Episode 3 - The Ills of Potent Motivators

Eshe must begrudgingly admit that the sweaty dish monkey had proven to be useful and she thanks him, even going so far as to give him some of the colorful Monopoly money that passes for legal tender in Canada.

Espying a pile of untouched beans on a table that has yet to be bussed So wasteful! Eshe scoops them up into one of the dull, stained cloth napkins. Despite it not being what they had agreed to, she was going to head to the basement and give Mangas the info along with half of the legumes.  Hopefully they would not need to use them, but she would feel better if they were both well prepared.

"I'd text if I thought he'd see it," she says aloud, trying to justify the change in plans.  Besides, this isn’t the kind of information that I can just sit on - what if the cook tries to start something with Mangas?

INT. DAY - EDOKKO IZAKAYA - WINNIPEG, AB

As she gathers up the beans, Eshe hears a roar over the shitty excuse for music that is blaring out of the restaurant's speakers. She follows the sound down the filthy bathroom hallway to the back door. Through it, she can hear the sound of a scuffle. She pushes it open and glances outside.


EXT. DAY - ALLEY - WINNIPEG, AB

Mangs charges the large cook again, but this time, he swings to the side to avoid being thrown by his opponent and swings with his claws. The big man brings his arms to fend off the blows as best he can. His skin feels rough, like leather (clearly, he's been neglecting it), but the werebear's claws still manage to draw blood.

Smelling victory, Mangas pushes the offensive. The big man moves in closer, getting within the werebear's reach and making it hard for him to use his claws. Somehow, he manages to hook his arm under Mangas' and flips him again. The werebear hits the ground with a dull thud. Before he has a chance to get up, the cook is upon him. He uses his bulk to pin Mangas to the ground. To the werebear, it feels like a mountain has lain on top of him. "Stop it, you rabid fool!" he says in his rumbling tones. "You're drawing attention."

OOC for Mangas:

If the chef had not spoken, Eshe would have certainly been engaged in delivering a leguminous suppository to the massive man. But someone have the wherewithal to call Mangas a rabid fool while trying to get him to submit as oppose to slicing him open with a massive claw, having him suffocate on dry land, chucking rusty debris at him... was far more reassuring than it ought to have been.

She steps fully into the alley, intending to channel her great-aunt - the family matriarch, with every fiber of her being, and take control of the situation; seeing that Mangas is injured throws her off however. Instead of striding over with confidence, acting every bit the iron-willed boss, Eshe runs over to kneel by him, essentially ignoring the chef altogether.  

"Mangas! How? Ugh! Honestly! Can you hear me? It's Eshe. Mangas?"

Rabid fool? He called me rabid fool?? Who's rabid? Mangas lifts his head to look for his opponent. Then the door opens and the light flooding into the alley blinds him for a moment. What else did he say? 'I'm drawing attention'? Why does he care? While his thoughts are racing, he blinks trying for his eyes to adjust. From the light, Eshe's head emerges and suddenly she steps out of the light, towards him. Mangas! Mangas, can you hear me?
It takes a moment for him to shake the impression and answer "Yes, yes, I'm here, I'm good." He realises Eshe's angel-like appearance had him forget his rage, for a moment he didn't even feel annoyed. He also realises his paw becoming a, granted large and hairy, hand again. He sits up, leaning against the dumpster he recently smashed into and rubs his aching ribs. "I'm good. It's... He started... I don't know. I'm good now, thank you for coming."

The wave of relief that washes over Eshe, pushes her from a crouching position into being fully seated, and leaning on a leg?. The limb was stout and massive, but a leg nonetheless; and of the chef who had managed to pin down Mangas no less. With an ease that belies the feat of strength that it represents, she hops from seated back to a crouch; a far more optimal fighting position - just in case.

Despite being VERY annoyed with him for managing to get into a fight without backup, more than anything she is happy to find Mangas relatively safe, and that relief is written clear as day across her face.

"You're welcome. And thank you," she says looking up at the mountain of a man straddling Mangas, a mountain of a man in his own right.  "For not escalating this with my friend. Can we head back inside to talk? Or at least get out of this alley?"

The big cook sits up to let Mangas stand once the werebear has calmed down and retaken his human shape. He looks down the length of the alley, then grunts.

"I can't go back to work like this. Boss'll dock my pay." With theatrical gingerliness, he takes off his apron and starts wrapping up one of his bleeding arms, eyeing the two hunters with barely veiled resentment. "You both owe me," he says, clearly exaggerating his injuries and trying to weasel some money off of them.

