Scene #8828: Titanomachia-2

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	The following hours are an adrenaline-fueled and listless haze. Even after the defeat of the S2, reinforcement mecha and drones bar the path towards the Titanomachia for the Elites. The closer they get, the more often those mecha are manned, though without tearing through the cockpit and seeing inside yourselves, it's impossible to distinguish which ones are and aren't. A careful approach means an exhausting approach, using the obliterated ruins of gravel mountains as cover for limiting how much of the massive force can reach you, picking them off the edges to get a little closer, all the way up to and into the walking city, busting in through drone ports where mechs can't follow. There's not a single opening in its exterior that isn't meant for outputting weapons, so the hangar is another barrier to fight through before reaching hallways where mechs can't follow, only for them to be replaced with armed soldiers. Down into the depths, through spartan hallways, targeting critical reactors as was the plan; and after all that, eventually, it's done. One more immobile metal wreckage added to the elephant graveyard in the snowy wastes around the Industrial Behemoth. What comes after is either business as usual, or impenetrable bureaucracy. The denizens of the Tornadoes number fewer than ten thousand, but that's still thousands of souls for whom this place has been their entire lives and livelihood. Whether it's Commonwealth aid, Concord connections, or some other near-inexhaustible source, the now-refugees are accounted for somehow. They're less than cooperative. One breaks up the tense drudgery of negotiations by loudly commanding his men to kill you while yours guards are down before being shot himself. One declares that he'll die before he lets the image of his country in his mind be tainted by 'the disease', putting a bullet through the roof of his mouth. You don't learn either of their names. Kyrikos is here too; remember Kyrikos? Despite having facilitated this entire ordeal, all the way back to giving Petra the means to become an Elite in the first place, there's little to say to him besides work, and little he'd say in response. He helps, of course, with the dull few hours of communication that come after the gunfire stops, but even then there's no personal connection to be found in interacting with him. It's a blunt reminder of how incompatible the... exaggerated personalities of Elites tend to be with more grounded professionals. What does a normal, serious, middle-aged guy have to say to a nineteen year old magical girl? If there's any closure to be found in the Titanomachia at all, it's political, not personal. There's no way to stay there 'until it's done'. Relocation, integration, and rehabilitation is a years-long process. So whenever you leave is, really, fairly arbitrary, and it happens to be Petra who slips out first when there's a reasonable opportunity.
Petra Soroka	Whenever you end up joining Petra, she hasn't gone back in the direction of the warpgate to head home, instead lingering deeper in the mountain range. She's standing on the slope of one of the mountains of crumbled rock, boots slipping a bit in the unsteady ground as she looks down at the site where the Ekanamsha S2 was fought and destroyed, with the metal hull of the mech sunk only inches deeper into the toxic mud in the hours you've been gone, owing to its thickness. Polluted ash-and-snowfall fills in the holes pierced into the snow by battle, and more relevantly, by the fragments of the shattered Beauty of Ash when it was shorn from the S2. Like this, with the hardlight shell peeled away, and the sockets where razor crystalline legs used to connect buried in the mud, the S2 looks identical to the S1-- the Kana. Sludge still boils in lazy bubbles and bursts around the mech, where its white phosphorus-like substance must still be superheated even deprived of oxygen. The chemical tang in the air is sharp like poison, stinging like battery acid in your lungs and prickling on your skin. It's a frigid wasteland of rock, toxin, and metal. Tolerating it all was only worth doing when there was a mission to be done, but Petra stares down at the mech as if she doesn't notice any of it. With a sigh, she starts trudging down the hillside, gravel skittering down the slope with each step, hands in her bomber jacket pockets. She passes by the toxic waste pool in a wide arc, eyes locked on the grimy snow. When she realizes others joined her-- or at least, decides to address them-- she speaks up without looking in their direction, contemplatively heavy. "Well. I guess this is what I decided to stay alive for." There's barely a divot in the freezing detritus (up close, it's hard to call the grey mixture 'snow') here now, even though hours ago, it was a sharp crater blasted into the ground. Petra pauses for a second, then crouches down, scooping away ice with her hand before flinching and standing up, a pearlescent shard of glass stuck in her skin. One of uncountable.
