In the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Remilia and Yukari watched as everything around them dissolved into chaos. Yukari passed some popcorn, and Remilia chuckled. "You were right, Yukari. With someone like her around, it's impossible to be bored." They were watching Haruhi as she tried to kidnap Remilia's fairy maids, babbling something about "taking them home with me!" Koizumi was trying to help her, but he simply wasn't as fast as her and so was left far behind. Nagato had wandered into Patchouli's library and never came back out. The maids themselves were either running away in terror, or trying to stop Haruhi with danmaku bullets. Haruhi didn't even notice their attacks, and they never seemed to actually hit her. Sakuya was also watching this, silently lamenting how much cleaning she would have to do when they left, while answering Mikuru's questions about what being a maid is like. Flandre, wondering what was going on, had sneakily came up from the basement. She smiled at Haruhi's antics, wondering if she'd found a new playmate, hopefully one that wouldn't break so easily. Humans are so fragile, she thought, but this one seemed different.

Outside the mansion, the gatekeeper Meiling was standing guard, making sure no one got inside. Well, she thought, no one else got inside, since Yukari and her friends bypassed her completely via gap. Still, it seemed Remilia had invited them, so it wasn't that big of a problem. What might be a problem, however, were the two new people walking towards the gate. As soon as they were in earshot, she shouted,

"Halt! Who are you?" One of them shouted back,

"My name is Shimi, and this is my friend Kyon. We don't mean you or your mistress any harm, we just want to know: Has Yukari Yakumo been here recently? If she has, did she have anyone with her?" Meiling nodded as the two came closer.

"Yes, she came here a while ago with some humans." She frowned, uncertain. "At least, I think they were humans…"

Shimi smiled, and Kyon looked relieved.

"See, Kyon? I told you they were at the mansion. Why did you think they would be in the forest?"

Kyon shrugged.

"It seemed obvious. You told her not to go there."

"Exactly. It was too obvious." Shimi looked at Meiling curiously. "Say, have we met? I know I'm scheduled to meet you at some point."

Meiling shook her head.

"Sorry, I've never seen you before. Now, why are you two here?"

"Simply put, we're here to find Yukari and the others and bring them home. If you would step aside, we can get that done a lot quicker." Meiling scowled and moved into a combat stance.

"I can't let you do that. Only those my mistress has invited may come in!" Kyon said calmly,

"Then why don't you ask her if we can come in? We'll wait until you come back."

Surprised, Meiling asked,

"How do I know you will stay here? For all I know, you'll sneak in the second I'm not looking."

Shimi laughed.

"You know we won't do that because then you and Sakuya would end up fighting us, and that's something I'd rather avoid. We're not looking for trouble."

Meiling relaxed somewhat.

"…Fine. I'll ask Mistress Remilia if you can enter. Don't do anything while I'm gone, or you'll regret it!" She walked into the mansion, and the two waited.

Since the fairy maids were still being hounded by Haruhi, Sakuya brought in a tray of food for everyone. Yukari and Remilia had some tea, but Sakuya hadn't sure what to get for Mikuru. She asked, "Miss Asahina, what would like to eat?"

Mikuru considered this, and finally said,

"I would like some pudding, please." Sakuya snarled, and her eyes glowed red.

"DID YOU JUST SAY PADDING?" Several knifes suddenly appeared, all pointed at Mikuru. The poor girl squealed in fright. Remilia chuckled and flew between them.

"Sakuya, that's not what she said. She said pudding, the kind of dessert. Now, I order you to get it for her. Oh, and make me some too. With blood, of course." The knifes disappeared, and Sakuyas eyes returned to normal. She bowed.

"Of course, mistress. I will see to it." She walked off, though not before giving Mikuru one last glare. About that time, Meiling barged into the mansion.

"Lady Scarlet! We have two visitors!"

Remilia raised an eyebrow.

"Is that so? Then why didn't you get rid of them?"

"They said they were here to find Yukari and their friends and take them home!"

Haruhi looked up at this, furious.

"Take me home? Why would I want to do that?"

Meiling ignored her.

"Should I let them in, mistress?" Remilia nodded, and Meiling ran off to tell their new guests the good news.

