"Oh, yep, I was right! Do you see these scratches up the sides of the bars? That's because kappa polish their big metalworking pieces with a pretty coarse abrasive." Kogasa ran her fingers along one of the bars and gave it a firm tug, delighted by its complete lack of give. "It's really solid work!"

"So what you're saying," Sekibanki said, tiredly, "is that we're stuck in here."

"Oh... yeah, I think so. It's some nice craftsmanship, though!"

Kogasa gave the cell's bars a final appreciative pat and stepped back. Only now, after five minutes in the tiny prison, did she notice that nobody else had found her assessment of its materials quite as interesting as she had. Kosuzu and Akyuu, in the adjacent cell, had mostly given up on paying attention to her. Sekibanki looked vaguely annoyed, and Mamizou... well, Mamizou was a plump, fuzzy tanuki about half a meter tall. As part of imprisoning the two of them, the guards had moved her tiny carrier outside of the cells, leaving her sitting a couple of meters away. The extra distance really didn't help with reading her expression.

"No harm in having a look," Mamizou reassured her. "Only, remember, me and the girls have been here a few days now."

"Oh... oh! That means you've had time to come up with a really good escape plan, right?"

"Not hardly. Mostly it means we've had a lot of time to stew on it and haven't come up with anything." Mamizou yawned and stretched out in her carrier, flopping forward and extending two furry paws. "Like you said, this place is kappa-made. I make a policy of not trusting kappa farther than I can throw them, myself, but they know their way around a set of tools."

"Oh..."

"How did you end up here in the first place?" Akyuu asked. "... were you here on a rescue attempt?"

"Seija... brought one of my heads here," Sekibanki said. "That was enough for me to find the place. We tried to sneak in. It didn't quite work."

Kosuzu frowned at this, and only looked more concerned after a few seconds of thought. "One of your heads...? Um."

Sekibanki stared at her through the bars between the cells. Kosuzu stared blankly back.

Sekibanki reached up, grabbed her head, and popped it off.

Kosuzu screamed. Akyuu clamped a hand over her mouth. "Not so loud!"

Kosuzu continued giving muffled protests. Over a few seconds, they tapered off, and Akyuu reluctantly removed her hand. Kosuzu gasped for air, then squeaked out, "I didn't know she was a... ghost or something!"

"She's a rokurokubi," Akyuu said. "She caused some trouble a while back, but she's been well-behaved since then. We let her live in the village as long as she behaves herself."

"... there are youkai living in the village...?"

A low chuckle came from Mamizou's direction. "Kid still has a lot to learn, doesn't she?"

"Ah, Sekibanki's nice!" Kogasa said. "... well, um, okay, sometimes she can be kind of grumpy, but she won't eat you or anything!"

Kosuzu didn't look convinced. "She's the one who made all of those creepy flying heads...?"

"I scared you," Sekibanki said. "Just be glad that I'm not the kind of youkai who would eat you on the spot, instead."

Kosuzu froze in terror, the color slowly draining from her face. She shrank back from the bars.

"A-ah, anyway!" Kogasa said. "... we should probably keep looking for a way out, right?"

Sekibanki and Kogasa kept trying new escape attempts until it was too dark to see. By the next afternoon, Sekibanki understood why the other prisoners hadn't been very enthusiastic about them.

They tried chipping away chunks of the floor around the base of the bars. They hovered up and spent an hour trying the same thing with the bars of the cell's single tiny window. They tried scorching the walls and bars with magical attacks, but neither of them could do much more than the flashy lights of danmaku. Kogasa managed to summon a light rain, which accomplished nothing except making them soggy for the next few hours.

They slept. In the morning, the guards begrudgingly brought them a meal. They tried bending the bars by squeezing them with a piece of cloth, which Kosuzu insisted had worked in some book she'd read, and didn't accomplish much except nearly tearing Sekibanki's cape. They took a break and joined the others in idling the hours away. They made small talk until it became maddeningly repetitive. Kosuzu got Akyuu and Mamizou to tell a few stories from their long lives, which thankfully ate up most of an hour. They played shiritori, and gave up when it became obvious that Akyuu was unbeatable. They played roshambo, which Mamizou managed to participate in despite only having paws. They took a nap. Kosuzu spent half an hour asking increasingly curious questions about Sekibanki's detachable head. They talked more. The guards brought another meal.

