Turn back the clock hands half an hour ago, when Mei Hong and Kaguya were in a difficult fight, and Marisa and Alice, who were riding a broom together, had finished their initial search of the area they were in charge of, and the results were ......

There just didn't come of it.

"I borrowed it!"

Marisa took two high-calorie chocolate bars, lifted the curtain, walked out of the dark grocery store, handed one of them to Alice, who was waiting at the door, and said:

"Why don't you have one?"

"No," Alice shook her head as she gently pushed away the chocolate bar that was handed to her, "I've been quitting this since a long time ago, and besides, ......"

She watched Marisa peel open the plastic bag of the chocolate bar like a banana peel, opened her mouth, and bit down like a carp, and then cried and laughed:

"You're stealing!"

Or, in Rinnosuke's words, "Marisa borrowed."

"What's wrong?"

Marisa chewed "crunched", puffed out her slowly stuffed cheeks, and said confidently:

"I bleed and sweated for them, and I couldn't eat two pieces of candy!"

"Yes, yes, yes, you have a point, there is a truth in Morisha. ”

Alice shook her head with a wry smile, then gradually put away her smile. She looked away from Marisa's body and glanced left and right. The glow of the red moon sprinkled all over the empty street where they were, and the color of the eyes was either red or black, and they couldn't see a single figure for a long time. There was a dead silence all around, except for the cool evening breeze that poured into the house with the door open, and the strange sound of "squeak" and "clang" made by the swing of the door sounded like a haunting, very permeating.

Alice likes to wander around the neighborhood on weekdays, and it's a small but beautiful neighborhood that's far from the city center, so it's not bustling, but it's not deserted. The houses and roads here generally retain the quaint style of the Edo period, with brown wood and white stones, and weeping willows in small rivers, which have not changed for more than 100 years. Under the tide of industrialization and commercialization set off by kappa, tengu and some foreign humans, this precious "unchanged" makes this place unique. Walking along the small forks in the road between the houses, Alice can always find some small shops that surprise her, quite a kind of "mountains and rivers have no way out, and the willows and flowers are bright and another village".

But now, searching the street is a real ordeal for her. From the street to the end of the street, she searched room by room, and all she gained was disappointment and worry, and the infinite accumulation of the two. That is, the face of Marisa in front of her, who was satisfied with eating, could bring her some comfort. At times like this, she always has the idea that "I want to have a big heart like Marisa", but after a while, she will be disappointed to find that she can't learn.

After Marisa finished replenishing her energy, she threw the wrapping paper to the side of the road, and touched her stomach and burped, Alice said:

"So, this is the last one?"

"Ahh ”

"Hey......," Alice sighed, "and then we can only look forward to the results of Reimu and Huiyin......

When Marisa saw Alice's disappointed look, she patted her on the shoulder, laughed a lot, and said:

"It's okay, okay, our piece is relatively biased, and it's reasonable that we can't find the results. Reimu went to the barnyard field house on the hillside, and Huiyin went to the city center, and the possibility of finding clues was much higher than ours. Besides, take 10,000 steps back, even if you don't find ...... among people."

"Shhhh

At this point, Alice suddenly put a finger in front of her lips, let out a long "shh Her ears were pricked up, her eyes widened, and her expression was steady and startled, like that of a cat that suddenly became alert.

Before Marisa could figure out what Alice meant, Alice was within a pout of her lips enough to kiss her. She could feel Alice's cold snort brush her cheeks, and the smooth, unwarm hand of a ceramic doll pressed against her lips, preventing her from making any sound. Alice just kept covering her mouth, and with an extremely serious look, she lowered her voice and said to her:

"When I first started searching, didn't I release six automata?"

"Hmm!"

Marisa couldn't speak, so she responded with a continuous nod.

"Those six are standard automata that I made in large quantities with the same technology, the same materials, in other words, the 'production type'. Alice continued, "They can do simple tasks like 'searching', 'fighting', 'garrisoning', and so on. I connect myself to them with magic threads, using these thin transparent wires as 'conductors' to provide them with the necessary energy, transmit new instructions, and receive feedback from them. ”

"However, after all, it is a mass-produced doll, and it is not too intelligent. The information they can return is very simple, a brief statement of fact such as 'the enemy has been found', 'I have started the fight', 'the enemy has been destroyed', or 'not enough energy'. ”

"I gave them three tasks: 'searching', 'reporting' and 'tracking'. This means that they will randomly search the area I designate, and if they find a target, they will immediately report the situation to me and try to track it down. During the entire investigation between the two of us, they didn't deliver a single message to me. This is quite disappointing to me, and I intend to take them back and end the investigation into the area, but ......"

"Just a minute ago, one of the six magic threads in the palm of my hand sent me a feedback. The content is simple, with only three sentences in total. ”

"One, 'Humanoids are found, and the number is one.'" Second, 'try to track'. Third, 'the target is lost, return to its original position'. These three sentences are not the point, the point is after they are passed on......"

At this point, Alice stopped talking. She let go of the left hand that was covering Marisa's mouth, took a step back, and spread out her right hand holding the magic thread.

I have to say that Alice's craftsmanship is really fine, to the point of being incredible. The threads were made of pure energy, only the thickness of a hair's hair, completely transparent, and were almost invisible in normal times, only lighting up with a fleeting blue light when the magic flowed through the threads. That's a disaster for guys trying to figure out the thin lines.

Marisa bent down and almost pressed her face to Alice's palm. She narrowed her eyes, pursed her mouth, frowned, pinched her chin, and looked at the old man for a long time like a palmist, but she didn't understand it. In desperation, Alice had to deliberately inject some magic into those threads, so that they lit up with a faint blue light. With this light, Marisa finally discovered their existence in the palm of Alice's hand.

"You're a good palmist. ”

Marisa quipped as she looked at the thin lines that were clear and out.

Six threads of magic that extend in six different directions, like cobwebs. Five of them are floating in the air and occasionally vibrate, presumably due to the movements of the puppet on the other end. Only one, after leaving Alice's hand, fell limply, and finally stuck to the ground, like a broken fishing line. Marisa carefully pinched it with two fingers, wrapping it around her fingers. After a little distance, she stopped, for she had found the end of the thread—there was no doll attached to it, which was supposed to be attached.

In other words, this thread has been cut off.

Marisa removed the magic thread from her fingers and looked up to meet Alice. It didn't take a word for both of them to know what to do next.