Scene #9252: Took Your Time, Cyborg

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	Petra has done the unthinkable. Over time, Ash has gone from a total unknown, to a vaguely prophesized someone, to part of a half-intuited set, to a faraway concrete somebody, to a looming fated encounter, to a complicated nemesis stranded across enemy lines, and now, finally, due to Petra's efforts, somebody you can not only just text on a burner phone (and be told 'kys' by), but someone who has enough lingering reality to be called for a meetup and actually be there. It feels like she's breaking some law of the universe or another when she manages to work out directions to the Warpgate she wants, get clearance to the Long Island Urban Center on her Concord Elite credentials, step out into seaside semiclassic urban construction, and just see them; like, right there, with no pilot suit; waiting for her on the other side of the security terminal. Up until that point, the process of entry is long and annoying and very much familiar. Outside the waiting time and the uncomfortable navigation, it has her being asked a bevy of questions, some about medical implants that the 'border' agents aren't really qualified to follow up on with Multiversals, and an amount of 'support our troops!' paraphernalia for the G.D.F thrown up all around the terminal (clearly postmodern, built around the natural Warpgate cluster that arose a decade ago) that it's almost downright refreshing. The wheel has been reinvented. Nature is healing. Welcome back to America. The amount of armed personnel is actually relatively low, though, when put in ratio against the sheer amount of post-propaganda dicksucking that fills the area, on projected displays and intercom announcements and wall-sized advertisement spaces above automated walkways, up to and including the tile mosaic art awaiting Petra on the threshold to the consumer gallery, deliberately (or so you'd hope) style after a famous D-Day photo. There's a plaque that no doubt mentions the individual glass tiles being made of something poignantly relevant to the subject, so the fact that it's covered up by Ash leaning against it feels pettily intentional. It may strike Petra that the gaudily ultramodern space, filled with overpriced indulgence, lined with shops pretending nothing has changed, and stuffed to bursting with memorial statues and artist's interpretations of the truly apocalyptic sacrifices that it took to get here, complete with a final display of the Earth from space at night, its layout of man-made lights juxtaposed against a modern photo she recognizes, and a tagline about the time to take it back, might all be very cynical. The Warpgates are too useful to ignore, but surely it must not exactly fail to occur to the people in charge just how simple it would be to fuck off into the Multiverse and never return. Ash could. From that distance, at a sprint, they wouldn't even need a ticket. Seeing them subtly diverting the flow of traffic near them by premise alone, it's easy to imagine that the only reason they don't is because they don't perceive anything to run from, or anywhere to be. They weren't playing the game from the start.
Lilian Rook	"Took your time cyborg. No point dolling yourself up; lost cause and all." Nope. It's definitely weird. The inflection is familiar, as is the almost exaggerated pan-American nothing accent, but hearing it without at least two layers of radio garble and helmet is a lot. Those jeans were definitely ripped up after, and not before, leaving the shelf, given the amount of dust stained into them, and the footwear the boot cut is mostly hiding is definitely not standard issue, but it's just surreal to see a faded t-shirt and wallet chain in place of a g-force suit, even halfway disguised by a folded poncho still over one shoulder for the cool and clammy rain outside. You'd nearly mistake the strap of a SERE kit from under the seat of one of those mechs for a messenger bag, the way they've strapped it to carry it over the shoulder, though they might just be using it as one by now anyways. The turquoise-onyx-bone-amethyst bracelet cluster is unfamiliar, too. Ash shifting their weight to stand up barely reveals a hint of a holster on the poncho side, and also reminds you of just how much taller they are than you. It's a small wonder how they get the ambiguous mass of reddish hair into a helmet, even with the number of cords and tchotkes holding it above shoulder length. "You're gonna have to settle for whatever slop they're airing now." says Ash, who had not communicated a specific time or urgency. "Or eat something other than however much dirt and leaves you've been."
