Thanks to everyone who read and again to all the people who reviewed. This next one is another humorous story, though I could see this actually happening...

Reimu spared a glance at the intruder into her peaceful afternoon. "You know, I have duties here as well. What makes you think I can go running off to help you on such short notice?"

Sanae bowed deeply in supplication. "Please Reimu! I'll help out at your next festival. I'll clean your shrine for a week! Just help me out here!"

The red white miko sighed. "Alright. I'll accept." She held up her hand to cut off Sanae's happy cheer. "If, and only if, you explain why this is such a big deal. I know you can handle a festival without me."

Sanae winced. "Well, it's because this festival is the one commemorating Lady Kanako's victory over Lady Suwako."

"Huh?" Reimu looked over at Sanae in surprise. Then she chuckled. "Oh that's great. But why is this a problem now?"

"Well before we moved to Gensoukyo Lady Suwako was mainly just keeping the curse gods suppressed, and that didn't require much effort outside the border. She didn't deal with day to day events much. But now they've both started to get more active..."

Reimu nodded. "Right. I see. So you want me to come along and be a restraining influence."

Sanae smiled sheepishly. "Yeah. They wouldn't want to show disunity in front of you, since you have a branch shrine."

"And I'm working for the competition," Reimu added with a smirk. "Well in this case I can help you."

"Thank you so much," Sanae bowed deeply to the other shrine maiden. "With you there things should work out."

Reimu shrugged. "Eh, I think you're worrying too much anyway. They've dealt with this for a long time. I honestly don't think there'd be a problem unless someone was trying to stir things up."

"Halt and state your business," stated the Wolf Tengu.

"Me? Just waiting for the declaration invincibility to end so we can bomb you out of the way," replied Reimu.

Sanae gave the miko a glare before turning to Momiji. "She's here to help with the festival. Come on Momiji. You know me. Do we have to go through this every time?"

Momiji nodded. "Yes."

Sanae sighed, and after a few seconds Momiji echoed it. "Look Sanae, we can't just let you gods tell us who can and can't enter the mountain. I'll let it pass, but you have to clear this stuff with the Great Tengu for a reason. We're the rulers of the mountain, not your subjects."

"Is it really that important?" Sanae asked.

Momiji nodded. "Yes. Yes it is." After a few moments however her expression softened and she shrugged. "But there's a festival tonight so go ahead. We'll be officially dropping picket duty tonight anyway, so everyone else can come."

Sanae nodded, "Thank you."

Reimu started flying further up the mountain. "Yeah, thanks. Anyway let's go get started on our jobs."

As the two flew off Momiji called out, "I'll see you two at the festival."

Reimu gave the green miko a sidelong glance. "It seems you're fitting in better then before. Momiji seems to be much nicer to you then she is normally."

Sanae blushed, "I hope so. It's still a little confusing here with all the odd rules. Still it would be nice to be seen as a friend instead of as an ambassador of a dangerous foreign power."

Reimu shrugged. "No clue if that'll happen in our lifetimes. But so long as you have some friends it should be okay right?"

"I suppose so..."

Hatate smiled as she snapped off a few photos of one of the more impressive wipe outs on the onbashira. It was too bad this festival only happened every six years. There was a whole lot to see.

Unfortunately, she'd have to spend a lot more of that time doing her work instead of wandering the festival. In the past she'd have just just played around like the second rate tengu journalists did, and then used spirit photography later to get her info for the articles. But with Aya as her rival that just wouldn't cut it. She'd have to be in the middle of things, stirring up trouble if necessary.

Still, she thought to herself, she could spend a lot of time personally inspecting the vendors and games. For example the takoyaki at this stall was grade A. She took a quick picture of the bird youkai cooking the treats then moved on down the lane of booths.

There were a lot more of the youkai from below the mountain here too. The shrine kassha and the shikigami kitten seemed to be having a contest as to who could catch (and eat) the most goldfish. She snapped a quick pic of that. Then another pic of the gap youkai and the flower youkai being very dangerously polite to each other.

As Hatate walked away from where she'd just done an investigative review of cotton candy, something caught her eye. What looked like a young girl was walking through the booths alone. Most people would probably just guess she was some random minor youkai and overlook her. But Hatate knew better then that. She moved through the crowd to the girl and took a quick snapshot.

"So Lady Suwako, any reason you're wandering this festival in disguise?" the tengu asked quietly.