Kukuru	Kukuru's still feeling a little worn down by the time she pulls herself out of that toxic sludge covering the ground, and having to slog through the reinforcements barring the path to the Titanomachia doesn't make her feel much better. She's still wary of getting shot by another one of those strange rounds that had locked off teleportation, too, and she's resorted to hurling wrecks into wrecks-to-be to avoid getting too close as a result. Her fighting strategy doesn't change much from the usual, though, once she starts getting more comfortable teleporting again: Brute force, healing, brute force, healing, and occasionally hurling herself through clouds to crash into something and regretting it later. Thankfully, getting inside does actually happen eventually, and Kukuru isn't nearly prideful enough not to let her connections do the talking and sorting in her stead. She knows well enough that her own lack of knowledge on... Well, most of this could be quite the problem, and trying to muddle through it blindly could easily make things worse even with the best intentions in mind. That won't stop her from leaving little care packages of handmade snacks and storebought drinks for those Concord connections all over the place, of course. She might not necessarily know who Kyrikos is at first, but if she finds out even a hint of his connection to Petra's past, she'll make sure to leave some for him, too (and an employment application, if he ever wants to test his luck with the shredder). She doesn't linger long, though, before wandering off to rejoin Petra and company via teleportation and squeaking briefly when her jump winds up being a few inches higher off the ground than she had expected. "There we are... Oh. It's stingy up here." She comments while looking out into the distance, past all the snowy sludge without looking at anything in particular, wincing a bit as she gets a fresh whiff of acidic air hitting her again. "Well. I guess this is what I decided to stay alive for." "Maybe before, but... What about now?" Kukuru asks as she follows along in digging through the snow as well, grunting lightly if any of those pieces get stuck in her hand as well. "There's Angie, there's Lilian, the Agents, Meika..." She pauses to look over at everyone else that's gathered, then turns back to Petra while stumbling a bit with that ice underfoot. "I'm glad you made that decision back then." Smiling softly, Kukuru's about to slide her other hand through the shard-filled ice before getting an idea for once. Reaching into her jacket pocket, she pulls out a mesh colander, and she uses that to try and separate out the shards from the ice. It'll take her a bit to realize that the ice might be too big to go through. "What do you wanna do now?"
Dysnomia	For much of the actual assualt, Dysnomia is consigned to pulling herself together in ISIAH. Through herculean effort, she manages to drag herself out to help shut down the reactors, an endeavor as draining to her as it would prove forgettable. But it's what came after that would hurt most. It's a suffocatingly familiar routine, though Dysnomia isn't too familiar with going through the process up front. Displaced, seething lives, dislodged from the course of their intents. Dreams and ideals ground up into past, sorted through systems to fit them somewhere 'better.' Their goals were monstrous. They had made so many suffer and die, and wrenched the worlds of so many open. She hated that it didn't make them feel less persecuted, or lessen their conviction. She hated feeling their rage and hate flicker through her synapses, pushing her from her course. No one among their party had the necessary mental weight to override the feeling, but it didn't stop Dysnomia from hanging close to Berislav, to Hibiki--Yes, even Petra, when the pressure was so much she'd rather just taste knives under her skin than all these minds agaisnt the balance of her thoughts. It was a slow, agonizing process. Dysnomia found herself falling into old habits, an instrument. The air was harder for her to breathe than the toxic atmsophere outside. As support crew arrived to take over, Dysnomia fled, until she couldn't feel their thoughts bearing down on her, until she could once more breathe. Is it strange, to try to catch your breath in the midst of a wasteland of rusted carcasses and fallout? Certainly it is. And yet, here she is. Even with her suit pulled shut, it can't hide the way that her body bleds away from her in mist. Some of her hair even seemed to be slipping out through her helmet, and one of her feet seemed to be standing half-on-nothing. "Shifting through toxic sludge for pieces of a broken machine?" Dysnomia's voice came out rough. "I never understood your affection for that." A blade of plasma materialized in her hands, as she strove to rip apart and cripple the remnants of the Titanomachia's engineering, much as she had with the first Kana. It was slow work, but at least it was quiet. She left the Beauty of Ash to Petra; the girl understood it better, and it had been part of her. "What are your intentions for it now?"
Father Berislav	Isaiah's approach is even more glacial than is already implied by the necessity of caution--for every moment of cover had behind ruined gravel mountains or rusted out industrial hulks, for every advancing enemy armor picked off by a shot from the mech's handcannon, there is a hurried jaunt outside of Isaiah's partially shorn silver frame. Optics from one mech. Dirty circuit boards, left forgotten in the half-buried form of some cargo exosuit. Intact arm plating from another. Mass produced for use as expendable shock troops. But some is better than nothing. It's too risky to make use of it and install it in the same 'outing,' with the rate at which the Titanomachia is sending parties out to meet everyone. Even as the straggler in the group, even with Dysnomia's help, Berislav knows that. His approach had been slow, and plodding. Isaiah's entry into it had been no less methodical in its destruction, even with hastily-welded mismatched armor plating which provided protection at the cost of mobility. Even with scavenged guts for the optics which muted the colors to black and white. The mech's loudspeakers worked perfectly well. And Petra, much as she'd witnessed during the business with Annie Green, may very well have heard the scripture that the priest spouted, the burning anger with which it was given, as surely as the city's would-be defenders, its governing body, and its loci of power had. It is almost louder than the missiles, the explosive ordnance, the report of the mech's heavy revolver. When it's over, his conviction is no less immense--nor any less terrifying. The fact is that his guard isn't down, during this exhange, even as he appears visibly exhausted, and even as his flight suit is slicked with blood and several patchwork, rough fixes-- he was more than ready for some sort of 'last stand' and all too prepared to answer it. His own revolver had barked out six times, fired from the hip, the other hand fanning the hammer. Six bullets found six spots in the blink of an eye, neat, bloody holes placed between six pairs of eyes so suddenly and jarringly and utterly, chillingly calm, so unnervingly either faithful in the abilities of the others, or so prepared to die. He had returned, then, to his work, without a second look towards the still-warm bodies.
