Scene #9257: Infinity Mirror

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Petra's been to the Shrine of Adversity several times before, but never as a Partner. The difference in just being able to walk in rather than booking days in advance, and not being subjected to the hallways and popup stands of trashy food and merch, and the paperwork and strict scheduling, is pretty stunning, though she does miss being forcibly bombarded with the slop from the general entryway. She pokes at the expanded options for the advanced rooms a bit-- turns out the pain settings can go from zero percent, all the way to three hundred, which she tries to imagine use cases for but can't come up with any that aren't indecent-- before settling on a fairly simple design. When Audrey joins her in the room, it's already set up. A grey and brown wintertime forest, half-rotten and half-dry leaves atop scattered patches of grass, with tangles of bare branches overhead. There's a cliff rising up to one side, and a semi-distant cabin to the other, with no signs of life around it. Petra is sitting eight feet off the ground in a tree branch, kicking her feet and smoking a cigarette, and the clicking sound of the air filtration eliminates the subjective experience of smelling the smoke before it gets to Audrey. "Hey hey. So, I guess, what do you think's your weakest area? Just not having tested your limits and abilities all that much? We've got basically however long we want in here, so no rush."
Audrey Basque	Audrey is a BIT late, and still in her SCHOOL UNIFORM because she had CLASS and that's a REAL EXCUSE, PETRA. Still, you couldn't tell she was out late and up early this time; being to class revitalized her a bit, just enough, though she'd spent an unhealthy amount of time thinking about-- <B-anter> Audrey Basque says, "My craft benefits greatly from the access to other worlds being a Partner will afford me. I'm not worried. I'm very capable." <B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "I went to the same school, in the same country, on the same world, and pathed out from that life into this one. I wasn't ready for a single thing about it, and my capability had nothing to do with it. If you had any sense, you'd stay home, and if you were moon-eyed chasing after me, you'd join the Paladins." Well. Of course it was still on her mind. Enough so that she hasn't been constantly acting like a tourist on her way in, despite the fact the Grand Dorado is still stunning in every way it could be. "Illusion magic?" she perks up, at the currently selected theme. "No, it feels--" Real. It's real. But also not. Okay back to tourist mode it is then. "My weakest... ah. Concentration. I can... my craft isn't a problem. I've got my focus, and my foci. Twisting space is second nature. But doing it while under pressure, it's different. When you have to think about the harm that's coming your way and react to it, or think about how what you're doing might impact others, or just... juggle a lot of different things, all at once. I'm not prepared for that. The school doesn't teach that." It's a school, not the Immune Corps. Lilian had the edge there. "How does this place handle... pain and injuries, and all that?" Is she concerned Petra is going to give her a black eye?
Petra Soroka	"It's-- holographic, I'm pretty sure, but..." Petra really would like to answer Audrey's question about the technical workings of the Shrine, but she discovers that she actually has no idea how it works. That makes her slightly excited rather than frustrated, kicking her feet back and forth up on the branch. "Actually, I guess I have no idea. I wonder if they'd let me poke at it now? Or-- or get in contact with whoever designed it." 'Concentration' tracks as an answer based on what Audrey experienced with Hiromi, but it's not quite satisfying to Petra. She flicks her cigarette away, which would be a tell for what's about to happen if Audrey was familiar enough with her habits. A flash of light streaks through the air in an instant, slicing the cigarette cleanly in half, aimed right between Audrey's eyes like a bullet. The morphmetal flechette comes to a perfect quivering stop a centimeter away from her forehead, and Petra idly points a finger at it while leaning her elbow against the tree trunk. "Concentration is one thing, I think, but you can't actually concentrate on everything. It's good to, like, be able to stay focused, because losing focus is a bit of a death sentence, but you just don't have the time to individually judge every single thing that's going on. So to concentrate on the biggest threats, you need to have fundamentals trained well enough that you can automatically react to the rest." Petra hops down from the tree and lands with a 'hup!' on the leaves. She raises her hand up to gesture to the trees-- more for Audrey's benefit than because it's necessary-- and a thousand more disparate morphmetal droplets shift around like cicadas coating the trees in warning. "Uh, I turned the pain settings down, at least. Not to zero." Really, only to seventy percent, because any lower than that wouldn't even feel like training. "And you might end up tired and achey, but... it's like, really minor. I could-- you could squash me into a pancake and I wouldn't die, though it might suck a bit."
Audrey Basque	Audrey freezes in place as the morphmetal stops an inch from her face; she obviously wasn't expecting that, but then that one wasn't a concentration issue, it was a trust issue. "I... I see. I think I understand. So I need instinct, not concentration, exactly?" Both, she feels, but one is useless without the other? Seventy percent? That's... still going to be seventy percent more than she's ever been injured. A scraped elbow doesn't count. She's tripped, she's not that perfect. Injuries though? Broken bones, dangerously deep cuts? Never. A cut while cooking can't prepare her for whatever is about to happen. But she has to, right? <B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "You're going to be eaten alive." Audrey frowns. "Okay." Space distorts around her, though there's no hint of what it could be right then and there. It's like reality just collapsed inward for a moment at her core, but then snapped back into place. She adjusts her blazer, her collar, and pushes both of her hands out. Her foot stomps down, onto a streak of passing magic, catching it there in place; gravity suddenly shoots up across the forest, buckling the trees down and trying to ground Petra by surprise. She's taking this seriously after that, and the pancake comment made the first move obvious. It won't relent, either; the field is just at twice the gravity now, though Audrey seems exempt.
