Okay, skip the candy and purple stuff.

"I'm guessing meat is pretty expensive? And what's the purple stuff?"

"Meat is a lot harder to grow than grain, yes? You should make sure to eat some of those Tosa beans for their protein, too. That's Amarit. Basically just raw Amaranth grains ground to flour and mixed with butter and water and then not cooked, so the, uh, chemical that gets you high isn't destroyed."

He grabs some beans.

"Meat is harder to grow than grain but my family was still able to afford more of it than this. Again with the mysterious agricultural productivity discrepancy, I guess. Do Kitsune eat dairy?"

"I think meat on every plate can wait. Just getting enough Amaranth grown that nobody's in danger of starving any time soon is relatively recent. Like, in the last three decades. Milk and cheese and things? Sometimes. Cheese is not really a thing in Luo, I'd say it's more a Shen thing. Or maybe an Iwa thing. Small children drink milk, though."

"Three decades? Christ."

Sid will chow down and wait for the doctor to get here, he guesses.

"There's a reason some curse the makers..."

The doctors arrive. There are two, wearing a pair of biohazard suits. They would like to do various medical things and get blood samples and sweat samples and saliva samples and skin samples and ideally more samples and do things like checking his pulse and breathing and ask a lot of questions about diseases he knows about.

"I can hardly believe my eyes," says the three-tailed doctor through his suit at one point. "But, uh, ignoring evidence is, uh... Yes. There was some question about wanting to keep your existence quiet, Mr. Sid? Is that the proper address?"

They can have all the samples they want that don't require a biopsy. That one costs money. Or... something, if kitsune don't use money. He'll answer their questions to the best of his ability, which isn't great. Infectious disease is not one of his special interests.

"'Mr. Hill' would be the formal address, but 'Sid' is fine. I'm not very formal. I would prefer to keep things quiet if possible. Becoming the target of... the amount of attention my presence here merits does not sound very fun."

"We can get you a whole lot of Lux. It's technically still money, more that you can't buy everything with it. Mr. Hill of Earth, then? Uh, obviously I cannot just keep it to myself. Your presence here has - immense implications. But I predict my superiors also will want to handle this calmly. To borrow a phrase, the individuals are not the same thing as the clan and an unwilling sacrifice is just as great an evil as a willing one is good. Uh, I'm planning to bring this to the highest levels directly and minimize the number of people who could have... Strong reactions. There will probably be people who want to work out terms with you. I don't imagine it will be relaxed but I hope it's not too bad."

Then they can do a biopsy or two in exchange for some Lux. Sid is not actually going to charge them a lot for something that could be important for disease control, he just expects some compensation for the pain and inconvenience of literally removing part of his flesh.

Sid thinks the doctor's plan to communicate the situation to his superiors sounds fine and explains to him the acasual bargaining he did earlier. (He doesn't mention the dynamite, obviously.)

"Do you think the relevant parties will be willing to commit to that?"

They do something in the computer systems to make a 'Hill-of-Earth' Clan Account. He now has 100,000 Lux.

"...I think you think a little like a canny old Iwa matriarch, if you're going to determinedly offer a hard line of killing yourself. I also think they will commit to not preventing you from killing yourself and giving you whatever assurances you require about that. Do you need a suicide device? I can offer you, at least, catastrophic amounts of painkillers. I'm unsure if they would even do anything to you."

"I have one."

A nod and a little affirmative half-chirr, half-yip sort of noise. 

"Please let me know if you notice anything off about your health so we can attempt to address it. I'm going to, uh, spray everything with aerosolized disinfectant and then drive these samples to the lab and talk to a bunch of people now, unless there's anything else..."

"Nope. Message one of us with any updates."

"It was interesting to meet you... But we have quite the job ahead of us now."

The doctor and his one-tailed assistant (who has been mostly a quiet fetching-assistant) will leave without issue, after that. It's getting dimmer as the local sun moves to twilight.

Sid is still really curious about whatever was going on with Tak, so he'll try to find him.

Tak is doing some kind of martial arts kata shirtless in what passes for a yard. It's more of a fallow and bare dirt garden. He looks stiff, angry, frustrated.

"Hey, Tak. Is this a bad time?"

Tak ignores him and finishes a set of motions.

Then, "...No worse than any other. I guess that's a polite intro to a conversation for you guys? I have every question, all of 'em, 'bout my own special interest but I think we came to a quiet collective agreement not to bombard you with those."

"It's a polite way to ask if a conversation would be welcome. You seem kinda grumpy, is why I asked. You, and everyone else, are welcome to ask me questions about things at a sufficiently moderate pace that I don't get overwhelmed. I like talking to people and it's not as if we have a ton of other stuff to do in quarantine."

"But I actually sought you out because I was curious about, uh, why everyone was giving you dirty looks about the dynamite and the whole context behind that. If you don't mind talking about it."

"It's a pretty suspicious thing to have, explosives, isn't it? Someone who knows things about explosives, if they're not in the military or a mining engineer or something, might be part of... A group of like-minded individuals."

Pause.

"Wait shit, you're not going to get any of the subtext. Okay, well, having a stash of dynamite in a place that's supposed to be off limits is a stereotypical organized-crime thing. I'm not an organized criminal, but it sure looks that way to them right now."

"Gotcha. I figured you just like to blow stuff up for fun. That's... not a particularly uncommon interest, among humans, although people are more likely to have guns or fireworks than dynamite. Thanks for taking the reputation hit for me, I owe you one."

"I don't regret it. And you're pretty much right as far as blowing things up goes. I also like swords, sailing, and tanks." Shrug.

"An entirely sensible set of things to be interested in. If you have any burning questions for me, we can talk about that."

"What kind of swords did Earth have? Your hands are mostly like mine, but your legs are different. I think you'll have less reach. But maybe more stability? So maybe heavy blades like the two hander? Does Earth favor single edges? Sabers, curved single edges are a wonderful design. Brutally efficient."

"Humans historically used a variety of swords—one-handed, two-handed, single and double edged. It varies by culture, time period, and application. I think the largest ones were about as long as I am tall. Sabers were definitely also a thing, particularly used by cavalry."

Sid can try to draw some designs from memory if they have paper.

"This is a difficult topic for me to talk about with any accuracy, because swords were used for ceremonial purposes and in art and fiction for a long time after they became obsolete on the battlefield, and I don't know enough about them to distinguish what's true from the false impressions I picked up by cultural osmosis."