The second Marisa won the game of rock-paper-scissors, Kyoko charged at her with a fierce yell and a barrage of danmaku that seemed to reflect and bounce off of empty air and scatter at odd angles. As tactics go, it might have been a good one, combining a sneak attack with a complex and unpredictable first strike, but the difference in skill between Kyouko and Marisa was too great to be so easily bridged. All four girls scattered out of the way of initial assault, with Sanae, Youmu and Reimu all diving in different directions and Marisa launching herself straight up into the air while hanging from her broom with one arm. After scattering several more bouncing columns of danmaku in every direction, Kyouko looked up just in time to see the shining lance of laser light Marisa was aiming down at her. It impacted her square in the forehead, knocking her to the ground. She fell with a dramatic, bellowing scream that echoed off of the stone wall surrounding the temple and was still ringing in everyone's ears long after she was sprawled out on the ground.
With one hand holding her hakkero and the other suspending her from her broom, Marisa couldn't cover her ears and seemed to get the worst of it. She descended lower then dropped to the ground, rubbing at her temples and wincing.
"So loud," she whined. "Today really ain't my lucky day."
"Today really ain't my lucky day" Kyouko parroted weakly back at her.
"You're a yamabiko, ain'tcha? So is echoing things all you can do?"
"Of course that's what I do, that's what a yamabiko is. Don't tease me about it." Kyouko sat up and glared at Marisa. According to Sanae, the way her floppy dog ears flapped and the one canine fang protruding from her mouth as she puffed out her cheeks made it hard to take her anger seriously.
"A yamabiko?" Sanae asked. "That's the sort of youkai that yells back at you when you yell 'yahoo!' in the mountains, right? What's a creature like that doing living down here?"
"Someone on the mountain was spreading a false rumor that yamabiko weren't real and echoes are just a reflection of some kind. Almost all of the other yamabiko faded away because of that. I came down here to become a nun instead. Now I repeat the sutras every morning."
Sanae gasped in surprise.
"Gee I wonder who coulda spread a rumor like that?" Marisa asked, looking slyly over at Sanae as she hefted her broom onto her shoulder.
"Supposedly it was someone with knowledge from the Outside world. That's where the rumor came from."
Reimu and Marisa both turned to look at Sanae, who shied away from them.
"I didn't know yamabiko were real here! I didn't mean to exterminate anyone."
Kyouko climbed to her feet, surging up off of the ground. "You did this!" she declared, glaring angrily at Sanae. She growled briefly then leapt at the priestess, claws raised. Sanae waved her wand with a somewhat sad expression on her face, producing a wave of intense wind that doubled Kyouko over and carried her away, sending her sailing through the air to crash into one of the tall posts beside the entrance to the temple.
"Sorry," Sanae said, wincing in sympathy as Kyouko slid down the post to slump against the cobblestones.
"Ugh, I need more training," Kyouko moaned. She began chanting the heart sutra quietly to herself as the four girls passed her by and proceeded into the temple.
Reimu looked about as they entered. "There are barely any of those spirits here," she noted. "I don't know if that means we're in the wrong place or they already used up the ones here for whatever they're planning. Let's go check the graveyard like Yuyuko suggested."
Youmu nodded. "The few spirits that are here seem to be headed that way," she said, watching one of the formless spirits drift through the doorway over their heads. And so, almost immediately after fighting their way through the gates of the Myouren temple, the four girls turned around to leaver. As they did, however another figure emerged from one of the doors off of the main hall, padding quietly across the floor.
"Kyouko, what's all the yelling about? We're supposed to be trying to sleep at night, remember? Mother Hijiri says..." Ichirin walked into the hall, followed by Unzan who was flowing formlessly through the doorway, one immense knuckle rubbing at his eye sleepily. They both froze as soon as they noticed the intruders and Kyouko slumped against the entrance to the temple. She ran over to where Kyouko was laying as Unzan solidified himself and floated over her shoulder, glaring suspiciously at the four girls the whole time. "Kyouko! Are you alright? And all of you? What are you doing here in the middle of the night? Have you come to hunt youkai again?"
Reimu answered, meeting Unzan's glare with one of her own. "I haven't decided yet. That depends on if your master is the one behind this Incident or not."
"What Incident?" Ichirin asked, standing up and turning to face Reimu. "Do you mean all these spirits? Mother Hijiri has nothing to do with that."
"All the spirits we have seen are floating in this general direction, but here in this temple there's almost none. That's pretty suspicious. I'm going to go to the graveyard now to see if the spirits are gathering up there. If they're not, I'll be coming back here to talk to Byakuren. If you try to get in my way at any point, I'll exterminate you." Reimu said all of that in a disinterested, matter of fact tone, as if she were reading off items on a shopping list. To someone like Ichirin, who was standing defensively over the form of an injured friend, it was the same as pouring kerosene on a bonfire. If Renko had been present at the time, I have no doubt she would have tried to interfere and lower the tensions of everybody present, pointing out that it wasn't Reimu who had injured Kyouko, and that none of the girls had attacked first. Being as she wasn't around though, Ichirin and Reimu squared off, and another round of fearsome fighting seemed to be about to begin in the yard before the temple.
That all came to a close as another voice spoke out, however. "I understand your suspicion, but this phenomenon is completely unrelated to our actions," It said, in a peaceful, unworried tone.
