Twenty-five humans were tied up, and six youkai were deciding who to murder and consume. I struggled in my bonds; the compulsion to kneel was ending. I also felt a compulsion to urinate, but I resisted that as well.

Shamefully, I wished that the youkai would start the selection process with strangers. They didn’t.

“How about this one?” said Trident, pointing at Arnold with her weapon.

“Remilia,” whispered the Quiet one.

“Okay, well this one–” she was pointing at another martial artist.

“Also Remilia.”

“How the fuck do you know that, anyway?” asked the Short one. “Some power? Are you making things up? Are you trying to save them for yourself?”

“I have a friend who knows things,” whispered Quiet with a shrug.

“All the ones I want to eat are protected,” lamented Bloody. “What about the woman?”

“She’s not protected.”

I threw myself over Sasha, and the youkai all sighed.

“Delicious,” said Red Umbrella. “That’s why you leave the women and children for as long as possible. So much fear in them, and in their protectors. Having to protect something is a great weakness.”

She picked me up and tossed me away. I landed next to Wiki and hurt like a dropped dog. Red Umbrella bent over to examine Sasha, who was bleeding on the grass.

“Get over here and bandage her. We want this one to live; the humans need to keep breeding, you know? The crop is failing?” She straightened up and laughed.

Ropes walked over and wrapped parts of Sasha in the strange plastic.

“She’s unlikely to survive,” noted Ropes. “Especially since I touched her.”

“Yamane,” mumbled Wiki. “She’s a spider. She diseases you.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, channeling Sasha. I held in my desire to cough. “They’ll hear you.”

“Did I hear something?” asked the Short one. “The humans whispering, plotting?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Quiet. “They’re afraid. Let them feed us.”

“What about this one?” asked Trident.

“Remilia.”

“God damnit, she really did pick out the tasty-looking ones, eh? She’s as bad as Yukari!”

More than a few of them flinched at the name, but the god of boundaries did not appear.

“I don’t think they can hear me, though,” whispered Koishi, from my other side. She was kneeling just like us, but her hands weren’t tied.

“Save us,” I muttered.

“Too strong,” she said. She was crying, I saw. “I’m sorry.”

“Get help.” There was a shout. They’d found a student they could murder, one I didn’t know personally. While Koishi dithered, humans were dying.

Raghav struggled to his feet, but Red Umbrella struck him with a beam of light and he fell over. Bloody bent down toward their latest victim.

“Don’t eat him now,” said Quiet. Her head tilted back to look at the moon. “Time is of the essence.”

Bloody grumbled, and straightened back up. “I won’t get a chance later.” She was some sort of beast.

“All the same, don’t get caught with your pants down.”

“As if any of us wear pants,” said Red Umbrella.

“It’s better to try and fail,” hissed Wiki, to Koishi. “Please–”

“They’ll know I was here when I leave,” Koishi said. “They’ll chase me down. They don’t follow the rules, they will kill me!”

“They didn’t kill Keine,” I argued.

“Yukari knows who Keine is,” said Koishi. “Nobody knows who I am!”

“I do,” I said.

“If they don’t know who you are, you’re safe anyway,” said Wiki.

Koishi whimpered and got to her feet.

“How about that one?” said Short, pointing at Wiki. “He’s awfully chatty.”

“That one…” said Quiet, with hesitation in her voice. “Remilia.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Red Umbrella. “He’s not… overbuilt, for one.”

“Neither is the one next to him, and he is also under Remilia’s protection.”

“I can sense these sorts of things too, you know.” She twirled the umbrella, which was more of a parasol. “The chatty one is definitely one that we need to nip in the bud.”

“Trust me,” said Quiet. “He’s no good. Choose another.”

“We have to kill him now,” said Red Umbrella. “Because you lied to me. I don’t think he can even do danmaku.” She took a step forward.

I tried to get in the way, but I felt in my stomach that it wouldn’t work, just like it hadn’t sixty seconds earlier. Red Umbrella walked toward me. I wished that she would just attack me, so Remilia would come save us. If Remilia had chosen to protect Wiki, he wouldn’t be vulnerable in the first place!

Adrenaline coursed through my veins as Red Umbrella pushed me aside. She was gentler this time, like a human shooing off a fly.

Remilia had hung Wiki out to dry, even though she’d chosen to protect Arnold. She’d chosen to protect me. And, perhaps because of the adrenaline, the logic crystalized. I would not give in to despair and hopelessness. I couldn’t.

This couldn’t be how Wiki died. Remilia had been scared to protect him, but not us, and we were in the same damned situation. In fact, as long as we were with Wiki, he should have been safe! Whatever was going to get him was different from what we faced.

I saw Arnold’s ax on the ground. I knew how to make Remilia appear.

“Koishi, try to kill me with the ax,” I said.

“What?” said the youkai. “No!”

Red Umbrella stopped short. “Who’s Koishi?” She looked at the seventh youkai in their midst. “Wait, who is this?”

“She’s a youkai that can’t be detected,” said Quiet. “Obviously.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I forgot about her until just now. So did you.”

