<em>The following is a summary of events that were handled in a Skype chat. I'm not going to put individual post headers for each character's actions.</em><br/><br/><strong>Characters:</strong>Ken, Lily, Maddy, Maple, Rev. Foley, Sakeena<br/><strong>Where:</strong>Rev. Foley's office<br/><strong>When:</strong>During and after lunch<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong>clothes<br/><hr/>Rev. Foley sent email to Lily, Maddy and Maple asking them to drop by her office at the start of lunch and offering to feed them. They did, along with Sakeena to whom Rev. Foley had spoken personally. Over veggie quiche (for Maple) and sushi (for everyone else), they discussed the Min-joon situation. Maple briefed everyone on what she observed of Min-joon after breakfast (as described previously in this thread under a spoiler), and spent half an hour making a "one-shot wizard portrait" (not having read the rules, that's what she calls Trump sketches, after Harry Potter). She then meditated on the sketch to try to get further insight. Summoned by another email from Rev. Foley, Ken arrived just as Maple finished meditating:<br/><br/>“He has some kind of<em>soul plague</em>or something!” Maple hisses, barely stopping herself from shouting. “He looked all—all rotten and awful and and and I think I might be sick.”<br/><br/>Rev. Foley grabs her trash can and passes it to Maple, just in case she means it literally.<br/><br/>Maple waves it off but slumps down in her chair a little.<br/><br/>“So we were concerned that you seemed to have a not entirely pleasant interaction with him this morning, at the same time that we noticed he was—apparently much worse than I had thought.”<br/><br/>Ken frowns at that. "He has a soul plague? You think he may have been infected by one of the monsters?” Ken asks Maple then turns to the Rev. “He asked me to be his date for the dance. I said that I'd go with him as a friend not his date…he was getting rather wound up about it when he thought I was going to flat out reject him.”<br/><br/>Maple shakes her head and forces herself to sit up. “I, uh, have it on good authority that he’s not a Monster. Unless he’s a fun new Monster, fun in this case meaning horrific.”<br/><br/>Rev. Foley says, “I am as confident as I can be that I would have noticed if Min-joon had become a monster of the sort we know about.” She glances curiously at Maple when Maple mentions ‘good authority’ but does not comment. “Are you friends with Min-joon, Ken?” she asks. “I know you don’t have any classes together.”<br/><br/>Ken shakes his head. “No Ma’am. Actually this was the first time he spoke to me. He was impressed that I scared Bob and just point blank asked me out.”<br/><br/>Rev. Foley frowns. “That’s a distressing thing to have attracted his attention.”<br/><br/>Ken nods with that observation. “I agree, especially when all I did was look at Bob.”<br/><br/>“Bob finds you intimidating, I think,” Rev. Foley says. “You have a reputation that as far as I know is based on nothing. …it<em>is</em>based on nothing, right?”<br/><br/>Ken forces himself not to sigh. “It is based on a few altercations over the years when some people have made some very insulting comments about my mother. The…fight seems a bit much since they only lasted a few seconds. In any case the tales grew in the retelling. Other than that, no. Not really based on anything.”<br/><br/>“I see.” Rev. Foley looks like she might say something more on that topic, but doesn’t. Instead she turns to the girls and says, “Unfortunately, none of you have any classes with Min-joon other than Maple being in Shakespeare with him, so I can’t exactly ask you to maintain surveillance. But you’re my best students, and I trust your insights. If you see him do anything unusual, or if you get any more impressions of him metaphysically than Maple has, please let me know. I could in theory take action as Dean of Spirituality and school chaplain, but that would also involve Dr. Balthazar, and I’m not ready to do that—yet.”<br/><br/>Lily nods.<br/><br/>Ken looks at the others. “I could cast a spell that I call upon Lord Hachiman for. A reconnaissance—it tries to subtly discover information about the subject,” Ken offers. “It may offer some insight as to what is happening with Min-joon.”<br/><br/>Rev. Foley nods. “Yes, by all means, Ken, I think invoking divine aid is appropriate right now.”<br/><br/>“Oh, hey Rev I asked in my email earlier if you had, like, access to the sign-out logs or something so we could see when Min-joon’s been off campus this semester. Was that over a line or…?”