Kotohime and the Threat Beyond the Border

"So get this," Yōsai said, putting down his cup and waving his hand to get the other tavern patrons' attention. "Hanyu says that he and Miki were painting a fence, right? And while they were taking a break, this little bird swoops down, lands right next to them-"

"What kind of bird?" asked Ishikawa from the barstool next to him.

"Not important! Anyway, that bird hops across the part they've painted, keeps going over the unpainted part, leaves a little trail. Hanyu and Miki laugh, it's cute. But..." Yōsai leaned forward, his face splitting into a ghastly grin, "then they looked at the bird's footprints. And they weren't tracks of bird feet, they looked like little human handprints!"

"Gross." The balding bartender made a sour face, but didn't look up from his work dusting crumbs off the counter in preparation for the dinner rush.

"Now wait, that doesn't make any sense," complained Hideo from the other adjacent seat as he poked Yōsai in the shoulder. "If this bird of yours had human hands, they'd be on its wings. Otherwise, where's its feet?"

"How should I know?" asked Yōsai with a roll of his eyes. "Just what I heard." He paused for a moment, then nodded at the bartender. "So, have you got any stories like that, Mizushima?"

"Bird stories?" Mizushima glanced up at the newest addition to his establishment, the stuffed head of a brilliantly-colored and oversized chicken-like creature, mounted prominently on one of the columns closest to the bar.

"No, I mean weird stories!" Yōsai pressed.

The tavern's owner smiled slightly to himself. "It is a weird story, but I get what you mean." He shrugged one shoulder. "Remember Ms. Tae came by last night, said she saw that nun from the youkai temple riding on something with two wheels, one in front of the other. Said it rolled itself, made an awful racket and stink."

A somewhat nervous-looking young man sitting at a nearby booth cleared his throat. "Uh, that'd be a motorcycle."

"I suppose you'd know," Mizushima said with another shrug. "Those things common beyond the Border?"

The young man, who still looked a bit uncomfortable in his clothing, nodded. "Yeah, they're not as popular as cars, but they're cheaper and have an easier time getting around in a big city."

"They got birds with human hands past the Boundary, too?" someone asked, earning a few chortles.

The young man flushed slightly, adjusting his spectacles. "Uh, not sure about that-"

A patron cried out, stumbling out of his seat as a perfectly round hole suddenly appeared in the wall over his table. A woman squeezed through it, a lady with blue hair bound into a pair of hoops, a face that would be attractive were it not for the insufferably smug expression currently occupying it, and a simple teal dress at odds with her aura of arrogance.

"Pardon me!" the newcomer said cheerily as she twisted to hover in midair on the other side of the hole she'd come through. Within seconds the portal shrank to a point and disappeared while the woman slowly drifted away from it.

There was a loud thud as something hit the other side of the wall, followed by muffled swearing.

"Too slow!" the blue-haired woman shouted, gently bobbing on her back in mid-air as though she was floating down a river.

Mizushima was aware that his customers were all staring at him, waiting to see how he'd handle the situation. He cleared his throat. "Miss-"

"Shhh!" the woman interrupted instantly. "Let's see what she does next."

Then there was a loud crash and a scream from Chieko in the back of the establishment. The blue-haired woman laughed and darted for the bar's front door, blasting it open with a brief spray of cerulean danmaku that made nearby patrons duck for cover. A second later, a redhead in purple formal robes rocketed out of the kitchens in hot pursuit.

"For damages!" Kotohime panted as she tossed a small clinking pouch at Mizushima on her way out.

The bartender caught it without looking and heaved a sigh. It could be worse. At least the roof was intact this time.

-x-

Seiga Kaku (female, Chinese ex-pat, 1,400 years old) cackled as she flew over a pedestrian so closely that the hapless man panicked and fell over, allowing Kotohime to add Interfering with Foot Traffic to the list of charges her quarry had racked up over the past hour or so. The policewoman-princess grit her teeth and urged herself through the air even faster, rolling onto her side to slip between a young couple more interested in each other than in paying attention to what was going on around them. As they shrieked in surprise and collapsed in her wake, Kotohime pondered whether she should invest in a helmet with a police siren on it, before deciding it would mess up her hair.

Seiga turned, flying backward at speed so she could grin at her pursuer. "My, you are persistent!"

"And you're still resisting arrest!" Kotohime shouted back.

Even as the police chief struggled to close the distance, she could see the glint of amusement in Seiga's eyes. "I don't think you're come close to arresting me since this farce started," the fugitive replied.

A grappling hook pistol, that's what Kotohime needed. Or maybe a harpoon. Unfortunately, not only was she lacking when it came to less-lethal ranged apprehension devices, her target was still flying down one of the village's busiest streets at rush hour, meaning Kotohime couldn't risk replying with danmaku or hurled explosives. So she was forced to pour all of her energy into flying through the air, taking solace in the fact that eventually Seiga would run out of village.

But evidently the perp recognized this too, and Seiga abruptly darted sideways down a narrow alley. Kotohime just managed to stop herself from overshooting and flung herself on another vector to follow-

Then immediately had to duck to avoid taking a clothesline to the throat-

No sooner had the drying underclothes cleared her vision than Kotohime saw the tall wooden fence in her way, a rapidly-shrinking hole closing up in its center-

The princess reflexively thrust her palms forward, not to brake but to unleash a short-ranged blast of magic that reduced the obstacle to smoke and splinters. She burst through the cloud of dust, blinking furiously to clear her vision, and coasted to a halt when she saw nothing in front of her but someone's back yard. A girl stared at her with wide eyes, frozen in the act of watering her flowers.

"Surely by now you've caused more property damage than what the stolen item is worth," mused Seiga Kaku. Kotohime turned to see the blue-haired woman leaning against the alley wall, arms folded and a mocking smirk on her face.

"You stole their precious heirloom!" the police chief shot back. "It's priceless! No amount of property damage could match its value!"

"And do you have to be so noisy?" Seiga complained. "The... what do you call them, magistrates? Back in my day, they knew not to cause such a fuss. And when to look away and keep walking," she added.

Kotohime flexed her wrist in a practiced motion, so that something metallic and round rolled down her forearm and into her waiting hand. "But did they have these?" she asked before lobbing the object at her target.

Seiga's eyes widened as she took in the sparking bomb arcing towards her face - blast from the past she may be, the wicked hermit had obviously learned about gunpowder at some point. She was already flying toward the street when the grenade exploded with a bang that was even louder in the confines of the alleyway, sending her tumbling head over heels through the air.

Kotohime burst through her bomb's smoke cloud, coming close to tackling Seiga before the fugitive managed to right herself and speed away. There was no time for banter now, the policewoman was right on Seiga's heels, and the Taoist didn't risk a backward glance. Instead Seiga fled across the village's main avenue, down another alley, and then along another major thoroughfare as Kotohime continued her hot pursuit. Citizens walking the streets below looked up or pointed as the two flying women shot overhead, a few people sitting on balconies or looking from windows cried out when they raced by, and while Kotohime always appreciated an audience, she also really wanted to shoot at Seiga and was annoyed that said audience was getting in the way of that.

The princess reminded herself to be magnanimous, while the police chief tried to anticipate the perp's next move. They were heading towards the village outskirts, in the part of town where the Myouren Temple was located, Kotohime realized. And that meant-

Sure enough, the instant the flag-lined main steps of the temple were visible, Seiga made a beeline for the cemetery surrounding it. Kotohime rushed to follow, diving down amongst the headstones... come to think of it, the Myouren Temple had only been built a few years ago, hadn't it? So where had all these graves come from? Kotohime couldn't remember if the village had a cemetery here, but then again she wasn't sure where else people would be buried, and it was a bit disturbing to think that so many people could have died since Byakuren Hijiri's release from Makai-

Kotohime blinked, realizing that she'd lost sight of her quarry, and slowly descended onto the paved path that made a circuit of the cemetery. She looked around, taking in the horrible sights - the cloudless sky was transitioning from the blue of midday to the gold of sunset, the sun was sinking towards the hills ringing Gensokyo, all while birds sang and the trees around the temple sighed in the breeze. Not a wisp of fog, or any sign of a wandering ghost. What was the point of being in a graveyard if it wasn't scary?

"Gotcha!"

The princess dove to the side to avoid someone lunging out at her from behind a grave, and reflexively drew her jitte. But when she got a good look at her opponent, Kotohime realized she needed to keep her distance - the gray limbs, stiff gait, and vacant expression on the face of the woman ponderously turning to face her could only belong to the walking dead. And since the animate corpse was wearing a red Chinese-style shirt, had a paper talisman affixed to her forehead, and had been encountered during Kotohime's pursuit of Seiga Kaku, it was logically Yoshika Miyako, the wicked hermit's pet jiang-shi.

"Have you tired of the chase yet?" came Seiga's voice from somewhere close but out of sight - the echoes on all the headstones made pinpointing her difficult.

"I'm actually facing a legal quandary," Kotohime said in reply, even as she shifted into a guarding stance. "I'm not sure whether the ambulatory deceased can be charged with a crime. Might be stepping in on the yama's territory, trying to judge someone's corpse after she's judged their spirit."

"Maybe you'll get to ask her in person," Seiga cackled. "Get her, Yoshika!"

"Uhhhh..." The jiang-shi slowly blinked her eyes, her pallid brow twitching. "Who, the yama?"

Interesting, Seiga's exasperated sigh didn't echo like her voice had been. "Attack the girl in front of you!" the necromancer commanded.

Yoshika gurgled her contentment and gave Kotohime a grin full of yellow teeth and black gums, then burst into motion. It couldn't be called a run, but it was a bit more fluid than a traditional hopping vampire's gait - Kotohime thought the jiang-shi's lurching, off-balance charge looked like the undead girl was in a three-legged race with herself.

Kotohime held her ground, extending one palm outward to fire some choice blasts of magic at the incoming enemy, but as expected the danmaku just impacted against the jiang-shi without noticeably slowing her approach - the lumbering corpse didn't even flinch in response, or show any other indication she knew she was being shot. Kotohime's other hand twitched as she resisted her instinctive inclination to strike with her truncheon, since trying to beat this thing in hand-to-hand combat would be suicide. Instead she ceased fire and forced herself to stay calm, sticking her free hand down a sleeve to withdraw something and waiting for her moment.

Just as Yoshika was about to tackle her, Kotohime spun to the side, her purple robes swirling around her as her sandals danced across the cemetery flagstones. The zombie stumbled to a halt just short of crashing headlong into a headstone, then laboriously turned to face Kotohime once more, as if she could only move one part of her lower body at a time. The freaky part about it was that even though the jiang-shi moved like a drunk, those unblinking, filmy eyes of hers were locked on Kotohime the whole time - the zombie's flesh was as unresponsive as her lethal intent was focused.

But in that moment, when Yoshika's head was facing Kotohime but the rest of her body was still getting into position for the next attack, the police chief acted.

Kotohime darted forward, a slip of paper held tight between two fingers, her teeth bared with determination. She'd spent a good deal of time and effort creating this thing, and if it didn't work... the princess shoved aside her doubts a split-second before slapping the item onto Yoshika's forehead, just under the brim of her cap.

For a few heartbeats, Kotohime was afraid that she'd miscalculated, and the zombie's arms tensed as if to strike. But almost immediately Yoshika froze.

"Ugh?" The jiang-shi went cross-eyed as she tried to focus on the new addition to her accessories, a second talisman covering up the first. Then she jolted, grunted, and toppled onto her side, bouncing like a plank of wood upon hitting the ground, before finally twitching her limbs spastically and mumbling nonsense.

Kotohime let out a puzzled hum as she looked down at her handiwork, then noticed a blue shape coming out from behind a nearby grave. Seiga floated over her way, staring in disbelief at what Kotohime had done to her underling. Then she slowly lifted her gaze towards Kotohime, her eyes as cold as ice.

"What," Seiga demanded in a low, dangerous voice, "did you do to my adorable minion?"

The princess sucked on her teeth. "I thought I could try to override your orders with my own, but it looks like the two ofuda are interfering with each other. I mean, she's supposed to be doing 'Hare Hare Yukai,' but..."

As she spoke, Yoshika's jerky arm and leg movements were causing her to slowly rotate in a circle, as if she were running along the inside of a hoop.

"Yeah, I don't know what that is," Kotohime finished.

"Fool!" thundered Seiga, rising into the air as a ring of sizzling blue-white power appeared around her. "You shall pay for meddling in powers beyond your comprehension! And for your affront against my loyal servant!"

Kotohime furrowed her brow and responded in kind, taking flight and summoning her own aura of purple energy. "And you shall pay for your crimes against my subjects!" she shot back. "And your crimes against the natural order!"

Seiga's face twisted into a sneer. "I am above your petty laws, as I am above this 'natural' order you speak-"

"MISS HIJIRI!" shouted a voice that would be cuter at less-deafening decibels. "INTRUDERS IN THE CEMETERY! IT'S THE EVIL HERMIT AND THE CRAZY LADY!"

Kotohime whirled around and spotted a girl with curly green hair and fluffy brown ears peeking out at her from the graveyard's entrance. "Crap, it's the temple guard!" she yelped.

Seiga let out a hiss of panic. "They were supposed to be on an aerial tour!"

"Cheese it!" Kotohime urged.

The wicked hermit deftly scooped up her zombie minion and managed to somehow carry Yoshika under one arm. "This way, this way!"

Kotohime followed Seiga as they fled the scene as fast as they could.

-x-

-2-

They took cover in that narrow, shady alley Seiga had feinted down earlier, where the same girl from before was trying to sweep up the splinters of the barrier that used to block it off. Or rather she had been before their return, now the girl was frozen, staring at them in disbelief. Or maybe she was reacting to the rigid corpse propped up against a wall. It wasn't like Yoshika was bothering anyone, though, with her ofuda off she was just kind of staring at nothing and drooling slightly.

Kotohime peered around the corner for any sign of a supersonic magic monk, but luckily they seemed to have given Byakuren the slip. "That was close," the princess muttered, finally relaxing.

"That 'holy woman' is fast," Seiga agreed as she tried to get her looping braids back in order. "And her hypocritical lectures..." the wicked hermit shuddered. "If any woman deserved to be sealed in a tomb, it was her."

"She kind of was, though," Kotohime pointed out. "In Makai, at least. Though I've heard suggestions that it wasn't much of a punishment." Then she remembered what she'd been doing. "Oh, right, you're under arrest."

Seiga froze and took a moment to glare at her, then gave an exasperated sigh. "What's the point? I can escape any prison you put me in."

"Spoilsport," Kotohime grumbled. "Fine. Just return what you stole and we'll call it even."

The wicked hermit smirked, but withdrew a necklace from a pouch at her waist. "I don't see what all the fuss is about. It's not even real jade."

"Theft is theft, no matter the market value of what was stolen," Kotohime replied. She easily caught the purloined jewelry when Seiga tossed it at her. "Unless the government does it, in which case it's eminent domain," the princess amended. "Or when the police does it, in which case it's confiscating evidence. At any rate, it's not something you should be doing."

"I was trying to avoid any insipid moralizing this afternoon, remember?" Seiga replied with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, 'officer,' you should be grateful." The wicked hermit gave a wicked grin. "If it weren't for criminals like me, what ever would you do all day?"

"I can find stuff to do," Kotohime insisted, but the other woman was already making her escape, smoothly slipping backward through a hole in the wall she was leaning against, a hole which quickly closed as soon as she was through.

It wasn't that good of a one-liner, Kotohime assured herself. And it wasn't a cool exit, either. Especially since-

"You forgot your zombie," the princess said loudly.

Another hole appeared in the wall behind Yoshika's head, causing the jiang-shi to flop back so that her hips and legs were extending straight out into the alley. With a series of muffled grunts and jerks, the not-currently-walking corpse eventually disappeared through the temporary portal.

"Literally dead weight," Kotohime chuckled to herself. "Eh? Get it?" she asked the girl still staring silently at her.

The other woman didn't reply.

"Okay, 'undead weight' would be more accurate, but I don't think the joke flows as well," shrugged the police chief. She decided to leave the citizen to her cleaning and strolled out of the alley onto the street proper.

All in all, the encounter could probably be considered a draw, Kotohime decided as she joined the pedestrians moving along the village's main thoroughfare. Though the culprit had ultimately escaped, the stolen property had been recovered, so the status quo at least had been maintained... at the cost of some collateral damage, the police chief admitted to herself. The fence in the alley, Mizushima's doors, that one lady's garden, the vegetable stand - well, it all gave carpenters and handymen something to do, so it probably worked out in the end. Kept money in circulation and all that.

At any rate, Kotohime's next step was clear - she needed to find some way to imprison a woman who could make a hole in any surface. Perhaps some sort of fine mesh cage? Layered, rotating walls carefully spaced so Seiga's magical tunneling wouldn't be able to affect more than one at a time? Or maybe it'd be easier to just freeze the wicked hermit for the duration of her sentence? Kotohime smiled at the thought of Warden Cirno overseeing an iceberg prison bobbing in the Misty Lake...

The police chief realized that she had been walking against the flow of foot traffic for the past minute, and some of the people hurrying past her looked rather excited - not like they were fleeing something, but like they were in a rush to get somewhere interesting. Kotohime frowned, sidestepped in front of an oncoming woman, and held out a palm.

"Excuse me," she said in her steady, authoritative voice, "is there something I should be aware of?"

The other lady came to a sudden halt and blinked in surprise. "Um, maybe?"

Just the sort of mental acuity to be expected from someone with thought her teal hair went well with bright pink robes, Kotohime thought to herself. "Where are you going?" she asked.

Yep, the woman pointed down the street she'd been running along as if Kotohime couldn't figure things out for herself. "There's word that the youkai nun is on her strange wheeled contrivance again-"

"I see," Kotohime said, struggling to keep her expression calm. "Carry on, then."

The citizen nodded and resumed her jog, and Kotohime picked up her own pace, marching along in the opposite direction, hopefully not fast enough to call attention to herself but quick enough to escape while there was still time. She had a safehouse nearby, and if-

"Kotohime?" came a voice.

The police chief froze in a moment of panic before she matched a name and face to the voice. "Chiyuri?" she asked, a sunny smile spreading across her face as she turned around to greet the woman behind her. "It is you! My goodness, it's been too long!"

Chiyuri Kitashirakawa grinned back at her, but Kotohime could immediately tell that something was wrong. The woman's golden eyes were relieved instead of simply happy to see an old friend, and her fair hair was hidden underneath a dark, drab scarf that matched the simple but oversized robes she'd chosen. The cheerful, even exuberant expression Kotohime remembered was gone, and instead Chiyuri's face was tight with stress and worry.

Kotohime let her smile fade. "This isn't a chance social encounter, is it?"

The other woman shook her head, then glanced over a shoulder. "No, I - look, is there a safe place we can talk?"

"Come with me," Kotohime said immediately. If she kept going for a bit and took a back path she'd be at her safe house in a jiffy, but instead Kotohime turned around and joined the flow of people, walking at a more leisurely pace along a main road, taking the long and indirect way to her destination. "You think you're being followed," the police chief surmised.

"How did ya - oh, police officer, right." Chiyuri looked both embarrassed and comforted as she strolled alongside her companion.

"Got it in one!" Kotohime gave her an easy smile, keeping her body language unconcerned. It wasn't like they were in any danger at the moment, plenty of people were on the street with them, if distracted somewhat by the rush to catch a sight of a nun on a motorcycle. Come to think of it, any potential threat would probably be leery of provoking Byakuren too. "So, are we talking a predatory youkai, or a human stalker?"

"I... don't know," Chiyuri admitted, keeping her gaze down and her improvised hood covering as much of her face as possible. "I haven't seen anyone, but - I don't know, I just know, alright?"

"Oh don't worry, I'm not doubting you," Kotohime assured her. "We humans have well-developed instincts for telling when there's a threat watching us, and you shouldn't ignore them just because you can't immediately see the danger. Might be a nurikabe, some jerk magician with a glamer, a kappa with optical camouflage tech - Gensokyo is really the last place you'd be laughed at for thinking you had an invisible stalker."

"It all started just a few days ago," Chiyuri explained as they sidestepped a very annoyed man trying to sweep clean the entrance to his store while seemingly half the town was marching past. "I was takin' a walk outside the walls, just up to a nearby farm and back, and even though it was a sunny day and there were only a few people workin' in the field, I still felt like I was being watched. That night I thought I heard something on the roof, so I stayed up until morning with a lamp on and some wards up. I ran my errands the next day and kept lookin' behind me, but couldn't see anyone, and that night I stayed at a friend's house but thought I heard something in her garden, and-" She abruptly shook with a suppressed sob.

Kotohime immediately put an arm around Chiyuri's shoulders. "Sounds like you've been doing all the right things," she told her.

"Sorry," Chiyuri mumbled as she swiped at her eyes. "It's just, I'm tired, and sometimes I thought it was just me going crazy, but when I got back to my house this morning there were footprints around the windows, like someone had been peeking in on me."

"And your stalker hasn't tried to make contact? No threats, demands, creepy love letters?"

Chiyuri shook her head. "Nothin'. I just know they're out there."

"Hmm." Kotohime thought for a moment, made her decision, and gestured for Chiyuri to follow her down a side street. "You look like you could use some tea," she told her companion. She kept an eye on the other woman the rest of the way to their destination, making one last turn to reach a particular house. Kotohime tried not to fumble for her keys too long and opened the front door as quickly as she could while still appearing normal. "Come on in, I'll put a pot on," she told her guest, standing aside so Chiyuri could enter first and then closing the door behind them.

The blonde woman stepped inside and immediately halted, taking in all the priceless treasures displayed in the living room and the damage to the walls and floor that Kotohime would repair any day now. "What is all - are those forks?"

"Make yourself comfortable, this should only be a moment," Kotohime said loudly, a finger to her lips.

Chiyuri froze when she discerned the policewoman's meaning.

"Now strip," Kotohime ordered in a bare whisper.

The blonde woman's eyes bulged. "What?" she croaked.

"Swap outfits," Kotohime repeated, setting an example by shrugging out of her outer layer of clothing.

Chiyuri blinked, blushed, but obligingly turned her back to the princess and began to disrobe as well.

"Lucky we're about the same size now," Kotohime commented quietly as she handed her favorite purple garment over. Chiyuri's face was red and she avoided eye contact as she tried on the loaned outfit, while Kotohime picked up Chiyuri's discarded vestments and slipped into them. "Back in a jiffy," the princess promised, hurrying into her bedroom/office.

Kotohime was glad she'd had the foresight to keep a few of her assortment of wigs at this safehouse. She pulled out two, a long red one and a long yellow one, and returned to the living room, where Chiyuri was fidgeting in her borrowed robes. She caught the red wig when the princess wordlessly tossed it over, then set about figuring out how to put it on.

"I'm going to leave first, then you wait about ten minutes and go somewhere else," Kotohime whispered as she started hastily arranging the blonde wig into pigtails. "Your safest bet should be... do you know where Meira lives?"

Chiyuri wordlessly shook her head.

"Well, there's no guarantee she'd be home anyway, so..." Kotohime tried to stuff as much of her hair under the wig as possible, and decided that Chiyuri's headscarf would have to conceal what she missed. "Better go to Mizushima's bar and grill. You know the place? Used to be the Princess' Crown, now it's the Blazing Basan."

"I went there once, I think I remember the way," Chiyuri replied.

"You'll be safe there, it's close enough to dinnertime that there should be a decent crowd, and some of the regulars know how to handle themselves. If Mizushima asks any questions, just say I'm up to something again." Kotohime finished tying the scarf under her chin. "Don't take any empty streets there, but also try not to get close enough to someone who might recognize you and blow your disguise. I'll give you a good head start, but no sense in taking chances."

Chiyuri's eyes were wide. "And what about you?"

"Oh, I feel like wandering all by myself in a quiet, isolated place far from any witnesses," Kotohime replied with a grin. "Now, I think it's late, and you'd better be going." She followed the words with a gesture.

The blonde woman started, licked her lips, and said loudly "Thanks for the tea, but I'd better be goin', it's gettin' late."

"Come back anytime," Kotohime said as she walked towards the door, giving Chiyuri one last reassuring smile. "I'll see you in an hour, tops," she said more quietly. She put her hand on the door, realized something, and looked back over her shoulder. "Ah, do me a favor and don't reach down your sleeves," she added. "I've got a lot of stuff stowed down them and some of it is a bit twitchy."

Chiyuri's eyes widened, and her hands starting to shake as she stared down at her arms in alarm.

"Probably shouldn't warm your hands near any open flames, either," Kotohime warned. "Well, good luck!" And with that she set out, doing her best to mimic the other woman's posture and stride from what she'd observed on the way there.

This was exciting, Kotohime decided. Here she was, playing the helpless victim, when normally she went around victimizing evildoers. Quite a refreshing change of pace from her usual adventures. Plus she'd just handicapped herself by leaving behind her arsenal, which she admittedly hadn't planned on doing, but she wasn't going to go back on it now. Her upcoming battle was going to be interesting.

As Kotohime walked, she tried to decide where her destination should be. Not someplace too open where a long-ranged attack could catch her by surprise, but not someplace too confined that she couldn't react to a sucker-punch... but if the stalker didn't have any advantages, then it would be hard to goad them to strike...

She mentally shrugged. It wasn't really up to her, was it? She just had to be ready when the attempt came. So she strolled along at an unhurried pace, stretching out her senses.

Within a few minutes Kotohime knew that Chiyuri wasn't crazy, and so far her plan was working - the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling. She'd paid attention to the other pedestrians on the side street, and none of them showed interest in her, so... well, she couldn't look up without blowing her disguise, but her hunch was the roofs. This particular street had a row of houses that were mostly the same height, a perfect avenue for a prowler with good legs or the ability to fly. And if Kotohime remembered correctly, there was a disused well in a yard nearby.

The police chief grinned to herself and decided she was feeling thirsty.

She turned down a narrow alley between two residences, hurrying just a little faster because it was the last place she wanted to be ambushed, before emerging into a nearly-empty lot adjacent to the village wall. The old stone well in its center had a heavy wooden lid to discourage any fools from jumping into it - and possibly to keep anything from coming up out of it. The ground around it was a mix of dirt and sparse grass too scraggly to serve as an urban pasture or playground, so no one from the surrounding residences was out on it. No audience, but no innocent bystanders either.

Kotohime glanced around. This close to sunset the yard was mostly cast in shadow by the buildings around it, and there was no sign of activity from the surrounding residences. A perfect place for an ambush, in other words. She stared down at the covered well without really seeing it, her policewoman's instincts stretched tight like a tripwire-

There was the faintest of sounds from atop the building behind her.

Kotohime hurled herself forward as a rattling, clicking noise heralded a burst of dirt clods and grass leaping up from the ground behind her. She tucked and rolled to end up crouched behind the well, then the clicking was replaced by the cracks of something hitting her cover hard enough to send stone chips flying.

The police chief resisted the urge to crane her neck and try to see where her enemy was, and there was another brief burst of clattering and fracturing rock just over her head, then a moment of silence. And then something hit the ground with a heavy thud.

Kotohime immediately leaned out to for a quick second, her glance taking in a blurred shape revealed mostly by the dust clouds wrapped around it, before that loud clicking started again and the well went back to cracking from the impacts. It was a brief burst, though, either good trigger discipline or suppressive fire. And it was only a matter of time before her enemy got a better angle-

The princess let her magical power flow down her arms to build in her palms, flattened her hands against the well, and in the same motion threw herself forward and unleashed a blast of purple energy behind her.

The abandoned well was blown apart, its wooden lid popping up to flip in the air like a pizza, while stone bricks were blasted away from Kotohime. The princess spun around in mid-flight, skidding backwards on her sandals to burn off her momentum as she landed to face her opponent.

There was a vague humanoid form in the midst of the dust cloud, crouched and shielding its face with its arms. Before the debris could clear from the air, Kotohime saw sparks, and then suddenly there was a person, a woman wearing tight-fitting gray clothing featuring a great deal of straps and pouches, a cross between military fatigues and bondage gear that was scuffed and torn from the stony shrapnel Kotohime had thrown at it. Yet there was no sign of blood. The woman lowered her arms, and Kotohime had a brief look at a face that bore no expression, a dark-haired, dark-eyed visage that was so utterly generic that it could blend in with any crowd.

Then the woman raised the firearm she was holding with both hands, pointed it at Kotohime again-

The princess hurled herself sideways, flinging an arm out to send a stream of brilliant purple danmaku at her opponent. The other woman dodged but lost her chance to fire, and so Kotohime raced forward, flying just over the ground, leaning back and extending her leg for a high-speed foot sweep-

And then pain exploded in her shin as she impacted against something that felt like a steel bar.

The other woman barely rocked as Kotohime cursed and bounced off her to end up in the dust at her feet. The attacker's expression still lacked even a glimmer of interest as she aimed her firearm for a point-blank killshot-

"Wait!" Kotohime said quickly, reaching up to grab her wig through her scarf and then tearing them both off, revealing her glorious red hair. "You've got the wrong girl!"

The woman didn't blink, but she hesitated for one crucial second-

Kotohime threw the wadded-up clothing and disguise right into her enemy's face, and while her foe was clawing at that, the police chief flew sideways, curling around behind her opponent and concentrating as she marshaled her arcane power once more-

The assassin turned-

Kotohime blasted her point-blank with all her strength, the dust in the air flashing purple for a moment as the thwoom! of her attack echoed off the surrounding buildings.

When the afterimage faded, Kotohime saw her enemy staggering back but somehow still standing. The other woman's clothing was scorched and in tatters, along with some of her skin, but what was revealed beneath was not flesh and blood. She straightened, looking at Kotohime once more, a gruesome facial injury exposing parts of a gleaming metal 'skull' and a red, balefully-glowing optical sensor instead of an eye.

No wonder Kotohime had bruised her shin when she tried that kick.

Despite the damage, the assassin raised her gun once more-

Kotohime was faster. Her focused beam of magical energy hit the weapon right over the trigger, causing the metal to glow orange for a brief second before something inside the firearm exploded with an abrupt staccato c-c-crack. The assassin staggered back, her gloves glowing with little embers, the mangled weapon tumbling onto the dirt.

"Right," Kotohime said with a decisive nod. "You'll be happy to know that Gensokyo's police force grants artificial intelligences equal treatment under the law. That said, you are under arrest for stalking, attempted murder, and probably copyright infringement if Kojima's people ever get a hold of you." The police chief instinctively reached down a sleeve, remembered she had swapped clothes with Chiyuri, and cursed. "Um, I don't have any handcuffs with me, so you'll have to pretend your wrists are-"

The android (or possibly cyborg, Kotohime reminded herself) didn't respond with words. Instead the mechanical woman abruptly broke into a sprint, a rising, furious whine coming from her torso, accompanied by flashes of light through the tears and holes in her uniform and outer covering.

Kotohime had made enough bombs to recognize when something was about to explode. She forced herself to remain calm, time seeming to slow as she raised her hands, overlapping her outward-facing palms. She gathered another burst of magical power, then concentrated it by cupping her hands, before releasing it in a brilliantly purple and tightly-focused beam of energy.

The magical attack hit the assassin in the throat, piercing through her neck with a cascade of sparks. Her head rolled backwards to tumble onto the ground, but the android's body kept running forward, letting lose a furious, sputtering hiss as a bluish glow from within it intensified-

Kotohime felt a moment of panic as she tried to decide where she could shoot to bring the running bomb down, before she remembered she could fly and leapt straight up-

There was a sudden flare of agonizingly bright light, then a mighty CHOOM accompanied a blast of heat and a shockwave that rattled the sides of the surrounding buildings and sent Kotohime tumbling through the air for a moment. The princess righted herself, looking down into the cloud of dust that had filled the space around the now broken well. The android was gone, and there was no sound but muffled cries of alarm coming from the adjoining homes.

She descended, letting out a slow breath and forcing her body to relax and her adrenaline to drain as she examined the crime scene. There was no sign of the majority of the android beyond a small scorched crater, which was a shame since Kotohime had really wanted to rummage through all those pouches. But the broken gun was still there, intact save for the rupture just above the grip, and of course there was the severed head. That was lucky, the self-destruct mechanism must have been restricted to the torso.

Kotohime scooped up the ruined firearm and tucked it under an arm, then picked up the head by its hair. "Suppose I should make a Hamlet joke," she said as she stared into the lifeless eye and darkened lens of her defeated enemy. "Though truth be told, I never read it."

Someone screamed.

Kotohime turned to see a portly old woman framed by the back door of one of the buildings, two children peeking out around her to gawk.

"It's okay, miss, just some police business!" Kotohime shouted, waving a hand cheerily. When the woman screamed again and retreated into her house, pulling the kids behind her, Kotohime decided she probably shouldn't have made the gesture with the hand carrying the severed head.

She shrugged to herself. With all the weird things she'd heard were happening around town lately, this shouldn't cause too much of a stir. Feeling satisfied with both her performance in the battle and the promise of a new mystery to solve, Kotohime set off for her favorite bar.

-x-

"I found the culprit," Kotohime announced as she let herself fall into the booth opposite Chiyuri. She set the head down on the table with a thump.

The other woman jumped out of her seat. "WHAT THE F-"

"What did you do?!" Mizushima cried from the bar.

"Hey, hey, everybody relax," Kotohime said, leaping to her feet and holding up her hands for calm. "Not a real head. Look." She picked the thing up and pointed out the exposed metal bits. "Robot in disguise. A hyperalloy combat chassis wrapped in synthetic skin and hair. More than meets the eye, see?"

Some of the tavern's patrons craned their necks to get a good look, and a few brave souls took some steps closer. The dismayed shouting was soon replaced with mutters and low conversation, and Kotohime noticed that about half of the bar's clientele had evidently lost their appetite and made for the door. Mizushima noticed too, and gave her such a look.

"Th-that's what was stalkin' me?!" quavered Chiyuri. She was still standing at the table, eyes locked on the blank fake eye and dead lens on the severed head.

"Unless a completely new stalker picked up your scent in the time it took us to change clothes," shrugged Kotohime. "Oh, that reminds me, we should get back in our proper outfits." She started pulling at the sash of her borrowed robes-

"Hey! No!" Mizushima shouted, snapping his fingers like he was scolding a pet. "I told you, this isn't that kind of bar!"

Kotohime half expected one of the regulars to argue with this pronouncement, and was vaguely insulted when no one did. She decided the reaction to the robot head was more to blame than a lack of sex appeal on her part.

Chiyuri more or less collapsed into her seat, eyes locked on the object on the table. "I still don't understand - I mean, I don't understand what this thing is, I don't understand why it was after me-"

"You haven't said anything disparaging about robots lately, have you?" asked Kotohime.

Chiyuri gave her a blank look.

"Or maybe you haven't said anything disparaging about robots yet," Kotohime said mostly to herself.

The other woman stirred from her stupor, rising from utter bewilderment to a state of annoyed confusion. "Huh?" managed Chiyuri.

"We don't have anything like this in Gensokyo," Kotohime explained, tapping the severed head for emphasis and making Chiyuri flinch.

"I dunno, the kappa come up with some pretty wild stuff," said Chiyuri. "If anyone's capable of makin' something like this, it'd be the river folk."

"In their dreams," smirked Kotohime. Then she reconsidered. "Well, technically my dreams. Anyway, I'm confident this didn't come from Gensokyo, because our friend here was carrying this." She reached down and set her other battle trophy onto the table alongside the head.

"Now what are you pulling out?" Mizushima complained.

"It's fine, I'm pretty sure I have the safety on," Kotohime said with an unconcerned wave. One young man at the bar made a strangled sound, jumped to his feet, and started fumbling for some money.

Oblivious, Chiyuri slowly leaned back against the booth's backrest. "That's a gun," she said quietly. "I mean a real gun, not like great-grandpa's old rifle."

Kotohime nodded. "Not only was this metal lady guilty of trying to kill you, she was also engaging in weapons trafficking. A firearm this advanced could only come from beyond the Border. Except," she went on, holding up a finger for emphasis, "the outside world doesn't have robots this sophisticated yet. The most they can manage are automated manufacturing equipment and terrifying animatronic imitations of the human form, while this robot was capable of independent action and could pass for a person."

Chiyuri blinked, slowly. "So where did this thing come from?"

"Like I said," Kotohime answered, "the outside world doesn't have anything this sophisticated. Yet."

Chiyuri sat in silence for a few seconds, before sighing. "You're still not answerin' my question."

"Time travel," Kotohime said gravely. "This killer robot came from the future to stop you from doing something that will later thwart its plans."

Chiyuri groaned and clutched her head in her hands.

"The real mystery here," Kotohime went on, "is that I'm the one who's had various temporal adventures, yet nobody's tried to kill me for them yet." She frowned, feeling like she hadn't been invited to a birthday party. "Maybe the bad guys are trying to draw me out?" she wondered aloud. "Getting to me through you, since we're such good..." She cleared her throat awkwardly. "Well, I count you among my friends, even if the last time we really had anything to do with each other was when we were both competing to enter those 'ruins.'"

Chiyuri had gone still and quiet, and was staring down at the gun. "Say that again?" she asked quietly.

Kotohime arched an eyebrow. "Surely you remember? Those weird ruins showed up near the Hakurei Shrine a while back, someone handed out fliers promising to grant the wish of one person who proved her right to enter, so everyone started fighting-"

"And I met another me," Chiyuri said in the same soft and calm tone. She tapped something on the barrel of the confiscated firearm. "Now I recognize this symbol, a maker's mark or somethin'. It was on the handgun that Other Me was carryin' back then."

Kotohime blinked, impressed. "Huh. You have a pretty good memory to hold onto a detail like that."

Chiyuri's mouth twisted into a half-grin. "When you meet your twin from another world, you remember the experience."

"Ain't that the truth!" Kotohime chuckled.

"You don't think the other Chiyuri and her friend are involved in all this, do you?" asked Chiyuri, turning serious again.

"I can't think of any reason for them to try to kill you, can you?" shrugged Kotohime.

The other girl sighed, slumping back in her booth. "So what do we do now? Besides order a drink, because I really need a drink-"

"If you only had one stalker and her destruction has dissuaded anyone from making any further attempts on your life, then you're in the clear," Kotohime said, folding her arms and imitating Chiyuri's posture. "But since we don't know that for certain, we have to assume that your life is still in danger."

"Oh." Chiyuri managed to sink deeper into her seat, eyes hollow. "Great."

"Hey." Kotohime reached across the table to take the other woman's hand, giving her a confident smile. "You're my royal subject and a citizen I'm sworn to protect, and I'm not going to let anything happen to you, alright?"

Against all reason, this did not seem to immediately reassure Chiyuri. "Okay," she said slowly. "So what do I need to do?"

"First we go back by my place so I can get into my proper clothes," Kotohime explained. "Then you'll need to lay low for a while, but in a safe place that can withstand an attack... ah, I know exactly where! I'll write a letter explaining things to your hostess."

Chiyuri's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Wait, so where am I going?"

Kotohime merely frowned at her, waving a hand to take in the dozen or so other people still hanging out in the bar-slash-greasy diner.

"Right, right, keep it secret," Chiyuri sighed. "So what are you doin' during all this?"

Kotohime smiled, and glanced down at the severed android head lying between them. "First, I need to pick your stalker's brains."

-x-

-3-

Just over an hour later, as the sky was fading to purple and the sun had vanished behind the mountains, Kotohime approached a cottage sitting on the very edge of the Forest of Magic.

Most magicians, in Kotohime's experience, preferred to dwell within the forest itself. It made it easier to gather alchemical ingredients, and the distance from other residences was advantageous when it came to dangerous magical experiments. This house stood in the shade of the forest's outer limits, but there was still an old path leading from it to the road back to the village. It was also a bit shabby - the grass around it was tall, the ivy on the walls of the one-story building had grown past the point of 'tasteful decoration' to 'sign of neglect,' the windows were smudged and dirty, and there were plants growing out of the gutters. Even Marisa's cottage was kept in better condition, and the girl more or less used her house as a garbage dump.

But then again, Kotohime mused as she approached the front door, Marisa had regular visitors, and despite her lack of concern when it came to item storage, the magician knew how to maintain a home so that it operated. This house belonged to an outcast with larger concerns than trimming the hedges. Or leaving a porch light on for any late visitors.

She reached out to knock, but froze when she noticed a button on a metal plate bolted on the doorframe. Kotohime smiled and gently pressed it, hearing a faint buzzing sound from deeper inside.

Then she set the robot head down on the front step and ducked out of sight.

About a minute later, the cottage door opened as someone leaned out, peering down at what Kotohime had left before it. Some people would have freaked out at the sight of a severed head on their doorstep, either reflexively lashing out with a foot or retreating indoors from the grisly scene. But this person froze for only a split-second before crouching down to take a closer look.

Kotohime briefly considered using her skill at ventriloquism to have some fun, but that would probably make things harder. So instead she cleared her throat and stepped into view.

"I'll let you keep it once the case is closed, if you agree to a consultation," the princess declared with a bright smile.

This time the other woman took a step back, then realized who Kotohime was and groaned. But after a moment's thought she sighed "Fine" and gestured for the princess to follow her, scooping up the head and hurrying back inside as though she was afraid of being seen.

Kotohime shut the door behind her, then took the opportunity to inspect the living room she found herself in. A Western-style wooden table and chairs, looked secondhand. Traditional cabinet in the corner, dusty, unused. Vase containing a stick. Not much else.

"Nice place," she lied. She'd been curious what it looked like, since its owner had never let her in before, and had invested in some very good locks.

Her reluctant hostess didn't respond, but switched on a modern electric lamp resting on the table, using its light to examine the robotic head in her hands, turning it over and over to inspect every inch of its surface. She finally set the thing down, pushed her glasses further up her nose, and gave Kotohime a long and level look that the princess did her best to return.

Rikako Asakura had changed, Kotohime noticed. The other woman's hair was still vibrantly purple, if waist-length and hanging free at the moment, but she was wearing simple and somewhat worn houserobes rather than the white labcoat Kotohime remembered. More tellingly, there were a few creases around her wine-colored eyes, and her usual serious expression had hardened into something stern, almost bitter. It must be tough being an aspiring scientist in a world of fantasy, Kotohime decided with a pang of sympathy.

"So-" Rikako coughed and cleared her throat before continuing, as though unused to speaking. "So, what is this thing? And why bring it to me?"

Not even a 'long time no see,' Kotohime noted. She decided not to hold it against her old acquaintance. "Well, you are Gensokyo's foremost scientific authority," she said aloud.

"That's because I'm the only person in Gensokyo who knows what the scientific method even is," Rikako muttered, eyes on the artifact again. "If this is a prop, someone went through an awful lot of trouble finding the materials."

"It's the only surviving piece of an android that was stalking a citizen," the princess clarified. "I disguised myself as its target to draw it out, and the robot attacked me with this." She pulled the submachine gun from her robes and set it down on the table next to the head.

The scientist stared down at the damaged weapon for a long moment. "This can't have come from Gensokyo. Neither could the robot, for that matter, it's far too sophisticated."

"Yeah, I'm thinking time travel," nodded Kotohime.

Rikako arched an eyebrow. "Really now? And what data have you gathered to support this hypothesis?"

"Oh, lots, but most of it's classified," Kotohime said with a careless wave of her hand. "What I need from you is help getting into this thing's head, so I can access its memory to learn who sent it, what its mission was, and why it wasn't trying to kill me even though I'm obviously the greatest threat to any evildoers."

Rikako frowned. "And how might I do all that?"

"Science?" suggested Kotohime. "Like, plug into its head and hook it to a printer or projector or whatever. Or do you have one?"

The scientist shut her eyes for a moment, breathing slowly and deeply. "No," she said after several heartbeats.

"Well, what do you have?"

"Guess I have to give you the tour," Rikako muttered. She pushed herself to her feet, then carefully picked up the two objects and carried them out of the living room. Kotohime followed her down a dark, narrow hallway to a steeply descending staircase lit at the bottom. The princess had been expecting a basement, but what she saw as the stairs opened up into a massive space was a full-fledged workshop.

Humming panels shone filled the room with a bright if artificial light, revealing several neat rows of tables bearing an eclectic variety of technological devices. Kotohime saw what looked like an automobile engine, a collection of beakers around a basic chemistry set, even a small and simple rocket, all carefully arranged with relevant tools close at hand. There were more artifacts on the shelves lining the walls, along with a great deal of notebooks, battered tomes and tattered magazines. Something rumbling in one corner was presumably the generator powering the lights, and in another was-

"If you touch anything without permission, you're out," Rikako warned. "And don't even think about taking anything."

Kotohime's fingers itched in protest, but she folded her arms and shoved her hands down her sleeves. "Very well," she said with a slight sniff. Interesting - the air down here was clearer than she had expected, probably due to a ventilation system, but all the engine oil and various chemicals and metal bits still created an interesting medley of scents. She peered around some more. "It's impressive. Did you set this up yourself?"

"It wasn't exactly hard to excavate," Rikako replied as Kotohime followed her between two rows of tables. "I know some geomancy that could raise a castle in minutes. Digging out this basement was one of the last spells I cast, and I've been collecting technological artifacts ever since."

They finally stopped at one particular workstation, a bench under a hot electric lamp that shown down on a boxy object. It was missing a side, from which cables and wiring spilled onto the table, while some cracked circuit boards were laid out next to it amidst pliers, screwdrivers, and more esoteric tools. Kotohime supposed the scene would be rather ghoulish if one were a toaster.

"This is the current extent of my electronics equipment," Rikako said, carefully setting the head down on a clear corner and leaning the gun against a nearby metal cabinet.

Kotohime scratched her chin. "So you technically have a computer, but..."

"I'm getting better at taking them apart, but I've never been able to get one to function," Rikako sighed. "The magazines I picked up from Kourindou weren't any help either, they tend to be more about programming the things than putting them together."

"That's disappointing." Kotohime looked speculatively up at Rikako's ceiling. "Maybe the kappa-"

"No," Rikako snapped. "They're not scientists, they're tinkers."

"So how else am I gonna figure out why this killbot tried to kill Chiyuri?" demanded Kotohime.

Rikako had opened her mouth to rant, but froze as she heard Kotohime's words. "Wait, what? Chiyuri?"

Kotohime tried not to flush with embarrassment. "And there I go, leaking another victim's identity. At least there aren't any tengu around this time," she muttered.

"When you say Chiyuri, you're referring to-"

"The one from Gensokyo, yes," Kotohime admitted. "I haven't heard from the other Chiyuri since she left. Wait, have you?" she asked.

"No," Rikako spat, her face twisted into a scowl. She must have seen Kotohime's surprised reaction, because she winced and calmed herself. "No, I haven't seen them since then, either. I've tried to make contact, but-"

Kotohime blinked. "You have some way of communicating with them?"

Rikako sighed and gestured for Kotohime to follow her to another corner of the lab, where a metal dais supported some device that resembled a little keypad affixed to three plastic cylinders just larger than wine bottles.

"That's a weird design for a cell phone," Kotohime noted. "Where'd you get it?"

Rikako leaned against the wall next to it, folding her arms. "After that 'tournament' to enter the ruins-"

"Which I won," Kotohime reminded her.

Rikako's lips pulled back to expose her teeth. "Yes, you defeated me in battle and won the grand prize, snuffing out my dream of revolutionizing science in Gensokyo so you could have Reimu put in a jail cell for a night." She took in and held a breath for a moment before slowly releasing it. "After you did that to me, I still managed to talk with those people from another world. They gave me a basic science textbook as a consolation prize, as well as this device as a means to correspond with them."

"I see," Kotohime nodded. "So maybe you can call them up and have them get into this robot head-"

"The damned thing won't WORK!" Rikako flinched at the echoes of her own outburst. "It doesn't work," she repeated, brushing imaginary lint off her robes. "I followed all their instructions, punched in the numbers they gave me, even tried pushing buttons at random. But all it does..." She leaned over to jab at the keypad, imputing a sequence of thirteen digits, then straightened up as-

The little yellow light flickered on over the buttons, the machine went beep, and nothing else happened.

Kotohime chewed her lip. "Popping the thing open and trying to tinker with its insides-"

"Too risky," Rikako said immediately. "But I've done everything else. I tried to make an antennae for the roof, didn't work. Thought about running a line to an old radio tower some fairies took over, but don't have nearly enough material. Honestly, I'd given up on it," she admitted with a weary sigh. "Last time I messed with it was two years ago. I just keep it around, hoping they'll call me."

Kotohime tapped her chin. "Yet they haven't contacted us, even after all this time... what about boosting the power?" she asked.

Rikako arched an eyebrow. "Also risky, if not quite as dangerous as cracking it open. Which isn't to say I haven't tried it." She gestured at the humming column of machinery taking up one corner, which on closer inspection had a cable running along the wall from it to the base of the communicator's dais. "Used up my last can of gasoline during that attempt, so I had to..." the scientist grimaced. "Had to modify the generator to run off a mini-hakkero."

"Oh? How'd you manage that?" asked Kotohime with polite interest.

Rikako glowered at her. "You wouldn't understand if I tried to explain."

"You might be right," Kotohime said diplomatically. Then she rummaged around in her sleeve and withdrew a hand-sized glass canister containing a thick purple vapor that positively glowed with energy.

"W-what?" Rikako's eyebrows shot up over the top of her spectacles. "What is that? Some sort of neon light?"

"Magic," replied Kotohime, making Rikako immediately droop with disappointment. "Bunch of charged thaumic particles in a semi-gaseous state. Marisa came up with the first formula, I tweaked it a bit. Potent stuff," she said conversationally, tossing and catching the thing without really looking at it. "It's a bit too strong to use in my bombs, but I figured it might have applications as an energy source. Wanna give it a shot?"

Rikako's expression had gone from discouragement, to hidden interest, to alarm, and now settled on suspicion. "So it's too strong to use in an explosive, but you want to use it to power this?"

"Well, as an alternative I suppose we could try and tap into the underground reactor," Kotohime pointed out with a smile. She let it fade. "But frankly, I don't think we have time to mess around. Someone tried to kill Chiyuri, and the sooner I get some answers, the better I can keep my people alive."

That seemed to settle it. Rikako reached out and carefully took the glowing glass canister from Kotohime, staring into it for a moment before meeting the princess' eye. "Alright. But how do you plan on integrating it into the generator?"

"Oh, I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to start," Kotohime admitted cheerfully. "Lucky we have Gensokyo's finest scientist here, aren't we?"

It looked like Rikako was out of practice when it came to grinning, but she made an attempt.

-x-

Before they even got started, Rikako took five minutes putting sensitive projects under tarps and finding goggles and gloves for herself and her guest.

"I don't know why you're bothering," Kotohime said with a shrug, glancing at the safety gear briefly before setting it aside. "If this goes wrong we'll be lucky if your house is still standing."

"This isn't the first time I've worked with hazardous materials," Rikako said coolly as she tied her shimmering purple hair back with a white ribbon.

"Oooh, or maybe we'll get blown into another dimension entirely," Kotohime went on, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Unless that only happens when you start in a demiplane. Or does Gensokyo itself count as a demiplane? Suppose there's only one way to find out."

Rikako froze, her hands still behind her head, then sighed. "W-well, let's just not make any mistakes then."

Kotohime stopped listening once Rikako started describing what she was pulling out of her various drawers and cases, but the key seemed to involve a lot of copper wiring, and within ten minutes they had swapped out Rikako's miniature magical furnace for Kotohime's thaumic plasma power source. The princess briefly considered pocketing the mini-hakkero, but decided now was not the time. Besides, she was fully capable of building her own.

"I think we're set," Rikako declared after checking the wiring one last time.

"Shall we do a countdown?" asked Kotohime.

"Seems self-indulgent," Rikako said, before taking in and letting out a deep, slow breath. "Right. Activating the new power source." The purple-haired scientist strode over to the generator, and without a moment of further hesitation, slammed a heavy lever on its side to the upright position.

The magical dynamo immediately rumbled into life, grumbling and growling as pinkish smoke jetted from vents on its top. Rikako took a quick step back, her gloved fists clenched, but despite the racket and shaking, the generator seemed stable.

"System activated," the scientist reported, voice still steady. "Initiating the energy transfer..." She pulled a lever, and now it was the dais' turn to vibrate and hum, making the device affixed to its top rattle. It was getting pretty noisy in the workshop, Kotohime noted, and the air was starting to smell like hot tin.

Rikako briskly walked over to the device. "Inputting the communications code now..." A drop of sweat running along the top of her plastic goggles was the only sign of stress as she jabbed at the buttons in a specific sequence.

Almost lost in the ambient rumbling and roaring, the device went beep, and a green light lit up.

Then there was a tearing sound that made Kotohime and Rikako stumble back, as a crackling line of purple-greenish energy blasted upward from the top of the device. The inverted lightning bolt faded to be replaced with a shining beam of light, the device at its base made another beep, something shifted on its surface to reveal a small, glassy circle, and then with a crackle of static, a fuzzy, translucent image appeared to hang in the air in front of the thing. Spellbound, Kotohime and Rikako watched as what looked like a localized bluish blizzard swirled and danced, resolving itself into-

Suddenly there was a short line of translucent text hanging in the air before them, spelling out an error message. The device went beep again, and a digitalized female voice said "We're sorry, but the number you have dialed cannot be reached. A notification has been sent to the customer's inbox. Thank you."

And then the text disappeared, the beam of light shining up from the communicator cut off, and the green light dimmed, flickering once every few seconds like an electronic heartbeat.

Rikako was frozen, her mouth agape in disbelief as she stared at the communicator that had worked... and yet hadn't.

"She must not have her phone on," Kotohime said with an apologetic shrug. "Guess we'll have to wait and see if she calls back." She idly glanced up at tiny, glowing hole in the ceiling that the lightning bolt had exited through. "Got any card games?"

-x-

Rikako did not have any card games.

To her credit, she tried to be a good hostess, and brought down tea and some (bland and unsatisfying) soup while Kotohime watched the communicator, but the scientist was clearly distraught. For the first hour, Rikako simply sat on a stool, her half-finished dinner cooling on the table next to her while she stared intently at the slumbering piece of technology. Kotohime tried to explain that there was no telling when the message would be picked up and returned, but the other woman didn't seem to be listening. So the princess amused herself as best she could while the scientist continued to sit with her chin in her hand, staring at but not really seeing the communicator.

After assembling some empty beakers and tubes into a concept model of her underwater palace, Kotohime stifled a yawn, glancing around but not finding any windows. "Think it's getting late. Maybe we should sit in shifts? I'll take first watch, if you'd like."

"I'm fine," Rikako mumbled without lifting her gaze from the communicator.

The police chief gave her a long look. "How involved are you willing to be with this?"

Rikako blinked, then stiffly pushed herself into a more upright seat as she turned to face Kotohime. "Huh?"

"Like I said, someone tried to kill Chiyuri," Kotohime went on. "It's entirely possible that by investigating why, you'll become a target too. Are you willing to-"

"Yes," Rikako said bluntly. She leaned forward, staring at Kotohime over the rims of her glasses, her purple hair hanging down to frame her face, and took a deep breath before continuing. "When I investigated those 'ruins,' I encountered something fantastic, made contact with a world beyond my comprehension. For the first time in my life I met people who cared about the same things I did, even if I could barely understand when they tried to explain them. And..."

Kotohime waited patiently as Rikako took several breaths.

"And then they vanished," the scientist said quietly. "Everyone went their separate ways. Nobody talks about it, like they're pretending it never happened. I was alone again." She ran her fingers through her hair, staring down at the floor of her laboratory. "Some mornings I'd wake up and think it was all just a dream, and I'd have to come down here and reassure myself that they'd left this behind," she said, flapping a hand at the slumbering device. "Except I could never get it to work, so I started wondering if I'd just found some more junk beyond the Border and imagined it was from another world."

The princess said nothing. What could she say, anyway?

"I started to think I was worse off from it," Rikako said in a near-whisper. "Just... getting that glimpse of what science was capable of, and then coming home, playing with these, these toys!" she suddenly snarled. "Picking up scraps from the outside world, trying to make them work again or replicate them, except we don't have the industrial base or knowledge, so there's no bloody point-"

"I always thought your jetpack was neat," Kotohime said brightly.

Rikako was silent for a long moment. "I cheated."

"Huh?"

"I could get the rockets to flame, but it wasn't enough thrust to keep me airborne, and I couldn't control it," Rikako admitted, her face twisted with bitterness. "I was just flying with some fireworks strapped to my back."

Kotohime scratched her jaw. "Are you sure that your belief in your invention wasn't bolstering your thruster's attempts to make you fly? Gensokyo works like that sometimes."

Rikako stared at her, her purple eyes as cold as a winter twilight. "Would that really be any better? Either I'm cheating or this stupid valley is holding my hand."

Kotohime hmmed at that, unable to argue with her point. "Back to my original question," she said. "It sounds like you're really interested in being a part of this, no matter how dangerous it is."

"Yes."

"So," Kotohime went on, "I strongly advise you to take advantage of my offer to keep an eye on this thing so you can get some rest. Because if that killer robot from the future was only the prelude, we're going to need you in top condition to stand a chance of resolving this Incident."

Rikako grunted at that, but slowly nodded her head. "Guess you have some good ideas from time to time," she conceded.

Kotohime tilted her head and gave her a smirk. "Hey, didn't I get this thing working in the first place?"

"That was a dangerous and ill-advised idea that just happened to work out," Rikako replied, though her mouth was twisted into something like a half-grin. She hopped off her stool, walked over to a wooden cabinet near the lab's staircase and withdrew some blankets and pillows before returning to her seat. She made herself as comfortable as possible, leaning forward to rest her head on pillows stacked atop the table in front of her. "Wake me in an hour or two, will you?"

-x-

Kotohime had picked up the trick of being able to rest with her eyes open, nearly dozing but still alert - Agsaldai had said it was crucial when the ordo was riding long and hard - so it wasn't like she'd fallen asleep during her shift on watch. Still, the sudden beep was startling and made her nearly jump out of her seat.

While the princess recovered, the panel on the communicator slid to reveal the lens, and the whole machine started humming. Kotohime quickly hopped off her chair and shook the snoring Rikako's shoulder. The scientist sputtered, swatting reflexively at Kotohime until she saw what was happening, and nearly tripped on her stool's legs as she rushed to get up.

A pale blue light began to shine out of the lens on front of the communicator, projecting a flurry of snow and static that hung in the air for a moment, before swiftly moving into the shape of a woman leaning forward, reaching out to touch something - though her arm abruptly terminated at the elbow when it reached the limits of the projection.

"-zzzzlo? Hello, hello? Is this thing working?" came a scratchy yet distantly familiar voice from the same device that was creating the imagery.

"It's working," Rikako breathed, eyes wide. Then she cleared her throat, and said "Yes, we can hear you!"

"Rikako, is that you?" the image asked. "Hang on, let me see if..." She leaned forward again to make another adjustment.

There was another crackle of static, and the image abruptly sharpened. It was a little translucent, and the colors were somewhat washed-out, but hanging in the air in front of Kotohime and Rikako was a redheaded woman in extra-Border modern clothing, with an incredulous but delighted smile on her face. And it was that smile that confirmed her identity to Kotohime - she'd last seen this person as a teenager, but although she'd since transitioned to full adulthood, her grin was unmistakable.

"You, you got it to work!" gushed Yumemi Okazaki. "That's fantastic! How in the world did you - I mean, when I got home I found out that my end of the communicator was faulty, so I'd given up hope that you'd - it's so great to see you again!"

"It's..." Rikako croaked, then blinked rapidly. "Yeah, it's-"

"Faulty?" asked Kotohime, stepping forward to stand next to Gensokyo's scientist.

Yumemi's smile managed to get wider. "And Kotohime, too? Wonderful! Were you helping Rikako with this?"

"The secret was to apply more juice," Kotohime said with a fleeting grin. "You said your device was faulty?" she asked again.

"Um..." Yumemi seemed taken aback. "Yeah, that's right. I tried to contact Rikako shortly after we made it home, but..." she gave a helpless shrug. "It wouldn't work. I never figured out what was wrong with it, I tried to get it repaired and they couldn't make any sense of it either, said it was a factory defect or something. And since the dimensional communicators only work in entangled pairs, I couldn't replace it, so..." She trailed off into another shrug.

Kotohime scratched her chin. "Guess phone companies suck no matter the dimension. Anyway, I hate to bother you, but we were hoping we could borrow a computer."

Yumemi obviously hadn't been expecting that. "W-well, of course I'd love to help, but... uh, there's some pretty strict laws about what kind of technology we can share with other worlds. Just this simple communicator was pushing it, I had to do a lot of paperwork when I got back..." She shifted awkwardly. "May I ask why you even need a computer in the first place?"

"Killer robots," Kotohime said matter-of-factly, and held up the severed head for emphasis. Maybe it was a limitation of the medium, but Yumemi seemed to pale. "This afternoon I defeated an attack on a Gensokyan citizen by a mechanical assassin. I need to get into its brain and learn the whos and the whys and whatnot."

Yumemi's gaze was locked on the empty eyes of the robot girl. "That... that looks almost like one of our androids."

Kotohime nodded. "Right, and since the technology represented by this cyborg ninja is closer to your dimension's tech level than ours, it must have come from the future."

"Uh... right." Yumemi's gaze flickered to meet Rikako's for a moment, and Kotohime saw the mage-turned-scientist shrug out of the corner of her eye. "Ah," Yumemi went on, "did you get a look at what the assassin was using?"

In response, Rikako stepped forward, displaying the confiscated firearm to the professor's hologram.

"Obviously an advanced killing implement," Kotohime pointed out unnecessarily. Then she remembered something. "Oh yeah, Chiyuri thinks-"

Yumemi jolted. "What?!"

"Dammit, I did it again," Kotohime said with a wince. "Yeah, the target was our Chiyuri, and she thought she recognized the maker's mark or whatever as something she saw on your Chiyuri's gun. Which I suppose begs the question of why a robot from the future would need to steal firearms from your dimension, but I didn't read the rules for time travel, so-"

"Where's your Chiyuri now?" Rikako asked, stepping in front of Kotohime, to the princess' irritation.

"Um, still at work, she got stuck with the late shift tonight," Yumemi answered. Her expression grew worried. "You don't think she's at risk too, do you?"

"Good thinking, Rikako," Kotohime said with a grave nod. "We can't disregard the danger," she told Yumemi. "Robots are infamously meticulous, and if they've decided that one Chiyuri Kitashirakawa is a threat to their future plans, they may move against every universe's Chiyuri, just to be safe." She gave the woman in another world a reassuring smile. "Luckily I've got a pretty good witness protection program set up, so you really ought to bring your Chiyuri along when you drop off that computer."

"That's..." Yumemi let out a heavy breath, slumping somewhat. "That'll be difficult. See, when we got back... the short version is, I'm no longer with the university, and now I'm, um..." Her hands clenched. "I'm underemployed. Not in a great position to even rent a vehicle capable of crossing dimensions right now."

"Bummer," said Kotohime to fill the pause that followed. She tapped her foot, brow furrowed as she tried to think of some way to transmit the data from the head in their dimension to an interpreter device in Yumemi's, but was interrupted when another haze of static swept over Yumemi's projected image, making it blur and jump before steadying.

"Is this safe?" Rikako asked.

"Huh?" both redheads said at once, before shooting each other an amused glance. "What do you mean?" Yumemi asked.

"It's a two-way sending, correct?" Rikako clarified. "No one else might be eavesdropping?"

"Uh, I guess it's possible," the otherworldly ex-professor said. "I'm not sure why anyone would want to tap my apartment, but-"

Kotohime stifled a curse. Of course the robots would have bugging equipment. "We may have put you in danger just by contacting you," the police chief said curtly. "You and Chiyuri need to get over here as soon as possible. How quickly do you think you can get another hypervessel?"

Yumemi froze, then clenched her fists. "I think I can - dammit, I can't say, just - hold on, alright!" She leaned forward, arm disappearing again, and abruptly her image dissolved in a cloud of hissing static, shortly before the communications device shut off again.

Kotohime and Rikako stood in silence for a moment. "I should have anticipated this," Kotohime sighed. She knew she was a genius, but even so, outsmarting supercomputers bent on exterminating or enslaving the human race was proving to be a real challenge.

"She's smart," Rikako said, though she seemed to be talking mainly to herself. "I'm sure she knows what she's doing. And there's nothing we can do right now. So now we just need to wait and see if she can come to us."

"Yay." Kotohime scowled and drummed her fingers on her folded arms. "Do you have a sleeping bag or something?" she asked.

-x-

Rikako did not have a sleeping bag.

She did have a guest bedroom, but it had evidently been repurposed as a storage room, and rather than spend hours cleaning out the old clothes and boxes of who-knew-what that were cluttering up the bed, Kotohime declared that she'd make do in the living room. Although Kotohime was a pampered princess, she was also a hardened officer of the law, and so heroically wrapped herself in blankets and made herself not completely uncomfortable sitting in one of the chairs. Fortunately, sleep came quickly - all she had to do was think about the department's yearly budget, and consciousness made a tactical withdrawal.

-x-

-4-

She stepped confidently into sunlit clearing around the entrance to those strange ruins, only to halt when she found someone else already blocking the way. It was some redhead in purple robes - fancy formal robes, in the woods! - who didn't seem to have noticed her yet, and was staring at the weird structure with her hands on her hips.

Rikako opened her mouth to speak, only for the girl to ask, without turning around to face her, "Do you think these new ancient ruins would be more interesting than old new ruins?"

She had to blink at that. "Huh?" managed Rikako.

"They look pretty old, but they weren't here last week," the girl continued, finally glancing back at Rikako. "I was thinking, maybe some newer ancient ruins that had been around a little longer might have more treasure in them. Or maybe mummies!" She smiled at the other woman, her expression bright and innocent. And vaguely familiar, a face Rikako may have encountered during an errand...

"You're from the village, aren't you?" asked Rikako.

"Not as much as I'd like," the girl answered, frowning slightly. "Most of the time I'm just in the village. It's boring." She abruptly jolted. "Ah, forgive me, I've let myself become distracted from protocol. I am Kotohime," she said, bowing deeply and gracefully.

Ah, now Rikako remembered, from some gossip she'd overheard before striking out on her own. Apparently there was a well-to-do family with a daughter they tried to keep at home as much as possible, and now that she'd met her, Rikako could see why.

But she was supposed to be introducing herself right now. Rikako pushed the bridge of her glasses further up her nose, subtly shifting into an aloof and commanding pose that had looked very good in the mirror. "Rikako Asakura," she said. "Now, I think-"

"Your clothes are very interesting!" said Kotohime, taking a step closer and fidgeting as though resisting the urge to grab the fabric. "Foreign, are they not?"

"It's a lab coat," Rikako explained, similarly fighting the urge to take a step back. "I'm a scientist."

"Ohhh..." Kotohime's smile brightened, or maybe intensified was the better word, becoming something slightly off-putting. "That's great! I thought I was the only one!"

Rikako couldn't hide her surprise. "What?"

"Well, I suppose it's more of a hobby than a career," Kotohime said, flapping a long and loose purple sleeve. "Just some chemistry and a bit of metalworking. You know, applied science. Or maybe they should call them the fun sciences!"

Frowning, Rikako decided to quit wasting time. "Good for you. But why don't you be a good girl and go home now? These ruins might be dangerous, and there's some people fighting for the right to enter them."

"I know, I already fought some of them," the girl said, that manically-cheerful smile back on her face. "Like that ghost behind you."

Rikako refused to fall for the trick. "Really?" she asked sarcastically.

"Oh, it was wonderful! Her danmaku was beautiful, simply amazing!" gushed Kotohime. "I also fought a bird keeper! I'm not sure about the others, though, they seemed pretty suspicious - that 'shrine maiden' in particular." The smile vanished again, replaced by a furrowed brow. "She looked kind of tough, too." And then she was back to cheerful. "But I'm pretty strong."

Rikako realized that her lip had curled and quickly set her face in a more neutral expression. "Right. Well, if you'd step aside-"

"Oh, you want to explore those ruins and claim your wish too!" Kotohime finally realized.

"Yes," the scientist said through clenched teeth. "So please move."

But Kotohime shook her head, setting her long, loose ponytail to swaying. "No, that's not how it works. We fight, and then the loser steps aside." She drew something from her belt, a short metal truncheon with a hook of sorts aimed upward from the grip, and flourished it.

Rikako stopped bothering to hide her disdain. "You seriously want to fight me?" She folded her arms and triggered her jetpack, letting herself rise from the ground as growling flames shot down under her.

The girl's eyes positively glowed with excitement (and some sort of mental illness). "Wow! Your science is pretty impressive!" But she didn't back off, instead she too rose into the air. "Wanna see mine?"

And then the girl stuffed her free arm down her other sleeve, withdrawing a hand-sized metal globe with a short length of sparking cord extending from the top like the stem of a fruit. Rikako's eyes widened as Kotohime lobbed the bomb-

-x-

Rikako was jolted awake by her bed, indeed her whole house, shaking on its foundation. Her first thought was of an earthquake, but then she picked up the rising, whining sound that was coming from outside, something unlike anything she'd heard before, something that her instincts told her was mechanical in nature.

She looked at the windows, cursed, then snatched her spectacles from her nightstand. They didn't help much, from the light levels outside it looked to be just before sunrise, but as she watched, a brilliant white luminescence shone through her shutters before just as quickly disappearing.

The scientist realized she'd wasted enough time, and hurriedly threw back the covers, swinging herself out of bed and dressing in the dark - and not in her normal houserobes, no. Before going to bed she'd opened a long-unused drawer and laid out the extra-Border business attire she'd purchased at great expense from Kourindou so long ago.

It was harder to button the pants than she remembered, unfortunately.

Rikako swatted some lint off her legs, then donned the last piece of her ensemble. She hadn't worn it in years, not since her efforts to revolutionize Gensokyo had failed, but if there was ever a time to put on her labcoat again, it was now. Unlike her pants it slipped on easily, and Rikako Asakura let out a slow breath of satisfaction as the white jacket wrapped itself around her.

For the first time in a long time, she felt like herself. She straightened her glasses and strode out of her bedroom.

Kotohime was still in her chair in the living room, cocooned in a blanket with her head tilted back against the headrest, mouth open as she snored. Surprised and a little annoyed that the rumbling and the racket hadn't woken her, Rikako gave the lunatic's shoulder a not-so-gentle shove. "Hey, wake up, they're here."

"Summoning your gods for backup is cheating, Kochiya," Kotohime mumbled as she wriggled out of her wrappings and got up from her chair. She smacked her lips, glanced around, and smiled when she noticed the commotion. "Think we should put a pot on?"

Rikako ignored the suggestion, walked to the front door, took a breath to steady herself, and then flung the portal open.

The sound from outside suddenly intensified as a gust of wind ripped through the house, buffeting her hair and clothing. The scientist only managed to step out her door before she had to come to a halt and stare up at what was in the pale pink sky.

