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Rose: Spend some quality time with your palemate.
Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you have just been dealt the worst Scrabble hand in the history of paradox space. Your opponent is staring at you from across the board and waiting for your next move. What do you do?
You decide to attempt the rare and highly dangerous MOBIUS DOUBLE REACHAROUND BLUFF.
“This is the worst set of tiles ever,” you say, dropping the tile bag with a satisfying thumping sound. “The only way this bag could be improved is if it were set on fire and left on someone’s doorstep.”
Terezi sets down the tile she had been licking thoughtfully. “The tiles in general, or the ones on your rack right now?”
“Yes. Seriously, what am I supposed to do with these? About the only use I could make of them would be to donate them to the Can Town Reconstruction Fund.”
“The Citizens of Can Town thank you for your generous support! But maybe we should finish this game first,” she says, grinning.
“Fine. Okay, I suppose it’s my turn, so-” you start to say.
“Anyway, I know you’re bluffing,” Terezi adds, still grinning.
You raise an eyebrow. “Really,” you say noncommittally.
She delicately rearranges a few tiles on her rack for effect. “Yup. They really are as bad as you say.”
Shit. Time for a new angle of attack.
“No, Terezi, I think you’re confused. See, that would be the opposite of bluffing. If I were bluffing, my tiles would in fact be good.”
“Nope.”
“I’m serious, here. If you’re going to accuse me of bluffing, at least get your facts straight. You should be thinking that my tiles are good,” you say.
“So you’re saying that’s what you want me to think? That your tiles are good?”
“Yes!”
“So really you’re trying to get me to think your tiles are better than they are. And thus you’re bluffing!”
You sigh. “No, that’s not what I – hey!” you begin, but are interrupted when Terezi quickly slips over to your side of the board. You nearly elbow her in the head in surprise.
Terezi doesn’t care. “See?” she says, pointing at your tiles. “These really are pretty terrible.”
“Terezi. This is MY SIDE OF THE BOARD.”
She shrugs. “I go where I’m needed.”
You roll your eyes at the ceiling. “I have the worst moirail ever.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” she replies, waggling her eyebrows for effect.
“I had a nightmare. Extenuating circumstances,” you say, not entirely indignantly.
“Mm-hmmm. All I’m saying is, that was some of the best cuddling I’ve had in weeks.”
You decide that the best course of action - or at least the most appealing one at the moment - is to not say anything, and simply rest your chin on Terezi’s bony shoulder while she’s still hunched over examining your tiles.
“Maybe you could make a word or two out of these…hmm. I dunno,” she says. “How about ‘kwyjibo’?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a real word.”
“Is so! It’s Alternian!”
You feign a yawn. “I’m too lazy to check the dictionary right now. Maybe I’ll just curl up right here and take a nap,” you say.
Terezi giggles and lies down next to you on the pillows you were leaning on, and the two of you play-wrestle for superior cuddling positions until you’re both tangled up with each other. At one point you hear a horrible clattering noise and realize you’ve just managed to knock over your tiles and possibly scatter the board as well. You also realize that you don’t particularly care. Especially given the previous state of your tile selection.
Eventually the two of you settle down and just lie there and stare up at the ceiling for a while. This is the part you like best. You can hear Terezi’s heartbeat, still beating quickly from the wrestling, and as it calms to a slow, steady pace, so do you.
“Terezi?” you ask, somewhat sleepily.
“Yes Rose?”
“How did you know I was bluffing?”
“I smelled it!” she says. You are not actually looking at her right now, but you suspect she is beaming.
“You smelled my tiles?” you ask.
“No, I smelled your ruse.”
“You cheated.”
You feel Terezi shrug under your head. “It’s not my fault you reek of deceit,” she says, ever so sweetly, and it is at that moment that you decide to retaliate by tickling.
“I have a proposal for you,” you say the next day as you set the board down on the floor at your usual time.
Terezi looks up at you from her book. She is snacking on a garishly-colored candy cane alchemized from Dave’s set of codes. It actually looks pretty good, but you know from past experience that it is likely Dorito flavored.
“And what does counsel propose?” she asks in her finest legislacerator voice.