Petra Soroka	"Yeah, I think, um... the way I'd phrase it is..." Petra is not the world's best teacher for combat tactics, even after Lilian's tried to train her in it. In terms of lecturing, she was much more comfortable with explaining pattern cosmology in the Library, or talking about her theories on journalism last night; between her EGO, her precognition, the warrior-mind of the Silver, and just experience in general, her familiarity with combat is more ingrained than it is studied. She's still doing her best, though. "Thinking that you can just fix your mindset and get through anything with just power and focus is the kind of superficial idea a lot of the heroes that show up in this Sector have at first. It's not just about locking in, because you're not just trying to use your mind 'and' your body, but the synergy between them. When you're playing sports, you can't get better at hitting the ball just by focusing, if you haven't practiced the mental and physical subroutines that go into hitting the ball." Petra is fascinated for a moment by the imagery of Audrey's magic, the space-collapse followed by a splitting crack through space, but she doesn't have the time at the moment to elaborate on whatever thought it is that came to mind. The doubled gravity makes her tighten her face and widen her stance to keep her knees from buckling, and around her, several branches crack and plummet to the ground, scraping dead twigs against each other to pull others down. Morphmetal pellets latched on to the tree trunks all around start sliding down, but she reasserts her control over them and forcefully lifts her chin back up. "Alright! So what's your next step? What does putting up all this weight do, and how do you capitalize on it? Does it let you do more precise spacial control stuff to me now that I'm 'caught', or does slowing me down give you the opportunity to do something else?" "And simultaneously with, like, how you're using it to lead into your next move, how does it help deal with what you already know about what I can do?" To emphasize, a dozen more Silver bullets come streaking down at Audrey from all directions, and these ones don't stop before hitting her-- though they're pellets, rather than blades, because Petra feels like she should warm up to that. And along the lines of 'just warming up', Petra herself isn't taking a threatening stance at the moment either, standing with her arms folded while quickly getting used to the increased gravity.
Audrey Basque	Alright! So what's your next step? And simultaneously with, like, how you're using it to lead into your next move, how does it help deal with what you already know about what I can do? "I--" Did Audrey really know what Petra can do? She's got that metal she manipulates, and the Beauty of Ash, and a thousand different reputations as a terrorist. She seems good with electronics, so... traps, bombs? Surely she has a gun or something. She has that flaming sword, too. Silver bullets streak towards Audrey-- And streak, and streak, and... They're caught, all around Audrey, an inch or two from her at most. They're still moving forward, at full speed, but they're also stopped completely. She's put distance around her, and the longer the pellets try to reach her the further they feel from Petra. Does her control over them have a range? Audrey thinks, this'll be a good way to find out- and so she keeps them there for now, unless Petra calls them back. Her hands seem free to keep acting, too; the field around her, shimmering in and out of view like a pearlescent mirror, doesn't look like it'll give easily. Getting NEAR that is probably a bad idea too. "I just wanted to slow you down. But I follow. I should be thinking about leading into something, not making individual moves and hoping they're enough." She reaches forward, to wrap her hands around the whole of the forest. A flick, coinciding with a passing current in the sky, twists the ground under Petra's, like it's splitting open into a V shape and then collapsing back in on itself. The spatial crunch is nasty on its own and kicks up plenty of debris, which catches into Audrey's literal orbit. Gravity's increasing a little bit again, alongside the visual cue that is chunks of rock spinning around her.
Petra Soroka	Petra, actually, herself doesn't know how her morphmetal will interact with Audrey's spacial manipulation, and it's something she wanted to find out today too. The tactile sense of having her intuitive position of how the metal is moving clash with her visual sense of where it is throws her off and makes her stomach briefly churn, and she starts tugging all of the pellets back but one for experimentation. "U-ugh, that feels like-- like getting VR-sick, or something." Pulling them back out of Audrey's field isn't an instant thing either, and Petra starts pacing around her, gradually ramping up her own pressure. A cluster of morphmetal droplets peel off a tree and accumulate in her palm, stretching from a blob into a gleaming metal spear that she suddenly darts forwards to try and stab through the field. When that doesn't work, she flips her foot in an instant to dig her heel into the ground and stop herself from tumbling into the protective magic herself, and just when it seems like she should be unbalanced on one foot and Audrey's crunching of the ground beneath her should catch her, she pinpoint-turns in defiance of inertia and hops to the side. She skids to a stop with her feet wide, troughs carved in the dirt from twisting her feet into it to stay standing against the spacial collapse. "Yeah! And there you simultaneously made me give up ground, and you're better protecting yourself from my bullets, so good! But here's where something like concentration would come into play, because..." The morphmetal plastered onto the tree beside her flattens into a reflective sheen, and Petra presses her hand to it to grab out another weapon right as she has to dive to not get smacked by an orbiting tree branch. Holding Fourth Match Flame, Petra turns around and points it at Audrey. "You understand that you've got a tactic to deal with the type of attack I've been throwing at you so far, and that can make you comfortable, but your opponent is-- theoretically, at least-- thinking as much as you are, so as much as you're learning about them, they're learning about you!" Rather than jumping in to try and break through Audrey's barrier with the sword, Petra stabs it into the kicked up piles of leaves around her. The smoldering sword flares up for a second, and the leaves catch fire, swept away into Audrey's orbit to spread to more and more of her debris.
