[The Day of Disaster]

"Disaster! Disaster! Everyone, it's a disaster!"

A line like this, shouted at the top of her lungs, at the beginning of the day no less, could only have come from Sanae. As it was, it was heard a little after nine in the morning, when Sanae ran into the temple school hollering with all her might and throwing open every door in her way. Renko and I had both just begun teaching classes in two separate classrooms as both of us had students in the morning that day. Sanae had rushed through the front doors of the school and hurled the first classroom door she found open with enough force to rattle it in its frame.

That door had happened to be the rear door of Renko's advanced mathematics class, but with all the commotion, I interrupted my lessons to go into the hall and see what was happening as well.

"Sanae? What's wrong?" Renko asked from the front of the class, textbook still in hand.

"It's an Incident!" she panted, desperately trying to catch her breath. "Or something bigger, like a super-Incident! A hyper-mega-Incident!"

It was a headline so overblown that even the Bunbunmaru Shinbun wouldn't have run it. Nonetheless it was enough to get all of the students' attention, as they whirled around as one in their seats to stare at Sanae as she leaned against the doorframe.

"Well, can it wait until after class? I'm on the clock here."

Keine had come out of the staff office and was peering down the hall. "Oh, it's the mountain priestess. If this is something related to detective work you'll have to do it later."

"There's no time!" Sanae gasped in between panting breaths. "This is a major event! If this was a Super Sentai series it would be like episode 48 or something, right about the point in the series where they destroy the set for the heroes' base and spoil the next season's theme in a toy commercial during the break! This would be the lead up to the season finale!"

"What are you talking about?" Keine asked with a look of utter bafflement. "Take a breath and then explain it in terms we can understand."

By this point Renko had made her way through the rows of kneeling students to the back of the classroom where she laid a hand on Sanae's shoulder to soothe her.

"Tell us what's going on, Sanae. Did something happen to the Moriya shrine?"

"No, no, we're all fine." Swallowing a gulp of air, she turned and flung out her arm, pointing to the east. "I went to check on the branch shrine just now and the Hakurei shrine has been completely destroyed!"

-.-.-.-.-

Despite the over-the-top delivery, Sanae's characterization of events hadn't been an exaggeration. We ended up closing the temple school and sending all of the children home so that the four of us, Renko, Sanae, Keine and myself could all hurry over to the Hakurei shrine. Keine had wanted to go alone and leave us to teach our classes, but after Sanae's appearance the children were much too distracted to listen to a lesson anyway. Eventually, Renko had convinced her to let us go by telling her that we were concerned for Reimu too and wanted to check on her.

Thus, it was before 10 in the morning when we set off, Keine flying with me and Sanae flying with Renko as we all departed through the eastern gates of the village. Typically, after following the long path through the fields, you'd come to the stone steps cut into the hill before the Hakurei shrine, then, after climbing them, see the shrine's main building directly through the torii gate. In this case all we saw was part of the shrine's roof. The building itself was completely collapsed, folded in on itself with only splintered beams and shattered chunks of roof tile to proclaim that there had ever been anything more than a jumbled pile of lumber there.

It was a scene straight out of news footage of natural disasters -the hot, sunny weather painting the tangled mess of lumber with stark black shadows. Keine was staring slack-jawed at the scene as we landed, as was I. Renko was looking around with concern. Only Sanae seemed unaffected, standing with her hands on her hips and a proud smile as she looked over the wreckage.

Renko suddenly ran forward toward the collapsed heap. Following her gaze, I saw Reimu, sitting atop one of the fallen beams, staring dumbly into the wreck that had once been her home and shrine. "Reimu!" She called, waving to her.

Reimu turned around slowly, looking us over, but not really seeming to see us. "Oh Keine. Glad to see you're alright. Shouldn't you be helping out in the village though?"

"The village is fine, Reimu. What happened here though? Why is your shrine like this?"

"What do you mean, 'why?' Nothing could have stood in an earthquake like that."

"Earthquake?" Renko, Keine and I all looked at eachother, then back to Reimu. "We didn't notice any quake. When did this happen?"

"How could you not have noticed? It was enormous! It started right after I went outside to sweep, about nine. I was lucky to be outside. What am I going to do about my shrine though? This sort of thing never-"

Reimu froze suddenly, then looked up, turning to face Sanae, as if she had only just noticed she was here. "Did you do this?"

"Eh? Me?"

Sanae blinked in surprise as Reimu pointed her gohei at the priestess.

"You're standing there all smug, and the Moriya Branch shrine is still intact. How can it be standing when my home is like this!?"

Sanae's eyes darted over to the zelkova tree on the side of the grounds behind which the branch shrine stood. It was just barely visible around the edge of the tree, but seemed to be completely intact, in spite of its shoddy construction.

