((Expecting))

Atsumori checked his communicator one more time as he leaned casually against the wall by the door of Tian's teashop. Who was this mysterious Kitsune? And what did he need from Atsumori? Hopefully it really was just a favor and not pavers, which seemed like they might call on technical skills Atsumori did not possess. Or flavors, which... was either a little too easy to make sense or wildly inappropriate.

Hmm, flavors... wonder if that silver fungus flavored tea is any good...? Or maybe passion fruit...

Soon a shock of electric blue hair could be seen bobbing towards Atsumori through the crowds of the evening. Surely this could not be the mysterious Kitsune?

It was.

Izumi looked at the grainy picture on his densai and compared it with real life before completing the distance between them, making a 'bow' which was more a bounce and starting with a wide grin.

"ShibaAtsumori-san?"

"That's me. Kitsune Izumi-sama?" Atsumori pushed off from the wall into a deeper bow. Partly because Izumi was important for a minor clanner, and partly because he was just... tiny. A bow of merely average depth still seemed a little too looming.

"Good to meetcha. Always happy to see a Fox around." Even if he was still feeling a little under the weather from his ikebana adventures, Atsumori's smile was full of energy. Though it was a bit less obvious than usual while he was standing next to HYPER-FOX. "Your clan were tremendous hosts while I was on Old Rokugan. Just great."

"OhitwastheHomeworld. I'mfromInari'sCradle, waswonderingwhoyouwere. Keitaro-samawaslightondetails."

He was all smiles and energy.

"Shallweseewhatthey'vegotbeforewetalk?"

He said as he indicated the tea stall.

"Sounds good." Atsumori had to take a moment to decode from Kitsune-sama speed down to normal-person speed, but it wasn't so bad really. He gestured for Izumi to go ahead.

Maybe passionfruit. I'll try the fungus one when I'm feeling a bit more tip-top. Stupid plants.

"Yeah, I was doing a conservation residency out there. Those forests..." he shook his head. "The homeworld biome is really somethin'. It must've been amazing before industrialization."

The Kitsune went for plain sweet bubble tea . . . perhaps surprisingly.

"EveryFoxwantstoseetheKitsuneMorieventually. It'sourhome."

He claimed a table while they waited for the orders.

"I'llgetthereeventually. Keitaro-samahasputyourdebtatmydisposal, butitmightnotbeneeded. I'dratherlethteMiaiproceedasintendedthanleveragepoliticaldebtslikeaCraneorScorpion. IassumeyouareherefortheMiaiandnotthehugeinsectsandcolourfullizards?"

Atsumori blinked just a little worriedly at that 'leverage debts.' Then he shrugged and took a sip from the comically oversize straw stuck into his plastic cup of tea. "Yeah, that's right. I shipped in for the miai. The lizards are just a bonus. Pretty good one, though!" He grinned. "Can't wait to get further out there now they've lent us those otori. Remarkable birds, just amazin'! Smart, too, for birds."

He paused briefly to negotiate with his tea again. Two of the little starchy balls had gotten stuck together, and the straw wasn't quiiiiite big enough to... ice rattled as he poked it around inside the cup. "Hah! Gotcha, sticky little blighter! Err." He swirled the drink nonchalantly. "Needed for what, exactly, Kitsune-sama? I don't mind helping out if I can."

"Wellit'saMiai."

He paused briefly to try his own tea . . . and then continued at his usual breakneck speed.

"ItmightcomethatIoroneoftheAllianceneedsawordorthreeputtinginwithanotherPhoenix. Nothingtoonerousandallaboveboard. Wedon'tuseScorpionorSpidertactics. I'drathermuckouttheOtoristablesthandescendtotheirlevel."

He grinned.

"Suchgoodbirds. WeactuallyheldourlittleAlliancemeetingwhileridingthem."

"Oh, that's it?" Atsumori shrugged, to the accompaniment of a watery rattle from his tea drink. "No worries. You were all invited here anyway, right? Can't imagine they'd invite anybody they weren't pleased to have around, anyway. The governor and his nakodo, that is." He frowned slightly, remembering the surprisingly large swarm of Spider guests at the welcome banquet. Well, probably?

"Oh, you got one too? Great, aren't they!" He nodded enthusiastically at Izumi's approval of the otori. "Much better than a car for most of the planetary biomes, too."

Oh, right, this conversation was also about humans. "Who else from the minor clans is here, then? I haven't met everybody yet, not to get names anyway."

"Fiveofus. NakauchiMumeioftheOsprey, UjinaJinoftheHare, HotaruKosekioftheFirefly and SuzumeShionoftheSparrow.

