Katniss floated lazily about the commons, hands in her pockets. She was tired from the last match, any and all interaction having to pass through a haze of fatigue before reaching her brain. It took her a couple seconds to realize that someone was calling her name.
"Katniss! Hey, Katniss! Over here!"
The voice, overly perky and energetic, was entirely familiar. She looked around and found Ruby Rose waving her toward a packed table. Adam, who sat next to the excited girl, reached back and picked up an empty chair from a table behind them, placing it under a corner not yet occupied. Katniss wandered over and slipped into the seat, looking around at the familiar faces.
Adam was holding a deck of cards, writing something on each with a pencil that looked miniscule in his huge hands. Ruby was examining them closely, pointing excitedly as Adam placed them on the table. Ryuko and Holly chatted across from them, with Twilight occasionally making a comment. Mikasa sat with her head surrounded by her arms, seemingly asleep. Alucard had his feet up on the table, quietly observing the proceedings, while a few of the young fighters from earlier- Harry, Tris, and Amuro- ducked under Adam's shoulder to look at what was going on. The Dovahkiin stood behind Holly, poking her shoulder constantly- she didn't seem to notice.
"What are you guys up to?" said Katniss, trying to get a good look at the cards Adam held.
"Tarot cards! Isn't that edgy?" squealed Ruby.
Ryuko let a little puff of air out from between her lips, rocking her head back and forth. "If you think old women with bad accents are edgy."
Katniss was confused. "What's a tarot card?" she asked.
Twilight levitated a card off of the table, her magic a soothing purple again. Katniss wasn't sure how she de-vampire-ized herself, but found it best not to ask.
"They're a set of playing cards that originated in medieval Italy. They've since taken on an occult connotation, as some people used them for divination."
"Telling the future," translated Holly.
"Do they work?" asked Katniss.
"Oh, no. The meanings assigned to them are pure fantasy," Twilight stated.
"I once knew a family that played games with a tarot deck," said Adam. "I decided to make this deck to pass some time. Ruby thought it was 'cool', so I gave her a card."
Ruby held up her card excitedly, pointing at the image drawn on its surface. Adam's huge hands were clearly very gentle, as he had drawn an intricately-detailed scene of a girl sitting on a hill on a moonlit night.
"The moon!" she chirped. "Like, crescent moon! Like, Crescent Rose! I said, 'Adam, this card was destined for me, or something!' And he said, 'I'm glad you like it.' So I invited everybody over to get one!"
"And… what all did you get?" asked Katniss.
Holly flipped up a card between her fingers. On it, an angel stood between two crowds of people, one group sitting on a cloud; the other in hellfire. "Judgement," she said. "I won't complain, I think it's supposed to be the best or something."
Ryuko chomped into a lemon, holding out her card with another hand. A woman in the center of the image poured one glass of something into another. "Temperance. It reminds me of this lemon."
"Why does that remind you of the lemon?" said Katniss sheepishly.
"I like lemons, and Senketsu says I should eat more of them to maintain my figure. They're low-calorie."
"Ryuko, nobody eats the peel of a lemon," pointed out Holly.
"I like lemons," said the girl, and no one questioned her diet after that.
Twilight spun her hovering card around, revealing a figure pointing at a beautiful night sky. "This one is called The Star. According to tradition, it represents quite a few of the Elements of Harmony. I'm trying to not pay much attention to it, so it doesn't destroy my skepticism."
Alucard slipped his card from under one of his gloves. It was far enough away that all Katniss could make out were glowing eyes in a dark field. He said it was The Devil, and she believed him. Mikasa woke up for long enough to slide out a card depicting a woman with her arms around a lion- Strength.
The other warriors showed their cards, some that made sense; others that didn't. Harry held the High Priestess, while Tris complained about getting The Hanged man ("He's upside down? What's that supposed to mean?"). Amuro slipped The Wheel of Fortune into his pocket without objection, and Holly handed Dovahkiin the Justice card to occupy him.
Adam finished drawing another card, slipped it in with the remaining ones, and shuffled the deck. He passed it to Katniss.
"Oh, I don't think I really need to-"
"Come on!" said Holly. "It's just for fun. Give it a shot."
"Okay, fine," sighed Katniss, caving to peer pressure. She swiped the card off of the top of the deck, and turned it in her hand. A man sat in a dirty alleyway, petting a dog. A bag, jagged-looking thanks to the items crammed in it, was slung over his back. At the card's corners sat the number zero, and along the bottom, written in ornate, enlightened text, were the words
DER NARR
THE FOOL
"Ooo," cooed Holly. "That's a good one, too. Or is it bad? I can't remember."
"I'm surprised you can remember anything after turning into that dumb brute," laughed Ryuko.
"Wait, what did I miss?" asked Ruby excitedly.
"She turned into a titan," groaned Mikasa from under her little fortress of arms.
"It was really ugly. Not a lot of skin," explained Ryuko.
Ruby shrieked with delight. "Awesome! Oh, man, don't you wish you saw that, Adam?"
"Sounds like me," he said flatly.
For a moment, the warriors were quiet. Then the huge, artificial man burst into laughter, and everyone else followed. Katniss smiled, slipping the card into her jacket.
You can let yourself get overwhelmed with fear, or anger. Or you can look a little harder and see the good in the people here. You can break them, push them too far… but here they are, laughing it off. We're all made of pretty stern stuff. It was a very dangerous thing to bring us all here.
She looked up to the throne that dominated the commons, but the Master of Games was not there.
Odd. He's always up there, watching. Why wouldn't he be now?