The next morning, Sanae had a long flight down to the human village, but the events of the night before were still fresh in her mind.
She'd arrived at the house just a minute too late to catch the culprits. By the time she landed, the building was in ruins, too far gone to salvage without a really inventive miracle. The residents had rushed to her, babbling about the attack through tears. It had taken her a few minutes to calm them down, and even then, they were too frantic for her to get more than the barest details—tengu, stealing, and then the tengu had made their house fly.
She'd spent another hour afterward searching for the tengu, but they were nowhere to be found. Wherever they'd gone, she wasn't going to find it by just wandering around.
Sanae only slowly drifted back to the moment as she descended into the human village. The village had a strange air to it today, and the streets were more crowded than usual. It had the slightly frantic feel that she usually associated with festival preparations, but with none of the energetic cheer. Everybody was hurrying from door to door or standing along the street gossiping. Some shops seemed to be closed for the day, while others had lines out the door. Normally, she might stop and make sure that everything was okay. Today, she kept right on walking.
She was headed for Suzunaan, but before she could reach it, the familiar red of Reimu's outfit caught her eye across a crowded square, and next to it, the peak of Marisa's hat. Carefully picking her way closer, she spotted Kosuzu and Akyuu standing alongside the pair. She elbowed her way closer, giving the occasional apology when she bumped into somebody.
"Oh, hey!" Marisa said, before she'd even finished picking her way past the last wall of people. "Don't tell me you're here to get in on this bounty, too."
"Bounty...?"
"Huh? Yeah, you haven't heard?"
Kosuzu turned toward Sanae and smiled. There was a stack of papers clutched to her chest, and before Sanae could ask the obvious question, Kosuzu peeled one from the top and offered it over. "If you could hang a few around your shrine and the station, it would probably be a big help."
The illustration on the paper had started out pretty amateurish to begin with, and being converted to a woodblock print hadn't helped it any. Even so, Sanae could make out the details well enough—it was a group of four people wearing tengu masks, two of them holding crossbows. At the top was printed, 'REWARD OFFERED FOR EXTERMINATION.' At the bottom, in smaller print, were the details on the previous night's attack... and the reward amount.
"Fifty thousand yen?" Sanae said.
"Yep!" Marisa grinned. "It's the best-paying extermination job the village's had in a few years. Me and Reimu are racin' to see who gets it done first."
"Marisa is racing," Reimu corrected her with a sigh. "People are going to complain to me if any more houses get attacked either way, so I'd be doing it even without the reward."
"But the reward helps," Marisa said, smirking to her. After she accepted that the remark hadn't gotten a rise out of Reimu, she glanced to Sanae. "And hey, you've got that radio thing, don't ya?"
"I do... um, how did you know about that?"
"It's all anybody'll talk about. Hearin' about all this on your boxes, I mean."
Kosuzu perked up and nodded excitedly. "People who had televisions learned all about the attacks as soon as they happened last night. Everybody else had to wait until the papers came out this morning. By then, the news had already gotten around, and everybody wanted to know more. We sold out of papers within two hours of getting them in, and half of the customers said they were thinking of buying TVs now."
"Oh! That's great!" Sanae said, with her earlier annoyance temporarily forgotten. "Did the paper say anything else?"
"Not really... Miss Aya was really angry when she delivered them. Half the article was just reminding people that the tengu don't endorse the attacks and want them to stop."
"Right, so, anyway, here's what I'm thinkin'. Sanae," Marisa said. "You let me borrow that radio thing, and we'll split the reward fifty-fifty."
"Ah, that radio is the private property of the Gensokyo Television Station!" Sanae grinned and leaned closer. "If you want to hear updates about it, though, you can buy a television! We announce anything we hear on there."
"Sometimes I'm not sure if you're a shrine maiden or a businesswoman," Reimu said.
"Look who's talking," Akyuu said dryly. "In any case, at this rate, you can include the villagers in the race for the bounty."
"Huh?" Sanae said. "What do you mean?"
"Have you spent much time in the village today?"
"Nope! I just got here. … is something wrong?"
"Everybody is worried. There are always rumors of youkai attacking farmhouses or eating people, but everybody is used to those, and adults remember the days when that sort of thing still regularly happened. Youkai destroying houses is harder to ignore, though."
