36 - Dragon Dance

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Help the Heavens cover for a missing goddess at her temple festival.
When: March 18
Where: Near the Sensou-ji temple in Asakusa
Summary: After Kannon's disappearance last year, the Heavens are concerned that things might go wrong at her temple's March 18 omikoshi festival. They've asked new gods and shinki to attend the festival and keep an eye out for trouble. Meanwhile, trusted newcomers and older gods and shinki alike are watching over the cultists that have been identified.






The Festival

Shrine-carriers, musicians and dancers congregate early in the morning in their matching outfits to get organized into their parade. Luckily, all of the parade participants this time are alive and well. There aren't even any troublesome ayakashi hanging around... so why is everyone having such bad luck?! Laces are breaking, costumes tearing, small children are getting sick from nerves, and even the drums seem to have gone out of tune. It looks like this parade is going to need a whole lot of help to prevent disaster.

For those who aren't busy with the parade preparations, food and souvenir booths throng the area in front of the temple. There's traveling games, too, and plenty of people showing up early with their families to find a good spot to watch the parade. This is one of Tokyo's most popular temples, so it's quite a crowd!

The Stakeouts

Any gods or shinki who were told about the cult problem by Amaterasu -- or anyone who might have heard from friends and allies about the plans -- can help Amaterasu's shinki keep a tight watch on all of the known cult members. Her shinki are looking for any sign of the young gods who she believes are behind all of this trouble, but are there other clues that might be found by a keen observer? Join in on staking out a cult member, and see what you can see.

Current cult members that the shinki are watching include:

• Mitsui Ryou - lives alone in a medium-sized apartment, appears to work a 9 - 5 schedule with occasional late nights.
• Imai Takeru - lives in a small two-story house by himself, has an unpredictable schedule.
• Shimoda Tsuki - lives alone in a small apartment with a lot of plants, works retail with varying shifts.
• Oota Saburo- lives in a medium-sized apartment with his wife and two young children, works a 9 - 5 schedule with frequent work trips.
• Maeda Shinnosuke - lives alone in a small, messy apartment, works construction (early mornings, long days.)
If your character is taking part in the surveillance of any of these people, please feel free to comment to the Cult Clues thread below with the name of the character they're watching, and the times that they're watching that character, in order to learn what they might see. (Note: surveillance doesn't have to take place only on the 18th. Characters can take part in watching the cult members at any time after Amaterasu's announcement on March 8.)

The Parade

At noon, the parade begins. Misfortune is still dogging the participants and the crowds around them, but it looks as though everything will go all right up until the final turn as the heavy, gilded shrine turns back towards the main temple building, tips, and slowly falls over sideways, straight for the crowd.

What's worse, when the shrine hits the ground, it cracks open -- and a huge, jellyfish-like ayakashi wearing a giant white mask with a single black eye inscribed on it heaves its way out and begins lashing its tentacles in every direction. People stung by the tentacles are driven into a furious frenzy, and fights are breaking out everywhere. Stop the humans from fighting, take care of the injured, and destroy the ayakashi before the situation gets any worse.

The Pursuit

In the middle of the fighting crowd, two white-robed shinki are chasing after a very average-looking salaryman in a tan coat. He doesn't seem to know that the shinki are chasing him, but he is moving fast, and they're in danger of losing track of him. They're calling out to any Far Shore denizen close enough to hear, shinki or god:

"Don't let that guy get away! He knows what happened!"

Anyone who has met or spent time staking out Mitsui Ryou will recognize him as the escaping salaryman. If your character takes part in the pursuit, please comment to the Cult Clues thread with a link to your thread - the character who successfully catches Mitsui will be determined by RNG on January 6, 2019.

In Summary:

• Attend the Sensou-ji festival
• Enjoy food and games
• Help Amaterasu's shinki stake out the cult
• Fight a masked ayakashi
• Have fun~

Comments

[onehandsomeslickninja]

As Edge's romantic choices will tell, he is perfectly capable of satisfying his masochism on his own. "Thread and sewing needles," he repeated with a nod. "Anything else?"

[nopixiedust]

"A way to make things start going right for once?" Annoying, Wendy waves her sewing needle around. "No, that's it. I won't say no to a snack or anything." She's pretty sure she's going to be stuck here for a while, after all.

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"I brought you that when I showed up to help!"

Even a smile at his expense was a smile. With a wave, Edge took off at a run, hurrying to seek out what she needed. He had his phone to guide him, so this wouldn't be too bad a task at all!

[nopixiedust]

"Less flirting, more fetching!" Wendy yells at his retreating back, which is either absentminded frustration having her not think over her words too carefully... or an entirely pointed jab. Who can tell! Wendy. Wendy could tell. But she's busy repairing clothes.

