All of the humans stared at me as I flew up toward the top of the spherical barrier where the youkai were gathing. My cheeks began to burn. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that a flying male human would garner a lot of attention in Gensokyo. On the bright side, I was wearing pants instead of a skirt or dress.

Miko laughed at me as I rose. “Didn’t expect it to work, did you! Get a load of this guy!” She elbowed Byakuren companionably, and the Buddhist nun looked like she was considering tearing the arm off. “He’s so embarrassed that he’s about to die!”

I looked around to see if Maroon would remanifest from my embarrassment, but apparently my cheeks weren’t red enough. Having a few dozen youkai all look at me like an intruder made my anxious feeling infinitely worse. My desire-sensing landlord had no sympathy for me and continued to laugh. I noticed she was wearing industrial grade ear protection and had two pillows strapped to the sides of her head with bungee cords–all of her tenants were down below, after all.

“I empathize,” said Satori, who was curled up in a flying fetal position with her head in her hands. “With Jake, not Miko, just to clarify.”

There were six hundred human minds or so and I couldn’t even imagine how loud that would sound. Her sister Koishi was worriedly rubbing her back.

“He tried to look at your underwear second, Patchouli,” said Satori. There was laughter as the librarian blushed one tenth as hard as myself. Maroon still didn’t appear. “You wouldn’t believe who was first.”

With herculean effort, I managed not to turn toward Sekibanki. The librarian’s eyebrow rose.

“Are you trying to get a rise out of me, Miss Komeiji?”

“I’m not,” said Satori with a pained smile. “Jake though? And a lot of them down there are having similar thoughts, by the way.”

Yukari gestured, and a giant portal appeared beneath us and spanned the barrier, blocking the view of the humans below. After that there was a huge purple void with red eyeballs the size of garbage cans and mid-size sedans.

“Now I’m the only one who can see up anyone's dress,” said Yukari, “As god intended, by definition.”

Ten different youkai responded to her, as did I. I tried to say “I feel a bit better,” because it felt like most of the humans had been staring at me specifically.

The youkai had a range of reactions, some positive, some negative. I only caught Miko’s response, because she happened to be nearby.

“Wow,” said Miko, taking a breath. “They’re even more scared now! Way to go!”

“Having so many speakers is confusing, and as satisfying as that fact is, we don’t have enough time for thirty-fold commentary,” said Yukari. “Miss Kasodani, silence please.”

A dog-like youkai, Kasodani Kyouko, opened her mouth and barked. She looked like a human woman with pale green hair, dog ears, and a pink dress. Her ability was to control echoes or something like that–I couldn’t remember specifics just then–and apparently she could control sound so well that she could cancel the noise of the entire crowd of youkai and increasingly-alarmed humans below.

Yukari said something and nobody heard it. Several youkai laughed silently. Yukari summoned a whiteboard and a marker, and scribbled some instructions I couldn’t see from my angle.

Remilia pointed a sharp red fingernail toward Yukari and suddenly she could speak. Kyouko the dog youkai followed her pointed finger with a singular attention.

“There!” said the gap youkai. “Whoever Miss Scarlet points at has the floor.”

“No floor,” mouthed Satori, not quite giving voice to my thoughts. Apparently thoughts weren’t silenced, and neither did MIko remove her desire-obstructing earmuffs.

“Miss Scarlet is using her power over fate to point at only the most important contributor to the conversation,” continued Yukari, “which is in fact the one most deserving of our attention.”

Remilia pointed at Keine, who giddily said “Ipso facto!” Then she pointed back toward Yukari.

“Actually, there are still some bugs in the system,” said Yukari with a nod. An insectoid youkai nodded with her. “But please keep guiding our conversation, Remilia.”

The vampire grinned widely at the opportunity to be the one who got to choose who could talk. To be fair, most of the youkai looked like they were having a good time. There was a crowd of frightened humans just below, after all.

But not all of the monsters were happy. Satori was in obvious pain. Byakuren looked displeased, as did the other religious figures of Gensokyo. Sakuya stood beside Remilia, frowning and holding a parasol between her mistress and the noonday sun.

