Stage 1: Chief Engineer Flowers

Robin had found hell a pretty uncomfortable place, at least outside of her new casino: it was hot, it was on fire, and it was just a step away from the screaming souls of the damned. The mercenary camp of the Soldiers of Fortune wasn't much better. It was located in the blistering hot wastelands outside a smoking ruin she was pretty sure had once been a bustling town, probably destroyed by their handiwork. It was on fire. The vehicles parked in a dusty ring, an eclectic mix of trailers, motorcycles, humvees, and tanks, were also teeming with the souls of the damned, screaming...

... screaming with mirth and laughter, that is. These mercenaries seemed to be a fairly close knit group. Robin wondered if committing the kind of terrible acts they did racked up a bigger debt if one was also totally unrepentant in the aftermath. She hated to admit it, but she was happy that they were happy. She didn't want her first job to be a gloomy one, nor did she want everyone to be as uptight as real soldiers.

However, once she left the Hell Roller and strolled through the open gate of the camp, the scenery got worse inside than it had been out in the wasteland.

Guns. Everyone had a gun. Some had multiple guns. Most of them weren't holstered, either, and she highly doubted any of them were unloaded or had their safeties on. She'd dealt with a gun scare or two at the Hard Luck, but this was less of a gun scare and more of a gun horror show. Every girl in the Soldier of Fortune looked poised to blow her friend's head off and then share a good laugh about it with the others.

"I'm really putting a lot of faith in those powers of yours," Robin reminded her guardian angel and devil, as her bright red attire and very shapely, twenty-year-old figure began to get interested looks up and down from the surrounding mercs.

"I'll watch your six," Betty assured her.

"W-Would you mind watching my six as well, Ms. Betty?" Colline asked, shivering with fright as an especially scary merc watched Robin through the scope of a sniper rifle.

"I don't know how many times I can tell you that humans can't shoot you. Is that halo scrambling your memory or something?"

Robin tried to ignore their bantering, feeling as though she'd better keep her head on a swivel instead. The mercs were slowly prowling around her, like coyotes in a pack, sizing up their prey while cutting off its escape route. She felt ridiculous, carrying a folding card table and a briefcase full of playing materials while all of them were carrying firearms... it would be a while before she understood the power the game of Blackjack actually granted her.

For now, Robin looked for a soft target. She needed someone who she could play a game against without feeling so terribly intimidated. Even a place like this had a person who cooks or does the laundry, right? Not everyone would be some hardened criminal carrying a knife between their teeth or wearing a rocket launcher on a shoulder strap. Just when she was about to think that maybe she was wrong and everyone really was going to fit into one of those two categories, Robin came upon someone who stood out for just how ostensibly non-threatening they were at a glance.

A slight, skinny girl was seated at a workbench to one side by her lonesome, with a weapon disassembled in front of her in loose, metallic pieces. At first, she didn't even notice Robin making her way through camp, as she was instead examining the inside of the long tube that ordinarily served as the barrel, holding it up to her eye as though it was an old-time telescope. She was dressed in an over-sized, black leather jacket, possibly borrowed from someone else, but without it, she might have looked like a hippie, with her flower-print, yellow-green t-shirt tucked into very long cargo pants-- possibly also borrowed from someone else, based on how poorly they fit her.

Her hair was a pretty blond color, although oddly black around the tips. Robin's first thought: the girl had a dye job that was starting to wear off. However, when she looked closer, she realized the girl's hair was black at the tips because it was burnt. As the girl turned to regard her with huge, plate-like eyes, Robin realized that the girl's hair wasn't just burnt-- it was actively on fire, with tiny flames licking the tips. The smile on her face was so sweet and unassuming in spite of that fact that it actually was scarier than seeing her panic.

A bunch of black powder slipped out of the barrel the girl was inspecting, covering her shirt. "Whoopsie daisy!" the girl giggled, then tossed it back haphazardly into the pile of gun parts on the table.

