Mission start

he Games We Play​

Mission Start​

​

Luck's a funny thing.

So is poker.

And my life, I guess, considering how the former led me to the latter.

A few hours after I started gambling, I'd found myself at a table being dealt cards. All around the table were older men in suits that made me feel young and underdressed. And, given how they all seemed aware of those facts as well, outnumbered.

I didn't start the night at the poker table, of course. I didn't even intend to go there at first. I didn't know precisely how Luck was trained in the beginning, so I started with the options that depended solely—or almost solely—on luck. I played some baccarat, craps, and took a few turns on the roulette wheel. I won some, I lost a few more, but I kept the individual bets small and in the end I didn't lose too much money. Better yet, my Luck began leveling up gradually, improving as I won, which I did a lot more often than I thought I would, though that wasn't saying much.

But then, that's why I'd put five points into it, wasn't it? What had held true before held true again; if I needed to get lucky to improve Luck, I'd need some luck to build off of, first.

With that confirmation of how Luck improved, however, I started experimenting. I began with higher bets, going from a hundred lien to a thousand where I could and making the highest legal bet when the limit was lower. As I still lost the same number of times, that quickly dropped my cash from near sixty thousand to below forty in about an hour—more money than I had ever personally spent in my life before today, down the drain like nothing. And yet, in that same time, I earned several levels of Luck, which itself began to show in my favor, though it wasn't enough to make me win more then I lost or even breakeven.

Until I started playing blackjack and counting the cards. That was the next thing I wanted to check, after all—if there were things other than luck involved, could it still be improved? The answer turned out to be 'it depends.' It was possible so long as luck still played a major role; that is, being good and lucky was fine, but there came a point where it wasn't really luck anymore. I could use Observe to see the cards I was about to be dealt or even those inside of the deck. I could also use it to read the dealer's emotions and many other things, to a point where I knew exactly what to expect and could plan around it.

But at that point, it wasn't really a question of Luck anymore and the stat didn't seem to improve.

There was, however, a balance. If I simply kept a running count of all the cards that had been played, thus giving me a fair idea on whether the remaining deck leaned towards high or low value cards…that was something else, sort of. I was shifting the odds in my favor, but I didn't know the specifics of each card, of each move. As long as I restrained myself, I couldn't be certain of winning or losing, and luck had its place.

However, the degree that Luck improved varied—I figured it depended on how much a specific win had to do with knowledge and skill compared to how lucky I was—and it made luck slow to improve, even if I could win far more often that way. I found it worked better if I played high-stakes games around the rest of the casino until I had been chiseled down to about half my funds and then winning them back with blackjack, again and again. Though the dealers had gotten suspicious and had seemed ready to complain or ban me from the games after a while, Junior had stepped in and that had ended that, leaving me to buckle-down and grind tediously.

At least until Junior himself had interrupted me with an offer to try my luck at what he referred to as 'the big boy's table.' I was understandably suspicious and about a hundred percent certain he was pulling something over on someone, whether by trying to use me against the table or draw me in to get creamed.

I accepted anyway, simply because it had seemed like it might be a good opportunity and I was curious which, in time, had led me to the side room, Adam following at my back. My first hour at the table had been…

Have you ever heard the saying that if you can't spot the sucker within the first half-hour, you are the sucker? Yeah, well, I was the sucker. In that time, I'd dropped from near seventy thousand to barely hanging onto the edge of twenty. It had been pretty brutal—but also a learning experience, in several very literal senses. I'd learned that Poker was great when it came to improving Luck, as well as several different skills—including, unsurprisingly, the Poker skill I developed while doing it.

I also learned that, though I had no real attachment to the money I was spending, being made a fool of brought out the competitive side of me and all pretenses of fairness and mercy had spontaneously evaporated. I Observed their emotions, I counted the cards—which wasn't as effective as in Blackjack but still useful—and Intimidated them as best I could, and all around was an unabashed cheating cheater, allowing me to make a comeback and improve my skills.

But even if I could read people easily and was scarier then I should have been, Poker was just weird sometimes, which was probably why it was so good for Luck—alongside, I suspected, the nature of human competition, how it was a zero-sum game, and the probabilities involved due to the higher number of variables. It wasn't the merely game itself that was weird, though it had its fair share of oddness, it was just…

I'd climbed my way up to ninety thousand over the course of another hour, was dropped down to thirty half an hour later, went on a winning streak back up to seventy, got dragged down to forty, rose to over a hundred in a fairly amazing section of the game if I do say so myself, and fought every step of the way when they pulled be back to seventy again. It was just all over the place and in strange ways. It sounded really exciting when I spread it all out like that and it was, in a way, but there were a lot of silences, a lot of waiting, holding, and folding, and a lot of watching and staring. Parts of the game were twist after twist and other were empty and tense.

