[x] Have Kazami stand near the tree for Eternity to paint. I’m sure Eternity would love something to hang in her winter cave.

Eternity pretends to check her paints, making herself small from the conversation at hand. I doubt I can gain anything with Kazami’s prickliness, and Eternity’s mood being brought down won’t help anyone. So, to kill two birds with one stone…

“… Miss Kazami, go stand by that tree,” I order the malcontent Youkai.

“For what purpose, exactly?” she outright tells me of her suspicions. “Your idea for a creative piece of art is to not be at my canvas?”

“Yes, because she will be,” I point at Eternity next to me.

Eternity hangs her feet from a stool, and interprets my words as, “You want me to paint Yuuka?”

“Surely you’re just wishing to find more of Eternity’s little quirks,” Kazami claims, her smile being anything but friendly. “Your intents may as well be worn on your sleeve, human.” Her mention of Eternity’s ‘quirks’ may raise an eyebrow, but I already had my bets that she knew something.

I grin a bit at how shallow I can really be, assenting, “Yes, I suppose that is one reason. But the other reason is that Eternity could paint her dear friend for a keepsake. You think that sounds just as untoward?”

Kazami sniffs at my moxie, “Indeed it does. And your attitude is quite demanding of my patience. Were you not with the fox it may well have broken. However…” she trails off, staring at Eternity.

The fairy fidgets with a brush, stealing a glance at Kazami a few times before realizing she’s been had. An uncertain sound spills from her lips as she pieces together the words, “I think I would like that, Yuuka… if it’s fine with you, anyway.”

The elder Youkai sighs a resigned, “Fine. I see that my opinion falls on deaf ears. Fox, clean up these supplies. It would be a shame to go to waste.” She motions to the set of earthenware paint jars she laid out for herself.

“And you believe yourself allowed to command me for what reason, necessarily?” Ran snips at the woman, not budging an inch from her position.

Kazami’s malicious grin grows with the retort, “I didn’t realize I needed to be your master to ask for your assistance. If that’s the case, I’m sure that old hag would love to know how much you follow this human’s words. You, clean this up.” She points at me now.

Ran doesn’t take lightly to the taunt, her eyes narrowing to slits as she spits back, “If you must be so vapid as to order mundane chores on others mayhaps that is a question on your own ego rather than a need for assistance.”

“Hah!” Kazami cackles, retrieving her pink parasol from the easel. “I see your domestication hasn’t changed your sharp tongue. Now if only your new master could have the power to back it up.”

She steps around her station, strolling down the flowery hill and swinging the parasol over her shoulder as she walks. The garish pink stands out amongst the field of yellow, subtly boasting the pride of its owner now and prior. I guess she’s still taking the painting into account, even if she acted reluctant. Eternity checks her paints, ensuring none have dried up in the last minute since her previous inspection.

Kazami stops by the tree, its green leaves hanging like a curtain in front of her, and with a pirouette, calls back, “You may start any time! And I don’t see you cleaning, fair researcher!”

“You were serious?” I call back in spite. I can see the smile she flashes me from here, the answer being a resounding ‘yes.’

While I’m looking at where to start with the earthenware, Eternity abandons her set to take in the view. Slowly, her brush is raised to the canvas. There is no color on the end, and there is no threat of motion against the white plane, just a pause in thought. She taps a finger to the instrument a few times as a pensive frown begins to fester.

I abandon my task and kneel next to her. “Is something wrong?”

She brings the brush close to her cheek, awkwardly scratching her skin as she whispers away from Ran, “Could we, uhm, find Wriggle, too?”

I lean over to my partner and whisper the same question in turn. She peeks at the fairy, deliberating on following the girl’s whims, and ultimately decides it’s a harmless enough gesture. A shikigami slides from her sleeve, darting into the distance until it’s out of sight.

“This will be a few moments, please be patient as Wriggle Nightbug is requested to arrive here,” she notes, looking vacantly in the direction the doll fled.

“What are you all doing?” Kazami shouts a couple dozen yards away.

“Getting Wriggle,” I yell back to her.

“Why are you-?!” she stops herself, already knowing the answer. “Just clean up!” She folds her umbrella and sits contrapposto, waiting by the tree. She wasn’t joking about the paint, then.

I get back to my task, letting the breeze take the front of the conversation. The only sound to break up the low hum is the scratching of ceramic against ceramic as I sort the lids in my hands.

“I’m glad she’s okay with waiting. Or this silly thing at all, I guess,” Eternity mumbles to herself.

“For that matter, when’d you meet Miss Kazami? I know I kinda asked before, but it really does stand out. Ran and I might be the only stranger pair in Gensokyo,” I joke, coming to terms with paint marks under the lids signaling an organizational pattern I messed up. Ran hums a little chide at my folly, receiving an equally polite finger from me.

Eternity giggles at my plight, answering, “It’s been so long, I don’t remember. I think I was wandering around like normal when I came into the Garden of the Sun. Yuuka… I don’t think she was angry. I started my hole the same day. The sunflower fairies thought I was weird to make my own home when the open sky was just as good. Yuuka was... surprised. I was new, and living next to her, but she never asked me to leave.”

“Never?” I repeat, unsure if she’s being hyperbolic.

She looks at me, my question somehow unexpected, and drags her eyes back to Kazami. “No, never. I don’t know why.”

The conversation dies there. I’m lacking some critical information to follow up, but damned if I can tell what it is. What gets me just as much is how present Eternity is and yet still out of the loop.

Wriggle eventually breaks the minutiae, just in time to sate Kazami’s thinning patience. The first thing from her mouth is ask what Eternity’s doing. It takes her a moment to realize that Kazami is even present, if not physically distant. After a quick rundown, and some punk remarks following yesterday, she agrees to join in the activity. Kazami narrows her eyes at the bug as she sidles up next to her, but does nothing more than bicker.

Eternity smiles with a little more confidence with her two friends in the same frame, and begins to choose the first color to brush with. Now that she’s underway, I get back to my Sisyphean struggle of sorting identical looking black liquids.

“Are you truly confused by those?” Ran wonders in a low voice.

“Yes I’m confused, they were sorted before I started touching them and now they all over,” I groan.

“Do you require assistance?”

“No. You know what–“ I fume as I stick a finger into one of the pots, the digit coated in grass green paint. I compare it to the lids I have on hand and conclude, “This one to here. Whatever god damn works.”

“That does not seem entirely sanitary,” Ran comments.

I grunt at the opinion, “How horrible, the Youkai might get sick.”

“It’s theoretically possible.”

“Isn’t she powerful enough that severing her head won’t do much to her day?” I posit.

“With a powerful enough weapon even a god can be killed, Tanner,” she states.

“Bit dark to just bring up.”

She prods for the last laugh, “Which of us is discussing severed heads?”

“Yakumo, how is she doing?” Kazami garners our attention in the distance.

“What?” Ran asks in return. You know it’s bad when that’s the only word she can use to question something.

“The painting, how’s the painting?”

Ran glances down at the canvas, now with the major swathes that make up the background. “Fine?”

“Describe it,” Kazami insists.

She takes a deep breath, more fed up than I think I’ve ever seen her. This probably isn’t the first time these two have interacted, much less in this dynamic. She begins robotically listing off painting techniques and their utilization, information that should normally be useless to her and not stored in any database. I wouldn’t say she remembers it naturally, though, with how the art terminology sours her face.

As much as I want to laugh I also need to keep my head down. My fingers colored every shade of the rainbow and I’m still not through all the jars. How many colors does one painter need? I glance around at what else might need attending, my eyes trailing just over the opposite side of the hill−

I freeze. Leveling my eyes, without so much as blinking, I stand to my feet to see a door at the bottom of the knoll. This time it’s a glossy sheet of metal, with a window taking up nearly half the surface, and a pushbar handle. It’s… a door like I’d see on my old school. It, or whoever’s behind it, is beckoning me. This one isn’t some random door I don’t recognize, nor is it trying to blend in with anything, it’s a beacon. One that says it knows me and refuses to be ignored.

I want to glance back to Ran and Eternity, see if they’ve discovered my source of silence, but should I lose sight of the door for less than a blink it might be gone again. Whether that be because it avoids the gaze of others or because it’s warning me of notifying others is uncertain. I don’t think I’m comfortable with either.

Just as it was yesterday, though, the only way I have to combat it is to be proactive and see who’s lying in wait. I walk down the hill, wondering when Ran will notice I’m distancing myself. I try to feel for something, anything, out of the ordinary with the door itself. What I do to sense Ran is definitely not what this thing runs off of, though, and so it remains a black box. I stand just within reach of the portal and clearly see that view of outer space from inside. I hazard to touch the handle.

Not push it in, not yet. Just touch.

Solid. Cold. Real. I wonder if it’d be better if it wasn’t real. No matter.

The bigger problem is that Ran hasn’t noticed it yet. Can she not see it? No, she would notice my absence instead. Is she somehow blinded? Shit, what do I do about that? I shouldn’t encounter something without her backing me up. Which means I need to turn away. What happens then?

I swallow my nerves and try to be quick, darting my face to the side ready to call out. In the same breath my voice cracks to life, and my eyes are no longer on the door, the frame follows the edge of my periphery. The motion is so quick that I feel the bar crash into my ribs before I realize. The portal opens, and what was once stable ground is now the empty void. The kaleidoscope of colors that assault my eyes are made all the more disorienting by my free tumbling.

[Please wait warmly as teacher falls through space…]

I must say I’m quite shocked, nay, humbled that you all said you read the whole thing when I asked for feedback. Of course, I will take into account your critiques on information tracking and character arcs going forward, even if they might not necessarily come to fruition for this story. For character–… however you’d define anti-rigidity, I do feel like that is a consequence of my method for dialogue, but I digress.

I wish I could say that I’m proud of my work’s inclusion of Keine, but that’s only recent in terms of a quality that I would personally find acceptable. She was very one note early on, and while it was a fun foil to Tanner’s open antics, it was obvious that there would be no development on that end until the story properly picked up around Seija. So for that I will have to live with Keine’s romance being underbaked. Potentially for the rest of the story.

[… Continued]

I can’t say I know what falling through space would be like, nor would I claim to have a perfect imagination of what it actually would be. There are about three things I can say for certain, though. One, the fact that I’ve stopped tumbling after a few minutes, or however many, should be impossible. Space isn’t supposed to have friction, and even possible diminishing forces such as gravitational waves or random spurts of radiation couldn’t explain how this’s happened.

Two, it’s colorful in this void. Space isn’t supposed to be colorful, it’s supposed to be empty. This suffocatingly red fog is more than a little strange, due to that.

Third, and probably the most obvious, I don’t think any country has tossed a countless number of doors out into space. They’re all in the same orientation, and that they’re sideways leads me to believe I’m actually the one off kilter. The sheer density of them is surprising as well, with so many I think I could draw a line in any direction and hit at least three.

So, if it’s clear that this isn’t space, then where am I? Someone brought me here, but they haven’t taken the time to come out, so I guess I’m not much of a guest. Or maybe I am and they’re setting up tea. Maybe I should’ve invited Ran after all if I’m going to just float around bored.

Man, Ran is going to fucking kill me when I’m back. I should’ve thought of a way to signal her before diving in headfirst. She even stayed tight lipped about who this is, so something’s going on. Who could be so important that she treads lightly? Some political figurehead, I imagine, but someone like the top tengu doesn’t have anything to do with doors. I doubt I’ve piqued the interest of anyone from hell, despite my pointed absence from the river of the dead. Are there any door related Youkai? Maybe a door related god? A god would make sense as a political figure, but I can’t think of any related to doors– seriously, why doors of all things?

They’re not even greeting me. If only I could swim to a door maybe I could just leave.

… Then again, who knows where they go. It might spit me out on some random corner of the world, like Antarctica. Or hell, it could also go to actual space. That would be fun, aside from the part where I instantly die.

“Hello?!” I call out to the empty, door filled realm. I was kind of expecting someone to receive me after being kidnapped, but now I feel like an after thought.

“Master will be with you in a moment,” a feminine voice suddenly acknowledges behind me. I whip my head over to see who came upon me, but I get at most a swath of pinkish purple in my eyes before tumbling again. This new person’s hand stops me, revealing a girl sideways of me, or rather, upright of everything, with tucked up brown hair. Her garish dress and drooped blat hat suggest a more jovial or jesting personality than her pitying eyes offer. “Seeing someone not able to fly really is the strangest thing.”

“I’m always free to meet on solid ground, you know,” I bicker in return, crossing my arms and tumbling forward in the effort.

She rights me again, reckoning, “Sure that may be, but my master cannot be met so easily.” She glances around the void of doors. “I wonder where she is. She did want to see you.”

Seems I’m already pretty well known to this person. Actually, haven’t I seen the girl in front of me, before? “Who’s this master of yours? I feel like I’ve seen you with her before.”

“Oh? Yes, you were at the arrival of that ancient god,” the servant deflects. “I was with my master and Mai at the time. Hi, I’m Satono Nishida,” she properly greets, shooting a hand in salutation. Her hat bounces on itself in the motion.

The thing looks more like a shoe than a hat. Definitely familiar. “Mai, was she the girl wearing the same hat and dress as yours but green?”

Her eyes shed that sense of pity, lighting up as she chirps, “Oh, oh? Do you know my other half? She’s been so busy headhunting for our replacements that I haven’t seen her recently. Did you talk to her? How is she?”

Well that changed her tune. I’m not sure how to tell her that I only saw the other girl a few months before the shrine fiasco, or that Kasen and Ran dragged her away after the whole debacle with Meira. Probably best to just shrug it off than set any expectations.

“Mai is doing perfectly fine, Satono,” a voice bellows through the space around us. A woman’s voice, confident and telling of a high authority behind it. “Return to your duties, I will see to our guest now.”

“Yes, Master!” Satono affirms with a salute before diving into the nearest door.

“Now, face to face, dear Yakumo thrall,” the voice addresses me.

Part of the empty space before me cracks apart, splitting open like a double door, but one made of nothing. Within lies a black void, devoid of anything save my captor. A woman, clad in a sagely orange tabard and with an antiquated hat to cover her blazing blonde hair, rests upon a throne. Fires of four seasonal colors sprout from the back corners of the throne, one of which shining upon a small object floating next to the woman. A miniature drum, was it?

The chair carries her from the void, the imaginary double doors shutting behind her. That orange cloth and green skirt, back at the shrine when Nyx appeared…

She smiles, something about its will or mirth misplaces the shape as condescending, maybe regarding me as no more than a curious child. “My, are you attempting to study me? How flattering. If you are such a well studied man, why not tell me who I am?” she challenges my gaze.

“Can’t say I’ve ever been asked that before.” I’m trying to parse out the meaning of this little exercise. A test of my knowledge? Simply a whim of hers? Either way, I guess it couldn’t hurt. “Your servant told me you were at the shrine a couple weeks back. What was it? You were standing by Yukari?”

“Are you asking? I’ll not explain who I am. That is like a word being used to define itself.”

I spread my arms in a shrug, tumbling back. “It’s a yes or no question, could you just let me have those?”

“Temper,” she mocks, floating the little drum near enough for me to grab and stabilize with. “If your memory must require help, then yes, I arrived with Yukari, as it happens.”

“Alright, so you were the woman in a wheelchair.”

“Yes,” she answers, though I didn’t mean to ask. “Is that all you know?”

“One of your servants caused some trouble a few months back. I think Ran mentioned you at the time, but there was a lot going on,” I append. “Is there a point to this?”

She offers a finger to answer, “I believe there is. My dear friend Yukari has been feeding you, coddling you, yet she has informed you of so little up to now.”

I find her choice of words more than a little strange. “’Your dear friend?’ First time I think I’ve heard anyone refer to Yukari as a friend. You know, being an impulsive liar and all,” I grouch about my respected boss.

“Her lies are a point of endearment, you know. The more she lies to you the more she trusts and respects you.”

I can’t stifle an amused hack, wondering, “You really think that? You should hear yourself right now.”

Her brow dips as she berates, “My, but you are so challenging. I’m shocked she hasn’t forced a shikigami upon you, yet.” Her smile turns vicious at the statement, though I can’t say I fully understand the meaning behind it.

“I already have Ran, though?” I assume what she’s referring to.

She motions the drum back to her, carrying me along with it. Once I’m within range, she arrests my chin, inspecting my face for invisible injuries. “No, you are not taken by Yukari’s spell. Not in that way,” she concludes, releasing me from her grip.

I rub at my jaw, the bones sore from her iron clasp, and ask, “You mean actually putting the same thing in me that Ran has? That pseudo computer program? Can she do that to a human?”

The woman wags a finger to tut, “Humans and Youkai are only different in power, not in the structure of their minds. You and your partner are different by magnitudes of power but not as much in your mental realms. A thousand of you wouldn’t be able to scratch that fox… ignoring your curse, anyway, but you may think in similar ways.”

While it doesn’t shock me to hear Ran and I, or rather, Youkai and humans in general are closer than the status quo likes to suggest, I’m more focused on her throwaway remark. “You know about my curse? Whatever Yukari’s done to me?”

Her smile slinks to the side, arrogance meeting prescience as she muses, “Another challenge? Might I go over my titles so you understand the extents of my wisdom? Or are you–..? Why, you are good at distracting. I haven’t properly introduced myself.”

She turns flat hands inward to present herself, announcing in that booming, captivating voice, “I am a god of the back door. A god of Earth. A god of noh. A god of hindrances. A god of the unwanted. A sage of Gensokyo. And for you, a god of primordial life energy. I am The Ultimate, Absolute Secret God, Okina Matara.” Her eyes seem to glow at the listing of ostentatious titles, the kind that any god could exist off of individually.

My introduction is not as gaudy, nor impressive, “Tanner Regis. Human village researcher. So, uhm… about the curse?”

She shakes her head, disappointed in my lack of awe, but also in my lack of knowing, “No one told you? Still? How very silly.”

“What? What is there to tell me?”

She points at me, and declares, “You cannot hurt living beings. It is your contract for immortality. … Goodness, she really does hoard her knowledge from you.”

“A contract..?” I repeat, feeling like that only partly makes sense. I also have trouble understanding the other implications, “How can it be a spell that Ran doesn’t know, the–?”

“Ugh, I’ve had enough incessant small talk,” she bemoans my question. “Are foreigners always so quick to dribble on? I’ll not discuss your nature with you, that is far from why I brought you before me.”

The sudden shift in attitude is enough to catch me off guard, silencing my questions. The only thing I can think to ask is, “So, why am I here?”

She leans towards me, an intensity crossing her eyes as she mandates, “You are studying Eternity Larva. You will cease your studies of her as anything more than a fairy.”

“You lost me,” I utter. “So she really isn’t fairy?”

“No. I hope you were suspecting as much. Your conversations with her led me to believe so.”

“Well, I did notice she was a little odd. A bit too smart. A bit too skillful. But… what actually is she?” I try to draw some information from Okina.

“Dangerous. To everyone,” she simply replies, thumbing the armrest of her throne. “I might tell you that she is, her species, a god, and you might think this a petty squabbles between gods, but that isn’t the whole story. She is, by her very nature, dangerous.”

“To everyone?” I remind her. “Who ‘everyone?’”

Her smile falters, burrowing into a contemplative grimace. “Everyone you might care for in your life now.”

Different from the scope of Yukari’s question. Not that it makes it any less troubling. “And this danger, you aren’t going to tell me any more than its existence?” I beggar the temper of a god.

She folds her hands over her lap, appearing once more in total control of the conversation. “Ask whatever you may wish to know. A secret god does not mean a lying god. I am not like my friend in that way,” she mocks.

I almost want to ask why she was worried enough to bring me here, but just as soon understand how tone deaf the question is. I instead start simple, within her little boundaries, “How is Eternity dangerous, then?”

She motions to a door, floating it towards us. It opens with an extra wave, revealing the bright vista of The Garden of the Sun.

“Here,” she says, “maybe it would be better to demonstrate.”

With another motion of her hand, the view rotates. She scans the vista for our person of interest, spotting Kazami under the lone tree. Our perspective is distant, seeing the woman from behind. Wriggle hides under her arm, still, with no hints of my absence holding their attention. They pose in the same place I last saw them, still as statues.

“What is this?” I interrupt her show of power. “Shouldn’t Kazami notice your watch or something?”

“Does Kazami notice the eye of Yukari? Does your fox recognize the gaze of either?” Okina deters my impatient questions.

She raises her hand, our view ascending above the field. Out in the further distance, Eternity remains at her canvas, diligently working away at the painting of Kazami and Wriggle. I cannot see her face from here, only her wings spread in their colorful splendor. Ran is absent, unsurprisingly. She must be stressing a way to find me.

Okina steals me from the calm sight, “A mundane activity, isn’t it? Your suggestions have them doing such droll things. What ever should I do about this?”

“Nothing?” I try. “They’re enjoying themselves, there’s no reason to mess around with the calm moment.”

“That wouldn’t be a demonstration. Certainly not one that shows the latent destruction lying in wait by that god masquerading as a fairy,” she proposes.

“And what would you define as a real demonstration, exactly?” I probably shouldn’t ask, but… no, I really shouldn’t have asked.

She taps a finger to the armrest of her chair, the other hand cupping her chin. “I would say I needn’t be so overt,” she coos. “A little nudge will suffice.”

She brings the door even closer to her, tapping the image of Eternity. The impact causes ripples in the projection we spy from, but any outward effect remains to be seen. Eternity continues to paint, her wings lightly fluttering in cadence with the strikes of her brush against canvas. They emit sparkles under their beats, her scales dusting the earth below her feet. In where they land, a collage of beautiful flora, the kind not seen in the garden, sprout from nothing.

I’m about to ask what this is supposed to demonstrate in terms of a warning, but something happens, the world feels as though it sinks in to Eternity. The flowers’ blooms gaze her, the breeze dances with her scales in playful spirals, and the sun seeks to capture the perfect angle to light her.

“What-? What is happening?” I utter, confused whether what I see is an illusion or some strange reality I haven’t considered.

“It is a visage of her nature. That tethering, vile force that brings the world around her to worship,” Okina spits.

I play with the word on my tongue, “Worship. That… yeah, that would be the word for it. But, why is this happening? How is this dangerous?”

Okina smirks once more, as if I asked something banal. “Two questions with the same answer. If you were asked what the absence of purpose could do to a god, what do you imagine the answer to be?”

“What? Purpose?” I bumble with the word, unable to stay in Okina’s tempo. “Do gods require purpose? Do they not just exist like any individual?”

She shakes her head, like a mother would to a naughty child. “Dear researcher, teacher, that is the first question that should be on your test. You understand Youkai but have not internalized Youkai and gods being of the same cloth?”

“No, it’s that Youkai exist on fear, while gods exist on faith, but both are affirmations of existence, right?” I retaliate to the best of my knowledge.

“Correct, but there is an… impetus, if I may borrow your vocabulary,” she lectures. “There must be a given reason for any god or Youkai to garner that faith or fear. My titles, Yasaka’s nature as a god of war and conquest, even the nagashi-bina’s collection of misfortune. Eternity Larva, on the other hand–“

She looks back into the image, of the bright world wholly cherishing the butterfly goddess more than anything.

“She is humanity’s conceit, crystallized into a single individual.” Okina does not tout this as an opinion. She does not say it out of jealousy. This is her formal conclusion on what sort of god Eternity is.

“That’s a lofty title,” I curb her hyperbole, “but what sort of god does that actually make her?”

She stares into me, attempting to pierce through my very soul, as she states, “The god of faith.”

My brows crease, the reaction of such an absurdity taking hold before even coming to any logical conclusions of why it is itself an absurdity. “Faith? The accumulation of people’s belief in that god? How can a god hold power over the thing that makes them exist? Shouldn’t that be–?”

