Scene #8862: Egg Daughter Bonus Round

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	As Petra said before, there's an entire country, with various densities of deadly robots and mechanized scars left by Eggman, surrounding the capital of Quicknest itself. Kale can't just waltz up to the castle, storm inside, and singlehandedly take her down, somehow freeing Quicknest in a single stroke. He does have an airship, though. So he can get pretty close. The anti-air defenses, such as they are, in the outer reaches of the country aren't all that much to write home about, to a surprising degree. Of course, there's clusters of automatic cannon turrets in the typical Eggman fashion, rattling or thoomping ammunition in his direction. There's bots on the ground, armed with handheld lasers and rockets and so on, some of whom take potshots at the airship when it strays too close, but those especially are sparse. Moreso than they must've been just a month earlier. It's still enough that it'd be a monstrous slog on foot, for plucky rebels, or a squirrel if he was so inclined, but certainly not... Eggman tier. Closing in on the capital is where that changes, by orders of magnitude. Around the distant walls of the city, he can glimpse a continual buzz of construction, some of which is dedicated towards turrets that spring up and join the hail of defensive fire in his direction, but most of which is dedicated to... something else. Soon enough, some distance away before the defenses can really take note of the East Wind, he's forced to land it and continue on foot. Through mechanized suburbia, rebuilt with sick-green metal, with impractical verticality and scattered less-than-lethal platforming challenges, as is tradition. Petra isn't here-- maybe she's in the city, but she hasn't taken note of his presence yet. If he wants to get her attention, there's some traversing to do until one of the ratbot screens will notice him and alert her; though if he didn't want to get her attention, he'd have to do the traversing to get anywhere anyways. A series of bright red springs and slippery wall mounted levers allow Kale to leap and puff his way up to the top of a twisted mechanical parody of a typical suburban house, stretching above the yellow-black painted, spike-studded, robot-patrolled streets to survey them.
Kale Hearthward	NEW PROBLEM: KALE HEARTHWARD THREAT VALUE: SPENDING BAR CURRENT STATUS: inbound Kale spent all of yesterday eating ice cream and binging on stupid tv shows. That was yesterday, though. Today's feel-better indulgence is validharm against Petra. And Petra's practically been begging someone to come fight her so it's like... doubly valid, right? "Right. Getting a bit too much right here - shouldn't risk the East Wind any further. I'll go alone." "Shouldn't really be risking it like this at all, on a personal thing," grouses his pilot. "Shush. Don't make me put you on... double probation, or whatever," says Kale as he steps out of the craft. Instead of landing, Kale skydives and slows his fall at the last segment via jet-boots and magic, and then from there continuing on foot. "... She's... not falling far from the egg tree, is she," he comments to himself as he takes in the scenery. He'd only really ever seen the capital from the air and later occasionally from photos and videos (once the Empire had gotten some basic internet networking worked out) so seeing up close for the first time like this is... striking. It's like an entirely different city. ... Kale, despite going through An Arc right now, still can't say he really cares about Quicknest Capital being essentially gone. Here we go, on foot! As it turns out a lot of already less-than-lethal platforming can be made less-than-lethaller by having ~~helicopter tails~~ jet boots. Even so Kale does his best to appreciate all of it, and land on most of the platforms and do at least one instance of each stage gimmick? Some of this is for him, but some of this is for Petra herself, after all, and it wouldn't do to be an entirely ungracious guest. (Being a moderately ungracious guest is fine though.) And then finally up to the top of the vantage point, which Kale will be mentioning on the report card being sent to Eggman ("Decent view, good previewing of upcoming hazards, excellent thematic framing of the castle proper, spring placement Needs Improvement"). And that's probably far enough. He grabs one of the flying ratbots, and shakes it till he's sure it's paying attention to him. "Ahem." "Do re mi, sibilants..." "Petra Soroka!" He glares into the monitor. "Your reign of terror ends here!" "Already I have infiltrated deep into the heart of your territory, and I'm within sight of your headquarters! Soon, I shall put your pitiful robotic forces to the sword, set your flag ablaze and replace it with my own, free all the poor innocent souls you're so vilely holding here, and..." ... What was the other thing? Quick, improvise. "... Tell Lilian Rook how bad you are at being a supervillain!" Maybe that wasn't the right move? Well, can't unring that bell. And with that, Kale releases the ratbot and sets off, going faster and a lot less stealthily now - the mission is on, whether Petra's ready or not!
