"Aaaand there's another loss." Zane commented internally, the shiny ball of the roulette table landing in the exact opposite place he wanted it to. He wasn't exactly having much luck so far. How was that possible? Who in the world could lose at a casino? Sighing, Zane leaned back on his stool before promptly stopping himself from falling onto the establishment's floor. "I must say Zane, I'm somewhat worried about the state of our wallet. Perhaps we should leave before your stupidity leaves us homeless?" Beelzebub commented, a hint of fear in his voice. It was almost as though the demon actually believed Zane would be sleeping in a cardboard box tonight. Zane hopped off the stool, grabbing the overpriced drink he had ordered as he left the vicinity of the roulette table. "Relax, relax. Roulette is dumb anyways. If I wanted to see a ball spin I could just grab my old marble collection from back home." Zane was lying - he didn't have a marble collection. At least not anymore. Jerry from Baska stole it when they were 10. "Just... pick something low stakes, my friend. Low stakes."

Zane sipped his drink as his eyes scanned the casino, thinking about what Beelzebub said to him. Low stakes. Low stakes. Low steaks. Did Beelzebub actually mean that? Or was it a code for something else? Was he trying to say the opp- "No, I quite literally meant low stakes! We need money to survive, you fool!" Beelzebub's concerns fell on a deaf ears... or mind. Or however the hell their internal conversations worked. "So what you're saying is... we need to go as big as possible." Zane confidently replied as though he had just cracked some sort of hidden meaning. "No! What I mean i-"

"I've got a plan!" Zane interrupted Beelzebub, already having had a grand scheme completely laid out in his mind. Beelzebub sighed. At times like these it was probably best to just go with the insanity. "Oh yeah? And what happens to be your "grand" plan this time around, hm?" Beelzebub asked, Zane's feet already shuffling around the floor they were on as he looked at different people all around. "Well, first we need to find a partner. Someone I can work with here. Should be easy enough if we promise them a cut, right?" Zane approached the bar, his eyes judging just about every single person who sat or stood in its perimeter. "Alright, but I feel as though we should lay down a rule. No attractive human females, Zane. Everytime you try to pull them into some scheme or scam you always end up only focusing on th-"

"Oh, she's beautiful! I'll go ask her." Zane happily remarked internally, promptly heading on over to a woman sitting on one of the stools. It was around this time that Beelzebub just gave up. This was it. They were going to end up homeless. Zane slid in a somewhat dramatic fashion onto a stool near the lady, though in the end the rather small nature of the stools made it look more like he just... sat on it. Normally. But that doesn't sound as cool, so just pretend he slid! "Good evening, ma'am." He flashed the woman a smile, his teeth bringing out the best in his eyes. Or, well, eye. He was wearing the eyepatch at the moment. "I must say... this place is crawling with an absolute ton of people, yet you somehow still end up being the most beautiful. It's rather impressive, really. And extremely lucky on a  statistical level." Zane wasn't actually trying to pick this woman up - yet, at least. Rather, he was tying his compliments into what he wanted to REALLY ask her. Lowering his voice a bit so no employees or customers could hear, he made his proposition. "Not only are you lucky to look that good, but you're also lucky to have met me here tonight. I need a partner for something that could win us a lot of money. It'll just require you to have a good poker face and a biiit of a willingness to... bend the rules a little. Interested?"

Every post in this template will have a different message here. Maybe.

"It looks like your tongue might be paying more attention than your ears here..." Zane's free eye gazed upon the parfait, both jealous for the fact that the woman was paying more to it than him and that the woman was eating said tasty treat in the first place. Oh how he wished to have even just one small spoonful of its creamy and elegant texture, its sweet and rich flavor... "If we have any jewels left by the time the night's over I suggest that we order one of those for ourself. Zane couldn't help but agree. Still, he had to focus on actually making some money first. Ignoring the matter of the extremely tempting sweet for now, Zane turned his attention back towards the woman as he spoke in a voice that was even more hushed. "I want us to work together to cheat a little bit in high-stakes poker - use our teamup to our advantage, right? Now, I've never played poker but..." Beelzebub immediately brought their mental state to a halt. "Wait a second. Waiiiit a second. You don't know how to play poker?! Then why are you trying to cheat at it?!" Beelzebub's complaining was met with an internal groan from Zane. "Can't you wait for like 20 seconds to go all peanut gallery on me? I was just about to explain it to the pretty lady..."

