It was probably Sanae's fault. Or at least that's the way Suika would tell it when she sobered up sometime after lunch the next day.
The miko from Moriya Shrine had arrived to visit Reimu Hakurei to share plans for holding a festival among all of Gensokyo's shrines and temples, only to find Reimu missing and Suika sitting on the shrine steps, watching a single drop fall out of an upended gourd into her open mouth.
"Neverending sake gourd, my foot. I think this sake bug went on strike," she muttered. "Oh, hey there; I didn't see you come in."
"Good afternoon. Is Reimu around?"
"Nah, she had to fly up by your place, actually. Seems the tengu papers are having a bit of a circulation war. Something about a couple of newsies getting into a brawl right in the shopping street at the Human Village? Something like that, anyway. Anyway, she'll be stuck there until tomorrow, clearing it up."
Sanae winced. Technically, that was probably her job to fix that...though, on the other hand, she supposed that Reimu would probably be happy just to get the extra extermination business.
"So it's just you here, then?"
"Yeah, me and the shorty, there." Suika jerked a thumb in the direction of Shinmyomaru, who was napping stretched out on the veranda railing. She had to admit, in a way it was nice having the inchling living at the shrine, if nothing else than because it meant she wasn't the smallest one there any more.
Sanae grinned.
"So what are the two of you getting up to?"
"Up to?"
"Come on! When I was still living with my parents, any time they would spend the night away from home, that meant the chance to invite my friends over and party! I mean, what they don't know won't hurt them, right?"
Suika laughed.
"And here I thought you were supposed to be a good girl." She rubbed her hands together. "So who d'you think we can get to come?"
~X X X~
It had started out small. Just a couple of people for a quiet dinner and drinking party. But Gensokyo was a tiny community and news traveled fast even with the public press temporarily incapacitated. Suika was pretty well sure that they'd dragged every table from the shrine out into the courtyard and somehow three or four more had showed up anyway. Maybe they were tsukumogami who wanted to join the party or something.
In any case, the sake was flowing freely, and by two in the morning the party was showing no signs of slowing down even after the debate between Marisa and Nitori over whether magic or science made for the flashiest fireworks was cooled off while they were still fighting over which team Utsuho ought to be on. Sanae and Reisen were just coming back from putting away the water buckets when the Moriya Shrine miko demonstrated that yes, indeed, she was taking advantage of Gensokyo's lack of a drinking age by asking Eirin Yagokoro, "Hey, after all that, why don't you tell us a story? You must know a lot of good ones by now!"
Reisen sped to refill Eirin's cup, but found that someone else had gotten there first.
"Yes, why don't you tell us a story?" put in Yukari Yakumo. "I'm sure that you must know all manner of tales of ancient times."
Given that Yukari was quite possibly the oldest person at the party, the stunned silence that greeted this offhand provocation gave Eirin plenty of time to decide on an answer.
"Why yes, I think I will. As a matter of fact, Miss Yakumo, I'm reminded of a tale that calls back to the last time we drank together..."
~X X X~
The youkai had descended upon the Lunar Capital in waves. The unclean monsters of Earth, bearing with them the corruption of that tainted place and led by the youkai sage Yukari Yakumo, whose nefarious cunning had reached even to the hidden side of the moon by reputation, had posed a threat that even the astonishing powers and technology of the Lunarians would have had to work to defeat. Even the most haughty of the defenders believed that the struggle to throw back the invasion would be long and painful.
Or so it had seemed.
Perhaps it was the fundamental nature of these tainted creatures, the Lunarians considered. The initial waves were led by some of the most powerful and rapacious among the youkai, and yet their emotions had seemed to get the better of them, their desire to raven and consume drawing them out from their forces, making them rush ahead at the first contact with the enemy. Calm, rational military strategy began to fall apart quickly, and before the Lunarians' might, the youkai were cut down or driven back. By the time the battle should have been underway in earnest, it was over, and the youkai reserves were falling back without having ever having the opportunity to be committed to battle. Standing behind to cover the retreat of her forces, Yukari faced the leaders among the lunar emissaries, her dress torn and stained with the strife and smoke of combat.
"You have lost," Eirin stated flatly. The one-winged goddess by her side said nothing at all.
"It appears to be quite conclusive," Yukari said. A casual remark, as if she had been discussing the weather.
Conclusive, indeed, Eirin though. You are better than this. Which led, inevitably, to the conclusion that this invasion had never been about winning at all...or perhaps more accurately, that what Yukari meant by "winning" was something very different than what her fellow youkai did.
The emissary on the other side of Lady Sagume tossed her head.
"Of course! You filthy mud-dwellers could never breach the sanctity of our home!"
"Is that the lesson that should be carried away from this? How curious. Rather, it seems that we youkai cannot carry the day by force. But then, force, I think, would not be what the Lunar Capital should have to fear."
"What do you mean?" Sagume asked.
"As you have been so gracious as to offer a lesson, then permit me to give you one in return. You have turned us back today, but what do you think will happen when humans at last turn their eyes skyward?"
