[X] Can we put a shock collar or a magical equivalent on her?

A white ring, stitched together from a number of Ran’s paper dolls, sits around Seija’s neck. She tugs at the fashion accessory, despite being explained how much pain it can inflict her in an instant.

When Ran asked me last night how we might restrain Seija, I didn’t immediately come to this idea. At first I thought more along the lines of tethering her in some way, but Ran and Keine brought me around to this in a matter of minutes. We came together to make this overnight and I’d say we did a bang up job. A string of shikigami set to activate their Youkai damaging properties at Ran’s convenience.

“Gah!” Seija shouts in a burst of pain, as one would from being statically discharged. There is no noise for when the collar is active, nor does it emit any light that would otherwise indicate it. Her hand darts away from her neck, and she relaxes again.

Ran doesn’t have any form of button, instead operating it with her thoughts, so I’ll have to interpret when it’s on. It bugs me that I have no say in when it’s used, especially given Ran’s proclivity to incite turmoil, but the best I can do is stay a step ahead of them.

With enough haranguing maybe I can factor it out of the day.

“So, why am I wearing this?” Seija asks, pointing at the collar from a healthy distance.

“Because we’re taking you out of the cell today, but we also need something to keep you from harassing everyone we see,” I explain, taking out a key for the heavy metal bars.

I quickly locate the keyhole and slot its heavy partner in. It unlocks with a clack, and brace my whole body to swing it open. The sheer weight isn’t surprising in any way, but does make me wonder what the most dangerous thing they could keep in here would be.

I let the door settle and thumb over to the exit, commanding Seija, “Alright, let’s get a move on.”

“To where?” she asks with a raised brow, refusing to budge from her position in the cell.

I decide to be direct with her, “To wherever you want, I suppose. It’s your choice.”

She puckers her lips and nods. “Wherever I want? Well in that case.”

She walks to the back of the cell, dropping back to the ragged cloths that make up her bedding. She pats her skirt down to sit with legs crossed, looking none too intent on moving.

“You’re really doing this right now?” I find myself off pace from her bullheaded contrarianism. I pass a glance behind me to Ran, her eyes looking into mine and suggesting that she expected this. I round back on Seija and start to bargain, “… Look, Seija, I get that you want to do the opposite of what I say, but could you for a second consider that I’m legitimately giving you the chance to breath some fresh outdoor air with no strings attached?”

“None?” she challenges, flicking a finger against her collar.

My eyes clamp shut, turning off to the side as I’m forced to admit, “Close to none.”

She stares at me, chin crooked into balled fists.

“Fine, if you don’t want to, then I guess I can’t force you...” I concede.

There’s a brief minute of silence as neither side continues this debate. That is until…

“Gaah!” Seija shouts, launching from her seat into the back wall. She floats upside down in the air for a second as she fights with the collar. “What the hell?!”

Ran takes a step in front of me and enforces, “Leave the room or the collar will remain active.”

Not much more is needed to get her from flailing in the air to swimming right next to us, an aggravated, “Fuck! Fine, I’m out!” to follow. She plants her feet on the ground, forcing her fingers close to her neck, and pulls as hard as she can against the thing harming her.

“Ran, I think that’s enough!” I reprimand my partner, attending to Seija’s hands.

She’s too distracted by the pain to really notice me. Ran isn’t stopping, though, why isn’t she..? The collar. She’s touching the collar. I get my hands over Seija’s, trying to remain calm, hoping that she’ll understand the same.

With some patience, and worming my fingers under her clammy palms, she takes notice. She releases a white knuckled grip on the collar, and slowly lowers her arms.

I reproach my partner, “You think maybe you’re taking this too far?! What the hell was that?”

“A warning,” Ran holds firm. “Cooperation would be better than the alternative.”

Seija coughs out a jesting, “Go have fun or else? That’s my kinda time.”

“I hope you realize you’re not helping your case,” I bicker at the numskull.

Ran bangs on the door, “Three out!”

Kaze grunts, his displeasure in the idea being made known through the solid metal door. It took a lot of convincing to get him to go along with this, but I think he still trusts me enough again. It would be good if I could keep that trust.

The prison door opens and we file out, Seija being kept between Ran and I.

“Let me know when things go wrong,” Kaze growls, his arms crossed over his spear.

“Oh, I’m sure the little human would be of so much help,” Seija snickers.

Kaze narrows his eyes at the girl, and retorts, “Why don’t you tell these two when you snuck a metal pick into your cage? Who slammed you back in?”

