Sagaki looked around the room in horror for a moment as the scene sunk in. He looked around, and found elements tickling his mind, familiar... reminding him of his time with the Yogo, of what he had learned about maho...

He moved towards the bodies, he studdied them, and their surroundings carefully, looking for hints as to what had happened...

OOC: Maho lore roll

As you look at the body with the gaping hole in her chest. You notice that the entire face has been removed. Her lidless brown eyes stare at you lifelessly.

Zatoichi steeled his will before walking around the body and studying its wounds carefully. He wasn't, at the moment, too concerned with identifying the victim, but rather in merely answering Nadare's question, and then doing a thorough sweep of the rest of the room. After a few moments of intent study, Zatoichi closed his eyes and took a deep breath, calming himself and forcing back his body's reaction to the body before answering, with a quiet calm that denied the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. "The girl died of the explosion through her chest. Apparently, as was said, from Maho... the taint is strongest there," he said, hovering his finger over the gaping wound.

"I will return shortly to finish studying the body, but for now I believe it's best to look over the rest of the building and search for clues." Zatoichi's investigative training took over. He willed it to, because he knew that if he was left to drive his own body at this point, he would be of little use. Mutilated corpses were not an every day occurence to him, and only by mentally distancing himself could he operate.

He walked into another room, to find Keyomi's clothes hanging there, clean and dry. A bit suspicious, and, when he walked further, he noticed that there was a maid laying in the bath tub. She had been stabbed repeatedly and left in the bath tub, her blood leaking out to mingle with the soap and water. Apparently the bath had been run for someone.

Zatoichi shook his head and returned to the main room, studying every aspect intently. This time, he noticed that the tainted victim's knife was missing, and, further, that her hair had just been cleaned and brushed.

He, without yet speaking, wishing to get a full view of the scene in his mind, leaned in close to her missing face, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve. The cut was mostly smooth, but for a few scratches through the remaining tissue.

He also noticed her neck as he studied the face, and, glancing down, her wrists and hands.

He pulled back and glanced about the room once more, before speaking.

"The attacker was silent and fast. He, or she, entered the room, and slit this maid's," he pointed downward toward the woman laying with her throat cut on the floor, "throat and blasted a hole through Keiyomi's chest before either of them were able to resist. There are no signs of a struggle," he clarified, gesturing about the room. "Apparently Keiyomi had just bathed. Her hair is cleaned and brushed, her clothes are hanging dry in the other room, and her other maid was killed by a knife and left in the bath tub... which still contained soap and water. Her face was removed," Zatoichi was droning the information out, keeping himself disconnected from the scene as much as he possibly could, until he began to speak of her face, where his face twitched a bit as he remembered something, but it was something that could wait to be explained until he finished explaining the crime scene to the others, "by a sharp implement with a single nick in the edge... also, someone should remove her head before she returns to us through the taint... but once you do, I need to take a closer look at it... I have, just realized something," Zatoichi finished, backing away to allow one of the crabs, who hadn't been stripped of their weapons, to remove her head.

And then, almost as an afterthought he added, a bit weakly, "Also... that is Keiyomi. I recognize her neck and her hands from our discussion earlier... there is no doubt."

(OOC: JAD, once they've cut the head off, he's going to look to see if the face was peeled off at the chin or not.)

Nadare sighed.

"She was? Oh well..."

The Crab drew his wakizashi, returning the arrow to its case and handing it to Sagaki.

"The kansen will not reach so far into the Wall. But yes, we should decapitate her, to be certain."

Taking the utmost care to avoid being splashed with Keiyomi's corrupted fluids, his blade found the chinks between her spinal vertabrae, and with the precision of a butcher, he removed the head almost at the shoulder, poking it aside with the tip of his short blade.

"Be very careful. Just being this close to a Tainted body runs the risk of contamination. Look at it all you want, but do so at a distance. I'll get a cleanup crew. Also - keep the door closed behind you. The last thing we need is for some fancy-hakama courtier to scream and upset everyone."

Nadare left the room quickly, after wiping his wakizashi clean on a relatively untouched patch of cloth on one of the girls' clothes.

Sagaki took the arrow from Nadare, still looking at the body.