“Just try, you won’t succeed!” I said to Koishi. She put her hands to her mouth and looked down at the ax. “Just do it! We don’t have time!”

“Can’t be detected?” asked Trident. “Like me?”

“No, not like you,” came the whisper. “We can detect you, we just can’t identify you.”

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“You’d think I’d know her.” She spun the trident once.

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Is she a threat?” asked Red Umbrella. “Probably not. I’m starting to think it’s easy to forget her for a reason.” She bent down and put a hand around Wiki’s chin.

Koishi stepped back in fear. I had had enough.

“Just fucking hit me with the ax!” I screamed. I shot her with danmaku, and it did fuck-all, because she was a youkai. Then Short hit me with a giant green ball of danmaku and I fell still again.

“They really are hard to keep down,” said Short. “I wish I was that resilient.”

“Yeah, well, you can take more than three hits,” said Ropes. “If we gave them commands that took time, this might work better.”

“Just to be safe we should deal with this other youkai,” said Red Umbrella. Koishi took off running, and Red smiled. “And she’s dealt with. I love cowards, they are my favorite.” She looked back toward Wiki’s face. “And I like you quite a lot, human. I want to pluck your leaves off, one-by-one.”

“Perfect Golden Bullet,” said Raghav. He hit Arnold, who stood and strained against his bindings.

The webs broke. Raghav could not have compelled that on his own, and Arnold would not have been strong enough without compulsion. Arnold winced; one of his hands was hanging limply from the end of his arm.

He ran forward and grabbed the ax. He was hit by Short’s danmaku, but it didn’t matter, because one compulsion can’t easily override another. Being compelled to do what you wanted anyway was a trick I’d try to remember, if I survived.

“I’m sorry!” cried Arnold as he swung at me, left-handed. I closed my eyes. If I died, at least I’d be saving three lives. Unfortunately, Arnold closed his eyes as well.

He missed, grazing my shoulder and tearing open my skin and yukata. I screamed.

“Aim for my neck, dumbass!”

Arnold, who was bawling, wound up another swing. He huffed, and took a second to line it up as he was pelted with danmaku from the other youkai.

“Just kill him!” screamed Red Umbrella. The youkai stopped firing danmaku. Half of them moved forward; half flinched back.

“We can’t!” shouted Quiet in a voice that was familiar, and the youkai started fighting each other. We were surrounded by glittering danmaku.

Even as tears streamed out, Arnold prepared a strong blow that would absolutely kill me. And then, just before he swung, he hesitated. The compulsion ended.

My good friend couldn’t kill me, even if it was the right thing to do. Break his wrist, maybe–hurt me, maybe–but ending my life was too hard. I could see it in his eyes. Even if we were all going to die, he just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in his nature to hurt anyone, least of all his friends.

A dark blue ball of danmaku hit Arnold from over my shoulder. “Fear works,” said Wiki, his voice heavy with despair. “If that’s all you feel it’ll work. I’m so sorry.”

Arnold swung again. I didn’t blink the second time.

The blow didn’t land. The ax was yanked out of his hands by a two-pronged blood-red spear shooting out of the sky. Remilia Scarlet descended and the spear flew back of its own accord to settle in her hands.

“I should have known it would be you two,” said Remilia. Her wings beat once, then again several seconds later. “You guys are a giant pain in the ass, you know that right?”

–

It was bedlam. Most of the other youkai attacked Remilia at once, including the one that could make giant beams. Even then they followed the indirect fire rule; they were bursting danmaku in every direction, causing the rest of us to submit. Remilia was the interloper. Only she was allowed to use direct fire.

They united against her.

Then Red Umbrella pointed her parasol at Remilia and fired an immense beam of light. Yellow bullets went out in every direction; it was technically not direct. Remilia dodged, but just barely.

Six versus one was too much, even for Remilia, especially since Red Umbrella herself was apparently powerful and could manipulate sunlight.

However, Remilia was a vampire that could manipulate fate. She hadn’t come alone.

“I’ll have you know I just woke up,” said Sakuya Izayoi. The world was monochrome, save for her red glowing eyes. The maid stood there in the middle of the grassy field, tapping the knives strapped to her thigh, and spoke to me alone. Everyone else was frozen solid.

(I noticed her dress was very short, in that moment, to keep those knives exposed. She had hitched it up or something. In my defense, I was on the ground for good reasons and I didn’t try to sneak a peek or anything.)

“No time for tea, even,” added Sakuya. “So, fuck you, Mister Thorne, and how may I be of assistance?” She flew into the air and gently moved Remilia out of the way of the second beam of light that might reduce her to ash. “Anytime, by the way.”

“We were about to get killed,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“Who was killing who?” she asked. “The Mistress hates being manipulated. She’ll probably end your life for this!”

“Whelp,” I said. At least Wiki would survive. Maybe that was why the human village was wrapped up in his destiny, and not mine. He’d kill me, if it was the best course of action. I didn’t know how to feel about it, and I didn’t know what to say, so I said something dumb. “Do you usually get up at midnight?”

