Scene #9206:

Owner	Pose
Rita Ma	Apple Tree Island's artificial warpgate is in a room atop the beached former Union Busan. Petra's stood in that room before. Back then it wasn't tilted ten degrees; wasn't shot through with tree-roots and gently blue tendrils. Daylight pokes through a hole the Queen made. One of her urchin-like spikes still lays in a corner. A heavy door leads out to the deck. To the left, the ocean; to the right, a beautiful crescent-shaped island wrapped around a caldera, tenderly sprouting green and stirring with white flowers. Like flowers from up here, too, makeshift buildings have sprung up into a delightful little town buzzing with life. Kids play in the caldera's deep, still pool, unworried by the huge shapes that swim beneath them. In the distance, on one of the crescent's tips, there's a dark rectangular monument to the battle Petra fought in. Above and ahead is the grand apple tree, itself woven with those tendrils, shattering through the old garden dome that she'd seen once or twice in its hundred-foot-plus majesty. There are no apples this time of year, but there are pink-and-white flowers that wave and shed in the breeze. Honeysuckle-and-rose scents overpower salt or metal. Rita sits past the tree for a while, dangling her legs off the aircraft carrier's front edge and finding refuge in her old usual dress. Talking to Petra is one thing- it's nice. Talking to Petra is something else. The realistic best-case scenario is that Petra saw something on the internet and wants to finally drop their charade. The worst case is... a vague picture in her head about Petra breaking the news of magically incurable cancer, or maybe blowing to smithereens in front of her, or maybe hurting Liza, halfway forms and then gets waved away. It's a relief when she finally hears that heavy metal door open. Only a moment after Petra leaves the warpgate room, Rita circles around the tree's trunk and waves brightly, forgetting almost all her worries. "Petra! It's your first time here, right?" With Petra surrounded by all these pretty things she helped to bring about, there's one more: that Rita can still smile.
Petra Soroka	Talking to Rita is nice. Talking to Rita is... impossible, really. Which is a significant part of the problem that brings Petra to Apple Tree Island today, but not all of it. It's one of those things that she has to steel herself for, because A Talk carries the kind of weight that makes all the time leading up to it that much more tense, but that simultaneously makes her feel vaguely guilty for having an association like that just for visiting Rita's home. And that's... another part of the problem, but still not all of it. The way Petra is dressed when she steps through the warpgate isn't much like how she was dressed that first time they hung out on Tellus Station, unlike Rita, but it's constructed with a similar amount of care. An open long-sleeve button-up replaces the cardigan she wore before, over top a slightly cropped blouse that exposes a slice of birthmark-and-sunburst-tattoo splotched midriff. Straight cut jeans and sneakers, a beanie in case the ocean air makes it cold, and a corded necklace that hangs below the black and gold collar she's always got on. The particular quality that's changed about her fashion in the past two years is... pretty easy to place, actually. The formless stress that stepping through the warpgate causes her, from recognizing the room on a subconscious level and matching smell and shape memory to the imminent massive scale battles that happened nearly every previous time she's been here, dissipates when she lingers for a moment longer to take in the changes. The roots are soothing, the tentacles are something her eyes still belatedly flick away from looking at too hard, despite her reason for coming here. It's important to not get lazy just because the end is coming up soon. "Petra! It's your first time here, right?" Petra's worries don't lessen at all from seeing Rita, but they're dwarfed in comparison. She lifts her hand up for a smile and wave, and then hooks her thumbs into her pockets to walk alongside with her. Looking around at the town, enthralled at the formation of it from nothing and how normal it feels despite that, Petra nods and takes a few atmosphere-absorbing seconds to reply. "Yup. I mean, I heard about it plenty, from people talking, and Shajo and Nonon's wedding and everything, so I knew it was nice, but... it's really nice. It's been like, basically exactly a year now, right?" "Uh-- do you wanna walk around for a bit? I haven't seen any of it at all before, so..." Petra is dangerously close to just settling into a moody slouch on the railing for a Serious Chat, but seeing Rita's demeanor gives her enough of a shot of energy to push past that. Actually, it would be more pleasant to be wandering around with and through beautiful things, even if it's a serious topic! While walking down to the island, Petra sighs and pushes her hair aside with a finger. "God, you know... I feel like this might've been the first thing that I ever fought for making better in a way that wasn't... fucked up somehow. Like, this result, getting here, with you back home and everyone safer and happier, is something that I wanted to help do the first time I came to the Busan, and now I'm happy it actually happened."
