"We're a pair of humans from the surface. I'm Renko, and this is Merry. Orin told us about you. She mentioned you recently acquired a very strong power."

"You know Orin? Have I met you before?" She asked, her head still cocked at a 45-dgree angle.

"No, this is our first meeting. We just met Orin yesterday."

"So you're strangers, then? Why do strangers want to know about me?"

"Well, we were hoping to ask you some questions about the power of Yatagarasu and what you planned to do with it..."

"It's nuclear fusion!" She declared excitedly, interrupting Renko. "Electromagnetohydrodynamic guidance of a super-dense energized hydrogen mass inside a gravitic constriction field!" As she said this swung her right arm around, bringing both hands up toward her face in excitement. I leaned back as the opening at the end of the rod, which I now saw was bored out like the barrel of a cannon, swept past my head. The sheer weight of that much metal looked formidable, but it didn't seem to bother her at all. "It's the ultimate power!" she chirped excitedly. "Do you do fusion too?"

Renko blinked in surprise, both at the reaction and the string of technobabble. "Uh, no," she said, leaning back as the rod swept over us both again. "I don't do fusion."

"No? You should! It's fun. By the way, who are you? I should know your name if we're going to do fusion together."

"I just gave you my name... and I don't do fusion."

"Unyu?" She asked cocking her head to the said again. It was if the entire conversation had just reset.

"I'm Renko Usami. This is my partner Merry. We're humans. From the surface." Renko explained again, slower this time.

"Why are humans in the Hell of Blazing Fires? Are you here to be burned? Orin will be happy, she's always looking for more fuel. Yay fuel!" She said in a sing-song voice, extending both arms over her head happily. She seemed to have no trouble moving or flying with either the heavy looking boot or the rod on her arm, but the additional weight of them both gave her extra momentum on her right side. After every burst of movement she spent a second or two straightening herself back out.

"No, we're not fuel!" Renko declared, waving her hands in front of her face. "Look, let's try a different question. Orin told us your name was Okuu, but that sounds like a nickname. What's your full name?"

"Utsuho!"

"Ah, I see, written with 'çİş,' I assume? That would be pronounced Utsuho in old Japanese but pronounced as 'sora' or '-kuu' in modern usage. Hence the 'Okuu' nickname, I assume."

"Unyu?" Again her head tilted to the side.

"We were about to ask you about this new power you obtained, remember?"

"You guys are really confusing. I'll just go get Orin for you, she'll be so happy I found two new corpses to burn. And really fresh too!"

"We're not here to be burned! We're here because Orin was worried about you and asked us to make sure you weren't getting in trouble!"

"Unyu? Do you know Orin?" Just like that, we were back at the beginning.

Renko stared at Okuu, seemingly flummoxed. Not only was her typical talent for cunning wordplay and polysyllabic jargon of no use here, but Okuu seemed fundamentally incapable of being swayed by reason or consideration. To do so would require an ability to keep thoughts in her head for more than a few seconds at a time. It wasn't quite severe enough for me to attempt to diagnose her with anterograde amnesia, but it seemed the capacity of Okuu's mind for both short-term memory and long-term planning was severely limited.

Renko sighed. I was vaguely reminded of the various times we had tried to talk to Cirno over the years. "Alright, let me just ask you a simple question miss Okuu, with nothing complicated about it." Renko said, moving her hands demonstratively and speaking slowly. Okuu blinked at her, an utterly vapid, blank expression on her face as her eyes followed Renko's hands. "Okuu, are you planning on invading the surface and trying to set everything there on fire?"

"Oh," she said, seeming to consider the question carefully. "Yup!" The smile on her face as she nodded was the sort of blissful, innocent grin that can only survive on the face of a true idiot. "The point energy released during induced nucleosynthesis is almost 800 million degrees! That was enough to reignite the Hell of Blazing fires, so if I do it whole bunch of times on the surface, I can turn that into a new Hell too!" She announced this with the same brainless smile, and a tone that one might expect when excitedly discussing tonight's dinner.

