Scene #8476: Two Folding Chairs And A TV

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	"That reminds me! I'm-- there's an apartment, that I'm, that I'll be moving into. My apartment. You should-- once I'm there, we could-- you c-could come by? That'd be-- I mean, since it's been a while, and-- like, since last time we hung out, because, you know, jail, and-- and everything, so--" "Really?! I mean- I'd love to, Ms. Petra!! I was worried you wouldn't want... well, I'll bring food for you, and some things that we can do if you didn't have anything in mind, and... when are you free? What days? I know you have a real job now, but I can make time whenever!" After being released from Lilian's room, Petra immediately returned to her errands since the subject of them was time-sensitive. Tonight, the day after spending the night with Lilian, Rita is coming over to Petra's apartment for dinner and a movie. Petra will not think too hard about what that might look like. With the vast majority of her signing bonus for L-Corp spent on the deposit for the apartment, Petra is working with limited funds. A decent television is non-negotiable, since they'll be spending their time looking directly at it. Petra won't make Rita sit on the floor, so she needs to pick up two chairs, too. And she needs to pay the energy bill so that any of the appliances work, so she writes a check to... L-Corp. This is the extent of Petra's interior design, when Rita arrives. Petra meets her in the lobby of the smallish apartment complex, visibly excited and watching the door for Rita's entry with enough anticipation that she doesn't notice the receptionist throwing Looks her way. After a reciprocated hug (if Rita initiates, Petra won't), Petra leads Rita up a few flights of stone stairs, babbling all the way until she gets down the hall and puts her key in the lock. "--think I mentioned before but probably not completely in detail, but I have a normal job now, at Lobotomy Corporation, as an agent. In the Control Department. Do you know much about L-Corp? Angela's been around longer than I've been back from prison, so I-- I don't really know! It's still funny feeling to know that I missed that much context while I was gone, even though Lilian kept me updated about bits of it, which is why I wasn't surprised when I came back and Ishirou was unfortunately still alive." "Here we are! Apartment 0201." Petra hesitates before pushing open the door, looking awkward. "I-- I only just moved in, though, and it's kind of small, so it's-- it's just what I have, right now." Inside the small studio apartment, there is exactly the things that Petra has placed in it. A CRT television on a stand, pushed up against a wall, with a VHS box on top and two shitty folding chairs in front of it. The kitchen is attached to the main room, separated by an open bar, though the chairs aren't tall enough to sit comfortably at it. The one door off to the side leads to the bathroom. There's no bed, or almost any personal touch of any kind. A duffel bag that clearly isn't Petra's is on the floor, unzipped, and a few sets of bloodstained clothes are draped over the bar in the tiny closet. There's a teakettle sitting on the stove, but Petra does not have any tea, and if inspected, the cabinets and fridge are all completely empty. Petra smiles embarrassedly at Rita when holding the door for her. "I, uh. Got a movie? To watch with dinner, or after dinner, or whatever. The conversation in the radio yesterday reminded me of it, so I thought...."
Rita Ma	Rita is dressed up a little less than usual, which is to say, still more than Petra: fancy white shirt, high-waisted daffodil skirt, typical thin hair-ribbon in red. There's an impatient bounce in her step and a sparkling brightness in her eyes, both of which ramp up the instant she walks into the lobby and spots her friend. "Ms. Petra!! It's so good to see you again!!" It takes her alarmingly little time to close the gap, and of course she initiates the hug, nearly threatening to bowl Petra over. It's a little awkward with the covered basket she's carrying under her arm, but she manages! As she pulls away, her giddiness overflows into a little laugh. "I mean, there was that time with Mr. Sougo and Mr. Woz, but that barely counts, right? This is... it's important. So thank you." She's still squirmy with joy. ---- Petra might be self-conscious about the apartment, but the moment the door opens, Rita seems... enthralled? Her eyes open wide; her hand grips the basket handle, on her shoulder, tighter until it creaks. Her lips move in something like awe. Blood. "I-it looks great, Ms. Petra! Don't worry a bit," she says, forcing herself out of the reverie with a fake-perky beaming smile. "It's amazing you have your own place at nineteen. I definitely didn't!" She squeezes Petra's hand before slipping around to the kitchen to unpack small insulated lunch containers: it's steak! One container's piled high with with stir-fried veggies and mashed potato on the side; the other is conspicuously otherwise bare, and isn't steaming as much. The former one is slid across the countertop to Petra. "I don't know much about Lobotomy Corporation, except that they work with monsters to make energy, and that everyone I've known from there has seemed really cool. Ms. Angela has seemed nice, too, mostly. What's it like? You're staying safe, right?" She slips back around the counter and sits down cross-legged in the chair without complaint, her tray in her lap- if she's used to less spartan conditions, it's only recently. The inside of her steak is vivid red (while Petra's is medium-rare). She'd fit right in with Remee, except that Rita understands seasonings. "And movie sounds wonderful, Ms. Petra! It's been a long time since I watched one. What kind did you have in mind?" As an absentminded afterthought: "Oh, um, that's your bedroom, right? Don't worry, Ms. Petra! I won't pry." She is gesturing with her fork at the bathroom door.
