In the wake of the final bout, an uneasy hush lingers over your little group.
"So," you say, causing several of the girls to start as you break the silence, "after seeing that, I think we can all agree that Gorn isn't human. Right?"
"Safe bet," Cordelia agrees grimly. Briar and the ninja-girls look about the same, while Tatsuki has gone pale.
"Excuse me," Tifa Lockhart interrupts politely, one hand raised as if she were in school. "'Not human?'"
"...okay, not entirely a safe bet," Cordy amends her previous statement.
You turn to Tifa. "Short answer, demons are real."
"Demons." The word is loaded with all sorts of meanings.
"Unless you think a kid under the age of ten could master a ki-based healing technique powerful enough to heal first-degree burns, cleanly, with no treatment or scarring, in less than a minute?" You pause, frowning. "Assuming he is under ten years old, or that the ten years are Earth years."
"Or that he didn't spend ten Earth years in one of the temporally-accelerated dimensions," Briar adds, getting looks from everyone except Tatsuki and Tifa. Or rather, Tifa doesn't look in Briar's direction until she notices everybody else doing so.
"What are you all looking at?" Tifa asks curiously as she stares intently at your shoulder. This is enough to shake Tatsuki out of her frightened funk and get her "looking" at Briar as well.
"Just my invisible friend," you tell her.
Miss Lockhart frowns. "You still have an imaginary friend, at your age?"
"He said invisible, not imaginary," Cordelia replies.
"...another demon?" Tatsuki guesses.
"A fairy, actually." You hold up your hand, thumb and forefinger held two inches apart. "Imagine a girl about so tall, with butterfly wings made out of crystal, who glows a deep shade of pink." Tatsuki and Tifa look at your shoulder again, but obviously don't see Briar. You shake your head. "Anyway, getting off topic. Demons are real, and Gorn is one. I don't recognize his species, so I have no idea if he obeyed the age limit or what his capabilities are beyond the obvious strength, skill, and healing factor. Do any of you know?" you ask, looking around at the girls.
Cordelia shakes her head, as do the kunoichi trio, and you hear Briar respond in the negative. Tatsuki just stares at the floor, clenching her fists so tightly that her knuckles whiten, while Tifa appears torn between disbelief and concern.
"I guess it would have been too easy that way," you sigh, trying to think of what to do next. You dismiss the idea of approaching the officials to try and get Gorn disqualified; you have no evidence that he's broken the age restriction, and you can't imagine that making that sort of false claim against an opponent would go over well, even if there weren't elements within the tournament's overseers who didn't like you. You lack Internet access, so hitting up "Demons, Demons, Demons" to ID Gorn's species is out - not that you think it'd have helped you determine his age. Although Three-D is better than a lot of online sites when it comes to the details, it still doesn't go into THAT kind of depth about the various creatures it describes. Magic won't help much in this situation, either, as you don't know any spells for determining something's age. It just wasn't the sort of thing Ganondorf ever needed to know, nor is it something you bothered to study on your own.
With your usual sources tapped out, you're forced to consider a radical approach: asking the grown-ups for help. For some reason, just considering the idea makes you uncomfortable, as if you'd violated a fundamental law of existence, and the entire universe was crying out its opposition to this unthinkable act. You promptly set that feeling aside and give the notion some serious thought.
Gained Filial Piety F
Lu-sensei has shown that he's well aware of the supernatural world, and is the adult you'd most trust to handle this manner - assuming you can find him before the second round starts. Approaching the Kurosakis is another option, since Isshin and Masaki's reaction to being told about demons was not denial, but more like resignation. Plus there's that Yoruichi person Masaki, ah, told to show up within an hour of that phonecall; it's been longer than that, so she should be here, somewhere. You might try asking the ninja-girls' families - Kasumi and Taki recognized a supernatural being in the tengu, so it stands to reason their elders would have a broader range of knowledge about such creatures - and of course, you could always go to the Shuzen family. They're powerful non-humans, and from what Kahlua said the other day about her parents' slightly-divided opinions on how to deal with demons, it's clear that they keep tabs on other non-humans.
The main problem here is time. Your earlier desire to keep your friends together for their own safety hasn't diminished, but you can't see how to check with more than two of your potential sources while dragging half a dozen people around the arena, before the intermission ends.
Looks like you'll need to make another decision.