Summertime Sadness

Though she had not changed her mind by the time she and Shanghai got home, Alice was still feeling very troubled by her meeting with Sakuya Izayoi.

In times past, her relationship with Remilia Scarlet and her household had always been neutral at best. They were both friends of Reimu Hakurei, and thus would sometimes collaborate with one another should the shrine maiden need some help with a particularly troublesome incident, but until very recently Alice had always been closer to Marisa than to Reimu, and that association was a mark against her insofar as the Scarlet household was concerned.

Still, there had at least been some measure of respect. Sakuya Izayoi was, of course, Sakuya Izayoi, and even if Alice had found her to be a bit too passive, Patchouli Knowledge's exploits in the field of magical study could not be denied. And Alice certainly had never wanted anything bad to happen to any of them, especially not what they were currently dealing with.

The worst of it was seeing Sakuya like that. For someone so notorious for her icy demeanor and masterful control, the Lunarian maid had been clearly on edge. As someone who also prided herself on emotional self-control, Alice found it to be quite disturbing.

Maybe I should have accepted, she thought. They could certainly use my help, if only to keep a lid on-

"Mama, do you mind if I ask you a question?" Shanghai inquired.

Though Alice was still ill at ease, she had long resolved to always encourage her daughter's curiosity. "Not in the slightest."

"Why did that woman want us to move into that huge house so badly?"

"Because she wants someone to mind their books, preferably an experienced magician."

"Why?"

"Because without someone minding the books, it is very easy for them to fall into disrepair, become lost, or even stolen. And having an experienced magician around is always a benefit to everyone."

"Oh. Do they not already have one?"

"They did," Alice remarked. "But she died recently."

Shanghai tilted her head. "Was it your friend? The one that gave you your hat?"

A fresh stab of pain shot through Alice's heart, but she remained calm. "No, it was another."

"Is someone killing magicians specifically?"

That wasn't…untrue, but not in the way Shanghai was thinking. "No. But there have been a great many dangerous events happening recently, and magicians tend to be involved in dangerous events. So we are more likely to be targeted."

The two of them reached the house. Alice came down to earth right in front of the white gate, opened it, and started up the path.

"Is that why we live so far away from everyone else?" Shanghai said.

"That is part of the reason, yes," Alice said. "But mostly because I do not like having lots of people around."

"Oh. And is that why you said no?"

"That is also part of it, yes."

They reached the porch. Alice ascended the steps while Shanghai continued to hover just over her shoulder.

"Do people really live in that big house?" Shanghai asked.

"Yes. But it is really for one very rich person, and everyone else there are her servants."

Shanghai frowned. "I do not understand. Why would she need such a big house? She is only one person, correct? Is she exceptionally large?"

"No, actually she is rather small," Alice said as she pulled the front door key from her side-pouch and unlocked the door. "But rich people enjoy having very large houses. They think that other people find them impressive."

"Do they?"

"Some, but they shouldn't. It's all very silly."

They went inside, and Alice shut the door firmly behind them.

"Actually, I grew up in another very large house," Alice said as she took off her hat and hung it on the oak hat stand.

Shanghai's eyes went wide. "You did? Were you a very rich person, or were you their servant? And was it like that one?"

"No and no, but I was being looked after by one. And it looked very different from that one, though it was still large. I didn't care for it though. It was too easy to get lost in, and it never really felt like-"

The phone rang.

Shanghai squeaked in surprise and darted under the large chair. As for Alice, she just stared at the phone in confusion.

It was an old-fashioned rotary antique that she had picked up from Rinnosuke Morichika's shop for aesthetic reasons and hung in the hallway. It of course did not work, as Gensokyo did not possess phone lines. Or a phone company, for that matter. Anytime it had rang was through magic on the behalf of someone who knew that she even had a phone, and those instances were few and far between.

But they always spoke of trouble.

Steeling herself, Alice walked over to the squealing phone and picked up the earpiece while standing close to the brass receiver.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hello, my niece."

Alice felt her chest clench up. The voice was beautiful, ethereal, almost crystalline, and most definitely not Human.

"Sariel," she said in a neutral tone.

"I apologize for contacting you," the Angel said. "You know I would not do so unless it was very important."

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. "What is it?" she said.

"It is your mother."

Alice felt a long-buried but all-too-familiar tic start to resurface in her right eyelid. "Sariel, I already told her that if she wants to talk to me, then she can damned well come see me herself instead of sending someone else-"

"I'm sorry, my nice, but she is incapable of going to see anyone at the moment. In fact, she is not aware that I am contacting you now."

Alice's eyes narrowed. "Sariel, if you're trying to get us to reconcile again-"

"She's hurt, Alice. Hurt badly."

Alice's head jerked back. "Pardon?"

"You are of course aware of the recent battle that took place-"

"-at the Garden of the Sun!" Alice finished for it. "Of course I am, everyone is!"

"Well, she and I were there to lend Yukari Yakumo support."

"Wait, both of you? Two Angels of Death? Isn't that kind of…overkill?"

"No."

That was it. Just a flat no. No clarification, no further explanation, just a no. Alice blinked and said, "Continue."

"While we were successful, Yuuka Kazami put up a much larger fight than expected before going down, and Shinki was hurt."

Alice shook her head. None of this made any sense. "Hurt. What do you mean, she was hurt? She's a Fallen Angel! What could possibly hurt her?"

"Yuuka Kazami was in possession of a blade tempered with mordite. She stabbed Shiki in the back."

Alice almost dropped the phone.

"My niece? Are you still there?"

Hands shaking and heart pounding, Alice swallowed and said, "D-Did you say she had a mordite blade?"

"Yes."

"You mean, like a knife?"

"Exactly."

Marisa's knife.

It had to be.

But…how? How had Yuuka Kazami had gotten it? It didn't make any sense!

Moments later, Alice realized how silly that question was. Marisa undoubtedly had it with her when Yuuka Kazami murdered her, and she stole it off of Marisa's corpse.

And now she had used it on Alice's mother.

"How is she?" Alice said in a low voice.

"Not well. Shinki's status as a Fallen Angel means she has evolved into a hybrid of ethereal, immortal being and, well, corporeal mortal. The mordite poison is attacking her mortal qualities, while her Angelic Grace is struggling to fight off the infection. The battle is ravaging her terribly, Alice. She is not even lucid most days, and I fear…"

Alice waited for the rest, but it didn't come. It was not like Sariel to drop off in mid-sentence. "You fear what?"

"I…I believe she might be dying."

Alice slowly breathed out. "You are serious? Shinki is actually dying?"

"Her condition is unprecedented. She had been partially mortal for a very long time, and there is no way to tell what condition she will be in if she comes through."

"Ah. I see."

A heavy silence fell as Alice struggled to mentally digest everything she had just been told. Years of resentment were hard to throw off, and she would have been more than happy to tell Shinki to kindly go sodomize herself with a rusty spoon.

But this was different. Shinki wasn't the one approaching her; Sariel was. And now Shinki was…dying? At the very least in great pain. And despite everything that had gone down between them, it was still her mother, adopted or otherwise.

"My niece," Sariel began again. "I know that things between you two have been…tense."

Alice couldn't hold back the snort of derisiveness.

"But please understand it was never her intention to hurt you. She only wanted what was best for you."

"Correction," Alice spoke through clenched teeth. "She wanted what was best for her. I was never consulted, even though I was the one being changed."

"Mothers make mistakes, my niece. Surely you must understand that now."

"Mistakes are one thing," Alice snapped. "What she did was-"

And then it hit her.

After she had managed to bring her breathing under control, she whispered, "You know."

There was no answer.

"Sariel, tell me the truth right now: is Shinki spying on me?"

"No, my niece. It was me. I've been-"

"Spying on me! Even after I made it clear that I wanted nothing further to do with either one of you!"

"Keeping tabs, not spying!" Sariel said, a rare hint of agitation in its perfect voice. "I do not watch you, nor do I report to Shinki what I know."

"But you do keep track of me," Alice seethed. "You know that I have a daughter now."

"I do," Sariel said. "I would have sent congratulations, but-"

"But? But? But it would spoil the game? It would reveal how you knew? And it wasn't until Shinki was the one hurting that you felt it was time to break the façade?"

"It was only ever for your own protection-"

"My own protection?" Alice cried. "Oh, okay! So tell me this then: if you've been keeping such good track of me, then where were you when my best friend was murdered? Where were you when it felt like my heart was being ripped in two? Where were you, aunt/uncle? Where was either one of you?"

With that, she hung up.

Shaking and crying, Alice stood with one hand still on the phone, the other covering her face. She couldn't deal with this, not now, not when-

"Mama?"

Oh no.

Shanghai slowly floated into the room, her wide blue eyes both concerned and fearful. "Mama, you were shouting at the ringing box. And now you're crying. Why?"

Taking a deep breath to compose herself, Alice said, "That box is a communication tool. That ringing was to signal that I was receiving a message."

"Oh. Was it a bad message?"

"Yes." Alice sniffed and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. "Very bad."

"What was it?"

She considered telling Shanghai to leave things be, to not inquire further, but no. She had promised to avoid secrets between them, and this would have come up sooner or later. "It was about…about…" My mother. "It was about the woman who raised me. The one who lived in the big house I told you about."

"Oh. Was she your Mama?"

Alice wondered exactly how to explain the concept of adoption to her, and then decided to leave it for another time. "Yes. Yes, she was."

"Is something wrong with her?"

"Yes. She apparently was hurt very badly."

Shanghai frowned. "And that was why you were angry?"

Oh, Alice was not ready for this conversation. "N-No, that wasn't it. I mean, that was part of it, but I was angry because…" Damn it. "Because I've been angry at her for a long time."

"You're angry at your Mama? Why?"

"Because I was born a Human, and she forced me to become a youkai, that's why!" Seeing Shanghai recoil at the unexpected rancor in her mother's voice, Alice felt a stab of shame and forced herself to calm. "I'm sorry, Shanghai. It's not you I'm upset with. But I didn't want to become a youkai, but she made me one anyway. So I left that house and haven't spoken to her in a long time."

"You weren't born a youkai?"

"No," Alice said bitterly. "Humans can become youkai. The process is…complicated and painful, but it is possible."

"Why did she want you to become a youkai?"

"Because she is immortal, and I was not. She wanted me to live forever with her."

"Was she lonely?"

"I suspect so, yes."

"Did you wish to die?"

"Not immediately, of course. I wished to have a regular Human lifespan. However, my issue was not having a say."

Shanghai still looked puzzled. "Did I have a say when you turned me into a youkai?"

Alice felt her face turn red. She almost said something regrettable but managed to rein in her anger before it got out. After all, the question was asked in pure innocence, with no malice or resentment whatsoever. "Shanghai," she said, willing every trace of indignation from her voice. The results were less than satisfactory. "That was different. You were a doll, an inanimate object. I was a sentient being."

"But-"

"Furthermore, I was not the one who made you into a youkai! That just….happened!" Granted, the numerous tests, spells, and rituals she had performed in order to achieve that very effect probably had influenced the process, but that was beside the point.

"But-"

Alice sighed. Enough. "Shanghai, please. No more questions right now."

The small doll actually looked surprised. "But you said I could ask any question I ever wanted if I wished to learn something new!"

Alice pressed her fingertips into her own forehead. "I know, but right now I am…very upset, and…require time to compose myself. So please. Later."

"I don't understand though. Did I say something to-"

"Shanghai!" Alice snapped.

Shanghai stiffened in shock, and Alice immediately regretted her sharp tone.

She took a moment to mentally run through several calming exercises that all reputable magicians were adept in. Then she said in a much calmer tone, "I apologize. I should not have used that tone. But this is a subject that deals with several troublesome moments from my past and makes me…emotionally compromised, so I must ask that you refrain from questions for the time being."

"But-"

"Shanghai," Alice said, almost pleading. "Please. I will answer your questions when I am able. But not now."

"Oh." Shanghai wilted. "Okay, Mama."

Dejected, the little doll flew off, leaving Alice feeling even more wretched than before.

Her body still trembling, Alice retreated to her study and collapsed into her chair. Then she slowly leaned forward and buried her face in her hands. A small, strangled-sounding sob forced its way out of her throat, and hot, angry tears leaked down through her fingers.

Then she scowled, sat up straight, and slammed her fist into the armrest. Damn that woman! How dare she do this to her? Right when Alice was just piecing her life back together after suffering her greatest tragedy and receiving her most wonderful miracle in quick succession, Shinki had to go and do this of all things, and now of all times? Damn her, damn her, damn her! Literally! Wasn't that what was supposed to happen to Fallen Angels? Why couldn't it have happened to her? Why couldn't have Shinki been sent to the Abyss with the rest of her twisted kin and stayed out of Alice's life? Then she would…she would…

Alice sighed and slumped back. Then she wouldn't have reached her sixth birthday. She would have ended up as a meal for that Makai demon years ago, her bones lost beneath the earth to be forgotten by all. Then she never would have grown and learned magic, never would have befriended Marisa, never would have created Shanghai…

But even so! That didn't excuse everything else!

If only she had been as much a monster as the rest of her kind, Alice thought bleakly. Then I could hate her properly. Instead, she had to…had to…

The cocktail of anger, grief, resentment, and guilt that had been stirring within her suddenly overflowed, and Alice started crying. She couldn't take this, not now.

Then a tiny hand touched hers. Blinking, Alice look down to see Shanghai standing on the chair's armrest, looking up at her in confusion and concern.

Alice felt a quick surge of indignation. She had told Shanghai to leave her alone! She ought to scold her, to teach her not to disobey, ought to…

The anger faded as quickly as it had ignited, and Alice reached down to take her daughter into her arms. Holding her tightly, she continued to cry.

…

This, Rin thought bleakly, is a bad idea. No way will this go well.

Against her better judgment, she had consented to Doremy's idea of taking a day trip to the beach. It wasn't an idea she was particularly thrilled about. Bringing along a small group for a heist was one thing, but taking the whole gang out in public while trusting each and every one of them to not do something drastic was something else entirely.

Still, Doremy was right. Everyone was getting really antsy from being cooped up all the time. If things kept up the way they had, more fights would have erupted. A bit of fresh air and fun would do everyone good.

Hopefully.

At any rate, despite her misgivings, here they were, on the shores of the Saltlick Sea, where, funnily enough, she and Rumia had tried to hide in early in their involvement, only to almost be eaten by a sea monster. With any luck the worst thing they would have to deal with was someone getting sand in her eye.

