[X] Can we put a shock collar or a magical equivalent on her?

A white ring, stitched together from a number of Ran’s paper dolls, sits around Seija’s neck. She tugs at the fashion accessory, despite being explained how much pain it can inflict her in an instant.

When Ran asked me last night how we might restrain Seija, I didn’t immediately come to this idea. At first I thought more along the lines of tethering her in some way, but Ran and Keine brought me around to this in a matter of minutes. We came together to make this overnight and I’d say we did a bang up job. A string of shikigami set to activate their Youkai damaging properties at Ran’s convenience.

“Gah!” Seija shouts in a burst of pain, as one would from being statically discharged. There is no noise for when the collar is active, nor does it emit any light that would otherwise indicate it. Her hand darts away from her neck, and she relaxes again.

Ran doesn’t have any form of button, instead operating it with her thoughts, so I’ll have to interpret when it’s on. It bugs me that I have no say in when it’s used, especially given Ran’s proclivity to incite turmoil, but the best I can do is stay a step ahead of them.

With enough haranguing maybe I can factor it out of the day.

“So, why am I wearing this?” Seija asks, pointing at the collar from a healthy distance.

“Because we’re taking you out of the cell today, but we also need something to keep you from harassing everyone we see,” I explain, taking out a key for the heavy metal bars.

I quickly locate the keyhole and slot its heavy partner in. It unlocks with a clack, and brace my whole body to swing it open. The sheer weight isn’t surprising in any way, but does make me wonder what the most dangerous thing they could keep in here would be.

I let the door settle and thumb over to the exit, commanding Seija, “Alright, let’s get a move on.”

“To where?” she asks with a raised brow, refusing to budge from her position in the cell.

I decide to be direct with her, “To wherever you want, I suppose. It’s your choice.”

She puckers her lips and nods. “Wherever I want? Well in that case.”

She walks to the back of the cell, dropping back to the ragged cloths that make up her bedding. She pats her skirt down to sit with legs crossed, looking none too intent on moving.

“You’re really doing this right now?” I find myself off pace from her bullheaded contrarianism. I pass a glance behind me to Ran, her eyes looking into mine and suggesting that she expected this. I round back on Seija and start to bargain, “… Look, Seija, I get that you want to do the opposite of what I say, but could you for a second consider that I’m legitimately giving you the chance to breath some fresh outdoor air with no strings attached?”

“None?” she challenges, flicking a finger against her collar.

My eyes clamp shut, turning off to the side as I’m forced to admit, “Close to none.”

She stares at me, chin crooked into balled fists.

“Fine, if you don’t want to, then I guess I can’t force you...” I concede.

There’s a brief minute of silence as neither side continues this debate. That is until…

“Gaah!” Seija shouts, launching from her seat into the back wall. She floats upside down in the air for a second as she fights with the collar. “What the hell?!”

Ran takes a step in front of me and enforces, “Leave the room or the collar will remain active.”

Not much more is needed to get her from flailing in the air to swimming right next to us, an aggravated, “Fuck! Fine, I’m out!” to follow. She plants her feet on the ground, forcing her fingers close to her neck, and pulls as hard as she can against the thing harming her.

“Ran, I think that’s enough!” I reprimand my partner, attending to Seija’s hands.

She’s too distracted by the pain to really notice me. Ran isn’t stopping, though, why isn’t she..? The collar. She’s touching the collar. I get my hands over Seija’s, trying to remain calm, hoping that she’ll understand the same.

With some patience, and worming my fingers under her clammy palms, she takes notice. She releases a white knuckled grip on the collar, and slowly lowers her arms.

I reproach my partner, “You think maybe you’re taking this too far?! What the hell was that?”

“A warning,” Ran holds firm. “Cooperation would be better than the alternative.”

Seija coughs out a jesting, “Go have fun or else? That’s my kinda time.”

“I hope you realize you’re not helping your case,” I bicker at the numskull.

Ran bangs on the door, “Three out!”

Kaze grunts, his displeasure in the idea being made known through the solid metal door. It took a lot of convincing to get him to go along with this, but I think he still trusts me enough again. It would be good if I could keep that trust.

The prison door opens and we file out, Seija being kept between Ran and I.

“Let me know when things go wrong,” Kaze growls, his arms crossed over his spear.

“Oh, I’m sure the little human would be of so much help,” Seija snickers.

Kaze narrows his eyes at the girl, and retorts, “Why don’t you tell these two when you snuck a metal pick into your cage? Who slammed you back in?”

Seija bares a set of rough teeth at the man, feigning a snarl. It does little to change his mood.

“Is that so?” I openly wonder. “Not– that I thought you were bad at your job, or anything. I’m just having trouble picturing somebody going toe to toe with a Youkai.”

“Do I look built for smooth talking and danmaku, Regis?” he reflects my pointed questioning. “Now get out of here, maybe the elders will figure out what the hell to do with her if I go rattle their heads.”

He continues mumbling to himself as we take our leave, greeting the mid morning sun. Guards at the gate greet passing housewives, coming into the walls to purchase farming supplies, but quickly catch our entourage standing idle just outside the guardhouse. Ran waves them off as a sort of implicit ‘all clear.’ Like Kaze, they fidget with their spears, likely left to worry for the rest of the day as our group leisurely traipses the streets.

Seija walks ahead of us, immediately taking the reigns of the outing. She looks happy to be outside, showing how little she really cared about that stunt a minute ago. The simple act of walking down the street, passerby gawking in fear, puts a smile to her face. Little wonder, too, since I’m sure a lot of Youkai would love this treatment.

She casually strolls through the village, not stopping at any single location for longer than a few seconds before moving on. We’re forced to right many objects that she displaces, most being of little consequence, but for the few shop signs take poorly to being flung upside down we briefly apologize to the owners and continue our pursuit.

As we enter the market area we’re on high alert, waiting for Seija to nick goods of their shelves. We catch her hand a few times with foreign objects, Ran briskly zapping her for the trouble while I return the item to its rightful owner. Seija gives up entirely on larceny once the song and dance become routine. She rebels against our advances in her own small way, still, turning the odd fruit or vegetable over compared to its family. She grimaces at the results. They don’t elicit the same rush as snagging the food off the shelf for her.

We make our way still further around the village, coming more into the housing area, where we find children playing past an alleyway. Likely a secluded spot that they’ve made their own.

Seija looks particularly keen to meet them, her heel thudding as she turns to the alley.

I catch her shirt collar and warn, “You might want to rethink that one. Ran can only set that collar so high before your head pops off.”

As far as I know, that’s a complete fabrication, but a solid enough one to not test. She looks between me and them, considering what would happen if she just ignored me. I release her, having said my piece.

This girl is like so many students that’ve gone through my classes. Being too pushy will make her do what I don’t want her too, but being too timid will also have her doing what I don’t want. It feels like there’s no winning with her. That’s by design, obviously, but hardly a justifying one.

She continues to stare at the children, a lame frown popping up to a wry smile. She lifts her foot up, and…

“Gh!” she emits through her teeth. Her confident step miscarriages, sending her reeling back into Ran. The latter braces her from falling over before pushing back. Seija swivels on a heel to face the thorn in her neck.

“Do not engage with adolescents. The risk of you causing them harm is against all directives,” Ran rationales.

Seija challenges her, “Your directives? We’ve been walking around for a half an hour and all I understand is that your directives are to have me do nothing. You sure you don’t just want me dead?” she seethes.

Ran reflects her heated glare, refusing to argue the assertion.

Seija picks up on this, choosing to taunt, “… Oh, right, you can’t.”

Ran remains still as stone, angry as a gargoyle. Seija’s caught on to that much. If this keeps going what else will she be able to weed out of her? Nothing good, I suppose.

“We should relocate,” I interrupt, lacking any suggestion in my tone. “If being around the village is going to have us bog you down, then it’s better that we aren’t here in the first place.”

