Gambling with Denial

“Are you kidding me!? How the heck do you keep managing to do this?” I exclaimed, as I fell to my knees in defeat with a short piece of straw in my hand.

“I swear, you never learn, do you, Recruit Number Sixteen?” Eight shook her head as she stood over me with a longer piece of straw. Her hair was now dyed orange, but over the course of the past few days, it seemed like she changed her hair color on the daily.

For the past week, as we wandered through the barren mountain pass, I attempted to defeat her in a Gamble Showdown on a daily basis and everyday she somehow managed to get the best of me with some sort of cheap trick. Today the game we played was short straw and I managed to end up with the short straw thanks to her using her gambling sorcery to redo her draw.

Rollnaldo waved his map around in the air. “If you two are done with your daily game, it looks like we're not too far off from the city of Derbyton.”

Eight looked at him curiously. “Hold on a sec, Recruit Number One. Isn't that back tracking on our route?”

“Derbyton’s the second wealthiest city in the Kasino Kingdom next to the High Roller Capital. I figured we could take a little detour to resupply and rest … and sell some marked up Matthew merch to rich people.” That last part he muttered under his breath.

I shrugged indifferently. “I wouldn't mind stopping off for a bit. We've been on the road for a week straight, living off the coconuts we stole from the resort.”

Eight nodded in agreement “That's fine with me too… Ya know, that city has a place that does shotgun weddings, if you're-.”

“Nah, I'm good.” Rollnaldo immediately shot her down. “If we keep down this path, we should be there before noon.”

Rollnaldo eagerly led the way down a dirt path, as he pulled his merch cart behind. We had finally made it out of the cold and crappy mountains and were now entering into a lush grassy valley region.

🎲🎲🎲

“You weren't kidding about this place. The people here must be loaded!” I stared in awe at the vast metropolitan city that we stood at the outskirts of. The road we were walking along was paved with what appeared to be solid gold bricks.

“Yep, It's always been my dream to come here.” Rollnaldo responded.

Eight had an unimpressed look on her face. “It's not that big of a deal, I've been here dozens of times.”

I looked at her a bit surprised. “If you were hanging out in places like this, what made you decide to become a domestic terrorist?”

“That's on a need to know basis, Recruit Number Sixteen and at the moment you don't need to know that.” She refused to elaborate any further, which only made me a bit more curious about her past.

“How much do you want to bet that she’s just a rich girl playing terrorist to get daddy's attention?” Rollnaldo murmured to me with a smirk on his face just quiet enough so Eight couldn't hear.

“Yeah that seems about right to me.” I whispered back to him.

“What seems about right, Recruit Number Sixteen?” She managed to overhear me.

“That the…uh… oh hey, what's that giant stadium for?” I quickly changed the subject by directing her attention to the football stadium-like structure that was out in the distance.

“Thats just the horse derby track. Now what were you saying about me, you sneaky muck?” My diversion failed and she continued to press me.

“I was…um… just wondering why you… uh… dye your hair so often.” I threw out the first thing that popped into my head, which admittedly I had been wondering anyway.

“You should have just asked in the first place.” She seemed to buy it. “As the soon to be most infamous domestic terrorist in the kingdom, I try to change my appearance as often as possible so it's hard for people to identify me.”

Her logic did make sense, but the key word in her sentence was ‘soon to be’. Was there any point in changing her appearance if nobody knew who she was?

After making it further into the sprawling metropolis, Rollando halted and set his chart down. “Alright, Lucky, keep a look out for any police. I don't want to get tagged again for operating a business without a permit.” Just like he had done back in Scratcherville, he proceeded to set up shop right next to a set of public bathrooms. After opening all his crates and putting all his bootleg merch out in the open, He handed both Eight and I a piece of cardboard each. “Do me a favor and hold these signs.”

I looked at the square cutout he handed me, which read, ‘MASSIVE SALE’ in thick black marker and had a red explosion drawn around it. “Why would you mark down your products if you're trying to sell it to rich people?”

He let out a chuckle. “Even rich people like a good deal… and technically I've marked up my prices up one thousand percent and then discounted that thousand percent by twenty percent.”

“So you just marked up everything by eight hundred percent and are creating the illusion of a discount.” I responded.

“Its all about marketing. The big box stores do the exact same thing.”

“Muck, you're hot when you get all entrepreneurial, Recruit Number One!” Eight interjected.

“Yeah that's great… do me a favor and don't say anything weird to my customers.” He waived off her lustful comments.

Standing at the ready, he was locked in and prepared to sell to the first person who came into his sight, which wasn't long since a gamblord wearing a black suit and a top hat came strolling by…

“Afternoon good sir, can I offer you-.”

The gamblord walked right past him into the bathroom, completely ignoring him.

“He probably just had to take a really bad leak.” Rollnaldo rationalized to himself.

A few seconds later, a roulette ball man with a pair of diamond encrusted grills in his mouth approached the bathrooms. Rollnaldo immediately stood in front of the entrance to halt him.

“What's up my homie?” The Roulette ball looked at him confused.

Rollnaldo snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “You look like you're a man of good taste… a man that could use an official Matthew the World's Largest Twine Ball™ baseball cap imported all the way from Dice Town.”

The roulette ball tilted his head, confused. “Isn't that twine ball a bit irrelevant now, homie.”

Rollnaldo raised his eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Well ever since Marcus the Even Bigger and Better Twine Ball came onto the scene, Matthew just kind of seems washed up.” The roulette ball held out his wrist. “I actually got my high quality Marcus themed watch right now, homie.” The watch he was wearing had a diamond encrusted band and a golden engraving of a twine ball on its face.

Rollnaldo’s left eye began to twitch, as he spoke in a passive aggressive tone. “Where can one find this supposed ‘bigger and better twine ball’?”

“He actually lives right here in Derbyton, homie.” The roulette ball responded just before continuing in the bathroom.

Rollnaldo stood still, staring forward, blankly. He looked as though his entire world had just been shattered.

I waved my hand in front of his face. “Are you okay?”

Shaking his head, he snapped himself out of his daze. “There's no way there's a twine ball that can be bigger than Matthew… there just can't be! That's Dice Town's whole claim to fame and my whole livelihood.”

“I don't actually think it would be that hard to make a larger twine ball and I thought you hated everyone in Dice Town anyway.” I attempted to rationalize with him.

“I do, but I got a soft spot in my heart for Matthew.” He began to load up his merch back into his cart. “I need to see this Marcus or whatever it's name is with my own eyes. Until then, I refuse to believe it!”

At that moment, Rollnaldo refused to listen to any sort of reason. Eight and I just followed behind him as he was now on a mission to see this bigger twine ball for himself…