"Well, as a human who lives on the surface, I'd like to ask you not to do that. Are you aware that it would cause a lot of problems for a great many people if the surface was turned into a sea of flames?" Renko said, doing her utmost to keep her tone even and conversational.

"Unyu?" was, perhaps entirely predictably at this point, her only response.

"Okuu, why do you want to turn the surface into a new Hell? What would doing that accomplish?"

"Why? Unyuuu... I wonder..." She said, tapping the pointer finger of her left hand on her lip as she tilted her head in thought.

"Do you... do you not remember, Okuu?"

"Not really. But I remember it was really important. So as long as I do it, it should be just fine!"

Renko let out a slow breath, pressing two fingers to her temples as she endured her headache. Somehow I expected that the return of her migraine had little to do with either the heat or her hangover.

"Alright then. Thank you very much for answering that question, miss Okuu. I suppose there's just one more thing that I should tell you now."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Very soon someone very strong is going to come before you, to try and stop you from invading the surface."

"A strong person?"

"Yes. A strong human in fact. Maybe even two of them. They may even be so strong that even with the power of Yatagarasu you won't be able to win against them." Renko said that, but I wondered if it was true. I had seen the things both Reimu and Marisa were capable of, and while they were both impressive, could they really compete against the power of the sun? I remembered seeing Marisa battling Remilia and tumbling from her broom years ago. I didn't want to think what would happen if that were to be repeated here.

"That's impossible!" Okuu declared. "No one can stop me! The power of nuclear fusion can burn through anything!" Saying this, she spread her feet and wings wide, and brought the rod on her arm to shoulder height, steadying its aim with her left arm, the tip of the enormous muzzle scant centimeters from Renko's face.

At this point Kanako, who had been standing, (or floating,) silently by the whole time cut in. "Alright, that's enough, Utsuho. Go back to the Hell of Blazing Fires now," she said commandingly.

"Unyu?" Okuu asked, relaxing her stance and looking up over her shoulder at Kanako. "You're done now, miss God? I thought you said I needed to talk to these people."

"You've talked enough. You can go back now. And remember what I told you. If you're going to use Yatagarasu's power, you have to do it down in Hell."

"Oh, right."

"Now run along, I'm sure your friend the kasha is waiting for you somewhere down there."

"Oh! Orin's waiting? I should go find her and show her how hot I can make it now! Thanks miss God!" With a flap of her wings, Okuu turned and dived straight down the shaft, back towards the fires below. As her bizarre, lopsided silhouette shrank away Renko let out a faltering breath. Had having a fusion reactor pointed at her face by an unpredictable, child-like youkai finally been enough to scare her?

"Well..." Renko said, slowly recovering herself, "I thought it was difficult to communicate with Satori with her handling both sides of the conversation, but trying to talk with someone who doesn't follow either side is even harder."

"You see what I was getting at now though. That raven has a bird's brain. She is powerful, but she poses no threat, and is completely obedient to my will. I'm a bit worried that she might forget who I am though. She didn't seem to remember my face this time."

"That's not exactly reassuring, Lady Yasaka."

"It's a temporary issue. She remembers her friend and her master, so I'm sure after having worked with Suwako and myself for a time we'll become familiar to her too. For now though, there's no reason to keep you in this heat. Shall we head back to the surface?"

"Yes, let's!" I said, nodding enthusiastically while still clinging to Renko.

"Alright then, hold on."

She reached out and took us each under one arm again. Our ascent to the surface this time was much less harrowing than our last trip, and the hot air blowing up from beneath us gradually gave way to the pleasantly chilly feel of the winter air as daylight enveloped us once more. After all of that though, I wondered what the point of any of this was. For all of our explorations and discoveries, things were still just as they would have been if we had never gone below ground. Renko was busily pondering something, rotating her hat in her hands and chewing on her lower lip as Kanako carried us through the air, but I couldn't for the life of me imagine what there was left for her to figure out.