We knew that if Keine found us, she would definitely stop us. This meant we couldn't hang around the school, where the odds of Keine happening by and noticing that Mokou was with us and that Renko was trapped in her coat and floating were high. Renko had suggested waiting until night fell, but we couldn't be certain the distortion I was seeing in the sky would stay there for that long. It certainly didn't seem to have been there earlier in the day. As such, the only thing to do was to set out right away.

Mokou grabbed Renko by the ankle and held onto her as we made our way over to the pond to retrieve Genji. Once we explained things to him Renko sat down on his back, gripping the bands holding her cushion to his shell with both hands to keep from floating away. Mokou wrestled the hem of her coat down until she was in a sitting position then I took a seat behind her, sitting on top of the back of the trenchcoat and wrapping my arms around her waist to hold her in place. With that done we headed into the sky, with Genji carrying the both of us and Mokou flying alongside. Our destination was westward and upward, headed for the source of the magical disturbance.

"What are we flying towards?" Genji asked after five minutes or so. "I can't see anything but clouds but I feel like there's something unpleasant ahead of us."

"Oh, you can feel it?" Renko asked in surprise. "I suppose that makes sense. Are you feeling okay, Genji? Is the sensation making you hate humans?"

"It's making me a little agitated, like a bored housewife with nothing to do. I almost feel like someone is shouting at me over and over again not to follow the rules and rebel against anyone in power. To be honest though, I'm too old for that. If I were a few centuries younger I might feel the need to do something about it, but these old bones don't have energy for anything like that any more."

"How interesting. So this power is not only empowering weak youkai and inanimate objects, it's also inciting a spirit of rebellion in them. Merry, are you thinking what I'm thinking again?"

"It would be hard not to. Someone looking to incite weak youkai into standing up for their rights and throwing off human oppression? While acting from something that's suspended in the sky and using what appears to be powerful magic to do it? All of those signs point to Byakuren, don't they?"

"Well it certainly seems possible that it could be her, but that doesn't really make any sense. For one thing the Holy Palanquin is still in the form of the Myouren temple. I can see it right down there. I suppose she could have made a new flying ship, but why would she go to the trouble of staging a coup d'état like this? There's hardly any government here in Gensokyo to rebel against and her temple has been growing more popular with humans and youkai alike as it is. Besides, everything we've seen her do so far seems to indicate she's against the idea of using violence to achieve her goals. I suppose she could have been lying about all of that, but even then simply empowering weak youkai and urging them to rebel doesn't really seem like it does much to fulfil her aims."

"Well maybe it's not Byakuren then," I suggested. "It could even be someone who wants to pin the blame on her."

"I think it's most likely the result of actions by some third party we've never met. We'll have to ask them what their intent was when we find them. Honestly though, I couldn't begin to guess. Gensokyo welcomes everyone and even the village will let most anyone come in as long as they don't cause trouble and stick to the market district. I can't imagine that there's any unpopular enough policies in place for anyone to want to overthrow the current order. Even those two tsukumogami sisters didn't really seem to have any idea what they wanted. They sounded like they were just shouting slogans they had heard somewhere else."

"Don't you think you might be a little biased, Renko? You work as a math teacher, after all. Doesn't that make you a government employee?"

"Does the Hieda household count as a government? They don't have any real political power, but they do take care of a lot of day-to-day organization, I suppose. What are you suggesting though, Merry? That someone would be upset enough about the actions of the village's ruling families that they'd want to create a bunch of new youkai and foment a revolution?"

"Maybe it's someone who took one of your classes. I heard the groans from your classroom when you announced that pop quiz on fractions the other day."

"That doesn't make any sense. I'm here as a great detective, not a math teacher." Renko tried to twist around to look at me. As she did so, she pulled the hem of her coat out from under me and it immediately lifted up and off of Genji's shell. Mokou and I both had to work to get her back into place and properly pinned down.

"Don't get so caught up in chatting that you let go of her, Merry. She's like a balloon now. If we lose hold of her, she'll be gone."

I nodded solemnly and put all my strength into my arms, squeezing tight around her skinny waist.

"Oh Merry, this is so sudden. I didn't know you could be so forward." Renko said, with a grin so broad I could hear it, even though she had her back to me.

"I could just let you go, Renko. Or maybe I could get a better grip if I held you by the neck."

"No, no, stay here. I'd like to keep enjoying the feeling of you pressed up against my back a bit longer. Ow! Hey!"

She flinched as I poked her in the ribs. I wasn't about to let her go, but its her own fault if she decided to make the trip unpleasant.

"Now's not the time to flirt, you two." Mokou called back from ahead of us. It feels like we're getting closer."

I looked around to get my bearings. We were over the Forest of Magic by now, maybe half-way towards the Road of Reconsideration. To the north Youkai Mountain towered over the Scarlet Devil Mansion and Misty Lake lay before it, shrouded in clinging fog. I wondered if Wakasagihime was alright down there. I didn't imagine Mokou would have hurt her badly, but if she was unlucky enough to attack Sakuya she might just end up as sashimi. Ahead of us a gauze of distortion filled the air. We were definitely getting closer to it, but I still couldn't tell what it was or just how big. It just looked like a blurry, wavering patch of cloud to me. If I looked away in any direction I could see waves of magic cascading away from it in rings like turbulent ripples in a pond, wavering as they tore away from the locations where a stone had been dropped in. During the Scarlet Mist Incident we had been directly in the center of the events and I had never had a chance to view the situation from high enough up to get away from the mist. If I had, I wonder if things would have looked to me then like they did now.

"This is really getting intense," Mokou grumbled. "The full moon's coming up too. If weak youkai are already getting all twisted up just from this power then Keine might really have a problem on our hands in a few days..."

"If that happens I'm sure Reimu would get involved," Renko reasoned. "But with any luck we'll never have to find out. How's it looking for you, Merry? Can you see anything that looks like a source yet?"

"It doesn't look like anything in particular, but everything's definitely coming from inside those clouds," I said, doing my best to indicate a direction without releasing Renko. "The borders I can see look like they're swirling around inside of there."

"Like a tornado?"

"If tornados could be ball-shaped, maybe."

"That sounds like Laputa from Castle In the Sky! If only Sanae were here!"

It was definitely an odd thing to see, but the impression was much more disturbing to me than an old animated movie could have been. The bank of clouds I could see with my regular vision must have been all that Mokou, Genji and Renko were seeing. They looked grey and heavy but otherwise unremarkable. The hazy veil of boundaries I could make out within the clouds was a completely different story, however. Hidden amongst the fluff of the clouds was a whirling, churning vortex of interlocking boundaries. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if we tried to fly into something like that. I didn't feel any wind coming from the cloud from here, but what my eyes told me was that on at least some level there was a ferocious maelstrom whirling around inside there. I wasn't sure if a storm like that was actually dangerous or not, but I should warn Mokou about it either way. I suppose for all of our safety I really couldn't shake my role as a high-performance anomaly detector. I swallowed a sigh and gave Mokou directions, pointing her toward the center of the storm and warning her about what I saw.

We only made it to the edge of the clouds before we were stopped though. As we drew near to the border of the cloud bank two figures emerged from within it and stood before us in the air, clearly intending to block our path.

"Oh! It's our tools!" one of them called. "I mean our humans! The humans we were using as tools! Except tools won't be used like that any more. The humans we were using as humans!"

"Those ones are. Who's the new human? Or is she a human? She feels stronger."

Standing before us were the very same two Tsukumo sisters who had abandoned Renko and I a day before.