Scene #8433: Midnight City Barista

Owner	Pose
Xion	When Petra escapes her entanglements, whatever they are, after the uneventful (for Xion) conversation over the phone with the ex(?) Hero-of-Everyone's-Hearts and for-hire heroine there was a lingering text message in her phone. The timestamp puts it somewhere in the middle of the last thing she was doing, which is an easy excuse to miss it. > If you just want to hang out I'm covering a shift. > It's pretty busy for a city, but the place across the way attracts all the business. > Even if you just want to be alone together. THE MIDNIGHT OIL Brick And Mortar In A Neon City, Set into a bookstore-coffeeshop with stools and cocktail tables and a beat up leather couch and recliners in the back next to the bookshelves, the Midnight Oil was a dark-windowed hole in the wall smushed between two large highrises in an alley of a city drenched in concrete and steel. In a see of eyes and a chaos of colors, nothing is seen, and nothing is loved. The cyber-bar across the way with a neon sign starting in V is obscured by the traffic, bot inside and about the street and air. It is populated. The Midnight Oil isn't. Xion leans on the counter of a glass food case, lit with a single dim flourescent light strip. Xion wears a grey collared shirt and a black pair of shorts with a dark green apron stamped with a white coffee lid insignia where the of the lid mouth is more smile-suggesting wide, and it drips a single stylized drop of black. She is currently watching a video on her phone, a checkered phone case with a jangling empty star charm held at arm's length against the counter. The entire rest of the store is empty. The place across the way really is a lot busier.
Petra Soroka	> Oh? > Yeah Id likd that a lot > Ill be a bit of a mess tho lok Petra types the last K of her mispelled 'lol' on her shitty flip phone with a completely straight look on her face. She got out of Candy's truck in Cuernavaca minutes ago, then loitered outside the warpgate to check her phone out of pure mind-muscle-memory habit. She's back in her bomber jacket, mercifully covering up the damage to her t-shirt, back, and arms, and spent the ride picking scraps of sugarcane off of her jeans. All things considered-- especially considering the impeccably pristine physicality that the Silver grants her-- she's still in the top 5% of Petra-presentability moments. It's like the fight never happened. It sucks. The Neon City is thankfully easier to navigate for Petra than Candy's home city is, without any sort of vehicle of her own. Petra pushes the door of the Midnight Oil open cautiously, with a mildly nervous expression. Something about... between Tamamo, Persephone, and Xion, the three people that Lilian is emphatically close to, Petra has completely ruined her ability to have a positive relationship with two of them. It feels important, that at this point, she should be able to make a good impression on one of them. "Hey, Xion." Petra approaches her, and blinks and notices how empty the shop is. She takes a seat at one of the stools, just a little out of arms reach. "...Um. The fight went well, I think."
Xion	Petra doesn't get a message back, but there isn't a huge demanding ask there. Did she want to hang out? Sure, it seemed so. And so, pushing into the coffeeshop bookstore in a city of neon and midnight, where personhood was interchangeable, buyable and sellable. Cheap. Flashy. Plastic and chrome and neon... And Xion was a bored barista in a physical bookshop. Looking up from her phone with a curious tilt of her chin, the noirette in her collared shirt and apron regard Petra as she meanders in. Settled up before Xion, Petra looks up at her barista while Xion turns around to show the back pockets of her black pants, the loose tie of her apron, and the gentle side-to-side bounce of Xion's idle bored rhythm-dance. Swung around with an orbit back to the counter, Xion places a full cup of hot black coffee before Petra with a smile, the whites of her teeth flashing at the corners of a smile that's a bit too knowing-tight. "You got your butt kicked, didn't you?"
Petra Soroka	As Petra settles into the stool and leans her elbows on the table, she lets the vibe of the bookstore soak into her, relaxing slightly. It's the most familiar any place has felt to her in... months, she realizes. The city outside is sensory overload, Cuernavaca is unfamiliar in a lot of ways, Nephra's motel in Carnegie Park is grating and suffocating in how... 'earth-like' it is. This place is a little nice, at least. Petra habitually slips her hand into her jacket pocket, about three quarters of the way through the automatic motion of retrieving and lighting a cigarette before remembering that she's inside. She squeezes the cigarette between her fingers, then replaces it in her pocket, half-heartedly smiling when Xion brings her the cup. "Thanks. I-- I mean, I got what I needed, at least." Petra studies the cup of coffee, the memory of how the fight ended briefly souring the prospect of consuming anything at all. "I knew it was going to suck. It was two on one. But I had to do it that way, I had to lose, because last time I set myself up to win against Ishirou I murdered him. And I didn't want to do that again. I wanted to talk."
