+High Stakes and Slacks+
Kenren glanced over as his door opened, wondering if someone was going to make him do work. He decided that wasn't the case when he had to look down to about the level of his own navel before making eye-contact with the visitor. Reassured that work wasn't in his future, Kenren waved his visitor in and went back to trying to make a house out of the cigarette butts that were threatening to overtake his desk.
"What can I do for you, shorty?" Kenren asked as he attempted to create a bedroom on the second room on the second floor using a slightly-soggy cigarette that had been prematurely extinguished when he'd accidentally spilled half a glass of beer on Tenpou the night before.
Goku didn't answer right away, and that was suspicious. Kenren looked up again curiously, to find that a pair big brown eyes were looking up at him from the other side of his desk. Tenpou probably would have used a world like "balefully" for the expression on Goku's face, but Kenren liked to think that he didn't know such big words.
"Is something wrong?" he asked, straightening and preparing to thump the person responsible for making Goku look worried. The butt house teetered and threatened to fall.
"Noo..." Goku replied, slowly.
"What, then?"
"Ken nii-chan...I was wondering why Ten-chan was making you take off your pants?"
Kenren's boots, the ashtray, and most of the house he'd been building fell off the table, the first with a loud thud, the second with a light tinkling noise, and the third simply making a huge mess. "What?"
If Goku noticed that the way Kenren was barely able to squawk the word out, he didn't say anything. "Konzen kicked me out last night, so I was going to come visit you, but you were busy."
The wheels in Kenren's brain turned, grinding against one another as he tried to remember what Tenpou had been doing with his pants the night before. He'd been very drunk, he remembered that. But certainly he would remember something like Tenpou forcing him to remove his pants. He was going to have to have serious words with his brain if he didn't.
"Ten-chan said that you should stop trying to fall asleep on him, because he intended to have your pants, too" Goku elaborated finally.
Ah. Okay. He remembered that part. Thank Kami-sama.
"Oh, that? That was just Tenpou and I playing a little game," Kenren said, and then pondered if that sounded quite as bad as he thought it did.
"A game?" Goku parroted, brightening. "What sort of game?"
They'd started with Mahjong, and a couple of lackeys, but then the lackeys had left, and Kenren had gotten bored, and depressed, so Tenpou had allowed them to move on to Sic Bo. He had no idea...oh, wait. Yes. He'd given up his pants reasonably late in the night. They weren't something you gambled lightly.
"It's a guessing game," Kenren said. "You play with dice."
Goku looked contemplative – for about a millisecond – and then bounced on his heels. "Teach me!"
There really couldn't be any harm in it, Kenren thought. He wasn't that worried about Goku getting his pants. The boy was unlikely to even understand the idea of safe bets, and Kenren had the feeling he could make the dangerous bets look much more appealing. He'd keep his pants and it was likely to be entertaining.
Five hours later, Kenren was wondering how the hell it had come to this. He'd given Goku half of what was in his pocket to begin with – some string, a few pieces of lint, and a couple of small coins, and now the boy had everything that was in his pocket, and quite a bit of what was on his desk, too.
The boy had grasped the rules of the game, and the idea of making medium-risk bets, far more quickly than he had a right too. He should be bad at this. No one made smart bets the first time out. It wasn't fair.
"You call first," Goku said, sounding as professional as a hyper-active monkey can sound when gambling.
"Alright," Kenren muttered, "I'll take...," he trailed off as his door opened.
Konzen looked at them for a moment, taking in the dice, the stacks of money and other things next to them, and asked carefully, in the voice that tended to make people worry. "Goku...what are you doing in here?"
Goku looked at him for a long time, then at Kenren. Then he beamed, and Kenren could feel his control of the situation slipping away. "I'm trying to make Ken nii-chan take off his pants."
Konzen didn't bat an eyelash, simply shifted his gaze to Kenren. "Really?"
"Yeah, I heard Ten-chan and him doing it last night, and it seemed like fun."
