Scene #8361: Doesn't Understanding Feel Worse?

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, An unknown caller contacts a number they shouldn't have. PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, When Ishirou picks up, there's no greeting, and a click interrupts anything he begins to say. PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, Whirring, and then a slightly grainy sound comes through the phone, as if coming out of a cassette player. PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, It plays a few seconds of dull environmental chatter, which is cut through by a loud metal clang and Lilian's voice, shouting "YOU!". PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, A familiar, saccharine-sweet voice responds, "Oh, wow! I didn't think I'd run into you here, Lily-R." PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, The recording cuts off. Petra clenches her fist around the payphone receiver, holding the mouthpiece up to the tape player for just another second before slamming it back onto its hook on the wall. Plastic cracks sharply, and Petra freezes until the sound dissipates through the empty building. Takes at least an hour to fly from the nearest Warpgate, and he's not faster than the mech. An hour to prep. Petra's new boots--new to her, despite being dirty and stained-- scrape against the rough wood floor of the campground's office building as she turns away from the payphone on the wall. She hesitates, only a step away, then pulls out her revolver from her jacket pocket and fires a round into the handset with a single motion. Plastic shrap--debris sprays outwards and the bassy retort of the shot shudders the windows. Petra lowers her gun slightly, and stares at the wreckage, broken pieces and a cord swinging lamely. I have no idea if that made it any harder for him. She sighs and steps back to the wall, returning the revolver to its place in her jacket. Bending over, she sifts through broken pieces of wood and plastic until she collects four--Canadian--quarters, picking them up and rubbing them between her fingers. A few feet away, just between the welcome desk where a bored teenager stood until Petra shooed him away some hours ago, and a rack of pamphlets and brochures, is a vending machine, and Petra walks over to consider its contents. She lights a cigarette and deposits the quarters into the machine, and after waiting for the rattle and thunk, she pushes the plastic flap aside to pick up her canned coffee. As a last preparation before cracking the tab open, Petra flips her phone open, and sends a quick text to Buttercup and Hibiki. No way else to phrase it except directly. >One hour. -Tap here to see PETRA's location- >You said you wanted to be here. >Stay inside the tree line until >well, you'll know Petra snorts. That all comes across as too serious, and she briefly imagines adding some emojis to cheer it up. :person_running: :explosion: :skull:-- :gun:, if it wasn't a water gun now. Petra giggles to herself, then cuts off, taking a drag on her cigarette and running a hand through her hair. Maybe spending two days straight in Bladecraft hasn't been great for my brain. Among other things. Coffee will help.
Petra Soroka	Petra sips from the can as she pushes open the glass door outside, putting the office behind her. The dilapidated shack and the small park restroom building beside it are the only two permanent structures in the campground. The rest, half a dozen or so, are RVs, scattered apart from each other throughout the clearing. The campground is a considerable drive from the nearest town, which is itself a considerable drive from the nearest city, so the occupants of the RVs must have planned to stay for a while, but there's no sign of movement around the site besides Petra herself. With just one dirt road leading out through the dense pine forest, the clearing is placid as Petra strolls across to the mech squatting in the center. She plucks her cigarette out of her mouth and drops it to the ground, grinding it with her toe to extinguish it. Directly beside the crushed butt is a small mound of fresh dirt, copied a dozen times across the field, obscured by grass, RVs, or grilling equipment. Each one contains one of the Kana's high explosive shells, clustered evenly so that when one detonates, the entire clearing is blown to smithereens. The Kana's hull has a scorch mark on the side, evidence of Petra experimenting earlier. She climbs up the ladder and pokes her head inside, then pulls out a sealed package with a new gas mask and cuts it open with the bayonet of her revolver. That's the third of three. It's probably fine, though. If I lose this last one too, I won't be living much longer anyways. Equipped with her gunblades, remote control, and canned coffee, Petra leaves the Kana crouched in the clearing, a visible and tempting target from the air, and hides some distance away beyond the treeline. Fifteen minutes of waiting go by, and Petra gets bored enough to climb the tree she was leaning against. No one ever talks about this part.
