In the sky above Gensokyo hung a grand fortress, the Shining Needle Castle. To an observer from the Outside World, a castle suspended in midair would already be a spectacle - the fact that it hung upside-down, its parapets plunging toward the earth and its deepest dungeons grasping for the heavens, only compounded the marvel. But in Gensokyo, few gave much thought to the castle, or to its lord, the tiny inchling princess Shinmyoumaru Sukuna. It was just another wonder in a place saturated with them.

Today, though, someone was interested. A lone youkai flew through the damp summer evening air, checkered cape fluttering in her wake. Seija Kijin, the amanojaku who had once been Shinmyoumaru's partner in a failed attempt to overturn Gensokyo's social order, was making a beeline for the castle. The two had unfinished business, and Seija was here to settle it.

The doors of the Shining Needle Castle swung open at Seija's kick. Two hollow suits of armor, tsukumogami animated as doormen by the power of Shinmyoumaru's Miracle Mallet, creaked metallically over to block the amanojaku's path. She sent them both clanging against the opposite wall with a backhand blow.

"Hey! Pipsqueak!" Seija bellowed into the echoing halls. "Where are you?"

Shinmyoumaru cringed in her sewing room as Seija raised a ruckus. She'd been dreading this day.

The time she and Seija had spent together as the Revolution had been sweet strong wine, an intoxicating dream of liberation she'd greedily gulped down. She had been savior of the oppressed, heir to the Miracle Mallet, the world's biggest inchling, Seija's hero. With the two of them together, the overwhelming power of her Mallet mated with Seija's brilliant strategic mind, she'd felt they were unstoppable. Then, the shrine maiden had shown up to stop them. Reimu fought her way through Seija and her tsukumogami allies, through everything Shinmyoumaru and the Mallet could throw at her, until the Mallet ran dry of energy and Shinmyoumaru ended up a helpless prisoner in the shrine. Quite the hangover.

Seija, though, was cunning enough to avoid capture and kept fighting on her own. By the time Shinmyoumaru had been deemed "rehabilitated" and released, Seija had become enough of a nuisance that the powerful of Gensokyo put a bounty on her head, and even suspended the Spell Card dueling rules for the sake of hunting her down. And Shinmyoumaru, the rehabilitated former revolutionary, had joined in the hunt.

Shame had an intoxicating power too: not sweet gulpable wine, but hard liquor, one grim shot after another, burning on the way down. Drunk on her bitter failure, she had adopted the role of hero of the status quo. Wielding her Shining Needle Sword in the service of the strong, she had tracked Seija down and delivered a haughty ultimatum:

"If you're going to go against me, I'll tell everyone to devote themselves to your capture. Wouldn't you prefer living to see another day?"

Big words. But Seija had proved too tough for her. Not just for her, too tough for the shrine maiden too, and for all the mighty lords that joined the hunt. Gensokyo's ruling class pulled out all the stops to take Seija down, and Seija cleverly countered it all and survived anyway. Shinmyoumaru, who had failed as a revolutionary, failed as a counter-revolutionary as well. She'd slunk back to her upside-down castle to wait for the other shoe to drop. And now it had.

Shinmyoumaru poked into the castle's great hall with her needle sword ready, braced for an attack. When she entered, she found Seija kicked back with her feet on the dining table, drinking her cheapest sake out of a salad bowl.

"Heya, short stuff. How the fuck you been?" Seija grinned and took a big swig.

Shinmyoumaru inched into the room, letting her swordpoint lead the way. "Seija? What are you doing here?"

"FYI, I mighta dinged up those tools you had guarding the door. Wasn't expecting them to be such empty suits. Don't think they woulda stood up to an angry fairy, much less a badass amanojaku."

Shinmyoumaru circled warily around the table. "You didn't answer my question, Seija. What are you doing here?"

"You didn't answer my question either, Princess. How the fuck have you been?" Seija drained the bowl and let it clatter on the ceiling. "Seems like the posse figured out they didn't have a hope in hell of catching me. So now that the heat's died down, I came here to check on you. You good? That shrine maiden's not giving you shit these days?"

