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[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.

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[Armin's surprised when he starts to hear Malik's message, but he'd already been composing his own, after learning what he could in a few private conversations, and finding out what's been going on in the rest of the factions. He begins a visual broadcast right after Malik ends his, so that it's all but a single message. Armin takes a deep breath before beginning, obviously a little nervous - but he grows more confident as he continues to talk, sounding almost as if he's giving a military report.]

I was one of the automata too, and I've found out a bit more. From what I've been able to piece together from my experience and what Hijikata was able to tell me, the automata - who have members in every faction - are working for the Lovers. The Grid is the site of a conflict between the Trumps long ago - a conflict the Lovers and their partner won, at the time. ROSE - another Trump, the Magician, and the reason why I'm back here now - brought us all here, somehow without the knowledge of the other Trumps, trying to reverse something that happened here last time. Something about what the Lovers and their partner did to a being called "Ix", or that's what she seemed to say. I think he may be another of the Trumps, and I think he may be somewhere on the grid - possibly in the J1 corner, given where ROSE has been searching.

What the automata faction wants is to destroy the ports and seal the Grid forever, trapping the cryptos here. They have no care for the network outside the Grid, like everyone else seems to think. I think... I think they are planning on trying to drop the tower on the ports, destroying both, and they're hoping to use the rebels to do so - although most of us seemed to genuinely be in favor of the rebel cause as well, and chose this plan because it would benefit both factions.

But I don't know if this will truly preserve the Grid or not - they want this because their user, the Lovers, wants this. Presumably ROSE is after something else and wants the automata to fail, and there are probably at least two other Trumps involved - whoever the Lovers' partner is, and this "Ix" I think ROSE is looking for.

...as far as I can tell, we're in a battle between the Trumps, and I'm not sure who's on the right side. I'm not sure there is a right side. Every faction is just trying to do what they think is right.

But I think we need to be very careful in deciding what we're going to do. Consciously deciding to work against the wishes of a particular Trump may have consequences - and with all the factions, it would be too easy to start working against each other - as it seems the Trumps might want, fighting between themselves and claiming us like they are.

Lets make sure that doesn't happen.

ROSE is looking for where the 'true' Crypto area is...weither to release her friend or not, I can't say.

And if they're using the factions for this reason...we're all in danger.

[Naoki takes in both messages, and it's a while before he marshals a response.]

...Well, shit.

Lovers' partner, based on some information Naoto got and passed on to me, is almost certainly Devil. And I'm willing to bet they're in C8, but I'm not about to poke my head in there to find out.

Ix is probably this SAGE the Cryptos are looking for. I'd been wondering if SAGE was Magician, but if that's ROSE - of course that was ROSE, Priority 1, I feel stupid now - he can't be... wait. Ix. IX. Nine. SAGE is Ix is Hermit.

So that leaves us with some questions. What did Hermit do that was so bad the others felt the need to lock him up? Why's ROSE risking so much to get him back, especially since she has to have upset the others by doing this? [And then, quieter:] Kanji, what did you get yourself into?

We're still going to get rid of that damn bomb. I think we can all agree letting it go off isn't what we're here to do. Naoto's still undecided on dropping the tower. How much of this should I even try to tell her?

The 'true' crypto area... [He purses his lips, thinking.] Despite being obsessed with the cryptos, my infiltrator self learned very little about them.

...What danger do you mean?

I do not think the bomb could be moved. If you are all trying to get in to the partition I can give you a map of the inside, and suggest you go on through the bridges between it and the games if possible.

...can you explain what those names mean, and why the numbers matter?

If I might ask, how did you come by this information, and what makes you believe that it describes the truth of the matter, and not just the story that's most convenient to one side of the conflict?

Not moving it, disarming. Reprogramming, more or less. We have a few Defender defectors hanging around here, but we'll take any piece of advice we can get.

I can, but... it's going to take a while. How much do you know about the powers that dragged us all into this mess?

ROSE... she seemed to have really strong feelings about what the others did to Ix. I don't know why they did what they did... but her response seemed a lot more human than I had expected. I think she really cares about him - about the Hermit. [He can't help the small voice in his head that immediately says 'we can use that'.]