Ishirou	The message is picked up by Ishirou, but the contents were...well what he wanted even if he didn't think he did. It was an opportunity to get that recording and remove it from Petra's hands. It was a chance to...to help because... <X-paladins-chatter> [4] Lilian Rook says, "Tell me to calm down when you've done something about here you limp-dicked pissant!" <X-paladins-chatter> [4] Futaba Nuki huffs "At least I'd be doing /something/ to rein her in. He had spent too long not doing anything about her. Part of him was mad. Angry. Beyond angry. But the other part of him, /didn't/ want to hurt anyone. He should be livid, he should have tried to arrest her sooner. He just kept putting it off and kept getting into a rut. He kept telling himself he just had to hold out for the plan to go throw her in jail to happen. Ishirou was already wondering how to even /find/ her, but this... He was already in the air when the phone clicked off. He hacked the multiverse phone net, tracing its location and running it through a map to finally get an exact location. It was far away from anywhere that'd be considered civilization. One thing didn't fit into Petra's plans. He /is/ faster than the Kana. Considerably so. The flight unit connected to the RESCUE system was surprisingly fast for a generalist terrain setup. Upon getting close, the RESCUE folds out of the flight formation and into humanoid mode. He's already making a scan ahead, aiming to find a location for Petra. Of course, the Kana is there and he's almost immediately trying to hack the thing, trying to sift through whatever he can to find the recording. All he needs to do is get it, delete any copies, and defend against Petra. Nothing else matters. Though Petra likely set this up as a trap. He knows this, he knows she's going to try and kill him. He doesn't care. He had...he had to make things right for Lilian.
Hibiki Tachibana	"...Hibiki? Is something the matter?" It's entirely understandable Miku would ask that, given the look on her face after checking her phone notifications. They were both in the middle of catching up on piled-up schoolwork from the previous week - Hibiki's, of course - when it came. The reason for that is not, surprisingly(?), because the text comes across as serious as it does. It's because she knows she has to brace herself for this. Even the best of these kind of fights aren't pretty--they're things where you bare what you think, what you feel, in your heart. It's ugly, but it's something that has to happen for the situation to get better, and for there to be an understanding. But this isn't 'the best' of one. Nowhere close. Not for Petra, and not for Ishirou. But she said she'd be there. And she wants to be there. For her, for Ishirou, and for herself. And she has to believe it'll work out for the better, and see it happen with her own eyes. "...No. It's totally fine. I have to go take care of something, okay? I'll be back before dinner." ... By the time Ishirou is descending from above, Hibiki is standing on top of a branch within the trees, a hand on the trunk to keep her steady on top of it. She didn't dare risk trying to approach Petra to talk before things, with no way of knowing when her opponent would be showing up. Part of her still wanted to. Whether it was to offer last-minute support, try to make sure her mind was on the right track...or just to unnecessarily let her know she was here. But it's happening, and he's here. The only thing she can do is watch...and watch close, when it's two people she cares about. And really, really hope she won't ever have to feel like she has to show herself.
Petra Soroka	One day Petra's habit of continually assuming that people's capabilities are closer to her own than they are will bite her in the ass. Today is not that day, though without her camera drone to give her a heads up-- it's probably broken on the ground at Lilian's school alongside her other mask-- she's lost the ability to make the first move. Distracted by her thoughts, Petra is watching a hawk catch and slowly pick apart a mouse with fascinated revulsion when Ishirou makes his appearance. The Kana's warning alarms ping in Petra's ear, and she swears under her breath and hurries to put her gas mask on. Thankfully, given that her plan to bait Ishirou out relied on the assumption that he'd immediately hack any device connected to her, the Kana has been scrubbed completely clean of information related to the recording. The only copy right now, is the tape currently hidden inside one of Petra's overall pockets. Why does she need an original at all? Never you mind. With Petra still concealed by the trees, the Kana's turret folds out a familiar side cannon-- thin, cylindrical, and smooth, the alien-looking barrel tracks Ishirou's trajectory through the air, without firing at first. Petra takes one last look around the surrounding forest, anxiety furrowing on her face-- if they don't show up, I can't be blamed for whatever they miss, right?-- and then she draws both of her revolvers, flips their dials, and connects them together with a decisive twist, forming her full sized gunblade. Petra swings it over her head and down into the tree she's standing on, biting the blade deep into the wood to form a stable platform, and then she fires. Bark, branches, and needles are scoured off of the cone of trees in front of its muzzle, the sound of wood splintering almost louder than the explosion itself, and Petra's ascent out of the treetops is heralded by visible swaying of those trees hit by the spray. She flips over top of Ishirou, landing with both boots hard on his back. Familiar. In that moment, shotgun angled downwards to her former friend's head, Petra thinks of all the things she might want to say to him. Feelings to convey, apologies, bitter insults, anything at all before she turns him into a splatter of gore. Nothing comes to mind. Just a dull ache, yearning for this to be over and done. Petra pulls the trigger. The recoil blasts her a solar system away. As Ishirou is propelled down into the ground by the point-blank shot, the thin barrel locked onto his position fires, making his flight sluggish and clumsy. The reason why the main turret wasn't pointing at him becomes clear, as it fires an explosive shell directly into the ground, as Ishirou connects with it. With a roar, the clearing is engulfed in a column of fire, dirt, metal, and boy turned to ash all the same.
