Scene #8355: Repeatedly and Artfully

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	It's been three days of this, and Lilian is beyond done. First it was the student portal notifying her that she'd missed too many class days, and so she'd phoned in four complaints and phoned the admin personally to sort it out, because of course she's never had an unregistered absence from class in her like. Then it was her contact information, cutting her off from emails, alerts, calls, and professional links, which she noticed when her scheduled interviewer got the wrong number, which she had to resolve by calling up the board and interrogating the student resources manager personally for hours. Now, it's her graduation credits; when her ceremony is this year, and what certificate she's receiving, and that was bad enough that she barged right on into the headmaster's office and threatened to sue, and got away with it. Of course, each and every time, it was sorted. Nova Heliosanctus is hundreds of years old, and many of its esteemed professors and alumni have been teaching there for a mortal lifetime or more; the reliance on paper records is extensive and habitual, and computers are a modern convenience that have come with ample regard for stamping out any ability for students to digitally shortcut their careers. It wasn't hard to set it all straight. Especially not for Lilian, star student and perpetual terror, from one of the big ten houses, Immunes credibility and resources, and Paladins simps. Everyone is eager to see her graduate because they recognize their role in the backstory of someone already going on to become famous, or because they crave the day she'll be out of their hair. But that's still not good enough. Once is an outrageous anomaly. Thrice is so ridiculous that even the faculty have to scrape and scramble and apologize profusely for how poorly it reflects on an elite academy. It's intentional. It has to be. Someone is up to something, and Lilian is hellbent on finding out. Ishirou is coming later today, to sort it from the cybersecurity angle, and then she is going to spend all of her afternoon block in divination. Her graduation, coming up in summer, cannot be allowed to fall through, or be disrupted in any way, by any means necessary. This school nearly killed her, and yet she stuck it out to the end. This school was once all the authority the system had made manifest, and she has made it hers. Through spite and pride and envy and a faded, misguided hope, this is the one thing she can claim to have done, that nobody should have any reason to complain about. That even Alison and Matthew should be proud of. Graduation is the only day she'll see her family, or at least her brother and sister, together, looking at her. This is the one tie she has remaining to the society she was born in, and Lilian will do anything to leave it behind properly; as an accomplishment, and to finally sever her ties to the toxic proto-Lilian that entered these doors nine years ago. So one can imagine her reaction, barely not storming through those high-vaulted halls with their marble floors and hundred year old heirlooms by gothic doors and warm conjured lighting, to peering over the baroque rail to her left, past the pillars, and into the open air garden outside, only to see Gabriel duNord that piece of shit; he's nowhere near good enough for Eleanor only halfway behind a tree, talking to-- Still in her school uniform, Lilian's hands slap down on the railing bar, and her fingertips leave dents in the metal. She leans forward nearly so far she falls, hair spilling over her shoulders, bag thumping against the rails, and yells loud enough to send birds scattering from their foliage cover, "YOU!"
Petra Soroka	Indus was never going to be the end of this for Petra. Picking up that Eggman-emblazoned gunblade, crushing Ishirou, scarring Indus, and burning nearly all of the few bridges she'd managed to built, was never about any of those things. It was always, every time, about her. With weeks of planning and promising Dryclean whatever the robot wanted as payment, Petra clumsily stacked up blocks to construct this exact situation. Dryclean's interference with electronic records would fray Lilian's already-battered nerves, and Petra reached out to this boy with some stupid childish grudge, Gabriel, for access to the campus and to be a witness for what happens next. Because without a finger openly raised, without a word or threat on her part, without anyone at the school knowing who she is-- Petra has placed herself directly in the path of an incoherently furious Lilian Rook. Petra washed up for the date event. Obviously, the greasy girl with disintegrating clothing would be an immediately suspicious sight on a noble campus, so she snuck into a hotel to use their showers, freshened up her hair and countenance, and dressed much cuter than she's been recently seen. From top to bottom, her clothes appear new: she's wearing a blue pinafore skirt over a lacy white tee, with her hair brushed glossy-smooth and fastened with a sunflower hairpin. She's wearing her glittery green scarf and bomber jacket, with the scarf pulled up around her mouth and the bomber clearly recently cleaned, and she's wearing those cute black loafers-- from that one day-- and light makeup to cap it all off. She's struggling to not roll her eyes at Gabriel as he talks, scanning the campus with a flat expression buzzing with anticipation, until she lands on Lilian. Petra's eyes, with the rest of her lower face concealed by her scarf, lock on to Lilian's without flinching when she slams her hand into the railing. She hesitates and pulls the scarf away from her face, drooping down with slightly unnatural heaviness, then smiles brightly. She steps out from behind the tree, walking past Gabriel to put herself in full view, then raises her hand into a shoulder-height finger waggling wave The abnormal weight in the front of her scarf exposes a sliver of the front of her throat, facing directly towards Lilian. Red-purple marks peek out from underneath, visible to no one but her. "Oh, wow! I didn't think I'd run into you here, Lily-R." Her tone is saccharine enough to read as hostile, barely plausible to any onlookers even without context. But maybe, just barely plausible enough.
