One note upfront: The chapters for this are all complete apart from a final editing pass. Unless some unexpected delays crop up, I'll be posting a chapter every Monday and Friday, with two chapters on the first and last days. There are still sixteen chapters, so I expect that to take until the first week of September.

Standing on the open slope of Youkai Mountain, Nitori hesitated to consider her options.

She'd already spent ten minutes traveling uphill, darting from tree to tree and watching the sky for hidden observers. In order to move as quickly as possible, she'd ditched everything that might slow her down. No backpack. No toolbox. Not even a weapon, apart from the pistol she kept hidden under her hat—barely even enough to be worth mentioning, in her opinion. All she had going for her was her optical camouflage, humming to itself as it struggled to keep her hidden. Practically naked, by kappa standards.

Stealth would only buy her so much now. Speed. That was the important thing, probably. Reach her destination, get what she came for, and make her way back before anything happened. She reached for the power switch for her camouflage, but hesitated. It wasn't even about what could happen, but the principle of the thing. With no tools, no weapons, and no camouflage, she was practically a human. It was an embarrassing state to be in, that's what it was.

Nothing to do but get it over with as quickly as possible. She took a deep breath, got a running start, and hit the power switch. With one last beep, her camouflage deactivated. One second, an observer would have seen nothing but a distortion in the air. The next, Nitori exploded into being, running at a full sprint.

Foliage scratched at her skin, but she didn't let them slow her down. Even for a relatively minor youkai, such things were an inconvenience at worst. The fact that this was an uphill trip was more of an issue. She'd always relied on her helicopter pack to travel up the mountain, and kappa weren't really built for long trips on land, either. She started wheezing for air, her pulse pounding in her ears...

And crested a ridge. The Moriya shrine came into view above her. Seeing her destination gave her all she needed to keep going. She lowered her head and gritted her teeth, urging her aching muscles to carry her the last hundred meters.

She'd barely even screeched to a stop on the shrine's front step before she started pounding on the door. "Hello! Is anybody home? There's something I really need to talk to you about!"

No answer. Nitori kept beating on the door. It rattled under her fist. "Hellooooo! Look, it's really urgent!"

A few more knocks. "Come on, I don't have time for th—"

The door slid open, and her fist came down on nothing.

From inside, Suwako peered up at her curiously. "Urgent, eh?" She leaned back, resting her hands on her hips and inspecting her. "I never knew a kappa to be so gung ho about religion."

"It's not about...!" Nitori trailed off mid-sentence to wheeze for air. The pause gave her some time to think. "I need to talk to your shrine maiden. Is she in?"

"Huh? Yeah, she is. What do you need her for?"

"I have, er... business? To talk to her about."

"'Business'? Just 'business'?"

"Look!" Nitori drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't very tall. Fortunately, almost anybody could look tall next to Suwako. "It's a confidential matter, okay? I'm not going to tell the details to somebody who doesn't need to know them."

Suwako held her gaze for a moment, then stepped back from the door and cupped her hand to her mouth. "Sanae! You have a suitor!"

"I'm not a—!"

"It's okay! Our Sanae is a lively girl. This isn't the first time she's charmed somebody."

"A... suitor?" Sanae's voice called from within the shrine. "Lady Suwako, this is a joke, right?"

"Nope! This young lady seems pretty keen on you. She might even be getting ready to propose."

"A suitor, though? I didn't think anybody in Gensokyo really felt like..." Sanae rounded the corner, coming into view of the two. She paused when she saw Nitori. "... um?"

"Eh, um, hey, look," Nitori stammered. "I'm not a suitor."

"Hey, there's no need to be shy. A kappa's a pretty good catch." Suwako leaned forward and gave Nitori a nudge with her elbow and an overstated wink that made it perfectly clear that she was enjoying herself. Nitori grumbled, but accepted it. Considering that she'd backtalked a goddess, she was probably getting off lightly.

"So, then," Suwako said, taking a step backward. "An old lady like me should leave you lovebirds to it, I imagine. You kids enjoy yourselves, now!"

The two stayed there, frozen in embarrassment, until Suwako was well back into the shrine and out of earshot. Sanae was the first one to manage to piece a sentence together. "You're... not really a suitor, right?"

"Huh? Er, no! No, no! Kappa don't do that kind of thing! There's not even a—look, one person lays eggs, and the other one finds them later and fertilizes them, and...!" Nitori trailed off. "A-anyway, it doesn't matter! I'm here about business!"

