"Whoa! It's just like Rozen Maiden! Did you agree to wind them? Can I?" Upon seeing the various dolls moving about Alice's house, seemingly of their own accord, Sanae's eyes lit up. She ran over to a pair of dolls who were using tiny hammers to drive nails into a bookshelf and stared at them, repeating "amazing" under her breath in a low tone as they went about their work.

"What is she talking about?" asked Alice with a look of confusion.

"Sanae says some things that don't make sense from time to time, don't worry about it."

Alice seemed to consider Sanae for a moment, then turned to Renko. "She's an Outsider like you two, isn't she?"

"Yes, though she's an Outsider from the current time in the Outside world."

"Miss Alice, how does these work?" Sanae asked. She had run over to where we were standing in the entryway, holding a Shanghai doll she had captured. It writhed in her hands, trying to escape, it's cute face contorted into a look approximating exasperation as it flailed its tiny arms. Holding the doll in front of her face, Sanae mimicked a low, sultry voice. "Don't get angry, it will raise your blood pressure. Are you getting enough lactic acid?" I couldn't begin to imagine who she was imitating or what it might have to do with the situation at hand.

Looking slightly concerned, Alice answered: "I'm controlling them with a magic string."

"So they're all manipulated like marionettes? I don't see any wires though. How do they all not get tangled together?"

Alice sighed. "It's a magic string. It doesn't have a physical existence to get tangled and unless there's a lot of power going through it at the moment it's invisible. Surely that's not what you came here to ask about though."

"So that's basically a wireless system then, like radio control with each doll on a separate channel, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, but I feel like you're fundamentally misunderstanding something. I move them with a thread formed from my magic."

"But that's just the medium. Whether it's a radio signal, infrared or magic, the principal is similar. Maybe sufficiently advanced science really is indistinguishable from magic in Gensokyo. But in the Outside world, controlling this many dolls with this many joints at once would take an incredible amount of processing power and a whole team of experts. You must be a really amazing witch, miss Alice!"

"Well, thank you for saying so, but in the end it's nothing much, I'm still expending my own power to do all of these tasks, I'm just able to do them all at once by controlling this many agents. It takes some skill to learn, but it's nothing groundbreaking once you get the knack of it."

As always, Alice remained cool and demure but I imagined I saw the faintest hint of a smile as she walked out of the entryway and over toward the kitchen.

"I'm sorry about all of the noise, but I want to get these repairs completed as soon as possible. Take off your wet things in the entryway, if you can. I'll make some tea."

As Alice moved off to the kitchen, Sanae released the doll she was holding and it instantly flew away, carried on its unseen strings, to find a place in the corner of the room farthest from Sanae where it could help out, ferrying nails to the other dolls. Sanae continued to watch all of the dolls with interest, seemingly trying to catch a glimpse of their magical strings. From what she had said to Alice, I imagine that she must have studied the sciences during her time in the Outside world too. I wasn't very familiar with the state of the physical sciences in the early twenty-first century, but I imagine physics and electronic engineering must have been at least part of a high-school curriculum. If Sanae had had the chance to attend university in the age that we had, back in Kyoto, I wonder if her major might have been the same as Renko's? Certainly, they seemed to have similar interests.

As we moved into the living room Sanae turned to me with a serious expression. Speaking in a voice low enough to not be heard in the Kitchen over the sound of the hammering, she asked "hey, this Alice person seems very muted and kind of looks like a doll herself. Do you think she could have been a former Rozen Maiden who won the Alice game? Her name's even Alice!"

"Sanae, I can't possibly answer that without having any idea what you're talking about. As far as I know though, Alice is just a magician from Makai."

"What? Haruhi is still around in your time, but Rozen Maiden has been forgotten? It was so popular though."

"I expect most works from your era would have been forgotten in 80 years,"

It was difficult to have much of a conversation over the constant sound of hammering, and the tiny dolls with their tiny hammers seemed to need to take a lot of strokes to drive in each nail. In the end we just sat on the couch and watched them work until Alice came back in with the tea. As she approached, balancing the four steaming cups on a tray, the dolls continued to flit about and the sounds of the hammering continued unabated. Despite Alice's earlier denials, I found the way she could manage so many tasks at once impressive as well.

"So, miss Alice, why the sudden interest in earthquake preparedness? Earthquakes are a fairly rare occurrence here, aren't they?"

Alice sat demurely and sipped at her tea daintily. The black tea she had served us wasn't as nice as the stuff Sakuya made, but after coming in from the weather outside, it was heavenly. "Waiting until after an earthquake strikes wouldn't accomplish much. Doesn't it make more sense to prepare ahead of time than regret it later?" She asked, dismissively.

"That's certainly true," Renko replied, "but you've been living in this house for years and clearly have never worried about it until now. Despite that, you're now acting with enough urgency to keep working on the preparations even while you have guests. Not that I mind of course, I'm just wondering what it is that's brought this level of preparedness to mind all of a sudden."

"The way you say that, I assume you've already come up with a theory explaining it?"

