fatua | (no subject)

She was born without a name.

Thrown into the cold world without as much as a next of kin, the girl was found and taken in by a local orphanage already struggling to keep with its load of children. The nun that had brought her, Miranda Mackenzie, passed on days after due to old age, and thus the girl would inherit her name, or rather, her surname. There was little need to give a surname to someone who would soon might have another one though, so she stayed as such. The hallways were cold, the floor was hard, the food was even harder and the nuns in charge were severe at best, borderline fanatic at worst. But it was better than dying outside, and it was what she would grow to think of as "home" for the formative years of her life.

She stayed there for fifteen years.

Mack (because nobody ever called her Mackenzie) grew up quickly, both in size and in smarts. Raised in a place where sometimes meals weren't a given, she and many other kids had learned to steal their own sustenance from a young age, and to run away with it safely back. They all wanted out of the gray granite walls though, and had therefore also learned to look exactly the way the childless parents that came every two weeks wanted them to look. Clean, dressed up, hair combed, Mack and the other kids were little actors and actresses of high caliber before turning ten, and it worked for many of them, but not for her. She was simply too vibrant, too aware, too there; the parents usually commented how it looked as if she could see through them, like someone far older hiding behind the eyes of a little girl. In time, Mack was the oldest and shortly after that she was just too old to stay. One day a nun entered her quarters with the dreaded news, but she had left already. Nobody was kicking her out if she could help it.

The change from the orphanage to the streets wasn't as jarring as it would've been to many because Mack had already spent so much time out and about she was one more fixture in the city's seedy underbelly. She eventually took the Jones surname for the sake of having something to put after her name, and because it sounded nondescript enough. Stealing was easy, making connections and learning the ropes of other lucrative ways to make it through the day was also simple enough for her; only the more gruesome instances of living surrounded by all sorts of unsavory fellows didn't ring true with Mack, but she had grown used to look the other way, as long as it didn't affect her or an innocent passerby. It was a simple enough system, one she could live with. Time passed, and Mack made herself a name among the other thieves and con artists, although she was known as "the one with a conscience", which was good if needed someone that did things cleanly and quickly, but not so good for business that involved violence.

Mack's easy life would come to an abrupt end the day she met two different, but similar people; The Chariot, a rather disgruntled fellow with a penchant for driving things into people he didn't like (and he apparently didn't like Mack one bit) and Bambi Caprice, the Two of Diamonds, someone as shady and conniving as herself (or even more) and apparently the only person willing to give her a hand in fending off the ridiculous attacks she was being subjected to, and who was working under orders of The Devil. The day would end with The Chariot's broken corpse sinking inside of a tank by the river and a very confused Mack absorbing its Number. Bambi would go on to explain Mack what the fuck was going on: every certain number of decades the Major Arcana, those whom inspired the Tarot Cards, gathered to pour their Numbers, the mystical representation of their powers, into the Fool, the vessel that gathered all their power and became The World, a being capable of messing with the very laws of well, the world. All the Major Arcana were immortal, being reborn if they died, retaining all their memories. All but the Fool, who was Mack, who always woke up without memories "in true Fool fashion".

Bambi herself was part of the Diamond Suit; Suits, or the Minor Arcana, were loyal servants to the Major Arcana. The difference was that Bambi wanted nothing to do with the life of a servant imposed on her, and so she wanted the power of The World to abolish the system that existed already, even if it meant killing the Major Arcana for good. Specially if it meant killing them. She also told Mack that while some of the Major Arcana would wait for her to approach them to test her and see if she was worthy of their power, others would attack her, just like The Chariot, partly to see if she was indeed worthy, partly because some simply wanted her dead so she couldn't change anything. Whatever the case, Mack wasn't safe anymore. In reality, she would never be safe anymore, ever, but Bambi didn't tell her that and Mack wouldn't come to this realization until later, when it was already too late to do anything about it.

Seeing how her neighborhood had been trashed and she had been outed as some sort of weird terrorist weirdo of sorts, Mack decided it was time to pack the few things she had and just go away. She wasn't expecting Bambi to follow her around though, or that she would be so good at keeping up. Eventually the two would find some sort of middle ground, with Mack asking as many questions as she could think and Bambi giving her as many vague answers as she could. The unsteady partnership born out of Mack's understanding that perhaps Bambi's unabashed desire for independence was the most real thing about her would slowly turn into what might have been considered true friendship, and even something else, but both girls excelled at keeping each other guessing, not to mention they usually had other things to concern themselves with. Mack would need to be attacked twice again by The Sun and The Tower before she admitted Bambi was probably right and started to actively seek the Major Arcana that weren't trying to kill her.

What followed was a long journey around the globe; guided partly by Bambi's knowledge about the Major Arcana and complimented by Mack's uncanny ability to almost literally fall upon the right path, the girls faced the trials of many of the Major Arcana; The Death, The Devil, The Hermit, The Star, The Moon, The High Priestesses, The Tower and The Magician, who ended up going with them when they realized that with every new Number she absorbed Mack grew weaker and weaker, her body failing to cope with the massive power collected inside of her. They had to fend off and sometimes kill the others, as well, but ultimately the task was seemingly done, with only The Magician having retained his powers for protection. But as he was giving Mack his Number The Devil showed to literally stab him on the back, claiming that it had always been in his plans to be there when The Fool became The World, as he wished to make it so every single person was turned into a member of a Suit, thus becoming a servant of the Major Arcana, something that went in direct contradiction to Bambi's own desires. But The Devil had no time to do much as The Magician managed to hold him, hurt as he was.

The result of that particular fight became irrelevant the moment Mack became The World, and sucked Bambi into something of a pocket dimension when she explained the girl that what she wanted to accomplish was near impossible and required much more power than she had. She did have a solution though; if Bambi were to kill her, the resulting energy release would be enough to change things enough so that Bambi herself would eventually be capable of enacting the change she wanted, something that was currently impossible. Overcoming whatever that might have kept her from killing her friend, Bambi killed Mack, who in turn became The Universe, and with one swift movement reshaped the world... and Mackenzie Jones ceased to exist as a person, but remained as The Universe to watch over. A new world rose, with new rules, new players, and Bambi was given not one chance, but as many as she needed.

But on the fifth try, something went wrong.

It was like getting woken up with a bucket of cold water, only worse because it was the sea trying to drown her. Mack opened her eyes only to realize she had eyes again, and realized she was being dragged into some ocean by the current. After scrambling back to the shore, she further realized she was, indeed, back. Something was very wrong. Her mind was broken too; memories from other times were mixed with those of her new self, making it difficult to tell who was who and what was only in her mind. Still, it was oddly good to be back. Now all she had to do was figure out why.