Make Your Wildest Dreams Come True

Oh, she'd been eyeing it all right. Maybe not for the reason Facilier might have guessed, but Rita had been keeping an eye on the skinny man as soon as she'd set paw on the road. Not once had she seen him about the local areas, so she was inclined to guess that he was a traveler of some sort. The clothing he sported and the sign he'd set up just lent further credence to that theory. Well, she was going to make the most out of her current situation. Rita's gaze had gone up and down Facilier at least a couple of times then, looking the man over for some obvious valuables to rob, but she hadn't found anything immediately worth anything. A closer look was warranted, then, she decided. As she padded forward, moving to some unheard rhythm in the air, she flashed a small smirk and planted her rear on the ground in front of him. This human was something else. Rita would give him that much.

"Hello yourself," Rita greeted back. Her fluffy head bobbed up and down neatly, sending the sort of hair-like fluff atop her skull in rhythm along with her, before she considered her options. The way Rita saw it, she either could entertain this human and try to make off with some goodies for the Gilded Wings, or she could see what he was all about and return with nothing. The former option seemed like the sweeter option as far as Rita was concerned, and so she decided to stay a while. The worst that could happen was her returning with empty paws at the end of the day.

"You could say I was just browsing," Rita answered. "Never seen a business like yours before, and I've seen a lot of people in my day." Not a lie, that. Rita really had seen just about everything while she'd lived in New York. Her dark eyes shifted from the man to his sign once more. The closest thing Rita had ever seen to a business like Facilier's before was something she'd seen on TV once. That had only been a flash of something, though. Could this human really do what the sign claimed?

"Futures told," she read aloud. "All right, I'll bite." Like a fly drawn to a spider, Rita had presented herself to the man. She sought nothing more than what curiosity beckoned of her. That, and a chance to do what she felt she did best. If Facilier could show her what skills he possessed, then the curiosity would surely be satisfied.

"How's it work? You need to read my paw or something?" A little playful smirk danced upon canine lips. Wherever this went, Rita was sure it would be interesting. She'd have a new experience to share with her fellow Wings if all went well. If not? Well, then she'd have learned from the experience. As far as she could tell, though, there was nothing wrong with dabbling in getting one's future told. Perhaps one should have just left well enough alone and let the future play out as intended. Rita, though? Well. Curiosity killed the cat, one could say.

She'd just have to see how true the old adage was.

"The cards?"

Her turn to be a little surprised, she supposed. Dark eyes kept a careful watch of what Facilier was up to, yet she couldn't say she knew where on Earth he'd drawn that set of cards from. It was sufficiently safe to say that Rita was more intrigued than before. Whatever skills this man had were something else as far as she could tell. Still, Rita didn't comment any further than her initial question. She watched him fan the cards out before making a show of folding them back and beginning to shuffle them. There was something oddly hypnotizing about it, but Rita didn't claim to know what it was. If Fagin had some technique like that, maybe he wouldn't have had such issues making ends meet back home.

"Well, you make yourself look like a natural with those cards," Rita commented. His question, and the assumption that she had to be drawn there for something big, was met with a light wave of one of her paws. Rita wasn't up for revealing all her own metaphorical cards just yet. Still, she was going to give him little bits of information as needed.

"You could say that. Could say a little word on the wind drew me here. Bit out of the way from New York, but what can a girl do when that call comes," she decided to say. Though Rita didn't know what faction Facilier belonged to, if any, she wasn't comfortable with the idea of passing around information related to the Gilded Wings. They were secret for a reason. Thankfully, it looked like Facilier had more or less finished shuffling the deck and was making another show of fanning them out. This time, she watched him as he held out the cards in front of her. All she had to do was pick three. Just three, huh? That was all it took to read her future? A light smirk returned to her features, and her fluffy tail beat back and forth in a momentary wag while she considered her options.

Going for the cards in the middle of the deck seemed like the wisest thing. But what about the cards toward the left or right? Soft hums escaped her maw while she considered. At the same time, she had time to think of the sort of sing-song tone Facilier had taken with his last words. It was almost like he'd done this before.

"Let's see..." Rita leaned a little closer and sniffed at the cards. They had a sort of musty scent to them. Interesting, but... not helpful. Finally, though, Rita raised a paw again and pointed to the cards close to the middle yet not far from the right side of the deck. She didn't know what the future held. All she knew was that this felt like a good enough decision.