She sweeps her face towards mine, aggravating, “Oh I’d love that. Maybe we can stop for tea on the way? I’ll make it for you myself, asshole.”

I back up and raise a hand between us. “I more so meant that you wouldn’t get zapped for doing the same elsewhere… is that fair enough?” I defend.

Her brows furrow. Her lips twitch. And with a click of her tongue, she grouses, “Whatever.” Without another word, she flies off.

Ran apprehends me from behind, launching us into the air to pursue our target. The tiled roofs fall out from under me, shrinking until I have a view of the whole village. We level out with Seija as she travels to the East. There’s no urgency in her speed. In fact, she seems to enjoy the flight as she lounges in the air, facing away from where she’s traveling. She even offers a wagging finger for us to keep following as she descends.

If my bearings are still with me, we’ve flown for about some ten to twenty minutes, so… That forest below is the Forest of Magic, I think? Probably a deep portion of it, too, judging by the thickness of the leaves. The canopy scrapes against us as we follow Seija below.

We emerge to a portion of the forest about as dark as the evening, the glow of various plants and fungi providing more visibility than the absent sunlight. I feel a new paper doll attached to my shoulder, courtesy of Ran. The air is rife with spores and pollen of magical plants seeking shelter from the coming winter. That, combined with the generally invisible miasma of this place, is best to be wary of. Whether it effects me anymore is beside the point.

Lying atop an especially massive fungus is Seija, playing with an oversized snail shell she’s caught in a twister. She flicks a finger on beat, spinning the critter around and around above her head. How it retains height is difficult for me to say, but just as difficult to hand wave as negligible.

Seija herself seems passively taken by the act, staring at the rotating bug as one would stare into a campfire. I stroll next to her, reaching up to gently stop the snail. It takes almost no force to do, despite being as large as a baseball, and the sudden break in motion causes eye stalks to peek out from the shell.

“Now what?” groans a set of jagged teeth. The back of her hand lowers against an eye as she complains, “Don’t want me playing with bugs, neither? It ain’t fun, anyway.”

“That’s not what I’m stopping you for. I just wanted to ask if you were going anywhere from here. You can have the snail back,” I finish, placing the shell and its occupant back into her open palm.

She rolls up on the giant mushroom, shaking a thick cloud of iridescent spores loose from the underside. She tosses up the snail, letting it fall back to her hand a few times before levitating it through some imaginary force.

“You know, I have been thinking of taking something boring from one of the hoarders out here. They’ve got lots of stuff, I’m sure some of it’s bad,” she muses, more to herself than anyone else.

The irony strikes me that she would steal from the little witch, but that’s better left unsaid.

I look at the snail, the ethereal lights of the forest bouncing off of it like a disco ball, and comment, “I don’t condone theft, but you’re not wrong to say they have a lot sitting around. What do you hope to find, specifically?”

Her lips push to the side in thought, answering, “Like I said, something boring. Nothing will do.”

“Right…” I concede with a nod and add the part she doesn’t want to hear, “You realize that we’re not gonna sit idle while you commit burglary, yeah?”

She shoots an eye at me, and slowly stands atop the giant shroom. When she finds stable footing, she taunts, “You realize that I’m always idle, yeah?”

She jumps, curling in on herself to cannonball the fungus. The impact knocks loose a mass of spores, too bright and thick to see through. An improvised smokescreen. I swat at the space above the mushroom, but my arm finds nothing solid. It’s still so thick that the motion does nothing to dissipate the particulates. It takes another several seconds for the smoke to thin, and Seija is nowhere in sight.

She’s taken flight. In a forest we can’t fly out of, no less.

“… Shit,” I curse at my lacking awareness. I should’ve noticed when she rolled on it. Now all that’s left is the snail, shell shocked and agitated.

I turn to my partner, starting, “Ran, do you–?!”

She offers an open hand, shutting me up. It turns over, requesting something be put in it. I feel something slither out from my lower back up through my collar. It traces back to Ran, resting in her palm. She flicks it into her fingers, raising her eyes in place of verbal communication.

I point at it and then to where Seija was sitting. She nods.

“You’re the best, you know that?”

She lets the doll slip back under my shirt, stating, “In addition, the restriction collar is currently set to low. Shall we go after her?”

[x] Well of course. Don’t want her causing trouble unattended.

[x] Maybe we can wait a bit, see what she tries.

[x] Surely we can think of something more ‘boring’ than that. (Write-in)

[x] Maybe we can wait a bit, see what she tries.

I rub my heel in the dirt as I think. We could go after Seija right now, and it would be interesting to see her reaction for how we can pin her down, but I’m thinking otherwise. Letting her do what she wants for a moment can show me what her master plan was. Running from us is one thing, but staying away from us is an entirely different story.

Or rather, staying away from Ran. I contribute little to this equation.

“Let’s hang back,” I decide. “If we keep watch on her from a distance, I think something interesting may happen.”

“Interesting by your metrics are marginally concerning,” Ran retorts, though without a tone of admonition.

“As bad as Seija’s?” I joke, prodding the snail left behind on the mushroom platform. The little critter starts trailing away at mach snail pace.

“You overestimate yourself. Nothing is as reprobate as an amanojaku’s values,” Ran opines.

I chuckle, “I guess we’ll have to see. What direction?”

Ran points to a section of the dark woods, one without signs of tampering. Seija must be better at running away than I expected, there’s no tracks to follow. We take a leisurely pace through the thicket, all manner of ridiculous creature appearing in the corner of my eyes as we pass. We even see Marisa’s mushroom man picking other mushrooms for her, though he seems to have trouble doing so upside down. Any uncertainty I felt in our heading vanishes at the sight.

Sunlight begins to poke through thinner parts of the thicket as we continue following Seija’s path. Whether this means she was making a break straight out of the forest is hard to say, but I can conclude that she’s not intent in staying in the deepest parts.

We continue on, out to the point that the mushrooms start to look plausibly normal, after which Ran arrests my shoulder.

“Approximately fifty meters out,” she states.

“What? We caught up already? What did she find that would have her stop in the forest?” I ponder, swiping away the last of the loose spores from my shirt.

“Unresolvable without empirical inspection. While not as intense as the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, the Forest of Magic is known to disorient those caught within.”

“You can just say you don’t know.”

She retrieves a shikigami from her sleeves, and goes through the process of summoning Chen. The paper glows, it drops to the ground, and a bright flash emits where the cat appears after. A wily smile, cat ears, and two tails all contained in a red tunic, Chen looks as mischievous as ever. She violently shakes her head, forcing herself to attention.

“Chen,” I greet with a curt wave.

She locks eyes with me. “Tanner,” she chirps.

Ran intervenes before any banter can start, “Chen, you have your orders. Pursue post haste.”

“Yes, Lady Ran!” the cat salutes in perfect order. She slinks off, jumping into the trees. The shifting leaves dampen in the distance.

The forest sits in quiet movements, small critters roaming in regular minutiae. Just some five minutes back seems like a completely different world, while I could mistake this for regular forestry. It’s more unsettling, in its own way, that I can stand here and know full well that the magical poisons still linger with the sun shining down on me.

I pace around as we wait, hoping to strip some of my nerves of their authority.

“What did she find?” I wonder aloud, not expecting any answer.

“Tanner,” Ran steals my attention. She holds out a blank paper doll, sweeping its face with her palm. As her hand passes, what was once white now appears with color, moving color. It’s like a video feed, but from what is hard to tell. I hover over it to study.

The colors are dark, but movement can still be made out in frame as two limbs wave into and out of it. I think it’s paws, maybe? The way slices of light travel out leads me to believe this is an animal traveling through foliage.

Still not grasping the exact extent of the video, I ask, “This is..?”

“Chen,” she simply replies.

“You mean… we’re seeing through Chen’s eyes?”

“And speaking to the girl in question!” the paper vibrates out a sharp-tongued response.

I find my lips pursed. “This is a new trick. How come you haven’t used this yet?”

