Games of Chance

Thirty Six

The characters and their alignments (according to me- this is obviously open for debate!):

Juliana: Lawful neutral
Chase: Neutral good
Roy: Lawful evil
The King: Lawful evil
The Eagle: Chaotic neutral
Ravenna: Chaotic evil
Hayley: Lawful good

Also, we're almost to 5K reads!! Can we get there before the end of the book?

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Whoosh. Ravenna's claws flew upward, twirling upward before returning to their sheaths on her fingertips with a satisfying shirr. She lay on her back, one of her legs folded and the other hanging off the edge of the ratty couch as she rhythmically tossed her claws up and down.

"... and do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to get you out of there? How many policemen I had to bribe? You know how much I despise corruption!" the Eagle fumed, staring down at her with his arms crossed over his chest. Ravenna lazily turned her head toward him.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

"I don't know why I even try," the Eagle sighed, sitting down. There was barely enough room on the couch for the two of them, especially with Ravenna draped across it like the subject of a Renaissance painting, but the Eagle didn't care to complain. Ravenna obviously wasn't in the mood to listen. 

"And I can't believe you told them you know where the Box is! You've given away the element of surprise." The Eagle added, recalling the other reason he was irritated with her. 

"We didn't totally lose, you know," Ravenna shrugged her shoulders as she caught her claws one last time, finally resting her arms at her sides. "Now that the Order plans to move the Box, it'll be under the loosest security in years. I've given us a pretty solid shot of getting ahold of it. Also, I learned something about the enemy. Juliana... she's changing. I remember her standing there, holding my claws in her bare hands and not even flinching. You know how painful that is- you designed them! And holding my weapon so I can't access it- that's such a crude, elementary strategy, like holding a toy out of a kid's reach. It doesn't sound like something she would do, it sounds like... like-" She paused, almost ashamed to finish her thought. 

"Something you would do?" the Eagle smiled softly. "Yeah. Maybe you guys aren't polar opposites after all. Our many differences aside, I've always admired Princess Juliana, both as a scientist and as a leader. All these years, I've been trying to convince you that perhaps she doesn't have to be killed, but you never listened."

"I'm listening now," Ravenna turned her head. The look in her eyes showed genuine curiosity- a rare indication that the headstrong cyborg might actually be willing to listen to an opinion that contradicted her own. 

"Good," the Eagle nodded before prefacing his statement. "You know I don't like to kill people unless they are truly beyond saving." 

"And that is where you and I differ," Ravenna looked down at her claws, gently running the dull sides of them across the back of her hand as they glinted in the dull fluorescent lighting. A sharp scraping noise ensued as they rubbed against her metal veins. 

"In all seriousness, Ravenna, try to see what I'm saying," the Eagle sighed, visibly frustrated. "The people I've authorized you to kill were all monsters. So consumed by greed and vice that they lost touch with the value of human life and arguably their humanity itself. But Princess Juliana isn't like them. No matter how many times I threaten to kill her and the people she loves, how close I come to destroying everything she cares about, she sticks firmly to her principles. That kind of conviction is only found in someone who genuinely believes she's doing good. She's so young, so idealistic, so childlike. Over my years of fighting her, I've come to realize that it's the system she represents that's misled her, indoctrinated her, and driven her to evil. If we were to successfully destroy that system, to remove her from it... who knows what could happen?" 

"I could have a sister," understanding dawned in Ravenna's deep hazel eyes as she stared at the Eagle as if seeing him for the first time. "I could have a family, E." She said the word family slowly and deliberately, like the concept was totally foreign to her and she needed the time to comprehend what it truly meant.  

"Yeah, you could," the Eagle lowered his voice and leaned in so that Ravenna could feel his breath on her face. "So now you know what's at stake. Just got a lot more personal, didn't it?"

"Hm," she agreed. 

"Then there's just one more thing to do now. Go get that Box." 

"Now we're getting to the stuff I'm good at," Ravenna grinned as the Eagle stood up. Sitting up, she backflipped off the couch and stood with her arms crossed, gazing at the screens that filled the control room around her. 

"So this is where the Order is planning to take the Box," the Eagle gestured to one of the screens, which showed an image of a picturesque country house with a spacious front yard and a long cobblestone path leading up to the front door. 

"Doesn't look very secure to me," Ravenna frowned. 

"One thing you should've learned about the Order by now is to never take them at face value. Their headquarters is literally inside an accounting firm." 

"Fair enough. So what am I doing?"

"This is the approximate route the Order team will be taking from Arcana City to Switzerland," the Eagle pointed to another screen, which displayed an annotated map of Europe. "Your job now is to find a good place to intercept them and take the Box. Preferably while they're in the air, as it would be harder for them to describe their location and take longer for help to arrive. Especially since they won't be expecting an attack, it should be fairly doable"

"Take it? You literally just want me to... take the most powerful object on the planet? But we don't even know where we're going to put it, or what to do with it!" For a group that had been plotting to steal the Alpha Box for years, Ravenna was realizing that the Jackers had very few concrete plans for what came after they actually accomplished their goal. They'd assumed that the Alpha Box was the key to completely restructuring global society to rid it of its inherent corruption, but how exactly this was... they weren't sure. 

"Nebulik figured out how to start a plague within days of acquiring the Box, and that was with a Dark Ages level of mathematical knowledge. If I just can get my hands on that thing, I'm sure it wouldn't take long to learn how to use it." 

"Yeah..." the Eagle's plan made sense, but as Ravenna gazed at the map, a different idea began to form in her mind. The Eagle's revelations about Juliana were beginning to shift her priorities and change her line of thought. Was the only way for her to acquire the Box really taking it from the Order by force?  Collecting her thoughts, she braced herself for a reaction before saying something she would normally never even think of saying to the Eagle, genius inventor and strategist that he was. 

"Actually, I think I have a better idea."