Father Berislav	The last to arrive is the last to leave. Berislav emerges from the battered, slapdash-mended Isaiah near Petra, not in his flight suit, but in his cassock, a chasuble, and a stole--white, like Jesus' burial garb, for the feast day of Annunciation. He must have been administering last rites, though it's hard to imagine he would have done it in the presence of the very people whose neighbors he'd killed and helped to kill. I never understood your affection for that. "One day," says Berislav, "Sooner than you may imagine, you might." I only hope that if you find something to kindle within yourself, that it isn't cruelly stolen and appropriated.
Hibiki Tachibana	What does a normal, serious, middle-aged guy have to say to a nineteen year old magical girl? Nothing, really. Maybe if he were an abnormal, serious, middle-aged guy, but he's very normal. And she can't think of anything to say to him that'd be particularly necessary. Hibiki is pretty good at the 'doing', but not at the 'after'. This scale of clean-up is for systems and setups much larger than her; she's always operated on the level of individual people more than this, and as long as the ones uprooted are taken care of properly, she's not picky about how it's done or who does it. And so, despite the heavy villainizing she's done of the Titanomachia in her head all of this time, as if the massive and behemoth machine ravaging every landscape it ran over was some kind of thinking, evil entity itself. It's not, of course, as if a few hours of fighting through the interior wasn't enough to reinforce that. She would've liked - and tried - to save those unnecessary lives lost near the end, but... There's not really anything for her in there. So when Petra leaves, she's right behind her. Into the mountains and having long-since untransformed, the relative cleanliness of her casualwear contrasts the bruises, cuts, and other accumulated injuries from the battle. Hands clenched at her sides, Hibiki stops at the edge of the S2's wreckage to stare at it for a long moment, without saying a word. She seems like she's trying to search for something, maybe expecting something-- but whatever it is, it's not there. "Not exactly glamorous, I guess. But being alive isn't most of the time." Making her way after Petra, she steps alongside her and leans over slightly to catch the glint of glass in the light, that she brought up with her. Or rather, in her. She glances back down to the murky, ashy gray covering over the earth. And she ducks down herself, bare fingers sifting through it slowly. Just like Kukuru has a better idea than doing things by hand, Hibiki could pretty easily don her Symphogear again, to make any potential pinpricks not actually hurt. For whatever reason, she doesn't. Extremely predictably, this is going to be rough on her hands, but the only complaint she seems to have right now is, "...Hey, we're gonna need, like. Somewhere to actually put these, won't we? There's a lot."
Touta Konoe	From what had been a hard fought battle against the S2, there had been little reprieve that had followed. // It wasn't just a fight for a single win, but a battle of attrition. One that even while not as involved on the single entity like the S2 had proven to wear on all involved. Up to the point he could, Touta had been trying to continue to act as a vanguard. Where ruins of gravel weren't available, or the need to advance came at risk, he made sure to prepare the next set of cover or to act as it himself. To make sure if a reload was required, or a breath taken, or a healing that was impromptu. He was to act as the wall that split enemy from foe. It's an exhaustive process without a doubt. Especially when your foe is a city upon towering legs. As he uses drones that swarm the battlefield like locusts looking for crops to devastate. Even just trying to act as a stalwart shield isn't so easy. To force to spread oneself as thin as possible, to cover as wide an area as they can. At the end of it all, there's a victory in making it to the hangars. Though that too is but another battle to be had. But one of progress. It had to be viewed that way. Though armed soldiers while still needing to be cautious felt like a steadily lowering of difficulty in some aspects, and a rising difficulty for others. Ultimately the Titanomachia meets a proper burial site within the Industrial Behemoth. It almost feels surreal to think that such a place falls. "Wonder if there's a path where that city could have become something more than just a war machine...? So what, someone gonna plan to dismantle this stuff completely or... Just gonna leave this thing here to rust with the rest of the scrap...?" It's a half-hazard thought. But one he truly does wonder in earnest. A nomadic city parallel to the world below it. The idea of self-preservation...It's methods were wrong, but the concept even Touta can feel like there was some way that it could have maybe been made into something...Beyond a titanic monstrosity...Though, that was for another time. The aftermath still leads to a more bureaucratic issue that comes next. There are natives that definitely take things to extremes. Taking actions so drastic that there's not even time to stop them before a life changes forever. There's nothing to be done for people that don't think a life like that is worth living. So those who are willing to compromise. Those that are willing to suffer through the situation that of no fault of their own was brought upon them...He tries to discuss with what leaders there are immediately available to attempt to reach out to the Paladins. At least in hopes that they might be willing to help with the Refugees. It almost felt odd that there'd been none that decided to join in the final ordeal. But the universe is a big place, and even the Paladins could be spread wide perhaps? Whatever the case maybe, it seemed that this was as much the end to this event as it was going to be. There wasn't much left that any Elites could do at the moment. Only time could hope to mend this wound now. That was it, they could all go home, to sleep off the hell they'd gone through. Only Petra never ends up taking the path to the Warpgate even if she is the first to part from the group and the others do find themselves reaching for the mountain ranges where she had parted instead.
