Three chapters? One, two, and three? Wow. Looks like I'm sticking with this one until the bitter end :D
I've actually done some research (on Wikipedia) about phoenixes - specifically it's Eastern counterpart known as Fenghuang - as well as the story behind Izanagi and Izanami, and gathered a few small facts about oni. Thus, the project they present at the end (presuming they do) should be at least partially true. Now then, about this chapter…
Since we met Kaguya's family in the last chapter, I found it only fitting that this chapter introduces Mokou's family, small and nutty though it may be, and even if it's just at the end of the chapter. Mokou's dad is actually a worse cook than I, which takes effort, and he managed to accomplish a feat that I'm still pretty sure is impossible. Even though he's minor, I have this feeling that he'll become the favorite of at least one person reading this, even when overshadowed completely by his daughter.
Her mother is mentioned a couple of times in this chapter as well, but that's a different basket entirely.
"So, Fujiwara," Kaguya's father - a big bearded man always in a black suit - said. "Tell us a bit about yourself. It's rare our little princess brings home company."
"Please, just call me Mokou, sir," Mokou insisted. "I'm from the trailer park on the south side of town, and I guess you could say my father's kind of a guardian for the whole park." It wasn't that he solved crimes close to home. Far from it. It was mostly that he always had his eyes out for everybody's backs around that neighborhood; if he couldn't have a wealth of money, he'd at least try to have a wealth of favors. "Being there, you grow up kind of fast, and I didn't really have all that much time to just be a kid when I was little. Since dad was usually out on work and I had no mom, I was usually left to my own devices."
"I'm sorry to hear about your mother."
"I never said she died…but thank you. She was a doctor, and we actually didn't live too far from here, but one day about five months after I was born, the place flooded and she drowned to let me and my father escape." That was a major contributing factor to Mokou's phobia of water. And that she couldn't swim. "So how about you Houraisan folks? It's a pretty big place here." Kick!
"I thought I warned you," Kaguya angrily whispered from the seat next to Mokou's. "Don't ask about his work, dummy."
"I'm a sanitation expert," Mr. Houraisan said happily. "It's my job to know when and where the streets are dirty, and do something about it."
"I had no idea a sanitation expert would get paid so well," Mokou said in awe. "It's a great mansion you have here, Mr. Houraisan!"
"Thank you. So, Mokou, what are you dreams for the future?"
"I'd like to follow in my father's footsteps. He's a sanitation expert, not unlike yourself. He finds dirt on the streets and gets rid of it." It was a pretty nice cover to avoid saying she wanted to be a detective. Even if Mr. Houraisan had the "sanitation expert" cover ready, Mokou wasn't ready to say she wanted to be a detective. "So how about Kaguya?"
"You sit next to me in class," Kaguya retorted. "You should already know plenty."
"Let's see…works hard," Mokou said in a way that practically radiated "yeah, right" over to Kaguya. "Always ready for a few assignments, never late…yep, you're just the model student. So now let's hear about outside of or after school. What do you want to be?"
"Well, if you must know, my dream is to marry an extremely wealthy man and never have to work a single day in my life."
"Good plan." So pretty much exactly what you do now, only with a ring on your finger? What a NEET. Some people never changed, it seemed. "You won't make a name for yourself by just marrying some rich guy. I figured somebody like you would want the world to see her name in bright flashing lights."
"That's not very nice, to assume stuff about people. Are you done eating yet?"
"Yeah, just about. I've got a small appetite, so I'll get out of your hair now," Mokou said, getting up to her feet. "Thanks for the food, and…Kaguya, I'll see you tomorrow. You'd better start studying."
"I'll have Michael meet you up at the car."
Along the ride back to Mokou's place…
"So, tell me something," Mokou said.
"What is it, Miss Fujiwara?"
"Please, Miss Fujiwara was my mother. Call me Mokou. I just wanted to know, what's Kaguya's story?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Her past. I'm sure the staff thinks it too at that mansion, but she's pretty selfish and a bit of a bitch." Maybe that was just Mokou's slightly biased way of looking at it, but whether or not it was happened to be irrelevant. What mattered was her partner's life story.
"The child of my boss is an enviable position. Never has Kaguya not gotten something she wants, and likewise, not once has she gotten something she didn't want. She's highly accustomed to buying her way out of situations and using her own personal cunning to gain what she can't through money."
"Kaguya has cunning? I'd like to see that."
"If in the appropriate situations, her cunning goes without compare."
"Right situations, huh?" Mokou could only wonder what those situations would be. Trying to watch two different anime at once, perhaps? Or, knowing Kaguya, trying to watch two different anime in her sleep. "Is she actually any good for practical things, like a school project?"
"If given the right stimulus, Kaguya can do nigh-anything. Keep that in mind, Mokou. It may come in handy when working on this big project of yours."
The right stimulus? "Thanks for the advice."
"Of course."