And, Mamizou managed to sweet-talk one of the guards into a single minor concession.

"Okay..." Kosuzu squinted down at the battlefield laid out on the floor. "Then I'll take... this one!"

She plucked a card from the floor, where several others were carefully arranged around the base of the bars, accessible to both cells. After flipping over the next card from the deck, she frowned at them thoughtfully. "I can't do anything with it," she said, and tossed it down with the others.

"Oh! Oh!" Kogasa barely gave the new card time to settle to the floor before she slapped another card on top of it. "Three ribbons! That's a really good combo, right?"

"Only if they're all blue or poetry ribbons," Akyuu said. "Normal ribbons aren't a set until seven."

"Oh."

"Even if they were," Mamizou said, without looking up from her position lounging in her cage, "you'd be better off waitin', with that kind of luck. The other lights're still in the deck, so your odds of gettin' a shikou are pretty good with a hand like that."

"It isn't like we're gambling for actual money," Akyuu said. After a second, she added, "Although if we were, I'd be up by about five hundred yen."

Kogasa pouted, but paired the card with another from the table, flipped another from the deck, and ended her turn. "... you sure do know a lot about this stuff, Miss Mamizou."

Mamizou yawned toothily and stretched. "Lady's got to be able to take care of herself if she stumbles into a den of iniquity."

"Right..." Sekibanki's turn was up. She squinted down at the variety of cards spread out in front of her, trying to remember what they all meant. She'd noticed that Akyuu kept snatching up cards with animals on them, but she couldn't remember if those did anything. It was nice that Mamizou had been able to get the deck for them, but she was turning out to be pretty bad at this game. Plus, all of the cards smelled like one too many nights of drunken gambling.

Before she could decide what to play, footsteps approached down the hallway.

"Two humans and three youkai," Seija said, stepping into the room. "I'd thought that two cells would be plenty when we got this place, but it's looking kind of full."

The card game was immediately forgotten. One by one, the cell's occupants rose to standing. Nobody wanted to be stuck looking up to an amanojaku.

"Save the gloating, kiddo," Mamizou said. "You need something?"

"Tomorrow's looking like a pretty busy day. Figured I'd stop in and say goodbye before I leave."

"E-even if we're in here...!" Kosuzu leaned up against the wall of her cell, thrusting an accusing finger between the bars. "You won't get away with it! Miss Reimu will definitely track you down, you know...!"

Seija shrugged. "Probably. Most ways that it can shake out are okay with me."

There was a moment of silence. "That," Mamizou said, "don't make a lick of sense."

It was obvious that Seija had been hoping somebody would challenge her. A hint of a smile tugged at her lips. "Think about it this way: If the shrine maiden does catch on and start hunting people down afterward, what happens?"

"You will have killed a hundred innocent people," Akyuu said, in a tired, lecturing tone that suggested she knew that trying to shame an amanojaku was a waste of time, but couldn't stop herself anyway. "... and Reimu will come exterminate all of you once she catches on, even if it takes her a month to track you down."

"Sounds about right. But what then? This isn't some normal incident. A hundred humans dead, and eaten in the middle of the village where everyone can hear them scream. A hundred youkai fugitives scattered all over, and the shrine maiden rampaging across the countryside not even sure who she's supposed to be fighting. Can you even imagine what that'll be like? I give it a week until half of Gensokyo's pissed off and shouting for blood."

"It would... be a mess, yes," Akyuu conceded. She sounded like she was transitioning into interview mode. "I'm not sure how that's supposed to help you, though."

"We get that far along, the whole thing is probably one good punch away from starting a war." Seija was growing excited now, a grin spreading on her face. "Nice, huh? Gensokyo's been peaceful for way too long. This whole spell card system—humans and youkai pretending to get along, everybody playing nice—it's disgusting. A bunch of self-righteous monsters holding hands with their prey, and as soon as one person rocks the boat, half of Gensokyo comes down on their head. If I can burn that down, it's a way bigger win than just eating a few humans."

