"Mmmh…?"
A sheep looking girl twisted her head to be parallel to the ground—or, well, as close as 'ground' counted when it was in fact a pool of liquid.
The Former Hell of Blood Pools. A literal Hell composed entirely of enormous pools of blood, filled with liquified resentment and hatred from life—known more commonly as petroleum.
The sheep-ish girl in question was named Yuuma Toutetsu, and had been tasked with preventing people from getting to the Blood Pools, and, last she checked, was doing a good job of it.
Yuuma Toutetsu was a Taotie, a stereotypically greedy beast looking similar to a sheep. Her hair was white and fluffy like wool, two red curving sheep's horns sticking out of it, and wore a teal dress with half attached red sleeves. White meandering patterns and eye motifs covered the waist part of her dress and she carried around an enormously large spork.
So, then. As one of her more recent subordinates, a single-horned girl with long purple hair and wearing a loose lime green shirt and teal shorts, floated by on the blood, a question created after observation of the blood simply popped up in Yuuma's head.
Why is there a current in the oil?
She lifts her head from the blood, taking a few steps with a light application of the incredibly common power of flight, and calls out to her newest subordinate.
"Hey, Chiyari!"
The other girl floating by, Chiyari Tenkajin, looks up, then floats out of the pool, taking a moment to use a bit of her magic to pull the blood out of her clothing and dripping off her and compressing it into a ball—then tosses it into her mouth, swallowing it whole.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"I'm off to investigate something. I think someone is trying to steal the petroleum."
Where Chiyari had previously been slouching in posture, she suddenly straightened with an alertness that belied her stature, red eyes contracting into focused dots, and wisps of deep red flames sprouting into existence around her.
"Huh?! Who'd do that?"
Yuuma grins, a frightening thing filled with razor sharp teeth and smug intelligence.
"Keh-heh-heh. Let's find out."
—-
The chairwoman of the Gouyoku Alliance and her subordinate followed the current of oil, watching as it flowed away from the pools, strange wild magics and rules of reality pushing and pulling it up and down and out through natural holes that connected the Hells underneath the earth together.
Through the ground it went, collecting debris and contaminants as it went, slowly turning from something that the two would have drank like water to…something less desirable.
A grimace appeared on their faces, going from slight discomfort to pain and disgust at the sheer amount of filtering the liquid would have to go through to be enjoyable again.
"M-maybe it's not worth knowing where this goes?"
Chiyari probed, the heat and interest gone from her actions.
"Mmh. I still wanna know."
Yuuma groaned. At this point, it was hard to say whether or not it was worth discovering what was going on with the petroleum—or whatever it had become, having lost that red and brown bloody sheen, turning more clear and shiny.
Still, though, it was flowing towards somewhere and she wanted to know where. As the most stubborn of the three beast gangs' matriarchs, it would be very strange if she stopped now.
Onwards the two traveled, their destination unknown.
—-
Some time had passed since they began flying with no stop, and they saw nothing.
Only Yuuma's superior emotion senses kept them on the right track, able to follow the resentment in the petroleum, as diluted as it was.
"I can't say I've ever been here before."
"You've basically never left the Blood Pools, Chiyari. Anyway, I think…the Beast Metropolis of the Animal Realm is somewhere in that direction. Which means that, at some point, we did pass into the Animal Realm."
The Taotie points to a direction a little bit off of where they had flown from.
"Huh."
Chiyari stares blankly, then shrugs.
They continued flying through the sky of the Hell known as the Animal Realm in relative silence, finally leaving the familiar parts and entering uncharted territory: the self-explanatory Unlocated Hell. An unmapped, untamed zone where very few things lived, whether they were living, dead, or otherwise.
Eventually, though, something appeared.
A Fairy, a creature that took the form of a girl but was composed entirely of Nature Energy, flew through the air straight past them, seemingly coughing her lungs out.
"Whoa. Never seen 'em do that before."
Fairies were embodiments of Nature itself. If a Fairy was sick, Nature was sick.
