Episode 11

**The Beginning** (始動 *Shidō*) is the eleventh episode of the *Dead Mount Death Play* anime.

## Official Blurb

While everyone scrambles to discover the secret of the emblem, Polka receives an unexpected visitor. The modern world's most dangerous individuals are starting to realize that the fortune teller is more than he appears.

## Synopsis

Four people fill out their intake forms for their respective fortunetelling sessions with Corpse God. The first is the medical practitioner who previously visited Corpse God; the second and third are teenagers or young women; and the fourth is a middle-aged man.

The lady with the bobbed hair wonders if the fortuneteller is "legit", and the medical practitioner replies that he is visiting the fortuneteller for a second time after being convinced of his legitimacy during their first session. The older man listens in mild-mannered.

Corpse God pulls on his fortunetelling garb and asks if Takumi Kuruya learned anything about the emblem. Takumi says his all-nighter revealed nothing, but he does suspect that the case must be serious due to Public Safety's involvement and how Inspector Miyabi Hosorogi went missing while tracking the emblem down.

Hosorogi corrects him: "They" got Hosorogi right before he got *them* though the rest is as Takumi and Corpse God understand it to be. By "they," Hosorogi means "most likely" hired assassins rather than the enemy he was chasing. Takumi infers that the culprit must have been a cop considering Hosorogi's profession as an internal affairs inspector. Hosorogi is reluctant to name the culprit without proof since that might endanger Corpse God and the others; Corpse God shares his concern insofar as  Polka Shinoyama and his family are concerned.

Xiaoyu Lei, eavesdropping as he prepares food in the kitchenette, wonders what this band of crooks intends to fight regarding police corruption. He offers Sayo Shinoyama a chipper "I'll be right there!" in response to her complaints of hunger, only to immediately resume his suspicious contemplation of the pencil scratchings and the odd pauses.

Hosorogi affirms that he passed along a message to Tsubaki Iwanome, to whom he wishes to entrust their case despite it being one of his lingering regrets.

Opening credits.
In a room dedicated to the Tena Sorimura investigation inside the headquarters of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, a business suit-clad Iwanome briefs the intra-department taskforce on Solitaire's history and suggests that they will cross paths with Solitaire if they likewise pursue the publicized symbol.

A pair of disgruntled Tokyo detectives grumble to each other about "Shinjuku's" integration into the task force. That such Comps-3 members as Kōzaburō Arase and Pop Tozawa are in attendance might as well make the meeting a "loose cannon convention," in their opinion. Still, they are especially chagrined that Iwanome is leading the task force. "After the shit, he pulled with that IA inspector," one grouse, "who does he think he is to lecture us?"  Arase glances at the men but says nothing.

In the divination room, Corpse God informs the middle-aged man, Shouta Yamanoura, that he stands on a ship bound for an ostentatious demise and should board another ship posthaste. Yamanoura, who had not mentioned the situation to which Corpse God is alluding on his intake form, stammers that Corpse God is right—

—*if I really were Shouta Yamanoura-*kun*, that is!* thinks Sorimura, who is impersonating the real Shouta Yamanoura, an innocent citizen who works for a company that is cooking its books. Solitaire assumes that Takumi is feeding Corpse God this information via a hot reading, which, while impressive for Takumi's ability to unearth said information in a short period, is merely the work of ordinary mortals.

Solitaire slouches with disappointment and, when asked if he has any questions, glumly asks if Corpse God can identify the emblem about which Solitaire is offering a 300-million yen reward. Corpse God replies that he cannot, to Solitaire's lack of surprise, but continues that he does sense something amiss with it.

Hosorogi hops up to draw the symbol; Solitaire is more interested in the pencil trick than the fortune since Hosorogi's writing is too firm to be the result of wires or magnets, but his breath catches when Hosorogi finishes. The actual symbol, Corpse Gods says, as rendered by the pencil, lacks the horizontal line through its center that the dirigible symbol had.

Corpse God is correct; Solitaire had deliberately added the line to winnow the liars from the truthers. He tries to quell the thrill that goes through him, telling himself that this must be a test, that a secret society affiliate would never reveal themselves in such a careless manner, but his heart races nevertheless.

This move *was* careless, in Corpse God's private, independent opinion. Still, Corpse God could and cannot tolerate a doctored version of the emblem being spread around—though he is fully aware that the only way to fix things would be to inform Solitaire himself of the correction.

