thenearshore | 36 - Dragon Dance

Entry tags:

36 - Dragon Dance

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

The Stakeouts

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.)

Cult Clues

The Parade

The Pursuit

Mitsui Ryou

Cult Clues

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~

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"Mm...I was considering cars because then it would be easy to move. A mobile curse of misfortune...of course, I'm not actually sure what goes into making such a curse, so I don't know if it's at all feasible to establish one in a car. But it certainly sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?"

He looks out over the festival. "Unfortunately, even if we rule out the sewers, that doesn't narrow down our search very much..."

"If it were the type of curse to bring misfortune, then that seems like it could affect the car as much as anything else..." Unless there was a way to somehow guard the vehicle from that even as it carried it? That sounds like it could be extraordinarily difficult... but maybe not impossible. Chikusa needs to do more research on that.

Huffing, Chikusa can't help but quietly agree with Komaeda on that. He sure as hell won't say it, but he does agree. "Even with the cultists that Heave knows, that's not all of them... and rental cars are a thing. And then there's everything else..." He lets out a long and slow exhale.

"If Heaven was so concerned, they should have had us scope things out prior to the actual festival..."

"The gods don't really seem to put much proper forethought into how trouble could be caused for themselves and the heavens, do they?" Komaeda says mildly. "I imagine if you or I were asked to consider ways in which the cult - or anyone else - might try to upset the course of heavenly events, we'd come up with so many possibilities and precautions to take against them that nothing could even happen in the heavens without months of careful planning and screening for any theoretical interference...but the old gods don't even seem to consider that something could go wrong at an event until, at most, a day or two before it actually happens. I wonder if they're just extremely ineffectual, or someone in the heavenly bureaucracy is actually leaving opportunities for things to go wrong?"

Sometimes, he really hates Komaeda, because he's very unfortunately intelligent. Of course, he finds it obvious how inept the old gods seem to be, but sometimes Chikusa wonders if most of the people on the Far Shore really think on the hows of their uselessness. The arrogance, the lack of foresight, the clear inability to discern the real threat because they're so used to their own idiocy... Komaeda is one of those people who's clearly put his weird way of thinking to work there, and it's unfortunately effective.

So, because he's a teenager like that, Chikusa merely eyes him for a moment in clear displeasure before huffing a little. Yeah, he's not going to argue with something that's clearly got a point, especially when it would be too much effort to argue in the first place.

"...Well. It's not as if there hasn't been any thought that there's a mole or traitor within Amaterasu's own temple. But that sort of territory... isn't where outsiders like us would be allowed. Yet clearly the old gods won't consider that sort of thing..." Oh, right. Komaeda wouldn't have been around for that, would he? The aftermath, maybe, but not the event itself. "Her temple has already been burned down once before... And the first started within the residence, far as I could tell."

"Ah, yes...that was before my time, but I've heard people talk about it. Whatever the cult is responsible for, it's clear that either they have agents within the heavens, they have a way to access the heavens themselves - which is a reasonable possibility, considering they managed to impose that forest of theirs on the heavens - or there are more conspirators against the heaven than just the cult. Of course, given the balance of probability, it's more reasonable to assume that all the trouble is coming from one group until we have reason to believe otherwise..."

Komaeda tilts his head. "I'm sure you've been gathering information, and you've been here longer than I have. Does anyone in the heavens strike you as particularly likely to be working with the cult? Or do you think it's someone inconspicuous enough that no one's paid them any attention? Amaterasu has so many shinki, after all; if one of them were with the cult, it would be hard to pick them out. I don't even know the identities of any of them..."

For a brief second, it almost seems as if Chikusa won't even bother answering Komaeda's question. Instead, his gaze wanders away, as if he's determined to forget Komaeda even has a presence in the world at all. Finally, however, his eyes wander back.

"...The old gods keep their distance, mostly. Fuujin seems to be too hotheaded an idiot for being a mole... but I can't speak for any of her other advisers on the god end. And learning about her shinki... would mean having access to them. Or being able to dig into what they're all like and what their names are... but doing that would take forever, assuming they'd allow us to get so close in the first place... People like them would probably take it as an insult, wouldn't they...? From the bottom to the top."