Ishirou	Ishirou growls... Of course, she did the thing that'd stop him from getting it so easily. He was hoping to stall her out until he could recover it, and then get out. That wasn't going to happen, so now he's searching for any media that could hold it. Anything at all... He gets a ping. It's Petra, already flipping over him, sending her foot into his back again, but this time following it up with a shot that sends him flying toward the ground against his own power. The attack was devastating, and what came next would definitely be enough to maim him seriously. POD warns him at the last second, and he immediately switches his movement mode. Drill arms switching in for flight. He burrows right as the shell fires at him. It's not enough to protect him from the majority of the blast, but it's enough to take an edge off. He lies in the earth, which is covered by fire and burning shrapnel. For a moment, perhaps, Petra will assume it did the trick and nothing was left. Until Ishirou burrowed out finally coming to and releasing a barrage of static-looking blasts at her. They fly out in a focused stream, aiming to try and pin her down as he considers what to do about the Kana. He tries to disrupt any communication systems in the Kana, the last thing he needs is another blast like that when he gets knocked around.
Petra Soroka	Despite all the logical certainty, as superheated air rushes past Petra's face and sears it dry, as the atmosphere of the entire word seems to shudder and collapse inwards to make up for the hole abruptly torn through it-- Petra knows this would never be over that quickly. It couldn't be. If it was that easy then there was never a reason to hold out as long as she did, and it would be harder to ever again. For a moment, Petra is improbably balanced on a treetop, watching the delayed shockwave of her making wash over the shallow lake nearby. It really is "hers", now, isn't it, not "the mech's". Explosive ruination is what the Ekanamsha S1 was made for, and it had always been Petra holding it back from that, not the other way around. It's not new, to feel finally at ease with the machine she's supposed to be commanding, but maybe that's why it feels just a little bit unfaithful. The earth around Ishirou, as he emerges from his den, is a hellish crater. Pockmarked and ragged, the dozen explosive charges carved varying depths into the ground, the heat of each blast intense enough to bake dirt and stone into slick glass-like walls. Metal RVs and trailers are twisted and turned to slag, and the air shivers with residual heat, burning his face and scalding his eyes. The Kana remains, scorched but mostly undeterred. Cutting off its communications system is easy. The remote in Petra's hand is rendered useless. But probing the Kana's computers reveals that Petra is actually doing very little on her own. The Kana seems to have a rudimentary AI for an autopilot, dull and lobotomized, which controls almost every facet of the mech when allowed to, from flight to combat. Preventing Petra from accessing it from outside merely stops her from updating the last command she gave it-- and that last command was "fire". Petra is traveling back through the air to rejoin Ishirou, already assuming that he's alive. She dodges the majority of the staticky blasts, the heat distorting Ishirou's vision enough that it's difficult to pinpoint where Petra is, and cuts through the remaining bolts. When she lands on the edge of a crater, she pulls out the remote, fiddles with it, and then looks surprised and betrayed (?) when the main turret swivels to Ishirou and floods the crater he's in with sticky, flaming white phosphorus.