Audrey Basque	Petra's spear crashes into the field-- it's a different effect this time, the mirrored field hardening and briefly showing Petra her own reflection, spear and all. The force of the impact is turned back against her, like the point she's striking is herself to begin with, not Audrey. Warping the space in front of her to be the space Petra is occupying. It feels weird, but since the spear clash was experimental, it's not that threatening. So far Audrey's managed to stand her ground, even; she's not sure if that's a good thing or not. Moving seems good, but it also means adding more things to the already nasty equation. She's sweating, between the stress and chaining twists so quickly. "Y-Yeah, but you're fast. It's a bit hard to keep track of everything. I guess that's just how it goes and I need to deal, right?" The flaming sword! Audrey braces for a hit that never comes, and the fire spreads to all the leaves, branches and grass caught in her orbit. It reduces visibility, and she hadn't thought of that at all. "T-That's dirty!" But that, too, is how it goes huh? She swings a hand, suddenly trying to shift Petra's gravity sideways so she gets slammed into a tree. It's a bit of a blind shot, considering all the fire around her right now. Petra's gravity might even get stuck ninety degrees off for a bit, letting Petra use the trees sideways to platform.
Petra Soroka	Is it dirty? That actually throws Petra off a bit, and while she's spinning the idea over in her head, she gets smacked sideways into the tree. Blindly thrown, she's not hurt by the impact, and she clings to the side of the tree with her foot and forearm pressed against the bark like she's felt sideways gravity a thousand times. Rather than trying to stand up relative to her new gravity and giving Audrey the chance to slam her sideways into the ground, Petra pulls a cable of morphmetal off the tree and whips it around a tree trunk that's 'above' her, letting her swing closer to Audrey and still land on her feet when gravity rights itself. Still. Is it a dirty technique? Is there something about it that's underhanded, that would make Lilian disappointed in her if she did it? It's hard to imagine Lilian herself doing something like it, and modeling how Lilian would win this fight in her mind, she imagines something along the lines of studying the fracture-indicators of Audrey's magic in order to trace where it's strongest and weakest, and constantly harrying her in those weak points, or using her power to slip past them in a moment of distraction. Does that mean Petra shouldn't use the environment to her advantage like that? ... Not that she has a choice right now, with all the smoke and fire swirling around. The fact that Audrey seems to have trouble moving while working her magic registers to Petra as the flaming debris builds up into an accretion disk, but she doesn't immediately have an idea of how to take advantage of that. "I'm pretty good at fighting from 'all angles', I think," and she sounds a little guilty about it, "But imagine cases where it isn't just one on one, too. All of those bullets might have been from a dozen different soldiers, or waves and waves of Antegent, or anything else, so when it comes to something like that, not being able to keep up can mean dying." Petra platforms her way all the way to the rising cliffside, standing on it like it's a flat surface. She looks up at Audrey, and fiddles with her mirror for a moment before coming up with the transteam gun. She affixes the bayonet attachment to it-- and if Audrey can hear past the crackling wildfire, she'd hear a gritty electronic callout of 'RIFLE MODE'-- and then carefully lines up a shot into the center mass of the debris. A concussive energy blast launches out of the gun, and explodes in the middle of all of it, kicking up more debris and sucking in more oxygen to flare up the fire more.
Audrey Basque	WAVES of Antegent??? Has Petra-- is that a thing?! Still?! "I-- no, I get that. I keep falling back onto the same old excuses. This is hard! I wasn't trained for this! But then I think... probably you weren't either. Even Miss Rook said--" It swept her off her feet. The stoic star pupil who had a side-gig with the Immune Corps, was actually swept off her feet by this kind of thing too. So what chance does SHE have? It doesn't matter. It can't. She HAS to steel herself, or... Petra's shot might not penetrate the field and bruise Audrey, but it does a good job upsetting the orbit of flaming debris and growing flames. Audrey pretty much can't see at this point, so she decides to change gear and dump the burden before it gets worse. "I'd say more than pretty good," Audrey says, a bit winded; if this is what Petra calls 'pretty good' she's afraid to see 'excellent'. And yet, she has to ready herself for THAT exactly. She grounds herself, a pulse of pearlescent white light indicating a shift in gravity. Even the cliffside starts cracking, and Audrey finally moves-- a half spin, like a slow dance, arms fully extended to both sides like she's guiding something. Rock, mud, wood, leaves and fire start compressing, the jumbled mess of an orbit turning into a single bright red strand of crunched matter, fire and superheated air. She makes it swirl alongside her body, thinning it out with an audible whine as it all accelerates, and then weaves it into a strand-like spear of plasma and fire, straight for Petra. For the briefest moment it's like she's a star hurling a prominence. It's more likely to wreck the cliff than Petra, but now Audrey can see again and that's invaluable.
