ph_logs | Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground (Mingle)

Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground (Mingle)

CHARACTERS: Hawkeye and the Veteran’s Poker Club
DATE: March
LOCATION: Hawkeye’s clinic
SITUATION: Poker game (for veterans)
WARNINGS: Presumably discussion of conflict and ptsd

You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands

A notice goes up on the board, and Hawkeye sets up the clinic for the occasion. Obviously he’s not moving all his medical supplies out- at the back of his mind is always the possibility that something could happen that demands he put his doctor hat on again. Not choppers, but something.

But he sets up a table and chairs in the middle of the main room, with a stack of cards and some ‘chips’ (acorns, he went out and gathered some acorns, which he’s painted different colours). There’s a flask of his homemade gin, some finger food from the Oak and Iron, and he got a box of cigars for the occasion. Feels just like the conferences from home, only without sandwiches that move and Frank. So, y’know, infinitely better.

Prior to starting, while Hawkeye’s setting up, he’ll engage in some small talk with anyone who shows up early- which, they’ll all be military, it will probably be all of them.
“Ever played poker?”

Or

“Can I get you a drink?”

Or

“Can you grab that tray of implements for me?”

At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer

When everyone who’s arriving arrives, Hawk sets himself at the table, one of his surgical lights over top of the table to set the mood.

“Alright- this is poker, it’s a little game we like to play back on earth, because we like losing money. I’m gonna teach you five card draw, just to get us started. I’m going to deal each of you five cards. What you’re looking for is to have the highest hand at the end of the round, then you take the pot. Easy. Hands are ranked by how hard they are to do- if you get numbered cards in order and they’re all the same suit, that’s a straight flush. Then we go four of a kind, which is just that- four of the same number. Full house is if you have three of the same number and a pair of a different numbers in the same hand. Flush is if you have all your cards in the same suit. Then straight, which is by number order but not the same suit, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, and then if you have absolutely nothing we score it by your highest card.”

Hawkeye clears his throat, takes a sip of gin.

“I'll deal to start with, we all bet based on our hands and how confident we are that we’ll have the highest ranking hand, then we discard any cards we want and redraw back up to five. Then we place our final bets, and reveal our hands. You get lost at any point, just ask. Questions?”

And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the chair

Shittalking, chewing the fat, commiseration, and general socializing with Hawkeye during games goes under this header. Tls for your characters welcome in the comments.

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Leon snorts, not quite buying that. He's not a sore enough loser to genuinely care when they're playing for fun - it's more funny to him than anything else.

"You sure? They've gotta get their kicks somewhere, right?"

He's teasing, but between the wide array of different people at the table and the shit they've all been through, he knows not to push too hard on the subject of faith and gods, and changes the subject once he's gotten that last jab out of his system.

"So where is it you're from again? Somewhere that doesn't have poker, but I'm guessing that doesn't narrow it down that much."

Gaeta huffs at that, but lets it slide. Best not to bring down the mood by talking about all the other ways the gods might get their kicks, especially not in a roomful of soldiers.

"Served for seven years on the battlestar Galactica," he says as he quickly sorts his 'chips' into the appropriately colored piles. "No poker, but we do have Triad and FTL travel, so I guess it evens out. What about you -- you're another one from Earth?"

His voice stays carefully neutral on the last word.

"FTL travel - that's faster than light, right?" Leon seems appropriately wowed by that, eyes going wide like a kid who's, well, just been told FTL travel is possible and he's talking to a real astronaut. He's tempted to just let the question hang until Gaeta answers it, but he's been asked one in turn, and it'd be rude to derail the conversation entirely.

"Yeah," he says, nodding. "From the United States, in 2004, if that means anything to you. If not, don't worry, sounds like any dates and places you throw at me won't mean much to me either."

He does not pick up on any weirdness about the word Earth, too distracted by the astral elephant in the room to notice any subtler cues, intentionally obscured as they are. This may be part of why he was doing so poorly at poker.

Gaeta relaxes an inch as he realizes Leon didn't pick up on anything. More and more, it's been a struggle for him to contain the small -- and sometimes not so small -- prickles of resentment he feels whenever he meets someone who proclaims they're from Earth. Seems like his world drew the shortest straw in the entire godsdamn multiverse some days.

"It doesn't, but that means you can make up whatever you want about the United States and I'll probably believe it," he says, more or less easily. As the next hand's dealt, he scoops up his cards. "Anyway -- yes, FTL means faster-than-light. The jump drives that allow for it are standard on military ships, but a little less common on civilian ones. I spent most of my career calculating Galactica's jumps."

"That's a terrifying amount of power you've just given me," Leon says, solemnly. "I'll do my best to wield it responsibly."

He is not by nature much of a bullshitter - again, maybe why he's doing so poorly at poker - but the temptation is going to exist for as long as he knows Gaeta, now.

"Seriously, though, that sounds amazing. You must really like math, huh?" If calculating a goddamn warp jump is anything like the physics that go into rocket science from Leon's world as he knows it, at least.

Equally solemn, Gaeta replies, "You're a fine, upstanding soldier, sir."

He double-checks his hand, chucks an acorn into the pot after a brief moment's consideration, then puffs out an amused breath at Leon's next comment. "You could say that. I spent about three months convinced I'd be a mathematician when I grew up; turns out I wasn't quite that good at it. But I like solving puzzles, and jump calculations are a hell of a good one."

He cocks an eyebrow.

"What about you? Numbers not your thing?"

Leon shakes his head, a slight, crooked smile on his face. "Nah. I'm alright at math, but not the kind of 'alright' where I wanna do anything more dangerous with it than my taxes."

And he has to assume getting a jump calculation wrong could have serious consequences. He remembers reading news stories about a single fumbled unit conversion messing up a whole shuttle launch - imagine what that would do when going considerably faster.