"Ah, it's a miracle! The protection of lady Kanako and Lady Suwako shielded the branch shrine from the wrath of the gods caused by your mismanagement and lack of care for your own shrine. If you had just handed the Hakurei shrine over to me in the beginning, this all could have been prevented! The base has been destroyed and Fantasy Sentai Hakuranger has aired its last episode. Tomorrow will see the beginning of the new era of Moriya Sentai Mishagujar as the Moriya shrine ascends to command the heavens and the airwaves!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about but if you're trying to take over my shrine by force, that's just about the stupidest thing anyone's ever done. One shrine has always been enough for Gensokyo!" Eyes blazing with fury, Reimu hopped off of her seat and began to walk toward Sanae.

"Objection! That is a false accusation. The Moriya shrine denies any involvement with this unfortunate event. We are a pacifist organization, opposed to violence. If you can't understand that then I'll have to convince you with force!"

Sanae's wand had found its way into her hand and she began walking toward Reimu as well. I had hoped Keine would have intervened, but she was still staring dumbstruck at the whole situation. Before anyone could say anything else, the miko and the wind priestess both launched themselves at eachother, flying low along the ground and dodging past eachother at the last second before ascending and chasing eachother in a whirling spiral as they began a fearsome danmaku match in the sky above the rubble.

I looked up at the two of them. Whether it was consideration or dumb luck I couldn't tell, but their battle was climbing ever higher, soaring into the sky so quickly that there was little danger of any of us being caught in the crossfire, but also little hope of any of us stopping them. With the blazing sun shining with blinding intensity in the sky, I couldn't have watched their match even if I wanted to. Shielding my eyes I turned to Renko. "What should we do?" I asked helplessly.

"Let them have their match, they both need to burn off some energy. When they're done though, there's still going to be the question of what we should do about... all of this" Renko said, gesturing vaguely at the huge heap of rubbish that had once been a shrine. "Keine, what do you make of this?"

"Well it certainly looks like it was hit by an earthquake. The roof is mostly intact but it flattened everything else. I've read that only happens with very powerful tremors..."

"Yeah, that's what I thought too, only..."

"We didn't have any kind of quake like that, did we?"

"Reimu said she felt it around nine. If it was strong enough to do this, there's no way we wouldn't have at least felt something like that in the village, right?"

"Nine o'clock is when the children were filing in to class. Even if you or I didn't notice it, there's no way that someone in the school wouldn't have. If it was this powerful here, it should have been strong enough to do significant damage to the village as well."

It seemed an impossible paradox. There had definitely not been an earthquake in the village. All the evidence made that that undeniable. It also seemed impossible to deny that Reimu's shrine had been completely destroyed in a way that could only have been caused by a major quake. Would it be possible for an earthquake of that magnitude to be entirely localized to a region small enough to have not affected the village?

Keine turned back towards the village, shielding her eyes from the sun. "I don't see any smoke, so I don't think there's been a fire at least, but if there was a quake, there could be damage on the edge of the village that we didn't feel in the center. There might even be aftershocks that are yet to come. I think I'd probably better go back and check."

"Alright. Be careful Keine. We'll stay here and make sure they're both sorted out once they're done fighting. Reimu will need some place to stay for the time being, and I'm sure Sanae has enough room at her shrine if we can keep the two of them from throttling eachother."

"OK. You two be careful too. If there are aftershocks, they might be worse around here. Try and stay away from anything that looks unstable. Take care of Reimu for us. If she needs anything I'm sure we can get her some supplies from the village."

Renko nodded and without another word Keine turned and left, kicking off of the ground and racing back toward the village. I waved after her for a moment, but she never looked back. Turning, I walked over to join Renko at the edge of the wreckage, on the beam that Reimu had been sitting on. A corner of the roof poked out at an odd angle beside us and the air was still thick with the smell of sawdust.

We tried to watch the match taking place overhead for a moment, but it was too hard to make out anything against the glare of the sun. All at once, both girls suddenly swooped downward, carving sharp arcs overhead.

Sanae was whooping with joy as she dropped. "Sanae Kochiya, innocent of all charges! Justice has been served!" She declared, flaring to a stop then descending to stand on the ground beside us. From the dejected expression on Reimu's face opposed to Sanae's exuberance, it was easy to see who had won the match. Perhaps it was my imagination but even the intensity of the sun seemed to have lessened now.

"Whoa, Reimu, are you OK? Did you get hit on the head during the quake or something?" Renko asked, looking concerned.

"What? No. She just came at me out of the sun and I couldn't see anything. The earthquake didn't hurt me, it was just so shaky I couldn't stand. The shrine made a bunch of awful noises and then it collapsed, just like it is now. So, no, I guess I'm not OK. What am I going to do?"

