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Xion	There would definitely be several wonderful and period-appropriate places to drop into the gentle haze of capitalism's porkbelly indulgence in the Tapestry, with a hundred kinds of Americas across a whole strait of them, each with their own enshittified concrete edifice lined on both sides with shops filled with tchotchkies and garbage, a thoroughfare of stairs and steps and linoleum and stamped and colored concrete and hot metal railings on unwashed playsets. The gang does not go there. The Quilt is built different. The SLEEPYWILLOWS MALL & ICE RINK is located across from a large gas station for long haul trucks, a warehouse store, a pawn shop, a storage unit lot, a US Post Office, and a whole lot of nothing else. Ten minutes from where residential starts, it's an oddity on the saddle of an interchange and the civil center of Sleepywillows (unincorporated county) is a town over. But, some people live near here. It's as near to here as anywhere, and surrounded by a forest is an old The World Of The Future (1980's) style metal dome with glass panes structure at the earlobe of an L-bend mall. Anchored on the other end by a Sear's store that had been converted into a laser tag arena by the Dave and Buster's next door, a comfortably asleep collection of clothing stores of the usual mall drek, overpriced watch stores to sell low quality gold and a few wedding rings, the only card store in a hundred and fifty miles that's any good, and... The Food Court. Since Hamada Haru had put down cash at Xion's suggestion to buy the ice rink out for the afternoon, a handful of children and adults are still being escorted off the ice for the 'Hamada Party' at the half-hour. He's rented it out for the rest of the afternoon -- which gives everyone a chance to get whatever they want at the food court in an upstairs mezzanine horseshoe that feeds down to the ice rink area beneath. The rink and mezzanine food court look out into the dark forest beyond, through triangles of cleaned-maybe-months-maybe-years-ago glass that give it a smudged and earthen-evening character even in the middle of the day. Xion, dressed in a grey short sleeved t-shirt with a three-color bow over an orange circle and a wavescape vaguely implying a sunset, has pushed not one, not two, but *three* whole food court tables together near a squggly bend of the bench seating, and is at loudly pulling chairs into place. She has already ordered: 2 Sbarro Pizzas - the big slicey ones! Pepperoni and Cheese. 4 Hot Dog On A Stick Lemonades -- Blue, Green, Red, and of course, Yellow! A Large Beef Chow Mein A Whole Lot Of Potstickers Satisfied with her mess of food, the noirette pushes out invites to nearabout everyone that looks interesting on broadband at the time. Are you invited? Probably!
Hamada Haru	Hamada Haru is here. It's unclear exactly when he showed up because he just walks through walls to get places, but he's milling around the skating rink. More specifically, he's waving his transteam gun around, deconstructing and reconstructing all of the rental skates into brand new ones because rental skates and rental bowling shoes are truly cursed objects, and he simply cannot stand the idea of putting them on without uncursing them. The cycle begins anew today, however. The likelihood that he'll do a refresh is... pretty decent, eventually, but it won't happen for a few weeks anyway. His clothes today are his usual fur-trim leather jacket, a white t-shirt with a moogle depicted in sketchy outlines on the front of it, and plain blue jeans. His shoes today are black-and-teal sneakers. Having temporarily de-cursed the skating rink shoes, Haru meanders over to where Xion is sitting, seats himself heavily next to her, and slumps forward to rest his arms on the table and then his head against his arms. "Tired," he says. It's not a physical tired, though. There's definitely no evidence of that.
Angela	Like Flying. Love wonders if it'll still feel like that, now. Justice promised to sned her a text if a Temptation attacked--she is increasingly uneasy about Tacky, not so much because Tacky keeps insulting her but because she's seen how the cherubs treated Meika and she really just doesn't want to think about that right now. She is still wearing that red hairtie around her wrist and periodically runs her fingers across it. She already has put on a suitable jacket to keep warm with that covers her shirt and a pair of shorts which might seem incongruous but it makes her feel more like she's soaring if she can feel the chill on her legs. She wants to feel cold right now. She doesn't have her own skates and she seems unaccustomed to The United States and is periodically checking her radio to make sure she's arriving at the right place. She actually probably showed up a little late because of getting turned around and lost. With Chevalier Vermilion, she thinks, she could close her eyes and feel safe, raising her arms up and turning off the world around her so she could barely feel like her feet were touching the ice. When Chevalier Love does make it in, it occurs to her she doesn't actually know what Xion looks like. She watches as children and adult leave the rink and she thinks 'oh, are they not able to skate because of me?' since her mood is just kind of in that space right now. She is however the sort of person who tries to mask this even if she's not very good at it.Rather than try to look for Xion specifically, she looks for someone who isn't leaving and approaches Xion who seems to be someone who is settling in. "Are you...Xion?" She asks. The food looks delicious. Just be normal, she tells herself. Sitting in her jacket pockets is an ipod-like music listening device with earbuds attached but she isn't making any move towards them--she just was listening to music while making her way over. ''Tired.'' Love has no money to rent skates herself and she's not supposed to steal, she remembers, but she recognizes Haru's voice--it's real distinctive to her. "Hi Haru." Her eyes look swollen.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine's thirty feet from Xion's table setup, already eyeing the pizzas, when she first catches on to the Nobody's outfit. Thinking better than to tempt fate and risk a tiger incident, Madeleine turns on her heel to locate food of her own. Even slipping nearby just long enough to grab a slice might be too close for comfort.     The huntress returns a few minutes later with a pretzel dog and some cinnamon pretzel bites (with icing dip!) from the Auntie Anne's across the way. She sits near the far end of the tables away from Xion, but does offer a little wave and smile in the noirette's direction. It's a dessert-first sort of day, so Madeleine digs in to her pretzel bites with gusto, eagerly applying icing between every bite. About a third of the way through the heap of sugared dough, she unwraps the pretzel dog and takes a tentative bite.     Her face twists in disgust, but she chokes it down. "This is awful," she says to anyone who's listening. Then she takes another bite. "But it's awful like a car crash in slow motion. I can't pull myself away." Over the next few minutes she repeatedly sets down the pretzel dog and pushes it a short distance away from her, only to find her eyes returning to it, then her hands, and before she knows it she's taken another bite.     "It looks a lot better than it tastes," she says, holding the food crime up to the light for inspection. "But it's not a lingering badness. I set it down for a minute and I'm starting to wonder if it really was that bad, if the next bite will prove me wrong. But it doesn't. Really, there is no better pretzel dog experience to be had, if you ask me." She glances across the table at Love. "Want a bite? You look like you could use something to take your mind off things."
Dysnomia	How did Dysnomia hear about this excursion? Who knows. But, now she's here, and nobody's beating her away with a stick, so.     Her suit, by and large, has retracted entirely into her collar, and to cover up she's draped herself in a black hoodie, her hands tucked into its pocket, with leggings and a pair of shorts, leaving nothing but her face--and sometimes, her hands--visible. It bled some of the grandeur from her radiant hair and eyes.     She looks out of place and awkward, her shoulders tense, visibly unsure of what to make of it. And indeed, it seems...any of this at all. Her eyes, scanning over the court, eventually finding what she was looking for.     "Love." Dysnomia's voice came from behind. She looked more solid than she had in a long time-felt it, too. Almost like it was, before the battle with the Queen. It was good. But, it filled Dysnomia with a melancholy that was hard to shake. "Good to see you." But she managed a subdued smile anyway, clapping Love on the shoulder, before slipping into a chair herself.     'How are you?' Was a useless question. She knew. If not, precisely, why. "Making sure you're eating can be good." She said, mildly, taking a couple silvery spheres out and placing them by her own plate--a little snack Mia had brought, to make whatever food was in this mall more palatable to her. She keeps them out of reach of anyone but herself--for their own good, really. "Gives you the energy to be properly sad." She swallows down one of the silver spheres--whole--before grabbing a slice of the pizza, skeptically studying the way the grease glistened.
Xion	Xion and Haru have worked together fairly closely in odd gigs and jobs since their team up during Twin Peaks, and so the noirette's comfort with a man who would deconstruct boots with a plastic-looking and very talkative gun. Even oddities could become normalcies with repetition! Arranging the food while Haru arranges the De-Cursing of the Deeply Cursed Objects, Xion falls to messing with her star-charm chained phone and absentmindedly pulling one of the extra-wide slices of bubbly-golden greasy Sbarro Pepperoni slices into a New York fingered-V to raise to her mouth. "You've been decursing every pair of skates for twenty minutes now, because you couldn't leave *some* alone. Try a lemonade! It'll cool you down. The blue one's the best, but green's fine." Xion advises Haru as he plops down next to her, knowing sugar for the cure-all drug that it truly was. 'Are you... Xion?' Nodding and looking up, Xion looks up at the puffy-eyed Chevalier and instantly is whelmed by concern. "Oh, yes! I'm Xion, please, sit down, have what you like, I was ordering for everyone! So we don't have to wait to order and eat and rink and... Ah..." To slow her mouth down, Xion leans over to take another bite of her thin-and-wide slice, crunch-chewing as she catches Madeleine come -- and look at her, and then immediately go get her own order. Ah! Agh! Alack! Slightly distracted, Xion moves to pocket her phone, happy that Love's friends are already arriving, even if they're spooky. Spooky's fine! "Eating's important, yeah. Even if you're feeling awful and like nothing's working, taking a break and getting something to eat always helps me. Even if it is... Well," rA knowing-melancholic sigh escapes Xion. "The energy to properly feel it out, at least." When Madeleine is returning, she finds that Xion has 'changed' her shirt! Well, it's the same shirt ... it's just on backwards now. Everyone else gets to see Xion's shirt flicker through being a black t-shirt for a moment before the original snaps back on, like a glitch or render spasm, the 'wrong' way. But all those colors are facing inward now!
Hamada Haru	Haru straightens back up and waves in greeting to Love. He draws his transteam gun and points at the table, a hiss and a burst of steam producing a midsized shareable tray of takoyaki with some of the customary condiments on the side. Seems like he's the kind of guy who doesn't like to see things smothered in whatever you might want to put on them. He re-holsters the weapon/henshin device. "Love. I'm not going to gas you up about things not being so bad," he says. "Things happen, and the world moves on, and it doesn't feel like it should. It feels like there should be a... pause. A moment to process. Or to find a solution. But there is no moment to pause, and it's frustrating. You wonder what's wrong with people, just moving along, like the world hasn't changed. Eventually, they'll feel the same thing, for somebody different, or over something different." "You can't do that if you're a Kamen Rider-- or a magical girl. The pause can't happen. So you carry on, and you leak. Kamen Riders and Magical Girls leaking is messy, and sometimes dangerous," he reaches over and grabs a slice of Sbarro's, taking a bite as much to give himself time to think as because he's hungry. A few chews and a swallow later, he says, "So you have to let the pause happen. To be a good Kamen Rider, or magical girl, you have to spend a moment being imperfect and helpless and aware of that. And that's not okay, but it's better than taking it to the place that it goes if you don't-- and it has to be okay to not be okay. Especially with the way people treat these things." With his slice of pizza, he gestures around towards the still-leaving crowd. "Those people got taught not to cry, no matter what. They got taught that you should be gentle until a moment of righteous anger strikes you, and you're justified, really, in bringing out all the hurt that you wanted to do before but didn't have the justification for. But that's wrong for them, and it's especially wrong for us." "They," he says, "can only know that it's wrong with good examples." "So cry, and don't hide it. Be gentle. Don't strike in fury. And go skate, I spent the last twenty minutes de-cursing all of the skates," he concludes. This is when Hamada Haru takes Xion's advice, snags one of the lemons, and sips on it for... too long. He was probably a little sugar-deprived, actually.
