Scene #8760: Pest(ering) Control

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	<B-anter> Yuri says, "Sometimes it's nice to just go outside and enjoy a park. Sometimes animals will pay you a visit while you're just chilling--there's like the cat cafes or if you are more a dog person the puppy pubs." <B-anter> Petra Soroka says, "I-I-- I feel like I have to go to a puppy pub. It feels so important that I go to a puppy pub." It's hours into the evening, after Petra and Cinder finished their overpriced sandwiches and beer at the Puppy Pub. Petra has her head on Cinder's shoulder, still woozily affectionate from the one (1) beer she's had, arms wrapped around the head of a German Shepherd that's laying in her lap, with the bench at the bar supporting a collection of other various dogs. On the TVs behind the bar, Petra's recording of the final fight for the fate of Rita's world has been playing for some time. After getting riled up and a bit uninhibited from the alcohol, she emphatically declared that she would show everyone in the bar a 'really cool fight', and before the employees could get in their own opinion on hijacking their ambient entertainment, a trail of morphmetal bridged the cybersynaptic gap between her ratbot and the televisions to play out the recording. Pence's cameras are apparently much higher quality than they'd seem, and the robot hadn't just been statically hovering above the battlefield; there's a good grasp of focusing on flashpoints in the battle, making sure to capture enough that, though not a movie, it'd make for a competent journalistic record of the day, besides the fact that there seems to be a terrifying monster lurking in the water just outside of frame at all times. The problem is, of course, what the battle actually was. After ten straight minutes of butchering the endless press of leviathans, Petra insisted that it gets more interesting later, and fast forwarded, only for the grueling war of attrition to go on longer than she had the patience to fast forwards through. Rather than being exciting, the battle on screen is just harrowing, the Busan gaining ground foot by foot with the only other noticeable change being the blood slick state of the deck. As Cinder saw when Petra stumbled into her bed earlier this week, her favored bomber jacket was slashed in half, and with it, her entire typical fashion sense. What she came up with, nearly acting blind as if guided by a higher force, is a blue-grey flannel shirt unbuttoned over a hoodie, completed by a beanie, straight leg jeans, and her combat boots. Pinned to the beanie is her EGO gift from Fragments of the Universe, since she didn't want it covered up. She does not have a lanyard. Reckless though it may be for Petra to go out of the facility so soon after the murder attempt against her, she's taken precautions. Cinder's here, which-- honestly is more of a vulnerability, despite Cinder's capability to fight, because Petra understands tragic storybeats enough to know exactly how that would go. EGO gear isn't proper datewear, but she's brought her compact mirror despite being angry at Qetra, to make sure she has access to it at a moment's notice. She let Angela know where they were going and when they'd be back (and tried to not imagine Angela saying something along the lines of 'make sure you bring her back by eight'), so she'd know quickly if anything prevented them from following through on schedule. But most importantly of all... PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "You want a tracking collar?"
Petra Soroka	"Ciiinder," Petra murmurs over the sound of metal creaking and sea monsters dying by the dozens turned down to five percent volume, while scruffling behind the German Shepherd's ears. "Wanna head out? It's kind of too hot in here now." When Cinder agrees, Petra distractedly reaches her hand out at the bar, still looking at the dog, and wraps her fingers around the first FullBottle-shaped item she grasps. After a few seconds of trying to telekinetically control the beer in her second, mostly-full can, she recognizes her mistake and reaches for the morphmetal instead, cutting off the battle playing out on screen in the same instant that something finally changes: massive tentacles crash up out of the water to punch uncountable holes through the steel hull, coiling around to effortlessly crush metal, preempting the appearance of-- something, but the screen goes dark before it's shown. "Excuse me... good boy..." Petra very carefully extricates herself from the German Shepherd, grabs her beer and the various weird tech she splayed across the bar, and then heads out of the pub with Cinder, still cheerily flushed with alcohol. Night has fallen in the town, and streetlights illuminate the sidewalks damp from recent rain. Petra lights a cigarette the moment she's out, and after bumbling their way vaguely to the bus stop that would take them back to the warpgate, she decides on a whim to divert their path instead, assuring Cinder that they're 'safe because I've got a tracking device now'. After a few minutes walking, Petra spots a playground-- empty of course, with no other person in sight because of the time of night, and veers towards it. Mulch crunches under her boots, and then with a small noise of exertion she hops as high as she can to clear the vertical leap of landing on top of the plastic play structure and gestures for Cinder to join her. Beer sloshes out of her open can with the motion, spilling onto her hand, and she giggles a bit before licking it off. Looking across the darkened town, swinging her feet in an irregular thunk-thunk against the structure, Petra announces without any prompt in particular, "I'm glad I wasn't murdered."