Kosuzu nodded. "I heard that the blacksmith had a line around the building this morning, and he'd sold out of weapons by noon..."
"Oh." Sanae glanced over the crowd around them. It was true. It had that energetic atmosphere she'd felt before, but the energy driving it was tension, not excitement. Here and there throughout the crowd, she could hear voices raised in argument. She was pretty sure that she saw a few weapons poking up, too. "... people aren't going to do anything, are they?"
"This always happens," Reimu reassured her with a sigh. "Whenever youkai start acting up, everybody suddenly wants a sword. Never mind that a sword will barely slow down anything worse than a fairy."
"I mean, not a normal one," Marisa said. "There's ways to make them work for that kind of thing, but you've gotta know the right enchantments, and..." Realizing that nobody else was interested in the line of conversation, she trailed off.
"Reimu is right," Akyuu said. "This happens every time there's an incident that affects the village. People will get more suspicious of youkai for a while, but once it blows over, things will go back to normal."
"Unless something even worse happens," Reimu pointed out.
"That's why we've raised fifty thousand yen to convince the best youkai hunters in Gensokyo to focus on the issue," Akyuu said, coolly.
"A-ah, well." Sanae glanced between them uneasily. Kosuzu looked a lot more worried than Akyuu, but even the usually-calm Child of Miare's face betrayed some anxiety. She straightened herself up and forced a smile. "Well, you don't need to worry anymore! The Moriya shrine maiden is on the case!"
"I bet those youkai will surrender as soon as they hear that all three of you are looking for them!" Kosuzu beamed up at her, looking immensely relieved. "So did you come down on business? I can head back to Suzunaan, if you need to talk."
"Oh! That's right." In the conversation, Sanae had almost forgotten about the actual reason for her visit. She pulled her own stack of papers out from beneath her arm and offered it over. "I just came to deliver these."
Kosuzu took the paper and glanced over them, adjusting her glasses.
"They're schedules," Sanae explained. "For the station. We have a bunch of new shows coming up starring Gensokyo residents, so I thought it would be nice for people to have a better idea of when things air."
"Oh. That should be helpful, yes!"
"Tomorrow is the first one, too! We have a minor goddess hosting an advice show."
"An advice show...?"
"It's a show where people send in their problems, and the host tries to give them advice on how to deal with them. I was kind of hoping that you could gather up letters from people here, and we could carry them back up to the station when we make deliveries. I know it's kind of short notice, but..."
"I'll be sure to mention it!" Kosuzu promised.
"Which goddess?" Akyuu asked.
"Oh, um, it's Hina Kagiyama. She's been doing our news broadcasts!"
"Taking advice from a goddess of misfortune sounds like a real bad idea," Marisa said.
"She really means well! And I'll be putting up some really strong wards around the studio to keep her powers in check."
"So you aren't just using it to promote your own goddesses' faith?" Reimu asked.
"Huh? Nope. We're offering shows to anybody who can come up with an interesting concept."
"Huh. Something like that could probably do a lot to increase visitors to my shrine, if it caught on..."
"For a good enough show idea, I might let even a rival shrine have one. Marisa, that goes for you too! We need everything we can get!"
The rest of the visit was over quickly, with just a bit more discussion of business with Kosuzu. By the time that Sanae said her goodbyes, the crowd had started to thin out, but the uneasy mood still filled the village.
The inside of the station was starting to feel like an actual business these days. When Sanae stepped into the front room, two of the youkai she'd given shows to were hanging around, arguing over their competing concepts. In the studio, Hina was pacing back and forth, reading a handwritten news article to herself, mumbling different enunciations to herself. In the back room, Nitori was sitting on her mattress, with tidy rows of TV components laid out in front of her as she produced more of them.
It was just as well that everybody else was busy. Sanae wasn't in much of a socializing mood. She settled down at her desk with a draft of the Sunday schedule in front of her to make some tweaks, and before she knew it, ten minutes had passed and she hadn't gotten anything done.
She clicked her pen. She doodled on her paper. She did everything except actually accomplish something.
She couldn't stop thinking about the night before.
