And then, since that day another three days have passed. During this time, Usami returned to deliver another letter from Keine which read –

"You owe me a week of lessons, you moron."

Just when I was about to sigh hard, it continued –

"I'll be wishing the best for you, in you finding 'you'. I'll really like to know if you're Konpaku Yuuji, or Pasonia. Tell me when you get back."

Trust women to be this sensitive and curious, I smirked before folding the paper and going back to my supposedly back-breaking work. Must've been Suika tellin' her about my story.

In that time I've been having carrots and pork for meals. Apparently, these two are the only food served during lunchtime, and it isn't hard to see that I'm the only non-rabbit amidst a large workforce of nearly three hundred other rabbit workers… at least, I'm the only worker who walked instead of hop.

Not to mention I'm the only male around, which makes things embarrassing. In that time, though, I've still managed to chat up with a few other worker rabbits whom I thought might help me in future; besides Usami and Nina, I befriended Melos – one of only three rabbits who (not 'that') could speak English as a native tongue, and with a very distinct UK or Scottish accent – and Anisa, a particularly bulked-up and dim-witted droopy-ear bunny. They remind me of T.J. and Jack from back in the fight club, and if I ever had a chance, I swear, I'll definitely have those cool bros meet Melos and Anisa.

It's surprising that there're coincidences everywhere in this world.

""""""

"Pasonia?"

It was Princess Kaguya, handing over what looks like a net book to me over a busy lunchtime.

"Adaptive technology," she quipped. "This has a similar amount of internal power as a P.C. Your TechPost thing was accessed by someone else, and this is what I managed to retrieve out of whatever they tried to delete."

I quickly scanned through every email sent out, then noticed that someone had been sending emails through my account during my absence.

"Additionally, we found a tracer module that linked back to this user known as Zachary. You have any idea who this is?"

Of course I do. Zachary is the neighbourhood geek, the one delving into the deep ends of the Net while we fighting boys at Nordoff smack each other silly. But I didn't expect him of all persons, to be able to pull this off, given his submissive temperament.

"So… Zachary planted some sort of thing that stole my info, that scary Trojan thing like they always say in the news," I quipped. "Then, he set me up to take the fall. But what does he get out of this…"

"Should I investigate further? My tracing churned out something interesting."

My interest was piqued. "Go on, Princess."

"During my search, I noticed that the person who planted this module… received, and then withdrew a large sum of money from his bank. And there were records of him going to this… uhh… what you call a police station maybe? – because they noticed he's drawing money in a weird manner."

"Large sum of – oh!" It was the bit about money that made me realize his possible motivations.
"Why of course… goodness, I remembered Mrs Dalston needed the money for her cancer treatment. I got news of it from one of the fight club buddies right before my arrival at Narita. Then again, he could've waited…"

"KAGUYA-SAMA! ROU… ROU YOUKAI AT THE DOORS!"
A panting rabbit came crashing through the room, sounding extremely flustered.

"How did they get this – activate the response team!"
"No good, Princess! They're all knocked out! I can't get a line to any of them!"

The electricity to the room was suddenly cut, plunging the area into dim light.

"They got to the main power supply!"
"What the heck is going on in here…?"

Before we could properly respond, the poor panting rabbit was hit by a quick-slamming door that sent the poor thing careening across the room, and it was there that I noticed those were the same creatures that attacked me back at the village. The unmistakable growling and stature…

"The wolves are here!" Kaguya shrieked a little, but I told her to stand behind. By this time, I had my nerves tingling, and my fists ready. My breath was heavy, but it was more hyped up than fearful, and that mixture of emotions kept me from going loco.

"Ready to fight?"
I'm itching for a good punch-up for quite a while.

As the wolves went for the princess, I found myself throwing the table at the enemy (didn't really have to take much to hurl the thing at them with force), sending a couple of them sprawling on the floor as the mahogany took the mickey out of them wolfies. I then zipped right into one of the pack, using my elbow and my newfound speed as a weapon to knock him – and by proxy some half-dozen of others – back out the door. The wolves on the front were unperturbed, and in the ensuing brawl one got past me and went for the Princess, before I conveniently raised my leg to trip him and stomp his head down.

"It's that guy from that nigh!"
"How the hell did he get here?"

I smirked at them as they tried to recover, using numbers to ensure a one-versus-many standoff. My muscles, warmed up by several days of pure, hard labor, itched to provide power for my fists.

"You won't get past me," I blurted, throwing in some egoistic bravado while twisting my face into what I call that 'face your worst enemy' expression.

