Scene #8549: Little Red Singing Hood

Owner	Pose
Remee Halcyon	Remee's got it all figured out this time. She's holed up in a Watch safehouse. It's one of those mystical nature valleys that you can only enter via a faerie ring, and only then if you know the correct phrases and dances to get in. Can't enter it from the sky, can't tunnel in through the valley walls, it's the faerie ring or nothing. Right now, she's taking a much needed nap, curled up under a tree near a magical river. (The river flows uphill but other than that it's normal.) She'll need to leave at some point this week to run missions and check on her various irons in various fires, but for now: she's safe. Theoretically. Theoretically, as in only someone else in the Watch would be able to get in to bother her. And how many people would do that, really?
Hibiki Tachibana	How many people would do that, really? At least one. She's never exactly put her position in the Watch to all the use she could before, and she has her own problems to contend with right now. Honestly, she hasn't even spoken up much on the Watch radio either. It'd be pretty understandable to assume she'd be too busy hiding and staying on the run to bother even looking into her location, much less actually go after her. And yet, Tachibana Hibiki is stepping inside--already wearing her Symphogear and having taken care of the requisite entry dances off-screen (entirely flat-faced), where they won't infringe on the serious atmosphere practically pouring off of her. Step after step, fists clenched at her sides, walking up alongside the uphill-flowing river. The scenery is honestly too beautiful to want to mess it up. Especially when it's a safehouse. This is what she'd think in any other situation. Instead, Hibiki trudges towards the sleeping Remee, not particularly going through the effort of easing her footsteps even as the running water does a good job of covering up the noise. If Remee happens to pick up on her doing it, that's fine. If she doesn't, that's fine too. It doesn't especially change what she's going to do. That is, leaning down to grasp onto Remee by the collar, and hoist her right on up with one arm. It's a rude awakening, but she's feeling awfully rude right about now. "...Remee," her voice is low and husky, which is a good match for the emotion obviously bubbling under her half-narrowed eyes. "I've got a whole lot of things to talk to you about, and radio never would have been good enough for all of them."
Remee Halcyon	"YIP!" Stupid collar. Remee really should get into the habit of taking it off when it's not needed. It's useful for various four-legged disguises, and makes people second-guess the difference between 'wolf' and 'wolf hound', but it's clearly a liability otherwise! "H-hey, Hibiki! What are the odds we get assigned to the same safehouse?" says the wolf. She starts squirming. "If you want to talk, I know a great steakhouse, my treat, we can just order the entire menu, heh..." When the offer of food obviously ends flatly, the squirming intensifies. Remee's not being violent, but she's trying increasingly hard to get Hibiki to loosen her grip - and is pretty clearly going to bolt away if Hibiki does.
Hibiki Tachibana	She really should. They're super inconvenient in times like this, and it'd be important distancing from Petra! "We didn't," Hibiki says without a single change in tone. And predictably, the attempts to squirm out of this both verbally and physically get nothing more than the magical girl's baggy-eyed stare growing that much colder. If it keeps up for too much longer, her grip might actually loosen up--and if Remee gets away, she's going to be a complete pain in the ass to track down again. So while still holding her aloft, she takes several more steps forward, until a riverside tree is the perfect thing to smash the other girl's back up against, hard enough to make the leaves overhead shake. It took a whole lot of effort to not be at risk of half-toppling the thing, and on closer inspection past all the writhing around, it becomes obvious her hand is slightly shaking. "That isn't going to work with me. Not today. Where's the Remee that was able to do all of /that/ without flinching...?" 'Wrap up and let's go' as if it were any normal, everyday operation...?" Hibiki's words drop to a whisper, before her /other/ hand also comes up to double up on her hold, and she draws in as her voice roars back up in the entirely opposite direction. "Where the hell is she!? Is she right in front of me or not!? Or is it because you're not inside that /thing/ that you think you can just brush me off!?"
Remee Halcyon	Remee flinches back. "I don't-" She tries to stop from flinching again. It... really is different, in that mech, huh? You're cut off from everything happening outside that steel shell. Everyone outside is just... voices on a radio, images on a screen. Targets on a radar. WHereas here, Hibiki is entirely contained within Remee's personal space, with no way to shut her out. "I'm - I'm right here! It's no different, whether I'm in that thing or not!" "Hibiki, let me go." Remee starts thrashing about more. "Let me go - I'm not going to tell you again!"
