"What is all this... Have you two ever seen anything like this?"
"No, but this must be what Banki was talking about. If she keeps her heads up in the air at night, she definitely would have seen this..."
"Renko, shouldn't we let Reimu know? Or at least Keine? This is a full blown Incident occurring right in the middle of the human village!"
That's the sort of thing the three of us were discussing as we hovered in the air over the northern edge of the village, near the entertainment district. In every direction we looked more and more people were emerging from their homes and taking to the streets, every last one of them wearing identical, featureless white masks. Between the Edo-era designs of the buildings, the period-costume sleepwear and the costume-like masks it could easily have been mistaken for the set of a strange, period-piece zombie movie. Being Gensokyo though, there were of course no cameras or lights around. Seeing the streets in which we lived our everyday lives transformed into something straight out of horror movie by the presence of hundreds of shuffling sleepwalkers was extremely unsettling, even if the people in the masks didn't appear to be doing anything horrific, or really even much of anything at all. They were just milling about, seemingly at random.
"We need to find out how wide-spread this is and where exactly it's happening before we can tell anyone about it. Sanae, can you take us closer to the town square?" Renko asked.
"Roger! Heading to the next waypoint!" Sanae barked. The winds whipped up around us and we glided up and around, turning a little eastward as we moved south. Gliding over the silent, moonlit streets, it soon became clear that the problem was more widespread than I had feared. From over the town square we could see in every direction and while most streets were too shadowed or too far away to make out anything specific, I could see the silhouettes of wandering people in any direction I looked. We passed by Suzunaan, then the temple school and then the Hieda residence. All of them had people wandering, zombie-like and masked on their premises or nearby. The more I watched the shuffling figures, the more purposeful their movements seemed. They were walking at random, yes, seemingly without having any shared destination in mind but their movements were coordinated enough that individuals avoided eachother in the street and navigated around obstacles. I saw masked figures walking up and down stairs, around corners, through crowded doorways and even, on one occasion, around a puddle. Moreover, although they seemed to be walking at random, all of the figures we saw would occasionally stop and seem to examine their surroundings, lifting objects to peer beneath them or sticking their blank-masked faces through doorways for a moment before retreating and wandering off. They all seemed like they were slowly, vaguely searching for something, though for what I couldn't imagine. The movements of everyone we saw were devoid of any sense of passion, fear, desire or any other emotion that we could discern. Certainly their faces were all blank, but their body language also conveyed no sense of alarm or urgency as they searched. I was continuing to look over the crowds of slowly wandering figures with growing trepidation when suddenly I saw something that made me call out in alarm, my gasp seeming louder than it was against the eerie silence of the village.
"It's Keine!" I yelped.
When Renko turned to follow my gaze, she didn't yell as I had, but I heard a little unconscious groan rise in her throat. There, just outside of the neighborhood watch office, facing the village square, stood Keine. Her familiar square hat was positioned neatly above a perfectly blank white mask. She was standing in place as if dazed, neither moving nor searching, still but with her back slumped as if only half awake. Sanae hurried down to land and Renko and I both released her hands and hit the ground running. I thought to call out to her but as we drew closer and I looked into the unfeeling white void of the mask I found myself stopping short, the words I would have yelled falling mute in my throat. She gave no sign of recognizing us or even noticing our presence at all. She merely stared straight ahead, an empty shell beneath the mask.
"Hey, miss Keine! Keine! Can you hear me?" Renko said, first waving a hand in front of her face then shouting directly into Keine's ear. She didn't flinch in the least. Renko's attempts to shake Keine's shoulder was similarly ineffective -she didn't react to being grabbed, but resisted if Renko tried to move her. With a frustrated growl Renko stepped right in front of Keine, then reached up and grabbed at the mask she was wearing with both hands. "What... is... this?" She grunted while prying at it. "I can't get it off!" Bracing herself against Keine's shoulder with one arm, she pulled with all her might with the other, but the mask didn't budge a bit.
Catching up to us, Sanae looked about apprehensively, her shoulders hunched as she took in the sea of blank faces on every side. "This is definitely an Incident, right?" She asked.
"Incident or not, if it's even affecting Keine then the neighborhood watch has already been defeated. We need to tell Reimu."
"Why Reimu, Merry? I'm an Incident resolver too, aren't I? Just leave this to the Moriya shrine!" Sanae declared, raising her voice. She exhaled sharply then looked about with renewed vigor, floating back into the air as she glanced first one way and then the other.
"Sanae, do you have any idea where to even start looking for a mastermind? We've just discovered this situation, but we have no idea what it's all about yet." Renko said, looking up at her.
"That's won't stop me! The culprit must be nearby, right? We just have to go looking for youkai in the area and exterminate everyone we see! Eventually that'll lead to the mastermind, right?"
"Sanae, you've been completely poisoned by Reimu. This is serious, we can't just blunder blindly into this."
"I'm not blundering and I'm not like Reimu! It makes sense! Someone must be controlling all of these people, we just need to find them and beat them up! That's how problems get solved in the Gensokyo!" Sanae looked about for a moment longer then suddenly thrust out her wand, shouting "There!"