Petra Soroka	Petra is a creature of the empty sides of highways and half-abandoned strip malls. They're like home to her, in mostly a bad way, but slightly a good way, and most importantly in a currently-has-pizza-and-friends way, so when her idle radio blips with the invitation that Xion-- in a currently-having-Xion-specifically way too! Though that category of 'home' is different from the other-- she packs her tools back into her Silver bottle and cleans up her workstation to head out and join her. She's never actually been *ice* skating, but she tried skateboarding once years and years ago and did decently at it, so how hard could it be?     The fact that an ice rink is, probably, quite cold doesn't occur to her until later, when she's already left Quicknest for Sleepywillows. For what may be the first time ever, Petra is absent her bomber jacket in a situation where it would be very appropriate to have it, rolling up to the food court in just a tank top (reading 'Cigarettes Are Cool And Good For You, and then beneath a cartoonish anthropomorphized cigarette it continues, 'They Make You Friends!') and jeans, and not even the right jeans for ice skating either. Little smudges of machine oil suggest that she probably just washed her hands and face and changed clothes, rather than going through the entire ordeal of cleansing herself back to the modern Petra standard, and this casual comfort becomes immediately embarrassing when she sees how many people are actually here.     She slides into the chair besides Xion and across from Haru, accompanied by her own Sbarro calzone. She has no comment on the quality of it; Kale should be ashamed at losing his Breakfast Boy title to this judge. "Are you...Xion?"     "Oh, hey Love!" Petra had the radio on for background chatter while she worked, but hadn't exactly been listening closely enough to realize that this entire gathering was for the purpose of having Love get some time out. After waving to her, though, she puts together the fact that this is an implicitly Meika-related event, both for the locale and the attendees, so her mood dims a bit. She presses her lips together and looks at Love thoughtfully. "Um... you want anything? I did promise you lunch before." "Tired,"     Petra hasn't seen Haru out of armor practically ever-- not literally never, but rarely-- so to see such a dramatic display of exhaustion from him is kind of unexpected. "Er... not because of the whole thing with Quicknest, right, hopefully?" It's slightly awkward for a moment to consider Petra's status as a supervillain right now, and that's the last time she saw and talked to Haru. "Just, er-- not-Kamen Rider stuff?"     There's other people here too but Petra takes an extra pose to notice them.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	It's been a while since Ritsuka, Mash, and Jeanne have had any kind of dedicated break to just hang out with people. They weren't even planning on taking one today, either, but a sudden text from Xion is enough to get the whole van turned around and sent that way, extra toll payment and risky highway u-turns be damned. When they actually show up, Ritsuka and Mash seem more interested in pestering Jeanne about something while she's busy willing herself into not throwing either of them off her. The three are dressed in wildly varying clothes, too, with Ritsuka dressed for the summer (orange floral-print shirt with white shorts and open-toe sandals), Mash for the winter (purple bubble jacket and thick snow-plodding boots), and Jeanne for the spring (dark blue jacket over a white sweater and jeans). "Come ooon. What's really going on?" "Do you even know how to ice skate, Miss Jeanne?" "Nothing's going on. And of course I don't know! It's a training opportunity, that's all." Although neither of them look particularly convinced that there's nothing going on, they know better than to push more than that. Like Haru, Ritsuka and Mash end up wandering over to where Xion and Haru are sitting, greeting them with a wave and a bow respectively before setting out their own offerings: mini shrimp rolls, fried and lukewarm straight from the same place with the chow mein. Jeanne, meanwhile, keeps her expression fairly subdued as she's just looking all over the place aimlesly, half-nodding at Love and Dysnomia in recognition from their past encounters and then raising her eyebrow at Madeleine tasting the food crime stick. "Good place to rest. What's this about decursing?" "Hello! Thank you for... Inviting us all today? Should we be purifying something, then?" "Was it an invitation? Cool! Maybe that's why she was so insistent." "I didn't insist on anything! Tch... Remind me never to suggest anything to help either of you again." Jeanne's the first of those three to take a seat, snagging a slice of the too-wide pizza and flumping in close to, but behind Xion. She struggles with the slice a bit, too, trying to keep it from flopping too much one way or the other before just folding it over and accidentally pouring a few too many topping into the first bite. "Mrph... Hn. Not bad. Been waiting long?" She's not looking at anyone as she says that, but she's totally projecting her voice vaguely more in Xion's direction.
Angela	Love hears Dysnomia's voice and she puts on a better attempt of a convincing smile at her. She remembers Dysnomia. It has been a dysnominute, admittedly, but she remembers! She feels guilty that the clasp on her shoulder feels nice. She doesn't want to feel nice right now. She should be unhappy at least until the wristband falls off right? She couldn't save her. She didn't even know what it'd take to help. The more she tried the further away she felt from being a helping person. She was able to be a friend and she fought Temptations and she will remember and maybe that's enough, she thought. Surely someone in the multiverse had a solution. Not that she's seen. The thought of eating something makes her feel a little off. "Oh, I'm okay." She says. "I dunno if I want to take my mind off things right now. Right now I want to remember." A pause. "Thanks, though. I'll, um, try to eat." She takes a potsticker and nibbles on it a little. She looks out towards the entrance for a moment and stares expectantly but when Sarracenia doesn't enter, she seems...disappointed. "I, aha, half expected Sarracenia to come and be... I don't know. I was kind of hoping she'd come so I could just... stop being..." She rubs at her eyes. "I'm sorry, Xion, you're not wrong." She logically understands everything but she is a creature of emotion in the end. Dysnomia saying that food gives one the energy to be properly sad helps her finish off the potsticker. "Justice says the same thing, thanks Mia." She quirks her head fof a moment, clearly noticing the weird glitch but doesn't comment on it in the way you might not comment on mismatched socks. Sometimes a girl is in the mood for glitchy fashion. "Petra? Oh, um, I am not super hungry but I'm trying to eat to be properly sad." Love manages. They knew, and they know, she realizes. What does that mean? Did she not pray hard enough? She doesn't know if she can pray harder. She nods to Jeanne uncomprehendingly. There is no moment to process. No moment to find a solution. Soon there will be another Temptation fight. Then another. Then another. She knows this intimitely because that's why she chose to go to Kagoshima. She didn't expect to find love she was just stupidly living out her beautiful stupid fiction. "I don't hide my emotions." Love says. "I just can't cry anymore. I've been crying and crying and snakes don't usually cry, I'm just a person now so the tears aren't reptilian." She turns her body to wholly look at Haru dead on. "Do you know...what my favorite magical girl story is? the stories are so old, as old as fiction itself, there has always been a firm line connecting Magical Girls to the fairytales of old. I'm not gonna laser anyone. I said I wasn't." She looks towards the exit once more but she isn't saved by the princess. "My favorite magical girl story is also a fairytale. Do you want to know what happens?" She asks.
Hamada Haru	Haru looks towards Petra, eyebrows lifting faintly. "You're not really that exhausting. Lecturing the other guy was a one out of ten on the effort meter. I'd prefer it if you'd inflict a suitably ironic punishment and extricate the people trapped in the middle, though," he says, dully. There's nothing suggesting a lie in his expression or his thoughts here. He taps two fingers on the table lightly. "Some of it concerns things of interest to you, which you have not had a negative impact on, but I'm not discussing that in the open here." His gaze flicks to Ritsuka. "Rental shoes. Nasty. Unmade and remade them. They're clean now. It took a while." He glances at Xion, observing the glitchy shirt phenomena. Contemplating it for a moment, he comments, "Go ahead, if you want." Evidently he thinks he's put together what just happened and is giving explicit permission for it to happen again in his direction. It makes him think of Twin Peaks for a moment, and that makes him feel a little more tired and a little more energetic at the same time. "I want to hear what you want to speak. If that's your story, go ahead," he replies to Love.
Xion	There's enough food tabled from the collection of mid grade 'quantity, calorie, salt fat and oil' in the three primary food groups - pizza, takeout, and sugar - have all been located and placed. There's Baskin Robbins and Burger King, but who buys ice cream treats first when lunch is on the menu? Also, of course, the milkshake machine is broken. Not for Taylor corp reasons, but for normal milkshake machine reasons. You don't buy Saddle-Urbia milkshakes from the food court. That way lies madness. (The madness is food poisoning.) Pushing and re-arranging chairs with her knees and feet to make room besides around and behind her for folks, Xion works on a broad-cheeked grin under her bright blues and dark bangs. There's a lot of folks here! And the spread is for someone in particular, despite the squadding up. There was a particular need. Love's canting gaze towards the exit doors gives Xion a ready answer to Ritsuko and Mash's concerns. "Well, we can all use days for purifying ourselves, right? Re-setting, cleansing out, the kind of healing pizza and sugar and potstickers and food court trays can provide. It's not the *only* place it can happen, but..." Xion looks to Petra, then Jeanne. "Can either of you skate? Is everyone here a first-timer? Or do we have anyone who can teach basic skating? I'm *okay* but it's not like a grind rail, I can't just... let my shoes do the work." Haru's question to her, wordless, about her glitchy shirt, gets an apologetic look canted from the noirette towards Madeleine. "She's allergic to colorful things, and I had a second to fix it. You're fine! Black and white's safe." She advises underbreath. Back to Jeanne, Xion grins. "Not long enough for the pizza to get cold. Hurry up and pick your favorite pieces before they get stolen though, Jeanne. We've got *activities* today! Training!"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Xion reversing her shirt, and explaining the reason to Haru, earns a sheepish smile from Madeleine, and a mouthed 'thank you'. It's still strange to her to see non-Excrucians who will recognize her curse, let alone accommodate for it.     Madeleine glances at Dysnomia with visible unease. She's slipped into Madeleine's mind before, during Tiphereth's meltdown - would she be able to tell, if she did so again, that Madeleine has encountered another 'dragon', and even done the bidding of a dragonslayer from the Nine Moons? Trying not to think about it, of course, makes it impossible to not think about.     The huntress catches notice of Jeanne eyeing the pretzel dog, and slides it across the table on its greasy wrapper. "Please, have some," she says. "Ere I succumb again to its siren call. I'd rather work on my pretzel bites anyway." And she does, dipping another doughy cinnamon-sugar lump into the icing and popping it into her mouth.     "As for skating," Madeleine says to Xion, "I'm no-" She nearly says Meika's name, but has picked up on enough cues to at least know that bringing her up may be unwise. "I'm no expert, but I can manage. Chased enough critters over frozen lakes that I can at least keep my balance on ice pretty well."
