The Human Council met in Toyosatomimi no Miko’s sound-proof tent. About twenty humans of various nationalities gathered in folding chairs around the space. Some of the faces were familiar to me, but most were not. Either way, after some recent reading I was seeing human affairs anew.

Raghav was there. I desperately wanted to ask him about his appearance in the Bunbunmaru, but I doubted that the human council meeting was the right time to bring it up.

Sekibanki had finally relented and let me look at the newspaper. She’d brought it with one of her heads flying toward us with the paper in her mouth. Right in front of me she had cut the paper with her powers and given me the article in which I featured, and nothing more. I didn’t know whether she was hiding something else in the paper, or just embarrassed that some of it had saliva on it. The snippet I’d read had been eye-opening regardless.

My imagined tryst with Sekibanki had only warranted two paragraphs. It had used a pseudonym for both me and Sekibanki, but ‘Tank Jorn in a ten gallon hat’ and ‘Bekki Sankey’ had definitely violated taboos. Sekibanki assured me that so few people knew her actual name that her pseudonym was pretty safe.

I didn’t believe her. Of course, Patchouli and Sanae both guessed the true identity of ‘Tank’ right away. And apparently I’d appeared with my real name a few times, too, in other editions. The writer had attempted to protect Sekibanki’s privacy, not mine.

Raghav’s detective work on disappearances had gotten the rest of the page, and had used his actual name. The writer depicted him as an immensely-capable, rational, imposing, and suave man who was followed around by admirers of both genders. He went and discovered why people would want to venture off into Gensokyo, always learning something about the human desire for freedom or self-expression.

I looked at the actual man, with his defined jaw and beautiful outfit, and scowled. That there had been more disappearances was another problem. It might come up during the meeting. I shook my head. I recognized a martial artist in attendance, but all the other men were strangers.

Maribel and Renko were also present. Since arriving in Gensokyo the pair of students had become inseparable, just like they’d been in canon. Renko the would-be physicist sat next to Wiki, whereas Maribel sat next to me. I didn’t know her very well but I still appreciated it. I was an interloper with a bunch of serious strangers. Her familiar face made me feel more welcome. She was good at smiling mysteriously–the resemblance to Yukari was undeniable, except for by her.

Only one other woman was there, technically making women overrepresented, at least as far as demographic percentages were concerned. Reika sat opposite Wiki with a cool look on her face. She gave me a slight smile that warmed a bit when I waved, but then she went right back to a serious and cold demeanor, matching everyone else. Two Japanese men were flanking her. They were the ‘original inhabitants’ contingent, I suspected.

You’d think that having your ex-girlfriend on the Council with you would be awkward, but Wiki seemed resigned to it. People continued to shuffle in.

It was Miko’s tent, but the landlord herself was nowhere to be found. I asked Wiki about it.

“This is the only way we can be sure that she can’t hear us,” Wiki told me. “Thanks again for confirming Inubashiri Momiji’s panopticon vision, by the way. That she can’t see through walls means that we can eliminate that as a potential source of surveillance.”

“I didn’t realize the Human Council was so…” I started. He finished for me.

“Clandestine? We really aren’t. However, it’s easier to be open about things if you aren’t worried about other entities listening in.”

“Political entities? Like the tengu?”

“Any kind of entity.”

“And Miss Toyosatomimi was just willing to lend the tent to you?” I asked. “Knowing her, she’s probably charging money.” Wiki talked to one of the new arrivals about some bit of policy, but Maribel answered instead.

“She doesn’t charge us rent,” said the blonde student. I shrugged. “She said she could taste our desire for privacy, and she approved of it as a ‘prudent negotiating measure.’”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“Toyosatomimi no Miko said she wants to deal with a united front,” continued Maribel, “You know, let us work together and just come to her with the result?”

Renko leaned around WIki to join the conversation. “I personally think that she actually recognizes that we are handling a lot of administrative duties in her place. If she could actually taste our desires, this town would look a lot different.”

“How so?” asked Maribel.

“It would have come with more trade infrastructure, for one thing, and there’d be way more women.”

“Sounds about right to me,” I said. “Miko has been very hands off. This is just continuing the pattern.”

“She’s supposedly busy with youkai,” Maribel added. “Negotiating with groups she won’t name. I have an inkling about a few of them.” She met my eyes. “Want to list some names, to see if we have the same thoughts?”

Renko gave a thumbs up. “Double-blind confirmation!”

“Okay…” I said as I tried to think of what the political entities would be, in Gensokyo. “The Scarlet Devil Mansion, Moriya Shrine, Myouren Temple…. uh, the oni and the tengu perhaps?”

