1243/I Don't Care About Adora

I Don't Care About Adora
Date of Scene:	07 March 2024
Location:	Plot Room 2
Synopsis:	Corrupted Adora finds Catra at a food stall in the low end of town. But there, neither of them find anything but pain, and reconciliation seems further away than ever.
Cast of Characters:	Catra, Adora Rainbowfist
Tinyplot:	How the Adora Crumbles

---

Catra has posed:
Two weeks have passed.

Catra is at some dingy, back-alley ramen shop, the kind where you sit under some flimsy canvas roof, on a stool around what's basically an outdoor kitchen with a couple of chefs working feverishly to keep up with orders. The menu is small, but it's ramen and in spite of the grotty surroundings, the food is excellent. Welcome to Japan, where you do your best no matter what it is you're doing.

Two weeks since the fight. Two weeks since everything that was said.

Catra is concealed, of course, under her illusion as Rachel Miller, obnoxious American tourist. She has a bowl of tonkatsu ramen in front of her, and is busy slurping up noodles and eating the pork that's so tender it's like butter, and saving the egg for last (it's the best part afterall). She's got her headphones in her ears, with music playing loudly enough to keep the seats to either side of her unoccupied; not her goal, but a pleasant side effect. No, she just wants to shut the world out.

What if I wanted to stay away?
What if I wanted to run and hide?
Vows and promises break,
oh, hey no
It always ends like this

She pulls her hoodie down low over her head, and hunches over her food. A smartphone sits on the counter beside her ramen, and she's got an actual pen and paper notebook open, with a single word written at the top and underlined -- 'RULES'. And she's just staring at it, as the new song begins and she munches on her ramen.

Earth to earth
Ashes to ashes
Dreams to crumbles
And love to dust
Earth to earth
Ashes to ashes
Dreams to crumbles
And love to dust

Catra, writing down anything on a piece of paper that says 'rules'? It'd almost seem laughable to anyone who knows her. Perhaps it's laughable to her. The paper is blank, afterall, apparently not for lack of trying to change that. Well, sometimes these things are hard. Changing tracks is hard.

And it's still been two weeks.

Two weeks that Catra hasn't seen Adora. Two weeks she's been actively avoiding her, and pretty much anyone and everything else as part of the package. Two weeks since they fought, and two weeks since she destroyed a convenience store by accident. And in spite of it all, the only thing dominating her thoughts is the one thing she doesn't want to be thinking about.

Adora Rainbowfist has posed:
"Tonkotsu. Extra egg."

Adora sinks onto the stool directly to Catra's side. She sits on the side that feature's Catra's off-hand, so any sudden attack will take her a few milliseconds longer to stage. The chef nods to her before giving her a second glances and shrinking away a bit. She doesn't look good. The blonde teen has her hair pulled back into a messy bun, with strands hanging down on either side of her face. She's a bit paler then before, with notable bags under her eyes. Her hand clenches as she settles, as if filled with anxious energy. Her clothing is second-hand and ill-fitting. Her clothing she'd been wearing before had been covered in crimson, so something new was needed. It's a pair of jeans and a baggy hoody, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows.

She tugs the hood back and sets her phone down on the countertop. It'd been clenched in her other hand...and the thin rectangle is crumpled, as if squeezed with furious superhuman strength. It's dead and in shambles now. She shakes her hand to let some of the broken pieces of plastic fall from her palm.

"Hey, Catra."

Catra has posed:
Deep in my heart I've been prayin', cravin' for
Someone like you to come and stay
Innocence died in my childhood
I would trust you, but I'm afraid

Catra's disguise is good enough for the average, oblivius human stumbling around in Tokyo, but of course it doesn't fool Adora. (The fact that she can only come up with one face doesn't help over much on this front.) The feline just sits there, acting like she hasn't noticed -- she has, of course, she could never turn the music up high enough that she wouldn't hear. The way her shoulders hunch and her body tenses up, like a spring getting compressed gives it away, anyway.

For the moment, that's just how it is; the feline keeps eating her ramen, and becomes extremely studious about it, making a deliberate point of not looking to her side. (Or up, or to the other side, or really anywhere else for that matter.) She does, after a moment, pick up her own cellphone and tuck it away in a pocket, but the little notebook stays right where it is.

Earth to earth
Ashes to ashes
Dreams to crumbles
And love to dust
Earth to earth
Ashes to ashes
Dreams to cr--

A press of her thumb turns off the music, though the space around Catra seems to become no less inhospitable. She doesn't turn her head; she doesn't offer any sort of verbal answer. She keeps eating, keeps staring straight ahead with her face mostly hidden by the hoodie, and otherwise sits in silence.

Adora Rainbowfist has posed:
"I've been..."

"I was wondering..."

"I wanted to say..."

She can't say it. She can't push her thoughts past her lips. Every time she starts to talk about what happened, the dark energy wells up and her anger and bitterness and sadness overwhelms everything else. The girl has been getting worse by the day. She's sick. Dark Energy corruption shouldn't work like this, though it isn't like Adora knows how it is supposed to work.