Hibiki Tachibana	With the far more frantic struggles to break free, Hibiki has to put that much more effort into not letting the wolf get free of her grip. Her teeth clench tightly, and not just from her arms tensing to keep up, or from Remee's limbs beating against her. It's not just her hands shuddering anymore, but the rest of her body too. "Why the hell are you LYING to me!?" With a shout right in the other girl's face, loud enough to make her voice go hoarse halfway through, Hibiki turns on her heel, whirling to the side, hold on the collar so forceful that she might be at risk of snapping it from that alone. And she only releases it to /throw/ her straight towards the river, with a predictably massive swash of water and sediment from the riverbed going to be made to splatter across the surrounding area unless she does something to stop herself. It'd be an excellent opportunity to escape, if she could get herself back together and scramble away in time. That is, if Hibiki weren't intent on staying right on her tail and tackling her almost immediately after so she won't ever get the chance. Just to glare down at her from above this time, hair matted down with liquid. "Do you know what I did? You know what the problem really was? I felt /bad/ for you, Remee! I ran over what Haru said before then so, so many times in my head...and I KNEW I should have stopped it! I knew it was just something you were doing for yourself more than anyone!" "Reverse engineering the technology...? Using it for some kind of greater good...?" She sounds almost delirious, asking the rhetorical questions, before she goes right to yelling again. "Who the hell would buy any of that!? You were hurt by Petra, the same as me! It screws you up so much that you act like she barely exists, let alone has anything to do with you! You tried to /kidnap/ her, with the excuse that it'd be helping her! But it was for you as much as anyone, wasn't it!? I'm not any better, which is why I wanted to give you a pass! I let something /so stupid/ happen when I could have--should have stopped it! Just like I never stopped /her/! When I should have, more than anyone." "...Are you going to tell me the situation with the Kana there was different...? That it wasn't for you at all? Is that it?" That sounds more like a genuine question. "People /died/ because of whatever happened the moment you got in that thing! You're getting hunted down every day! Are you telling me it was all worth it!?"
Remee Halcyon	Remee flinches back at the yelling. "I'm - I'm not, I-" And there she goes. She doesn't even realize at first that she's been thrown, her mind is still on the yelling. She lands on the far side on the bank, sliding across/into the riverbed a bit, making a furrow in the loose rocks and dirt. "... Ah...?" She scrambles up onto her feet - just in time for Hibiki to pin her again. "It's not - it's not greater good! It's trying to stop greater bad!" "There's people doing worse - every day, not for anyone else but solely for themselves! Do you think they're bothered? Do you think they even hesitate?" And then Hibiki brings up Petra. Remee freezes. "What - what does it matter if Petra has anything to do with it? If I can do two things at once? If I can do something about her... about her just... up and leaving us!" She braces - and pushes, with all four feet. Hibiki has her beat in terms of raw strength, but if she can just surprise her enough to throw her off for even just a second...!
Hibiki Tachibana	"Do you think other people not hesitating is some kind of excuse to not bother yourself!?" Remee braces, and pushes, and pushes--and for a long moment, Hibiki can't answer back to the even more important thing Remee says, too caught up in fighting back. Almost. She almost lost her grip, but she keeps it by suddenly wrenching to the side, bringing Remee with her in a rough tumble through dirt and river water. "There's--nothing--we can change--about what happened with Petra anymore...!" By the time they come out of it, the magical girl is...not pinning her down, actually? She stumbles back to her feet over top of her, face damp with a little more than just liquid from the stream, although it's very difficult to tell. The way she's looming over Remee makes it clear she's still not intending on letting her just slip away, though. "And I'm not okay with that either! I hate it! I hate it so, so much!" She has to force the words out between heavy breaths. "What's this going to do about it anyway...? What's any of this going to do about it!? You think stealing her mech is somehow gonna fix everything that happened!? The only thing that it can /DO/ is make problems! Fifteen people are /dead/ because it got into your head! Because I was /stupid/ enough to think nobody had to be hurt! That I could stop them from being hurt! That I could trust you to not take it so far that nobody had to be hurt! And when Petra comes with Lilian to do something about it--you're not going to be able to keep turning your head away! What are you gonna do then!? What's that 'something', Remee!?" The moment she does try to take advantage of not being grappled to try and make an escape, or even if she doesn't, Hibiki goes to grab her by the back of the neck this time. Hoisting someone by the scruff is debatably ruder than the collar, honestly. Maybe not debatably. "Because /I/ sure don't know what it is! Are you going to spend the whole time trying to run away!?"
