Sharpshooting

"Hey."

007n7 raised his head, screwing his eyes at the shadow that blocked out the blinding moon to try to make out any discernible figure. The panel he'd been hunched over disappeared into reality again— seemed to disappear, but merely became transparent so whoever this shadow was would get off his back for doing a bit of hacking so late at night. Whatever it took to not get accused again of trying to hack his way into another game, he was willing to do. Even hide his more helpful tools. Wherever he had hidden his pride in hacking, he did not know. Ages ago, his every move would've been tracked in fear of another strike; in fear beloved worlds would've been torn asunder, that stud would betray stud and clash in erratic, violent colors against the sky, hard work erasing and undoing itself with a few lines of malicious code executing as soon as a player entered the server. He'd even done the job of taking out entire games with just that little panel. How distant that past was, and how near the future of cowardice and isolation was. How close he had been to the top of the world— how poorly he had handled his power. How guilty he was, that he knew he would never trade his son for all of the capability of his old c00lgui again. Hence, constant improvement. Hence, isolation. They didn't have fond memories of him anyway (Elliott did not joyfully recall 007n7 ripping scaffolding to pieces and clipping through walls, nor did he exclaim with glee that 007n7 had frozen every player in place and made them unable to exit the doomed server, locked in an eternal tailspin towards the ground), so it was better this way. He got more time to himself to try to make a tool that would rescue them. They got to be blissfully unaware.

Shades. Reflective shades, and what he saw in them, 007n7 was afraid of— both his own reflection and the leer of Chance underneath. In the mirror of Chance's eyes, he saw bags carrying pounds of luggage, a deadweight in his mind of null memories and missing numbers, missing people, missing faces. He could hardly even remember who wrote half of these comments, let alone know why he could decipher them automatically. Sometimes, he didn't remember anything before the matches, besides the fact that he'd woken up there and he had something to do and apparently, someone to run from, most of which was done alone and without staring into someone's eyes. At the very least, those shades were a barrier to whatever judging gaze was probably underneath them— the blessing of all of it was that 007n7 couldn't see it.

"Saw that 1x guy gave you a nasty cut. Wanted to give you my thanks for putting the odds in my favor. I sure as hell wasn't in any condition to distract him any longer.”

007n7 squinted, trying to remember exactly what Chance was talking about. They had been in a match earlier, and he was right about the gash on his arm, but... 007n7 had sent in either clones or himself to save Chance multiple times. He might have been discussing that occasion where 007n7 took a hit for Chance, and Chance turned and used the gun on 1x1x1x1 so they could both get away. That flintlock, he seemed to bear like a grudge— unable to part with it, shooting it and letting it blow up in his face, or making it cheer with triumphant fireworks in someone else's face, all by the roll of a weighted die.

"Of course. No problem. It's..." he looked away, but never dared to look down. No teammate of 007n7's had ever done such a thing for him out of anything but obligation, but if 007n7 were to conjure the image in his mind of a good teammate, he supposed that they'd do what he did for Chance. "It's what teammates do."

Upon hearing a shake, 007n7 looked down. Two hands held out a medkit. Not even an opened one, like what 007n7 could usually scrounge up from around the map— crusted, stained wads of used gauze to pack wounds, ripped and half-absorbed sutures for greater gashes, half-empty painkillers that made him loopy and dizzy. A full medkit. One with clean gauze. Clean bandages. Clean threads, clean absorption. A cool sensation of relief arose and embraced him just from looking at the medkit. He imagined opening it, peeling open a bandage, applying cooling gel and compression wraps to his larger wounds... lying in bed, thinking about nothing but the warm satisfaction of care…

"Are you... gonna take it?"

"Oh—" 007n7's head snapped up. "Yeah, sorry." He reached up, hands trembling as Chance did not shove, but placed the medkit into his hands and waited for his fingers to close on the cool, white plastic. "Thank you." He gave a smile to the shadow, who moved to the side. Though it was terrific that he didn't have to look into his own eyes anymore, the reflection of the sun off of the moon blinded him, and he blinked to get rid of the burn that the moon left in his gaze. Later, he'd help himself, as if not to seem greedy.

"No problem. Consider it my thanks. Mind if I sit here? Beautiful night out, it's gettin' hot in there."

007n7 shifted over to make room for Chance, and though he didn't look over, he knew he'd sat down from the creaks of the shoddy bench and the sigh next to him, along with the distinct sound of a coin flip.

