"Hire? Detective Agency? What do you mean?" Yatsuhashi asked, blinking in surprise. Beside her, Benben was frowning at Renko as well.
"Look. You two don't know what the source of this power affecting you is, right? That means you don't know its disposition either. For all you know it might have empowered you by accident, or even for the purpose of drawing you into a trap. If you charge in blindly on your own, there's no telling what could happen. Maybe you get stronger, but maybe you get turned back into instruments or even burned as firewood."
"That wouldn't happen!" Yatsuhashi snapped. "We were given this power for a reason... I think. By someone who wants to see tools ruling the world... Probably."
"Well since you're in a position of power right now, its only fitting that you should make the best possible use of all of the power available to you. That means not just the bodies you've been given, but also your ability to use humans to do work for you. I happen to have a human right here with me," Renko said, gesturing to me with her chin, "who functions as a high-performance anomaly detector, skilled in finding hidden things and strange powers. She's just what you need to track the source of this power down without putting yourselves at risk."
"Renko, I'm not an anomaly radar! Don't treat me like a tool!"
"I'm not, Merry. I'm treating you like a human. It's just that in light of this revolution humans have taken the place of tools now. You should be proud though, you make for a trustworthy tool with a proven track record."
"I never wanted any part of that."
"Well willing or not, a tool's a tool, right ladies?" Renko asked, turning back toward the tsukumogami sisters. And humans are troublesome tools. We're fragile and have to be fed and socialized and what not. If you're going to go to the trouble of using us, you're going to want to be sure you get your money's worth. Much better to use our talents rather than just hand us over as bargaining chips. What's the point of becoming a youkai if you can't make smart decisions and practice a little self-determination, right?"
Yatsuhashi looked unsure. Benben glanced at her, but seeing no reassurance, she turned back to Renko. "Why are you telling us this?" she asked. "Are there humans who enjoy being forced to serve or something?"
Renko grinned. "I can't comment on that, but I'll admit I'm curious about what's going in Gensokyo right now and what the source of all of these recent changes could be. Honestly, if the situation were reversed and I were in control here, I'd probably still want to accompany you to find out what's going on."
Benben turned to Yatsuhashi. "What do you think, sister?"
"...It makes sense, but do you think they could really be useful? They seem really weak..."
"Well you won't know unless you give us a shot, right? If we aren't useful you can just abandon us afterward. That's the great thing about tools, if they don't work, you can just toss 'em out and get a new one, right?"
"Yeah..." Benben said contemplatively. "Use 'em up and toss 'em out. That's what we should be doing with humans!"
Yatsuhashi deliberated for a moment longer then met her sister's gaze. A look of understanding passed between them and they both nodded before turning to face us. Both girls raised their hands and all at once the red cords that had bound us unwound from out bodies and flew across the room. Four of them laid themselves across Benben's biwa, stretching tautly over the body of the instrument even though there was nothing holding them in place. The rest of the strings rushed toward Yatsuhashi's skirt and settled into place on top of the ridges wound around it. We were finally free to stretch out and stand up. I rose up and flexed my fingers. I couldn't help but look sadly over at our ruined dinner. Good grief.
"So can I take the fact that you're releasing us to mean that you'd like to hire us?" Renko asked, still grinning as she stood up.
"We're not hiring you. We're employing you as tools. You work for us now."
"Fair enough, I suppose. Either way, that means the Hifuu Detective Agency is on the case now. We'll help you find the source of this mysterious power."
Yatsuhashi nodded, seeming to be trying to do her best to look dignified and collected but after a moment Benben leaped joyously into the air. "We did it, sister!" she exclaimed. "From now on this is the era of tools using humans instead of the other way around. Isn't this great?"
I wasn't about to say anything of course, but it seemed to me that if anything the both of them had just more or less volunteered to be used as tools to serve Renko's curiosity. If they hadn't charged into our home as they had then Renko would likely still be doing the same thing anyway. We just might have at least waited until after we'd eaten first. Once a tool, always a tool, I suppose.
-.-.-.-.-
"Eh? It's night time. You want to go flying now? What for?" Genji asked.
With the two tsukumogami sisters trailing closely behind us we had marched out of our home and back to the grounds of the temple school. Renko had been able to convince the girls that flying with Genji would both attract less attention from potential threats and save the two of them from having to go to the trouble of carrying us. Nobody likes having to cart around a heavy, inconvenient tool, after all.
"We're going looking for the source of a mysterious power tonight, Genji. Somewhere in Gensokyo there's something that's been creating newborn tsukumogami and making weak youkai become more aggressive."
Genji craned his head up, looking first at us then slowly over at the girls behind us with his sad yellow eyes. "Newborn tsukumogami like those two girls? I suppose it's nice of you to want to help out two young'uns like that, but I wish you'd give some thought to my poor, tired, old bones."
