Food Network! Raiten Style!

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Able learner  2 Dice per post.

Sense Motive
Rank: "E"
Skill: Skill
Effect: User is skilled at detecting falsehoods and true intentions.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: A successful check lets you avoid being bluffed (see the Acting skill). The user can also use this skill to determine when "something is up" (that is, something odd is going on) or to assess someone's trustworthiness. Sense Motive does not, however, allow a character to determine whether a given statement is a lie. In addition, a character can use this skill to make an assessment of a social situation. With a successful check (Very Difficult Difficulty), the character can get the feeling from another's behavior that something is wrong. Also, the character can get the feeling that someone is trustworthy and honorable. A Sense Motive check may be made as a reaction to another character's Acting check. Try Again: No, though user may make a Sense Motive Check for each Acting check made against the user. Look in Task Skills thread found in the Skills and Traits Index for more information. If user has 25 or more Ranks in Evidence Analysis user gains a Synergy Bonus +10 to Sense Motive. If user has 25 or more Ranks in Cultures user gains a Synergy Bonus +10 to Sense Motive when interacting with someone of said Culture. If user has 25 or more Ranks in Cultures user gains a Synergy Bonus +10 to Sense Motive when interacting with someone of said Culture. Each time learned user gets 1 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

Welcome back Kumogakure to the regionals of the most highly anticipated Poker tournament in the land of lightning. Today we have finally gotten the game down to two of our most highly talented players in the land of Thunder. In the left representing the Village of Kumogakure it's everyones most beloved and dangerous monster hunter in the entire land of thunder. You know him. You love him.... Kumgakure in the building give it up for SHiiiiiiiiiiki Seeeeenri!

Shiki slowly walked out on stage and he was rather excited but slightly nervous. He looked around at all the smiling faces that were intent on watching him compete in a game of chance, probability, in-depth personal evaluations and most importantly absolute total and utter luck. If someone didn't properly know what they were doing Shiki knew that they would be at a loss. 
But even here in the big leagues sometimes people won with absolute luck. 

But in a game of 52 cards. The most important thing is not to play against the cards. You'd never win on chance alone. You needed to play the opponent. 

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Same Skill

Shiki looked at the arena around him as the crowd continued to applaud him with the calls of thunder. Shiki knew that in a few moments all these thousands of cheering voices would soon be silenced as the series started. Shiki walked slowly along the illuminated pathway and knew that this was more then just a tournament. This was all done as a fan service. The excitement and fast paced music of this place was little more then a distraction to keep people from trying to make any serious assumptions of his skill.

Shiki stretched a bit intentionally making sure his strides were slower then that of the music. He would want to exude an aura of calmness and almost indifference. He would need to make sure to guard his thoughts. The easiest way to do that was to guard his emotions. Shiki knew that if someone wanted to cloak their mind they needed to keep it locked in a metaphorical vault inside of their mind. 

If someones face was a window for their emotions to show through it would then easily be used as a way for them to look inside of a person and take away their thoughts. He needed to remain sharp. 

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Shiki knew the easiest way to read someone's intentions was to pick on their micro expressions. A microexpression is a brief, involuntary facial expression that is shown on the face of humans according to the emotions that are being experienced. Unlike regular prolonged facial expressions, it is difficult to fake a micro expression. Shiki knew from his time questioning people what exactly to look for. 

There are seven universal microexpressions: disgust, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise, and contempt. They often occur as fast as 1/15 to 1/25 of a second.The face is the best indicator of a person’s emotions. But people are so quick to look at the body in some mystical sense tor read someone's body language.  But the real way to watch for someones emotions was in the face.

Facial expressions are universal. In other words, people in the Kumogakure make the same face for sadness as indigenous people in Kisagakure despite never having really seeing each others cultures. 

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Blind individuals, even those blind since birth, also make the same expressions even though they have never seen other people’s faces. This was a very telling thing about human nature. There are certain ways that your body can act and react to certain things that were going on around it. But you are genetically programmed as a human to react to certain things on your face unless someone was skilled in acting. 

But Shiki got in this business to know when someone was lying to him. He was never going to be lied to again. Not knowing what was going to happen to him he wanted to make sure that he was never again taken blindsided by someone ever again. If he wanted to bring light to a world of darkness he needed to become familiar with how to operate in the shadows. 

Because real darkness doesn't start where the light ends. There is a grey area. To own this grey area Shiki would need to know how to tell the difference between. 

