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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vanifae" data-source="post: 5273118" data-attributes="member: 58765">[Mayako's journal, another interesting read from Mayako's perspective!  - GM's note]Journal Entry 6Well so much for going home anytime soon! We’ve been delayed for four days now and I think I might kill myself because of the boredom!!! We’re still here at Pale Oak Castle because Mother had to take care of the situation since Asako Shizu-Sama was murdered. She’s so busy she finally just told us to go on ahead of her. I’m glad to go back home but I feel sorry for my mother since she has to take care of so much. We leave in the morning. Oh! I almost forgot to mention that Nobutada showed up at the castle today. He came for the tournament hahaha!! My dear cousin is late as always. He’s coming back to Sweet Plum Castle with us. I can’t tell if I’m happy or not about this. I am always happy to see my cousin, but he’s a bit snobby. He’s very high class and acts the part in every way. It gets on my nerves sometimes and I can already tell that he and Shiatari are not going to get along. Oh well! What am I going to do? Mother told him to join us and I can’t shame her by telling Nobutada to mind his own business. I guess I will just have to make the best of it.~MayakoJournal Entry 7Oh I am so miserable!! I try not to be the delicate little princess that complains at every discomfort but this is just awful! We’ve been traveling all day through the rain and I’m completely soaked to the bone. We had to make camp on the side of the road and I’m just so filthy and cold. And to make matters worse, Shiatari and Nobutada won’t stop bickering. I knew this would happen but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. We should reach Lady Shion’s village tomorrow to drop off the gift and I cannot wait for it!~MayakoJournal Entry 8Well we managed to reach the village. But of course, not without some difficulty. Luck seems to really hate me lately. We had almost made it to the village when we came across an overturned merchant’s cart that was being robbed by bandits. We ran to the merchant’s aid but were horrified by what we found. The bandits were actually zombies!! I had never seen anything so awful in all of my life. I had heard stories of the walking dead but had never actually seen one. I might have been prepared if I had known that that’s what we were up against but the complete horrified surprise that I felt when I realized what we were fighting froze me to the spot. Shiatari and Nobutada managed to shake their fear and fight with annoying ease and I was ashamed by my uselessness. It was if all my training had never happened. I tried countless times to perform a spell but I couldn’t focus and they kept failing. It even got so bad that I began to hear the voice of Tenchi again. He only speaks to me at the most dire of times. I have to admit it has been a long time since I heard his voice so it was somewhat of a comfort, though he was still as annoying as always. I managed to focus finally near the end of the fight and pulled off a few spells. I still was a shameful excuse for a shugenja. Shiatari got hurt pretty bad so I used my water spell to heal her though it’s still going to take a few days before she heals completely. I was at least helpful in some way. Anyway, we decided to stay the night at the village to rest up before seeing Lady Shion. I’m so happy to have a warm bed tonight! It will be a wonderful change from the cold, hard ground I’ve been sleeping on the last few days. ~MayakoJournal Entry 9Ugh, I can hardly stay awake, but I need to write what has happened today. It’s been a terrible day. It started with us visiting Lady Shion to give her the gift from Mother. I asked her about why there might be zombies roaming her lands but she had absolutely no idea. I didn’t think Father would like me to leave such a troubling situation behind when there might be clues that could disappear in a few days, so I requested Lady Shion’s permission to investigate. In return for her permission, she asked me to spend some time with her son Tetsuo. Tetsuo was an old friend that I went to school with so I was excited to see him, but the situation was awkward. His mother wanted me to cheer him up because he had been really depressed about his father’s recent death. A bit more than just depressed actually but I didn’t know this until later. Shiatari suggested that I invite him to come along with us on the investigation so that seemed like the best reason to talk to him without it being super obvious that his mother had asked me to speak with him. Seeing him brought back nostalgic feelings of simpler times. He had been a good friend and I hated to see him like this. I could immediately see the sadness in his handsome features. It was in every line of his face. He seemed surprised to see me though I couldn’t tell if he was as happy to see me as I was to see him. He agreed to help us and brought his yojimbo. We first went back to the bodies of the zombies and I deduced that they had been dead for less than two weeks and that they had first died by being hung. We also realized by their green clothing that they were the Green Cap Bandits that had been executed a week before for attacking a young girl that worked at the tea shop. We questioned the executioner about what he did with the bodies after they were dead and he finally told us (after some obvious flirtation from Shiatari….ugh that guy was so gross) that he had been drugged by a prostitute the night they were executed. He didn’t know what had happened to the bodies. So, needless to say, we questioned the prostitute who told us she had been paid to do