The other options were nice thoughts, but there was only one real sensible one. “The Tengu Village is our best bet, sadly.”

She sighed, and floated to the ground like a deflating balloon. “Yep.” She touched down in a small clearing in the cedars. “You’re right. Going anywhere else wouldn’t be too clever…” She checked her clothes, picking at her long sleeves. “And neither would showing up to the Tengu Village without a disguise.”

“Ah. Yes, of course. When you are rea-dyyyy!”

The forest became a blur as she suddenly sank into the ground like a rock into water, and the next instant everything became black. I could feel my body rearrange, my brim recede, my top fold and harden, and my eyes grow out on stalks-

Then just as suddenly Suwako re-emerged from the land and the world sprang back into view. I had been transformed into a tokin hat, and now my eyes hung at the puffy shoulders of Suwako’s crow-tengu button up shirt. I could also see her face in this form, her yellow burning eyes and her thin lips, which were drawing up and out into a smirk – suddenly she tilted her head, making my limp stalks and vision sway. “Hey,” She said, “Do I look good?”

I gave her outfit a thorough scan. Everything was standard fare for a crow-tengu reporter: a white shirt with red buttons, a purple skirt with a wave pattern, and an exceptionally large pair of geta which added a good shaku and a half to her height. “Yes. An excellent disguise as always, my god. And excellent balance on those geta, too.”

“Excellent, excellent.” she put her hands on her hip and raised her head proudly. “Well, that should be excelle- everything.” A pair of huge crow’s wings sprouted from her back, their wingspan almost three times that of Suwako’s height. “Let’s get this over with.”

Something twinkled from the treeline below and in front of us – a wolf-tengu border guard, hailing us to land by catching the moonlight on their shield. Something the tengu thought only they could detect.

*Border guard signalling for us to land at 10 o’clock, 100 shaku.*

*I see them, roger.* Suwako descended towards the signal, expertly spreading her new wings to decelerate and come to a hover just above the treetops. A white-haired wolf-eared white-wolf-tengu emerged from the tree cover. He lugged around his equipment, avoided eye contact, and overall seemed very uncomfortable.

*Now that’s the rookiest runt I think I’ve ever seen.* I said.

*They don’t send their best to guard the border between our shrine and their village. They used to, when we were new here. Anyway,* She flew over to the guard, “Hello. Returning from an interview.”

“Yes, Miss, er-” His eyes went wide and he looked down at the sword and shield in his hands. “Sorry. I don’t have my clipboard – well I do, but not in my hands, I mean…” He bent over forward and clumsily tried to sheathe his saber in his back-scabbard – that took him a few attempts. Once that was done, he brandished his bureaucratic implements at us, and took a steady breath in. “Your name, miss.”

“Yaori Kowasu”

“Your business?”

“Returning home from an interview”

“Right. Your identification, please.”

She tapped the reporter’s badge on her chest.

“Miss, I-” He did a double take at the ID. “-Oh. Sorry.” He moved out of the way then bowed deeply, “Very sorry for the holdup, miss Kowasu!”

“Don’t sweat it, it’s fine.” She snapped out some finger guns at the guard, making him jump. “See you round, and don’t fall asleep!”

The guard rocketed back up with the best casual smile he could muster. “Of course!” he barked.

“Yeah.” Suwako turned back around then struck off again at full speed toward the village.

The thick mountain forest ended a couple of ri in front of us, and a warm glow filtered through the last few trees. Suwako slowed down and flew lower as she approached the edge, flying just above the treetops. As she passed over the last stretch, the cliff mounted Tengu Village became visible.

The buildings here were some of the farthest up the mountain, and naturally had the grandest purposes – august manors, printing houses, and business flats – all built into the sheer black andesite and held up on huge cedar beams driven deep into the rock.

*Alright, first things first we ought to see if we can get our info from bar gossip and newspapers.* Without further warning she practically nosedived toward a facsimile of an outside world 24-hour convenience store.

*By which you mean I’ll scan the papers and eavesdrop for info while you look at the comics and drink*

*So kind of you to offer!* She came to a landing on the porch of the store – the crow-tengu cashier at the till jolted awake upon her arrival, trying to recover some semblance of professionalism. *Make sure you read quick, if you don’t they might kick us out for trying to get the news for free.*

Shinraigare Printing Company has had massive layoffs. The bad harvest this season has had adverse effects on confectionery companies. There have been more Kappa startups this year than any other…

After checking no one was around I tapped Suwako on the shoulder. *This is a business daily.*

*So?* She had been running her fingers over the glossy pages and making them squeak and continued doing so.

