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The House of Five Leaves
Dirty Vegas' First Gambling Den and Geisha House.



General Information

It Starts With a Dream

Vegas has bars, strip clubs, drug dens, whore houses, baths and a good number of… more conventional, maybe even “respectable” establishments. What it lacks thoroughly in, however, are places that toe the line, and cater to far more Oriental tastes. Oh, and how the hell are there no places to gamble here?!

At first glance, the House of Five Leaves is a traditional izakaya: that is, a Japanese restaurant cum bar that serves fine food and an even finer selection of alcohol, with sake and beer at the top of the list. This is, however, a front for two things: a gambling den, and – of all things – a geisha house. Members of the Five Leaves (and members of the Five Leaves’, ah, business associates) can participate in very traditional forms of gambling: Oicho-Kabu, dice games and mahjong. There are also Western forms of gambling, sponsored by the Lotus Lounge. If that’s not their thing, they can select one of the Five Leaves’ handsome (or beautiful?) party masters to accompany them for the evening in one of the Pavilion’s many private rooms, for a night full of good wine, lovely music and fine conversation.

The man behind the House of Five Leaves is Takasugi Shinsuke: he runs this joint with a razor sharp smile, soft words and a heavy hand. His second is Kawakami Bansai, someone who seems to know Shinsuke very, very well.


Maybe It Will End With Fire

Overall, the Five Leaves is an honest business, but Takasugi’s reasons for establishing it are not. In the Gintama canon, Takasugi is the head of the Kihetai, his own personal army. His goal at the moment is to gather enough money and enough support in order to change the status quo in Vegas by finding a way to take Loki down. The Five Leaves is meant to be his base of operations, and a venue for future meetings and negotiations.

Enough of that, though. For all intents and purposes, most of you will simply know Takasugi has the one-eyed, fairly eccentric gentleman who happens to run this fine establishment.



This Is Where the Road Ends

The House of Five Leaves is a walled two-storey Japanese compound with rock gardens and trees sheltering the buildings itself from the rest of Vegas, and even more koi ponds and gardens at the center. It is located on the south end of the Strip, across the street from the old ruins of the Luxor and overlooking what is left of Las Vegas Airport. Overall, it seems more like an inn than anything else.

The main building and the front half of the first floor of the compound serves as the restaurant and the bar. The reception area is at the front: the bar is located on the west wing, and the restaurant – the main hall, and rooms for more intimate affairs – in the east wing. The back rooms of the first floor, however, are where the gambling dens and mahjong are located.

The second floor is not as large as the first, with private rooms for members and their selected companion of the evening and the Five Leaves’ offices.

They run seven days a week, from 6:00 PM to 5:00 AM.



( House Rules, Services and Merchandise Offered, Price List, Employment and Potential Plot Notes. )

He had loved the world, once – he had loved the world and everything in it, and made himself believe that he could somehow protect all that he held dear through hard work and sacrifice. By getting stronger, fighting harder, staying on the path of the good and the righteous.

It had been easy to tell himself to keep going, while he had still been surrounded by friends. Even in the face of certain defeat, even with the fact that he lost someone he knew and loved with almost every fight, he felt as though he could carry on, for so long as there was going to be just one other person at his side or just at his back by the time everything came to an end.

The days became weeks, however, and those weeks became months, and in ones or twos or threes or more, he watched the rest walk away from the war in the dead of night, or saw them carted off like animals to alien prisons, or to the block.

He remembers what it was like standing in front of a table lined with their heads clearly, as though it were only yesterday.

An old veteran from a war whose name nobody remembered had once told Takasugi that the voices of the dead followed a man everywhere. “It’s in the eyes,” he muttered. “Those eyes and lips, saying things. Screaming. You can never figure out what they’re trying to tell you, unless you join them.”

Takasugi realized, on the day he quite certainly lost himself, that the best way of figuring out what they were trying to say was to make sure they stayed loud, hammering at your skull, pounding in your ears. That meant making more of them, with every cut of your sword, in every waking hour you had.

He wonders, sometimes, if he’ll ever really find out. He figures, though, that after he’s made a couple of mountains of corpses, one of them is bound to have the answer – or a piece of it anyway.

Years afterward, Takasugi’s standing on the deck of a dying ship, far above the beginning of s war that he himself started. He doesn’t need to look for too long in order to single out the figures of the two men who had once been his closest comrades. He’d recognize the way they fight – the way their swords dance – anywhere. Something in him stirs, something beyond the babbling mess of ghosts and memories, somewhere beyond all of that noise. For one split second, it’s his body – not his brain – that remembers what it was like to stand with them, to know, instinctively, what one needed to kill for and work one’s way towards it, confident in the fact there will always be someone watching your back. For one split second, his mind is clear.

There is a sense of loss, almost, but it is buried quickly, drowned by the remembrance that Sakata Gintoki and Katsura Kotarou abandoned the cause long ago. They walk a different path from his, one that takes them further and further away from the possibility of vengeance. They are content with living in a world that stole everything from them.

There is no greater sin than that of complacence.

So he watches the pair weave through the battlefield, cutting out a new future for themselves n the flesh and bone of their enemies, and he thinks to himself that this is what he’s given up, this is what he’s going to throw away. This is what he’ll destroy, between his own two hands.

Perhaps it isn’t important. Now that he’s carrying the weight and sound of the dearly departed inside of him, he’ll never be alone.



( Profile. )



( Permissions. )

[ PLAYER INFORMATION ]

Player Name: Kae
Age: 25
Timezone: GMT +8
Personal Journal: thedovetailor
Contact Information:
Instant Messenger: AIM; derridamustdie / y!m; stitchedophelia
Email: derridamustdie@gmail.com


( It will never stop howling. )