The etymology of the word 'thunder' or kaminari comes from the combination of words kami and nari, meaning something like 'the rumbling of the gods.' As the deep vibrations of the thunder echoing through the clouds sent their rattle buzzing through our bodies, it became eminently clear why that might have been. The air around us seemed charged with pent-up energy and each boom, whether near or far shook us with the profundity of its sound, like the tremor of an earthquake even though we were standing on wind itself. Every aspect of observable reality, from the unfamiliar sights, to the bone-shaking sounds, to the hostility of this environment, which we couldn't have survived without Sanae's help seemed to be proclaiming this place to be the domain of the gods, and not of humans. If not for the fact that both Renko and I were clinging to the hands of a living god at the time, I don't imagine it's a place we could ever have seen.
"Don't worry, Merry. Lady Kanako wouldn't let any harm come to me."
"That's fine for you, but what about Renko and I?"
"As long as you don't let go of my hand you should be safe. Wind element characters are always strong against lightning, right? If the party mage got burned every time they cast fireball, they'd be a joke."
"Wouldn't you be the party priest through, Sanae?"
"Hmmm. I can't cast heal, but with the power of miracles, maybe getting hit by lightning would unlock your latent abilities!"
"Well, Merry already has a bunch of abilities, but I'd be interested to see what more she could do. What do you say Merry? Have you got an umbrella you could hold up or something?"
"Sanae, if your arm is getting tired, feel free to just drop Renko."
We continued to bicker senselessly back and forth for a moment until suddenly Sanae called out in surprise.
"Oh! Look, there, through the break in the clouds, I see the ground!" She cried, staring at a drifting hole in the swirling crimson mist all around us.
"That must be the peak of the mountain poking up through the bottom of the cloud. Do you think you can land there Sanae?"
"No, we must be higher then that. I bet we're not even on Youkai Mountain any more. It must be Laputa! Look out for giant ancient robots! I'll bring us down."
Still clinging onto the Sanae's hands, we descended and touched down. The ground we had found was a rocky plateau of stone and gravel. It looked like a mountaintop to me, but I had never been to the peak of Youkai Mountain, so it was hard to be sure. The thickly swirling scarlet clouds all around us continued to churn, giving a dizzying sense of motion to the scene that made you feel like you were spinning even when standing still. It didn't help that the clouds blocked out so much light that, despite it being broad daylight, everything was cast in dim shades of red that randomly flashed to blinding purple-white every time a stroke of lightning arced overhead. It didn't feel like we were in any place suitable for humans any more, but it would be hard to think of a place like this as being any sort of heavenly realm either.
"Do your eyes see anything Merry?" Renko asked.
"I can't be sure. Between the dim and the lightning flashes I can barely even see the ground. I'm not sure if I'd notice if there were a barrier here."
Renko looked like she tried to respond, but the overwhelming rumble of the thunder drowned out any hope of hearing her. All around us, in the enormous hollow cylinder of the cloud, lightning was flickering from point to point at irregular intervals, followed by claps and peals of thunder. I wondered if being at Sanae's side was really enough protection to justify standing on top of a mountain in the middle of a thunderstorm. If my life was going to come to an end in Gensokyo, I'd prefer it didn't involve any event that would leave my corpse charred into black soot. As another crash of thunder, this one nearer than the last, clamored from above, I stumbled, tripping on an unseen rock. I managed to grab onto the sleeve of Renko's coat for support, but as I pulled myself back up to standing, I looked up into Renko's concerned but smiling face -and saw something behind her, a lone figure floating in the air above her head. I must have gasped because, reading my face, she and Sanae turned to look at it too.
"You don't look like tengu. But you're not ghosts or youkai either. Are you three... humans? More humans came all the way up here? And three of them this time?"
Sanae looked up at the floating figure with her eyes wide, staring for a moment, then turned to Renko with a look of shock.
"Renko... is that your mom?" she asked in wide-eyed wonder.
"What? No! Why would you think that, just because she has a similar hat?" Renko shook her head as the woman who had been floating above us began to descend, eventually alighting just in front of us.
Sanae's presumption was unwarranted, but I could see where it might have come from. It wasn't just the hat. Although it was hard to see in the intermittently pulsing light, the woman wore a spotless, ruffle-covered white blouse adorned with red ribbons on the sleeves and a long, simple black skirt. Her hair was cut about the same length and Renko's and was just as dark, though she didn't wear the tiny asymmetrical braid Renko was fond of. The two biggest differences in their appearance, other their age and the trenchcoat Renko currently had on over top of her outfit was that this woman didn't look like she shopped at a generic discount fast-fashion retailer and she was wearing a strange garment like a scarf or a shawl edged with ruffled red ribbons around her arms and shoulders that caught the flowing breeze and floated above her head, never quite managing to come down, always seeming to catch just the faintest hint of a new current and stay aloft. In terms of age, she did look old enough that she could have been Renko's mother, but having met Renko's mother on two occasions myself, this woman actually appeared to be a bit younger than her. Given that she likely wasn't a human though, her age was anyone's guess.
