Scene #8831: A Complex About Wonder

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	The Eggman Empire Province of Quicknest (Name Pending), formerly known as the Kingdom of Quicknest, wherein the capital city of Quicknest (Name Pending) is located, is largely uninhabited but not silent. Robots scurry around, most of them nearly identical grunt-tier robotomized residents, still doing the endless work of rebuilding and mechanizing the damaged city. Stone, dirt, and wood are gradually replaced with metal, and a colosseum is in the process of being erected in the distance. Stepping out of the warpgate, the mosaic plaza outside the castle has had its tiles removed, repainted, and replaced, so that instead of a regal image of Quicknest's historic battles, it displays the logo of the Eggman Empire, so that looking at the castle as a whole always includes its new ruler's sign. Marble stairs, shattered in places, lead up to the front doors, and the throne hall inside is lined with alternating flags of Petra's customized rat insignia and the Eggman Empire grin. Waiting, seemingly aimlessly, around the plush carpets of the hall, is another one of the generically indistinguishable robots, with one particular distinguishing feature from the others. Screwed to its face is a cylindrical smart speaker, of an obviously different design by a different designer, in place of actually integrating any kind of AI into the bot. The bot pleasantly introduces itself as 'Heyalexa' when Dimo gets close, just from proximity sensors. It really is just a slightly-modified Amazon Alexa attached to a mindless bot so that it can move around. Heyalexa offers, when prompted, to guide Dimo to where Petra currently is, and while leading her through the castle, asks if she'd like to repeat her order for Custom Flag 3 Foot By 5 Foot Custom Design Black Background Heavy Duty Outdoors Durable Polyester Double Sided Suited For Yards Or Hanging Ten Pack. 'Where Petra is' turns out to be a few floors down, in one of the many massive kitchens, that she's repurposed into a tinkering workshop. A few robotomized bots are standing around to lend her extra hands, or to serve as a seat, while she works on building a new series of ratbots. A halo of morphmetal droplets floats around her head, half of them being formed into various tools that guide themselves into her hands when she needs them. Bolts to fix the antigravity generator inside of the ratbot that she's currently working inside the paneling of are similarly lifted by morphmetal on her command, which she does seamlessly and almost thoughtlessly, focused entirely on her work with her tongue poking slightly out.
Dimokratia	Quicknest had been a location of interest for some time simply on the actions of a Concord Elite acting against a population center. The claims made by the Doctor Egg Man - the granting of the territory to the Gale Empire, under the governorship of Petra - were certainly complicating for any Commonwealth response. Politics had to be considered, and responses had to be planned. Eggman had made himself a problem before - but it wasn't as personal a problem for the Paladins. It was a personal problem for the Watch - to Aidan Proudpick and those he could arrange. Beneath concern. And the aerial surveilance of the location was. . . strangely positive? Inefficient, even amateurish, but... In a particular direction. A particularly fine direction. Well-intentioned, if -- a little wet. Another pass of high-overhead aerial recon shines as a silver glint above the cloudline, inconveniently above the Badnik flight cieling. The spying lasts only moments, before Dimo strides out of the warpgate into the converted square, wearing a grand European greatcoat in naval blue, with crisp rolled thread epaulettes and starched sleeves that end in white dress gloves -- all of course sized for an eight foot tall synthetic champion, complete with white dress trousers and tall boots - cut from a fantasy or swashbuckling adventure from either of the Mobian or Gale Imperial cultures and striding with the bootclack of leather and sole and a dozen bouncing buckles and bits of metal falling in their individual weights. The trails of silver and spread-gossamer strands and skirtings from her back fall as the coat's tails, a sine wave drift aquatic behind the naval coated champion's advance. The sweep of blue-optic-cast attention and hot-crackling synapse washes over the simple AI like a particularly fond cat lady finding a particularly scrappy stray. "Oh, Heyalexa, what a charming name and form you've been given. Do you take orders?" By the time Petra's location is betrayed by Heyalexa, Dimo (of the Silver) has ordered several dozen cans of high grade metal paint and painting equipment, including one (and only one) painting apron in women's medium. She also repurchase Custom Flag 3 Foot By 5 Foot Custom Design Black Background Heavy Duty Outdoors Durable Polyester Double Sided Suited For Yards Or Hanging Ten Pack, with an updated design. Since she was asked. Advancing into the kitchen with gloved arms spread wide, and dark carbonblack and complex chrome neck rising from her latest strange cos-play, Dimo smiles on dark lips. "I had come to see what blaspheme your theft had affected, and yet here I am, seeing such devotion. What am I to think of you, lost and lonely little sister? You who wished to be anything but sisterly, yet..." Warm, reactor-warm, heatsink hot and well oiled, the laughter falls from her heavy throat with the gentle synthesized fry of a speaker tuned for recordbreath and music. "Look at you. Oh, lost, lonely little sister. What did you really wish for?"
