Hello, everyone! after dealing with real life and the other nonsense of living, panny and i have decided to bring back war of change. give a round of applause. we’ve worked through all of the information and hopefully improved coherency and cohesion; however, tell us if we missed something. eventually, we’ll announce an event to celebrate the re-opening, so look out for information on that. -RAIDNE, THE HEAD ADMIN
From the moonless night, screams of terror and fear resound, spreading across the world and infecting the masses; however, those sleepless nights occurred years ago. A new era began with the fires of war, and with no end in sight, the residents of Selene Isle trudge through life, basking in the momentary peace. Despite their prayers for continued monotony and peace, a storm brews, stirred to life by the continued presence of Rapture and Wraith. And as we set our sights on the seemingly peace laden isle, we must ask: how shall this tale end?
As the years passed, the number of true pairs increased; however, they continued to live in the shadows, catering to the whims of the mundane. Seven Moons kept watch over them all, instructing them and assisting them, but for many, the attitudes and ideals of the organization were smoldering, suffocating. With Seven Moons and the mundanes, they could not grasp the freedom, the power dangling before their eyes. In the beginning, rebellion was a dream, a fantasy, a figment—developed by the repressed and carried forward due to the nature of humanity. No one expected the call to sound, and no one expected the call to be answered. However, it happened.
The club was especially crowded tonight, which surprised Yasuo. He visited the club often on Friday night's; people were getting off work, eager to drink, ready to have fun, and were, especially in good moods. He could easily entertain himself with the strangers he met on these nights. The club was always full on Fridays; however, tonight, they were especially crowded. Quickly, Yasuo realized why. The place was crowded with college girls who had flooded in after their classes had ended. He heard a couple girls babbling about finals and it all made sense. Finals had just ended and they were ready to let loose. Soon after the girls came, the boys followed after them, and thus, here we was, in a very crowded club.
It wasn't all that bad. He was not keen on crowded places; but, he found some sort of strange solace in this place. It was a place where he could walk over here and gamble, walkover there and drink, and then walk this way and hit on some hot girls. He was dressed in all black, aside from his white tie and the white collar of his undershirt sticking out. Something about suites made him feel indestructible.
He spent his first hour wandering the casino. He liked watching other people play and giving advice to strangers. He helped a man, who was clearly down on his luck, win all of his money back in a couple games of craps. He then taught a foolish woman how to play poker without losing like an idiot. She quickly nailed the poker face, going from a dunce to unreadable in a heart beat. She even invited him back to her room; however, Yasuo politely rejected her. His reasoning was a combination of the fact that she was tipsy and almost twice his age.
After his stroll about the casino, Yasuo wandered over to the bar. It was lit up with amazing black lights that made it shine through the darkness. Each bottle behind the bar was illuminated with all sorts of powerful blues, violets, reds, oranges, and greens. "Zyr Vodka on the rocks, please," he requested the bartender, setting some cash down on the bar top. The bartender flashed Yasuo a smile before scooping some ice and pouring his drink.
Yasuo took it happily and sipped it, slowly to savor each drop. He did not finish it right away, however; he rotated around on the bar stool and looked out to the dance floor. He was scanning, looking for someone to dance with. He did not know what it was, but something about dance floors created psychic connections. All it took was the right set of eyes and a pair of gorgeous hips. He took his time with his drink as he watched the people moving beneath the flashing lights.
Llyr had to work quickly to wash the blood out of his hair. The early evening tasks had gone as he had planned: two rogue information brokers mutilated into silence and the third-- who had agreed with desperation, while his piss stained the front of his threadbare jeans, to leave the island-- carved up like cattle and left in a bag of lime and dirt to rot in his apartment. It was a pity, Llyr had always held, that he was not allowed to kill more of his charges, but, at the very least, he could get off on the occasional "accidental" or "unavoidable" snuffing.
Had he been a creature of foresight, the american might have abstained from his semi-forbidden practices, considering he was working at sundown; participating in the glorious front to all of his master's conspiracies. But Llyr was not as forward thinking as he was brutal and had ended ten minutes late ensuring that he looked presentable. After all, there were people, patrons and colleagues and superiors, he wanted to impress. He came in through the back entrance with a mechanical nod to the woman working security on that end and slipped through the intricate maze of back corridors until he could smell the familiar burn of high brow spirits.
