Tarot memory share [Phoenix]

[guillotineroom]

The room you enter this time is an ostentatious fortune tellers tent. Colourful silks drape the walls with intricate golden constellations embroidered on the ceiling. Various crystals, candles, magic 8 balls, and other superstitious sundries are scattered throughout the tent.

In the centre of the room is a table with ten chairs around it, and three cards laid out for you:

HIEROPHANT, STRENGTH, SUN

[ RULES | TURN-IN ]

Comments

it's time for Juzo's memory theater! (1/3)

[gunmettle]

[ Juzo isn't entirely certain how this works but thankfully he doesn't have to try too hard. The second he picks up the Strength card and thinks about those moments with Tetsuro all those months ago, the card does the rest, taking the memory right out of Juzo's head for all to see as it's transferred to the card.

It is a little weird, he thinks, watching himself like an outside observer. ]

(slight cw for mentions of maiming and human experimentation)

[gunmettle]

The memory begins in a dingy sewer, a pair of figures looking waterlogged and worse for wear deep in conversation. One of them is Juzo, soggy and bandaged after a fight and a long fall into the water.

The person across from him appears to be a robot of some kind – an Extended, like him, though the build is far different – with a hole blown in its head and its lower limbs missing. It struggles to speak, its voice pained and strained and young. The voice of a boy in a massive steel body.

“How are you alive in that condition?” Asks Juzo, clearly under the impression that he’s talking to someone like himself, more metal than flesh and bone but still living.

The boy’s voice in the Extended body goes on to explain in grim detail how he is a test subject, a lost and forgotten child living in an “orphanage” that was just a front for a sinister corporation’s experiments. He tells of how they shoved a special prototype device in him that allows him to control this body – and any Extended body – from a distance. He hijacked it to escape, but his real body is elsewhere, lost before the fall into the sewer, and now being carried back to the facility as they speak. His name is Tetsuro. Juzo’s client.

“I’ll be their tool again soon enough,” he laments. “I should have known I couldn’t escape.”

Juzo says nothing, but his body tenses with anger. Tetsuro simply continues.

“In order to focus the device, you need to mentally move your own body parts. That’s why they removed my vocal cords and severed the tendons in my arms and legs. But I still managed to escape. I guess they underestimated… the strength of my will to be free!

The people in the city, the Security Bureau… no one would listen to me, but… you did… Juzo Inui – the Resolver.” His would-be savior if things had gone a bit better. With one final lament over how things have ended, the robotic body shudders and falls still, an empty shell once again.

Juzo is quiet for a while, fishing around in his pocket for something – his usual pack of cigarettes, now ruined and soggy with sewer water. With a sigh, he remarks to no one in particular, “This is why I hate humidity, and kids.”

Time slides by in a short blur then, as Juzo makes his way out of the sewer, following the blips of a radar device set into his wrist to a set of train tracks circling the city. It’s the dead of night, buildings glittering in the distance, cast in the shadow of a gigantic black monolith at the center of the city. He steps fully onto the tracks as the light of a fast approaching train washes over him – a train bearing the same emblem as that terrible, looming monolith. Tetsuro is on that train, and Juzo made a promise to help him.

Juzo sets his feet, a gout of smoke or steam bursting from the ammo chamber built into the back of his hand as he pulls the hammer into place. The train is almost upon him, and he rears back his fist and lays into the nose of the speeding train with all his might. (And yes, he does shout his attack name, don’t look at him.) The train’s wheels give a godawful screech as it meets resistance, the force of Juzo’s fist caving in the shining black steel of the train car. He skids back along the tracks for a short distance, pushed by the impact, but in this battle, Juzo ultimately wins. The train’s cars erupt from the tracks as the sheer strength of one punch brings the speeding vehicle to an abrupt stop.

Soldiers start to pour out of the upended train cars, weapons trained on him, bullets already flying the second he so much as flinches.

“I’m just one unarmed man,” he quips, as if he didn’t just punch the whole train off the tracks. “Aren’t you guys overreacting just a little?” He dives into the fray, then, and that’s where the memory ends.

[mountanoffensive]

YOU PUNCHED A TRAIN???

[I mean, the other stuff was pretty horrible but HE PUNCHED A TRAIN]

[gunmettle]

[ He takes a drag of his cigarette, turning his head to exhale the smoke away from Horse.

Probably because he thinks it makes him look cool. ]

Sure did.

[mountanoffensive]

That was awesome! You're so strong!

aaand done

[gunmettle]

[ And when it's over, Juzo stands back from the card, his posture a bit sheepish. ]

Stoat said we should cover our bases so I think that gets us physical strength and strength of character.

[totalmisplay]

[CACKLING IN GLEE AT THE ROBOTS AND EXPLOSIONS]

Aaaahahahaha!! Now that's what I'm talking about!!

—Uh. Well... You know. It does kinda fit both of those, I guess. It'll do.

[tailflick,]

[gunmettle]

“It’ll do”, like you weren’t just giggling like a maniac. I take it you’re impressed?

[totalmisplay]

The train should have totally exploded. Maybe we can get you some upgrades.

[gunmettle]

Did you miss the part where there was someone on that train I was tryin’ to bring back alive?

[totalmisplay]

Ugh, you're always getting misplayed! Fine, fine. You have the strength to restrain your strength or whatever.

[gunmettle]

Yeah well, maybe if you decide to loosen up and share somethin', I'll show you an explosion or two.

[totalmisplay]

[TAILFLICK...]

I dunno about sharing memories. But, just so you know, I'm really good with technology. It's kind of my thing. If you actually did run into any technical difficulties or shortcomings, you should be asking me.

[gunmettle]

[ There’s a very long moment where Juzo considers Stoat for a moment. ]

Can’t say I’ve ever had an engineer quite like you before, but I guess my options are pretty limited here.

[totalmisplay]

It's a huge pain manipulating things this way, but that's what all the other people on the team with hands are for. I'll just order Yor or Sholmes around and get them to do what I say.

[gunmettle]

So long as Yor doesn't handle a wrench the same way she handles a spatula, we'll be fine.

Hopefully.

[totalmisplay]

...We'll see if she's more or less useful than a drone.

[gunmettle]

If nothin’ else, she’s got strength on her side. If I’m outta commission, she’s got the heavy lifting covered.

[briarliar]

[ ...not sure if this is a clapping appropriate moment, but respectfully applauding his bravery in her head ]

[gunmettle]

You look like you got somethin’ you wanna say.

[briarliar]

Oh! Um, Stoat was already cheering so I didn't want to interrupt...

I would have been very worried if you didn't already tell me he would be okay.

[briarliar]

What you did was really impressive, Mr. Inui.

[ and from her tone of voice she doesn't mean punching the train, her admiration is because he listened to Tetsuro ]

[gunmettle]

[ He angles his head away, a little embarrassed. He doesn’t like to advertise his soft, gooey center, but in showing more than just the bit with the train, he put that art of him on display, if only a little. ]

It all came back around in the end. That kid saved my life, too. In more ways than one.

[briarliar]

I'm very glad it worked out so well for you, and you don't truly dislike kids.

But I was wondering...what's a "Funke Faust"? Is that a train term like "all aboard" but the opposite?