Normally, kappa would be very reluctant to walk very far through an open, grassy field, but calling their current surroundings a 'grassy field' was a criminal understatement. It had been an expansive rice field at some point, but it had been untended for years. Now, other plants had moved in to fill the opening, making a solid wall of foliage that reached two meters into the air. Maeri, as the one with all the maps, led the way, huffing indignantly and swatting plants out of her way. The others followed in a single file line behind her, taking advantage of the path she was clearing.
"There," she said, once they'd been walking for what felt like an hour. "This is the place."
Rumi couldn't even see anything except more grass at first. Not until she'd pushed her way through another five meters of it was she finally able to see their destination. In the middle of a much less wild clearing, a house stood. It had clearly seen better days, with some of its panels ajar, ivy growing up one corner, and years of detritus strewn across its roof, but it was still more or less in one piece.
The kappa filed into the clearing and laid down their loads—tools, cleaning supplies, even a few pieces of lumber. Touko stepped forward, looking the place over. "You're sure this place is abandoned, Maeri?"
"Unless there are squatters or something. I can't be a hundred percent sure about that kind of thing, but... if there's nobody inside, we should be able to use it?"
"Ririsa, go take a look." Once Ririsa was underway, Touko turned to the rest of the group. "There, listen up! We've got until tonight to get this place cleaned up and make it look like someone lives here. Orisa, you and me will do the cleanin'. Maeri, you can make repairs, and Ririsa will start settin' our trap."
"Huh..." Rumi looked over the house. "... what about me?"
"Isn't it obvious? You've got the most important part. You're gonna be gettin' that bomb of yours ready for our new friends."
Nitori had a problem.
Or, well, Sanae had a problem, and by extension, it was also Nitori's problem. Nitori was sitting in the maintenance room, but the door was still open, and from her spot on the floor, she could see most of the studio. She could see the mixing desk, where Sanae was hunched over in her chair, halfheartedly shuffling papers and occasionally jotting a quick note on one. She was close enough to hear the deep sighs Sanae gave now and then.
She tried to ignore them. Getting involved in other people's problems wasn't really the kappa way, and that went double when those problems were emotional. If it was a sensible issue, like getting the timing on an engine right, you could at least expect that the other person would try to reciprocate sooner or later. Reciprocating emotions, on the other hand, was a messy and complicated affair, far worse than even the most daunting engineering project. It wasn't something to enter into lightly.
So, Nitori focused on her work for the day, making another batch of TVs. By this stage, she'd already made the components, and just needed to slide them together into their final state. Four pieces to snap together, one wire bundle to connect, four screws to put the internal assembly together, four more screws to close the casing around it, one knob to snap on, stick the antenna on, slide a battery in, and hit the power button to test it. Easy. It was meditative, in a way. Snap snap screw screw screw screw snap slide and one was practically done. Straightforward, like other things regrettably weren't.
But she still found herself glancing toward Sanae now and then as she worked.
It took most of twenty minutes for her to work up the nerve to approach her. "Hey, uh, Sanae?"
Sanae had given up on even pretending to work. She was staring vacantly down at the paper, with her pen tapping anxiously at the table. Whatever she was worried about, she was so preoccupied that she barely noticed Nitori's presence until she spoke. "Huh?"
"So, I've been thinking..." Nitori glanced aside and tucked her thumbs into two of her many, many belt loops. She liked to think it looked like a casual posture. "You've come in every single day since we started the station, right?"
"Huh? Um, yeah, I guess I have."
"So, don't humans usually get a day or two a week off?"
"Oh. Well, usually, I guess..."
"You should do that, then."
"Huh? Well, I mean, I could, but... there's a lot of stuff I should get done today, and then tomorrow we start airing the new shows, and those don't finish until—"
"Remember when you made me take a break the other day? I'm doing that now. I didn't say you get a a choice here." Nitori leaned in, smirking. "I still own this place, and even though you might be the manager, that means I get to make a few rules. And, uh, anyway..." She glanced down at the paper in front of Sanae. She didn't know what it had looked like before, but she did know that the hash marks and stars that Sanae had doodled all over it probably weren't the intended contents. "... you don't look like you're in a state to get much done today anyway."
Sanae followed her gaze down to the paper and flinched. "A-ah, sorry. I'm just a little distracted, is all."