Lilian Rook	On a typical campus, Gabriel would be what Petra would expect; tall, dark, handsome, brooding, exuding the sense of being misunderstood and talented, probably to be famous in the future. It's unusual to get the sense of being sort of pathetic, from a guy like that. Not in any particular manner of his bearing, but in the way that all the usual traits aren't quite good enough here, next to the all-consuming question of what separates them in the future from the mundane rabble (like her), and furthermore, in how she can clearly tell just how thoroughly he's been whipped by Lilian. "--I don't think that's unreasonble? Do you? I know there's all the time in the world later, but it's petty and controlling and anyone should be able to see that kind of narcissism from an early age, right? She just doesn't want her wing girls to show any interest in anyone but her. Eleanor and I like each other. And she got that sugar mommy anyways, right? I get that Sabrina is just one of those types, you know, those weirdos, probably isn't 'into it' at all. But--" He's been going for a while, rambling to Petra while waiting to see her plan in motion, only to freeze when Lilian screams from above. It's actually kind of weird, but it feels that way on a delay, to not see Lilian just 'appear' in front of her. To see that girl storm over to the stairs and click clack down the double flight, charging through the grass with her bag thumping against her hip and stray sticks snapping against her skirt. Enough time to contemplate what's about to happen. To really let the context soak in. To have Gabriel nervously ask "Hey-- Hey she saw us. What's the plan? Hello?", and perhaps barely hold back some kind of slur. Long enough to see it coming when Lilian reaches right for Petra's scarf, balls it up around her fist, and hoists her up from the ground by it. It's almost ridiculous, in that ridiculously expensive school uniform for aristocrats, to see Lilian do that one-handed. Gabriel staggers back, even. Lilian isn't even looking at Petra's throat; she's too focused on that smugly saccharine expression. Her eyes are blazing with feverish hatred; anxious energy from nerves frayed raw, mixed with vehement, inhibition-squashing disgust. Which isn't as bad as it gets. Petra knows. "Of course it was you! Who else would bother?! Who else would be so utterly, pathetically ridiculous!" Lilian yells, turning and throwing Petra against the tree to pin her. "I thought I couldn't fathom you before, but it feels like every week, I reach new and dizzying heights of wondering what your fucking problem is!" Over her shoulder, Petra can see Gabriel blinking in shock at the curse word. "Miss Rook, I'm sure you're aware that there's a zero tolerance policy for--" Lilian barely glances over her shoulder. The way Gabriel's face pales tells Petra just how she looked at him. Like an irritating alarm. An obnoxious game mechanic. A pile of waste cardboard.
Lilian Rook	"Shut it, Gabe. I'm certain you understand that you're finished. You let this filthy little Extra onto school grounds, didn't you?!" "I don't--" "Shut Up! You're complicit and I'm going to prove it either way! They'll have your head for this! Bringing her here, aiding human trafficking and tresspassing, engaging in fraud, divulging Hidden Continent locational data to-- do you even know who this mutant rat is?!" He falls silent, and backs up, reaching for his smart device like a gun in a holster, but currently struggling with having the guts to pull it. Lilian is already refocused on Petra anyways. Gabriel has elevated her from histrionic fury to cold rage, which is a step closer to what she needs. "That again? You're so full of shit, Soroka. You know full well what you're doing, don't you? That thing. The one thing I tell you not to do, that button you hammer over and over, just so you can cross a boundary. So you can try and ruin something happy. So you can keep making things worse. How in God's name are you this obsessed with me?! What does my graduation have to do with you?! Does it offend you that badly that I might have anything?! Why do you want to be such a horrible little piece of shit so badly?! Just leave me alone! Stop creeping into everything I do, everywhere I go, everyone I talk to, like putrid black tar you are, and let me have a moment without a fucked up little narcissistic poseur pervert ruining it!"
