Dusty Roads, Dusty Inns

"Orooo." The girl had little she could say then. She could feel the woman's hands reach down to help her but Shizuka instinctively shook her off. The girl rolled over onto her stomach and started to climb onto her hands and knees. That was when she saw it. It looked out of place. Shizuka's hands slipped under the wire that lead across her path. Her and Mai were standing within the doorway. Her eyes trailed the length of the wire until it disappeared into the walls. The wheels turned in Shizuka's head. The exploded floor. The wire. This explosion wasn't caused by spirits. "Its a trip wire!"

"The authorities, right!" Shizuka was ready to run out of the house and get help until Mai's words resonated within her. That's right! She puffed out her chest with a sense of pride. She was a soldier! "You think it was?" she asked out loud. She bent down to inspect the broken trip wire. Her hand on her chin she pondered it. That's what people did that were professionals or something.

She didn't get it.

"I don't understand though. Why would people blow up an inn? That could have hurt a lot of people inside of it." She gasped with a bit of realization. "Do you think all of these were connected somehow? Why would somebody want to target any new inn?"

The girl nodded. She rubbed her chin at the thought of everything this woman was saying. "Yes, yes of course. I was thinking just that." Shizuka hadn't been. "There was just one assistant with the cook. Truth be told, I don't think the food here was really that good. It's nothing like The Axe and Flute." And that was saying a lot. The Axe and Flute didn't have very good food to begin with.

"It's kind of scary to think that it happened. Like this was all set up by somebody. Its not like tripwires all just appear out of nowhere!" The girl gasped. Now that would be totally crazy. "Do you think the others were like this too? What if the same person was behind all the other inns going under." She gave a soft huh... and followed the train of the trip wire. It began twisted around a nail and flowed through the kitchen. Shizuka could see it against a wall and where the wall had been missing. And then it led under the home where the explosives once were.

"Ahh.." She was uneasy. "I don't think we should go down there. What if one hadn't gone off. I don't think we'll find out anything. Everything destroyed."

Shizuka was pretty sure the building was safe. It's been a long time since this attack. The bomb or whatever had set off the explosion was probably ruined from rain or something. The building itself was blasted open and exposed to the elements. She was more worried about splinters than getting blown to pieces at this point. Shizuka stuck her thumb in her mouth and bit lightly on her fingernail. Maybe the authorities knew. Why would they cover all of this up though? Peering over Mai's shoulder, she examine the picture.

"Hey! You're an artist!" she said. She was more drawn to the picture than what had been going on. "That's a really good idea. You're super smart and you know magic and all of that stuff. Woooow." She met somebody really amazing today.

Shizuka took one last glance at the building before she waved Mai to follow her. She pointed up the street ahead of them. In this town, full of warriors in the making, there were but a few guard posts. Kitsuki was probably one of the safest places in Hoshido to be. All around you there were fighters of every kind. It was so amazing! That's probably why Shizuka liked it here so much. Yeah!

"Here it is!" They stood outside of a building. Men in armor were nearby shooting at straw targets in the yard with bows.

The girl proudly puffed up her chest in recgonizition from the other guards. Of course they would know her. She was one of them. Or perhaps, it was because she had lived there for her entire life. Either way, there came a sense of pride that Mai trusted her to handle the situation with these two men.

"Kagesaki," she addressed the guard that spoke. For a moment she had seemed formal. Her body erect and she stood tall like a normal soldier, but that quickly melted away. The situation had lost its seriousness as Shizuka reverted back to her goofy self. "Sooo," her words trailed on, "This magical lady and I went to one of the old inns because she wants to make an inn here and I told her that it wasn't a good idea because of all the trouble with the inns around here and how theres this curse on all of them and while we were that one inn that nearly exploded, you know the one with the big hole in the floor that looks to the storage space below, yeah we found this wire that led through the floor and there is no doubt that it was a trip wire. I don't think that the trouble with all these inns came from spooky spirits but like, I think it might actually be a set up from someone else. Isn't that kind of scary? There's someone in Kitsuki that is trying to destroy all the inns." The girl took a moment to tap her chin in thought. In her monologue she had moved her arms around and gestured actions to match her words. With a gasp she covered her mouth. "What if The Axe and Flute goes next!?"

"Ninja's really!?" That got the girl a bit excited. "I haven't seen any around here. Maybe that's because they're ninjas." The girl laughed at her own joke.

"Physical proof?" The girl questioned. What more proof did they need other than the exposed floor and the tripwire in the doorway? "I mean, there is a clear wire running acrossed the doorway in the inn. I found it myself! See this woman here is a spirit detective thing. She summoned a sheep and it got mad and it shocked me." Shizuka's train of thought drifted as she thought about the sheep. She hadn't seen what happened to it since then. Maybe it was angry and just ran away. She wondered if Mai was mad about that. She glanced over to Mai in her bit of silence as her mind was going wild and then blinked a few times while her thoughts resurfaced once again. "Oh! Oh! yeah, then I fell onto my butt and the wire was there. It went into the floorboards and led right to the hole in the ground. That's enough proof right?" It had to be. That was the only thing Shizuka and Mai had to go off of.

"It's just too big of a coincidence that all the inns are going out of business! Like, things like that don't just happen. I'm surprised we just now thought to look into it. It's like we're solving an age old crime." Though.. she hadn't been looking for that in the beginning. The pair just happened crossed some luck. She wasn't sure if she would have been more excited about the whole ghost thing.