The big cook turns and walks to a worn door a few steps away from the one leading to the restaurant. He pulls out some keys and unlocks a heavy padlock. He pushes the door open and steps into the the restaurant's basement, leaving the door open behind him. The fool was leading them right where they wanted to go.

Once the cook has stepped inside, Eshe leans to whisper. "What the heck happened to our plan? If I hadn't come by when I did he might have squished you to death, and then what?" That she manages to convey both pathetic whininess and shrew-like annoyance is a remarkable feat. No doubt the bright sheen of her eyes are crocodile tears meant to get Mangas to be lenient given the fact that she was once again doubting in his fighting prowess.

Eshe blinks a few times and then follows the chef, hoping against hope that the two behemoths had a braincell between them.

Mangas makes a wavy motion, as if swatting away an annoying fly.  "I would have handled it. See how he is bleeding? Quit whining and let's go." he gets up, with a muffled groan and follows the cook towards the cellar door.

In a fit of pique Eshe sticks her tongue out at Mangas. Who did he think he was to wave her off like that anyhow? If they didn't have to catch up with the cook, she would have given him such a talking to.

INT. DAY - COMMERCIAL BASEMENT

The hunters follow the big cook into a cramped, poorly-lit basement, full of crates, spare furniture, cleaning supplies, etc. Whoever is in charge of maintaining order in this place was clearly slacking off and in need of a stern talking-to. The place smells stale, with a hint of something coppery... blood, Mangas' nose tells him.

As they make their way deeper in, the hunters notice a spot where the cement floor is cracked in a spider-web pattern. Brownish stains can be seen in the cracks. Further proof of the incompetence of this place's caretaker. The big cook makes his way to a first aid kit hanging from the wall and opens it. He takes out a few supplies and starts cleaning his wounds, clearly more concerned with his own well-being than that of his guests.

"So," he says with his gravelly voice as he sees to his needs, not bothering to even offer the hunters a seat or a drink. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"We are looking into the death that happened here, as well as other 'happenings' in Winnipeg that might be related to the Compact." Eshe inflects the last word slightly and watches the cook to see whether he reacts before continuing. "I am somewhat relieved to know that this city might not be this miserable under normal circumstances, because it really sucks here."

The cook doesn't react to Eshe's use of Compact. He shrugs nonchalantly when she finishes talking. "Humans," he says disdainfully. "What are you gonna do."

The sound of a crash coming from above. Raised voices. The scrapping of furniture on the ground. More voices raised and more noise. A bigger crash as a body hits the floor. The big cook sighs, sounding exhausted.

"I have to go back upstairs before they kill each other, so you both have to go. I'd prefer you do so while I'm still asking. What you're looking for ain't here anyway." He starts moving, trying to usher the hunters towards the door.

Mangas remains where he is. "Something bad happened here. Would you mind if I hung back and performed a cleansing rite? I won't touch anything and I'll be out quickly. I'll close the door behind me."

The big cook sneers. "Cleansing ritual? You're a shit liar, kuma. You assault me, dodge my questions, and now waste my time when I just want to help my colleagues before they get hurt. I don't trust you at all."

Another crash from above, the screams get more shrill. The cook looks up, then back down at the hunters. "I ain't asking anymore," he says, pulling off his hachimaki. As he does so, his form twists and changes. His skin turns red, horns sprout from his head and he somehow seems to get bigger. "GET! OUT!" he roars.

Eshe steps between Mangas and the Cook a decision that is almost as stupid as this situation and stares flatly at the latter, unphased by the yelling. This was neither the first nor the last time that a large, not particularly mundane, man has had a tantrum in her presence.

"We are not lying, but we are leaving. But if when we get up there, we can keep your colleagues from getting hurt, no amount of yelling is going to stop us from helping if that's what we choose to do. C'mon." She puts a hand on Mangas' chest and pushes gently, knowing that the only way that she could move her stubborn, pig-headed, stupidly strong friend would be if he let her.

Mangas doesn't fight Eshe and lets her herd him to the door. The noise above grows as whatever confrontation is happening spreads. As the hunters pass through the basement's exit, the big cook puts his hachimaki back on and retakes his human form. He makes his way through the stacks and out the back door as well.