"Huh, looks different when it isn't disguised," Kotohime noted as she joined her.

It wasn't a particularly impressive vehicle, once your eyes adjusted to the floodlights shining down from it, though Rikako supposed its function was more meaningful than its form in this case. It was gunmetal grey, shaped somewhat like a squashed cylinder. Its snub-like front featured one big, rounded window, there were a few stubby wings near its end presumably for stability, a set of boxy engines on its rear, and that was more or less it. The whole thing looked about as aerodynamic as a turtle, yet hovered in the air as easily as... well, one particular turtle.

As they watched, the vehicle slowly descended, and a set of sturdy landing claws swung out from hidden hatches shortly before the thing touched down on Rikako's front yard with one last tremor. Immediately the whining and pulsing sounds started winding down, and the scientist saw movement through the front window shortly before there was a hiss and a rectangular ramp slowly lowered from under the vehicle's midsection.

There was another flare of light from this new opening, but it flickered as a shape descended down the ramp. The silhouette resolved itself into a red-headed woman, and though she'd just seen Yumemi over the communicator, now that they were meeting in the flesh, Rikako was struck by just how the other woman had changed over the years. She remembered a driven eighteen-year-old out to make her mark on the world and turn the scientific community upside-down, not this woman with a darkness around her eyes and a sharpness to her features. She'd even discarded that flamboyant red cape for a simple black jacket and baggy tan pants.

But Yumemi Okazaki obviously recognized them, and gave Rikako and Kotohime a bittersweet smile, her eyes shining with emotion. "Well, it's..." She struggled for words for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders and gave a self-effacing chuckle. "It's so great to see you guys again!"

"It has been far too long!" Kotohime agreed, stepping forward to give the other redhead a sisterly squeeze. "Literally hours since we last communicated!"

"You know what I mean!" laughed Yumemi.

After Kotohime disengaged, Rikako opted for a simple handshake. "I'm at a loss for words," the scientist admitted, her throat tight. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again, so I don't know what to say to you now."

"Maybe 'hello?'" Yumemi suggested with a grin, before stepping forward to give her a quick hug. Rikako forced herself not to tense up and awkwardly patted the other woman on the back. "So how's the science going?" Yumemi went on. "Get anything out of those books I loaned you?"

Rikako fiddled with her spectacles, keeping her face carefully neutral. "More than I would have accomplished on my own, certainly. I-"

"Hey, you guys aren't gettin' the reunion started without me, are ya?" came a voice came from behind Yumemi. The light coming from the hypervessel's landing ramp blinked as another figure descended it.

Kotohime put a sleeve to her mouth in surprise. "Chiyuri? My goodness, you've grown!"

"I was just a kid when ya saw me last," Chiyuri Kitashirakawa agreed with a wide and reassuring grin as she strode into view. Compared to Yumemi, Chiyuri had changed both less and more. Her girlish blonde pigtails were gone, though she still wore her hair short, and her gawky fifteen-year-old frame had gained almost a foot in height and filled out to become a proper woman. But while the geometry of her face might have changed after finishing puberty, Chiyuri's infectious good cheer and confidence hadn't diminished one bit.

"More than our Chiyuri, I should say," Kotohime clarified. "You look at lot like her, but I think you're a bit taller." She squinted at the other woman. "Maybe it's because of diet?"

"Must be," agreed Chiyuri. "Can't imagine you can get a decent burger in a place like this."

"But hey, what happened to your sailor outfit?" asked Kotohime, flapping a sleeve at the sweater and worn denim pants Chiyuri was wearing.

Chiyuri laughed. "Grew out of it, of course!"

"Oh..." Kotohime swallowed, her gaze downcast as she blinked her eyes rapidly. "Th-that makes sense. I just wish I could've seen it again, one last time..." She turned to Yumemi. "You still have that cape, though, right?" she pleaded.

"Is that really important?" Rikako interrupted. "We called them here for a reason, remember."

"Right, right." Kotohime composed herself and bowed to the extradimensional visitors. "Thank you very much for coming," she told them. "If you'll follow me into the dining room, we can discuss the looming threat to humanity over some refreshments." The princess led the party towards the cottage, respectfully holding the door as Chiyuri and Yumemi stepped inside.

A frowning Rikako halted next to Kotohime. "What are you doing?"

"Being a good hostess," Kotohime replied.

"But it's my house," Rikako pointed out.

"So step up."

-x-

It had been a good while since she'd entertained visitors - or she should say invited visitors - but Rikako was of the opinion that she made a decent pot of tea, and it wasn't like there was much of a trick to serving it. Yumemi and Chiyuri had accepted her offer of refreshment quickly enough, even if they'd been disappointed after asking if Rikako had any coffee instead.

"We had a long night," Yumemi explained with a wry smile and tired eyes. "Got Chiyuri from work, went home, threw together what we could, dug out Gensokyo's coordinates, got the hypervessel..." She had to stop to stifle a yawn.

"Someone obviously never had to pull any all-nighters while she was gettin' her degree," a bright-eyed Chiyuri said. She looked around Rikako's dining room as though searching for something. "So, where are the others?"

Rikako frowned slightly as she bent to carefully refill Yumemi's teacup. "You mean the ones who were involved in the tournament?"

"Reimu and Marisa are still around, but I don't think they'll be joining us," Kotohime explained, leaning back in her chair. "They're busy collecting the Dragon Balls or something."

Yumemi choked on her drink, and Chiyuri was at her side in a flash, gently pounding on the older woman's back. "The dragon's what?" she asked when she could breathe again.

Kotohime arched an eyebrow. "You guys don't have Toriyama in your dimension?" At their slow shake of their heads, she shrugged and explained, "It's basically Journey to the West, but it turns out they're aliens and there's more posturing and screaming than is strictly necessary."

When Yumemi and Chiyuri turned towards Rikako, the scientist only snorted. "Don't look at me, I don't know what she's talking about either." She set the teapot down and pulled a chair back to take a seat. "At any rate, it looks like the four of us are the only ones available to deal with this."

"And what is 'this' exactly?" Chiyuri asked, ignoring her beverage to fold her arms. "I heard the professor-"

"I've told you a thousand times to stop calling me that," Yumemi said quietly, her face going blank.

Her former student gave her a reassuring smile. "I don't care what those morons say, you're a better professor than any of 'em."

Yumemi's expression softened, ever so slightly.

"But like what, someone tried to kill me?" asked Chiyuri. "The other me, I mean. The me from here."

Kotohime nodded, her face grave. "At approximately 0500 hours yesterday afternoon-"

"That'd be five in the morning, you mean 1700," Rikako interrupted.

"-Gensokyo's version of Chiyuri Kitashirakawa came to me to report that she was being stalked," Kotohime continued. "I disguised myself as her in order to lure the suspect out, and was attacked by an android who could pass for human, using a firearm far in advance of anything normally found in Gensokyo."

"Not that we have robots either," Rikako added.

Kotohime allowed herself a slight smile. "Fortunately, I have some experience dismantling killer robots-"

"Which is hard to believe since, as I said, we don't have any around here," said Rikako.

"-and so was able to neutralize the threat. The android attempted to self-destruct, but I was able to recover its head and weapon, which are down in the basement."

"My laboratory," Rikako corrected. She cleared her throat, fighting to keep her body language casual and praying that she wasn't blushing. "Er, would you like to see it?"

A short time later they were all downstairs, and Rikako was so thrilled to have someone who would understand a tour of her workspace that she overlooked the fact that Kotohime had violated safety protocols by bringing her drink with her.

"I have to say, this is simply amazing for a place like Gensokyo," Yumemi said as she slowly turned around, taking in everything.

Now Rikako was sure she was blushing, dammit. "Ah, well," she said as she glanced down modestly. "I've been working on my collection ever since you two left."

Chiyuri, however, only had eyes for the two particularly foreign objects sitting on the table nearest the transdimensional communicator. She approached slowly and in a thoughtful silence, giving the severed head a long stare before picking up and examining the somewhat mangled gun.

"Yeah, I recognize this," she said. "Uraga Heavy Industries Type 97. Or at least that's the basis for it, some of these attachments are newer."

Rikako arched an eyebrow. "You're familiar with such weapons?"

"Just as a hobby." Chiyuri put the thing down and gave them a nearly embarrassed smile. "I mean, I read about 'em and stuff. Got to shoot a real machine gun at a firing range for my birthday once. But the only gun I own is my pistol, a good ol' Uraga M120, and I haven't fired it in years."

"So this weapon came from your world?" asked Rikako.

"No, it came from the future," Kotohime corrected.

Chiyuri almost dropped the gun. "Wait, what?"

Rikako sighed. "Kotohime is convinced that the android she fought arrived here through time travel or such nonsense-"

"It is awfully unscientific to dismiss time travel as impossible while conversing with two women from another dimension," Kotohime said mildly, before taking a loud slurp from her beverage.

"And it is awfully unscientific to cling to a previous conclusion in the face of new evidence that casts serious doubt on it," Rikako countered. She turned to Yumemi. "You said that the robot looks like the androids from your world, correct?"

"Right," the former professor nodded.

"Yeah," Chiyuri agreed, setting the firearm down before crouching to look the damaged robot head in the eye. "Almost reminds me of whatsername, the assistant we brought along with us last time."

"You mean Ruukoto?" Yumemi snorted. "Some 'assistant.' She could barely keep the ship tidy. I think her programming was faulty, I kept catching her wandering off."

Rikako noticed that Kotohime had gone still, her brow furrowed with confusion as she stared off at something only she could see, her forgotten drink frozen halfway to her lips. "What is it?" the scientist asked.

"So how did they know about her?" Kotohime wondered to herself. Fortunately she shook herself out of it before Rikako had to hit her. "Questions for later," she decided. "Right now we need to get into that thing's head and figure out why it traveled back in time on an assassination mission."

Rikako growled in frustration. "If the robot looks like the ones in Yumemi and Chiyuri's dimension, and the gun it was using looks like the ones in Yumemi and Chiyuri's dimension, wouldn't it make more sense to assume that they both came from that dimension?"

Kotohime stared at her in silence for a long moment, then shrugged. "Okay then. So we need to get into that thing's head and figure out why it traveled here from another dimension on an assassination mission."

Yumemi turned to her former student. "Chiyuri?"

"I'll try, but don't get yer hopes up, there's a reason I didn't go into programming." Chiyuri pulled a slender piece of palm-sized equipment out of her pocket and tapped it so that its surface suddenly lit up to display text and colors - oh, it must be a compact computer. Then she withdrew a length of cable, plugged one end into the device, and after a bit of searching found a matching socket around the android's temple, on the part of its 'skull' exposed by the damage sustained during its battle with Kotohime. Assuming Kotohime hadn't made that part up.

"I guess this is digital necromancy," Kotohime said with a little smile as Chiyuri made the connection. "Calling up a machine's ghost with the power of electronics."

"Or not," Chiyuri said, staring down at the display on her little screen. She sighed and pulled the wire out of the android's head. "There's nothin' to read, it's fried. Or wiped."

Kotohime sucked on her teeth. "Damn, I was hoping the self-destruct sequence wasn't that complete. Now we'll never know why it came back in time." She saw the look on Rikako's face. "Or from another dimension, as the case may be."

"Neither scenario makes sense," Yumemi said with a mirthless chuckle. "Even our society hasn't figured out time travel, assuming it's even possible-"

"It is," said Kotohime with an earnest nod.

"-and Chiyuri and I are the only ones who think Gensokyo exists, so I don't see how this thing could've come from our dimension," Yumemi finished.

Rikako tilted her head. "No one else has access to your, ah, vessel?"

"Naw, even civilians can own a hypervessel if they got approval," Chiyuri said with a wave of her hand. "What the professor means is, we're the only ones who know how to get here. A trans-dimensional drive doesn't do ya any good if ya don't know where yer goin'."

"But I thought you were going to give a full presentation on what you found here," said a puzzled Rikako. "Or..."

Too late did she notice the frantic gestures for quiet that Chiyuri was giving her, or how the ex-professor's face had gone as red as her hair. Yumemi clenched her fists and took a few steps away from them.

Rikako cringed. "That's right, you said you aren't with your university anymore."

Chiyuri cleared her throat. "Yeah, the professor gave her report, but it, um, didn't go over well. And afterward, the board decided to let her go."

"It was not a case of the report 'not going over well,'" Yumemi corrected as she turned to face them again. "It was a case of being laughed out of the auditorium!"

Rikako winced, but had to ask. "What went wrong? I know you didn't get your test subject, but didn't you collect any data? Like... readings," she said lamely, "from your ship?"

"All the data was garbage!" Yumemi ranted. "The numbers never added up the same way twice, at least half of what we thought we were recording never got saved, error messages everywhere-"

"Even the holos, video and still shots were a mess," Chiyuri added glumly. "Tried to show the, y'know, battles and stuff with the magic bullets flyin' everywhere. End result looked like something a student programmer could put together on a 16-bit computer."

Rikako chewed her lip, desperate to find some way to help but aware of how woefully out of her depth she was. "I don't quite understand everything that you're talking about," she admitted. "But do you think it could have been an interaction between your advanced technology and Gensokyo's natural background magic?" It was a theory that Rikako often entertained as she wondered why her experiments tended to go awry - it was tempting to think the whole bloody country really was conspiring against her.

Chiyuri shrugged, listlessly. "Maybe."

"Most certainly not," Kotohime countered. When everyone turned to her in surprise, she merely waved a hand. "If Gensokyo's magical field did have a negative effect on modern - or postmodern - electronics, our friends' hypervessel would have been rendered inoperable the minute it arrived," she pointed out. "Additionally, that killer robot was able to function within it, to say nothing of our local fusion reactor, kappa gadgets, and other anachronisms." Then she took another noisy sip of her tea as everyone stared at her for a moment.

"Those are good points," Rikako said grudgingly.

"So how'd our data get scrambled, then?" demanded Chiyuri.

Rikako folded her arms, furrowed her brow, and pondered. A part of her recognized that it was ludicrous for her to try to solve a years-old problem involving technology she could not begin to grasp, but even so... "You said everything on your ship went wrong, correct? That seems statistically improbable."

Chiyuri snorted. "Tell me 'bout it. And the worst part is that we didn't even realize anything was borked when we were recording everything, it was only after we got back and started trying to put together the presentation that we realized how badly we were screwed."

"Well..." Rikako briefly glanced at Kotohime when she realized she was thinking less like a scientist and more like a detective. "Could you have been sabotaged?"

Kotohime made a wordless sound of approval.

Chiyuri and Yumemi exchanged a look. "What would be the point?" the latter asked. "Why send us out on an expedition to an incredible new world, but turn all our readings into garbage?"

"All your data got scrambled," Kotohime said.

The other redhead blinked. "Yes, I just said that."

"All the data you checked when you got back was garbage," said Kotohime.

Yumemi frowned. "Weren't you paying attention?"

"But what about the data you didn't check?" Kotohime asked, one eyebrow arched. "What about the data that you didn't even know about? The data that wasn't yours?"

There was a moment of quiet, then Yumemi snarled a curse and abruptly stormed away from them, muttering to herself.

"Professor!" Chiyuri called, alarmed. "What's wrong?"

Rikako took in a sharp breath as she saw where Kotohime was going with this. "Ah. You think they weren't the only ones studying Gensokyo?"

"What?!" Chiyuri's golden eyes were wide. "But we were the only ship to ever come here!"

"Let's suppose I want to gather information about Gensokyo, but don't want anyone to know I'm doing it," Kotohime said to no one in particular as she leaned against a table, gesturing with her free hand as she lectured. "Now, it just so happens there's a pair of bright young women interested in the same thing, and they're taking a research vessel to Gensokyo to gather as much data as possible. What do I do?"

Rikako thought for a moment, then nodded to herself. "You would put your own information-gathering devices on their vessel. Do it in secret, keep the data secure so Yumemi and Chiyuri couldn't access it. Then, when they return, quietly recover it."

Kotohime beamed at her. "Precisely. And to ensure that no one else is interested in Gensokyo, you take steps to render your patsy's research not only worthless, but so laughably inept that no other academic would see a point to continuing it."

"They screwed us!" Yumemi shouted, stomping their way again. "Hell, I bet they rigged it so our equipment was feeding information right into their data logs! They stole our work, made us a laughingstock, ruined my life-"

"But who's 'they?'" interrupted Rikako.

"It was them bastards at Edo Technical Institute," Chiyuri said darkly. "I just know it. They never got over the professor turnin' 'em down-"

Kotohime held up a finger. "They may have had a motive, but would they have the resources?"

"Sure," Yumemi said with a scowl. "They always get plenty of funding, both private and public. They have two state-of-the-art research hypervessels to work with, while we had to borrow ours from the government..."

She froze, her face paling, and a sudden silence fell over the laboratory.

"Oh no," Chiyuri said quietly.

"We, we were just so excited to finally have a proper ship," Yumemi mumbled, eyes hollow. "It already had a lot of the necessary equipment aboard, we barely had to add anything besides the hard drives..."

"They sent us some technicians to help install everything," Chiyuri added, looking miserable. "It was just chaos, people and stuff goin' everywhere. They were always runnin' tests, messin' with wires, doin' things..."

Rikako was forced to admit that she was getting lost again. She had little experience with political issues, and as far as she knew Gensokyo's human population didn't really have a government beyond a few powerful families like the Hiedas who tended to get what they wanted. It wasn't like people needed to be told how to run their farms or businesses.

"So, what," she asked, "some local lord or something had an interest in science, and loaned them-"

"Think bigger," Kotohime interrupted with a somber shake of her head. "Federal bureaus that don't officially exist, top secret research projects, classified covert operations..." She looked to Yumemi for confirmation. "Right?"

"I don't even remember which department loaned us the equipment," the other redhead admitted. "We were just so happy we got it... someone else handled all the paperwork, maybe the dean? Or was it the provost?"

"At any rate, we now have a rough idea of who the 'who' is in this Incident," Kotohime said with a bright smile. "This is starting to sound more interesting than the killer robots from the future!"

"But why?" asked Chiyuri, rising to her feet again and clutching her forehead. "I mean, why now? Why attack the other me, so long after we went to Gensokyo?"

"I'd say it was a case of mistaken identity," said Yumemi dryly, "but going to the entirely wrong world is a pretty big mistake to make."

Rikako chewed her lip as she thought, then suppressed a wince when she came up with a theory that had nothing to do with her chosen vocation. "Sympathetic magic?"

"Good catch, Rikako," Kotohime said with a wide smile. "Think voodoo dolls," she said for Yumemi and Chiyuri's benefit.

"By killing our Chiyuri, they could possibly get at... wait, no, they'd have no reason to..." Rikako stared at nothing for a few seconds, then jolted as realization hit. "Ah. Closing the link, not exploiting it."

"What link?" Chiyuri asked. She was looking a little pale from all this talk of killing alternate universe equivalents of herself.

"Let's be methodological about this," Kotohime told Rikako, before turning to their guests. "How easy is it for your civilization to detect and travel to another dimension?"

Yumemi opened her mouth to explain, paused, and gave the girls from Gensokyo an almost pitying look. "I'm having trouble figuring out how to put this in a way you'll understand," she said. "But, well, finding another dimension - with the right equipment, it's a lot like detecting a distant star with a telescope. And then reaching it is... kind of like getting the right frequency on a radio." She gave a brief chuckle. "I mean, this is all a pretty inaccurate description of what actually happens, but it's a useful misconception to hold onto."

"So it was pretty easy to find Gensokyo, then?" asked Kotohime, but from her expression she already knew the answer.

Yumemi shook her head. "Not at all. I mean, we found your 'outside world' easily enough - I forget what number it's filed under in the Probability Space atlas - but no one had found Gensokyo within that world. But one night, it was getting late, we did one last check of the instruments, and there was this anomalous reading-"

"Chiyuri was with you?" interrupted Kotohime.

The young woman in question nodded. "Yeah, this was right after I became a grad student. I thought for sure I wasn't usin' the scopes right, had the professor take a look at what I was doin', and there it was."

"A world within a world, emitting energy readings unlike anything we'd seen before," Yumemi finished with a nostalgic smile. "And you have no idea how exciting this is when your local scientists have a grand unified theory for everything."

Rikako nodded to herself. "Well, that probably explains how you found us."

"What do you mean?"

"You had a Chiyuri, and we had a Chiyuri," Rikako explained, pointing at the blonde woman. "When your Chiyuri was around those telescopes and radios of yours, she was able to use them to detect our Chiyuri."

"Sympathetic magic," Kotohime repeated.

"Right." Truth be told, Rikako was thrilled to be able to sound like an expert on something when talking to these women from an advanced society. Even if that something was an art she had long since turned her back on. "It can be difficult finding your way into Gensokyo from our outside world, much less another world altogether, so having a Chiyuri on each end of the connection is probably the only way you managed it." Rikako straightened her glasses. "Which means that the robot Kotohime blew up yesterday afternoon was either left behind when you two came to Gensokyo all those years ago, or else that government of yours has figured out how to reach Gensokyo without Chiyuri."

"Probably the latter, since now they're trying to kill our Chiyuri to prevent their Chiyuri from taking anyone else to Gensokyo," Kotohime said.

The Chiyuri in the room with them shivered. "Geez. But why come all the way over here to kill the other me? I mean, it'd surely be easier to..." She abruptly slumped forward, face gray and sweating. "Uh, kill me, I suppose," she managed after taking a gulp of air. "Aw geez, this ain't fun to talk about."

Yumemi immediately went over to start rubbing Chiyuri's shoulders. "Well, if anything happened to you back home, there'd be an investigation and everything. I certainly wouldn't let that happen without one," she said with a grim smile. "But here there's no witnesses - at least that our justice system could find - and no government-"

"A-hem," said Kotohime.

"Ah, excuse me," Yumemi said with a brief bow of her head. "Sometimes I forget you're a princess."

Rikako managed not to snort.

"Well, I am a lot of things," the self-proclaimed princess said. "Just prioritize remembering I'm a princess over remembering that I'm also a ski instructor, alright?"

This time Rikako failed to hide her disdain.

"But why kill the other me?" Chiyuri repeated, looking a little better thanks to Yumemi's efforts. "Me and the professor are scientific pariahs and haven't been able to get on a hypervessel ever since our trip to Gensokyo. Nobody believed us when we tried to tell the world about it. We're no threat to any hypothetical secret government plan."

"But you are a loose end," Kotohime said with a worryingly out-of-place smile. "You've got a figurative spare key to a wonderful new source of power that I'm sure the bad guys are eager to exploit. Even if you were disgraced and marginalized, there was always the chance that you two would find a way to make a trip to Gensokyo and risk blowing the lid off their evil schemes."

"Why are we assuming this is some sinister conspiracy?" asked Rikako.

Kotohime gave her a look. "Because good guys usually don't send robot assassins to kill women whose only crime was to have a counterpart in a parallel universe."

"Good point."

Chiyuri shook her head slowly. "It's hard to believe someone's willin' to murder someone just to keep Gensokyo a secret."

"No it isn't," Kotohime countered, her expression grim. "If your world thinks it's figured everything out, anyone who discovered a way to add magic to all that superscience would have a huge advantage over their rivals, an advantage they'd do anything to protect. The bad guys have probably been monitoring you for years in case you made a move towards Gensokyo, ready to make sure that if you ever came here again you'd never make it home."

Her words seemed to echo in the suddenly quiet laboratory.

Rikako cleared her throat, then asked Yumemi and Chiyuri, "Ah, would this government of yours have a way of knowing you're here now?"

The women from another world were very still. "P-probably," Yumemi admitted. "I mean, I - this trip wasn't an official voyage by any means, I had to cash in a lot of old favors just to borrow this hypervessel, but it's pretty easy to tell when someone crosses dimensions, so if anyone was paying attention... then yeah, they, uh, probably know we're here."

A cold, uncomfortable silence fell over the gathering.

"I think you and me have big ol' bull's-eyes on our backs right now, professor," Chiyuri said quietly.

Yumemi gave Rikako and Kotohime an anguished look. "And we've made you targets as well. I'm so sorry-"

"Nah, it's fine," Kotohime soothed. "I was getting tired of chasing crooks anyway. A good adventure across the dimensions is just what I need right now."

"I take it we should be moving?" Rikako asked, hopping to her feet. Her voice was calm, but her heart was already starting to beat faster.

Yumemi nodded. "If we can just get back home, I can try to put all this right, expose-"

Something chirruped, and Chiyuri jolted before picking up that palm-sized device of hers. Her eyes widened when she saw whatever information it displayed.

"Dimensional bow-wave detected," she reported. She swallowed. "We're about to have company."

-x-

-5-

Rikako barely had time to grab a bag of her essential tools on the way as the four ladies hurried out through the front door. She looked up at the bright blue sky but saw nothing but a few high, wispy clouds and the sun starting its climb from near the horizon.

"Everyone aboard!" Yumemi ordered, standing at the bottom of her vessel's boarding ramp and waving at them. "Chiyuri, get the engines started!"

"Shotgun!" Kotohime said eagerly as she followed the blonde girl up the ramp.

Rikako had to hustle to keep up, but even while she was evacuating in the face of a potential attack that could end her life, she tried to take in every detail possible as she clambered up the ramp. After all, this was a vehicle from another world, a technological masterpiece centuries more advanced than anything in Gensokyo.

It had been ages since Rikako had been given a brief tour of Yumemi and Chiyuri's hypervessel, but she still remembered the experience vividly, which meant that it was immediately apparent that this was a totally different style of vehicle. Exploring the old ship had been like stepping into a dream world, a boundless black void with a crescent moon in the sky and glass cylinders flanking a silvery road extending into the distance.

This hypervessel was comparatively mundane, and Rikako ascended the ramp to intersect a central corridor lit by strips of luminous panels overhead that looked similar to what she'd done with her laboratory. The walls were curved and seemed metallic, and the thinly-carpeted floor thumped and gave ever-so-slightly beneath her steps, presumably because there was a space under it for wiring. The lack of windows was off-putting, as was the air inside - it was a little too dry, a little too chill. The background noise was probably the worst part, though, a faint and high-pitched whining coming from the vessel's systems or engines or something. Rikako had gotten used to the sound of her generator humming away, but this sound put her on edge.

The endless, surreal expanses of the old hypervessel had been fantastic but not unfamiliar - Rikako had been to Makai, after all. This thing was simultaneously mundane and alien, and Rikako could feel her shoulders tightening from an irrational fear. She tried to reassure herself that this vehicle couldn't be unsafe if Chiyuri and Yumemi rode around on it, right? So she just had to get used to it.

Oblivious to Rikako's inner turmoil, Yumemi bounded up the boarding ramp after her and slapped a button on a nearby wall, causing the slope to slowly raise itself to rest flush with the floor in its little alcove. "C'mon, the cockpit is this way," she told Rikako, leading her along the hallway in the direction Chiyuri and Kotohime had disappeared.

"Ah, I know that word!" Rikako said with a nervous smile as she followed. "That's the part of the aircraft that the pilot sits in!" But Yumemi must not have heard her, the redhead was nearly sprinting as she hurried towards the front of the vessel.

The hallway abruptly terminated in a small room dominated by a curved window - the canopy, if Rikako remembered correctly - taking up the far wall, as well as several chairs and consoles whose function Rikako couldn't begin to guess at. Chiyuri was seated in the front left corner, hands dancing across the array of buttons and levers arranged before her.

Yumemi was giving orders even before she stepped into the cockpit. "Chiyuri, get us-"

"I know, I know, startin' the engines up now!" Chiyuri glanced over her shoulder to give her former professor a brief smile. "They're still warm, so it shouldn't take long."

"Excellent," Kotohime said grandly as she slid into the chair next to Chiyuri's. "You keep our vital systems operational, Ensign Kitashirakawa, I'll take the helm." The princess began plucking at the console in front of her with cool purpose.

Yumemi and Chiyuri exchanged a worried glance as Yumemi settled down behind Kotohime into what was presumably the captain's chair, quickly tapping at some buttons of her own. Rikako thought she saw the lights of Kotohime's console flicker and dim, while several new indicators lit up on Chiyuri's row of controls, though Kotohime didn't seem to notice. To Rikako's surprise, softly-glowing, faintly-translucent symbols and text also appeared on the aircraft canopy itself, though since the women from another world didn't react to them, presumably it was all part of how the ship operated.

"Better get strapped in," Yumemi ordered as the whining, growling sound Rikako had heard earlier began to intensify from the rear of the vessel. "I'm sorry we don't have a better place for you, this ship wasn't designed with a large crew in mind."

The scientist - well, Gensokyo's scientist - saw the relatively simple fold-out seat that Yumemi was pointing at on the wall next to the cockpit door. Rikako didn't like how it shifted under her weight as she eased herself down into it, but it seemed to hold her, so she occupied herself by figuring out how to get the cloth straps and metal buckles right. At least it was something else to focus on than how unnerving this vehicle was to be in. Surely the science of Yumemi and Chiyuri's world offered a better way to travel?

Rikako's thoughts were interrupted by flashing red text appearing on the forward viewport and harsh beeping coming from the equipment in front of Yumemi. The redhead's eyes widened as she read the instruments and reported "Dimensional breach imminent! Chiyuri, take us-"

Rikako wasn't sure what sort of phenomena should accompany a flying machine arriving from another world, but she was expecting more than what happened. As it was, there was simply and suddenly another unidentified fantastic object hanging in the sky before them, clearly visible through the cockpit windows. While the ship they were in was stubby and cylindrical, the new craft was sleek and angular, with swept-back wings and a more slender, pointed body.

A hawk to their pigeon, in other words. Rikako swallowed, unable to shake the feeling of hostility the newcomer was exuding. There was silence in the cockpit for the moment - at least from its human occupants, the ship was still damnably noisy.

"So, they ain't sayin' anything," said Chiyuri in a near-whisper. "Should I hail 'em?" With a shaking hand, she reached for some sort of technological earmuffs hanging on the side of her console-

There was a green flash and their ship rocked as something exploded behind them, making Rikako grateful she'd figured out how to belt herself into her seat. Something started making a harsh, urgent beeping and large, alarming text interposed itself between them and the ship outside the canopy.

Yumemi shouted a curse. "Evasive! G-go evasive!"

"We're not even airborne!" yelped Chiyuri.

"Shields up!" Kotohime ordered.

"MOVE!" Yumemi bellowed.

Chiyuri was yelling hoarsely, there was another flash from the other ship, but Rikako's attention was fully focused on how they were suddenly in motion, launching forward and to the side of the hostile craft, their entire vessel shaking and shuddering and bouncing for several seconds before Chiyuri pulled back on a stick. Rikako felt herself being pressed down and back against her seat, her stomach left behind somewhere below as the hypervessel abruptly leapt skyward.

"I think the rudder's hit, she's not responding quite right," Kotohime reported, yanking at the stick in front of her in a completely different manner than how Chiyuri was actually piloting their vessel.

No one bothered to reply. Rikako was too busy being terrified to cry out as this bizarre vehicle propelled her forward faster than she'd even flown, and much less smoothly. The flying ship was vibrating and bouncing as it battered its way through the air, as if the world was resisting the notion that such a thing could fly.

"Get us high enough to transition home," Yumemi ordered as she stabbed at her console.

"Oh hey, I can see my house from here," Kotohime said, temporarily letting go of her stick to lean to the side, her face pressed almost against the cockpit canopy as she looked below. "And my other house, safehouse, tree house, vacation house-"

There was another eye-searing flash that lit up the inside of the canopy, a thunderclap as something booted Rikako in the rear, then the ship was dropping like a rock, nearly sending the contents of Rikako's stomach to splatter on the cockpit's ceiling-

And then they were under control again, but only just, as Chiyuri sent them diving down and to the side, making Rikako strain against her seat's straps and her head and limbs flop for a moment.

Rikako Asakura realized two things: she might die in the next few minutes, and she absolutely hated flying in this thing. If she ended up in Hell for her rejection of faith and magic, whatever torments awaited her couldn't be much worse than this. She dimly noticed that the blaring sound was back, and she smelled some chemical smoke in the air.

"Oh, that's not good," Chiyuri groaned as red lines of text scrolled down the canopy like blood running into a wounded warrior's eyes.

Yumemi spat a curse. "The, the probability drives have failed!"

"Are we going to crash?" Rikako asked, her own voice surprisingly calm to her ears. Then again, crashing would mean all this discomfort would at least be brief.

"No, it means-" Yumemi grimaced, along with Rikako, as the ship began to bob and weave through the air as Chiyuri went evasive. "It means we can't travel between worlds! We're trapped in your dimension!"

"And Gensokyo doesn't have many places to hide something this size," Kotohime noted calmly, even while her hands yanked her station's control stick around to imitate their ship's movements.

There was another flash, but this one missed to explode a short distance in front of them, a green-white fireball that flared and faded in the time it took to blink.

"If this ends up blowing up Mizushima's bar again, I'll never hear the end of it," Kotohime added with a sigh.

"Keep us away from the ground," Yumemi told Chiyuri as she tried a few more buttons.

"I don't suppose surrender is an option?" asked Rikako.

Kotohime gave a curt shake of her head. "No point. They didn't try to talk before attacking, and remember that their goal is to kill Chiyuri. Surrendering just makes it easier for them to do that." She scratched her chin. "I suppose Chiyuri could offer to sacrifice herself-"

"No," growled Yumemi before her former student could even open her mouth.

"-but yeah, screw that," Kotohime said with a grin. "Let's save a fake surrender for when we have a trap ready."

"So what do we do?!" Chiyuri nearly wailed. She was answered by another flash and a blast of turbulence.

With no other way to contribute, Rikako tried to think of a way out of this. Even if this vessel had weapons - and she had a hunch that it didn't, surely they'd have used any by now - they were still outclassed by that enemy ship, so fighting wasn't an option. Kotohime had been right about there not being any places to hide, especially with their foe dogging their heels like this. And Rikako was skeptical that they could try to lead their enemy to a potential rescuer. Even the tengu would have trouble keeping up with these flying machines, and of course there was no way to let them know which of the two alien spacecraft was the friendly one. So the only logical option left was to-

"We run for the Border," Kotohime announced, wrestling with her stick once more.

"Just over the hills on the horizon," Rikako added, pointing out the cockpit window for emphasis and trying not to be too annoyed that Kotohime beat her to the recommendation. Chiyuri nodded and brought their ship along a new course.

"Yeah, I know where it is," Kotohime said, oblivious. "I'm not entirely sure how easy it will be to pass through the Great Hakurei Barrier, though. I know some folks manage it by accident, but-"

"This vehicle is designed to pass into other worlds," Rikako said as much to reassure herself as the other woman.

"And if that's not enough, boy will we be surprised!" Kotohime laughed. "At least we'll take the bad guy down with us, he'll probably smack into it right behind us."

"I'll do what I can," Yumemi said, working furiously at her console. "We're too damaged to initiate a jump ourselves, but maybe if I..."

Everyone seemed to hold their breaths as the slightly misty hills ringing Gensokyo grew closer. There was no obvious sign of the mystic boundary, though terrain seemed hazy and indistinct, as though they it was much farther away than it should be. Rikako realized she was unconsciously stretching out with her other senses, but her long-neglected magical ability was either too weak to detect the Barrier or else there were too many distractions from this bouncing, shaking, whining airship-

And suddenly they were over a different world.

Oh, it looked similar to Gensokyo - the sun was still shining, still climbing up from the horizon ahead of them, but it seemed dimmer, and the sky around it was more washed-out than vibrant with the promise of a new day. There were still green hills and mountains around them, but the colors were muted and the heights less imposing. It was a world with something vital missing from it, Rikako realized.

At that wasn't the biggest change. The scientist initially mistook the long gray stretch running along the valley for a wasteland, before she realized that she was looking at buildings, more structures than she had ever seen before, as if the Human Village had become some creeping vine that was spreading to cover the land.

For a long moment the four women simply stared out the canopy into the new world they were now flying over.

"Wow, it's like looking back a hundred years ago," Yumemi murmured.

"What happened to this place?" Rikako breathed.

Kotohime craned her neck, then pointed off at something. "Ah, there's Lake Suwa. And I think that's Matsumoto past it."

"Oh, we're in Nagano," Chiyuri realized. "You're right, professor, it looks totally different."

And then there was a violent reminder that they were still being pursued.

Something exploded against the hull right next to the cockpit, there was a blast of light and sound, and the ship felt like it had bounced off a stone wall, lunging violently to one side and shaking its occupants like dolls in the grip of a hyperactive child. Rikako's arms and legs flailed through the air, her head lolled this way and that, her glasses nearly bounced off her nose, but through it all she distinctly heard a very brief, cut-off scream from their pilot, punctuated by the loud thump of something hitting the inside of the cockpit.

"Chiyuri!" shouted Yumemi.

As Rikako shakily tried to get her spectacles on straight again, she noticed several things through the chaos. Chiyuri was slumped in her chair, upright only because of her seatbelt, while Yumemi was clawing desperately at her own restraints. There was a chorus of alarms or warnings beeping and blaring all around them, the text displayed on the inside of the cockpit canopy had vanished, and as Rikako watched, the vessel's nose began to dip as it entered a fatal dive.

"Chiyuri, answer me!" cried a desperate Yumemi. She had unbuckled herself completely to rush forward and grab her companion, who stirred weakly and groaned in response.

"We're going down," Kotohime reported unnecessarily.

Rikako's heart was hammering in her chest, her eyes were wide and darting about wildly as she searched for an escape. "Should we abandon ship?" she asked, a bit shrilly if she were honest.

"Only two of us can fly under our own power," Kotohime said tersely as she struggled with her stick. "Controls aren't responding," she added.

Yumemi was clutching the side of Chiyuri's chair, one hand to the side of her friend's head as she tried to rouse her. "She's out! C'mon Chiyuri, I need you!"

"Can you take over?" asked Rikako, eyes glued to the rapidly-approaching ground. It had never even occurred to her that she might die someplace other than Gensokyo, but here they were.

Rikako's question had been directed at Yumemi - it might have been possible to grab the pilot's stick and at least get the ship pointed away from the ground. But instead-

"Oh, flight control must have gotten switched over in the impact," said Kotohime after glancing over at Chiyuri's console. "Hold on." She reached out, tapped a button on the other woman's control panel, and settled back in her seat-

Rikako's stomach fell out of her body again as the vessel pulled up as suddenly as it had entered its dive, and Yumemi had to cling tight against Chiyuri's chair to avoid flying backward into Rikako.

"There we go," Kotohime said happily. She wriggled in her seat, then hunched forward, grinning from ear to ear. "Did I already say to hold on?"

And then the vessel rolled onto its side, followed by Kotohime pulling back on the stick, taking them through a sharp turn. There was a green flash and the crump of an explosion, but it didn't feel like they were hit - instead it felt like Rikako's eyeballs were being pressed against the back of their sockets, a sensation that did nothing to quell her nausea.

When the ship leveled out again, there were green hills and mountains in front of them and the sun was nowhere to be seen. "Didn't want to fly over an urban area with someone shooting at us," Kotohime explained. "Now, how's Chiyuri?"

Yumemi had somehow managed to hang on to the back of her friend's chair through the maneuvers, and looked down at the unconscious woman. "Still out of it. Come on girl, this is no time for a nap!" She gave the blonde's shoulder a gentle but urgent shake.

"'m sorry professor," Chiyuri slurred, flopping her head from one side to the other without opening her eyes. "But I couldn't find my razor so I had to use yours... I'll make it up to ya, promise..."

There was a moment of awkward silence in the cockpit as Yumemi's face went the same color as her hair. Then the hypervessel bounced as something exploded just behind it.

"Rude," Kotohime muttered, before twisting the control stick and making their vehicle waggle and lurch about at random.

"W-well, she can't be hurt too badly if she can still talk, right?" said Rikako hopefully.

Another green flash illuminated the cockpit, and this time the explosion was somewhere off to their right. "This would be a good time to engage a stealth system so we can lose this guy," their new pilot commented.

Yumemi stared down at Chiyuri for a few heartbeats, then bared her teeth, growled in frustration, and staggered her way to her station behind Kotohime's chair. "The stealth suite was one of the things that got knocked out when we were hit the first time," Yumemi said as she strapped herself back in. "I might be able to get it working, but it'll take at least a few minutes-"

"So we need a distraction," Kotohime decided. She sent the ship into another banking turn, descending slightly as it changed course, then leveled out over the valley below them.

They were close enough to the ground for Rikako to make out what must be a roadway running between the trees and buildings, but one wider and longer than anything she'd ever seen. She tried to distract herself from her hammering heart by remembering what little she heard about road construction in the outside world - they had something called asphalt for their automobiles to roll on, but she didn't know much else-

"Think that's Kofu ahead of us," Kotohime commented. She waggled the stick just enough to keep them from going in a straight line, but otherwise kept the vessel on a steady course. "Hope someone's paying attention..."

Then there was a sound like paper being torn apart in a tin-lined closet, and a man's stern voice emerged as if from thin air to say "Incoming aircraft, this is Yokota Air Base. Identify yourself immediately, over."

"There we go," Kotohime said happily. She glanced over at Yumemi even as she pulled their ship's nose up and shifted course to fly over the hills again. "This should buy us some time."

"Good," the other redhead said absently, without looking up. Her fingers were tapping away at her instrument panel, while a drop of sweat slowly worked its way down the bridge of her nose.

"Incoming aircraft, identify yourself now," the man's voice repeated.

Kotohime leaned over and snatched those strange earmuffs from their place on the side of Chiyuri's console, quickly donning them and moving some stick extending from the device to jut near her chin. "Che womok! Nude-la tyehtgeethin eedada huutaveet, yub yub!" she jabbered into the thing.

There was a long pause. "Incoming aircraft, can you repeat that?" the voice said, sounding decidedly off-balance.

"Eleeo. Yeha!" Kotohime replied, before pulling the thing off her head and tossing it aside. The lunatic cackled to herself, clapping her hands. "That'll give them something to think about."

Rikako realized her mouth was hanging open. "What did you say?" she demanded. "And who was - what are-"

"That was a nearby airport's air traffic control tower asking who we are," Kotohime explained. "Since 'we're from a secret magical refuge and another dimension, respectively' isn't an answer we need to be giving, I just gave them the impression that we're more conventional aliens. So they're sure to send some fighter jets up to investigate, which," she glanced out the cockpit canopy, "our enemy seems to have realized as well, and thus our attacker has made herself scarce for the moment."

"Wait, what did you do?" Yumemi asked, suddenly looking up from her work.

"Something involving 'fighter jets,' which I assume are more hostile aircraft," Rikako reported. Her words were calm, but the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end.

Kotohime only shrugged. "Well, it's a different problem than the one we were having, isn't it?"

"What is the expression?" Rikako mused, surprised at how composed her voice was. "'Out of the frying pan and into the fire?'"

Kotohime leaned out of her seat to look back at her, holding up a finger for emphasis. "Ah, but see, these soon-to-be incoming aircraft are less advanced than what was attacking us. So I'd say it's a case of out of the frying pan and into, I don't know, a crock pot? Or maybe a kabob."

Something beeped near Yumemi, and she looked down again. "Two contacts on an intercept course, dead ahead of us."

"Unidentified aircraft, this is your final warning," came that man's voice. "Identify yourself and your heading or we will be forced to bring you down. Over."

"Grenchicit," Kotohime muttered as she turned her attention forward again.

Rikako and Yumemi yelped as the aircraft dove once more, leveling out briefly before climbing up and over a line of hills, skimming just over the treeline.

"Can we transfer power from the tractor beam emitter into the engines or something?" Kotohime asked.

Yumemi ignored the nonsensical question and stabbed at her console, eyes locked on whatever it was telling her. "Lots of air traffic around, but let me see if..."

She must have adjusted something, because there was another harsh tearing sound, and then another man's voice emerged as if from thin air. "Yokota Tower, this is Bravo One, the target has gone evasive, over."

"Copy that Bravo One, you are cleared to engage, over," came the first man.

"So hey, about that stealth system," Kotohime started.

"Almost got it," was Yumemi's reply. Her fingers positively danced over her instrument panel.

"I don't suppose we could outrun them?" asked Rikako.

"I don't know," Yumemi said heavily. "I don't know anything about the aircraft in your world, but this- this isn't a high-performance vehicle," she explained. "Just something you use to cross dimensions and move around in them, it's not built for dogfights."

Rikako wasn't sure where dogs figured into their situation, but decided not to risk distraction by asking for clarification.

"Oooh, Mount Fuji on our left!" Kotohime said excitedly, pointing out the canopy.

Which wasn't to say that nobody in the cockpit was getting distracted.

"It's a rare Japan that doesn't have one," Yumemi commented without looking up from what she was doing. "And the worlds where it's absent tend not to be worth visiting."

Rikako couldn't even really get a good look from where she was sitting, but from what she could see, the mountain resembled the pictures she'd seen of it - a great, gently-sloping, conical, flat-peaked mount whose heights were wrapped in brilliant white snow. The glare and smudges on the inside of the canopy detracted from its grandeur, unfortunately. She wondered how she would feel if she saw Mount Fuji on foot and up close, if its natural beauty would affect her despite her cynicism and pragmatism-

Something started beeping again, and Yumemi reported "They're trying for a missile lock!"

-and Rikako felt a twinge of sadness that she would probably never get the chance, followed by a twinge of nausea as Kotohime sent them into another dive.

"I'm thinking we steer clear of any major population centers," their pilot said when she went back to focusing on her flying. "Head south, pass between Nagoya and Tokyo-"

"Where?" asked Yumemi, glancing up in confusion.

"The capital," Rikako supplied.

"What, Kyoto? Bah, I'm getting distracted." Yumemi bent over her console again, gripping its sides for a moment as Kotohime started jumping the hypervessel over the lines of hills below them, rising and falling to stay as close to the ground as possible, presumably in order to cover their rear with the terrain.

It was uncomfortable, but it seemed to be working. Rikako heard the beep-beep-beep accompanying what Yumemi called a 'missile lock' cut off each time they went over a ridge, and it took several seconds before the sounds picked up again. But after a small eternity there suddenly were no green hills to fly over, only a gray band of civilization hugging the coast of a wide blue sea.

"And now it's time for phase two of my plan," Kotohime announced. "Which I unfortunately failed to come up with en route. Suggestions?"

"Almost, almost," Yumemi muttered, stabbing at her control panel like she was squishing a swarm of ants individually.

"I don't suppose this thing can go underwater?" asked Rikako hopefully, but Yumemi merely shook her head without looking up from her work. Well, that was disappointing. The hypervessel seemed fully-sealed and had air moving about in it, but obviously Rikako was missing some knowledge about the requirements for a submarine vehicle. Maybe it would rust?

The ominous beep-beep-beep picked up again, and Kotohime immediately started weaving and juking the hypervessel through the air, no longer on any clear course. But she could only slip the enemy's attention for a few seconds before the beeping resumed.

"I suppose we can double back and ask Sakuyahime to do us a solid," Kotohime said, sounding a little strained. "But I'm not sure saying I'm a friend of Mokou's would be the best way to win her over."

"Got it!" Yumemi shouted jubilantly, making Rikako jump in her chair. The former professor lifted an extended finger over her head with a little flourish, then stabbed decisively at her control console.

Rikako shifted in her seat, looking out the canopy to see what Yumemi had done, but nothing seemed different. "Did it work?" she had to ask.

"Y-yokota Tower, we have lost visual, repeat we have lost visual," came a voice. "Target is no longer on radar, either. Over."

"Understood, Bravo One," came the other voice. "Bravo Two, do you have the target?"

"Uhh... that's a negative, Tower," came a third voice. "He was there and now he... isn't." A long pause. "Over."

"Copy that, Bravo Flight. Stand by."

The entire cockpit seemed to expand with the force of the three women's relieved exhalations. Rikako's heart was still hammering, but her muscles were starting to relax. Another advantage about flying without an aircraft, she reflected, was that if you were in mortal danger, you were at least in control of your attempts to escape that danger, as opposed to being a helpless passenger. Especially a helpless passenger on something Kotohime was controlling.

"Is the earthquake over, professor? I'm tired..." came a mumble.

Yumemi nearly tore her restraints apart in her haste to reach her former student. "Chiyuri! Are you alright?"

The blonde woman opened her eyes, blinked, and smiled up at the figure looming over her chair. "Did I oversleep? No, wait... aw hell, that's right." Then she yelped as Yumemi gave a cry of relief and wrapped her arms around Chiyuri for a crushing hug. "Hey, c'mon, I've had worse!"

Yumemi managed to contain herself, snorted, then gave Chiyuri's shoulder a playful shove. "Dummy. Don't scare me like that, okay?"

"Damn, now I know why them fighter pilots wear helmets," Chiyuri muttered, rubbing the side of her skull. Then she noticed the view out the cockpit and frowned in confusion. "How long was I out, and what'd I miss?"

"Well, we nearly got shot down by several different aircraft," Yumemi replied as she returned to her seat. "And I think I just broke all sorts of laws about revealing yourself to less-advanced civilizations, but in my defense, I wouldn't have had that problem if my own government hadn't tried to kill me."

"That was fun," Kotohime admitted as she took a moment to stretch. "Aside from Chiyuri getting a concussion, anyway," she added with an apologetic nod towards the blonde girl.

"And our government trying to kill us," Rikako chimed in.

The self-proclaimed princess gave her an indignant look. "Hey, I was the one who saved us," said Kotohime.

"No, I meant the enemy aircr- never mind," sighed Rikako.

"And now that we're no longer in danger of imminent death," Yumemi went on, "I have to ask, Kotohime - where did you learn to fly?!"

Their unlikely pilot grinned without looking back. "Oh, like most Gensokyans it was an unforgettable day in my childhood, when I finally mastered my inherent magical abilities and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to punch the face of-"

"I mean fly aircraft!" Yumemi interrupted hotly.

Kotohime gave the woman a brief glance. "I'm fully instrument-rated in Microsoft Flight Simulator '98," she said proudly. "They have that in your dimension, right? It's basically a training program you can get on your computer-"

"How the hell do you know this stuff?" demanded Rikako. "I can accept it from Yumemi and Chiyuri, but you talk like you've been to the outside world before or something."

"I have," said Kotohime with a shrug.

Rikako stared for a moment, then pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Of course you have. Out of all the insane stories you've told, that's the true one."

"Just because a tale is 'insane' doesn't mean it never happened," said Kotohime, smiling to herself. "An unbelievable story is one that nobody thinks is true, not necessarily a fabrication."

"Right," Yumemi said reluctantly. "But be that as it may, I think I'm going to operate under the theory that you're just a natural pilot who got lucky when she grabbed the stick."

Kotohime snickered at the skies ahead of them. "Oh, too easy!"

"So, what do we do now?" asked Rikako loudly, eager to get the conversation into a more productive area.

Kotohime looked back over her shoulder. "This thing have an autopilot?" she asked.

Chiyuri pushed something on her console, realized that it wasn't working, then leaned across the cockpit to press a button on the control panel in front of Kotohime. "This'll keep us on a level heading," the blonde woman explained.

"Much obliged. Well," Kotohime continued, shifting around to sit sideways in her chair, her legs dangling over the armrest and her back against the side of the cockpit. "The big question is: can you get the dimensional drives working?"

Yumemi's expression hardened. "I haven't had time to run a full diagnostic, but... it's bad. The spare parts and auto-repair systems won't solve all our problems, and..." She shivered. "And I'm not sure your world has the technology needed to fix them. Chiyuri and I may be stuck here." At this pronouncement, the already-strained Chiyuri managed to get even paler.

"I'll do everything I can to help," Rikako said immediately. Yumemi gave her a grateful smile, but it looked forced.

Kotohime only nodded, acknowledging their problem. "Okay. So we can't go to your home dimension, and the enemy ship is still out there somewhere. Second question, can they find us?"

"Doubt it," Yumemi said, relaxing just a bit as she returned to her seat. "I've disabled our transponder - another law broken, but who cares? - and there's not much difference between military and civilian stealth systems, and not much you can do to detect them. Unless they blunder right on top of us, I think we're safe for now."

Rikako pushed her glasses further up her nose, more due to force of habit than anything. "So, do we go back to Gensokyo?"

"I'd rather not get anyone else caught in the crossfire," Kotohime replied. "Plus it seems like everyone's been kind of busy lately, getting into fights over those orbs. So no, I think we stay on this side of the Barrier for a bit."

"Then where do we go?" Rikako asked, frowning.

"Wrong question." Yumemi shifted, slumping forward in her station, resting her elbows on the edge of the console and folding her hands beneath her chin, frowning as she pondered. "We need to decide what to do, and that will determine where we need to go to do that. So, what's our main objective?"

"Survival," Rikako replied.

"Then I suppose we spend the rest of our lives hidden from sight and on the run," Yumemi replied with a thin, mirthless smile.

"And they won't be long lives, either," Chiyuri chimed in. "The stealth system can't stay up forever, and we've only got a couple days operatin' time before we run out of fuel."

"So if 'flight' is out, choose 'fight,'" Kotohime said, smacking a fist into her palm. "We get back to your home dimension, figure out who our enemy is, and sock her in the face. Excuse me, bring her to justice," she corrected herself. "Though that doesn't preclude the face-socking, I suppose, especially if she resists arrest-"

"But since the hypervessel is damaged, we'd need to get repairs to do that," Rikako said. "So where do we go for that?"

Yumemi gave a weary sigh. "I have no idea. I mean, we can set down anywhere there's cover and me and Chiyuri can do what we can, but to properly fix things... I don't know where to go. I was only interested in studying Gensokyo, I know hardly anything about the world around it." She turned to her companion from the other dimension. "What about you, Chiyuri?"

The blonde woman sheepishly rubbed the side of her head, her nervous smile turning into a wince as she did so. "Wow, that's a bruise. Um, first, I just got knocked out, so I'm not thinkin' so great, and second, you're the professor, so if you don't know I sure as hell don't either." She gestured at Rikako and Kotohime. "These two would know better than me."

Rikako shook her head glumly. "Ah, no, we really wouldn't. Most people in Gensokyo are just as disinterested in the outside world as you were-"

"Got it," Kotohime said as she swung her legs around and grabbed the controls again, shifting their heading a few degrees to the left.

Yumemi gave Rikako a searching look, but Rikako had nothing to give in return but an exasperated sigh. "She's doing it again," she muttered.

"Yub yub!" Kotohime said cheerily.

"Kotohime, please explain where you're taking us," Yumemi said with astonishing patience.

"We need a place with advanced technology," Kotohime said without turning her attention away from the canopy, "or something to substitute for it. A place that's big enough to hide in, but also a place where we wouldn't stand out too much if we move in the open. A place that our enemies may not be expecting us to go, though they really should, because it's a place where we could link up with some allies who can provide us assistance and shelter."

"So, Gensokyo after all?" asked Rikako. "Maybe ask Kirisame or-"

"Most of our allies are in Gensokyo, but not all of them," Kotohime interrupted. "And the two allies I'm thinking of may be as much targets as the rest of us, if our enemies had access to all of Yumemi and Chiyuri's data. So even if we didn't need their help, we'd probably want to at least alert them to the danger."

Rikako blinked as the pieces fell into place. "Oh. You know where they went off to?"

"Yep!" said Kotohime cheerfully. "And in an amazing coincidence, they went to the traditional place super-advanced spaceships are supposed to go when they're stranded in the mundane world." She turned to give the others a big grin. "We're going to San Francisco!"

Yumemi exchanged a confused look with Chiyuri and Rikako. "Where?"

-x-

-6-

After consulting some sort of computerized atlas to properly set a course, and engaging the autopilot to keep to it, the four women retired to recover a bit. Rikako was uneasy about trusting the vehicle to operate itself, but Yumemi and Chiyuri didn't seem concerned, so she tried to relax as well as she followed them out of the cockpit.

The hypervessel had a very small kitchen and dining area about midway down its length, just past the entrance ramp, where the central corridor widened into alcoves that gave people just enough room to get out of the way. One featured appliances that Rikako couldn't identify more or less built into the wall under some cupboards containing comestibles, while the nook opposite this mini-kitchen had a table, two chairs and cushioned bench running along the wall, which was able to seat four people who didn't mind rubbing elbows. A somewhat unusual set-up, and the furniture was all bolted to the floor, but nothing unfamiliar.

Yumemi used some sort of device to examine Chiyuri, declared her "no more brain-damaged than usual," gave her some pills, and while her former student stretched out on the bench, Yumemi tried to prepare some sort of meal since nobody had actually gotten to eat breakfast before being forced to flee. The problem was that Yumemi and Chiyuri evidently hadn't had much time to pack, and so Yumemi largely had to make do with what had been left on the vessel by whoever they had acquired it from. The 'brunch' she gathered thus consisted of pre-made tea that had come out of a small refrigerator, noodles from boxes that Yumemi had prepared in something called a 'microwave,' and packets of what Chiyuri called 'fruit snacks.'

"The only flavor's strawberry, though," the former student added as she tore a paper packet open and lifted her head slightly to pop one of the red jelly-like things into her mouth. "Because that's all someone buys when she goes out for groceries," she said between chews.

Yumemi gave a little sniff, colored slightly, and grabbed one of the snacks without further word.

Rikako made do with the noodles, which weren't actually bad, just a bit too salty. And rubbery. And strangely flavorless. And simultaneously over- and under-cooked. But they were fortifying fare, if only because after eating them, you wanted to do whatever it took to keep them from being your last meal.

And Kotohime... had found cookies somewhere. None of the others commented, so Rikako just decided to ignore the question too.

"So," Chiyuri said as she straightened up so Yumemi could sit on the bench next to her, "where we goin'? San Whatever? Sounds like some place in Spain."

"No, it's - well, it was Spanish territory at some point," Kotohime corrected herself. "Major city on the west coast of North America. Very hilly, famously foggy, big bridge as a landmark."

Chiyuri and Yumemi exchanged a glance. "Spanish territory, huh," the blonde woman said. "Doesn't sound like the history I remember from class."

"In our world, Japan settled that part of America," Yumemi explained. "What you're describing sounds like the city of Kiriminato. Apart from the bridge, anyway."

"Oh, your Japan got in on the colonization game?" Kotohime asked.

"Yes, the Oda Shogunate was keen on exploration," said Yumemi. "Founded settlements along the Pacific Rim, made a protectorate out of Hawaii... so what, Japan in your world didn't?"

Kotohime shook her head. "No, Tokugawa ended up shogun, kicked the foreigners out and had everyone stay home for two hundred years. Well..." she shifted uncomfortably on her seat. "We kinda made 'colonies' out of our neighbors after that, but... that ended badly."

"Oh, did the Americans annex them too?" asked Yumemi.

Kotohime abruptly turned to face her fellow Gensokyan "You remember much of your history lessons, Rikako?"

Rikako hurriedly slurped up another mouthful of gummy, lukewarm noodles. "Ah, no, not really," she said after a gulp. "I was never very interested in Miss Kamishirasawa's classes, to be honest."

"Yeah, who needs liberal arts," Chiyuri said with a dismissive gesture.

"It's just hard to care about history when you live in a society that decided to turn back the clock," Rikako sighed.

"But it's useful if you ever find yourself unexpectedly in Transoxiana and need to know which khan you're dealing with," commented Kotohime. Everyone else stared at her in silence as she took another bite from her cookie.

"Right," Yumemi said eventually. "Let's get back on track - you really think this place will have what we need?"

The self-proclaimed princess swiped crumbs from her lips, then shrugged. "It's a major city in a technologically-developed nation, so there's probably science stuff somewhere we could use." She frowned and tapped her jaw as she tried to remember something. "There was a nuclear plant... or was it a naval base? Heh, 'nuclear wessels.' Anyway, if that angle doesn't work out, one of the friends we're looking for is a very powerful magician, so she might be able to solve our technical problems with the right spell."

"I thought the rest of your world doesn't believe in magic," Chiyuri pointed out.

"Doesn't mean there aren't a few magic-users and youkai still out there, though," Kotohime countered. "Some live in places like Gensokyo, and a few like our friends can live among normal humans." She smiled. "It helps that our destination is pretty diverse and known for having an eccentric population. So not only will our contact not be in hiding, but we shouldn't raise too many eyebrows walking the streets. Because let's face it," she said, grin widening, "we've a bunch of gorgeous Japanese girls with non-standard hair colors, wearing extremely varied outfits."

Rikako tried very hard not to flush. "I could always change clothes. And put on a hat, I suppose."

"Like I said, shouldn't be necessary." Then Kotohime tilted her head as though to reconsider. "On the other hand, if our enemy is smart, they may be looking for us there, so a disguise might be a good idea after all. But, even if they find us, they'll have trouble acting with so many people around. But they might be so desperate to stop us that they'll act anyway, regardless of how many people see them or get caught in the crossfire. But..." she giggled. "I guess I have a one-track mind today."

"I can't believe we're letting you decide where we should go next," Rikako groaned.

Kotohime merely gave her a winsome smile. "Got any better ideas for our destination?"

"No," Rikako sighed. "I'm starting to wish I'd paid more attention to those geography lessons, though."

"See what I mean?" Kotohime said triumphantly.

-x-

The journey was simultaneously short and day-long. Rikako knew enough about astronomy to understand that they were flying east as the Earth rotated under them in the same direction, so judging the passage of time from the sun's movements was deceptive. As it was, they were moving fast enough so that the sun was well on its way to the top of the sky just an hour or so after their voyage began, which was a weird thing to see so soon after breakfast. Further complicating matters was that the hypervessel's clock was malfunctioning - it had a digital display on one of the cockpit's control panels, but it was stuck flashing '12:00.'

"Yeah, I don't think Hiroshi ever figured out how the thing works," Yumemi shrugged from her spot leaning against the wall next to the cockpit's door. With the ship locked on a level heading, she'd let Rikako sit down at the main console to look things over, with the understanding that the scientist wouldn't be pushing any buttons.

"The person you borrowed this vessel from?" asked Rikako.

"Right." Yumemi's expression twisted to one of distaste, as if those noodles were repeating on her too. "Guy had a few indiscretions with the dean's husband that I was privy too. I'm not proud of myself for holding it over him as leverage, but... well, I needed every advantage I could get. A woman with as unconventional views as mine doesn't get very far in academia without some, ah-"

"Extracurricular activity?" suggested Chiyuri from the co-pilot's seat.

The former professor winced. "That makes it sound like I slept my way to the top, and I was never that desperate, thank you very much."

Rikako stared at the blinking digits for a moment. "So back to the clock - can you fix it so-"

Yumemi snorted. "No, I - just because I can fly this thing-"

"Pretty sure I'm the one flyin' this thing, professor," Chiyuri said with an audible grin.

Next to her, at the still-broken main pilot's station, Kotohime jolted into alertness. "If you want, I could take over-"

"No!" the three other women said at once.

"Aww, you're just jealous," Kotohime sulked.

"Look, as I'm sure you've both noticed, this is a different vehicle than the one we took to Gensokyo the first time," Yumemi explained as she turned her attention back to Rikako.

"Yeah, I miss all the trippy scenery," said Kotohime. "Why doesn't this boat have anything like that?"

"This is just a simple civilian transport, not a state-of-the-art science vessel," replied Yumemi. "So no dataspace to visualize and analyze information, just the engines to get you were you want to go, a camouflage system to keep you from attracting attention, and enough essentials onboard to keep you from dying on the way."

"And no robot 'helper,'" added Chiyuri. "I'm not sayin' Ruukoto could fix the mess we're in, I'm just sayin' she'd be an alternative source of spare parts if needed."

"Oh, that reminds me!" Kotohime squirmed in her seat until she managed to get the back to recline, then pulled a little cloth mask out of a sleeve and put it in place to cover her eyes. "I'm going to nap for a bit, but please wake me before we get there."

Yumemi glanced back at the cockpit door. "Ah, you might be more comfortable stretched out in the galley-"

Kotohime was already snoring.

Chiyuri glanced away from the controls for a moment, then shook her head in disbelief. "How does she do that?"

Rikako snorted. "You tell me. After all, you were the ones studying everyone."

Yumemi looked wistfully out the window, a finger to her chin. "I think we ended up sticking a great big 'Unknown' label on Kotohime's profile. She wasn't like anyone else we observed."

"And thank heavens for that," Rikako muttered.

Chiyuri watched the Kotohime sleep for a moment, then glanced back. "Is it okay if I follow her lead, professor?"

"Absolutely," Yumemi said immediately. "The autopilot can get us there, so you have yourself a good rest."

"Sounds good," the blonde woman said as she started releasing her straps.

"And make sure you wear your monitor," Yumemi said quickly.

"I'll be fine, I've taken harder knocks from ya when you bopped me for doing somethin' stupid." But Chiyuri stopped on her way out and playfully scratched the top of Yumemi's head. "But don't worry, I'll wear it."

"Good," was all Yumemi said as she turned her attention back to the console Rikako was sitting at. "Have a good rest."

"Nighty-night," grinned Chiyuri as she slipped out.

For a minute there was nothing but the background noise of the hypervessel, the throb of the engines, the roar of air around the aircraft, the hiss of the air circulation systems. And Kotohime's snores, unfortunately.

Rikako shifted in her seat. "So, what do you usually do on voyages like this?"

"Depends how we're flying," Yumemi answered. "Commercial flights usually have a movie or something playing, otherwise there's whatever entertainment you brought along with you. Or failing that, awkward conversation with your fellow passengers."

Rikako licked her lips. "So, uh, tell me about this hypervessel. How does it stay up without proper wings?"

Yumemi glanced over to check if their words had woken Kotohime, then gave Rikako a smile and cleared her throat. "That would be antigravity. You don't have it in your world yet, do you? Well, it's surprisingly simple stuff..."

-x-

"Enemy ship decloaking dead ahead of us, sir," reported Commander Wriggle Nightbug coolly as she looked up from the sensor readout, her antennae bobbing with the movement.

Captain Kotohime of the HJMS Starpuncher rose from her chair, slow and stately, her red eyes narrowed and her expression steely. "On screen," she ordered.

The viewscreen dominating the front of the bridge flickered, displaying a field of stars and bright, swirling nebulae, now serving as the backdrop to a saucer-like vessel. The tan coloration, and the distinctive pair of pale, spherical weapon blisters affixed to either side of the command deck that bulged out of the top of the saucer, made the ship's identity and allegiance clear.

"A Moriya battlecruiser," Lieutenant-Commander Meira growled from the weapons station directly behind Kotohime's chair. "Shall we open fire?"

"Captain," Wriggle said immediately, stepping forward to stand at attention with her arms folded behind her back, "Logic dictates that if the Moriya vessel was hostile, it would have attacked immediately upon coming out of stealth."

"And every moment we spend not firing is another moment they have to correct their mistake!" Meira snarled back.

Wriggle was undaunted, and stood tall (or as tall as the little firefly youkai could), her boyish face impassive. "It is still possible that we could find a diplomatic solution to this encounter."

Before the purple-haired weapons officer could start another tirade, Kotohime simply held up a hand. "Miss Meira, shields up, weapons at ready, but do not engage before they do."

Meira grumbled to herself before responding with an "Aye-aye, captain."

"Miss Komeiji," Kotohime went on, turning to the communications officer on the bridge's periphery, "open a channel to the Moriya ship."

"'kay." The green-haired satori with the disturbingly empty eyes flipped open a cell phone and held it to her head, near the puckered scar on her temple. "Hello? Yes, this is Koishi. No, I..."

The rest of the bridge grew quiet as Koishi continued to jabber into her phone.

"Yes I know - well, that's not really fair. Oh. Oh? All right, all right, just a moment." She sighed and offered the phone to her captain. "It's for you."

At that instant, the viewscreen changed once more, revealing an obnoxiously-grinning green-haired girl in a white-and-blue uniform, leering out at them from the bridge of another spaceship.

Kotohime's eyes narrowed. "Sanae."

"So, 'captain,'" Sanae Kochiya sneered, "once again we meet. And for the last time, I think."

"The enemy vessel is charging weapons," Wriggle reported briskly.

"Evasive maneuvers!" Kotohime snapped without looking away from her nemesis.

The bridge suddenly rocked with an impact, forcing Kotohime to flex her knees to stay upright and making her officers grip their stations. One of the consoles exploded in a flash of sparks, sending a low-ranking crewmember sprawling onto the deck.

Kotohime drew in a deep breath. "Miss Meira," she said slowly, dramatically. "Arm torpedoes and prepare to..." she trailed off as realization dawned, and heaved a sigh. "Aww, dammit. Forgot to go to red alert, that's what's missing. No alarms in the background." She turned away from Sanae and waved a hand. "Alright everyone, once more from the top."

This new order prompted a chorus of groans, and the fallen crewwoman pushed herself to her feet and ambled back to her mark. Kotohime returned to her chair, wondering whether she should just call for a break so she could grab a snack.

There was a crackle of static from the intercom built into the armrest. "Do I say my line now?" asked Nitori Kawashiro.

"No, I have to ask for a damage report first," Kotohime replied. Then she blinked, suddenly remembering. "Oh, hang on - hey! You two! Dreamweavers, we need to talk!" She rose to her feet again, sweeping her gaze from side to side as she tried to see through the starship bridge around her.

A side door slid open, each part of the portal disappearing into the doorframe with the rough scrape of cardboard on cardboard overdubbed with a smooth whoosh, and a blonde woman-looking entity in a pink dress with a pair of white feathered wings tucked tight against her back strode onto the bridge, her golden eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"What is it now?" demanded Gengetsu.

"You got some 'splaining to do," Kotohime declared, folding her arms.

Gengetsu took a half-step back, subtly shifting into a defensive posture. "Hey, you're here of your own free will in a mutually beneficial training scenario."

"But when you were misbehaving, and you had that whole 'Reimu blows up Gensokyo' story going on, you guys had Ruukoto the robot helping her."

The demon of dreams tilted her head slightly. "Right, and?"

"You said she came from Yumemi and Chiyuri, and was the prize that Reimu won in the tournament for the ruins," Kotohime continued. "Now, since I won that tournament that's obviously not what happened, so I assumed you made her up. Except this morning those two came by to visit and talked about Ruukoto."

Gengetsu was tapping her foot impatiently. "So?"

"Well, see, I didn't know Ruukoto was real until they mentioned her, yet I already ran into her in that dream I had before I knew that," Kotohime pointed out. "So what gives?"

The viewscreen flickered on, displaying an obviously annoyed blonde who looked very much like her older sister, save for the shorter hair, blue maid outfit, and lack of wings. "You're assuming that we build our dreams solely out of things the dreamer has in their mind," Mugetsu pointed out.

"That we're limited to the dreamers of one world," Gengetsu added with a little smile.

"That our realm follows your linear understanding of time," the image of Mugetsu chimed in.

"That we can only see what was dreamt rather than what could have been dreamt," finished Gengetsu.

"Okay, okay, you're mysterious and mighty dream-goblins who won't give me a straight answer," said an exasperated Kotohime.

"'Goblins?'" repeated Gengetsu, her lip curling.