Kyon was ready starting to worry. Shimi was talking with someone on his phone, but the conversation was… disturbing. Shimi smiled and said, "Yeah, it has been a while since we saw each other, hasn't it? …Really? I didn't know that could explode… are you sure it was a good idea to set it on fire, though? …Yes, I know you felt like it, but you should really think before you… what do you mean, 'so should I?' Oh, I hurt you one time, and suddenly I'll never live it down! …Ok, yeah, it did kill you, but at least I brought you back! Doesn't that count for… yes… no… look, I'm in the minute of something, I can't… I'm sure you can handle… look, you'll be fine, we all get attacked by monsters sometimes… Anyway, the gatekeeper is coming back, I have to go… ok. See you later!" He hung up. Seeing Kyon's look, he said, "What? It was my nephew. You wouldn't believe the messes we've got into…" I'm not sure I want to know, thought Kyon. Meiling walked up to them and said,

"The mistress said you can come in. Try to be careful, I heard shouting on the way in." Shimi and Kyon walked inside, quickly making their way to the corridor where all the noise seemed to come from. They found Haruhi wrestling a fairy to the ground. She was trying to drag her off, but the fairy's squirming made this impossible. Noticing Shimi and Kyon, she said,

"Hey, can you two help me with this?"

Shimi looked at Kyon.

"Does she mean help her catch the fairy, or to help stop her from catching it?"

Haruhi glared at him.

"Just shut up and help me!"

"I'm sorry, but I really don't think-" He saw Haruhi's look, and sighed. "Fine." He walked over to the two and put his hand on the fairy's head. His eyes glowed for a second, and she fell asleep. Satisfied, Haruhi picked up the fairy and started to walk off.

Shimi and Kyon hurried to keep up. Shimi asked,

"Umm, Haruhi? What are you going to do with the fairy?"

Haruhi grinned.

"Well, I'm gonna find out what fairies are like, of course!" She frowned. "By the way, someone showed up a while ago saying someone was coming to take me home. Do she mean you?" Shimi nodded, and Haruhi spun around, making him stumble. "Why would I ever want to go back? Have you seen this place? It's amazing!"

Shimi backed away, and said,

"Well, it's not like you can't come back. No one ever said that." Haruhi smiled and grabbed him, pulling him upright.

"Really? I can come back whenever I want?"

"W-well, no one said that either… there's no telling what would happen if you were here in Gensokyo all the time, but yeah, you can come for a visit every now and then."

Haruhi let him go, and asked,

"So, what else is in Gensokyo? There's fairies, what else?"

Shimi snickered.

"What else is there, you ask? Everything, Haruhi. Everything is here!"

Koizumi stood up, panting. Haruhi had run off chasing fairies, and he had no idea where. All of the halls were the same blood red color, so he had no way of knowing where she went. "Well," he said, smiling, "At least she's happy." He looked up, and smiled eerily at the girl clinging to the ceiling. "Hello there. Were you hiding from me?" Flandre dropped down in front of him, a bit surprised by how calm he was.

"No, I was following you so I can find that girl. The really fast one that was chasing the fairies."

Koizumi nodded.

"Ah, you're looking for Miss Suzumiya as well. You wouldn't have any idea where she went, would you?"

Flandre shook her head.

"Sorry, big sis never lets me out of the basement."

"And why is that?" Flandre shrugged. "Well, I suppose I'll just follow you then, Miss…"

Flandre grinned.

"Oh, I'm Flandre Scarlet!"

"Well, Miss Scarlet, which way do you think she went?" Flandre looked around, pointed down a random hallway, and the two walked off.

"So you see, Haruhi, if you look in Gensokyo long enough you'll find just about any supernatural creature you can think of."

Haruhi grinned.

"Ok, so where do I start looking?"

Shimi considered this.

"Well, this mansion would be a good start, it has vampires, a magician, and a time-stopping maid. Oh, and Meiling the bodyguard, but she isn't all that interesting. But before you do any of that, could you answer a few questions? I did come here so I could interview you, after all."

"Well, alright. What do you want to know?"

"First, let's find a room with chairs. I don't like doing interviews standing up if I can help it. Brace yourself, this may be a bit disorienting…" He snapped his fingers, and suddenly they were in the mansion's foyer, with Yukari, Mikuru, and Remilia. "Oh, I'm sorry to bother you two, can I just borrow a couple of these chairs?" Remilia nodded, and Shimi teleported away again, Haruhi and several of the chairs vanishing with him.

