Apparently, we were to be taken to the underground city. I might have expected that, being captured by youkai, our hands might be bound and we would be forced to walk the rest of the way there. What happened instead was that Renko and I were completely wrapped, from our necks down to our toes in cocoons of fine spider silk, then each hefted onto one of our captor's shoulders like bags of rice. It seemed clear now that the being intending to eat us must be a tsuchigumo - a gigantic subterranean spider depicted in numerous old picture scrolls. Stories involving them didn't tend to end well for any humans involved. She was carrying us facing opposite directions, so that I could only see Renko's feet and the caves behind us as we moved along. The cave walls were slightly damp, and the sound of a running river somewhere nearby echoed against the stone.

"Excuse me, miss tsuchigumo?" Renko began, from the opposite side of the youkai's body.

"It's Yamame," she replied brightly. "Yamame Kurodani."

"Ah, well, miss Yamame, don't you find carrying the both of us like this heavy?"

"No way, you guys are light. You should eat better, is there a famine going on up on the surface or something?" She chuckled to herself and gave us each a brief toss, bouncing us on her shoulders without slowing her pace.

The spider silk cocooning each of us was warm and soft, and not really uncomfortable in any way other than its implications. Its strength was absolute though, and even straining with the utmost limits of my effort I couldn't get it to move a bit. I doubt if any human could have broken those bonds without the aid of a tool.

"Well you know, miss Yamame, we can walk by ourselves. Don't you think that would make for a more impressive trophy then just a human head poking out of a cocoon?"

"You're just looking for a chance to escape. Give it up, you've both already fallen into Hell, there's no place for either of you to go. Letting you run about would be annoying though, so I'll just keep you right here," she gave Renko a brief toss again. Renko landed hard, exhaling sharply as Yamame's shoulder knocked the wind out of her.

"Oww, I wouldn't run, you know. Like you said, there's nowhere for us to go down here."

"You know, this underground world is filled with the most despised youkai in existence. You'll have a pretty hard time finding anyone down here who's dumb enough to fall for the lies of a human," the tsuchigumo replied, smiling cruelly. After that Renko went quiet for a bit, but I didn't doubt that she was still thinking furiously.

We were proceeding down a dark, damp tunnel that had branched off from the bottom of the seemingly bottomless shaft. Despite the distance we had already descended, the cave proceeded steadily, slowly downward. I couldn't begin to imagine how far underground we must actually be by now. The passage we were moving down would have been completely dark if not for the dim light of the lantern carried by the girl in the bucket, who was apparently named Kisume. She floated along behind us, her bucket hovering a meter above the ground, its handle pointing upward and a taut rope attached to it. The rope didn't seem to actually go anywhere though, it simply extended straight up and faded into nothingness just before it touched the roof of the cave. I imagined she too must be some manner of human-eating, reviled youkai. Perhaps a tsurube otoshi?

"Hey, it's going to be a bit before I get a chance to eat you two. I should know your names," our captor said from behind me.

"Oh, I'm Renko Usami. I run a detective agency in the human village up on the surface."

"...My name is Maeribel Hearn. I'm a hapless assistant bound to be caught up in the blast radius of my idiot partner's schemes, I guess."

I was surprised to find I had the presence of mind to speak at all, much less quip at Renko. I suppose spending all of these years following along behind her had instilled me with a certain fatalism, or else dulled my sense of crisis over time. Perhaps it was that I had already assumed myself to be dead the moment the ground gave way beneath us and this momentary reprieve of survival and torture at the hands of a anthropophagic monster barely counted as a bump on the nosediving curve representing the trajectory of my life. I steeled myself against the unnecessary agony of false hope. Even if my partner's usual gift of gab were to find a way for us escape our immediate crisis, our fates were sealed. We were trapped down here, and sooner or later something was going to eat us. The only things that were still uncertain were the specifics of who, when and whether we would be alive at the time.

"A detective agency? What's that?"

"It's an organization founded for the purpose of uncovering the hidden secrets of the world. We're just a small organization right now, with only three members."

