Just a Second

Barth and Katryn Norse, as you surely don't remember, met Joe Eawest just a second ago at this hunting lodge outside Pomeroy, Ohio, a few hours after Barth had popped in for just a second. Right as you read this, Joe is popping Barth on the head with a bottle of Rolling Rock. Joe is, you see, drunkenly displeased. Barth has, in his inebriation, mistaken Joe's room for his own, and Joe's tenor-banjo case for a clothes hamper, and so has stripped off his Spaceballs t-shirt, whipped the banjo case open, and flung the stained and smelly shirt inside. He is displaying his might moobs in their full glory at the moment of impact. Fortunately, Joe is too drunk to be able to cause any harm with the stout bottle, which is rolling harmlessly away on the floor. Now Katryn  Norse is walking in, and laughing at the scene.

Barth left Katryn for a second hours ago, because Barth *hates* hunting. He has no moral objection to guns or killing. He just finds it all boring. He's a born city-slicker. Katryn's not. He wants to be kind and he wants to get laid and so he goes on these trips, but he's not good at coming back from the hunting-lodge bar. Katryn forgives him for it, though he doesn't know she does.

It's getting dark, and Katryn knows the local warden is strict on the rules about hunting after dark, so she leads Barth back to their room, where he finds a real hamper to chuck his t-shirt into, and she convinces him to put on a new shirt while she stores away her muzzleloader. Then they come back to Joe.

"Want to play the Game of Joe?" he asks. "I guess so. I do a lot of miniatures gaming and stuff. Katryn too, she's not girly that way." Katryn nods. "Oh, the Game of Joe is all about the miniatures," Joe replies.

Joe leads them back to his room, where he has converted his cabin's dining table to a modest and makeshift gaming table, with a big green hex sheet spread out upon it. The figures assembled on it have no obvious rhyme or reason; there's figurines of a He-man, a mace-wielding dwarf, Bart Simpson eating a cucumber, a starfish and so on, but nothing organized or coherent to suggest a wargaming set.

"Uh." (That's Barth speaking.)

"Oh! I'll show you." And all night, he did. And thus befriended the Norses until the end of humanity. Which wasn't bad, since humanity still some years left in it. (Then everybody died.)