//------------------------------// // 87. Tarot Terror. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Earth, Haiti, Mz. Ruby- Sitting in a dark hut in my swamp, I prepared to do a random reading of tarot cards to see the portents of the future. Whether or not they would be related to me and my fight with the Cooper’s gang would remain to be seen. I shuffled the magical card and continued to think about my adversaries, they were coming and I had no clue when they would arrive. They would not be getting me out of my swamp without a fight! I spread the card, all of them were blank, like they were supposed to be. They were ready. I placed the first card. Strength, but there was something quite odd about it. Strength, both upright and reversed… at the same time?! Who could have such bravery, compassion and focus, yet be experiencing self-doubt, weakness and insecurity? I placed a card below it and a suit of wands showed up, it was the upright ‘Seven of Wands’. Whoever they were they were persevering, protective and had an indomitable control of themselves. The next card was that was also upright and reversed like the major arcana of strength, from the suit of cups. The two of cups, it represented unity, partnership and connection, reversed it showed broken communication, tension and… an ‘unintended’ imbalance? Someone was having a worse day than me it seems, my ghost factory was producing spiritual rats at a good pace. I dare pirates to try and attack me now! The card I placed down next below strength had me blinking, the suit of swords? Is whoever this is about going to have one of every suit? This was the nine of Swords, upright… anxiety, hopelessness, trauma? There were massive amounts of all three. Whoever currently representing Strength was, they had to be on some form of roller coaster they direly wanted off of. One last card… huh… Suit of Pentacles, which was to be expected considering all the others. What does this portray of your future? The symbol came into focus for me… The Knight of Pentacles. This person would always be efficient, hardworking and responsible as she moves on to the future, she would lay a foundation for everyone she can while putting the weight of the world entirely on her shoulders. For yes, I have divined them to be female and they… sound unbreakable despite all that comes at them. “The two of cups has me curious… what Arcana is the one of Strength meeting with?” I asked the air and placed down a card, a thread of pure magic passed between the two cards. “Hmm... strange… Fortune upright and reversed. Basically a boat with no rudder to steer with to get it off its current course, but luck… is still on the side of the passenger… curious.” A card surprisingly flopped out on its own next to Fortune, Fortune is… a girl… she has a brother who is… The Star? One with boundless hope and faith, he clings tightly to Fortune with everything he has and does not wish her to meet her inevitable fate. Strange tidings for whoever these are… I will continue with looking into this Fortune. I placed a card, the ‘Eight of Wands’. Fortune acts quickly then… perhaps too hastily at times. ‘Knight of Wands’, both upright and reversed. Fortune was fearless, adventurous and loved to take action, they were also easy to anger, impulsive and reckless. A confirmation of acting hastily at the very least then. I place a ‘four of wands’ and looked at it curiously as a copy of the ‘four of wands’ automatically jumped to being beneath The Star, as did a second card. Both ‘four of wands’ were upright and reversed, this means that they had a huge family. So the Star and Fortune tended to be in conflict with one another at home, but they cherished one another all the same. I never got much of that with my family, all I needed was my powers! The Star had a Two of Wands upright and reversed. The Star liked planning things and making decisions, but feared change and liked safety when in reference to the Four of Wands. That they were a community unlike any other screamed loudly in my senses, Fortune will soon face a huge lack of support. I never understood why people care so much about forming such strong bonds. I haven’t ever needed them since I started concentrating on my voodoo. A King of Wands leapt out to position beneath The Star, he saw the big picture, he was a leader and he overcomes challenges. I reached for a card, but the final card slotted into place beneath Fortune before I could. Six of Cups, upright and reverse… familiarity, happy memories, moving forward, leaving home. Whoever this is, they will be putting on a brave face soon. Interesting, but it likely had nothing to do with me. These people were somewhere in the United Kingdoms. -Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian Street, Dolly- “So… it would be kind of like something from Poodle Woof huh?” I tried to ease Dylan down, but he was clearly upset. As were all the puppies that I might follow Pom when she has to leave. “The game is Poodle ‘Wolf’ Dolly, Poodle Wolf, no… forget about that! Dolly your place is here… with us… your family! Please tell me this is just a phase and not something magic is doing to you!” Dylan looked heartbroken and I couldn’t meet his eyes, I told him about the magical bond I created with Pom and nobody in the house was taking it well as Pom told everyone about it. “I agree with Pom. You really need to break this bond Dolly, whatever it is, before it’s