//Ahn: Luck

Ahn couldn't read him. One moment, Nathan had looked like the world was turned against him, the other, he came off as a hero that had recently come home, smiling and laughing as if there was no wrong that could be done to him. Sometimes, he was serious and cunning, others he was outgoing to the extent of coming off as idiotic.

A thin woman in a black synthetic fur dress walked up to Ahn. "What are you two doing over here?" She smiled, revealing a set of blindingly white teeth. "I don't suppose you came here to sulk at a table alone? Why don't you join us for some blackjack? Who knows, it could be your lucky night."

She leaned down and tugged on Ahn's sleeve playfully. The stench of alcohol wafted down as her breath reached Ahn. "Let's go, yeah?"

Ahn thought for a moment. Gambling wasn't normally his thing, but they had virtually no credits to speak of. Real ones, anyway. If they needed to buy something from somebody who had an augmented optical system or an android, they wouldn't be able to.

He slowly pushed his seat back and stood up, earning a confused look from Sae.

'We need money,' he explained. 'We can't rely on fake credits for everything.'

'I see,' her monotonous reply came after a brief moment.

The woman slid her arm down in an attempt to take Ahn's hand, but he lightly swatted it away. She looked a bit hurt, but, perhaps more prominently, confused by his harsh reaction.

If she suspected him in any way, there would be nothing good that could come of it.

"Um…" he started. There weren't many explanations for it. To make things more difficult, he had little to no genuine interactions with women.

"It's fine, sweety," she waved a hand dismissively. "That pretty girl over there is yours, isn't she? She looks like a keeper."

"Right," Ahn said firmly. It was a blatant lie, but likely the most convincing explanation he would find. He glanced back at Sae. She was looking at him with an entirely blank expression.

She may have changed a bit since she first discovered emotions, but things like relationships between people seemed to be completely beyond her. She seemed to like being with Ahn, and sympathized with him, but they had rarely talked about things outside of issues at hand.

That was fine with Ahn. The last thing he wanted to discuss were the things he thought about, or his past. Often, they were the same thing. He, like Sae, struggled to form or understand interpersonal relationships. He had started to make an attempt at one with 4-AE, but it was torn away. What was the point of caring about someone if it would eventually end in sadness?

"Hello?" the woman was waving her hand in front of Ahn's face. "A bit distracted, are we?"

Ahn snapped back to reality, realizing that he had been standing next to a chair in front of a table surrounded by people, all of which were staring at him.

"Right," he said, stiffly pulling a chair out and sitting down. There were five other people, excluding the dealer. They were looking at him as if they were sharks spotting out their prey. They didn't know that he was an android. That would give him an enormous advantage over them.

Ahn watched carefully as the dealer shuffled the cards. A jack, a queen, a three, a seven. The cards flew with impressive dexterity through the man's hands. By the time the man had finished, however, Ahn knew the exact position of each card. He had memorized each individual movement the man had made, and was able to predict how each turn would play out.

For the first two rounds, it would be impossible for him to win. The cards were arranged perfectly so that the woman who had brought him over to the table would get a twenty-one on the initial draw, and the others would get values somewhat lower. The cards in the deck were of high enough value that if the others decided to draw, they would go over twenty-one. A bust.

She was obviously cheating, and had probably paid the dealer off to allow her some easy wins. The dealer dealt the cards, making a subtle effort to keep a straight face as he did so. The woman, who was sitting to the right of Ahn, had a slight smirk on her face before she even picked the cards up.

Ahn sighed. While keeping track of each card as he watched them being shuffled was probably cheating, this woman had managed to beat him not through cleverness, but through sheer amount of money. The only way to beat cheating of that level was to cheat even more.

He set his meager amount of credits on the table. The others scoffed at the tiny portion, then matched it. Ahn saw his opportunity. He only had one arm, but he was still incredibly fast. Faster than the human eye could follow if he were to quickly flash an arm out. None of the people around him had optical augmentations. It was perfect. He almost was grateful to the woman sitting next to him for cheating.

He flicked his arm out, simultaneously grabbing the woman's cards and putting his own in their place. He casually looked at his new cards. A twenty-one, as he suspected.

"A bit overconfident, eh, miss?" a gruff looking man on the opposite end of the table said. "To not even look at your cards."

The woman gave a sly smile as she picked up Ahn's cards, casting a nonchalant glance at them. Ahn noticed her heart rate spike. She was angry.

"Sixteen?" she yelled, then paused. She couldn't give herself away.

The men at the table laughed. "Well, you still have a chance, don't ya? Give it a draw, maybe double up with that swelling pride of yours," the man who had spoken earlier mocked.

The woman shot a death stare at the dealer, who quickly averted his eyes. She reached over to the draw pile. This card, Ahn knew, would be a six. Just enough to give her a bust.

