Scene #2909:

Owner	Pose
Catra	Tokyo. Radiant Heart Academy. The Cafeteria. Lunch time. This means that the cafeteria is amongst other things, a very boisterous environment, full of teenagers who are all engaged in excited conversations about everything and anything. As usual, of course, there still manage to be a few loners; one such is Catra, sitting in the corner under the guise of her Rachel Miller illusion, and dressed in the standard school uniform. Complete with miniskirt. Which she keeps tugging at. In front of her she has a bowl of cafeteria noodles with not nearly enough chicken in it and a bunch of vegetables that have been picked up and deposited wetly on the table (take ''that'', Cafeteria staff who denied her request for more chicken not once but twice), which she picks at with her chopsticks. Any more chicken hiding under this blob of noodles? Yes? Maybe? No? No. The reason for her solitude is not hard to pin down, at least. She has a big pair of headphones clamped down over her ears and some sort of obnoxious death metal music is playing at absolute maximum volume. And honestly nobody wants to sit at the same table as that.
Adora Rainbowfist	Lunch time! Honestly, strangely, not Adora's favorite time of the day at school. She's really started getting into her clubs. It's a fun thing to focus on instead of all of the other crisises. That and punching a bag was a /really/ good way to blow off steam! But that's later, right /now/ it's lunch time. Unfortunately, there are actually several people immune to Catra's tactics for alone time, one of them being, of course, Adora Rainbowfist. Who makes her way over to the table, having gotten her own serving of stir-fry with noodles. "Hey, Rachel." Adora says, giving a light wave towards the disguised cat, making sure that she was looking straight at her face when she did. She knew that, even if Catra couldn't hear her, she would /definitely/ be able to recognize the lip movements. The two's greeting towards each other was pretty consistent, after all. She carefully breaks her chopsticks (Imperfectly, of course, she put too much strength into it...as usual, but they still work, so it's fine.) and starts to eat her own noodles, /starting/ with her veggies. She might be formulating a plan in the back of her mind.
Catra	Catra's solitude is... disturbed. That's always a source of irritation no matter who it is; she is a cat, afterall. Company is good when she herself seeks it out. Unsolicited company is... always an interuption. Unless it's Hinoiri, or Rashmi, or... or. Or. Adora. Mismatched eyes (even in the illusory guise of Rachel Miller) lock on to Adora; her chopsticks freeze halfway between bowl and mouth, and for a confused moment she just kind of processes what's happening. It's not like she didn't know Adora was also attending this school but their classes haven't seemed to overlap and well things have just been, y'know, they've been things, and they've just been managing to not encounter each other at all and then all of a sudden Catra's brain resumes operations, and it's almost visible to watch as she puts the morsel in her mouth, drops her chopsticks in the bowl, and produces her cellphone -- still with the crack down the middle of the screen -- and thumbs her music off. "Uhh. Hey," she half-mumbles -- there's only so much her disguise can do to hide the tell-tale signs of 'flustered'. "What... are you doing here?"
Adora Rainbowfist	Oh perfect Catra's brain is briefly shut down and she's frozen staring at her instead of at her food. Adora takes this chance to quickly sneak a few extra pieces of meat into Catra's plate while she's frozen and just seeming to process the fact that she actually showed up at her table during lunch time. ... A lot of time she's off elsewhere during break time, frankly. Not that it's a /huge/ secret that she goes to the school, but it's fine. It doesn't matter that much. What does matter is that Catra's brain has resumed operations, so Adora is back to eating her vegetables as if nothing happened and she didn't just sneak some extra meat into Catra's noodles. "Hm? Having lunch. What else would I be doing here?" Adora asks towards Catra. "Ooooh... right... I've been studying to catch up on lunch breaks a lot recently, and we're in different homerooms, huh?" Adora comments thoughtfully between bites of noodles. "And I spend a lot of my free time doing clubs, past me was enrolled in a few so I just decided to go along with it, and I added cooking club on top of it, and it's /busy/. Fun, though!" She grins towards Catra. "How about you? You adjusting to school life okay?"
