Tex was a bundle of nerves by the time Wednesday night came around. He’d received no new information, and the only indication he'd gotten that Junji was still alive was an RSVP he’d given to a meeting the next morning.

Tex had only organized the meeting as an excuse to reach out.

There was a chance that Junji would show up to Bianca's meeting, although it seemed unlikely. Tex’s doubts were confirmed when he walked into Bianca's office five minutes late to see no sign of black hair or cotton sports clothing.

His eyes widened, however, to see that Barton had decided to show up.

She was standing by the wine and cheese table next to Luke and Caverly. An unopened bottle of wine was in her hand, the label of which she looked at with disgust.

Tex chewed on the inside of his cheek while he walked over.

"Hell are you doing here?" he asked once he'd gotten in range.

Barton looked up from the wine bottle and placed it back on the table.

"I was gonna go home and jerk off," she answered, "but then I remembered that my house is still being rebuilt."

"Can't jerk off in the bathroom?"

"There's no leg room."

Tex scoffed and scanned the room for Bianca. Once he'd caught her eye, he motioned for her to step off to the side with him.

"Hello." she greeted once they'd settled under the doorframe.

"Hey." Tex replied. "Was wondering what's on the list for today."

Bianca shot a glance at the wine and cheese table before responding.

"We were supposed to discuss where our budget is going, but last time we did that with Barton here she called us all simps for donating to the women's shelter." she answered.

Tex bit the inside of his cheek as the memory passed through his mind.

"We could do jeopardy, like on Tax Day." he suggested.

"I don't have any jeopardy questions. But I think Dan has Trivial Pursuit under his bed."

"Oh."

"Do you want me to grab it?"

"Sure."

Bianca smiled and took off for the hall. Tex pulled a chair up to the wine and cheese table and took a seat.

"What's going on?" Luke asked.

"We're, uh, gonna play a board game." answered Tex. "Grab a chair."

Thankfully, everyone followed Tex's instructions in a timely manner. Tex ended up with Caverly to his left and Barton right across from him.

Sean took the head of the table, directly to Tex's right.

"I thought we were doing budget plans." Caverly said.

"Nah, that's next week." Tex replied.

"Where's Junji?"

"He's--doing something."

"He did a bunch of cocaine and now he's busy all the time." Tala answered, causing Tex to cough.

"Busy with what?" Luke pushed.

"I don't know. Whenever I ask him what he's doing he sends a bunch of cryptic texts about some mystery project."

Tex might have shot Tala a look, had he not been too busy feeling petty that Junji had given Tala more information than him.

"...still in town?" Caverly finished asking.

It took Tex about ten seconds to realize she was looking at him.

"Huh?" he wondered.

"I asked if Lida was still in town." Caverly replied.

"Ah, no. You were right, I should've left that crazy train a long time ago."

On the other side of the table, Tala brought her eyebrows together and scoffed.

"I thought that might be the case." said Caverly. "You look a lot happier."

"Thanks. You look good too." Tex replied.

"I hope so. First trimester's been rough."

"I'm sure. Can't say I don't envy you, though."

"...You can't?"

"Nah, I got some womb envy problems."

Caverly's face lit up as she laughed.

"My parents have been begging us for a baby for years." she continued. "They can't believe we've finally gotten around to it."

"Never got why parents did that."

"It's, uh, common in my family. Younger women give birth, and then her parents raise the baby. That way the baby gets raised by people with more experience, and the mother's body heals much faster because she's young."

Tex's right eyebrow crept up into his bangs.

"I thought we were the same age." he muttered.

"I'm twenty-two."

"...What?"

Caverly turned to Tex to meet his gaze of confusion.

"Oh, were you wondering about these?" she asked as she pointed to her crow's feet. "These aren't wrinkles, they're just a characteristic of my species."

"......What?"

Caverly opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by a clunk when Bianca dropped a large cardboard box on the table.

The box looked like it held more than just Trivial Pursuit.

"I got the games!" Bianca announced.

"What do you have?" asked Tala.

"Uh..."

