With the matter of Cat Island behind them, the M-Com team
has begun to put together more of a progressive front against Hikozaemon and
Suidobashi to prevent them from feeding reality off to this multi-verse eating
abomination. Among other things, with the majority of Sierzant’s requested gear
come in, the sacred place under Tokyo has become the center of a strong new
regional headquarters for M-Com and the focus point for the task force to work
against these enemies. This is further improved upon when Carracci is brought
to the site and, in looking around, notices a pattern about some of the
decorations which has been broken. When she fixes it, the sites ancient arcane
defenses come on in full and a set of ritual gear and laboratory is awakened
with arcane power.
Thomas begins thinking about contacting other Chosen from
other universes and working with them to fight this monster. He comes to this
conclusion by thinking about how the Spooky Girl is not a ghost and was at one
time another Chosen with powers similar to his. His connection to destiny brings him a vision that confirms his suspicions that the Spooky Girl is another Chosen from another universe. When discussing the leads the
team has, Thomas also suggests an attempt to strengthen the ley lines and thus
the dimensional boundaries of the globe. Thus giving the team a direction to go
in.
Carracci sets out with Sierzant’s team to research
Suidobashi, Mills is included in this group due to the necessity of getting her
out of Katkemat’s way after the modern occultist’s major screw up in the Cat
Island incident. Meanwhile, Katkemat studies how to go about the process of
making Thomas’s idea into reality.
Katkemat determines that it is possible to reinforce the Ley
Lines by performing rituals to make use of immense emotional energy similar to
how the dimensional buffer site in France was made when Hikozaemon utilized the
force of the World War II slaughter and atrocity to create it. However,
Katkemat suggests that using an opposing emotional force, such as celebration,
would serve just as well and might even be better for their purposes. She
reasons that they will need to reinforce four major Ley Line sights around the
world and begins looking into which particular sites would best fit.
Meanwhile, Carracci investigations have revealed that
Suidobashi Heavy Industries does not seem to actually exist. People know about
it, people work for it, and there are buildings that bear its name, but on
paper it doesn’t actually exist. There are no records of it to be found
anywhere, and several of its supposed properties actually belong to others and
most of its employees are either listed as unemployed or employed by others. It
appears that the entire company and all of its front companies are essentially
a mass delusion. People in key positions have been convinced by some manner
that the company is real and that its claims to ownership are legitimate.
Armed with this knowledge, Kasper and Thomas arrange a
meeting with Katya Chen of the arachne. They meet with a number of arachne
faces and gumo in the fifth floor of an Arachne owned building rented out to
other companies for the most part. The Arachne are initially skeptical on the
matter of magic and supernatural entities. They have psychics and but they can
site scientific reasons for those powers and their own mutation into the spider
people they now are. However, Thomas recognizes the presence of the goddess
Arachne once again in their midst and appeals to her to help convince them.
Despite being in the middle of the room, nobody initially
notices the conversation between Thomas and the apparent Mediterranean
secretary. She notes that she is limited in what she can do by some rules but
proposes that a deal be made. She speaks up and reveals herself to Katya Chen
and the other arachne present and in exchange Thomas and M-Com help the arachne
mortals to be able to go public.
As soon as Kasper’s directly referenced by
Arachne and addressed, he becomes aware of her presence and the conversation
ongoing. He also suddenly remembers the bits about meeting a goddess in
Thomas’s reports of the Forgotten Scepter mission. The deal is made, and
Arachne clears her throat, causing all present to suddenly be aware that she is
there. She reveals herself to the Arachne, commenting about how they decided to
name themselves off of her without any effort on her part, and strongly
suggests that they listen to M-Com on this matter. Katya Chen agrees.
Arachne and M-Com begin deploying psychics, occultists, and
deprogramming experts to clear the widespread mind-control that allow
Suidobashi to exist as an entity. Meanwhile, Arachne Bioware also rushes to
purchase locations in Israel, Mexico City, Lousiville, and Kyoto at which they
begin to build facilities including a concrete and inscribed ritual circle to
cast the ritual with. The idea is to use several major celebrations occurring
at those sites in short order to be able to complete the ritual as quickly as
possible and with minimal interference from Suidobashi or Hikozaemon’s other
resources.
