Love Addict's RPG Ch. 38 (Patreon)

My earlier estimation was off and didn't get a ton of work done earlier. I then split 38 because it was getting really long. Should have 39 tomorrow.

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"Hey there, kids!" The manager said, trying to start things off cordially enough as he placed the pizza on the table. "Got a pizza here for you, but I have to say, I can't help noticing you two have been on one heck of a winning streak!"

Mia eyed Oliver, waiting for him to take point. There wasn't any point in denying it. He didn't know how Prize Planet kept track of these things; Oliver just assumed there was some guy on a computer back there keeping track of data and maybe cross-referencing it with security footage. However it happened, the manager knew what was up.

Oliver wasn't going to give up all the prizes he'd won, however. Not without a fight.

"That kind of thing happens occasionally in arcades, doesn't it?" Oliver casually asked.

"Sure, there's no accounting for luck," the manager conceded, having had the exceedingly rare day or two where the establishment ran at a loss. "But when you start picking claw machines clean and winning the jackpot on every machine you touch? Well... I'm afraid there's a word for that kind of luck, and it's called 'nonexistent'."

Oliver could feel things growing more tense by the second, which was when Mia spoke up with something completely random. "You got a quarter on you, Mr. Manager? A penny, maybe? Any old coin will do."

"What?" He asked, rightfully confused.

"Gonna prove to you that someone really can be that lucky. You picking up and what I'm putting down, mi amor?"

He obviously was. Mia's intention seemed pretty clear to him.

"Flip a coin as much as you'd like, and I bet you anything I'll call it correctly just about one hundred percent of the time," Oliver proposed. He was trying to sound laid-back about the whole thing as if this wasn't a big deal to him and more like a mild inconvenience he was used to.

Naturally, the manager thought this was all one big joke. "You know I can have the police here in minutes, right? I've seen hacker kids like you before, with your cell phones, laptops, and your guys in remote vans... you've probably got some sleight of hand trick up your sleeve, too, if you're so confident about the coin flip. This isn't my first rodeo."

Oliver had to hand it to him. This guy was pretty shrewd, if woefully ignorant of what 'hacking' actually entailed. Regardless, he wasn't going to let anyone stand in the way of him spoiling his new girlfriend.

"How about we step a couple of feet from the table beforehand?" He suggested. "It'd be hard to rig a coin flip if we're nowhere near it, don't you think?"

The manager paused briefly. Whether he owned up to it or not, Oliver's claims of luckiness were fanciful enough to captivate this man's curiosity. This kid really seemed to believe he would make the right call often enough for it to serve as compelling evidence. It was preposterous, borderline absurd, even... but damn, was it intriguing.

"Five flips," the man said, pulling a quarter from his wallet.

"And if he gets them right, we're off the hook?" Mia pressed.

"It means I'm willing to see just how lucky your boyfriend is, kid," he clarified, then looked at Oliver as he flipped it for the first time and caught it in mid-flight on the way down. "Call it."

"Heads," Oliver announced, holding back a smirk when he was proven correct. The manager was undeterred, however, and eager to repeat the process. With each flip, Oliver made the correct guess, and they watched in real time as this man became increasingly confused with what was happening.

The manager didn't know what to believe when the last call was made, and the kid had guessed correctly for the fifth time in a row. Oliver was still holding back his smile, but Mia wasn't.

"Told you he's lucky," she clicked her tongue, dialing up the sarcasm.

"There has to be an explanation," the man grasped at mental straws. "Maybe you've got a warped sense of time like athletes do when they're in the zone, and you saw which way the coin was facing right before I caught it, right? Yeah... yeah, that must be it."

Oliver wanted to call this guy out on how ridiculous of an assertion that was, but being who he was and having the powers that he had, he figured he really didn't have the right to call anything ridiculous. He looked at Mia to see if she had any more bright ideas, and the look on her face told him that she did. Plenty.

One thing was clear: she wasn't giving up her swag.

"If you need a more compelling example, I've got just the thing."

"Save it," the man started rooting around in his pocket for his cell phone. "I've heard enough out of you cheaters."

Mia yanked an unopened deck of playing cards from the prize tote. Oliver had only picked them out because he'd already gotten everything he wanted out of the prize machine and still had a credit left over. Otherwise, he wouldn't have bothered. Mia thought they might as well be good for something.

"One more gambit, all or nothing," she tossed the cards at the manager, who plucked them out of the air. "This time, we'll go with something so crazy you can't possibly explain it with anything other than luck."

Oliver trusted whatever Mia was cooking up, but he did shoot her a quick glance to ask if she was sure about this. A wink back told him all he needed to know.

Once again, the manager was far more intrigued than he felt appropriate. He inspected the unopened cards, tossing them around in his hands as he looked for any possible signs of tampering. When he finally found none, he looked at Mia and said, "Fine. Let's hear it."

Mia smiled as the fish bit the hook. They had him now; the rest was just a formality so long as Oliver's luck held strong. Her suggestion was a simple one.

"Blackjack."