Miko was grinning ear-to-ear. I didn’t even look at Sekibanki. Besides Sakuya, none of the player characters were present: no Youmu, Reimu, Marisa, or Sanae.

A demon flew up and gave a report that the sigil would be ready in five minutes.

Yukari’s smile vanished. “Good. The first covering catastrophe will happen in two hundred and seventeen seconds, so we are technically ahead of schedule.”

“No we aren’t,” said Kawashiro Nitori. It was the only time I would hear the kappa engineer speak that day. “You threw out the schedule and made up a new one.”

“I’ve gathered all the humans into the safe zone, I believe,” added Yukari. Thank goodness, I mouthed but didn’t get to say aloud. I could believe the zone was safe, not because Yukari said it, but because the youkai were there as opposed to somewhere safer. “However, we are dealing with deficits. Miss Scarlet?”

The vampire pointed at herself, her expression also becoming serious. “You should not have accelerated the timetable. I’m not yet powerful enough to enforce the sigil on my own.”

“Can the sigil be altered?” asked Yukari.

“Yes,” said Patchouli when the vampire pointed to her.

“Quickly?” added Yukari.

“That depends on what you mean,” said Patchouli. “Give me an hour and I can remove one or two sections. The symmetry will be broken but it–” Remilia cut her off to point back toward Yukari.

“Unacceptable,” said the gap youkai. “We don’t have time and the sigil is already as small as we thought viable. I’ve changed my mind about altering it. What alternatives to alteration are available?”

Remilia rubbed her chin, and pointed at her cheek with the same hand. “I think I’ll be strong enough with one–no, one hundred and twenty-five full humans’ worth of blood.” She cracked her knuckles. “Or perhaps one or two youkai, consumed in their entirety. Any volunteers?”

Remilia dropped her hand. The happy youkai’s smiles became muted, and the upset youkai became more so. For several seconds none spoke. They looked between each other. Finally, Remilia’s hand shot up to point at Byakuren.

“All lives are precious,” she said. “It might be time for me to move onto my next. I volunteer.”

“How noble,” said Remilia, “Your saintly blood would likely kill me.”

Remilia pointed to Patchouli, then back to herself the moment the librarian’s mouth opened.

“No. It has to be someone else. Someone a little less selfless.”

“That’s a contradiction,” I said, and shockingly, I was allowed to speak. Remilia was pointing at me with a self-satisfied smile, but most of the other youkai were scandalized. They looked at me with unadulterated confusion. Yukari took a deep breath.

“Mister Thorne,” said Yukari, “As the only human representative here, what do you say about sacrificing one human life to save… forty?”

“I–” I started. “Forty?” What, was she planning on bargaining me down to one-in-five?

“That’s right.”

“Your math doesn’t seem to add up,” I said.

“I assure you, we checked the math before undergoing this endeavor,” said Yukari. She looked at Ran. “Right?”

“Of course,” said her servant. I noticed the fox youkai had another smaller youkai behind her. It was the cat Chen, who was her own familiar. Chen was hiding so I didn’t get a good look.

“So, please just answer the question,” said the gap youkai. Hearing this from Yukari made me want to go back down and join the silently-screaming humans.

“Can we take a little blood from everybody?”

“No,” said Remilia. “Blood’s power quadruples when someone dies. Death makes it more potent.”

“Oh. Well, trading one life to save forty is… worthwhile,” I said, praying they’d wait for me to continue before the murder started, “ceteris paribus.”

“Nice,” said Keine with Remilia and Kasodani’s permission. I guessed that Latin was essential for the discourse, and complimenting Latin as well.

“But if you kill one hundred humans in the village right now, you’ll be facing a full on revolt. I don’t suppose that matters much to you–?”

“It actually does,” said Yukari. “Thank you Mister Thorne. We cannot kill a fifth of the humans and secure the cooperation of the remainder. Does that confuse anyone?”

Nobody said anything. “Maybe a little,” admitted Sekibanki. I tried not to feel or think anything about this, in case someone who could read thoughts or feelings was listening. I glanced at Toyosatomimi’s earmuffs made of literal pillows.

