High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 3 - but life is just a party

"Argh, I'm booored. Let's go out!"

Rose threw her pencil halfway across the private study room of the White Hand.

It didn't surprise Mean that she was bored. While he had been busy trying to make sense of the exercises for his introductory course into stochastics and statistical methods, Rose had worked on the same small flower design for, what... two hours?

He was impressed she was able to keep at it for this long in the first place. But Rose had such a loving eye for detail that she looked at designs differently than... normal people.

"You know what? I'm in. Statistical methods just don't make sense."

He closed his paper notebook with a similar energy as Rose had just tossed her pencil.

"Maths don't make sense in general," she commented.

"One of these days you'll see that maths are just like art. Normal maths that is. It is beautiful. But ugh... Statistics are just so slippery."

"That's exactly why I love it, Mean."

That was Viola, who must have walked in on their conversation behind them, without either of them noticing. She walked down the spiral staircase into their study room as if she had planned this dramatic entrance all along.

"That's what poker is all about. You can't just let your machine calculate a result for you and it's immediately obvious how you have to play. Sure, you need to be able to calculate the odds – which is what stochastics are for, but after that, you have to read the game."

"Did you just call me stupid?"

She laughed.

"Maybe?"

One thing was certain in any case, Mean would never play poker against Viola, ever.

They had grown up together, he had sat next to her when she had made her first attempts, and when she had started to sneak out to bars and later even to backrooms to play for increasingly higher stakes, Mean had stood behind her most of the time, making sure she didn't get into trouble.

While the rumour wasn't true that she had never lost a game in her life – of course she had – it was true that she rarely left a table with a negative balance.

And though the story had grown a lot in the telling, it was true that she had once managed to survive for two weeks without her parents' allowance on poker earnings alone.

"You know, if you had succeeded in recruiting that Einstein boy-"

Mean rolled his eyes.

Why did she have to bring up that sore topic again?

The fact that the guy hadn't shown up at their door so far, and he had in fact completely ignored the existence of the White Hand outright, was still a thorn in his side.

One that hurt.

"He said he preferred Higgs."

"Whatever," Viola smirked, "when are you going to invite him again? I think he'll be worth it. I'm sure he could explain stochastics to you."

Mean hit the table with his flat hand, as if he was putting an imaginary pencil down with force.

"Unlike you apparently, I respect a no when I hear one. I invited him, he said no – and like I told you repeatedly, he is too rude, anyway. Let's find someone else. We have two spots to fill. Didn't you have that party idea, Rose?"

Thankfully, Rose didn't need to be prompted twice and immediately opened her mouth to start explaining. She didn't get far however. She quickly stopped on her track when she caught Viola's gaze and saw the raised index finger she was wagging slightly.