Petra Soroka	"I dunno if I want to take my mind off things right now. Right now I want to remember."     So that probably means no lighthearted ice skating and chatter at all, huh. Petra's mouth twitches into a little scowl she hopes Love doesn't see, and then she closes her eyes for a full minute before rejoining the conversation. Internally, she's trying to construct some model of empathy by conjuring up the feelings that 'Meika having her personality wiped' invokes in her, but it's a struggle. How does she envision something like that, and make it emotionally real-seeming, when she hasn't interacted with Meika since then at all? What does it even feel like, to have someone close to you suddenly heel-turn their personality and rewrite the context of every interaction you've had, leaving them shut out and alienated from you in a way that feels guiltily like your own fault?     Well, actually, she can figure that one out. She reopens her eyes. "Yeah. Feels bad to not think about it when you haven't done anything about it. Sort of like, letting time pass at all is kind of a betrayal." Petra inclines her head to the side a bit, towards Xion, but still keeps her eyes directed towards Love. "'Allies' is a pretty important thing to do about it, though, no matter what ends up happening."     "And Haru's right." With respect to 'pauses', though in general too. "Unless you're staying tense in a specific direction, you're not, like, a spearpoint, you're just a ball of needles. But you don't have to 'not feel bad' to also 'feel a bit okay', I think." "I, aha, half expected Sarracenia to come and be... I don't know. I was kind of hoping she'd come so I could just... stop being..."     Petra understands. "To have an enemy. Yeah. ... Yeah." "Oh, um, I am not super hungry but I'm trying to eat to be properly sad."     "Yeah, I mean, they've always got food at funerals and stuff, so it's normal." Was that the wrong thing to say? It might've been the wrong thing to say. Petra intently focuses on attempting to saw through the tough exoskeleton of her very dry calzone, ineffectually scraping at the bread with her plastic knife, to not be awkward for a minute.     "Er-- anyways, like, ice skating is a thing you picked up from Meika, yeah? So you're remembering your friendship by being here, and keeping that trait alive inside yourself." Almost on instinct, Petra flicks open her compact mirror and draws Qetra out-- with her decorative bangles of all the people in Petra's life-- into the chair beside her. Qetra plops down with a look of dazed confusion for a second, then inappropriately smiles and directs her gaze approximately towards Love.     "Mmm, hi, Love~ hurt the people you need to hurt, okay? You can just let the 'Queen of Hatred' do it for you if you don't know who that is. -- Oh...! Pizza!" Qetra snags a slice from in front of Xion, and starts taking very small bites of it for the purpose of engaging in a communal activity. After a while of that, she adds on, "It hurts so bad that you want to die or hurt everyone, doesn't it? But Meika can't run away from you more than once."
Ritsuka Fujimaru	"Oh, um, I am not super hungry but I'm trying to eat to be properly sad." "Eh? Oh, I'm sorry. Is there anything we can help with?" "Good call. You don't want to get hungry sadness mixed up with real sadness, or you might just feel worse about both. Speaking of..." Ritsuka grabs two slices and extra paper plates for herself and Mash, then offers Jeanne an extra plate for good measure. Mash gets a napkin to try and dab away some of the extra grease before picking up the tip of her slice to nibble at it a bit at a time, and Ritsuka nudges the pizza off one plate with the other as a handle to steadily shovel it into her face. "Rental shoes. Nasty. Unmade and remade them. They're clean now. It took a while." "You can rent shoes here? That sounds..." Ritsuka pauses, like she's having trouble how to feel about that. "Disgusting, but I kind of want to see it? Just not touch it." "Please don't. Mister... Um. Thank you for doing that!" Mash bows her head quickly to Haru, pushes her hood back up with the back of her hand, then realizes she should really take off the jacket before eating more pizza, lest she get it all greased up with mysterious Sbarro juice. "Well, we can all use days for purifying ourselves, right? Re-setting, cleansing out, the kind of healing pizza and sugar and potstickers and food court trays can provide." "Do those really have healing properties? I've heard of short-term energy boosts from these, but-" "That's right! It's not all about the nutrition and vitamins and stuff. Junk food's good for the heart!" "I don't think... Um." "Can either of you skate?" "Hurry up and pick your favorite pieces before they get stolen though, Jeanne. We've got *activities* today! Training!" Jeanne pauses for a moment in mid-bite, then lets out a low grunt and shakes her head. "Not even a little. It never came up before or after I showed up here, and... Well." She pantomimes something bursting into flames, then takes another moment to finish off her slice before snagging another slice and what's left of Madeleine's pretzel dog. "You already know what I prefer handling." She pauses again as she notices Ritsuka and Mash peering closely at her and Xion and Madeleine, the duo blinking owlishly like they're about to figure something out. Jeanne waves dismissively at the two with an irritated noise, then takes a bite out of the pretzel dog. "... Besides, how hard could it be? We've leapt across crumbling towers before, so this should be easy! ... what the hell is in this?" "Meat!" "From?" "... Meat?"
Hamada Haru	"Ah..." Haru looks towarda Madeleine. He nods, faintly-- he'll remember the allergy. "The cinnamon ones are better." Questions start going out on who actually knows how to iceskate. Haru looks resigned almost immediately-- he's not really feeling tutorializing, but he can if he has to. //Mister... Um.// "Hamada," he introduces himself, distantly. //[Qetra talks for thirty seconds.]// Sitting up straight again, Haru nudges Xion. "Would you... lock that one's mouth, for the moment?"
Angela	Love doesn't have an immediate answer about if she can be helped right now. Love nods a couple times, absently, thinking. "It's a story about a lonely duck who falls in love with a prince. And it's a story about a writer who died before his story could end. And it's a story about a raven's daughter and a prince. It's actually kind of complicated for someone like me." "But," Love continues. "As the story begins the duck is given human form so she can hunt fragments of the prince's soul and restore his soul to him. And the more she finds, the more the question becomes.... Should she even be? Not all of the prince's soul is pretty or kind. There's fear, there's anger. Maybe the prince would be better off without a soul at all." "But she keeps going. Because he deserves the chance to be real. A person. The right to think for himself and make mistakes. She learns that the woman he actually loves isn't her but the raven's daughter and she still resolves to return his complete heart to him." "...But the author loves tragedies so...things aren't looking good. Er, the author within the story... You know, I think you'd really like this one Petra. It's all about narrative, both making it conciously and living within it." Love eats one more pizza slice but she doesn't really think she can eat more. She really isn't hungry after trying to share food for thought. "I'm sure if anybody can find her...pieces....and return them or whatever it is, it'd be all of you. Or The Dame Commander." She can't see Petra's scowl, and she couldn't see Petra's scowl, but she can taste it in the air. She is briefly startled by Qetra and doesn't seem to get one part of what she says, "Run away more than once...?" She nods to Petra. "...Yeah I came because I figured I could keep her memory by coming here. The best thing I can do for her is remember since... that was her gift to me. The ability to remember." This idea does seem to pull Love out of her spiral a bit--or maybe it was everything, letting her get her stuff off her chest, eating some food, speaking of a more hopeful narrative, the possibility of ice skating... "Do you wanna ice skate with me, Petra?" She asks. "Would it be dangerous for Qetra?" She smacks herself twice in the cheeks as if to decurse herself.
Dysnomia	Meika? That was why Love was like this? Then...Mia frowned into her pizza, as if trying to find her reflection in the thin film of grease over the top of it. It must have happened, then. How much time had slipped away from her? She assesses her feelings, like a geologist monitoring a volcano's activity.     She doesn't find sadness. Just a resigned, bitter resentment, at something she can't quite place.     But Love was completely distraught. And no wonder. "Then remember her." Mia said, simply, taking a bite of the slice of grease that was advertised as pizza. Expressionless, she chased it down with another silver sphere, swallowed uncomfortably whole. Haru and Xion were bringing an emotional intelligence to the table that Mia simply could not measure up to. But, maybe she could give Love an opportunity to do what she wanted. And she wanted to not forget. "What do you want to remember?" She prompted, tapping a finger idly on the table. "Tell me." A pause. A correction; "Tell us."     "I've never skated, no." Dysnomia admitted, with clear reluctance. "It's not really something we did."     Madeleine found that, if Mia was going to delve into her thoughts and find her meddling with the Captain, it wouldn't be today. But her anxiousness did draw Mia's eye, along with a hard frown. "Just what's your problem?"
Xion	"Well, I've never *really* been shown how to skate, so I was wondering if there was an expert," Xion begins, easy and gentle while she gives a smile back to Madeleine as the the moment of considering's spotted and appreciated. "but," She tries to continue, but the vibe seems to dip, and dive, and continue to a precipice that for a moment Xion doesn't have more to say. So, blue eyes gazing towards the 'sad' dragon, the Nobody offers a withered smile. "Hey, maybe you're *way* more right than I realized. But you know, sometimes just feeling it out can be done with motion too. After all the energy, you've just gotta go, sometimes. I think sitting with it's harder." Sliding out of her seat after a few minutes for everyone to eat, Xion checks down the ice that had been cleared of its few patrons. "Oh! I think we can start skating now. And if you want to keep eating now, it's fine too." Wiping down her fingers with a wet nap and then a brown paper napkin after, Xion looks over the gang in survey. "I think the cold will feel good,--" 'Would you... lock that one's mouth, for the moment?' "Huh? Sure," Without thinking *too* much about it, seeing as it's Haru, Xion leans back over the table and kneels back into her seat to press her index finger to Quetra's cheek, just off her mouth. In her index finger is the keychain-charm for Starlight, which emits a quiet-'click!' when she taps it there, like a *very* insistent shushing finger to the lips that still allows for eating pizza. Giving Petra a deeply apologetic 'I'm sorry I had to restrain your pet personality shard', Xion murmurs an "If Haru's too tired I can show you, Petra, it's not too hard." like a token of amelioration. After a second, she brightens and nods at Dysnomia. "You too! We can figure out skates if none of the shop ones work for you." Withdrawing after Several Moments, Xion heads towards the rink, to start getting her skates on by the ice, a chilly-brisk aura palpable from the plastic and powderboard contained slate of blade-marked rink. She doesn't drag anyone with her, but it's the way she's going.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	"Mister Hamada." "Hamada!" "What?" "Hamada." "Hamada?" "Hamada..." After an exasperated sigh at whatever that was, Jeanne looks over at Dysnomia and Xion when they reveal their own lack of ice skating experience. Strangely enough, she actually looks a little more spirited at what they say about skating, as it doesn't take Jeanne long to realize that this could be a good chance to show off. Sure, she might not know a thing about skating, but learning it from scratch and being a whiz at it would really put a feather in her cap and then some. She get "We'll pick it up as we go. Could you imagine it? Some jackass trying to escape by skating down a frozen lake, turning around just to see one of us bearing down on him on top of nothing more than..." She's not actually sure what skates even are. "... Those little shoe-knives? Maybe we could even learn to fight with these." Jeanne might be getting ahead of herself, but she's got a good feeling about this. Before she heads to the rink, she turns to Mash and Ritsuka with a quick jerk of her thumb towards the rink. "You coming?" "In a minute! This pretzel dog tastes weird." "Is that even safe to eat, Ritsuka? It's... Oozing?" "Not a clue. Here, try some!" Ritsuka and Mash stay by the food with the former trying to force that food crime into the latter's face, and Jeanne just goes to join Xion at the rink. Even knowing that Haru had decursed the shoes ahead of time, she still takes a moment to inspect the shoes before putting them on and gracefully clinging to one of those handles at the side to keep herself from falling while inching along the wall slowly. "How the hell are we supposed to move on these?! Just staying up is impossible...!"