"Do you think Fuujin could be acting?" Komaeda asks thoughtfully. "After all, the best cover for being a traitor would be to appear too foolish or impatient to ever be successful at it...but that's just a guess, and there's no way to prove it one way or the other."

Komaeda crosses his arms, idly drumming the fingers of one hand against his jacket. "I wonder what it must be like, to have as many shinki as Amaterasu has. To feel the emotions of dozens, maybe hundreds of shinki all at the same time...to run the risk of being blighted in so many directions at once..." He tilts his head slightly. "I wonder if even Amaterasu herself is able to keep them all straight. Surely when you have so many bonds, there's an upper limit to how much a god can make sense of within their own head."

"Who knows." The answer comes out blunt and simply. Chikusa doesn't even bother to roll his shoulders in a shrug; it would be a waste of energy. "I'm not the kind of person who can recognize that sort of thing." What pride Chikusa has is in things he can learn academically: poisons, first aid, infiltration, shinki magic. People, however, have mostly eluded him save for things that directly threaten him, such as killing intent.

Deep down, it's honestly an issue of not knowing and not wanting to connect with people to such an extent. It's easier on his end if he can think of them carelessly, just in case he has to murder a person himself. So even if he can theoretically understand such things as "why a person would do this based on their emotions", well. It never quite sticks.

Still, now they're getting into more metaphysical conversation topics... "And shinki only blight their god if they feel guilt..." Says the person guaranteed to very rarely blight his god from that sort of thing. It's why he can be so confident in his next words. "If they don't feel guilt for possibly going against her, then she might never realize there's a traitor. Ah, but that kind of thing can be troublesome... So many people working alongside one another, that leaves more chances to be found out..."

"Oh, I wasn't suggesting they were blighting her," Komaeda says with a light chuckle. "I was just musing that gods with so many shinki have to worry about things we new gods never do...but I do think that if one of her shinki was a traitor, at the very least the nerves of living a double life and the anxiety of potentially getting caught would be strong enough to register with Amaterasu. It's just a question of whether she could actually pin down who it was among her shinki that felt that, when she has so many bonds to keep straight. I don't think any of us new gods have anywhere near as many shinki, so we don't really know firsthand how it works."

He folds his arms, drumming his fingers idly against one elbow. "Logically, though, it only makes sense to assume there's a traitor among her shinki. There are so many of them that statistically it's likely, and of course Amaterasu's shinki have incredible freedom in the Far Shore. It's easy for them to come and go anywhere they please, no one questions their presence, and there are so many of them that any one person among them is rendered effectively anonymous unless they have some reason to stand out...and, of course, without knowing who specifically to look for, it's almost impossible to narrow down suspects or track their movements effectively. It's frustrating...and I'm sure Amaterasu wouldn't welcome anyone questioning or doubting them."

"That's making assumptions..." It's Argue With Komaeda time. In other words, a time that most people experience with Komaeda, probably. Chikusa isn't entirely sure he has the energy for that kind of experience on the regular, but he guesses he's fallen into this rabbit hole now. Time will tell if he can drag himself out of it.

...Well, he could always just walk away from him but still.

"A normal person might experience that sort of thing... But for someone who's already made the decision to go against their god and bring down all of Heaven, regardless of who gets caught in the cross airs... Can they really be called normal, or feel anxiety in a normal way, even with all that pressure?" Chikusa says it all as someone who wouldn't be the type to feel that kind of anxiety himself. Humans, dead or not, can be extraordinarily fucked up.

...Although he lets out a breath. "...But they'd definitely throw a fit... if we made that kind of suggestion. Heaven is always right... and all that."

"Well, it's impossible to theorize without making some assumptions," Komaeda replies mildly. "Especially when we know so very little for sure...and in any case, what I'm assuming is a moot point anyway, isn't it? Since I was wondering if Amaterasu would be able to pinpoint such feelings even if they did exist, so I don't think we could narrow the suspects down like that either way..."

