Watching the Drawings and Talking to Demons..! Wait. (Open)

Ah, the South. Truly, the least North of places.

But, alas, Cheri was here in preparation for the Tenka'ichi Budōkai Tournament, in which she had signed up as a combatant. However, unlike many of the other prospective victors, she had not signed up for the cash prizes. Indeed, she was not there to win, either. No, she was there to see first-hand how powerful Earth’s warriors got, and how moral they could be. For, if they were powerful enough to help on Plant and righteous enough to want to, Cheri was quite interested indeed. To wit, Cheri had come to the Tournament Grounds multiple days early. Why? Well, why else? To do some snooping, maybe some hacking, to take from the computer systems (presumably figuring out all the logistics behind the scenes) all the information she’d need. If she could early on figure out all the combatants who signed up, she’d have more time to get to each of all of them and try to convince them to assist Plant in its time of need, whenever that was.

But that wasn’t to say that she couldn’t enjoy the spectacle. She was wearing clothes she figured typical for an Earthling, like a modest dull-pink dress. She wasn’t wearing her scouter. Just looking at her, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that she was just an Earthling woman, if a rather short one at just one metre tall.

But even without her scouter on her head, she knew it was serious business when it started buzzing. She ruffled through the bag and found the scouter which read 8,360PL! Oh, now this is interesting. I wonder who has that. She figured it would be too suspicious to put her scouter on her head to have her scouter pinpoint the power signature’s location, so she would start moving around the festivities, sleuthing, to see who was suspicious.

Meanwhile, to anyone with a scouter or who could sense energy, her own power was plain to see. She had not learned how to suppress it.

At the same time as when her scouter detected the 8,360PL, she had also seen that there was a 500PL. Certainly, such a Power Level was quite large in terms relative to the usual power signatures from the population of Earth as a whole, but in so widely-spanning a tournament as this, it would not have been much. Cheri imagined that power signature belonged to someone who was going to enter Budokai… but wasn’t going to get very far in it. Additionally… oh, kais, there were quite a few. There was also a 7,840PL, which she made sure wasn’t just the first one again (turns out, totally distinct) and two other power signatures of about two thousand each. But, again, without her scouter on her head, she had no way of determining who these powers belonged to.

This made sense, she supposed; it was a widely-spanning tournament, famed the galaxy over. Even when she had precisely no reason to ever go to Earth, or really ever leave Plant at all, she had heard about what a momentous thing it was! And, looking around, he could see, yes, plenty of Earthlings, but also quite a few varieties of alien, many of which she recognised. There was a Namekian, suspiciously close, who was just sorta looking at her weirdly and talking to himself… concerning, but possibly he had the ability to sense energy and was astounded by hers, or perhaps he had never seen a woman and/or adult so short before and also didn’t know to keep it to himself. Aside from him— them? Cheri did not have the framework to assume the gender of aliens she knew were sexless— there was a Heran, a human (or tailless saiyan?) and another alien, species hard to place, but possibly a Broljin. Lastly, there was a red-skinned and tailed alien who bumped into the Namekian, though Cheri wasn’t familiar with whatever type of alien he was. Truly, the Budokai was a very big deal, and had earned the right to be called the Tournament.

Well, she was here for a reason, wasn’t she? Certainly, she meant to hack into the registers here, but there were powerful energy signatures here, and Cheri assumed that most of them belonged to the people who didn’t dress like it was a normal day (and, as far as Cheri could tell, that was what an Aloha shirt was): rather simply, she would socialise, chat about, see how moral they were.

”Hello there!” She was speaking to the Namekian who, she assumed, was the owner of one of those larger power signatures. ”Don’t mind me, I’m new to Earth. The name’s Cheri. Are you here for the Tournament?”

