Showdown Part 3 (Gabrielle)
June 3, 2009 by sharppointythings
Ty hated a stand up fight. He knew that the only way he’d ever win this fight was by sneakiness and deceit, two things he’d practiced and excelled at. So the dust cloud Anna had make with that last blast was no problem to him. Ty just slowly angled toward the closest chunk of rock and started planting bombs.
“Hey, Anna, what’s the matter?” he asked. “This cloud too much for you?”
“No, Ty,” Anna’s voice said. “Just giving you time to recoup. I know how tiring flying is to you.”
Ty chuckled. “You’re lost, aren’t you?”
The mirth in Anna’s voice was replaced with brittle ice. “No.”
Ty laughed out loud. “Yes, you are. Do you need me to send out a beacon or something? Help you get out of this field?”
“Ty,” Anna said with the teasing back in her voice. “I’m not the one who ran away from fights.”
Ty’s smile vanished. “Well, Anna. Then come get me.”
*****************
Anna stood ramrod straight, her gaze focused on some point on the back wall. The instructor paced down the line of bruised and battered pilot trainees. He was furious. She counted cursing from six different languages and was sure he could go on for an hour and never repeat himself. He paused in front of her and told them all how disappointed he was in them and how their behavior was completely inappropriate. Anna took the words and burned them into her brain. She promised herself that she would do all necessary to never hear them again.
Anna’s gaze left the back wall and followed the instructor as he moved down the line. She looked at the trainee standing next to her. Was he smiling? The entire fight had been his fault. If he hadn’t been idiotic then she wouldn’t have needed to beat the tar out of that Marine and they wouldn’t be standing here. She turned her gaze to the wall again and thought darks thought about Ty Bodock.
The instructor was saying something else now. “Kraus, Bodock, I think a night in the brig would help you remember exactly how fond I am of brawling trainees. The rest of you, go to your quarters and try to make me forget we ever had this conversation. Move!”
Anna sat on her cot and folded up the gauze that the medic had wrapped her hand in. She folded it into a perfect square and then unfolded it and did it better. Again and again. A noise from the other cot made her look up. Was he-? No, not even Bodock would-
He was. He was humming that same song that landed them here in the first place. Anna got up and kicked his cot.
“Can’t you just be quiet for once?” she demanded. “It’s bad enough that my defending you landed me here. Can’t you just let me serve my punishment in peace?”
He looked at her, a thought spinning behind his blue eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “When we get out of here you want to go out sometime?”
Anna grabbed his cot with both hands and flipped him onto the floor. She grabbed him by the back of his jumpsuit and slammed him face first into the wall.
“Owowowowow,” Ty said, his voice muffled by the concrete.
Anna let go of him and stalked back to her cot. He turned around with a grin on his face, wiping some blood from the corner of his mouth.
“So, is that a yes?”
Ty’s kind of a jerk.
I’m just wondering… which one is Ty and which one is Anna?
Also, is this game something that could be played as a shared turn-based writing project? or do you need to be face to face to get this game going?
Sorry, Jon, I decided not to tell which is which until it’s over.
Yes, I suppose you could use the Showdown format for a shared writing project. The only difficulty I could see is that there are dice involved at several keys points to figure out who get to narrate what. When Raquel and I were setting up the game we agreed that we would both brainstorm even if it was technically the other person’s turn so this story is much more of a combined effort than other games of Showdown I’ve played.
I’ve done shared writing projects before and it was difficult to keep a shared vision of the story. One time two of us were working on a story and we did have some face to face conversations about the direction of the story which we were both happy with at the end. The other time there were three of us and we didn’t have the option of face to face planning sessions and no one was really happy with how that story turned out. So, no, the face to face isn’t necessary, but I’ve found it helpful in the past.
My money is on Ty being Raquel, and Gabrielle being Anna. I think that’s opposite personality-wise… but that’s kind of the point of roleplaying.. Plus, I don’t think Raquel would be able to resist being the ’sneaky’ one.
I’m enjoying reading the gameplay. It definitely has me curious.
Lol, I like this section. The character interaction is great. Plus, my confidence in my first guess is renewed.