Robin wondered if that was gunpowder or maybe just some kind of soot or ash... she hoped the latter. The more pressing part was the girl's karmic debt. It was higher than that of the man she'd inspected at the Hard Luck Casino, but not nearly as much so as that of her fellow mercenaries. "Does that mean she's nicer than the others?" Robin whispered to Colline.

"Perhaps," Colline speculated unhelpfully.

"Or she's the type who can successfully plead an insanity defense," Betty added from the other side with a chuckle in her voice.

"Well, howdy, stranger! I don't remember a girl like you in camp! Golly, there's not a speck of ash anywhere on those clothes of yours!" the mystery girl remarked, jumping up from the bench and beginning a fast-paced circle around Robin to inspect her from all angles. "That's a really nifty outfit you've got on! You must be from somewhere far away from here, he he he! What brings you to these parts?"

"I'm a traveling games peddler," Robin replied, trying to match the girl's smile.

"Oh boy! That means you have a lot of money, right?"

"Ah, well-"

"Hold still! I'm going to put this gun back together, then I'll rob you!"

"W-Wait! Robbing everybody all the time is really boring, right?"

"Nope! Never gets boring! Each robbery goes down a liiiiittle bit different, ha ha! It's so fun!"

"A game would be even more fun than robbing me though! You want to play a game, don't you?!"

Finally, the girl seemed to slow down and reconsider her initial decision. "Oh! You know what? You're right! I looooove games! The other girls in camp avoid me most of the time, unless they want a weapon from me, ha ha! I haven't played a game in foreeeeever! My name's Flowers and I'm the engineer around here!" the girl announced, proudly crossing her arms across her chest. "Chief engineer, really, since I'm the only engineer! It's me who keeps everyone's weapons in such great shape! What's your name?"

"I'm Robin Redd," Robin said, then sighed in relief, seeing that she'd somehow amazingly managed to avoid getting shot. "Before we continue, I should ask: are you eighteen years old?" The girl's size and speech was such that it was a bit of a toss-up.

"Doi! They aren't going to let a kid go out onto the battlefield with all that boom and pow and rat-tat-tat, ha ha ha! We're crazy mercenaries, but we're not heartless!" Flowers giggled. "I'm nineteen!"

"Old enough to know better, as they say," Robin sighed with relief. She didn't have the chance to ask Betty or Colline, but she had to assume that they weren't going to put her up against opponents of an inappropriate age. "The game's blackjack, with just a few rules different from the usual."

"Blackjack? Ooooh, like that little leather club thing Bugs uses to hit people some times? It's nastier than it looks!"

"'Bugs?' Er, uh, no. Although there is some hitting involved."

"Okay! I'll go grab my shock stick and start wailin' on ya!"

"No! Not hitting like that! Let me explain, please..."

Robin ran through the rules of blackjack as quickly as she could. Surprisingly, when she got **** off her brain for a few seconds, Flowers proved to be a quick learner, befitting the know-how of a weapons engineer and sometimes-chemist.

"That's almost too simple for a brainy girl like me!" Flowers laughed. "But I should warn you! I don't have any cash! Boss doesn't pay me."

"... Then why do you work for her?"

"Why? Because it's fun! I take my payments in fun, ha ha ha ha ha ha! Why does anybody do mercenary work?" The girl tilted her head to an uncomfortable, vaguely deranged angle with a pop.

"... Well, the good news is, you don't need money to play! I was going to propose strip blackjack. We each bet our clothing and when we run out, the loser has to do whatever the winner says," Robin proposed, giving a saucy wink.

"Oooooh! That's suuuuuuuper fun! You're not going to believe what I make you do when you lose, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You'd never guess it in a miiiiiillion years!"

As a gambling woman, Robin thought that it was a pretty safe bet Flowers was right about that. It's hard to predict the whims of a mad woman, after all.

Opponent: Chief Engineer Flowers

Pile: 3

Difficulty: Standard

Ability: Four Leaf Clover- When her hand has a value of 16, Flowers will randomly add a number between 1 and 4 to the value and then stand.

Karmic Rewards: 100 points per round win, 750 points per game victory, +1 Angel Power or Devil Power