"I know what spell the killer used. It's called "No Pure Breaths" - it's elemental Maho, using Tainted air to burst the lungs... but whoever did this was truly sick - tghey need only have created a small burst to kill her, not... ruptured her chest like this. I can't tell you whether her face... was removed... before or after the spell was cast... I'd hope that it was after... but it's not part of the spell. It wasn't done at the same time, at least - the killer would have ended up covered in tainted blood and gore... The spell, however, is the reason that her body is corrupted like this... And one more thing - the caster must have used a scroll to have cast the spell with so much mastery..."

He continued to study the body, curious despite his revulsion, then looked up suddenly, realising that while Nadare might know that he has some knowledge of Maho lore, Zatoichi might find it a little bit suspicious. "Uh... I studied with the Yogo for a time, and learnt much about the lore of Maho..." he stammered with an embarrassed flush.

Outside, Nadare slid through the corridors like a tanto through a drunken bushi's ribs. Few of the drunken courtiers were in the mood to stop a dour-faced bushi storming to Kaiu Takagana's chambers.

The bushi outside the castle karo's chambers looked up at Nadare.

"Gunso, Takagana-dono is-"

"This is important. Let me in. Now."

Nadare's face informed them that they would be best served by letting him by, unless they were really interested in doing screamer duty for a month. They parted, and Nadare entered the Kaiu's chamber, immediately falling to one knee, as protocol demanded.

"Takagana-sama, there is an emergency. A guest has been murdered. And it is maho. My associate Sagaki is there with two others who found the bodies, but I wish to request a guntai of men with Kuni backup. I told them not to raise the alarm, but I believe we will need assistance in this."

"Are you telling me you want me to start a full investigation in this castle while we have half the clans eyes on us? Are you trying to make us look like incompetants, The last thing we need is the attention of a full investigation. Damnit to Jigoku, you and your friends investigate the matter. Be discrete, don't let any of the guests know what's going on. Hida-sama will expect the perpetrator's head before mother sun rests for the night."

Zatoichi studied the disembodied head, the missing face particularily, for a few seconds with frustration. There was no way for him to tell where the incision had started, which weakened his mental case against Shigeru, but the scorpion was still connected to the crime in multiple ways, and had the time to have done it.

He stood when Kuni Sagaki tried to explain his knowledge of the maho, and shook his head. "You are not a suspect, Kuni-san. This happened after her dance but before I arrived here. You could not have committed the murder in that time because you were in the ball room, and then in the examination room with myself... but Shigeru, he is not so easily removed from suspicion. He left the examination before either of us, we do not know when he arrived in the examination room, and he knows of maho and how to remove the face of a victim without making a mess. Not to mention that the nature of the murders here is very much in line with how a scorpion would handle such a thing--fast, silent, efficient, and wicked... we should attempt to question Shigeru once Nadare returns... but for now I am going to attempt to establish a tighter time frame on the murder. Someone on this floor must have seen someone enter Keiyomi's room, or heard or saw something out of the ordinary... why don't you go and question Kuni Taira, and see if you can't find out more about Shigeru?"

Nadare came back, the katana tucked into his obi.

"Right, we're on our own for this. Any leads?"

Zatoichi nodded toward Nadare as he entered. "As I just told Kuni Sagaki-san, the scorpion known as Shigeru is my lead suspect. He knows how to remove a face in much this manner, although I'm unable to tell if it was done in exactly the same way as he taught Kuni Taira, he had opportunity to come here and kill this woman, and he seems to have at least some knowledge of maho, but, before persuing that, we should try to close the time frame for the murder and see if we can place him on this floor during that time by asking the other people on this floor if they'd seen anything strange. Perhaps tell the guards we are looking for him, and ask if they had seen him here recently, so on and so forth. We can not merely raid his room for evidence without a bit more evidence. Everything I have now is tenuous and extremely circumstantial."

The magistrate then pondered the turn of events for a moment. "Also, I wonder if it would be possible for us each to attain some jade, and perhaps allow me to gain access to my katana once more. This could prove to be quite the dangerous investigation... although if it would cause too much suspiscion, I am quite capable of handling myself even with this wooden toy," he said as he rested his palm on the hilt of his boken, "I would merely prefer not being forced to rely on it."