"You needed fresh air?" 007n7 asked, willing the c00lgui panel to disappear. He supposed he could always pick back up on his fixes later, as it seemed Chance was not keen on disappearing any time soon.

"Yeah. Too much breath, you know. Hot. Gets hot in there, bad ventilation. Kinda reminds me of a casino floor, except at least a casino floor smells good. Like smoke. That's the reason why they're all so hot— makes you more impulsive. I think it's always good to have a level head, though. Especially in a weird place. Shedletsky wouldn't care though, the place still stinks of fried chicken." 007n7 wasn't going to question where the conversation was going. "I spilled my whiskey so I'd have an excuse to get out of the room— I bet that Elliott was gonna get distracted by it, and I seemed to have bet right." Chance harrumphed.

007n7 vaguely remembered deleting an object from the inside of the bar where everyone was sat. After all, tracking the digital reconstructions of their avatars and assets through the panel wasn't that hard, considering it already had the ability to visualize moved assets. With some tweaks, he could surveil any room or track the movement of any objects or survivors across any distances— useful when deleting spills out of the world, at least. Not useful for making him feel any less isolated, forced to watch the group socialize rather than being invited or even— God forbid— missed.

"It looked like fun. Why would you ever want to leave?” As much as he was wary of Shedletsky, the guy had included him in the few conversations where he felt like a normal Robloxian again. He replayed those short conversations over and over again in his head on the regular, trying to remember what he could do better this time. His memory seemed to be failing him recently, though. He never seemed to say the right things.

"Yeah. Builderman pulled out Catan."

007n7 let the ghost of a snicker play across his face. "The spreadsheet, too?"

"He made a spreadsheet?" Chance's coin stopped flipping, and 007n7 looked over. Chance still had a smile on his face, but only one corner of his lips was pulled up in a contemplative manner, sharp tooth snagging his lip to think.

"Yeah. A while ago," (when they were all still friends,) "he came over, brought the game... Shedletsky couldn't keep track. Almost flipped the table." 007n7 remembered he ought to be smiling at happy memories rather than trying to mentally crawl his way back into the past. He gave a smile to the observant Chance— fearing that Chance's gaze had fallen upon the late reaction.

But he seemed to be too stuck in the thrill of gambling to notice— Chance tossed the coin back up into the air, and as soon as it hit its peak, 007n7 let out a short breath of relief. "Oh, man. I mean, I'm not against all of it. I think board games can be great. Roulette's lots of fun, you know." Chance smelled like cheap wine. 007n7 highly doubted that he knew anything about fun, but then again, it'd been a long while since he'd even touched any sort of alcohol. "But, I mean... c'mon, man, it's a bar, you got... a gambler, a Spawn worshipper, a... whatever Shedletsky is, so... when you gotta pull out an account history... I think it gets a little absurd. You don't like playing many games?"

"No." 007n7 remembered his clammy hands were clutching onto the medkit, so he promptly set it down on the side that Chance wasn't on. "Not anymore. I used to be. Used to have a lot of fun with them, actually." The word 'fun' tasted like an allergic reaction inducing sugar cube dancing on his tongue, considering his past was less than savory and leaving him struggling to breathe. For some reason, a pit grew in his stomach when he thought about his brief history of cardcounting, but... there was nothing he could say to Chance that would be too unexpected or make him like him any less. There were already plenty of reasons to dislike an exploiter. "I had a brief foray into cardcounting, actually. I liked the games that I could figure out how to hack the most. There's a lot of... useful things about knowing how probabilities work, you know. Passwords and everything." Basic permutations. Accounts didn't just belong to spreadsheets— they also were held in the snug embrace of baskets woven in riffled patterns by SQL, and 007n7 would know the most out of anyone here about passwords and accounts, as well as protected data and vandalism.

The lamps of the garden reflected off Chance's shades as his head poked up with piqued interest. Various rosebushes, fresh into the phases of blooming dead leaves, were lined on the edges of the garden. 007n7's brief adventures did not just include cards, but how to grow plants. There was probably a reason why the roses were dying, besides the flagrant and foul disregard for the proper soil conditions they needed— 007n7 chalked it up to the rich swamp that lay beyond the confines of the fence none of them could pass. Roses were delicate and on occasion, picky when it came to growth conditions— when treated well, their flowers bloomed and filled the air with a light, sweet scent. Hard to miss, but when it was found, it was seen everywhere. Every scent seemed to have the fragile, skillful manipulations of the rose beneath it. Swamp soils were rife with acid and low in oxygen, too busy saturated and drowning in water to notice. The weeds that did grow there were stifled of true breath, constantly fighting against the smother and suffocation common to mud. The nutrients were aplenty, releasing swaths of fog sprawling lazily over the lands the swamps were conveniently close to. The roses were choked by the vast love of the swamp— the delicate scent of the bloom inundated by the scent of decay and the roots that stole nutrients away from the soil to fuel the rapid growth and decay of organic matter in the bogs. It was difficult for 007n7 to see. He looked away from Chance's shades as Chance talked.