Ishirou	Ishirou isn't as blind or as disabled as she might expect. For one, the environmental systems in the RESCUE help mitigate the choking and stinging smoke and the heat is slowly causing an uptick in internal temperature, but not as much as would be expected. The RESCUE was created to be viable in almost /any/environment. The problem is... White Phosphorus is a war crime for a reason. There is screaming, and pain burning throughout Ishirou. His body burns with white-hot fire as he blindly flails around, trying to get away from the Kana before he can recover. All he can do is purge the outer armor once he gets to the lip of the crater. It's...enough to stop the fire from continuing the burn him, but not enough to get out unscathed. The remains of the Burrow unit are strung across the battlefield, and it just leaves Ishirou in the base RESCUE form. His body is severely burned, and it hurts to walk. He doesn't have a choice now, not that Petra is right there. He takes a breath and then... Flings an electromagnetic pulse at Petra and the Kana, trying to disable the latter, and blast away the former. He's also trying to magnetize the tape. This is followed up by Ishirou reaching out to grip the remaining pieces of his armor, still covered in fire, and toss them at Petra.
Petra Soroka	"Hey! What's your problem?!" Petra is, for the first time ever, shouting at the Kana as if it can hear her. Her voice scratches with the dust in the air, and she stalks over to the mech with the intensity of planning to kick it, though she reconsiders as the residual heat is still glowing-hot in the hull, and the rubber treads of her boots turn sticky just from touching the ground. Instead, she smacks it with the flat of her blade, and the sound rings out dully over Ishirou's screaming. Petra shudders, and keeps her attention focused pointedly away. Nausea rises in her throat, though whether that's from the acrid smoke or from a sympathetic twinge of agony isn't clear. Because she's doing her best to put Ishirou's burning form out of her mind, the blast catches her off-guard, forcing her to stumble away and slide down the slippery walls of the crater. The tape is, of course, affected more direly by radiation than the girl is. It has no shielding against a magnetic pulse, and is ruined immediately, destroying the only existing copy of the original recording. Petra doesn't know this, though, because she can't tell if energy is magnetized just by feeling it. She turns back towards Ishirou, and whips her gunblade around to bat the flaming scrap away. As he teeters towards her, burned and bloodied, hot air catches in her throat and momentarily burns away the dull fog pulsing behind her eyes. Her sword sinks to the ground, clinking against the blasted-smooth earth. "...Was it really that hard? To just give me a break?" Petra's voice rasps with days of disuse, and a tight emotion that's hard to place. "God, I wasn't half as horrible to you as Dr. Eggman was, but if you'd treated me as being evil like him, I wouldn't have had to put up with your constant needling. You could never take me seriously enough for that, though. Not before Indus, and not after. You only ever treated me as some stupid, helpless brat, fucked in the head, fragile enough to topple in one direction or another from your limp-dicked prodding." Petra sighs. A tree cracks and topples on the edge of the clearing. "And now here we a--" The Kana follows its command. He staggers towards Petra, and is met with an explosive shell the size of his head, heavy enough to shatter bones even without the following ear-splitting detonation.
Ishirou	Ishirou hears Petra's ranting at him, but right now Ishirou is covered in third-degree burns and only up because combat drugs have been injected into him to keep him from passing out. It only takes a confirmation of a scan to determine that he was successful. He sighs, relieved that he at least did this much. He takes some small joy that only later she'll figure it out. When the Kana rises up to fire a shell at him he immediately reacts. Electromagnetic force aims to try and catch the shell...but he wasn't quick enough to completely catch it. Instead, it explodes farther away than it was intended to, blasting him away from the shot and avoiding the majority of the blast. Ishirou rolls across the ground, before finally coming to a stop against some debris. Everything hurts, and he's sure something is broken. He can't escape now. "He..." he says finally, "He didn't betray me.." he says, miserably. "He didn't betray any trust...all so that they could hurt someone who is family to me.." He forces himself to stand, one arm dangling as he brings up the other. He's got maybe one more shot. Maybe. "I trusted you.." he says, weakly and in no small amount of pain. "But you've finally shown me just how ugly humans can be...I don't want...I don't want this.." He's barely got enough strength left to throw something of his own, so he waits. He waits for the Kana to go back to fulfilling its orders. And then he yanks down the weapon with all of his might so that the barrel of the cannon is aimed right at Petra. It's a long shot, and he's probably not going to get it... But it's all he got left in the tank.
