Rick watched the small group leave, nodding towards Brenda in acknowledgement of her tactic. As much as he admired Tali's skills - and though the boy was more or less his own size - he still was that: a boy, and with all his "street wise" attitude deep down as innocent as Enya. So the former soldier was glad to see that the two kids had left the room as well. And 'Iheyu - the woman had been through enough suffering and loss in her life to not be called innocent anymore, but she still was the kind of person Rick wouldn't have liked to see what would be coming now.

He cracked his knuckles. "And now, Mr Putin, to the second part of this little get together." He eyed the autocrat coldly. "Time you feel some of the pain you inflicted on so many others."

"Delusional, huh?" Brenda sneered.  "Because we thought we could barge in here?  But we did.  Change your mind?  An off-chance; we weren't really counting on it.  Actually, I personally was hoping you wouldn't; if you did, if you all of a sudden decided to straighten up and fly right, it'd kinda spoil our fun.  We came here to have a bit of fun with you.  Just a bit; you've been quite obliging...  Stupid?  That's your middle name nowadays.  Bitch?  That's mine."

~ And now, ~ she thought, ~ it's time to get the innocents out of the room. ~

"Enya-babe?" she called, eyes still on the dictator so as not to give away Enya's hiding-place.  "Any idea how Mariupol got to look so much like you?  Like, if you were a Sky Person?  She even had a red tunic and tan trousers..."

Tali answered for both of them.  "We were just wondering about that," he said, smiling winsomely.

Brenda flicked her tail towards the entrance.  "Hey, if you hustle you might be able to catch up with her and ask her about it, hmm?"

This time Enya did speak up:  "Yah!  Gotta ask...  But what if she vanish?"

"I'm not real worried about that," said Tali, knowing what Brenda was trying to do.  "Looked to me like she walked here...  C'mon!"  And he grabbed his adopted sister's arm and they scampered out, their mother 'Iheyu behind them.

Ni'ka nodded, full of wonder herself. "She is. I didn't know that this world would have places with Spirits too."

"Some of them do", Anna said. "This is just the first time I actually saw one of them in person and heard her talk." She frowned, eyeing Putin with disapproval. "Funny enough there's always been this talk of the Russian Soul over the centuries. I wonder what she'd think of him. Cause she's said to be someone with a big heart, full of laughter and melancholy, song and, yeah love. I don't think she's very happy right now either."

Putin swallowed, but picked himself up again. "Fairytale talk", he spat.

"You saw that 'fairytalel' right here in front of you", Anna replied cooly, then all of a sudden went up in flames. "What the heck is wrong with you???", she yelled at the Russian.

"Wrong?" Putin even managed a laugh. "With me? You are the delusional ones, thinking you can come in here to... what? Change my mind? Make me mushy like you? Stupid little bitch!"

In the meantime Txa'ren had decided there wouldn't be any arial attacks coming in and made his way down to Kremlin, slipping into the huge room too. He had stayed in the back so far, big speeches weren't his thing and he was pretty sure his friends had it covered. But now his eyes flashed and he stepped forwards, putting a hand on Anna's shoulder. "You will not speak to my mate's sky person like that!" he declared firmly. "Or you'll have even more problems than you already do."

The Na'vi warrior's words or voice weren't any more threatening than everything else that had been said so far, but it was like the straw on the camel's back, starting to break something in the Russian's mind. "I...", he started, closed his mouth again, then shook his head. "For f...'s sake", he muttered.

Brenda had somehow quietly stashed her bow, unnoticed.  Arrows were for hunting, really; for combat and less pleasant activities, she had her Bowie knife.  It wasn't time to unsheath it...yet; but if that time came, she could do so just as quickly as she'd armed herself with the bow.

