One of the things that Marcus was best at was board games. He'd grown up with a father who loved to play them and then had spent the better part of two years stuck on a military base with little else to do to occupy time other than play various games with other, similarly trapped people.

That being said, he had never experienced such a brutal, universal string of losses at any game (let alone all of them) than what he was currently weathering.

He had always assumed that Rosie (though obviously fairly eccentric) was highly intelligent. He had discovered that this had carried over into the realm of games.

It was the fifth day since Rosie had wedged her way into his existence and several days before she had suggested gathering items from the surrounding neighborhood to make additions to his relatively sparse home.

Other than the entire library of books that Marcus had collected over the years (many of which were taking up the entirety of what had formerly been a bedroom) he had little in the way of anything else on display (other than his father's medals, in the very room they now occupied) so, trying extremely hard to be a good host, he had ultimately complied with this request.

Rosie then proceeded to have a field day collecting vases and other containers that could hold flowers before scouring the entire square mile around his residence for as many flowers as she could find to put in them. The vases were now all over the house, with one occupying just about every flat surface that could support one.

Additionally, she had suggested gathering as many games as they could to help them pass the time, subtly insisting that she wanted to spend time with him. Even still, Marcus had already set Rosie up with one of his favorite novels (which was huge) and she was, to his knowledge, chipping away at that during her time when she wasn't with him.

But, as it turned out, the girl was insanely good at games. Scrabble, Risk, Stratego, Battleship and any other games that involved anything other than pure luck she was utterly dominant at. She was also exceptional at all card games they had played. Marcus hadn't, for instance, won a single hand of poker against her (the girl was entirely unreadable; she possessed the perfect poker face).

In fact, the only game where Marcus had so far managed to hold his own was the current one: Monopoly. Luck had, thankfully, been on his side up to this point and he and Rosie were pretty much at a dead tie in terms of amount of currency and amount of properties owned. Against her being even, at this point, was a victory in his book.

Things had pretty much remained status quo at his place, which was pretty impressive given that he had never had a guest over for one night, nevertheless nearly a week. The fact that it was an exceptionally smart, incredibly pretty girl should have only added to the odds that something catastrophic would happen, but so far, thankfully, nothing had.

She was polite, unobtrusive (well, except when she wanted to know something about him, anyway) and she didn't seem to have any attraction to him whatsoever, which made it very, very easy for Marcus to keep a safe distance from her.

Despite this, he had slept every single night in his garage under his truck, just to be safe. He had padded under his sleeping bag with a sleeping pad he had owned forever and had added several additional blankets to the increasingly comfortable makeshift bed he had created. He was thankful that his truck was fairly high off the ground, otherwise with the amount of bedding he had added, he might have been perilously close to not being able to fit under it anymore. Of course, he had to break this setup down every single morning on the off chance that they would drive to somewhere in the neighborhood, but given the lockdown, Marcus's hadn't recommended it and so far they hadn't. Still, it never hurt to be cautious. He'd have a hard time explaining a bed under his truck if Rosie happened to spot it.

The nightmares had remained somewhat consistent, though he had been drinking even more than normal of late, not only in order to keep himself somewhat calm around his houseguest, but also to help him sleep in the unfamiliar (though increasingly more familiar) location that he had been. At least one of them hadn't woke him up yet. Those nights were the worst.

What was most interesting to Marcus about his drinking was that Rosie hadn't mentioned it to him a single time. He wasn't in the slightest trying to hide it (because not only was hiding who he was simply not his style, but he also didn't want to lie to this girl [he wanted her to know exactly who he was]) and given her intellect and obviously strong powers of observation, she had to know what was going on. It was possible she was just too polite to say anything but it was equally likely that she simply didn't care.

Either way, it wouldn't be too long now before she would be out of his life permanently. He had wondered more than a few times over the last few days if, by the end of all of this, Rosie would want to become friends and remain in contact. Marcus dreaded the moment before he finally drove her home where he would tell her that that wasn't going to be the case.

He had no intention whatsoever of dragging this sweet, oddball of a girl into the thresher of his life. He never intended on hurting another one, like the one he had before.

Though, hopefully, she wouldn't want to have anything to do with him once she was gone. Marcus wished for this scenario; it would definitely be the best and easiest one for everyone involved.

The lockdown of the Oahu was still on, as far as Marcus knew. Standard procedure, as it had been written, was five days. Meaning, he would assemble his phone a little later and make a call to Pearl Harbor-Hickam to see if that lockdown would be extended.

Personally, he figured it would be, by at least a few days. Just to make sure the Fog ship (a replica of a large American carrier, as it turned out; he had seen it circle around his part of Oahu two days back, but it was too far away to tell if the Fog avatar rumor was true) wasn't going to bizarrely assault any land based targets.

Of course, the small trading system between the Hawaiian islands had obviously been completely shut down. Oahu was mostly self-sustaining by this point, but Marcus still wondered how an extended blockade was going to affect everyone. It was doubtful an SSTO could land while the ship was patrolling about, so Oahu (and all of the Hawaiian islands) was once again on its own.

Marcus had at least a year's worth of canned food, MREs and potable water stockpiled, not to mention months worth of cigarettes and whiskey, so even if nothing else came from the mainland for a while, he figured he wasn't going to be too affected by it.