Petra Soroka	"You're not really that exhausting. Lecturing the other guy was a one out of ten on the effort meter."     "Oh thank god." So far Petra has almost entirely avoided stressing out anyone she respects over being a literal supervillain, which is a pretty good streak to keep up, and a fairly good barometer for guiding her moral outlook on her behaviors. "Probably the heroes will end up freeing all those guys, anyways; it'd just be annoying if I was still in Quicknest when they did. I'm just building some stuff with them still."     The idea of things existing that are both 'of interest to Petra' and 'that she hasn't had a negative impact on' is new enough to give her pause. Pale red tomato water leaks onto the paper plate from the one slice she's managed to carve out of the calzone as she stops to think about what that could possibly refer to. What's something she hasn't made worse? Angela? ""Can either of you skate? Is everyone here a first-timer?"     "Er..." Petra does *not* know how, but immediately picks up on the vibe of not wanting to teach. A little bitterness seeps up in her, for not being able to join in. "It's mostly a balancing thing, right? I'm really good at balancing. If not then I'm fine just watching, I'm pretty much relaxing after working all day." "Disgusting, but I kind of want to see it? Just not touch it."     Petra leans on her elbow to get enough forwards lean on the table to actually address Ritsuka properly, separated by seats as they are. "I mean, that's basically normal? Bowling alleys do that too, for like, the proper shoes, so that's..." Horror slowly dawns on her face as she trails off. "... Oh... those must be so dirty... I never thought about it...." "You know, I think you'd really like this one Petra. It's all about narrative, both making it conciously and living within it."     Petra opens her mouth wordlessly, wondering briefly how she got read so completely by Love when they've only really met in person once before. On the other hand, though, that one meeting was defined by reading each other on levels far better than Petra expected, so maybe it's not surprising. Girls be interpreting their lives as narratives for the purpose of role-based self-characterization.     "... Well, I'm kind of the expert on fragments, at least." Interpreting it through *that* lens actually does give Petra a hint of a plan of action, though she's not sure how she feels about taking action *herself* when Lilian was so adamant about this being the right outcome. "But... well... in that case, we'd need to figure out some way to get her memories back... like, the actual feelings, not just stories."
Petra Soroka	"...Yeah I came because I figured I could keep her memory by coming here. The best thing I can do for her is remember since... that was her gift to me."     "Mmmmmhm! That's right~ the 'you' you are is a little piece of her, forever, so that can't ever disappear. But that means you can never ever give up either, or you lose a little bit of that 'you' that you worked so so so hard to get."     Qetra is working her way through the same pizza slice that she has been for multiple minutes now when Xion reaches over to her, and she immediately leans back in her chair and lights up in delight. "Xi~onnnn! Gosh, I feel like we have--" Her mouth keeps moving after the poke, but her voice is completely silent.     After talking for about ten seconds longer without noticing, Qetra stops and then silently giggles through her fingers. Expression teasingly pleading, Qetra leans past Petra to hold her wrists together up towards Xion, offering them up as her next locking target. Petra doesn't notice at first, singlemindedly focused as she is on folding up a paper straw wrapper into the smallest square she can manage, but when she looks at what Qetra is doing over her shoulder she immediately smacks her arms away.     "Stop that! Stop being like that! Get back to eating!" After muttering expletives, Petra looks apologetically at Haru. "Sorry. She's evil. I just-- she's, like, a visual aid, that's all. For what I was saying." A vague wave at the silent double's outfit, particularly recognizably with the heart hairclips framing her face. "Do you wanna ice skate with me, Petra?" "If Haru's too tired I can show you, Petra, it's not too hard."     "Oh! Uh, then, y-yeah. I'd love to, actually." Petra stands up from her chair, having successfully eaten most of the stale calzone, then rubs her biceps. Realizing something, she turns to Qetra and leans down to yank the bomber jacket off from around her waist, identical to Petra's except for lacking the patches and stitching she's accumulated over time. "Ah ha! And, don't worry if it's dangerous for her," to Love, who'd asked about Qetra, "You could stick a fork in her right now and she'd be fine."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Just what's your problem?"     "N-nothing." Madeleine's tone is a little plaintive, but when she continues she's more assertive, bordering on indignant. "It's nothing. I just haven't seen someone who eats metal and wasn't like, a robot or something." It's a lie, and she's not being a convincing liar. The way she returns immediately to her cinnamon pretzel bites is a little *too* casual, a clearly forced sort of ease.     But there's not much more time for conversation, at least at the table - Madeleine stuffs the last three cinnamon bites into her mouth and chews over the sugary mass as she descends the escalator to the skating rink. She pauses at the dirty, scratched-over rink and sighs in vague distaste. "Aren't they supposed to have one of those Zombinos or whatever clean this up? Whatever," she says before taking a deep breath in. The following lengthy exhale releases a cloud of vapor which settles to the floor of the rink, smoothing over most of the gouges and scrapes with fresh ice. She sits on a bench to take off her platform boots and picks out a pair of white leather skates before heading out onto the ice.     Madeleine is, as she said, not an expert skater, but her natural physical grace does her favors here. There's only a little wobbling before she has her footing and is gliding around the ice in a wide circuit. She pauses after the first go around and, with a mischievous smirk, puffs out some more of her ice-vapor which coalesces into... a puppy?     The ice-sculpture wolf pup lets out a chime-like bark and follows Madeleine as she begins to circle the rink again. However, it only makes it halfway around before getting bored of following its pack-leader and deciding to investigate the other skaters. If they aren't careful, it might get underfoot and cause some spills...
Hamada Haru	"It's possible that she's going to have to create new pieces. That's possible. But maybe. I don't know. Nothing about the situation in that world makes sense," Haru says to Love, running a hand through his hair in a gesture of apparent frustration. "As for your story... mn. Seems like a normal fairy tale to me. Maybe I have a hard time reconciling the tutelary nature of such things with 'magical girls' and 'Kamen Riders'. But those have their own lessons, I suppose..." He rises, glancing around and sizing everyone up a little. "... Hey. Don't listen too much to what that one says," he adds, of Qetra. His gratitude towards Xion is expressed with a nod-- though there's an ongoing misunderstanding. Truth is, Haru doesn't want Qetra to speak if she's going to speak like that-- and unlike some of those assembled he's not willing to actually bodily hurt people for just talking things he thinks are a waste of the oxygen they're sharing. At some point through all of this, Hamada Haru ran out of some critical kind of patience. He leaves and comes back with some iceskates, swapping his shoes out for them as he talks, "As for you..." He's speaking to Qetra, even though he's not looking at her. "I'm doing a lot of lecturing right now. Encouraging others to manifest parts of themselves they're trying to grow beyond during vulnerable moments is vile. I don't want to hear it, ever." "... I don't know how to take your relief," Haru admits to Petra, finishing lacing his iceskates and testing the feel of them without rising. Thankfully for everyone, the shoes available here do not have Rental Shoe Funk because they are technically completely new. //Sorry, she's evil.// "I can tell. I considered killing her almost the moment she started talking, and I don't kill people," Haru says. He's not certain he hasn't had such a thought before. Twin Peaks seems like a likely candidate. He rises, as steadily as one can while wearing iceskates off of the ice, and moves off to join those gathering on the rink. Once he actually gets onto it he's a lot steadier, and spends a moment dragging some of the obligatory scattered-around ice walkers to the entry step-down nearest the tables they were occupying. One look at Jeanne is enough to tell him that she's not going to use the ice walkers though-- and he gestures towards Madeleine as an example. "Look at how she's moving. You push off on the blade-- it's cyclical. But the easiest way to get your footing is to simply walk a little ways. It'll help you learn how to stay upright, and teach you the current physics of your body. If you get wobbly, bend inwards and rest your hands on your knees. That'll help you stabilize." Though not really meant to be illustrative, Haru does move a little from the side to clear space for those who need it.
Dysnomia	"It's nothing. I just haven't seen someone who eats metal and wasn't like, a robot or something."     Mia seethed. Sighed, pushing to her feet and tossing the last of the orbs into her mouth. "Well," she grumbled, "I'm not here for you to gawk."     Dysnomia, reluctantly, allows herself to be pulled along by Xion's momentum, toward the ice. Assurances that none of the skates are cursed--whatever that means--makes her more suspicious of the skates, not less. But, eventually, she finds one that she believes to fit.     It was very, VERY hard not to cheat. Like lifting up a leg while standing and letting yourself fall over. Gravity pulled away at Dysnomia like a pushy child, and her first instinct was just to reject it--the first time her skates slipped on the ice, she did, lifting off the ground mid-fall.     Frustration stitched itself across her face. WIth a determined set to her mouth, Mia once more set her skates onto the ice, one hand gripping the railing tight. Saying yes to gravity. Saying yes to solidity. Saying yes to friction.     It made it hard to focus on anything other than keeping upright, nevermind skate--and that was before an ice puppy began to quite LITERALLY nip at her heels. "I'm trying to FOCUS, you little..." She scowled at the thing. "Shoo!"
Xion	Xion, who has never missed a Quick-Time Prompt in her life for her copious advantages towards them, is presented one when Qetra keeps talking past her shushing finger, carrying on quite easily despite her silent-sealed voice, and then notices, and then giggles, and then *continues* presenting, offering up her wrists. Xion hammers the X button. Close enough (while still touching the palm-mirror girl's cheek), Xion takes Qetra's wrists in thumb and ring finger, tugging her just a bit closer and leaning in dangerously to the evil drone girl's ear. "If you're 'good' until we're done on the rink, I'd lllove to continue that conversation." She directs, hushed voice to silent-smiling mirror-girl's ear and then-- -- They're both back in position, Xion snapping back like a physics correction and Petra knocking Qetra away, the pivot to curseless but not laceless shoes with blades on them, the fawnlike struggle off the ice. Once she's on though, Xion is natural at moving on the ice, taking a few rusty-to-moving steps onto the ice and then looping back around to the gate. "No expressive para-self shooting today!" Xion calls with her arms crossed over her chest in an X. "It is no good! Literally or figuratively." Cheered greatly as people pile out on the ice, and even Haru doing a little illustration, Xion claps her hands and crouches down, balancing on her borrowed skates as Dysnomia wants her way onto the ice and makes it a reality, earning a beaming smile from the Nobody with each tactile scrape of blade to freshened ice. It is around when Mia shooes away the dog that Xion's crouched position comes back to bite her -- more literally than one might like! "So, I think about it like balance and cy--" Without even a chance to get to that Good Stuff, Xion is jumped on the Ice Pooch both alterted by clapping and excited by Small and Crouched Down towards playing. Spilling out onto the ice and 'oof!'-ing onto her butt, Xion spins out across the ice, laughing foolishly as she's accosted by the excited dog (cold type) and keeping the canine not-at-all at bay with her arms while, doing little clean-iced spirals across the floor on her seated legs for a few more feet before sliding to a stop. "Okay! Don't do any of that!" Xion advises.
