RP [Open RP] Welcome to The Kikyo Sector, Part 2 - Love Day YE 43

[hyralt]

"War hunter, huh?" Eldon gave Aries a curious look and actually spent a few seconds in silence, mulling over what she'd said. "I knew this one kid at the orphanage where I grew up. Now, I only ever knew him as Antoine Gage, but he hated that name. Then again, he mostly seemed to hate everything and everyone.

"Anyway, this brat Antoine was the type of folk who'd just keep talking at you and you couldn't get a word in no matter which way you tried to fit it. That, combined with the fact that he was the most hateful person I have ever met, meant that I learnt his voice but good and avoided him as much as I could. Years later I'm listening to the Nep News Network on a long-haul between Malaise and Murf. Not sure why a hundred tons of plushies needed to move across the sector, but I weren't the type to ask no questions. Point is, I heard that brat's voice. He was doing one of them voice-overs for an ad for some new pizza place in Funky City. I s'pect that's a good fit for someone what can't keep his mouth shut for more than a second at a time. Goes by Twelve Guage now. I reckon he must've come up with that himself.

"In his case though, it was more that he was describin' what he already was. With you, it sounds like it was more aspirational. See, in my mind, he was always Twelve Gauge, it was just that nobody really knew it until he figured it out. But you got a body and bam! Aries Jaeger. War hunter. Sounds like you knew what you wanted to be right from the word go. I like that.

"Now I don't fully know what it means to hunt war, but on the matter of living every day to its fullest, I couldn't agree more. I once found myself fortunate enough to be temporarily out of work in Jiyuu. Gorgeous place. But that's when I really learnt that I couldn't spend a single day sittin' idle on a beach. Had to find something or someone to do or I'da gone stir crazy.

When Aya-chan took the stage, Eldon looked up and blinked. "Huh," he muttered in surprise, but then a wicked playful expression crossed his face and he turned back to Aries. "That sounds like it could be fun, depending on the wager. How's about you try to slip one past me, and if you can I'll do any one thing you want. If you can't, you do something for me. Nothing that's liable to get someone landed in jail, mind. I'd rather end up somewhere a might more comfortable tonight. Ideally with the company of a woman who knows exactly what she wants."

 

[5tar]

Aya rested her chest on the bar for a moment as she leaned in towards Kasandra the bartender, "hey hey Kass, think you can make me one of those tasty bubbly drinks again?" she pleaded softly. Wanting something to hold in her hand to keep her hands busy as she was about to head out to scan the room and start picking out couples to ceremoniously slip a few drink tickets to. The lengthy Aya in her much preferred form stood a little taller then the average Yamataian girl, and ever since she transferred from her 22C body, she enjoyed the ample figure to serve her better as a Kyoto hostess then her old life before all this. After a dreamy moment in her own head, Aya spun around and faced the crowd with her elbows behind her on the bar.

"Whattyou think Kass — you going to be serving love tonight, or you going to be somewhere being served love after last call wraps up?" Aya asked wistfully, wondering too if she would be somewhere in a little hotel tonight, with someone hosting her time. All while carrying on this conversation, the dolled up Minkan scanned the room with her glittery pink eyes. Two Chibi-chans about to go on their own wild adventure, an awkward Elysian settling in with a Mom-type covering his tab. Aya wasn't quite sure what to make of those two yet, but she had her own little funny ideas, as the older woman got emotional over things and then kissed him on the head — unless she wasn't a Mommy type, and actually his real life mother. Well that made things awkward in Aya's head as she dismissed her previous thought pattern.

Then there was that tough girl in the corner dazed out trying to blank out in a space where that defiantly was next to impossible with the plethora of Neko ears pointed up at attention, trying to find a nesting buddy before the next big thing. But that changed when Miss Virgin Killer locked eyes on her. That was a situation that might evolve quickly, but it looked more friendly then not.

That's when she caught the image of the two holding what seemed like a generally simple introduction, a fancy looking wallflower and a classy kimono wearing guy. Aya was convinced those two might be her target depending on the next few strings of conversation ahead of those two. Aya mouthed a few silly things, pretending that the two were having a romantic rendezvous, and that he was going to take Miss Sophisticated on a rickshaw ride to a fancy hotel and whisk her away from her troubles... or at least that's how the narrative played out in Aya's mind.

