Public Neo-Shogun Camp.

Yasu didn't seem like she was terribly fond of talking to men. That aside, she was apparently even more bothered by the silence as DragonierMan continued washing her back. "You're lucky I'm the hardened general that I am, DragonierMan. A lesser woman like Dee would have certainly objected to this scrubbing by now," she warned him, pointing out the inherit strength of his arms.

As she spoke, the soft patter of feet signaled Hime's return. "Have you two bonded a little while I was gone?" she asked, peeking her robed body back in through the hole. Seeing the two of them so close, she was unable to stop her mouth from conveying her surprise. "To think, the two of you were that close!"

"This dragon is ignorant of rules or manners. He asserts himself wherever he pleases," Yasu grumbled, hunching forward to hide her face from the NS patron and cross her arms upon the rocks. Unfortunately, this made it somewhat hard for DragonierMan to reach the upper part of her back.

"My business concluded, thus, I've returned. Do you have other questions you'd like answered, DragonierMan?" Hime asked, sitting at the side of the bath near the two. DragonierMan noticed that Yasu made no particular attempt to hide her front from the patron. Hime seemed to have no intention of getting in the bath.

---------------------------------

Dee came back out from the building, kicking a rock with her boot as she left the gate. Pressing one fist to her head and sticking out her tongue like a child, she indicated that she'd made a mistake. "Ho ho ho! I've made a fool of myself. The Shogun really was there, alone in meditation. He sounded a little aggravated with me," she laughed awkwardly.

Strangely enough, she didn't mention anything about him being in bad health, nor being guarded by soldiers.

~DragonierMan~

When Hime returned and the two girls talked, DragonierMan stepped back from Yasu, and began running the cloth about his own body. He might as well get clean now that he was in the bath water. He dipped the cloth in the hot spring as he spoke, "Well that didn't take long." He ran the cloth up his chest and under an arm. Hime was only gone for a few minutes it seemed. "Might I ask why you are back so soon? Run into any problems, or was it a cake walk?" he asked Hime before he ducked back into the water. He emerged moments later, flinging his head back, letting his wet mane flail wildly behind him.

~Magistrate~

The navi emerged from the bushes as Dee approached. Coming into view, the program began to write in the air, {What have you discovered?} it asked unhurried. Already Magistrate had gleaned a bit of useful data. Either Dee could not retain her invisibility for a long period of time, she was not very stealthy, or the Shogun was capable of seeing through such tricks. However, the questions remained as to what was going on while the Shogun 'meditated' and where did Hime go during her brief absence?

"Well, I am curious as to why Yasu lied to me. Either the Shogun got better faster than she anticipated or he was never sick at all. There were no guards, just him sitting there in silent meditation. Honestly, he noticed me when I got too close," the blue-clad general laughed, fanning herself as she spoke. It seemed about as Magistrate had most likely inferred without revealing much new information.

"Well, all we can do now is wait for dragon boy to quit splish splashing in the bath and make his report," she yawned, sitting back down in the bushes with her legs folded beneath her.

------------------------

Yasu eyed DragonierMan, lowering her eyebrows critically. "You would use that same cloth to wash your own body? Dragons are clearly educated in neither manners nor hygiene," she sighed.

"Yes, I-" Hime started, but shut her mouth as DragonierMan disappeared beneath the water. Once he had come back up, she cleared her throat and began again. "Yes, the business concluded quickly. I simply had to check on a situation, playing my usual role as observer," she chuckled. "Is that the only question you've managed to come up with in my absence, DragonierMan?"

~Magistrate~

{I can fill you in, in his absence.} the scrawling holographic letters appeared again in front of Magistrate. The program outlined that Yasu uses the bath house during the time it is 'shut down for cleaning.' DragonierMan had met this 'white-robed' individual, and this individual has been seen moving about the camp, even meeting with Yasu in the bath house for business reasons, but was not responsible for any problems the camp has endured thus far. Magistrate did not elaborate on who the 'white-robed' individual was, beyond the fact that this person remain a secret by the Shogun's orders.