Petra Soroka	Petra tenses up a little when Rita is immediately accepting of the tiny apartment, having braced herself so hard for reluctance that Rita's excitement feels like pity. When Rita turns to her with a smile, though, she relaxed and smiles back more genuinely than before, following her in. "Well, you were living on a boat with your family at my age, weren't you?" Wait-- oh god her world is kind of a sensitive topic, though, what if bringing it up makes her lonely, or unhappy some other way. What if she's been in the multiverse longer than that, and left before she was nineteen? Won't that make her feel horrible, that she hasn't seen her family in that long? Petra's motions picking up her lunchbox and thanking Rita grind to a halt like she'd become petrified. After a moment she unsticks, having come to a conclusion. A slightly different one, than she would've decided on before. "Your world is really pretty. And your family seems really nice. I-I-I hope I can go there again, eventually, with-- with you." Petra concentrates on intently staring at her lunchbox, as if she can, by sheer force of mental will, have stumbled onto the correct response. There's also a fork in there, which saves Petra the trouble of pretending she had any that she didn't need to create. Petra delicately removes it, flexes her fingers to stop the instinctive hungry crawl of morphmetal from consuming the fork instead of the meal, and then beams at Rita, sitting down beside her. "Thanks, Rita, it looks amazing, like always. God, I'm so hungry all of a sudden, even though I ate yesterday." "Yeah, it's like... they're called Abnormalities, and some of them look like monsters and some of them look like people, but they basically all work the same. Our job is to just treat them the right way while working with them, and that creates energy. Sometimes they break out and kill people but I'm-- realistically, I'm probably the safest one there. Angela is a good friend of mine, too. She's, really good, to me. And Lilian." Petra went fifteen entire minutes without mentioning Lilian, which is probably her record since rejoining the Elites. At Rita's question about the movie, Petra excitedly starts to stand up, freezes, gently lowers her tray to the chair, and then scurries over to the TV. She grabs the VHS box on top and shows it to Rita, pointing at the colorful graphic on the front: Mothra vs. Godzilla. "I-it came up yesterday! When we were talking about movies. It's kind of old, but-- that just means that the special effects had to be more creative, and the ways that the studio would get around the technological limitations tells you a lot about what, like, they were willing to compromise on, and what ways they had to innovate to tell the story that they wanted to, since really, the monsters are more representative than literal, of what kinds of things that they--" Petra pauses and her shoulders rise and fall like she took a big breath. "Sorry. Um. It's a monster movie, but it's not like, scary, if that's a problem. One of the monsters is even, like, a good guy."
Rita Ma	"Well, you were living on a boat with your family..." Rita's smile gains a bittersweet tinge. Her eyes drop to her steak. "Well, sort of. It's... it was complicated." That probably suggests much more mundane worries than what she really means. But Petra's words warm her up and lift her eyes again, even if she still seems somehow sad: "Yeah. They are really nice. I'm glad you got to meet them." She takes on a faraway look. "I miss them. I miss them a lot. And, I'm kind of jealous that everyone else gets to go and talk to them, while I can't. While I'm not ready to." Then she focuses back in on Petra's eyes, and the sadness lifts. "But you, and Ms. Grier, and Ms. Rook, and everybody else, have kept me really good company these last couple years. I don't want to imagine how lonely I'd feel without you. So, thank you. I'd like that." Rita laughs, self-consciously and stabs her steak. "I'm sorry, Ms. Petra. I'm kind of ruining movie night, I guess. I don't want it to get this heavy. I'm glad you're here. That's all." Sometime after Petra sits down, Rita hooks a finger under the folding chair and pulls it a couple inches closer, from 'friends' distance to 'besties' distance. 'Yesterday' creases her face with worry. There's no point nagging her about it. I'll have to ask Ms. Angela to feed her. She smiles patiently-yet-fondly when Petra gushes about the kaiju movie, but there's something subtly tense in her expression from the moment she sees the cover, too. The tension isn't ameliorated by the assurance it's not scary. The tension is worsened by "a good guy". Rita's fingers subtly curl the handle of her fork. And then it all evaporates. "Oh!! Right! Because of your job, that's why you've been thinking about that. I kind of wondered where that came from." Rita munches on a bite of her steak, having abruptly regained her appetite, and pats Petra's chair to invite her to sit back down as soon as the VHS tape is in. "So what do the monsters represent, Ms. Petra?" She's genuinely interested! But she also thinks it'll swerve the conversation somewhere better.
