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

[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."

“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)

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."

"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."

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)

Keeping the game going. The sound of that wasn't very reassuring. Nor was the acting on the idioms.

"Reminds me which idioms those are, other than the ones you already mention. What's Star for example?"

"Hope," she says, very quietly. "Maybe the most important. Hope, and working for something better. After the tower falls, you can see the stars: reach for them."

"... all this time, the Arcana have been lacking hope, of all things?"

Sara closes her eyes. The loss of Star is what prompted the Arcana to send the veterans to Moebius. And experiencing that secondhand from Allura's dungeon was enough to tell her that Moebius was a monstrous crime.

The death of hope for the death of Hope. But two wrongs don't make a right.

"...damn it," is what she says out loud, suddenly very tired. "Yeah. No balance, no morals, no hope, and now no revolution."

Jean doesn't say anything and instead comes over to Sara to hug her. Because it seems like she might need a hug and heck - he needs one too to be honest.

Sara eeps? at the sudden touch but hugs back almost immediately after.

She did need it.

...so does ROSE, probably. Damn.

Jean can forgive her for being distracted, right?

He definitely can. And he doesn't keep the hug going on for too long, in case it's too uncomfortable.

"Sorry. I wasn't sure what to say so..."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Sara insists. "Like, thank you, even."

She squeezes him once more for good measure.

"...whether or not they affect the greater World doesn't matter if this explains how they affect themselves and us," Sara says.

"I have... an idea. Probably stupid. But I'll need to talk to one of Fortune's chosen about it. I need to talk to Fortune, really..."

"At least Fortune seems more likely to actually, you know, listen, unlike some other Arcana."

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

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