"Blackjack?" The manager laughed. "Anyone can win at blackjack."

"And what if he got twenty-one for three rounds straight while blindfolded?" Mia proposed in a lazy, singsong voice. Oliver thought that someone was having a little too much fun LARPing out one of her favorite gambling animes, but hey, that just meant this was a good date.

The manager stopped in his tracks, clearly trying to calculate the immeasurable odds. He looked as if his brain was broken and was now struggling to piece it back together. "There's no way you could pull that off..." he said, glancing at Oliver.

Oliver played his part, taunting, "Supposing I do, will you agree to get off our backs and accept that I earned all our prizes and tickets legitimately?"

It went against the man's better judgment, but Mia assumed he would be all in by this point. He sat down at the table and moved the pizza to the side, then gestured for them to sit as well, Mia having to go and grab another seat for herself because he'd taken hers. Stripping the sheet of plastic protecting the deck of cards from being tampered with, the manager gave in.

"If you win..." he laughed. "Then sure, whatever, you won't see me standing in your way. You can have your pick of the prize rack, no problem." The look on his face told them he was all but certain this outcome had a zero percent chance of happening, and it was on Oliver to prove him wrong.

He was about to sit down and do exactly that before Mia thrust her arm out before him and added another stipulation. "Hold up for just a second. Not exactly what you'd call satisfied with these terms, ese."

"Mia?" Oliver felt the need to tell her she shouldn't be pushing for more, but her mind was dead set on doing so and she didn't allow him the chance to stop her.

"You seriously think you can win, don't you?" The manager laughed yet again, though the strangest hint of uncertainty was present deep beneath his confidence. "Christ. I don't know why I'm even humoring this, but go on."

"Relax, not asking for much, here..." Mia smiled, pulled out the chair, and gestured at the center of the table. "Just want a new pizza, Mr. Manager. Didn't even get a single slice before you started throwing baseless accusations, and now it's already cold..."

Oliver had to hold back an amused grin.

The manager looked ashamed by what Mia had pointed out and mumbled in agreement about her demands, saying it was only fair. Since there wasn't a blindfold among their prizes, Oliver took off his jacket, rolled it up, and tied the arms around his face. He admittedly looked pretty stupid, but not as stupid as the other guy was about to.

Oliver took a deep breath as he heard the shuffling of cards. Evidently, the manager was really fucking going at it. He shuffled, cut the deck, and did a dozen little tricks to ensure the cards were as randomized as possible. He did this without knowing Oliver's powers were already overriding his hard work, causality rearranging the strings of fate solely to benefit one Californian stoner.

After about a minute of nonstop shuffling noises, Oliver heard two cards being unceremoniously slapped on the table. "Your move," the manager-turned-dealer announced.

Things turned quiet as Oliver focused on the cards he couldn't see. There wasn't a method to any of this. He couldn't 'feel' the luck, no cues told him what to pick, and he didn't sense anything, either. All he had to do was go for it.

"Hit me," he said, hearing another card being dealt. The manager was stone-cold silent, giving Oliver nothing to work off of. To be fair, Mia didn't react, either. Everything came down to him.

"Hit me," he repeated. His fourth card hit the table, and Oliver knew what to do without hesitation. "I'll stand."

"Bullshit..." The manager exclaimed.

Oliver might not have been able to sense luck, but he could sense his girlfriend smiling like a cat through his improvised blindfold. "Well, would you look at that. Two of hearts. Nine of spades. One of diamonds. Nine of hearts. Twenty-one."

Tension got the best of him, and Oliver exhaled with relief as the manager made some frustrated noises and said, "This is crazy. You got lucky, that's all!"

"Yes," Oliver agreed. "That's what we've been trying to tell you this entire time. I'm astronomically lucky and, therefore, don't need to cheat to win."

He could hear the manager taking a deep breath, clearly not happy about the results of the first round. "Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. That remains to be seen!"

The cards were slid away, and Oliver was dealt a fresh pair. He was confident in his choice ahead of time, so he asked for a single hit and stood. The dealer held back his silence for as long as possible, then stammered in disbelief.

"And there it is," Mia clicked her tongue. "Queen of clubs, eight of diamonds, three of spades. It doesn't get any better than that, now, does it?"

"I... I don't understand. How is this even possible?" The manager asked if not of Oliver, then of God.

Was there more to the universe than he previously believed? One round, he could've waved off as a fluke. Two was definitely cutting it close. Three, however... three just couldn't have been in the cards, pardon the pun. Or... maybe it was? He was beginning to fear finding out. It was too late to back out now, though, so he got on with it and dealt Oliver for the final time.

Here, at the very climax of the game, the stupidest idea imaginable took hold of Oliver and refused to let go. Luck had served him well so far, but what his instinct was telling him to do was about to push the boundaries harder than anything else he'd pulled off that day. Throwing caution to the wind, Oliver did the absolute funniest thing possible he could've done at that exact moment in time.

"I'd like to split."

The dealer stared at him. Mia was staring at him, too. She betrayed a hint of skepticism for the first time since the game began.