Petra Soroka	Petra giggles a bit, crouched against the cliffside with her transteam rifle balanced across her thigh and aimed out towards Audrey. "I wasn't even trained in magic! It's kind of a miracle Hiromi didn't just kill me flat the instant I walked out into the multiverse. I literally just showed up with a gun the moment I became an adult; it was suicidal. So don't worry. If you really want to, and I'm trusting you do, then you'll be able to pick it up." Petra considers the national secrecy of the still-Antegent-filled wastes to be much less priority to keep than the secrecy of the Blooms. Or, really, she just doesn't care about national secrecy at all, just Lilian's trust and the Blooms themselves. Thinking about Lilian, the way Lilian started out in the Paladins, the Antegent and the Immunes, the Cycle of Tears filling up the facility, starts to stress Petra out, and it's as if she can take a breath better when the flaming debris is cast down by Audrey. "... You haven't seen half of it, haha." That dry tone doesn't sound like she's bragging about it, either. It wasn't what she was actually thinking about, but in order to pull her mood back up, she hard-switches the topic to something adjacent instead. "I mean, I did study under the guy who singlehandedly built a robot army big enough to make a multiplanetary empire. --Oh my god, have I not shown you the ratbots yet?" It's Audrey's turn for show and tell, though, not Petra's. The matter compression gets a low whistle out of her, and remembering fighting Marc, she's tensed and ready for a telekinetic-style attack, but the spear of plasma is more like something from artillery. She flinches and retrocausally blinks to the side, out of the direct impact zone, in the middle of sliding down the cliffside from the blast, but the heat and shrapnel still catches her. She stumbles to the ground and makes a wordless excited noise, trying to get her breath back. "Hey! Awesome, actually! Now--!" A flash of light and a sussurus of broken glass tinkling against a billion other pieces swells out from where Petra was, and each tiny fragment slides and clicks into place to form the Beauty of Ash. It snaps together standing up, as tall as the trees, but then lowers down on all fours with its eye locked on Audrey. It darts through the trees with shocking nimbleness, barely rustling the branches except from the air rushing past it, and its razor-edged forearm shatters and extends into a long blade that gouges out the ground around Audrey, spewing up dirt and splinters and carving a crevice for her to fall into.
Audrey Basque	Oh yeah, Petra had mentioned Hiromi was also one of her first big encounters. And from the sounds of it, it must have gone as well as hers did, or just about. "T-Thanks. I'm-- it's... you know, they tell us, don't go outside the Urban Centers, there might still be Antegent out there, but we almost never hear about any of it. It's... I could have probably lived my whole life in the Phantom Circle and never seen one, ever. Now I might. Or I might see things that are worse. So, it's not like it matters if I want to be ready or not. I have to be." Ratbots? "You have ratbots? Are they cute?" She's curious, Petra! You can't just NOT show her them now. Also she's kind of glad the spear didn't hit head on, in retrospect, she might have overdone it a bit, and even with the pain tuned down-- Oh that's the Beauty of Ash. It really is beautiful. AND ATTACKING, THAT'S MORE IMPORTANT. Audrey isn't sure if she can halt its attacks, and then, it doesn't. Not directly. It tricks her into a hole, and she falls back onto her back. Sure, that's painful, but it's tripping, and she can stop her fall by just-- hovering. She's lucky Petra didn't try worse, but that visibly made her wince. "I feel wholly unprepared to match you tool for tool, hehe... I wonder if I'll be like that, in five, ten years? Armed to the teeth with things I picked up?" It sounds so... barbaric. And fun. No, barbaric. Just barbaric. Yeah. Definitely. "Okay, I don't know if I can handle a mecha, but here goes!" She stands, and gravity hops out of the crevice. She claps her hands, grabbing hold of-- something. Like a strand on the tapestry of the area, holding the spaces together but separate. The cabin, the cliff, the trees, each their own boundaries, spaces. She unravels that, and the area churns like Petra's taken some bath salts. Portions of the ground rotate out under the Beauty of Ash, trees suddenly crashing inward like a cage as the world gets smaller and yet not. It's disorienting, more than dangerous, and nothing seems to want to stand still anymore, tree sideways and upside down, the ground rising and falling randomly, the cabin both in front and behind. Something that big is going to have a harder time dealing with a chaotic space, she hopes!
