Natalie: hey hailey?
Hailey: Hey, Natalie! What's up?
Natalie: who are all the new people
Hailey: Did you see the post from Cinza? Here - https://------------.---/thread/406-Splitting-the-site/
Natalie: she writes too much
Natalie: i got lost
Hailey: They're new awakened. People not from Rallsburg.
Natalie: o
Natalie: so thats why my name changes when im in that board?
Hailey: Yeah. So out there you're not Natalie, okay?
Natalie: ok
Natalie: can i ask you something?
Hailey: Of course! What is it?
Natalie: there's a boy in class who wants to be friends
Natalie: but i dunno if i should
Natalie: hes nice but
Hailey: But what?
Hailey: Natalie?
Natalie: sorry
Natalie: someone walking by and i hid it
Hailey: Are you at school?
Natalie: ya
Natalie: tech class
Natalie: and i cant use my phone
Natalie: cuz they block it while youre inside
Hailey: Natalie, you shouldn't be logging in from school. Those computers might not be safe.
Natalie: what do you mean
Hailey: Cinza said they usually record everything. They'll know you're visiting this site.
Natalie: i thought it looks like a gaming forum to everybody else
Hailey: Yes, but just in case.
Natalie: ok
Natalie: im sorry
Hailey:
Natalie: o
Natalie: i dont know
Natalie: should i be making friends out here?
Natalie: i thought were in hiding
Hailey: That doesn't mean you can't make friends!
Hailey: What's he like?
Natalie: he was my guide in first week
Natalie: hes kinda funny
Natalie: but really nice
Natalie: he plays a card game with his friends every day at lunch though
Natalie: everyone thinks theyre a bunch of nerds
Hailey: Can I let you in on a little secret?
Natalie: ?
Hailey: I'm a huge nerd too.
Natalie: no you arent
Natalie: youre too pretty to be a nerd
Hailey: Straight-A student, Natalie. I had the highest GPA at my high school and in Rallsburg.
Natalie: gpa?
Hailey: Grade point average.
Natalie: no way you were the smartest
Hailey: Hey! Smart people can be fun too.
Hailey: Give them a shot. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. You'll find other friends.
Natalie: will they think im weird if i just walk up and sit down?
Hailey: Time for another secret. Don't be afraid to break the rules a little. They really want you to join them, but they're never gonna ask you themselves.
Natalie: they kinda did all ready
Hailey: Oh! Well then, what do you have to lose?
Natalie: ok
Natalie: thanks hailey
Hailey: I wish I could see you. Sorry I can't come by.
Natalie: me too
Hailey: How long do you have left in class?
Natalie: a couple minutes
Natalie: why
Hailey: I was going to ask Alden if he wanted to say hi.
Natalie: o
Natalie: sorry
Natalie: tell him i said hi
Hailey: Good luck with school! I'll have my phone on me. Message me if you need to talk, any time.
Natalie: ok
Natalie: bye hailey
Hailey: Bye Natalie! Love you!
----------------------------------------
The next day, Natalie took her advice.
As lunch rolled around, she almost started walking out to South Hall, but the thought of spending another meal totally alone and worrying every time the bathroom door opened pushed her to turn around. Natalie walked right up to the cafeteria doorway and stepped in, expecting the worst. She waited for every head to swivel toward her, the hundreds of kids watching her every move as she finally tried to rejoin the student body.
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No one even noticed. The bustle of the cafeteria continued as if she wasn't there.
Natalie took a few nervous steps inside. A couple heads briefly turned, but after a curious glance or two, they returned to their friends and their food. No one really cared. She scanned the room for Blake and her friends, but they were nowhere to be seen—or Natalie might have expected a bit more fanfare.
To her great relief, Quinn was there, along with most of his 'Glasses Club', seated at one of the far tables against the walls. Natalie made her way across the room and approached them. Steven was leaning up against the wall, watching Quinn and Tyler playing a card game. Natalie didn't recognize it. As she approached, Steven sat up straight, waving her over.
"Hey, Jenny!"
Quinn looked up. Natalie shrunk slightly away, but he just gave her a little wave before focusing back on his game. His eyes were so narrow and focused, she didn't want to interrupt. She nearly took a step away.
"Come on, sit down over here," Steven added, pointing at the spot across from him. Natalie reluctantly walked up and took the spot, grateful it was against the wall. She didn't need to worry about anyone behind her.