“Oooh,” said Maribel. “I haven’t heard of the tengu! What are they like?”

“They are pretty secretive, apparently,” I said. “I haven’t learned as much about them as the oni.”

“Well, I’m interested in both,” said Maribel. Before I could tell her how disgusting the oni were, Wiki interrupted me and told me to save it for my presentation to the Council. The last few humans arrived, so we got started.

First, everyone stood and went around the room saying their codenames. I had no codename, so Wiki vouched for me.

“A defense against Mamizou and… the other one,” said Maribel, referring to the youkai attackers. ‘The other one’ was the only name that would stick to the other one. “We tried to hire Satori for this, but she refused to read the minds of twenty politicians simultaneously.”

“You’d think that she’d get a lot of sustenance from exposing their secrets,” I said.

“I did think that,” said Wiki as he listened to each person give their code name. He was paying extra close attention, the better to spot an interloper, but most of the crowd was having side conversations. “She said she’d avoid us for our own good, and after a while I agreed.”

“Huh?” For our own good?

“Lots of people here are prideful,” explained Renko. “Exposing their secrets would reduce the number of volunteers. We aren’t paid.” She was writing down the minutes, I noticed. “And there are some things it’s better to keep secret anyway.”

“Yep,” said Maribel. She was cheerful.

“Like what?” I asked, but the last person had given their codename so the meeting continued.

After attendance had been called, we swore an oath not to leak information on the penalty of death. Everyone put a hand over their heart. I did the same.

“I thought this wasn’t clandestine!” I hissed to Wiki as we sat back down.

“It isn’t,” he softly said back. “Mostly.” Then the meeting started for real.

At first it was awfully, horribly, unbelievably boring. Someone to my left started the reports, and we went clockwise around the circle giving everyone a chance to speak. Every person there was the representative of a ‘department’ or ‘interest’ in Human Town, or sometimes several. Some of them passed without saying much, but just as often they wanted to linger in the limelight.

Wiki had warned me that they saved the interesting ‘special project’ stuff for last, so that people would stick around, but after ninety minutes I was about ready to say fuck it and go straight back to old Hell even without an escape ability.

Rick, an African construction manager in overalls, talked about how his workers were slowing down due to hunger and fatigue. There were multiple construction projects underway, and an argument about materials ensued.

“Why are we still building anything?” I whispered to Maribel.

“To keep people busy,” she responded. “In case Yukari comes back and wants to do something with the new sections of town.”

I winced. Yukari would be gone for a very long time. Even if her plan had been to duplicate more urban sections we were probably stuck with what we had. Some of the projects sounded like farming or processing facilities, at least, so they weren’t entirely useless. The teams were also building power distribution structures. Electricity poles, made of wood because we didn’t have steel. A young guy with a braid said he was working on a forge and got shushed. He skipped his turn.

Reika and the two Japanese men with her talked about local businesses. The bathhouse was getting more customers as the weather got colder.

The meeting went on to talk about crimes and laws. That report was given by Lex, a portly Spanish man with a full beard. He talked about how the provisional laws were earning the ire of just about everybody, despite their careful construction with the hindsight of the most advanced legal systems on Earth. Everybody had conflicting ideas about what was proper.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Gensokyo was a multicultural capitalist utopia with a strong socialist central government, except ruined by massive immigration, so these sort of disputes were to be expected.

After Lex’s legal report a farmer named Joe had nothing but bad news. The stores were just about consumed, and all but a small section of the gardens were dead because Minoriko Aki was too weakend to help us. We would need an alternative food source in less than two weeks, or else people would be going hungry.

“It’s time to eat some of the chickens,” he said. “And their food.”

“I agree,” said Reika.

“Their meat would extend our timeline by… a week,” said Renko. She didn’t say whether or not it would be worth it.

“It wouldn’t be worth it,” said Wiki.

“I have twenty officers, and only ten I would trust not to steal from the hen-houses themselves,” added Raghav. “If we aren’t going to defend the chickens, we should distribute them to the worthy.” A long argument ensued. With a vote, the Council decided to spend some resources protecting the chickens.

Finding more food was a ‘special topic’ that would be revisited at the end. Several people were pursuing solutions and would give special reports. The kid with the braid kept looking at me.

We went around the room. Renko gave no report; she was there to help with math and to take notes. Wiki also skipped; he was conducting the meeting. I was deferred for special topics. Maribel gave a short report about things found at the Hakurei Barrier–lots of electric lamps, which was suspiciously good timing–and sat back down. Raghav went last.

He had news about police efforts, but it ended up mostly being minor disputes between residents of human town. His newspaper column was bullshit. It didn’t stop him from monopolizing the meeting.