Hopefully that doesn't distract Edge too much. There's already enough bad luck wound up through the preparations that might distract him as it is.

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Edge didn't take too long to return.

He was muddy, his cape was soaked through and dripping with every step, he had a large and irritating scrape on one arm... Edge hadn't gotten distracted. But the task had been way, way more difficult that it had to be.

"Here," he said, too busy breathing hard to be over the top, as he held up a craft store bag.

[nopixiedust]

By the time he came back, well, Wendy had done her best to struggle through her own task, but a bunch of little things seemed to be dogging every bit of progress. She almost didn't hear Edge but, when his voice did finally get heard, she raised an eyebrow at the state he was in.

"Thanks," she said, accepting the bag, before quickly adding, "You look like rubbish. What happened?"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Falling objects, a crowd, a bicycle incident, kids not watching where they were going..." Get the picture? A lot of little disasters that had really added up. "What is WITH today?"

[nopixiedust]

"Ugh.... It's been a pain over here, too." Not nearly as bad but, then, Wendy hasn't wandered off to expose herself to more situations. Still, with the way he describes that... Digging through the bags, she frowns. "The way you talk about it reminds me of when that big store kept falling apart."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Big store did what now?" Edge dropped down next to Wendy to catch his metaphorical breath. He'd earned a moment's rest, hadn't he?

[nopixiedust]

Well, she won't complain about that when he looks like so much garbage. Instead, she just starts to thread her needle properly. "Yeah, it was one of those huge buildings that has dozens of different stores in it, and even food places... It was supposed to open, but everything that could go wrong seemed to be going wrong. The lights were going weird, things were falling apart... It was a mess. We got free things out of it because Heaven paid, but still..."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"And like when things were going all weird at the shrines at the beginning of the year?" He had been around for that one, and the memory made him frown. That did sound like a pattern, if this was the third occurrence of that sort of chaos.

[nopixiedust]

"That's right!" If her hands weren't full with sewing, Wendy would snap her fingers. "But at least during New Years, there were apparently those paper curses that were left around or something, right? I don't even know what you'd do that would affect, I don't know..." She huffs. "A whole street? Part of a street?"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Did we ever figure just what about those curses caused the problems? Was it the symbols themselves, or were they enchanted, or both...?" Edge knows nothing of such things. Not that he thinks Wendy does either, but she's in a better place to hear rumors and whatnot than he is.

[nopixiedust]

"I think... the symbols helped enchant the items, maybe?" Looping through the cloth again, she lets out a sigh. "I'm sure some of the people really digging into all of this cult business might know more. I mean, there are plenty of them, right? Or at least a good handful."

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Yeah, and they're right here to ask, too." Edge folded his hands behind his head and leaned back slightly, staring upwards. "Is it really so unlikely they dropped some symbols like that hidden around here?"

[nopixiedust]

Leaning over to stare down at him, Wendy raises an eyebrow. "It's probably really likely, in that case, but it's not like either of us know a lot about magic, do we?"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Edge quirked his eyebrows, hinting at the grin hidden behind his mask. "Well, I know ninjutsu, and you know bratjutsu, so we have a versatile and incredibly inapplicable breadth and depths of knowledge here."

[nopixiedust]

Wendy stares at him for a moment before very calmly putting down what she's repairing. With that out of the way and her guaranteed not to immediately stab herself, Wendy reaches down for his ribs to pinch down.

"Excuse me, do you want to repeat what sort of jutsu I know?"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Laughing, Edge swatted at her hand with no real force at all. "Bratjutsu! And such a high-level master of the art I've never seen before!"

[nopixiedust]

Alright, now she's not going for a pinch, but a sucker punch. "I'll show you Regretting Your Life Jutsu! Honestly, how could you say that about a cute girl like me!"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Ow! Ow!" Wendy was a surprisingly strong little thing! But even if that punch smarted, Edge still laughed all the harder. "It's a compliment and you know it!"

[nopixiedust]

"Who would take 'brat' as a compliment?" She'll go for one more strong punch, just to drive the message home. "I have a reputation, you know!"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Well, it's sure a lot better than 'good little girl, never caused any trouble!'" Edge, it seemed, might take 'brat' as a compliment. He at least liked Wendy.

[nopixiedust]

"Yeah, but then if people knew me by that, they'd underestimate me more!" Wendy pouts, unintentionally revealing more bratjutsu. "That's not a bad thing to have!"

[onehandsomeslickninja]

"Maybe, but it would require you to act like a good girl who never caused any trouble, right up until you revealed the truth," Edge said with a nod to punctuate just how good his point was. "And you'd hate that."