the bones of the earthgods shake and planets come to a halt
._._.
The girls were too close for Yuugi and Jounouchi to run without causing a scene and looking ridiculous, and since the girls had yet to do anything warranting such, neither Yuugi nor Jounouchi made moves to approach or retreat. Yuugi did notice that Jounouchi had tensed for a fight, though. The girls stopped about five meters away, but they still smiled.
“Hello, Yuugi-kun,” said Hebi, her dark hair shining brightly in the dying light,
“Hello, cute-guy-who-is-not-Yuugi-kun,” said Hikari with a rumble in her voice Yuugi had not heard the night before and, by the way he stuttered and blushed through his introduction, Jounouchi noticed it as well.
Hebi clapped her hands together and grinned. “Yuugi-kun, how sweet of you to bring a friend! I’m very excited for our sleep-over now!”
Yuugi looked down, embarrassed and kicking at the ground. “Ah, Hebi-san, I don’t think—”
“That’s a great idea!” Jounouchi announced too loudly, and Yuugi looked up in shock to see Jounouchi was completely red, flustered, and all his fighting tension gone. Hikari and Hebi were both smiling brightly, but now a heavy sense of unease began creeping across Yuugi’s skin like the pinpricks of the nervous footsteps of a venomous scorpion.
“Jounouchi-kun...”
“Oh, we should hurry back to our place,” said Hebi with a gentle smile, “to avoid the curfew. It will be very fun.” She said, and Hikari echoed, “very,” the flirtatious rumble still deep in her voice. The two girls turned and walked through the darkness (curfew had, Yuugi could tell, long since passed) and Jounouchi began following without hesitation. Yuugi scowled.
“Jounouchi-kun,” he muttered, but his friend kept following the two girls; with a sigh, Yuugi jogged after him. I guess I have to keep you out of trouble this time, Yuugi thought, the Puzzle thumping painfully against his torso. He pressed it against his chest as he ran, letting the trapped heat of sunlight warm his fingers with courage.
The two girls – sisters, something Yuugi should have noticed yesterday – didn’t live too far from the Game Shop, so Yuugi could probably sneak out and run home if he needed to.
Hikari and Jounouchi stood very close to one another once they entered the apartment lobby, and their shoulders were nearly brushing when they had all gone into the comparatively spacious elevator, and Yuugi couldn’t help but stare daggers at the girl. Just because she was an attractive girl didn’t mean she had the right to go after his best friend like that. He was seriously thinking of just grabbing Jounouchi’s arm and dragging them straight back out of the building when Hebi lightly brushed her hand across his.
“We tried going to the game shop you mentioned,” she whispered, a lilt in her voice, her hand brushing across his again in what Yuugi could tell was a very deliberate move; his brain was shutting down under the surprise of it, though he still secretly wondered if Hebi was crazy, considering she was obviously flirting with Yuugi, “but the shopkeeper said you’d been and gone.”
Yuugi gave a tiny embarrassed laugh, and he could feel the blush all the way down to his neck. He was acting like a bleeding girl, turning red at even a glance! “Ah, sorry,” he said, looking up at Hebi with sincerity, “I’m not used to people taking my invitations seriously.”
Hebi gave a little hum of understanding, and with a smile (did she ever not?) added, “The shopkeeper was very nice, too. When I tried to buy a booster set for Monsters Kill You Dead, he gave me a huge discount!” At this, Yuugi laughed with embarrassment for entirely different reasons.
“Yeah, Grandpa likes giving random discounts like that, though it’s a bit embarrassing – he forgets that he actually has to charge some people, sometimes!” Yuugi didn’t add that his grandfather only gave such discounts to attractive girls and women – he didn’t want to embarrass Hebi too! “You play Monsters Kill You Dead?”
Yuugi hadn’t really noticed, but at some point they had not only gotten off the elevator, but also gone into the girls’ apartment, and somehow Yuugi and Hebi had wound up sitting next to one another on the couch, only inches apart. Yuugi’s face exploded red at the realization, but Hebi didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, do you play?” she asked, “I can never find anyone who plays Monsters. Older sister does, but you need at least three to play a good game.” Yuugi nodded.
