Chapter XLV - Character Development is Your Friend ~Kyanosa

Kyanosa slammed his cards face-up on the floor, bounced up from his seat, and pointed at the other players. "Ha! There! Two fours, a five, an ace, and a seven! Beat that!"

Mazzic smacked him upside the head. "'We're playing poker, you plank!"

Kyanosa nodded. "Right. What's your point?"

"You don't go to twenty-one in poker!"

"You don't go to twenty-one in poker. I'm playing First Earth rules."

Kaye huffed in frustration. "There aren't First Earth rules! Poker is the same everywhere!"

Kyanosa blinked at her.

"Since when have you been here?"

Kaye wondered if anybody would turn her in for lynching him. She doubted it.

Saph sat back, massaging her temples, and silently wondered how long she had put up with this so far. And how long it would be before Kyanosa had to go to sleep. Or, during travel, got shoved out a window into the inky blackness of space, the pressure inside his body so radically different from that of the area outside that his entire self rather messily exploded. Saph smiled.

Kaye took a deep, cleansing breath. "Okay, let's try this one more time."

She took everybody's cards and re-dealt. She would have continued with the previous game and just made Kyanosa sit out, but that round the best she had was a pair of nines. Better to try her luck at a new hand. And, as fate would have it, she did fare better. Two pair. Yippee. She discarded her extra card and drew something completely different, leaving her up the creek without a paddle. Luckily, she still had wings, and she eyed the other players, watching for any signs of their hands before the first bet was made.

Kyanosa placed three small glass cubes into the middle of the table. After Mazzic's 437th loss, he suggested coming up with some kind of monetary system, so at least he would know how much he was losing. Kyanosa pulled out his Mirror staff and created a nice quantity of small glass spheres, but since he kept knocking them off the table, endangering everybody's feet, they all opted for cubes.

Saph only added four to the pot, but Mazzic was smiling. He finally had something, a straight. It wasn't much, but it was among the best hands he'd gotten that night. He put eight cubes in the middle, doubling the overall bet. Kaye eyed him carefully, then saw his eight. And raised him six.

Kyanosa and Saph quickly folded. Not only did neither have enough cubes to lose on a huge pot, but Kyanosa liked pretty shiny things (which he had said seventeen times thus far) and didn't like letting any go. It was down to Mazzic and Kaye, who went back and forth, raising by one or two each time, yet considering their hand more before continuing. During one particularly long stretch, Kyanosa started making a little pyramid out of the cubes in the middle.

Eventually, Mazzic decided that whatever he was losing (nobody had really kept track), it was too much, and he folded. Kaye happily raked in her winnings, then surveyed the table.

"I don't think anybody else had enough cubes to continue. I suggest we just declare me the winner and move on."

Kyanosa raised his hand. "Can I be winner next time?"

"No."

"Are you sure?'

"Yes."

"What if I get good cards?"

Mazzic shoved the rest of his cubes into the middle of the table. "I'll steal them."

Kaye also pushed her supply into the pile. "So, what do we play next?"

Kyanosa took out his staff and waved it over the whole table, turning the cubes into white energy, which flowed back into the glass ball at the end. "How about Go Fish?"

Saph nodded. "At least that way it will take longer for Kaye to win."

Kaye grinned. Again. It was getting pretty annoying. "Not the way I play it."

Mazzic muttered something about hustling.

"Would we play to twenty-one?" Kyanosa asked.

"No, but since you're so adept at counting, we can do Hand and Foot."

Saph stood up. "Sorry, but I don't feel like learning something brand new. I'll be in the next car."

Kaye sighed. "Ah, you're right. Cards are getting boring anyway."

She gathered up the cards and formed them into some semblance of a deck, placing them on the table. Mazzic stood up to go as well, but only took one step before tripping and landing on his face.

Kyanosa ran over to him, looking around at the floor. He bent down and felt around the area where Mazzic's feet had been, eventually coming up with a rather cracked glass sphere.

"Heh. Guess I forgot one."

Mazzic said something I'm not allowed to write, grabbed the metal pole, and swung it at Kyanosa. Being the truly graceful person that he is, Kyanosa dodged the pole, but lost his balance and grabbed onto the table, forfeiting his grip on the sphere. The table then lost its balance, toppling to the ground. Kaye's deck of cards, which was on the opposite end of the table, flew through the air, scattering all over half of the car.

Mazzic, sufficiently pleased at his results, put the pole on the ground, and Saph wasn't sad to see something bad happen to Kyanosa. On the other hand, Kaye gaped at the rainstorm of flying synthetic paper-type stuff, or whatever cards are, for a few seconds before being able to gather a sufficient sentence.

"My cards!"

Kyanosa stood up and put the table back upright. "I'm sorry, my fault. I'll get them."

Unfortunately, he forgot about his sphere, and promptly stepped right on top of it. Since having the weight of Mazzic on top of it had given it a substantial crack, Kyanosa's metal shoe shattered it completely, so he didn't fly through the air. But it was enough to make him lose his balance. He fell to the side of the train, ran into the wall, and fell down. Right on Kaye's backpack.

Saph snickered audibly. It was actually pretty funny, if somebody hadn't just sat on everything you brought along for your interdimensional romp.

Now just about angry enough to throw him out of the train a la Saph, Kaye stormed towards him. Or at least she would have. She was so intent on ringing Kyanosa's neck that she failed to look around before walking, an idea proven quite useful by our last two heroes. She stepped on the metal pole Mazzic had put on the ground and slipped forward. Now, I'm not some horrible writer, so she did at least put her hands out to stop her fall, and it worked. It would have worked better had one of those hands not landed in the shattered glass.

Kyanosa jumped up and ran towards her. "Geez, you okay?"

Kaye grabbed her hand and shot him a look that would sink Atlantis.

"Shut up! Just shut up!"

She stood and started pointed at him with the hand that wasn't bleeding.

"Nothing else out of you! Ever! I am sick and tired of your constant, irrepressible inane banter! I don't want your help with anything! I don't want you to talk, I don't want you to pull out any weird powers, I don't even want to look at you. Just get out!"

Nothing moved. No, really, nothing. Nobody even breathed. People in other cars had stopped what they were doing to hear what was going on, and neither Mazzic nor Saph would dare to say anything at this point. Everybody just waited for what Kyanosa would do next, what trick he could pull out to smooth everything over, like he'd done so often before. Maybe a choice joke to lighten the mood, or a comical suggestion about stopping the blood flow. Anything unexpected to calm Kaye down. It took a good while for him to do something. And when he did, it sure as heck was unexpected.

He walked over to the door of the train, opened it, and left.