"Sorry Genji. These two tools happen to be a real pair of slave drivers," Renko said with a grin.
Genji grumbled some more but dutifully climbed out of the pond and rose into the air while I tied our riding cushions onto him. As the last light of dusk faded behind the horizon and the cool stillness of an autumn night fell over the land we rose into the sky over the village which was perfumed with wood smoke and cooking smells and set out with Benben and Yatsuhashi flying close behind us.
"Alright, humans. Do your thing. Show us the way to the source of this power," Yatsuhashi commanded from behind us.
"Calm down, Yatsu, we'll get there. Merry needs to spot a trail first."
"Who's Yatsu?"
"It's a nickname. Yatsuhashi is too long. Humans like to give things names."
"Benben, she gave me a weird name. Are you sure letting them lead us around is a good idea?"
"You're the older sister, Yatsu. As long as we don't forget that we're in charge and they're just our tools, it'll be fine. I think. Let's just use the anomaly detector until she stops working."
I sighed to myself. As bad as it had been having Renko use me as a tool, this was worse. The situation at the moment was preferable to being tied up though, so I might as well try to make myself useful. Without knowing what I was looking for exactly, I scanned over the village, picking out the shapes of familiar landmarks in the dark. It was easy enough to tell where we were, but there was no sign of anything unusual that my eyes could detect.
"Hmmm, I don't really see anything," I muttered.
"Look harder. We've become enormously powerful youkai. All of this strength is coming from somewhere, I can feel it."
"Well if I'm right and this same power is what's making weaker youkai more hostile then it stands to reason that the closer we get to the source of the power, the more dangerous the youkai would be, right? So all we have to do is head toward wherever the youkai are the most dangerous right now." Renko said that with confidence, as if it were a perfectly reasonable plan.
"Renko can we, for once, not head straight for the most dangerous place in sight?"
"We'll be fine, Merry. We've already been to several of the hells and Makai, whatever we find here isn't going to be any worse than any of those places."
What an attitude. It's a miracle either of us was still alive. Trying to talk reason into someone who had had as many lucky breaks as she has was a fool's errand, unfortunately. "Now," Renko continued, cradling her chin between thumb and forefinger as she looked about. "What's the most dangerous place in Gensokyo?"
"Youkai mountain!" Benben blurted.
"That's tengu territory though," Renko countered. "Everyone there was strong to begin with, so I doubt they'd have been affected very much."
"What about Eientei then?" I suggested. I didn't think it was likely to the source of anything noteworthy, but maybe we could loose the girls in Bamboo Forest of the Lost. If we should happen to come across a swarm of youkai rabbits who had been turned into man-eating monsters though... well at least our deaths would be fluffy ones.
Actually, now that I thought about it, there was someone else in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost I wondered about. Kagerou Imaizumi lived down there somewhere, and while werewolves like her were the sort of famous monsters everyone knows of, I'm not sure if they would really be considered 'powerful' creatures in a place like Gensokyo. Could she have been affected by the ongoing Incident? We knew plenty of youkai who must be pretty far down on Gensokyo's power scale, now that I thought about it. Even more if fairies or gods could be counted. There were probably lots of people we knew who might be feeling the effects of this strange power.
"Eientei's not bad, but there's a bunch of powerful people there too who are probably keeping everyone in line. I think we'd be better off going somewhere wild, where there isn't any one in charge. The Forest of Magic, maybe, or possibly Muenzuka." Renko mused.
We had been warned before that going to Muenzuka was dangerous for any human, even in the middle of the day. Feral youkai tended to roam around the area, waiting for humans from the Outside world to stumble across the Great Hakurei Barrier. It was also just about as far as you could get from the Hakurei shrine and still be in Gensokyo. A hostile place to be certain.
"That might be a little too dangerous of a place to go in these conditions, Renko. Besides, we searched that area just a few months ago while we were helping Kokoro look for her mask remember? We didn't see anything unusual there back then."
"Well it's a long way to fly in the dark too," Renko admitted. "Let's begin by searching through the Forest of Magic. It's on the way to Muenzuka and full of all sorts of strange things"
I leaned closer and whispered to Renko. "We could fly towards Marisa's house and hope she notices we're being held hostage, is that what you're thinking?"
"Actually no. I think Reimu or Marisa will probably find us before too long no matter what we do. We should try to avoid them for now and get some information out of this search while we can. Let's start by heading to Korindo for now."
"Hey, quit being sneaky! What are you two whispering about?" Yatsuhashi yelled, flying closer so she could watch us from directly above.
"Just deciding on a destination," Renko said innocently. "We'll start by going somewhere that's normally full of all sorts of old objects. With any luck there might be some other tsukumogami to meet there who might know where to find what we're looking for."
I sighed and leaned back as Renko turned Genji and steered us towards the west, wondering what else this night would have in store for me.