Obviously not the whole group was with them, as Wriggle had decided to stay behind and look after the hideout, Seija had disappeared again, and Kogasa hadn't felt like going. Also, Flandre and Kurumi could not go outside during the day. Rin had promised to make it up to them both, but while Kurumi had been relieved, Flandre had been clearly disappointed at having to sit out another fun activity, which worried Rin. An annoyed Flandre could easily escalate into an angry Flandre, and if she woke up and snapped while everyone was gone, when Rin wasn't around to stop her, then things could turn deadly. But if one of Yukari Yakumo's hunters came across the group and Rin wasn't around, then things could also turn deadly.

In the end, she and Doremy had worked out a compromise. Rin would accompany everyone over while making frequent trip back to check on the hideout. It was an imperfect solution, but then again, most of their ideas were, so why stop now?

At any rate, now they were committed. Some were excited about the trip. Others were understandably nervous. And a couple had voiced their opinion that this was a bad idea. Rin was actually one of the latter, and she could not wait until it was time for everyone to go home. Watching over everyone when they were all in a hole in the ground was difficult enough.

At least there wasn't anyone else around. Hopefully it would stay that way.

"Well, here we are," she said as they settled down onto the grassy bank. "So…have fun!"

Nobody moved. Elis swallowed nervously, while Sara and Sekibanki exchanged nervous looks.

Rin had expected this. She looked over to Cirno, whom she had brought along to act as cheerleader. However, to her surprise Cirno was the most morose among them. She just stood with her head down and arms crossed, a sullen look on her face.

Fortunately Doremy was there. "Come on!" she said, clapping her hands. "We've been cooped up for weeks! Let's enjoy this!"

There was another round of awkward looks, but then they stopped standing around and started setting up: spreading out blankets, opening baskets, while Mystia set to work clearing away an area for a fire pit.

Rin slowly breathed out. Okay, it was a start.

…

Daiyousei had to admit, while she was still very nervous about being out in the open, it did feel good to get out of the cave and stretch her wings without having to worry about pulling off some heist. After several weeks of being underground following even more weeks in the unnaturally bright and, in hindsight, kind of diseased sunlight of the Garden of the Sun, being in the good, old-fashioned summer Sun really made her remember what she had been missing. She vowed to never take it for granted again.

The only problem was now that she and the others were out, what was she supposed to do?

In times past, there would always be something to do, a game to play or a prank to pull. With friends like Daiyousei's, there was no lack of ideas.

But that had been then, and this was now, and Daiyousei had never been one to come up with ideas for herself. So she sat down on the rocky shore and waited for someone to come up with something.

In time, someone did. The Demons had gotten the others together and were explaining how to play some kind of game, one that seemed to be a popular Makai game called "Slam Ball." Daiyousei listened with interest until she had heard enough of the rules to know that it didn't really sound like something she'd enjoy.

They had divided into small teams, with Doremy, who had volunteered to be the referee, making sure that Sekibanki had her scarf tied tightly around her neck.

The two teams took up position on opposite ends of what had been designated the field, with a rock on either end acting as the goals. And then they started slamming into one another.

Daiyousei watched them for a time. The rules seemed to involve trying to get the ball into the opposing team's goal. Except that there was no ball, and the thing that they were trying to force toward the goals were the opposing players. And to accomplish that, one had to, well, slam into them as hard as they could. It was basically a team sumo contest.

Daiyousei had never cared for fighting, especially nothing physical. So instead she just sat and watched.

Moments later someone sat down next to her, and to her surprise it was the last person she'd expect to sit out a highly competitive show of physical violence.

Cirno was in a mood. She had been in a mood for a few days now, and it was worrisome to see. Cirno was always such a ball of energy and optimism that seeing her in a funk felt like a bad omen of things to come. Under practically any circumstances she would be out there butting heads and kicking butts with great aplomb, not sourly sitting with her legs drawn up and arms sulkily crossed over her knees.

Daiyousei hesitated. Usually she was the one on the receiving end of emotional support, so she wasn't exactly sure how to proceed, but she had to try. "Um, Cirno?" she said. "Are you-"

"Hey, Dai?" Cirno said suddenly. "Can I ask you something?"

"Um…sure?"

"Are you still a part of my gang?"

Out of all possible questions, that was not one Daiyousei had been expecting. "Er, what do you mean?"

Cirno shrugged. "Well, I mean, it's always been my gang. Like, even when we'd get into fights and scuffle, that's just how it was. And then Rin joined, and it was great because she was so strong and cool. But then we got a whole bunch of people joining, and suddenly no one listens to me anymore. They all just listen to Rin, and when I try to say anything, they just yell at me to shut up." A moth lighted on her shoulder, and she scowled and swatted it away. "I mean, this is gonna sound crazy, and don't tell anyone I told you this, but I don't think anyone likes me."

…

"Ready? Go!"

The two teams stampeded at one another, heads lowered and fists pumping. Sekibanki zeroed in on Luize, who in turn charged at her at full speed, intending to knock her silly.

But before either got halfway, Sekibanki extended her neck, thrusting her head forward like a battering ram, and if it had connected as intended, Luize would have been sent sprawling.

Alas.

Luize ducked the blow and kept going, and with her head extended out so far, Sekibanki was unable correct her course. The blonde Demon leapt forward and speared her in the midsection.

The shock caused Sekibanki's neck to retract on reflex, and since her head was now far from being snugly tied by the scarf, it flew right off and kept going, sailing past the goal line and tumbling through the grass.

The few moments were a confusing, but not unfamiliar, muddle as Sekibanki's head tumbled through the field. Fortunately the grass made for a soft landing, but it wasn't exactly comfortable.

Finally it came to a rest, giving Sekibanki time to just lay still in two different places and wait for the world to stop spinning. She felt her friends helping her sit up in one place and heard them laughing from another. Which, while embarrassing, was fair enough. It had been a dumb gamble.

"Hey, Seki!" Sara called. "Where'd your noggin go?"

"Over here!" Sekibanki called back. Her head was lying flat, staring up at the sky, so she wiggled it around until she was able to get a good look at her surroundings. "I've over by-"

She was surrounded by flowers: big, fat ones with thick yellow petals. The petals pressed in-

-from all around, forming a cage of yellow that was as soft as it was strong. Sekibanki gasped and tried to pull herself out, but nothing would stop them as they slowly closed in over her head-

Sekibanki choked. She tried to run, but her body was far away. The cloying stench of wildflowers filled her nostrils-

-suffocating her. "No!" she screamed, or at least tried to. Nausea twisted her up, and she started gagging.

"Help," Sekibanki muttered. She tried to roll out of the flowerbed, but just managed to fall back so that she was now staring up at the sky, with the unblinking eye of the Sun beaming down on her, staring-

-at her through the closing petals, the monstrous woman's glowing red eyes being the only thing she could see as the petals closed shut over her head. "Please!" Sekibanki begged. "Don't!" But the monstrous woman didn't listen. She only laughed as Sekibanki was sealed away in a sticky prison that smelled of sickly sweet rot.

Sekibanki started screaming.

…

"That's not true."

"Yes, it is! Don't tell me you don't see it!" Cirno sighed. "I don't know. Even Wriggle doesn't talk to me much anymore, and Rumia's sleeping all the time and Rin's always so busy, so you, Mysty, and Flan are the only ones that still talk to me!"

"W-Well, that's just-" Then Daiyousei blinked. "Wait, you hang out with Flandre?"

Cirno frowned. "Well, yeah. She's our friend. Don't you?"

Not really, which did make Daiyousei feel a little bad. But Flandre was so unpredictable, and Rin wasn't always around to supervise her. Still, it did stand to reason that Cirno would be the one to not fear her. Daiyousei quickly changed the subject. "Um, well, things are sort of…different now. Rumia's, well, she's sick from whatever's messed up in her head. And of course Rin is busy! She's got to take care of everyone! And Wriggle…"

"She's mad at me," Cirno groused. "She's been mad at me, and I don't get it! What did I do to her?"

Oh. Oof. Cirno might be Daiyousei's best friend, but sometimes she…well, some things took a little explaining for her to get it. "Cirno," Daiyousei said softly. "Please don't be mad, but it was your idea for her to go to Yuuka to ask for help in the first place."

Cirno jerked back like she had been struck. "Wait, what? Hold on, are you saying that all this was my fault?"

"No! But we all know how Yuuka used to treat Wriggle, and you did kind of push her into going back anyway. So seeing how things went, I guess she's still a little mad…"

"But I didn't make her do anything!" Cirno protested. "She could have said no! But she didn't, so don't put this on me!"

"I'm not! I'm just saying-"

"And if I didn't do that, then Yuuka wouldn't have convinced Rin to let Rumia go, so it worked! And Yuuka was the one to f-figure out how to get that evil stuff out of Rin! And Rin would've never met Flandre and helped her if none of that happened! She'd still be locked up in her dumb sister's basement!"

"I know, I know-"

"And we would've never found everyone else that Yuuka was keeping prisoner, so they would've never been freed! If you think about it, everything good that's happened to everyone happened because of me, so I don't get why everyone's so upset with me!"

"Cirno, c-c-calm down!" Daiyousei cried. She was unused to upsetting anyone, much less Cirno, and it was getting her flustered. "I get it! But, you know, Yuuka still hurt Wriggle really, really badly, and you still really wanted her to go back! And okay, good stuff happened because of it, but a lot of bad happened too, so I kinda get why she's mad at you, because, well, you were really on Yuuka's side until we found the rest of the girls in the flowers, and never really said sorry for any of it, so I guess she's still kind of sore at you for not believing her."

Cirno stared at Daiyousei, her face turning red, and for a moment Daiyousei wondered if Cirno was going to hit her.

Then Cirno said in a small voice, "I just wanted to get Rumia back."

"I know," Daiyousei said.

"I didn't think Yuuka would be that bad. I thought Wriggle was just being whiny."

"I know," Daiyousei said again. "But, uh, if there was someone really, really bad who had done something really, really bad to you, but no one would believe you and made you go back to that person, wouldn't you be mad?"

Cirno looked down at her feet. To Daiyousei's surprise, she actually looked a little ashamed. That was new. Cirno was normally a fount of powerful emotions in a very small package, but guilt wasn't one she expressed regularly.

But it was one that Daiyousei knew well, and she felt pretty bad for making Cirno feel bad.

Except…she was right, wasn't she? Cirno had hurt Wriggle, had been dismissive of the firefly's feelings, and had never said she was sorry. Daiyousei knew that Cirno meant well, that she never really meant to be mean, but she could be kind of…thick sometimes.

Cirno sat back down next to her and frowned out at the lake. "So, um. Huh. W-What should I do?"

"Do?"

"For Wriggle. I mean, if I…" Cirno made a face, as if the words were unfamiliar to her. "If I did do something bad, how to I, uh…make. It. Not bad?"

Was Cirno really asking her for advice? Wow. "Um, I don't know. I guess you could, uh, tell her…that you're sorry?"

"And that'll make things good?"

"I don't know. But I still think you should."

"Oh. Uh, how do I do that?"

Daiyousei frowned. "Uh, you mean how do you say you're sorry?"

"Well, I've never done it before!" Cirno said crossly.

"Really?"

"Yes, really!" Now Cirno was getting annoyed. "I mean, how many times have I screwed up? Honestly!"

There was a pause, and then Daiyousei said, "Er, okay. Good point."

"There, you see?" Cirno huffed as she haughtily folded her legs and crossed her arms.

After a few moments that proud look deepened into something more thoughtful. "Well, there was the time you got us all decapitated."

"Huh," Cirno said. "Was…anyone mad at me after all that happened?"

Actually, both Mystia and Rumia had been pretty put out, though it hadn't lasted long. That was the thing about being in Cirno's Gang. It seemed like everyone was perpetually annoyed with one another, and arguments and even fistfights weren't uncommon. But they always made up in moments and went right on to the next scheme. Actually, the thing with Wriggle was the first time Daiyousei could remember any of her friends being angry with one another for this long.

However, before she could come up with anything resembling a satisfactory answer, she heard someone call, "Hey, ice fairies!"

The two turned to see the slam ball players looking at them. The speaker was Sara, who was waving to them.

"Yo, Seki's…gotta sit the rest of the game out. Any of you want to tag in?"

Sure enough, Sekibanki was sitting on the sidelines, her head in Doremy's lap, looking all sorts of upset. Her body was visibly shaking while Doremy stroked the hair of her head, murmuring soothing whispers.

"Is she okay?" Daiyousei said.

"She'll be fine," Doremy said. "She just had a bad episode. Don't worry, I got her."

Sekibanki didn't really look okay. In fact, she looked like she was crying. However, Daiyousei had learned not to push when someone was upset and wanted to be left alone.

Sara looked over to Doremy and Sekibanki and winced in sympathy. Then she looked back to the fairies. "So…yeah. Any of you want to join in? We're short a player."

Cirno's face scrunched up. "Are they asking me to play?"

"Uh, I think so."

"I thought they didn't like me."

"Well, maybe this is a good time to make them like you."

"Huh." Then Cirno grinned. "Y'know, that's a good idea."

Then she suddenly sprung to her feet. Cold air flashed white around her, and when it cleared, she was wearing a gleaming blue ice chest guard, shoulder pads, and a helmet. "All right, you plebs!" she declared as she raced toward the field. "Prepare to get stomped by the strongest!"

Daiyousei watched her go. She wasn't a fan of full-contact games, so there was no question of her joining in. Still, she didn't want to get left out.

Then she sighed and stood up. Well, at the very least she could watch and cheer her friends on. It seemed to be the only thing she was really good for.

…

While her friends all beat the stuffing out of one another, Mystia preoccupied herself with lunch. They had cleared away a sandy pit and surrounded it with stones. A fire had been built within, and a metal grill laid across it, on which skewers of fish, shrimp, and eel mixed with various vegetables were cooking.

Singing to herself, she carefully kept the skewers turning, while sprinkling them with herbs and spices when appropriate.

Sekibanki walked up to her. "Uh, hey," she said. "Mind if I help?"

Mystia was a little taken back. Doremy had said that Sekibanki had had some sort of Yuuka-centered flashback, so Mystia had honestly expected her to just go home. Still, maybe keeping active was her way of taking her mind off of things. It was something she understood all too well. "Um, sure! Here's some mitts. All we got to do is keep the skewers turning."

"Got it."

The two worked in silence for a bit. Mystia tried not to look like she was watching Sekibanki, but it was difficult.