"Oh! Okay." Sanae looked relieved. "... what kind of business?"

"I'm investigating something, and I could use an outside world specialist to take a look at it. Do you think you've got an hour or two free?"

"Sure, I'm free. What do you need?"

"Well, do you have a, um..." Nitori mimed holding something to her ear as she fished for the word. "A cellphone! That thing the new outside world girl uses."

"Sumireko? Sure, I have one. Mine's older, though."

"Great! That shouldn't be an issue. Actually, older is better, maybe. Do you think you could bring it and help me run some tests?"

"Hmm, well... if you just need my phone, I could let you borrow it. I don't have much use for it in Gensokyo."

Nitori hesitated. Getting her hands on outside world tech was a rare and enlightening treat... but her current goal was far, far more important than a single phone, and if she needed to spend half an hour figuring out how to work the thing, it would only slow her down. "I'll need you to work it," she said. "Oh, and you have anything else that uses that kind of signal, bring that too. I want to test some stuff."

"Anything that uses a wireless signal? Er, are you sure? That's a lot of things..."

"The more, the better. You might want to throw them in a box or something, though. It's a bit of a walk. And hurry! We might not have much time."

One time, Sanae had led an entire squad of tengu warriors and two goddesses home, both groups drunk and singing, after they'd had entirely too much to drink during negotiations.

Another time, she had flown back and forth across Gensokyo chasing a flying boat full of Buddhists.

Yet another time, she'd run from the Hakurei Shrine to the human village wearing nothing but a towel, chasing a youkai fox who was both disguised as her and wearing her stolen clothes.

And today's trip still counted as one of the strangest ones she'd ever taken in Gensokyo.

Nitori had been reluctant to tell her where they were going. Nitori was very insistent that they needed to walk there, that nobody could follow them, and that if they thought anybody might have seen them, they needed to take a different path. She'd also insisted that they needed to move quickly, so they were running down the mountain at a slow jog, through thin underbrush and between trees.

In Sanae's arms was a box containing the supplies that Nitori had requested—every single thing she could think of that used a radio signal. Most of them were dusty from disuse, and they bounced and jostled around in the box as she ran, raising a cloud of dust that left her sneezing for the first kilometer.

The forest grew more pristine the farther they traveled from the main paths, with the underbrush thinning as the canopy overhead grew heavier. This wasn't the sort of place that Sanae had ever gone before. Theoretically, it was tengu territory, but even the tengu didn't have much use for it. It was the domain of beast youkai, fairies, and all the other species of Gensokyo that were too unorganized to claim anywhere more desireable for themselves. Nothing that Sanae couldn't handle with ease, but it still made her wish she'd brought her onusa.

As they jogged along, she caught the glint of metal in the canopy below. Slowly, their destination came into view.

It was a tower. A metal tower, just barely taller than the trees around it. It might have once been new, but it was hard to imagine—long corrosive stains rain down the sides, and tree branches were tangled in its scaffolding. The wobbly remains of a chainlink fence stood around it, and a few pieces of machinery sat at its base, some of them looking far newer than the others. Next to the tower was a broad, squat building, covered in chipped paint that had probably been white at some point.

"Whoa!" Sanae hopped over the lowest point in the fence and gazed up at the tower. "Did you build this?"

"Nope. I found it this way. Well, most of it. I've had to do some restoration myself."

Sanae sat down the box of electronic devices that she'd brought with her and rested a hand on one of the tower's supports. She gave it a thoughtful rap with her knuckles, and the entire structure hummed. "Why would somebody build it all the way up here?"

"I think it drifted in from the outside world. It's kind of rare for whole buildings to show up, but it's happened a few times." Nitori walked across the fenced-in area, to a corner of the building where most of the newer-looking equipment sat. Among them was a big, chunky switch, the type that Sanae had never seen outside of movies about cackling mad scientists. She grabbed it in both hands, braced her body, and gave it a tug. It settled into place with a satisfyingly heavy clunk.

Electricity flowed out, and the machinery around them came alive with a high-pitched hum.

Sanae stepped back and looked up at the tower, her eyes wide. She hadn't heard the sound of electronics powering up in ages. After years of living in Gensokyo, it was a strangely nostalgic experience.

"Wow..." she said.