“Because it’s tiring! You try focusing on putting everything you see into a different spot in your brain! Lady Ran, this is a cruel trial to let him of all people speak directly to my mind!”

I point down at Chen’s facsimile, and start, “What does she mean by that? Ran, what does speaking into her mind mean?”

“This shikigami is an extension of the spell that allows this specific telepathic feed. Normally reserved for my own personal use, it would best serve for this purpose at the moment. Chen is well capable of more sensory information than this,” she wards off my concerns.

“I would appreciate not being overclocked,” Chen whines.

I look up to my partner, eyeing her down to question, “And what might that entail?”

She doesn’t have the chance to deny comment, not when the paper bleeds out into white. After a few seconds it dims down to the scene of a white house surrounded by greenery. Chen’s broken through the thicket, but arriving to where? I don’t know much about this area, but this house can only belong to one of a few people. More pressing than that, though…

“Seija is… hiding in there?” I guess.

“Most likely,” Ran surmises.

“Now what? I don’t think it’s a good idea to wander into the doll witch’s house uninvited,” Chen reports, remaining posted on a branch.

“Then we will have to wait,” Ran dictates. “It should not be long for the puppeteer to take notice of her intruder. The aftermath will be the only unknown portion.”

“You think Seija might break her house down to get away?” I conjecture, ascertaining what variables Ran could possibly be tracking.

“No, the larger concern rests with Margatroid. The puppeteer is known to be moody. How she might receive unwanted guests is dependent on her own bias at that moment.”

“And so, what? She might just treat Seija to tea? You realize that’s the logical conclusion of that assertion,” I bicker. It’s still bugging me that she’s holed up in the witch’s house. Why did she not keep running? There’s gotta be more to this, otherwise she’s pigeonholed herself to a dangerous situation worse than what she started with.

… Unless she wanted to do exactly that?

“Tanner. You appear stressed,” Ran points out.

I dissuade her attention, “No, don’t mind me, I’m just thinking about how much I’m beginning to dislike amanojaku.”

“Get in line, old man,” Chen mocks, “everyone wants a piece of that girl.”

Chen’s eyes dart away from the house, landing to a clearly tread pathway through the forest.

“Speaking of which, another victim,” she announces for us.

Chen repositions through the trees, letting us view down the path where one particular woman approaches the house. Short blonde hair, vaguely European attire refurbished to be more doll-like, and a book that is perpetually carried in her arm. This is Alice Margatroid, the third witch of this forest, the one that controls dolls.

Whilst not an impressive sounding ability for magic, the doll accompanying her, dressed in a similar, albeit simpler fashion to its master, carries and entire suitcase thrice its size. And like so many denizens of Gensokyo, even this doll is not bound to the earth below it, gliding by Alice like it were perfectly natural for it to do so.

The duo pass under Chen, our cat following them like she was on the hunt. She fixates on the doll especially, perhaps some baser instinct desiring she pounce it.

Even before they’re out of earshot, Chen comments, “Those things are freaky, no matter how many times I see them. How can a human love them as much as she does?”

“Humans truly are strange, Chen,” Ran admits.

“Wait is there no problem with Chen talking?” I latch onto.

“Telepathic,” Ran reminds me, keeping her focus on the image of Alice as she enters her house.

The door closes, and…

An eruption of activity. Dolls rise from the surrounding grass, patrolling outwards. They lift up from behind an open porch, buzzing around the house in search of a target. Chen’s eyes do their best to keep up with all of the movement, but the army is too multitudinous to track.

“Looks like she found something out of place,” Chen explains for me.

Something about this reasoning strikes me as odd, to which I ask, “Seija took something out of the entryway, you think?”

Ran cuts in for Chen, the girl occupied with evading the horde of dolls now at the trees, “No. Margatroid is a much more organized mage than those you have met. Most likely she felt a doll out of place amongst the filled walls of her house and is now investigating its whereabouts.”

“She can feel her dolls? If she’s so organized, why isn’t it more systematic?”

“There is no way to properly interpret her magic for non-magic users, so the best possible analogy is she can sense the dolls before she can analyze them. Here she felt something off with her home but is in the process of identifying the perpetrator.”

“And when she finds this perpetrator..?”

Ran narrows her eyes at the image of the house, conferring, “As soon as she is able to confirm the anomaly, she will move to a–“

Something blasts open the side of the house, a body ejecting from the site. Chen’s image has no sound, but it’s loud enough that this isn’t an issue. The person projected from the house slams into a nearby tree, when she lands I recognize Seija’s white dress.

“– Combative role,” Ran finishes.

The trees continue rattling from Seija’s impact, the girl herself staggering to her feet. She points to the house, or rather the hole in the house, where Alice steps out into the yard. They begin exchanging words, but we can’t hear what they’re saying.

“They’re bantering to one another,” Chen fills in the gaps. “Pleasantries and all that, too. Oh? Oh, that’s interesting, though. You two should come hear this for yourselves.”

Ran and I meet concerned eyes and break into sprints. I’m unable to keep up with Ran’s pace, but my fifty yard dash is no longer a schoolyard time. Fifteen seconds to catch up to Ran through woodlands. Not too shabby.

We arrive on the opposite side of the building, unable to see the action. Our cat falls from the trees onto my shoulder, commenting, “Look at you, being so gung ho. They haven’t started yet, but it sounds like Seija nabbed something from inside.”

We skirt across the front of the house, ignoring the mass of dolls now sitting idle. They turn their heads our way as we pass, but there’s little need for caution at this point. Rounding the corner, Seija pulls something with her fingers, alerting Alice to danger on her rear. A few dolls converge to impede the threat, but their slow reaction allows another of their kind through, tackling its creator with a… collar?

The doll flies past, stopping next to the miscreant cackling her head off without her collar. Seija, and the doll, flaunt their skirts at the doll master, a finger lowering her eyelid shows off a set of rings adorning her hand.

I didn’t think it would last all day, but she had an easier time than I anticipated getting that collar off. Alice recoils from the collar fixing itself to her, grasping and tugging at it with fingers owning a similar set of rings. Her panic quickly wanes as the seconds pass without any repercussions. What was yanking turns to fiddling as she ends up confused by its purpose.

A doll flies next to her, carrying a pair of scissors fit for needlework, but she gives the thing a shrug, unsure what to make of the situation.

Seija, and her smug grin, deflate at the sight. Alice not only stands but is completely unphased by her trick. Her eyes trail off to the side, where we stand, and radiate a disconcerted frown. I wave back to her welcoming face.

“Well… shit,” she mutters to herself.

Alice turns golden eyes our way as well, focusing on Ran and supposing, “Your handiwork, Miss Ran?” She rattles the collar, tighter than a necktie on her.

“There will need to be more troubleshooting to assure that it cannot be trivially severed by a magician’s implements,” Ran all but confirms.

“Don’t bother, I don’t need more challenges than I already have.”

Alice swivels on a heel to face her opponent, eyes tightening just short of scornful, and raises her free hand. The dolls return to her flank, wielding a variety of medieval weaponry, and she declares, “Perhaps you need to be scolded with more than a simple danmaku match, amanojaku. No, you probably require a bruise or two for your trouble.”

Seija heels at the threat, beggaring, “Now, hang on, I’m all about close combat, you know. Really terrible at it and–“

She ducks, dodging the miniature lance of the one of the dolls. Hers punches the aggressor back, disarming the former. The two partake in fisticuffs as the rest of the army assaults Seija at Alice’s command. To call what Seija does fighting would be an insult to everything I’ve experienced in Gensokyo thus far. No, this is outright fleeing. Would she be able to hold her ground? I’m left unsure, as her desperation to avoid everything Alice throws at her is like watching a leaf be carried in the wind.

Not to say that I would fare better, because what Alice is doing would be considered domestic terrorism in any urban area, and I’m not trained for that level of bullshit. Dolls that fire bullets. Dolls that sweep and cut at their opponent. Dolls that fire lasers. Hell, dolls that explode. Did she go wrong at some point in her career in doll making? They appear so cute but are capable of such violence.