Finally she worked up the nerve to say, "So…are you okay?"

Sekibanki shrugged. "Sure."

"Are you sure?"

"I…" Sekibanki sighed. "Look. I'm as okay as the rest of us. I just freaked out a little. I'll be fine. Anyway, it was just flowers. It's not like they can hurt me, right?"

Mystia nodded. "I get it, I really do. Honestly, I used to like flowers, but now I can do without them."

They worked for a little longer, and then Sekibanki asked, "Ah, um, Mystia? Sorry if this is…well, I was wondering: when Yuuka, uh, took you guys, did she…?"

Mystia winced. "Well, no. She didn't rape us, not like she did you. She just stuck us in those flowers and left us there."

"Well, you were lucky then," Sekibanki said. Mystia's ear twitched. There was a hint of bitterness in Sekibanki's voice.

Mystia looked down into the fire. She watched the embers dance, smelled the scent of cooking meat. "Well, not always," Mystia said softly.

"Hmmm?"

"Wriggle, well, I don't know if it's my place to talk about this, but she does have a history with Yuuka, a really messed up one, one that's a lot like yours. We don't know a whole lot about Rumia's past, about why she had such a monster living inside her head, but what we do know sounds really awful. Rin was experimented on until her life was destroyed and got stuffed into a tiny box for several years. Honestly, Cirno and Daiyousei are the only ones I can think of that don't have something terrible in their past. And I'm glad for it. Someone in our weird, little community ought to be able to sleep at night."

"Oh," Sekibanki said. She hesitated, and said, "What about you?"

Mystia felt her hands start to shake inside her mitts. She closed her eyes took in slow, deep breaths to steady herself. Still, she could hear the ghost of the sound of sharp steel as it was drawn from a scabbard, as it cut through the night, as it cut through-

"I also met…someone that was stronger than, that did things to me," Mystia said softly. "Not like what was done to you, but still really, really bad. It really screwed me up for a long time. I still get these scary flashes whenever something…" She swallowed. "So, uh, when I say that I know wh-what it's like, to have someone bigger and meaner than you do terrible things to you just because they can and not be okay afterward, I honestly do."

Sekibanki said nothing.

"But you know what I learned from all that? That…it's okay to not be okay. You don't have to act like you're fine and nothing hurt you. You don't have to put on a front and pretend everything's all right when it isn't." Mystia swallowed. "My friends…okay, some of them might be a little weird, or crazy, or kind of dim, but they've always been there for me when I wasn't okay. They're the reason I was ever able to start, well, living again. And now that our group is so much bigger, and now everyone's some kind of not okay, then I guess fine to really be not okay sometimes, if that makes sense."

"It does," Sekibanki said. "Thank you. And, um, sorry."

Mystia frowned. "For what?"

"Oh, you know. For thinking that you and your group couldn't really understand what we had gone through. I guess we all have our own Hell we got to live with."

…

Wriggle was starting to regret not going with everyone else.

Of course, someone had to stay behind. Someone had to keep an eye on the hideout and make sure Flandre didn't freak out and destroy the place. Someone had to keep an eye out for Seija. Someone had to keep things under control.

Wriggle often volunteered for guard duty. It gave her time to herself, where she didn't have to interact with anyone else without making it seem odd. It also gave her time to think, something very few other people really did those days.

Unfortunately, with very few people around to make noise, it left her without distractions, and without distractions her thoughts often wandered to places she wanted to avoid.

She heard the now-familiar sound of wooden wedges clacking against the stone floor, which told her who was coming. She had been expecting it, as this particular person had seemed to take a liking to joining her during her shifts for some reason.

Kogasa walked up to her, a pair of steaming cups, her umbrella-self held in the crux of her arm. "Hello," she said. "Can I sit with you?"

Wriggle glanced up at her and then down again, but didn't refuse.

The Karakasa Obake sat down next to her. "Here," she said, handing Wriggle one of the cups. "I brought you some tea."

Wriggle shook her head.

"You don't want any?"

Wriggle shook her head again.

"Oh. Okay. Well, more for me, I guess."

Even though she hadn't accepted the tea, Wriggle could still smell it, the scent of boiled herbs. Her lip twitched.

Yuuka had loved tea. She would drink it all the time, and make Wriggle join her. At first, when things had been good, Wriggle had loved taking part in Yuuka's tea parties. But over time things had gotten less good, and the worse that they got, the scarier they got.

Wriggle had always wondered why Yuuka drank tea at all, considering how violently she opposed the destruction of plants for any reason. It later occurred to her that since Elly had done all of Yuuka's cooking, she had simply never told Yuuka what tea was made of, and Yuuka had never thought to ask. That was one of the many paradoxes of Yuuka Kazami. She had seemed so wise and knowledgeable in some ways, and so unbelievably ignorant and almost childish in others.

"So why didn't you want to go to the beach?" Kogasa asked.

Wriggle shrugged.

"Most of your friends went."

"Why didn't you go?" Wriggle said.

Kogasa shrugged. "I don't know. I just…wanted to stay here, I guess."

Wriggle shrugged.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

Kogasa waited.

"No," Wriggle said at last.

"Oh. Um, wanna…talk about it? I'm a great listener, you know! Anything you want to talk about, I can-"

Wriggle stood up and walked off.

"-or not. Where are you going?"

"I'm going to take a nap," Wriggle grumbled. "Take over the watch for me, okay?"

…

After it seemed like everything was going smoothly, Rin decided to pop back at the hideout to check up on things, though she resolved to do it quickly. The trip between the lake and the hideout wasn't long, and at her full speed Rin was quite capable of covering an exceptional amount of ground in a very short time. But it still wasn't short enough. Already she was regretting not just bringing everyone over in one large group. At least that way she could an eye on everyone all at the same time without having to spend time going back and forth between the two locations.

Though given that Flandre and Kurumi were still sleeping and there were a few people that just weren't interested in the beach trip, she supposed that she would have to leave someone behind anyway.

She reached the hideout, dropped down, and zipped over to the hidden entrance. She knocked on the door.

"Oh! Uh, one sec!"

Rin frowned. That sounded like Kogasa, not Wriggle.

"Password?"

"Cheesecake," Rin said. "Uh, is Wriggle still there?"

The door opened up, confirming that yes, it was Kogasa standing watch. "No, she went to take a nap. I'm filling in for her."

"Oh." Well, that was odd. Why would Wriggle volunteer to keep watch only to immediately abandon her post. "Is she okay?"

Kogasa winced and shrugged. "I don't know. She's still…in a mood."

Right. That. Well, better a bad mood than dead. "And what about Seija? Any sign of her?"

"Nope. Haven't seen her since the last time she messed with Flandre."

Which could be a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, Seija not actively trying to set the wellspring of destructive power off or otherwise trying to sabotage everyone around her was a good thing. On the other hand, if Seija was going to be around, as she almost certainly was, then Rin preferred it to be someplace in sight. Oh well. "Okay, gimme a sec."

Rin raced into the hideout, zipped through the common area, and entered the ever-expanding network of tunnels and caves.

First she checked on Kurumi. The wild vampire's lair was a little isolated from the others, but that was mainly to keep the smell of blood from leaking to other people's rooms. Rin moved the curtain aside from the entrance and peeked in.

Kurumi didn't have much, mostly just the clothes that had been procured for her and some toiletries. Along one shelf wall were several chunks of colored quartz she had found during the excavation, along with some other pretty stones. On another shelf was a collection of animal bones. Apparently she just liked collecting things. Wriggle had said it was a vampire thing, which was fine. Of all the vampire things she could be doing, this was pretty harmless.

And in the center of the room was Kurumi's coffin. Rin had nicked it from an undertaker's shop at one of the local villages. Why vampires preferred to sleep in coffins in the first place, not even Kurumi or Flandre could properly explain; they just did.

At any rate, the coffin lid was shut tight, and the bottle of blood Rin had left for her breakfast was sitting next to it, undisturbed. From within, she could hear Kurumi's soft, mewling snores.

Okay, that was one vampire checked off the list. Onto the next one!

Rin again sped through the tunnels, heading further and further down, until she had reached Flandre's cavernous lair.

Unlike Kurumi, Flandre did not sleep in a coffin. They had tried it, but she had ended up smashing it to bits two nights in. Instead, she was curled up like a cat beneath a brand new blanket in the center of the cave. It frankly didn't look exactly comfortable, but Flandre never seemed to mind.

Rin stood at the entrance and listened. Flandre's breathing was smooth and even. No sign of any kind of distress, nightmares or otherwise. Good.

Well, so far so good. Time to get back. Rin turned and headed back the way she came.

When she was about halfway up, she paused. Her ears and nose had detected someone heading her way, someone Rin had sort of been hoping to run into.

Rumia rounded the corner, her bright red eyes shining like twin lamps in the dimness of the corridor. She still looked fairly haggard and one edge, but at least she was up and walking. "Hey, Rin? Kogasa said you had popped in."

"Yup!" Rin said. "Everything's fine, so now I'm heading back." She paused, and then she said, "So…have you changed your mind?"

Rumia sighed. "Yeah, fine."

"Really?"

"Look, either I'm napping by myself in the dark, or I'm napping on the beach, and I'm getting sick of being cooped up here. So sure. Let's go to the beach."

Rin grinned. Well, this was a nice turn! Maybe this day wasn't going to be a total disaster after all. Presuming, of course, nothing showed up to complicate things.

Then her smile died. She just had to think that, didn't she?

…

"Score!"

A score indeed. The force of Cirno's charge had taken Sara full off her feet and driven her a good four meters past the goal line, leaving the demon completely stunned. She lay flat on her back, staring up at the sky.

"Good job, Frosty!" Elis said, clapping Cirno on her ice-sheathed shoulder. "You really got a knack for this game."

Nien nodded enthusiastically. "Yup! Yous dud swammered up the chokeline propers!"

Grinning, Cirno shot her a thumb's up. Swammered up the chokeline indeed.

As for Sara, she was just groggily sitting up. "Ugh," she muttered as she rubbed her head. "Th' hell jus…"

Then she frowned at her arm, which was now bent at an odd angle.

Cirno froze. Oops, she hadn't meant to do that!

Sara looked at her wrecked arm, then up at the ice-encased fairy, and then back down at her arm. Then she laughed.

"Holy hellfire, fairy!" she said as she grabbed her arm and started twisted it around. There were several loud pops and crackling sounds, and suddenly it was the proper shape. "Who taught you to hit like that?"

Relived, Cirno let herself relax. "No one! This power is all natural!"

"Um, guys?" Daiyousei said from the sidelines. She sounded worried. "We have a problem."

Everyone turned their attention to her. Daiyousei was standing on the shore of the lake, pointing to the other side.

To their dismay, while they had been busy playing Slam Ball, several other people had shown up. There was a small group of Humans, a few families and a collection of youngsters, likely from the local village. Further down the way a fairy dance had shown up, all of them wearing bathing suits, and were splashing merrily in the water.

"Uh-oats," Nien said.

"Should we leave?" Sekibanki asked.

Everyone all looked at one another. Then Doremy shook her head.

"No, we knew this probably was going to happen," she said. "Besides, who really knows who we are? As far as any of them are concerned, we're just some local youkai enjoying the Sun. So long as we keep our distance, we should be fine."

Sara scowled. "Y'know, that's exactly the sort of things that'll get the jinx gods looking in our direction."

"Sara. Relax. We've been out in public plenty of times, and nobody recognized us. What are the odds of anyone who knows who we are showing up?"

…

"Here we are!" Meiling declared as she and Koakuma touched down on the shore of the Saltlick Sea.

Koakuma dubiously looked around at all the people swimming, playing, and sunbathing. "Um, yeah. Here we are."

Then she was nearly sent cartwheeling when Meiling slapped her on the back. "Oh, loosen up! This'll be fun!"

Koakuma sighed and popped her shoulder in place. Thank the dark ones for her Demon physiology. "I don't know, Meiling. There's a lot of people here, and I haven't really been in a crowd since Patchouli summoned me." She turned toward her new master. "It's just not something I'm…uh…"

Meiling had dropped her poofy white pants and was in the process of pulling her green dress off. She seemed to be having trouble getting it up over her head though, and was struggling to pop it off. "Sorry, what was that?" she called from within the bundle of cloth, her voice muffled. "Can't hear you from in here."

Koakuma blinked. Meiling was wearing a green two piece workout swimsuit which, okay, wasn't incredibly revealing, especially not when compared to the sort of things Koakuma used to wear on past assignments, but even so, it was a lot more of her than she was used to seeing, and…

Rippling biceps.

Um…

Shredded abs…

Er…

Outstanding glutes…

Okay…

Legs for days…

Wow. So many…muscles.

Koakuma…really had been shut up in the library a really long time, hadn't she?

"Um, Koa?" Meiling said as she continued to struggle with her garments. "I'm…kind of stuck, and I don't want to rip this, so, could you, you know, give me a hand?"

Koakuma swallowed noisily and then slapped herself several times in the cheeks. "Damn it, I'm supposed to be the seductive one," she muttered.

"What was that?" Meiling asked.

"Nothing! Nothing." Her face now red, Koakuma reached up to help disentangle her new master's long, copper hair from the neck hole. As she did, she couldn't help but notice how gloriously toned Meiling's shoulders were, or how strong her back was, or-

Meiling's head finally popped out. "Ah, that's better!" she said as she spread her hair and let it shimmer down her back. She glanced over her shoulder and shot a dazzling grin at the stupefied succubus. "Thanks!"

Koakuma blinked.

Then she was hit with a face-full of Meiling's clothes "Come on, silly! Get undressed and let's go!"

Koakuma dropped Meiling's clothes onto the towel and sighed. Wow, Meiling was right. She really needed to get out more.

…

"You know, this isn't so bad," Yuki remarked as she walked hand-in-hand with Mai. The game had ended, so the Demons had decided to take a walk. "In fact, this is quite nice! We should've done this a long time ago."

Mai said nothing. But then, that was the norm for her.

"Almost makes up for that vacation we didn't get to have! You know, if you think about it, a lot of what happened to us could be laid at the feet of that stuck-up shrine maiden. If she'd just let us have our blessed trip. I mean, seriously? What's so bad about a few Demons taking a day visit to the topside anyway? I mean, am I right?"

"Totally," Luize said as she walked along right in front of the pair. Of the gaggle of Demons, she seemed to be enjoying herself the most. "I mean, if you think about it, we're the victims! These topsiders get to have as much sunlight as they'd like, while all we get is that weak shit from the crystals! The Heaven is up with that?"

