Planning

"That sounds painful," Toki said, still hanging in midair as Hana sighed. Jack spoke instead: "Listen, dude, I don't know what happened, but I won't give a fuckin shit for an assface like you, so fuck off." The man was pissed, ready to pop a vein as he reeled back his punch to hit Jack, but a notification popped up. 

[Violence in the general area is banned.]

The man sighed in a frustrated tone. Just then, Toki said, "Oh, hey captain," and Dustin came walking back with both hands in his pockets. After they explained it all to him, "Alright then. Let's do this. I'll challenge your team for the next round; if you win, you can get 3k merits from each of us. If we win, you give us 2,000 merits and say sorry to Toki." The man looked at them as if he had gotten the best deal of his life.

"Deal," he said, shaking Dustin's hand before he walked away.

"What an asshole!" Hana said this time, finally letting Toki down. Dustin sighed and looked at Jack. "You can heal people, right?" 

Jack was a bit confused but nodded. 

"Good, because I think my hand is broken from that handshake," he said, making Jack realize what a mess they had gotten into.

After that, they went back to their room, where Toki was hit by Hana. They got into this whole mess because of him, while Jack did feel bad for Toki. That idiot deserved it. Dustin only sighed as he looked at the screen.

"System showed us that man's first round match," and the screen changed instantly to the match between that man's team and his opponent. Watching it was surprising. The match was more or less one-sided from the start; the man seemed to have some kind of super strength while his team member was able to turn any object he touched into ashes. That was a fucking op, but whatever he needed, he just needed to make sure he didn't let him touch his items. He wanted to keep his special abilities for when single matches finally started. 

But at least they had some idea. "Great so we don't even know what 2 of them can do" hana siad shooting toki an angry look, toki who was hiding behind dustin right now didn't dare look back. 

"At least we know what two of them can do." Dustin said, looking at the footage, and then he looked at Jack and said, "And they don't know what one of us can do."

"In all honesty, even I don't know what I will end up doing," he said, smiling behind that joker mask. He almost forgot he was wearing that as he sighed and then looked at Dustin. "Any plan?" 

"Well, even if I do make one, we need to select a game first," he said, looking at the screen. "Z, are you there?" 

He asked if the screen suddenly went black and the letter Z showed up on it. "What do you need?"

"We would like to challenge that guys group who tried to attack Jack," Dustin said, as that was the only system-related interaction they had with him.

"Alright, challenge request sent... and they accepted it. Well, whatever, I'll randomize a game for you guys," Z said before the screen started shuffling through so many games they could hardly keep up before ultimately stopping on...

[Congratulations, King of the Hill has been selected.].

[You have 10 minutes to prepare.]

"All right, best of luck," Z said from the screen before it turned black and vanished. 

Toki, who was hiding behind Dustin, spoke up to him. "Uh, what's the king of the hill?"

Dustin sighed.. "Basically, there is a zone on the top of the hill; whoever stays in that zone longer wins. Each team's goal is to stay longer than the other team, it seems." 

Honestly, even Jack didn't know what that game was, so he nodded as well before waiting for Dustin to make a plan. Meanwhile, he knew he was going to be used as a main weapon since he brought in the factor of surprise, and he didn't mind that at all. But the factor of surprise was such a surprise, even though he didn't know what it was going to be. While he agreed with Dustin that this was a great plan, he didn't know what he would do if he rolled a 1 again. He didn't want to reveal all his cards yet. "I hate gambling," he said to himself.

"But didn't you gamble as a career?" Toki said as the Joker-masked man looked at Toki. Toki was hit twice at that time—once by Hana and once by Jack now. Anyway, the match was about to start, and Dustin only sighed deep in thought.