Raghav then talked about danmaku users. He said the students were advancing fast, which was good–it was part of my own plans. Then he went on to talk about disappearances, and I felt a knot of worry settle in my gut.

“Another human has left without explanation,” he said. “This brings the total of missing humans up to twenty-six.” I reeled; ten times as many people were in Gensokyo, and they were going missing ten times as fast. “I should remind the Council that we can only be sure of four kidnappings; the others might have been voluntary abandonment.”

“Nevertheless,” said Renko. “Is it still true that none have voluntarily returned?”

“Unfortunately,” said Raghav.

“Hold on a fucking minute,” I said, making everyone stare at me. “Twenty-six people are just… gone, and I’m just learning this now? And it happened right under Marisa’s nose?”

“The information is controlled,” said Raghav. “We don’t want to strengthen our enemies by sowing fear and discontent.” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you plan on leaking this information?”

“... no,” I said. That explained the harsh oath. “But help me understand. How haven’t people realized?” If one of my roommates vanished, I’d definitely notice!

“Most of the four thousand people are still strangers,” said Renko. “They are divided into groups of three or four. If twenty-six have disappeared, between fifty-two and seventy-eight people are in a position to notice immediately. That’s less than two percent of the population.” She was rubbing her chin. “I wonder if they’d tell anyone given that we can’t use the disinternet.”

“No one has mentioned it to me, outside this room,” said Maribel.

“Reassignment requests are common enough that nobody questions it,” added a man with stubble. “You gain a new roommate, you lose an old one, you weren’t close anyway.” I remembered that Toyosatomimi no Miko and Komeiji Koishi hadn’t had time to sort people, on the day of Yukari’s disappearance.

“Well, even if you can keep it a secret,” I said, “Since the youkai feed on fear, maybe letting people know and be afraid would reduce the rate of attacks? They may be our enemies, but forcing them to starve and make desperate moves seems like a bad idea.” There was some murmuring.

“Thank you,” said Reika while waving a hand. “We should let people be afraid! Not only do they have a right to know what’s going on, but the youkai will be less incentivized to attack us if they aren’t hungry! Our primary goal should be placating them until Yukari returns.” The men beside her were nodding.

“The opposite is true,” said Wiki. “On both–well, two of three counts.”

“If we force the youkai of the rebellion to starve, escalation is inevitable,” said Reika.

“We do not negotiate with terrorists,” said Raghav.

“We already discussed this,” added Wiki, shaking his head. “We have a lot to cover. Let’s move on.”

Reika crossed her arms and sat back down, but she nodded toward me. I’d inadvertently waded into a political battle on her side, against my own roommate. Whoops.

“Is it time for special topics?” asked Raghav. He received affirmation from several council members. “Good. The lighthouse is ready. I’ve identified a dozen volunteers, so we should start immediately.”

“Seconded,” said Lex.

“All in favor?” asked Wiki. Everyone’s hand went up, including mine, but I didn’t technically have a vote. I looked at Maribel in confusion.

“A trap,” she explained. “Someone will sleep by themselves on the edge of town, in a house that is full of electric lights that come on if the bedroom door is opened unexpectedly. It’s to catch the youkai that keep kidnapping people, if they exist and it isn’t people trying to run away.”

“A weird kind of lighthouse,” I said. “That seems dangerous. How confident are we that shining a light on them would stop them?” I also had questions about how it worked–did they have tons of improvised batteries that might lose charge? Was it a tripwire that could be flown over?

She shrugged and continued in a whisper. “Ask Wiki if you want to know. He didn’t tell us how he knew it would be effective, but he knows that youkai are severely affected by electric lights.”

I looked at my roommate, and realized that while I’d been debriefing him for weeks, he hadn’t been debriefing me nearly as much. I didn’t get much time to wonder. My own contribution was the next topic.

I stood up and told the council about our stay with the oni, their cannibalistic nature, and their attempt to convert Sasha and I. I tried to go fast (a lot of people’s time was being spent, mine included!) but that ended up backfiring a bit because they needed to ask lots of questions. They wanted to know why battling all the fairies and taking my time helped; they wanted to know my spell cards; they had many curiosities about small details of the logistics of Oni town, not all of which I could answer. Even the locals, who were strangely ambivalent about danmaku, asked a few questions.

It took a long time to explain everything that had happened. I was thanked for providing workers that could fly, even if they were part of the rebellion. There was an argument about using youkai labor to build systems against them, but Rick said that flight really did make stringing wires easier.

“I like the spider lady,” he said. “She’s funny. The wires are visible anyway, so there is no point hiding them from her.”

“So the system is useless,” I said. “The wires can be cut.”

