goneawayworld | I'm still the talk of this town, I'm still the roll of their dice.

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dan sagittarius

I'm still the talk of this town, I'm still the roll of their dice.

Who: Dan Sagittarius and Beckett
What: Dan and Beckett bond(?) over poker.
Where: The library.
When: Prior to the attack.
Warnings/Notes: None here yet.

Dan feels a little bad underplaying how good he is at poker to Beckett, but on the other hand, he trusts that people who describe themselves as “decent poker players” are generally people who are well into the upper percentages of adept poker players. After all, if you describe yourself as a good poker player, you’ve already indicated that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Dan’s a very good poker player, so long as they’re only using one deck at a time, because he’s got a fantastic memory for the cards and a practiced, fluid poker face. He’s financed many a trip back and forth across the continent on hustling poker games.

He still hates the library, though, which is why as he waits in one of the little alcove areas with the recliners he’s preemptively shuffling the deck of cards. Being completely illiterate - old school illiterate, the kind that signs that name with an X and needs a witness - is usually just a background handicap in his line of work, but occasionally there are places or things that throw into stark relief that he’s in a world where he’s intellectually got one arm tied behind his back.

But it’s quiet, and he has a bottle of wine, which the lady at the cafeteria gave him after he flirted with her enough to establish a “connection”. It’s not just in her head, either; Dan’s absolutely willing to get unprofessional with things. Anything to break up the tedium of the rig, which so far has been a corporate nightmare full of schedules and fluorescent lights.

He’s looking forward to an evening with Beckett. As far as he’s concerned, they have at least a few things in common, and there’s always something to be said for someone who mentions chess, poker and dancing in their introduction. That’s someone who has at least some kind of taste for intellectual stimulation by the way of both strategy and expression. That’s someone who can tap into both worlds.

“Beckett,” he says with a grin as he sees his new friend enter. “It’ll be a pleasure to get to know you better, and an even greater pleasure to kick your ass at Texas Hold ‘Em.”

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"I don't doubt you will," Beckett says, sliding with equal ease into the proffered chair and his preferred strategy. Which is to present himself as a courtly gent here just to play, without investment in any outcome. "It's been ages since I had the chance to play. What are we playing for, by the way?"

It's not untrue. It's just not all the truth. Poker is a competition, and Beckett, like all vampires, enjoys winning. He assumes that Sagittarius feels similarly. That's what he enjoys about card games. In a life where he can never really know anyone's agenda - including his own - a friendly hand of poker is about as straightforward as it gets. Everyone's more or less lying towards the same goal.

"Ah, shit, all this time here twiddling my thumbs and I didn't even think of the stakes." Dan drinks wine from the bottle, because he's classy like that. If only one of them is partaking, what's the point in having a glass?

Dan's poker games have always had dual motives - the first being a way to finance his next tank of gas to skip town and go wherever his sense of adventure calls him, the second, like Beckett, the thrill of simple gainful competition. The deck of cards gives everyone a focal point around which to arrange the conversation, so that the rest of the socializing comes easy. You can make lifelong friends or sworn enemies over poker games.

"Well, you can't do poker without currency." He takes out about forty sweetener and sugar packets pilfered from the cafeteria from his pocket and divides them evenly. "But if you want to make it interesting, at the end of each hand the loser divests a story from their life. Sweetener is five, sugar's a fifty."

Edited 2020-09-25 21:42 (UTC)

"Do the stories have to be true?" There's a twinkle in Beckett's eye as he asks. He accepts the paper packets as they slide his way, sorting real from false with flicks of his fingers. Up close, without his gloves - Jorgmund's doing - it's very clear that his fingernails are black, doglike claws. It doesn't affect his dexterity, however.

"Who deals first?" He slides one of the sweeteners forward, in suggestion.

"Hell no, they don't. Culture's as importance as truth. Just has to be a story." Dan glances up at Beckett's claws, but he's not alarmed or offput. As he's said many times here; many of his best friends aren't exactly the typical human.

"I'll deal. I worked at casinos a few times, you know." He waterfalls the cards, shuffles with the practice of someone who's backing up his resume with skill, deals them both, and starts the river of communal cards for Texas Hold 'Em. And he slides a sweetener forward. The first card is the seven of spades, but it doesn't really matter; no one's actually here for the details. "How are you liking it here so far?"