On the viewscreen, Mugetsu opened her mouth to harangue the princess, but was distracted when a light stared flashing just off-camera. "Aw, crap. Sis, we've got another baku muscling in on our turf again."

Gengetsu's head flopped back as she groaned her disgust. "Officious little tapirs," she muttered. "It's just as well, you're about to wake up anyway," she told Kotohime.

"Oh? That's alright then," the princess shrugged. "See you later, I guess. At the usual time tomorrow? Maybe mix things up with a mecha battle? Or some high school hijinks? See who I can take to the big dance?"

There was a rustle of paper from the viewscreen. "Actually, it looks like that'll be difficult," Mugetsu reported, flipping through what looked like a schedule. "Seems like your next sleep will either be in a low-magic area or due to chemical sedation. Maybe both? But don't worry, we'll try to work you in once your little adventure is over."

Kotohime blinked. "Wait, wha-"

-x-

-7-

"Kotohime!" Rikako gave the slumbering woman's shoulder another firm nudge. "Hey, wake up."

The redhead stirred, took in a deep breath, then straightened up in her chair and stretched, yawning hugely. "That just raised further questions," she said to herself.

"And now you know how the rest of us feel every time we try to communicate with you," Rikako sighed. "Anyway, we're here," she added, nodding toward the cockpit canopy.

Of the few books from the outside world that had made their way into Gensokyo, even fewer had described its great cities. Rikako had heard things, however, and imagined sprawling urban complexes with towering structures reaching into the sky, man-made mountains of steel and glass.

This city wasn't quite like that, but was no less impressive for it. It clung to the coast, and from their elevated vantage point, hovering high over the water just off the shore, Rikako could discern that the city was specifically on a peninsula, though it also extended around the bay behind it. There were indeed some skyscrapers clustered in the heart of the metropolis, but most of its buildings seemed more modest. The most interesting thing was how these structures rose and fell on a series of hills, some of which even broke through the urban development.

And yes, to their left there was indeed a colossal reddish bridge linking the end of the peninsula to the other side of the bay. It definitely wasn't golden, though, even when painted by the orange rays of the sun that was sinking towards the horizon behind the hypervessel.

"Lots of air traffic, looks like there's a major airport nearby, but not much at our altitude and nothin' close to us yet," Chiyuri reported, looking down at some instruments. "Lots of boats too, but that shouldn't be a problem. And nobody's hailin' us so the stealth systems are still holdin'."

"So I guess we need to decide how to approach," Yumemi said, shifting slightly in her seat. "We can't exactly hover out here forever."

"It'd be a good hiding spot, though," Kotohime commented. She leaned forward, one hand to her chin as she peered out the canopy, hmm-ing to herself.

There was a moment of silence in the cockpit, and then Rikako had to ask the obvious question. "So, Kotohime, where in this city are we going?"

The self-declared princess arched a delicate eyebrow. "You think I remember, from a conversation that took place several years ago, directions to find someone in a city I've never been to, and which has undoubtedly changed between then and now?"

"I was hoping you'd have another flash of inexplicable competence," Rikako said dryly.

Kotohime smirked at her, then went back to looking out the window. "No, I don't know exactly where we're going, but I know how to find out. Our immediate concern is finding a place to land." She glanced back at the women from another world. "Can this vessel do the thing where it looks like some ruins or whatever?"

Yumemi hunched over her command console, tapping at it with a single finger. "I'll go with a cautious 'yes.' I think I can make us look like a little run-down building or shack or something. But..." She tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear nervously. "Look, I've got this thing mostly working, but we've still taken some heavy damage. So I can do the stealth system or the camouflage, but not both at once. I can put up a hologram and shut down the non-essential systems, but we might still give off energy readings that certain instruments could pick up on."

"From how far away?" asked Rikako, trying to suppress a shiver of fear.

The ship's commander gave a tired shake of her head. "I'm a comparative physicist, not an engineer. I can't tell you anything about military-grade sensor ranges."

"So we probably don't have time to take in the sights," Kotohime concluded, drooping a little. "That's disappointing, I was hoping we could swing by Colma and pay respects to the emperor."

Chiyuri couldn't hide her surprise. "The USA in your world has emperors?"

"Had an emperor," Kotohime corrected absently, as she went back to staring thoughtfully out the canopy. "The traditional landing zone is supposed to be a park, but we're not leaving the cloaking device on and a sudden new building in the middle of a field is going to get attention... but it's not like we could just add a house to a street either..."

"And there's a lot of people to spot us," Rikako added. She could see sunlight glinting off of countless automobiles moving along the city's streets, and the motion of streams of pedestrians on the waterfront and sidewalks. It was uncharitable to compare this modern metropolis to a swarming anthill, but not inaccurate.

"But if we park this thing while stealthed, we run the risk of those overstressed systems failing on us," Yumemi said soberly. "Plus, someone blundering into an invisible spaceship is going to get a much bigger response than someone finding a new 'building.'"

There was a moment of silence in the cockpit.

"This was so much easier when we landed in Gensokyo the first time," Chiyuri grumbled.

"Will popping open the landing ramp mess up the stealth thingies?" asked Kotohime suddenly.

Yumemi and Chiyuri exchanged a glance before the former professor cleared her throat. "Uh, it won't cause the field to switch off or anything, but the ramp itself will be briefly visible - why do you ask?"

"Got a plan," Kotohime announced, an eager smile on her face. "Take us in close to a big enough landing area, let me slip out while stealth mode is still on, and I'll make a distraction so nobody's looking while you-"

"How about we come up with a plan that doesn't involve splitting up in a huge, unknown city while one of us does something that will probably get them arrested?" Rikako recommended.

Kotohime folded her arms. "So do you have any ideas?"

There was another moment of silence in the cockpit, before Rikako gave in with a sigh.

-x-

"Steady," Yumemi said tersely.

"I know how to fly, professor," Chiyuri replied. But Rikako could see that the blonde woman was sitting rigidly in her seat, her shoulders stiff as she carefully adjusted the controls.

The hypervessel was hovering in the air just a few stories up, over what Yumemi had identified as a construction site, an open patch of dirt and bare foundation amongst the city's buildings that no one seemed to be working on this late in the day. The place was cluttered with stacks of building materials and sophisticated machinery, but there was just enough room for the hypervessel to touch down next to a stack of what looked to be huge pipes made from cement. Rikako presumed such a choice in materials made sense to the builders.

"Okay, this should be good," came Kotohime's voice through what Yumemi identified as an 'intercom' - the self-declared princess was waiting in the vessel's main hall, right next to the boarding ramp. "Let me out when you're ready."

"You sure about this?" Yumemi asked once again.

"Yeah!"

Yumemi let out a slow breath. "Alright, dropping the ramp in five... four... three..."

Rikako frowned, a thought occurring to her. They were well away from Gensokyo now, far from the last refuge of magic and in a world of science and skepticism where even deities had trouble surviving. Kotohime's plan was to fly out of the hovering hypervessel, but could she do that in such a low-magic area?

But just as Rikako opened her mouth to raise the issue, Yumemi announced "One! Opening hatch!"

There was the faintest tremor from the hypervessel's midsection, and then a whoop of excitement that swiftly changed to a whoop of surprise.

"Closing hatch!" Yumemi said as she pressed another button and the vessel jolted once more.

Chiyuri stood up in her seat, twisting her torso as she tried to peer down out of the cockpit. "I can't see her!" she complained.

Yumemi hit something, and suddenly a rectangular image imposed itself on the inside of the canopy, showing an overhead view of Kotohime pushing herself to her feet, looking up and waving, and finally hurrying out of sight. "Okay, she's clear," Yumemi reported. "And since there's nobody underneath us or around for the moment, go ahead and bring us down, I'll get to work on a disguise."

Rikako heard a change in the pitch of the vessel's engines, and felt it sway a bit before slowly and smoothly descending. The screen showed a steadily-approaching patch of dirt, while through the slightly-transparent image, she could also see a building rising into view until shortly there was nothing to see through the canopy but a brick wall and some interesting graffiti. Shortly after the image on the screen became nothing but a close-up of dirt, there was a jolt and a whump that rocked everyone in their seats as the hypervessel touched down.

"Camouflage system is getting a feel for the surroundings," Yumemi reported, idly chewing a strand of her red hair as she clacked away at her station. "A tool shed or something might make people want to take a look inside, so what do you think about a stack of crates?"

"People might still want to pop one open," Rikako replied, pleased to finally have a way to contribute. "It would be best if the ship looked like something too big to carry away and too solid to pry into."

"Ah, we could do bundles of steel beams, that'd fit the bill." Yumemi pressed one final button, smiling. "There, disguise is set. Now we just w-"

There was a sudden piercing, whistling shriek that came from somewhere close to the hypervessel, the sound echoing strangely off the walls surrounding the urban construction site. It was shortly followed by a pop and crackle, and Rikako thought she saw a flash of light, though it was hard to make out in the late afternoon sky.

Chiyuri swiveled in her seat to grin at them. "Guess that's Kotohime-"

And then there were more noises, a rapid whoosh-whoosh-whoosh followed by more explosions, along with some shouts and cries of alarm.

"I'm going to optimistically assume that's fireworks," Yumemi said. "Activating camouflage." She held up a single finger with a little flourish, then pressed a button decisively.

Rikako turned her attention back to the forward viewport, but there was nothing to see but that brick wall, and no indication that anything had changed. "Did it work?" she had to ask.

"Yep." Yumemi was pressing more buttons, and as she did so, the lights on the bridge abruptly went out, plunging the three women into near-darkness - they had landed deep in the shade of the adjacent buildings. Soon the hypervessel was still and quiet, all the little vibrations and hums and other signs of activity that Rikako had been putting up with for the past few hours suddenly cutting off, so that the sound of her breathing seemed unbearably loud.

"We should probably get out of here while everyone out there's distracted," Chiyuri said, putting words to action and rising from her seat.

Rikako followed, wincing as her legs protested to moving after sitting so long. It was nearly impossible to make anything out in the ship's main corridor, but Chiyuri led the way with the confidence of (comparative) youth, and fortunately there wasn't anything to trip on between the cockpit and boarding area. The ramp descended with a whine, and the three women quickly hurried down it so Yumemi could press a button on a small handheld device to make it retract again.

Without pausing to appreciate being able to breathe fresh air instead of that unnaturally cold and stale stuff in the ship, Rikako not-quite-jogged after Yumemi and Chiyuri. At least until she felt a sudden tingle, glanced back over her shoulder, and stumbled to a halt. The hypervessel was gone - in its place was a stack of heavy metal bars, bundled together in little clumps that even an oni would find cumbersome to move.

"Fascinating," she mumbled to herself. Rikako wondered how the illusion worked, what ingenious artifice allowed machinery to alter observers' perception of an object. Obviously it was related to how the hypervessel could vanish from sight, so-

"Aw, crap," Chiyuri muttered from beside her. "We never set up how we're gonna regroup with Kotohime, did we?"

"Oh dear." Yumemi bit her lip, then shook her head helplessly. "Let's just get out of this back lot and hope she remembers where we parked."

With no other options, the three women walked down a long, shady alleyway between two brick buildings and stepped onto a sidewalk. Yumemi and Chiyuri stopped to search for Kotohime, while Rikako stopped from the shock of being in a proper metropolis.

It was, in a word, overwhelming.

There was a constant stream of people moving both ways along their sidewalk, people with skin tones ranging from pitch black to snow white, hair styles that went beyond anything Rikako had ever seen, hair colors that... well, Gensokyo probably had more variety in that regard than the population here. But the clothes were much more varied than what Rikako thought she knew about modern fashion, trousers and skirts and dresses and shorts of more colors and styles than Rikako ever imagined, ranging from conservative affairs similar to Rikako's outfit to attire that exposed a scandalous amount of flesh. And there were accessories, handbags and slim technological devices similar to the thing Chiyuri had used earlier, and they were everywhere and people were using them while walking and that was just the people!

There were vehicles, automobiles, shining wheeled constructs ranging in size from astonishingly small to alarmingly large, parked nose-to-nose along the sidewalk or puttering and roaring as they rolled along in the street, leaking music and conversations through open windows or rattling as they blasted bystanders with pulses of raw sound, emitting a sinus-burning industrial stink Rikako had sometimes encountered in her workshop. There were of course buildings, structures of stone and brick and wood unlike anything seen in Gensokyo (apart from the Scarlet Devil Mansion and other Western manors that had relocated there, anyway), plain rectangular buildings, majestic towers gleaming with glass, stately stone structures bedecked with pillars and sculptures, and illuminated signs and glowing letters and posters and billboards and graffiti. And the very air was different, surprisingly cool and breezy with a faint smell of salt indicating that they were near the sea, and-

"Rikako?"

The scientist turned, realizing that Yumemi had been trying to get her attention for a while now. "I'm fine," Rikako mumbled, even though her head was spinning.

Chiyuri put her hands on her hips, tilting her head to look at Rikako quizzically. "Culture shock?" she asked with a grin. "This is your first time in another country, ain't it?"

Rikako couldn't find the words to argue, but Yumemi shook her head on her behalf. "Sensory overload," the former professor deduced. "You knew what the outside world was like, this is just your first time experiencing it."

"It's a lot to take in," Rikako admitted, swallowing to try to get some moisture back in her throat. She tried to distract herself by feigning concern about Kotohime. Looking around, there was no sign of the lunatic.

Then she jumped when a voice right behind her said "We're not here to sightsee, remember?"

Kotohime was in the alley they had just come out of, and was finishing pulling her purple outer robes back on. She looked a bit winded, but otherwise fine.

Chiyuri grinned. "Hey, ya made it!"

"Wasn't hard," Kotohime replied, straightening up and making the last adjustments to her clothes. "Granted, I did go through my entire supply of firecrackers and nearly got hit by a bus, but I successfully held everyone's attention for a couple of seconds."

"Not that ya can tell now," Chiyuri commented.

Rikako examined the scene again. Kotohime's antics had failed to bring the city to its knees, at most the scientist could spot a few people standing around talking to one another who could conceivably be reacting to a one-woman fireworks display. There was just a hint of gunsmoke in the air, but with this much vehicle traffic it was almost impossible to spot, much less smell. Rikako had to wonder at the non-reaction - were people in this city more concerned with their own business than a fit of madness on the street, or were outbursts like Kotohime's fireworks show common in this place? Whatever the reason, they seemed to have gotten away with-

"Uh oh," Yumemi muttered, tensing as she spotted an approaching figure. "Pretty sure that's a cop."

There was a dusky-skinned, black-haired woman moving with purpose along the sidewalk, the other pedestrians giving her a wide berth as she advanced toward Rikako and her companions. The policewoman wore a uniform of black trousers with a matching short-sleeved shirt, the weapon holstered at her hip could only be a firearm, and she bore a shiny silvery badge on her chest. Not a particularly flashy uniform for a city guard, though Rikako supposed that such an understated outfit could stand out in a place like this.

"Time to leave?" Chiyuri whispered tersely.

But Kotohime was shaking her head. "Running is an admission of guilt. Let me handle this." And then she stepped forward, giving the approaching woman a friendly smile. "Hola, señora policía. Una tarde encantadora, no?"

The officer blinked, seemed to curse under her breath, and then cleared her throat. "Uh - hola, señora. Estar... uh, como estar?"

"Estoy bien," Kotohime said breezily. "Pero, si puedo preguntarte algo - donde esta convención de anime?"

The policewoman was staring hopelessly until Kotohime finished the sentence, and then understanding dawned in her eyes. "Oh! Um, ellos es donde... er, abajo... um." She was actually blushing as she gave up on words and awkwardly gestured down the street.

Kotohime bowed. "Muchas gracias, señora. Buenos noches!"

"B-buenos noches!" the other woman repeated, hurriedly walking past and away from them.

Rikako blinked, impressed despite herself. "So, what did you say to her?"

"Gave us an airtight alibi," Kotohime said with a slight grin. "We might as well head that way until I find a phonebook or tourist's guide or something and find where we need to go."

Yumemi chuckled. "Guess it's a plan."

They started walking, but Chiyuri glanced back at the departing policewoman one last time. "So was she around when ya made that ruckus?" she asked Kotohime.

"Probably," the so-called princess replied. "But she wasn't after me, she was honing in on you."

"Huh?" Chiyuri blinked in confusion. "Why?"

Kotohime smiled and flicked her wrist, so that a yellow tangle briefly tumbled out of her sleeve and into the palm of her hand before disappearing again. "I'm not so foolish as to draw that much attention to myself without putting on a disguise first, and it just so happened that the one I had with me was the one I used when helping the other you." She winked at Chiyuri. "Lucky you grew out of pigtails, eh?"

-x-

Kotohime had been right about this being a city they could blend into - even Rikako's purple hair and labcoat drew only occasional glances of interest, otherwise the four of them more or less matched the foot traffic of the city. Or perhaps it was better to say that, since there was hardly a uniform look to the pedestrians around them, Rikako and her companions were no more unusual-looking than anyone else on the sidewalk.

Still, anyone paying close attention would probably be able to tell that Rikako didn't belong here. She tried to focus on following the others, but there was just so much to see, so many shops along the street with fascinating items on display in their windows, so many passersby casually toying with technological artifacts hundreds of years more advanced than anything in Gensokyo, so many wheeled contrivances rolling past. She was able to keep herself from coming to a stop and staring, but Rikako spent a lot of time looking back over her shoulder at a departing sight. If only they had more time! She could spend years here, recording everything she saw, asking questions, devouring all the knowledge the outside world had to offer.

Or maybe not, Rikako admitted to herself. Yumemi had been right about 'sensory overload,' this city was an assault on all five of her senses. All those signs, many illuminated, promising things in languages Rikako couldn't read. All those vehicles, belching smoke and fumes that burned her nose and hit her with coughing fits, air that felt used instead of fresh, even with the sea breeze coming from the nearby but out-of-sight coast. And those vehicles and the pedestrians created a constant press of sound that forced Rikako to fight the urge to run off into some corner and cover her ears to get a moment's quiet.

It was all so overwhelming. And the worst part was that the others didn't seem to be affected. Kotohime took it all in stride and went along with the same careless confidence she showed in Gensokyo, while Yumemi and Chiyuri seemed to consider the city quaint, even rustic and backwards by their standards.

"Oh, this is nothin'," Chiyuri declared when Rikako spoke up on the matter. "Back home there's the Kanto Axis, stretches from Mito through Edo to Yokohama, pretty much one huge, sprawlin' city now. And then there's the arcologies in Europe and China-"

"Those are basically entire cities that exist as one huge structure," Yumemi supplied.

"Which means that ninety percent of the population can't get a room with a window," Kotohime added without looking back. "Also, this bus stop looks promising."

Something was on the sidewalk ahead of them, a simple structure made of glass - or some other transparent material - to provide shelter for a long bench. There were posters affixed to its exterior, including a bunch of lines and blocks that resembled a map.

"Yeah, this could work," Chiyuri said as they approached. "Never had to navigate like this before, normally I just use the GPS on my mini-comp-"

"Yours is off, right?" Yumemi interrupted.

"Yes, professor. Don't want anyone trackin' us, I know." Chiyuri snorted. "Sorta wish I could turn it on, just to see what it made of the local network."

"Heh, might take over the city."

Once they reached the shelter, Kotohime made a beeline for the map and crouched in front of it, fingers on her chin as she pondered. "This should only take a moment," she insisted. "Or two moments. An hour, tops."

"We might be able to help," Yumemi said as she moved to stand next to her. "Wow, or maybe not. This is such an... inefficient way to convey information."

Which would seem to indicate that Rikako had little chance of contributing something meaningful. That, combined with her aching feet and a growing awareness of just how much she was sweating, made Rikako's eye fall on the bench inside the enclosure. "I'm going to sit down," she announced. She was proud of herself for not gasping the words out.

"Try not to get kidnapped or anything," Kotohime said distractedly. "Normally I wouldn't mind a rescue mission, but we've already got a pretty full plate for the evening."

Rikako didn't bother to reply, but stumbled through the openings along the enclosure's side to take a seat on the empty bench, groaning as she eased herself down. She let her head fall back and closed her eyes, taking a few slow, deep breaths of air that she wished didn't contain so much engine exhaust.

"This would be so much easier if we could fly," the scientist murmured to herself.

"Oh, I heard right!"

Rikako jolted in her seat, turning to see a strange woman entering the shelter, with dark hair and eyes but a friendly smile on her face. Her clothing matched the style worn by most people in the city, but her features were Japanese, and something about the way she walked and looked around suggested that she was feeling almost out of place as Rikako was.

"It's good to hear someone else speaking the same language," the stranger said. "Don't get me wrong, I'm having a great vacation, but, well, it's nice to know I'm not the only one." She gave a friendly smile. "I'm Shizuka, by the way."

"Er, Rikako," the scientist replied. "Pleased to meet you." Somehow she managed to keep the statement from sounding like a question.

"Charmed. Do you mind?" asked Shizuka, indicating the seat.

Rikako was too flustered to refuse, and the other woman didn't wait for her to answer before plopping onto the other end of the bench, mirroring Rikako's earlier gesture by letting her head tilt back with a sigh. "Thanks, I've been walking all day! The shops, the science museum, my brother's house... You had the right idea, using public transportation." She smiled at her. "So, what brings you here?"

"I, uh... I'm meeting somebody," Rikako managed.

"That's nice," Shizuka said. "Family, or someone you met on the 'net?"

"No, we were in a tourn- I mean, we met when she visited my hometown," Rikako replied.

"Oh? Where's that?" Shizuka leaned forward to give Rikako an inquisitive grin. "I'd try to guess, but your accent is unlike anything I've heard before. No offense!" she added.

"Um..." Rikako desperately tried to remember what was said in the cockpit during their escape from Gensokyo. "Just a little village near Matsumoto?"

"Oh, I've been there!" Shizuka said excitedly. "The Crow Castle is amazing, isn't it? So much history!"

"Y-yeah. It's..." Rikako cracked a grin. "Back home, it's like living in a different era."

"I can see why you'd choose to live there," her unexpected companion said with a little sigh. "Life is so complicated now, with cell phones and computers and subways... sometimes I wish I could just run away somewhere and, I don't know, work on a farm or something." She arched an eyebrow at Rikako. "I don't suppose you know any real estate agents back where you're from, do you?"

"I hate it there," Rikako said almost before she realized it. At Shizuka's surprised expression, she elaborated. "It's so primitive. Everyone's concerned with the drudgery of day-to-day life, or upholding tradition, with no appreciation for innovation. And they're so narrow-minded that they don't have any interest beyond the Border. Er, their borders." She cleared her throat and gestured around them. "Sure, this is exhausting, but that's because it's going places, not trying to stay in the past."

"Hmm." Shizuka tapped her chin, then gave Rikako a warm smile. "I never thought about it that way. Guess it takes an outsider's perspective to help you appreciate what you have, eh? Like maybe you might be grateful for your home town's air quality after breathing city air for a while?"

"Maybe," Rikako grudgingly admitted, which earned a chuckle from Shizuka.

The other woman glanced down at her wrist, looked out the transparent walls of the shelter, and sighed in frustration. "At this point I'll get their faster if I walk. Well, it's been enlightening, but I should probably get going if I plan on getting home for supper. But hey," she went on, pulling a slim bit of technology out of her purse, "would it be alright if I friended you? Feel free to add me too."

Rikako could only blink. "Um..."

"Ah, battery's dead," sighed Shizuka after failing to get a response from the device. "This new model just drains too fast. Well, it was nice to meet you all the same, Miss Rikako. Have a good visit with your friend, and hope you get home safely!" Then she stood up and just as suddenly walked out of Rikako's life.

The scientist managed a halfhearted wave as she watched the other woman leave. Well, that had been unexpected. She wondered what the odds were of encountering another Japanese person in a foreign city this large, but Rikako had never really appreciated mathematics for the sake of math, only as a means to an-

"I notice you didn't mention the wildlife back home," Kotohime commented as she leaned her head into the shelter, from the opposite direction Rikako had been looking.

Once Rikako was sure she wasn't having a heart attack, she turned her head to glare at Kotohime. "I wish you'd stop creeping up-"

"But I guess it evens out, some big-city criminals are at least as dangerous as your average youkai," Kotohime concluded, nodding sagely to herself.

Rikako just grunted and pushed herself to her feet, then followed the lunatic back onto the sidewalk. "Do you know where we're going now?"

"We figured out where we are," Chiyuri chimed in as she leaned into view from behind Kotohime, "and Kotohime says she knows where to go, she just won't tell us."

"Operational security," the self-proclaimed police chief said in a singsong.

"Oh come on, we're on a busy, public street and there's been no sign of pursuit," Yumemi protested.

"But maybe the bad guys had a murderbot tail our ally when she left the tournament all those years ago," Kotohime pointed out. "There could be an enemy in the area, staking out our objective and keeping an eye out for our approach."

The four women took a moment to study the dozens of people on the street in their immediate proximity, none of whom seemed to be paying them any particular attention.

"Yeah, sure," Chiyuri grumbled. "So, we movin' now or what?"

Kotohime nodded smartly and broke into a steady stride. "The good news is that it's not far and we're already on the right street," she said over her shoulder, before nodding at the landscape ahead.

Rikako's heart sank as she had to tilt her head back to follow the road before them.

"The bad news is, it's uphill all the way," Kotohime finished.

-x-

-8-

What, Rikako wondered to herself as she puffed and gasped along, possessed this city's founders to settle on such hilly terrain? Yes, there was probably some defensive benefits to it, but that had to be outweighed by the daily inconvenience of hauling oneself home in the evening. Yes, there seemed to be a natural harbor nearby, but any goods unloaded here would, again, have to be hauled up those hills. Was there some sort of religious significance to the site, or-

Wait, hadn't Chiyuri or Yumemi said something about a gold rush? Oh yeah. Well, that would explain everything.

Grumbling and cursing under her breath, her shin bones, leg muscles and feet burning with overuse, Rikako cast a jealous eye at the vehicles rolling up and down the hill in the street next to them. It might be a lazier way of getting around, but what was technology for if not making life easier? She almost suggested finding some way to procure a vehicle, or use those... what were they called, the big things rolling along under cables strung along over the streets? Not buses or trains, but... Anyway, Rikako had a feeling none of the money she or her friends happened to be carrying would be any good here.

Still, Rikako was proud of herself for not giving in and trying to subtly fly up the hill. Though she had a real concern about how well she could do magic outside the Border, and didn't like the thought of rolling all the way back down to where they'd started in case she crashed.

She took a moment to glance back below and marveled at their progress, as well as the scenery - the sky was shifting from a brilliant orange to pink, the tall buildings were casting shadows over each other, and there was now a swirl of lights moving along the streets, as hundreds of vehicles passed underneath electric lamps lining the sidewalks. Rikako realized she was gawking and hurried to keep up with the rest of her group, only to find that they'd come to a halt as well, and were staring up at a nearby building.

"This the place?" asked Chiyuri.

Rikako took a closer look as she got her breathing under control. The structure they'd arrived at didn't seem very special, aside from the fact that its foundation was at a distinct angle to the sidewalk in front of it. It was a comparatively short and simple rectangular stack of brick and glass in relation to some of the skyscrapers visible in the distance, though of course it would still be considered a marvel if it somehow showed up in Gensokyo.

"What is this, a store?" asked Yumemi suspiciously.

"Business on the bottom, apartments above," Kotohime nodded, pointing out a sign next to a pair of large glass doors. The plaque was covered in letters from what looked like several different languages, but among them Rikako recognized the characters that spelled out Fluffy Ellen's Magic Shop.

"Huh, guess she got into commerce when she got home." Rikako fiddled with her glasses, then angrily took them off to try and wipe the sweat drops from them. "Is it any use asking you how you know about this place?"

"Oh, it wasn't detective work or anything, I just had a nice long chat with Ellen back in the day and she told me all about where she came from and what she did for a living," explained Kotohime as she pulled open the establishment's door for everyone, causing a cheerful bell to chime. "She actually lived here a good while before coming to Gensokyo."

Rikako stepped inside, her brow furrowed slightly as she studied her surroundings. This 'magic shop' looked fairly innocuous, more like an apothecary's business than anything else, though cleaner and airier than most Rikako had known. Behind the counter were glass cases displaying an impressive array of bottles, along with shelves holding everything from colored liquids to herbs to insect parts. Large clay jars sat on the counter itself next to what Rikako eventually decided was a surprisingly slim computer monitor. Some displays in the corners held small figurines and other knickknacks, which Rikako supposed could be magical fetishes or children's toys. The overhead lights were electric but not glaring, and there was a slight but not unpleasant smell of herbs in the air.

There was a customer at the counter, an older gentleman in modern business attire taking a brown paper bag from the woman behind it, who looked up at the four newcomers and gave them a friendly smile.

Kotohime halted in her tracks. "Wait, you're not Ellen," she said accusingly.

"Guess you are a detective," Rikako murmured. The woman running the store was someone she'd never seen before, a foreign brunette who looked to be in her mid-twenties, and could probably stand to lose some weight.

"Maybe we took the wrong entrance?" suggested Chiyuri, as she glanced back at the door as if she could read the sign from inside the place.

The old man looked back and forth between their group and the woman running the establishment, murmured something to the latter, and hurried his way out. The woman seemed taken aback too, but cleared her throat, and asked in halting Japanese, "May I help you?"

"Oh, that's convenient," said Kotohime with pleasant smile. "We're actually looking for someone, not something. Do you know-"

"Um," the woman interrupted. "I speak small Japanese, slow please."

"Is Miss Ellen here?" Rikako asked, making sure to enunciate carefully.

The woman blinked, then nodded. "A moment, please." She turned away from the counter, walked over to a tall, narrow door in the corner, and promptly got hit in the foot when it suddenly burst open.

"Oh, sorry!" came a young, cheerful voice. "I didn't see you there!"

While the woman mumbled something unintelligible, a stack of packages wobbled into the room and traveled behind the counter before carefully descending out of sight. A girl came up in their place, a child who looked no older than twelve. Her hair was long, blonde and bushy, and tied back with a big red ribbon. She was wearing a wooly red sweater with a white apron over it, and had such a sunny smile on her face that Rikako felt like investing in some smoked spectacles.

Or in other words, other than her change in wardrobe, Ellen looked exactly the same as she had all those years ago. Rikako realized her mouth had fallen open and quickly shut it.

"Welcome to my magic shop!" the girl said brightly. "Can I interest you in a potion? I've got cold cures, pain relief, good luck charms-"

"Good to see you, Ellen!" Kotohime interrupted, smiling right back. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

The girl blinked, her smile flickering and going out as her expression shifted to confusion. "Do I know you?"

Kotohime seemed taken aback. "Well, I thought you did. You don't remember? Those ruins, back in-"

"Wait," Ellen interrupted. She leaned over the counter and, to Rikako's confusion, inhaled sharply. "You stink of magic," Ellen said in a low voice, her golden eyes narrowed as she studied the self-proclaimed princess.

Kotohime might actually have been blushing. "Ah, well, I-I don't think they make a deodorant for that sort of-"

"Oh, it's the weirdo!" Ellen said suddenly, a wide smile returning to her face. "Kotohime!"

Well, that disproved the theory Rikako had thrown together over the last couple of seconds, that she was looking at some identical offspring of the Ellen she remembered. Then the girl turned to her, and Rikako saw the spark of recognition in Ellen's eyes.

"And the nurse, Rikako!" Ellen went on, clapping her hands with delight.

"Scientist," Rikako corrected a bit sharply, still off-balance.

The girl simply shrugged. "Well, it's all magic, isn't it?" Ellen then took notice of the two women waiting behind them. "And who are you? I don't smell any magic on you." She gestured at the displays. "Would you like some? I've got lots of potions."

Yumemi and Chiyuri were still flabbergasted. "Ah, we haven't been properly introduced," Yumemi managed, before turning to Kotohime and asking, "You do realize she hasn't aged a day, right?"

"Oh, that's just Ellen's thing," Kotohime said with a careless wave of her hand. "Eternally young witch and all that. What, you never picked up on that when you were collecting data on everyone?"

"I suppose not." Yumemi straightened up, stepped forward, and bowed. "A pleasure to finally see you in person, Miss Ellen. I'm Yumemi Okazaki, and this is my good friend Chiyuri Kitashirakawa."

"Pleased to meetcha," Chiyuri said as she stuck out a hand.

Ellen enthusiastically shook the offered appendage. "Nice to meet you too! I'm Ellen Aureus, though my grandpa always called me Fluffy-Headed Ellen. And that's Sokrates," she added, gesturing at a short bookcase up against a front window.

Rikako glanced over and saw a large lump of cream-colored fur curled up on a blanket, soaking in the day's last sunbeams. She recognized a feline in its amorphous state and wasn't surprised that the cat didn't so much as twitch an ear at the sound of its name.

"He's pretty lazy these days," Ellen confided in a stage whisper, "but he's still an old sweetie."

"And your lovely assistant?" Kotohime asked with her head tilted towards the woman standing in the background behind the counter.

"I am Jennifer Reed," the woman spoke up. After a moment's hesitation, she managed a stiff bow.

"She's a big help!" Ellen said proudly, giving the older(-looking) woman an affectionate pat on the arm that made her blush. "Jenny can run the store while I'm making potions and things, so business is better than ever!" Ellen's eyes were practically glowing. "We have two color TVs now! And one of them is so flat, we can hang it on the wall like a painting! Isn't this modern magic of science amazing?"

"When it's not trying to kill us," said Kotohime mildly. "Is there a place we could go to talk, Ellen? We've got a delicate situation to discuss."

"Oh, sure, we can go to my apartment." The apparent little girl turned back to her employee. "Can you please run the store without me for a bit?"

Jennifer looked almost exasperated, and said something in a language Rikako didn't know.

Ellen blushed. "Oh, right. W-well, since I am the boss, and I got to go do important things, you do your job good, or no bonus for you!" she blustered. Then she glanced about nervously and asked, "That wasn't too mean, was it?"

Jennifer said something else, and seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh while doing so, but took her place behind the store's counter.

Still flustered, Ellen marched over to where her cat was curled up and picked the animal up with a grunt of effort, carrying it against her shoulder like an infant. As far as Rikako could tell, the cat was still asleep.

"Okay, we gotta go out on the street before coming in to the staircase, my apartment is on the top floor." Ellen must have seen the looks on their faces, because she added, "Or we could take the elevator."

-x-

It was amazing how simple physics - in this case pulleys and counterweights - could so tremendously make life easier, Rikako noted as she stepped out of the elevator. In this case, science and technology had saved her from having a heart attack, or possibly attacking one of her companions in a berserk frenzy caused by the prospect of climbing several flights of stairs so soon after climbing a hill.

The apartment hallway she found herself in was quite bland, undecorated save for a thin layer of carpeting and some wallpaper, but then Ellen hurried to the front of the line, Sokrates still tight against her chest, and pulled a jangling keychain out of a pocket, then managed to get a nearby door open with only one hand. "Please, come on in!" the youthful-looking mage said to them.

Rikako had no expectations about what a home in the outside world was supposed to look like, so she wasn't sure whether she should be surprised or not. Ellen's apartment seemed spacious, or at least as roomy as Rikako's own home, and it had a lovely view of the city skyline as it lit up against a purple sky. The furniture was definitely Western, but beyond that there wasn't a real theme to it - some wooden chairs around a dining table looked old and stately, the overstuffed couch next to a fireplace had some tears in it around cat height and a beige floral pattern that made Rikako wish Sokrates had finished killing the thing, while the chair next to it looked brand new, so sleek and stylish that Rikako wasn't sure which way to sit in it.

What was on the walls was even more interesting, an enormous collection of pictures that Rikako stepped closer to examine. Many were simple photographs of various smiling people, or landscapes. One near a light switch showed a beaming Ellen and a slightly-younger-looking - what had been her name, Jennifer? Well, both of them were standing in front of some ruined castle. But Rikako also spotted some framed paintings hanging in places of honor, depicting stately nobles or renditions of landscapes, one of which seemed to be an intact version of the ruins in the photo. Some of the peoples' outfits looked European, but others were more exotic, and-

"Oi, you're blocking the way," Kotohime said while gently poking Rikako's shoulder.

The scientist jumped, glared, but sidestepped so Yumemi and Chiyuri could slip inside after her.

"Nice place," Chiyuri said after sweeping her gaze around. "Pretty spacious for urban livin'. How's the rent?"

Ellen paused in the process of closing the door behind them. "Um... I think Jenny does that. No, wait, do we own the building now?" She stared off into the distance for a second, then shook herself, noticed her guests as though surprised to see them, and gave them a sunny smile. "Would you like some refreshments? I have tea, coffee, juice-"

"Any beer?" asked Chiyuri hopefully.

Yumemi raised a hand as if to give her former student a bop to the head, but froze mid-gesture and contented herself with giving a stern glare. "We're in terrible danger, you just had a head injury, and you want to drink?"

"Tea would be lovely, Ellen," Kotohime declared with a bow.

"Okay! Please, make yourselves comfortable, it'll be ready in a moment." The young mage gently set her cat down on a folded blanket sitting on a sofa, then hurried off to an adjoining room filled with appliances that looked like some evolutionary stage between the furnishings in Rikako's kitchen and the ones in Yumemi and Chiyuri's hypervessel.

The four travelers took seats around the dining table, three of them continuing to take in all the sights in the apartment, while Kotohime instead got distracted by a lacy doily left on the table.

Yumemi's expression hardened. "This is much nicer than our apartment," she admitted. "The ceiling's higher, a separate kitchen and pantry, full carpeting-"

"I think our place is just fine, professor," Chiyuri said placidly.

Yumemi snorted. "The bathroom isn't ventilated properly so there's mold, the ceiling fan clicks and rattles and needs to be replaced, there's still a hole in the bedroom wall from where we had to move an outlet-"

"You two live together?" Rikako asked.

"It's a budget thing," Yumemi said quickly, reddening slightly. "The economy the way it is, sharing a place is the only way to get by in the city."

"And we crackpot theorists need to stick together," Chiyuri added with a grin that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Everyone else thinks we're lunatics, so who else are we gonna hang out with?"

There was an awkward silence interrupted only by some clinks and clanks as Ellen put the refreshments together in the kitchen. When it became too much to bear, Rikako turned to Kotohime. "You seem awfully engrossed in that," the scientist commented.

Kotohime didn't look up, but continued to peer at the fancy circle of cloth she was holding before her. "You know anything about fractals, Miss Asakura?"

Rikako narrowed her eyes with the effort of recalling some random trivia. "Those are geometric figures that look the same no matter what scale they're at, something like that, right?"

"Correct. Now," Kotohime went on, "what do you think would happen if an geomantic sigil was given a similar treatment?"

Rikako gave her a long look. "I'm curious what this question has to do with the doily you're holding."

Before Kotohime could answer, Ellen stepped into the dining area bearing a tray of cups and saucers. "Tea's ready!" she said cheerfully. "I can only have decaf, so I hope that's okay, and I can get some sugar if you need it."

Their hostess went around the table, setting down refreshments for everybody. Rikako took her cup with a murmured thanks, took a sip, and found the beverage acceptable enough. She set her drink and saucer down, glanced out the window-

She thought she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and jerked her head to the side, so she could properly see through her spectacles.

"Something wrong?" Chiyuri asked.

Rikako opened her mouth, shut it, and frowned. Her eyes might be playing tricks on her, but given who they were looking for...

Yumemi yelped as her teacup and saucer slid across the tablecloth. "W-what?! What's going on?!"

"Oh, I just remembered," Ellen announced, an introspective finger to her chin. "I think my apartment is haunted."

Yumemi and Chiyuri gave her a shocked stare, Kotohime broke into a wide smile, but before Rikako could give a warning, all hell broke loose.

The cups and dishes on the table abruptly took off and began zooming around the room. The lighting system flickered on and off as the switches controlling it rapidly clicked up and down. What must be a television on the wall started spewing a bewildering stream of images and blaring noises, while the paintings hanging nearby bounced and swung as if in an earthquake. Rikako yelped as her chair started skidding across the floor, reflexively tried to jump out of it, only to trip and end up on the floor.

"The ghost is back!" Ellen squealed. She looked more startled than frightened, though, and promptly began running around the room, squirting liquid from a spray bottle she'd gotten from somewhere. "No! Bad spirit!" she scolded.

Chiyuri had a death grip on her seat as it zig-zagged across the room, Yumemi had managed to jump free of her own chair and was flat against the wall, wide-eyed, but Rikako's eyes for whatever reason were drawn to Ellen's cat. Despite the ruckus surrounding it, Sokrates himself seemed unaffected, and indeed was peacefully sleeping, curled up in a tight ball.

"Alright, Kana, that's enough! We know it's you!" Kotohime said loudly as she folded her arms.

And just as suddenly, the chaos ceased. The lights came on and stayed on, the television turned off, and all the flying dishware hung in the air for a heartbeat.

"Wait," came a young woman's voice, "is that..." And then there was a blur of movement as the floating dishes and plates zoomed to take their proper places, and a white-knuckled Chiyuri was carried by her chair back to the table.

Rikako struggled to get up, wincing as her legs protested the day's ordeals, and by the time she was back on her feet, there was someone else sitting at the table with them.

Like Ellen, the newcomer hadn't changed since Rikako last saw her - a slim, blonde, foreign-looking teenage girl with a mischievous grin, wearing a blue dress under a white apron along with elbow-length white gloves. Though the wide, floppy hat Rikako remembered wasn't on the girl's head - wait, there it was on a coathook by the kitchen door.

"Well, well," Kana Anaberal said with just a trace of a foreign accent, her deep blue eyes flashing with amusement. "Never thought I'd see you oddballs again."

Then Ellen squirted her in the face.

"Begone, evil spirit!" the apparent little girl blustered, brandishing a jangling chain overloaded with various pendants and trinkets as she advanced on her target.

Kana sputtered for a moment, then abruptly winked out of sight just as suddenly as she had appeared. "Cut that out! I'm a poltergeist, thank you very much!" came her voice from nowhere.

"A what?" asked a frowning Yumemi. "I remember Miss Kana, but I though she was a magician?"

"That's what we put her down as," Chiyuri said, still a bit unsteady from her impromptu ride around the room.

"She's a sort of spiritual or psychic construct," Rikako explained. As much as she hated discussing supernatural phenomenon these days, it was somewhat comforting to do so when surrounded by the unfamiliar. "Similar to but distinct from a ghost or phantom."

"That could explain some of them weird readings we got from her, then," Chiyuri said with a shrug. "Ah, no offense," she added, looking up at the ceiling.

"I resent the term 'construct,'" Kana complained, reappearing seated on the kitchen counter. "It implies that I was deliberately created, rather than spontaneously generated by a psychically-gifted individual's mental illness."

Yumemi was staring at the girl with an almost hungry look on her face. "Dammit, I wish I'd brought my notes," she said to herself.

"So... I'm being haunted, but not by a ghost?" Ellen asked.

"Not sure whether to call it a stalker situation or a permanent home invasion," Kotohime said thoughtfully. "But yeah, I don't think you'll be able to exorcise her like a pesky spirit."

Rikako looked between Kana and Ellen, before asking the latter "You don't remember her? From Gensokyo?"

"From where?" Ellen asked, brow furrowed.

"Ellen's memory... well, it's quirky," Kana said with a smirk as she folded her hands behind her head. "She retains every magic spell or alchemical formula she's learned over her life, and can vaguely recall her own adventures or where she's lived. But if she's not reminded regularly, she'll lose details and forget acquaintances." The poltergeist preened from her perch on the counter. "I suppose you can call me a scientist, now - I've done experiments, and it looks like Ellen forgets people if she goes about a month without seeing them. So all I have to do is keep my actual appearances to a minimum and her shock from seeing me stays fresh." The poltergeist nearly glowed with satisfaction. "Limitless entertainment."

And then Ellen squirted her in the face again. Chiyuri and Kotohime both burst out laughing.

Kana glared at her attacker. "What did they just tell you-"

"I don't care if you're not a ghost, you're still being bad!" scolded Ellen.

The poltergeist winked out of sight again. "You have no idea how much I pitch in around here," came Kana's voice. "How many breakable items only wobbled but never fell from their shelves. How many shoplifters ran into an alley only to find what they stole wasn't in their pockets anymore. Or how many burglars got scared off by a sudden loud noise." Rikako tracked the sounds and turned to see that Kana was suddenly sitting, fully dry, at the table next to her. "All things considered, I think I've earned a few harmless pranks now and then," the poltergeist finished.

Ellen slowly lowered her spray bottle and let the hand holding the jangling charms fall to her side. "Oh. Well. I guess you're being bad now, but I also owe you my thanks. So, thank you," she said with a little curtsey.

Kana narrowed her eyes warily. "Well, whatever. Just put the bottle down, okay?" She looked around at the other women in the kitchen. "So what are you all doing here, anyway?"

"We could ask you the same question," Rikako replied.

"The same thing I was doing in Gensokyo, only around a new and more interesting person," the poltergeist answered evenly.

Which shouldn't have been possible, Rikako mused to herself. Poltergeists generally had a close relationship to the extraordinary individual who spawned them, and couldn't usually roam on their own. The Prismriver sisters were an exception, though Rikako knew that they were created with the help of a magical artifact, so they presumably played by a different set of rules.

But here was Kana, attaching herself to a new 'host' to not only travel to but thrive in the outside world. If the poltergeist had tried that with any other person, Rikako assumed Kana would have at best failed to pass through the Boundary or at worst evaporated in the land of science. But even without making a conscious effort, Rikako could sense the magical power emanating from Ellen, a girl with an arcane background extending centuries, if not thousands of years beyond her apparent age. Maybe that was enough for Kana to survive on, a free-roaming magical power source that could sustain the poltergeist even when-

"Well we're doing the same thing we were doing in Gensokyo, only in a new and less magical setting," Kotohime said in response to Kana's words, shaking Rikako out of her brief reverie. "Long story short, some bad guys from Chiyuri and Yumemi's dimension-"

"Huh?" the poltergeist interrupted, her brow furrowed.

"We're from another world," Yumemi explained. "Sort of like this one, but there's no magic and our science is a couple of centuries more advanced than yours."

"Oh, like how the demon world's magic is more advanced than Gensokyo's," Ellen said with a nod.

"Something like that," Kotohime nodded, before doing a double-take. "Wait, you've been to Makai?"

"I have?" Ellen blinked in confusion.

Kotohime stared for a moment, then shrugged. "Anyway, some bad guys are out to get us and chased us out of Gensokyo. They shot up our vehicle, so we were hoping you might be able to help us repair it."

Ellen had a hand to her mouth. "How dreadful! Well, I'll do everything I can to help-"

"I notice you said 'vehicle' rather than 'car' or 'plane' or 'boat,'" said Kana, folding her arms. "I'm not saying we could help fix any of those, I just have a sinking suspicion that something that brings people from other worlds is more complicated than anything we might be familiar with."

Yumemi and Chiyuri's expressions tightened at these words, but Ellen merely shrugged. "It's all magic of one kind or another," she said. "I already sell some sprays that fix devices like televisions and computers, and I bet they'll work on your vehicle as well, whatever it is."

"Sounds almost too good to be true," Chiyuri said with a mix of wariness and optimism.

"It's just like a healing potion, only for machines," Ellen assured her. "I sell a lot of the stuff these days."

Kotohime was beaming. "I knew you'd have something for us, Ellen."

"I don't keep much stock in my apartment, but we can go by my store on the way out," Ellen declared, before freezing in the process of heading towards the door. "Um, that is, if you're done with your drinks."

"We should probably keep moving," Yumemi said, but she sounded uncertain and was looking down at her unfinished tea.

"We don't know how close the bad guys are to catching up with us," Chiyuri added. Her statement was punctuated by her stomach gurgling like one of Rikako's failed chemistry experiments.

Ellen looked like she was trying to stifle a giggle. "Ah, I also have tonics for indigestion-"

"Naw, naw," Chiyuri said, holding up her hands. "It's just, well, it's been crazy, and we haven't really had a good meal all day-"

"And we don't have the right money to buy anything," Yumemi admitted with a grimace.

"And if we shoplift anything I'd have to arrest us" Kotohime sighed. Then she jolted as she realized something. "Oh, wait, I've got this - in mani ylem!" she exclaimed, waving her arms dramatically.

Something thudded onto the kitchen table, something shriveled and brown and curved and unpleasantly fragrant. Rikako wrinkled her nose and bent to examine what Kotohime had unexpectedly conjured. "It looks like an overripe banana," she declared.

"And it smells like a sick cat," Kana added with a smirk.

Kotohime winced. "Well, I tried."

Ellen looked at the fruit, then out the window at the fading sunlight, and finally gave her guests another wide smile. "You know, I was about to close up for dinner when you arrived. Would you like to stay a while longer? It's the least I can do for some old friends."

Her four guests exchanged glances. "There's no telling how close we are to being discovered," Yumemi said. "They could be outside this very minute, waiting for us to leave a place of relative safety."

"In which case we wouldn't want to fight them on an empty stomach, would we?" Kotohime pointed out.

"It feels like a foolish risk to take for the sake of a meal," Rikako said bluntly, while trying to ignore her hunger pangs. Damn, that stupid hill had used up what little she got out of those noodles.

"Maybe we can compromise and have a quick supper?" suggested Yumemi.

"Please, no fast food," Chiyuri said with a wince.

"I know a pizza place that can deliver here in five minutes," Ellen said, pulling out a slender piece of technology. "Ooh, I better see if Jenny wants anything." And with that the young mage - a mage who had adjusted surprisingly well to the world of science and reason - hurried out her front door. Kana watched her leave, gave the others one last smirk, and promptly vanished.

"I really hope this doesn't get us killed," Rikako sighed. Then she remembered Ellen's words and had to ask "What's pizza, anyway?"

Kotohime had gone rigid, her eyes wide. "Oh no," the self-declared princess said in a soft, tremulous voice. "I fear that Ellen has awakened something I've tried to suppress for a long time."

-x-

Pizza turned out to be some sort of baked bread rolled out into a thin circle, slathered with tomato sauce, covered in cheese, and studded with chunks of meat and spices and other flavors, all of which was finally cooked and coated in grease. The meal was then cut into wedges and delivered in flattened cardboard containers, and eaten with one's hands. It was awkward and messy trying to fit the wedges of the stuff into one's mouth, and the gooey cheese and glistening patches of oil left behind in the box gave a grim prophecy of indigestion and heartburn to come.

Rikako had to eat it slowly and carefully, both to avoid smearing the toppings onto her face, and to give her stomach time to recover after each swallow. Ellen, Yumemi and Chiyuri ate theirs with casual ease, and between bites chatted about the various pizza restaurants they knew and the merits of each. Kotohime ate like she had a grudge against the stuff, and consumed four slices all by herself in the time it took the others to get through one or two. Kana didn't eat at all but watched the spectacle with a mixture of fascination and disgust.

"Are you sure you don't want anything, Miss Kana?" Ellen asked politely.

"I'm no hungry ghost," the poltergeist said with a wave of a gloved hand.

"I am sorry, I do not know that word," Jennifer said with a slight frown. "Are you a... how do you say it, a person who only eats flowers? Plants!" she corrected herself.

"Something like that," Kana said with a slight smile.

Since Kana wasn't eating, and ordering enough pizza for five women was evidently more complicated than going for an even six, Ellen's assistant had been invited up for supper once she closed shop for the night. So what was already an awkward meal involving foreign food in a strange environment was made even more so by the inclusion of a stranger who was still learning Japanese. And so Rikako ate in silence, concentrating on girding her stomach against the culinary assault upon it, and listening to the others make conversation at the table.

"How long have you two been working together?" Yumemi asked.

Jennifer glanced over to smile at the bushy-headed blonde girl. "I know Miss Ellen all my life," she said with a warm smile. "Or maybe I say, she know my family? She help Grandpa Bob and Grandma Terri get together."

"He just needed to get over his nerves," Ellen giggled. "All it took was a potion: a bit of dandelion roots, mosquito eyes, frog-"

Chiyuri made a face. "A man brave enough to drink something like that shouldn't have any trouble askin' a lady out."

"Oh, he wouldn't drink it," Ellen explained. "I had to put the potion's magic on him directly."

"And Grandpa Bob want the potion to try to do good at a rehearsal, but he use up the magic to ask Grandma Terri on date," Jennifer added with a smile.

"So the rehearsal didn't go well, and Terri said she would only go out with him if he was able to ask her without magical help." Ellen frowned, her gaze going distant. "And after that... I'm not sure what happened to them."

Jennifer cleared her throat.

Ellen jolted in her seat. "Oh, that's right! They got married later! And had a..."

"Daughter," Jennifer supplied. "My mom."

Yumemi's half-eaten pizza slice lay forgotten on her plate, and was leaned forward, propping her chin up in one hand as she studied the eternally-youthful magician. "So how does this all work?" she asked. "You've lived here for generations now. Hasn't anyone noticed?"

"My family help," Jennifer explained. "On paper, we own the business, and do the taxes and things."

"It's been... harder these days," Ellen said, frowning slightly. "I think... I remember it used to be that I could run my magic shops by myself, but now there's people who talk about 'child labor laws' and 'mandatory school attendance,' and they ask for the list of ingredients in my potions and whether they're approved by the FDA, whatever that is, and I had to get something called 'ISO 9001 certified,' and..." she clutched the sides of her head, bewildered and overwhelmed. "It's all so complicated! I just want to help people with my magic!"

Jennifer gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then flashed her guests a conspiratorial smile. "It help that we know person in government. She love a certain potion."

"And we've decided that it's best if I'm not always the one dealing with customers," Ellen added. "So I get to take vacations, which is fun."

"Is that how you ended up in Gensokyo?" asked Rikako after giving up on finishing her second slice of what passed for food here.

Ellen's smile slowly faded, and her brow furrowed with the effort of trying to remember something. "Um... where?"

Rikako traded a glance with Kotohime. "Gensokyo," the scientist repeated, "a magical valley in Japan. That's where you met us, remember?"

Ellen held a finger to her lip as she pondered. "I don't think I've been to Japan..."

"But you're speaking Japanese!" Rikako said without meaning to sound as exasperated as she did.

Jennifer cleared her throat. "Ellen has - ah, I hear her speak English, you hear her speak Japanese, and she understand whatever we speak."

"Oh, that's useful," Kotohime shrugged.

Yumemi rubbed her chin, realized she was inadvertently spreading a glob of sauce, and tried to surreptitiously wipe it off before anybody noticed. "I wonder what would happen if you recorded her voice digitally..."

"As a way to figure out what her native language is?" Chiyuri asked. "Good thinkin', professor."

Jenny shrugged. "We have message from her on phone, I hear it in English."

"But if you examined the data..." pondered Yumemi.

"Or we could just ask her," Kotohime suggested. "Hey, Ellen, where ya from?" she asked, turning to the blonde girl beside her.

The eternally-youthful magician stared vacantly for a long moment. "Um, here? No, no, before that there was a train, and a dragon, and gems and gnomes... And earlier there was a prince and a forest? But no trains, then. And..." her face screwed up with the effort of recollection before she shook her head fiercely. "Ow, ow, ow. Ask me questions I can answer next time, okay?"

Jennifer put a comforting hand on Ellen's arm, and murmured soothing words in presumably English.

"I think Aureus is Latin," Kana supplied, "but that may not tell us much, lots of people in Europe like to spice up their names with a dead language."

"I'm surprised you know that sort of thing," Rikako said with an arched eyebrow.

The poltergeist mirrored the expression but added a hint of a smirk. "Well, what else was I supposed to do all day? The people of my mansion were ignoring me, and there was a big library. It was only after I'd gone through all the books twice that I got bored enough to set off on my own."

Jennifer had gotten Ellen calmed and was watching Kana closely as the psychic construct spoke, mouthing Kana's words with a furrowed brow as she tried to comprehend them. "Excuse me, you are nobility?"

"No, I'm the princess," Kotohime said instantly.

Jennifer's eyes widened. "You are princess?" she repeated.

"And she's a poltergeist," Kotohime continued, pointing at Kana before going around the rest of the table, "and these two are from another dimension, and Rikako here is a heretic," she finished with a teasing smile.

"Scientist," Rikako corrected curtly.

"Also, I'm a policewoman too," Kotohime added.

There was a moment of silence as Jennifer took a moment to give her dinner companions a long look. But then the young woman shrugged before going back to her pizza. "Ellen meet interesting people," she declared.

"You're takin' all this rather well," Chiyuri said with a grin. "Normally there's concern about the natives' reaction if they find out there's people from another world runnin' around theirs."

Jennifer shrugged again. "Like I say, I know Ellen all my life, know about magic, potion, strange thing."

"And there's some pretty broad-minded people beyond the Border," Kotohime chimed in. "People who believe in magic and fairies and such despite never seeing any evidence. It's enough to give you hope." She turned to gaze out the window wistfully, her eyes shining. "Maybe, with the help of people like Ellen, enough belief in the unbelievable can be nurtured so that kappa can once again swim freely in the world's rivers, performing surprise proctology on anyone they catch alone."

"An inspiring vision," Kana said dryly. "Are you meatbags done stuffing your faces yet?"

"Don't knock it 'til you try it," Chiyuri replied, before having to hide a belch with the back of her hand. "Hey, Ellen, got any antacids?"

"Oh, I've got a potion for that!" the little mage said brightly.

"Just so long as it doesn't have any mosquito legs or whatever in it," said Chiyuri warily.

Ellen rose to fetch something from the kitchen, but stopped, blinking in confusion as she stared down at the table. "Where'd the teabag go?"

"Sorry, sorry, force of habit." Kotohime shifted and reached down one sleeve, then withdrew a soggy square of paper on a string. "You'd probably be out of range anyway," she decided. But in the act of returning the teabag to the pot, she hesitated. "Out of range of the first version," she corrected herself, and then Kotohime settled back in her seat and started to put the teabag back down her sleeve.

"Uh..." Ellen gave her guest an uncertain smile. "Well, I suppose you can keep it. I mean, I didn't really need it, I was just wondering where it had gone."

"I appreciate your cooperation," Kotohime said with an earnest nod as she stowed what was essentially garbage.

Rikako also noticed that the tea kettle was resting directly on the table now, instead of on the little doily Kotohime had been fascinated by earlier, but the scientist decided not to get involved.

-x-

-9-

Jennifer was nice enough to offer to clean up after supper so the rest of them could get going, and before their unwholesome meal had time to properly settle, the visitors, their host and one tagalong poltergeist prepared to set off. Though first Ellen had to give her cat one last scratch behind the ears.

"Well be back soon, Sokrates," she promised.

The cat actually opened his eyes for this, but promptly yawned and looked away, staring pointedly at nothing in particular rather than return his owner's affection.

"Aww, I'd take you with us if I could!" Ellen insisted. "But you're so heavy! You need to lose weight, mister," she scolded.

Sokrates' response was to twist and start licking the back of one leg.

Rikako had been worried about fitting the six of them onto the elevator, but Kana simply filed in last, gave them a smirk, and promptly sank through the floor and disappeared. As the elevator finished its descent, the girl's wide-brimmed sun hat pushed up through the floor, followed shortly by the rest of her, and Kana evidently was enjoying the looks on their faces.

"Cute, but you shouldn't show off like that when we leave the building," Kotohime warned. "We're trying to keep a low profile."

"Says the girl in the medieval robes," Kana scoffed, but she suddenly vanished from view. "This subtle enough for you?"

Yumemi shook her head slowly. "It'd take me ten minutes to just try to explain how our hypervessel's cloaking systems work, but you make that look easy."

"That's because it is easy," came Kana's voice from somewhere near Ellen. "Almost as easy as being visible, in fact."

They had to stop by the magic shop one last time so Ellen could search the back room for whatever potions or ointments she thought could help them get the hypervessel working again. She emerged a few minutes later with a small satchel that clanked and clinked as she tried to get it positioned properly on her side. "I wasn't sure if we'd need computer magic or car magic more, so I brought along both," she explained. "But I'm sure I've got something that can help," she said with a decisive nod.

"If not, we still got to have a lovely evening with an old friend," Kotohime replied with a charming smile. Yumemi and Chiyuri tried to grin along as well, but theirs looked forced.

"And hopefully while we were having that lovely evening, our enemies haven't figured out where we are," Rikako added with a sigh.

She wanted to be the group's voice of reason - Kotohime was insane, Yumemi and Chiyuri were smart but misguided in their appreciation for magic, Ellen was like a child, and Kana was more or less a teenager causing trouble to get attention. But the minute they stepped outside the magic shop and back onto the streets of the city, it was Rikako who felt overwhelmed and lost.

She had watched, over the course of their meal, as the sky went from a brilliant magenta to a deep purple before going dark. But now she felt a dizzying sensation like she was drifting through a sea of stars, as she watched the lights of automobiles moving toward and away from her like processions of comets, underneath the lighted squares and rectangles of building windows and the circles of luminescence cast by the street lights and the varying colors of traffic lights, alongside the bluish glows from pedestrians and the technology they were holding, creating a patchwork of light and darkness in which it was impossible to tell where anything was so the city sounds seemed to be coming from everywhere at once and-

"Hey, ya okay?" Chiyuri asked, gently putting a hand on Rikako's shoulder.

The scientist shook herself, trying to surreptitiously flex her knees to remind her body that she was standing on solid ground. "It must be the pizza," she muttered.

"I still have some of my indigestion potion!" Ellen piped up.

"No, I think I'll be fine," Rikako said quickly.

"It wasn't that bad," Chiyuri assured her, and Rikako could just make out her smile in the ambient light shed by Ellen's building. "Ya could hardly taste the mosquito elbows."

Despite the pizza, the trip back was much easier than the march to find Ellen, particularly since it was mostly downhill. Foot traffic was lighter as well, useful when trying to keep a group as big as theirs together, though Rikako was a little concerned by some of the other pedestrians. Those they'd passed while the sun was still out had a staggering variety to them, but now that it was night she saw more dark clothing, and perhaps it was her imagination, but she saw more groups of young males sticking close together.

She tried not to overreact or judge anyone unfairly, and it was entirely possible that the attention they received was due to being a pretty eclectic group themselves, but Rikako didn't like some of the looks they were getting as they passed youths coming the other way or loitering in front of building entrances. During the day it was easy to brush aside such hostility, but in the dark...

Rikako could sense Chiyuri tensing up, and the young woman reached for something that wasn't on her hip and sighed in frustration. "Wish I hadn't left my gun at home," she muttered.

"And I'm starting to regret bringing Ellen with us," Yumemi added, pulling her jacket tighter around herself. "Ah, do you usually go out by yourself at night, Ellen?"

The youthful-looking mage glanced over with a surprised look on her face. "Huh? Um, sometimes? I don't usually stay up late," she confided.

"Secret to a long life, if not an interesting one," came Kana's voice from nowhere in particular. One woman with spiky blue hair stumbled while passing the other way and stopped to stare over her shoulder at them.

"We're just wondering whether we should be concerned about safety," Yumemi explained.

"Oh." Ellen walked in silence for a few moments, seeming deep in thought, then shrugged. "Well, I don't think anything bad's happened to me here. There's no dragons around anymore, and no invading armies to cause trouble. There was that time Sokrates almost got into a bird nest, but I stopped him, and he's too old to climb trees these days."

"Any, uh, 'bandits?'" Chiyuri asked.

Ellen tapped her chin, staring off into the distance. "I don't think so... you know, it's really hard to buy a sword these days. That might have something to do with it."

"Sometimes I wonder how she's survived this long," Kana's voice mused. "And from what I can tell she spent most of her life living alone, too. We can only imagine what confrontations she's forgotten."

"So have you seen any confrontations?" Rikako asked.

"None that Ellen knows about," was Kana's smug reply.

"You better behave yourself, Miss Kana," Ellen lectured sternly, stopping for a moment to waggle a finger in the air and address the sky, thereby earning some bemused stares from a couple sitting on a nearby bench. "Sokrates was a real rascal when he was younger, so I know how to handle misbehavior."

Rikako met the eye of one of the staring civilians and simply shrugged.

Kana didn't reply - perhaps the poltergeist was unwilling to draw attention to herself, for once. "We should probably keep moving," Yumemi said to fill the awkward pause that followed.

Rikako realized they'd just passed that enclosed bench they stopped at earlier, so they were probably halfway to the hypervessel. Not that it was easy to tell where they were, since lighted windows tended to look the same and there were only occasional spots where the sides of the buildings were illuminated. But she reminded herself that she didn't need to be worried about her safety. After all, she had grown up in a land of magic and monsters, where woman-eating youkai lurked in the woods around the sole beacon of civilization. She had her bag of equipment with her if she was engaged with combat, and she had years of experience defending herself. Some humans who couldn't even fly shouldn't pose a challenge.

"We'll be fine," Rikako assured Chiyuri and Yumemi with a slightly smug smile. "I don't think this city could throw anything at us worse than a pack of fairies."

"And I don't think we're anywhere near Castro," Kotohime murmured distractedly.

"Huh?" Rikako gave the woman leading the procession a sharp look. "You've been strangely quiet lately, and while I'm certainly not complaining-"

"You don't feel it?" the noblewoman asked, turning her head to give Rikako a penetrating stare.

Mostly Rikako was feeling a burning in her shins from walking downhill, not to mention her sour stomach. "Feel what?"

"Just like after I met our Chiyuri and disguised myself as her," Kotohime replied. She turned her head forward again, but from the looks of it she was scanning their surroundings, even trying to follow a skyline all but invisible in the darkness. "Something's watching us. And while it might be a typical urban encounter of a half-dozen or so low-level gang members..."

Everyone else glanced about nervously while Rikako tried to decide whether or not to take Kotohime seriously. Her instincts weren't raising any flags, though admittedly Rikako didn't see much combat these days, and she was still struggling to process being in this city. That stupid pizza didn't help, either.

"Well, I don't think we really want to turn around and hide in Ellen's apartment until we're attacked," Yumemi said eventually.

Kotohime nodded. "Yeah, we have to stay the course. And also stay alert. The bad guys haven't moved in public yet, but our landing site is a perfect place for an attack."

Rikako's shoulders tightened at the thought - to say nothing of her clenching stomach. Stupid pizza.

"But there's six of us now," Chiyuri pointed out.

"Indeed!" Kotohime agreed. "And they can only see five of us, so they're in for quite the surprise! We'll get to ambush the ambushers!" She broke into a manic grin as she looked eagerly down the road ahead. "This will be fun!"

"So what exactly am I ambushing?" Kana's voice asked. "You've been pretty vague about the trouble you're in, and dragging me and Ellen into."

"We're fugitives, I guess," Yumemi said with a sigh and a shrug.

Ellen stopped to stare at her. "Oh no! You've broken the law?"

"No, no - well," Yumemi cleared her throat, "technically, yes, we've broken so many laws and protocols by this point I'd be surprised if the Parallelism Police isn't after us too-"

"We don't even own the hypervessel we borked," Chiyuri added with a grin.

"-but the real problem is that there's attack craft and android assassins out to get us," Yumemi finished.

Ellen blinked, her expression totally blank.

"Spaceships and robot ninja," Chiyuri clarified.

"Ohhhh..." Ellen's golden eyes grew wider, and an innocent smile crept across her face. "Just like my cartoons!"

"Y-yes?" Yumemi coughed again. "And since they're coming from me and Chiyuri's world, they've got some advanced equipment."

"The android that went after my Chiyuri had an automatic weapon and a cloaking device," Kotohime chimed in. "Also a pretty impressive self-destruct mechanism. So we can consider that a baseline of what to expect."

"So what you're saying," said Kana slowly, "is that we should be on the lookout for an invisible attacker."

"No, since we're going to ambush it when it tries to ambush us, it'll be an invisible defender," Kotohime said with a smile.

"At least this evening won't be boring," was the poltergeist's grumbled reply.

"But why would someone want to hurt you for breaking those laws?" Ellen asked. "Shouldn't they try to arrest you instead?"

"They don't want them in jail, the bad guys want Yumemi and Chiyuri out of the way," Kotohime explained.

"Why?" Kana asked. "What's this all about, anyway?"

"The bad guys sabotaged Yumemi and Chiyuri's expedition to Gensokyo all those years ago so they could simultaneously steal their research and discredit the only other people interested in traveling there, then developed their own method of reaching Gensokyo, so now they're trying to assassinate Chiyuri because the fact that there's a Chiyuri in both their world and Gensokyo is what allowed Yumemi and her Chiyuri to get there in the first place," said Kotohime, though the last words came out as a gasp as she ran out of breath.

"Okay, now I need a sane person to try to explain it," Kana said.

"No, no, that's basically what we've pieced together," Yumemi said with a little mirthless laugh. "I'll admit, it sounds pretty wild."

"Huh." Kana's smile was audible even if the poltergeist was remaining invisible. "This is gonna be interesting, isn't it?"

"Wait," said Ellen, her brow furrowed with the effort of keeping up with everything. "Where's Gensokyo again?"

-x-

"And here's our turn," Yumemi announced, drawing to a stop as they approached one particular building. A restaurant or something by the looks of it, Rikako decided, with large glass windows spilling light onto the street before it. But past it was an alleyway, or rather a patch of shadows between the eatery and whatever business or residence was beyond.

The group stopped to consider. "I'm thinking redheads in the front, blondes in the middle, purple watches our backs," Kotohime declared. "Blondes except Kana, I should say," she added.

"Where's your vehicle?" Ellen asked, standing on her toes as she tried to see over Yumemi's shoulder.

"It's behind these buildings, and disguised," Chiyuri told her quietly.

"And you've got a problem," Kana's voice reported.

Rikako took in a breath. "An assassin?"

"Some of the local flavor," Kana corrected. "Seven just around the corner. It sounds like they're just hanging out, but they look like rowdy types. No obvious weapons, but I can't exactly search their pockets without them noticing. Looks-"

"Miss Anaberal," Kotohime interrupted, "have you ever considered a career in law enforcement?"

"I am literally a being of chaos," Kana said flatly.

"Well I'll just give you fair warning and say that I'm sorely tempted to requisition you as a crime-fighting asset," said Kotohime with a wide smile.

"You'll never take me alive, copper," replied Kana with an audible smirk.

"Can we focus?" Rikako asked, rolling her eyes.

"Right, how to get past these guys." Kotohime put a hand to her chin as she pondered. "I could bank a flashbang around the corner and then we could rush them, but that'd attract a lot of attention-"

"We don't even know if they're hostile," Chiyuri protested.

"But we can't work with them hanging around the hypervessel..." noted Yumemi with a frown.

"Okay, let's ask them to leave," Ellen said cheerily.

Everyone else traded glances. "There's a lot of ways this could go wrong, but it's probably our best option," Yumemi said with a sigh.

Kotohime nodded and took a breath. "Diplomacy, ho!" she declared, before boldly stepping forward, turning the corner, and marching into the alleyway. The others hurried to follow.