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Ash \| hey freak kill yourself yet? What is Petra supposed to feel about Ash? <Q-Conversation> Lilian Rook says, "I can't believe this is going to fall apart because Petra keeps pissing off the person we need to listen to us." <Q-Conversation> Lilian Rook says, "It's exactly like every other time I've relied on someone to be normal in my entire life." "It's me again. Like usual. So nothing's changed." At some point, when she first heard their name from Sakura, she knew Ash was a threat, and knew some vague shape of why before anyone else understood. That was a time where that was enough, and so long ago that that much was beyond what was expected of her. Fumbling, uncertain, guided by the hand into the inner circle for a glimmer of personal worth, and patiently allowed to do her best to actualize on it. "The only 'good' Bloom. We are the 'deviants'. The errors." "You have us. Me. Isn't that what you wanted?" 'For Lilian', and 'for the Blooms', generally, was the starting point. But on first contact, in that facility in Nevada-- "I won't be like you; I'll keep fighting forever before I'll finish off my last page with a happily ever and forget to exist."-- Petra made the impulsive gamble that she was 'Bloom-like' enough to 'get' the aspects of Ash that everyone else at the time seemed apathetic towards at best, or more broadly contemptful towards. Trying to understand them, then, was still for Lilian-- the category of people given worth by her presence, who needed care and attention because of that connection, and were provably worth something in their own right, because of her. Petra respected them, but that was with knowing that she only had that respect because of the perceptual halo of association around them-- if Lilian had said 'No, we're wrong about Ash', then that would've been it. PHONE: Ash \| i thought she was gonna be so psycho we'd click and blow off the rest of you fucking losers and maybe go destroy the world together "Sorry, Lilian--" "--What is wrong with you?!" "What are you planning on doing, Petra?! Who're you here to care for?" But just like with Nika, that led into caring for Ash more specifically. Not really just like Nika, actually-- everyone loves Nika, even though Petra does more than most to demonstrate it. But in Ash's case, Petra likes them despite everyone else's opinions, even Lilian's. Despite their hostility to Lilian too, because for all of the ideological justification behind it, usually expressing that at all would be a dealbreaker categorically. In a room inside the Armillary, when asked by Xion... "I don't know if I'd do this, if the world didn't depend on it. Isn't it kind of gross to... become someone's friend for reasons other than to try and get to know them?" ... Petra was the only one who said she would. It was conditional, because Petra's relationships always have the complicating factor of Petra, but still, she would, and she meant it. And then after, when Ash vanished into the desert, and Petra was in the worst emotional trenches of her life, they were the only one Petra could think of wanting to talk to.
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Ash texts \| idk i dont really give a shit about you at all but i kind of want context now because its bugging me youre still alive i guess It's a strange trajectory, and one that's inverted from typical social narratives, that as Petra came to know Ash better, the less she associated them with anything besides themselves. NAZCA hardly came up at all in their last conversation, and the Blooms were talked about more relative to Petra than relative to Ash. So, in absence of them being relationally an enemy through the Letter Agency, or an ally through Lilian, this is Petra interacting with Ash in of themselves for the first time. Petra interrogates her feelings, while half-focusedly answering questions from the border cops-- 'I know there's a tracking chip implanted in me, but don't worry, it's off right now'-- and comes to the conclusion that she just feels broadly positive towards Ash. If she's supposed to feel some other way, then she kind of just doesn't want to hear it. Not from a prophecy, not from Trudy or Bond or Tamamo or the others, and not even particularly from Lilian, either. If Lilian asked, she wouldn't hide the meeting from her, but she's not going to offer it up for her judgement otherwise, right now. "No point dolling yourself up; lost cause and all." "Damn, you almost sound disappointed. Were you expecting me to pretty myself up for you?" Petra says this, but she actually is pretty happy with how her outfit turned out, when piecing together clothes from her annihilated wardrobe. In the past several weeks, the self-care she did in one of the dorm's bathrooms in the Library is more than she's done for anything else, though all that really does is pull her up to the baseline minimum of before the war. What she ended up with was different from her usual, but even as beat to shit as she is, the image of herself that she saw in her phone camera (since mirrors don't work for her) made her incrementally more fond of the ways her arcs are visible in her form. A compression binder underneath a fitted crop top with low rise jeans maximally exposes the various mostly-healed wounds on her upper body and invites space to fit however many more bruises from Ash shooting her with a paintball gun. A blotchy birthmark bridges the gap between her top and jeans, and there's a partial pattern of what can only be read as a womb tattoo visible, even though it's actually the Celtic sunburst brand Tamamo put on her. The outfit's completed by a wooden beaded necklace with a carved sun ornament, and Petra re-ties her slightly shaggier hair into a tiny ponytail after emerging from the security lines and greeting Ash. "I'm good with whatever, I didn't look up what's airing or anything. Do you know where the nearest theater is? Wanna grab snacks on the way?"