"Well, what can I say? As far as involuntary servitude goes, there are worse forms. I've kept my own mind, at least."

Beckett remembers the times that he hasn't, and gives thanks to whoever looks out for kindred scholars that Jorgmund doesn't have that kind of power at their disposal. It's never a pleasant experience.

He peeks at his cards. Seven of diamonds and the jack of hearts. Well, it's early yet. So he pushes another sweetener packet forward, deciding to feel lucky.

"And you?"

"You've got a more open mind that I do." Dan flicks his gaze upwards, as if there are cameras, although honestly, they could be anywhere. They could be embedded in their very flesh. "I have nothing nice to say about our current situation."

It's been what, three weeks? And the ache for freedom and unaccountability are chewing at him like wild dogs.

He checks his cards. Worthless. But that never changed a poker game. He moves a sweetener forward.

"I'm hoping to keep my own mind, but I don't reckon I'd be that wise about it, given how much they screw with them."

"Mmm. One generally notices, eventually," Beckett says, with well-practiced equanimity, and takes the deck to execute a practiced shuffle. The next public card is three of hearts. Sometimes the cards are just determined to fall in dull configurations.

"Is Jorgmund capable of that, then? I hadn't thought them able to exert any kind of subtle control, given the shock collars."

Boring. No high stakes in the river. Dan turns over a five of hearts, which leads to almost nothing in his hands, which means it's time to either cut his losses or bluff.

"Would you be shocked? They pulled us from our world, dicked us around...I expect they're messing with our heads a little."

"Messing with our heads, yes. Controlling us, no." Beckett contemplates his hand, or appears to; his glasses hide that he's studying his opponent, instead, wondering if his hand is as bad. It's always just barely possible the other fellow has something he's not telling you.

"Aside from gross physical restrictions, they don't seem able to - hmm, well, I suppose the best phrase would be mind control. They give orders that can be disobeyed, if you're fine with a shock."

"I don't know about control. I do know when I got here, I walked straight into someone else's memory, and it felt as real as you or me sitting here right now. I'm just saying we should keep our wits about us."

The cards in the river are garbage, a mess of suits and low numbers; the best either of them can hope for is a three-of-a-kind, or failing that a two-pair. Dan throws three sweeteners in, decided to go with a bluff. He's a great liar but, well, Beckett said he was a decent poker player, so this is a way to test the waters on what Beckett meant by that.

"At this point a shock might at least be interesting. Or, you know, good information to have if we ever have to decide what's worth risking more shocks. You know what I mean?"

"Well, if you're volunteering..."

Beckett studies his hand, the cards on the table, the pot, and his opponent. Dan's raise is almost certainly a bluff. Unless it isn't - and a slow, lopsided smile crosses his lips. Here it is again, that moment of uncertainty. The ghost of adrenaline in his veins, setting stolen blood to racing.

"I'd heard about the incident of psychic overlap, but I have to confess it passed me by entirely. Has anyone uncovered the cause?"

As he speaks, he picks up a sugar packet and tosses it in the pot. There. Let's see how he answers that.

Edited 2020-09-29 19:15 (UTC)

"I'm sure I'll get into trouble sooner or later. It's a bit of a calling for me. You should see how many jobs I been fired from." Dan takes another drinks and squints at Beckett's face, the dark glasses, the smile. "Far as I know everyone's just chalking it up to the Stuff. Seems to be an easy thing to blame."

And on the note of calling...Dan chips seven sweeteners in to meet Beckett's and raps his knuckles on the table. He shows his hand - a six and a queen, which means if Beckett has a pair with anything on the table or a single king or ace, Beckett takes the first pot.

"This Stuff does appear to be quite the phenomenon, doesn't it?"

Beckett's smile deepens when Dan lays down his cards. He turns over his.

"Seven of diamonds, jack of hearts. I believe I win this hand."

"By the skin of your teeth, you sure do, hot stuff." Dan grins and takes the cards back, shuffling the deck more as he settles in for storytime. He was expecting to win, and now finds himself at a loss as to where to begin. He doesn't like to talk about himself; he doesn't even particularly like to think about himself as an entity collecting history as he passes through his life.

He taps the corner of the deck against his knee.

