Conversation Space III.

[powersthatbe]

A poured concrete floor and cinder block walls are lit by a single bare light bulb hanging overhead. Shackles dangle from brackets on every side, and the chair in the center of the room is clearly an electric chair. A tall glass sits on top of a stool made of what looks like pure gold - but the liquid inside it is almost definitely blood.

Comments

[adastraea]

She likes truth, even when it's ugly. It will do.

"Less a torture chamber than an aggregate representation of our archetypes," the woman with the blindfold says, appearing wherever Jolie had just looked away from. "I have no intention to torture you. It would not serve my purpose."

[mytearsaremine]

"Oh. That's good." Jolie eyes the figure there, though it's a little hard to tell she's doing so. Her head-ish part turned that direction, anyway. "You... looked a little different last time I saw you. Are you still Dara?"

[adastraea]

"Astræa," the woman corrects. "Dara was a native of that world, whose form and some of whose manner I borrowed for a time. Try not to worry. She was safe the entire time in a temporary storage space that the Arcana erects for such contingencies. Tobi was as well."

[mytearsaremine]

"Because that's not creepy at all," Jolie mutters, shaking her head. But it doesn't set off any of her major alarm bells yet, either, so she says instead, "So you're Astraea. And Justice, right? With the whole blindfold thing, and the sword on my back, and stuff. What does that really mean? I mean, are you guys named after the tarot for a reason?"

[adastraea]

"Less named after," Astræa corrects. "More embodying."

[mytearsaremine]

"So the tarot came first, and you're... stuck acting like the card meanings?" She only has a vague understanding of tarot, based on a few brief conversations with Persona-users, mostly, and listening in on network conversations. "Why? I mean, that seems pretty dumb, limiting yourselves like that."

[adastraea]

"It is not so much a matter of limiting ourselves," Astræa corrects, "as it is that we are what we are. We are our archetypes. The cards mean us."

[mytearsaremine]

"So which came first, the tarot or the Trump?" Jolie asks curiously. "I mean... if the tarot cards came first, then did you guys come into being based on them, or did you change when you joined this game thing in order to fit them? But if you came first, does that mean the tarot's based on you?"

[adastraea]

"Time," she says, after a very long pause, "is different for us than with mortals. We do not change. We cannot change. Unless..." She shakes her head. "We were what we were since before we began Synodiporia."

[mytearsaremine]

Wow. That's interesting. Jolie has to ask the obvious question here: "What were you before?"

[adastraea]

"Justice," she says.

[mytearsaremine]

"That's what you are now, though. Or were you, like, some disembodied theory of justice before, and now you're a person made out of justice, or am I totally off base here?" She's finding that it's really important to know this, as if it might help her understand where they're coming from and what she, and the others, are supposed to do.

Plus she's a nosy kid with a stubborn streak, and not getting this is bugging her.

[adastraea]

"Yes," she says.

[mytearsaremine]

Jolie frowns at her. "Yes to which one? I kind of asked a lot of questions, there."

[adastraea]

"Can I not be both?"

[mytearsaremine]

"I can't be both right about what I said I thought you were, and off-base, at the same time," Jolie clarifies, sounding exasperated. "So was I right, or was I not right?"

[adastraea]

"Why can you not? Our existences may seem contradictory to mortals. At times, mortals seem contradictory to us."

[mytearsaremine]

"Mortals, sure, that I can see-- we do stupid stuff, we do things that's bad for us, we get mad or sad or laugh at things we shouldn't laugh at. But you just said you're stuck as one thing, as this Justice thing, I don't see how there's anything contradictory about Justice," Jolie replies stubbornly. "So you're 'both' originally the formless concept of justice given personhood for this whole Jaunt thing, and something totally different from that. How does that even work?"

[adastraea]

"Can I not simultaneously be a disembodied theory of Justice and a person made of Justice?" she elaborates.

[mytearsaremine]

"That wasn't what I was saying, though. Now you're just talking in circles," she huffs, frustrated. "Because that doesn't answer the question of which one you were before, rather than now. But okay, say you're both now, too. What is the disembodied concept of 'the moon' or 'the tower'? I mean. Those are actual things, not concepts. Justice I can get, there's some spiritual force that wants things to be right and just and good, but how can there be some spiritual force that wants things to be 'the moon'?"

[adastraea]

"Ah. We are grander archetypes than you may conceive of us. The Moon is illusion and deception, self-doubt and romanticism. The Tower is sudden change, ruin, chaos, and revelation. I am justice, yes, but I am also intellect, analysis, and clear vision."

[mytearsaremine]

"Wow, I can think of so many images or pictures that would show those things better than the moon or a tower," Jolie says with a bit of a grin, but she's liking the sound of Justice more. "So clear vision, huh? Even though you can't see. Kind of like blind justice, the statue. With the scales and stuff. I always liked her."

[adastraea]

"I am glad that you are fond of me already," Justice says, wryly.

[mytearsaremine]

Jolie takes that opportunity to stick her tongue out at Justice. Of course she does. "So what now? What are we trying to do exactly?"

[adastraea]

"We are trying to achieve Synodiporia," Justice says, simply.