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Thus most of the time you are only picking up on these expressions unconsciously, which may give you what feels to be intuitive insight into what a person really feels. Shiki knew that these things could happen consciously as subconsciously. For example, if someone sneers for a split second before smiling to answer a question and you detect the change either conscious OR unconsciously, you will not trust the smile as much as if the sneer had no occurred.

Another example is when you meet someone for the first time but for some reason, you don’t like them or trust them even though they haven’t given you any reason to feel that way. You most likely picked up on a micro expression or two that your brain automatically translated to a feeling of dislike based on our evolutionary ability to interpret facial expressions. Shiki was pretty good at picking up on this kinda stuff. 

We, as humans especially ninja, unconsciously detect and express them universally because we have all evolved that way. However, very few humans have the ability to consciously read micro expressions without any formal training.

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Post 4

To everyone watching this, it was just gonna be a story. Perhaps a conversation piece. They understood the stress. They understood just how dangerous a single hand could be. But what they didn't seem to understand was that this was more than just a game for him. When the tournament was over it wasn't going to be followed by another commercial and another program that would simply wash over this entire event like this didn't even occur. 

No. Shiki was going to have to live with these consequences. He finally sat down in front of his opponent. This was the first move in chess. The pawn was pushed forward. The man reached his hand out. Old and weathered. He had obvious lines on his face from constantly smiling and frowning. Shiki reached out and shook the mans hand. It was firm but not crushingly so. Shiki could tell right away that this man was not aggressive in nature. At the very least he had a small level of confidence. 

Shiki knew that it could possibly mean that he wouldn't be afraid to bluff. Shiki realized that this could lead to further complications later down the road. Shiki made an internal wince at it. 

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Post 5

Shiki stood edge of his proverbial battle ground and waited for his opponent to make the first move. Shiki put his ante up and his opponent would need to make the decision to stay in the game or not. Shiki watched as the man didn't even pick up his cards to look at them before putting his ante up. Shiki was baffled. What was he doing? The man put his money up blind? Shiki knew that there was no use of chakra techs of blood limits doing this. So this in and of itself was concerning. 

Shiki looked at his cards and saw that he had a pair of eights. Shiki was in for  sure. He tried to get a read on the mans face as he simply checked and sent the rotation around. Suddenly it was time for the flop. There was a moment where Shiki watched as the dealer started flipping over the cards in the center. As the two of them watched intently Shiki wasn't sure what he should be looking at if he should be looking at the man or the cards.

Shiki realized this was the moment where he needed to watch for micro expressions the most. Shiki was fixated on the old mans face as he watched for a short moment as the man studied the cards.

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Shiki watched as the small blind was posted and monitored the mans micro expressions with a find comb looking to find anything in this persons face or facial features that gave away what he was thinking. Shiki saw the mans lower lip twitch. Shiki knew from his lessons that this meant that it could technically be considered one of several telling factors. At the bottom of the lip meant that the person could likely be frowning. 

Shiki pondered the fact that the man could be frowning and how that could translate into what the mans intent was in regards to the poker game. How could this fucker even have any idea if he should be happy or sad or not. This guy didn't even look at his cards?! What could this mean. Shiki looked at the table and tried to understand what he was seeing. Shiki saw a four a jack of spades and most importantly he saw another 8. 

Shiki wanted to smile. He had a three of a kind already and that was a pretty strong hand. However he couldn't display this emotion because he was still dealing with something more important. 

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Post 7

Shiki started getting ready to increase the bet when he stopped himself. He understood what was happening. This man wasn't interested in winning this particular hand. This man was trying to read his expressions to see what exactly he would do and how he would react if he had a good hand versus if he hand a bad hand. Shiki frowned. What exactly was this guys back ground with reading expressions. 

Shiki knowing what was going on had two choices he could make here. He could either go in on this guys bluff and try and get him to put more money into wasting more money specifically on learning what his mannerisms are. Shiki could do that... OR Shiki could simply pass this turn and only take the small amount of money that he could get if he simply checked away this good hand. 

Shiki decided that there was a third option that he wasn't quite thinking of completely. He could also put forwards a moderate amount of money and make this guy pay for his information. But how much was this information worth?

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Shiki looked at the man and set his cards down. He put 40 grand of his 100 thousand down on the table. If this man wanted to see if he was bluffing or not all he would have to do would be to match his bet. Shiki knew that this guy wanted to get a feel for Shiki's psyche. What would the man think as he looked at Shiki's face. Perhaps Shiki was just a young man that was far too bold and rash in a game about skill. 