Seija bares a set of rough teeth at the man, feigning a snarl. It does little to change his mood.

“Is that so?” I openly wonder. “Not– that I thought you were bad at your job, or anything. I’m just having trouble picturing somebody going toe to toe with a Youkai.”

“Do I look built for smooth talking and danmaku, Regis?” he reflects my pointed questioning. “Now get out of here, maybe the elders will figure out what the hell to do with her if I go rattle their heads.”

He continues mumbling to himself as we take our leave, greeting the mid morning sun. Guards at the gate greet passing housewives, coming into the walls to purchase farming supplies, but quickly catch our entourage standing idle just outside the guardhouse. Ran waves them off as a sort of implicit ‘all clear.’ Like Kaze, they fidget with their spears, likely left to worry for the rest of the day as our group leisurely traipses the streets.

Seija walks ahead of us, immediately taking the reigns of the outing. She looks happy to be outside, showing how little she really cared about that stunt a minute ago. The simple act of walking down the street, passerby gawking in fear, puts a smile to her face. Little wonder, too, since I’m sure a lot of Youkai would love this treatment.

She casually strolls through the village, not stopping at any single location for longer than a few seconds before moving on. We’re forced to right many objects that she displaces, most being of little consequence, but for the few shop signs take poorly to being flung upside down we briefly apologize to the owners and continue our pursuit.

As we enter the market area we’re on high alert, waiting for Seija to nick goods of their shelves. We catch her hand a few times with foreign objects, Ran briskly zapping her for the trouble while I return the item to its rightful owner. Seija gives up entirely on larceny once the song and dance become routine. She rebels against our advances in her own small way, still, turning the odd fruit or vegetable over compared to its family. She grimaces at the results. They don’t elicit the same rush as snagging the food off the shelf for her.

We make our way still further around the village, coming more into the housing area, where we find children playing past an alleyway. Likely a secluded spot that they’ve made their own.

Seija looks particularly keen to meet them, her heel thudding as she turns to the alley.

I catch her shirt collar and warn, “You might want to rethink that one. Ran can only set that collar so high before your head pops off.”

As far as I know, that’s a complete fabrication, but a solid enough one to not test. She looks between me and them, considering what would happen if she just ignored me. I release her, having said my piece.

This girl is like so many students that’ve gone through my classes. Being too pushy will make her do what I don’t want her too, but being too timid will also have her doing what I don’t want. It feels like there’s no winning with her. That’s by design, obviously, but hardly a justifying one.

She continues to stare at the children, a lame frown popping up to a wry smile. She lifts her foot up, and…

“Gh!” she emits through her teeth. Her confident step miscarriages, sending her reeling back into Ran. The latter braces her from falling over before pushing back. Seija swivels on a heel to face the thorn in her neck.

“Do not engage with adolescents. The risk of you causing them harm is against all directives,” Ran rationales.

Seija challenges her, “Your directives? We’ve been walking around for a half an hour and all I understand is that your directives are to have me do nothing. You sure you don’t just want me dead?” she seethes.

Ran reflects her heated glare, refusing to argue the assertion.

Seija picks up on this, choosing to taunt, “… Oh, right, you can’t.”

Ran remains still as stone, angry as a gargoyle. Seija’s caught on to that much. If this keeps going what else will she be able to weed out of her? Nothing good, I suppose.

“We should relocate,” I interrupt, lacking any suggestion in my tone. “If being around the village is going to have us bog you down, then it’s better that we aren’t here in the first place.”

She sweeps her face towards mine, aggravating, “Oh I’d love that. Maybe we can stop for tea on the way? I’ll make it for you myself, asshole.”

I back up and raise a hand between us. “I more so meant that you wouldn’t get zapped for doing the same elsewhere… is that fair enough?” I defend.

Her brows furrow. Her lips twitch. And with a click of her tongue, she grouses, “Whatever.” Without another word, she flies off.

Ran apprehends me from behind, launching us into the air to pursue our target. The tiled roofs fall out from under me, shrinking until I have a view of the whole village. We level out with Seija as she travels to the East. There’s no urgency in her speed. In fact, she seems to enjoy the flight as she lounges in the air, facing away from where she’s traveling. She even offers a wagging finger for us to keep following as she descends.