<br/><br/>Rev. Foley smiles faintly. “It would be utterly inappropriate for me to use my access as Dean to investigate the comings and goings of a student not under my care and not subject to Review in Council. That’s why I didn’t find out that he’d taken a long weekend the 10th through the 12th to travel home for the funeral of a relative. Not having obtained that information, I certainly did not share it with any of you.” Her expression becomes sober again. “Maple, you said you hadn’t observed anything unusual about him until now. I certainly didn’t either, though I’m not in contact with him four times a week like you are. That suggests that whatever happened was very recent.”<br/><br/>“Don’t suppose any of you big fancy mages can look back in time~?”<br/><br/>“Time is a barrier I do not know how to overcome,” says Rev. Foley, “and in any case this school is heavily warded against all forms of divination and scrying. If whatever happened, happened within these walls, then the only record of it would be security camera footage—and that, I really can’t access, nor would it necessarily show anything of interest.”<br/><br/>Sakeena says, “The prescient trance works, though. I mean, you’re the one who showed me how to do that.”<br/><br/>Ken considers that. “I could pray to either Amaterasu or her brother Tsuki Yomi...as the kami of the sun and moon...calendars and therefore time would fall under their purview and it is said that Amaterasu sees all...but I've never asked for something like that before.”<br/><br/>“What if perhaps I tried to divine using his True Name?” Lily asks.<br/><br/>“Have you studied his True Name before, or would you have to compute it first?”<br/><br/>“I believe I would have to compute it first.”<br/><br/>“And that takes days.”<br/><br/>Lily nods. “It’s still something I can work on.”<br/><br/>Maple pulls out her cellphone and starts typing an email to Penn:<br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">Hey Penn!<br/>I have a weird favor to ask, can you meet me in the garden after class?<br/>(That's not the weird favor, that's a mundane pre-favor. Favor to be revealed in garden for extra drama + nice atmosphere. Very important, nice atmosphere.)<br/>--- Maple</span><br/><br/>Very soon, she gets a reply:<br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">Maple, I would love to meet you in the garden. How about 4:30 PM today? It should still be clear and not too cold.<br/>--Penn</span><br/><br/>Sakeena excuses herself to go make Dhuhr prayer before class.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;">It's a date!<br/>Exciting conspiracy date~<br/>--- Maple</span><br/><br/>Meanwhile, Rev. Foley turns to Ken. “So. I think you should invoke the aid of Lord Hachiman first. If you are not prepared to pray to the other Kami for insight through time, it will probably take longer than we have before your next class.”<br/><br/>Ken nods at that assessment. “I can do that,” he agrees. “Uhm—I’d like to point out that if there is something amiss with Min-Joon and we are seeking to get to the bottom of it, he could pose a danger. Perhaps people approaching him should do it in pairs?”<br/><br/>“That might be wise,” says Rev. Foley, “if we approach him at all. We don’t know how this…soul-plague…spreads, whether it’s limited to him or might infect others.” She frowns at that thought. “Maybe I<em>should</em>involve Dr. Balthazar…”<br/><br/>Ken thinks about it some more. “I will pray to Izanagi, Kami who created life. He can help in protecting us.” Ken nods, sure of it.<br/><br/>First, however, Ken prays to Hachiman, and gets<em>outer darkness full of squirming fungus tentacles that rip at him with claws like crystal venom and it’s all music and the music is screaming the words that end the Earth, the closure of all possibilities down to zero, absolute zero freezing him in place for a moment before he can pull his mind away, shaking, shuddering.</em><br/><br/>Also, Ken's pretty sure Min-joon noticed his spell.<br/><br/><strong>Maple, Maddy and Lily</strong>all feel that something dire has just happened—something that literally threatens the survival of planet Earth.<br/>Wherever<strong>William</strong>is, he hears the world screaming, and the voice urgently trying to calm it down. He feels reality shudder.<br/>Wherever<strong>Lara</strong>is, she feels distinctly uneasy. Lily's upset.<br/>Wherever<strong>Morgan</strong>is, his stomach lurches briefly, then settles.<br/><br/>Rev. Foley goes gray in the face and grabs for her cellphone.