But then she snapped back to reality as she overheard someone offer a round in her game, it was at that point that she narrowed in her hearing towards them and tried her best not to appear like she was eavesdropping.

 

[Wes]

Kasandra nodded, bouncing her small pink feathered wings in greeting. She grabbed a bottle of something nice from behind the bar and poured it into a shaker followed by another pink colored liquid and shook it over her head, shaking her hips like a dancer. When it was done she poured the fizzing, foamy, bubbling concoction into a glass for Aya. "It's like drinking a cloud of sparkling tart cotton candy," she said. "I'm open to some possibilities. I will be working a late one tonight. Business is always great on these holidays,"

 

[5tar]

Aya swung her attention back to Kasandra as she heard the ping of shaker cups connect, her eyes shone with excitement. "Well Kass, I think with your charms and good looks anyone would be lucky to snag you," Aya complemented as she cupped the glass with both hands and brought it to her nose. "Ahhh, it smells so good!" Aya said before taking a quick sip, her expression bunched up with a pleasant happiness from the deliciousness. She was indeed fond of these sorts of things. "Thanks Kass, this is perfect."

Now holding the rim of the glass with her finger tips Aya propped her chin up with the other hand. "Well no reason you can't partake into the morning hours afterwards, after all the sunrise over Kyoto is a wonderful time to fall in someone's arms. Maybe a cute little breakfast date after work, who knows! Like I said, you're set I'm sure," Aya nodded agreefully, reaffirming her statement that Kasandra was gonna be just fine.

"As for me," she drifted off looking about the room one more time, as if the people inside would suddenly be different then the last time she looked. She was looking for someone to drift off into a romantic moment, that was for sure, but also — she was here to work! Suddenly the realization came to her, and she did her best to shake off her silly day dreams. She finished then her sentence, "I'm sure something will come up." She was vague, as referring to work — and or — pleasure. Whatever the dragged in.

 

[hyralt]

Light from outside poured into the Chrome Catgirl through a suddenly open doorway, bathing the silhouette of some slender figure in the last rays of the setting sun. The shadowy contour stood there for several moments, visible only as the outline of a person in negative space through which the prismatic glow could not pass.

When at last the figure moved forward into the bar, the door swung silently shut and the interior lights revealed an older Geshrin woman with shoulder-length black hair pulled back and fastened with an icy blue comb that matched her kimono and obi. Though her obsolete body was incapable of levitation, her feet moved with such a practised elegance within the confines of her tight apparel that she practically glided. As she moved across the room, the lights caught her from ever-changing angles that revealed a holographic fractal pattern in the material of her kimono that was like sunrise playing across the early morning frost on a window. When the light fell upon the blue comb that held back her hair, it scattered around her head like a halo or a crown.

Kinoshita Fusako hid the hands of each arm in the other arm's sleeve until she reached the bar alongside Aya, at which point she produced a crisp KS note that ought to be at least twice the price of any bottle. She pressed the note to the countertop and slid it forwards while making eye contact with the cute Elysian with the blue eyes and pink wings who seemed to be serving drinks.

"A bottle of your best sake, please."

 

[Wes]

"Of course," Kasandra nodded, pouring fine traditional sake into a saucer-like ceramic cup for Fusako. "What brings you out tonight?" she asked, making conversation.

 

[hyralt]

Fusako felt tremendously foolish, dressed in an eye-catching new kimono surrounded by strangers so very far from her home. But her face revealed nothing of her inner agitation. In fact, her features were the picture of serenity as she delicately placed the thumbs and forefingers from both of her hands at four points on the rim of the saucer-like cup and gracefully lifted it to her lips.

Closing her eyes and taking a sip, she held the liquid on her tongue and felt her mind race. At once, she was the fluid in the bottle moving backwards through time, pouring herself back into an ageing vessel, then reincorporating herself with yeast, koji, and rice, at which point she became the rice and shipped back out to a paddy where over the course of a growing season she became one with the earth again. When she was finished with her voyage, she swallowed the divine substance and opened her eyes to look at Kasandra with a newfound intensity as she placed her cup back down on the counter.

Fusako gave the question some thought after her libation but before her reply. What indeed brought her out tonight? To be perfectly honest would be to reveal the hole in her heart she had carried for the last 35 years, which she had tried to fill with hard work and dedication to her craft. This hole was something she had convinced herself didn't exist, only to remember it so very painfully upon the recent embrace of a lovely young cyborg.