Speaking of, Seija’s doll seems to have lost its head. Its long blonde hair flaps across the ground as Alice’s champion mounts a foot atop the remaining body.

“Think we’ll be waiting a while?” I cross my arms and ask my companions.

“Yeah, you ain’t getting notes from this, huh?” Chen muses, encroaching down to my forearms.

“Some ten to fifteen minutes, give or take. Margatroid requires probable suspicion that her opponent will not fight back,” Ran estimates.

Seija dives back into the house, likely assuming Alice will reserve her destructive path for its sanctity. Her hopes are dashed as several of the lancer dolls shoot straight through the remaining boards. Seija’s voice can be heard from inside, prompting further assault from swords-dolls.

Chen purrs, “Keep going like this and it’ll be easy to get that brat back in the cage.”

I look down at the little solicitor and retort, “Hey, kettle, she’s barely been outside for two hours. You can’t be serious about bringing her back already.”

“Regis, consider what she has accomplished within those two hours,” Ran chides, leaving any lecturing idea stillborn. She monitors the fight in front of us, no longer paying me mind.

If I have it right, this is her way of saying this is an exercise left to the reader, not that it’s a particularly difficult list to conjure. For as brief a time as we’ve been out, Seija has done things that better define her. Little acts that show her obsessions, her focuses, and big acts that show her intents and ideas.

I play off of her deferral, and counter, “Be that as it may, it is terrible to send her back after promises of a full day out.”

Ran’s visage cracks a smile at the pontificating, now debating, “Her nature as an amanojaku, who would assent to being treated with disdain, set aside, there are extraneous concerns to her continued venture. Mentions of the word ‘danger’ seem to not sway you as they should, so instead I shall bring up your foreign terminology, ‘rocking the boat.’”

“So you’ll make an executive decision?”

She lilts, “Correct… but…” A rustle in the tassels of her hat, and a sharp breath snuck away from me, betrays some regret in that additional word. This garners her a glance from the cat in my arms, too. I can’t even begin to fathom her mind when she finishes, “I would like to know your opinion on the matter.”

“Mine?” I consider. Though a responsible answer is obvious, my true thoughts on the matter are…

[x] Seija’s too dangerous to people around her, and even herself if left to her own devices.

[x] Seija is just as normal as any other Gensokyan. Why she gets the different treatment is beyond me.

[x] Something a little more nuanced. (Write-in)

[x] Seija is just as normal as any other Gensokyan. Why she gets the different treatment is beyond me.

“Is this some sort of test, Ran?” I prod. “The day is far from over, and we’ll see Seija plenty more.”

“A Youkai’s riddles are not made in the intent of insult. Do not disparage it as such,” she deflects. A finger lifts out from her sleeve, pointing at Seija. The girl is still fleeing from Alice, but here and there I see her attempt something with the strings tied to her knuckles. The doll she conscripted is lying limp on the ground, likely having its own connection to her severed. Then what is she–?

Chen jumps from my arms, morphing from the diminutive cat to a human, and skirts to the outside of Seija and Alice’s scuffle. She doesn’t act from there, simply observes.

I side eye my partner and query, “Something wrong?”

“Potentially. She is reassurance, not the solution.”

“But you question…”

“Yes?”

I pause for several moments. She’s asking me, but she also already said the answer doesn’t matter to her. What’s her reasoning, here? A Youkai’s riddle? Something in confidence? And even besides that, how the hell do I explain this without sounding like a total anarchist?

“Ran.”

Golden hair turns in my periphery. This time, I point at the group.

“What do you see there?”

“Chen, Alice Margatroid and Seija Kijin in conflict with one another. Chen is ordered to take out Kijin at an opportunistic moment, not interfere with Margatroid’s advance. You are to say this summarization is inaccurate?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. To me, I see three girls causing a ruckus, for lack of better phrasing. A common sight in Gensokyo, from what I’ve learned.”

“This is to answer my previous question?” Ran asks, tilting her head further into my vision.

I grunt, “Not exactly. What I’m thinking is… this is normal. Isn’t this what Gensokyo is all about? Troublemakers making trouble? I don’t see how Seija is any different from the rest. More than that, I don’t see her being someone that could rock the boat. From what I’ve read in the papers, she was only really a bigwig one time.”

Ran stays quiet and I look over to see why. Her eyes are closed, an air of thought holding her. She raises a hand to her chin and comments, “Mm. Perhaps further examination is in order. What do you believe the ultimate goal of an amanojaku is?”

“The what? Ultimate goal?”

“Indeed. The ideal state or environment for which an amanojaku can exist.”

“… That sounds like a trick question,” I note.

“How so?” Ran quips, almost amused by my pointed calling.

“Amanojaku are self contradicting. Are you going to tell me that it goes beyond just their speech or their preferences? It’s something more?”

Ran’s eyes open, tracking Seija with a keen focus as she says a single word, “Inexistence.”

… My brows tighten in confusion, head shaking in a false start as I unpack the riddle. I look over at Seija as well and state the obvious, “But she’s alive. Like, as a living being. Wouldn’t that mean–“

She nods, “A paradox. Correct. As you stated, amanojaku are self contradicting.”

“And that’s why you’re happier throwing her back into confinement?” I surmise.

“It is not a debate of joy, Tanner. It is a debate of necessary control.” She raises her hand, flicking a finger to signal Chen. Chen’s ears twitch in response and she creeps towards the fight. Neither combatant takes notice of the girl in red, preoccupied with hurling and deflecting sentient dolls at one another.

I get a start at this, “That can’t be true, can it? I realize Youkai don’t always make sense but for an entire species to basically be nihilistic?”

“It is not a question Gensokyo has the capacity for formulating a solution to. The point, if there is one, is that amanojaku cannot be trusted to any extent. The sole reason you may describe her actions as ‘trouble’ and not as ‘existentially dangerous’ is due to a lack of means, not a lack of motivation,” Ran concludes, self-assured in her evaluations. She’s so serious about this topic, but instead of feeling worried for Seija I’m instead wondering… what makes Ran so sure this is all true?

A loud bang sounds from the fight. This is no different from the previous hundred in the last few minutes, except for the silence that follows. Ran’s eyes widen at the showing. I whip back to the scene where Seija and Alice are at a standstill, burns covering their dresses.

Wait, both of them? Seija hadn’t landed a hit last I saw. Hell, she wasn’t even trying to fight back. The loose puppet strings reach out in Alice’s direction, glistening trails tied to every one of her dolls. What impact this has, I’m unsure. It was enough to halt their immediate aggression is what’s important.

“You’re real creative, using the same trick over and over again. You should be less surprised, though,” Seija taunts the puppeteer.

“What just happened?” I openly mumble.

“Kijin is using stolen puppet strings to tether the dolls. Several were primed for detonating on her position before being tossed at Margatroid,” Ran reports.

In just minutes? She figured out how to contest control in just minutes?

Alice directs one brave soldier to charge down the Youkai, a dangerous fume coming from its back. Seija lashes at her tether, tugging the soldier from the air. It circles her body, overlapping the opposing strings, and once its trajectory is in line with Alice, the doll detaches from the strings.

Alice hurls an open string to intercept the doll… or rather, the projectile grenade. The fumes haven’t stopped pouring out of it, and it continues to hurtle her way. The string attaches to the doll, but seems to have no bearing on its flight. As a final measure, Alice walls herself with several more of her legion, using their bodies to shield against the first.

The instant the dolls collide the smoking one bursts, a bright fireball engulfing the witch and her creations for a split second. It passes over her, leaving no visible damage, but the same can’t be said for the dolls she used for protection. They’ve become unrecognizable, smoldering piles of flying cloth, wood, and plastic.

