1801/Mutual Safety

Mutual Safety
Date of Scene:	05 August 2016
Location:	Mitakihara - Downtown
Synopsis:	Lacrima comes to Kyouko's conbenie to 'talk'. Threats are exchanged, but an armistice is agreed, of sorts. Hopefully nobody decides to test it's strength.
Cast of Characters:	Kyouko Sakura, Norie Okana

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Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko's conbenie is a small store in downtown Tokyo. It's not on the main street, which is dominated by the big chains, but rather down one of the small, well-kept sidestreets which are so ubiquitous in the city- as such, it's never packed, even at rush hour, but still does a decent business for people who know where it is. The official name of the place is the "AM/PM Minimart", as declared on the orange and white sign above the automatic sliding glass door.

    The store itself is quite small inside, with only a few aisles of shelves, but manages to cram most of what one would expect into said shelves, from toiletries and first-aid items to snacks and a row of fridges along the back wall with drinks and frozen treats.

    Kyouko is alone in the store at the moment. The old lady who runs the place, Tachibana-san, is more than comfortable enough with leaving her in charge these days. She's behind the counter, fiddling with something, wearing the orange and white apron with the store logo on it and generally minding her own business.

Norie Okana has posed:
Norie Okana.... isn't here right now. Nope. She's Lacrima right now. Wtih the same purple hair- coming down long- purple eyes- pale complexion and other such features one probably associates with the undead. Such as slightly sharp canines. Not that she drinks blood. She is. However, wearing the clothes one would expect Norie Okana to wear. Floral blouse. Red skirt. Simple black dress shoes. Nothing fancy.

She still kind of reeks of a dark energy signature.

Lacrima steps through into the conbeanie and looks around. This is a small store- smaller than she expected. Could...

Could she even /fit/ a monster in here if she'd happened to had brought one along? (She didn't.). Probably.... not.

She'd probably see that spill out over in the street or something immediatly.

Also, why is she even here? Kyouko will notice she isn't attacking. Or destroying. Or threating. or floating into the air as she glows purple and spouting off monolouge.

Nope she actually picks a basket by the door and begins filling it with some snacks off the shelf. Some packets of chips. Some candy bars. Some sort of gummi candy.

Kyouko probably gets to watch in awe as she completely fills a tiny basket with 'way more than it can carry' before she walks up to the counter and plops the basket down onto it.

"Kyouko Sakura." she says flatly. "Hello." she says.

Yeah. She knows what she's doing, apparently.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko rattles off the offical store greeting automatically as the doors open. "Welcome to the PM Minimart~" in that sing-song tone of voice that suggests it's been drilled into her head and is basically a Pavlovian response to the door opening. The final word dies on her lips though as she catches that Dark Energy signature- a feeling she is very sensitive to indeed.

    Her eyes snap over to the door, and narrow at once upon seeing Lacrima. No bat-dress, but she recognizes the girl well enough. Her posture tenses up.. but she doesn't do anything. She's on the job, and her job actually means a lot to her. It's the primary way she supports both herself and her sister, and over her time here she's actually come to care quite a bit about old Tachibana-san and the store itself. The last thing she wants to do is start a fight in here where things might get wrecked.

    So she just watches in some amount of bemusement as Lacrima fills her basket to way overflowing.. then carries it up and plops it down on the counter. After a moment, she starts ringing things up with quick, automatic motions. "Hello, Customer-san." She says, in her best polite, formal tones. "I hope your day is going well." Polite, meaningless chit-chat is part of the job. Her eyes remain sharp, however.

Norie Okana has posed:
Lacrima doesn't seem to be here to burn the store. At least. Not yet. Or at the moment. She has a slightly inconviently large basket. Surely, 'making work for Kyouko' isn't her master plan to get back at her. If she's here, indeed, to 'get back' in any meaningful way.

She stands there and blinks once, in perfect deadpan. This is not a girl who expresses emotion easily when she's not channeling things like being upset or anger or irrational.

"It is a day." she says matter of factly. Yes, yes it is. "Days are hardly 'good' for me." she says.

"Tell me."

"Do you like that I am here. Right now?" she asks matter of factly. Yeah. She apparently came in here on purpose it seems afterall.

Another pause.

"Also. I will have twenty five ham and cheese burritos."

Yup. Kyouko's gonna need to slog that microwave.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    It says something about Kyouko that, when Lacrima orders 25 burritos, her expression isn't 'oh man, so much work', but more like 'cha-ching!' Yeah, the store making money is kind of important to her. But her eyes narrow slightly before she moves from the place where she's checking out the rest of the items that were in the basket.