Petra Soroka	Quietly singing along with some indie rock song playing through her radio, the first sound Petra hears is the presence of sound at all. Without looking up from her work, barely even pausing in singing, she calls out, "Hey, Alexa, standby." Heyalexa, as requested, enters standby, leaving Dimo to cross the rest of the (short) distance alone. At the continued noise, the sound of confident bootheels on stone and faint jingling, Petra's mind jumps to another association with those sounds, as implausible as it'd be for her to show up without saying something first. Petra hops off the back of the robot she was using as a stool, curiously peeking towards the door. "... Lilian?" Then, of course, it's the crackling synaptic warmth that finally clues her in. Before anything else, before managing to look angry or defiant, Petra flinches, taking a step back right as Dimo enters the kitchen and bumping into one of the stone countertops. She's somewhat afraid, as a baseline, her gut-feeling alarm at being cornered alone again flaring up despite how different the environment really is this time, but the main expression on her face is a confused kind of guilt. Petra isn't in any kind of cosplay at all, except in the sense that she's wearing the guise of someone who would seem more capable than Petra Soroka. It's warm in the kitchen, even before the sophont's arrival, from a fire going in one of the stoves, and Petra just wears a fitted tank top and jeans for comfort. Patterned all over her skin are the same old blemishes that were inscribed in her Silver form, though they've faded to pink and white rather than being open and wet. In place of the silver collar, she has a black one. In place of feeling comfortable in the heat, she feels mildly uncomfortable. "What the fuck kind of-- blaspheme-- no, before that, why are you here at all? What are you expecting to get from me?" Questioned directly and mustering a response, Petra finally has the presence of mind to raise her hackles. What her hackles are actually composed of, on an instinctual level, is the Silver still floating around her. The radio is shut off by an extended electronic impulse from the morphmetal, while all the rest of them soften from tools and reharden into jagged flechettes. "Stop-- stop calling me that. I'm not your--" Her mind catches up to the morphmetal arranged around her, and she growls low in her throat in frustration, swiping her hand through the swarm to ineffectually rein it back in so that it becomes an amorphous blob again. She still doesn't return it to the Silver FullBottle on the table, though; not with Dimo's intentions still not being clear. "I'm not your fucking-- sister. If you put a fucking hand on me again, you're going to-- a bunch of people are going to instantly hate you. I've got the radio right here. Don't touch me." Warily, trying to slowly creep back closer to her stack of ratbots for security's sake without taking her eyes off of Dimo, Petra... practically pouts, failing to produce a more appropriate expression than that. "And just so you fucking know, you're, like, a month late to be asking about my wishes."
