Kasumi, having reached the end of her part time leave, decides to quit Toyota, and sell her apartment and find somewhere cheaper. She is in the process of doing so when she is approached by Hidden Green, specifically William Summers. comes to her with a proposal - if she sets up a project manager type business, he will support it by sending (government) work her way for that critical first year of establishing a business. His proposal is that she fund the whole thing but they will ensure that she has income. The catch-ish is that they want her to employ a couple of kinfolk (on a contractor basis - they get paid when they do work) and that the Sept would regard you as having a commeasurate debt to them.
Kasumi decides that this is more or less equitable. She proposes to Sinead that they find somewhere to live together, and after a bit of hunting around they manage to get a lease on a townhouse off Brunswick Road, one of a set of 6.
She spends additional time around Hidden Green switching information for efforts with Elaine. The big takeaway from the Glasswalker knowledge she learns is the existence of the digital realm - its an umbral realm where information is king. Access to that realm is what makes many of the glasswalker gifts work, and access is becoming ubiquitous. Any device that manages or handles dense information has a strong association, and in the Umbra that can give you an in to the realm.
It isn't a universal panacea to existing computer issues - if you go in there to clear out a pc, you quickly realise how much a terabyte of instantiated data weighs. Its more about finesse.
Phone diving is an example of a gift that works through the Digital realm (or cyber realm or digital web - people call it different things). You don't travel down the phone wires - you step through the phone into the digital realm and then out again through another phone. (Caveats: you don't take the originating phone with you. Its a massive veil breach if you do it to a human. You can be endangered by messaging services and such. It doesn't work on skype and internet phones - or rather it does, you can step in, but the richer data of those services mean you get lost easily.)
The existence of this realm is something you are discouraged from communicating to other tribes.
She also learns that Elaine used to be in a pack with Christine and Nadine. They do not like each other very much - that may be why Christine and Nadine are at Sleeping Lore, but no one really said.
While she is at Hidden Green, Kasumi hears more about their issues with the camera setup they had over the CBD. Unfortunately rather than being a panacea, individual cameras keep flaking out - they either stop working, or point at something strange, or are flakey. There doesn't seem to be a supernatural influence, at least not directly, but the Sept continue to look into it.
At the end of the 12 months of chiminage for building her computer, Kasumi interacts with the spider and offers to maintain its home.
She learns gifts during the quiet time: Phone Diving in return for never let phone go flat for 3 months; Power Surge in return for 100 hours of winding up a cranked flash light; and Mother's touch from a river spirit, for which she trades spending a few days in a canoe picking rubbish off the river edge.
Kasumi travels to Japan to visit family and see what has happened after the tsunami. She arrives in winter, and finds that her home town has expanded somewhat with a refugee camp, full of displaced people in 'temporary emergency housing' that have been there for a year. Her family tell her about how many people are sick, or have given up. There are rumours of how some people have moved back into the exclusion zones, just to have somewhere to live.
She heads into the Umbra and approaches the exclusion zone around Fukushima. The Umbra is not dead, but it is not good. Its vibrant, but twisted and warped. Lacking her sense wyrm pack gift, she opts for discretion.
She's walking home one day near to the refugee camp and spots two children huddled in the dark. She can hear one of them crying and so she approaches and asks what is wrong. The older child is a girl and she says that her brother is scared. Why? They are running away from home... Why? Their father beats them. Kasumi looks around and contemplates the possibility of police. Kasumi asks them to take her to their house. They do not want to go home - their father drinks and comes home angry. Their mother was lost in the emergency. They live in a temporary house. The younger boy tugs on her sleeve and whispers in her ear. She says that Hirokumi is hungry.
Kasumi calls her family and asks if there is scope for feeding two hungry children this evening. Her mother gives a long pause and then agrees that they can do that. Kasumi says that she will take them to her house tonight, and tomorrow to the police. The girl says that they have run away before and the police took them home and told her father not to let them wander. He became far more angry. The boy whispers something again and Kasumi hears "his eyes were glowing". She asks about it, and the girl says he imagined it. Kasumi twitches and says to take her to the house and point out their father - he's not home tonight - ok, house and then to her house.