It was dark in the halls and impossible to navigate off of intuition alone. They had been built as precautions against intruders but with the aesthetic of the casino in mind; how magnificent and murky an establishment with employees who did not travel with the customers but, rather, moved through places close and unseen. Llyr himself had always figured the back-ways were also intended as measures to protect against inner incompetence: if you could not memorize your steps or carve out a method of navigation, how could you possibly expect to serve The Devil Himself? And Llyr was brilliant in the dark. He already lived half of his time inside it.
He opened the door to a deluge of color, smoke, and sound. His co-worker, man in his later twenties, had just been hailed by a group of university students who looked like they'd had a few already. Llyr's attention shifted to another figure seated at the counter and glided over.
"Zyr Vodka on the rocks, please,"
The guy looked aimless but obviously well funded. Llyr ducked his head in a half-nod and smiled. The lives of others were hardly the Synister's concern, but parts of him did enjoy fabricating stories for patrons if he had nothing else to occupy himself with. Coming from Llyr these imaginings were always coarse and shameless, but he had a certain art to his interpretations that he had cultivated during his employment under Dimitri. The dark haired customer took the drink and swiveled around in the bar stool, sipping the burning liquid.
Something sordid and half-form stirred inside him as he watched the man's lips curled ever-so-slightly around the rim of the glass; Llyr knew then that this stranger was accustomed to pain.
Shaking his head to rattle these thoughts into a concise path of action, Llyr scanned the rest of the bar for any patrons that required immediate attendance, found none, and then settled his elbows onto the counter.
"I have yet to see many people here who don't just swallow their vodka the same second it hits the counter."
He did not attempt to adjust his voice above the music, but compensated for the volume by tipping his head closer to the man's back.
"But, I suppose this is your first time here?"
YOU LAUGH LIKE A BANSHEE GESTICULATE YOUR DELIRIUM THEY TREAT YOU LIKE A CORPSE KEEP YOU FULL OF CANDY LITHIUM WHAT A DREAM LIFE WOULD SEEM IF ONLY.
University students - college girls - were rarely Yasuo's type. It did not really matter the major or the reason, a lot of them were copies of each other. College girls were adorable with lean forms, shining faces, and ripe bodies. They were gorgeous and young; although, regardless of how attractive they were, they were absolute trouble. College girls couldn't handle their liquor, they were naive and foolish, easily gullible, and very clingy. Yasuo has learned on many occasions how complicated they could be. The thought made him outwardly chuckle; after all, he was not much older than most of them, maybe even the same age as most of them, yet carried himself like someone who had lived half a lifetime. Often, he felt like he had lived half a lifetime.
He could feel the bartender move in closer, a very slightly action most people would not notice at all. The closeness allowed Yasuo to hear his voice over the pounding music. The man's words made him smile; but, he did not reply right away. He watched the crowd for another moment, admiring a group of girls, who had clearly drank way to much, hump each other on the dance floor, ignoring the guys around them, who stared intently and tried to find a way to join them. That was another thing he forgot about: college girls had no boundaries. Maybe that was the best thing about them.
Yasuo turned his head slightly so he could see at least a bit of the man's face. Sharp features, big blonde hair, and worn eyes. He was a man who stuck out and was easy to remember; for some reason, Yasuo always preferred the company of people who were easy to remember.
"Chugging it down defeats the purpose," he replied, an almost invisible smile gracing his features. He wondered if he stuck out for some reason; although, he quickly doubted that his appearance gave this stranger any reason to believe he was new. Perhaps bartenders had a way of remembering people and Yasuo was certainty not someone he had seen before. "I just settled in, actually. Do I stick out?" he asked the bartender, deciding to simply be direct. He held his half-full glass lightly in his hand, holding it by his finger tips and lightly shaking it every now and then so the glass would rattle.
The purpose of drinking? The haze in the blond's head cleared for a moment, interjecting the encounter with an unceremonious memory. He'd been nine the first time he'd pressed the grubby glass of a corner store beer bottle to his small, cracked lips. The liquid had gone down as smoothly as any swill could and he'd almost purged the stinking, amber substance when the bubbles swelled inside his belly. But the bottle got him drunk; sent him spinning into a wonderful world of blurred buildings and holy halos dotting every single light he saw until he was sick with the thrill of this new reality. An older street girl, hair so fair and thin it got a green tinge every time she lay in one of the remaining parks, slapped him hard across the face and told him how foolish and base the whole thing had been, but Llyr didn't take it to heart. There was a wonderful, unique kind of pain to be gleaned from intoxication and he chased it with the same fervor as he would any suffering.