Petra Soroka	<Yeah, you will.> It's a bit of a shock to have Petra's words directly projected into Audrey's head rather than spoken, but it makes sense, since the Beauty of Ash doesn't have a mouth. Its diamond-shaped head doesn't have any features besides the shattered crevice down the middle where its eye is, and the zero-g floating clusters of crystals to either side, like tufts of hair at its 'ears'. It's identifiable as Petra's, but it only 'sounds' like her voice in descriptors that escape words. It feels like the rushing heat and itch of blood flushed against the surface of cold skin, warmth and stinging rolling up her neck and around the base of her skull, the little pins-and-needles that follows numbness, buried in her nerves beneath the skin. <What you signed up for was that if another Onslaught happens on another world, you'll be one of the first people there, and there won't be any of the walls or the G.D.F. until after you've done your work.> The Beauty of Ash skids around, digging shallow channels into the ground with its needlepoint limbs that absolutely don't correspond to its full weight. It acts like it's barely any heavier than a cat, leaving inch-deep holes in the ground where it steps or sliding around like it's on an ice rink without any of the clumsiness of losing friction. When the ground starts to shift underneath it, its leg snaps up away more like it's startled than knocked off balance, and it stretches up and tip-taps warily around to try and escape the folded-space cage. <I don't know if I'm really the metric to use for that, ahaha. Lilian picked up Winter Crow, but besides that... most of everything she has is 'hers' and always was. Rufus takes things from the Abnormalities and the other monsters we fight, but he never even asked for an EGO weapon, because he can do that himself. Sarracenia got the Silver handed to her, but she doesn't have the same relationship with it that I do, and she basically just folded it into the stuff she's always done.> Eventually, getting frustrated with the ways out never spacially leading to where they seem, Petra decides to just force the issue. The Beauty of Ash rears up, snapping warped tree trunks around it like toothpicks, and a pulse of telekinetic energy that reverses gravity on the debris on the ground launches the mech up into the air, piercing through the netting of branches. The mech hovers in the air, one knee cocked and snout angled down towards Audrey. Rather than flying with wings or thrusters, it's much more like how Audrey uses her magic to float, essentially silent with a soft bobbing motion like breath rather than roaring engines. Framed against the dim hologram sun, the frosted glass chest of the mech has the smeared colors of Petra visible inside, fully translucent all the way through. <I guess it might be a little hard to believe, but I don't have, um... really even a fraction as much <capability/self-genesis/original virtue> as you.> That one concept crackles and overlaps in Audrey's mind like crunching ice, layered with multiple simultaneous meanings. <Most people resist picking up stuff like I do, or at least, don't do it on purpose.> <Hey, you don't have any weird hangups about the difficulty in remaining human, right?>
Petra Soroka	The spikes jutting out of the Beauty of Ash's shoulders glow with an unwholesome-feeling light that flows up inside them like blood in translucent skin. The anticipatory glow that coalesces behind its head feels like it should be followed by a deafening explosion of some kind, but instead there's just a silent flash that streaks towards Audrey, and an 'impact' that doesn't shift a single leaf on the ground. It feels like spacial cavitation on a higher realm of reality superimposed over this one. A 'bubble' surrounding her consciousness that's attacked directly and opened up into a void that she had no idea was around her before, suddenly assailed with the sensation that that void encompasses 'everything' besides herself, sublimating thought and coordination and the cohesion of her identity into vapor dissipating into space. It only lasts for an instant, and when she blinks, the forest all around her in a hemisphere is painted over with an atomic-thin layer of pearlescent glass that frames every leaf and blade of grass in picture perfect stillness.
Audrey Basque	First responders to an event like the Onslaught...? That's terrifying. Is that really what she signed up for? Of course it was. Orientation made it clear. But maybe she'd chosen to think, surely, those things don't happen often, and by the time one did, she'd be acclimated to everything. The weight of Petra's words, both literal and figurative, causes Audrey to pause; and it gets a bit worse when Angela pipes up on the radio, and suddenly Audrey is multitasking. Which is good, and bad! Good for the training, bad for everything that's about to happen. Capability? Self-genesis? Audrey perks a brow up. The flash makes her ready up-- she tenses, she focuses on her barrier. It even seems to expand, like a bubble surrounded by mirrored dust. It ends up not mattering. Not against this. This isn't physical, is it? She stops breathing; it's over as quickly as it took her over, whatever that was, and Audrey pants, heavily, actually falling to one knee and-- Maybe she lied. Maybe she did have a hangup or two. About how hard it is to stay normal, some days. She looks terrified. Her field, even the slightest distortion around herself, isn't visible anymore; she didn't just lose her focus, her focus was obliterated. The sight of the glass-covered landscape doesn't snap her back to reality right away, and when it does, she's very slow and sluggish to rise. She looks at Petra, still shaky. "T-T-That... is that... what was that?"
Petra Soroka	The Beauty of Ash weightlessly sinks down to the ground on one pointed foot, clicking against the pearlescent dirt with all the impact of setting down a wine glass on a crystal table. It sets down its other three legs to tik-tak towards her, looming over her even when on all fours, and its head quirks towards Audrey's expression interrogatively. The glowing eye blinks off for a second, and then softens in intensity, and it tucks its knees up to its chest to sit cross-legged on the ground in front of her like a giant glass statue. Sitting down, the 'cockpit' inside its chest is about at eye level for Audrey, but it doesn't feel like Petra is looking out at her from there. Instead, it's the faceted head that looks back at her, humanlike despite being utterly alien in form and substance. <Sorry. Was that too much? We can time out for a sec.> Like the splash of throwing a rock into water, the back of the mech shatters into sparkling fragments that Petra slips out of and onto the ground. She walks around to the front of the mech and settles down in its lap, folding her own legs to sit and leaning her palms into her ankles. "That's the, uh... one thing that's 'mine', I guess. Since before being an Elite, like your magic." Audrey being terrified is unsurprising, and... only a tiny bit disheartening, considering Petra did specifically use a 'weapon' against her in the heat of battle. She does get nervous, though, about first impressions. "Or... one usage of it, I guess. I'd hate for you to think that that's all the Beauty of Ash does-- like, really, it's a gentle machine; I really promise it's more about wrestling with Fae than doing that, ahah." "... Do you wanna see a ratbot? I've got Twopence with me."