Sara, who was in the lead, turned to shoot them a furious girl. "Ix-nay on us being emons-Day!" she hissed, swiping a hand across her throat. "You never know who has super hearing, idiots!"

Yuki and Luize glanced first at all the strange Humans, fairies, and youkai about, and then at each other. "Oops," Luize said.

"Sorry boss," Mai added.

"Won't do it again," Luize agreed.

Mai continued to say nothing. She didn't need to. The way her eyes rolled around in conjunction with a weary sigh said enough.

Mai caught notice of the fifth member of their little group of demonic outcasts. "Uh, hey there, Elis. You doing okay back there?"

Elis had at first been keeping pace with the other four, but had started lagging further and further behind. As a Batfiend, she didn't do as well in direct sunlight as the others, and the heat was sapping her energy. Plus, given that she had to hide her wings beneath a heavy cape and a headband, it was only serving to hold the heat in.

"For now," she panted. "But if it gets much hotter you guys are gonna have to scoop me off the ground."

"Let's take a break then," Yuki suggested.

The five of them sat down in the shade and looked out at the people. By now there had to be almost two dozen of them. It was sort of strange to look out at a group of mortals and not think of ways to screw with them, if not outright prey on them. No one present was from any particularly malicious Demon strains, but the urge was still there.

Then Luize giggled. "Oh, isn't that cute."

"What is?" Sara said.

"They even got their own lifeguard!"

Sure enough, a high-risen chair had been set up, and sitting in it was some kind of squid youkai girl with blue tentacles for hair, one wearing a white one-piece swimsuit and an arrow-shaped white hat. She had on a pair of sunglasses and was watching the swimmers intently.

"I wanna steal her hat," Sara said after a bit.

"No," Yuki said.

"Come on. Look at that stupid thing! Don't you wanna snatch it too?"

"No!" Elis said. "Behave."

Sara grumpily folded her arms. "I never get to have any fun."

"Trouble," Mai said in a dull, quiet tone, the first thing she had said all day. "Bad."

"See? Mai knows what's up," Yuki said. "Don't go putting attention on us."

"Fine," Sara sighed. "Man, it's not like I'm going around trying to eat people. You should be grateful!"

Then Luize lowered her sunglasses and let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Well, hello. There's a pair of succulent treats I wouldn't mind taking a bite out of."

A couple of redheaded women were walking by, one a tall youkai woman of indistinguishable species who was, well, extraordinarily athletically fit, with the sort of lean muscle definition that would make even the most accomplished gymnast weep with envy. Her swimsuit wasn't especially showy, being mainly a practical green sport's bra and a pair of bike shorts, but on her it might as well have been silken lingerie for how well she wore them.

Her companion was about half-a-head shorter and was no less stunning, though in the opposite direction, with the soft curves of a lingerie model and the sensual grace of someone accustomed to the catwalk. Her swimsuit, if it could be properly referred to as a "suit," was a string bikini in ocean greens and blues, and had so little material that it quite frankly could be said to be providing the bare minimum of coverage before she was properly nude. Not that anyone would mind. Even those who would be scandalized would have a hard time objecting.

The duo were holding hands and chatting, and if they were unaware of all the stares they were drawing, they made no sign. However, though the Demon squad was leering right along with everyone else, Elis suddenly made a squeak of distress.

"Oh, no," she moaned. "Are you serious?"

"What?" Yuki said.

"The shorter one. Use your Demon Sight."

The other four shot her confused looks. Then they shrugged and looked back to the showy pair. Their eyes took on a slight red hue as their sight was bolstered by demonic power.

The tall, athletic one remained more-or-less the same, albeit now with the shimmering aura all youkai had. But the shorter of the two became noticeably different, as batlike wings appeared on her back while a smaller pair showed up on either side of her head, right above her ears, which were now long and pointed. A thin black tail snaked out of the top of her waist, one ending in an arrow-like point.

"Oh, she's a succubus!" Luize said. "Wow, no wonder she looks like that!"

"Wonder how she got out of Makai," Yuki mused. "I mean, I know how we got out, but…"

"She's not just any succubus," Elis said glumly.

"You know her?"

Before Elis could answer, the bikini-clad succubus suddenly came to a stop, and then turned to stare at them. Too late they all realized that using their Demon Sight would give off energies detectable by other Demons.

And when the succubus's own eyes flashed red, they knew that the gig was up.

"Elis?" the succubus blurted out. "Oh, my dark gods. Elis? Is that you?"

…

"And here we are!" Rin called. "You still awake back there?"

"Yup," Rumia said. "Only…sort of woozy right now. Scared me awake." She sighed. "Gods, why did I agree to let you do the flying?"

Given Rumia's current malady of chronic sleepiness, Rin didn't think it safe to let her fly herself. So she turned herself into something that could carry her, similar to the same form she had taken to carry everyone from Yuuka Kazami's mansion, only much smaller and with just one seat on her back. However, she had still needed to make the trip as quickly as possible, leading to a ride that was more focused on speed instead of comfort. At least Rumia didn't vomit on her.

And now they had made it back to the lake, and no one had tried to blow them up. "Okay," Rin said as she swooped down. "Let's find the rest of the guys and…" Then she braked hard, causing Rumia to make a sudden choking sound.

"The hell, Rin?" Rumia said. "You almost launched my brains out through my nose!"

Rin barely heard her. "Where did," she said as she stared, "all these people come from?"

Sure enough, the shores of the lake, which had previously been deserted save for Rin's friends, now had several groups of people from a variety of different species, all enjoying the Sun and the water.

Well.

Shit.

"Oh, godsdamnit!" Rumia groaned. "Already everything's gone to hell. Trip's cancelled before it begun."

Though Rin's mind had been going down the same lines, something about Rumia's irritated surrender triggered something in her. "No," she said stubbornly. "It's not."

"Really?" Rumia said after a pause. "Uh, you do remember the part about us being fugitives, right?"

"We knew this was probably going to happen," Rin told her. "And the number of people who actually know who any of us are or what we look like is vanishingly small, you know? So we'll just keep an eye on you and the rest of the original gang. Besides, basically no one that wasn't in Mugenkan even knows that any of the others are with us, so if you think about it, they can really go just about anywhere without worrying."

…

"Elis?" the succubus said again as she approached the group, her muscular friend in tow. "That is you! What are you doing here?"

Elis, who was keenly aware of how intently her friends were staring at her, sighed and said, "Hello, Koa."

Then she looked to the others. "Uh, guys? This is Koakuma. She's my third cousin thrice removed on my mother's side, and my fifth cousin on my father's side."

"You're a succubus?" Sara said.

"No, I'm a Batfiend." Then she paused, and amended, "But that's basically a succubus without the, um, sex. Koa, these are my friends! Meet Sara, Yuki, Mai, and Luize."

"Hello!" Luize said cheerfully.

"Uh, hey," Sara said in a guarded tone.

Yuki waved. Mai inclined her head.

"Oh, hello," Koa said. "It's…nice to meet so many other Demons. Outside of Makai." Then she glanced over to her tall friend, who was waiting patiently to be introduced. "Oh, and this is Meiling. Hong Meiling. She's my master."

"Hey there!" Meiling said with a sunny smile. "Any friend of Koa's is a friend of mine." Then she frowned. "Though, hey, master? Really? Do you gotta put it like that?"

"Well, it is the proper term," Koakuma said.

"Yeah, but it just sounds so…cheesy. I mean, I didn't even summon you."

"You didn't?" Elis said. "Then how-"

"Though I totally would have if I knew how! It's just, I didn't know how, so I had to ask someone else…except I wasn't the one who asked, it was actually-"

"It's okay, Meiling, we get it," Koakuma said in a slightly exasperated tone. Then she turned back to the other Demons. "Though speaking of which, Elis? I…didn't hear of you becoming anyone's familiar."

"Er…"

"Well, I'm a witch!" Yuki chimed in. "And so's Mai. So we could've summoned them up!"

"Uh, okay, but you're Demon witches," Koakuma said. "So…no. You couldn't?"

"Oh, don't mind us!" Luize said with a laugh that she probably was hoping sounded casual and disarming but instead completely betrayed her nerves. "We're here on a group vacation. A road trip!"

"Oh, hey! That sounds fun!" Meiling said. "What places have you seen?"

"A road trip," Koakuma repeated. "From Makai. To the topside."

Luize winced, as did Sara and Yuki. Mai, of course, said nothing. Elis nervously scratched her neck. They were all thinking of the same things: specifically, of Makai's short-lived travel agency from a few years back and how thoroughly the Hakurei Shrine Maiden had shut it down. And how it hadn't been since resurrected in any shape or form, meaning that there really wasn't any reason for five Demons to be wandering around in Gensokyo.

"Uh, Koa?" Elis said. "Can we…talk?"

…

"There you are!" Doremy said as Rin and Rumia approached the spot where they had set up. "We were getting worried! Hi, Rumia! Glad you could come!"

"You were getting worried?" Rin said. "Doremy, what's going on? Who are all these people?"

Doremy sighed. "Well, locals, obviously. Come on, Rin. We talked about this."

"I know, I know, it's just…" Rin sighed. "Why'd they have to show up while I was away?"

"Take it easy, I've been holding things together."

"Uh-huh." Rin looked around. Mystia and Sekibanki were tending the firepit and the skewers of seafood that were cooking over it, while Cirno, Daiyousei, Rengeteki, and Nien were by the shore fishing. "So, where's everyone else?"

"They went for a walk."

Crap.

…

The pair of bat-winged Demons walked a little way from the rest of the group. As they did, Elis's mind raced. How was she supposed to approach this? What was she supposed to say? No matter how one sliced it, she and the others frankly weren't supposed to be there. And if Koakuma pushed too hard, it could end up ruining things for everyone else.

"All right, Elis," Koakuma said at last. "What's going on? Because I know that none of you are supposed to be up here."

Elis slowly breathed out. "No, you're right," she admitted. "But please, please, please, please don't turn us in! I swear we're not up to anything and we won't hurt anyone! Just, like, pretend you never ran into us!"

Koakuma sighed. "Look. Elis. Normally I'd have no problem doing that. No skin of my wings, you know? But now…"

Elis swallowed. "Now? What's wrong with now?"

"All right, well, you know the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, right?"

Elis felt her normally very hot demonic blood chill in her veins.

"Yes," she said in a small voice.

"All right. So, she's…well, she's not really my friend, but she's a friend of my boss, Remilia Scarlet. You know who that is, right?"

It was all very well that Elis already looked quite nervous and just a little panicky, because otherwise Koakuma would have certainly noticed how suddenly she had gone stiff. "You. Work for. Remilia. Scarlet?"

Koakuma made a face. "Well, technically I work for Meiling. Actually I serve Meiling, except she doesn't really make me do anything, but I'm bound to Meiling, and Meiling works for Remilia Scarlet, which makes me kind of part of the staff."

"Oh."

"And, well, lady Remilia has been going through a real terrible time. Her sister got kidnapped-"

Not by us! Elis thought but fortunately had the wherewithal to not say.

"-and still hasn't been found, and her-"

Koakuma paused. Elis waited for her to continue, and when it looked like she wasn't, she cleared her throat and said, "Um, her what?"

Taking a deep breath, Koakuma said, "Someone…very close to her died. So she's been in a real bad place lately."

Elis blinked. From the sound of things this person also had probably been close to Koakuma as well. She wanted to ask more, but decided it was in her best interests to simply stay silent.

"And the Hakurei Shrine Maiden is a close friend of hers, and has been visiting quite often in hopes of lifting her spirits. However, this has almost meant that she's been pretty busy as of late, so what I want to make clear is that if you and your friends are planning on making any sort of trouble for Reimu Hakurei, then I'm sorry, but we are going to have a problem."

"No!" Elis blurted out. "Definitely not! Koakuma, I swear to you by the seventh, eighth, and ninth circle, by the stone and the sword, and by the eternal dripping of Salazar's horn, none of us are planning on making any trouble whatsoever, not for the shrine maiden or…or anything else! No schemes, no plots, nothing! Trouble is the last thing we want!"

Her cousin eyed her in suspicion. "Then why are you up here?"

Think, Elis, think! "Because it's summer!" Elis said. "We don't get any sunlight in Makai; you know that!"

"True," Koakuma sighed. "All right, I'll keep your secret. But I'm serious. Have your fun, and then go home, okay? Now's not a good time to stir up trouble."

Elis took a deep breath. She needed to choose her words carefully. As a Demon, lying was a risky game, and she could end up unintentionally binding herself to an oath. True, it wasn't as strong when it was to another Demon instead of a mortal, but it would still be troublesome. "Understood," she said. That ought to be safe. "Don't worry about me."

Koakuma frowned at her for a bit longer, and then she relaxed. "All right. Sorry, it's just been…a bad year all around."

"I've heard."

"I bet you have." Then Koakuma smiled and gave her a quick hug. "Still, it is great to see you. Give my love to Aunt Cecilia, Aunt Morrigan, Lilly, Sally, Marie, and Kyoko next time you see them, okay?"

"The next time I see them," Elis promised. Whenever that is. "And hey, congrats on who you got for a master! Because damn, girl! She must have stamina for days!"

Koakuma burst out laughing. "Oh, Meiling? Um, believe it or not, it's actually not like that between us."

Elis boggled. "What? Really? How?"

"Well, she just doesn't see me that way," Koakuma said with a shrug.

"Wait, wait, hold on! You are literally a Demon of illicit sexual desire! And she looks like the sort that needs to burn off energy constantly! And you're telling me that you never…?"

"Well, what can I say?" Koakuma said with another shrug. "It's just not like that."

Elis blinked. "I thought all non-animal youkai were bisexual."

"They are, and…I think she is? But again, even before I was bound to her, she just saw me as a work friend, and now I'm more like her…sidekick, I guess. So no. To put it bluntly, we have not banged."

"Wow," Elis said. "You poor thing! You must be stopped up something awful!"

Koakuma laughed. "Not really! Remember, our drive is molded to fit our master's! So mostly I just feel like working out, actually."

"Ah. Well, you're gonna get ripped then."

"Basically! My last master was kind of similar. I mean, not with the working out thing; I don't think she even knew what exercise was. But she wasn't interested in sex, at least not with me, so I…"

Her voice trailed off, and a sad, sort of haunted look passed over her eyes. She blinked away tears and shook it off. "But anyway, I haven't really done the sex Demon thing for a while. And honestly, I kind of like it."