Petra Soroka	The monitor attached to the belly of the ratbot grabbed by Kale flickers to life to reveal Quicknest's monstrous conqueror, the woman responsible for paving over a thriving nation with cold steel and robot slaves. She is lying stomach down on a carpeted floor, legs kicking in the air, wearing an oversized t-shirt as pajamas while chattering to the owner of the dorm room, who's sitting just out of sight on the side of the bed. "So, okay, it's funny because like six months before that, she wrote up this whole entire melodramatic ass callout post about him, but since it got, like, no traction at all, she-- huh? What's got you freaking out, Twopence? What--?!" Petra scrambles to her feet in a flash, whipping out a wavering sword made of quicksilver and looking around in horror, hair mussed up and fully pajama-moding. "Kale Hearthward I swear to god--!" Then she finally turns her gaze down to the (phonescreen sized) monitor that Twopence has been trying to show her, and comprehends with a coming-down-from-panic frown. This being the second time that she unexpectedly started hearing Kale's voice while lazily lounging with Cinder, a large part of her repulsion was from the idea that she might start building some kind of mental association against her will. "Oh, what the fuck? You're doing this now? Fucking give me some notice first, asshole." Petra shuts off the connection unceremoniously in the middle of Kale's monologue. Obviously she knows he's under no obligation to give her a warning, but she needs a few minutes to get dressed. Conveniently, the warpgate at LobCorp connects straight to Quicknest, so it's only a few minutes before Petra's opening the connection up again, lounging in bomber and jeans on a rooftop in the capital city, with the mechanized cityscape in the background. (It's obviously a location she previously scouted out). "Okay, okay. Continue your fucking monologue, hero." She also washed her face. Isn't that nice. "Soon, I shall put your pitiful robotic forces to the sword, set your flag ablaze and replace it with my own," "Hold on, your flag? What's your game here? I thought you just had a whole arc about your time as a little weapon of the Empire. Still going through it?" Now that she's all set up, the ratbot keeps pursuing Kale at a steady pace so that Petra can chat while he hops and runs around. She's got the Eggman-emblazoned gunblade stuck through the shingles beside her, rubbing a finger along the hilt idly in a very 'I'm waiting for you to show you're worth me standing up' kind of way. Also, almost certainly, practiced. "... Tell Lilian Rook how bad you are at being a supervillain!" "Huh?!" That riles her up, predictably. She sits up straight and wraps her hand around the grip of her gunblade, glaring at the camera like she's trying to shoot Kale with her mind. "I'm not! I'm literally not, even! I'm a fucking great supervillain! I'll literally invite her here to show her, you don't know shit about what I've got planned!"
Petra Soroka	Jet boots work for some time to carve his way through armed ratbots and jump on floating platforms and around spike walls. The ratbots attempt to slam into him with buzzing saws stuck to their bases, or hook onto platforms and gravitationally yank them away so he falls into pits, or simply whirl around and pepper him with gunfire. At some point, after bouncing along what's barely recognizable as a residential street, the open pathway ends with a yawning metal opening into what was formerly a strip mall. In front of the opening is a pair of robotomized citizens, one armed with dual saws, and one with an arm replaced with a thick beam cannon. They open fire on him, and they can be freed if he batters them enough-- though what he does with the people inside after isn't clear.
