Card Games

"Ah, life is exhausting."
With a sigh Ardyn approached the caravan they had rented for the night.

Noctis shot him a glance, even though he could barely keep his eyes off his mobile. Ardyn looked positively exhausted, but then again, he always had a certain air of weariness about him. Apart from the Chancellor, they all sat around a plastic table in front of the caravan to play a mobile game.
"What have you been up to?", Noctis asked casually.

"You know; Making calls, pulling strings. The usual", Ardyn replied and stepped closer to look over the shoulders of Ignis and Prompto.

"You lot seem mighty busy."

"We are playing Triple Triad", Prompto explained.

"It is really popular right now", Ignis added.

Ardyn looked mildly confused at the four of them, all sitting around the table staring at their phones.
"All of you? How does that work?"

"You only need a mobile", Noctis explained.

From a coat pocket Ardyn pulled out a flip phone. It was an old model, the kind that used to come with a regular display and a bunch of buttons, but it appeared to be in a very good condition still.

"Where'd you get that from?", Gladio asked with a chuckle. "The stone age?"

"Not quite. The minister gave it to me some ten to twenty years ago."

"Man, that makes it almost as old as me", Noctis remarked.

Prompto eyed Ardyns phone with curiosity. "Look at the design!"

"My dad had one of these", Gladio said. "They're actually quite sturdy and the battery lasts pretty much forever. Something like this would not happen with one of these." He tilted his smart phone enough to reveal the large crack that ran across the display.

"What happened? Did you drop it?", Prompto wanted to know.

"Nope. Just took a beating along with me."

"In any case", Noctis said, turning to Ardyn, "you won't be able to play Triple Triad with that."

"Too bad." The chancellor put his flip phone away. "Well, nevermind. I don't need to try everything that is popular. I suppose I'll simply lie down early."

From the corner of his eye, Noctis watched him disappear into the caravan. It did not take long before he started to feel bad for him, even though he knew it was mostly just the generation gap between them and not really his fault Ardyn did not know how to spend his evening.
"This is kind of awkward", he mumbled to himself and received some questioning looks from his friends in return. "Hey, Ardyn! If you pull up a chair I'll explain the game to you using my mobile."

Ardyn stuck his head out the door, looking surprised. "Alright." He took one of the remaining chairs just as Noctis had suggested and sat down next to him. If only communication with the chancellor was always this easy.

Noctis showed him the game screen. "It's a card game, see? You get to place them on this board, and if your card has a higher number than the one next to it, you score a point. It's really simple to understand, but there are also a lot of different moves you can make."

"I like to regard it as a form of mental exercise", Ignis chimed in.

Ardyn listened intently while Noctis explained some of the more strategic aspects of the game in a mock battle against Prompto. It was not long before he asked Noctis to let him have a go, so Noctis set up Ardyn against Prompto with the cards he had chosen earlier. To his surprise, Ardyn lost.

"Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it quickly", Prompto said.

"Would you care for a rematch?", Ardyn asked.

"Sure."

The rematch went down quickly and ended in a devastating loss for Prompto.

"Wow, you really know how to play once you know how to play", Prompto admitted. "I'm kinda glad now you don't have a smart phone."

Ardyn looked among the remaining members of Noctis' retinue.

"Who wants to go next?"

His glance was met with a challenging look by Ignis.

"I'll play against you."

"Iggy's real good", Prompto warned him.

Noctis knew he did not even have the right cards to beat Ignis, and he had not yet explained Ardyn how to choose the best cards, either, so Ardyn was using the same ones he had used against Prompto. Fairly early into the game, he set a card into a spot that made it practically defenceless.

"An obvious mistake", Ignis said and scored a point.

"Oh dear, whatever am I doing to do?" With that mocking tone of his, Ardyn set down a card that outplayed both Ignis' and his earlier one and turned the game around.

Prompto, who was watching from over Ignis' shoulder, gasped. "Wicked move!"

"Nice try, but it will not get you very far."

It came down to a draw in the end, which, if Noctis was being honest, was probably the best that could be achieved with the cards chosen. He took his mobile out of Ardyn's hands to review his total score. "I think that's enough for now."

The chancellor leaned back, looking very pleased with himself. "This game has some interesting tactical aspects to it, I must admit. Although I still prefer chess. If we ever get a chance, I will gladly take any of you on."

Ignis adjusted his glasses. "You may consider this challenge accepted."


When I read that the game the boys play, "King's Knight", is actually a vertically-scrolling shooter, I replaced it in this scene with Triple Triad from FFVIII, because a) I've actually played that, b) it is fairly easy to explain and c) it seems more like something Ardyn would try.
This scene could be set at pretty much any caravan, anywhere, anytime, so you can decide for yourself where and when they are exactly.
It's a slife-of-life kind of chapter, I know, but there will be "meatier" chapters, I promise.

Also, I've written this directly in English, because it is so short and 95% dialogue anyway. Let me know it if shows.