“Impossible,” Okina finishes my sentence. “A paradox. A redundancy. It is many things. Above all, it is dangerous. She is an atomic bomb to Gensokyo’s foundations.”

I find it difficult to deny her claim. How could Eternity have come to exist? Does all faith in Gensokyo, maybe even the world, go to her to some extent? There’s questions I’m not sure I’m ready– maybe not even equipped– to tackle. But in just as many ways as this is alerting, there are things that make me suspect Okina’s concern.

I need a way to destabilize her. There must be an ulterior motive to this beyond distrusting another god. “Why did Yukari not get rid of her if she’s that dangerous?” I decide is the best method of approach.

Okina chuckles at the question, “In my friend’s eyes this is another part of her lauded ‘Gensokyo accepts all’ motto. She’d sooner let this realm become a powder keg, filled enough to blow through the walls of reality, than to act against her philosophy.” She stares into the image of this polarizing god, and continues, “What of you, human? What do you believe?”

My beliefs? Not the easiest question when assaulted with all the information she just bombarded me with. No, there is one question, above all the rest. “Who is Gensokyo for?”

“Hm?” she hums, looking back to me curiously. “Who? Who indeed..? A question from Yukari herself, I’ve no doubt. She likely hasn’t told you her answer, either. She’s refused to humor me with mine.”

I’ll not mention my dumb luck having Rumia guess the ‘correct’ answer, but it’s interesting she never told one of her peers. “What was your answer?” I wonder.

A forlorn look comes over her as she recalls, “Gensokyo is for the gods and Youkai that would be forgotten.” She closes our view into the outside world with a wave, adding, “That some are more fit for a stable world than others is a remorseful fact, but a fact regardless. It is thus a necessity.”

“Nyx?”

“And others. Existential problems with no answers. Our world has never been so rational,” she irks, speaking through multiple lifetimes of fatigue. She looks at me again, but it feels as though she’s genuinely considering me for the first time this conversation. “What of you? Are you another to the pyre that lights our home? Or are you one to help against the flames from consuming it all?”

I swallow, unsure if I understand the full extent of her question. She wants to know something like my allegiance, but I don’t know the intents of the powers that be, nor which side the analogy applies to. The only way I can make sense of this is if she considers herself as much a ruler as she is a god, with the brightly colored clothes, shapely hat– hell, she’s sitting on a throne. Telling a leader to their face that you’re against them isn’t the brightest move.

She grins knowingly. “Abstaining, are you? I suppose as one of the Yakumo’s kin you would be cautious in your words.”

“I’ll have you know I don’t really like Yukari all that much,” I argue over a hollow voice.

She motions another door over to us, combating, “But you think so much like her. I truly think I’m looking into her spitting image, something akin to a sibling.”

The new door also opens to The Garden of the Sun, this time where I was taken from. The miniature drum slowly drags me along as Okina’s words follow me out, “And remember my warning. Of course, if I’ve read you correctly, I’ll be seeing you this time tomorrow. You and that mischievous god will die when the time comes.”

“You’ll what–?” I whip my head back to the goddess, but am slung out the door and reacquainted with gravity, crashing on my pack. I scramble to look where I came from, but the door is already no more than air.

The soft grass and dirt under my knees is a reassuring feeling after floating in that nothingness, but it’s little more than a diversion from more pressing matters. I get to my feet, finding my limbs, my clothes, and my pack all how they should be. Not something to take for granted.

“Tanner,” Ran’s voice comes from the shikigami on my back, “you are back in The Garden of the Sun, but where were you taken? It was outside of any observable space.”

I speak to the device, and tell her straight, “I met Okina Matara. Thanks for the warning, by the way.”

“Do not take such sarcasm. Matara-jin has a complicated relation with Lady Yukari and I do well to not strain it. That she would take you is a possibility I was hoping would pass and you would not be required to know,” she reprimands.

“Well, she seemed pretty convinced I’m Yukari’s servant, and that led to me being kidnapped, so I think you might need to reevaluate what you are or aren’t gonna tell me. One servant to another,” I bicker at the fox.

Ran grumps at my criticism, “Noted. We will discuss this more when I return to the garden.”

“Where’d you go, exactly?” I ask, realizing that she’s been absent since the moment I disappeared.

“I attempted to make a more direct form of contact with Lady Yukari for aid. As is perhaps the closest comparison, it is equivalent to performing a telephone call. It requires the other end of the communication to answer. Since Lady Yukari is not in hiding, nor does she believe to have me fooled as hibernating, I was able to make contact. Her advice, however…” she pauses from her winded explanation, more akin to complaints than an explanation.

“She told you to bring her a bucket of steam, didn’t she?”

“Save the aphorisms.”

“Right, sorry. Not making fun of you.”

“Of what did Matara-jin wish to speak with you?” she continues in topics.

“Well…” I scratch at my neck, trying to structure the whole thing together in summary. By the time I’m done explaining, I’ve settled onto the side of the hill, attempting to let the problems work themselves out in my mind.

“There is no way to stop you from investigating Eternity Larva’s divine aspects, is there?” Ran asks, well aware of the answer.

I chuckle at how well she knows me, “No, I guess there isn’t. If there’s one thing I want right now, it’s to tug back on the chain I’m being pulled around by. I’ve got two sages jumping down my throat, probably watching me as I speak, and they have a bit of a disagreement. It’d be a shame if either of them were wrong about their whole worldview.”

“Do you wish for one of them to kill you?”

“Not really. They just piss me off and I want them to understand why.” I stand up, seeing Ran approach in the distant air, and begin to think of my next steps. Where to drag Eternity more than anything.

Where do I go? What do I do?

[x] Time to hit up those archives. Akyuu probably knows what god Eternity was historically and that might be a lead to untangle her present existence.

[x] I should check in with someone more spiritually minded, if not more moderate, and find Kasen Ibaraki. She could have some insight on the more metaphysical nature that Eternity occupies.

[x] I should check somewhere else. There’s definitely places and people that have a plethora of information. (Write-in)

I also hope I’ve given Okina the proper gravitas for her character. Besides Kanako, I often imagine her as one of the most overtly or ‘in your face’ powerful characters in the series, if just because most people on or above her level are so casual or secretive (I’m looking at you, Yukari).

[x] I should check in with someone more spiritually minded, if not more moderate, and find Kasen Ibaraki. She could have some insight on the more metaphysical nature that Eternity occupies.

Eternity seems to be near finishing her painting as I crest the hill once more. Only the edges of it are visible around her head, the colors what I’d expect of a scenic view, though perhaps brighter than reality. Her hand is, well, I can’t tell if it’s moving or not. Maybe doing detail work.

Ran lands behind me in short order, keeping whatever panic she had to herself. Having to ask Yukari herself for help must’ve been a blow to her ego, considering the radio silence they keep. We still have quite a bit to discuss, not to mention ground rules to widen… again, but that’ll have to be later.

I lean in and tap Eternity on the shoulder. “How’s it coming along?”

Her brush remains still on one of the excessive number of flowers making up the ground. And some of the sky, actually. “I think I’m done. I…” she trails off, staring at her work like she wasn’t the one that made it.

I glance at my partner, the fox giving me a knowing look in return. It’s only been, what, half an hour since she started? Damn fast work. I right myself and wave to Kazami and Wriggle, telling them to come on over. The elder Youkai folds her umbrella, giving the younger a bit more than a love tap across the head with it. Safe to assume Wriggle annoyed her sister figure. Doubtless a difficult task.

Kazami takes her time wandering over, giving no one a word of greeting before assessing Eternity’s work. She doesn’t even complain over the jars of paint I’ve left out, much less my general absence. It’s only fitting for how capturing the painting itself is.

Now if only it weren’t an ill omen. Confusingly bright out of context, damning with. Like the lone hanging tree, Kazami and Wriggle face away from view. A sort of light comes from them, as if they themselves were the source. The flowers clogging all empty space feel like a hallucination of what’s really there, their blooms facing away from the viewer enforces the opinion. Despite being a colorful, sunny day, the additions and transformations lead me to consider it something else. I’m just not sure what, exactly.

“Woah,” Wriggle utters upon seeing the image, falling a step back to take the whole thing in. She seems as shocked as Eternity by the depiction.

Kazami’s study is more level, her piercing eyes discerning every detail in attempt to weed into her little friend’s mind. “This is an artistic style? You put a shocking amount of focus into facing everything in sight away from you. I’m almost surprised you didn’t eclipse the sunlight itself so that it wouldn’t look at you,” she says without a hint of humor. That is her legitimate critique of what she’s seeing.

“I just painted what I saw. I don’t know why it’s like this,” Eternity defends herself, downtrodden at her lack of self awareness. It only makes the piece more worrying if her way of seeing the world is literal. What could cause such a discordant sense of reality?

“Mayhaps you’ll find what possessed you by sitting on the thought,” Kazami consoles the girl. “I will take this artwork home to dry. Remember that it will take a long time before it’s ready to varnish.” She lays a hand behind Eternity’s antennae, letting it rest for a moment. She looks stiff to the idea only after completing it, remaining still as stone until Eternity relinquishes the act of praise.

“Thanks, Yuuka, but…” she trails, staring at her handiwork once more without so much as a grin, “I don’t think I like it.”

Kazami remains silent, a bit of Eternity’s melancholia drifting onto her.

“But it’s so pretty,” Wriggle comments, gazing into the individual stems so painstakingly supporting every bloom that doesn’t face us.

“Sorry, Wriggle,” Eternity apologizes more to herself than Wriggle, “it doesn’t feel right.”

Wriggle frets over the butterfly, more diminutive than she already was, clumsily comforting, “I-I’ll take it, then! I’ll be sure to look at it tons!”

“Pfft,” an alien sound escapes Kazami as she settles the back of a canvas over the finished one. “And just where do you plan to hang it, Wri? Your favorite choice of tree?”

With another motion, she takes a spool of string from the ground and ties the canvases together, leaving touches of wet paint to her fingers. She tears the end with a fingernail, dropping the spool to her side and shooting us a perplexed gaze. “What?” she brandishes an unamused remark at our stares.

“’Wri?’” I repeat, narrowing my eyes in disbelief.

Kazami pauses at the realization, hovering a hand over her mouth as if covering it could retract what passed out of it. Her hand drops as she tries to recover her air of threat, “Yes, that is indeed what I called her. Is this so offensive to you?”

I shrug at the accusation, a smile sneaking its way to my lips. “I just think it’s unexpected. Yuuka Kazami having a soft spot for kids and all.”

A moment of pause, silent enough that I can almost hear her face slacken. She retrieves her parasol from its perch on the easel and swings it up towards me with the fluidity of the field’s breeze. The tip aims for my shoulder, the metal piece sharp enough for a weapon.

Gasps resound from one or two of the others as they catch up.

I retreat but a step before it’s upon me. Catching me. Gouging me. Ran’s hand slipped between the majority of the metal and what ended up under my collar bone, grappling the parasol from pushing further in. I use the moment of stillness to yank myself away, the hole in my skin staining my shirt. I’ve had far worse pain than this, but that doesn’t stop a grunt from announcing my displeasure. The area is already hot and wet. Holding it does little against my shoulder feeling like it’s on fire. And all that from a little poke, meanwhile Ran has the rest of the blade jutting out the back of her hand.

“Soft, you say?” Kazami picks from my words, blood red eyes flaring up at the sound. “Nothing bemuses quite like a human thinking it their place to look down on those above them.”

“Y-Yuuka!” Eternity cries at the woman, tugging at the side of her dress.

Wriggle joins in on the opposing side, attempting to Wrench Kazami’s arm away. “Stop, you idiot! He was complimenting you!”

“Enough! Both of you!” the Youkai commands of her companions. She grimaces at Ran, twisting the parasol with ease over the fox. “You. Why are you not attacking? That human is your charge and I have injured him. Is that not enough?”

A paper doll looses from Ran’s sleeve, attaching to the underside of Kazami’s wrist. It stuns the woman’s grip, allowing Ran to disarm and disengage in a blink, dragging me along a few extra paces. She ejects the piece of metal from her hand, letting the area exsanguinate over the grass.

“My charge would choose any possible paths to diplomacy. I would not destructively interfere with that goal,” she holds. Several paper dolls wrap the open wound, the threat of blood seeping out still present.

Kazami shakes her wrist back into use, peeling off Ran’s paper taser with an eye of intrigue. Eternity and Wriggle abandon their wailing as their elder calms down. “How trite. Aren’t you powerful enough to do more?” she taunts, crumpling the paper doll and flicking it at Ran.

Ran remains silent, having said her piece and refusing to expend a word more on the matter. She bends over for the deformed paper doll, idly unfolding its wrinkled form before returning it to her sleeve. Kazami scoffs at the headstrong fox, turning to retrieve the painting.

“I can’t talk with you. I can’t get any exercise. I can’t put a dullard back in his place. You are as frustrating as your master,” she complains before approaching once more with the painting under her arm. She holds out her hand, but when Ran doesn’t budge addresses us, “… No, I won’t stab you or him again. For now.”

Ran hefts the implement into Kazami’s paint stained hand, adding a bit of blood to the mixture. Kazami, shockingly, walks past us and starts down the hill. She’s in no way satisfied with this outcome, but she kept to her word. Ran sees to my stab wound, sealing the gash like she did her own.

“That jerk. Always doing things at her own pace,” Wriggle grumbles.

Ran tilts her head towards the girl and, to my surprise, chides, “Become as powerful as she is and you will come to understand, little queen bug.”

“Hmph,” Wriggle grunts, turning away from the group. “I’m gonna go find somebody fun to play with,” she bemoans, floating idly off.

Eternity either ignores the slight wholesale or is too distracted to notice as she bounds to Ran and I, fussing, “Are you okay?! Yuuka is so unreliable! Laughing one moment and hurting you the next like we weren’t having a good time! How could she?!”

Ran rounds on the girl, hiding her behind a golden hedge, “As I told Miss Nightbug–“

“I don’t care,” Eternity scorns the opinion. “Being strong doesn’t mean you have the excuse to be meaner. If anything shouldn’t you be nicer because you can be?”

Ran’s scowl at being so easily deflected is something else. I decide to persuade the fae, “Hey, Eternity, you don’t need to worry, we’ve had worse than this. If anything, I’m impressed she didn’t stab me yesterday.”

“No!” she exclaims, throwing her hands down in a fit. “Yuuka’s not bad! She’s not scary!”

“I believe you,” I placidly agree, if only to not further agitate her.

“She’s nice! She cares for others! You all just don’t see it!” she continues.

“I said I believe you.”

“No you don’t!” she shouts with glassy eyes. She stalls at the outburst, turning to rub her eyes from any sign of weakness.

I pass Ran and crouch by the girl, telling her, “I know Miss Kazami isn’t that bad. She just wants to protect her home and that means looking big and mean. It happens all the time.”

“But she’s actually nice. I don’t want her to be mean,” Eternity hacks through a teary voice.

“I know,” I mumble, putting my hand atop her head– through the pain, that is.

For as mad as I am at Kazami I also can’t help but feel disappointed in her when seeing the expectations Eternity has. Her reputation must be one of the few things keeping people like myself away from the garden, but what’s the point in keeping it up so earnestly? An attempt of self isolation? Selective isolation? Something akin to a fear of anyone that could hurt her garden?

I’m sure she’d stab me again at the mere mention of the word fear. Ugh, what am I doing? It isn’t my job to play psychiatrist, especially for someone as imposing and proud as her.

I nudge Eternity’s shoulder, getting a reddened eye to glance over her shoulder, “Say, I was thinking of visiting someone today. I think you’d like them. Do you want to come along for a trip? Asuming you didn’t have anything planned.”

She grabs the bottom of her dress and hums, “Mm.”

I get to full height, Ran sneaking behind me to whisper, “Who were you visiting, exactly? This was not previously discussed.”

I hook my good arm over Ran’s neck, answering, “I need to talk to Kasen about what Okina told me. There’s a lot I think a hermit of her skills might know, maybe give me ammunition against the sages’ dispute.”

She unshackles me from her collar, blustering, “You have no idea what you are incurring.”

“Of course I do. I want trouble. The more the better to fuck with them,” I sneer with my cheeriest grin.

The mist in this part of the mountain truly chills to the bone. I still remember this path to Kasen’s home being brisk some months back, but now it’s outright frigid. If only I didn’t have to feel the passage of time in terms of frigid moisture. Eternity doesn’t seem to fare any better even in my coat. She was shivering on the way to this misty maze, and dragon knows she wouldn’t’ve last long without something to cover her when we waded through it.

“Directly ahead. She is presently home,” Ran informs us, stopping just outside the obscuring mist.

I wade through the last few feet of dreary gray to be greeted by the brilliant colors of a pristine two story house. Its antique architecture is no less impressive the second time, with round windows, wooden struts, and tiled roofs. The only other place to look remotely similar is Eientei, but I won’t pretend to understand the implications of that.

I pass a glance behind to Eternity, the girl’s eyes lighting up as much as the place we’ve now found ourselves. For that matter, the fog seems like it magically disappeared after we entered. What was a ten minute trudge is now only a few paces from where we started, visible under clear early winter skies.

I ignore the absurdity in space, and take a step towards the building, only to be gripped at the shoulder by my partner.

“Shit!” I exclaim, slapping Ran’s hand from me. “Watch where you’re grabbing! I don’t heal as fast as you!”

She holds her hand aloft, waiting out my complaint before assuring, “It was necessary to stop you from walking forward.” She brings a finger down to the corner of the building, adding, “It would not be wise to walk straight into that one.”

I follow her direction to spot the head of a large cat, its watchful eyes cut from dark orange fur. It hides its body behind the building, slipping away to another part of the yard now that it’s been found.

“Does she always leave that thing off its leash?” I wonder, a little oddified that Kasen would retain something so openly hostile.

Ran walks after it, ignoring the front door in its entirety. I keep close to her rear, not wanting to find myself in the open for any other creature of Kasen’s menagerie, while Eternity floats behind me with my coat folded over her arms, enjoying the warmth of this little microcosm.

Rounding the corner we find the tiger sitting next to one Kasen Ibaraki. She appears to be in the middle of feeding animals, letting one of them eat from her outstretched hand. A few others laze around her, circling a thick stump she’s seated on. Aside from the tiger I also spot a couple of bald eagles, a small blue-maned creature, and a Chinese dragon. I feel like there’s a pretty big discrepancy in these animals, but then again Kasen herself isn’t the most typical person.

“Miss Ibaraki,” Ran hails the woman, approaching the crowd of animals without reserve.

“Ran!” the hermit greets, nudging away a forest bear she had been feeding. “To what do I owe the pleasure? And, is that Tanner hiding behind you?”

I swing my head over a couple of Ran’s tails, getting a better view of the pink haired woman before announcing myself. “Hey Kasen, been a while.”

“Tanner seeks your aid,” Ran simply states, stepping aside to leave me in the open.

“My, and you two have become fast friends if even the strict, formality loving Ran calls you by first name,” Kasen teases, a pure smile coming to her lips as she pets the little blue creature in her lap. “Does that have anything to do with your newly acquired title of ‘Youkai seducer?’”

“Excuse me?” I utter in disbelief. “Where’d you get that impression from?” I glance over to Ran’s lame eye, holding back an impressive roll. “Back me up, damnit!”

“Well, aside from the origin of your problem, it isn’t an entirely off base derogatory for your relationship with Miss Kamishirasawa,” Ran determines, most unhelpfully.

“Two woman at once?!” Kasen squeaks in shock. “Are we sure you aren’t an oni?”

I narrow my eyes at the pink haired leper, retorting, “I don’t want to be called that by the oni hermit of all people. Where’s this bull coming from?”

She smirks, resting the blue animal atop the dragon’s head and standing from her stump. She struts over to a small table festooned with glass and earthenware jars, small brown bits resting inside each. Reaching behind the display, she plucks a piece of paper from hiding. A newspaper. It’s no feat to deduce what issue it is.

There is at least one strange thing about this, to which I point out, “You get the paper here? How do deliveries work?”

She laughs at the question, “Don’t worry, I don’t really want the paper. Shameimaru writes the pettiest things. She is far more skilled at finding places she isn’t wanted.”

“Shameimaru’s slander aside, have you been informed of any other pieces of Tanner’s recent work?” Ran questions, acting like such a pointed remark won’t draw suspicion.

Kasen tosses the rag aside and puts a finger to her cheekbone, giving Ran a thoughtful stare as she replies, “No… should I know such things? Now I’m concerned. You aren’t in trouble, are you, young man?”

“No, but I could use a little help,” I note, tossing a finger down to Kasen’s side, where a miniature god tries to pilfer a jar from the table.

Kasen plants a finger to the threatened jar, forcing Eternity to retreat in fear and doing little to assuage the fae as she says, “I believe I know this little fairy, but would you care to properly introduce me?”

I step over to Eternity, planting a hand to her head before she gets the chance to scamper off, and proclaim, “This is Eternity Larva. A ‘fairy’ from the Garden of the Sun. And a good friend of Yuuka Kazami’s.”

Kasen blinks at the mention of the greater Youkai, almost gasping, “Yuuka Kazami? I never would have guessed she of all people would be friends with a fairy. She pegged me as too proud to let that happen.”

“I’m right here!” Eternity puffs up at the slight. “Yuuka isn’t too proud! She’s strong, and thinks it’s fine to be friends with anyone because of it!”

“Yes, yes,” Kasen placates the child much like I did, “she must have a boundless love for fae and their antics.” She grabs the jar Eternity was attempting to open, and follows, “Would you like to give some of my friends these treats? They’re quite cuddly, you know.”

Eternity looks from Kasen to the animals, a bit of reservation present at the sight of the tiger and dragon. Kasen pops the jar’s lid, grabbing Eternity’s palm, and pours a few animal treats into her hand. They’re no larger than the tip of a finger.

“See my friend, Mukou? He’s the smallest of the group, known as a raijuu. Could you give him his treats, please? And, you didn’t hear this from me, but his fur is fluffier than a rabbit’s,” she goads the fairy away from us, tossing her to everything but wolves.

With Eternity busy Kasen grabs our attention, “Tanner, good to see you, despite… everything before.” She curls her bandaged arm up, revealing a cuff at the base chaining that toy block tetrahedron once attached to Ibuki. “Now, why are you here? I’m afraid I’m still lost.”

“We needed someone with a bit of knowledge to help understand Eternity’s… existence,” I scratch a bit of scruff as I try to conjure the right words. “You seem like someone with a wide net for spiritual information, so I was hoping you could indulge me.”

Kasen leans to one leg, giving a bit of thought to Eternity as the girl reaches above the dragons head to the raijuu. “You mean to say she is extraordinary in some way for a fairy?”

I walk up to her and whisper, “Try a god.”

“A god?” she repeats in a low voice. “Her? She does have the presence, but… well, no, besides that I won’t involve myself, Tanner.”

“What? Just like that?” I reel back.

“I have my reasons,” Kasen holds, crossing her arms in obstinacy. “Now, I will not force you to leave, but I will not entertain this topic, either.”

Ran clears her throat, informing the woman, “It may be apt to mention, Regis knows most of your secrets and has personally met Lady Yukari and Matara-jin. Is there any purpose to leaving out one crucial detail, Lady Ibaraki?”

I toss a glance at Ran. “Lady?” I repeat her sudden shift in formalism.

Looking back I find Kasen staring at me, as if she’s seen a ghost. “You’ve met Yukari and Okina?” she gasps. “That… huh. I didn’t think you were under their clutches. I wish I could say that didn’t change anything, but no doubt Ran will attempt to corner me more than she already has.”

