After that monstrous 4500+ chapter yesterday I decided to take this one easy.

The prompt was 'Two or more characters play a board game one stormy night'. Originally I wanted them to play Cards AGainst Humanity, but I didn't know how to write people playing that game. Next time I play it I'll write down all the cards that are played and incorporate that in inot the story. It might be Pendragon, might not. Depends on what cards are played.

ALSO I FINALLY REGAINED INSPIRATION FOR AMNESIA SO GUESS WHAT WILL BE UPDATED SOMETIME IN THE NEXT COUPLE DAYS. That means this is gonna be cut short. I really enjoyed doing this and might do it again in the future. Don't worry, there's still one more of these oneshots left, and then it'll be over.

Bobby vowed, from this day forward, to never again play another board game with Loor.

Especially Monopoly.

Ever.

The reasoning for this? After she got the hang of the game, she wiped the board with his ass. Despite coming from a culture that wasn't quite this advanced yet, Loor was fricken amazing at all the skills it took to be good at Monopoly. Bobby debated the merits of starting a small business with her once all this Halla-protecting stuff was over. She could run everything and manage it fine on her own. She could also be the night guard. Whatever. Probably not, but man, with how good she was, he wondered why she hadn't already figured this stuff out on Zadaa.

She had kicked him out in the first couple rounds, then set to bankrupting Spader and Courtney. Mark joined him a round later, having also sucked royally.

"Never would have thought she'd be this good," Mark had said, voicing Bobby's thoughts.

"Yeah." Bobby watched her stoically take over the board as Courtney groaned; she'd finally had to give up Boardwalk. Bobby had felt himself grow warm with pride for Loor.

That was about a half hour ago. Since then they'd started another round, but with a new member who dropped by. Aja. She had said she'd been stressed out from her continued upkeep of the Lifelight pyramids and decided to take a short break. She came here to Second Earth to see what they were doing, and found them about to start again. Apparently there was a game similar on Veelox, of which Aja'd been fond of during the Academy. She joined in, feeling pretty confident in her skills, and expecting a fun evening.

All hell broke loose.

Loor was competitive, obviously. It was in her nature. Aja wasn't quite as competitive, but she had an ego. That ego took a minor beating when she discovered that she wasn't the best anymore. She now had competition for first place, something she wasn't used to. And she was determined.

It started out with petty insults to each other's intelligence. That devolved into flicking board pieces at each other. Bobby, Spader, Mark, and Courtney eventually just bailed out, and left the board to be battled over by the two. Bobby got everyone drinks, and they settled in to watch the war.

The flicking soon turned into full-on hurling, and the game itself was nearly abandoned. They each owned half the board, and were going back and forth with the money at this point. It was clear that neither was going to win, but the two women had histories of being stubborn, and neither were ready to admit a draw.

"You already own the most powerful places on the board, why are you so determined to have the brown ones?!"

"They have hotels on them!"

"So do Boardwalk and Park Place! That makes them far more powerful than anything else. Look, I will give you my Leicester, Bow, and Whitechapel instead."

"I refuse!"

"Why do you insist on only those two?"

"To take them from you!"

Bobby sighed. This was a bad idea. Never again.

I hate playing monopoly. We never get anywhere.

But yeah, I like to imagine Loor as actually pretty intelligent, but she just prefers the physical method instead. Plus there's the thought that Zadaa hasn't advanced in that way yet, at least with the Batu. Hell, I don't think the Rokador are quite there yet. I don't care. I imagine that once Loor gets the hang of things, she's pretty calculating and smart. My story, I can do what I want with the characters.