"No one leaves a brawl without a fracture… but me."
"Way to go, Pasonya!"

Provoked, one of the wolves decided to test me as it lunged at me forcefully, and I answered by punching straight at its throat, sending him onto the ground gasping heavily for air. I gloated too soon however, and several of these humanoid wolves came up pouncing at me and pinned me to the floor, making me gasp for air as I tasted blood in my throat at the same time. I then shook off their pin-down before they could break my face, then punched one that got too close to the Princess, right back out the door.

It was then that an orb of something suddenly came flying out from the Princess's palms, and I had to dodge that before it struck me too. The wolf in the orb's way was knocked both out of breath, and right onto a nearby wall where the resulting force made a spider-web crack on the wall; the wall eventually gave way and the wolf was nowhere to be seen.

"They're not gonna play by the rules, so I don't need to follow the rules of Danmaku fights either," growled the Princess, whose expression turned as fiery as the glow of a fireball she conjured in her palms.

"What the heck is th – "

Before I could ask, three more multi-colored balls flew at the wolves. It wasn't deadly enough to kill them, but nonetheless the group that got close to us got all knocked out of their consciousness. Once that was done, the princess pulled out a knife which I swore I never knew she had, as she proceeded to stab the wolves in their chests one by one.

I've seen ultraviolence before during fight club – sometimes it just happens way too naturally – but seeing orange blood spurting out of humanoid beasties was another thing. Here, it seems that the Princess's acts were actually justified, her actions spurred out of the need to protect herself from another being not human.

I could only stand aside watching the murderous Princess take down the wolves and their lives.
Rather helplessly and overawed.

""""""

After a while, the Rou Youkai realized that their time was up and their game was over; they beat a retreat before the rest of the rabbits could eliminate them. I had wanted to take off after them, but the Princess pulled me back.

"Princess! Are you all right?" Miss Yagakoro came running for the Princess as the princess's malevolent aura slowly faded.

"It's fine now," she quipped, the bloodied Princess dropping her dagger squarely into one of the wolves' stomach. "How's the situation out there?"

"The stasis fields have been re-activated. Someone sabotaged it, which caused the chaos inside."

She stared at me sternly, as though she'd already decided that I must have been the one doing it.

"How many of us are down?"

"The entire first response team was knocked out, and we've got about thirty more other casualties."

It was at this time that the medicine lady suddenly flew into a fit of rage, and with unexpected strength, clutched me at my throat painfully.

"Did you collude with the wolves? They seem to know you, and you to them."
"Lech go!" I yelped, unable to speak with my throat being clutched. I can't bring myself to hit the medicine lady, but I'm going to die if I don't do something.
"Stop it, Eirin! He protected me while we were in here! Let him go!"
"NO! HIS PRESENCE WAS WHY WE GOT INTO ALL THESE MESS, AND TEN FAILED TESTS IN A ROW! THIS GUY IS A FUCKING CURSE!"

It was then that I felt a surge of energy – it feels malevolent and dark, for some reason – shoot up from my spleen area and then all over my body, and then I saw that Eirin was apparently struck; she yelped and let go of me. For a good five minutes I was down on the floor gasping for breath. Tasting yet more blood, I then noticed her grabbing at her wrist, as though something had burnt it.

"I don't… *cough* know what your problem is, Miss Yagakoro, but can't you tell me earlier that you don't want to see me? I'm just here to look for medicines to a language problem, *cough* I've got my own shit to deal with, and I am not even aware of you! Can't you blame your failures on your own incompetence? Can't you leave me alone?"

"Stop it already, you two. Eirin, please go check on the casualties and give me a sit-rep. Mister Keros, please go back to your bunker or something… for now."

"Sorry," I blurted, before realizing that Eirin had blurted the same. This time, I felt equally justified to stare as much daggers towards that mad scientist as she does to me.

""""""

I took a look at the surroundings. To say things were flipped and messy was a huge understatement; a lot of glass bottles and stuff were all over the floor, hardly any one of them intact. It wasn't a pretty sight looking at some of the bunnies – blood was trickling out of some quite badly, and others are quietly nursing their injury in a corner… one of them being Melos.

"Oh, gosh, Melos, you all right?" I saw the blood trickling down the side of her face.
"It's you, Pasonia. I'm not good at all pyon. Those damn wolves shoved me right onto the walls. I knocked my waist into the wall and now I'm unable to move."

