Card Duel Ch. 01

The university headmaster, satisfied he'd scolded the two thoroughly, stood up behind his desk. He had taken the job right after his service in France in the first world war, and suffered from both indignation that young students broke rules and also naïveté that they could be easily dissuaded from doing so again by a few words of paternal admonition. "I trust neither of you will venture into that section of the library again."

He sent the two students, both juniors, a boy named Dakota and a girl named Minh, to repair the hole in they'd put in the wall of the grand lobby. It was a divot the size (and shape) of Dakota's head, pounded into the stone. Before repairing it, Dakota placed his face in the concavity to savor the perfect fit around his nose and cheeks.

What the two of them had stolen from the forbidden section of the library was a crate of potions prepared using ancient, outdated techniques later abandoned because of their side effects. Last night, Dakota tested one of the potions, an unlabeled vial of glowing green goop, by drinking it himself. It conferred enormous strength and durability, but it also impelled him, like a strong itch, to pound his face into stone walls.

"Dakota," Minh said, in that tone, wanting him to hurry up and repair it. She had the character flaw of following every rule. She lived inside herself. When the dean had scolded them, she let her long black hair fall in front of her face and hid behind it.

Dakota placed his hand on the wall and let energy flow out. Slowly, the divot repaired itself. When the surface of the wall felt flush again, he leaned against it to recover his breath.

"If we're going to keep researching together," Minh said, "no more pounding your face into the wall, or turning toilet water to wine, or anything like that without running it by me first. You embarrass me when you do that stuff, and I'm not used to authorities scolding me."

He smiled at her. "Come up to my room with me."

"No, I've had enough of you for now." She turned and walked away.

He caught up with her, whispered in her ear. "I still have some."

"You should have returned it all."

"If you want it returned, you'll have to come up and grab it."

To Minh, working with Dakota was not unlike supervising a child. When they reached his dorm room, she finished her notes on the effects of the green goop. She held it against her thigh to write. He tried to speak to her, but she shushed him, and didn't look up until she'd recorded her observations in the little blue notebook she carried around.

What neither Minh nor Dakota knew about about the crate of potions they'd stolen was that only minutes before they took it, someone else had visited it, someone they knew and who knew they would come. This someone deposited two potions wholly unlike the others, wrapped in a brown sack.

Dakota set this same brown sack on his study desk, and pulled up his roommate's chair for her so they could both sit. Once she finished scribbling, she took a seat next to him and looked at the sack. A tight gold string held it closed. Dakota pulled the string loose, and the brown fabric unfolded flat on the desk. Inside the sack were two vials with more glowing goop, one blue and one pink, and underneath them a red notebook.

"The labels are in Vietnamese," Minh said, picking up the pink vial, which read 'bật'. "This one means 'on'. The other means 'off'." She opened the red notebook, and read the introduction, which was dated thirty years in the future: 1999.

"What's it say?" Dakota asked.

"This isn't like the others," she said. "This isn't a relic. It's from a future. Or at least claims to be."

Dakota took the pink vial from her and held it close to his eyes. "I thought there was a time barrier."

"Yes, there is. It could be a lie. Or they know a way to travel through the barrier, though I can't begin to imagine how such a spell would work. Listen as I read. I'll translate it." Minh traced the words with her index finger, translating to English in real time for Dakota:

Rule #1

This is a game. Enter the game by swallowing the on (pink) potion, and exit the game by swallowing the off (blue) potion.

When Minh turned around to ask what he thought, Dakota was already licking a droplet of the pink goop off the back of his hand. He swallowed. "What kind of game?" he said.

"You didn't want to know that before swallowing?"

"Whoa. Can you see--do I look different? I feel way different. I don't feel even a shadow of tiredness or discomfort anymore. Which I don't think I consciously felt tired or anything before. It's just, better. And my nasal breathing is suddenly super clear." He drew in a dramatic breath through his nostrils.

Minh leaned in to inspect his face. His skin had smoothed over. She could not identify a single pore, and the few creases which remained clustered around his eyes and made him more attractive by emphasizing his smile. His chest and biceps expanded under his robe. "Interesting. I guess this is how you'd like to see yourself," she said, and read on:

Rule #2

When you enter the game, you will transform into your sexual avatar.

On the far side of the room, Dakota hopped onto his bed, then jumped down, over and over. "I sweat, but I don't get tired or out of breath. I need you to try this so you know I'm not exaggerating."