Catra	What on Earth or Etheria makes Adora think she could possibly sneak anything past Catra? Catra is a ''CAT''. She has the ears and the eyes and the nose and all the senses that are just better than anyone else's, she's hyper alert, and there is absolutely no way she misses sneaky stuff -- especially when it's Adora who is as far as Catra's concerned the least sneaky person in existence on at least two planets. Well, except when her own brain is stuck in '''DOES NOT COMPUTE''' so in fact Catra completely doesn't notice. Mission successful. "Okay yeah but--" she stops as Adora keeps talking about her clubs and whatnot, and -- cooking club? Catra looks at Adora sideways. Cooking Club? Cooking Club. She goes to Cooking Club. Catar's brain immediately starts to wonder what Adora would even cook before she realizes that she, in fact, cannot cook either and if there weren't anyone in the Cafeteria who could, she'd be eating this noodles with chicken and no vegetables basically just raw. "I hate it," she pronounces. "It's..." It's something she feels intensely bad at. "I've never... I don't... I'm not cut out for this so I'm just planning on failing everything until either I'm too old to be hear or they just kick me out." She plants her elbows on the table and clasps her hands behind her head, "Rrrrrrrraaaagh I miss the Fright Zone. How on Etheria do you put up with this place?"
Adora Rainbowfist	Hey. Adora isn't the least sneaky person in existence! There's less sneaky people! ..Probably... ...Maybe... Look that's beside the point, she chose a tactical timing when stealth didn't matter! Especially since Catra basically seemed to immediately go into a state of struggling to compute when she starts talking about clubs. "But what?" Adora tilts her head slightly as she looks towards Catra. And then Catra goes into how she hates it. And how she's not cut out for it and she's planning on failing everything and that she misses the fright zone. At which point... Adora puts her chopsticks down and looks into Catra's eyes. Seriously /looks/. "I put up with this place because the structure of it is familiar, it's actually very much like a much nicer fright zone. My schedule is planned. The parameters for what I'm expected to do is planned, and it's honestly kind of like the officer training that we were going through until I found the sword." Adora replies honestly. "Honestly, I'm surprised you're not top of your class, you're competetive enough for it." Adora blinks a couple of times, before awkwardly looking away. "...Ah... wait... maybe...hm." The cogs are turning in her head as she thinks on WHY Catra might /not/ be at the top of her class and excelling like her. ....Yeah you can almost see the steam coming out of her ears.
Catra	Catra looks up at Adora, and sighs, unclasping her hands and sitting up straight so she can reclaim her chopsticks and continue eating her food. Where'd that piece of chicken come from? That wasn't there before was it? Oh come on it must have been. As if the obligate carnivore is going to complain about more meat. She doesn't complain. "...Yeah well maybe I'd excel at boxing club or something but we both know that either one of us in a boxing match against pretty much ''anyone'' here who isn't one of your sparkly friends would end in them getting a completely broken face," Catra points out, "Because we were both trained for war right from birth and these people," she gestures around the room with her chopsticks, "Have never dealt with anything scarier than a bad grade or a difficult video game." The feline's eyes narrow, "When ''WE'' found the Sword," she insists. "Okay so fine technically you saw it first. After ''YOU'' crashed the skiff. ...But I was there." Catra sits there, and after a couple of bites she once again pauses, chopsticks halfway between mouth and bowl, except this time it's not her brain that's gone into shut-down mode and is in need of rebooting. Her eyes narrow and she quirks an eyebrow, waiting patiently for Adora to figure it out. Actually forget that she's not waiting that long. "Something you'd like to share with the class?" she inquires. Because yes, being sarcastic with the person you supposedly want to patch things up with is definitely the way to go about it.