Nitori found herself really wanting to ask, 'about what?,' but managed to stifle the urge. She knew how to act like a disinterested jerk. She wasn't sure if her repertoire extended to 'concerned friend.'
"Well, see. After you relax and stuff, you'll be a lot less distracted, too. Come on. Get up, out the door. If you're still here in ten minutes, I'm firing you."
Sanae gave a hesitant nod, and Nitori wondered just how much of this she was buying. It was enough to get her out of her seat, at least. "Well... okay then. But I'm supposed to stop by Kourindou and get the camcorder Sumireko's buying for us—"
"I can do that."
"—and give the fairies more lessons on running the cameras—"
"I can do that, too." Internally, Nitori winced. When fairies were involved, even the simplest task took twice as long and was four times as annoying.
"—and I really need to start drawing up a budget so we know how much money we have to work with when the TVs stop selling so fast..."
"And that one can wait." No way Nitori was touching a budget in a million years. That sort of thing was why she'd hired Sanae in the first place. "... seriously, you look like a mess. If you're really serious about doing more stuff today, at least go take care of whatever's bothering you first."
"I guess a few hours wouldn't hurt..." Sanae still didn't seem to be in a rush to leave. "Could I take Hatate with me too?"
Hatate had been sitting at the news desk, facing away from the two and randomly looking up pictures on her camera with her thoughtography. Now, out of the corner of her eye, Nitori noticed her stiffen up. So she'd been eavesdropping. That would be good to keep in mind for the future. "Hatate? Er, well. It's her call, I guess. I don't need her for anything."
Hatate kept on trying to pretend that she was ignoring the two, but even she seemed able to sense the two pairs of eyes on her back. Begrudgingly, she asked, "What do you need?"
'Other tengu sources,' Sanae had asked for.
She'd looked so hopeful. Hatate hadn't had the heart to tell her that she didn't have any tengu sources. None of the papers really reported on events within the tengu village. What was the point? Any tengu reading it would already know what was happening, and the Great Tengu only paid for juicy news on the other races. A waste of time, that's what it was.
Sanae had also added, 'or any other tengu friends you have might be fine!' Hatate hadn't yet found a way to retain her pride while admitting her number of friends.
What she did have, though, were acquaintances and co-workers. So, she'd led Sanae on a long flight around the mountain, a kilometer or two below where the springs joined together into a roaring river. A bridge came into view, and a single figure on it, standing rigidly.
Hatate just hoped that Momiji was on duty today, and not one of the other wolf tengu. A few of them had gotten so annoyed at Aya that they snapped at crows on general principle.
She was in luck, though. Momiji didn't turn as the two landed, but that was the easiest way to know it was her. Nobody else was so dedicated to standing guard that they wouldn't even glance aside for a moment. "Good afternoon, Hatate," she said, before they'd even finished settling down.
"Good afternoon. Er, how'd you know it was me, th—"
"Smell."
"... right. Uh, so, anyway, this is Sanae Kochiya, from the shrine up on the mountain?"
"We've met, yes." In a rare break of her vigilance, Momiji turned from the mountainside to give Sanae a nod of acknowledgment. "What can I do for you?"
Sanae didn't immediately answer, and Hatate realized that she was the one leading this conversation. "Sanae was wanting to ask you about, you know, all the robberies or whatever that have been happening down there. Oh! And the house last night."
"The Tengu Anti-Human Militia?"
"Right. That stuff."
Momiji gave a nod of understanding. "I don't know much, but I'll answer what I can."
Hatate glanced to Sanae, desperately hoping that she'd pick up their end of things. This was already in the running for the second-longest conversation she'd had today.
Fortunately, Sanae came through. "Right! So, um, I'd just been thinking... You have really good eyesight, right?"
"I do, yes."
"Do you ever stand guard at night?"
"I cover a twelve-hour shift from noon to midnight three days a week. To answer your next question, yes, I was on duty when the attack happened last night."
"I guess that means you didn't see any tengu leave the mountain around then?"
"I didn't. The only tengu moving around were patrols and normal foot traffic. The only tengu that I saw leave the mountain was Aya."
"Hmm... are you sure it was Aya? It couldn't have been anybody else in a disguise or anything?"
