As Nas (Simplicity, Aubrey, Open)

[Adrian]

Adrian tapped on the table in thought as he looked at his deck of cards and his fellow players. His eyes were shrewd but there was a grin on his face. "Well," he said, looking around at the various denizens of the Academy underworld, or what there was of it, "I think this will be an interesting night."

For the past few weeks Adrian had been attending a weekly poker game held in the mess hall. Most nights they bet nothing more exciting than a few chores. Adrian had lost quite a bit of free time at this table but he always enjoyed the games so he kept coming back. A while back he'd gotten the group to occasionally up the stakes, to clothing. Tonight was one of those nights.

"Yes, interesting," Dimitra said in heavily accented English. She and Adrian had struck up a tentative friendship over their mutual desire to see many of the Academy's female personnel without their clothes.

"We should get started then," Adrian said, chewing on a toothpick. "Buy in's jewelry," he said, removing a bracelet he could rarely wear during class and throwing it in the middle of the table.

[Aubrey]

It was the dead of night, and Aubrey was awake. Well, more like half-awake at the moment. But awake. Sometime during the night she'd gotten an overwhelming craving for some marshmallows, and so had finally decided to venture out and see if she could find any in the Mess Hall. After tying back the thick length of her blonde hair with a scrunchie, Aubrey quietly stumbled out of the room and into the hallway. The door swished silently closed behind her, taking the peace and darkness with it. While the hallways were quiet and abandoned, the lights were still on. She rubbed her eyes, then headed towards where the Mess Hall should be.

After a couple minutes of confused wandering--she was still getting to used to where everything was--she found it. There weren't many people around, and Aubrey gave the poker table people only a cursory glance before zeroing in on exactly what she wanted: The cabinets. Aubrey slid open one of the cabinet doors, and reached forward to move some cereal boxes out of the way. No luck. The next cabinet had some cans and jars, but again no marshmallows. The third was piled with plastic bags of rice and flour. Aubrey shifted the bags around, feeling as if her search was in vain, when she saw some marshmallows squished up against the back. Reaching inside, Aubrey yanked the plastic bag out and smiled widely. Perfect.

Still in a bit of a fog of sleep, Aubrey wandered back towards the entrance to the Mess Hall and fumbled as she tried to tear open the soft plastic. As she did, she lifted her gaze and attempted to get a good look at what the group at the table was doing. Some sort of gam--the bag suddenly ripped open, and a shower of white marshmallows fell at her feet. Aubrey stopped in place, half a bag of marshmallows in hand, and glanced down. "Shit."

[Adrian]

Adrian began to shuffle the cards but had the deck firmly taken away from him by Dimitra. Everyone here knew he'd gained a certain level of proficiency with card tricks and they liked to pretend they didn't trust him with a shuffle or a deal. Adrian relinquished the cards with a chuckle and watched Dimitra shuffle. If there was anyone they needed to be worried about it was her. The easy way in which she handled the cards was enough to tell anyone she knew her way around a deck. But the fact that she kept winning told him he was outclasses at the poker table. If the games weren't so fun he would have given up by now.

He turned when he heard a muttered curse and saw a girl bending to pick up something a bit across the way. Adrian wasn't sure who it was but that just made him more curious. He knew everyone that frequented this part of the ship at this time of night and he wasn't going to pass up the chance to meet someone new.

He slid his chair back and tipped it towards the table to indicate that he intended to keep it before walking over to the unknown girl. "Hi," he said, bending down to help pick up the marshmallows. "Got a sweet tooth?" he asked, letting his Persian accent have a bit more free reign than he normally might since he'd found it never really hurt him in introductions.

[Aubrey]

With a handful of marshmallows, Aubrey glanced up at the person that had spoken to her. "Hello, and thanks." A light smile flashed across her face, and she looked dolefully at the scattering of marshmallows on the ground. "Well, sometimes, yes." With her free hand full, Aubrey slowly stood. "I was just really craving marshmallows tonight for some reason. I'm actually really surprised they had them here, there was only one bag and it was stuffed in some little corner." Aubrey took a deep breath and laughed a bit. "And now I've wasted most of them. Go me."

Her gaze swept over the Mess Hall, attempting to spot a trash can somewhere where she could dump the handful of marshmallows. Her eyes landed on the poker table, briefly, before she glanced back to Adrian. He must've come from the table, seeing as how they were the only other people around. "What're you guys playing?"

[Adrian]

Adrian nodded towards a trash can near the door and began to walk in that direction with the handful of marshmallows he'd helped pick up. He glanced at the poker table and saw the other players watching him since they couldn't start the game without him. Dimitra raised her eyebrows in an inquiry before glancing at the girl walking with him. He just shrugged with his own eyebrows before looking back at Aubrey.

"We're playing poker," he said, honestly enough. "Card games are one of the few things that are universal and decks are easy enough to get though it took us a while to get a complete one. Still, poker seems to have become the Academy's official past time in off hours for a sizable group of us. We're thinking of even doing a tournament or something," he said, giving the idea some thought. "But tonight's just for fun. Want to join us?"

[Aubrey]

Adrian pointed out the trashcan, and Aubrey followed suit behind him. After she had dumped her handful of bad marshmallows in the trash, she twisted the top of the plastic bag that held the rest of them. That way, the bag was sealed and no more of them could fall out on her way back.