Lilian Rook	'Damn, you almost sound disappointed. Were you expecting me to pretty myself up for you?' For the first time, Petra actually gets to see Ash's expressions, rather thanjust intuit them from the tilt of their helmet and the relative intensity of their vocalizer. The way they look at her is heavy with the mix of probing relief, that the internet friend is recognizable IRL, and with the reflexive dismay of getting not just more No-Bromo than they bargained for, but in some context or another that makes it jarring. The way they lean their head back by inches, shuffle their hands into their pockets, furrow their brow; it's all so naked that it's sort of a shock to see. It's be easy to imagine they'd have a stone cold stoic affect to go with their usual 'business tone'; something befitting the ice-in-their-veins fighter pilot aesthetic Petra knows well enough by now. Someone like Lilian, who knows that every single twitch of the lips and saccade of the eyes tells a story to the greedy millions scrutinizing her, emoting being something she does in spite of it. Instead, they're almost more like Nika. It's closer to utter lack of moderation that comes to someone whose expression never matters. "I was expecting you to be the same Claire's rat as usual, but like, all fucked up and red-eyed and sad about it." says Ash, looking suspiciously up and down Petra, then shove their hand back through their messy hair as if it doesn't concern them at all. "Not trying to hard to impress me." The 'pshh' sound is automatic. 'I'm good with whatever, I didn't look up what's airing or anything. Do you know where the nearest theater is? Wanna grab snacks on the way?' "No shit. Nobody likes an anorexic dyke." says Ash, gesturing with a left tilt of the head and an onward hand-wave, turning around from the station mosaic and rounding the pillar next to it. They don't seem to notice the vaguely horrified looking woman looking up from her phone two feet away. "Forget snacks, you're eating a fucking burger, white girl." The energy of leaving the terminal is a lot different than the energy of entering it. The vaguely scandalized energy of pedestrians around you doesn't account for the way they naturally default to a bubble of space centered on Ash, seemingly without realizing it. The heads that turn your way aren't all that many less than with Lilian, but for different, harder to articulate reasons. It's not too surprising that almost everyone in the terminal is either what you'd call 'upper middle class' or in in G.D.F red or white; stepping outside past one more two storey tall art piece and onto the street tells you that you're deep in the First Circle of an Urban Center, going by the lingering presence of now-historical asphalt and barely used car-based infrastructure. You stand out. It's hard to tell whether 'as Third Circle gutter trash' or 'as rich kids who're appropriating the fashion in very poor taste'. Ash throws on their poncho in with a maneuver that carefully doesn't lift their shirt high enough to expose their waist, plucks an umbrella out of the hands of a woman in a coat waiting under the overhang as if they were picking berries off a tree by the side of a hiking trail, and hands it to Petra without acknowledging the shocked "Hey!!" that follows, and dissipates into nothing.
Lilian Rook	"No complaining about whatever's on now. If there's nothing good, you're just gonna have to deal with it." says Ash, taking you right, then straight, then crossing the road directly in front of the one and only oncoming car, forcing them to skid to a halt in the rain, slamming on the horn as well as the brakes. They didn't look, and they don't jump at the noise, either. They're too busy scanning around the rainy street; it takes some watching to figure out what they're looking for, and if it's not the food stall they find in short order, it must be the dozens of cameras around every single junction. "Hot dogs are good enough." Ash shrugs, pops open a side compartment in the dangling kit banging on their hip, and thumbs out a credit card with a bogus name on it; 'Damien Kent' on this one, most certainly for espionage use and probably without a limit. "You're not too much of a queer for a hotdog, right? Not gonna give me a lecture about how problematic it is." They elbow Petra in a way that feels a little bit forced, but succeeds in nudging her attention to the signboard at least. "'Cause I don't care. And you're getting fries." It takes some looking to see that a 'historical theatre' (refurbished, done in 90s style) is at the end of the block, already scouted and planned out.