Dimokratia	A kitchen provides surfaces to move through, but the displacement of the sophont champion leads her to snake and stoop around the kitchen a little, breadth of shoulders highlighted by the golden rolls of tassles, neck highlighted by a complete lack of cravat or covering so to look at her is to confront the core of her, a hot medallion of curling purple plasma behind temperature-ablating crystal 'worn' (planted, part and built) as reactor-fed standing art jewelry-approximate. An air of hot, synapse-warm nobility, and the cast look of interest first at the hovering droplets and held halo of chrome as a tell. And with a heavy sigh that burns low and trembling in the harmonic register, her eyes land lower on Petra herself. Confronting what this has become - what Petra has made of herself. Dimo could hide the disgust. She doesn't have to display any emotion she does not want to, as a far more perfected being than Petra is. But still, there's a certain grimace, a tightening at the corner of the mouth, an all-too-familiar tisk (though hers is a spring-tick, a pressure-tick, a pin hitting post-tisk). She stops by a kitchen island, placing hand at the table still quite low for her, despite the extreme height variance of the locals. "Why am I here at all?" Dimo repeats, disappointed in the character of the question, darkly amused but not ha-ha laughing in tone. "If I give you the truth, you bite it, doubt it. If I speak in amusing fabrication, you think I so monstrous." Dimo half-shrugs, hand swept out, back, to Heyalexa. Gloved and curling with a naked and whisperquiet whir of adjustment, the hand turns over and points at the various other robots and ratbots in the room, ending on... Chrome Silver touched and run through, felt through. Something to be put away, could be put away, but... Even Petra can't deny it in motion, and so Dimo doesn't need to defeat Petra at all: They are already at bargaining for the settlement. "You're so honest to me, Petra. It's such an interesting trait. You'll tell those idiot meatheads on the radio your full feelings, a naked cutting blade, a spinning saw, a swung pick, a n d for me you are. . ." First a little chuckle, and then, leaning forward, leaning across, L-bent and elbows down on the low kitchen table, Dimo looks low, silverwhite hair falling to either side of her coated arms, and jellyfish metal trails spun into a bow behind her, comfortable, cozy, tapping boot-toe to the kitchen floor in the improbable and spine-stressing position for any organic spine to hold for long, but... Of course the champion is built quite different. "So honest. Is it because your thoughts are cast in silver, lost little..." A venture, a pause, a warm beatific smile. "... girl? Have you healed some? And, so, what would you have me call you?"
Dimokratia	''And just so you fucking know, you're, like, a month late to be asking about my wishes.'' Petra earns, perhaps, her first win on Dimo - ever. The pouting look she wears, the denial, everything, culminates in being told that she was late for asking on wishes. The absurd position shifts, hair pooling before and about her shoulders and neck. Shifting from looking up, to looking at, to looking down again at Petra, Dimo blinks her optics and speaks carefully. Her tone challenges the warm needle rub on delicate film record, the soft abrading of material into purified sound. "That... is too bad. I would have liked to know you more intimately, as I wished to show you the wonders of your second birthright. But you wished that away." A moment's skip, a track-pause, and then the turn over to the b-side, unassisted vocal: "In that case: are you, likewise, late to be asking me of mine? When I came to you, and touched you, and you became free, and there was no question to your most precious one?" Disbelief, a minor key harmony. "Did you think there was a fight and I was. . . defeated? That I had no recourse?"