Right. Kenren flinched, and wondered why he'd taught Goku to gamble instead of teaching him how to drink. If he'd taught him to drink, they'd be very drunk right now and maybe Konzen's dry look might seem a bit less deadly.
"What were we doing last night?"
The voice curled around the corner fluidly, and Kenren really wasn't sure if he was happy to hear it. While he doubted Tenpou would allow Konzen to kill him for thinking he'd molested Goku, he also doubted the man would be kind enough to simply explain matters.
"Apparently, you were making Kenren take off his pants."
"Ah. Yes," Tenpou replied as he appeared in the doorway, confirming all of Kenren's fears. This was headed down a very bad road.
"And were you successful?" Konzen asked, and Kenren's toes curled in his boots. The ice hadn't melted from Konzen's expression and it was still looking at him.
"Unfortunately he fell asleep before we could finish," Tenpou purred.
Goku had been looking between them for the entire conversation, and seemed a bit upset by that revelation. "You wouldn't fall asleep before I finished, would you?"
"Of...course not," Kenren croaked out. There just wasn't a correct answer to that.
"Good," Goku said, then paused. "Large."
"...Large?"
"Yes. The dice. Large numbers, total above six. I'll bet, uh, this," Goku said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a very nice, gray, rock.
"Ah," Kenren said, as it slowly dawned on him that Konzen had walked in before they'd called their bets on the last turn. He was still losing horribly. Worse than he'd lost to Tenpou, actually. But he wasn't about to give ANYONE his pants. He hadn't given them to Tenpou and he damn well wasn't given them to Goku. "I think there will be a number one on one of the dice. My left boot," he muttered.
Goku looked hard at him, and then at the covered dice. "I also bet that the number three will be on two of the dice. I bet, uh, Konzen!"
Kenren turned a bit green, and an eye to Konzen. He needed out of this game now. Maybe Konzen would simply hit him, and not kill him. Or something. Winning Konzen, however, was not a good thing at all. It was a bad thing. A very bad thing. "I stay with 1-1, and raise my bet to," he glanced around the room, gaze landing briefly on Tenpou, and then very quickly continuing on. He really had nothing left. He was going to lose his pants or win Konzen, and either way it was a bad deal. Fine. "I'll bet my pants."
Goku's face lit up, and he certainly wasn't about to raise his bid. He placed his hand over the bowl, counted to three, and lifted.
6
3
3
Kenren groaned. A total above seven, and two threes. He'd lost everything.
Tenpou didn't make a sound, but Kenren could swear he was laughing. Konzen was still standing there, twitching slightly.
Out his pants and a boot, Kenren sighed. "Good call, kid. You want payment now or later?"
"Ten-chan says a man should never leave debts unsettled," Goku replied firmly.
Kenren wondered when exactly Tenpou had given Goku advice on debts, but reached down to untie his boot and push it over to Goku. "We'll have to go to my quarters for the pants," he said calmly. Maybe, just maybe, he could get out of this gracefully. Or as gracefully as someone who had just lost their pants to a child in a game of dice could get out of something.
Goku looked at him hard, then grinned and shrugged. "Oh. It's okay. Just give them to Tenpou. I won them for him, anyway."
Kenren and Konzen both turned sharply to the field marshal, who blinked once before one corner of his mouth twitched upwards. "I'm flattered."
"You wanted them so badly last night, so..." Goku trailed off suddenly, and looked at Konzen.
"Can we go outside?"
"..."
"It's boring in here. I've been sitting her for hours trying to win Kenren's pants, and now I have. So I want to go outside. C'mon..." Goku stood up, grabbed Konzen's hand, and was dragging him out the door, with nothing more than a quick wave goodbye.
"Well..." Kenren began, as the door shut behind them.
"You seem to owe me a pair of pants," Tenpou interrupted with a grin.
Kenren sighed, and then decided to make the most of it and grinned back. Somehow he doubted Tenpou was going to accept any other pair of pants than the one he was wearing. And, to be fair, he had fallen asleep last night
And Goku was right: A man shouldn't leave his debts unsettled.
+End+