"How long did the tremors last, Reimu?"

"I don't know, a few minutes maybe? It's hard to tell during something like that. How bad is the damage in the village? I expect half of the houses must have collapsed."

Renko looked over at me for a moment, then back to Reimu. "That's just the thing, Reimu. We didn't feel anything at all."

"What? The village is only a stone's throw away. You must have. Maybe you weren't paying attention or something. Did you feel it, Merry?"

I shook my head at her. "There was nothing to feel. When we left the village there was no sign of any damage. No one had noticed anything at all. Keine went back to make sure there wasn't an aftershock or something, but until Sanae told us about it, I never would have guessed there had been an earthquake."

"How can something strong enough to knock my house down not be felt in the village?" Reimu asked, a confused expression on her face.

"It's the wrath of the gods!" Sanae declared, before I could answer. "Divine retribution for your devotional neglect." She was wearing a nasty smile. Sanae was generally one of the nicest people I knew. I guess you didn't want to get on the wrong side of a religious debate with her though.

"Shut up!" Reimu said, hurling a splintered chunk of wood sidearm at Sanae without even looking. The projectile missed, but not by much, sailing over Sanae's shoulder. "I've got to figure out where I'm going to sleep tonight! This is really starting to make me mad!"

"Ah, well maybe we can help you with that." Renko said, laying a consoling hand on Reimu's shoulder. We humans have to help eachother out here in Gensokyo, right? Give me just a moment to confer with my colleagues and see what we can find." She stood and walked away from Reimu, towards one corner of the shrine grounds, motioning Sanae and myself over to her. Once more the three of us put our heads together in an impromptu huddle.

"Alright, boss, what's the plan?" Sanae asked.

"There's one important detail I haven't caught you up on yet, Sanae. You were with us when we heard that the abnormal weather conditions seen all over Gensokyo have been associated with the presence of scarlet clouds, and that those clouds are thought to be omens of a coming earthquake, right? I had hoped I would have had time to tell you about what we discovered at Eientei yesterday before the quake struck, but, well, here we are."

Sanae clapped a hand over her mouth as it opened into a perfect 'o' of shock. "Have you found the culprit, boss?" she asked, eyes full of wonder.

"Well, not exactly, but in the eyes of the lunar sage, it's very likely that this Incident is being caused by a celestial -an inhabitant of the heavenly realms. Apparently they are known to occasionally mess with things here in the earthly realm."

"The 'heavenly realms?' Is that like capital H Heaven?" It was an unexpected question from an established priestess of an indigenous pre-Shinto faith.

"Well, I can't comment on the metaphysics of it much, but from what we've heard, its a world that exists above the skies of Gensokyo where ascended hermits and souls on the path to Buddhahood live their days in idle decadence, with nothing to do but pursue spiritual refinement. I heard something else too -there's supposed to be a shortcut to get there."

Sanae tilted her head curiously.

"A shortcut?"

"So I've heard. Apparently, rather than hoping to be sent there by the Yama, you can just physically enter that realm from the top of Youkai Mountain."

Immediately upon hearing those words, Sanae's eyes opened wide as a broad smile bloomed on her face. "I know exactly what you're thinking! We have to zoom up there and smash whoever's responsible for this earthquake before they can strike again! Just leave it to Sanae, boss, we've got this one in the bag."

"Renko, if you're sure that's where the culprit is likely to be found, shouldn't we tell Reimu?" I asked.

"Well, we don't have any proof yet. We can't go to the authorities and make an accusation until we confirm things for ourselves, right? If we're wrong, then we won't mention it. If we're right, well then maybe we'll get lucky and spare Reimu the trouble of having to resolve an Incident after the rough day she's just had."

I eyed Renko suspiciously. Her logic sounded reasonable enough, but it was nearly impossible to think she wasn't at least partially trying to beat Reimu to the punch. I lifted my head from the huddle and turned back toward Reimu. Renko did the same. She was still sitting, staring at her broken shrine and groaning.

"She's gonna be busy here for a while longer. We've probably got time to look into this, and it would be nice to help her out, right?" Renko said, turning back to Sanae and I with a big grin.

"Right!" Sanae said, mirroring her expression. "We'll save Reimu and Gensokyo in one fell swoop. All we have to do is keep moving forward a little bit more with each revolution. If we do that, then this will be the drill that pierces Heaven itself!" she shouted, raising her wand above her head.

I glanced over, but Reimu was still staring at the ruins of the shrine. If she had heard Sanae, she had ignored it. "This sort of thing is exactly the reason that Reimu's always suspicious of us." I hissed in a whisper. It was hopeless. Try though I might, the two of them were already cheering eachother onward at the thought of our next step. I could only look on and sigh.