Suwako jumped in surprise, then turned to stare at the reporter. Finally she shrugged in acceptance and waved the reporter over to some quieter benches. When they could hear clearly the goddess responded, "Who says I was hiding? It's not like leaving behind my hat is some ultimate disguise."

Hatate smiled while punching in notes on the camera's keypad. "Suuure it isn't. That's why no one but me recognized you, right? But that's not important." The Tengu looked around briefly before continuing, "I'm actually interested in an exclusive with you."

Suwako's eyes narrowed. "About what?"

Hatate waved her hand around at the festival. "Well this is such a sweet party, but there's all this history stuff attached to it as well. So I figured it'd be awesome to get the other side of the story. The Great Suwa War from Lady Suwako's POV right?"

Suwako sat and considered it. "You're actually trying to get me all riled up at Kanako so you'll have an incident to cover aren't you?" Hatate blanched then tried to look innocent. "That's okay I guess, if only because it won't work. And it would be nice to tell my story again." The frog goddess pointed up at her interviewer. "I'll do it if you get me some shaved ice. Strawberry flavor!"

Hatate whirled around to head back to the vendors. It was still a better story then nothing. "'Kay! One strawberry ice ASAP."

Kanako smirked at the frantically scribbling Tengu. "But why a sudden interest today Miss Shameimaru?"

Aya smiled easily. "Because of the festival of course! It's the biggest one in Gensoukyo for some time. Even Suika Ibuki didn't draw in this many people during her incident. You've got unique events, a full crowd of booths and even a full fireworks display created by the black white witch herself. With all that excitement, it seems only fitting to have a proper retrospective on the reason for the days events."

"Hmmm? Are you sure that's it?" Kanako asked.

Well that and I figure getting you in a bragging mode increases the chances of you annoying Suwako and something fun happening, but you don't need to know that, thought Aya.

Out loud she said, "Of course."

The goddess smiled knowingly. "Well alright then. I'm glad I was able to help you."

At this point a rather frazzled looking Marisa poked her head into the room. "Hey, you on soon? It's taking all my spare time and some help from two mikos to keep the Kappa from busting open my fireworks to inspect them."

Kanako nodded. "I'll begin the official festivities right now. That should distract most of them." She nodded to Aya. "If you'll excuse me..."

"No problem Lady Kanako," Aya said before flying out to get a good spot to watch the festivities. The drinking hadn't started in earnest yet, so Aya still considered herself on the job. She wasn't going to let that young fledgling one up her.

It looked like Marisa had been telling the truth about the kappa messing with the fireworks. Reimu was lecturing two younger ones right now. Aya idly wondered how Sanae had persuaded the other miko to help here. Something to look up later.

Scanning the crowd she found the newcomers from the temple had shown up, though they hadn't split off into pairs yet, so there was no material to be found there. The umbrella seemed to have joined Yuuka's entourage, though Aya couldn't say yet if that was because she'd been drawn in by the other youkai's power or if she just enjoyed being with Medicine. Momiji seemed to be buying a plush doll from Alice, which seemed a little odd. Aya had figured Momiji would prefer traditional porcelain dolls.

And wandering through the crowd was her self proclaimed rival... and Suwako? Aya stared closely to confirm her suspicions. That was unexpected. The girl had more promise then Aya had suspected.

Still even if Suwako was Hatate's front page, the worst it could do was boost Aya's sales from people interested in seeing the other half of the story. She just needed to make sure her article was better.

The festival din hushed as Kanako made her usual flashy appearance in front of the shrine. Admittedly flash was something to be proud of, and as the host, showing off was almost required. Kanako immediately headed into her speech, which sadly didn't describe much about the war at all, and mainly just talked about how great the unification of Japan was. Suwako looked a little miffed at points, but it was hardly the rage Aya had been hoping for.

The speech ended quickly, and Kanako raised her arms to allow those with large offerings to come forth.

Aya had almost given up hope on there being an incident when a small figure caught her eye. She smiled and raised her camera as she recognized the person. "Well, well, the most interesting person in Gensoukyo. Don't fail me now..."

Reimu sighed as the speech ended. "Well that wasn't too bad. Honestly those Kappa kids were way more annoying. Why were you so worried Sanae?"

Sanae absently tossed her gohei back and forth between hands. "It's not over yet. The worst is right about now..."

Reimu looked over at where the Great Tengu was offering several barrels of Sake (which would likely be gone before the end of the night) to Kanako. "Huh? What's there to worry about."