The pulse of the music jolted him back into the present and he had to blink up at the spasms of the dance-floor lights to ground himself back in the moment. The vodka savoring stranger was peering at him now and Llyr's eyes flicked casually away to avoid unnecessary eye-contact. There was something enticing in the way the man carried himself: a casual indifference cloaking something dangerous underneath. And slipping into those dark quarters... the idea made Llyr's heart skip lurid little beats. Bartending would never hold the same place in his mind as inflicting or receiving pain, but it served as a gateway to those pleasures while providing its own cheap thrills.
"I just settled in, actually. Do I stick out?"
He rattled the clean cut cubes of ice against the glass as if in further punctuation to his inquiry. Llyr's smile ticked up into an uneven smirk and he leaned back, reaching for a glass that had been abandoned by university girl who'd decided to forgo another trip to the toilet. He dumped the contents and stacked the cup on one of the designated "used/dirty" shelves on the lower part of the counter, reemerging with,
"Not in the usual ways, just your personality isn't terribly," he tried to pick the word out of the fog, "Patron-like. See them," he felt the tug on his shoulder as he raised his left arm and gestured to an older man in bastardized victorian garb who was attempting to hold the hands of two drunken college clubbers who were too interested in each other to notice, "They've been here before. They know what Blasphemy is designated for."
A beat and Llyr paused to take the slurred orders of four university girls, pouring double their number in colorful, berry-melon flavored shots before sending them reeling back into the tide of music, bodies, and light.
"You, though, you're not immersed enough. You could be sitting anywhere with that glass and be comfortable with it, so the appeal of this place doesn't effect you."
He smiled, recalling sting of his first encounter with the casino: dragging a weedy business man into the back alley and handing him a dull box cutter while trying to keep his instructions clear, coherent under the magic of the alcohol.
"Not to imply you don't belong here, you just act more like a benefactor or owner more than a customer. Understand?"
YOU LAUGH LIKE A BANSHEE GESTICULATE YOUR DELIRIUM THEY TREAT YOU LIKE A CORPSE KEEP YOU FULL OF CANDY LITHIUM WHAT A DREAM LIFE WOULD SEEM IF ONLY.
Yasuo lifted his glass to his lips and sipped down the last little bit of vodka that rested at the bottom, between the slightly melted ice. He sighed happily with that final sip as it burned a trail down his throat. He set the glass down, hardly even tipsy. Years of alcohol abuse had quite an affect on young men like him, giving them an alcohol resistance that was hardly realistic. If anything, he felt even more vivid.
Yasuo's eyes followed the direction that the bartender was pointing at. The sight nearly made him snicker. It was nothing new and absolutely not unordinary: an older man attempting to convince a couple of lip-locked girls to accompany him. The older man could hardly keep the wads of hundreds from popping out of his pocket. Even though many insisted otherwise, Yasuo knew very well that money could buy anything - absolutely anything.
"Should I be effected?" Yasuo asked the bartender, sounding somewhere between serious and smug. The Japanese man rotated around in his bar stool to face the other direction, towards the booths lined up against the wall.
He pointed towards a group of three men and three women. They were too well dressed to be college kids and all in their mid-thirties. "I bet we could easily guess their game." He then pointed a few inches to the right, to the booth beside the thirty-somethings, which consisted of an elderly gentlemen and a pair of twins wearing matching, bright pink dresses. "We can guess their game, as well." A few booths down was a young man, in his early twenties, and an older man in his late forties. The younger man was hand-feeding the older man cherries. "Those two are even easier," Yasuo added before turning his upper body so he could face the bartender.
"Swingers... an old man who enjoys twins, and can afford them... and a man who has always been curious as to what it is like to fuck another man," Yasuo explained, almost feeling smug with himself; it was all apart of a world he knew too well. "That summarizes this place fairly well, doesn't it?"
All the talk of "games" had Llyr's lifeless fingers shaking ever so slightly with the prospects of each of these scenarios. He could feel the devil turning the handles that ground the wicked, well-oiled cogs and bone-grinding gears in his imagination. The twins, despite their desperate attempts to hide their claws and scabbed talons, were vicious creatures who would tear their temporary charge to strips of bill-thin skin if given half a chance. The cherries were poison, of course, but the youth would suck the tainted saliva back up from the older man's throat just to die so sweetly, so skillfully by his side. The group of six were a gang of delusional berserkers who had sewn bits of fur and bone into their skin, wandering the streets on dark nights looking for some lonesome soul to devour. All of them running through the mist, as he was, to find the most magnanimous of sensations without the capacity to understand that such powerful upheavals were fleeting by nature.