Bianca began to sift through the games, placing them on the table as she did.

"Risk, Tiddlywinks," she listed, "a bunch of Magic cards, Monopoly--"

"I wanna play Monopoly." Barton cut in.

Before Tex could rightfully express that he'd rather spend a day as someone else's penis than play Monopoly with anyone let alone Barton, Bianca nodded and put the box in the center of the table.

"Man, I haven't played this game since I was a kid." Luke said.

"Hope you got used to losing." Barton replied as Bianca sat down in the chair Tala had gotten for her.

Upon opening the box, Barton pulled the hat token from the dish of monopoly pieces.

Tala got the boat. Bianca grabbed the iron, and then Caverly took the dog. Sean snagged the bag of tiddlywinks.

"Oh boy!" Sean said as he dumped the bag out onto his table space.

The only piece left was the thimble. Secretly, Tex was relieved, as he'd always found the thimble's humble nature to be the most approachable.

"Did you need a piece?" Tala asked Luke.

"We want to play together." Luke answered, jabbing his thumb at Caverly.

"God, you two suck." said Barton.

The game had thankfully been pre-organized the last time it had been put away, so set-up was easier than it might have been. Tex placed the community chest cards neatly on their space. His satisfaction, however, was undermined when the card directly below the one on top slid slightly out of uniform with the others.

"How much money are we all supposed to get?" he wondered.

"I wanna be banker." Barton announced as she snagged the bank and dragged it over to her side of the table.

"...Alright."

"Cool. Let's go."

Tex grabbed the dice while Barton passed them each fifteen hundred dollars of colorful bills.

"Who wants to go first?" asked Tex. "Tala?"

"Me first." Barton replied. "Me."

"Calm down. We're all gonna get the same number of turns."

"That's only true if we play for an amount of turns that's a multiple of how many of us are playing. Otherwise, people who go last will have one less turn."

"...I mean I--guess."

No one replied, and Tex did himself a favor by zoning out.

Barton rolled a seven and moved her hat to the chance space. After covering the entire stack of chance cards with her hand, she pulled a roughly cut thin piece of paper from the top that didn't match with the others in the pile.

"Ah, man, it says to go directly to Park Place." she said as she held up the card.

It did say to go directly to Park Place, in crude pencil lettering. Barton moved her hat over to Park Place.

"Is anyone going to stop her?" Luke wondered.

No one replied. Caverly nudged Tex's side.

"Hwat?" Tex replied, thinking about eating pussy.

Caverly tilted her head in Barton's direction. Tex looked over to Barton to see she had a giant pile of money in front of her.

Suspicious, Tex looked over at the bank to see that all the money was gone.

"Barton, did you steal all of the money from the bank?" he asked.

"Nuh uh." she replied as she shook her head no.

Tala sighed and grabbed the dice. After rolling a five, she advanced to the Reading Railroad and bought it for two hundred dollars.

"Am I next?" asked Bianca.

"Guess we'll keep going counterclockwise." Tex replied.

Bianca ended up landing on the same chance space that Barton had. Luke pushed the card stack over to her so she'd have an easier time grabbing one.

"Take a trip to B&O Railroad." Bianca read. "Okay, I guess I'll do that."

B&O Railroad was about three fourths of the way across the board. While Bianca moved her iron, Tex received a kick under the table.

“Hey Dallas.” Barton stated, aiming another kick at Tex’s shin.

“What?” he replied.

“I’m gonna beat you at Monopoly.”

“That’s nice. Caverly, you two are up.”

Without even a glance between the two of them, Luke and Caverly both picked up the die closest to them and gave it a roll.

Both came up sixes.

"You get to go again if it's doubles." Tala noted while Caverly bought the electric company space they’d landed on.

Luke and Caverly simultaneously took another shot at the dice. This time, they rolled two threes.

"Woah, what are the chances of that?" asked Bianca.

"Actually pretty high." Caverly replied. "We vibrate at nearly identical frequencies."

Tala cleared her throat when Luke and Caverly managed a pair of fours for their third roll.

"Triple doubles. That means you go to jail." Tala explained.