“Are you going to tell me or am I just gonna have to assume what you’re dancing around?” I bleat, a bit peeved to be left out of the loop at this stage. Her referring to Yukari and Okina casually, the immediate distress at the mention of Eternity’s divinity, there’s only really one conclusion that makes sense of that.

“No, I’ll tell you,” she combats my aggression with a level tone. Her lips curl the very next moment in hesitation, but she ultimately decides to inform me, “I am part of the group known as the sages, though in reality that only means that I was one of the hands to support the creation of Gensokyo as it is now.”

While I should be surprised by the revelation, I can’t help but feel like nothing surprises me at this point. Like I’ve been desensitized to all this nonsense. “What does that have to do with why you won’t help?” I skip to the point.

Kasen gives me another look, just shy of a very vocal guffaw as she wonders, “You must have been through quite a lot to not even bat an eye at my most closely guarded secret.”

It only takes me a moment to think on the reason why, answering, “I’d like to not be part of a power struggle. Is that really so much to ask?”

“With those two? Unfortunately it is,” she sympathizes my plight. “Now again, how does this little god fit into this?”

Kasen asks this, but when glancing over to Eternity she gives a double take, shocked to find the girl huddled between the animals as if they were protecting her.

“And what sort of god is she?” Kasen adds.

“A god of faith, Okina told me. She wouldn’t budge on much else other than reiterating how dangerous that makes Eternity. This was before she kicked me out of her realm with the promise of killing the two of us tomorrow,” I report with only the most minor omissions.

“Kill you?!” Kasen can’t contain her shock, the whites of her eyes growing by the second. “She knows she isn’t allowed to do that, you’re effectively a villager and Eternity appeared without third party involvement.”

“And how do you know that?” I try to trap Kasen into properly explaining herself.

She huffs at my deliberate word jousting, “If Eternity is the same god I am thinking of, Okina oft noted a personal hand in slaughtering her during ancient times. With her alive and well, that would mean she’s reincarnated.”

“Gods can reincarnate?”

“All souls are part of the cycle, Tanner. It’s why the Yama can come to the land of the living and equally judge Youkai, gods, and humans,” she outright proselytizes. “What that means for the pup, I’m unsure.”

I come back around to the crux of the problem, “But do you think she’s dangerous?”

Kasen raises a brow, looking over at Eternity in a long drawn thought. She eventually concludes, “No. I do not sense the sort of threat Okina depicted of a god of faith in this girl. At worst, my animals enjoy her company too readily, but nothing present and threatening to Gensokyo.”

“Those are some choice words. That a policy?” I challenge her for more information.

She rounds on me this time, “We are discussing Okina committing murder, Tanner. If it would maybe keep you from asking self-serving questions, I’ll lecture you on them until your ears fall off.”

“Well now you’re threatening me with a good time,” I chuckle.

“I’m threatening you with understanding my dilemma, human. You clearly don’t know what war of attrition you’ve stepped into,” Kasen says with a straight face. She’s a bit more on edge than the start of the conversation. “Ran, please separate Eternity from my animals. I don’t want them to soften at the sight of fairies because one gave them treats. They should be wiser.”

“As it were,” Ran abides with negligible pause.

The sight gives me a weird feeling, an uncanny sense of something being out of place. “She’s not usually so gung-ho.” I ponder.

“She’s not usually making proper friends. Yukari would leave the task to someone so much like her, I suppose,” Kasen grunts, pulling out a chair from the far side of the table, holding it for me.

I can tell it’s not an option, and while seating ask, “You mean like Ran or like Yukari?”

“Both,” the hermit affirms in monotone. “Now, you need a lesson on history that isn’t recorded, nor what your, ah, ‘relationship’ is allowed to give.”

“You mean Keine was told to keep her mouth shut about the sages?”

Kasen harrumphs at the jab, “Rude, but yes. Even I agree that it’s for the best. The sages are… oh, where to start?”

She has some trouble formatting a proper story for everything she knows, but not due a lack of things to say. In fact, there’s probably too much to know about them. Yukari and Okina have a long standing rivalry, both as sages that see to Youkai and gods, respectively, and as governors that stand polar opposite in their ideals. Yukari takes a laissez-faire approach whenever possible, outside of extreme circumstances, whereas Okina prefers to attack trouble before it springs. As it stands, ‘present and threatening to Gensokyo’ under different definitions.

“And what’s your role?” I question my sagely friend. I also do my best to ignore previous blunders I’ve had with one of the three most important people to Gensokyo.

Kasen, still being in lecture mode, answers on a dime, “Guiding humans and hermits from becoming antagonistic, as far as Yukari demanded. I don’t see myself in the role, though, and never agreed to any duties. That said, I feel like Okina will go too far if I don’t intervene… Agh, I’m tossing back and forth on what to do. Tanner, if you were in my position, what would you decide?”

I lift my eyes at the woman. “You’re deferring to me? After telling me how much of a fool I am for the last half hour?”

“I can at least trust you to make a choice. How I decide to feel about that choice is yet to be seen,” she nags. Still the same Kasen I remember, sage or not.

[x] If it’s that important, I’d fight Okina over the whole thing.

[x] I’d pitch in my perspective, but I don’t think I’d go tooth and nail over it.

[x] Have you considered something else entirely? (Write-in)

Anyway, this was the section I had meant to get to last week, but there was a couple of character details I wanted to get in my back pocket plus it gave me an excuse for making the painting a slightly better through line. I can’t say I enjoy being more verbose than I probably should be but I’d prefer making things more cohesive rather than more succinct.

[x] Have you considered something else entirely? (Write-in)
-[x] A light provocation. Not enough to be a serious fight, but enough to gauge her spirits and get some information from her, particularly why she thinks this girl's a nuclear bomb.

I consider the hermit’s question, wanting to give my thoughts on more than a gut reaction. Obviously, I’d want her to fight for Eternity’s continued existence, since I think that’s right. When she asks me what I’d do in her position, though, with peers that I know and trust, if only to a bare minimum… I can’t so readily say I’d go against them.

I answer her, maybe against my better judgment, “I’d prod Okina for an actual explanation. If she has a legitimate reason for doing this, I’d think it should be enough to convince me she’s right.”

Kasen freezes up for a moment, tilting her head to accentuate a curious look. She doesn’t say anything, simply observes. Like I’m some new foreign entity.

“What?”

“No, it’s…” she stammers. She then raises a hand in contempt of inarticulacy. “I wasn’t expecting you to be so understanding. I was ready to dismiss whatever you suggested, but instead you said something sensible. Though, maybe it’s not terribly sensible to recommend something not in your favor.”

I puff at the antagonism, “Gee, thanks. I’m glad that you think I’m an idiot in any situation that isn’t actively shooting myself in the foot.”

Her eyes widen and she raises her hands to defend, “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I’m surprised you’re more neutral than Okina must think.”

“That’s because I’m not. I’m just telling you what I’d do in your position, like you asked. I still want you to side with me, but it’s not like I can tell you what to do,” I knock her poor interpretation of me.

“Is that so?” she trails off. She’s definitely trying to gauge something by the interaction, much like when Okina was challenging me, but her method is much more blunt and to the point. “You are so much like Yukari it’s uncanny.”

Basically what Okina said. It didn’t strike me when she was throwing me out the door and threatening my life, but now, hearing it again, it really sets something off in me. Not explosive. More like a pressure, building up until its vessel fails. That vessel is… Patience? Discomfort? Disgust? I can’t quite place it, but somewhere in that ballpark.

Ran walks next to me, clutching Eternity under her arm to fend off a careening tiger. “He does have the same infatuation with dramatics,” she agrees with Kasen’s assessment. “That isn’t to discuss his insistence on solving problems that do not impact him in any first or second order collateral.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m nosy, I get it,” I grouch. “I hope you both know that I don’t really like Yukari. In fact I kinda hate her, and she probably knows it.”

Kasen rubs her chin with a smile. “That’s the most common opinion there is. Now I’m worried how much you must loathe yourself.”

“Enough!” I bicker. “I’m not even entertaining the thought. Are you going to do what you can to help or not, Kasen?”

“Oh? Help with what?” Eternity ponders from Ran’s arm, dangling like a stuffed animal whose wings take up most of the fox’s reach.

“A problem that you don’t need to worry about for now,” I deter the child from any undue stress.

Kasen eyes the girl, only the vaguest hints of pity discernible before turning back to me, replying, “Yes, I will do what I am able. Do not expect any miracles, however.”

A sigh of relief slips out of me. Getting anyone at all to support us is a boon, but having someone so closely tied to Okina is what I’d consider a windfall. “Great, let’s get a move on, then. We’ve got a sage to go submit our complaints to.”

“Not right now, Tanner,” Kasen stops me. “If Okina said that she’d act tomorrow, then there’s no way even I can find her before then. She’s nothing else if not true to her word.”

“Okina?” Eternity repeats in no more than a whisper, her oft held smile faltering.

I draw a bit of vim to argue Kasen’s point, “You’re kidding, right? We’re just supposed to wait overnight? She can do anything she wants in the time between, whether it be to me or Eternity.”

“As I said, she’s true to her word,” Kasen tries to reaffirm, her eyebrows raised at her tested patience. “If it can ease you, I’ll keep the little fairy here with me, and we’ll return to… I’m assuming The Garden of the Sun?” she questions the little fae.

The girl nods with an affirmative hum, to which Kasen finishes, “We’ll return to the garden first thing in the morning. I believe there’s a good lone tree to make our meeting point.”

“Okay, but why go back to the garden at all?” I wonder.

Kasen posits with a knowing finger, “She won’t have an excuse to treat me like an unrelated party. And she’d like to find any excuse she can, be sure.”

“I get the impression you don’t appreciate your peers.”

“She’s gone on record to say she wishes to have never met the other sages seven times to Lady Yukari alone,” Ran addends.

“And they’ll hear it as many times as necessary to leave me out of their rivalry,” Kasen groans a plea that starts to resound in my soul.

“Expecting to be under duress again so soon?” Ran jokes at my oblique.

I spit at the fox while lunging to one leg, “Don’t act like you weren’t a part of what happened.”

“My, but I recall fending off the hakutaku to within my capacity.”

“Which was like fifteen minutes. I’d almost say you meant for her to catch me,” I cut back, shooting her a narrowed look.

“You may choose your own interpretation, Tanner,” she replies. I can tell she’s holding back a smile drenched in schadenfreude.

“Why’d the teacher want to catch you, old guy?” the gnat of a bug Youkai innocently asks from her seat in the crook of the tree.

“For no reason that you should know, Wriggle,” I holler back at the girl. What poor timing for her to have wandered back here, and so typical that she’d forget why.

I reread Shameimaru’s news article with her, but her memory troubles are far worse than I imagined. I’m not sure how to get her out of here before things get complicated. I’m just as unsure if I need to. Maybe having more people around will dissuade Okina from acting.

I see one of the points of Ran’s hat twitch as she looks up to the air, “They are arriving now. Be prepared for any scenario.”

I stand to full height, following her eyes to see Kasen and Eternity floating down to us. They look no different from how we left them yesterday. I mean, of course they wouldn’t, Kasen herself assured me Okina wouldn’t try anything. I just can’t bring myself to believe something so fortunate.

Eternity floats down to Wriggle, giving the bug girl a hearty greeting and talking about her sleepover with the mountain hermit.

The hermit in question lands next to me, getting straight to business with, “See anything yet, Ran? Tanner?”

Ran is quick on the uptake, responding, “No movements since we arrived nineteen minutes, twenty seven seconds ago. There are a small collections of fairies due northwest fifty point five meters and a total of one hundred thirty three small animals in the nearby locale, but no magical energies of extra-dimensional origin.”

“And you were looking for life energy, right?”

Ran squints at the woman. “The question alone is a disservice.”

“Of course it is,” Kasen mirthfully affirms. “You and Yukari are the only ones I’d think could protect someone from Okina.”

“Yeah, speaking of protection,” I interrupt their reporting, “how are we gonna drag her out here? She’ll have the upper hand in her realm of doors, won’t she?”

Kasen puts her hands together to inform me, “Well, about that. While we don’t have a way to convince her out here, there is one tried and true way to get her attention. Same for Yukari.”

My brow furrows at her lack of specifics, and I hesitantly ask, “What would that be?”

She smiles a giddy, gay grin as she turns away from me, cupping her hands to mouth and shouting to the entirety of the garden, “OKINA! Show yourself this instant or I will have Yukari send me directly to you!”

No sooner does she finish her sentence that she turns back my way, rushing the arms length we’re apart to tackle me. The speed of an oni cannot be understated as the impact completely winds me. Where I expect ground, however, is the weightless tumbling of the realm of doors, the infinite void of space where sky was before I knew it. Kasen holds onto me, and unravels her bandaged arm to whip across the emptiness, finding Eternity similarly stunned by the loss of gravity. This all occurs in no more than two, maybe three seconds.

Kasen stops our sauntering through the ether, and wrenches the bandages back to us with Eternity in tow. At some point I forgot there wasn’t a real arm under the wrappings, and that the wrappings themselves were the limb. Damn if it isn’t one of the weirder things I’ve seen.

She reforms her hand to grip Eternity at the collar, giving the girl only a moment to look at her surroundings in shock before shaking her to attention. “Eternity, hold onto Tanner and don’t stray far from me,” she commands, levering the fairy behind my shoulders.

Eternity grips under my armpits without complaint, but as soon as Kasen releases us asks, “Where are we, Miss Kasen? This place is scary, and who is Okina?”

“She is an old friend of mine, and she wants to chat with us,” Kasen tries to placate the girl, slowly drifting along a trail of doors. “She might look scary, but she’s really heartfelt about her beliefs. It’s probably to a fault, honestly.”

I can practically hear Eternity’s brain churning at the words, resonating to the point of swallowing her nerves and following obediently. Assuming they talked last night, Kasen must know what buttons to press to get Eternity going. But that’s not what worries me. I’m more concerned with why she’s using such a tactic. Is she being impatient? Or is she trying to lure Eternity into Okina? I can’t tell, and at this point I’m no more than a spectator in my own struggle, so patience is all I have left.

We don’t float far from our starting point, only around a dozen or so doors before halting. Kasen cranes her neck to a familiar figure that hangs above us. The figure does not announce herself, simply observing her domain, us included.

In this realm devoid of direction, she stations her throne on a row of doors separate ours. From there she waits, anticipating our first move. Kasen slowly approaches, sparking the throne’s flames into a frenzy of color reaching out to several doors around the god. The eyes Okina meets her peer with do not suggest an ounce of welcome.

“Okina, we need to talk,” Kasen opens the floor to her compatriot’s dropped veneer.

“Kasen,” the god booms, trying to sound even more impressive than when I met her. “I was not expecting you.”

Kasen crosses her arms and starts to lecture the being, “My conversation with Tanner, directly stating that I will help him oppose you, wasn’t enough to stop you from this charade?”

“My, but that could be any Okina. I thought you were discussing some horrific Noh performance that was so offensive the performer should be brought low,” the god holds a merry smirk at the ridiculous hypothesis.

“And yet I’m here.”

“And yet you’re here,” the god agrees, not so merrily.

Ignoring Okina’s pauses for effect, Kasen continues her interrogation, “Why are you overstepping your boundaries? You know as well as I that killing a god is not within our duties.”

“She wants to kill a god?” I hear Eternity mutter under her breath, her arms lightly quavering at the idea. I put a hand to her fingers as they poke from my side, though it does not abate her fear.

“Ah, and so you speak of duty when it’s convenient to criticize your fellows,” Okina readily jabs. “Truly, your preaching is as insightful as ever, friend.”

“Answer the question before this turns ugly,” Kasen growls lower than I thought her register could achieve.

Okina gawks at the threat, “And whatever happened to your stance of nonviolence? That stance even suggested by Yukari’s beloved human servant?”

“Waning by the second as you don’t explain yourself,” Kasen bites. “Don’t act surprised. You and Yukari are the two people I despise the most, and this chronic desire to avoid discussing problems is just one of many reasons why.”

“A chronic desire, you say?” Okina takes umbrage with the taunt. “You truly want me to discuss the problem, Kasen? So be it.”

She rises from her throne, the flames at each corner trailing to her front, framing the god in a nearly angelic shape. The flames scorch the doors they were touching, leaving smoldering black stains on everything nearby her.

“The problem is that god’s continued existence!” she bursts, the fires combusting in unison. “We are but a short time away from a natural event in which that wretch will burgeon to power once more, and when that happens we will be forced to kill her! Instead of letting it get to that point, for which civil strife may ravage Gensokyo, I will see done that which I’ve accomplished before, ending the deity here and now!”

“Calm yourself!” Kasen yells back, steeling herself for a larger struggle than she wished.

“What?” Eternity breathlessly gasps. “But I never… she never…”

“Never what?” I ask as Kasen tries to deescalate the situation. “Do you remember her, Eternity?”

“Of course I do,” the fairy states, troubled by her own words, “she’s the one that didn’t kill me.”

[Please wait warmly as hermit berates a god…]

>>45732
Voting normally ends on Saturdays the latest for active back and forths. When I see it’s a landslide I’ll usually start planning as early as Thursdays, though. I do this to make my time writing be over the weekend and a bit into the week.

>>45733
I will definitely consider my character dynamics a lot more from the outset when I go to (the eventual) new stories. I firmly stand by my characters for where they are now and how I feel they’ve developed, but there’s many pitfalls I’ve fell into.

>>45722
I would say I need a chapter of Kasen holding a mortal grudge against Sumireko, but that would mean I’d need to write the average teenage Japanese schoolgirl.

[… Continued]

Eternity gasps before I can follow up with the hundreds of questions that now rattle my brain. I focus on Okina and Kasen, searching for what might be coming. The flames around Okina converge in front of the woman, coalescing to a point of light as blinding as the sun over the garden. Kasen yells at the woman to stop her attack, but another flash precedes a wave of energy directed at Eternity and I, clipping the edge of a door unfortunate enough to be in its path. The thing splinters in half like a twig.

Eternity drags the both of us to the side, but with our combined weight she isn’t able to gain much speed over Okina’s correction in trajectory. Right when the beam would crash into us, Kasen intercepts, a barrier of rainbow magic reflecting the raw energy off into the void where it disintegrates several doors before fading out of sight.

The fires recede to Okina’s grimace, with an anger so intense I almost miss the disappointment it yields to Kasen. The look screams of how much she wishes the oni disappeared this instant. I can feel the beats of Eternity’s wings pick up as she spectates the duel.

I, despite narrowly avoiding something that could shred through my body, now have my attention on the little fairy carrying me. “What the hell do you mean, ‘she didn’t kill you?’” I question, craning my neck as far as it will take me to face the girl behind my shoulders.

“Wha-?” she recoils, shocked that I’d be focusing on her in the moment. “I–… It was so long ago. Like, a long, long time ago. I used to be bigger, then. But what about that woman? I thought she was a human.”

“Well clearly not if she’s trying to kill us now! Come on, why did she try to kill you back then?” I fish for the answer to why we’re in this predicament. Whether it’ll be some magic bullet is anyone’s guess, but I can at least hope.

Eternity jerks me over to the side as a cascade of fiery orbs darts past us. Kasen once again intervenes, halting the stream with a few liberal whips of her bandaging. She maintains a rhythm of swatting them away until Okina realizes she isn’t getting through.

With a wave of her hand, Okina dissipates the assault and bursts, “Stand aside, Kasen!”

“Not unless you plan to properly explain yourself!” Kasen roars back, the wraps pointing at her opponent.

“How dare you not trust your fellow!” Okina shouts, slamming a fist against the magical frame in front of her. “We are comrades for Gensokyo!”

Kasen fires off a blast of rainbow energy, forcing Okina to shut up and deflect the projectile. “Do not act as if you ever earned my trust! You and Yukari are both self serving maniacs with the intent of disguising your actions behind the excuse of Gensokyo’s wellbeing!” Kasen scathes her cohort.

Okina harrumphs at the accusation, “Then I suppose we’re at an impasse.”

“I suppose we are,” Kasen agrees with a wild dip in her brow.

“Perhaps we should settle this the way our current Gensokyo would!” Okina announces, drawing a card from her sleeve with a flourish.

Kasen snaps into her martial arts pose, all too happy to accept the challenge with a hardy, “Try me!”

They burst into spirals of bright projectiles, abandoning any sense of finesse or fair play as they try to overpower the other by volume. All it really seems to achieve is making a messy field of rainbow orbs and daggers that force Eternity to retreat with me in tow, slipping behind a door for safety. She must not have internalized that the doors are no better at protecting us than a sheet of paper. Not that there’s much we can actually do to protect ourselves. Kasen is basically our only line of defense right now, seeing as we’ve been separated from Ran.

But that’s all circumstantial for right now. What’s actually important right now is my question, “What you said a moment ago, Eternity, about a long time ago. Do you actually remember that time? Were you really a god?”

“H-how’d you know about that?!” the girl stutters in response.

“Okina told me. I would’ve figured it out at some point, anyway, but that’s not important. What is important is what happened in the past, Eternity. Why does Okina want to put you down all of sudden?” I press the matter, not really needing to divulge any other specifics.

“She didn’t tell you?”

I grab the door and split off from her grip, giving her a cross eye. “Don’t act coy. If she told me I could’ve spun the story in a way that Kasen would’ve guaranteed been on our side. As it is we’re in the middle of a gamble with Okina holding the favorable hand.”

“You’re starting to sound like a bad guy,” Eternity notes with a peak in her brow.

I scoff at the thought, “I’ve been getting that more and more lately. Talk and we might still get Kasen’s help before Okina finds her own way to spin the tale.”

“But I–…” she stalls out with a look far more troubled than her generally mild mannered nature suggested to hide. She’s outright horrified to speak up, her lip quavering as the shapes of words form but no sound emerging.

She flies off beyond our cover, leaving me attached to the door alone. “Eternity, wait!” I call for her to refrain from getting between the two sages, but she’s already a short distance from where I can grab her.

She sucks in a deep breath to shout from her tiny frame, “Miss Goddess! Please stop! I remember everything!”

The sound of fingers snapping reverberates through space, the colorful daggers popping out of existence. I can start to make out the shapes of the women fighting as the rainbow orbs slowly fade out, as well. They stare at Eternity, one in confusion the other in shock. The void starts to feel a lot more quiet, down to only the distant crackle of Okina’s flames.

Despite the bulge in her eyes, the whites visible from here, Okina calmly asks the girl, “Do you remember your name? The name those people chose for you?”

Eternity shrinks at the question, answering in no more than a whisper, “T-… Tokoyo.”

Okina places a hand to her forehead, looking even more despondent than she already was. “How..?”

Kasen sees the opportunity to take the reigns and announces, “If you still refuse to tell me the reason behind your actions, I will ask the fairy, and I doubt she will have quite as many excuses for you.”

“I liked you better when you were depressed over Shuten Doji’s rejection,” Okina seethes at the oni.

“Last chance,” Kasen refuses to bite at the insult.

Okina narrows her eyes, puffing indignantly now that she’s been backed into a corner, “I was hoping to keep this to myself. That fairy is the reincarnation of Tokoyo-no-kami. You likely haven’t heard of her because I slaughtered her and the village her worship originated from during the Asuka era.”

“But I never died,” Eternity contradicts.

Okina sneers at the undermining testament, “A disgusting oversight of mine. I had not realized how much power you truly held to survive the beheading of both your body and your worship. A mistake I do not plan to replicate.”

“We are not done, yet,” Kasen interjects, patience running thin with both gods. “You cannot leave out your rationale behind tearing down an entire village just before the reform era.”