"Wow. You didn't change any cards or numbers or anything? Color me intrigued. You're a more traditional card sharp, then." That joke was severely unfunny, but 007n7 supposed a buzzed man might find it hilarious, hence why he let out a shuffling series of snickers. "Kidding, of course. I had the feeling that there was a lot of... statistics and stuff to it, lots of probability, but... I never paid attention unless I was verifying it was fair. That stuff was more intuition to me than anything."

"Certain shuffling methods strike you as odd, or...?"

"Eh. My casino tended to use shuffling machines, but... here." Chance pulled a deck of cards out of his jacket and unsheathed them from their case. "Shuffle these, huh? Maybe I can teach you a couple tricks. It starts with the Ace of Hearts and goes by suit."

007n7 wiped his hands on his cargo shorts before taking the cards out of Chance's open hand and weighing them in his own hands. Weighty, but nice and velvety in terms of feel and distribution— the cards, despite their polish and external shine, were well loved by their loyal user. 007n7 separated the deck of cards into two halves.

"There's the Zarrow shuffle, I think that's one I kick a lot of employees out for. The top card hides the fact that secretly, the order of the cards is preserved. If they know the orders of the two halves, they can rig the game by counting. That one, I don't remember if it was invented by a mathematician— you know, people put a lot of fancy names on stuff that other people have been doing for years, and then claimed they invented it. I think that's cheating. People have been finding ways to cheat each other for years, and all of those people were smart, even if they didn't have a name for what they were doing. We don't all owe each other every bit of information. I personally think it's most fun when you know the exact odds but don't know what's going to happen, but... you know, people like what they like." Chance sighed. "Some people enjoy guessing."

He placed half the deck of cards in his left hand, and the other half in his right.

"Besides, even if they knew the secrets, they wouldn't believe them anyway. For example: most of our decks are shuffled by machines. Some people think the computers are rigged, though, and that we're just lying to get money, which... I don't think it makes sense. Plus, y'know, we're pretty transparent. Nobody really wants to play a game that ain't fun, or that they know isn't gonna be fun. If the house wins every time, why would anyone want to play at all? To me, the fun is complete randomness— so even if there was a fraction of a chance, I'd still put my all into it. I make smart decisions, just... risky ones. They should know better than anyone what good business and good gambling is like. Plus, I judged them myself. Rigged odds have a scent. They smell okay to me."

007n7 felt his eyes wrinkle up in a smile at that oddity of Chance's. That feeling hadn't come to him in a while— a bona fide smile. He remembered it, long ago, crows resting their feet upon the corners of his eyelids... seeing c00lkidd carry home a big prize they'd won at the carnival, back when he was teaching his kid about games. Unfair ones, yes, as carnies often tended to rig them, but fair ones. How to win games. How to exploit them. He set his four fingers up on each hand as a soft, pillowy surface for the thin, soft cards to land on, and released the halves such that they lay intertwined with each other, cradled by his palms.

"But yeah, I don't... I don't like the games where you make those calculated, logical decisions. Gambling and bets is gambling and bets, but the more random it gets, the purer it feels. We should get some people together, play poker sometime... I think you'd have fun with it. Me, I'll stick to the roulette tables, but you?" Chance laughed.

He performed this mechanism six more times, taking care to make sure that the top card from the previous shuffle always landed second from the top. Somewhere near the fifth shuffle, his thumb slipped, and the seventh and sixth cards fell out of the draw. He tried discerning which was which in the order, but the backs were identical thanks to Chance's foolproof card backs— having a symmetrical coating to prevent anyone from counting them or tracking wear. "I'm not much of a gambler." He supposed that it didn't matter. The cards would be shuffled either way, so he picked up the cards and stuffed them back in their place.