Alice harrumphs, Seija’s subversion causing a shift in the dynamic. She’s about to say something to her opponent, but angles her eyes to the ground. Seija has been firmly grounded and detained by Chen, barely able to struggle against Chen’s absurd grappling power.

Ran and I decide it should be safe to approach at this time. Alice is too busy tearing into Seija to notice our presence next to her. She also doesn’t seem to question Chen’s involvement.

“And maybe consider not breaking into someone’s home when you must hide somewhere? You should consider yourself lucky that I was in a good enough mood to humor your antics. Tying you up would have been a much simpler matter if I’d decided to,” the magician gloats over her… win? I suppose she didn’t lose, so it’s a win for her by default.

I look back up at the house. House is a poor way to describe the Swiss cheese I’m looking at, though. The only thing this could be considered a shelter for is kicked up dirt. Certainly nothing living.

I tap Alice on the shoulder, pointing at the more pressing matter of the scene.

She glances at it and turns back to reply, “Is there a problem? It looks quite usual to its state after any combat.”

“You do that to your house every time?” I ask, too taken aback to properly question her sanity.

“It’s of no matter to repair,” she dismisses offhandedly. “More critical is the presence of an intruder. I do not tolerate such things.”

… But… one of the other witches is a common burglar..?

My mental capacity is already at its limit discussing ethics with Ran and dealing with Seija’s… everything.

Ran and I bid the magician a good day restoring her house, the dolls proudly scrambling at her command to begin construction work. She had no downtime between getting assaulted and building her home, huh? I can’t put my finger on how, but that magician isn’t like the others I’ve met.

“So, where to now?” Seija coyly remarks. “Maybe the underground? What about Heaven? Oh! Or maybe the– Ach!”

Ran tightens her arms together on her back, securing the limbs against her body.

Seija chuckles through the pain, “… Mmm, metal cage, then? My favorite.”

“You’re really not helping her mood, you know,” I disparage the two of them equally. The double meaning doesn’t look to be lost on them when each gives me a look of contempt.

Ran takes the time to properly bind Seija, leaving me to gaze at the barrage of dolls at play. With a few extra minutes she apprehends the puppeteering rings from her fingers, handing them over to me for safe holding. They’re clearly magical, as Seija demonstrated for us, but I can’t detect a hint of anything extraordinary about them.

I fruitlessly try to get Alice’s attention to hand them back, but to no avail. I decide its at least better to hold onto them instead of leaving them on the ground. I don’t even consider going into the doll construction site. The place is like a hurricane of materials with Alice at the center.

“Not even gonna say goodbye? Well aren’t you unsavory,” Seija mocks.

I stifle a chuckle. Chen hollers without reserve. Despite her casual nature, there is no helping Seija’s image from the way Ran is carrying her. Hauled from her tied up arms, legs stiffly bent together, the girl is more like a bag hanging from Ran’s hand.

Our humors are dashed when Ran gestures out into the forest. “Now is the appropriate time to egress,” she commands.

I raise a hand to the open sky above us, questioning, “We can’t just fly out? In this giant clearing?”

“No. It is time to walk,” she dryly repeats, leading the way ahead.

Chen and I fall in behind her on peaceful walk through the more mundane sections of the forest. I’m unsure where we are gonna end up on the other side, but that matters little with Ran around.

No, what matters more is two things. My boredom, and my curiosity. Incessant detriments to a long life.

“Seija?” I call out to the luggage.

She grunts back, “Shut up. I’m enjoying the peace and quiet in the forest.”

“Is that to say you hate the quiet?”

“Think for yourself, I’m not telling,” she bites back. Ran jostles her when she starts to swing.

I ignore the two’s following bickering and get back to the point, “No, but really, Ran and I were going back and forth on this a bit ago: do you consider yourself dangerous?”

“No? Duh,” is her curtailed response. No elaboration, no scorning the question, just the answer. A rarity for her.

“Seriously? It’s that simple?”

“I mean, I could say yes and really throw you off. You know what, that’s more fun, so yes, I’m dangerous,” she muses, grinning up at the fox carrying her.

“Not all that surprising, hearing it from her directly,” Chen wiles at the amanojaku, marching beside her master. “She would want us to think that she’s a bigger problem than she actually is. It’s cute, really.”

Seija growls at the little brat, nearly literally biting at her, “Why don’t you try saying that again after I skin you, cat?!”

An insipid giggle follows the threat, “Meaning that you aren’t planning to!”

“Fuck off.”

Ran slaps a paper dolls from her open hand onto Seija’s mouth. “Provocations are not productive to civility. Consider doing the opposite, as you so enjoy,” she scolds. I hear her sigh in relief over Seija’s grumbles.

Natures ambiance fills the woods as we walk, the cool air mixing with colors of fall on the path back. A pleasant change from the once scalding summer heat amidst green canopies. Now if only I wasn’t walking through it for hours with a thin white shirt. I’ll have to think about warmer clothes soon.

On reaching the jailhouse, we find Kazegou already back at his post, guarding an empty cell. Ran drops Seija unceremoniously, letting the guard inspect the miscreant… more disappointment than surprise on his face.

“It’s barely evening. It was that short lived?” he ponders to the venerable fox and her bounty.

“Less. More time was used walking.”

Kaze prods the butt of his spear in Seija’s cheek. “Figures,” he drawls. Standing from his stool, he grabs Seija in the same fashion Ran carried her in, rustling the nonplussed girl for a reaction. “Not even a snarl? No sounds like a wild dog? Your spirit isn’t broken, is it? Gods forbid something good happens for once.” His eyes roll at the lack of enmity, and opens the secure door for us.

Ran is about to step in, but I grab her arm demanding, “We need to talk, first.”

Her mouth opens and pauses just short of telling me off for my attitude. Thankfully, she changes her mind and assents to my request, waving Kaze into the cell without us. The three of us wander back outside, and around the building to an alley. Chen remains close by, paws tapping on the overlapping roof tiles. She’s a little minx for sticking around this long, and if I had to guess I’d say she was entertained by Seija’s suffering. But that seems to go for everyone.

I look down at Ran, and start, “What you were talking about earlier. What was that?”

“Earlier? Do you refer to the dialogue at Margatroid’s residence?”

“Yeah, you said that amanojaku are all about inexistence, but that conclusion is… hard to believe.”

Ran stands a little taller, attempting to impress her ideas on the matter to me, “In what respect is it difficult to believe? The paradox of the species is stated in the most simplified possible terms. They like what others despise, value what others resent.”

“Why does that sound like you are talking about more than just Seija?”

“Because she is a singular amanojaku. There are more. Were more,” Ran corrects me… and herself. “The amanojaku were a Youkai that no other could bond with, but they also lacked strength to defend their malignant ways. Including from themselves.”

It occurs to me now that this is a history lesson, one from a time I couldn’t begin to imagine. I parse the end of the story, “And so they all died..?”

“With one known exception,” Ran deliberates. “Others may be somewhere, but they are as of yet unknown. Unknowns are not important when they are outside of Gensokyo. What is important is the turmoil they represent, embody, and preserve when they are present. Seija Kijin is that presence.”

“But you’re telling me this only now? Seija is basically doomed to self destruction in your eyes and that’s just the way of the world?!” my voice raises.

Ran grabs my shoulder and holds it firm. Her eyebrows have stiffened, and a stonier voice reassures me, “It is better her than the collateral she may cause. Lady Yukari herself even considered wiping her from Gensokyo entirely. I still do not understand why she did not.”

I clasp her forearm, challenging in whatever coherency I can, “You can’t just..! What right do you have to even say that?!”

“The protection of Gensokyo. There is no higher right, in my eyes. And even if you may disagree, understand. Amanojaku are not worth risking anything more than absolutely necessary.”

She releases the pressure from my shoulder, my heart pounding into the constricted veins. She slips her arm away from me, and walks off, leaving me to stew in my own thoughts.