"I suppose I ought to be direct. Alice, do you have the ability to foresee earthquakes?"

Alice sighed. "Of course not. Divination is the work of charlatans and priests, not true magicians. That said, I know an omen of disaster when I see one."

"An omen?"

"Yes. I wasn't expecting to see you, but now that you're here I ought to ask you. Do you have any idea what it was, that scarlet cloud in the sky?"

Renko and I looked at eachother, bewildered, but Sanae clapped her hand to her mouth. "You saw it too!" she exclaimed. "It's been rainy up at the Moriya shrine all month, but sometimes I can see a red cloud when there's a break in the sky. I didn't know it was a sign of earthquakes though."

"You live up on Youkai Mountain don't you?"

"Yes, a little over halfway up."

"I imagine you'd have a good view of the clouds from there. You say it's been raining all month? That's surprising. It's been hailing here just like it is now since the end of spring. I would have expected it to be colder up by you." Alice tilted her head as she turned to look out the window. I hadn't noticed it over the sound of the dolls' hammering, but pellets of hail were continuing to rattle against the glass and clatter on the roof.

"The weather has been strange all over Gensokyo recently. That's part of what I came here to ask you about." Renko said, steering the conversation back toward the topic at hand.

"Is that so? I'm afraid I haven't been out much recently."

"Indeed. It's blazing hot at the Hakurei shrine, raining like a monsoon at the Moriya shrine, storm clouds have settled permanently over the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and in the human village its completely unpredictable, going from rain to sun with no warning. Interestingly, Marisa told us it's been nothing but drizzle in the forest, but coming here, we find that it's hailing instead."

Upon hearing that, Alice crossed her arms and grumbled. "That's even more alarming to hear. Whether its the abnormal weather or that scarlet cloud, both seem like terrible portents of a looming disaster. I would recommend that you make a point of securing your own furniture at home as soon as possible."

"Wait a minute." Sanae said. "Magic and miracles is one thing, but believing you can predict earthquakes or anything else about the future from looking at clouds is fake, isn't it? Alice you just said divination was for charlatans, right? Wouldn't this be pseudoscience too?"

"Not necessarily," Renko replied, closing her eyes and adopting a scholarly tone. "Here in Gensokyo perception and faith have power, so often pseudoscience might be more predictive than empirical measurements. The physical laws of the Outside world all seem to apply here, but only up to the point that someone with will and power decides to mess with them. If someone is behind that scarlet cloud they might very well have a giant pet catfish underground that's responsible for earthquakes for all we know."

"I see, professor." Sanae said, nodding along. "I really can't be held back by common sense here. But if that's the case, then who could be behind a scarlet cloud?"

-.-.-.-.-

"Oh, it's so late already!"

By the time we left Alice's house a little while later, it was nearly night. Somewhere above the heavy clouds from which the hail still fell there was still some hint of the sunlight, but it would be gone in a matter of minutes.

Bracing ourselves and screwing out eyes shut, Sanae took our hands and flew straight up with us, racing as fast as she could to pierce the low, heavy clouds and get out of the storm. There was a brief, turbulent bout of freezing cold air all around us, and then we were through it, sailing high above the Forest of Magic, barely able to make out the dim shapes below us as the twilight edged toward night.

Standing upright on a cushion of air as usual and holding my cap on my head with my free hand, I turned to Renko. "What now, Sherlock? Are you really planning to stay out all night again after what happened last time?"

Renko tucked her chin to her chest for a moment in consideration then replied. "I think we've got to go see Hakugyokuro before I can be sure of anything, and with Remilia's deadline and classes tomorrow, we can't afford to waste time. We might have to pull an all-nighter, Merry. It's been a while since we had a good cram session."

I was about to object, but Sanae interrupted before I could speak.

"Don't worry about it!" She said happily. "There's no need, I've already solved all the mysteries!"

Somehow that statement inspired a feeling of anxiety in me far greater than the fact that I was suspended dozens of meters above the ground with only my grip on a teenage girl's hand and cushion of air keeping me aloft.

"Tomorrow we can go see Remilia after your classes and I'll lay it all out for her. Until then, you two just sit back and enjoy your flight with Sanae airways. Please remember to keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, and nail your furniture to the wall during takeoffs and landings."

"Are you sure about this, Sanae? This sounds less like flying first class and more like sailing on the Titanic."

"I love that movie! I memorized the songs! I can sing if you like!"

"Not while we're flying, please!"

"Oh right, I should concentrate on getting us home. Don't worry though, you can leave this case to Sanae Kochiya, divine detective!"

"That sounds like something out of a Maya Yutaka novel," I groused. It seemed that our course was now set for an inevitable collision between the aristocratic detective Remilia Scarlet and the divine detective Sanae Kochiya. Both seemed about equally likely to have come up with anything resembling an actual clue.

"Hey Renko, divine detective sounds pretty cool right? What if we changed our name to the 'infallible detective agency?'"

"That sounds like it's just asking to be cursed by the gods."

They continued discussing such nonsense as Sanae flew with us, all the way back to the village.