"You were worried about me." A tone of flat disbelief.

"Of course! I wasn't able to protect you when the shit went bad, and I'm gonna need your help if we want to get the Revolution back on track. You're my important comrade, so I need to know: are you all right, Princess?"

This wasn't how Shinmyoumaru expected this conversation to go. "That's... that's not... I didn't..."

"So long as the two of us are alive, we can still rebuild the Revolution. There is a path to overturn this whole rotten society, Princess, I know it. But we've gotta be careful, not make the same mistakes this time. The key thing is gonna be not to draw attention from those puffed up clowns who call themselves Gensokyo's elites, not until we're ready to hit 'em hard and take 'em-"

"What are you talking about, Seija? How can you talk about the Revolution, I... I went... I came after you and tried to..."

The amanojaku gave a lopsided smile. "Oh, is that what you're so tense about, Princess? Hey, I don't take it personal. You only tried to kill me because you thought it would work."

"I wasn't trying to kill you!" Shinmyoumaru wailed. "I wanted to protect you! All the bigshots in Gensokyo were coming after you to kill you and I thought if you surrendered, you could at least be safe, we could be together and just live in Gensokyo and try to fit in with-"

"I'd rather die," Seija cut in. Her voice had a hard edge Shinmyoumaru knew well. "Sorry, Princess. You can take that sort of safety and shove it up your ass. I'm not going to put on a pretty smile and eat the shit their corrupt system dumps on me. I'll fight. That's what it means to be an amanojaku. I'm going down swinging. Win or die, with allies or all alone, I'll fight."

Shinmyoumaru trembled, the point of her needle sword tracing an erratic path in the air. Seija returned to her lopsided smile and flippant voice. "But hey, I won, right? They all came after me to kill me, with all their rule-breaking bullshit, and they couldn't pull it off. Here I am, the wanted amanojaku. Still alive. Still free." Seija flipped out of her chair and approached the little inchling. "So what now, Princess? Are you still gonna try to 'protect' me? Is that oni-killing sword of yours pointed at me? Or do you wanna go poke society in the ass with it?"

As Seija came closer, Shinmyoumaru dropped her sword, then fell to her hands and knees. "Seija... Seija... I'm so sorry... I did something horrible, I betrayed you, I was supposed to be your ally and I stabbed you in the back! Seija!" Tiny tears misted the great room's ceiling.

Seija loomed awkwardly over the inchling princess. "Hey, hey now, hey. Come on, don't worry about it. This is normal for an amanojaku. A true friend, a reliable ally, these aren't things my kind of youkai can even dream about. An amanojaku gets betrayed three times before breakfast, that's just our fate. I'm used to it."

The logic may have seemed sound to Seija. It didn't do much for Shinmyoumaru's emotional state. "Hey, no harm done, all right, Princess? You came after me, but it's not like you got me. Nobody got me, I was too clever for them. Ten days of everybody throwing all their cheating bullshit at me and they didn't even give me a scratch." Seija stretched out her arms and spread her fingers to demonstrate. Shinmyoumaru looked up briefly before bursting into tears again.

Annoyance was creeping into Seija's voice. "Come on, Princess, get it together already. With you, me, and the Miracle Mallet, we can overthrow this shithole of a Gensokyo. But I can't do it without you. I need you. You remember what they did to your people, right? Are you gonna help me out, or are you just gonna let this stinking fucking status quo fester?"

Shinmyoumaru clenched her fists. "Seija, Seija! I do hate them. I hate the big who trample on the small. I still want the Revolution, but I don't see how the two of us can go back to the way we were. Not after what I did. Turning your blade on a comrade, it's unforgivable."

