synopsychic | we interrupt your regularly scheduled Babish rip-off for this important announcement

My room? I can do A Thing that probably makes it harder for our hosts to listen in.

Also we gots sodas and food.

[He makes a light chuckle at the sodas and food. An amused one.]

Alright. I'll be there soon.

[Sure enough, soon she will hear a knock at her door.]

If he has the senses for it, time and space go soft when he enters. This place is a dreamworld, and deliberately constructed at that. It otherwise looks normal, but Jiangwa hanging in the sky and the VINELAND sign on the hill are new.

"Hey," she says. "Sit down, make yourself at home. Anything you want? Anything you can't eat or drink, while we're at it?"

Small talk and logistics before actual serious discussion.

There is a small reading he gets with dimensional senses, but it's not anything he worries about. She did say she had A Thing.

"Hey." He looks around a bit before settling in on a chair to sit. "Uh... anything a canine can't eat? I mean, just things like chocolate that are dangerous. Werewolf genes, you know."

Maybe it decided the only way to win was to lose.

[She does have her theories as to why Tower fell. That isn't actually one of them.

There's a pause, and then the impression of a faint sigh.]

You may be right. Come to the Castle and we can talk.

Edited 2019-01-10 19:39 (UTC)

If nothing else, I get to really appreciate what having a direct and straight response from one of Them is like.

Seriously, though, I don't actually have much on the whole situation besides what everyone's already been saying. I'm not part of the detective crew, I got most of my info from Raidou.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't understand this passionate need to overthrow our only way home. I thought I heard someone compare it to slavery once. Clearly they've never actually been a slave. This is freedom and paradise compared to that.

True. Dying and leaving the other Arcana in chaos while flipping us both birds seems like The Most Tower play.

[Sara doesn’t believe that for a second, either - or at least doesn’t think it’s anywhere near the most important reason.]

In the mood for anything? I’ve been working on baking, and mixed soft drinks.

“So no garlic and onion, either,” she mutters.

But she presents a bamboo steamer of shumai atop another of eggplant and bok choi.

“...why Tower instead of Lovers, Moon, or Judgement Reversed?” She’s very quiet and very, very serious as she examines her plain wood chopsticks. “What’s the endgame? I get wanting to go home or being angry at the Arcana for taking us and Tower for being Ruin, but he’s also Revolution, and a way better choice as a friend on the inside than literally goddamned Devil. What were they trying to even do?”

Edited 2019-01-10 23:15 (UTC)

...no. I can totally understand them seeing this as slavery. It’s not whips and chains by any stretch, but the Arcana’s polite suggestions sound like direct orders for a reason.

Not that it makes this right. Or that it makes them right.

Jean also looks at the chopsticks with a frown on his face. He's never used them, so he's unsure of how they would even work. But he does focus on the conversation, too, because it's what he's mainly here for.

"I guess a lot of Travelers just focus on the negative sides of Arcana like Tower. Especially when they don't even want to understand them and just wants to go home no matter what it takes." He shakes his head. "I guess they did't go for Lovers at least because she's closely connected to Devil. They would have gotten two of them against themselves."

Nothing in particular. Surprise me.

[The door to the false Castle of Lions opens without difficulty, as it always does. Allura isn't visible in the front hall, though her opal-furred spirit companion is, sitting stone-still as though waiting to play escort.]

Detective Raidou on the case... do we want them to know whodunnit?

...though I'm really curious what Rose told you.

[Sara salutes the companion, as ever; hand over heart into drawing an invisible sword. Likewise, Gabriel the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcat, no longer going "I'm a cat now, I'm a girl now," sits and bares her neck to the lion.]

I think Allura's expecting me. Brought something you can eat, too.

[She produces a crabcake.]

That's the million dollar question, isn't it?

Hold on, I can show you.

[And a moment later, a memory follows with Magician in her full Rider-Waite resplendency - as opposed to her usual lycra - and ends with "Bingo."]

"Just like Moon and Sun. Judgement and Justice."

Unfortunately, that makes a lot of sense to Sara, so she just takes a single dumpling to chew on while she chews on that thought.

"...I think I'd better lay this out. I think they're necessary as they say they are," Sara tells him. "I think a world with Temperance and Star back is better. I cheered with Chariot when Fortune returned. You don't have to agree with me, but you have to know that to get where I'm coming from."

She reaches for another dumpling. There's a fork, now, just to the side of Jean's place setting, that wasn't there before.

"Which isn't the same thing as liking how they're doing things."

...Haeccity. That's one to look up.

She wasn't always the younger sister. She wasn't always she; maybe she was the Juggler, an older brother. Or in the middle of age and boy/girl. Or none or all of these.

And they didn't always realize we were people. Some of them still have trouble with it cause "people" is hard to cram into an idea like Ruin or Lies or Corruption.

Well, a fork is definitely easier. Jean helps himself to a dumpling as Sara speaks.

"Actually PSYCHE once told me that the Arcana define each other. When Hermit wanted to stop doing that, she and Devil were in danger of losing their individuality. So I understand where you're coming from."

He eats the dumpling before saying anything else. "I don't agree with the Arcana most of the time... But I do think they're necessary."

"...oh my god," Sara says at that.

She lays her hand on the table, slides it, and two cards spill out from under her hand.

"...one is or is supposed to be the healthy version of the other. Love and Lust."

She lays down three more cards. "Take away Balance, Morals and finally Individuality, and there's nothing left to make them different..."

She looks up at him, one hand over her mouth.

"Lovers and Devil were absolutely right to worry, so they... tried to kill the one thing that could keep them from crashing into each other?"

She shakes her head and groans. "Nice to know we're not the only people who panic and go dumb," she grumbles.

"Actually they didn't try to kill him. They could have, but he's their brother. So they only locked him into the Grid."

That's something he needed to just correct, but otherwise... A lot of that makes sense. And it's really dam worrying and scary. Enough that he doesn't want to eat more.

"... so how will losing Tower affect the others."

"Revolution and ruin," Sara says. "...gambler's fallacy, they'll be more stubborn, it'll be harder for them to see the consequences of - of mistakes - oh, god, this is why Judgement is Reversed..."

Give her a moment to catch her breath, this is legit horrifying for her.

Jean looks at her, getting worried.

"Breathe Sara. Take some deep breaths..."

She does. She's still terrified by the implications, of course. But she's used terror as fuel before.

"...We need a new beginning," she says. "We need a World playing with a full deck. We need a world with balance, morals, hope, and revolution. We even need one with animal hunger in Devil."

She takes another deep breath.

"Our Worlds need that."

Jean watches her a while before nodding.

"But how? We got Fortune back, but will the same method work again?"

"Winning the game, and keeping it running," Sara says. "They can come back if someone who misses their fallen family wants them back, and wins. Not with the same face, the same - same haeccity - maybe Temperance comes back as the Artist - but they can bring each other back if someone wins."

She winces.

"And. And we need to... be, act in the idiom of, the missing Arcana. Remind them what they're missing, and that it's important, and why."

Edited 2019-01-11 07:12 (UTC)

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