“I love games,” he said with a laugh, “but I’ve only played Monsters during demonstrations at the shop, so the rules are a bit fuzzy.”
Hebi clapped her hands in glee, and leaped off the couch, telling Yuugi to wait while she pulled Hikari and Jounouchi out of the kitchen. In a flurry she was gone, and Yuugi was left alone in the sitting room. When did Jounouchi and Hikari go into the kitchen? He hadn’t even been paying attention.
The sitting room was only about half a room larger than the size of Yuugi’s bedroom, though it looked much smaller in the amount of clutter. The walls were a chocolate brown, covered in posters of what looked like Bollywood pop stars and newspaper clippings, and a photograph of the two girls and their presumed parents; the photo was really high quality, and their parents were both stunningly attractive, and for some reason Yuugi felt that one of them – their father, he supposed – looked familiar. After a moment he gave up trying to place the man, and continued looking around.
All of the furniture in the room was brown, leather and wood, and the only real color in the room came from the posters, the slew of magazines in stacks against the walls, and the brightly colored clothes messily left in small piles around the room; the clothes not only looked clean, they looked new, and Yuugi could still see price tags hanging off of some.
Hebi returned with Hikari and Jounouchi in tow, and didn’t he look flustered and out of breath? This was unexpected, but he couldn’t really blame Jounouchi – Hikari was freaking gorgeous and interested in Jounouchi, which was surprisingly something he didn’t get a lot of from girls at Domino High. Besides, with all of the attention Hebi was giving him, Yuugi was having a hard time focusing on the many ‘why I shouldn’t be here’s, but he still looked over to Hikari and thought, lucky.
“So what did you want to play, Hebi-chan?” asked Hikari, her cheeks red but her voice steady.
“Oh! Yuugi-kun wants to play Monsters Kill You Dead, and since we’ve never played a full four-person game, I thought...”
Hikari grinned. “That’s a great idea! Let me go find the base game.” She disentangled her fingers from Jounouchi’s hand and moved back into the room they had just left – apparently the kitchen. Then again, it was the only doorway other than the one out of the apartment, so it probably led to the all the other rooms, too. Hebi gestured Jounouchi to the couch and began clearing off the table. After a moment, Jounouchi plopped down on Yuugi’s left, oddly silent. Yuugi nudged Jounouchi’s knee with his own, and very slowly Jounouchi reacted and turned.
“What happened?” Yuugi whispered, aware of Hebi in the same room, his concern for his friend growing with how long it took for Jounouchi to react.
“What? Oh. We. Um,” he paused for a long moment – long enough for Hikari to reenter the room, ask about the location of the game, Hebi to tell her specifically where it was, Hikari to deny the claim, and for both girls to go off to search before Jounouchi continued; Yuugi doubted Jounouchi’s delay was in wait for their departure. “She. Um. We drank. Tea. And she kissed me. And we, ah, we drank more tea.” Yuugi stared at his friend in disbelief, and Jounouchi laughed, breaking out of his obviously hormone-induced stupor. “Ah, a bit unexpected, yeah? Considering who they are, and all.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think,” said Yuugi, worried and unsure and suddenly confused, “wait, who—”
“The freezer, seriously?” said Hikari loudly, entering the room with a slightly frost-covered box; Hebi followed behind, carrying a small plastic bag from the Turtle Game Shop.
“I wasn’t awake when I did that,” she complained, “considering I also put the ice cream in my underwear drawer,”
“And your socks in the curio cabinet,” Hikari added with a laugh – a previously unheard sound, and it reminded Yuugi of the chime of breaking glass. Hikari placed the game box on the table, and Hebi sat on the floor beside her, examining the contents of her new booster pack.
“So have either of you played Monsters Kill You Dead?” Hikari asked, and Jounouchi shook his head. Yuugi leaned forward and watched Hikari begin setting up the board.
“I don’t remember all the rules,” he admitted, “but this is the one where the adventure changes each time you play, right?” Hikari nodded.
“Yeah. In this game, we build the game board as we play, exploring new rooms in the House of Leaves. In certain rooms, you have to fight monsters to receive Sigils of the Quest.”