EXT. DAY - ALLEY - WINNIPEG, AB

Out in the alley, the cook shuts the basement door and puts the large padlock back on, snapping it shut. He gives the hunters one last glare, before going up the steps to the restaurant's back door and disappearing inside.


INT. DAY - EDOKKO IZAKAYA - WINNIPEG, AB

Whatever started the conflict in the Izakaya is indiscernible, as it has now devolved into a general brawl. A server is straddling a helpless patron, emptying pitchers of ice water onto their face while yelling "THERE'S YOUR FUCKING WATER!" A group of customers are surrounding the busboy, who is lying on the ground in the fetal position. The customer are throwing dirty plates and bowls at him while chanting "DO YOUR JOB! DO YOUR JOB! DO YOUR JOB!" There's shattered porcelain all around him on the floor. A customer is holding another one down on a table and shoving mochi into his victim's mouth. "YOU WANTED THEM ALL? WELL HERE THEY ARE!"

The big cook wades in, separating combatants. He's gentle with his colleagues, pushing them away and keeping them from getting at the customers with his bulk. He's less gentle with the patrons, shoving them over tables, yanking them away by the arm, or bellowing in their faces to get them to flee.

He does his best, but he's just one... man? ... and there are dozens of people fighting...

"I'm going to try a thing. If it goes to shit, don't hurt people too much, k? I can take a beating." Eshe gives Mangas a wry grin. It was annoying to have to risk her own skin for the slovenly patrons of this one-star restaurant, but she was better than these losers, and sometimes that meant helping her lessers.

She takes out her Sanjiegun and brings the heavy staff down on the nearest table three times, with a resonating, tinnitus-inducing crack.
"Enough!" Her voice cuts through the air like that of a parent on their very last nerve as she channels her great-aunt's imperious demeanor. "You call yourselves adults? You call yourselves Canadians? I've seen hordes of underslept six year olds hyped out of their stupid little minds on sugar act with more decorum and self-respect than the lot of you." She suppresses a shudder at the recollection of the fateful weekend spent helping out with a cousin's birthday. "So have the decency to be ashamed of yourselves, and stop this."

The combatants, patrons and staff, nearest to the hunters stop and have the decency to look ashamed at Eshe's rightful admonition. No longer the wild animals they'd been mere moments before, they shift on their feet, looking at the rest of the melee and, more importantly, at the restaurant's door.

They look back at Eshe like lost sheep looking to the herd dog, fear plain on their vacuous faces, clutching their coats to their chests.

With a sigh, Eshe motions for them to follow and leads them towards the back exit so the idiots can flee before any of them get seriously hurt trying to navigate their way to the front door.

Mangas is left in the dining room with the rest of the fighting morons, about half of the crowd. The cook is still trying to restore order, but without help, the big oaf is unlikely to succeed before someone gets seriously injured or killed.

Mangas wades into the sea of wrestling bodies. Maybe the cook does want to help us. He did have plenty of opportunity to hurt us and didn't. And obviously he is more than a regular human. Or he has a very severe, body-morphing skin condition... "YOU SHOULD HAVE THAT CHECKED OUT!"
Grabbing the closest two brawlers, he lifts them both a few centimeters off the ground and snarls at them "Playtime is over. GET THE FUCK OUT!!" Then he drops them and makes sure they leave, before grabbing the next pair.

Some particularly dim members of the crowd decide that resisting a man twice their size is a good idea and force poor Mangas to shake them a bit to get them to leave. A wise man once said that a dislocated shoulder is a lesson not soon forgotten. That man would have been proud of the Hunters' resident werebear.

A few minutes pass and Edokko Izakaya finds itself freed from its rowdy patrons. The dining room is a mess. Overturned tables, spilled food, broken dishes, as well as the odd tooth and discarded item of unfashionable clothing litter the floor. The remaining staff (some of them seem to have fled) are huddled near the kitchen, tending to their wounds and occasionally throwing frightened glances in Mangas' direction.

The big cook, Mangas and Eshe are sitting at one of the tables, the cook positioned between the group of shaken staff and the two hunters. The chef has retrieved a bottle of shoju from the bar as well as three cups. With theatrical precision, the big man slowly pours the alcohol into the three cups like some sort of silly foreign ritual. He picks up his cup and lifts it. It looks absurdly small in his massive fingers. He drains its contents into his mouth. "You two seem real curious about the basement, so if it'll get you to fuck off, I'll tell you what happened."