"Yep. Still in working condition, as far as I can tell."

"So, um... why did we have to rush to get here?"

Nitori stepped away from the switch and took a seat on a nearby toolbox. "Well, you guys sell outside world tech to the kappa when you need cash, right? How much do you think something like this would go for?"

Sanae craned her head back and looked up at the tower. It was definitely a bit bigger than anything they'd ever sold. Once, they'd pawned off a microwave, and gotten enough money to support the shrine for a month and a half. Compared to that...

"Oh. Um, yeah. I think I see your point."

"Right? This place is a gold mine." Nitori grinned, with an expression like she might run over and hug one of the tower's supports. "And that's just if you broke it down for parts. As far as I can tell, nobody else has noticed it yet. If they do, all it will take is me leaving for a few minutes and... bam!"

"Bam?"

"Stolen! It isn't like I have a deed or anything. So, until I've staked my claim, I need to be careful."

"Where are you even getting enough power to run something like this?"

"Ah, um." Nitori glanced away guiltily. "Well. I might be borrowing a little from the wires running up from the reactor underground..."

"... hey! That's our power!" Sanae leveled a finger at her accusingly. "You shouldn't use it without asking!"

"A-ah, it's just a, um, a temporary measure! There are a lot of ways I can make my own power once I know this place works! That's the important thing for now, anyway. Go on, pull your phone out and see if it's getting a signal!"

Sanae frowned, not comfortable dropping the subject quite so easily, but she was curious. Besides, the box of electronics held a lot of memories for her. A few hand-held systems, a phone or two, a radio... a lot of these items had been staples of her junior high summer afternoons. For now, she fished her phone out and waited a few seconds for it to start up. She was almost surprised that it still started, but it flashed a 'NO SERVICE' warning on the screen. "Hmm... nope."

"I guess that was too much to hope for, huh. What else do you have?"

"Hmm, well..." Sanae searched again and pulled out a different device. "Walkie-talkie?"

"Eh, sure."

She pressed the button. "Nothing..."

"Next."

"A radio-controlled clock... Nope."

One by one, Sanae cycled through the devices in her box. Batteries were swapped out and extension cords were strung to Nitori's nearest outlet, but none of them showed any sign that they were getting anything from the tower overhead. A dozen devices in, Sanae slowed down and looked up at the building.

The front of the building was bare, and covered in years of grime. Near the middle, though, she could just make out the ancient outline of a long-gone sign, reading 'EVIS.'

"I think I have an idea..." Sanae said. "Can I see what's inside?"

Practically everywhere that there were kappa, there were areas where somebody could sneak off, lock the door behind them, and work for a few weeks without being disturbed. Kappa were pretty antisocial creatures, for one thing. In the opinion of most kappa, the only thing less interesting than talking to another kappa was talking to anybody else. When you added in their tendency to borrow tools from each other and never return them, plus a competitive bent that could make them very secretive when they had a big project underway, many kappa took this a step farther and had their own private hideouts.

Genbu Ravine was riddled with caves, and practically every single one had been claimed by a kappa at some point. Until recently, this one had been one of the few exceptions, left untouched because nobody thought it was worth the effort. In the highest foothills of Youkai Mountain, through a narrow ravine with a stream flowing at the bottom, behind a mess of boulders, it wasn't easy to get to. A short distance in, a light bulb hung from the ceiling. It was the only hint that Rumi had found the place she wanted. A trail of lights led back from it, leading the way through the cave's winding passages.

Twenty meters in, the sunlight behind her had faded away to nothing.

Forty meters in, she could hear voices deeper in the cave.

Fifty meters in, she rounded a corner, and the cave opened up into a cavern the size of a mansion.

At least, that was the feeling she got from it. In front of her, a large table sat on the cavern floor. A single lamp illuminated it from above, a tiny oasis of light in the vast, empty darkness. Near the edges of the lit circle, she could see a few shelves and other signs of habitation. Beyond those, there was nothing but the occasional glimmer of other objects in the distance. She wasn't sure how far the caves stretched. Her footsteps sounded like they were echoing for kilometers.

There were three kappa already sitting at the table. Rumi froze when she saw them. They looked up, their conversation coming to a pause as they inspected her in return.

"Huh," one of them said after a few seconds, breaking the silence. "Didn't expect a one-armed girl."