She’s always saying her damn piece without giving me the time to rebuttal. Hell, my thoughts are still all over the place, far from rebuttaling. I head back in, using the precious seconds to mull over my thoughts once more. What I said before, against what Ran said now. No, more than that...

What everyone has been telling me from the start, including Seija herself, is something I don’t agree with. If my job is to observe and report, then I’m going to do my gods damned best to analyze what I’m looking at, and right now what I see is something everyone tells me is wrong. They say what is itself impossible in my mind. I need some way to experiment which one trumps the other. Though I may already have something lined up.

Kazegou breaks the door open for Ran and I, and we take our positions in the prison room. With a wave, Ran releases the girl from her bindings, sending a barrage of shikigami dolls returning to her sleeves.

Seija sprawls on the floor for several seconds, a sense of sloth overcoming her limited freedom. She rolls up and stretches her limbs. Muscles, tendons, anything she can find stiffened. I spend this time she’s meandering to draw some diagrams in my notebook.

I present the book to her, “Here, Seija, you might find this of interest.”

“Huh? More legitimate promises?” she stabs.

I brush off the comment, “No, a coordinate axis, a simple tool for vector analysis. I think it’s time you learned about this.”

[Please wait warmly as girl is learning…]

[Continued…]

Question: what does Seija’s power do, exactly? I do not refer to her inexplicable ability to pick up someone else’s tool and somehow use it like her own. No, I mean her actual magical ability: turning things over. It sounds so mundane, but those are usually the ones I find most interesting.

In my efforts to answer this question, among other… ulterior motives, I’ve started teaching Seija a number of mathematical principles that might help expand her creative faculties in this subject. Coordinate axis, coordinate basis, coordinate transformations, basis vectors, everything I can conjure from my dusty knowledge is crammed into her brain.

While she may not retain even ten percent of what I say, anything that sticks is another step in the direction I want. And it is a want of my own, selfish as can be. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that Ran and Seija have both caught on by the end of the first day.

Hell, the possibility is completely wiped away when I start discussing rotational values stemming from trigonometry on the start of the second day. It doesn’t help that I begin to notice objects in Seija’s cell shift around overnight. The futon thrust to a different wall, significant clumps of dirt, still remaining from my first day excursion, creating crop circles on the metal floor, even the hanging Daruma doll changes its vantage point.

Ran finds no room for complaints, as I haven’t necessarily broken any of our initial agreement. It’s been tricky, but I have managed to avoid any mention of mirror transformations in all of my ramblings, and I never cared for chemistry related topics to begin with. Rotations should suffice for all of my purposes, though. If I’m right, and what we observe in Seija’s cell continues to progress, she’ll have the edge needed to properly challenge people with her power alone. When she comes to realize this, I’ll be close by to see what hides under all of her pomp.

Until then, Ran keeps a steady eye on us, enough to dissuade Seija from trying anything too adventurous. In fact, progress on most other aspects grinds to a halt for the rest of the week. A willingness to convene in questionable dealings stunted by more responsible heads. That I’m afforded this leeway to begin with should be counted as a blessing, so I’m not much to complain.

The last day of trading education for personal information seems to run like a dull blade, wishing to pierce skin with its tension but prevented by a slow draw.

Now, several days later, I sit at my desk with only muscle-deep information about the girl. I feel like I could’ve gone to the bone, if not the very marrow, but Ran held me from doing so.

I stop striking the keys of the typewriter, a lapse in concentration as the thought takes me on this dreary autumn day. It’s probably for the best that Ran is stopping me from indulging in my curiosity. It’s like she’s become my default safety net against the dangers it might present.

My fingers feel cramped, typing at the keys for several hours straight without rest. Still so much to do, but I should stop for a moment. Make some tea or something. I rise from my desk and head for the kitchen. It surprises me to see Keine sitting at the living room table.

“Did I miss you coming back? What time is it?” I gasp, shocked at my own lack of sense.

She looks up and over from a book, staring at me with obvious concern, before jutting her eyes over to her hat, enshrined on its home shelf. “Is that enough of an answer?”

I grunt in response, “I think so. Sadly, that means I never even had lunch. Or drank any water, for that matter.” I continue into the kitchen, listlessly preparing a kettle and fire to make tea. Didn’t care for tea, was more about coffee. Still more about coffee, but I think the Scarlet Devil Mansion is the single place I’ve seen it since coming to Gensokyo. Real shame, that.

“Writing Seija’s report has you that engrossed? I’m surprised you found her so interesting,” Keine’s muffled voice says from behind the screen door.

I sniff at the statement and retort, “You don’t? She’s like a well of weird questions I hadn’t thought to ask until now.”

I hear the door slide and a hand settles to my shoulder. Keine slides up next to me. “What sorts of questions? There’s a lot that you could ask, but might not be good to,” she muses, leaning into me as we stare at the kettle.

“So you remind me every week. And it really isn’t anything, just those mundane questions that were probably brought up so many years ago. What makes one person that starts an incident dangerous where another isn’t? What is the status quo for Youkai?” I ponder, expecting no answer from her.

“… So you are sympathetic to that amanojaku,” she concludes.

A snort escapes my airway as I joke, “Did the big bad fox tattle on me?”

She tilts in front of me, and pats my cheek, “No, Tanner, I simply paid attention to what you were doing. Not everything revolves around you and her.”

“Fair enough…” I drawl, letting the soft flame carry the sound of the conversation. A few moments pass until the kettle comes to steam. As I’m adding the dried leaves I nearly stutter when asking, “Does it bug you?”

She holds a thought, pensive to share it, but relents, “Everything bugs me, Tanner. You of all people should know that.”

“Right… sorry.” I fetch two cups from the overhead chest.

“… Wait, no, I don’t mean to…” she doubles back, drifting away from me. I pour the cups as she tries to compose a more coherent thought, and hand one over to her. “Thank you. And… I’m sorry as well, that was uncalled for.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I shirk off. “You’re always too stressed for me to hold it against you.”

“Well that certainly boosts my confidence,” she sarcastically accepts.

We return to the living room table with our cups in hand, and sit across from one another. She returns to her book, testing the temperature of her tea every here and there, while I review my notes. I often wonder if my notes are legible to anyone else, if not completely recognizable as language. I mean, I can barely make out my own scrawls just a few days after the fact.

I sip from my cup, the earthy flavor not settling on my palette pleasantly, but still better than regular water. This sort of peace always comes following the field work. While a part of me feels like such meandering days are dull, another part remembers that this is what should be considered normal in all regards.

Keine lifts her cup, confident the temperature has finally settled, but is interrupted by a clattering, rushed sound. A knock at the door, and by someone in a hurry. She sets down her leisurely activities with similar haste and makes for the door.

I shuffle about, trying to get a view of who’s there as she opens it.

The evening shadows cover a man in armor, that of the village guards’, as he stands panting. His breathing makes him sound like he could go out at any second. Keine put a hand to his shoulder, worried first for his health before anything else. The man, thinly built for a guard, rasps out a moment’s pause alongside a signaling hand.

Half a minute later, he stands tall to announce with torn breath, “Miss Kamishirasawa, the amanojaku escaped!”

Keine looks at him for a moment. While I can’t see her face, I can imagine the steepled eyebrows she so often brandishes at me when she says, “I suppose it was only a matter of time until she found a way?”

This, in turn, equally confounds the guardsman. “… Ma’am, you don’t… look very disturbed by this news.”

Her voice hardens, imposing the counterargument, “Should I be? I don’t see what help that will be to you if I’m up in arms.”

“R-right, sorry, ma’am.”

“Now state your purpose for informing me.”

The man elaborates as ordered, “The amanojaku has escaped and the guard is in pursuit to recapture her, but we do not yet know how she escaped!”

“And so you wish to know how she did so, is that correct?”

“… If you could please help us, miss Kamishirasawa,” the man looks ready to crumble when the question leaves his lips. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look this nervous around Keine.

“Haah…” she openly sighs. “If you continue acting like a child that needs the help of his teacher, you won’t appear like the strong and reliable guardsman you are. I cannot coddle you all at all times, you realize.”