Petra Soroka	Petra flinches at the sudden, unprompted firing of the Kana, cutting off her speech. Horror floods her expression, the first strong facial movement she's made today, at the sudden realization that Ishirou might be killed without letting her say everything on her mind. Unspoken sentiments carve into her even in the brief few seconds where she charges into the clearing smoke from the explosion, checking for Ishirou's body, to see if he's got enough life left in him to finish her sentence. Petra spots him, crumpled against debris, the scorched and disintegrating remains of what was once a kitchenette inside an RV. She exhales, cool air stinging on her blistered lips, and walks over to him calmly. He tries to stand, and Petra plants a foot on his chest, grinding her heel to keep him down. "Did you get what you came for, then? Was it worth it? Making me feel a little worse, for a little longer, breaking your own promises to bait me into killing you, just as retribution for that betrayal? I hope--" Instinctually, Petra spins around the moment before the Kana fires. With the pair stacked on top of each other, adjusting its aim isn't necessary-- what Ishirou has to do to fire the cannon at Petra is override the AI's recognition of its pilot, designating her as acceptable collateral. All of this is invisible to Petra, and from her perspective, the Kana's auto-combat system gives no consideration for her at all. She assumes that the cannon is still aimed at Ishirou, and despite that, steps forwards towards the Kana and fires her shotgun at the shell, shielding herself from the interrupted explosion with her jacket, and shielding Ishirou with herself. Bomber jacket smoldering, hair charred, skin red and angry, Petra looks down at Ishirou, with a disconcertingly neutral expression. "You wanted to understand why I'm like this. You demanded a front row seat, when I asked you to look away." Petra raises her gunblade above Ishirou's chest. "I hope you got what you wanted." The blade is driven down by Petra's arms in tandem with combustive force slamming it forwards. The tip buries itself a full inch into the ground.
Hibiki Tachibana	The fighting is heavy. It's not the good kind of heavy. It's the kind of heavy where the air is so dense it feels impossible to move her body, where just breathing feels hot and difficult, even on the sidelines. Ishirou's screaming hits like a two-ton weight, and so does what she can see of him down in the destroyed, searing pit carved into the clearing. The same gut-wrenching feeling she had back at the contest returns in force the more she sees, and has to resist the urge to vomit on the spot. Standing here, simply watching it happen, feels like it's going to make her physically sick entirely on its own. Even if it /does/ end up being what she needs...maybe what both of them need to break out of this horrible state they're in with each other, it doesn't feel right at all just standing here. Every nerve feels like it's on fire. Before she knows it, Hibiki is dropping down off the branch, hitting the ground hard enough to make her knees hurt, just to immediately lurching forward into a desperate sprint. She'd be faster if she transformed, but it doesn't even come to mind in the heat of the moment. "Ishirou...! Petra...!!" The only thing is how much she really wanted this to work. That Petra honestly would find more than 'uninterested', or that having a fight like this would bring something out - if she'd find what would bring her closest to 'her'. There was even a part that was genuinely hoping Ishirou would win, and they could make something work from there. But right now, Hibiki doesn't know. And she can't shake the awful feeling that 'Petra' is going to be farther and not closer, and it might be to a place she won't be able to reach. She has to get to the edge of the crater as soon as she can. She's not going to be anywhere close to fast enough, though. All she's done is make sure she'll only be able to look down there and see what's happened by the time the deed is already done.
Ishirou	He couldn't get up, but he DID get what he wanted out of that. The foot drove him right back into the ground so he couldn't get up. The explosion that followed the shot knocks him around and forces him to lie flat. This time, though, there wasn't any more getting up. The blade is driven down, and the force sends it through him and deep into the earth beneath him. His RESCUE unit is soon colored red, as is the ground beneath him. He chokes and struggles to try and get the sharp object out of his chest, but is nowhere near strong enough to. Blood is coming up through his mouth, as he chokes on it. He can barely speak, nevermind scream as he writhes on the ground before... He goes still.