I'd gotten pretty good at it. I think it's because most of that had grown a lot more applicable to my life lately; preparations and patience and numbers leading up to an attack, no way of knowing if you were about to be struck down, and getting by on masks and lies. Getting by on wits and sheer dumb luck, that was my new life in a nutshell. And slowly, as the night dragged on, the odds seemed to shift in my favor as my luck gradually improved.

And then it was over. People had spent the evening sliding in and out of the game, whether because they were cutting their losses or wanted to quit while they were ahead, but I hadn't truly noticed how much time had passed until Junior returned to close up. I waited for the others to leave, Adam leaning against the wall behind me.

"Pleasure doing business with you," I said to Junior, voice polite as I held out his due. I still wasn't certain if he'd seen some skill in me or just wanted to bring in a sucker, but he seemed pleased whatever the case.

The larger man snorted as he palmed the money.

"You're a weird kid, Jian," He said. "But if this is your idea of gambling, you're welcome back any time. And if you want a more permanent arrangement…come by again and we'll talk."

"I'll do that," I said, bowing my head slightly. "Have a nice day, Mr. Xiong. Adam?"

My higher-leveled friend pushed off the wall, adjusting the glasses that had slowly slipped down his nose as we left.

"You get what you needed?" He murmured as we walked out into the darkness.

"Hard to tell with Luck," I replied. "But I think so; I was doing better there, at the end. We'll have to test what it actually does, though. But…"

I was feeling lucky, I didn't say.

He nodded as if he understood anyway and then, somewhere between that step and the next, Blake was walking beside us, dropping down silently from above. Adam didn't react and, thanks to the Gamer's Mind, neither did I. She didn't question why we had been inside a casino or a club, though, so I assumed Adam had told her what we were doing when he informed her of our location. She passed me a pair of small booklets that I held onto until we were inside the car, at which point I promptly devoured it, closing my eyes as the knowledge flowed into me.

And then I flashed back to some superstitions about black cats as I suddenly stopped feeling lucky.

I felt my face twitch down into a frown as I stewed in the new information for a time. I glanced at Adam and then back at Blake, exhaling slowly. I think both of them noticed the sudden change in me and though they didn't visibly react, there was a sudden tension in the air.

One of the books had been the schematics for the airship, if relatively brief, but I didn't need obvious details when my power gave me full understanding of everything written within something. The other had, of course, been the driver's manual. We'd found the former in one of the email account Blake had gotten, emailed there by an employee that wanted to go some work at home, and she'd gotten the latter from the computer of one of the pilots, once we'd had their names. There was some overlap between the two, but to give ourselves the best chance, I'd asked she get and print off both—and between both of them, I knew everything I needed. And it was…

"Give me a minute to think," I said, putting the car in gear and leaving the parking lot. Even this later, there were a fair number of people mulling about, but that's not why I was moving—as safe places to talk about stuff went, inside a locked car in a parking lot was actually fairly good. I just wanted to move and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have helped Adam and Blake's nerves if I spent a few minutes in brooding silence. I turned on the radio for the same reasons, shifting it absently until I found something tolerable.

I drove aimlessly for a little bit, though it may not have seemed that way since I'd memorized the streets, and simply mulled over the new information. Some of it was good, some of it was bad, but…

In time, I pulled over and finally sighed.

"It could be worse," I admitted, most because I didn't think they'd fall for a lie. "We can still do this, it'll just take a bit more work."

Reaching into my Inventory I drew out the schedule for the event and I took another glance over it to be sure I remembered it, filling in the blanks with the knowledge I now had. I pulled out my scroll next and placed it in my lap for the moment.

"Okay," I said, drawing out a pen and notepad as well and flipping the latter open to a blank page to start doodling. "The good news is, I can definitely fly the thing. I know everything it can do; I can put it through its paces. The bad news is that we're going to have a few things to deal with first, if we want to get it in the air."

I finished the drawing, sketching out a rough illustration of the airship's sleek design and marking out bits I thought were important, scrawling brief notes beside them.

"The first issue we'd anticipated; there are several security measures on the airship itself. Most of them won't be an issue, because they'll need to be taken off for the presentation, but there are several that…" I shook my head. "There's software on the ship specifically for this presentation, to make sure nothing goes wrong, and it's both inside and outside the ship. The stuff inside won't be a problem since most of it was explained in the books, but…that outside controls will be a bit tougher."

I added another drawing off to the side, this one of a man in a room.

"This is the control station," I said, tapping the new picture. "It's mainly in case of emergencies and to avoid any incidents in the demonstration. Among other things, it can remotely lock and unlock the weapons systems on the Airship, largely to make sure no accidents happen within city limits, and if something happens, it can activate the emergency landing protocols even if the controls within the ship suffer damage, causing the ship to lower safely to the ground. Actually flying the ship requires both a confirmation from within the ship and one from outside it to unlock everything."

"So they can shut us down any time?" Adam asked, tilting his head to the side. "That's what you're saying?"