Angela	Cinder is somewhat more sober. She too has a dog on her lap. What kind of dog? It's a beige-ish white pug with soulful eyes. It is the only pug in the puppy pub thus making it the Puppy Pub Pug. The Puppy Pub Pug's name according to the staff here is Bug thus making him the Puppy Pub Pug: Bug. He rushed onto Cinder's lap quickly and has been smugly lording it over the other puppies at the puppy pub ever since, thus making him a Puppy Pub Smug Pug named Bug. Cinder has been cooing that Bug, the Puppy Pub Pug, is the cutest Pub Pugu of them all ever since they arrived, breaking only to show other puppies some show of affection too or showing Petra affection instead. As Yuri surmised, Cinder has loved the Puppy Pub and loves that she gets to have time off with her favorite person in the multiverse. It's definitely better than being back at Lobotomy Corp worrying about A) Tiphereth having a Meltdown, B) Another Magical Girl Invasion, and C) The encroaching doom that seems to be steadily approaching the facility just, you know, due to the inability for the Multiverse to keep a secret and the sensation that all they're doing is spinning plates. One will eventually drop and the rest, in alarm, will tumble after. Cinder is someone who has seen a lot of horrifying shit in her life. She works at a place called Lobotomy Corp, after all, but the battle against the Leviathans should actually be way worse to watch. Scores and scores of monsters are dying, yes, but they still resemble sealife just enough that it's enough to make one swear off seafood and that's to say nothing of the scores of PEOPLE being butchered, eaten, crushed, and torn to bits. But Cinder thinks Petra is a great hero despite Petra's insistence to the contrary and pretty much every time Cinder learns more about her, she learns more about how she's a total badass. SURVIVING the battle against the Leviathans, even if all you did was hide and pray, would be kind of badass because that's the kind of battle it was. Just seeing tommorow is inherently badass. But Petra didn't hide. She played a major role! And even more recently, she survived a battle against 'the scariest person in the multiverse yes even more scary than Hiromi and Gebura put together', even if it was because someone asked nicely. Badass! So she seems fascinateed at first, marveling at the destruction in the way one might marvel at a flood knowing they had a friend in there somewhere who took it like a champ. But then the battle just ... kind of goes on, and on, and on--Cinder knows they fight the Queen eventually--Nonon has been sharing THAT story all week--but she remains patient all the same. Cinder is wearing the nicest outfit she has which is--a pair of non-heeled dress shoes, a white blouse and black blazer with a fire-butterfly patterned tie for color along with some dress pants. Cinder doesn't tend to wear dresses and skirts--actually a lot of Agents don't just in general, but that's neither here nor there. She DID bring a gun to the date but it's safely holstered at the hip. It won't help but she hasn't forgotten that Petra might have OTHER agents from the Watch rying to kill her today and she doesn't think quite narratively enough to know she's more likely to bite the bullet than Petra is. She has an arm around Petra and is giggling at drunk-Petra, finding her adorable. "Aww, it'll be tough because of these cuties, they're not gonna make it easy for us, no they won't...!" She blinks and then clears her throat. "I mean, ah, yes, we can head out. This has been so much fuunn though. My stress has evaporated!" She is helpfully distracted with her own puppy while Petra has to adjust the csreen. The pug, sensing his throne is about to depart, helpfully hops off Cinder's lap in search of a new kingdom.