Or maybe he would look deeper past that. Maybe he would think Shiki was bluffing and would simply be after some easy ante money. Whatever the case was Shiki wasn't going to let him get any sort of credit from this by looking at him. He would have to play the cards to find out as Shiki was keeping a stone wall on his face. Shiki kept looking at the man not even blinking. The old man contorted his face into a small grimace.

The grimace slowly turned into a pursed smile as he simply put his cards down and folded his had. Shiki reached out and grabbed the pot. He gained a small victory here. 200 dollars and he didn't let any information slip. 

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Post 9 Able learner

Shiki waited patiently and stoicly as the man started started to put his fingers to his nose. Shiki looked at the dealer as the dealer started moving the game chips around. He moved Shiki from the large blind to the small blind. All Shiki had to do was make sure that he kept his face masked as he continued his betting. It was time for the man to post the large blind of 200 dollars. Shiki watched the mans hand as he put the money forwards.

Shiki looked at the mans fingers and he gripped the chips. The mans slow moving reluctance and white knuckle grip of the chips. Shiki knew that meant one thing. This guy was not keen on spending any of his money. There was only so much that that Shiki could get from body language at a poker table but that was something very telling. This guy wasn't going to part from his money easily. Meaning that if he started applying pressure chances were...

That it was more then likely not going to be a bluff. Shiki took this information with a grain of salt as he started to put forward the rest of his bet. Shiki waited for the dealer to dish out his cards for the next round of betting. 

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Post 10

Shiki watched as the dealer set out the three cards in the flop. These cards make up something called the 'river'. Once these cards were set there was another round of betting. Shiki wasn't all that confident in his cards and this put him down in the more reserved way then he normally would. Here in lies the hard decisions to make however. There was a few courses of action that he needed to make. 

He could either fold and not risk losing any money. That might work but there was the problem that it would telegraph how he reacted to certain situations. So... If he was to fold now it would mean that he was the type of person to fold whenever he had a bad hand. However Shiki acted or reacted to any of this was going to be put into this mans mental bank for his future accounting with Shiki.  

Shiki wasn't sure exactly what to do. But he knew that his indecision was going to viewed just as a decision in a lot of things. If Shiki acted to long or quickly then he would also notice his indecision. 

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Shiki knew he needed to act on something. He wasn't sure what exactly he wanted to do but he didn't want to be caught up in his indecision. Shiki realized something important at that exact moment. If he didn't know how he would act in response to what he was going to do. How the hell was his opponent supposed to do that either? Shiki gave a small chuckle and let the that expression show through his face. 

The man looked at him and raised an eyebrow. Shiki tapped the table twice signifying that he was ready to pass his turn to check. The man mulled over Shiki's face for a short amount of time before looking back down at his cards. The man put his fingers tentatively on the stack of chips that he was using to signify the ryo increments that were being wagered in this not so friendly game between professionals. 

Shiki didn't even look at the mans hand as he started counting the chips. Shiki knew this man already from his betting habits. If he put a single dollar up it was more then likely that he had a working hand.

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Post 12

Shiki watched the man put the money down on the table and knew right away that the man wasn't bluffing. Just from looking at the man's fingers he could tell that his demeanor was totally different from what it was he first out his bet forwards. His hands weren't shaking and it was missing that familiar white knuckle grip that Shiki had grown use to seeing as the man started moving his chips about. 

Shiki looked at the man's hand. He was confident. He was looking to make money on this hand. Shiki wasn't going to add anymore gas to this fire. He let the man raise the pot by 500 Ryo before Shiki simply folded his hand and made sure that he didn't reveal his cards at all. The man grabbed the pot and the dealer gathered all the cards up and put them back together into  a short deck. 

The dealer grabbed the cards and started to shuffle them making sire that the deck of cards was kept towards the bottom so that no one could see him interacting with them in any way shape or form. 

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Post 13

(changes the channel.) 

Shiki was standing there alone in an old rustic looking western bar scene. He was looking around waiting for the mercer boys to show up. The mercer boys were a new gang that suddenly cropped up in the badlands bordering the massive desert expanse of the land of sand and where the sandy village met the edge of the grassy plains of its neighboring country.  These lands were home to honest folk trying to scrape together a living. 