“Every time a Sigil is collected,” Hebi interjected, “that player has to roll the dice, aiming for a number higher than the total of Sigils held by all the players.” She held up a Sigil token, a circular chip with a tower imprinted its face. “Depending on the Sigil and the room, the Quest is determined – sometimes the players fight a common foe, sometimes everyone has to fight against one another, sometimes there’s one player betraying the rest.”
At the last, Hikari grinned broadly as she handed out the somewhat generic plastic character tokens; Yuugi got a piece that looked liked it could have been either a woodsman or a golf player.
“I love playing the betrayal Quests,” said Hikari with a giggle, “since it’s that way that you really can judge the way a player works in a team, or by themselves.”
At that, Hebi frowned. “You just like ganging up on the unlucky sap stuck as the betrayer,” she muttered, but Hikari continued laughing.
“You’re just upset that your betrayal failed the last time we played the Electric Spiders Quest.” Hebi crossed her arms in a pout, but her cheek twitched with a suppressed smile.
Examining his token, Yuugi asked, “so what does the booster pack do?”
Jounouchi, although he was dancing his token across the edge of the table, was obviously fully engrossed in the explanation of the rules, based on his reaction to Hebi’s next words. “The booster packs are new Sigils, new dice, and instructions for new Quests. Sometimes even new rooms for the board. There are so many expansions out now that if you played them all at once, you could have over three hundred possible Sigils, meaning rolling about fifty dice every time someone collected one.”
Jounouchi’s game piece suddenly skidded off the edge of the table and he very nearly fell on top of Yuugi in shock. “Fifty dice?” he exclaimed, but both girls laughed, and Hikari waved a dismissing hand.
“Since we don’t want to be playing this all night,” she said, that flirtatious growl underlying her tone once more, instantly attracting Jounouchi’s full attention; Yuugi tried looking for a clock somewhere in the room, but found none. “We’ll just use seven Sigils, so it’ll be a quick first half.”
Hebi began plucking a few of the round tokens out of her expansion pack, and Hikari began shuffling the room tiles. “Until the Quest is determined, the rules are very simple,” said Hikari, “we take turns exploring the manor, building stats and collecting items and Sigils, and for every new room, we have to examine the Explorer’s Symbol, which may indicate monsters to fight or useful items, or ways to alter your base stats, or that you need to draw a Sigil, and sometimes it has more than one. After you draw a random Sigil, you have to make a Sigil roll.” Hikari set down the stack of room tiles, and began shuffling the item cards while Hebi took up explaining the battle rules. Yuugi remembered those well enough, and tried in vain to find a clock again; his only clue to the time was the utter black of the night sky outside the window, and the reflection of the moon off the neighboring building.
They rolled to determine the playing order; Yuugi would go third, after Jounouchi and Hikari, and Hebi at the end. Jounouchi and Hikari each uncovered a room, the Kitchen and a Nursery; only Hikari recovered a Sigil, and she easily passed the Sigil roll. Yuugi entered the Study, and wished fervently that the game would end as quickly as possible. Yuugi loved games, but the way Hikari was staring at Jounouchi was worrying him greatly, and the way his friend seemed so distracted by the woman made Yuugi very anxious to leave, but Yuugi hated quitting games. His Explorer’s Symbol was a monster and a Sigil.
“In the Study, I encounter the Cursed Toy Monkey,” he read from the card, “and I need to roll higher than a two to defeat it.” Yuugi tossed the die and got a five, successfully killing the toy and drawing a Sigil token from the bag. Without ceremony he withdrew the Cursed Bell Sigil. Hebi handed him two d-6s.
“Remember, Yuugi-kun, you’ve got to roll higher than a two, so...” Hebi said encouragingly.
“Don’t worry, Hebi-chan,” Hikari interjected as Yuugi rolled the dice, watching them skitter in the lid of the box, “it’s, what, one in thirty-six that he’ll throw—” she paused, staring. “—snake eyes.”
Yuugi tried to hide his relief; the earlier the Quest was revealed, the sooner the game would be over and he’d be able to get them out of there. As Yuugi reached to retrieve the dice from the box, he noticed suddenly that his shadow was cast onto the table in such a way that the snake-eyed dice rested where the shadow’s eyes would be, if shadows had eyes. Thanks, he thought, not letting himself feel silly for it; Hikari beat him to the dice, and Hebi began flipping through the instruction manual.