it by a masked man with a star tattoo on his neck. We looked all over the village but no one fit the description and Tetsuo eventually went home. When he left, Nobutada whispered to us that he saw the tattoo on the neck of Tetsuo’s yojimbo. Of course I was horrified, immediately suspecting his yojimbo of betrayal. I was such a fool. I had asked Tetsuo earlier to join me for a drink that night so we could catch up. I planned to ask him about it then. We were having a really good time just talking about when we were young and I was tempted not to even bring it up. I finally did though, and naturally he acted surprised. Since I suspected the yojimbo was responsible for everything, I asked Tetsuo to let me question him tonight before he had a chance to escape. He agreed and when we went to his room, Tetsuo promptly broke a vase over my head knocking me unconscious. When I woke, I was blindfolded and tied up in a pool of some foul liquid that was mixed with blood. With my head pounding and the taste of this liquid in my mouth, I thought I might throw up, but Tetsuo’s voice caused me to focus. He was angry with me, saying that I had pushed him too far. He kept going on and on about how he had acquired some power that would make him invincible and that no one was going to stop him. Hearing this just made me feel worse. I was so foolish to have ignored the possibility that he might be responsible for the zombies. I have always felt that I was a very perceptive person and could tell someone’s true intentions, but I had let my previous friendship with him cloud my judgment. And I was now paying the price for that mistake. He told me that he was going to bring his father back to life by killing his mother. I tried to plead with him but he was beyond listening. He was a mad man. He took off my blindfold and I saw that I was in some cave-like shrine with a floor covered in dead bodies that I could only assume were Tetsuo’s test subjects. He was trying to get me to join him when we heard fighting outside. Tetsuo cursed and rose to see what was going on but he was too late. My allies were quick and ruthless. They burst through the door and chopped him down before he could say a word. I screamed for them to cut my bonds and as soon as they did I used my water spell to heal him before he died. I couldn’t let him die without knowing who was responsible for corrupting him. He told me that he had been given this scroll that gave him power by the tea girl he had saved from the bandits. I tried to get him to come back with us but it was no use. He wanted to die. He decided to perform seppuku and I acted as his second. It was not easy for me to do but I thought it was only proper since I was his friend. Nobutada wasn’t volunteering and Shiatari was too busy making jokes about making Sukime do it. That girl can be a bitch sometimes. So, I acted as his second and Tetsuo’s life was finished. We returned to the manor to deliver the news to Lady Shion and now I’m here documenting the worst day of my life.~MayakoJournal Entry 10Something very strange is going on. This morning we went to the village to question the tea girl but she was nowhere to be found and the people at the tea house acted like they had never even heard of her even though she had supposedly been working there for a couple of months. We questioned the executioner again and he at least remembered her but he offered little information that could help us. We were walking around wondering what to do next when I suddenly remembered the book. The first night we had stayed in the village, the tea girl had given a book to my sister Keiko. I thought nothing of it then, but now seeing the power of the scroll we kept in our protective care, I had no idea what horrors that book could be performing on my sister at that very moment. We rushed back to the manor and I practically tore the book out of Keiko’s grasp. She was upset to have her book taken from her but otherwise seemed no worse for wear. We examined it closely but found nothing too out of the ordinary about it. I noticed that that calligraphy seemed to have some type of code in the writing but I couldn’t decipher it in any way. We asked Lady Shion to help us and she complied with what little composure she had left. Poor Lady Shion was so upset when she heard of her son’s death. She threw herself on the ground at the news and began to sob. I tried to comfort her but there was little I could tell her besides a few stories of the spirit realm that always seemed to cheer my sisters up. I can’t imagine the pain she must be feeling to lose both her husband and son in such a short time. She managed to decipher the code and it was apparent that the book held some instructions in dark magic but nothing Keiko could have understood. I still worry about her though. I’m going to have to keep a close eye on her. Other than that though, there wasn’t anything else useful. We currently have no leads on where the tea girl is or what her motives might have been. I keep feeling like there is dark cloud gathering over our land, holding some nameless enemy that is working hard to destroy what little peace we have left. I might just be paranoid, but I think the events at the tournament and the tragedy that has happened here are connected. I don’t know why I feel this way or what evidence might spawn such feelings, but I do feel it nonetheless. These are dark times. We are about to head back to Sweet Plum Castle. We can’t think of any other investigating we could do while in this village, so we decided to head home so I could discuss the situation with Father. It’s quite possible that he already knows what’s going on.~Mayako</blockquote>

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