"Love Day is the perfect occasion on which to begin a journey that has been a long time coming." Fusako's warm voice contrasted harshly with the icy motif of her garments as she deftly avoided answering the question. "This is the farthest I have been from my home in decades. The next step I take will be into unfamiliar territory, and I am looking for someone to come with me."

 

[Jack Pine]

"Sounds like a decent enough wager. Alright then, you're on.", Aries replied with a mischievous grin, before taking on a more pensive expression. She took a moment to think on what three things to say, and which one to make her lie. Idly, the crimson beauty took her glass of wine and sipped it in thought, before the answers came to her and she set it aside once more on the bar. Turning back to Eldon with a smile like that of a tactician enacting a plan, "I was born in a tank in a lab, I was also born an only child, but used to be born crippled." Aries sat back after giving her three statements, and eagerly waited to see which one he guessed as the lie, as well as which he would choose for himself.

 

[hyralt]

"Let's see here. Born in a tank in a lab. Born an only child. Used to be born crippled. I'm thinking the last one's true on account of somethin' you said earlier what struck me kinda funny-like. You said something about giving yourself a name when you got a new body what you could move around in. Now, at first, I thought you'd meant you were something like a...what's the nice term they use these days...? Synthetic intelligence? Something like that. If'n I'm usin' the wrong term, do me the kindness of forgivin' my ign'rance. For I am trying with all my might.

"Anyway, what you'd said earlier made me think you were some kind of SI until you got a body. But now I'm thinkin' you were crippled until you got this perfect specimen. And I s'pose that means that you were also born in a tank in a lab when you got this'n.

"So I s'pect that means you ain't no only child and that's yer lie."

In the absence of a drink or even a glass of his own, he made the bold move of taking a sip from the glass she had placed atop the bar. It wasn't at all to his taste, but he wasn't the type to complain about a free drink.

 

[Jack Pine]

"Very perceptive, could use a guy like you in our intelligence network. But yes, I have a older brother, and a half sister. My brother owns the company I work for, a....very tenacious man. My sister on the other hand, is a bit of a ditz, and maybe just a little crazy.", She answered with a pleasantly surprised smile at his attention to detail. Aries then picked up the bottle and tipped it as she topped off the glass now in his hand. A part of her was half tempted to sip from it while he still held the glass, but she wanted to gauge how playful she should be first. Instead she merely put her hand on his and guided it to tip the glass to her crimson lips, an imprint of her lipstick already on the glass from earlier, taking the moment to get some touch in and sate her thirst.

"So, you've won the wager, and have earned a favor from me. Few people get those from me, so make it count handsome. If I enjoy it, you may even earn yourself more favors from me. Do tell, what is it that you would desire from me?"

 

[hyralt]

Eldon grinned when Aries drank from the glass while he was still holding it.

"I definitely ain't cut out for no intelligence work. That would almost certainly involve knowing what kind of things were important to listen up for and how to make folk want to tell me those things. For all my blathering, I just like listenin' to folk, whatever they want to say. It's all good in my ears.

"Truth be told, a part of me was hopin' that my guess was wrong and that you'd have the hard task of comin' up with something good to ask. See, the way I figure it is that there's a load o' stipulations on what makes fer a good favour in this situation. I only specified the rule whereby it couldn't be the sort o' thing to land you in jail, but I see an acre o' things what went unsaid.

"Firstly, it's gotta be something that you can do fairly quickly so as we can get back to chattin' and whatever else that may lead to. It briefly crossed my mind to ask you to get me a starship or something like that. But that'd take time and would stop bein' fun right quick.

"Next, it'd have to be something you ain't already likely to do. There's a mess of things I could ask you to do to me, and it may be presumptuous on my part, but given that you ain't bothered by my sharin' yer wine, I reckon there's a chance you may already have a mind to do them.

"Finally, it'd best be the sort o' thing that you'd enjoy being forced to do. Or maybe not that you'd enjoy doin' it so much as you'd enjoy having done it. If you regret having done it, that's no fun."

Eldon took on a serious expression and looked Aries up and down and then at various people around the room before taking a sip of the shared wine.

"Alright, Aries," he turned to look at her, grinning again. "I want you to get up on stage and sing a few bars o' something, but naked."