“A rich inquiry from an oni! Should I say I was searching for drink and the god happened to be on my path?” Okina mocks the sage.

Kasen refuses to even merit the jab with words, staring daggers through the god until the woman relents, “Oh, fie! You are simply no fun! Have you looked across Gensokyo as of late, friend? Do you not see what I see?”

“Pretend I do not see. What would you describe to me, then?” Kasen allows her peer at least some opening.

Okina raises her arms to proselytize like a hawker, “The native Shintoism of Japan challenged by the foreign ideals of Buddhism and Taoism! What occurs when those yearning for tradition turn to nontraditional practices? What becomes of a worship that puts faith in only it’s own faith?”

We all remain silent as she lets the question settle in the void. It’s hard to say if it’s rhetorical or not, but I wouldn’t dare try to insert myself so late into the conversation.

“Tokoyo-no-kami!” she proclaims, pointing to Eternity. “A god that exists purely for the hope of those that wish upon belief. A god that exists as belief itself. She is the danger of making those that follow no doctrine, no core fundamentals to their practice. Such a being should not exist, for she begs of anarchy not only of political affairs but affairs of the spirit as well!”

Kasen looks back at Eternity. A pensive curiosity besmirches her lips as she sifts through Okina’s high and mighty recitation. She turns back to the secret god, interrogating, “And so you destroyed those people because they made Eternity? Is that what you will have me believe?”

“It is only the truth, Kasen,” Okina directly addresses the oni. “What would become of gods if they knew that faith alone, without any bearings or blessings, could sustain them indefinitely? We have here a god that I believed dead, after all.”

Shit. So that’s her angle of attack. Suddenly the threat is far less about Eternity herself and more about what she represents. I gotta jump in, but how am I supposed to–?

“Now hold on!” I throw myself in before coming to any legitimate arguments. “How is that supposed to mean you need to get rid of Eternity? Very few people know she’s a god, much less one that could change what it means to earn faith!”

“I find myself truly surrounded by hypocrites,” Okina bemoans, floating past Eternity and over to me. The flames of her magical wooden frame lick the door on sitting on, emanating a heat I only hope won’t contact me. She gestures to Eternity, and asks me, “Was it truly so difficult to determine this fairy was a god? How long would it have taken if I didn’t outright tell you? Another day or two?”

I remain silent, not wanting to help her case as much as possible. Eternity sits debased of any possibility of helping herself. A plight I’m not unfamiliar with.

“And all it took was wanting to know about the girl. Do you think such a meagerly hidden secret will remain that way when the religions truly begin removing their competition. There will be left that base desire for humanity to believe in something, as self fulfilling as it may be, just as it was in the past.”

“Okina,” Kasen takes the woman’s attention, her brow hardened to a fold over the bridge of her nose. “Do you believe in what you claim? Do you think Gensokyo will have a religious struggle as tense as the period you were human?”

“My, now when was that?” Okina deflects, dotting her chin to feign thought. After a brief silence she replies, “Not even I can predict the changes in the atmosphere, but I can tell you it will change.”

Kasen accepts the vague answer and looks down to the fairy, asking, “Are you a danger to those around you?”

Given how she shies away, Eternity seems to have been expecting the question. Tossing it around in her head does little good, either, as she appears predisposed with her eyes clamping shut in denial. How many centuries has she spent with this secret? Did she hope it would go away, her brush with death absolving her of any connection she had to her past? From everything I’ve heard, she herself never did anything. She was just an unfortunate bystander in the wrong place and time.

This unfair reality doesn’t escape her, as the three of us have nothing to say to the little god when she collapses into tears, wings closing in around her body. I’m sure her answer is obvious, as much as I disagree.

Kasen floats over to Okina, and as she passes reluctantly wishes her, “Do what you think is right.”

Okina is hardly phased by the wish, having made up her mind long before the conversation started, and floats closer to Eternity as Kasen stops next to me.

I whisper to the sage, respectfully, “Kasen, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Agreeing with someone I don’t often agree with,” she groans back. “I take no joy in this, you know.”

I rise at the idea, “No joy? Kasen, you’re condemning that girl to die. Look at her. Does she really look like she could hurt a fly?” I nod over to Eternity huddled in on herself, anguishing over her very existence.

Kasen softens for just a breath at the sight, but shakes back into a stony resolve to argue, “She’s not the problem. I’m worried the fly she doesn’t hurt will protect her to its last breath.”

“And Eternity?” I insist.

Kasen holds her tongue for the final verdict, but Okina picks up on the conversation, pausing to turn and address her cohort, “Do you see how little this human respects the necessary evils we commit? Yukari is truly weakhearted if she retains such a petty fool.”

“It’s called having a conscience,” I growl. “Maybe you should try growing one.”

“Maybe when the day comes that Gensokyo is truly at peace, and nothing should come and loom over its horizon. I suspect such a fantasy too much even for our little world,” Okina waxes poetic as if it were some poignant thought before turning back to her target. “You’d be better off not a part of it if you should believe that lie.”

“Leave Tanner out of this, Okina,” Kasen stands to my defense, getting between us.

In that moment, I feel Ran’s shikigami slip up my back, and follow it as it floats away behind a nearby door. Kasen and Okina are too occupied to notice my gaze, nor the hand that shoves aside the door to reveal my partner, sitting within one of Yukari’s gaps from The Garden of the Sun. She beckons me over, likely hoping to salvage me from the situation before Okina should remember her threat.

I move as little as possible to point to Eternity.

She raises her arms in frustration that I’d suggest helping someone else before myself in this moment.

I scrunch my eyebrows a little more to try and really convince her that I’m asking out of a sense of moral rightness.

She’s not persuaded by the appeal.

Guess I’ll have to do something myself. I feel the flash rocks sitting in my pocket, hoping that they haven’t gone off in all the movement, and note Okina’s movement as she readies that deadly laser she used earlier.

[x] Dive for Eternity. Dangerous, but it means both of us will get out when Ran goes to retrieve me.

[x] Explicitly order Ran to grab Eternity. I have a much lower chance of getting out myself, but there’s no immediate harm I should expect.

[x] Another plan of action. (Write-in)

[X] Dive for Eternity

I slide my hand in and out of my pocket as quietly as I can. The flash rocks are

Just like I did before… Aim. That door, about four or five yards, doesn’t look too skewed for me to hit, and it’s directly in Okina’s line of sight. Shit, Kasen will probably get in the way if I don’t hit her, too. Hopefully there aren’t any obstructions between her and where I’m looking.

Alright. Launch. Let the smooth stones pass under my fingers as I chuck them. One looks to go in the correct direction, with the other two trailing into the endless void. Okina follows the projectiles as they pass by, the immediate confusion forcing her to pause the release of her spell. Kasen looks on as well, having never seen the only trick I’ve got up my sleeve.

I shield myself from the blinding light that comes a short second later, and bounce from the top of the door towards Eternity.

“You imbecile!” I can hear my partner scold from the tear in space behind me.

I fly by Kasen, who’s covering her eyes in attempt to retrieve her senses, and slip by Okina’s flames, one of which narrowly misses my abdomen. Okina herself groans in anger at being stunned, pinching her eyes in a vain effort of recovery. I’ve only got another couple seconds before a very, very angry god is on my tail.

I throw my arms wide as I slam into Eternity, clutching onto her for dear life. Our momentum barely changes in the impact, like a reminder of just how small the girl huddled in on herself really is. Thank the gods for it, too, because I see the beam Okina was charging up screech past me, the heat only felt a few seconds after.

Something snaps at my leg, jostling us in the direction I came and quieting Eternity’s crying. I whip my head down to find a tether of shikigami, folded over one another into the shape of a rope, being pulled towards the gap. Ran hauls us over with a haste I don’t often see, her hat nearly flying off in the motions.

Why doesn’t the gap just move to me? Can they not do that? Or is this one different? Did Ran actually make it?

I shake my head and ignore my blossoming curiosity, aware that it couldn’t rear its head at a worse time. Grabbing at the tether, I flip myself and Eternity towards the gap and await Ran to slip us through.

Something else whips around my ankle, and yanks opposite to Ran, thrusting the fox into the edge of the gap where she nearly loses her grip. I look from the new set of bindings to find Kasen winding me in by her bandages.

The way she has to squint only makes her look angrier. Then again, I did blind her. “Stop playing the hero, Tanner!” she commands. “I can’t keep you safe if you and Ran continue to impede what must be done!”

Eternity buries her face into my chest, clasping my shirt with the only might she can muster. A danger to Gensokyo? This little thing?

“Fuck off, Kasen, you’ve gone nuts!” I yell at the sage, unabated in my conviction.

“Tanner do not enrage the oni!” Ran scolds again, pressing her feet against the edge of the gap to fight Kasen’s pull.

“There is someone you’ve enraged far more, you buffoon!” the vicious voice of Okina flares up along with her magical flames. They turn in my direction, and Okina looks like she could crush a diamond between her teeth. She wastes no words before converging the flames once more to attack.

Kasen shouts at her cohort, “Okina, wait! Don’t–!”

The god doesn’t wait for her attack to fully prepare, satisfied with turning Eternity and I into a splayed mess rather than completely vaporizing us. I release my grip on the shikigami chord and cover Eternity as best as I can, hoping that maybe, just maybe, my body can negate some of the damage from her.

The beam spills onto me like boiling water out of a fire hose, only probably another few thousand degrees hotter. Every nerve at the center of my back bursts out of reception, the sheer brutality several magnitudes more than what they can identify, and only a circle of pain withstands the torment enough to inform me of the size of the beam.

This, after not quite a second passes, makes me realize I haven’t been punched through like soggy bread against a plasma cutter. This doesn’t change the fact that my blood is boiling and my chest set to explode. This feeling of being undone, wholly stripped, forces a guttural roar out of me.

“What?!” I can hear Kasen utter over the crashing rancor of the beam, and notice the binding still trapping my leg.

Okina screeches at this absurdity before her, and the circle of pain widens with each second, quickly enveloping my sides, then my entire torso. Ran drops out of the way as the spillover flies at her. Of all people to take her place, Wriggle looks into the gap, avoiding the trails of rainbow and blanching at the sight.

The beam finally spreads wide enough to cover my leg, burning Kasen’s bandage off. Without the binding keeping me in place, I shoot off towards the gap, and right into the bug Youkai still caught in the headlights. Luckily, I hit her away form the beam as gravity reasserts itself. I land on my back, the whiplash throttling my head more informative than the absent nerves against dirt and grass.

Everything in my vision fades to black as the sudden subsiding of pain makes itself known. I still remain keenly aware of my surroundings, with the sounds of Ran slipping the gap closed and running over to me. She arrests Eternity from my grip and flips me on my back. A sharp breath in tells me the measure of the damage.

“H-hey…” I slur through the grass aside my face.

“What?!” Ran gasps. “You are still conscious?! Even accounting for the odd state of your body, you should be no more than base particles with the amount of energy Matara-jin exerted.”

“Can’t see…” I mutter through the grass and onset lightheadedness.

Ran comes to her wits and asserts, “Yes, you must have very little blood circulating through your veins. Allow me.” I feel something stamp to the side of my head. A piece of paper.

Shit, I recognize this one. Color, sight, motor functions, nervous system, it all comes back with the help of Ran’s magic talisman. I hear Eternity gasp behind me as I pop to my knees. I stumble to my feet, but the energy does not subvert my shaking legs, no more than stilts.

Ran does not attempt to catch me as I crumple, instead noting, “You are in no state to move. Your back appears to have been cauterized down to the muscle and it is highly likely your pain reception has become invalidated due to over stimula–”

“Y-you’re fine...” Eternity mumbles in disbelief, teetering next to me. Tears well up in her eyes at the sight, and she states through building sniffles, “I hoped so hard.”

An aggrieved groan in the distance interrupts, “A little sympathy for the bug, please?! Augh–!” Wriggle shouts, holding onto stumps where her legs once were. The remainder of the appendages sit next to her, what likely flew under me before coming through the gap. They’ve been burnt clean off, the smell of near carbonized flesh permeating the air. Though it barely touches me, it’s enough to make me gag.

“That all three of you are alive is miraculous on its own, bug,” Ran chides the little Youkai. “More importantly, the sages will be upon us any second, we must–“

“Do not bother, Ran,” the booming voice of Okina fills the area. Ran’s eyes go wide as she tries to ascertain its origin. “Your attempt was paltry at best, but this will not stop me.”

Ran looks up, and I follow to see Okina and Kasen exit a door made out of blue sky. The magical flames surrounding her appear no less animated than when she attacked. Running from someone like that is out of the question. I hold Eternity close, though there’s next to no help I can provide like I am.

Okina raises her chin to the fox, “Now step aside. I will not tell you twice, even for Yukari’s precious pet.”

Ran stands tall, eyebrows tightening as she shields Eternity and I behind her tails. “I will do no such thing. You will sooner need to vanquish me for insulting the Yakumo’s pride and obstructing my duty than for my compliance!”

Kasen looks hesitant at the declaration, and tries to plead with the sage, “Okina, I think we should bring this to Yukari as well. She’ll never forgive you if you–“

“Enough, Kasen!” Okina barks at the oni. “I need not your indecisiveness at this time. I will do what must be done myself if need be.”

Her flames grow out, forcing Kasen to back away. They extend past the hill we sit atop, covering the closest area of sunflowers from view, and continue to grow until they nearly blot out the sky around us. It’s a veritable tempest of fire in the colors of the seasons, trapping us where we stand.

“Ran?” I query my partner for what she plans to do next.

“Still thinking,” she bites back, a nasty snarl crossing her lips as she estimates how screwed we are. She sends her shikigami to try and attack Okina first, but there’s no way she can fight and protect us simultaneously. She turns to cover us, using her tails as the bulkhead, but we know it won’t be more than a suggestion against Okina’s power.

Just as I wonder how I can help us escape, the screaming anger of a laser, four times larger than Okina’s, whizzes a few feet next to me and up towards Okina. It burns cleanly through the line of shikigami in the way, and forces the goddess out of position, dissipating the flames overhead.

That rainbow colored beam, so violent as to split a mountain, is Marisa’s attack, isn’t it? I turn to look down the hill and find its source.

“Well,” a voice, composed of pure wrath, sounds off, “I was wondering who was shouting a name I didn’t care to hear, and I come to find… Wriggle, pruned from her legs, Eternity, more distressed than I’ve ever seen, and the Yakumo fox and her charge, cowering for their lives…”

Yuuka Kazami crests the hill, her face filled with judgment for the two individuals above her. She holds her umbrella like a rifle, letting it bend under her vice grip for what little composure she retains.

“Care to explain this, you two?” she talks to the sages as if they were children.

Kasen and Okina exchange a glance. Kasen backs further away, keen on staying away from the elder Youkai. Okina grunts at her compatriot, not backing down from the threat. Kazami steps ahead of us and bears down on the goddess. The garden feels a little quieter than usual.

Okina folds her arms, nonplussed with the new arrival as she says, “She’s a danger to Gensokyo, Kazami.”

“Which one?” Kazami traipses about, looking at our collective.

“The god disguised as a fairy,” Okina continues. “Surely you must know.”

Kazami looks up to Okina, the veneer of disinterest fading to her underlying rage by the second. She looks at Eternity and laughs, pointing aside at the girl as she gazes back at Okina. “Her? Dangerous? She makes people like her. We can uproot Gensokyo from its foundations. You’ll need more than that to spook me.”

Okina squints at the bullheaded woman, reinforcing, “She will cause tensions between humans and Youkai.” The flames around her magic door sputter in frustration.

Kazami leans against her umbrella, remaining directly between us and Okina. “What tensions? Humans can’t hate us more. They can’t group together more than they are in that little village. The old Youkai hunters are nothing more than dust and bones. What’s the problem?”

“That I need to spell it out for you is disappointing, Kazami. I’m worried that the humans will tear each other apart over religion. I’m worried that she will be the catalyst to start the bloody feud.”

Kazami leans in, flashing a dangerous smile up to Okina as she wonders, “You’re worried about her? While I’m standing right here? I can’t say I’ve ever been insulted that way before. But anyways,” she cuts herself off, swinging the umbrella over her head and aiming at the god.

Okina quickly raises her flames to a point, firing off a beam immediately, but is subsequently dwarfed by the unstoppable torrent that bursts from Kazami’s umbrella. The beam, one which looks much like Marisa’s master spark, is comparable to the entire energy of the sun bursting from the tip of a pin. Okina is fighting a tsunami with no more than a water cutter.

The goddess avoids the exchange, diving into the door she left ajar to avoid Kazami possibly redirecting the beam. This is not what Kazami does, however, as she ceases firing and twists the umbrella to an underhanded grip. Raising it high she aims the end at the door made of sky, and throws.

Her might is so great the article sounds like a gunshot leaving her hand, its concussive force blasting aside any still dissipating energy from her own beam as the dainty apparel skewers the door before it can shut. The umbrella sits in the air, right in the middle of an impossibly splintered spot of air.

Kazami floats up to her catch, swinging it open by loose hinges and letting herself in. As she closes the door behind her it disappears from existence.

This, unfortunately, does not rid us of Kasen, who lands close by. She whips her bandages around Eternity, trying to pry her from my arms before Ran can react. Eternity yelps in horror and I hold on tight, getting dragged across the ground for my efforts. My muscle nerves, already budding back to life, shriek in agony as if I was skirting over sandpaper.

Ran stomps down against Kasen’s magic appendage and stamps a shikigami to the paper. The bandages around Eternity go limp, letting me unfurl them from the tear riddled girl.

“You’re supposed to be on our side, Kasen!” I yell at the madwoman.

“I am on no one’s side, Tanner! I do what is best for Gensokyo, just as Okina or Yukari. Her ability to manipulate life energy, protecting you like she did, is not something I can ignore,” she grouses back, not bothering to remove her arm from under Ran’s foot. She looks up to the fox, and requests, “Ran, please don’t be difficult.”

“I am performing my duties, just as you are,” my partner remains obstinate.

Kasen’s eyes roll off to nowhere. “Why must Yukari find so much importance in such a dangerous individual?” she complains, more to the air, and its likely spectator, than to us.

“I am not acting under Lady Yukari’s directive.”

Kasen locks eyes with Ran. Her head tilts ever so slightly as interest trumps frustration, and she asks, “Then why are you doing this?”

Ran, not missing a beat, answers, “I act under Regis’ wishes. Eternity Larva is off limits for extermination.”

Kasen stares at her, considering the shikigami’s answer, and relaxes a little. She directs her next comment to me, “Okina’s insistence is grating, but she makes a valid point. What are your beliefs, Tanner? Can you sway me as well as you did the implacable Ran?” Somewhere behind her stern gaze, a part of me feels like she’s commanding as much as she is pleading. An entirely baseless feeling, but one that still catches me.

I keep Eternity close, unsure if the oni would attempt something, and tell her, “You think I know how I got Ran to like me?”

“It would be wise to make an attempt of her offer, Regis,” my dear partner sounds like she’s close to slapping me.

[x] “Who is Gensokyo for?”

[x] “Is she really so much more dangerous than anyone else in Gensokyo?”

[x] Ran’s reasoning. (Write-in)

Kidding. I’m only kidding. I didn’t even know it was coming out until it did. As for the update, I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to do, but I wasn’t expecting it to take more time that I actually separated it to a vote.

[x] “Who is Gensokyo for?”

“Kasen,” I address the woman, shuffling my feet under me. They fail to carry my weight, much less while I’m also holding Eternity, and I look like no more than a frail doe. I collapse back to my rear, and the only thing I’ve accomplished is identifying the seams at which my clothes have melted to my flesh.

“By the dragon,” Kasen growls at the sight.

“Cease your attempts at movement, Tanner!” Ran scolds once more.

I pause to take a haggard breath, straining to remain upright. Eternity sniffs into my shirt, shaking.

Kasen starts to lecture, “You’re courting death, Tanner. And for what? A god you met two days ago?”

“Call me an overly moral man,” I sneer back with an energy I don’t have.

“And what are these morals? How do you know you’re right for what you’re doing?”

I scowl at her. Is she seriously acting stuck up about trying to murder someone? It’s so… ridiculous! And, as if summoned, the question pops into my head. Like it was placed as a sort of, ‘you’ll need this.’ I start chuckling to myself at how inconsequential I really am compared to that hag and Ran. Yukari should stop being a lazy bitch and do her own work for once.

Kasen looks at me with the question of if I broke plastered to her face. I ask her in turn, “Who is Gensokyo for?”

She recoils a bit at the words. In disgust, I imagine. “That’s… Yukari’s question? So she’s not spared you any headaches.”

“But I’m the one asking, right now,” I argue, noting her lack of engagement with the words themselves. “Did you ever answer her?”

She looks to Ran, suddenly wary of the servant. “Everyone. That was her answer.”

She’s still hesitant. “It’s not yours? She never told Okina her answer because they weren’t the same,” I show my hand. I won’t let her escape the way Yukari did. “So why’d she tell you? What’s the meaning behind such an open ended question?”

She huffs, understanding there’s no way she can skirt around the subject. She asked me for my opinion, and this is it. This one simple question Yukari has cursed me with. Her mouth opens, hesitantly silent, and she has to swallow down her discomfort to answer, “It’s probably the most important question, Tanner. It’s the way we expect Gensokyo to be, and so each sage learns to distrust one another by it. She told me her answer, not because we agreed, but because we are of opposite mind.”

“Opposite?” the word strikes off-key. “You realize the opposite of everyone would be no one? Doesn’t that sound… I don’t know– nihilistic? Didn’t you help make everything here?”

She looks over the garden in it’s stillness. This impossible little corner of summer fighting off the mid November cold. And not just here, but everything beyond it, she is supposed to have a hand in. She relaxes her stance, gesturing for Ran to release her bandages. Ran tosses an eye over for my approval and I give a curt nod. After a pause, she acquiesces with a twitch in her lip.

Kasen winds her arm back together and calmly steps towards me. She’s stopped by ran before getting within arm’s length of me, and settles to her knees on the spot, leveling her gaze with mine. She sits as formally as possible: back straight, hands over her thighs. I don’t release my hold on Eternity.

“Tanner,” Kasen addresses me, “do you know how long Gensokyo has existed?”

“Over a hundred years, right?”

“And quickly approaching one hundred and fifty,” she adds. “Do you know how long Gensokyo has been planned, though?”

I shake my head.

“Another hundred years before that. Funny enough, your homeland was founded around then, wasn’t it?” I give her a cocked brow, not sure why she’s bringing this up. “Sorry, I guess you’re in no mood for tangents. What I mean to say is that I’ve had a long time to deliberate the past. I once agreed with Gensokyo, but now I don’t.”

Ran’s eyes go as wide as dinner plates. Kasen follows my gaze, and without facing the fox, tells her, “I wish you didn’t have to hear that, Ran. This was supposed to stay between Yukari and I.”

“So you’re serious?” I find myself equally baffled, leaning further in. “You thought Gensokyo shouldn’t have been made?”

She taps her thigh, the shackle at her wrist clinking. “That’s… difficult for me to say. Especially since we know who’s sitting in listening.” She huffs a sigh of frustration, and continues, “If it’s between Gensokyo and some way to keep our presence in the outside world, I’d choose the latter. It’s taken me a long time to accept that I’m not satisfied with how it all turned out.”

Hers eyes stop trailing down as she reasserts her strict gaze with, “That’s why I make sure Gensokyo is safe for the future.”

I ignore the obvious change in topic, and openly wonder, “And Yukari..?”

She tries to stay stern, stony, but I can see the cracks in her tightened brow as she states, “Livid. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her raise her voice in anger before then.”

