641/Inner Conflict: Body Paint

Inner Conflict: Body Paint
Date of Scene:	24 October 2023
Location:	Juuban Ward
Synopsis:	Youkai Watch gets a live-action adaptation! Wait, no! Paranormal activity is on the rise, and lives are starting to be endangered by the fear-stoking antics of the spirits. A clue to their motives and the cause of their sudden appearance in Tokyo is found!
Cast of Characters:	Pyrite, Amanda Faust, Veronica Perenna, Mamoru Chiba
Tinyplot:	Inner Conflict

---

Pyrite has posed:
    What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
    A baboon youkai looks directly into the camera. "Me shoot a man in Vegas once, just to watch him bleed, and also for Klondike Bar!" The Hihi youkai grabs onto the camera and presses its face right up close. "ME KILL ALL LIFE IN UNIVERSE FOR YUMMY CHOCOLATE CREAMS!"
    And now, back to our scene.
    The reports of strange occurrences are on the rise. Rationalizations, memory loss or alteration, even physical evidence vanishing, are all elements of the Veil, including a simple failure to perceive things entirely. So when there are rumors, stories, and official reports piling up that specifically and consistently name spirits, monsters, and youkai as the culprits or involved in some way, that means the situation is BAD.
    It takes an enormous, overwhelming amount of evidence for someone without Veil Sight to gain and retain an awareness of magic in any capacity. But youkai aren't, strictly speaking, magic. They are the native spirits of Japan. They are, in many ways, creatures of nature itself. So, like ghosts, though memories may grow foggy over time, at least for the span of life that their existences overlap, they can be as real as any person met on the street.
    But they will still be forgotten eventually.
    Not, however, if they are constantly asserting their presence and reminding people that they are there.
    Juuban Ward seems to be a focal point for youkai activity. All sorts of mythological creatures of folklore have been sighted, and even some more modern urban legends are starting to manifest, feeding on the attention and fear of humanity.
    It's night, and many of the hauntings or incidents or attacks or whatever this falls under have occurred at this time, in this neighborhood, here in Juuban. It is, not coincidentally at all, a short distance from the hidden path to the Forgotten District, which was once part of Juuban and is now swallowed up by the Veil and the ghosts that inhabit it.
    These are probably very strongly related.
    There is, right now, wandering in the Dark Energy that floats about like rolling fog banks, a child in an old conical straw hat and shabby kimono... A monk in training? He appears to be carrying a block of tofu. Also, he beneath his hat is a single large eye in the middle of his forehead. He is going about his business and aside from his startling appearance is causing no trouble. But there's more where he came from.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Well, *something* is up, with all these reports of the supernatural. Amy's gonna wander around looking for weirdness. She's not transformed, presently, just wandering around as a civilian. ...It's so strange, for her. She's so used to always being *going* somewhere. If not to her computer or to work or to class, some social event or hunting a witch. It's... strange. To feel okay just being out and about in the evening.

    It's also strange to see a one-eyed child. She'll approach, waving. "Hey there! Um. Excuse me... Can I talk to you?"

Veronica Perenna has posed:
Veronica had been checking nonstop for any clue as to what the strange pilgrimage her spell accidentally uncovered. Emery has been meowing nonstop that day when she came home as if she had perceived something unnatural too and was worried about when the brunette would come back. Hopefully her roommate hadn't been too annoyed by the noises.

Veronica spent the next half an hour that day calming down her cat, and after a good amounts of pettings and toys, Emery has finally gotten distracted enough to appear more relaxed.

That said, with incidents at Juuban Ward on the rise, trying to move in the same direction as those ghosts is a good idea as any. The Phantom Thief is cutting through the night from building to building parallel to where she remembered the procession going, when a side glance makes her notice a small monk figure and the red magical girl she met at the shrine.

A single individual dressed as a monk was interesting enough to be investigated on its own in the dead of the night, but two of them, and the redhead being a classmate from the school? WHat could Faust-senpai possibly be doing here?