I had some experience with broken bones; assuming the bunnies' body structures to be similar to human, I felt the pelvic area a bit and noticed that it was slightly dislocated. I ain't gonna mess around with this sort of business since I am not a bone-setter, so I thought I'll have the bunny brought over to the infirmary since the medicine lady must, by extension, be the in-house doctor.
"You need me to carry you anywhere?"
"Uhh, yea, if you'd not mine carrying the other injured first to Miss Yagakoro's. I'm sure she's treating the rest now."
"Yea, I'll do it." I said so, rather unwillingly. Thinking of that unreasonable woman turns me inside out.

""""""

"Did anyone ask you to help? Go away!"

Understandably, it was the medicine lady who's over-reacting to my presence. I did what I could to ignore her, and to be honest I'm quite upset after a while, every time calling me by a different name whenever I bring a rabbit to her infirmary. Words initially used were "idiot", "fool" and "skunk", but gradually it progressed to "traitor", "bastard", "devil" and then still yet later, after nearly three hours of carrying injured rabbits she came up with "malevolent leech" and more colorful phrases that were either too dirty to go to print, or too bombastic for me to remember.

"Is she always like that?" I queried Melos.

"She's not always like that pyon," replied the injured rabbit, who by then had something like a brace attached to her waist; apparently it was a slightly dislocated backbone. "In fact, she's mighty jumpy today."

"Might be the time of the month," I quipped loud enough for her to hear, but not close enough for her to retaliate, as the both of us trotted out of the infirmary section.

"Eh, just so you know, she's jumpy whenever shit happens. Though, the last time I saw her as jumpy as she is now, was when we were planning to install a fake moon over the sky here so that the Rou Youkai do not disturb us anymore pyon."

"Let me guess –"this time I actually knew the answer – "it's an oni by the name of Suika who broke it?"

"Eh? How did you know—"

"Well, that oni told me quite a long time ago that she broke a fake moon. The two facts add up."

"Uwah… to be in the company of a legendary youkai like Suika-sama is already something us rabbits want so much pyon. It seems like they've got so much we can glean from if we even get just a little bit closer, if at all."

"I'm not sure about you, Melos," I laughed nervously, thinking of the crazy things that Suika did that I saw happen before my eyes. "But, whatever did you mean by 'legendary'?"

"Every so often, there would be incidents – such as our encounters with the Rou Youkai, these are considered incidents. When an incident is known to be outside of the youkai's ability or care to intervene – this generally meaning something that is on a scale that even legendary youkai can't do alone— the Shrine Maiden of Hakurei will appear alongside that witch our mistress doesn't really like too much pyon. We have systematic records here, just for our own perusal to while our time. Like, several years before there was the Mist Incident, which involved the devils and which is why we now call this language the devil's language as a matter of habit pyon. Then our own actions became an incident when the Shrine Maiden took us to task pyon. Recently—"

"Recently, there was an unknown ghost ship with some monk in it. I was told."

"Mister Keros, can I ask a question?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Just who are you pyon?"

Who am I? I'd like to know that too.

""""""

Another two days passed since the Rou Youkai's invasion. In that time, I was amazed at how fast things were restored to their original state. The rabbits who weren't injured were all over Eientei, beaming this strange thing onto non-organic objects, and within seconds these objects restored themselves like little puzzle pieces jumping back in place.

"That's a pretty nifty little device," I remarked as I followed Melos and Usami around.

"We're already used to the Rou Youkai damaging things, so we had the people up top send us some restore beamers. But this remains strictly Lunarian property so don't touch it. We only got this unit."

"Got it."

"Hey, hey Mister Keros!"

It was the Princess, whose presence immediately elicited respectful bowings from the rabbits. Though, given the way she shouted across the corridor I must say she's anything but graceful at times.

"Don't stand on ceremony girls. I need to speak to you for a while, Mister Keros."
"Is… anything the matter Princess?"
"I've asked the people up top to trace the source of the money that your friend got."

Aren't you mighty inquisitive, missus…

"We found that the money was supplied by a certain Helston Industries. The account was a company account, but the main controller was this guy called… Anselmo Sanchez."

Anselmo Sanchez… it all clicked in place. His goons tried to take over the fight club to build one of his sleaze joints, but I threw them out in more ways than one; not only did I trash his men, I also took the footage of his men monkeying around the fight club right up to the fuzz.
It made sense for him to low-blow me this way.

"…for him to low-blow me this way."
Shut it. You're not helping at times.

"That's the basis of your circumstances right now. You got framed. Knowing that, you still wanna go back? If you ask me, you're better off staying here."

"No matter what, eventually I will have to go back," I responded.

