Titled A Social Experiment, the project pairs total strangers up to live together for a year either in groups of two or three. During that time, they are to record their experiences while performing a series of tasks outlined in the trial plan. It seemed simple enough until Koda found himself overwhelmed on moving-in day, leading him to get off on the wrong foot with new housemate Kenji.
All of his life, Kenji excelled at Tae Kwon Do, competing from a young age and quickly moving up in the ranks. His hard work and rigorous daily routine earned him accolades in regional and national-level competitions. As a second-degree black belt, he’d hoped to earn the opportunity to try out for the US Olympic team, only to have an accident cost him his chance at competing, as well as his left arm. Now, three years after his accident, he’s made a new life for himself, and while he still harbors bitterness over the loss of his dream, he’s hoping this experiment will be just the thing he needs to help him take that last leap back to living independently.
It’s a rocky road, gelling with one another, and dealing with each’s insecurities and triggers, but as each day ticks past, one question remains: where will they go when the experiment comes to an end?
“Okay, so, what the hell
do you call that thing again?” Kenji grumbled.
“A handkiller,” Koda
explained.
“And how exactly is that
supposed to work?”
“By not getting blasted
to pieces, which is failing tonight,” Koda remarked, shaking his head at his
cards. “What the hell is this bullshit?”
Listening to Koda
grumble beneath his breath as he studied the opening hand of a deck that
already failed twice, Kenji had to hand it to him, he was persistent if nothing
else.
“Yes, land!”
“Having a mana problem
over there?” Kenji chuckled.
“Yeah,” Koda remarked,
sticking his tongue out at him. “You keep nuking them.”
Wow, okay, so he could
be playful.
“Hymn to Tourach,” Koda said as he tapped two swamps and held up a
card.
“What the hell does that
do?” Kenji asked, taking it so he could read it closer. “Damn, okay,
seriously.”
“Yup and it’s at random,
so just hold your hand up and I’ll pick,” Koda remarked, showing two cards from
Kenji’s hand, and dropping them on the table. “You really didn’t need those.”
Was he…smirking at him?
Damn. He was. He did have a competitive streak.
“Yeah, I kinda did,”
Kenji remarked. “Just for that, you can eat this lightning bolt.”
“Looks yummy, but I
don’t think so,” Koda remarked, discarding a card from his hand to cast a
counterspell without using mana.
“Hymn to Tourach my ass,” Kenji grumbled, not one round later when
Koda did it again, leaving him with one card left. “What is this bullshit?
Damnit! I needed those.”
“Card gods said you
didn’t,” Koda replied, grinning as Kenji did the only thing he could, which was
play a land tax and hope at some
point Koda ended up with more land than him, though now, he was beginning to
regret nuking so many of Koda’s because it was keeping him from being able to draw more now that he desperately needed
them. “You done?”
“Yeah, cause you Hymn to Tourached my shit!”
“How many cards do you
have left in your hand?”
“One,” Kenji groaned.
“Okay,” Koda replied,
tapping one of his swamps. “Funeral charm.”
“Oh my god, seriously!”
Kenji groaned, tossing the card on the table. “Not like I could use it, anyway,
was a damn fireblast and I haven’t seen six mana all game.”
“That’s precisely the
point.”
“Balance,” Kenji
grumbled, playing the one card he grabbed.
“Okay,” Koda said,
dropping the three cards left in his hand, then pointing over at Kenji’s land.
“You gotta lose one of those though.”
“Wait…what…”
Kenji grumbled, glancing
across the table to realize Koda had been doing all that damage to his hand
with only two black mana.
“Son of a bitch, I
cannot believe I did that.”
“Me either,” Koda
muttered as he lay down another land, “but thanks.”
Tapping three swamps,
Koda laid out a hypnotic specter.
“What is that thing
anyway?” Kenji asked on his next turn.
“A two/two Hippy.”
“Lightning bolt that
shit.”
“Awesome, thanks, it’s
easier to bring creatures back from the graveyard than it is to cast them with
this deck.”
“Seriously! Oh, come on!
I was set up. I was run amuck. I was led astray,” Kenji complained.
“Yup, by your own
competitiveness,” Koda giggled, drawing a card, and sitting there with it.
“Incinerate you for
three,” Kenji declared, tapping two red lands.
“Nope, counterspell,”
Koda remarked. “You done?”
“Apparently so.”
Again, Koda drew, this
time, tucking the card away in his hand, while Kenji managed to pull a card
that gave him two lives for every card in his hand, meaning the one card he had
left.
“Rack,” Koda remarked,
laying out a card on his very next turn that cost Kenji one life for each card
under three he had. Meaning those two lives he’d just gained were gone again.
“Dammit!”
An orcish artillery came
into play, that witsh circle
red, he could use to whittle away at Koda’s life. The only question now would
be which of them would run out of lives first. He hit Koda for three with it,
prevented the two damage the card would naturally have done to him, had a brief
flash of triumph, only to have it crushed when Koda played yet another rack.
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shit!”
He had two turns to
plink away at Koda with those orcs, before finally building up enough cards in
his hand to cast something, in this case, an orcish cannoneer.
“Oh, hell no,” Koda
remarked, tapping a swamp, dropping a dark ritual, and tapping everything in
front of him. “Powersink the fuck outta that and tap all your shit, the new
orcs go away, and the old ones can just sit there.”
“But…but…they were just
late to the party.”
“Nope.”
“They were bringing the
beer.”
“Orcish beer sucks.”
“I wouldn’t know, didn’t
have a chance to taste any of the shit,” Kenji grumbled, “And for the record,
that damned powersink sucks,” Kenji remarked, dumping the cannoneers in his
graveyard as Koda cackled with glee. “That’s like sending someone to do a beer
run, only to kick them out of the party when they get back, beer and all, what
was the point of that?”
“No point, just
amusing,” Koda remarked, eyes shining bright, and that smile, damn but Kenji
didn’t find himself distracted by it, and the way Koda’s face was all lit up
for him.
“Coercion,” Koda
remarked on his turn, drawing Kenji out of his brief jaunt into daydream
land.
“What the hell does that
do?”
“I get to look at your
cards and make you discard one,” Koda explained as Kenji groaned and passed his
cards over, knowing full well what Koda would see.
“Yeah, this one’s got to
go,” Koda replied, passing over his second artillery. “Nice land, by the way,
looks about the same as my hand.”
“You’re seriously not
going to play one until I do, are you?” Kenji muttered.
“Nope,” Koda remarked,
the pair dissolving into laughter, right before Koda brought another Hypnotic
specter into play, and drain lifed the hell out of the one artillery Kenji did
have. An attempt at a lightning bolt failed, followed by the arcane denial of
Kenji’s attempt to blast it out of existence, which left his hand already one
short. Koda wrecked the rest of it with another gods be damned Hymn to Tourach, and the racks did the
rest, obliterating the remainder of Kenji’s life.
“Now that is how the deck is supposed to
work,” Koda remarked, leaving Kenji to sit and wonder how the hell he’d gotten
lured into such a perfect trap.
No comments:
Post a Comment