*So unless Sanae and Tsukasa have started a company while they’ve been gone, they won’t be in here.*

She put the paper back on its stand. *Well, that’s around twenty volumes skimmed and we’ve got nothing.*

*There was that one accusing our shrine of collusion with Lunarians.*

*Right, because we had Yuiman over.* She fingered through the papers again until she landed back on the defamatory article. *I’ll get this one to show Kanako.*

Approaching the izakaya from the air, I could see a rowdy pack of wolf tengu crowded around one of the outside tables. They were all seemingly enthralled in some game between two of them, all of their tails held stiffly up at attention. They gave Suwako only the most cursory of glances when she landed down on the porch before their focus went back to their game.

The building’s door was open, and warm light and lively conversation poured out from it into the night. Suwako put her arms behind her head and leaned back, stretching, *Hopefully we’ll have better luck with the wolves. The crows were too tight-lipped about anything not already in a newspaper, as expected.*

When she stepped in some of the patrons glanced her way, then whispered to their more animated friends. With her every clacking step the lively atmosphere died down, until at the bar the only sounds left were occasional clinks of glassware.

*I don’t think we can count on any loose tongues in our current disguise, my god.* A beat of silence. Suwako stared dead ahead at the bottles behind the counter. *I think if we changed-*

*You know what?* Suwako met my eye briefly, *Enough beating round the bush. I’m going to one of my contacts-*

“Hello miss.” The stick-thin longnose-tengu bartender shot us a service grimace. “What would you-”

Suwako’s face suddenly contorted into one of pure horror. “My eggs!” Then she sprinted back out of the building, leaving the patrons and bartender in shock. She shoved a hulking wolf out of the way at the door, repeating “My eggs!” again before taking off as soon as she was outside.

*You don’t think that’s going to bring attention to us, do you?* I cautioned.

*Nah. Good thing about wolf tengu is they’re trained to be exceedingly tolerant of the upper castes’ bullshit.*

*Of course, my god. Anyway, which contact are you visiting?*

*One Hatate Himekaidou.*

*I thought you said you were done beating around the bush. Hatate isn’t exactly known for breaking news.*

*I know, I know! It’s just best to, y’know… go from least to most taxing, in terms of getting info. Any other Tengu’ll want some favor or some other crap that’ll snowball, Hatate’ll just want a few crates of soda or a new keyboard ‘cause she spilled soda on the last one.*

*I see.*

True to her word, none of the wolf tengu, nor any other tengu, accosted us on our way to Hatate’s.

Hatate’s residence was on the outskirts of a very neat neighborhood, and for all the quirks of the girl inside it looked perfectly normal. But if one was observant or knew where to look, they could see the glint of a hidden camera pointed at them at every point around the house – including some ones with very low angled shots as well, if you took the Bunbunmaru as fact.

Suwako flew low, just above the roof level of the houses surrounding, finally coming to a silent landing at Hatate’s front door. I could faintly hear someone typing on a keyboard inside. *Sounds like she’s still awake.*

*Good.* Suwako pressed the doorbell, then looked up and to her left at a camera lens (embedded flush in the wood as if it were a natural eye in its grain) and stuck her long tongue out at it. There was a pause before a few final clacks rang out, then the sound of cloth ruffling and muttering. Soon footsteps approached us, the door slid open, and Hatate stood before us. Thanks to Suwako’s huge geta, she was at eye level with Hatate.

“What is it?”

“Hatate, it’s me, Suwako.” She took me off her head to reveal her disguise and smiled.

“Noooooo. Really?”

“Yeah.”

The tengu turned her head up, scanned the skyline, and growled. “Alright, come on in, we don’t want to be seen.” then stepped out of the way to let us in. The instant we were inside, Hatate slid the door shut again.

The crow went past us to the middle of the dining room as Suwako unbuckled her shoes and leapt off them. It was unexpectedly plain and clean for a shut-in like Hatate; probably because it didn’t get used much, as one could infer by the grand amount of takeout sitting on one counter.

“So,” The girl said, “What do you want?”

“Sanae’s missing and she hasn’t told us where she’s gone. Do you have any idea where she could be?”

“You don’t know?” Her brows scrunched, relaxed, then she pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Okay.” Suwako tilted her head, “And?”

“And it’s going to be my breaking news-”

Suwako stepped forward stiffly, shifting the shadows of the room over her face. “What?”

Hatate didn’t flinch, “Hey, cool it you little freak, not like that! She’s not in danger or anything!”

“So why do you know before anyone else?”