"Those three," she said. "Let's see what you got, doc."

"New York, y'all say? Now that's quite a ways from the Crescent City, ain't it?"

The question was rhetorical, of course. Although, since the worlds had shifted, it was barely even true anymore; New Orleans and New York had, defying most conventional explanation, slipped a lot closer together; if they still weren't quite next-door neighbours, that distance had rather noticeably decreased. More, however, the comment was calculated to drop the titbit of where he was from, in reply. It was a small bit of information, not of very much value at all... but looking as if he was willing to give as well as take, in the Shadow Man's experience, made it more likely that Rita's own lips would loosen.

She was being coy so far, of course; but what could her 'word on the wind' be, if not news of the war? It would have taken a far less clever man than Facilier to guess that much.

That seemed to be as much as she was going to give him for now, at least; but that was alright. Now it was time for the doctor to do his own part... with a little help from the powers granted him by his Friends, of course. Hands deftly fingering the three cards Rita had picked, Facilier slipped them from the deck, holding them up so that Rita could see their faces but he couldn't. Again, it didn't matter what they displayed on them; but letting the participant see their chosen cards gave them some small illusion of control.

Once she'd got a good look at the faces, the doctor laid out the cards on the table in front of him. The rest of the deck had, once again, seemed to vanish; all that remained were Rita's chosen three, face-down and side-by-side between them.

"Now you? You've lived on the streets all your life. Y'all got good at it, too."

Whatever image Rita had seen on the first card, as he flipped it to face upwards, it was now subtly different; it still looked like the card she had seen, true; but the details had changed enough that now, instead of a generic cityscape-type image, it now resembled something she would recognise from her life. The canine's past, and her desires for the future, were like an open book before the Shadow Man, who picked and chose as suited his purpose.

His slender fingers reached for the second card.

"But you've never been content to just survive; you want to help people. It burns deep in your soul, you can't just leave some poor helpless waif by the wayside. That's what brought you out this far."

The second card was flipped, too; the generic figures it had displayed moments before now replaced by vague, but instantly recognisable, depictions of the dog herself, and a scrawny orange kitten who no doubt meant something to the saluki.She was, Facilier noted with distinct detachment, the exact opposite of himself; their experiences might have been similar, but where being trodden down had made him hungry for power and revenge, it had made her want to pick up others who were in the same boat.

Facilier himself could give the impression of sympathy too, it was true; but always, always, to him the key was what he could get out of the others, either in payment or by bending their selfish interests to his own whim. Someone who had no greater desire that to help people was so other to him that it gave the doctor very little to work with.

But very little wasn't nothing.

He was certain he must have her full attention now, and Facilier was already scheming to work this to his advantage. He knew exactly what the third card was going to show, what the surest way to turn an advantage of his own out of this little chance encounter was. He fingered the edge of the final card, on the verge of flipping it, of making known exactly what it was Rita most wanted, even if she herself didn't realise it yet--

"Rita!"

The sound of the animal's name being called slashed through Facilier's thoughts like the screech nails on a chalkboard. His fingers clenched on reflex, crushing the third card between them as the spell his words had been weaving collapsed around them. The doctor's violet eyes narrowed, landing on the while powederpuff or a rabbit who had burst onto the scene, his genial veneer giving way, for a moment, to a very real sneer of irritation at the little thing.

For now, he didn't speak, allowing Rita to deal with the interruption herself as she would; but while his expression mellowed again after a moment, one look at the hardness of his eyes, at the way his visage was still pinched with annoyance, would warn the newcomer that the voodoo doctor wasn't happy with him at all.

His train of thought had been jarred from its rails; still, Facilier clung grimly to his composure. Forcing himself to relax, the sudden tension easing out of his muscles, the doctor tugged on his jacket lapels as he straightened again. Being interrupted, being disrespected, was high on Facilier's list of things he hated most in the world; there were so many, SO MANY in this life who would disregard him, ignore him, try to brush on past as if he was nothing, a speck of dirt on their shoe, not even worth their time of day...