They take her into the emergency housing area. Their house is on an old farm - it is a small, badly assembled prefab on a corner. The streets have been gravelled, but not sealed and with the winter weather, they have become a ruin in places. These are not the worst of houses - they have power, apparently. She makes a note and takes them home for a food. On the way, they say their names are Hirokumi and Raicho Etsuko (and their father's name is Tokuma). Her mother makes it clear they are Kasumi's guests. In the stronger light, its clear both children are filthy and their clothes are ruined. They get fed (and eat a lot), cleaned and put into bed before Kasumi leaves.
She checks out the house, switching to lupus subtley on the way. It has a basic fence around it, with a small garden plot out the back (it looks like most of the prefab ones do, possibly in an effort to get people to grow some basic food). She sneaks in with her gifts - the house is occupied by an adult male that drinks too much and two small children. There's no other scents inside, but there's an odd smell in the back yard area that she can't quite place. It looks like maybe the garden was used as a garden briefly? Kasumi peeks into the Umbra and can see a little bit of spirit activity - some weaver spiders, some things that are probably banes (given the environment). This yard maybe seems a bit darker than it should be. There's a couple of depressions in the Umbral ground that seem out of place.
She decides to check it out and slips into the spirit world. Its not reassuring being actually here - there's not a lot of wyld or gaia here. She opens the house and looks inside, but there is not the explosion of banes that she expected. She can track scents that might have been spirits lingering around the father's room, which is concerning. In the Umbral yard there is a scent of death, which is more concerning.
Kasumi waits for the father to come home, peeking occasionally. When she looks about the 8th time, he's staggered in and passed out on his bed. She can't cleanse him, and Mother's Touch won't help against anything like she suspects he is suffering. Hmmm She figures he's unconscious and steps out into his room. She decides to give Mother's Touch a go and see if it can help him with his poisoning. Its hard to see if it made much of a change. She changes to glabro and pokes him. He starts crying he has no money, and she tells him to stop hitting his kids. He seems confused and says he didn't and she hits him some more. He is clearly too drunk to really be coherent, so Kasumi drags him through the house and throws him out in snowy slushy water at the edge of the road. There's enough light out here with the moon that he can see her in glabro, and its not reassuring, apparently. He's pretty freaked out, and starts to try and run, screaming across the road, but trips over something and falls into the ditch screaming about monsters in his house. A couple of lights come on, but no one comes out. She rings the cops about a man screaming in the street - but when she gives the address they say they'll see what they can do. People finally come out and throw things at him, but Kasumi has long gone back into the Umbra.
There's no banes here, which she was expecting to happen - that it was temporary depending on his mood. He eventually cringes inside, looking around nevously. He gets some water, and goes out the back into the toilet. Kasumi leaps out again and scares him shitless. He screams and runs back inside. Kasumi gets a whiff of that same smell as before... its something mixed with old blood, somewhere in the yard. She sniffs about and finds it in the back corner. Under some rubbishy crap, she finds old kids clothes, torn and bloody. There's no body, just the clothes. She grabs them and kicks her way in through the back door in glabro, chasing him with the clothes. He starts to scream and moan about why is she torturing him, his life is so awful, why. She accuses him of knowing what they are, and he continues to act as if he has no idea what it is. Frankly delerium and wild accusations and alcohol are making the perfect storm.
Kasumi considers her options, and is thinking of calling the cops with evidence that he beats his kids. She sniffs at the clothes and then takes a look at them. They don't smell like Raicho, and they are probably too small. That's not reassuring. And they were hidden. Has...he... murdered another child? That slight umbral depression does smell of death, and they might be about the size of a grave for someone about five. Kasumi runs back to the yard and looks at the spots - they've been disturbed, in the last couple of weeks. She digs down with a make shift shovel, and the smell of old blood and decay increases. Eventually she uncovers a hand ("I should call the cops. But then i can't murder him"). Is he a fomori? Well... he seemed to be suffering from the Delerium, which fomori usually don't do. Is he possessed sometimes? There was more than one depression.