Rita Ma	A belated, relieved, further delight blooms on Rita's face, straightening her up with shut eyes and a tiny flounce of her hair. So it's not so bad that she can't smile... "Mmmm! The one-year thing was about a week ago," she says, offering Petra her arm. There's one shift in Rita's fashion: she's sewn pockets into that jacket of hers, just a tiny bit sportier. "But it was just a bunch of seaweed wine at Mr. Mao's. You didn't miss anything." Since she's a half-foot taller now, she's probably had to re-fit everything, but that's the invisible kind of work. "Uh-- do you wanna walk around for a bit?" Third surprise, second relief. "I'd love to, Petra! You helped make it, so yo're one of the people who earned this happy ending, right? Even if it isn't an 'ending' for you and me... it's here waiting for us forever." "Let's just--" She peeps over the edge. Then looks between the fifty-foot drop, and Petra, and the drop again, and Petra again, and smoothly segues to: "Um, the stairs are over here!" And so they go... ... down the stairs, through unmarked corridors Rita still knows like the back of her hand, and out through an oceanward breach in the Busan's side... ... along the shore, where the volcano gently slopes down into the deep, and where sea turtles swim among seaweed... ... through the outskirts of town, where seaweed is hung up to dry, and a couple of mermaids from Angela's world can be fleetingly glimpsed... ... into the town square, sheet-metal buildings lining packed dirt streets, where every tenth person seems to want to fondly hassle Rita and someone in a diving suit tries to fist-bump Petra... ... by Rita's little two-story slanted-roof house, where Bota waves to her through a window while chopping something, and she waves back... ... and end, if Petra doesn't stop them anywhere first, at a quiet section of the caldera's edge, in the shadow of the hill the monument stands on. Rita sits on a little ledge, feet dangling just above the water's surface. She palms a couple of grilled fish skewers off on Petra, having none for herself, and stares down into the deep. A couple of boats are docked nearby; the kids are leaving, laughing, from the caldera's other edge. The water is so so clear that it feels like more of a drop than the aircraft carrier's deck was. Still you can't see the bottom; the smooth-walled lava tube descends until it's overtaken by clear dark blue. "Mmmm. I know. It feels like the first thing I succeeded at, too," she says, almost in the tone of a joke, but achingly sincere. "Getting to do something big like that... it makes it easier to believe in yourself, I think. Before, it's easy to think of 'wanting something and getting it' as something that only happens to other people, right?" She stretches down and kicks up a little spray of water with her leg. Like this, bracing for the Talk is almost bearable.