Petra Soroka	"You are monstrous." Petra huffs, then flinches at Dimo's outstretched hand before seeing it's not meant for her. Fingernails curl into the countertop, and to try to regain momentum, Petra stumbles forwards a few more forceful words before losing steam again. "You literally broke into my fucking cell and fucked with me to... to..." Trailing off again, her memory of the last conversation between Dimo and Lilian in the radio can be seen playing across her face, and the finishing phrase, '... to help Lilian', is practically audible as it comes to her mind. Petra's eyes narrow, brow wrinkling in unease, and she takes another half-step backwards like it's an afterthought. Petra's honest in ways she doesn't plan on being, too. The instant those two dots connected in her head, even without acknowledging out loud that Lilian had thought it was appropriate to thank Dimo in Petra's place, the line drawn between them sliced any certainty she had in her position to ribbons. For all her psychic impenetrability, Petra's thoughts remain nakedly readable to anyone paying attention; nothing that Dimo's glowing blue optics could miss. "I'm not-- you don't get to take credit for me being honest. I'm that way on purpose. If I don't constantly hammer it into the heads of those dumbasses on the radio, they...." Petra shrinks when Dimo leans forwards and over her, tilting her head up and even further emphasizing the loom. She falls silent as Dimo searches for the word, unconsciously even stopping breathing and moving until she finishes talking. A few beats later, and Petra abruptly staggers back a few steps, putting herself out from underneath Dimo just as the sophont is straightening back up. "No! You didn't touch my head! I know I think weird, compared to most people, I know I'm... but I'm honest because I want to be. I made myself that way. I didn't do all this work just for you to steal it from me." "If you have to talk to me at all, then... I'm just Petra." Petra shakes her head, something about Dimo's pout helping her settle down, in combination with the confusion she's been struck with. Her snotty emphasis on refusals and corrections dulls a bit, from the hurt and the drawing-back, even though she's still tensely gripping the table edge. "It's a fucking... healing shouldn't be just positive. It's a process. That's the whole thing. So sure, maybe, I'm 'healed' some, but it's no thanks to you. It's despite you. It's what I took, and worked with. You and... everyone else. That's how it works." Pointedly, Petra shoves the morphmetal back into the bottle and snaps it shut, leaving it in her hands as a little fidget-object. She runs her thumbnail along the plastic design on the exterior, making an irregular clicking noise while she stares at the ground rather than meeting Dimo's gaze. "I don't want to be fixed against my will. I don't want it. I won't let it happen no matter who tries to do it to me. So you... if you'd actually bothered to try to get to know me, you'd know that I don't belong in any kind of... perfect world." Petra crosses her arms, hunching up her shoulders and looking away in a very literal demonstration of the kind of cold shoulder an estranged younger sister might give. "Why should it be my job to ask? I didn't ask for any of this. If it mattered that I should know, then you should've just told me before making me hate you."
Dimokratia	Calling Dimo of the Silver monstrous is a particular choice, amuses her in a particular way. It and the flinch together with that, the instinctive flinch together with with revelation, the instinctive throwing up of clouds of sharp points and knives -- the smooth and effortless spread and hold of what she 'took', 'stole', prized. What she had been filled with, what she had filled, what she had swam in, and what swam through her- -trails in two from beneath the naval coat, unspooling from their complex bow and flowing about. One, then both, reach around as wide widths of wingspan, fanning filiment feelers in two halves of a curtain of silver and oil-bent light. As Petra retreats, Dimo speaks. And as she speaks, the almost-passive trails gain a purpose of their own. A shroud falls around the pair, the moment warming, lit from above for Petra by the crackling plasma of Dimo's chestpiece. "I will be clear to you then, simple, for a girl who wished to not be my sister with all her heart." The champion, even toned and buzzing only slightly, crisp. "I entered that pit to save two souls. From the worthless hole of a prison - that which my people have no need for. The weak men there allowed me, because I-" Her tone switches, now eerily sweat and diplomatic and patient, immaculately conceived as her cool optics look down, the only part of her that won't follow the pantomime together with the pushed down expressives of her brow, down far enough to see the inhuman panel seperation. "-can speak in a way that creates harmonious cooperation." And then toneless deadpan -- translation, like a typewriter adding a footnote. "I can 'ask nicely'." The heat from the strangely-shrouded Zone, the ring of hot Silver that still allows a few feet each way, like being hoverhanded by a wide armed heatlamp, continues. It doesn't get hotter, and it doesn't close in. It remains, and is definitely interfering with something? It's hard to tell from the inside. From the outside: It's a lot more obviously some sort of privacy cone, an opaque pearlescent screen. Inside, Dimo resumes her normal speaking tone, her broad arms slowly crossing. "Lilian would not be allowed to have you in the state you were in for her required Paladin transfer. The one who took care of that was me. And when the healing that was due any sister of mine, any daughter of our Father and Mother, any who I would so personally..." The trails in their odd spreading of synapse-heat cease, though it is still hot. Retracting, Dimo also takes a step back, and then two, and then turns as the long idle limbs swept behind her follow her own pacing-back. It cools, with the cone of her gaze, and the cast heat of the plasma crackle at her collar. The privacy screen of dreams couldn't hide the twisting, legitimate distress that this sequence has caused Dimo. it was supposed to work, the thing that always works, but it didn't work so exceptionally badly and is left in such a state. . .
