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[03:44] <Sachiko> Exam week drew to a close. As expected the feelings varied from student to student, although 'relief' was the great uniting force. Things had even started to cool down at Soejima after the mid-week blow-up.-
[03:44] <Sachiko> An hour of so after school finished, Dinah's phone would buzz. A text from <Sachiko> "I got that info you were after. Come find me whenever you get back, I'll be in the dorm library."
[03:58] <Dinah> Not too long after the message was set, the door to the library opened and Dinah stepped in. After her talk with Roy, things were..a little better anyway. She radiated a less violent energy anyway.-
[03:58] <Dinah> "Hey." She said as she sat down, looking around some. This was a place she didn't really come to that often, after all. "So you found something out about him?"
[04:15] <Sachiko> The library looked a lot better. It'd been Sachiko and Ji-hu's sole domain over the past couple of weeks, and they'd set right a mountain of the library's organizational wrongs. Now the shelves were neatly stacked, with index cards separating each section, and the thin layer of dust that had covered almost everything had also been removed.-
[04:15] <Sachiko> The miasma tracker still ticked away in the corner. The geiger counter click was muffled, though, as when Dinah entered she'd find the library was also pretty damn loud. Sachiko had a pair of speakers hooked up to her laptop on the table, and she was blasting a propulsive rock track loud enough that the bass carried through the door. It was a chaotic, driving thing, overlaid with a surprisingly sweet-sounding vocalist.-
[04:16] <Sachiko> When Sachiko realized Dinah was there she was quick to switch it off, of course.-
[04:16] <Sachiko> "Yeah, I found some stuff," Sachiko said, shutting the book she'd been reading. "Remind me again why you're researching gun-runners?"
[04:25] <Dinah> The music was not unwelcome to Dinah, even making her smirk a little as she just watched Sachiko, slightly interested that it seemed to be what she liked to study to, if this was any indication. As she sat, she simply propped her head against a hand, just waiting to be acknowledged.-
[04:25] <Dinah> Finally she was and the music was gone. Any other situation would lead her to say it was fine but this needed them both to hear.-
[04:26] <Dinah> "Well I want to jack his supply and start a Shadow Army so we can make a presence in the Market. It's a good plan."-
[04:27] <Dinah> She'd said it completely straight-faced, staring at her for a moment as if she was waiting for a response based on that. But then she just shrugged. "Just helping Wallace out. The guy apparently knows how to get a part he needs for this legendary computer."
[04:32] <Sachiko> "Trust Wallace to have a legendary computer with a quest chain…"-
[04:32] <Sachiko> She pulled a small sheet of paper out from under the books and scanned it. "Well the upside is that maybe we can do the army thing as well. Two birds with one stone."
[04:36] <Dinah> "Yeah, it's real wild. But he's floated me some good stuff, so, y'know." With the joke out there, she figured it was taken as such, though when Sachiko ran with it, her brows lifted in surprise.-
[04:36] <Dinah> "I-"-
[04:36] <Dinah> She shook her head. Best to roll with it. "What's your plan?"
[04:48] <Sachiko> "We can actually have a lot of power in the Market if we want to. Memories are their exclusive currency, but they can't create their own."-
[04:48] <Sachiko> Was she joking? Impossible to say.-
[04:48] <Sachiko> "We could play it pretty similar to gangs that deal with narcotics and contraband. We have access to a huge supply they want, and we could apply it to muscle out or absorb current power players. And as long as the Market itself keeps humming along without chaos Krishna probably isn't going to get in our way."
[04:52] <Dinah> "Well, it'd make getting what we wanted there a lot easier. Maybe Indrid and Idraceyl won't fuck with us as much."-
[04:53] <Dinah> Leaning back in her seat somewhat, she sniffed. "I mostly just wanted some dirt on this guy so we could go in, make our deal for the part and get out. Clean hands. I guess Dexu's goons might be hanging back but I'm not lookin' to replace them with other assholes."