Petra Soroka	"I was expecting you to be the same Claire's rat as usual, but like, all fucked up and red-eyed and sad about it." "I'll have you know that not a single one of the holes in my body right now are from Claire's," Petra shoots back, but she can't keep the smile off her face from the exchange. Absentmindedly, she twiddles her earlobe between two fingers, skimming the spot where a piercing used to be with her thumb. They'd stayed open for years, whether or not she had a stud in them, but her psychic powers going haywire around her arrest had either been the catalyst to close them up, or were the only thing keeping them cleanly open. Cold fucking called, though. They were from Claire's, when she was a teenager. "Nah, though. I've got, like six articles of clothing total, now. Er, well--" Petra starts getting distracted with counting socks and underwear in her mind so that she can give an exactly truthful answer rather than just an emotionally truthful answer, but then discards that mission while the progress bar is half-full. "Yeah. Besides my work suits, I basically just picked this all up for the thing with Hiromi earlier this week." "Forget snacks, you're eating a fucking burger, white girl." "Hey, I ate today--" Meaning, she ate a little portion of the pajeon Angela made earlier, which hardly even qualifies as one meal out of a theoretical three. Realizing that, Petra self-consciously passes a hand in front of her stomach. Bodily, the week in Lobotomy Corporation was lean by necessity, and then Angela's memories distanced her even further from normal concepts of daily eating. "Is it really that bad...?" Petra can't help the twinge of shock at how Ash interacts-- or doesn't interact-- with the public as they pass by, but when she shoots a sympathetic glance to the woman whose umbrella got snatched, and then they actually make eye contact back, that instinct is instantly crushed. Petra flicks her eyes away and casually pops the umbrella open and leans it on her shoulder, with an aside 'nice, thanks,' to Ash before stepping out and following along with them. The vague familiarity to the sense of being around them is placed, though adjacent to rather than identical, Exigent Serenity in Lampport. Heedless disregard for other people is a toxin that Petra can comfortably inhale, with antibodies already thoroughly developed to propagate it through her system and match Ash's freak. Rather than looking past them because of them being statues and dolls, assessed only for harm or maneuvering rather than individual personhood, Petra can immediately intuit the treatment of humanity and the structures they build and carry as a tide of convenience and nothing else. Invisibility and blindness, in equal and opposite ways. Walking in the oasis of Ash's presence quickly becomes natural to Petra. "What about you, though? I dunno the map of the US that well--" She says, having spent the majority of her time in this world in Britain somehow. "--but I can't imagine there's an Urban Center or one of those little villages every few days."
Petra Soroka	"If there's nothing good, you're just gonna have to deal with it." While Petra is abstractly rotating the usage of 'you' in her mind, she has to suddenly hard-swap her mental focus into whether to step in front of a moving car. On one hand, she is so not invincible like Ash, and in this freeze-framed instant, there's no guarantee that the car is actually going to stop in time. On the other hand, Petra understands better than anyone else what being a social link to a Bloom means for her influence on their relationship to society: if Petra is affected by a thing that Ash would rather not be affected by, then she's introducing a weak point into their societal maneuvering just by existing, which is unacceptable. Therefore, after a momentary hitch, Petra takes a breath in a sped-up iteration of her mood matching breathing routine, then walks out into traffic only a half-step behind Ash. She winces a little bit at the honking, but she'll get over that. "I'll survive eating a hotdog, I think." Petra rolls her eyes with a small irrepressible smile, then tilts her head questioningly about the cameras. It'd make sense if surveillance was a particular hassle to Ash, if their power wouldn't cover it. Sure, the cops couldn't do anything to them, but it'd ruin the movie. "Gosh, my calorie counter's gonna have a fit," Petra says while munching on a fry, after they've been acquired. She doesn't have any such thing, but it plays into the bit.
