fatalstriker | ic contact; cerealia

yrui pyrrhas herre and i sondt know what tod o

[Someone has had better days.]

where are you

[he's not going to deal with this through barely coherent text messages—besides, this is definitely the sort of thing to be handled in-person.]

pleasure district

[thanks vivid]

on my way

[yeah, he sure did just drop everything he's doing to go out there and immediately try to find her. maybe he should have asked where she was specifically...

but yuri is yuri, so he just presses forward anyway until he finds her. it'll work out eventually.]

[She won't be hard to find, at least. She's seated on a bench off one of the sidewalks, hood up to obscure her face, shoulders hunched and face towards the ground.

She hasn't been bothered by any robots, at least, it seems--small mercies.]

[well, if any bots comes around now, yuri will shoo them away. for the time being, he'll just sit next to her and greet her simply, so she knows it's him and not someone else.]

Hey.

... Hi Yuri.

[Her voice is a little muffled by the hood, since she doesn't look up, but at least she doesn't startle or pull away.

Instead she just...sits there.]

...Sorry, I kinda panicked.

No apologizing.

[he doesn't want to hear it, that's not what he came out here for in the least. if it was a hassle? he wouldn't have dropped what he was doing just to check on her.]

I'm not looking for anything like that. [but he's not going to push her into talking about things, either.]

...I know. I was just...

[It was such a shock. Seeing someone that she saw die like that, standing in front of her again, living and breathing...]

... I didn't think I'd ever see her again. I... I watched...

[...watched her die.]

Hey... take your time, don't force yourself to say it.

[he knows, so she doesn't have to. he draws in a breath, quietly.]

Guess even knowing something like that's possible around here's not gonna make it any easier when it does happen. [he muses, quietly.

it's a double-edged sword, and he knows it. someone getting some kind of second chance, but at what cost, especially for people like ruby, who has to deal with this and the uncertainty of what may come of it?

fuck ceres, basically.]

[He's right, of course. Ruby's shoulders hunch as she stares down at the ground, breathing in shakily.

This is a lot harder than she'd ever thought it could be, that's for sure.]

...Shouldn't I be happy?

[And she is happy, she thinks. Or she will be, maybe. It's... just really complicated.]

Dunno. Nice as it must be to see a friend, there's probably a lot of reasons not to feel that way. They're messing with the natural order of things, they're doing things that shouldn't be possible.

[it's really fucked up. and yuri, being yuri, isn't sugarcoating things. he's not very good at giving comfort; all he can do is be honest about how he sees it.]

Either way, forcing yourself just because you think you should be's not gonna help.

[He's right, of course. She hadn't expected to see Pyrrha again, and now that she is, she doesn't really understand anything anymore.]

... What happens when we get out of here, Yuri?

[What happens to Pyrrha?]

Don't know. I can't even tell you what'll happen to us when we're through.

[he's honestly skeptical at this point. at one point, he was convinced that ceres was lying about their worlds—but after talking to the flamines, he's not so sure.]

You, me... everyone else—who the hell knows what we're really up against here.

[.....]

We're...gonna win. And go home. That's what's going to happen, Yuri.

[She's... sure of it.]

Because we're the good guys.

It's a nice thought. But being good guys doesn't change that we're dealing with a hell of a lot more than we understand right now.

[he's not sure he wants to bring up what he heard and the plausibility of it right now. not after what she's been through.]

Still...! We're going to win. Because... we've got me. And you! And Yang and Jaune and Naoki and Hiro and--lots of people who are good people and who won't let bad things happen.

[So...]

I really think so.

Listen, Rubes.

[he's got something he wants to bring up, even if this is probably the worst time—but then, is it even expected for yuri to have good timing at all?]

What would you do if we won and had nowhere to go back to?

[It's definitely not the great time to bring something like this up, Yuri!!!

But she hesitates at that, staring at him.]

You don't...really think that... [Their homes are destroyed?]

[he can't help it. it would be better to lie to her and he knows it, but he just doesn't want to.]

When we got stuck in the other part of the city, I talked to one of those Flamine guys.

[and he felt like they were lying a hell of a lot less than ceres was.]

... I...

[She can't accept this, she really can't. Her home. Her dad. Her school (well, that's already destroyed)--

So she sounds more disbelieving than anything.]

No, that can't...

I'm not saying it is. But they made it clear... They're nuking things CERES tells them to. And they wanted their payment for it.

[he's been stewing on this for a while, and that probably makes it obvious why he hasn't brought it up. leave it to yuri to shoulder that knowledge alone knowing nobody is going to be helped by it.

they have a lot of different, interconnected problems they're dealing with, and they can only ignore it for so long.]

They didn't say if it was our worlds, or anyone else's here. But I got the feeling they weren't lying about what they said, either.

[For a moment, she just hangs her head. The hood hides her face, leaving it shadowed and unreadable, and her shoulders are hunched. Destroyed worlds... her entire world, destroyed, just like that.

But.

...She's still here, isn't she?

This isn't the end.

She lifts her head, and meets his eyes.]

Then we'll fix it. And we'll bring them all back.

ic contact; cerealia

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