ceiling_cat | [007 | public | Japanese audio

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discedo

[007 | public | Japanese audio | text translation]

So we've got earthquakes again... I haven't felt any tremors over here, though. Anyone know what might be goin' on over there?

That aside... I've been stuck in here more'n long enough. Gotta keep myself entertained somehow. Anyone up for a card game? Poker, blackjack; anything but solitaire. I'm settin' up in the front hall of Latimir.

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A pause. And a suspicious look as Lelouch takes up the cards again.

"If I didn't know any better... I'd say you could read minds too."

Hanekoma laughed outright, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Course not, Catnip. Chip's still in," he said, and winked.

"I'm just a good guesser. Gonna deal?"

"That's surprising."

But he deals out the cards anyway. Not really irritated, but he's getting a little tired.

"Oh, you know. Things happen." And it had taken him a while to be concerned enough to risk the removal of his chip. Joshua's relatively uneventful chip removal had been encouraging....

He picked up the cards, glancing at them. A pair of aces. Not bad. "Want to call it a game after this hand? Your sister'll kill me if you wear yourself out."

Two queens. Not a bad start. He puts the other two down. Naturally waiting for Sanae to do the same.

"Seems like a good idea."

Discarding the other three, Hanekoma smiled. "We'll have to do this again sometime."

"I wouldn't mind."

He gives the other male three new cards and also some for himself. At least he has enough for a three of a kind this way.

Nothing better than two of a kind. Oh well. Hanekoma laid down the cards. "Pair of aces."

"Three Queens," Lulu announces, places his cards down.

"Though I guess you should suspect what I am going to ask already... What is your reasoning behind setting Joshua up?"

"So he didn't explain his Game to you?" Hanekoma asked, taking the cards back and shuffling their hands back into the deck, the absent motion of his hands helping him think. How to phrase it without giving away his role? How far could he explain without revealing other secrets?

There was plenty that he could say, though: Lelouch already knew it.

"Shibuya was growing stagnant," he said, tapped the cards into a neat deck, and cut them for shuffling once more. "The UG was worst off, and the RG was beginning to follow it. As the Composer, Joshua saw no way to prevent its decay... so he decided to destroy it."

He neatened the deck again and set it down on his lap. "His Conductor made a bargain with him to try and save Shibuya: if the Conductor could change the city for the better in the space of one month, Joshua would spare it. If he could not change the city, it would be destroyed. To make their deal fair, Joshua agreed to play using a human proxy instead of directly opposing the Conductor's actions.

"Even with Josh handicapping himself, I knew the Conductor wasn't going to win."

Hanekoma lifted a hand, a what-can-you-do? gesture, and said simply, "The only way I saw to save Shibuya was to arrange for Joshua's defeat and replacement as Composer. No one in the UG had the strength to do it then, and so I picked the most ambitious and gave him the necessary tools."

Of course Lelouch listens. Yes, he might be tired, but that doesn't stop his brain from processing this information. The guy normal works on about three hours a sleep on average. It's more like his brain would go without him really having too tell it to. It makes a lot of sense, when cross referencing everything he's heard from Joshua and Sho. Also listening in on other conversations with Shiki, Beat, and Neku and all of their interactions with each other mixed in with Joshua, Sho, and Sanae... Yeah... He almost felt sorry for the first set of three. Getting in with something greater than themselves.

"But Shibuya is still standing," he remarks. "So something good must have come out of it. Though at least now I know how some of the others fit into this."

"Joshua changed his mind at the last moment," Hanekoma said, slipping the cards into his vest pocket. "His Proxy changed enough over the course of the month to convince him that Shibuya wasn't irredeemable after all - and so he spared the city even though he won the Game."

He took a deep breath, and got awkwardly to his feet. Well, one foot. He was getting good at the one-leg hobble hop. "Thanks for the card game, Catnip. You oughta get back upstairs and rest now."

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[007 | public | Japanese audio | text translation]

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