He lived by folly and fog, yes, but he could convince himself that he was wicked in the knowing of such things and that his brutality, his blunt acceptance of addiction, would save him.
He plucked the finished glass from the counter, his eye catching the ink-splatters of red and electric blue reflected in the ice, and smiled; overwhelmed by the urge to close his thumb and forefinger on a print's worth of the skin on the man's wrist. Instead he tipped the half-melted contents of the glass, produced steel tongs to refill the transparent vessel, and then poured another shot's worth of Zyr.
"You're almost there," he said, softly as he slid the completed drink towards the man, "But you're missing the darkest parts behind the decadence."
Most of the inhabitants of the casino had gravitated towards the card tables, slots, or spirals of gaudy light, and Llyr focused himself entirely on the stranger, who was aware, if only partially, of the chase through the haze. Llyr tried to expand this thought but the clutter in his head drowned out any further revelations with static. Shaking his head slowly, he spoke to recenter himself,
"These people are killers-- or they will be or would have been," he locked his one red eye on the dark haired man's dark two, probing for a response, for recognition, "Or they are cowards. There's no grey area between the people who slip in or the people who provide the playing field. They are killers,"
Gesturing to the even-numbered group he flexed his fingers and imagined how the sensation would feel were they still stitched through with nerves and blotted over with tender, tearable skin. He spun slightly and redirected himself towards his own example,
"Two killers and a coward," he pointed towards the twins and the elderly man, "All of them killers," then to the young man and the mid-life crisis dabbler, "Both cowards."
More fabrications of character, again, but Llyr was enjoying the confidence in his designations; because it was not a matter of being correct, it was his and the stranger's own version of "the game". They were merely setting down their respective rules for the other to observe. Llyr's expression twisted into a broad, mischievous smirk,
"The only question now if which one of them are you?"
YOU LAUGH LIKE A BANSHEE GESTICULATE YOUR DELIRIUM THEY TREAT YOU LIKE A CORPSE KEEP YOU FULL OF CANDY LITHIUM WHAT A DREAM LIFE WOULD SEEM IF ONLY.
Everyone had a game they played. Some were more sincere than others, sure, but most played games for their own benefits. Yasuo had met his fair share of game players, and the occasional sincere, but he knew very well that the world was never black and white. Good and evil was never split down middle: everyone had bits and pieces - here and there - some less than others. Human beings were torn creatures... and others were just not so human.
Yasuo's eyes flickered between his suddenly refilled glass and the lights above, changing their colors and brightness to illuminate any surface that would reflect them, including his dark brown eyes. He then locked his gaze on the glass for a split second before picking the glass back up and letting it sit in his hand. Did he really want more? Why the hell not? Though, he didn't drink it just yet.
The word killer burned like an iron in Yasuo's mind. It struck through the space between the two men like lightning from the sky to the ground. Yasuo eyed the man suspiciously for a moment. These people? Killers? He couldn't possibly be serious. How many of these people actually stained their hands with blood? How many of them sliced flesh or held tightly onto the trigger of a revolver? But, then, he wondered if the bartender was referring to something less specific. They were killers... in their own ways.
The Japanese man's eyes trailed back to the people he had pointed out a mere few seconds ago. Middle class swingers who no longer found joy in their lives, a man who questioned his sexuality, and an old man who had enough money to buy any sexual desire from two girls who would do anything for money. It was a sickening sight to behold and yet, it was the way the world truly was - behind closed doors, in not-so-hidden places, and away from what society wanted you to understand.
"The only question now if which one of them are you?" the bartender asked, which surprised Yasuo and didn't. He didn't look at the man right away, for he wanted to savor the moment and ponder his response. Was he an enemy assassin merely using this playful batter to lower Yasuo's guard? It was possible, but if that was the case, than he should have known that Harbinger didn't fall for tricks and if you hesitated, even if you didn't know you were hesitating, he would have killed you. Maybe this man had his own assumptions, but...
"If a man who drinks and fucks is a killer, then, absolutely." With that, he took a small sip of his vodka and then set the mostly full glass on the table. The chilled glass left his finger tips frozen and the vodka left his throat burning.
"If a man who drinks and fucks is a killer, then, absolutely."