MumeiisashugenjatrainingtobeaNavigator. Jinisadroptroopernikutai. Kosekiisverynewtoplanets, youknowhowtheFireflyalmostalwayssticktoships,stationsandasteroids. ShionisfromtheHomeworldwithImperialconnections."

Well then, looks like the Fox did pay attention to his surroundings after all.

"WhichofthePhoenixareintheMiaiitself?"

"Oh, Ujina-san! We're in the same room at the Inn. Huh, lot of Navigators here, eh?" Atsumori's eyebrows went upward of their own accord. "Or girls who are gonna be Navigators, at least. Maybe my sister should've come instead of me, just to make a set."

He rubbed his jaw with the hand that wasn't wielding his cup of bubble tea. "Let's see... Well, there's Asako Chiruha, she's the governor's daughter. I heard she has a brother, but I don't think he's on the market yet. Asako Mal-chin, researcher I think. Two sisters--twins, that is--Shiba Hoshiko and Moriko. Hoshiko's a Navigator student too. Moriko's not a priest, she's in colony agriculture." He thought through the list for a moment longer. "That's everybody I met, but I think there's a couple of other local shugenja in the games too. One of 'em is supposed to be the head of that temple sect that's a big deal here, the one out by Murkwater Lake. Beautiful scenery out there."

"Wentouttherethismorning. Strangeplace. Greattolookatbutthemonksjustdidn'tsitrightwithme. NotTaoistorFortunist. InsteadtheyveneratetheelementsofAsakaze, andthekoansandscriptureontheirwallsisjusttotalgibberish."

He took a slurp of tea, shaking the straw when it blocked slightly.

"Oh, well, it is a bit dark and drafty, isn't it? I had a look round, but I didn't talk to the monks yet. Anyway, lots of Isawa and Asako and Agasha are into that primal elemental stuff. I suppose if you're not used to it, it might seem weird." Atsumori shrugged and sipped his tea. "You should see the place I lived when I was a kid. Ever heard of the Five Moons?"

Izumi shook his head. Even that he did fast.

"NotthatIrecall."

Atsumori stirred his drink with his straw, forming a temporary vortex of ice, tapioca blobs, and passionfruit seeds. "The Five Moons World is this gas giant in the Tadaka system. It's got more than five moons, actually, but five are big enough to hold on to an atmosphere. Somebody must've thought that was auspicious, so they were handed off to the Elemental Masters to shape."

He had a pretty good presenter-voice, actually; one could almost picture the stormy gas giant with its crown of varicolored moons orbiting on an informator screen. "Five moons all totally dominated by one element. I was on Joudo the most as a kiddo, which is the most normal one of the five. Belongs to the Master of Earth. It's almost a bit like this place, except there's no native organisms--the whole biota was shipped in from Old Rokugan. And then just... let run wild." Atsumori shook his head with a fondly rueful expression. "It's an artificial ecosystem, totally unstable, but somehow it never actually collapses... the Isawa like it that way. More fun for the Earth spirits, is how they'll put it. They change stuff around just to make the spirits excited."

Being an Earth shugenja, Izumi knew that an excited Earth Kami was something truly wondrous . . . and possibly terrifying to see.

"Ihopetheydon'tgetoverexcited. Earthquakesarenotfunforanyone."

Atsumori shook his head. Izumi's rapid speech pattern barely left him time to finish chewing a mouthful of squishy 'bubbles'; it was another moment or two before he could answer verbally. "None of those, but the Master of Fire's moon... crikey. Not where you'd choose for a vacation. Nah, we mostly got, err, what I think the Isawa call 'em is surface-tier imbalances in the organic matrix. Algae blooms, wildlife population explosions, weird shifts in ecosystems that'd never happen that fast someplace else... you never knew, any day, if it's something the priests planned or if they were just going with it."

He chuckled. "There's this old Shiba family joke about watchin' the Isawa the way other people keep an eye on the weather. On the Five Moons it's a bit more literal."

To the Fox that sounded like a nightmare. They liked nice stable forest biomes. Algal blooms killed off entire waterways, population explosions damaged the food web, ecosystem shifts were supposed to go slowly enough so the wildlife could adapt or they'd die out.

He blinked.

"SolotsoffireandlavaontheFireMoon?"

"Oh, yeah, that's an understatement." Just thinking about the landscape of Rekka made Atsumori reach for his iced drink again. "I've never been, but I've seen the holos. Even the Master of Fire can't live there without an oxygen generation plant. Hard to imagine it used to be seismically stable before the world-shapers got to it."

"SoitwasstableandthentheMastersbrokethatstability . . . ?"

Izumi could hardly believe it.

"Ihopeitwasadeadmoon."