Angela	''Then remember her.'' "okay." Love says. She was planning on doing that anyway. She's from another world so she should be pretty safe to remember. Dysnomia also suggests speaking about what she liked about Meika. "Well, there's the iceskating... I liked how she kicked around her cherubs. I liked her drawings... I liked... she'd do this thing where she'd kind of hyperfocus on this cute or real thing and she'd be getting real philisopical about it and maybe she'd giggle and smile and kind of... I don't know if I'm expressing it good, but I knew it when I heard and felt it. I liked when we were in the secret base together and whenever she came by to visit the secret base and...I even liked it when she pushed me, kind of, I don't want to forget that she pushed me. Or that she had bad days too and could maybe even get a little nasty or harsh at people. I remember when she brought s'mores to a campfire even though she didn't like sweets, and--" She trails off, thinking about what happened with Sougo and Woz and she doesn't finish saying what she thought. ''I was wondering if there was an expert'' "Oh well, you sort of chuck yourself over the side of the rink and then you skate with your eyes closed until you hit a wall." Love explains. "You can kind of lift your hands up but--you really need someone else there to help you so you don't hit other people." As Love pulls on her own skates (she has no money but Haru rented the rink), she looks to Petra. Love mostly just listens. She doesn't record banter dialogue like the way that Haru does but there were a lot of days where she had nothing better to do than listen to the radio. And that one conversation with Petra ended up with a lot of discussion about shaping one's own story, taking what made you better from others nad making it your own, deciding the importance of what wasn't real to yourself. ''we'd need to figure out some way to get her memories back'' "Maybe Flamel knows what to do... I don't have a lot of skills but I can at least help with the Temptations--maybe everyone can focus more on investigations since I'm not very good at figuring stuff out like that." ''The 'you' you are is a little piece of her, forever, so that can't ever disappear.'' This makes Love smile. "Okay, I won't give up, Qetra." She hops up on her feet. It's time to skate, she decides mentally. She thinks again of the Duck. She'd happily return to a duck if it meant the Meika she knew could be restored but she has no idea if that's really on the table. ''You could stick a fork in her right now and she'd be fine.'' "O-oh I don't tink I'd eat her though--" She totally misunderstands. She thinks the ice pup is cute and isn't going to be the one to be a responsible adult today that's another magical girl's job entirely. She nods once to Haru--probably, sadly, more about the idea of meika having to 'create new pieces' than not listening to Qetra, who has only seemed to mostly be a font of super wisdom to Love today. ''I considered killing her the moment she started talking, and I don't kill people.'' "That's kind of scary," Love admits as she moves onto the ice the same way she was shown last time but this time she doesn't immediately fall flat on her face, which is a little sad for Love, so she immediately closes her eyes and skates to the opposite wall without looking where she's going and when she crashes into the wall and falls over, she feels a little better.
Hamada Haru	"Yeah. It is," Haru admits to Love, shrugging loosely. He isn't able to continue until she hits the opposite wall-- and he follows her, managing the ice just fine. Once he reaches her, he offers her a hand up and continues, "It isn't as if... I'm one of those lunatics who is just like this. Being Kamen Rider is important to me, so I don't do things like that. But it isn't as if I don't have a lot of the same impulses that many elites do. Impulses of pride, or stubbornness. I just don't follow them. Honestly... that's one of the ways I'm tired, right now." He rolls his neck with a series of pops. "It would be easier, the other way. But I don't want to be that way. Even... just having Xion silence somebody like that, is pretty messed up. Too easy. Too coarse." Pausing, he calls back to Xion, "Doing stuff like that is part of the learning experience!"
Ritsuka Fujimaru	"I mean, that's basically normal? Bowling alleys do that too, for like, the proper shoes, so that's..." "Oh... those must be so dirty... I never thought about it...." "Wait, yeah... And those shoes aren't even in a frozen rink, so you know it's gotta be hotter in there. And then there's all this food around..." Even Ritsuka looks like she's starting to get sick trying to give Petra that same mental image, half-snickering and half-gagging the whole time. It doesn't stop her from finishing her slice, though, and what's left of Mash's crust after she loses her appetite thinking about all that as well (and being forced to eat the pretzel dog). "Look at how she's moving. ... That'll help you stabilize." Much to Jeanne's chagrin, learning how to ice skate from scratch and just winging it most certainly is not working out for her. She's only gotten as far as pulling herself back up with the aid of the bars at the sides and staying in place with both hands on it, never mind actually moving in any appreciable direction. When she hears Haru trying to guide her, her first instinct is to make irritated noises, but... No, no, he's got a point there. After taking a moment to calm herself down from nearly slipping doing nothing again, she hangs off the bar before turning her head slowly to see what Madeleine's doing. She also sees Xion flying around the rink like a pro. The frustration is easy to see on Jeanne's face, but she soon starts burning it for fuel as she gets right back to focusing. It takes a few testing kicks back and forth to try and feel out what he's getting at and to mimic what Madeleine's doing, and her eyes even light up (briefly) (very briefly) (it's kind of noticeable) when she starts making any kind of intentional lateral movement. "I see... Good Hmhmhm. Of course I'd get it this quickly. Something like this is child's pl-!" Jeanne's boast, predictably, is cut short when she gets ahead of herself and tries to start moving with only one hand on the bars, and her feet keep sliding back and forth in opposite directions until she steadies herself with both hands again. She stares at Haru for a couple of seconds in that 'don't say it' sort of look, then recalls what he had actually said and... One hand on the knees, other on the bar. She inches along. It's not fast, it's not impressive, but it's stable. Once again, that faint gleam returns, but Jeanne's careful to keep her gaze focused outside of the rink where she's pretty sure Haru and Xion can't see whatever excitement she might be holding back from her face. "... Hmph. I could've figured it out on my own. But... Good instructions, you." A beat. "...  Hamada."
Xion	"With dogs?!" Xion asks, from sprawled out on the rink. Despite general agility, there's not much to be done about being tackled, and even if the ice dog continues on, Xion remains seated for a moment longer, watching people's struggles. A puff of cool breath, a light shiver from the ice, and Xion moves carefully from sprawl to both knees, then rocking backward onto balanced blades -- and even then she still has to lightly windmill her arms and adjust on the ice. "Yeah. The first step is to try, and feel it, and then eventually probably crash. But after that crash, Love, I think you get up and you try again, because the crash isn't the end, it's just the stumble. Eventually, I think, you try to get to a state where you just get on the ice to move -- because you like it." "It can be a way to spend time with a feeling, or memories, too. Going back to somewhere you've been, or doing something you did again. It changes with you, and you change it, don't you? Doesn't everyone?" The talking feels a bit much, after a while, leaving Xion with a bit of a guilty grimace after she dispels in her motion. She's not really the one here with the feelings, she's just here to eat and skate and share that. Letting her feet slowly sine wave across the ice to provide a little motion, Xion bounces from skate to skate with a slow sweep that lets her catch up to Jeanne during her eager moments after her spill, giving Jeanne but moments to recover. Holding one of the Frenchwoman's hands in one gentle hold while using the open palm of her other to straighten out Jeanne's back. "Feel out your balance and your motion, and how you can sway and cut into the ice to change or carry you. Really think about the way it makes you *move*!" Xion breaks off after that to look for someone else to help, looping back towards Petra as she promised a moment ago.
Hamada Haru	"In this community, yeah!" Haru calls back to Xion. It's hard to tell if he's being serious.
Lilian Rook	'Encouraging others to manifest parts of themselves they're trying to grow beyond during vulnerable moments is vile. I don't want to hear it, ever.'     "I'd advise you save your breath. She has a memory like a sieve, an attention span shorter than Petra's list of redeeming qualities, and the part of her brain that would have her survival instinct was repurposed to release dopamine just for talking."     The issue of Qetra is how Lilian chooses to warn anyone that she's here, instead of a simple hello, or choosing either of the other, better topics. It lets her double back and show up late to a gathering of people she doesn't quite fit with under the impervious shield of being slightly too good for it. "You know, as far as these sorts of attractions go, Xion has gotten quite good at finding the more characterful ones, don't you think? Less gaudy and crass." Not that she'd have shown up at all if this place were still packed with children.     It's tough to tell if the pretty little white lace-up skates she's carrying in one hand are because she agrees with Haru about rentals, didn't think about it, or-- "Oh my, I didn't know you all had your own. Should I be surprised?" --didn't know 'rental skates' are an extant concept, yeah.     'I liked... she'd do this thing where she'd kind of hyperfocus on this cute or real thing and she'd be getting real philisopical about it and maybe she'd giggle and smile and kind of... I don't know if I'm expressing it good, but I knew it when I heard and felt it'     As if her suddenly showing up to something lowkey and ordinary weren't somewhat of a significant event in of itself, Lilian finds a bench to start untying her shoes, and have something to look down at as she says "I wish I'd had the opportunity to see her laugh. It was all I could do just to let her smile, once."     'We'd need to figure out some way to get her memories back... like, the actual feelings, not just stories.'     "If they're gone, then they're gone. We've all expected as much; I've done what I can." Lilian says, gradually fastening on her skates, next, after a quick, habitual camera check. "If they're still there, somewhere in her brain, just impossible to notice any longer without protection from magical confabulation, then--" Lilian pauses. "Well they'd better not be."
Dysnomia	"If they're gone, then they're gone. We've all expected as much; I've done what I can."     Dysnomia jolts somewhat, as Lilian arrives. Questions sort though her mind one after another, and then are discarded. The most she can muster, once she's finished hte process, is nod. You can never get back what's cleaved away. Not really. She glanced to Love. Kept the thought to herself.     A thought that quickly got lost, in the ongoing struggle to interact with an ice rink like a normal human person. Gritting her teeth, hard, she did her best to follow Haru's instructions. Whether she was really letting physics guide her steps, or just using the way Madeleine and Haru moved as guideposts for How To Move...She wasn't sure she could tell.     But, one way or another, she was skating slowly along the outer edge of the rink, one hand still on the guard rails.     As Xion crashed in a heap, Mia couldn't help but snort, smirking, momentarily unnaturally steady before she corrected herself. "Stars, Madeleine. That thing is a damn menace!"     "She liked this, huh?" Dysnomia tried for light, but couldn't keep effort's tension out of her voice. Exhaled. "Explains the way she flies, doesn't it?"
Petra Soroka	"Encouraging others to manifest parts of themselves they're trying to grow beyond during vulnerable moments is vile. I don't want to hear it, ever."     Haru might not be looking at Qetra, but Qetra's looking at him, inasfar as she 'looks at' anyone. Her gaze paints a smear out of his face, fixated somewhere on his ear exactly as if she's making direct eye contact, and her mood doesn't seem dimmed at all by either the silencing or the chastising. She nods a few times emphatically, throwing out a thumbsup between bites of pizza for good measure.     Seemingly being perfectly fine switching her opinion on a dime like that feels worse, kind of. "If you're 'good' until we're done on the rink, I'd lllove to continue that conversation."     Qetra, despite being silenced, emotes far louder than a hush. Wrists still pressed together, she holds a shushing finger to her own lips with an evil smile, and then flicks it away with a very enthusiastic wink. She'll *be* good. "I considered killing her almost the moment she started talking, and I don't kill people,"     "Dang," As willing as she was to vouch for Qetra's intolerability, that still puts a frown on Petra's face. She tries to figure out how to articulate the differences between her and Qetra as they matter for this particular topic, using the distraction of putting on her skates for silence. She doesn't really come up with a great distinction that doesn't also sort of damn herself by proxy. "She, uh, kind of has a weird perspective on all of that. She doesn't really think about 'good' or 'bad', just, like... 'more' or 'less'. Yeah. Kind of evil." "... I don't know how to take your relief,"     "Er... I mean, like, I wouldn't be surprised at your, like, *ideological* opposition to me, but..." Petra tilts her head, thinking it through to give the topic the full focus of her mind, coming to an awkward stop while walking. "I think you have good opinions, and I like you. So if I was doing something wrong enough to not just get hostility, but, like... uh... what's the word. Burnout and boredom. Then I probably fucked up pretty badly. I don't want people to dread-- well, I want *some* people to dread interacting with me, but that's in a different way, and I don't want to do that to people like you. Right?" "No expressive para-self shooting today!"     While Petra takes her first wobbly steps out onto the ice, the brief muting Xion inflicted on Qetra wears off and she flounces over to lean on the wooden railing and observe. "She doesn't even mind if you do." "Ahaha, but it hurts, though!" "Yeah, but you don't mind." "Yeah~"     Petra takes a couple steps out, wobbles, and then holds on to the railing and-- slips and falls anyways. Pouting and rubbing her bruised palm against her borrowed jacket, she pulls herself back up, slides the blade across the ice while holding weight off of it, and then tries to push off again and falls over just like last time.     "What the fuck?! Why is this so hard!" Petra fumes, obviously frustrated, and when Xion cycles back around to help her stand up again, the painful itching is back in full force. "I'm so fucking clumsy for some reason. Thanks, Xion." "Even... just having Xion silence somebody like that, is pretty messed up. Too easy. Too coarse."     Petra needs a lot of help to get going, in full baby-deer mode even with Xion holding her hand. As she passes by Haru, she says aside, as if this is a fully completely thought on its own, "Well, it's fine if it's for yourself, but I don't really think it's right to treat her like a person."
