Description: Rio crashs Lee Laochan's high-stakes poker table, acts drunk, and ends up losing a lot of money. Lee Laochan offers to speak with her regarding a new tournament.
Casino de Monte Carlo. Monaco. 8 PM. High Rollers Only.
The refined casino was the pride of the House of Grimaldi. Built in the 1800s, it was a regal symbol of the classiest of gambling. The rich, the savvy, and the classy all took part within the halls of the high rollers. No nickle machines would disgrace this place. Craps, pokers, blackjack were only some of the more elegant offerings by the casino. Of course, even amongst the upper crust of society, you can end up with a few rough edges. The floormen of the Monte Carlo are well renowned as trained fighters, and the pit manager is often a former champion martial artist of some kind, as well as a excellent manager. After all, the upper crusts could just as easily be trained in dangerous unarmed combat.
And there was few more dangerous than the Mishima Arts.
Sitting at one of the poker tables was one of the few practioners of the family martial style. Known by some as the Silver Haired Devil, he was known publically as Lee Chao Lan. Smooth-skinned and dressed in an impossibly refined white suit, the man is flocked by three cocktail-garbbed women. A blonde, a brunette, and a red head, the three aspects of eve, and each shapely and clinging to the man as he played poker. To his right? An irate Oil Shiek, having lost an holding in Yemen to Lee's full house. To his left? A young know-nothing prince squandering his family's money for a quick lesson on how even in gambling, you can't get rich without wits or willpower. Past him? Another businessman. In the software field, as Lee found out. A smart young man it seemed, used to go to MIT. Supposed to be a master in statistics.
If it was, it wasn't serving him well against Lee.
In fact, the bespecticled man is livid at the last hand. As the last of his money is swept away, he screams as he hurls his cards down. As the chips are casually pushed his way, the prince storms off, cursing and fuming in his native tongue. Lee Chao Lan casts a predatory glimpse towards the Sheik. It seemed, for now, it was just them two.
Unless, of course, someone took advantage of the opening on the table.
Rio Fujisaki is wearing a black suit with sleeves that are just a little too long and a tall top hat to go with the overall slightly more formal atmosphere. She's also kinda stumbling, and there's the smell of alcohol on her.
The legal drinking age in Monaco is 18, after all, and she'd be a fool to not take advantage of that.
She almost trips into the seat recently vacated by the statistician, but falls back into it smoothly almost as if she intended to do so in the first place, and rests her hands in front of her, letting a couple dozen thousand-dollar chips drop onto the table in front of her. She blinks, and then looking at the cards, then the hands.
"I guess I'm playing poker now, right?" She smiles, blinking as if trying to mantain coherence and mostly succeeding. "I'm not bad at poker, you know..." She looks over to the dealer. "Deal me in, please." She pauses, and leans in towards the dealer, adding in a conspiratorial tone. "You... you're kinda cute, you know that?" She sounds puzzled by this realization, and turns back to smile at her new competition in turn. "Hello... I'm Rio."
The smell of liquor.
The men at the table, Lee included, cast their eyes up on the woman that moves towards the table. The smell of alcohol. It was like the scent of blood to hungry sharks. It meant many things. A weakness of judgement. A willingness to take risks. A tolerance of three men. A flash of hunger comes over the prince's face. A furrowed glare comes from the Sheik. But from Lee Chao Lan, the middle-aged man with the apperance of 20 years younger, merely gets a twinkle in his eye. A smirk on his face. And there, he gestures to the newcomer.
"Oh... Hello There, Rio~"
The ever-charming Lee Chao Lan was no stranger to ladies at the table. Both the Prince and the Sheik may see a piece of meat, with various definitions of meat, but Lee Chao Lan was charmed. "I am Lee Chao Lan, CEO of Violet Systems." The man explains, laughing lightly as she settles in. "Yes, this is poker, and it would be my honor if you would play with us!" Lee Chao Lan sounded sincere.
Of course, the dealer had to intervene.
Blushing bright red at the flirting, he puffs out curtly to the woman. "Excuse me Madame, but this is a high stakes table. A minimum of $100,000 is required before you can participate." The dealer strains to be polite. But as the Prince lusts, and the Sheik glowers, Lee Chao Lan himself is cooly waiting, the three dames shooting dirty looks at Rio. They had only known the executive for scantly under an hour. But they knew that look from him.
It was the same look they gave to each of them.