“… S-sorry, ma’am.”

Keine shakes her head, a more beleaguered sigh escaping her lips, as she shoos off the guard, “I know where to go so join the efforts in finding that girl. And please, retreat if anyone should get hurt. Your lives are worth so much more than putting an amanojaku in their temporary cage.”

“Ma’am!” the man almost yells before bolting in the opposite direction. A sudden quietude washes over the room now that he isn’t filling the air.

“Real commanding officer you are,” I rib.

“You’re coming too, my wakadoshiyori,” she demands, moving quickly to snatch her hat from its shelf. “I despise gambling, but would it be a safe bet to think you have something to do with this ruckus?”

I lean back into the table, really gushing out a level of coyness meant for theater, “What? Me? Why, I’d never have anything to do with something so nefarious.”

A sly smile crosses her face. She pulls me up by my arm, directing us to the door with the proclamation, “Put your shoes on, young man. We should see what damages you caused.”

We walk through the streets with a purpose, evening crowds doing nothing to abate our trail. Soon enough, we break through the liveliest sections of houses and bars to approach the jailhouse. The building from the front looks to be in fine condition, so we head in immediately.

Stepping inside, nothing seems to be out of place, aside from a close to empty rack of weapons, where before a number of bladed tools and even firearms lay. Keine and I take conservative steps to the back of the room, inspecting every inch for something out of place. When nothing catches our eye, we break open the door to the cell.

Inside looks to be no different than usual at first, the metal walls all sitting as sturdy as they should be, the bars thick as arms, and even the door has been closed. What is different is the lack of a certain occupant.

“You really thought this would be a temporary cell?” I question Keine’s earlier choice of words.

“We both see the lack of a Youkai inside, Tanner. I do not think I need to give you more reason,” she argues back, crouching down to sift through scattered clods of dirt. “What in the world is all of this dirt doing here?”

“Ah, well…” I mumble, wasting my mental faculties on what plausible lie I could explain this with. Nothing seems to come together, and so I concede, “I brought this in. Used it as a prank on Seija.”

“A prank?” Keine repeats, looking up at me with the most quizzical look I’ve ever seen her give. “You gifted a girl dirt?”

“Listen, I was thinking outside the box,” I defend myself. “It wasn’t my only gift, though. I gave her a Daruma doll as a show of good will,” I further, pointing at the cell’s ceiling.

Keine and I look inside the bars, inspecting the interior’s contents. Futon, dirt, cloth tightened to a rope on the ceiling, but no Daruma.

“But she left it there this whole time,” I pout.

“Where should this doll be?” Keine instructs, more focused on the investigation than my misgivings. I point up at the thin cloth, motioning at the empty loop is still has. “Then we can assume she took it with her…” Keine asserts.

“A statement that she’s not planning on coming back?” I conjecture, walking over to the cell’s door to check the cloth.

The bars rattle with a bit of effort. “What the–?” I gasp, getting no clearance whatsoever. “Is this locked?”

Keine skirts over to me, starting, “What, why would it be–?” She tugs at the door as well, getting no more than I do out of it. She stops once the clattering of metal fills the room. “There’s no reason it should be closed. The guard on duty would have left to fetch his brothers as soon as he entered.”

“Knowing it was still Kazegou on duty, that’s probably what happened. But… that would mean Seija locked it?” I figure, looking back at my second set of eyes.

She paces back and forth for a moment before yielding, “If not her, who? Is it something sensible for her to do?”

“It’s Seija, so instead of leaving it open as a bold declaration of her escape, she closed it. Still… how’d she get the key off Kaze?”

“That child, always so impossible,” Keine grunts for both of us.

“Regis,” a voice pricks my ears. A familiar, vulpine voice. “Can you hear me?”

I search around, baffled that I couldn’t sense her approach in the slightest. “Ran?” I call out. “Where the hell are you? Not to mention where the hell have you been? Seija’s gotten out.”

“Look inward if you do not know why that is,” she stabs, a bit of venom on her tongue. I feel her trusty surveillance doll sneak out from my collar and nestle into my hand. “This communication method is for emergencies only, as the doll does not have long to function as such. Listen carefully and do not interrupt.”

Keine and I stay silent, understanding that Ran wouldn’t be this intense without reason.

The doll vibrates in my hand, projecting greater volume, “I have been investigating Kijin’s whereabouts as of this afternoon. She eluded the guard during a routine meal preparation. There is no evidence as to how she accomplished this, but that will need to wait for a later time. At this moment she has arrested objects from the antiques shop, Kourindou, including and most importantly a blade.”

“What?!” Keine interjects. She snags the doll from me, snarling, “How did she find it?! You said it was hidden somewhere no one would find it!”

“Ah, Kamishirasawa, excellent,” Ran calmly assesses my company. “Little more explanation is needed, in that case. All communications are hereby cutting out to redirect resources.”

Despite giving it a few moments, no further response comes from the doll, now cut off from its master. Keine crumples the article in her hand. She holds it, shaking. She contains her voice, but even without it I can practically hear the fire from her grimace.

I gently put my hand over hers, noticing pale white in her knuckles. My token attempt to calm her shows little results, at most staying her wild shivers to steady shakes. Without context I can do little to balm whatever just happened.

She strips her hand away from mine, tossing the paper off to the side and storming out of the building. As she exits the front, I hear her guttural war cry, shouting the sole name, “YAKUMO!”

She jumps out of sight without a word, nor explanation. One blade could send her into a frenzy like that? Something must have gone horribly wrong. Something I’m not privy to.

I don’t think Ran expected this would happen, as now I need to put the pieces together myself. Including where the fuck everyone’s going. And… how much of a mess I’ve gotten us all into.

[x] Investigate the jailhouse further, there may still be clues.

[x] Time to put Chen’s tracking instructions to good use again.

[x] Something else that might find them. (Write-in)

[x] Investigate the jailhouse further, there may still be clues.

This is no time to worry about something I’ve yet to find; there’s an order of operations to these things. In this case, I first need to find how Seija broke out, then I can worry about where they all went.

First, what was her method of exit?

The cell door, or rather the door into the actual cell and not the heavy metal door out of the room, doesn’t appear to have any external damage. No scratches around the lock. The bars are not bent. If she went through here it would have been with a key.

Are there other options that seem plausible?

The only other ways out of the room are the bars themselves and the window in the back. That window is too small to fit a body through, even one as thin as Seija’s. Of course, that isn’t even taking into account the bars in the opening. If she were to get through them she would have to place them back afterwards. That seems like too much work for her to bother.

So… the cell door. How did she open it? And how did she lock it again after? The key, obviously. The heavy, rounded metal key that Kazegou usually has on his person. He’s not here for me to ask, but I’d assume he doesn’t let it leave him for any reason while he’s on duty, so that makes it simple for Seija. Well, simple in that she knows where it was, approximately. The real problem is how to get it off of Kaze, then.

He needs to bring her food twice a day. I saw him do it once, and he was uncharacteristically meticulous in the act. His back never even faced her. There shouldn’t have been any opportunity for her to filch it from him. But if she didn’t pickpocket it..?

I look between the bars, inside the cell. Something itches at the back of my mind, but I can’t quite explain what. I gaze into the shapes of dirt, systematically spread into a canvas as wide as the available floor.

Every inch is drawn in, with the rare sighting of a footprint to break the patterns.

These patterns consist of circles… more circles. Some arcs… A line? I wipe my palms against my eyes, hoping I’m not seeing straight. Even through now bleary vision, though, a line persists amongst the many drawings in the dirt. At the back of the cell, up against the wall and perhaps in attempt to hide it, a line stands out amongst the shapes. The futon is against the left wall, so perhaps it was made from moving that by hand?

No, that can’t be. The line breaks through an assembly of overlapping circles and arcs, meaning it happened after they were drawn.

How could she possibly make such a shape? I only taught her how to rotate things.

