"So what did you have in mind exactly as the game of choice?" Mana raised an eyebrow. "Surely you didn't come here for "dismemberment poker"?"
"No, we'll be playing "the Weiner"." Jagaimo declared. "Are you familiar with the rules?"
"I am not," Mana admitted. "What kind of game is it?"
"It's the bread and butter of the Kirigakure slums, really. The slums used to have its streets, nooks and crannies flood crimson all the time. It may not have been a good or a bad time, but it was a bloody time. After other Countries started their intervention, it soon became too dangerous and too much of a hassle to settle differences by stabbing people, at least it began requiring an actual artist to do it right, do it unseen. The Weiner was adopted as the card game that settled differences instead." Jagaimo appeared pretty excited, his voice had that certain melodic tune to it, a pinch of tension when he spoke, his eyes and large frontal teeth shined with pearl white as he spoke.
"Hmph. Surely you would not belittle yourself by playing a game of his choosing, the rules of which you do not even know, with this hoodlum." The watchful Kumogakure ninja exclaimed.
"No, let's do it. I like this game already, even if I do not know much about it. Anything that substitutes violence is a treasured thing in my handbook." Mana smiled.
"Excellent, the rules of the game are pretty simple, I'm sure you'll catch on immediately, let's just play a game for warm-up, after it is done, you'll be asking for more." Jagaimo grinned while he worked the split cards.
He was transparent like wet paper. The Kirigakure ninja was luring Mana in, he would intentionally lose this game to make her believe she was good, he would refrain from cheating and even hold back, then he'd introduce the desired stakes. Granted, Mana was not entirely sure as of yet what these stakes were but just as she would have drawn a profile of a fighter by just exchanging a few blows, she had learned to draw profiles of people she met and she did not like the way Jagaimo's sketch was shaping out to be.
"I assume that the game only uses high cards? That is why you split the deck into two stacks of high and low cards?" Mana showed the surprised Kirigakure street rat that she was aware of his every move and that he would be unable to hide anything shady from her. It was meant as a little shine of light at a dark corner, no dark business may have transpired there now, but if the wicked knew better, they would not attempt to bring their business to that as of now enlightened alley.
"Y-Yeah…" Jagaimo fumbled as he dealt the entirety of the high deck out, splitting the cards between the two. "It would be a bit better if K played with us, the game is more fun with more people…"
Mana's face covered with a smile. She knew instantly what the Voice of Kirigakure was doing. It was so clear that the magician felt almost a bit scared to focus on that thought, out of fear that it was exactly what she was being led to believe. As if it was a feint of some sort. Jagaimo did not want to play the Weiner one-on-one because he knew Mana would be able to count the cards. That meant that any unexpected appearances of aces would be instantly recognized, the magician deserved that respectful fear from the street rat's side.
"Not a chance…" Tokui objected. "I am not sitting by the same table as a delinquent such as yourself."
"You're gonna repeatedly use a synonym one of these days and I'll be there to point it out." Jagaimo raised his thumb up. It was a rather lovely way to downplay the hard to like attitude that Tokui had taken toward the Kirigakure native.
"Could we return to the rules now?" the magician yawned. It was a fake yawn but it was better if Jagaimo genuinely thought her tired and believed that she was in no mood for plenty Weiner sets.
"Oh… Sure… First of all, you got nine-o-hearts?" Jagaimo wondered.
Mana had slipped the card out from the rest of her plentiful hand before Jagaimo's sentence was even finished. The Voice of Kirigakure reached out of the card, removed it and played it on the table.
"Great, that means you start. The nine-o-hearts is the lowest card that is always dumped first, no matter what other cards anyone has. Any other nines you have you can instantly dump, as many of them as you have." Jagaimo said.
"I see, so am I to assume that the purpose of this game is to "dump" all of your hand onto the table?" Mana wondered.
"Yep, like a drunkard dumps all of their content onto the pavement after a good drink." Jagaimo grinned. His frontal teeth were a bit too large for the young man to form a full-teeth, arcing, upside crescent-shaped smile but Mana acknowledged the effort.
"I can see why this game would be so popular with your like." Tokui looked away in disdain.
"Very well, I have one more nine." Mana dropped the nine of spades from her hand, letting it gently flutter and descend on top of the nine of hearts. "What now?"
"It's my move. Each of us gets one move, you can either dump something or take everything except the nine-o-hearts back to your hand." Jagaimo grinned as he slammed two more nines onto the pile haphazardly.
"Why would you do that?" Mana wondered.
"Because you may be unable to "beat" his card," Tokui mumbled with a cold tone.
"That's right, you can't dump a card that's lower than what I'm dumping and you can only dump one card at a time, except when you have a full chug." Jagaimo directed a "bingo" gesture at the direction of his highly irritated yet peacefully spectating fellow voice.