Petra Soroka	"She has a memory like a sieve, an attention span shorter than Petra's list of redeeming qualities, and the part of her brain that would have her survival instinct was repurposed to release dopamine just for talking."     "Oh! Lilian!" Petra veers out of Xion's grasp, traversing ice on her own capably smoothly, solely for the purpose of getting to lean on the railing nearest Lilian. "Yeah, that's what I was saying. It's kind of pointless trying to get her to 'learn' instead of just 'behave'-- well, for Haru, at least. I guess you or Xion could." "Ahaha, yeah! I'm just kind of stupid! Hiii~ Lilian!" "I wish I'd had the opportunity to see her laugh. It was all I could do just to let her smile, once."     Petra leans her chin into her crossed arms on the rink railing, watching Lilian prepare to skate with an unreadable expression. She *did* make Meika laugh, on multiple occasions. And smile on plenty. She's not sure whether that's a good thing to have succeeded at when Lilian couldn't.     "... Yeah. I'd really like to see what she's like when she's not so scared all the time." "Well they'd better not be."     Petra's brow creases as she considers that possibility. "Because that would mean... yeah. That something did it to her. I mean, it's not impossible to start from scratch, either way. She's only just eighteen."
Hamada Haru	Haru doesn't give Jeanne flak for taking a spill. He thinks of it as a natural part of the process, just as he said a moment ago. He blinks down at the look she gives him, but doesn't seem to understand it. This, at least, IS his true nature-- he just doesn't think to make fun of her for messing up while learning. In answer to her thanks, he says, "Yeah. And of course you could have. But not having to reinvent every single thing is why we have brains like we do." Raising a hand, he taps his own temple twice. //I'd advise you save your breath. (...)// Since it's Lilian, she at least gets the courtesy of finishing the sentence before he says, "No." But he was ready to save it the moment that first sentence was spoken. Haru knows when too much of his being is bent towards doing something and the reason why to pretend otherwise. It was just too ugly an exchange for him to leave alone. "... And these aren't ours. The place lends them," he adds. Glancing down, he remarks, "I have my own, but I didn't think to bring them. I mostly take them out to places with frozen lakes." Although she's gesturing at him, Haru isn't paying attention to Qetra. He had her silenced because he didn't want to deal with that, after all. To Petra, he replies, "What she thinks about the nuances of the matter doesn't really matter to me, if those are the things she's going to put out into the world." //I think you have good opinions, and I like you. So if I was doing something wrong enough to not just get hostility, but, like... uh... what's the word. Burnout and boredom. Then I probably fucked up pretty badly. I don't want people to dread-- well, I want *some* people to dread interacting with me, but that's in a different way, and I don't want to do that to people like you. Right?// Raising a hand, Haru messes with his hair in a second gesture of... some kind of frustration, maybe. Connecting it to a coherent feeling is hard. "I think you're trying to be better. I wish you'd do less harm. We'll probably beat each other up eventually. But I suppose that I don't perceive somebody who isn't worth existing near in you. I'd like you to figure things out better, eventually. I'd like you to hurt less, and I'm not talking about 'as a villain'." //I don't really think it's right to treat her like a person.// Dark eyes flick from Xion's face, to Petra's, and back again. He doesn't say anything, but the intensity of his gaze increases exponentially. Then it slides off of Petra entirely. "If you just get into it and let the world disappear, skating is a lot like being in the shower, or driving alone. It's a sort of... quasi-active space, where you very tangibly exist, and can do a lot of thinking, but don't just drift off. If you feel like it it can be pretty adrenaline-inducing, I guess. Don't know what part of that appealed, but I get why it could appeal," he replies to Dysnomia.
Angela	Love, despite being a person for significantly less time than Haru, thinks she kind of gets it when he says that not killing poeple tires him out. She takes his hand up and goes, "Huhp...!" As she does. She looks towards Lilian for a long moment as she looks at her shoes and-- ''I wish I'd had the opportunity to see her laugh.'' That almost gets her crying again. She wishes Lilian got to see Meika laugh too. It was such a nice laugh. It always felt like someone or something was trying to smother that laugh. She's worried she might hear Meika laugh more often now without it being the same but there's nothing she can do about it right now and it's just the sort of aimless worrying that's probably just going to bring everybody's day down. Love's main super power as a pink magical girl is a sense of empathy (that's why her lasers are heart shaped) and she doesn't want to keep making everybody sad and down even if being sad and down isn't really an unrealistic way of looking at things. Xion's right, after all, being kind of ok even in not kind of ok situations--isn't just part of being a magical girl or kamen rider, it's also just life, right? Maybe she can keep it as a quiet voice in her and be normal on the outside. "I'm sorry you didn't get the chance. I think I just got lucky," She tells Lilian, honestly. "I think you would've really loved it." Maybe it would've made her and Haru less tired, if they could hear it--or hear it a little more. Love doesn't know how often she laughed, exactly. She's not the bureau of laughter, that's more the King's thing. She pretends to not hear the part of how the memories being gone make them ''gone''. Or if they're still there, then someone stole them. It'd be nice if there was someone or something she could laser and then Meika would be back to normal just like that-- --but her experiences in Kagoshima have taught her that life... ...Isn't actually an anime. She finally looks back to aru and says, as if being reminded thanks to Lilian. Or more accurately, having a better idea of what to say thanks to Lilian. "You and the Dame Commander--are you a lot alike?" She seems to think so. "...I think, um--well 'being tired' can be addictive, kind of like shooting the people you hate with your mouth laser." ''The crash isn't the end, it's just the stumble.'' "Oh you mean--you don't have to crash into stuff? It's kind of fun though, in a weird way??" She skates to the other side, eyes open this time and thumps to the other far wall--at least she doesn't fall this time since she's ready for it. ''She liked this, huh?'' "Mhm mhm mhm." Love knows this if nothing else, looking to Petra. "It's okay, it's okay! It's a lot like normal skating--" Love starts moving along the wall, though she's not holding herself by it. "But if you ask me, the crashing is part of the fun."
Hamada Haru	//You and the Dame Commander--are you a lot alike?// Haru shifts uncomfortably in response to Love's question. "There's a lot about that that isn't mine to share. There are similarities. I had it easier than her, by a lot. But there's... overlap. Shared thought-spaces, and pain points. A dissatisfaction with anything shy of perfect, at all times... or maybe a belief that not being perfect will always end in something really tragic. Sorry, it's hard to put into words." "Why?"
Ritsuka Fujimaru	"But not having to reinvent every single thing is why we have brains like we do." "Philosophy and ice skating? Never thought I'd see the day, but-" Jeanne jolts briefly, but using that hunching technique saves her again (and makes her go silent for another few seconds). "... First time for many things today, I guess. If only more humans were so inclined to learn from the past instead of beating their chests at carving a circle." In time, Jeanne would be able to get it together enough to get back to learning how to skate properly, perhaps even come up with an impressive move or two of her very own. Xion coming up from behind her gives her much less time to get it together, and she in fact gets it less together than she did before, complete with a confused noise once Xion takes her hand. "Uh? Oh! I... I've got this. O-of course I've got this!" To her credit, Jeanne's actually retained quite a bit of what Haru had shown/directed her to see from Madeleine and from hunching over for who knows how long. She might not have the luxury of hunching over balance better with Xion straightening her back out, but she does feel herself brimming with more confidence after that encouragement, further guidance, and that last . "Feeling it out, hm? Ah, yes. Hamada mentioned that earlier, too. If we put all of that together with this, then.. Watch this!" With that confident declaration uttered, Jeanne has no choice but to truly show off: She lets go of the bars entirely from her free hand, just holding onto Xion's while skating forward with all the speed of an old person going for a jog. With some careful shifting of her weight and her legs, Jeanne's even able to turn while maintaining her balance, albeit still turning slowly enough that she's likely to draw a circle that's only a little smaller than half of the entire rink. "Hmph! It really was that easy to figure out... And soon, I'll be moving just as well as you did." Jeanne boasts with a chin-raising grunt and smug aura, nodding firmly at Xion while she goes off to help someone else with the impromptu skating lesson day. As proud as she looks, though, that soon turns into a narrow-eyed stare when she notices Ritsuka and Mash laughing and skating along slowly through the rink, already leaving the bars behind in less than a minute of entering the rink. They're still stumbling every now and then, but they do seem to be taking to skating relatively painlessly even with the occasional spills. "Miss Jeanne was right... This really is easy!" "Right? We should've come out sooner. Hey, there she is right now." If nothing else, Jeanne chasing Ritsuka and Mash around the rink is pretty good practice for learning how to accelerate and turn properly.
Xion	Lilian's arrival is one that Xion only catches on the double-back after Jeanne, having taken Petra's hand and begun to lead her lightly around the rink. Again, Xion straightens back at the base of bomber jacket, the perfect player two to steady fumbling steps and provide an anchor point even kinesthetically, just on touch and balance. The wobbling deer state of Petra is one Xion does her best to correct and by the time she forgets to be scared of the ice to dash to the railing for Lilian, Xion transitions her 'oh? you could always? are you playing me?' giggle of honest laughter follows her eyes up past the rail to Lilian putting on her skates and Xion's heart skips a few beats and then gets right on to pumping double-time to make up for lost thumps. "Oh! You made it! It's--" Xion begins, cutting to the entrance to the emptied rink, frowning only slightly when Haru catches her -- distracted, but visibly a little wounded -- skating to the railing herself to lean and wait and talk and not be so showingly present. She was actually here for the mid pizza and the sugary lemonade and corn dogs and a nowhere ice rink that was kept up by love and location and momentum. She wasn't here for the wake of memories, but... ... It seemed like she set it up anyway. "You shouldn't be surprised at all, Lilian, that I managed to drag everyone out to some preposterous place with fast food for friends. I'm just glad there's more friends that showed up." Xion answers honestly, looking over Petra's shoulder at Jeanne's 'watch this!' with grand interest in the progress, and a firm faith. "You're doing great holding back too! I know how strong you are, but remember to glide!" She coaches from the rail, before leaning over to Petra's ear: "Hey. I'm serious about ripping up your para-self. It's not good for you. Trust me. Coming to terms with your bare heart is something you seem to keep picking up pieces to show off, don't you? Don't show off by stabbing and kicking and spitting on them."