Lilian Rook	'Nah, though. I've got, like six articles of clothing total, now. Er, well--' "Shot off in the war." Ash mutters under their breath. "You know what. Fine. While you're here, get a souvenir. It's a city. Clothes grow on trees here." The articulation of the statement is odd. Beneath the layers of inherent, semi-performative impatience and hostility, it feels like Petra is the recipient of a particular bit of wilderness lore from an experienced guide. 'Is it really that bad...?' "Bad enough that I can tell it apart from the rest of how you look like shit." Ash scoffs back. They don't actually look, even habitually, to double check their math, or reasses their judgement. It somehow feels a little unnatural. "You think I don't know what someone who doesn't eat looks like? I'd peg you at one to two weeks." '--but I can't imagine there's an Urban Center or one of those little villages every few days.' "No shit." Even though Petra can only see the back of their head, she can feel them rolling their eyes. It does nothing at all to slow their roll, briefly ignoring Petra entirely to focus on the task at hand: jumbo, chili, cheese, green onions, large side, cajun, salsa, yeah I said salsa are you deaf? It's difficult to tell if the subject is closed, irrelevant, or strenuously ignored, even up to the point Petra has a paper box shoved into her hands, and Ash 'menacing' her face with the business end of a hotdog she'll barely get her mouth around, in what she can only assume is something like 'straightbaiting', before handing it over. Charging out into traffic seems to have been the correct call. "I don't get hungry. Not until I already decided to eat, and only 'cause it makes it taste better." Ash says, ten seconds later, as if that were something normal to do, resolving the superposition of how far away Petra is from interacting. "I don't get tired unless I want to blow something off either; there's a feeling you get after sleeping and-- whatever. Didn't you figure that out from the other time prison gamer war?" 'I'll survive eating a hotdog, I think. Gosh, my calorie counter's gonna have a fit.' A block later, eating as they walk, halfway through their own order already, after having left behind a weirdly shaken-looking stall vendor, Ash adds "They're nooses that people use like leashes, y'know. If you don't eat, you die. If you don't sleep, you die. We have all the food to eat and all the places you can sleep, so ask nicely or you die. It's bullshit; so I don't do it anymore. Dumb bastards standing out in the rain selling hotdogs could take a lesson from me, right?" They laugh. It's hard to tell whether that was an appropriate time for it. "Six villages, though. Along the way." It comes out of nowhere. There's no particular prompt but Ash having just thrown away the empty cardboard tray in one of the trash receptables before the theatre doors, quite possibly only because they happened to be within arm's reach at the moment they finished wolfing down their food. "If you start missing the taste of food, that's the first thing they're happy to give you, if you can show a little good faith and help out with something. There's always something to do in those places; something easy for me and hard for them."
Lilian Rook	Even after having slammed the doors open, strutting on into the lobby where the two are surrounded by dozens of random civilians and half as many cameras again, Ash keeps talking at 'loud conversational' volume about state secrets in a way that would make a whistleblower blow their stack. "The last census the Agency took was fifteen years ago, but I memorize them. Those dusty little places that knew they never needed anyone but each other, chugging along just fine with the old ways that worked before we turned it all to shit; going there always feels like a little secret between me and them. You get it? Like, a place I can get everything the suits advertise like they invented it for cheap-as-free, that they're too up their own asses to remember even exists." "Truth is, if you walked out that wall and kept going west, I'm pretty sure even you could handle it." Ash says, pointing in a direction you simply have to assume is, actually, west, despite staring at a list of holographic posters. They idly toss a wavy tuft of hair, toy with the bound end for a moment, and watch the titles moving with narrowed eyes; a parade of familiar and unfamiliar names under the 'cultural revival' showing bloc. "You walk. You fight monsters. You do an odd job at a little town. You pick up a thing or two about the local magic. You get a gift. You walk. You fight monsters again. It's like communing with nature, kinda. And yourself. After a long time, you even start kinda getting used to the Antegent. Getting a feel for them. You can almost figure out the shape of what their--" They stop, snort, point at a poster, and say "God. That one. Fuck yes. I love spy movies. Espionage thrillers are always the most." they say, without adding an adjective.