Inwardly, he seethed at every occurrence. People feared what they didn't understand, tried to pretend it didn't exist; and, oh yes, he'd seen that fear in the little fluffball's eyes.

Well, they were right to fear him. And once he paid off his friends, once the whole City of N'Orleans answered to him, they'd see just how right they were on that count... and how wrong to, as a consequence of that fear, brush him off, pretending that he was just a dark side of their city who didn't truly exist.

But no, why stop there? Once he was out of his debt to his friends, the whole world could be before him. His powers were growing now, even beyond the boost his friends had given him, and his eyes were still on Big Daddy La Bouff's fortune; in time, Facilier was convinced, he'd become the most powerful man alive. No-one would be able to ignore him again. Even the dark fairy, for all her own sorcery, would be no more than his equal.

In time. In time.

This passion burned fiercely in his violet eyes; otherwise, however, he betrayed no outward sign of what was running through his head. He once again appeared cool, in control. Deliberately choosing to ignore the interruption, the doctor once again leaned forward towards Rita. The moment was lost, but not impossible to recapture at least some shred of it; in fact, as he met the canine's curious gaze, he could tell that she was still under his spell. Where she had begun as idly curious, she now almost yearned to know what he was going to say... he could read in her eyes exactly what she wanted, what she hoped he'd say; and it gave him an opening so perfect, he could hardly have planned it better if he'd tried. An expression of triumph wanted to steal it's way onto the Shadow Man's face; for now, however, he suppressed it as nothing more than the slightest twitch of his expression.

He smoothed out the card he'd unwittingly crushed in his hand, laying it flat on the table once more. His gaze, however, never wavered from Rita; and for all his talk of what she wanted, she could no doubt recognise the presence of the desires flaming in his own gaze.

"As I said, y'all want to help people. You want to pick them up, you love that feelin' of being looked up to, of being a hero to someone. So here's what I see in your future..."

And his hand was on the final card, flipping it over in a swift, practised movement.

"You're gonna get your wish. This ol' war's gonna tear lives down, but you? Y'all are gonna be the one to pick people up in its wake."

The card he held in front of him, offering it out for Rita to take in her paws if she wanted or was able to, showed her in the centre; several kids of varying species sat around her. Their faces were unclear, but what was evident was the way they all gazed up at her with wide expressions of gratitude, even adoration. Kids she'd have saved, kids she was going to be a hero to, just the way she wanted.

And if, if, in the background, the card's design hinted at the violence of war spiralling out of all control, with only Rita and her few kids in their little haven supposedly 'safe' from it?

Well, who'd notice a little detail like that, right?

"They're gonna love y'all. Look up to you. You're gonna be exactly who you wanna be."

With, of course, the unspoken caveat. War was ugly for the ordinary people caught up in it at the best of times, and the only way Rita was going to be able to achieve her dream of being a hero, even a mentor, to a few rescued kiddies was if the violence got worse, a lot worse. It was inescapable; you couldn't save people from a war that was just a few tame backyard skirmishes. In order to be a hero, the fighting had to be terrible enough for people to want to be saved from it. In a sense, if Rita agreed to this, she would be saying that she wanted the war to get more and more bloody, just to assuage her drive to save people from it.

A desire that perfectly aligned with Facilier's own; only in the war escalating would enough lost souls be cut loose from the mortal plane to pay off his debts.

"Now, you look like a girl who knows a few tricks. What do you say, won't you shake my hand before you leave?"

He extended a hand, inviting Rita to place a paw in it.

Whether or not she realised that doing so would be sealing a pact with him, that would indeed be the case. The one monumental limitation to Facilier's powers, one that would haunt him no matter how powerful he became, was that his Voodoo couldn't conjure a single thing for himself. It was as he'd told Lawrence; money, not magic, was the real power. Magic was a means, not an end in itself; and, so long as it was the only kind of power he had, he'd always be reliant on twisting someone else's desires to align with his own.

On the plus side, that was something he was very good at.

So Rita would be unwittingly handing Facilier all the power he needed to cause the war to escalate beyond even the vaunted King Mufasa's ability to easily stop. Just so long as he was acting on her behalf, allowing her to rescue a war orphan or two here and there; her desire would fuel his magic, and there was no reason for her to be any the wiser...

His hand waited, open and inviting, and hardly sinister at all.