For a Fairy to be actively running away from something while coughing like she had the Black Lung…
Well. Maybe Nature had the Black Lung.
Yuuma suddenly had a strange feeling. Even Hell had life and Nature, and thus Fairies. Who would be a better example than Clownpiece, the right-hand Hell Fairy of Hecatia Lapislazuli, the Goddess of Hell?
Though, she hadn't been seen recently around Hell. In Gensokyo, the land above, on the other hand…
But that wasn't relevant.
What was relevant was the smell in the air, like something burning.
Further ahead, acrid smoke and smog now could be seen billowing upwards, but from what?
The pair exchange gazes, before continuing on.
In yet another few moments of flight, they had their answer.
Before them stood something that could only be called a facility.
Walls, squares and lines of movement, creating an almost hypnotizing rotational pattern of color on the surface of the ground. Like an infection, it seemed to have spread and spread with no thought of stopping. The trees…the flora closest to that infection was dead and withered, the further plants' colors remaining dark and muted before that line of death was crossed.
The water was green and murky instead of the more pristine blues even Hell was used to. To and from the edges did lengthy objects speed away, stopping at further points of infection littering the ground before returning. One of them was directly ahead, where they would have been led by the trail of resentment had they looked ahead. At the very center of the largest portion, a black and red flag was raised higher than anything else.
Chiyari was the first one to break the stunned silence.
"What…what is that?"
Yuuma took a moment to think before she responded. When she did, the sheer confusion in her voice felt like statements thrown together just to get her thoughts in order.
"I don't know. It…it looks like the Beast Metropolis. But all the expansion proposals or projects were canceled after the failed invasion of the surface. And…and…there's no one here. I can't smell any beasts or humans, but it feels like this whole thing is alive. But…no. It wouldn't be possible that—no. No!"
The sheep-girl's eyes widen in horror before shrinking to a less-than-fully panicked state. She raises a hand to her forehead.
"Ah. No, no. Sheesh. This isn't that Haniyasushin gal's work. I know what that looks like and it's nothing like this. That means…"
That smug grin returns to her face with a tinge of relief in her voice. The other girl finishes her boss's sentence.
"...We can deal with it?"
"Exactly. Why don't we greet these guys, spook 'em a little, then get them to join the Gouyoku Alliance? This place looks kinda important."
"Yeah. Yeah!"
The two nod, confident expressions adorning their faces.
Even though Yuuma had noticed the many gun turrets littering the walls, she had chosen not to say anything. As the all-too-reliable and invincible boss, mere bullets wouldn't—couldn't—kill her.
It would still hurt, though.
—-
On the inside of the facility the two beasts had come across, an engineer wondered what the Hell an [Entity_Yuuma_Toutetsu] and [Entity_Chiyari_Tenkajin] his scanners had picked up in the air just outside of his factory were, and if they were anything like those fairy-things he had occasionally seen giving the factory dirty looks.
His new boss simply laughed with the wind when he prayed to her about them, reaffirming his decision that prematurely investing in military might was indeed the right action to have taken…and made sure his other emergency gun, a remainder of the first incident, was at the ready.
Then they got closer, and every single turret within a certain radius of the two rotated to stare directly at them.
He silently watched with his radars, nervous.
—-
Guns were funny inventions. They used an advanced physics technique just for the sole act of killing. Who in their right of mind would use controlled explosions to send a small metal object, usually dull, hurtling down a tube to purposefully poke a hole in a target?
Humans were so funny sometimes.
The thought didn't make Yuuma any less nervous at the sight of all the gun barrels suddenly and silently turning to face them as the two approached the facility from ground level.
From her position, she could identify three types of them poking over the walls.
The five-headed gun felt self-explanatory.
The nozzled barrel with the lit match in front perhaps meant that it was a fire-breathing gun.
The last one was almost purely rectangular and, as opposed to a hole where a bullet might come from, there was just glass. She didn't know what it meant, but since it was with the other defenses on the walls…
Well. It would do something and wasn't sure she wanted to find out.