There may well be automata among the group going to defuse the bomb - I probably can't say for sure, since my other self insisted we know as few of each other as possible, so we couldn't give each other away - but I can assure you the automata want to get rid of it as much as anybody else.

As for what to tell Naoto - I'm really not sure. I don't know if she'd listen to all you might have to say, given how much you couldn't tell her, about us and about how you got the information. And... without the context we have, programs acting on this information could be even more dangerous for all of us, if they don't fully understand the situation.

I think... we need to decide what we think before talking about influencing anyone else.

I know because I was given the knowledge first hand.

It is a piece of the truth, Dorian. Nobody ever knows everything.

The Lovers, the Hermit, and the Magus I know...but what is the Devil?

[Things that exist in the Imperium: tarot, or a form of it.

Things that don't exist anywhere on Thedas: strictly Christian-derived symbolism.]

That can be done?

[Sorry, he's unfamiliar with that sort of thing properly.]

Very little. I know that time is not linear here and that such things exist and hold influence here greater than other places.

Huh. Wonder if she'd bother giving us any more information at this point. [Not that he's going to go Trump-chasing himself - he has too much to do down in this corner of the Grid to waste time on that.]

Well, that's a place to start, at least. I had a feeling pretty much the only group that wants the bomb to still be a thing is Red Team, but the confirmation's good.

[Naoki snorts.] It's Naoto. You think she hasn't noticed we can communicate with each other without speaking? She'll accept that much at least, but you have a point about the Users thing.

Would a demon be a good analogy?

By whom? And why? One of the Automata, presumably, but the time for coyness, I think, is long past.

[There is a flash of something, mingled humour and bitterness and hope, and other things too complex to be fully captured by something so brief.]

As for truth - it may be a piece of the greater whole, or it may merely be the explanation of one faction's motivations. They would not be the first to do evil in the service of what they believe to be good, nor, I would wager, the last. Certainly they are no more forthcoming than these Cryptos appear to be.

It's not easy, but it can, yes.

They call themselves the Trumps, and they have associations with the major arcana of the tarot. I had to get familiar with the basics of it because of some stuff at home, but anyway - the cards are numbered 0 to 21, in Roman numerals. Magician's 1 and Hermit's 9, so 'Ix' as a nickname makes sense.

[Sadly, where Naoki's knowledge is lacking is the Rider-Waite imagery, or he would have twigged to 'ROSE' much sooner.]

[That's funny - that's exactly how Armin feels, only in reverse. He's about to be too busy trump chasing to waste down in the corner there.] It's worth a try, anyway.

That's not what I meant. I wouldn't be surprised she noticed that part, but from her perspective you'd have to have gotten the information from the automata - in a way, I guess you did - and I don't think there's any way she'd trust that. [Besides which, the fact that they can't explain the users, and moreover that they don't even know what to do with the information themselves is the more important part. If you don't know how to act on a piece of information, giving it to someone who knows less than you do who will act on it is hardly the answer.]

If you mean to convey the ever-present threat of one's darker nature, certainly, but I'm afraid demons are as versatile as they are ever-present.

So the Trumps are f-fighting and we're stuck in the middle... Wonderful.

We already suspected that might be the case - but I guess this is proof.

Yes, because they need allies to do anything successfully. If the conversion goes wrong it turns the program in to the beasts out on the grid.

[He won't comment on good and evil though.]

We do not have the luxury of time to debate the nature of things. Either take what I have or do not, either way I will be acting.

And it m-must have been going on for a while, if this is Round 2.

Tarot? I am afraid that does not exist in my time... or place so whatever symbology involved is lost to me.

I mean... we don't know what happened before M-Moebius. Or how long it's been happening.

[Well, he can go do his thing. After he got busted letting the Automata out of the prison after all, it's probably just as well.] Good luck.

True. This is too complex to try dropping a quarter of the story into it. At the very least, next time the tower thing comes up I can mention it'd probably destroy the ports - I don't think she'll care one way or another about that, since her focus is on the Grid being open and not the wider system. Network. Whatever the hell it is.

True. I think it's more Christian imagery than anything else, but in this particular case... material possessions, sometimes sex, being controlled by something you backed yourself into, overindulgence.

[If that helps him narrow it down to a reference figure he'd know better.]

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