Scene #9295: Yuri on Ice

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Petra Soroka, the girl with a number of destroyed Watchtowers on her kill list, cannot be allowed at the Faded Print. However, she does still need to interact with Yuri, so via contacting Berislav or some other means, she arranges a a meeting at a spot where neither of them would be either dangerous or unwelcome, which, considering the both of them, is a limited selection. Yuri's corrosion is easily identifiable and vaguely uncomfortable to be around, and Petra is naturally weird and threatening even when she doesn't mean to be, so the only place for them to have an uninterrupted conversation is where there's no people around. The location Petra gives for Yuri to meet her at is on the side of one of the few lakes of District 12. A brick supply storage building that was worn down even before the blackouts led to it being abandoned, it's sheltered on every side that doesn't face the lake, and the lake gives a perfectly flat view out to the far side, where darkened factory structures lie still and empty, and all the visible shorelines are still and quiet. Part of the power outages, or maybe something someone did while affected by the White Nights and Dark Days, led to a dumping of toxic materials into the lake that now sits as an iridescent sheen across the surface, patchy and swamplike. So no one really has any reason to be nearby it. Besides Petra, who's sitting in the lakeside shelter with Fourth Match Flame across her lap. There's still some leftover office supplies; they're all dusty and mildewy, but it's entirely possible they were like that even before the building was abandoned. Petra, rather than sitting on one of the folding chairs that are leaned up against the wall, dangles her legs off the side of a table too high for her to touch the ground. The metal table and the concrete and brick of the building saps heat away to make it feel like late winter rather than early spring, but the EGO sword emits enough warmth that Petra doesn't seem to notice. She presses a cigarette into one of the smoldering embers of the blade to light it, and then waits for Yuri to arrive, looking out over the twilit pre-dawn lake surface.
Angela	You don't get someone to do field bomb disposal/surgery on your eye and get up walking around chipperly the following day. Indeed, Yuri has been in recovery but has been good to move today. Sonya has left District 12 for the time being but she is being given a handler in Jack, the man who has been acting as Sonya's Number Two in the area. It's not a good idea for Yuri to walk over to Petra, so Jack drives her over. "You sure you want to do this? You two really seemed to be going at it." "Yeah..." Yuri says. The Corrosion has only subsided to a mild extent. "It's for the best and... I have to. Even if it's not." Jack understands this well enough. He pops open the door and Yuri, stumbles out, the car buzzing off for a while as Yuri makes her way towards the lakeside shelter. She's not fast about it. She's not accustomed to moving around with one functional eye and she's taking her time so she doesn't trip which is harder. A small trail of frost follows behind her but instantly melts away the moment she's more than a few feet away. She doesn't bother to go for a folding chair. Petra is sitting on a table, so Yuri moves to sit next to her on the table. She doesn't draw Frost Splinter, her good eye looking at the Fourth Mathc Flame for a moment and then looking down at her hands. "Hey." She says. And then with a soft little huff of a sigh. "They really did a number on this lake."
Petra Soroka	"Yeah. The whole District, really." The table creaks when Yuri hops up onto it, so Petra shifts her weight to stabilize it. She folds her legs up, crossed and turned towards Yuri, placing the Fourth Match Flame between them like a little campfire held in Petra's lap. It's only after that readjustment that Petra moves her eyes to flicker over Yuri's face, taking in the chill, the exhaustion, the post-surgery pallor, and the eyepatch. "I figured if you still want to fight me, this would be as good a place as any. But I don't really have any interest in doing that, so...." Petra sighs. "... So, have you suffered enough? When you're healed, where will you go? I..." Petra trails off for a stretch of silence where the wind blows tiny toxic waves against the concrete harbor below them. Her eyes leave Yuri's face, and don't find it again. "... Don't know how to feel about you. I don't think I respect any of your decisions. But... there's not really much else from back then I still have to hold on to anymore, so."
