Miharu walked into the tea house after a long absence and looked around before taking a seat at a central table.
"How are you today?" she asked to no one in particular, hoping to spark a conversation with another member of the GC.
Sayuri Asuka stood in the bar... looking and waiting for something to happen.
The teahouse had somewhat died down lately, possibly in the absence of a certain troublemaker...
She watched patiently as many people bustled in and out, and sat by her table with some cardamine, looking out the window. She longed for a chat.
Steve looked at Ryu confused.
"What the hell good is a Car on a space station?"
He shrugged, and went back to the box. Soon afterward, as Miharu and Sayuri arrived, he went back to his cheerful and happy demeanour.
"Konnichiwa, beautiful ladies... Can I get you anything to drink?"
***...offer yourself up to them? they have betrayed you...***
"Shut the hell up, box" He whispered at the metal cube.
He then walked over to the bar with the intent to make drinks for the ladies.
***...delusion? you have oppurtunity....***
Naomi meanwhile, rolled her eyes and went off to take a shower, unamused by the state of affairs in the tea house.
"Kyosuke, glue the manual back together please."
Lady Kurisho is sipping her drink ,when she notices something.
''Eai.Eai. That piece does not fit there.''
She makes her way to the group that is gluing the manual back together, bringing her drink with her.
''It is better if you test-fit the pieces first, before glue it.''
''Also, I would use tape. If you glue it on a page, then you will not be able to read the other side of the page.''
She reaches down and readjusts one of the pages pieces into the proper fit.
Someone else nods in agreement.
After a while, the 'puzzle' seems to have attracted a couple other of the crew personal.
Most of them are sitting off to one side, in a large circle. Eventually, someone brings a low table where the ''puzzle'' is moved to.
The girls test fit the pages then hand them to Kyosuke.
Seeing that Lady Kurisho is now busy with a project of some sort with several other Sisters, Shikyo looks around for a moment slowly. She sighs for a moment quietly, feeling as alone as she always seems to be, and not just because of her position in the Sisterhood would take her away for weeks if not months at a time.
She looks at the bottle of Fruit infused Vodka and suddenly finds she just does not feel like getting as drunk as she had planned when she walked into the Tea House much earlier. She also notices she is not carrying her Katana as usual, but rather a very large and old Casaul .454 Revolver. Another sigh and she quickly shoves it under her belt on the left side where she can cross draw it quickly if need be, but considering that Steve is around and even some of the older more experienced Sisters, not much was likely to happen right away.
So she rose to her feet after plugging the cork back into the bottle of Vodka and turns to leave when she notices Naomi leaving the Tea House at just about the same time. The first thing that goes through her mind is *Is she angry at me, does she think about...what happened?* the shakes her head and decides she will never know without finding out directly.
With that Aki digs into a pocket for some coin to at least pay for the Vodka she will be taking out of the Tea House, and as she does so, dug out one or two of the pages she snatched earlier when the Instruction Book got accidently torn apart in the process of opening Steve's package. One of the pages falls to the floor almost unnoticed, though she manages to grab the other and stuff it back into the cover-all pocket and hurry to catch up to Naomi, and maybe answers to what she has been feeling.
"Naomi, wait up!"
Naomi was almost to the main elevator to the residential deck, when she heard footsteps behind her. Apparently, it was Lady Shikyo.
"Konnichiwa, sister. Is there something you want?"
She turned and faced the fellow Chrysanthemum, unsure of what her response would be.
***
Elsewhere
Among Ainu's corridors and passageways, a lumbering GUARDIAN model tactical robot made it's way through the station. One of a small few Consortium machines still on Ainu, the robot was assigned to general maintenance of the Consortium hardware still active, replacing it's main weapons with utility hardware and grippers.
As the Robot walked along, it received a new paramater from the Consortium Neurocyte hub.
---DATALINK UPDATE---
>New Priority instruction<
-
>Line: Service entities on Ainu Hardpoint to accumulate maximum amount of paramater 'Alcohol'<
-
>Acquire, Catalog, Assemble, Accumulate for deployment to Logistics Spike transport entity<
-
>CMD: Execute-Code: 934 Texas<
-
<Acknowlage?>
The Robot, with a simple electronic signal, acknowledged it's new instruction and redirected itself, proceeding toward Storage Bay 5-14. It's target; the remains of a gin mill which several Tea House denizens had created several months prior, before exploding spontaneously. With cold and mechanistic purpose, the robot proceeded through the enlarged service corridors and arrived in the storage bay.