Aubrey cast a look over at the table where Adrian had come from, curiosity in her gaze. "That's pretty cool. Poker, huh?" Aubrey smiled at Adrian's question, but her expression had turned slightly sheepish. "Yeah, sure, I'm totally down for playing. I might need some refreshing on the rules of how to play, though." The only time Aubrey had really ever played poker was sometime back in high school, at some friend's party. It'd been awhile since then, and she couldn't exactly remember how to play.

[Adrian]

"Excellent," he said with a large smile and turned back to flash Dimitra a knowing smile. Adrian loved strip poker and not necessarily because people lost their clothing. He'd never had a problem getting someone out of their clothing if he found them interesting and they liked him in return. If they didn't like him in return then he found they weren't that interesting after all.

No, he liked strip poker because he felt like you got to know someone a bit when they took their clothes off in front of you. First off because you got to see what they were wearing and people always had such interesting clothing choices. But also because it was interesting to see what people tried to hide or tried to show off. He wasn't the type to get caught up in the "Hero of the West" nonsense but he had to admit he was a bit curious about the animorphs that had arrived and won such acclaim in this community. He hoped the night would be interesting.

[Simplicity]

Simplicity idly threw the piece of paper she’d crushed up into a ball between her hands. There were probably plenty of things she could be doing but she either couldn’t think of them or wasn’t in the mood. She’d considered sleep but her mind was running too fast for that plan to work properly. It was starting to piss her off too, running at full without an actual thought.

She paused with the paper in her right hand, blinked, then hopped of her desk. Simplicity grabbed her loose vest off the bed and headed out of the room. If she wasn’t going to do anything she might as well not do anything outside her room. As she walked through the halls she resumed tossing the ball between her hands.

Eventually she heard an echo through one of the halls. She paused and pursed her lips, debating on whether to follow the voices. Simplicity shrugged to no one and began walking in the direction they came from. It wasn’t long until she spotted a small group at a table, one of which was Adrian. After putting the paper in her pants pocket she approached them.

“Hello,” she waved to get their attention, “how be you all?”

[Adrian]

Adrian had made his way back to the table and made a bit of a fuss out of finding a chair for Aubrey though it was obvious it was all in good fun. A few people who were here weren't actually playing so one of them gave up their chair and decided to call it night, wishing them all well as he left. On his way out he passed Simplicity coming in and Adrian's eyes lit up and he glanced at Dimitra. This night just kept getting better.

"We're fine," he said amiably, turning to look up at Simplicity. "What about you? What brings you to a darkened mess hall in the middle of the night?" The mess hall wasn't dark at all. Living inside of a spaceship was worse than living in a city for natural clocks. Everything was always kept lit and, from the inside, you couldn't really tell what time of day it was. They could all be taking classes at two and sleeping at sixteen for all they knew.

[Simplicity]

“Is boredom an acceptable answer?” She asked taking a chair. “Couldn’t sleep, and don’t think I was going to fall asleep anytime soon. So sorry if I’m a bit out of it.”

Simplicity sat down at the table, smiling at those already seated. She set her elbows on the table and leaned in. Her mother would have scolded her and she enjoyed not being yelled at. While she missed her family, some other their tendencies were not so enjoyable. Despite a number of them being “higher rank” Simplicity felt like those on her ship as peers, at least in age. They were also much more relaxed than a number of people she ran into over the years.

“What brings you guys down here by the way? Unless you guys have a regular game night or insomniacs like me, which I’d understand.”

[Adrian]

"We play about once a week," Dimitra answered. "We'd play more if Adrian didn't lose all of his spare time so quickly," she continued with a grin. Adrian just shook his head and continued to shuffle. Dimitra turned to Simplicity who had sat down beside her. "We play for chores," she explained, her heavy Eastern European accent making her voice sound husky and full of character instead of just gruff as Adrian had heard it with others. "Usually anyway," she said with a smile.

"All right, all right, settle down you degenerate lot," Adrian said. "Gonna explain the rules one more time since we have guests. If you're sitting at the table you're in the game. Buy in is a piece of jewelry," he knocked his finger on the table near his own bracelet. He'd worn quite a few tonight. It may be considered cheating or just preparation. "Who's in?"

[Aubrey]

After everyone had figured out their seats, Aubrey had settled down and eagerly introduced herself to the others around the table. Not too soon after, another girl came wandering into the Mess Hall. Aubrey smiled over at Simplicity, then paid attention as Adrian explained about the game. The half-gone bag of marshmallows sat on the table next to her, and she snacked on one as she listened. Jewelry?

Before the war, Aubrey had been big into collecting all kinds of bracelets. Even when she lived in Los Angeles, she'd maintained some of her old jewelry in her bag. She had even gone out of her way to carry the bag on her trip to her next faction. None of it had survived through the event in Dallas--the only thing left after that had been the morphing outfit she had worn and the piece of the morphing cube she'd had to carry. Since then, when she had been stationed in New York, she had managed to accrue a meager collection of bracelets. Most of them were stored in her bag in her room, but she'd been too lazy to take off one of them before falling asleep tonight. It was tied around her wrist with a simple purple cord, and had a metal daisy on it. The paint on the daisy had worn off by now, however, leaving the design a silver color.

The bracelet itself wasn't particularly important--she found it when she'd gone exploring the New York faction's hideout--but some part of her still hesitated before answering Adrian. "Um, ah. Sure. I'm in," Aubrey said, twisting off the bracelet. She leaned over and dropped it in.