Angela	"Oh this was wonderful. Working at a place like this must be a dream." She says, patting her jacket pocket for a moment before finding what she's looking for, drawing out carton of cigarettes, leaning in against Petra . "Woop!" She says as Petra spills some beer, then giggles as Petra licks it off. ''I'm glad I wasn't murdered.'' "Hell yeah~! To not getting murdered!" She says a bit too loud because she's still a LITTLE drunk.
UFO Gang	Hooray for some girls! It is definitely a good night out there for some gals, whatever degree of 'pal' they might be one for another. They're able to be alone here, as far as you can be alone in a city. Alone with each other, and more importantly, completely unwatched! ON THE DECK OF A SHIP NEARBY Four girls squat, by the light of a single solar-powered battery lantern. The wind blows over the decks of the Treasure Ship. "Are you certain that this is indicating... that place?" Shou says doubtfully as she stirs the mix of udon noodles and heated-out-of-a-can water chestnuts and other assorted vegetables with her chopsticks. "It definitely, positively, absolutely is," states Nazrin, whose dowsing rods are pointing forwards and down. "And I think I know why." Minamitsu slurps her own noodles. Nazrin continues to exposit, buoyed by the power of her Space Fun Helmet. "The building's been checked thoroughly. I had a confirmation from one of the mice of an object LIKE 'That Item,' but it turned out to be a sculpture in someone's personal quarters. I think it was personal quarters, anyway." "Unzan has been watching the entrances and exits, so it isn't as if there's some kind of secret traffic we're unaware of," Ichirin reports. "Right... I think it might be that 'That Item' is in a 'place we can't reach,'" Nazrin says. "But I know what I did see." Minamitsu and Ichirin lean in! Nazrin looks smug. "I saw that girl," she states. "The one who was carrying that thing with the screen on it. She's probably in cahoots with that 'Angela' person... I think she's something like a ghost, but she might be the key." "I see... then you think 'that woman' will lead us to 'that item,'" Shou concludes. "Basically, yup." "Then I suppose we have no choice. But I forbid you from interfering with them." "Wh-- but we had it worked out!" Ichirin exclaims. "I was going t" "No," states Shou, with Authority. (She gleams faintly in the dark.) "The harm might not be much," states the tiger-patterned bodhisattva-ish, "but if we should violate the precepts in order to further our goal... we will bring ill karma upon Hijiri. She might seal herself up again in protest, to know we disturbed a peaceful night out for two lonely hearts to bring her back." "She'd definitely do stuff like that," Minamitsu agrees. "With that caveat... follow them," Shou states. "And find that 'Angela' person... whatever they may be."
UFO Gang	SO THAT'S WHY "Hup," says Nazrin as she hops from building to building. "Hup. Hup - woop." She stops on top of a four-story professional building and ducks behind a cooling or possibly heating box on top of the building, leaning around it and angling her head to supervise. She makes a tactically cool gesture. A mouse sees it and waves a piece of blue ribbon. Another mouse does the same. Twelve mice painted with glow-stick juice run around, forming first an X, then an indicative arrow. A vast dark object, like a cloud... moves, in the shadow of the night, but briefly and decisively, to float behind the sign of a local burger chain. Nazrin tactically crawls to the edge of the building and peeks one ear over the edge, tilting it downwards. "... not getting murdered?" Nazrin mutters. "I guess that is pretty good." In the gunwales of the Treasure Ship, Minamitsu brings out a spyglass, peeking through boundaries of the sign to spot - "Heh heh," she says. "Aww... I love that neck ribbon thing." "Are they drunk?" says Shou, with mild concern. Minamitsu handwobbles, still watching through the spyglass. "There's someone else though... that must be the other 'lonely heart.' Do you think she's actually the key?" "Watch them both," Shou judges.