too late!” “So… you’ll be taking the job for the time being and will try to get Dolly to hopefully agree to break this thing going on between you on purpose?” I vaguely heard Hunter ask as I continued to interact with my dorky bro, I saw Pom nodding and I cringed a bit. It hurt, but I wanted to help her regardless of how much pain it’s going to put me through. She wanted to be back with her family and I know that she would have returned the favor, even if Pom had to die for me to do it. “Bro you worry too much, it’s not like Pom is leaving immediately or going somewhere far off and dragging me away from the ‘fam’ forever.” I couldn’t help but feel there was something hollow about my words, I think I actually wanted this bond like I wanted to help Pom get home. “Please Dolly, this is important, we don’t know much about magic. This isn’t like my game at all!” He was pleading with me to reconsider my stance on being Pom’s companion, because Pom has said this bond is a two way road and we didn’t know exactly what we were actively giving to one another. “You should really listen to the one expert we have on the subject and I’m not talking about Dante! Our world’s magic might have created this bond and it could be entirely different from what Pom knows... so she has a very good reason for wanting you to break it!” “Bro… nothing… will ever… break up our ‘fam’! I will always be ‘fam’ Dyl… I still want this though.” I needed to get this point across and I wanted to do it in a way that Dylan would understand without a shadow of a doubt. “Look… Hansel could walk up to me this minute, declare his undying love for me, ask me to marry him and ask me to stay here with all of you until we’re ready to be wed… but I would refuse him. You don’t know what that feels like to me Dylan, knowing that I would say no to Hansel’s face for this… that I would not take that kind of perfect dream to go into the unknown with an alien that just came out of the sky!” I had screamed at him, he had to understand how bad my crush on Hansel was… that this took priority over that said a lot about my determination to see it through. “Sis…” Dylan wilted and I wilted too for getting so angry with him, he was trying to help and I was refusing to see reason. I just… where Pom goes, I wanted to follow. “None of us want you to leave.” “I know…” I started to cry into his chest, the bond to Pom didn’t weaken from this. I didn’t want it to. It didn’t help that I could now also feel the massive pyre of a bond that I had with my family too, all one hundred of them. I didn’t even know my bond with my step mom was that iron tight! It just wasn’t quite the same as Pom’s bond with me. “I’m not becoming a pet though Dylan… I’m not getting a pet either… it’s… hard to explain what’s happening. I just… I don’t want to be the one to break the ‘fam’, both Dee Dee and Dizzy are going to be so upset about all this and they are always so impressionable… they’ll want to make a bond like this too because I’ve already done it! You saw what happened during my whole ‘Camilla’ episode with that evil corgi Clarissa!” Dylan started to gently rub my back with a paw as I cried into his shoulder. “Can we Dalmatians really do anything bro?” I finally asked, it was a belief of mine and it was shaken to its core. This is something I couldn’t do, for the first time in my life. “We’re not letting you go without a fight Dolly.” Dylan’s voice was determined, but I don’t think he quite understood the severity of what we had to do to break this bond on purpose. We figured that the bond was created by our world’s magic and latched onto the magic from Pom’s world, because with the way Pom explained it… I was far too smart for this to have happened otherwise. Who knows what mixing magic from two completely different worlds was causing with us?! Well… in for a pound as much as penny. I then recalled Dante’s words and my heart basically stopped in my chest as the echo played out in my head. “Scary thought…” I tightened my hold on Dylan. “The future…” -Pom- I had expected this from Dorothy, which could have been easy for me to block a bond attempt from. The baby puppy wouldn’t have the willpower to get through my guard. A guard which I never dropped once, but was usurped entirely by Dolly’s purely impossible ferocity in the way she embraced it with her very being. Maybe Dante would have been possible and a far less detrimental bond, as we became good friends these last few days and his family was a little more inviting to him thanks to me. Still he was guarded as much as I was, so it would never have happened. I did have to tell him that even Grimm Dogs couldn’t see everything coming, which is why this even happened. I possibly would have even slightly expected Da Vinci, given how much she likes me… I was a living work of art to her and an inspiration for many a painting for the adorable blue tongued dog. What happened, was that I ended up forging a bond with one of the two dogs that were holding this entire family together. Top dogs were necessary for the stability of large litters, the older dogs that cared for the younger. As such, ninety plus dogs was too much for one top dog alone. Dolly was said to be half sassing her part in things around here, but she was good at corralling puppies. That was her primary skill around here and they might soon be missing that… because of me. This was a disaster and no amount of screaming or kicking could