Seija picked Shinmyoumaru up by the back of her kimono, letting the tiny princess dangle between her thumb and forefinger. "Hey, who do you think I am, munchkin?" She brought the inchling to her mouth and licked the tears from her face. "I'm the world's greatest amanojaku. The impossible is easy for me. Maybe other people could never let something like that go, but why should I give a shit what they think? I forgive you."

The edge was back in Seija's voice; this was no joke. Shinmyoumaru let the words wash over her like disinfectant, cleansing her of her shame and weakness. She was forgiven. She had a second chance. She clung to Seija's thumb like a lifeline.

After Shinmyoumaru had some time to calm down, the two went together to the castle's war room. The dark keyaki-wood tables were spread with annotated maps, notes, and agendas for the Revolution, half in Shinmyoumaru's neat minuscule handwriting and half in Seija's illegible scrawl. Everything was just how it had been the day the Revolution fell. A shiver ran down Shinmyoumaru's spine as she finally re-entered this room, breathing in the warm dry scent of paper, ink, and wood. Surrounded once more by the proofs of their shared ambition.

We're really doing this.

She didn't get much time to bask in nostalgia before Seija started wadding up the notes and tossing them in the wastebasket.

"Seija, uh, what are you doing?" asked Shinmyoumaru. She didn't want to spoil their reunion, but Seija was treating their precious war plans like trash.

"This is all trash," Seija explained. "It didn't fucking work. It got you locked up and put a target on my back. We assumed the Mallet was an unbeatable trump card, and now we know it's not. We gotta get rid of all this and start over."

Seija stopped and picked up a sheaf of paper that had been pushed to the back of a corner desk. "Well, maybe not all of it."

Seija had found the draft constitution for the Republic of Gensokyo, a detailed anatomical sketch of their future utopia. Shinmyoumaru had written it up one night early in the Revolution, crafting her perfect charter of rights to guarantee the fair treatment of the weak. To ensure the inchling people would never be subject to the whims of the bigger youkai again. She had worked late into the night with Seija sitting next to her, offering helpful advice, cracking jokes, and egging her on. A happy memory, perhaps not ruined forever.

Seija brandished the Gensokyo Republic Constitution like one of her magic items. "Our goal hasn't changed. Overthrow the strong, tear down the corrupt, build our new society for the salvation of the weak. That shining nation is still out there waiting for us, Princess. We just need a new way to reach it. A new path for you and me to forge, together."

"Right on!" Shinmyoumaru was more than ready to get back to Revolution planning with Seija. With an enthusiastic wave of the Miracle Mallet, she conjured up a drinks cart with a small cup of green tea for her and a flowerpot of black coffee for Seija, along with a pineapple upside-down cake for them to share.

Seija ripped a chunk out of the cake and stuffed it behind her grin. "First, let me fill you in on what I've been up to." Through a shower of crumbs, she began the story of her heroic fight for survival.

"... and so it was just wave after wave of fucking keystones, crashing down all around, exploding into shrapnel as they hit the ground beneath me. I had to fend off the barrage from above, and at the same time dodge the chaotic mess from below. I'm telling you, it was hell on earth. Any ordinary youkai woulda been shredded."

"Wow, that celestial sure sounds strong!"

"Yeah, she thinks she is, anyway. High and mighty eldest daughter, thinks her shit don't stink just 'cause it smells like peaches. I got her good though. When the keystones hit the ground, they didn't just spray shrapnel, they kicked up a ton of dust. You know how dry the soil is there in the foothills, right? So I took a deep breath and dove into the dustcloud to hide. A proud celestial isn't gonna let me get away that easy, so of course she came flying in after me. But when she got to the center of the dust cloud, what she found wasn't me. It was the big ol' magic bomb I planted, burning out its last shred of fuse. KABOOM." Seija gestured expansively with her flowerpot. "She wasn't expecting that! Blew her hoity-toity ass all the way back up to Heaven. Too bad she flew by too fast to see the look on her face!" Seija cackled at the memory, and Shinmyoumaru laughed along imagining it.

