Description: Alan R. B. has received an invitation to Jinchuu, and brings it to Rugal's attention. His boss makes plans.
The parlor room is occupied by only two at the moment. One a large, black panther, the other a tall, suited German. Both are gazing through the glass panel in the back of the room. Normally tinted an opaque black, the glass is now completely clear, allowing an unobstructed view of the gallery of bronze statues on the other side. The sight of the grotesque figures, frozen forever in bronze, depect the final moments of many a powerful fighter throughout the decades.
It's been a while since a new piece has been added to his collection, Rugal muses. But so few warriors today seem worthy of such an honor... not even Wolfgang Krauser could give him a decent fight the last time he stormed the castle of Strolheim. But there was that Principal Imawano recently... he might just qualify. A second match may be necessary to determine his eligibility for imortality within Bernstein's collection. One hand lazily pets the soft, velvety furred head of Rodem, the large cat sitting on his haunches at Rugal's side. "Yes... After all a spot was left by that shrivelled old Sennin," the tyrant growls, eying the empty pedestal where Oro had stood for well over a year before somehow breaking out of his bronze casing - A feat Bernstein still muses upon to this day.
In the wall opposite the one the elevator opens from is a small panel with monitors and input devices. No where near the hive of technology that the bridge of the Black Noah contains, this room is still able to tap into the vast resources of information being gathered from around the world. On the largest screen over the display a segment of footage is on continual repeat: a camera, pointed up at the sky as flocks of black birds fly by. Words splash across the screen announcing the coming of Jinchuu: The Judgment of the Clans.
Apparently Bernstein is interested in this mysterious, upcoming tournament. Already his information gathering resources have been redirected to find out more about what is afoot.
It took a while for Alan to get used to those bronzed statues. He's never taken a good long look, but one gets glimpses, moving about the Black Noah as he does. The boxer wouldn't say they don't unnerve him, but he also wouldn't say that he particularly cares. Of course, that's a running theme.
The boxer has no intention of sneaking up on Rugal, not that he'd be able to, because it's a horrible idea. So, as he steps from the elevator, he knocks the steel point of the small steel kunai in his hand against the edge of the doorway, and it makes a rather pleasant ringing sound. As always he makes a little silent prayer that Rodem doesn't eat his face today, and shoots out a grin as he sees the looping video of Jinchuu. "Well, would you look at that. I guess you really will be happy to learn about this one." Alan R. B. grins at Rugal's back (or front, he may have turned around), left hand stuck in a pocket, right hand leaving little trails of electricity as he toys with the little knife. Few people can be as relaxed around the leader of "R" as Alan.
As the electrified bait, er, Alan, arrives, Rodem's head turns, a deep throated growl rumbling as his eyes lock on the younger 'R' employee. Rugal, with his hand still resting atop the beast's head, does nothing to disuade the hungry gaze of the large, deadly cat and for several seconds, he is slow to pull his gaze away from the sight of the statues - immortalized trophies of past conquests; powerful fighters who will never have to suffer the indignities of growing old and succumbing to old age, preserved for eternity in this gallery of champions. The faint smile that touches his lips is would be chilling to anyone unfortunate enough to know the full depths of the crimelord's self-justifying depravity. But for Alan, no such smile is given, as by the time Bernstein turns to face him, his expression has grown once again impassive.
His hand brushes lightly over a panel of buttons next to the glass seperating the parlor from the ghastly exhibit and the glass swiftly regains its opaque blackness, cutting off any sight of the forever doomed fighters on the other side. "What is it, Mister Alan." Somehow his questions always sound more like demands, even when his mood is as pacified as it is at the moment.
His left eye narrows, focusing on the steel bladed weapon in the boxer's hand. "This pertains to that event, I take it?" He pauses, glancing over his shoulder toward the display. "Jinchuu... It can mean judgement... justice... or revenge. I wonder which meaning these secretive sponsors had in mind." he muses thoughtfully before his attention is once again entirely on Alan. "So what news do you have of it?"
Alan takes a few steps closer, as close as he needs to be, but stops, primarily so that he doesn't test Rodem's self-restraint. Humans are one thing - he'll antagonize a human all he wants, they're either going to get angry and sloppy, amused and sloppy, or just not care and then he's at least amused himself. Animals, now, are mostly just hungry.
Once he's come as close as he needs to, he takes his hand from his left pocket, something held within, and does something with the knife. "So I was going to my Metro apartment last night, 4 AM and drunk as a lord, and pretty much walked directly into this." A tiny wave of electricity accompanies the movement as he flips the knife from his hand, trailing sparks as it arcs into the air to land, point-first, directly on a convenient little table near Rugal. Trapped on the point of the kunai is a scrap of paper.
'To the invited agent of Jinchuu: Southtown's Pier, Midnight, August 19th. Those who accept will be there.'