Petra Soroka	Even without that sense of Gabriel being underneath Lilian's boot-- after all, Petra assumes everyone is-- his tall, dark, and handsome presentation is supremely unimpressive to her. It's only out of an innate understanding of the Male Ego and a need for his presence later that Petra manages to maintain some facsimile of attention with his rambling. Even giving Gabriel the barest amount of her mind possible, Petra struggles to hold back from sticking up for Lilian and refuting his completely misguided complaints. Once Petra finally has the opportunity to put Gabe behind her, the few seconds where Lilian is forced to physically approach stretch on impossibly long. Petra locks in place, smile still plastered on her face while her eyes track Lilian and her hand slowly sinks. Rather than being frozen in fear-- her stomach is twisting into knots, but fear definitely isn't the primary emotion-- Petra is exerting all of her willpower to avoid looking at the cluster of floral vines clinging to the wall of the garden, where a small, disc-shaped drone hides, its camera trained on the pair. Petra reacted belatedly to Lilian's violent approach, her smile flickering with a grimace and half-heartedly backstepping away from the grab, the outlines of her hands faintly blurring with aberration but not moving quickly enough to interfere. Petra gasps as Lilian grabs her scarf, and inside the cloth, she can feel a blocky plastic shape, sewn in the interior lining. "I don't--" The air is knocked out of her with a small oof as her back collides with the tree. "I don't know what you're talking about!" Patently untrue, obviously, but Petra raises her hoarse, damaged voice loudly enough with the plaintive cry to signal to anyone in earshot that something is happening. And with that ragged, desperate voice, isn't it obvious who's the aggressor? Petra's attention is fully focused on Lilian's face, but after a few seconds of Lilian berating Gabriel, she tears her eyes away to shoot him a quick look. He's too much of a pussy to do anything but stand there if he feels like he's alone versus her. Petra's expression, in the brief moment that she locks eyes with Gabe, is sculpted with helpless panic, with a sense of "Isn't this too far? I wasn't prepared for this.". Once she turns her face back to her real target, she's wearing that smile again, tight with suppressed energy and not so much showing teeth as baring them. "Am I obsessed with you? You're had a few bad days at school and your mind immediately jumped to me. You're the one who's so full of herself that she assumes my every thought is about her. You're the one," Petra's voice lowers, grinding in her throat, "Who's so scared of me using a simple nickname, because you know that you'll hear it in my voice when she says it." Petra wraps both of her hands around the arm that's twisted into her scarf. There's no force behind the grip, she's not ripping Lilian away from her neck, and there's an odd sense that she's just feeling the bicep that lifted her up effortlessly. "Total war, Lily-R. That's what wanting me as your archrival means." Petra shrugs against the tree, bark flaking off and sticking painfully through her clothes. "Besides. You went and stalked my ex-boyfriend. At least this is something relevant to you."
Lilian Rook	"You know exactly what I'm talking about you disingenuous piece of shit." Lilian whispers dangerously between clenched teeth. "You're so fucking obnoxious. What went wrong in your head? You find out one or two things about me and now it's your mission you try and ruin my life in whatever mediocre ways you can try? You don't get to. You're just a worse version of everything I am." Gabriel looks at her cluelessly, but senses, at least, the vulnerable urgency in her eyes. She can see the moment he calculates that he has to help or he's sunk too; that her plan is his only lifeboat. Funny. It'd be easy to assume everyone in this circle is an expert liar and socialite. He backs up a few steps and quietly taps his device, like the usual lookie-loo bystander. Lilian, is of course, focused on the obvious; the suspicious thing hidden from her, not very well. "What the fuck is this?" she gasps, briefly above water, as she reaches under Petra's scarf with her left hand, and tears the mask free from beneath, breaking the strap. "What the fuck is--" She stares at it, wide eyed, her lip slowly curling in disgust. "So that's how you-- and you have the stones to bitch at me about Noah." Lilian crushes the device immediately in her fist; another alarming display of strength completely out of place in her posh, academic setting; something she couldn't even do four years ago. It draws a quiet gasp from the couple of girls in the same exterior corridor who'd stopped to look at the yelling; it's not an approving one. "My mind? You stalked me here you fucking freak. I can see you." Lilian hisses. "Nobody's ever told you anything about where I go to school. I can't even begin to imagine how much effort it took to get here. And the second you butt in, illegally, from outside, things start going wrong and nobody can explain it? Do you think I've forgotten who you work for? Do you think I really believe you aren't that lowly? No matter how much you try to guard your thoughts, I can tell-- we can all tell-- that you have nothing in there, nothing to think or do or feel, that's any more important, any less pathetic, than this. This is the best you'll ever be. This is the most important thing you'll ever do." Lilian's eyes widen almost imperceptibly at the exact instant Petra goes from crossing the line to crossing that line. Even her sneer fades from her lips. Her expression glasses over. The muscles in her arm --astonishingly powerful for still being able to slip her arms into her blouse sleeves without alteration-- tense more than her face does. Just before Lilian pulls Petra away from the tree and swings her by the collar back into it, concentrating all her own bodyweight on the back of her head. The bark crunches, snapping in a circular crater. The snap and shudder of rustling leaves is enough to drawn a little more of a crowd, peering down from on high. It seems anomalous that none of them are doing the natural thing that Gabriel is doing. Like they know better. "I don't want a fucking thing from you, Soroka, least of all a relationship. No matter how hard you try, you'll only ever exist when you're right in front of me. Only Ishirou is enough of a loser to think about you on his own time, and even he can't give enough of a fuck about you to shoot you." Lilian scoffs. "'Total War'? The only reason you have the freedom to get up to this bullshit is because you still haven't made me hit back. You're so pathetic that I can't touch you without crushing you to death, and yet, somehow you seem to have gotten the idea that you're actually pushing me around."