Petra Soroka	"It's a city. Clothes grow on trees here." Petra considers this seriously-- extremely seriously, given how easy it is to think of the City in its ruined state as a more literal concrete jungle. It's not hard at all to make the jump to thinking about Lilian, especially having been in her shoes, and the continually stressed dissonance between her ability to ignore the trappings of society and her refusal to do so anyways. It is a city. Clothes are here. Petra needs them. Why shouldn't she have them? Petra blinks and shakes her head, feeling like she just cut off a growing static haze consuming her vision. Mentally prodding at that new neural connection finds that it's indelibly seared into her mind, impossible to un-think. "Oh yeah. I feel like I forget that sometimes. I mean-- like, I feel like it's been a while since I even had the idea to spend money on something I needed." As she says it, she has an internal double take at how true it feels in her memory. Lobotomy Corporation-- along with Petra's other networks of interpersonal berry trades-- created a strange environment where Petra bounced between resource points and exchanged other resources to get them, without any particular emphasis on one or the other. Even her assault on the vending machines in the war felt like cutting supply lines and salting fields, really. "I'll grab something to change into after we're done with paintball," she decides, like a convenient ore-harvesting point they could loop around to on the way back. If Petra were in a different mood, maybe she'd be more of a sweaty pervert about having a hotdog shoved in her face, or maybe she would do the exact same thing that she did when Lilian shoved a hotdog in her face while Petra was kneeling in front of her at camp a long time ago, and obediently take a bite. Instead, she makes a delayed 'ah--' and blinks in surprise, then belatedly readjusts in an instant to already have the hotdog in the box, nestled on top of the pile of fries. The biggest difference in the overall patterns of her demeanor from the repeated interactions in the Armillary and now is that where she was sweatily weird before, she's slouchily weird now, tinged with a fraction more of the tendency to disbelieve the world around her. "Didn't you figure that out from the other time prison gamer war?" "I dhoo," Petra insists from around a careful bite of hotdog. "And spefifically, I remember you needing a lot of water. I'd be worried about walking through the desert even without the Antegent just from that." "I've spent a ton of time not needing to sleep or eat, though, so I would've figured even before the gamer war. It was just all, like, different kinds of weird torture, though, so I feel like I'm getting cosmically jerked around by my metabolism." "We have all the food to eat and all the places you can sleep, so ask nicely or you die. It's bullshit; so I don't do it anymore." Petra's getting used to the pacing of Ash's conversation, synching up her internal metronome to the beats and pauses Ash outwards portrays until she can get better at anticipating them. She's not even a quarter of the way through her hotdog yet, though. "Roads and buildings, right? I took a walk through the City this morning-- where Ange lives-- and it's hard not to think about it when, like, the roads and buildings are literally torn up, and people follow them anyways. Literally a gang reinvented cops to guard grocery stores after the apocalypse, back in the neighborhood my apartment was in. But everyone loves it, because it's back to business as usual."
Petra Soroka	"You walk. You fight monsters. You do an odd job at a little town." "Oh, like quests." The nature of 'quests' as a proper noun is approximately fifty percent from Xion, and fifty percent from Nika. She's still only half-done with her food, but she's far too invested in the energy to bother giving a glance towards anyone telling her she can't bring outside food into the theater. "It's just sort of like a game, right?" Petra does a pleased little nod, supremely proud of herself for having the metaphor snap together cleanly in her mind, conceptualizing something that makes intuitive sense but that she wouldn't have put words to so precisely before. "I get what you mean. Everything's chopped down to things that actually matter to people, and the exchanges that move that stuff around. The rules are, you know, all actually relevant and intuitive. The monsters fight people, you fight the monsters, the people give you something because now they've got extra stuff from not needing to fight the monsters. I guess I don't really think of nature and games as being that different? Or, I guess, games are more like nature than they're like everything else... or something. Oh?" Looking at the poster that Ash indicates, standing in this retro movie theater, Petra is staggered so severely that she almost forgets what the local year is. "I-- I mean, we have to. Absolutely. Hey,--" Petra indicates the employee at the counter to ask which room that movie's showing in, with the same verbal cadence as Ash had physically when taking the umbrella out of the woman's hands earlier. Once she's given an answer, she walks past him completely unbothered towards it.