Petra Soroka	"Yeah... forever." For a moment, the complicated look Petra has while contemplating the idea of 'forever' and looking across the vista of the town briefly gives the idea that she's here to confess to Rita about her imminent evaporation into dust more credence. That isn't it, though-- Petra is basically always thinking about death or dying or ceasing to exist, but that isn't exactly what's on her mind at the moment, though her feelings about 'happy endings' are at least adjacent to that. "It's nice to know that there's a place out there now where things just won't get worse. Well, not within my lifetime at least, who knows about a hundred years from now. Er-- that's depressing for no reason; forget I said that, eheh." "Um, the stairs are over here!" Yippee! Stairs! At first, Petra is content to politely plod down them alongside Rita, like a normal person goes down stairs. A couple flights in, though, when it comes apparent that there's still a dozen more to go, Petra starts skipping more and more of the bottom stairs each landing, first hopping over the last one to thud on the next metal platform, and eventually building up to... "Alright, alright, alright. Okay. Hold on, I can totally do this, just watch--" Taking a running jump off of one landing, skidding her foot along the slightly-angled ship wall halfway down to get a physically-implausible wall running step that propels her the rest of the way to skip the whole flight of stairs. She lands with a loud CLANG that echoes all the way up and down the abandoned stairwell, makes a teeny noise of pain from the impact, and then gives Rita a reassuring thumbs-up that she's not hurt. An energetic Petra is a happy Petra, even in this context. Maybe especially in this context, because nothing they see while touring around Apple Tree Island does much to slow her down. She's got lots to babble about, from how even though she's lived her whole life on land it's still so incredible to see it here that it 'feels' new, to excitement at the sea turtles, and being sort of excitedly bemused at the fist bump since she can't see past the suit to recognize the person giving it to her but reciprocating it anyways. Bota gets a wave and a megaphone cupped-hand "Heeeey Bota!", after which she hesitates, then concludes that Rita's house definitely isn't the place to have this conversation. "Before, it's easy to think of 'wanting something and getting it' as something that only happens to other people, right?" "Mmmm." Petra hums, down-pitch, while chewing on a bite of fish. She dangles her legs alongside Rita, one hand planted on the ground, precariously holding all the fish skewers between her fingers in a fist (looking closely, her knuckles are turning white from the effort of not letting any of them slip out). "For me it wasn't... succeeding. It would've been 'the first' even if we didn't-- augh, even if we didn't succeed. Just..." Petra pauses for a moment, then uncorks a couple droplets of morphmetal from the bottle on her hip, letting them wrap around the skewers to hold them for her. She flomphs onto her back, and a skewer telekinetically lowers down to be in mouth-range hands free. "I think about, sometimes, how weird it is that I can talk about things that happened or things I felt 'a year ago', and it doesn't... come with any guilt or dread or anything. That, a year ago, I was still like the person I am today, and wasn't doing anything I'd hate now. I can't say that about anything two years ago, or anything ever before that, except for... um, except for helping you."
Petra Soroka	Petra lifts up her head a bit to tear the last piece of fish off of her skewer, and then, amoeba-like, the silver blob wrapped around its base just starts to slowly eat its way up the stick until it disappears. She drops both of her arms on the grass above her head, hands splayed out and stretching kind of like a dog on its back to absorb the sun. "And, um... that makes me a little happy. But it's also..." She sits back up, and puts her hands on her knees, turning her face to the side to look at Rita. "But I'm still definitely not much like the person I was two years ago. Like, in a lot of ways. Really, most ways, I hope." "And the thing we agreed on back then... I guess, I've been thinking about it. Because crossing your eyes can let you see the idea of a rough painting better, but you'll still miss the differences when they change." Petra laughs awkwardly and rubs the back of her head. "Er, eheheh, that was kind of dorky. But you know what I mean. Like, I want to be a good friend, but...."
Rita Ma	- - - - The scampering puts a dreamily fond look into Rita's eyes, though she's slower to follow. It almost banishes her bittersweet concern about 'a hundred years, when Petra's dead', but not quite. Thank goodness she's not an immortal vampire or anything. "Heyyyy, Petra!" Aw, so Bota does remember her! Probably bolstered by Rita's fond stories. But as she moves on, he just beams and returns to his work, lingeringly content. - - - - "Oh. Kana says that's because--" Rita's gaze placidly rests on the water, until the corner of her eye catches levitated and Silver-engulfed skewer, and then her eyes widen. She's seen a little of Petra's knacks like that before; never in peaceful enough circumstances, though. "... Um, she says that happens when you're growing really fast. The sooner you can be embarrassed of your old self, the faster you're growing, right? If that's true... two years ago... we must be growing about the same." She smiles her eyes shut again, opening with a tender appreciation about 'except for helping you'. "And the thing we agreed on back then..." Rita gracefully flumps backwards, landing on her side to look at Petra on her own level. Or, at least, she means to; having more height above the waist, she has to awkwardly scoot ledgeward a few inches to even up their gazes. Once she does, one of her patented queasily-warm smiles comes over her, and her hand tries to engulf Petra's to squeeze it. That's a long way from the worst thing a Talk could be. "I started to wonder," she says. "You've been really kind to me. In a way nobody else ever was. I needed that kind of kindness back then. It's a little scary to give it up, but... I don't think I need it anymore. Pretending to be normal isn't so important when you have people who love you anyway, right?" She tilts her head back at the village. "... But I haven't been hiding it very well, now. Did you just keep yourself from thinking about it? The ways you're not normal... I mean, the ones that are important to you... I still don't know much about them at all." A long, lazy moment passes. Rita loses track of where she was going with that. She squeezes Petra's hand a second time. It isn't hard to guess that she's savoring the last time she'll be this Rita to Petra. Maybe to any good friend. "... so, I guess you've been doing a lot more work than me. We can stop. As long as you're sure, too? It's not something I can ever take back."