Dimokratia	Her variance comes in tone, in outbound signal, in a countless complexity of ways that Petra might perceive filtered through now a cup to the wall of the building of her soul - through the Silver she bottled despite a wish to be rid of it all. Low, like a parent or sibling vengeantly mad, but they can't-be-mad-at-You. The You, of course, being the <<sister>> that Dimo isn't calling Petra. But not saying it, and not feeling it, are seperate. "Lilian thanked me. For what I failed to do. The healing to the soul takes time, but there is nothing sanctified in a compromise of form. There is nothing sacred in self-denial. There is no joy in abject simplicity." Arms uncrossing, chin hanging to look down at the fresh set of Eggman tilework on the kitchen workroom floor. "You are honest, to me,--" The pause is only one strike of the clock, and not breathless long strokes. "Petra. Perhaps you remember being shown your second birthright. It is beautiful there, a place I had hoped to take you. But you flinch, and I know why. First my hand leads you to a place you do not wish to go." The champion's chin rises, to consider a look over her shoulder. "You are honest, to me. You could lie, or care less, and do not. It would be easier to hate me and love Lilian, but you want to be. . . complex. Considered, at length. You do not consider others at length. I haven noticed." "So you are honest." The third time, affirmative. "To me. May I be honest, to you?" "I am not the entirety of the Silver. You know this, of course. But forgetting is easier, and don't you wish to be honest? With me?"
Petra Soroka	When encircled by the Silver, curtains rolling shut across the routes through the kitchen and out into the halls she'd been keeping in the corner of her eyes for this entire conversation, Petra freezes up and her heart rate spikes. Obviously, her first association is being trapped. When else, one on one, had Petra's range of motion been limited, with Dimo blocking the ways out? And with it being sheets of that crackling metal, heat and indistinct Other energy washing off in waves, Petra immediately assumes that this is an attempt to cut off her most precious lifeline. Whatever weaponry and physical capability she might have now that she didn't in the cell-- the objective tools by which she could have asserted her boundaries back then, and could now-- she forgets about them in the moment in favor of the more abstract shield she's kept nearby. After stiffening up and having her heart jump into her throat, sweating from more than the heat, Petra twitches and yanks her radio off the table with abrupt force, clutching it to her chest and squeezing while she frantically presses it to see if it turns on, if any signal at all is being blocked, isolating her and imprisoning her for-- And it does turn on. A woman's raspy voice, singing some new rock song, comes through the speakers, not wobbly or fuzzy at all despite the distortions in the air from Dimo's tendrils. Petra stares dumbly down at the radio, then up at Dimo, eyes wide and whole body rigid-tense until a shiver snaps away her stillness and she blinks rapidly, trembling a bit. She keeps the radio tight to her chest while looking around and reassessing, expression slowly loosening as she realizes: the topic is prison. The walls aren't meant to emulate the inescapability of the cell, but the liminal privacy of it. That's actually, once it processes in Petra's head, a surprisingly empathetic wave towards a goal that Petra never really expects anyone but herself to be interested in preserving; Lilian's dignity. Connecting that third dot to the previous two makes Petra feel even more off-balance. "I will be clear to you then, simple, for a girl who wished to not be my sister with all her heart." Actual hurt flashes across Petra's face, just as she's finally settling down. "That's not-- that's not fair to say. That's not a fair way to describe it. Of course I said no. I wasn't told anything at all. I wasn't given any options. I'm not-- you can't just barge in and grab me and then complain that I wasn't willing to come 'home' with you. I already have-- had a home." "The one who took care of that was me." Petra, sullenly, mutters with the radio still playing quiet, angsty music in her arms. She doesn't seem to want to turn it off as long as the barrier's up. "You weren't sent by her. She didn't know about it. I know, because-- because when she next saw, after--" Petra swallows, shaky. "She was horrified. She was. And if you're not with her, you're not with me. So if you ever really wanted 'sisters' to work, then you would've proven that you were related to Lilian." "I don't like being 'healed'. It's never right, what 'healing' makes me. I could've tolerated it, though, for a bit, if it was for Lilian. If I knew it was, and-- and I knew it'd be temporary. But I don't like when someone sees the mosaic and thinks the cracks need to be filled in." Petra trails off into a near-whisper over that last sentence.