“Cursed Bell in the Study is Quest fourteen, which is... Banshee Wedding. Yuugi-kun,” she said, handing Yuugi a small purple booklet, “as the revealer of this Sigil Quest, you’re the villain, and the rest of us work together to defeat you.” Hebi looked up from the book, a sympathetic look on her face. “Playing the villain is harder, so you get special allowances in the game. Banshee Wedding’s on page sixteen, so you can go read your scenario in the kitchen while we read ours out here.”
“We’re going to take you down, Yuugi-kun,” Hikari said with a feral note of competition, “and when we do we’ll all play a much better game.”
Yuugi tensed, snatching the booklet. Glaring at Hikari, he said, “but if I win, Jounouchi-kun and I are leaving, and you’ll let us go with no hard feelings. And you won’t try to contact us again.” Hebi frowned at him then, and Jounouchi spluttered.
“Yuugi, what the hell—”
“If that’s what you want,” Hikari said, grinning too broadly as though sure of her victory. Yuugi’s grip on the booklet tightened, the soft paper curling in his fist, and he stalked his way past the posters of pop stars and brown dark walls into the much brighter kitchen. Its walls were painted a horrifying Day-Glo orange, and they were plastered with photographs of flowers, and kittens, and flowers on kittens. The kitchen itself was tiny – all Yuugi could see was a couple cupboards, the counter, and the fridge: no oven or stove whatsoever. He approached the fridge for something to lean against as there were no tables or chairs, but seeing that the top of the fridge was where they – rather unsafely – kept their block of kitchen knives, Yuugi opted instead for sitting on the counter near the sink. He began flipping through the Traitor’s Handbook for the proper entry.
The Banshee Wedding, read the header, and so Yuugi began the story.
You didn’t want to come to this house in the first place, did you? Yuugi smiled, agreeing already with the premise. You just wanted to read the evening paper in peace and let the whole matter drop, but no, your silly cousin(s) wanted to explore the cursed mansion of your great-grandfather Broken Stones. They, of course, are off searching for the wine cellar and the untold riches (and alcohol) held within, but you’re by yourself, wallowing in your misery in the study. Suddenly you hear the resounding thud of a fallen book behind you, but when you examine the area you find that it’s not a book at all. It’s a bell. Your eyes and hands are drawn to the cracked metal, and with a loving caress you bring the bell to your lips and kiss the unsightly crack in the metal.
Yuugi frowned. Well, jeez, this is getting ridiculous and creepy, he thought. He read on:
Fainter than a whisper, you hear and feel the mist pouring out of the bell, and when it takes shape you are struck by the beauty of the woman, her wedding dress almost reaching out to you. She smiles at you, and laughs, and you are lost...
The text broke there, then continued a few lines down with his Rules of Treachery: once he got back to the board he would have to place the Banshee token into play, and on each of his turns he would move the Banshee two rooms to the nearest player for every player on the board (other than Yuugi, so six spaces). If the Banshee ended its movement in the same room as another player, that player was exposed to her “deadly scream.” If the same player heard the scream on two consecutive turns – or three non-consecutive turns – then that player was killed and was removed from active play. Damage could not be dealt to the Banshee, but certain item tokens (the White Candle, the Golden Knife, and the Music Box – none of which were possessed by the other players) would repel her. Yuugi’s character’s job was to get to the Chapel with at least one other player dead, and summon the Banshee using the Cursed Bell. Once married in the Chapel, the Banshee’s scream would instantly kill all other surviving players in the house. If Yuugi’s character died, he lost. If the other players got all three of the aforementioned item tokens into the Chapel, Yuugi lost. Also, if three different times any of players intentionally inflicted harm upon themselves to save one of their teammates from the Banshee’s call – a sacrifice, of sorts – then the Banshee would instantly die, and Yuugi would lose.
Yuugi read through the rules once more, smiling. Obviously the other team knew about the ‘items to the Chapel’ method of winning, but the sacrifice one – the easiest way to win - was probably an unknown solution to them. Since this Quest was from the expansion, he knew neither Hikari nor Hebi (who’d obviously played this game before) knew of this ‘secret victory,’ so his chances for winning were even better. It seems almost too easy, thought Yuugi, but a knock on the doorframe distracted him from his ponderings.