If my bearings are still with me, we’ve flown for about some ten to twenty minutes, so… That forest below is the Forest of Magic, I think? Probably a deep portion of it, too, judging by the thickness of the leaves. The canopy scrapes against us as we follow Seija below.

We emerge to a portion of the forest about as dark as the evening, the glow of various plants and fungi providing more visibility than the absent sunlight. I feel a new paper doll attached to my shoulder, courtesy of Ran. The air is rife with spores and pollen of magical plants seeking shelter from the coming winter. That, combined with the generally invisible miasma of this place, is best to be wary of. Whether it effects me anymore is beside the point.

Lying atop an especially massive fungus is Seija, playing with an oversized snail shell she’s caught in a twister. She flicks a finger on beat, spinning the critter around and around above her head. How it retains height is difficult for me to say, but just as difficult to hand wave as negligible.

Seija herself seems passively taken by the act, staring at the rotating bug as one would stare into a campfire. I stroll next to her, reaching up to gently stop the snail. It takes almost no force to do, despite being as large as a baseball, and the sudden break in motion causes eye stalks to peek out from the shell.

“Now what?” groans a set of jagged teeth. The back of her hand lowers against an eye as she complains, “Don’t want me playing with bugs, neither? It ain’t fun, anyway.”

“That’s not what I’m stopping you for. I just wanted to ask if you were going anywhere from here. You can have the snail back,” I finish, placing the shell and its occupant back into her open palm.

She rolls up on the giant mushroom, shaking a thick cloud of iridescent spores loose from the underside. She tosses up the snail, letting it fall back to her hand a few times before levitating it through some imaginary force.

“You know, I have been thinking of taking something boring from one of the hoarders out here. They’ve got lots of stuff, I’m sure some of it’s bad,” she muses, more to herself than anyone else.

The irony strikes me that she would steal from the little witch, but that’s better left unsaid.

I look at the snail, the ethereal lights of the forest bouncing off of it like a disco ball, and comment, “I don’t condone theft, but you’re not wrong to say they have a lot sitting around. What do you hope to find, specifically?”

Her lips push to the side in thought, answering, “Like I said, something boring. Nothing will do.”

“Right…” I concede with a nod and add the part she doesn’t want to hear, “You realize that we’re not gonna sit idle while you commit burglary, yeah?”

She shoots an eye at me, and slowly stands atop the giant shroom. When she finds stable footing, she taunts, “You realize that I’m always idle, yeah?”

She jumps, curling in on herself to cannonball the fungus. The impact knocks loose a mass of spores, too bright and thick to see through. An improvised smokescreen. I swat at the space above the mushroom, but my arm finds nothing solid. It’s still so thick that the motion does nothing to dissipate the particulates. It takes another several seconds for the smoke to thin, and Seija is nowhere in sight.

She’s taken flight. In a forest we can’t fly out of, no less.

“… Shit,” I curse at my lacking awareness. I should’ve noticed when she rolled on it. Now all that’s left is the snail, shell shocked and agitated.

I turn to my partner, starting, “Ran, do you–?!”

She offers an open hand, shutting me up. It turns over, requesting something be put in it. I feel something slither out from my lower back up through my collar. It traces back to Ran, resting in her palm. She flicks it into her fingers, raising her eyes in place of verbal communication.

I point at it and then to where Seija was sitting. She nods.

“You’re the best, you know that?”

She lets the doll slip back under my shirt, stating, “In addition, the restriction collar is currently set to low. Shall we go after her?”

[x] Well of course. Don’t want her causing trouble unattended.

[x] Maybe we can wait a bit, see what she tries.

[x] Surely we can think of something more ‘boring’ than that. (Write-in)

[x] Maybe we can wait a bit, see what she tries.

I rub my heel in the dirt as I think. We could go after Seija right now, and it would be interesting to see her reaction for how we can pin her down, but I’m thinking otherwise. Letting her do what she wants for a moment can show me what her master plan was. Running from us is one thing, but staying away from us is an entirely different story.

Or rather, staying away from Ran. I contribute little to this equation.

“Let’s hang back,” I decide. “If we keep watch on her from a distance, I think something interesting may happen.”

“Interesting by your metrics are marginally concerning,” Ran retorts, though without a tone of admonition.

“As bad as Seija’s?” I joke, prodding the snail left behind on the mushroom platform. The little critter starts trailing away at mach snail pace.

“You overestimate yourself. Nothing is as reprobate as an amanojaku’s values,” Ran opines.

I chuckle, “I guess we’ll have to see. What direction?”

