synopsychic | (no subject)

[There's something a bit rough and tired to Malik's mental voice, even as he speaks with crisp efficiency.]

The Defenders and Miners are wrong, and you do not have all you should. I do not know what everyone has been told but hopefully this information will not be too late to help.

The Automata do not seek to destroy the grid or infect the rest of the network. They are trying to stop the Cryptos from escaping and have been trying to do so since the beginning.

Nothing anyone has told you of them is likely true.

[He pauses before continuing again.]

What you need to know is this.

There is a covert team of automata who are trying to preserve the grid. They are under the directive of a... I am not sure that pair is the right word? The Users they are following the directive of are some sort of creature and two who were once one.

[He doesn't know anything of Trumps or tarot, being from the middle ages is difficult sometimes when having to deal in symbology.]

I will not argue over the fact that they are dangerous. The desperate acting against overwhelming numbers tend to be.

I can answer what I know of, and offer what conclusions I have come to.

One of which is that the Cryptos are far more of a danger than I think anyone realizes.

...I will also need a sword once I return to the grid if any have one to lend.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...Welcome back.

[After all that, it still ended up this way... But while Levi isn't completely ignorant to the set of circumstances that must have cause Armin to revert to his real self like this and part of him wants to address it further, the rational, harder side wins out as is typical- this isn't the time for personal shit.]

So these worlds are just the stages for their pissing contests. That's what this boils down to. Their fate only matters so far as it advances a given Trumps' agenda.

[That's... Well, it's fucking aggravating, is what it is. Levi'd been wondering if this whole 'they send us here to help' thing was crap- not that even this will stop him from continuing to try and see to it that his presence does more good than harm- and this more or less confirms that his cynicism had been more than warranted.

It's about as comforting as usual.]

Thank you, sir. [His voice, though still wary and subdued, is suddenly crisp and sharp, though - only communicating psychically - he does not snap to attention as he once would have.

He pauses for a moment then, considering Levi's words and looking grim.] It's little different from what I expected, to be honest, though it's unclear just how far this competition extends. The Solstice Masquerade, for example, was likely a competition between the Sun and the Moon. Harrogate, on the other hand... I think they were all in agreement on that one.

But it's not really surprising that this is all a game or a competition to them. [Armin, for one, had never for a moment believed the Trumps had good intentions - but then, not everybody experienced Moebius as their introduction to Traveling.]

I believe that, many places they may send us, it will still be a place where we might have a positive impact - if only because they know we may not stand for it, otherwise. Until it starts to conflict with their true goals, like ROSE bringing us here, anyway.

[In other words, they still have a chance of leaving the worlds better than they find them - the Trumps likely just don't care that they do.]

[Levi hums, filing the 'we're fucked' he's taking from this away for the moment. If he gets started with complaining about the situation he doesn't think he'll ever stop, and from what he can tell he doesn't have anything useful to contribute to that discussion- his attention has been pretty fully directed toward SHIRO and it's plans to free the Grid, and so he hasn't heard much of anything regarding the possible other Trumps involved here. Fucking politics... He has no patience for that garbage.

In any case, his desire to straighten things out in this world is only strengthened by this news- the Trumps may not give a shit what their fighting destroys... But Levi does.]

I'm assuming your interaction with ROSE- or the Magician, whatever the hell you wanna call her- didn't go very smoothly.

[He can't even begin to guess at the details, but if Armin'd wound up back in Liminal Space... The end result is obvious enough.]

What happened?

[About those details...]