"Sigh… typical of you outsiders to be unable to let go of whatever you had, isn't it? Then again, I understand; if something big happened back at the Moon I'll take the fastest pod back."

"I'm glad you understand," I replied.

She then pulled out a watch-like device while none of the rabbits were looking our way, and stuffed it into my pocket.

"Whoa, what the-"
"Shush. Don't let anyone know. That is a Transporter Watch. It looks like an ordinary watch, a G-Shock maybe, but it actually has an option that teleports you to anywhere you know.

Just how inquisitive are you about everything? That's the first I hear someone mention a G-shock in Gensokyo!

"…anywhere I know?"
"If you'd gone to the place before, just imagine the surroundings and press this button," she said, pointing to a red button on the watch. "It will scan all possibilities and even display you a list of possibilities if you need to jog your memory."
"Sounds helpful, Princess, but…" I pointed at the other rabbits, "wouldn't they get suspicious if I disappeared just like that?"

"That's the beauty of this device. As long as you're doing whatever you need to do within ten days, you can come back within a short moment; as in today, so to speak. However… it doesn't go forward in time, only backwards. You also cannot use this device to show up at the same place repeatedly because that will cause a heck lot of problems with time and space. More importantly, the Moon Time Police will find out."

"Sounds pretty complicated," I mused.

"Just think of it this way – do what you have to in one shot." The tone of her words was absolute.

"Wait a minute, Pasonya."
Oh what is it this time, jeez. Sometimes my double fails to realize what makes me irked.
"Are you fine if I wanted you to go back alone without me? I don't want to run the risk of not being able to stay with you there."
On the contrary, I'd prefer you come with me for just this once.
"… Whatever you say then. We're one to begin with."
Thanks. I owe you one.

"…are you listening, Mister Keros? You spaced out for a bit there?"
"Uh, what? Oh, uh, sorry."
"…I could read you there."
"With all due respect, Princess…" I droned, unhappy that I was being read into.
"Yes, yes, I'm sorry, but I only did so because I deemed it necessary. Yes, he can go with you, but he'll only be able to stay with you for three days. I know because Youmu came here complaining before about her other half's disappearance the other time she borrowed the device, so I'd give you three days tops if you're gonna bring him along, to avoid problems."
"Augh, that's pretty problematic… he's not going to be able to accompany me this way, whatever I do will most definitely take more than three days."
"You half-ghost-half-humans sure have a lot of problems with the time-space continuum and our devices. It's your choice whether you want to take the risk," she mused light-heartedly, "'coz we ain't no insurance company here."

Looks like I've got no choice then. Could you leave me for a bit… literally?
"Ah well that's a shame. Sure thing…"

Slowly, but surely, a wave of very sharp and jolting static swept through me; before long I felt disconnected with my other half (in a literal way). It was for the first time that I saw this blue apparition the dead ringer of myself, and I was half-excited, half-nervous.

"Whoa, so you look like this… totally me?" I blurted out incredulously.
"This is my 'you' form," he smirked. "I prefer to be in orb form, but I don't have enough energy to make it happen now," he explained. "You mightn't realize it, but even when the two of us speak like this they can't tell what we're saying. At least, I knew none of the other ghosts but I understood when Youmu-nee and Myon-nee were talking."

Sure enough, I looked to my side, and realized that the Princess didn't get a word of what we said.
"...That's strange. You just learnt that funky new language or something? Nothing I had could decipher it," the Princess blurted, surprised that she couldn't understand something for the first time.

"Long story, I guess. Uhh… Princess, I'm sorry I'd to leave him in your care."
"It's okay! It's been so long since I'd had happier times than this. That stupid Mokou hasn't shown up for the longest time already, so I'm more than happy to talk to guests."

Even when the whole place is still quite messed up and fought in?

"Usually she makes an even worse mess out of here… if she manages to fight all the way in. Usually we settle things in the forest."

That's an even more disturbing thought. In other words she meant that this place gets thrashed regularly.

"And whenever one of us dies we'll wait another few months and then we'll fight again. This one with the Rou Youkai is probably an appetizer, but it's occurring too frequently lately."
"Wait, what'd you mean 'whenever one of us dies'? You can't possibly die on a regular basis!"
"I'll tell you more when you come back. Now hurry along already," smirked the Princess. I got the hint, and then I scooted back to my room as fast as I could.

Though, what the hell did she mean by that? She really does die on a regular basis?

If you ask me, I think that's pretty screwed even for a mysterious world like Gensokyo.