Let's Play Homestuck
Act 5 Act 2: He Is Already Here.
Part 25: Scratch Doctor
Link back to comic: Page 3763
[Hello again.]
Welcome to my apartment. I trust you'll find my voice is more palatable against this decor. I continue to be an excellent host.
I'm expecting two more guests later. Make yourself comfortable in the meantime. But don't touch the candy on the table. That is reserved for one of my guests.
Now, let's have a look at this disc.
What a shame. There are many moments trapped on this disc which you would have no doubt found to be quite exhilarating.
But yes, I can fix it.
If you don't mind waiting here while I complete my repairs, I will tell the rest of the story. I will show you as well, as I recover data from the disc. But the visuals I supply will be nothing more than abbreviated snapshots, and my telling will be abridged.
This would appear to be where we left off. The Seer challenged the Thief to a simple gamble. If the result was the undamaged side, the Thief would agree to stay. If it was the damaged side, she would "go".
The result of the flip was left inconclusive, at which point you decided to pay me a visit. But the inconclusive should not be confused with the uncertain. The actual result was trivial; it was a constant across all timelines.
The Thief used her abilities to steal the fortune of her opponent, and forced the flip to yield what she regarded as the most favorable outcome. The Seer anticipated this move, correctly.
While the Thief turned to fly away, making a show of claiming her prize, the Seer would stab her in the back the moment her guard was dropped. This was her plan. Not a particularly clever tactic in its own right, but its ingenuity didn't dwell in the novelty of the ruse, nor even the neutralized probabilities in the game of chance. Psychology was in play.
Each was gambling, not with any vehicle of probability, which had been eliminated from the equation, but with each other's intentions. The Thief indeed took the Seer's bait, stealing the luck needed to affect the flip in defiance of her dare. And in turning to leave, she then posed a dare of her own to the Seer, challenging her to back up the implied threat.
This was the Thief's gamble. She wagered the Seer would not be able to go through with it.
It turned out she was right.
But in order to understand its proper conclusion, we should first catch up with another of my other proteges, from whom I'm expecting a message shortly.
The other Seer.
The other Hero of Light.
Here we left our human Hero of Light.
She flew away to take vengeance on the Noir this side of The Scratch. That is, the one less angry and dangerous. The one not yet unmotivated by a compelling duel.
Compelling, but not challenging. The Seer wouldn't win this duel.
I warned my neophyte protege not to stare into that ball.
I told her about stares.
8^y
Characters Jack Has Killed
Black Queen, Black King, Everyone on Prospit, Jade, Everyone on Prospit again, all the trolls, Bro, John, John's Dad, Rose's Mom, John again, Rose
The duel ends. The Seer dies. The Heir comes back to life.
It would be disingenuous of me to present this as a point of suspense, and I will not belittle your intelligence with such a tawdry narrative ploy. It would be rude, and I am too well dressed for that kind of behavior.
If there truly stood some chance of permanence to the Heir's corpsehood, I can hear you asking now...
How could this moment later come to pass?
And what sort of spectator would you be if you'd forgotten the terms ruling the conditional immortality he won with his previous, similarly unceremonious impaling?
While I can't give you my assurance, I'm reasonably convinced of this much. When the Hero of Breath dies for good, it won't be as a scoundrel.
But not for lack of a devoted mentor.
I mentioned there was a bit more to her story. I believe it's time to resume it.
I trust you won't mind if I step away for a moment. I have important guests arriving very soon.
Vriska finds Jack Noir, fully prepared to claim her role as the hero of the story.
Jack, however, isn't interested in the duel.
Vriska's trail just gave him an easy-to-follow path to the hiding place of the remaining trolls.
Apologies for my preoccupation. I have managed to pacify the rowdier of my two other guests with sugary little black dogs, so that I may continue my narration. But only briefly. In a moment, I will go stand over by my typewriter and teach my neophyte protege the consequences for taking advice from strange men over the internet, while I continue to attend to my second guest, who is you from an earlier point in the story.
The two Heroes of Light had challenged the same Jack Noir, the one straddling The Scratch and about twenty hours of his own time, to a circumstantially simultaneous pair of duels.
On his arrival, not about to repeat the mistakes leading to his banishment, he quickly obliterated all twelve planets, followed by Prospit and Derse, to weed out those who might outsmart him in the same manner.
With as little fanfare, he seized the opportunity to follow the Thief's trail quickly before it dissipated, and destroyed their hideout in the veil.
And knowing her position,
He would soon return for the duel she wanted,
but not without a pair of trophies.
This is where events begin to outpace my awareness. The deeper into this dark pocket we explore, the more I will be forced to speculate. I rarely have cause to rely on probability, but luckily for you, my guesses are better than anybody's.
The thief would probably roll her dice. And just as probably, due to her impressive hoard of stolen fortune, she would have a 100% chance of rolling the most favorable result.
In round two, the Slayer would be not merely compelled,
But challenged, if my guess is right. Challenged by one claiming godhood before reaping the prodigious spoils from striking down a formidable endgame foe. One with the guile of a cheater, the luck of a Clover, the hubris of her mentor, and the drive known only to the pathologically competitive.
While I am not a gambling man, I wouldn't bet against her.
Let's pull back from this ever narrowing dark pocket. I've never much enjoyed navigating the vortices of alternative possibility. The path which alone has my absolute mastery is the alpha timeline, a continuum I define as that which boasts exclusive rights both to my birth and to my death, two circumstantially simultaneous events. Any divergence from this path to my knowing will taper into blackness like rotting roots. But if I was a Seer, such offshoots would be fully within my domain. And if I was a Seer of Mind in particular, synaptic causality would be my specialty.
A Seer would support her allies in battle not with her weapons, but her vision. She would sift through dross of her comrades' poor tactical inclinations and examine the grim consequences. A Seer would not charge into the fray headlong but direct it as a conductor with a baton. She would have the sight to eschew the obvious gambits, and find the path to victory disguised cleverly as setback, or even imminent defeat. She would behold the fortunes of friends and foes in totality, and appraise the contrivance of luck itself. She would know its mines were not to be plundered, but simply explored and charted carefully.
A true Seer would know where luck is a given, where it is absent, and most importantly, where it doesn't matter at all.
What sort of story would this be, with our Knight and Seer made to stay cadavers? Certainly not one the alpha timeline would allow.
And not one she'd allow either.
In the next chapter, further loose ends will be tied, but I will be once again distracted by my troublesome guest. You will have to navigate them yourself.