"Weird," Elis said. "Well, good for you though! Whatever makes you happy." She looked over to the rest of the group. "Well, we'd better head back before we start making them worry."

As they headed back, they could heard Meiling's conversation with the rest of the Demons. "No, I don't even lift weights!" she was saying. "You don't need to! This is all from yoga, bodyweight exercises, and flexibility conditioning!"

"Get out!" Yuki said. "You don't lift? Like, at all?"

"Lifting's just picking up heavy things over and over again. It helps, sure, but with my job, it's less about how strong I am and more about how effectively I can use it, like so." Meiling got down into the push-up position. But when she did push up, she lifted her entire body into the air, supporting all her weight on her palms. She then bent her lower body up and over, curling her legs around into a crescent.

Then, as the Demons oohed in appreciation, she lifted one hand off the ground and reached up to grab her own toes.

"See?" she said as she pumped her curving body up and down on her remaining arm. "It's all about the proper application of chi and the control of the body and spirit."

Sara raised an eyebrow. "You sure you're not just flying a little to give yourself a boost?"

Meiling laughed. "Nope!" Keeping her one hand planted on the ground, she then swung her legs around, bent her body back up, and crossed her legs around her arm so that she was sitting cross-legged in the air. "Where would be the fun in that?"

"She's telling the truth," Koakuma said as they rejoined the group. "She may not look it, but Meiling's one of Gensokyo's top experts in the physical arts."

"Oh, she looks it," Luize said, who wasn't even hiding how her eyes hungrily roved up and down every bit of Meiling's form. "Boy, does she look it!"

Meiling beamed. "Thanks! I work really hard on it."

Elis sat down with the rest of her friends. Sara, Yuki, and Mai all looked at her expectantly.

"We're cool," she said in a low tone. "She's not going to give us up."

"Provided that you won't give me a reason to," Koakuma said, the steel evident in her voice.

"Oh, don't worry, scary sexy lady!" Sara said. "No nefarious machinations here! Believe me, we've all had enough trouble to last us multiple lifetimes, thank you very much!"

…

In that feverish place between asleep and awake, Wriggle tossed and turned on her sleeping mat.

Standing tall over her, her silhouette framed by sunshine, Yuuka reached down with one hand to stroke the trembling firefly's cheek.

Sweat broke out across Wriggle's brow. Her face contorted into a pained grimace.

Gathering Wriggle into her arms, Yuuka pokes her in the nose. "Wriggle, my sweet, my honeybee, you left me."

Wriggle turned over and curled into a ball.

Yuuka's hand slips from Wriggle's face to her chest, caressing where she liked. "You left me to die, Wriggle. Why did you do that?"

Violent shivers erupted all over Wriggle's body. Now her body was completely soaked with sweat.

"I loved you, and you brought destruction to me and my house," Yuuka says as she slides her hand further down. It pauses, hovering right over Wriggle's crotch.

Tears filled Wriggle's eyes.

Then the sky above turns blood red, and Yuuka's skin burns away, crisping off to float on the wind, leaving her a burned and skeletal horror. Her eyes still bored into Wriggle's. "You will regret that, my lunar moth. You will regret bringing the fire."

Then her hand squeezes tight.

"AH!" Wriggle kicked and trashed, trying to get the hand off, trying to get away!

"Wriggle! Calm down! It's just me."

Wriggle continued to struggle, only to realize that the hand wasn't grabbing her sex, it was holding onto her shoulder. And it wasn't Yuuka's hand at all.

"Wriggle?" Kogasa's mismatched eye peer at her in concern. "Are you-"

"Don't touch me!" Wriggle wrenched her shoulder away and retreated away from Kogasa. She huddled in the corner, facing the wall with her legs drawn up and face buried in her arms as the tears flowed.

A long silence passed between them, and then Kogasa said softly, "You were dreaming about Yuuka, weren't you?"

Wriggle tensed up.

"Wriggle, it's okay! I dream about her too, we all do. But she's dead now. Rin killed her, right? So we don't have to-"

"Stop it," Wriggle said harshly. "You don't understand."

"What?" Kogasa said in confusion. "But I do! What she did…" She swallowed. "W-What she did to you, she did to all of us! We're all in this together, remember?"

"No, you don't!" Wriggle shouted. She scooted around so that she might glare at the umbrella youkai properly. "You can't know! It's different for me, and-"

There was another long pause, and then Kogasa came over to sit down next to her. "What do you mean?" she said. "What did she do to you?"

Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it! Why couldn't she just go away? Why was Kogasa always following her? Why couldn't she just let it lie?

Wriggle opened her mouth to tell her to go mind her own business, but then she surprised herself by say, "Don't you get it? I'm the reason she did all that to you! She did it to me first, but because I left, she went and got all of you!"

…

"There you guys are!" Rin said as the Demon squad returned. "We were gonna start without you."

"Oh, you were worried?" Sara said as they joined the rest for lunch. "Come on, chief. Have some faith!"

"Yeah, thanks, but no thanks," Rin said as she helped pass out the skewers. "Faith doesn't agree with me. Nor you, I thought!"

"Wrong kind of Demon," Sara said with a roll of her eyes. "Hi, Rumia! Glad to see you awake for once!"

Rumia, who had already consumed one shrimp skewer and was working her way through another of salmon, calmly returning her greeting with a one-finger salute, making Sara snort.

"So!" Doremy said after they had all eaten a bit. "We've managed to get through the day without disaster. Anyone do or see anything interesting?"

"We ran into Elis's cousin and her master!" Luize chimed. "And they were hot!"

"Luize!" Elis hissed.

Rin's head snapped up. "Wait, you told other people about us?"

"No, of course not!" Elis said, shooting Luize a dirty look. "I told her we snuck out of Makai for a day trip, and she bought it! Relax, she's not going to turn us in."

"You have a master?" Cirno said. "Why?"

"Not my master, my cousin's master!"

"Oh. Okay, so why does she have a master?"

Elis sighed. "It's a Demon thing. We get summoned, we bind ourselves our summoner, and they become our master."

"That sucks. Why not just say no if you get summoned?"

Sara snorted. "And with that, the freezer fairy's just summoned up over four hundred years of demonic academic debate."

"Though if her cousin's master decided to summon me, I sure as Heaven wouldn't say no!" Yuki said as she fanned herself. "Because vavavoomdeyay!"

Mai looked annoyed.

"Oh, don't you start! You would totally tap that muscular ass if given the chance!"

Mai's face softened. "True," she murmured.

Rin scowled. "Okay, I know we're working to loosen things up around here, but can we at least try not to attract the attention of people that might recognize us?"

"You can shapeshift," Rengeteki said. "And you can turn anyone and anything nearby invisible. Besides, other than you and your gang, who here is going to get recognized by anyone."

"Well, seeing how two hours in Elis has already run into her long-lost cousin, I'd say the odds are pretty good! Also, trouble kind of follows me everywhere for some reasons. It's kind of my thing, you know?"

…

Thus far, Reimu's daily patrol was turning out to be much like all of her patrols lately: boringly uneventful. And sure, she had enjoyed the nice change of pace at first, especially in light of everything that had happened, she was starting to feel just a little insulted. Even with no major incidents underway, once could count on somebody trying to stir shit up. But barely anybody was willing to take a shot at her those days!

Well, for their sake, it had better be because they had heard that she was under a lot of stress and were too scared to risk upsetting her and not because they felt bad for her. Her ego would never be able to recover.

As Reimu sailed up high over a grassy field near the Saltlick Sea, she noticed a small crowd of people gathered on the shores. Ah yes, the summertime crowd. They had been a little skittish about coming out earlier in the season due to how many "new" monsters were reportedly running around, but it seemed that they were finally emerging.

From the look of things, nothing down there required her attention, and she probably wouldn't receive an especially warm welcome if she were to show up. Still, she might as well pop in to check up on things. It wasn't as if she had anything better to do.

With a shrug, Reimu adjusted her flight path and headed down to the shore.

…

"No, Cirno!" Rengeteki said crossly. "You can't just freeze the fish and pick them out when they float to the surface!"

"Why not?" Cirno demanded. "It's way easier than just sitting around waiting."

"Because it ruins the whole point of fishing! We do things your way, and we might as well just go buy some fish!"

Cirno thrust an accusatory finger at the sea. "Well, what about her? Isn't that cheating?"

Nien stood on the shore, fiddling with the device she had brought along. It was a long apparatus that support six fishing poles that had their lines in the water. Their reels were hooked up to some kind of control board that let her man all six at once.

"No, it's just cheap," Rengeteki said. "Because she's still fishing."

"Well, fishing is boring! You just sit there! What's the point?"

"The point is to kick back and relax while still being technically productive! It's an excuse to be lazy!"

"Well, if I wanna be lazy, I'll just be lazy! I don't need an excuse!"

"Der freezey-fairy gots pointers," Nien remarked.

"See?" Cirno said triumphantly. "I'll tell you what: I'll go down all the way over there and fish my way! And I bet you a gazillion yen that I'll catch twice as much fish than you do! Deal? Deal!"

And with that she stomped off. After a moment's hesitation Daiyousei ran after her.

Nien and Rengeteki exchanged glances and sighed.

"Man," Rengeteki said. "Someone needs to switch that fairy to decaf."

…

There was some kind of commotion happening when Reimu landed, some sort of argument. But when she looked, it seemed to already have been resolved, and there was just a dark-haired Kappa with glasses fishing with a blonde fairy. Hardly worth looking into.

Shrugging, Reimu made her way across the beach.

As predicted, Reimu didn't get a lot in the way of friendly looks. Most of those that saw her immediately adverted their gaze. One or two glowered sullenly at her, as if they expected that she was just there to ruin their day. And a few started whispering among themselves.

Reimu ignored them. She was used to frosty receptions wherever she went, though it irked her whenever she got grief from other Humans for having befriended so many youkai. If they didn't want her doing that, then maybe they ought not rejected her outright every time she showed up.

Regardless, it didn't seem like anything required her attention, but no harm in making sure. Reimu walked over to the raised wooden chair that sat overlooking the sea.

"Ika. Hey," she said to the squid girl in the chair. "Everything cool?"

Ika Musume nearly fell out of her seat in surprise. "Ah! Reimu! I didn't do anything, I swear on my suckers!"

"I know. Relax. I was just passing by and thought I'd pop in and make sure there's no evil afoot."

"Uh, no! No evil here! Everything's nice and peaceful."

"Cool," Reimu sighed. "Well, no reason to stick around then. Keep up the good work."

She was about to leap back into the sky to continue on her way when she paused. Something was off. There was something going on nearby. She didn't know what it was or which one of her periphery senses had detected it, but something…familiar was close.

…

"Come on, what about mochi?" Yuki said as she and Mai walked hand-in-hand down the shore, heading for the food stalls. "Mochi's good, right?"

"Ice cream," Mai said.

"You always want ice cream! Try a little variety!"

"Ice cream."

The pair of Demon witches wound their way past some lady in a red-and-white dress. "Baked pheasant! Watermelon! Crystallized grapes!"

"Ice. Cream."

…

Stepping aside for a pair of young girls arguing about snacks, Reimu scanned the crowd of beachgoers again, searching for anything out of place.

In the shallows, several Human teenagers were getting on each other's shoulders and trying to knock one another over. Fun, energetic, and irrelevant. No.

A few fairies looked like they were about to start some sort of shenanigans, but unless they were planning on unleashing some kind of imprisoned beast from the depths, fairy mischief wasn't worth her time. No.

Over in the sand, a group of youkai were getting to work on what was honestly a fairly impressive sand castle, but unless it somehow magically transmogrified into an actual fortress from which they were planning on launching their invasion of the beach, that also was barely worth a glance. No.

…

"See, the trick is to use these big rocks to make your foundation, and then build the walls around them," Sara said as she, Doremy, and Luize built up their walls and raised their towers while Sekibanki snoozed nearby.

"Oooh," Luize said. "So it's more of a stone castle than a sand castle."

"Well, sand is basically all just tiny rocks," Doremy said. "So either way…"

"Really?"

Then Sara felt someone tap her on the shoulder. Turning around, she saw a very headless Sekibanki standing behind her, arms crossed and her irritation evident even without a face.

"What?" Then Sara glanced down at the wall she was working on and saw that it was moving. "Oh!"

She hastily cleared away the sand. Moments later a very sandy head rolled clear and started coughing. It shook as much sand off as it could and glared up at her.

"You buried me!"

Sara cringed. "I didn't mean to! I wasn't paying attention and thought it was a rock!"

She reached down to help Sekibanki clean herself up, but Sekibanki's body pushed her aside, grabbed her head, plopped it on her shoulders, and continued to glare at her.

"You buried me!"

"I'm sorry, it was an accident!"

…

Reimu glanced at an angry redhead with a scarf and a really sandy face as she stomped past and returned her attention to the beach.

Come on, something was grabbing at her attention! What was it, what was it…

And then she saw it.

…

"You know, I'm starting to remember why I don't like the Sun," Rumia groused.

She and Rin were walking along the edge of the grassy fields and the beach, close enough to keep an eye on things but not so close that anyone would bother them.

"What's wrong with the Sun?"

"What's not wrong with the Sun?" Rumia mopped her leaking brow. "It's hot, it's blinding, it keeps beating down on you no matter what, it drains all your energy. Why do people like this?"

"Then why'd you come?"

Rumia sighed. "You know, I'm starting to wonder. Look, I'm going to turn out the lights for a while."

Rin shrugged. "Go ahead."

A sphere of black enveloped Rumia, and from inside Rin heard her sigh with relief. "Oh, that's better."

"I thought you were getting sick of the dark," Rin said.

"I'm getting sick of nothing but dark," the black sphere said. "Dark I can turn on and off is just fine. Thank the gods."

"Can you even see in that thing?"

There was a pause, and then Rumia admitted, "Not really."

Rin rolled her eyes. She was about to comment on the perceived usefulness of Rumia's powers, but then she saw someone, and everything else flew out of her mind.

No. No way.

It couldn't be. Why would she be here?

…

It wasn't often that Reimu came across a member of the Scarlet Devil Mansion staff away from the mansion, and when she did, it was usually Sakuya out on one mission or another. Mainstays like Hong Meiling or Koakuma were almost never encountered in the wild.

And yet, there they both were, both wearing swimsuits and sunglasses and reclining on a pair of lawnchairs, soaking up the Sun. Koakuma even had a gaudily large fruity drink.