"Oh, make this left here. Then it's the third trailer on the right; the red one." The stars were especially bright tonight. Just as she stepped out of the car to go home, Mokou could look straight up and see the seven stars in Hokuto Shichisei (Big Dipper) shining brightly in the sky. It was rare that Mokou had the chance to see those stars in particular, but she always kept an eye open for them. They were certainly beautiful, but of course, there was one thing that stuck in Mokou's mind since childhood, thanks largely in part to having to watch old anime with her old man. "Where the mark of Hokuto is…"
"…chaos follows," Kaguya mused from her room. Click. The remote for her television was always comfortably seated at her computer desk, as well as that being the spot where Kaguya herself was usually sitting. "And that wraps it up. A Hokuto no Ken marathon starting at the end, then working my way back to the start." She'd been working on that since the day before yesterday. She probably could have finished yesterday, had it not been for school getting in the way, but it did, so the marathon finished today. It was about the right hour that, if Kaguya were to open the blackout curtains over her windows, she'd be able to see the moon. During those hours, she always opened her curtains. And when she did, her eyes widened at the first thing her eyes locked on. Not the full moon, but not all too far from it (given that it's the sky and all) rested seven twinkling stars. Hokuto Shichisei; the seven stars that foretell death and chaos.
"…well, that sucks." It meant Kaguya would probably be involved, which was just about the last thing she wanted.
GRRRRNNNNNNNNN… "Somebody's gotta fix that door," Mokou muttered. "Hey," she called out so as to be heard across the little trailer. "I'm-"
"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Not today, old man," Mokou casually said, raising her right foot at just the right moment to make it clash with the face of her detective father. This was a commonplace occurrence at the Fujiwara home. Mokou walks in, says she's home, and her father almost always ambushes her from some point, though rarely at the door. It was her father's odd way of honing Mokou's reflexes in case she went into law enforcement and had to handle a gun. He'd been shot once before, and didn't want his kid to go through that kind of ordeal.
"So how was school?" Of course, Mr. Fujiwara didn't ask that until after Mokou's foot and his face ceased to be connected. "You're home pretty late. I had to cook my own dinner, and…"
"I know." Mokou's eyes drifted over in the direction of the kitchen. As expected when he had to cook a meal himself, it was pretty much all black with soot and ash. "At least nothing got destroyed this time…well, except whatever you were cooking. What were you cooking, anyway?"
"Ramen noodles."
"…seriously? Over-boiling them, from a cooking klutz like you I get, but not even you have the lack of ability to set them on fire. Did you fall asleep or something?"
"…so how was school?"
"Alright, I guess. Same old, same old, until I had to start a school project."
"Interesting." Grabbing his handy tools for cleaning up soot and ash, Mr. Fujiwara eagerly said "Please continue." Looking back on his ramen blunder, he could have just as easily gone to a convenience store and bought some, and have them cook it for him there. He was a great detective, and always noticed the smallest details, but outside of his work, few people were able to avoid being surprised with the revelation that he was really a detective.
"It's about Japanese mythology, and I have a partner. It's that Houraisan girl."
"Houraisan? You mean, the same Houraisan that we think is in with the yakuza?"
"His kid. And…" Did Mokou dare call Mr. Houraisan out on his yakuza connections; his yakuza command? If she did, he could probably be put behind bars, but if there was a leak in the department, it wouldn't take long to find out it was Fujiwara no Mokou that let the information slip. It would mean the end of her, probably literally. Out of fear of exactly that happening, she finished her statement with "And he's a pretty neat guy; doesn't seem like he'd be in the yakuza."
"Well, that's usually how it is with crime bosses."
"Yeah, I know. So did you eat or was the burning ramen scare too much?" Mokou still had trouble believing that he could actually burn ramen. She'd heard of very inexperienced ditzes over-boiling them at which point they got all soggy, but even that was rare. Never did she hear of a person actually over-cooking them enough that they'd burst into flame. Not to mention they were in water…only Mr. Fujiwara, Mokou figured.
"After I burned the ramen, I decided to wait until you got home."
"Well, I'm here now. I'll fix you up something quick, probably a grilled-cheese sandwich or two." Probably two. Nobody knew just where Mokou got the cooking ability she had, but many have said in the past that instead of being a detective, Mokou should have aspired to be a gourmet chef. She certainly had the skill, and it was probably a better-paying job than a detective. Regardless, Mokou's wish was to be a detective, nothing more.
I like to think that creating a backstory is a particular talent of mine, and Mokou's is no exception. Even without completely fleshing it out, I've managed to make a Mokou that fits so well with Touhou's canon and fanon alike, despite not being immortal or having fire powers. But really, for people who've read my other KaguMoko fic, you might have noticed by now that it's really the exact same personalities as in the last fic, but the vastly different setting has made their interactions a tad different. We can't have a shouting fight in class, lest we get CAVED!
Now, I do have a very unique plan for these very mortal versions of Kaguya and Mokou, and bits of pieces of it may have reflected in Kaguya's plan from the last chapter (you'll have to find out yourself) so by the end, this should get interesting.
Also, I have one last thing to say, about names. I could've been exceptionally clever with the names of Fujiwara no Mokou and Kaguya Houraisan, especially with them being at the lower and higher classes of society respectively, and swapped a critical part of their names. If I'd thought of it in the first chapter, Keine would have called off the names "Mokou Fujiwara" and "Houraisan no Kaguya" instead of what I had, but now that it's out in the open, Houraisan no Kaguya sounds weird.
Oh well. That's life ;)