Kale Hearthward	"If I gave you an advanced notice, you'd complain that I wasn't taking you seriously," says Kale, crossing his arms and glaring at the screen. "But yeah, take your time." He waits patiently. > "I thought you just had a whole arc about your time as a little weapon of the Empire. Still going through it?" "What, no, my flag. Like-" He reaches back to grab his flag, and forgets that he forgot it on the ship. "I do have a flag, though!" he says. "One of my own. I'm going to get it couriered over and plant it right on top of your castle, and then take pictures to send to Lilian." And with that, onward to the next set of obstacles! KALE'S PLAN FOR RESCUING ROBOTOMIZED PEOPLE: Oh right, he doesn't have a plan. There's not really much he can do. He can pull an Aidan and grab one or two (out of however many hundreds/thousands/etc are here) but nothing more than that, not without calling in the East Wind and having it brave the anti-air here. "Sorry," he says, quietly, opting to evade and then get past them instead of fighting them. This involves falling back a bit to get them out of position, and then going to blow past them at top speed before they can fire on him too much. Onward into... the yawning opening of what used to be a strip mall? Kale's just being led where the architecture seems to be leading him, really. He assumes he's heading Petra-ward and hasn't stopped to take stock yet.
Petra Soroka	"Yes, I know you mean your flag! I'm just kind of surprised that you're not, like... putting Quicknest's up again?" Petra's done sitting down, apparently. In antsy anticipation of Kale arriving, she's stood up to start pacing around on the roof, circling around her embedded gunblade while loosely wrapping her hand around the hilt. "Like, that's sort of... still the tinpot conqueror thing, isn't it? Aren't you giving that up, at this point? Or is it just that you really really want Lilian to recognize you being the one to do it, so you'll just pose with the flag then take it down after?" The minions aren't fast at all. Kiting them is fairly easy, though a laser shot near him melts a hole in a building by his head, and the one with whirring sawblades attempts to tackle him as he darts by. Petra laces her fingers together and leans her chin on the hilt, squinting at the camera. "Ooh, that's rough. That's what I'd expect Proudpick to do too. It really is just about me, huh?" Inside, whatever building or warehouse or store this used to be, the interior is repurposed into an infuriating semi-maze. The ceiling has protruding stalactites of metal, some of which drop down when he gets close-- some more which are detatched, and then piloted by ratbots to veer at him like rockets. Walls extend up to the ceiling in places, limiting the speedrun skips that Kale has available to him, and forcing him to run through the downwards crusher traps and wall crusher traps and surprise upwards crusher traps lining the path. Idly, it's possible to consider Petra's own psychology as she was designing the course: she's no professional supervillain, not with the decades of experience Doctor Eggman has. She doesn't have a binder full of ideas, clever things she wants to try, subversions to measure up to; so when running through a series of iterations on 'make a big piston to crush the person running through', Kale has to imagine that she simply got the idea midway through designing this section, and then got excited for it and placed a bunch down before moving on to another whim. There's also a huge platform that splits down the middle to slowly open up, threatening to drop Kale into a pit of bubbling acid, while on the far end of the platform a laser turret sprays beams at him to slow his progress. "How're you doing with all that, by the way? I, uh...." Petra, reinvigorated by seeing someone actually engaging with her little setup, is filled with the urge to Talk, and her default to talk about isn't particularly villainous at all. "'Home whether you've lived there in years or not, and then it's suddenly not home anymore'. Yeah. Got a bit of my own of that, um, recently, so I won't make fun of you for that." Petra snorts, the ugly sound cutting through her surprising gentleness. "I'll make fun of you for that shitty ass wall-kick though. Jesus. You looked like how those sloths accidentally grab onto their own arms thinking they're branches, and fall down to the ground and die."
Kale Hearthward	"Well - I don't exactly have a way to get them out, unless you want to give me clearance for my ship," calls Kale up at the direction of Petra's voice. Then she brings up his flag. "What?" Kale pauses for a moment, which actually works to his advantage as he avoids a leading shot that might have otherwise hit him. "Quicknest's flag? Oh, that's... actually a better idea, yeah? I probably shouldn't actually plant my flag." "Okay! I'm going to burn your flag and plant Quicknest's on your castle! I mean the castle, which isn't yours. Because that's who this place actually belongs to. And I don't care about Lilian recognizing me," he lies. Kale can bump his platforming level up when needed by using more of his available tools - his wind magic can create cushions to bounce off of, ramps to adjust his angle, and funnels to help course-correct himself as he dashes around. It's an approach that requires forethought and patience to use to its fullest potential, which is unfortunate because it's being wielded by Kale Hearthward. Thus, he's pulling off fancy moves to escape from Petra's traps, but they're all last-second and by the seat of his pants. "I almost got crushed!" "Whoa - acid!" "Ack - lasers!" Fun fact: wind magic can't do much against light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation. "Uh-" Kale finds a safe spot, or at least a spot he believes is safe. "It's..." "... I don't know. I believed in the Empire for so long, and I still believe they're a net force for improving the world, but they just..." "... It feels like the Empire I knew then isn't the same as the Empire I know now." "... Or maybe I'm finally seeing it for real after so long out of it. I don't know. I miss it." "- Hey! My wall kicks are fine! You've just got terrible wall placement!" Kale gets back into motion, putting a bit more effort behind it, as he's more certain he's on the right track for A. making Petra feel better and B. kicking her butt.
