[0] Tanner and the tank girl…
State: Aya Shameimaru observation: Day 8
Time: 3:26 PM, Afternoon
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I pat the grumpy guardsman on the shoulder, the thick bone mistakable for the pauldron he isn't wearing. "I'm just happy that we can sit down and have drinks again," I tell Kazegou. It's been some time since we last talked like we have for the last hour.

He harrumphs, cautious of saying he's enjoying himself, "You should thank Miss Kamishirasawa for changing my mind."

That must've been no small feat. It took a lot of bickering to convince him to talk to his own sister because she's a Youkai, so I can only imagine how betrayed he was to see me die and walk around a few weeks after. I couldn't get a word out of him, much less any reaction at all.

"I'll be sure to kiss her until she tells me otherwise," I laugh, swinging a half a glass of whiskey around. "Truly, I'm glad you're willing to talk to the weirdest guy in town."

He smirks at this, stating, "Guy, maybe, but there are many stranger women. Of all the people in the village, I don't think you're even close to the weirdest." He nurses a cup of sake, a few hours left to sober up before he goes on duty. It's hard to tell if he's joking or not through the light lisp on his tongue.

"Not even close?" I puff. "That's hard to believe. You could tell me Akyuu and Keine, sure, but who else is there? Meira? Mokou?"

The bar's saloon doors bang open. "Aha!" a youngish voice projects from the entrance. "I've been looking for you, mister researcher!"

I was hoping it was for any reason other than me or Kazegou, but I guess that's impossible when it's just us and the bartender. I turn in my chair to find a little girl. White collared shirt, khakis, comfy looking slip on shoes, and twin braids reaching past her neck. Why do people think I'm a tengu, again?

"And who might you be, kid?" I ask the little scamp bounding over to us. "Aren't you a little young to be in here?"

Her brows scrunch in at my dismissal, but Kazegou quickly identifies her, "Rika, what are you doing here? You're not causing any trouble, are you?"

She takes a moment to recognize the man at my side by comparison, eliciting a squeak when she does and puffing up her chest. Waving her braids back and forth, she denies, "No sir, I'm looking for trouble, and I've heard that guy causes more trouble than I can! I want to hear all about it!"

Kazegou and I exchange wary eyes. "I have trouble you want?" I repeat back.

"Well… not like that," she deflates from the simplest prod at her boasting. "I saw a bunch of articles about you in the paper and thought, 'Oh! A foreigner with a scientific background! I could use– I mean ask for his help! The last time that happened was with the Moriya Shrine, but they still won't let me go there."

Kazegou leans over to me, half whispering, "Their shrine maiden claimed she was troubling them by turning their, uh… 'toaster' into a 'heater?'"

"They kept complaining about how cold the top of the mountain is, so I used their internal power grid to change a heating coil into a central unit," Rika brags.

I raise my brows, pondering, "How did you actually push the heat around? Did they have fans lying around they weren't using?"

"So you do know outside technology!" Rika acts like we're not talking about commonplace devices. I narrow my eyes at her, waiting for my previous question to be answered. She folds to the demand, “I… may have used a box fan they kept in the shrine. Then I stuck the highest voltage I could to it and the toaster."

I take a deep sigh, visualizing poor Sanae having to disarm the little fire hazard that could. "Alright, listen kid," I start, "I'm not interested in whatever you're up to, so find some other shmuck."

She furls her brows, pouting with a puff, "Hmph. First of all, I'm not a kid. Second, I'm coming to you because my creative well is running dry."

"You, running out of ideas?" Kazegou chuckles, turning away from his drink. "Next you'll tell me the Dragon God appeared in the sky."

Rika rounds on the man, punching his arm, "Very funny! No, what I want is to trade ideas with an outsider, someone that knows of all the wild things the outside world has."

"And why should I go along with you? I'm visiting a friend right now, and I don't mean the drinks," I grouse, leaning back into the bar.

"Bah, you always keep the drinks as a third wheel, you stupid bastard," Kaze mocks. He shuffles next to me, suggesting in a low voice, "Just go with the girl. At best you convince her to make something that isn't a weapon."

"I make more than weapons, you jerk!" the girl fumes. She drags me out of my seat, receiving only token resistance as I'm admittedly curious. A little engineer girl from the human village, not the strangest thing I've heard but far from expected. I wonder how different her creations are from the kappa's.

