Start of the Dream

[Carthrat]

"Well, as long as his anger is pointed at someone else, I'm happy," comments Tom. "Yakuza, huh. Sounds dangerous. We know if those other groups have a hand in there?"

[Bjorn]

"The yakuza seem to deal with some of the Cabal's front groups, at least," Bjorn replies.

[Dracos]

"His friends on the plane were definitely not Yakuza." Dracos agreed.

Dracos

[Brian]

"From what Relm's told me so far," Jim says, squinting at something on his console, "I believe that neither faction has an established foothold in Japan.  Both have tenative inroads, but the Yakuza comes down hard on people who go against them.  If there are any dealings, within Japan, at least, it's entirely at the behest of the Yaks."

He frowns for a moment, and adds, "Of course, our information comes from old Workshop servers, so...."  Then he shrugs.

[Dracos]

"Six months in other words could easily transform inroads to footholds, but we don't know anything for sure."

Dracos

[Ginrai]

Ginrai nods. "Well in this case we should talk with Tetsuo as soon as we can. I can help out with that."

[Dracos]

"huh?" Dracos blinked, surprised.

Dracos

[Ginrai]

"Hmm? Anything wrong?"

[Dracos]

"eh, nothing.  Anything else?" Dracos shrugged, looking over the group.

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"I have an issue with all of this," Nathan finally says, "Can I have that chair?  I want to talk to Relm."

Once seated, he starts typing.

>Alright, oh Oraculous one, I'm not sure I entirely agree with this course of action.  Why are we even going to Fuji in the first place, exactly?  They don't know where it is; going there no matter -how- carefully is just going to give them an opening.  Maybe they can scry us somehow, maybe they'll be able to detect that shadow-walking or whatever.  Is there seriously no way that we can tackle Uluru first?

>There are issues with handling Uluru first, I realize, and it's not as simple, but on the plus side we've got much better odds of having everyone else remain stuck until we've cleared our second dream . . . and we'll have to handle those issues now anyway.  Besides which there's a third point; if we can even keep the fact that we -know- secret for a while longer it'll give us a nice head-start timewise when we do go to Fuji as our third stop . . . because if they find out some other way, they were going to find out anyway and we haven't lost anything.

[Brian]

> You can do anything you want, Rezykins.  But you have to know what you want to do.  If you want Uluru first, that's fine, but you'll need a plan to handle the radiation.  I believe that the ward of Fire will protect you, and I know that the ward of Water would allow you to heal fast enough.

> But any other approach will require resources, time among them.  What would you like to do?

[Dracos]

"Ward of water?" reads over Rez's shoulder.  "Hum, I thought we knew of three.  How many are there?"

Dracos

[Brian]

After Nathan passes on this question, Relm replies:

> There are four wards.  One for each of the Dreams.  You have the Ward of Earth currently.

[Dracos]

"Hum.  We know fire is at fuji.  We know where earth is because we've hit it already.  We know where wind is.  Where's water?"

Dracos

[Brian]

The screen clears itself before Relm replies.

> No one knows yet.  And from what I can tell, we know more than anyone else.  No one else knows about Fuji, which makes it an inherently easier target.  At least, we hope.  We know for certain that the Workshop knew nothing of it.  None of the Vatican archives mention it, either.