While Caverly moved their dog to the jail space, Luke sighed and handed Barton a fifty dollar bill.

"Hey, that goes to the bank." Tex said when Barton added the money to her pile.

"Yeah." Barton replied. "I am the bank."

"...What?"

"The government said I could control all the money way back in 1913."

As she spoke, Barton grabbed her phone and typed something into Google.

"Hell are you talking about?" Tex asked.

"Here, look."

Tex examined the screen when it was shoved into his face.

"That's about the Federal Reserve." said Tex.

"Uhuh." Barton replied. "Federal Reserve is my middle name."

"Your name is Lucille Federal Reserve Barton?"

"Yeah."

"Ah, fuck off. Your middle name's Conrad, I saw it when we were in Sweden."

"No you didn't. Go back and check."

On the other side of Tex, Sean brought a red tiddlywink between his thumb and forefinger sharply against a blue tiddlywink flat on the table. His face lit up with joy when the blue tiddlywink launched into the air and landed squarely in the cup.

"Tex, it's your turn." Tala said as she pushed the dice in Tex's direction.

Tex rolled a nine and ended up on Connecticut Avenue.

"Guess I'll buy it." he shrugged.

Barton handed Tex the card for Connecticut Avenue. Although it pained him to do so, Tex passed the dice along to her.

"Thank you." said Barton.

In what was either an astonishing stroke of luck or due to the fact that she simply dropped the dice rather than tossing them, Barton rolled snake eyes and was able to advance to Boardwalk.

Once she'd bought it, she grabbed four houses to go along with it and paid herself the money.

"You're really picking yourself up by them bootstraps there, huh." Tex muttered.

"Glad somebody noticed." Barton replied.

Tala rolled a three and Bianca got a five on their respective turns. They both bought the property they landed on, although neither of them were anywhere close to scoring anything meaningful.

"Maybe you two shouldn't roll together." Tala suggested when Luke and Caverly were up next.

"Good idea." Caverly replied.

Luke grabbed the dice, only because they were closest to him. Caverly took a community chest card off the top after he rolled a seven.

"It says to go directly to Boardwalk." she announced as she read off the back of the mismatched card made of paper.

"Barton, stop putting homemade cards in the deck." Luke said.

"Where in the rules does it say I can't make my own cards?" asked Barton.

"We're not going to Boardwalk."

"Fine, then, I'll file you for tax evasion. Then it'll be your fault when the middle class disappears."

With a groan, Caverly moved their dog to Boardwalk.

"Thank you." Barton said as she leaned back in her chair.

"Just tell us how much we owe you." Caverly replied.

"Seventeen thousand dollars."

"...What?"

"Boardwalk, plus monopoly on dark blue plus four houses is seventeen thousand dollars."

"We don't have that much."

"Can't believe you would fail the middle class like that." said Tala.

Barton clicked her tongue and grabbed three five hundred dollar bills from the bank.

"Say." she stated as she toyed with one of the bills. "Could I interest you in a loan?"

The next few turns went exactly how Tex should have expected them to. Barton scored another monopoly on green, and she bought up every space of light blue besides the one Tex already owned.

“Hey Dallas.” Barton repeated, kicking Tex in the foot once again.

“...What.” he replied.

“I’m beating you at Monopoly.”

“Don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

Barton opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by her ringtone. She pulled her phone from her pocket while Tala moved her piece from Park Place to Baltic Avenue.

"...four, five, six." Tala counted. "Okay, I passed Go."

“Yeah, my house blew up.” Barton said into her phone. “What about it?”

Tex could hear a muffled voice on the other end of the line respond to Barton, but he wasn’t able to make out what it said.

“Why do you need me to be there to do repairs?” Barton replied to the voice. “I can’t, I’m playing Monopoly.”

“Barton, I need two hundred dollars.” said Tala.

Tex shot Barton a look, but she still didn’t notice Tala was talking to her.

“What do you mean you don’t understand why I would base all my self worth off this one game of Monopoly?” Barton continued. “What about that doesn’t make sense to you?”