Before I'm fully whisked away, I call for the bartender to put my drinks on a tab. The giant only spares a grunt for me and my antics.

Rika drags me for a jaunt outside the village, close in the direction of Meira's shack, but breaking off far deeper into the woods. The area is more than a little familiar to me, as it stretches directly out to the Garden of the Sun, though without any indicated path.

Rika asks me to 'regale' her with tales of the outside world along the way. I can understand a curious kid wanting to know what's beyond the barrier, so I do just that, telling her of what world history I know past the year Gensokyo was isolated. It's similar to how I endeared myself with the Youkai buddhists and Byakuren, so it could earn me favor here. She stops me before I get into anything about the industrial revolution, though, claiming an apathetic knowledge of those concepts and wanting more of the technological innovations that happened. I shift to describing the industries and experiments of the time: railroads, electromagnetism, radio communication, whatever came to mind first.

After some time of my lecturing I worry that we might stray into the garden itself, an existential problem if Rika set up shop around Yuuka Kazami's sunflowers, but she stops short of a forest clearing. I assume the clearing itself is where we're going, the identifiable marker of flattened ground showing some level of manufacturing, but instead she crouches over an overgrown spot of grass, beckoning me next to her. Plunging her hand into an opening, she pulls something that emits a click.

Seconds pass and the ground churns, one of my feet catching on a raising section only for me to retreat it and find I'm the one descending. A square patch of grass lowers Rika and I into a metal plated shaft. The further we plunge, the tighter the platform feels. On all sides metal hugs us, the sounds of hydraulic machines reverberating through the interior.

"I'm impressed, but did you think to maybe make it hold more than one person?" I groan, tucked up against the kid. I'm afraid of what burrs might be hidden in such a hole, regardless of how impressive a galvanized steel elevator is.

"It's supposed to hold four," she retorts, just as confused as I am by our uncomfortable packing.

A familiar feeling pricks my brain, and I turn to find my everpresent partner taking up most of the elevator space. Or rather, her tails do.

"Five would be sufficient. Seven centimeters on each side would amend the issue," her usually dry voice notes.

Rika swerves her head around through the fox's well-softened clothes to determine who this intruder is.

"You couldn't wait until we were inside to show yourself?" I complain to Ran, knowing full well that she could shrink her profile to half of its current volume, all of which being her tails.

She closes her eyes and tuts, "This girl is not as she seems, and yet your unguarded trust brings you directly into her lair."

"Lair? Seriously?" I find the words wholly unnecessary.

Rika presses herself off of Ran's dress and growls back, "I'm not some Youkai! I'm a respectable tinkerer!"

We nearly burst out of the elevator as the doors open. I take a second to regain my footing as Rika and Ran file into the underground hideout we've been whisked away to. The ride down was somewhere between fifteen to twenty meters, all of which has been cleared out into a massive chamber. Metal walls the same as the elevator uphold the bay, giving the same factory made impression as the kappa's main hold. For that matter, with the number of parts, devices, tools, apparati, and inventions strewn about, I find it hard to believe this isn't a kappa's hideout.

Hell, even the walls aren't spared from the scrapyard aesthetic, housing the same assortments at least twice as high as Rika could reach. Collections of tables are scattered evenly around, holding regular household appliances on some and entire engines on others. I could swear at least one engine was stripped straight off of a biplane.

"... Rika, is this all yours?" I falter, looking back to the girl.

She paces ahead, keeping a keen eye on my partner before announcing with glowing pride, "You bet it is! All my years smashing things together are right down here! In fact, you haven't even seen the best part!"

She claps her hands in dramatic fashion, as if calling someone to a stage. Dozens of compartments in the walls reveal themselves, sending out an army of small, floating white balls. It seems she has a flair for giving such devices character, as they each lead in with comically large tongues and trail away with wispy tails. A couple dots for eyes and a triangle at their 'forehead' gives them the vague image of a ghost, but they're definitely something else.

Dozens of them fly overhead, seeing to tasks Rika set them to before, taking apart or building up the exhibits on all the tables. The sheer number alone is impressive, but the way they handle tools with opposable fake tongues borders on magic. The outside world would do so much with these, after getting past their uncanniness.

"Robots? Do they have electronic components? How do they float about?" I think aloud, attempting to narrow down what exactly they are. I snag one from the air, the thing waddling in my hands like a soccer ball with a fish tail.