He picks up the bottle and refills the cups. "A bad man, made worse by whatever's making everyone worse lately, came in chasing an acquaintance of mine with malice in his eyes. So, I crushed his head against the floor."

Having spent a good deal of energy during the eviction, Mangas feels relatively at ease... considering. If just these stupid cups weren't so small. Did he steal them from a doll house?
Mangas takes the tiny cups content and swallows it at once. "Ahhh... So, what is making everyone worse? When did it start? Did it start at once or swelled up? Are there places where it is worse than other places?"

The cook raises an eyebrow, clearly surprised by the questions. "Can't you smell it?" he asks, but then understanding dawns on him. "Of course not, you're from this realm. Probably too unfamiliar to you."

He drains his cup again and serves another round. "I haven't been around long, can't say when it started, but it has been getting worse. A few weeks ago, I was summoned. Wasn't sure by what, at first. Looked like a scrawny human, but smelled... wrong. Like a bunch of things mixed into one, some familiar, some not. Didn't take long to figure out why. He said he wanted to 'borrow' my strength, but I figured he wanted to keep it. Made a deal with him, and outfoxed the little brat. Only gave him a bit. Probably smells a bit like me now."

"After he left, I could still smell my realm in the alley back there. Figured the passage was still open, but couldn't find it. I'm stuck here, but it isn't so bad. For me, anyway."

"If the Onmyoji did such a poor job with the others he summoned, their realms might be leaking into this one too. All this energy mixing together," he sucks his teeth and shakes his head.

Eshe looked at the cook in disbelief. How could he be so casual about this? From the sounds of things some guy was going around summoning spirits and then taking a part of their powers. On top of which the summons were probably behind most of the worst violence because they had otherworldly powers and less concern for human life.

She tried to schooled her features, and gave the cook a reverent smile and nod.
"I have So. Many. Questions. Somanyquestions. Like, what was the deal that you made. How did you outfox him? Do you remember how many smells you could pick out? Have you smelled any of them around?" She glances over to Mangas to see if he wants to say anything before adding "And when you say Onymoji, do you mean like the game? It's a fantasy RPG."

The cook frowns and gives Eshe a disparaging look. He thinks he's better than her, that big jerk! "I don't know anything about that game. I mean a type of... wizard. I recognized elements of the ritual he used. It was the craft of an onmyoji."

"As for the smells..." he shrugs. He was taking this lightly. He didn't care if people he didn't know got hurt. "I don't have that good a nose. He just didn't only smell human."

He leaves questions about the deal unanswered, clearly planning his next con.

Mangas is starting to be annoyed by this... guy? thing? Do we really have to pull everything out of its nose? He leans forward, rubs his temples, then grabs bottle, pours himself another drink and after downing it, asks "Where is this wizard now? Or where is it that you were summoned?"

Eshe nods patronisingly at both men; she probably isn’t even paying attention to the conversation. When Mangas pours himself a drink, the entitled brat is just as quick to grab a glass as she was to slip out and avoid having to do most of the work of clearing out Edokko Izakaya. "Oh, also, what ritual elements did you recognise?"

The big cook sighs, clearly growing frustrated by the interrogation. "I don't know where he went, we didn't keep in touch after our first meeting in the alley," he says, tilting his head towards the back door.

His eyes flick to Eshe. "The use of charms, incense..." he scrunches up his dumb face as he racks his tiny brain for the memory. He shrugs as he predictably comes up empty. "Typical onmyoji stuff, which was weird, because he was a gaijin."

Sensing that the cook has reached the end of his rather limited utility, Eshe bows her head slightly in recognition. "We part ways on better terms than those on which we met, and that is good." She is careful not to imply that a debt is owed by either party.

"Hiroto, if you hear anything about the onmyoji, please let me know." She gives him her cell number, if he's willing to take it. "He's up to mischief, and it's not the fun kind."

To Mangas she indicates that they should leave. Hopefully Dan will have some insight regarding onmyoji, and either way they had other sites to check out; it was time to regroup.

Mangas pushes his chair back, leans onto the table (which creaks under his weight) to push himself up (this atmosphere is so damn tiring, stupid wizard-idiot) and says to Eshe "Let's go out the back, I don't need to run into any remaining angry patrons." Without a good bye (with what did that grumpy, glorified boar deserve that anyway), he walks out the back door.
Back in the alley, he stops and tries to find remains of the ritual.