I turned to look where she was pointing and caught a glimpse of a humanoid shape standing on the roof of a nearby building for just a moment before it leapt into the air. Sanae raised her wand and seemed to be about to launch herself into pursuit, but rather than fleeing, the figure sailed through the night sky and alighted on the roof of the neighborhood watch office, just in front of Sanae and just above Renko, Keine and I.
"Fighting every youkai you see is a little hasty, don't you think?" the figure said as it swung itself into a seated position, legs dangling off of the roof and a large fluffy tail curling behind her. "And a mite ill-advised too." Between the large, bushy tail and the glint of the moonlight off of the spectacles the figure wore, there was only one person it could have been. As Renko and I looked up, Mamizou Futatsuiwa's face was illuminated for just a moment by the glow of a match as she put fire to the bowl of her pipe, then waved the match out and tossed it aside.
"You're that bake-danuki from the other day!" Sanae declared, still pointing her wand at Mamizou.
"And you're the wind priestess from the mountain. I expected that someone would catch on to what's been goin' on here the in the village eventually, but I hadn't expected you three to be the first," Mamizou said wryly, exhaling a long stream of pungent smoke. "You're not even one of the holy rollers wrapped up in this little spat, are you?"
"Lady Kanako is waiting this one out. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to ignore a youkai causing an Incident right in the middle of the village! If you're the mastermind behind this, I'll exterminate you right now!"
"Now just hold on just a minute," Mamizou said, looking unbothered despite Sanae's posturing. "I'm not the one causing this whole situation to happen. I know who is though, and if you'll just calm down for a moment I'll tell you."
Renko spoke up, taking a step away from the watch office so she could address Mamizou more easily. "You said 'causing this whole situation to happen.' The way you're phrasing that it almost sounds like you think this is an accident rather than an Incident."
"That's exactly right. This is all being caused by someone, but not intentionally. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter, if you get me."
"That's no excuse!" Sanae shouted. "If you've let it get this far then you're part of the problem. I'll exterminate you, then whoever's responsible."
"Hold on, Sanae. Mamizou is telling us about the issue, not trying to make it worse. Maybe we can help each other out here and try to solve the problem. If all of this isn't being done intentionally then I imagine whoever's responsible would prefer that it wasn't happening, seeing as an Incident resolver is likely to exterminate them over it," Renko said, nodding her head toward Sanae.
"But isn't this the way it works?" Sanae asked, lowering her wand. "If a youkai is doing something bad, we just have to take them out and that'll fix the problem. It's the same whether or not they meant to do it, right?" She looked almost disappointed.
"If a youkai spilled a bucket of water on the floor would exterminating 'em clean it up? You need a mop here more than you need one of those," Mamizou replied waving her pipe at Sanae's wand.
"Well what do we do then?" Sanae asked despondently.
"That's the tricky bit. I hadn't quite expected anyone to find out about this just yet, but it can't be helped now. Guess you'll all be helping me mop up as it were, seeing as the current situation is no good for any of us. I'm sure this happening every night is just as inconvenient for you as it is for us."
"Wait a minute," Renko interjected. "This happens every night? All of this? With the masks?" My mind flashed back to the sensation of suddenly finding myself standing in front of our home, my legs tired as if I had been walking all night. Had Renko and I been wandering about the village in a blank mask just like everyone else without realizing it? It was a terrifying prospect to contemplate. Renko didn't seem bothered by the idea, however. "I suppose that would explain a lot..." she muttered, fiddling with the brim of her hat with one hand. "So in that case who's behind all this and how did they cause it to happen?"
"Well it's neither any of my tanuki nor anyone from the Myouren temple, I'll say that much right off the bat. I just happened to be the first person to notice it was happening and found the one responsible, so don't go pinning any of this on me, y'understand?"
"That sounds just like something a mastermind would say," Sanae grumbled, crossing her arms.
"Well then I suppose you'll just have to trust me. I think once you see who's behind this all you'll understand a bit better though."
"Sanae, come on down. Let's at least hear her out. We know where she lives, so you can always go exterminate her later if it comes to that, right?" Renko asked with a grin.
Sanae sighed and floated down to the ground, landing with a swirl of dust that flung her hair in all directions. "Alright, you're the boss, director."
Once she landed Mamizou smiled and stood up on the roof of the watch office, turning to call out over her shoulder.
"Hey, come on out, they're playin' nice now."
At Mamizou's invitation a second shadow hopped from the alley and joined her on the roof of the watch office. Illuminated by the pale light of the moon, this second figure had a striking appearance. She was wearing a large balloon skirt paired with a blue checkered shirt. Her face was completely expressionless -it possessed all of the normal features one would expect but was otherwise as completely devoid of emotion as the visages of all of the villagers milling about. It was only half visible though, as her face was partially concealed by a carved Noh mask she was wearing at an angle, so that it covered one side of her head. Beneath the mask her hair was long and flowing but every bit as still as the uncaring gaze with which she looked down on us from the roof.