The alley wasn't completely dark, and there was a single electric light shining down from a wall mount over a sturdy metal door, but it still took Rikako's eyes some time to adjust and make out who was blocking their way. A group of young men were not, as Kana had suggested, dangling from anything, but were crouching or leaning against the walls as they conversed. They didn't have a uniform appearance that Rikako could detect - there were more skin tones in this one alley than there were in all of Gensokyo's human population - but something about them felt familiar, a demeanor that Rikako had also seen in the village's troublemakers. There had been that kid with the wannabe gangsters, what was his name, Kotaro? Kodama? Something like that.

They were still laughing at something one of them had said when they noticed the troupe of women that had stepped into the alley to approach them. The youths reacted with surprise, the ones that were crouching abruptly standing up, while the ones leaning against the walls pushed off and stood with their hands loose at their sides. One of them stepped forward, his face mostly hidden in shadow thanks to the hood of his jacket, but there was a wide smile visible that Rikako didn't like.

"Buenos noches!" Kotohime said cheerily.

The young man seemed surprised by her words, then said something in another tongue.

"And so in all of two sentences we run headfirst into the language barrier," Kotohime noted, her smile not even flickering. "A little help, Ellen?"

The young-looking girl stepped forward to stand next to Kotohime, still cheerful. "Good evening! That's what my friend was trying to say, but she's not from around here."

Some of the men looked at each other, then the leader said something else.

Ellen shook her bushy blonde hair. "Oh no, we're not lost. We're trying to get through here. Could you please move out of the way?"

"Maybe add something about us not wanting to use violence, but being willing to if necessary?" Kotohime suggested.

But she was talking at the same time the ringleader was saying something else.

"Huh?" Ellen asked. The man made an annoyed sound and repeated what he had said. "Oh. Well... I don't have any candy or anything on me, and I'm sorry but all the potions I'm carrying are for my friends' use." She brightened. "But I can give you directions to my shop so you can come by later! Maybe you'll see something you like? My prices are very reasonable."

"Let me guess, they want something in exchange for standing aside for a moment?" Yumemi sighed.

"Just a matter of time before someone propositions us," Chiyuri said sourly. Rikako privately agreed - she did not like how one of the kids was staring at her hair.

One of the young men on the gang's fringes said something that got raucous laughter in response. Ellen took a step back, then clenched her fists at her sides and stamped her foot. "Well, that was rude!"

"This is going to escalate, isn't it?" Rikako asked, even as she was reaching for her pouch of equipment-

Someone saw her and barked a warning, and the fake friendliness abruptly vanished. Before Rikako knew it, the youths had weapons in hand, at least two handguns were pointing almost directly at her, while others had drawn knives that gleamed in the harsh electric lighting.

There was a moment of frozen tension, punctuated by a hissed curse from Chiyuri.

Kotohime pinched the bridge of her nose wearily. "C'mon guys, we have much more interesting enemies to fight, just step aside." She glanced over at Ellen. "Pass that along, will you?"

"Um..." the mage turned to address the group of men again, and gave them a slightly apologetic smile. "My friend thinks it would be best if you and your friends walked away now."

But it was Ellen who had to take a step back as the group's leader slowly strode forward, his false smile nowhere to be found, until he was standing right in front of the girl, glaring down at her. The words he said were calm and even, but did not sound friendly-

And then one of the men behind him yelped, whirling around and shoving at another youth, who staggered before surging at the other, clearly furious. Their leader turned and barked a question, the two youths started talking at the same time, and soon a heated argument had broken out.

"Um, someone shoved someone else, though they're not sure who," Ellen reported for her friends' benefit.

"Let's back away, now," Rikako said.

Ellen seemed earnestly puzzled by the suggestion. "Why?"

A girlish giggle echoed strangely in the passage between the buildings.

As the group of street toughs tried to find the source of the sound, the alleyway's lone lightbulb started flickering erratically. Someone gasped as, among the silhouettes being projected on the opposite wall, a shadow unconnected to either group appeared deeper in the alleyway, slowly moving closer only to disappear when the disturbance stopped and the light shone normally once more.

The gang of young men had completely forgotten about the interlopers, and whirled about, weapons ready as they searched for this new threat, stammering to each other all the while.

Wordlessly, Kotohime grabbed Ellen by the shoulder and spun the girl around, and the five women retreated back onto the sidewalk, waiting by the well-lit windows of that eatery.

"That was pretty spooky, and I knew what was causin' it!" Chiyuri admitted with a sheepish smile.

Kotohime nodded. "So you can imagine how-"

There was a hoarse yell, a crash, and the clatter of several metal objects hitting concrete. Someone screamed, the sound so high-pitched that if Rikako hadn't known otherwise, she'd have suspected there was a girl around the corner from them. And then a bunch of young men burst into sight, wide-eyed and panting in their panic, tripping over each other as they took off in different directions. One last youth staggered out of the alley, and while Rikako couldn't be sure, she thought the front of his pants looked stained. When he caught sight of them he whimpered and promptly turned tail, sprinting down the sidewalk away from them as though something was snapping at his heels.

And then Kana Anaberal stepped out of the alley to stand prim and proper in her lacy dress and wide-brimmed sun hat, smiling innocently at them. "Way's clear!" she reported chirpily. "Just watch your step, there's bits of gun on the ground and a puddle or two you don't want to step in."

"Bueno," Kotohime replied. "Normally I'm all about beating up some bad guys, but..." she trailed off, looking thoughtful.

Rikako sighed. "What is it now?"

"Well, I was going to say that I prefer to fight enemies connected to the Incident, but then I remembered that you usually go through two or three unrelated foes on the way to the evil mastermind," Kotohime explained. She frowned. "Except in this case I started with the bad guys' minion, then we encountered an enemy spaceship-"

"Hypervessel," Yumemi corrected.

"-so now we're finally trying to match the pattern by getting off-track," Kotohime finished.

"Don't suppose you can translate that gibberish, Ellen?" snarked Kana.

"Can we please fix the hypervessel now?" Rikako sighed.

Yumemi nodded and led the way back into the alley. "Our ride is just up ahead," she said for Ellen and Kana's benefit. "We've got it disguised so-" And then the former professor came to a sudden stop, nearly causing a pile-up among the women following her.

Someone was standing in the alley, just visible on the edge of the pool of light shed by the bulb over the doorway. Rikako thought they looked like a woman, or maybe a very young man, wearing a bulky backpack, a baggy jacket, and pants that were pretty understated compared to most of what she'd seen on the streets of this city. But even though the figure looked normal enough, there was something-

"Kana, I thought you said it was clear," Yumemi complained.

The poltergeist was frozen in place, her mouth hanging open in shock. "I can't feel... something's very wrong," she said quietly.

Yumemi opened her mouth to reply, but at the same instant the figure took a step forward, pulling something out of its jacket and aiming it at-

"Down!" barked Kotohime, even as she more or less tackled Chiyuri.

Rikako's reflexes were dull from years of solitary research, but even so, she found herself lunging to the side before she had consciously willed herself to dodge. But Yumemi was still standing, if twisting around to see what Chiyuri was yelping about, and Ellen was frozen in shock, and Kana seemed similarly thunderstruck-

And then there was a series of loud, rattling clicks as light strobed in the alley once more, this time cast by the interloper's weapon as she fired into the crowd of women-

A half-dozen sparks, miniature blue suns the size of lit candles, suddenly flared into life just in front of Yumemi. As Rikako bounced off the brick wall (and immediately regretted hitting it with her shoulder), she realized the lights were brassy objects, bullets, wrapped in an pale blue flame, and that Kana had an arm thrust imperiously before her, her hand curled into a claw as though she was grasping something.

"Android!" Kotohime shouted. She was crouched over a prone Chiyuri, shielding the blonde woman with her body even as she reached out with her hand. Dazzling purple light filled the confined passage as Kotohime unleashed a burst of her danmaku-

But to Rikako's astonishment, the magical bullets simply winked out of sight just before they would have impacted their enemy.

Her mind whirled with hypotheses: there wasn't enough local background magic for Kotohime's attacks to exist, their enemy could consume hostile magic, their enemy had some powerful ward that nullified magic... The last seemed the most likely, though if she were wrong, there wasn't much difference in how they should react. "Some sort of shield!" the scientist warned.

Kana snarled and made a violent gesture, and suddenly the bullets hanging in the air in front of her rocketed forward, returning to the one who had fired them. This attack didn't vanish, and Rikako thought she saw a spark or two as the projectiles ripped into the cyborg, or android, or whatever it was. Definitely not human, there wasn't any blood and their attacker didn't go down, much less cry out in pain.

Instead, their adversary charged, closing with alarming speed on the group of women. As their foe sprinted into the pool of light, Rikako saw that their attacker looked like the less-mangled twin of the severed head Kotohime had delivered what felt like ages ago, and was just as expressive in 'life' as the other had been in 'death.' The android's lips were pressed tightly together, its brow was furrowed ever-so-slightly, and its emotionless gaze was locked on Chiyuri, who was still struggling to extract herself from Kotohime.

Clearly inhuman, in other words. Good, it made Rikako's next actions easier.

The scientist coolly tore into her pouch of scientific weaponry, the handful of offensive artifacts she had brought with her from the lab. Operating purely by touch and memory, Rikako wrapped her fingers around one of the glass vials inside, pulled it out with a bit more violence than was strictly safe, and then lobbed the beaker overhand directly at the incoming foe.

Two things happened, in quick succession.

First, the android dodged. A human probably wouldn't have the reflexes to do so, or been able to so smoothly cancel her momentum and lunge sideways the instant her foot hit the ground again, but an advanced machine would certainly have a faster response time and stronger muscles, or servos, or whatever.

Second, a blue glow flashed around Rikako's hurled flask, and it too abruptly took on a new vector mid-flight. And, superhuman reflexes or no, the android clearly had not been expecting that.

The glass shattered against the android's head, and while their enemy barely rocked from the impact, the android came to a sudden halt, taking a hand off its weapon to claw at its face. The air was filled with an acrid stink and a horrible hissing sound as the flask's payload did its work.

Yumemi's red hair whipped through the air as she turned to look at Rikako, wide-eyed. "Acid?" she gasped.

"Never leave home without it," Rikako panted, pushing the bridge of her glasses higher up her nose with a fingertip. "Thanks for the assist," she added for Kana's benefit.

"Just make sure it's dead," the poltergeist muttered.

The android wasn't screaming, but it clearly was in distress. One hand held its firearm at its side, while the other swiped desperately at its eyes. Rikako grimaced as she saw her handiwork - the artificial flesh on the android's skull was being eaten away, exposing those disturbing lenses it had in place of eyes.

"Quick, while it's stunned!" Kotohime shouted, thrusting her palm forward in an adamant gesture that released another volley of brilliant purple magic-

Which promptly winked out of existence just before impacting against the android. Kotohime's curse in response was fairly creative, Rikako decided.

"Do we flee?" Chiyuri asked, struggling back onto her feet.

But the android seemed to react to her voice, swiped at its ruined face one more time, and began to raise its gun-

Rikako's second flask burst against its face before it finished aiming its weapon, and the results were much more dramatic, a woomf and a flash of flame that sent the android reeling. It bounced off the brick wall behind it, then crumpled onto its rear, jerking and twitching disturbingly as sparks spat out from the corroded and pitted metal around its optic sensors.

Yumemi looked over at her, clearly impressed. "And a base, huh?"

"I was able to pick up the fundamentals of chemistry, at least," Rikako said with a self-satisfied grin.

"MOVE!"

Rikako was running before she was aware of it, and almost stumbled when her legs realized that it had been Kotohime who told them to move. But from the sound of footfalls the rest of the troupe was right on her heels, racing away from the enemy as fast as they could - Rikako risked a glance back and saw that Kotohime was more or less towing little Ellen along by her hand, and for once the lunatic's expression was deadly serious.

Kana was floating along with them, not panting from exertion like Rikako, but the poltergeist still looked shaken. "What the hell was that?"

"Later!" snapped Kotohime as they neared the end of the alley.

"Chiyuri, got the remote?" gasped Yumemi.

The former grad student had already pulled a gadget out of a pocket, and pressed a button. Just as the six women (or five women and a poltergeist) burst into the open area ringed by buildings and littered with construction equipment, a dark pile of objects taking up the middle of the lot abruptly vanished to be replaced by the landed hypervessel, the stubby vessel's boarding ramp already down and shining an inviting light for them.

"Inside!" Kotohime ordered, quite unnecessarily. "Chiyuri, get us out of here!"

"Aye-aye," the former grad student managed before scampering up the ramp and disappearing.

Yumemi stood at the top of the boarding ramp until everyone else was aboard, then she slapped the button to make the gangplank rise to rest flush against the vessel's hull. At the same time, Rikako could hear the vessel's engines whine into life and feel the vehicle shudder before rising off the ground.

"You all better get strapped in here," Yumemi advised, gesturing at the nearby galley seats. "I've got to help Chiyuri."

So while Yumemi staggered her way to the cockpit, Rikako braced herself against a wall and somehow was able to grab one of the bolted-down chairs, while Kotohime and Ellen slid into the padded bench on the other side of the table from her. Kana didn't have any problem getting around and didn't bother to take a seat, but she still looked rattled.

"Can I get some answers now?" the poltergeist asked while the others found belts and buckles.

"Be patient," Kotohime said, letting out a breath and relaxing, if only slightly. "We're not out of danger yet."

Rikako was a little unnerved now - this was as focused and serious as she'd ever seen Kotohime. She decided to distract herself by wondering how Ellen had managed to get herself buckled up properly.

"Oh, I've been on planes before," Ellen explained after seeing Rikako's interest. Then the mage blinked, her eyes going unfocused. "Wait, or was that a zeppelin?"

Kana opened her mouth to say something sarcastic, only to be cut off by an electronic pop from a panel on the ceiling.

"You all strapped in?" came Yumemi's slightly scratchy voice through some sort of speaker, though Rikako could also barely hear the woman talking in the cockpit down the corridor at the same time her words were being transmitted to them.

"Except for Kana," Rikako responded loudly, just in case.

The poltergeist smirked at her, folded her arms and leaned against a wall with exaggerated casualness. "I'm good," Kana assured them.

Kotohime shrugged. "Never mind, we're ready!" she called.

"Ya don't have to yell," Chiyuri chimed in. "Hold on, we're movin' out."

The whine of the engines suddenly increased in pitch, even more so since they were sitting closer to them than they had been during their first flight. Rikako found herself clutching the seat of her chair as she felt the hypervessel go from hovering after a vertical take-off to properly flying-

The scientist swallowed, wishing she had a glass of water, or maybe even some of Ellen's stomach medicine - flying in this thing was trying enough without struggling to digest foreign cuisine, and since they were sitting in the middle of the ship there weren't any windows to look through. Worse, the orientation of the furniture in the eating area meant that Rikako was facing at a right angle to the direction they were moving, increasing her disorientation further. Trying to turn her head to face the cockpit didn't help much, unfortunately.

The absolute worst part was that nobody else seemed bothered by any of it. Ellen was sitting patiently in her chair, arms folded in her lap, smiling faintly at nothing in particular. Kotohime was nonplussed as usual, and the poltergeist... Rikako decided to distract herself again.

"You're not having any trouble keeping up with us?" she asked.

Kana arched an eyebrow. "Why would I be?"

"You can-" something made the ship tremble, and Rikako had to clamp down on a wave of nausea. "You can become incorporeal, yes?"

"More like I can become solid when I want to," the poltergeist corrected.

"So, you do not have to exert any effort to keep from falling out of this vessel?"

Kana smirked. "No more than I do to keep from falling off the planet."

Rikako grunted at that, not so much offended at Kana's flippant responses to her inquiries, but starting to wonder why she never did a properly scientific study of the fantastic elements of her homeland. She'd spent years focusing on catching up with the technical knowledge of the outside world, but what might Rikako discover if she applied that methodology to a world of fantasy?

If her subjects were as helpful as Kana, probably very little, Rikako concluded.

Her thoughts were interrupted by another staticky pop coming from the ceiling, followed by Yumemi's voice. "This is your captain speaking," she said cheerfully. "We are clear of the city, active stealth systems are engaged, and there's no sign of pursuit. But don't unbuckle just yet, I'm going to have Chiyuri put us down someplace quiet."

"Probably not another settlement," Kotohime mused. A thought seemed to occur to her, and she gave Rikako an apologetic look. "I'm sorry your first tour of the outside world was so abrupt," she said. "You didn't even get to spend a full day experiencing the wonders of modernity, and to make matters worse you won't be able to really appreciate the character of the city we just left."

Rikako waved a hand, trying to come across as cool and disinterested rather than irritable, and probably failing. "It's fine," she mumbled. Then her stomach lurched as the hypervessel suddenly began descending, not so much dipping its nose down as it was entering a slow, controlled fall.

"Got our landin' spot," Chiyuri reported over the vessel's communications equipment. "Little cove with a stretch of beach big enough for us and out of sight. Should be safe to set down and conduct repairs from there."

The hypervessel gradually lost forward momentum until it came to a stop, hovering motionless in the air for a moment before sinking toward the ground. Something whirred beneath Rikako and her companions, and then there was a sudden jolt of impact before the vessel went still, the engines winding down from a high-pitched whine to a low rumble until finally going silent.

"And here we are," came Yumemi's voice once more, except this time it was echoing down the ship's corridor as the woman herself strode towards them, a cautious smile on her face and Chiyuri close behind her.

"So now can you tell us what the rush was, and what that thing was?" Kana asked Kotohime sourly.

"An android assassin like the one I dealt with in Gensokyo," Kotohime said after popping her buckles and rising to her feet. "That one tried to kamikaze me after I got the upper hand, which is why we needed to-"

"Tried to what?" Chiyuri asked.

"I don't know either," grumbled Rikako as she got out of her chair. She did remember enough of Miss Kamishirasawa's history lessons to know what Kotohime was talking about, she just wasn't sure what a miraculous typhoon had to do with the current situation.

"The first android blew itself up in a pretty big way after I disabled it," Kotohime said patiently. "And since my magic wasn't having any effect on the one that just jumped us, we needed to make a tactical withdrawal before it did the same."

"Which brings me to the second part of my question," Kana said, scowling.

Kotohime could only shrug. "Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are. The first android could turn invisible, but I could still blast it fine with my magic, while this one..."

"It seemed to have some manner of ward against spells," Rikako supplied.

But Kana shook her head vehemently, her eyes flashing blue for a moment. "No, that was... ugh. It was like it wasn't there."

There was a moment of uneasy silence. "Something the bad guys came up with, ya think?" asked Chiyuri.

"All the more reason to stop them before they do something worse," Kotohime said with a nod. "So, how are we doing on that front?"

Yumemi flashed them a confident grin. "Well, we're safe for the moment, so there's nothing stopping us from making repairs to the hypervessel so we can go home and get to the bottom of this." Her smile flickered. "Ah, we've only got enough power reserves to keep the stealth stuff up for at most two more hours, so we need to work fast."

Ellen's grin managed to light up the galley. "That's not a problem, my magic works instantly!" She quickly extracted herself from her safety harness and started to pull an assortment of packets and bottles from her satchel while the others gathered around the table. "Let's see, this one makes metal whole again, this makes wiring go back to the right places, and this makes your computer do what you want it to-"

"Are ya seriously sayin' that you have a spray that can reprogram?" Chiyuri interrupted, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

Ellen just nodded earnestly. "Yeah! It's been kind of fun," she told them. "I've been making things like healing potions for..." her eyes went unfocused for a moment, then she shook herself. "For a long time," she finished. "But now that there's so much technological magic around these days, I get to come up with new ways to help people."

"And I suppose fixing a machine isn't all that different from fixing a human body," Yumemi mused, rubbing her chin.

"Well..." Ellen fidgeted. "There is one thing different. When I use my magic, I get kind of fluffy."

"Static electricity, she's not a werewolf or anything," Kana chimed in.

"So I have to be careful when casting spells around technological magic, because it gets messed up by all the zapzap," Ellen said with an embarrassed little shrug. "That's part of why I made these sprays, so I can fix things without making them worse."

That was interesting, Rikako thought. Back when she'd used magic she never had any problems with static build-up, and none of the other mages she knew had encountered a similar side effect to their own spellcasting. Could this be an idiosyncrasy of Ellen's style of magic? An unexpected reaction between spells and whatever was keeping her eternally young? Or was she simply so powerful a mage that she had problems that nobody else experienced?

"But they do work, right, Ellen?" Yumemi asked. When the young-looking mage nodded, Yumemi let out a slow breath. "Okay. You got the diagnostic for us, Chiyuri?" she asked, turning to the other blonde woman in the vessel.

Chiyuri nodded, pulling out her miniature computer from a pocket and pressing something so it lit up with text. "And I managed to get the schematic for this ship, so we know where things are."

Kana tilted her head slightly. "Do you need any help?"

Chiyuri and Yumemi both blinked in surprise, and traded a glance. "Ah, I'm not sure how much you can contribute, to be honest," Yumemi told the poltergeist.

"Well, I can do this," Kana said dryly. She held up and waggled a finger, and one of the potions on the table next to her was wrapped in a blue aura and lifted into the air, then deftly wove in and out of the piping and cables running the length of the ship's inside walls.

"That would save us a lot of trouble with making repairs in hard-to-reach spaces," Yumemi said as she broke into a wide smile. She pushed it aside to give Kana a serious look. "You'll have to follow our directions, though, or specifically the blueprints Chiyuri pulled up."

Kana shrugged carelessly, though she looked pleased with herself. "As you wish."

"Some 'being of chaos' you are," Kotohime scoffed.

"Ah, but I wouldn't be truly chaotic if I was consistently chaotic," Kana pointed out with a devious grin.

Rikako suppressed a sigh - she was getting tired of the banter. She should be offering to lend her limited technical expertise to get the hypervessel working properly again, but there was already more than half the group set to work on it, she was tired, her stomach hurt from too much bad food, she was still feeling motion sick, she-

"Would it be possible for me to wait outside while you worked?" she asked, before admitting "I could use some fresh air."

Yumemi froze in the act of helping Ellen gather up her gear. "Oh? Uh, sure, that should be doable. Just have to disembark quickly so we can get the ramp back up and not compromise our stealth systems too much."

"Don't worry, I'll be out keeping an eye on her," Kotohime assured them. Rikako didn't bother to hide her resigned sigh.

"Um..."

Everyone turned to where Chiyuri was standing next to the retracted boarding ramp. She pressed a button on a panel on the wall next to her, waited for a response, then slowly turned her head to look at them. "Door's not responding."

Yumemi scowled. "More system failures?"

"Oooh, I'll get my spray!" Ellen said eagerly, digging through her array of products for the proper technological tonic. But then she froze, her face wrinkling as she sniffed the air. "What's that smell?"

Rikako blinked, wondering what Ellen was going on about, until her nose began to tingle from some new scent, something not greatly unpleasant, but faintly chemical, and which made her headache even worse. "It-"

She had barely opened her mouth when Ellen suddenly, heavily sat down on the galley's padded bench, her golden eyes unfocused and her head lolling.

Chiyuri spat a curse. "Gas?! How?!"

Rikako glanced about, the motion making her head swim and her vision blur. Her eyelids felt heavy, her limbs leaden and sluggish, and though she tried to hold her breath, her legs began to buckle. She watched as Chiyuri pounded weakly on the door controls before collapsing onto her knees. Kotohime was leaning against a wall, digging frantically into a billowing sleeve, Yumemi croaked Chiyuri's name and took a staggering step towards her friend before toppling forward and collapsing onto the deck next to her-

Rikako banged her elbow on the galley table on her way to the floor, and wound up on her side, her glasses nearly bouncing off her head so one eye was blurred, the other merely bleary from sudden exhaustion.

"Hey!" Kana said desperately, the poltergeist flitting from one woman to another without bothering to fly. "What do I do?! C'mon, don't leave me like this! I... the hell?"

As Rikako watched, Kana floated back a few paces, slack-jawed with horror as another two figures stepped into sight from the rear of the hypervessel, wearing close-fitting uniforms and bulky backpack, figures who moved with inhuman poise and whose expressionless face was becoming increasingly familiar to Rikako.

"No," Kana mumbled, face white with horror as she backed away from the interlopers. "G-get away from me!" she screamed, lifting her gloved hands-

And then there was a blast of orange light, a crackle of electricity as something burst out of a device the lead android was holding to wrap Kana in furiously sputtering bands of radiant energy. The poltergeist shrieked, the sound distorting weirdly, and then the display was over and Kana was suddenly gone, the abrupt silence even more horrible than the sounds before it.

Rikako wanted to raise her hand, to make some defiant gesture before her consciousness slipped away completely. But her limbs would not respond, and the panic she felt at her helplessness was being buried by an overwhelming urge to just close her eyes for a moment...

-x-

-10-

"Yes, director, they should be regaining consciousness shortly," a pleasant voice was saying. "In fact, Subject Seven has just revived."

Rikako blinked heavy eyelids and stared up at a strange ceiling. It was a really clever design for a light fixture, the analytical part of her mind noted. Obviously electric, the luminescence didn't flicker like a lamp and there was a tell-tale hum, but the light source was set in a shallow arched alcove - what was the word, a vault? - in the ceiling, and aimed upward so that only indirect light shone down on the room below. Effective illumination that didn't hurt the eyes.

"Subject Six gave us a scare - her body weight was much lower than the others', so the soporific affected her more strongly. Though we have attempted to counteract the effects, she has not fully recovered yet, despite our treatments."

Rikako groaned and sat up, relieved that the room didn't start spinning around her, but she still had a pounding headache, and felt dreadfully tired. Blinking, she tried to take stock of her surroundings.

"Ah, excuse me, director, I must attend to my patients."

She was in a long room with stark white walls, more of those clever light fixtures on the ceiling, and illuminated devices similar to the television she had seen in Ellen's apartment hanging in place of picture frames or windows. Other technological artifacts, slightly rounded boxes and towers studded with glowing lights and panels, stood here and there, along with a few desks and what were probably computers, if models more advanced than what little Rikako had experience with. There were rows of beds that resembled cradles, lined with banks of technology, and Rikako saw Kotohime, Ellen, Chiyuri and Yumemi still sleeping in some nearby. The air was filled with humming equipment and occasional beeps and a faintly chemical odor.

"Please, have some water," the pleasant voice said.

Rikako managed not to jump as a smiling woman with vivid pink hair leaned into view, holding a glass that made the scientist realize just how thirsty she was. She took it without a word and drained it all in one long drink, then gasped and handed the empty glass back. "Thanks," she said after catching her breath.

"You are very welcome!" said the woman. Or maybe not, Rikako realized - she lived in a land where plenty of things that looked human were not, and there was something off about this figure in a clean white dress. Her smile was friendly enough, and her pink eyes were bright, and she could probably be considered pretty, but Rikako thought the woman was almost too pretty, with no signs of blemishes or old scratches, and her smile was almost too bright, with no slight twitches as the facial muscles strained to hold it, and her movements were a bit too graceful-

"Are you a robot?" Rikako asked bluntly.

The woman didn't take offense to the question, and dipped her head in a brief bow. "Correct. My name is Izumi, and I am programmed to specialize in medical care."

And that meant... Rikako turned her head, finally noticing the other people in the room, four dark-haired figures wearing close-fitting gray outfits covered in straps and pouches, as well as four very familiar and perfectly identical blank expressions. They stood like statues in the spaces between the beds, and each was carrying a bulky backpack, and holding a short, sleek, two-handed firearm. The nearest gave Rikako an unblinking stare that made her shiver and look away.

Dammit, they'd been captured.

Rikako let out a slow breath, fighting the urge to spring into action, firstly because this was no time for haste, and secondly because she belatedly realized that she wasn't wearing her labcoat, or her bag of scientific 'tricks.' On further inspection, Yumemi's jacket and Kotohime's purple outer robes were gone too. And on top of that...

Rikako felt her eyes tighten. Something was definitely wrong with her, something more than the aftereffects of a tranquilizer. Something a magnitude worse than how it had felt going through the Great Hakurei Barrier. Whatever anti-magic technology that robot in the alley had used was obviously at work here too.

"Where are we?" Rikako asked Izumi.

The pink-haired nurse shook her head, looking earnestly apologetic. "I am sorry, that information is classified."

"So it's probably no use asking where Kana is," muttered Rikako.

Someone groaned, and Yumemi slowly sat up, one hand clutching the side of her head, her red hair sticking up a bit in places after being slept on. She looked around and jolted at the sight of the guarding androids, then swore softly.

Rikako met her gaze and gave her a sardonic smile. "At least they kept us together."

Yumemi snorted, then spotted Chiyuri stretched out on the bed next to her. She was upright in an instant, swinging her feet under her to stand up-

There was hardly a rustle of fabric as the four guards trained their weapons on Yumemi, perfectly in sync with each others' movements.

The former professor slowly raised her hands, her face twisting into a snarl. "I'm checking on my friend, okay?"

"That will not be necessary," Izumi said brightly, stepping forward with another glass of water. "I am available to attend to your medical needs."

Yumemi glared at the drink in her hand, knocked a quick mouthful back, then sneered at the robot doctor. "Forgive me if I don't find that encouraging."

Something stirred out of the corner of Rikako's eye, and she turned to see Kotohime stretching her arms over her head and yawning hugely. The self-proclaimed princess winced as her back popped and rubbed her spine for a moment, then opened her eyes and looked around. "Huh?" Then she glanced down at herself, clad only in her white under-robes and red sash. "Oh," she said quietly.

"Yeah," Rikako said.

Kotohime chewed on her lip for a moment, then managed a somewhat forced smile. "W-well, you could say this saves us some trouble. I mean, we wanted to go back to Chiyuri and Yumemi's world and find the bad guy, and here we are."

It took some prodding from Yumemi before Chiyuri woke up, and even more to get Ellen awake again. Chiyuri sobered up immediately upon seeing the guards in the infirmary, but Ellen...

"My head hurts," the young-looking mage said, her eyes screwed shut and her fingertips rubbing her temples.

"A side effect of your sedation," Izumi assured her. "You have already been treated and the symptoms should disappear shortly."

But Ellen didn't seem to improve, even after sitting on the edge of her bed for a few minutes. Her yellow eyes were half-closed, her hair somehow seemed to have gone flat, and Rikako was struck by how frail the mage looked.

After staring at Ellen for a long moment, Yumemi sighed and made a gesture at the robots guarding them. "So, you guys went through a lot of trouble to capture us. Now what?"

Izumi bowed, showing them nothing but courtesy despite the fact that they'd been taken prisoner. "If you are feeling recovered, my colleagues are to accompany you to a meeting with my superiors."

"This is where I ought to make some challenging statement like 'and what if we refuse?'" Kotohime mused. "Except I'm actually really interested in hearing what this is all about. I mean, they didn't kill Chiyuri while we were asleep-"

The young woman in question shuddered while Yumemi glared at Kotohime.

"-so we shouldn't be in any immediate danger." Kotohime glanced down at herself, and seemed to remember that she was missing her outer layers of clothing. "Plus, they took all the stuff I'd use for an escape attempt, so it's either play along or stay here forever."

"Let's just get this over with," Yumemi muttered.

"Very good," Izumi said with another bow. "I shall send word that you are coming. Please, follow these soldiers. I must warn you," she added with an apologetic look, "the consequences will be severe if you attempt to escape."

Kotohime gave her a carefree wave. "Relax, it'd be rude to skip out on the bad guy before she gave us a self-righteous rant to try to justify her actions. We'll make our escape later."

The robot nurse frowned in concern. "As a medical android, I am programmed to do everything possible to ensure the survival of my patients. However, my colleagues are military models not bound by the Hippocratic Oath," Izumi said, nodding slightly at the guards. "They are designed for tactics and combat, not personality or human interaction. Therefore, I must advise that you be as compliant as possible, and take care to do nothing to antagonize them, or you will surely perish."

Rikako expected Kotohime to say something dismissive, since the girl's mental illness seemed to have left her without any semblance of self-preservation. But to her quiet surprise, Kotohime only stared at the robot nurse before making a vague gesture and turning away. There was an uncomfortable silence in the infirmary for a long moment, broken only when Yumemi sighed and addressed one of the guards.

"Alright, lead the way and we'll come quietly," she said.

-x-

One of the guards did take the lead, while the rest wordlessly took up positions behind them, marching close enough that it'd be easy for them to lunge forward if necessary, but also giving them room to fire their weapons if needed - or so Rikako assumed, she wasn't an expert on military strategy by any means, and her thoughts still felt sluggish.

The prisoners marched close together, Yumemi and Chiyuri side-by-side in front, Kotohime and Rikako behind them, and Ellen carried piggyback by Chiyuri. The young mage still looked ill, and she hadn't even tried to take a step out of the infirmary before Chiyuri had volunteered to carry her.

"Used to do this with cousins," Chiyuri had explained before grunting with the effort of picking Ellen up. "'Course they weren't as heavy," she added with a half-hearted grin.

Even though they were out of the infirmary, Rikako had no idea what kind of place they were in. The door - a portal with no obvious knob or latch, which slid aside with barely a sound as soon as they stepped closed to it - intersected a long and surprisingly spacious hallway, wide enough for three or four people to walk through abreast. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made from dull gray metal, and exposed but well-secured pipes and cabling snaked their way overhead or on either side of them. The lights were less elegant, harshly artificial and humming panels similar to the fluorescent lighting Rikako had managed to set up in her lab, though she wouldn't know for sure unless she had an opportunity to pop open the covering on one.

There was writing on the walls, but mostly numbers and what looked like abbreviations, along with the occasional shallow alcove containing metal doors similar to the one they had exited through. But no windows, no decorations, nothing to give them any hint of their location or any reprieve from the grim functionality of the building. If Yumemi or Chiyuri had any guesses, they kept them to themselves.

They did encounter some other people, however. After being led around the corner, they passed two women in drab olive, modern clothes - trousers and smart-looking jackets, with studs and patches here and there that suggested it was a military uniform. They looked human, or more human that the guards escorting Rikako and her companions, but at the sight of the procession they simply stepped back against the wall, watching the prisoners and their escorts pass but saying nothing.

Rikako took that as slightly encouraging. After all, it the human soldiers had been too disinterested to watch, it would suggest that such a sight was commonplace. And since it wasn't, that suggested... it logically followed that...

She grit her teeth in frustration. She wasn't sure what her observation meant, and she couldn't tell whether it was exhaustion or the knock-out gas that was impairing her cognition, or the total suppression of her magical abilities that the robot guards were somehow generating.

Rikako belatedly noticed that they'd turned a corner to a corridor that was markedly different than the rest of whatever place they were in - there was grey and blue patterned carpeting on the floor, and the hallway terminated a few paces ahead in some heavy-looking wooden double doors, surrounded by plaster or something other than metal, and flanked by two flags Rikako didn't recognize.

A pair of soldiers stood at attention in front of the doorway, some sort of rifle at rest against their shoulders, and unlike the people they had passed earlier, these guards weren't in dress clothes, but dark green fatigues, a bulky vest, and a helmet with a mirrored visor hiding their eyes. The guards didn't salute the approaching robots, but wordlessly parted and opened the doors for the group.

Rikako had been expecting an office, but to her surprise the doorway turned out to be an exit leading outside onto a patio or something. She traded a look of surprise with Kotohime, but Chiyuri and Yumemi didn't seem thrown by this development, and stepped through without hesitating. Rikako mentally shrugged and followed.

They seemed to be in a garden, surrounded by lush greenery, tropical shrubs and trees with vivid red and orange and yellow flowers, as well as the melodious trilling of several birds. The sun was mostly hidden by leaves and branches gently swaying in the breeze, but enough light filtered through the natural canopy overhead that it just was pleasantly shady instead of dark and foreboding. They were standing on a wide path of paving stones leading between the plants to an artificial pond of dark green-blue water, and next to it-

Rikako blinked. There was a large and ornate wooden desk sitting on the pavement next to the pond, as well as an array of simple but comfortably-padded chairs. Yet there was a glowing floor lamp standing nearby, so there must be a power source of some sort-

And that's when it hit her that while she could hear the breeze, she couldn't feel it on her skin. Oh, it was nice and cool in this 'garden,' but the air had a dry and slightly used quality that Rikako recognized from her flights on the hypervessel.

"It's an illusion," the scientist said, at the same moment that Yumemi had opened her mouth to tell her something.

The former professor gave her a slight, approving smile. "Holograms and speakers, correct. Even we can't do hard-light stuff yet."

"Not yet, but give us time," came an unfamiliar woman's voice.

The prisoners turned as a woman in a smart-looking blue business suit stepped out from a side path and into sight near the pond. Her hair was black and worn in a sensible bun, and her eyes were dark, but she had a friendly smile on her face, and while Rikako wasn't particularly talented at reading people, this amicability seemed genuine, if out of place. She couldn't guess at the woman's age, only that she was older than Rikako.

"It's not too much, is it?" the woman asked, tilting her head with concern.

"It seems inappropriate for an interrogation," Yumemi said dryly.

The woman seemed surprised by this. "Is that what you think is going on?" She glanced up at the sky above and said "Computer, end program."

An indescribable sensation swept over Rikako, and suddenly the garden was gone, collapsing like spilled sand to reveal a room slightly smaller than the space around the vanished pond. The walls were the same grayish material around the entrance, decorated with a few framed photographs - or whatever it was you called it when the result seemed to project slightly out of the picture. A large glossy black computer screen took up the wall immediately behind the desk, and once again there were no windows.

And there was someone else in the room with them. Well, the robot guards had followed them inside, Rikako noted, but there was also a woman in a dark green uniform similar to the outfits they had seen on the base personnel, but studded with more golden ornamentation and two or three medals. This woman had an expression that seemed to be perpetually on the verge of a scowl, and very hard eyes that glinted out at them from under the brim of a peaked cap, which mostly concealed her short-cropped dark brown hair. She stood next to the computer screen behind the desk, her arms folded at the small of her back, her legs slightly apart in a ready stance.

"Please, have a seat," the businesswoman said, gesturing at the five chairs arrayed in front of the desk.

Rikako and her companions traded silent glances, but evidently nobody felt there was anything to be gained by being oppositional, and so they warily sat down. While Chiyuri helped Ellen off her back and into her chair, Rikako shifted in hers. The back was firm, but she wasn't sure what it was lined with, just that it wasn't leather.

"Much better," the woman in blue said as she sank into her own, overstuffed green leather chair. It swiveled and squeaked slightly as she got settled, then she sighed, shook her head ruefully, and spread her hands. "Ladies," she said to them, "let me begin by offering my most sincere apologies."

"You're sorry?" Chiyuri said incredulously. "Ya tried to kill us, and now ya've captured us, but you're apologizing?"

"I assure you, I had no such hostile intent. The attempts on your life were my colleague's doing," the woman said, gesturing at the woman standing behind her.

The other woman didn't so much as blink, but continued to study Rikako. The scientist had to look away, trying not to fidget under the woman's stare.

"Colonel Nakano has her own ideas about operational security," the woman behind the desk went on, "and as part of our arrangement she has enough autonomy to launch missions without consulting me. Rest assured, if I had known-"

"Who are ya, anyway?" a scowling Chiyuri demanded.

The woman tilted her head back and gave an embarrassed laugh. "How rude of me. Director Naoko Kushida, at your service," she said, briefly rising to bow for them.

"Not a colonel?" asked Kotohime.

"This project is a joint effort between the military and private sector, and I'm the head of the civilian contingent," Kushida explained, returning to her chair. "But enough about me," she said with a smile. "Now that you're here, we can finally get down to business."

"Oh, this should be interesting," Kotohime noted. "Assuming it isn't incredibly boring."

Kushida's smile flickered somewhat. "Quite. Well, I won't go into all the details at this moment, but the Eastern Project-"

"The what?" Chiyuri interrupted.

"That's our code name," Kushida said without annoyance. She gestured at the colonel behind her. "Nakano was the one who came up with it, said it needed to be vague for security reasons. But I think it fits, don't you? We're interested in researching worlds with unusual properties, specifically a little valley that embodies all the mystery and wonder the Orient used to be known for, brimming with something we haven't seen before."

"Magic," Rikako said to herself before realizing she'd spoken out loud.

"Well, for lack of a more scientific name for it," Kushida chuckled. "This facility has been searching for such phenomena since-"

"They don't need to know this information," Colonel Nakano interrupted, her voice steady and cold.

"Hmph." The director sighed, then shrugged apologetically for a moment. "Well, you can probably surmise that we've been monitoring the scientific community in case anyone discovered something relevant to our mission. Naturally, when we saw the initial data that Professor Okazaki and her assistant had collected from a previously undetected world - a world within a world, I should say - well, of course we were very interested! Our attempt to launch our own expedition was unfortunately unsuccessful, so when you proposed your excursion, we-"

"Yeah, yeah, ya loaned us a hypervessel crammed full of your spy gear and then sabotaged our results so no one would take us seriously while ya went on to plunder Gensokyo's secrets," Chiyuri said with a sneer. "We already figured all that out."

Kushida actually looked remorseful. "I hope you understand that we did not act out of malice. But we had to keep those findings confidential."

"And so you destroyed our academic careers and ruined our lives," Yumemi said quietly.

The director held up a finger. "I'll have you know, some members of this project were in favor of sabotaging your hypervessel so you wouldn't survive the return journey. I was able to argue for a more tempered approach."

"Why?" Yumemi asked.

"You're a smart woman, Professor Ok-"

"I'm not a professor anymore," Yumemi interrupted. Her voice was still level and her face was calm, but her eyes were blazing. "You made sure of that, remember?"

"Miss Okazaki, then," Kushida said with a little shrug. "Well, we faced a dilemma - how to learn all we could about this incredible new world without placing it in danger. Regardless of what supernatural powers its inhabitants possess, Gensokyo is still incredibly backward, even for the world around it. Or in other words, it would be very vulnerable to advanced civilizations such as our own."

Rikako was struck by the unreality of this moment, of hearing someone discuss her homeland in this shining, futuristic facility in another universe.

"If we had allowed your expedition to succeed," the director continued, "and for you to publish your findings - well, can you imagine? Word getting out of some magical land of monsters and wizards, waiting out there in Probability Space for anyone to claim?" Kushida ruefully shook her head. "It'd be the Kiriminato Gold Rush all over again. Even if we declared it a restricted world, there was still the threat of criminals making the journey anyway. And recruiting you and your assistant for our project and trying to bury your findings would lead to questions about where you went to. So, regrettably, we had to sabotage your expedition and, by extension, your careers."

Chiyuri only snorted. "Yeah, real benevolent of ya, makin' sure ya wouldn't have any competition."

"We have been incredibly restrained, all things considered," Kushida insisted. "This project has been monitoring and researching Gensokyo ever since you and Miss Kitashirakawa visited it, without its residents any the wiser. Other governments would probably just send in troops and annex it.

Kotohime chuckled. "Oh, I'd pay to see someone try to invade us." Her eyes grew wide as she gazed at something only she could see. "Just imagine, Gensokyo's heroines taking up arms together, a mighty bulwark of humans and youkai standing together against the foreign hordes-"

"Assuming someone didn't drop a positron bomb on your valley to make sure no one else could claim it," Kushida said bluntly.

Kotohime's smile only grew wider. "Oh, that'd be pretty cool to watch, too! I mean, if you gotta go, you might as well go out in a cataclysmic explosion, eh?" she asked, nudging Rikako with her elbow.

"Why are you telling us this?" Rikako asked Kushida, while ignoring Kotohime. "You captured us for a reason, yes?"

"Oh yeah, how did you capture us, anyway?" Kotohime asked, leaning forward eagerly.

Kushida aborted whatever speech she had been about to start and gave Kotohime an almost embarrassed look. "Some simple misdirection, I'm afraid. We detected your hypervessel when you landed at that city, and while one android distracted you, the other two infiltrated your vehicle and placed a gas bomb. Once you were all aboard and safely landed again..." she trailed off with a shrug.

"I knew I didn't leave the ramp down," Chiyuri muttered.

Rikako frowned. "So if you wanted to take us alive, why did your 'distraction' try to shoot us?"

The director blinked in surprise. "Tried to shoot..." she twisted in her seat to look back at the colonel.

"Perhaps that unit's mission protocols weren't changed properly," Nakano suggested without seeming too concerned, much less regretful, about the situation. "I'll have the service technicians look into it."

"Good," Kushida mumbled, before turning back to face her 'guests,' clearing her throat, and continuing. "Now, the reason we brought you here instead of just taking more drastic measures... well, that would be such a waste, wouldn't it?" She folded her hands atop her desk. "We could accomplish so much more working together as partners."

There was silence for a heartbeat, then Chiyuri threw her head back with mirthless laughter, startling everyone except Colonel Nakano.

"After all ya've done to me and the professor," Chiyuri sniggered, "the way ya made us the laughingstock of everyone we knew, ya think we'd willingly work for ya?"

"Well, yes," Kushida said, sounding surprised at Chiyuri's hostility. "I have read your psychological profile, Miss Kitashirakawa. You and Miss Okazaki have a real hunger for knowledge and an interest in the unknown - something quite rare these days, with so little unknown left to find. What I'm offering is a chance to continue your work beyond merely collecting sensor readings and recording battles. You will finally be able to build upon this knowledge and create something meaningful." She smiled. "You really do need to see what we've come up with since your expedition. We've made major strides integrating this 'magic' with existing theories and reproducing it with what we have here. With your help, I'm sure we could do even more."

"Yeah, sure," Chiyuri said, folding her arms. "And what if we refuse?"

Kushida looked regretful. "Well, as I said, this project operates under a great deal of secrecy. You and your former professor are security risks and, we must not forget, criminals in major violations of interdimensional law. Whether you agree to cooperate or not, I'm afraid you won't be allowed to leave this facility."

Chiyuri's response consisted of several words that Rikako didn't know, though it only made sense that this world's profanity had advanced along with its science, Rikako reasoned.

Yumemi was a bit more restrained than her friend, and merely showed her teeth. "Sabotaging research expeditions and stealing data is bad enough, but now you're trying to invoke the law? And you think this will make us want to work for you? The answer's no."

"How disappointing. Though I suppose I can't blame you, under these circumstances," Kushida sighed. She glanced back at the colonel standing behind her. "Perhaps their answer would be different if they hadn't been attacked over the course of being brought to this facility," she said pointedly.

The colonel didn't even blink at the director's passive-aggression.

"But what about you three?" Kushida went on, shifting focus to address the ladies from another world.

Rikako blinked. "What about us?"

"Vivisections and autopsies?" Kotohime asked excitedly.

Kushida drew back, aghast. "Good lord, no! Passive biometric scans established that the humans of your world are identical to those of our own-"

"You sure?" Kotohime pressed, batting her eyelashes flirtatiously. "Not gonna grind us up and see if any magic dust falls out? Render us into raw materials for your twisted science projects?"

"We're not barbarians," Kushida insisted. "I was actually hoping you could assist us in understanding your world - it is hard to conduct decent qualitative research through remote observations alone. For instance, Doct- ah, Miss Asakura," she went on, nodding toward Rikako. "Despite your homeland's backwardness, you obviously have a great interest in science, as well as enough talent to create technological devices far in advance of anything else seen in Gensokyo. Your use of acids and such on the battlefield is quite clever, and you can imagine how surprised we were to examine the original footage and see someone from a veritably medieval society with a working jetpack! We're curious as to how you managed to learn these things, and also want to know more about Gensokyo's attitude towards science in general." She smiled winsomely. "It would only be fair to offer you full access to our data archives and research facilities in exchange. Perhaps even a position on our scientific team. What do you think?"

Rikako blinked and felt her breath freeze in her chest. This was... some nights she had wondered how her life would be different if she'd won that 'tournament' and earned that boon from Yumemi and Chiyuri. She'd fantasized about returning with them to their world and devouring all the knowledge she could find there, and here she was, being offered just that. She could see herself now, surrounded by peers instead of people who considered her an apostate, performing experiments in a real laboratory, flipping through page after page of scientific texts-

Except if she had won and gone back with Yumemi and Chiyuri, all three of them would probably have been detained by the very people who held them now.

The vision disappeared like a dream at dawn, and Rikako's expression hardened. "I'm not sure I would feel comfortable doing that," she said slowly.

Kushida looked regretful for a moment, then the woman turned to another of her 'guests.' "And what about you, Miss Ellen?" she asked the apparent child. "Is there some way we could help each other?"

"I miss my kitty," Ellen said in a small voice, her eyes dull. She didn't otherwise move or react to being addressed, and continued to stare at the floor.

"Ah. Well, we can get you a new pet." Kushida quickly turned to Kotohime. "And as for you... well, Your Highness, you offer us the most unique opportunity of all."

Kotohime tilted her head, her expression one of polite interest. "Oh?"

"As I said, we have limited our operations to covert surveillance, but we've frankly exhausted these avenues of research," Kushida went on. "So we're about to enter a new phase, one of direct observation and interaction. Now, less civilized nations would probably go all-out and conquer a treasure trove like Gensokyo, but I propose something different: peaceful contact." Kushida gave the other woman a brilliant smile. "As Gensokyo's leader, you could help introduce our research team and their escorts to your society, put your citizens at ease as our scientists interviewed them, and act as a bridge between our two worlds. I would need to get approval from those higher in our own government," Kushida added with a nod towards Colonel Nakano, "but I'm sure we could set the terms out in an official treaty putting Gensokyo under our protection. With a minimal peacekeeping force in place, we could-"

Rikako couldn't contain it anymore, and doubled over with laughter. She couldn't see for tears, and could barely breathe, and could barely think because it was so ridiculous-

"Well that's different," she heard Kotohime say next to her. "Treaty negotiations usually make me sleepy, but evidently it affects different people in different ways."

"Is something the matter, Miss Asakura?" asked Kushida coldly.

Rikako tried to straighten herself up, and gasped for breath. "Hwa, it's just, it's just..." she had another sniggering fit for several seconds. "Oh good grief. It's just, you think you're scientists, and you say you've been studying Gensokyo all this time. And you, you never figured out-" She cackled, there was no other way to describe it. "And you think Kotohime is a real-"

She couldn't even say it. Rikako had to bite a knuckle to keep from losing it completely.

"I suppose you have been under some stress lately," Director Kushida said, her face stony. "But I would like you to take this seriously. I was hoping we could have a productive meeting."

"Guess she has an allergy to laws," Kotohime mused, scratching at her temple. "Never took Rikako for a natural criminal, but the evidence is pretty clear."

"If you'd like, we could send your friends away so we can discuss the matter in private," Kushida offered.

But Kotohime shook her head, smiling slightly. "That will not be necessary. I know a bad deal when I hear one." The smile vanished. "You would have me sign away my nation's independence, let you occupy and exploit it to fulfill your own selfish ambitions. I would never betray Gensokyo in such a manner."

Kushida sat back in her chair, frowning for the first time. "I see. But would your countrymen share this resistance to our offers? Especially if they learned that their princess was our guest?"

"There is no sacrifice I'm unwilling to make for my country," Kotohime said boldly, her breast swelling with pride. "And I know that my beloved subjects would continue to fight for freedom even without me-"

"Assuming they've even noticed you're gone," Rikako sniggered.

Kushida glared at her for a moment, then heaved a sigh. "Regrettable. I had hoped that if we discussed this rationally..." She shrugged. "Well, you will all have ample time to reconsider. You really only have two options, you know - either stay in your cells for the rest of your lives, or make something productive out of your time here. Hopefully it won't take too long for you to make the logical choice." She gestured over their heads, and Rikako sensed more than heard their escorts stepping forward. "Take them away," Kushida ordered.

"Hey, wait," Kotohime protested.

Kushida cocked her head. "Oh? You've changed your mind already?"

"No, I mean I had a whole speech prepared," said Kotohime. "Like, we will fight you on the rice paddies, we will fight you on the canals, we will fight you on the city walls, unless you send in the flying machines in which case we'll have a pretty interesting dogfight and-"

The director growled in frustration and made the gesture again, this time more forcefully. Rikako felt a heavy hand on her shoulder, and looked back and up into the expressionless visage of one of the robot soldiers. It was irrationally creepy seeing them up close, and Rikako actually jumped when the android finally said something.

"Please do not resist," said the robot in a voice as flat and lifeless as its face, "or we will use what force is necessary to ensure your compliance."

"That's a pretty smooth line," Kotohime said approvingly. "I'll have to borrow it next time I arrest someone." The self-declared police chief held out her wrists. "Well, aren't you going to cuff me?"

One of the androids held up a slender truncheon of some dark metal, then did something to make it suddenly crackle and spit a spark. "Handcuffs will not be necessary."

Rikako thought she heard Chiyuri gulp, but Kotohime merely narrowed her eyes slightly, focusing on the electrified baton. Rikako wasn't sure if the self-proclaimed police officer was wary of the thing or coveting it.

"We will talk so more later," Director Kushida promised as the androids took up formation around their prisoners and led them out of the room.

-x-

-11-

Rikako probably should have been paying closer attention as she and the others were led through the research facility, or military base, or whatever it was. If they intended to break out, they needed every advantage they could get, and a working idea of the place's layout would be a great start.

But instead she found herself staring at Yumemi's back, her mind reduced to an exhausted fog, her heart sick with dread. She'd gotten her wish to live in a world of science and rationality, and all it cost her was her freedom and any chance of seeing her homeland, no matter how backward it was, ever again.

So she barely noticed as the guards marched them through metal-lined hallways under harsh electric lights, turning corners and passing doorways and side passages and staring base personnel. Eventually they passed through a series of whooshing automatic doors, and then the hallway came to a dead end, where the solid walls gave way to metal bars and sturdy-looking doors - a prison, Rikako glumly realized. Their prison.

The cell doors slid open without any of the robot soldiers having to do anything, and then the captives were split up, Ellen and Kotohime nudged into the holding area on the left, while Rikako, Chiyuri and Yumemi were herded into the cell on the opposite side of the hall.

Rikako felt a moment's panic, a desperate impulse to do something, but logic prevailed. They'd confiscated her labcoat with all her gadgets, and she knew her chances of overpowering even one of these android soldiers was effectively zero. Being a prisoner was bad enough, she didn't want to be a prisoner with bruises or broken bones.

The cell door slid closed with a solid clank, the androids gave them one last blank-faced stare before marching out of the cell block in perfect formation, and that was it.

Rikako looked around. A shiny toilet in one corner without so much as a curtain for privacy, four small beds that appeared to be bolted to the ground, and that was the extent of the amenities in her new home.

Yumemi marched mechanically over to the nearest bed, turned, and then slowly and heavily sank onto it, her red hair hanging down to hide her face as she stared hopelessly at the floor. Chiyuri was a bit more fluid as she sat down on the cot next to her ex-professor, put an arm across Yumemi's shoulders, and then leaned into the other woman, resting her head against Yumemi's, her eyes closed. The posture seemed meant to reassure, except Chiyuri looked near tears, so Rikako wasn't sure who was comforting whom.

Across the hall, Kotohime was helping Ellen sit down on the cot next to her, murmuring words of encouragement that the childish mage didn't seem to be hearing, while Kotohime herself seemed unusually subdued.

For a moment Rikako thought she would scream in frustration, but she forced her anger and terror back until it was merely simmering instead of boiling. "So. This is how it all ends, huh?" she asked no one in particular. Now that the reality of the situation had sunk in, she felt almost invigorated by the surge of useless anger rising within her.

"The key is to keep a positive attitude," Kotohime lectured. On the bright side, the bars the cells had for walls allowed them to communicate. On the downside, this meant that Kotohime could communicate with them. "You need to look at this as an opportunity," the madwoman her. "A chance to practice your escape artistry and have an exciting jailbreak to tell stories about later."

"And do you have anything beyond your positive attitude to help us get out of here?" Rikako sneered.

Kotohime chewed her lip. "Well, my magic is still shut down, and they took my favorite robes, along with all my explosives and lockpicks. I don't use hairpins, so I can't try to pick the lock with one of those. Though," she added, shifting slightly in her seat, "now that I look closer, these doors seem to have remote-controlled locks that I wouldn't be able to pick anyway. We don't have any tools to pry at the wall panels or saw at the bars. So the best way to escape would be to..."

There was a long, painful silence.

"This does kind of suck," Kotohime admitted.

"I don't feel right," Ellen said in a faint voice.

Rikako felt a pang in her chest - Ellen seemed barely able to sit up straight, and her eyes were tight with pain.

Kotohime put a hand to the girl's shoulder and gave an encouraging squeeze. "I don't like it either," she said softly. "But we can put up with it until we break out of here, can't we?"

Ellen didn't respond, and continued to stare down at her shoes dangling over the edge of the bunk.

Next to Rikako, Yumemi shifted, raising her head. "How bad is it?" she asked the prisoner across the hall.

Kotohime scowled. "Like I'm not getting enough air, didn't get enough food or rest, and have my ears filled with lead," she replied. "And Ellen is a way more powerful magician than I am, so I can't begin to imagine how she feels."

"Is she gonna be okay?" asked Chiyuri, straightening up from her slump against Yumemi.

Probably not, Rikako concluded with ice in her guts. Ellen wasn't a youkai or 'naturally' long-lived creature - well, to be honest Rikako wasn't entirely sure how to classify the childish mage. She may be a post-human magician like many of Gensokyo's older magic users, or maybe she was something else altogether. But Ellen's long lifespan and agelessness indicated a dependency on magic. Without it...

"We need to get her out of the anti-magic field as soon as possible," Rikako declared.

"Maybe we should surrender," Yumemi said softly, her red eyes dark and defeated. "Say we'll cooperate if they take her home."

That would make it easier for their captors to take over Gensokyo, of course. But even Rikako, rational as she was, balked at the thought of dooming little Ellen to keep her homeland safe.

"Much better to break ourselves out, don't you think?" asked Kotohime.

"And how do you propose to do that?" replied Yumemi, neither sarcastically nor with much interest.

The other redheaded woman tapped her jaw. "We could hold out hope for the ol' Yukari Ex Machina, but that's highly dependent on her actually paying attention, and since she hasn't gotten involved by this point, she's probably asleep at her post again. Or... well, I can't do it because I'm immortal, but one of you could commit suicide and try to come back as a ghost, see if you can possess a guard or unlock-"

"Ya can't be serious," Chiyuri grumbled, folding her arms and glaring at the other woman.

Kotohime sighed, looking uncharacteristically weary. "I'm sorry, I'm usually good at coming up with clever ideas, but like I said, my head's all messed up from this anti-magic field." She looked over at the Gensokyan in the opposite cell. "What about you, doing any better, Rikako?"

"Um..." Rikako blinked. "I'm not that bad, really."

Kotohime arched an eyebrow. "Not feeling sick? Like some vital organ has been torn out and a key component of your identity erased?"

"No, I'm... I think I'm good..." Rikako frowned in puzzlement. Huh. She was pretty unhappy about being kidnapped and imprisoned in an alien world, but other than that, Rikako didn't feel nearly as bad as Kotohime said she felt, or Ellen looked.

"Interesting. Maybe your magical skills have atrophied so much that you barely notice being in an anti-magic field?" wondered Kotohime aloud.

Rikako's spectacles shifted as she wrinkled her nose. "No, it felt pretty numbing..."

She blinked, realizing what she had just said.

"'Felt?'" repeated Chiyuri. Next to her, Yumemi suddenly stiffened.

Rikako stared at nothing, paying close attention to how she was feeling, but that aching, empty sensation that had accompanied her ever since she woke up in the infirmary was gone now. Which meant-

"They can't be this stupid," Rikako deadpanned.

"When you fought in the tournament, we recorded you using your jetpack and gears and other technological paraphernalia," Yumemi said excitedly, shooting to her feet. "We never put anything about your background in our report, we were doing a quantitative presentation first and were saving a qualitative case study for later-"

"And when the robots attacked us in San Whatever, Kotohime and Kana were the only ones slingin' spells!" Chiyuri went on. "And they knew Ellen was a mage from our data, but-"

"They stuck you in the cell with us instead of the one with Kotohime and Ellen," Yumemi said, eyes wide. "Rikako, they don't know you can do magic!"

Rikako noticed how everyone (save Ellen) was staring expectantly at her. "Oh, come on!" she protested. "Why would they have something to nullify magic and only use it on one cell?!"

"I obviously don't know the specifics of how it works, but I imagine it could be a pretty complex device and a major drain on the base's power," Yumemi shrugged. "Or maybe it has a short range and it's more practical to only install it in specific cells than to try and extend its effects to entire sections of the base. Or maybe they have a limited number of the things to begin with and didn't want to spare two to completely cover a cell block."

"Why are we jabberin'?" demanded Chiyuri. "C'mon, Rikako, hurry up and get us out-"

"I swore off magic!" Rikako interrupted. She realized that her words had come out as a wail of dismay.

"But I doubt you've forgotten it," Kotohime said with a smile. It faded quickly. "Rikako," she said more quietly, "back in Gensokyo, why did you want to become a scientist?"

Rikako grit her teeth. "Because it made sense! Because it had potential, and could be used by everyone!"

"But is that all?" Kotohime pressed patiently.

Rikako only glowered at her.

"I think there's more," Kotohime went on. "Magicians are a dime a dozen back home. Scattered across the Forest of Magic, training in Makai, a fair number in the village itself. But a scientist, that's unheard of, even among the technologically-advanced kappa. And if you became one, you'd really make a name for yourself, even more than if you'd remained a powerful magician." Kotohime considered. "Especially since Marisa would probably overtake you at some point in that regard, the girl is amazingly adaptable when it comes to-"

She saw the look Rikako was giving her, and changed topic.

"What I'm trying to say," Kotohime concluded, her smile subtly shifting to something dangerous, "is that the people in this world, they've never seen magic before. At least, not up close and in person. And I think you're just the woman to introduce them to it."

Rikako Asakura stood silently for a long moment, her hands clenched at her sides, her mind swirling with emotions. Disgust, despair from being asked to turn to something she had forsworn. Self-loathing for letting these other emotions keep them imprisoned. Fear at being put on the spot like this, for having everyone's lives dependent on her.

But there was excitement, too. An eagerness to show everyone what she was capable of. And a feral desire to pay their captors back for kidnapping them in the first place.

And when she was done analyzing what she was feeling, and turned to consider the situation they were in, then logically... well, there was only one conclusion.

Rikako slowly raised a hand, tapped into her long-ignored power, and snapped her fingers as she forced the laws of thermodynamics to submit to her will. Yumemi and Chiyuri took a quick step back as a bright blue flame burst into luminance over Rikako's thumb. Ellen finally perked up, the magic light turning her golden eyes into sapphires.

"Yeah, there's definitely no anti-magic in here," Chiyuri murmured.

Rikako simply stared down at the flame for a long moment. "It's been so many years... but I still remember how..." She let her unnatural fire wink out and pushed her spectacles up with a finger, feeling herself break into a mirthless grin. "Heh. Heheheh. Very well. If these fools want magic..."

-x-

Colonel Nakano shifted slightly, turning her attention away from the softly-glowing main screen of the command center to the officer sitting at the security station nearby. An advantage of spending so much time in the base's headquarters instead of her office was that Nakano had developed an instinctive understanding of what things looked and sounded like when everything was normal. The digital chirp from the console rang out like a missed note in an orchestra.

So Nakano was standing behind the security officer's desk even before she had turned in her seat to try and get the colonel's attention. "Report, lieutenant," she ordered in a low, calm voice.

The younger officer hid her surprise well, and managed to merely fidget instead of jumping out of her seat. "Uh, yes, colonel. We're getting an anomalous reading."

"From the research wing?" Nakano asked. The eggheads had been eager to get to work on their new specimen...

But the lieutenant shook her head. "No sir, from the brig."

"Send in a Response Team immediately," Nakano ordered.

To her credit, the other woman relayed the order with a few keyboard taps before looking up at her commanding officer to voice her objections. "Sir, this could be nothing more than another glitch in the system..." She trailed off and shrank in her seat under the weight of her superior's condescending stare.

"If it is a glitch, then this is a valuable exercise in the proper containment protocols," Nakano lectured. "If it's more than that, an immediate response could be the difference between life and death. Never forget that." She nodded at the supplementary monitor. "Now get the dolls' visual feed up so we can see how bad this 'anomaly' is."

-x-

"These door locks are controlled by electronics, correct?" Rikako asked.

"Yeah, that's right," Chiyuri nodded.

Electricity, then. Simple enough.

Her two cellmates jumped at the sudden loud crack of discharging static and flash of light as Rikako gestured at the door and lanced it with a miniature lightning bolt. Rikako knew she had succeeded even before she heard the faint click of something disengaging and saw the door slide a hand's breath open - from her lab mishaps, she was well-acquainted with the acrid stink of shorted-out wiring.

Chiyuri immediately grabbed at the portal, grunting and heaving it along its rollers until there was room for someone to slip through sideways. "If they're payin' attention, we don't have much time," she warned.

Rikako didn't respond as she stepped out, she was already examining their next obstacle. Kotohime and Ellen's cell appeared all but identical to her own, but now that she could look closer, Rikako could see a boxy device affixed to the ceiling over where Ellen was standing. She lifted her hand and expressed her innate magical power through another jolt of electricity, but the sparks vanished as soon as they passed between the bars of the other cell.

"Well that's not fair," Kotohime grumbled. "Just because the lightning came from outside the anti-magic field doesn't mean it should stop when it enters it."

"It is an evocation," Rikako pointed out.

Yumemi tilted her head. "How's that significant?"

Even with the situation they were in, Rikako couldn't help but briefly smile. "Remind me to explain later."

"Right, right. Um..." Yumemi licked her lips, staring up at the obstacle. "If you can't zap it directly, well, I don't know if the thing has its own power source, but I don't see a switch anywhere, so there has to be a way to control it remotely, which means it's wired to something. So if you can, I don't know, sever that connection somehow-"

"That sounds tedious," Rikako remarked absently, already extending her long-neglected senses.

It was actually easier than she'd feared. She was in another world, a dimension that had long since disregarded magic as primitive superstition, and she was using powers she had similarly turned away from. And yet, now that Rikako was using them, it was almost... liberating. She wasn't muddling through chemical equations before giving up and resorting to trial and error, or ranting in frustration at a broken device she didn't know how to use or repair, she was using knowledge she actually comprehended, her almost instinctive understanding of how to manifest her intent as physical change in the world around her.

But her scientific knowledge helped too, in this case her study of circuits and electrical wiring. So Rikako was able to gaze up at the ceiling, to sense the humming currents hidden by the panels above her, to see how the electrons flowed along their metal paths - it was almost like ley lines - and most importantly spot the huge gap in this pattern directly above Kotohime and Ellen, a place she couldn't sense but which must complete the rest of the puzzle.

Rikako probably could use finesse, take hold of those metal fibers and sever them one by one until she cut the one sustaining that anti-magic device. But since she was already using electricity... plus, if she were honest, she felt like showing off.

She reached up and clenched her fist like she was grabbing a handful of vines, and the air was split by furious snarls as jagged lines of lightning suddenly tore out of the ceiling to flow into Rikako's grasp. The thunderous display cast flickering striped shadows against the walls of the cells as the ceiling panels went dead, but Rikako stayed focused, and gestured with her free hand when she saw the power-starved door to Kotohime's cell slide slightly open. "Quickly," she snapped.

Kotohime bundled up Ellen as Yumemi and Chiyuri yanked the door all the way open, and soon all five of them were in the hall. Rikako released her grip on the local power system, letting electricity flow through the wiring around them instead of into her hand, so that the lights came back on. This did nothing to what she'd already grabbed, however, and now she had a fist wrapped in coils of spitting, flickering energy.

Chiyuri's eyes were wide as she stared at Rikako's hand, while taking care to stay well away from the scientist. "Wow," she gulped. "So, um, what'cha gonna do with that?"

"Let's see if I can find a use for it," Rikako replied with a cocky smile. She hoped no one could see her sweating - she'd just realized that with these metal surfaces around them, she didn't have a safe way to ground this electricity.

"Oh, good timing," Kotohime said conversationally.

A blur of movement in the corner of Rikako's eye made her turn her head so she could properly see through her spectacles, and she saw the door in the hallway slide open. She wasn't sure if the group that came through were the same androids as those who had served as their guards - since they all looked identical, it was impossible to tell. They marched almost in lockstep through the portal, then in unison and without a single word raised their weapons-

Rikako pivoted and thrust her hand forward, unleashing the stored electrical energy as a lightning bolt, the whip-crack sound of it almost deafeningly loud in the confined hallway. The attack hit the lead android dead-on, and the artificial woman went rigid, her weapon spitting a stream of danmaku - no, energy bolts - into the wall as she convulsed. A few heartbeats later the android abruptly toppled forward to faceplant onto the floor, smoke rising from it like it was a burnt-out appliance.

But the rest of the robot squad was untouched, and wasted no time gawking at their fallen comrade. They promptly fell back, retreating through the doorway they'd just entered through, then took up firing positions behind it.

"Take cover!" Yumemi shouted as hostile bolts of red energy began to scream through the air towards them.

"Where?!" Chiyuri complained.

That was a good question. The best they could do was try to crouch and press against the walls around their cells, but the cell block was more or less a firing range. A prolonged shootout would be suicide.

"So we finish this quickly," Rikako muttered to herself. She cupped her hand, manifested her power as a guttering orb of fire, then hurled it down the hall to explode in the midst-

The magical attack disappeared right before it would have hit the androids.

"And there's that anti-magic garbage again," Kotohime groused even as she ducked to avoid getting her head blown off. The so-called princess sent a brief stream of her purple danmaku at their enemies in response, but didn't seem surprised when it too vanished just short of connecting. "On that note, don't suppose anyone sees a garbage chute?" she asked.

Rikako glanced around at the metal panels making up the hallway's floor, ceiling and walls, and realized that if they couldn't find proper cover, she'd just have to make some. She grit her teeth and stretched out her hand and her will, focusing not on creating elemental forces, but manipulating existing matter.

With a groan of tortured steel, the sheets of metal lining the walls between them and the attacking androids abruptly tore free of their mounting and curled back, exposing wires and dusty subsurfaces before meeting in mid-air to form a crude barrier that cut off nearly all of the hallway.

Chiyuri and Yumemi stared in shock, but Kotohime only scratched her jaw. "Well, I suppose that gives us cover, but it doesn't do much for our escape plan," she pointed out.

"Shut up," Rikako murmured, eyes half-closed as she concentrated on two things at once. The first was generating heat in a particular area, a task that was aided by the androids as they kept firing those energy rounds into the metal barricade, evidently trying to blast it apart. Soon the sheets of metal were glowing orange and it began to feel a bit toasty in the cell block.

At the same time, Rikako extended her senses, getting a feel for this world's background magic, the mystic energies always swirling around them - and the conspicuous hole in those energies. The androids had stopped firing, she realized, and the magical void was moving closer. Rikako tried to remember how far it was to the doorway before resolving to wait until as late as possible.