"Seems like a pretty convenient philosophy, comin' from someone who got hunted down by half of Gensokyo," Mamizou said.

Seija ignored her. Sekibanki stepped closer to the bars. "And the youkai who are following you—you just run away and let them get exterminated?"

"It's what they're there for. A hundred gullible idiots, tearing up half of Gensokyo fighting the shrine maiden and trying to eat more humans." Seija gripped the bars and leaned in to add, "A revolution needs a few martyrs, you know."

Sekibanki held her gaze. Seija's eyes didn't show a hint of remorse. Only dull, bitter hatred toward the entire world. If she somehow succeeded beyond her wildest dreams and sparked an actual war between humans and youkai, Seija would be standing in the best vantage point, grinning and enjoying the show.

Reflexively, Sekibanki pulled her fist back and slammed it directly into Seija's face.

The punch landed with enough force that something popped inside Sekibanki's hand. Seija stumbled backward, clutching her nose. Blood welled past her fingers.

For a moment, the room was completely silent. Then, Seija chuckled under her breath. "Hah!" She pulled her hand away and flicked some blood from it. After her initial shock, her smile returned, taking on a manic quality as more blood dripped down over her lip. "Not bad, not bad! Disgust and outrage, just the way I like it." She leaned in against the cell's wall, shoving her head through the bars and grinning. "Go on, do that again. I'll give you a free one."

"I wouldn't start beating up an amanojaku if I were you," Akyuu remarked. She had one arm draped over Kosuzu's back, trying to keep the other girl from having a meltdown over the strangeness of the past few minutes. "It gets strange quickly, as I understand it."

"I wasn't planning on it anyway." Sekibanki rubbed her knuckles, frowning behind her collar. "It's too rough on my knuckles. … if I wanted to do it again, I'd shoot her instead."

Seija actually looked disappointed. She pulled away from the cell and swiped the blood from her nose. "Real pity. It's hard to get good hatred like that these days. Just one more reason to get youkai and humans at each other's throats again, I guess."

"Y'made your point," Mamizou griped. "Don't you have a big feast to be preparing for?"

Seija flicked some of the blood away, giving a satisfied sigh. "Point is, as long as the feast happens, I win. Except, I still need to keep an eye out for the shrine maiden. So, I'm thinking..." She produced a key, raised in one hand. "... I could use some insurance."

"Um," Kogasa said, "What do you...?"

She trailed off without finishing her question, as the answer became apparent. Seija walked up to Akyuu and Kosuzu's cage and slipped the key into the door.

Kosuzu scrambled backward until she was pressed to the wall. Akyuu stood her ground.

"What are you doing?!" Sekibanki demanded.

"She wants me." Akyuu breathed out a soft sigh, a self-effacing I really should have seen this coming sort of grimace on her face. "As a hostage, I assume."

"Or human shield," Seija said. "Whichever comes up first, really."

"N-no! You can't...! You can't take her!" Kosuzu looked wildly from Akyuu to Mamizou to Sekibanki. When it became obvious that none of them were going to be able to intervene, she charged forward, scooping a plate from the floor and swinging it at Seija.

The plate smashed harmlessly against the size of Seija's head. Kosuzu froze up, realizing the depth of her mistake. Seija flicked her hand in a bored gesture, and Kosuzu flipped over in the air, sent tumbling head over heels. "Beating up a helpless kid isn't actually that fun for me," Seija said. "Stay down and we'll both be happier."

Akyuu shot Seija a steely glare, but followed it with a slight nod. "Don't get yourself hurt for my sake, Kosuzu."

"But...! She's going to—!"

"Even if she kills me, I'll be back in a hundred years. Nothing you can do is even going to slow down a youkai, anyway."

"Smart kid," Seija said. It didn't seem like Kosuzu was listening to her, though. She pushed herself up from the floor, groaning and rubbing at a fresh bruise on her forehead. Seija studied her for a few seconds, like a child watching an ant fry under a magnifying glass, before pulling out a length of rope and binding Akyuu's wrists.

"Y-you can't just do that!" Kogasa shouted. "She's the Child of Miare! That's, like, really important!"

