Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Hmm...this must be the place. A bit less impressive than I had hoped, but I suppose it will do," the light gray-skinned man spoke his thoughts aloud as he tread through the doorway. Ah, sterilized area. This is more like it! He removed the hood of his dust-laden brown jacket, revealing his light purple 'hair' -hair would be far from the truth, though, as anyone who looked would notice they were quills- which reached down to his shoulders.

He took another moment to survey his surrounding and cast his wary, purple-flecked-with-gold eyes at the people in the room with him. Three men and one speaking of bonds. Alm's interest was piqued, "A bond? What is this bond you speak of?" Noticing his outburst Alm excused himself, "How rude of me," he bowed deeply, his hood bobbling with the gesture, "I am Almarech Yrgendall, master of the runic arts. You may call me Alm...Now about this bond?"

"Ah, you seem just the sort who's interested in this sort of thing!" Tadashi said, turning to face the newcomer. "My name is Tadashi.

"You're here about the marbles, of course? I've been developing a way to utilize the power within safely. With that sort of power, one could do all sorts of interesting things..." Shaking his head, he got back to the point. "Anyway, I've got a way to interface a human with a marble, but it requires three people to be bonded. Otherwise, the whole thing gets unstable, and... well..." He fingered Aiolos. "He could tell you more about that. Pop.

"So, if I could just get three volunteers with marbles, I could create the bond, and then you could go off and have adventures or something--whatever you want, really. I just want people who'll go out and experiment with the new limitations. Then, I could collect the data and work on improving the interface, you see, and figure out exactly what these marbles are."

After all that, Tadashi had to take a breath. A breath of cigarette.

Alm nodded a bit before grinning at the man, "Yes, I can understand your thirst for knowledge for I, too, am a man of magical science." He stuck his left hand in his pocket -realizing he had no place to store things except his glove, Alm decided to have a seamstress sew pockets onto the outside of his robe- and retrieved the blue and white marble, lifting it for Tadashi to see.

"So it is these tiny trinkets that you desire, boy? Yes, I am here about the marbles...so I shall offer this. You give me the information you have, and I will be your loyal guinea pig for your experiments! It sounds fair to me,"
the grin never left his face as Alm stared down at the man in front of him, his deep purple-gold eyes weighing the man's levity. Standing 7'5", Alm knew one of the best ways to get what you wanted was to intimidate people with size alone.

Anji felt his mind wandering as his eyes alighted upon Alm briefly, studying the other man. Now, Anji was pretty tall when he stood up straight, standing at a good 6'4", however he was dwarfed by this man, who must've been more than 7 feet tall. And to top it off, the purple mane which hung around the man's head fascinated Anji, the entire picture being almost surreal in Anji's mind. "Awesome..." he said slowly and almost in an awed tone, tilting his head back to get a better look at Alm from his perch on the metal chair. This guy had presence....

"Hmm, good questions," Tadashi said. In truth, he hadn't even considered the safety or compensation of his guinea pigs. "Well, for payment, you get the results of all my studies--this is big stuff, I'm sure you realize. This study could change the whole way we think about magic.

"As for your safety, well, you almost definitely won't die from anything I do to you directly. I have no control over what you do in the outside world, of course."

Alm's arms akimbo stance held as he turned back to face Tadashi, "Sounds fair enough to me, Tadashi. Though I've seen how prone Gaians are to violence. Perhaps I should make haste in finding a few partners..."

His face gained a contemplative look as he returned his gaze to Anji. He seems to have a young mentality. I must choose my words carefully. Alm spoke seriously, yet lightly to the man, "This is good! As good friends, you and I will protect each other from the bad people when we are out. Live good long lives!" Thinking for a moment, Alm added to his statement, "What do they call you?"