Lilian Rook	'She doesn't even mind if you do.'     "Exactly. It's dangerous to get involved with that." --what?     'What the fuck?! Why is this so hard!'     "Because it requires, grace, focus, self-awareness, and ideally a hint of elegance, and you have none of those things at all~" Lilian says. She stands up from tying her skates from off the rink, dangerously energetic, to the point of a little bounce. The walk to the ice from there, short as it is, should be comedically naive. It's no different from her wearing heels instead. A tiny pulse of propulsion magic, and Lilian skips holding the rinkside entirely. She twirls casually as she first kicks off, leaving motes of black static swirling around her waist as she passes Petra.     "You cling to earth to get anywhere. Better than most at rejecting it for a short time, but you rely completely on the Silver to move without it. So of course you can't skate on your first try." she says, gliding away from Petra in reverse, arms behind her back. "You don't have a sufficient grasp of the motion of cutting."     '... Yeah. I'd really like to see what she's like when she's not so scared all the time.'     "You're free to come and visit her later, if you like." says Lilian. "Personally, I'd like to see what she remembers of you too."     'Because that would mean... yeah. That something did it to her.'     Lilian rolls her eyes. Her ankle turns to curve her away, looking back towards the rink entrance. "No you idiot. Because then she'd remember everything I showed and told her yesterday." She glides by Petra one more time with an expectant look. Just the slightest motion is enough to keep her going as far as anyone else would need their whole bodyweight for. "You know, I seldom ever get to skate for anything. I wonder why? It's a 'traditional' hobby, so I never received any complaints about it." she says. "Honestly, if skates worked without ice, I can't see any reason I'd ever walk. Feet are sort of a consolation prize, haha."     'And these aren't ours. The place lends them'     Lilian looks at Haru about exactly as he'd expect.     "Is that . . . sanitary?"     'I think you're trying to be better. I wish you'd do less harm. We'll probably beat each other up eventually.'     Lilian raises an eyebrow, but it's clearly a gesture of reflexive surprise. She curls her fingers in front of her mouth to not betray anything else. "Well, don't worry about it. Not that I think you will, though." she says. "Beating her up, that is. I beat her up for fun."     'I'm sorry you didn't get the chance. I think I just got lucky,'     Lilian looks away, so that she can see where she's going, as she speeds up along the ring wall. She wears a forced smile in the direction of the windows. "You deserved her trust. That's all." Lilian says. "It's only natural that she couldn't be happy around someone trying to be as perfect as I was."     'You and the Dame Commander--are you a lot alike? ...I think, um--well 'being tired' can be addictive'     The absurdity of the following thought has nothing to do with why Lilian looks at Love by reflex. She turns side-on, leaning sharply, circling around the ring wall in thought.     "What does that mean?" Lilian asks. "I've never heard it before."     'You shouldn't be surprised at all, Lilian, that I managed to drag everyone out to some preposterous place with fast food for friends.'     "Sorry, sorry~ My bile fascination with old suburbia's idea of collective entertainment is older than my familiarity with your evolving tastes." Lilian says. Glancing between her and Qetra, as the topic continues, Lilian says, with such lack-of-gravity that it conveys she doesn't even believe the two topics are related, "I could have mine stab and kick and spit on hers, if it helps."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Stars, Madeleine. That thing is a damn menace!"     "That- oh!" Madeleine finally notices that the puppy's gotten away from her. She chases it down, though there are no corners to corner it in, and scoops it up into her arms. The huntress kicks off again and finds herself keeping pace with Lilian and Love.     "Dame Commander! Good of you to join us. It's a pleasure to see you, especially when the circumstances aren't 'the world needs saving again'." The ice-puppy in Madeleine's arms squirms up to lick at her cheek, and she laughs - the Excrucian is clearly having a good time.     Conversation turns to Meika, and Madeleine's smile dims a little. "Has- she's lost her memories? That's... all of them? Dreadful. Even the Excrucians I've known with curses like that didn't lose *everything*, not permanently." Her expression has almost fully soured, now. "I hope we find whatever did this to her. It has a lot to answer for."
Hamada Haru	//Well, don't worry about it. Not that I think you will, though. Beating her up, that is. I beat her up for fun.// Haru looks at Lilian. "Not sure why I'd be worried about it," he admits. "But I don't really want to. It just seems like the sort of thing that could happen eventually." //Is that . . . sanitary?// He wants to say 'don't worry about it' so badly. Lips curving into a faint grin, he replies, "I deconstructed and reconstructed them to address that problem. They're fine. But no, it's usually pretty gross. They do it with bowling alleys, too. Same problem." //That's... all of them?// "All of them pertaining to being a magical girl, as I understand it. I don't know her actual condition, though," he offers. Haru's gaze slides back to Xion. The wounded expression from just a moment ago is what he's looking for. He doesn't linger if there isn't a hint of it re-emerging, but the whole exchange is still enough to make the grin slip off of his expression.
Xion	Xion remains on the bar when Petra bounces off of it to join Lilian on the ice, lingering under Qetra on the stands, chewing on the response from Lilian given confident and true. Would she? Like Exigent Serenity to appear and step on Qetra? Stab and kick and spit?     Xion settles with her shoulders braced against the bar for stability while her hands pull back her black bangs slick. After doing so, a few bangs lift, antenna-like, to hang s backwards-arched. "No wonder I went right to talking like Larxene at you. Well, no." She raises her voice to be heard as Lilian speeds past. "I think I'll pass on the exhibition match at the rink - we've only got the place rented for another short bit, and I think it'd take longer than Haru paid for to have Serenity be satisfied for coming all the way out here to this cool bucket. Even if I think she might like fresh corn dogs. They're *really* good, like, straight from the fryer into mustard!"     Shaking out her head and shoving off the wall, Xion takes to the ring to slice in quickly, lightly laughing and pumping her arms from catching up to smooth out with long strokes and fall into pace. "I'm glad Lilian and I made the same reference about skating, but it's *so* easy to think of them as using blades." She admits, before trailing down to hum softly at the matter of memories.     "I'm sure that even if something important is lost for a while, with love, Meika can get it back - can get something beautiful there." The noirette declares. "It's not like there's any lack of love in the world for them, is there?"     Deeply rhetorical. The whole thing had been about her from the start, even if Xion didn't know it quite as exactly.
Angela	''Why?'' "Eheh..." Love manages. "I don't know if there is a ''Why''?" She isn't sure how to answer that question anyway. "You shouldn't share a lady's secrets though, so good on you for--not doing that!" There's this sense that she has a tendency to push herself to be upbeat as part of her magical girl ideal but she is definitely making an active effort to express that right now rather than just sort of letting it come naturally. She gives Lilian a long look when she talks about ice skating like she's teaching someone how to wield a blade in, yes, an anime. It makes ice skating sound a lot less pedestrian than she found it even with the metaphor of it being like flying--but it's because of that flying metaphor in the fist place that the phrasing of 'clinging to earth to get anywhere' does strike a cord with her. Is she clinging to the earth right now? Maybe. She could fly right now for real if she wanted. But you can't just turn into a giant winged serpent with blacked out eyes without causing a stir so she doesn't. She hesitates at the idea of visiting the current Meika. She could, she could in theory and just try to be her friend again right? But she's so inherently weird, she wonders if that would be weird for her. Plus she doesn't trust herself to keep it quiet the relationship they used to have, to be quite honest. She'll think about it. ''Because then she'd remember everything I showed and told her yesterday.'' "Oh!" She asks stupidly. "What'd you tell her?" ... "Oh right, probably secret stuff." She knows about secret stuff! Secret bases! ''What does that mean?'' "Ummm..." Love says, because she's not entirely sure what it means herself it just sort of felt real in her head. "Oh! Like... when you're on the internet and you see how awful things can be and you get mad and you maybe write a post about it cause you're so mad, but then you keep scrolling over and over and you're kind of getting really into it even though it's making you unhappy, maybe. And it's not like it's unfair to be unhappy, exactly just like it's not unfair to drink coffee but uh this is being tired so I guess it's anti-coffee...?" She has kind of lost her own thread and gives a hapless shrug while movig around the ice.
Petra Soroka	Dark eyes flick from Xion's face, to Petra's, and back again. He doesn't say anything, but the intensity of his gaze increases exponentially. Then it slides off of Petra entirely.     "Ah--" It's not the glare at her, but the flicker over to Xion, that makes Petra stop cold and circle around back to Haru (involving a near-fall on the ice as she does). It doesn't take a genius to figure out what the association Haru drew might be, and especially not for Petra, given the particular topic. "Uh, not... like that."     "Like... she's a..." Petra gestures helplessly for the words, wobbling and taking her hands off the railing to do it. "She's like *this* on purpose. She's, like... a 'passive' actor, or... well, you know, she's literally my reflection. Sorry, I don't mean anything bad by it, she's just not really like that. She doesn't have any, aspirations or anything that she wants for its own sake. She..."     Petra holds up a finger in realization, thinking she has the right words now. "She's sort of like a doll. As in, she only 'acts' by 'being acted upon', and she hates the idea of being anything else. She's..." Not like a sword that holds keychains, since swords have a particular meaning that Petra doesn't understand due to the lack of one in her hand at birth, but, "Like a key ring, sort of. Right, Qetra?"     "Ahaha, I don't know! You talked way too much, ajoeto~ and I don't know which one's the right answer for being a good girl for Xion." "What--?!" "Oh you mean--you don't have to crash into stuff? It's kind of fun though, in a weird way??"     While skating laps with Xion, Petra veers towards Love, wobbling as she giggles into her fist. "Oh my gosh. You're like a human pinball. No, no, I think I get it, right? As long as it doesn't hurt too bad, it's just a sudden burst of excitement and-- and being kind of silly. Maybe that's my problem actually." "I'm just glad there's more friends that showed up."     Petra nods in a bit of dreamy agreement with Xion, radiating fondness in the slow low-energy beat of Lilian getting equipped for the rink. "I'm really glad. Between this, and that camping trip, too...." Lilian having a good time at low stakes social outings is a moral imperative that Petra has been clinging to ever since its absence was made known to her. "Hey. I'm serious about ripping up your para-self."     Petra exhales slowly, giving the due time for Xion's words to sink in and be processed before marring them with a 'but'. "... I don't, like, hate her, at all. I mean, it'd sort of be silly for me to, right? But there's just, like... some things she doesn't have that I worked really hard to make sure I do, and one of those things is... 'Petra', I guess? That's just how she is."
Petra Soroka	"Because it requires, grace, focus, self-awareness, and ideally a hint of elegance, and you have none of those things at all~"     Lilian's twirl leaves Petra dizzy-eyed and enraptured, mouth slightly agape and her bullying defenses entirely lowered. How *could* she argue, really? Instead she just dumbly nods; obviously she doesn't have them, in comparison.     "Then-- then I'll just learn!" Petra, fired up and ready to put into practice all of the things that she's learned from Haru and Xion's tutoring, pushes off from the railing and sails over to the other side of the rink to immediately crash into the wall. "Ack-- I-I'm just trying the Love method first, I think." "No you idiot. Because then she'd remember everything I showed and told her yesterday."     "Oh. That makes sense. I guess-- huh. I really wonder how much of my talk with her will stick. I mean... she *knew* about me for-- for a while." "Honestly, if skates worked without ice, I can't see any reason I'd ever walk. Feet are sort of a consolation prize, haha."     In defiance of Posters everywhere, Petra nods in agreement, trying to slowly decrease the frequency of her tumbles when doing loops. "Feet kind of suck. They're meant for, like, the most ugly, boring type of movement, and it's all they're good at. It's just about balancing and stuff. The-- the Beauty of Ash didn't even have them." "Beating her up, that is. I beat her up for fun."     That's normal. To Haru, she says, "I guess it might. We do have matching thingies. The transteam guns." Then circling back to an earlier topic for a moment, "... Though I'd kind of rather not too. It's sort of hard enough for me to be 'worth existing near' *without* a fight." "I could have mine stab and kick and spit on hers, if it helps."     Petra turns to Lilian, eyes wide and warning with the dire knowledge that she picked up from a dream-- that was *totally* real, by the way, which probably only makes it worse. "L-Lilian, that's--" She's cut off before she can say anything to the contrary, though.     "You *could*?" Qetra is alerted by this suggestion from Lilian so dramatically that she instinctually scurries over to give her full attention, like slamming open the door of a room and rushing inside. Here, though, of course, there is ice, and Qetra does not have skates, so when she tries to make a sliding entrance she trips over her feet and slams face first into the middle of the rink while surrounded by people with blades on their feet.     Removing herself from this situation isn't her top priority, though. She springs back up to sitting with a bloody nose and stares at Lilian with practically sparkling eyes. "Promise?" Petra, passing by, considers kicking her on reflex, but both out of respect to Xion and to not cleave open her body double's head with an ice skate she resists.