Momiji glanced over again. She gave an expression that Hatate had always figured was meant to be a smile, but it was uncomfortably toothy for the tastes of anybody who wasn't a wolf. "It was Aya," she said. "Also, the top button of her jacket was unbuttoned, she hadn't brushed her hair, and there were two rolls of film inside her top-left pocket."
She held Sanae's gaze for a moment, challenging. Sanae blanched. Momiji turned back, looking satisfied.
"A-ah, right, so nobody left but Aya, got it."
"I wouldn't be surprised if Aya was the one smashing houses just to drum up more news," Hatate muttered.
"She didn't head down until afterward," Momiji said.
Hatate muttered under her breath anyway.
Sanae was deep in thought, and the back-and-forth seemed to pass over her head. "That doesn't make sense, though. If no tengu left the mountain, how could any of them attack the humans?"
"I didn't say that nobody left. I just said that I didn't see them. They could have descended on the other side of the mountain." Momiji gestured toward the mountainside below them. "The mountain is covered by trees, too. There are plenty of routes down that aren't visible from here. There are caves up and down the mountainside, and the kappa have built tunnels apart from that. There are plenty of ways to get down the mountain without being seen if you really want to."
Sanae didn't look pleased at that news, but it seemed that she'd learned better than to challenge Momiji's eyesight again. "Right..." she said, and sighed. "So we really can't say much about who it is or how they're getting down there..."
"I'm afraid not."
Momiji's eyes settled onto a point in the distance below, and she went silent. Hatate belatedly realized that she should have been recording the entire conversation for the news, and fumbled a notebook out of her pocket to start jotting notes. Sanae fell into deep thought.
Momiji was the one to break the silence. "More than likely, you're looking in the wrong place."
"Huh?" Sanae looked up from contemplation. "How do you mean?"
"The tengu village is pretty close-knit," Momiji said. Her eyes flitted briefly toward Hatate before she added, "... mostly. If somebody were sneaking out every night, one of the village's sentinels would have noticed by now. This is probably being caused by a group of bandits."
"You have those...?"
"From time to time. When everything is peaceful, there's nowhere for the younger warriors to experience actual battle, so it's fairly common for small groups of them to become bandits. They spend a few decades raiding human monasteries and settlements. Sooner or later, they get bored and settle down."
"Oh, right. Hatate mentioned that!"
"Like I said, dumb kids," Hatate said.
"So if they're rebels, I guess they'd be hiding pretty well, right?"
"They would. They're causing a lot of problems for us right now. I personally volunteered to deal with them once we find them, but there's already a queue of applicants."
"Hmm... so they're probably in a hidden camp, and they're sneaking through the forest or something." Sanae gave a firm nod. "Got it! Thanks! I guess it isn't a lot to go off of, but it's better than nothing."
"It's my pleasure," Momiji said. "If you do find them, I'm sure the tengu would be grateful."
"Oh, yeah, it'd be a huge favor," Hatate added, not wanting to feel left out.
"Right..." Sanae spent a few more seconds considering that, then said, "Thanks again for your help! Hatate, I think I've got a few more places I'd like to check out, if you don't mind."
"Sure," Hatate said. "Lead the way."
Sanae had only intended to search a few places when she'd led Hatate from the bridge, but the list had just kept snowballing. They'd flown over kilometers of forest, searching for any habitations larger than the occasional youkai shack. They'd checked out a few caves, and quickly retreated when most of them got too dark to see. They'd scouted along the mountainside for good paths to sneak down. As nighttime approached, they'd stood along one of the ridges, looking out over the slope for any fires or other signs of camps.
Nothing. In hour after hour of searching, they didn't manage to find a single clue about where an entire group of tengu could be camping out. Sanae had never realized just how big a mountain was before.
Just as she'd been getting ready to give up and return to the station, the radio crackled. "Alright, where're we attacking tonight?"
"Eh?" Hatate looked up from her camera. She'd long ago given up on finding the tengu, and started using it to look for newsworthy stories elsewhere. "Was that them?"
"It sounded like it!" Sanae cranked the radio's volume as high as it would go and waited.
