xp_logs | Wendy: Tick Tock Tick Tock

The sponsers of the teams are finally revealed.

"Hey, how are you doing? Having a good time, Nakimura?" Arcade slipped through the crowd like a redheaded shark, moving comfortably among the high rollers and their animated conversations about the game so far. It was obvious that his experiment was a hit, and Ms Locke had just informed him that the first round had collected more then forty-forty million in bets thanks to the success of LeBeau.

Lowenstein had always known what people wanted; from the arcade games to the casino, it wasn't the lure of profit or experience. People wanted the feeling of winning, whether a ten dollar flutter on a dog race or a thirty second end movie from a video console. They'd pay any amount of money for the feeling of conquering. He'd built his empire recognizing that consistency in people, and now it was being expressed in the fullest. Men and women so successful, so jaded, that a million dollars won or lost on a hand of cards no longer concerned them. What mattered was somehow prevailing against those they recognized as their 'equals'. As if the bets they made somehow showed strength or cunning that the other people lacked. That would let them lose their money over and over, each time coming up to bet more aggressively and boast more loudly of their chances.

It was the sound of money, and Arcade loved it. More importantly, he loved the game itself. He was different from them. He loved to win, of course. Who didn't? It was the process of the game itself that fascinated him. Money was a way to keep score, and if he wanted to, he could buy anything in the world that interested him. But only in the context of the game, be it high finance, politics, a complex betting system or his own cherished MurderWorld, did he feel truly alive. He didn't need to cheat to enjoy it, and he didn't need to win. He just needed to play, and that's how he was being paid back.

Ms Locke fell into step beside him as they reached the private elevator. His special lounge in the Excelsior held the giant monitors, commentary and details of the race, along with the endless stream of food and drink his guests required. Most of them were booked into his suites, but few left that room for more than a few hours, addicted to each new development. Above it was a more private room, tasteful and restrained, looking down on the select betting floor like a view from a castle wall.

"How are our guests? Did they eat the ocean prawns? Those things are thirty-six dollars a pound. Can you believe that? Thirty-six dollars for big shrimp. I really need to talk to Maurice with his food choices. There's got to be a cheaper supplier."

"They are fine, Mr. Lowenstein." They stepped inside, and Locke touched the thumbpad to activate it. "Mr Willard is most agitated though. It might be dangerous to allow him to remain."

"Worse to let him out and start blabbing. I'd have a couple hundred wannabe Nazis searching high and low for my team, and eventually one of them gets picked up, talks to the cops… get some of the girls to take him up to a suite. Fill him with drinks, let him watch them eat each other out or something." Arcade said dismissively. "If he tries to leave, drug him and bag him for a few days. He'll get the hint."

The doors slid open and they stepped out into the room. Only five people were there, four men and a woman, mostly contemplating computer screens or working on computers. The exception was an overweight balding man, who was drinking rapidly behind angry taps of his keyboard. "Gentlemen, Ms Boudreaux, sorry to have kept you. Everyone enjoying the view?"

He didn't bother to wait for a response, simply walking over to sit at the boardroom like table to the one edge of the room. "Obviously, the House's team has won the first leg of our race, and then next one takes place in Chicago. Mr Willard, I'm afraid your associates from the Friends of Humanity have been arrested by the Savannah Police department. Therefore, your team is officially eliminated. Ms Locke is going to take you to get some final details worked out, and then you'll stay as my guest here to see the rest of the race."

Willard looked like he was going to say something, but Locke's hand on his arm stopped him. A fully rebuilt cyborg, her slim frame belied her vast strength, which had just cut off any objections from Willard.

Belladonna watched with a smirk on her bright red lips as Locke escorted Willard out of the room, the door sliding shut decisively behind him. "There will be no sore losers allowed here, I take it," she remarked, glancing at Lowenstein and arching an eyebrow

"Providin' that the House ain't stackin' the deck."

The interjection came from a lanky blond man in neatly-pressed denim jeans and silk shirt, slowly savoring a whiskey as he watched information scroll past him on a computer screen. "House team seemed t' move through Savannah right quick, mate. Just an' observation."

"Um, did I ask your men to turn in their heavy weapons and the thousand dollars that you happened to slip to them before the start, Donald? Or forget the phonecalls that your team is making to help prescout their cities, Belladonna?" Arcade smiled. "Each of you were invited because I expect you to cheat. That's why it's so much more entertaining to make my team play fair against you."

"I still think they should be penalized for disabling their microphones," Belladonna asserted. She had so been enjoying the nervous bickering between Remy and his 'friend'. Torturing people was so much more fun when you could watch them squirm. "I'd be more than happy to come up with a creative punishment or two."

"Nothin' like watching a woman scorned, eh, Mister Lowenstein?" Donald Pierce arched an eyebrow at Belladonna before looking back to his screen, then grinning ferally at the report he received. "I tell you what, luv, my boys manage to bring your ex and his new squeeze to heel, I might find it in me heart to give you some special time with your boy before putting 'im down, howzit?"

"Ridiculous. Your Reavers might be terrifying to the average American, Pierce, but I assure you that Ororo Munroe is not to be taken so lightly." Hanan el-Gibar said from his seat, the clipped Eton accent and Saville Row suit proof of his schooling in England. Unlike his father, Hanan had been sent to learn the mysteries of high finance and high society. He was down to one member of his team in the field, but that wasn't a worry. It was to see if Ororo was potentially ready to return to her old life, and test that chance. "No matter how many weapons you'd snuck to them."

"No matter how good a particular team may be," spoke up a short, dark-haired man, whose accent held a particularly Eastern feel to it, "the odds themselves almost ensure that the house must lose." Tsurayaba Matsu'o turned his gaze away from his screen, casting a look all around the room. "It is only logical that even if they reach the end, they will be exhausted while their adversaries will be fresh and rested. They would have to be superhuman to triumph over that."

"Mr Matsu'o is very right, and that was always the point. There is a message to be made about what happens when you mess with me, and I need it to be absolutely crystal on this point. However," The gamesman in Arcade just couldn't help himself. "I've noticed that in all the bets we've taken in so far, none of you have bet on your own teams. Funny, isn't that?"