They certainly made for a striking pair, and judging by the many looks they were getting from those nearby, it seemed that everyone agreed. As Reimu approached them, she heard a few murmurs of disappointment, as if they expected her to make the eye candy go away. She couldn't help but smirk at that.

"Good afternoon, ladies," she said to the two. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

Seeing her, Koakuma immediately tensed up, as if she expected Reimu to order them gone on the spot. That, or conscript their help in some arduous task that would be both painful and dangerous. Meiling, however, seemed genuinely happy to see her.

"Reimu!" she said, sitting up and waving. "Hi! Wanna join us?"

"I'll pass. I don't think your fans would appreciate that anyway. No, I was in the area, saw you, and figured I'd say hi. Don't usually see you two this far from the mansion."

"Eh, it's our day off," Meiling said. "And everything's been so tense over there that we needed to get away for a bit."

"Don't I know it," Reimu said glumly. "So, everything's good, right?"

"Just dandy! We even ran into Koa's cousin earlier! She was nice."

"Your…cousin?" Reimu turned her attention to the succubus in question. "Like, another Demon?"

"Succubi are born from mortals, remember?" Koakuma said. "I have Human relatives."

That much was true, but even so, Reimu felt like there was something she wasn't being told. She had a knack for knowing when she was being lied to, and she was pretty sure that Koakuma was hiding something from her.

"I see," she said. "Well, so long as it's nothing I have to look into."

"It isn't. Everything's fine."

Reimu frowned. She wondered if she ought to push further. On the one hand, she was fairly certain that Koakuma wasn't being honest with her, and when a Demon lied to your face, that was a sure sign that trouble was afoot.

On the other hand, it was Koakuma, and she was bound to Meiling! She definitely wouldn't be doing anything without her new master knowing, and Meiling certainly wouldn't be involved in the bad kind of mischief.

Which left her two possibilities: either Remilia was feeling better enough to be up to her old tricks, which honestly would be a relief, or there was something Demon-connected going on.

I bet it's those damn tourists again, Reimu thought to herself. Demons were always trying to sneak to the upside, and with Shinki currently in the condition that she was, this would be the optimal time to do it.

Still, insofar as incidents were concerned, a few Demons crossing the border wasn't something to get excited about. More of something she should look into sometime soon. "Well, that's good to hear," she said. "I guess I'll see you guys the next time I pop into the mansion."

"See you then!" Meiling said, blissfully ignorant of the tension that was lying thick between her mistress's close friend and her new assistant.

Reimu nodded and turned to walk away. When she had gone far enough, she spared a look over her shoulder. Koakuma was irritably whispering something to Meiling, who was openly cringing.

Yup. Meiling definitely wasn't supposed to have mentioned this "cousin." That meant that Remilia Scarlet's servants were lying to her, which meant-

A small bell went off in her head. Reimu paused. She was being signaled from home. Huh.

Reimu waved a hand. The Ying-Yang Orb appeared in the air in front of her. It started spinning around and around until the black melted into the white.

Genji's face appeared in the center of the blur. "Hey, kid," he said. "You in the middle of anything'?"

"Not yet," Reimu said. "But I'm about to be, aren't I?"

"Could be. Alice Margatroid's here at the shrine. She wants to see you."

Alice? Reimu rewound her memory, searching for anything bad that could have happened to her. "What's wrong? Did something happen to Shanghai?"

"No. It's about her mum."

Shanghai's mom? But that was Alice. Why would-

Wait.

Not Shanghai's mom.

Alice's mom.

"She found out," Reimu said.

"Yup. And she's mighty upset. And things look like they might've gotten worse. You might wanna get back her, post-haste."

Well, that answered the question of whether or not anything was going down in Makai. "I'm on my way," Reimu said. Genji's face disappeared, and her Ying-Yang Orb split into four smaller spheres, which all took up position around her, ready to shoot down anything that might slow her down.

Reimu leapt into the air and sped off.

…

"I'll be damned," Rumia whispered. "It is her."

Sure enough, among the food stalls was one serving up roasted sweet potatoes. And manning the stall was a woman with auburn hair, an autumn colored dress, and a floppy hat decorated with grapes.

"Minoriko Aki," Rin said. "Wow. Never thought I'd see her again."

"You think everything turned out all right with them? I mean, we did leave them with an entire Fallen Angel."

"Not an entire Fallen Angel! Just…whatever part you got stuck with. Divided into tiny chunks. That were stuck into dolls." Rin sighed. "Wow, that was a weird day."

"Even so, maybe things went bad. That thing was so evil that it scared Yuuka, remember? Maybe it ate them."

"I don't think someone who had their sister and close personal friend eaten would be selling sweet potatoes on the beach."

"You don't know that! Maybe she needs to pay for the funeral!"

Rin sighed. "All right. Tell you what: I'll swap out disguises and go ask her!"

"Uh, yeah, that's dumb," Rumia said flatly. "Aren't we supposed to be trying to not attract attention?"

"Just stay close to me. I'll keep you invisible."

"Yeah, no." Rumia disappeared within her bubble of darkness again, which then proceeded to waddle over behind a large stone. "Come get me when you're done, assuming you don't get your reckless ass stuffed in a cage."

Rin sighed. "Fine. This shouldn't take long. Hopefully."

Yeah. Hopefully, she thought bitterly as she headed for the sweet potato stand. Because relying on hope had turned out so well for her in the past!

…

"You were her first?" Kogasa said.

Sniffing, Wriggle nodded. "I…I wasn't like you, okay? I wasn't like any of you. Yuuka didn't just go out and kidnap me and make me her slave, not at first. I was…her friend. She took me in, right after I became a youkai, because I was weak and scared and had no place to go. She saved me from some other youkai that were chasing me, and said I could stay with her. And at first, it was great! She was so nice, and Elly was there, and-"

Kogasa frowned. "Elly?"

Wriggle nodded. "Th-The one with the scythe."

"Oh." Kogasa's voice got very small. "The one that grabbed me."

"Her," Wriggle said bitterly. "Yes. We were friends, the three of us. We would play together, have tea parties together, go swimming together, help Yuuka with the gardening, it was so wonderful."

Wriggle's throat was starting to close up. She slowly inhaled and exhaled several times until her breathing stopped shaking. "But then, Yuuka started to change. She started to make me…make me do things. Kiss her. All over. She started touching me whenever she wanted, and wherever she wanted. She made me start wearing a collar. She said it was what lovers do, and I didn't know much better, so who was I to argue? But I didn't like it. It didn't feel like love."

Kogasa said nothing.

"And then she started hitting me, whenever I made her mad, or if I didn't do it good enough, or if she felt like it. Or she'd start squeezing me, squeezing my bones together, like my…my wrist or my jaw or my neck." Wriggle pounded the ground with her fists. "She'd hurt me for any reason, and she liked it!"

"So you ran away?" Kogasa asked.

Wriggle shook her head. "No. Not then. I ran away when I started to like it too."

"Oh."

"I ran away. I didn't want to go back. But I did. I did, didn't I? That's why I did go back. But I didn't, and-" Wriggle made herself stop. She was talking too fast, breathing too hard. She But that's why she went and took all of you! It's because she didn't have me anymore, and I still ended up in a flower with the rest of you. I should have just stayed. This would never have happened if I stayed."

Kogasa pressed her lips together. She stared unspeaking at Wriggle while breathing heavily in and out through her nose. She then looked down at the cave floor.

And then she got up and ran from Wriggle's room without a word.

…

Rin dubiously approached the sweet potato stand. Minoriko seemed okay. At the very least, she didn't look like she had suffered any repercussions for having helped her and Rumia. But even so, Rin needed to know.

Waiting until there were no customers at the sweet potato stand, Rin sidled up to her, cleared her throat, and said, "Hello."

"Hello, there!" Minoriko said cheerfully. "What can I do you for, sweetie?"

Rin wrestled with how to approach things. Did she just engage Minoriko in conversation with innocent-sounding but poignant questions until she learned the truth? Did she dance around her real reason for approaching the harvest goddess? She admittedly was not really good at this at all.

"Um, I actually wanted to ask you something. You live…with your sister and Hina the curse goddess, right?"

Minoriko blinked. "Er, yes?"

"Well, I've met Hina before, but I haven't seen her for a while, and someone told me that Hina was…feeling a little out of sorts, so I thought I'd come by and ask-"

Minoriko made a sharp choking sound. "Oh. My. Faith. Mary?"

And this just further proved that even with the ability to disguise herself however she saw fit, Rin was a terrible lair and really ought to learn to let things lie. "Shhh!" she said as she anxiously looked around. One or two people had glanced over at the harvest goddess's outburst, but fortunate no one seemed all that interested. "Quiet!"

"It is you! What's going on? Why do you look-"

Panicked, Rin slapped a hand over Minoriko's face. "It's a disguise!" she hissed. "And please keep your voice down!"

Minoriko's eyes were still wide, but she nodded.

"Okay. Um, let's…move to someplace private."

At this, Minoriko's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Rin said wearily. "I just want to see how Hina's doing, okay? And I'll answer whatever questions I can. Just please…stop freaking out."

"Okay," Minoriko said as she pushed Rin's hand down from her mouth. "If you say so."

The harvest goddess silently put her potatoes away beneath her stall, placed her earnings so far into a lockbox, and covered her stand with a tarp. Then the two headed away from the beach toward the cover of a small copse of trees.

As they did, Rin watched Minoriko out of the corner of her eye. She was clearly on edge, eyes on Rin while occasionally flitting around, no doubt taking into account possible avenues of escape. That couldn't be a good sign. Had Minoriko been keeping up with the news, as sensationalized as it was? Everything Rin had read about herself had painted her as a rampaging monster that threatened every living creature in Gensoyko. Had Minoriko figured out who she was? Was she afraid that Rin was going to eat her?

Rin hated this. She hated being hated. She hated being feared, especially by those who were at least willing to help her. And she really hated feeling like she deserved it. After all, she had been the one to bring her troubles into the lives of Hina and the Aki sisters. She hadn't wanted to rope innocents into her troubles, and it had technically been Yuuka that had done the roping, but the fact remained that they had been troubled because of her.

Once they were ball themselves, Rin said, "Okay. So, before we begin, I really need to know: is Hina okay? And are you guys okay?"

Minoriko's mouth flattened out into a straight line, but she said, "Hina is fine. She finished absorbing the last of your Fallen Angel curse a week-and-a-half ago."

Rin felt a small jolt of hope. "Really?"

"Yes," Minoriko said, the anger palpable in both her gaze and her voice. "It made her violently ill and kept her in constant pain for several days, but she got through it. Because she's tough like that. Shizuha's with her now. They're cleaning up that abomination that was needed to break the curse down, but I doubt that we'll ever get the smell out. Or the feel of death."

"Oh." Rin winced. "Um, l-look. I'm sorry about bringing you guys into this. I just didn't know what else to do but had to do something and…" Her voice trailed off. What could she really say.

A pregnant pause passed, and then Minoriko said, "The battle. The big battle at the Garden of the Sun. Were you there?"

"Yes," Rin admitted.

"Were you on Yuuka's side?"

"Oh, hell no! The thing with Yuuka went way bad, and she ended up locking up me and my friends for weeks! Hell, I was the one that killed Yuuka!"

Minoriko blinked. "You? You killed Yuuka?"

"I'm…" Rin sighed. "There's a lot more to me than you might think."

Minoriko didn't look as if she believed her. "Everyone's saying that Yukari Yakumo was the one who killed Yuuka."

That made Rin's eye twitch. "Everyone wasn't there. And Yukari's a liar."

"Is that right?" When Rin didn't have a ready response, Minoriko said, "Mary, we haven't told anyone about you or what you had us do. We've had to lie to a lot of people to cover for you, and my friend went through hell because of it. So I deserve to know the truth: are you the Shadow Youkai?"

Rin winced. "No. The Shadow Youkai is what Hina ate. It's just nobody knows that it's gone, so they're all freaking out about it."

"Okay. But that means you must be Rin Satsuki then, right?"

Damn it, she had figured it out. True, it had probably been real easy to put the pieces together once the reports started coming out, however…"biased" they might be, but Rin had been hoping that they hadn't been paying close attention.

Which really was a dumb thing to hope. After all, why wouldn't they?

"People say that you're a monster," Minoriko continued. "People say that you eat people and take their power. People say that you're a danger to everyone in Gensokyo."

"People say a lot of things," Rin said neutrally. "People do a lot of things. And I can't say that I'm totally innocent, but I can promise you this: I'm just trying to stay alive and keep my friends safe. I just had a lot of bad things happen to me and not a lot of good ways of getting out of it. And you can think whatever you want about me, but I'm never, ever going to hurt you, or your sister, or Hina, at least any more than I already have. I'm just trying my best."

Minoriko frowned. "So the Shadow Youkai is gone, and you're not trying to eat everyone like the papers say?"

"Yeah," Rin nodded. "And Rumia's just a sleepy youkai girl now. She's no danger."

Minoriko looked less than convinced. "What about Flandre Scarlet?"

Rin winced. "I'm…doing what I can to help her, but she's not a monster. She's just…also had a lot of bad things happen to her, you know? I'm trying to help her the best I can."

Minoriko made a face. "Flandre. Scarlet."

At this, Rin could only shrug. Flan's reputation was what it was. What could she say to change her mind?

"Hmmm." Minoriko's face softened just a little. "You know, there is a big reward out for anyone who has any sort of information about you."

Rin scowled. "If you want to call the GPF and tell them about me, you can go ahead and do that. Maybe you should. Maybe everyone needs to know that the Shadow Youkai isn't a problem anymore. But they won't catch me. I'm very good at disappearing."

"Then why don't you go to them? If you're so innocent, why not just turn yourself in?"

"Because Yukari Yakumo doesn't care. She knows everything wasn't my fault. She knows all about me, and she doesn't care. She just wants to get rid of me once and for all. And I'm sick of trusting people in charge."

A few more moments passed, and then Minoriko shook her head. "I'm not going to turn you in. But I do want you to stay away from me and my family. You've done enough to us just by showing up. We're fine, so just keep away. All right?"

Rin swallowed. Well, that had been…harsh, but she couldn't really fault her. "I understand. Thank you."

Minoriko nodded and slowly walked away, pausing every few steps to glance back over her shoulder. Rin remained where she was so as to not spook her by vanishing.