As "Yamanoura" stands to leave, Corpse God asks him if he knows a girl with pigtails who uses a wheelchair, staring at the girl's spirit with his Evil Eye; he says that even though the girl's speech is incomprehensible, the girl is evidently distressed by the path that Solitaire treads. After considering the girl's loss of conversational ability and how she must have been a longtime wheelchair user for the wheelchair to have manifested post-death, he prepares to force her soul to pass on.

Having momentarily frozen, Solitaire remarks that the girl must be his guardian spirit and that he will face her if he remembers anyone of that description. Corpse God decides to let the soul be. On the other side of the door, Solitaire wonders how a fraud could know about *her*.

Solitaire exits the building to find drizzling rain and the two girls from before preparing to weather it. The girl with bobbed hair lends her friend her umbrella and dons a rain poncho bearing the kanji for *Fire safety* (or, *Watch out for fires*) before the pair set off. Solitaire notices and questions Fire-breathing Bug's aesthetic tastes. Above him, Corpse God considers the strange coincidence of two people asking the same question in a row.

After the Solitaire task force meeting's conclusion, Arase fetches himself and Iwanome two cans of black coffee and informs him that 100 investigators are patrolling the streets while others are checking surveillance cameras, thus restricting the number of places wherein Solitaire can move. He wonders whether the task force should make a decisive move themselves, but Iwanome reminds him that only a few people know the publicized symbol is doctored—and most people on the task force, as Arase is aware, do not and should not.

Iwanome admits that having more than one goal throws off his instincts; Arase encouragingly says that catching Solitaire and Comps-3 will cause the enemies who hunted Hosorogi to make their own move. The partners' peaceful moment is interrupted when the two disgruntled officers from before call them out on it and Iwanome out on his superior attitude, what with dead-ending his career. These jibes Iwanome counters, causing one officer to grab his clothes and snap that many LEOs still nurse grudges over Iwanome's time as "Hosorogi's flunky."

Anyone who holds such a grudge, Iwanome retorts, can only be a corrupt cop who resents being unable to get away with corruption. The officer shoves Iwanome against the wall and sneers that he is no big shot in the TMPD like he is in his precinct, so he ought to mind his place. Iwanome instead suggests that the officer is an ill-mannered coward who has to make every conversation a "pissing contest."

Arase seizes the officer's arm mid-punch and slowly crushes it. Iwanome insists he is fine, then repeats himself when Arase will not let go. Once Arase does, Iwanome grins around an unlit cigarette—which Arase lights—and suggests they all agree to cease bullying the weak.

The second officer asks Arase what he thinks will happen to him if he finds himself in trouble post-illegal sting operation—trouble, adds the first officer, that could easily be *invented*. Arase calmly interjects that he has already been punished for the operation and thoroughly reprimanded by Tozawa.

Tozawa approaches the group alongside Ranmaru Yatsu, the latter asking Iwanome why he is picking fights before tripping the physically aggressive officer with his cane. Tozawa snatches the officer's bruised right arm as the officer falls before asking if the officer is all right. The officer answers yes, only to realize that his right shoulder has been dislocated.

Upon exclaiming how the officer could have disclosed his arm, Tozawa pops the arm back into its socket and says the officer is lucky he was here since Arase does not know how to fix dislocations. He and Yatsu express breezy relief over the lack of a situation at hand.

Senior Commissioner Habaki storms over to confront the men over the commotion. Tozawa claims that he merely administered first aid to a colleague and prompted the officer to agree, which he quietly did. Habaki asks Iwanome for an explanation as the disgruntled officers walk away.

Once Iwanome explains himself in the empty meeting room, Habaki puts his head in his hands and pleads with Iwanome not to provoke the men, however in the wrong they certainly are, given that everyone is on edge due to Solitaire accusing the police of sniping him in his video—though, he says, "the brass" seem to believe Solitaire staged the shooting. Regardless, he can only cover for Iwanome so much.

Iwanome says he is grateful that Habaki is willing to cover for him at all. He excuses himself and exits into the corridor, where Comps-3 members are waiting for him, and tells them that more troublemakers such as Lemmings could be involved in this case—and speaking of troublemakers, he adds that he intended to ask certain members not to create further friction between HQ and the Shinjuku precinct. Yatsu cheekily quips that HQ's men specifically have it in for Iwanome, not the rest of them. In any case, Iwanome continues, Comps-3's objective remains unchanged: protect the town from the troublemakers' mischief.

That night, Xiaoyu reads an email from his older sister that opens with the news that she has found no traces of Miyabi Hosorogi. The rest of the email consists of sisterly advice to avoid catching the circulating summer cold, to make small batches of curry since it spoils sooner than one thinks, and to avoid making mistakes with Young Miss Sayo. Xiaoyu is disconcerted at the thought that even the Heilei could not trace Hosorogi but could not dwell on that fact, for he hears footsteps on the rooftop.