Lilian Rook	"You know what's going to happen, right? Of course you do. You're asking for it like this. And you wanted an audience, after last time. A bigger one." Lilian leans in close enough that her breath hits Petra's face, hot and scornful and so acidic it's as if the condensation might peel her skin. She's still going. Talking faster and faster. He voice grows colder with each word, like cloying, chemical smog. "God you're a freak. Creep. Degenerate. Stalker. Masochist. A crossdressing exhibitionist, sex pest incel, school shooter in training. An absolute fuckless loser. A narcissistic do-nothing parasite. Whatever god put you on this Earth to do, it certainly wasn't this. All you've accomplished is being a histrionic attention whore and dragging everyone into your fucked up little delusions. You're a black hole that sucks up everything good about people, eats it up, and gets fat on it. An extra that nobody needs." Lilian raises her grip hard enough to start choking Petra, but not so seriously she really couldn't breathe at all; the bruises on her neck just prove that she liked it after all. It's just so Lilian can grab the collar of her shirt underneath. "I'm far past being shocked that they let people like you act as if they're Elites; I'm shocked that you can get away with acting like you're some ninteen year old girl you can find in any city. Talking to me about school and nicknames and your 'boyfriend' and her, like you belong in the same breath as any of those things. You're a fucked up little freak who belongs in a cell to keep her from stalking and harassing women. You even wore a disguise." It's like she's just noticed Petra is dressed pretty. Then she pulls. Hard enough to tear fabric. A gathering blob of students makes noise that Lilian isn't listening to. She raises her voice loud enough to be heard on purpose. "So, Gabriel, you absolute imbecile. You've let in a Watch agent provocateur onto the campus, like the absolute sub-simian you are." Lilian kicks the mask away. "An armed sociopath known for multiple counts of everything from assault to theft to human trafficking to attempted murder. You're fortunate that I found her." Gabriel himself is white as a sheet, clutching his smart device, and shaking, but determined to try and cling to the only branch he has; that Petra will somehow get him out of this. "I'll have to ring the faculty to check the academy for bombs you gormless idiot. Sit still while I search her for any more secret equipment she's smuggled in. She was hiding that mask; god knows what else she's armed with."
Petra Soroka	Petra's expression isn't triumphant by any means, but she looks quietly satisfied, jarringly contemplative, as she leans her head forwards as far as it'll go. "Being a worse version of you isn't so bad, is it? It still makes me better than all the rest of those vermin. There's a barrier none of them know how to cross, and none of them care to, but I've already been past it. More than status, or upbringing, or magic, you're more like me than you're like the rest of the people here. Girls like us will always clash like this." Destroying her mask does spark a legitimate flash of worry across Petra's face. She's suddenly consciously aware of the mild burning sensation prickling across her skin, the raw concentration of ambient magic eating away at her. "It's-- it's fine. If I look like I'm struggling more, then that's still a victory for me. No matter how much it hurts. "You've talked a lot about your school, you know." Petra's voice is strained, as more pressure is put on her throat, but her tone comes across as almost reassuring. Onlookers might interpret this as her desperately trying to take the high road, and deescalate the conflict. Lilian might pick out the intense energy fervor vibrating beneath the surface, with the air of the manifesto. "You have so much passion for what you study. I mean, I get to see it in practice, but even when you're just gushing about theory, you mention bits and pieces of where you study. It's really engaging. I remember that kind of stuff." Petra's head cracks against the tree, and she involuntarily lets out a cry of pain, her vision going briefly dark. Tears spring into her eyes from the pain-- That'd good, tears are good-- but even when she wants them to, none of them break loose to slide down her face. Blood trickles out of the back of her scalp, instead. She coughs and squirms in Lilian's grip, the burning pressure reminiscent enough of her ongoing cold to make her feel a wave of illness again. At this point her scarf is twisted up enough to put her bruises on display, and they look fresh enough that an anxious mind could attribute them to Lilian's current abuse-- especially with the displays of strength she just put on. Petra raises her head and scans the audience, looking for the student that seems the most shaken, to single them out with her gaze. "H-hey. Some--" Petra coughs, "Someone help. Please." Force an individual person to feel that pressure to act, prevent them from melding into the crowd.
Petra Soroka	Lilian's torrent of insults starts grating at Petra, woozy and dazed as she is. Her face contorts with genuine anger, and she spits out a pointless retort. "Don't you dare call me a sex pest, you pervert freak. You're so poisoned by your fucked up kinks that you can't fucking control yourself even on official business. You pulled a gun on me during a fashion show because your raging artificial hormones broke your brain. So don't project on me." Petra scrunches up her nose with the effort of putting on another smile as she taps Lilian's legs with her loafers. "Though, speaking of that, I'm glad I saved the shoes at least. Don't you think they're cute?" Petra had almost forgotten about being part of the Watch. The idea that she's here as some representative, as anything but herself, strikes her as so unnatural that she writhes in denial and calls out. "No! There's nothing like that. I need that mask to breathe, jackass. I'm not armed, and I didn't do anything to provoke this!"