“I guess that’s no surprise,” I sympathize. “Is that why Okina said all that to you?”

“Now who’s going on tangents, Tanner?” she grimly closes. “Please hand over Eternity, if the human village should find her… I don’t think we want to go down that road.”

“Tanner,” Eternity tugs at my sleeve, calling my attention, “can I answer your question, too?”

I remain silent, letting Eternity push off from me and get to her feet. She looks… crestfallen. Even outside of the obviously wet trails along her cheeks. What strength I have left is used to fruitlessly reach for her as she walks right up to Kasen, much to our surprise.

She eyes the oni, and though her brows are about as stable as a river’s eddies, with a voice as large as an ant’s, she claims, “Gensokyo is for everybody.”

“… So you both say,” Kasen condones, crossing her arms in condemnation, “but putting on a brave face doesn’t make me suddenly agree.”

“No– but–! That’s not the point!” Eternity’s antennae droop dejectedly.

Kasen comes to a stand, alerting a twitchy Ran in the process. She holds the guard back with a quick glance before returning to the girl. “Then say what you mean.”

“If…” Eternity halts, stringing the words together in her mind, cautious of twisting the thought out of substance, like a fleeting image. “If I– If Gensokyo is for everybody, then that means it remembers everyone. But it doesn’t remember me when I was big, just how I am now. I don’t have to think about what happened before Gensokyo, just how much I want to live now.”

“Like a second chance? So you see this as a second chance at life?” Kasen interprets, now more interested in the little god’s train of thought.

Eternity spreads her arms, wings sprawling to attention as she announces, “You said you don’t want this anymore, but that’s sad, Kasen! There are people that want to be your friend! I want to be one.”

“Eternity, that’s–“ Kasen starts with her scolding tone, but the sentence dies before it can start. She fights her troubled look by returning to the more understandable problem, “We can’t have the villagers fight each other, Eternity. Do you understand that’s why we’re afraid?”

The girl pleads, “But I don’t want to get anyone hurt. Why does living happy make me not part of the Gensokyo that’s for everybody?”

Kasen grimaces at the redirection, her patience for the topic waning, “You’re caught up on that question, Eternity. We don’t even agree on the answer, so please stop bringing it up.”

“Yours is the impossible answer,” I tag the sage. “If Gensokyo is for nobody, then are you gonna kick us all out? And here you say we’re not making sense.”

“Tanner, it isn’t so–…” she trails off, eyelids and hands clenching shut as she impatiently calls for an answer that she can leverage against us.

Eternity frets at the oni, weakly raising a hand, and closing in. She wraps her arms around the sage, unable to reach higher than the waist. Kasen resists the act for several moments, eventually deflating from the minimal pressure. She releases her hands and reciprocates, a sort of creaking motion betraying her reservation.

“You’re lucky I like cute things,” she grumbles. “… And that I’m a bit lost.”

“I just know you didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Eternity snickers.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kasen allows, separating the girl from herself. She eyes me as well, and muses, “I’m not sure which of you two are worse, to be honest.”

“Hey, take it from a screw up, you’re doing good for yourself,” I joke.

I spot a beam of light streak across the sky, its source unknown. Or rather, the location of its source is unknown. We all know who’s firing giant beams of light, it’s only a question of where the plant woman is. The first to pop into the empty sky is Okina, more singed and splinter laden than last we saw her. The second is another blast from Kazami, forcing Okina off to the side.

The plaid woman herself floats out of the emptiness in the next moment, swinging a part of the blue that must have framed a door.

“Decided on another change of scenery?” she taunts the goddess.

Okina floats down near the garden flowers, and yells back, “Well, I just thought you might enjoy your beautiful garden as a part of the backdrop.”

Kazami blasts Okina without hesitation, the power enough to shake the earth from well over fifty meters away. As the light fades, I can see Okina holding her magical door frame aloft, the flames doing their utmost to stave off the torrent. It’s to little effect, as evidenced by fumes trailing off soot stained clothes. But that’s better than her surroundings, as everything in a circle save her is reduced to dirt.

“What parts of ‘I hate gods like yourself,’ and ‘let’s see how many colors you scatter into,’ did you fail to consider?” Yuuka once again mocks her prey. “Any casualties will simply be held to your account. Let’s say a square centimeter of skin for every blossom.”

“Think she’ll make good on that threat?” I wonder.

“Yes,” Kasen affirms, none too happy to do so. “I should step in before we have to add ‘skinless’ to that idiot’s monikers.”

“Hang on,” I try to flag her down as she rises.

“Yes, yes, I’ll be sure to stop her from attempting Eternity’s life,” she remarks, almost like an afterthought. “It’s easy enough to convince her of most anything when she’s being petty and gloating it as a virtue.”

“H-huh…” I can’t say I’d have the confidence to say that to her face, toasted by Kazami or not.

Ran steps next to me, and leans down to silently advise, “Now would be an optimal time to evacuate, Tanner.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll survive another beam meant to scorch the earth.” Ran takes me into her arms with only a mild whimpering on my part. I look down to Eternity and offer, “Hey, you can hide out with me if you need to. After my imminent hospital visit, I mean.”

She looks up to me, in Ran’s arms, anyways, and back to the fight. Kasen flies into the skirmish but fails to dissuade Kazami’s wrath. An expected outcome, but hopefully they work it out of their systems.

“I think I’ll stay behind with Yuuka,” Eternity says with certainty. “It’s nice to have friends that are there for you.”

She says this with a childlike glee, but somewhere under it, as if intentionally buried, I almost sense remorse. Or maybe regret? Still haven’t developed those counselor skills, despite everything. I decide to the leave the girl for today with a different question, “Say, if I believe hard enough, do you think you can avoid what those two are so worried about?”

“What?” she’s utters, looking away from the fight with present eyes. “I… I guess? – I hope.” Her look skirts around to start searching for an answer. Ran begins to float up but I tap her arm to stop, and await Eternity to regain her composure.

“So, wait, you mean…” she comes to an epiphany. Slapping her cheeks from the emotions that have been running wild, and standing a little taller, she pronounces, “I’ll make sure of it.”

I smile at her, the pull at my ears shifting some burnt skin in discomfort. “Then you’ll probably be the only god I’ve ever earnestly prayed to,” I encourage the little god, ignoring how ill advised it may be.

[x] Yea
['] Mis-assignment (Ran)…
[BB] Tanner and the tank girl (Rika)…
[3rd] Pick someone to check in on. (Choose anyone)

[x] Nay, get on with the story!

['] Mis-assignment (Ran)…

State: Eternity Larva observation: Day 7
Time: 1:04 Pm, Afternoon
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I can’t say I expected how wet it could be out here. A part of me understood it from the mugginess of every summer day I’ve lived here, but it’s so different from the dreary overcasts accompanying frequent snowfall. Today, too, is another day taken by vast grays and whites. A far cry from the sunny realm of The Garden of the Sun.

I lift my hand from my typewriter, the words refusing to slip from my fingertips as I decide what is and is not allowed to be put to paper. A problem I’ve come to frequently tackle on these reports. My fingers run across the front of my scalp, their cool touch tickling the newly bare skin as hair only starts to grow back.

I check my hand as if something strange should come off it. “It’s a weird feeling every time,” I comment to my audience of one who sits as no more than a decoration.

“Would you have preferred a front patch of hair without the back?” Ran suggests, hopefully ironically.

I should be thankful that my skin came back normally, even if all the hair along my backside was effectively laser trimmed. Suffice to say, I went to a trimmer right when I left Eientei the next day.

“I’d sooner consider wearing a hat for the first time ever,” I joke.

Keine enters the room with a stack of papers under her arm, picking up on the conversation and commenting, “I think you look cute bald. Like you’re training to be a monk.”

“Thanks. Every man wants to be called cute,” I quibble over the compliment. “What’s that you got there?”

She brandishes the stack, handing them off to me with a curious, “They were just at the door. I only got back with food for dinner and found them without any notes of the sender. It’s obviously for you, though.”

“What makes you say–“
I stop the question as soon as I notice the cover page. A name, and information on that name. The same format I normally get my assignments from Yukari in, including supporting news articles and formal reports, only… “Ran.”

Keine passes a glance to the statue in the corner, its ears twitching at my call. “Yes?”

“Do you know anything about this? She’s surely taking us for a ride,” I note, holding out the stack to my partner as she steps up.

She holds the articles, squinting in confusion at the name. “Why would Lady Yukari ask for information on myself?” she ponders.

“I’m asking you,” I grouse. “Bah, I guess she’s just pulling some joke. I haven’t even started making headway on Eternity’s report.”

“Perhaps as good excuse as any to take a break and think on it,” Keine suggests, leaning over me.

“Think on it? I’m worried that even giving Yukari the time of day is somehow losing to her.”

Keine sighs at my crotchety behavior, “Why must it always be about mind games and subterfuge amongst the three of you?”

I raise my hands in defeat. “Hey, I wouldn’t be so paranoid if I wasn’t thrust into difficult situations every other week. It feels like the only things that do happen to me are bad for some reason.”

Keine remains silent for a moment, then pops her eyebrows in condescension.

My eyes naturally avoid hers, despite the proximity. “Sorry, didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh, no, everything is bad to you, surely,” she doles the words back at me. “Maybe that distraction would do you some good after all. When was the last time you simply sat down and spoke with your bodyguard?”

I pinch at my chin, the hairs growing out steadily to make up for the lack atop my head. “When was the last time?” I ask my partner.

“Eientei after your resurrection,” Ran notes. “Before that, under the nomenclature of a ‘heart to heart’ it was the time after you awoke from injury due to the onikuma.”

“Have we actually had a heart to heart outside of when I’m confined to a bed?” I joke.

She remains quiet, if only for effect.

“Seriously? Stop being coy,” I bicker. “Alright, Keine, I’ll think on what Yukari is trying to coax out of me, if just until I’m in the right mood to cobble together the report.”

I stand from my desk, gathering a few personal affects and retrieving the papers from Ran. Keine gives me a fixed look as I pass her towards the door. “And just where are you going?” she asks.

“Just finding a nice place to stop and talk with my good friend,” I dismiss.

“You mean stopping to drink yourself silly in a bar.”

“What? You’re exaggerating, I don’t go bar hopping that frequently.”

“Tanner, you can’t lie about your intake when we share a bed.” I pause at the reality of the statement. Does it carry on my breath that heavily? Did I not realize? Keine passes a glance over to Ran, requesting, “Please make sure he doesn’t overdo it.”

“How does one prevent a fish from being in water?” Ran snarks back in her regularly level tone. A grimace from Keine relents out a more moderate, “I will do what I am able.”

“Day drinking again, Tanner?” the bar master greets. “I’m not helping if Kamishirasawa comes for you.”

“Is that any way to greet a paying customer?”

“Is that any way to greet the man serving your drinks?” he retorts.

I pass sturdy nailed down tables to take a stool at the stone counter. Ran slowly paces up behind me, reluctant to follow my lead when I tap the stool next to mine. She takes the seat, earning a puckered lip from the man behind the counter.

“You make her break down and try whiskey?” he comments. “No, before that, how many times do I need to tell you the doors ain’t open yet.”

I glance back at the swinging doors, but don’t get farther than opening my lips before he demands, “Not even one word out of you, smart guy. Your usual?”

“For two,” I request, motioning to my partner, her narrowed eyes none too pleased at the advent of alcohol as Keine foretold.

I begin through the papers as drinks are served, treating my glass with only passive interest as I try to suss out what Yukari is playing at, Ran presses her drink away. The articles on hand are far more mundane than expected, consisting of Ran’s Perfect Memento article, a Bunbunmaru section on her calculating the size of the… Sanzu River? Alright, sure. And lastly, a myriad papers concerning Gensokyo’s census efforts conducted by Ran, all containing extensive commentary in her more typical, dry analysis.

None of this elicits a moment of clarity on my part. It all looks like completely divorced items from why they’re in my hands now. Is there something I missed? Is it something that needs cluing in to understand? I can’t tell, and that frustrates me, enough so that I scratch at my scalp again.

My lack of hair gives me a sudden start as I realize how horrible of a habit I’ve developed, and I consign myself to nursing my drink in hopes of some form of epiphany.

“Ehh, that’s the look you’re supposed to have after several more hours of work, mister researcher,” the bar master taunts.

Ran leans into me, checking a few pages from the top of my split stack, pondering, “None of it was elucidating? Truly? There must be something of interest in all of this material.”

“Now you sound like you’re more worried that the recordable parts of your life are boring,” I groan, taking a large swig of my glass.

“You are most unpleasant when you find minor obstructions. Have you been notified of this?” she states, taking the split stack for reexamination. As she does so, something slips out from between the papers, likely in the deeper folds of the news articles that I didn’t check.

It flutters past me to the floor. I wave Ran off, saying, “I’ll get it, just stay in your seat. And yes, I have been told on occasion that I can be rude, thank you very much.”

I lean over, finding the odd piece that fell from the rest. It looks to be a photograph on a polaroid. I’ve seen these a lot more since coming to Gensokyo, but not really as part of these dossiers. I hunch further to get a better look at the photo itself.

Or… it is a photo, right? I grab it from the floor, inspecting the details close to my eye. It looks like a… painting? A photo of a painting? It’s a portrait of two women. One looks like some sort of goat Youkai, the other like Ran. Or, I say, but her clothes are different and she has longer hair bereft of a hat. The white tufts in her fox ears are fairly recognizable, at least. But what bugs me more is the look in her eyes. A sense of someone worn down by time sits behind them. It isn’t something I can imagine coming from the Ran I know. She gets mad from time to time, sure, but there’s an intensity here I can’t place. The longer I stare at her the tighter my spine coils, like she’s staring back at me in pure antipathy.

“Tanner?” Ran’s voice takes me from the image.

“Huh?!” I gasp, doing my best to not spring into a flight or fight response. The only thing out of the ordinary is a man lost from his seat. I slide back up to concerned eyes but dismiss their worry. “It’s nothing, stop looking at me like that.”

“You looked like that picture was trying to steal your soul,” the bar master rebuffs. “What’s on there that’s got you of all people scared?”

“Of all people?” Ran repeats. “How much have you told this man, Regis?”

He somewhat comes to my aid with, “Less than I’d like. I only ever get the vaguest word to accompany his dour looks. Especially since he and his drinking buddy are always off and on.”

“Enough,” I complain over the topic. “Listen, you’re not gonna hear anything we say for the next few moments, yeah?”

“You’re really gonna ask if a bartender can keep a secret?” he gives a rhetorical, cupping his ears for a moment to affirm his intent.

I slide the picture to Ran, and ask, “Do you know this photo?”

She immediately goes wide eyed at the sight. I think after all this time I’ve known her, this is probably the most animated response I’ve gotten. She snatches the photo to stow in a sleeve, careful of her full glass.

“What in the world,” she ponders to blanching skin. “I should have known Lady Yukari would hide such a thing in there.”

I jump the opening while it’s there, “Why? What’s so important about that picture?”

“Tanner, could you please refrain from hounding after information so readily?” she asks, almost as if she were… embarrassed? Ran can get embarrassed?

“Well clearly that’s what Yukari wanted me to see, so now I’m wondering what’s so important about it,” I argue, well aware that my reasoning is based upon a complete assumption.

Ran remains pensive on the subject, but breaks down after several moments of me staring intently and asks in return, “Tanner, how many periods of your life would you say you have lived?”

“What? Periods?” I find myself bemused by the change in topic.

“Yes, you require some context for what I am about to say. So, how many different periods, or ‘lives’ would you say you’ve lived?” she insists.

I refrain from jokingly answering two, and instead recount the actual number. One as a kid, another as a soldier, a third as an academic, a fourth as the small town school teacher, and now… “Five,” I answer, still withholding the obvious sixth.

She nods. “Right, within your relatively short lifespan you have already lived five different periods of your life. If we were to use that as a baseline, then I have lived over one hundred twenty five life altering periods. As you might imagine, life altering events come infrequently for me, so perhaps the approximation would be that number divided by three, though even that is an overestimate.”

“Overestimate? You can’t remember it all?” I start to realize why she’s being vague about it.

She holds a hand for me to wait, and continues, “Mayhaps that is not a useful perspective. Consider instead, how long I have had my shikigami.”

“Since Gensokyo, at least. But I guess it’d really be for however long you’ve worked for Yukari. So, what, a couple hundred years?” I ponder.

“Close. But in short, over a ‘couple hundred’ years ago, I was the person in that photo, one who lived in the animal realm of hells.”

Well, I guess that explains the death stare. Although, isn’t that strange in itself? “Hell? Does that mean you’re actually–“

“No, I’m not dead,” she curtly cuts down the insinuation.

I accept the answer, despite how ridiculous it really is. “So, what were you doing when you were there?”

“Partaking in the local tribal warfare.”

“Very funny.”

“The truth is unfortunately far from a joke. The beast gangs were not as contemporary to human civilization at the time. It was only by a consultant’s suggestion to one of the leaders, backed by a prolific lieutenant, that human souls were extracted for information to rapidly develop new technologies.”

“Now you’re just gloating,” I don’t give an inch to her uninvolved narrative.

“I do not consider myself the same person as then,” she firmly denies. “And, yes, if you should ask, the other person in the photo is the lieutenant in question.”

“See? It ain’t that hard to share a thing or two about yourself,” I jab at her clamminess, even clinking her glass with my own. She refuses to so much as touch it, still.

A puff through her nostrils precedes a slight change in attitude, one that shows an open interest as she asks, “And what of you, Tanner? It is merely context to read a person’s profile, but what about the story as told through your own lens?”

“Hang on, before that,” I stave her off for but a moment, “it’s been on my mind for a while, but you once told me you’re helping as a way to show more independence from Yukari, right?”

“Correct,” she allows the conversation to remain on her for a little longer. “Why would such a thing be on your mind?”

“Because you’ve always struck me as independent. Is that really the right description? Again, you’d just take on your own work that interested you if you just wanted food for thought.”

“I more explicitly stated that Lady Yukari would call it ‘learn to be more than machine.’ Is that not a sufficient explanation?” She eyes me down with a sidelong glance.

I hum at the memory of her words back at Eientei, “It’s an explanation, but also begs another question: weren’t you a person before you were a machine? Is that something someone can forget?”

“If you should let the machine work without restraint for long enough, yes,” she replies. A moment passes in silence. I toss an eye to find the carved creases of a mourner across her forehead, for as subdued as they might be. “There is more to that question, actually…”

I tilt my head for her to continue, leaving my glass to hang from my fingers.

“I would say… I also wished to forget.”

“What? How to be a person?”

“Who I was,” she corrects.

Another moment passes as I conjure an appropriate question. It might be better to console someone if they said that, but Ran and I are far too pragmatic to solve our personal dilemmas through kind words.

“Why would you want to forget who you were? Much less if it actually worked…” I raise a brow, noticing that she rarely separates the shikigami from herself in conversation.

She sighs, knowing she’s in too deep to back out of sharing now, “It did not work. Not entirely. Memories remain, though their emotional weight has been removed. That includes the reason behind my actions.”

“Your reasons were based on emotions?” I pick apart her words, making sure to not discount a single syllable as unimportant.

She smirks at my bemusement, “Shocking, is it? It is apt for someone who has only known the servant Ran Yakumo, and not the antecedent Ran.”

“And what did that other Ran think was worth leaving her life behind for?”

Picking up her glass, she stares through the whiskey and towards the back wall. The collection of shot glasses line the shelves, several still displaced for cleaning before tonight. “You retain some of the normalcy of your prior life, as well. Taking from Lady Yukari’s methodology, let me turn the question back to you. What convinced you to stay in Gensokyo?”

I lean an arm onto the bar to directly face her, heckling, “Are you asking to answer my question or because you’re curious after the whole thing with Eternity?”

“Kamishirasawa was correct to say we partake in sophistry,” she muses with a smile. “Regardless, I believe you’ve answered my question. For my part, I was taken by a sense of wonder.”

“Wonder? … To a nine tailed fox?”

“Mm,” she agrees. “My lady is magnitudes above what I considered possible after so many centuries of life. It truly is difficult to believe.”

I chuckle, “I guess it would be her. Should’ve seen it coming.”

She considers the glass for a moment, and then breaks into an oration with unprecedented passion, “If there is anything I hope you come to know, Tanner, it is this. I have lived many lives, some peaceful, some violent, others scrupulous, and more unprincipled. From living them all I came to a conclusion.” She pauses to take a sip from her glass, expelling a discontent moan at the liquor. “It is best to observe those that understand what you may not, and no one understands more than Lady Yukari.”

I take another swig of my glass, and wonder, “You think I know anything you don’t? Is that why you’re so attached to me?” The question may have been prompted by a bit of liquid courage, but it’s honest enough.

“You understand how to learn, Tanner. That is something the fox in that portrait could never appreciate. She only wished to know,” she shares, giving some plausible compliment to shut me up. “Now, you have delayed your own story long enough.”

“Hah, sure enough!” I cackle, wondering where I should start for her.

The rest of the afternoon is spent sating Ran’s questions of me. While I thought I could get away with embellishing some parts of my life, she picks out the discrepancies in an instant, even stating the correct age I was when I joined the military. Maybe I haven’t been wary enough of her. Or maybe that old paranoia is striking me. Either way, I don’t think she’s ever been this freely open with me, and if I have to swallow my pride and thank Yukari for this little diversion, I guess that isn’t the worst thing in the world.

State: Eternity observation: Lecture Day
Time: 1:50 PM, Afternoon
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“Hold a moment, Wriggle!” I call the little bug Youkai as she attempts to escape from the chaos. The villagers filter out around her, antsy to get away from the room with its newly forming draft. While I don’t blame them, I do wonder if they consider the fact that Kazami and Okina already left. It’s not like they’re gonna take their fight back here.

Wriggle waddles up to the front of the class as the last humans leave the room. Only the gaggle of anything but remains, myself included, of course. Yukari tries to make herself small in the corner of the room, checking over her transcription as if she could make a mistake. Keine slips behind me, tapping me aside as she kneels by the podium.

“Pardon me, Tanner,” she excuses herself, taking a palm sized object from the podium’s inner shelf. Her eyes trail below, brows popping in surprise before shooting back to me. “I need to measure the amount of wall we need replaced.” Looks like she already knows what I’m planning, walking over to the new entry without a word else.

I greet the bug, “Last I saw you, you were half the bug you used to be.”

“And you still had a little hair left, baldy,” she presses back.

My smile drops into its serious, parental figure role, questioning the girl, “Have you talked with Eternity since then?”

“Uh…” she immediately avoids my gaze.

“You both have very little to apologize for, if you ask me,” I allow my nosiness to interject. “I’m sure you can hug it out and call it good.”

She crosses her arms and pouts, “What makes you so sure? I bet she’d think I’m lying, or that I forgot, ‘cause she’s mean like that.”

I puff at her, “Just call it intuition. I mean, it’s also a bet.”

I swing my leg under the podium, bashing something that then pops into the underside shelf. The noise rings through the room as a small, familiar voice whines, “Owww…”

Wriggle’s antennae prick up at the sound. “Huh? That’s…”

Aqua hair and colorful clothes crawl out from under the podium, the girl wearing them rubs the top of her head, patting down her osmeterium in the movement. When going to stand, stretching her back and wings, she stares daggers through Wriggle.

“Mean?” Eternity repeats the choicest word.

“Oh, uh,” Wriggle sputters at being called out, “sorry.”

Eternity puts hands to her hips, complaining, “Honestly! Talking about me like that just because you think I’m not here.”

I pat the girl’s shoulder, noting, “You can’t act like you’re any better. I’ll gladly jog your memory of every little complaint you have about her and Kazami.”

