martinlivings | Tuesday's Ten Minute Tale

Here we go. Thanks to

capnoblivious for "A snide remark, but well-meant",

bluetyson for "Roman legions and pokemon", and

chrisb74 for "chickens". Not my best, but hey, given what I had to play with... ;)

"Pullus, Pullus, Pullus..."
(c) Martin Livings, 23-10-2007

I knew I was in trouble when Dexter stopped playing by the rules.

"I play Nidoqueen," I said, putting the card down. "She stomps all over your Psyduck."

Dexter glared at me. I'd been kicking his ass all afternoon.

"C'mon, Dex," I said, "you can do better than that. Where's that one sixty IQ you keep talking about? Pull something out of your oversized hat."

I should have kept my big mouth shut. I was just trying to be encouraging. Idiot, idiot, idiot!

A steely look glazed Dexter's eyes. I could see that even through his coke bottle bottom glasses. He flicked to the back of his deck, and as he riffled the cards, I caught a glimpse of colours that I'd never seen in a Pokemon deck before. Non-standard cards. Rarities, perhaps.

I nearly drooled. I had to have them!

He pulled out a card and played it. "Pullus," he declared.

"Pullus?" I leaned over and looked more closely. Then burst out laughing.

It was a chicken. Just a chicken. Its stats were pathetic.

I grinned, and played a card. "Snorlax eats Pullus." I burped for dramatic effect. Mmm, pizza and coke.

Dexter didn't look worried. "Pullus has a megahydra effect. Twenty for one."

"A what?" I looked at the card more closely. There, across the bottom, in fine print. "What's a megahydra effect?"

Dexter smiled. "For each one you kill, I can play twenty more."

"What??"

He dealt out more cards. "Pullus," he said. "Pullus, Pullus, Pullus, Pullus, Pullus, Pullus..."

"What the hell are you doing?"

He laid out the last of his twenty cards. "And Pullus."

I looked at the cards. These ones were different. They were still chickens, but wore armour and old-fashioned steel helmets, like Roman soldiers. Their stats were better. I looked at the cards, but didn't see the line about megahydra, just some gobbledigook about their armour.

"Right," I said. I'd had enough. I played my best card. "Cyndaquil with a mecha upgrade. Flame attack, wide effect. And," I added another card, "a damage boost. Three thousand points."

"I invoke my armour class," Dexter said.

"Come on," I laughed. "There's no way they can withstand that kind of damage. They're fried. Fried chickens."

"Individually, perhaps," Dexter conceded. "But these cards have cumulative exponential reflection armour classes. A single unit only has ten armour, but two have a hundred, three a thousand, four ten thousand, and so on. It's the power of the Pullus Legions."

"What?" I looked at the card again, and swore. He was right. "So, the attack has no effect?"

"On the contrary," Dexter smiled, "the attack has a very great effect indeed. With twenty units, the cumulative armour is ten to the power of twenty. Which is how much damage is reflected back, minus the initial amount you inflicted, of course." His smile widened. "How many armour points do you have?"

I blanched. "Which card?"

"All of them."

"Uh..."

I knew I was in trouble when Dexter stopped playing by the rules. It took me years to make that deck, and minutes to lose it.

Still, he left me with one card as a consolation. One lousy card.

Pullus.