Branch
Amid the chaos and disrepair, the ghost of what this room used to look like emerges for a moment:
Walls lined with cages large and small, the faux-rainforest cacophony of chirps, squawks and yips, and in the center of the room, a circle of people crowding around a brightly-lit patch of floor.
"Twenty on the tiger beetle." Your old friend drops a folded bill into the hat being passed around.
Oh shit, beetle fights with Ramses!
By day a normal pet shop, on weekend nights they used to clear out a space for invertebrate death matches -- mostly beetles, occasionally a tarantula.
Ramses used to love this stuff. The perfect balance of pointlessness and grit.
"Who're you going for, H? Tiger, or stag?" He nods over to the octagon, where the two beetles are still flailing in the hands of their respective handlers.
The mandibles on the stag beetle are fully the size of its body. Obvious physical superiority.
Branch
"Fuck it, I'm still going for the stag beetle." (Put 10 sol on stag.)
"Nice. Get ready to see your boy torn the fuck apart." He grins lopsidedly.
The competitors are released.
Suddenly, Ramses leans in and exhales. A pressurised column of smoke strikes the floor and expands, enveloping the insects in heavy, grey-brown billows.
"What the fuck, Ram, when did you even inhale?'
"Been holding that one inside." He winks at you. "Fucking... Got to bless them, you know."
He's none-too-discreetly hiding a cigar-sized joint under his wrist.
It's like a brushfire. You can almost smell the animal panic as the jungle goes up in flames.
For a moment, stillness. Suddenly you hear an awful chainsaw buzzing. The two beetles begin to whir like enraged wind-up toys.
"Here we fucking go." Ramses strokes his beard and leans in close as the floor erupts in insect violence.
"Tear him apart!"
Your words ring out in the empty space. The room is back to its current state of disrepair, still vaguely smelling of animal fur.
The memory is gone -- and so is Ramses.
Branch
End of this branch
I can't remember, who won that match?
Indeed, you can't remember.
He's got secret pockets of old smoke inside his body!
"Won't that calm them down?"
"Would taking a bath in hallucinogens used by advanced creatures one hundred times your weight calm you down? Fucking... check it out." He nods at the forms in the smoke.
"Are you insane? The stag beetle's twice it's size." (Put 10 sol on stag.)
"Oh, if the stag manages to get the other one between its pincers, it's all over, but... it won't. That thing's so clumsy, nothing it does is on purpose."
"Get ready to see your boy torn the fuck apart." He grins lopsidedly.
"I'll join you on tiger, Ram." (Put 10 sol on tiger.)
Alternative wording
"Fine, I'll trust you on this one." (Put 10 sol on tiger.)
"Let's fucking go." Cross-legged, he shifts his buttocks to edge closer to the arena.
"You're the expert, Ram, fill me in."
"Fucking... if the stag beetle gets the tiger between it's pincers, it's all over. It'll snap it right in half."
"But it won't. Thing's so clumsy, it looks like nothing it does is on purpose. The tiger beetle, on the other hand... purpose." He nods.
Branch
Don't be distracted by the tiger beetle's iridescent shell, look at it's eyes -- the eyes of a killer.
When was this again?