Audrey Basque	"N-- No. It's okay. I'm fine." She's not! First time experiencing... what was that, even? A psychic attack? Something more conceptual, more metaphorical, something from the soul? Alien. But familiar. And scary, in that way everything that isn't you should be, and in that way that losing everything that's you should definitely be. In that way being honest can be. The Beauty of Ash comes to rest, Petra hopping out, and Audrey walks up to it to look up at its head from down below, and then at the pilot plopping down in its lap. "It's okay. I asked for this. It's no good if I freeze up like that next time. I just didn't expect... I thought that was going to be a laser, or beam, or maybe some solid light blast." It's 'hers'. Like her magic? "... is that what you feel like?" That seemed too simple/easy. Audrey was just trying to piece the feeling together, with the context clues. "... and yes. I would love to see a ratbot."
Petra Soroka	"Ahaha... yeah...." It's only a tiny difference, but Petra reacts a little more precisely to the microexpressions and tonal fluctuations Audrey makes while working through her thoughts than she did before, or maybe they're just slightly more readable in general. The aftermath, hanging around in the psionic ozone tang of the blast, feels like a layer of dead skin has been ripped away all at once, or scales over her eyes. Audrey feels raw and exposed to the emotional elements, a fraction of a degree disjointed from her body like she's trying to control herself from a third person view. Petra sits in the blast radius comfortably. "It's not magic. I, uh, don't know any magic." It's a little hard to believe that, but Petra says it earnestly. "Just, like, the Beauty of Ash taps into my psychic stuff and amplifies it to the point that it can actually affect the world. So it's from 'me', in, like, the most literal way, because that's just the effect of a wish I made hard enough to turn it partly real." "And it's basically the most fucked up thing I've ever encountered in the multiverse, so good job! Haha." Petra forces a smile, though it's only partly to cover up her discomfort and unfamiliarity with actually talking about the topic out loud, because she did do it on purpose. "Unless you've got a thing about body stuff, then there's probably more fucked up. But as a test of your, um, mental capacity, you held up pretty well; better than most of the other Elites that got subjected to... that side of it." "We can start working on your physical durability and stuff later. I figure you need a break for now." Petra brushes her hand against the glass ground beneath her, and in the thousand facets of reflections, Qetra's hand reaches back. Only the one that makes contact with Petra's hand is holding the ratbot, and Petra pulls it out of the reflection to show the adorable toy robot on her palm. Only a moment later does the realization hit that Petra practically didn't physically attack Audrey at all. The morphmetal was a constant barrage on her ability to split her attention, the fire was a mass hazard that she had to make quick decisions about managing, the mech was a large, imposing threat, and then the psychic cavitation was a direct attack on her psyche. She, almost exclusively, did target the idea of concentration and focus like they talked about at the start. "So this is Twopence. He's my main man, since I used to have Pence but gave him away." The ratbot blips to life and starts to hover off of her palm, moving by changing its relative gravity up and down or side to side, rather than conventionally flying. It also has useless little wheels that spin fruitlessly when it's addressed. "I never really got the hang of building full humanoid war robots like Doctor Eggman, but I like these little guys even if most of what they do is carry stuff. And I can work on mechs and machines and all, but... I only really do that for special occasions. So this silly little thing is the main result of me studying under the greatest roboticist in the multiverse."
Audrey Basque	The idea this is how it feels to Petra is almost as terrifying as the suddenness of it was to begin with. It's a different look at her, not a bad one necessarily, but different in a way Audrey wasn't ready for, and probably couldn't have prepared for anyway. She's still trying to piece the experience together, amidst the odd sensations that refuse to leave her body. At least there's no harm, but she almost wishes that had been a physical injury instead of... being eversed. "A wish, not magic?" She wonders what the wish was; a fact that's plain to Petra, as plain as the fact Audrey wants to ask, but doesn't dare cross the line, just in case. "I... I see. Body stuff?" That one she's not sure what Petra means at all. "I-I mean, I-- am currently undergoing "body stuff" as a result of... it's..." She's wobbling, between formal and familiar. "Something feels really wrong, but a bit right too. How long is this going to last?" Wait hold up durability? "I'm... my barrier is enough durability, isn't it?" A bit of cardio wouldn't hurt though. She looks down, a bit; but seeing the ground, angles her head back to look at Petra, just in time to see the ratbot. Audrey regains a smile, which is great right now. "You made it? That's cute! And it's altering gravity to float, how clever. This is much cuter than if you made humanoid war machines!" On account of being war machines, presumably. "So these were from the same man you helped take over a nation for?"