“We’re ready whenever you are,” said Hikari, almost purring in threat, “so get ready to lose to a couple of girls.”
Yuugi smiled, closing the booklet. “We’ll see,” he said. Hikari grinned back, and he followed her back into the overpoweringly brown sitting room.
._._.
Hebi, on the couch, looked up at Yuugi with a sly grin and light sparkling in her eyes as he entered, the Banshee token resting between her fingers like a cigarette. Jounouchi was dancing the dice along the table, now that his token was on the board, but he did give Yuugi a short glance when he reentered the room before turning his attention back to the dice. The indifference of the action made Yuugi’s heart clench painfully in his chest. Was their friendship so weak that a couple of pretty girls could drive a wedge between them? His free hand went up to the Puzzle for reassurance. The Millennium Puzzle had granted him friends; they would not fall away so easily. He smiled.
Yuugi sat down at the table, placing the Banshee token with him in the study. “As I end my turn in the study, I gain a stat point of knowledge. Your turn, Hebi-san.” She nodded, moving her player through two of the explored rooms, revealing the staircase leading upstairs, and continued up to the Research Laboratory. Hebi quickly dispatched her foe – a mysterious fog – and acquired the Cursed Spear.
Their turns went quickly after that, Jounouchi and Hikari both retreating upstairs and exploring rooms there. Yuugi could easily see their plan: lead the Banshee away from Yuugi, and then send their strongest player to kill him directly. Evidently they didn’t know that he could summon the Banshee to his side using the Cursed Bell. Interesting. Way too easy for the Traitor to win, Yuugi thought, they must think that teamwork is enough to overcome such a ridiculous handicap. The other team wasn’t even finding that great a selection of items, either. The only thing remotely useful they’d gotten in the round of play was Chekhov’s Revolver for Hikari, and Jounouchi found a Fire Axe. Yuugi’s turn.
“The Banshee has now fully materialized, and she gets two points of movement for every non-traitor on the board, so six rooms. She moves at the start of my turn to the nearest player, and if she winds up in the same room as that player—”
“Yes, Yuugi-kun, we know that,” said Hebi, her fingers absently playing with the dice on the table. Yuugi stuttered under her gaze, but quickly shook himself back into composure.
“So you know how many hits will kill you, and—”
“Yes, Yuugi-kun, we do.” Hikari said, though her gaze was fixed on Jounouchi. Yuugi shrugged.
“All right. Since the Banshee is a spirit, she can go through any wall, and can move from floor to floor without using the stairs, so I’m going to move her one space here—” Yuugi pointed to an adjacent room, “which is directly below the Master Bedroom, which is two spaces away from Hikari-san in the Gymnasium—” He placed the round token next to Hikari’s character piece with a joyous smile, “where the Banshee screams, and ends her movement.”
Yuugi had his character continue exploring the downstairs, where he fought spider webs in the Greenhouse and acquired the Rabbit’s Foot, an item that would let him on one occasion re-roll a single die during any of his rolls. The sisters' turns passed quickly – no one found the Chapel, or any of the repelling items, just weapons and stat-boosters. The Banshee attacked Jounouchi this turn (not a sacrifice; Hikari had a higher speed, and the top floor wasn’t large), and Yuugi ran out of movement in an empty hallway. Turns continued for another few rounds without action until finally Jounouchi unearthed the Chapel in the basement (having fallen through a hole in the floor on the second story, for minor amounts of implausibility).
Yuugi quickly calculated. Unless he found the staircase to the cellar in his loop around to the lobby, it’d take him two turns just to get upstairs, another two after that to go to the hole in the floor, and another two after that to get to the Chapel. Dammit. And none of the other players were very close to death, but none had made sacrifices either, and they still didn’t have the right items. Yuugi was fine in terms of ability to win, but he just wished it wouldn’t have to take so long.
Jounouchi, realizing what his uncovering the Chapel meant, swore profusely.