Adora Rainbowfist	It wasn't like she expected Catra not to notice anyway. That wasn't the point. It was that she knew that Catra needed more meat than was in those noodles. So Adora acted. ... Really with a minimum of thinking. She shrugs a little as she takes another bite of her noodles. "Yeah." "...I do pretty well in the boxing club. Usually I end up practicing drills against a bag or in the air away from others because I'm just that awesome that most of the others don't wanna spar with me." Adora says, flexing one of her arms with a playful smirk towards Catra. Wait no that's not what they're talking about. This is about Catra. She's struggling. Does she need help? CAN she help? Ugh, what would Usagi say...? Her thoughts are pulled back out when Catra insists that. "...Ah? I thought i wandered off on my own then after we had an argument about dreams about swords... and then I found it alongside Glimmer... and then we had a whole kind of honestly pathetic in hindsight fight over it." She frowns thoughtfully. Seriously how did she do /that/ badly? She was a trained soldier and everything. Wait. No. No. That's still not that important.. There was a thought her brain was chasing before... it's... "...Are you sabotaging yourself? Because I know you're really smart, Ca--Rachel. You're probably smarter than me, even." She frowns. "I mean, you were right there with me if not for Shadow Weaver you'd have probably been the one more suited to being the next squad captain..." Crack. Ah. There goes her chopstick.
Catra	"Please don't... call me 'Rachel' when there aren't people around how need to not know that I'm actually a car from another planet," Catra mumbles. "I hate that name." She pauses. "I mean, you're probably wondering why I don't just change it but actually I hate any name that isn't 'Catra'. For me, I mean. Because they aren't ''MY'' name and I don't want them. But I can't..." She gestures around the room with her chopsticks, "I can't be myself in front of these idiots so I have to wear this illusion." She pfffts, "I am definitely smarter than you. It's just..." She sighs, fishing out another bit of chicken from the noodles (the noodles are quite bad actually) and eating it, "I don't... care about anything they're teaching. Stuff that happened on this planet four hundred years ago? How to know how big a circle is? How to, I don't know, paint a flower with watercolors? Why do I ''care''? None of that matters to me in the slightest and they claim it's 'preparing us for adulthood' and I Just don't see how that's true. They always said that in the Fright Zone too, except what they taught us doesn't seem to matter here anymore eithe." Adora talks about finding the sword, and Catra shakes her head, "No no before that, when we were out on the skiff and you said you found a sword and I thought you were brain damaged, before you snuck out ''WITHOUT ME'' to go find it." Catra drops her chopsticks back into her noodles -- basically just noodles by now the chicken is all gone -- and flops backwards in her seat, "And they we fought each other and I almost blew up Etheria and now we're stuck here and like, absolutely nothing makes sense." Well that was melodramatic. "...And I was a ''fantastic'' Force Captain," she adds, sullenly.
Adora Rainbowfist	"Okay, Catra. I just was calling you that since we were in, y'know, the cafeteria.. then again most people know not to approach you so I guess this is pretty private, huh?" That struggle... Adora frowns as she listens to Catra talk. "Yeah... that does sound pretty awful... hm." Maybe that's the difference. Maybe that's why she's doing okay and why Catra seems to be struggling? That and, well, she kinda made more friends and stuff before even /coming/ to Earth. "...I honestly don't even know how to approach that, since you're right that you just walking around without the illusion would draw eyes and you could use the excuse of it being cosplay but do it too much and people would start thinking you're weird for the wrong reasons instead of the /real/ ways you're weird." She frowns more, before giving a soft sigh. "Yeah. It's kinda hard to care about the history, even if some of it is interesting, it's just... more of what we were living on etheria, honestly... and the rest... well I find a lot of them pretty fun, but... hm." How can she help this? What can she /do/ to help? Should she even do or try to say anything to try to help? Maybe just letting Catra vent is the right answer? Uuuuugh it'd be so much easier if she could just stab Catra's problems away. "Oooh right yeah when I was telling you about my crazy dream and stuff and you thought I was brain damaged and honestly, maybe I was, you /did/ kick me pretty hard in that one training session." She says, flicking a sly grin towards Catra briefly. "Back when we were fighting those 'princess' robots, remember? I think you used my head as a springboard to steal the glory~?" ...She doesn't know much about Catra's force captain-ing. She didn't see it. So she doesn't comment on it.