Lilian Rook	Despite her rapid slide from paranoid rage into dissasociative mania, somewhere in her reserves of fading, guttering care, battered and bled dry by Petra over all these months, she dredges up the ability to focus on her eyes, for an instant of lucidity, and utter words so raw that it's as if they could make her throat bleed for saying them. "There's no 'us'. You're the vermin. You're them. You're nothing but their vacuous hungry rot, filling up an empty shell, starving for something that's not yours; that you'll never, ever have. You think you're special just because you're a little bit different on the outside, but you'll never be 'girls like us'." The gathering, perhaps a dozen students --the school doesn't seem densely populated for its size-- gasps with rippling shock at Petra's head being driven into a tree, a couple of students covering their mouths or hiding behind each other at the unprecedented sight. All of them who look older than sixteen guiltily look away from Petra, and she can tell in that second how many of them know that this sort of thing probably goes on around Lilian, but simply never this vehemently, this flagrantly, or this openly. A younger girl locks eyes with Petra, swallows hard enough to see, and starts to sprint away; probably to fetch a professor. Petra feels Lilian's fingers twitch against her, and the girl falls flat on her face; the impact to her nose has her screaming. Enough subjective time must have passed --how long was Petra hanging in the air against that tree, according to Lilian?-- for the woman's mood to shift. Right in front of her, Petra can see Lilian lose that sputtering spark of sanity --that tenuous grip on reality-- in the very instant she makes something stop. Just like that. Nothing happened. She didn't even say anything. It's wrong. Lilian isn't supposed to look like that without Petra pushing her all the way herself. She's supposed to resist. And yet, she has clearly lost a battle that Petra never saw, and knows nothing about. Something that has nothing to do with her, something that she feels in her bones was there long before she ever showed up, deeply and incomprehensibly corrosive, ate away at the last frayed strings holding her superego together for being forced to wish for something. And now it's just like Indus. That one, fantastically awful moment that Petra had picked. She's unravelled. "Oh? So that's where it is? That's what gets you. You'll admit to being pathetic, weak, useless, a fuckup, evil, worthless, rotten to the core, and you'll love it, but 'sex pest' is where you bleed. Your values are fascinatingly deranged, if that's where you feel uncomfortably seen. I can barely begin to fathom what goes on in that horrible little tangled knot you call a brain. It must be completely disgusting." Then, Petra digs her grave, in two different senses. '--artificial hormones--' "What the fuck are you blithering about?" says Lilian, her grip loosening, eyes blanking in guarded confusion, as if she's frantically trying to guess at some critical detail she's overlooked while keeping her cool. For a single, horrifying, rock bottom miserable instant, Petra is made excruciatingly aware that Lilian really, honestly, without a drop of deceit, doesn't know what she's talking about. And then the intended implication hits her. Lilian's face seizes up in white hot hatred and blind, fighting panic; the kind that comes from the surge of adrenaline brought on by something deeply miserable and intuitively, physically lethal. Gabriel stares at Petra as if she'd just put a gun to her temple. Like reaching for a fire extinguisher, he steps forward, and manages to begin "Miss Rook, it's--"
Lilian Rook	Lilian's skirt flares to the side as she removes her wand from the thigh holster-- not the archaic rod somewhere in her bag for complex ritual work in class, but the one that flicks like a switchblade and sounds like loading a gun. Physical violence from Lilian comes from passionate hatred, like at the show. Whatever this is comes from something else. The bifurcated tip is jabbed up into Petra's solar plexus, puncturing her shirt. Magical lightning courses through the glowing spiral grooves and erupts into Petra's nerves in starburts of brilliant, blinding agony. Lilian has the raw magical ability to fry her to death in seconds like this, and so the fact that she modulates it just so, lowering her output to just the exact point where it should put Petra on the verge of blacking out from pain, speaks to practice. It's a wonder that Lilian catches her once she lets go. The habitual, unconscious, dispassionate gentleness of her embrace is terrifying. "Don't talk to me Gabriel. I'm working." Lilian says, cold like rime-covered glass. "She's an instigator. A saboteur. She'll say and do anything, rob and kill and ruin anyone. It's Paladins business, so stand back and watch. I said she needs to be searched, so that's what I'm going to do, got it?" Gabriel looks down and flinches back as if struck. His recording device