Petra Soroka	Petra stares down at Ishirou's limp form, eyes half-lidded. She plants a boot on his torso and slides the blade out of his chest with a wet sound, and when the bayonet suddenly retracts, gore flicks backwards onto Petra, spraying her overalls. She doesn't seem to notice. She thought she'd feel a little more, with her vision focused intently on the trickle of blood flowing out of the corner of Ishirou's mouth. There isn't really anything, no matter how deeply she probes. No sense of victory, or mourning, or relief. Just that same dull, cotton-like fog, packed into her brain and behind her eyes and in her stomach and limbs. The trickle stops. Petra finally raises her face and notices Hibiki, without a flicker of surprise. She still hasn't moved a muscle besides that, her foot is still pressing on the corpse's chest, the gunblade is still held tensely in her stock-still arms. "Oh. Hey. So you came. I..." Each word is a struggle, forced through Petra's dry throat. Oh. Maybe she's just thirsty. Following that line of thought, Petra stiffly reaches into the pocket of her overalls, and pulls out her water bottle, twisting it open. She takes a few tiny sips, then says with her voice just as painfully scratchy as before, "This is how it went."
Hibiki Tachibana	It's fine that Petra took time to notice Hibiki. She's not exactly sure herself, exactly how long she was standing at the top edge of the crater staring down. For all she's aware of or knows, it might've been an entire hour before the other girl's scratchy voice brings her back to reality. "I was...here the entire time." Her mumbled response is automatic, and quiet enough that it's a wonder her voice even carries down there. She steps forward, and slides down the edge of the pit towards the bottom, neither the roughness of the trip or the bottom of her shoes shearing away enough to take her eyes off the two of them down there. When she touches down, it's slow and unsure steps that bring her to the both of them, stopping only a bit away. With hands clenched at her sides, there's a long stare at Ishirou from up close, and her wide eyes take in the injuries he's taken...ending on the stab wound. "...Yeah," she says back, turning her head towards Petra. Hibiki isn't looking at her though; her eyes are still cast down towards the ground, as if she's still looking at Ishirou. They drift up to Petra after several seconds, just long enough to take in the look on her face...and scrunch up tightly a few seconds later. Her tight fists go white-knuckled, and a sniffle escapes. And then another, as she bites down on her trembling lip, and tears go from building up quickly to flowing down, layering over top of each other one after another. She shakes from the shoulders down, and little gasps and hiccups fill the air as she struggles to even form words past the messy, barely-restraing sobbing. "Y-Yeah...I can see it, Petra...I c-can see it..."
Petra Soroka	Petra matches Hibiki's look with a neutral, almost bored looking one of her own. Over the handful of seconds that her eyes linger on Petra's face, that mask-like expression starts thawing, and her lips part helplessly when Hibiki sniffles. She clenches a fist and shudders, the violent motion unlocking the tension in her body and leaving her shivering uncontrollably. Her eyes are completely dry. "I-I-I said, didn't I? That this is how it would end. I gave him every opportunity to stop, I told everyone what would happen, and no one took me seriously. Not even Lilian did." Petra presses her hand to her mouth, and the world swims around her. The anxiety over what Lilian will think briefly floats across her mind, but is overwhelmed by the reality of what the girl in front of her is currently thinking. The gut-crushing sense of wrongness settles on her like physical weight, suffocating her. Death isn't a tangible thing, even with the corpse nearly touching her foot, but being the reason that Bikki cries is all too familiar. "I--" I can't say I'm sorry. "I hate this. I hate this." Petra's voice is choked, barely coming out as a hoarse whisper, cracking more often than not. "None of this should've needed to happen this way. I-I-I-I liked him just fine, you know? I didn't even care about Indus. I would've helped him get home again later, just, later, after everything with L-L-Lilian. He just took something that wasn't even about him, it was just supposed to be aimed towards Lilian, he just took it so personally, and he was so fucking embarrassing about it!" Petra raises her voice until she's shouting, tears carving a path through the ash and grime on her face. She stomps her foot angrily, and Ishirou's hand cracks underneath her boot. Her eyes widen in horror, and she doubles over and dry-heaves.