With a single jump, the Princess of Sarek is in front of the duo, and bows as she usually does towards them. "Hello, friends, the Princess of Sarek at your service. Is something special going on?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Floating in midair above the rolling fog-bank dark energy streets, a tall caped figure watches the youkai interacting with the mundane world below. He turns partway, looking toward the Forgotten District and the top of its hill, where his ghost sister still won't let him enter the shrine-- and he frowns when he hears a girl talking in the street-- and then the Princess of Sarek, who he's opposed once and vaguely teamed up with a different time. She's the one who revealed the parade of spirits the night he acquired a bakeneko for his sister to befriend.

He doesn't actually approach, instead waiting, above, to see what happens.

Pyrite has posed:
    Hitotsume-kozou is the name for this type of youkai. Harmless, but can be very surprising. A normal person encountering this child by surprise might be frightened, but... You know. Neither the Princess of Sarek or Amy Faust are normal. Even so, it may be a bit odd, when a scratchy high-pitched, child voice calls out when initially stopped, "Whaaaaat?"
    When the Princess joins in to ask what's going on, the little youkai just says, "I'm outta' here!" and rolls himself up like a wall scroll, only to disappear when he reaches the top. The tofu goes with him. Aw, man! Oh, but what's this? The sound of a car's wheels screeching can be heard clearly in the quiet of night. The increasingly loud noise of the engine as it speeds at far beyond 'illegal' turns into the visual of the car taking a turn so badly that it drives up onto a lawn outside of an apartment building, fishtailing as it tries to get back onto the street. Then, speeding again! Is it a car youkai??
    No.
    A large dark shape, loping along, looking like a huge black dog, comes speeding along after the car. Despite the automobile and its wide-eyed, white-knuckled driver going approaching 120 kmph in a residential area, the dog-thing quickly matches pace with it, and then overtakes the car, with relative ease. The dog thing may be passing by on the other side of the street, but when it looks back at the duo on the sidewalk, it clearly has a bizarrely deformed human face.
    The terrified driver screeches to a halt, going so fast that it takes several seconds to actually stop after slamming on the breaks, and leaving burnt rubber in a trail behind them, to stop a few meters beyond the Puella Magi and the Magical Girl. He's still holding onto his steering wheel for dear life as he watches the Jinmenken run off down the street and vanish around a corner.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy blinks. Jumping back slightly and staring as the kid rolls up and disappears. Oooooo-kay. And then she hears the car, and turns, and transforms, rushing over to intercept the dog, but it's run off. "Uggggh. How do I find a youkai that will *talk* to me about whatever's going on?!"

    She turns back towards Veronica and shrugs before walking back over to her. "I just want to find out why there are... why are there actual youkai running around? What is going on? Do you know?"

Veronica Perenna has posed:
Well, another spirit, the single eye looking back to the Princess of Sarek confirms. "Would you know anything..." Aaannnd he is gone. So much for this being a good opportunity. The Phantom Thief shrugs before looking back at Amy.

Faust-senpai, it wouldn't do to..." she starts saying, etiquette taking a precedence even over the fact she was in the wrong guise for it. She intends to hopefully lead her away when the rumor of brakes distracts the Princess of Sarek from ending the sentence, her first instinct to grab Amy and jump out of the way.

But the redhead's transformation is faster than her, so she is left grasping at the night air, impusively turning ethereal to avoid the impact of the speeding car, vanishing like the breeze in the cold of the night, not having noticed the dog chasing after it. The concern is useless though, since the car avoids the spot she is at, leaving her with nothing to do but reappear again with a sigh.

"Red-senpai", she tentatively tries, still adhering to form, "I do not know much about what is going on, but it seems they are all headed in the same direction. They were being concealed by dark energy on another night. I don't know why they appeared so blatantly all of a sudden."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The car wildly veers every which way and Hematite's prepared to do some wild teleport tricks to get it to avoid crashing into any apartments or houses -- but he doesn't have to. The dog, he kind of wants to ride down the street, but it's moving a lot faster than he is; he probably can't catch up in time except for more teleport tricks, and there are more pressing things that take his attention.

Like the girl transforming in front of him. Faust-senpai? Is the Puella they've been...