Koizumi and Flandre were lost, but Flandre refused to admit it. Any fairies they saw that could have given them directions ran off on sight, and after the third time this happened, Flandre was starting to get annoyed. So when they ran into another fairy a few minutes later, she grinned maliciously and swiftly pinned the poor maid to the ground. Koizumi smiled. "Thank you, Miss Scarlet. I couldn't possibly have caught her." Seeing Flandre's grin, he added, "Be careful, we don't want to hurt her."

Flandre looked at him in surprise.

"We don't? But I wanted to play with her!"

"What does that have to do with hurting her?"

"Well, I grab her 'eye', like this!" She held up a strange red orb. "That's her 'eye'! and them I crush it, like this!" She did so, and the fairy exploded. Flandre giggled at the sight, while Koizumi looked horrified.

"You killed her…"

"Yeah, but she'll be back!"

"She… she will?"

"Sure, she'll come back to life! Then we can ask her for directions, and I can make her go boom again!"

Koizumi calmed down slightly, enough that he returned to his usual eerie smile.

"Maybe… maybe you shouldn't do that this time."

"Why not?"

"Well, have you considered that she might not like being blown up?"

"But it's fun!"

"Maybe for you, but what about her?"

Flandre's eyes widened in shock. The idea that the fairy might not have liked getting blown up had never occurred to her.

"I… I thought…" Before she could say anything else, Shimi, Haruhi and Kyon appeared next to her. Haruhi and Kyon looked slightly disoriented, and Shimi smiled at Flandre.

"Ah, hello, Flandre! How've you been?"

She looked at him, and he was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

"I… I remember you. You were that boy who showed up in the basement back then. You said you wanted to play, but then you ran off making that weird whimpering noise when I blew up your sword. Did you… did you come back to play with me? I'm sorry about the sword…"

"No, that's ok, I got a new one. And I might play with you later, but now I want to ask a few questions. For a start, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"

Flandre pointed at Koizumi.

"He… he said that…" Before she could finish her sentence, Haruhi ran over to Koizumi and grabbed him by his shirt, yelling,

"What do you do to her, huh? How could you possibly make this cute little-" She looked at Flandre, then Shimi. "Hey, what is she?"

"She's a vampire."

"Yeah, how could you make this cute little vampire girl cry, huh?"

Koizumi didn't look particularly worried about any of this. His only reaction to being pulled off his feet was to frown slightly.

"I'm sorry, Miss Suzumiya, but I didn't mean for her to cry. I was just trying to make her understand that killing people isn't a good idea."

Flandre shuddered slightly.

"I never thought that they weren't happy… I thought I was making them happy too… I won't do it again, I promise."

Shimi smiled and knelt down so he could hug her. Surprised yet overjoyed, Flandre hugged him back, so strongly that he could barely breathe and he felt like his spine was about to snap.

"F-Flandre, could you let go, please?" She did, and he stood up shakily. "Another thing you should know: try not to hug people so hard, you could break them."

Flandre looked horrified.

"I could?"

"Yes, but don't look so worried. You just don't know your own strength, you'll figure these things out with time. Now then… you've learned a few new things today, so I think it's my turn to learn. Please, take a seat." He gestured to the seats he brought with him. He sat down as well and pulled out a notebook. "I suppose I'll start with you, Flandre. Tell me, what do you think the world is like?"

Flandre considered this.

"I don't know. I guess it would be dark and pretty, because I always see the moon out and there's shadows everywhere. And sometimes I see these shiny things in the sky. I wish I could just go out and touch them... And I saw a big mountain, a bunch of trees, and fairies. Lots of fairies. Big sis told me that they're really annoying."

Shimi wrote all this down and nodded.

"Fairies can be. Now, speaking of her, how do you feel about your sister?"

"Oh, Remi's amazing! She's so smart and strong!" She frowned slightly. "Do you mind if I tell you something? It has to be a secret!"

Shimi leaned in closer, curious.

"Don't worry, I can keep a secret."

"Well… Big sis told me I had to rest in the basement until I got better. Until my mind wasn't all funny. But… does it have to be so long? I want to leave. I do. But sometimes I'm scared… I think, what if I don't ever get better? What if I won't ever leave? Sometimes I think, it would be so easy, to just grab big sis and break her, just snap her in two… maybe that's why I have to stay inside. I'm not well. I won't ever be, will I?"

"Flandre, don't say that! You'll get better, I know you will. You just need to relax a bit, think clearly, and… yeah, you need to do a lot of learning, I suppose… and I think, with your sister's permission, that I know the perfect person to teach you. I'll introduce the two of you later… Anyway, I have one last question for you. Where did you get your sword from?"

