"Miss, what're you reading about?"
Setsuna poked her head over the teacher's desk, peering at the book resting on it. She squinted at the archaic text, and Keine could see the little girl's brain cave in on itself.
"This book's a little too tough for you, dear." She gave the schoolchild a gentle pat on the head. "It's about mines in the outside world."
"Mines?" Setsuna's mouth popped open. "Like the one Jiro fell into?"
"...Yes, like that." Keine sat up straight, eager to change the subject. "It's very interesting! I'm learning lots of things I never knew before."
"But you're a teacher, not a student."
"There's no reason I can't be both." Keine smiled. "You'll understand when you're older, dear."
Setsuna wore the innocently precocious look that all children seemed to be born with. "Daddy says what happened to Jiro was a diss-grayce."
Keine gripped tightly at the book. "Did he, now?"
"He was shouting about it with the other grown ups." Setsuna continued, blissfully unaware of Keine's reaction. "He says they should blow up the mine with a kun-trolled demmy-lishun."
Keine sighed. "Grown ups say they'll do a lot of things they'll never plan on doing." She pulled out her canned teacher's smile. "Setsuna, why don't you go play with the other children?"
"Mmkay."
Setsuna waddled off to join the rest of the class. From what Keine could hear, they were having an argument about which of Gensokyo's shrine maidens would win in a fight. A contentious topic, and one she didn't want to take a side in.
Once the little girl was preoccupied, Keine reached upwards and squeezed at her temples. It had been a few days since the incident at the mine, and the adults of the village were still up in arms about it. Anti-youkai rhetoric had been rampant, with calls to sanction trading with the kappa as punishment. None of it would go anywhere, of course; kappa technology was too convenient for the villagers to simply abandon.
Then came the calls to cave in the entrance so there wouldn't be more accidents in the future. Normally Keine would have been all for that course of action, but knowing someone lived in there changed matters entirely. She'd been visiting Nakari in secret after sundown for the last few days, but she hadn't mentioned the canary to any of the humans yet. The last thing she wanted was for a lynch mob to go after an innocent youkai.
She was glad for the day to be over. The students headed back to their families as the sun began to set overhead. It would be a full moon tonight, which meant an evening locked away at home riding out her transformation. Most of the humans weren't aware of her were-hakutaku heritage, and now was a bad time for anybody to find out.
She had just finished cleaning up the classroom when the door swung open.
"You still use chalkboards around here?"
Keine felt a new tension rise in her shoulders. "They do the job fine, Nitori. There's no point in fixing what isn't broken."
"Yeah, but they take forever to clean." Nitori wore the disdainful look kappa saved for technology they hadn't invented. "I can get you some whiteboards on the cheap if you want. Since you're a friend and all."
Keine pushed out a breath through her nose. Nitori was the village's most prominent kappa trader, which basically meant she was the most obnoxious. She'd made a living out of barging onto people's property to sell them inventions they'd never asked for. Unfortunately, the gadgets were just convenient enough that people would buy them anyway.
"I hope you have a good reason for being here," Keine said. "I'm really not in the mood for your solicitation right now."
Nitori puffed out her cheeks. "You're a really tough customer, you know that?"
"Frankly, I'd rather I wasn't a customer at all."
"Fine. I'll skip right to the good news." Nitori drew a cucumber from one of her many pockets, chewing on it as she spoke. "So you know that whole mine accident that everyone's talking about?"
Keine glared. "The one that happened because you kappa didn't clean up after yourselves?"
"Hey, we put up warning signs and everything." Nitori folded her arms. "It's not our fault the kid didn't listen."
"Just get to the point."
"Well," Nitori said as she puffed out her chest, "since we pride ourselves on being friends with the humans of Gensokyo, we decided we'd do you a favour. That mine won't be causing any more trouble from now on."
"Let me guess." Keine rolled her eyes. "You put up an even larger warning sign this time around."