Hamada Haru	//I don't know if there is a ''Why''?// "Okay," Haru says. He's stayed mostly stationary for a while now, hovering near the edge of the rink. But then Love goes and clarifies what she meant about something... //Oh! Like... when you're on the internet and you see how awful things can be and you get mad and you maybe write a post about it cause you're so mad, but then you keep scrolling over and over and you're kind of getting really into it even though it's making you unhappy, maybe.// A heavy sigh sends Haru's hair drifting into a faintly disordered pattern to one side. He jerks his head towards Lilian, "We just got accused of doomscrolling reality." His gaze falls to the icy floor beneath him though, and he admits, "Even if I am, I can't say that I know what else to do." His sightline is drawn back up by Petra's approach. For all that she has to say in trying to defuse the perception that just passed, Haru just ends up letting most of it drift through him like fog. Once she's done speaking, he says, "I don't like it when people are nasty to Xion. It wasn't intentional, so I'm not going to hate you for it, but I'm not going to pretend that I liked it or any of what you just said made up for it. Anyway, I'm not the person you accidentally took a swing at." It's at this point that Haru hauls himself up onto the edge of the rink and twists so that his skates aren't blade-in against the railing. //I guess it might. We do have matching thingies. The transteam guns.// "... That makes me want to do it less, because I feel like I'm being prompted by fate, or something," he grumbles.
Petra Soroka	"Anyway, I'm not the person you accidentally took a swing at."     "-- Right." Stop, pivot, hesitating for a second when getting her balance back under control with her skates at an angle. "Sorry, Xion. I have my thoughts-- and, uh, para-selves-- on this kind of thing but I need to be more careful when exposing other people to them. I don't mean to take swings at you *or* Qetra."
Xion	Slowing from her loops, Xion pulls to a stop, turning to face Petra. Her arms rest, swaying, at her side, but cross before more than a few moments pass, cold when not in motion. "Qetra is someone that's pretty new to me, but she struck me as an honest part of your heart, maybe even a reflection of your Heart itself, without Will to bind it. And if it is..." Xion closes her eyes and draws in a nasal breath. When she opens her eyes, she's looking away, and brings her attention back on Petra with a saccade snap. "You definitely should treat it... firmly, and kindly. A heart can only beat or die. You've held the hand: is Qetra alive? She seems alive to me. So..." Xion sighs, off it, shaking her head and losing interest over heartbeats. "Thank you. For apologizing." Xion lifts a smile to Haru - for caring, himself, and being kind to her - that shifts back to Petra while the noirette wiggles on the ice. "You do need to be more careful, but you came and you've been pretty good, so between you and Qetra -- who will dash right off after Lilian and stumble around without a care -- I think I'll just accept it'll be a little bit of a mess for now. I hope it'll be less of a mess tomorrow." "Keep trying, Petra. People notice that more than the supervillain stuff, it seems like." Xion encourages gently, and and passes the blonde on the right as she skates off to join Love and Lilian in the roundabout group.
Lilian Rook	'Dame Commander! Good of you to join us. It's a pleasure to see you, especially when the circumstances aren't 'the world needs saving again'.'     "That's twice now, Cadrasteia." Lilian says, back to that cocky arms-behind-back glide. "The first time was camping, if I recall. Relatively speaking, you seem to have a knack for being where I deign to alight from heaven." Her smile is honest, and thus short-lived. "Not all of them. Just all the ones that matter to her."     'It just seems like the sort of thing that could happen eventually.'     "You're an astonishingly normal sort of man." Lilian says. She always says 'ordinary' when she means something else.     'I deconstructed and reconstructed them to address that problem. They're fine.'     She even jokingly narrows her eyes at him. "Suspiciously normal."     'I think I'll pass on the exhibition match at the rink - we've only got the place rented for another short bit, and I think it'd take longer than Haru paid for to have Serenity be satisfied for coming all the way out here to this cool bucket.'     Lilian laughs in spite of herself. She shouldn't, and so she wants to even more. "Well for one thing, as much as I'd like to, it's not as if I can just let her exist whenever I want. Outside of the circumstance that caused it in the first place, it's been only Lampport's horrid wish machine and Lobotomy Corporation's narrative inversion collapse." She glances at Qetra out of the corner of her eye, barely looking over her shoulder, grinning as she skates. "And two, it wouldn't be a match."     'I'm glad Lilian and I made the same reference about skating, but it's *so* easy to think of them as using blades.'     "Oh my, really?" Lilian blinks, hand to her lips. "Of course, you'd be the obvious choice, but I hadn't quite expected to be so predictable today." Her expression is only contemplative, but Lilian begins to learn further and further into her slow turn until well beyond the point she should have fallen, and right up to the edge of where she must. "Perhaps I'm still preoccupied after yesterday?"     The moment next is a harsh scrape and a flurry of shredded ice that almost seems like a collapse; where she desynchronizes her left foot, pulls in her arm, lets her right side extend past, and gouges the ice with the toe point of the skate directly under her. Inertia in line with gravity is bound up in a dizzyingly sharp spin; the ice is deeply slashed in a half-circle around her; the surface needs refinishing especially where the tip of her skate blade sinks a half-inch into it; and Lilian comes to a lazy, on-purpose stop.     She remains balanced on half a square centimeter of metal whilst her hair and her skirt catch up with her just after, and then smoothly rocks back down to a stable stance again, getting back into her glide. It has the air of tilting a chair back as far as possible. "You are, though." she says, as she slides past. "The edge and flat, contact and brace, and the simple, elegant angles involved . . . How you can feel, control, every little bit of your energy by letting it orbit around a single absolute plane and point . . . If you already grasp the true appeal of blades, then it's a universal one, isn't it?"     "Nothing else has such a clean division; between its sides and surfaces, you and it, the world it's touched and hasn't, before and after. You get it, right, Xion?" One glance is enough to know; to see confirmation or rejections.     "A blade is something that does exactly what you want it to and nothing that you don't; something hard and pure and simple that it makes the rest of you feel clearer against it. Nothing so tiresomely soft and cumbersome and complicated as legs and feet, or even arms and hands. Using one is the only art with four variables."
Lilian Rook	'Ack-- I-I'm just trying the Love method first, I think.!'     Lilian smirks at some private joke as she coasts away. "People like skating because it's cleaner, purer, easier, than running or walking; it's entertaining because it's a taste of an ideal. The little part of your brain that lights up the moment the scissors cut your hair, or when the sewing shears go through the cloth; it's the same one that's fascinated by sword fights in movies and surgery in videos. 'Balanced on a razor's edge' is the most breathtaking way for something to be. A blade is fundamentally an unearthly tool."     Lilian pivots to spray shaved ice on Petra on purpose. "People just find they don't suit them because they aren't willing to earn it. At the level most people are at, 'using a blade' is as chaotic and difficult and unpredictable as anything else. They just project their own physical limits into the tool, and stain all the bright silver into titanium grey."     'What'd you tell her?'     "Secrets." Lilian says at the same time as Love, nodding understandingly in the process. "But the sort that are just inopportune truths." A wisp of fog slips from Lilian's lips as she circles the wall, eyes closed. "I saved it until the last minute, so that it wouldn't matter what I said. And . . ."     'Oh. That makes sense. I guess-- huh. I really wonder how much of my talk with her will stick. I mean... she *knew* about me for-- for a while.'     "Well. The way she was, at the end, was . . ." Lilian squeezes her eyes tighter shut. A quiet gasp of frustration lingers where she breathed it. "Like 'why didn't you tell me sooner?' As if it all could have gone so much differently if I'd just never listened to her once and always did the opposite of whatever special need she had. Hah . . . It was actually fucking bullshit, now that I think more about it. It's like the thing she wanted me to be was what I usually am; but I was the only one willing to take five seconds to what her situation needed."     'Promise?'     Lilian leans forward, hands on her knees, as she approaches Qetra. Like she's going to lean down and ruffle her hair for being so cute. Instead, she catches her in the neck with her arm as she accelerates past. "Why are you even asking me? It'd obviously be up to her to decide anyways."     'The-- the Beauty of Ash didn't even have them.'     "Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
Lilian Rook	'Oh! Like... when you're on the internet and you see how awful things can be and you get mad and you maybe write a post about it cause you're so mad, but then you keep scrolling over and over and you're kind of getting really into it even though it's making you unhappy, maybe. And it's not like it's unfair to be unhappy, exactly just like it's not unfair to drink coffee but uh this is being tired so I guess it's anti-coffee...?'     Lilian tries her very, very best, not to crack up and snort through her nose laughing. She haggles it briskly down to a sharp cough against the back of her hand.     'We just got accused of doomscrolling reality.'     "Ahhh . . . So close!" Lilian says. "It's actually dooming reality-- no 'scroll'-- that I'm addicted to~" Her smug hairflip game while in linear motion is just crazy. "That's almost right, though. Being angry is simple. There are so few 'wrong' ways to feel cross about things; you have a reason and that makes you the heroine, which cleans up and clarifies whatever you feelings want to do. And anger is such an easy feeling to sustain, besides. The fact that it wears you out like nothing else; that it leads you to making even more trouble for yourself after . . ."     "Hmm . . . I suppose cynicism is like that also. 'World weariness' in general. It's relieving to give up on everyone else, and unburdening to expect nothing and know better. It gets hard to function without it, sometimes." Lilian says to Love. "Perhaps you're right? My efforts with cutting down my 'tiredness' intake have felt like kicking an absolutely horrid addiction, from time to time."
Hamada Haru	//Xion lifts a smile to Haru - for caring, himself, and being kind to her// Haru lies back on the wall of the skating rink, waving at Xion in response to that smile. An acknowledgment-- not much else. He tosses his head to get his hair out of his face, crossing his legs and bobbing the toe of one iceskate in a manner that looks a lot more perilous than it is. //You're an astonishingly normal sort of man. Suspiciously normal.// "Yep. That's me. Love going home to my normal Tokyo apartment building that doesn't have a guy from the future locked up in the basement to prevent him from killing the wrong baby hitler," he says, dully. //That's almost right, though. Being angry is simple. There are so few 'wrong' ways to feel cross about things; you have a reason and that makes you the heroine, which cleans up and clarifies whatever you feelings want to do. And anger is such an easy feeling to sustain, besides. The fact that it wears you out like nothing else; that it leads you to making even more trouble for yourself after . . .// The bobbing of Haru's foot stops. "... It's not right, but it's not wrong enough. Sitting here thinking about it... I do think I like being tired, in a way. I wouldn't call it an addiction. If you work out, you're tired after, right? It's not the greatest. Take a drink of water though, and suddenly it's a lot nicer, in a strange sort of way. When I'm tired, I get on the radio and listen. Talk, a little. Look up at the stars and think. Being tired... isn't it just the consequences of doing something worthwhile?" He leaves the question floating on the air, shuts his eyes, and lapses into silence.