"That’s incredible!"

  Blue stared in shock. She hadn’t expected August to hit a triple 7 on his very first pull.

  August, too, was stunned as he looked at the pile of tokens accumuting in the payout tray.

  Did my luck suddenly turn around? Or is Team Rocket messing with the odds behind the scenes, trying to pacify me by giving me a few wins so I stay quiet?

  He wasn’t sure.

  But there was a simple way to find out.

  He grabbed the lever again and rapidly pressed the buttons.

  The reels spun and stopped.

  Beep beep beep.

  7 - 7 - 7.

  Another jackpot. More tokens poured out.

  The pyers at the surrounding slot machines all paused, turning their heads toward August with expressions of disbelief.

  August ignored their stares. He had always thought of himself as having decent luck, but there was no way he was the kind of lucky guy who could pull two triple 7s in a row.

  That left only one expnation—Team Rocket was maniputing the odds to make him win.

  To be honest, he found their tactics really annoying.

  His original pn had been to lose all his tokens, then use the excuse of buying more to get closer to the front counter and look for the hidden entrance to Team Rocket’s base. But now that they were deliberately letting him win, it would take him forever to burn through his stash.

  "There’s no way they’ll let me keep winning forever."

  Determined to test their limits, August pulled the lever again.

  Beep beep beep.

  ...

  Ten minutes ter…

  A massive crowd had gathered around him.

  "This is insane!"

  "I’ve been pying here for a year and I’ve never seen anything like this!"

  "A year? Try ten years! This is unheard of!"

  "Hey, man, do you have some kind of secret technique?"

  Under the disbelieving gazes of the crowd, August stared at the massive pile of tokens filling an entire crate.

  Something’s definitely off. Very, very off.

  In just ten minutes, pying at a pace of one round every twenty seconds, he had hit 30 consecutive triple 7s.

  There was no way this was just Team Rocket feeding him some small wins.

  "Could the machine be broken?"

  As August entertained this thought, the same question was being asked inside the Game Corner’s surveilnce room—by none other than Team Rocket’s Head of Security.

  They had taken notice of August after he hit his third consecutive jackpot.

  At first, they assumed he was just lucky, so they manually adjusted his odds from the control room, reducing his chances of winning.

  But to their horror, it didn’t make a difference. Even with the probability settings drastically lowered, he continued pulling triple 7s at an impossible rate.

  Thirty jackpots in a row!

  Since the casino’s opening, no one had ever done this before.

  At one point, someone in the room even suggested that August might be a Psychic-type Trainer using telekinesis to manipute the machine.

  But the theory was quickly shot down—each slot machine had an anti-cheat arm, and their Sableye had already scanned him for suspicious psychic energy.

  There was nothing.

  It should have been impossible.

  "Can we just set his odds to zero?" the security chief asked the technician.

  The technician hesitated before shaking his head. "No… We have to account for the League’s routine inspections. The lowest we can legally go is a 1-in-4096 chance of winning."

  "From a professional standpoint… my best suggestion would be to get him to switch machines."

  If it weren’t for the commotion earlier, they could have just thrown August out of the Game Corner.

  But since they had just announced in front of all their customers that winnings would always be honored, kicking him out now would destroy their reputation.

  The security chief sighed and reached for his radio.

  "Keep an eye on the guy at Machine 13. Find a way to get him to move."

  Back on the casino floor, just as August hit another triple 7, a staff member squeezed through the crowd and approached him.

  "Apologies, sir, but we need to take this machine in for maintenance. Would you mind moving to a different one?"

  As soon as he said this, realization dawned on the faces of the onlookers.

  "Ohhh, that expins it. The machine must be broken!"

  It was the only logical expnation.

  Some even looked at August with envy. Why couldn’t I have been the one to find the glitchy machine?

  Blue looked like she was about to argue, but August subtly stopped her, shooting her a look that told her to hold back.

  Instead, he asked calmly, "So you’re saying the machine was malfunctioning? What happens to the tokens I won?"

  "Of course, they’re still yours," the staff assured him. "And we’ll also retrieve any remaining credits you had stored in the machine."

  Honoring his winnings was their way of minimizing the backsh.

  From the expressions of the surrounding customers, it was clear that the Game Corner’s response seemed reasonable enough. If August continued to argue, he would come off as the unreasonable one.

  "Then I’ve got no problem with that." August stood up without making a fuss.

  The staff member blinked in surprise. He had expected a long-winded argument, maybe even a confrontation—but August just… agreed?

  "Alright, folks, show’s over!"

  With August stepping away, the crowd began to disperse.

  The "faulty" machine was cordoned off for inspection, but even so, what had happened today would be the talk of the town for weeks to come.

  Blue followed August to another slot machine, looking at him with clear confusion.

  She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t let her speak up.

  This had been a golden opportunity to provoke their opponents—if they had pressured them a little more, they might have forced them to slip up and expose their connection to Team Rocket!

  Noticing her puzzled expression, August smirked.

  "The reason I stopped you," he said, "is because I have an even better pn. You don’t seriously think that was just a malfunctioning slot machine, do you?"

  Blue hesitated. "Wait… wasn’t it?"

  "Of course not!"

  At first, August had thought it was a mechanical failure.

  But then he had absentmindedly touched the Amulet Coin hanging around his neck.

  That’s when it hit him.

  His insane luck today—it had everything to do with this charm!

  Seeing Blue’s still-doubtful expression, August grinned. "Actually, I have a nickname. They call me… the Slot Machine Saint."

  With that, he casually pulled the lever on the new machine.

  The reels spun.

  August zily tapped three buttons.

  The screen froze.

  Beep beep beep.

  7 - 7 - 7.

  The familiar jackpot chime echoed through the casino.

  Blue’s jaw dropped.

  And just like that, all eyes turned toward them once more.

  Meanwhile, in the surveilnce room, the security chief, who had just started to rex, felt his heart leap into his throat.

  "You’ve got to be kidding me…"

  ---

  T/N: give me that COIN