Catra	"Yeah well I thought I was gonna do well in Obsidian once I got here," she grumbles, appropriate to exactly none of what Adora just said, but it's a tangent that Catra is on anyway. "Except then I threw that away 'cause I helped put a stop, or an end -- whatever you prefer -- to one of the Witches, and I was basically fired after that. Which also means that Glimmer is still there by herself and I haven't seen her in a while so I haven't got a clue what she's doing but she's probably digging a big enough hole that she can't even teleport back out of it." Catra glances towards Adora's food, and -- oh, right. She broke a chopstick a few minutes back. The feline picks up her chopsticks, and drops them both across the rim of Adora's bowl. "The noodles suck, but you've probably figured that out already," she points out. "But like. How... does any of this make sense? It's not that long ago that we were leading opposing armies and fighting over the fate of Etheria, then we were here and... I mean still fighting on opposite sides but over a different planet, and we've both done stuff like..." She struggles for words, "Like I fought a dragon this one time, like an ''actual dragon'' and you've definitely faced stuff and we're just supposed to sit in a desk here and let someone tell us to spend half an hour later tonight doing, like. math or something?" She throws her arms up in the air, "You and Glimmer are like, princesses, and I have a Runestone now too and I could burn this entire place to the ground if I wanted, we're not like these people. And I don't ''want'' to be. I'd rather be springboarding to steal the glory and be... y'know. Fighting I guess." She shrugs. "It's the only thing I really know how to do anyway."
Adora Rainbowfist	Adora frowns a little at the talk of Obsidian, and Glimmer's continued interactions with them. She gives a long sigh at that, letting herself slump over the table a little. "Uuuuugh don't remind me, especially since I'm pretty sure I'm half of why she can't teleport normally anymore because we failed when we got out her runestone and uuuuuuuugh." She grumbled under her breath. "Honestly it's better that you're out of that place anyway so it ended up okay. All the people who were there seemed like jerks, there weren't and Scorpias or Lonnies or anything else, right? Just a bunch of jerks being jerks at each other." Catra gives her her chopsticks, and she actually smiles up towards her. "Oh, hey, thanks, Catra. I was just gonna keep eating with the broken one." She says with a shrug at that. And then... hm. "I mean... yeah. We were. We still are fighting, kinda, yeah." Adora says, straightening up. "I mean less on opposite sides now but that's honestly because Usagi and the others are all so nice and amazing, and then like." She pauses. "I don't know." "...I kind of think of it just as like a vacation? I've been fighting for almost as long as I can remember and half of it was against you and frankly that kinda /sucked/ because you're smart and good at fighting and I didn't /really/ ever want to fight you in spite of all the time I spent chasing you down to try to stop you but also you're my friend and we made that promise and..." She shakes her head. "But yeah. I like fighting too. I do that after school! At boxing club, and then I go out and beat things up as She-ra! Or cook. Cooking's pretty fun too." She flashes a toothy grin at that. "I made /cupcakes/ the other day. They turned out great."
Catra	"I ''cannot'' picture you making cupcakes," Catra shoots back, "Or like, cooking anything." She purses her lips, and shrugs, "But I suppose there's no reason you can't. I never pictured me hanging out with the good guys or... having a Runestone or... I don't know. Any of the things that have happened since we got here." Her mismatched eyes narrow when Adora talks about not wanthing to fight her, "Of course you didn't I was beating you," she exclaims, "I would've won it too except--" Except what? "I dunno. I don't think winning would ever have gotten me anything I ''really'' wanted anyway. As if I knew what I wanted in the first place." She shrugs, "But... yeah we... did make a promise." An important promise. A promise that Catra rapidly changes the subject away from. "There were other good people at Obsidian, like... like Hinoiri who's... actually really cool," she points out. "I mean like it helped once she got out of Obsidian and when she, uhh, got over the fact that Obsidian sent me to kill her whcih I like, didn't do, mainly because I let people succeed at defending her because... y'know. She also taught me how to use dark energy before I found the Spirit Ember so that was... in hindsight maybe not the best but at the time it was ''great''." Catra shrugs, "I never thought it was fair. That... you got the sword and you always got... I don't know. Everyon always just automatically liked you and gave you everything and I always had to struggle for recognition. Which... I know wasn't... your fault. But I didn't know who else to blame for it."