“Barton.” Tex stated.

“Whatever, next month is fine. Just don’t call me again.”

Barton hung up the phone and put it back in her pocket. Tex nudged her foot under the table.

"Huh?" Barton wondered.

"Tala needs two hundred dollars." Tex replied.

Barton looked down at the spot on the table where she'd been keeping her money. Tex followed her gaze to see that all was left was a hundred, a fifty, and a ten.

"Barton, did you loan out all the money?" asked Tex.

"No."

"Hey Barton, thanks for the loan." Bianca said as she held up a five hundred dollar bill. "With this loan you've given me, I can now purchase more goods and services."

Tex turned to Barton to see she was chewing on her lower lip.

"Look, it's good for us." Barton explained. "Now I got the same amount of money that I started with, plus ten percent for every turn that it doesn't get paid."

"How is that good for us?" Tex asked.

"Barton, give me my two hundred dollars." said Tala.

"...Gimme a minute." Barton replied.

Barton climbed out of her chair and made her way over to the corner of the room with the coffee maker. It didn't take Tex long to figure out what she was doing when she opened the printer and placed one of each bill type on the scanner.

When Barton returned, she was carrying thousands of dollars worth of crudely cut out bills.

They didn't even have backs.

"Two hundred and twenty dollars." Barton said as she slapped a few bills on the table space in front of Tala. "Gave you ten percent interest."

"...Thanks." Tala replied.

After taking her terrible money, Tala returned her attention to her boat on Baltic Avenue.

"I guess I'll buy it." she muttered.

"Whoa, where'd you get all that money from?" Barton asked, her eyes lighting up.

"You gave it--"

"Hang on."

Barton pulled a pen out and reached across the board to scribble something. Once she'd pulled her hand away, Tex saw that she'd changed the price of Baltic Avenue from sixty dollars to sixty-six dollars.

"Barton, you can't just raise prices." said Tala.

"Says who?" Barton asked.

"Says Mr. Monopoly."

"Oh, you really gonna trust that guy? He doesn't have pupils."

Tex found his attention drifting to his right, in search of something more pleasant. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Sean launched yet another plastic circle into his cup with a look of delight.

"Having fun there, pardner?" Tex muttered to Sean.

"More fun than you!" Sean answered happily.

"That's for sure."

Tex only gave Barton his attention after she'd kicked him in the foot for the third time.

"What?" he snapped.

"Everyone's going bankrupt, huh." Barton replied.

"This should've ended a long time ago. Stop playing with your food."

Barton responded by kicking Tex in the foot once again.

"What?" he repeated.

"Check out how much money I got."

Tex looked down at Barton's money pile. He hadn't noticed it before, but he saw that she'd started keeping a written tally of the total amount of money in her possession.

Considering the fact that the amount on her tally was much higher than the amount of money Barton physically had in front of her, Tex assumed that she was also counting the money she was owed.

"It's way more than you have." Barton followed.

"Uhuh."

"Man, how am I doing so well? Guess I'm just objectively better than other people."

"You're not better." Tala snapped. "You're just selfish."

"How's it selfish that I'm perfect? Would a selfish person formulate a plan to force everyone to breed with me so that all babies could be born in my perfect image?"

Bianca cleared her throat and laid her hand in Barton's direction.

"Hey Barton?" asked Bianca. "I need a loan to pay off my loan debts."

"Alright." Barton replied as she stood up from her chair.

"No!" Tex yelped. "No more printing!"

After shooting a look at the printer, Barton sighed and sat back down.

"Here, just--take the money." she said to Bianca as she held out her empty hand.

"There's no money." Bianca replied.

"It's an IOU. Take it."

With an indescribable expression, Bianca took the invisible money from Barton for just a moment before passing it back to her.

Barton put the invisible money in her pocket and added the amount to her paper.

Luke and Caverly went, and then it was Tex's turn. He bit the inside of his cheek when he ended up on yet another one of Barton's spaces.

"What's the damage?" he wondered.

"You owe Barton three thousand dollars." answered Tala.