Rumi glanced aside, self-consciously running her fingers over her left hand. It gleamed under the bright lights. "I have two arms! Just... one of them is metal."

"What good's a metal arm?"

"It does a lot of things...!" Rumi held her hand up and wiggled her fingers demonstratively. One of them jolted and dispensed a toothpick from the fingertip. The toothpick fell to the cave floor. She flushed, but pushed on. "It has a lighter, and a screwdriver, and a flashlight, and, um, a fishing line, but the last time I used it, the fish pulled my arm off..."

One of the other kappa shuffled a pile of papers around in front of herself, then glanced over one. "She lost it in an accident. Building some kind of teleporter, supposedly? It also took out quite a chunk of wall in the main hideout, and flooded an entire wing."

Rumi lowered her eyes to the cave floor, but didn't refute the accusations.

"Whatever," the first kappa said. "Take a seat, metal-arm."

Rumi wanted to keep arguing, but her few social instincts told her that it was probably better to drop the subject. She gave a single nod, mumbled a response, and sank down into an empty seat.

The overhead light looked a lot brighter from this angle. Everybody's face was left shrouded in darkness. Even so, Rumi's memory slowly managed to put names to the other kappa at the table.

Tengu and humans usually thought of kappa as a lawless species. They didn't have a government, and the few large-scale projects they finished were small miracles of a dozen individual kappa just happening to find the same thing fascinating at the same time. A lone kappa was a one-woman research and development lab. A small group of kappa was a weird hydra of an organization, where everybody was performing experiments on borrowed pieces of each other's experiments. The collective term for a large group of kappa was commonly held to be 'a disaster.'

Somehow, it worked out, and kappa society mostly kept chugging along. Most kappa felt like a civil war would require too much social interaction, anyway.

Even so, while there were no laws, there were rules. No destroying a project somebody put a lot of work into, unless the result was even more interesting. No trying to kill other kappa. No starting trouble for kappa as a whole. Breaking these rules didn't carry any sort of prison sentence, but the offending party would suddenly find themselves locked out of casually borrowing their neighbors' tools, getting last pick whenever interesting new salvage came in, and ultimately not getting informed when the communal hideout's hidden entrances were moved.

The kappa around Rumi were all exactly that sort of kappa.

For example, the one who'd spoken to her, at the end of the table. Her name was Ririsa, Rumi was pretty sure. After an incident had led to some of the human village's amateur youkai hunters poking around the ravine, Ririsa had been the one to drive them off. When the Hakurei shrine maiden came to investigate, Ririsa had attacked her, too, and stood her ground for almost twenty seconds before fleeing. Being one of the few kappa to ever face a shrine maiden in a life-or-death fight and live to talk about it had made her a living legend, but the Hakurei girl's resulting rampage had caused way more problems than that was worth. Ririsa had been banished, and hadn't been seen in years.

Next to her, the one with all the papers, was Maeri. Maeri had previously been a bit of a leader among the kappa, one of the few who could occasionally oversee a successful large-scale project. She'd founded a banking service, Gensokyo's first outside of the human and tengu villages. She'd done pretty good business, until the day she'd declared that she was closing shop and ran off with half the kappa race's life savings. She wasn't exactly welcome in polite society these days.

They were two of the most notorious criminals known the kappa civilization, and Rumi was apparently going to be working with them from now on. She shrank down in her seat and tried not to wonder if it was too late to sneak out.

"One-arm girl makes five," Ririsa said. "How many are there even supposed to be?"

"There are five chairs," Maeri said.

"That doesn't mean anything."

"There are five chairs," Maeri repeated. "That's the four of us, plus Touko, wherever she is. This is a good hideout, so she isn't expecting guests. If there are five chairs, it's because she expects five people to be present. If we include her, then with the four of us—"

"Right, right, I got it. Stop yapping before you give me a headache."

An irritable grumble rose from the final kappa at the table. "Don't talk to Maeri like that."

This one, this was one of the least kappa-like kappa that Rumi had ever seen, with short brown hair and a face that could almost get her mistaken for a human child. She was wearing what looked like a custom-made pair of bib overalls, with the front and sides completely covered in shallow pockets. Occasional odds and ends poked out of them—a sewing needle here, a scrap of cloth there—and she was constantly fidgeting with the flaps. Rumi's memory eventually dug up the name 'Orisa' for her, but she couldn't remember why it had ever come up.

