synopsychic | A public service announcement and a request.

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A public service announcement and a request.

Hey all. Been a while. It's Madoka Mawaru. First Jaunt Harrowgate, last Jaunt before getting Dungeoned I spent on the Grid as the Malware/Automaton Defenses Optimization and Compiler App. Sorry to worry you - I just came back from talking with Best Pony. How long have the Champs been so blatant?

Anyway. Come find me. I'll be around - gonna charge my phone, then see if someone put up a place to stay or can make food.

A little bit later, there's something like a mental groan.

...One last thing. I didn't want to have to ask this, but... I was worse than useless as I was, Infiltrated in Harrowgate and the Grid.

Every single traveller here has blanket permission to shock my Overlay out of a Jaunt, using whatever it takes to do it. I know... at least one way to do it, though I normally wouldn't recommend it.

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That depends on what you mean by 'blatant' - there were like four of them on the Grid, and a pay phone that called some of them afterward. Actively pulling people aside for chats is... the last six months or so?

[You know, as far as one can tell time when jaunts are involved.]

There's another option for bringing people out of overlays now. You're still sharing a body with them, but you can get on the network and into Liminal Space like usual. I don't know how many of us can do it - I seem to have discovered it by accident.

Which faction were you in, on the Grid?

Red. Uh, the Defenders. Low-Priority stiff, good at intuiting how to fight Automata, basically made attack Functions for other people. And I remember - Magician, Hermit, and Devil were not hard to figure out. Tower wasn't much harder.

Do it. If I'm ever not myself, just do it. Do you have any idea what it's like, knowing as yourself exactly what you could have done to have salvaged a Jaunt, if only you hadn't Infiltrated?

That would explain why I didn't bump into you. I was investigating and ended up neck-deep in the rebellion, which... didn't draw a whole lot of Defenders. [For probably obvious reasons.]

If I'm myself to do it, I'll keep an eye out for you. And I can't say that I've been on one that... intensely personal.

[He's guessing Harrogate, if only because he's not sure anyone could have predicted the Grid and it didn't particularly need 'salvaging,' but he's not going to ask.]

Yeah, it wouldn't have.

Thanks. I'd say I owe you, but... we're all Travellers here, I'm gonna pay it forward.

[If he's aware of what her world is like, Harrowgate becomes an even better guess; she was a student of the occult and a computational sorceress.]

Hey, we did reel in a couple. [It was a good rebellion and Naoki's still glad he was part of it ok ok.]

It's no trouble. Being stuck in a useless overlay isn't good even when you don't know exactly what the jaunt needs.

...no kidding.

Even hearing the name of the play as myself could have stopped it.

What, how else did you get the overlays loose?

I just gave a good psychic yank to bring Yakumo back to himself. Wasn't anything to it.

Must be a new trick. I never got too deep into metapsychic talents while I was here.

Killing an Overlay resets the Traveller, but that's... normally a last resort.

Oh, yeah, I've had that done.

But nah, this is just a good, solid psychic yank, pulls 'em right back to themselves, doesn't leave any bodies lying around.

Less questions for the authorities after. I heard, vaguely, about return trips where this was a problem. Best not to leave evidence, or at least not to leave bodies. If we have to be known quantities I'll take having a good reputation over leaving a body-count.

Some Jaunts, they don't really care about extra bodies lying around, but yeah, it's usually not something you want to make a habit of.

You ever run into a welcoming committee on Round 2?

Look, if they're waiting for me and I'm pissed off about it, they're the ones who are gonna have to worry.

But nah, it's been fine.

There's a coupla places to crash around here. Biggest one's the workshop. Got my restaurant 'n Hajime's for food at least... think there's a few more too. Stuff's ... man. It's a whole lot different since the Grid.

[Private, protection 1]

...Heh. Did the old horse impress ya or is that ironic?

I think I'll head to your place, then, for a bite to eat and to catch up. See a familiar face, if you'll pardon the pun.

Talk in private a bit.

Sounds good - it's the Aiya restaurant. Wasn't there before. You'll see the signs.

It isn't hard to find. She rolls herself into the place, frowning at the narrow doorway, before heading to the counter.

"Surprise me, I guess," she says. "I'm a gamer, I will eat almost anything."

Then she slumps over the counter a bit, holding up her weird Future Cellphone. "Wi-Fi's new," she says. "So's heart-to-heart chats with the Great Elder Deck." She makes a halfassed warding gesture with one hand. "Ia Ia Rider-Waite ftaghn."

...hm, true, he could probably do with fiddling with the doors some more. Last time he changed them around was to let the animal companion crew in and out... not that Magnus ever needed the help.