Touta Konoe	In truth...Touta is almost the first person to leave. He feels like he should. Unlike the others, he has no history with her pertaining to the Kana. He imagines of those lingering Elites, he's one that she'd want the least to be there for a moment of solace. He understands that, he does. Though, even so, he still finds himself arriving just before the view to which the others would share the remains of that machine. It's not for her sake, but for a promise he's made, that he finds himself feeling as though he intrudes on this final place. And thus, as she speaks out to them, not even offering to look her way. He's not one she wants to hear from, nor does he feels he has the right at this moment to say anything. So in the meanwhile, he simply keeps a distance, using his blade to sift through the gray snow. Attempting to pile as much of that hardlight crystal that lingers upon the battlefield together. Trying to avoid touching it directly, but make it easier for collection when all is said and done.
Petra Soroka	"Maybe before, but... What about now?" Petra blinks at Kukuru in confusion before standing back up and (pointlessly) brushing grungy snow off of her jeans. Then she sighs and shrugs when she understands, shaking her head while taking a few steps forwards to the next spot of glass, dragging her boot through the snow to scuff off the surface layer. "Meant more recently, Kukuru. Not in general. When Liza came to kill me, and then, like... after that." Kukuru might never have seen it herself, but Petra means the state she was in after Flamel's astral projection into her head. It's a bit harrowing for Petra to think about how Kukuru could be referring to any number of incidents and expressions Petra's made over the past year and a half; that this is such an omnipresent aspect of herself that she has to remind her that she means 'a few weeks ago', rather than 'last year'. "I've got plenty of people who need me around; yeah, I know." It feels like Petra's ran a marathon today, between trekking across the Maw, fighting through the Titanomachia, and even just the standing that came after. She wobbles, then crouches down again, for a small partial handful of broken pieces, a start made even more exhausting with the looming bulk of the Kana besides them to remind them all of how much mass there is. "So... that, I guess. It's not like I'll ever really be able to do enough." Her eyes flick to Kukuru. "... You don't really need to help. I'm not-- ..." She just lets that hang, not finishing the sentence. "I never understood your affection for that." "That's because you don't know jack shit about me, anyways." Even sniping back, Petra sounds subdued by more than exhaustion. 'Melancholy' is a good way to describe it, but 'capitulation' might be better. "It's not like you ever asked. Or I ever would've told you. Or it was ever relevant. I'm just..." "What are your intentions for it now?" Petra reaches down for a fragment of the Beauty of Ash that's not covered by the snow, despite being surrounded by it. Slick with faintly-glowing, heated orange liquid as if sun-warmed, it and hundreds of other pieces are warm enough to feel comfortable, but not hot, despite having been in the snowstorm for all this time. Petra stares at it and runs her thumb through the liquid. "... wasn't ever mine. So I'll at least get it back to the people it belongs to in a bodybag instead of never at all. It's not really good for anything else, anyways, now."
Petra Soroka	"Not exactly glamorous, I guess. But being alive isn't most of the time." Petra's sleeves are soaked up to the elbow with sludgy ash-mud, caked with more snow on top. Her jeans are more black than blue at this point, and the cuts and scrapes on her face are barely managing to scab over-- though even that's unusual enough to note, for her. She could use the morphmetal to make digging easier, but she doesn't, for some reason. "Gosh. Could've fooled me." On the subject of actually storing the literal bus-sized amount of sharp crystals scattered around in the snow, Petra nods like this is a totally novel consideration for her, then pulls out her compact mirror. She flips it open and tries to dump her handful of hardlight into the reflection, and it all slides right off and falls to the ground. "Qetra! What the fuck?" Petra tries to press an individual piece into the mirror, to the same results. Apparently Qetra doesn't like the presence of the numbingly inert psychic material-- or she doesn't want a literal ton of broken glass poured on her head (a ton, only; each shard is much lighter than you'd expect, like pumice, or aerogel). "... Bitch." After hesitating for a bit, Petra looks over at the Isaiah and Berislav, slightly furtive. Asking for help, from the one person here who hasn't already initiated it, would make it seem like she expected that everyone who came with her would help dig through the slush. Mentally, she figures that if Berislav can fit one mech in that pocket dimension of his, he can probably fit a second, but she's adamant about not asking. Plan B is to simply be pathetic until he either offers, or definitively decides not to offer. "Well, hold on, I've got... some trash bags in here, I think, and I can carry some inside the morphmetal...."
Father Berislav	"I'd be happy to help," Berislav offers. He's known Petra long enough to know the score and intuit some meaning from that look, in combination with her insult spat at Qetra. He holds his hands out, as dirty snowfall stains his white stole and chasuble. They're cupped, as if to drink water, then drawn apart. A familiar orange burn spreads out, as if the space around them were a thin film, scraped away. Inside the priests palms, there is a glow, like holding a flashlight up to the skin. "Would you like me to say a few words, as well?"
Petra Soroka	"Would you like me to say a few words, as well?" Petra huffs, even though she's plainly grateful enough to immediately start dropping the salvaged pieces of the Beauty of Ash into the portal. Again, still sounding dispirited while trying to keep up her usual tone and barbs. "It's not, like-- it's just a machine. It'd be stupid to really treat it like a person, and it'd kind of be-- like, what's the word... melodramatic, I guess. Selfish. Performative." She shrugs, dropping her hands down, and goes back to digging around. "It's not, like... a funeral. It's a machine that I begged for, then stole, abandoned, and broke. I'm just... it's too self-important for me to also be, like... demanding pity for the Beauty of Ash itself. I'm picking up the pieces to get it back for-- for a resolution, and so I'm not being even shittier to the people that made it happen in the first place. That's it." Dysnomia is the only one to have any context for why Petra glances towards the black smudge of the Industrial Behemoth in the distance, and why she'd follow it up with, "It's kind of unfair to leave it here for a lot of reasons."
