What was it like to see Hell? In a word, hot. Or perhaps 'searing' would be more appropriate.

"It's fire, Merry, what did you expect?" Renko asked as soon as I uttered a word of complaint. The heat in the oven-like stone corridor had increased steadily as we descended, but here at its bottom the temperature was very nearly unbearable. The air rushed steadily past us as, in the vast, bowl-like chamber of raw bedrock found at the bottom of the stairs, a wide and twisting column of searing flame spiraled upwards from a hole in the lowest point of the crater. The flame shot up in fits and starts, like a tongue licking hungrily upward in search of fuel, but when it died down enough that we could see into the hole, we saw that it was positioned over what looked like an endless sea of flame.

The distance between us and the opening with the column of fire rising out of it was substantial, perhaps 50 meters, but even at this distance the heat it gave off felt like it was burning my lungs. The very air was painful to breathe and against our skin the light of the flames stung like boiling water. Sweat wicked away in an instant, seeming to provide no respite from the intense heat. There was no question that even just staying here, on the lip of the crater would be lethal after prolonged exposure.

Even Renko's enthusiasm was no match for the heat of the flames, her progress checked alongside my own as she shielded her face from the intense flares.

"Now I know what it feels like to be in one of those volcano levels they always had in old games. I feel like I should apologize to every hero I ever made scale Death Mountain," she quipped.

"Renko, what was the name of that story that starts with a monk performing a fire ritual for a national TV audience? The one where you have to stare into the fire from so close it almost burns your eyebrows off?"

"That was Nakajima's The Pigs of Gadara, wasn't it?"

"I feel like we're doing that."

"Apparently entire professional baseball teams used to do stuff like this during the off season to maintain mental discipline."

"Well I'm not sure what a human could learn from an experience like this except maybe what it feels like to be slowly cooked into jerky. We can't possibly go any farther and we can't stay either. Let's go back."

"I think you're right Merry. Any closer and we might risk catching our clothes on fire just from touching the rocks. I don't want to think about how much that bowl-shaped crater must be focusing the heat. It's like a giant wok. We'd cook in a second if we went in."

I was actually mildly surprised to hear that response. My partner, who is usually the world's foremost leading authority on the cutting edge of recklessness and boneheaded ideas was actually suggesting a reasonable course of action. I suppose in the face of an unquestionably lethal danger like this one though, any living being would have the sense to turn back. I hadn't seen a trace of Koishi since we had come to these stairs, and she couldn't have gone any deeper either. It stood to reason that she must have doubled back after reaching the staircase and I had just missed her.

"Alright then, let's go, Renko. Any longer and you'll loose your precious hat." I said, turning and tugging on her sleeve as I made to ascend. Renko turned and walked along with me, slipping the trenchcoat off of her shoulders and folding it over one arm as we moved away from the lip of the bowl and started up the stairs. We had only made it as far as the first of several landings though when a large black cat dropped down onto the path before us from the shadows that the stairs ascended in to. Eyeing us coyly, the cat stretched, then sat down directly in our path, meowing loudly. We both stopped for a moment, surprised by the sudden arrival of the creature, but being as there was only one of them in our way, I went to step forward. As soon as I did, it meowed once again, and then suddenly began to shine brightly, giving off a bloody red light that contrasted garishly with the flickering orange firelight behind us. As it shone, both of its two, red-tipped tails ignited with a small, candle-like flame.

The light swelled, then receded, and where the cat had been there now stood a girl in with a pair of black cat ears perched atop her head over two long, swaying, red braids. She was wearing a cute one-piece dress in very dark green tied with black ribbons, and seemed to be accompanied by a handful of floating, ominous-looking bluish fireballs that floated lazily in the air behind her. They looked vaguely like the phantoms we had seen in Hakugyokuro but possessed with an unwholesome malevolence. My immediate impression was that she must be a youkai cat like Chen. That didn't explain the presence of the creepy-looking phantoms circling her though. They looked more likely to be vengeful spirits. If that was the case, then this youkai must be...

"Ta-daah!" She said, posing with her arms raised. "You got here real quick, surface-sisters. I wouldn't have expected you to catch on so fast. You don't look very strong though. If you're going to go any further, I better test your abilities, nyah?" She smiled at us with carefree expression, but then squinted her eyes, looking closer. "Actually, you don't look strong at all. Like, at all at all, sisters. How'd two humans this weak make it all the way down here?"

"You've caught me," Renko said raising her hands, palm up. "I'm just a regular human with no fighting ability at all."

The girl tilted her head at us, causing her braids to hang asymmetrically. "Why would someone like that come and talk to someone as amazing as miss Satori? What would someone like that be doing at the gates of the Hell of Blazing Fires? Are you crazy, sister? Or are you here to end all your troubles? If so, just a few more steps back the other way and I promise you'll never have to be cold again."

"That's not our goal at all. But since you're here, I'd actually like to ask you a few questions, miss. I take it from your appearance that you're one of the pets from the Palace of the Earth Spirits?"

"That's right, I'm Rin, a hellcat. Who are you and the quiet sister over there?" she asked, jerking her chin at me.

