That job wasn't too stressful, but the rest of my team had a much more physical experience. They were wrestling, dodging, and trying to shove people around. If I don't have a squad of beefy boys with me next time, I may need to do some of that. I'm at least going to start going on runs again. I should probably join a karate class or something, but I really don't want to hurt people. I just don't want to get hurt myself. Ohh! Maybe there's a dodgeball league or something I can join that'll let me practice looking out for "attacks" and dodging them. That'll be a great way to train for these missions without having to hurt anyone. It'll also be a blast, and I can meet all the people that play dodgeball in the area. I bet Joe will join me too; he could use the exercise and social outings too.

These scars are tough. I don't generally take a particularly beautiful form because I don't want to draw too much attention to myself, but the stares I'm getting from these scars is real uncomfortable. Luckily most of stream was pretty chill about it. I just put a generic post in the stream description saying I'd gotten a serious burn recently, it's still recovering, and I'd rather not talk about it now. Otherwise I won a dodgeball tournament, and made some new friends. While this scar sucks, I guess it is helping me learn to improve my social skills, since navigating around the issue while not lying can be a challenge at times. I wonder if there's anyone with healing powers out there to help fix this. I should probably start looking around to see if I can find a healer. I've tried covering it up by just shapeshifting to a different form, and of course that didn't work either.

After that last mission, I've decided I need to start wearing armor to these jobs. I spent awhile online looking for some lightweight kevlar reinforced body suit. I finally found one that seemed protective enough, while still being flexible enough to accommodate any form I want to take. Once I took care of that, I spent a few days translating this weird book. Turns out it's some occult ritual to summon a demon and achieve immortality, maybe. I think my translation may be a bit off, because the last step of the ritual is to die and ask the demon to imprison yourself. Based on where I got it, there's some truth to the immortality available, but I'm not sure if a person became an immortal car or if there was just an immortal demon possessing a car. I'm not sure what to do with this book; it seems dangerous to get rid of it somehow, but I also have no interest in using this ritual. I'll probably try to find someone to work on a better translation. It could also be interesting to speak with a demon.

I don't know why I made that promise, but at least tracking the girl down was easy enough. I had plenty of time to look into that spooky book.

I took the edited copy of the book to France to find an expert on Martinezism; I started the search in Martinez's home town. After a day of chatting up the locals and asking around, I learned that there's a professor who lives just out of town who studies Martinezism. Someone tried to rob me in the middle of the night at my hostel, but I demanded my stuff back. I was planning to hike to the professor in the morning, but after the robbery a nice family in the hostel offered to give me a ride to his house. He let me crash in his guest room for a day, while he looked the book over. He wanted to share it with other researchers into the area, and I said that was probably fine since he didn't think it could be dangerous if it got out. The work could take awhile so I left my number with him and headed back home.

He said the edited book couldn't be dangerous, but that I also shouldn't show it to any true believers or practitioners. I did learn that the Arnoult family left for the Caribbean when Martinezism dissolved, so they could have been practicing and might still be.