"Hi."
"Hi." Steven grinned. "Don't try to talk to them. They're in the zone."
"They are?" Now she really felt nervous. Should she leave?
"Well, Quinn is. This is the closest he's ever been to beating Tyler and he's really into it." Steven pointed down at the cards. "He just needs one more good attack and he wins, but Tyler's defense is like a fortress."
"Where the heck did you get this draft?" Tyler muttered. "It sucks."
Quinn didn't answer, flicking through his hand of cards. Natalie tried to figure out what was going on just from context clues, but the numbers and symbols on the cards were pretty meaningless without a rulebook or anything else to explain them. The artwork was something though—a lot of cool fantasy images like dragons and knights and wizards. One card on each side stood out, with much more fancy artwork (and a lot more text) than the rest.
Tyler's card depicted a knight in full plate armor and a humongous sword planted in the ground. Like his card, Tyler was sitting stock still and staring straight forward, waiting for his opponent to move. Between them lay a wide array of cards, pressed up against each other as if they were fighting. Knights and creatures and rock monsters and all sorts of other things, though they didn't look as heroic and strong as the main card back in Tyler's area. As Natalie followed them across, she found the knight's equal on Quinn's side, facing away from her.
Her mouth fell open slightly. Quinn's card showed a young elf woman in full hunting gear with bow and arrow, riding atop a huge grey wolf and with a ball of fire immersing one hand. In fact, it was almost exactly like Natalie sometimes pictured herself when she was thinking about Gwen—if she were a bit older, a lot prettier, and with wavy golden hair and striking lavender eyes instead of plain old brown for both.
"What are the special cards on each side?" she asked Steven quietly, not wanting to interrupt their game.
"Those are their generals." Steven pointed at the different spots that cards had been laid out. "Each stack is a territory, and if it's on Tyler's side then it was originally his. They send out guys to each area until they can make a path to the other side." He indicated how the cards were laid out in a nine-by-nine grid on each half of the table. "Tyler took six spots on his side and made a fork, right? So Quinn has to go through the center to get to Tyler's base, but he's got two different ways to start."
"And the general is in the base?"
"Not always. Generals do stuff wherever they are on the board. Both of them have their generals at home right now to make stuff faster. They can draw more cards or play them faster. It depends on what that general does and how smart the guy playing is. So basically, Tyler's general does a lot and Quinn's ends up doing nothing."
Natalie had never played a card game more complicated than poker, but she wasn't having too much trouble picking up on the basic idea so far. It didn't seem that much harder than some of the games she'd played on her phone, at least. She was determined to figure out as much of the game as she could, so they'd accept her as part of the group. Steven talked way too fast, but she pieced it together from what he said and what she could see on the table.
"Quinn has less territories on his side. That makes him harder to get to?"
"Yeah, since he's got more power in those spots. Tyler has to go through the center, and all of Quinn's back line probably won't get attacked. But it means he can't make as much stuff every turn."
"It also means he's going to get bulldozed by a couple meteors," Tyler added, leaning forward. He picked up a face down card from his left-side pile and flipped it over, setting it on top of the one in the middle of Quinn's. He suddenly broke into a coughing fit, diving into his bag and pulling out a small piece of plastic.
Natalie was alarmed, but neither Quinn nor Steven seemed the least bit surprised, so she tried to ignore the unpleasant hacking sounds coming out of his mouth. She leaned a little bit away from him, as if she could press herself into the wall beside her. Tyler took a deep breath before finally returning to the game. "Meteor storm to your farmland, on your templar knight and your assassin."
Quinn frowned. "That's coming from your wizard tower?"
"Yeah."
Quinn sighed, and took two of the cards from his front territory and set them aside.
"Tyler did a meteor from one of his two front spots, his wizard tower," Steven explained. "Quinn doesn't have any magic in his front line anymore because he used it all to break Tyler's other place, the merchant village. He didn't expect Tyler to still have any spells left after their last big fight," he continued, pointing at the single card on the other side of Tyler's board, a bustling village without a single card protecting it anymore. "Oh man, Tyler just killed all his defense. He's too good at this. Quinn's gonna lose now."