Oho, it seemed he didn’t entirely prepare his answer! ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘sort of’ and ‘I don’t know’, the perfect quadfecta. He even had the time to throw in a ‘I just want to make friends’ which, yes, there was a solid chance it was authentic, especially given the stereotypes of his species, but a phrase like that would be rather suspicious from anyone. ”Oh, you know,” she answered, started slow, perhaps even coy, ”just thought I’d see how I do.” She lied. ”You should join! You certainly have the power for it.” No, she hadn’t miraculously gained the ability to sense Shakuhachi’s energy. Rather, she was just assuming that one of those strong Power Levels was his own. The implication would be that Cheri could tell how powerful Shaku was, though it would have been unclear if she just had an intuitive sense for that sort of thing or if she had the learned ability to sense energy.

She did not make it obvious that she knew, for Cheri was too sneaky for it, but she’d noticed that the Broljin had gotten closer to listen in. All while still not looking away from the Namekian, she would sneakily form from programmable matter a series of buttons over her left palm: these buttons, with a few presses, would activate the Omnimote functionality of her tech. At the same time, some programmable matter moved up to her ear, stealthily forming an earpiece. Without reason to be suspicious (provided it worked), the Omnimote would try to tap into the Broljin’s scouter and, through its pre-existing connection with the two other scouters, would carry even Erbia’s and Rassica’s conversation all the way back to her… again, provided it worked.

Oh, but someone else was on the scene! Or, rather, someone who had been on the scene the whole time and whom Cheri had previously made note of but, now, with their increased involvement, required a bit more than merely the few mental notes she’d made. He seemed interested in the list of names on the wall, and… wait. There was just a wall of names for everyone who signed up? Dang. Guess she didn’t need to hack into any systems after all. ”Ah, don’t mind me, sir…” Cheri would move over to the board as her earpiece subtly changed into a tiny camera with which to photograph the whole board for later review. After she got that, the earpiece would be an earpiece again… unless the ploy had failed, in which case it would fall back under the suit. If it worked, though, and the situation called for it, she might have been able to take more information than that from their scouters.

There were some interesting names there, certainly, though she would only give it a proper analysis when she was alone. She recognised the name of Leriac, yes, that made sense; the girl was quite powerful, and she was an Earthling, after all. 4K being there, that made sense; he was a mercenary who would reach a wider range of potential hirers through such a widely-televised event. Azoth certainly made sense, she’d previously spoken to him about such a thing. Even Delia sort of made sense. With a stretch, perhaps Lima and Faustus. But… Onnio!? The daft, rancid genocider whose only redeeming quality was that he was too incompetent to act on his evil properly? Now that was just ridiculous. Thankfully his first match was against this 'Beowulf' guy, who, judging by how often he was being mentioned just now, must have been quite powerful. If he was morally-driven and powerful enough to beat Onnio, she’d be interesting in meeting this person as these others seemed to have done. Not something she could easily act on in the current situation, but she would keep the name in mind.

And this red-skinned gent, of an alien race Cheri still could not identify… he must have been one of the Power Levels her scouter had detected earlier! ”Mind my pardon, sir, but who are you?”

Yeah, that Shakuhachi guy was definitely hiding something.

Whatever defensive software Korla was paranoid enough to install, she might not have been paranoid after all, for this attempt which had been detected would have slipped through by just about any less secure a firewall. Cheri had no idea that the Omnimote’s hack had been detected. Furthermore, Broljin attempted a counter hack to infect Cheri’s equipment as well… but the Omnimote itself and her programmable matter did not operate through any coding language and could be hacked no more than one could hack a spanner or a lego set. The scouter definitely would have been susceptible but, alas, it was in her bag unconnected from the rest.

The alien, who was an alien, was called Alastair. He had some sort of fishing business with a name suspiciously similar to her own, but it was likely named after the fruit and was entirely mundane. Though strangely enough, Cheri got the impression that Alastair thought of her as young, or as a ‘small girl’. He mentioned some other person in a rant, Lattei, who also happened to be fighting in the Budokai.

”Yes, I’m in it. I take it some of you lot are, also?” She said, looking over to not only Alastair, but the other group of aliens.