Adora Rainbowfist	"And yet I made them! I even got the swirl for unicorn cupcakes right so they were all tie-die and didn't turn brown on me." Adora says proudly, pushing her chest out like that is the best achievement ever and not something /really/ mundane. "I dunno, I just... started doing it one day, and you know how I am. When I'm doing stuff, I like to put my all into it and everything." She says with a shrug. "Eh? No... it wasn't even that. Even if I was beating you every time, I still didn't want to, it didn't feel good fighting you. It was almost more like... playing with you and trying to keep you distracted long enough that we could take care of whatever you were doing so that we could stop you but also without hurting you and... yeah. Unfortunately, you're /way/ better at holding back than I am, you were able to fight way better while trying not to kill me than I was with you, you've always been better at the little fiddly things." "...And...yeah. ...Honestly I wish we'd managed to get on the same side again earlier, you would have been such a great help in the fight against the horde." Look. Adora's not afraid to admit that Catra is, and frankly always has, been kind of a genius when it comes to fighting. She was able to laze around growing up for a reason. That and because Shadow Weaver didn't properly /teach/ her to begin with but that's beside the point. Hinoiri... hm. That's sure... something. And it worked out really well too, considering what Catra had said while she was talking before. "Yeah, it did work out great with Hinoiri, huh?" She chuckles. And then... the comment.... "You know what?" "You're right. It wasn't fair. You know how things went before I showed the sword off and became She-Ra? They chased me around. Tried to capture me. Pretty sure they were ready to throw me out or whatever, and then I pulled out the sword and became She-Ra and suddenly they gave me a chance." She shakes her head. "It wasn't fair. And I'm pretty sure even if you'd gotten the sword, it would have been the same, because I am pretty sure that the sword chooses its wielder. It's why I had those dreams that made you think I had brain damage." She pauses. "...So you know what... it's whatever, if you need to blame me, it's fine, because it really wasn't fair." She quickly finishes off her noodles. "But..." She leans in a little, looking towards Catra with a slightly playfully smug look on her face. "What are you gonna do about it, then?"
Catra	"I don't want to blame you," Catra asserts, "I want to blame Shadow Weaver and Lonnie and Hordak and Octavia and that one dumb teacher we had and... and everyone ''else''. And yeah, I did blame you for a long time, but it... wasn't your fault. You were like six years old the same as I was, how were you supposed to make the world fair anymore than I was supposed to... I don't know. I have no idea what I was supposed to do. I still don't." Catra raises an eyebrow, "You actually finished the noodles? Look I know they're better than the Grey Kind but that's a low bar and you really don't have to eat stuff if it's terrible," she points out. "Also if you actually made cupcakes, I want to eat one and comparie to the... like... two cupcakes I've eaten before. And you should give one to Hinoiri too, she loves everything that's... even vaguely unicorn related." What are you gonig to do about it? "I mean, I don't know? I have no idae what I'm supposed to do about anything." She pauses, and sighs, collapsing her elbows back onto the table and her face into her palms. "Like... I don't... even really know how to... like people," she mumbles.
Adora Rainbowfist	Well. That... didn't work. But in kind of a good way? Huh. Aodra honestly isn't sure what to say about that because it was kind of nice that Catra /wasn't/ blaming her and was being kind of nice to her. She doesn't /like/ fighting with her childhood friend after all. She's actually smiling pretty warmly as Catra talks for a few moments. Until she actually asks a question and she blinks out of her thoughts. "Oh, yeah, they're, well. They're okay. And they help fill me up the rest of the way that the meat and veggies don't on their own." She shrugs a bit. "And... yeah. I'll have to make a new batch, but I'm sure I could do that. Do you want them tutti-fruiti flavor or vanilla flavor? I kinda like them as the fruity flavor, it's kind of like a colorful fruit punch." She says with a little grin. "I'll bring Swiftwind with me, we can make a little party of it or something. Celebrating, like... I don't know..." "...Cupcakes." She gives a simple nod. And then... she hums. "Well... i mean..." "Just... enjoy being around them I guess? And if you don't enjoy being around anyone, that's okay too, because I mean, you have Hinoiri don't you? So there's at least one person. And I think you like being around Usagi too? So that's a start! And... maybe me, too."
