"Wait, you should let me come with Gunshi back to the Agbarmahal," Damisan stepped up and approached the guards, all of whom became suspicious and lingered their hands above the handles of their scimitars.
"Didn't you hear what I said? No outsiders, just the competitors and the Sheikh's court and essential service staff are allowed inside the Agbarmahal. The tournament is in contempt. Someone murdered a contestant and now the bracket is in disarray. The Sheikh requested that all the contestants are safely locked up in the Agbarmahal until the Sheikh reaches the decision of how to proceed with the succession tournament. If I allow an outsider in, it's my head on the line!" the largest guard who may have been in charge of the retrieval operation walked up to Damisan, blocking him off from Gunshi and the trio of guards behind him.
"I'm not the murderer," Damisan crossed his arms. "I've been here drinking with Gunshi this whole time. Gunshi can vouch for it. Besides, I'm essential technical support for Ryoku Genshi, who is one of the surviving contestants. Without my technical support, Genshi won't be able to fight in the quarterfinals and the bracket will be in even more trouble."
The guard pondered on what Damisan said, weighed the pros and the cons for a good handful of seconds before rolling his eyes and pulling Damisan into the fold of the guards alongside with Gunshi Aspen. After retrieving the man that the guards came here to pick up, as well as an unexpected stowaway, the guards promptly marched off. Shige-H and Asuka stood up and regrouped, running off through the door and out into the town without waiting for their orders.
The server ran out to check up on the two clients that just ran out spontaneously, only to find that the two women were no longer there. Scratching her head, she slipped back indoors while painfully dealing with the reality that two orders would be thrown to waste. At least they only ordered a bunch of small fry stuff, as opposed to something that took hours of delicate care to make.
"A murder, what the hell?" Asuka turned her look diagonally up and behind her, where Shige-H oversaw the procession of the guards back toward the massive palace at the northern edge of the Sheikhate.
"This complicates everything," Shige-H grumbled. "We have to solve who did it. Our assignment is to make sure that the Fennec crew or the Chaos Factor don't win the succession tournament. If this truly was a Fennec crew member, or one of the Chaos Factor people, killing that contestant, we need to know. And if it was–we need to take them out."
"Yeah, the bastard should have known that the only people contemplating murders here to fix the brackets are us," Asuka sassed her squad leader with a smirk.
"The brackets… That could be a clue," Shige-H snapped her fingers. "Whom was Batsudoru going to fight tomorrow?"
Realizing that she had the advertisement poster on her, Shige-H unwrapped it to scan it. The instant her eyes ran over and through the Cursed Warrior entry, it occurred to the Stars leader that these Cursed Warriors had very little information on them. Mostly it described the fact that they were gigantic, living monoliths of obsidian and fiery, glowing neon lines with the power to level entire villages and flatten the surfaces of continents. Weapons of mass destruction on par with the Tailed Beasts.
"It says that he was scheduled to fight someone called "Dashula"," Shige-H reported. "Based on the plentiful information available on the guy, he's not the type to scheme to kill his competitor. The fighter's description emphasizes his love for combat and the biggest sense of honor and discipline amongst the Salvari warriors. Besides, the guy apparently got through the entire first battle royale round with hardly a scratch on him. Not the type of guy to have something to worry about either."
"I could give you a hundred different people who didn't do it," Asuka rolled her eyes. "How about we start working out who did it?"
"There's no other way, we'll need to snoop around the crime scene, see if we can gather some more clues. Let's just leave Damisan to becoming pals with Gunshi and working something out. Right now, it's best that we stay out of his way and avoid raising Gunshi's suspicions that he's being recruited and that his friendship with Damisan was anything but accidental," Shige-H replied.
"Well, let's just hope those palace guard goons we've seen have the authority to snoop around the crime scene," Asuka sighed, weaving a hand seal and sinking in the cover of smoke. After the smoke cleared out, the blond kunoichi had transformed into one of the guards from earlier who stuck behind and guarded the rear of the party. Reluctantly, Shige-H followed the example set by her subordinate and assumed the role of the leading guard who did all the talking.
"So, you said that you were in Agbarah to save a life, didn't you?" Gunshi leaned in to Damisan's side with his slurred speech being occasionally broken up with hiccups. While Damisan would have preferred some privacy about this matter, it was entirely possible that, once they reached the palace, either Gunshi would pass out from drunkenness, or the guards would isolate them to prevent them from being a danger to each other. If a plight was to be made, it had to be made now.
"Yes, the life of a young woman I owe a great deal to," Damisan nodded. "Because of a strange combination of fringe technology and hidden ninja techniques, her soul and mind have become displaced. A magician taking part in the tournament preserved her soul inside of a soul gem, however, it appears that the process of Soul Diffusion simply isn't happening. I was looking for someone familiar with the magic of the higher planes who could help us with accelerating my friend's Soul Diffusion."