Despite her patrons, or perhaps because of them (who can wrap their head around their whims and machinations?), Eshe has never had a strong sense of the occult or the arcane. In the alley she does her level best to help Mangas find any remaining trace of the ritual, taking a number of pictures in case Dan notices something that they had both missed. It was high time for the Tanuki to stop being so much dead weight.

Between the snow, vehicles and pedestrians that have passed by, and the passage of time, there is very little to be found through mundane means in the alley. Mangas' enhanced sense allow him to discover small flecks of incense, confirming Hiroto's claim about its use.

In one spot, he also picks up an out-of-place, flowery scent that just... makes him jealously possessive. He wants to keep it all to himself. He feels the pressing need to get Eshe to go elsewhere so he can be the only one to enjoy it.

"Quit hovering over me! I am searching here, go search that area, over there!" he says to Eshe and then shakes his head and mutters under his breath "Like a mother hen..."
Desperately he digs in the snow and dirt to find source of the divine smell. He must have it so he can enjoy it all the time. Alone!

Being dismissed when she is trying to help, when all she has been doing lately is helping that shaggy, belligerent ingrate, is pretty hurtful, but Eshe knows better than to think that Mangas would care.

"Yeah, whatever. I wouldn't want to get in the way of you somehow managing to get into another fight, she snaps back.

Scooping up a handful of snow, she packs it into a ball and showing remarkable restraint (and a better than decent sense of self-preservation), whips it at the dumpster rather than at Mangas, where it connects with a thud followed by a metallic reverberation. It does not take long for her to get into a spectacularly irritating rhythm.

Mangas digs in the snow and finds bits and pieces of paper, some with traces of ink on it. He's fairly certain he's found the spot where the summoning ritual that brought Hiroto to Winnipeg, but is unable to find out more from the scraps left behind. They're too small and too damaged.

However, he gets no closer to the smell. Whatever is emitting it is not physical in nature. Mangas looks at the pieces of paper in his hand. Maybe the ritual Dan taught him could show him the source, but could he cast it without Eshe noticing? Or, worse, would it draw even more attention?

*Whack*


*Whack*
*Whack*





*Whack*

There is no clear rhythm to the snowballs strikes, as Eshe is obviously going out of her way to be as annoying as humanly possible.  She notices that Mangas has stopped digging, having likely found something, and holds on to her most recent salvo, opting instead to call out to him.

"You find something? Don't bother lying: if you don't want my help, I'll just head back to that weasel Dan," she ends sulkily. And you can claw, bite, and bleed your way back to the base all on your own when you are done.

"Амаа тат!" Mangas throws an angry glance over his shoulder, shouting at Eshe.  Why does she keep on yapping? Everything is always about her, like she was special or Chosen... "Can you pleeeaase just leave me alone for just one minute? I can't even hear my thoughts. Sure, go yammer on to Dan, at least I don't have to listen to the constant 'Me! Me! Me!' anymore." The last part he says more silently, to himself, but loud enough to be easily over heard.
Trying to be subtle, he searches for the ink to prepare the spell.

Mangas retrieves the ink and brush. He starts applying it to his eyelids, the brush comically small in his enormous hand, while reciting Dan's incantation with a thick Mongolian accent: "Furukute atarashī kami yo, mienai mono ni watashi no me o hiraitekudasai."

There's a brief flash of yellow light and when Mangas closes his eyes again, it's like he's looking through sunglasses. The world is muted, darker, but he can see motes of light floating in the air. They surround him in great quantity, slowly drifting away as they are carried away by unseen and unfelt currents. In front of him is their source. A thin, vertical sliver of light, about 2 meters in length, standing a few feet off the ground. A whirlwind of emotion tears through him as he looks at it. His human side feels an intense sense of greed and jealousy. It wants it all to itself. His monstrous side feels intoxicated. It wants to dance and roar and stay in its presence forever.

The werebear turns his head away so he can think a bit more clearly. This was a tear in reality, left over from the incompetently performed summoning ritual that had brought Hiroto to Winnipeg. If he wanted to close it and end its influence on the surrounding area, he would need a banishment or barring spell of some kind.

He turns to Eshe to ask for her input, pushing his frustration with her down, and pauses. With the sight granted by the spell, Eshe looks majestic and confusing. The motes of energy seem to dance around her as they flow by, adding strange, fleeting features to her body. One second, she has antlers like a deer, the next, a bunch of fox tails, a moment later, she has 4 extra arms, making her look like a humanoid spider. These traits never seem to last for more than a breath.