Angela	Yuri winces at the creak, about to half slide back off until Petra adjusts her own weight. Her grey eyes have a blueish tint to them thanks to the EGO's influence. She doesn't want to fight Petra. She's not sure if she wants to fight ever again. She could run away like Tiffany did and vanish, maybe start anew in some other sector--but what other skills does she have right now? She doesn't run to be running some heartless gang any more than she wants to be controlled by one. ''I figured if you still want to fight me, this would be as good a place as any.'' Yuri startles, looking up and straight at Petra. ''But I don't really have any interest in doing that, so...'' Yuri shakes her head. "No... I think...I'm done letting swords and screams speak for me for a while." When she's healed where WILL she go? She imagines Berislav is taking all hands, practically, but she doubts she'd be welcome at Trideag--doubts it enough it doesn't even occur to her, really. And even if she could, she doesn't think she could be comfortable there. In a way, they're just too strong for her. "I don't respect any of my decisions either. Even before there was another option..." She shakes her head. "At the branch office I worked at. There was an Abnormality originally called Lottery, but eventually we called it Doomsday Calender. Only one way to sate it. You had to offer up an employee to the Calender. It would kill that employee and you'd get a lot of energy and it wouldn't try to kill everyone instead. We had a lottery of our own to decide who'd get sacrificed. The fairest way. Every time I'd get my slip I'd pray it wasn't the one called even though it'd kill a coworker or even a friend." "...When the Purple Tear offered me a way out, even though it was the most suspicious offer in the world--I took it without hesitation. She'd train me a little, put me in the right place at the right time so that when the main office needed more Control Team members, I'd be the one picked. I figured...sabotaging L Corp? After all they've done, it'd only be fair but I didn't expect..." She gestures with both hands to suggest ''everything''. "...But in the end, even though I was stronger than I'd ever been before, I was still just that scared girl begging the lottery wouldn't land on me. It seemed so clear when Carmen was talking to me--that if I accepted her deal all that anxiety and pain and uncertainty would melt away but... I couldn't take the deal. Especially not when I saw you trying to stop it. I hope that means I've stepped a little farther away from that girl and could become someone closer to whom Cinder would be proud of." She rubs at her eye briefly before... ''But... there's not really much else from back then I still have to hold on to anymore, so.'' "You want to hold onto a girl who makes bad decisions?" Yuri asks. "I know I don't want to lose anyone else. Even if I don't know what I'm doing now."
Petra Soroka	"I don't respect any of my decisions either. Even before there was another option..." "See-- that's what I don't respect. There was always another option. And you chose the one for you, because fuck everyone else, fuck Lilian, fuck Angela, fuck me, fuck Cinder, and you don't even have the fucking guts to stick to it. I don't fucking respect it at all." Petra's voice heats up along with her tightening her grip around Fourth Match Flame's handle, though she doesn't make a threatening move towards Yuri. She doesn't even manage a glare, just an annoyed little pout that looks more disgusted than actually angry. "Would you do it again? In the same circumstances? You saw the future already, back then, so nothing's changed, has it?" Then, Doomsday Clock. It's not unusual for Abnormalities to demand random sacrifices, or that death be a part of their typical Work schedule. Headquarters was uniquely lucky to have relatively few like that, and even fewer that couldn't be brute forced some way or another, especially with Petra's immunity to White damage, but through Angela's communication with the Manuals, Petra knows basically every Abnormality in every facility. Yuri can't possibly be aware that Petra already knows the Abnormality, though, and so she doesn't say anything. Petra's brute force could solve a lot of Abnormalities that otherwise would be lethal, really. Even this one-- if Cinder had been chosen 'randomly', then Petra would say no, and the world would have to warp around her. In HQ, Petra had enough gravity to deny the lottery, and either find a way around, or point to someone to demand that they die instead. As a normal employee, though, having it be a random sacrifice by lottery rather than based on a characteristic like White Night feels... even worse. There's a narrative in how it had to be Cinder or Petra, even if it was a sick one. Inventing a lottery means falling back on the blind meat grinder logic that the City functions on, something that volunteers giving up the agents' humanity just by participation in it. So, then... does Petra have sympathy for her? Who wouldn't want to escape a circumstance like that? Petra did worse to escape a less-awful environment, so she can't really judge someone for whatever trail they have to blaze in order to survive. The difference with Yuri, though, is that she's a pathetic loser with no convictions besides survival. "... I guess, all that time with the lottery, and you're still dogshit at guessing the odds. You know, if Lilian had been hurt at all by that video, you'd be dead for certain, right? I would've butchered you in jail and no one would've defended you. Did you really think that Lilian and Angela would be fine, or as fine as they are, afterwards? Or did you just think it was exactly as certain that you'd die to the Purple Tear even if you asked Lilian and I to defend you?" "You're a loser. That's your problem. You got reduced down to a rat cannibalizing people for scraps and you're terrified of being anything else. Cinder deserved better than you, and she deserved better than me, too." Petra swallows and tenses her shoulders. That last part slipped out accidentally, but she means it. "If your own survival is all you care about, then give me your EGO and I'll find some safe world where you can live, or you can stay on Hydrochoeria for a while, and you'll never be in any real danger and never have to do anything again. If you're less like that girl from before, then who are you now?"