"They lack the magic to reach the moon in enough numbers to make a difference, even through the Spirit World," scoffed another of the escorts.
"True, but what of a crossing via physical space?"
Eirin's eyes widened. Of course, the Lunar Capital was isolated from the moon's surface, but if humans came to the moon regularly, saturating it with their spreading impurity, the life, the death, the change that they brought with them everywhere they went, that barrier would not escape their gaze. And then, whatever happened would be an inevitable rush to disaster. Humanity's mere presence would be like an assassin's dagger aimed at the Lunarians' way of existence.
"Mind you, were the humans to be incapable of doing so until their imaginations became so decayed that they were closed to all but the physical world, it might be that they themselves would pass by in complete ignorance, hm? The signs of the direction they are taking are already there, and in only a few more centuries, I think the transfiguration may well be complete."
"But that's impossible!" Sagume blurted. "The calculations are far too easy! Why, it would only be a matter of a...a decade or two before they've determined how to step across space to the moon!"
"Really?" Yukari touched a fingertip to her lower lip, affecting a pose of curiosity. "I don't think that's going to be true any more."
~X X X~
Eirin raised the cup of sake to her lips and sipped placidly. Yukari's stock-in-trade was mystery and obscurity, as she herself had once found out to her detriment, and pulling back the veil on that mystery was a bit of good-natured revenge. And after all, if she was going to live as a human in Gensokyo, didn't that mean that she should be an enemy of youkai, in some symbolic way?
Of course, she had neglected to consider a few things. Most significantly, she had neglected to consider the fact that most of her audience was three sheets to the wind by now, and not really capable of comprehending the delicate subtleties of what Yukari had been doing.
She could almost see, for example, the little swirlies in Sanae's eyes as the living goddess tried to fit the mental pieces together.
"She..." she began, then turned towards Yukari. "You..."
"Yes?" Yukari said, a certain flatness in her placidity that suggested that Eirin's shot had hit home...or that she was a couple of bottles further along than Eirin had calculated.
"You...tricked...Lady Sagume...into..."
"I would hardly say 'tricked,'" Yukari protested with mock innocence. "Indeed, I would say that she was quite content with the outcome."
Minor edits to character motivation were not, however, going to penetrate Sanae's understanding of the situation.
"You gap hag! All the math homework I've ever done was your fault!" she screamed, and flung herself across the table at Yukari, scattering plates, cups, and bottles in her wake.
Eirin wasn't quite sure, she thought as soy sauce dripped off her nose and she cleaned the contents of a half-eaten plate of sushi off her bodice, but that the woman currently being throttled hadn't come out ahead after all.
~X X X~
Birds were greeting the early morning sun with merry chirping as Reimu walked over the threshold into the courtyard of the Hakurei Shrine. It showed every sign of being a pleasant day, and she was looking forward to relaxing at home after having ensured Gensokyo's freedom of the press without having to lose her temper.
Much.
And she was sure Aya and Hatate could get that one tengu unstuck from that tree-bole if they worked together. A teamwork-building exercise, and all that, to help celebrate their newfound peace. Why, taken in that light, it was probably a good thing, all told. That's right, she hadn't really lost her temper; she'd...showed them the value of community and cooperation by giving them an outside issue to deal with! It was positively Yukarivellian of her, right?
Hell, Marisa might even buy it.
Her smirk, however, vanished in approximately twelve seconds, ten of which were spent just seeing the aftermath of the night's activities: sprawled bodies, dirty dishes, and empty bottles...the vast majority of which she clearly recognized as coming from the shrine's own cellar.
"Suika!"
It said something about the quantity of alcohol consumed that most of the guests didn't even stir at Reimu's screech. The diminutive oni was not one of those, though, since she had the constitution of...well, an oni.
"Yeah? Oh, hey, Reimu," she said and yawned.
"This was your doing, wasn't it?"
"More or less, I s'pose. Hey, want a drink? I think I saved you some, around here...somewhere..."
"Do you have any idea how much all this sake cost?"
Suika scratched her ear.
"Let's see...seventeen bottles of that kind...six of the crate you got from the kappa for fixing their dam, just the one out of Marisa's birthday present 'cause she wouldn't let anybody else have some...minus the two Reisen brought with her...plus six...an' figure the market value... Not really, no. But the way Eirin explained it, that's Yukari's fault."
"...Somehow, I'm not surprised."
~X X X~
A/N: Canon, at least at a superficial glance, seems to be a little fuzzy on the timeline of the first youkai invasion of the moon. But since Silent Sinner in Blue says it was "hundreds of years" ago, that theoretically could fall into the period after Kaguya was exiled to Earth (c. 1000 y.a. in Heian-era Japan) but before Eirin went down to retrieve her when she was forgiven. And, honestly, for a gag fic, based nonetheless on an obvious-Sagume-joke-is-obvious like this one, "hey, it's possible" and "at a superficial glance" are pretty much going to be as far as I take it! (Also, yes, I know I fudged Suika and Shinmyomaru's relationship as being friendlier than canon for the sake of making a short joke.)
