AuthorPalt
patreon
A Gamer's Guide 308
🕑 Added 2024-08-14 13:00:03 +0000 UTC“I’ll be the bank,” the girl who picked the wheelbarrow says—Ida, according to Simon. From the way she’s sitting right next to Lisa, the other girl, and with them both having such Scandinavian names, I’ll assume they’re both from one of the northern countries, and probably in a party. With her piece said, she starts sliding the small piles of money over to herself.
“Hang on, you’re being a bit hasty here,” Henry says, drilling his eyes into her. “Before we do anything like that, we have to ensure that everyone here is up to speed. Has everyone here played monopoly before? If anyone hasn’t, please raise your hand.”
Unfortunately, I’m not part of the non-player crowd. I have, in fact, played monopoly. Only once or twice, and each time to disastrous results. This game seems custom-designed to make people break out into fights—even more so than ‘Adultery the board game.’
However, among us, a single person raises her hand, her fingers covered with silver spellrings. “Um,” Gecko says, tentatively. “I haven’t played monopoly before. But I kind of understand what it’s about, so—”
“I see!” Henry says, making an impressively swift grab for the rulebook, which is on the other side of the table, so he has to lean across the entire thing to get it. He could just have asked for it, but, no. “Right! So…” He opens the rulebook to the first page. “Okay, okay, so… Object: the object of the game is to become the wealthiest player by buying, renting and selling property… Preparation: place the board—”
Joe grabs the rulebook out of his hands and throws it square across the room. Henry spends a few seconds reading his empty hands. Then, once recovered from the shock, he turns to Joe, enraged. “Hey! What the hell—”
“We start with fifteen-hundred dollars,” Joe says, carefully grabbing piles of money and handing them out, “and the remainder of the money will be held by the bank.” He begins nudging the money towards Ida, but halts himself. “Just to clarify, do you still want to be the bank? We’re quite a few, so if you’re the bank, you can elect to only be the bank, and not have to partake in the game itself.”
“I don’t really mind either,” Ida says, “but I think it’ll have to depend on whether the goal of this trial is to win the game or not.”
Henry frowns at her. “What else would it be about?”
“Teamwork,” Gecko answers easily. “Playing monopoly is just the mode through which we show whether we’re good at teamwork or not. It’s probably not even about winning. All we have to do is prove that we can cooperate with others while under stress, and we should be able to handle this trial without any issue.”
Henry watches her for a few seconds. “And why should we trust you?” Ah. Hm. Well, killing him would probably get me an automatic F, and it would be antithetical to my goal of getting better, so I’ll restrain myself. “For all we know,” Henry continues, dense as a neutron star, “you could be trying to trick us into playing nicely so you can win and get the best grade.”
“That’s dumb,” I say, using my words as weapons. “Why would she even do that? You’re stupid.”
Unfortunately, he seems to make just enough sense for the rest of the players to doubt Gecko. Hrrmm. Killing is bad. Killing is bad. Killing is bad. Killing… is… bad…!
“Alright,” Gecko says. “Fine. Play it however you want. But when you reach the finish line first and get a C-minus, don’t blame me.”
Henry looks like he’s about to shoot something back, but Joe stops him. “Great discussion, however, let’s get back to the subject at hand. I agree with Gecko that winning is most likely only a secondary goal, making it possible to get a good grade despite being the bank. However, since we can’t be certain about this, there’s a fair chance that being the bank alone could tank your overall score. Still, as mentioned, you can be the bank and still play the game. It’s up to you.”
Ida hums for a moment, before smiling. “Alright, I’ll be bank full-time. If nothing else, it proves that I’m capable of trusting others, and if I’m not in the game, you won’t be able to argue that I’m sneaking myself bills under the table, right?” She shoots a very poignant look at Henry, who bristles in turn.
“I’m only playing devil’s advocate,” Henry grumbles, holding up his hands, but it’s a weak display. “Besides, what’s to say you won’t be doing your party-member any favors?” He tries to shoot her a look back, but it simply isn’t the same.
Both Ida and Lisa look like they’re about to say something in turn, but one of Henry’s party members, the guy who picked the car, is faster. “He has a point. I’d like to trust you, but there’s no saying what your true intentions are.”
We haven’t even started the game, and we’re already throwing suspicions back and forth. I sigh audibly, which strangely enough makes Henry flinch. “Listen, fine,” I say, “we can’t trust her. Whatever. So, all we have to do is make sure there’s someone else there, keeping an eye on her.” I smirk. “Or eight.”
Nobody understands my meaning, so nobody has the courtesy to laugh at my amazing joke. But, anyways. I pluck Simon from my eye, blinking a bit at no longer seeing the world for how it really is.
“What the fuck,” Henry breathes next to me. I ignore him.
Simon in hand, I hold him up. “Alright, Simon. I want you to go over there, and count the numbers alongside Ida. She’s the nice lady over there. She’ll be handing out these little papers, and you just have to make sure she doesn’t give out too many or too few. You can do that, right?”
Even though he isn’t close enough for me to be able to see his face, I can tell that he’s nodding excitedly. “Great! Good boy.” Oh, yeah. I look up at Ida. “You don’t have any issues with spiders, do you?”
