Storm on the Horizon

Stopping gossip from getting out at the Aoki Yume's Children's Home was like trying to catch the wind in your fist. Sure, you ended up with a handful of air, but the wind itself didn't seem to notice and before you knew it all your stuff was knocked over.

Rumia hadn't told anyone about their misadventure. Kohta hadn't told anyone about their misadventure. Keine definitely hadn't told anyone about their misadventure. And say what you will about Miss Mokou, but she was a woman of her word.

Still, by the time dinner had rolled around, everyone knew.

No one said anything to them. There were no questions, no comments, no taunts. But Rumia could still tell. She could tell by some of the sidelong glances and smirks from the ones she didn't like. She could tell from the pitying looks from those that she did. How word had gotten out when none of those who had actually been there would ever tell, she didn't know. Maybe someone had so happened to be near enough to hear. It didn't matter. Word always got out.

Rumia sighed. To be perfectly honest, she didn't really give a crap about their punishment. They were in trouble all the time! This wasn't the first time they had been given extra chores as a result and it wouldn't be the last. It was gross and annoying, but whatever. It would pass.

The problem was that, as always, being in trouble made them vulnerable.

Supper was fish stew, and while Rumia liked it well enough, she was not looking forward to dealing with that fishy smell afterward. She tried to eat quickly, so as not to get too much of the taste stuck on her tongue.

"Head's up," Kohta muttered.

"Huh?"

Kohta nodded to their right. Sitting across from them down the table were their arch-nemeses Haruko Kamijima, Eiko Goto, and Hayate Maeda. The three of them had been the ones that Rumia and Kohta had caught tormenting Keine to begin with, and the two trios had been enemies ever since. Which was fine. Sometimes you just needed an enemy to make life more interesting.

Unfortunately, having an enemy also made other times all the more hard to take. Such as now.

Apparently the three of them had been trying to get Rumia and her friends' attention. They were already leering at them when Rumia looked up, and as soon as Rumia was looking their way they started snickering.

Then, with deliberate slowness, Haruko reached up with a single finger and stuck it into her nostril. She dug around for a bit before pulling out a slimy, greyish-green blob. Grinning at Rumia, she smeared it across the inside of her bow.

Suddenly Rumia didn't really care for the rest of her meal. "Thanks," she hissed to Kohta. "I really needed to see that."

"You're washing theirs," Kohta remarked.

"Uh, am not? Why should I?"

"Because the cookie raid was your idea. And I'm already stuck with the big pot, so it's only fair. Or are you going to make Keine do it?"

Keine, who had been lost in thought as she pushed pieces of stew around in her bowl, suddenly looked up at the sound of her name. "Huh?" she said. "What about me?"

Rumia and Kohta exchanged a glance. Rumia sighed. "Nothing," she growled. "I got it."

"Got what? What happened?"

"Nothing! Gods, drop it!"

Keine still looked confused, but she knew better than to press the subject, so she shrugged and went back to her private musing. Rumia shot Kohta a glare. In response, Kohta just shrugged.

"Jerk," Rumia muttered.

"Youkaiass," he whispered back.

"Fairypuss."

"Shiteater."

"Will you two grow up?" Keine said.

"Never," Rumia and Kohta said in unison.

…

It was, as predicted, a thoroughly miserable experience.

Eighteen kids lived at the orphanage. Eighteen kids, plus the six grown-ups that took care of them. That meant twenty-four bowls, twenty-four plates, twenty-four sets of utensils, and twenty-four cups, plus everything that Miss Mokou used to make the large meals for everyone.

Kohta had been stuck taking care of that last bit, and now he was on his hands and knees deep inside the big black pot that Mokou had cooked the stew in, scrubbing every bit of fish goop away. He had to emerge every few seconds to gag and cough before taking a deep breath and plunging back in again. Rumia sympathized. It wasn't that it smelled bad, of course. It was just that it smelled a lot.

She and Keine were taking care of the bowls, plates, cups, and utensils, and unfortunately Rumia herself was doing the actual cleaning while Keine had been lucky enough to be left with the drying and stacking. Technically, Keine's job was the more lengthy one, but Rumia's was by far the grossest.

Most of the bowls were mostly picked clean, leaving just the residue. Others…were not. And Rumia knew the second that she came to Haruko's.