She wasn't waiting long. A second voice answered the first one. "It's an old farmhouse, in the middle of an overgrown field about half a kilometer south of the main road into the village. There's a big tree in the yard, you can't miss it."
"Great. We'll be there in about twenty minutes."
The radios clicked as they went silent, and Sanae's smile just kept growing. "This is great! With that much information, I bet I could find the place before they even leave!"
"Yep! Super convenient, huh?" Hatate closed her camera. "Should I head back to the station and do a story about it?"
"Of course!" Sanae grinned. "Just don't take too long, or I might have already beaten them by the time you finished."
Maeri flicked her radio off with a sigh. "Are you really sure this is going to work?"
"'course it will," Touko said. "These TV people are already tellin' everyone our plans. You really think nobody's gonna think to try stoppin' an honest-to-goodness attack by wicked tengu? If we get real lucky, it'll be someone from that TV station."
The kappa had retreated half a kilometer to a small hillside. It had enough foliage for them to hide in as they waited, and better yet, it offered a nice view of the house from above. After getting most of a day's labor from five kappa, the place was barely recognizable anymore. It looked occupied, patched up and clean. They'd even had time to trim the yard around it just to help sell the illusion.
More importantly, they'd made some much less obvious tweaks to turn it into their perfect trap.
Ririsa had a cobbled-together control panel in front of her, little more than a box with a few switches on it, with hastily-applied labels that read 'WINDOWS,' 'DOOR,' and 'ABORT.' She didn't look up from working on it as she spoke. "The thing I'm wondering about is, is this really necessary?"
"It does seem a little... overreacting," Maeri agreed, shooting a cautious glance toward Touko as she spoke. "If you want to stop them from eavesdropping on us, we could easily switch to a different frequency or use encryption."
"See, now, it ain't about the radio," Touko said. "It's about sendin' a message. All it takes is one human pokin' around in our business to bring this whole thing down, and we're gonna make sure that don't happen."
"If you don't want humans 'poking around in our business,' trying to kill one might not be a very good decision. We can—"
"Anybody who crosses me has to learn there's a price you pay." Touko's voice held an edge, and it wasn't entirely clear if she was talking about just humans.
The conversation died, and Rumi's attention returned to her own device. Hers was rather simpler than Ririsa's, a single hand-held switch to trigger her antigravity bomb. Maeri had rigged it for remote detonation with ten minutes of effort. She sort of hoped it wouldn't actually work, though. When she was wrecking houses to work toward paying off her debt, she could tell herself that it was justified. Trying to smush a shrine maiden who'd gotten on Touko's bad side... that was a bit harder.
"There," Orisa said, breaking the silence.
Every eye turned back toward the house. Just visible at this distance was the little white blob of a uniform, descending toward the house. The interloper landed next to the house and walked around it twice. She cracked the door and peered inside. She stepped in the front door.
"Touko," Maeri said urgently. "That was a shrine maiden. We can't—"
"Quiet." Touko turned to Ririsa, grinning. "Told you it'd work. Hit the trap."
Sanae had found the house easily, at least. Making sense of what she found was a bit less easy. It was pretty obviously the one that the tengu had been talking about over the radio, but it didn't seem to be under attack. She could hear sounds coming from within, but nobody answered her shouts.
She circled the place twice, looking for any other signs of life, and found none. The place didn't have a garden, let alone any cultivated farmland, and the few objects scattered around the yard looked like they'd been subjected to years of outdoor weather.
And yet, sounds still came from within.
"Hello?" Sanae cracked the front door open and peered inside. The place smelled weird, like a mix of mildew and cleaning supplies. Kind of similar to how the radio station had smelled that first day. There was furniture filling the front room, though, and with the door open, she could more clearly hear the noises coming from within. They were conversation, just too low for her to make out the words. "Hello? I don't want to make you worried, but I think some tengu are going to attack this place soon!"
There was no response, but the conversation continued. Sanae hesitated for a moment, then mumbled an apology, then pushed her way through the door. The place wasn't big, but as she progressed, it became increasingly clear that something was strange here. The house didn't have much furniture, and what little it held had all been moved to the front room, leaving the others empty. The conversation she was hearing became more clearly artificial as she got closer, too.
She turned a corner and found the source. There, in a room all the way at the back of the house, a television was sitting, turned on.