"Judgement, justice, revenge, whatever it's supposed to mean, looks like they want me there." He flashes a gleaming grin. "You've got yourself an inside man."
For the 'R' agent's sake, Rodem stays behind even as the 'curtain' over the gallery is drawn. Eventually becoming disinterested as the young man maintains a safe distance, the large cat turns and slinks off, retreating to one of his favorite lurking places beneath the grand piano.
When Alan begins with the account of how he found the invitation, Rugal's expression rapidly shifts toward disinterest. Keeping the attention of a man like him can be a hard thing to do unless one cuts quickly through the personal, irrelevant (in Rugal's mind) details and gets straight to the point. But when the small knife is sent arcing into the surface of the table meant for serving expensive wines from, Bernstein's interest ceases to wane.
He glances to the side for only an instant, that dark, cybernetic eye of his narrowing before he looks back toward Alan, folding his arms in front of him with a slow nod of his head, "Well, well... it seems you making a public spectacle of yourself biweekly has actually managed to pay off. No doubt they found out about you from your Saturday Night Fight appearances," muses the tyrant, the oh so very slight hint of amusement just barely perceivable in his voice.
"This Sunday at midnight, hm? Being at that pier is your highest priority." It would appear that Bernstein took in all of the information on that piece of paper in an instant, committing it to memory with a glance. In this business, it doesn't pay to need to keep hard-copies of critical data, after all. "Make sure to not get distracted this weekend with anything that would keep you from making that appointment. Something big is afoot and this will be an excellent opportunity to find out what."
Alan's eyebrows creep up over his shades as Rugal mentions priorities. He does wait for Rugal to finish before pointing as his chest with his thumb. "Have you heard about the /purse/ they're offering in this fight?" Something in his eyes goes a little cold. "I'll die before I miss out on that kind of chance." Judging from the boxer's typical attitude towards money, and the fact that for once his face is completely devoid of his trademark flippant humor, that statement seems... pretty entirely serious.
As an afterthought, Alan pulls a PDA from his vest pocket, deftly hitting a few buttons and glancing over it before slipping it back into his pocket. "But something tells me I'm going to have to pay more attention while I'm there instead of just doing my thing. What kind of crazy ninja shit you think they're actually doing?"
"I've heard some of the rumors, yes," Rugal chuckles. "Information is trickling in slowly and it is still early... difficult to discern fact from rampant overblown hysteria. But the amount of the prize does seem to be getting confirmed from a number of directions. This is quite the expensive event they're putting on... and yet to do it with such secrecy... Even the location is a secret."
Unfolding his arms, one hand comes up to stroke at his chin as the tall German contemplates further, "We have people trying to figure out where it is going to be held. Looking into any major recent land aquisitions, recent construction projects of suitable size, and other expenditures substantial enough to accommodate this event." He turns then, taking a few strides over to the display panel in the far wall, glancing over it in order to parse any recent intel picked up by people in the field.
"So far none of those angles have provided any information with regards to location. However, we have picked up some intel on other people who have gotten invitations." High School kids are so chatty about such things, it seems. "It would appear the bulk of the known participants are all... well, the sorts that would be eligible for the Junior League title in Howard's SNFs." It goes without saying that there's echelons of fighters in the professional circuits. Big names, small names, and the mixed bag of fighters in-between. It would appear this tournament is interested in up and coming talent rather than proven veterans.
"They seem to be highly interested in fighters who have yet to see their full potential explored. New faces, young combtants... While you are there, keep an eye out for any that might be worth adding to our ranks."
Alan R. B. mostly stays where he is, turning to keep facing Rugal. Rodem's vision is based on movement.
"If you want my guess..." Rugal probably doesn't. "...considering that it's some crazy ninja shit, and they want us all gathered on a pier, I'm thinking it's out on some island in a hole. Lots of torches and dirt, like a Fei Long movie, maybe some screaming guy with a goatee..." Alan raises a fist to his mouth and coughs once, catching himself rambling. There's a moment of silence as he slides his shades off to dust them on the hem of his vest.
"They'll probably try to keep us there and all that during the tournament, so I'll get the tech monkeys working on low-profile transmitter. Stick it in my ear or something." He shrugs casually with one shoulder, finding that he doesn't have much else to say.
For once, Rugal doesn't seem to react with impatience as Alan proposes his own vision of what the event might entail. Though his back is to the other man, the tyrant of 'R' remains perfectly still, his hand now resting at his chin while his other hand crosses over his chest, propping the opposite elbow up slightly. "Perhaps," he muses, sounding thoughtfull. He's arranged a few tournaments himself, after all, so getting into the heads of the sponsors is not an entirely foreign concept. His eyes stray over the streams of data being pumped through the display on the terminal, trying to make sense of the patterns, the minutia, the little nuances that on their own may seem unrelated, but when viewed with the right perspective will begin to fall into place in order to reveal the larger picture.