Petra Soroka	"... Um, she says that happens when you're growing really fast. The sooner you can be embarrassed of your old self, the faster you're growing, right?" Petra snorts, and an idle twirl of her finger makes her borbles spin around in the air. "'Embarrassed' is really, really kind of understating it. Like, two years ago you were a good person. Two years ago I was an animal that should've been put down." Petra lets that comparison that she knows is at least a little funny somehow hang for a few seconds, and then coughs. "I mean, really. I've, like, changed since a year ago, still. What I mean is a little different from growing up. Like, my heart was built wrong. It's really not because of getting older that I got better, it's because of..." She raises her hand up to catch the morphmetal droplets in her palm, letting them drain down between her fingers and then coil around into little rings. "Well, you know. Lilian, of course." "Pretending to be normal isn't so important when you have people who love you anyway, right?" Petra makes a tight, wobbly smile, chewing on the inside of her lip. It's a lot less difficult to get a hold on her hand and squeeze now than it was two years ago. "... Yeah. I mean, I've been... a lot less invested in the idea of 'normal', too. There's people whose love I care about more now, that don't really love 'normal' people the same way. Normal means a lot more to me now than just, like... not being anything weird." A giggle slips out of her at Rita's question, the phrasing of it suddenly making it more obvious how silly she's been acting. Looking up at the sky, with Rita's hand on hers, she takes her time coming up with an answer, languidly appreciating that this was about the best this talk could've felt for both of them. "I mean... I'm pretty good at not thinking about things if I don't want to, ahaha. It's harder to think about things on purpose sometimes. But you know... yeah. Like, your brain doesn't process every bit of information you receive all the time; it's got little... shortcuts for deciding what's important, and what's not. If you just choose to, uh, tell those little processes in your brain what result they should spit out, then they'll do it, and you'll see what you're supposed to see and all. I mean, for the most part." Petra giggles again, and then blurts out, "Man, I'd be so good at being in a cult."
Petra Soroka	"The ways you're not normal... I mean, the ones that are important to you... I still don't know much about them at all." " Despite it contextually being something like praise, Petra's smile fades away quickly. She squeezes Rita's hand, and rolls partway onto her side to face her, squirming a bit to get comfortable. "I feel like that always ends up happening. That imbalance. I don't have any smartass reason for it, either, I just... like, if it's done, then it's done for both of us. I'd tell you whatever, too." With her free hand, Petra pokes and twirls at the grass in front of her face, eyes crossed to look at it instead of at Rita, because she's just a tiny bit flustered. "I don't even know if it was ever good for me to hide it all, but I guess it was still something I needed. I just needed some bad things back then." "We could stop." The 'but' is audible even before she says it. "But... if we did, I don't know if I'd ever be able to come to Apple Tree Island. I don't know how I'd... go to anything like the island's anniversary, because people would talk; or talk to your family; or be in... really most of the conversations you're in on the radio and stuff. I guess probably before, knowing would've created more distance than not knowing. But I don't really think that's true now."