Hibiki Tachibana	The sound of cracking at their feet isn't something Hibiki has to see to know what it's from, and even just the moment of unconscious realization is enough to also put her on the verge of retching on the spot. She, somehow, only gets away with staggering slightly in place, a gasp breaking up the sounds of her sobbing. She doesn't stagger away, though. It's towards Petra, her feet careful to miss Ishirou beneath them by the largest margin possible as a hand comes to grip tightly onto her shoulder. Almost every other time she's tried to make physical contact with Petra, whether it was gentle or firm, it was for her sake first and foremost. This one feels like it's for Hibiki to support herself as well as Petra - like she might fall over otherwise, as she struggles to get her breathing under control enough to put words together. "There...there it is..." And after several chokes, she manages it, even if it's quiet compared to the other girl's shouting. "T-That's what I...was waiting to see. How I wanted it to be." If Petra looked at her now, it'd be obvious that Hibiki still has her eyes clenched tight, still shivering more than a little. "...You're crying. And feeling something. And telling me how you...how you feel, too. But, I'm not..." She trails off, her head lowering just to turn halfway towards Ishirou's body. There's an audible swallow. "I-I'm not...the one it was supposed to be for, though..." There's an understanding, somewhere, that this outburst of emotion is only happening right this second because of her. She's not entirely sure how she feels about that - but it makes every other time she wasn't there for her feel that much worse. "And now you...he..."
Petra Soroka	For the first time in a while, Petra shudders at Hibiki's touch. She doesn't push her away, or refuse to be used as a support, but she locks up, her own hands rigid and trembling by her side. Petra stays upright, looking over Hibiki's bowed head, dimly scanning the cratered environment. A fire reaches one of the surviving RV's engines, and it explodes, the boom followed by a metallic screech as its frame twists and scatters in sharp fragments. Once it clatters into silence, Petra shakily whispers above Hibiki's head, matching her volume. "I told him already, right? I told him so many times, you were there for some of them. I didn't have any grudge towards him until he made one. I said all of that to him before, and all he did was keep on bothering me. I didn't want this. I don't--" Petra cuts herself off, and Hibiki can feel her shoulders tense up under her hands. Petra slowly raises her left hand, careful not to touch Hibiki with the movement, and deliberately tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Hibiki can feel Petra's chest fall in a silent sight, and when she speaks, her voice is dull. "Well. It's over now." She steps back, letting Hibiki's hands slide off her. She takes another step, not looking down at the body. "I'm going to check if the vending machine survived, I need to drink something cold. Do you want anything?"
Hibiki Tachibana	Hibiki doesn't miss the shivering on contact. But that's fine. It's not something she can blame Petra for, even unconsciously. What gets her lips to purse, making her struggle to swallow again, is when the mask goes back up. Her hand falls away from the other girl and back down to her side, and there's a few more dying down sniffles as she remains in place. "...N-No. I'm fine. ...Totally fine." Hibiki sucks in some air, and somehow finds the strength to straighten up just a little more, make her voice a little clearer. Even though she's not fine at all. Every time she's said that recently, she hasn't really been fine. "But this isn't...it's not over yet, Petra." If anything, it's only just started, after this. The hands at her side can't decide if they want to tighten up or stay loose, but her head hangs low and her eyes shut for the second time. "He's--...Ishirou is still here," she quietly calls attention back to the exact thing she's ignoring. And she knows she is. "...And I can't just leave him...like that. Like this. I can't." Her already shaky voice breaks, just a little bit, on the last few words.
Petra Soroka	Petra knows Hibiki isn't fine. "... I'll check if there's an iced tea for you anyways, alright?" She also knows that isn't the answer. The management office is halfway-blasted apart, wood charred and broken, smoke still rising from ambiguous hotspots in the collapsed structure. Debris is strewn down the side of the crater that the office is perched on, and Petra trudges along the slope, eyes downturned and hands in her pockets. Her shoulders stiffen visibly, the bomber jacket exaggerating the motion, and she doesn't turn around to face Hibiki or the thing on the ground. Petra's voice is quiet and subdued, like she's just resigned herself to something unpleasant. "...It is over. If you want to bury h-him," Her voice falters, "Or whatever, then I'll help you. Or we can...." Petra's mind wanders to all the other ways they could dispose of the body, grotesquely physical, made sharper in her imagination by the fresh feeling of feeling bones resist and then give way like a watermelon under her weapon. Fire, explosives, crushing, carving, each less helpful of a thought than the last, but sticking in her brain insistently. Why-- why am I thinking like this? It's awful. It's disgusting. Petra shudders, then slowly crouches to the ground, hugging her knees to her chest. "We can give it a burial. If that'll make you feel better. That thing won't mind either way."