“Don’t worry,” said Hikari, the apparent leader of their group, “Yuugi-kun has to come upstairs to get there, so we’ll cut him off here. You just make sure that he doesn’t get through if we can’t.”
Yuugi smiled, excited. Finally, he thought, some action!
Hikari was obviously heading for the main staircase, but Yuugi wasn’t worried; they still didn’t know that Yuugi could summon the Banshee to his side at any moment. Hikari ended her turn at the top of the staircase. Now it was his turn.
The Banshee attacked Hebi – her first hit in the game. Yuugi looked at the board of tiles carefully; he was still on the rather small first floor, but because of the horseshoe layout of doors and hallways, Yuugi was on the tip of a half-circle of tiles, meaning there was a gap of two unplaced rooms between his bloody hallway and the foyer leading upstairs. If he got lucky, he might hit nothing but hallways and save himself a turn of movement, instead of walking all the way around. If he did get lucky like that, though, it would give Hikari the advantage to attack him, something he didn’t really want to risk. Looking down at his item cards, he made a face of discontent: he didn’t have very many, and none of them were particularly good, him having spent most of his turns in dusty hallways. The few he did have were either luck-based, or would help him alter stats he didn’t really care for. (Sanity? Really?) So, some exploration couldn’t hurt.
He placed his hand over the land tile deck and closed his eyes. I’m so tired, he thought to himself and to the cards, I just want to finish this game and go home. I know you don’t get to have fun often; he wasn’t even the slightest bit embarrassed by the way he spoke to the cards in his mind. I just want to get my friend out of here. So please... holding his breath, Yuugi drew the room tile. There was no Explorer’s Symbol, and he started to place the tile down and continue exploring when he noticed something off about the tile he drew.
He didn’t draw a room; he drew an elevator.
Quickly Yuugi’s eyes scanned the directions on the card. He would roll one of the special 3-integer d-6s (numbered zero through two, each number appearing twice); if the die landed on a zero, he would go down a floor, whereas a one would take him up a floor, and a two would let him control which way he went. The elevator could attach to any door that did not connect to an adjacent room. He silently thanked the deck.
“I have revealed the Mystic Elevator, and I shall now roll to determine my destination.”
“Wait-a-minute, what?” interjected Hikari, bewilderment and frustration in her tone, “since when has there been an elevator?”
“Since the second expansion, Zombies Eat My Brains Oh No! You’ve used it before, remember?” Hebi said, frowning, “The time you were the traitor, with the radioactive fairies? You put them all in the elevator and killed everyone in two turns.” Hikari looked at Hebi in confusion. “You remember! It was when we were playing against the exchange students who used the dog to shuffle around possession of the bug spray!”
Yuugi let the die fall, and was only slightly disappointed when the face came up one. He moved the elevator up to the top floor, aligning it to the nearest empty door to the Mine Shaft, a full two rooms away. Yuugi had run out of speed though, and ended his turn just outside the elevator. Hebi spent her turn trying to outrun the Banshee, but a failed roll in a previous turn had reduced her speed from seven rooms to five, meaning that she was left well within the range of the Banshee’s approach. Jounouchi skipped his turn for lack of anything to do, passing over to Hikari.
Well, here was an interesting situation. Hikari also had a speed of seven, and within her range of possible movement were two viable options: she could use all seven of her blocks of movement to reach Yuugi by the elevator, putting her six spaces away from the Banshee and leaving Hebi at five spaces to get killed (as it would be Hebi’s second consecutive hit). If Hebi died, it would give Yuugi the one death he needed to resurrect the Banshee and win the game. The other option Hikari had was to directly approach the Banshee and prevent the monster from killing Hebi, a move that would not kill Hikari, and delay Yuugi’s potential victory, but allowing him to escape down the Mine Shaft.
If their positions were reversed, Yuugi would save Hebi; it wouldn’t even be fatal, as Hikari’s character had only been attacked once by the Banshee and that had been several turns ago, and her high speed would allow her to easily outrun the threat on her next turn. Jounouchi was still by the chapel, after all, and she could trust him to take care of Yuugi, should Yuugi make it down there. It was the smart option, too: Jounouchi’s character had maxed out strength and sanity, and he actually had strong weapons.
The choice was obvious.