That being said, Yuuma needed to get the attention of whoever was here, so she took the most simple and straightforward method. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted.
"Heeeeey! Anyone home?"
The pair didn't immediately get a response, so they waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And…
Yuuma shouts again, annoyance in her voice.
"Hellooooo? I just wanna talk!"
Another few minutes went by before Chiyari once again took up her role of breaking the awkward silence her boss left behind.
"…So what do you think the chances are that this guy is asleep?"
"None. I think they're ignoring us. And that makes me mad."
She said that through clenched teeth.
Yuuma Toutetsu, the Chairwoman of the Gouyoku Alliance, was not like the other two beast gang matriarchs.
Saki Kurokoma of the Keiga Family was a meathead who would have simply charged the walls, guns be damned.
Yachie Kicchou of the Kiketsu Family was highly manipulative, and would probably just keep shouting threats or send some poor lackeys to test just how far the guns really reached.
Yuuma, though? She would just stand here, still seething, and wait patiently.
Solitude and patience went hand-in-hand as part of her job of guarding the Blood Pools.
So, she took up a stance, a squatting pose that she normally did, and waited.
This time, she didn't wait long. A head popped up over the walls and stared at the two of them.
"Finally! I'm the matriarch of the Gouyoku Alliance, Yuma Toutetsu. You'd better have a great reason for stealing my petroleum!"
Yuma points at the figure hiding just behind the walls to accentuate her point.
The figure then rises upwards, seemingly floating above the solid stone walls until they are standing atop them. They wore an all black suit of armor with highlights of gray, blue lines running along the limbs. Their head too was covered in a black helmet, rows of glowing blue lines running down its entirety, a brighter neon color where the eyes and mouth should have been. Their arms were crossed.
The person then spoke, their voice projecting clearly despite the sheer empty space between the two parties.
"…Greetings. I am Jeremiah of Neos, Engineer and…follower…of Hecatia Lapislazuli, Goddess of Hell, Hell being where we are currently located. What's this about stealing, now?"
His voice was deep, and had a near-bass gruffness to it, making him out to be a foreigner, even to Hell where all sorts of people gathered. And—
Wait. What did he say? Follower of…?
What flag was he flying, again?
Yuuma looked up.
It rotated with the wind. That wasn't a flag. No, it was a shirt hung sideways. Now that they were up close, she could make out that peculiar choice of words on it, one that even those like Chiyari wore now as a clothing brand.
Sure enough, it read, sideways, Welcome 3 Hell.
The signature shirt of Hecatia.
Yuuma almost swore right then and there. Then Chiyari had to speak up.
"Whoa, an original run T-shirt… Only Lady Hecatia herself has more of those."
She swore and then wondered how she was going to deal with Jeremiah. Of course, the Taotie did want to come out on top in this situation with him joining the alliance and thus allowing her to gain access to this whole thing he was part of.
…This whole thing? Yuuma turns her head and stares, where her original destination lay.
The oil.
Apparently, Jeremiah was still watching her, because she saw him follow her gaze, then suddenly snap back to her, as if realizing something.
"Hey."
Yuuma turns back, smiling innocently, as if she didn't just think about using the fact that the man couldn't be in two places at once against him to get to that oil.
"Oh? Something the matter?"
"...Yeah, actually."
He points—
"Who're you?"
"That's my subordinate, Chiyari Tenkajin."
—at the girl standing next to her, silent aside from the one comment about the goddess.
With the reply, he…sits down on the walls, head slightly tilted. Apparently content to ask and answer questions from his place.
"Tenkajin, huh?"
The girl in question nods rapidly.
"Y-yeah, like a chupacabra, basically."
"Hm. Izzat so? Can't say I've met one before. In fact, I can't say I've actually seen anyone up 'till now."
Jeremiah of Neos spreads his arms—in a shrug.
"Welcome to the factory. Please go away?"