“Please don’t,” she stuffs her overenthusiastic moralizing.

“And what are some of the things she complained about?” Wriggle croons my way.

I lean down, pinching her cheek with nothing but my voice, “Nothing for you to hear, little firefly. I’m trying to get you two to make up, not throw insults at one another.”

“Well I don’t know how she’d insult me, but... was it really okay to say all that at the end?” Eternity wonders, acting like she isn’t totally redirecting the conversation right in my face.

I wittingly reflect her intonation, “Well ignoring your poor sleight of hand for a second, I did pass it by Kasen before this. We agreed that the village should know you at least exist, instead of keeping it all some conspiratorial drudgery.”

“I don’t think Okina is very happy about that,” Eternity is quick to comment. “But, I guess she won’t be doing much with Yuuka around.”

I nod, satisfied with this conclusion. “Yep, now you don’t need to worry about those grown up troubles. That leaves just one loose end,” I insist, pushing her towards Wriggle.

Wriggle catches her, hardly perturbed by the fairy sized god’s stumbling. “You can’t just expect us to make up because you ask, old man,” the bug refutes.

“Sure I can! ‘Cause I’ve got a trick that you’re gonna hate but I can guarantee works,” I threaten.

Wriggle rights the butterfly, letting the girl fight back, “You’re lying. You’re gonna say something stupid and act smart about it.”

“Darn right I am,” I agree, snapping my fingers. “I’m glad people understand where I’m coming from. So now what I want you two to do is simple: apologize to one another.”

“What?” they each ask.

“Are you kidding?” Wriggle finds problem with my request. “It can’t be that simple.”

“Well I’m telling you it is. All you both gotta do is tell the other that you’re sorry. Even if you don’t mean it, that doesn’t matter. It’s about how you take it going forward. The lie can become true later, basically,” I deliberate. They give me empty stares, like I just said the most… okay, it is a little ridiculous, I’ll admit.

A crack escapes Eternity, turning into a rowdy laugh in the next breath. She lets the sound fill the room, garnering a weak, confused chuckle from her friend before telling me through choppy bursts, “You’re ridiculous! I’m not a child, you know, but I suppose I’ll try it your way.”

She pivots on a heel to face Wriggle, and stands tall. “Wriggle, I’m sorry I didn’t share things Yuuka and I were doing. I didn’t know it was so important to you but I could have still brought you along.”

Wriggle scratches at her cheek, looking awkward at the inconsistently verbose ‘fairy.’ She utters her own apology, starting with, “Uhm, yeah, thanks. I, uh– I guess I’m sorry for… being a jealous idiot?”

“Good enough!” Eternity delights in the young Youkai’s uncertainty. She takes her hand, looking sprightly as a fairy. “C’mon, I wanna show you that book all the way through!”

“Hey, before that,” I interject, “try to bully Kazami into saying sorry for being unapproachable.”

Eternity giggles, Wriggle naturally chuckles as well. “I think Yuuka would die of embarrassment before she would,” Wriggle answers, being pulled away from the room.

They pass by Keine, jumping out the open wall to a few words of nagging, and backed by their own fiendish giggles. The room quiets down after a few seconds, now leaving only two of the women I think about the most.

“Well,” Yukari opens the floor in her disguised voice, “should I apologize to you, Tanner? For what, I wonder? Forcing you under my service?”

“We both know that isn’t true. And sadly, I don’t think it’d ever be true. You gotta follow through with your actions for that kinda apology,” I tout my philosophy.

“So we’re finally on speaking terms?” Keine points to her presence.

“We never weren’t,” Yukari lies again, stepping from her desk. With a spinning hop she clads herself in the long blonde of her sagely self. It occurs to me that her sense of dress is not unlike Okina’s, or perhaps it’s the other way around? Curiously, the stack of papers next to her don’t include any newspaper articles.

“I should gut you for the dangers you’re putting Tanner in,” Keine growls. She moves to my side, putting herself ever so slightly between Yukari and I.

“Aw, and here I thought we could be friends,” Yukari openly mocks her vitriol, pointing at us with a folded fan. “We’ll return to your threats, and why they will be taken into consideration, in a moment. First… Tanner.”

“Oh boy,” I mutter under my breath.

She leans in, and almost seems to taunt, “Did you ever find why?”

“Why what?” I ask, but already know exactly what she means.

“Why is Gensokyo for everyone?” she cheers at her own intellect, offering the question out by her hands.

My lip curls at her haughtiness. “It doesn’t matter,” I report. “We’re all here, so it doesn’t matter as long as we focus on the lives we do have.”

“Ooh, the optimistic nihilist approach,” she coos. “I should have suspected you’d be so inclined.”

“And?” I try to prick her for more. “What’s your reasoning? After… what, centuries of deliberating? You’ve gotta have some point so profound that you’ll blow my mind,” I bleat, motioning my hands in corresponding effect. “Well, c’mon. Profound upon me.”

She amusedly sniffs at my pontificating, barely audible over the empty room. “Oh, forgive me,” she feigns humility, “I simply can’t help myself amongst you all. To think even poor sweet Kasen would remain befuddled.”

“Cut the shit, Yukari,” I accuse, letting my patience slip. “What’s the actual point of this little exercise? Showing me your vaunted way of rule by detachment, unlike the other bumbling sages?”

She swats away the notion with her fan, saying, “No, no, nothing of the sort. It was never about rule. In fact, it was never a metaphorical question to begin with, but a metaphysical. Why does Gensokyo accept all?”

“Because it does,” I groan out a trivial answer, one without any proof, hypothesis, or really any statement.

She relaxes down to a black void, sitting on emptiness against noncontinuous emptiness, its corners decorated with ribbons “Not far off,” she admits. “You see, our dear little Eternity was actually quite close when she stated that Gensokyo remembers all. Gensokyo does, indeed, remember, and it uses that memory to bring us here before we should be forgotten by all, for all time.”

“And what does that mean?” I attempt to follow what she’s saying, but to consider the barrier, or maybe Gensokyo itself, to remember things– people is hard to grasp. Like some sort of digitization of information against the event horizon of a black hole.

“Well, first it means that all who could be forgotten by a large enough quantity of minds will be under it’s watchful gaze, but also that it is only the residents of Gensokyo who can decide whether someone may be brought into the fold, or otherwise rejected.”

“So you’re saying that the sages do moderate who’s here or not? What happened to Gensokyo accepts all?” I point out the conflicting information in her explanation.

“It’s a cruel, cruel thing,” she finishes the adage with an impish smirk. “That isn’t to say that I agree with their policy. I am, after all, a hands off ruler.”

“You really are incorrigible,” I espouse.

“Someone must be if they are to properly teach you,” she retorts.

“And how does Tanner fit into all of this? Why ‘teach’ him, Yukari?” Keine finally brings up. “Even after seeing him so many times within Gensokyo’s building history, I still do not understand his role.”

This gives the sage a moment of pause, as if she never considered the possibility. “He appears within your limited omniscience? How intriguing,” she comments, letting the ribbon on her hat droop forward. “But truly, with the both of you together, I’m shocked you haven’t concluded why I brought him to Gensokyo.”

“Which is?” I growl, having enough of her riddles.

She smiles to offer a new one, “You’ll find the reason much closer, but so much more distant than you might consider. Truly, think. What is this work, who does it serve, what does it achieve?”

My lips rear at her insistent demeaning, and I slam the nearest desk roaring, “Tell me now or so help me god I will stuff that pile of paper down your throat, Yukari! I am done working without a god damn explanation!”

This earns a raised eyebrow from her, at most. Keine holds my arm, reminding me to keep whatever composure I can. She doesn’t speak up, and I have to remind myself that despite her whimsy, Yukari is not to be antagonized. The air settles for a moment as I reel in my breathes.

Believing I’ve calmed down enough, Yukari unfurls her fan over her lips, eyes narrowing as she states, “If you will not work, then your position will be concluded.”

The air is arrested at the words.

“Concluded?” Keine whispers, terrified by the implication.

“Concluded. To return from whence you came. As if this were no more than a dream.”

“Excuse me?” I can’t imagine she’s being anything more than exaggerative or hyperbolic.

She continues to lay into me, “I’m sure you’d love to wake up in that oily, secondhand leather recliner in front of your TV, surrounded by empty bottles and expired medication. Say, didn’t that pill bottle state not to mix with alcohol? Oh well, such warnings are only suggestions, you’ll surely walk off one bad night.”

I finally pick up on the extent of her threat, and though my blood drains I still contend, “You’re bluffing.”

She looks up at me, and I wish I could see any of that playful nonchalance in her eyes. “Am I? Do you believe, in your heart of hearts, that I cannot do something I claim if I should feel so spiteful?”

I do not dare answer. I’ve invited the wrath of something I still have yet to fully understand, and I should be thankful that she wants me around despite my penchant for instigating.

“Yukari!” Keine bellows, looking ready to jump across the room herself. “You will do no such thing under my watch!”

Yukari is hardly phased by her conviction, folding her fan again to point. “I am hardly concerned by you. I do not need your forgiveness. I do not require your permit. I do not so much as want your support. You are only here to remind Tanner that he is of more than one pair. I can thankfully order Ran away from these conversations, but thought it would be polite to include you.”

“Polite?! You’re threatening to send him away because he doesn’t fit into your nonsensical plans!” she nearly shrieks.

“And I could threaten so much worse, dear hakutaku,” Yukari warns.

I can feel Keine about to explode next to me, and now I’m the one grabbing her arm, hoping that I can hold her back because I absolutely need to. She takes a moment to tug against my hold, but stops as soon as she looks back at me, throwing a fist down in rage. I can’t imagine the look on my face that stopped her.

“Good boy, I’m glad you understand,” Yukari mocks my reluctant obedience. She picks up the pile of papers and passes them into the void she’s sitting on, thrusting her arm out of a gap that appears right in front of me. “Perhaps we may consider your next assignment a sort of punishment for insubordination.”

I take the stack, letting her retract the appendage to the rest of her body. “Using vaguely militant terminology isn’t going to shove me back in line,” I snarl.

She smiles in return. “It was only a joke. You’re well acquainted with such vocabulary, so I’m sure you’ll be fine this week as well.” The gap opens wider below her, and she tilts back into it with a pleased, “Goodbye.”

Her dress flips up as she falls in, the visage of a purple dress gone in an instant as I release my grip on Keine. Taking a look at the cover page of my next assignment, I can’t feel any ease, though.

Aya Shameimaru.

[Please wait warmly for researcher to read study material…]

[… Continued]

“… Shit,” I curse at the world under my breath.

Shameimaru is not a name I wanted to see in one of these packets. I could tell since the first time I read a Bunbunmaru news page that we’d get on about as well as oil and water. Her opinions are grating at the best of times, but then she adds in little unnecessary comments, the kind that serves no informational purpose besides bashing whatever she’s talking about. I guess it wouldn’t be a stretch to say I simply dislike journalists.

I guess it also wouldn’t be a further stretch to say I dislike most tengu by principle.

“Tanner, that’s the third time you’ve sworn without explaining your problem,” Keine nags as I’m flipping through the scant provided information on Shameimaru. She left about an hour ago to get a quote for the open wall and came back to find me in exactly the same huddled corner of the classroom picking through papers.

“I realize. I’m trying to determine where the hell to go with this,” I refer to one page in particular, tossing Akyuu’s Perfect Memento article from the pack for Keine to inspect. For all that I know of Aya’s opinions and thoughts, I barely know a damn thing about her otherwise. Akyuu is also freakishly unhelpful here, too, as her report states the most obvious parts as if it were new. She’s a reporter that flies around Gensokyo really fast. Yeah, I got it, Aya’s said as much herself in multiple of her papers.

Keine stares at the page for a few moments, noting, “Mm, now I see why you’re so antsy. Shameimaru? Really? I wonder what Yukari is getting at.”

From her post at the side of the room, Ran offers a hypothesis, “It is likely a tactic meant to guide you towards her desired conclusion.”

“And what conclusion would that be?” I press my partner.

Her eyes slit down in offense. “Do you believe Lady Yukari would allow me to tell you if I did know? She still feels the need to seclude me when speaking with you. At most we may assume it pertains to the question she asked.”

“What does this work achieve?” I repeat, leaning back in my seat.

“As well as what the work is and who it serves,” Ran reminds me.

I rub at the bridge of my nose, groaning, “This nonsense again?”

Keine sets down the paper I handed her and takes another page, this one a census form of the tengu village. It split the village into about four sections, but how am I supposed to know what meaning that has? Aya is listed under section three, but does she actually live in the village? I thought she was generally an outcast from what Hatate once told me.

Speaking of whom, I haven’t spoken with Hatate since she wrote an article on me in her own paper. Although it was some months ago, I wonder if she’d be willing to help me at all…

“The first step will be finding Miss Shameimaru, I suppose,” Keine tries to piecemeal the problem. “If you can confidently find her, then you can speak to any topic you should wish. Not unlike a certain sage we know, hm?”

A few goosebumps tickle the back of my neck, and spew, “I feel greasy just thinking about it. Do I really not have any other options?” I crane my neck over to my partner, leaning on the edge of the desk. “What about you, Ran? Can’t you just use your shikigami to find her?”

Ran seems to come alive from her watch to deny, “Shameimaru does not have a regular point of activity outside of the tengu village. Finding her via shikigami would require processing surveillance feeds equivalent to an entire city’s street and security cameras combined. That is not a valuable use of resources.”

I slump a bit in my seat, sighing, “Should’ve figured.”

I scratch at the stubble on my scalp. Everyone present for the lecture couldn’t stop staring at it, as if I were trying to make a fashion statement. Another point to add to why I’m not enjoying today.

I get up from the desk and make my way to the front of the class. I snatch the nubbiest piece of chalk and take to the blackboard, drawing a crude house. Striking an arrow towards it and tapping the shape to ask, “What’s stopping me from going to her house and waiting for her to get back?”

Keine and Ran glance at one another. Ran doesn’t bother humoring the question while Keine retorts a baffled, “Are you truly asking or are being belligerent?”

I consider for a moment if I’m being petulant rather than trying to solve a problem. When I find the answer is yes to both I reply, “I’d go spear fishing in the Sanzu River before letting Aya dictate when I meet her for my work.”

Keine screws her lips at my hyperbole, now addressing, “I can understand your distaste. I’ve also thought of kicking her out of the village on numerous occasions, but I still feel like you might be convincing yourself she’s worse than reality.”

I grunt at the calm evaluation. “I just don’t like news reporters. You can imagine why.”

“You seemed alright with Miss Himekaidou.”

I shrug. “Well… she didn’t feel like she was digging for dirt on me. Whether that’s true or not I guess I can’t be sure, but at least she pretended to be polite, then.”

“You have forgotten the occasion she offered you a photo of Nitori Kawashiro’s injury due to Hina Kagiyama’s misfortune,” Ran recounts.

“I’m willing to overlook it,” I hold.

Keine sighs at my stubbornness, though the sound is more pleasant, like she’s trying to not agree with my misgivings on the grounds of rightness. “Well…” she starts, joining me at the blackboard and taking a piece of yellow chalk. She draws a winding line from the tail of my arrow. “From my own diplomatic pursuits–” she sneaks in an excuse against her usual holdup, “there are a few places that you’re going to be held up.”

Ran paces next to me as Keine sketches in a few key positions, all with the same mathematical detail as my lonely little hovel. One a set of trees, another a gate, and the last a batch of houses.

I point to the trees and guess, “The patrols?”

“Who you once ran into, I believe,” Keine tugs at my cheek over one of the things I tried to omit from her.

“Hey, Inubashiri didn’t try to arrest me on sight, so the infraction wasn’t that serious.”

“Perhaps, but we still needed to bargain with her for something minor. Imagine asking her to lead you to the tengu village,” she argues back.

“She won’t be happy, that’s for sure.” I cup my chin, thinking on ways around the problem. “I could use some formal statement of diplomacy to get past her. She’d probably have to default to her superior’s call if I weasel my way out of enough warnings… ugh…” I gag at the end.

“What’s wrong?” Keine tends to me at the flip of a switch.

“Nothing. Just… weasels,” a rather unfortunate mountain venture crops to mind.

“That weasel wished to be sent to a sub-realm of hell, Tanner,” Ran reminds me. “It is difficult to find a greater level of irony in the fulfillment of its request.”

“You’re not helping,” I bicker. “Does Inubashiri care about anything else? She’ll think I’m desperate if I bring up Nitori again. Can’t really gift her anything, either. Maybe something that could tie her down.”

Keine nudges me. “You’re thinking like Yukari again,” she deliberates.

“Ah,” I sputter, tilting my head ashamedly. “Right, keep it simple. Diplomacy.”

Keine hums at the conclusion, “Probably for the best.” She draws a symbol next to the trees, and moves on without a thought.

I pull her back to the symbol and ask, “Why in the world did you draw a swastika?”

She seems to have expected the question, but not in the way I’m asking, as she begins to spill out, “Ah, well, the tengu have a sort of history with Buddhist practices, our friends on Youkai Mountain being no exception. While they don’t hold it to the same prestige these days, it is still an underpinning piece of their culture. As for the swastika, the tengu’s specific practice of Buddhism doesn’t contain much symbology for something like peace, so I chose the closest thing from more recognized practices. Honestly, they might not like the idea because they’re more reluctant to be a part of the core cyclic beliefs of Buddhist theology due to being Youkai… Actually, believe it or not, the previous leader of the tengu–“

I stop her mid sentence, “I’m not sure I follow all of the history. I’m just taken aback by it because of its more modern association.”

“The modern association?” Keine curls a brow at the words, looking almost distraught about something she’s poured so much thought into.

“World War II?” I try.

“Oh,” she squeaks, looking at the drawing again. “… I could change it if it has that strong of an impression.”

I wave her off. “No, I think you made– multiple points for why it’s fine, actually. Let’s just move on.”

She paces to the drawing of a gate. Not a torii, but more of an actual gate set into a wall, like the village’s. “Do the tengu actually have a secure wall?” I wonder aloud.

“No, but they do have multiple checkpoints. You and Mokou happened to find yourselves in one once.”

“So you asked her after the other day,” I comment.

“Of course I did. I wouldn’t gloss over the tengu imprisoning two people I care so deeply for,” she says without an ounce of embarrassment. “As for where they all are…”

“Eight in total. Each is located on the cardinal direction or combination thereof to represent the direction of winds,” Ran imparts. “You may already guess what formation their spacing takes.”

“Thank you, Ran,” Keine jumps back in. “They use small buildings to hold people before sending them back down the mountain. They tend to keep people to find better excuses, though. The most significant one being–“ She sneaks her hand into my pants pocket, snagging out my folding knife. “Weaponry.”

“Like I can even use it,” I counter.

Keine shakes her head. “Not the point. This is more dangerous than a bullet to Youkai. Smaller weapons have a lot of intent when you attack someone, and intent is what’s important. A tengu would think having this is the same as planning to use it.” She stows the piece in a seam on her dress, one which I hadn’t realized could hold things. “And don’t mention that you’re cursed. Gods know what they’d do.”

“So don’t give them an excuse to kick me off the mountain?” I summarize.

“Or be imprisoned. Again,” Ran appends.

“I don’t remember us getting out of that situation when you were in the lead, either,” I snark back.

“Systems are not designed to be underclocked.”

“Enough, you two,” Keine tuts, drawing an ‘x’ around a crude knife before tapping the last picture on the board. “You can guess the last obstacle.”

“The village?” I consider the location, though find myself having difficulty describing it as an ‘obstacle.’ And besides that, “So is Aya not in the village?”

Keine points her chalk at me to assent, “She is not. She’s listed as living there, but in reality she lives on the outskirts, not unlike our village’s resident ronin. The problem is they won’t let you go without visiting their village hall.”

I grin at the thought, and jeer, “What? Gonna tell me I need a warrant to visit Aya’s home?”

“Well…” Keine trails off scratching at her neck.

“Seriously?”

“Let’s hope not,” she mutters. “I doubt you’ll see a great tengu, either way. Do they still ignore face to face meetings, Ran?”

Ran thinks on her answer for a long drawn second, slit eyes wandering elsewhere before responding, “They do indeed. They claim to respond to meetings several months out by schedule, but there have been no examples of individuals following up this claim.”

“How do they lead if they don’t see anyone?” I naively guffaw.

“An excellent question,” Ran is the one to reply.

Keine picks up the actual discussion, circling the group of houses for emphasis, “I’ve tried multiple times before, but get held all day in their reception room. The fact they call it a room is also an insult. It’s more of a box smaller than my schoolhouse study. Somehow their holding cells are more accomadating.”

“You’ve been jailed, too?” I catch on to her slip up.

She freezes at my jab, pale eyebrows shooting under paler bangs as she fumbles for a curt response. “I… imagine you wouldn’t want to see me at your doorstep unannounced.”

I narrow my gaze at her, loosing in seconds flat, “I’d invite you in wholeheartedly.” I can see Ran shake her head in the corner of my eye. She doesn’t get the art of campy pick up lines.

But Keine is certainly weak to them, as a light blush fills her cheeks. She taps the board a few more times and obstinately asserts, “On topic, dear.”

“Right, right,” I relent, backing off from the flustered woman. “So, getting the attention of the big wigs.”

“Please don’t cause another incident,” Keine begs. I’m pinched by her tone of voice lacking any levity.

“I’ll try not to cause something,” I assure her. “But if they get too thickheaded…”

“Just–“ she stutters, “promise me you won’t bring up Buddhism. Or the Moriya Shrine. Or the fact that you helped in the trial against Miss Kagiyama.”

“And the jailbreak?” I snicker to her grief.

“None of it!” she gets short with me, slapping the chalk into my arm.

So, see myself into the middle of a people that really don’t like visitors. Feels like I’m going down memory lane today.

[x] Why change the formula? Let’s kidnap Nitori and walk right in to spite it all!

[x] Maybe I should check in with the yamawaro. Surely Takane and I can cobble together something clever.

[x] Who else do I know that can, or would, help me? (write-in)

[x] Maybe I should check in with the yamawaro. Surely Takane and I can cobble together something clever.
-[x] it still ends up involving kidnapping Nitori

“Oh, I think I recognize that tree,” I point to a particular tree a couple dozen feet from us. It looks like it never healed off the stab wound Takane gave it. I should poke fun at how dramatic she was in our first encounter.

“And? Are you thinking you want to get strung up on another snare?” Nitori bickers from Ran’s shoulder. “You know what, go do that, I’d love to have an excuse to leave and get back to what I was doing.”

When I asked Ran to fetch Nitori this morning, she didn’t bother asking why. She simply left and came back in twenty minutes flat with the kappa in tow. It took a bit to explain that I wanted to convene with the yamawaro, the irate turtle interrupting every other sentence, but still Ran didn’t question why. I told her my general plan yesterday, but for her to not beat back any aspect of its validity is… different. Maybe I’ve finally hit a good enough track record in her eyes.

“How far does that leave us from the camp?” I ask my partner.

“About a quarter of a kilometer, depending on exact travel path,” she prints back.

I tap my shoe into place. I’ve been doing a lot of walking lately, and I can start to feel the wear in the sole, but now’s not the time to be worrying about where I’m supposed to find dress shoes. “You’d think we could just fly in if they have an open borders policy, now.”

“So you’re telling me you’d be fine if someone was flying over your house?” Nitori posits.

“I’d say that’s different from landing inside.”

Nitori goes to contest the thought, but Ran holds up a finger, looking into a set of nearby trees. We wait a breath as the rustle of red and orange gives way to a figure in green. A yamawaro lands next to us, a net slung over their shoulder and a few shuriken gripped between their fingers.