seem to get Dolly to recant the bond despite everyone actually siding with me on pleading with Dolly to do so. The puppies, once they got an explanation from me through Dante, were all over Dolly about breaking it and not following me to wherever I went from here when it was time for me to start making headway into find my friends. The entire family was now in on the keep Dolly home, where she truly belongs, campaign. I hoped and direly wished that they succeeded, or else I would be responsible for tearing an entire family of Dalmatians apart just because I magnetized the wrong dog to me. I was breaking their whole family simply by existing, but I would find a way to make things right… I had too! Hopefully my job as Hunter’s advisor and protector went over well, I would be considered a foreign bodyguard with an exceedingly sketchy background. Don’t know how Hunter was going to get me some identification when I wasn’t born on this planet or even in this dimension. Now being a bodyguard, that was something that I could do easily enough while looking unassuming as a native quadrupedal animalistic I appeared to be. -Haiti, Mz. Ruby- New prediction path, I placed down a card and a card immediately jumped next to it protectively. Whoever the upright version of ‘The World’ was, they were protected by… The Lovers? That protection was incredibly fierce, so much so that I could hardly look directly at The World that was guarded so jealously by The Lovers committed to protecting them above all else. It was almost like it was a dragon protecting their hoard, it even almost felt like a dragon. If I remember right, The World represented fulfillment, completion and… I felt a powerful surge of absolute ‘HARMONY’ immediately ruin my reading. I huffed audibly, whoever I tried to randomly scry apparently were protected by many figures. One of them was apparently a novice in learned magic, but a powerful one with incredible instinctual magic nonetheless. It was better that I didn’t try to do more than locate the source of that problem… it was… north of California? I’ll be sure to avoid Calisota in the future. -Calisota, Duckberg, McDuck Manor, Lena Sabrewing- Whoever that was, I hope I just gave them a black eye… it kind of scared me that they got through the protections on Uncle Scrooge’s mansion. Oh great, Webby, Huey, Dewey and Louie got me thinking of him as my ‘Uncle’ too. When Scrooge said I would have a part in his family, he seriously meant it to the point that I felt welcome here any day of the week and all year long. Scrooge honestly despised magic… well magic used as shortcuts to things you could simply achieve with hard work, he didn’t mind letting me into his home and I was made of the stuff held together on the power of pure friendship. Something that I’ve been feeling a lot of around here, it was like the mansion was being saturated with harmonious energies. It says a lot about how much Scrooge trusted me around his oddball family of adventurers that he had me around to make sure the defenses were up to snuff when Penny the Moonlander couldn’t handle something. “Hey Violet, do you know of a kind of magic that can circumvent all the protections that Moneybags has on this mansion?” I asked while looking at for another intrusion, it didn’t feel like Magica. “It wasn’t Magica, which is as much as I know for certain. I think they were looking at Smolder and Ocellus before I caught them, the intent behind it was ambiguous with a hint of negativity.” “Possibly voodoo magic mixed with tarot card divination, which originates in West Africa, sixth thousand years old and sixty million practitioners… if a third ‘six ‘happens with a time frame soon… well… let’s not go there.” Violet said immediately. “Dangerous stuff, whoever this practitioner is they are good at what they Voo-doo.” “Finally, you make a good pun, it took you months to finally get one that didn’t sound like Dewey using his name over and over again! It’s understandable that I really want to punch his beak in right?” I stopped, stood up straight and cleared my throat. “So as Scrooge’s ‘Team Magic’… research?” “Research.” Violet confirmed. “Hey guys, we can confirm that Shanty was in fact in Mesa City.” Huey stated as he came in looking through some notes. “She was last seen in the presence of one Mopsy Muttoncoddle, a relatively famous dancer at The Prance Dance.” -Mz. Ruby- I felt a shudder trickle down my spine. No matter what power I seemed to have attracted the attention of, it is time to do the reading I wanted to from the start after confirming my deck was working correctly. “Sly Cooper.” I stated audibly for the magic to latch onto the name, I was being quite specific with this reading. I placed a blank card down, four jumped to join it protectively. What Sly Cooper came up as… I wasn’t even surprised by it in the slightest. The card was the element of air, such as being hard to touch or catch. The ruling planet of mercury representing the quick footed, like that of the raccoon that wore blue clothes like a wrong side of the law police officer. A spread of four other individuals and Sly Cooper comes up as ‘The Magician’ in the upright position among them. The meaning behind this was clear, Sly had the talents, capabilities and the resources to eventually succeed in most endeavors. The Magician, when upright, means he’s skilled, determined and dexterous, he is all around a strong powerful male with