She blinked away sweat trickling over her eyebrow that had nothing to do with the red-hot barricade between them and their attackers. She could sense the void coming closer, it was almost upon them-

Rikako clenched and twisted her fist, and the metal barricade abruptly contracted into a tightly-spinning ball of molten steel, glowing like a sun. Through the heat haze around it she could see the three androids standing out in the open, weapons at ready-

With a shout, an emphatic gesture, and rapid pulses of will, Rikako sent bead after bead of glowing metal shooting out of the larger sphere. They whirled as they flew, almost instantly flattening into razor-thin discs that trailed sparks like comets as they hurtled towards their targets. Rikako lost control over the projectiles as they entered the anti-magic field, but while it could snuff out any magical energy she threw into it, evidently it could not stop incoming objects.

And whatever armor the androids were wearing, it wasn't very effective against a hail of superheated, impossibly-sharp shuriken flying as fast as bullets.

Rikako was too busy to aim, so she went for quantity delivered rapidly. The androids could only jerk and shudder as they were torn to pieces in a flurry of burning steel. Metal sparked as weapons were shredded and metal limbs were severed, military uniforms and artificial hair caught fire, there was even a small explosion as something one of the androids was carrying had a fatal malfunction. And after several noisy seconds, there was nothing left of the attacking squad but a pile of smoking wreckage.

"Mother of god," choked Yumemi.

"Credit where it's due, Miss Anaberal gave me the idea," Rikako admitted, letting out a slow breath.

Happily, there was still a good bit of glowing metal to work with even after the threat was neutralized. Rikako subtly moved her fingers, pulling apart the remainder of what she'd torn from the walls and flattening it into two plate-sized discs, then proceeded to sculpt grips so she could carry them once they were finished. She let herself relax against an intact hallway wall as she watched her two new chakrams hang in the air in front of her, cooling.

Kotohime gave a low whistle. "Nice work. Knew you did geomancy, but that was a fancy bit of metalbending."

"There's metals in the earth," Rikako pointed out, but she was smirking despite herself. "And how do you think I handled my gears, anyway?"

"That, that was..." Chiyuri managed, looking somewhere between awestruck and terrified. "That spell wasn't like anything we saw-"

"A spell?" Rikako wrinkled her nose in distaste. "That was nothing but brute force, raw elemental energy. A proper spell is a work of art, a meticulously-crafted magical sequence that reshapes the world with a minimum of effort for maximum effect."

"Oh." Chiyuri blinked. "So, do ya plan on bustin' out any of those?"

Rikako cleared her throat. "I, ah, don't have a spellbook or spell cards with me, so... no." She swiped at her brow. "Also, that was somewhat taxing," she admitted. It was the mental equivalent of hiking around that city after a long period of inactivity.

"I'll help pick up the slack," Kotohime said cheerfully. "Maybe Ellen too, if she's feeling any better?" The statement came out as a question directed at the youngest-slash-oldest member of their party.

"I'm tired, but now my headache's not as bad," Ellen told them. She looked around as if suddenly realizing something. "Where's Kana?"

"Good question," Yumemi said with a scowl. "Last I remember she was on the hypervessel-"

"I saw her struck by a device one of the androids was holding," Rikako told the others. "Then she disappeared. It's likely she was captured as well." Better to think that than face the possibility that this civilization had a weapon that could destroy poltergeists.

"She's probably being studied then," Yumemi concluded, her frown deepening. "We have to rescue her, I don't want to think about what these thugs might be doing to her." Ellen paled at the words, her eyes shining with concern.

"So objective two is getting our poltergeist back," Kotohime concluded. "Objective one is to get our stuff back, since it'll be easier to rescue Kana if we do that first. And objective three is to blow this place up."

The other women all blinked at her. "Uh, we're not just trying to get out of here?" asked Yumemi.

"These guys know about Gensokyo, and want to take it over," Kotohime pointed out. "So we need to destroy whatever data they have on the place and hopefully keep them from ever going there again."

Chiyuri shivered. "Five of us against a whole military installation, huh?"

"Six with Kana," Kotohime corrected with a slight smile. "And hey, I once invaded a demon realm all by myself. This'll be easy by comparison."

"Should we let you handle this, then?" Rikako asked without bothering to hide her sarcasm.

"Nah, I'm willing to share the spotlight," Kotohime answered with a breezy wave of her hand.

Rikako snorted, then gave one of her discs an exploratory tap and found the metal cool enough to handle. "So, we should probably get going," she said as she plucked the weapons from the air.

Chiyuri grunted as she picked up Ellen piggyback-style again. "Okay, where to?"

"Good question," sighed Yumemi. "Maybe we'll stumble across a map or something?" She gave the rest of them a tired smile. "I'm sorry, I'm not used to this sort of thing."

"It's pretty easy," Kotohime assured her. "You just pick a direction, blast anything that gets in your way, have a series of increasingly-intense battles until you finally face the culprit, and before you know it you're back at the Hakurei Shrine for tea."

-x-

-12-

Director Kushida was annoyed to have to walk all the way across the base from her office to the command center, but for whatever reason Colonel Nakano wasn't responding to her requests to meet and schedule next month's interdepartmental status report. She knew better than to try Nakano's office first, the colonel preferred to stay in the installation's nerve center rather than sit behind a desk - which was unfortunate, since Nakano's office was just around the corner from Kushida's. Some days she wondered if her military counterpart was deliberately avoiding her, but that wasn't a productive attitude to have, so she tried to dismiss such thoughts.

When she finally reached the command center, Kushida was surprised to be stopped and checked over by a pair of armed and alert guards. Then once she stepped inside, she found herself surrounded by noise and movement, as more guards took up positions at the entrance while radio operators talked briskly into their headsets. She tried to make her way through the controlled chaos as best she could, but it wasn't easy - nobody seemed to notice her, which was a bit flabbergasting since she was in charge of the entire facility.

Well, along with the colonel, of course. Nakano was standing in front of the biggest, brightest holographic display in the room's center, looming behind a junior officer seated at one of the stations ringing its base. "I want Response Teams One and Three at the cell block on the double!" the colonel ordered.

"Team One is still down a unit and hasn't finished post-mission processing," the officer reported.

Nakano's lip curled for a moment. "Then send Team Four in their place, but get Team One ready to go ASAP."

"Orders acknowledged," the officer nodded curtly, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. A physical keyboard, which was embarrassingly backward for such a state-of-the-art facility. Kushida was sure she'd put proper holographic interfaces in last year's budget... she shook herself to stay focused.

"What's going on, Hitomi?" the director asked.

The colonel tensed at her words, then sighed, and barely turned her head to look back at Nakano over her shoulder. "Your prisoners have managed to escape, Director Kushida."

"What?!" Kushida lurched back a pace in shock. "How?!"

"Evidently the purple one can use magic, something conspicuously absent in your file on her," Nakano said with a slight curl to her lip. "She singlehandedly destroyed a containment squad, and presumably was the one to bypass the cells' security system. So now she and the other freaks are loose in the facility."

Kushida clamped down on a protest. After all, Nakano's people had gone over the same data as the science team, and it was unfair to blame the civilian side of the project for an oversight the military group had made too. "Why wasn't I immediately notified?" she asked instead.

"Because this is a security matter," Nakano replied, turning her attention back to the screen.

Kushida glanced around the room, at the bright overhead lighting, and realized her partner had overlooked something. "We should go to red alert!"

"We're already at full alert," the colonel said through clenched teeth.

"So why are the lights still-"

"Because red lighting does not improve efficiency in a crisis, but does help soldiers trip on furniture," Nakano ground out.

"Colonel, our infantry squads report as ready to receive orders," the seated officer piped up.

"Took them long enough to get mustered," growled Nakano. She leaned forward, one hand on the top of the chair she was standing behind. "Put them-"

"Shouldn't you send them in to assist the Response Teams?" recommended Kushida.

Nakano gave her a look. "Do they have anti-mage devices?"

The director frowned. Nakano was asking her questions she already knew the answer to, just so she could rehash an old argument. "You know it wasn't cost-effective to equip every security android on base with null fields, to say nothing of the regular soldiers, and there are other research priorities-"

"Then we keep them in reserve," Nakano interrupted. "Let the dolls take the offensive, while the real soldiers cut off escape routes and secure key positions. Here, here and here," she said while gesturing at the projection of the base map hanging in the air in front of them. "If they get there fast enough they can establish a perimeter around the cell block. If not, they're to get dug in and keep the prisoners from reaching the armory, surface access or hangar. And the command center," she added almost as an afterthought.

"Understood," the junior officer said coolly, pressing the buttons to make her commander's orders a reality.

"Do we have the prisoners' location verified?" asked Nakano.

The communications officer shook her head. "No sir. Team Two is offline, the only unusual energy emissions are coming from the research labs, and we don't have any cameras or motion trackers inside the base."

"Because someone said they were too expensive," spat Nakano.

Kushida had to suppress the urge to explain, once again, why it hadn't been sensible to waste their limited resources on internal security when they already invested so heavily in perimeter defense, or complain that the facility hadn't even been intended to hold prisoners until Nakano had converted one disused wing into a little brig shortly after they moved to this location.

Instead the director cleared her throat and pressed the case for her previous suggestion. "W-well, if the prisoners already took out one of your response teams, you'll want to throw everything you have at them," she pointed out. "Gather the robots and the security forces, then take them all-"

"Absolutely not," Nakano said immediately. "You've studied the battlefield data, so you should know that each of those witches is effectively a walking artillery piece. And you don't charge into the enemy's guns head on. We need to be tactical about this." Nakano pointed up at the main screen once more. "Set the dolls for ambush protocols, focus on pinning the enemy down so the anti-mage devices can move in close enough to neutralize them. Anything but a straight shootout. If the regular soldiers encounter the prisoners, they're to make a fighting withdrawal into cover while keeping the enemy engaged until the dolls can flank them."

"Yes sir!" the communications officer said briskly. "Orders relayed, colonel."

There was a moment of silence as the facility's leaders stared at the glowing display of shaped light, neatly laying out all the base's hallways and chambers. Kushida supposed the little dots represented soldiers and combat androids. Hopefully no one got lost on the way to the battle-

"Hey," she said suddenly.

The colonel glanced over at her, brow furrowed in undisguised irritation. "What now?"

Kushida kept her temper. She'd been in management long enough to know that the easiest way to get respect wasn't to demand it, but to earn it. "Could you remotely trigger the door locks from here?" she politely inquired.

"The facility is already on a full lockdown, director," the lieutenant seated in front of them said without glancing back.

"Which means that the prisoners know they have to bypass every door they come across," Kushida pointed out. "Whereas if you only locked some of the doors while keeping others open, you could encourage the escapees to stick to the hallways where they'll be easier to find, and our soldiers won't have to worry about clearing every last room."

Nakano's eyes narrowed, but she nodded, ever-so-slightly. "They'd have to be pretty stupid to go along with that, but I suppose there's no harm in trying. Make it happen," she added for the lieutenant's benefit.

"Sir." At a few taps of the security officer's keyboard, some of the red lines overlaid upon the base display winked out, closing off the rooms and side passages but leaving the main halls clear.

"Happy to help," Kushida said humbly. A thought occurred to her. "Ah, these response teams, they're trying to subdue the escapees, right? They're still quite valuable as sources of data and potential assets."

"I've made my orders very clear," the colonel assured her, smiling slightly to herself.

"Good, good," said Kushida, still uneasy. She decided to focus on the screen, then blinked in surprise. "What's that?"

Nakano's eye twitched. "Yes, director?"

"That dot right there," Kushida said, pointing up at the main hologram. "If that's a soldier, she's way out of position-" she was cut off when the image flickered with static for a moment.

"Damn thing," the lieutenant muttered, leaning over to give the projector a good whack. "Ah, there we go, everyone's in place. Must've been a glitch."

"Hmm." Kushida stared up at the display, arms folded. She didn't know military tactics, but she had minored in computer science, and more than that had a healthy amount of suspicion after so many years of corporate politics. "Could someone have hacked into our system?"

Nakano didn't even bother to glance at her. "There is no outside access to the local network, no human personnel have been allowed to exit or enter the base since we relocated here last year, and the androids are wiped and rebooted after every mission. This is perhaps the most secure computer system on the planet."

This was why the project needed people like her, Kushida reflected. A soldier would only be thinking about potential enemies attacking from the outside, while she had survived a decade of backstabbing and scheming to represent her employer at this facility. But she knew how Hitomi would react if she suggested that there might be a traitor in their midst, and so Kushida said nothing, but folded her arms, staring up at the display and watching for the next 'glitch.'

It would be wonderful if it was simply a technical issue, but all her instincts told her to remain vigilant.

-x-

"I can't believe I'm losing a fight with a door," Kotohime commented as the closed portal beeped dismissively at her.

"Hang on," Yumemi said, "you're not used to these, let me..." The professor jabbed at the buttons next to the steel doorframe, but once again the metal portal just made a noise instead of opening. "Okay, we're locked out," she concluded.

"I can try more magic," Rikako offered, but she had to add, "though my capacity to do so is limited."

"My turn?" Kotohime said hopefully. "I can't do electricity or metal, but I might be able to blast a door open with a long enough barrage."

Chiyuri gestured down the main corridor, whose doors had slid apart without incident as they approached. "For all we know that leads to a closet or something. Better to save your strength and stick to the halls until we find what we're looking for."

Yumemi chewed on her lip. "It's really exposed..."

"So we'll have to hoof it. Less talkin', more runnin'," Chiyuri recommended.

"You're getting bossy," Yumemi said with a frown that didn't quite cover a grin. "You were a lot more respectful back when you were my student."

"It's our lives at stake now, not a diploma," Chiyuri replied with a smirk. She shifted her grip on Ellen's legs, still bearing the girlish mage on her back, but didn't complain about being little more than a steed.

So they ran down another stretch of metal corridor, past closed doors and underneath humming lighting panels, but didn't encounter anyone. Rikako assumed their escape had tripped some sort of alarm, but there weren't any soldiers resisting them, nor did they come across noncombatants like what was her name, the nurse. Had everyone else on the base gone to ground, or was it mostly empty?

They slowed a bit as a set of heavy metal doors parted to reveal an junction where the hallway split to the left and right.

"Always go left," Kotohime said, pointing unnecessarily. "It's an adage that holds true at Disney World, so if..." She trailed off, frowning.

"What?" Yumemi asked.

"Something's wrong," Kotohime murmured. She had half-closed her eyes, gazing at nothing. "It's like how it felt back in Gensokyo, the first time I fought..."

Rikako had stretched out with her own senses once Kotohime had voiced her concern, and she could feel it, that void, a figurative blind spot in her mage eye, one that was moving closer from the left branch of the halls ahead. "More magic-proof androids approaching," she warned.

"Take cover!" Kotohime snapped, but while she was shifting into a battle stance, she was also spinning around, hand outstretched and aimed behind them-

Rikako glanced back. Yumemi had hurtled herself into one of the hall's slightly-recessed doorways, while Chiyuri was moving for one on the opposite side of the hallway, shifting so Ellen would reach the cover first. But if Rikako looked past that blur of movement, there was another blur, a faint distortion in the middle of the hallway behind them, as though a perfectly translucent glass sculpture was there to bend light and-

There were spells designed to negate an enchantment of invisibility, but Rikako had none such spells prepared, and this wasn't an enchantment but technology. So Rikako made a gesture and shouted an invocation of winter, and a shrieking blast of ice exploded in the center of the corridor, coating the walls and floor and ceiling with frost and revealing what had been hiding there.

She had been expecting one enemy, but instead there were two humanoid figures half-covered in glittering white particles, both in identical poses crouched on one knee, heads bent to aim down the rifles braced against their shoulders. The one on the right, whose posture meant that it took the brunt of the blast on its front, fell backwards onto its still-invisible rear end, while stiffly and jerkily trying to get its arms and legs out of its firing stance. The one on the left was less affected, though, and was mostly visible by its ice-covered shoulder. It shifted its weapon towards Rikako-

Then it shuddered with countless little impacts as Kotohime unleashed twin streams of magical bullets into it-

Rikako started swinging her arm to throw a discus, but that absence she was sensing was drawing closer, so instead she turned to face the junction they had been considering moments before-

Something small and metallic clinked and bounced once or twice on the floor in the center of the intersection.

"Grenade!" barked Chiyuri-

There was a deafening blast of sound and a blinding flash of light.

Or rather near-blinding - Rikako's arm was still up from her aborted attack, and her spectacles probably helped as well. As it was she was merely dazzled by the lightburst, and thus able to see the two forms charge out from the left corner, their legs pumping in sync, but staggered instead of side-by-side. Two androids sprinted across the intersection with their torsos twisted at right angles, allowing them to sight down their weapons as they went at a full sprint-

Nothing moved faster than the speed of light, Rikako knew that much. So what the androids were firing weren't lasers, but streams of bullet-like projectiles of some other sort of energy. It wasn't quite danmaku, but it wasn't unfamiliar, either.

She hurled herself to the side, matching the attackers' movement and therefore slipping between their two streams of fire. They tried to adjust their aim, but Rikako focused and kept moving, letting the sizzling pellets of energy graze by and singe her clothes, finding the safe path between the moving streams of fire. She suppressed the urge to shoot back - this close she could feel the cloud of non-magic clinging to their attackers, and she didn't have the freedom of movement to properly throw her discs. So she focused on not getting shot until she bounced against the hallway's far wall at about the same time the two sprinting androids entered the cover of the right corner.

Rikako glanced back at the others - the two non-magical women and Ellen were hunkered down in a doorway on the opposite side of the corridor, while flashes of purple light accompanied Kotohime's battle against the half-frozen, half-invisible androids. The alleged policewoman turned her head to yell something at Rikako, but the scientist realized all she could hear was a high-pitched ringing. She could guess what Kotohime was shouting about, though - as the only one who could fight an enemy protected by an anti-magic ward, it would be up to Rikako to deal with the newcomers.

Her eyes darted about, searching for an opportunity as her mind raced to come up with some strategy. But the enemy was already acting, and one of the magic-warded androids peeked around the corner and loosed a spray of red bolts of energy that forced Rikako back into cover with a hail of sparks and a stink unlike anything she had encountered in her lab.

The scientist grit her teeth. She had to do something, or else Kotohime would get shot in the back while dealing with the first two robots, and then it would be Rikako against four enemies from two different directions-

And then she spilled over onto her hands and knees as the door she was leaning against suddenly slid sideways into its frame.

Rikako was too startled to cry out, and barely noticed the door closing just as soon as her feet were clear of it. She scrambled upright, but there was no immediate threat - she was in an empty room, a lounge or something with couches and a big dark television screen set in one wall. There was another doorway on the left wall, and as soon as her gaze fell upon it the portal hissed open, revealing another hallway. Or, judging from the flashes of lights and sounds (now that the ringing in her ears was starting to fade), it was the hallway connected to the intersection that the hostile androids were fighting from.

Despite the suddenness of this latest development, it took all of a second for Rikako to assess the situation. Yes, this was suspiciously convenient, and yes, if she took this opportunity she would only have one chance to strike before she was gunned down. But it was only probably suicide, compared to the certainly of defeat if she didn't act quickly.

After a taking a deep breath, Rikako darted across the room, vaulting over the couches facing the television, then peeked her head out the other doorframe. To her left she could see one android crouched at the near corner of the intersection, still firing into the hall where Kotohime and the others were pinned down, while the other was in the process of relocating to the far corner, shooting sideways as it ran. That they weren't charging at her friends yet meant that there was still someone offering resistance, but the longer she delayed-

Before more time could be lost, Rikako surged into action. She burst out of cover in a charge, chopping an arm overhand and flinging a chakram with all her physical and magical might, rocketing it towards the nearest android's head.

There was a shower of sparks as the weapon embedded itself in the thing's mechanical skull. The android didn't dramatically explode or anything, it just sort of sagged, still kneeling in a firing pose, weapon in hand but pointed down at the floor.

Rikako had barely time to confirm her 'kill' before she turned her attention to the other android. She felt a jolt of fear when she saw that it had already spun around and was aiming its weapon at her-

She threw her other chakram, accelerating it more with her magic than her left-handed toss, the simple metal disc shone as it sliced through the air-

And the android sidestepped it, faster than humanly possible.

Rikako gaped for all of a moment before she was forced to dodge an incoming stream of weapons fire. But this wasn't like earlier when the android had been strafing, it had learned, and was quickly sweeping the weapon back and forth in irregular arcs, forcing Rikako to jump into the air and twist and reverse direction as she flew to and fro in the confined hallway. She needed to end this now-

She glanced back at the first fallen android, but she couldn't sense the weapon embedded in its head, apparently that anti-magic field persisted even after its bearer's 'death.' Then Rikako cursed at a close call as a blast of energy whined past her ear, extended her senses further, magically grasped the chakram that had wound up at the end of the hall-

This time the hostile android didn't see the attack coming, and Rikako's disc hit it right in the back, or specifically its backpack. There was a flash of light, a small explosion, and an instant later the android was blown onto its front, its uniform and artificial flesh shredded and aflame. It stubbornly tried to push itself upright-

But Rikako could sense her enemy again, and coolly lanced the android with a bolt of lightning. It jerked and went still, a deceptively-human base for a small bonfire.

Rikako panted for a moment, lowering herself from the air to stand on the ground. Then she remembered the two other androids, and so grit her teeth, stretched out with her magic, and yanked her scorched and surely-dulling weapon out of the robot's back and into her hand. She glanced back at the first fallen android, sighed when she felt its anti-magic field persisting, and gave up on pulling her other disc free. Only partially-rearmed, Rikako charged around the corner-

And saw her companions standing around the icy spot on the corridor's floor next to two fallen androids. Well, the non-Gensokyans were standing, while Kotohime was doubled over, hands on her knees, panting.

Chiyuri broke into a relieved smile at the sight of Rikako. "Ya did it!"

"I told you, Rikako knows what she's doing," Kotohime gasped with a smile.

Rikako sagged with relief, then barely managed to keep from collapsing completely as the adrenaline surge left her. Yumemi was over to help steady her in an instant. "You alright?" the former professor asked.

"I'm about at my limit," Rikako admitted. She got her feet back under her, nodded gratefully at Yumemi and adjusted her glasses. "I don't know if it's the low magic in this dimension or I'm just out of practice, but..." she winced and shook her head slowly. It was like one of those migraines she got when she stayed up all night working on a project, only for it to fail miserably and leave her in an impotent rage that kept her from catching up on her sleep.

"Know what you mean," Kotohime said, starting to recover. "Took forever to shoot that one down..." she flapped a hand at a burnt and battered shape slumped against a wall that was similarly covered in scorch marks. Then she strolled over to the second android, which didn't seem as badly damaged even though it lay with its limbs twisted at odd angles. Evidently she found something interesting, because Kotohime crouched over her defeated enemy like a vulture, her hands seeking out the numerous pockets and straps on the android's tight-fitting uniform.

"And what about that one?" Rikako had to ask.

Kotohime hopped up to her feet, smiling as she flourished the truncheon she'd pulled off the android's body. "Oh, just a bit of fancy footwork," she said with a smug grin as she tossed and caught the thing like a baton.

"And a couple of thousand volts," Chiyuri added, pointing at the wall. Rikako followed her finger and saw that one of the many cables running along the corridors had been severed and was hanging free, a few sparks tumbling out of the frayed line.

"Kotohime blasted it loose," Yumemi explained, "and luckily the cable was insulated so it was safe for me to grab it, and..." She shrugged, letting Rikako infer the rest.

Rikako nodded. "Cleverly done."

"It was loud," Ellen noted, wide-eyed and shaken.

"But hey," Chiyuri asked, frowning with confusion, "how'd ya get that door open so ya could run around and flank 'em?"

"Actually, ah, that wasn't me," Rikako said, clearing her throat awkwardly. "It just opened right when that android was about to get me-"

As she spoke, the door nearest to them abruptly slid open with a whoosh, and a helmeted, armored soldier stepped through, making Yumemi and Ellen back away in shock. "Which sounds like my cue," the interloper said cheerfully-

Kotohime blurred into action, lunging at the newcomer with her purloined weapon in hand. The guard dodged to the side, took a step back as Kotohime recovered to take another swing, and then quickly drew a truncheon of her own.

Exhausted as she was, Rikako could only watch in dull amazement as the two women clashed, their weapons clacking against each other in a flurry of movement she could barely keep up with. She hadn't realized Kotohime was so proficient in close combat, but here she was, swinging and lunging and spinning with all the skill of a seasoned swordswoman, if one bearing a blunt instrument. Yet her opponent was at least her equal, and the soldier was able to dodge or parry Kotohime's every strike.

Rikako couldn't find a clear shot to intervene, and more to the point wasn't sure she had the energy to do so. Though she couldn't help but wonder why Yumemi, Chiyuri and Ellen were content to gawk instead of doing something, it wasn't like they had been burning through magic to take down a half-dozen lethal robots-

The two truncheons locked for a moment, then Kotohime twirled hers in a way that made her opponent's weapon spin out of her hand. But the very next second, the soldier grabbed Kotohime's wrist and brought it down sharply on her thigh so that Kotohime's own weapon fell from her grasp. The two disengaged, scooped up each other's weapon, spent a moment brandishing the clubs at each other-

And the guard tossed Kotohime's weapon into the air before snatching it by its end and offering it to the noblewoman, grip-first. "You're pretty good," she said casually, without a hint of malice or exertion.

Kotohime's eyes narrowed, but she took the offered truncheon and in turn handed back the guardswoman's weapon. "Politeness dictates that I return your compliment with one of my own," she said. "But my favorite robes and my jitte and my bombs and my other toys have all been taken from me, so I'm in a bad mood, so forgive me if I instead glower at you in silence." She did so.

The soldier tilted her head back at the door she'd entered through. "Come with me and I can help you get them back."

The escaped prisoners stared at her for a moment.

"And you might want to hurry," the interloper suggested, "Response Team Three is going to be on top of us in another fifteen seconds."

The other women exchanged suspicious glances, until Ellen broke into a slightly hesitant smile. "She seems nice," the young mage decided.

And that apparently was enough. Without a spoken decision, everyone followed the guardswoman as she slipped back into the room she'd stepped out of.

-x-

-13-

There was a moment of shocked silence when the feed from the last android soldier abruptly cut off.

"Response Team Four is not responding," the security officer said unnecessarily.

Director Kushida realized her mouth was hanging open and quickly shut it before someone noticed, though fortunately no one seemed to be paying her any attention. She had read the reports, of course, watched the holo footage the observation drones had gathered. But seeing these magic-users in combat, from the eyes of their opponents, had been something else entirely. Like that purple-haired woman - the old records of her throwing gears around had been almost comical, like she was some sort of the themed superhero (or -villain), but then you realized how much damage those gears, or similar flattened metal discs, could do if hurled with enough force. And the princess by herself had been spitting out as much firepower as a full squad of soldiers-

"Where's Team Three?" Nakano asked calmly.

"En route," the lieutenant replied, pointing up at a group of dots, moving at a brisk pace from the repair bays into the heart of the base.

"And what are they equipped with?" the colonel asked.

"Even mix of null fields and force fields," answered the lieutenant after glancing aside at another screen.

"Good, those stealth systems didn't accomplish much," Nakano mused, stroking her chin. "Somehow they knew... have Team Three's dolls work in pairs of different shields, sticking close together for overlapping coverage.

"As ordered, colonel."

Kushida swallowed. "Will that, uh, be enough?" she asked. For the first time, she was less worried about losing valuable assets to a spray blaster bolt and more concerned about what these people could do to her if they fought their way to the command center.

"With every encounter we're learning more about our enemy and refining our tactics against them," Nakano replied. She straightened up. "This is not an unwinnable situation," she said loudly, lifting her head so everyone in the command center could hear. "We have the right tools for this job, we just need to use them properly. Understood?"

"Yessir!" was the soldiers' chorus.

"Outstanding." Nakano looked up at the display one last time, then spun on her heels and marched away. "You're in command until I get back," she said as she departed.

Kushida staggered in shock. "Me? W-well, if you insist-"

Nakano stopped in her tracks to give a brief bark of laughter. "Not you, the lieutenant," she said on her way to the door.

The woman at the main station stood up and saluted. "I won't let you down, sir!"

Director Kushida frowned. Well, this was a security issue and therefore a military matter, but still. The notion that she could lead in a crisis wasn't that ridiculous.

There were a few moments of busy silence in the command center as everyone with a free eye watched the dots representing Response Team Three make their way to the last point of contact with the escapees. The tension grew as the group drew ever closer, Kushida realized she was holding her breath as the visual feed showed the androids rounding one last corner, to find... nothing but wreckage and damage to the corridor.

Kushida blinked, mouth working in silence before she asked no one in particular, "Where did they go?"

-x-

"Wait, this is a supply closet," Yumemi said. The place was smaller than even Rikako's meager living room, dominated by metal cabinets, shelves, what smelled like cleaning supplies, and a desk and chair crammed into one corner. With six women jammed inside, there was barely room to shut the door behind them.

"And maintenance access," the guardswoman said. She gestured at a corner, and what Rikako initially took to be another closet opened on its own, revealing a red-lit staircase descending steeply out of sight. "Go on ahead, I've got to lock the door behind us," the woman added.

Kotohime took point, and Rikako mentally debated for a moment whether she, as someone who could fight enemies protected by anti-magic, needed to be up front with the group's other warrior, or in the rear to keep an eye on this suspicious ally. The decision was made for her when Chiyuri ungently prodded her in the back since Rikako was blocking the way.

So Rikako followed a still-fuming Kotohime down a metal staircase that clanked and shuddered alarmingly as more and more feet hit it. The level of the base they soon found themselves on was quite unlike the floor above - the walls and floors were simple concrete, and pipes and cables snaked along the metal ceiling, or crawled along the walls. The lighting was both harsh and dim, provided by a few bare lightbulbs placed at wide enough intervals that the circles of light on the dusty corridor floor didn't quite meet each other. Their footsteps were swallowed up by the constant background noise of humming machinery, and the air smelled of stone, oil and heated electrical equipment.

Yumemi was the last of the prisoners to clamber down the stairs, then there was a click from above before the guardswoman descended to join them, propping herself up on the guardrails so she could take the steps three at a time.

"There, we should be safe-ish now," she told them. "The door's locked and all the workers who might be down here are tending to a major problem on the other side of the base-"

"Who are you, and why are you opening doors for us?" Kotohime demanded, arms folded across her chest.

The guardswoman's easy smile contrasted weirdly with the reflection of Kotohime's suspicious glare in her helmet's mirrored visor. "You can call me Corporal Noriko," she said with a brief salute, "just a somewhat-promising three-year soldier with nothing on her record that would keep her from being assigned to this top secret base, but nothing about her interesting enough to pay particular attention to, either."

"Uh huh." Kotohime drummed her fingers against her own forearm. "And what about the second part of my question?"

Noriko, if that was her real name, simply shrugged, still smiling, her tone nothing but pleasant. "Well, the people running this place, they're bad guys, aren't they? Exploiting other worlds, kidnapping or trying to murder people. Someone ought to stop them."

"Evasive answers aren't doing you any favors when it comes to us deciding whether or not to blast you," Kotohime warned, wagging a finger. "And neither is that helmet; I like to look dubious allies in the eyes."

The guardswoman tapped the side of her helm. "I think I'll keep it on, thanks. I like getting a real-time update of troop positions and security actions." She tilted her head back to glance up at the ceiling, as though she could see through it. "Looks like Team Three has already swept past us, Command's thinking you might have doubled back toward the cellblock. But they've got a conventional security team setting up in front of the armory and another robot squad mustering, so that's trouble."

"I was wondering why you reek of magic," Ellen commented, nodding sagely to herself.

That actually made Noriko's smile flicker for a moment. "Thanks? Now - can we walk and talk?" The guard didn't bother to wait for a reply, and began strolling down a hallway branching off the main corridor whose walls and ceiling were near-covered with humming conduits.

Rikako found herself complying before she realized it. It must be exhaustion, she decided, that was making her susceptible to being ordered about. The others followed without comment, Chiyuri walking a bit stiffly until Ellen took her hand and smiled up at her. Kotohime came last, still sulking.

"Your stuff has been taken to the base's armory," Noriko explained, glancing back over her shoulder at them. "I suppose they didn't feel like studying any of it in the lab just yet."

"The armory, huh?" Chiyuri repeated. Rikako looked over at the other woman and saw a dangerous glint in her eye. "Guess the professor and I can grab some weapons and start pullin' our weight."

"Don't bother, they're all keyed to base personnel," Noriko warned.

"Dammit," muttered Chiyuri.

"But what about Kana?" asked Ellen, almost skipping in order to keep up with the longer-legged women.

"She is being studied," Noriko said. "They've got her in- just a second, I can show you."

The hallway ended in a big room that was even mustier and more poorly-lit than the rest of the facility's underbelly. Rikako peered around, taking in rusting pieces of machinery, stacks of abandoned technology, cardboard boxes containing who knew what-

And then she stiffened as she saw someone staring back at her with wide, lifeless eyes. Fortunately her experiences over the past day or two had left her well-prepared for this encounter, so Rikako barely had to realize she didn't smell a decomposing corpse to identify what she was looking at as another robot. A green-haired android, more like that robot nurse than the more mundane-looking military models they'd been fighting, wearing a blue dress with a maid's apron over it. Her clothes were stained and her skin was smudged, but other than that the robot girl appeared intact.

Rikako turned to see Noriko watching her - well, her face was pointed at her, with the visor it was hard to tell. "You took that well," the guardswoman commented. "I think there's been at least one technician who gave a panicked report about a body hidden down here."

"That's Ruukoto," Kotohime said accusingly. "The robot who tagged along with Yumemi and Chiyuri the first time."

"And helped sabotage us," Chiyuri growled. Then she did a double-take. "Wait, how didja know it was her, we never introduced-"

"Don't worry, now she's helping me sabotage the bad guys," Noriko assured them as she leaned over a box to peer at the robot. "Hey Ruukoto, time to activate, code: wakey-wakey."

The robot's green eyes lit up, literally, casting a soft radiance that lifted some of the shadows around her. "Hello, Corporal Noriko!" she said pleasantly as she broke into an unconcerned smile. "What can I do for you today? Do you have more files for me to process?"

"Nope, it's game time," the guardswoman said, extending a hand and helping the robot girl extricate herself from the barricade of junk that hid her from casual sight.

"Well, well," Yumemi said mostly to herself, looking none too pleased with the situation. "Guess you didn't keep your job either, eh, Ruukoto?"

Ruukoto froze in mid-step, not quite finished navigating an old toolbox. "Oh? My apologies," she said, her face almost over-exaggeratedly remorseful, "but I do not believe we have met."

"They wiped her memory some time before dumping her down here," Noriko explained. "Which isn't to say that I haven't filled her up with some interesting data," she added with a smirk.

"Like what?" asked Yumemi.

"I am sorry, that information is classified," Ruukoto said, bowing once she got both feet under her again.

"I just hope she's a better conspirator than she was an assistant," Chiyuri grumbled.

Noriko shook her helmeted head, still smiling. "You're looking at this the wrong way: Ruukoto was always a spy, only now she's spying for the good guys." She nodded at the android. "Give us a map, will you?"

"Certainly, sir!" Ruukoto stiffened slightly, and then her eyes suddenly blazed with light that fanned out to create a slowly-rotating, transparent green image that hovered in the air before the android's face.

Chiyuri put her hands on her hips. "She did not have that feature when we had her," she complained, only for Yumemi to shush her.

"Thought you might want to know where you are," Noriko said conversationally, gesturing at what Rikako realized was a three-dimensional floor plan. "This facility is a decommissioned military base at... uh, somewhere in the South Pacific," she finished with an awkward shrug. "When we get out of this, do me a favor and don't try to figure out the specifics, this base didn't officially exist even when it was operational."

Rikako frowned. "So if it's not operational, why-"

"As you can see, there's three levels," Noriko went on. "Right now we're here, on the maintenance and utilities sublevel, and above us is the main level with the quarters and offices and such. The armory is here, and the research wing is here," she said, pointing out one cube off what must be a main hallway and then one branch of the complex. "The hangar and landing pads and all that are on the surface level, and that's where they've taken your hypervessel. Good news is that they were nice enough to fix it up and fill the tanks, I think they intend to use your vehicle for some covert ops." She clapped her gloves together briskly. "Now, my suggested game plan: there's a stairway accessing the maintenance level just a few doors down from the armory, so you can pop up where they won't expect you and take it by surprise, hopefully before more robots show up. But I can't be seen with you, so you'll be on your own. Plus, Ruukoto and I have some errands to run."

"As if we needed your help fighting bad guys," Kotohime scoffed.

"Once you've got your gadgets or potions or whatever back, you'll want to head to the research labs, that's where they've got your ghost friend," Noriko continued. "It's pretty easy to get there from the armory, just follow the widest hallway through any intersections," she added, pointing out the route. "Of course, this also means you'll be easy to locate and will face fierce resistance, but..." The soldier shot them a wide grin. "Like you said, you don't need my help, so I'm sure you'll be fine."

"We'll get Kana back," Ellen said with the quiet confidence of a child who didn't understand the odds against her.

"That's the spirit!" Noriko pointed out a passage linking the second level with the base's top floor. "I'll meet up with you in the labs and we'll take this emergency staircase up to the hangar, and then we fly off into the sunset," Noriko concluded. She made a gesture toward Ruukoto, there was a click, and abruptly the floating map vanished. "That work for everyone?"

Rikako exchanged looks with the others. Ellen was perky and excited, a quite reassuring recovery from how she'd been under an anti-magic field. Chiyuri continued to glower at Ruukoto, but didn't appear hostile to this soldier who was inexplicably helping them. Yumemi seemed on guard but met Rikako's gaze and gave her a cool nod. And Kotohime-

Was still glaring at their unexpected benefactor. "You might as well go straight to the hangar after you run your 'errands,' because we'll blow through this dump so fast that we'll be in and out of the labs before you get there," boasted Kotohime.

"At least you're not lacking in confidence," Yumemi said with a wry smile.

Kotohime gave the other redhead a cocky smirk. "It's not like I haven't blasted my way through state-of-the-art military installations before. And even though the last time was in a dream dimension, that doesn't make it any less valid!"

Rikako sighed. "I'd feel better about this whole plan if our most enthusiastic fighter wasn't also our most delusional."

"We've got medicine for that," Noriko said absently. "Shame about the flavor."

"Enough gabbin', let's get goin'!" Chiyuri urged them.

"Yeah, it'll be good to be properly armed again," Kotohime nodded. Then she froze, staring at something in the room with them, before turning to give Chiyuri a sly look. "Though if you want a weapon..." She gestured at an object in the corner, some sort of lightweight, portable steel chair with hinges so it could fold almost flat for ease of storage.

Chiyuri blinked. "But why would - oh." She looked torn between annoyance and embarrassment. "C'mon, that's not funny, I only did it that one time."

"But it evidently made quite an impression," Yumemi said a bit stiffly. She muttered something to herself that sounded like 'made an impression on me.'

-x-

"Just up here," Noriko said, nodding at the narrow, steep staircase leading up out of the maintenance level. "Take a left out the door, follow the main hallway a bit, another left and you're there." Then she tilted her head back to stare up at the ceiling, presumably studying something displayed on the inside of her visor. "Looks like... yeah, no bots in the immediate vicinity, just a standard squad of human guards, and you'll be happy to know that none of them have null shields."

Rikako frowned. "What shields?"

"The things that take the 'super' out of you superheroes," Noriko explained. "They're still experimental and guzzle juice, so right now only the android squads are equipped with them." She lightly smacked the side of her helmet. "Oh, and before I forget - other androids are equipped with more conventional force fields, and a few have stealth tech-"

"Had," corrected Kotohime with a smirk.

"-so don't be surprised by that. Good news is that any given android can only pick one of those options, so if you've gotten this far you probably won't have too much trouble taking the armory," Noriko went on. "There's no turrets or anything, but the doors are thick and you're certain to trip some alarms, so try not to hang around too long. I'll do my best to disrupt their ability to call in reinforcements, but I can't make any guarantees."

Yumemi gave the guardswoman a quick bow. "Thank you for your help."

"We're helping each other," Noriko shrugged. "A nice, big distraction like a raid on the armory will make it easier for me to do my job. And the sooner you get started, the more you'll help me."

"Yeah, yeah, we're goin'," Chiyuri said, but she was grinning.

"Best of luck!" Ruukoto said with a big, closed-eye smile and cheery wave of her gloved hand. "All my records relating to your combat capability have been deleted, but I nevertheless have full confidence that you will be successful!"

Rikako just stared at the android girl for a moment, met Kotohime's eye, and shrugged before following the self-declared policewoman up the stairs.

Given how the steel staircase shook under the feet of five people tramping up it at once, just reaching the top probably counted as a minor victory. Rikako soon found herself in another gloomy supply room, lit by a single bare light bulb and stinking of unwashed socks and dusty electronics. But as she moved to clear the top of the ladder for the rest of her friends, the room's main door slid open with a faint whoosh.

"At least she remembered to unlock it for us," Kotohime said in a near-whisper.

Rikako leaned ever-so-slightly out the portal, into yes, another nearly featureless hallway lined with steel panels on the floor, walls and ceiling. There were lots of closed doorways, but no people. "We're clear," she reported.

"Let's try stealth," Kotohime suggested, nodding at the others. "Rikako and I can move silently-"

"We can?" Rikako asked, wondering why Kotohime would assume that of her.

Kotohime gave her a level look, wordlessly rose into the air to hover an inch or two off the floor, and proceeded to drift back and forth without making a sound.

"Right, right," the scientist sighed before lifting herself off the ground. She was tired from all the fighting, and even using a little magic to fly took more effort than it should in this dimension, but Rikako still had enough in her to do it.

Kotohime nodded, her expression serious, and proceeded to raise her hands, flex her fingers in a variety of signals, before silently hovering out of the closet and into the hallway.

"Uh, I don't know sign language," Chiyuri murmured, "so what was all that?"

"Only she knows," Rikako sighed before following the lunatic.

Most people in Gensokyo could fly - well, the ones worth knowing, anyway - but it was something you did when you needed to do it, not your default mode of transportation. So Rikako felt weird and a bit self-conscious as she ghosted down the hall like a restless spirit cursed to trail along in the wake of a madwoman with a penchant for explosives. Fortunately there was no one around to see her, or try to kill her.

She caught up with Kotohime as the princess briefly peeked around the corner. "Contact," Kotohime whispered. "Twenty meters, squad of soldiers digging in front of some important-looking doors, maybe ten of them. They're putting up barricades but not really paying attention."

"Right." Rikako swallowed, trying to get some moisture back in her mouth. "How do we do this?"

Kotohime stared at nothing for a moment, presumably trying to remember her quick glance at the enemy, or perhaps running through battle plans in her head. "We won't have any cover between here and there, so we'd have to go hard and fast. Can't use regular danmaku to knock 'em out, they'd get off a report before we could drop them all. They're bunched up, so you could probably catch them all in one good fireball, or you could keep using your discs-"

"Disc," Rikako corrected, her empty left hand flexing.

"-if you think you can cut them down fast enough. But..." Kotohime trailed off, frowning, and sighed.

Rikako's grip on her improvised chakram tightened. "Yeah."

But these weren't androids, killer automatons given a human appearance to help them fulfill their objectives. These were human beings, people who opposed them not of their own volition, but because of forces outside their control. True, they worked for the people who had captured them, and would probably shoot Rikako and her friends (and Kotohime) on sight, but...

The fact of the matter was that Rikako had never killed anyone. She'd dueled with rival mages, and blasted some troublesome youkai, but never to take a life. And even in this desperate situation, she wasn't sure she was ready to change that.

She shook herself out of her reverie to find Kotohime giving her an uncharacteristically understanding look. "There's got to be a better way," said Kotohime. "Maybe we could spook them? Drive them off with a scary light show, loud noises, that sort of thing?"

Rikako chewed her lip. She could try something with fire or electricity, but anything flashy enough to cause fear would almost certainly be capable of causing harm, and then there was no way of knowing how they'd react, if the soldiers would run or fire wildly. It was at moments like this that Rikako wished she had any skill as an illusionist-

Next to her Kotohime stiffened, staring back the way they'd came. "Wait-"

"What's going on?" asked Ellen as the girlish mage strolled up to the two women. A chagrined Yumemi and Chiyuri trailed close behind, slinking along as quietly as they were able.

"I'm sorry," Yumemi whispered, "but she set off before we could stop her and-" She was cut off by Rikako's adamant shushing gestures.

Kotohime gave Ellen a patient smile. "Bad guys up ahead," she said softly. "We don't really want to hurt them, so we're trying to figure out how to get past them."

The blonde girl nodded curtly. "Okay, I'll see what I can do!" she said with a cheery smile.

And without a moment's hesitation, she walked around the corner.

Someone do something! Rikako screamed mentally, but as she glanced around it seemed that everyone else was just as frozen in horror as she was.

"Excuse me?" came Ellen's voice. "Can my friends and I get through? We need to get our things, and you're in the way."

Rikako finally got her body to respond and shoved herself around the corner, already gathering up her magic to intervene. There was little Ellen, already halfway down the hallway, which met another corridor directly in front of a sturdy-looking door. In this intersection stood a squad of armed soldiers, clad in green fatigues, armored vests, and visored helmets identical to what Noriko had been waring. Many of them were working in pairs to arrange some chest-high metal barriers in front of what was presumably the door to the armory, but three or four were standing guard with their rifles out and ready. Though none of them had actually pointed their weapons at Ellen yet.

"Come again?" said the guardswoman in front of the group, confusion plain in her tone.

"I need to go past you, please," Ellen repeated. "I mean, all of us do," she added with a gesture behind her.

Another soldier leaned close to the one who had just spoken. "Sarge, I think there are the intruders we're supposed to be stopping," she hissed.

"But she's just a kid!" the sergeant complained. "What are we supposed to do, shoot her?"

None of the soldiers said anything for a moment. "She is a witch, or something. Command said she was dangerous," one spoke up.

"But I don't want to use my magic on you," Ellen explained. "It makes my hair all messy. So if you'd just-"

"Alright, girl," said the sergeant, stepping forward, "I need you to come along quietly-"

Ellen took a hurried step back. "Don't come any closer, I mean it!" She lifted her hands beside her head, spreading her fingers in sideways V's to bracket her eyes.

Some of the soldiers snickered, a few grinned warmly at the girl's posturing, but the one who had called Ellen dangerous finally raised her weapon. "Don't let her-"

Before Rikako could do anything, there was a sudden pulse of magic that she could feel even several paces away from the group of guards, an outburst of raw power that made the lights in the hallway flicker madly and a nearby door slide halfway open as its lock disengaged. Ellen didn't have to recite an incantation, or hold up a spell card, or even make an arcane gesture. There was simply a warm burst of blue-green light, a shimmer in the air that washed over the squad of soldiers, and they suddenly sagged and crumpled to the ground without so much as a groan.

Yumemi mumbled a shocked curse.

Kotohime darted over to where the youthful mage was frantically trying to smooth her frazzled hair back into its normal shape. "What was that?" she demanded.

Ellen looked up at her, golden eyes wide and innocent. "A sleep spell. Normally I cast little ones for my Long Sleep, Sweet Dreams Medicine, but there was a lot of them so-"

Rikako slowly let out a breath. In retrospect it had been foolish to think that Ellen was capable of snuffing out the lives of a whole group of people. But still, coming from a land where drawn-out, flashy magical battles were commonplace, seeing someone win an engagement in a figurative snap of her fingers...

"So why didn't'cha do that when those punks gave us trouble in San Whatever?" complained Chiyuri.

Ellen had nearly succeeded in getting her hair back under control, but took a moment to give the other blonde woman an innocent smile. "Jenny says I shouldn't use spells outside my home, it would get too much attention." The smile flickered. "She also says we need to advertise more, so it's a little confusing." She shrugged. "Anyway, it's a bit rude to leave a bunch of people snoring on the street, isn't it? Someone might rob them."

"Exactly," Kotohime said as she crouched over the nearest soldier and rifled through his pockets. She must have felt the stares they were giving her, since she looked up to say "What? I'm looking for a key to the armory. And collecting evidence."

Rikako snorted and spent a moment staring down at the slumbering guards - one murmured something and shifted onto her side, breathing deeply and peacefully - before lifting her gaze to focus on what they had been guarded. The armory entrance was a simple but particularly sturdy-looking metal door with a narrow viewing window in it, crisscrossed with little lines that suggested that the glass was reinforced as well. There wasn't a mechanical lock, but another one of those keypads like the ones in the cell block. Rikako smiled and lifted her arm-

"Wait!" Yumemi grabbed her wrist, eyes apologetic as she asked "Could we find some other way in? I think they're going to know if there's an electrical failure."

"They're going to raise an alarm when they realize none of these jokers are reporting in," Kotohime pointed out. She was unburdening a wallet of some currency, and snickered as a shiny square packet fell out in the process. "Admire your optimism, guy," she murmured.

"Hey, a sudden shortout just like the one that preceded our escape is going to be taken more seriously than someone taking too long to get on the radio," Yumemi countered.

Rikako closed her eyes for a moment, stifling a groan of frustration. At this rate, by the time they were done arguing about how best to avoid detection, they'd have another patrol to deal with. It was time for decisive action.

She studied the armory door. Big, made of some dark metal... Rikako stretched out her magical senses, attuning herself to the elements so she could get a better feel for the obstacle. It was some composite material unlike anything she'd encountered back home, but she could discern its weight and dimensions. She could almost see the electricity flowing through and around it, the keypad controlling it, and the power lines running along the rest of the hallway. And she could also sense the gaps in those lines, places where there was nothing to power, and one such gap was in a section of wall right next to the door.

Rikako grit her teeth, extended her free arm, reached out with her arcane power, clenched her fist, focused her will, and pulled.

There was a brassy snarl as a sheet of metal tore free of its mounting, peeling aside to expose another layer of steel. Sweat beaded on her brow as Rikako made another gesture, there was another ripping sound, and suddenly there was a second doorway right next to the security door, framed by the building's steel support beams and a few lines of wire running at just over head height.

Rikako let out an explosive breath and doubled over. "Why couldn't they have made this place out of stone?" she gasped. She was much better at sculpting solid rock than changing the shape of metal, which worked best if you heated it first. Brute-forcing hardened steel into a new position was exhausting.

"I think the better question is, why didn't they build a secret base in an existing stone castle?" Kotohime asked. She walked over to give a sagging Rikako a reassuring yet condescending pat on the back, then proceeded to slip through the new hole in the wall. Yumemi at least was nice enough to help Rikako up.

Rikako had to duck to avoid a drooping cable as she followed the former professor through the gap in the wall, then took a moment to study her surroundings. The armory... she wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but the room was underwhelming, more or less a starkly-lit closet the size of a small house. Metal wire shelves lined the walls, bearing strange firearms and ammunition for them, and there were a few sets of body armor that looked more like heavy jackets or vests than proper protection. Mesh cages surrounded more esoteric equipment, which presumably was more dangerous, even if Rikako couldn't guess its use.

"Wow," Chiyuri breathed from behind her. She gave Rikako an incredulous grin, then gravitated towards one of the rifles. "Oh, the fun I could have if these weren't coded," she sighed, poking at the weapon's grip and the strange texture on it.

"Here we are!" shouted Kotohime from the back of the room, next to some shelves holding plastic tubs. Rikako looked over and saw the so-called princess flourishing a familiar purple kimono, before pulling the robes on with a blinding smile on her face. "Oh, it's so good to be properly dressed again! I haven't felt so naked since the time I infiltrated that nudist colony."

"I don't want to know," Rikako muttered as she hurried over. Sure enough, there was her lab coat, neatly folded in its own container along with her bag of scientific weapons. "Looks like they have your satchel too, Ellen," she called out.

"And our mini-comps and wallets, Chiyuri," the former professor declared as she came over. "And my jacket. Good grief, why'd they even take it? I got it from a thrift shop..."

"Here's my jitte," Kotohime said happily, buckling the truncheon onto her waist before stuffing the baton she'd stolen from an android next to it. Then she remembered something, reached down a sleeve, and her smile grew even wider. "And they never found all my other stuff! Oh, this jailbreak is gonna be fun."

Rikako checked her bag, and yes, their captors had left all her vials and ready-made gears in her coat. She wasn't sure if it was a measure of their foes' confidence or the enemy overlooking what the Gensokyans used as weapons, but Rikako resolved to punish them for their mistake. She set her clunky, scrap-metal chakram down on a shelf and drew one of her properly-crafted gears - lightweight but strong, the edge's exaggerated cogwheel pattern a bit of an indulgence but still razor-sharp, the metal itself inscribed with subtle enchantments to let her manipulate the weapon with ease. Just feeling the weight of it on her palm made her feel better.

She put the gear aside for a moment, then pulled her labcoat over her shoulders, tugged it into place, flexed her fingers, and had to suppress a smile of her own. She'd gone years without wearing the outfit, but after putting it on again just a day or so ago, the scientist had found herself keenly missing it. Now, with her sturdy white coat wrapped around her shoulders, Rikako felt almost rejuvenated.

Next to her, Yumemi abruptly stiffened. "Oh my god," she gasped.

"Something wrong?" Rikako asked, frowning with concern.

Yumemi was staring at something hanging on a hook on the other side of a mesh cage tucked away in a corner. From what Rikako could see it was just a piece of red fabric, but when Kotohime came over her reaction was similar to Yumemi's.

Chiyuri ambled over to see what the fuss was. "What's the big - oh! Wow! The bastards must've confiscated that too, huh?" she chuckled.

"I thought I'd lost it," Yumemi said in a dazed voice. She reached for the cage's steel door, though of course it was locked with another of those electronic, keypad-activated security systems. The former professor sighed. "Damn, if we had some way of hacking this..."

"Would my spray work?" Ellen asked, stepping forward even as she rummaged through her bag.

Yumemi blinked. "What spr- oh, the stuff you brought to fix the hypervessel?" She laughed. "I almost forgot you had it. And it will, uh, make this little computer do what we want it?"

"Sure!" Ellen said brightly. "I have to use it because I'm not too good at this scientific magic yet." She produced a small can, bent slightly, and sprayed the electronic lock with a fog of something that smelled of-

Rikako sniffed. "Lemons?"

Ellen looked up from her work to smile at her. "Yeah! It's syncretic magic, since you can use lemons as a simple battery. I got the idea helping Jenny with a science experiment back when she was still in grade school." She frowned slightly. "It would also work with potatoes, but those don't smell as good, don't you agree?"

Funny, Rikako had never heard of that. It sounded almost like something Kotohime would come up with, but since it was coming from Ellen it was probably true...

"Okay, door," Ellen said, returning her attention to the lock. "We need you to open for us." The tip of her tongue protruded as she concentrated on selecting the right key, but when she stabbed a fingertip forward, the lock went beep and the cage's door immediately clicked and swung open. "Thanks, door!" said Ellen.

Chiyuri gave a breathless laugh. "She invented a hackin' spray. Unbelievable."

Yumemi said nothing, but slipped inside the enclosed set of shelves. She pulled what turned out to be a red cape off a hook, holding it up under one of the banks of electric lights running along the ceiling. "I always assumed I left it in Gensokyo, or on the ship when we returned it," she murmured. "Wonder if it even fits..."

"Do it," Kotohime whispered, tears brimming in her eyes. "Become the heroine you were born to be."

Yumemi stepped free of the confines of the cage, swirled the fabric through the air dramatically, pulled the cloak over her shoulders, and tugged it into place. The fastener clicked, and Yumemi posed with her hands on her hips, feet set in a wide stance and a challenging grin on her face. "How do I look?"

"The bad guys are screwed," Chiyuri snickered. Her good cheer faded. "Wait a minute, if they held onto that, could they have..." She squeezed past her companion and into the enclosed storage section, popping open the containers and drawers surrounding the hook where Yumemi had found her cape. Rikako leaned over, trying to see what Chiyuri was looking for-

"Oh, here's my phone!" Rikako glanced back to see Ellen rummaging around in the bag she had brought with her the previous night, finally withdrawing a slender device that looked quite similar to the things Chiyuri and Yumemi had been using. "I should call Jenny and let her know where I am, she's probably worried."

"Ah..." Rikako blinked. "Ellen, I'm not sure your phone will be able to do that. We are in another dimension, and-"

But Ellen was oblivious, and tapped at what could have been a very small and flat television screen before holding it against the side of her head. "Hi, Jenny! It's-" The young mage's face crumpled with remorse. "I know, I'm sorry! I didn't forget this time, we just got captured by some bad guys, but we're escaping now and- no, you don't need to call the police, Rikako says we're in another dimension, whatever that is."

Rikako inspected the ceiling over Ellen, searching for the tell-tale burning hole that would indicate one of those reverse-lightning bolts had come out of Ellen's device as it had for Yumemi's communicator, but found nothing.

"I'm just letting you know I'm okay and should be home in time for supper," Ellen said confidently. She frowned. "And that reminds me, has Sokrates been eating his canned food?" She listened for a moment, then sighed and gave Rikako a rueful look. "I don't think he likes the seafood pack, we'll have to go back to chicken," she confided.

But Rikako had noticed something outside the armory. "Um, Ellen-"

"Oh, I need to go, Jenny," Ellen said into her device. "See you later!"

She had barely put the communicator into her pocket before Rikako grabbed Ellen, not-quite-gently yanking her into a bear hug and out of the line of fire as a few bolts of crimson energy whined through the hole in the armory's wall.

"More androids!" the scientist yelled.

Kotohime was suddenly hovering behind her, peering over Rikako's shoulder at the oncoming threat. "Sure wish they'd throw in a mutant or something for variety."

-x-

-14-

Even if the approaching figures hadn't been identical to each other and all the other androids Rikako had fought, their inhumanity was obvious - they moved unnaturally smoothly, each stride the exact same length and in sync with each other. They didn't slow as they reached the slumbering guards still sprawled in the corridor, but stepped over the bodies without looking down, their eyes still locked on Rikako and the others as the androids fired bursts of angry red energy to keep the prisoners suppressed. They only split up when they navigated the half-finished barricade the human soldiers had been putting together, and then they were almost at the armory itself-

Rather than watch the assault happen, Rikako decided to take more substantive action. With a shout of effort she managed to force the peeled metal panels back into place, undoing the work that had used up so much of her magical energy, but at least sealing the hole they had entered through.

"And now we're locked in a dead end," Kotohime commented as she went on tiptoes to peer through the reinforced window of the chamber's proper door. She didn't so much as flinch after several bolts of energy impacted against the portal to no effect.

Rikako swept her sweaty bangs off of her spectacles, glowering at the other woman. "I didn't see you doing anything."

"I was about to throw a bomb, but like I said, someone shut us in," Kotohime said with an arched eyebrow.

Before Rikako could offer a retort, there was a click, a faint hiss of hydraulics, and then the armory's reinforced door began sliding sideways into the wall. And Rikako realized in the long seconds she spent frozen in shock, watching that happen, that of course the base's security forces would have free access to where the weapons were stored.

Then she had to jam herself against hard steel shelves in an attempt to avoid the hostile fire ripping through the now-open door. On the bright side, it looked like Ellen had enough presence of mind to take cover herself, and the girl was small enough to crawl onto the bottom shelf, taking her totally out of sight of the androids. Rikako considered imitating her before deciding she'd probably get shot in the rump during the attempt, and focused on crouching as best she could.

There was a yell of alarm from deeper in the armory, and Rikako looked back to see Yumemi pulling her head back into the mesh cage that had contained her cape. At least she and Chiyuri were out of the line of fire back there, Rikako reasoned. And Kotohime-

Was pressed up against the armory doorframe, fishing for something up the sleeve of her robe. "Been waiting all day for this," Kotohime said eagerly as she extracted something round and metallic. "Frag out!" she shouted as she lobbed the bomblet into the hall.

There were flashes of return fire, but Kotohime was out and back into cover before anything came near her. Rikako could see her lips move as Kotohime counted to herself, then there was an echoing crump and a flash of light. Kotohime broke into a wide smile and stepped through the door to see her handiwork-

And immediately had to fling herself into cover to dodge another flurry of shots. "This is completely unfair!" Kotohime ranted over the whine of the energy bolts. "The one time in like forever I get to use an actual deadly explosive and it doesn't do squat!"

Rikako peeked out of cover just enough to get a glance at their attackers, who had split into pairs flanking either side of the door. There was a scorch mark on the floor between them, but the enemy didn't have so much as a rip in their outfits.

"You wanna try your gears?" Kotohime offered.

Rikako considered. All the brute-force magic she'd been doing over the course of their escape had left her on the verge of exhaustion, but her weapons had been specially-designed to be thrown around, and should be much easier to use. Plus she had a few other tricks in her bag-

Something small blurred through the air, bouncing once off the floor with a metallic tink before coming to a halt directly between Rikako and Kotohime. Rikako had just enough time to realize that the androids had responded in kind to Kotohime's grenade before-

The self-declared policewoman dove on the device, grabbing it with both hands, and Rikako though her companion had actually done something heroic for once and was sacrificing herself to save the rest of them. But Kotohime immediately pushed herself off the floor and back out of sight of the armory entrance. To Rikako's bewilderment, there was no sign of the grenade, nor was there any explosion.

"Ellen!" Kotohime shouted instead of explaining what had just happened. "The spray!"

Against the odds, the lunatic had a good idea, Rikako decided. "See if you can use it on the door's controls," Rikako advised, "get it to close again."

"Ok-kay," Ellen said uncertainly, giving them a wide-eyed nod. The little mage managed to crawl along the shelves almost all the way to the doorframe, then slipped past another few potshots to press herself against the wall next to the door's controls. She pulled out her spray-application potion, and soon the smell of lemons was competing with all the ozone from the energy blasts flying around. A moment later, something went beep and the door slid closed.

"Well done!" Kotohime said with a big grin. "We are now safe from enemy fire, if still trapped in a dead end."

The enemy androids continued to stare emotionlessly at the people behind the armored door, but they nonetheless seemed surprised by this turn of events. Then they all replaced the magazines of their weapons in perfect synchronization, making Rikako's skin crawl. Her unease only grew when two of them began advancing slowly on the door, their weapons unerringly aimed through the window at her head.

The scientist took in a sharp breath. "If they get one of those 'null shields' close enough, will that undo Ellen's spray?"

"Seems likely," Kotohime said, shifting from cheerful to grim as she drew her truncheon. "And our magic too. Be a good time to come up with a plan."

"I can throw the door at them," Rikako said wearily. "Maybe," she admitted.

Kotohime immediately stretched her arms out, unleashing a concentrated stream of purple magic from each hand - almost like laser beams - that she quickly traced along the inside of the doorway. In the beams' wake the metal glowed orange. "Loosened it up for ya," Kotohime gasped when she had finished the circuit. "Man, magic is harder here," she complained while swiping sweat from her brow.

"I'll wait until they're close," Rikako said tersely, staring out through the armored window, her teeth bared as she watched the pair of androids come closer. And more importantly felt that field of emptiness draw near. Just a few steps now-

"Going on the offensive?" came Yumemi's voice from close behind. "Got your back," she said confidently.

Rikako only spared the other woman a quick glance - she could tell something about her was different, but she didn't have time to give her a proper inspection, or ask what she had planned. The androids were almost upon them, so she clenched her fists, took in a deep breath, and then shouted with effort as she attuned her will to metal and pushed-

Somehow, the androids dodged, leaping to either side of the door as it rocketed out to smash into the barricade. Kotohime was up in a flash, almost flying in the door's wake as she rushed into the corridor, her purple danmaku raking towards the second pair of androids before they could shoot. Rikako forced herself skyward once more, ready to follow-

Only to be interrupted by a crimson blur shooting out of the armory.

Yumemi Okazaki was flying, her cape billowing behind her as she swooped up towards the ceiling, spun around, and unleashed twin streams of energy from her hands, rapid-fire pulses of red rings that sent the android to Rikako's left staggering back in a spray of embers. The enemy took some potshots back, but Yumemi managed to juke and dodge, keeping up the pressure like she was fighting a proper danmaku duel.

Rikako realized she was staring and lurched into action. She swept out of the armory just in time to see the android to her right get back on its feet and swing its weapon around. She couldn't sense that aching void of magic, so she flung out a hand and tried a quick burst of magic. But her azure octahedral danmaku impacted on something just before they hit the android, their energy dissipating as if they'd collided with an invisible suit of armor that flashed blue before disappearing once more.

On the bright side, now Rikako didn't have to get Yumemi or Chiyuri to explain what a "force field" was.

She dodged to the side when the android dropped to a knee and fired back, and the scientist tried a different tactic, tossing one of her gears forward. It was so much easier than hurling those discs about earlier - in this case the gear was constructed so she'd be able to magically manipulate it in flight, and accelerated on its own after she threw it. A bullet being fired compared to a javelin being thrown, in other words. So the weapon ripped through the air, almost faster than the eye could follow, only to abruptly ricochet into the ceiling in a shower of sparks and flickering energy as it glanced off that invisible barrier surrounding the android.

Rikako bared her teeth, made a gesture, and caught her gear as it shot out of the ceiling and into her hand, while trying to think and dodge at the same time and come up with some way of defeating-

"Keep shooting, you can batter down the shield!" shouted Yumemi as she flew over, firing what could only be classified as danmaku. The android's barrier glowed red under the assault, and when Rikako added her fire the result was an eye-searing purple that completely obscured their target behind a human-sized sphere of light. Then suddenly there was a flash, a burst of electricity, and the mechanical woman was being blown off her feet by the sheer amount of punishment she was taking. Rikako's brow furrowed as she repressed her revulsion for pouring this much magic into a humanoid target-

And something critical must have been hit, because the android abruptly exploded, sending a blazing limb spinning like a kasha's wheel down the hallway.

Rikako hovered for a moment, trying to catch her breath, and turned to Yumemi to ask a few questions-

"Kotohime," the redhead said suddenly, and accelerated away.

Rikako heaved a sigh and followed her back to the intersection.

The bursts of purple light had ceased, which Rikako took to mean that Kotohime's fight was over. She was right, but not in the way she had expected - Rikako rounded the corner right after Yumemi and saw the lunatic sprawled on the floor just behind the barricade, struggling to get upright while the remaining two androids advanced purposefully, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Rikako took a snap-shot, but cursed when her attack simply disappeared before it would have hit her target, then she had to go evasive when the androids starting shooting back. Yumemi started shooting, but her danmaku merely impacted against another invisible shield. Which meant, Rikako realized, that one of the androids was warded against magic, the other was warded against conventional attacks, and with the two that close together, there was no way to bypass one's defenses before overwhelming the other.

So she needed to break up their formation. Rikako let herself drop to the floor next to Kotohime's prone form, behind one of the metal barricades the still-slumbering soldiers had been erecting. She landed and hunkered down, partly to stay in cover, partly because she didn't think she could fly and do this at the same time. Then she reached into her nearly-drained reserves of magical power, gripped the barricade with her will, tried to hurl it forward into her enemies-

Only to scream in pain as the metal barrier merely jolted. It felt like Rikako had torn a muscle trying to lift too heavy a load, except she had strained something less tangible. She slumped onto her hands and knees next to Kotohime, her vision going dark for a moment, but she shook her head and lifted her gaze as the androids-

There was a strange ripple in the air, followed a split-second later by flashes of eye-searing, red-white light centered on the pair of androids that quickly resolved themselves into... Rikako blinked, doubting her own senses. The light expanded and shifted to become a trio of crosses - crucifixes? - sporting what could only by the Seal of Solomon inscribed within their centers. The display only lasted for a few heartbeats, but forced the two androids apart as humming energy filled the space they'd been moving through. One stumbled sideways into the middle of the hallway, a sleeve of its uniform on fire, but there was another weird distortion-

And the android stiffened before being replaced with another of those glowing red-white crosses. When the light show faded, the very scorched robot slowly flopped onto its back, smoke coiling out of what was left of its face.

That left only one, presumably the android with the force field. Rikako spotted the second enemy turning to retreat, only to stagger as Kotohime strode forward with her hands outstretched as she shot a sustained stream of purple danmaku into it. She was soon joined by Yumemi, who swooped down to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other redhead, and their combined efforts turned the android's force field an almost opaque shade of magenta before it suddenly exploded.

Rikako sagged in relief - she hadn't gotten everyone killed by failing at the worst possible moment. She looked over the scattered bits of android, wished she could breathe something cleaner than ionized air that stank of overheated electronics and burning cloth, and tried to push herself to her feet-

Just in time to get nearly knocked off them as Chiyuri burst out of the armory, Ellen stumbling along behind her.

"It still works!" Chiyuri shouted, eyes shining with excitement.

"It still works!" Yumemi crowed back, striking a heroic pose, hovering in the middle of the corridor with her hands on her hips and cape fluttering behind her. She let her head tilt back and laughed uproariously, making Rikako worry that whatever mental illness Kotohime had was contagious.

"It still works!" Ellen chimed in, grinning widely, if somewhat uncertainly. "What is it, though?" She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "Smells like magic..."

"My old battle rig," Yumemi explained as she twisted and twirled in mid-air, bobbing slightly with the motion. "Put it together after the first day of observing Gensokyans in battle, so I could meet you guys on equal terms at the end of the tournament. Miniaturized anti-gravitic engines to cancel the wearer's body weight, scaled down repulsor systems for maneuvering, state-of-the-art photonic emitters in the palms... see?" She held up a hand, pointing out the shiny metal disc in the center of her palm, and the straps and cables running down her arm to the harnesses on her torso and limbs.

"It's a... device," Rikako breathed, her fatigue vanishing in light of this technological wonder. Despite coming from a world without active magicians, Yumemi had managed to invent a... thing that let her fly and battle as well as any magic-user in Gensokyo.

"Oh, so that's how you could fight me," Kotohime realized.

Chiyuri gave her a look. "Well yeah. How'd ya think we dueled you back in the day?"

Kotohime shrugged. "Figured it'd be rude to ask."

"Why would you be interested in magic if you could already build something like this?!" Rikako hadn't meant for her question to be so loud and exasperated, but buried her chagrin under indignation.

Yumemi looked surprised, before rallying and countering with "Well, why would you build a jetpack if you could already fly, huh?"

"Ladies," Kotohime said with an amused grin, "now's not the time to argue over the merits of the predominant philosophies of our respective dimensions. The important question," she went on, turning to Chiyuri, "is where is your battle rig? 'cause I remember you flying around back then, too."

"Good question," Chiyuri said with a scowl. "There was only the professor's on the shelf. Maybe they've got mine stored somewhere else?"

"We can only hope," Yumemi remarked as she landed to stand with the others. "You guys okay?" she asked Kotohime and Rikako.

"I'm spent," Rikako said bluntly. "It'll be a while before I can even fly again, much less fight."

"You've earned a break," Kotohime soothed. "Don't worry, me and Yumemi can handle things from here."