"Yes…and no," I said, raising a hand to forestall them. "There's a few ways around it. It's all password or scroll activated, but if things are unlocked from both sides, I think I might be able to change which passwords and scrolls. They've had to go through a number of pilots and technicians, so I know it's possible, we just need to figure out a few things first. This is primarily an issue of timing, since it'll be hard to do beforehand, but we can do it."

"How?" Blake asked, surprisingly calm. I guess she wasn't surprised that things had gotten a bit more difficult.

"I'll get inside the ship," I said. "You'll need to handle the control center, because it'll need to be done quickly and quietly. I'll need to know the specifics about the system they're using to be sure of anything, but I can sneak in and wait until at least the flight portion of the system is activated. You get into the control tower, we disable whoever we need to, we change everything we have to, and we're fine."

"You think you can do that?" Adam asked. "Sneak in and change everything?"

"Probably," I said. "Maybe. Not enough information to say for sure, but it should be possible. If we walk in after they undo most of the defenses, it should be possible. Some of it depends on who controls what and how. If they're paranoid enough, then no, it won't work—but people will do what's most convenient, right?"

He huffed out a tiny laugh, tilting his head my way.

"We still have the advantage, because for all these precautions, they aren't expecting something to happen," I said seriously. "These security measures are just to ensure they don't make fools of themselves at such a big event, not to defend against attackers, which was why they prepared three different pilots. They'll keep the security measures simple, I guarantee it, because anything they make us go through, they have to go through themselves. Remember that, however things seem. For example, I know I can get on the ship, because of the second issue, which simultaneously makes things easier and harder for us—the ship won't be armed until shortly after it makes its appearance."

"I'd hoped to steal it as soon as we knew its location…" Blake sighed. "Why are they doing it that way? Why not before hand?"

"Vanity, I think," I said, lifting the schedule. "Part of the pilot's manual was a schedule for flying and refueling it and if I compare it to the activity schedule, I can make some guesses. A hundred lien says that whoever's in charge will give some speech and the airship will fly into sight over a building or something and do some tricks in the sky or whatever—something to show it off early on before the presentation and the main event—but they don't want to take any chances, so they won't arm it until they start preparing for the flight along the Vytal trade route. It'll land and everyone will have a chance to marvel at it while the presenter hypes it up, and then it'll refuel, take off, and fly to Mistral in record time for the other half of the demonstration, recording the flight."

Blake tilted her head to the side and her ears twitched.

"Ah," She said. "I see. That's when you'll sneak in."

I nodded.

"I should be able to sneak way and get on board, whether as cargo or one of the people refueling and loading. I'll lay low until it's time and we'll take things over from inside once they unlock things—which they should do about fifteen minutes to half an hour before they're scheduled to leave, to check things one last time. That gives me time to make sure they won't be able to shut us down with a push of a button and that should give you a chance to get back."

"Where is the command station?" Blake asked, to which I shrugged.

"I don't know yet," I said. "But I'll find out. I do know there's a range limit to the thing, though, and I can make some guesses."

"If I'm running late, don't wait up for me," She said, accepting that I would find it.

"You want me to be the distraction, then?" Adam asked.

"God, no," I said, drawing another piece of paper out of my Inventory and tossing it at him. "Have you seen the guest list? Let's try and avoid a fight if at all possible. No, I need your help with something else."

Adam glanced over the list and grimaced, nodding. There were a bunch of people on it I was sure even he didn't want to deal with—like the current Headmaster of Beacon.

"Our main objective is to go unnoticed as long as possible," I said, opening up my scroll and bringing up a map of Vytal. Vale was already marked, but I used the draw function to create an arc to the east. "So long as we're proactive and they don't even know they're supposed to be reacting, we have the advantage. Even after that, we want to keep them on the defensive and guessing. Since they don't suspect anyone's going to steal the ship—much less successfully pilot it—it should take a while to form a real response; call it a five, ten minute delay on reinforcements once we get passed whoever's guarding the area. We have an advantage in that the airship we're going to steal is very fast for its size and designed to fly between the kingdoms, but there are smaller craft designed for speed that may be able to catch up to us around here—unless something happened to delay them, of course."

Adam hummed, drumming his fingers on Wilt and Blush.

"If we can safely get passed here," I drew two arcs, one further out then the other. "We should be beyond their reach. And if we get over here, it'll be too dangerous for them to risk following."

"That's not on the trade route," Adam noted, sighing.

I just grinned at him.

"You really think I'm making a detour for some stupid Grimm?" I asked. "Hell no—the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, whether a few monsters are two stupid to get out of the way or not. Besides, didn't I tell you—we want to keep them guessing. If we fly on the trade routes, yeah, it'll be safer, but they'll know which way we're going and we'll probably meet some resistance along the way. If we fly off and vanish though…well, who's to say where we're going? Where we'll appear? That we're even alive? And if a few tracking devices get shut off suddenly a while after we disappear…"

I shrugged.

"Here's the plan…"

XxXXxX