Sanae frowned at the TV in confusion, but her thoughts were interrupted by a series of sharp clacks that echoed throughout the house. The radio in her hand let out a burst of static as it spoke again. "Hey. Are you people from that TV place listenin'?"
Sanae froze mid-step, slowly raising the radio. It felt like even breathing might give too much away.
"C'mon, I know you're out there. You didn't exactly make it secret you were listening in on us last night, you know. You know how to use a radio, right? You just hit that button and talk to me."
Sanae fumbled with the radio until she found the button. "I am... Who is this? Who are you?"
As she spoke, she hurried back toward the front of the house. Every window's shutters had been drawn closed, as had the door, and the only light shined in through the cracks around them. She made her way to the door and gave it a tug, but it didn't budge. It was a sliding one, made of sturdy wood, and on one side, she could now see two slim metal rods hold it in place, leading back to a box built into the wall. The whole assembly was made of suspiciously newer material than the rest of the house.
"Never you mind that. Am I talking to that kappa, or...?"
"Er. I'm... a human. This is Sanae Kochiya, of the Moriya shrine! … and, er, the Gensokyo Television Station. Why are you talking to me now...?"
"A shrine maiden works at the TV station...?" There were a few seconds of muffled cursing on the other end of the radio before the speaker recovered. "Look, point is, we noticed that last night, you were tryin' to tell all of Gensokyo what we were up to. Me and the girls don't really appreciate that kinda thing. Makes us feel like you might get in our way. So, I thought we'd dedicate tonight's little show to you."
"What are you talking about?! Are you the ones who did this to this house?"
"That's right. Let's call it a little gift from me to you."
"I don't know what you're talking about, but if you want to settle this, meet me somewhere and we'll have a spell card duel!"
The voice on the other end chuckled. "That kinda thing ain't really my speed. This? This is a whole lot easier, in my book." There was a brief, muffled conversation on the other end of the radio. "Good luck, shrine maiden."
The radio went silent with a click.
Sanae stared at it for a moment, but whatever that was supposed to mean, it didn't sound promising. She clipped the radio to her skirt again and pounded on the door, but it wasn't going to budge. She tugged on the casing of the mysterious box that was keeping it sealed, but it was seamless and solid. She drew back her hand to try punching it...
and a sound like a dozen sizzling pans of bacon, in the bottom of a distant well, shook the air around her. It was accompanied by a strange feeling, like firecrackers going off in the air around her.
The space around her warped like the reflection in a puddle, and a subtle blue glow shined through the cracks around the shutters.
The scent of ozone and tar rushed out to fill the air, so heavy that it was palpable. And, Sanae floated upward, suddenly untethered from the ground.
"A-aaaah! What the heck is going on?!" She flailed around in the air for a moment before asserting her flying skills, bringing herself to a stop. The entire house was groaning and creaking, making a sound like a dying whale, and it was just getting louder. Soon, it was rattling and shuddering, threatening to rip itself apart, while the wind howled around it and whistled in the cracks. What little she could glimpse through the cracks soon explained everything—the ground was rapidly retreating beneath her.
The house was flying. And, presumably, like the one last night, it was going to fall at some point.
"H-hey! Let me out of here!" Sanae floated up to a beam on the ceiling and used it as leverage to brace herself and kick a window. A few sharp blows were enough to rattle it, but it didn't budge.
An immense moan rose from the house's frame, as it was subjected to forces that no building was ever built to withstand. Somewhere on the other side of the building, something snapped with an ear-stabbing noise. The entire house leapt in the air, sending furniture ricocheting around the room, and Sanae was thrown against the ceiling. Only some quick braking with her flight saved her from a broken rib.
It was followed by another jolt, though. A rogue table cartwheeled across the room, ricocheting from floor to ceiling under the apparent zero-G, and Sanae only barely dodged it.
The whole house was shaking constantly now, like the worst earthquake she'd ever felt. Another sharp crack sounded, and then, one of the beams holding up the roof splintered. The roof collapsed along one side, and the angry wind poured in.
It was the strongest wind Sanae had ever felt, like a typhoon gone mad. It immediately slammed her against the wall, while throwing the contents of the room around. The added drag made the house start rotating in the air, until she could see the ground through the hole in the ceiling. With another few snaps, a portion of the wall ripped away, flying off toward the ground so quickly that she didn't even see it move.
