Ken
For the first time at Game Night, my palms were getting sweaty. Made me think of how it felt before an actual Game Night, pacing around the locker room. Mind running in circles, heart pumping. Part of me was still thinking this was some kind of hidden camera thing, but not so much now. It was just full-on freaky weirdness, and I was here for it.
“First, check below your navel, you should have something like this,” Ash stood up from her chair, showing off her flat stomach and the three red heart tattoos that definitely weren’t there earlier, pulling her pants down an inch or so to reveal two more on a second row.
“No shit?” I pulled up my shirt and sure enough, I had the exact same mark. “Check it out, April.”
“Lemme see, lemme see,” Haruka put her palms on the table as she leaned over it. “Wow.”
That got a frown from Rayne and an eyebrow furrowing from April. It was hard being the hot guy around a bunch of chicks, they always ended up wanting to start drama.
Frank got up from his seat and ran towards the bathroom, then came back out after like ten seconds with his shirt untucked.
“You got it too, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s unsettling,” he said as he sat back down.
April, Haruka, and Rayne didn’t make any moves to confirm it for themselves. Haruka I could understand not wanting to flash her skirt up. April was shy, the big dork. And Rayne, well, I kind of got the feeling she never really relaxed around guys, which, y’know? Fair. A little silly what with all the hocus pocus in the room, but fair.
“These are your Hearts,” Ash explained. “When you lose all of your Hearts, you’re eliminated from the game. So the last one who still has any heart points left is the winner.”
“Heart Points. So we can call it HP then, right?” Frank had his phone out, and it looked like he was taking notes.
“Sure. It doesn’t really matter what you call them. Next, those cards from before. They’re a part of you now. If you think about them, you should be able to see them clearly in your mind. And if you focus on one card in particular,” Ash held out her index and middle finger, and like some kind of magician, that oversized metal card appeared in her hand. “You can draw it out.”
Summoning cards like magic? Or… summoning cards with magic, magically. Of course I was gonna try that! I did like she said, thought of the card, then bam! It was right there in my hand, with a nice heavy weight to it.
“Fuckin’ sweet.”
On impulse, I tossed it like a frisbee, watched it arc across the room and thud into the drywall next to the window. I thought about it returning back inside me, and it vanished from the wall. I tried summoning it again, and there it was, ready for another throw—
“Ken! What the hell!?” I’d never heard Rayne raise her voice like that and it was scary. “Are you a child!? Don’t throw those things at my walls!” She was up out of her chair and checking the damage. Probably just a tiny little hole but… yeah.
“Sorry, that was totally my bad. Just got a little excited over unlimited throwing stars.”
April gave me a squeeze on the thigh. “It’s okay, but let’s all try to calm down and let Ash finish, maybe?”
“Yeah. Good idea.” I made a mental note to google some tutorials on youtube on how to fix walls. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?
“Well, as Ken already showed us, just thinking about making the card vanish will do the trick. But they aren’t just ‘unlimited throwing stars’. We use them for Duels, with a capital D. Each symbol is for a different category of games. They’re all similar to games we’ve heard of before, but the card will create something new each time.”