[04:58] <Sachiko> "Yeah, fair enough," she said. Now she smiled, but only briefly.-
[04:58] <Sachiko> "Okamura's a middleman. Does a lot of smuggling for yakuza up and down the coast, and for the major players in China," she handed the slip of paper to Dinah. Details, typed up neatly. She'd taken the time to print it rather than making Dinah deal with her handwriting.-
[04:58] <Sachiko> "Mainly guns, as far as I could tell. Didn't sound like he had a hand in the drug trade, but I wouldn't discount it."
[05:10] <Dinah> She looked at the paper and nodded with a little bit of a sigh. "I was kinda hoping Wallace was just being a little hyperbolic when he was saying this guy was bad news. But the other options aren't much better, really. Collector that probably won't let it go without charging more than Wallace can make in a while, if he actually parts with it at all after that and a museum that wants it if they donate a part for it. Which he can't do since he's fixing this for someone else."-
[05:10] <Dinah> "Still…" She frowned. "Now that I know about him, I kinda wanna shut him down anyway."
[05:12] <Sachiko> "You can probably get the part without shutting them down, you know."
[05:20] <Dinah> "Well yeah. But we can do more than most people when it comes to shit like this. Might do some good."
[05:29] <Sachiko> "Sure it might. I see the appeal."-
[05:29] <Sachiko> "But it also might kick open a hornet's nest, and unlike the Sea our powers out here aren't consistent. If some dude with a gun came at us right now? I know you can fight, but I've got nothing for that. Neither does Roy, or Karo."
[05:40] <Dinah> "True." She frowned and thought about it for a moment, looking over the paper again. "Well, we'll consider it tabled. If we know who he is and what he's got, we can always mess with him later. All I need to do is make sure that Wallace isn't gonna get screwed."
[05:45] <Sachiko> "Sounds good." The paper contained a few other things besides what she'd described, along with a likely hangout. "If I can help any more with that, lemme know."-
[05:45] <Sachiko> "… Playing vigilante's appealing, but I've had to work hard enough dealing with the fucking newspaper gang. Yakuza can wait."
[05:52] <Dinah> The wheels were turning in her head, obviously and, knowing Dinah, she already had an idea of what she wanted to do.-
[05:53] <Dinah> "I will, thanks. And in fairness, the newspaper gang probably likes to think they run like the Yakuza. Just without guns."
[06:08] <Sachiko> "I know they do. Idiots."-
[06:08] <Sachiko> She sighed. "So you and Roy made up?"
[06:10] <Dinah> "Still can't believe they tried ambushes."-
[06:11] <Dinah> Her guard was up a little after the question, making her look at Sachiko for a moment until she finally sighed and shrugged. "Yeah. He brought a fish home and I cooked it for him. We talked about stuff."
[06:50] <Sachiko> Sachiko was clearly watching her guard shift, but she didn't pay it much mind. "That's good."-
[06:50] <Sachiko> "… Are you okay? I'm not trying to psychoanalyse, just asking."
[07:05] <Dinah> "I mean…I guess? I'm about as okay as I usually am. And the only times I'm not really okay is….well, that's obvious."
[07:34] <Sachiko> One of Sachiko's fingernails tapped gently against her book.-
[07:34] <Sachiko> "Yeah, I get it."-
[07:34] <Sachiko> "… Listen, you were right about us needing to be better at functioning as a team," she said. "I'm pretty sure the start of that is that we need to be able to go more than a week or two without a screaming match, you know?"
[07:34] <Sachiko> "And before you get mad, I really mean all of us. Probably even the kid."
[07:36] <Dinah> "Yeah…I know."-
[07:38] <Dinah> She frowned. There were so many things she could've said there, things to ask or throw around. But it wasn't a necessary point to make. She had been the one to say it. She wanted to make them a better team. It was just that things hadn't gone that way that night.-
[07:38] <Dinah> "You really think we should let Karo in?"
[07:48] <Sachiko> "I mean I don't love it from a moral perspective. I know he's only three years younger, but wow…"-
[07:48] <Sachiko> "We can't confiscate his Persona or anything. And we're not imprisoning him," she said, with a little shudder. "So say we kick him out when he decided he wants to stay in… All that does is push him right to Delacour, who knows and apparently likes him."-
[07:48] <Sachiko> "I'm not as dead-set on us being absolute rivals with him as you are, but I'm not sure enough that I want to hand him team members."