    "They're 150 yen each. I'm gonna need to see that money up front, please, Customer-san." She's not going to do all that work if Lacrima is just trolling her and doesn't intend to actually pay for them.

    As for the rest.. "That's a shame. Maybe you should find something meaningful to do with your life. I always feel better when I'm accomplishing something." Kyouko says airily, as if offering good advice to a patron she in no way recognizes.

    When Lacrima asks if she's 'happy', she merely quirks her eyebrows, although her eyes are still hard. "Customer-san, as long as you pay for your purchases we at PM. Minimart will always be happy for your business."

Norie Okana has posed:
Norie Okana reaches into her pocket and removes a sleek, black, credit card that probably looks familar as something similar Hannah gave Momo that one time for spent grief seeds. This one actually has emblems on the front suggesting it's a permenant card of some sort that belongs to Lacrima. This is probably how Eclipse pays her so large amounts of weird money aren't showing up in her 'civillian' account.

Which is good anyways because 'Norie' ran away and she wouldn't want to be tracked.

"You may ring them up." she says matter of factly. "I used to do 'meaningful things' with my life." she doesn't relate anymore than that.

Kyouko treats her as just another customer. It's hard to tell if this gets under her skin. She keeps that deadpan.

"Do you know what I do not like, Kyouko Sakura? When people invade one of my very, very few safe spaces where I can be myself and think." she says. That's when she begins to frown, finally, more heavily.

"-and quite frankly. My gut reaction was to teleport in here and start destroying everything a few days back." she says.

"But my other friends." she says growing more deadpan again as she seems to calm down expression going neutral and straight again.

"Want me to talk with you before I do something like that. So here I am. Potentially. And Most Likely. Wasting my time." she says.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko eyes the black credit card as it is produced. She takes it after a moment, rings up the total for all the purchases, and runs the card. It goes through, so she shrugs and hands it back with a "Thank you for your purchase, Customer-san." Then she begins fetching burritos. She can only microwave two at a time and they go in for a minute-thirty each. This may take a while.

    "Well," She says off-handedly as Lacrima states she used to do meaningful things, "Then I'm sorry your life is now meaningless."

    She quirks a brow at the girl's statement about 'invading safe spaces'. "Oh yeah? Well, that's what you're doin' to me right now, so I hope you don't expect sympathy."

    Her eyes harden again at the mention of 'destroying everything'. "It's a good thing you didn't, or we wouldn't be having this conversation, because you'd be dead." She says, coldly, before leaning over the countertop, eyeing the girl. "Lemme make something clear to you, Customer-san. You want to come after me? Fine. I'll take you on any day of the week. It's been a while since I really went ham on somebody and I could use the workout."

    "But it's me you want. Leave other people out of it. Tachibana-san, the owner of this store, didn't do nothin' to you and she depends on this place for her livlihood. I can always find another job, but you'd be ruining her. I can accept you got an issue with me, but doing that to her would be unforgivable."

    She then adds, "Besides. I didn't even break anything in that lab. I went in lookin' for something and I didn't find it, so I left. Didn't even have to break the door- dumb-ass guards opened it for me and I waltzed right in past 'em. Maybe talk to your boss about improving security before you get mad at me."

Norie Okana has posed:
Ah, good. Now she's taking the discussion seriously. Recognizing the incident. This gets a slightly content glance in her eyes, for a second, but nothing more as she gently takes the bags filled with the not hot items and places it into her hand. It's held at her side.

Kyouko makes a threat. She responds to this first. "You can't kill what's already dead, Kyouko Sakura." she says. She uses Kyouko's full name in a weird way. She's been doing it from the get go.

"You didn't break anything? But you did. You broke my ability to feel safe when I currently need it most. So perhaps I will break what makes you feel safe."

Lacrima scoffs. "If you cared for these people. You'd remove the awful travesty that is yourself from thier life." she says.

Not that Lacrima knows anything about that. Nope. "You don't care. You just pretend. Like everyone else."

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    'You can't kill what's already dead', Lacrima says. Kyouko stares right into her eyes. "Try me." Is her grim, firmly spoken response.

    She takes a break to swap out the burritos in the microwave. By the time she's done the first bunch will probably be cold again. But that's not really her problem.

    "Maybe you should consider how meaningful your ability to feel safe is if it can be broken so easily." She says, tilting her chin up slightly. "Seems to me somethin' so fragile wasn't worth nothin' in the first place."