Petra Soroka	"To not getting murdered!!" Petra echoes, raising up her can and taking a drink, and then snorting self-consciously. "Is that a... cheers-- no, it's called a toast. When you do the... 'to happiness and health', thing. Or 'happy new year'. Does not getting murdered count?" Given what a single beer can had done to her, a few sips of the second puts her in the dangerous territory of risking teetering off the playhouse roof. She puts a hand down onto the edge to steady herself, but in doing so, lets her cigarette slip from her knuckles, sending it to the ground. Instinctively, she whips a strand of morphmetal out of the bottle to try and catch it, but it just slices the cigarette cleanly in half instead, and both halves fall into the mulch. "Haha, whoops. Shit." "You know... I can count every time I've had alcohol on my hand. Isn't that kind of, a little silly, with everything else I've gotten up to at this point?" Leaning into Cinder to match her, Petra holds up her fist to count off fingers one at a time. "Back in high school with Emma sneaking it into class in her water bottle. Adrastea got me 'n Val some from the colony near h-- home once. At this yacht party Halcyon threw a year or so ago. Then-- o-one I shouldn't talk about. And now, now. Five." Petra drops her hand down, and it lands on Cinder's thigh, then flinches away like she was burned to put it in her own lap instead. "I don't know. That's just something I'm thinking about lately. The number of times I've done something, like, any 'thing', you know? And how low it is. How, like, when you really piece it out, I've still really got so few, experiences." She lifts her hand up to her mouth, forgetting that she lost her cigarette, and makes a quiet disappointed noise when there's nothing there. In a moment of alcohol-fueled casualness, Petra plucks the cigarette out of Cinder's mouth, takes a drag, then slips it back between Cinder's lips like this is the most normal thing in the world to her. "I feel like I've only been alive for two years. Maybe not even that. Six-- seven months, maybe." A laugh bubbles out of her, drunkenly more intense than her soft tone would warrant. "Maybe just three days, haha. I don't know. It feels like it did something to me. Feel like-- a piece slotted into place. Maybe 'cause a whole bunch of other pieces got shot out, haha."
Angela	"Not getting murdered makes me happy, and it's hard to imagine anything healthier than not being murdered. Being murdered is pretty unhealthy." Cinder reasons. "It almost always results in death!" Cinder has a minor debuff to perception right now and mice, even glow-stick juiced mice, can likely avoid her direction pretty easily. She IS a little bit drunk which might be why hasn't notice glowing mice and other youkai despite also being in a state where she's worried about someone trying to murder Petra. A lot of people try to fight Petra (she has always been victorious as far as Cinder knows--she even beat Nonon!), but she doesn't know too many who actually make her worried about getting murdered. Petra slices a cigarette in half. "Mannn you even accidentally destroy your cig in a cool way..." She says. CInder has had more drinks in her life than Petra has and she thinks about that now that Petra has brought it up. "Guess... You'll need two hands next time." She says, squinting thoughtfully. "Though ... maybe it's cause...you're always off on a new adventure? You probably wanna do that sober so you don't have a lot of time to sit around and drink." Cinder might think Petra is on adventures more than she actually is, but she can think of about a hand's worth of adventure just off the top of her head while she's halfway to wasted. She bites her lip thoughtfully. Adventure experiences and experiences are two different things. SHe learned that from the Banter channel. Petra takes and then returns the cigarette to Cinder. Cinder ALSO reacts like this is the most normal thing in the world to her because this actually has happened a few times. Since her release from prison, Cinder thinks. "For a long time I thought I wasn't living either," She admits. "If it wasn't for you, I would've died while feeling dead." She pauses. "Er, does that make sense?" Three days is even less! Cinder is shocked for a moment--then smiles at her, "I'm glad you made it out of there. It sounds like it was a miracle and--I guess that puts some things in perspective, right?"