Hematite drops down from the sky just out of the reach of the Princess of Sarek's cane (he doesn't want to get slugged with it) and says, utterly without preamble, "The barrier between worlds is thinning, especially here, approaching the equinox. There's a former kami that wants to take over as goddess of the dead, from what I've been told." He flips his cape back. "Not entirely sure how the two are related, but since it got my sister a bakeneko to make friends with, I can't be too angry about it."

He goes over to the car and knocks on the window. "Do you need an ambulance, sir?"

Pyrite has posed:
    The driver takes a bit of prodding to snap out of his terrified trance-like state as he keeps staring in the direction the man-face dog went, but lets out a startled yell and turns to blink rapidly at the man outside his window. He doesn't really seem to be parsing the words said to him, but when he realizes how much his hands are hurting, he turns off his car, lets go of the steering wheel and shakily emerges from his vehicle. "I th-think that might be... Best." He can barely stand, the poor guy.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    All headed in the same direction? "I guess we see what's drawing them, then." Red replies. She blinks at Hematite. So this is related to... But there are bigger questions. "Hang on, what other world *is* there? You're saying there's really a spirit realm full of Youkai and... and fairies and who knows what?!" She slumps. "...Oh my god, how much do I *not* know about the world... This all should be impossible... were any of my science classes true?" Amy, technology and computers work! But she's having a moment as it hits her, again, just how far this magic stuff goes.

Veronica Perenna has posed:
Oh, hey, it's that guy, the one who adopted the bakeneko. "Hello, short time no see", she winks at him. "How is the kitty? Did she get used to your home?" She really wants to know how the kitty is doing, yes.

Now, a former kami, is it? That should mean both deity and spirit, right? Though, she is a former one, so it should be taken as deity, she thinks. At least she can postpone fighting a honest-to-huh, god deity for a bit longer. If they interrupt the plan of this spirit at least

."If this former kami is responsible for the bakeneko, that makes her likely responsible for the assaults of the other youkai, right?" she observes staring up at Hematite with an antagonistic expression. Why does he speak like that is not a problem? "Is there a way we can stop her?" she asks then.

Then Amy gets focused on the dynamics of another world. Should she tell her she caught a glimpse of one? Heh, it probably wouldn't hurt. "Red-senpai, if It helps, I got a peek at another world once. It was like a verdant wood full of flowers and rigorous plants and a huge wall of stone, but it was empty besides that."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"All right," says Hematite to the guy, then gently turns him back and says, "We'll get emergency services for you. Lean on your car, and if you start feeling faint, sit down on the ground. I'm afraid I didn't get the license number on that truck. It was really out of control, going so fast like that..."

He takes out a burner phone and hands it to Veronica. "I'm literally a villain. At least I didn't cause this. Here, call emergency services. He was run off the road by a speeding truck. It's a good thing it's nighttime and most people were off the streets. The closest intersections are..." He checks, then says what they are. "The bakeneko's doing well, though. She's got lots of fish. The rest of the problem? I don't know what to do about it and I have other things to worry about."

Then Hematite looks down at Amy and purses his lips. "Can't relate. I've been able to see ghosts for as long as I can remember. Maybe help this guy and then do some yokai-investigating. Call a shrine maiden or something. Why do I have to tell you this?"

He's being a jerk, but there's a lot of dark energy around.

Pyrite has posed:
    Middle-aged Driver-san nods in agreement, though he looks very confused at the explanation he is given of a truck... But he also doesn't want to seem crazy by bringing up what he saw, and... And maybe he really did just see something else. Yeah, that's the ticket.
    As he leans against his car, shivering all over, he really hopes he isn't going to see that thing in his dreams tonight. He never wants to see something like that again.
    Just as he thinks that, he looks off into the distance. He freezes.
    There's a bouzu behind a window in a house across from him. A little hand-crafted ghost, for scaring away the rain. But it's about a meter tall. And it's looking at him. He swallows hard, and raises a hand slowly to point, afraid to take his eyes off of it. "E-excu--" he starts, his eyes flicking away for just a moment to the two girls and the argument he isn't following at all. When he looks back he screams at the top of his lungs.
    The Bouzu is standing on the sidewalk right to the side of the Princess of Sarek.
    It's taller now.
    About 2 or 3 meters.
    But as the poor man looks upwards, instinctively, to find the Bouzu's face and gauge its exact height, he finds himself looking up and up and up and up and--
    He passes out.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "Assaults?" Amy echoes. "Have there been any actual *attacks*? Like yeah the dog-thing was chasing a car but it didn't *do* anything. Or are people just scared because they've never seen magic before?" She looks in the direction the dog-thing ran. "...How are they not curious? If magic is real, that means so much is possible... wouldn't you want to understand it...?"