"Puzzles I can do a little more with, but I never got into the more mathy kinds. My idea of a good time is a little less solving for X and a little more unscrambling a Rubik's cube. You got those where you come from?"

And much like Leon would never use his knowledge of Earth for evil, Gaeta would never use this confirmation of Leon's so-so math skills for raking in even more winnings.

(Hah.)

"Never heard of them." Gaeta throws another quick glance around the table before he discards two and draws their replacements. Curious, he asks, "What are they?"

"So they're these cube-shaped toys, right?" Leon starts, setting down his cards (face down) after getting his hand settled for the next round and gesturing with his hands to indicate a roughly two-fist sized shape.

"Each side is a different color, and is divided up into... usually nine squares, in a three-by-three grid. The rows of squares can all rotate freely, so to set up the puzzle, you twist the cube in different directions to scramble the colors." Without really thinking about it, he mimes the motion as he speaks, twisting his hands in opposite directions. "Then you or somebody else tries to unscramble things and get all the sides back to being one solid color each. That make sense?"

Gaeta listens to this explanation, first with an expression of polite bafflement, then growing interest as the description takes proper shape in his mind. "Yeah," he says. "Honestly, that sounds like a good puzzle for a navigator -- you're rotating a three-dimensional object in what could be trillions of permutations, then have to reverse-engineer it back to the starting point. If you don't have the right spatial reasoning skills, you'll have a much harder time solving it."

Bids start to circulate; Gaeta murmurs call and puts in a few more acorns.

"Yeah, you've got it. It's all about spatial reasoning. If you just twist randomly it makes things worse, but if you can keep track of where each colored square is even if you're not looking at it, you can piece together how it got to where it is and go backwards."

Leon all but beams, the expression subtle but pleased, and distracted enough by it that it takes him until someone prompts him that he's holding up the game to remember to place his bet.

"I still don't think I'd make a great navigator myself, but hey, if I see that guy in the alleyway selling all the weird stuff's found a Rubik's cube somehow, I'll bring it to you so you can give it a shot."

Gaeta hides a brief smile of his own. Dare he say it, he's a little charmed by Leon's earnestness; it's hard not to be, especially after a couple glasses of Dr. Pierce's gin.

"I'd like that," he says, and means it. "...What kind of weird stuff does that guy usually sell? I've heard about him, but haven't seen him yet."

"Seems like mostly trash that washed up on shore," says Leon. "But last time I was in there he had some kinda - one-person escape pod looking thing. Like a little submarine, but not like any I've ever seen before. Maybe you'd have a better sense of what it is."

Being from a spacefaring era and all. Leon knows being from a more technologically advanced time doesn't grant you immediate expertise in everything that came before, but maybe the wider frame of reference would help.

"Other than that, there were a lot of canned drinks he seemed pretty confused by, a few swords, a panini press, some kind of weird onion..."

"A pod looking thing," he repeats, slowly, "and a... weird onion?"

Well, good to know that once Gaeta has enough money for a leg and a nicer set of clothes, he can turn his attention toward acquiring weird onions! Maybe he can smash them in the panini press.

"Never mind -- " He waves his hand, dismissing the comment about the onion. "The pod -- what made you think it was a submarine and not a spacegoing ship?"

Leon just shrugs about the onion. He's as confused by it as anybody else here!

"I didn't get a great look at it, but it had what looked like a pretty big propeller in the back," he says. "Not the kind of thing that'd be much use in a vacuum, at least as far as I know."

But as far as he knew up until like five minutes ago, FTL travel wasn't physically possible either, so he's willing to defer.

"The guy wanted 6,000 brass for it since he could tell it's not from around here, though, and was willing to admit it was in pretty rough shape. Might not be much use to anyone unless one of us who got here on the ferry knows how to repair it."

Gaeta, midway through taking a sip on his gin, almost chokes on it.

"Six thousand?" he sputters. "Gods, I'm making maybe a tenth of that a week. And it might not even work?"

What the hell, shady merchant! It's almost like... he's being shady. (Then again, he supposes buying a full-fledged submarine would be on par with buying a private shuttle back home. Still, though! The shuttle dealer would make sure said shuttle worked first!)

"At least when I was bartering for toothpaste I could just round up some extra magazines or shoe polish or something."

"Right? I mean, I guess in the one point in his defense I'm willing to go with, I'm not sure anyone on the island can fix it with the tech we have available to us here. One of the people here I was talking to about engineering stuff said they haven't figured out titanium yet, and that was holding back a lot of his trying to recreate the stuff he's used to."

Not to mention any other prerequisite materials that might be relevant.

"So his thought might be more that someone'll come along who knows how to salvage it for rare parts, but who knows with guys like that? I figure if anyone wants to buy the thing, they'll have to pool resources for it."

Gaeta winces. No titanium? It's easy to accept the rudimentary electricity and transportation when you're dealing with it every day; he hadn't even considered -- but should have -- that it would extend to seemingly basic materials, too.

"Yeah, good point," he says. With a sigh of feigned melancholy, "Guess I won't be building a rocket out of acorns after all."

Then again, considering the fresh pile of them about to come his way...

The round concluded, everyone lays down their hands, and to the shock of barely anyone (but to a handful of hearty groans), Gaeta's won again. Smirking, he gathers up his winnings. Again.

To Leon: "But maybe I will be able to buy the sub on my own."

"Maybe if we can convince the guy to go in on the acorn economy," Leon huffs, amused, and flicks an acorn from the pot at him. "Come on, that beginner's luck isn't gonna last forever. I'm good for one more round if you are."

He is, at this point, pretty resigned to a total losing streak, but this is the most fun he's had in a while. Might as well stick through to the last game.

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Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground (Mingle)

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wrap!