Llyr cocked his head, the response needling a slight clearing through his focus and staving off the memories and morbid tangents that threatened to envelope him at any moment. the stranger was verging on the realization, that glorious chase through the fog, but he did not understand the severity of the title "Killer". A coward could come in all shapes and sizes of success, confidence, or morality. But a killer was bound to a single defining trait: the will to destroy another human for the sake of something he or she desired, however small. A killer would turn out hours of gruesome deaths for the man who cut him off in traffic or the child who cried too loudly in the cinema. A killer would pretend to hold a waiter's throat in her fingers for something as minor as a botched sandwich order.
His good eye was fixed on the man's lips, touching the least amount of the glass's rim as he sipped the clear liquor. The coldness of the ice bobbing like tiny, transparent worlds had seeped through the glass and left tiny beads of freezing sweat on the outside. One of these slid down the side of the glass as the stranger set the drink down. His desire quickened. His tongue strayed to the outer corners of his lower lip. He reached up with equal unconsciousness and touched his dead eye through its seal of pale hair.
But their person game could not be reduced to such prematurity, and the focused, vicious parts of Llyr knew this. Ignoring a young man who'd been trying to get the bartender's attention for a minute now, he dropped into a squat and produced a small flask from the lower shelves. Then, reappearing with this and two sun colored shot glasses, he set the items on the counter in front of the self proclaimed killer.
"These are hand blown," he explained, gesturing to the tiny bubbles of air in the glass, "They're more fragile than factory glass but they don't cling to liquid either."
The flask was small, aluminum, and the color of old copper. Its cap was shaped like the head of a bird of prey but was too poorly made to allow for any further recognition of species. Llyr grabbed the hooked beak and unscrewed the lid, tipped the flask towards the golden glass, and poured an amber colored liquid into both.
"This is a secret menu item, of sorts," his hands shook as he resealed the flask and then tucked it back under the counter, speaking as he descended, "My boss allows us to distribute it freely as we see fit. For special occasions, etc. What I want to do" he locked his eye with the stranger's corresponding one, "Is see how well we play Blasphemy's "Game", which I'm going to call "Killers and Cowards"."
The music slowed into a darker piece, rhythm slowing into a rare growl of loud base. The dance floor emptied of the more self conscious and Llyr paused and moved to take the orders of the retreated dancers. When he returned to the "killer", he pointed to the glass on his right,
"Yours is the "Killers" glass. Drink it down, just make sure you get all of it. I'll do the same with my "Cowards" cup."
He plucked the shot from the counter and tossed the liquid against the back of his throat. Then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and set the golden glass back down.
"The game is a lying one, which is to say its about opposites. We must convince each other in the next 15 minutes that we are not who we are: that i am a "Killer" and you are a "Coward". Whoever does so will not have to drink a second round, whoever fails is at the mercy of the victor."
YOU LAUGH LIKE A BANSHEE GESTICULATE YOUR DELIRIUM THEY TREAT YOU LIKE A CORPSE KEEP YOU FULL OF CANDY LITHIUM WHAT A DREAM LIFE WOULD SEEM IF ONLY.
Something his father had pounded into his head was that business was business and killing was business, and nothing more. He did not kill to fit any need other than the fact that the business of murder was a thriving business that would always be needed. When the economy was down, jewelry, nicknacks, and other such things would take a blow; however, people would always need killers, no matter what. Murder was business a thousand years ago and it would continue to be business even long after they all passed and were done rotting in the ground.
At this point, Yasuo watched the bartender intently, observing each and every move or gesture as if his life depended on it. For all he knew, each gesture and tiny movement was a piece connecting him to the bartender's next move, which may or may not prove fatal. His father had also taught him to trust no one, something that proved fatal indeed since Yasuo killed his old man himself.
His was continuing the game in a more intense way, which made Yasuo wonder what the bartender was diving into. Was he simply entertaining himself with this Japanese boy or attempting to excavate something more sinister? As the music changed, a group of people exited the dance floor and gathered around the bar to order beverages. A busty woman was sure to rub her breasts accidentally against Yasuo's shoulder as she slid some cash onto the table. He didn't flinch or even glance at her, which worked just fine for she quickly retreated. He waited, patiently, until they all cleared the space around them.
He watched the bartender drink down the bizarre liquid, which brought back a haunting memory. In that moment, Yasuo remembered the first time his father poisoned him. He was fourteen years old the first time. He spent weeks confined to his bed before he was able to function again. At the time, he merely thought it was from bad food or a flu.