They plan to start with Israel’s Independence Day
celebration on May 2nd, move to Kyoto to take advantage of the glut
of tourists arriving there for Golden Week on May 4th, then go
Mexico City to take advantage of Cinco de Mayo’s celebrations on the 5th,
and finally to hit Louisville, Kentucky on the 6th of May in order
to utilize the festivities of the Kentucky Derby. All of these are celebrations
that go back anywhere from decades to centuries. In theory, if this move is successful,
it will bolster this reality for the next thousand years or so. Katya Chen is
present with some psychics and bodyguards to bolster security and to get a look
at actual magic.
They start off in Israel, bringing in a team of fifteen
mystics from M-Com including Katkemat, Mills, Thomas, the crystal woman
Valerio, The Schemer, The Plotter, and nine other M-Com mystics. They decided
to purchase and convert an older building here. Looking into the situation,
they learn of a planned protest by Palestinians to take place on the same day
and worry about trouble erupting. In response, Kasper directs one of his team
members to make Israel aware of an “Interpol” operation in the area as a
courtesy, successfully encouraging the Israelis to keep a calm lid on the
situation in order not to disrupt whatever Interpol is doing.
With the first ritual, they plan to iron out the troubles of
the process. Katkemat is leading the situation, Valerio is acting partially as
an enhancing talisman and Thomas, as the Chosen, is the focus of the ritual.
The ritual will last twenty four hours, and everybody has to pace themselves to
stay up the entire time. Carracci is running surveillance and counter-hacking
while Kasper runs logistics and appears to be doing little more than sitting at
a desk and drinking coffee. Before the actual ritual, Katkemat helps the mystic
team out with practicing the ritual’s chants and mechanics while Thomas tries
unsuccessfully to meditate and center himself.
With the actual start of the ritual, Thomas’s nervous mental
state is worsened when the Spooky Girl’s presence is felt and he is distracted
causing a sort of light show to start to develop around the ritual site. This
attracts some attention, which Kasper addresses by having Daley use her powers
to set up a sort of Somebody Else’s Problem Field so that onlookers decide they're not interested in the strange lights from the old building or assume it's just some holiday celebration going on.
Carracci, after nearly a year trying to uncover the secrets
of M-Com and what is going on in the world has a sudden epiphany when she
realizes that she is going to have to keep information about what is happening
from going public. She’s now part of the secret conspiracy. In this case, she’s
tracking the source of some posted internet videos. It’s too late to prevent
the video from going viral, but she is able to alter the source video to change
what city and date the video is supposedly happening at.
Katkemat lectures Thomas about keeping his mental state more
under control and he blames the Spooky Girl for distracting him. She comments
that all she did was show up to watch. Thomas’s distraction and the demands of
the ritual begin to cause him to tire out and Katkemat has to turn toward
managing all of the other mystics and basically herding cats from numerous
different traditions.
Carracci notes that some of Suidobashi’s remaining resources
has noticed the ritual and are starting to look into it, but she manages to
stall them and confuse their researches as well as direct some Arachne and
M-Com psychics to the area in question to further disrupt the situation by
seeing if it was possible to disrupt any mind-control in play.
Thomas finally gets a hold of himself and focuses in tightly
on his desire to protect the world and keep it from dissolving into chaos
before being devoured by the entity in question. His good will and kind nature
floods out of the ritual into the ley lines, infecting every corner of
Jerusalem and the surrounding geographical region. As a result, while the
people of the region might not be aware of what is happening specifically, the
spirits and the land of the Middle East are now attuned to Thomas.
With the ritual finally complete and preparations are made
to move to Kyoto against the turn of the Earth. Using some of the excess power
of the ritual, Katkemat leads a smaller ritual to teleport herself and the
relevant major players of the situation to Kyoto to address the next ritual,
where they expect to face the first major resistance now that Hikozaemon is
likely to know what is going on. The teleportation somehow rejuvenates the
group and they arrive refreshed and ready to go again with the band of Kyoto
mystics they gathered to help with this ritual.
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