"A ship," he states after a long while. "The boat that will pick you up from the pier isn't in order to take you to the sight. It /will/ be the sight." A faint smile creeps its way into his expression again followed by a glutaral 'Heh.' The sea is his empire, after all. If some little ninja clan wants to play games out here in the deep blue, the Black Noah might end up having a thing to say about that.
Turning away from the display at last to face Alan again, Rugal continues, "Jinchuu. Revenge. This whole set up might be an elaborate trap. Unlikely, perhaps, but it's best to be prepared. I have people looking into the avenues by which spectators might gain access. Surely an event of this magnitude will have an audience." It sounds like Rugal already had plans in motion himself to get inside, even if Alan hadn't been so fortunately selected.
"Vice and Adelheid will most definitely be there somehow. If you get into anything... over your head, call on them to assist you." Alan? Get in over his head? Impossible!
Vice. The name is brief, dropped casually and gone in an instant, the single syllable leaving nothing behind it but a lingering sibilance. Finally, even that sound fades to nothing: and in the brief space of silence afterwards, the deceptively-gentle click of some compartment opening is unsettling. Especially since it is impossible to discern from whence it comes. Impossible-- at first.
There is the barest of movements in the wall directly behind Rugal. A hairline crack appears in the smooth, polished wood, and rapidly spiders into the outline of a door. The secret entryway slides open with a whisper of wood, and the lithe form of a woman pours silkily from the narrow opening: slithering free with an effortless and languorous motion.
Stretching to her feet, the lithe form of Vice steps with a light delicacy across the thickly-carpeted floor: heels near-soundless on the plush material. Heavily-lidded dark eyes flick instantly over to Rugal, skimming over Alan with a cursory appraisal as they do, and her mouth-- hitherto coiled into a spare, sleek curve of a smile-- flattens down into a graver look; though the mad flicker caged deep in her eyes never quite abates.
"I took a shortcut," she informs Rugal, in that smoky, lazy voice of hers. A heavy pause, and then she purrs onto the end of the sentence, "...sir."
Alan flips his hand as though tossing something away, leaving a thin trail of electricity in its wake. "Ship, island, hole in the bottom of the ocean, I doubt it'll be a trap. No kind of ninja clan could handle the kind of talent they'll be pulling together, it'd be suicide."
Anyone else may have missed the boxer's right eyebrow twitching downward slightly at the mention of Vice's name, but Rugal has a robot eye and probably caught the motion. Alan'd be lying if he said the woman wasn't the only human he'd ever met to really unnerve him (since Akuma doesn't count), but fortunately for his sake, he doesn't intend to say anything on the matter. "Heh... I'll probably manage just fine, but it'd be handy to have some hands around."
Then something surprising happens: Vice herself. Alan hasn't seen the woman for quite some time, but isn't likely to forget those brief moments back when he was barely even considered a recruit when he learned exactly who not to hit on. The insouciant smirk Alan is actually becoming famous for out in the world drops slowly from his face. He tries to arrange his handsome features into a look of boredom, and stays still, just in case Vice's vision is based on movement. The constant electric chi continues to crackle on his hands and face as though everything was normal.
But damn, she /can/ bend.
At the first indication that another will be joining them, Rodem's head lifts from his paws, looking toward the now open secret door from where he is lying beneath the piano. The large cat regards the woman silently, not greeting her with the same growl that he did Alan. She is practically kin, after all, as far as the black panther is concerned, and before long he lowers his head back to his paws to resume his rest.
Rugal doesn't look as he and Alan are joined until the woman slips into the room completely. Only then does he half turn, his eye coming to rest upon her, a faint smile of approval at her arrival. "Yes," he muses at her mention of a shortcut. The only person alive that knows the guts of the Black Noah better than he, the woman who lives on the perpetual, sharp edge of losing control has the uncanny ability to pop up just about anywhere at any time. Only a few locations are closed off even to her - harboring secrets Rugal entrusts to no other than himself.
"Mister Alan will be our pointman for looking into the Jinchuu affair. It seems... his mouth has somehow garnered the attention of the sponsors." A casual wave of his hand is made toward a nearby table where a steel kunai stabs Alan's invitation to the tournament into the wood. Having an actual fighter in the event is a fortuitous circumstance. No doubt he will be privy to information that would be hard to obtain as merely passive observers.
"But if any particular action needs to be taken, you and Adelheid will not be far." If the event really is taking place at the sea as Bernstein suspects, it's safe to assume the Black Noah will be firing up its tired engines once more in order to draw near to the vicinity of this Jinchuu.
Vice's eye fixes on Alan immediately once his smirk starts to drop from his face. It's not even both her eyes: it's just one, cocked at an angle, regarding him askance with an almost animalistic, intense focus. The gaze is almost mindless in its predatory calculation. It's as if she's tuned to notice any failing in nerve, any hint of weakness: and to capitalize upon it.