Rita Ma	"Like, two years ago you were a good person. Two years ago I was an animal that should've been put down." Rita is sideways. It's hard for her eyes to pick a direction to be 'down'cast in. They manage anyway, with an open-mouthed barely-smiling grimace. For a moment, Rita envies Cure Glow's ability to make a perfectly mortified 'uwaaa... ahhhh...!' noise. It'd fill the pause. "People need bad things sometimes," she echoes back, when her eyes can meet Petra's again. It's not even said matter-of-factly, but with a deep-worn sympathetic warmth. That's her tribe. Her forehead thunks gently against Petra's. Murmuring, like the most desolate pillow-talk: "... You got it. People love to say stupid things like 'I accept you the way you are'. Or 'it doesn't change anything'. Trying to be good to me. I hated that. I could trust you to be 'bad'. But..." Rita sits up, just to scoot towards the caldera's two-foot ledge- and then slip down it with a quiet splash, pivoting back around to rest her crossed arms on land like she's hanging out at the edge of a pool. The state of her clothes is, evidently, no concern. She smiles up like a beguiling lake-fairy, if a little forlorn. "Having you close is more important than that. Definitely now. I think it always was. It's just that..." She struggles. "I try to be, enough like, a 'real person', that it's not a mistake to think I am. Sometimes blurry eyes help you see a big picture, right? I hate it when people treat me the exact same. But it's almost as bad to treat me as completely different." "I guess..." Her lips try to find the next syllable, and eventually sound it out. She bobs lower, mouth almost burbling against the water's surface. "Say you'll still think of me as 'Rita', and not just someone who wore her? I know you will. But it'll help a little, maybe."
Petra Soroka	Petra snickers fornlornly, at a dark joke played on 'everyone who isn't right here'. "I think being accepted the way I am is, like, maybe my least favorite thing in the universe. Like, oh my god, way to have zero standards or expectations for the people you spend time with; that's sure a ringing fucking endorsement of both of us." Forehead pressed against Rita's, Petra is suddenly stricken by an incredibly mundane worry. It hadn't crossed her mind before this particular meeting-- for maybe the first time, with a one on one meeting with Rita, but she can't ever say that out loud-- but Petra didn't pay any attention to how her breath smelled, for, just in case. She's abruptly self-conscious about her lack of mints, and because of that awkwardness, is forced to pay manual attention to her breathing, where the faint scent of blood radiates out of Rita's mouth as she talks. Petra tenses, then instinctively un-tenses, so that tensing isn't read as a negative response. Her mind automatically goes through the practiced sequence of blocking out the sensory information, recontextualizing it-- because sometimes that just happens after eating a lot of sushi!-- and packaging it into long-term memory as a insignificant event, and then fizzles out somewhere in the middle. She sighs and relaxes a bit more into Rita, un-clenching her lungs to take another quiet breath. "It's a tiny bit funny... that you were maybe the only person I wasn't 'bad' to back then. At least... less-bad." Heretra rolls onto her back, and then sits up when Rita does, like she's being pulled along by a string. She doesn't follow into the water though, of course-- the positioning, one on land and one in the water, facing each other and slightly separated, is a tonal indicator she can read off of Rita as easily as if it were written in a script. "... I'll still think of you as Rita. I promise." Petra faintly smiles and ducks her head to look at the water beneath the gap in her knees as they dangle over the edge of the caldera. "When it comes down to it, I mean... it's thinking of you as Rita that made me have to come over here. I know 'Rita' too well at this point to, um, think of a simpler, blurry image as you. I don't want to... 'expose the truth' about you. I want to know you better, on purpose, and, um, on our terms."