wobbles away, as if out of shame, or perhaps just fear. Like he knows, etched into his bones, that this is something not even this school can get away with anymore, once it comes to Lilian. Some taboo, some kind of line that You Just Don't Cross. Petra feels Lilian's hold on her tighten, without the tree bracing her. Arm around her waist, leaving her head lying against her chest. Her fingers catch the hem of Petra's shirt to keep her in place, fingernails scraping beneath, as the air is delicately, intentionally, squeezed partway from her lungs. The second wave of pain is different; intense and localized, agonizing and ephemeral, passing across her skin from collar to navel, then hip to ankle to ankle. Lilian's grip is choked up on the two foot metal wand to use its end like a scalpel, glowing with the flickering hiss of magical torch fire. She shears away clothing beneath the jacket, so she can slide her hand inside and feel for an underarm holster, or lower back case. Slitting her skirt, to scour both thighs for concealed weapons as Lilian does. Destroying the boots Petra taunted her with, just in case there may be a knife or holdout. It's swift. Professional. Forceful and assertive. A little hateful, and over the top. What a cop does when they're really pissed at you and have you handcuffed face down. The fact that she can do it so calmly, with sensual cruelty, is a feat of pure, enlightened psychosis. She's insulted, berated, humiliated, slapped, choked, and even shot Petra before; and none of it stuck. In that brilliantly mad and disinhibited moment of exhausted sanity, broken empathy, and singular delusional focus, Lilian touches Petra as she does because she intuits that this is what will leave the deepest scars. Lilian leans over, hand squeezing Petra's thigh to look for her revolver, and whispers under her breath, too quietly to be heard by anyone else, smouldering with hateful contempt bordering on ecstatic, dreamy relief, "I hate you so much, Soroka. I hate you so much I think you were made for me. A girl so worthless that she shouldn't have rights, made of every single thing wrong with this putrid species, and she wants nothing more than to be tortured by me. It has to be on purpose. You're so disgusting I could hurt you forever and never feel worse. You're my reward for being so good, aren't you? An empty doll for me to hate and hurt and vent every awful thing I feel that nobody else can know about, from now until the day you die."
Petra Soroka	"...Starving for something that's not yours, that you'll never, ever have." That's what makes Petra's eyes finally start prickling, and her throat constrict. Still no tears, though. Just the awful stinging in her heart of being genuinely wounded, being cut deep enough through poisonous scars to draw blood from that tumorous longing rooted inside her. The part of her that wants to crumple and cry and say You're right, and beg for some way to make amends. It scabs over. All Petra does is break eye contact. Her noble savior turns and sprints, and Petra sighs even before Lilian forces her to faceplant, unsurprised. Maybe that newly broken nose will be enough of a pain that she'll commiserate with other students about Lilian, spread some wave of discontent. It's not a good look for Lilian to be abusing someone a decade younger than her, but who knows if enough people will get upset to force administration to reprimand her. Petra's mind wanders, imagining the whole crowd trying the same thing at once, running for a teacher, while Lilian methodically trips each one in stopped time. Petra giggles quietly, in stark contrast to Lilian's flat expression. The mirth on her face slips back into a sneer, as pain throbs through her skull in time with Lilian's words. For a moment, as Lilian wondered aloud, all that was going on inside Petra's brain was sick fog packed like cotton around fantasizing about Lilian. That realization, coupled with Lilian's genuine confusion at not understanding how Petra is trying to cut her, is so desperately pathetic that her heart nearly stops. The next heartbeat is ignited secondhand, jolted into motion by Lilian's blazing panic. Petra bares her teeth and hisses at Lilian, digging in as cruelly as she can to keep up that flash of triumphant fire. "What, does it hurt to be reminded? Does having a vital part of yourself dangled in the air in front of an audience scare you? I thought brave, strong girls like you, the ones who earned it, were supposed to be above caring what everyone else thinks." Petra's gaze flickers to Lilian's thigh, stumbling over her low, heated words only for a moment, "Do you want to put that to the test? Have you thought about what I could do if I got into your records like you think I have?" Petra flinches at her own words, bitter like bile rising in her throat. That threat is even a little too far for her, but she doesn't need to actually want to follow through to make Lilian panic. She opens her mouth to continue, and all that comes out is a strangled shriek of pain.