Such footsteps belong to Solitaire, who exclaims to the moon that alighting on rooftops is intoxicating no matter how often he does it. He considers adopting the moniker "[The] Phantom of Twenty Faces" as he walks toward the stairwell's door but pauses in front of it, concerned that fans of Edogawa Rampo would take umbrage with him despite Rampo's works being in the public domain.

When he turns to ask a concealed Xiaoyu for a second opinion, Xiaoyu flings a few kunai at him. Solitaire blocks them with his playing cards and demands that the "Fortunetelling Corpse God"—Polka Shinoyama—divulge information about the symbol and the organization to which he belongs. Xiaoyu steps out from behind a corner and requests that Solitaire not confuse him with "that weakling."

On a floor below, Polka wakes up and hops onto Corpse God's—that is, *his*—chest in time to watch a message from Bug scorch itself into the wall; outside the Abandoned Building's front entrance, the Bug in the rain poncho sings a nursery song.

Meanwhile, Corpse God dreams about the day an enormous sinkhole opened in the imperial capital to swallow all units of the imperial army save for General Daryl's unit, which the Home-wrecker Dragon had stolen away. Corpse God had listened to men discussing this outside a room and, when the men fretted as to the whereabouts of the prince and empress, drew his cloak about him and made to exit the room.

His mentor, Easlies, had stopped him by pointing out she had placed wards to deter the others from noticing their room, lest they be dragged to the front lines, for she lacked any interest in participating in the "fools' self-inflicted downfall. Having already entrusted her and Corpse God's acquaintances to Romelka's care]], she proceeded to say that Utsurojuza was right when he declared that "the time is ripe" for Corpse God to live free from the empire's shackles. She remarked that despite the older skeleton which she had Corpse God possessed, Corpse God remained a child to the very end. Unlike most others, she added, Corpse God has unlimited time to grow up, so he ought to learn to treasure those with limited time.

The dream shifts to the deaths of Corpse God's found family of five; Corpse God hopelessly asks that his mentor forgive him for failing to protect the mortals or forgive those who killed him. He flees from the world, ashamed to face anyone from the empire ever since he became the world's enemy—yet as he collapses with despair, the emperor clasps his hands. He affectionally calls his friend as "dimwitted as ever."

At the sensation of Polka's plushy flippers smacking his face, Corpse God wakes and discovers the following English message burned into the common room's wall: This world is a buggy program... Are you a termite? Or are you a bird eating the bug?

Polka hops onto Corpse God's shoulder out of a belated fear of ghosts, though this is no ghost's work. Corpse God brushes his hand against the words, which are still hot, then answers a call from a withheld number. In the stairwell, a slender umbrella-carrying man haltingly asks if he is speaking with Polka Shinoyama and if Polka is also a Bastard Child of Sabaramond. Corpse God stiffens as he asks how the caller knows that name.

Solitaire chuckles a complaint about how inconsiderate "they" are for forcing him to entertain such a quirk of fate. Xiaoyu remains composed despite recognizing Solitaire and wondering who "they" refers to. There is no "they": Solitaire merely spouted confident nonsense in an attempt to sound like he knows what is going on (he does not), and without a plan, he is left to flounder in the face of Xiaoyu's indifference.

Xiaoyu just as indifferently supposes that he can take his time interrogating Solitaire after catching him. Solitaire quips that 3 AM must be past Xiaoyu's bedtime—but Xiaoyu coolly says that he is nineteen as he swipes three kunai at Solitaires's chest and throat.

Solitaire reels backward into a flip to create distance between them. Xiaoyu may be no child, he admits, but indeed Xiaoyu is not so fast as to—

—catch up with him, perhaps Solitaire means to say, but the words die in his intact throat at the sight of Xiaoyu's gloved fingers extending into cords. With a baffled yell, Solitaire frantically dodges Xiaoyu's vastly augmented attacks.

A Shinoyama employee observes the attack with binoculars in his left hand and reports it to Takeru Shinoyama with the cell phone in his right hand. Takeru Shinoyama sets down his phone and muses to Bao, Taipei, and Yochigi that this activity—the "thrill-seeker" fighting one of his grandfather's bodyguards, of all things!—is not quite the activity he was expecting. His people will nevertheless make their move, he adds. "When it comes to securing a conflict zone, the most important question is how to walk off with the spoils."

As Takeru speaks, Lemmings observes the rooftop fight from an even higher rooftop.

## Adapted From

* Chapter 29
* Chapter 30
* Chapter 31