"It's more permanent than that." Nitori rubbed at her nose. "So there's this river that runs right next to the mine, right?"
The hakutaku felt her throat go dry. "What did you do?"
"Hmm hm hm~"
Nakari whistled to herself as she ran a cloth across the surface of her latest find. Excavating the shinies was only the first half of her job – just as important was keeping the stones polished so they could show off their full radiance.
"Picked up a real nice specimen today." The canary smiled at her own reflection in the crystal. "Think I might even add this one to the hall of fame!"
She brought the crystal back to her nest, finding a place for it among her collection. It was a careful process that demanded a lot of thought – she couldn't just put them up in any old order. There were deep, meaningful aesthetics to keep in mind, especially since other people would be seeing the fruits of her labour.
After some deliberation, she placed the newest crystal near the top of the display. It wasn't quite the prettiest thing she'd ever carved out of the rocks, but it was definitely up there. She tipped it forward ever so slightly, ensuring it would stand out from amongst its neighbours.
"I bet miss Keine is gonna love this one."
Nakari beamed. She'd been mining twice as hard since her new friend had arrived. Collecting shinies was already fun, but having someone to share them with made things even better. When she wasn't mining she was showing off the tools that the kappa had left behind, with Keine listening in and paying attention to all of it.
"I really hope she visits again tonight." Nakari rubbed her hands together, wiping off a layer of dirt. "Those drill bits I found are sure to-"
Her pondering was cut short by a massive bang.
"Wha-!?"
Nakari flinched, her wings swinging forward in a huge flap. What had that been? She knew all the little noises these passages made, but this one was new to her. Had one of the shafts caved in?
"Wait...there's more?"
The canary cupped a hand around her ear, pressing it against the wall. She could hear a rumbling noise in the wake of the first crash. A low rumble hummed through the stone, accompanied by a violent sloshing. It grew longer the more she heard of it, and when she realised what direction it was coming from a chill ran along her feathers.
"I think...I think I need to go."
Nakari scooped up her shiny collection in one arm, holding her pickaxe in the other. She backed away from the source of the rumbling with clumsy steps, almost tripping over herself more than once. All the while the growling in the walls was getting louder, a churning like the juices of a giant stomach.
She turned around just in time to see her cage engulfed by a wall of raging water.
When Keine made it to the mine entrance, she found a squad of kappa engineers gathered in front of the passageway. Two of them were dripping wet and drying themselves off with towels, while a third was reading through measurements on a laptop. From the jovial compliments they were sharing, they'd already finished the job.
"Oh, hey, aren't you the village guardian?" One of the damp kappa saw her approach and frowned. "I bet Nitori spoiled the surprise. We wanted to tell you after-"
"You IDIOTS!" Keine grabbed the woman by the collar. "Do you have any idea what you've just done?!"
"H-Hey, what gives?!" The small kappa gasped in shock before pushing Keine away. "We go ahead and solve your problem for you, and this is how you thank us?"
"There's a youkai living down there!" Keine yelled. "And you morons might have already killed her!"
The cheering stopped. Keine felt the air harden around her as the engineers shared looks of quiet dismay. Behind them Nitori barrelled over the horizon, gasping and wheezing from exertion.
"It's no good, Keine." Nitori shook her head. "The hole in the lakeside is too big for me to plug. We can't stop the water from flowing in."
Keine's blood was running backwards in her veins. Somewhere deep inside her was an all-consuming terror, but there was no room for it to rise to the surface. All she could feel now was primal, unholy rage.
"You thought you'd block off the mine by flooding it?" she growled, staring right into the soul of the head engineer. "Is that how you kappa solve all your problems?"
"We didn't know, okay?" One of the other kappa stepped forward in her friend's defense. "Nobody told us the mine was occupied."
"So you didn't even bother checking before you blew the damn thing up?" Keine could scream at them all day, but she didn't have time. "Look, you need to send a rescue team in there right now. Otherwise Nakari's going to die for sure."