Petra Soroka	"That's not my job to figure out! What the fuck!" The ratbot buzzes angrily around Kale's head, monitor displaying Petra's irritated posture. Its wheels whirr pointlessly in the air, adding a little flair of mechanical noise to layer beneath her complaining. "Yeah, great, here you go. I made this whole ass obstacle complex, I converted this entire city, I've been working on projects, but sure! Let me just add an extra safe tunnel for you to funnel my own really useful robots into, so you don't have to figure out your own way of saving them! I feel like I should kill one of-- er, nevermind, I said I wouldn't be doing that anymore." 'Kill one of the robots' would be the end of that sentence. Petra blinks and shakes her head to clear the distraction away. Did she accidentally think of Kale as Aidan for a second? "Of course you care about Lilian recognizing you. Everyone does. Just a few days ago, Proudpick was standing in the middle of my capital and shouting at me about how jealous he was of Lilian, for some reason. I wasn't even the one who said it first. Everyone's desperate for a little bit of her attention, so the least you could do is admit it." Petra waves her hand dismissively, tone lightening mockingly. "Well, she already praised you a bit for being the only one willing to come out and do this, so go ahead and throw away that little scrap of goodwill by being too obnoxiously proud to admit you look up to her. I won't mind. I already got over that little character arc ages ago, so it's no problem to me if you disappoint Lilian both by losing here and by being a brat." There's still more strip mall-warehouse-arbitrary large open building full of deadly machines left to go, but Petra yanks her gunblade out of the roof and swings it up over her shoulder. Morphmetal curls around her hip and back, snaking up her arm to flow into the chamber of the gunblade. She hops off the roof, and vanishes for a second while the ratbot recording her scrambles through the winding metal streets to catch up. Meanwhile, Kale continues to get blasted at with lasers. Bouncing off a series of springs (or just flying, if he's boring) to get through an elevated door up high on a wall, Kale is greeted by a wide open room with the exit into Quicknest proper on the other side, streaming daylight. Before he can rush through, steel doors slide shut across it, and then every light in the facility shuts off, leaving Kale in total darkness. ... Which he can see in. So could Aidan, if he ever came through this way. It takes a short time to remember that Petra can't, and she'd babbled once about making the obstacle courses for her own fun sometime in the radio. The 'obstacle' in this case remains unclear until dim pinpricks of light flicker into existence, embedded in the walls. Flashing out through the darkness, crisscrossing around the room, is a barrage of lasers that forces Kale to constantly stay aware of his peripheral vision on every side to dodge, sudden searingly bright light ruining his night vision for moments at a time. Simultaneously, a heavy thud rings out, as a robotomized Quicknester integrated with a larger, heaver robot drops into the room. Somewhere between tanklike and buffalolike, but cartoonishly cutesy in shape, the bot sits in the center-top of a car sized mobile mech, each side bristling with a rotating armory of small to medium fire. Bullets, lasers, metal darts or launched bricks or oddly even boomerangs are spewed in Kale's direction, while the mech's bulk threatens to rush at him in the dark. "... How can it not be the same one? It's not like you were reading the minds of people that just only got fucked up by the Empire now, after you were gone. It's the same one. It's you."