All of these meaningful looks seem to pass right over Rio's head, although she looks at the people having them, she doesn't really react except with the same confused friendliness. After a moment, she closes her eyes for a moment and rubs her head. "...right... if you have a headache, you should drink something so..."
At the dealers words, she blinks, and stares at him uncomprehendingly for a moment. "Oh... my bad...." Rio smiles hazily at the dealer, and starts to pick up the chips, put she can't seem to quite manage to stack them properly into her hands, and some slip through. She flips her hat off, and it falls onto the the table instead of into her waiting hand. She furrows her eyebrows a little, and puts the hat open side up, and starts dropping her chips into it. Finally, she stands up, with the hat under her arm, seeming a little proud of herself for this problem-solving. "Sorry to dis... to dis... to mess with your game, gentlemen. I'd tip my hat to you, but... you know." She waves it a little bit before turning, presumably to wander off somewhere else.
Disruption.
The Prince just starts laughing. Not a kind, cheerful laugh. But a cruel, cutting laugh, like a boy pulling apart a fly. The Sheik does not laugh. The glower continues, a look of disgust. He could not, nay, he would not tolerate the presence of a woman at his table. Of course, Lee Chao Lan was not much better. Behind that twinkle was the tiniest of a leer. Behind that smile was a hint of lust. Of course, he was too refined to be that charming. But there was another spark, another aspect hidden behind it. It surfaces when he sees those chips. Drunk women were easy to play against. But Lee Chao Lan was canny. A goofy smile comes over his face.
He was beginning to like this girl.
The dealer rolls his eyes as Rio puts her chips up. "Five Card Stud." He mutters, as he begins to shuffle into a blur. "Ante up, gentlemen, $10,000 minimum. Lee Chao Lan pushes his chips along, as the other two men follow suit. Lee Chao Lan idly grins to the girl. "Don't worry about it at all, Rio~" He coos, as the girls continue to stare daggers at the new face at the table. "So Rio, what line of work are you in? We get all kinds here." He questions, as the dealer looks at Rio apprehensively. There weren't that many kind faces at the table.
And the dealer certainly wasn't one.
Rio blinks at this question. "Work? I never work. I just amuse myself and make bets and rip apart people's minds and bodies for tournament money and... stuff." She stares straight into Lee Chao Lan's eyes with a pretty good simiclarum of the intense clarity of a drunk woman, and raises the index finger of her free hand into the air as she swings the hat in a bit of a circle. "But I only do that cause that's what I /want/ to do. It's not really work, you know?" She shrugs, and looks back to the table as she flips the hat back onto her head(poker chips somehow not falling down somehow).
She distractedly waits for the players and the dealer to be focused on the cards for a moment, and turns so the girls but not the table can see her easily, moving a bit closer to Lee in the process, then raises her eyebrows at the girls, suddenly seeming very sober, and slowly mouths the word 'weaklings'. And then she's back into drunk-mode, stumbling back a bit to lean against the game table.
She looks back to Lee, furrows her eyebrows a little, and leans in. "Your face looks... familiar? Have I seen you on TV somewhere? You're a fighter too, huh?"
A good portion of the clients share Rio's sentiments.
Rich, bored people, ready to gamble away a whimsy just to amuse oneself. The ante comes up, and with it, the cards come down. The dealer flicks the cards to each player. The Prince sneers at his cards. The Sheik furrows his brow at his. Lee just smiles softly as his cards comes. Inspecting them idly, he looks back towards Rio, letting her make the first bet. That hat trick was talent.
Another thing to like about her.
"Oh, I might have done a few tournaments." Lee states idly, rearranging his cards. He suddenly hides them, glancing up at the blonde at his right shoulder. Waggling a finger at her, he continues. "I sometimes fight, I sometimes host! You might have followed my Beachtime Bonanza! Of course, I can't help but notice you said 'too.' Are you a martial artist yourself, dear?" Lee shifts his gaze from his blonde to the blonde across the table.
And naturally, he unleashes a wink at her.
"I'm a /terrifying/ fighter. could kill /everyone in this room/." Rio sounds sad about this fact as she tosses in her ante chips and wanders back over to her cards, her head tilting a bit to one side. "I only have to raise my hand, and I can make the entire world... crumb... fall into crumbles." She pauses, then shrugs elaborately. "But why? Is it going to make me happy? Just fight a few people, that's fine...." She shakes her head a little, glaring at her cards, then blinks, and looks at them again, and promptly shoves the other 14 thousand-dollar chips into the center. She bites her lip and raises her eyebrows a bit as she glances from Lee to the Shiek and back.