"I know. That's what makes her such a good hostage." Seija finished up her work, and gave Kosuzu a halfhearted kick toward the back of the cell before dragging Akyuu out the door. After locking it, she added, "Probably not going to have time to come visit for a while. Nothing personal, you know. … might ask the guards to come by and check on you in a few days. Who knows?" She met Sekibanki's gaze. "Maybe you'll get hungry enough to eat that librarian girl in the meantime."

And then, she was gone.

Kosuzu sobbed long into the night. When she drifted off, though, it was almost worse. The place seemed far too quiet.

The other youkai, Seija's followers, seemed to be emptying out. It made sense. By this time tomorrow, they'd have accomplished their goal—or Seija's goal, at least. Only a skeleton crew was left behind to guard the prisoners. Sekibanki almost would have preferred to hear more of them out there. The silence left her alone with her thoughts, and she had plenty of them. Most of them were along the lines of how could I have been so reckless, but there was the occasional maybe they'll kill us quickly and get it over with mixed in there.

Sleep wasn't going to be easy to come by, at this rate.

She stared up into the darkness. The prison cell was darker than the tomb had ever been—and not metaphorically either. Their captors hadn't seen fit to provide a lantern, and the place didn't exactly have a lot of windows. Only the feeling of the cold floor against her back and the steady rhythm of a few people breathing convinced her that she hadn't already died.

"Um, Sekibanki?" Kogasa's voice whispered from the nearby darkness. "Are you still awake?"

"Mmh? Yeah, I am."

Even in the total darkness, she could sense Kogasa recoiling, hesitant to impose too much by continuing. Some things never changed. "... If you don't mind, can we talk?"

"Er." In Sekibanki's limited experience, somebody saying 'can we talk' was almost always the opening of a long and difficult conversation. "Well, it isn't like I have anything better to do. About what?"

"Oh. Um, it doesn't have to be about anything in particular. Just, I'm... not very good at sitting around and not moving."

Sekibanki thought back to the night this whole mess had started. "... I'm well aware."

"Oh, no, I mean more, um..." Kogasa shifted around in place. "When I was abandoned, before I became a youkai... I spent a really, really long time sitting around, and I couldn't move at all. This kind of thing... reminds me sometimes."

Kogasa left it at that, but even in the darkness, her meaning was clear. There was an anxious quaver beneath her voice, and the statement ended in a needy question mark.

Sekibanki hesitated, but not so much from reluctance as indecision. What the hell were you supposed to do in situations like this? This past week or so was probably the most time she'd spent in the company of other people in ages. She liked to think that she wasn't antisocial or anything. She could make polite company with the woman who bagged her groceries or when she bumped into other youkai in the village. Neither of those were very good practice for consoling a lightly traumatized umbrella.

She only had Kogasa's own example to go off of, really. Sekibanki reached over, patting across the floor until she found Kogasa's body. Moving slowly, giving Kogasa time to protest if she wanted to, she eased herself closer. She looped one arm and pulled her into a loose embrace. "... this is about as much as I can offer."

Kogasa sat in silence for a few seconds. "... it does help. Um. People don't really hug lost umbrellas that often, so this is... definitely different from that."

Sekibanki gave the slightest nod. She'd never heard Kogasa embarrassed before. Not like this, actually slowing down and taking the time to choose her words carefully. At least they were both into uncharted territory, she supposed.

"I know it sounds really selfish, with everything that's happened, but, um." Kogasa paused, summoning her courage. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, barely even rising above the volume of her breath. "I'm kind of scared."

Sekibanki could only answer with awkward silence. There were probably Things that one was supposed to say in situations like this. Everything will be okay or I promise that we'll make it out of this. She read quite a bit, and she was almost certain that those were the kinds of things that a heroine would say in a book, at least.

Not that she could convince herself that she was much of a heroine. When rokurokubi showed up in books, it was to be the villain. It was a role she'd played once or twice, herself.

But...

She'd faced down youkai hunters and angry mobs more than she cared to remember. Some times, she'd barely managed to escape. Skillful or not, those were the odds—she needed to get away every single time, but the youkai hunters only needed to get successful once. If it came down to it, she liked to think that she could face her end with stoic resignation.