"I don't know… I think Remi gave it to me… that was nice… my 50th birthday…"

"I see… well, I have one more question. What do you eat?"

"Your questions are weird… well, Sakuya usually makes me cakes and stuff."

"Ah…" Shimi wrote down 'blood cakes' and decided to move on. "Well, that's all my questions for you, Flandre. Koizumi, I believe it's your turn, if you don't mind."

Koizumi's smiled widened slightly.

"Not at all. What would you like to know?"

"For a start, be completely honest with me. I want to know how you really feel about coming to Gensokyo. Does it… bother you? Surprise you at all?"

"Well, I suppose it is a bit surprising. I must admit, I wasn't expecting anything like this to happen… but then again, after everything I've been through, I can't say I'm very shocked."

Haruhi looked confused.

"What are you talking about? This doesn't seem amazing to you? How can you say that? And what do you mean, 'everything you're been through'?" She narrowed her eyes. "You're hiding something from me, aren't you?"

Koizumi's smile finally dropped, and he let out a sigh.

"Well, considering all you've seen here, I suppose there's no point in denying all the supernatural things that I've seen… and done. My organization was hoping to leave you in the dark about everything, since they had no idea what would happen if you discovered such things… but now that this guy has shown you… Gensokyo, did you say it was called? You can finally see that there's more to the world than the ordinary. So I suppose I don't mind telling you my secret. You see, Miss Suzumiya, I'm what you might call an esper." Seeing Haruhi's frown, he chuckled. "I see you don't believe me, but I am telling the truth. Ordinarily, I'm a average human, but in certain circumstances, I can use my abilities. Apparently, simply being in Gensokyo is one of them." He opened his palm, and a orb of red energy appeared, along with a look of pure joy on Haruhi's face. "It's good to see you so happy, Miss Suzumiya. I use these powers to fight off creatures that threaten the world. As for why you were kept in the dark… well, you yourself aren't exactly a normal human. Strange things happen around you, and my organization has worked very hard to keep you from noticing. Not that it matters now, of course, since all of that work just crumbled to pieces the second Shimi showed up."

Shimi chuckled.

"What can I say? It amused me. I derail plans all the time. Although, to be fair, I do try to make things work out for the best if I can. For instance, now that you're being completely honest, not only can you answer my questions more openly, you won't have to lie to Haruhi anymore. Isn't that nice?"

Haruhi kept staring at the orb in Koizumi's hand, and said,

"What do you mean, strange things happening around me? I've had the SOS Brigade searching everywhere for interesting things, but they never-" Her eyes widened. "No… you were all… don't tell me everyone was hiding things from me!"

Shimi snickered.

"Ok, I won't. It's not bad as you think, though. Everything-" Before he could say anything else, Haruhi pulled him out of his chair.

"Not as bad as I think? What do you know about me, huh? How dare you! You're treating all of this like some kind of joke! How do you think you'd feel if you found out all of your friends were lying to you?" Shimi's response was to chuckle guiltily.

"I see your point, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have treated this so lightly… but as I was saying, there's more to this than you think. Do you know why they were hiding things from you? Because, as Koizumi said, these strange things happen around you. They didn't know what to make of it, except Kyon. He was just sort of dragged into all this. But the others… they didn't know how all of this weirdness was happening, except that you were causing it somehow, unconsciously. Think of it as a tree that bears fruit, except the fruit can be literally anything and it isn't aware it's making it. I think what Koizumi and his group was worried about is what you would do if you consciously started making things happen. Just imagine, Haruhi, if you idly thought, say, it would be nice if cats could talk, and then cats everywhere start talking. Can you see the problem? In short, they're worried you'll alter reality and destroy the world. But… from what I can see, you're not that stupid. I could have done this interview a bit more discreetly, seen everyone separately, but that didn't seem to be the right thing to do. At any rate… could you let go of my jacket? You seem to be grabbing people at lot lately…" She let him go and set down, the shock in her eyes plain. "Now then… I think it's your turn, Haruhi."

Haruhi shook her head.

"No, not yet. I'll answer your questions, but first I want to hear from the rest of the SOS Brigade. If he's an esper, then just think of what sort of amazing things everyone else is!" The shock in her eyes had been replaced with excitement and determination.

"My, you recovered quickly... Fine, let's start with Mikuru, shall we?" He snapped his fingers and all five of them disappeared.