Tex looked down to where he'd been keeping his money to remember all he had left was two ones and a paperclip.

"If you can't pay in money, I better be seeing some property." Barton said.

The only piece of property Tex still owned was Connecticut Avenue.

"Come on, Dallas." Barton pushed. "You're the only thing in the way of me getting light blue."

Anxiety began to flare in Tex's chest at the thought of Barton scoring yet another Monopoly. He knew that she'd won either way, but he wasn't sure if he could bear it.

"I'm gonna--go to the bathroom." Tex managed.

Tex jumped to his feet and scurried to the door with his eyes straight ahead.

"Hate to see you go," Barton mused as she clunked her feet up on the table, "but don't mind watching you leave."

Tex's eyes narrowed when several people snorted under their breath. Still, he didn't dare turn around.

It wasn't until Tex had gotten to the bathroom that he realized he didn't have to go. Not wanting to seem like a dumbass, he settled on washing his hands for two minutes straight.

His head felt clearer by the time he'd finished.

Tex walked back into Bianca's office and returned to the table to see that Barton was doing even better for herself. Once he'd taken a seat, he craned his neck to read the tally she'd been keeping of her net worth.

According to the log, Barton had been in possession of $14,580 out of the total of $20,580, or seventy percent of the money when the game had started. Currently, however, she had $40,470 out of the total of $47,500, or eighty-five percent of the money.

Tex looked up just in time to see a tiddlywink soar through the air and land squarely in Tala's plastic cup of wine.

"Sean." Tex whispered, turning to his right.

"Hmm?" Sean replied.

"How would you feel about letting me borrow some of your pieces for a--plan?"

"Depends. How chaotic is your plan on a scale of inventing a new type of hiccups to forgetting where your mouth is?"

"Which way--which way do that scale go?"

Tex was given the entire cache of tiddlywinks.

After Tex had eyeballed the stash to estimate that there were about thirty plastic circles, he began to group them into piles of six. He kept his head down, but it wasn't long until he caught attention.

"What are those?" Bianca wondered.

"Oh, what, are y'all still using paper money?" Tex asked in response as he fought against his smile.

Bianca's eyes widened with interest.

"I thought I was, but then you made it sound really lame." she replied.

"And I got a point." Tex continued. "Think about it. Why should you be a debt slave to paper when you can not be a debt slave to a bunch of circles backed by the plastic standard?"

Tex's response was met with a collective 'ooh'.

"I need it now!" Caverly shouted, slammed her fist against the table hard enough to shake it.

Tex nodded and began to pass out the piles of disks. He wasn't sure if he should give any to Barton or not, but the choice was made for him when she didn't make a grab for one.

"What do you think you're doing?" Barton asked him under her breath.

Tex flicked his eyebrows in response.

"Who's turn is it?" Luke wondered.

"Bianca's." answered Tala.

After scooping her new money into a neat pile, Bianca grabbed the dice.

Tex frowned to remember Barton still owned half of the board. And as probability would have it, Bianca's iron ended up on one of Barton's spaces.

"Guess it doesn't matter if you got plastic circles," Barton said, folding her hands behind her head, "because I'm about to have them all."

Sean reached across the table and brought a stray tiddlywink between his fingers down on Bianca's iron, launching it into the air.

It landed on the unowned Short Line Railroad.

"I think I'll buy it." Bianca announced with a smile.

Barton jerked forward so quickly that her chair squeaked.

"What?" she managed. "You can't just change the rules like that."

"And what're you gonna do about it?" Tex replied.

Barton's eyes were as narrow as Tex's as they stared each other down. After Tex counted fifteen of his own heartbeats, Barton's mouth began to twist with consideration.

She reached into her pocket and grabbed her pistol.

"Whoa!" Luke shouted alongside Bianca's scream.

Although everyone else's hands shot into the air, Tala kept hers at her side.

"Are you really going to shoot us?" Tala asked, her tone flat.

Barton looked down at the tip of her pistol with a frown.

"...No." she sighed as she put the gun back in her pocket.