"Ollie...?"

He ignored her, simply smirking at the manager and tapping his finger on the table. "Well? I'm waiting."

After a couple seconds spent hesitating, the man across from him laughed nervously. "What makes you think you even have a pair you can split?"

"Well, you probably would've told me I can't if I couldn't, right?"

"...God damn it," the manager laughed at the insanity he was seeing, reached out, split Oliver's hand, and dealt him an additional card to both.

He went dead silent immediately after.

This was the only time Oliver physically sensed something during the entire game of blackjack, and it wasn't because of his powers. Something in the air changed when the last two cards hit the table. There was no way for him to explain how he knew what happened, but he did.

He was at the point where all he had to do to claim victory was to say the magic words.

"I'll stand."

Neither Mia nor the manager spoke a word in response. Oliver could only stand this for a few seconds before removing his blindfold and looking at the results. He grinned from ear to ear. For his left hand, the jack of spades and the ace of hearts. For his right, the jack of clubs and the ace of diamonds.

Double blackjack.

Game, set, and match.

"Dude, holy shit," Mia jumped out of her seat and stopped just short of hopping onto Oliver's lap like a trophy girl, instead settling for pulling her boyfriend into a no-holds-barred embrace right there in the middle of public. "Ollie, how in the fuck did you pull that off?!" Her voice was full of life and excitement, a rare occasion indeed.

Feeling daring and swollen with confidence, Oliver wrapped his arm around her waist and squeezed Mia tight. "You already know how," he reminded her. "I'm just that lucky."

"Nah," Mia countered, hugging him even harder and nuzzling her cheek in his face. "After all that? Starting to think I'm the lucky one, mi amor."

--- Mia Gained 5 Affection! ---

Oliver's mood skyrocketed upwards from such a significant boost, and he was starting to think that things couldn't get any better than this.

Shame that the following notification proved he factually was correct.

--- Your Luck's Run Out!

Warning! Engaging in prolonged activities that trigger continuous passive activations of Lucky Bastard will rapidly drain the probability manipulation reserves from which the skill is powered. When these reserves are emptied, a cooldown period goes into effect, during which no random events or passive activations will occur.

Lucky Bastard will reactivate after seven days, seven hours, and seven seconds. Until then, good luck!

---

And just like, he crashed and burned.

Are you fucking serious right now? Oliver thought nervously. Why does my game-breaking skill come with such a gigantic downside? Then again, Free Ride had that stipulation keeping me from instantly moving out of my apartment and into a mansion... it's almost like someone put a lot of thought into balancing these so that things don't get too easy for me.

To call him disappointed would be an understatement. Oliver bought Lucky Bastard for the continual stream of luck it promised to provide and was upset to discover that forcing its hand led to a lengthy cooldown, preventing him from gaming the system for very long. Still, he had to admit he used up a comical amount of luck today. Between the arcade games, the coin flips, the blindfolded blackjack, Prize Planet's security getting distracted, and getting trapped in the truck earlier that morning... yeah, he was definitely pushing it.

This wasn't the end of the world.

If anything, it was a good learning experience. The random events Lucky Bastard had thrown his way thus far had helped in numerous ways, even if Stacy's was somewhat frustrating, and while cutting off the skill for an entire week in exchange for an hour and a half's worth of gambling wasn't a fantastic trade-off, the more options Oliver had in his back pocket, the better.

It was such a terrible tragedy that it had to happen when it did because without his good fortune to defend him, Oliver was surely about to die.

The manager lowered his head and stared at the table before him. His face was getting red, sweat was forming on his brow, and his hands balled into fists that trembled and shook. He could barely contain his rage, and it didn't look like he'd be able to hold off for much longer... until he threw his head back in an uproarious fit of laughter, clapping like a chimpanzee.

"Well, I'll be damned, that was crazy! Crazy, I tell you!" He shouted between bellowing bursts, pausing only to slap his knee. "Kid, you are the single luckiest son of a bitch I've ever met. You got me. There's no way in hell I can explain whatever you just pulled off here, but hey, a deal's a deal. I'll get another pizza sent your way in just a moment here..."

Dumbfounded, Oliver felt untold relief wash over him like sudden rain as he watched the manager pick up their lukewarm pizza with a pleasant smile. He then stood and took a step forward, reaching out to pat Oliver on the shoulder in a nonthreatening manner. "Enjoy your prizes, kids, and hey, thanks for showing me something so interesting. Never gonna forget this for as long as I live."

He started to walk away, paused, and then looked back at them with an anxious expression punctuated by a nervous grin. "Oh, one more thing? Please don't ever show your faces here again." The tone implied he was joking, but Oliver could simultaneously tell it was meant to be taken somewhat seriously.

After exchanging looks with Mia and reaching a silent agreement, he smiled back at the manager and made a halfhearted promise. The manager simply sighed, leaving it up in the air as to whether or not they would actually get in trouble for returning to Prize Planet. This left the couple where they were before all the drama unfolded, waiting for a fresh pizza.