Nearby, Miss Mokou was lounging on a stool in a corner, a lit cigarette in her mouth as she smugly watched them. "You know," she said around puffs of smoke. "I know kids will be kids. And I sure as hell know that you three all got a bit of devil in you. But come on! Now? When flying lessons are right around the corner? With the market trip…tomorrow? Would've thought that you'd have more sense than that."

Rumia clamped her jaw tight to keep from letting a smart remark slip. She kept on scrubbing.

"Ah well, guess we're all servants to our natures. Especially in this godsinfested country. Spirits will wander, fairies will forever be stupid, and you will-"

"Um, Miss Mokou?" Keine said suddenly.

Miss Mokou paused, no doubt a bit taken back at being interrupted. Then she said, "Yeah?"

"How come we can only ever get to see other people when the big market goes up? How come we can never actually get to go to the Human Village anymore?"

Rumia, who had only been listening with half an ear, suddenly heard a sharp sizzling sound. She turned around.

Miss Mokou's cigarette was burning. Not just lit, but burning, a small ring of fire traveling down its length, turning it into ash as it went. What was more, it wasn't coming from the lit end, but out from Miss Mokou's mouth.

Soon Miss Mokou was just left with a cylinder of solid ash stuck between her lips.

She let out one last cloud of cigarette smoke, and the ash fell apart. She spat out the rest. "Because, Keine," Miss Mokou said, her voice calm but filled with barely repressed anger. "It's like I was saying. We all have our natures. Kids will get into mischief, fairies will be stupid, youkai will be wild." She picked up her cigarette box from the nearby kitchen counter and her nose wrinkled in annoyance when she saw that it was empty. She tossed it into the nearby trash bucket. "And fools will be fools."

Kohta looked up from his ordeal. "What does that mean?" he said. "What fools?"

Miss Mokou shook her head. "Never you mind." She leaned forward on the stool, her long forearms perched in her knees while her hands dangled in between her legs like a pair of hanging spiders. "Listen to me, kids. Yeah, we expect you to mind the grown-ups here in this house, but just because someone's a grown-up doesn't make them wise, or even smart. There are plenty of people who get as old as the hills but remain dumber than any one of you. And the Human Village is crawling with that kind of idiot."

"But why?" Keine said. "What does that have to do with us not being allowed in?"

Miss Mokou shook her head. "Never you mind," she said again. "Just remember: as you grow up, you're probably gonna hear some people say some nasty things. But don't you believe any of it. You might be annoying little cockroaches sometimes, but there's nothing wrong with you kids at all."

"Wrong?" Rumia frowned. "Wait, who's saying that something's wrong with us?"

"Idiots. Like I said earlier. Just idiots." Then Ms. Mokou sighed. "Look, you guys are good for tonight. Go ahead and go to bed. And seriously, next time you try to pull one over on me, at least come up with something new, okay?"

"Okay," Rumia said, though she was still very confused. "Um, good night, Miss Mokou. "She, Kohta, and Keine all started to head for the door.

"Oh, wait, hold up," Miss Mokou said suddenly.

The trio turned around, half-expecting to be presented with some last-minute labor.

Instead, Miss Mokou was holding out a sizzling metal tray. On it were three freshly baked ginger cookies with chunks of apple.

Rumia perked up in surprise. "Uh, huh? Really?"

In response, Mokou winked and held a finger to her lips. "Shhhh."

That sounded as fair a deal as Rumia had ever heard. She and her friends took the offered treats, bowed in thanks, and hurried off.

…

Mokou sat alone in her kitchen, eyes still fixed on the door that her favorite band of troublemakers had just departed through.

Even though she cared for every child who lived at the Aoki Yume's Children's Home, even the mean ones, she had always had a soft spot for those three. After all, it had been them that had found her lifeless body buried in the snow and had it dragged back to the orphanage two years prior. It had been them that had sort of taken her under their wing after her shockingly quick recovery and showed her around. It had been them that had convinced her to abandon the endless cycle of hatred and pain her life had been. It had been them that had convinced her to find a new purpose in life, to stay.

Mokou smiled. Even after she had been accepted into the family, those three had still seemed to be unable to stay away from her, though as her tormentors rather than her caretakers. They seemed to take personal delight in trying to pull one over on her, to make her fall victim to their endless pranks and schemes when most of the other kids seemed to be a little afraid of her. As someone who had grown up with several older brothers, Mokou appreciated that. It had been a long time since anything had reminded her of the few good times in her life.

Then, as she mused on the drastic change her life had taken in the last couple of years, there was a knock at the back door.