"What about you, though?" Chiyuri asked. "I saw ya go down when-"

"I didn't- I mean..." Kotohime cleared her throat. "It was a tactical maneuver. Feign defeat, then strike when they let their guard down. And it worked!" she said with a forced smile.

"Right," Yumemi said, obviously unconvinced. "We can't get overconfident now that we're re-equipped, we still need to go through more of the facility."

"And get Kana back," Ellen added quietly.

"So we should get moving, before more androids show up, or these guys wake up," Yumemi said, nodding at the crowd of sleeping soldiers further down the hall. Rikako was mildly surprised that none of them had been hit by a stray magical bullet, though perhaps they had and simply slept through it.

"I hope they don't get in trouble for this," Ellen said timidly. "I don't think they were bad people."

"They should be fine," Kotohime assured her. "If their bosses are paying attention, by now it should be clear that we're unstoppable."

-x-

"What the hell was that?!" demanded the lieutenant in charge of the command center.

It wouldn't do to say that the mood in the facility's headquarters was panicked, but the loss of another team of androids wasn't being received well. Director Kushida glanced around saw bewilderment and carefully-managed fear in the eyes of the base personnel.

A technician replayed the last seconds of footage from the androids on his screen, then froze a few frames and sent them to the main holographic display. "Unknown, sir," he said. "It looks similar to the attacks used by some of the fugitives, but it wasn't affected by the null fields."

"They couldn't have stolen a weapon from the armory, those are all keyed to specific users," the lieutenant said with a frown.

"That wasn't an ordinary weapon," Kushida chimed in, stepping forward to address the lieutenant. "It was an experimental combat system recovered during the initial phase of this project. One of the prisoners must have found it." Despite the situation, Kushida couldn't help but feel a flash of vindication - she had argued that the device should be stored in the labs, but Nakano considered it a weapon and wanted it lumped with the others in the armory.

The lieutenant didn't acknowledge Kushida's input, though, and kept her attention on the technician. "Anything from Second Squad?"

"No sir," another operator answered. "Their biometrics are all positive, but they don't seem to have recovered from... uh, whatever they did to them."

"Probably some sort of spell," Kushida supplied.

"I figured that, yes," the lieutenant growled.

On the bright side, they were gaining all sorts of useful data from this, Kushida reminded herself. It was a case study of just what these magic-users could do when confronted with seemingly-insurmountable situations - when put up against an android team with state-of-the-art anti-magic shielding, one of them had managed to disable the robots anyway through creative applications of force. Then the prisoners went on to vanish and reappear on the other side of the facility, incapacitate a squad of conventional soldiers before they managed to get in a single report, tear through reinforced steel walls, and for an encore defeat a squad of androids equipped with both conventional and null shields.

Kushida just wished that they could get the situation under control before the escapees did any further damage. And she was still trying to shake the feeling that there was more going on here than she was aware of, even though there hadn't been any suspicious 'glitches' since that one earlier.

The lieutenant gestured up at the holographic display showing force deployments. "Well, there's no use trying to guard the armory now. I want Third Squad to redeploy to the research wing, that seems to be the way they're headed. Fourth Squad should move up and try to rouse Second Squad. Is Response Team One ready yet?"

"Just about," another officer reported. "One unit's repairs aren't completed, and we don't have a replacement for the one we lost the other day, but they'll be combat ready once they're done rebooting."

"Good," the lieutenant said with a nod. "Once they're out, have them sweep the halls between the armory and the labs."

"I wonder how they know where to go?" Kushida mused to herself. "Some sort of divination spell?"

"If the androids make contact," the lieutenant continued, ignoring her, "have them-"

Suddenly the hologram flickered, the station map giving way to an animated, two-dimensional image of a picturesque coastline. Then the 'camera' swooped in to focus on a boy in an ostentatious and comically-oversized robe.

Kushida boggled for a moment, but before she could demand an explanation from someone, she clasped her ears as every speaker in the command center began blaring some cheery and cheesy music. Some of the operators cried out and clawed at their headphones.

"Status report!" the lieutenant shouted. "What's going on?"

"That's..." One of the guards flanking the door stepped forward, staring stupefied at the animation now taking up the main screen. "That's Serene Doge Little Venice!"

Kushida turned. "What?" The question came out as an unnecessary shout right after someone managed to turn down the speakers.

The guardswoman blushed. "Um, it's a show about - it's basically European history, except all the Italian city-states and stuff are personified as cute little boys, and they get into fights and romances based on real politics, and..." She stared down at her feet, face blazing. "And it's really educational and sweet and funny..." she mumbled.

"It's on every screen!" a technician spoke up. "All the radio frequencies, too, and it looks like our computer network is wholly focused on running it instead of responding to commands! We're locked out!"

There was a moment of shocked silence in the command center - or rather what would be silence if it weren't for the stupid theme music playing from the sound system. "Ply the seas of love, Elected ruler of our hearts..."

"Right," the lieutenant said suddenly. "You, you and you," she said, pointing at the commander center's technicians, "work on getting us back into our network. You three," she went on, pointing at some guards, "get out there and see if there's a computer this garbage isn't playing on. When you find one, come running back."

"You may not be strong, But with wisdom and daring you will conquer-"

"Quickly," the lieutenant added through clenched teeth.

Kushida just sighed, wishing her instincts had been wrong, but it was obvious that the prisoners had someone helping them from the inside. She also knew better than to tell the lieutenant this. No, this was a problem only someone like her could solve.

"I'm heading out," she announced with what she felt was cool determination.

The lieutenant's eyebrows rose ever-so-slightly. "Are you sure that's wise, Director?" she asked in a tone that suggested she didn't actually care.

"You've got your job to do, and I have mine," Kushida said somberly, before stepping between the command center's guards and out the door. She managed to keep a stern expression until she was safely in the hallway, then she had to fight back a chuckle - good grief, she was starting to sound like Hitomi!

Where was the colonel, anyway?

-x-

At least the group's redheads were having fun, Rikako said to herself as she jogged along.

She, Chiyuri and Ellen were trying to move as fast as caution allowed, always on the alert for a sudden door opening as they progressed through the base's seemingly-deserted halls. Kotohime and Yumemi flew as a vanguard, darting ahead to clear intersections and occasionally swooping overhead to check for signs of pursuit. And when they found hostiles-

There was a blast of light and sound from a side passage up ahead, followed closely by maniacal laughter. Rikako and Chiyuri halted as a soldier burst into the hall, but he was completely ignoring the prisoners as he fled. Then a quick burst of purple danmaku hit him in the back, pitching him forward to hit the floor helmet-first. He skidded nearly to the other side of the corridor, struggled briefly to get up, but evidently decided he was better off on the ground and went limp.

"That one was mine!" came Yumemi's voice shortly before the former professor popped into sight.

"Then you either should've shot him or called dibs," Kotohime said as she emerged. She took notice of the rest of the escapees and gave them a big grin. "Just another half-dozen normies," she announced. "Looks like we caught a group on the move, and they're more interested in running than putting up a fight. No sign of any robots, so no more garbage force fields."

"So much fighting," Ellen murmured. The childish mage's eyes were locked on the fallen soldier, and filled with concern.

"Don't worry, he'll be fine," Kotohime assured her. "Yumemi and I are pulling our metaphorical punches."

"I have to really crank this thing up to take down a robot," Yumemi added, pointing at one of the discs in the palm of her hand.

"But my sleep spell doesn't hurt them," Ellen pointed out.

"I know that technically you're the oldest person here, and may very well be the most powerful, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable putting you on the front line," Kotohime replied. Then she smirked at the unconscious soldier. "And a little pain can be instructive."

"And I thought I was the professor here," Yumemi quipped. "Back to it," she said as she flew ahead of them again, her scarlet cape fluttering behind. Kotohime cackled and soon followed.

And the rest of the group did as well, if more slowly and carefully. Which was good for Rikako's lungs and legs, and let her address a nagging question.

"So why aren't the androids using anything like Yumemi's, ah, 'rig?'" she asked Chiyuri.

The blonde woman seemed surprised. "Huh? Well, like the professor said, she made it herself. I'd say it's one-of-a-kind except she made one for me too," she said with a grin.

"But this facility confiscated your devices," Rikako went on as they paused to help Ellen step over an unconscious soldier sprawled out on the middle of the hallway floor. "Couldn't they reproduce them, mass-produce them?"

Chiyuri seemed only slightly troubled at the thought. "I suppose... but what would be the point? We made those rigs for danmaku duels, nonlethal, 'one hit you're out' combat, so there's no armor or anything. And the professor didn't mention it, but she's gotta be drainin' a lot of power ampin' up those emitters so they can take down a robot."

"So they're not practical for a real battle," Rikako summarized, ignoring the echoing sounds of combat and excited whooping coming from ahead of them.

"Yeah, it's like the problem with a hover tank," Chiyuri said with a grin. "Ya can either get flight or heavy armor and weaponry, but not both. Ya couldn't wear a proper suit of flak armor with one of those rigs and expect to fly, to say nothing 'bout force field generators or those null-fields - there wouldn't be enough juice left for the anti-grav and repulsors. I think it'd actually be easier for us if the bots were in those rigs, you and Kotohime are used to shootin' things out of the sky, yeah?"

"I'm a little out of practice," Rikako admitted with a smile, "but I see what you mean."

They came to a sudden stop as a corner ahead of them lit up with a blue glow, as a stream of eye-searing bolts of azure energy impacted against the near wall with a roar. Yumemi and Kotohime hastily darted back into sight, then pressed close against the intersection as another volley knocked a now-warped and scorched metal panel off the wall.

Chiyuri swore. "That sounded like a proper cannon."

"Something on a tripod, behind a barricade," Yumemi confirmed, looking a bit frazzled. "It, uh, it shoots fast." She noticed something. "Kotohime, your robes are on fire."

The princess looked down and glared at the flames licking along the hem of her clothing, and irritably bent over to swat them out. "I thought I did a better job of grazing through all that. So, any suggestions?" she asked.

Rikako glanced at a nearby door. "Cut through rooms to try and flank them?"

"We'd burn lots of resources and don't know if the rooms even connect," Chiyuri replied. "Uh, don't suppose ya have any magic that would help?" she asked, turning towards Gensokyo's scientist.

"Ask me again after I get eight hours of sleep and a decent meal," Rikako said dryly. She could probably manage a fireball or something crude like that, but with as little energy as she had, she'd prefer to save it for an absolute emergency.

"Um, I might be able to do something," Ellen said.

The other women exchanged glances. "If it has the same range as that sleep spell of yours, let's not risk it," said Yumemi.

Ellen was shaking her head. "No, I was thinking I could cast a spell on you here, and then you could go around the corner."

"What kind of spell?" asked Yumemi, torn between interest and wariness.

"Well, we just need to get these guys to stop shooting magic at us and run away, right? So I'll make you scary."

Rikako frowned, getting interested despite herself. "Some sort of mind-affecting enchantment?"

Ellen shook her bushy blonde head again. "An illusion, actually, to make Yumemi look scarier but keep them from actually hitting her."

"If nothin' else, the camouflage would be useful, professor," Chiyuri said.

Yumemi bared her teeth in a challenging grin. "Alright. Hit me, Ellen."

The mage blinked. "Um, do I have to?"

Chiyuri snickered and pinched Ellen's cheek. "Aren't ya just precious. She means cast the spell, sweetie."

A flustered Ellen managed to step away from Chiyuri to stand before Yumemi, then took a deep breath. "Okay, here we go!" Once again she spread her fingers in two sideways V's beside her eyes, her childish face set with almost comical concentration, there was a ripple in the air-

And Yumemi landed heavily on her hands and knees as the lights in their section of hallway flickered madly. "Hey, what did you-" But before the former professor could start complaining, she just as suddenly jolted into the air, jerking around a bit as her flight systems shuddered back to life.

"Sorry!" Ellen said quickly. "This is why I use my sprays on scientific magic!"

"Well next time-" Yumemi started to say, only to shut up when the words came out with a deep, sinister echo. Rikako did a double take - she'd been looking directly at Yumemi when she fell out of the air, but now she was close to the other side of the hallway. And, come to think of it, about twice as big as normal.

Chiyuri took a step back, eyes widening. "Geez. That's somethin'."

Even as they watched, the apparition of Yumemi became more sinister, her features darkening until her eyes glowed out of a woman-shaped void that was draped in a cloak of vaporous crimson shadows. And then Rikako's stomach lurched as the monstrous figure grinned at them with a maw full of jagged tusks.

"Neat trick," came Yumemi's voice. It was distorted and deep, but the woman was whispering to keep it from being overwhelming. "So you conceal the user's real position while at the same time creating a spooky double."

Ellen nodded, smiling proudly. "My Uncle Arcus taught me this. He'd use it on things like cats when he was bored and wanted to scare people." Her gaze grew distant. "It's been a long time since I've seen him, I think..." Then she noticed that her hair was fluffed out again, blushed, and started trying to smooth it out, her motions accompanied by faint crackles of static.

"I'll be right back," Yumemi growled. Then she - as well as the monstrous image she was controlling - flew around the corner again.

This time there wasn't a flurry of weapons fire to greet her, but a moment of shocked silence that was soon shattered by several high-pitched screams. The booming demonic laugh that followed shook the facility like an earthquake.

"Drown in your despair, puny mortals!" thundered Yumemi. "The true inheritor of this world has arrived to purge the unworthy!"

This was answered by more screams, and a few flashes of red and blue light as wild bolts of energy impacted against the corner, but these soon tapered off while Yumemi kept chortling like a fiend, so Rikako assumed the fight was going well.

Chiyuri, meanwhile, only groaned and let her head tilt back, but she was grinning. "Of all the corny..."

"What?" asked Kotohime. "That was a great speech. I mean, if you're a demon lord."

"I'll explain later," Chiyuri assured her.

One last burst of danmaku fire echoed around the corner, then Yumemi called "All clear!" in that infernal yet feminine and cheerful voice. Kotohime didn't so much as peek around the corner before marching around it, and since she wasn't cut down in a hail of energy blasts, Rikako decided it was safe enough.

This group of soldiers had done a better job of putting up a barricade than the one they had run into earlier - the chest-high metal barriers were positioned in a semicircle in front of the door at the end of the corridor, and interlocked in a way that had kept them in formation even in a heavy firefight. But the soldiers who had been manning the defenses were scattered about on the ground, and a heavy weapon that had been clamped to the barrier was now a mangled, smoking wreck. Since Rikako didn't see any blood or burns on the half-dozen or so unconscious guards, she surmised that they'd been knocked unconscious by Yumemi's scientific danmaku.

Yumemi herself - or rather the apparition she was disguised as - was hovering over her handiwork. "They couldn't even aim straight," she burbled like an oni challenged to arm wrestling. "Just panicked and got blasted."

"They were supposed to run away and not get hurt!" Ellen protested.

The demon-Yumemi shrugged, which just looked weird. "The ones who tried to had nowhere to go, so I knocked them out before they caused any problems."

"Ah, you can dispel that illusion now, right?" Rikako asked Ellen. She hated to admit it, but this twisted simulacrum of Yumemi was one of the most unsettling things she'd seen, and Rikako lived in a fantastic dumping ground for all matter of monsters and horrors. Which made it all the more surprising that little Ellen was the one who came up with it, Rikako mentally added.

"Got it!" Ellen narrowed her eyes, staring intently at the faux-Yumemi, then did that thing with her spread fingers at her temples again. Not a magical gesture Rikako had seen before meeting Ellen, but it still resulted in a pulse of power that messed with the lights and made Yumemi land on the floor with a squeak. "Aaaaah, I wish I brought along my hair spray," Ellen lamented as her hair once again went wild.

Almost immediately the dark giant in the hallway vanished, revealing Yumemi standing a few paces to the side of where it had been. Chiyuri promptly walked over to her companion and poked her in the collarbone.

"You've got some 'splainin' to do!" Chiyuri said, though she was grinning.

Yumemi looked guilty as she adjusted her cape. "About what?"

"That speech!" Chiyuri poked her again. "I distinctly remember ya sayin' that ya had no interest in, and I quote, such a 'puerile excuse for entertainment.'"

"I wasn't interested, but the first season got uploaded, and it was the only thing on, and..." Yumemi noticed the others watching and blushed hotly. "And you know it's hard to find ways to fill up all my free time," she said quietly.

"Well, next time you're bored and I'm around, let's watch season two together, okay?" Chiyuri told her. She nodded at the set of heavy doors behind the barricade. "Now c'mon, we've only got another twenty ri to go," she said with a wide grin.

Yumemi had to clasp a hand to her mouth and nose as she snorted, doubling over with the effort of not laughing. Then she noticed the blank stares coming from the others. "It's um, it's a joke, from the show, and..." Yumemi smiled awkwardly. "I guess you guys don't have Maruyama in your world, do you?"

Chiyuri smirked at them. "It's basically The Tale of Genji, only there's more musical numbers than are strictly necessary, and it turns out he's a robot."

Rikako exchanged a glance with Kotohime, but evidently the lunatic was just as clueless as she was. "Well, ah, here we are at the research wing," Rikako said to move things along.

"And I thought I was the detective," Kotohime commented, pointing up at the sign over the door reading 'Research.'

Rikako glowered, then took a moment to size up the door - it was different from every other portal they'd passed through, one heavy piece of metal framed by bulkheads, large enough to admit at least three people walking abreast, and thick enough that Rikako immediately ruled out trying to use magic to tear through it. But there was as always a little keypad set in the wall next to it, along with something that looked like a speaker.

"Ellen, do you want to use your spray again?" Yumemi asked.

The little mage gave her a worried look. "Um, there's not much of it left. It's one of our most popular products, you see, and I hadn't restocked yet, so I had just the one can, and we've already used it twice..."

Yumemi bit her lip. "Well, Rikako, do you-"

"No," Rikako said immediately, her head pounding just from thinking about trying to force her way through that obstacle.

"Door's got a speaker," Chiyuri pointed out. "We could threaten 'em."

"I might have a breaching charge," Kotohime commented as she dug into her dangling sleeves.

"Or we could try diplomacy," Rikako suggested sarcastically. She walked over and inspected the door controls. "Just ask nicely, say 'This is Rikako Asakura and friends, please let us in-'"

"Access granted," came a sudden mechanical voice that made the five of them jump. Then there was a digital tone, a green light lit up above the keyboard, and the heavy metal door slowly but smoothly retracted into the ceiling.

Rikako stared in shock for a moment, then felt the others' eyes on her back and turned around. Yumemi, Chiyuri and Ellen were obviously as surprised as she was, though Kotohime had a cheery grin on her face. "Good work!" the maniac said. "I'd ask how you did it, but I want to figure it out for myself."

"Ah..." Rikako cleared her throat. "Yes. S-shall we?" she asked, flapping an arm behind her.

-x-

-15-

The door led into a small white room, empty save for an identical portal on the opposite wall, and a light fixture and unidentifiable protrusions on the ceiling.

"It's a decontamination chamber," Yumemi explained as they all piled in. "It keeps anything from-"

She was interrupted by the main door sliding shut behind them, then there was a humming sound, a fan of bright light that swept back and forth across the group, and a queer tingling sensation. But since Yumemi and Chiyuri didn't seem bothered by it, Rikako assumed it was normal, and so tried to remain calm. Sure enough, a moment later the display stopped, something went ding! and the far door slid into the ceiling, revealing the chamber beyond.

Or rather, the lack of a chamber beyond.

Rikako had dreamed about finally being able to explore a modern scientific laboratory, but instead she found herself following Yumemi into a realm that was both fantastic and familiar. There was a floor of sorts, a featureless grayish-purple plane that extended infinitely into the distance, but above that was nothing but darkness - yet the ground, as well as Rikako and her companions, were illuminated as though something was shining down upon them. Standing singly or in short lines or clusters were objects like glass canisters, larger than humans, jutting out of daises on the ground, and seemingly filled with stars. A white seamless path wound between these objects, leading further away from the door to a dense cluster of those bizarre structures.

It looked very much like the interior of Yumemi and Chiyuri's original hypervessel, in other words. Rikako couldn't help but sag in disappointment.

"Now this is more like it," Kotohime commented.

"Just like the good ol' days," Chiyuri agreed.

"It's another scientific illusion, like the director's office," Yumemi added for Ellen's benefit. "A way of expressing and exploring data. See?" The former professor stepped up to the nearest glowing transparent pillar, and as she approached the swirling motes of light within it shifted, changing position until suddenly Rikako was looking at legible text and numbers- well. It was legible in that she could read it, not in that she could understand it. She recognized the word 'quantum' at least, that had been in one of the less-helpful science texts Yumemi and Chiyuri had given her.

"Sparkly," Ellen murmured, seeming entranced by the display. Then she shook herself. "So where's Kana in all of this?"

"They might know," Kotohime said, pointing further along the path.

Rikako had to move to the side to see clearly, but there were other people in this illusory world, huddled around one particular display, a group of men and women in white lab coats. They showed no sign they'd noticed the intruders.

Ellen took off immediately, strolling with purpose between the scientific towers, and the others hurried to follow. The path wasn't a straight shot, however, and just about when they were close enough to the main group of scientists to start hearing snatches of their conversation, a sudden bend revealed a balding man working at a particular station, waving his hands in a way that made a cluster of spheres inside the container change hue.

He must have heard them approach, because he said "Just a moment, almost done," and made some final adjustments that colored the spheres green. "Got the sequence!" he said excitedly, but then he turned and saw who was approaching, and his good cheer quickly changed to alarm. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "How did you get in here?"

"We can answer one of those questions," Chiyuri told him, glancing over at Rikako with a teasing grin.

A young woman's face suddenly peeked out from the other side of the display. Her eyes widened when she saw the commotion. "Dr. Asakura!" she shouted.

Rikako had to take a step back at this unexpected greeting from someone she'd never seen before. "I-I'm not actually a doctor," she stammered. "Um, do I know you?"

"Miss Miyuki wasn't talking to you," came a voice, a voice that made Rikako freeze in shock.

The rest of the scientists were stepping forward to confront them, men and women of various ages, their expressions confused and alarmed. But Rikako barely noticed them - her gaze was locked on their leader, a stern-faced woman who wore her dark, slightly reddish hair in a severe bun, kept fairly short. Her eyes, behind her slim and stylish spectacles, were a warm brown. Her build was a bit soft, probably the combination of a sedentary lifestyle and the food in this dimension. But there was no mistaking the woman's features, because Rikako saw them every time she looked in a mirror.

Silence fell over the scene as the two Rikakos stared at each other, and everyone else looked from one to the other.

"Well," Yumemi said slowly, "I'd say this explains a lot. Like how Rikako got the door to open."

"And how these guys were able to find Gensokyo without Chiyuri," Kotohime added.

"Wait, why are their hair colors different?" Chiyuri asked. "Other me was blonde too."

"Probably Makai," Kotohime shrugged. "See, it's a magical dimension where magicians like to go to train, but the miasma there..."

Rikako barely heard Kotohime's explanation, and her doppelganger wasn't paying attention to it either. It was one thing to step into a dream of scientific progress, quite another to see oneself already living in it.

"You're... are we both the real thing?" she managed, her mind struggling to come to terms with the situation.

The other Rikako slowly shook her head. "Even after everything I've seen here, I wasn't ready for this," she muttered. Then she took a breath, tugged at her labcoat to straighten it, and stood tall to address the intruders. "Well then. I am Doctor Rikako Asakura, head of this facility's research team." She bowed stiffly, then stood at attention, obviously at a loss on what to do next.

"I'm... Rikako Asakura," Rikako replied. "From the land you're studying."

"But you're a scientist?" the other Rikako asked, eyes on her counterpart's labcoat, which looked identical to the one she was wearing. "Why are you here? How are you here, for that matter?"

"We're here for Kana!" Ellen said, stepping forward and balling her fists at her sides.

The crowd of scientists looked at one another. "Who?" a woman in the back asked.

"The poltergeist your murderbots captured," Kotohime said, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. "Or maybe I should say, a Gensokyan citizen you illegally detained for the purpose of involuntary and prohibited scientific research."

Dr. Asakura's eyes bulged. "What?"

"We are here because we were captured and brought here as prisoners," Rikako explained. "We are no longer prisoners," she said dryly, "and want to free our friend as well. We were told that you have her in your lab."

One scientist's jaw dropped. "Wait, so it isn't a drill? You're the reason there's a base-wide lockdown-"

"I see," the other Rikako said. Her face remained calm as she pushed her glasses up further on her nose with a finger, but Rikako knew herself well enough to know that her counterpart was shaken. "This changes... you'd better come with me," she decided. She glanced up at the empty sky. "Computer, end holographic interface."

It was sort of like the director's office earlier, where one world crumbled to reveal another, but in that case a garden had given way to a mundane office, while this time it was one kind of fantasy replacing another. The dark void became sterile white walls and a ceiling with soft indirect lighting, while the 'glass' pillars turned into desks supporting slim screens, or humming, boxy, light-studded towers that could only be advanced computers. Then there were stainless steel racks bearing tools that Rikako couldn't hope to identify, devices that projected softly-glowing, translucent images into the air above them, something like a pane of glass containing a weave of glowing, colorful lines that rolled and spiked up and down even as Rikako watched, what looked like an artificial arm extending down over a desk, ending in some sort of tool-

The rest of the research team stepped aside as Dr. Asakura turned around and marched back into the depths of the laboratory, while the escaped prisoners followed, winding their way between clusters of desks and distracting displays. The scientist stopped next to a particular console, and gestured at something several paces further on. In an alcove well away from any furniture or devices, behind a yellow rectangle drawn on the lab's steel floor, was a surprisingly small metal container studded with who-knew-what, bathed in a harsh orange light. There wasn't a glass panel or anything to seal the box off from the rest of the lab, but Rikako could see a tell-tale shimmer in the air that suggested that some other force was serving as a barrier.

Dr. Asakura adjusted her glasses again and let out a slow breath. "The entity-"

"Poltergeist," supplied Kotohime.

The other Rikako arched an eyebrow. "If you say so. Well, it's currently under secure containment, or at least as secure as we can make it. When we attempted to perform some tests on it-"

"Her!" Ellen snapped.

"There was nothing remotely ladylike about it," Dr. Asakura muttered. "This 'poltergeist' of yours nearly broke out while we were running our scans. We-"

"What exactly have ya been doin' to her?" Chiyuri asked with a scowl.

The other Rikako held up a calming hand. "Just a standard..."

Rikako felt dizzy for a moment, bombarded by sounds that her brain couldn't assemble into words, but which still sounded almost like a real language.

"...but we had to stop when we encountered such an unexpected, ah, reaction," the other Rikako finished.

Yumemi, despite everything, looked intrigued. "What kind of reaction?"

"The sort that makes me very reluctant to disengage the force fields and open the container," Dr. Asakura said darkly.

Ellen, undaunted, set her jaw in an attempt to appear intimidating. "Well, you better let her out anyway. She's annoying and makes messes and plays pranks on me, but she's still my roommate, and she's been helpful. So give us Kana back!"

"Before we got the fields back up, two of my people were down and a third was being throttled by an invisible attacker," the other Rikako deadpanned. "If we let your 'friend' out I'm pretty sure she's going to try to kill us."

Rikako took a closer look at the container Kana was supposedly in. She might have been imagining it, but she thought she could see the box bouncing slightly.

Kotohime sucked on her teeth for a moment. "Well, I'm torn. The policewoman in me wants to see justice in the form of Kana getting some payback on her tormentors. But the princess in me wants to try to minimize casualties, even among morally-questionable scientists."

"Haven't enough people gotten hurt today?" Ellen replied, frowning. She gave the other Rikako a friendly smile. "I can usually control Kana, so I'll keep you safe when you let her out."

"Uh, right," Chiyuri said, no doubt remembering the chaos in Ellen's apartment. "Or we can have 'em tell us how to pop open Kana's box and let 'em evacuate before we do it."

The other Rikako failed to hide her relief. "That sounds like the most logical course of action-"

"Dr. Asakura!" someone yelled.

Rikako instinctively responded to her surname and glanced back across the length of the laboratory. It was that girl who had summoned Rikako's doppelganger earlier, waving her arm in the air as she stood near the lab's entrance, joined by three figures who weren't wearing labcoats. And Rikako's blood went cold when she realized who - or what - had followed them in.

"One of the Response Teams is here," the young scientist said, only to be cut off in an outraged squeak as the android closest to her roughly shoved her away, then raised its weapon and started shooting.

Chiyuri spat a curse, grabbed Ellen, and hit the floor, Rikako following. Kotohime and Yumemi only managed to return a few shots before being forced to take cover as well, and with the other escapees crawled forward to crouch behind a row of consoles as red bolts of energy tore through the air just overhead. Rikako looked up, saw her counterpart still standing frozen in shock at that station, and brought her down onto her rear end by shooting her legs out from under her with a quick, low-powered burst of danmaku. "Get down, idiot!"

Dr. Asakura shot her a furious look, her teeth bared and her spectacles askew, but she quickly scrambled forward to join the others. "What are you doing?!" she bellowed at the robot soldiers, rising to her knees to peek over the top of a workstation. "Stop this at-" was as far as she got in her tirade before she screamed - embarrassingly shrilly, Rikako thought - and dropped back into cover to avoid getting her head blown off.

Glass shattered, paperwork was sent fluttering into the air or burst into flames, computer screens exploded in clouds of sparks. Past the furious whine of the energy weapons, Rikako thought she could hear the rest of the scientists screaming and shouting, but they obviously weren't able to stop the combat androids' attack.

"They're destroying my lab!" the other Rikako wailed.

"And trying to kill ya," Chiyuri pointed out.

"Interesting," Kotohime said while sparks and shards of equipment cascaded down around them. "Either they've confused you for my world's Rikako, they think you're colluding with us, or they consider you acceptable collateral damage. Would that mean that you're no longer necessary for them to reach Gensokyo?"

Yumemi did no such pondering, but briefly popped off and thrust an arm out to fire off some shots of her scientific danmaku. She only managed a short burst before she dropped back to the ground with a yelp, the side of her face pink from a near-miss.

"There's three of them," she reported. "Close together, advancing slow but steady."

Kotohime leaned out from the side of the desk she was sheltering behind, loosed some purple danmaku, but ducked back in with a scowl on her face. "They've got shields and there's stupid civilians still hanging around, so I can't bomb them. Maybe if..."

The self-proclaimed policewoman suddenly leapt into the air, but Rikako could immediately see that Kotohime's maneuver wasn't going to work. Out in the base's corridors there had been just enough room to fly and fight effectively, enough space to have options when it came to dodging incoming fire. But in this lab, where towers of equipment nearly reached the ceiling, and desks and work stations cluttered the rest of the space, they had at best a third of the room to maneuver as they had enjoyed in the hallways.

So Kotohime shot up, nearly hit her head on the ceiling trying to clear the desk she had been crouched behind, yelped and juked left and right as enemy fire started to converge on her, and suddenly dropped out of the air with a flash of purple light. She landed on her back and quickly sat up, but smoke was rising from her palms and her robes looked singed.

"Okay, we're grounded, girls," Kotohime coughed. "Any ideas?"

"I got one," Chiyuri said quickly. "Doc, how do ya open that box?"

The other Rikako stared for a moment until she grasped Chiyuri's meaning. "You, uh, flip a switch on the side and press the button on the top. But I'll need to disable the containment fields first," she said, gesturing at the console, a short distance away but with no cover nearby.

"Distraction in three," Kotohime said, shoving a hand down a sleeve. "Two... one..." and with that she tossed something small and metallic over the desk she was sitting behind, without even bothering to see where she was throwing it.

Even though she'd been expecting it, Rikako still jolted at the sudden blast of sound and flash of light, though neither was as overwhelming as when some androids had thrown a similar grenade at them. And without being prompted, Dr. Asakura and Chiyuri scrambled into action.

The other Rikako leapt to her feet and ran with surprising speed, so that she had to clutch the upright control station to avoid shooting past it. At the same time, Chiyuri surged forward like a sprinter, bouncing off the wall next to the shielded alcove where the box containing Kana sat.

And since the enemy wasn't shooting for the moment, the rest of the group made the most of the opening. Kotohime and Yumemi both got up on one knee and started firing danmaku towards the advancing androids, and Rikako peeked up to join them. It was a wasted effort, though - Kotohime's purple blasts disappeared harmlessly just before they reached their target, while Yumemi's red rings splashed against that invisible bubble protecting the lead android and the two others marching close behind it.

Rikako bared her teeth in frustration, but knew she didn't have the energy to try to toss anything at them with her magic. But then she noticed, as the androids opened fire once more, that one of their assailants was horribly damaged around its eyes, bare metal showing where its artificial skin had been burned off to reveal its optic sensors-

She blindly jammed a hand down the pouch belted to her side, swept her thumb over the top of the vial and felt the symbol carved into it, and pulled out the slender glass container. Rikako lobbed it overhead at the approaching androids just as they began shooting back at her. She had to duck back out of sight, but heard glass shatter and something sizzle. Rikako could only hope that, even if the acid didn't work against those shields the androids employed, it could at least help distract them.

While she was down, she glanced further into the laboratory. Her counterpart was no longer at that console but was wedged in a corner behind a solid piece of equipment resting against the wall, while Chiyuri was running forward, a bulky box in both hands-

Then she spun and dropped to the floor as she was clipped by a red bolt of energy.

"NO!" Yumemi shouted, louder than the weapons fire.

Chiyuri was still struggling to move, however, and though she was sprawled on the ground, she bared her teeth and shoved the box forward. It skidded across the floor and slid to a halt next to Rikako's feet.

Hands shaking, the scientist reached for it, trying to remember her counterpart's instructions. She groped along the sides until she found the switch, and pressed it while trying to ignore how the box was lurching in her grasp. She almost hit the button on the top before reconsidering, keeping her finger on it as she twisted around. When she noticed a momentary lull in the storm of energy flying overhead, Rikako shot to her feet, shoved the container forward, and stabbed the button on its lid. The panel on the top hissed and slid aside-

And then Rikako was knocked onto her rear as something blasted out of the box in a flash of light.

A bluish fog coiled over the scorched and battered furniture the escapees had been sheltering behind, a mist that shone with its own unnatural radiance. The robots, apparently not ones to take chances, fired a short burst of shots through the center of the gaseous mass, but the only effect was to make it quickly condense into a humanoid shape.

But it wasn't quite Kana, the figure didn't pretend to be human. It was unnaturally thin and somewhat elongated, only vaguely feminine, an abstraction of a person formed of glowing cerulean vapor, featureless save for eyes that blazed like blue witchfires.

The figure floated in the air in the middle of the lab, back hunched and limbs bent, but not in supplication or fear. Then it flung its head back, loosing a deafening, tearing sound that was only distantly related to a scream.

The androids starting shooting again, but the apparition dodged, not so much sidestepping as it was vanishing and reappearing in the blink of an eye to avoid the incoming fire. It screamed again and reached out a long, clawed arm. A cabinet-sized piece of equipment along the wall was suddenly wrapped in a blue glow, then was ripped out of place, cables and wiring trailing behind it as it hurtled with shocking speed into the knot of androids. They scattered, each diving in a different direction, still finding the time to take potshots back at their unexpected attacker.

The rampaging poltergeist ignored the incoming fire and lifted both arms, almost like a maestro conducting a symphony. Then the air was filled with objects - computers, chairs, small tables, unidentifiable devices - that rocketed into the leftmost android from all directions, as if it were a magnet attracting all the furniture and equipment around it. It was sent staggering with each impact only to reverse direction when something else hit it, until after several noisy seconds the android was buried beneath a pile of dented debris.

The poltergeist turned to the android on the right, the one with the damaged face, and brought its hands together as if clapping a fly from the air. An instant later, two heavy desks slammed into the android from opposite directions with a deafening clang of metal on metal, colliding so hard that they ended up a wad of unidentifiable wreckage.

The last android was sprinting for the door, only to come to a sudden halt when the poltergeist made a gesture, shining blue as it levitated into the air. It twisted and struggled in an attempt to bring its weapon to bear-

The rampaging poltergeist roared, clenched an upraised fist, then started sweeping its arm every which way, each motion sending the captive android to collide with the floor, then a wall, the ceiling, the floor, the ceiling again, ricocheting from surface to surface. At first there were flashes of light as the android's technological wards tried to absorb the impacts, but in the middle of the display there was a bang and the flashes stopped. But the telekinetic pounding continued until there was nothing left of the android but a lump of mangled metal and shreds of synthetic flesh that still bounced around for another couple of seconds, until at last the poltergeist released it and let the remains of its prey scatter across the floor.

The ghostly figure slumped forward, shoulders heaving as though the poltergeist were struggling for breath, hovering just over the floor in the middle of a sea of wreckage and scattered furniture.

"I'm really glad we didn't try to calm her down ourselves," Kotohime commented, slowly rising from behind the table she'd used as cover.

The apparition whirled at her words and growled weirdly, the flames in its eyes shrinking but burning more intensely as it noticed the people to the other side of her. Rikako's heart froze in her chest as the poltergeist seemed to focus on her, and then it was hurling forward with a scream, passing through scorched and scattered furniture as it lunged at her with outstretched arms-

Only to reel back as some water hit it in its face.

"No!" Ellen said loudly and firmly. She stepped forward, interposing herself between the poltergeist and Rikako, and yes, Ellen had that spray bottle again. "Bad spirit!" she scolded.

The poltergeist didn't seem hurt by Ellen's water bottle, but it did appear angry. It growled and made a violent gesture, there was a shriek of tearing metal from off to the side, and Rikako had enough time to turn to see a large steel cabinet flying at her face just before it-

The lights in the laboratory flickered madly, the blue glow surrounding the container was replaced with a gentle golden luminance, and the hurtled piece of furniture abruptly stopped, shedding all its previous momentum to float about a handspan from Rikako's face. She sucked in a sharp breath and took a step away from it even as it gently lowered to the floor.

Snarling, the poltergeist turned its attention to Ellen. The young mage was suddenly wrapped in that blue fire and rose into the air-

"Hey!" Ellen squirmed a bit, then thrust both arms toward the floor. The lights around her went out entirely for several seconds - the magical backwash nearly knocked Rikako to her knees - and the blue foxfire surrounding Ellen was replaced by a warm yellow radiance that lowered her gently to the ground. "Kana, stop it!" she said sternly.

The poltergeist's head tilted almost as in disbelief, but it drew a gnarled blue arm back-

"No!" Ellen cut in, squirting it with water some more. "Behave yourself, you're among friends!"

The apparition shook violently, the entire laboratory rattling as the poltergeist's 'skin' began to seethe like the surface of a boiling pot of water. "Ffffffffoorrrrrr the lasssssssst tiiiiiiiimmmmmeee-"

And suddenly Kana Anaberal was standing before them, her arms rigidly against the sides of her dress and her gloved fists clenched, her head tilted down so that her bonnet hid her face. She let out a slow breath and slowly lifted her gaze to glower at Ellen, her eyes briefly blazing with power before turning a more natural shade of blue.

"...I'm a poltergeist, not a ghost," she finished.

The whole room seemed to exhale at once as the poltergeist got herself under control. Then the lull was broken when a muffled voice asked "Did you get all of that?"

Rikako looked past the poltergeist to see a scientist crouched at the entrance to a side room, some sort of device in hand and pointed their way. "There's several interruptions in the data," the balding man said as he tapped at some buttons on it, "but I got, uh, most of the important parts." He swallowed as he stared at Kana.

The poltergeist rose into the air, swiveled, and began to drift toward the scientist, who seemed to seize up in terror. "You," she spat. "I remmmemmmberrr yooooouuu-"

"Kana," Ellen said warningly.

The other blonde girl whirled to glare at Ellen, half of her face wispy and skeletal, one eye blazing with blue power. "Do you have any idea what they did to me?!"

"We did not know that you were sentient," the other Rikako spoke up. Her face was pale, but she nevertheless stepped forward to stand before Kana. "You were the first test subject returned to this facility from your world, and the android who acquired you did not supply any information about what you were. If we had known you were intelligent, we would have conducted an interview, not an experiment."

"And once Dr. Asakura realized you were responding badly to the scans, she stopped them," that young scientist from earlier chimed in, trembling but emerging from the side room the rest of the research team seemed to be hiding in. "S-so she's not your enemy."

"For what it is worth," the other Rikako said, before suddenly bowing to the android, "I am sorry," she said as she straightened up again.

Kana just stared at her for a moment, harrumphed, and then vanished, reappearing several paces away, sitting on a desk with her back to them.

With that emergency defused, Rikako looked about for the rest of her companions, and saw Yumemi helping Chiyuri to her feet, one of the blonde woman's arms draped over her shoulder. Rikako felt a pang of guilt when she realized she'd been so preoccupied with Kana that she hadn't checked on the woman who had been shot.

"I'm fine," the former grad student insisted before Rikako could open her mouth. "It just grazed me." Sure enough, she had a scorched tear along the left side of her sweater, and the flesh revealed underneath it was wet with blood.

"That wasn't grazing," Kotohime corrected, her expression stern. "Grazing is when the danmaku comes so close you swear it hit you, except it passes by harmlessly." She looked off into the distance, considering. "And there's this clicking sound, like tktktktkt. Anyway, you took a glancing hit."

Yumemi shot Kotohime a look, then turned to Dr. Asakura. "Do you have any medical supplies in here?"

The other scientist nodded. "Yes, they should be..." She turned around and seemed to suddenly see the sheer amount of devastation in the laboratory, the mangled equipment, the upended tables and chairs, the snarling and spitting severed cables. She swallowed but gestured at some of the other personnel emerging to pick their way through the wreckage. "Miyuki, get one of the first aid kits!" she ordered. The young-looking scientist nodded and quickly hurried into another side room.

Yumemi meanwhile had righted one of the lab's wheeled swivel chairs and helped her former student sit down. "Why is it always you?" she complained. "First you get a concussion, then you get shot..."

Chiyuri grinned up at her, even while wincing slightly. "Sorry, professor. But it's better if it's me, don't'cha think? The other girls, we need their magic, and you, well, you're the brains of this outfit." Chiyuri's smile faded. "But lil' ol' me, I don't bring much to the table, so it's okay for me to be the one to take the hits."

"You're important too, Chiyuri," Yumemi said softly, staring into the other woman's eyes.

Rikako found herself turning away, feeling unaccountably like an intruder. This meant she was the one to see the research facility's doors briefly open once more to admit two figures. But before Rikako could start yelling about taking cover, she recognized who she was looking at. "It's that guard and the robot," she announced.

"Who?" asked Dr. Asakura.

Noriko barely slowed as she stepped over the scattered furniture and chunks of android to reach them, while Ruukoto was more cautious, stretching her arms out to keep her balance as she tried to keep up. The scientists still loitering at the far end of the lab seemed relieved to see someone in uniform, but Noriko ignored all their attempts to get her attention.

"You guys don't mess around!" the guardswoman exclaimed as she approached the escaped prisoners, grinning widely underneath her visor. "I've seen veteran marines who couldn't trash a place this badly!"

Kana didn't look back, but gave a little sniff even though she strictly speaking didn't need to breathe.

Then Noriko noticed Yumemi tending to Chiyuri and her good cheer vanished. "Crap, a casualty?"

"Shall I contact a medical droid?" Ruukoto asked, rejoining them.

"Naw, I'll be fine," Chiyuri insisted, even as that scientist returned with a first aid kit and Yumemi started digging through it. "Just wasn't expectin' this much blood from a laser burn." She winced when Yumemi reached up and under her sweater and began to clean the injury with a prepackaged cloth.

"Contrary to what you've seen in movies, energy weapons don't always cauterize wounds," Noriko lectured. "Also, injured count as casualties, so you're wrong in that regard too."

"Who is this?" the other Rikako asked.

Her Gensokyan counterpart frowned, wishing she could fully answer that question. "She's-"

"Corporal Noriko, ma'am," the guardswoman said with a salute, suddenly all business. "Here on orders."

"Orders?" Dr. Asakura repeated, eyes widening. "You got through? Our communications went down what feels like ages ago, and all the inter-base frequencies and messaging systems are playing some stupid cartoon, and with the lockdown in effect-"

"Been delivering messages in person, ma'am," Noriko said stolidly. "Only way that works right now."

"R-right." The other Rikako looked from Noriko, to the escapees, and back to the guardswoman. "So, what the hell is going on here? These women say they were imprisoned, and got loose, and were fighting our security forces, but you don't seem worried that-"

"There's been, if I may speak candidly, some pretty big misunderstandings, ma'am," Noriko interrupted. "My orders are to get these six back home before they cause any more problems. And the rest of you," she went on, nodding toward the crowed of scientists that had gathered, eager for news, "you need to leave the facility."

This bombshell was met with a moment of stunned silence. "What? Why?!" someone blurted.

"Engineering has detected a problem with the reactor," Noriko said evenly. "There is no immediate danger, but, just to be on the safe side..."

From somewhere in the ceiling, a disembodied female voice loudly announced, "Attention. This is a Level Two Alert. All personnel must evacuate the facility immediately. Please exit the complex in an orderly fashion. Repeat: this is a Level Two Alert. All personnel must evacuate the facility immediately. Please exit the complex in an orderly fashion. Thank you."

"Well, that was uncanny timing," said Noriko with a slight smile, just before the klaxons started wailing.

-x-

"Are you kidding me?!" the lieutenant exploded, all professionalism vanishing in the face of this latest development..

She had been on the verge of congratulating her crew for finally getting rid of the damnable cartoon, but the minute the misadventures of an Italian princeling had vanished from the main screen, a critical announcement had popped up in its place, the siren had started blaring, and the automated evacuation protocol began.

"Contact with Engineering," one of the operators said, hand to her headphones as she listened intently for a moment. Then she paled and looked back at her commanding officer. "They say there's nothing they can do, a critical... fault, or something. In a couple of minutes there will be a coolant leak and all the air in the base will be toxic." Her eyes darted to the door before returning to the lieutenant.

This... this had to be a bad dream, the lieutenant decided. Escaped prisoners, magical ones at that, who had all but wiped out the base's complement of android specialists and made a joke out of its human soldiers. They had last been detected heading towards the research wing, but that was before the bloody cartoon took over the base's systems, so there was no telling where they were now. And Colonel Nakano was still gone, and even Director Kushida had wandered off to do something stupid, and this was not how her first proper command was supposed to go!

"Sir?" the operator asked nervously. The lieutenant realized the other woman had been trying to get her attention for a while.

"Follow the protocols, evacuate the facility," the lieutenant said dully.

"Yes, but sir, the colonel - she's not answering her comms, and-"

"She has ears, she can hear the alarms." The lieutenant grit her teeth. Hopefully Nakano could put together an effective defense once everyone had retreated a safe distance, in case those witches followed them out. It was probably too much to hope that the freaks would all die in the reactor leak.

"Yessir," the operator said briskly. The entire command center burst into motion, its crew rising from their stations and hurrying out the door, while two extremely-nervous soldiers escorted them as if they stood any hope of slowing, to say nothing of stopping, the women who had been rampaging through the facility.

The lieutenant lingered for a moment, though, and tried to raise Colonel Nakano one last time, but now the evacuation order was clogging the base's communications system. Which was pretty par the course for how the day had been going, the lieutenant thought with a groan.

She tried to find a bright side to this fiasco. The colonel had always come down hard on anyone who asked to step outside the facility, citing security reasons. Now they didn't have a choice. Maybe some sunshine and fresh air would take the sting off the catastrophe.

-x-

-16-

Someone in the crowd of scientists began shouting, partly to be heard over the alarms, partly due to panic, only for Dr. Asakura to immediately raise her hands in a calming gesture. "Everyone! Everyone, stay focused," she said firmly and loudly. "You know what to do. Make your way to the exit, I'll be with you shortly."

"But my notes," one of the younger women started, gesturing back towards one of the adjoining rooms.

"There's no time for that, ma'am," Noriko said. "But it's not like your data can wander off on its own, can it?"

With a great deal of disgruntled mumbling, the dozen or so members of the research team began picking their way over the debris to the laboratory doors. "And now we have to walk all the way to the base's only entrance," the balding man griped. "You'd think this place would have a fire exit or something."

"That would compromise security," Noriko answered. "Oh, and do try to wake up those soldiers in the hall? They need to evacuate too."

"What about you, doctor?" the youngest scientist said, her eyes wide as she stared at the team leader. "Aren't you coming?"

"In a moment, I've got to make sure there's nothing left running that will go out of control if we aren't here to supervise it," the other Rikako said. "Now get moving!"

While her colleagues exited the lab, Dr. Asakura busied herself with going over to one interface on the wall, and did something that shut off the alarms - at least in this section of the base, Rikako could still hear the rhythmic, mechanical blaring through the lab's doors.

"Thank you," Ellen said with feeling as she removed her hands from her ears.

"Don't mention it," the other Rikako muttered. She returned to stand before Corporal Noriko once more, and glanced over to confirm that her colleagues had passed through the decontamination chamber. "You said you're taking these women back to their home world?" she asked the soldier.

Yumemi looked up from awkwardly applying a bandage to Chiyuri while trying to keep the other woman's shirt on. "Actually," the former professor started-

"Yes, everyone's going back," Noriko nodded.

The other Rikako turned and stared at her counterpart for a long moment, then her face crumpled with desperation. "Please take me with you!"

Rikako blinked. "What?"

"I've spent my whole life obsessed with stories about magic, and wizards, and monsters," the other Rikako babbled. "Went through an occult phase, joined a necromancy club at the university, and even though I got a degree in comparative physics I never grew out of it. I was going nowhere, had a lousy job at a lab pushing around carts of samples for the anti-mass spectrometer, and then Director Kushida contacted me and said she'd studied my file and thought I'd be perfect for a top-secret research project and Colonel Nakano approved and-" The woman had to take a gasp of air before continuing. "And then I came here and saw a world where everything I dreamed of was real! Magicians, and youkai, and g- beings that resembled deities! And I spent years working to reverse-engineer the things I saw, and finally made a breakthrough with those talismans that got me promoted to head of the team, and then just a few months ago we managed to send a second group of automated observers there, and I kept requesting permission to go in person but they kept denying-" she doubled over and gasped for breath again.

Kotohime looked from one Rikako to the other and gave the one from her homeland a wide grin. "I guess you're a heretic no matter what world you're in," she said.

Rikako glared at her, then turned back to her counterpart. "You said something about talismans?" she asked.

Dr. Asakura straightened, her desperation giving way to pride. "Oh yes, yes! Come see!"

"Aren't we supposed to be evacuating?" Ellen asked, nervously glancing at the lab doors.

Rikako blinked. She had completely forgotten about that - it had been easy to, since Noriko hadn't been in any hurry to leave-

The guardswoman in question opened her mouth to say something, but Kotohime cut her off. "Don't worry, it's a trick to get all the innocent bystanders out of the way," the noblewoman assured Ellen.

"Ohhh," Ellen said, before nodding sagely. "That's clever."

Noriko gave Kotohime an approving grin. "You're pretty sharp."

"Lethally so," Kotohime agreed, smirking back.

The other Rikako still looked confused. "Oh, I... see. But why would you-"

"You were about to show them your achievements, right, doctor?" Noriko reminded her.

"Ah, yes." Dr. Asakura straightened her glasses. "This way, please."

She led the group over to some of the few untouched pieces of furniture in the laboratory, up against one of the walls and under a bright light, almost in a place of honor. There was a table with a heavy glass cover on it, and laid out beneath it, in evenly-spaced rows, were-

"You stole some spell cards?" asked Kotohime, frowning.

"We made some spell cards," the other Rikako corrected with a faint smile - or rather a smug smile, if Rikako were being honest. "We're obviously amateurs working by imitation rather than any understanding of the underlying principles," the scientist explained, "but we have had some successes in duplicating the phenomena observed in your world. Under controlled conditions," she amended.

Rikako leaned forward to examine one of the paper talismans more closely. There was something off about it, something it lacked - perhaps that bit of a creator's personality that made its way into a work, whether it was mundane or arcane. This wasn't someone's magical creation, this was a painstakingly-made reproduction done by people who didn't quite know what they were doing, like someone illiterate copying a page of text. But as... synthetic as the magical charm might be, Rikako couldn't see any flaws that would keep it from working, and if she concentrated she could feel the power circulating within the talisman like an active circuit, a spell just waiting to be unleashed upon an enemy.

"Impressive," she said, and meant it. It was almost embarrassing how the other Rikako beamed at this praise. And then Rikako noticed what was in the case next to the spell cards, and her jaw dropped. "And a mini-hakkero too?"

Her counterpart nodded eagerly, beaming. "Oh yes. We didn't have any hihi'irokane, of course, but we were able to synthesize a substitute to make a functional arcane furnace. It was how we tested some of our spell cards, it's not like any of us are natural mages." The other Rikako's good cheer quickly drained away. "But we've been stuck at a dead end for months now, and my requests to launch an expedition for some firsthand research keep getting denied." She trembled with anticipation. "To actually set foot in Gensokyo myself..."

"It's kind of a dump, to be honest," Kana remarked. The poltergeist had joined them without anyone noticing, and was leaning nonchalantly against a tower of electronic equipment.

Yumemi and Chiyuri, though, had been listening intently to their fellow scientist, their eyes full of sympathy. Yumemi finally turned to Noriko. "Well... could we take her with us?"

The guardswoman shook her head, and what was visible of her face looked earnestly regretful. "I'm sorry, but my orders are to ensure that the prisoners are returned to their homeworld. You're needed here, Dr. Asakura. Or more specifically, outside with the other scientists."

The other Rikako looked so crushed that Rikako nearly teared up herself. She knew all too well what it was like to pursue something all her life, only to have it snatched away...

"Listen, uh, Rikako," she said, putting a hand on her counterpart's shoulder. Dammit, this still felt weird. "Gensokyo isn't bad, I suppose. But once you immerse yourself in all that magic and monsters, it becomes just as normal as anything else. While you, well, just look around you! All these technological wonders, a world governed by logic and science, and-"

"It's awful," the other Rikako interrupted. She had to swipe at her nose before continuing and took off her spectacles to wipe tears from them as she spoke. "Everything's so fake, so cold and sterile and synthetic. There's no mysteries to solve anymore, no adventures to go on, we think we've got everything all figured out," she said, her voice dripping with bitter sarcasm. "If you dare to suggest otherwise you're at best a romantic and at worst a lunatic."

"Ain't that the truth," Chiyuri sighed.

"This facility was the first place I've felt like I belonged," the other Rikako said, her gaze going hollow. "Even back in school with the necromancy club, they were just a bunch of kids pretending to be wizards, none of them really believed. You have no idea what it's like to..." She trailed off as she realized who she was speaking to.

Rikako gestured at her labcoat with a wry smile. "I think I do," she said quietly.

Kotohime looked between the two some more. "Maybe we could switch them?" she suggested. "Send each Rikako to the world they want to live in? We'd have to dye their hair, though."

Before the start of this adventure, Rikako would have jumped at the chance. But, given their present circumstances... "I don't think I want to live in this world," Rikako admitted.

"Even though it has everything you've ever wanted?" asked Kotohime with an arched eyebrow.

"Including some androids and abductors that I'm not fond of," Rikako said dryly. She looked back at her counterpart again. "I think... what I've learned from all this, is that I don't want to just to walk into a world of science from a world of magic, I want to bring some of that science to my world. To develop it instead of being given it. And maybe that way I can avoid some of the mistakes that the world of science made to get to where it is," she mused aloud, remembering the bad air and noise in that big city.

"Wanting is better than having, you mean?" the other Rikako asked, but she was smiling slightly. "Yeah, you, you might have something there. I mean, I wouldn't know what to do if I got dumped in a world of fairies and demons. Might get eaten by an oni on my first night. Maybe I should master the basics first."

"And you've already accomplished so much," Rikako added, gesturing at the case full of spell cards and the magical reactor. "You've done more with magic in your world than I have with science in mine. If you keep building on your research, there's no limit to what you could accomplish."

"Which means it's a shame we have to wipe your data," Kotohime sighed.

The other Rikako's eyes bulged and she made a strangled sound.

Rikako winced. Wonderful, she'd given what she felt was a decent speech encouraging her twin from another world, and here was Kotohime reminding them that their mission was to undo all of this Rikako's work.

Noriko folded her arms, the visible part of her face set in a neutral expression, while Ruukoto looked from her to Kotohime in confusion. "And why do you feel the need to complete your destruction of the research wing?" the guardswoman asked.

"The robots started it, and Kana did the rest," Kotohime protested.

"The people running this facility want to take over our home," Rikako said, looking at her counterpart even as she answered Noriko's question. "Send in soldiers, wring everything they can out of it, and given that they've tried to kill us at various points they probably won't use what they learn from Gensokyo for the benefit of mankind. We can't stop them from coming to our world-"

"Yeah we can, all we'd have to do is kill this Rikako," Kotohime pointed out. She blinked when everyone stared silently at her for a moment. "We won't, though. I mean, that's what the bad guys were trying to do to Chiyuri, and I like to keep the moral high ground."

Rikako rolled her eyes before turning her focus back to her twin. "So the best we can do is try to keep them from finding it again and erase the gains they've made so far. Hopefully they won't be able to recover and make another attempt, or at the very least we've bought ourselves some time."

"Time enough to get on Deputy Yakumo's case, certainly," Kotohime mused to herself. "For a border guard she's pretty unprofessional."

The other Rikako stared for a moment, then looked over at Corporal Noriko. "So what about you? Are you going to try and stop them?"

"Oh, I'm quite skeptical I could manage that," the soldier said, smiling.

Seeming dazed, Dr. Asakura walked over to an intact console, and batted at some buttons. Images appeared in the air above it, three-dimensional but slightly-transparent representations of people - Reimu Hakurei, who had evidently learned to fly without that turtle, then Marisa Kirisame in a black-and-white outfit instead of the purple Rikako had last seen her in, then Rikako herself, Kotohime-

"The hologram always adds five pounds," Kotohime grumbled as she looked up at herself.

-and then the parade became one of strangers, people Rikako couldn't remember or had never seen before. The other Rikako stopped at the image of a baton-carrying redhead in a green-and-yellow dress and yellow cap, then stared up at it silently.

"Who's that?" Rikako asked softly.

Dr. Asakura glanced over at her. "What, don't you know?"

"I don't get out much."

"Well, we don't know either. What data we have on her is filed under 'Subject Ten,' but most of us call her 'Orange.' We only caught a brief glance of her, and don't think she's human, but she's otherwise a mystery." The other Rikako sighed. "I suppose we'll never solve it, now."

"If it makes you feel any better," said Yumemi, her expression somber, "you're not the only person who's gotten screwed over like this. Chiyuri and I were the scientists who found Gensokyo in the first place, but all our research on it was sabotaged and we got laughed out of the academy."

"At least you puttin' your data in the garbage will help Gensokyo," Chiyuri added. "All we did was enable your bosses to make their own move on it."

"And you can always start over, right?" Ellen added, her expression cheery. It faded when she saw the looks on the others' faces. "Or maybe not?"

"Guess it would depend on who she wound up working for and what they did with her research," Noriko shrugged.

Dr. Asakura didn't respond, but looked up at the projection floating in the air above her console, then looked down and started tapping at buttons like her fingers were numb. Eventually a warning message appeared in place of the baton-carrying woman, prompting the other Rikako to type in some lengthy gibberish before pressing one final key.

Then the display vanished, and every still-functioning screen in the research center went dark.

The other Rikako staggered back and grunted, as if shot. "It's done," she croaked. "Used my override and wiped all the data we've collected. Years of work..." She hung her head so her dark red bangs covered her eyes.

"For what it is worth," Rikako said softly, "I am sorry."

"We should probably take the stuff they recovered, too," Chiyuri said, turning to the display cases.

Dr. Asakura straightened up, pulled herself together, and started patting her pockets. "I-I have the key somewhere, give me a moment-"

Kana Anaberal silently lifted one hand that flashed blue. There was a staggered series of clicks and Rikako saw the lids to the cases swing slightly open.

"I'll carry them," Rikako said quickly. She did not want to think about the chaos someone like Kotohime could cause with a mini-hakkero, or a full set of unidentified spell cards.

Kotohime scowled but didn't interfere as Rikako collected the goods. "I ought to be confiscating this stolen property," the madwoman said, "but I also respect the 'Dibs' Protocol, so you've won this round."

"And if the data is wiped and the goods are back in the right hands, I guess we're done here," Chiyuri said, looking around at the ransacked lab as if for one last time.

"Well, it's a start," Kotohime corrected . "But we still need to take care of the other records."

Dr. Asakura blinked in confusion. "What other records?"

Yumemi nodded towards Kotohime. "Think they're pulling the same trick as they did on us?"

"It seems a safe bet," Kotohime answered, before turning to explain things to the other Rikako. "We're operating under the theory that the people who sponsored Yumemi and Chiyuri's research sabotaged their recording devices while also sneaking in their own so they could gather some untainted data. So odds are good that there's some data storage somewhere even you can't access."

The scientist's face hardened slightly. "I see. So, how do you propose we deal with it?"

"Well..." Kotohime's smile was fairly alarming as she turned to Corporal Noriko. "Think we could turn that fake reactor meltdown into the real thing? That'd wipe the slate pretty clean, I bet."

Noriko's expression, or what was visible of it, hardened. "If Ruukoto and I were able to overcome all the failsafes and induce a catastrophic failure, there wouldn't be an island left afterward."

"And the shockwaves would cause a tsunami that would threaten everyone within a hundred miles of us," Dr. Asakura added sternly.

"So I'm thinking no, let's not do that," Noriko finished.

"Got a computer spray for us, Ellen?" Rikako asked.

The little mage winced. "Maybe? There might be a little left in the bottle."

"That's no good, it wouldn't be a secure storage system if it could be controlled from this lab," Chiyuri pointed out.

"I might have something else, though..." Ellen reached for her bag, sat down on a desk, and started shifting through the contents of her satchel. She stopped to snap a finger, creating a ball of gentle white light that hovered over her shoulder to help her search, but jolted at the crackle of static that resulted as she shifted on the metal surface. "I wish that didn't happen," she complained.

Yumemi stared at the magician for a long moment, something triumphant in her red eyes. "Find anything, Ellen?"

"No." The blonde girl sighed and dispelled her magical light with a flippant gesture. "Sorry, I've got stuff to put things back together, and bug spray, and air fresheners, but-"

"What's the biggest spell you know, Ellen?" asked Yumemi.

"Oh? Um..." Ellen's eyes glazed over, her lips moving slightly as though she was reading something. "There's Egnatius' Invocation of Vulcan, but I'm not supposed to cast it... Red Wrath of Agrona is pretty big, but it's s-scary...Shaoqing's Endless Font takes a lot of effort, and it's not safe to cast indoors... the Rite of Nabu-Kullani can only be done at night and if the planets are aligned..."

Rikako traded a worried glance with Kotohime, who looked just as surprised as her. "Ah, maybe you should limit your options to harmless magic?" She wasn't sure she wanted to be remotely near to anything called 'Red Wrath of Someone,' no matter how curious Rikako was about what it actually did.

"Okay. Um..." Ellen jerked suddenly, then broke into a wide and sunny smile. "Oh, I know, Nantosuelta's Blooming! I use a minor version of it to help my garden..." Her smile flickered and her brow furrowed for a moment. "Wait, do I have a garden? I thought I had a garden..."

"But if you put a lot of power into it, what would it do?" Yumemi asked, folding her arms.

"Make a lot of flowers pop up and bloom," Ellen said, smiling again.

"You're going to destroy this place's secret library with a bunch of flowers?" Kana asked sarcastically. The poltergeist was suddenly sitting on the same desk as Ellen, the two blondes almost back-to-back. When Ellen glanced over her shoulder and saw Kana, she nearly jumped out of her seat with a squeak of surprise.

"Not quite," Chiyuri said, looking at Ellen. "If you cast a big ol' spell like that, it'd make ya real staticky, right?"

Ellen shifted in her seat. "Probably."

"Sounds like we have a winner," Chiyuri declared. "If Ellen castin' normal spells can make lights flicker," she explained to the others, "castin' a big spell might fry the electronics of this whole facility."

"Like a magical EMP," Noriko said, nodding in approval.

"Which would technically make it an ESD," Dr. Asakura corrected.

"Nerd," Kana muttered.

Ruukoto, who had been standing silently and patiently just behind Noriko, stepped forward, her green eyes full of concern. "You pardon, Corporal, but this course of action could compromise both my systems and the information stored in my data banks."

Ellen's mouth formed a horrified little O. "Oh no, I don't want to hurt you-"

"And I'm not confident a single spell of Ellen's could generate all the static we need," Rikako said. "But, I may have a solution to both problems."

"Let's hear it," Kotohime and Noriko said at the same instant, before trading an amused glance.

Rikako took a slow breath. She was still tired from everything she'd done so far, but she'd had a big enough break from magical exertion that she thought she could manage a little more. "I may be able to amplify the electrical by-products of Ellen's spellcasting, and with the right magic I could work a delay into Ellen's spell, or..." she frowned, searching for words for a moment. "Like, I could insert something to keep her spell from going off, hold it right on the cusp of completion, and then when needed I could remove that delay so-"

"Like a remote detonator?" asked Chiyuri.

"Something like that," Rikako nodded gratefully. "It's been a long time since I've done any magic like this, but I think I can do it. Contain and control Ellen's spell so it triggered when we wanted it, let us get to a safe distance before it goes off."

"That would preserve my existence and the data the corporal has been gathering," Ruukoto said with a grateful bow.

Kotohime eyed the green-haired robot girl suspiciously. "What kind of information is she storing, 'Noriko?'" she demanded.

"Some important e-mails, personal logs, and official documents," the guardswoman said. "Nothing scientific, or anything that would help anyone find or threaten Gensokyo." Her expression, at least the part of it visible under the mirrored visor of her helmet, was serious. "You have my word on that."

Kotohime nodded, accepting this, so Rikako turned to the eternally-youthful magician. "Whenever you're ready, Ellen."

"Ruukoto, I think you ought to watch this from over by the door," Noriko suggested.

"Acknowledged, corporal," the robot maid said with a quick bow before hurrying to what was hopefully a safe distance.

"Oh, this will be fun! It's been so long since I've worked with another magician!" Ellen hopped off her seat, dusted off her pants and looked around. "I just need a magic circle to get started..."

The other Rikako cleared her throat. "I'd love to help you with that, but our attempt to recreate one... ah, it was unsuccessful," she admitted, flapping an arm at a patch of floor that Rikako thought looked newer than the rest of it.

But Ellen didn't respond, and simply walked to a large open area near where Kana had been contained. The mage looked down, bit her lower lip, and half-closed her golden eyes.

The lights above her flickered madly for a moment, then there was an indescribable sound, not a crunch or a slosh, but the sound that occurs when one substance is instantly transmuted into something else. Rikako blinked - suddenly there was a perfect circle on the floor around Ellen, inlaid with a few simple geomantic sigils and, judging from its gleam, made of pure silver.

"Deftly done," Rikako admitted.

But Ellen was only getting started. She didn't look up at Rikako's praise, but furrowed her brow in concentration. One light above her blew out as a second ring appeared around the first, this one filled with more elaborate sigils, followed by another, then another. Rikako realized she was watching a master at work, as Ellen created the magical tools she needed to make the next level of arcane paraphernalia before continuing the process, like a mechanic using a hammer to make a forge and so on until she had created a full workshop, all in a matter of seconds.

When the little mage finally lifted her head and let out a breath, she was standing in the center of six concentric silver rings fused into the very floor beneath her, at the heart of an arcane diagram whose sweeping lines and geometric figures operated on a level even Rikako couldn't fully understand. And Ellen's hair was an absolute mess.

"I never see this happen to the rest of you!" she complained as she tried to get it under control, static crackling with each movement of her arms.

"It looks like she stuck a fork in a power outlet," Chiyuri snickered.

"That's the plan, isn't it?" Yumemi observed, smiling.

"This side-effect of Ellen's spellcasting won't be enough to do what we want," Rikako declared as she stepped onto the periphery of the nested magic circles. "But I should be able to amplify it, and keep it from discharging until we want it to." She briskly rubbed her hands together and let out a slow breath, trying to remain calm and focused despite her anxiety. "Whenever you're ready, Ellen."

"'kay." Ellen gave up on managing her bushy blonde hair, let her head tilt back with her eyes closed, took in and let out a deep breath-

And Rikako really ought to have braced herself, because the surge of power that emanated from Ellen nearly knocked her off her feet. The other mage was positively glowing, hovering just off the floor surrounded by a yellow-green brilliance, the air around her heavy like the sky before a thunderstorm, smelling of freshly-tilled soil and young leaves. The sigils and figures beneath her shone a bright green and seemed to shift and writhe like rapidly-growing creepers. And every electronic light in the room flickered and went out, leaving Ellen's spell the only source of illumination.

"And there goes my helmet," Corporal Noriko commented. "Keep going, though."

Rikako grit her teeth and thrust her hands forward, muttering under her breath as she recited what she hoped was the right incantation to contain the magical backwash Ellen was generating. She could immediately tell that this was going to be difficult, and not just because Rikako was so out of practice when it came to magic of this caliber, or magic in general.

The simple truth was that Ellen was probably the most powerful magic-user Rikako had ever met. She had tangled with Marisa back in the day and found her to be a young prodigy, and by all reports the witch had grown only stronger since then. Rikako herself was once considered one of the most potent human spellcasters in Gensokyo, until she turned her back on magic in favor of something more sensible. But Ellen, despite her size and childish demeanor, had the sort of arcane power normally associated with the oldest and most dangerous of youkai. Rikako could wield raw elemental forces without needing a spellbook or reciting an incantation, but Ellen here was making an intricate, staggeringly powerful spell look as natural as breathing.

Rikako was long out of practice, she'd come close to depleting her personal reserves of magic getting this far, and she was exhausted from a chemically-induced slumber and too little decent food. But she had her pride, dammit, and so she grit her teeth and focused her weary mind on the task at hand.

Ellen's spell began to take shape, a miniature yellow-green sun that embodied everything that made plants grow and flowers bloom. At the same time the young mage was positively crackling with static, so Rikako began weaving a net of arcane power around the burgeoning incantation, shifting that excess energy from Ellen's body to the spell she was creating. She also fed some of her own power into the arcane construct, and diverted some of the electricity flowing through the laboratory into the burgeoning spell, magnifying the electrical effect even as she reinforced her containment of it. Soon Ellen's ball of light was surrounded by a sparking haze.

"My spell's just about ready," Ellen announced suddenly.

"Right," Rikako answered. "Go ahead and try to finish casting it."

"Okay." Ellen made one slight, almost casual gesture, the miniature sun suddenly pulsed and expanded-

And Rikako clenched her fists, contracting her arcane cage around Ellen's magic, holding it on the cusp of completion like the hook of a drawn crossbow. For a moment she feared that she wasn't powerful enough, but though her magical container flickered once or twice, it finally held.