It immediately began rummaging through the remains of the still, grabbing a pallet of Gin, Sake, and Whiskey bottles. Before leaving however, the robot noticed a strange moldy green box...
Cross-referencing it with it's database, it was unable to confirm the box's identity. Scans of it's contents proved oddly fruitless. With it's programming unable to identify it, the robot followed it's contingency and picked the box up, carrying it to the tea house, and hopefully, a trained professional...
***
Unfortunately, there was only Steve...
"I can't even tell what language it's written in..." He said, standing over the cube and looking at the partially re-assembled instructional booklet, along with several other staff.
"And I am... checking... the... neurocyte hub..." he paused for a moment, trying to use his cyborg implants to discover the information from the Consortium database. "...nope... nothing."
"Hmmm... I think this might be... Aramaic?" One of the GC staff also looking at the page commented.
"Okay, that's kind of scary. Given the cube is talking to me..." He shrugged...
"If it starts telling anyone to kill each other..."
Steve sighed, walking over to the bar and preparing himself a martini. He then began the arduous task of drinking it through his Gasmask.
***...do you really wish to be their slave? You have the power... serve their drinks... place within the seeds of their death...***
"Okay, someone go get some plasma charges. We're not going through this again..."
' Wrote:Naomi was almost to the main elevator to the residential deck, when she heard footsteps behind her. Apparently, it was Lady Shikyo.
"Konnichiwa, sister. Is there something you want?"
She turned and faced the fellow Chrysanthemum, unsure of what her response would be.
"Ummm, koban wa Naomi-san. This one would like to know if you have time to...talk about that Night?"she pauses a moment then is a lot softer voice, almost a whisper even unsure how to ask,
"Or maybe figure out...what we did."
Usually she is a lot more composed than this, and even better dressed, but its evident that she's been on edge. Her eyes, as she looks at Naomi, look a little darker than usual, almost a little fearful even. Her clothing is not much more than well worn and a little bit dirty set of cover-all's that the ship mechanics tend to favor. Even the usual Swords she's seen with when she visit's Ainu seem to be missing, only some old style revolver shoved under a belt that keeps the cover-all's from seeming to baggy on her.
A quick look around she confirms there does not seem to be any other personal around them at the moment so she takes a hesitant step closer, clutching tightly the bottle of vodka she took with her from the Tea House, and whispers again softly
"Please Naomi-san, may this one stay with you, this seems to have lost her key cards to everything."
"Oh..." Naomi blushed, remembering the incident in question.
"Well... I... I guess it's alright..."
The look on Shikyo's face and her ragged state told the tale that she was under stress. Naomi couldn't help but feel sorry for her. Despite Shikyo's contempt for Kiretsu, she was still a Chrysanthemum. Still Naomi's sister in arms.
Quote:"Please Naomi-san, may this one stay with you, this seems to have lost her key cards to everything."
At this statement, Naomi blushed. Scratching the back of her head, she thought over her options.
"H... Hai. Sister Shikyo. I don't see why not. I'm just curious about... erm..."
Realizing it was probably as much her own Drunken fault for whatever happened, and Shikyo was unlikely to remember either, she dropped the question.
"Nevermind. It's not important. Sure, you can stay with me tonight... I guess..."
Steve sighed, walking over to the bar and preparing himself a martini. He then began the arduous task of drinking it through his Gasmask.
As he was working on the drink, Miharu reentered the tea house and walked over next to him. "Anything good to drink?" she asked with a smile.
Leaning on the bar, she took a look around. "Hmmm, something going on here? I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Not much time for tea."
"Okay, that's kind of scary. Given the cube is talking to me..." He shrugged...
Lady Kurisho glances up from her pages and pieces of the 'puzzle'.
Talking to you??? Oh Goddess, it MUST be a male thing. Steve, I always knew that you were a few points off from being a complete [ Insert your favorite slander word here ], but to make a claim that the box is 'talking to you'.........just takes you to a new level.
Lady Kurisho sighs softly then goes back to looking for pieces to fit, thinking to herself 'If I just toss Steve out of an airlock now, I could save us all months of agrovation'