Whenever you have a situation like this, where a new element or a new actor is suddenly introduced into the mix of mystery, there are always several different ways that someone might react. Some will react like me, simply taking the new development in stride for the moment and only later considering how the new information might recolor our understanding of past events. Others, like my partner, are quicker to form connections and would immediately seek to contextualize this data, often resulting in them bombarding this new arrival with questions and investigations that only make sense to her. Then there is another type of person. One who, when exposed to a new stimulus like this and a chance to re-contextualize what they know, chooses to instead leap to an immediate conclusion without any consideration of facts and complicate the situation further. Normally I would try to avoid naming names in these stories in order to protect the identities of all involved. -But I suspect that if you've read my previous casefiles you could already guess that one such person like this would be Sanae Kochiya.

"What are you?" Sanae shouted into the storm, pointing her wand at the girl sitting on the drum. "You're some kind of evil youkai, aren't you?"

Unexpectedly, the girl responded with joyful bark of a laugh. "You recognize me as a youkai? That's awesome. Hey, you're the shrine maiden who exterminates youkai, right? I guess that means I've really made it."

"Oh, if you recognize me as a youkai exterminator then my name must be becoming popular too! I'm Sanae Kochiya, wind priestess of the Moriya shrine and if I exterminate you, our shrine will become even more popular!"

"Wait a minute. Moriya? Wind priestess? That doesn't sound right..." the drummer twisted her head in thought, the ease of her posture utterly at odds with the scene of the thunderclouds looming behind her. It seemed clear to me she had been expecting Reimu, at least by reputation. "I suppose it doesn't matter though. Just so you know, I'm not going to let you seal me away. I've got work to do here with those tsukumogami."

"Well you'll have to fight me first. That's just how things go in Gensokyo."

"Hold on Sanae! We could just talk, you know." Renko interrupted, leaning forward and grabbing the hem of Sanae's skirt as she flew past. "We don't even know what she wants yet. You're being just like Reimu here, rushing into exterminate every youkai you see. Wouldn't it be better to follow Lady Kanako's example and handle things with a more mature, calculating approach?"

Sanae looked rather abashed at that rebuke and stood aside, muttering to herself as Renko, Genji and I floated forward to talk to the girl on the drums. Even after all the years Sanae had been here now, she still didn't like being compared to Reimu. I wasn't sure of that was due to envy of Reimu's position or dislike of her character. I suppose either way, when you have two people in the same industry operating as rivals, differentiation is important.

"Now," Renko said, adjusting the collar of her trenchcoat and pulling down on the brim of her hat. "It's nice to meet you, miss drum tsukumogami. My name is Renko Usami. I'm not these girls' owner by any means, but I am a detective who they hired to try and help them solve a problem, so I have their best interests in mind. Might I ask who you are and how you're proposing to help my clients?"

"Oh, how polite. I'm Raiko Horikawa, and as you guessed I am indeed a drum tsukumogami. As for how I can help, I..." she paused for a moment. "Wait, sorry. Renko Usami, you said?" She peered intently at my partner.

"Yes, that's right."

"Huh. Well, I can worry about that later. Anyway, like I was saying, I'm here to help those two. I'm betting I can guess what sort of problem they might have hired you to look into."

"You know what's happening to us?" Yatsuhashi asked, surging forward to hover beside Renko. Benben rushed up as well, but rather than saying anything she just plucked at one of her strings, letting out a resonant note that almost sounded inquisitive to me.

"I can guess. You two are losing your power bit by bit and if things continue as they have been you'll soon be turning back into regular objects, right? Well I was in the same boat, once. I figured out a way to stop being a tsukumogami and become a proper youkai though, and I can show you how to do it too."

Both of the Tsukumo sisters' faces lit up at that statement. Renko looked intrigued for her part. The only person who looked dissatisfied was Sanae.

"Boss, you can't let her do that," Sanae said, turning to Renko. "This anthropomorphized DrumMania is trying to increase the number of youkai in Gensokyo! Isn't that against the rules? She's an enemy of humanity!"

"What's a DrumMania?

"Are you not a Konami fan? I'll admit I'm more partial to Parappa the Rapper and Space Chanel 5 myself but it's a classic, you shouldn't discount the foundations of the genre."

"What are you talking about, Sanae?"

"Hey, Renko Usami, right?" Raiko asked. Renko swiveled back around to face her. "Look, if you want to save those two tsukumogami then you and I have the same goal. Can you just leave them with me? I'll take care of them."

"Well that's a generous offer, but can you at least tell me what you're planning to do with them first? I can't just abandon my clients to the care of the first person I meet who tries to sweet talk me into letting them go. For all I know you could be trying to take advantage of two innocent young tsukumogami."