Petra Soroka	The monitorbot following Kale to show Petra's own progress wandering through the city provides a little oasis of light around him, conveniently. A tinge of irony enters Petra's voice as she half-smiles, not facing directly towards the camera, and still somehow readable as a little sad all the same. "Psychic powers are dangerous, Hearthward. Should've known that before getting into them. Even if it was fine, mostly, you never could've gone 'home' after learning what they're like."
Kale Hearthward	"Actually, if you could make that tunnel, it'd be great," says Kale, who's started taking sarcasm as genuine as a defensive mechanism. "Fine, whatever, I care about her! And I'm not going to lose here!" More lasers! More springs! And then - darkness. "Um-" Kale starts to say. Truthfully, he doesn't even need his good vision here. He can feel the person in the robot. He's trying not to listen to them too closely, for obvious reasons, but he can tell where they are - especially in the darkness, where one tends to check their non-visual senses with a bit more emphasis. And - there's a rush of attacks heading his way, all at once, along with the robot itself. Kale focuses on dodging, using his defensive arsenal, and only somewhat succeeds in not getting winged by the bullets and bludgeoned by the boomerangs. It's in motion, while frantically dodging and casting in equal measure, that Kale's thoughts crystalize. He doesn't really have a plan here. Not for getting people out. He was just hoping he could take Petra out all at once? Which isn't really possible between her preparation and what Eggman left for her to use. So - getting the few people he can carry out? Maybe? That'd be disappointingly ineffective, though - a few people per attack would be... hundreds of trips here to get everyone. No, grabbing a few people and bolting isn't the answer. He needs to do something bigger. > "... How can it not be the same one? It's not like you were reading the minds of people that just only got fucked up by the Empire now, after you were gone. It's the same one. It's you." The words strike at Kale harder than the robot. > "Psychic powers are dangerous, Hearthward. Should've known that before getting into them. Even if it was fine, mostly, you never could've gone 'home' after learning what they're like." "..." Kale deflates. "Oh." There's more emphasis behind that 'oh' than a dozen casual swears. There really is no going back from paying that price, is there. He grits his beak. Focus. This sucks right now - but it's going to be worse if he's paying this price and losing. Kale draws his sword and activates it, forming a giant drill and swinging it at the robot, trying to grind away its weapons one by one and then to disable and pop it open if he can. He'll figure out saving the person inside - somehow. He's committed now, anyway. "Are - is this working out for you? By the way? This whole Egg Daughter thing?"
Petra Soroka	"Oh." "Yeah. Fucking 'oh'." Petra turns a corner on the street, hesitates in confusion, then has to backtrack to a different path. She takes a breath in like she's about to rub in how emphatically against Kale accepting more of Persephone's offer she was, or more broadly, her views on reading minds in general, call Kale a privileged little power-hungry dumbass or something along those lines... and then lets it out. "Normally I'd never bother to talk about this kind of thing with you." There's a soft emphasis on that 'you', but she doesn't radiate as much disdain as she would usually. "But, you know, I tried going back to my parents' place, my hometown, after getting psychic powers too. After living away from it for years. Thinking it was probably better than the alternatives, despite the flaws. Normal fucking Earth." "... I almost went insane. Not even just because of the mind reading, I..." Petra's voice fades away, weighed into silence with some sort of heavy thought or lore that she doesn't explain. "Didn't have that for very long. But even just... remembering. Touching hearts. Saying no, even just a little bit, to the kinds of things that everyone else is so completely unable to question that they don't even notice they're there. It means you're... different, now. Even if you just got it as a handout, and don't really understand it." "It means you can't belong there anymore. It means the things you see, the things you feel, the things you think, are just a little bit different enough that you'll never be quite right anymore, and you'll always feel it, and they'll always know too. Even if there aren't words for it. Especially if there aren't." "So that's not home for you, anymore. Space isn't, either, I mean..." Petra isn't looking at Kale, and he's also being clocked in the back of the head by a boomerang he failed to dodge in favor of not being stampeded by the mech, but she gestures like she can seee him perfectly fine. "Look at you. And there's no way the Paladins are 'home', not right now, with your history with them. I mean, you almost left; you're always singled out as the worst Elite for its reputation; you've done enough to piss people off there over the years that everyone's got at least a little bone to pick with you even if they can work with you fine." The monitoratbot displays Petra standing in a broken down factory, in front of a shut set of steel sliding doors. Petra hoists the gunblade onto her shoulder, looking up at the seam between the dozen foot high doors. "... So where?" Those are the last words that come through before a pulse of electromagnetic energy shorts out the monirots of both Petra's ratbot and the one following Kale, bot dipping in the air before reasserting its weightless flight.