Angela	Yuri says, "...If I had guts, I wouldn't have taken that deal in the first place. Cinder and Aya were the ones with guts. I just hung on because I wished I could be them." She hasn't mentioned Aya before but there is no Aya in the Lobcorp personel folders so she must not be a part of it. Would she do it again, though? The only proper test would be in the moment but Yuri shakes her head all the same. "I don't want to. Like I told her, I'm done with shady deals just to survive. I still don't want to die but... I don't think I could do it again. Being alone is just as bad as being dead, maybe even worse because you get to watch it happen." But what HAS changed? "...Well... In that future, I'm guessing nobody was around to call me out." She manages a small smile though it is only a small flicker. "Back then I definitely thought between Lilian and the Tear, I definitely shouldn't betray the Tear. I mean, I knew you and Lilian were badass but she .... She seemed to know everything and she could go anywhere." She exhales. "I didn't think Lilian would be hurt. I didn't even really know that was aimed at her. I just thought she wanted a peek at Lobcorp, learn something maybe even she couldn't see." She shakes her head. "But it wasn't as if I thought it all through. It wasn't tough to rationalize. I...am glad they aren't hurt, though I should probably say something that I got shown that only made sense to me after the fact, after I saw that pillar. Maybe you can use it to help Angela." But she waits for acquiescence on that. Instead she moves on, for now, from this to not deserving Cinder. She offers Petra a hand, one undeserving to another. "...Another rat for your collection?" Yuri quips at Petra's offer. "It's not a bad deal..." She looks down at her hands. "...But I want to become someone worthy of Cinder. Of you. Being alone is... I had a lot of time alone and that's worse than dying because it's the same as dying, just you get to watch yourself as a corpse. I think... I took one step there. But I'm gonna keep trying and ... if I fuck it up that bad again... Well I won't. I can't."
Petra Soroka	"Like I told her, I'm done with shady deals just to survive." "Carmen..." Petra murmurs to herself. "You heard her, right? And recognized her? W-wait, how did you even know...? You've never heard her voice before. Did she tell you?" "Either way-- keep that to yourself. Don't go talking about what Carmen's doing to anyone. If you're sticking around, then you're not out of the woods yet, so...." Petra pulls her knee up to her chest, and the sliding of Fourth Match Flame onto the table allows it to warm Yuri up too. Petra's mind wanders to a certain dangerous-seeming fifty year old woman earlier this week, and she chews on the inside of her cheek. "I can't... really fault you for shady deals. Or for wanting to survive. But... yeah, you have no right to blame anyone but yourself for being hated and alone, when you chose that as if it was your only option." "...Well... In that future, I'm guessing nobody was around to call me out." Petra frowns deeper, unable to dispel the nagging disappointment she has at seeing Yuri again. In the weeks after the war, when it'd been a year since Yuri had been around, thoughts of the time she spent with Cinder naturally led to unhappy nostalgia for the dorm room with the three of them, as if there would be some kind of... revelation, or catharsis, or unique bond left over from that, in the smoke of Cinder's absence. But now that she's here, the memories she evokes are the ones of Petra and Cinder in the silent room with the empty bed. "But they were. So that future was never real, was it. And you still let it have more power over you than the obvious fucking reality in front of your face. I don't know whether the Purple Tear is a fuckup for obviously being blind to that part of the future, or way smarter than I even thought before, for reading you for pathetic well enough to know she could say anything to you to decide what your future was." "But, I guess you're lucky that you being such a coward didn't hurt Lilian, even though you didn't give a thought to it at all. So congrats on winning the lottery again." "Maybe you can use it to help Angela." This talk with Yuri has elevated the threat level of the Purple Tear in Petra's mind, despite her scolding. As much as she berates Yuri for crumpling to the destiny that was ascribed to her, the Purple Tear was right in the end, and that makes her dangerous. Petra lifts up her face to look at Yuri. "What is it?" "...Another rat for your collection?" Petra winces, wounded a little bit from things outside this conversation. "Okay, well-- funny joke, but-- don't call that kind of thing a collection. I'm trying to set it up as a sanctuary for the agents in general." "And... I mean, I agree that being alone isn't any better than being dead. But you're still just as alone now, aren't you? Keep trying how? Take a step where? How will you avoid fucking up? What will you dedicate yourself towards? Living passively and just taking whatever the fucking slot machine gives you isn't something you can do anymore."