Renko was fiddling with brim of her hat as I tried to conceal my expression of surprise. It was rare of Renko not to dive into an opportunity like this head-first. I wondered if she was still thinking about Seija, who had deceived and mislead Shinmyoumaru, or if she had some other reasoning going through her head.

"That's fair. I wonder what I could say to get a human to trust me though? Look, I used to be a lot like those two are, which is to say I was pretty weak. Now though..." She took the drumsticks she was holding into each hand and raised her arms up, then with a casual ease that can only come through diligent practice, brought them down, the heads of her drumsticks cascading almost faster than we could see across the numerous drum pads floating around her, beating out a dynamic, staccato rhythm that finished with a heavy kick of her boots back toward the drum she was sitting on. As the blow was struck a powerful reverberation coursed through us and a bolt of lightning tore through the air just to our left, illuminating the gloom first with its flash, and then with a dull orange of a cloud of sparks as a tree below us on the mountainside groaned and split in half, erupting into flame as it did.

"...and it was simple," she said, twirling her drumsticks around her fingers before settling them back in her lap. "It just takes a little ingenuity and some effort."

Renko stared down at the shattered, burning tree and blinked before looking back at Raiko. "What sort of 'effort?'"

Tsukumogami like us need power to live. Magical power. In a place like this, that builds up over time. If you get old enough, you might gather up enough on your own. These girls were born recently though, back when there was a lot more magic in the air for some reason. Now that magic is going away, so you need something else to live off of. You may have been tools once, but you're people now. Don't you have the right to go on living now that life has been granted to you?"

"Ah! You understand us!" Benben said, drifting forward toward Raiko.

"Please help us!" Yatsuhashi cried, following after her.

The two girls both floated towards Raiko who grinned as they took up positions on either side of her, floating just below her in the air.

"Boss! Our clients just teamed up with the mastermind! What do we do?"

Renko waved dismissively at Sanae and continued her questioning. "Alright, I suppose that makes sense, but where do you intend to draw the power you need to survive from if not the source that brought you to life?"

"Hey, you are actually a human, right? Your coat looks a little like a tsukumogami too, now that I look at it. Should I turn it into a youkai as well?"

"What? Oh! Trenchy! Do you still have a little bit of magic left in you?" Renko's coat, which as far as I could tell had been behaving normally ever since we had returned from the castle was reaching weakly forward, up off of her arm, the cuff of her sleeve rising as if trying to fly towards Raiko. I wasn't sure how long it would take the Miracle Mallet to recharge, but it seemed that even after a week there was still some measure of its power that was yet to be reclaimed. "No need to do that," Renko said, forcing her arm and sleeve back down to her side. "I would merely like to know what your method entails for my own intellectual curiosity."

"Yeah? Well if that coat ever gets old enough to become a tsukumogami, send it my way. I'll teach it how to survive as well."

"For now though, could you tell me how it works?"

"Yeah, I want to know too!" Yatsuhashi demanded.

"It's real, right?" Benben asked. "You're not just trying to trick us?"

"It's real," Raiko said with a nod, "but I didn't want to tell you about it right away because it's scary. We're talking about completely replacing your very nature here. Are you alright with doing that to yourselves?"

"Replacing our natures?" Benben asked, "what do you mean?"

"The power that made you came from outside of yourself, not within. In order to go on living you'll need to find another external source of power." As she said this, Raiko raised up one of her drumsticks like an antenna then kicked her drum again. Another bolt of lightning ripped down out of the sky and struck her upraised hand. It coursed over her body, crackling but not moving any further. She didn't seem at all bothered by it. "To receive that external power you'll have to be ready to connect to it. You'll have to change part of who you are. You'll still be you afterward, but you'll be different." She kicked the drum again, eliciting another peal of thunder as the bolt of lightning left her body and surged down into the ground.

"We'll have to change who we are?"

"It sounds scary, but its natural. You've probably done it lots of times without even remembering. Tools gain their power from being used and become tsukumogami after having absorbed a lot of power from their users over the years. What you need is to absorb power from new users. That's easy enough, but the trick is to find you a different kind of user than normal. You want someone who is strong, who can give you everything you need. To become a tool with a users like that, you'll have to throw your bodies away and get new ones. It's scary, but it works."

The two sisters first looked at eachother in alarm then turned back to Raiko. "You want us to throw away our bodies?" Benben asked, cradling her biwa in her arms.

"Like I said, it's scary. Same spirit, different body. You'll need a new instrument that's never been affected by magic power. One that relies on something completely different."