UFO Gang	"They're doing something with little incense sticks," says Minamitsu, doubtfully. "Let me see that," comments Shou, raising the spyglass up afterwards and peering. "Ah," she says. "Smoking." "Like smoking fish?" "No, they breathe it in. The habit came to Japan from overseas," Shou says. "A plant from the great land on the other side of the ocean." A pause. "Past Hawaii." "Woah," says Minamitsu, previously unaware of the existence of America. Shou hands back the spyglass. ON THE ROOFTOP: Nazrin keeps an ear out. She leans forwards, somewhat. The signal-corps mice scamper back to their natural environment (the sewer) in order to sleep off the glow. She can hear what they're saying. Wasn't living? Died while dead? Are they zombies? wonders the mouse as she leans a little more and - click The visor of the Space Fun Helmet lights up. Nazrin, thankfully for her, is ducked low, so her falling on her face in surprise is veiled unless either Cinder or Petra might be looking RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT at the rooftop of an adjacent building. But they have better places to be. ON THE TREASURE SHIP: Shou tilts her head and reaches up to touch her ear. "... Hello?" she says, quietly. ON THE ROOFTOP: Nazrin mumbles back, "can you hear me" ON THE TREASURE SHIP: Shou answers, very quietly, "yes." ON THE ROOFTOP: "the helmet came on" ON THE TREASURE SHIP: "i don't know what that means." ON THE ROOFTOP: "i'll brief you later" ON THE TREASURE SHIP: "brief?" ON THE ROOFTOP: "i'll summarize the findings and emergent intel but i can't talk much because i'm on overwatch ops right now, let me get back in a readiness state." A mouse ear sneaks over the battlements of the roof again. ON THE TREASURE SHIP: "none of those words are in the sutras. nazrin? hello?" "Why are you whispering?" asks Minamitsu. On the rooftop, alone-ish, Nazrin thinks through what she's hearing. The other one (Petra, though Nazrin hasn't overheard the name) and Cinder are not just some sort of aid worker or anything. This sounds military. Some kind of modern day samurai force out there doing... stuff. More and more mysteries are revealing themselves. Nazrin advances towards some kind of stairs she saw peeking over the corner of the building, creeping, of course, much like a mouse.
Petra Soroka	"Being murdered is pretty unhealthy. It almost always results in death!" Petra giggles as an automatic reflex. The structure of a joke is recognized, the behavior in response to one is engaged, mirror neurons-- appropriately-- light up, and it's not like she doesn't 'really' think it's funny; all the right joy-responses are present, but a thought strikes her mid-giggle that makes it die off abruptly. She doesn't pull away or react like she's unhappy at all, but there's a few moments where she falls silent, and it almost seems like she sobered up from that stray thought alone. Then she exhales the last of the air from the suddenly-aborted laughter, and relaxes into Cinder, pressing against thighs, shoulders, and leaning her head over. Her only response to that is another slurp of beer. Petra is totally oblivious to the spies scurrying around. She'd chosen to stay in the city, intentionally, imagining that Liza probably wouldn't drop a nuclear bomb on her (if her mood happened to change) if she stayed in a populated area, but all her preparations to survive another night out would be worthless if any of the youkai had hostile intent towards her. Learning to stay alive is a process. "Lilian says that too... not about drinking. I used to kind of-- I mean, I guess I still sort of avoid it, but I'm accidentally building up a bit of a positive association with it now, haha. She says I'm always going around doing something, I mean. Getting into something, fighting someone. Falling into portals. I think I'm kind of addicted to it. Like, it sounds weird, but 'taking time for myself' feels like the one thing that isn't 'for myself', you know?" The heavy clouds obscuring the night sky let out a thin drizzle on and off, faintly misting against Petra and Cinder. It's not particularly cold, but Petra shivers a little anyways. She quietly watches a car drive along the street beside the playground, from when its headlights first shine through the mist, to when the red of its taillights vanishes behind a building. "... Yeah. It's totally different when you have the thought that, like, you really, really want to live. That you're scared of dying. And then you have to think, like, 'why'?" Petra closes her eyes, sighing. "I'm glad I was there. For you. It was really-- like, really, such a coincidence, that I even ended up with L-Corp on my radar. If Lilian hadn't shown up in the radio at that time, if she'd called Angela, or just... happened to have been a day later, then... who else was at Malkuth's Meltdown? Sougo? Who knows if he-- what would've happened." "There's a lot of what-ifs. A lot of-- um, miracles. It's sort of nice to have the thought 'I would've hated if it went another way other than this', too."
