I’ve treated the next two steps only cursorily, since it’s been established as something of a routine by now: after some prompting, the rice farmer could remember another smallish structure that just showed up in the general area overnight, in this case a small castle.
Our friends then took the textbook approach and fitted a simple cart with some make-shift armor and disguised it as a crate of oranges before trying to use it to ram through the gate of the suspicious structure. In this case, the slight problem that emerged was the fact that the structure’s gate wasn’t at ground level, but that’s the price you pay for that sort of one-size-fits-all textbook approach. And, yes, it’s a textbook approach. The Professor hasn’t written the textbook yet, but he will as soon as he gets back. The first time they tried the trick it was just so successful that the undistinguished results of the later attempts can be easily considered experimental errors.
Well, anyway, once they were inside, crucial clues were quicköy discovered, as it should be. Aside from the standard clue indicating the involvement of Ukrainian cossacks, the most crucial clue was a big picture of Japanese warlord Takeda Shingen. That, of course, is clear evidence that…Dr. Dutchman Fu isn’t terribly original and, basically, reads the same books as everyone else.
Everyone else but Snuka, apparently, who doesn’t recognize the man – but she sees enough to conclude that the guy must be a brony, because he’s clearly trying to impersonate Derpy Hooves on his official portrait. A rather angry Derpy, though. Probably something went wrong with the muffins. The concept of “The Tiger of Kai” is helpfully (if inaccurately) illustrated by Kai and Kay from Shonen-Ai Kudasai . The real reason for that nickname was, of course, that Shingen was born in Kai province. And because he had such a bouncy personality as a child, and a teddy bear and a piglet, he was called the Tigger of Kai. He later tended to omit one of the g’s, because he somehow felt that that sounded better for a warlord. And now you know the true story.
More on Thursday.