"That being?" Mana scratched her head.
"A full set of cards: three niners, four tenners, so on…" Jagaimo pointed out. "If you have multiple chugs, you can vomit all of them onto the table in one move."
"That is a fairly interesting game…" Mana closed her eyes, letting eggplant-colored shrouds cloud it entirely as she did her best to memorize and analyze all of the rules in an instant. If Jagaimo was to introduce new stakes in the middle of a set, she would not like to have missed a beat of this free game.
"It is, isn't it?" Jagaimo nodded passionately.
"However, can I trust you to have told me all the rules?" Mana wondered.
"More or less… Can you truly ever trust anybody?" Jagaimo grinned.
"Hmph… I did not believe that Nakotsumi Mana would be afraid of a stake-less game, especially as a person that has bet her life on the line on more than one occasion…" Tokui taunted the magician for spending a while before playing the next card.
"Unless this is not stake-less at all..." Mana glared at Jagaimo, doing her best to penetrate the shabby defenses of the young man.
Jagaimo played it cool, the magician's suspicions flowed off of him like water off of a duck. The Kirigakure ninja slowly deposited a pair of his own nines onto the pile. Mana tried to advance with the game's basics like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. She made sure to note that receiving the most nines right in the beginning could have tremendously tipped the scales as it allowed to quickly get rid of more cards because of how special nines were. It didn't take long for the magician to realize something even more daunting in its simplicity – the game was one of skill, planning, a clash of wits and mind games in every way but it was also stacked like all hell.
Weiner was never fair. The cards were never divided evenly, it's what one did with the massive influx of tens – the most useless card as it was the lowest card that lacked the special status of the nine or a lack of aces. Aces were aces in a quite literal sense, especially in a game between two players. It was not unlike the world outside the game, some ninja were just born better but that did not make them better. A good player could have always played their early ace early, sacrificing it to fill up the hand of the luckier player with tens, saving aces for the end was hopeless if one had none or just one ace, just like clashing with a talented taijutsu fighter in taijutsu was pointless, one had to plan out the entire game to avoid such a confrontation.
Little by little, it came to Mana why exactly this game was so beloved in the slums of Kirigakure. It was because it mimicked the world out there, you could have literally relived the injustices of your own life but come out on top by playing your cards right or one could have gotten all the lucky breaks in the world, forming an effective escape from one's own shitty luck and believing just for a moment that life wasn't out to get them.
"Hmmm? I don't think it's that complex of a situation…" Jagaimo sunk his head, hunching his neck. Mana realized she's been observing her own cards as well as those under the table for a bit too long. It was a new experience, one the magician tried to excel at from the get-go as she suspected there being more reasons why she was tempted into playing cards with this young man.
Mana had two tens. That meant that Jagaimo's situation mirrored hers. Sadly, she had three jacks, that was not great as jack was a very so-so card to have one's hand full of. Jacks only beat the most special and easily gotten rid of card or literally the least wanted card to get. It was not a good break of luck, just like in real life… The magician dropped a ten of clubs on the stack with a melancholic smile, the situation of getting the influx of average cards ranging on the lower end did not elude the young woman's ironic specter. Jagaimo answered with a ten of diamonds almost instantly.
For someone who looked so passionate about this game, the way in which the Voice of Kirigakure played it: lacking any hints of emotion, any semblance of deeper thought and entirely mechanized like he was a card dumping machine tipped Mana off. He was not investing his heart, his passion into this game and the pain of that fact was evident on Jagaimo's face. By now Mana was almost completely certain in an ulterior motive.
"Well, I guess tens are gone." Mana blinked a pair of times and stated the obvious after depositing a ten of hearts onto the stack. She noted that her hand lacked any queens in it at all, what at unfortunate shuffling disaster… She got three jacks and none of the queens, meaning that Jagaimo could dump all of his at once, filling Mana's hand up with a bunch of useless leftover dumps. It literally stank of eating from a bowl of vomit.
"Now the real game can begin, don't you think?" Jagaimo finally grinned after depositing the final ten. Whatever passion he held for this game broke through the discomfort that the pestering thoughts of his enigmatic ulterior motive brought up. Mana knew what he meant perfectly – with all of the self-evident moves made, it was now all in the decisions, all in the mind games, all in the clash of cards and wits.
Mana's only advantage was her three aces. That was the only thing her hand had going for it, would it be enough? She could have pressured Jagaimo into scooping the dump stack at any moment with superior firepower but she would have to make sure to finish the game quickly as she'll be surrendering that firepower at the same time. The damned pendulum principle, it appeared this game had it all – the harder Mana tried to make Jagaimo scoop, the more options, the more strength she gave to her hand and the riskier her own game turned.