Rikako let out a slow breath, drained but triumphant. "Got it."

"Good job!" Ellen's shoes hit the floor once more, and the young mage blinked and patted at her hair, then smiled hugely. "And I'm not fluffy!"

"Did you," the other Rikako said slowly, her mouth still hanging open from gawking at the lightshow, "just create a magical Faraday cage?"

Rikako paused in the act of wiping sweat from her brow. "Maybe?"

"I wish we could record this," her twin sighed.

"Ruukoto?" Corporal Noriko called, glancing over her shoulder.

"All systems nominal, corporal," the robot girl said with another bow after rejoining them. "I lost audio/visual input for approximately two seconds, but my data caches remain intact."

"And my helmet's working again," Noriko said. "Hopefully when this thing blows the results will be more permanent."

For a moment, the nine of them just stood (or slouched on a desk, in Kana's case) in silence, staring at the pulsing, glowing orb of mixed magical power hovering in the air at the center of Ellen's arcane diagram.

"It's pretty," Ellen observed.

"It should affect all the electronics in this research wing, if not the entire facility," Rikako added. "Once I let the spell activate, I mean." She shifted uneasily. "And because I'm holding the... what did you call it?"

"The metaphorical remote detonator," Kotohime supplied.

"Right. Well, because I'm occupied with that, I'm not going to be able to cast any more spells," Rikako admitted. "Assuming I even had the energy to do so," she added with a tired frown.

Noriko slowly panned her helmeted head around. "That shouldn't be necessary. There's no one nearby, and it looks like the base is almost fully evacuated. All the human soldiers are outside, and I'm not reading any more android units - you guys might have wiped them all out."

"Poor robots," Ellen said softly. "I wish we could have gotten along with them."

"Don't think of the military models as artificial humans, consider them weapons that can pass for people," Noriko advised.

"They actually are not as intelligent as they may seem," Ruukoto added, almost conspiratorially. "Human militaries have been hesitant to give their android soldiers advanced artificial intelligences, for fear of betrayal."

"Whereas android maids like Ruukoto here are considered harmless and given more brains than they probably need," Noriko said with a grin. "So when the robot uprising happens, it'll start in our homes."

"Can we get moving?" Rikako interrupted. "Holding onto this spell is giving me a headache."

"Oh, excuse me." The guardswoman gave her a quick half-bow. "If you ladies will follow me, I know a back stairwell that can get us to the hangar level in less than five minutes."

"Can I come with you?" asked the other Rikako. "To the hangar, I mean. Just in case we run into anyone, I may be able to talk our way through."

"That may be a good idea," Noriko murmured, looking at something through the base's walls. "I think it'd be best if you're with me when things get busy."

Dr. Asakura blinked. "What do you mean?" she asked suspiciously.

"Now c'mon, your twin is getting a migraine," Noriko said instead of answering.

As they headed for the laboratory's entrance - the other Rikako glancing back over her shoulder for one last look at the caged spell humming in the middle of it - Kotohime drew alongside Rikako. "I don't like this," the self-declared princess muttered, nodding slightly towards the guardswoman in the lead.

"I know what you mean," Rikako said curtly. "We still don't know anything about her, and it's awfully convenient that she's decided to help us. But she's our best opt-"

"What, you haven't figured it out yet?" asked Kotohime, looking surprised.

Rikako frowned. "Figured out what?"

"Anyway, I'm talking about how she's taken over command of the group! This is supposed to be my adventuring party!" Kotohime blinked at her own outburst, then gave Rikako a gracious smile. "Of course I consider myself first among equals-"

Rikako only sighed in response.

-x-

-17-

By the time they reached the barricade outside the research wing, the unconscious soldiers had vanished, presumably roused by the departing scientists. Rikako was relieved that there wouldn't be unnecessary casualties, until she remembered that the base-threatening emergency was just a trick. Her annoyance was only compounded when they started jogging down sterile steel hallways that echoed with blaring alarms which, combined with the fatigue from the day's battles and the mental strain of holding a spell on the cusp of completion, meant that the only thing keeping Rikako from screaming was the thought that this bewildering escapade was nearing completion.

Noriko let them down the first side hallway they came across, then around a corner to a door indistinguishable from all the others in the facility. It hissed open at her approach, revealing the landing of a metal staircase leading both up and down.

"We're in an advanced civilization's state-of-the-art research facility, and we still have to take the stairs like a bunch of primitives," Kotohime grumbled.

Yumemi chuckled. "I don't think we'd all fit in an elevator."

They went up the staircase as quickly as they could, and while Rikako was alarmed how the structure vibrated from the number of feet hitting it, it held, and the procession filed out of the door waiting at the top into a cavernous chamber.

It was at least three stories high and large enough to contain a whole street's worth of houses, but was currently occupied by only a few vehicles - one was Yumemi and Chiyuri's stubby hypervessel, two were the sleeker, deadlier variants that had chased them out of Gensokyo, and the fourth seemed like an intermediate stage between the two types of aircraft, something military but with room for cargo or passengers. There wasn't much else in the chamber but some enormous metal boxes, what looked like steel staircases on wheeled frames, and stranger things Rikako couldn't identify. Powerful lights on the ceiling high above cast wide circles of illumination onto the floor, but that seemed to only amplify the gloom outside those islands of luminescence - Rikako couldn't see where the room's walls met the floor.

Each footstep echoed alarmingly loud in the vast space, and even though their means of escape was in sight, nobody in the party was smiling or joking. Rikako jumped when the door to the staircase hissed shut behind them, and wasn't the only one to do so.

Corporal Noriko slowed to a halt after taking just a few paces into the hangar, then shifted into a ready stance and drew her handgun. "This isn't right," she said quietly, her helmeted head searching the room.

"No kidding," Kotohime agreed. "This is a dangerously dim hangar bay. I'm thinking tripping hazards, putting the wrong fluids in the wrong tanks-"

"Someone's switched off the secondary lights," Dr. Asakura said.

Noriko tapped the side of her helmet. "And put the hypervessels on lockdown."

"That would be me," a woman's voice rang out.

The echoes made it hard to pinpoint her location, but Rikako turned at the sound of footsteps and saw a woman step out of the shadows near the door they'd entered through. It took Rikako a moment to recognize who she was looking at because the new arrival was wearing a bulky, military-style backpack over her business suit. The slender pistol she was aiming into the crowd of women was new, too.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" demanded Director Kushida.

Noriko slowly turned around to face the woman, her own weapon lowered at her side. "I could ask the same thing, Director. If this is supposed to be a standoff, you're badly outnumbered and outgunned."

"Don't underestimate me!" Kushida snapped. "Just because I'm not in the military doesn't mean this weapon is harmless. I've got the drop on you, and even if you kill me, you won't get my override to the hypervessels and hangar door." She scowled at them, her jaw set stubbornly. "This nonsense has gone on for long enough! I don't know what your game is, soldier, but you and the detainees need to-"

"Kana?" murmured Kotohime.

"Can't, anti-magic bubble," the poltergeist reported in a low voice.

Without a word, Yumemi extended an arm, palm forward, and unleashed a single red ring of artificial danmaku that hit Kushida's hand. The Director yelped with surprise and her pistol went skidding across the hangar floor, at least until it was wrapped in a blue fire and abruptly rocketed into Kana's waiting hand, where it crumpled into a small metal ball.

"If it makes ya feel any better," Chiyuri said as Kushida took a shocked step backward, "this is only a slightly worse bargaining position than the one ya started with."

"So, about that override, Director..." Noriko started.

She was cut off by another voice, a harsh bark of laughter that seemed to echo from everywhere at once. "Idiot," this new speaker commented.

"Hitomi?!" Director Kushida looked about wildly, her dark hair whipping back and forth as she searched for her ally. "When did- is this where you went to? H-help me!"

Rikako started when she suddenly noticed someone standing in a spotlight on the other side of them from Kushida. It was that colonel from earlier, standing with her arms folded and a sneer on her face. The uncanny thing was that Rikako hadn't heard her coming, even though Kushida's footsteps had been quite loud...

"What did you think was going to happen?" Nakano scolded the director. "I know you saw the footage of what these freaks are capable of."

"A-at least I'm doing something!" Kushida retorted. "You just ran off in the middle of a crisis!"

"I can't sense her," Kana reported, sounding troubled. "But it's not like those shields, more like..."

"Something's not right," Noriko said slowly, panning her gaze back and forth across the colonel's figure.

"Whenever you're ready, just give the word," said Yumemi,

"I would advise against any rash action, Miss Okazaki," Nakano said sharply. The colonel didn't make a gesture, but six more figures abruptly stepped out of the shadows into the spotlight around her, stalking forward as quietly as cats. Another set of those bloody military androids, all with their rifles aimed at the escapees. There wasn't a hint of emotion on the faux-women's faces as they took up positions around and behind the colonel.

Kotohime gave Noriko a sidelong look. "So, why didn't you see this lot coming, Miss Magic Helmet?"

"They're not showing up on the base defense net," the guardswoman said sourly. "She must have taken them off the grid." With a frustrated sigh she stowed her weapon.

"Aww come on, we can take them!" Kotohime insisted.

"Can't get a grip on them," Kana muttered. "They all have those shields... or something?"

"Be sensible, there's no reason for violence when we can discuss this rationally," Director Kushida said. She started to walk past the group of escapees to join her military counterpart, but froze when one of the androids immediately shifted its weapon to point directly at Kushida. "W-what? What are you doing, I'm on your-"

"Shut up," the colonel said curtly. "You two," she said, nodding toward Noriko and Dr. Asakura, "explain yourselves."

The other Rikako clenched her fists at her hips and glared at her employer. "You used me," she said, her voice unsteady with emotion. "I never wanted to hurt anyone, I just wanted to learn and discover things. But these people tell me you used the transport I set up for you to try to kill them, and then you abducted them, and then you brought in a sentient lifeform to experiment on without telling us, and you're planning to invade-"

"You can't be this naive," Nakano sighed. "What did you think we were going to do with your research? Build magical, eco-friendly refrigerators? Film a documentary on pixie society?" The colonel turned to the rogue guardswoman. "And you, corporal? What excuse do you have for this betrayal?"

Noriko only grinned. "Oh, there's certainly treason going on at this base. But I'm not the one behind it, am I?"

The colonel's smug expression vanished.

"More to the point, I don't actually work for you," Noriko went on. She held up her left hand at just over eye level, cupping it in a certain gesture. To Rikako's astonishment, a short fan of golden light shone out of Noriko's gloved palm, coalescing in a brilliant emblem just bigger than her hand. Nakano grimaced, Kushida stumbled backwards in shock, while Yumemi, Chiyuri and the other Rikako gasped at the sight.

It looked rather like a badge.

"By the authority of His Imperial Majesty," Noriko boomed, "I hereby place Colonel Hitomi Nakano and Director Naoko Kushida under arrest for unlawful interference in less developed worlds, misappropriation of federal funds, perjury, conspiracy, kidnapping, attempted murder, and high treason. You can come quietly, or you can resist arrest and have you asses kicked first. Your choice."

"T-treason?" sputtered Kushida. "W-what's going on- who are you?!"

"Special Agent Usagi of the metsuke," the faux-guardswoman said simply, her face stern beneath her mirrored visor. "And you will have time to review the evidence against you as you prepare your defense."

"But, but these charges are nonsense..." Kushida slowly turned to her companion. "Aren't they, Hitomi?"

The colonel ignored her, staring at the woman dressed as a guard. "Well, you've been quite patient. The last personnel transfer was over a year ago, and to create a cover identity beforehand-"

"The charges, Hitomi!" Kushida repeated, turning red. "What's this about treason?"

Noriko - or Usagi now - tilted her helmeted head. "She never told you? Well, that's a point in your favor, at least." The operative shrugged and lowered her hand, her illusory badge vanishing as she did so. "Yeah, this whole venture was reviewed by the Emperor, PM and cabinet two years ago, and they ordered it shut down as ethically unsound. But Nakano here refused to comply and went rogue. Which should explain why everything was suddenly moved to a remote, decommissioned facility under a communications blackout, and the only people allowed to leave it were androids under the colonel's direct control."

Kushida's jaw dropped. "Two years?! But, but the letters from the Board-"

"I faked them, idiot," Nakano sighed. "You just aren't very clever, are you?"

Fury flashed in the director's eyes. "No, I suppose I'm not as much a schemer as you. And I'm not traitor to my country, either!" Kushida turned toward Usagi and took a step forward, her chin held high. "I surrender, and will eagerly cooperate with the proper authorities."

"Good choice," Usagi nodded, before gesturing at the colonel. "And what about you?"

Nakano gave the other woman a wintery smile. "If you think I plan on abandoning everything that I've accomplished, you're as much an idiot as she is."

"You can't win this, colonel," the agent said calmly. "This facility is surrounded. Even as we speak, a naval detachment is apprehending your soldiers outside. If you had your comms on, you'd find a lot of people very eager to speak to you."

The colonel shrugged. "And yet, in the immediate sense, you seem to be the one in a disadvantageous position. I think whatever forces you've mustered will be hesitant to fire on one of the Emperor's little terriers, if I let them know I've got one on my ship." Her lip curled into a sneer. "Particularly one with your... pedigree."

"I have all this hangar and all the hypervessels in it on lockdown," Kushida said, scowling at her counterpart. "Hitomi, there's no reason-"

The colonel just sighed. Without her having to make a gesture, all four vessels' boarding ramps whined and lowered themselves to the hangar floor. "Why would I give you any authority I couldn't revoke?" Nakano asked rhetorically, before turning back to Usagi. "You, come with me, and no tricks."

"You're wasting your time," the agent replied. "I gave the task force strict instructions to fire on any escaping vehicles even if someone claims to have me hostage. If you try to run, you'll die," she warned.

Nakano smiled thinly. "I disagree. But, if you're no use to me alive, I might as well-"

"Excuse me," Kotohime said loudly.

The colonel sighed with exasperation. "What?"

"I'm a valuable hostage," Kotohime insisted with a smug grin. "I'm a veritable princess of a magical realm and its chief of police."

"Yes, I'm sure that would go over well if I called up the navy to discuss why they shouldn't shoot at me," Nakano said with a roll of her eyes. "Instead of firing they'd try to get me committed-"

"Also, one of your 'bots dropped this earlier," Kotohime interrupted, shoving a hand down a sleeve and quickly lobbing something forward-

The grenade clanked once on the metal floor as it bounced to land at the feet of the two androids on the general's right, who didn't so much as glance down at it before-

There was a deafening CHOOM, a pulse of blinding green light, a blast of intense heat, and a shockwave that sent Rikako reeling, wholly unlike the explosives she'd seen Kotohime employ so far.

As Rikako tried to blink the afterimage away, she was aware of Yumemi, Kana and Kotohime all leaping into the air, ready for battle, but it quickly became clear that something unexpected had happened. When her vision recovered, Rikako saw that where the rogue colonel and androids had been, there was nothing but a wide patch of scorched floor.

"What did you do?" demanded Usagi, pulling her gun and looking about for her quarry.

"And where did you get a plasma grenade?!" Yumemi added.

"Like I said, one of the killbots threw one earlier, and I thought it'd be a shame to let it go to waste," Kotohime replied. She slowly eased onto the hangar floor, staring at her handiwork. "Um, did I just vaporize the bad guy?" she asked, her face pale.

"No," Usagi said immediately, making Kotohime sag in relief. "Plasma blasts leave remains behind, even at point-blank range."

"Not gonna ask how ya know that," Chiyuri muttered.

"So nobody got hurt?" asked Ellen from the rear of the group.

"They must have... run off?" the other Rikako suggested. "Very quickly?"

"Or they cloaked," Kotohime said.

"I'd have seen it," said Usagi, tapping the side of her helmet. "My guess is they were all holograms."

"Ah, we don't have any projectors up here," Kushida supplied. "And a portable unit wouldn't be that perfect, there would be flickers of static or other flaws."

"So an illusion, then," Rikako theorized aloud.

The former director blinked. "Oh. Yes, I suppose that's possible." She frowned. "But that would mean that she could use mag-"

A thin bolt of blinding yellow energy stabbed right through the woman's mid-torso, making her stiffen from the shock and impact of it. Then Kushida made a horrible sound and slowly toppled onto her side, blood already soaking her business jacket while a few sparks sputtered out of the device on her back.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting to do that," came Nakano's voice from the shadows to their left.

Then there were echoing footfalls, not the slap of shoe leather on a floor, but the steady clank, clank, clank of heavy footsteps. A figure emerged from the darkness, a hulking form at least a head taller than even Chiyuri. It was wearing a thick suit of armor, almost like Western plate, but far more sophisticated - the torso and limbs were protected in a dull gray metal covered with etchings or engravings, while the joints were sheathed in some matte black, flexible material. Each step was faintly accompanied by whines and hisses, and from the cables and wires visible between the armor plates, Rikako guessed the suit provided more than a layer of protection.

Rikako was dimly aware of Ellen making a dismayed sound and ducking out of sight, but most of her brain was still trying to process the sudden attack and what exactly she was looking at. It took her a moment to realize that the pale part near the center of its chest was someone's face - the suit's shoulders were so bulky that the thing looked almost hunchbacked. And it took Rikako another moment to recognize the suit's wearer, since she had traded out her peaked cap for some sort of close-fitting coif that covered everything except her face, and because the woman's normally stoic expression had become a predatory smile.

"What's wrong?" Colonel Nakano asked sarcastically, coming to a halt at the edge of one of the circles of light shining down on the hangar floor. "You are all so wearily chatty most of the time, why have you gone silent now?"

"I was politely waiting for you to speak," Kotohime replied. "You decided not to gun us all down from concealment, which means you have a speech prepared for us. Probably something about how unstoppable you are."

"Or a rant about why she committed her crimes," Agent Usagi added. "I think criminals like to try to justify their actions to others because they're still trying to convince themselves that what they're doing is right. Even after they have, for example, just shot someone in cold blood," she said, flapping an arm at the fallen Kushida.

"I can fix this," Ellen was muttering to herself from near the floor, ignoring everything else around her. "I can fix this."

"I don't have to justify myself to you," Nakano sneered. "But the idiot is right, I am unstoppable. This suit," she said, flexing and clenching her gauntlets to the faint whine of servos, "is the most sophisticated piece of wargear on the entire planet, the culmination of all our research here, and years of work by the Special Projects team."

Dr. Asakura took a step backwards. "What Special Projects team?"

"The one in the part of the base that wasn't on the blueprints," Usagi said without turning away from their enemy.

"Though we can't take all the credit," Nakano went on, flashing a nasty smile at Yumemi and Chiyuri. "You two made a sizeable contribution as well. My engineers could barely improve on that battle rig of yours, beyond adapting it to power armor, of course."

Chiyuri started swearing, softly but viciously. Yumemi said nothing, but her fists were clenched and shaking.

"So," Nakano went on, rapping her suit's knuckles together and shifting into a combat stance, "I might as well give it a test run before dealing with that task force of yours."

Usagi drew her pistol, checked it, and kept it out, pointed down but ready to fight at a moment's notice. "Are you sure you want to do this, colonel?" she asked somberly.

"Oh, of course," Nakano replied with a mocking grin. "Just think of all the data I'll collect, mmm?"

And Kotohime... was counting on her fingers. "Let's see, there was the assassin in Gensokyo, the guys in the enemy hypervessel, the assassin in the alley... wait, do the gang members count? And how many mobs of killbots did we go through?"

Rikako gave her a sidelong glance. "Is this the right time?"

"Eh, let's call this the sixth fight to make things square," Kotohime decided, then cracked her knuckles. "So what, do we want to count to three before starting?"

"Three," Nakano deadpanned, lifting her arm and unleashing a snarling lance of energy from of the palm of her hand.

The group of women exploded into light and motion. Kotohime leapt sideways to dodge Nakano's attack, Yumemi jumped into the air and rushed at the rogue colonel, Usagi ducked and rolled and came up in a firing stance, and Rikako-

Realized she should stop gawking. Her hair whipped back and forth as she searched for cover-

And one of those enormous metal containers suddenly landed right between her and the battle, a blue glow around it quickly fading.

"Good thinking," she gasped, nodding gratefully at Kana. The poltergeist gave her a quick smirk, then floated up to peek over the top of the impromptu barrier.

"How is she?" Dr. Asakura asked Ellen.

Ellen briefly looked up from where she'd knelt over Kushida, her eyes glinting with tears but her jaw set in determination. "I have something that can help, I'm sure of it!" Then she went back to digging through her satchel.

"It would be fortunate if we can save the director," Ruukoto said, the robot maid's tone earnest and calm even as the sounds of battle rose from the other side of the barrier sheltering them "Her testimony will be crucial to bringing this investigation to a successful conclusion. And, of course, human life is precious and should be preserved."

"Got it!" Ellen cried triumphantly. She nimbly extracted a thin vial containing a sparkling clear liquid, twisted its cap off, and carefully poured it into the unconscious Kushida's mouth.

The director's lips moved slightly, then she took in a sudden gasp of air, her eyes flew open, and her hands went to her bloodstained shirt.

"Take it easy," Ellen said. "You don't want to hurt yourself more by moving around. Just hold still." The young mage gulped, but shifted her attention to Kushida's wound, spreading her fingers and holding her hands just over the woman's body. A soothing amber light began to shine from Ellen's hands. "I'm not much of a healer," Ellen admitted. "But I think I can stop the bleeding."

"That's great," Kushida said in a small, shaky voice, and she let her head rest on the floor again. "I'll just... keep lying here..."

"Hooray, one of the women responsible for all our problems will survive," Chiyuri said flatly. She moved to lean out of cover to check on the battle, only to flinch when an errant blast of yellow light impacted close to the bulky container. "Gah, I hate just watchin'! Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Kana?" Rikako asked.

"Can't grab her, but it's not one of those no-magic bubbles, more like the suit is warded," the poltergeist said without looking back. "Might be able to throw something at her if I get a clear shot, but, uh..." She looked back at them, face twisted with frustration. "I can't get too far from Ellen. There's, there's just not enough for me to go off of here. Outside Gensokyo was one thing, but in this world..." she shuddered. "The only reason I didn't escape from that lab is because I didn't know if I could survive outside of that damned box," she admitted in a small voice. "That's part of why I was so, uh, freaked out when I got out."

The other Rikako had closed her eyes. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"What about you?" Chiyuri asked Rikako.

Rikako shook her head wearily. "I'm occupied keeping that spell ready to go off, remember? If I try other magic, I could lose it, or trigger it prematurely."

"Think it would take out the colonel's armor?" asked Chiyuri.

"That would terminate me and destroy evidence vital to the case against Colonel Nakano," Ruukoto reminded them, even though she didn't seem too bothered by the prospect. "But, if doing so is the only way to preserve your lives, it is the most logical course of action."

"I don't know if it would work," Rikako said, suppressing a scowl. She wanted to get the spell off instead of having it throbbing away inside her skull, but... "Kana said the suit had wards up, so it would depend on how strong those defenses are."

"So we should save it for a worst-case scenario," nodded the other Rikako.

"Well we have to do something," Chiyuri spat.

"Like what?" asked Dr. Asakura pointedly. "We don't have anything that would let us fight this enemy."

Chiyuri said nothing - her eyes had fallen on the ramp of the nearby hypervessel, open and inviting. "First, let's get some better cover..."

-x-

Kotohime knew it was only appropriate for a final boss to be more difficult than all the minions the heroine had encountered and overcame when fighting through her villainous lair. Still, she was getting tired of watching her attacks not have any effect.

Colonel Nakano's armor looked huge and ungainly, but it bobbed through the air with a dancer's grace, darting about as easily as Yumemi's less-protective prototype. The suit was bulky, though, and Nakano evidently wasn't experienced enough to dodge every magical or scientific energy bullet that Kotohime and Yumemi was spraying. But the shots that did hit did nothing - Yumemi's scientific danmaku flashed against a briefly-visible bubble of energy wrapped around Nakano's armor, while Kotohime's magical attacks were stopped by suddenly-manifesting rectangles of golden light patterned with the same inscriptions that covered Nakano's armor.

Force fields and magical wards, on top of unparalleled physical protection. And of course the suit would also fire golden lasers out of the palms of its gauntlets while flying around.

After making another useless attack run, Kotohime swooped up to hover next to Yumemi, who seemed to have reached a similar conclusion. "Any insights?" she asked the scientist.

Yumemi narrowed her red eyes, breathing hard but steadily. "I don't know how it's generating enough power to keep those shields up, shoot at us, and fly. Though the answer's probably magic, isn't it?"

"Probably," Kotohime agreed. And now that Yumemi mentioned it... "I think she's got a mini-hakkero in the suit's chest," Kotohime said, pointing at a telltale hexagonal shape in the center of the armor's breastplate. The problem, though, was that it was a faint shape, almost lost in the heavy plating and protective enchantments inscribed into the armor. "No obvious weak points to get to it," Kotohime sighed. "Terribly unsporting."

They had to split apart again as Nakano loosed three quick lances of energy at them. "Having a pleasant conversation?" the colonel called sarcastically.

"Just admiring your outfit!" Yumemi yelled back. "As far as warmongering perversions of science go, it's quite stylish!"

"Could use some flair, though!" Kotohime added with a tight smile. "Ever think about a cape?"

She could see Nakano's lip curl as the rogue colonel prepared to reply, only to be interrupted by a flurry of energy bolts that made her armor's force fields glow cherry-red for a moment. Agent Usagi was in a shooter's stance, both hands on her pistol, spitting a constant stream of fire into Nakano. And she didn't miss a shot, either, Kotohime noted approvingly.

Not that Nakano was bothering to dodge. The colonel simply hovered in mid-air, not reacting until the barrage ceased and Usagi smoothly pulled a boxy something from the middle of her pistol. "Are you done?" asked Nakano.

"I've still got four more clips," Usagi reported, pulling something from her belt and slamming it into her gun with practiced ease. But before she could take another shot, the special agent had to sprint for cover as Nakano fired a series of yellow lasers at her, turning patches of floor to slag right on Usagi's heels until Kotohime and Yumemi opened up again.

And Nakano still wasn't dodging, but continued to float and take carefully-aimed shots that forced Kotohime to spend more time avoiding attacks than firing back. The only good thing about the situation was that Nakano's golden lasers weren't particularly hard to avoid.

"This would be easier if you would just hold still and accept your death!" Nakano shouted. "You can't stop me!"

"But you can't hit us," Kotohime fired back as she sideslipped another laser. She put a finger to her chin as she pondered. "It's probably the differing combat philosophies of our two worlds," she mused aloud. "You're trying to do a lot of damage to a very specific target, while in Gensokyo, danmaku is all about delivering a high volume of fire, usually in an aesthetically-pleasing attack pattern."

"You call that combat?" scoffed Nakano. "I've seen your little 'duels,' and they're just a bunch of luddites squandering their potential to play games with each other. Do you have any idea what someone like me could accomplish with that power?"

"Yes," Kotohime said somberly. "That's why I have to stop you."

"In fact," Nakano went on as if Kotohime hadn't spoken, "maybe it's time for a demonstration." She held one arm close to her chest while her other hand pressed some buttons on it, deploying a strip of paper from a panel on her gauntlet-

As her blood ran cold, Kotohime felt intense regret that she had lectured her enemy about the proper way to fight a danmaku duel. "Get back!" she warned her comrades-

"Fire Sign ~ Agni Shrine!" Nakano shouted as she held the spell card high.

With a great roar and a flare of orange light that illuminated the cavernous chamber, a veritable firestorm erupted around the colonel, a swirling outburst of guttering balls of flame. They burst out in pulses that overlapped and passed through each other, each wave swirling in opposite directions, forming a rapidly-approaching wall of crisscrossing flames that only began to scatter into its component fireballs just as they were about to hit Kotohime and Yumemi.

"Pull back!" Kotohime bellowed, struggling to be heard over the roar. "Look for the gap and shoot through it!" She put her words to action, backpedaling through the air until she spotted a break in the furious red fireballs, then hurtled through it, feeling her hair singe and her silk robes scorch from the heat. Once she was through, she could just see Nakano at the center of the next burst of fire, surrounded in the tell-tale magic circle of an active spell card.

Evidently the research team had duplicated more of the suckers than the ones on display in the lab, and the colonel had obviously taken her pick of the crop. Kotohime could only hope Usagi had found something to hunker behind, and that the rest of the group had taken shelter as well, but with this much fire flying through the air she couldn't take a moment to check. The best Kotohime could do was glance over her shoulder to see if Yumemi had made it through the first wave.

She was relieved to see her companion fly over to join her, but before Yumemi could say anything, the policewoman shouted "Again!" and drifted backwards, following the departing flames in anticipation of the next wall of fireballs. Once more the hangar filled with a sheet of fire, but as its component bursts drifted apart, it was Yumemi who spotted the next gap, and Kotohime flew hot on her heels to take advantage of it.

She didn't have to say anything as the next wave of flame exploded out from their enemy, and the two heroines drew back again and found the safe path as the colonel's danmaku spread out. This time when they broke through, Nakano was just hovering in place, staring at the slip of paper in her gauntleted hand.

"What, that's it?" she snarled.

"Three pulses of fireballs isn't anything to sneeze at," Kotohime commented. Spots of the hangar's walls and ceilings were still glowing red as they cooled, and the floor was charred a good distance from the colonel.

"But you're still alive," Nakano said, glaring hatefully at them.

Kotohime merely sighed and shook her head. "You're missing the entire point of spell cards. How can you hope to properly use a power you don't understand?"

"I understand battle better than you primitives," Nakano retorted, as she readied her next attack...

-x-

Rikako heard Chiyuri's gasp the same moment she glanced over her shoulder saw the orange glow. More than that, she could feel the sudden surge of magic-

"RUN!" she shouted, pushing herself to her limit even though she knew it wouldn't be enough.

Ruukoto and Dr. Asakura were ahead of her, helping support Director Kushida, and even as Rikako watched she saw them reach the safety of the hypervessel's gangplank. But the rest of their group was still caught in the open between the vehicle and the metal container Kana had provided for cover, and she could hear a great roaring of the approaching inferno, feel the wall of heat rolling over them-

Rikako was aware of Ellen stopping and turning, and immediately halted herself in a futile effort to bring the young mage along-

There was a blast of cool blue light, and the next breath Rikako took was filled with the sharp chill of a winter night.

Ellen's head was bowed but she was otherwise standing tall, her feet planted wide and her arms outstretched to either side of her, palms out as she generated a sphere of magic that just encompassed her, Rikako, Kana and Chiyuri. The snarling swarm of fireballs sweeping over them from both sides simply disappeared upon making contact with Ellen's barrier, not leaving so much as a puff of smoke. Chiyuri stared with wide-eyed amazement as Ellen's magic absorbed a second and then third wave of fire, and even Rikako found herself impressed with the little mage's wards.

Only after the last wave of flames had passed and nothing else seemed to be forthcoming did Ellen let out a breath and lift her head as she let the spell fade. "Phew!" she gasped, swiping sweat from her brow. "That was scary!"

"What was that?" Chiyuri asked, a bit unsteadily.

"I don't know what the bad person's magic was," Ellen said apologetically, "but I was using something called Thrymr's Breath. It's pretty useful! I use a little version when it gets too hot, but you can also use it if a dragon gets mad at you, or-"

"Keep moving!" someone shouted. Rikako spotted an armored figure running their way, gesturing at the hypervessel. To Rikako's annoyance, her legs started moving before she made a conscious decision to obey, though fortunately Ellen got the message and came along with her.

The five of them quickly scampered up the hypervessel's gangplank - although Kana just flew up and through the hull - to regroup with the others. Director Kushida was slumped in the vehicle's galley, still looking dazed, while Dr. Asakura was clearly relieved to see them again. At least until she spotted who had joined them, and promptly jolted in alarm.

"Y-you're on fire!" the scientist stammered.

Rikako did a double-take and confirmed that yes, there were flames licking from Usagi's shoulder.

"I've been more on fire," the special agent said unconcernedly as she slapped them out. Then she turned to Chiyuri. "Miss Kitashirakawa, you can fly this, correct?"

Chiyuri gave a curt nod. "Yeah, I'm certified with-"

She fell silent at a sound like a thunderclap and a flash of blue light coming from the vessel's boarding ramp. There was a tense moment when everyone to see what would happen next, but although there were some interesting noises coming form the unseen battle, nothing appeared to be headed their way.

"The first thing you'll wanna do is turn this thing on and get the shields up," Usagi said with a wry smile. "I know it's a civilian model, but it's better than nothing."

"And then what do we do, hide until the shooting stops?" Kana asked, gloved arms folded as she stared at the agent with half-closed eyes.

"I'd rather you all get out of here," said Usagi calmly. "Nakano's locked the hangar door and I can't override it, but I'm hoping you can magic up a solution to that. Then I want you to run for it. When someone hails you, surrender immediately and let Ruukoto explain things-"

"I'm not leaving the professor," Chiyuri growled.

"Miss Okazaki can fly out on her own if necessary," Usagi said sharply. Then she turned to Rikako. "Once you're clear of the base, I want you, Miss Asakura, to detonate your magical EMP."

Rikako took in and let out a deep breath. "Alright, but what about you?"

"And Yumemi," Chiyuri added, scowling.

"And Kotohime," Ellen piped up, presumably because someone had to be worried about the maniac.

"Either we'll manage to stall Nakano until you can detonate the spell and disable her, or she'll kill us but get knocked out by the EMP before she can escape," Usagi said with a shrug.

"Yeah, screw that, I'm not leavin'," Chiyuri said, her face reddening.

The visible part of Usagi's expression was calm, but Rikako could still feel the intensity of her stare through the mirrored visor of her helmet. "Need I remind you of the consequences of refusing a direct order from a metsuke?"

"I'd rather die than abandon her!" Chiyuri snarled back.

"At least think for a moment, Miss Kitashirakawa," Usagi said sharply. "If Nakano isn't stopped, if she gets away, all of your efforts to shut down this project will be in vain. If she was ready to run, it means she thinks she has enough information and resources hidden away elsewhere to make another attempt to take over Gensokyo for herself. And I know the woman, she will not stop until she gets what she wants."

Chiyuri glared at the other woman for a long moment, her silence interrupted by explosions and flashes from outside the ship, before she spat a curse. "Fine! But if ya make it out of this and the professor doesn't, so help me I'll-"

"And what about you?" Rikako asked Usagi.

"I get to help Yumemi and Kotohime distract Nakano so she doesn't swat you out of the sky when you make your run for it," the special agent replied with a wry smile. "You good to go, Ruukoto?"

"The information you stored in me is intact and ready for access by the proper authorities, Special Agent Usagi," the robot maid said with a bow.

"Good. Try not to fry it or anything," Usagi told the magic users. "Good luck." And with that she took a deep breath and then charged down the ship's ramp, pistol in hand.

Everyone stared after her for a moment, until Kushida turned toward Chiyuri. "Ah, shouldn't you be turning on those shields now?"

"Right, right," the blonde woman muttered as she hustled up the ship's main corridor to the cockpit.

"Which means the rest of us have to come up with some way of getting out of here," Dr. Asakura said. She folded her arms and started absently tapping her upper arm with a finger.

"And unfortunately Ellen is our only functional mage," Rikako sighed. She realized she had folded her arms too and forced herself to relax.

"I know a door opening spell," Ellen said slowly, frowning as her eyes went a bit unfocused. "But I'm not sure how to use it in this situation..."

"I think Helmet Lady was talking about you blasting a way out for us, sweetie," Kana said, rolling her eyes.

Kushida shifted slightly, trying to straighten herself up, but gave up. "Well, this facility is buried underground, and the hangar door is reinforced to protect in case of enemy attack, so whatever you used would have to be-"

There was another tremor, but it seemed to come from the ship instead of the battle outside it, and Rikako realized some of the engines - or other devices - had whined into life. Chiyuri promptly appeared at the end of the hall and hurried to rejoin them.

"Shields are up," their pilot said.

"Will they help us break out?" Rikako had to ask.

Chiyuri snorted. "Hardly. And it just occurred to me, any magic powerful enough to blow our way out of here would be powerful enough to kick the colonel's ass, right?"

"She's warded against magic," Rikako reminded her.

"That's not the same as being magic-proof, is it?" Chiyuri countered.

Rikako frowned. "Well, no. Magic can cancel out other magic, so in theory it would be possible to overwhelm those wards with enough force. Similar to how Yumemi and Kotohime were able to batter down those androids' force fields. Which the colonel also has," she said with a sigh.

"But why doesn't she use a null field?" Dr. Asakura pondered. "It would surely be more effective than those magical wards..."

Rikako blinked as the pieces started to fall into place. "Would a conventional power source be sufficient for that suit of armor?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

Her counterpart shook her head. "No. I mean, a standard fusion core could power a suit like that one, but not if it was flying around and unleashing that sort of firepower, to say nothing of casting spells."

"It's like I told ya earlier," Chiyuri added. "Flight or armor, not both." She seemed to catch on. "But if the colonel can fly in that thing-"

"-then she's not using an ordinary power source," Rikako finished.

"And if my scientists were able to make a mini-hakkero," the other Rikako said, "then that 'Special Projects' team could make one too."

"And that's why she can't use a null field, it'd neutralize her own power source," Rikako concluded, smiling despite the situation. It was always a pleasure to use logic and reason to work through a problem that seemed insurmountable.

"So if we stick her under one, she's just a bitch in a metal straitjacket," Chiyuri said with a feral grin, while Ellen gasped and blushed at the language.

"I'd, uh, help you with that," Kushida said from her seat, reminding Rikako that she was there. "But the one I was wearing got shot when I... got shot," she finished with a shudder.

Rikako looked over at the woman, and at the heavy backpack sitting on the floor at her feet. She couldn't see anything of its inner workings, but the blackened patch around a scorched hole in the fabric wasn't reassuring.

"You've still got that stuff you brought along to fix this thing, right, Ellen?" Kana spoke up.

The young mage jolted, then started patting down her satchel. "Yeah! I used up the computer spray, but I've got things to fix metal and wiring..."

"And if anyone has some tools, I can pitch in as well," Dr. Asakura said. She picked up the backpack and set it down on the galley table, then pulled apart the fabric to reveal... well, Rikako wasn't sure what she was looking at. Some wiring looked vaguely familiar, but the rest was incomprehensible. And, judging by the expression on her counterpart's face, not in good shape. "This could take awhile," the other Rikako said somberly.

"I'll help if I can," Rikako offered.

"Keep your distance, remember?" her counterpart said without looking up. "If the null field tags you it might set your spell off prematurely."

"Right, right," Rikako said, blushing.

There was another loud sound from outside, a great tearing followed by several sharp pops. Chiyuri grit her teeth in frustration. "Rrrrgh, there's gotta be something we can do to pitch in right now!"

"Don't suppose you have one of those 'battle rigs?'" Kana asked sarcastically. Rikako noticed that the poltergeist had relocated to the other side of the galley from the damaged device.

Chiyuri opened her mouth to yell something, abruptly closed it, and furrowed her brow. "No," she said finally, before breaking into a smile. "But maybe I can double our firepower all the same. You guys keep working, I'll be back in a moment," she said as she abruptly turned toward the cockpit.

"Can I help?" Rikako offered as she followed. She knew she was out of her depth no matter what she tried to assist with, but she had to do something.

"Naw, I've got this." Chiyuri slipped into the ship's control room but didn't sit down in her usual pilot's seat. Instead she stood over the console Yumemi usually operated, and started hammering buttons. Rikako wasn't encouraged by the number of red lights and warning messages that popped up while Chiyuri worked.

"So what are you doing?" she asked, hoping she wasn't distracting Chiyuri too much.

"Overriding a lot of safety measures," Chiyuri replied, but she turned to shoot Rikako a manic grin. "Oh, we're not in danger - well, much danger - but this is illegal as all hell. Ethically questionable as well."

"That's not very reassuring," Rikako admitted.

"Desperate times and all that." Chiyuri actually cackled. "Now, would ya like to learn about energy imbalances?"

-x-

In all the excitement, Kotohime had actually forgotten how many spell cards Colonel Nakano had thrown at her - she'd been too busy racking her brain, trying to identify the attacks as the colonel announced them and remember their patterns. Like a pop quiz for keeps, Kotohime figured. Unfortunately neither her princess nor policewoman training had involved memory tests under live fire exercises, which was an embarrassing oversight. Or maybe the colonel was cheating and had picked material that hadn't been covered in class.

Nakano held up another slip of magical script. "Origin Sign ~ Ephemerality 137!"

"From the top!" Kotohime shouted as she flew back, putting some space between her and her opponent so she could get the measure of her attack. Usagi was below, darting about a big metal container in between taking potshots at their foe, while Yumemi was right at Kotohime's side, and doing a marvelous job dodging all this danmaku for someone who hadn't had a chance to practice since before the adoption of the official spell card system. Hell, that amazing cape wasn't even singed slightly. Assuming it was made of mundane fabric and not some advanced material like carbon nanotubes or-

This time Nakano swept her arm to the right, launching a stream of ghostly white flames that ran nearly parallel to the hangar wall, flying well clear of Kotohime and Yumemi. But before Kotohime could wonder what the point of the attack was, the white fireballs exploded into clouds of red and blue magical bullets flying in all directions like arcane shrapnel. Just as the clusters of danmaku started to spread out, Nakano flung out her other arm, firing another volley of the white fireballs along the other side of the hangar-

"Back and forth!" Kotohime ordered, even as she started flying away from the approaching cloud of magical bullets, nearly matching their speed so she had as much time as possible to spread apart and open up a safe path through them. When the second volley of white fireballs exploded into another storm of red and blue, Kotohime shot forward, threading her way through the first wall of bullets, then immediately spun around and repeated the process, flying away from the second wave as they dispersed. And once she was through the second wave, she had to spin around and deal with the third, and then the fourth, the fifth, the sixth-

At one point she heard someone cry out, but Kotohime couldn't spare a moment's distraction to try to find the source of the sound. Neither could she multitask and fire back at Nakano - truth be told she was out of practice when it came to proper danmaku duels, and with two teammates battling alongside her, shooting blindly into a firefight was just a terrible idea.

Finally the magical storm abated, and Kotohime glanced around. This attack hadn't done any damage to the hangar, she noticed, but then she realized that she and Nakano were the only people still in the air.

"Okazaki's hit!" Usagi called from underneath her.

Kotohime glanced down, fighting to remain calm. Sure enough, Yumemi was sprawled out on the hangar floor, her cape pooled around her like a bloodstain. She was stirring weakly, though - danmaku didn't exactly tickle, but it wasn't supposed to be lethal. At least when it wasn't being thrown around by a product of the military-industrial complex.

"Look after her," Kotohime called, unnecessarily since the special agent was already kneeling over the former professor, trying to rouse her. Though of course this was only to be expected since-

Pure instinct made Kotohime juke to the side just in time to avoid a sizzling lance of lethal yellow light.

"Worry about yourself!" Nakano jeered. But she'd stopped firing, and was already reaching for another spell card-

Kotohime hurled herself forward at full speed, something that evidently caught her opponent by surprise since Nakano hurriedly flung her arm forward so she could fire more lasers. But Kotohime barrel-rolled to avoid them, not slowing down in the slightest as she bore down on her enemy. The policewoman's fingers wrapped themselves around the grip of her jitte with practiced ease, she bobbed down and then swooped up so that she was right in front of her enemy, she drew and swung her weapon in the same smooth motion, aiming the blow directly at Nakano's head-

The jitte made a sharp clank as it bounced off the armored gauntlet Nakano had reflexively raised to defend herself, and Kotohime just managed to keep a grip on the weapon over the flash of pain in her wrist.

For a moment the two of them simply hovered there, and the rogue colonel's eyes widened as she realized what had just happened. "Seriously? Did you just try to hit me with a stick?"

Kotohime grinned, spun, and made another back-handed swipe at Nakano's unprotected head, but the colonel ducked. "Got past your shields, didn't it?" noted the policewoman. She tried an overhand blow-

And doubled over as Nakano punched her in the gut. Evidently the suit of armor didn't enhance its wielder's strength to superhuman levels because Kotohime was still in one piece, but damn did it hurt.

Kotohime let herself fall out of the sky for a moment to evade Nakano's follow-up kick, then popped up behind and slightly over the colonel before she was finished moving. For one brief moment her enemy was hovering motionless, searching for Kotohime - and that was encouraging. Her technology (and magic) were formidable, but Nakano wasn't actually experienced at this sort of three-dimensional combat. She was, theoretically, beatable.

So Kotohime lunged downward, intending to club the colonel on the top of her helmetless head, only for Nakano to spin around at the last second and loose a snap-shot that forced the princess to veer off. She spat a short stream of close-ranged danmaku out of reflex, which of course impacted without any effect against the glowing arcane wards generated by the inscriptions on Nakano's power armor. Which was getting really annoying.

"It is literally impossible for you to hurt me, you imbecile," the colonel snarled at her.

"You're wearing magically-enhanced power armor to engage in an aerial duel with a princess from another dimension, and you're talking to me about stuff being 'impossible?'" replied Kotohime incredulously.

Nakano spat a curse and raised both hands to shoot this time. Kotohime put all her effort into evasion, and dodged and wove through the air while a flurry of golden lasers peppered the hangar wall behind her.

"So what exactly is your endgame?" Kotohime asked during a lull in the shooting. "Like, you think you'll eventually beat all of us, but then what? Are you going to take on the whole task force waiting outside by yourself?"

Nakano sneered at her, pressed some sort of button on the suit's vambrace, and promptly disappeared from sight.

"Oh." Kotohime nodded somberly. "Illusion spells, right. Yeah, that could-"

The bad news was that she had once again inadvertently reminded her enemy of one of her special powers, making the battle harder for the good guys. The good news was that Nakano's illusion wasn't perfect, and she briefly blinked into visibility when she fired her techno-magical laser, so Kotohime had all of a split-second to put all of her energy into a shield before the blast hit her.

It hurt, not the shock of physical pain, but the more esoteric sort of unpleasantness that occurred when you poured all of your willpower and fighting spirit into generating a tangible barrier that was then forced to endure the sort of punishment that melted steel. Even though the attack only lasted a second or two, when it was over Kotohime was reeling, gasping for breath. She started moving and dodging as soon as she could, her finely-tuned warrior instincts helping her evade a shot aimed at her back, then once she thought she'd gotten some distance between her and her opponent, Kotohime finally turned to try and face her foe. She didn't have to wait long, suddenly the colonel was simply there, just to the left-

Kotohime shot purely on reflex, though even as she did so she reasoned that it might give her enough of a distraction to escape to safety. But the purple magical bullets passed right through Nakano's armored form, and the colonel showed no signs of noticing them-

Her sixth, possibly seventh sense warned Kotohime of the danger just in time for her to spin around and throw up another desperate shield that barely caught Nakano's follow-up attack as the colonel winked into sight behind her. The princess couldn't hold in her bark of pain as her defenses shattered like a breaking bone, and she tumbled from the sky, her nerves on fire and her mind momentarily blank.

Somehow she managed to slow herself, but the breath was still knocked out of her when she hit the hangar floor. She lay there, struggling to collect herself, to get her magic to work for her again, but whether due to her fatigue or the properties of the dimension she was fighting in, Kotohime just couldn't manage it. She could only lift her head weakly as Nakano descended, hovering a few feet over her, sneering down at her fallen opponent.

"Well," said Nakano, "if nothing else you were good practice. When I-"

And then something happened, something Kotohime didn't quite have words for. It was sort of like being underwater with an explosive going off at the far end of a pond, a change in pressure, a shockwave, though Kotohime couldn't describe the medium the concussion was traveling through. There was a surge of power that made the lights in the hangar flicker for a moment and made Kotohime's skin tingle, though it wasn't quite static electricity. It was the sensation of a great change occurring, and it felt just plain weird, like the world had been twisted in ways it shouldn't. The closest Kotohime could come for a comparison would be the sensation of traveling between dimensions, except she wasn't moving.

Even Nakano was given pause, and the colonel halted in her attack, looking around suspiciously. The hangar fell silent for a moment, save for what sounded like a hurried and excited conversation echoing down one hypervessel's boarding ramp.

And then a red blur shot out of the ship.

For a moment Kotohime wondered whether she'd taken a harder hit than she thought, because Yumemi was zooming around again, filling the air with her scarlet scientific danmaku, even though Kotohime distinctly remembered the former professor going down during Nakano's last spell card. Colonel Nakano quickly turned her attention to this new threat and fired some golden lasers, but her enemy was too fast, her cape streaming behind her as she kept up the pressure. Nakano's shields were constantly flaring, a glowing crimson bubble wrapped tightly around her armor, and evidently it wasn't doing her accuracy any favors since her shots started going wilder.

"You alright?" Kotohime looked up - well, tilted her head back - and beheld Usagi running toward her upside-down. With the secret agent's help, Kotohime hauled herself back to her feet.

"I've had worse," the princess said. "How's..." Kotohime trailed off because Yumemi was limping along in Usagi's wake, and the princess had to glance up again to confirm that Yumemi was also still fighting Nakano. "So hey," she had to ask the one on the ground, "did you suddenly find your alternate universe equivalent or something?"

"No," the other redhead said with an expression of mixed awe and pride, "Chiyuri just did something highly unorthodox."

"And highly illegal," Usagi had to add. "And when she was supposed to be getting out of here."

"But with this much firepower..." Yumemi's red eyes blazed and she leapt into the air like a superheroine, joining her doppelganger's attack against Colonel Nakano.

"This might tip the scales," Kotohime finished. She reconsidered. "Which isn't to say it was an even fight to begin with, so I guess the scales are even more tipped now-"

"Shouldn't you be fighting?" Usagi sighed, though Kotohime knew she was suppressing a smile.

Kotohime flashed her a grin and leapt to the attack once more... if a little slower than she'd been flying before taking those hits.

Luckily Yumemi seemed to have recovered, while Yumemi of course was fresh and raring to go. The two were positively bullying Nakano, swooping and bobbing through the air to attack her at opposite angles, pouring on so much firepower that the colonel's shields were constantly flaring a brilliant scarlet. Nakano's return fire was infrequent and veered wide, like she was having trouble seeing through her own defenses. Kotohime only realized that her enemy had turned invisible when she noticed that she couldn't see Nakano's armored form in between the splashes of energy hitting her shields, but it wasn't helping the renegade officer - the sheer volume of fire coming her way meant that it was impossible for her to hide.

"Keep it up!" Kotohime shouted, adding her signature (trademark pending) purple danmaku to the display. Now there were little golden squares of light appearing under Nakano's flashing shields, which meant that Kotohime's attacks weren't doing any damage, but it was more power being drained from Nakano's suit and another obstacle to her hiding herself.

"ENOUGH!" Nakano bellowed. The colonel did something, there was a flash of golden light, and suddenly Nakano had cloned herself too because there was four of her swooping through the air, flying in different directions, attacking from four different angles-

And then there were ripples in the air that became explosions of blazingly bright red light, flaring horizontally and vertically to become a sequence of crosses that filled the air in front of the Nakanos like a particularly pious barricade. But the multiple armored colonels flew through the displays without so much as their shields flaring-

"They're all fakes!" one of the Yumemis reported.

"So the real colonel's invisible somewhere," the other surmised.

The three heroines - well, two and a clone or something - drifted closer together, facing outward from one another, eyes sweeping the hangar, which seemed all the gloomier now that the fireworks had stopped, so to speak.

"She's not the kind to cut and run in the middle of a fight," Usagi warned from below. "Stay alert."

"But she is the kind to sucker-punch from hiding," Kotohime said, nodding to herself.

"Hell God Sword ~ Divine Flashing Slash of Karma Wind!"

Kotohime whirled around, saw Nakano rocketing at her from the shadows, spell card in hand as she...

Drifted to a stop within arm's reach of Kotohime.

Yumemi and Yumemi both dove to either side, but held their fire when they noticed that Kotohime wasn't reacting.

Nakano rattled the little paper charm around, swearing under her breath. "Are you kidding me?! The eggheads let a defective spell get through?" Then she jolted as Kotohime started laughing.

"It's possible that they didn't copy it correctly," the policewoman said between chuckles. "But I think your bigger problem is that you're using a spell card meant to incorporate swordplay without wielding an actual sword."

Next to her, Yumemi arched an eyebrow. "You can do that? Call an attack with a sword a spell, I mean?"

"Oh, sure," Kotohime nodded. "You can also fire missiles, or invoke a god - hell, one of our local deities has a spell card where she throws energized sweet potatoes."

"Potatoes?" laughed Yumemi from the other side of her. "How does that count?"

Kotohime shrugged, grinning back. "Hey, no one consulted me when they drew the rules up."

"Scarlet Sign ~ Red the Nightless Castle!" Nakano roared, her face crimson with rage and humiliation. This time the spellcard seemed to work, and the colonel drifted upward slightly, tilting her head back and stretching her arms out to either side as a magic circle materialized around her.

"Back," Kotohime warned, but she drifted away at an unconcerned pace. Yumemi and Yumemi joined her, and continued to hold their fire after seeing her rueful smile.

She blinked when Nakano exploded into an eye-searing column of radiant red magic, momentarily illuminating the hangar and blasting a wide hole in its roof directly above her. The net effect was that a curtain of wreckage and dirt tumbled down around her before being replaced by a circle of sunlight that shone down upon the giant crimson cross the spellcard had created, turning what was supposed to be a furious battle into religious posturing. The thrumming display lasted for several heartbeats, then abruptly cut off, and Nakano finally looked down and saw how little her attack had accomplished.

"So are you picking these based on whether their names sound cool?" Kotohime asked loudly. "Or just choosing at random because you have no idea what you're doing?"

"Just surrender, colonel!" Usagi shouted from below. "You can't keep fighting forever, and there's-"

"Great Magic ~ Devil's Recitation!" Nakano shrieked as she flourished one last spell card.

All the mirth drained from Kotohime's face. "Uh oh."

"She pick a good one?" asked Yumemi worriedly.

"She picked a spell that destroyed a demonic citadel!" Kotohime realized she was screaming and fought to remain calm as she tried to reason with her foe. "Colonel, you're gonna bring this whole place down on us if you don't stop!"

But the renegade officer wasn't listening. Nakano hung in the air as a lattice of purple-red energy spread behind her, and four miniature suns appeared, two to either side of her. The air positively hummed with power as a sizzling sound grew in volume and intensity...

Yumemi and Yumemi immediately opened up with their scientific danmaku, and Usagi added to it by plugging away with her pistol, causing Nakano's shields to flare just as brightly as the magic building around her. But Kotohime knew shooting wouldn't stop the attack in time. Fleeing through the handy hole in the ceiling wasn't an option either, as it would mean abandoning the noncombatants who couldn't fly on their own. And evidently the colonel was enraged past rational thought or committed to taking her foes down with her.

There was only one thing left to do in this situation, but Kotohime had sworn she would never do it again. On the other hand, what were oaths if not to be cast aside in suitably dangerous and dramatic situations?

Kotohime closed her eyes, ignoring the demonic magical display appearing around her enemy, and the storm of fire coming from her allies. She let her head tilt back, let her arms hang loose at her side, and drew upon all her power. Not her magical power, those reserves were running dangerously low following all this combat in a low-magic dimension. Not her physical power, which couldn't batter through Nakano's armor no matter how hard she swung her jitte. And not her psychic powers, which come to think of it she kept forgetting to use, and might have been able to get through Nakano's defenses at the start of all this, but oh well.

Instead, Kotohime drew upon something different, something unique to her, and something hard to express in a single concept. It was the power that let her charm people and mollify enemies, the power that let her command her vassals, a power she had been born with and was her privilege and burden to use wisely. Some might call it charisma, but any brat in a frilly dress could strike a dramatic pose in front of a full moon. Some could call it glamour, but what Kotohime was drawing upon couldn't be duplicated in front of a make-up mirror.

She was channeling the essence of pure Princessdom, the awesome power that set her apart from anyone else in Gensokyo. Well, except for Kaguya. And possibly Miko's groupies. Miko herself was a bit of an anomaly, no telling what a lady channeling pure Princedom would look like. Yuyuko was also an honorary princess, it'd be a shame to exclude her. Oh yeah, probably Mokou too, succession issues aside-

Kotohime banished the flicker of distraction, felt her power suffuse her being, and unleashed her Smile.

-x-

"And that should do it!" Dr. Asakura said excitedly as she shoved some wiring into place. To finish the job, she placed a shard of metal over the ragged hole in the device's casing, then squirted the edges of the material with one of Ellen's spray bottles. The metal glistened like wet clay, then subtly shifted, flowing like rapidly-melting wax until the device's casing was whole again, without so much as a scratch indicating where the hole had been. "Good as new," the scientist declared.

"Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it has been restored to the best of our ability?" suggested Ruukoto as she gathered the various tweezers and screwdrivers and less identifiable objects scattered on the galley table, and carefully put them back in Chiyuri's toolbox.

"Right," agreed Chiyuri, smiling smugly as she folded her hands behind her head, "and our ability means we fixed it good as new."

"It certainly looks that way," Rikako said as she adjusted her glasses with a fingertip. She'd watched every step of the repair process from as close as safety allowed, and though Chiyuri and the other Rikako had done their best to explain what they were doing, they may as well have been speaking another language.

"We'll test it first, which means you magic types might want to visit the cockpit for a moment," Chiyuri suggested.

Rikako, Ellen and Kana obligingly hurried up the ship's hall and crowded into the ship's control room for a moment, while the other Rikako took the device to the opposite end of the corridor, next to a door that presumably led into the engine rooms.

"It's on," the scientist called after a moment. "Uh, I'm pretty sure it's working-"

"It is," Kana confirmed with a shudder. "Ugh, I'm no anti-science rustic, but that thing you created is just wrong."

"Okay, it works and I'm turning it back off now," Dr. Asakura said as everyone regrouped in the ship's galley.

She handed the device over to Chiyuri, who began stuffing it back into its backpack. "So now we gotta get the Steel Shrike cosplayer-"

"Who?" Rikako asked before she could catch herself. She quickly waved a hand. "Forget it."

Chiyuri smirked and went back to what she was doing. "So now we gotta get the bad guy under this null field." She tightened one last strap and set the backpack down on the table, then stared at it for a moment. "So... any ideas how we do that?"

"None of us can fly with the thing on," Rikako said with a grimace. Not that she thought she could fly without the device - she was exhausted and still holding that spell on the verge of completion, which only added to the strain. "And if she sees us coming and can guess what we're trying to do, she'll-"

She was interrupted when the hypervessel rocked from another explosion, not a direct hit but something that shook the whole hangar.

Kana flew straight up, until only her legs were dangling through the vessel's ceiling - forcing Rikako to hurriedly look down to avoid staring up the poltergeist's skirt. Even if she had been wearing bloomers. "Well hey," Kana said when she returned, "looks like there's a hole in the ceiling now."

"Big enough for us to escape through?" Kushida asked eagerly, leaning forward from her seat at the table.

"That is what Agent Usagi ordered you to do," Ruukoto reminded everyone, her voice polite but disapproving.

"Not sure," Kana shrugged. "I could check again-"

She stopped suddenly as the texture of the air changed, taking on a metallic tang that made Rikako's neck crawl. There was a heavy, energized sensation, like the moments before a monster storm, or-

"What is that?" Dr. Asakura said, her brow furrowed.

Director Kushida looked around in confusion. "What's what?"

"I know this magic," Rikako muttered, her mouth going dry and her eyes widening as she realized what she was sensing. "That's, that's something out of Makai!" Like many aspiring magicians, Rikako had spent some time in the demon realm - how much was hard to determine, since time passed differently in different worlds - and while she hadn't formally studied the locals' spellcasting, she had picked up enough knowledge to recognize a cataclysmically powerful invocation when she felt one. She turned to Chiyuri. "We need to-"

And then there was a blast of white, brilliant and blinding even if it was indirectly shining at them through the hypervessel's lowered boarding ramp.

It wasn't just light, it was something else, something overwhelming that made Rikako turn away and cover her eyes. It lasted only for a moment, but it was followed by a great tearing sound, the groan of tortured metal, and the heavy impact of collapsing earth.

After several seconds of furious blinking, Rikako could see again - or rather she could see the interior of the vehicle she was taking shelter again, and decided she needed to see more. She stumbled to the bottom of the boarding ramp and then gaped in astonishment.

Roughly a third of the hangar had been destroyed. The walls and roof simply terminated in a ragged line about where the combatants had been fighting, letting in glaring sunshine that was such a marked contrast to the shadowy conditions inside that Rikako couldn't see much details of what was beyond. A mound of dirt now covered one of the military vehicles parked in the hangar, while mangled chunks of metal were scattered across the floor like person-sized caltrops.

Against the dazzling backdrop were four hovering shapes. Colonel Nakano slowly uncurled herself from a braced position, and Rikako thought her armor looked a bit scorched and battered. Opposing her were Yumemi and the duplicate that Chiyuri had created, on either side of Kotohime-

Who promptly toppled backwards and dropped out of the sky. One of the Yumemis immediately dove to catch her, which meant the two hit the hangar floor in a controlled fall. The armored form of Agent Usagi broke from cover in the wings to assist them, while the other Yumemi watched, still dumbfounded.

"What the hell was that?" asked Chiyuri, drawing up next to Rikako.

Rikako just shook her head slowly, unable to answer.

"It looks like it did something to Nakano," the other Rikako said as she joined them at the bottom of the ramp. "But..."

But it wasn't enough. The armored colonel laughed and yelled something at Yumemi, firing one of her golden lasers at the former professor, who hurriedly began dodging and firing back with her own scientific danmaku, so that once again the hangar was filled with brilliant lines of energy.

"Kana," Rikako said, turning to look up into the hypervessel, where the others were peering down curiously. "Do ya think ya could get the null field's backpack on the colonel?"

The poltergeist's eyes narrowed. "From here? No. And I'm not sure I can trigger the thing while I'm moving it."

"Okay." Chiyuri let out a slow breath. "So, I'll take the null generator, then ya throw me at the colonel when she's holding still, and I'll turn on the generator in mid-air, grab her-"

"If she flings you that far, you'll be traveling fast enough that you'll be lucky to survive the impact," Dr. Asakura pointed out

Chiyuri glared defiantly. "Fine, so I'll run up until I'm under her, then Kana-"

"Then you're too far from me," the poltergeist said tiredly. "And I can't get too far from Ellen."

"Alright, I'll go with you and Kana can come with me," the young mage in question said, smiling brightly at Chiyuri.

"And what's Nakano going to do if she sees you three charging at her?" Dr. Asakura asked rhetorically.

"What if they had some covering fire?" Kushida asked, leaning into sight again. "That big spell stunned Hitomi - uh, the colonel - for a good bit. Can't any of you do something like that?" she asked the women from another world.

Rikako shook her head. "I can't use magic until the spell I'm holding goes off."

Kana scowled. "I'm not actually much for flashy stuff. I didn't do too well in that 'tournament.'"

Ellen winced. "I don't want to hurt anybody," she said meekly. "Magic's supposed to make lives better, not cause pain."

The other Rikako hissed in vexation, then turned to Rikako. "What about those spell cards we made? Could you use one without messing with the spell you're holding?"

Rikako blinked. She'd almost forgotten about them. "No," she said, even as a new idea began to form.

"Dammit, some of those were pretty powerful. Ah, at least in theory," Dr. Asakura amended. "'Speed Sign ~ Luminous Ricochet,' that 'Master Spark-'"

"What do you think of those null-fields of yours?" Rikako asked her counterpart.

The other Rikako shuddered. "Truth be told, I don't much like them. I just feel... wrong in them, I'm not sure how else to-"

"And you're sure the mini-hakkero works?" Rikako pressed.

Dr. Asakura seemed confused by the question, but nodded.

She wasn't quite a mirror image - easy living in a different world had left her with a couple of pounds her Gensokyan counterpart lacked, and obviously she had never been to Makai. This meant that she missed out on the sort of magical training that helped Rikako become such a famous mage... but Rikako had quite a bit of natural magical ability even before that.

And if she had it, what about this other Rikako?

Rikako reached into her satchel and withdrew a few of the items she'd taken out of the labs. "Chiyuri, Ellen, Kana, get ready to move. Rikako-" damn, it felt weird to be ordering someone else using your own name "-you're getting a crash course in magic."

"W-what?" Her counterpart stared at the 'Master Spark' spellcard Rikako thrust at her, until she mutely accepted it and the mini-hakkero.

"Ya think she can do magic?" Chiyuri asked, cocking her head and arching an eyebrow.

"If she has even a fraction of the talent I have, she can do this," Rikako said, giving her twin a reassuring smirk. "Don't worry, firing a magical laser isn't actually all that difficult."

Dr. Asakura shifted, at once nervous and excited, a gleam in her eye that hadn't been there before. "Okay," she said quietly, letting out a breath and shaking out her arms for a moment. "Tell me what to do."

"First, concentrate your mind," Rikako said, moving next to her doppelganger, leading her a bit further away from the ship. "Imagine you're clearing a chalkboard, sweeping away all the distractions. Ignore the battle, the enemy's attacks." The last part was difficult since the golden lasers and scarlet danmaku of Nakano and Yumemi's duel were still flying fast and furious, but luckily it was mostly directed over their heads.

The other Rikako closed her eyes, her breathing slow and steady, and nodded.

"Now, the spell card," Rikako went on. "Recite the incantation. You're not giving the magic orders, you're letting it channel your power, like water through pipes, or a current along circuits. Don't force it, let the words guide you."

Dr. Asakura, her eyes half-closed, was muttering softly to herself, whispering the spell almost tenderly. The others had gone completely quiet, and stared in amazement as a soft white light flickered into life at the center of the miniature magical furnace.

Rikako smiled with nostalgia. This was awfully close to how she had learned her first spell... she put her mind back on track. "Let it build," she told her other self. "Don't be afraid of your power, it's under your control. It's under your control, and you can aim it exactly where you want it to go."

The other Rikako's expression was almost serene as she let the spell card drift to the ground and readied the mini-hakkero in both hands, held out at arm's length. Except she wasn't actually holding it - the little artifact was suspended between her cupped hands, at the center of a growing ball of radiance that made the other Rikako's glasses shine white. A noticeable hum began to fill the air.

"Get ready," Rikako murmured to Chiyuri and Ellen. Kana had gone invisible again, while the other two nodded, Chiyuri dropping into a sprinter's stance, Ellen fidgeting nervously. Rikako kept her eyes on the battle. Nakano was dodging another burst of Yumemi's fire, then she stopped and lifted her hand to take some potshots in response-

Rikako turned to her counterpart. "Unleash it."

The spell went off with a deafening WHOOOOM and a blast of light like a sunbeam shattering against a prism, as a white magical laser flecked with a myriad of other colors stabbed through the hangar and enveloped Colonel Nakano, then continued past her, blazing into the bright blue sky behind her. The onlookers jump in surprise, and the other Rikako obviously was startled too, since almost as soon as the spell went off, she staggered backwards, dropping the mini-hakkero from her shaking fingers.

"Go!" snapped Rikako.

Chiyuri was off like a shot, racing forward low to the ground just in case their enemy recovered sooner than they'd like, while Ellen... Rikako cringed. She was clearly trying, but was jogging along stiffly and not at all quickly.

The Spark had already faded before Chiyuri and Ellen had covered half the distance between them and the colonel. Smoke was rising from Nakano's armor and Rikako thought she could see sparks falling from the suit, but Nakano whirled about to face her new attacker and in the process spotted the two blondes-

Only for the colonel to reflexively raise an armored arm to cover her face as her shields absorbed a burst of gunfire from Usagi. The agent was slowly advancing, her pistol held in both hands and firing a steady stream of red blasts into the colonel's force fields. Nakano dodged out of the line of fire and snapped off a golden laser that made Usagi tumble sideways, but the agent came out of the maneuver in a crouch, weapon still in hand, and kept shooting-

Only to suddenly stop. Chiyuri was underneath Nakano now, urging Ellen closer, when suddenly the former grad student was wrapped in a blue fire and rocketed upwards-

It was simply a beautiful throw. Chiyuri shot into the air, the azure glow around her vanishing as she hit something on the backpack, but she didn't slam directly into Nakano. Instead Chiyuri's momentum ran out just over Nakano's head level, so that the colonel had a moment to stare up in shock at the young woman momentarily hanging in the air.

Then Chiyuri dropped down onto Nakano, grabbing the armored figure and sending them both careening through the sky.

The colonel struggled to both steady herself and pry her attacker off her, but Chiyuri somehow managed to swing herself around and cling to the back of Nakano's armor, which wouldn't let the colonel twist in the right ways to dislodge her. Then the two of them abruptly dropped altitude, and Nakano's movements became alternately jerky and sluggish. She roared in fury when she realized what was happening, but it was too late - she and Chiyuri plummeted the rest of the way onto the hangar floor.

The colonel hit with a sound that was as much clang as thud, and Chiyuri more or less bounced off her to roll to a stop a few paces away. Yumemi immediately swooped down, crouching over her fallen enemy, palm out and aimed at the woman's head.

Rikako huffed as she jogged over to join the scene, but when she noticed Ellen carefully keeping her distance, she stumbled to a halt, beleatedly remembering the anti-magic field that was incapacitating the colonel's armor.

"Miss Asakura, if you'd check on the others?" Usagi asked as she strode towards Nakano.

Rikako just stopped herself from bowing, and turned the motion into a quick nod before hustling over to the two fallen redheads.

"I'm okay," the downed Yumemi wheezed. "But I think Kotohime's- Chyuri!" And with that the former professor leapt up and ran over to her old student, leaving Kotohime behind without a backward glance.

"Fine! I'm fine!" Chiyuri insisted as she was helped to her feet by the second Yumemi. "Just some bruises." Rikako saw her wince. "Maybe a sprain."

"What were you thinking, pulling a stunt like that?!" a Yumemi demanded.

"It worked, didn't it?" Chiyuri countered.

Yumemi put her hands on her hips. "That's irrelevant! What's the point of trying to save us if you put yourself in danger? Do you just like the attention?"

"Oh yeah, professor, I can't get enough of those head injuries and laser burns, and then I thought 'hmm, I can still walk okay, I should probably do something about that.'"

Rikako turned away from the squabble and reluctantly checked on the last member of the group. Kotohime had somehow managed to land gracefully, so that her hair and robes were pooled around her, while she lay on the floor with her hands folded on her stomach and her eyes closed as if asleep. She looked almost like a fairytale princess waiting for a prince to wake her with a kiss.

Rikako nudged the side of Kotohime's head with her foot. "You dead?"

Kotohime's eyes flew open, widened in shock, narrowed, then blinked the confusion away. "I must have overdone it," the self-proclaimed princess decided.

"I'm still not sure what you did," Rikako said, peering down at her.

"Royal secret," was all Kotohime said as explanation. She shot to her feet so fast that Rikako had to quickly step back, then Kotohime stretched her arms over her head before dusting her hands on her clothes. "But it evidently worked! Our enemy has been defeated!"

