"Go ahead.  I think I have the information network stuff down, so I'm going to ask around about Yamashita."  She picked<tt class="bbc_tt">INVESTIGATE </tt>and then<tt class="bbc_tt">YAMASHITA HIROJI</tt>for her subject of choice.  As Joy went to start another set of races, Aika started with the crowd and the car crews to see what she could learn about this Akuma...which, when you got down to it, was a little...and a lot.<br/><br/>One of the people at the races was a worker at the construction company who had been building the Aoyama; he mentioned that Yamashita was a student of several martial disciplines, most notably karate.  That was the little.  The lot - which came from another source, this one an urban anthropologist - was that there were stories about him achieving some higher form of karate, one that utilized the internal energy of human beings, which Aika immediately recognized as the ki that she and Joy used as fighters, themselves.  They had already pre-supposed that Yamashita was an Akuma, and this confirmed it - but more importantly, they had known that certain Mugen techniques were based on real-world martial arts, so a student of those arts could more easily learn those techniques.  It sounded like the Akuma had much a similar benefit - almost like they were a dark mirror of the Solar Exalted.<br/><br/>She headed back to the stand, where Joy had already started the races, and began to share.  "Yamashita - in case we hadn't confirmed it already - is definitely an Akuma.  They say he used his mastery of karate to achieve a higher form; that sounds like what you and Shun have done with your own martial arts..."  She continued.  "It also sounds like he's studying other mundane forms, probably hoping for a similar benefit from what they can provide."  Compared to Tamatsuki - who sounded pure street fighter - and the Red-Black Viper, who knew Snake Kung Fu, he was definitely shaping up to be a bigger challenge, if not the<em>biggest</em>challenge they had to face.<br/><br/>Remembering the map, they could bypass the Industrial District and go straight for the island, denying him the position of last - and therefore toughest - boss, but Aika wasn't sure about doing that.  Not yet.