Shiki was sitting down in the saloon. He was leaning against the bar table. He looked at the barkeep and set down a single silver coin on the table. He simply nodded at the bartender as he walked over to the bar and set down a single glass shot glass. The man would open up a corked bottle of whiskey and pour a stiff jig of the brown liquid into the glass. After making sure it was filled a good portion of the way he slid it in front of Shiki. 

Shiki tipped his hat at the old bar keep. It was a sign of courtesy in these parts. Shiki took a small sip of the drink and set it down. The barkeep was an honest man. It was now just a waiting game. 

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Post 14

The saloon was full of strange and exciting folk. This town was a crossroads for cowboys who were tasked with the difficult job of herding hundreds of heads of live stock across the prairy lands to this particular city while they waited to be purchased by merchants from the land of sand. This town was full of new faces and old faces every single year. Merchants traveling far and wide to trade beg and barter to make a few Ryo. 

There were seasoned ranchers who had delivered their 30th or 40th run of cattle. There were also young green horns who had spent their entire lives on a ranch who had never stepped out of their families land before. Whether their first time here or their fortieth time. This small town of Reilly was the only bastion of civilization this far out in the frontier lands. 

This was a place of total confusion, chaos and a pearl on the edge of the desert. The town of Reilly wasn't a town that was claimed by either nation that lived on either side of the divide. Rather it was a constantly moving city. 

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POST 15

Shiki was one of the few sherifs in this town. Shiki was once a drifter like so many wayword souls that just so happened to find them selves in the town of Reilly. Shiki was just here trying to find a place to say while he waited for the season to pass so he could start hunting the next creature that he was after in this dangerous game of monster hunting. But as he stayed around in this rambunctious city his skin started to itch. 

The whole city seemed to lack order. Shiki could only stay in town a few days before he was already cracking skulls together. Whether it was saloon customers who had refused to close a tab that they had acquired. Cattle rustlers, or even just your run of the mill every day problems. The post man was running late. People going back on trade deals. All this corruption and disorder made Shiki's head spin. 

It wasn't long before the would to be quasi government offered Shiki a small sum of money to stay in the area while he waited out his time to keep the peace as a job. Shiki took the job happily and  continued on his merry way. 

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post 16

Shiki was in charge of routing out all the miscreants in this town. The more vigilant he was the more money the town made and the less amount of violent death occurred as a result of shady business dealings and other such people who operated outside of normal business hours. Shiki took a deep breath as he moved along simply eying down the people who moved about the town. Shiki was friendly enough.

But there was something special about his eyes. It allowed him to see into the hearts of men. With just a gaze he could tell when someone was lying to him. Just by hearing a few words from someone Shiki was able to get to the bottom of things rather quickly. He was really good at figuring things out with people. All he needed to do these days was just ask people what was going on and he would sort through it. 

Shiki walked from one end of the bar over to a table against the side of the saloon's glass window. He was facing towards the door and with his drink in his hand he blended into the patrons at the bar. 

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Post 17. 

Shiki new that these new gang members frequented this saloon. It made sense. The drinks were stiff, strong and cheap. there were a lot of places that were known to water down their drinks but the sad reality was that there was so much money being moved around here that people were prone to celebrate. It was a city in constant celebration during the times where the cattle were being moved. 

But in the winter months this place was would be a ghost town. All the hustle and bustle would leave. Leaving only the locals of this town to keep this place from totally turning into a ghost town. They would do everything they could just to make sure that the town was still standing for the next big cattle drive. The whole town was built quick and with that came with the fear of having the whole place go up in flames. 

This town was literally a walking tinder box. The lack of rain, the arid climate all of these things made any sort of problem that the town was experiencing suddenly become deadly. The whole place could go up in smoke. 

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Post 18

Shiki started moving around the town as he sat in the bar. He heard them before he saw them. It was clear that the next group of people who were coming into the saloon were coming down off of some sort of a adrenaline high. Shiki watched the saloon doors swing open and tucked his face down from the view of the incoming patrons. It was the gang he was looking for. They all took up seats at a long table.

Many of the patrons actually stood up and left as the gang rolled in. All the faces on the gang members were fresh and new. Not a real beard on a single one of them. Shiki knew this meant a lot of things. One it meant that wherever these guys were basing themselves they were close enough to a city where they could get razor blades. Also, it meant that these people cared about their grooming. 

Status and their perceptions mattered to them. They could also be preparing themselves for a chemical attack. Shiki looked at their mop like hair. no... they weren't.