Blinky was surprised to see his his new friend at this hour but quickly got over it. After the previous day's excitement he had spent most of the day strutting around the farmstead showing off his best feathers. It was nice to see the human and his human flock. It meant an opportunity to meet other otori in a low key matter-of-fact way with minimal need for preening or display. It took the pressure off.

Koseki's thoughts were elsewhere, but he patted Blinky affectionately as he waited for the others to arrive. They had much to discuss.

Hiroki was gonna get so much exercise today. Such an excellent bird.

This one of the human flock, fits in with the birds better in her new feather cloak, worn despite the heat. Hiroki preens the shoulder feathers sociably as Mumei greets the Firefly.

"Hotaru-san, it's really good to see you again. I'm...kind of surprised at how busy things have gotten. How have you been doing? Other than steaming in the weather here."

_______
*Dies at Blinky's need for low-pressure meetups.*

Shion shows up sporting her own feather cloak atop Kurikoo, Stray at her side again, the dog and bird now apparently a bit more at ease with one another.

"Oi, Nakauchi-san, Hotaru-san. Good to see you again", she says, smiling a bit more than usual. "How have you been?"

Mumei scratches at the back of her neck. "Well, a lot's happened, that's for sure. So Kitsune-san already knows this part and probably better, so I'm just going to sketch out that they're doing something really off up at that shrine. Bad enough that the kami are warning that it's kind of everyone should leave the planet bad." Yeah, Mumei never learned the art of sugar-coating.

"Also, I nearly died on a date...but the date part worked out really well, so...could be worse?"

Koseki gave his friends a smile and a little mounted bow. "Hey minna-sama, it's great to see you too! Yeah, doing pretty well thanks. Placed second in the yojimbo test, so I got to uphold the honour of the Firefly." He gave them a big grin....which faded at Mumei's words.

"Well I'd heard about the date... What's all this about leaving the planet? Did you go back to the shrine after our little visit? Is it to do with mushroom zombies?"

It was probably to do with mushroom zombies. And Maho. He'd better warn Eriko.

Meanwhile Blinky seemed pretty chill. He blinked pleasantly at Hiroki and Kurikoo, then made a few chirps that were otori for "Humans eh? Whatcha gonna do?"

"Mushroom zombies?" Mumei turns to Koseki a bit shocked, the movement sudden enough to elicit a squawk from the Otori. "Ahh, yeah, we went back up there, brought along Kuchiki Tsugiharu-sama. But there weren't any mushroom zombies mentioned. Where did you find those?"



_______
*Possibly meeting with the governor's daughter before this, but that hasn't happened yet, so...information is incomplete.

"Oh shit, so this is different bad stuff?" Koseki shook his head. "Biology just messes everything up. Okay. You tell me about your crazy stuff and I'll tell you about mine."

Mumei takes a breath, realizing that at this point she should have a prepared speech ready, maybe typed up for use in her private forum or something.

On hand on Hiroki's neck, as the bird scratched at the ground, Mumei settles in. "Ok, so Shiba Moriko-sama and Shiba Hoshiko-sama and I were chatting, and Shiba Moriko-sama had been to the shrine a few times, and to a ritual that she remembered only vaguely. It all sounded a little strange. People shouldn't be drained after a ritual if they weren't involved in the invocations, at least among the Osprey.

"And that might not have meant much, but on my first day here, I was communing with the kami, who said that the world would whisper to people in their dreams if they'd listen, but that the man-thing and woman-thing wouldn't listen. And that last bit sounded like a bit of a warning. But it's hard to know with spirits sometimes, neh?" She lets Hiroki dance a bit sideways, full of pent up energy.

"So, several of us, including Kitsune-san, went up to the shrine to commune with the elemental spirits that are quite strong there. They spoke of a yellow king from another realm...that sounds like Chikushudo, we think." And if anyone knows, about that, it would be Izumi.

"Kitsune-san said that the air spirits indicated that those in the ritual somehow 'feed' this king with nothing and everything...which sounds like the Void, yes?" She lets Hiroki jog around the other pair for a moment, her cloak fluttering. "And maybe we wouldn't be too worried about all of that, but the kami of the earth were pretty clear that 'the people of the planet should flee, for while the planet yet slumbers, it will soon awaken. Now earth kami are stubborn and stodgy, but I'd hate to ignore that and have everyone wake up to giant lizards storming the gates."