The wind was weakening now, though. The house groaned as it approached the apex of its flight. All the furniture levitated into the air, suddenly free of both gravity and wind. And then, it began falling again.
Sanae kicked off the wall, flying off toward the hole, and almost made it before the descending house caught up to her. It was upside-down now, and the floor smashed into her with enough force to nearly knock the wind out of her lungs. As the house accelerated, the wind picked up strength again, whipping through her hair and making her eyes water, making it hard to move.
She could see the ground approaching below, and while it felt like she'd been flying upward for ages, she could practically count the seconds until impact. She was running out of time. Even if she could personally fly, she wasn't sure that being inside a house as it smashed against the ground would be good for her.
"Alright, alright, um...!"
Normal brute force wasn't going to save her. A miracle might, but she didn't have time to prepare a miracle. It didn't leave many options.
Sanae took a deep breath, doing her best to focus despite the circumstances, and called on her abilities. The goddesses' power flowed into her, still carrying the warm, distant feeling of their presence. She knew she didn't have much time, but she was only going to get once shot at this. She lingered, gathering as much power as she could for a single, decisive blow.
Sanae could form energy into phantasmal snakes or frogs, or simple rays or bullets. Today, she released it in a single, forceful sphere, a shockwave expanding out from her.
She didn't see much of the aftermath. Even with the house falling at dozens of meters per second, her attack was far faster. It ripped the walls and floor apart, like a bursting balloon. Horrible shrieks of wood filled the air, drowning out even the wind. Wood and furniture and splinters whirled around her in an angry mess, and Sanae shrunk down to avoid the worst of it. A few chunks of debris smacked against her body on the way down, followed by a rush of wind as the bulk of the house fell past
And then, it was over.
She drew to a stop, hovering in mid-air, and barely a second later, the world was filled with the strange sound of the house smashing into the ground. It was over. Everything went quiet, apart from the sound of Sanae wheezing for air and her heart pounding in her chest. She was still dozens of meters in the air, high enough to see the entire scene beneath her. Pieces of the house were tumbling across the ground for quite some time. She was just happy not to be among the debris.
Her head hadn't even stopped spinning by the time the radio spoke again. "You lived, did ya? Well, I can work with that, too. Just keep in mind what happens when you mess with us. Now, tomorrow, I'm gonna call you up again, with a little personal favor I want some help with. If you don't answer, or you try anything funny, well..." The voice gave a dark chuckle. "I reckon I can find some ways to make you regret it, don't you?"
The radio went silent with a click.
Touko was still grinning as she clipped the radio back to her belt. "That oughta give her something to think about."
"Mostly makes me think about the fact that we just pissed off a girl who can apparently rip apart buildings," Ririsa said.
"And she's a shrine maiden, you know," Maeri said. With the kappa occupied with physical labor all day, she'd worn a normal uniform like the rest of them, and looked very grumpy to lack her usual quota of frills. She sat up and brushed her knees off. "After pulling a stunt like that... I don't think anybody would protest too much if she tried to exterminate us. We really shouldn't push her any more."
"Nah, I think she's learned her lesson."
"You're crazy," Orisa muttered.
Touko shot her a dark look, but didn't have time to deal with it just yet. "If you're so scared of that girl, then let's get movin' before she thinks to look for us. Back to the river, quick."
Maeri looked like she wanted to push the issue, but let it slide with a sigh. "Got it, boss."
Rumi wasn't far behind. Like Maeri, she didn't relax until she was safe underwater again, the surface of the river roiling a meter over her head. She lowered her head as she pushed against the current, heading back up the mountain.
Another house tonight. That was two houses they'd destroyed, and now an attempted murder. Two houses, and she was barely any closer to paying her debts. Two houses, and it was getting harder and harder to convince herself that any of this was justifiable. Eating humans to survive was one thing, but this was just unnecessarily cruel, and Touko seemed to be enjoying herself a bit too much for Rumi to convince herself that this was all purely necessary.
And tomorrow, they'd go for the village, committing sins that dwarfed everything they'd done so far.
Rumi wanted out.