As Hikari moved her token room by room, Yuugi realized some things about Hikari’s personal character: she wanted to win the game and keep both Yuugi and Jounouchi here with her, and was very determined to do so. She did not trust Jounouchi’s superior strength; she wanted to be the victor by herself, which was probably why she had intentionally kept both Hebi and Jounouchi far away from Yuugi’s character token as possible for the entire game. Hikari was willing to leave her sister to die so she could grab the glory for herself.
Yuugi slid his thumb over the grooves of his God Pyramid, and said, “You know, your attacking me isn’t the wisest move, since the Banshee will kill your sister otherwise.”
“Whoever said she was my sister?” Hikari asked, placing her character token in the same room as Yuugi’s.
Yuugi shrugged. “Your loss.” He could summon the Banshee to him now, even though it wasn't his turn, but the attack wouldn't stop Hikari's. Besides, he'd lose the otherwise guaranteed death of Hebi if he did, something he needed to win the game. He left the Cursed Bell where it lay.
Hikari grinned, wide and feral, “I’ll attack. My strength is five, which would give me five d-2 dice,”
Yuugi nodded, “My strength is also five—”
“but I play the Ballet Slippers,” she interjected, holding up an item card, “meaning I can change my attack from being based on strength to being based on speed. Mine is seven, and yours is still five.” She placed down the item card, and tapped one sitting next to it. “I also will attack you with Chekhov’s Revolver, which under the modification of the slippers also turns into a speed-based attack, giving me a total of nine speed and nine dice to your five.” Hikari looked at Yuugi with the wild-eyed glee Yuugi associated with gamblers and the insane. He had to suppress a shudder. “For every number of damage difference, you lose that many points of speed.”
“I know how battles work, Hikari-san,” Yuugi said pleasantly, trying to defuse her mania, “I told you I’ve played before.”
They each picked up their respective number of dice, and with closed eyes Yuugi began shaking the bones. She has an advantage of four dice, he thought quietly, listening to the rattle of the dice in his cupped hands, meaning that if we both roll straight twos on these modified dice, then she’d have a full eight points over me, which would kill me. The most I can possibly roll is ten – even if I roll that high, there’s still pretty much a fifty-fifty chance she’ll win the fight, and about a one-in-four chance that she’ll kill me dead. Ugh. His hands stilled momentarily before he began shaking in earnest once more. So, please, he asked the dice, at least give me that chance!
Yuugi released the dice into the cardboard lid, watching them ricochet off the interior side, thrown against a side on his half of the box so as not to interfere with Hikari’s simultaneous roll.
“That’s too bad,” Hikari said, looking at his throw of seven, “that’s nothing compared to my—”
Yuugi’s heart stopped in his chest; there was no contest. The game was over.
“It seems like my seven is perfectly competent,” he murmured, smiling, “against your five.”
Of Hikari’s nine dice, her four advantage dice and one of her base stat dice all rolled blank, leaving a single two and three ones. Yuugi’s three ones and two twos easily won the fight. He didn’t even need to beat her numerically in the battle – he just needed to have lost by less than five – but Yuugi liked the poetic justice of it. Hikari screeched in rage; she isn’t a very good player, he thought sourly.
“And that ends your turn, right?” said Hebi, staring at the dice. Hikari didn’t appreciate the comment.
“But I shot you!” she exclaimed in complete shock, “I had a gun! I SHOT YOU! You weren’t even two feet away!” She stood from the couch, her arms flailing, but thankfully nowhere near the pieces of the board. “It was point-blank range! How could you dodge a bullet at point-blank range?!” Her fists clenched, her eyes were dark as she stared at the board, and without another word she hurdled over Jounouchi’s legs and stormed out of the room, slamming a door closed behind her as she went. Yuugi winced.
“Don’t worry about her,” said Hebi with a look of disappointment, lips pursed as if swallowing a bitter medicine, and her eyes lowered in resignation that worse would follow. “She’s always been a sore loser. She’ll calm down.”
Yuugi frowned. “I’m sorry. If I had known—”
“Ah, don’t worry about it, Yuugi-kun,” she said, smiling at him brightly, her features softening, “besides, it’s your turn, so hurry up and play!”