Rita Ma	Rita laughs, at first fondly and then just as forlornly as Petra. "I was bad to a lot of people back then, too," she admits with eyes averted. "Only you mostly didn't see it. ... I wonder if that's why you thought I was more grown-up than you, and why I thought you were more grown-up than me." That feels quaint now, though. They've both grown up now, maybe past the point of worrying about being grown-up. No more 'Miss'. "I don't want to... 'expose the truth' about you. I want to know you better, on purpose, and, um, on our terms." She reaches up to steal Petra's hand, connecting sea to land, and smiles with only slightly wavery eyes. "Okay. Thank you. I believe you. This is maybe... the first time it hasn't felt bad." She's a little melancholy, but perhaps only in the 'tender' way. "... Hold your breath, okay?" Planting a foot on the lava tube's wall, Rita pulls their connected arms taut, submerging herself and dragging Petra off the edge above her and-- down, down, down, down. Just deep enough that ears ache a little. Just deep enough the yellows and reds of sunlight don't penetrate. Before Petra can open her eyes or see through the bubbles, something squirms against her palm where it's gripped by Rita. "... You can look now. It's okay." It's Rita's voice in Petra's head. The feeling of it is a clammy near-miss of authority, crawling up the spinal cord instead of routing through the ears, but it's still unmistakeable. Below her is a faintly glowing shape that's hard to parse until her eyes focus. Juxtaposed against the black deep, what-used-to-be-Rita is unraveling in ribbons. Hair, clothes, and skin slowly stop pretending to be anything but slightly gelatinous blue tentacle-flesh. There, fingers. There, the red ribbon in her hair. Here, the eyes of Petra's friend, staring blankly. But "It's okay." At the center of the blossoming, along the connecting line of their arms, is... still Rita? She's paler, and the hue-shift of the ocean brings out dappling and veins on her skin, and that white dress fades into her collarbone as an extension of her flesh, and the fingers that grip Petra's hand feel a little sharper, but- but- Despite the dozen tentacles that arch and angle all around, and the subtle dark veins where veins don't go, and the bluish dappling on her throat, it's her. Her eyes still waver the same. What's behind her lips is scary, but they're still drawn in the same melancholy smile. Is she crying? How could you tell? "There really was... I really used to be a girl like that, you know. I didn't make that up. Things changed, but I, I still wanted to still have a normal life. That's why... thank you."
Petra Soroka	"... Hold your breath, okay?" Petra nods and inhales deeply, falling forwards and breaking the water's surface without resistance. Distantly while sinking, she wonders if she should've stripped before doing this-- dim memories of survival advice for something about... tying up her shirt and using it to float come to mind, and then fade away. Drifting up and then beyond her, thoughts pass by her like bubbles from the seabed, eventually leaving nothing but the placid, endless dark. She sighs out some air between her lips once she drifts to a stop, attuning to the feeling of neutral bouyancy in the water. She can't think of a time where she went into water much deeper than a pool that wasn't violence-oriented in some way, and floating now is both a novel experience and an oddly familiar one. The pressure, the drag, the slight stinging in her eyes, those are all new, but the surprising serenity of it immediately reminds her of space. Vaguely, she remembers one time, a long time ago, she was sumberged in water well over her head. It probably wasn't actually any deeper than ten feet, but at the time, it felt like she could fall forever without touching the bottom, just like this. The details around the memory aren't clear anymore, but Petra assumes it was one of the things that she had to do before going off to the Instrumentality Foundation the very first time, back when the preparation facility was just a rented building with a pool and some rooms with physical testing equipment and paperwork. The memory is comfortable when otherwise she'd start focusing on needing to breathe and getting cold, soothing and washing away anxiety, so Rita's voice can smoothly enter her mind. Petra opens her eyes and rubs one with her knuckle to focus. The motion solidifies the association that somehow, getting pulled deep underwater by a pretty girl is analogous to falling asleep. Dreamily fluttering in zero-g, the way Rita unwraps to fill the space feels more natural than the way Petra doesn't. It takes her a moment to recognize it as what it is, rather than some angelic optical illusion, and her eyes widen to take it in. In that moment of understanding, Petra squeezes the tentacle in her hand to grip 'Rita', searching for the matching recognition of the gesture on Rita's face.