Not long after getting better did his father poison him again... and again. As Yasuo laid in bed on the third poisoning, his brother slipped to him that good old dad was behind it. He poisoned him for two reasons: to warn him the dangers of eating food brought to you and to build up his immune system. He never confronted his father about it, but he stopped eating everything and anything his father brought him.
Yasuo flashed a smirk to the bartender. "I don't like games where I'm on the losing end. Exactly what is it you're hoping to learn from me?" He picked up the glass, but did not drink it just yet. He observed the bartender's reaction, first. His black hair slid over his face, creating a dark silhouette around his pale features.
Llyr had never attempted this particular gambit before and he was not surprised by the man's hesitance to partake in the mysterious substance on command. After all, avoiding the dubious offers of strangers in bars was the first rule of nightlife. He ran his ring finger along the tiny rim of the empty shot glass and did his best to keep his senseless hands from shaking.
"You're already winning, I see," he laughed softly, his eye focused on the remnants of the dancing crowd, "Coward, refusing both the drink and getting figuratively fucked by the circumstances."
The music skipped and in the second of silence, Llyr thought he heard someone moving through the passages behind him. How long had he been focused on the stranger? How long until the casino began its routine expulsion of its rowdy inhabitants? It was Blasphemy's policy to avoid the use of time devices apart from the phones and watches brought in by the customers themselves. It helped further the illusion of detachment from the rest of the world-- from the responsibilities of work or family or even time itself-- but Llyr often found it to be crippling too the employees as well. He had enough time grounding himself in the present and without the physical comforts, evidences, of clocks he was just spinning in the dark; running out of time.
His focus on the stranger returned and he tried to stifled the hurried tone in his voice,
"But I suppose I should get equal recognition for fulfilling my roll of sucking down suspicious alcohol and enjoying the perks of pretending to be a Killer."
The lifeless hand twitched suddenly and sent the glass spinning on its side, Llyr half hoping it would break and shatter in a spray onto his exposed cheek. The build was sturdy, though, and it merely rattled a few times against the counter and then lay still. His voice cracked in its stead,
"One point for you, but then one for me as well."
The management had never been clear on the contents of the flask but had explained that it carried within the weathered copper a liquid of powerful intoxication to be used only on special occasions. Llyr had always assumed it was a weak poison but had never had the heart or the whimsy to test it until the sharp figure of the man had crossed into his sphere. Something about the stark cut of his features and the knowing he carried in his eyes alone-- Llyr noticed the brightest of Blasphemy's lights were now rimmed with blurry halos. His smile buckled but he was intrigued by the thought of dying in such a way.
His closest brush with death had been so violent and stretched between hideous days of white-hot pain: the bat with nails slamming into his ribs, while he cried and bled and begged himself into unconsciousness. But to die by poison was swift and subtle, highlighted by the most effective and invisible of agonies. Nothing he would have pursued purposefully apart from his reckless wager with the stranger, but an intriguing new breed of pain: internal, sudden, invisible.
He found himself leaning on the counter for support, his forehead dripping with stinking sweat.
WORDS: 539 TAGGED: sora MUSE: Nightlife NOTES: sorry i dragged my feet writing this otz life's been meh
Yasuo leaned back in his chair, wiggling around a bit to get more comfortable. He was watching the bartender with a curious set of eyes, wondering what it was he was hoping to learn from him. A piece of Yasuo's bangs dipped down between his eyes and settled on his nose. He was not bothered by the stray hair and just allowed it to sit there for a moment before he finally pushed it back; although, his unruly black hair never really obeyed, and it fell right back over the right side of his face.
The man gulped it down without hesitation, which seemed to peak Yasuo's interest. Would this man purposely poison himself? It was always possible that he had built up a resistance to poison, but so did Yasuo. No assassin would attempt to poison Yasuo, at least, not if they did their research. He had hoped if someone was going to come after him, they would at least be better than that.
Yasuo lifted the glass. The outside was dripping with condensation; it nearly slipped through his fingers as he lifted it. Before he brought it to his lips, he held it for a moment to let the water on the outside drip onto the counter, mostly to ensure it did not fall onto his well tailored suit. He then pressed the glass to his lips and sipped down the sickly sweet juices. It was metallic, though smooth and sweet, and very oddly bitter; in fact, it was so many things all at once.
It was making his heart rate increase ever so slightly. His throat was burning in a way that would slowly melt away into numbness. His eyes dilated to the point that his pupils completely covered his iris, making them dark and reflective. The lights were shimmering behind his dark eyes. "What a fun game..." he teased.