"A few weeks before I came here, I was trapped in a mansion with a bunch of civvies and the jackasses that be done called a dragon in to eat us all. Now, back home - it don't seem to mean much here - back home I speak monster Common Tongue, so we got me on a loudspeaker to communicate with it and try and reason. I reckon you can imagine how kindly a dragon takes to being told it can't eat a mansion full of people.

"But dead serious, it turns out that I could stall that motherfucker like no one's business, because it turns out that dragons like music. I talked it into composing a song with me on the piano, little dinner-and-a-show thing, and it spent a whole twenty minutes with me doing this little ragtime number about sucking the marrow out of little kids' bones.

"We all got out safe in the end. Probably one of my finer moments." He grins and deals Beckett his hand.

"A dragon?" Beckett blinks, taken aback. "What, fire breathing and everything? We don't have those where I'm from." And thank god for that. They had enough problems. "Are they a normal hazard?"

He takes his cards, and the corner of his mouth gives, perhaps, the barest twitch as he peeks. A ten and seven of diamonds. Much more promising then the last. He keeps them facedown after his look, just as he had last hand.

"A monster common tongue? Tell me more about that, if you can?"

"Normal? Not really. It's more like a tiger than anything else, you don't see them often but if you do, it's got a high probability of being the last thing you ever do." He checks his hand: ace of spades and two of hearts. "Fire-breathing, flying, scaly. Like something right out of a movie. They're an endangered species where I'm from."

He starts the river - ace of diamonds. Things are already looking good for Dan this hand, but he doesn't show it on his face, just biting his lower lip slightly in thought.

"Well, most sentient beings where I'm from that ain't human have a common language among them all, and some of us human people are smart enough to try and pick it up in case we need to communicate with them. I never want to shoot without asking questions unless I have to, so it made sense to learn how to ask a question and understand the answer."

It depresses Dan how few of his fellow monster hunters bother to pick up Common Tongue, how many situations have turned into brutal bloodshed when it could have been a matter of simple negotiation. How many lives have been lost to the presumption that whatever you're hunting doesn't have any mind beyond senseless violence.

"Course, it seems here everything's translated for us, so speaking Common Tongue's about as useful as tits on a steer."

He puts a sugar packet in.

"Oh, I'm sure you have other talents. Just because a being can talk, doesn't mean it has good intentions. If you've survived as a mortal long enough to learn that much, you're capable of something useful."

It's a conciliatory statement, given offhand and just barely on the right edge of condescending, mostly because he clearly doesn't mean it that way. After all, it's not just mortals he thinks of in pragmatic terms of useful and useless, worth the trouble or not.

"And speaking as one of the monsters, I appreciate an interest in negotiation."

Beckett sees the bet, without raising. He takes the deck, shuffles, deals. Six of diamonds. Hmph.

"Well, I hate to say I've shot and bludgeoned my share of talking things in my time." Human or not; Dan's racked up such a body count in "defense of others" that one might as well wonder if he got into this business for an excuse to blast holes in something for morally justifiable reasons.

He catches the subtle air of condescension, but it doesn't rankle him; Dan doesn't have a ton of ego and he's spent the last decade as, usually, the sole "mundane" in any given crew of magicians and superhumans, and the illiterate backwoods mundane at that. Feeling underestimated or disregarded is a sort of background toxicity for Dan, like UV light from the sun.

"Lotta diamonds in this hand," he says, raising his eyebrows and throwing another sugar packet in.

Don't take it personal, Dan, he's like that with everyone under a hundred and fifty.

"I've racked up my share of bodies as well, don't get me wrong. It's not really possible to do otherwise, in our line of work. But stopping to ask questions first is rare enough to be noteworthy." That Dan might not be touched or flattered by his praise never once crosses Beckett's mind, bless his heart.

He meets the second packet, leaning back. "Yes, well, at least this hand can make up its mind. Unlike the last."

"Unfortunately so." He gives Beckett a bit of a grim smile - a flash of something truly honest underneath the affected levity that Dan wears like a second skin - and flips the last card.

Two of spades.

"Spoke too soon," he says, sucking air through his teeth a bit. He bites his lower lip as he considers his next move. Raise the stakes and hope that Beckett has just a good enough hand to bet on and lose to a two-pair with a bigger pot of packets? Or stay here and ensure that Beckett has to play whatever he has?

Dan plays it safe. He raps his knuckle on the table and puts his hand face-down. "Call."