Thinking of the same thing happening to Kogasa, though, made her jaw clench until it ached. She could convince herself that she'd earned her doom, one way or another. She couldn't fool herself into thinking that Kogasa had.

Part of Sekibanki cursed her own weakness. This wasn't the way things were supposed to go, ever. She worked alone. Revealing herself to others, let alone getting involved with them, never led to anything good.

She pushed that part aside and took a deep breath to steady her voice. Far more confidently than she felt, she said, "I'll keep you safe. Try to get some sleep, okay?"

There were no card games the next morning.

The few guards who were still around the place—Mamizou had a theory that they'd been offered some pretty choice selections of meat in exchange for their service—had brought breakfast, surprisingly. The group ate in silence, and they sat in silence. Kogasa made a few halfhearted attempts to start conversation, but none of them went anywhere. Kosuzu barely even looked up.

Nobody needed to say it, but Kogasa was pretty sure that they were all thinking of the same thing anyway: Kilometers away in the village, Seija's banquet was creeping closer and closer.

Minutes silently blended together into hours. The sun slipped past the room's tiny window and disappeared above it.

And, movement caught her eye.

Kogasa looked up, and found that she hadn't imagined it. Sitting in the room's tiny window was... something. It was backlit by the light outside, leaving her squinting at a silhouette. But, it was fuzzy and moving, which narrowed down the options a bit.

Kogasa glanced side to side, but nobody else seemed to be paying much attention to the window. Silently, she rose from the floor and stepped over to it, rising up on her tiptoes to get a better look.

The shadow stepped forward. It was a mouse. A tiny, grey mouse. Perhaps more notably, there was a piece of paper clenched in its mouth.

"Oh. … hi? Did Nazrin send you here?"

The mouse crept up to the edge of the window, then down the wall, carefully picking handholds out of the rough material. After it had gone half a meter, Kogasa thought to raise her hands, offering her cupped palms to it. "Is that letter for us...?"

"There are only so many people in Gensokyo who send their mail through mice," Sekibanki said, stepping up alongside her.

The mouse didn't answer, but dropped down to land in her palm. Little pinprick claws poked at her flesh as it turned to face her, then reared up and offered her the paper.

"Thank you very much." With her free hand, Kogasa lightly plucked the paper from its mouth. Pressing it against the wall, she unrolled it, flattening it out with two fingertips. In crisp, tiny handwriting, it said:

Help is on the way. Be ready to leave.

Please feed the deliveryman if possible.

"Oh!" Kogasa hurried over to the plates they'd piled in the corner after breakfast. Kneeling down, she shuffled through them until she found a few grains of rice, then offered them up on a fingertip. The mouse was apparently accustomed to this ritual. It—he, she guessed from Nazrin's use of 'deliveryman'—took the rice without a second thought, plucking them up in little paws and gulping them down.

"Er, kiddo?" Mamizou said. "Something in that letter you'd like to share with the rest of the class?"

"It's from Nazrin!" Kogasa looked up, leaving the mouse to his well-earned meal. "They're coming to rescue us!"

Be ready to leave, the note had said, but there weren't exactly a lot of preparations they could make.

Sekibanki felt like it would have been better if there were. It would have been nice to have something to keep their minds off of the situation. Anything to do other than wait in anxious silence, staring at the window and watching for their rescuers.

Their rescuers didn't come through the window, though. They came through the front door.

Muffled, distant shouting was the first sign that something was amiss. It was soon followed by a concussive thump that rattled the door and left the cell bars humming to themselves for a few seconds afterward.

"A-ah," Kosuzu said, staring in the direction of the sound. "I hope whoever did that is on our side..."

They could only sit and listen as the fighting moved across the building, sometimes with pauses of a minute or two. A long, pronounced sizzling noise was followed by a shuddering groan that came from every direction at once, like the structure itself had been wounded. One of the periods of silence was terminated by a chorus of confused shouting.

As the fighting came closer, Sekibanki finally got the reassurance that the good guys were winning. It was the only way to explain the still-distant and muffled, but recognizable, sound of Nue laughing.

Finally, far-off projectile exchanges transitioned into nearby footsteps.