“No, I happen to find them quite charming,” she says.
“Perfect, wonderful,” I say. Holding out my hand, I nudge Simon towards her. “Good luck out there, Simon.”
With an acrobat’s ease, Simon bounds across the table and over to her, taking a seat right on top of her shoulder. True to her word, she doesn’t seem to mind him in the least—just what the doctor ordered.
“Now,” I say, the whole table’s attention on me. “Can we finally start playing?”
They glance at one another, trying to find someone who can disagree with me. They all come up empty-handed. So, when they finally turn to me again, Joe simply nods, and goes “Yeah, sounds good.”
We all put our pieces on go. Henry tries to get Ida to give us money because we went on go and Joe damn near almost smacks him over the head for it. Since Lisa is next to Ida clockwise, she’s first up. There’s a brief argument about clockwise VS counter-clockwise. This time, Joe actually does smack Henry, though not very hard. Everyone goes in turn. I buy a quaint little street. I collect rent from others. Eventually, I buy a railroad and get the wicked awesome idea to collect all of the railroads, no matter the price. I proceed to trade away and sell everything I own to fulfill this. I go to jail for tax fraud. By using the “Look over there!” maneuver I sneakily slip out of jail. I get jailed again for escaping jail. An argument breaks out about whether that’s in accordance to the rules or not, but the rule book was actually burnt a couple turns ago to stick it to Henry, so we can’t know.
We keep playing for around two and a half hours. At that point, though, Gecko and Henry have gotten into a one-on-one bout for the final pieces of the game. Everyone else has been bought out, and I have been in jail for fifty in-game years. The amount of money being traded is insane. At some point, the way the game was supposed to be played got thrown out of the window. Even Henry is abiding the new, generally agreed-upon rules, even though they are often to his detriment.
But… we’re having fun. I’m really having fun! And Gecko, too. Despite never having played monopoly before, she’s gotten really into it, and now, she’s dominating the game.
I have a theory, though. A little game theory to explain why it’s just Gecko, Henry and myself left.
I think… And don’t tell them this…
I glance left and right. No one’s listening to my thoughts. Good.
…Henry went easy on her. Yeah. I’m almost certain! No joke. I’m not great at the game or how it works, but early on in the game, she almost went bankrupt, but he pulled her out of it, citing some rule I can’t remember hearing. So, she stayed in the game, and here we are. Now, it’s just them. They’re both smiling, and so am I—even though I’m stuck in jail.
“Well?” Gecko asks, smirking desperately. “Roll the dice.”
Trembling, he reaches for the dice. The entire street before his little tophat is her property. Each one filled to the brim with hotels and houses. I think one or two rules may have been waived to make this work, but with this, if he lands on any one of them, he’s a goner. She knows it. He knows it.
And still…
He smirks right back at her. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
He rolls the dice. Clacka-clacka-clacka-clacka… The table stares silently in anticipation… The dice roll over, once, twice… a one, and a one. Snake eyes.
“Hah!” Gecko cackles, reaching across me to move his piece for him. “Two steps—that puts you right on ass-kicking boulevard! Say bye-bye to your empire, Flammy!”
He grabs her hand. She freezes.
“No,” he says, his voice low. Slowly, he raises his face. “That’s a double number.”
Her brows furrow. “So what?”
“That’s my third double number in a row.”
Now, she understands. Her eyes widen in horror and realization. “No! This can’t be, you can’t possibly—”
“I can, and I do!” He grins triumphantly, grabbing his top-hat and putting it next to my jail-bird dog. “Off to jail I go!”
“Nooooooo, I was so close!” Gecko whines, draping herself across the table, face hidden in her arms. After a few seconds, her eyes slowly emerge to stare surreptitiously at me, lips pursed. “Hey, Kitty?”
“Yeah?”
“How much money to make you shank him?”
I think about it for a moment. “Twenty bucks.”
“I’ll give you a fiver,” she says, holding up a five-dollar bill.
I grab it. “Done.”
But before I can decide whether to shank his tophat or his actual body, a bell chimes somewhere, and confetti suddenly rains down from above. Hunter abruptly appears next to the table, clapping his hands. “Great work, everyone! Very entertaining game, as I had hoped. You humans never fail to amuse Me.”
While we all turn to look at him, Henry elbows me in the side. “Shanking people in jail is against the rules!” he whisper-shouts.
“Nuh-uh,” I whisper back. Out of sheer evil horrible spite, I tickle him in the side.
“EEEEEK!” he shrieks, instantly followed by an awkward chortle as he buckles over. And as everyone starts to stare at him in confusion, I start to worry that tickling him… with my claws… maybe I hurt him? Maybe I sliced up his side? Maybe that’s why he squealed like that? Maybe he’s going to die? Maybe I—
I look at my hands. No blood on my claws. But I definitely tickled him. My fingertips went against his side. Normally, they would have sliced through. Normally. But, this moment… Right now…
I forgot I had claws. For just a second, I didn’t think I had claws.
So, maybe, just maybe… For a moment there… I didn’t have claws.