Angela	''How did you even know...?'' "She just told me it was her name." Yuri admits. "I saw lots of...quick flashes passing by. I think some memories of hers were shared but they went by too fast to really see them. But she mostly was just talking to me. She was acting like she wanted to help me out." She nods. "So--yeah. she just told me. I guess she doesn't think it's a secret or maybe it's a rule and she ''has'' to say." She glances over to Petra and adds, "I think the Watch is gonna ask what ''that'' was all about, should I not tell them either? And if not, what should I say?" She doesn't exactly know why this is something she can't talk about but she's willing to obey. ''You chose that as if it was your only option.'' "Yeah... so I should stop now. I don't think I'll get another chance." That future was never real, was it? Yuri's not sure. She doesn't think it can be the future anymore. That future her didn't have an EGO for starters. And she seemed ... "I think it was some kind of possible future, maybe..." Yuri says. "But at the time it seemed like the sure thing. But yeah ... guess I lucked out again." ''What is it?'' Yuri hesitates, this is an old memory that feels like a lifetime ago but she pressed on. "That version of me. She was escorting a bunch of people through the LobCorp facility we both once worked at. She only showed me glimpses, but they did say they were looking for something called a 'Bough of Light'. ... Naturally I thought of the 'Seed of Light' project, but this facility was nowhere near headquarters, it was all the way in District 4. I... 'died' there... That version of me, shortly before they got the bough, so I don't know what happened past that but... If there was a 'Bough of Light' there, that means ... something right? To Angela?" ''Don't call that kind of thing a colletion.'' Yuri raises her hand up. "Okay I won't." But that leads to the big question of how. Keep trying how? Devote herself to what now? "A lot of people are in the position I was in that world. I'm going to help the Watch help those people, I think. I'm gonna steal Aya away and give her a chance for a better future. Carmen said I wished to be an Apple of Discord to change the future, but ... An apple is something that other people throw. So instead--I'm going to try and fight for something fairer for everyone. And they're the people who'll take my help right now. And well--I'll try to hold myself accountable, but I do have people to kick me back up onto my feet when I stumble." She scootches closer to Petra, despite the table creaking. "I'll check in too. Okay?"
Petra Soroka	"She just told me it was her name." Petra scowls. Carmen is such a fucking brat. First she kills Angelica, and then she goes around chattering to every mentally ill weirdo in the City about stuff she should keep to herself. "My goal is to keep the attention of the City off of Angela as long as I can. She's not actually involved with any of this, but if people start hearing about Carmen and the Tree of Light being linked to the monsters that are going around killing everyone, then they'll probably get mad at her." "The Watch already knows everything they need to know. They're calling them 'Distortions' now; there's someone in the Watch investigating them. Frankly... I should probably get you away from the Watch as soon as I can because of that. Moses isn't fucking around." "But at the time it seemed like the sure thing." "Of course it did. Because you're gullible and didn't stick up for yourself even when there were people around supporting you." Petra looks away from Yuri, to where the lake is starting to reflect the oily glimmers of the sunrise. Is she being too hard on Yuri, maybe? Would Petra have ever done similar, in a situation like that? It's easy for her to imagine what viewing her own future would have been like, when she was younger, because it felt like it was extremely certain in the way that everyone else talked about their plans for her, and she did make a deal with the devil to escape it. But... once she had support, once someone understood, she didn't stick to it any longer than she had to, did she? Petra's actions were definitely worse in pursuit of changing her future, but she always had a principle besides fear to it, and she wasn't so entrenched in it to run away from every other opportunity and then bitch at the first person she saw after jail. The more Petra tries to conceptualize an empathetic mirror of Yuri's experience, the more distant she feels from her former friend. She was... sort of just a normal person, after all. "If there was a 'Bough of Light' there, that means ... something right? To Angela?" Petra squints at Yuri, but ultimately nods and taps her finger on the table in thought. "Yeah. It's been on my to-do list to check out the fallen facilities for a few reasons, but that's probably moved it up a few ranks. Even if it's just to keep the Abnormalities from swarming across the City, it's worth doing. I might recruit you for it after doing some investigations."