Not to mention that once the lockdown was lifted, he would likely get his now overdue bimonthly supply run. He was going to be fine; even if he had his guest for another few days.

It was after dinner and the sun had just about set. Marcus and Rosie were sitting around his kitchen table playing Monopoly, when the game took a sudden, entirely unpredicted shift in Marcus's favor.

Rosie landed on Boardwalk which contained a recently installed hotel. Despite the two thousand dollar cost, it only paired her finances by around half. She had plenty of properties and monopolies of her own, so the game could very well swing back in her favor in just a turn or two, but for now Marcus was content to be the currently winning player for once.

"Marcus?" she asked, after handing him the game money she owed him. "Those are your Dad's medals, right?"

She gestured towards the wall, where the framed, highly organized display contained his father's name tape and Chief Master Sergeant stripes from his uniform and his medals, among other things, with his Medal of Honor most prominently featured.

"Yeah, it certainly is," Marcus nodded, rolling the dice, getting a seven and advancing his cannon piece to what was thankfully a property he owned. "He had quite the career."

Rosie collected the dice, rolled them and advanced her piece, the battleship, four spaces to Baltic Avenue, which he also owned. She withdrew her two hundred dollars from the bank (she was the banker, he was the property manager) and handed him four dollars for rent.

"So," she began. "Do you have any medals?"

Marcus laughed. This girl had some of the strangest questions. He wondered if this was another one of her segue attempts to get him to talk about his combat experiences (there had been plenty of those attempts the last few days) but he figuratively rolled the dice and figured it was safe to answer this one.

"Yeah," he shrugged. "I have a few."

"Where are they?"

"Oh, in a box in my garage somewhere, I think."

"Why's that? Why aren't yours in here?"

"Because my Dad's accomplishments are a little more noteworthy than my own and are things that I'm extremely proud of."

"You're not proud of what you accomplished?"

"Okay..." Marcus sighed. "Add this to the list. I don't want to talk about it."

Marcus had indeed composed a small list of things he didn't want Rosie to ask about. One of them was why he chose to live on Iroquois Point, but most of them had to do with his military service. He wasn't interested in the slightest talking about any of it and one could add his lack of displaying his own awards and decorations to that list.

Rosie frowned and looked hurt, an expression Marcus had seen more than a few times when he refused to talk about something she wanted to know.

"It's kind of a long list now," she muttered dejectedly.

"Yeah, well, there's a much longer list of things I am willing to talk about, such as I might actually beat you at this game and win something for once."

Rosie just smiled. "Oh, I don't know. I'm just getting warmed up."

Turned out, she was right.

It took a couple more hours, but Rosie ultimately pulled off a solid victory. Marcus's luck, as was pretty usual, had run out eventually.

It was now after ten and Rosie stated that she would he heading to his room (though he legitimately considered it her room by this point) and would read for a few minutes before going to bed. Grabbing the huge novel he had recommended from her favorite perch in the living room, Rosie wished him a good night and proceeded upstairs.

Marcus, behind schedule on his drinking, filled a tall glass full of ice and whiskey, spent the next three minutes draining it and refilling it before heading to deck, plopping down in his chair, assembling his phone and calling the Security Forces dispatch room (which was operational at all times). He spoke to a Senior Airman, who informed him (no surprise) that despite the fact that the Fog ship hadn't in any way attacked anything, that the lockdown would continue for three more days before normal island traffic (minus anything nautical related) would resume. He also assured Marcus that his supplies would be delivered the moment that the lockdown was lifted; the only vehicles, of course, that weren't affected by said lockdown being security patrols.

Marcus sighed as he hung up and disassembled his phone, putting all of the parts back in their zippered pouch and storing in in its pocket on his cargo shorts. He lit up a cigarette, took a deep drag off of it and chased that with a sizable gulp of whiskey as he listened to the calming sound of the waves of the Pacific crashing lazily on the shore.

It was a warm night with almost no breeze and Marcus closed his eyes in order to better enjoy it. He was, by this time, satisfactorily caught up on how intoxicated he should be. By the time he finished his current drink, it'd be just about time for bed.

Twenty minutes later, Marcus brushed his teeth in the small bathroom downstairs (he had long since moved all his toiletries from his, the master bedroom, to here) and he headed to the garage, drunk enough for his liking, to sleep.

It had been a bad one.

Marcus blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to gather enough light to see clearly. By this point, he knew where he was and knew that he was okay, but that only lessened the impact ever so slightly.

He had just dreamt of being in combat, though the exact details remained indistinct to him, as they often did. All that he really knew was he had taken a bullet to the face and had woken up instantly.

It was plainly obvious to Marcus that for the rest of the night (as it was for any nights where he had woken up like this) that sleep was going to entirely elude him.

Having only slept two hours, according to his watch, Marcus went right back to doing what he was doing before he went to sleep in the first place.

After heading back to the house and pouring himself another drink, Marcus found himself back on his deck and he proceeded to spend the next three hours drinking and smoking the night away.

At least looking forward to the sunrise almost made this all worth the trouble.

Author's Note:

This is now the longest Arpeggio of Blue Steel story on this site! Thanks so much to all of you readers who have supported it! It looks like it's going to be quite a bit longer, ultimately.

Black Cloud, by Brad Carter