Back in the actual world Zane proceeded to explain his situation in regards to his inexperience with the way of the cards. "I've definitely seen enough plays to kinda get the gist of it. And if some pretty dealer in a bunnysuit accuses us of cheating, I can just use my insanely good looks to get us off scott free!" Zane flashed the woman yet another award winning smile, holding his hands out slightly as though he was expecting some sort of compliment or reassurance of his handsomeness to leave her mouth.  "We'd definitely have to practice our non-verbal communication a little bit beforehand though. I'm just going to assume that my godlike charisma has completely won you over by this point, so let's go sit in that little booth that just opened up in the corner of my eye. Follow me."

Zane waved the woman to come with him as he made his way into one of the booths that were in this little bar area of the floor, slipping into its red leather seating. To be completely honest that was a bit too flashy even for Zane's taste. He did suppose that was just kind of how casinos were... assuming that the woman had taken the chance to sit across from the table from him, Zane straightened his posture and held his hands together on the table in an attempt to appear more serious and mature. He was definitely being serious and mature about this plan, after all! Mostly. "First off, I'm Zane. Nice to meet you."

Zane took a deep exhale and allowed the woman a chance to introduce herself should she please. After bracing himself for a moment Zane finally got around to admitting the big roadblock that way in wait for his plans - and the chance to get Beelzebub off his back for a little while. "Look, here's the deal. I needed a beautiful woman for my plan and everything, but that fact also could be a hindrance. If we're being real, I may or may not often fail in my schemes because of things like this." Zane's confession was delivered with a tone that seemed quite serious - by his standards, anyways. It seemed like he really wanted to get this problem out of the way. "So we need to fix this. As it just so happens, I have the perfect solution. You must have some super embarrassing secret, right? Maybe you're really weird or something behind a cool exterior? Maybe you've like, got 100 pet rats back at home? All you have to do is tell me something that makes me instantly less attracted to you!" A much bigger smile came upon Zane's face than usual as he clapped his hands lightly in a way that seemed to indicate that he honestly believed whatever he had just thought up of was one of the greatest ideas to be brought forth by any human ever. "Oh, fortunately we don't need to waste time doing the same for me. Not even the most embarrassing stories in the world could make me less attractive!"

Do you ever think middle names will be relevant? Would be pretty cool.

September was a nice name! Zane really liked that song. It was kinda weird that people decided to name an entire month after it though. While Zane was hoping for a rather scandalous secret from September that would expose her as some sort of psycho serial killer or something he instead only found her spouting pretty basic stuff that he already knew. "You're into the fairer sex? How is that any kind of secret?" Zane asked, a confused look on his face. "Not exactly uncommon for a woman to be into men, ya know." Through his sheer idiocy Zane seemed to have believed that men were referred to as the fairer sex. When he was a kid in Baska he often found that the girls acted rather unfairly. One such situation involved a girl named Sally cheating in tic-tac-toe yet bragging over a supposed 'win' anyways. Zane had been using that as concrete evidence that men were fairer for about 20 years now. "I think all sexes on Earthland are rather despicable, to be quite honest." Chimed in Beelzebub who was also rather confused by the woman's confession.

"Alright, well, whatever. I think this can prooobably still work while we're both so incredibly attracted to each other. It'll take some practice though!" Zane pulled out a deck of playing cards that he had "borrowed" off of one of the tables and set it down onto the booth. Opening it up he'd gently slide out the deck and take 5 cards to himself, sliding over the rest of the deck and gesturing towards September to take some too. "Alright, so. We'll be sitting here, holding our cards. But we gotta come up with some sort of way to signal each other without talking. Hmm..." Zane looked deep into September's eyes. They were rather pretty! Not quite as much as his own eyes however. Perhaps he could do something involving the eye contact between the two? Zane blinked twice in quick succession, though it was technically a wink considering that his other eye was hidden behind his (allegedly) stylish eyepatch. "Two blinks can mean we should both fold. Makes sense, right?" Zane asked, knowing that folding was important even with his absolutely minimum poker knowledge. Humming to himself a little, Zane blinked three times in a row. "Three times can be me telling you to fold. Four times can be telling you that I'll be folding." That was one hurdle out of the way, but Zane had this feeling like blinking any more times than 4 in a row was going to take far too long. Sighing and leaning back a little in his seat, Zane looked at his cards and wondered. "Can you think of any non-vocal way we can signal raise? I don't wanna blink like a million times..."

Brazil is the Dark Souls of real life.