Sanae winced. "Because one of the offerings that can be made is to sacrifice frogs."

Reimu gave Sanae an odd look. "Huh? Who would know that? For that matter who would do that? I think you're worrying about nothing."

Marisa gave a cough. "Spoke too soon, Reimu. Look."

The two miko looked at where the magician was pointing. Coming down out of the sky was a very familiar ice fairy holding a sack. Reimu and Sanae buried their faces in their hands.

Cirno landed on the grounds, completely ignoring the line behind her. Fortunately most of the people in that line were looking forward to a bit of spectacle. Pointing at Kanako the fairy asked, "Are you the goddess that makes people strong?"

Kanako nodded in amusement. "Yes that is one of the blessing I can grant. Why, do you wish to become stronger little fairy?"

Cirno shook her head. "Nope! Cirno is already the strongest. I just want to make sure you don't make anyone stronger then me!"

She upended the sack. "You like frog sacrifices right? 'Cause I'm the best at freezing frogs!"

Sure enough a mass of frogsicles rolled onto the ground. Kanako did her best to hide a laugh, "That's not the normal way of offering them, but it is an impressive number."

Cirno nodded in 'comprehension.' "Oh, I can break them if you need to! It's real easy. Let's see..."

The solid crack of an iron ring bouncing off Cirno's skull and hitting the ground cut off any comments the fairy or Kanako were going to make. The crowd turned as one to see Suwako striding out of their midst, with her hat restored and an angry gleam in her eyes. "I'll accept a lot of grief from you Kanako. Stealing my snacks, setting up my shrine to be cleaned last, pretending you're the one doing the harvest work... A whole lot of grief. But I won't let you keep hurting frogs just to show me up!"

Kanako glared at the other goddess. "Did you think I'd really have that fairy kill all those frogs? Why don't you let me finish doing the real work around here while you go back to the shed!"

Reimu sighed and pulled out some talismans. "Alright plan B." She began to move forward when a gust of wind hit the crowd. To everyone's surprise suddenly Aya Shameimaru was standing next to Kanako and the unconscious Cirno with notebook in hand. "So Lady Suwako, do you often use your powers to crush small fairies who are actually participating in rituals? And how do you explain the interruption of festival events?"

There was a flash then Hatate entered the grounds next to Suwako. "So Aya, could you, for the record, explain why you spend so much time following this ice fairy around? What type of interest do you have in her?"

Aya looked shocked for a moment before smiling viciously. "I assure you I have no non professional interest in young girls, like you two."

Kanako burst out laughing at the looks of shock on the faces of Suwako and Hatate. "Oh no, you didn't," snarled the younger Tengu when she got back her composure.

Suwako was more direct. "Alright, let's see how well you do with spellcard rules Kanako!"

The four combatants took to the sky, exchanging attacks. Reimu put her amulet away and stepped back. This was no longer a problem that could be solved quickly. The rest of the Tengu and youkai were of course taking bets, and Sanae looked like she was beside herself with tears. "Sorry Sanae. Looks like we got outmaneuvered by idiots."

"Oh... There's got to be some way to stop them! Please stop you two!" Sanae's words flew up into the sky, where they were lost in the rumble of battle.

Reimu shrugged. "It's Gensoukyo. These things happen."

Sanae frowned. "It still looks bad! This is why your shrine has no worshipers." Sanae ignored Reimu's glare and began to pray. "Please stop those two..."

Suddenly an errant bullet landed behind the autumn shrine. Marisa's eyes went wide in concern. "The fireworks!"

Sure enough, not 3 seconds later a full Marisa special flew into the air. And Marisa was not one to skimp on gunpowder. Or magical explosives either. The gods and tengu fighting in the air were caught by surprise as the waves of explosives hit them. The Tengu were taken out before the first 'intermission' while Suwako and Kanako hit the ground as the finale shattered the skies.

"Nice work with the miracle, Sanae," Marisa said as Sanae stood sheepishly over the fallen forms of her goddesses.

Sanae winced. "I didn't mean to do it! It was an accident!"

Momiji walked out of the confused crowd and placed a sake bottle in front of the temples shrine maiden. Then she clapped her hands twice and bowed in supplication. "Oh great goddess of miracles Sanae Kochiya. Please grant my fellow Tengu the wisdom not to annoy me while I'm on patrol."

Sanae blushed furiously with embarrassment. "That's not funny Momiji!"

Momiji nodded and smiled as she looked on the unconscious forms on the ground. "Yes. Yes it is."