He figures he can't really go wrong with pizza for now, and a couple of cans of Mad Bull, sitting down next to her and manipulating the food up. "Yeah, the wifi stuff just got up and running before you got here... oughta get my laptop set up." And not just his brain. Reminds him, he was going to go poke people about how to power the thing...

What's a ffftaggen? That gets a curious look at least. "Mm. Got jumped on by Chariot -" Being cautious, after Achaia, but he'll have to tell her about that mess later- "a few Jaunts after ya fell outta things, but didn't hear a word from it until a few months ago."

She double-takes a bit at the choice of beverage, then smirks at Kanji. "Do you and Chariot go to the same stores for this stuff? He had seven of these in a cooler for anyone dropping in to his Liminal Space," she says.

Then pops the top and takes a good chug.

"If they're as bound as idiom as they claim, we're both INCREDIBLY lucky we got lucky number 7 instead of, say, 15," she says, pausing to wolf pizza. "Or 4, or 16, or 18. Of course, they probably wouldn't pick us if we didn't think so. I'm... how much about the Academy did I tell you while I was around?"

She offers her can to clink. "Good stuff you conjured up, by the way."

Edited 2017-06-03 09:14 (UTC)

"...Why ain't I surprised?" he says with a laugh, taking a second before he returns the gesture. "Uh. Cheers?"

"Heh, can tell ya that you weren't gonna get sixteen no matter what - the horse knocked that guy outta the running last Jaunt. Not gonna lie, I'm glad to have folks I - can talk to about it." And as for number four ... well, he can think of worse, with who else is there, but still ... a bit personal.

"...Don't think your Academy stuff ever came up?"

"...right, you came in after Harrowgate, which was. A big part of why I noped out of ambit." She shudders, clutching one armrest of her chair for support - more emotional than anything. "The short version is that I would have been in a perfect position to prevent Harrowgate's everything..."

She shakes her head. "My world is dangerous. Our magic and science rubs up against some dimensions with stuff either inclined to be or inherently hostile to human lives and souls, like for example a dude who had a play written about him I could name." Her voice is flat.

She composes herself with more drink. "Occultar Academy is where people go when they desperately need to learn how to use magic or Outer Science powered tech safely," she says. "We covered The King in Yellow as a textbook example of a memetic hazard. Literally, in the textbook."

"As in the ...shit." Kanji sighs slightly. "I've ... I've had Jaunts like that. Maybe not to that scale, but... Where I was over across Walkabout from somewhere I could have really helped. Try 'n tell myself that it wasn't something I could change, but it still makes ya feel sick sometimes, huh."

He takes a slightly sad bite of pizza. "Least if we go back we've got the advantage now."

Edited 2017-06-03 09:33 (UTC)

"So you understand why I just threw out that request on the network," she says, gesturing with her slice - before finishing everything that wasn't crust. "And we can knock Arcana out of the game, that's... interesting, and troubling too. I'm not sad to see the backside of Tower... though he JUST got knocked out, right?"

Too many beings claiming to be cosmic principles are dead for her comfort.

"Your buddy Naoki was the first to offer zapping me back, for which I am very grateful," she says. "Is he... open... about which one of the Champs picked him, or is this a thing I should ask?"

"Yeah, he had to bail me out last time. He's been ... kinda called out on the network before and he ain't really keeping it secret. Probably shouldn't go passing it around, but he's with Death." Not going into the whole saga of actually looking for the Arcana in question...

"It's an elimination match. Lovers and Hanged Man are outta it too. And yeah, they're just out of the competition. Probably sitting around with whatever cosmic incarnations use for popcorn." He shrugs. "People either wanted Tower the hell out of things or they just didn't care about the result."

"Huh. Frankly, Death is one of my 'oh thank God' choices too," she says. "Usually 'oh thank god this is over.'" She chuckles.

"...It's nice being able to talk about this with someone that has half a clue about Occultism 101," she says. "But from what I understand your world had a leg up on getting a clue too."

...Right. American class speak. Kanji nods. "Ya heard right," he says. "Whole lot of stuff going on with a big old tarot card slapped on it... I kinda had a private teacher on the symbolism stuff. Had to learn fast."

She nods. "So, not new to the 'proxies of Ancient Ones' bullshit either, then." She sighs, folding her arms and leaning back.

"I am pretty sure that on the whole, the Great Elder Deck - and if my world has a file on them, you bet they would be classified, and how, as Ancient Ones - is low on the threat level. They strike me as a lot more fae than as... the level of hostile that assholes like Der Gelbe König are. Clueless about why we might object to the honor of being in their game, things like that."