"And you'd do well to show Touko more respect," Maeri continued. "Touko is... well, er, she's very temperamental. Please try not to upset her."

"Crazy," Orisa added. "Shouldn't be working for her."

"So I hear," Ririsa said, settling back into her chair and crossing her arms. "I didn't know she was real, to be honest. Figured she was just one of those stories you tell to kids to get them to shut up."

"I, um," Rumi blurted out, and she instantly regretted it, as every eye at the table turned toward her. "I heard that a few years ago, she smashed the Hakurei shrine just for fun."

"That's just a rumor," Maeri said with a scoff. "The shrine got wrecked by some celestial. … not that Touko wouldn't do that kind of thing, you understand."

"Well now," a voice said from the darkness. By kappa standards, it was practically a baritone, and the cave only made it more imposing, a booming echo like a thunderclap. The owner stepped forward to the edge of the light, until her face was visible. "You girls have some awful unkind things to say about me, but since I've got a heart of gold and all, I'm gonna let them slide, just this once. As a favor between new friends."

She glanced between them, with an unreadable smile on her face. Nobody else saw fit to respond. "So, here's the little deal I'm gonna offer you. You think I'm too 'crazy' to work for, now's your chance to head for the door. You stick around, you're mine for the next few weeks, and I'll make your wildest dreams come true. How about it?"

Touko subtly shifted her posture. It became obvious that she was holding something. Something gun-shaped. The length that was illuminated had an outside world chemical hazard label on it, and a red light blinked in the shadows. Rumi had been strongly considering leaving, but now suspected that it would be a very bad idea indeed. Touko had invited them to head for the door, but she'd never said they'd reach it in one piece.

"No? Everybody's sticking around? One big peachy family? That just warms my heart." Touko shouldered the weapon, still grinning. "Let's get down to business."

Like most kappa, Nitori was either very good at making plans, or very bad at it, depending on your point of view.

Kappa made plans in the same way that they made devices.

A kappa never simply madea device. Certainly, they often set out to do so. Say that a kappa set out to invent a better coffeemaker. She might start out intending to give it a sensor for detecting empty mugs, so that it would automatically brew more coffee when it was needed. Of course, if it could brew coffee by itself, delivering it would be even better, so she'd add that in while she was at it. After three weeks of development, what had started as a simple coffeemaker would now have a timer, a sensor for detecting empty mugs, articulated legs, a levitation system for getting over obstacles, a roasting and grinding chamber, three reservoirs for flavored add-ins, a voice recognition system, a biometric scanner to limit coffee-drinking to authorized users, and an apparatus for firing electrified darts at would-be coffee thieves.

As a species who collectively worked a lot of late nights, kappa took their coffee very seriously.

Nitori's plans for the tower were no less complex. She'd found the thing two days earlier, when she'd spotted gleaming metal on the slope of the mountain and gone to investigate. This had been followed by two full days of examination, some repairs, and otherwise getting the thing into working condition. She'd come up with quite a lot of ideas in that time.

First and most obviously, she was going to find out if this was one of those outside world cellphone towers she'd heard about. Kappa-made radios were a standard form of communication among the youkai of the mountain, and if she could extend their range for a modest fee, she'd never be short on cash again.

If it wasn't a phone tower, she'd decided, whatever signals it did handle still had to be pretty valuable if they justified building this big thing, so she'd just have to find some way to profit off of those. Or maybe she could convert it to handle a different type of signal and do something interesting with that. If not, there were a lot of electronics inside the building—she could probably salvage them and make herself some nifty new inventions. If the inventions were good enough, the lump sum of cash would be better than a steady profit from the tower. Or, she could salvage the good stuff and sell the building to somebody else, after tearing down the tower and selling it for scrap. Or if there were no buyers for the building, she could use it as a new workshop. Conversely, she could tear down the building, sell the contents, put a ladder and seat on the tower, and sell it to the tengu as an observation post. Or...

Dozens of options were lined up in her head, strung together in a massive flowchart of possibilities that would look like a bad drawing of spaghetti to an untrained observer. Whatever the tower did, she could profit off of it. Whatever parts of it were unnecessary, she could repurpose. Whatever she didn't need, she could always sell. And whatever combination of these options seemed like it would get the most money, she'd find it. It was her pride as a kappa.