Mokou rose and went to answer it.

Standing outside was a woman. A very short woman, one that was barely taller than the kids that Mokou had just been talking to and could probably be mistaken for a child herself if one didn't know better like Mokou did. Her short, black hair was curly; her eyes dark maroon; and she was wearing a fleecy pink dress, a carrot-shaped pendant on a slender silver chain around her neck, and probably not a whole lot else. In one hand she was holding the handle of a lit lantern while the other clutched the handle of a large wooden mallet that was resting over her shoulder.

Also, sticking out of her hair was a pair of white rabbit's ears.

"Heeeeeeeeeeey Mokou," the rabbit said. "What up, girl?"

Mokou looked her up and down and sighed. "Tewi. Well, hello, but seriously. We've talked about this."

"About what, Phoenix?" Tewi said with a wry grin.

"You're on Human lands now. I don't care that it's almost midnight. Could you at least put on a hat?"

"Hmmm." Tewi placed the head of her mallet on the ground and made a show of thoughtfully tapping her lower lip. Then she shook her head. "Nah."

Mokou shot her a look. "Seriously, Tewi. Is it too much to ask that you just keep your ears covered? You know people'll start talking if a fucking youkai keeps showing up here in the dead of night."

"That is, how do they say, not my problem." Tewi stepped to one side and gestured. "Besides, one might think that you would be a little more polite and less judgy about someone providing you with all these?"

Outside were four large wicker baskets, each filled with a different kind of food. One contained rose red apples, one with freshly caught fish, one with white and purple turnips, and one with onions.

"Oh, I'm grateful," Mokou said as she grabbed the handles of two of the baskets with one hand apiece. Each one of them would have been difficult for two large men working together but she lifted them both with ease. "I'm super grateful. But come on, you know how things are now."

Tewi hopped inside and jumped up to sit on the counter next to the sink. "Oh, I hear. Word has reach my ickle lickle ears that your Human friends don't really like us anymore. Again."

"Right," Mokou sighed. "Fucking Sonozikas."

"Well, that's what you get for not finishing the job."

"Hey, I finished the job." Mokou set the baskets down and went back for the other two. "Everyone I barbequed had it coming. But I'm not going to kill someone's kids just because their dad is a murderous bastard that needed to be slow-cooked inside his own armor."

"Which is what you did to him."

"Well, yeah."

"Uh-huh. And how did that little bit of mercy turn out?"

Mokou shrugged. "Look, if it wasn't the Sonozikas, it would be someone else. They do this shit all time. You could set your calendar to whether or not the Human Village hates youkai."

"Yeah, you Humans are weird. At least we keep our grudges personal."

Setting the last two baskets down, Mokou shut the back door. "So do I, if you'll remember."

"Yeah, speaking of which, you wanna know what Kaguya's been up too?"

Mokou had to take several seconds to breathe in deeply and slowly exhale. "I," she said icily, "could not give less of a shit."

"Oh, come on! Aren't you at least a little curious?"

"I'm done with Kaguya," Mokou said flatly. "That's the whole point, remember?"

Tewi grinned in that insufferably disbelieving way of hers. "Yeeeeaaaahhhhh, bullshit."

Mokou leaned up against the door and folded her arms. "Think what you want. I'm done. She can go back to the Moon for all I care."

"Uh-huh. Okay, fine."

Silence fell between them. Tewi remained seated on the counter, her legs swinging, while Mokou stayed where she was, leaning nonchalantly against the door.

She reached into her pocket but frowned when she remembered that she had just smoked her last cigarette earlier. Damn. She made a mental note to tell Joshua to pick her up a new pack tomorrow.

Then she glanced at Tewi, who was still idly swinging her legs while her head bobbed from side to side as she hummed a nonsensical tune, seemingly without a care in the world.

Then Mokou sighed. Damn it. "Okay, fine," she said. "Tell me what the moonbitch has been up to."

Tewi grinned in triumph. "Pottery!"

"Eh?"

"I'm serious. She's, like, majorly into pottery now. She's been spending every day with heaps of clay, just shaping pot after pot after pot. They're not even that good. She doesn't even paint them or anything, and doesn't seem to care about them once they're done. When she has too many, she just throws them away to make more room."

"Oh really?"

"Oh yeah. At least it's better than her last hobby."

Mokou scratched the back of her neck. "I heard she started to fancy herself as a playwright."