Xion	Xion is, undoubtably, one of the best baristas in the Midnight City of neon illusions, but that's because she's one of the only real baristas in the city that doesn't work on floor 500 of a soulless brutalist luxerise. Leaning forward on the counter two-armedly and letting her elbows bear weight, Xion continues to give Petra a detached sort of gaze. Her bright blue eyes are large on her face, and her chin comes to a soft point that cants just a bit down as she carries on her slight rocking while she takes Petra's measure. There's only so much a bomber jacket can avoid telling a barista, but she's not a barkeep, so some of the intimate secrets are still hers. "You needed a beating? That doesn't seem right. And it doesn't sound like it needed to be two on one and a loss either - that's just feeding them, at the end of at least this day."
Petra Soroka	Petra shifts on the counter, looking away from Xion. Light glints off of the silver lining of her eyelids, made all the more visible by the matte-tar shading around them. "It doesn't seem wrong either. I mean, you-- well, you weren't around much, I think, but if you listened to the Watch radio logs. You know I kind of needed it, for how shitty I was before." Fingers wrapped around the coffee signal to her brain that it's hot, without the prickling urgency that the sensation usually brings with it. Petra lets it linger to cool off anyways. "I don't mean that I didn't try to win. Just that... it was more important that they understood Lilian a little better. Feeling like I needed to win, on top of that, would kind of just be selfish, right?"
Xion	Petra can clearly tell that Xion is looking - for the cheer and bored barista bounce of the noirette, she's still someone who gazes with the particular eyes of someone always pressing Examine on every detail they see. They had met several times before! But only in passing. She had worn plaid and held a sword casually, if at all, and played with plastic and toys and acted the hero in an airport and the past. Familiar, like characters who were in the same movie prior. "It's wrong." Xion answers firmly. "If you're going into a fight like that, and you're going to lose, it's not a fight - and if it is, it's not two on one. It's three on one. The two you fought, and yourself, bringing yourself down." Tilting back and coming off the counter, Xion pulls a tall carafe of cream up, waving it near the cup of black coffee. "Want me to do an art? I can do leafs and doggies and stuff, but faces are pretty hard." She hangs there, grooving to her own beat for a moment longer, and then pauses. "Do you think it'll get better if someone hits you? I could, but you're not asking. Feeling like you should be able to bring her forward, and defend her, is taking the responsibility for not adding a loss to her name as well. Knowing that - is it more selfish to take a loss in her name and yours both, or accept that the fight you can't win should be avoided, and you can do better than a painful loss to overcome pain?" Xion leans in with her carafe, tonking the edge lightly against Petra's drooped brow. "For her, even if it was impossible, I'd win anyway. And if I couldn't, I'd make the fight one I could win."
Petra Soroka	Like two characters that were in the same movie prior, with a season of a spinoff television show between. Petra's almost unrecognizable as the girl who was sweatily incompetent at Twin Peaks back then, at the beginning of her time as an Elite. Besides her bomber jacket, nearly everything about her has changed: her posture, the health of her skin and hair, those subtle silver flairs, the way her eyes move slower across the bookstore without anxiously darting around. "Oh, art... how about stars? Something like that?" Petra thinks for a moment, and then after answering, slouches again when answering the rest of Xion's question. "I mean, I said I wasn't trying to lose, I just... fucking Ishirou would never have been brave enough to meet me to talk if I didn't offer my head on a silve-- on a platter. You know. Because of the murder. It's... using myself as a bargaining chip to get to the part I need to happen." "It doesn't get better when someone hits me, I'm not..." The fact that her thoughts immediately drift to Lilian in that particular way is mercifully shielded from view. "It's about doing things that'll help her even if I get hurt by them." Petra chews on the inside of her lip thoughtfully. At some point in the last week, her tar sub-layer shifted inside her mouth, to accomodate for the habit, giving her something to chew on that isn't metal. "I guess I-- I don't like the feeling of saying I'm fighting for her and then getting my ass kicked. Yeah. That feels kind of lame. But I also wouldn't feel right engineering a fight that's supposed to be a conversation in a way that makes sure I win."
