Downtime 3

She says, "that will not be a problem. The police would not suspect me walking through the center since I told them my purpose for being here. However, to not raise awareness of the officers' attention in my direction, I can stealthily move passed the office where they are conducting their investigation."

Emiko activates her chameleon ability and while she was wearing black jacket and black pants (with a smatter of blood across), she now appears to blend to her surroundings with barely a shimmer visible. "Does this work," she asks.

This is perfect Emiko. I will follow you from the astral plane and manifest again at our destination.

Kitaro's shape becomes more translucent as he folds back into the astral plane until he is once again invisible to metahuman eyes.
He floats behind Emiko and follows her.

Emiko makes her way into the community center, moving quietly and avoiding the police; she is looking for Ichigo or the other men she saw before the incident with the exploding child.

Chougou

The anime convention turns out to be fairly reasonable at only 15 nuyen if you buy tickets in advance or 20 if you buy them at the door. There is a huge selection of vendors, voice actors and other talents expected to be there.

Community center

The police are too preoccupied with their investigation to care much about Emiko walking around, invisible or not. If they noticed her, they made no sign of it. She and Kitano easily find the others at the center.

Kitaro once again manifests on the physcial plane. His ghostly shape makes a deep bow towards the group.

Hello again. Apologies that I'm not here in the flesh. After the boy blew up I went home to clean up and rest.

Kitaro looks around the group and pauzes on Chougou.

Are you alright?

Chougou looks up from the screen that he is buying tickets on (he buys one for himself and asks the members of the group if they want to go, his treat)

"I am not alright...I expect that you didn't have anything to do with what happened to that child though?"

Kitaro looks at Chougou with an expression of shock and disgust on his face.

How dare you even suggest such a thing. Ofcourse I had nothing to do with that!

"Sure I'll go. I all ways wanted to go see what all excitement was about."
"Chougou I don't think that he would come back if he did"

Once passed the officers and now in the presence of the group, Emiko introduces herself to everyone she has not met.  She offers a bow and a card containing her credentials and commlink information.  To Ichigo and Sun, she mentions the unfortunate circumstance of being blamed and interrogated for the recent incident and hopes the experience with their own officers went ok. She relays the information she gave her officer and how she kept all details focused away from the group.

She adds, "should there be any missions you have available, I would very much like an opportunity to be a part of it. I find that I am best suited for jobs requiring negotiation or stealth and subterfuge."

"Thank you Ms.Amaterasu let us all go into the conference room to talk."

Inbetween his training with Sanji, Sun pops by the community center.

Sam is scanning for bugs. He notices the new people, who he saw come in earlier on the security cams, but he isn't particularly interested in them. If they don't approach or talk to him, he pretty much just ignores them as he scans.

When he finishes scanning and finds nothing, he messages his report on the lack of bugs and the lack of matrix security to Sun, ChouGou, WuJen, Torpor, and Ichigo.

Chougou -> Kitaro (during their conversation)

"I don't expect that any person would *ever* do such a thing, but that didn't stop it from happening. I've seen people do unthinkable evils and then console the victim's family. For you and your friend to appear at the same time as this child's death causes me to have to ask.

I'll believe you when you say you had nothing to do with this, but things are to the point that it's just easier to be direct than to wait and find out. Things are likely to take an even darker turn around here, so if you all are going to roll with us we have to thoroughly honest with each other."

Chougou goes into the conference room with everyone.

Seeing the new folks, Sun walks up, offers to shake hands and says: "Hey, I'm Sun Dashou. May I ask your names and how we can help?"

Ichigo will introduce them "This Ms. Emiko Amaterasu and Mr. Kitaro Saito."

Kitaro replies to Chougou.

I understand mister Chougou. I'm still very much shaken up from the event myself. That's why I have chosen to come back here in my astral form.

Kitaro then turns to Sun and makes a polite bow.

Mister Dashou, what a pleasure to meet you. Unfortunately I cannot shake your hand at this time since I'm in my astral form, but I'm sure we'll meet in the flesh very soon.

He then starts talking to the group in general.

As I have told a few of you before the ... incident ... I wanted to meet you all after I heard about your recent adventures. You struck me as the kind of people who know how to get things done. And even though I'm not as proficient in combat or technology as some of you, I think I have other qualities that are complementary to yours. Perhaps we can come to some sort of mutually benificial agreement.

Sun scratches his head. "Oh, you're here to offer your basket weaving skills?"

Kitaro answers.

Well, weaving baskets is certainly a possibility if the job requires it. But my talents are mostly situated in communication. I have a way with people you see. And besides that, as you can obviously see, I'm gifted with magical abilities as well.

After Sun introduces himself Emiko follows with, "please, call me Emiko," and shakes Sun's hand followed by handing him one of her information cards. "Coincidentally, like Mr. Saito, I heard about your group on the news and happened to stop by to offer my services at a very unfortunate time. While I have never weaved a basket, I have weaved some tales to help in rough situations. That is one of the many skills I can offer." Emiko goes into similar detail of her skills like she did with Ichigo.

Torpor enters the conference room, listening intently to the introductions then introduces himself, "I am Torpor, the resident gunsmith." He bows just enough to be courteous.

Emiko returns the bow and says, "a pleasure to meet you Torpor. I am Emiko, communication specialist." She then hands Torpor one of her information cards.

Emiko notices Sam walking around the complex, occupied with something on his computer. So as not to be rude and interrupt his process, she waits until he is near and politely says, "excuse me, hello, I am Emiko Amaterasu; you can call me Emiko. It is a pleasure to meet you," and follows with her traditional bow and the extension of an information card.

Sam pauses his bug scanning, and appraises Emiko, though he does not make eye contact:

Perception
Sam Dekker carried out 7 launched of one d6 :

, , , , , ,

So as not to be rude, he takes the proffered card and pockets it. "Okay," he says in acknowledgment, before going back to scanning.

Chougou levels with the group to go into details of what he thinks is happening with the collars and why the little boy was killed.

He explains to Emiko and Kitaro that he used to be a dwarf before they found a demon that granted them wishes in this facility, and how he had been kept as a slave prior to that by someone named Nikaru who made him fix electronics while chained in a back room; which is where he got his modest skills with machines.

Nikaru died in a gunfight that Chougou had orchestrated, he had seen him eviscerated by bullets through one of his spy drones. He was trying to help the man while at the same time freeing himself by getting him to commit a crime that would force him to go into hiding and free Chougou, but that at the same time would allow him to reclaim his honor by killing his ex-wife's abusive husband who had also been making advances on their daughter.

Recently he had begun receiving notes referencing his past. His name (chou丑(ugly) gou狗(dog)) had been given to him by that man, and after they were on TV for the jiangshi case notes referring to him as a bad dog and the collars arrived; the same type of collar that had exploded today taking an innocent life.

Chougou says that he has no idea who from his past would be so malicious and sadistic as this man, but he had seen him die. The possibility of it being his daughter, some crazy business associate, a ghost, or even a clone of his have been driving Chougou insane, the only thing that helps keep him focused is to work; so he needs to stay busy.

He hadn't planned to put on the collar or to have anyone else do so, but other people's lives were being affected now including the group. If they need him to leave because of the danger that he is bringing then he understands, but in order to prevent more wanton explicit violence he was only in the position to either kill himself to remove the target for this vindictive attack, or to put his life on the line to destroy it. He was going to choose the latter, but had no intention of involving anyone that didn't want to be associated with the quest for revenge that he was now on.

Kitaro listens to the story, often nodding in understandment.
He covers his mouth with his hand during the most horrible parts.

When Chougou is finished with his story he says.

You sure haven't had an easy life mister Chougou.