“You said a fifth,” I said, or tried to say, but it didn’t pass muster as far as fate was concerned.

“Any other feedback?” asked Yukari.

“We can’t kill the humans,” said Keine. “We’re protecting them, now.”

“We can’t kill one hundred humans,” added Miko, “We just finished building them homes!”

“It’s too late to start treating them as disposable,” added Sekibanki.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“No killing humans,” added Satori, her head in her hands from the presence of the humans. She didn’t elaborate.

“It’s decided,” said Yukari. Remilia frowned at her, but didn’t look confused, like the rest of us. She lifted a hand to point at Patchouli without looking.

“The sigil won’t do anything without sufficient power,” said Patchouli. “What’s our fallback?”

“Simple,” said Yukari. “I will provide for the deficit personally. I’m at the height of my power with all those sad, confused humans, both below and elsewhere.” Without another moment passing, Remilia pointed toward the fox youkai, Yakumo Ran, who was so close to Yukari that they shared a name. Her mouth was already open as Yukari turned to face her.

“--y lady, your task is already too great! There is a significant chance–”

“Best estimate,” said the gap youkai.

“–eighty-five percent chance you survive, but who knows in what state! You might be rendered catatonic! And if you are lost then all will be lost!” Ran grabbed Yukari’s sleeve. “Please, don’t–”

“And the same is true if we cut corners,” said Yukari with a nod. “Especially since it’s a circular diagram. Let us try to win entirely instead of barely-failing with certainty, right?”

I reeled. Yukari was talking about a concept I was familiar with as an alignment researcher: “playing to your outs.” The term came from poker but it had been popular in the alignment community. It was about making decisions that would make the most of a bad situation, even if the decisions were hard or potentially destructive. The instinct to cower in the face of defeat could be the very reason that you lost.

Someone playing five card draw might discard half of a pair to seek a flush. Policy makers might assume not all parts of the alignment problem were intractable, and so continue making policies in a doomed world. An alignment researcher might spend their entire 401k and all of their possessions fruitlessly chasing a miracle…

Yukari clearly thought the mysterious sigil was of the utmost importance if she would risk her own life.

“My lady,” said Ran. “You’ve already been stretching yourself so thin–”

“I’ve made up my mind,” she said.

Yuyuko the ghost looked upset, and was given a chance to speak. “If you die, can we still spend a lot of time together?”

“I won’t lie to you,” said Yukari, quietly, “That’s not how it works for youkai like me. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine.”

Toyosatomimi no Miko shook her head and opened her mouth, but we couldn’t hear it.

“No need to bite me, though,” added Yukari, to Remilia. “I’m quite capable of release without it.”

“Heh heh heh,” said Satori, grimacing and doubled-over.

“Very well,” said Remilia. “How much time do we have?”

“About forty seconds,” said Yukari. “I think it will be just enough.”

Just then, Reimu, Marisa, and the others flew up to the edge of the barrier. They looked battered and bruised. Yukari portaled them in. Youmu went to Yuyuko, Sanae joined her gods, Marisa went off by herself, and Reimu flew to Yukari.

“The attackers?” asked Yukari.

“Fled,” said Reimu. “We couldn’t identify them, but they gave up when we defeated them.” Her red and white clothes were torn in several places, presumably where they weren’t sufficiently close to her identity.

“A pathetic grab for power during a moment of perceived weakness,” said Yukari with a nod. “They should have waited ten minutes. Good work. Please wait patiently while I prepare.”

Then she gestured, and seven immense portals opened in a circle around us, dropping about twenty thousand tons of raw building materials. There was an earthshaking thud that came from every direction at once, except for the direction in which we had actually built news dorms. Nothing was damaged and nobody was hurt, although several demons looked inconvenienced.

I knew what twenty thousand tons of material looked like, because over the last several months we had hauled and used about three thousand tons of material to build the new dorms. Wiki had relayed that fact to me, supposedly from Nitori herself. We’d been working for months to make it happen.

I realized at the last second what the sigil was for.