Xion	'Stars' in a mug of coffee is difficult, but Xion is a professional stand-in barista, and so she takes her offhanded offer of a gift art extremely seriously. With a careful eye, she pours off the milk into a second low dish and then draws a wooden toothpick from nowhere to delicately dip the tip into the dish and start pricking and swishing patterns into the surface. Rather than give a base of milk, she dot-draws with a carefully dipped wooden diamond, and listens to Petra with little attentive 'mms' and 'mmhmms', an active kind of creative listening. A single careful drop-o-let becomes a moon in cream-white astral sea. "I think it's nice that you want to move forward with Ishirou, but that's a lot to ask, too, isn't it? Well, maybe it had to happen this early. But at the same time, maybe it didn't. Using yourself as the bargaining chip..." She doesn't like saying it... ...but isn't it true? "Then don't do either. It's not a binary choice. People do that all the time, frame something as a binary, and as long as they aren't taking the worst path they'll argue themselves into doing anything. And it never matters what the actual parameters - only the creativity of cruelty." "Are you being creatively cruel to Petra in Lilian's name? I wouldn't defeat the evil of yourself for her either." Xion wonders, carefully placing forward her carefully dotted moon-and-stars before Petra and smiles slightly. "Do you think you'll build the world you want by showing your neck? Do you think Lilian wants Ishirou to get another round with you? Another round he'll win? Even if it appeases him, and it might, and that might get you things: Does it build the world, that outermost layer you wanted? Does it pull the staple better?" "Do you like the coffee?"
Petra Soroka	"God. No, I don't want to move forwards with Ishirou. I can't stand him. Somehow even worse after today, even though it should be better." Petra rests her cheek on her fist, watching every little motion of Xion's craft. "But he said he'd try to be better for her, so that's... really all I could ask. It doesn't matter that he makes me sick until he does it to Lilian too. I'll just deal." 'Creatively cruel to Petra in Lilian's name'..." Petra stops herself from blurting out that that might be a plus for Lilian. Petra's neck is, similarly, concealed with gauze, wrapped all the way up to the base of her jaw. She readjusts on the stool, to accept the offered art with both hands, sliding it just a little closer to her chest with her hands wrapped around it. "I guess she-- wouldn't, really, be happy about me losing to Ishirou. I can be pretty certain of that actually. Unless she hates me forever after this, which... well." Petra takes a little bit of silence, expression wrinkling with worry as that hangs in the air. She takes a small sip of her coffee and murmurs 'thanks for this, by the way', still double-handing it. "I think it loosens the staple temporarily, but winning would pry the arms up better. I know that me winning was the way the story should've gone-- I'm fighting for Lilian, fighting for something that Ishirou needed to be fought for, and earnestly trying to do better by someone I care about, for once. Compared to him, who's a shithead who called me a slur with his first few minutes of being newly returned to life and hurts someone who he claims to be his best friend enough that she thinks he'd be better off dead. And then he says I'm never capable of being good for her." Petra huffs, releasing the tension she built up during the tirade. "Like I said. Temporarily, a little better. Even though it just feels a little worse, I can still make it better again later, I just need to manage right now first."
Xion	"Well," Xion begins anew after the arted coffee is taken, pulling back to stow her warming carafe in a counter fridge and start cleaning out her art dish. There's no other dishes in the washer as she sets the saucer into place. Finishing delicately, with the toothpick left between the tips of two opposite teeth, Xion scooches over a bar stool behind the counter and sits with one knee up on the bar and the other dangling, hands clasped in her lap. She looks, down a little, and sad a little, at the things that Petra is saying. "Saying he'd try is the expectable minimum, it's not the reward you're looking for. If you had walked up there, and asked for a talk, and then defended yourself if you had to, then you could have won - because you would have been fighting a two versus one, your heart and Candy's versus Ishirou. I..." Xion exhales nasally, her empathy remaining now with the air of admitting, the atmosphere of honesty. "... understand, wanting to turn your frustration into anger, and hit someone for how you feel. If it's bad, why should it only be you? Still..." One of her hands comes unclasped from its partner to rub gently at the back of her neck. "... That means by the end of it, if you want to hit someone and feel better after, you'll have to fix yourself and the thing you hit too." Her hand falls with the rise of her shoulers into a shrug. "But it's okay to lose a fight. It has to be." Xion slouches, and smiles. This one is a little guilty in the curious questions - because it's a rough one: "Do you think Lilian wants the Petra that can't help defend her, and the Petra that's already been hurt by someone else? Or do you think she wants the Petra that's at her best for Lilian, and the Petra that won't lose when it counts?"
Petra Soroka	"I think Candy feels better. And I feel-- better about Candy. So that's half-right, at least. Maybe I could have just talked to him, but... I was mad at him, and now I'm-- well, we'll see, but I don't think I'm angry at him anymore. Ishirou, though...." Petra makes an unsure noise, and taps her finger on the counter. "I guess now that you say it, there was no reason it couldn't have been a normal conversation, except for the fact that I was mad at him for good reasons and wanted to beat that into him. So the only reason it had to be a fight was because I wanted to win the fight, which feels obvious when I say it like that. So it feels a little stupid that I lost." "But it's okay to lose a fight. Especially since I still won the conversation." Petra takes another sip, idly looking at the couches and bookshelves with more than a little longing, before Xion tears her thoughts back to the counter. "T-that's an unfair question." Petra tries to deflect, with a shaky tone that indicates she doesn't really believe that. "I can't-- I can't really be at my best right now. I relearned how to walk in a straight line like, three days ago. I don't-- everything about this is wrong and hurts, and I'm just trying to make it a little better. A lot better. I won't settle for a little, not for her. But isn't talking about 'wants' a little...? I mean... you know...." Oh. There it is. §<If you love her, you should really throw off that shame.>§ Petra presses her lips together and curls her shoulders in, shriveling up. She goes silent, briefly choking on the interstitial fluid between shame and devotion.
