Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Oh right, the luck thing. Forgot about the ticking clock over here because I was busy having an emotional crisis about unread texts.

[System: SLOTS NOW! MACHINE’S RIGHT THERE. GO GO GO YOU’RE SO SLOW AHHH!]

”There’s a jackpot machine over there,” I say out loud, mostly to myself, already slithering that direction before I finish the sentence.

[System: it’s rigged though mate, gotta be upfront about that, house always wins, that’s the whole business model, it’s like the one rule of casinos, but but but YOU HAVE THE LUCK SKILL, LET’S MILK THE PLACE DRY.]

ok ok ok ok, we can do this.

[System: I’m just saying, last jackpot paid out was a month ago, odds are cooked]

Did you forget about the skill?

[System: Oh yeah, I’ve been drinking, sorry haha.]

What the hell... nah. The house doesn’t win today.”

I can feel it humming under my scales, that unnatural, borrowed luck buzzing like a second heartbeat. It isn’t hope. It’s a sure thing.

I coil tight around the base of the machine, a towering beacon of blinking lights and spinning reels. The jackpot counter glows: $6,000,000 and climbing. With the very tip of my tail, I tap the lever. Not a pull, just a light press. Like I’m starting up an engine I already own.

I start humming that song that calms me down.

First icon drops. Little golden snake, coiled up, shining like a tiny trophy.

[System: YES]

Second icon: another golden snake.

[System: LET’S GOOOO!]

Third icon, and my whole body goes rigid, wings snapping half open on instinct because I already know; I already feel it in whatever passes for my gut these days.

Golden snake.

Fourth icon drops slow, way slower than it should, dragging out every millisecond like the machine itself knows what it’s about to do to the room.

Golden snake, boom, that’s four in a row.

The alarm that goes off isn’t a normal alarm, it’s a full-body experience, lights strobing red and gold, a horn blaring so loud the champagne bottle behind me actually rattles, and a voice booms out over the entire floor announcing that somebody just won the jackpot, again. Same night, same snake.

Six million four hundred thousand dollars.

[System: LOOK AT ALL THOSE DOLLARYDOOOS!]

The whole floor loses its mind. People I’ve never met are screaming my name, except they don’t know my name, they’re screaming ”the snake” and ”the crimson guy” and pointing phones at me from six different angles.

[System: HOLY SHIT MATE HOLY ACTUAL SHIT I MEAN I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN BUT SEEING IT OH MY GOD.]

My brain isn’t working right anymore. Everything’s too loud, too bright, tail thrashing so hard I nearly knock Hana clean off her feet, wings flared out wide because I don’t know what else to do with them.

And that’s when the suits show up.

Old mate, they look like FBI agents about to wipe my memory.

[System: you’ll be fine probably, maybe.]

Three of them, moving through the crowd as if they own it, which I guess they do, expressions carved out of stone, and the one in front doesn’t even raise his voice.

”Sir,” he says, real calm, real polite, real not-a-request. ”Come with me.”

[System: relax, they probably just wanna give you the whole VIP treatment, comped room, bottle service, the works, big winner energy, hell, maybe even a nice heat lamp.]

They probably wanna kill me, is what I think, because that’s what my whole body is screaming right now, every scale tightening at once like I just got dunked in ice water.

[System: nah mate you’re spiralling, it’s fine, casinos love a big win, it’s good publicity for them]

It does not feel like good publicity; it feels like being herded to the back room in every movie ever made about guys who won too much money too fast.

Hana leans in close, voice low enough that only I catch it under all the noise, and there’s nothing panicked in it at all, just calm and ready like she’s already picked out which suit she’s gonna hit first. ”Young lord, do you need us to intervene?”

”Nonono, I’m fine,” I mumble out, way too fast, tail curling up tighter around the base of the machine like that’s somehow gonna save me.

[System: are you fine though]

No, not even a little bit. But something in me, some dumb little voice that isn’t the System, says I should just see where this goes, because bolting through a packed casino floor covered in cameras is probably a worse look than just slithering with the nice men in suits.

The lead suit hasn’t moved, hasn’t blinked, just stands there with his hand held out in this open, easy gesture like he’s inviting me to a dance and not a potential murder.

”This way, sir,” he says again, and somehow it’s even calmer the second time, which is worse.

I turn my head toward Hana. She gives me the tiniest nod, the kind that says she’s got eyes on every exit and every guard in a fifty-foot radius, which helps exactly zero per cent because I still gotta be the one who slithers forward first.

So I do.

Coil by coil, I unwind off the machine, wings folding back down against my spine because flared-out-panic-wings probably isn’t the vibe I want slithering into whatever this is.

The crowd parts around me like I’m contagious, phones still up, people still shouting my new nickname, and for a second the whole world’s spinning between six million dollars and the very real chance I’m about to get disappeared behind some velvet curtain.

[System: for what it’s worth, mate, if this goes bad, I really did think it’d be fine]

Cool, great. Very reassuring, huge ten out of ten system service.

The suits fall into step around me, one on each side and one trailing behind, and the noise of the floor starts dropping away the further we go, alarms and cheering fading into that weird hush you only get in the parts of a building regular people never see.