"I'll keep my hand," Ahn said calmly.

The remaining three drew, all with the same result as the woman. Ahn slid the small stacks of credits to add to his own, immediately multiplying his money by a factor of six.

He kept the now moderately sized portion on the table. "I'm betting everything I have right now," he said.

"Beginner's luck," one of the men huffed.

The session ended when the others left out of frustration. Ahn's 'luck' was just too good. He, of course, intentionally lost a few rounds, but won the majority of them, earning himself enough money to live a comfortable life for a couple of months. The people he had been playing with had no shortage of money, but had become tired of losing it.

Ahn stood up and walked over to a credit transfer machine in the corner, exchanging his large amount of bills for higher value ones. He had won so much that he couldn't fit it all into his pockets. He looked around the room for Sae and Nathan.

Sae was sitting in the same place she had been for the past...how long had it been? Ahn checked his internal time mechanism and realized he had been gambling for almost two hours. It was time well spent, as the large sum of money he had earned was a testament to, but it took longer than expected.

A clearly drunken man was stooping over the edge of the table across from Sae, talking loudly about how pretty she was. Sae said something quietly, and the man seemed to not like her response. He stood up straight, shouting with words so heavily slurred they couldn't be considered english anymore. The man reached over when he had finished his rant, grabbing on to Sae's wrist. Ahn almost felt pity for him.

The man tugged on Sae's arm, a startled expression coming over his face when she didn't budge.

"A tough one, are we?" he breathed, gritting his teeth and pulling harder.

It looked almost like a comedy act. The man, who was over twice Sae's size, was pulling with all of his strength, and Sae was sitting in a relaxed position, looking up at his face like he was nothing more than an insect buzzing in the air above.

A few onlookers started to take notice, a few of them laughing at the ridiculous display. This further provoked the man's frustration. He raised a fist, then brought it down as hard as he could at Sae's face, earning some jeers encouraging a fight from the forming audience.

The shouting stopped just as abruptly as the man's fist. Sae was holding it in one of her hands, looking to the side disinterestedly.

The room went silent for a moment.

"Is that all you've got to back up your big talk, Jarvis?!" one of the onlookers yelled, breaking the stupor.

The man, apparently named 'Jarvis', snarled, grabbing for a stun baton at his belt. He swung it wildly at Sae, confident that she would at least have to dodge it. He would make her react, if nothing else.

The only sound in the room was the loud buzz of the baton in Sae's other hand. The group surrounding the two was more shocked than any amount of electricity could have made them. Sae was grasping the baton firmly, taking the electric charge directly into her hand like it was nothing more than a sting.

Cheers erupted from the crowd, along with questions of who this woman was. Jarvis kept swinging futilely, his anger growing with each blocked attack.

"Fight me!" he roared.

Sae obliged.

When Jarvis took his next swing, Sae took hold of his forearm instead of the baton. This time, she didn't let go. Jarvis tried to pull away, but Sae's grip was too strong for him to move.

Sae looked up at him coldly, tightening her grip slightly. Jarvis cried out in a manner unbecoming of such a large man. The viewers weren't laughing anymore. They were fixated on the prospect of somebody being so impervious to such vicious attacks, and her ability to deal with them ease.

"Are you done?" Sae asked coolly.

"Like hell this is over!" Jarvis shouted, pulling away again. His bold words lost any meaning as he flinched from Sae's slowly tightening grip. His arm was turning purple now.

After a few more seconds of struggling in vain, Jarvis decided he had had enough. "I give! I give! Jesus, let me go!"

Sae stared blankly at him. "If I recall correctly, your original statement was, 'like hell this is over'." She closed her fingers a little more, producing a scream from Jarvis.

"Damn, let me go!" he shouted, fruitlessly hitting her with his free arm. She didn't make any attempt to block or even dodge. She just took the impact of each blow, looking more annoyed than anything.

Sae fully closed her fist, a loud cracking sound ringing out as Jarvis' arm fell limply to a mangled ninety degree angle at the breaking point. Jarvis yelled a string of curses as he clutched his injured arm.

Sae ignored him, pushing past a few of the speechless spectators and coming to a halt in front of Ahn.

'We've gotten ourselves a bit of attention,' she thought to him.

'Right,' Ahn replied, having to make a conscious effort not to...what was that feeling?

It disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Ahn discarded the thought. What was important now was leaving before any real trouble came.

'Let's get Nathan and go,' he suggested, scanning the room for their likely severely drunk companion.

Where was he? Ahn had seen him not ten minutes before, and the room was fairly open. Had he managed to slip off without him noticing?

Sae pulled lightly on Ahn's sleeve.

'Nathan appears to be in a bit more trouble than ourselves.'