Everyone's hands slowly began to relax. Tex was the first to sit back down at the table, and everyone followed his example.

Barton crossed her arms over her chest after she'd sunk back in her chair.

"I guess it's my turn." Tala said, grabbing the dice when Bianca passed them to her.

Tala rolled an eight, which put her on New York Avenue. Tex quickly examined everyone's cards to see that Luke and Caverly owned the space.

"Are you going to make me pay rent?" Tala asked Luke.

"Nah, let's just eat some cheese." Luke replied as he dragged the cheese platter towards the both of them.

The next few turns followed the same trajectory, with the five of them avoiding Barton's half of the board. Bianca even came up with the great decision to replace jail with some fruit leather from her purse for them to share.

For the first time in his life, Tex had fun playing Monopoly.

“Man, I wish Junji was here to see us beat Barton.” said Tala.

“ Don’t worry.” Sean replied. “I’m finna gonna text him about it the moment I get home.”

“....Why do you have Junji’s number?” Tex asked.

“Hook-ups, sometimes I let him dispose of dead bodies on my farm--”

“I dunno why I asked.”

Barton watched the board in silence with a blank expression for a solid ten minutes. After Tex had finished working with Luke to establish a public walkway between Saint James Place and Pacific Avenue, he gave Barton a nudge under the table.

"You're sure taking this better than I expected." he muttered to her.

Barton stayed silent for a moment before responding.

"Yeah, well, it's fun to finally see your true color come out." she said slowly.

"...Color?" Tex wondered.

"Yeah. Red."

Tex's eyes widened until they were as round as the tiddlywink between his fingers.

"Just saying." Barton followed, pausing for a moment to look at the Monopoly board covered in property cards, tiddlywinks, and cheese. "I know communism when I see it."

Although he was still in his chair, both of Tex's feet managed to leave the ground.

"Woah, Tex, are you alright?" asked Bianca.

Time slowed down for Tex as his blood turned to ice. His heart hammered against the inside of his ribcage, painfully so.

"I have to go." Tex said loudly in response. "Just remembered."

"Alrigh--"

"I need to take the Monopoly board."

After scooping the cards and tiddlywinks into an unorganized pile, Tex dumped them back into the box and began to fold the board back along its creases. The lid of the box didn't go down all the way when he smushed everything back together, but he figured it was good enough.

"See y'all next Wednesday." he said as he power walked out of the room.

Tex's blood was still pumping as he climbed the stairs to his apartment. He momentarily considered leaving the Monopoly box somewhere in the stairway so he wouldn't have to look at it again, he found himself unable to on the off chance that it was sentient.

He hid the box under his sink once he'd gotten back to his room.

Tex sat down on his couch and breathed a sigh of relief just in time for his phone to buzz. He quickly pulled it from his pocket in the hopes that it was Junji, but found it was Tala instead.

From Gamer Gril

you are the lamest person ive ever met

To Gamer Gril

whatd i do?

From Gamer Gril

you can't keep letting people beat you just cause they call you a communist

Tex frowned in consideration before deciding to not to think about it.

To Gamer Gril

i don't see why it matters to you

From Gamer Gril

like a wise man once said,

From Gamer Gril

There’d been many times throughout his life that Tex had wished he'd never been forced to leave his ranch, but never before had he felt the urge so strongly.

To Gamer Gril

makes me want to go hunting

From Gamer Gril

these are crinklers and you support their right to practice their lifestyle

To Gamer Gril

whenever you send me this stuff it brings up a lotta questions

To Gamer Gril

what percentage of people are doing this?

To Gamer Gril

what has to happen to you to make you want to?

To Gamer Gril

is it possible to live a healthy life doing all that stuff?

To Gamer Gril

how do they use the diaper if its on the outside of the costume?

From Gamer Gril

you think i haven't asked myself these questions

To Gamer Gril

why do you make me look at this stuff

From Gamer Gril

i'm not sure how to explain it

From Gamer Gril

it makes the pain i feel of looking at it go away somehow

Tala's response seemed a little selfish, but Tex didn't know what he'd been expecting.