Petra Soroka	"I'm going to help the Watch help those people, I think." That puts Yuri in dangerous proximity to Moses, but there's nothing Petra can really do about that besides abduct her. She sighs and leans back against the brick wall behind the table. "Okay. I respect that. As far as I can tell, they're doing good work in the City, and I don't really have any problem with the stuff Berislav's set up here. But you're around people who are dangerous to me now, so I'm not going to be telling you anything that I wouldn't want spread to the entire world, because I don't trust you enough for that." "But..." Well, there is one thing Petra will tell Yuri, that she knows wouldn't be turned into a slip of the tongue or idle gossip. When Yuri scootches closer, Petra nudges Fourth Match Flame to make room for her, and keeps her hand lingering on the blade while she talks. "It was an Abnormality we hadn't seen before, a new one that showed up after you left. During the final stretch of the final Meltdown. It breached, and turned into a form we had no data on, and it started blasting waves of Pale damage through the whole facility. People died before I could even check the readings, and... everyone was in a panic. We couldn't beat it, not even with me, and Lilian, and everyone." "So when there was another way, a sacrifice it would take, everyone agreed we had to. But the criteria... it had to be someone who was able to corrode. If you were there, you would work. If Ceri, or Nonon were... but they weren't. So it was Cinder or me, and..." Petra trails off with a swallow, eyes stinging. "... I'm sorry. We'll keep in touch."
Angela	''Moses isn't fucking around.'' "Um--I don't know who that is, but I'll be careful. Some kind of... Distortion ... Investigator?" It's hard to imagine distorting now that she rejected the opportunity to distort and she'll probably connect those dots soo0ner rather htan later. "Alright, I'll just say I heard a 'Voice'. I don't have to have recognized it." Yuri says. She owes Petra and Angela that much. She's not involved so it's not like she's hurting the world by not mentioning her. Yuri was sort of just a normal person. She seems to be getting weirder. ''But that's probably moved it up a few ranks.'' "It's possible it's something that only happened afterwards--this event was at least a couple years from now if not more. But with that giant pillar of Light--I have to assume it's not unrelated." ''I might recruit you for it after doing some investigations.'' "I can definitely guide you through my old facility. If we clear that out, it'll save at least one life." ''So I'm not going to be telling you anyything that I wouldn't want spread to the entire world.'' "Fair." Yuri agrees. "And it's not like I'd be able to do much even if I did know. And then she hears the story of how it happened. The people who could've saved Cinder--just weren't there. And the reason they couldn't be there was because of the Multiverse. Maybe Yuri wouldn't have been there, but Nonon and Ceri would've had nowhere else to go. Is there a world out there, she wonders, one without the Multiverse that Cinder managed to make it to the last day and survive? What would that kind of Cinder be like? She doesn't know, she doubts she ever will. But the sad truth is is that Cinder was willing to burn for Petra, probably was willing to burn for Yuri--but Yuri and Petra weren't so willing to melt away. A frozen tear drips from Yuri's functioning eye. She wipes it away. "So that's what you meant ... I had no idea I was just being crazy but..." She exhales. "Petra. There was no way she would've let you throw yourself on that pyre for her sake. You already saved her life and she always gushed about the worlds and experiences you showed her. You showed her life was something to be experienced not spent so ... um ... Thanks for being with her, then. At least she wasn't alone thanks to you." And as discussed, that's worse than dying.