~DragonierMan~

"I'm not an interrogator," DragonierMan said as he moved to the side of the bath and dropped the used rag on the tile edge. "I've learned all I care for the moment," he finished as he waded through the water toward his pile of clothing. As vulgar as before, and with his back to the ladies, he fished himself out of the water, totally naked. His sculpted buttocks on full display, they might have even gotten a glimpse of the dangly as he grabbed up his man-bikini and put it on. He had no shame.

"If you want to tell me more, we'll set up a time somewhere else." The smirk reappeared as he said that. He moved relatively quickly to retrieve his belongings, as if he had somewhere to be. It did not take him long to become fully dressed. Well, at least as fully dressed as the skimpy uniform allowed.
"Now if you'll excuse me," he said with a bow before heading for the front door and stopping just shy of the entrance, "I am clean and have monsters to slay." Then he was gone.

He emerged from the bath house with a smile on his face and a whistle on his lips. Though he couldn't really whistle, and so it came out as puffs of air and shrill cheeps. He passed right by the bushes as he began his trek back to their starting tent.

"We've learned more than I realized! How interesting..." Dee mused, pressing her fist to her chin pensively. "Let's put all of our thoughts together once DragonierMan returns to us."

---------------

Hime turned the other way as DragonierMan exited the bath, meaning to be respectful. "Ahem hm! Yes, that's quite alright. I hope that what I've told you will be sufficient. Go and do the work of our Lord-" she started, but Yasu interrupted.

"Do you even realize what a great honor Hime has done by granting you this audience?! Despite her graciousness, you have seen fit to make outrageous demands, shrug off the opportunities she presents you, and now you show her this indecent display!" Yasu raged, grabbing up her towel and following DragonierMan out of the bath. "I will not allow you to continue this brazen disrespect towards such an important and admirable figure!"

"I'm not offended. I told him to disregard rank, after all," Hime sighed. "Yasu, you should not get so worked up about behaviors that differ from your own."

"I simply cannot accept that this man is so ignorant as to show that... the very symbol of incompetence... to you!" she continued, clenching her fists at her sides. DragonierMan could only assume she meant his "dangly." "DragonierMan, mark my words! If you want to be fit to serve our Shogun, you must get a leash on that grotesque appendage, the curse that marks all of your gender!"

She made no effort to follow DragonierMan out of the bathhouse. "And if you're going to intrude upon my bath, the least you could do is get it up!" she grumbled to herself, crossing her arms and returning to the water.

----------------------

Dee waved at DragonierMan from the bush, but luckily, before she could call out, she noticed that he was walking straight towards the exit. She quickly picked up that he must intend to speak further from the bathhouse, somewhere that would not reveal her presence.

Scurrying out quickly, she headed for the gate, keeping excitedly beside him. When she finally got outside, she grinned, clasping one gloved hand onto his. "Very good, you escaped! Now, are you ready to try to put together our mysteries? Please explain them to me, one by one!" the sorceress whispered, giddy with anticipation. She seemed excited to hear it from him, even though Magistrate had more or less explained it already. "I'd like to hear your insight as well; speculations, that is, if you can tie these occurances together!"

Magistrate, in the bushes, made some mental notes about how Yasu reacted during the whole event. Especially her physical reactions. There was definitely more going on under the skin that betrayed hidden truths about her.

DragonierMan on the other hand, didn't seem to care as Yasu chewed him out, walking briskly away from the bath house and toward the outskirts of the camp. His ears twitched slightly as Yasu mumbled and a sly grin formed on his face before Yasu retreated back into the bath and away from both hearing and view. But he was snapped out of his reverie as Dee catted up beside him. He kept his smirk as he turned around the corner of a tent and came to a halt, pulling Dee with him and pushing her gently up against the wall.

"Hmm?" he purred as he put one hand above her head on the wall and leaned his body toward hers, bringing his face close enough that she could feel his breath tickling her skin. His gray eyes bore into hers like two pools of clouded water, as hypnotizing as a lava lamp. "Perhaps I will, once you give me a little something." He brought his other hand up and cupped her chin and made to bring her into a kiss, drawing together...