Ran points to a section of the dark woods, one without signs of tampering. Seija must be better at running away than I expected, there’s no tracks to follow. We take a leisurely pace through the thicket, all manner of ridiculous creature appearing in the corner of my eyes as we pass. We even see Marisa’s mushroom man picking other mushrooms for her, though he seems to have trouble doing so upside down. Any uncertainty I felt in our heading vanishes at the sight.

Sunlight begins to poke through thinner parts of the thicket as we continue following Seija’s path. Whether this means she was making a break straight out of the forest is hard to say, but I can conclude that she’s not intent in staying in the deepest parts.

We continue on, out to the point that the mushrooms start to look plausibly normal, after which Ran arrests my shoulder.

“Approximately fifty meters out,” she states.

“What? We caught up already? What did she find that would have her stop in the forest?” I ponder, swiping away the last of the loose spores from my shirt.

“Unresolvable without empirical inspection. While not as intense as the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, the Forest of Magic is known to disorient those caught within.”

“You can just say you don’t know.”

She retrieves a shikigami from her sleeves, and goes through the process of summoning Chen. The paper glows, it drops to the ground, and a bright flash emits where the cat appears after. A wily smile, cat ears, and two tails all contained in a red tunic, Chen looks as mischievous as ever. She violently shakes her head, forcing herself to attention.

“Chen,” I greet with a curt wave.

She locks eyes with me. “Tanner,” she chirps.

Ran intervenes before any banter can start, “Chen, you have your orders. Pursue post haste.”

“Yes, Lady Ran!” the cat salutes in perfect order. She slinks off, jumping into the trees. The shifting leaves dampen in the distance.

The forest sits in quiet movements, small critters roaming in regular minutiae. Just some five minutes back seems like a completely different world, while I could mistake this for regular forestry. It’s more unsettling, in its own way, that I can stand here and know full well that the magical poisons still linger with the sun shining down on me.

I pace around as we wait, hoping to strip some of my nerves of their authority.

“What did she find?” I wonder aloud, not expecting any answer.

“Tanner,” Ran steals my attention. She holds out a blank paper doll, sweeping its face with her palm. As her hand passes, what was once white now appears with color, moving color. It’s like a video feed, but from what is hard to tell. I hover over it to study.

The colors are dark, but movement can still be made out in frame as two limbs wave into and out of it. I think it’s paws, maybe? The way slices of light travel out leads me to believe this is an animal traveling through foliage.

Still not grasping the exact extent of the video, I ask, “This is..?”

“Chen,” she simply replies.

“You mean… we’re seeing through Chen’s eyes?”

“And speaking to the girl in question!” the paper vibrates out a sharp-tongued response.

I find my lips pursed. “This is a new trick. How come you haven’t used this yet?”

“Because it’s tiring! You try focusing on putting everything you see into a different spot in your brain! Lady Ran, this is a cruel trial to let him of all people speak directly to my mind!”

I point down at Chen’s facsimile, and start, “What does she mean by that? Ran, what does speaking into her mind mean?”

“This shikigami is an extension of the spell that allows this specific telepathic feed. Normally reserved for my own personal use, it would best serve for this purpose at the moment. Chen is well capable of more sensory information than this,” she wards off my concerns.

“I would appreciate not being overclocked,” Chen whines.

I look up to my partner, eyeing her down to question, “And what might that entail?”

She doesn’t have the chance to deny comment, not when the paper bleeds out into white. After a few seconds it dims down to the scene of a white house surrounded by greenery. Chen’s broken through the thicket, but arriving to where? I don’t know much about this area, but this house can only belong to one of a few people. More pressing than that, though…

“Seija is… hiding in there?” I guess.

“Most likely,” Ran surmises.

“Now what? I don’t think it’s a good idea to wander into the doll witch’s house uninvited,” Chen reports, remaining posted on a branch.

“Then we will have to wait,” Ran dictates. “It should not be long for the puppeteer to take notice of her intruder. The aftermath will be the only unknown portion.”

“You think Seija might break her house down to get away?” I conjecture, ascertaining what variables Ran could possibly be tracking.

“No, the larger concern rests with Margatroid. The puppeteer is known to be moody. How she might receive unwanted guests is dependent on her own bias at that moment.”

“And so, what? She might just treat Seija to tea? You realize that’s the logical conclusion of that assertion,” I bicker. It’s still bugging me that she’s holed up in the witch’s house. Why did she not keep running? There’s gotta be more to this, otherwise she’s pigeonholed herself to a dangerous situation worse than what she started with.