Rikako rolled her eyes. "With a little help from Chiyuri, Kana, Ellen, the other Rikako-"

"But what happened to the hangar?" Kotohime asked. Then she pursed her lips. "Oh."

"Yes, in your effort to stop the bad guy from blowing up the whole place, you settled for blowing up half of it," Rikako declared with a smirk.

"Which is still better than some of my cases have gone," Kotohime mused. She shook herself out of some reverie. "Welp, let's put this in the bag," she said, marching toward the knot of people now gathered around Nakano. Rikako followed close enough to listen in while still staying clear of that bubble of non-magic.

"She's coming to," said the Yumemi who was standing over Nakano.

"Good," Usagi nodded. She had her arms folded as she stared down at the renegade officer. "I wouldn't try anything foolish, colonel."

Nakano shifted her head, but from where she was sprawled after belly-flopping to the ground, she couldn't lift her gaze to look her enemy in the eyes. "'s that a joke? I can't even move. Damn stupid prototype garbage power supply-"

"Let's get her out of the armor," Kotohime said, a worrying gleam in her eye.

This process entailed accessing a catch or valve on the back of the suit, but once Usagi did the right thing, Nakano's armor abruptly opened almost like a flower, the back swinging up and the arms and legs spreading apart so that the colonel could be yanked straight out of the thing. She looked a lot less impressive in the crumpled, one-piece jumpsuit she'd worn under it.

The nearest Yumemi was on her in flash, the photon emitter in the palm of her hand pressed almost against Nakano's cheek. "I dare you to move," Yumemi hissed. "Please give me an excuse. All that work, all those years, all you've done-"

"Miss Okazaki!" Kotohime said sharply in a way that made both Yumemis go rigid. "That is not how we do things in Gensokyo! No matter the enemy, no matter what she did, when the battle is over and good has triumphed, everyone sits down together for a friendly cup of tea," she finished, nodding sagely to herself.

Yumemi's nostrils were flaring, her eyes were blazing, but she unsteadily stepped back, letting Nakano sag slightly as the threat against her life was removed.

"That's a generous sentiment," Usagi said with a nod.

Then she drew her truncheon from her belt and tapped Nakano in the belly with it, making the woman jerk and sputter from the sudden surge of electricity before collapsing to the floor.

"But here it's acceptable to knock out a perp who vigorously resisted arrest," Usagi finished, stowing her weapon.

Kotohime frowned. "I expected better from you than police brutality."

"That was not brutality," Usagi protested. "That was the lowest, 'stunner' setting, proven to be non-lethal and legally within the bounds of acceptable force in any cases involving a healthy adult." She gave Nakano a firm nudge, eliciting a mumbled groan. "See, she's fine."

"If you insist," Kotohime said with a sniff and a barely-suppressed grin.

"Is... is it over?" asked a voice. Director Kushida was slowly walking over to the rest of them, a hand on her chest where she'd been shot. Ruukoto and the other Rikako were close behind her.

"Unless Nakano has a little sister with an even more powerful battlesuit," Kotohime pointed out.

"Just don't," Rikako said wearily.

"So can you turn off the damned contraption now?" Kana asked, glaring at Chiyuri's backpack.

"Oh, sure. Sorry." The former grad student hit something, and that aching void around the fallen colonel suddenly vanished.

The poltergeist looked down at what had moments ago been a suit of unstoppable techno-magic armor. "Huh, the wards are still down," she noticed. "Yoink," she added, making a gesture like she was pulling something. A second later everyone jumped from the horrible screech as something shot out of the armor to land in Kana's palm. The poltergeist tossed and caught the mini-hakkero, then handed it over to Ellen. "Here you go, a souvenir."

"Police evidence," Kotohime corrected as she took the magical reactor from the little mage.

"Shouldn't the object be placed in Agent Usagi's custody, then?" asked Ruukoto.

The special agent waved a hand. "Nah, take it back with you. I wouldn't feel safe with something like that around."

A moment of awkward silence fell over the ruined hangar, and Rikako took in all the scorch marks and craters left from the spell cards, and the collapsed roof from... whatever Kotohime had done. And, now that her eyes were starting to adjust, she could see more things in the dazzling brightness beyond, a brilliantly blue sky, a slightly bluer ocean with dark shapes in it, and-

Another dark shape against the sky, drawing closer and accompanied by a rising mechanical whine.

"Incoming," one of the Yumemis reported, pointing unnecessarily.

A vessel was flying towards them, similar to the military-looking transport that was now half-buried by debris, but this one was painted in a mottled blue and gray and black pattern. Rikako had to raise a hand to shield her face from the dust and dirt kicked up by the wind of its approach, and she wished she had something to negate the scream of its engines. The vehicle eased itself down in the open part of the hangar, though a boarding ramp on its belly had deployed even before it landed, disgorging a swarm of figures who quickly fanned out to confront Rikako and the others with weapons pointed and ready.

"FREEZE!" the one in front bellowed. "GET DOWN!"

"No sudden movements, do what they say," Usagi said, loudly but calmly. "Just on your knees for a moment while I handle this."

Rikako frowned but complied, easing herself down and wincing as her knees pressed against... what was this, anyway? The hangar floor wasn't quite metal, but not quite rock either.

Usagi stood perfectly still while everyone knelt around her, which irritated Rikako irrationally. "At ease, captain," the agent said to the newcomer, still calm. She very slowly and deliberately lifted an arm and made that gesture to make her glowing badge appear in the air over her cupped palm. "The situation is under control."

The people - well, they must be soldiers, even if their uniforms were different from the facility's guards, outfits covered in a disorienting swirl that matched the camouflage of their vehicle, and were festooned with pouches bulging with fancy-looking equipment. They immediately lowered their weapons at the sight of the badge, visibly relaxing, while their leader stepped forward.

"Special Agent Usagi?" she asked, sounding awed. When the infiltrator nodded, the soldier broke into an incredulous smile. "Wow. I'd, uh, heard you were involved, but never expected-"

"You guys can get up now," Usagi said to Rikako and the others. Then she turned back to the soldier. "How goes the effort outside?"

The captain cleared her throat. "Yessir. We're just about finished embarking the last of the detainees. The base defenses were disabled, like your message said, and the soldiers and civilians were too disoriented and surprised to do anything other than surrender - no shots fired, no casualties." She flapped an arm at the rest of her squad. "We were actually about to start our sweep of the base itself to look for any stragglers-"

"Hold that thought, captain," Usagi said. "I need everyone to pull back to the ships."

The soldier blinked, her surprise evident through the clear visor on her helmet. "Sir? But what about-"

"I have reason to believe that an electromagnetic pulse will be triggered within the next five minutes," Usagi said, turning her head just enough to give Rikako a slight smile.

"Wait, what?" Director Kushida spoke up.

"I'll place these two prisoners in your custody," Usagi went on, prodding Kushida towards the soldiers and indicating for some of them to pick up and haul off Nakano.

The captain gave a crisp salute. "Sir, yes sir! You heard the lady," she said as she turned to her squad, "get that order relayed to the admiral and get back on the ship!" Then she did a double-take. "Good god, woman! Medic!" the captain shouted towards the ship she'd come from.

"Huh?" Kushida looked down at her shirt and, like Rikako, realized it was still covered in a big, drying bloodstain from where she'd been shot. "Oh, uh, it's fine, I'm fine."

"If you say so," the soldier said, clearly unconvinced.

"Carry on, captain," Usagi said with a trace of annoyance. "I'll keep an eye on the rest and meet you on the carrier in a minute."

"Yessir!" The captain saluted crisply and took Kushida by the arm. "With me, then."

Usagi turned to Chiyuri. "Are you still fit to fly, Miss Kitashirakawa?"

-x-

-18-

"So, not a clone?" Kotohime asked after they crammed themselves back aboard the hypervessel.

"Not in a biological sense," a Yumemi explained. "But it's one of the potential side-effects of our dimensional drives."

"The physics behind it is pretty complicated," the other Yumemi went on, "but the short version is, it's possible to duplicate a person if you tweak the probability fields just right-"

"Or get sloppy," the first Yumemi interrupted. "And that's normally a huge no-no, because it creates a hell of an energy imbalance and all sorts of prickly questions about what to do with the extra person-"

"But desperate times and all that," the second said with a shrug. "Can't complain since we probably couldn't have beaten Nakano if Chiyuri hadn't done it."

"So which one's the original?" Kana asked, sounding interested despite herself.

"I am!" the two Yumemis said at once, making Ellen giggle.

"Well, there's only one thing to do in this sort of situation," Kotohime said sagely. "Fight to the death, and the winner was obviously the real Yumemi."

Rikako was barely following the conversation, and in truth was hardly bothered as the hypervessel made what Usagi described as a short 'hop' to a new destination. She felt simultaneously exhausted and wound up almost to the breaking point, and swore she could feel the spell throbbing against the inside of her skull.

"How bad is it?" the other Rikako asked in a near-whisper from the adjacent seat.

Rikako blinked, swaying slightly as the hypervessel changed course. "Sort of like... I have to sneeze," she decided. There were other similes which would be just as accurate, though not in good taste to use.

"Just a bit more," her doppelganger soothed. And sure enough, the hypervessel began slowing, dropping altitude until there was the bump and bounce of its landing gear hitting a surface. The ramp was falling before the engines began quieting down.

Rikako was the first out of her seat, and stumbled down the gangplank, only to come to a sudden halt when she noticed where she was. A tropical sun shone down on her from a deep blue sky, a strong sea breeze buffeted with her hair, and she was standing on what she initially took for a metal landing platform, until she realized she was surrounded by water. There were ships around them, not archaic sailing vessels but sleek and deadly steel vehicles-

"Oh, it's a mini-aircraft carrier," Kotohime said as she strolled over to Rikako, shading her eyes as she looked around. "Cute! I guess if your air force can take off vertically, you don't need much runway."

"Can I cast the spell now?" Rikako mumbled, not sure who she was asking.

A shadow passed over them as something roared overhead, and Rikako was aware of Usagi coming over to join her, followed by the rest of the group. "If you think we're far enough out, Miss Asakura," the special agent said. "Though, maybe you should stay in the ship just to be safe," she added with a nod towards Ruukoto.

Rikako lifted her gaze. There was an island to the right of the boat, a small landform that featured a handful of palm trees, a hill, and what looked like a cave until she realized it was the buried hangar Kotohime had wrecked. Huh, so that was where they'd been.

"Ellen?" she asked. "Are we far enough out?"

"I'm sorry, what? Oh, the magic, right! Um..." Ellen toyed with the end of her ponytail nervously. "I've never cast Nantosuelta's Blooming with that much power, but I'm pretty sure it won't effect us out here."

"Good enough for me," Rikako said. She faced the island, held up a hand-

"Should we do a countdown?" Kotohime asked excitedly.

"No." And Rikako cast the spell.

Or rather, she cast the spell that broke open the spell that was confining Ellen's spell and the energies created as a byproduct of its casting. With a single word of power and a quick gesture, Rikako triggered a pulse of ethereal force that made everyone on deck stagger even though the ship itself didn't react to it. It was answered by a flash of light and a thundercrack followed by a popping sizzle like distant fireworks, a sound that made some nearby soldiers reach for their weapons.

Then Kana's spell went off. A yellow light suddenly stabbed upwards from the structure on the island, a warm radiance that could not rival, but was much less glaring, than the sun above. And then-

Rikako heard people gasp around her, sailors or soldiers or crew members who had stopped to gawk. Colors began to appear on the island, brilliant reds and yellows and purples that cascaded down the hill like lava from a volcano. Then trees shot out of the ground, unfurling like flags, growing from saplings to towering, leafy oaks, or elms, or something - Rikako didn't know much about plants, but even she could tell that these trees weren't native to this climate. Soon the hill was buried under a mixed forest and garden, even as flowers continued to spread all the way to the island's waterline.

"Holy cow," Chiyuri breathed.

Rikako jumped as Ellen squealed in delight. "Oh, it turned out even prettier than when I use it at home! Can we go over and look around, can we?!"

"Did it work?" Kotohime asked instead of answering.

Usagi, standing next to her, frowned as she tapped the side of her helmet. "My helmet's still working, and - you alright, Ruukoto?"

The green-haired robot maid stuck her head out of the hypervessel's boarding ramp. "Is it safe for me to come out, Agent Usagi?"

"Should be." The special agent smiled. "Well, that's bad news for Nakano."

"Agent Usagi?" someone called. It was that captain who had met them in the hangar, running up to them with an alarmed expression on her face. "W-we just lost any signals coming from the installation." She swallowed. "I guess you were right about the EMP. But..." she turned towards the flower-covered isle. "What was that? The stuff that happened afterward?"

"That information is on a need-to-know basis," Usagi answered placidly.

But the soldier was still staring, now at the crowd of people gathered on the deck around Rikako, at Kotohime and Kana's old-fashioned clothing, at Rikako and her near-double, at Yumemi and her actual double...

"And those blasts we saw on the way to rendezvous with you," the captain said slowly. "One was almost like a laser, except none of the attack craft in the hangar were active. And there were some weird energy readings-"

"Are you gonna have to neuralize these guys?" Kotohime asked the special agent. "Y'know, wipe their memories, keep them from learning too much?"

Usagi barely turned her head. "I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, but no, we don't have the technology to do that. At least not without inflicting lasting neurological damage," she amended.

"Oh." Kotohime blinked, then reared back in shock, covering her mouth with a dangling sleeve. "So you're going to 'retire' them so they can't blab?! How barbaric! I warn you, I won't stand for-"

"Captain," Usagi said, turning away from Kotohime's ranting, "I want you and your squad to take your prisoners to the brig. Separate cells, no contact until we're back to the Home Islands."

The captain saluted. "Yessir! Er..." The officer gestured at the large group surrounding Usagi. "But what about the rest of them? Do you want them held for debriefing?"

"That won't be necessary," Usagi told her. "They-"

"Diplomatic immunity!" Kotohime interjected excitedly. "I'm a princess, remember, so you can't-"

"You're not making this easier, you know," Usagi told her without rancor. She turned her head back to the officer. "Get moving, captain."

"And don't meddle with powers beyond your comprehension," a sinister voice added from behind her. The captain whirled, catching a fleeting afterimage of a ghostly figure hanging in the air, then spun back to look at the special agent, her eyes wide and near panic.

It would be impolite to say that the captain fled, but she certainly hurried to see to the prisoner transfer.

"Kana, that was bad," Ellen said, one hand balled on her waist while she shook a finger at where her companion had been standing a moment ago.

The poltergeist shifted into visibility once more, a dangerous smile on her face. "It's what I do," she said unapologetically. There was a clang from nearby as someone dropped a heavy load.

Usagi shook her head as she chuckled to herself. "You really are a fascinating group of people."

"You're a woman of many talents yourself," Kotohime said, playfully nudging Usagi's arm.

Rikako turned away from the horseplay, her eyes moving from the flower-covered island, to the background personnel pretending to move crates or connect cables while surreptitiously getting an eyeful of the weirdoes. "So what happens now?" she asked the woman who had helped rescue them, even if Rikako was sure they could have managed on their own, eventually.

"I'll be heading back to Kyoto with Ruukoto to give my report, and Nakano and Kushida will get a fair trial. Thanks for your help with that, by the way," Usagi added, giving everyone a quick bow. "Dr. Asakura, I'm afraid you'll get to experience a long and tedious debriefing along with the rest of the base personnel, and in a couple of weeks you'll probably get to testify in a military court."

"She's not getting charged with anything, is she?" Rikako asked.

Usagi shook her head. "Nah, she was just as much in the dark as the director. Though you are out of a job now," she told the scientist.

This world's Rikako snorted to herself. "And it's not like I'll be able to put any of this on my résumé."

"Depends what you're applying for," Usagi shrugged. "There won't be any government-sanctioned paranormal research projects in the near future, but if you wanted to take a fresh look at old superstitious folklore..." she shrugged again. "I'm not a scholar, but I'm sure you could write a book or something."

"Or maybe you could do some independent research," Rikako said with a smile. "Not necessarily to publish, but you might learn some things about yourself."

Her counterpart laughed breathlessly. "Yeah, that was... I don't have words for it. But you really think I could do more?"

Rikako pushed her glasses further up her nose with a fingertip, and her smile changed into a cocky smirk. "If I can get the hang of science in a place like Gensokyo, you can pick up some cantrips in a place like this."

"What about the rest of us?" Chiyuri asked.

"Oh, you're all free to leave," Usagi said with a little wave of her hand. "You didn't do anything- well, you did something that would normally get you put away for a good while, Miss Kitashirakawa," the agent corrected herself.

"Is she going to get in trouble for making a second Yumemi?" Ellen asked, all wide-eyed concern. "I can help with that!"

That earned a moment of surprised silence. "What, you've got a potion that gets rid of unwanted doppelgangers?" asked Kana.

"No, a spell, Ogechi's Reunion," Ellen said matter-of-factly. She moved to stand before the two Yumemis, rubbing her hands together briskly. "I haven't cast it in forever because nobody I know has done any chronomancy and I don't use it myself, but it was designed to fix problems like this where there's two of the same person at the same instant."

Chiyuri looked nervous now, glancing between the two Yumemis. "I'm not sure-"

"Oh, we have to see this," one of the Yumemis said with a gleam in her eye.

"Hit it," the other ordered.

"Okay!" Ellen looked into the distance for a moment, then squared her shoulders, held up her hands-

Rikako frowned. "Wait, aren't there any preparations to-"

There was a flash.

"-make before..." Rikako trailed off, feeling like she'd just missed a step despite standing still on the ship's deck.

Yumemi made a startled sound - and it was just one Yumemi, standing between where the two of her had been a moment before. The former professor clasped her forehead, and Chiyuri immediately put a hand on her shoulder. "Good god that's weird," Yumemi gasped.

"Sorry," Ellen said sheepishly. "It's temporal parallax, you're trying to reconcile memories of the same events from two different viewpoints. But your mind will adapt rather quickly and - oh hey, my hair's still not fluffy!"

While the seemingly-childish mage patted her hair, Rikako glanced about and saw a few dumbfounded passersby staring in shock. "Maybe we should have done this somewhere more private," she murmured.

"So where did the duplicate go?" asked Dr. Asakura.

"Oh, the important stuff is with Yumemi, and the rest just goes poof," Ellen assured her.

"Good luck explaining that, science!" Kotohime said with a wide grin.

"I suppose that's one less loose end to deal with," Usagi said, scratching her chin. "And that takes care of the last obstacle between the rest of you and home. So unless you need some fuel or anything, you can head on out. Preferably sooner than later, before you attract any more attention," she added.

"The ship's good to go, but..." Chiyuri shifted uncertainly. "Um, I'm not sure how much ya know about us, but the professor and me, we're not actually-"

"An important part of my job is knowing things," Usagi interrupted. "And sometimes not knowing things is just as important. My orders are to ensure that everyone who might have been abducted from another world is safely returned there. They don't say anything about whether that world is necessarily the world they were born in."

"Uh huh." Yumemi gave the agent a long stare. "What would happen if Chiyuri and I came home?"

Usagi shrugged. "Hard to say. I can get the violations you made out in Probability Space tossed out due to extenuating circumstances, but you'd probably be brought in for a very thorough debriefing. Like Dr. Asakura here, you'd live the rest of your life with punishments hanging over your head if you disclosed any military secrets you may have been exposed to during your time in this facility. And you probably wouldn't be allowed to go back into academia." She sighed, looking honestly regretful. "I'm sorry, but the Emperor is dead set on avoiding any repeats of this incident. We'd rather bury all evidence of Gensokyo and let it pass out of memory than deal with another Nakano."

"So it'd be back to our apartment and minimum wage, in other words," Chiyuri sighed. She cracked a half-grin at her companion. "Well, professor, looks like we've got a decision to make."

"Doesn't sound like much of a decision," Rikako said wryly. She swallowed, surprised with the amount of emotion she felt as she suggested "You could always come live with me, if you wanted. Back in Gensokyo, I mean."

The two former scientists traded a look. "You're sure about this?" asked Yumemi. "We don't know the first thing about living in a pre-industrial society, we wouldn't have many ways to contribute or pay rent-"

"I'm comfortably wealthy," Rikako interrupted, not because she wanted to brag, but to dispel their fears. "I have the means to support myself while spending most of my time in the lab." She cleared her throat awkwardly. "Er, my house isn't a mansion, though. I do have some unused space, but you two would have to share a bedroom-"

"Not a problem," Chiyuri said with a little grin, while Yumemi's face colored slightly. Ah, that was right, Rikako had heard them discuss their tiny apartment.

"Then I suppose it's settled," Rikako said, adjusting her glasses with a finger.

"Oooh, and I get to bring you the immigration paperwork," Kotohime added with a worryingly eager grin. "And run background checks, and administer the citizenship test, and-"

"Are you trying to scare them off?" sighed Rikako.

"I guess that's that, then," Yumemi said. She glanced back at the vehicle behind them. "Er. Except, well, we actually had to borrow this hypervessel, so-"

"I'll make sure the owner is fairly compensated," Usagi said with a nod. "With a little extra to encourage an absence of questions about where his vehicle disappeared to."

"Thanks. Hiroshi is an ass, but without his help, things would have gone a lot differently," said Yumemi with a slow shake of her head.

"I couldn't have put Nakano behind bars without you, for a start," Usagi said with a smile. "I have to say, I'm glad you two are going back with them, since it'll make this easier." She drew a device from a pouch, a slender bit of technology just bigger than the palm of her hand. When Chiyuri produced her similar device, Usagi aimed hers at it and hit something. "There, those are the last known locations of the surveillance drones they were using to monitor Gensokyo. They should be inoperative after the EMP hit their control center, but it never hurts to make sure."

Kotohime frowned. "That takes all the fun out of hunting them, doesn't it?"

"They can turn invisible," Usagi added.

"Guess it's time to say goodbye, then," Dr. Asakura said, primarily to Rikako. It seemed like she was about to step forward, but evidently she didn't do hugs either. "It was good to meet you," she said to her Gensokyan counterpart, extending a hand.

"Same," Rikako said as she shook it. "Take care." She meant it as a friendly farewell, before she frowned to herself, reconsidering. "I mean, never cast a spell at a wall you can't afford to lose. And if you do anything involving magic circles, make sure it's not broken by anything. And make sure you don't get any salt-"

"Hey, leave me something to discover," Dr. Asakura snorted.

Rikako smirked back, but even so, she had to wonder if she might be making a mistake by encouraging her counterpart. If this Rikako was in many ways a mirror to herself, could it be that her own pursuit of science in a land of fantasy could be as dangerous as the other Rikako's arcane research in a land of science? What would-

"Thank you for helping us," Ellen said as she shook Usagi's hand.

"I'm pretty sure we could've managed without her," Kotohime said, "but it's always a pleasure to work with a professional," she added, beaming as she clapped Usagi on the shoulder. "I'll be sure to look you up if I'm ever in your dimension."

Usagi was grinning back beneath her visor. "Normally I'd say something about being hard to get a hold of," she said, "but I bet you could manage it even if I was in deep cover."

"Aww, c'mere you." Kotohime pulled the other woman in for a tight, sisterly hug.

Rikako couldn't help but arch an eyebrow. "She seems to have grown on you. I remember you being pretty hostile towards her at the start of all this."

"That was before I figured out who she was," Kotohime said, disengaging from the special agent.

Yumemi and Rikako exchanged a confused glance. "What do you mean?" asked Yumemi. "Like, when she turned out to be a spy?"

Kotohime and Usagi broke into mirrored devious grins. "Go on," Kotohime urged the other woman, "I'm sure you've been waiting all day for this."

Usagi obligingly straightened, took her helmet in both hands, and slowly lifted it off her head. Red hair cascaded down to almost her waist, making a part of Rikako wonder how Usagi had crammed it all under her helmet. The special agent's rich red eyes sparkled with manic good cheer, and the rest of her face...

Rikako realized her mouth was agape. It was simultaneously shocking and blazingly obvious, so much so that she felt mildly embarrassed for not guessing sooner. The others' reactions were pretty close to hers, so at least she wasn't alone.

"Man, it was totally worth keeping up the disguise until now, just to see the look on your faces!" Usagi laughed.

"And it was so much more dramatic this way, don't you think?" asked Kotohime with an absolutely identical grin.

"Oh, definitely." Usagi gave her twin another tight hug, then addressed the rest of the group one last time. "I hope you get home safely," she said with a final, formal bow, "and prosper in all your future endeavors."

"You too," Rikako said dazedly.

"It was a pleasure to meet you all," Ruukoto said, bowing deeply. "Or rather meet you again, I should say. I am sorry my previous programming was such a bother."

"No worries," Yumemi muttered.

"Now get out of here already," Usagi ordered, still smiling. "That idiot mechanic behind you has been filming you for the past five minutes, so I've got to get busy explaining the magnitude of his mistake."

And with that, the six former prisoners filed back aboard the hypervessel. Kotohime made sure to throw one last salute before the boarding ramp retracted and the hypervessel's engines began to whine.

"I mean," she said to no one as she strapped herself into a seat, "how could I stay mad at what is essentially myself?"

-x-

This time it was Rikako who took a nap during the flight - well, her and Ellen. The seemingly-young mage almost immediately stretched out on the padded bench in the hypervessel's galley and fell asleep curled up on her side, with Kana hovering silently over her. The poltergeist gave Rikako a look as if daring her to say something, but Rikako was just too tired, and sat down, made sure her safety harness was fastened, tilted her head back, and promptly lost consciousness.

She was jolted awake by a thump that shook her seat and left Rikako bewildered until she remembered where she was. As she blinked her eyes clear, she noticed Ellen awake and sitting at the table, a slim device to her ear.

"...and we just landed, so we should be back soon," Ellen spoke into it. She listened for a moment, then cringed. "I'm sorry! But Yumemi says we were like eight time zones away, so... yes, I'll be careful. See you in a bit!" She pressed a button and put the device in her pocket, then blushed as she noticed Rikako's attention. "Jenny isn't happy I got back so late. Usually I have a nine o'clock curfew."

"So what time is it now?" Rikako asked, unbuckling so she could stand up and stretch. She winced as her back popped.

"Close to midnight," Ellen said in a hushed tone, her cheeks red from the scandal of it all.

"Which means it will probably still be dark when we make it back to Japan," Yumemi announced as she walked into the galley, Chiyuri and Kotohime in tow. "Time zones are a bi- a bother," she said, glancing momentarily at Ellen.

When they put down the boarding ramp, Rikako realized that they were not only back in Ellen's home city, but in the same empty lot surrounded by buildings that they had landed in for their first visit. Which meant, unfortunately, that they had to repeat their long hike back to Ellen's apartment. It certainly wasn't what Rikako had wanted to do after such a long and exhausting day, but no one had even raised the possibility of just dumping Ellen off in a back alley and flying away. Even if the mage could almost certainly handle herself, especially with Kana hovering nearby.

But as it was, they made the trek without incident, at least beyond Kotohime having to be talked out of stopping for ice cream. Rikako barely remembered the way, and so was pleasantly surprised when the building containing both Ellen's home and business suddenly loomed over them in the darkness, only a few of its windows lit this late at night. But there was a light in the entrance, and a worried young woman waiting for them behind its sturdy glass doors.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Jenny," Ellen said with a cringe before giving her friend a tight hug.

"I was up already," the other woman said. "So say you sorry for make me worry! For get... steal, take, capture!"

Chiyuri opened her mouth to argue, but Kotohime interrupted by giving a deep and formal bow. "Please accept our sincere apologies for placing Ellen in danger, Miss Jennifer," she said humbly. "We thought we had taken every precaution possible to ensure her safety, but we were still overcome by our enemies. And yet, without Ellen's help we would never have been able to ultimately defeat them, so I am still glad she was with us." She reached down a sleeve and withdrew a small, clinking pouch that she casually handed to Jenny. "In compensation for my selfishness, please accept this gift."

Ellen's assistant stuck her fingers into the little bag, withdrew a golden rectangular coin, and proceeded to stare at it in shock. "This... generous of you."

"Well, it's an outdated currency, and I've got plenty more at home, so it's no trouble," Kotohime shrugged. "And speaking of home, we should probably be going. It's past Ellen's bedtime," she added with a smile.

The little mage took the time to give each of them a tight hug, and even Rikako found herself patting the top of Ellen's bushy head. "It was good to see you again!" the little mage said. "It was also pretty scary at moments, but I'm glad I was able to help. I haven't cast magic like that in a long time!" She blinked. "I think."

"Who knows how long she'll remember this little adventure," Kana mused sardonically.

"I think I know a way to help," Chiyuri spoke up with a grin.

Apparently Ellen's little handheld phone also doubled as a camera, because the six of them ended up jammed together in the apartment building's foyer while Jenny aimed the device at them, telling them to smile while it clicked and whirred. "Okay, that good," she said finally. Then she frowned when she checked something. "Miss Kana just blur," she said. "Try again?"

"I think it's more appropriate this way, don't you?" the poltergeist asked, smiling slightly.

"Take one from mine, if you please," Chiyuri said. She had to break off from the group to instruct Jenny how to use her device, though.

Once they were done with the second picture, Rikako turned to Kana. "So, you're staying with Ellen?"

Kana's expression turned serious. "I don't think I have a choice. Out here, I can only go where she goes. But..." she shrugged with perhaps exaggerated carelessness. "I don't mind. I'm still having fun with her."

"You're still welcome to return to Gensokyo at any time," Kotohime said with a half-bow. "There's a lot of new faces these days. I bet most of them haven't seen a proper poltergeist before."

"We'll see," Kana said with another shrug.

"And that offer extends to you too, Ellen," Kotohime went on. "If you ever feel like a taking another far eastern vacation, feel free to visit. Marisa would probably love to compare notes."

Ellen blinked her golden eyes. "Who?"

-x-

-19-

"Let's see, Rikako scrapped the most 'bots over the course of our escape, though Kana also did some good work," Kotohime mused to herself. "Not sure who took the most shots, probably either me or Yumemi, it's impossible to keep track with danmaku. Chiyuri wins the dubious award for taking the most hits, and may want to consider a bulletproof vest or something in future adventures."

They were all sitting in the hypervessel's cockpit again, sailing through darkness as they sped towards Gensokyo, the only illumination coming from the lighted buttons and screens on the vehicle's controls. Rikako had been surprised to see Chiyuri sitting in the left-hand seat, but evidently their captors had gotten the control console there working again. She had also been surprised that she didn't feel like sleeping, even though when she had awoken from her nap earlier it had been well after sundown. She had a feeling it would be a few days before her sleep schedule was back to normal.

Her little rut back home was looking quite appealing, Rikako decided. Especially since it didn't normally feature a crazy woman jabbering nonsense as she tried to write a 'post-operation report.'

"I'm the only one here who never got a chance to fly," Chiyuri protested sourly. "If I'd gotten hold of my rig, I'd have done just as well as the professor."

"But overall MVP," Kotohime went on, ignoring her, "would probably be... I'd say Ellen," she concluded, tapping her chin with her pen. "Her magic was what took care of the bad guys' base in the end."

"I don't know, we probably would've gotten overrun if Noriko - or Usagi, or whoever she was - hadn't shown up," Rikako countered.

"She doesn't count, not a formal team member," Kotohime said with a careless wave of her hand. But then she seemed to reconsider. "Although... since she was me in another universe, maybe I should add her score to mine-"

"That's not fair!" Chiyuri whined. "You and Rikako had your alternate yous around to help out, but my other me was stuck in Gensokyo the whole time, and we never even found the professor's alternate self!" A thought seemed to occur to her, and she twisted in her seat to look back at Yumemi. "Hey, what do ya think you're like in this world, professor?"

"Huh?" Yumemi shifted, coming out of some deep contemplation.

"Ya weren't dozin', were ya?" Chiyuri asked with a grin.

"No, just... just thinking." Yumemi sighed.

"Doesn't sound like happy thoughts," Kotohime noted.

Yumemi snorted, then leaned back against her chair's headrest. She might have been sleeping had Rikako not seen the glitter of the cockpit's lights in Yumemi's eyes. "Those people, Nakano and Kushida, they were bad guys, right?"

"Well yeah," Chiyuri said immediately. "They attacked us, kidnapped us, spied on Gensokyo, all for their own benefit-"

"But," Yumemi went on, "how is any of that different from what you and I did when we went to Gensokyo the first time?"

There was a long, uncomfortable silence in the cockpit.

"Well, they tried to kill our Chiyuri," Rikako pointed out. "And us, too."

"There's that," Yumemi admitted. "But the rest? Chiyuri and I fought Kotohime at the end of the 'tournament,' and even though we were keeping things nonlethal, I tried to subdue her so I could take her back to my dimension as a test subject."

"But you were sporting enough not to after I shot you enough," Kotohime chimed in.

"And those things Kushida said," Yumemi went on. "About what would have happened if our presentation hadn't been such a miserable failure... she was absolutely right. There would've been a scramble to send teams to Gensokyo, or soldiers, or someone trying to blow it up to keep someone else from claiming its secrets... god damn it," she sighed, slumping forward and burying her face in her hands.

"We were tryin' to help people," Chiyuri protested, but her voice was small. "Tryin' to further science, not build weapons."

"And you were just kids," Rikako said. That had been one of the most astonishing things about her meeting with Yumemi and Chiyuri all those years back, just how young the strangers to Gensokyo had been. "You couldn't have known something like that would happen."

"I was eighteen years old and a college professor," Yumemi said bitterly. "I could've guessed... but I was just so excited..."

There was another moment of silence, then Kotohime shrugged. "Well, I'm still glad things turned out the way they did. I got to have my first real adventure when you guys visited, and since the bad guys preferred to work behind the scenes, they kept Gensokyo a secret until they made their own moves on it, which we just put a stop to. So it all worked out in the end."

Yumemi let out a long sigh. "I suppose... but now I'm wondering whether it'd be better to give up on magical research and just become a farmer or something."

"Don't say that," Rikako said, sharper than she had intended. "Science means making mistakes and learning from them. As long as you do that, your methods will improve and your results will be better."

"Oh?" Kotohime gave her an arched eyebrow and a sly smile. "Not having any second thoughts about your vocation after seeing the dark side of science? This adventure hasn't rekindled your love for the mystic arts?"

"Absolutely not," Rikako scoffed."Magic is physics-defying wish-fulfillment that only a select segment of the population can use in inconsistent and individualistic ways. Science is logical, methodological, and universal, it's inherently superior. Just because it can be used badly doesn't mean that I'm going to abandon it. And just because I can do magic doesn't mean it has to define me."

"And I'm still interested in learnin' all I can about magic," Chiyuri said with a grin. "See if I can find a science behind it or whatever."

"So after an incredible adventure in another world, none of us underwent any character development whatsoever," Kotohime said, nodding sagely to herself.

"Hey, a couple of hours ago we were all prisoners in some unsanctioned government black site," Chiyuri pointed out. "And before that, there were androids tryin' to kill us. I'm just happy to be alive and free."

There was another moment of silence in the dark cockpit - aside from the ever-present engine noise and hum of electronics.

"Do we have any more of those fruit snacks left, Chiyuri?" asked Yumemi.

-x-

"Land ho!" Kotohime announced some time later, suddenly leaning forward in her seat.

Rikako shifted to try to see from her perch near the cockpit door. Their flight until now had been like flying through half of outer space, but now the stars above were joined by a myriad of lights below, dazzling rivers of radiance flowing down valleys or clinging to the coast like surf. Chiyuri and Yumemi immediately checked their instruments.

"Okay, looks like that's Edo below," said Yumemi, sweeping an empty paper packet off her console to drift onto the floor of the cockpit.

"Tokyo," Kotohime corrected.

"Whatever. Luckily our nav computer remembers the route we took on the way out, so if I make some corrections..." Yumemi tapped something, and suddenly there were glowing green dots being projected against the inside of the cockpit, a trail that led from the coast to the mountains. "There you go, Chiyuri."

"Thanks, professor," their pilot said as the hypervessel banked to alter course.

"This takes a lot of the excitement out of night flying," Kotohime noted.

They didn't say much during the final leg of the trip, and there wasn't much to see beyond stars and the lights of settlements below. But after a short interval, Yumemi cleared her throat. "So, I know we passed out of your Border without any difficulty," she said. "But if we're heading in, is that going to-"

There was the slightest bit of turbulence, but Rikako could tell something was very different.

Even though she was still being carried through the sky in some otherworldly vehicle, breathing recycled air, it was like she could suddenly breathe properly again. As tired as she was from her travails in another world, it was like she had just woken up. And even though it was still dark outside the cockpit, it was like the darkness had shades to it, a richer variety of shadow than could be found beyond the Boundary. She let out a slow sigh of relief.

Chiyuri brought the hypervessel to a halt, hovering in the sky with the nose pointed slightly down so they could better look upon the valley below. "Huh, it's certainly different than the rest of your Japan," she said. "Just that one group of lights below... though there's something goin' on over on that mountain..."

"I'm half-tempted to violate tengu airspace, just to see what they make of this," Kotohime said with an audible grin. "Or ooh, could we use the stealth systems to spy on them?"

Rikako ignored the lunatic and rose from her seat so she could better look out the canopy. "Ah, my house is going to be hard to see, but if you look from the village to the Forest of Magic-"

Yumemi tapped a button, something made a mechanical chirrup, and a glowing green icon appeared near the bottom of the canopy. "We still have your coordinates from our arrival the other day," the former professor said.

"Oh, right," Rikako said, feeling her face heat. She should have remembered Yumemi and Chiyuri knew where her house was, and of course they'd been able to navigate before sunrise.

Chiyuri brought the hypervessel down in a smooth descent, while the passengers watched the black shapes of Youkai Mountain and the surrounding hills take up more and more of the vessel's front window. Then there was the whirr of hatches opening beneath the vehicle, the thump and jolt of the landing gear hitting the grass, and there they were, parked directly in front of Rikako's dark, empty home.

As the engines steadily wound their way down, the four women sat in silence for a moment inside the dark cockpit, staring thoughtfully at their destination.

"Guess this is it," Yumemi said softly. "Our new home, I mean."

"And I just paid the month's rent for our apartment," Chiyuri joked, but even she sounded subdued.

"And we just... leave the hypervessel here?" Yumemi said. "That might be dangerous, actually. This could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands."

Rikako pushed up her glasses with a finger. "I suppose I could build a hangar. But that wouldn't necessarily make it secure," she said with a frown. She could do the best she could with locks and wards, but there were ways around those, and many in Gensokyo who could do so.

Kotohime thought for a moment, then clapped her hands. "Self-destruct sequence!"

Chiyuri snorted. "Don't have one."

"I can set one up," Kotohime offered with alarming eagerness.

"Could you send it back to your home dimension?" Rikako asked before anything catastrophic happened.

Yumemi and Chiyuri both flinched. "Well," Yumemi said, "perhaps. But maybe we shouldn't be so hasty? Never know when we might need to travel to another world."

That was understandable, thought Rikako. Not the excuse that Yumemi was giving, but the unspoken sentiment underneath it, a reluctance to completely cut oneself off from home.

Kotohime pondered for a moment, then clapped her hands. "The solution is simple - we'll put the ship in the most secure location possible. A veritable prison, if you will."

Rikako gave her a suspicious look. "Gensokyo doesn't have a prison."

"Incorrect, I just can't find the keys." Kotohime smiled. "And I never said this prison was in Gensokyo. Ready for one last trans-dimensional voyage?" she asked Yumemi and Chiyuri.

Yumemi blinked. "Um, I guess. But unless you have the coordinates, I'm not sure how we'll get to-"

Kotohime held up a hand, rolled back her sleeve, and seemed to enjoy the surprised look on the others' faces when she revealed the softly-glowing, crystalline vine wrapped around her wrist. "I think we'll find the way."

-x-

"I must admit, this is a novel idea," said Shinki, Lady of Makai and goddess of the demon world.

"Well, what is a treasure vault but a prison for valuable objects?" Kotohime said with an easy smile. "The big difference is that you don't have to feed your prisoner in this case. And I guess it won't make an escape attempt."

The four visiting humans stood with the winged, smoky-haired demon queen and her stoic maid attendant in the wastes of Hokkai, atop one of the bleak outcroppings that rose like islands from a sea of miasma. Though a distant sun shone in the murky red sky behind them, it did little to illuminate the terrain - instead the mist flowing through the valleys and craters below them glowed with its own blue or purple or red light, displaying a strangely grid-like pattern that remained stationary even as the miasma shifted to reveal or obscure it. It was hot despite the supernatural fog, but though the air was dry, it had a heavy, charged feel to it, something Rikako remembered from her days training in Makai proper.

She had never been to Hokkai, of course - she had only heard a few whispers about the private prison of Makai's ruler - but this place wasn't much more fantastical than other parts of the demon world, so Rikako was looking about with polite interest. Yumemi and Chiyuri, on the other hand, were standing in utter silence, their eyes wide and their hands tightly entwined, in the same state of shock they'd been in ever since arriving. Rikako tried not to feel too smug about finally being in a place that she found familiar but freaked out the other two.

She was still uncertain exactly how Kotohime had been able to take the hypervessel's controls to fly them all into Makai, and was frankly baffled that the madwomanwas evidently on good terms with the ruler of the world of demons, but after all she'd been through in the past forty-eight hours, Rikako decided she wasn't going to ask any questions.

"I would certainly rather imprison artifacts than people," Shinki mused, an elegant finger to her chin as her serene silver eyes stared past the horizon. She smiled as she turned back to Kotohime. "Though this does run the risk of changing my land's reputation from that of a Tartarus to a junkyard."

"And you might have to beef up security, since treasures like this would more readily attract pillagers than some of your prisoners would rescuers," Kotohime admitted. "I know this is asking a lot, but Hokkai is the safest place I can think of for something like this. You know how Gensokyo is - a new crisis every few months, new faces pouring in, looking for trouble. Makai is much more stable."

"For the time being," Shinki said, mostly to herself. "Well, this request is certainly within my power to fulfill, and I am willing to aid you like this. But surely you have not asked for a demon's boon without offering something in exchange?"

Kotohime rummaged around in one of her sleeves, then withdrew a small yellow and blue object. "Here ya go," she said, tossing it underhand.

There was something wrong about seeing a semi-divine entity get caught off-guard by a gentle throw. Shinki's beautiful white wings flapped once to help keep her balance, but she managed not to fall over, if barely. Rikako cringed and averted her gaze, lest the ruler of Makai take offense at them seeing her moment of weakness. Though the bigger danger might have been Shinki's blonde attendant, who was glaring at Kotohime with undisguised loathing.

When Shinki cleared her throat and straightened herself, Rikako thought it was safe to take a closer look at what Kotohime had tossed her. It was nothing but a doll, no bigger than two handspans, a simple toy with blonde hair and a blue Western-style dress.

"I had to confiscate this one night when her dolls went berserk and attacked me," Kotohime explained. "Fortunately it hasn't caused trouble since that Incident, so it should be safe. That is to say, it probably won't attack you on its own," Kotohime amended. "It is packed with gunpowder, so I'd keep it away from open flames."

Shinki barely seemed to be listening, and was turning the toy over and over in her hands, gently moving its limbs. "And this is one of her mass-produced puppets?" she asked without looking up.

"That's right."

"Such craftsmanship, even for an expendable drone," Shinki murmured, smiling proudly. She looked up at Kotohime again. "An acceptable exchange," she decided.

Then the goddess of Makai raised a hand that shone with a weird, purple-crimson light. An instant later, a circle of the same energy appeared around the landed hypervessel, a circle that was soon filled with demonic glyphs that spiraled inward towards the circle's center. This somehow created the illusion of depth, as if the arcane words repeated infinitely as they shrank smaller than the eye could see, then this became the fact of depth, and the magic circle ringed the mouth of a fathomless pit. The hypervessel slowly descended into a purplish haze, sinking out of sight as though it were a more traditional vessel being swallowed by the ocean.

In less than a minute, the ship was gone, and Shinki waved her hand once more. The magic circle changed, going from a ring around a pit to a simple circle on the ground, marked by one large demonic rune that pulsed once with otherworldly power before fading to glow like hot coals.

"It is done," Shinki said, nodding to herself with satisfaction. She turned to smile at her guests. "I will make no record of this device and its location, and defend it as strenuously as I would Hokkai's most dangerous prisoners. But if any of you have need of it, simply return to my realm and ask to speak with me, and I shall retrieve it for you."

"You have our gratitude, Your Eminence," Kotohime said with a deep and respectful bow.

"So can you leave now?" the maid standing behind Shinki deadpanned.

"Yumeko..." sighed Shinki, though she couldn't hide a slight smile.

"That might be difficult since the way we got here was just shoved into a demonic vault," Kotohime admitted. "And not all of us can make the flight back to the portal by the Hakurei Shrine."

"Fear not," Shinki said, extending an arm once more. At her gesture, there was a thunderclap that made Yumemi and Chiyuri jump, and then a shimmering magical gateway was hovering in the air before them, like a mirage showing the outskirts of the Human Village rather than more of Hokkai's terrain. "This may be less... disruptive than forcing you to return the long way," Shinki added, giving Kotohime a look.

"I wasn't that disruptive," Kotohime said with a laugh. "Which reminds me, give my regards to Telma and Yuki and Mai if you see them."

"I shall for two of them," Shinki replied. "Take care, Your Highness."

With one last bow, Kotohime promptly turned and hopped directly into the portal. One moment she was in Hokkai with the rest of them, the next she was visible as a purple and red blur standing in the street of the village as seen through the dimensional rift. Though it was hard to tell, she seemed to be beckoning back through it.

Rikako turned to the others, who were still standing in wide-eyed silence as they took in this latest occurrence. "I guarantee that it's as safe as traveling in your hypervessel," Rikako told them with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "A lot faster and more comfortable, too."

Yumemi swallowed. "S-sure." She gave a curt, tense nod to Shinki, took in a deep breath, and boldly stepped through the portal, dragging Chiyuri along by her hand. Rikako took a moment to bow to Shinki before she followed.

There was the faintest of tingling sensations, the queer feeling of moving a great distance while standing still, and a heartbeat later she was blinking in the morning sunlight, standing in the dusty road leading to her house. Rikako tried not to worry that a demon queen evidently knew where she lived.

"See?" she asked as she rejoined the two women from another world. "Not bad at all, was it?"

"Yeah, that was..." Chiyuri shivered. "Well, the trip back wasn't bad, but that place! That was... and ya said she was a goddess?"

"More or less," Kotohime shrugged. "I wouldn't take everything Shinki says as the unvarnished truth, but..."

"But she has more power than some deities, so she might as well be one," Rikako finished.

"Our society has seen and visited dozens, maybe hundreds, of alternate worlds out in Probability Space," Yumemi said, looking up at the early morning sky as though reassuring herself she was back in a place fit for humans. "But I've never seen anything like that."

"Yeah, Makai's pretty neat," Kotohime agreed. "Good place to do magical sit-ups too, if you don't mind the miasma. And on that note, don't be surprised if your hair color changes a little after your visit. Don't worry, it'll be temporary since we spent so little time there."

"I wish we'd brought our instruments," Chiyuri said with a smile. Good, she looked to have recovered. "Just the civilian-level sensors in the hypervessel were gettin' all sorts of interestin' readings. Can't imagine what we'd find with some proper equipment."

"One step at a time," Yumemi advised. "Let's get our feet under us here in Gensokyo before we start diving into demon worlds." She looked around and spotted Rikako's house not far in the distance. "And on that note, we should probably get settled in."

"And I should start planning how to expand my workshop," Rikako said, partially annoyed, and partially excited at the prospect.

"I may have a place for you, if you need more space," Kotohime said. "It's in town - technically - and I was planning on turning it into a superhero hideout, but you guys might need it more."

Yumemi, Chiyuri and Rikako traded surprised looks. "This place of yours has lots of room for us?" asked Chiyuri.

"Oh, definitely," Kotohime said with an eager nod.

"And it's suitable to put advanced scientific equipment in?" Rikako asked, arching a dubious eyebrow.

"It already has some modern industrial stuff in it," Kotohime said with a smile. The expression widened when she saw the surprise on Rikako's face. "It's a bit old and rusty, and I'm not quite sure what all of it does, but I think you could have some fun with it." She must have read the question forming on her lips. "You're not the first Gensokyan to have an interest in advanced engineering," Kotohime told her. "I don't know where this place's original owner has gone off too, but she hasn't been by in years, so it's probably safe to take over. Imminent domain and all that."

"This sounds... intriguing," Rikako admitted.

"I won't hand it over for free, though," Kotohime said with a wag of her finger. "I've been working on a science project of my own, but had some... setbacks. If you're willing to help me get back on track with that, you can use the rest of the space for your own projects. And there's lots of space, let me tell you."

The three scientists conferred in silence for a moment - which is to say that Chiyuri and Yumemi both shrugged - and Rikako turned back to Kotohime. "I won't agree just yet, I need to see this place you're talking about and get details about the project you want help with. But if those turn out to be acceptable, then-"

"Excellent!" Kotohime said with a brisk clap of her hands. "Can't do it right now, though, I need to see to Chiyuri."

The blonde woman standing with them blinked. "Huh? But I'm right-"

"I mean our Chiyuri," Kotohime corrected. She frowned at nothing in particular. "Hmm, we might need to use nametags. Or maybe send one to Makai for a bit until she gets purple hair or something. Although in Reimu's case it seems to have turned from purple to brown, unless she had gone to Makai even earlier and-" She finally realized she was rambling and shook herself. "Anyway, I'm heading off," Kotohime said with a wave of her hand. "I'll give you guys a day or two to unpack before showing you the future Royal Scientific Institute of Gensokyo."

She didn't stop to give a formal goodbye, she just hopped into the sky and soared away, a purple-and-red dot that shrank into the distance as it flew over the town to someplace else. The others watched her go in silence.

"So, is she a princess?" Yumemi suddenly asked.

Rikako adjusted her glasses and gave her a sidelong look. "You remember what I said about Shinki? It's sort of like that. I'm not saying Kotohime's more powerful than some of our would-be royals, but she takes it more seriously than anyone whom the title would fit better."

"But don't take everything she says as the unvarnished truth?" Chiyuri asked with a smile.

"Let's just say I wish our world had some of that medication yours has," Rikako grinned back.

-x-

Author's Notes:

Ha, you thought it was an OC to come in and steal the show, but it was another Kotohime all along! Though I guess my Kotohime is halfway to being an original character as it is, one-shot PC-98 character and all that.

Another yarn that was difficult to assemble - the premise was pretty clear in my mind, the set-up was easy, and I had a good idea of how I wanted the climax to go, but linking it all together ended up taking far longer than expected. I had to rewrite the final fight so many times... Hopefully the result was somewhat entertaining, and we got a Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream reunion of sorts. Seven out of eleven ain't bad, is it?

What else to say... I didn't design any of the science world OCs like Kushida or Nakano to be the counterparts of anyone from Gensokyo, so don't bother trying to figure out which one is Reimu or whatever. I was half-tempted to have Kotohime steal the magical power armor and smuggle it home in her sleeve, but thought that might be pushing it. The lieutenant in the control center and the captain who led the rescue party are nameless as an homage to the unnamed midbosses of early Touhou games, and certainly not because I was too lazy to give them a proper name. You can read whatever you want from Chiyuri and Yumemi's relationship. And there might have been some "Megalovania" playing when Kana went off the chain.

Special thanks go out to MatsuriSunrise and natural-log of Magic Archive Voile, who were nice enough to put up scans and translations respectively of Hatarakimono. And of course thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it, all glory to ZUN, etc.

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"I'm afraid that our soil is less than ideal for it," Yuuka Kazami said as she straightened up from her crouch, smoothing the crinkles in her red plaid skirt. "Or perhaps I should say our atmosphere? At any rate, it's taken regular treatments with magic to encourage it to grow even this much. Without them, I don't think it would have survived," she said with a sigh.

"That's a shame," said Kotohime. "It really is quite pretty."

The flower youkai smiled. "Isn't it, though?"

They were strolling through the Garden of the Sun, temporarily stopped next to a shady plot hosting a small tangle of softly-glowing crystalline brambles that looked rather like pieces of rock candy threaded together and half-buried in the soil. The sun overhead was shining down on them from a mostly-clear blue sky, a refreshing breeze sent the colorful flowers around them swaying and whispering, and bumblebees the size of Kotohime's thumbtip bobbed through the air on droning wings as they went about their rounds.

Yuuka looked off into the distance, her wavy green hair rippling in the wind like a field of grass, a serene smile on her face that didn't quite match the glint in her deep red eyes. "It almost makes me want to visit Makai again..."

Kotohime managed to stop herself from wincing. "But you have so many plants here to tend to," she pointed out.

The flower youkai seemed to consider that, and nodded, tapping the handle of her folded pink parasol with long fingernails. "That is true. The anemones will be blooming soon, and you know how finicky they are when it comes to watering."

"Oh, absolutely," Kotohime nodded.

"And there are always pests to watch out for," Yuuka went on, leading her guest further along the grassy path between the flowerbeds. "Beetles, fairies, trespassers..."

"Which brings me to my next concern," said Kotohime as she came to a stop next to an unusual-looking tree.

The boy looked to be about fourteen or fifteen, that age where a growing body opens up new avenues for causing trouble but the brain hasn't developed enough to keep up. He stared at her through wide, desperate eyes from just off the ground, suspended like a puppet by the hanging vines wrapped around his arms and legs. He might have tried to say something, but the creeper running over his mouth made the sounds come out as muffled whimpering.

Yuuka stared at Kotohime for a moment as though waiting for her to finish speaking, then followed the princess' meaningful glance. "Ah, yes. This is a new arrival, a supposed 'man-eating tree' I transplanted from the Forest of Magic." She planted the tip of her umbrella in the grass and rested her hands on its handle, gazing admiringly at the botanical specimen. "I had to send for some books to learn more about it. It's from Madagascar, if my sources are correct. One of the local tribes allegedly feeds such trees human sacrifices. Isn't that grisly?" she asked with a smile.

"Quite," said Kotohime with a polite cough. "Though in this case it doesn't seem to be eating him."

"Yes, I was wondering about that." Yuuka tilted her head, her tangle of hair shifting from the motion, that charming smile never leaving her face. "Despite its name, the tree doesn't have a mouth to ingest prey. I thought the vines might rend their victim to bits, watering the tree with blood and providing fertilizer in the form of rotting flesh-"

The boy whimpered but didn't struggle, Kotohime noted. Had he learned that trying to free himself just made things worse?

"-but it seems content to simply hold its quarry," Yuuka went on. "Very curious. Perhaps this is an immature specimen?"

"Or it's not hungry," Kotohime suggested.

"And yet it hasn't released its grip, either..." mused Yuuka. "Maybe it is a very patient tree, willing to wait until its prey expires from exposure and decomposes in its grasp."

"If it were that patient, it ought to be content to feed on sunlight instead of animals," Kotohime pointed out.

"Or perhaps it's saving this snack for when the sun goes down," Yuuka countered. She glanced up at the sky, where the sun was just about near the top of its arc. "I suppose we'll find out in due time."

The boy whimpered again.

"A lot could happen between then and now," Kotohime said, her arms folded and her hands hidden in her sleeves. "Someone might be missed, a search party could be organized. You might get more visitors."

"And what might these visitors want with me?" asked Yuuka with an arched eyebrow.

Kotohime starred at her through narrowed eyes for a moment, then nodded her head at the kid.

Yuuka smiled again. "And what objections could they have? Am I not acting within my rights as a youkai?"

"No, tradition is firmly on your side," Kotohime admitted. "But people aren't always rational, especially when it comes to loved ones in danger."

"If they attack me, I shall defend myself," Yuuka shrugged, unconcerned at the prospect.

"Yes, and then you have a mess in your garden to clean up, and another wave of humans out for revenge," Kotohime said with a slow shake of her head. "And eventually Reimu gets involved - or worse, that nun - and then some of the other youkai butt their heads in because they're concerned about the humans ganging up on one of their own, even if you don't actually need or want the help, and then the humans start wondering why they put up with all these dangerous youkai surrounding them, and..." Kotohime trailed off with a theatrical sigh. "You have to ask yourself, is one kid really worth all that?"

Yuuka stared at her in silence for a long moment, her face devoid of expression, her blood-colored eyes unreadable. Then, abruptly and without Yuuka doing anything obvious, the vines holding the teenager up slackened, allowing him to flop into the dirt with a squeal of surprise.

"This is how it starts," the youkai said, her voice low and hard. "Letting trespasses slide, showing mercy to those unworthy of it. And before you know it they aren't afraid of you anymore."

The kid tried to scramble to his feet, only to get tangled in his own limbs and collapse onto his hands and knees. He looked desperately to Kotohime for help, then his eyes fell on the youkai standing nearby, her hands still on the end of the umbrella planted on the ground beneath her feet, and he went absolutely rigid.

"I think he looks quite afraid," Kotohime said. She sniffed, and her nose wrinkled. "Smells that way too. Why don't you run home and get a change of pants?" she suggested.

The kid leapt to his feet, trying to speak but unable to do more than wheeze and gasp, and when Kotohime waved her hand he broke into an impressive sprint, fleeing between the rows of sunflowers ringing the Garden of the Sun - but not crashing right through them to take the most direct route out, Kotohime noted. Good, there was hope for the little moron after all.

Yuuka watched him go, tsk-tsking to herself. "And so the mystery of my man-eating tree's diet remains unsolved." But she smiled to herself. "I suppose there's always tomorrow."

"There usually is," Kotohime agreed.

"So, does that conclude your business in my garden?" asked Yuuka as she picked up her parasol and rested it lightly against her shoulder without opening it.

"Well, I came here to pick up my witness," Kotohime said, tilting her head in the direction of Yuuka's cottage. "But I figured I could defuse an international incident while I was around."

Yuuka nodded and began a leisurely stroll towards her home. "I take it the threat against Miss Kitashirakawa is over?"

"Well, that threat," Kotohime said with a grin. "She still lives in Gensokyo, after all. Threats abound."

"Indeed." Yuuka's smile gleamed like a scalpel.

"I don't suppose you had any killbot intruders pay a visit?" asked Kotohime as she walked beside her hostess.

"Unfortunately, no," Yuuka sighed. "Quite the pity. It's been so long since I did battle with an android, I was rather looking forward to the opportunity to test my skills once more. I would have even settled for a - oh, what is the word? Half-human, half-machine?"

"Cyborg?"

"That sounds right. Though I'm uncertain about the actual proportion of flesh to metal," Yuuka went on, her eyes going distant as she reminisced. "That mustache was definitely real, though," she said with a smile.

After turning a corner around a plot of - what were those, tulips? - they arrived at their destination. Yuuka Kazami's house was located on the edge of the Garden of the Sun, hidden from casual sight by the sunflowers that dominated the area and the hills surrounding them. It was a simple affair, a Western-style cottage with a golden thatched roof and brick walls, not something you'd expect for such a refined (and dangerous) youkai, but a home that certainly fit its surroundings. A table and set of chairs stood on the grass in front of it, where Chiyuri Kitashirakawa was currently reading, a cup and saucer sitting forgotten on the table next to her book.

She looked up as the woman and youkai approached. "Oh, Kotohime, you're back!" Chiyuri quickly put her book down and hopped up from her seat. "Does that mean it's over?"

"Yep!" Kotohime said brightly. "The bad guys are behind bars, and the good guys' feet are sore from all the ass they kicked. Also, it looks like some old acquaintances of ours have decided to become neighbors."

Chiyuri blinked in surprise, then smiled. "No kiddin'? Well, this should be fun."

"Yeah, they're rooming at Rikako's for now. You should probably pay a visit in a day or so," Kotohime suggested. "But you might want to bring along a nametag or something."

Chiyuri laughed and picked up her book, then turned to address her hostess. "Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Kazami," she said with a deep, respectful bow.

"It was my pleasure," Yuuka shrugged, smiling slightly. "It would have been better had someone tried to kill you again, but we can't always get what we want."

Chiyuri maintained her smile, but only through considerable effort. "Um, yes. I, I'll just get the rest of my things," she said hurriedly, then dashed into the cottage.

Kotohime gave Yuuka a look, but knew better than to comment. Instead she asked "She wasn't too much trouble, was she?"

"Not at all," Yuuka shrugged. "Mostly she sat around and read, though she did help with the gardening yesterday afternoon. Maybe that was the problem, I let her stay indoors too much," the youkai decided. "I should have kept her outside so one of those robots could see her."

Chiyuri was back in a flash, deftly handling her handbag as she shut Yuuka's door behind her. "Thank you for lettin' me stay at your place see you later" was what came out in a rush before the blonde woman began briskly walking away.

"I'd better make sure she at least makes it home safely," Kotohime declared. "Be a shame to fail the protection mission right at the last minute."

"I suppose so," Yuuka said diplomatically, but she was looking hard at Kotohime. "But, since your promise of an amusing attack did not pan out, what do you have to offer in repayment for my hospitality?"

Kotohime held up a finger. "Technically, I didn't promise anything. I just pointed out that some dangerous enemies had already gone after Miss Kitashirakawa, and they might feel like trying again."

Yuuka arched an eyebrow. "You would attempt to hide behind semantics?"

"It's the backbone of our legal system," Kotohime countered. But guilt made her sigh and soften her expression. "Tell you what, is there some other Makai plant you'd like to try to raise?"

The youkai stared at her for a long moment, her expression unreadable and vaguely worrying, before she abruptly broke into a pleasant smile. "I've heard rumors about some new wines coming from the realm, popular enough that even our local youkai are after more. I'd be interested in whether the grapes of Vina could be cultivated here."

Kotohime pursed her lips. "Technically, acquiring horticultural products from a private enterprise might count as industrial espionage..." She smiled. "On the other hand, it's probably legal to confiscate goods from trans-dimensional rum runners. I'll give it a shot."

"That would be wonderful," Yuuka said, turning and slowly strolling away, her umbrella twirling on her shoulder. "Feel free to take your time in fulfilling this request," she added without turning back to face her. "That way I might get to feed my plants."

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Kotohime touched down on the village outskirts and began the walk home - yes, she could have landed directly in front of her destination, but that just wasn't done. It was probably time for at least a nap, even though the jet lag and weirdness from the shifting time zones was giving her that weird buzz where it felt like she could keep going for another day. Yes, a refreshing nap, then off to those hills near the Hakurei Shrine, see if Reimu had repaired the damage Kotohime had done when she bypassed the seal on the portal to Makai, then-

"Miss?"

Kotohime turned as a middle-aged man trotted her way, brow furrowed with worry. He looked familiar, not like someone she usually interacted with, but like someone she often saw in the background at-

"Oh, you're one of Mizushima's regulars," she realized. "Haruki?"

"Hideo," he corrected. "Um, Mizushima actually sent me to find you. He's got a problem at the bar."

Kotohime couldn't hide her surprise. The last time the bartender had actually asked for her help had been... never. "This should be interesting."

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The Blazing Basan was all but deserted when Kotohime pushed through the door, and it was immediately obvious why. The owner was behind the bar, pale and sweating as he stiffly refilled the cup of the woman slumped in front of him. She was blonde, with exotic features that were only partially Japanese, and in a pretty sorry state - Yukari Yakumo's white dress and purple tabard were rumpled and stained with errant splashes, and her mob cap was sitting carelessly on the floor under her stool.

Mizushima very nearly glowed with relief when he saw Kotohime come in. "Ah, good to see you, princess!" he called out. "Let me get your usual," he said quickly, fleeing to the kitchens.

Yukari barely noticed him leave, and threw back another mouthful of liquor, paying no attention as Kotohime eased herself onto the barstool next to her.

"Rare to see you here in person," the police chief commented. "I mean, more than just your arm, anyway."

"It's a special occasion," the youkai of boundaries said, her voice low and moody as she stared into her drink Great, she was evidently a depressing drunk instead of a fun one.

"It looks like you've sufficiently awed the locals, though you're not garnering much gravitas," Kotohime pointed out mildly.

"I'm not sure why you'd think I'd care what they think." shrugged Yukari.

Kotohime frowned. That was a worryingly inelegant sentence from someone with the power to theoretically unmake Gensokyo. "There's been an Incident involving a threat from beyond the Border," she said conversationally.

"I know. In fact, I knew about it before it happened."

"So, theoretically, you could have stopped it?" asked Kotohime, taking care to keep the question from coming across like an accusation.

"Theoretically I could do a lot of things, many of them unpleasant," Yukari muttered. She took another sip of her drink and set the cup down hard, as though she had misjudged the distance to the table. "It doesn't matter, Reimu took care of it."

"Huh? No, I took care of it," corrected Kotohime. "With some help."

Yukari tilted her head just enough to look at Kotohime out of the corner of her eye. "What?"

"Yeah, fought the robot assassin, outflew a spaceship, popped outside the Border, went to another world, and ultimately stopped some bad guys from taking over Gensokyo," Kotohime explained. "They wanted to combine our magic with their superscience to conquer the universe or whatever. But I got the gang back together and we put them in their place."

"Oh, good," said Yukari disinterestedly.

"So what Incident were you talking about?" asked Kotohime, leaning in closer, eyes narrowed.

"An intruder with the power to shatter the Boundary," Yukari shrugged, surprisingly at ease for her potentially-apocalyptic talk.

"Who?"

A line appeared in midair, which spread apart to become a gap in reality tied off on either end with a red bow. For a moment there was nothing inside of it but a purple murkiness and the suggestion of multiple staring eyes, but then a figure became visible within as though the gap were a physics-shattering window. It was a bespectacled, brown-haired young woman - barely more than a girl, really - sitting inside a building against a wall, staring intently down at the spread book in her lap. She had on a dark bowler hat and fancy cape that clashed with what she wore under it, a uniform that instantly denoted her as-

"A high-schooler?!" Kotohime blurted out.

"Not bad for a freshman, hmm?" said Yukari with a brittle smile. It faded as she stared at the image for a few moments, then she abruptly swiped her hand through it, the gap instantly sealing in her fingers' wake.

Kotohime sat in silence, waiting patiently. Her interrogator's instincts told her that Yukari was willing-

"She obviously took - will take - a lot after her," the gap youkai said quietly, staring into the space where the vision had been hanging. "I could have dealt with that, but her hat... it's strange, how such a small thing could affect someone so much."

"It was a nice hat," Kotohime agreed.

"I think it finally moldered away... must have been centuries ago," Yukari murmured. "I buried what was left next to her. It was only right, I still felt guilty about keeping it in the first place. But I just couldn't do it. I needed it. It's not that I would have forgotten her!" Yukari insisted hotly, before sagging again. "I just needed to know I hadn't dreamt the whole thing."

The police chief could only grunt noncommittally to that.

Yukari downed the rest of her drink. "So you dealt with your problem, and it sounds like Reimu handled the rest. That's good."

"It is kind of her job," Kotohime pointed out.

"And mine too, but I fear I may not be of much use in future Incidents," Yukari admitted quietly. "I've been dreading this for a long time. When I started, I almost hoped I would forget it all, hat or no hat. But no, I still remember, remember it all like it happened only... tomorrow," she finished with a weak chuckle.

"Well, you're making even less sense than usual," Kotohime declared with a sage nod. "I think you're well and truly drunk, Deputy Yakumo."

Yukari gave Kotohime a dull, pained look. "Do you have any idea what it's like?" she asked softly. "To see the person you care for the most again, only to know that they'll be parted from you sooner than you can bear?"

"Yep," Kotohime said with an easy shrug and a smile. "It's called being human."

Yukari blinked her violet eyes, then threw her head back and laughed, long and uproariously. Kotohime sat patiently in silence at her side, but after taking the time to count to thirty, she was starting to feel worried.

But the youkai woman eventually managed to collect herself, pushing herself away from the bar and onto her feet with a grunt of effort, her hat falling through the floor to plop onto her head with the help of a brief gap. "It's been a while since I was human," Yukari commented as she made a minute adjustment to her cap. "Perhaps I'm simply out of practice."

Kotohime couldn't hide her surprise. "Well, that's quite the revelation about one of Gensokyo's most mysterious youkai."

Yukari laughed, lightly this time, her golden eyes flashing with mischief. "And one I can make in your company without fear, secure in the knowledge that no one would believe you if you told them."

"Yeah, I am pretty unbelievable," Kotohime agreed with a shrug and a smile. "But, just because something is unbelievable-"

"Doesn't mean it's not true," Yukari finished with a knowing nod.

"Lady Yukari, there you are!"

Another woman - well, youkai - was pushing open the tavern's door, then immediately folded her hands within the sleeves of her blue and white dress and hurried inside before the portal could close on her cluster of fluffy yellow fox tails.

Yukari sort of shrugged. "So I am, Ran."

"We've been looking all over for you," Ran Yakumo said as she bustled to her master's side. Then she glanced over her shoulder, saw that no one had followed her in, and frowned, her yellow eyes narrowed. "Well, I was looking all over for you. Now I'll have to look for Chen, too."

"I just needed some refreshment and time to myself," Yukari insisted.

"You could have left your phone on, and there are better places to relax than a disreputable bar, master," Ran said, her tone just stopping short of reproachful. "Perhaps we should take another holiday at Lefkosia? It's quite pleasant this time of year."

"If I wanted to go to Lefkosia I'd be there already," Yukari countered. She took some careful steps forward, brushing off her shikigami's attempts to take her arm and steady her. "Let's just go home for now."

A gap opened vertically right in front of Yukari and Ran, as tall and wide as the tavern's entrance, if considerably creepier-looking. Without a single glance back at Kotohime, the two of them stepped into the gap, disappearing in the swirling purple-ness until there was nothing in the spatial anomaly but a seemingly endless field of staring eyes. Then, thankfully, the edges of the gap closed and met, until a heartbeat later there was nothing but a rapidly-disappearing line hanging in the air tied off on either end by little red bows. Then those too vanished.

Kotohime stared at where the gap had been for a moment, then turned when she heard the kitchen door creak open as someone stuck their head out. "Are they gone?" Mizushima asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Well, they're not here," Kotohime shrugged. "At the moment, anyway."

The bartender let out a slow breath. "Good. Gave us all a hell of a fright, just turning up like that..." he licked his lips nervously and glanced up at the ceiling. "Ah, not that she wasn't welcome!" he added. "J-just caught us all by surprise, that's all."

"She usually pays, but forgot this time," Kotohime said mostly to herself, frowning. That was surprisingly careless of the Lady Yakumo. She glanced back up at the bartender. "Weren't you supposed to be getting my drink?"

He glared at her, and opened his mouth to say something, reconsidered, and ultimately nodded before turning and going back from whence he'd come.

Kotohime remained on her seat, annoyed that her triumph over the forces of evil had already been replaced with uncharacteristic concern. She ought to be planning her second expedition to Makai, but after this encounter with Yukari, Kotohime wasn't keen on leaving.

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