Damn. Far too soon. Beckett stares hard at his hand for a long moment, fingers hovering above a second sugar packet. With the stakes so low, the urge to push his luck is almost irresistible.

Ah, but the stakes never truly are that low, are they? Dan seems a fine fellow, but they're not friends. They barely know each other, and people in their line of work don't make friends, anyway. Does it benefit Beckett to be underestimated?

Behind his glasses, his eyes have shifted from the cards to his opponent.

Then, slowly, he moves his hand away from the packet.

"Alas," he says, laying out his cards with a flourish. "Your instincts were correct."

Dan grins and takes another sip of wine, putting his feet up on the corner of the table.

He does that annoying thing where, rather than reveal his hand, he just shuffles Beckett's back into the deck because Beckett's folded. It's a habit he picked up working as a dealer at a casino, and one that continues to keep a certain sense of mystery going about how much he'll lie.

"Alright. Tell me a story, hot stuff."

It seems sensible to Beckett, who cares less about how much he'll lie - presumably, as much as necessary - and more that Dan had guessed his game. True, he wasn't going to great lengths to hide it, but he does so hate being on the back foot.

Beckett rubs his chin, thinking. Then he nods, decided.

"By your accent," he begins, "I'd say you hail from somewhere in the American South, or your world's equivalent. I had cause to pass through Georgia about five years ago, doing a - well, call it a favor, but the fellow in question was convinced I was paying a debt. It often goes that way, among Kindred."

Bloody Pieterzoon and his bloody Camarilla.

"My employer's organization was - still is - engaged in a cold war rapidly going hot for territory across the United States. Georgia was particularly disputed; Atlanta had been a stronghold for years, since the city's founding, but had fallen to the other organization some five years back. They were desperate to get it back. I, and two other operatives, had been sent to retrieve what I believed was a mystical artifact from a former planation just outside the city, one that could tip the balance of power."

Pause for effect.

"It was, of course, no such thing. What I had in fact been sent to do was help in the resurrection of an ancient vampiress, a necromancer of great power, so that she could be recruited for that damned war of theirs. She had been betrayed by one of her childer - vampires she had created - and staked in a secret room in the manor. It was all going quite swimmingly until we looked outside and saw half a bloody battalion at the gate."

A coterie of tzimisce, to be precise, riding warghouls crafted of three mortals or more - Beckett hadn't been able to count limbs from the mansion balcony. But he spares Dan those details.

"One of our number was an excellent sharpshooter. He kept them at bay, but it's unfortunately quite difficult to kill a vampire with bullets. I suggested retreat. The newly-awakened Madame Bedelia objected, quite strongly."

He touches his cheek lightly, remembering the slap. It'd been a good one, too.

"She went out on the balcony and raised hell. I mean that quite literally. The ghost of every soul that had ever died on that patch of land and, you can imagine, that was quite a few. They rose at her command, and ripped the enemy apart. It was - quite the sight."

"Remote California. Far from Georgia or the South generally, but I reckon we use the same lingo and have the same pitfalls when we talk." He emphasizes the "tawk" intentionally, coyly, jokingly.

Dan shakes his head and makes the sort of facial expression and wordless noise that indicates he's responding with awe minus the sense of glory; he has no particular fondness for berserkers, be they justifiably-aggrieved supernatural or not. Dan's idea of a good ending to the story would be a truce or a daring escape, not a slaughter.

"So from what you're saying-" Dan deals another hand to each of them- "you've got some sort of reputation amongst the vampires and your faction, enough to be considered an operative."

He checks his hand. Double eights, a spade and a diamond.

"Did Madame Bedelia ever join with the faction that done sent you, or did she decide to go her own way after ripping apart the battalion?"

The first card in the river is the three of clubs.

Edited 2020-10-02 21:19 (UTC)

"Ah, my apologies," he says, with a carefully chastened grin. "I'm afraid I don't spend as much time stateside as should."

He checks his cards. Three of hearts and the jack of clubs. One pair already, not bad.

"Oh, she bore a long-standing grudge against the other side. I extricated myself as quickly as I could manage, but last I heard, Atlanta hadn't changed hands."

He doesn't address Dan's other supposition, interested in letting the man draw his own conclusions.

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I'm still the talk of this town, I'm still the roll of their dice.

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/crawls slowly from the wreckage of saturday the weekday not my other pc/

lol no worries i am a backtag queen

bluff4bluff

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