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Who: Hawke and YOU
What: THE RETURN OF BOARD GAEMS
When: June 18th-June 21st, afternoons.
Where: Der common room.
Warnings: INTENSE MONOPOLY ACTION

As someone who enjoyed the idle diversion now and again, Hawke found it slightly depressing that the massive piles of board games in the common room got so little use.

He'd discarded the frivolous games that required little to no thought, instead busying himself with a deck of cards and solitaire, the boxes that contained sophisticated board games like Risk and Stratego piled neatly on a coffee table next to him. It was a welcome respite from his most recent project of pouring over the documents filched from the old Black Hole headquarters, and Hawke had to admit he needed some time to focus on something else.

Coffee and cards was usually the way to go.

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"Hey little birdy."

The wunderkind sat on the chair opposite to him, putting her arms on the sides and looking over at his game. He seemed to be on his way to winning so there was no need to comment on his lack of skill like she loved to tease him about.

"Figured if I didn't find you in your room, you'd be either in the cafeteria or here." She crossed her legs. "Hey! You wanna play a game with me? I haven't had a good game of chess since a while!"

Oh yes. Hawke was totally showing this deck of cards who was boss, and was just about to clear the board. If only he'd been playing on the computer, all the cards would bounce at him on the screen forever and it would be the most glorious thing.

He supposed one could reproduce a similar effect in real life, but he honestly didn't feel like picking cards up off the floor.

When Lash joined him, he looked up and immediately began pushing the cards together. No sense in Solitaire when there were two people. He reached for the chessboard instead.

"Of course. It has been a long time, hasn't it."

"It has! And you're find me to be a much tougher opponent this time around," she warned, helping him set up the pieces. "I've been practicing a lot lately. I figured I could ask you for a game eventually, but you're like my ultimate opponent! If I beat you today then I know I'll really be ready! At least, the chess part."

The very faintest traces of a smile crossed his lips as he began putting pawns in place, making sure that all the rows of pieces were straight before pushing the board into the middle of the table.

"Since you seem so confident in your abilities, I'll let you choose. White or black?"

"Welllll, considering everything that has happened lately, I'm gonna pick white." She spun the board slightly so that the proper chess pieces were on her side, uncrossing her legs and leaning in more forward to ponder her move. They weren't playing with a standard timer, but she wanted to be fast enough anyway.

"You know, it's kinda interesting when you think about it." She pushed one of her center white rooks forward, looking around to make sure no one else was there. "The chess pieces are white and black too. White Dwarf, Black Hole...and it was one of the only games available back home. It's also a game about conquering your opponent and capturing their king too."

"White it is." He said, already contemplating a strategy. It had been a very long time since they'd played chess together, and Hawke had a feeling that she was going to surprise him. He'd have to surprise her right back.

He watched her first move carefully and sent forth one of his pawns. "Admittedly, the cards were to distract myself from that very thing."

"Oh." He probably had been working a lot about that while she was busy on her own side, Lash realized. She pushed another of her pawn forward before speaking again. "You want me to change the subject? We could talk about lots of other different things. Like how much cyanide I could get to perfect a few bombs I've been building. Or how about the fact that Zapdos is coming back?"

She beamed.

"He asked me to name him!" Someone looked immensely proud of herself.

Edited 2011-06-22 08:19 (UTC)

He raised his eyebrows at that, making his next move.

"Zapdos is coming back?" True, the Pokemon's departure had been sudden but not unnoticeable, and he wasn't sure how to feel about the inevitable return of the noisy student.

"And what did you name him?"

Lash moved one of her knights. There. First chess formation was secured. She just had to keep this up.

"He is! We talked a bit and I think he just needed a bit of time out. Old enough to be part of the RAs too! As for the name..." she offhandedly pointed to one of the game systems in the back. "It comes from this game called Makanikki Kingdom. You play Overlord Zebba and his main rival is this loud mouthed guy named Alexander." Could you see the irony in there? Lash certainly did. "He gets nicknamed Alex a lot in the game and he's the god of thunder! I found it fitting." She crossed her arms again.

"And Zapdos...err Alex didn't protest. It does also means powerful king or something."

Naming your Pokemon after video game characters. This wasn't a video game, Lash.

Edited 2011-06-27 05:42 (UTC)

Yes, leave it to Lash to name her Pokemon after video game characters. Well, if Zapdos liked it then Hawke guessed it was a win-win for everyone.

He folded his hands and rested his chin on them, contemplating his next move.

"You and Raiden," he said, "and your video games."

"There is nothing wrong with video games!" she protested, watching him ponder his next move with a keen interest, doing her best not to tap her fingers too loudly. "There a lot you could learn from them. Heck imagine if we could train soldiers to use weapons properly just by having them use virtual AI! That could save sooo much money!"

"All right. There's nothing wrong with video games," he conceded, moving his next piece.

"Check."

With classes out Raiden had a bit more free time; not having to constantly mop hallways and clean things that were sullied with the hustle and bustle of students and faculty going to and fro. That is to say he still had work to do, but also more free time to look busy when he wasn't working. Like playing video games in the common rooms.

...Which was currently being commandeered by a Hawke.

"Oh. Hey Hawke."

Yeah, oops. Looks like if Raiden wanted to play video games, he was going to have to GO THROUGH HAWKE. Luckily, the CO had no interest in the TV, only the deck of cards in front of him.