[07:53] <Dinah> "Karo just hasn't seen the real Adrien. So even if he went to be part of his team, he'd bail eventually."-
[07:57] <Dinah> It was…optimistic. For a few different reasons, really. But she sniffed and crossed her arms. "We'll have to test him somehow at least. I've got an idea for that. But that's something we should think of, too. Maybe not recruiting but…like…keeping our eyes out, I guess. I don't know what Adrien did to get Amazon but that's a whole other Evoker we know nothing about. And he'll get more eventually."-
[07:57] <Dinah> A growl rumbled in her throat. "And the more he gets…"
[08:04] <Sachiko> "Hm." She frowned, clearly weighing up her options.-
[08:04] <Sachiko> "… what if we're wrong about him?"
[08:09] <Dinah> "About who?"
[08:10] <Sachiko> "Delacour."
[08:12] <Dinah> "We're not. I'm not sure what game he's playing right now but he's up to something. If that last theater weren't so close to Hideki, things would've been different. And if he's really had this change of heart that he wants us to think he had, he'd come to us himself."
[08:15] <Sachiko> "What makes you think that?"
[08:18] <Dinah> "Because he knows if he shows up after everything that happened, we might give him another chance."
[08:31] <Sachiko> "'Might' is a hard word though. I don't know about you, but I probably wouldn't settle for might if it hadn't gone well the first time." Her good hand absently went to work massaging her bad one.-
[08:31] <Sachiko> "Let's say you're 100% right, which you might be. Delacour's bad news, and he has a long-game plan that we're going to have to stop."-
[08:31] <Sachiko> "But like you said, that team is going to keep growing. And treating him as an enemy means treating them as enemies. They learn we're impossible to work with, they see us having nothing but negative interactions. They've fought us a bunch of times, even. So when he wants their help to get rid of us, they'll be a lot less likely to blink."
[08:35] <Dinah> She sighed and rubbed her face. "Okay, I don't mean might and you know I don't. If he showed up, we'll yell, I'll hit him a couple times but at the end of it, we'll be a team again. We need numbers and we need cohesion, especially when it comes to going into theaters. Adrien's a parasite and an idiot but he's not stupid. He has leverage. So if he wanted to be a team, it'd be done already. So he's got some other game in mind."-
[08:37] <Dinah> Finally, she pulled her hand away from her face and set it on the table. "And keeping us at a distance is part of his plan. Keeping us mad at him, keeping us as enemies is the point. It's real easy to blame us. And that's what he's counting on."-
[08:38] <Dinah> "So like it or not, that's where we're at."
[08:46] <Sachiko> "Except we're not being kept angry. Roy and Nakajima both like him. I still think he's a terrible person, but things have been pretty civil between us since he split," she said. "He turned down Karo and specifically sent him here first."-
[08:46] <Sachiko> "He's keeping you angry. And maybe that's a tactical thing, but it seems just as likely that it's a personal one."
[08:49] <Dinah> "So where is he, then?" She snapped her head to Sachiko gruffly for a moment and then held up a hand and sighed.-
[08:52] <Dinah> "…Like I said. If he showed up, I'd be outnumbered. And even I can't deny that working something out is something we need to think about. We can't go into a theater and have him and Amazon and whoever the fuck else follow us in. We're just inviting trouble that way. And who knows? Maybe he sent Karo to us because he knew we'll take him. And if he can bait out Vader that way…." She trailed off and shook her head.-
[08:53] <Dinah> "Any way I look at it, I just see bad shit."
[09:07] <Sachiko> "Look, if you're concerned that you're the only person who sees the doomsday scenario, I promise you you're not," Sachiko said.-
[09:07] <Sachiko> "All I'm trying to say that I had Amazon laughing and chatting inside ten minutes, and that stuff matters if you wind up being right. Does that make sense?"
[09:10] <Dinah> "Yeah. I got no problem with Amazon. I mean, only thing I know about her is that she's Adrien's friend, which is a mark against her. But we all make mistakes."