"Automatons propelled and programmed by magic, using precious gems as mana receptacles for recharging based on reservoir reserves drawing on local leylines," Rika states in as lengthy a manner as allowable.

Ran looks at the one I grabbed, tapping a few times to somehow determine, "Why are they set at sixty percent output? Do they have cooling restrictions?"

"No, not cooling. The other forty percent is only used for big jobs. Something like digging out this base inside the leyline. I was worried I'd be stepping on a witch's territory when I did it, but I haven't had to fight anyone ever since coming out here," Rika reports, looking into one of the glowing ghost mounts in the wall.

"You're a magician? Like Marisa?" I question. I haven't seen any of the magically inclined from Gensokyo try to look at technology, so this is a first for me.

"No!" she denies, even more insulted than when I called her a kid earlier. "Don't lump me in with that project wrecking, thieving, constantly intoxicated wasp! I don't fling spells, I make things. If you want to compare me to a magician at least make it the dollmaker."

"S-sorry?" I always forget how much people actually dislike that girl. She might be one of the few names that can so unanimously exert that effect. That list including Yukari and Aya, of course.

"Apology accepted," she grins to herself, strutting deeper into the lab. "Now, for the real show," she continues, pointing to the far wall. A number of ghosts break off of their previous tasks and take to numerous devices, the exact function of any particular lever or switch up for debate in the sea of machines. After a few seconds of this, the far wall lowers into the floor, revealing an extension to the room with a surface ramp in line with the flat space I saw earlier.

Before the ramp are two massive 'projects.' One, a black ball with tentacles and wings, hangs high in the back. The other, the centerpiece of the lab, is in the shape of a tank.

I say in the shape of because the thing looks like it was Frankensteined together from pieces of old real world tanks and newer custom made mechanics. Its circular dome, bordered by thick vines, is crowned with a black and white decal, giving off a decorative purpose for the vehicle more than a practical one, but I'd bet it functions just as well as it looks.

I thought Kazegou was ribbing her, but she really is a lot more than I anticipated. A few outside world appliances, sure, but an entire tank? No wonder he mentioned weapons explicitly. "Why in the world are you asking for my help, again? You've got way more chops for making things than I can even begin to understand. I mean, that's a god damn tank."

"Well that's just the problem!" Rika exclaims. "I'm so good at making things that I've run out of new prospects that interest me. I need to know what's out there and start catching up to the outside world's innovations."

"So you're… what? Looking for a challenge?" I ask, still deciding if I'm capable of offering this girl such a thing.

She puckers her lips, mounting the nearest table and resting an arm against the remains of a gas motor engine. "A challenge? I guess that's what I want? Something people think only the outside world could make, right here in my lab! Something like that would definitely be fun to do! … But what do you think I should make?"

I gesture to the rest of the room and its hoard of ghostly robots. "Well, you'll have to show me what you've made so far." She smiles and jumps from the table, beginning with an explanation of the motor she was leaning against. A gas motor taken from a lawn mower, by Ran's confirmation. Rika pays little mind to the humble utility it once was and instead focuses on the exact values the engine outputs, especially mindful of the efficiency she got it to.

When she finishes gushing over it we begin touring the rest of the lab with the same level of scrutiny. I ask if she's made a proper heater– not a probable housefire– and she shows me one that could burn down a warehouse. I ask if she's made a motor engine, and she shows me one smaller than I considered possible, to the point that I worry if such a thing could keep a vehicle grounded. This back and forth continues for some time, with every challenge I pose already completed, sans the atypical quirks, until we've made it through almost everything in the room.

Communication devices, household appliances, machining apparati, this lab is a museum of the twentieth century, of that I'm now certain. We're really only missing the infomercial bullshit… and one particular field. What may be considered the crowning achievement of human civilization.

I pose my final challenge as we stray by mid-century bullet casings, "Have you made anything designed to be in space? Something to get there, stay in orbit, or going beyond Earth's orbit?"

She holds a completed bullet, which she had been using to taut the tolerances she could achieve to Ran, but now cups her chin to ponder my question. "Outer space? As in towards the stars, past the very atmosphere of the planet?"

"Yeah. Made anything getting to the stars?"

"No, I haven't. I know people sent things up there but I don't know why they'd bother," she answers, placing the heavy calibre bullet on a table she then leans against.