"Man…" Gunshi scratched the back of his head with a rotten look on his face that could either have meant that he was disgusted by Damisan or something he said, or merely wanted to throw up the entirety of his stomach's contents all over the closed off street the guards led them through. Based on the smelly burp coming out from his mouth, Damisan felt relieved to find out it was the second case. "I wish I could help you. I kind of love saving damsels from their distresses. It sure beats being possessed by demons and threatening to spill them all over the omniverse, threatening to cause just about the apocalypse of all reality as we know it! Problem is… My skillset just ain't about that Soul Diffusion stuff. Quite frankly, I'm not that good of a spellcaster either way. I'd say the chance of the spell working would be around 4% with me."
"That is unfortunate to hear," Damisan's eyes became clouded with gloom. "Do you, by any chance, think that Bogemu Uneyotsu could help me? He is the last magician remaining, so it's either asking him or gambling on that 4% chance for me and my friend."
"Bogemu Uneyotsu? Yeah… That guy's famous, or rather infamous amongst magicians. He's not a flat out rogue, but I've always had a feeling that the guy only does good work for his own gain. He's the type of guy to save the entire world, but only to relish in how sweet the praise for his skills and gratitude of those he saved feels. One doesn't craft a spell like his Game of Life without being entirely selfish and having the ambition of becoming the strongest magician in all of reality. Even shit-talking him behind his back gives me the creeps…" Gunshi validated the Stars' worries somewhat. "However, technically, his Game of Life is a skill that relies on spirit channeling and transference. I'd say that he's got a solid 82% chance of forcing a Soul Diffusion successfully."
"To be wholly honest with you, I was somewhat afraid you would say something like that," Damisan sighed in frustration and submission to the heap of trouble he had on his plate.
"Yeah, I feel your trouble, my man…" Gunshi hiccupped a pair of times again. "I'd be especially suspicious if it's Bogemu himself who agrees to help you, allegedly, out of the kindness of his heart. That's simply not the kind of man he is. It now depends entirely on how much you care about your friend, if you're willing to look for some other fish in the sea or if you're willing to give her soul the benefit of the doubt of being able to pull it through by itself."
"Could you, at the very least, help me understand why her soul would be stuck inside of a Soul Gem, even when placed on her true body?" Damisan turned to his newly met friend with a hopeful look.
"Who knows?" Gunshi snickered with the alcoholic blush on his sweaty face. "Soul Gems feels like a prison to a soul. A soul isn't just some shapeless thing floating around in the aether, it contains the entirety of your friend's best and worst qualities. In a way, a soul is super-aware of everything it experiences. If the Soul Diffusion won't happen, it's either because some kind of hidden ninja art technique is blocking it, or because your friend feels like she deserves imprisonment and willingly won't pass back through into her body. Considering she's a ninja like you, maybe the toll of the lives she's taken is just too much for her?"
"I… I doubt it's the toll of the lives she's taken. It could be the weight of the lives she's failed to save," Damisan looked up at the starry evening sky with worry in his eyes. If Mana truly was suffering from self-loathing, gloom and weary inside that Soul Gem, he couldn't be there for her and no one else could be there for her to set her straight either. If it truly was Mana's own decision to stay imprisoned inside of the Soul Sapphire as opposed to waking up, it would be something she'd need to overcome herself, no matter how much Damisan wanted to be there for her.
"Man, something about this place, huh?" Gunshi laughed out loud. "Something about this place attracts the weirdest people. Living portals to incomprehensible apocalyptic fiends and ninja who save lives and regret not saving enough of them… What a bunch of weirdos we are!"
"Could you perhaps keep it down a little? We're trying to not attract attention. Please have in mind that there is a murderer out there seeking to eliminate competitors behind the scenes," the lead guard with the bulldog's face turned back and barked at the VIPs whom the palace guards were leading back to the Agbarmahal for lockup.
"Right, sorry…" Damisan waved his hand in apology.
The Stars looking into the murder felt fortunate, as much as one in their bundle of predicaments could have been fortunate, upon finding out that the murder took place in one of the observation towers around the Agbarmahal. Around the palace, there was a collection of a handful of pillar-shaped towers with peaks that resembled a chocolate-colored, creamy swirl at the top. One of them contained a library, another one had observational and check-in facilities for the guards and military officers of the Sheikhate, the third one had a communications station and an aviary.
Seeing the guards swarming across from the waiting station and communications towers into the observatory revealed to the pair of disguised kunoichi where the murder took place. Because Batsudoru was murdered inside the palace grounds, their disguises should have fit for the occasion and they wouldn't seem out of place snooping around. However, they needed to avoid bumping into their counterparts and revealing their ruse.