"Well, if ya call a goddess tryin' to screw with the world via giving a bunch of misfits powers 'proxies bullshit', then yeah."

Kanji tries to wrap his tongue around the German translation and gives up. "Yeah. Cairbre didn't even realise we were involved in shit for a few rounds of the game... uh, their rounds, not ours. Even it's still learnin' how we work."

Edited 2017-06-03 10:12 (UTC)

"That is the most archetypal example." She chortles. "If her others were working at cross purposes, prime opportunity to say 'congratulations you played yourself.'"

"That's good to know... both that it admitted ignorance and that this isn't the first match of their game."

"Eh, one'f them was an asshole who duped another into doing his dirty work 'cause he thought he was doing the right thing... kinda a mess, but ya were probably expecting that."

He chuckles back. "Yeah. I figure it ... kinda wants to be straight with us? Or at least ... not gettin' things done ain't the idiom."

"Ritual murders, or just the regular kind?" she deadpans. "It always comes down to blood with the Ancient Ones."

"Chariot had the good sense to let me be mad at it. If any of them understood how upset I was at not getting to make progress, it does."

"As regular as chucking someone into another world through portals in TVs to let 'em get eaten by weird stuff that crawled out of folks' subconscious gets," Kanji says, just as neutrally as she's speaking.

"I think it ... cares. Like, sees us as people it can care about. On some level."

"...that is painfully SHUIZN shaped, honestly," she says, eyebrows raised. "Did this involve putting the id on display for prime time television?"

Madoka nods. "Self-determination; control; willpower; moving forward. If it's as tied to the Chariot's meanings as it claims to be, and at this point not being otherwise has bitten it on the butt way too many times for me to think it's lying, of course the Chariot cares about us as beings with our own wills. It would hardly be the Chariot if it didn't."

"Nah. Screenings on rainy midnights and a whole bunch of rumours about it all." He gives her an eyebrow raise back. Huh.

"Yeah. That's pretty much what I'm figuring. It knows we have free wills in a way it doesn't."

"Either your Ancient One was much less powerful, you were much better at stopping the incursion, or both," Madoka says. "But then, SHUIZN is one of the nastier ones."

She nods. "Based on that, and what you've seen... which other Arcana are worth half a second of our time?" she says.

Kanji thinks for a moment. "Hermit seems alright from when I've talked to him, and ... I think he at least gets letting his folks be independent." Never mind the dog thing. "Emperor and Empress are decent in a ... 'your parents know best' kinda way. Naoki's always said good stuff about Death and the one talk with him I had kinda agrees with that, and I ain't talked to Justice but I've heard good things. Magician's pretty tight with Chariot, too, but I ain't dealt with her. Couple of my pals rave about Sun, but ... I dunno how much is that he chose 'em for themselves, and how much is what he's like."

She thinks about this. "Hermit would want to be left alone, and would understand why we want to be left alone. Death probably wants this over and done with as much as we do; that fits and I'll ask Naoki when I get the chance. Justice would also by its very nature be on our side until we eff up royal; what was done to us can't possibly be a useful definition of Just. Magician could go either way - her, Magician being female here is interesting, my training had a dood Magician."

Not merely 'dude' but exaggerated, drawled dooood.

"Sun... Sun's about hope, optimism, and the Truth. I'm inclined to believe your friend when they say he's decent. As decent as these things are. They are Ancient Ones by any useful definition, and my world probably has a file on them."

I think I also have the hang of the trick to change someone back from an overlay. I mean, I once accidentally infiltrated myself, so why wouldn't it work the other way around.

I can also keep an eye out, if no one else is available.

Edited 2017-06-03 17:09 (UTC)

Oh, God you can accidentally Infiltrate? PLEASE tell me how to avoid that.

Appreciate the offer, by the way. I like being competent, thanks.

Uh... don't try to change your form when you get a form in a jaunt. That's what got me. I tried focusing on changing back into a human and instead I sent my mind out to an overlay.

Do you have bad memories of overlays?

Yeah, you could say that. Two words: Harrow. Gate.

I don't think I've heard of that Jaunt... it must have been a long while before I even arrived.

Dodged a bullet.

It involved a play called The King In Yellow. Which I covered back home in a class on How Not To Summon Ancient Ones.

I was infiltrating. Eff infiltrating forever.

Ah, I remember the talk about King in Yellow. I must have forgotten the name of the Jaunt at some point...

[That or it wasn't mentioned.]

I've been mostly infiltrating while I've been here. I can imagine why you would be frustrated over infiltrating if you knew you could have been off help...

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A public service announcement and a request.

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Into action?

Works for me!

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