Welcome to Gaia! ::

A man came to the room in about an hour. Kiyoshi looked down at his watch. It was exactly 8:55. He greeted the man with a slight bow, uncertain exactly who he was. The man was taller than he looked, Kiyoshi noted, now that he was standing next to him.

“Hey, so I’m here to escort you to this tea thing.” The man said, his accent sounded American. “Name's Owen by the way.”

Kiyoshi smiled and said in a more broken English. “Thank you, My name is Kiyoshi.” He had picked up some of the language through business meetings and such but he only knew enough of the language to get by in business meetings and such. Most of the time, he had a voice translator in his ear, but machine translations are never the best. And he could never just assume that everyone else was wearing one also.

“So you like tea?” Owen asked as they walked down the hallway towards the tea party.
“Not so much.” Kiyoshi answered.
“Me neither. I’m more of a milk and whiskey guy myself.”

Kiyoshi nodded as they stepped into what seemed to be a small living room. The entire room was full of windows that faced the ocean. Having lived on the coasts of Japan for most of his childhood, he sort of took the ocean view for granted. But looking at it now, it did seem majestic.

“Sit,” Owen instructed, gesturing towards the sofa next to an enormous black grand piano. A few more people had filed in after them and were taking their seats. The door closed as soon as the clock struck nine. There were only about twenty or thirty people in the room, much less than there had been at the banquet. Kiyoshi wondered if the others were having a similar tea party elsewhere.

://Sorry, I have not made character profiles for these people yet. I shall do so soon. I wanted to get the rp started faster. >.<

There was a soft whir of servos as Max entered the room. His replacement leg was one of the top of the line when he received it, and he'd done his best to maintain it, but all technology had it's limits. At least the sound was only a whisper. He'd seen older models that could be heard across a room. As he sat down in the leg of his shorts pulled up to expose the knee joint, leaving most of the mechanical leg exposed, except for the foot, which was covered by a shoe, of course. If you asked him, he would admit that he wore shorts not just because he was used to desert heat, but because he liked to see people's reactions to the leg. Prosthetics were an almost everyday occurrence in some places, but most people paid extra to get realistic looking limbs. Max, however, was proud of the fact that his was bare metal.

As he leaned back in his seat, made of supple red leather on a wooden frame, he looked around the room. Next to him was a telescope, polished to an almost gold finish, if it wasn't made of the precious metal itself. On his other side was a small fireplace, giving him a taste of heat that reminded him of home. There was also a grand piano with black paint so well done it looked as though your hand would pass through into nothing if you tried to touch it. This was probably the most interesting thing in the room to him, not only for the music it could make, but for the mechanical intricacies that went into it's operation. Hundreds if not thousands of parts, all working together in a design perfected hundreds of years ago, that could make the softest of whispers or fill a concert hall.

As he stared off into the distance towards the piano, his mind started to wander. Why was he here? Just a day ago he was toiling away in his repair shop, trying to get a regular customer's car running again. The car was an antique, one of the first to use solar cells as it's sole source of power. The old cells were prone to vibrate in their housings over rough roads, which messed with the wiring. Combined with the tendency for the electric motors to suck up seemingly impossible amounts of dust, and it was a wonder the car had ever been deemed roadworthy. The old man stood by it, though, and insisted that it was one of the greatest vehicles ever designed. Max rolled his eyes just thinking about it, wondering what the man would be doing now that the only man he trusted his car to was gone.

On the subject of being gone, he has to mentally ask again; why was he here? He knew that people invited to banquets like the one he had to attend last night usually ended up with government jobs, but why would they want him? Did they need a new head mechanic?

Max was still staring at the piano, thinking about that godawful suit they gave him earlier when he heard the girl next to him speak. Of course she had to be talking to him, because she'd sat by him at the banquet, and it was just his luck that she would want to talk. He wasn't very social, and only talked to people if it involved business. It didn't seem like it would be possible to avoid this conversation, however, the girl was speaking directly to him, and she was seated right next to him. Besides, her voice sounded somewhat familiar, which had sparked his interest.

"Max." He introduced himself with a nod. He would have been more formal, but a man was passing out drinks. He took the cup that was handed to him and was disappointed to discover that it was some kind of fancy tea. He tried to hide his frown, but he'd much rather have a cup of coffee. Oh, well, he should have expected this; he'd been told they'd be serving tea. Without so much as a second sniff he set the cup on the arm of the chair, moving the cup bit to set the tea swirling around the inside.

"Oh do try some," Maísa said when she noticed Max put the cup down. "It is absolutely marvelous. I've never had tea like this before." She took another sip, letting the steam rise up to meet her skin. Closing her eyes, she hoped that Max would also at least give it a chance. He seemed like a nice person. Already, Maísa was quite fond of him. But then, Iara had always said that she was fond of everyone.

The Lady who had sat next to her during the banquet was now sitting across the room from her. She seemed crazy, she thought, and wondered what had happened to make her so. Her eyes seemed too bright, there was much intelligence within her, Maísa was sure of it even though she didn't understand a word that the lady said. She wondered briefly if she too should be worried about what will happen next. This entire banquet and tea party did seem....odd. "Fique tranquilo (1)" She said towards the woman before realizing that she had been speaking Portuguese. "It will all be alright." Then taking another sip of her tea she let the steam calm her.

://Disclaimer: I am not Brazillian nor have I ever learn Portuguese before.... These phrases are all from the internet."
(1) Don't worry

Surely the woman sitting next to him was completely mad. Kiyoshi had seen business meetings go bad, with all the pent up anger and frustration boiling within each one of the members as they had to endure sitting still for hours on end in a small stuffy room. Still, it wasn't bad enough to warrant a death reference. Kiyoshi thought mildly of his past partner who had always compared the way she ran every business and rose in the ranks to war and battle. Perhaps he was the one who had been mistaken. Perhaps success has made him overly confident. After all, he did succeed in tripling the size of his industry in the past year alone.

It was hard to understand what she had said completely as he had no knowledge of Russian at all. He could only guess it was Russian. It could as well have been German or Spanish. Those European languages all sounded the same to him.

Still Kiyoshi smiled back at her, even when her grin seemed more like a threat than a friendly action. It would be nice to have friends. Even if they may be mad. Taking another sip of his tea, he began to feel sleepy. The air in the room was too warm and like a blanket, it wrapped around him. The other members of the room seemed to tired also. Only the blonde man sitting in the red chair seemed awake. As he pondered over this, his gaze drifted over to the tea cup resting on the arm of that man's chair. "The tea is drugged," he murmured, inaudibly as his eyelids began to feel ever so heavy...