Quinn was staring at his cards intently, his hand playing with one on his back-end that was underneath a picture of a line of catapults. Natalie found herself silently rooting for him to win somehow. Tyler was obviously the best in the group at the game, and even though she didn't understand how the game worked yet, she could tell that Quinn was probably losing. His back line had six cards each on the sides, but the three leading right to him were almost totally empty, with only his general on the last spot as his last remaining face-up card. She looked so fierce and resolute in her picture, but Natalie doubted that would help her against the ten or so cards lined up across Tyler's board.
"How does he lose?" she asked.
"There's three ways. If his general is dead for more than three turns, he loses."
"They can come back to life?"
"Yeah, there's a few different ways. Generals are special immortal hero types. You don't usually lose that way, but it can happen." Steven pointed at the spot behind Quinn's cards. "If you get to the end of the line, you can attack the other guy. Every time you do they have to drop cards from their deck, and if they run out of cards they lose."
"And the last way?"
"If they run out of cards another way." Steven shrugged. "I guess it's really only two ways, but it's important since there are spells and stuff to make you lose cards. You still gotta worry about it even if you don't get attacked."
Quinn stopped playing with the card underneath his catapults. He picked up his general and set her on his center pile, one behind the front. He put out two dark robed ninjas on either side of her.
"I move Linnethea to my fort and activate its guards." He then flipped over the card underneath the catapults. "Siege attack on your wizard tower. You randomly lose a guy."
Tyler sighed and picked up the three cards on his tower, holding them up in front of him. Quinn grabbed one out at random and tossed it aside.
"Shit," Tyler groaned.
"Tyler just lost his best wizard to that," Steven explained. "He's still doing way better than Quinn, but that slows him down a bit. He's still got this though. Quinn's screwed."
Quinn paused, then held up the six cards in his hand. "I discard everything and make three more catapult attacks."
Tyler stared at him for a moment, slack-jawed. "Uhh, where?"
"All three on your castle," Quinn said, pointing at the stack of cards at the side of Tyler's back line—which included his general.
"What's he doing?" Natalie whispered.
"Quinn's crazy. He's going all in on a stupid catapult play to try and take out Tyler's general."
"Why?"
"Tyler's general makes it easy for him to pump tons of soldiers as long as he sits back in the castle. They're cheap but he can just keep throwing them at the front until Quinn's got nothing left. Quinn didn't draft any good removal stuff in his kingdom so he can't take care of that many guys at once." Steven scratched his head. "This is like a fifty-fifty shot though and Quinn doesn't have any other cards left. It's a dumb play."
Quinn smiled. "Hold 'em up, Tyler."
Tyler held up the seven cards that had been clustered around the castle. Three of them had been face-down. Natalie leaned over slightly so she could see what he'd been keeping secret. Two of them looked like wizards, and the other card was a strange fairy girl with a wide, mischievous grin who seemed to be holding an exploding bag.
Quinn reached forward and plucked out the first card, which was a plain-looking knight. He looked disappointed, while Tyler let out a faint sigh of relief. Quinn waited a moment before he grabbed another one—the fairy girl with the bomb.
Steven whistled. "Oh man, that would have wrecked you. Nice."
Quinn grinned. "Now for Sir Sits-a-lot."
"Sir Tennenbauer the Indomitable," Tyler corrected with an annoyed look.
"Not for long," Quinn added, reaching forward for his last card. Natalie waited with baited breath as he reached right for the general—but he switched at the last second, grabbing up another knight instead.
Quinn looked at it, disappointed. Steven sat back against the wall, equally dejected.
"Is that your turn?" Tyler asked smugly.
"Nah," Quinn said. "Linnethea attacks with everyone using her double move special." He picked up his general and set her straight onto the wizard tower along with her two ninjas.
"Uhh…" Tyler started.
"Quinn, she loses that fight," Steven pointed out. "What are you doing?"
"I'm attacking," he replied calmly. Natalie noticed his hand touching the corner of a card underneath his other back-line territory, another wizard tower like the one he was assaulting. She hid her grin. She knew he had a real plan, even if it looked crazy to the other guys.
"I…" Tyler started coughing again, pulling out his inhaler. "I cast mystic retreat," he said, tossing out a card from underneath his castle. He picked up the remaining cards at the wizard tower and put them in his hand.
Quinn smiled and moved his cards onto the tower in Tyler's territory. "Your turn."