"Uncle...card trick." Eddy said stupidly.  The sticks were long forgotten now, dropped at the base of Eddys feet, a task that seemed like it belonged in a different life time by the looks of Eddys face. He pawed at the air with one hand, then retracted it slowly, not daring to interrupt the cards that were moving.

In the distance, Shawn heard Bobby calling out.

Shawn finished the trick, and then stowed the cards once more. "Anyway, we should get back to sticks! I can practice the trick again later." He got to his feet, then bent over to grab his stick off of the ground.

Eddy shook his head, as if clogging the cobwebs out. He grabbed a stick without looking at it and trailed behind Shawn with a sense of urgency.

"Oh, come on Shawn. Do the trick one more time, OK?" The words sounded strange on Eddys lips, the boy usually more accustomed to taking over conversations, or at least trying to.

"Oh, fine, only one more time. But you owe me, okay?" Shawn hastily rattled off the trick again, but while he did it technically correctly, the magic didn't flow. "Now c'mon. I'll show you again later, when Bobby's not here."

16:19, Today: Shawn Cramer rolled 3 successes using 7d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling on 9 or more with rolls of 6,9(+9,7),2,2,6,3,9(+6).  Wits + Subterfuge + Striking Looks.

OOC: 16:20, Today: Shawn Cramer failed (no successes) using 5d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 3,6,5,1,2.  Presence + Empathy + Striking Looks.

Eddy stopped to stare at the trick. The magic wasn't flowing. Shawn could feel it. Eddys face wasn't as mesmerized. But, he was still a kid. And kids love card tricks.

"Yeah." Eddy said, satisfied" that's it."

"Now let's go play sticks!"

Shawn grinned as if happy that Eddy liked the trick and followed him back to play sticks. Hopefully now it'd be easier to convince him to watch the card trick once he got him away from Bobby.

"What took you so long?" Bobby complained, looking strangely annoyed for being the 'new' version of Bobby that Shawn had come to know.

"OK." Bobby said "Now it's just a matter of trying to throw these sticks!" He said with excitement.

"OneTwoThree..THROW!!!" Eddy said, throwing his stick from the bridge into the water below, counting really fast and trying to do so before anyone else could notice.


There was a big smile on his face, like he thought he was going to win. And that winning was everything.

"Go stick!" Shawn didn't particularly care about winning, but saying that would probably take a lot of fun out of it for Eddy, and that was if it didn't sound really petty and petulant in the first place. So he cheered his stick on enthusiastically.

Bobby and Eddy leaned over the bridge eagerly awaiting the results to see which stick would come up first to float to the other side. Shawn could see, clearly, a stick float out, bobbing in the current. It looked like Shawns stick.

"It's mine! I win!" Bobby announced

"No it's not, Shitballs. That's my stick, I'm the winner."

"Oh, brother!" Bobby lamented, as the three boys watched all of the sticks come out from under the bridge. None of the sticks were marked in any way, and so there was no way to tell them apart. Consequently, there was no way of telling who won.

Shawn wasn't sure if it was his stick or not - it looked a little like it, but there wasn't any real way to tell from where he stood. "It...kinda looks like Eddy's? It's hard to tell."

"Oh brother!" Bobby repeated. "I'll go down there and get the sticks. We'll bend them next time and then do it again, fair and square." Bobby announced. Hopping out onto the landing near the base of one end of the bridge, making his way down to the water. He was jogging now, trying to catch up to the sticks before the current took them away.

"That's right! Go get my stick you fat Nazi!" Eddy yelled at Bobby. Bobby was not fat.


And Shawn...

OOC: Shawn Rolls Intelligence + Study with the following results

0 Successes: ...Had no idea what Nazi meant. It might be the first time Shawn heard the term

1 Success: .....heard the term, but wasn't sure what it meant

 2+ Successes....Knows exactly what Nazi means

Shawn had no idea what Nazi meant, but he assumed it was a bad thing. "Aww, c'mon. Bobby's cool."

OOC:  16:14, Today: Shawn Cramer failed (no successes) using 2d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 4,7.  Intelligence + Study .

"Ugh.. This game is already boring."  Eddy groaned. Shawn could tell that it might have to do with the fact that they were now waiting. Or maybe because he wasn't declared the winner. The two boys watched as Bobby ran down the side of the stream, looking for a good spot to grab the last two sticks, which continued to drift away.

"This is gonna take forever!" He complained. "Now what?"

"We could play Treasure Hunt. We all meet back here in two hours, and whoever has the coolest thing by vote is the winner. And then afterwards you have a bunch of cool things to play with." Shawn tried to sound cool and self-deprecating, like he knew Eddy probably already had that idea and Shawn was just bringing it up.

"Alright" Eddy agreed, unhappily. He kicked the side of the bridge in frustration.

"I mean, now? We start looking now?"

"I mean, we should probably tell Bobby first." Shawn looked over at Bobby to see if he'd found the sticks. If this was going to work, he had to appeal to Eddy's sense of superiority, and his competitive instincts. "But between you and me, I do know a really cool place in the woods where you could start looking. No one knows about it except me, and I'd totally let you have first pick of whatever we found there."

Eddy's eyes opened wide, clearly eager for any advantage. "Oh, yeah?" He asked, winning clearly super important to him.

"Yeah - no one else knows where it is, but there's like, a cave and stuff. There's all sorts of cool stuff there." Shawn had actually been to the place once before while playing in the woods. Maybe there was treasure in the cave, maybe not, but the place was really hard to find and thus would be very unlikely him and Eddy would be interrupted.

"Bobby's a wimp. " Eddy announced, his chin up in the air, broad frame puffed out. "He doesn't deserve to get first dibs on a the Pirate Cave." Eddy concluded, interpreting Shawn's description to involve pirate treasure or maybe hoping it would.

"Let's ditch him and get the treasure. Or just, I don't know, leave him a note or something."

Shawn rummaged in a pocket a found a scrap of paper, and he noticed a discarded pencil nub laying on the bridge ground. He spent a minute writing a quick note to Bobby, then folded it up and weighed it down under a rock. "Okay, follow me and I'll show you the cave."

OOC: Shawn Joins thread

Shawn: Where're We Goin'?