"Funny you should mention abominations," she said casually.  "I dunno, but somehow I think bombing schools and theatres and train stations and anywhere else people gather in numbers, shooting at civilians' cars as they try to escape, kneecapping people before executing them, and turning the grounds of a cathedral into a mass grave qualify as pretty abominable in themselves.  One of your guys shot a man off his damn bicycle, fer crust's sake.  How petty is that??  Was that man such a threat to the mighty Russian Army that you couldn't abide him living one more moment?  'Oh, but he saw us and might have informed on us.'  Great, so now you've got the International Criminal Court up your ass instead.  Nice going, Sherlock.  That's about as smart as attacking Ukraine in the first place.  You're going down in history as the best friend NATO and Democracy ever had.  They're united against you.  You couldn't have shot yourself in the mouth any worse if you'd done it on purpose...  What a joke.  I can't believe we were ever afraid of you; safe to say we've gotten over it."

Mariupol had said her piece, so she arose and drifted out of the room just as silently as she'd drifted in.

Tali, long since sidelined, had returned to his family where they hid in the wings.  Now he gave his not-so-little sister Enya a wondering look.  "She...she's kinda like a Hometree, isn't she?  Sustaining her people and being sustained by them...  I didn't know cities were like that.  I thought they were just scars on the landscape; I didn't think they could have a soul..."

Ni'ka was only too happy to oblige - she again picked Putin up, letting him dangle helplessly in the air.

"She's more than right." Rick had picked up the fallen chair and placed it to the side of the table, sitting down now, feet on the table, playing idly with his dagger, looking relaxed on the outside, but his whole being focused on what was happening - and ready to spring into action if necessary. "It was love that saved me from dying when I Changed into who I am now. It was love saving our world. And in the end love will be what brings you down - because it brings people to stand together, to help, to sacrifice."

He put the dagger down, tilting his head slightly. "But that's a concept you don't get, do you? Real, unconditional love for something or someone?"

Putin shivered - if of rage or some other emotion wasn't clear to see. "You're all pathetic!", he spat back, but he was already starting to fight a rearguard action here. "Put me down. Now!" He glared at Rick. "And you, abomination, get out of my cha..."

Ni'ka shook him slightly, cutting off his words.

That was when Mariupol did the absolute worst thing anyone could do to Vladimir Putin at that moment: She put a hand to her mouth and giggled.

Putin was instantly on his feet, groin agony be damned.  "How--DARE--you!!!" he roared.  "Why aren't you *dead*??  I fucking flattened you!!!  Your precious People are boiling corpse-water for coffee and dying of dysentery!  They're still digging bodies out of the rubble!  You're a smoking ruin, a crater, a parking lot!!  There's nobody left to love you!!!"

If Mariupol were actually a child, she would have been devastated by such a remark.  But she wasn't a child, and under the circumstances it would have been impossible to traumatise her any further.

"Don't be silly," said the numen of the city, voice dripping with similar contempt.  "Everyone who got out; everyone who stay behind to join the fight; everyone who ambush your men from the basement...  And, most especially, soldiers who stayed with me for three extra months of hell.  You have them now.  You not have harmed them, for which I thank you.  And Every. Single. One of my People who still lives still loves me, and those soldiers love me most of all.  I want them back.  Now.  And if they so much as have hiccups, is gonna be BIG trouble between you and me; and you and Kharkiv; and you and Sister Cities, Lysychansk and Severodonetsk; and you and Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia and, oh yeah, between you and West.  You gonna find out what power is.  You get power from love, the love of your People.  You not got that, you got no influence on anybody.  Your only power be in this one room at this end of this one table, and you not can do much more here besides yell and kick your chair over backwards, 'cept if Ni'ka hold you up, and then you not even gonna be able to do that," she spat.

[OOC:] Funny how Putin is talking to her like she's "real"...as in, exactly who she said she is...  *snickers*

Vladimir Putin had always tried to come across as a tough guy. And, apart from his exaggerated posing, he was to a certain degree. And there wasn't much in the world that could shock or frighten him. He had lost his conscience decades ago, being driven by power, seeing other people merely as pawns for his power games. He also sneered at the more superstitious part of his people; the only higher thing he believed in being the size and might of Russia itself, and even that was an abstract concept. Spirits of places? Bullshit!