Before Minoriko was fully out of earshot, Rin called, "And for what it's worth, I am really, truly sorry. I didn't want for anyone to be hurt."

Minoriko paused. "Yeah, well, it happened anyway," she muttered, mostly to herself, but Rin still heard her. "Good luck, Mary."

She walked away, leaving Rin feeling both better and worst for having the conversation.

She returned to the rock where Rumia was hiding. The bubble of darkness was still there, though unsurprisingly Rumia was snoozing within it.

"Hey," she said, nudging Rumia with her foot. "It's done. Let's go."

"Hmmm?" The bubble vanished, and Rumia sleepily looked up at her. "Wha…?"

"Hina and Shizuha are fine," Rin said flatly. "Hina's done absorbing the curse, so we don't have to worry about that. But Minoriko's pissed about it, and wants us to never show our faces ever again."

"Well, you got that effect on people," Rumia yawned. "Still, better than having them all ripped limb from limb, yeah?"

Rin sighed. "Yeah," she agreed, though it said something about her life that that was a definite possibility.

…

"Kogasa?" Wriggle called as she walked through the hideout's stone corridors. "Are you okay?"

No answer. Part of her said that she ought to just let the bipedal umbrella have her space, but since it had been Wriggle's anguished confession that had set her off, the firefly felt compelled to at least check up on her.

Muttering to herself, she continued on, checking all possible hiding places. Kogasa wasn't in her room, she wasn't in the washroom, and she wasn't in the common area near the surface. Where was she then? Had she left the hideout entirely?

"Kogasa, come on! I'm sorry I…Where are you?"

Finally she came to the laundry cave, where all the clothes washing was done. Sure enough, there was Kogasa, sitting against a stone pillar, umbrella-self held tightly in her arms, tears running out of both her normal eyes and the big one on her umbrella.

Wriggle slowly breathed out. Then she walked over and sat down next to her. Kogasa let her.

"I'm sorry," Wriggle said after a bit.

Kogasa shook her head. "It's not your fault.

"Well, it kind of it."

"No. Sorry if I made you think that…"

She paused, and then said, "She got me right after New Year's. The girl with the scythe. There had been this huge party over on the Youkai Mountain, and I had a little too much to drink. So I saw this little blonde girl that looked like a Human just walking down this street by herself, and I figured I would give her a scare. The next thing I knew one half of me was standing outside by a pool, my eye and mouth painted over, while the other half was inside this giant flower, one eye stuck closed, my mouth sealed shut, and no idea where I was or how I had gotten there."

Wriggle winced.

"I never understood why Yuuka was the way she was. I never understood why she liked hurting us so much. I mean, sure, there's lots of monsters in Gensokyo, but she just took to…Why was she like that?"

"Rin says that Yuuka was some kind of space monster from the Outside," Wriggle said. "That she came to Gensokyo to get away from something worse than her."

"Worse than her. Yeah. Like that exists."

Wriggle swallowed. "Kogasa, I am really, truly, sincerely sorry. I-I should've known that she would…take others. I should've acted sooner, tried to find you guys earlier, I-"

Her throat closed up, and soon she was shedding shameful tears of her own.

The next thing she knew Kogasa had reached over to wrap her arms around her, and Wriggle was no position to refuse.

The two sat there, holding another as they both cried their pain out. "It's…not your fault," Kogasa murmured after a bit. "It's really not your fault. She was just a terrible, terrible person. And she can't hurt us anymore. Rin killed her, right? So…we don't have to be scared anymore."

Wriggle wondered how true that was. Certainly Yuuka kept coming back in her dreams.

"We'll do it together, right? It's like Rin said: we're in this together. So long as we look after each other, we'll be okay."

With a sigh they parted and leaned back against the pillar. "Sure," Wriggle said. "Um, thanks."

Kogasa wiped away her tears from her face and canopy and smiled. "Sure," she said.

Wriggle smiled back. At least some good had come from the Hell they had been through. At least she had made another friend.

And then they heard the sound of small feet treading across hard stone.

Both Wriggle and Kogasa paused. The footsteps were very soft, belonging to someone who did not weigh a lot. Was Flandre awake? Or had someone else gotten in?

Whoever it was, they were heading right for the laundry room. What was more, the closer they got, the more Wriggle could hear the distinctive sound of a tongue lapping some kind of sticky liquid.

Wriggle slowly straightened up. With Kogasa hovering just behind her, she walked over to the entrance and moved aside the curtain.

A pair of glowing scarlet eyes peered at her from the shadows of the tunnel.

"Oh, hi, Kurumi," Wriggle said. "Did we wake you?"

The young vampire was still dressed in her nightgown, and she was holding the jar of blood Rin had left her with both hands, from which she was lapping away like it was ice cream or something.

"No," she said. "It's almost evening. But, um, where is everyone?"

"The beach," Kogasa said. "Remember?"

Kurumi blinked. Then she brightened. "Oh, right! That was today!"

"Yeah," Wriggle said. "We just stayed behind to keep watch."

"Oh. So who else is here?"

"Us, you, and Flandre's still asleep."

"That's it? Then who's in her lair with her?"

Wriggle and Kogasa stared blankly at her. "What?" Wriggle said. "What are you-"

And then horrible realization dawned on her.

Kurumi was a vampire. Perhaps not an especially powerful one like Flandre was, but she was still built to be a predator, and that meant that her senses were quite a bit sharper than most other youkai's.

Which meant that if she said that someone was in Flandre's lair, then someone was in Flandre's lair.

Without another word Wriggle raced past Kurumi, causing her to squeak in surprise and almost drop her jar. Behind her she heard the clacking of Kogasa's shoes as she ran to follow.

As she went, Wriggle's mind raced. Who could it possibly be? No one from the beach trip had come back; she would have heard of it by now! No one could have come in by accident. Maybe Flandre was awake, and she had split herself again? That was a possibility, but not a good one, as Wriggle didn't relish having to deal with multiple Flandres at once

But as she neared the lair, Wriggle realized that she wouldn't have to. She knew who it was, and that pissed her off.

She bolted into the entrance just in time to find the culprit in question sneaking her way across the floor toward the sleeping vampire.

"Seija!" she shouted.

Seija Kijin paused. And she looked over her shoulder at Wriggle and Kogasa, a leering smile on her face.

Wriggle immediately knew what she was up to. It was what she was always up to. Wake up Flandre and try to set her off. Cause a bunch of damage. Ruin everything. And without Rin to calm Flandre down, there was nothing stopping her from killing them all and demolishing the entire hideout, which in turn would kill her!

What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to do? Nothing she said was going to stop Seija, and attacking her would wake Flandre up anyway.

Reverse psychology. She had to use reverse psychology. But what was she supposed to come up with that would stop her in time? Wriggle's brain had frozen stiff, and there was no way she was-

"There you are!" Kogasa said, so suddenly that it made Wriggle jump a little. "Where have you been?"

Seija paused her sneaking. She then straightened and turned to face the pair, her smirk growing. "Oh, you know," she said. "Around. Wherever-"

"Well, you've had everyone worried sick! Did you forget that today was the beach trip? Everyone was so upset that you didn't go with them! They were really looking forward to spending all day with you!"

Seija brightened. "They were?" she said eagerly. "How mad were they?"

"Very! And since you went off without saying anything, me and Wriggle have had to do your job of waking Flandre up and keeping her exercised! So I guess you ought to do it now." Kogasa motioned toward the still-slumbering vampire. "Go on. Wake her up. She needs her exercise."

Seija's face twisted up in confusion. "You…want me to wake her up?"

"Isn't that your job? So do your job! Go on, get to it already!"

At this, Seija snarled with disgust. "No! Do it yourself!"

She spat in the dirt and stomped off, shoving her way past Wriggle and Kogasa to disappear into the tunnels.

Wriggle and Kogasa stared after her. "Well. That had been surprisingly easy."

Kogasa shrugged. "Even when we were in the flowers she always tried to start trouble. You get to know how to deal with her. Doremy was always the best at it."

"Still. That was some quick thinking."

At this, Kogasa's face turned pink, and the purple canopy of her umbrella-self brightened a few degrees. Wow, Wriggle hadn't known that an umbrella even could blush.

"It was nothing," Kogasa said. "It's just-"

Then a shiver went down both their backs. The temperature in the room had gone up by several degrees, and for reasons that had nothing to do with Wriggle's compliment.

They turned. And Wriggle realized just how much trouble they were in.

Flandre was awake. Flandre was up. Flandre was, in fact, hovering in place about half a meter off the floor. Her arms hung flat at her sides, her toes were pointed down, and a fey crimson aura flickered over her skin. Her eyes were open wide, her bloodred eyes flickering like candles in a storm, and she was staring silently at the two with her mouth slightly open at one side, a line of spittle running down her cheek. Something like writhing tendrils of smoke gathered around her feet, and there was a sound like the beating of a million locust wings.

It was, to put it simply, quite terrifying. Flandre looked like the specter of Death itself, having crawled up from the infernal depths to drag them both below. And judging by how she was cowering behind Wriggle, Kogasa had no idea how to talk them out of this one.

Fortunately, Wriggle had spent quite a lot of time around Flandre, enough to recognize that the unstable vampire was currently in her Lunatic state. Which, true, was incredibly dangerous, as one wrong word could send her into a whirlwind of violence. But it was still the most impressionable of her personas, one that could be easily influence if one kept her head.

"Flandre," Wriggle said in as calm a voice as she could muster. "This is a very boring dream. You should go back to sleep and have a nicer dream."

Still maintaining her unblinking stare, Flandre tilted her head to the other side. Then she slowly raised her hands up to her sides. The crimson aura brightened as the buzzing sound suddenly grew louder and more intense, sounding almost like the screams of the damned.

And then the aura disappeared, the buzzing stopped, and Flandre closed her eyes and dropped back to the ground. She curled into a ball, stuck her thumb into her mouth, and slept.

Wriggle and Kogasa exchanged a look. Then they both hovered a few centimeters off the ground so as to not wake her again with their footsteps and hastily exited Flandre's lair.

Once they were in the clear Kogasa slowly breathed out. "Oh. My. Gods. That was the scariest thing I've seen since we got out."

Wriggle shrugged. "It's not that bad."

"Really? She looked like she was going to suck out our souls!"

"Flandre's not that bad," Wriggle said, even though she was aware how weird her words sounded. "She's kind like a much less dickish Seija. Super dangerous to most people, but surprisingly easy to handle once you know what makes her tick."

Kogasa shot her a look.

"What?"

Chuckling, Kogasa shook her head. "I can't believe it. You just did…that and…" Then she smiled. "You know, you can be pretty cool sometimes."

Wriggle froze. She blinked. And she blushed.

"Uh, thanks?" she said, not knowing how else to react.

Kogasa looked her up and down. Then she reached over and took Wriggle's hand. And Wriggle let her.

"Come on," she said. "The others should be back soon. Hopefully their day wasn't as exciting as ours."

…

"You know, this is turning out pretty all right," Rin remarked.

"Yeah," Rumia said. "Gotta say, I'm actually kind of surprised." She yawned. "You know, given how most things turn out for us."

The two were sitting in the shade of an oak tree, watching their friends and companions relax, play, and generally enjoy themselves in and around the lake. Given how snappy everyone had been getting in the cave, it was a nice change of pace.

"I know, right?" Rin said. "And I guess Doremy was right after all. We needed this. I mean, look at them! They're all getting along and having fun, you know? And no one's gotten into a single fight!"

"Yeah, even Cirno's getting along with everyone. So I guess it worked."

Rin glanced at Rumia, who was at least sitting upright, albeit kind of slumped over. "What about you? I mean, you doing…okay?"

Rumia rubbed her eyes. "I guess? I mean, I'm not as drowsy as I usually am, but, you know…" She yawned again.

"Oh."

The two watched the others for a bit; or rather, Rin watched them, while Rumia mostly just fought to keep her eyes open.

Then Rumia said, "You know, I've been thinking…"

"Oh?"

"You know. About what you said earlier. About, um, taking a look at my mind and trying to figure out what's wrong?"

Rin frowned. "Uh, yeah?"

"Maybe we should…" Rumia made a face, like she had smelled something rotten. "I don't know, but maybe we should give it a shot after all."

"I thought you were dead set against that," Rin said.

"I was! Because…" Rumia sighed. "Look, I'm not saying the time spent in your head was the worse thing that happened to me…but it kind of was. Not because I was stuck with you either!" she swiftly added when she saw the hurt look on Rin's face. "It's just, you know, stuck in the dark like that, not being able to feel anything or do anything or even sleep. I mean, you can still control your body and do things! But for me, it's…well, it's really, really-"

"Rumia, it's fine. I get it," Rin sighed. "I get it. I was stuck in the dark by myself for a long time too, remember?"

"Oh yeah. You were. So, uh, no offense, but it's not something I really want to ever go back to." Rumia scratched her arm and winced. "Plus, you know, getting dissolved hurts like you wouldn't believe."

"I believe it."

"Yeah. Um, but even so, I don't know how long I can go like this, with barely being able to keep my eyes open and these weird, dark, freaky dreams where I'm all by myself on a red island in the middle of a black ocean, and there's just all the sound of wings flapping from a sky that's black overhead but red on the horizon, all the horizons, and a voice I can never really hear loud enough to make out starts talking to me and laughing at me and the water just starts churning and churning and churning-"

"Rumia!" Rin said sharply.

Rumia started. "Huh?"

"You zoned out and started mumbling about your nightmares just now. It got weird."

"Oh. Uh, right." Then Rumia scowled. "See? This is the most awake I've been in days, and I'm still going blank at times!"

Rin drew her legs up. "So you want me to take a look inside your head and see what's wrong?"

"Oh, hell no! I don't want you to do anything like that!" Then Rumia sighed. "But you might have to. I can't keep going on like this."

"I understand," Rin said. She laid a hand on Rumia's shoulder. "We'll figure this out, I promise. And this time I can come with you! So you won't be lost in your dream by yourself this time."

Rumia's smile was tired but genuine. "Thanks, Rin. This had better work."

"It will. And we'll find a way to make the absorption part not hurt so much, so-"

Right about then people began screaming.

Rin exploded onto her feet, disguise dropped and her "natural" hodgepodge body reassumed, talons spread and ready for battle, all of her senses searching for the threat.

Strange though, no one was charging toward her. Rather, they all seemed to be running away. Fleeing, perhaps? Or rushing to gather reinforcements, or to get out of the way so that-

Then Rumia cleared her throat. "Uh, Rin? I don't think it has to do with you."