"And in the course of trying to uncover those hidden secrets the director of the organization and her assistant have fallen into Hell. I'm afraid the outlook for your agency isn't good."

"Well, this wouldn't have been a problem if Merry had pulled me back from the ledge instead of diving over it."

"Don't you dare blame me for this, Renko! I wasn't the one playing around at the edge of the abyss or deciding to try to find a way to descend into Hell! If I hadn't lunged at you we would have fallen straight down and been smashed to pieces against the wall of the pit instead of landing in the web. You'd be dead for sure!"

"Well, that would have been my fault at least. I'm always ready to deal with the consequences of my own actions, but this one is all on you, Merry. If I lose my life in the course of revealing the hidden truths of the world, so be it, it would be an honorabledeath. It wasn't supposed to involve you falling in with me though."

"Oh don't try to sound noble now! You were planning to bring me along as soon as you could find a way to descend whether I wanted to come or not! And what's this bushido-like nonsense you're spewing about dying an honorable death? You just wanted to see what was at the bottom of a hole! That's not worth dying for to anyone but people whose heads are seriously malformed like yours. It's a shame we'll never get a chance to donate your brain to Dr. Yagokoro now, maybe she could have figured out what went wrong to make you this way!"

"Is that really what you want to put on my tombstone, Merry? Isn't it natural for one to want to eulogize oneself a little? Couldn't you say something about how my brain was always quick-witted and eloquent just this once?"

"The qualities of a brain are a little hard to judge when it decides to fall into a giant hole and scatter itself into a million pieces."

"You two are funny," Yamame said. "You must be really good friends. I would have expected a human to just scream and cry. That gets tiresome real quick and then I just have to end up eating 'em right away usually, but you two have some guts." She spun around, turning to walk backward and reversing the directions we were both facing. "What do you think, Kisume, should I take 'em to go see big sister Yuugi? I bet she might get a kick out of these humans."

I couldn't see what was happening from this angle, but I felt the solid edges of the wooden bucket as the girl flew closer and whispered in Yamame's ear.

"What? The treaty? I don't think it applies to humans, does it? Hey, Merry and Renko. Did either of you get told to come down here by a youkai on the surface or something? If so, it might be a bit of a problem."

"No, no, not at all," Renko explained. "I had heard rumors of an underground city and it piqued my curiosity. I came to the hole to try to find a way to come explore it safely, but then we both fell in."

As always, Renko was a skillful speaker. With Patchouli only having shown us the entrance to the Underworld and requested a report on any information we found, she wasn't technically lying about any of that.

"Hmmm, you don't sound like you're lying to me, but I think I should probably take you to see big sister Yuugi. She hates lies more than anyone, and she'd know for sure." She said, turning back toward the front of the tunnel as she continued walking.

"Who exactly is this Yuugi you keep mentioning?"

"Yuugi Hoshiguma. I guess you wouldn't know that name, but everyone knows her down here. I suppose you could call her the boss of Former Hell? Or the leader of the oni gangs? She's just kind of everyone's friendly big sister down here though."

"Wait, Hoshiguma? And she's an oni? Would that be the same Hoshiguma Doji that was once known as one of the Heavenly Kings of Youkai Mountain?"

"You know Yuugi from when she lived on the surface? What gives? No human could live that long."

"I've just heard stories about her. Mainly from my good friend little miss Watermelon."

Yamame's steady march stopped. "Wait. Watermelon? As in Suika? You're friends with Suika!? And you call her 'little miss Watermelon!?'" I felt her shoulders move as she twisted her head to look at Renko's face. "You're talking about the oni Suika Ibuki, right? The leader of the Heavenly Kings, who went to the surface? She survived that?"

"Sure, she's a friend of mine. She even owes me a favour after I helped her solve a little problem."

