When Club Is Over

Chapter 4: Victory At Last

   After spending all week practicing with the regular dice to make sure he could get a proper roll 5 times in a row and had the wrist rotation memorized, certain that this would be the week he could finally see the smug grin wiped from Idia's face. As he walks towards the club room, Azul keeps one hand on his jacket pocket, reminding himself that the dice are there. He strolls down the winding corridors, admiring the view from the many windows.

   When he gets to the club room, he goes directly to the table that Idia preferred and sat down in his chair. While Azul waits for Idia to come, he decides to practice a little more as insurance. Insurance was always good, it was what saved him hundreds of thaumarks whenever Floyd got too bored and started breaking glasses.

   He throws the dice on the table, aiming for threes. One dice lands, a three. The second lands, another three! Finally, the third and last slowly stops spinning, landing on a... three! Azul pushed up his glasses, silently celebrating proudly that all his hard work paid off two weeks later.

   All his attention on the dice in front of him, he misses the sound of the door opening and Idia coming to sit across from him. Azul only looks up when Idia gently sets the Magical Life box in front of him.

   "Azul? What are you doing...?" Idia trails off, noticing the dice in Azul's hand.

   "Nothing much. Let's begin the game, shall we?" Azul pushes his glasses off, sending a chill down Idia's spine with how ominous he looks.

   They work together to set up the extensive board, Azul still smirking like a madman. As the pieces labeling the buildings fall into place, Idia gets more and more nervous while looking at Azul, who looks increasingly more and more like a boss fight with the grin stretching across his face.

   "Why don't you go first? Since I went first last week." Idia's hands shake as he reaches for the dice, the money all counted out and distributed with the college loans. The two options for starting Magical Life were to go to college or start working immediately. Idia had wanted to start working, but Azul had convinced him a few weeks ago that it'd be better to start from college since that's where they were at.

   The debt disappeared quickly, leaving Idia with barely any money and Azul with slightly more, having landed directly on a payday and doubling his income. Azul was playing as a restaurant owner and Idia had pulled the better CEO career card, so the double payday was very helpful. He kept influencing his rolls, landing on all the paydays and magical life tiles. As the game progressed further and Azul gets stopped by the required marriage tile, he pulls a second blue token out of the bag without thinking and puts it on his carriage, next to the blue token representing himself.

   "D-did you mean to-..." Idia starts saying something before cutting himself off and retreating into his hood, pulling the strings so the pink whisps of his hair couldn't be seen.

   Azul misses what Idia was saying, too focused on getting the dice to land on a 2 and a 4. The dice roll across the table and Azul moves his piece 6 places to land directly on another payday.

   Idia immediately forgets what he was talking about, since this was the 5th time this game that Azul had landed on a payday spot. This early in the game, there were only 7 payday spots, and one of them were specifically for people that took the route of going immediately into the workforce. After only 10 minutes of playing. Azul had already tripled the amount of money he had, and while Idia wasn't doing too badly, he was still shocked and amazed at how lucky Azul had gotten over the past couple weeks.

   The nearer to the end of the game, the more suspicious Idia gets. Every time Azul gets close to a pay day, he manages to roll the exact amount to get him to land directly on the payday, feats that the chances of happening naturally are near zero. Idia has to resist the urge to pull at his hair every time he sees the merman's dice hit the perfect number. When the game ends, they both count up their money before turning over their Magical Feats tiles, with Azul having almost twice the amount that Idia had. They count up the additional money and laugh at the various feats the tiles claim they achieved.

   "Meh heh heh, it says I opened a world-famous bakery. A loser like me wouldn't have a job like that." Idia turns the tile so Azul can see it, the better of the pair to run a famous restaurant.

   "And I apparently develop new technology that changes how people live their daily lives. I believe this is more befitting of you, considering your work, especially with Ortho." Azul holds the tile up between his index and middle fingers, smirking amicably at Idia. "They are the same worth, perhaps we should exchange tiles?"

   Shaking his head, Idia turns down Azul's benevolent offer. "Nah, it's better played like this. Maybe we should switch personalities, shee hee hee. I'll be the shady businessman and you can be the loser otaku that nobody with any sense likes."

    A shiver runs down Azul's spine when he thinks of Idia running the Monstro Lounge, and in his daydreams his precious business that he crafted with blood, sweat, and tears (bribery and threatening Crowley) gets run to the ground. He switches topics to get the thought out of his head and begins gloating about how he managed to control the dice.

    "You know how I kept landing on Pay Days? I managed to get ahead of the dice and rigged the dice rolls almost every time." He grins sharply, internally proud of himself for figuring out how to beat the accursed dice. From Idia's perspective, it looks like Azul has lost his mind, but before Idia can remark on it, Azul grabs one of the dice and says a number.

    "I'll make this land on a four, just watch." Concentrated on the die, Azul bites his tongue to keep his hand steady as he preps his wrist. He rolls the die around his hand for a second before flicking his wrist out and sending the die across the table. The two mages hold their breath as the die rolls face over face, finally coming to land on the corner of the four face and the six face. The die shakes a little, then falls with a silent finality on the four face. Idia steps back from the table, shocked that Azul ACTUALLY managed to rig the dice.

   "W-what?! Y-you managed to cheat luck?! You're literally taking the chance out of a game of chance!! How long have you been working on this?" Idia yells out, volume reaching unheard of levels due to his extreme stress.

    "Oh, I don't know, probably only two weeks? I thought that if I could reduce the amount of luck involved... then I can control even a game of dice through sheer willpower! And look how it worked!" Azul gloats, an unfamiliar warm feeling in his chest rising at how Idia inadvertently praised him.

   Meanwhile, Idia's jaw drops at how this shady business man somehow managed to not only control the outcome of a random dice roll, but also fit enough practice in two weeks to become a master at it. It couldn't have been easy, especially with how busy Azul kept himself. As impressed as Idia was, he was still more impressed at how Azul had managed to create his own cheat codes IRL. He could only imagine how much more complicated game club would get, but this would at least give him a chance to work his brain with someone worthy of his effort other than Ortho.