"Huh?"

Rumia pointed. "I think it's something…completely about other people. That aren't us."

Rin looked. Sure enough, no one was looking at her at all. Instead, most of the beachgoers were rushing to a specific spot on the shore. There, she could see the squid lifeguard frantically dragging something out of the water while calling for help.

"I think someone got hurt," Rumia said.

"Oh," Rin said, now completely beside herself. She lowered her arms. "Really?"

"Yeah. So, uh, could you maybe put the scary away? Please?"

Rin looked down at herself and concurred that yes, this wasn't the time to draw attention to herself. She swiftly resumed her disguise.

"All right, let's see what that's about," she said.

"You sure? I mean, if it's none of our business-"

But Rin was already heading off.

A small crowd of Humans, stranger youkai, and even a few of Rin's girls were gathered around the lifeguard, who was kneeling over a prone body. It was of a young Human boy wearing a pair of shorts. He seemed unconscious.

"What happened?" Rin heard someone say.

"It was an accident!" cried another boy. "We were wrestling and I dunked his head, and I think he breathed the water!"

"What?" the squid girl said. "You did what? He drowned?"

"Well, fix him!" said someone else.

"I…" The squid girl stared down at the boy. "I don't know what to do!"

"How can you not know what to do? You're a lifeguard!"

"I'm just a volunteer!" the squid girl wailed. She seemed to be on the edge of panic. "Does anyone else know! Come on, someone help me! I don't know what to squidding do!"

Rin swallowed. The kid was going to be dead in a few minutes unless someone did something, but judging by the faces of everyone around, no one had a clue on how to help drowning victims. She was among them. Save for quickly absorbing the kid and then letting him go, she couldn't think of anything she could do.

But just standing aside made her feel awful. That was someone's son there, someone's friend, maybe someone's brother! He was just a kid, out for a day of fun, and now a stupid accident was going to take his life away, and no one knew what to-

Suddenly a deeply nested memory stirred within Rin, and she let out a small gasp.

She did know what to do!

"Wait!" she shouted as she rushed into the middle of the circle. "I know what to do! So just calm down and do what I say-"

"Here, you do it!" the squid girl begged as she grabbed Rin by the hand.

Rin hesitated. Could she? Probably not. She didn't have lungs, and what air she exhaled through talking wasn't going to be enough.

"I can't," she said. "I'm a special kind of youkai, so I can't…breathe into Humans. It'll, uh, freeze his brain!"

A few nearby Humans quickly took a few steps away from her.

"But you can do it!" she told the squid girl. "Just calm down and do exactly what I say."

"Uh…okay."

"Okay. I'll pump his chest. You tilt his head back and when I say so, breathe into his mouth."

Rin placed her palms in the center of the boy's chest and started pressing down. She was careful to not exert too much strength, lest she accidentally break something.

After she had compressed his chest thirty times, she said, "Okay, now! Breathe into his mouth twice!"

Though she was shaking with fear, the squid girl did as she was bid.

That did nothing though, so Rin started pumping again. After another thirty presses, she said, "Again!"

The squid girl again breathed down his throat, filling his chest. Rin got back to pumping.

Suddenly the boy's chest heaved, and he vomited up a spout of water.

A murmur of joy swept through the crowd as he rolled over and coughed hard while his friends patted him on the back. The squid girl just about collapsed with relief.

Rin sighed. Wow, it had actually worked.

"Thank you," the squid girl said. She scooted over to Rin on her knees, grabbed her by the wrists, and bowed her head over and over. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"It's fine, you did all the work," Rin said, hastily removing her hand.

"Well, you two are a pair of heroes," said a nearby Human man. "How'd you learn all that stuff."

Rin shrugged. "I've had some training as a nurse, a long time ago. Never finished it, but some stuff stuck."

"Good thing too! Well done!"

Rin smiled shyly. She wasn't used to being complimented by strangers, but she sure couldn't say that she didn't like it.

Then Rin looked up to see Rumia standing nearby, watching her. When she saw that Rin had noticed her, Rumia smiled and gave her a thumb's up.

And that was the best praise Rin could possibly receive.

Later, when everything had been packed up and she was carrying everyone home, she reflected that, a few close calls aside, this had actually been a good idea after all. And it had been a pretty good day.

…

"And that," Hina said as she triumphantly tied the neck of the final trash bag, "takes care of that!"

"I hope so," Shizuha said dubiously. "I really do."

Not about to let her roommate bring her down, Hina happily looked around her room, now cleared and scrubbed clean. Several trash bags of discarded doll parts lay in a heap, and a bucket of filthy soap water was at her feet.

It had been the most harrowing experience of her life. The curse she had drawn from that girl who had called herself Mary had been larger and more powerful than anything she had ever encountered. Even breaking it up into multiple pieces and sealing each one away into one of her dolls to be consumed and digested one at a time had taken almost everything she had, especially at the beginning. Every fragment of the curse had felt like frozen poison going down, and breaking it down and digesting it left her feeling weak and nauseous every time.

Fortunately, Hina had proven to be made of sterner stuff, stronger than even she had known. In time, her body and soul had adapted, and like the body's immune system will adapt to viruses through prolonged exposure, she had become more and more adept at taking the curse down. Soon it didn't hurt so much going down. Soon the weakness and nausea began to subside. Soon she was able to take down each piece without trouble.

Once that had happened, Hina was able to escalate the procedure. One fragment a day became two, and two eventually became three.

The more she had done it, the easier it became, and the stronger she was for it. It still had been tough going, but now it was done. All fragments had been fully absorbed and dealt with, all the dolls destroyed. The curse was dead. Hina had won.

"I'm just glad to put this behind us," Shizuha said as she scrubbed away at the last of the runes that had covered the walls and floor. "We should have never gotten involved."

Hina shot her a look. "And what would have happened if we said no? I don't think Yuuka Kazami would have taken that lightly."

Shizuha shrugged. "Well, considering how she ended up getting killed not long after…"

"Weeks after! Plenty of time to do something terrible to us." Hina shook her head. "Besides, I don't think I could live with myself if I let a little girl go out with a curse like that without helping."

"Little girl." Shizuha frowned. "If that what she was."

"I'm sure she was." Hina looked up at the ceiling. "I hope she got out of there before everything went down."

"Mmmm-hmmm."

"You think maybe she went with those renegades everyone's so upset about? I heard that they broke out a whole bunch of people Yuuka was keeping prisoner and ran off with them. Maybe Mary was one of them."

"Or maybe Mary was on Yuuka's side," Shizuha said.

"I hope not. I hope she's okay."

Shizuha grunted in a manner that was neither an argument nor an agreement. "Well, regardless, it's over, and that's the important thing." She dropped her rag into the bucket and stood up. "I'm going to go put dinner on. Minoriko's probably not coming back until late, so I want to have a plate ready for her when she gets back."

"Sure thing," Hina said. "I'll take care of the rest of this. Shouldn't take much-"

She turned, and the room was filled with dolls, all lined up against the wall, on shelves, and in rows on the floor. They sat facing her, their ceramic faces cracked and bleeding black paint, their eyes nothing more than scorch marks, their hair shriveled and crumbling.

But despite their ruined features, they all seemed to be smiling at her, their painted grins spreading in sadistic glee.

You think you are safe? they were saying in their silent voices. You think it is over? You know nothing.

And then they all began to laugh.

"Hina?"

Hina started. The dolls were gone. The room was empty aside from the two of them, the bucket, and the tied-off trash bags.

"Sorry," Hina said. "Just zoned out there for a moment.

Shizuha frowned in concern. "You sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Hina said, waving off her concern. "It'll still take a day or two before the aftereffects fade. But the worst is over and done."

"Um, okay," Shizuha said. "Still, tell me if you feel something is wrong."

She started to leave, but then Hina suddenly grabbed her from behind and hugged her tight.

"Thank you for putting up with this," Hina said. "I know you never wanted anything to do with this, so thank you for sticking with me."

"Sure, sure," Shizuha sighed. "No problem, I guess."

She disentangled herself from Hina and headed for the door. "Also, try to get a hot bath in or something," she said. "You're freezing!"

"I am?"

Shizuha gave her an odd look before leaving the room.

Hina touched her arm. Strange, she didn't feel all that cold. Maybe it was another aftereffect.

She looked back at the room. Well, what was done was done. It had been rough going, but she had pulled through.

Fucking finally!

Yes. Finally. Finally it was all done.

Oh, you think so?

Wait, what?

Before Hina could really question the dark voice that had started speaking from the back of her mind, her balance was struck out from under her, and she fell to one knee.

And the room suddenly was rolling, pitching like the sea in a storm, the floor rising and falling. Hina fell. She tried to rise, but the sickness was back, the cold and nausea rising up within her, stronger than ever. It wracked her body with shivers and twisted up her stomach, and she found she had no strength to do anything save lay still and tremble violently.

You thought you had gotten rid of me?

Hina tried to crawl toward the door, but the room continue to deform. The walls stretched further and further, taking the door away from her, until she was in an eternal passageway. The ceiling started to come down, lowering itself closer and closer, but never fully reaching her.

You thought it was over?

Hina rolled onto her back and stared up. The ceiling was boiling and bubbling, big blisters forming and popping. A crack sliced its way across the ceiling's surface and then split open, revealing a swirling maelstrom of distorted faces. She saw Humans and youkai, men, women, and children, all of them screaming in agony.

You thought you had won?

And then the floor opened beneath her, and Hina was falling, falling, and falling, tumbling in a deep abyss of complete darkness, and she could do nothing but tumble lifelessly. She didn't even have the strength to scream.

All you did was delay the inevitable. I was so close to taking the perfect host. Just another day or two and I would have had her! And now you have set me back.

Then Hina saw that she was falling towards…something. It was as black as the darkness itself, so she could only barely make out its silhouette, but it was huge and it was moving and it was right beneath her.

But you did collect all of my essence into one place, so I should be grateful for that at least. And now you are going to help me retake what was stolen from me.

Then a pair of bright crimson eyes opened in the dark beneath her, twin wounds in the world, both large than the moon and blazing like the sun. The silhouette shifted, and she saw the shape of a huge, sharp-fingered hand reached up toward her.

The claws closed in around her, and she knew no more.

Hina lay flat on the ground, shivering hard. In time the shivering stopped, and she was still.

Then she stood up. Or rather, she rose up, moving up off the ground to her feet.

Her movements were awkward, jerky, and stiff, like a marionette suspended on strings, one that had to individually focus on each individual limb in order to move it.

With her shoulders slumped, arms hanging slack, and head lolling around on her neck, she rotated around until she was facing the door. She slowly moved forward, meticulously placing each foot in front of the other, her right arm rising up, fingers spread and reaching for the knob.

…

Humming the tune of a local folk song, Shizuha chopped up some onion leaks for dinner. Minoriko was going to be home soon and probably very tired, and Hina was already worn out for having tackled that curse, so she was thinking something with a lot of protein was called for, something like omelets.

Then she heard the door to Hina's room open in the hallway behind her.

"All done?" she said as she stirred the eggs.

The door slammed shut. Hina didn't answer.

"Hina?" Shizuha looked over her shoulder. "You good?"

Hina was standing in the middle of the hallway. Something about her set off the warning bells in Shizuha's head. It was like she was a corpse being held in place by strings. Her upper body was slumping forward slightly, her arms dangling, which her knees bent inward toward each other.

"Hina? Um…are you…"

Hina started to walk forward, and that only alarmed Shizuha forward. Each step was stiff and plodding, her body swaying the whole while.

"Hina? What's wrong? Hina?"

Hina didn't answer. She just kept loping forward in that odd, unnatural way until she ran right into the kitchen counter. Then her legs gave way under her and she fell.

"Hina!" Shizuha rushed to her friend's side. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

She touched Hina's shoulder only to jerk away in shock. Hina's whole body was ice cold!

Then there was a pause, and Hina said, "Am I okay? Well now, that is an interesting question. Let's examine that, shall we?"

Shizuha stiffened. The voice was not Hina's. Rather, it was the voice one might expect to find seeping out of a long-buried sarcophagus excavated from beneath a mountain of ice: dead, cold, and ancient.

She started to reach for the chopping knife.

Suddenly Hina's hand came up and slammed down onto the back of Shizuha's hand, pinning it to the counter. Shizuha tried to scream, but the sound was stolen from her lungs as a shock of icy venom shot up her arm.

The pain was like nothing she had ever felt before, a chilling sort of corruption that sank its fangs into the very marrow of her bones and spread further and further. As she stood frozen in horror, the flesh of her hand began to shrivel and turn black, the darkness spread across her skin like oil. As it did, Hina's hand start to warp, the skin shrinking against the bones as her fingers grew out and extended. The tips then split open as metallic talons tore their way out to dig into Shizuha's flesh.

As this was going on, Hina slowly rose up, both standing to her feet while growing taller and taller, as if something inside was trying to force its way out. The tips of her dark green hair darkened to black. Then there was a ripping sound, and a pair of leathery black wings tore themselves from her shoulders and spread themselves wide.

Paralyzed by taint and fear, Shizuha could only stare and whimper.

Hina was panting heavily, her voice hoarse and ragged. She opened her eyes.

They were blood red and glowing with hate.

"Do I look like I'm okay to you?" Hina roared as nail-like spikes force their way out from beneath her teeth.

Shizuha wanted to scream, but found that she could not.

Moments later she couldn't do anything at all.

…

Okay. A few things.

I'm sorry that this took so long to come out, and that this week's update was delayed by two days. But in my defense, this chapter was a total bitch to write. Like, major writer's block, multiple characters and plotlines to keep in mind, so many moving pieces, that sort of thing. So, you know, your standard IM chapter. Plus, my computer decided to reboot without my permission and wipe out a big chunk of work a couple weeks back, so that was fun.

Something, something, there are no seas in Gensokyo. Yes, I know. But the Saltlick Sea had already been introduced before we knew that, so what the hell, I've already gone off canon quite a few times before. What's one more?

Yes, I know I got Mai and Yuki's descriptions flipped when they were introduced before the hiatus. I'll fix it…eventually.

Yes, the Ika Musume cameo was thought up when she was still the brand new hotness. As is the case with all my outdated references.

Yes, I know I have way too many characters with red eyes. Blame ZUN.

Yes, it is currently very late. Apologies for the rushed editing job. But I'm tired. If I fucked anything up, let me know.

Until next time, everyone!