The action pauses.
Rio's bragging freezes the table. The talk of killing was... a red light that the floormen were trained for. The Prince looks to one of the burly men. A drunk woman talking about fighting was... was a concern, for certain. The Sheik puffs up, ready to take a dive. Even the dealer was wary, waiting to see how exactly this would play out.
Lee, however, just lets out a bright chuckle.
"Oh my~" Lee states, discarding two cards. The tension eases, the table relaxing. THe Prince looks at his cards, and meets Rio's own, leering at the blonde. "You sound like quite the hellcat." The Prince coos, as the dealer tosses Lee Chao Lan two new cards. The silver-haired man continues, his tone sweet and playful. "It is wonderful that you like some of us in the world." He meets the $14,000, and raises it to $15,000. Lee smirks, laying back in the chair. "Still, it is rather disappointing what the fighting scene is like at the moment, don't you think?" He asks idly, as the Sheik groans, and simply folds. "Wretched luck!" He snarls, as the dealer glances to Rio. Lee pipes up to the tipsy blonde.
"What do you think it needs?"
Rio looks at the dealer with confusion, looks up at the ceiling, and sits up straight, saying mildly. "That's all the money I brought, and given table stakes, the remaining one thousand in excess of what I have at the table would have to be returned to him. You aren't used to people not having money to meet that, I'm sure, I really don't know why you let me in this hand, I was certainly counting on the fact you wouldn't." She stands up, a slight shrug. "But, you win some, you lose some." She looks back to Lee, and grins, any pretense of drunkenness gone now. "Asking me for your next tournament idea? How big of a cut of the profits do I get if you use my idea?" She places her hand on her poker hand, ready to flip it over(Jack high) when Lee does.
There is a clatter of chips.
From Lee's own hoard of chips, a stack is handed over to Rio's corner, to meet the challenge. That twinkle remains in his eye, as the dealer objects. "Monsieur! That is not things are done." Lee Chao Lan shrugs. "It's only money. Besides, the company is well worth it." The silver-haired devil smirks at Rio. "As for your idea, well. It depends on how good it is. I don't just take anything from a bright young rogue at a casino, you know." The focus comes to his hand, and Lee Chao Lan shrugs idly. "Of course, giving anything is another matter~" He states, as he reveals his hand to the table.
A collection of number cards, the highest a nine of clubs.
The Prince scoffs, sneering and cackling as he reveals a pair of kings and tens together. Dealer turns towards Rio, waiting impatiently. "Well, I hope you didn't waste your benefactor's good fortune, madame." He says neutrally.
And all eyes rest on Rio.
"If you're low on cash, you have to go all in. Everyone knows that. I was just wondering if you would catch that I was faking a flush, but the problem is this is pocket change to you guys." Rio flips over her cards. Jack high. She smiles at the Prince. "Good call."
She looks back over to Lee. "Yeah, that's why you'd only pay me if you use my idea. I'll pay you back the thousand dollars sometime - that's pocket change even to me - but my ideas are worth more than that." She tilts her head a bit to one side, the hat staying perpendicular to the floor. "Do we have a deal?"
'~Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand~'.
Lee Chao Lan was a little disappointed. Not in Rio. But himself. He expected she was going all in because she had the hand. After all, he bluffed himself. But that wretched idiot, the Prince, had seen through all their ruses. Or rather, ignored them blindly and blundered into the pot. As the Prince rakes in the chips, he glances to poor Rio, without anything to her name. Lee pushes away from his chair, the dames, and stands up.
That Prince would have to learn his lesson another time.
"Of course, Rio~" He states, wrenching free of his three ladies. The response, of course, is a very heavy huff. A mutter is even made about 'younger thing.' But Lee strides his way around the table, straight next to Rio. And that smile endures. "But perhaps we should discuss your idea in private; perhaps we can go to my penthouse to talk details? I am sure you would find that..." And A thumbs up is given, an arm extended for escort. A playful wink is unleashed, as Lee Chao Lan unleashes his signature catchphrase.
"Excellent~"
Log created on 22:20:22 08/26/2013 by Rio, and last modified on 00:12:39 08/28/2013.