Lilian Rook	'I mean-- like, I feel like it's been a while since I even had the idea to spend money on something I needed.' "That's the most normal thing you've said." Ash says. It's totally offhanded, but still lands with the impact of a brick. "Not just for whatever reasony you're thinking of. I mean even in this city--" They really do use 'city' constantly, not just 'Urban Center', here. "--most people almost never pay for anything with money. But they still think of it like they are. There was a time for the requisition credit system to turn into something, and it's passed, because people are fucking retards and can't remember that money is just everyone agreeing you deserve 'this much' already." Another passer by flinches at the casual impact of a low level slur. Ash continues not to notice. 'And spefifically, I remember you needing a lot of water. I'd be worried about walking through the desert even without the Antegent just from that.' Something about this seems to annoy them. Not so much that they look angry, or even to stop walking, but enough to vent it in a zero impulse barrier way of lightly backhanding Petra across the temple for saying it; as if she had said something offensive enough to be improper in public. "We knew how to do that two thousand years ago, dipshit. The part of you that knows just got replaced with serial killer trivia from too many fucking podcasts." they scoff. "And that was only even because I was overdoing it anyways. You slam back cold water after working out. That's just like . . ." They gesture a little bit, in that 'implicative of a word' way. Lilian might say something involving the word 'psychosomatic'. Ash says "Obvious? That's the ritual. It sets everything right." It's another patron, actually, and not theatre staff, that turns to Petra and says 'you know you can't bring that in here, right?', pointing at her hotdog with a tone partway between smug disdain and indignant disgust. Ash says "Call the cops. They can't un-kill you.", and without looking, draws attention to the holster by slapping it with their palm. The stranger is so caught off-guard they sputter and back away. The underpaid rope jockey standing in line to take tickets sighs, looks away, and pretends he was distracted by a notification on his phone, in order to have absolutely nothing to do with this if at all possible. Ash breezes on through. "Fucking sheep figuring 'it's all on camera anyways' . . ." they mutter, disdainfully, under their breath. 'Literally a gang reinvented cops to guard grocery stores after the apocalypse, back in the neighborhood my apartment was in. But everyone loves it, because it's back to business as usual.' "Yeah. They can't come up with anything on their own. Their 'human spirit' is just a fucking plagiarism algorithm. Whatever comes out can only ever be made of what went in." says Ash. The word 'cop' doesn't even seem to provoke an especial reaction; the sentiment is enough. "Human beings are just the world's most expensive meat-based storage media slash word scramblers. 'Consciousness' to them is just recording the shit that happens around them and puking it back up in the worst preserved way possible when you prompt them. Even just putting two and two together to spit out something that already exists but you haven't personally seen is already a lost fucking art."
Lilian Rook	'Oh, like quests.' Stopping momentarily in the screening room corridor, Ash turns and stares at Petra as if her pants had just fallen down around her ankles. "Oh my god." She can feel it coming, but there's nothing to really do about it. "You too? Are you all fucking gamers?!" Ash says it with the incredulous lilt of kind of hoping the answer is yes. "NAZCA went down to a cabal of fucking cosmic videogame mages-- I can't fucking believe it!" They appear so caught up in enjoying their mild stunlock that it's easy to miss they actually default to following Petra first, having not actually stopped to check which room to go into, but seeing that Petra had asked. ' guess I don't really think of nature and games as being that different? Or, I guess, games are more like nature than they're like everything else... or something. Oh?' But to their credit, after mutting 'quests' back a few times in incredulous awe, they give it due thought. Maybe a little more than what it's due actually. The comparison faintly mesmerizes them, in a way that seems like they hadn't not thought it before, but hadn't thought to be so embarrassingly literal about it. "Games are fun because that's how it's supposed to work. Yeah." Ash says, at nearly theatre appropriate volume, settling into one of the cushy, slightly scratchy seats at the back row. "Obviously, everything about that is appealing, because people do it for fucking recreation. Seeing everything laid out clear and logical and structured and having everything do something and be there for a reason feels as good as eating good food or exploring somewhere cool or beating someone at something, right? So videogames like that kind of piss me off, because they're like proof that everyone knows how to do it better, but they're all fucking convinced that 'realistic' means 'totally fucking stupid and makes no sense and sucks shit so I'm probably just too fuckdumb braindead to get why it's totally elegant and necessary actually'." They stare expectantly at the seat next to them, silently indicating which side Petra is permitted to be on; the left, for whatever reason. As the ads come to a close, Ash cuts off anything else she can say on the subject, for a moment, to reiterate it in a way that must make more sense on a personal level; jiggling the idea through a rock tumbler until the less relevant parts are ground off and the concept becomes smoother to handle. "Yeah. The more something makes sense and feels good, the more bullshit pretendy time it is, and if you take it seriously then you're brain damaged, and the more something makes no sense and actually just hurts you, the more realistic it is, which means it's smart and important and it's totally there for a good reason." "Because real life is getting hurt, and not understanding why you have to be, and being human is making up reasons for it instead of doing anything about it. No, yeah. I get it. It's like games."
