Sanae dropped us off in the village square, much to the surprise of the few passersby who could still be seen in the street after dark. Hovering above us, she waved before turning to leave, saying "Goodnight! I'll pick you up tomorrow after school to go see Remilia." Renko and I shared an uneasy glance as we watched her fly off toward the mountains.
"Getting a case from Remilia is kind of a big deal for our little agency." I said with trepidation. "Do you think it'll be alright letting Sanae take the lead like this?"
"Well, whatever conclusion she's come to, I'll find a way to smooth it over. Don't worry about it Merry, I'll figure it out. I'm the director, after all."
"You're sounding just like her now. That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either."
Regardless of how it panned out though, I suppose Renko had a point. Sanae might crack the case or fail horribly. Renko might smooth over her mistakes or make things worse. No matter what happened though, I was only along for the ride. No one looked to the detective's assistant to come up with the key breakthrough.
"Well, for the time being then, I suppose we ought to be taking Alice's advice. Figuratively as well as literally and just preparing for the possibility of a disaster."
"I get what you mean but I wonder if we oughtn't actually warn Keine about the possibility of an earthquake. It's not a sure thing, but it could be bad for the village if it happens."
"Well we only have Alice's words to go on at the moment. If we don't gather a little more evidence, Kotohime might use it as an excuse to slap those cuffs on you for false reporting."
"Before you start worrying about that, why not spend a little time thinking about what you'd do if you end up spending a night in jail for being out after curfew?" This last had come from a new voice, neither Renko nor I, but familiar enough that we both hunched up in surprise before turning around.
Spinning about, we came face to face with Keine, silhouetted by the crescent moon and staring us down with her hands on her hips and an exasperated look on her face. "Do I even want to know what you were both out doing so late at night or why you were being dropped off by that weird miko from the mountain?" she asked.
"Hey, we were back before nightfall tonight." Renko said, sheepishly. "Or well, we were headed back before nightfall, anyway. We got here before the gates closed for the night, that counts for something right? You can overlook two twenty-somethings having the occasional late night, can't you?"
"If you were just ordinary citizens, I might. But you two are role models! How am I supposed to tell the children to obey the rules and keep within city limits if they see two adults like you disregarding every convention and flying around at night? Do you know how hard I've had to work and how much I've had to conceal who I am just to gain the level of begrudging acceptance I have from the village? Parents wouldn't even send their kids to me until I got you both as teachers, but what do you think will happen if everyone discovers you're a pair of delinquents?"
"Alright, alright, but if you're going to lecture us, we should take it somewhere indoors, rather than the middle of the town square, don't you think?"
"You're completely right. I'm throwing you both in the drunk tank for the night, we can continue this there."
"Hey come on, that's not fair, I haven't even had a drop this evening! Besides, we were only out so late because we uncovered some information that might be of critical importance to the safety of the village."
Keine looked unimpressed, arching an eyebrow and crossing her arms at Renko as she waited expectantly. "And that would be...?"
"An earthquake. There's likely to be one in the near future, and from the looks of it, it'll be a big one."
Keine looked us both over with a scrutinizing eye, as if trying to search for any telltale detail that might indicate Renko was conjuring this story out of thin air.
"An earthquake." She declared flatly. "Where are you getting this from? Even the Dragon God statue can't predict earthquakes."
"We heard about it from Alice. It might seem a little far-fetched, but she certainly didn't think so, she was making all sorts of pre-emptive preparations to her house. Surely you've noticed that the weather has been unusually unstable lately. That's because in various different places around Gensokyo, completely disparate types of weather are all happening at the same time."
"Abnormal weather? What's that got to do with earthquakes?"
"Well, it's not just abnormal weather, it's practically impossible weather. We were travelling all around today: it was sunny at the Hakurei shrine, rainy at the Moriya shrine, and hailing in the Forest of Magic. We've heard scattered reports of drizzle, wind and snow too. What's more, there have been several sightings of an enormous crimson cloud in the sky. Alice's read on all of that is that an earthquake or other major natural disaster must be imminent. She felt strongly enough about it that she put everything on hold to nail down all the furniture at her house."
Keine grumbled as she looked downward, cupping her chin in her hand and thinking aloud. "The weather has seemed oddly changeable lately..."
As much as Keine might have good reason to doubt us, she wasn't the sort who could let a potential threat to the village be ignored. "Earthquakes aren't exactly the sorts of things the neighborhood watch is setup to deal with, but if we could make some preparations and lay in some supplies ahead of time, it would help to be prepared in case some houses collapse... I don't suppose Alice said anything useful like when she expected this earthquake to happen?"
"Unfortunately not, but she seemed to think it was near enough to focusing on preparations instead of visiting with us."
"Hmmmm, alright. Well, we don't have time to question it then. The more we can prepare now, the better off we'll be. I'll ask around and see if anyone else has seen any of these warning signs. Maybe I can get the watch to gather up some water in case the flow of the river shifts. We could probably stand to stockpile some food too. I'll have to talk to the farmers and the salt merchant..."