“Because… because why the fuck are you threatening me in my own home!? All over your shrine maiden, for fuck’s sake, isn’t she pushing thirty!?” She clenched one fist and stabbed her index at us with the other. “I was under the impression… that she could act on her own, without your permission.” She let her hands fall to her sides. She flustered and cursed under her breath, plainly frustrated with how the conversation was going. “I was under the impression that this was all done with your approval.

If that’s not the case, if I tell you where your shrine maiden is, I don’t know if you’re going to put her plans and my article in jeopardy, in which case I’ll then have to explain to her and my boss why I let slip to you…” She looked away for a moment, then pointed a finger at us, “If you want my info, you’ll have to stand in for the article I’ll lose.”

“How?”

“Uh,” her eyes darted away, then back. “There’s… been a trend among the fairies and other lesser yokai.”

“Okay.”

“And, well, they’ve all taken up this thing called ‘rap battling’. Instead of playing danmaku for sport and to settle disputes, they sing at each other. And whoever sings the best wins.”

Suwako tilted her head back so the light caught one eye.

“So in return for giving you info-”

“Telling me where Sanae is.”

“Yeah. In return for that, you need to do some ‘rap battles’ while I record them.”

Suwako tilted her head such that it shadowed over completely once again. Then she stood up straight, a resigned expression visible on her face. “Deal. So where’s Sanae?”

“She’s been down the ravine, working with the kappa on expanding their intranet project.” She let her words hang in the air, gauging Suwako’s reaction. There was none. She continued, “The reason I know about it is because I have an especial interest in it, and she filled me in on it so I could make it an article. Maybe even drum up enough interest in it that we could get the infrastructure built so the tengu village could also get connected to their intranet.”

Suwako evaluated the girl’s face for a moment before speaking. “Have you considered what that might do to Gensokyo?” She said. “Do you know what effect the Internet has had on the outside world?”

“Pshh. Yeah, on humans, I didn’t say that the Human Village would get connected.”

“So you want to be the test subjects for what effect it has on tengu?”

“Well the kappa are fine with it-”

“That’s because they’re huge nerds!” Suwako exploded, lunging forward and sending my stalks and vision careening. “They use their intranet to share schematics and code and technical documents! If the tengu get their hands on it, I doubt that they’ll be able to hold themselves back from recreating the outside Internet but worse. And don’t try to bullshit me that you won’t connect up the Human Village either, once they connect this place up-”

“Okay! Whatever! I’m not even involved in the fuckin’ project!” She threw her hands up and turned away from us, “Just go, you got what you wanted. Fuck up the whole project, destroy it, I don’t give a shit!” She scoffed once more, then stormed off up her stairs. then a door opened, closed, a chair creaked, and finally the sound of furious typing was all that could be heard.

Suwako didn’t move for a few moments, so I tapped her on the cheek with my eyestalk. Only her eye moved in reaction to meet mine. *I suppose we’re off to the ravine, then?*

She stared at me for a moment more before shaking her head. *Yeah. Let’s go.*

She turned around, floated onto her huge shoes, buckled them up, went to the door, opened it, and went outside. She carefully closed the door behind her-

A blur of movement caught my eye before a saccharine voice pierced the night’s peace, “Hello!”

Suwako looked over her shoulder at the interlocutor – a red haired crow tengu, dressed in a crisp pair of pajamas, her hands held politely behind her back.

She came to a landing. “I’m one of Hatate’s neighbours!”

*For fuck’s sake.* I could feel the discipline Suwako had to exert to stop herself from expressing her discontent.

“I just heard some commotion,”

*She’s heard our conversation.*

“And I was wondering if everything is alright?”

*We don’t have time for this.* I said.

On the outside, Suwako had done nothing but maintain constant eye contact with the tengu. *Then what do you suggest we do?*

Hatate’s shoes suddenly caught the neighbor’s eye. “My, those are some tall geta! Do you work for one of the big printing houses? My, you aren’t trying to poach our Hatate away, are you?”

[] *Let’s just leave.*

[] *Try to get out of view, then dive into the earth to escape.*

[] *Go back inside and wait it out.*

- [] *I know what to say...* WRITE-IN

- [] *But don’t say anything.*

Hey!!!!!!! You know when I said it'd be a couple of days a week ago??? It took longer than that.... i marked this as an update too, so hopefully i should also be able to sort out getting this on the story list and all that!

Anyway! Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed the new chapter, and DON'T FORGET, you vote for ONE of the options from each indent level!

Hopefully I can speed up with my writing, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so naturally I want to spend a lot of time writing and editing. anyway! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!