Lucas felt a mental tugging.
Neruite. Huh. Mental links. I wonder if I should be feeling more surprised...
She paused her game and opened a portal to wherever Neruite was.
Ah, the Room of Fate... Oh, shit, did I screw up?
"Not at all, Lucas. Quite the contrary." - Said Venus, smiling - "Do you see those scales?" - She pointed.
"Well, yeah... What about them?" - Asked Lucas.
Selene smiled lightly.
"You said you solved the chess game. True. You also know you still have to be careful to make sure Lilly lives. Also true. These, however, are more than your checkmate, Lucas. These are an impossibility."
"Uhm... What do you mean? They're there. That sorta puts a damper on the 'impossibility' thing..." - Said Lucas.
Venus smiled lightly. Selene herself was beaming with pride.
"There are rules, Lucas. Not laws, nothing you would be attacked or punished for breaking. Rules as in facts you cannot circumvent. Even when you fly or are in space, gravity acts on you, for instance..."
"Well, yes... Go on..." - Said Lucas, gently, but a bit perplexed by that line of reasoning.
"These scales are the relative values of Lilly and Jenny to... Well... To the things above us. To the statues, if you will. No two creatures have them exactly equal. Mind you, this is not an intrinsic value. They are "equal in the eyes of the gods", and so on, of course. That is the value as beings that are beyond even our ken see it, but we know they are not absolute. Lucas, a basic rule of our universe is that these values cannot be made equal. You, Lucas, broke that rule. To put another way, this is as if you achieved a temperature of -1 Kelvin." - Said Venus.
"I... I don't follow. I mean... I understand, and all, but... If I broke the rule, doesn't that mean it was possible all along?" - Asked Lucas.
"That's different." - Said Selene - "That's... Lucas, that's as if you had gotten known, immutable laws of physics to change once especially to help a person. It will not necessarily 'change' again. As if you changed the gravitational constant of the world for a few seconds to prevent a fall from killing someone."
"Oh..." - Lucas paused, trying to digest that information. She then began softly chuckling. That chuckle turned into open laughter.
"That's... Not the reaction I expected, really." - Said Selene, a bit surprised
"I'm sorry... It's just that it's so... So Brazilian." - Said Lucas - "This is the 'Jeitinho Brasileiro', the Brazilian Fix, the way Brazilians do things, only on a cosmic scale. We often place some value in bending rules, especially arbitrary ones, through lateral thinking and wheedling..." - She giggled - "Of course you'd get a Brazilian to get upper deities to bend a rule once or twice. Even if it's one of the basic rules of reality itself... Heck, Brazilians will likely excel at magic once it's treated as a science, likely due to plain convincing reality to bend better..."
"I did not fancy you as the patriotic type..." - Said Venus, smiling - "However, culture or not, Lucas, you did the impossible. I was expecting you to find a possible way to protect them both. I trusted you to do that... But not to find an impossible one."
"But how exactly does this prevent them from taking one or both?" - Asked Lucas.
"They want to maximize life. If both have the same potential, and if there is a convenient way to keep them alive, then they will be kept from harm. You will and should still pay attention to this, but this, Lucas, is checkmate to them, in a more definite way than before. You also increased Lilly's potential."
"To be sure, I have no idea how... Oh. The cat!" - Said Lucas.
Selene nodded.
"Precisely. You managed to change someone's potential and to make them truly equal to another's in the eyes of those that govern fate, Lucas..."
Lucas smiled.
"Well, since I did something impossible, I guess I'll go have lunch at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, then..."
Venus blinked.
Selene smirked.
"Literary reference, sister. Mostly harmless."
Lucas smiled lightly.
"Joking, yes, but still... Heck... My life changed a lot this week. It's big... Yet... I feel so... I feel strangely... normal about it."
"You've been dealing with it very well so far, Lucas." - Said Venus.
"Thanks." - Said Lucas, blushing.
