Nobody expects the last card up your sleeve to be from the tarot. 

Lucien rips their shirt open. Their hair is tall and ruffled with static and sweat. To kiss their cheek would be to lick a battery. To kiss their lips would be to know the hour of your death. 

Kids are scared of clowns. Kings are scared of Fools. 

This is where the chaos sings purest, and Lucien is in the mood to dance to the beating. This is different from being subsumed in the role of Fool of the Sky Court, in the place of mushrooms and angels where reality was at its thinnest. [i]They [/i]were safe as long as they did not think of the past or future - [i]They [/i]lived in the moment, between concepts. 

Lucien is the Fool Inverted, a role of his own making. He will dance through the chaos, though the role grants him no power that was not already his own. Reckless, daring, stupid - and [i]he's[/i] got a bloody [i]gun[/i]. He knows his future and he thinks only of it. He will land his punchline. There will be no encore. 

Lucien shoots ᴇᴠɪʟ ᴊᴀᴄᴋᴅᴀᴡ point blank in the spine, through the place where her heart should be. This is no great challenge. She is so focused on Ailee, the real threat. His gun is a joke. Everybody [i]knows [/i]that. It is a work of moments to walk behind her, silent under the impossible thumping music. There was no way this could have killed her, everyone knows that too. It doesn't need to. It ends the fight.[1]

She will hold the clown's attention better like this, anyway. The old saw about the tiger and the running shoes comes to mind. [i]"Surely you can't shoot all the clowns?" "I don't have to-"[/i] The clowns flock to the feast.

Lucien is standing in ᴊᴀᴄᴋᴅᴀᴡ's silhouette as she crumples, and stands eye to eye with Ailee. Are those tears in them? Or are his own eyes watering, staring into her power like this. Let her see him and know what he has done, and what he will do, and for all the love he has ever held for her, let her [i]understand[/i]. 

But we aren't finished yet, are we? The bouncers are walking towards the table. Nothing to hold back now, there will be no rainy days left to save for after this. It is time to cheat. 

Surma had a book on her, oh yes she did. What kind of Bookhunter doesn't domesticate their most useful catches? It's just one of those things that caught his eye, made him so immediately cautious about hiding a spine from her - har har, a running gag. 

Wouldn't it be such a [i]shame[/i] if she had lost that book when the word of Regret hit her? Dropped it, even, in the scuffle. Wouldn't it be a shame if Lucien had picked it up? Wouldn't it be miraculous if it was just the thing he needed?

As any card-counter knows; good cheating is indistinguishable from good luck. What was it he told the professor about his ability to extrapolate? He had tapped into the ultimate nexus of bad luck in the Heart, and he's had plenty of time to think about it. He'd been right in the thick of it when it blew up - able to learn from both cause and effect. It's a damned shame he didn't get more of a chance to practice.

As it is, he'd just learned enough to see the thrum of the thread leading Ailee and Surma to himself at [i]just[/i] the wrong moment, and for the spiral out of control since. Just hit after hit of bad luck and awful coincidence. Enough to form a pattern. Enough to extrapolate. 

"Tell Coleman to hug Sasha for me, she deserves it, and tell Jackdaw to always [i]remember me [/i]fondly. Please." His voice breaks too hard to say anything more to Ailee. He's crying. How can he be crying, when he is also laughing and smiling? He laughs at [i]that[/i], too. This is all very silly, isn't it? Yes, it is.

He takes Surma's book from his pile, opens it to a black-velvet bookmarked page, and hurls it at Ailee's chest. It's a panic button. It's a safe escape. And, if Surma was especially clever and good at her work - which Lucien suspects she is - she will have linked herself to it, so she will go wherever Ailee is as well.[2]

Somewhere [i]safe.[/i]

There is only one last thing to take care of. The ringmaster is still here, and Lucien still has five bullets. The clowns will only be distracted feeding on ᴊᴀᴄᴋᴅᴀᴡ for as long as she keeps squirming. After that, there is him and the professor. 

ᴊᴀᴄᴋᴅᴀᴡ is live bait. Let them get closer. Lucien has five bullets and a target. 

Lucien moves through the clowns in a blur of burlesque, ballet and boxing. Leap, lunge, kick-in-groin, spin, twirl, stomp-on-foot, shoot-in-kneecap, two, three, four.[3] The professor is dragged behind him, when he’s not being pushed ahead of him. The clowns are ripping into the mockery of their friend, and there is a heavy spray of blood in the air keeping their attention.

He does not have to fight the clowns. He just has to push through them. Any that get funny ideas about the weaponized professor he carries with him is dispatched in [i]hilarious[/i] fashion. The clowns do not see a kick to the genitalia as a threat, they see it as a joke, because that's all Lucien is, remember?

The Ringmaster doesn't fall for it. He makes his way for Lucien, not the carrion. The Ringmaster knows a good joke when he sees one, and he doesn't want to be the butt of it. The Ringmaster is here to escort Lucien from the table and drop the curtains. 

One last bit of sleight of hand. As long as he's looking at Lucien, he's not looking at the Professor about to drop him into [i]Crows[/i]. There will be consequences for this. They are in the middle of the clown mob, just as planned, and he's played all the cheap tricks he's had. There's no way out of this one. 

Lucien smiles as he thinks: Fried pickles are a hell of a last meal, aren't they? He can still taste them on his breath. Lovely. 

[hider=My Hider]
[1: Finish them by Disabling them: Sense 10 -1 ammo]
[2: Lucien has Luck of the Devil in his inventory, an immediate single-use get-to-safety-free card. He inflicts it on Ailee.]
[3: Keep Them Busy: 7 - It succeeds, but there will be a retaliation -1 ammo]
[/hider]