“You three look pretty darn suspicious,” the little ninja greets. “Although, I guess you’re also pretty recognizable. You need any assistance, Kawashiro? If they’re holding you unwillingly I’ll help however I can.”

“A brave thing to say to the face of a Yakumo,” Ran warns the girl to no reaction in return.

Nitori grumbles in response, “I wouldn’t say you need to go that far. I don’t want to be here, but it’s not like I’m gonna say no to visiting family.” But she’s perfectly alright if Ran and I get hurt, huh?

The yamawaro nods, whistling in the direction she came. A few extra rustles disturb some leaves from the trees as other yamawaro accompanying the first leave the area.

“I’ll lead you to the camp. Though, Lady Yakumo probably knows the way.”

Ran addresses the yamawaro again, “Correct, but remain within your presiding tasks. We would be stopped at the camp entrance if arriving alone.”

The yamawaro grunts in affirmation, turning on the dirt road to lead forward. We travel the last quarter kilometer in relative silence, only broken up by the small creatures of the far side of Youkai Mountain. It’s been a long while since I’ve been on this side, and it certainly looks much different with the late fall leaves covering large swathes of tree roots. I nearly trip over the buried tendrils as we take the most direct approach to the camp.

I barely recognize the site as we enter; it’s like a ghost town. No guard at the entrance, no bodies moving around inside. Just one yamawaro doing some accounting work off to the side gives us a passive gaze on our way. To Ran’s credit, the accountant doesn’t even raise a brow with the patrolman leading our group.

We arrive at Takane’s tent, the patrol guard lifting the tent flap for us to enter. There’s hardly any room to do so, with Ran especially taking up almost the whole space between her tails and Nitori’s backpack, as piles of papers dense enough to give Akyuu an aneurysm chokes the interior.

A lone girl with green hair and clothes sits in the middle of it all, her prized box lying beside her with a layer of dust accumulated over weeks of paper pushing. Takane is nearly buried under the papers, as well as a newly present wooden desk only adding to the clutter. I’m hardly surprised by the bags under her eyes as she gives us a dark, unamused look.

“I was told you were coming. Really is quite a day if the three of you are together,” the de facto leader of the yamawaro greets us. Whether she’s tired or just plain unhappy is difficult to pin down.

Ran sets our captive kappa down between us, barely leaving any legroom. Nitori doesn’t bother against the shikigami ropes restraining her, having once been under the foxes thumb in an all too similar situation. She looks up to the desk, but it’s clear she can’t see over it and find the occupant.

The yamawaro looms over the wood to look down at her sister, greeting, “Nitori.”

“Takane,” Nitori returns the word of greeting. I can already tell that they’re on better terms, considering the lack of insults within the last ten seconds.

“How’s development on that miniaturized wearable weapons platform coming along?”

“Not fantastic. You’d be shocked at how hard it is to put a wrecking ball on the end of an arm mounted exoskeleton.”

“You know, somehow I don’t think I would,” Takane laughs over the deathly sagged look in her face.

“And what about you? I don’t remember you ever being this unkempt.” Nitori gives a crooked eye to the surrounding chaos, inviting us to gaze upon it as well to Takane’s grievance.

The yamawaro leans back in her chair, reluctantly accepting, “Yeah, I didn’t think opening the camp would lead to this. I wasn’t expecting visitors at all, but then they started coming, buying small goods, and finally ordering our lumbers and metals.” She topples a stack of papers with a kick, looking more defeated by its existence than any hassle it will be to sort again. “It’s a mountain of problems, big as the one we’re sitting on. Not to mention how short staffed we are with all the seasonals gone.”

“How terrible,” Nitori expresses in monotone.

Takane shoots her a cross look and heaves a sigh before asking me, “So what brings you to my desk with my kidnapped sister? Knowing you, it must be research.”

“In defense, she refused to listen to any offer of the trip, much less acquiescing the invitation,” Ran holds to her pride.

“I am standing right here, asshole,” Nitori does not hesitate in retaliating. “Go on, undo these bindings. See how much I acquiesce.”

I cut off the rambunctious midget’s tirade, “I’ve come to ask for your help. From both of you.”

“Doing a real good job getting me on your side,” Nitori chafes, shrugging under the ropes.

“Quiet for a second, Nitori,” her sister hushes. “You haven’t asked me for help before, so this must be dire. I’ll hear you out, but helping is a different matter. My own problems are burying me alive, here.”

I tilt my head and play with her words, “Calling it dire might be overkill. I need to get into the tengu village and meet Aya Shameimaru.”

She has a double take at my words. “No, I’d definitely call that dire. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that’s hopeless.”

“Hopeless? Really?” I’m taken aback. “I find that hard to swallow.”

She leans in and taps her fingers, listing off, “I’ve got work from the tengu, the kappa, the tsuchigumo, the oni of old and even new hell– no, I don’t know what new hell wants with construction items– but who do you think is the most troublesome of that bunch?”

“Given the topic, you’re going to say the tengu.”

Takane seethes through her teeth, “The rowdy horned drunks pay off their bills. Tengu don’t.” She starts jamming a finger to a particular pile of paper separated from its peers. “At least not in the last couple months, anyway… And they make it a total pain in the ass to file complaints! I’m trying to do business! You want to enter their territory to visit somebody? Even if it’s Shameimaru, good fucking luck.”

I note the more interesting tidbit there, “She’s that alienated from her own kind?”

“Besides the point,” Takane confirms, waving off the thought. “You’re better off going to somewhere she shows up, instead of hounding her down. It’s why most people don’t get the chance to sock her in the face.”

“She’d beat you pretty easily, Takane,” Nitori draws her sister’s ire.

“It’d be worth giving her a bloody nose.”

“Hang on,” I take Takane from her wishes of violence, “That’s exactly what I don’t want to do.”

She dips her head towards a lowered eyebrow.

I continue, “If she controls the conditions I see her, that means she can make any demand she wants. As soon as she hears a deal she doesn’t like, or I give her any push back at all, that place she frequents won’t be so frequent anymore.”

Nitori is about to say something, but stops herself and considers the point, allowing, “That does sound like her, actually.”

“And ‘ya can’t just give her what she’d want? You got something to hide?” Takane challenges.

“Do you?” I sneer back.

She snorts, “Smug asshole. Guess that’s fair.”

“Then if we’re on the same page–“

“Yeah, yeah,” she dismisses, “untie Nitori real quick. I got something to show her.”

Ran looses the bindings on the kappa without a second thought, letting the little tempestuous miscreant slink to her sister’s side. She’s still patting down a few overly compressed areas as Takane hands off a particular page from the stack she’s shown the most frustration with. Nitori inspects the page, guided to a few locations by the butt of Takane’s pen, and ending with something near the bottom Takane explicitly circles.

“What the hell is this?” Nitori grouses.

“They’re all like that.”

Her blue pigtails nearly smack her face as she whips back to Takane. “All of them?!”

“For the past two months, all of them.”

Nitori glances from her sister over to Ran and I then back. Takane shoots her a quizzical eye, receiving another baffled head shake back, and gestures to me as if I were self evidently the answer. Nitori stares quite blankly at the insinuation.

Nitori covers her eyes to think as I query the two, “Care to fill us in?”

Takane clasps her hands over her desk, and tells me, “I think there might be something I, we, can do to help you. But, I need you to solve a problem of mine while you’re at it.”

“Between questions from Aya and requests from you, I’d give you the edge every time.”

She grins at my lack of caution. “Flattered, but don’t jump the gun. I have a shipment of goods ready to head up to the tengu, and you’ll be joining our merry band. Normally I leave a company commander in charge of deliveries, but I’ll head up the pack to make things a bit easier. The wolves get a bit jumpy when I’m around.”

“She once dueled Momiji with a survival knife,” Nitori elaborates, less than impressed by the accolade.

“Once we’re past the gates we find the first available leader to harass and go from there.”

“I don’t see how this would involve me,” I point out.

“No but that’s the idea!” she grins more mischievously. “They’ll think I’m coming on another surprise raid, then leave themselves wide open to allowing a ‘third party’ inspection pair do my dirty work. Trust me, they’d love nothing more than to get me off the mountain way more than you two.”

Nitori rolls her eyes and complains, “Just get on with it. They need to know what they’d be looking for.”

“Shut up, I’m enjoying myself,” Takane gripes. “Tanner, you and Ran need to find the paper trail. I think you’d be better at it than I am. Look for these papers here,” she tells us, sliding the page she showed Nitori to the edge of her desk. “That is a bill. I want to know why the tengu ain’t paying them off. I’m sent back invoices, but no signatures at the bottom for whose wings need clipping.”

“Are you not exaggerating the magnitude of your losses?” Ran proposes over the threats that are hopefully only metaphors.

“Miss Yakumo,” Takane starts calmly before slamming her fist into the desk, “we have supplied them with forty tonnes of lumber, among other things, and haven’t seen a single coin back! By the Dragon, I am this close to slapping the Tenma with this stack of papers until she fixes the problem herself!”

Nitori does her best to settle down the incensed yamawaro, leaving me a few moments to contemplate the plan. I can already imagine how Ran and I might find leads towards this supposed debt accruer, but there’s a lot of factors outside of that which I feel Takane is trying to skip over.

“How does this all actually help me get after Shameimaru?” I question.

Takane, settled back into her chair by excessive coaxing, gives me a wild eye for the assertion of a possibly bad deal. “You’d be doing something nobody wants to be involved in. Anybody that could stop you would be in your immediate crossfire to dig shit up on.”

“Which would appear far more abnormal if attempting to visit Miss Shameimaru,” Ran counters. “While monitoring her house for the presence of persons is trivial, there would be no way to change objectives and meet her without drawing suspicion.”

Takane narrows her eyes as she thinks of the best way to counter our concern. She pats Nitori’s arm, claiming, “Nitori will get on that.”

“I will?” the kappa shows that she knows how to accomplish this about as much as I do. “What the hell do you think I’ll do?”

“I dunno. You know that crow better than I do, so do something that’d draw her to Tanner.”

Nitori shoots her sister a lame look, explaining slowly, “I know Momiji. Momiji is not Aya. I try to stay away from Aya.”

Takane leans in her seat to try muttering so only Nitori can hear, “Just do it or the kappa will not be getting refined metals for a while.”

“You wouldn’t,” Nitori scowls back.

“Forty fucking tonnes. That’s at least three blocks of old hell.”

A tense silence comes between them, broken by a dragging roll of Nitori’s eyes in resignation.

“I think we’ve come to an offer,” Takane reports. “Do you agree to the terms we discussed? I’d put it to paper, but then we’d have our own paper trail to cover up, huh?”

I glance over to Ran. She waves for me to make the final decision, and I’m suddenly feeling the weight of that good track record.

I offer my hand. “I think it sounds obvious enough.”

Takane nearly crumples my fingers in her mounting excitement.

[Please wait warmly as the merry band travels…]

[… Continued]

“Alright, that’s what I like to hear!” Takane cheers, getting up from her chair with the clatter of paper toppling behind her. “We ship out in ten!”

She bumps out past Ran and I, hollering through the camp for any stragglers she can put to work. We follow her out to see a distant tent spring to life, depositing several yamawaro into the open to form up under Takane. Nitori slips around to stay at her sister’s shoulder, reminding the group to leave their weaponry at home. Takane unenthusiastically concedes the point, telling her squad in just a few words to commandeer the next package for the tengu from its company commander and meet us at a gate up the mountain.

The plucky squad shout a worn down, “Yes ma’am!” before breaking up and scattering.

Takane sets to a few other tasks as I track the time: telling Nitori to stay put, informing the accountant to start tackling the work in her tent, and grabbing the attention of the ninja patrol to stay nearby the camp in her absence. By the time she’s done running it’s about ten minutes on the dot.

“Alright you three, pick up your feet, we need to get a move on to meet the wolf tengu ahead of the transport crew,” she starts goading Nitori and I along the dirt trail out of camp. Ran follows along as we start the miserable trek up the mountain.

The sisters are open to banter for the first mile or so, but peter off as we scale higher into tengu territory. Ran gives no indication that anyone has noticed us, leaving the most of the journey in silence. At some point I recognize a small wooden structure in the distance. While not the same one, I can tell that it’s the same sort of guard checkpoint as the one that I, uh… visited one time.

Takane stops in front of the building, sweeping her eyes around the area. “They seriously didn’t even bother showing up,” she growls. A lift at the corner of her lip precedes a loud, “Get out here already!”

I’m startled by the thud of a person landing behind me. Ran scoops me behind her as she greets, “It is rude to keep people following your procedure waiting, Inubashiri.”

The wolf tengu, her white hair shining in the fall colors surrounding us, retorts, “I’ll take the precautions I need before approaching a group like yourself. Any one of you three are a threat on your own. All of you together make for a headache no one wants. No offense, Lady Yakumo.”

“None taken,” Ran allows.

“Wait, what do you mean three?” I wonder, peeking around Ran’s brush of tails.

The wolf rests her palm at the pommel of her blade, pointing at me and rejecting, “You’re hardly worth my time, but you come as a pair with the venerable lady, so I can’t force you away.”

“Venerable was the moniker you were instructed to use, then? I see the tengu do not wish to draw my ire,” Ran gripes.

Takane approaches the wolf, snapping her fingers to draw the guards attention. The hand once resting on the wolf’s blade turns into a proper grip, threatening to draw her weapon, but Takane is far from intimidated by the showing as she berates, “I will not be ignored because you don’t want to fucking deal with me, Inubashiri. I’ve got a shipment coming in with your people’s name attached to the invoice, and I expect you to lead us to the gate when they get here.”

“And you think I’ll agree because you tell me what to do?” Inubashiri pinches down her brow with the admonishment.

“We’re hoping you agree because we don’t want to cause you trouble, Momiji,” Nitori cuts in between the two. She smacks Takane’s shoulder with the back of her hand as she further rounds, “We’re not here to cause her trouble. Right, Takane?”

Takane looks to hold back another grimace as she agrees, “I… guess not.” She dips the brim of her hat down to avoid the wolf’s glare. Maybe in effort to not antagonize, as well.

Inubashiri scans the group, searching for… I’m not quite sure what. The nail that sticks out? She clearly finds our lot suspicious, she said so herself, but I wonder how she plans to make us falter.

“It would be prudent to go along with the yamawaro’s demands,” Ran tells her. “There is no chance of escaping torment from your superiors now that she is here.” She doesn’t see the need in pointing at the recipient of that comment. It’s obvious enough.

“Well screw you, too,” Takane spits.

Inubashiri trails her eyes to the sky, exhaustion settling on her face with every word from Takane’s mouth. “How I wish you weren’t correct, Yakumo. Come with me, I’ll see you all to the entrance. Oh, but first,” she stops, motioning to Takane.

Inubashiri takes a moment to pat down the irritated girl when she approaches. And while she doesn’t find anything at first, she freezes on something around Takane’s nether region. The yamawaro can sense that she’s been had, and attempts to evade the tengu’s grasp at her pants, leading to a brief scuffle over her clothes. She’s convinced to part with a hunting knife from the seam of her pants lest Inubashiri reaches in out of spite. Nitori covers her face in shame of her sister and friend acting like children.

“How many times have you been here? And you’re still trying to pull this?” Inubashiri reprimands, displaying the weapon for us.

“Well you never bother checking her!” Takane fusses, pointing at her sister and the conspicuous, massive backpack she’s wearing.

“That’s because I don’t carry weapons, you idiot. I’ve got nothing but tools on me,” Nitori confidently states, ignoring her earlier comment on the usage of an arm-mounted wrecking ball.

“Nitori, I don’t check you because everyone knows it’s impossible to get every last thing off of a kappa,” Inubashiri scolds her like one would a child. She waves me over next, patting me down like Takane, and gives a solitary nod when not finding anything. She didn’t check me anywhere near as thoroughly, though. “Alright, looks like you’re good to go. We waiting for your supplies or you wanna take care of it at the gate before they’re here?” she queries the ringleader.

“Oh, they’re probably there before us,” Takane muses.

“Hang on,” I start, “why didn’t you bother checking Ran?”

The wolf gives me a side eye, facing back to Takane while mumbling, “I’m just gonna pretend your drunk.”

I elicit some befuddled gasp or another as Ran leans in to divulge, “Miss Inubashiri sees most everything in Gensokyo due to a special power. This includes many events she is not technically allowed to see.”

“So you got her in a racket to look the other way?” I infer.

“If that is how you wish to refer to it,” she acts coy on the matter.

Inubashiri leads us up the mountain, the incline growing with each step. The distance is starting to bite into my calf. I’d like to think I’ve become well versed in hiking after these many months, but scaling an entire mountain is a different beast, for sure. I constantly underestimate how large it is when gazing down from Ran’s arms. Yamawaro, tengu, kappa, the forest sanctuary, the entire Moriya shrine and its lake, it’s big enough to fit all those territorial groups. I’m sure there’s even another half dozen I haven’t met, too.

After a sizable chunk of day goes by we come upon a distinctive wooden structure. It spreads out perpendicular to us, vanishing into the immediate surrounding forest as if a three man high wall isn’t grossly conspicuous. It also begins to dawn on me how high the tree canopy goes up the mountain. I wonder if that’s a natural thing for this part of the world?

I shuffle next to Ran and whisper, “Hey, is that where–“

“No, that wall has been in place for many decades,” she reads my mind. “They have proper documentation for any recent preservation efforts, as well. The previous work was completed approximately ten years ago due to anomalous weather activity causing integrity loss in the foundations.”

“I’ve never spotted this from the air, though,” I contend, unsure how a wall of this size doesn’t cut out a visible portion of the mountain.

Inubashiri commands us to halt, pointing to the squad of yamawaro from earlier now waiting by a mass of wood. She approaches a sliding window in the wall, knocking on it with a beleaguered groan and calling for someone to open up. The window reveals a small room, containing a man dressed in a white button up and slacks. The crook in his back tells me how often he’s seated at his post, and the unkempt hair tells how little he expects company. Still, he bemuses the patrolman with references of unwanted guests and endless paperwork that has nothing to do with him.

As Inubashiri does her best to shut the man up Ran taps me on the shoulder. I glance over to her, our eyes meeting, and she looks up over the wall. She’s set a few shikigami to clear the view up the mountain, and if I was confused about the wall then the tengu village itself will leave me with nightmares.

Wooden structures, most single floor buildings made entirely of wood, scale more mountain than I can see. Some are held up by scaffolding that looks like magic in the way it clings to the cliff faces. Some rest idyllically atop plateaus likely carved into the mountain by hand. Still more find themselves in conglomerations of wood that I can only assume are communal areas, my view obscured to only one side of these masses. From the foot of this village, it looks like chaos. Like the tengu couldn’t agree on where to put what and so they individually decided where they wanted their house or their place of work to go, and made it so no matter what. There’s clearly a deeper organization to it, though. Otherwise it would be impossible to maintain everything for as long as they have.

Inubashiri struts back over to us, no happier than when she started her conversation. She pats Takane on the shoulder and tells us, “You’re up. Good luck getting anywhere with that stick in the mud.”

She walks back into the forest before we get a word in edgewise. A mortified gaze holds over Nitori, now, and I’d hazard to say the irony of that wolf calling someone else a stickler is not a comment she’d use lightly.

Takane takes to the stand, her thick head not one to shy away from any inconvenience if it doesn’t suit her. “Well if it isn’t Kaito,” she greets, resting a hand against the wall. “How do you plan to be a pain in the ass today?”

“You’re a day ahead of schedule,” the checkpoint clerk gets straight into business, not skipping a beat to ignore Takane’s insult. He checks some papers with a stony look before continuing, “I don’t think I can let you in like this.”

“Really, for being a day ahead? We bring this stuff in every week, you idiot,” Takane rumbles. “We’re not gonna bring this back down the mountain just to take it up again tomorrow!”

The tengu in the window closes his eyes, letting the girl’s lashing wash out as another part of the day. It takes him a moment to realize that she’s not going away, and grunts in return, “Please leave before I have to get the guards to haul you off.”

Takane slams a palm into the wood top separating them, yelling, “Why don’t you tell your boys to–!“

Nitori clamps a hand to her sister’s mouth, the garbled mess of insults and threats hardly helping her case to the tengu stopping us. I push the two aside, standing across from the man and his narrowed eyes.

“Hi, sorry about her. She’s having a bad day,” I greet, praying to recoup even the mildest rapport in this conversation.

“And who are you? Wait, now that I see you up close, you’re none of my kith. Why are you dressed like that?” he pointedly remarks.

“Because this is how I dress. I’m sorry if I like looking casually good,” I snub the man’s fixation on my outfit. “Now, you want to keep insulting my dress or do you want to try and address the problem?” I gesture to the yamawaro and kappa now in a wrestling match, cheered on by the shipping team around the lumber.

“Insult?!” the man zeros in on my choice of word, his thin lips curling down in horror. He shakes his head and takes a moment. “No, you’re trying to get a rise out of me. I’m not falling for it. Our leadership are good at keeping to a tight schedule, and you will not treat it as a suggestion.”

I can see his eyes dart up to Ran for a split second, and it strikes me that he’s not demanding me to leave. Is he actually scared of me? Perhaps because Ran is at my flank and not the one addressing him, making me an unknown. I test the waters, “I’m here with them because they have a complaint with your leadership. Maybe I should add your refusal to negotiation as another part of it.”

His lips twitch in a barely contained snarl, his professional demeanor challenged to its utmost. “Is that a threat?”

I can feel my face becoming more punch-able by the second. I’ve found purchase and I won’t let up, “No, it’s exactly what I’m going to bug your superiors with when we do eventually meet them. Unless someone should happen to see us in the next few minutes.”

He stares me down, trying to gauge just how serious I am about this. Whatever he sees in my eye must convince him, as he opens a door behind him to wave down another tengu.

After a few seconds of mumbling he turns back to me, asking, “And what do you want to tell… Who do you want to speak to, exactly?”

“Who’s the invoice going to?”

“The same place as all other paperwork that comes in, the filing department. You’d have to ask them where it goes after that, if anywhere.”

“You seriously can’t contact anyone more relevant?”

He has to pause to take a deep breath, collecting himself before likely jumping through the window. “Well… I can let Lady Iizunamaru know. She takes care of most outside relations.”

I pucker at the thought, not having the best impression of the woman from our last meeting. I suck up my reservations and inform the man, “Alright, then tell her…”

[x] To expect a couple of representatives from the yamawaro to come greet her for sensitive matters.

[x] That the yamawaro won’t be delivering any further supplies until she meets with the entire group.

[x] Something else. (Write-in)

[x] To expect a couple of representatives from the yamawaro to come greet her for sensitive matters.

“Expect a couple of representatives from these folk,” I tell the gate guard, thumbing to the group behind me.

The man raises a brow, crooking his head around me. He doubles back to the door, whispering something to his cohort. Ran unsheathes a hand from her sleeve to object, but second guesses the act. The man looks at us to confirm, “Alright, she’ll expect a human and a fox to show up at her door.”

I plant a hand to the counter between us, griping, “That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

“I couldn’t care less. There’s no chance I’m letting those roughnecks in.” He points at the sisters behind us to prove a point.

The yamawaro shout for their leader to throw the kappa, who is currently dominating a hold. The two kick up bits of dirt and grass in their scuffle. What started as a frustrated bout seems to have become a full blown match, and they don’t look like they’ll tire out anytime soon.

Ran comments on the sight, “They will collect themselves, given time. It would be prudent to meet with Miss Iizunamaru during this. She may be more receptive to a third party’s opinion.”

“Hang on a moment,” I stop Ran. Her eyebrows lift with a wordless question. I ask the man to give us a moment as I drag her away and he tosses back a grunt. Obviously he’s not going anywhere.