Angela	Cinder is growing accustomed to Petra's little moments, parts where she stops suddenly and nothing would really seem off if you didn't really think about it or look closely but her general vibe upon feeling this out is to be patient. What's bothering Petra usually comes out one way or another and--she can't really help beyond listening. But she CAN listen. Cinder isn't a trained Fixer so her instincts aren't perfect. She isn't going to pick out a mouse that distance away while inebriated. The smug pub pug is still fresh on her mind and she's cozying up and she just feels...good. But she does kind of get it, she thinks. "It's a big, fascinating multiverse. It almost seems...rude to not explore it and just...settle down in a single place--I mean a place to rest your head, like uh--that's good!" "I think just showing up somewhere to just fix a problem is a waste though, like--every single world probably has slightly different takes on food, and you could just--try a burger in every world and each one'd be a little different and that's really just the start of really--getting to know a place and letting it enter you just as much as you've entered it.") That amusement park visit had gotten Cinder thinking about this for quite some time. It was the first time she felt that the multiverse could be more than a chance to see sun and do a dangerous mission as the medical facilities aren't a hallway away. Even before she had given up, long before meeting Petra, she wonders if she was even really alive then. It feels like a miracle. Even watching a car drive along the street, as normal as anything else feels strangely magical in the way cities can be sometimes. The red passes by. It isn't honking. It's just on its own little journey. "Yeah, it was a coincidence. I didn't think happy accidents like that really existed until then.")] She remembers that shift from terror and waiting for death to fiercely electing to beat the shit out of something in order to live. It was such a haze. What Abnormality was it even? M.O.M had Sougo looking after him and that didn't go well. Maybe that is just an unhappy coincidence. "Yeah ... Hey ... After--After Lobotomy Corp finishes its work, like--after you help Angela... Do you know what you're going to do next?"
UFO Gang	SNOO PINGAS USUAL, the tiny clever commander reaches the edge of the fire escape stairway. She doesn't know that that's what it is, but now Nazrin can peek towards these people. They're saying more things. Portals - yes, that's not unfamiliar. (But, thinks Nazrin, maybe that's why the rods pointed towards Cinder. If she's going to go INTO the right portal...) It begins to drizzle. On the Palanquin Ship, the drizzle rests damply on the shoulders of Shou Toramaru, whose eyes close for a moment. Ah, she thinks: The scent of rain. It's like the temple grounds became when they built the new road... 'hup!' Someone said hup somewhere. That's fine. Wandering... exploring... Meanwhile, Nazrin hears key figures. Angela, yes, good! They know. And what they say presents the small mouse with the big brain in her head with more information. This Angela is a leader. Something called L Corp. Lobotomy Corp? (The implications are lost on Nazrin, despite her distant persian background.) What are they going to do next? Then it's a service they can leave, thinks Nazrin, rubbing her chin. Which means, Nazrin reasons further, that it's a service people can /also join/. Her eyes turn towards the Ship... WHEREUPON Minamitsu walks past Shou holding a large french fry container and munching them. Shou opens one eye. "Where did you get those?" "Ichirin got alms," Minamitsu says. "There's a whole thing full of them." A COUPLE OF MINUTES AGO A closing-shift worker takes a big trash bag full of surplus fries, burgers and other overstock items out towards the dumpster. Standing in front of him is some kind of costumed person and a pink cloud with the face of a furious god. Both of them are holding beat-up wooden bowls. Wisely, the closing shift worker put the bag in Unzan's bowl. (It's much larger.) Then backed into the restaurant and, slowly, closed the door. "..." "It's kind of a mess, but it smells good," says Ichirin, with cheer. JUST A MOMENT AGO: "hup," says Ichirin as she lands. BACK IN ORDINARY TIME: What does come next, thinks Nazrin. Is this that 'attachment' stuff they keep talking about...?