Hibiki Tachibana	"It's not 'it' or 'that thing', it's Ishirou--!" Almost as soon as Petra finishes her sentence, Hibiki is squaring up her shoulders and scrunching up her face, raising her voice loud enough to echo off the walls of the crater. Following that is a mixture of heavier breaths and sniffles, along with a frustrated look on her face that shows more than a little regret at the outburst almost instantly. And it lowers back down afterwards, too. "...It's not over. There's still...all sorts of things that come after doing something like this," she murmurs in the tone of someone who doesn't want to think about it at all herself. "...You already know what I mean. With her...and all of them." Hibiki trails off, audibly taking in air just to let it all back out. "But before any of that, I..." She stops short. Probably because it's her turn to brace. "...no, no burying. Especially not here. That'd feel...wrong. Really wrong." "I want to...take him back to the Paladins."
Petra Soroka	Petra doesn't look surprised at Hibiki's outburst. Huddled on the ground, her eyes flicker uncomfortably, like she was expecting it. Petulantly, she mutters into her knees, not loud enough for it to be a proper response to Hibiki, but not quiet enough for it to be entirely unheard. "It was Ishirou." "Things that come after...." Petra knows that it isn't what Hibiki meant, but she still thinks back on how everyone reacted after she fought John in the castle. "She said, last time, that the most important thing to do after a serious fight is immediately indulge your brain's reward center, and treat yourself to something really nice." A dry laugh. "Somehow I'm not feeling up to it." And then Hibiki says that, and Petra becomes acutely aware of the weight of the two revolvers in her pockets. She slowly stands up, starts to brush dust off her clothes and then flinches when her burned hands sting at the contact. Facing away from Hibiki, Petra clenches both of her fists and speaks steadily. "Why would you want to do that, Bikki?"
Hibiki Tachibana	There's a slight twinge in Hibiki's face at being corrected, followed by a quiet response to 'her' words - "...I don't know if that's the right way to look at fights in the first place. At least not for me. And I don't think...it's your way, either." She purses her lips, and turns to look in Petra's direction, although there's quite a bit of distance between them now. There at least aren't any fresh tears flowing, although the old ones' trails are still clear on her face. Her voice still sounds dry and a little hollow, though. "...It's where he belongs. Not out here. ...If it was me, I would never want to be left out in the middle of the forest, at the bottom of a crater. I'd want to be home...or at least with my friends." She sounds entirely genuine about that, and a moment passes before she continues, slightly lower. "...They can decide what to do with him after that. And...they're going to come here for him sooner or later, anyway. They're going...to know. You know Ishirou. He either made sure to leave a record of where he was going...or he was in such a rush to get here that he didn't even bother covering his tracks. ...I want to at least make it so they don't have to worry any longer than they have to." It sounds like she's speaking at least as calmly as one could expect to, when they're still reeling. Maybe even a little more logical than Hibiki Tachibana normally is. But it's too calm. Unnatural and forced. All it'd take is one look back at her to see her still shivering, her head angled down, or the fingernails digging deep, deep into her palms. And her voice cracks, just a tiny bit. "...You told me...you didn't care about what happened to him either way. So let me do this. Please."
Petra Soroka	The hyperawareness of the revolvers in her pocket fades to the back of Petra's awareness as Hibiki continues talking. She's not threatening her, or even really insisting on anything. "...Yeah. I mean, I'd never want you to be forgotten in a ditch like this. But you wouldn't get to this point. I wouldn't let it happen." The intensity in Petra's response surprises even herself. Her fist is clenched and shaking, inordinately upset at the suggestion of Hibiki's corpse being abandoned in this same way. Petra flexes her hand and exhales forcefully. "And yeah. They'll find out eventually. But don't force yourself to be the reason why. You didn't do this, Bikki. You're not responsible for it. You shouldn't be the one presenting them with my fucking shrapnel." Petra is similarly unnaturally calm, but unlike Hibiki, she's also totally still. She's reverted back to that hollow, neutral expression, turned back around to face towards Hibiki. She tilts her head to the side slightly, charred hair disintegrating into ash upon contact with her shoulder. "I'll take care of it. I'll let them know. Let me follow this to the end, without ruining your reputation any more than being my friend already has."