Brothers? - SBI Orphanage AU

Chapter 21 - A coin and its uses

A/N: No, the coin isn't used for anything weird, I'm just terrible at naming chapters. Also, we get to meet another non-SBI character today!

-Phil's POV-

It's lunch time at my school. As per usual, I eat my lunch while getting homework done, since today isn't one of the days I can visit Fundy. While doing so, I hear someone walk over to me.

"Hey, I'm new here. Can I sit with you?", the stranger asks.

I look up and see a guy with brown hair and wearing a green/teal sweater with a purple spiral on it. (Were you guys right? Also note the sweater coloring) "Uh, sure!" I decided that my homework can wait in favor of not making someone sit alone.

"Thanks! I'm Karl, by the way."

"I'm Philza, or Phil! Nice to meet you. Why did you decide to change schools in the middle of the year? Did you move?" I asked, trying to start some kind of conversation.

"Uh, you could say that. Hey, by the way, I have this coin I want to give you as a thank you for letting me sit here." (1) He seems to want to change the subject, and being polite, I let him do that.

"Oh, you don't need to pay me. It's no problem."

"No, it isn't a coin that you use to pay for things. Here, let me show you." He takes out a coin with a pair of black wings on one side and a blocky heart on the other. I think the blocky heart is what the hearts look like on the hardcore difficulty of Minecraft, which I'd played once or twice on Techno's computer, but don't know all that well.

"That's cool. The heart is a Minecraft Hardcore heart, right?"

"Mm hmm. Anyway, do you want it?"

I don't want to be rude, and I'm sure I could find a use for it somehow, so I reply, "Sure! Thanks!". The things on the coin seem pretty random to me, but whatever. Maybe Karl has a thing for Minecraft Hardcore and... wings. The wings look kind of like crow wings, maybe he likes crows?

"Well anyway, I should probably start heading to class. Bye!" Lunch isn't over, but maybe he has to talk to the teacher about making up work that he missed or something? I don't know.

I go back to doing my homework, and don't see him again that day.

When I get home from work after school, I hear Tommy immediately.

"Phiiiiiiiiil!" Tommy calls.

"What is it, Tommy?"

"Wilbur and Techno are fighting in Techno's room, so I can't ask if I can use Techno's computer to play Minecraft!"

I sigh. How wonderful. I walk into Techno's room.

"We made an agreement! If this was real life, I would sue you and you'd have to pay me a bunch of money!" Will was shouting angrily.

"No, you wouldn't be able to! We didn't even agree! Even if we had, it would've been an under the counter business negotiation, which you can't sue people for! (2)" Techno angril responded. No wonder Tommy didn't want to try to ask Techno anything.

"Guys, calm down. What's going on? Wilbur first. Techno, you can't say anything until Wilbur's done."

"Last week, it was Techno's turn to do the dishes. But, because he was busy doing some Skywars thing with some other people and he didn't want to make everyone else reschedule for a chore, we made an agreement—" He got cut off.

"No we—" Techno tried to comment.

"Techno, be quiet. You can share your side of the argument after Will is done. Will, continue."

"As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, we made an agreement that I would do the dishes for him that week and he'd do it for me this week. But today, he's refusing to do it."

"Ok. Techno, what's your side of this argument?"

"A week ago, I thought I was going to need to make the arrangement that Wilbur mentioned. I talked about it a bit with him, but we hadn't confirmed anything. It was more of a "Just so you know, I might need to ask you to do this for me." It turned out that someone else couldn't make the Skywars thing, so it was getting moved to the next day anyway. So that night, I went down to do the dishes, but I saw that most of them were already done. Apparently Wilbur had already done most of them, though a few kids ate late so I still did their dishes. At the time I just thought that maybe some staff person cleaned them or a lot of people did their own dishes, and forgot about it. I don't think that I should have to do Wilbur's dishes tonight when I didn't say I would, especially since I did in fact do some of the dishes that day."

"So the issue is that Wilbur thought he was being asked to do extra dishes a week ago in return for not needing to do them today. And he's annoyed that he did extra work for apparently no return reward. Techno, on the other hand, claims he never asked Wilbur for the dishes and now doesn't need to do them for him today. Is that right?"

"Yep."

"Exactly."

I sigh. "Well, since there's no way to go back in time (3) and look at what specifically was said to judge whether Techno was at fault for being unclear or Wilbur was at fault for misunderstanding, and because I really can't think of a better way to resolve this, we'll do it randomly."

"How are you going to make it random? If you just say someone, there's clearly bias in what you're choosing." Techno pointed out.

"What I need is a d2 (4). I don't have one though. Maybe I could flip a coin? Oh wait, I know what to do." I take out the coin that Karl gave me. "Hearts or wings?"

"Huh?" Wilbur asked.

"A guy at school gave me this coin. It has a pair of crow wings on one side and a hardcore heart on the other. Kind of random, but it'll work to pick a random person."

"Huh, interesting. Anyway, I call hearts." Techno says.

"I guess that leaves me with wings then."

"Ok. If your choice is on top after flipping the coin, you get to choose who does the dishes." I explain.

They both reply, "Ok."

I flip the coin and it lands on wings. "Wilbur, your choice."

Techno groans, knowing he'll have to do the dishes.

"Yay! Obviously I'm having Techno do the dishes."

"Are you sure? You could be the nice younger brother and do them yourself." Techno tries to convince him.

"Nope!"

Hey, this coin is pretty handy, despite the seeming randomness of the symbols. I decide to keep it with me for future disagreements.

But strangely enough, the next day, I didn't see Karl at school. Or the day after that. In fact, after that one day at lunch I never saw him again. If it wasn't for the coin, I wouldn't know if he was actually there. I asked a few people around, curious, and they all say they saw him that one day but never after that. No one knows much about him.

A/Ns:

1. He didn't just move locations, he temporarily moved through time as well.

2. I think that's right anyway. The government doesn't tax you for under the counter jobs (like babysitting for example, you don't have to pay tax on money earned from that), but the person you work for doesn't actually have any negative consequences for not paying you other than you getting mad at them and possibly telling other people not to work for them. As far as I know, but I haven't done any research whatsoever.

3. Well now there really is no way to go back in time now that our time traveler isn't with them anymore.

4. If you don't know, a d2 is a 2-sided dice. It's like a really fat coin that you roll instead of flipping, because if you roll it, it doesn't have the chance of landing on its side.

Total word count: 1381