Hibiki Tachibana	Hibiki gives an uncharacteristic(?) scoff at Petra's comment, before shoving aside another clump of grayed 'snow'. Although she avoided her clothes getting bloodied or messed up from all of the fighting, as is the privilege of a transforming magical girl, digging around like this is going to leave some some stains. Even if she is in shorts, and rolls up her sleeves. There's a side glance, in Petra's direction, taking note of the gashes healing over. There's an exhale, and slightest of slight upturns at the corners of her mouth-- and then the distraction makes her poke a finger into the jagged edge of a piece of hardlight glass. "Ow..." She rubs at it with another for a second, then continues steadily scooping, to the sound of the mirror's denial of being used as a storage device. "...Maybe she doesn't have enough room in there. Or maybe she just decided to take the day off." Somehow, she can easily imagine Qetra saying all of the events of today are too much for her to think about. Hibiki, who is not smart enough to think about using pocket dimensions as containment past the already failed attempt, sets her collection of shards down before removing her jacket, holding it up and looking it over with a frown. "...I guess I could put some in here then bundle it up if I had to...?" Thankfully, Berislav is on the case, and it's with a slightly relieved sigh that she joins Petra is dropping off what she has before lowering to her knees and going back to it. As she does, there's a glance up towards a certain someone a little bit away from the group, working away with a blade. "Oi. Touta. You said you wanted to say something to me after we were finished, didn't you?"
Dysnomia	"Not in general. When Liza came to kill me, and then, like... after that." "Surprised you talked her down." It seemed impossible to Dysnomia, frankly. But Petra actually besting Liza seemed even more unspeakable. "You're lucky to be breathing." "One day...Sooner than you may imagine, you might." She stopped rummaging in the ruins of the S2 at that, head turning as her helmet retracted, showing her hair hanging about her face as though absent gravity, mouth pressed into a tight frown. "And just where is that coming from, Father? Do you have some insight I'm missing?" Or, maybe, you have no idea what you're on about. She read into his words as a rebuke, and in response, tendrils of smoke curled through the air, reaching down to pluck glass from the detrius...Most of them slipped through Mia's 'fingers' back into the snow, that same numbness visibly scattering the tendrils of her influence. But enough to shift some of them onto a relatively dry piece of land. She exhaled, trying--poorly--to hide her flinch as she 'touched' them. It was an imperfect method, and she focused on seeking out the smallest pieces, that the others might miss--but her eyes were very keen, and she could move a great deal of material at once. "That's because you don't know jack shit about me, anyways...It's not like you ever asked. Or I ever would've told you. Or it was ever relevant. I'm just..." "Of course not." Dysnomia mused aloud. "We're practically strangers. Why would you?" After the horror in that place, it was almost a relief in a frustrating way, to not feel that impulse to mirror the girl's thoughts. Even if it was because she couldn't feel them at all. "It's kind of unfair to leave it here for a lot of reasons." She can't help but follow Petra's gaze, and the memory hits her hard, and dots connect. "...I guess you're right." She admitted. "You going to be able to get this into space okay?"
Kukuru	Unlike perhaps everyone else here, Kukuru's never fought against the first Kana. She's heard of it in passing, sure, but it's not quite the same as seeing it in person. At most, she can guess that it was a fearsome machine, but that lack of context might as well be why she didn't think anything beyond the need to destroy it. As with that, however, there's little thought going on as to why she's trying to sieve out those bits and pieces now. "I never understood your affection for that." "One day," "Sooner than you may imagine, you might." "Looots of stuff has value, even if it's broken. We've still got an old rice cooker at home that hasn't worked for..." Kukuru closes her eyes while shaking her colander around, mouthing a few numbers silently before continuing. "Ten years...? Yeeeah, that sounds about right. Mom and dad wanted to keep it because it was a gift, but this sounds like something... Different. More important than that." "...Hey, we're gonna need, like. Somewhere to actually put these, won't we? There's a lot." "So what, someone gonna plan to dismantle this stuff completely or... Just gonna leave this thing here to rust with the rest of the scrap...?" Kukuru closes her eyes again as she tries to plot out a better way to separate all these things out. Just separating them isn't enough if the colander can't even do that much ideally, and the point of actually putting all these parts somewhere does have her stopping to think. "The ice is real chunky and bad for that, huh? Then... Hmm. What if we..." An idea starts forming. Kukuru digs two more things out of her pockets: A pot and a bag of hand warmers. She sets the pot down, snaps the little tabs on the hand warmers, then tosses them and more of the ice into the colander before setting it over the pot to let that ice melt and separate those little bits out. She's still not sure where to dump them afterwards. "Meant more recently, Kukuru. Not in general. When Liza came to kill me, and then, like... after that." "Oh... You've had a lot going on, then." She murmurs quietly in that concerned tone she usually gets and can't hide one bit of it. Even without knowing about everything that could be going on, she's seen plenty between this one peek into her past, the more direct look through the lens of Flamel's astral projection, and everything she's seen and heard in the context of Lobotomy Corporation. Even hearing things on the radio has... Well, a lot of that has slid right off Kukuru's brain, but she's heard plenty, and that makes it all to easy for her to come to a simple conclusion: "That stinks... Mmn. I'm sorry you've been going through all that, de-" Wait. Petra doesn't like that kind of overly familiar speaking, right? "Petra. Hmn... But I'm really glad you've got so many friends and mentors now to learn and rely on." "It's not like I'll ever really be able to do enough." "Do what you can, then. What you can do is..." Kukuru pauses again, actually (and visibly) trying to think instead of just saying the first thing that comes to mind. "... Maybe it won't be enough, but it's something. If you think you can do better than that, you can do that, too." "You don't really need to help. I'm not--" That, of all things, gets a gentle laugh out of her. "I know~" Kukuru scoops up another colander full of ice and (maybe) bits, then sets it over the pot again without adding more to that thought. She doesn't actually have any thoughts going at all at that moment.