She pushed the door open and led Sanae into the building. Big cabinets full of electronics lined the walls of the entry room. They weren't the new stuff the outside world was making, slim quiet rectangles full of circuits. No, these were the real deal, old machinery, with big chunky buttons, wires strung across the floor, and blinking lights all over. The way electronics were supposed to look, in Nitori's opinion.

It wasn't in great condition. It smelled like mildew and dust. Mice had chewed through some of the cords, and stains below the single window showed where rain had leaked in for years. Packaging, spare supplies, and other odds and ends covered the floor up to knee deep in places, and Nitori was sort of afraid to move it and find out what was under it.

"Hmm..." Sanae said, as she walked from cabinet to cabinet. Nitori had no idea what she was looking for, but her inspection seemed pretty methodical. "What about this one? Can you get this one working?"

"Sure, hold on."

Nitori picked her way through the junk to the cabinet Sanae was pointing at. She slid her backpack to the ground with a wall-rattling thud. Soon, she'd pulled out all the equipment she needed and was inspecting the cabinet's guts, a flashlight in one hand and a multimeter in the other. One dud capacitor, a cracked vacuum tube, and a few connectors that had popped out of place. Easy enough to fix, for now. She'd found a box of spare vacuum tubes in the back, but once those ran out, she was going to have a real pain finding replacements. For now, it was ten minutes of work to fix things up.

"Hmm, okay, now..." Sanae made her way back to a cardboard box on the floor. It was overflowing with reels of black tape, which had somehow gotten through the decades without getting tangled. She plucked one out, raising a cloud of dust. "Can you find the machine these fit on and hook it up?"

"Eh? Those things? I don't really see what that has to do with phones."

"Just trust me! I think I know what this place is for, but I need to do a test to be sure."

"Eh, alright," Nitori said, and began searching through the machines.

Touko was not what anybody would have called an imposing figure. She was short even by kappa standards. Her hair hung in a pair of mousy black pigtails. Her figure was so slim that her dress still practically looked like a tent on her.

Even so, there was something about her. Maybe it was the giant black boots she wore, making a thud on the cavern floor with every step. Maybe it was the way she swaggered as she walked, with her thumbs tucked into belt loops near her waist. Maybe it was the slight crow's feet by her eyes, hinting that she was very old even by kappa standards. If Rumi had ever seen outside world movies, Touko would have reminded her of a corrupt small town sheriff from the kind of movie with too many car chases. As it was, she mostly put Rumi in mind of a very small and angry dog.

Touko walked most of a slow lap around the table before she spoke up, like a shark circling its prey. "So. Do you all know why I asked you to come here?"

"A job," Ririsa grunted. She didn't sound like she expected to have much patience for the rest of this conversation. "I heard the pay's good."

"Oh, the pay isn't just 'good.' But that's not what I'm askin'. What I'm asking is, why you, instead of somebody else? I could've had any kappa I wanted down here, with the kind of money I'm offering. Why's it you, then?"

A few moments passed in silence. "Orisa and I haven't had any money in weeks," Maeri said. "I can't imagine Ririsa is in any better position, and—" her gaze momentarily shifted to Rumi "—nobody wants to hire a girl who might not leave your house in one piece."

"I get hired a lot!" Rumi protested. "Just not... lately."

Maeri ignored her. "We're desperate," she summarized. "By working with us, you guaranteed that we would all be willing to show up and hear you out."

"Sounds like you think I've got an awfully low opinion of you." Touko did not sound disapproving. "But you aren't wrong. See, I was pretty careful about who I pitched this job offer to. If other kappa got wind of it, they'd all be wanting a piece of the pie. Five people. That's all I need."

"Yeah, great," Ririsa said. "So are you going to tell us what we're here for?"

"I don't much appreciate bein' rushed," Touko said, but seemed to be in too high of spirits to let it slow her down. "What if I told you girls there was a way for us to steal the human village?"

Nobody responded for a moment. "Um," Rumi finally said. "A village is pretty... big."

"Yep, it is. And I'm not just talkin' money or anything like that. The whole damn pot. Money, technology, food, weapons, treasure... anything you want, if it's in the village, it's ours. And once we've got it, we can keep it for good. The humans won't know who took it, and they sure aren't getting it back. Heck, we'll have their houses and businesses, so what would they even stop us with?"

"Humans don't have much," Orisa said. "Poor. Too dumb for technology."

"They have enough, though," Maeri said. "Most of the commerce in Gensokyo passes through the village, and a lot of the industry..."

