Yeah, let's avoid fairy tale endings.

He watches the clock.

Almost time for us to enact our plan. Are you worried?

No, not particularly, but I don't even get nervous before exams. Are you?

No, of course not. 

It's kind of exciting.

Capturing the Cards? I guess.

I'm mostly interested in how powerful they are and the potential for good they have.

Do you think Clow Reed felt the same way?

That's what I always assumed, and that someone corrupted his vision.

If he's me, I'm certain he did. Why do you think it was corrupted?

His guardian beast fell asleep on the job!

Obviously, whatever his goal was has been sabotaged.

Or it could be one huge Rube Goldberg machine of a plan, but yeah, sabotage is probably more likely a priori.

If he really had precog, I guess threatening the world with destruction might turn out to be useful, but I don't think we can act on that assumption.

On the assumption that he really had precog, or on the assumption that threatening the world with destruction might turn out to be useful?

I doubt he had very good precog, if you're so sure he would have wanted to become immortal and only managed reincarnation. 

Yeah, good point. On the other hand, he did live for hundreds of years before creating the Cards and dying. That's pretty close to immortality. And creating the Cards is supposed to have taken out a lot of his magic, right?

I could be wrong. But if he was you, I think you would be able to tell if he'd done what he wanted. You know yourself pretty well...even if you're missing some details, you must know him, too. Does this look like him winning?

...possibly? I'm a fan of obscure plots that seem to make no sense. And I don't know that I'd make it obvious to myself. But yeah, end-of-the-world is not something I'd play with if I could possibly help it.

I suppose if the cards aren't as destructive as we think...

They seem pretty destructive, even something as simple as a flight card...

If it's an obscure plot, I guess Clow Reed will show up to rub it in our faces.

In the meantime, we stop the apocalypse.

Yeah, we do.

Have you thought about what you're going to do with the cards we have so far? 

I've been mulling over the idea of winning the Randi prize and using that as startup money for magically-backed public goods projects.

Randi prize? 

This organization offers a prize to anyone who proves the supernatural exists. It's about a million dollars I think?

We should talk to my parents first.

Possibly, but I'm not sure that there are lots of things they could say that would persuade me against that. What do you expect them to think?