"Ha! See? You do care." Tewi sighed. "And yup. She did."

"Dare I ask what her little dramas were about?"

"Her, mostly. About her killing you once and for all. Or making you her slave. Or conquering the Moon. Or about all the princesses of the world falling madly in love with her and becoming her personal harem. You know. Stuff like that."

Which was more or less exactly the sort of thing Kaguya would probably write. "Any of them any good?"

Tewi hesitated. "They…have their fans."

"So no."

"Oh, gods no, they were awful."

Mokou found herself smirking. "So basically what you're telling me is that Princess Kaguya is bored out of her mind."

"Oh, totally. You don't just wage eternal war against your hated rival for centuries and expect to cope when it's suddenly over."

"Ha! So, I get to enjoy my live peacefully here and still torture her. Best of both worlds."

"Well, you know what they say about living well. At least I don't have to help clear away charred rubble and rebuild Eientei every couple of months anymore." Then something incredibly rare happened, something that Mokou had only seen a handful of times in her lifetime, and her lifetime had provided plenty of opportunities for just about anything to happen: Tewi's face turned serious. "Though, hey, Mokou. Need to tell you something."

Mokou tilted her head to one side and frowned.

"Something's…up. Nothing to do with us or Kaguya or anything, but still: something's up."

"Something? What kind of something specifically?"

Tewi shook her head. "I don't know exactly, but I know a guy who knows a girl whose cousin's girlfriend said something about some weird shit going down in the Youkai Forest."

Mokou pursed her lips. Given how wild it was, the forests of Gensokyo were not to be traveled lightly. The Bamboo Forest of the Lost from which Tewi hailed from was probably the safest, and that one was notorious for perplexing unwary travelers. Everyone knew to never go into the Forest of Magic unless they wanted their blood drank and soul stolen away. In times past and present, it had served as a sanctuary for some of Gensokyo's most notorious monsters, from Shinji the Silver Tongued to Madam Mima, and the stain of their presence still lingered centuries after their deaths, quite literally in Madam Mima's case. Even Mokou, who was accustomed to wandering the dangerous corners of the world, preferred to give it a wide berth.

And then there was the Youkai Forest. It wasn't quite as bad as the Forest of Magic. At least, it didn't have a reputation to homing any of Gensokyo's Most Wanted. But it was still plenty dangerous, with many dark spirits and strange ongoings taking place beneath its sunlight-choking canopy. And its borders sat just a little too close to the Children's Home for Mokou's comfort. In the past, youkai have ventured out to take orphans. It hadn't happened for quite a while, and certainly never since Mokou had arrived, but it had happened. And the rest of the Human population wasn't exactly as mindful about the orphanage's safety as they once had been.

Tewi's information might be around fifth-hand, but whenever she took something seriously, she always had good reason to.

"Anything in specific you've heard?" Mokou asked. "Any details?"

Tewi shook her head. "Not much. Just that something has got folks in there excited. And, well, look: the youkai in there might be a bunch of morbid weirdoes, but most of them just want to be left alone. Don't bother them, and they won't rip your face off and use it as a doily. But there are a few of the really nasty types in there, ones that I think might actually try something."

"You don't have to tell me of that sort," Mokou growled. "Believe me, I know."

"Yeah, you would, wouldn't you? Anyway, I don't know exactly is going down, but…keep an eye out, okay?"

"I will," Mokou promised. "Thanks."

"Notta problem." Tewi hopped off the counter. "If it keeps you happy and not burning things over on our turf." She picked up her mallet and lantern. "Anyways, Imma split. Try not to burn the place down."

"That I won't," Mokou said as she got the door for her.

Mokou watched as Tewi wandered off into the night. It wasn't until the light from the lantern had disappeared entirely that she took her eyes off of the road.

Then she glanced off toward the horizon. The Children's Home was surrounded by mostly rolling fields of grass, which was ideal for the kids. It gave them plenty of room to run around, and made it easier to keep an eye on them.

But beyond that was the gnarled trees and long shadows of the Youkai Forest. And like Tewi said, there were plenty of monsters lurking within.

Mokou ought to know. It wasn't so long ago that she was counted as one of them.

Usually when the kids were taken to market, Mokou would stay behind. Preparing the day's meals took a lot of time and work, and even if it didn't, she hated crowds on principle and never did well with large numbers of other Humans. It just brought back too many bad memories. However, she decided that she just might come along this one time. If something was up, then this was the best to get to the root of things.