"I'm a detective from the human village on the surface. My name's Renko Usami, and this is my partner, Merry. We initially came down here to investigate why earth spirits were escaping from a recently opened geyser on the surface, but just at the moment we've been asked by your master to locate her younger sister. Following her is how we ended up down here."

Even though we had ascended a short distance from the flames, hot air was still blowing steadily up the stairwell from behind us. If the questions and answers were going to continue, I wish they could take place somewhere less actively hostile to our existence.

"You're looking for miss Koishi? Down here? Wait, even before that you were looking into the earth spirits?" Rin asked, looking confused with the deluge of new information.

"That's right," Renko said with a nod and a smile. "I take it you know something about both of those matters?"

"Mmmaybe," she replied, reaching both arms out in front of her and stretching her back. "But if I told you anything, you'd run right back to miss Satori and tell her, wouldn't you?"

"Well, it's a detective's job to deliver information to their employer."

"Too bad, sisters," Rin said, with a smile that was all teeth. "That means I can't let you leave here alive." Her eyes flashed with a cruel, playful mirth. "Look on the bright side though, I'll cart your corpses into the Hell of Blazing Fires, so you won't be eaten and you'll get to perform a useful public service, providing heat and light to the citizens of Former Hell."

"That's doesn't make it okay!" I shouted, as Renko stepped forward, standing between me and Rin with one arm spread toward me.

"Well, that's not my fault," Rin said as she stepped closer. "You two are the humans who decided to descend into Hell. Did you really think you'd come back out alive?" Still smiling, the girl raised her claws, fingers curled to reveal the dagger-like points of her burgundy-painted nails.

I squeezed my eyes closed. It was noble, if hopeless for Renko to stand in front of me, but I didn't want the last thing I ever saw to be my best friend getting her throat ripped out. I couldn't hear Rin's soft footsteps as she advanced, but I was certain she couldn't be more than a few seconds from pouncing.

"Ah, I get it now. If we were to go back to see miss Satori, then you know that she'd read our minds and see what we've seen here. You have some sort of project you're working on in secret down here that you don't want her to know about, don't you? Moreover, you said something about us getting here surprisingly quick. I'm betting whatever it is you're working on went out of control and you sent up a few of the weakest earth spirits you could find as a kind of SOS to attract the attention of someone on the surface who might help you clean things up without your master finding out. Am I wrong about any of that?"

I opened my eyes to see that Rin had paused, frozen cartoonishly mid-step in the act of stalking towards us, her claws still raised, but with a stunned expression on her face. Despite the situation, it was Renko who was wearing the cat-like grin as she smiled down at the hunched-over redhead. "Looks like I'm right on the money again, I take it. That's a difficult situation for you. You're counting on someone powerful from the surface coming down here to clean up your mess, but you haven't asked for your master's permission to do any of this, much less call someone down to clean it up. That doesn't look good at all."

"Hey, how'd you know all that?" the cat-girl asked, suddenly rising up and hunching her shoulders. Even standing fully erect she was still a head and shoulders smaller than Renko. Being as she was youkai, that probably didn't matter much if it came to fight though. "You're not a satori, and you're not strong enough to have come down here to try to solve the problem yourself."

"You had mentioned wanting to test our strength. That means you specifically were looking for someone powerful from the surface. I'm betting your project is pretty out of hand at this point, isn't it? What happened, exactly, miss Rin? Did the fires go out of control on you? Or is there someone down here causing problems that needs to be stopped by force? Preferably by someone who wouldn't want to talk to Satori afterward so that your master can't find out what they saw down here."

Rin deflated, her arms falling to her sides as her shoulders slumped. "Yeah, that one. And soon, nyah! Before the master finds out about her."

"Hmm, someone you can't stop by yourself, but who you also can't tell your master about. If it were an outsider causing problems down here, then your master would have no issues finding someone to help you sort it out, since everyone down here relies on these flames for power. It would also have to be someone used to working in this environment who could tolerate the extreme heat. Miss Rin, is one of your fellow palace pets planning on doing something bad?"

In the space of a few seconds, Rin's face had gone from looking ferocious to surprised, to angry, to defeated and now sick with worry. She was a highly expressive creature, and now both of her two red-tipped black tails were drooping limply behind her, intensifying her expression.

"It's not really her fault, she doesn't know what she's doing! And I told her to stop, but she's too strong now, I can't make her. I can't ask anyone in the city to help because they won't come anywhere near here, and if they did, miss Satori would want to know what they were doing in the area and read their mind!"

"I see, I see. So what you needed is someone who was strong, but knew nothing about how things work down here, who could come down and solve your problem but wouldn't think to go talk to master of the palace, is that it? Ideally someone who would be strong enough to convince your friend to give up their wicked plan, but who wouldn't just kill them. It seems even here in the Underworld the Hakurei miko is known, at least by reputation. Would the person you were hoping to see maybe be a shrine maiden in red and white, who's rumored to shoot first and ask questions later?"

Rin, who had advanced nearly to striking distance before, was backing away now, eyes wide and ears laid flat against her head as she looked up at Renko. "What kinda mind-reading youkai are you, sister?" she asked.

Still grinning her cat-like grin, Renko poked her hat back on her head. "I'm just your regular, garden-variety great detective."