“Yatta!” David cried gleefully while throwing his arms up in the air victoriously.

The three other people around him lowered then shook their heads in mock shame, but after a few moments, they burst into less somber giggles and patted David on the back in congratulations.

“Let’s get started,” David said, and the group quickly agreed. Phoenix had brought the table and his needed materials for the session. Milo had brought the chairs and some sustenance as well as his materials. Katie had brought her backpack which contained essentials beyond only her meager materials. David had supplied chairs and the place for the bi-weekly ritual.

This ritual was special though, being conducted on the special day of Samhain, or as most people referred to as Halloween. The group preferred the more archaic sounding name, as if the name changed their perspective of it to something beyond mere mortals.

Each person went about a task with a sense of duty and urgency. They did not have long, so they needed to begin as soon as possible. They wanted to be ready long before the witching hour. Thunder rumbled outside letting them know that a storm was brewing. The noise also loosened their nerves, and they began talking about little things to distract themselves from the current menial tasks that had to be done before the actual event.

Katie produced several small candles and distributed them around in windows and on shelves to provide mood lighting. Phoenix setup the table with David’s chairs. Milo got out a bag and a leathery mat, which he laid across the table with deliberate delicacy. The writing on the mat was valued by all present. Months of their work was easily evident on the surface that now covered the whole table.

Katie set up a pot on a counter and started bringing it up to temperature. David laid out all of the materials that would be needed on the table. He carefully arranged everything so that their tomes were holding down the corners of the mat that were trying to curl back together. Milo deposited the appropriate writing implements onto the tomes to be within easy reach then took a seat at the table. Phoenix followed suit opposite Milo and produced a folder from his supplies. He pulled small stack of papers from it and set them neatly atop the folder in front of his place.

Satisfied with the brewing pot, Katie took her seat across from David’s seat. David took his seat last and said, “Are you all prepared?”

The others nodded their agreement, and Katie and Milo quickly got out their own papers. David tried his best to give a sinister smirk before continuing, “Then let this session begin.”

The words had barely left his mouth before a closer rumble rattled the windows and door. Moments later, the room plunged into semi-darkness, lit only by Katie’s candles. Milo made a startled noise. Katie started glancing around as if to find a source of the power outage. Phoenix remained stoic and crossed his arms over his chest.

David lowered his voice and said, “This is perfect weather for this. Where were we?”

“About to attack the zombie leagions,” Phoenix said without looking at his notes.

“Ahh, yes,” David said. “Everyone roll initiative, and let The Treasure Box’s Samhain D&D session begin! What a great way to break in our new game store.”

Code_Man65 and I went to a Street Fighter IV tournament in Oklahoma City last Saturday (06/27/2009).  It was put on by a group called OKGamers.  I mostly went because CM didn’t want to make the drive alone.  So, with one hour of sleep and a borrowed MadCatz XBox 360 fightpad, I went.  We got there early, got registered, signed in, and…waited.  We could not even practice because they did not have any systems set up for SFIV.  They had at least a dozen systems set up for a Halo 3 tournament they were running in the same room, though.

Eventually, a couple of guys did show up with XBox 360s.  One of them did not bring the game, and did not have any characters unlocked.  The other one had all of the characters unlocked, at least.  A few minutes before tournament start time, another guy showed up with a PlayStation 3 that had everyone unlocked.  The hitch here is that the controllers, be they a pad or a stick, are not compatible between the XBox 360 and the PS3.  Because of this, if you were playing on the opposite system for the controller you bought, you were supposed to be using an adapter that would allow your controller to work on the system.  The catch here (there’s always a catch, right?) is that the adapter did not work.

The tournament was supposed to start at 2:30.  It did not start until 3:30.  Finally, they came back and announced the initial match-ups.  As one of the first ones up, I sat down and got beat by a very good Guile player.  We went and reported our results and settled in for a wait.  We then found out that what we did did not count and that they were starting the whole shooting match over.  They announced another set of match-ups, which I was not part of.  I tried to watch the fights, but every time I found a spot where I could watch a couple of the screens, someone would step in front of me and block so I could not see either of them. The guy who had beaten me was in this line-up, too, and won again.

After that round was reported, we waited some more.  We found out that again, none of the results counted.  They started us over one more time and actually had someone back there dedicated to our tournament to set up matches instead of having to have the person run all over the room.  My first match after this third reset was on the PS3, which meant I had to borrow a PS3 controller.  Having never used a PS3, and having never been much on the PS2, either, this put me at a pretty severe disadvantage.  I will not try to claim that it cost me the match, but I will say I did not make as good a showing as I am capable of with a more familiar controller.  Needless to say, I lost that one, which put me down one in a double elimination tournament.

In my next shot up, I was on one of the XBox 360s.  I managed to win one round out of 5, but that still left me with a loss for the match, and doubly eliminated.  I got to watch CM play both of his matches, and I can tell you his execution was way off.  I watched him fail to exploit a couple of openings that I know he saw (and mocked him for as much on the ride back to Tulsa), I watched him take bait he knew better than to take, and I watched him just not play as well as he should have.  He got doubly eliminated just as quickly as I did.

Final impressions:

Despite being poorly ran (especially compared to the Halo3 and Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournaments that were running concurrently), we both had fun.  Odd though this may seem, introvert though I am, I think I had more fun talking to the other SFIV players than I did playing Street Fighter.  I know I had more fun listening to the Halo 3 players, some of whose methods of “psyching” each other out bears a striking resemblance to a Tourette’s patient.

I do not see myself playing in another of their tournaments any time soon, especially if it looks like they might be this poorly organized again.  They are having another one near the end of July that I will not be making, but if I hear it is run better, I may think about attending later ones.

#FictionFriday’s Prompt: Where your character is committed to a drastic or extreme change

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“You cannot spend all of your time and money like that! It isn’t healthy!” Laura screamed at James, not for the first time this week on this subject alone. She stood at the doorway, watching him.

“It is not that bad,” he said, as usual. He completely disregarded her opinion on this subject.

“You missed work twice this week, and you forgot to pick up Billy from school!” she said. Technically, she had lied. He had missed two full days and left early on a third, but who was counting.

He said over his shoulder, “I have been feeling under the weather, and Billy needed the exercise anyways.”

“It was twelve miles!” August in Oklahoma was not the time for such insane exercises.

“A lot of exercise.”

“He had just finished football practice!”

“Fourth quarter conditioning.”

“No. No. Do not give me that bull shit. You fucking forgot your son!” She had heard this line of illogic many times before. Some kind of macho uber practice technique. She did not buy into it.

“I did not forget him.” Billy’s feet would disagree.

“You completely forgot him. And how about Sarah? Did you not forget to feed her all day yesterday? Did you not forget to change her diaper? Did you not forget to talk to her so that she knows you love her?” She clenched her hands into fists. She fought the urge to pulverize him.

“So I didn’t change a diaper. She didn’t complain.”

“Cuz she can’t talk!” Sarah was not even two months old.

“Are you just going to yell at me?”

“Will it do any good?”

“Probably not, but I need to know before I sign up for this next round.”

“You have to be kidding me. After all that, you’re still going?” She threw up her hands in frustration and spun on her heels to leave the room.

“Heck yeah. We’re gonna clear Flame Leviathan on hard mode!” James called after her.

Laura pretended not to hear him. She left the house. When she returned later, she had signed divorce papers and a sledge hammer, and James was already asleep. She left the papers on the smashed remains of the computer and took her kids to her parents’ house.