"You'd make a lot of money in those games. Maybe not by playing blackjack and hole carding... I'll get you kicked out for that. That's no way to have fun. Start with poker. Our rake isn't high, so maybe it'll incentivize you to come play."

007n7 raised a brow on the final shuffle and handed the deck back to Chance. Chance took it with an open hand and a hum, sorting them back into the sleeve they came in.

"Besides. You counted them, didn't you?"

For the first time of the night, 007n7 looked over and made eye contact with Chance. His face went instantaneously heart-red, button-down growing hotter despite the cool, humid bog air seeping in as the night continued.

"There's a reason I wear these shades. Your eyes are a huge tell."

"I—" He went to defend himself, but Chance laughed and continued.

"You're in no trouble. I actually think it's admirable— hold on, let me explain." Chance smiled with his teeth, sharp and shiny, white and reflective of the light of the sun. "I tried primin' you for tells by mentioning poker, because I caught you tracking the top card throughout each shuffle. You got nervous, you slipped. That's okay. Because, look—" Chance rifled through the deck, picking the 8th card from the top. "It turned out okay. You were using this—" Chance cackled— "this divine exploitation ability of yours to make sure my deck was fair, even though I didn't say we were gonna play anything, at first. You wanted it to be a good shuffle. Your first instinct was to make sure, above all, it was a fair game. You shuffled seven times because you know things about shuffling cards and you wanted to believe that every card had an equal chance of being in any certain position... even the ones you were counting and keeping track of. The ones you didn't interfere with, even though you could have. You weren't even sure if those two cards were in order, but..."

Chance flipped the eighth card. The Ace of Hearts— the top card. The rest would've been interleaved accordingly.

"They were. Your luck played out, even when your intentions went sour. It's not a bad thing, you know. I'm still thinkin' about that game from earlier, by the way—" Chance shifted so he was leaning towards 007n7. "You didn't even send your clone out to block— that was you. I could see it. Your clones look much happier than you."

That sentence struck 007n7 like 1x1x1x1's sword. If it was really that obvious to tell, he was going to have to start putting on some more courageous faces in matches.

Chance put the ace card back in the deck and shut the card case, stowing it back in his jacket. "At base instinct, you're not a bad guy. I figured I'd take a bet with you too. You put your faith in me to live another day, so did I in you to do some good to me. There's a reason your number is painted on the winning slots." That didn't immediately make sense to 007n7, but then again, he was not going to start arguing semantics nor fate with a man who had clearly had several glasses of something paired with the cheapest wine in the dustiest cellar in Hell.

As soon as 007n7 was going to question him, Chance stood up and clapped him on the shoulder, putting slight pressure on him, as if he was trying unimaginably hard not to fall over.

"I liked our games, lucky number Seven. Never play roulette. Or... maybe do. Live and let loose a little. Leave it all up to me, your good pal Chance. Who knows?" He snickered. "Don't lose your mind trying to figure out where the wheel's worn."

As Chance stumbled back off into the darkness, 007n7 didn't dare accompany him. It didn't seem like he wanted company, and he didn't seem to be keen on talking any more.

When 007n7 eventually had to go inside, he would inevitably face the scorn of his peers and teleport upstairs to avoid knowing, peering looks— even the looks of remnant pity Shedletsky gave him. All because of the feeling of ecstasy he left behind. All because he had new responsibilities to uphold, and because he could not cover up his past as easily as he could cover his tracks. Under Chance's careful, yet undisciplined scrutiny, 007n7 tasted an ounce of the gallons of anxious joy he used to experience when vandalizing and ripping apart the structures of worlds. It was exploitation, yes, and even that was deadly. When used in discipline, however... to gain an advantage against an expert opponent... to 'make the game fair...' his talents didn't seem as awful as the others made them out to be. They were just game balancing, and in games like this, some balance was necessary to make the game fun for everyone.

The scent of the dead roses was in full bloom. It was something 007n7 had never smelled before. Decay had tainted them, but... the roses were hardy, same variant throughout the line of bushes at the edge of the rickety wooden fence. Stone paved the garden, but the unsurpassed fence stayed fragile wood— more of a mental barrier to leaving than a physical one. The outward decay of the roses, as well as their thorns and clear danger, was supposed to deter anyone from leaving... but the persistent scent of the brittle petals made 007n7 nostalgic.

… He pulled out the c00lgui and grabbed the medkit. He had things to do.

The only trace that 007n7 had ever been there was the seventh card on the ground, swallowed by the mud— the King of Spades.