Academic

[echo_of_a_jedi]

Who: Meetra Surik and OPEN
Where: The facility formerly known as the Knight Academy (okay it's still called that)
Summary: Bored Jedi dispenses wisdom and possible swordfighting skill
Warnings: Introspection, hitting people with sticks
Meetra was a bit surprised she hadn't gotten more expressed interest in combat lessons given the...kind of things that tended to happen in this city. On the other hand, it stood to reason, since most Visitors seemed pretty capable despite being by her count at least 75% kids.

Well, she had been a "general" by the time she was twenty herself.

Still, she diligently waited on the steps of the training academy she'd sort of inherited, just in case anyone felt like coming to learn a lesson. Or just talk. It was starting to occur to her that she'd been here far longer than she'd been on any one planet in years and she was starting to get antsy.

Clearly, that was the reason she was playing with the familiar Pazaak deck she'd found by her bed. Re-learning how to count cards was a distraction. Good for meditation, in its own cynical way. She laid the red, white, and blue card-chips out in front of her as she waited to be bothered, her mind wandering backward...

"Ten, one and two needs seven. One ten on the table, eights and nines in the deck, thee, four, five, six..."

Funny how a deck of cards could move you somewhere faster than a hyperdrive if you had a strong enough memory.

Comments

[greyerrant]

"What are you playing there?" Loken asks, crossing to Meetra with his helm off and locked to his hip, his armor whirring with servos as he moves towards her, his face set in an expression of curiosity that looks more than a little hilarious on his war-worn face.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"This is Pazaak," Meetra replied, gathering the cards she'd laid out back into the deck and shuffling. "The only card game literally everyone in the galaxy plays back home."

[greyerrant]

"It is that simple to learn or is it that enjoyable?"

He cocks his head, looking down at the cards, remembering how many members of the Imperial Army used to like to play with a Tarot deck back home.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"It's very simple, really, it's just a counting game. You're dealt cards in turn until you tell the dealer to stop," she said, holding up the numbered cards for his perusal, "and the goal is to get the closest to 20 without going over."

She picks up a smaller set of cards, these both blue and red instead of the blue of the larger stack. "The strategy comes in with the side deck."

Oh god garviel is now in METAL GEAR???? mode.

[greyerrant]

"Side deck?" He looks over at the blue and red deck, his eyes narrowing a bit, and almost reaches for it before realizing that might be considered rude.

Well he is a nuclear-equipped walking death machine

[echo_of_a_jedi]

Some cards had numbers and a positive sign, some numbers and a negative sign, and some had numbers with both. She fanned them out rather than handing them to him.

These weren't hers, after all.

"Each player makes a side deck of ten cards before the game, and draws four. Any time after you've been dealt a card, you can play as many of your side deck cards as you want to add or subtract from your total. You only get four for the whole game, though, and the game lasts until one player wins three hands," she explained. "You're military. Think of the side deck as your heavy weapons or special forces. They can change the outcome of a battle, but you only get so many."

[greyerrant]

"This sounds like an intriguing distraction. Let us play."

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"Alright. I haven't got any money, so we'll go with what we call Republic Senate rules back home..."

She took eight cards out of the main deck to hand to Garviel as a 'starter' side deck and shuffled to begin the game...

[This was tedious enough in the actual game, so feel free to skip to a win or loss.]

[greyerrant]

Garviel looks mildly put out to have been beaten by the Jedi.

"Well then. You appear to have gotten the better of me this time."

He gives her a joking squint.


"Did you use sorcery?"

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"No, I just counted cards and had a better side deck," she explained without a hint of shame. "Another reason this is so popular is that it's almost impossible for most Jedi to use the Force to cheat at it."

[greyerrant]

"Nothing wrong with that, those are simple tactical ploys."

He raises an eyebrow.

"Why is it impossible to use the Force to cheat?"

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"Like I've said, seeing the future is very difficult compared to reading someone's emotions or physically affecting something," she said. "Since both sides rely on a blind draw, that's the only way the Force could help. Games where you hold all your cards are hard to play against a Force-Sensitive since an unscrupulous one could see through your eyes, and don't even bother with dice games."

[greyerrant]

"If someone cheated whilst gaming with me I'd probably kill them as a matter of honor, unless they were an unaugmented mortal, in which case I'd laugh it off."

[silvercoins]

Judas didn't know up from down in the city yet. He approached the Knight Academy slowly, gave it a once-over, looked at her, and looked at the building again.

Deciding to chance it, he cleared his throat. "Err... could you tell me what this building is for, please?"

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"This is a combat training academy," Meetra explains, picking her cards up and shuffling them. "Or it's meant to be. The original staff all left the city, and I don't actually have any students."

[silvercoins]

"Ah..." Judas thought about it. "I don't exactly have any training myself, and I'm under the impression this is a dangerous place."

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"If you're interested in swordsmanship, I can guarantee I can teach anyone the basics," she says, standing up. "Gunfighting is a little shakier, though, and I've never seen one of these 'bow' contraptions before I moved in here."

[silvercoins]

"Swordsmanship would probably be best..." Judas looks hesitant. "Guns weren't even invented in my time, so I won't ask for that."

[otakuro]

Meetra must be aware by now that 90% of the worlds depended exclusively on young adults under the age of 21 to provide their primary fighting force, whether it was a small elite group of five or an entire army piloting robots. Regardless of whether they had any training or not, they were still capable of saving the world by dint of being 17 and plucky.

That said, a member of the 17 and plucky (who had not actually heard anything about training lessons) coincidentally wanders by the Knight Academy one day and notes the presence of someone familiar.

"Hey. ...Meetra, right? It's been a while."

[echo_of_a_jedi]

She's gotten that impression, yeah. Seriously, though, the universe should let people get their inevitable teenage screwups out of their system first.

"It has been, Atsuro," she said.

Standing up and starting to put her cards away, she added, "What brings you by here?"

[otakuro]

Atsuro gives a small shrug as he approaches.

"No special reason. It's a nice day out, so I thought I'd leave my room for once and take a look around town. ...It seems to change from day to day; I get confused easily."

He glances at the building behind her.

"Speaking of which..."

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"It's a training academy for knights, apparently," she explained with a shrug. "I kind of inherited it since the people whose world it's from all seem to have gone home."

[otakuro]

"...Huh."

A knight academy? For swords and axes and the like? Or perhaps... training academy for knights skilled in the saber of light emission??? Atsuro blinks for another few moments at the building.

"So you use it to train?"

[terra_nullius]

Always one to note new structures in the city, eventually Xehanort would make his way over to investigate. Seeing the woman playing cards drew his interest, and he came over to see just what she was doing.

"What manner of game is this?"

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"A card game. Useful for teaching mental math or if you're short on cash around unlucky people," she explained, holding up one of the rigid electronic cards.

[terra_nullius]

"Training and bilking. Classic." He manages a grin at her. "What manner of opponent do you prefer to play it with, the pupil or the one with a fat wallet?"

[echo_of_a_jedi]

"I prefer teaching and earning money honestly, so the former," she said. "I can't remember the last time I actually made money playing a game."

It sure did beat the hell out of swoop racing as far as a fun past-time, though.

[terra_nullius]

"What do you prefer to teach?" He reached out to feel one of the cards, surprised at how rigid it was.

[genkibot]

After hearing about the academy over the network before, Tachikoma is looking forward to see what Meetra could possibly teach her. She's practically skipping up to the steps that lead to the building, finding her friend working with some playing cards.

"Hello Miss Surik! Are you playing cards with yourself there? That doesn't look like a standard French deck. Does it contain 52 cards?"