Xion	"It's okay to lose a fight." Xion agrees, having cleaned and polished her dish and returned the entire coffee and croissants counter to it's unused state, less, two barstools a paper cup of coffee an apron about her neck and two girls... "And it's good that Candy feels better." She continues to agree, though it's lighter, dimmer. Then her voice trends down again, as she dips and works to move through the motions of closing up. "But the cost was a little high, wasn't it?" She turns off the case-light, and for a moment, the brightest thing in the room at the bar is Petra herself. "Even if you lived." Hanging, mid-reach, mid-step, Xion finishes her thought first: "So starting with a normal conversation is better, yeah." The noirette works through, settling down to place the barstool away under the counter. "And it was a little stupid that you lost." She adds, a sort of impish smirk tucked into her left cheek, hidden as she leans and braces with her elbow. The overhead lights are tuned low and only brightest over the reading corners. With the counter case lights off, and the register closed, the dark smooths the rough edges. "Sure it is." Unfair as a question. "But I asked it. Even if you're not where you want to be - there's a 'best' in you. It's the 'best' in you that wants to help Lilian - and it's something else in you that ran up a losing fight for her and did it anyway." Xion pulls back, and in the same motion, undoes her apron from her waist, pulling it over her head and folding it in her hands. The clock strikes the hour with a pin-pan-pon soft alert. The electronic lock at the door cycles. Shift's over. In the bookstore-dark behind the counter, Xion's eyes track away towards the meridian of the back wall and the counterspace. "Hibiki did the same thing, once. With John. She fought with her heart, and fought for herself. She did it for Lilian, she thought, she said, but she fought loose, and she got smashed. And that had to be okay --" "--But it wasn't." Xion sighs, exhaling out the contents of her lungs, and turning away to place the folded apron in a cubby by the backroom door. "So, Petra - you didn't really think it through, and care, because of your feelings. You didn't come to win the fight, but you fought, and you fought for Lilian, so you lost for her. And that's something you'll have to fix, too. Next time, try the conversation first."
Petra Soroka	"Oh my god, that's what this is?" Petra is jolted out of her curled-up slump by the mention of Hibiki and John. She presses her hands into her thighs and leans, agitatedly watching Xion putter around closing the store. "Fuck, I was so mad about that, back then. I can't believe that I did the same thing. Though back then, John got worse towards Lilian, not better, that's why I--" Petra cuts off, eyebrows furrowing to think. "I guess it was a little for Lilian, even back then. And I-- I did fuck it up a little bit, but I was serious about winning against him, because winning really meant something." Petra's expression falls, this one precision point completely piercing her equivocation over the fight. "God. You're right. I-I'm not going to win every fight, but I need to go into them meaning to win, because otherwise I'm letting them vi-vicariously win against Lilian, in the name of helping her. It's just... boy's feelings, you know? They're so fragile, Ishirou especially. He literally hung up on me when I called him, even after I mentioned Lilian. I-- fuck." Petra groans, the domino-list of fuckups growing in her mind. "I let him bully me into setting myself up to lose because of how weak he is. I just-- goddamnit." "...Sorry, Xion. I-I'll, I'm still going to keep trying, even when I fuck up." Petra sighs and downs the last of her coffee, sliding off the stool to bring the cup to a trash can. "Conversation first, though I think fighting Bikki a few days ago was the right choice. I just need to be more intentional about why I'm fighting."
Xion	Xion flashes a smile, white against the dim light, and laughs breathy-light. "You understand it, so try and fix it. Make it so that you don't have to apologize any more for it - not just by winning, but for taking it to a fight you won't regret the results of, win or lose." Ducking into the back door, Xion tugs at the collar of her top with a finger, loosening the top button, grin remaining. "You can hang out here if you need someplace to stay - nobody's due in until six in the morning tomorrow, and they don't usually actually get here until six thirty. Okay? But if you want to head someplace else, just head out the door, okay? This place is old fashioned, so the bathroom isn't locked." Xion ducks through the back door, which closes with a click -- and even if checked later, just reveals a back room office with shelves of bindings and books and coffee supplies, and no further exits or rooms. The noirette is just gone.