He folds his arms. "And, of course, it's just as you say...Amaterasu, and the old gods in general, won't cooperate with us. Whether they truly believe they're faultless, or they're simply afraid of being found to be fallible in any way, or they're deliberately hiding something, they still won't want us to investigate..."

He smiles, and there's something a touch cold and chilling about it. "So I suppose if we want anything accomplished on that front, we'd have to do it without their permission."

How annoying. When it comes to this sort of thing... They're really alike in how ruthless they can be. Chikusa eyes Komaeda a little bit, not because of any suspicion on what that expression on the other's face could possibly mean or how dark it sounds, but because he doesn't like being considered similar to someone like this.

Which probably says something about himself, but Chikusa isn't going to start self-reflecting on that shit.

"Investigating them is going to be a struggle," he says after a moment, words leaving him slowly and carefully. "Especially after that arson which took out her temple... Their guard is going to be up after that, even if they're entirely innocent... Which makes me wonder if that was the point." Making their companions solidify the walls against outsiders, as it were, which means enemies and potential independent investigators alike... which is a problem when the call is coming from inside the house.

"If anyone starts nosing about, then word could spread inside Amaterasu's lot, and that could reach the hypothetical mole."

"Well, I suppose it's getting ahead of ourselves to suggest that we may be able to spy on them in such a way that we can't be detected, considering they have more experience with the heavens and the powers we have at our disposal than we do..." Komaeda taps a finger against his cheek. "But that still does only apply if we are detected, and they work out what we're trying to achieve."

He smiles slightly. "But also, would their realizing that we suspect one of them be such a bad thing? After all, if being observed by us alarmed one of her shinki enough that they would change their behavior in some way...wouldn't that be telling in itself? We might even provoke an emotional response Amaterasu could sense, if we were really lucky...

"And either way, how could the gods complain? At the very worst, they would view our efforts as being wasted. But unless they can prove the innocence of all of Amaterasu's shinki, surely they can't object to harmless observation in the form of a private investigation...especially if they don't believe Amaterasu and her shinki have anything to hide. They surely don't consider us above suspicion."

Interesting... Unfortunately. It's starting to feel like Komaeda might be something useful, despite how much distaste Chikua has for the man. Well, he guesses he'll have to deal with it.

He's pretty sure it's not the first time he's had to.

"So what you're saying... is that we should increase the pressure on her shinki until their emotions or actions become too much for even the god to ignore. And that the gods should have nothing to say on that... Because we'd only be observing, and that's nothing big... So long as supposedly innocent parties are truly innocent." Just to get it all out there in the open for the two of them.

"We'll need a unified group effort for something like that..."

"Well, I wasn't saying we should, necessarily, so much as that it might naturally happen in the course of investigating," Komaeda demurs, with a light laugh. "But there's no guarantee, after all. The traitor might be a cool customer who can play it off, so there's no point making it our plan of attack to pressure them into tipping off Amaterasu. We can simply observe - and if our suspect starts to realize they're being watched, and if they crack under the pressure, that will be a convenient bonus for us." He smiles brightly at Chikusa. "Other than that, though, you've got it!

"And we probably would need quite a group to coordinate. But is it so unreasonable to think we may be able to put one together? Finding new gods and shinki who are suspicious of, not to mention disillusioned and impatient with, the old gods...you likely can't throw a stone in the heavens without hitting one."

"That's not wrong..." Chikusa, after all, lives in a temple that is full of nothing but people who distrust authority figures just as a rule of thumb. Heaven's stubbornness and ineptitude, at least so much as they see it, only reinforces the feelings which were already there.

"But getting people to cooperate... And getting them to share their information regularly in case they suddenly disappear.. That's the more difficult part."

"That's certainly true...and it won't be easy to pool that information in any case. We'd need to take precautions that our actions couldn't be misconstrued as some sort of offense to Amaterasu or her shinki...which, I think, would either call for total transparency or total secrecy. Secrecy is obvious enough; no one can take offense at us spying on her shinki, looking for the traitor, if no one knows we're doing it. Transparency would be if we openly stated our intentions to monitor her shinki, if not actively sought her permission to do so. At worst, we'd be accused of not trusting her word or the word of her shinki, or she'd feel like we're wasting our time...but considering there's a traitor in the heavens, it should be reasonable enough to argue that trust is a luxury we can't afford, and that guaranteeing what we've been told is simply a precaution. There's a possibility she'll be unreasonable about it, but public opinion may pressure her to comply.