Petra Soroka	Kale sees bright daylight pour in through the doors when they slide open a crack, and Petra slips through, not giving him enough of a window to go himself even if he was inclined to. One of the mechs legs smacks him to the side, wiping him out, and when he gets back to his feet, the lights are on, and the boss arena contains Egg Head Soroka, standing on top of her midsized mech, lasers no longer firing. "The... what thing? I'm not his daughter. I'm his fucking apprentice, dumbass." Morphmetal crawls out of the gunblade's chamber, rolling up the length of the bayonet, and stretching farther beyond it to turn the two-handed gunblade into a monstrously oversized sword, telekinetic assistance allowing her to swing it freely. She swings it around, biting a deep gouge into the metal floor to expose subderman concrete, and then-- shuts her eyes and lets out a triumphant 'hhahhhh' at that working. "It's working great, for your information, though. It makes me feel sane. It's good for me. I mean, fuck, can you imagine me trying to just be a hero? It'd be a fucking disaster." Standing atop the mech, Petra's oversized sword swings have nearly as much threat range as the munitions still spewing out of the armory on its side. Whenever she misses a swipe at Kale and hits the ground, a puddle of morphmetal remains at the impact, spiking out at Kale to further control his movement. "Oh, by the way. Beat me, and you can take this person freely. Think of the victory as a thank you gift for trying, but you, you know, have to earn it. Make it a foothold for you, or something."
Kale Hearthward	"... Yeah." Kale has to split his attention between fighting and talking, but that's fine, it's a pretty common state for elites to be in. "Yeah I - I can see that. I went out, the week I got these, I went to a coffee shop out in a podunk college town in the middle of nowhere, some place I don't even remember the name of, sat and just listened for a bit. And - it just about bankrupted me." "Hearing - feeling everyone's problems. I couldn't... deal with understanding things troubling other people on that level. I couldn't shut it out. Someone needing just a bit more to cover rent and not get kicked out. Someone who couldn't afford a plane ticket home for their cousin's funeral. And not just money - time, trying to help every good cause that was short handed or visit everyone who was living alone or-" "... I had to jury rig a way to stop hearing everyone's thoughts. Even that's not perfect. Things leak." > "... So where?" "... The Empire's not home anymore. My old home, in the provinces - I probably can't go back there anymore either, not without finding out what they actually think of me." "The Paladins..." "... Maybe." "I hope not. Do you know why I took Persephone's handout, Petra? Not for power. Not just for power, honestly, the power was a small part of it. But - you've met Kale Hearthward, right?" "Kale Hearthward sucks." "He called someone homeless just because it was in vogue to make fun of them. He pulled someone he likes into a stupid contest for his ego and ended up causing her a lot of trouble. He talked behind the back of one of his closest allies to someone who had hurt him. He decided he was going to be a shining champion to some people that needed help, and didn't think about their feelings or well being beyond the bare minimum. He needed training wheels to start being nice to anyone, and a bribe to even put those on. And he had a breakdown because people didn't like him enough and almost called it quits, burning the rest of his goodwill in the process." "I can't stay that person." "I think I'd honestly rather die than stay that person." "So compared to that..." Kale draws his other sword, holding one in each hand. "All of this, whatever I end up going through because of this, it's worth it. But I gotta go through it first." "So if you want to ask - where's home now..."
