POP 2: The Magician

"'Do you respect yourself?' 'No.' -The Narrator & Alexis Lorentzen"

The Magician is the second episode of Eidolon POP and the fifth episode of Eidolon Playtest Season 1. It covers Quentin's Class as they first arrive at The Estate, meet Master Ronnui, and are forced into working as cleaners.

Summary
Quentin's Class are in Stapleton's limousine, being driven through The Undertow. There are a variety of unknown liquids on offer on a central table. Sloane Parker quickly finds the gin, pours herself a drink, and offers some to Alexis Lorentzen. Ursa asks for a bottle to clean her wounds with, which annoys Stapleton. James Studebaker is convinced this is all a dream, and Quentin Brooks is in the front seat keeping an eye on the driver.

The limo pulls up to a mansion the size of a skyscraper. Stapleton opens everyone's doors, and welcomes them to The Estate. Quentin notices most of his students are drunk and warns them to be careful. Sloane discreetly pockets a bottle of gin. Stapleton opens the front door to the mansion and gestures everyone inside. The interior looks completely different, like a cross between post-modern art, vaporwave, and a "1960s-style fuckpad". Across the foyer is a woman in a frilly dress who is a seeming-mixture of flesh, mannequin, and marble bust. She is pulled along the ground by one of her legs that descends into a groove on the floor. She introduces herself as Joanna, the Head Butler.

Joanna welcomes them to The Estate, and insists they follow her to meet the Master, Ronnui. Joanna takes them to a nearby elevator internally coated with buttons all over the walls, ceiling, and some of the floor. Alexis takes a polaroid photo of the elevator, but it doesn't develop. Joanna presses 17DR and the elevator seemingly moves in all directions before arriving at the seventeenth drawing room.

The seventeenth drawing room has a large window overlooking a grey ocean and grey sky, despite no ocean visible from outside, and a long table covered in giant platters of grapes. At one end is an unkempt man with pale sickly skin and a cigarette hanging from his lips. He introduces himself as Ronnui and invites them to make themselves comfortable. James eats a grape, only to discover the insides are raw egg. Ronnui does not seem to feel any emotion, but expresses as much surprise as he can that Quentin has returned.

Quentin tells Ronnui that he was called here, but Ronnui says Quentin called them to order a limousine. He wants them to leave as soon as possible if they have no business here. Quentin says he wants to keep his good gig in the real world going. Ronnui used to be angry with Quentin, saying he was bad to his friends, but is no longer capable of anger. Ronnui asks Joanna to arrange a room for them for the night and for them to be driven back in the morning. Joanna guides them all to a long dusty hallway with a door that looks like Quentin's classroom. Quentin bids her adieu and the class enters.

Eidolon Battle
Inside the room is a replica of Quentin Brooks' classroom, with a skeleton behind his desk. The door disappears behind them. From the corner, the dead cockroaches from before are twitching, growing, and multiplying. They rush Quentin's Class. Quentin finds himself unable to summon his Eidolon. From the back of the room, a laugh reveals a shadowy version of Michael Clark, the auditor.

Everyone struggles against the cockroaches. Sloane Parker throws her phone at Michael's head, and it dings with a push notification when it hits him. She rushes to the phone, it dinging more as she gets closer. As she picks up the phone, it is her bank telling her her account is overdrawn. Michael reveals Quentin is a con artist who doesn't even work at Joseph University of North Gibsonburg. Sloane kicks him in the testicles and he knocks her over.

Quentin rushes up to defend Sloane and Michael punches him in the gut. Quentin's Tarot deck spills all over the floor, and each member of the class sees a different Tarot card calling out to them. Ursa picks up The Moon and summons Revolution Lover, a pink heart surrounded by a blue circle that she transforms into a tommy gun that she shoots at Michael.

The Magician floats towards Alexis Lorentzen as she wrestles with a cockroach. She summons Vivid Memories Turn to Fantasies, a cat-lady holding the now-developed elevator photo she took earlier. Alexis summons the elevator and crushes two of the cockroaches.

Sloane Parker rushes over to grab The Chariot, and fire bursts out of her back and turns into Start A Riot, a large buff lady with dragon wings and a battleaxe. She bursts one of the remaining cockroaches into flame.

James Studebaker tentatively picks up The Hanged Man and a beam of light bursts from his back. Out of it claws Time After Time, a giant owl. James mind is flooded with almost too much information, he is picking up on patterns everywhere in the room. Heartbeats, airflow, all packaged into his head. James rushes over to Michael and uses Time After Time to make clicking noises, directing the cockroach Alexis was wrestling to attack Michael. Michael crushes the cockroach.

Quentin desperately grabs at The Magician, only to notice it no longer resonates with him. He sees The Devil call out to him, surrounded by cigarettes and alcohol. Instead Quentin rushes over to the skeleton behind his desk and finds The Hermit underneath it. The skeleton crumbles to dust and Quentin summons Speakerboxxx, shouting FUCK YOU at Michael and transforming that into web bullets.

Michael bursts into dust. The room immediately lightens up, reverting all damage and looking nicer than it ever did in the physical world. Quentin admits to not being a real professor and James glares at him. Joanna opens the door, asking what the commotion was about. She declares that they are not guests, but the new cleaning staff they needed and is frustrated they hid this from her. This means they cannot stay in a guest room, and she directs them all to the foyer.

In the foyer, Joanna tells Quentin's Class that the Servants' Quarters are in no fit condition so they need to go home and return first thing in the morning. Stapleton enters in a bus driver's uniform, gesturing them all to a run-down bus outside. They get in the bus and drive off, drifting off to sleep and waking up in their own beds.

Sloane checks her phone and sees her bank account is still overdraft. It is time for Quentin's class, and Ursa, Alexis, and James make their way there. Sloane stays in her dorm room to watch a movie, annoying her roommate Abby Morrison by not wearing headphones. Before he leaves, James shoves a baseball bat in his bag. Quentin wakes up next to his partner, Caroline Rose and tells her he is 'in it again' before heading off to class.

As Quentin, Ursa, Alexis, and James arrive to class, they find the room completely packed with students. One of the students in the front row is reading a book titled "Narrative Musicology and the Occult Philosophy of Stories Second Edition, by Quentin Brooks".

Appearances
● Abby Morrison (First Appearance)

● Alexis Lorentzen // Vivid Memories Turn to Fantasies

● Caroline Rose (First Appearance)

● James Studebaker // Time After Time

● Joanna (First Appearance)

● Michael Clark (Shadow) (First and Last Appearance)

● Prof. Quentin Brooks // Speakerboxxx

● Ronnui (First Appearance)

● Sloane Parker // Start A Riot

● Stapleton

● "Ursula" Ursa "Bear" // Revolution Lover

Trivia
● When Quentin Brooks first spots Joanna, he vaguely recalls that she didn't always look like this and that he is part of the reason why she does.
 * ● In the flashback events of POP #17, Cactus Jack badly damaged Joanna after Quentin had already absconded. However, given the general turmoil and state The Estate was in when Quentin was last there, its not unreasonable for him to infer the group he was involved with was to blame.

● Joanna recognizes Quentin as one of the final guests in The Estate. In the flashback events of POP #17, Quentin was only ever in The Estate as a Servant.

● Ursa did not have access to Revolution Lover until she went through the same process everyone else did to get their Eidolons. Despite this, she was able to see Quentin's Eidolon in POP #1.
 * ● Also, in later episodes Shades have access to an Eidolon ability without any outside interference.

● Quentin claims his last name is not Brooks, and he lost it in a 'gambling thing'.
 * ● As his last name is Brooks during the events of POP #17, this is unlikely.