Even a training game without any of Jagaimo's intended stakes made Mana tense up. She needed to learn this game well, to think up of a style, strategy and learn what optimal plays are, what works in this game and what doesn't… She would need it in the real game with the real stakes.
Mana unceremoniously placed a jack atop the pile, answered by Jagaimo's own and only jack of hearts. This was when Mana would snap the metal teeth of her trap, or at least, what she thought would be a trap…
The silent shuffle of plastic that the cards were wrapped in spread out, the only link to reality to anyone who was taken aback by the ace that Mana dropped atop the pile of cards. There was no smile or invitation for Jagaimo to ponder why the magician just dropped the highest card in the game atop of the pile, skipping a whole bunch of low cards she had to get rid of first or else she'd end up with a dead hand without a way to objectively do anything but scoop.
"Alright…" Jagaimo grinned, the tone of his voice changed, it was huffier and lower pitched but he also slightly slurred his words. He was confused by Mana offering him so kindly to correct the injustice of his own shuffle by giving him an ace. "I hope you are aware that one can drop any amount of full sets they want?"
"I suspected as much, yes." Mana nodded without betraying her intentions with a smile or any other similar emotion. She may have rushed it by dropping the ace just yet. Still, in this learning set Mana had to make all the necessary mistakes, throw everything against the wall and see what stuck. If this would not work out, she would see just how playing this way felt, just how often it came out successful and what exactly the timeframe of the pendulum swinging back to bite her was.
Now that Jagaimo scoops, Mana will have an opening to place her two remaining jacks, obviously her opponent would do the sa… Another ace dropped on top of the deck – Jagaimo called Mana's play. That bastard! He had fewer aces, he knew he was not going to win a power struggle and yet he still dropped an ace. He knew what Mana was thinking and doing with this play but he decided to bleed the magician out of yet another ace if she was to stick to the plan. This was the equivalent of a well-aimed shot to the ribs. Mana would be limping after this move the entirety of the remaining game…
She could not give him another ace, that would be signing a death sentence. He already had an entire set of queens and the same pair of kings that Mana had. If she did drop an ace, he'd scoop for sure because he had nothing to beat it with but this scoop would be tremendously beneficial to him. No… Mana had to scoop…
With a submissive look on her face, the magician collected a formidable stack of cards from the table and felt their collective weight in her hand. This was fine, she had all the aces now but also a whole bunch of other junk, still, if she managed her aces, she'd drop it before long and even out the hands. This would be a fine experience in how to properly manage aces when the real stakes hit.
"Well then, don't mind if I drop this down here…" Jagaimo smirked as he slammed a king down onto the nine of hearts with a smile of someone who had already won. He did not, not yet. Mana's king encouraged the young man to drop his second one as well, making it three kings resting on the board. That way there would be three whole cards, one short of a full set that Jagaimo would clutch in his hand and while kings were powerful, it would take a whole while for the young man to dump all of them. Such a large number of moves required for Jagaimo to close shop left Mana plenty of openings to block him completely with an ace.
Which she did.
"Not a bad play, most newbies would have rushed the ace and forced only one king back… Nice." Jagaimo complimented Mana's previous play with a grin. It may not have deserved a compliment as it may not have been an obviously correct move. What the magician was beginning to realize here that Weiner may not have had right and wrong moves in most even situations. It was nothing else but the fate of how the game turned out that defined moves as good or bad and not some objective factors.
A massive slam dunk of nines, tens and jacks followed, Mana's hand was effectively reduced to just four cards in a single drop. She wondered about this rule before Jagaimo informed her of it, she'd have gone for it and planned around it even if he did not inform her of it as her suspicion of its presence was rather strong. Considering the sum of other rules, it just made sense that this rule would exist.
Jagaimo struggled with an ace. Mana answered with one of her own, forcing the young man to scoop everything again. Now he had an even number of aces with Mana but it was too late. Thusly Mana got rid of her last non-ace card – the king of clubs. Jagaimo sighed. He knew it was over because counting cards was a piece of cake with just two players onboard but he let them finish the game without raising noise or conceding defeat. After a brief clash of aces from both sides, Mana's hand was empty.
"See? Wasn't this awesome?" Jagaimo smiled, he actually did look a little peeved about the loss, either he was a profound actor or he genuinely did try to win this game. Why would he do that if he meant for some other stakes to be introduced later on? "Now, how about we do actually raise those stakes?" the fateful words came just as Mana spoke the devil's name with her door open and unwillingly invited it in.
"Hmph…" Tokui mockingly closed his eyes and lowered his head.
"Yeah… I figured this would be a factor soon enough." Mana sighed. "What exactly are we wagering here?"
"Your testimony tomorrow." Jagaimo declared without gravity or volume to his voice and yet, because of the content of his words, Mana heard him just perfectly.