Petra Soroka	"--getting to know a place and letting it enter you just as much as you've entered it." "Yeah," Petra practically breathes it rather than speaking. She squirms in place, uncomfortable for no reason besides the gurgle of discomfort from alcohol in her stomach, and slips down on the slick plastic roof. She makes a small shriek and grabs at Cinder's shoulder, almost pulling both of them down before steadying herself. "Waa--! Woah. Scary." Petra pulls herself back up, then on a whim tucks her boots underneath herself to spring to her feet on the wet, slanted playground structure roof. She paces around, balancing on the edges of each side despite being visibly tipsy, apparently much less worried about falling now that she's got her feet beneath her. Cinder can feel a prickling sensation wash over her skin. "Mhm. I knew you'd get it. You know, like, the City is still kind of an alien world-- woah-- to me. It's not like I'm from there." Petra tries to balance with one foot on the peak of the roof, wobbles, and nearly topples over, accompanied by more itching. "I'm sort of not from anywhere. I mean, like, you get that, I know, but I don't even really have worlds." Petra drains the rest of her beer, crumples the can with her fist, and throws it as hard as she can clear across the street. Slurring slightly, she tromps her way across the plastic roof to be right behind Cinder, putting both her hands on Cinder's shoulders and leaning forwards to put her chin by the side of Cinder's head. "So everywhere is kind of a little bit new. But it's all kind of a little bit... familiar, too, you know? In good and bad ways. I wish I could write about it. It always feels, you know, like... really beautiful and prof-- profound, but I just don't think I'd have enough thoughts about them." Petra slowly sinks into a slouch, putting more of her weight on Cinder's back in something that at least approximates a hug. She rests her chin on Cinder's head, and her breath ruffles her hair as she contemplates the question. "After Lobotomy Corporation... is it weird that it makes me a little sad? Not for-- Angela, I want her to get what she wants no matter what; no matter what happens to-- to the company. But it's like... somehow, I'm really really... good, there. It's the one place in the whole multiverse where I'm actually kind of good. All those... you know, worlds and worlds, with different burgers and whatever, they're all enough of the same that I kind of feel horrible when I'm in them long enough. So... it just ended up being that, like, this one fucked up place is where I manage to be sort of useful, and liked, and popular, haha, actually as the person I want to be. So, after..." Petra falls quiet for a minute. "... I guess, wherever I'm needed."
Angela	Cinder flails her arms wildly as Petra slips. Cinder ends up slipping as well as a result but Petra can use her to steady and then steady Cinder in turn as she nearly falls flat onto her back. Or off the roof. A prickling sensation hits her. She's felt this before, and it's starting to itch and she bites her lip and clamps her mouth shut to quiet the small burp she's about to emit. She does this successfully but the smell of alcohol hits her nostrils directly and she wrinkles her nose. "Haha, we almost fell--woop!--We almost fell twice...Haha." Maybe it'd be a good idea to...not do that but she absently scratches at te arm Petra is holding onto with her nails. It leaves a lasting imprint but she at least doesn't break the skin. The little fire at the end of her cigarette flares faintly before settling back down. Cinder leans--but only a little bit--into the hug. More than she intends to but she is just sober enough to be concerned with 'Third Time The Charm' resulting in a broken neck. "Maybe you can someday. I'd read it. I'm sure Yuri and Angela would too. Even if it's not now, there's still a lot of time out there." Will it become familiar for her in time, she wonders. Cinder reaches out with her hands, despite the risk of tumbling, to places them on Petra's, mantaining a light pressure there. "No no, I get it. I don't think it's weird at all. I think--despite everything--I'm glad I came to L Corp. I know that's a little silly, everyone knows it's a nightmare factory but ... I guess nightmare factories are good for me." She blushes again. Would she be able to say that if not for Petra? Maybe not, but she thinks even if they weren't dating it'd be true. She gave her the ability to see it. She doesn't know how long she'll be around but at least she's burning. "....I can't speak for everyone, but I know a lot of us would drop everything to help you in a heartbeat so ... Even if the company's gone, we'll still be there thinking you're useful, cool, and popular."