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

[otomechapilot]

I'll do the cooking show after the Jaunt, I didn't have time to prepare it, but...

What's this I hear about Tower falling?

Comments

[otomechapilot]

“I’m guessing you don’t know much about Tarot.”

Not so much guessing as certain. But you know. (She’s also absolutely sure he couldn’t do it alone, but doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know his accomplices. Can’t accidentally reveal what y’all don’t know.)

“I learned as much as I could when I got here. I figured it was gonna come up. And, Hajime. What do you think the Tower means? Meant. Your own words.”

[modernliterature]

Hey, you know, nobody has mentioned anything like that to me.

[otomechapilot]

It's cause the Arcana absolutely can read the Network.

[chalicejoker]

Hajime shrugs. "I've picked up bits and pieces here and there." That's a no. (Shh let his ego have this shhh...)

That question gets a hard grimace. "Destruction. People getting hurt. I asked Tower if he'd be fine with an apocalypse. He said yes." There's a long pause. "And I won't be used for that again."

[otomechapilot]

"My brother," Sara says quietly, "once told me something about the word apocalypse. He said that it didn't mean destruction. It meant revelations, like The Book Of Revelations. It got associated with destruction because sometimes you need a disaster to open your eyes."

She lays the Tower card on the table in front of him: a picture of a lightning bolt from God toppling a tower.

"Followup question. Why do you think that Lovers is such an asshole?" she says. It's not a rhetorical question, though she needs to share her suspicions. She's genuinely curious.

[chalicejoker]

Hajime absentmindedly reaches over to rub at his right bicep, where his faded Mark of a roach and a mantis getting thrown from a lightning-struck tower still remains. "And in my experience, an apocalypse just means that everyone dies while cockroach monsters tear up the planet. Nothing revelatory about that."

He looks kind of like he's expecting to get caught in some kind of trick question here. "...aren't they all kind of assholes with the whole bringing us here thing?"

[otomechapilot]

"Yeah that'd... color that. I'm sorry, Hajime," she says, and means it. "I didn't know."

Sara laughs, but only once, a bark of relief. "More of an asshole than say Fool or ROSE or Empress or Chariot or Strength, then," she says, placing a card with the image of the angel Psyche bringing a man and a woman together in an Edenic meetcute.

"Like, seriously. Lovers represents relationships, from friendship to family to romance and everything in between. So why when we met her is she focused on creepy shipping and soap opera drama above the other stuff that's supposed to be her?"

Again, serious, honest and curious, but rhetorical as well.

[modernliterature]

Ja, nobody seems to have worked out just what that means yet.

I'm going to go put my sign up in the library again.

[otomechapilot]

I'll meet you there. There's... more to why I think that's the wrong question, but that's definitely better talked about than thought out loud.

[chalicejoker]

"Thanks." He sighs. "It was...stopped. But only by a man who gave far too much to do it." Ryo reaches out and pats him on the cheek, but for once, the mantis stays quiet.

He still seems to think he's going to get caught in some kind of trick question. "...emotions and relationships are difficult?" He's trying, here.

[otomechapilot]

"It's weird that she's doing worse than a coinflip when what she represents IS relationships," Sara says.

Sara sighs, and puts another card - an image of the Devil chaining together a man, a woman, and a treasure chest in a hellish punishment. The pose and composition is almost exactly the same as the Lovers card.

"...I think they're missing the parts of them linked to the dead Arcana."

Try that thought on for size, see where it takes you.

[chalicejoker]

Hajime stares at the card for a long moment. "...just so you're aware, I'm really more used to things represented by cards where you want to take as many of them out of commission as possible. Like that's the goal." He almost misses the other Undead. At least he understood them, even if he wanted to seal all of them. "And I don't...I don't see why taking the one that wrecks things out of the equation would hurt."

[otomechapilot]

"Tower isn't about wrecking things," Sara says, flatly. "Wrecking things is his hobby. His job is burning your hand when you stick it in a fire. If he's fine with an apocalypse, it's only because nothing makes you learn faster than a spectacular disaster."

Sara sighs, pressing her thumbs into the gap between her nose and her forehead.

"...without Temperance, the Arcana have no sense of balance. Without Hierophant, no sense of morals. Without Fortune, they had no luck. Without Star, they have no hope."

"And I really hope not having Tower doesn't mean they'll have no sense of the consequences of their actions."

[chalicejoker]

Hajime frowns. "You could argue they already didn't have a sense of consequence when they brought in a bunch of people like us to do all of this for them and they didn't think some of us might react poorly, and violently so."

[otomechapilot]

"Which they started doing right after their sense of balance got murdered by Cthulhu, right?"

Sara pinches the bridge of her nose again. "...I'm not saying that you're wrong, that they're innocent, that they shouldn't have asked instead of taken. I'm saying that there's a good reason for them to want their family back."

"I want a World where Ruin leads to Revelation and Revolution as much as I want one where Hope is real."

[canbebrave]

Decorum may very well be the only thing that can get us through this alive. Murdering one of them? Certainly not.

[chalicejoker]

"It's not like we can change anything now, anyway," Hajime says, "and I...just haven't had the same experiences with Ruin to even think such a thing has the possibility to exist." There's a pause. "But I'm not planning on going out with the intent to kill again, if that's what you're worried about."

[reallymean]

As the lioness leads the way deeper into the Castle, they pick up an escort. Somewhere, somehow, the mice have found pieces of rodent-sized armour, and long needles to use as swords. They stop to flank the door into the Castle's garden, while the lioness opens it with the press of a paw, and continues inward. It isn't far to where Allura sits, on a patch of grass beneath a tree laden with fruit that resembles nothing so much as silver peaches. She looks up as she hears the door hiss open, and offers a smile that doesn't mask the tension around her eyes.

"Sara. Gabriel. Come have a seat."

Private

[crouching_sin]

Some people decided that there was merit in testing their limits. I can't exactly blame them for going after Tower, given what him winning would mean.

Psi protect II forever

[otomechapilot]

...How do you know what his winning would mean?

He really needs to get that...

[crouching_sin]

I don't know for certain, but I can make some guesses due to his symbolism. I've dealt with Babel enough, I don't need it again.

[otomechapilot]

Everyone I’ve asked so far focused on one part of his symbols, and totally forgot the rest of them. You too?

(A mental sigh.)

[crouching_sin]

Oh no, I'm totally aware of the value of starting fresh with a rebellion. I was told that he would have attempted to scoop me up had I come in when he was still playing.

I don't know that it would work for every world, however.

[modernliterature]

[The sign in the library says: Tell That Arschloch what an Idiot he is - 1 copper

Caleb is sitting nearby, reading]

[otomechapilot]

Well with an opening like that, Sara can't help but manipulate up a penny and put it on the table.

"On the bright side, you're no more an idiot than I was two days ago," Sara says. "I only just now figured this out. How's the Liminal Conjuration practice going?"