Petra Soroka	"The part of you that knows just got replaced with serial killer trivia from too many fucking podcasts." Petra gets smacked right as she's taking another bite of her hotdog, and inhales it with a surprised 'bhh--?!'. Several rounds of hacking coughs later, she manages to suck in a food free breath, and washes it down with a bottle of water taken off the theater counter, then continues the conversation unimpededed. "Yeah, that's true. I've kind of, dipped back and forth on doing survivalism stuff for a while, but I've never committed to farther than a little bit outside of civilization. So I never forced myself to relearn it either." "I have a theory about that, anyways. The serial killer stuff, and generally like... the reason why kids like horror, and all those other little suburban deviant things." Petra pleasantly lets Ash handle the nosy loser patron without bothering to look, trading off the responsibilities of shooing away strangers between them in turns. "That there's a sort of... gradient, as they grow up, in the ways that people instinctively try to vent their natural discomfort with the way things are, from kids making up whole fantasy worlds and stuff, to teenagers doing donuts in parking lots and honking at people on the sidewalk. And serial killer stuff is on the far end of it, since it's a fixation with what it looks like to be outside society's rules, but it's only because they're fascinatingly depraved pervert murderers, or whatever." "I guess it's sort of my most pro-... humanity, belief, really; that kids have some potential to be something besides adults. Like, the car starts out with an engine, and the engine's designed from the start to be used on the road, but it's each step along the assembly line that makes incrementally more sure it can't be used anywhere else. Early on, you could totally put that engine into something else, like a mech." "Actually, I guess I'm the depraved pervert murderer people are fascinated with now." It's a really funny thought for Petra to end her tangent on, with how it feels like everyone has been projecting every collective bit of degeneracy into herself to soak up. Aspirationally, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, 'deranged pervert murderer' would've been pretty high up there. "Human beings are just the world's most expensive meat-based storage media slash word scramblers. 'Consciousness' to them is just recording the shit that happens around them and puking it back up in the worst preserved way possible when you prompt them." "Literally. We've got a thousand movies about how insane and pointless it is for people to try and force the world to work in a different way, and then every post-apocalypse movie tries to make it the, like, obvious goal to rebuild everything as much like it was before. And then it really happens, and it's like, damn, it's not even propaganda. They actually do just sit around in the ruins playing with blocks to try and pretend nothing's changed like some schizo in a padded cell." "That's the world Lilian's kind of got her focus on 'building something new' in, right now, by the way." Passing by the last of the concessions, Petra snagged a soda cup, and she takes a sip between sentences, marveling in a hindprocess of her mind how similar of a feeling to an abandoned theater this is, despite the presence of people. "But it's only, like, five percent destroyed after the war, so I guess it's probably my job to finish it off so she can. Whatever."
Petra Soroka	"You too? Are you all fucking gamers?!" "No!!" Petra's indignant squeak draws stares, but it's not because of them that she reels her tone back in. She just realized that she's wrong, actually. "Well, okay, a bit. But that's what I was saying before!" In text, about the playdate, that they're currently on. "Anyways-- they shoulda known they were type weak to cosmic video game mages. Nika-- that's Garmr-- flattened a half dozen of them in Siberia that time. She's got a real thing about games; I play with her a lot, and sometimes Arthur does too." Lilian might be a little angry at Petra just carelessly saying this kind of information, in public or to Ash, but she figures it doesn't actually matter. It's nothing that their enemies wouldn't already know, even if somehow one of the uneasy sheep milling around somehow happened to care and listen in and chain the information away to someone who matters, and as for Ash, Petra just likes them and thinks they should be allowed to hear about the Blooms. Petra sits down to Ash's left as requested without issue or comment. It's easy to interact with people when they make it clear what they expect and what boundaries to navigate in and have no compunctions about directly communicating them to you, so you can be good to them by trying hard! It feels like it's been a really long time since anyone's actually been that way for Petra, including Lilian. "No, yeah. I get it. It's like games." Petra makes an affirmative noise, but it's drowned out by the orchestral swell of the movie starting, so she nods her head along with it. "Nika wouldn't phrase it in the same way as me, but, yeah. Video games. Games in general to me-- not just whole, purposefully made and published ones, but the ones that are naturally emergent just from, like, kids hanging out. Even playing house like kids do. The aesthetics are poisoned, but it goes back to what I was saying earlier; they still know that things should be plain and simple and direct, and they try to mix that into the world around them less and less as they grow up. So, quests and rewards are the ritual that models how interacting with people is supposed to make sense." Petra piles various bags of candy between herself and Ash, harvested out of her mirror to be shared resources. She snickers at the movie, popping chocolate into her mouth. "Oh my god, they look so dorky. And they're really jerking this stuff off, too. 'Brilliant, brave soldiers... whose greatest weapons... were their minds.' Eheheh."