Petra Soroka	The shock cuts off Petra's train of thought, dimming her vision and searing her consciousness into a blank white canvas. The second one, arcing from collar to hip to thigh to ankle, blackens Lilian's name irreversibly into the empty expanse. Sparks dance between goosebumps across Petra's skin, and she shivers in Lilian's embrace. Both of her hands are wrapped around to Lilian's back, gripping fistfuls of her impossibly high quality blouse, and with her cheek pressed up against Lilian's chest, the watching students are scrubbed from her mind and field of vision. For a short time, no one exists except her and Lilian. With Gabe no longer existing to Petra, she interprets Lilian's words as being addressed towards her, writhing in her arms to free up her face just enough to be able to respond, hot breath from near-inaudible words soaking through Lilian's clothes and onto her skin. "I haven't killed anyone. I haven't. I promise." Lilian reaches underneath Petra's jacket, and running her fingers along her back, she finds something hard attached to the right shoulder strap of the skirt. Not a weapon-- an alarm, from a store, that was never removed. Petra whimpers as air is squeezed out of her lungs, her breaths quick and shallow. "I haven't even killed Ishirou. Y-you seemed really scared, that I would. Like actually. And not in a way that made you want to protect him, or defeat me, but. Uncharacteristically empathetic. That's what I said, but it's really not--" Petra whines as Lilian cuts open her shirt and slides her fingers along her back. Fresh air and cool fingers wash over her feverishly hot skin, her muscles tensing up under Lilian's touch. Still no weapon. Petra squirms away from Lilian's fingers, into her chest, and her own breath hitches, still murmuring into Lilian's blouse. "N-not uncommon. It's awful, how much you get it, and it's worse because I get how hard it is for you to be good like that. Uncharacteristic, but so, so consistent. And you're right, too, probably. I really, really don't want to tolerate him, but that's kind of all I have, isn't it?" The electric smoke slowly clears from Petra's mind, though her thoughts remain clouded for, um, other reasons. She finally realizes how brightly pink her face has become, and helplessly twists in Lilian's embrace, defensively pressing her thighs together. She lets out a low whine, nasally and choked up as tears start to roll down her cheeks. "Stopppp...." She squeezes Lilian's hand between her thighs, a bead of sweat trickling down onto her fingers. Still no weapon. "--made for me--" "--wants nothing more--" "--my reward--" "--from now until the day you die." Tears stream silently down Petra's face, absorbing into a growing wet spot on Lilian's chest. She chokes back a wet sniffle and weakly protests, her voice still nasally and clogged up, hoarse from the jewelry wrapped around her throat. "I can't stand them. I can't stand any of this. I hate them all so much and it makes me sick that you compare me to them. And I'm not a toy, I'm a person. You can't just--" Lilian's grip tightens on her thigh, electricity coursing through her nerves down to her ankles, and up through her hip, and navel, and collar. Petra's voice dies in her throat with a whimper, and when she continues her fragment, it almost sounds like a new sentence, breathlessly whispered with her face pressed into Lilian's chest. "--do whatever you want to me." Petra shrinks down as much as she can, curling up into her jacket. She sobs loudly, like a floodgate was broken, and if Lilian lets her slip out of her arms, Petra will just crouch on the ground in her shredded clothes with her knees tucked into her chest, head hanging, tears dripping onto the grass.
Lilian Rook	If Lilian could read Petra's mind --if that weren't the one and only power that Petra had jealously clung to above all else-- it would all be over in that moment where Petra knows Lilian is right, and Lilian would finally know it too. If she could feel it, bridging one girl's heart to another, in all its bloody sincerity, that would give her pause, and the pause would make her stop, and the stop would make her drop her wand, and drop Petra, and in her asphyxiated confusion, maybe even Lilian would cry, just a little. She would make up a convincing excuse, carry Petra away for something grim-sounding, and then they'd sit together in a room and talk about it for gruesome and teary hours. In that moment, somehow even Petra can feel it. Clear as day. What could be, slipping out of her fingers with the passing of the seconds, and becoming just more blood on the narrative knife that Lilian blindly plunges into Petra over and over again, looking for the heart, the kill spot, that will make this all stop. She has no idea that Petra is dead already. The fact that nothing works angers her almost as much as it scares her. "Reminded of nothing, cretin. Once again, you've blindly projected something from that pathetic little world of mewling, hollow mundanity at me, convinced you've 'crossed the barrier' and cracked the code, when the very bedrock of everything you know is still a continent apart. Pump yourself full of whatever drugs you like. I don't care. You'll never understand what I've done. You'd never make it through what I had to." The following threat causes Lilian to stop and grind the blazing tip of her wand-scalpel into Petra's navel, just at the waistline. The pain goes from intense-but-passing to writhingly agonizing. "Girls like me, who are brave and strong and worthy of something, are above a lot. Including you. Girls like me have been through enough; we don't deserve even more. I won't beg you to let me have this; I won't let you take it away." Lilian makes short work of her brutal search. As the seconds stretch long, the emotional timbre of the crowd is clear; shock at the scene before them, fascinated horror at the presence of violence in their line of sight, panic and dismay and alluring catharsis at seeing Lilian Rook inflict it so nakedly, but not sympathy for Petra. Once they knew that she doesn't belong here, that she needs that mask to breathe, and throws her lot in with the people who tirelessly work against their way of life, they brand her as an outsider, a threat, a detestable lesser, and merely balk at her treatment as barbaric from someone possessed of noblesse oblige. They won't help. They'll only gossip about it later. Which is fine, really. "Don't try to talk to me." Lilian says over Petra. Her voice is exactly as unglued as before, without any comprehension of the feelings behind the girl's words, as if understanding the obvious were an act of effort that she has run out of energy for. "You had your chance. You had six months of chances. If you really meant anything, you'd have said something when it wasn't so obviously to try and get yourself out of trouble." Just the sound of her voice is like bonfire smoke, burning and cloying and acrid in that unmistakably natural way. "You're a liar. A fake. You'll say anything to manipulate people. You keep getting away with your sins by acting like this, and then claiming you don't want special treatment; I'm not falling for it." The alarm is torn out of her clothes in vicious, dispassionate disgust. She keeps rummaging. Her volume lowers below the threshold of anyone else's hearing.