Pausing finally, Hiroki having trotted some of her energy out, she spreads her hands before her, palms up. "And that is what I know. We kind of suspect the upcoming festival might be spiritually significant to the cult, and thus when this awakening might be about to occur."

"The Planet will soon awaken?" Koseki eyes focused on something off in the distance as his sense of humour kicked in to help shake off the eerie chill." Say, isn't that an album by Khuurists of Hate?"

He shook his head. "I don't know about any of that elemental spirit stuff, but if you need me to shoot some cultists just say the word. I shot up a few mushroom zombies a few days back, but keep that to yourselves please. It's possibly another cult of some sort? Not my area of expertise. Anyone, seems some dastardly villain has been kidnapping farmers and melding them with the local lifeforms. If you see any weird fungal growths on people make a tactical withdrawal and call for back up."

Blinky seemed to pick up on the agitation and nuzzled his leg.

Mumei laughs a bit, despite the topic. "If it isn't an album, it should be. Maybe you can work on one after all this?"

Her expression flits between shock and disgust as he describes the zombies. "oh...eww...just. Why would anyone do that? Does anyone else know about it? I mean...keeping it quiet to avoid a panic is something, but shouldn't we be warning someone?"

Dasshu made this the moment to arrive in a flurry of squawking and feather displays. One of the feather displays turned out to be the Fox in his new Otori feather cloak which, considering his size, reached the ground and covered him completely while on Otori-back. Apparently the Phoenix had declined to insult him by giving him a childs cloak. Not that he would have ever noticed.

"WoahDasshu!!!! SorryI'mlate. Tookawrongturnatthefifthfarm."

"No problem Kitsune-sama. We just talking about the various flavours of doom that weve uncovered in the last few days." The Firefly shrugged and quickly caught his Foxy friend up with the details.

"So, yeah, mushroom zombies, but keep it to yourselves please. I believe the Crab are supposed to be doing the warning."

"Fungalzombies?"

He looked thoughtful.

"Youaresurethisissomeone'sdoing? Andnotanaturalprocessofextremefungalsporecolonisationofanunconscioushumanhost?"

Mumei's eyebrows rose a bit at that...highly disturbing possibility that hadn't really occurred to her. "OK...that would also be a problem, but it might actually be related to the other problem. That would almost be reassuring at this point."

She calms Hiroki, who's getting a bit restless with her rider's dismay at the variety and scope of the issues this world has. "I explained some of what we found up at the shrine, including the 'people should leave before the planet wakes up' part. But I'm still a bit fuzzy about how the whole thing seems to work, or what might be done about it."

"It'llallkickoffoncetheirKingisfull. SostoppingthemgivingVoidtotheKingmightbeenough. Hemightalsojustrageatthebrokenpromiseandrampageanyway."

He shrugged.

"ChikushudoorSakkakuorbotharestronghere. Neitherlikesbeingthwartedandwon'tcareaboutwipingoutthecolony."

He hadn't entirely followed all of that stuff about spores but it sounded close to what he had thought at the time.. "Maaaaaaybe? But you say there's a weird cult to stop? Who else knows about it?"

Mumei considers that. "So we know not stopping this will be bad. Stopping may also be bad. I'd say that weighs pretty hard on the side of stopping it."

She looks at Izumi a bit apologetically. "I'm going to note that I've been telling a few people about this, hoping to learn more or at least warn people without much power to really warn them. One of the Asako passed it to the governor's daughter and I met with her just a bit ago.*"

________
*Still ongoing, so I'm not sure what the takeaway will be there.

**Also figure Koseki should weigh in on whether zombies were just natural fungal evolution.

"ItalkedtoChiruha-sanyesterday."

But as the player has been glacially slow with the thread and not gotten to telling her yet we don't know the result.

"Ah, okay that's good. She's a smart one alright." His brain started to catch up to the previous conversation.

"I don't think the mushroom zombies are linked. I'm...er...reliably informed that they aren't natural. If you catch my drift." He wasn't sure of much in that area but he was pretty sure you didn't just drop the word 'Maho' into a conversation. Unless you were cute and wore face paint.

Even without any knowledge of those topics, the word zombie makes it pretty clear. "Sooo, we have two separate and horrible dangers to think about." She lays across Hiroki's neck with an unhappy slump. "I don't suppose the zombies will just chill until the possible end of the world is handled? Not that we're supposed to handle any of it when this is the Phoenix's place and all, but..."

"Oh. Does anyone else know about the zombie thing, to handle it?"