Seija's stories all had the same structure: an arrogant oppressor unleashing an overwhelming attack, Seija making clever use of her magic tools to turn the tables and escape. But Shinmyoumaru didn't mind the repetitive stories. She didn't mind Seija's bad table manners, or the fact that Seija ate almost the entire cake herself. She wasn't going to demand to start talking strategy. After too long spent sober, she was drunk again on Seija's company.

"So enough about me, Princess. Tell me your story. What was it like while you were a 'guest' of the shrine?"

This part was going to be less fun. Seija had stories of daring adventure and triumph over adversity. Shinmyoumaru's stories were of defeat and humiliation. Seija seemed to sense her reluctance.

"Sorry, short stuff. I need to know. You were embedded right there in the heart of Gensokyo's ruling class. This is valuable intel. We gotta go over it. Together."

So Shinmyoumaru took a deep breath and began her tale. A tale of her capture by the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, being tied up and shoved in an insect cage, being picked up and shaken like a rattle, being interrogated by the shrine maiden and her magician friend.

"What kind of interrogation? What were they asking, did they ask about me? What did you tell them?"

"I tried to play dumb," Shinmyoumaru said, "I didn't tell them much." She used an exaggerated squeaky voice. "Oh, I'm just a poor dumb little inchling, totally hoodwinked by that big nasty amanojaku. I'm so tiny and helpless, I don't know anything that would be useful to a big person like you. Really, they asked me more about the Mallet and the tsukumogami than about you."

Seija's mouth twisted. "They were more worried about the tsukumogami than about me, huh? Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm. Those assholes."

"They probably just thought they could get more useful information. I couldn't totally play dumb about my own family's sacred inheritance, after all." Seija still seemed agitated and Shinmyoumaru decided to change the subject. "Anyway, I was surprised to see how the shrine maiden lives. When there's not an incident, she's just sitting around drinking tea and eating crackers, reading novels and chatting with that magician. I don't think I ever saw her training."

"A human with that kind of power and she's not even fucking training?" Seija's attention was diverted all right. "There's no way. Really? Why don't you go through her daily routine in detail, she might be doing training hidden in mundane activities. Like some kind of Zen crap."

The two of them combed through Shinmyoumaru's recollections of Reimu's everyday life. Maybe sweeping the shrine steps with that old whisk broom was training for sweeping away disobedient youkai with a purification rod? They couldn't come up with much.

"Wow," said Seija. "I guess that shrine maiden really is an all-natural monster. All right, so at some point this ridiculously powerful shrine maiden decided you weren't a threat and let you out, right? Tell me about that."

This was the worst part, but Shinmyoumaru had to push through. She talked about how Reimu had come to see her more like a pet, and then more like a member of the household. In Reimu's mind, Shinmyoumaru became the little inchling in the shrine who helped with the sewing and snuck bites of her crackers while she wasn't looking, not a hardened revolutionary. She didn't mention her own feelings, how she appreciated Reimu's gestures of kindness, how she started to see the shrine maiden as a friend as much as a captor. Seija was right. In the end, she had nothing in common with an effortlessly strong monster like Reimu.

"After the Mallet recharged, she had no reason to stop me from moving back to the castle. I was nice and polite when I left. I even made her a little gift to thank her for her 'hospitality'." Shinmyoumaru gave a forced laugh. "Like everything she did to me was just wiped away. It never happened."

"But it did happen," Seija said softly. "That's how the strong always treat the weak, and they think they'll get away with it."

"So I came back here to think about my next move. And I was really, you know, trying to figure out what to do, when Reimu came to me and said she wanted my help. Everybody was getting together to go take down," Shinmyoumaru's breath caught in her throat, "to go take down the amanojaku, and, and I... I didn't mean it, they said they were going-"

Seija cut her off. "Yeah, yeah. You explained this part already. You don't need to keep yammering on about it." Shinmyoumaru gratefully fell silent.