… Unless she wanted to do exactly that?

“Tanner. You appear stressed,” Ran points out.

I dissuade her attention, “No, don’t mind me, I’m just thinking about how much I’m beginning to dislike amanojaku.”

“Get in line, old man,” Chen mocks, “everyone wants a piece of that girl.”

Chen’s eyes dart away from the house, landing to a clearly tread pathway through the forest.

“Speaking of which, another victim,” she announces for us.

Chen repositions through the trees, letting us view down the path where one particular woman approaches the house. Short blonde hair, vaguely European attire refurbished to be more doll-like, and a book that is perpetually carried in her arm. This is Alice Margatroid, the third witch of this forest, the one that controls dolls.

Whilst not an impressive sounding ability for magic, the doll accompanying her, dressed in a similar, albeit simpler fashion to its master, carries and entire suitcase thrice its size. And like so many denizens of Gensokyo, even this doll is not bound to the earth below it, gliding by Alice like it were perfectly natural for it to do so.

The duo pass under Chen, our cat following them like she was on the hunt. She fixates on the doll especially, perhaps some baser instinct desiring she pounce it.

Even before they’re out of earshot, Chen comments, “Those things are freaky, no matter how many times I see them. How can a human love them as much as she does?”

“Humans truly are strange, Chen,” Ran admits.

“Wait is there no problem with Chen talking?” I latch onto.

“Telepathic,” Ran reminds me, keeping her focus on the image of Alice as she enters her house.

The door closes, and…

An eruption of activity. Dolls rise from the surrounding grass, patrolling outwards. They lift up from behind an open porch, buzzing around the house in search of a target. Chen’s eyes do their best to keep up with all of the movement, but the army is too multitudinous to track.

“Looks like she found something out of place,” Chen explains for me.

Something about this reasoning strikes me as odd, to which I ask, “Seija took something out of the entryway, you think?”

Ran cuts in for Chen, the girl occupied with evading the horde of dolls now at the trees, “No. Margatroid is a much more organized mage than those you have met. Most likely she felt a doll out of place amongst the filled walls of her house and is now investigating its whereabouts.”

“She can feel her dolls? If she’s so organized, why isn’t it more systematic?”

“There is no way to properly interpret her magic for non-magic users, so the best possible analogy is she can sense the dolls before she can analyze them. Here she felt something off with her home but is in the process of identifying the perpetrator.”

“And when she finds this perpetrator..?”

Ran narrows her eyes at the image of the house, conferring, “As soon as she is able to confirm the anomaly, she will move to a–“

Something blasts open the side of the house, a body ejecting from the site. Chen’s image has no sound, but it’s loud enough that this isn’t an issue. The person projected from the house slams into a nearby tree, when she lands I recognize Seija’s white dress.

“– Combative role,” Ran finishes.

The trees continue rattling from Seija’s impact, the girl herself staggering to her feet. She points to the house, or rather the hole in the house, where Alice steps out into the yard. They begin exchanging words, but we can’t hear what they’re saying.

“They’re bantering to one another,” Chen fills in the gaps. “Pleasantries and all that, too. Oh? Oh, that’s interesting, though. You two should come hear this for yourselves.”

Ran and I meet concerned eyes and break into sprints. I’m unable to keep up with Ran’s pace, but my fifty yard dash is no longer a schoolyard time. Fifteen seconds to catch up to Ran through woodlands. Not too shabby.

We arrive on the opposite side of the building, unable to see the action. Our cat falls from the trees onto my shoulder, commenting, “Look at you, being so gung ho. They haven’t started yet, but it sounds like Seija nabbed something from inside.”

We skirt across the front of the house, ignoring the mass of dolls now sitting idle. They turn their heads our way as we pass, but there’s little need for caution at this point. Rounding the corner, Seija pulls something with her fingers, alerting Alice to danger on her rear. A few dolls converge to impede the threat, but their slow reaction allows another of their kind through, tackling its creator with a… collar?

The doll flies past, stopping next to the miscreant cackling her head off without her collar. Seija, and the doll, flaunt their skirts at the doll master, a finger lowering her eyelid shows off a set of rings adorning her hand.

I didn’t think it would last all day, but she had an easier time than I anticipated getting that collar off. Alice recoils from the collar fixing itself to her, grasping and tugging at it with fingers owning a similar set of rings. Her panic quickly wanes as the seconds pass without any repercussions. What was yanking turns to fiddling as she ends up confused by its purpose.