"We need to see the body," Shige-H, still in her bulldog-face guard disguise, approached the bundle of armed guards examining the body. "The nature of the wounds can help us determine which contestant might have had a hand to play in this man's death."
"Eadlagh? What are you doing here? I thought you were instructed to retrieve the competitors and take them to their chambers for lockup!" a worked-up guard stood up from the sprawled out body and approached Shige-H and Asuka, blocking them off from access to the body. "Leave the sleuthing around for those that were given the task to find the killer and deal with them and do your job!"
"Lay off our backs, will you?" Asuka stepped in to speak for her superior. "The contestants are all in their place. It's not like you can afford to keep us off work. If we don't find this killer, it's all our heads on the block!"
"Wait, you mean everything's ready for the lockup? Then why isn't the palace locked up!?" the guard leaned in and sprayed his frustrations so close up to Shige-H's face that the tips of the noses of the two guards nearly touched each other.
"I've left the other two to tend to the lockup. Don't tell me how to do my job!" Shige-H growled back, feeling like the size of the guard she disguised herself as should have given her ample physical presence to push this other guard around, no matter what their standing regarding one another was in terms of superiority. "I'm just making sure that my head won't roll off my shoulders despite the fact that I did my job to the letter, just because you fucked yours up. Now step aside and let me take a look at the body."
The path-blocking guard relented and stepped aside, letting Shige-H and Asuka approach the murdered man. He was a large individual, easily two and a half meters tall and burly enough to appear broad-shouldered and chiseled despite his size. The man wore a military-style uniform suit that was now torn and cut up. His right arm was replaced by a puppetry limb and his silver hair laid sprawled across the floor. There was such a thick bundle of it and the hair was so long, that the man must have held it tied while he was alive.
"His joints have been utterly decimated with forceful pressure. His forearms and calves popped out of place," Shige-H observed while leaning closer to the body and examining the sum of the injuries. "It's likely that this man hasn't been dead long enough for rigor mortis to set in yet, but his neck shouldn't be this loose. It's not just snapped, it's like the vertebrae in his neck have been turned to dust–it's utterly crushed and ground up."
"Hey, summer sleuth, have you noticed the giant wound in his gut?" a guard with a goatee standing behind Shige-H while she examined the body mocked her, still believing Shige-H to be the brutish guard she posed as.
"Yes, the victim was impaled, but it's unlikely they died from it. It was more likely just a means of keeping them in place," Shige-H surmised while gently lifting the body off the ground to peek at the man's back. "Not to mention, this wound was dealt from behind. Someone, or something, impaled this man from the back. Then, they snapped all of his limbs, nearly quartering him and rendering him helpless, before finishing him off by wringing something around his neck and crushing it with tremendous force."
"Not something a seasoned killer or an assassin would do. Kind of looks like the guy was just going through the notions and improvising as he went along. Maybe this guy's killer didn't intend on meeting the guy here and only acted out of opportunity?" Asuka suggested with a shrug. Shige-H nodded in approval of the theory, as Asuka's observations sounded feasible.
"Men!" a loud voice that sounded like it came from a cumbersome gut that polished it to a baritone that could drill through stone made Shige-H and Asuka perk up and turn around to confront the approaching presence of the balding Sheikh, accompanied by his harem of scantily clad women and a decent dozen of palace guards. The man was concealing his fleeting hairline underneath a pompous turban, decorated with exotic bird feathers and gemstones. Whatever ailment demanded the man's hair appeared to leave his facial hair untouched, as his mustache seemed like a brush that was grown in the span of a good forty years and suffered no losses since first perking up. "Have you come any closer to determining this man's murderer!?"
"We've just about gathered enough clues for the decisive broad stroke," Shige-H, still in her disguise, spoke up. This gesture made the other guards grunt and exclaim unintelligible outrage in her direction, signaling that Shige-H likely spoke out of line given the standing of the guard she impersonated. "I believe I have a firm clue about how this man was murdered. I would like to speak with the tournament announcer to help us filter out which competitors could have been capable of such a method of murder."
"You think that… One of the contestants?" the Sheikh grumbled, tilting the front of his turban to wipe the sweat off his brow as his tanned complexion seemed to grow paler for a few horrified breaths. "This is simply unacceptable! Find the killer and bring him to me, they're disqualified, needless to say! Make sure that no further accidents such as this take place! We can just about maybe stomach the loss of a limited, even number of contestants, but if fighters start dropping like flies and the succession of Agbarah is compromised… You personally will answer for this!"
Shige-H stone-walled the man's firm gaze without as much as a twitch, maintaining her transformation effortlessly. She may have been gambling with the professional reputation, job, freedom and life of this guard, but this was a sacrifice Shige-H was willing to make in order to complete the mission the Allied Ninja issued her.
Above all things, she will be useful!