Petra Soroka	"I didn't make that up. Things changed, but I, I still wanted to still have a normal life." <I didn't even think about that being fake. I mean, it didn't even come to mind.> She loosens her grip on the tentacle that was a hand, just enough that she can see the pale blue flesh in its place and gently rub her thumb along it, like tentatively petting a stingray. While doing that, she keeps her eyes on Rita's, saccading around to take the rest of her in, but always coming back to her face. The goal isn't to 'override' what she knew about Rita before by applying the 'real truth' over top of it-- Rita said what she'd prefer, so Petra's focus is on finding the anchor points of the Rita she knows as a means to understand the whole, because... <We might've been lying, but that's not the same as 'untrue', right? I'm not going to start doubting anything you told me now, or go back and reassess stuff. With the painting metaphor, the same lines are all there, it's just... just...> Petra's telepathic link wavers and fractures, grasping for and sliding off a dozen different incomplete concepts at once. 'Blurry' isn't quite what she's looking for, and neither is 'messy'. After a familiar kind of trailing off and then lighting up once it clicks in her brain, Petra transmits, <Lower fidelity! That's what I mean.> There's the wordless impression of a giggle that prickles like fiberglass, and then Petra abruptly puffs out more air to allow herself to sink down further. Bubbles rising up and catching in her hair, she gives one more clumsy 'push' with a breaststroke, to drop into Rita's arms and wrap her around in a hug-- hesitating to make sure she's not accidentally punching through any webbing or something. She doesn't quite hold her 'right'. The natural place to rest her arms isn't really there anymore, so the posture of her hug is unfamiliar; but even if the way she's doing it is unfamiliar, the feeling behind it isn't. <Thank you too, Rita. For being someone I could be good to. I plan on making your abnormal life better too, still, you know.>
Rita Ma	Petra's eyes widen. Rita's chest tenses, as if with a tight breath. Little bubbles float up to the surface. She relaxes a moment after Petra strokes like that, with her thumb. There's something about it, the stingray-petting. It's fondness-for-me-as-a-person and knowing-the-old-ways-won't-work-quite-right wrapped up in one gesture. With a bittersweet, soft awe: "Oh. You do get it." A tentacle sweetly strokes the top of Petra's head, just like she did as the moat-monster; and Rita matches the fiberglass giggle with still-sad eyes, having no room to complain. "Yeah. I always told you how I really felt. And you did too, didn't you? Even if you had to leave out some things. It was still..." She doesn't suspect the hug at all until the instant that it happens. Rita gasps water softly, hesitates for a long second- she does still have a heart that can pound against Petra's chest, even if the rhythm isn't right- and then hugs, and hugs, and hugs, and hugs her. The tentacles around her feel like every clammy thing you're scared will brush your ankle in a lake. Boneless, smooth, they're half a billion years estranged from human skin. But they move so delicately, intentionally; twining with Petra's fingers, squeezing her body just so, stroking her cheek, draping around her shoulders like a friendly python at the zoo. Rita's arms hold her too, and Rita's cheek rests against her collarbone, and the bubbles of one more finally-unwinding sigh tickle Petra's neck. A hiccup follows. And then what might be a tiny sob. "Thank you. I really--" "It's good now, but I really... messed myself up, bad." A tentacle-tip squishes Petra's hand tightly. "I wanted to be useful, and loved... but every time I tried to sacrifice myself, it didn't work. I didn't die. I lived, and just got uglier, and worse." "'A monster that protects humans'. Someone useful, who only gets love by tricking people... I could have endured that. I deserved it." "So if you can love me, just like this... that's making my life better. Thank you, Petra." Squeeeeze.