Kale Hearthward	"... Ask whoever comes out at the end of all of this." Kale activates all of his gear at once, and goes in, swinging while blasting air from his beak. It's a style he's used only once since he left his world - and that only once against Lilian. Using both swords and the boots and unshaped casting via dragonbreath - is going to blow through his reserves fast, which are already low from running Petra's gauntlet and fighting her miniboss. But for the time he can - everything works in concert. Petra's morphmetal can cut Kale's space, but he's doing the same in turn, one sword leaving a blade trail while the other's swinging in wide arcs as a drill. The wind he's blasting at her with makes her movement hard, while his boots let him take to the air and make tight maneuvers. Spending this much magic, all in one go, is going to suck later. But that's later. Right now... Kale needs this. He needs to burn his candle at both ends. "And - don't give me that 'Normally I'd never bother to talk this sort of thing with you' shit. It's not true." "We're friends, aren't we?"
Petra Soroka	A spike of morphmetal juts out of a puddle to stab at Kale and trip him up as he runs close, and Gobo's afterimages shred it into glittering droplets thrown wildly across the floor before it connects. A burst of his breath not only repels the metal bolts launched out of some technical-looking crossbow on a limb out of the mech's side, but catches the shape of the crossbow itself, tearing the entire appendage off. The mech lifts up a wide, flat foot to stomp down onto Kale, but Periactus catches the bottom, drilling a wide gap through it before it crushes him. "Shattering. That's what I called it, last year." From Kale's position right up close to the mech, Petra isn't visible, concealed overtop by the bulky shape of the quadrupedal machine. She's clearly audible, and probably just using its mass as a shield from Kale's barrage of magic. "Being willing to risk every part of 'yourself' in the hope of finding something that's actually tolerable to live as. Not just willing, needing to risk all of it. Burn everything away, crush it into sand, rip out the roots so whatever comes next isn't as tainted with the rot." Backing a step away from the mech, Kale's too slow to dodge the gleam of living quicksilver crashing in an arc overhead, but he can block it. The morphmetal-enhanced gunblade crashes into Periactus, and Petra grips the sword hilt in two hands, leaning further into the clash even though she can't possibly overcome Kale in brute strength that way. Her finger slips, and wraps around the trigger. "But you know, Kale. The only way that actually works, is, if, shattering, fucking, SUCKS!" The explosively propelled gunblade bayonet slams hard against Periactus, making Kale stumble, but worse: Periactus is still spinning, right up against the semifluid telekinetic metal. Shredded into droplets, droplets into airborne particulate, the sword loses half of its size in an instant, but all of that mass is suspended in the air in a razor sharp haze of miniscule flechettes, swirling with Petra's continued control over them. When Kale breathes in to fuel his magic, they all rush into his lungs like fiberglass given guidance by spite. In the white-out choking fugue that momentarily induces, Kale feels Petra's boot connect with the side of his head, followed by a morphmetal-engulfed fist to his chest to fully knock him to the ground, where Petra's standing beside him. "Friend? You just admitted you want to fucking annihilate everything about yourself. That you'd rather die than be this. That this," She punctuates with a slammed-down heel into his ribs-- a moment after he rolls away from it, she lifts up her boot, with a stiletto of morphmetal jutting out, punctured clean through the ground. It's like she's suddenly shifted to trying to kill him. "Is the worst thing you can imagine being." "I know how awful it is. To be called a friend like that. The fucking clawing, clinging, to something you already decided to wipe off the face of the fucking earth." Petra steps back from Kale and slices through the damaged leg of the mech, detatching it fully, and with a solid kick she sends the tree trunk-like slab of articulated metal crashing down on top of Kale to pin him down. Jumping up onto the mech as it teeters, she jams her gunblade into the slot around the robotomized core, morphmetal flatting to allow her to pry the bot out into her hands. "I'll be friends with the Kale that comes after, maybe. I'll do what I can now, to hope that that Kale is someone who I'd want to be friends with." Petra's tone slips a little, softening again. "... And I'm glad you're trying. Good luck, Kale."
Kale Hearthward	Kale, on the ground, lungs nearly shredded, mouths the word 'Shattering'. Petra has a very good point about not wanting to be Kale's friend right now. The mech crashes down on Kale, pinning him in place. It's nice that she's helping though. "Thank..." ... Oh, wait, she's going to be helping by making things worse for him. And that's the last thought that passes through Kale's head before the lights go out. ... Kale needed this, honestly. Some sort of... boundary, marking things before and after. Even if things aren't done getting worse.