–

A koakuma flew up to the barrier holding a stick carved with magical diagrams. Yukari let her in and took the stick.

“Clear the area!” shouted Patchouli. All around us demons took flight and fled straight away.

“Are we safe here?” asked Reimu. “Is this barrier strong enough?”

“The barrier is to keep humans from wandering into danger,” said Yukari. “I’d have put up caution tape, but nobody seems to take it seriously. These days it’s a mere Halloween decoration.”

“Oh,” said Reimu. She looked at one of her tags. “People don’t ignore my caution tape.”

Yukari turned to Remilia. “Let us begin, Miss Scarlet.”

Remilia grabbed the rune-encrusted rod with both hands, and Yukari put away her fan to do the same. The stick began to glow, as did the surrounding lightly-forested countryside. Red and purple electric arcs leapt up from the ground in every direction. The sound was deafening; Kasodani Kyouko wasn’t able to overcome it with her power.

The material moved. The material changed.

I watched a pallet of two-by-fours leap up and assemble itself into a cube that settled down where a house was supposed to be. Then wooden cladding snapped in on all sides and turned it into a dwelling. Bags of cement ate water that materialized in the air and spread themselves into paving stones that formed seven additional identical walkways leading away from the village center. Distantly I saw metal pipes shoot into the ground and produce great gouts of dirt and rock that swirled through the sky to settle in seven mounds nearby. Unpowered electrical cables strung themselves up; appliances folded together from raw sheets of iron and aluminum; plain yukatas and bedding wove themselves from bales of textiles. A pallet of clay split, morphed, and finally glowed red as it fired itself to become a squadron of flying toilets.

I wondered if the same thing had happened on a cellular level when my kidney was mirrored. This sigil was doing similar work. The humans of the village had made a place to live beside the village, and now magic remade it again and again, with eight-fold symmetry. Yukari’s materials were all transformed into completed housing over the course of sixty seconds. At the end Remila gasped and fluttered back.

“Completely drained,” she said. “I can’t–I can’t tell–”

“Just the last step now,” said Yukari. I saw that her nose was bleeding, leaving great big red drops on the front of her tabard. “The most important part. The whole point of phase two, really.”

Something like thirty-five hundred new portals opened and deposited fresh humans from the Outside World all around the new buildings, all at once. I peered out at them through the barrier.

New housing–new humans. I don’t know what I expected.

I wasn’t certain, but it seemed like most of the new arrivals were still men. Strong, capable young men. Men holding tools and looking around nervously. Men who looked like they could work, or perhaps like they’d been told they’d be put to work. Not as nerdy-looking as expected.

I had the thought that they were lucky that they didn’t have to walk through the woods to find the human village. No. We were bigger than a village, now–it was Human Town.

I had been foolish to think that the first five hundred new humans were special, and I resolved not to think about the first four thousand the same way. Our village was a town, now–but what would it be like in six months? Were they here to build? How many phases were there to Yukari’s plan? How many humans would there be here at the end of all of this?

“Huh,” said Yukari. “That was too much.”

The smaller barrier shattered.

The sky cracked in half.

I tasted metal, and other things. The sensations came so fast that I had to sort them out later.

–

I hadn’t considered all the implications of time flowing differently between Gensokyo and the Outside World. If one realm had faster time then the two realms would basically never be in sync, I knew–winter in one might be summer in the other–but when the sky cracked open I was still surprised to see that it was night instead of day, out there.

The first thing I tasted was the fear of all the youkai, which was like glass, or metal, or dirt, or paper–never anything edible–but overwhelming all the same. Their elation had turned to terror, and my mouth was full of fiberglass and plastic.

What I tasted and smelled wasn’t really relevant except insofar as absorbing it allowed me to keep flying. Neither was what I heard, which was screaming, or felt, which was also screaming.

The sky darkened as the sun disappeared. Instead there was a silvery moon and ten thousand artificial stars orbiting in every direction. These pinpricks of light were the great satellites that harvested solar power closer to the source, or did computations with more predictable cooling load and static charge. Space was crowded in the Outside World. Seeing it again made my stomach drop. I’d thought I’d gotten away.