She heads back to the Umbra, and gives one more shot at looking for a bane. She finds some, but they scatter when she approaches. She manages to kill a couple, while being careful to not get cornered. She goes back into the house and starts to hit Etsuko again. She starts trying to make him angry in case that will make the bane manifest or its possession evident. "Your wife's death is your fault! You drink too much that's why you are a failure! Your children hate you!" But Etsuko is just confused as to why this demon is doing and saying these things, throwing whatever cames to hand. She scratches him - he screams and bleeds, and then leaps at her. They tussle ineffectually for a bit before he makes a break for the door. She crash tackles him to the ground. Kasumi is sick of his shit at this point and changes to crinos, crushing him to the ground.
Shortly after he stops moving, she can hear laughter out in the back yard. She looks out the back door and sees two child-sized forms floating in mid air. Kasumi sighs and moves to the back door. The two forms are skeletal and gaunt, but are clearly Raicho and Hirokumi. Raicho says "thank you mr wolf. What I said was true. He did hit us. And then someone came and promised to take all the pain away. Now we are so hungry. And you smell so good...."
Hirokumi swoops down at her, mouth agape with many sharp pointy teeth. Kasumi dodges back into the house and grabs at him. She grabs his leg and pins him up against the wall. There is a smash sound from somewhere else in the house. Hirokumi tries to bite at her, twisting and snarling. Kasumi pulls one of his legs off, and breaks his neck, but the head keeps snarling. And they don't bleed. And then Raicho bites her from behind. Kasumi flings Hirokumi away, and tries to grab Raicho's head. She does some damage, but the child-monster thing keeps going. Hirokumi crawls brokenly over to attach her some more, but she stomps on him as he approaches. Raicho breaks off and Kasumi is unable to give chase - she's badly injured at this point and feels responsible for the damage and situation here. She rings home and checks, finding her parents are surprisingly alive, but the children have run off. She advises her mother to shut all the windows and doors.
Kasumi sets shit on fire and runs home.
Kasumi heads off to the State Library and can see she's going to get soaked. The rain starts about 3/4 of the way there, big fat raindrops that seem hot. There's bunches of folks running for PT, or hiding in the doorways, but also people standing in it and enjoying the cool after days of too hot. As she's approaching the library, she spots someone mostly in a door, holding an umbrella. He looks her way, and he steps partly out and appears to be waiting for her.
Kasumi cautiously approaches and he says "Ms Umino, I was wondering if we could have a bit of a talk?" Kasumi asks who he is, and he says his name is Xanthipides. She doesn't know him or his name. He says he was hoping to have a short talk with some matters of interest. She asks how long he's been waiting. Oh about 20 minutes. He has a favour to ask to begin with - could she not mention this to the rest of her friends straight away? Kasumi says maybe, and Xanthippides says that's a good start.
They're close enough together to be able to hear without shouting despite all the rain hammering his umbrella and the trams and crowds, but he does seem to be talking low. He says they have a mutual interest in some groups of people not being here any more. His patron also wants to call in a debt they owe, to get them to on getting rid of the people from Brazil - she didn't think they'd mind. He's been asked to approach them to get the ball rolling. Kasumi says she didn't think they were active? No, they were very active on New Years Eve. Could they talk a bit away from the crowd? He seems very nervous and a bit dorky - he's about 25 and tall. They end up out the from of the Library, away from people passing, but still in public.
His patron thinks their mutual aquaintences from Brazil are too active. Kasumi asks about a straw man? He looks confused for a bit, and then says 'ah'. She says they've talked to the straw man, but it wasn't greatly helpful. Xanthipides says he's not really part of any community of others so he's not sure who they are talking about, but he might understand the how. Kasumi says "but you have a patron?", and Xanthipides says yes, but she's not here... she's at the bottom of a long well that they've been to before? The penny drops and Kasumi realises that they're talking about the demon guardian just before the Still Face of Gaia. She says that they incurred a debt then? Oh yes. Kasumi is confused and surprised that the demon is in the more, uh, in charge situation? He says that the others that come when called are much less powerful, this is the other way.