She continued reading aloud:

Rule #3

The game is a simple card game, played by two teams composed of one or two players each. Summon your deck by holding your palm open and wanting it.

Minh held her palm out. "Come here and do this."

Dakota did as told, and found in his hand three metal cards. Or were they metal? They were cold to the touch, and smooth like metal, but light and thin, and retained the vibrant color of what was printed on them. They resembled trading cards, with titles, illustrations, and text below. He returned to the desk and showed Minh. "'Nói sự thật'? What does that mean?"

"That means 'say the truth'," she said, picking up the cards one by one. "As for the others, 'tố' means 'raise', like in poker, and 'bỏ' means 'fold'. Let me write these out for you."

Say the truth (nói sự thật)

type: action

tier: base

Play this card and ask an opponent a question. If the opponent misrepresents the requested information, or refuses to provide it, they incur the penalty for the turn.

If they answer honestly, you incur the penalty.

Raise (tố)

type: action

tier: base

Play this card to double the match stakes.

Match stakes can never be reduced.

Fold (bỏ)

type: action

tier: base

Play this card to forfeit the match.

Forfeiting the match incurs a penalty equal to the current match stakes.

"There's only a few more rules left," Minh said. "I'll write them down too."

After that, all the pages were blank.

"Let's try it," Dakota said. "Let's play a match. You won't believe how good this potion feels."

"But why is it a 'sexual' avatar that you become with the potion? Do you feel any thing sexual?"

"Not in principle, just limber and fit."

"Hmm." Minh tapped a drop onto her finger and swallowed it. Immediately, she felt what he meant. All sense of stiffness, all the vague pains she'd learned to tune out as part of normal life, they vanished. Nothing much about her physical shape changed, though.

"Makes sense," Dakota said, nodding. "You were already perfect."

She blushed. "Don't say that. And don't stare at me." With her palm out, she summoned her own deck, which featured the same three cards. Once she faced Dakota, the card edges glowed red.

Dakota vs Minh

at stake: 1

Dakota

articles: boxers, pants, robe, scarf, accessory x7, sock x2

article rights: 13

deck: Fold (bỏ), Raise (tố), Say the truth (nói sự thật)

in matches with: Minh

Minh

articles: panties, bra, robe, scarf, accessory x2, sock x2

article rights: 8

deck: Fold (bỏ), Raise (tố), Say the truth (nói sự thật)

in matches with: Dakota

"Try me," he said.

"Okay." She set the card on the desk between them. "What's your name?"

"Dakota."

The instant he answered, the butterfly pin holding her hair behind her ear vanished. She reached up to feel for it. "What? Why did that happen?"

Minh

articles: panties, bra, robe, scarf, accessory, sock x2

article rights: 7

deck: Fold (bỏ), Raise (tố), Say the truth (nói sự thật)

in matches with: Dakota

"Interesting. My turn." He set the same card down on the desk. "Have you ever thought about me while you pleasured yourself?"

"Hey! Dakota, we're doing this for research. Shouldn't you be curious about what just happened?"

"Sounds like you don't want to answer."

"No! I've never thought about you like that!"

But once she said this, her watch vanished from her wrist.

Minh

articles: panties, bra, robe, scarf, sock x2

article rights: 6

deck: Fold (bỏ), Raise (tố), Say the truth (nói sự thật)

in matches with: Dakota

"Seems like maybe you have thought about me like that."

The premise of their working together was that if they could combine talents: Minh's research prowess (she'd published several papers in sophomore year) and Dakota's irreverence with respect to rules (he was the primary supplier of MXE on campus), Minh could publish papers based on data impossible for the other academic tryhards to get hold of, and Dakota could get second author when he otherwise never would. But she sometimes suspected he didn't care about that, and had other reasons for wanting to spend time with her. Which this was true. Dakota did not care about his citation count and nurtured no intentions of continuing to grad school.

"Shut up," Minh said. "It's my turn now, and I need to take notes first. This seems like a kind of strip game." She flipped the page in her personal notebook. After she wrote a few sentences, she noticed something curious: a translucent, glowing numeral hovering in the air above the desk between her and Dakota's cards. The numeral was '1', and it slowly rotated.

This gave her an idea. On her turn, she played the raise card, and the numeral ticked up to '2'.

Dakota vs Minh

at stake: 2

"My turn," Dakota said. He played say the truth again. "When you pleasured yourself thinking about me, what was the scene you pictured?"