[09:12] <Sachiko> She snorted. "That's the truth."-
[09:13] <Sachiko> "You're right about us needing to decide a party line on Delacour, though. Fair warning, next meeting I'm going to be putting the idea of trading some of what we've got in exchange for some of the stuff he stole. I'm not happy about it either, but…"
[09:16] <Dinah> She shrugged. "You do what you gotta. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that you have to pick him or me or any of that shit. If you can get our stuff back, then good."
[09:20] <Sachiko> "Just letting you know, not asking permission," Sachiko said lightly.-
[09:20] <Sachiko> "… when I first scoured this place I found some old notebooks full of mission reports from the Fiends. All in French, so not much good to me. Adrien borrowed them before he split and promised to give me translations, but he never did. He still has them."
[09:28] <Dinah> "Why would they be in Fre-" She stopped and sighed. "Olivie. Right, that makes sense."-
[09:29] <Dinah> "So…considering all the stuff we've found out, he probably knows a lot of stuff that we want to know. And it's not good at all that he has it and we don't."
[09:39] <Sachiko> "Exactly. The trick is working out what to give him in exchange."-
[09:39] <Sachiko> "I have my suspicions that he knows about some of what we've found already, but it's impossible to tell until I speak to him."
[09:40] <Dinah> "So…askin' the obvious question here. If he gives you the translations, how're you gonna verify that they're accurate and fully accounted for?"
[09:41] <Sachiko> "That's the trick, huh? The thing I'd like to do is ask for photos or just the original books and then get them independently translated, but I can't think of a great way to do it."
[09:46] <Dinah> "Yeah, that'd be a little awkward, considering what's written in them." A moment of silence as she thought, crossing her arms in the process.-
[09:46] <Dinah> "My mom's got some French connections but they're all assholes. So that wouldn't work."
[09:50] <Sachiko> "Heh."-
[09:50] <Sachiko> "Google Translate is a bad excuse for an actual translator, but if we had his translation and the original text we might be able to use it as a verification tool. It'd be slow, though, and it's still got some pretty significant security problems."
[09:54] <Dinah> "….Y'think there's some way we could use the Metaverse? Like….teach ourselves French real quick or something? Maybe Idraceyl knows something about that."
[09:57] <Sachiko> "… shit, that's a really good thought, actually," Sachiko clearly brightened at the suggestion.-
[09:57] <Sachiko> "Idraceyl might work, but there might even be some sort of Shadow-made universal translator for sale in the market. They've got all sorts of magic crap in there."-
[09:58] <Sachiko> "We'd have to trade for it, but I think we're going to get okay with that in the very near future."
[10:03] <Dinah> "That's a good point. Hopefully we can figure out something that won't cost too much."-
[10:04] <Dinah> That made her hesitate for a moment. "Speaking of…Roy said something that's kinda stuck with me. He asked me if I remembered the names of his teammates and I said yes. And he said he couldn't. As in…he read them, retained them for a few minutes and then they were gone. He thinks he didn't just trade his memories of them but rather his ability to remember them."
[10:16] <Sachiko> "Wait, seriously? Her eyes went wide. "That's… shit, that's really terrible"-
[10:16] <Sachiko> "That's not what it seems to involve in anything I've read. I mean it's possible he traded with the Elves and they offered different terms…"
[06:53] <Dinah> "Yeah. I don't want to just spread his problems around but if we're thinking of dealing in the Market, it's something we need to know. And I told him we'd try and figure out a way to fix that. If his friends are Incarnates, then he needs to know who they are. And we need him to know that, too."
[11:16] <Sachiko> "Yeah," she agreed. She'd looked a distant ever since the idea of metaphysically permanent memory loss was introduced, like she'd retreated to some interior portion of her mind to assess the options.-
[11:16] <Sachiko> "… Maybe we can experiment? I'll watch some terrible movie I don't care about, sell the memories and then watch it again to see what happens. At least then we know what we're risking."
[11:17] <Sachiko> "And if we find out that's not how Market memory trading works, we might be able to narrow down who he did sell them to."