Touta Konoe	Oi. Touta. You said you wanted to say something to me after we were finished, didn't you? Up to this point he'd been casually compiling the shards with the blade like a mop almost. Though as he's called from out of nowhere, his eyes turn back to Hibiki. There's a long pause to her as he's asked that question. Ultimately, he finds himself shaking his head. "Must have been knocked out of my head during the fight. If it comes to mind I'll let you know..." So... that, I guess. It's not like I'll ever really be able to do enough. There's a momentary hesitation to speak up. Thinking words that come to mind, but refusing to let them grace the air. Though it's words common enough that he still hears them uttered still. Do what you can, then. What you can do is... It's a statement that doesn't come out with a tone that's directed towards anyone. Simply feeling as if it's added to the conversation off-handedly. "Wanting to have done something better, feeling like something could have been different. To have done more...That's pretty normal isn't it? Feeling like when you accomplished something that you didn't do enough still's better than spreading yourself out or not enough to accomplish what you needed..." At that point, he's still kept from facing Petra, but he's ended up close enough where he's probably digging close to her section now. At this point, his hands digging into that muddled snow, doing the best he can to avoid catching the sharp end of some of the glass. A part of him is not even sure why he's saying anything. If Mia didn't know him, then one could say that he knew her even less than that. It's as he does this like Hibiki does he ends up pricking himself. A 'self-inflicted' wound as much as any as he decided to do the work by hand. "Makes me wonder if the people who do know jack shit about you would argue that this was enough for now. Not like you're not already spreading yourself thin enough for those people ontop of it right...?" The words again aren't spoken with 'concern' but more of a 'matter of fact'. At one point, Touta had been asked to do something in regards to Petra. To acknowledge a form of humanity for her. In a way, this was him trying to do that. To make it apparent that he sees the people impacted by her, and that there were others that would have argued that her actions were plenty even when not including the scope of the events involving the Titanomachia. It's as he finishes speaking, he watches as the blood simply fizzles where it had fallen. The cut heals leaving his fingers unblemished and unsullied with only sludge covering them. All the while as he peers at Petra's. Where sludge ash-mud mixes with cuts and scrapes. His eyes meet with Petra's if only for a moment, but there's nothing left to say or should be said...He knows they're not on good terms. They won't be on good terms anytime soon. But he still feels like it even if they aren't. There are some things that are better vocalized rather than left unsaid. Instead he takes what glass he has and starts stepping away. "Oi, Berislav right? Sorry, I got a bit more for you to collect over here..." As he says that he'd make his way to deposit more of the remains as they'd fall into that thin film, the sound of falling together.
Father Berislav	"I thought that maybe I should ask, given the phrase you used," notes the priest. Body bag. "It had a... particular air to it. As does what we're doing here. But, I think I understand. Even if it isn't a person, it's undeserving of this as its final resting place." And just where is that coming from, Father? Do you have some insight I'm missing? "Insight? No," says the priest. "I just have faith that you'll realize a want you expressed to me, once, about becoming a rogue planet." Taking the shape and space that you want, with your own gravity. 'Free in the dark.' Oi, Berislav right? Sorry, I got a bit more for you to collect over here... "Thank you," he says, with a nod of his head, as the shards fall into a shimmering screen of burning orange. "There was something you said, earlier," notes the priest. "I overheard it while I was working with Kyrikos. I'm not even sure if you said it -to- any of us, more than to yourself, but it bears thinking on. You wondered what 'might have been.'" "An apple seed can't grow into a banana tree," says Berislav. "From the beginning, the aim of those people was isolation. Quarantine. To them, you and I are a sickness. There's nothing that place could have been, but a fascist stronghold. I hate what they did. Not only the killings," he says, "But the theft. The perversion. And most of all, I hate that they almost succeeded in forcing us to imitate the apathetic machinery of the world to be rid of them. To spend -another- young person, like countless others before her, to price out safety with bodies." "If nothing else," he says, "There's a kind of justice in a state with took pains to avoid even breathing the same air as us--yet had no problem appropriating a tool of self exploration--finally being exposed to open air in this, the Multiverse's most acrid, noxious monument to taking."