"Sunbreaker broke me. I ...where can I find her? Help me...make her fix me. Make her...make her fix me. Make her...make her pay for...for..."

Her words are growls. Her posture is all wrong. She's hunched, too, and her hand is gripping the edge of the counter brutally tight, her knuckles white. "I'm going to hurt her. I never would have hurt you if...if she hadn't..."

Catra has posed:
"Go fix yourself."

The words are blurted out almost without thought, and somewhere in Catra's psyche burried so deep she doesn't know it's there, they are regretted just as quickly. It's a feeling she doesn't understand, and does't fully register, at least not now. She pulls her ramen bowl closer, almost making it something to protect herself with as she shovels the noodles into her mouth and slurps up the broth with the little... spoon... thing, which she never cared what it was actually called. Who cares, this whole planet sucks.

"You're not broken," the feline mutters, before strengthening her voice. "I know how it works. What happend to you. It turns off all your inhibitions, so you just say and do the things you want to do without holding back."

Catra shrugs her shoulders, dropping the chopsticks into her bowl of half-finished ramen; and still she keeps staring straight ahead, not even pulling the hoodie off her head so Adora can see her face. And it might be a position of weakness for most people, but not for Catra. But does it matter?

"You just said and did what you've always wanted to do. So now, I just know where we stand. So thanks for that. It's good to understand everything clearly with no lies between us."

Adora Rainbowfist has posed:
"THAT'S NOT IT!," the girl screams. The chef's and the few people around all stop and stare, but the girl doesn't care.

"It started that way, yeah! I...I admit that! But that's not what's happening! It's INTENSIFYING everything! Things that annoyed me before make me hate now. Things that made me a little sad make me break down now!"

She stands up, taking a few steps back, but all of her attention is on Catra. It's true, too. The Dark Energy has coiled with her Eternian energy in a unique way, building and building. What it started as is not what it's become.

"How? How could you think that is me? You KNOW I can't lie! If I felt that way about you you'd have known a long time ago!!"

She kicks her stool and sends it flying, clattering along the sidewalk and into the empty nighttime street. "I almost killed the kids from my school who came to help me! Bow...I wanted to hurt him just for trying to help me! THAT'S NOT ME! THIS ISN'T ME ANYMORE!"

Catra has posed:
"It doesn't matter Adora." Catra stays seated, and though her ears flick under the illusion, she doesn't outwardly move; the tantrum occurs, and she tenses up a little further just in case she needs to avoid a flying stool or perhaps a punch, but she keeps her focus on the ramen, in a way that is becoming more and more deliberate with every passing moment and every exchanged word. She does pick up the pace in eating though; and before long all that's left is a bit of broth, some renegade noodles that slipped out of the chopsticks, and the egg. The best part, of course.

"You don't get it, Adora. Who you were a month ago doesn't matter anymore. It's who you are *now* that matters. And this is who you are now. So what? Someone helps you, 'fixes' you? That doesn't make you who you were before. That's gone now. This happened. You did those things and you can't undo them, and you can't say 'oh but it was the dark energy talking' before because when you hurt someone, you can't un-hurt them. You can never take it back." She pauses, sucking in a deep breath. "Trust me. I know."

The egg is always a little tricky to pick up with chopsticks, but Catra's been getting better at it (and she's been getting practice because she's been eating a lot of ramen). She eats it, taking the time to savor it while Adora is there, seething at her, and the feline is for once grateful for her illusion as it doesn't just hide her expression, but her emotional state as well.

"Look, it doesn't matter, okay? You said things. And it really doesn't matter if you meant them or not, because you know what? You were right. You were right, Adora. Everything you said was the truth and we both know it."

Adora Rainbowfist has posed:
"I...I just..."

She doesn't have words right now. She needs them and she doesn't have them. She's crying now, the tears so easy when they rarely came before.

I just what?

"Please."

She can't find anything else to say but that. No other words are coming. Adora tries to pull them to her lips but they can't get past all the twisting, thundering emotions and the seeming wall of dark energy.

"I love you. I love you. Don't...please."

Her words are weak now. They aren't whispers, but she isn't yelling anymore. To the onlookers this is just looking like the worst break-up or post break-up fight ever.

"I can't...without you. I know you didn't really hate me before. I know it. But...but now...I think you do. And...and I -can't-..."

Catra has posed:
"Oh, *Adora*."

Catra's tone shifts to poisoned honey, that sweet, not quite sincere tone that indicates a shift of mood, ever mercurial at the best of times. She finally turns, not shifting on the stool but twisting at the waist so she can look over her shoulder at Adora; she even does the courtesy of dropping her illusion, so the blonde girl can see her mismatched eyes, and the dried evidence of tears on her cheeks.

"I don't hate you, Adora. We're well past that. How did you think this was going to end? Did you think I was just going to say oh, well, oopsie-daisy, you emptied your true feelings but it's okay?" She shakes her head slowly. "Did you know, Sunbreaker's going to teach me dark magic? I'm tired of being your reflection. Everywhere I go *you* are the chosen one, and I'm just Catra. *You* are the one Shadow Weaver wants, and I'm the one she hates. I used to think I was glad you left because it made me Force Captain, but it *only* made me Force Captain *because* you left. ...I want to know what I could be on my own, and I have a chance to find out."