Fortunately, she sometimes has the presence of mind to restrain that instinct. That, and Alan isn't moving anymore: therefore, he's boring. Her gaze eventually breaks, skating back to Rugal at the moment he speaks.
The attentive devotion in her gaze as she hears out Rugal's plans is not too far removed from the look on the black panther's face: fierce, unreasoning, and singleminded. Her gaze breaks from him only to glance at the invitation he indicates. Dark eyes regard the keen edge of the kunai, the first hint of true cunning she's displayed since she entered the room gleaming subtly in their depths, and she nods slowly. Her eyes unfocus from the weapon: as if she had been grasping it, and had only now released her grip. A slow smile knifes her mouth open, the mad expression a sharp white crescent in an otherwise dark face.
"Then I wish Mister Alan luck in his assignment..." Her head tilts, the motion beastlike and cruelly playful. Her low voice coils in the air. "But encourage him not to be shy about calling me in. It's been such a long time since I got to play."
Vice's vision /is/ based on movement! Good to remember.
"What can I say?" Alan begins, in response to Rugal's first statement. "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me." The initial worry of Vice's entrance has already fallen off the Teflon boxer - she didn't rape him instantly, so his 'virtue' will be safe for now. He's back to his little smirk, and he shifts his weight easily, adjusting the edge of his right sleeve and throwing a calm glance toward Rodem.
Then he regards Vice, making a small, casual point with his right finger. "Oh, don't worry, as soon as someone needs to be strapped to a board and violated in more disgusting ways than I can count on both hands you will be the first on my speed dial." The same right hand comes up, a thumb hooking back to the elevator, and his pale grey eyes, tinted only slightly by the nearly-transparent sunglasses, flick back to Rugal. "Well, if I'm going to be gone for God knows how long, I should hurry up and get some business dealt with. Excused?"
Bernstein is remarkably quiet throughout the exchange between his two employees. That isn't to say that the slightest detail goes unnoticed. Although occasionally beset by fits of unconcerned, pride induced carelessness, the tyrant is usually a deeply analytical observer. There's a reason the techniques of others are so easy for him to pick up as even the slightest detail about how others move, act, speak, and even think become readily apparent to his sharp mind.
"Dismissed," comes his gruff reply as Alan gets ready to take his leave. The tyrant folds his arms behind his back, powerful hands gripping each other tightly as he turns toward the display panel once more while Alan makes his exit. Jinchuu's commercial continues to play on a repeating loop, the same simple message, floating text in the center of the screen making the announcement of events to come.
"There is something more to this than a simple tournament. The World Warrior tournament this year was a surprisingly honest event." An abnormality when it comes to fighting tournaments. "But this... I believe one of the old clans is making a play." His words must be for Vice - one of two people with whom the man would ever express actual concerns. "We need to know if and how it affects us. Once there, seek out those who might know anything. Do whatever it takes to work your way up through the chain of underlings until you can get to someone with real knowledge. Once you have them..." Well, he'll leave the details for information extraction up to Vice's imagination. It always turns out so much more interesting that way.
And with that, Bernstein reaches forward to deactivate the information terminal. This Jinchuu affair has already consumed enough of his valuable time for one evening. Sensing it's time to head elsewhere on the mighty carrier, Rodem gets to his feet slowly, slinking out from beneath the piano, pausing only to stretch lazily. "I'm entrusting my boy to your protection." 'My boy', a term bordering on affection. Only to Vice would he describe Adelheid that way, always referring to his son by his full first name whenever speaking of him to anyone else.
And with that, he turns to walk over to the window that looks out over the deck of the aging carrier, hands still clasped behind his back. Rodem, on the other hand, turns to follow Vice. Maybe the two can play another rousing game of tag through the back ways of th e Black Noah again.
Vice is accomodatingly silent as Rugal expounds upon his concerns and thoughts regarding what must be done. The commercial, as it plays, flickers light across her unmoving face: carving deep shadows about her heavy-lidded and downcast eyes. For a moment she seems statuesque, serene, and almost peaceable; but then, at Rugal's last trailing sentence-- 'once you have them'-- that facade cracks. Vice's imagination is already moving, and judging from the feral look that gleams briefly in her gaze, her thoughts are anything but pleasant.
In Rugal's presence, however, she holds herself back: pushing down the bestial excitement with some effort. She simply inclines her head, slinking low in a mockery of a curtsey. "As you command," she acknowledges, and makes special note: Rugal has entrusted Adelheid to her. As such, she'll afford him the best of protection; the fierce protection a great dog affords to the children of its master.
Alan R.B. left. It's cool.
Log created on 23:03:13 08/13/2007 by Alan, and last modified on 15:47:26 08/24/2007.