"I'm not going to keep researching with you, Dakota, if you can't control your invasions of my privacy."

"Okay, sorry."

"I'm not answering that, obviously."

This time, two items disappeared. Her scarf, and her robe. The cold air hit her bare skin, and she shivered. Immediately, she went to Dakota's closet to pull out one of his robes.

Minh

articles: panties, bra, sock x2

article rights: 4

deck: Fold (bỏ), Raise (tố), Say the truth (nói sự thật)

in matches with: Dakota

While she was turned away from him and couldn't notice, Dakota traced her body's outline with his eyes, starting at her feet. She stood on her toes because the rack in the closet was too tall for her otherwise. Her black socks ended just above her ankle, and their fuzzy, frayed texture made her skin where they topped out seem more smooth, more nude somehow. The bold arc of her calves from all her sprinting in soccer curved back in behind her knees, which he knew this area of her body to be sensitive because he'd once dug his knuckle into it to knock her over when she was fighting him for his journal. Whenever she asserted her privacy it was final, and he felt he'd done something wrong by pressing her. But when he asserted his she only saw it as playful refusal, an invitation to try harder. Her gray briefs hugged the convex arc of her ass, which by the way it didn't move it all as she struggled to reach higher in his closet you could know would be solid to the touch, but didn't cover it. Her briefs ended about twenty degrees before her ass met the back of her leg, revealing a span of skin even paler than her inner thigh.

Finally she got hold of a robe, but as soon she pulled it over her head, it teleported right back into the closet, onto the same hanger she'd taken it from. For a moment she thought, with her hand on her hips. Her hand pushed down on the waistband of her briefs just slightly, revealing a thin zigzag pattern impressed into her skin by the elastic, and creating just enough slack in the fabric for a crease to form lower on her ass. Dakota could not help fantasizing about reaching out to pinch this crease and pull down.

"I've lost my patience with this game," Minh said finally, and picked up the blue vial, placed a drop on her finger. But as she inserted her finger into her mouth, the blue drop crawled up toward her hand, as if pushed away by a magnetic field protecting the opening between her lips. "What the hell?"

"Maybe it's because we're still in the match?"

The suggestion made sense to her, so she glared at Dakota. "You'd love for that to be the case."

"I would, but also if I look at it impartially, that's truly the best guess I have."

She played her 'fold' card, which caused her two socks to vanish.

Minh

articles: panties, bra

article rights: 2

deck: Fold (bỏ), Raise (tố), Say the truth (nói sự thật)

After this, she was able to swallow the blue drop. Every article she'd lost reappeared on her body just as it had been. But an unpleasant sensation made her grimace. She massaged her temples. "I have a headache suddenly." After a moment she corrected herself, "Wait, no, this is just the way it's always felt. This is the ambient discomfort of inhabiting a body. After having a break from it for only a few minutes, it feels less unfamiliar, but I do recognize it."

"I think I'll stay in game mode," Dakota said.

"I can't pretend I don't envy you that."

In Dakota's hand, small glowing particles gathered from nowhere to assume the form of a new card. He picked it up to read it, but of course he couldn't read the Vietnamese. Minh snatched it and read aloud.

Article Choice (quyền lựa chọn mảnh)

type: mode

tier: win-1

Decide on an order in which your opponent will forfeit articles of clothing, then activate this card at any time.

Once activated and until deactivated, the opponent will forfeit articles in the order you chose. You may decide on a different order at any time.

Dakota

articles: boxers, pants, robe, scarf, accessory x7, sock x2

article rights: 13

deck: Fold (bỏ), Raise (tố), Say the truth (nói sự thật), Article Choice (quyền lựa chọn mảnh)

Minh took more notes, then caught Dakota up on her conclusions. "The game seems to be broken up into rounds, within which we have turns. I believe the reason I lost my socks when I folded is that the stakes indicated by that floating number always apply. But what I don't understand is, if the game ends only when a player folds, what happens after a player runs out of clothing?"

"You think too much, Minh. It's okay to just go with the flow sometimes."

Minh reached over and squeezed Dakota's enhanced biceps, looked at the way his scarf rested first on his pecs and then curved and fell straight down the rest of his torso. He was smart when he wanted to be. Even she would have been at a loss without his help to break the spell lock on the door to the forbidden section of the library. But she wondered why, most of the time, did he choose to be stupid?