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. The Chancellor looked positively exhausted, but then again, he always had a certain air of weariness about him. Apart from Ardyn, they all sat around a plastic table in front of the caravan to play Triple Triad on mobile.

Noctis directed his attention back to his match against Prompto and played another card before addressing the Chancellor. "What have you been up to?", he asked casually.

"You know; Making calls, pulling strings. The usual." Ardyn 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 pocket on the inside of his coat Ardyn pulled out a black flip phone. It was an old model, the kind that used to come with a non-touch-sensitive display on one half and a bunch of buttons on the other, but for its age, it appeared to be in a very good condition, still. There was some kind of tribal ornament on the casing.

"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 Ardyn's flip phone with the excited look of a tech nerd who just found a rare gadget from the last decade. "Gotta love the design!"

"My dad had one of these," Gladio remarked. "They're actually rather sturdy, and the battery lasts pretty much forever. Something like this wouldn't happen with one of these." He tilted his smartphone enough to reveal the large crack that ran across the display.

"What happened? Did you drop it?", Prompto asked.

"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." He put his old mobile away. "Well, never mind, then. I don't need to try everything that is popular these days. I suppose I'll just lie down early."

Out of the corner of his eye, Noctis watched him disappear into the caravan. It took a couple of seconds before the Chancellor's absence started to feel weird, as if the silence between the four of them had turned from perfectly normal to awkward. Noctis had never actively rejected company when offered, and for once, it seemed as though Ardyn had been genuinely interested to join them. Another second passed, and he felt downright bad to reject an old man's attempt to cross the generation gap.

"Hey, Ardyn," he called over to the caravan door. "If you pull up a chair I'll explain the game to you using my smartphone." He got some, rather questioning, looks from his friends, but at least he managed to grab the Chancellor's attention again.

Ardyn stuck his head out the door with a surprised look on his face. "Well, I can't pass up on that invitation, now, can I?" Just as Noctis had suggested, he took one of the remaining chairs 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 a lot of different moves you can make." Not to mention, of course, that there were lots of cool monsters and characters to collect.

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

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 the Chancellor asked Noctis to let him have a go, and so Noctis set him up against his high school friend with the cards he had selected earlier. The match went by quickly and, to his surprise, Ardyn lost, although there had been plenty of opportunities to turn the cards in his favour. Noctis could not have done such a bad job at explaining the rules, right?

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

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

"Sure."

The rematch played out entirely different. From the first turn onwards, Ardyn had and kept the upper hand. Prompto suffered a devastating loss. Actually, Noctis got the impression that Ardyn had understood the game perfectly right away, he had just been toying with his friend.

"Wow, you really know how to play once you know how to play," Prompto sheepishly admitted. "I'm kinda glad now you don't own a smartphone."

Chuckling, Ardyn looked among the remaining members of Noctis' entourage. "Who wants to go next?"

His gaze was met with a challenging look by Ignis. "I'll play against you."

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

Noctis knew his cards were not good enough to even stand a chance at beating Ignis, and he had not yet shown Ardyn how to use the menu to select the cards for each match, either, so Ardyn ended up using the same hand he had used against Prompto. On his first turn, he set a weak card into a spot that made it practically defenceless.

"An obvious mistake", Ignis said and took the opportunity to score a point.

"Oh dear, whatever am I doing to do?" The mocking tone in his voice complemented the obviously feigned expression of surprise on the Chancellor's face. Ardyn set down a much stronger card to overpower both Ignis' card and his earlier one, which scored him two points in one go.

Prompto, who was watching the screen from over Iggy's shoulder, gasped. "Wicked move!"

Only Ignis remained unimpressed. "A well executed tactic, but it will not get you very far."

It came down to a draw in the end, which, if Noctis was being honest, was 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. "I must admit, this game has some interesting tactical aspects to it. 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.