Petra Soroka	When she's hugged back-- in a way that permanently expands the upper range of how much 'hugging' can happen at once-- Petra does her best not to shudder. Millions of years of evolution scream at her to gasp in water and writhe away, from the hindbrain urge to flee from the slither of cold flesh against flesh. Another hundred million years on top of that scream at her for suppressing her breathing for so long because of being dozens of feet underwater, pumping her bloodstream full of stress hormones. It's made harder to resist by not having the chance to meditate it away, but there's another method to calm herself down that she does have available. She squeezes Rita back, leaning into all the weird fish-flesh and the tentacles around her intentionally instead of pulling away. She's hugged Rita before, plenty of times, and the 'lines'-- the posture, the pressure, the deeper-than-surface sensation of it all, they might've been blurred, but they're still recognizable. As long as that feels like hugging Rita, then eventually, so can the tentacles wrapping around her body. <Ahaha. You might still be a little more grown up than me, then.> Petra burbles fondly, rubbing the back of Rita's head. <Tricking my way into being useful and loved, a 'monster that protects humans'... that's basically the best I've got even after two years. I've just kind of made my peace with never having anywhere that would welcome me back like this even if I do get better.> <Back then I wouldn't have thought of myself like a monster, though. --Er, t-to be clear, I'm not hiding tentacles too, or anything. I mean, like, metaphorically. A tiny bit literally. But mostly metaphorically.> Fumbling her words a bit and getting a spike of embarrassment takes some of the edge off of the Grand And Emotional Confession. It's a little bit back to normal, more like a normal conversation with one of her best friends, where Petra is a tiny bit stupid because it's not so important to phrase everything perfectly with Rita. This isn't the end of the world, it's just a change. Petra runs her hand down Rita's head in an absentminded pet. <So, um, I'll love you like this. And in the future, too. As long as it's you, it'll be okay.>
Petra Soroka	Her petting motion crosses down from Rita's hair, to her neck, smoothly and seamlessly onto her dress. She pauses for a second, then slllowly backs her hand up, then down, confirming the lack of transition. There's a few hanging seconds where Petra is processing something, summoning up the Dark Truths, and then... <Oh my god. Wait, you're like, naked. It's-- it's just always been your skin. So-- wait, back then-- that first time that we hung out, when you flinched and looked hurt because of those-- those spiky little seed things. Oh my god. I was always, like-- it was one of those embarrassing things that stuck in my head, because I knew I fucked up somehow, but-- oh my god. I'm so sorry. I'm--> While Petra is reliving a memory that kept popping into her head when she'd try to sleep for the past two years, a certain bar finally hits zero. The autonomic seizing in her chest crumples any further thoughts she might have besides getting up to the surface, much too far away, and she suddenly flails around like a captured sardine in Rita's grip. When she's given an inch of wiggle room, she pulls her hand out of the hug, grabs her compact mirror, and presses her thumb into the center to crack the mirror. Unfurling translucent, iridescent-blue hardlight fractalizes out of the crack, catching the dim light that filters this deep into the ocean and refracting it a thousand times throughout itself. In the span of a second, Petra is encased in the Beauty of Ash, matching Rita's mass instead of being engulfed by it. The mech floats through the water like a hummingbird, gently tugged by the currents, and circles around Rita with its razor sharp limbs trailing behind it. Pearl-colored and see-through, laced with gently glowing orange fluid suspended in 3D space, it looks like a sea angel frozen and turned to glass. <... I guess both of our secrets were kind of pretty, huh?>
Rita Ma	They're sinking still. Slowly, but sinking. The light is getting dimmer; the water cooler; the pressure heavier, until it feels itself like a kind of hug. Petra might be too skilled at hiding her discomfort for her own good. "More grown up..." Another little bubble-y laugh, right by Petra's ear. She's profligate with air. "I'm not sure, Petra. It took you, and Ms. Grier, and Ms. Rook, and Apple Tree Island, to make me feel like I could be loved like this." "Nobody's given you that yet. I want to. I'll keep loving you, too." <Oh my god. Wait, you're like, naked.> "Huh?!" Rita clearly takes it as an accusation, startling and twisting around to look at Petra near-indignantly. "No, hang on! It doesn't count as naked! I'm normal! That's..." <because of those-- those spiky little seed things.> "... Oh. That's really sweet. You're still thinking about that? I..." It takes Rita slightly too long to let go of the thrashing sardine in her arms. Only slightly, though. An inarticulate "!?!" of alarm comes through their little link, and Rita's just realizing that she's kept Petra underwater for too long, when-- "Ah--!" That one is voiced, as a big glubby bubble. Having 'harmed' Petra, Rita approaches the Beauty of Ash slowly, like an animal she's trying hard not to spook. Her fingers trace the lines and vertices of its chest. A second later, her tentacles curl around to do the same, touching each part while her eyes open wide. Finally she swims below it, to see the sunlight from above shining through, and smiles with a giddy meagerness, and waves up at Petra within. "Yeah. You're really, really beautiful... wow. It's you? This is you? I don't get it at all, but..." Mental gears catch. Her mind drifts back to Ishirou's cookout, two lifetimes ago. "... Um. Hey. Then what does this have to do with the cigarettes?"