The feline fishes around in her pocket and pulls out a pen, which she puts her thumb on the end of for a little 'cl-click'. "I don't hate you, Adora. I just... don't care about you anymore."

And on the little notebook, she writes under where it says 'Rules':

1) I don't care about Adora.

Adora Rainbowfist has posed:
She's quiet for a long time.

She stands there, tears silently streaming, and she stares at the other girl as she stands up and pays for her meal. She takes those words like claws to the chest, taking a small half-step back. The darkness inside her coils around her heart, blossoming and enveloping. The Etherian core that is her soul flickers, and the shadows take a new, darker, twisted hue.

"Liar.

She spits the word as if it were coated in venom. She wipes the tears from her cheeks but they're just replaced with more.

Catra can see something change in her blue eyes, then. She can see something that had been there the entire time they'd known eachother just...snuffed out.

"I'm killing Sunbreaker tomorrow. I don't know what I'm doing after that, but...I know that much, at least. She ruined this. She ruined any chance of this ever becoming what we had. Any chance of me...ever...giving you that ring again. Any chance of you looking me in the eyes and smiling without...without all of that spite."

"Mabye I was wrong for wanting to try to fix you. To heal you. Mabye you'll like me better when my hands are covered in blood, too."

Catra has posed:
Catra watches what happens. She watches the change in Adora's eyes. And deep down, she feels something; something she doesn't herself understand. It's like an ice cold dagger being driven into her heart, deep through her ribs and all those organs and tissues, all the way down into the atrium and she can feel it, every inch of the way. It's pain and grief and loss, but it's so... lost in all the negativity and rage and pain and desperate inadequacy that she feels all the time, that she's unable to understand what it is, or what it means.

"Okay," she replies, and shrugs her shoulders dismissively. "Kill Sunbreaker. Take that away from me too, so I can't learn dark magic. Of course you'd want me to stay 'just Catra'." She fishes out some yen -- too much but who's counting -- and slaps it down on the table beside her, where the chefs can get at it. She takes her notebook and tears out the page she'd been writing on, and leaves that one page sitting on the counter as well, before she tucks the rest into her pocket. She gazes at Adora, letting the blonde see her face, for a moment; her real face, her blue and yellow eyes, her expression so bound up in anger like she doesn't really know anything else; and then the illusion returns, and she fades away, replaced once more by Rachel Miller.

"Do whatever you have to do. I don't have friends anyway. I don't care about anyone. I don't need anyone. I'm better off alone." She pauses, and turns her gaze away; but of course, the talled blonde is blocking her exit.

"Good bye, Adora."

Adora Rainbowfist has posed:
She stays in Catra's way at first, blocking her exit as she stares down at her, that dull, but intense darkness in her eyes where compassion and patience were a few weeks before. Before this utter consumption, Catra's words would have hurt her. They would have made her feel regret. But that isn't there, anymore, either. Adora isn't even thinking about taking away Catra's source of magic. To her Sunbreaker is the source of all of this pain. In her consumed, broken heart right now she can't even fathom that any of this is her fault. It's Sunbreaker.

The weird thing is that, even through this total envelopment of unusual dark energy, Adora isn't upset with Catra for any of these words. She can't focus that hate at her, even now. It's the only, single semblance of herself left in there. But everything she should feel towards her...all that bitterness and frustration at Catra's reaction to her words...her anger at years and years of hurtful, twisting comments...entirely turn towards Sunbreaker. All of it. Every poisoned ounce.

"You do that to yourself," is all she can manage to say. She turns her back, then, and walks away from the vendor and the girl that in another world, in another time, was months from being her bride.

She leaves Catra there to storm off into the night, or whatever it is she's planning to do. Adora, or what is now walking in her shoes, has a girl to kill.

Catra has posed:
Catra doesn't say anything else; she watches Adora storm off, and stays there watching, for several minutes after she's departed. She leaves the piece of paper with her one single rule sitting right where she left it. She isn't rally thinking about it; afterall, Adora said something. 'You do that to yourself'.

She's not wrong.

Catra considers turning her music back on, but she doesn't want it. For once, she doesn't need it. All the noise and bustle and clamor assaults her senses, but it doesn't truly register as she walks back to where she left the Honda Rebel, which takes a couple of goes to start back up. No reason, just... sometimes it takes more than one go, is all.

Perhaps riding a motorcyle in her state isn't the greatest idea. Five minutes into her ride back to Obsidian Tower, she makes a mistake and finds herself ou in front of a large truck. It almost hits her.

She almost lets it.

Afterwards, on the side of the road with her hands shaking where she grips the handlebars, gasping for breaths of air as she sobs, pitching forwards and planting her face on the dials. She bawls for a full minute before throwing her head back and screaming into the night sky.

As she gasps for her calm, looking for her equilibrium, she fumbles for her cellphone, and sends a single message to Hinoiri. 'Adora coming for you' is all it says, before she puts the phone on silent and stuffs it back in her pockets.

Eventually, she straightens, guns the engine, and continues into the night.