… No, there’s multiple ways she could accomplish this, but for now I’ll have to run under the assumption that this isn’t some form of trick. Seija, somehow, someway, can move objects in straight lines. That isn’t good, and I’d rather not believe it, but that’s likely how she got the key off of Kazegou.

Did she do it while he was sitting in front of the heavy door? There’s a small window in the dividing door that the key could fit through, but that would mean she could manipulate the key without even seeing it or its exact location. Not an idea I want to play with.

No, I’ll assume she snuck it off of him when he had to present her food. The key is only to the cell itself and not the door out, so it’s possible he didn’t notice after he left. While he may be alert, I doubt Kazegou would notice an object leaving his back pocket of its own volition.

But with that assumption in mind, did he find out Seija was out of her cell because he checked the key or only when he had to next present her food? It would have to be when he first went to get food, just this morning. That would fall in line with Ran’s report of following Seija for a while, not to mention the little minx robbing Kourindou for gods know what purpose.

As for the cell door itself… Why did she lock it? I guess she wanted to? Something as nonsensical as that would be precisely her modus operandi. A sort of signature of work. But something doesn’t sit right with me…

My gaze slides from the closed bars back to that open hole of a window. That conspicuous, open hole.

I step out of the jailhouse entirely to skirt across the front, ignoring an onset of rain that had been threatening to come for hours now. Through the closest alley I find a division from the jailhouse and its rear neighbor. I slowly sidle into the tight space, normally shaded in clear skies, but pitch dark in this rain. Guesstimating the spot just under the barred window, I begin to fumble along the ground for any solid objects amidst moistened dirt and dust.

Something bumps at my hand, too massive to get shoved away in the collision. The heavy metal key to the cell. She left it here after all? Not that I should be surprised by my own hunch, but still, it’s strange. I don’t think anyone but I would have found this here, at least not on the same day she escaped. A sort of challenge, or am I reading too deeply into her nonsense?

I stow the key in my pocket and make my way back in, taking brief respite from the rain.

I think I’ve covered everything inside the jailhouse, but now to think about outside of it. Where’d Seija go? It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of everything without my notebook. Somehow I didn’t think I’d need it, but now I feel practically naked without it and my backpack. Hardly necessary items, but they’ve become fixtures on my person for so much of my ‘fieldwork’ that it’s stranger to not have them nearby.

I glance around the rooms for a fresh set of ideas. The empty wall of weapons reminds me that much of the village guard is currently chasing after Seija. To cobble together that many men, there must have been a positive sighting of where she went.

So nearby, even if by flight. That should rule out the Youkai Mountain, among many other places. The Scarlet Devil Mansion is suicidal and the guards wouldn’t follow her there. Same for the garden of the sun. After narrowing down the list, I’m left with a familiar, and rather obvious, locale. Somewhere she would go to lose someone without being lost herself.

I begin my arduous jog from the jailhouse to the forest of magic, by no means a marathon, but also not around the block. This is no time to think about the distance, nor how fatigued I’ll be when I get there. I just need to catch up with everyone. Through blinding sprays of rain, chilled by the autumn overcast, I run. There are no people out in this drear, nor any animals to sound off over the soft din. The trip is isolating, without anything to keep my mind occupied from its worries.

Once the trees start to clump together a little tighter I can tell that I’m approaching the outskirts of the forest. Just how deep did they all go, I wonder?

Scrapes in the wood and branches suggest the group of guards came through here. The marks spread out wide enough for me to further assume they fanned out with very little caution. I traipse through this general bearing, crossing my fingers that it doesn’t shoot off somewhere else entirely.

Around a minute down the trail I spot something in a crook of trees, largely hidden from sight. On approach I find one of the village guards, a man in a light set of armor. He’s out cold, nestled here for what trivial protection from the elements can be provided. That said, it’s just him. Just the one guy.

Where are the rest?

I don’t expect to find the answer here, and so I continue inwards, assured that I’m going the right way.

As the canopy above thickens, for whatever reason, I feel as if the miasma of the forest is mixing into my breath. Logically I chalk it up to paranoia. The miasma is not a physical gas as I understand it, it’s not matter by any account, and exists outside of mundane senses. Even so, I can’t scrape away this falsely sour taste in my mouth.

The forest darkens still. Visibility was already diminished from the rain and clouds, but in here I might as well be in a cave. The only light provided is from bioluminescence, that of bugs, flora, and, of course, mushrooms. Navigation is now a wish before it’s a method, and I can only wonder if I’m lost for some time.

Through a dense set of brush the trail ends. Soldiers, and their weapons, dot an open area, the place lit by both the forest and lanterns. None of the men remain standing from whatever transpired. White hair shines in the middle, reflecting every color imaginable. Keine sits checking one of the bodies. A sight that looks impossible for the current state of Gensokyo.

“Keine!” I shout, sprinting to her side. “What the hell happened?!”

She shakes her head, consternation wrinkling her face. “Seija subdued everyone here. The way she moved, it was like nothing I’ve ever witnessed.”

I look down at the man she’s kneeling next to, her fingers pressed to his neck. I’m almost afraid to, but ask, “Are they alright?”

This time, she nods, drawing a tense breath out of me. “Aside from bruised bodies and egos, they seem fine. I only got here at the tail end of the fighting and didn’t give chase. I must ensure these men are safe. The vice captain, however, he went further in after Kijin. I couldn’t arrest his attention before he was out of sight. Miss Yakumo came shortly after, suggesting I move these men out of the forest.”

I swivel my head around, trying to find any sign of my fox companion. “Ran came by? Wasn’t she looking for Seija earlier than the guards?”

“I do not know why she was delayed, and truthfully I don’t have the luxury of contemplating it. The miasma here is not a thing humans can withstand, and these men need to be ferried out first thing. Come, pick up a body and help me.”

Gazing into Keine’s eyes, a crystalline sharpness cuts into them, coaxing out her authority. She points a finger at another soldier, but I’m not convinced into following the order. It’s all too convenient.

I instead kneel down, grabbing her shoulder, and squeezing. I look her stern in the eyes and ask, “Keine, what did Seija take from Kourindou?”

She stares daggers back, withholding any reaction under the delayed response, “… Why are you asking?”

“Because I’ve never seen you that enraged before. Now don’t play games with me, what is it and how dangerous is it?”

She stays quiet for a moment. Her lip flicks for a split second, baring her teeth in what I’d pin as frustration, before being swatted under control. She looks away and huffs at my advance, “Dangerous. Extremely dangerous by Gensokyo’s standards. And I’m not sure if I’m allowed to inform you of it.”

“That bad?” I try to air with any levity left in my voice, but it only comes off as belabored.

She nods. “Not something you should approach callously, Tanner. No… I don’t allow you to approach it. I… refuse to see you hurt yourself.”

Silence follows her voice. She doesn’t plan to give up and let me run ahead, that much is clear. How far she’s willing to go, that’s yet to be tested. And I think I’ll leave that test for better circumstances.

“Fine,” I relent.

“Hopefully you’re being dramatic…” she mutters, hauling a body over her shoulder. “Caring for Youkai like them keeps getting you hurt, and I don’t want to think about what happens when you don’t get up. Pick a man, and don’t feel like it needs to be the biggest ones here, I won’t think less of you for it.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I affirm, moving to the edge of the opening, towards the smallest body. Keine turns towards the way out, where I saw the first man passed out. And I…

Reach into my pocket. A few rocks fling from my hand, aimed past her. I cover my eyes briefly, waiting for the blast of light to shoot around my hand.

Flash.

Thud.

And I bolt. I don’t question the direction. I didn’t really figure out what the best direction is, yet. I just pick a heading and go.

Out from the depths, but further from safety.

“TANNER! PLEASE!” I hear her wail from somewhere far behind me.

The voice fades with distance, until I am well and truly alone again. Lost in the woods.

[Please wait warmly as teacher wanders…]