"But whether we operate in secrecy or in public, we won't be able to use the network to coordinate. We can't guarantee who has access to what messages, after all...so we'd have to meet in person to exchange information. And such gatherings, especially if we're operating in secret, could be misconstrued as some sort of conspiracy on our parts..."

He shakes his head. "You're right; it's going to be very difficult."

"People are such a nuisance..." Yes, because that's clearly the problem here. Chikusa is pretty sure he's not wrong, on some level. Whatever bullshit Heaven might feed itself, they're still people in the end... and still corrupt, as far as he's concerned. So all of this is mostly their fault to begin with. Sighing, he starts to turn away.

"It'd be easier if we could figure out how they have their network system set up here... It reaches further than regular human technology..."

"That would certainly be convenient," Komaeda agrees, with a chuckle. "But we can be sure they won't tell us, right? And to be fair, I don't know if they'd be wrong that letting the new gods and shinki have a way of privately communicating en masse is a bad idea...the divide, and the distrust, between the old and the new in the heavens is only growing. I'm not sure an echo chamber where we can vent and share our frustrations with the old gods without reserve wouldn't sow the seeds of some kind of outright rebellion. And as satisfying and exciting as that would be in the short term, I'm not sure that any kind of rebellion against the old gods would be a good idea just yet..."

He presses his fingertips together thoughtfully. "I wonder if any of the new gods or their shinki have powers that would allow us to pass messages between ourselves more effectively?" He pauses, tilting his head. "You know, entirely aside from all this, knowing what our fellow gods and shinki can do in terms of what powers they have might not be a bad thing...I'm sure some abilities could be enhanced by using them in combination with others, for instance. But I don't think I know the special powers of any gods or shinki outside of my own and my shinki's..."

"I don't see how much different that is between now..." Chikusa rolls his neck a little bit, feeling out the various cracks that happen as a natural consequence of horrible fucking posture. "But I guess the rare few times the old guard use the network... That's enough to deter some people." Granted, Chikusa isn't one of those people, having said in public earshot of Amaterasu's shinki that he thinks they're worthless, but, well.

Some people care a little more about authority figures.

"As for other gods... Who knows? You could ask people about that kind of thing... but there are a lot of people who won't give away that kind of information for free so easily, even if there were benefits..."

Says a similar kind of person.

"Well, it's not like we can make people share information, or stop them from pursuing separate lines of inquiry on their own..." says Komaeda, who has definitely been that kind of person himself in the past. Really, he and Chikusa definitely have some things in common. "But it's nonetheless a fact that all of us new gods and shinki are in the same boat, no matter what our personal desires or motives are. Anything that helps us figure out how we got here or who's attacking us ultimately benefits all of us. It's probably too much to expect that everyone will appreciate that, but...what else can we do but make that kind of appeal, and give those with the inclination to share the opportunity?"

"...I mean, we could definitely do some things, but apparently people frown upon those methods." And torture doesn't really lend itself well to cooperation anyway. Genuine cooperation. "Think you have enough charisma to make that appeal...?"

The way Chikusa slowly looks over Komaeda says he sure as hell doubts it.

Komaeda laughs outright in such a way that it's obvious he's not that delusional. "Oh, no! People don't tend to like me much. I more meant it as a group appeal, or an appeal to common sense or our shared interest...though if it came down to needing to have someone present the idea, I suppose a well-respected or charismatic spokesperson would be best. Or, at the very least, someone well-known in the heavens..."

Truth be told, the first person who comes to mind for Komaeda is Hakkai. ~~A shame that complications are such that the idea isn't feasible.~~

Having actually lived with Cho Hakkai for any extent of time, that in fact isn't the first person Chikusa thinks of. Instead, his mind idly wanders until he makes a faint noise of idea. "It should be a girl."

...Sure a suggestion there.

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36 - Dragon Dance

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