Catra	This is the moment where historically, Catra would laugh or say something mean or sabotage herself and her relationships with the people around her in some other manner. And certainly that kind of thing bounces around the inside of her skull, because it's just... easier to maintain a spikey exterior so nobody can get into her heart and cause her pain. But she ''did'' want to patch things up. And that wouldn't be the way to do that. It's like a lightning flash of inspiration. "I, look, Adora, I... never didn't like you," she mumbles. "I just... got so angry I couldn't see it. I was always angry. I had good ''reasons'' to be angry, but I forgot how to be anything else so I couldn't bring myself to see anything any way but my way and I still don't ''really'' know how." She shrugs, "But I'm trying." She pulls a softly glowing, reddish-orange stone out of her pocket, puts it on the table, and gives it a spin. She sits there watching it whirl about in place. "You'd think getting the ''fire'' Runestone might've made things worse," she admits, "But Glimmer taught me how to use it, and it's not like Dark Energy. I have to actually be clear-minded for it. It's weird, I think it actually helped."
Adora Rainbowfist	Adora falls silent after that admission, looking at Catra silently for a while. It's not really shock on her face or anything like that. Maybe a little bit of surprise, but she almost just .... looks unsure how to respond to it, to be honest. And it seems that, as is regularly her way, she opts to act instead. She stands up from her seat, and walks around the table. She sits next to Catra, her position a bit awkward at first. ...And then she turns. And she reaches to wrap her arms around her. "I'm glad. I think you're doing better than you think." Adora finally says, because, really, words are important even if she kind of wished the hug would just convey everything for her instead! Words are hard! Runestones are easy though. "Oh... huh, really? I guess like... because if you aren't calm the fire rages out of control or something?" She asks curiously, looking at that runestone as it whirls in place. She absently reaches to poke at the runestone a couple times when it comes to a stop, the faint glow of her aura naturally transferring to the runestone, since She-Ra is the core of the runestones, after all. The one designed to support and defend them. "Honestly, the fact you've got one is pretty cool. Can you throw out like, angry fire cats at people?" She asks, flashing a grin at Catra.
Catra	"Actually... yes, I sort of can. But the angry fire cats have to be illusions of me, and I can make two of them at a time. ...I have tried to do t hree when I'm practicing but it makes my head hurt, a lot, so I don't do it." As Adora hugs her, she stiffens up at first; but slowly, gradually, she relaxes, more or less back to her starting state. "I'm... not sure that's the right way to look at it. I can still be really pissed off or hurt or whatever and still use the Spirit Ember, it's more like... using the magic is different. I have to work with it, and... I don't know. Cooperate with the Runestone, to make it work? With Dark Energy it's all about the struggle, and I have to be stronger than it to ''make'' it do what I want and it never actually wants to cooperate, it's totally different." Catra reaches out to grab the Spirit Ember and tuck it back in her pocket. "I definitely know which one I like better. I really should give that sword back to Riventon, I guess, like he said. I really can't use it anymore, except like... as a sword." The disguised feline glances sideways at Adora, and her lips quirk upwards at the corners, just briefly. "Thanks," she mumbles. "But uhh... I think we both gotta get to class. Maybe next semester, let's... try to get some together?"
Adora Rainbowfist	"Ooh, that's honestly really cool, and I bet it's /super/ useful in combat since extra targets can cause confusion and make plans less effective on the enemy's side." Adora says, grinning cheerfully towards Catra as she listens to her talk about her powers. See, that was something she knew how to talk about! And she's just kind of awkwardly keeping up that hug the whole time. "Oh, that sounds kind of cross. No wonder She-Ra and Dark Magic really don't get along if it's like that." She wrinkles her nose. The Princess of Power and a power that enjoys the struggle... yeah, no wonder past-her went crazy and current-her went... weird... skelly lady... Skeletara was weird. "Maybe you could work with like, Rashmi or someone and make it so that it works with the ember? Maybe you could, like, I don't know, slot it into the hilt and then you could have a /flaming sword/ instead of a /dark sword/ but you might need to have all the dark stuff taken out first because let me tell you a corrupted runestone does /not/ feel good." She shudders slightly. And then... that quiet thanks. And the question. "...Yeah, Catra. I'd like that. Let's do it." She smiles, before standing and starting to make her way towards her own classes. ...That was... downright pleasant. ...She's going to have to make sure that Catra's okay later. Maybe when she brings the cupcakes. No, that's definitely not just an excuse to see her best friend again.