As he stares at her, he notices a sudden ripple go through the floating motes. The mixed feelings of greed and intoxication crest within him as the ripple passes through him. Its meaning is clear to Mangas: Somewhere else in Winnipeg, the foolish wizard has summoned again.

When the spell starts working, Mangas looks around astonished by the new perspective on... reality? He lifts his hands and looks at them and then continues to investigate the rift. It's beautiful and horrific at the same time. He feels oddly connected to it, in a sense that it feels like a reflection of himself: a horrific monstrosity, but trying to be and do good?
The sight of Eshe stuns him, making him forget his grievance with her. "You... are... ... beautiful." Realising that he is staring at the small woman, he shakes his head, barely visibly and clears his throat. "Ahem... There is a rift here. We need to banish it with a spell." As he feels the disturbance in the force he adds with a sense of urgency "...and we have to do it fast!"

Eshe turns to follow Mangas' sight line, surprised that someone had managed to sneak up behind her. Finding no one, she turns to look at him quizzically. He's not talking about me is he? No, that's ridiculous! Heat rising to her cheeks as she tries to process that he might indeed be talking about her, Eshe stammers a bit, preparing to ask Mangas What the heck!?, when he clears his throat and mentions the rift. Now THAT made sense. Of course, he was talking to the rift! Having somehow decided that that answer was satisfactory, she turns her attention to banishing said manifestation.

"How can I help?"

"I... I don't know. This is unlike anything I have seen before. So beautiful and yet horrifying at the same time. Let's go ask Dan." The thought of the raccoon man annoys Mangas instantly. Let's hope that bag of flees has something useful to say... He makes a mental image of the rift and its position, then turns towards Eshe, ready to leave.

INT. DAY - CUSTODES SAFEHOUSE - WINNIPEG, MB

The hunters feel instant relief as they step into the safehouse, like a migraine suddenly lifting. The air inside is slightly hazy from Dan's incense, which is still burning on the kitchen table. The scent is mixed with the sweet smell of cooking onions and garlic. Eshe and Mangas can hear a sizzling sound as well as the scrapping of wood on metal; Dan, thoughtful as ever, is making them a snack!

"Oh, hi!" the tanuki says with a goofy grin. "I'm making an udon stir-fry. Want some?"

A few minutes later, the three of them are sitting around the table, slurping down the pleasantly gooey noodles as the hunters tell Dan about their discoveries. The raccoon-man leans back and strokes his chin like an old master. "I see." He snaps his fingers. "I knew I'd come to the right people. You're really good at this!" he exclaims animatedly.

He leans to the side and starts to rummage through his bag. "I know a ritual that'll patch these holes up. It's more like putting a dressing on it than sewing it shut, but it should do the trick until you catch up to that foolish onmyoji. Once you do, make sure you get his book of spells. Then we should be able to undo all the damage he's done."

Dan's ritual involves the drawing of kanji on rice paper to form talismans, which are then applied to the portal while reciting the following chant: "betsu no ryōiki e no tobira o tojiyo!" Dan assures the hunters that the talismans will latch onto the portal, even if it rests in the air.

"Thanks Dan. Mangas, once we've settled this portal, what do you think about heading straight to another probable site? I'm worried that by the time that we catch up with the jerk who is doing this, he'll have a whole range of stolen abilities for us to contend with."

Helping herself to a second serving of noodles, Eshe looks back to Dan. "Is there any chance that the onmyoji is also taking on the vulnerabilities of the realms or individuals? Like I think that Hiroto is allergic or vulnerable to beans. He avoids them at the restaurant - or at least that's what one of the bussers said."

She then happily shovels noodles into her mouth, sure that onion and garlic are divine gifts to humanity. Like fire. That's why heating them produces such powerful alchemy!

As Mangas enters the house, the stress, the anger, the rage all get lifted from his shoulders. Once again he straightens up and his grim face looses most of its darkness. "Dan, you old rascal, it's nice to see you. It smells amazing, is that ginger in there?" He socially slaps the tanuki on the shoulder, sending him reeling. Mangas chuckles in amusement, continues to the fridge and grabs a beer. "Anybody else a cold one?" he hands out to those in need and then continues to the poor chair that is today's victim of his weight. "I agree, we should head back out as soon as we tried Dan's delicacies. First patch the rift we know of and then continue. Which site do you think we should go to next?"
He turns on the TV and flips to a local station, hoping to catch a news program. "Let's see if anything interesting happened while we were out. I felt a wave or ripple go through the motes I saw during the spell. Maybe our friend was mischievous again."

