Famer's Story-Writing Debate Round #1 Zaradi vs. Drafterman

I think it pretty much goes without saying that I became infatuated with Ryan. Not consciously at first. At first I was working on getting my life back together. But at least a few times a day I'd think about me sitting on that ledge and what Ryan told me. Initially I focused on her words, the message she gave me, and I did what I thought I needed to do to get in line and live my life. To learn from what I did. However, once I was on that path and that message had sunk in, I wasn't thinking about the words anymore, I was thinking about her: her face, her eyes. She couldn't have been too much older than me. Besides, while I may have learned a lesson, that didn't stop me from being a cocky teenager. It didn't take me long to rebuild my self-esteem. Having a supernatural ability didn't hurt either. Now, I'm sure you want to hear a story about how I climbed over hill and dale and honorably battled dragons to earn her love. Fvck. That. I exploited my ability. I'm the guy who's always in the right place at the right time, remember? When she got off work, I was there. Surprise! Remember me? What a coincidence that we met at this exact time. Want to go get a cup of coffee? Oh, hey, fancy meeting you at this park or random stop light on a random street. I was careful not to overdo it. I didn't want to look creepy. Just enough to get her thinking about me. Fair? Probably not. But as I had recently learned: life isn't fair. If you have problems with me using my abilities in that fashion, well, it's about to get worse. You see, she wasn't exactly single. She had a boyfriend at the time. Competition. As you know, I win competitions; I don't lose. I wasn't about to lose this. It helps that the guy was already kind of an a$$hole. He was older than her, drank a lot, and was out at bars with his friends a lot. Unfortunately he didn't really do anything that crossed any lines. He didn't hit or her cheat on her; he was just generally a jerk. So, what's a guy to do? Well, when you can know when anything is going to happen, it's rather easy to orchestrate events of your own choosing. Events like: bar fights. All a bar fight is, is having enough people drunk enough to fight for no reason in a confined space at the right time. Usually doesn't happen because people are constantly coming and going, putting everything in flux. When you know how long it's going to take a person to get drunk enough to fight, and when they're going to leave, some subtle stalling here and there is enough to bring things to critical mass. If it's any consolation, it really wasn't that hard to get this jerk to throw the first punch. And that was the first domino. Everything else just kind of slipped into place. First he was arrested at the bar fight. Later he'd be ticketed for speeding (pretended to have my car stalled and blocking a side street that he normally drove down, forcing him to drive down another street with a cop); arrested for drunk driving (temporarily "borrowed" his keys forcing him to stay at the bar and drink more than his usual amount); and arrested assault on a neighbor (stealing his newspaper without anyone ever catching me). As you can imagine, this only exacerbated his pleasant nature. It wasn't long before Ryan ditched him and left her available for other, more friendly guys. Like me. Now, this isn't some sappy romance story, but Ryan is a pretty big part of my life, so I think it's important to explain how she got to be a big part of my life. All in all, after about a year of meeting her, we were going out on a steady basis. But what you're really thinking is: how the hell did I end up in the situation I'm in now? -- One Year Ago (from present) – "Three… two… one…" Ding. Ding. Ding. Jackpot. 21st birthday. A milestone. Perhaps the milestone. Drinking. Gambling. All of the good things that I was probably already doing but now didn't have to hide the fact that I was doing them. It was also a special milestone for me in particular. One of the things I had been dying to try my ability at was gambling. Yeah, I gambled informally with my friends but that hardly counts. I wanted the big bucks. I wanted to go against the big players. The Casinos. As certain of myself as I was about other things, this actually scared me a bit. You always see in the movies how the Casinos get the last laugh. I had no doubts I could win; my fear was that I'd end up with my head in a vise at the end of the night. The excitement of the challenge and desire for cold, hard cash won the day. Ryan and I went to Vegas over a holiday weekend. It wasn't hard to convince her to go; she hardly got to use any vacation as it was. Though this would make things a bit trickier for me. I hadn't yet told Ryan about my ability yet, so I didn't want to make her suspicious. Plus, I wanted to earn enough money to buy a ring. Yes, a ring. We were getting to that "Sh!t or get off the pot" phase and I wasn't going to get her something cheap. We got to Vegas and I played fairly at first. That is to say I didn't use my ability to my advantage. First, I wanted to see if it would even work (it did). Second, I didn't want to arouse suspicion just yet. We got in somewhat late, so it wasn't long before Ryan headed to bed. I stayed behind. I had it all planned out. First phase: Slot machines. These things were all over the place, giving me a greater chance of finding ones that were closer to hitting a decent jackpot. The random factor apparently didn't affect my ability to see this. Also, it didn't involve human interaction, so there was less of a chance I would arouse suspicion. I paced up and down the aisles, looking for a good machine. I was afraid I would stand out, but apparently there are a great deal of superstitious people that do just that, watching the machines and sniping them out from others. They wait until a person gets off of a long losing streak and then they pounce on it, believing the fallacy that it'd be more likely to win. Me, I was looking for a relatively decent jackpot that was going to happen within a few minutes. Part of me hoped one of the huge jackpots would be coming up soon, as I could just win that and end the trip. Unfortunately, none of those jackpots were going to come up during my stay, so I settled for a $1,000 jackpot in the next 5 minutes. I sat down at the machine, plugged my quarters and, five minutes later – Jackpot. My heart was racing through my chest. I quickly went to redeem my prize for cash and call it a night but, at the last minute, I decided to get chips instead. It was time to move onto the next phase of the plan. Second phase: Blackjack. I sat down at a $20 table. This turned out to be even easier than the jackpots. Blackjack already has one of the best odds for players (that is, as close to 50/50 as you're going to get). All I had to do was wait until I was going to be dealt a winning hand and double down. After a few big wins, though, I could tell the dealer was getting to be a bit suspicious. Apparently certain types of bets alert them for the possibility of card counting. A few dirty looks from the dealer was enough for me to grab my winnings and leave. My winnings being almost $10,000. It was time to move onto the next phase. Third phase: Poker. Here I'd test myself against other players, rather than the Casino. I wouldn't be cheating in any sense that they could detect, so they really wouldn't care how I was winning, so long as I was taking other player's money and not theirs. I was starting to get bold so I made my way over to what I considered a high rolling table. $100 minimum bet sounded nice. As I headed over to the roped off area I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Mr. Miller. I think we need to talk…"