Petra Soroka	When the buzzing synaptic heat pulls away, at the change in confidentiality, the castle seems suddenly colder. Drenched in sweat and suddenly vulnerable to the sense of a chilly draft, even despite the fact that the kitchen felt hot minutes before, Petra shivers, squeezing her arms together and pouting. The radio, a bit later, gets clicked off again. "There's... nothing simpler than being 'whole'. A single, unbroken piece without any kind of pattern or decoration. Of course I... care about complexity. Not just because... not really at all because of happiness, or anything, but for that kind of 'intentionality' and 'gravity'." Petra silently mouths the words 'purposefully shaped', while staring into a cold stove behind Dimo, rather than at her. "It's like that. Self-denial isn't... it's only necessary because I don't like what my self is. So denying them, and breaking them apart, and filling them in with something else-- isn't that obviously 'more complex'? No one cares about someone who just skips to the end. Unless it's fucking Phony, I guess." "It would be easier to hate me and love Lilian, but you want to be. . . complex." "I love Lilian." She quietly repeats, in response to honesty. "Above anything else. If she's going to be responsible for my soul, if she wants to choose to upraise and purify it or rip it into tatters, it's hers. Not anyone else's; not mine. Not yours." Petra feels tired, drooping, from emotional spikes and fight-or-flight hormones draining away. Petra leans her elbow on the table, then slowly sags her weight into it, rolling her forearm flat onto the surface and pressing her face into it. For the first time, not keeping Dimo strictly within sight. "What's there to be honest about? You can't seriously think I'm just going to... agree to join you, after all of this has happened. You aren't going to force me. It's a little late for a sales pitch." It's not exactly a rhetorical question, the way she says it, but she's also really not sure what else could be accomplished by Dimo's honesty.
Dimokratia	There is no particular mercy to the way Dimo of the Silver moves. There is a particular mercy to the way she acts, perhaps, the considerances she makes, the delicate balancing and arranging of objects in space, of words in order... But she does not move with mercy. Grace is not mercy, for a blade is graceful, but a surgeon can make it merciful. Dimo has reached, and selected, and taken, and given to, and Simply Done things that appeared correct to her. That were calculated for an effect, and then negativity got in the way. The sickness, and her battle with it, became her focus. And Petra. . . . . . was filled with a certain negativity, as Dimo was filled with a certain positivity. Petra repeated the same mistake, over and over, of assigning the Silver to Dimo alone. Dimo struggled to seperate the girl from the threat, but if she was to make the claims she was making as well: it simply had to be done. "You were not given options because you were out of them. If you wish to pierce me with your bleak hypotheticals and what-could-have-happeneds, then weigh and consider what path your life would have taken should any other Paladin or adjutant arrive. One not motivated, as I was, to save the soul in front of me." Lingering in her pause, looking over her shoulder, Dimo observes Petra's tired drooping. The information - about her state, about the chemical crash of wild heart-blasting adrenaline inside of her, about the brakes being applied to her response, and about the loosening state of white-knuckled readiness. One cool blue eye and the glow from a second around the fall of silverwhite hair sees Petra droop away, and put her head down, and Dimo turns her own head away, to face her back towards the laid-out once-sister, and the slowly re-bowing of her trails into a tight eared wreath that hugs the fall of her naval coat's tails. "It is fair for me to say that you took full advantage of what I did to you. And it is fair for you to say that you were given it, and were not asked." Affecting a sigh, which comes off buzzing, steam escaping turbines, or pressure escaping from valves, Dimo's shoulders lift and then fall, resettling at a higher-poised stand and looking up, optics tracking some particular skyward object she is aware of. "I expected you to escape the prison. You had been given much to do so. But you did not even chase me, and you let them hold you. Those were your choices as well. If you did not use the blessings of your second birthright for the love of your soul, then that was your choice too. If you wished guidance, when I came to you, you had a choice then too."