Petra Soroka	"I'm kind of ruining movie night, I guess." "Y-you're not, I'm the one who brought it up, I--" Petra tears herself out of her trance staring into the lunchbox, twisting her head to look at Rita with a pained expression. "I'm sorry, I know it's," Petra catches herself from saying 'a thing, "A difficult, topic. For you. But--! But it's movie night, so we can just relax. I'm glad you're here too." Petra notices Rita's tension gradually as she rants, standing in front of the TV, the tape box in her hands slowly sinking down. Her eyes lower to the floor, and she shrinks down slightly, her voice tinged with preemptive apology. "I-if that's no good, I-- I could run over to the video store and be back quickly with something else. I should've asked you, I-- I just only got it a few hours ago, since I was busy, and didn't--" Petra's already edging towards the door when Rita perks up, and just as quickly as she notices that Rita's better, Petra bounces back into being overly enthusiastic too. She bounces on the balls of her feet, puts the tape in the built-in VHS player, and turns the TV on, wincing at the significantly-more-intense-than-before whine of the screen. "I guess that's probably why I was thinking about that stuff again, recently, maybe. But," Petra clambers back into her chair, crossing her legs to balance the tray. The hard surface and angles of the chair can't bother her-- which immediately makes her feel selfish, because now she's more comfortable than Rita. "My-- one of my-- a friend of mine, from before, really liked these kinds of movies. Cryptid stuff, and kaiju stuff, horror too, a bit. She, she taught me a lot about, this kind of media analysis stuff." Petra looks distantly through the TV, fork hovering midway through lifting it to her mouth. "I don't know why I was reminded of her again, though." When the studio logos flicker onto the screen, Petra is revitalized again, taking a few starving bites of her dinner before launching right back into it. "They're like! The monsters are representations of the abstract fears of the, the culture that created the media, right? If people tell stories about a monster that hides in the woods and kills people who go in alone, that probably means that those people have a real fear of the forest, and it's dangerous to go in alone! That makes sense, right?" "So, then, these ones, Mothra and Godzilla-- they're both consistently used, across a lot of these kinds of movies, and in all the good ones, they represent similar themes being used in different ways. Godzilla is like, the main one, and he's basically an incarnation of-- do you know what atom bombs are?-- an existential threat, that's humanity's fault, to the country that made the movie, and more importantly, the permanent radioactive aftereffects. But Mothra-- she doesn't actually show up for like, twenty minutes, but she's literally in the name so it's not really a spoiler-- is the counter to that, because she's dangerous, sure, but when people treat her kindly and respectfully, she fights on their side against the other monsters. Like a symbol of, hope, and protection, you know?" By the time Petra pauses to take a breath, the movie's already started. She looks to the side at Rita, anxiously. "That's-- that's okay, right? You really don't need me to get a different movie? I will if you'd prefer that."
Rita Ma	While the opening credits play, Rita loops her arm around Petra's in a way that still gives Petra just enough room to work a knife, and leans in, and rests her head on the other girl's shoulder. She's done it before, and yet it feels new. Is the angle of her head different somehow? No, that's not quite it. "Stay," she says bossily, with a little arm-squeeze. (She could be firmer with Petra, now, but she doesn't know that.) "This sounds nice. I like hearing about Mothra. And I want whatever movie means you don't have to get up and go. Okay, Ms. Petra?" Rita has one arm occupied, now, so she cuts off bites of her near-raw steak with the edge of her fork, which really should not be possible. Petra's seen her do stranger things, though, and showing that off doesn't dim the quiet joy that animates her bouncy knees. They almost threaten to spill her tray. "I love how enthusiastic you are about it, though. It's been a while since I saw you like this. It makes me really happy, too," she says, and rubs her cheek on Petra's shoulder while shifting herself in her seat. "I guess it's different," she adds thoughtfully, "if monsters aren't real to you. If something in a story is made up, it's standing in for something real, right? But if monsters are real, they can only mean monsters. So I don't think something like this could be made in my world. It'd have to be fairies, or robots, or something like that. Is that how it is, Ms. Petra?" "a friend of mine, from before" It's been a while since Petra said those words, but evidently they've been rattling around in Rita's skull for the last minute. "A friend of yours from before what?" she finally says, in a quiet moment. "She sounds like she was nice."