"Well, hold on," Renko said, reaching out an arm to Keine. "Some prudence is required here. If the neighborhood watch starts shouting 'an earthquake is coming' then there will be a run on supplies. People will start hoarding. This needs to be managed carefully. Maybe you could talk to the fire brigade and plan a large-scale disaster drill. If the earthquake should just happen to hit while you're testing for preparedness, well then that would be convenient, wouldn't it?"
"Hmmm, that's several more people I'll need to talk to. What about the citizenry though? You're right that I don't want to cause a panic among the populace, but people need to have plans on where to go, what to take and where to meet up too."
"What if we started teaching a unit on disaster preparedness in our classes tomorrow? Kids could take planning forms home and discuss all of that with their families. If the rumor mill in the village works like usual, everyone will be talking about it in a day or two. It won't be a formal, coordinated evacuation plan, but people will start thinking about it. You may even have people come to the neighborhood watch and ask you to setup a proper evacuation plan all on their own."
"That's a good idea! Alright. I'll need to draw up a lesson plan and talk to the fire chief tonight. If I call at the salt merchant's house, maybe I can speak with him before class tomorrow. Then there's the merchant's association and watch captains to brief..." She muttered to herself for a moment then looked up at Renko. "Thank you for the warning, it seems like I've got a lot of planning to do. I suppose your late night habits can occasionally be useful."
"That's right." Renko said with a nod. "Don't forget, you're a teacher first and a volunteer with the watch second. Our first duty is always to the children. You get those lesson plans worked up and I'll present them to both classes tomorrow since I don't have anything else during first period. That way the kids won't fall asleep during the lecture."
Keine frowned at that, but was far too caught up in the planning and scheduling swirling through her head to pay much attention. Muttering to herself she walked off, leaving us alone in the square.
-.-.-.-.-
[Second Tremor - 3 Days Until Disaster]
15 minutes before the end of the first period of classes in the morning, we crowded all of the students into one classroom with the older kids at the back and the younger students in the front so that Renko could give a lecture on disaster preparedness. She had evidently spent much of the first period rewriting and adding to Keine's lesson plan or else she read it over briefly and extemporized most of the presentation on the spot, as the lecture was mostly a showcase of her storytelling skills, which kept the children raptly attentive. Her talent in spinning a compelling narrative was one of the few things I could compliment her on without reservation -she really does have a knack for it, in a way that neither Keine nor I could replicate.
As the younger children filed back out of the classroom afterwards, I went with them to teach a period of reading lessons before lunch, but I left with some hope that the children might have learned and retained something. Certainly disaster preparedness would be something that would be talked about at home tonight. In class the children could barely focus on anything else.
At the end of the school day, the children were still talking about it with eachother and even Keine seemed relieved -or slightly less worried, anyway.
"Hopefully the idea of having an evacuation plan will spread among the merchant families and out among the artisans as well. I wish I could do something more organized, but there might not be enough time. I still need to go back and talk to the fire brigade again to work out plans for their drills."
It was enough to make me feel bad for all the extra work Keine was taking on, even if it was entirely her own choice. As if reading my guilty thoughts, she turned to me then, asking "what are you two going to be doing to help out tonight?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could speak, Renko cut in. "We're going to be working on our end of the issue, seeing what we can do to corroborate reports of the warning signs and trying to nail down a timeframe for you, Keine."
Keine's eyes narrowed as she looked over at Renko. More than anyone else, she was becoming adept at reading between the lines of Renko's carefully managed presentations of the facts. "Don't go anywhere dangerous." She said flatly. "And be back in the village before nightfall."
Renko grinned broadly and saluted. "Sir, yes sir." she said, with her most infuriating smile.
-.-.-.-.-
"School's out! Are you two ready to go?" Sanae called out as she came floating down from the sky to land in the schoolyard with a whirl of dust. As the cloud of grit spun away from her, flaring her long skirt around her legs, she struck a pose, soliciting a murmur of comments from the few students who hadn't left the school grounds yet.
"Oh, it's the main character of today's episode, divine detective Sanae, right?" Renko asked with a grin as she descended the stairs.
"All great detectives require an assistant to record their deductions, so today you can be my Watson, Renko!"
"If I'm being your Merry today, then who does Merry get to be?"
"I'll keep being me," I said, coming down the stairs to join them. "Delusional detective Renko's feats are such that she'll need someone to record all of her insane conclusions even if she's only a supporting character today. I have the utmost faith in your ability to come up with something even more far-fetched than whatever Sanae's explanation is, director."
"Ouch, Merry. After all you two've been through, I'd think you'd have a little more respect for Renko as a detective."
"No, it's fine, Sanae. Didn't you hear her? She has faith in me. With all this faith she's instilled me with, I'm going to end up as the god of deduction."
"Ah, well in that case, let me know when that happens and I'll enshrine your hat for you. Then we can really be a pair of divine detectives! Now come on, let's go! I've got a mystery to solve for our client!"
And thus, as soon as Renko took the time to once again don her unseasonable trenchcoat, we took Sanae's hands and flew off toward the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Towards God only knows what conclusion, an expression I use with full knowledge that it was a living god whose hand I was holding as we made our way out of town.