“That we cheat. One game. No holds barred. Each of us goes at it with every power we have at our disposal. Skill against skill alone. My Light and wit against your Mind and scent.”
“Hmmm.” Terezi’s face wrinkles with contemplation; her lips pursed into the beginnings of a question mark. “I like it! Just this once, though. I don’t want to be in the habit of encouraging cheating,” she says with a grin.
“All right. Let us begin then,” you say, moving to set up the board. Terezi’s hand intercepts yours with a gentle pap and chases it away from the board before you can open it. You look up at her in puzzlement. “Problem?” you ask.
“Not at all! You see, we have already begun. And I’d like our opening moves to be free from the distractions of the board,” she says, cool professionalism returning to her voice, a coy smile quirking at the sides of her mouth.
“Meaning?”
“Well! Let’s consider your motivations for a second, as that is my particular specialty as far as cheating goes. For example: if your motivation were to win the game, then you could have glimpsed the outcome ahead of time, and only brought the suggestion to me if you knew you were likely to win. This is made all the more likely by the fact that this game incorporates an element of chance - the tile selection - so you would also likely enjoy a bonus multiplier to your powers of perception,” she says. You let slip a controlled smirk, and Terezi scrunches up her nose at you. “What?”
“Well,” you begin, falling back into your own cool and collected mode (ironically helped by your proximity to your moirail), “I can see two problems with that. One, you assume I cheated in advance. Perhaps I decided to be ethical in my cheating, and thus to only cheat once you agreed to the game. You seem to be insinuating that I would cheat twice.”
“Wouldn’t you?” she asks, grinning that coy smile again.
“Secondly,” you continue, pointedly ignoring her, “winning might not in fact be my motivation at all.”
“And I never said it was! I was only using it as the initial assumption for my example. But you’re right on one front: The double-cheating scenario is boring to consider because you basically always win in that case. So instead, let’s consider the possible outcomes of the single-cheating scenario. You check at the beginning of the game. You perceive one of the following outcomes: one, you definitively win; two, you definitively lose; or three, an ambiguous outcome; a potential toss-up. There is nothing to be done for me in the case of your definitive win. So I write that off. But I do still have to be on the lookout for certain alternative end-games in the case of your definitive loss. For example: you may try to sabotage the game as part of your forfeit, or perhaps set us up for a rematch somehow. From defeat you would still seek victory.”
“And the ambiguous case?” you ask.
She shrugs. “Then we proceed with the game as usual.”
“And I suppose you would know right off the bat which outcome I saw, given your own powers.”
“Exactly! And my own perception of your view into the outcome necessarily skews that outcome towards certain end points, because I will be acting on that data in certain predictable ways,” she says, looking very pleased with herself. “By observing your foresights, I will be able to counter each move, making the game more likely to go my way, which means you yourself should be more likely to see such outcomes in the first place.”
“Ah, so you intend to collapse my waveform,” you say, smiling to stall for time.
“I will savor every lick of your waveform as I devour it,” Terezi says, and you giggle before you can stop yourself.
“So,” you say. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. We both know each other’s moves and are effectively stalemated. My best bet is inevitability. Your best bet is to draw the game out until one of us slips up. In addition, I should also take it as a given that we both already know which way this is going to go: either inevitably, or doggedly.”
“Yup!” Terezi says.
“So does this conversation count as drawing the game out, then?”
“No, this is just building suspense for the actual inevitable outcome of this game,” Terezi says sweetly, and then, seemingly in complete defiance of the laws of probability, flips aside the unused Scrabble board and launches herself at you, fingers outstretched.
She slams into you, and, taking advantage of your physically stunned state, tickles you ruthlessly. You let out a delighted shriek and counter with a headlock, which she then breaks out of with an expertly timed lick to the face. The two of you flop over, spent, breathing heavily and trading smiles with each other.
“I should have known that would be the outcome,” you wheeze, trying to catch your breath.
Terezi is idly chewing on your hair. “You didn’t already know?” she asks in between nibbles.
“No. I never actually used my powers to check the outcome of the game. I was bluffing.”
Terezi grins. “I know.”