"All right." Seija was speaking with authority now. "We've learned a couple things here. Number one, that shrine maiden is the strongest of the strong, and doesn't deserve that power in the slightest. She represents everything we're working to take down. Number two, she thinks you're on her side. Even if she had her doubts, she tested you by bringing you into the hunt, and you sure passed that test."

Seeing the guilt on Shinmyoumaru's face, Seija hastily continued. "Since we can't overwhelm her with raw strength, we need to build political support. Spread our ideology. With the magic of the Mallet and the youkai of Gensokyo behind us, even that fucking shrine maiden won't be able to stand in our way. See, you've got a power I don't have."

"Yeah, the Mallet responds to my bloodline. The most you could do is hit somebody on the head with it."

"That too, dingus. What I meant was, you're able to talk nice to the elites without losing your lunch. If it was me, I'd still be rotting in that shrine maiden's dungeon, yelling that she's a fucking oppressor bitch." Seija had a predatory gleam in her eye. "Which she is, but maybe some of these fucking oppressor bitches could be useful to the Revolution. The shrine maiden herself, maybe not, she was dead-set on the status quo. But those newcomer gods up on the mountain, they might want to shake things up. Or that narcissist celestial might be flattered into helping out. Something like that."

"So instead of creating tsukumogami as allies," Shinmyoumaru said slowly, "you want to make alliances with the bigshots."

"I want you to make alliances with the bigshots. It's a job I'm fully fuckin' unsuited for," Seija said, "but you showed you can do it. Make friends, get involved in Gensokyo high society, play along with their danmaku games. Work on their sympathies so we can borrow their strength. Just don't go native on me. While you're sipping their sake and nibbling their horse do-overs, don't forget it's for the sake of our new republic."

"Hors d'oeuvres?! After how they treated me? I won't forget how they look down on me, on all the little people." Shinmyoumaru tightened her grip on the Mallet. "Anyway, what are you doing while I'm sucking up to the oppressors, huh?"

"I'm gonna be working on the other end, the real scum of Gensokyo. My kind of people," Seija laughed. "There's a bunch of caves under the mountain where they shoved a bunch of youkai who didn't fit into their pretty porcelain society. Just like what they did to the inchlings. There's rumors of a sealed secret god too, a god of the disdained and discriminated and outcast. There could be a whole army just waiting to be organized. It's a beautiful dream, right? The two of us as generals, stylish matching uniforms, leading our battalions to march for justice, backed up by the power of a spurned, vengeful god. Between you and me, we can make that dream real."

Seija swept Shinmyoumaru up in her palms. "I'm gonna have to stay clear of the castle for a while, I think. If you want to fit in with Gensokyo society, you can't be seen harboring the outlaw amanojaku, right? So it's goodbye for now, Princess. Stay safe. Here's a little something for luck." Seija brought Shinmyoumaru up to her mouth and kissed her face, gentler than Shinmyoumaru had ever seen the amanojaku do anything. This was beyond liquor - Seija's kiss was an immortality elixir, flooding Shinmyoumaru's body with vitality. Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Long live Seija and Shinmyoumaru!

Seija set Shinmyoumaru down and turned away, blushing. "Haha, that was weird of me, wasn't it? Too bad, having an amanojaku for a partner means you have to put up with all kinds of weird stuff. Bet the shrine maiden never tried to do something like that. An amanojaku's always gotta do the wrong thing. Anyway, never mind that, I'll see you around, squirt."

"It's not wrong!" Shinmyoumaru protested as Seija started to leave. "I'll work really hard while you're gone, I'll show you. I'm gonna infiltrate their society, recruit the most powerful youkai for our Revolution. I'm not gonna be swayed by Reimu or anyone else ever again. Just because you're an amanojaku, doesn't mean you can't have a true friend, a l- a loyal ally to the end. I'm your comrade." Shinmyoumaru couldn't find the courage for the words she really meant. "Forever."

Perhaps Seija understood anyway. She turned back in the doorway with a pained smile. "I'd love if that were true, Shinmyoumaru. If you managed to stick with an amanojaku, you'd really be turning the world upside-down."