So, at this stage, there's not a lot he can offer her, but he will be looking into things more to try and give them some, er, leads. He's got a phone and they can communicate that way - it'll be better than him standing in her way randomly on a street. Was that like New Years where people showed up? He says that that's a differnt thing, its very precise, he doesn't have that going on. But after New Years, his patron was very keen that he approaches them and makes it happen. Kasumi senses unnatural - death (cold metal) and magic, and some wyrm and wyld.
So, why not mentioning things to the pack? He nervously says yes, he'd prefer that - nt to insult her friends, but they are.. er he gathers... they have a bit of a hair trigger, and a tendency to solve things through violence. So... until they're both comfortable with this cooperation, would she mind keeping it on the QT? He knows its an ask, because he's not really offering anything in return. Kasumi says could he hold still a moment and leans in, and sniffs hard. He mostly smells of cologne, and a large amount of it. She looks him in the eye and says that's not helpful. He shrugs and says a certain amount of caution seems not out of place? He'll let her know as soon as he knows anything. He leaves - Kasumi contemplats following him, but the rain will hide scent.
Kasumi calls Xanthipides and gives him a run down. There's some confusion about who's who, but eventually they get it straight that the strawman is giving them info about the bad werewolves who were working with the brazillian mages. She says that they've been seeing zips and zaps of magic and something spiritual and bad has turned out, but its not what they were looking for. He asks about the magic they keep seeing and he wonders whether that might be someone scrying for their location.
Kasumi puts forth the idea it might be magic hiding things, and he says that doesn't sound likely - not on that scale. Maybe they're far-looking to see what the pack do with the information they've been given?
He says that he'll see if he can see anything, but its not something that he's super good at - so it won't be decisive.
Xanthipides says that he's got a lead on something that might let them track magic. Its not a definite yet, and he'll have to go away for a time and chase it, so if he doesn't answer his phone, don't fret.
Kasumi slips away at some point and makes a call to Xanthipides. She says that she can try and meet up with him later, but she is keen to get him to just meet the rest of the pack. She cannot get the mirror away from them, it'd just be too suspicious. He says that he wasn't really expecting them to actually find it - the last mention of the mirror was 50 years ago, and he was hoping they'd be able to find some evidence of where it went after that. So he'd like to hear about what happened, especially given the news this morning that involved the town Cassilis.
He's not sure what he can do remotely, but he suggests starting with "do you know how to activate it"? Are there instructions with it? No, there are not. Kasumi gives some vague details of things they tried out that didn't work. She says they were mulling putting blood on it, and Xanthipides says that could work - it depends if it has any energy of its own. Kasumi says that it has an aura, and that might mean it has its own reservoir. Xanthipides says that there's two options - it drains your energy or it has its own. Either way there needs to be a connection made. Blood might do it, but it might need to .. be... charged? He's obviously trying to keep the description abstract.
Kasumi asks if he's sure he doesn't want to come see it in person - he would love to, but her friends are demonstratably insane. He's really concerned that they'll over react. ("They haven't murdered anyone for at least 24 hours"). She says that being upfront and honest with answers will get him onside with Tillie, she just hates enigmatic bullshit. He says he's still concerned - he has a precis of events, from Kasumi's point of view, and it was very violent. She says that it would help to come forward before they work out something is up, because they're getting suspicious.
Kasumi hears some pages flicking on the call as if he was looking through books. Xanthipides says that he's aware that this is a temporary situation, and can't last forever. Tell them what she needs to tell them - he's not keen to meet in person, but if a meeting became necessary, he'd be ok with Kasumi and Sinead. He doesn't want to, just to be clear. ("That's a part of growing up" "Yes, I would like to grow up") He could be on a phone call with them, he can provide some help from a distance, but eventually he might need to come see it.
He will take a look and see if he can find anything that might be helpful, but it was mostly letters "blah blah, see the lands of the dead" without instructions. Kasumi asks if the guy had any family? Because he was a vampire. "He was a _what_?" "We'll share the story later" "yes, please do!". "Call me back later."
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