Then stopped short of their lips touching. "What did you learn while I was busy?" he asked as he drew a circle around her chin with his thumb. Even though his strong fingers held her loosely, she wasn't able to turn her head much without some effort. DragonierMan held her like that as he listened to her recount the day's events. His eyes watching her all the while, soaking up nuances of expression. When she finished, he released her and backed up a little, giving her some space to cool down.

"Well, I'm pretty certain that the white-robed woman I met in the bath house with Yasu is the one that most of these mysteries revolve around," he said as he crossed his arms across his chest. "She seems to have much invested in the Shogunate and moves about the camp just to watch our progress. Accidents happen. And when they do, and she is around, since she is quite the unknown, she gets some of the blame. The maintenance of the bath house is just an excuse for Yasu to have private meetings with her away from prying eyes. I don't think we have much to worry from her," he finished with his smug grin.

Magistrate, meanwhile, was no where to be seen. The androgynous program probably left the camp after Dee and DragonierMan disappeared behind a tent.

Dee gasped as DragonierMan took her aside, pressing her curves up against the wall in kind and then regaining her composure. With a challenging smile, she raised one eyebrow and kept her ally's eyes. "Something's got you frisky, Recruit. Are you really so excited about simple mysteries, I wonder?" she asked in a mocking tone. "It'd be interesting to know what all happened in that bathhouse."

The general closed her eyes, smiling curtly as she continued. "For my part, I hid in the bushes with Notepad for quite some time, then snuck in to the Shogun's chambers. He was alone. I was spotted and he was somewhat impatient for me to leave," she explained. "To me, it seemed as though he was simply meditating, perhaps just resting. He didn't seem ill."

She kept her place as DragonierMan backed up, flipping her hair back over her shoulder from where it had displaced itself when she'd hit the wall. "I see... Well, be patient for just a moment if you can, recruit. I must make some notes," she responded, bringing back out her scroll and a small brush from the bust hem of her dress.





"We've learned a lot, Recruit. My only real wonder now is why Yasu made up that lie about the Shogun? We know that she was meeting that white-robed figure in the bathhouse now, so that's clear. But if it's just the bathhouse that held a secret, why keep us from meeting the Shogun? Did she just want us out of the vicinity in general?" the blue-clad general mused, cupping her fist to her chin. "Any ideas?"

"Well, the white-robed woman did leave for a bit while we were in the bath house to check up on something." He paused for a moment and mimicked Dee's fist-to-chin-in-thought. "Perhaps there is a path in the tunnel that she could use to go speak with the Shogun. Though where she enters this camp without being detected is a bigger mystery. A secret tunnel into the camp is a security risk." He straightened himself up a little as something dawned on him, "I should have asked about the tunnel while I was talking to them. We should take some time to find it ourselves now."

"Certainly, my fellow detective, but how can we investigate it? The only entrance/exit point we know if is inside the bathhouse and it'd be very awkward to go back in at this point," she sighed, fanning herself with jerky motions that showed her irritation. She seemed annoyed to have come this far and yet still have one loose end. "So far as I can tell, our options are to ask the Shogun about the path, ask one of those two in the bath, or investigate it further ourselves. We can't go for the last option without the aid of my magic, of course," she chuckled haughtily.

"If you're interested, I can shroud one of us in invisibility just long enough to get in there and investigate. Whoever goes in would have to be fast and also able to maneuver in the dark," she explained. Her saying this at all seemed to indicate that she didn't have much of a way to maneuver in the dark. "Alternatively, I could just wait for them to leave the bath, but that's lame! I want to know the answer now," she pouted, crossing her arms childishly.

Destin Obscura still had his attention on the continuing news coverage of PolicyMan's address when it was suddenly interrupted by a gang of hooligans. Even in the mad scramble of the attendees, there were still a few who stayed behind to keep the coverage rolling. But what caught Destin's eye the most was that the security around PolicyMan were mostly comprised of custom navis. That, and his screen flashing and bleeping at him.

