The Vegas casino was nearly as thick with cigarette smoke as it was thick with the glitz of dying dreams and evacuating stacks of cash.

     Fate, naturally, was the center of it.

     Staring down the pot-bellied businessman with a quirked brow and a placid smile, Fate pushed forward the tower of chips, equaling something or another of three-thousand dollars. It was nothing, really; it was the single tower of several he had built up over the night, and a leering crowd had been drawn to the table.

     "Your call, friend," he said to the businessman, who harrumpthed.

     "We'll see about that, 'friend'," he spat back, another tower being pushed onward to the pot as he chomped on the bit of his cigar, gaze pointed and no less intense. "As if I would let a dirtied no-name such as yourself take off with my money in a poker game."

     "Whether I walk home with your fortune or you plod out with mine ain't up to me." Fate remarked, ignoring the whole of the man's spite. It would be useless, anyway, and he watched as the pot was counted and the cards were dealt -- either still, he knew what he'd have for his hand. "But, if you're needin' a name to curse, it'd be just T.F. for 'ya." His friendliness was juxtaposed against his opponent's flaring nostrils.

     He pulled up his cards. The King and Ace of Spades belied the rest of the house's cards, right down to the final draw of the Queen and the Jack.

     Sure, he had won ten-thousand dollars at the drop of a "Royal flush," but the man's plumped up, reddened cheeks and utterly hateful eyes to where Fate was sure his only missive was his desire to strangle him right then and there?