Nazrin rounded the corner and took a few steps down the hallway before pausing in realization. "Oh," she said to herself, then turned to shout back over her shoulder. "I found them!"

"Hi!" Kogasa said, leaning against the bars. "We got your letter!"

"Mice might not be fast, but they're reliable," Nazrin said. "Do you still have him?"

"I do!" Kogasa offered the mouse up through the bars.

"Ladies!" Nue's voice came down the hall before her footsteps were even audible. When she came into view, she had one arm raised in the air triumphantly, and the other wrapped around Shou's back. "Your mighty heroines have arrived!" She paused after a few steps, frowning as she surveyed the cell's occupants. "... they didn't have Mamizou after all?"

"I'm over here." To underscore her statement, Mamizou headbutted the wall of her carrier with enough force to send it rocking side to side. "Tricky little assholes locked me up good and tight."

Nue sputtered. "A pet carrier?!"

"Undignified, ain't it?"

Nue made a sort of gagging sound, deep in her throat. A few sputters escaped her lips, and it became obvious that she was strangling back laughter. It didn't last for long. Soon, she was hunched over, cackling into the air and slapping her knee. "A pet carrier!" she wheezed. "That's great!"

"Just get me outta here..."

"I'll, er, let Nue do the honors," Shou said, with a voice so dignified that her true meaning of 'I'll let her deal with the results of taunting a bakedanuki herself' was almost masked. She stepped forward, leaving Nue behind, and only now was it obvious that she'd been leaning on Nue for support. She walked with a hobble, and kept one hand clasped over her side, the jeweled pagoda resting in the other.

"Oh..." Kogasa's eyes followed her. "Are you hurt?"

"A bit. I gave the guards out front a chance to surrender," Shou said, with a bashful smile. "They shot me instead of answering."

"Don't worry about her. It's nothing new," Nazrin said, flipping through a ring of keys. "You wouldn't think an avatar of war would be afraid of starting fights, and yet here we are."

"Even youkai like this deserve a chance to redeem themselves." Shou's tone was gentle, but somehow still managed to be both reproachful reminder and lecture.

"After that first batch, they learned pretty quick, though! Almost felt bad for shooting at them while they ran away. I mean, almost." Nue straightened up from opening Mamizou's carrier, then glanced over to the other cell. "Who's the kid?"

Sekibanki followed her gaze. "Oh."

Kosuzu was sort of frozen in place, staring at the horde of youkai newcomers in something between discomfort and outright fear. One of Nue's weird wing-tentacles drifted a bit too close to the bar, and she shied back from it. "... These are our friends," Sekibanki said. "They won't hurt you."

"Hey, that's no fun," Nue said. "At least give me a chance to scare her a bit first."

Sekibanki corrected herself: "These are our friends, except for Nue."

A cloud of odorless smoke and a light breeze announced that Mamizou had shapeshifted back to her normal form. When it cleared, she was stretching expansively, bent over backward to crack her back. "Ahhh. That's a treat. Can't stretch properly in a little box like that." Straightening up, she adjusted her spectacles thoughtfully. "Don't suppose you dashin' heroic types had much of a plan beyond this, did you?"

"It was all we could do just to find this place," Nazrin said. "We didn't have a lot of time to consider what comes next."

"They've told me everything you found about the amanojaku's, er... feast," Shou said. Her distaste for the entire topic was apparent. "It starts in barely an hour, so we don't have much time to stop it. Do you three have any ideas?"

"I haven't had much to do except think, myself," Mamizou said. "I don't figure that a Bishamonten who went and got herself perforated is going to be much used to us, though. Nue, why don't you take Shou and the kid and head somewhere safe until this all blows over?"

"Miss Futatsuiwa," Shou said, gently but insistently. "I know I'm hurt, but I can still fight."

"I'm not sure this is going to be a fighting kinda job. We need to get inside and stop the whole thing without causin' a hundred-youkai battle royale in the middle of the village. If it comes down to punishing the bad guys after the fact, we've done missed our chance."

"Oh! Oh!" Kogasa said. "What about me and Sekibanki? What do we do?"

"It oughta be obvious, shouldn't it? We've got a feast to stop and a human sage to rescue."