Dimokratia	Dimo does not let that linger overlong. Instead she sweeps attention about, to step around the outside of the kitchen, the leather of her bootclack heavy and gracefully slow to leave deliberate steps about the room, eventually coming into sight of Petra's laid down eyes to, on the periphery, laying a bare and gloveless and fully mechanical hand out on one of the old Quicknest boiler-ovens. "Petra. We are here now. In this place that has welcomed me, with shapes I recognize, borrowed patterns, and the touch of a familiar sort." The Silver, obvious and apparent. "You were healed in a different way, and you did not understand what the surgery accomplished, but now you are more. Not 'more whole', but more. The Silver contains you - and you've kept it. You - think - in silver. In some part, as your choice." A repetition of earlier. Her fingers arch, a brow quirks, a humming-in teacher's hope for this little bit to hit. Doesn't she remember? And now, with the FullBottle released, wasn't Petra? "There is much to be honest about, I say. I will be honest twice, and then you will be honest for me once. Isn't that fair?" Mustering - a rare and unthinkable sight, Dimo rises to her full height, fingers still splayed across the oven besides her. "I have never failed once, not really, before you. Among my people," Which Petra is not a part of. "the second-born may access much knowledge about themselves instantaneously. Despite an acclimation period, you should have simply... known." A dip of Dimo's chin and the lightest brush of a pout across her cheeks grants her a considered look of innocent apology. "By the time I could imagine needing to fetch you, you were gone from my ability to reach outside of dreams. So I will be honest, Petra: you have much to learn. And, I have much to teach." "The second honesty is that you use your blessing-shape like a tool, an arm, a manipulator. It is... More. You inhabit it. Allow it to move through and among." Like sweat from the carbon fill, droplets of chrome drip onto the surface, spreading across the appliance first to strip the ancient years of patina and carbon residue, then the paints and polishes and resins, and slowly - extremely slowly, by Petra's direct understanding - reshape the boiler oven into a still-connected dark metal chamber of... some... purpose (still an oven?? it is unclear). Transmuted and shifted, some of the mass - mostly aesthetic and excess framing - burned for fuel. "To use it as a brush of paint with the ink of the materials, shapes, uses available to you. Directly. That is - one - purpose of it." "Now. Fair is for those with superior power to ensure victory, Petra. One thing I am very happy to remind Kratia-" Her remaining sister. "-regularly of." Dimo advises, a little smile across dark lips. "Now, I would ask you to be honest with me: will you continue to learn? To ask? You wished to know of 'culture', mm?" A gently joking tone. The hand lifts, slid back into glove, weeping no more. "You may tell me later, Petra. Consider what it is you'd like to know. Give it..." A warm chuckle of an older sister. "At least ten seconds." The wave-fry of her tone continues into the amusement as the Champion steps away from the oven, back around the Kitchen... And out the door, as simply as she came. As she does-- she gives Heyalexa an affirming pat. The flags that Dimo ordered for petra feature the same rat as before, but... It's in silver, of course.