[11:24] <Dinah> She nodded, rolling her eyes some at what she was even thinking of suggesting. "We can make it like a….test."-
[11:26] <Dinah> What a thing after the week they'd had. "You watch the movie, we'll come up with, like, a worksheet for it of stuff that you noticed and then when you watch it again, you can fill it out after. If you can still get it right, then maybe that's a good avenue of…making memories to sell."
[11:43] <Sachiko> "Right! We could carve out a bit of time in a week for building up non-essential memories that we're okay with discharging, with enough variety that we can trade to different types of Shadows. Okuninushi was telling me a bit about that when I visited him…"-
[11:43] <Sachiko> And then quite suddenly the smile she'd been forming collapsed in on itself like a soufflé of human misery.-
[11:43] <Sachiko> "… I can't believe I'm more excited about the nerd version of 'selling my memories to demons' than the cool one. I bring shame to my own Persona."
[11:53] <Dinah> "I can't believe I helped. I'm pretty sure Montag would not be happy with this arrangement." A frown drew on her lips again as she sighed, propping her head up in her hand as her elbow rest on the table again.-
[11:54] <Dinah> "But we gotta do what we gotta do. We can't sell real memories or we could end up like Roy. So this is the only other alternative. Short of figuring out some way to steal memories from other people…which is worse."
[12:02] <Sachiko> Sachiko's expression twisted sharply at the suggestion. "I'd never even considered that possibility. Yikes."
[12:19] <Dinah> "Yeah, I'm not too proud about thinking of it." That was definitely the truth, showing clear on her face. "But I've been thinking of it as…well, as a currency. And the people, they've already been losing memories. Not that I'm gonna suggest we do it. Even I don't think Adrien would consider it, thankfully, though that was my first worry when I thought it was possible."
[12:37] <Sachiko> "Someone's probably done it, but it makes me feel gross just thinking about it…"-
[12:37] <Sachiko> "Uuuuugh, so much stuff we need to try and solve." She patted the stack of books to her right. "This seems to be what the library has on Incarnates, but I haven't had time to read it all with exams. Going to try and skim it before we have our next meeting. A lot of the info is conjecture, but at least it's something…"
[01:30] <Dinah> "Yeah." They could try asking around in the Market but the likelihood was simply that they didn't care where the memories came from or how, just that they showed up.-
[01:30] <Dinah> At the mention of research, she nodded, happy to change gears. "I've been thinking about it, too. If we have any actual research on Heeds, you might want to look into that, too."
[01:33] <Sachiko> "To try and explore your idea about separating them from an Incarnate again?"
[01:43] <Dinah> She nodded.-
[01:44] <Dinah> "We won't be able to just find a Heed for them, mostly likely. So we'll have to like…manufacture one, possibly. Maybe figure out a way to do the process in reverse. Instead of the event focusing on the item, focusing the item to make the event or something like that."
[02:09] <Sachiko> "Right, I get you," she said, a frown knotting her face.-
[02:10] <Sachiko> "I wonder if we could use their books? We probably can't get access to their tomes, but their entries in Library Of Alexandria's books should be functionally similar. A complete record of their life that we could channel through."
[02:20] <Dinah> "It's worth a try. Though I think we'll want to have something more solid than a 'maybe' before we try something like this. The Miasma could get really bad and while we're dealing with the theater, life still goes on in the outside world."
[02:38] <Sachiko> "Of course." She said with a sigh.-
[02:38] <Sachiko> "I know I'm a bit flighty on this, but I've been thinking about our options and leads non-stop for two weeks, and combined with exams I'm fairly sure my brain is melting."
[03:11] <Dinah> "I get it. We're all fucked after exams and everything else." She flipped a hand as she said it.-
[03:11] <Dinah> "Won't be a problem while things are fairly easy. So hopefully that lasts. I'm not looking forward to seeing an Archetype developing tomorrow or whatever."
[03:16] <Sachiko> "It'd be nice if we had a way of scouting for Archetype candidates, huh? We could have our intel ready if they tipped over the line, maybe even stopped it before it happened."
[03:28] <Dinah> "We can make educated guesses. Or…just take information on everyone. I'm not sure about stopping it but we could at least know what to do in that case if it happened to someone."
[03:42] <Minaplo> The Magician and Devil Arcanas strengthen…

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