“Not quite useless,” said Wiki. “But that’s a topic for another time.”

“You did say that Ibuki Suika’s gourd has infinite wine?” asked the young man with a long braid.

“Sake, but yeah.”

“That could be a foodsource.” He had a lot of papers in front of him and a nervous energy.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Sorry, you guys should really get name tags.”

“My name is Aka,” he said. “I was a chemical engineering enthusiast. I’m pleased to meet you.”

“Ah,” I said. Nobody was actually a chemical engineer, anymore, since the rise of powerful AI synthesis systems, but there were a lot of industry-focused videogames. Aka had probably fantasized about bringing that knowledge to Gensokyo before the harsh reality became apparent. Everything was also harder without AI, and in real life, so it was no wonder he was struggling with a forge instead of a chemical plant.

“I’ve thought about methods of extraction,” he said. “Sake isn’t just alcohol. There are proteins and vitamins in it, too.”

“Explain,” said Wiki. The man launched into a long diatribe about distillation columns, drying techniques, and bioreactors. The gist of it was that sake only had a small amount of nutrition that could be separated from the alcohol, but if you had an infinite amount of sake you could theoretically get an infinite amount of nutrition.

“We’ll feed the boiler with the ethanol we’re removing,” he said. “If I had a biosynth setup, we could make bacteria that eat it, but… work with what you got. I think you could get about one hundred and fifty non-alcoholic calories per liter.”

“Fifty thousand liters of sake per day for the whole village,” said Renko immediately. “I imagine that stuff isn’t nutritionally complete, though, so perhaps less and we’ll keep using other foods.”

“What are you doing later?” asked Aka. She gave him a curious look. Maribel’s expression was considerably colder. “I could use your help designing the system,” he added.

“We are getting ahead of ourselves,” said Wiki. He turned to me. “Do you think you could convince Suika to let you borrow her gourd?”

“Well, I’m pretty confident that either her or Yuugi is the second stage boss… so I suppose that means there’s a fifty percent chance,” I said. “I will try my best. Is oni sake safe to eat though? What if it turns you into an oni?”

“The oni are already selling wine in the village,” said Reika. “Through Miss Komeiji.”

“Reimu has checked it for negative effects,” added Raghav. “There are none. We already discussed the risk.”

“Four meetings ago,” said Renko.

“Good,” said Wiki. “So try to get the sake from her. Next–”

“But I want something in exchange,” I said. The whole council stared at me. I swallowed.

“What’s that?” asked Reika.

“Nothing too crazy,” I said sheepishly. “I just want help completing my mission. There are four thousand people in the human village, and what, a hundred of them are learning danmaku?” I looked at Raghav. “At the very least I could be training against them. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’m trying to protect a village… without telling them that I’m protecting them.”

Reika’s head tilted. Her gaze was intense. Maybe she thought I was commenting on the policy of hiding disappearances, even though I wasn’t.

“I’ve been squandering this resource, for practice certainly, but also just… ideas,” I continued. “I was hoping that a few people could be spared to watch our expeditions and help me come up with strategies for dodging bullets, or at least noticing the patterns. Maybe other students could imitate the youkai I fight so that we could get more practice on the surface. And the youkai themselves have identifiable motivations, so having a lot of people to watch for details… it could make a difference. And if not all that, just telling people about what I’m doing and asking for ideas…” I waved at the assembled group. “It works, right?”

“That sounds ill-defined and wishful,” said Raghav.

“No,” said Reika. “He’s onto something. We’ve got four thousand almost-idle starving humans. Something to entertain them might help us weather this crisis.” She sat back. “And you said that one of your motivating emotions was ‘showing off’?”

“Yes,” I said, my face burning. I wanted praise and admiration–I’d admitted that to myself and now to the Council–but I’d done almost nothing to receive it. Most of the human village didn’t even know my name, unlike the youkai. Somehow.

Wiki began to nod as well. “It’s a bit weird, but I think you’re right.” Reika glared at him. “The course of action is weird, you being right is plausible and frequent, calm down.”

“She’s right a bit over sixty percent,” said Renko with a small smile.

“You made that up,” said Reika.

“Sixty-five percent now,” said Maribel.

“Can we focus?” asked Raghav. He turned to me. “Is the idea that many danmaku students would watch you? From where?”

“The library at the Scarlet Devil Mansion,” I said. “There’s a projection crystal there.” I hoped Patchouli would agree to it–I hadn’t asked her yet.

“Or you could bring the projection crystal here,” said Wiki. “I think this is worth pursuing. Jake should get people to watch his expeditions. So should the others. In fact… they could become the first real livestreamers of Touhou.”