The engineers went painfully quiet. Each of them looked at the others expectantly, waiting for anyone other than themselves to volunteer. With every second they hesitated, Keine felt a deeper nausea rile through her gut.
"Don't just stand there, dammit!" Keine stomped at the dirt hard enough to leave a footprint. "Quit feeling sorry for yourselves and do something!"
"We'd love to, but..." One of the kappa spoke up, hiding her eyes behind her glasses. "Even if your friend did survive the cave-in, we can't just swim down there and bring her out."
"She's right," said the kappa at the computer. "With all the water currents swirling around, the cave system is extremely unstable. The whole thing could collapse at any minute, and if that happened we'd all die as well."
"So you're just going to shrug your shoulders and move on?!" Keine was incredulous, barely remembering to breathe between sentences. "You're all pathetic, every last one of you!"
The engineers collectively backed off, looking every direction other than forwards. Even Nitori was averting her gaze, keeping quiet out of fear she'd be called out as well. That silence said everything Keine needed to hear.
"...Fine. I see how it is."
She looked up to see the full moon emerge from its hiding place behind Youkai Mountain, blessing her with its enchanted light. Power coursed through her body, the blue streaks in her hair erupting into a neon green. A tail rose out from her back, and her horns stood tall and proud atop her head.
"Nitori." She addressed the kappa without turning around. "You've got diving gear in your inventory, right?"
"Eh?" Nitori blinked. "I do, yeah, but-"
"Bring me a set. Right now." The hakutaku started stretching. "If no-one else is going to do it, I'll save her myself."
"I just want to reiterate this is a terrible idea."
Nitori shared her opinion for what must have been the hundredth time in the last ten minutes. To her credit, at least she had been prompt to supply what Keine had asked for. The other engineers had made excuses and run away as soon as they found the chance.
"If I wanted your opinion, I'd be paying you for it," the hakutaku snapped. "Now hurry up and finish those checks."
The snipe was enough to put Nitori's focus back on the job. She looked over each piece of equipment before slipping it onto Keine, offering a brief explanation for each of them.
"Suit and gloves will protect you from sharp stuff," she said. "Fins make your swimming easier. Belt counters your buoyancy. Flashlight makes sure you can see what you're doing down there. Got it?"
Keine nodded. The outfit felt strange on her, but she was grateful for it. She'd need all the help she could get for what she was about to attempt.
"Right, most important thing." Nitori held up two hand-sized mouthpieces. "Rebreathers. One for you, one for your canary friend."
"...They're awfully small." Keine creased her brow. "Can't you give me anything larger?"
"The tunnels are too narrow for a full tank. This is the best you've got." Nitori shook her head. "They'll hold enough air for a round trip, but you'll have to haul ass."
Keine nodded. She bit down on the mouthpiece for a moment, acclimating to its weight and taste. There was probably a lot of complicated machinery that went into the device, but she didn't care as long as it worked. She strapped the second supply to her belt, ready to hand over to Nakari when the time came.
"I don't get why you need to go through all this trouble," Nitori said. "You can change history on the full moon, right? Why not just rewrite reality so your friend's not in danger?"
Keine spat out the mouthpiece. "Too recent. My powers are for things that happened much further in the past. And I don't have enough power to make huge changes to reality – it's got to be something clear and specific, or it doesn't work."
"Right." Nitori sighed. "Guess we wouldn't be having this conversation if it was that simple, huh?"
Once the preparations were complete, Keine looked down into the water. She was sitting on the edge of what had once been the elevator shaft. Gushes of bubbles burst up to the surface as the flooding continued to worsen, devouring the last few pockets of air inside the mine. Darker thoughts tugged at her mind, but she slapped her cheek to drive them away. She couldn't afford to be distracted now.
"Alright, you're as ready as you'll ever be." Nitori swallowed. "Good luck down there."
"Thanks," Keine replied. "I only hope that I don't need it."
She slipped on her air supply, pushed herself forward, and vanished into the rising water.