Maeri rose from the table, and Rumi got her first good look at her outfit. It was big. It was puffy. It was black, and it had enough lace for any five lesser dresses. Dozens of white bows adorned the sides, and in the back, a single massive one dominated them all. Somehow, the tailor of this garment had still managed to fit plenty of pockets on it. It was a strange enough display that the entire room sat in awed silence as Maeri dug through them.

Maeri seemed oblivious. After a few tries, she withdrew a heavily-stained, crumpled notebook and flipped through it until she found what she was looking for. "... forty-seven point eight percent of Gensokyo's wealth is in the human village at any one time. The money alone would leave us set for life. Assuming, of course, that we could actually steal it."

"A village is kind of heavy, the last time I checked," Ririsa said.

"Since I'm kind and all, I'm going to set this up so you don't even need to take it anywhere," Touko said. "I'll deliver the village right to your doorstep, all metaphorical-like, and you can grab whatever you want, when you want it."

There were some confused glances around the room, but nobody seemed to be able to find a further objection. Ririsa finally sighed and said, "So you're telling me that we can take over the human village, nobody can stop us, and nobody can hunt us down, with five whole people."

"Yep. Why don't we run down the list? You've got me, first of all. Some of you might know I dabble in weaponsmithing." Touko patted her oversized gun. It shifted in place, and something inside gave a low hiss of pressure. Rumi wasn't sure what it did, and she was certain she didn't want to find out.

"Maeri," Touko continued. "She's good at planning, and she knows the human village better than anybody around. Anything we do down there during our preparations, she's figuring it out. Orisa, she's..."

"Only here because of Maeri," Orisa murmured.

Touko held her in a withering glare for just a moment. "... Orisa's our tailor. We're gonna be needing a lot of disguises, and they've gotta hold up if we get ourselves into a fight. Ririsa, you're one of the best kappa to have around in a fight, so if we get into a scrap, you and me will handle it."

"I thought you said nobody could stop us?" Ririsa said. "Fighting us doesn't sound that helpless."

"Oh, no, that's the beautiful thing. We do this right, there won't be a single shot fired. But if something comes up, that's why you're here."

Ririsa grunted in response, but she looked pleased at the idea.

"So, um," Rumi said. "If you aren't fighting much, does that mean you need me to build things? I haven't gotten hired for it in a long time...!"

"Yep, you got it." Touko gave a sharp grin, and before Rumi knew it, drifted over to sling an arm companionably over her shoulder. "You've got the most important job of all. Got a few things I need you to make."

Rumi beamed, but her pleasure was cut off by a scoff from Ririsa. "Any kappa can build stuff. Why are we going to a girl who ripped off her own arm?"

"We need to be able to move a lot of dirt real quick," Touko said. She straightened up, and thankfully removed her hand from Rumi's shoulder. "But we can't use bombs. Gotta convince the rest of Gensokyo that we're not kappa. So, that's where Rumi comes in. She can do that kinda thing, can't you?"

"Bombs that don't look like bombs...?" Rumi frowned thoughtfully. "Huh, probably... A teleporter might work, but it would have to be really big. Or I could try some kind of mass-eraser..."

"Mass-eraser," Orisa repeated, skeptically.

"It's, um, my ability!" Rumi said. "I can make all kinds of stuff! As long as the outside world doesn't think it should work. Because, um, then the concept turns into fantasy and it comes to Gensokyo or something? I'm not really sure how it... works. I can just kind of... make them happen. … but I have a policy of no teleporters, time machines, faster-than-light travel, perpetual motion devices, or, um, flutes."

"What's so dangerous about a flute?" Maeri asked.

"Huh, well, that depends on how long your tongue is. I still have the prototype, if you want to try it..."

"Okay, hold up," Ririsa said. "If she's any good at this, what's with the missing arm?"

"Er, well, I was testing my teleporter, right...?"

"Right."

"It, um, malfunctioned. Also you had to reach inside to hit the off switch, which was actually kinda a bad idea. It worked, though! My arm got teleported away! … so did the wall, and, um, most of the topsoil..."

Ririsa held her gaze for a moment, then relented, sighing and rolling her eyes. "Alright, so, let's say this dipshit prodigy you dug up can build us these not-bombs you want. What then? We sneak into the village, blow half the place up, and loot it while the humans are running? Can only carry so much before they catch up."