Petra Soroka	"Or maybe she just decided to take the day off." "She's just fucking lazy." Petra whines, instinctively moving her thumb to her mouth after pricking it on a shard of glass, and then stopping when she remembers that the snow is about 90% comprised of pure carcinogens. A slimy black bubble in the nearby toxic waste pool builds and bursts with a spray of heated sludge and unwholesomely thick steam. Don't eat the snow here. "Maybe I should take the day off sometime. Make her do the work. I never take days off; the last time I did that wasn't just sitting in my apartment and dissociating was... does it count as a day off if I'm only getting out of bed at noon because the scariest person in the Sector beat me mostly to death the day before? I didn't even stay and rest that day, Cinder and I still went out of the facility." "Surprised you talked her down." "That was after Liza, I mean." Petra finishes up her previous phrase in progress when Dysnomia chimes in, since it's still relevant. Without meeting Mia's gaze, intently focused on pawing away gravel around a particularly large fragment of crystal that buried itself in the ground, Petra makes an inconclusive noise. "Didn't, really. Talk her down. It's not really possible to do that with Liza, I think." A beat passes. "Didn't beat her either, obviously. Women just naturally find it hard to kill me." It's not clear whether she meant to say that out loud. "...I guess I could put some in here then bundle it up if I had to...?" Petra straightens up and dumps her gathered glass into a little hovering bowl of morphmetal, just to keep her hands free. She looks over at Hibiki, jacketless, and exaggeratedly looks over to the submerged Kana, then back to her jacket, miming a size comparison. She snorts and flicks her hand dismissively at the offered 'container'. "Put your jacket on, dumbass; you'll freeze to death. I can't imagine you trying to c-carry--" Midway through the lighthearted, familiar mocking, Petra's voice suddenly wobbles, and she cuts off with a hiccup and shakes her head, getting back to work. "You going to be able to get this into space okay?" Petra doesn't remember mentioning any such origin for the Beauty of Ash, especially not of that kind of metaphorically significant kind. Still, the thought that catalyzed when talking with Hibiki, that's been following her around with that subdued atmosphere, means she won't kick up much of a fuss about it. So she just shrugs. "Warpgate. Got a few vehicles from Eggman, too. Just not here."
Petra Soroka	"Mom and dad wanted to keep it because it was a gift, but this sounds like something... Different. More important than that." "Well it sure is more fucking important than a rice cooker, yeah. It's just..." There's an intensifying feeling to that sense of giving up, like a tangible sagging in foundational walls, as Petra struggles to figure out what she wants to say. It feels a bit like refusing to confess fault at this point. "... Sort of just, a piece of a better world that I never belonged in, and I ruined by touching it, and ruined worse by taking it. I sort of... grew up with the Beauty of Ash, you know? Half my life, if you count... the past year." "... Maybe it won't be enough, but it's something. If you think you can do better than that, you can do that, too." "Feeling like when you accomplished something that you didn't do enough still's better than spreading yourself out or not enough to accomplish what you needed..." Petra exhales slowly, breath misting out in the cold air and sending ashfall swirling. "That's just too half-hearted. That's not good enough. I'm not going to... account for myself failing, when the only reason I exist is to-- to be good enough for them. Accepting not being enough just because it was my best means that even at my best I'd be better off dead." "Not like you're not already spreading yourself thin enough for those people ontop of it right...?" Petra straightens up and looks over at Touta with a slightly disbelieving expression. "... Too thin? I basically, really, only care about, like, two people. Everything else is an extension..." Petra lowers her eyes to the orange-stained iridescent shard between her fingers, pinched tight enough that blood leaks from her thumb to mix in with the orange. "... Well, I guess this isn't technically, directly for Lilian...." If Petra starts seriously considering how many people she gives enough care to to want to protect, then she'll start undercutting her own point, so she goes to dump out the heap of glass in her morphmetal instead. "It's just what I'm for. So don't ever tell me I'm doing too much or pushing myself too far." "Even if it isn't a person, it's undeserving of this as its final resting place." "... Yeah. It has a home." Even besides the S2, the Maw is the final resting place of uncountable numbers of machines, varying enormously in size. The strewn drones and mechs from fighting around the Titanomachia adds quite a lot of metal waste to the mountain range, and doesn't even budge the total amount rusting to pieces out here by a fraction of a percent. "And I know where it is, since I took it from there." Insisting that it's just a machine, while also visibly mourning it and talking about it as if it's a person, isn't evidence of Petra lying one way or the other. Trudging around in the snow long past the point of exhaustion, leakily recounting details she's hardly ever mentioned out loud in the past year and a half of being an Elite, collecting each fragment of the brutalized mech as performing funeral rites; Petra's responses are conflicted because Petra's feelings are conflicted.
Father Berislav	... Sort of just, a piece of a better world that I never belonged in, and I ruined by touching it, and ruined worse by taking it. Berislav smiles, wanly. "I think that they'll appreciate having it back. It's an act of due penance, too. And I know that kind of thing is important, to you. You sinned, against them. But I don't think anyone in that world would say your sin brought 'ruin.' If that world were really so fragile, it would have buckled under the weight of the one that came before it a long time ago. Before there was a Petra, or even a Waters." It's just what I'm for. "You've changed quite a lot, in the time I've known you. I noticed a distinct lack of Agents here," he notes, and not with disapproval. "Maybe you know something about that." He pauses, widening the portal for a particularly large piece of shrapnel. Then, he shrugs, allowing her to deflect it if that's what she wants to do. "I'm sure that they'll be happy to see you back. And I know for certain that Angela will."
