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[monsterstoyou]

This is Father Vincent. Leave a message. I'll get back to you. I promise. Thanks so much.

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Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

Because she seemed perfectly fine with leaving my corpse on the ground to bleed out. If she'd wanted my help, I suppose she might have tried to do something but she didn't.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

So you will leave your old world to rot out of spite?

[Oscar shakes his head.]

You used that girl as your cat's paw. You know very well that when someone feels used, or are in an extremely dangerous situation...which you helped put her in...they are less likely to help.

Does Heather owe you Vincent? Or does the world?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

'Girl'? 'Used'?

[ He can't help a dark chuckle. ]

I was hardly the one using people in that situation. [ A short huff. ] Or doesn't it say? Who 'Heather' actually is?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

It says that Alessa and Heather are the same, and she was once a little girl, four years old.

Did she use you Vincent? Please. Explain.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

She used all of us!

[ He leans back, and he gestures, but he's careful not to knock anything over.]

All of us were fodder for ire, or more appropriately, collateral damage in the struggle between her and her mother! And then she had the gall to run off, make a new life for herself, leaving the town in the state she had left it in.

[ Leaving Claudia behind. ]

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

[Oscar takes a moment to close his eyes and sigh, before taking a sip of tea. What in the world did his last warden do? Was this better or worse? Yeesh.]

So, let me make sure I have the facts straight.

You're going to leave the world to suffer, if not end. Because Alessa, now Heather, did not save you as you were dying, didn't save the town in particular.

Because your plan didn't work. Because your Goddess did not suit what you needed. Because you helped create the situation and since the results don't suit...you're going to do nothing.

Do I have that right? Please, Father Vincent. I would love to be corrected.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ And that's when his eyes very much open wide. ]

I created the situation?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

Tell me Vincent.

What would have happened if Alessa went undiscovered?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ And that will get an eyeroll. ]

You presume she wouldn't have been discovered. [ A small huff. ] Or didn't you think that there was a reason why I hired an outsider? That I might have a reason why I picked someone who'd only have one reason to do the job and not a zealous piety?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

You didn't answer the question Father Vincent.

What would have happened if she was not discovered?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ He spreads his hands. ]

I don't know. It's nothing I wanted to happen. I just think it unlikely.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

So...you wanted her found. This was not simply because of your love for Claudia, or for duty, or for the Order's desire to see God bring Paradise.

Am I correct?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ He takes up the tea and sips at it, because he's annoyed and he wants to make Oscar wait for it. Then, once he's had his sip, he'll put it down. ]

No. I didn't want her found. If it was up to me, she never would have come back. But it wasn't up to me, now, was it?

[ The tea is put down. ]

Claudia was going to seek her out, regardless of my wishes. Or isn't that clear in the file? [ His hand closes around nothing. ] I took hold of the effort so I could sabotage it. I had no desire for my God to return and I don't believe in Paradise.

[ A swallow. ]

It's a lie that people tell themselves to survive the way the world is, nothing more than that. And we've seen enough proof of the world our God would show us.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

[Oscar doesn't the wait at all. Instead, once Vincent finishes, he takes a moment to bring the cup up, and take a deep breath of the tea perfuming the air.

Before slowly, carefully, setting it down.]

So...

You never had a choice? At all? Paradise, in all of its brutality was invadable? No matter what you did- or didn't- do?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ His eyes go very wide. ]

You tell me, Father Oscar: what should I have done? With Claudia wielding the power she did, and my single gambit, apparently, an entire fiction? What exactly should the orphan outsider from no family have done against the daughter of a church elder and her pious quest?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

[Oscar smiled. It's not a happy smile, as he takes Vincent in.]

That's a very good question. You are someone who is who is very capable, even if you don't have a background.

Are you truly so helpless Vincent?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ He looks back. ]

Would I be here, dead, if I wasn't?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

[He shakes his head.]

You're not. Hopeless or helpless.

Not as much as the Order would have made you believe.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

I am exceptionally capable, Father Oscar, but as Claudia often reminded me: 'money' has no importance in these matters. And that is my talent.

[ He looks down at his tea. ]

I thought I could do something if I held the purse strings. If I paid the bills without... everything that the church did.

[ He looks back. ]

And I was wrong.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

And yet...I come from the Depression Era Vincent. I run a soup kitchen, as well as care for my people.

I think you're both wrong.

You're many things Vincent. And I think it is a shame that you have spent most of your life thinking yourself smaller then you truly are- that people abused you and hurt you.

But you are also going to have to face what you did. You are not just a victim.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ He looks back at Oscar. ]

Whatever gave you the idea that I thought that?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

You are only a person who came from the orphanage? You could do nothing to stop the seeking of Heather?

Most importantly, it's not your problem what happens to the world with your death?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

[ A tilt of his head. ]

And why is it that you think I'm so very consequential?

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[unilaterallydisarming]

Every person is consequential. If it helps, for now...we can say it is because you know how to bring a ruined church back on its feet, zealots or not.

Re: After the permanent pairing announcement

[monsterstoyou]

I know how to make money, which is more helpful in that effort than the zealots like to admit, [ is what he says to that ] but which is rarely appreciated. And 'consequential' is not he same as 'has the power to stop the chosen of god.' Clearly.