both willpower and desire. He has surrounded himself with The Chariot, The Sun, The Empress and… The Fool? That last one was curious. I was about to move on with the reading when a fifth card leapt forward and landed nearby, it was Justice. Justice was separate, but near the other five cards. Outside help, how annoying. I tried to place each card with the beings I saw in my crystal ball. Let’s start with The Chariot. It had to be the turtle, in control and always looking at a way to solve the next problem using his head. What did the current brains of the Cooper Gang truly know of magic though? In a direct confrontation, he's no real threat to me. Next I’ll think of The Sun. The hippo is a good fit as he seems like a cheerful chubby guy and he’s handsome too… to bad I have to end him. The universe conspires to give him a good path moving forward and he’ll cause me trouble, anyone who always knows the road to happiness seriously needs to be put down fast if they are your enemy. The Empress, a rather strange card for an even stranger sheep. A whore with a maternal heart, nurturing new friendships and always capable of finding new opportunities while offering stability to those around her. Friendship, what need do I have of that horrid concept at this point in my life? Bah. So a whore who has an abundance of kindness and won’t take part in any fighting unless a child is threatened, not very threating in the slightest to me. This last one in the Cooper Gang… The Fool, the most dangerous of all the cards I’ve seen because it is a truly wild card. It was the last shadow I saw in my crystal orb and I didn’t get a good look at them. A fool believes in the universe and can improvise a solution to any situation on command with enough time. They can be exceptionally spontaneous as much as free spirited in the direction they choose to go in life and are always found at the forefront of new beginnings, like the rise of the new Cooper Gang. The real danger is that one should never underestimate The Fool’s ability to do the impossible, especially after being told that the thing they will do or will have done is supposed to be completely impossible. The Fool will go out of their way to do the impossible anyways just to prove someone wrong, a fool that is actively aware of that kind of power is an exceptionally dangerous being. The cards that moved under the The Fool were all very specific to the element of water under the suit of cups. The two of cups, three of cups, Page of cups and Knight of cups. All of them are upright. Forms connections, wants to build a community, is in a partnership with the Cooper Gang and understands what unifies a group, a dreamer and idealist that follows their heart. The dream? Adventure wherever the wind blows or the water flows, with good friends by their side. Their ideals? Freedom of movement and the eventual ability to do as they see fit. Wait… water element… idealistic… wanted to create a community… they have a pirate with them? Pirate’s always made for the worst kinds of fools, toughened by every experience life can throw at them and they always live how they please. I was now worried about the Cooper Gang. I figure I could handle most of them, but the lone pirate that works as The Fool makes me uneasy. To think that disgusting pirate filth was coming into my swamp, my army of ghost rats will tear them limb from limb! Now that I had an idea in my head. I don’t know if I truly wanted to know, but I had to find out. “Clockwork...” All the cards played themselves out before me without prompting. The metal owl's arcana was that of the… oh… well… it seems I’ve seriously backed the wrong mechanical menace. The Tower lay before me… both upright and reversed. The Tower is never a good sign when it comes to magical tarot cards no matter whether it be upright or reversed, but both happening at the same time? I’m glad that it wasn’t me and that I couldn’t do readings for myself to find out if I fell under the arcana of The Tower too. The best I could hope for was the Death card personally. A metamorphosis, a huge change in my life as a result of my old one dying. I could see that the Cooper Gang cards were all arrayed so that… something big would happen and it was going to be catastrophic beyond belief. There was also Justice again… and... Judgement? Who was Judgement? Justice was fairly obvious, Inspector Fox has become famous lately for cleaning up Mesa City and would be gunning for me as soon as she hears that the Cooper Gang is here. Judgement… there’s something wrong with that. Who was receiving redemption and why were Strength and Fortune from the earlier prediction flickering in and out of focus like dying embers, distorted chances of a possible future? Judgement represents enacted karma, an incredible devastating reckoning in the form of a person. Hopefully I wasn’t going to be anywhere near ‘The Tower’ if it falls… but before that, I had some guests to prepare for in my swamp. I may not be able to predict my future, but I will still fight to invade Mexico with an army of ghosts… those Mexicans had it coming for allowing Hamburger Hippo chains into their region! -A small distance away from Haiti, Shanty- “That be fairly ominous.” I stated as I looked up at the swirling clouds in the distance from the boat we were on. "The swirling clouds?" Sly said sarcastically. "The giant mosquito!" I leapt away from the giant insect piercing the deck.