Mia 2: What's in the box? A towel! Mia is convinced to continue the game

Inside, most of the box was empty air. At the bottom sat a neatly folded white bath towel. Mia pulled it out, unfolding it and holding it up.

“A towel? Huh?” asked Mia.

“A Towel of Temporary Tenacity!” Lucy excitedly corrected.

Mia just had raised eyebrows that said ‘Really?’ to the pink-haired girl.

“Yeah, the card just has a picture,” said Sophie, handing off the card to Mia. A cartoonish picture of a towel and a stopwatch was all the info they had.

“Alright. Are we done now?” asked Mia, throwing the empty box across the room and laying the previously neatly folded, now very balled up towel on the coffee table.

Sophie spent the past couple minutes thinking about the game. Her interest was entirely re-invigorated, and she wanted more than anything to understand what made this game tick. She gave Mia the neediest puppy dog eyes she could, and it worked like a charm.

“Whatever, it’s not my turn anymore anyways,” Mia said, crossing her arms and pouting.

Faith had also thought they were quitting. She shared a lot of that uneasy feeling with Mia. Sophie saw that she was hesitating, too, so she said juuuust the right thing to get the redhead in the fighting spirit.

“Plus if we quit now, Mia’s in the lead and Faith continues her eternal loss streak!” said Sophie.

Faith smirked, impressed with Sophie re-igniting the competition. She snatched up the dice, shook them, and rolled.

Lucy cheered as the game started back up.

“Six? Could be worse, I guess,” Faith said, trying to be positive about the below average roll. Her dice showed two threes.

Her high heel slid forward six spaces, landing on a red space four ahead of Mia’s mailbox. Faith did a small fist pump to celebrate her lead, then stopped celebrating as soon as she saw where her piece landed.

P’TIING!

This time the cards popped out pretty fast, and the girls all jumped. The unpredictable fashion of the game’s regularly scheduled jump scares kept everyone on their toes.

As Faith predicted, based on the red space she landed on, all three cards had the word PUNISHMENT in red under their titles. The redhead assessed her options in a deep depression, then remembered something that cheered her up.

“But I rolled doubles!” Faith pointed out with a big grin.

Faith had her cheeriness renewed again, and assessed the options before her.

The three cards read “Continental Drift”, ”B.O.U.N.C.E. Into Action”, and “Peculiar Poise”.