Petra Soroka	[ansi(243,"I... I see. Body stuff?")] "Oh, like, eyeball skewers, spiders in your veins, teeth falling out. Stuff like that. Some people really shut down at body horror, but, sorry, I'm not gonna test that particular boundary because it's gross. If you wanna know how your mentals hold up to that, I'm sure the Shrine's got a way." Then, preempting Audrey's horrified response, Petra leans forwards and waves her hands reassuringly. "It doesn't happen often! Not often. Especially not that Lobcorp's out of the picture." As to 'how long it's going to last', Petra silently makes an 'oh' with her lips, and gestures with her hand. A crack runs through the glass with an echoing gunshot sound, like across a frozen lake, and then every surface that was touched by the iridescent glaze shatters into floating fragments of glass that sweep to the side, dragging the dissociative haze with them, though the mental rawness remains. Once it peels out from underneath them, they're both sitting in bare dirt, with a perfect circle of all the grass and trees around them annihilated and turned into glittering dust. "That should be better, right? Sorry, I'm still getting used to the new feeling of piloting it. I didn't actually get it back until... just a couple months ago." "Your barrier's good," Petra nods, watching Twopence fly in circles around the pair of them. The little ratbot's beady eyes are actually camera lenses, which Audrey can see when it flies close to her. "But you don't know what its limits are, do you? If there's some insane level of force that could manage to break through, or a kind of attack you have more trouble with than others, like lasers, or something. If Hiromi tries to hurl you through a mountain, or I try to run you through with the Beauty of Ash. Sustained gunfire. Hey, I bet we can get tons of soldiers lined up in these bigger rooms." Seeing Audrey's expression, though, Petra wordlessly drops that topic off for 'later, maybe'. Petra pulls out another ratbot and sets it hovering around too. "And that's Farthing, and Emmy's got Shilling, and there's a bunch of others too. They can be a little scary in fights, 'cause-- look underneath Twopence there, you'll see a little hook, it extends the boundaries of the antigravity engine to whatever it's stuck on-- I can put guns and stuff on them, or drop rocks, but mostly... yeah, they're cute." "He didn't actually give me designs or anything. Mostly... a reading list, lots of examples and showing off-- he does like to show off-- access to materials and fundamentals... and this is what ended up feeling most natural. Now they're all over Hydrochoeria, which is what's left of Quicknest."
Audrey Basque	Oh bless, everything is back to normal. Ish. So why does it feel heavier, not lighter? "E-Eyeball... sk... y-you know, I think, I'm better off not knowing about that. Thank you, for not doing that one." Bless, really. She's not sure that would have gone any better. And she's happy to be reassured it doesn't happen often. "A few months ago? Ah, I see. Well, from how you pilot it, I couldn't have known you were rusty. Really, that makes me want a ride even more now." On the matter of her barrier, Audrey states matter-of-factly: "I may not know its exact limits, but I know its theoretical limits if I can get better at it. The issue is really... my limits. My focus, my mental state, how exhausted I am... I say that, and yet your cannon went through like it wasn't even there, so... maybe my faith is misplaced. But I don't think I have the ability to develop hard skin, or incredible durability, so I'm not sure what you want to train." She dreads it a bit, now. It sounds like it'll be painful. Her attention goes back to the ratbots, quite enthralled by their design. It's a good distraction, and robots aren't a common sight for her yet. "Sounds like you did the best you could and it paid off. I don't think I could just pick up some books on robotics and build something like this very quickly."
Petra Soroka	"... I'm actually a little surprised too. At how easily it all came back." Petra stretches out her legs and leans back, head against the Beauty of Ash's folded knee. "But, I mean, you heard in the radio. It's not like it was the exact same machine I had as a kid either. And I did have to rebuild it for months before that." "I would, um... rather you didn't call it a psychic death tank, though. Really." Petra looks away from Audrey and runs her fingertips down the smooth surface of its hardlight ankle, slipping back and forth along the edge of the facet. "I'd rather that you know it for better things than that." "Actually-- do you want to? See it?" Petra sits up again, leaning forwards excitedly. "The nicer things I can do with it-- or, I guess, the nicer psychic things, since you've already seen playing with Fae, and stuff. Really, none of my psychic powers work without it, but there's one specific one I think you might like seeing. Hold on a sec." Petra hops to her feet and scrambles around to the back of the mech, hopping up its arm and back like she's scaling an obstacle course. She plops down and sits with her legs dangling over its collar, where its neck would be if its head didn't float freely, and wraps an arm around the crystal head. "It'll feel weird for a sec, but I promise it's not going to last." For an instant Audrey feels like that same void-feeling is collapsing around her a second time. The oppressive sense of essentiallized emptiness paints over the entire Shrine landscape, rendering it in the cold tilt-shift of unloved toys strewn across the ground. A sixth sense she wasn't aware she had, the one that draws the mental web of trees to leaves to nature to art to humanity and infuses the world with the feeling that she ought to interact with it, flicks off like a light-- but the one and only thing spared from being drained of that emotional weight, is herself. A psychic lens warps that invisible something in herself, and angles it towards Petra, magnifying into her and through her until it feels like the two of them are the only existing things in a universe void of meaning. Gradually, past Petra, the sensation radiates out until the world feels back to normal again. Petra pats the Beauty of Ash on the head, and then hops to the ground in front of Audrey. "Okay! That wasn't so bad, I think. Now..." Petra kneels down and scoops up a handful of dirt, then stands back up and throws it into the air. When it falls back down on top of her, a barrier flickers into existence around her, hardening into a mirror and sending the dirt flying in all directions away without touching her. "... Ta-da!"