I realized after a moment that my stomach had also dropped because I’d fallen about twenty feet, as magic failed for a second. All the youkai had fallen with me. We’d gone toward the giant portal below us that was somehow still open.

“I got it,” said Yukari. Black bags had appeared under her eyes. “I got it! Just a sec!”

The edges of the fragmented opening in the sky had glowing iridescent lines that slowly cycled through the rainbow. These lines were getting thicker–no, they were coming together and closing. The black sky was like a windshield cracking in reverse, leaving a blue sky in its wake.

“Hrrrg,” said Yukari, lifting her hands. The cracks were shrinking faster. “Gotta hurry, before someone notices us. Hah hah.”

The ten thousand satellites above continued to rotate. I thought that most if not all of them were typical satellites in that they were pointed at Earth. The ring of blue sky was closing, but not evenly. It was elongated, pinched at both sides like a giant eye. The eye was bloodshot with ultraviolet lines, but clearing fast.

“Almost there….” said Yukari, gasping. Her eyes were half-lidded. Ran was holding her and weeping, as was Chen. The smaller youkai wore red and white, I noticed, with a yellow bowtie. She had brown cat ears and two tails. Chen kind of reminded me of Maroon.

The sky kept closing. The screaming stopped. I heard gasps from below. Some of the humans right below us were visible, because the portal beneath us was shrinking with the cracks above. The darkness disappeared as the sun returned to the sky.

“There,” said Yukari, a few inches above her own portal. “Done.” The sky had all-but-repaired itself.

“Are you sure?” asked Patchouli. She pointed. “I think you missed a spot.” And indeed, there was a tiny circle, no bigger than the sun or moon, that was still pitch black. It was like a second sun in the sky, but inverse; a dot of darkness. It was too bright outside to see satellites through it, though.

“‘Tis fine,” said Yukari, slurring her speech. “Can’t see in, only out. Don’t worry ‘bout it.” She yawned like she’d been drowning, and gently pushed Ran and Chen away. She flickered in place, in a way I’d seen a few short days before. “Be good girls and stay here, ‘kay?”

“My lady–” started Ran, but Yukari fell into the portal and disappeared before she could finish. It was about six feet across and still shrinking.

“My lady,” said Sakuya to Remilia, her voice quavering. “Should I…”

“Yes. G… go,” said the vampire. “Now!”

Sakuya flew in the portal after Yukari. Patchouli was right behind her, but Remilia interjected before she went through.

“Stop. You won’t come back out, and I don’t need to manipulate fate to know that.”

“Neither will she, not without–!”

Remilia’s next move shocked me. In a quarter second she flew up to me and stuck her hand in my pants. The vampire pulled out my notebook and pen. Then she tossed them over her shoulder and straight into the portal, which closed a half-second later.

“What,” was all I could say.

“I have writing materials in my pocket,” said Patchouli, pulling out a pen and paper from the magical space on the side of her chest. She dropped them into the humans below and pulled out another.

“Make your pockets more accessible, then,” said Remilia, flatly. The vampire looked tired. Drained, even.

“Will a notebook–”

“I don’t know,” said the vampire. She sniffed. “Computer? How long?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Ran. She was still crying. “I’m also struggling to … foresee.”

The youkai both looked at the hole in the sky.

“Whatever,” said Remilia. “Let’s go home before my sunscreen wears off.” The vampire turned to fly away, and Patchouli went right behind her.

The youkai dispersed, leaving a bunch of very confused humans in the village, including one who was slowly descending as his ability to fly finally failed. The fear had been replaced by confusion.

“What happened?” asked Wiki as I touched down.

“I don’t fucking know!” I said.

“Stop!” called Miko from above us. She wasn’t talking to us, though. “Marisa! Reimu! Come back!”

“Why?” shouted Marisa. Reimu had stopped, as had Youmu and Yuyuko. Sanae continued on with her gods.

“Oh, um, no particular reason,” said Toyosatomimi no Miko. She looked around nervously. “Just, well… you know.”

“Where’s Yukari?” asked Wiki. Miko didn’t answer him.