    Amy stares at her. "*Another world*. You saw?! Are there more???" Why yes she *did* watch Stargate SG-1 growing up!

    She looks to Hematite. "I don't know any shrine maidens! And after the last kitsune I saw I'm kind of concerned about leaving an offering and hoping I get someone to talk to."

    And then there's a teru-teru bouzu only big. "Huh. Is that how big real teru-teru bouzo are? Hey there, I--" And soon she's looking up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and she closes her eyes and puts a hand over her eyes. Okay. It's a yokai, not a kaiju, regardless of what she just *saw*, right? "Hey um. Do you talk?"

Veronica Perenna has posed:
"I only know it was another world because there was this sense of extraordinary distance", she explains. "That's all I saw, and I think that world was more of a prison. Again, this weird impression that was part of the vision."

Veronica looks at Hematite for a second before saying "Congratulations on your manners then". Then she takes care of contacting the emergency services for this guy before quickly pushing her phone into her hat instead of giving it back. He just admitted he is a villain. Who knows who he has called.

She gives him a challenging glance before she notices Amy looking at something. "What's wrong?", she asks before she too looks up and up and up and...

She turns her gaze away from the huge youkai with the same realisation as Amy before repeating the gist of what the Puella Magi has just said. "Hello, are you here for something?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Some people have the sense to be afraid," Hematite tells Amy, more than a little exasperated. "Not because it's magic, but because it's dangerous. If you're not going to read up on the culture of the country you're in, know that you shouldn't judge by your culture's standards. I cannot believe... hhhh." He gives Veronica an equally annoyed look. "Phone thief's your new name. Enjoy it, it was about two thousand yen."

He doesn't look up.

He just steps away into nothingness, teleporting out.

Pyrite has posed:
    The Nyuudo-Bouzo makes creaking sounds as it leans back and forth in place, like a tree in the wind, only it's not a tree, and its branches are long, long, long arms that end in rough hands like the mouths of bulldozers thanks to all the height it has been given. When questioned on if it can talk, it is silent for quite some time, before eventually letting out a low, deep, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooo..." Well, it can talk, but perhaps it means it is unwilling or there is a scheduling conflict of some kin--
    "MAAAAARRRCHHHHhhhhhh..." the Nyuudo-Bouzu replies to the Princess of Sarek. Then it turns, and begins walking away, continuing to grow as it does so if people look up, but otherwise gradually shrinking the further away it gets, until it's just a meter-tall little white sheet with black eyes drawn on, toddling its way down the sidewalk. All in the same direction. Hey, what's in that direction anyway? Not the Forgotten District.
    Where else could be spiritually significant enough?
    Questions to ponder on at another time, when EMS isn't on the way.
    At least no one got hurt!

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "I'm sorry! I've read a lot, but I confess I don't know about *every* mythological creature from here, just several of them! ...S'not my culture's standards either. People back home would just be scared, too."

    March? "What?" It goes... that way, when she dares peek and tries to only glance at it briefly.

    She turns to the princess. "Do *you* wanna talk to emergency services? I don't. I'm a bad liar, and I can't tell them the truth."

Veronica Perenna has posed:
"I don't know about it either, not my area of expertise", she says, before shrugging and detransforming with a flash.

"I would have felt rude if I were the only one knowing your identity", she explains. "And I can check my phone now. A quick search of youkai march later: "I found this Hiakki Yagyo, either a parade or a riot of 100 demons. That's gonna be a lot to deal with", Veronica bites her lips pensively.

And how is that prospective goddess going to use it to her advantage?