"This is a very dangerous place," she said, with an almost apologetic tone. "Ordinary humans shouldn't be here."
"Lucky for us I'm not an ordinary human then!" Sanae said, hands on her hips and chest thrust out proudly. "I'm a living god!"
"A god? You don't seem to have much of a divine aura for a god. You must be very young."
"Wow, rude! What kind of a person discriminates based on age the first time they meet someone? You could stand to learn to read the atmosphere a bit better."
It was not an accusation I ever expected to hear coming from Sanae, of all people.
"Tone it down a little, Sanae, we're not here to pick a fight. Pleased to meet you, miss. My name is Renko Usami. This is my partner, Merry, and this is Sanae Kochiya, wind priestess of the Moriya shrine. We may all three of us be humans, but none of us are exactly what you would call ordinary. What can we call you?"
"...I'm Iku Nagae. A messenger of the Dragon Palace."
"'Messenger of the Dragon Palace...' Ryuugu no tsukai... Isn't that what they call those weird-looking deep sea fish with all the frills?"
"You're going to say something like that on our first meeting and I'm the one who gets accused of failing to read the atmosphere? No one could predict that. You're as impossible to read as the Eldest Daughter."
"I didn't fly all the way up here to be insulted by an oarfish!" Sanae cut in, indignantly.
"I'm not an oarfish!"
"By that do you mean that you're not a beast youkai? You're actually a literal messenger of the Dragon God?" Renko asked, moving to get in front of Sanae. "Then the Dragon Palace of legend is a real place and it's actually in the sky rather than at the bottom of the ocean?" She seemed eager to stop the meeting from escalating into a fight, but more than that, her eyes were sparkling with curiosity, gleaming at the implications that a celestial messenger held. That familiar look in her eyes was uniquely capable of making me feel both happy to see her so engaged and terrified for my own future.
Iku flinched back a little, whether from Sanae's testy aggression or Renko's intense curiosity, I couldn't say. Perhaps both. Put together, the pair of them were a bit much. "...I just came here to warn you of an approaching danger to Gensokyo," she said, re-asserting herself. "I don't have to tell you anything about the heavenly realm."
"Oh, and what would that danger be?"
Iku stepped back, taking on a dramatic pose, one arm raised above her head like a statue of a god about to hurl a thunderbolt to earth. Her shawl continued to flutter around her, billowing in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with the soft breezes inside the rotating cloud. "Creatures of the earthly realm, heed now my warning!" She intoned, taking on a profound tone. "This scarlet cloud is a harbinger of the extraordinary! The temperament of heaven and earth have become volatile, and soon the disruption of nature that this crimson hue heralds shall shake your world to its very foundations! By order of the Dragon God, I have swam the skies to bring you this warning!" As soon as she had finished delivering the message, Iku lowered her arm and relaxed her pose.
"Shake our world?" Sanae asked, walking out from behind Renko to face Iku again. "You're talking about an earthquake! You're the one who flattened the Hakurei shrine!" She held up her wand, the charm at the end of it snapping to rigidity. "I won't let you do to the Moriya shrine what you did to the Hakurei. I'll stop you here!"
"Sanae! Sanae! Just wait! There's no need to rush in swinging. She wouldn't come here to warn us if she was trying to flatten shrines. Let's try listening to what people have to say, OK?"
Sanae growled as Renko held her back, wriggling ineffectually as Renko pinned her arms. "Sorry about her," Renko said with a weak smile. "She can be a little quick to jump to conclusions."
"Raaarr" Sanae growled, playing it up as she flailed her arms.
"Getting mad at me won't achieve anything," Iku replied. "I'm just the messenger. I have nothing to do with the presence or absence of any quakes. Humans like you should be spending your time and energy making preparations."
"Well, your warning has come a little late, I'm afraid. There was already an earthquake this morning."
"What? Are you sure? Once the earthquake happens these scarlet clouds should dissipate. They've only grown larger since this morning though."
"Well, the earthquake was extremely localized. As far as we can tell it destroyed one shrine and no one else even felt it."