Yuugi gave a very short laugh, and slid the Banshee token towards Hebi’s. “Sorry for this,” he said as the Banshee attacked her character, “her movement is automatic, and—”
“Yuugi-kun, don’t apologize for being a good player. Idiot.” She said, removing her token from the game board. Yuugi shrugged, and began his trek across the tiles.
“Ah, Yuugi, wait,” said Jounouchi, speaking to Yuugi for the first time since he had set the stakes for the game, “you just beat Hikari-chan in battle, right?” Yuugi nodded, slowly, his hand paused in mid-movement from holding the elevator tile. “That means you get to take one of her items. Here.” Jounouchi flicked a card across the table to Yuugi, and he picked up the Ballet Slippers. “They’ll get you to the Chapel faster.”
Yuugi shook his head. “I don’t need them. You deserve the chance to win, too, Jounouchi-kun.” Yuugi rolled one of the dice, and it came up as a one. Unhappy, Yuugi used his Rabbit’s Foot to re-roll, and this time got a two. He went down to the basement, getting as close to the Chapel as he could, but still stopped a full two rooms away. Hebi, being dead, obviously didn’t get a turn, so Jounouchi moved his piece out of the Chapel towards Yuugi.
And past him. Yuugi watched in confusion as Jounouchi entered the elevator, ascended to the first floor, and slyly placed down an item card.
The Fire Axe: Use this item on any wall to create a doorway into an adjacent room or territory. Jounouchi grinned.
“I bust through the elevator and leave the House of Leaves, and escaping death-by-Banshee. Only kills the people in the house, right Yuugi?” Yuugi stared at Jounouchi’s little character token on the brown table, off the board and out of the game, and Yuugi laughed.
“That’s right, only those in the house. Jounouchi-kun! You beat me in a game, that’s so cool!” Jounouchi smiled, but shook his head.
“Nah, it’s more like a stylish forfeit. Besides, if you summon that Banshee Wedding thing, you still win, since Hikari-chan’s still alive, isn’t she?”
“I don’t think she’d forfeit,” said Hebi, and with a glower she turned to the hallway and shouted for her sister. (Were they sisters? They looked like sisters, and Hebi said they were sisters, but Hikari denied it. Maybe it had just been anger?)
“Kari-chan! It’s your turn! Stop being such a whiny bitch and finish the game!”
A lot of things happened after the door opened.
Hikari walked into the sitting room slowly, her arms crossed behind her back and her head down, pensive and contrite. Jounouchi started a jaw-popping yawn and stretched his arms, and Hebi leaned back into the couch, relaxing. Yuugi glanced out the window, but the sky was still dark and the moon was gone, so he still had no idea what time it was – a couple hours had to have passed, at least. Hikari approached the game table, shuffling her feet quietly against the carpet as Jounouchi battled his yawn for Round Two.
“Your turn,” said Yuugi, looking away from the window.
His brain had all of one second to take in the tears on Hikari’s face and the gun in her hands and the red of her cheeks befo—
Gun?
Pain ripped through Yuugi, an explosion of black and fire and dragons and FUCK.
Bang.
Yuugi had fallen, and maybe he skidded, but he knew he was staring at the ceiling, and he could feel his blood pouring out of him and instantly cooling in the stale air.
She actually shot him. With a gun! Why did she even have a gun?
Yuugi had been afraid of what the two girls would do to him and to Jounouchi, and even though murder had been on the list for a while, getting shot for winning a board game had not.
He never even saw it coming. He could feel pain – holy fuck what was that bullet made from? – and vaguely he heard Jounouchi and Hebi shouting, and another gunshot.
His vision starting getting dark, his eyelids closing against it, and he was pretty sure this was a bad sign.
I’m going to die, thought Yuugi at the sound of a third gunshot, his eyes refusing to open again, this sucks.
You will not die here.
His eyes did not open, but they did flutter in the effort of blinking. I’m not?
The bullet only hit muscles, near the shoulder. No organs.
Oh. Well, that was good, wasn’t it? He should probably snap out of his shock, then, before he bled to death.
You will not die here, that other voice repeated as Yuugi struggled against passing out, but he could tell he was failing miserably.
The girl will not be as lucky.
._._.
