Lucas arrives

Your lust filled regret is interrupted by a familiar voice

“Hey Mason, how’s it going?” The short rotund sight of Lucas comes into view. Stocky with virtually no neck, a wide unlovely face and a greasy mullet Lucas is not exactly the most handsome guy out there.

You greet him and order him a drink. Keeping one eye on the proceedings with Cindy down the bar you get on with business.

Sure enough Lucas has brought a collection of bizarre items powered by the enigmatic magic of Shoubu University. Most are pointless such as a pair of stockings that won’t completely dry or a note pad that will immediately dry out the ink of a pen.

“Do we have to do this every time?” you say. “Just leave out the shit and show me the good stuff.”

“Alright, alright” Lucas says. “You’re in a mood tonight. Normally you get a laugh out of the knick-knacks.”

You glance over at Cindy. She seems to be in an altercation with some blonde slut over the jock. Lucas notices the glance “Ah I get it, tried your luck and got rebuffed huh?”

“Not exactly smart-ass” you retort. “Now what the hell you got?”

“Take a look at these.” Lucas holds out a deck of cards. He slides them from the battered cardbox and hands them to you “Shuffle these as much as you want, then tell me what cards you want to deal.”

You casually take a drag from your cigarette and then give the cards a few overhead shuffles and a couple of riffles. “Four hearts for me, dealer’s choice of faces or numbers. Four aces for you.” you say.

Lucas hesitates for just a moment and then nods for you to deal.

Sure enough four hearts and four aces get dealt.

“Nice!” You nod. You can immediately see the application for winning CHALLENGES. “Powerful item all things considered. Why aren’t you keeping them yourself? What’s the catch?”

Lucas gives a wry smile “Well apart from the fact I ain’t getting invited to too many poker games, I tested them and using that trick to win CHALLENGES does work. But it counts as cheating. So, if someone calls you out after the CHALLENGE is made but before completion you forfeit”

“Risky huh?” “Still, I think I can make use of them. Where’d you get them anyhow?”

“Tracy Barling. Shoubu University poker champion…take a guess how he got his four-year winning streak?”

“Son of a bitch” you say. “He beat me out 5000 Prize Tokens two years ago.”

“He graduated last year, left these behind. The magic wouldn’t work in the outside world anyway ” Lucas grins “I always thought there was something about that smug bastard so I had one of the janitors deliver a box of what he had left in his dorm to me. Ran some tests on the cards and came up trumps.”

“So do how they work exactly?” you ask.

“The owner of the cards has to be in line of sight, and doesn’t even need to be touching them. He clearly thinks about the order of the next cards dealt up to 52 and hey presto. If you think about two of the same cards it ruins the spell.”

You nod “I’ll take them. How much?”

“Say 7000?”

“3” you respond

“5000 final”

“Done” you agree shaking on it.

Behind you, you can hear raised voices. It is Cindy and the pink dressed blonde with massive tits that the brunette is in some kind of confrontation with

"You're on!” The Latina girl declares slightly too loudly "I look forward to your inevitable self-destruction." Well, that seemed to have escalated fast. The blonde grins and strides away.

Lucas ignores the students and continues with his sales pitch. “I’ve got something else as well, want to see?”