"Nah, nah." Touko scoffed. "You're thinking too small, way too small, my friend. I did promise you half the village. Whole thing, all yours. Everyone wins, right?"

"Except the humans," Orisa muttered. A chuckle ran around the room.

Touko walked over and settled into the final empty seat, at the head of the table. "Here's what we're gonna do. Maeri, pull out the maps so we can make it real clear."

Maeri and Touko laid the maps out on the table, and launched into an explanation of their plan.

Rumi listened on, in horrified fascination.

"There," Nitori said. "I sure hope you know what you're doing. That was a pain in the butt."

Getting the machine that the tape reels fit on—tape player? Recorder? Sanae wasn't sure what it was actually called—working again had taken more effort than Sanae had expected. Nitori had needed to rip the guts out to repair it, and now they were strewn across a countertop. It was a messy assortment of wires, adapters, and things that Sanae was pretty sure were vacuum tubes, and it tapered down over its length to the little assembly where a spindle now held the tape reel.

"Well, we're going to find out, right?"

Along one wall was a television set built into a cabinet. Sanae turned it on, and the screen erupted into static. Thankfully, no sound accompanied it. "Is everything all set?"

"Yeah, sure, it's running. Let's get this over with."

"Right! Here goes."

Sanae turned back to the tape player and pressed the PLAY button. Something in the machine's guts gave a sickly-sounding buzz. Slowly, though, the reel started turning with a soft clatter of gears.

Nothing happened. The TV showed only static.

"Um, hmm." Sanae looked over the cabinet. It had dozens of buttons, and any one of them could be causing issues. She adjusted one labeled 'tracking,' but there was no change. She fiddled with a few knobs. She checked on the tape, but it seemed to be navigating its maze of spindles in tape heads in a way that looked more-or-less correct.

"Oh, wait," Nitori said. "There's a broken connection." She fiddled in the machine and lifted connectors, then fitted them together. They slid into each other with a soft pop of electricity.

The static on the television disappeared. It was replaced by a video of a man.

Well, mostly. There was still a lot of static overlaying it, and the image drifted side-to-side every few seconds. Sanae could still make out most of the details. The man looked like a very serious type, middle-aged, with glasses and a balding spot on his head. He was sitting at a desk and speaking solemnly toward the camera, not that there was any sound.

They studied the image for a moment. Nitori frowned in confusion. "Who the heck is this?"

Onscreen, the man glanced toward the camera, shuffled a few papers, and read from them. A grin spread on Sanae's face.

"I figured it out! This is a TV station!"

"Huh?"

"It's like..." Sanae excitedly thrust her finger toward the TV. "The station is sending this out, so anybody with one of these machines can see it!"

"That seems like a lot of work to show people some bald human."

"No, um, it's..."

"This isn't some—" Nitori shifted uncomfortably. "—romance thing, is it? Is he what humans find attractive?"

"What? Ew, no! I mean... I think he's reading the news. Just, you can't hear it because there's no sound. He talks about all the things that happened that day, and he reads it in front of a camera, and they record it on this tape! And then it gets broadcast all over, like a newspaper that gets delivered everywhere at once. There are other things too, like stories, and weather reports and stuff!"

Nitori frowned, glancing between Sanae and the man onscreen. "So it sends a signal out, and anybody who receives it can watch this?"

"Yep!"

"Then what's the point? You can't make any money if you give it away for free."

"Oh, um. Advertising and things, I think? I doubt it would work in Gensokyo, though. Nobody has TVs in the first place, so nobody would want to pay for advertisements on it. Not that there are many businesses who would want to run ads, anyway..."

"Advertising, huh?" Nitori crossed her arms, considering that. "So to sum it up, this entire building was made to send out pictures for free, using boxes that nobody in Gensokyo owns, to sell a service that nobody in Gensokyo wants."

"Hmm. Yep. That's pretty accurate, I guess."

Nitori gave a belabored sigh. "Well, at least now I know. In that case, I guess that's all I need you for. No reason for you to stick around, huh? Sorry it didn't go anywhere."

"Yeah..." Sanae gave a slow nod, glancing around the room. "It really is a shame... It would be cool to have TV in Gensokyo, but I don't think just finding a station is enough."

Nitori hit the power button on the tape player, and it whirred to a stop. "Eh, not your problem. Have a good night, Sanae."