Lilian Rook	"Don't try to praise me for the only way I'm not perfect. I know it's not normal. I'm just trying my hardest, and that's all I can say. But you aren't even trying at all, and everyone forgives you, everyone tries so hard to love you; and the way they give you endless second chances and weepy hugs and friendly advice; it makes me sick. It's not fair." "You get everything for free. You've never lost anything; only thrown it away. This irredeemable world was set up for you, and it hands you everything someone needs to live with a wink and a pat on the ass, not a fight. So no matter how much you want to take what I have, no matter how hard you try to scar yourself the same way, you'll never get it. No matter what you pretend to be, everyone can tell that you're one of them, and not like me. You'll be showered in love and privilege for the rest of your horrible life, and the few beautiful things I have will always be out of reach for you." "It's too late. You can't go back in time and change it. That's how it'll be for you and I, forever and ever and ever. It was set up that way from the moment we were born. So the most you can do is try to ruin it." Petra's thighs squeeze around Lilian's hand. But this isn't the Lilian Petra knows. Not really. What would fill her with alarm and disgust normally only registers with her on the level of a particularly weird insect still crawling around with its head cut off. Her fingers ball up into a loose fist to force space, and then squeeze just precisely enough to be more vicious than if she'd used all her strength. The arm around Petra's midriff slides up to hook around her throat instead, pinning her head against Lilian's breast and strangling out any attemps to wrest free, while she takes her time checking the entire waistband. Ostensibly, for the ill-advised holdout weapon. Realistically, because this is what makes Petra panic and cry and beg, which feels like having control. "No, Petra. You stop. All you had to do was stop. Now it isn't your choice." That time it was enough to hear from more than six inches away. For the audience, even. Level and airy, smooth and carefree in its businesslike uncare. "I'm very well aware that you hate us." Definitely the audience. Dragging Petra through the mud, as the rebellious Watch element with a vehement grudge against the social elites. "That's why you're here, after all. I've seen what you've done before, remember? You got away that time, but I'm not allowing you to repeat the disaster in Indus here. I have a duty to the institutions of my homeland, you see." she says with a certain hint of pleasure."And I'm afraid, within this territory, you don't have any rights. How fortunate." It's her turn at the machine. "You threw your last chance away, thinking there'd still be more." Against all odds, Gabriel finally shows what Eleanor sees in him. Letting his phone hang at his side, he steps forward as Lilian is finishing up, and says with more confidence than he's earned, "Miss Rook, I understand the situation now. I'll come with you to answer any questions you have any take any responsibility I have to, in order to clear the good name of Nova Heliosanctus and the duMond family. I would urgently suggest that we move this business off of academy grounds, if not for matters of decorum and the young and impressionable minds that may come by at any time, then for matters of privacy and operational secrecy."
Lilian Rook	Lilian looks up slowly over her shoulder, and drops Petra in a sobbing heap. Standing up slowly, she dusts the grass off of her skirt, turns to Gabriel, and says "Your opinion and cooperative attitude is duly noted, Gabriel duMond." before promptly snapping her wand out to her side and electrocuting Petra's crumpled body again with a short burst of lightning fit to leave first degree burns. "It's necesary for the dignity of the school, and of the culture of the English Phantom Circle as a whole, to demonstrate that we have no tolerance for terrorists." Again. Brutal and quick. "I may have to question your sympathetic tone in dealing with the filth of not only our own, parasitically attached to society, but those of the broader Multiverse as well." Again. Like a punctuation mark aimed at her feet. Daring Gabriel to react. "I'm doing my best to be understanding, you know. Once upon a time, I, too, thought they could be redeemed. But such a questionable lapse in judgement is--" Finally, Gabriel lunges forward to grab Lilian's wrist as she goes to hit Petra again. "Look at her. She's just some girl. I know this school wasn't the best to you, but--" "Too little too late. It doesn't count when I've already won." Gabriel doubles over, dry heaving and struggling for air. His phone shatters against the tree, 'dropped' with careless vehemence. "And don't touch me." Lilian looks down to readjust her aim, and her eyes wander to where her rumpled sleeve has been pulled back slightly by Gabriel's grip. At the cutesy little black-striped wristband against her skin. Her throat tightens. Rapid blinks ensure her eyes don't betray her. Lilian sways nauseously on her feet, then regains her balance. A flick of the wrist snaps the tactical wand back into its grip and flips it back into hits holster. Lilian crouches down to grab Petra by the wrist, and begin dragging her away. "Your concerns are noted and valid, however. Allow me to throw her off of campus grounds, first. Notify Miss Reid that I . . . will be a few minutes late to class." She has scarcely the energy to haul Petra through the dirt to the gates, never mind actually interrogate her once she's thrown out like a sack of trash. Just enough to say "The next time you fuck with me will be the last, Petra. I promise."