"Raiden." He nodded in greeting.

Luckily, Raiden had no interest in the deck of cards and only the TV. With all his Contra games DESTROYED he had since picked up a new game to gather whatever semblance of pride he had left for electronic dominance of the score boards.

Good old Galaga.

Shouldn't be a bother to Hawke, right? Right. Raiden booted up the console, turned the volume up to a concentration-breaking level and plopped himself in front of the TV.

Yeah that was just not gonna work. Hawke gave Raiden exactly a minute and a half before placing down his deck of cards and leaning over his chair to see what he was doing.

"Is that necessary?"

"What's necessary?" Turning the game on? Playing it? Not playing cards like Hawke? Uh. Yeah.

"The music," he answered, frowning in a very sour fashion. It was distracting.

"The..." He paused and twisted around with a look that was something of a cross between 'please sir may I have some more' and 'you're kidding right'?

"...music that's part of the game?"

NO, RAIDEN. THE OTHER MUSIC. "Yes. The music that's part of the game. You can turn the volume down on the television, correct?"

"Yeah." That didn't mean he was asking or instructing to turn it down. Right? Right?

That was totally what he meant. "So turn it down."

He set his jaw and grumbled, not unlike a bratty teenager being told to turn down their music by an overbearing mother.

"Fine."

And thus the music was turned down to an actually reasonable and quiet volume. However, now, dear Hawke, you would have to content with an orchestra of:

clack clack tap tap click grunt clack "oh damn it" clack clack "yeah take that"

Even without the music, he found Raiden's background noise too distracting for his liking. So much so that soon enough, he'd set down his deck of cards and made his way to the sofa where the games were being played.

Hawke stood behind the janitor, folding his arms and watching.

Like a creep.

What a creep. For all of Raiden's skills as a spy/mercenary, he was completely engrossed in his Galaga game, and didn't notice Hawke for an entire level. Eventually, though, Raiden paused the game and noticed the ominous shadow looming over him, blocking out the florescent light of the common room.

"Did you..." Raiden started, and awkwardly finished knowing This Was Not Why Hawke Was Here. "...want to play or something?"

Yeah, this was pretty creepy, even for Hawke.

He puzzled over the video game for a few moments, watching Raiden mash buttons and fight his way through the delicious 8-bit level.

To up the creepy ante, Hawke took a seat on the couch next to the janitor. "What is the goal, exactly?"

Oh my god.

Oh my god his sort of commanding officer just sat down next to him and was interested in playing Galaga.

Lash was going to have a field day with this.

But first, after the initial shock and awe and creepy factor, Raiden seemed... genuinely happy at this turn of events. He brought his attention back to the game, currently paused and frozen in digital 8-bit space.

"You're the little spaceship at the bottom," Raiden explained, "And you have to stop the swarm of invading aliens before they reach the bottom of the screen. You can only move left or right, and fire. You score points for every alien you take out. Take them all out, and you move on to the next level." Predictably, more bugs moving faster. While little tactics or strategy was involved in Galaga, the game more than made up for it in testing one's speed and reaction time.

Raiden handed off the controller. "Pretty simple, right?"

Extremely simple. But really, what did he expect from a game for children?

But Raiden looked pleased at the turn of events, and Hawke had humored such inane diversions before (he recalled the Charizard girl and her game called "Crossfire", or whatever the heck it was). And besides, it wasn't like he was completely unaccustomed to video games. Lash played them in his apartment and at Adder's mansion all the time.

He took the controller in hand...

and stared at it.

Raiden stared for a while. Up at Hawke, down at the controller, back up at Hawke, down to the controller....

"...You press 'start' to play."

Hawke regarded Raiden with a cold stare that would freeze even penguins, or other such arctic creatures.

Then he pressed start.

TEHM GAME HAVE STARTED.

And lo, Hawke began mashing every button in his effort to vanquish the alien invaders.

It was harder than it looked.

Hello there, look who had never seen a board game before.

"Query: What are you doing?"

Oh. It was the robot.

"Playing solitaire," he answered simply.

"I am unfamiliar with that game," he explained. "Query: How is it played?"

"By oneself," Hawke answered, putting down another card. "That's why it's called solitaire. There are, however, other card games for one or more players."

"Query: Which games?"

"Quite a few," he said, gathering up his cards and beginning to shuffle them. "Hearts, eights, bridge, poker, simple things like Go Fish."

"Query: Can you teach me to play one of these games?"

Hawke gave a very purposeful stare to the robot's lack of fingers.

"How are you going to hold the cards?"

R.O.B. looked down at his grabbers. They rotated and began to unfold into three fingers and a thumb each. "Query: Will this suffice?" he asked.

Ah, robots. Always full of surprises.

Well, at least that barrier was surmounted. Hawke began to shuffle the deck. "What exactly would you like to play?"

"Please select a game that is comparatively simple," he said. "I wish to learn the fundamentals of playing games with cards."

Hawke considered this for a moment.

"We'll play War."

"Please define instructions."

"It's simple enough," he began, dividing the deck evenly in two. "We each take half of the deck and deal cards one at a time. The higher card is the winner and takes both cards. We play until one person runs out of cards."

"Understood," he answered. "I am prepared."

"Then we'll deal on three," Hawke said, readying his first card. "One, two..."

On the count of three, R.O.B. turned over his first card. It was a Queen. He blinked. "Error: This card has not been assigned a numerical value."

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