Remee Halcyon	Predictably, Remee does go for the escape - and Hibiki gets a solid grip on her scruff, with a full on YIPE! in response as she's hoisted up once again, covered in dirt and dripping wet. "I didn't - I didn't want to kill those people! But I couldn't just... do nothing either!" "I was up there stuck in my room alone for a month! Or at least it felt like it! I thought we were friends, I thought we were allies - and I make one mistake with her and she abandons me, and she winds up at the side of the person I was protecting her from! And I had enough of just doing nothing, and this was - this was at least something!" "And what's next-" "-What's next, I don't, I don't know!" "I'll figure it out! I'll figure something out! I've been at this for a year, I'm not some green newbie anymore!" She starts squirming about, more agitatedly, and caps it off with swinging her hind legs out to try to kick Hibiki hard enough to shake her off!
Hibiki Tachibana	Didn't want to. Couldn't do nothing. Sick of doing nothing. And not knowing what to do next. More than every kick hitting against her, more than the increasingly more difficult attempts to stop Remee from scampering away to where she won't find her a second time, all of those hit Hibiki much deeper. There are reasons she felt sympathetic for her back then, after all. Sympathetic enough to not go as far as stopping her, because she was hoping it would help, at least a little. "You really are--stupid! Even /stupider/ than ME!" Emphasized twice, as Hibiki wheels around and swings Remee with the motion - yet again, today - for something much less kind than just sending her for a swim. She holds the grip the entire time to do nothing less than to try and full-force slam her down into the earth of the riverside right behind her, and probably leave a big bad wolf-shaped hole a few inches deep in it in the process. If it weren't for the other girl being so obscenely hard to put down herself, would she be this violent about it? "/Three/ years! It's going to be almost three whole years I've been doing this soon! And every time--every time...! No matter what I say, the only thing I actually end up being when it matters most is 'the world's most utterly worthless magical girl'...!" Just forcing that out, to herself more than Remee, makes her wince in enough frustration and pain to make it seem as if she was the one who was trying to be put in a crater. "--I didn't come all the way here to blame you for being torn up about her," Hibiki gets out between grit teeth. "Because I can't stop myself either. ...Maybe I can't ever stop myself. I came here to make you shut up about all the excuses...and take a look at yourself and what you're doing. I've spent so long...so long not taking responsibility for how things ended up." "For not changing things I wanted to change. In the Watch...and other places, too. So I'm starting now. ...If you're going to hide in the damn safehouses until they hunt you down to one, at least think hard about what you came here to fight for in the first place."
Remee Halcyon	How hard is Remee to put down? Hard enough that Hibiki's slamming her around, getting solid hits on the ground with her, and she's... enduring it. She's healing through it faster than Hibiki can dish it out. At this rate, the ground is going to give out before Remee does. Remee hasn't so much as bitten or scratched in response, but she's struggling more - at least until Hibiki speaks up again. "... Hibiki..." "... I... I'm sorry." "I don't think you're worthless. And I... I guess maybe I'm trying to be... well, I'm trying to act like I'm more than I am right now." "I want to be Liza. I want to be Hiromi. I want to be... in control. Bigger. Feared. Respected. Not just... the clueless girl who ran away from home, who's hanging out with the people who've actually been hurt." "And I just... while I was in there, while I was in the Kana, I felt like... I had finally made it. And so I tried to convince myself that those fifteen people didn't matter, that they were just in my way, or it was their fault for being there or the Paladins fault for not protecting them better..." "... When really it's my fault."
Hibiki Tachibana	Remee gets all of that out--and Hibiki is silent and still the entire time, all the way up until the very last thing she says. And that's when Hibiki's grip finally loosens up and lets her go. "...You shouldn't want to be Liza. Liza feels like half of everything I think is wrong with it all," she mutters from a place of complete bias, with the remnants of her anger over all of this. But afterwards, she gives a heavy, shuddering sigh, straightening back up and hanging her head. "But I don't think it's wrong...to want all of that. It's normal, even. ...I know why it's so hard to not let everything with Petra do this to you." A few more breaths, before it begins slowing down at long last. Rather than looking at Remee, her tired eyes are put off to the side. "...I just wanted to hear your real feelings, and not the excuses. And to let you hear them, too. So now...whatever you do with that is up to you. I hope it's something good. ...I really do. I don't know how much more trusting and being trusted and it all going to crap I can take anymore..." A little bit of the shakiness returns to her voice, but levels out after a moment. And then, Hibiki turns in the direction of the exit. "...That machine. I don't know if I'm ever going to be satisfied until it's scrap metal. The only thing it's done...is make everything it's ever touched worse." After a second's pause, she starts walking back off towards the exit. She really hopes she won't have to do the stupid dances to get out of here, too.
Remee Halcyon	The dances to get out of the valley are even stupider. And there's a song you have to sing as well. Suffer for your ideals, Hibiki Tachibana.