    As to the rest, she shrugs her shoulders. "Gotta make money to eat, kid. I may be less of an asshole than I used to be, but I ain't so nice I'm gonna starve."

    As for caring or not caring, again, she just shrugs. "You don't know me, so I don't see how you can make that judgement. And I don't know you, so frankly, I don't care what you think."

    One more trip to the microwave.

Norie Okana has posed:
Lacrima replies. "Perhaps I will." she says.

"Oh, I consider it a 'lot' Kyouko Sakura, but it seems whenever I find a place to be alone and think things over and not need to worry about judgement or attacks or being on edge, someone takes it away from me. "

"And what angers me the most about this time? I didn't even do anything to you to deserve this one. I can't say that for the others. Admittedly." she insists.

"That- even when I 'behave' like everyone begs me to, that I still get similar outcomes. Yet here I am. Still trying to 'talk' with you anyways." she says.

"So I will be frank, about what I will be content with upon walking out that door, when you're done." she says.

"You will not go back there. Under any circumstances." she insists. "In turn. I will not return here. Either as a customer, or to retaliate."

"This is a mostly simple deal. Of course, you have no way of knowing I'll keep my word. This is simply a fact of the matter." she insists.

Then she holds out her hand.

She seems to understand her burritos are mostly done.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    "You know what, kid?" Kyouko says, leaning an elbow on the counter as the microwave humms behind her. "Life is tough for everybody. The world's a hard place, people suffer, and it sucks. But that's true for every damn person. I sure as hell know it. Only thing any of us can do is just pick ourselves up and keep on trudgin' forward. Ain't gonna get any easier, but hell.. 'least we ain't standin' still."

    She fetches the last of the burritos and begins piling everything into a bunch of plastic bags. "I got no problem with that." She replies to Lacrima's 'deal'. "I told you. I went there lookin' for something specific. It had nothin' to do with you. It wasn't there. I got no reason to go back, so I'm not plannin' on it." She shrugs. "I got no problem with your little offer, since it's what I was gonna do anyway."

    She finishes bagging everything up and pushes them across the counter. "But," She pauses, looking down at the girl across the way. "Lemme tell you what I told a friend of mine with regards to this whole incident. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'm done with it. However, if you, your boss, or anybody who works for 'im goes after anybody who's important to me, whether it's the boss of this store, my sister, or anybody else.. I will go back there. I will burn the place to the ground and I will destroy everyone who was responsible."

    She gives Lacrima a hard, steady gaze. "You understand me? Mess with my family, and you will never have a safe place to hide, ever again."

    Then she shrugs, turning away. "So I think it's in both of our interests to just let this drop, hmm? Oh, and.. thanks for your business, Customer-san.~" She even adds the little sing-song at the end.

Norie Okana has posed:
Norie Okana scoffs. "Please." she says. "I've known that for a long time. 'The the world is hard'. Even before this...undead thing." she says suddenly coldly. "The fact of the matter is, I'm trying very very very hard to keep what little I have left to protect it from people like you. I do not know what happens when 'I have nothing left to care about'-- but I know it won't be my decision at that point. I'd rather not know." she says curtly.

"'Hiding' isn't what concerns me Kyouko Sakura. Quite frankly. If it was 'hiding' I was just worried about, I have better, superior options. No. This is a different kind of 'safe'." she says.

"I am not here , talking to you, to benefit myself in regards to you, Kyouko Sakura. If it was my true desire, I'd had ripped the store apart already. Or perhaps be chasing your sister right now. Or any other countless things. I am here. Because my friends belive I can be 'a human again'. It would calm them to know 'I tried to talk'."

"As you've agreed, however, you're right. There's no need to continue talking." she says flatly as she accepts the bag.

"Have a good evening, Kyouko Sakura." she says, as she turns around and begins to leave.

Kyouko Sakura has posed:
    Kyouko doesn't interrupt as Norie says her piece.. just raises a brow slightly as the girl talks of her true desire. As Lacrima turns and begins to leave with her bag of burritos and other things, she says nothing, letting the younger girl exit the store.

    Once she does leave, she turns away, mutting to herself, "Then for the sake of your friends, I hope you don't act on those true desires. Can't be a human if you're a corpse." She laughs, a finger touching to the Soul Gem ring around her middle finger. "Well.. the kind that doesn't move anyway."

    Then she sets about re-stocking the burrito display.