Separating from the group, I ponder in a hushed tone, “Can we really speak on Takane’s behalf?”

She blinks, recalibrating the flow of the conversation before quipping, “You already did so once, did you not?”

I scratch the back of my head, and my eyes dart away from her. “That was a bluff, I wasn’t planning on following through if he pressed.”

“Tanner,” she addresses me while leaning closer, “do not lead on a tengu. Shameimaru’s proclivity to investigate is not unique to her. All tengu seek the truth to matters regardless of their stake. Unlike Shameimaru, however, some individuals do come with the required subtlety to coax information from you.” She passes an eye over to the gate guard, wary of what he might have already deduced.

“Don’t string lies,” I simplify, trying to lighten up her mood. “Sorry, but we’re already paddling upriver, aren’t we. Plus, if that’s what you’re worried about, why didn’t you stop me from agreeing to Takane’s plan?”

“There was little other choice,” she admits, “we’re under time constraints against a faction known to delay problems until they can no longer be ignored.”

“So we’re causing a problem they can’t ignore.” My eyes narrow, realizing what we’re getting ourselves into for once.

“We are not the cause,” Ran reminds me. “We are also not the endpoint. Perform the duty you have been tasked with and we will be only a segment to the whole.”

“Keep my lying to a minimum and keep my head down. Easy as can be,” I gloat, despite my track record being anything but those two things.

She isn’t remotely convinced, and instead proposes a more pertinent idea, “Meeting with Iizunamaru will give us the opportunity to bargain our permissions in the village. If the conversation goes well, meaning she finds you favorable, we may be able to admit Kawashiro and Yamashiro to the village.”

“No pressure,” I joke.

“I would help, but she has a certain distrust for foxes.”

I almost ask her why that may be, but second guess the relevance to what we’re doing right now. If it’s some secret Ran isn’t supposed to divulge, it would be better to not even know about its existence from a secondhand source. Pretend to respect other people’s privacy, at the very least.

I walk back to the gate guard’s post, Ran a close step behind me. The tengu man, Kaito, gazes at the wrestling match, his eyes glazed over in contempt. If I had to guess, he’s woefully used to Takane’s rowdiness, and might be expected to sweep her away if she loiters. She did say the whole village hated her very presence. He snaps himself back to the present moment when I step into his line of sight, leaning up from the counter as if he weren’t about to slump over.

“Come to a decision?” he asks.

I answer him as clearly as possible, “We’ll go in. Let those two know after they’ve calmed down.”

He stares at me for a moment, taking a deep breath in recognition before leaning down and producing a couple of wooden blocks from below the counter. “Here, take these,” he orders, holding them out by strings slung through the ends. “Wear these so that people know where you’re headed. Don’t stray from where you should be. You don’t want trouble. I don’t want trouble.”

I pluck the pieces from his hand, passing one to Ran as I read the front of another. It’s entirely illegible. Not like the handwriting is atrocious, though I think it might be, but that it’s in a language I don’t recognize. Do the tengu have their own language? That might be a problem if I want to look at their business documents…

Ran taps me on the arm, pointing to my shirt pocket as a quick instruction to tie the wooden plaque to the button. I attend to the article as the wooden wall scratches across a layer of settled dirt. The gate doesn’t move too often. Probably only for the yamawaro’s visits, at that.

“Stay out of trouble,” Kaito bids, tending to some paperwork as we start up the mountain once again.
It’s immediately apparent the village isn’t intended for foot traffic, as we have to scale slopes as steep as a naval ship’s staircase to get around. We walk across bridges connected by wooden supports jutting out from the cliff sides, shooting up to buildings of many sizes. Some are just shacks, while others are large enough for whole families.

Getting above the supports, we start to find entrances, as well as more supports going even higher. We seem to be making our way up the village in layers. Some have barely anything, others end up housing more buildings than there is support, with structures overhanging like tree branches. The only consistent feature is that they have walls. Some even consider that a suggestion. Why they’re placed where they are, or what their purpose is, eludes me more than I’d like to admit. Ran and I walk on the inside, closer to the mountain where the sun barely peeks through the masses of wood.

After about a dozen or so floors, we come upon a more open lot. Before this, we didn’t spot a single wandering villager. They all took to the inside comforts of their homes or were otherwise out, but here they’ve flocked together in droves. Above their heads I can see the occasional spurt of color. Freshly fried food lingers in the air. Hawkers shout over the crowd to try and get the attention of anyone in earshot. The scene rivals a good day in the human village’s market street, both calling to memories of malls during Christmas.

Looking into the crowd, a lot of things start to make sense. Everyone present dons the pyramidal hat of the tengu, of course, but then they’re separated into collectives. A portion of them wear regal white robes, akin to kimono but with a lot less fabric restricting movement. Another chunk wears colorful baggy pants and vests with puffballs hanging from the front. Yamabushi, I believe. But by far the largest selection are those in the journalist’s uniform. White button up shirt, slacks or skirts, and dress shoes. Some shoes sport the high rise tooth of a tengu’s geta, but it’s still part of the classier footwear.

So this why people have mistaken me for a tengu? I could see why. I’d mistake some of them for regular office workers.

Ran starts to shove me away with words of caution. Don’t attract attention, we have somewhere to be, the like. The only thing on my mind is that I should come back later and find a clothing store.

We ascend another few layers of buildings until meeting a layer of structures with a lot more effort put into their aesthetic. The wood faces carved to meandering patterns and gold painted trimmings marking the buildings far more official looking than those previous. Ran opens the door to one, staying out of the way as I enter a reception area containing no more than a few chairs and a receptionist. The girl greets us, noting our expected arrival, and guides us through a hall of closed doors. They’re heavy, ornate, and hold plaques with names etched into them. None that I recognize, except for the one we stop at.

The receptionist opens the door to Iizunamaru’s office and bids us a good day before walking off. I take the front to a little cluttered office. The room is hideously grand. A grand desk, a grand chair, a grand framed photo, and a grand tengu. An overcoat with a golden pauldron sits on the wall across from her. Without it it’s hard not to notice all the blue present on her. Her simple dress, her navy colored hair including her thin eyebrows, and the lacquered tokin hat atop it all.

The only thing out of place for the room are some hand drawn constellation charts, a telescope, and some test tubes. One tubes contains something yellow, though I’d be damned if I could tell whether it’s liquid or solid.

The woman notes our arrival, feigning some surprise, “Ran Yakumo and Tanner Regis. And to what do I owe the pleasure?” She does a poor job of hiding a monotone drawl, betraying her words.

She gestures to a chair in front of the dark wooden desk. I take it, but find it more than a little uncomfortable to sit in. I press on with the conversation, “We’re here because the yamawaro have a major objection to their business with the tengu.”

“Now what could possibly be the problem in our trades?” she asks.

She keeps her face relaxed, letting no outward emotion reveal itself. I didn’t get the chance to really look at her last time we met, world ending misfortune and all that.

Her eyes are a dull red with a thin face sharpened by age. She looks closer to my contemporary than most Youkai I’ve met, including Yukari and Eirin. I guess one fakes her looks and the other is immortal, so that might not be a fair comparison. There is something else, though… I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“Am I so enchanting, human?” she taunts.

“I’m just deciding where to start,” I brush off. “If anything, I’m more curious about the massive photo behind you.” I point over her head to the framed photo.

Her chair creaks as she looks back at it. The thing is outright ancient, color replaced with pure sepia that’s been slowly faded from the minimal light in the room. It shows a collection of tengu posed like an incumbent. She gives me a measured smile to explain the piece, “That was a photo from when the Tenma just changed over. It’s the first time I think it’s ever happened, so we were all quite hopeful of the occasion. A shame she doesn’t do as much as the council these days.”

“The council that you are a member of?” Ran undermines her reminiscing.

“Quite the scathing review, Yakumo.”

“Merely an observation.”

“A pointed one from a pointed fox,” a new voice chimes in.

“Must you really interrupt such a delightful occasion, Tsukasa?” Iizunamaru nags, seemingly to the vials at the corner of her desk. She uncorks the one containing the yellow substance, continuing, “I rarely receive visitors. It certainly wouldn’t kill to make small talk before business.”

The tube shakes before the yellow inside spurts out like water from a fire hydrant. It bounces from the ceiling and over to Iizunamaru’s side. It resizes, reshapes, and refits into a girl in a jumper. Her pale blonde hair sports fox ears, and a slick tail flows down behind her. I find myself paying significant attention to the fact that this fox only has one tail, unlike my voluminous companion.

“Is it not within my right to defend my generous master?” the fox trills. Her every word is steeped with something akin to sarcasm.

“I would prefer you not introduce yourself unnecessarily,” Iizunamaru scoffs without so much as looking at the girl.

“I see we have a point of commonality,” I joke.

“Do not compare me to that creature,” Ran uncharacteristically seethes.

The tengu groans at this, “Yours is far more dependable than mine.” The scrawnier fox seems unphased by the slight, her grin well plastered. “Now, what was your business, again?”

I inform her of the yamawaro invoices without a sponsor, as well as the related lack of payments. The majority of her threats and superlatives are taken out, but the mere mention of Takane’s name is enough to falter Iizunamaru’s stoicism in disgust. It’s only a split second each time, but a crease just above the bridge of her nose deepens with each item on the list of charges.

When I finish, she takes a moment to think over the situation. Whether this is all news to her or not, she keeps well out of my perception. She waves her fox servant to her side, beckoning the girl’s ear for her to whisper.

The lesser fox perks up at the mutters, and gestures for Iizunamaru to offer her words over to us.

Iizunamaru leans to her elbows and steeples her fingers. “Well, I believe I have an idea that may benefit both of us. What say you to a deal?”

“A deal?” The phrase concerns me more than it normally would. “That’s gonna depend on what you have in mind.”

She grows a wicked smile, one drenched in confidence. “Let’s say- hypothetically speaking- you enter the archives, search around for a while, but find that I’ve tampered with all of the documents that you may want. There’s no way to prove that I’ve tampered with these documents, so you end up telling the yamawaro that there’s nothing you can do.”

“That sounds like a pretty bad scenario for me. Hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” she repeats. “Now, for entirely unrelated reasons, I decide tomorrow to personally invite you to the village. Our conversation convinces me that a cultural exchange between the human and tengu villages might be worthwhile.”

My nose crinkles. Obviously I’m not going to bite that bait without knowing how sharp the hook is. I remain silent, crossing my arms and waiting for her to finish.

“My… don’t look so insulted. This is a very hypothetical situation, isn’t it?”

I refuse to prod at her behest. Even a simple jest could give her something I don’t want.

“You are welcome to set out and find what you may. Make no mistake, my hypothetical has no bearing on reality,” she plays. It’s clear she’s intentionally mocking me, trying to incite me. But which way is she actually pushing me?

“You’re asking me to outright betray my friend?”

“Why, whatever are you talking about?” she coyly remarks, gesturing to herself. “I suggested no such thing. I’m giving you one possible future.”

“A future where only net positives happen,” Tsukasa chirps.

“Silence, tube fox,” Ran bites at her.

I nearly blow off the entire deal, but stop myself. There is one more thing to consider. “And if I say no?”

“Like I said before, you’re welcome to search for whatever is there,” Iizunamaru denotes with an emphasis on the last few words.

[x] Take the deal. Tell Takane and Nitori that there is nothing to find and get free reign of the village.

[x] Decline the deal. Pivot to getting Takane and Nitori into the village before absconding to the archives.

[x] Bargain different terms. (Write-in)

As for this story, I’ve had quite some time to think through the progression of this chapter. During that time, I’ve had a better idea of where I want to take it and how to get there. On another note, I’ve started working closer with a friend as an editor starting this section. Going forward you might be seeing me refer to them every here and there. So say hi editor friend! It’s due to his influence that I wasn’t allowed to call Ran’s tails voluptuous. No, I don’t know why my mind went there.

[x] Decline the deal. Pivot to getting Takane and Nitori into the village before absconding to the archives.

“I think I’ll take my chances searching,” I decline Iizunamaru’s offer. “Whatever’s there ought to be enough.”

“As you wish,” she allows, fishing for a paper from her desk to set a quill to. “What’s your formal reason for appearing before me, then?”

“Unscheduled audit of purchasing records. Unguided inspection,” Ran states before I can cobble together a response.

Iizunamaru gives her a narrowed eye etched with a crow's foot at the end. “And how long do you expect to be present in the village?”

“Starting now, likely to the end of the week. Visits will be on a daily arrival and shall repeat untilTanner Regis and I have gleaned the entirety of the purchasing records archive for the period of the yamawaro's shipments," Ran continues laying out the exact nature of our demands.

"Hmm…" Iizunamaru cups a hand over her mouth in thought. She'd surely love any reason to be rid of us now that she knows I have no interest in her advances. "The entire purchasing archive? You understand that such a demand will not fall on deaf ears. The other council members will have a vested interest in your activities at minimum."

"Well we're talking to one right now, aren't we? I doubt the others will be too worried if one of their own is already on the case," I argue.

"We are all quite independent of each other. Please be ready with detailed reports of your findings for them each day," she asserts. I guess this means they're not so unified. Figures. Reports like that are just to make sure nobody's going behind your back.

Then again, how much dirty laundry could this bunch of bureaucrats have in three months of purchases?

… Actually that's pretty worrying, now that I think about it. What would they be worried about? Embezzling? Trafficking? Would Gensokyo have such a thing as a black market?

I shouldn't linger on the thought. Hopefully it's not any trouble I need to encounter. "Fine, we'll note anything of interest. In return, we ask that we're not interrupted while working." I get back on subject.

She scoffs in return, "Less manpower I need to pin on the both of you? I can allow it, so long as an extra zero doesn't appear anywhere." Her hands clap together, the fingers weaving together as she confirms, "Now, if there's nothing else, I'll write your next destination on those passes and you'll be in order."

I lean in. "And Takane and Nitori?" She's not getting away with ignoring that part of the request.

She stares at me for a moment. Tsukasa and Ran remain still waiting for her response. She takes a deep breath before wondering, uselessly, "What about them?"

"They need to be allowed into the village for their own inspections. Ran and I are here for the paperwork, they're here for the actual use of their supplies."

She eyes me up and down, as if my body language would give away the fib. Unfortunately for her, this was the plan ever since we walked into the gates. She still casts some doubt on the request, "I don't see why they would need to make their own inspections. If you two should find reason enough to go outside the archives, I'll hear you out. However, under no circumstance will I allow Yamashiro into the village."

"And Kawashiro?" I note the lack of Nitori's mention.

Iizunamaru heaves a sigh, knowing she let on just a bit too much in the omission. Her eyes wander to a nearby window, taking a moment to consider her options. "Well…" she stalls, "I suppose Kawashiro can be allowed entry. She knows to control her temper, unlike her yamawaro friend."

Friend, she said? Not sister or sibling, but friend. I guess their relation isn't common knowledge. Not that I'll correct her. It's a convenient degree of separation.

"Then I think that's all for now," I conclude. "Anything I missed, Ran?" Iizunamaru purses her lips as I pass off the demanding.

Ran closes her eyes for a moment to process the query, and replies, "We require the jurisdiction to summon specific individuals for questioning."

Iizunamaru brushes the thought away, bickering, "The tengu aren't so coy, Yakumo. We understand what an audit is and you'll have what you need. Just don't expect everyone to be timely nor pleased with your request."

"Understandably so," Ran muses. "That is all."

With the specifics out of the way, I get up from my seat, keeping my eyes fixed to Iizunamaru. In the motion, I spot a blotch of blue behind the test tubes Tsukasa came out of. Staring at it a moment more, I realize I know the little blue figure, drawn onto a card.

Iizunamaru follows my eye, but doesn't explain its presence. Instead, I have to point it out, "That card on your desk… What is that?"

She peels it from the flat wood, looking at the front in consideration. I receive an almost practiced explanation, "I've been interested in tarot as of late. The fool has especially caught my interest. Perhaps a poor omen for a great tengu so frequently in her office." She flips the card back my way, showing a crudely drawn version of Cirno, bright and colorful as she always is.

A part of me wants to call her bullshit, but something about the way she so proudly presents her reasoning catches me off guard. It wouldn't shock me if her poor excuse was itself a trap to get some information out of me, maybe find my limits in understanding of esoteric topics.

"Maybe you should get out more, then. Talk to people that share your interests," I settle on joshing her during my retreat.

Things aren't looking up for our search in the archive. Regardless of Iizunamaru's actual tampering, the archive is a mess of papers. WhileAkyuu stored her documents in scrolls allowing clear labeling, the tengu have everything laid out in flat pages stacked for the entire height of a shelf.

It's no wonder the only tengu we met at the entry was beside themselves. I've no idea how they could organize any of this cohesively. There weren't any purchasing forms in the archivist's pile, either, so no head start for us.

I guess the state the archives are in makes sense for these bookish tengu. These rooms are a thesis of their current establishment: shelves perfectly fit from ground to ceiling, walls of paper stuffed down every dark aisle, and hardly any light fixtures present to dissuade the average person from easy perusing. The fact that they don't even hold newspapers on these shelves yet there's several magnitudes more paper than wood is astonishing. Not to mention an outright admittance to the useless paperwork they create.

Ran and I've taken a corner of this fortress, stealing several bricks from the foundation and sifting page by page for… I'm not exactly sure. I haven't done any finance work outside of my taxes and occasional personal budgeting, so I'm lost in a foreign realm beyond my comprehension.

More than usual, I mean. At least they wrote everything in a language everyone uses. Probably to appease people like Ran and myself. The poor shmucks that have to actually check their work.

"Please tell me you've found something. Anything," I plead to my partner, pinching my bleary eyes from crossing over the papers sprawled across the floor in front of me.

She stops in the middle of flipping a page from one pile to another and nitpicks, "Elaborate on anything. There are records of rice bought at a premium. Vegetables that are only available from the human village. Inks. Textiles. Oh, this lists alcohol sourced directly from old hell. What event might that have been unleashed?"

“Well at least one of us is finding this fun,” I poke at the fact that she’s already a second stack in while I’m nowhere near a quarter through mine. I never thought I’d be jealous of her and the computer stuck in her head but here we are, passing through haystacks of information looking for needles.

Just outside of the lanternlight we work by the entire archive is pitch black. A constant reminder that people aren't expected here. It’s only been a couple hours but it’s felt so much longer because of the way we’re stuffed between the shelves. They keep the place clean enough to not stink of mold, but it's not much better than the dried papers.

I’m gonna go stir crazy in just two hours. How is this so different from when I was digging through Akyuu’s library?

I can hear the front– or rather– the only doors to the archive click open. I get up with the energy of a child on their birthday, happy to have any excuse to leave the piles of money pushing to my trusty companion.

I peek around the entry of our aisle to be blinded by the bright fluorescence of a naked light bulb. The little spiraling bulb is festooned atop a pole jutting out from Nitori’s backpack, making it yet another device she has stored within. She walks in with a tengu in tow, the girl shielding her eyes from the brightness.

By our previous meetings, I recognize the red tokin, black hair, and journalist's attire to belong to Aya Shameimaru. I gotta be sure to praise Nitori more for following through on my whim.

Aya looks lost following behind the kappa, scanning the aisles while her eyes adjust to the previously impenetrable dark. She locks onto my position just after I duck back, hopefully only spotting the source of light a ways behind me. I double back to Ran, only to find she's already disappeared.

She's always a step ahead of me, it seems.

"Are they over here, Nitori?" Aya chirps to her diminutive escort, the joy in her voice palpable. Nitori didn't explain what she brought her out for, did she? It's… Yeah, it's probably for the best.

I set to work on Ran's stack of papers, pretending to be the only other person here as they round the corner.

I hear Aya gasp, and shoot them a look of false surprise. It's difficult to look directly at them with Nitori's literal radiance, and hopefully the harsh light drowns out my poor acting skills by forcing me to cover my eyes. "Oh, there you are, Nitori," I greet them, ignoring Aya for just a second. "Looks like Iizunamaru kept to her word and let you in."

"And not Takane," Nitori grunts with closed eyes. "It took four of her girls to drag her off. I never realized how much she hates all the red tape stuff."

"I'm inclined to side with her," I jest, getting up to approach her. "Now, as for our agreement…"

"Already done," Nitori thumbs to Aya. She pivots on a heel and walks off with a dismissive, "Now I've got to check everything that Takane can't. See you next year." Her every step out is painfully noticeable as the light conducts shadows across every opening and crevice previously unnoticed.

Aya and I stand across from one another for a breath, unsure who should open the conversation. The sudden darkness, only pierced by the dim lantern behind me, gives her figure a much larger appearance. It's as if she were waiting to attack me. In a sense, she is– just as I am for her, but I'm glad she's not close to my size.

The plunged lighting also makes it hard to determine her exact facial features, beyond a general sense of elation. Her bodily movements more than make up for it, though.

"... So," she mutters, steepling her hands forwards, "how'd you get in here? And how'd you get her in here? And what's this about looking into stuff?" Her feathers ruffle as she keeps adding to the questions, my presence seeming to spark some mania in her.

"One thing at a time, Miss Shameimaru," I settle her down, or perhaps merely hold her back, defending myself from her questions. "First of all, hello. I think you know exactly who I am by now."

"Oh, ah," she stops herself, forcing down her wings and sticking out a hand. "Aya Shameimaru. The fastest reporter there is."

I shake her hand. Her grip is shockingly normal, like she isn't putting any real effort into the act. Not to complain, though, as my bones still feel crushed by Takane's beartrap of a paw.

I return her greeting, "Tanner Regis. Researcher from the human village." While I may have a strong disdain of the girl, I don't formally know her. We may have exchanged words a time or two before this, but never anything like a real one on one conversation. So in that respect, we each probably know each other by our work before our persons.

Gods do I despise her work.

Her wings shoot back up, with formalities out of the way she continues, "So how are you here?"

I fend her off once more, refuting, "How I'm here isn't important right now. Why I'm here should answer a lot more for you."

She tilts her head for me to elaborate, the puffballs dangling from the side of her tokin swaying in the motion.

"You know my research. You probably guessed how I asked Nitori to bring you here. Two and two together makes you the person I need to talk to this week."

She nods, affirming, "So, you're reporting on the reporter, are you?"

"Yup. The same reporter who happened to put out a gossip page on me seeing Yuuka Kazami for… informal reasons," I remind her.

"Is that not what you were doing?" She sharpens in an instant. That's the attitude I need to be cautious of. She'll act ditzy or airheaded, but she's always on the prowl for information to string together to her amusement.

"Maybe you should've asked me on site. I might've been more willing to explain myself, then," I disparage her hounding. "Now, how's about you answer a few of my questions? I'm asking you directly, after all."

"And why would I answer your questions if you're not answering mine?" she pricks before casting a cursory glance over my shoulder. "What's that? Are you poking through tengu papers? What section is this?" She steps out of the aisle, spotting the characters I couldn't decipher on the bookshelves and throwing another, more confused look to the papers. "You're not into financing, are you?"

"I'll take that as an insult."

Her wings flit as she doubles over, "No, no! I was just thinking that what you've done so far hasn't really been related to anything money based. Or tengu related, either…" she drawls, resting her thumb under her cheek.

I growl a retaliatory, "You don't get to control the conversation, you know."

"Don't I?" she chuckles. This game of cat and mouse isn't lost on her, and nothing could be worse for me.

I've gotta break the stalemate, but how do I hook her in?

[x] Let her in on the investigation.

[x] Tell her about the number of encounters I've made it out of… perfectly fine.

[x] Some other juicy tidbit that won't get me on the fast track to someone's shit list. (Write-in)