The statement wounds me for all the curiosity she's previously displayed. How could a kid like this not have starry eyes for space travel? "They do it for the challenge of doing it. For the many scientific mysteries lying in wait beyond our little ball of dirt and water," I retort.

Her braids droop as she looks up in thought, "Hm? It's challenging to get up there? But I've heard stories about the shrine maiden and a vampire launching their own rocket. If those two nimrods could do it, anyone with enough drive could, too."

Admittedly fair. I don't know the exact mechanics it takes to launch a rocket in Gensokyo, but it surely couldn't be that easy. How much magic did they have to use to accomplish such a feat? I remember it was a moon trip as well, but did they take the same rocket back? Even more, do they have a concept of a vacuum sealed space? Does the barrier interact with such physical concepts? There's far too many variables I have no direct background in for this conversation.

"The task was considered impossible for humans of the outside world until only the prior century," Ran comes to my aid. "The technology required for reaching the vacuum of space, traveling through it, and lastly remaining in specific gravitational orbits has largely been credited as a triumph in human ingenuity." As reported by humans, I can feel her lips clamp shut to leave out.

It looks to have done the trick, though, as Rika is now all ears for the idea. "An invention that could impress the humans of the outside world…" she muses to herself. "Alright, so what do you think I should make? I'm more than ready for a challenge like that."

---

"Tanner… come out here a moment," Keine calls from another part of the house. It's been a few days since I met Rika. I thought she'd be excited to give me regular progress reports, but I haven't heard back since Ran and I went to her lab. Is she having trouble with our suggestion, or what?

I stop typing, the draft on Aya's report still in the early stages, and walk out to the back. Keine shields her eyes from the sun, looking directly up at something. She glances over to me and points up, as if it wasn't obvious enough that something's wrong. I follow her gaze, but I'd have to be half blind to miss it.

A metal blimp, the size of a shipping container, floats across the blue sky of Gensokyo. Whatever keeps it afloat so high above isn't apparent, nor where it might've come from. Unfortunately, I have a strong suspicion of it's exact origin.

Keine swipes her head down to me and interrogates, "Have you been talking to anyone recently?"

I recoil, overemphasizing the movement to try and mask my awareness. "Why do you automatically assume I'm to blame for that? That could just be someone getting bored and making something ridiculous."

Her brow shoots up. One brow means she knows I'm lying. "And they would just happen to make an artificial satellite? In the shape of outside world orbital stations noted in numerous articles dating to the seventies? Something that bears little practical use in Gensokyo?" she rubs in the absurdity of the notion.

"Okay, so maybe I gave that girl Rika the idea…" I admit.

She closes her eyes and sighs, "Right… well, I suppose it was inevitable the two of you would meet, though I'm surprised you didn't ask her to make something more mundane, like a refrigerator or air conditioning."

"She wanted a challenge," I counter. "Ran and I thought to have her build a rocket with a GPS satellite. We told her not to launch it into space, of course. Ran almost showed emotion at explaining the political problems that would cause, gods forbid."

"Ran agreed to the idea? How did that happen?"

"I don't know, ask her." I shrug, looking back up at the metal tube in the sky. "So is there a problem?"

Keine looks up at it for a few moments more before concluding, "Well… it's probably not able to remain up there forever."

"How do you think?" I find the idea moot when it's built by a girl that creates flying robots.

She scratches the back of her neck, screwing her mouth replying, "Who do you believe is the most likely to fight it?"

"Fight it?" I croak in between a laugh and a scoff. "The inanimate object in the sky?"

"Of the kind that no one has seen before, yes," she remains firm in the idea.

Staring at the metal contraption, and understanding how testy Gensokyans can be on the best of days, I answer, "The kappa. If just to pick it apart after."

"Dinner's on you if it's Cirno," Keine jokes back. "Could you please have the girl take it down before it causes any damage? I don't want to explain why Rika got someone hurt when she wasn't making a weapon. For once."

"Give Ran and I 'til the end of the day, we'll shoot it down ourselves if we need to… and I'll tell Rika to develop a fridge."

---

This one has been on the back burner for quite a while, now. I'll admit I put Rika on here because it felt fitting for her character background, though Rikako or Sumireko could have also worked but I felt they would have been too on the nose. Shit, in another world I might've framed this entire story around Rikako, but she feels a little too powerful given that she makes jetpacks and stuff without actually having perfect knowledge of the outside world.

Extra credit post to come soon with the new thread!