A doll flies next to her, carrying a pair of scissors fit for needlework, but she gives the thing a shrug, unsure what to make of the situation.

Seija, and her smug grin, deflate at the sight. Alice not only stands but is completely unphased by her trick. Her eyes trail off to the side, where we stand, and radiate a disconcerted frown. I wave back to her welcoming face.

“Well… shit,” she mutters to herself.

Alice turns golden eyes our way as well, focusing on Ran and supposing, “Your handiwork, Miss Ran?” She rattles the collar, tighter than a necktie on her.

“There will need to be more troubleshooting to assure that it cannot be trivially severed by a magician’s implements,” Ran all but confirms.

“Don’t bother, I don’t need more challenges than I already have.”

Alice swivels on a heel to face her opponent, eyes tightening just short of scornful, and raises her free hand. The dolls return to her flank, wielding a variety of medieval weaponry, and she declares, “Perhaps you need to be scolded with more than a simple danmaku match, amanojaku. No, you probably require a bruise or two for your trouble.”

Seija heels at the threat, beggaring, “Now, hang on, I’m all about close combat, you know. Really terrible at it and–“

She ducks, dodging the miniature lance of the one of the dolls. Hers punches the aggressor back, disarming the former. The two partake in fisticuffs as the rest of the army assaults Seija at Alice’s command. To call what Seija does fighting would be an insult to everything I’ve experienced in Gensokyo thus far. No, this is outright fleeing. Would she be able to hold her ground? I’m left unsure, as her desperation to avoid everything Alice throws at her is like watching a leaf be carried in the wind.

Not to say that I would fare better, because what Alice is doing would be considered domestic terrorism in any urban area, and I’m not trained for that level of bullshit. Dolls that fire bullets. Dolls that sweep and cut at their opponent. Dolls that fire lasers. Hell, dolls that explode. Did she go wrong at some point in her career in doll making? They appear so cute but are capable of such violence.

Speaking of, Seija’s doll seems to have lost its head. Its long blonde hair flaps across the ground as Alice’s champion mounts a foot atop the remaining body.

“Think we’ll be waiting a while?” I cross my arms and ask my companions.

“Yeah, you ain’t getting notes from this, huh?” Chen muses, encroaching down to my forearms.

“Some ten to fifteen minutes, give or take. Margatroid requires probable suspicion that her opponent will not fight back,” Ran estimates.

Seija dives back into the house, likely assuming Alice will reserve her destructive path for its sanctity. Her hopes are dashed as several of the lancer dolls shoot straight through the remaining boards. Seija’s voice can be heard from inside, prompting further assault from swords-dolls.

Chen purrs, “Keep going like this and it’ll be easy to get that brat back in the cage.”

I look down at the little solicitor and retort, “Hey, kettle, she’s barely been outside for two hours. You can’t be serious about bringing her back already.”

“Regis, consider what she has accomplished within those two hours,” Ran chides, leaving any lecturing idea stillborn. She monitors the fight in front of us, no longer paying me mind.

If I have it right, this is her way of saying this is an exercise left to the reader, not that it’s a particularly difficult list to conjure. For as brief a time as we’ve been out, Seija has done things that better define her. Little acts that show her obsessions, her focuses, and big acts that show her intents and ideas.

I play off of her deferral, and counter, “Be that as it may, it is terrible to send her back after promises of a full day out.”

Ran’s visage cracks a smile at the pontificating, now debating, “Her nature as an amanojaku, who would assent to being treated with disdain, set aside, there are extraneous concerns to her continued venture. Mentions of the word ‘danger’ seem to not sway you as they should, so instead I shall bring up your foreign terminology, ‘rocking the boat.’”

“So you’ll make an executive decision?”

She lilts, “Correct… but…” A rustle in the tassels of her hat, and a sharp breath snuck away from me, betrays some regret in that additional word. This garners her a glance from the cat in my arms, too. I can’t even begin to fathom her mind when she finishes, “I would like to know your opinion on the matter.”

“Mine?” I consider. Though a responsible answer is obvious, my true thoughts on the matter are…

[x] Seija’s too dangerous to people around her, and even herself if left to her own devices.

[x] Seija is just as normal as any other Gensokyan. Why she gets the different treatment is beyond me.

[x] Something a little more nuanced. (Write-in)