But for some reason the little girl's words cracked something in the hardened shell of the autocrat. It weren't the words themselves, he had heard similar ones a dime a dozen, from allover the world, sentimental crap he sure didn't care about. It was how they were spoken and by whom. There was something otherworldly in the girl's eyes and the sound of her voice. Still reluctant to give even the fracture of an inch of ground to this strange group of invaders in his sanctum he cleared his throat.

"Russia doesn't need advice from someone like.... you!" He glared first at Mariupol, then at the rest of the group, giving them his best icy impression. It were just tiny signs that something had gotten to him - a slight twitch around the eyes, almost too short to spot if not for someone who'd be watching intently. "This country stands great agains the decadence of what you call the West, so shut up." He scowled. "You all are a strange bunch of weird creatures, you have no idea of the power you're messing with!"

Brenda eyeballed the autocrat with a withering stare that, on another world, had been known to send viperwolves scampering for their dens.  "Ya hear that??" she barked.  "The 'enemy' cares more about his troops than he does!!  Ohh, that makes me sooo want to join the Russian army...  Let's just say I wouldn't want to be sitting in your chair the day all those Russian mamas figure out what happened to their boys."

Now she advanced on Putin, baring a little fang.  "So what's your next reclamation project?  Oregon?  Alaska??  Good luck with that!  I know some people who might have a problem with that idea, and they're not gonna 'say it with flowers'."

Mariupol regarded Brenda with something approaching hero-worship.  "You sure you not Ukrainian?" she teased.

"Naww, just Armenian," Brenda drawled in her best "Aww, shucks" manner.

"Then that will have to do," said Mariupol with a wink.

But when she turned back to Putin, all hints of levity were gone.  "'Happily,' you say.  Happily die for idea of Russia.  You ever think maybe their idea of Russia be different now, knowing that you not care a dead rat's behind about them?  You say; they see.  They see same things I do.  And how they feel about it, I not would call that 'happy'.  Your People be as miserable right now as my own.  Only relief be to make Ukrainians even more miserable, then at least someone be worse off than them.  Such bad, bad things they do to my People to make us even a little unhappier than them.  Is same-same for you?  Be you so unhappy that you gotta step on other countries to feel maybe-little-better 'bout yourself?  How 'bout maybe you spend that energy making Russia actually nice again??  Too hard?  Nobody believe in it?  Nobody want to do the work?"  She put her head up haughtily and crossed her arms over her chest, now every inch the old and proud city she was: "We not got that problem in Ukraine."

Putin scoffed. "Our soldiers are dying happily for the fame and glory of Russia," he stated. "To get back what's rightfully ours and has and always will be Russia." The truth was that Putin didn't care much about the average soldier being sent out to Ukraine. They all were just pawns in his game for domination. His pawns, true, but replacable.

The falling of the Soviet Union hadn't sat well with him, as had losing territory to states calling themselves independent. He was in it for the power and the more territory and people he controlled, the more power he had. What were the lives of a few more soldiers compared to that?

Rick's face showed his disgust. "Says the guy hiding in his palace," he growled. "Ever heard Sting's 'Russians'? He hopes Russians love their children like everyone else and I can tell you: they do." He pointed up to the sky. "Met a few of 'em up there on Pandora and a lot of 'em just had signed up for the money - for giving their kiddos the chance for a better future. None of them wished for them to get killed in some stupid fight with their neighbours."

"Never alone," the girl agreed.  "Is one street right now, houses messy too, but enough scrap left to make a shed so neighbors can get out of the rain.  Sign on shed say 'Don't Be Jealous!' with a smilie, 'cause still be something standing on that street, when Russian soldiers who pass by it have nothing at all to rest in."

She turned to Putin now.  "Is silly, no?  But sad; very sad.  I still here, always will be, and we not gonna live in ugly Soviet buildings next time.  But you...?  All those cute Russian boys dead for nothin', and all the world against you.  My People suffer for something; many die, but nobody die far from homeland and forgotten by family.  Why your People suffer?  What they hanging onto in their hearts when bombs fall, or shells hit, or we start shooting back?  Do think is their forgiveness you gonna need, not mine."