Audrey Basque	"Oh." Oh! Indeed. "I'm-- my apologies, I didn't realize... a joke in poor taste is still in poor taste, of course. I have to remember this is not simply "a machine" for you, that you ride into battle, but something more connected, and with many uses besides fighting." Audrey definitely looks like she feels bad about it. It doesn't last, not because guilt fades, but because Petra offers to show her something. "I would love to see more of it, yes!" ... just not the eversion cannon again. Even though... No. So anyway Petra proceeds to do the thing again! It's different, this time, but also the same. It's more manageable, but at the same time she's able to experience something other than the shock of it now, to just feel past that initial disorientation and into... Nothing, really. Nothing, and then Petra. It's stunning, to exist in the moment where none of the universe means anything except another person. It's familiar, in the worst of ways too. To be back then, in the hallway, drowned out by other students she can't even perceive, reaching out to say hello for the first time and-- Okay, Petra says. Audrey blinks, the color flooding back into view. She watches Petra pick up some dirt, and then-- "Oh my. No magic, you said? Here you are threatening my position as the top student. Well, Petra, Crown White, color me impressed," she grins, feigning a full body bow, even bending an arm over her chest and all.
Petra Soroka	Petra grins wide, energized by the ritual she just performed. In a way, it's an incredible display of affection for her, even though it's fairly esoteric to actually be interpreted as such: she said that 'this', whatever it represents to her, was her most heartfelt wish, so it's natural that sharing it with someone else would make her happy. "I'll have you know that I was a Jewel Silver last time I got tested at the Seven Worthies, so you don't need to be too insecure." As way of explanation, she pats the Beauty of Ash's arm. "My psionics were sort of busted for a long time. No clue what I'd be at this point." She claps her hands together and does an excited little twirl, which she would get embarrassed about if she didn't get distracted by playing with Audrey's magic. She calls over some of her morphmetal to hover in the air around her, and starts chewing on her lip in intense thought to draw on the internal secondhand familiarity with how Audrey does it. Her finger catches on one of those pearlescent cracks in the ley-framework that Audrey senses too, and she opens it up into a mirror shield right as she sends a bullet streaking through the air at her own hand, and it bounces off. "Sick." "It's sort of not, magic though, I think. I guess I've never tried it with someone's actual magic Tradition, come to think of it, but I'm sure the Corridors of Darkness are magical somehow. It's like, um... because it's something important to you, I can make it important to me too, and use the... sensation of narrative synergy to do it. It's not like I 'know' any magic." "God, if I tried to be a student, it'd be really funny, though." Petra flexes her fingers in the crack in reality again, pulling up the magical barrier. "Like, 'hey can I copy your homework'? 'Sure just change it up a bit so it doesn't look too obvious'." The barrier shifts just slightly in color to match the Beauty of Ash. "So!! You know, I was thinking we might have to do everything all in one go, because normally when you're a non-Concord peasant you have to reserve a room, but, we're not! Do you wanna leave it here for a bit, and maybe grab something to eat? Walk around the shops downstairs?"
Audrey Basque	Petra's behavior certainly doesn't escape Audrey's notice. This isn't the Petra she's used to... and she doesn't hate it. She understands, deep down, why; the connection, the moment spent together that was more shocking to Audrey on account of not knowing what to expect. It means a lot more to Petra, though Audrey isn't understanding that fully at surface level. Somehow it makes her happy to have made Petra happy. "Well, on the contrary, now I must be even more on my guard. A student has found a way to improve so rapidly as to climb the entire ladder! This is truly devious, Petra, but I think I still have an edge on the academic side." Petra's behavior is contagious, even. Audrey stares with curiosity and wonder as now peer experiments with the barrier. "I think you have a good hang of it! There's more to it than just the flows of current, but that's already a good start. For example..." Audrey adjusts her blazer; she hadn't, since falling, and then she looks around. The Grand Dorado is rich in powerful currents; it's not a surprise, and so-- She steps to the left, refracting behind Petra and tapping her on the shoulder. "See? But the beauty with this Tradition is that it's born out of many cultures. Currents are useful, but what if there's none nearby?" She looks up; past the fake sky and the roof beyond it. The impercetible flicker of a star, that fraction of a fraction of a second where the light it casts on the world is lesser, and some seams become easier to see and traverse. Audrey steps forward, into Petra as she refracts again, at her opposite angle to shoulder-tap her again. The effect is a bit different, less of a crack in space and more of a flicker of light. No doubt Petra had noticed Audrey's powers flickered different ways, sometimes. "Different people have come up with different ways to do the same things. The way I compress space around myself is the same. I'll be happy to teach you, so you're not caught in a corner if there's no flows to catch hold of." She laughs about the matter of homework, and then nods her head. "Plenty of time ahead. Let's get a bite and look around the stores, I came here right after class, I'm famished. My treat!"