"I'll take one." Eshe raises the beer to her lips, pausing  to pay her respects to Mangas' chair as it valiantly maintains its structural integrity despite extraordinary circumstances.

"The convenience store in Saint Boniface was the other spot that Dan seemed certain about," She looks at the Raccoon Man for confirmation. "Though I suppose that we could find the Karaoke place if we wanted to. I mean, how many karaoke clubs are there in this 'city', let alone ones that have had riots recently!?"  Eshe laughs, her eyes bright with mirth.  

It was so much better here than outside; she really did not like what she was like when she stepped out the "Door!" The exclamation is punctuated by Eshe leaping to her feet. "The onmyoji is the one who left all of the doors open!"  She finishes her beer triumphantly and heads over to the fridge to get another, mirroring Mangas' earlier offer.

"What doors are you talking about? Do you mean to find karaoke bars with open doors? Or investigate any place with an open door?" Mangas tone is not snappy, but genuinely confused.
He nods to the beer and grabs the offered bottle. It looks comically small in his hand and is empty in just a few sips.

Eshe looks confused for a moment and then realises that she's not been particularly clear. "No, no. Not literal doors here. You see, the night that Dan came to see us, I remember walking down the hallway, and every door I passed being ajar and emanating some kind of energy or sensation, like heat or winds or cold. It just now clicked that what I saw was the portals being left unsealed by the onmyoji! Oh man, I need to get better at making sense of my... visions." She says the last word a bit sheepishly. She was a fighter, not some kind of mystic.

Dan waves off the beer, politely refusing. "If I start drinking, I won't stop until I'm under the table! I need to keep my wits if I'm to be of any help."

In the background, a news reporter is talking about a new event in the city. The hunters pause to listen for a minute. It seems a mass panic swept through the Canada Life Centre during a Manitoba Moose game an hour ago, roughly when Mangas felt the disturbance. People were trampled as they ran for the exits and dozens of people have been injured.

Dan chuckles amiably when Eshe mentions her visions. "Sorry, can't help you there! Prophecy isn't within my purview and the Oracles always were cryptic. It gives them some cover for when they're wrong," he says with a wink.

"As for the 'borrowed' weaknesses... I think it could work! At the very least, it should disrupt his stolen abilities, making it easier to give him his well deserved beating. Ultimately, if you want to stop him, you'll have to get his spellbook away from him. Without his magic, he's just a normal human. The question is, how many powers has he taken and from who? So far we only know about two.... er... I mean one: the oni." Dan chuckles nervously and gives the hunters a wide smile, which makes him look like an adorable child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Eshe shares an amused smile with Mangas at Dan's slip up. She is not yet sure if it was intentional, but it certainly had the potential to be useful.

We should head to the Canada Life Center. The trail will be warmest there. We can always circle back to convenience store and Karaoke place afterwards. Yeah?" While she hopes that Mangas will agree, Eshe doesn't pause to confirm his assent. "Now Dan, I appreciate you wanting to confirm that we were competent before giving us all of the intel that you have, but like you said, we are reallygood at this. How about you tell us about the second set of powers that this onmyoji is likely to have. You don't need to expose your source, but we do need to know what we will be up against."

Tricksters were a prideful bunch, who could take a joke but it was always hit or miss as to whether it would be graciously; better to give Dan every opportunity to save face.

Dan chuckles in embarrassment. "Well... based on my intel, he may have some shapeshifting abilities." Regaining his composure, he starts stroking his chin sagely. "If he does, then he may lose them if you can get him drunk."

The tanuki sighs. "Who knows how many yokai he's summoned by now... Getting a full list of what he can do would prove to be a challenge."

Commenting the news report, Mangas says "Looks like we're going to see the mooses... Meese? Moose'? Well, the hockey team." . He gets up and starts putting on his jacket. As Dan mentions the second weaknesses, Mangas smiles. "Well, lucky for us, I can put back a drink or two. Let's just get him to the bar, I will be able to match him." he rubs his chin, looking upwards and to side, as a thought crosses his mind. "That is, unless he also has some superhuman alcohol tolerance. In that case, we're in trouble..."