Fresh shivers spread across my back, and I feel myself start to sweat again.
“So, moving on…” Hunter says, clearing his ‘divine throat equivalent’ or whatever. “With this, your trials are over! You’ll be sent your final grades momentarily, where you’ll discuss your grades with your difficulty administrator. They might be busy with other challengers, so please have patience. I’ll send you to them in just a moment, but for the moment being, I want to assure you that your assumption was correct—winning was not the goal of this trial. And for the real goal… You’ve done very well. Have no fear regarding that. It’s been a delight to host you these brief days, and I hope to see you all again! Although you may not have fully entered the service you have agreed to, just know that We deeply, deeply appreciate the sacrifice you have made in entering the tutorial. When you eventually come face-to-face with our shared enemy, know that We will stand by your side.
“But, until then…” He smiles warmly. “Thank you. Good luck with everything else, and try to enjoy your time in Purgatory! See it as your reward for getting this far. Have a good one.” He directs one secret little look to me, nodding. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean, but with genuine gratefulness, I nod back. His smile widens. “It’s been a delight. I’ll let you say your farewells for a few minutes. After that, though… I hope to see you again sometime!”
He disappears.
<Time left until trials finish:
4:59>
Five minutes. Right. That gives me plenty of time to…
A hand is held out in front of me. To slap me? No…
Hesitantly, I take the hand. Henry shakes my hand, and I shake his. He smiles on one side of his mouth. “Good game. You’re not half-bad, Kitty. If we meet in Purgatory… I might not try to arrest you straight away.”
“Thanks,” I say. To match his general attitude, I add, “And, in return, I won’t eat you.”
He chuckles, and he doesn’t seem too uncomfortable, so I chuckle too, to make it seem like I was making a joke.
Another hand reaches out from across the table, and I’m just about to take it when I realize that there’s something in it. Simon blinks up at me, his eyes glittering. Ida smiles at him, and at me. “Here. Thanks for letting me borrow him.”
I accept him and put him back into my eye, blinking a few times. Yeah, the double-gaze is still weird. Better put the eyepatch back on. “No problem,” I say, fiddling with the band. “I’m glad he was able to help you avoid the corruption accusations.”
She chuckles too, and I repeat my earlier little half-laugh once again to pretend I was making a joke.
Then, finally, with the eyepatch back on, I turn to Gecko. She reaches across me and shares a firm handshake with Henry. “Good game,” she says.
“Good game,” he repeats back to her. Their eyes are intense. No winner was crowned this time. But the next time they go at it, things will be different—that’s the unsaid promise they’re making.
With that done, she finally turns to me again. “Well,” she says.
“Well,” I echo.
She grins, and she almost reaches out to shake my hand, but in the end, she changes her mind. Instead, she reaches across the short distance between us and hugs me. After the momentary shock has worn off, I hug her back. A few seconds pass, and she leans back out. “Thank you,” she says warmly. “This was really fun. We can do this again, right?”
I frown at her. “What are you talking about?”
She weighs something in her hands. “I’m just, I mean… Sorry, what I meant is…”
“Aren’t we meeting up in Purgatory?” I ask her. She freezes. Then, her face thaws, lighting up into a relieved, simple smile.
“Yeah, we are. Of course.”
I scratch my cheek. People can be so weird sometimes. “You have my username, and I have yours, so once we’re both in Purgatory, we can just send each other a message and we’ll know where the other is. That makes sense, right?”
“Yeah! Obviously. That’ll be perfect. I’m not sure how many P’s I’ll get, but even if I don’t get too many, we should still be able to party up, at least for a while. Maybe just to hang out. Explore Purgatory together. It’s a big place, after all. And—and I’ll be sure to need some muscle to keep my back safe and un-stabbed!”
“And I’ll be sure to need someone to summon lizards,” I say, nodding along. “I mean, what’s a rat without his steed?”
“I think what you mean to say is, ‘what’s a rat without his rider?’”
“No, I don’t… Well, that is… It depends. How large are the lizards?”
“About the size of your palm.”
“Oh. Okay, yeah, rat-riders. Hmm. Yeah, right, right, that sounds way better. Hmmm… I can see it now… Rat-riders in the sky… Riding their steeds into battle. Awesome.”
“Epic.”
“Yeah.” I grin at her. She grins at me. This is nice. This is all I’ve ever—
<[Sorry to interrupt, but,]>
<Time left until trials finish:
0:00>
<You will now attend a
grade-talk.>
<Thank you for participating
in the ante-purgatory trials!
Good luck out there!>
I give Gecko one last look. She makes a peace-sign with her fingers. I mirror it.
And off we go on our separate ways, connected as friends.
Despite everything.
Comments
Kevin
Palt, I know youre insane, but dont you dare make kitty do what he did to moleman towards this innocent african lady!!!!
papyae
:)
itisaparty
I absolutely insist that Simon become Kitty’s PR manager.
Nogardnoir
Such a nice time they had ! 🥰
Nogardnoir
Wasn't Henri the real name of Joe... ????
cRAZiE
I'm happy for Kitty 🥰