"Holy mother!" Ichirin exclaimed, turning to the far door at the end of the hall from which Byakuren had emerged.
"I heard Kyouko's scream. Is she alright?"
"Oh um, yes mother Hijiri, I'm fine," Kyouko said, hopping to her feet and bowing respectfully.
"Ichirin, Unzan, please take Kyouko to her quarters and see to any wounds she has. I will properly greet our guests."
"Of course, holy mother." Ichirin said with a nod. She stood up and took Kyouko by the arm.
"Oh, and Ichirin? Nue has gone missing again so I asked Murasa to search around the grounds for her. Once you're done, please help her with that and if you don't find her, go looking for where she may have run off to."
Ichirin seemed to suppress a sigh, then nodded. "Of course, holy mother," she said, leading Kyouko through a side door and out of the hall.
Byakuren watched them go for a moment, then gestured invitingly toward Reimu, showing her to the same tatami-floored room where she had met with Renko and myself the previous day. As she walked into the room she gestured absentmindedly at several small oil lamps and their dim, floating flames leapt up to illuminate the room. As everyone entered through the door, they had to brush a handful of the floating spirits which seemed stubbornly determined to remain in the doorway out of their faces.
"I'm partly responsible for causing this misunderstanding, I suspect, so let's leave the matter of Kyouko aside for the time being." Byakuren began. "This mass outbreak of small spirits is not my doing or the doing of any of my disciples, however. In fact, we were working to try and prevent it."
"Oho?" Marisa asked, leaning forward after having taken a seat across from Byakuren, "prevent it how?"
"I chose this location for Myouren temple because of its proximity to that cemetery. Maintaining the graves for the people of the village is all well and good of course, but there was a more pressing reason. From the moment of my arrival in this world, I have been aware of a powerful entity slumbering beneath the ground somewhere near that graveyard. My intention in building the temple here was to locate and inspect any seals on it, ensuring it did not awaken."
"Something buried underground? What is it, some sort of youkai?" Reimu asked, tilting her head to one side.
"It's buried underneath the graveyard?" Youmu asked, hunching up her shoulders. "Like an animated corpse? Or one of those zimbos?"
"Zombies," Sanae corrected.
"Perhaps it might be something like that, miss swordsman," Byakuren said "Though I think it could be something more powerful than just a corpse."
"So a ghost then?" Marisa suggested, "Like Yuyuko?"
"I told you, it's a zombie!" Sanae declared triumphantly.
"Hearing about a powerful corpse in a place like this, I would have expected a sokushinbutsu," Reimu grumbled.
"That's probably the closest to the truth," Byakuren said with a nod. "Whoever is down there is very powerful and likely buried themselves to await a later resurrection. I sense from them a strong holy power. I built this temple here to prevent that resurrection."
"If it's someone full of holy power, wouldn't letting them be resurrected be a good thing?" Youmu asked.
"Not for her," Reimu scoffed derisively. "Even though she used to be a human, she's firmly on the side of the youkai now."
"Ah, I get it," Marisa agreed. "You're thinkin' this buried saint might start offin' youkai once they wake up, probably startin' with the one who dropped a temple on top of them.
"That's a possibility," Byakuren confirmed, "but being buried here in Gensokyo of all places they might also have been someone favored by youkai. There are many stories of monks who forsook the light of the Dharma and became tengu or oni."
"If this person is a youkai exterminator, they'd be a threat to our business, Reimu!" Sanae exclaimed.
"At any rate, we'll need to find out who they are and what their intentions are," Youmu said grimly. "Lady Saigyouji said these spirits aren't souls, but if there's this many being drawn in before this person has even awakened, then who knows what might happen once they're resurrected?"
"If we're going to go looking for a corpse that's been buried underground does that mean we're going to have to dig it up?" Sanae asked, "In the middle of the night?"
"If it was the corpse of some famous person, maybe they got buried along with a horde of silver an' gold!" Marisa exclaimed. "Could be worthwhile to dig 'em out."
"At any rate," Byakuren said, clapping her hands together to command everyone's attention, "we had been intending to keep the seals intact while dispatching Nazrin to investigate the specific nature of this buried power. The sudden appearance of all of these spirits is a sign that whatever is down there is about to awaken, however. In light of that, we felt we needed to move quickly, so earlier today, I actually asked her to hire miss Usami and miss Hearn to assist her in her investigations."
"Renko and Merry?" Sanae exclaimed. "That's why they weren't in their office!"
"Why those two?" Marisa asked, scratching her head.
"Because Merry can see borders," Reimu sighed. "And knowing Renko, they probably dived right into the middle of whatever they found."
"That may be the case," Byakuren said, awkwardly. "They went to explore the graveyard, with Nazrin acting as a bodyguard early this afternoon. We haven't heard from any of them since though. I sent Murasa to go have a look around, but she told me there was no sign of any of them. It is, I'm afraid, entirely possible that they've been captured by whatever is down there."
I'm told an awkward silence passed through the room then as the four Incident-resolvers looked at eachother with worried expressions. It was broken only when Byakuren bowed deeply to them, nearly pressing her forehead against the floor and said "I'm sorry to ask this of you, but would you be willing to go and rescue them?"