Hibiki Tachibana	Put your jacket on, dumbass; you'll freeze to death. I can't imagine you trying to c-carry-- "...Hah. Yeah. If I knew it'd be this cold, I would have brought my winter clothes." Her own voice is a little subdued, maybe because of the whole Liza talk that came right before that. She slides her jacket back on, zipping it back up while looking back to the S2, briefly. None of this helps the fact she's still wearing shorts. A belated reply to something else comes after-- or maybe it's more like a thought leaking out. "...Didn't you leave Qetra watching a containment unit once, or am I going insane...?" Must have been knocked out of my head during the fight. "Well, don't hold back on saying so if it does, Touta. You're gonna leave me wondering," Hibiki says plainly, sounding like she's going to let it pass right on by without digging any further. Though, the next trip she makes to deposit what hardlight shards she's collected is very suspiciously timed to be when Touta goes to do the same. Which lets her lower her voice in a weary-sounding tone towards him. There's been enough emotional exertion today that she sort of just says words without thinking about them. Even less than usual. "I know a thing or two about things that don't get said out loud, y'know. If you're feeling... guilty about something, or that you should've done more, or something like that, don't. I mean, don't /just/ feel bad." Well, the other thing he had said doesn't make all of that terribly hard to guess in the first place. The words come over the clink of glass going in. "You came to help. You did help. I can't speak for anyone else, but that's enough for me. And if it's not enough for you... that's part of what 'next time' is for. Isn't it?" Hibiki gives him a small nod, then steps away to return to drudging through a fresh patch of sleet. ... Yeah. It has a home. In the middle of carefully placing more fragments into an open palm, Hibiki pauses, glancing down at them. The machine that was taken from its home, weaponized for so much strife, caused pain for her too-- right now, it's all nothing more than these inactive slivers that deserve better than to be buried away underneath the polluted snow here. "...I hope going back there'll give you... something," she murmurs, low enough that only she can hear it. She's not sure if she's saying that to Petra, or to the Beauty of Ash. Or if there's a meaningful difference.
Kukuru	Remembering that the ice itself is toxic hurts Kukuru just a little more inside. Partly, because she knows that the people here have to live around all this. Partly, because she knows she won't be able to use that pot and colander again unless... She'll have to find some way to sterilize all this later. "You wondered what 'might have been.'" "To them, you and I are a sickness. There's nothing that place could have been, but a fascist stronghold." Although Kukuru knows she doesn't know completely what Berislav means there, she still feels an aching, sinking feeling in her gut just hearing him speak about all of it. The theft, the killings, the use of the young. "That's too cruel... But maybe this can be the start of changing it all. Making it better for everyone that... That you can feel better about helping, even if they don't know it yet." Kukuru can feel a bit of bile bubbling up, too, like there's... Anger? Like she's feeling angry on Petra's behalf, but... No, she doesn't like that. It doesn't feel right for her to feel that emotion, especially since she doesn't understand most of the situation. Maybe it's just the toxic waste she's been breathing in this whole time. It's easier to explain it to herself that way. "It's just... Sort of just, a piece of a better world that I never belonged in, and I ruined by touching it, and ruined worse by taking it. I sort of... grew up with the Beauty of Ash, you know? Half my life, if you count... the past year." "Petra..." She murmurs softly, letting out a vague noise at first before letting out an irritated noise. "If the only thing a world is good for is making someone feel like that, then that world isn't good enough for anyone." She deflates a moment later, sighing once and settling into a squat to scoop up even more of that ice (and throwing in another hand warmer). "That piece of your old home.... I know it'll be better wherever you put it. And... Waters is right. Something that'd break that easy wouldn't last around anyone, so... It's lucky that it had someone thinking about it as hard as you are." "I'm not going to... account for myself failing, when the only reason I exist is to-- to be good enough for them. Accepting not being enough just because it was my best means that even at my best I'd be better off dead." Hearing that perks Kukuru right back up, although she doesn't quite get to the point of beaming or sounding super excited or anything too uncomfortably affectionate like that. Instead, she gets up with her colander full of bits, then calmly deposits them into the morphmetal. Once it's empty, she turns back to Petra with an encouraging smile. Somehow, it's not quite like any other she's shown Petra before. Or perhaps anyone here, really. It's more awake, like Kukuru's getting herself fired up a little in the process. "Theeen don't! Keep doing better, but aim at something so you can see what you're doing better at. That way, you don't have to feel bad about not doing it all at once, you know?" Kukuru keeps her own ice/glass scooping path near-ish to Petra, keeping one arm hanging back, but not quite reaching out towards her so much as leaving the invitation vague and open if she wants to take it. "And then when you show me how much closer you are to becoming that person that's good enough for them..." Her face contorts briefly, like she's holding something in the back of her throat. She's getting sleepy herself. "I'll show you how much closer I am to destroying a planet, so I we both know we're becoming who we wanna be. How's that sound, dear?" So close to not slipping. So close.