[ATTRIBUTE DATABASE SEARCH CRITERIA IDENTIFIED. LOADING...]

[SUBJECT: DJINNI. GENDER: FEMALE. ELEMENT: FIRE. SUBTYPE: NOT FOUND. DISCERNING ATTRIBUTE: FLIGHT. REASON FOR INQUIRY: MADE IT TO ROUND 2 OF INTERNET CITY TOURNAMENT; NETBALL PARTICIPANT; MEMBER OF TEAM THAT DESTROYED NEO-SHOGUNATE ARMY.]

[SUBJECT: MELEEMAN. GENDER: MALE. ELEMENT: FIRE. SUBTYPE: MELEE. DISCERNING ATTRIBUTE: DURABILITY. REASON FOR INQUIRY: WINNING MEMBER OF TEAM ANDANTE IN HADE'S BETA TOURNAMENT.]

Thankfully there was a lot of open information in the NET and Destin could keep an eye out for certain navis that interested him. He did it mostly to learn from them. They were, after all, some of the more powerful individuals on the NET.

~

DragonierMan furrowed his brow in thought and his head scanned around him as if he was looking for something to jog his memory. How to go about working through the dark? As his travels brought his head around to Dee again, his eyes flashed, bathing her in light briefly. The navi jolted and swung back around again, looking back towards the camp. "Do you know where I can find a torch?" he asked Dee as he began looking for a supply tent.

"Well, conjuring a simple torch would be easy. The troublesome part will be finding a way around that doesn't alert attention to that bathhouse passage. A torch would release smoke or, at minimum, a detectable glimmer of light," she responded, sitting down momentarily upon a wicker basket inside the supply tent. "Wait, I know! My friend has just the right tool for this situation. Just a minute~"

Dee slipped off, leaving DragonierMan in the darkness of the tent for a moment. Quickly, she returned carrying a pair of shades. "Escort's shades here are equipped with night-vision functionality! You'll be able to see your way around easy with these. Just er, don't break them. I get the idea that they're sort of expensive," the general warned, fitting the shades upon her ally's head. "Then again, she's always playing demolition derby with those limousines, so I don't get what the big deal is."

The general had apparently nominated DragonierMan for the role of infiltrator, judging by the fact that she'd given him the shades. All he had to do now was sneak down there invisibly and investigate the tunnels. "You'll only have a short period of invisibility. After that, you'll return to your sweaty, visible self. Try to finish up as quickly as possible," she instructed him, then held her staff into the air, nearly punching a hole in the roof of the tent. Slowly, DragonierMan's body faded from view; he was now invisible!

As his body began disappearing, he quickly started unclasping his armor. He would be discovered by the clinking of his armor if he didn't get rid of it. It clattered around him, leaving him only in his leather codpiece and sunglasses as he became fully invisible. Even his boots joined the pile of clothes. "Be back in a flash love," he said as the flap of the tent brushed aside by an invisible force.

DragonierMan broke into a run to get to the bath house as soon as possible. The dirt squishing between his taloned toes. He rushed through the entrance and began skirting along the wall, holding his breath until he got through the still wide-open doorway of the tunnel. He slowed then, hoping that he had not been discovered and could go through the passageway at a more leisurely pace. Then he reached his hands up to the glasses, trying to find the switch to activate the night-vision functionality.

"I'll be waiting," the general replied, trying not to laugh as she imagined DragonierMan skirting around the camp in only his briefs and shades.

---------------

The bathhouse seemed to be much as he'd left it. No one noticed him enter, that he could tell. Yasu was still lounging against the far end of the bath, near the gate he needed to enter through. Hime was sitting nearby with her legs crossed beneath her, presumably (it was hard to tell because of the cloak). The two seemed to be talking, but in such a hushed tone that he couldn't make out what was being said.

As DragonierMan fiddled with the glasses, he found that they had three functions: night-vision, thermal sensors, and x-ray vision. Each was activated with a different button (including a final button for returning to neutral). None of the three could really be activated at the moment to accomplish anything more than hurting his eyes.