"Ah. Is that so? I see. Aha... oh, why me?" Iku responded with a nod that ended with her head and shoulders slowly drooping lower and lower.
"I take it you have some idea who might be responsible for this disruption of the natural order then?"
"Yes, I'm afraid I do. But the fact that I do means that I must now give you another warning, though this one is not an official message from the Dragon God. Think of it more as a friendly word of concern: These clouds are probably not a natural occurrence. You humans should not, under any circumstances, pursue this any further or attempt to locate the one responsible. Doing so would be certain to end very poorly for you."
"Boss, she must be part of the mastermind's gang! She's just a henchman if she's saying something like that!" Sanae yelled, struggling again to escape from Renko's grasp.
"I'll admit it's a bit suspicious..." Renko said. While she was busy considering it, Sanae wrenched her arms free from Renko's hold.
"I'm not affiliated with the one responsible for this," Iku huffed. "And if I were to be, I wouldn't be her henchwoman. I'm a messenger of the Dragon God themselves! The earthquake you saw already was probably just a test of her power. If the clouds are still growing like this, then the real disaster is yet to come."
"I won't let it come! I'll crush your entire gang of miscreants, starting with you! With the power of the Moriya gods, I'll punish you before you can strike again!" Saying this, Sanae leapt into the air, striking a complicated pose as she did so, then hovering above us, arms crossed over eachother with the pinky and forefinger of each hand extended, one hand pointed toward Iku.
Iku turned to face her, bracing herself and settling her feet on the ground while letting out a sigh. "The advice of the Dragon God was intended to prevent disaster and allow you humans the chance to prepare yourselves. Fighting like this is squandering the gift of time that has been given to you." Saying that, Iku thrust one arm down to her side, grasping the floating shawl as she did so. The cloth of the shawl wriggled and snapped rigidly into place, extending out from her clenched fist like a baton, crackling with arcs of blue-white lightning.
It was at that moment that I abandoned any hope of a peaceful resolution and instead grabbed Renko by the shoulders, pulling her with me as I scrambled to find cover behind a a jagged thrust of slate poking up from the ground at an angle. The very moment Renko and I were out of sight, the crash of thunder signaled the opening of a dazzling barrage of danmaku, illuminating the gaps between the blinding flashes of lightning.
-.-.-.-.-
To label the fight 'a clash between the uncontainable power of wind and the unstoppable force of lightning' seems a bit overblown, and maybe like a chapter title from a fantasy manga. Nonetheless, that's exactly what we witnessed atop that mountain. Sanae and Iku fought using searing thunderbolts and raging winds in a battle that was both stunning and nearly impossible to follow between the frequent blinding flashes and the darkness between them. As always, my words cannot paint a worthy picture of the grace of their conflict, but in this case even if they could, I wouldn't know what to say happened. At any rate, I won't make an effort to describe the battle here, as the nuances of their contest have no bearing on this story. Maintaining the readability of a narrative is important.
As for the outcome of the match, however...
Iku landed on the ground with a clatter, throwing up a spray of gravel. Wincing, she skidded to a halt and began to sit up just in time for Sanae to drop to the ground directly in front of her, her wand pointed at Iku's face.
"Now point me to the leader of your gang, minion!" Sanae declared.
"I'm not in a gang! Up above the top of the scarlet cloud is someone who has the power to control earthquakes though. That's probably who you're looking for." Iku said with a heavy sigh. "I don't know what you could do to stop her though. She won't listen to anyone. It's pretty likely she's the one responsible for the destruction of that shrine you mentioned."
"Alright! All we have to do is find this troublemaker and beat her up and the peace of Gensokyo will be restored! The village will be saved and the Moriya temple will be known far and wide as the new source for everyone's Incident-resolution needs. Merry, Renko, let's go!"
Sanae darted over to where Renko and I had been sheltering and grabbed our arms without a moment's notice. All at once we found ourselves floating off the ground and accelerating upwards before we had even had time to properly stand up.
"Hey, wait a second Sanae, we haven't even gotten a name or description of the culprit yet!" Renko protested.
"We don't need that, we can just look for someone suspicious! The only thing we need is to get to her before Reimu does!" I looked over at Renko, full of anxiety. She looked back with a similarly worried expression. With the two of us unable to fly on our own and already a dozen meters above the summit of Youkai Mountain, however, we had little choice but to cling on to Sanae.
Soon we were pressing into the cold mist of the clouds again and the sound of thunder was slowly fading away below us. I closed my eyes and concentrated on just holding on to Sanae's hand.
A moment later, with our momentum still propelling us upward, we pierced the heavens.