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Guys? I'm not sure, but I think Matthew-san might be Trump-hunting.

I didn't go to him, he came to me, and started quizzing me about 'the dragons of my homeland.' It sounded like he meant gods, so I told him exactly that and he seized on their lack of element as important. Wouldn't say why, but there are only so many reasons I can think of that coming up, especially since he followed up by asking if the ones I told him about can leave their domain.

Has he talked to anyone else about that? For that matter, has anyone run into a Trump here?

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No, but there are dragon shrines. I've been sweeping out the one in the Temple every morning...

Well, if that's the cover the Trumps are using to talk to people this time, it'd explain why he's so concerned.

They usually pretend to be human.

Since we didn't all show up as dragons, this time, maybe something else is going on.

How better to catch people unawares than sneak into where they usually pray, though?

Well... it seems like people caught on pretty quick...

Matthew-san's possessed, though. That might have given him an edge in getting the information - I don't think he's talked to one of whatever he's looking for, whether it's Trumps or not.

...

Maybe I'll pray at the Temple shrine tomorrow morning.

...Be careful. This feels very Tower.

Then again, I can't see you keeping their attention long enough for anything to happen, so we might find out if there's more than one around.

Does this mean you don't think I'm a disaster?

I don't think Naoto would put up with that for very long. Besides, of the Wild Cards, that would've been Adachi-san.

Edited 2016-04-04 06:08 (UTC)

You said it, not me.

I think he would've said it too.

Yua would have unleashed Myriad Truths on anyone else who said it, though.

Probably.

I never said he didn't get his shit together, or I wouldn't have liked him so much. [Which is to say... at all...] But I think it's fair to say his group had the roughest time making progress out of any of us.

That's probably true.

I'd really like to learn more about what everyone's been through, but I don't think now is the time...

It's probably not a good time, no, but it's definitely worth talking through sometime.

I ran the idea of a second Tarot 101 session by Kanji, since it's been so long since the last one. We could always try fitting something in before or after that.

He's looking for those guys?

Damn, he's crazier than I thought. Absolutely out of his mind.

Looking for them in general isn't the weird part. I've looked for them before.

The weird part is that he's infiltrating and looking for them. The locals generally don't know what's up. And as cavalier about death as his overlay is, there's... a non-zero chance he might kill someone for his answers. Not like someone being a corpse would stop him asking.

Yeah, of course he wouldn't care about killing anyone, not with the way he's hobnobbing with ghosts! He's freaking nuts!

Normally he's too freaked out by death to do that as his first option. That's the weird part here.

Well, that's what happens when you go crazy!

Seriously, dude's flipped. He's a few tacos short of a combination platter! Not playing with a full deck! Listening to weird dead voices!

As opposed to what, weird alive voices?

You know what I mean!

If he sees them as potential threats to this land, then it stands to reason that he would want to know as much about them as possible.

But they're all-powerful and shouldn't be poked at!

How would he know that without investigating?

[Assuming it's even true that they're all-powerful. Raidou has his doubts about that.]

Because that's how all-powerful beings are! Leave them the hell alone, that's the best move!

There are times when that is not possible.

[Raidou knows that from experience.]

I know, life sucks sometimes...

Just before I found you, actually. I merely replied with a description that rather resembled the local dragons in the interest of blending in.

You have the advantage of remembering a thing or two about the local dragons. Did he have any questions that might help us figure out what he's looking for?

Well, for one thing, he wanted to know about something called 'kami.'

[Whatever those are.]

Also, come to think of it, while I haven't run into a Trump personally, there were some rather odd things going on when Bai and Raito went to the dragon shrine together. Very strong wind, enough to lift clay jars off the floor, and I wouldn't be surprised if Raito saw or heard things Bai didn't, considering the way he reacted to the winds dying down.

Kami would've been the rabbit hole I set him down. They're a Shinto thing, but if you want 'dragons from my homeland' that's about as close as you can get. They don't travel the way he's worried about, though.

...huh. That could be one of the locals or it could be a Trump poking its nose in. We may not know until we get a chance to ask the kid himself, when all this is over. What all happened, as you saw it?

Ah. They sounded to me like this Old Earth insult I remember from reading archaic literature at university--'commie' I think it was--so I told him that I thought it might be an ancient pejorative. Which... disturbed him a bit and he asked if my people were insane, so I told him about my late cousin the former count Pierre and how he used to line his hats with gold foil to keep away the Cetagandan mind control rays. Only I called them something like evil foreign spirits he feared would possess him.

He dismissed me soon after that.

[Which had been a relief, really.]

Anyhow, I remember that Raito was praying and Bai was pouring a libation of rice wine for the dragons when Raito started looking around the shrine for some reason. He went back to praying, I corked my bottle, and some moments later a fierce wind picked up around the temple, whirling around us, like we were in the eye of a hurricane. It was enough to pull the scrolls and jars from the temple shelves into the vortex and threatened to pull the banners off too. And then just as suddenly as it started it stopped and Raito went to examining his right arm. Which... is probably where he's been marked if it was a Trump.

That's not one I've heard before, so it's probably not the same thing. [Not that he's never heard of communists - that'd be an interesting trick, with China and Vietnam and North Korea so close - but English is his second language.]

...huh. Kanji's wasn't visible during Nova Venezia, or we would've seen it when we were setting his arm. So if the marks are showing up during the jaunts now... I wonder if that's a new pattern, or just a side effect of how they're manifesting this time.

Either way, I think I'll be avoiding the shrines, this time out. I don't know if we'll have a way to figure out who's around, unless more infiltrators die and can tell us, but this whole thing feels very, very Tower to me. One way or another, someone's in for major upheaval. Possibly everyone.

Edited 2016-04-02 07:18 (UTC)

It's not new. Remember Zed's prison ink? Although he was Investigating that time. I didn't get a good look at Raito's arm before Bai's untimely death, unfortunately.

But yes. We'll definitely have to question the next death. Somehow I suspect there will be more of them.

Yeah, that's the difference, Kanji was infiltrating. He didn't find it until after we got back to Liminal.

Oh, I'm sure there'll be more. It's a question of how long it takes for someone who talked to one of the 'dragons' to bite it.

Hopefully Raito won't be one of them. [It's not that he thinks of Right as his brother, but he still has some lingering fraternal impulses there.]

[No, Naoki understands the feeling. It plopped Yua into the older-sister role before he could think about it.]

Hopefully.

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