“Not important,” she said.

I wheezed. My shoulder was still bleeding, so I tried to hold the wound shut. There was a flash as time started and stopped, briefly, and the hole was sewn up. She’d pulled my hand away.

“You’re not as good at that as Yukari,” I said.

“More timely, though,” said Sakuya. “The Mistress told me to talk to you about getting us out of this mess with limited firepower. Any ideas?”

I looked at the six impossible-to-identify youkai, who were all frozen while attacking the vampire with their unknown abilities. It would be good to figure out who they were.

“We should bring Wiki into this,” I said. “He knows a lot; he’ll help.”

“Okay,” said Sakuya. She went over and touched him. He gasped and looked around for a moment. Wiki laid eyes on Sakuya. He looked at Sakuya’s legs–no, the knives, actually–and then back at her face.

“Izayoi Sakuya,” he said.

“Very good, smarty pants! Solve this problem for us, would you?”

“If you can unfreeze people, unfreeze Miss Scarlet,” he suggested, his voice loud. He spoke a bit more softly when he continued. “She can defeat them all pretty easily, then.”

“Won’t work,” said Sakuya, holding up two knives. “First, the Mistress is immortal.”

“So?” he asked.

“She has ‘infinite chronoscopic density,’ as Lady Knowledge might put it. I can move her, but I can’t accelerate her, like you two.” Sakuya lowered a knife. “Second, you cannot cast danmaku from frozen time.” She lowered her other knife.

“What!” he said. “But many of your attacks involve doing just that!”

“I don’t know what makes you think you know how my attacks work,” she said, “But I unfreeze time for a moment to throw each knife, that is, the ones that don’t throw themselves, which is almost all of them.”

“Okay,” I said. “If danmaku doesn’t work, stab them the old-fashioned way.” I knew she could do that; she’d sewn up my wound.

“I will not be murdering six youkai,” said Sakuya. “Yukari would have my head for that.”

“But they’re murdering us!” objected Wiki.

Sakuya sighed. “I’m sorry, Wiki–Wiki was your name, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Killing youkai is illegal, killing humans is not. I wish someone had told you before.”

“They did,” he said, with a sigh.

“Then quit testing my patience with stupid suggestions. You’re lucky that Remilia hates conceding, or we’d just leave the rest of you to your fate after dragging off our employees.” She tapped her thigh impatiently, where the knives were. “Why did we unfreeze this person, again?”

“He can identify our attackers,” I said.

“Some of them,” said Wiki. He pointed at Red Umbrella. “That’s Kazami Yuuka, the sunflower youkai. She can manipulate flowers, is super strong, turns into light, teleports, and can clone herself. She’s using Master Spark.”

“Marisa’s most powerful attack,” said Sakuya.

“Yeah. She’s better at it than Marisa, though. And her umbrella can both block danmaku and spit out ultraviolet rays.”

“Fuck my life,” said Sakuya. “I hope the Mistress has dealt with her before.”

“Not in canon. Next to her is Kurodani Yamane. She’s a spider who makes humans sick.”

I coughed. “Deathly ill?” I asked.

“The flu, in canon at least.” He pointed to the one with the trident. “The reason we can’t tell who any of them are is because of her. She is… um…” He rubbed his temple. “She can hide her true form, and she can contact the Outside World. I recall that her other power is making things impossible to identify. It’s stopping me from identifying her, but the black trident is super suggestive, I think?”

“Alright,” said Sakuya. “If that’s so, how is it that you can identify the others?”

“I don’t know?” he asked. “Maybe because I’m remembering the Touhou versions of them from the Outside World and putting it together. I’m not identifying who they are, just which character they correspond to.” He shrugged. “Or maybe her power is imperfect, unlike Koishi’s, which throws me every time.”

“Not quite every time,” I said.

“Yeah… I can remember Koishi, now.” He looked toward the village. “Do you think she is getting help?”

“And the other attackers?” asked Sakuya. Koishi was of no concern to her.

“I think that one is Imaizumi Kagerou, the werewolf, because she’s eating people and she seems too smart to be Rumia. Also, there’s no magical dark spots. I don’t know about the other two, possibly her friends, Sekibanki and Wakasagihime, or other fear-feeding youkai like Parsee or Seija or the oni… it could be anyone, really.”

“Wakasagihime is peaceful,” I said. He shrugged.

“Tatara Kogasa, then,” he said. “Except, she has, and is, an umbrella.”

“The red one?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. Kogasa is teal and purple, and Yuuka has her own parasol.”

“So basically Yuuka is the only real threat,” said Sakuya.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “Not knowing what sort of attack you face is a huge disadvantage, and the other youkai have abilities that could inflict various misfortunes.”

“Alright. How do we deal with them?”

“Let me think about it,” he said. “How much time do we have?”

Sakuya checked her pocket watch. “Five minutes, tops. Less if we move too much. How much do you like fresh air?”

I realized that the air was getting stale. “We have to keep moving to keep getting clean air, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Well…” said Wiki. “Let’s try to get this right on the first try.”