Yamame spun around again, presumably turning back toward Kisume, but again pointing me at the front of the tunnel where I couldn't see. The two seemed to converse for a moment, then Yamame suddenly hefted Renko off of her shoulder, dumping her up against the wall of the cave so she could look her in the eye. After a moment's delay she flipped me over her shoulder and dropped me beside her. She put us down roughly, but with the padding of all of the silk surrounding us, I barely felt it.

With us both leaning against the wall before her, she looked the two of us over carefully, her glowing eyes probing our faces in the dim lantern light. "You know, oni hate lies. If I take you to Yuugi and you tell a lie, she'll probably tear your arms off. If you're lying about being Suika's friend she'll probably do something worse."

"Well, I'm not lying, but it's kind of hard to prove it now that we're down here. I don't have any way to call Suika after all. If you were to carry us back to the surface though, I could go get her and come back with her, and she could tell you herself."

"No way, I'm not doing that. Why should I even believe you when you say you've met Suika? I didn't think she even survived going up there."

"Well let's compare notes then. See if the little miss Watermelon I know is the same Suika you know. Let's see. She's a petite little girl with big horizontal horns growing out of either side of her head and wears jangling chains with metal weights on the ends both on her belt and on either wrist. She can divide herself into lots of little versions of herself or one huge version or even split herself into a cloud of fog. She has a bottomless gourd full of strong, harsh alcohol and she spends pretty much all of her time at least a little bit drunk. That ring any bells for you?"

"Alright stop. That's definitely her," Yamame said, wrinkling her brow in frustration. "What should I do, Kisume? I guess it's a good thing I didn't eat any of these guys yet, they're not like the average human at all."

The girl in the bucket floated closer and whispered in Yamame's ear again. The two of them passed a few whispered words back and forth behind upraised hands, then seemed to come to a conclusion.

"Right. This decision is over my head. I'm definitely taking you to see Yuugi now, this isn't the sort of problem I should be deciding on my own. I just hope for the sake of my meal you're not lying. You wont be nearly as good to eat if Yuugi smashes you into a pulp first." With that, she reached out and grabbed each of us by a few strands of our silk binding and hefted us back onto her shoulders, both of us facing backward this time.

As we thumped into place and Yamame began marching again, Renko smiled and me and winked in the dimness. I sighed at her.

"I don't suppose that you'd be willing to let us walk on our own given our relationship to Suika, would you?" Renko asked hopefully.

"What did I tell you about us underground youkai not being dumb enough to fall for human lies?" Yamame grunted, sounding irritated rather than boisterous for once.

As we bounced on the tsuchigumo's shoulders, I looked over at my partner. Her brow was furrowed in thought. My own mind drifted back to the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons Every Three Days Incident, and the theories (or outright delusions) that Renko had presented there. I won't bother rehashing the details here, as you can read that casefile if you want to review them and the reasoning behind them. Still though, if Renko's suspicions back then were right, it meant two things: first that when Suika had lived in the Underworld she would have occupied a position of similar rank to that of Hoshiguma Doji. If that's who this Yuugi was, then that would have made her something like royalty, or at least management down here. Second, if Renko's theories could be trusted then Suika had had very good reason to leave.

So far, Yamame's reactions seemed to at least confirm the first part of Renko's theory -that Suika was seen as a peer or at least as big of a threat as Hoshiguma Doji. The other part was still anyone's guess though.

"Renko, do you remember when you confronted Suika about her identity? If I recall, she almost killed you for your rude accusation back then."

"Well, I think you're exaggerating things a little, but that couldn't be helped. I didn't have any information about the Underworld at the time, so I might have made some uncharitable assumptions. Maybe after I get to talk to this Yuugi, I'll revise my theories some. I think I was at least on the right track though. I guess we'll find out soon."

"Just don't get so caught up in trying to solve a mystery you forget to look for a way to keep us from getting eaten."

"Hey! No strategizing about that! I'm still gonna eat you both, I'm just gonna have Yuugi take a look at you first." Yamame said, poking me in the ribs with a long fingernail. I hurriedly shut my mouth.

And thus, our infiltration of the Underworld, which was already off to a disastrous start, proceeded apace.