Because the cover had been torn from the gate, he realized he'd be able to get in without making a lot of noise due to creaking hinges. On the other hand, replacing it again might be difficult to do quietly.

DragonierMan stealthily slid through the wide-open gate and began to head towards the tunnel, passing the barrel-fort from earlier. It was only then, after he activated the night-vision enhancement, that he noticed other buttons on the glasses. Curious, he switched through two more enhancements, thermal and x-ray... These glasses were surprisingly useful. But he had a job to do, and switching back to night-vision, he entered the tunnel and followed its length as best he could.

On the other side, DragonierMan discovered foreboding darkness, just as he thought he would. The night-vision goggles helped him to see where he was going as he moved through the surprisingly narrow passage. It bended occasionally, a fact that proved the glasses were very much a necessity. DragonierMan had to be appreciative of the fact that he wasn't claustrophobic at this point.

At the end, he found a wall where a small slit of light let through from the other side. It appeared to be a sliding door...

If he had good mental mapping skills, he'd realized that he'd ended up somewhere in the near vicinity of the Shogun's quarters. If he slid back the door, he could proceed onward and find out where. On the other hand, somebody might be watching.

The glasses paid off, allowing DragonierMan to navigate the tunnel without undue stress. And then he came to a dead end. Thankfully, the wall in front of him was actually a sliding door.

As DragonierMan examined the door, he hoped he was still invisible. And as carefully as he could, he placed his hands on the sliding door and began to slide it open. Even if he wasn't invisible, he still was apart of the Neo-Shogunate and could say, if discovered, that he was just curious of a passage connected to the bath house. Also he could reference Hime if necessary.

As DragonierMan pushed the surprisingly light frame out of the way, he discovered that the path led directly to the shogun's quarters; specifically, directly behind the Shogun. The tremendous, imposing red armor of the Shogun sat in front of him on its legs, squatting in meditation. A giant metal spear and equally long flag, bearing the NeoShogun emblem, sat on either side of him. An odd accessory, like a giant quiver or rations-box, was strapped to his back.

Strangely, whatever perception had allowed him to instantly notice Dee did not come into play. He continued silently meditating, keeping his back turned to DragonierMan. It seemed to DragonierMan that he may be able to beat a secretive retreat at this point, but it might be worth speaking to the Shogun, as rumor claimed that the Shogun was sometimes difficult for associates to make a personal audience with.

DragonierMan noticed that he was still invisible, as his own appendages were transparent even to himself.

DragonierMan was about to beat a hasty retreat, as he had learned what he needed, putting his hands on the doorplate... But then his eyes started glowing dimly behind the shades and his body froze. He could not afford to loose this chance to speak with the Shogun. To learn a little about the one he swore fealty. He dropped to his knees and bowed his head to the ground.

"My Lord Shogun, I request an audience." DragonierMan was still invisible, but his voice was not masked. There was a slight reverberation in that voice as well, as if he was speaking with two pitches that were close together in the spectrum.

The Shogun continued meditating silently for some time. Suddenly, a brief grumbling, as if waking up from sleep, emanated from the armor. A voice sprang out from the armor, loud and commanding, but the Shogun did not turn his head. It barely seemed to DragonierMan as if he was even being addressed directly. "I apologize, but I am in the middle of an important meditation exercise at the moment. Whatever it is that you desire, it will have to wait,"[font=eras demi itc][/font] the commanding voice boomed. "If need be, pass on the message to my First General, Yasu, and she will deliver your inquiry to me."[font=eras demi itc][/font]

Throughout all of this, the Shogun stood entirely still. He didn't so much as wave a hand, turn his head, or even shift the position of his legs.

DragonierMan remained rooted to the floor. Even though the Shogun was reputed to be hard to confer with, the current situation could not be any better for the attempt. "I apologize for the interruption, My Lord, but I wish to inquire as to the nature of the one called Hime. What is so important as to have her meet in secret? To keep herself secret?" The questions came easy enough, though the answers could be hard to extract.

"The Shogunate does not fear open displays, I have been told." he added with his head still lowered.