“Would it really be wrong though?” Hiraku questioned, a mischievous smile on his face, “If the mochi’s purchased as a thank-you for all the hard work of the members of the MYO?”

After all, the plan WAS to purchase enough mochi to feed even the mascot dog, right? He personally didn’t think it was that much of a problem to use the organization’s budget when it’s for the sake of the organization’s members, but it looked like he was outvoted in this regard. “Well, if you’re so keen on paying, feel free to, Ren. And I wouldn’t put it past you to keep money up your sleeves, like those Chinese ninjas. That being said…”

Reaching out towards the satori’s antennae ears with a closed fist, Hirako said with mock surprise, “Oh, what’s this? When did you start using your antennae as your wallet, Aoi?”

And, within that clenched fist was a 500 yen coin. Which had always been there, because his own skills in sleight-of-hand was trash…but it was just a joke, really. Flicking the coin up and catching it once more, Hirako said, “Alright, I’ll go negotiate with Jou over there about group deals, so just…uh, pick out a good mallet, eh? Find the flattest head and go for the heaviest one you think you can repeatedly swing!”

A few minutes of intense handwaving and money slapping later, Hiraku returned to the duo, flashing a peace sign and a frayed smile.

“5kg of mochi for 2000 yen, if we do it all on the spot. Howzat sound, Ren?”
@Lightning@VitaVitaAR

Makiko gave Shiki a nod, before her attention returned to the little girl, who was still looking up at Suzuka in surprise for a few moments. It really wasn't every day you saw a tennin, they weren't the most common of youkai after all. It was quite possible the little girl didn't come from around here, either, so seeing youkai wasn't exactly a common occurrence. After all, outside of the Imaginary District, youkai were a secret that the public was not allowed any privy too. Not just youkai, but all supernatural entities and occurrences. Regardless of the reason, she patted the girl on the head again.

"Suzuka-san is right," she began, "We need to know what your parents look like, so can you tell us, Sayuri-chan?"

The little girl shifted on her feet and hesitated for several moments.

"Um, mommy is really pretty... she has kind of wavy brown hair and green eyes," she said, after a moment, attempting to illustrate her mother's hair with her hands, "And... oh, she's wearing blue! Daddy has short black hair and grey eyes, and um... you'll really find them?"

Makiko gave Sayuri another smile.

"Of course, Sayuri-chan! Leave it to the Miura Youth Organization!"

The black-haired girl straightened and proudly jerked a thumb towards her chest. After all, this was the kind of thing she had formed the Youth Organization for!

Still holding Sayuri's hand with her other hand, Makiko turned towards Suzuka.

"Do you think you could try and fly up and try and spot anyone like that, Suzuka-san?" she asked, "If not, we can just take a look around, but it'd be quicker with a bird's eye view!"

@AtomicNut@easy modo

"It was in my hand the whole time I just..." The Kitsune trailed off as Hiraku was preforming his own trick. Ren pouted as he pretended to pull the coins from Aoi's ear. "He didn't even use real magic...and wheres the confetti?" she murmured to herself.

Before Hiraku turned around towards her, she turned her head looking nonchalant. "Uh, sure, that's cool with me." Ren said calmly. She had faith in the boy, he did know this sort of stuff better than she did.

"Alright Aoi, lets pick up a good one," Ren said walking towards the mallets that were lined up waiting to be picked up and used pick a hammer of justice, at least that's what Ren was thinking. The kitsune lifted a few before she found one that she could pick up and swing. "We were destined to meet, here and now...in this place. Hammer of Light, lend me your strength," she says jokingly.

Ren looked up towards Hiraku as he waved his arms making a deal with the man running the stall, the deal had seemed to gone well for him. Ren returned the smile and replied, "yeah sounds good." Honestly she had no clue what a good deal was for mochi but Hiraku seemed pleased.

Just then, a man with short black hair and grey eyes approached the three MYO members. The Man looked panicked, Ren blinked taking in the mans appearance. "Uh-did you need help sir?" she asked softly.

"Y-yeah, a lady told me to look for you kids with the orange arm bans, she said you'd be able to help," the man says nervously. The man looked young, maybe early to mid twenties at the moment it seemed he was stressed. "I lost my little girl...Sayuri. Me and my wife have been looking for her it's been almost an hour.

Ren placed a hand on the man's arm to calm him down, "Okay-okay, umm...let me contact my boss and she'll put out the word. We'll find her sir, the MYO are on the case.

Ren took her hand from the man's arm and pulled out her phone she began to text ferociously as the man describe his daughter from her hair and eye color to what she was wearing. The text was sent to all MYO members, hopefully one of them would spot the missing girl.

@ERode@VitaVitaAR

It's not as if it wasn't obvious what Hiraku had done, but Aoi clapped for him regardless, giving him a cheery smile as he left to negotiate. With that, she hurried off to pick a hammer, ideally the best one of the bunch. Nice and heavy, but not so heavy it's hard to lift, flat, firm head...! To her surprise, however, she felt satisfaction radtiate from nearby and turned to see that Ren had picked out a rather perfect-looking hammer. They were going to pound all the mochi they could eat! ... Well, them and the rest of the Organization's members. Only... it was right about then that her antenna picked up another approaching presence, twitching. Aoi turned to face the source of the sensation.

Upon hearing his story, Aoi immediately decided it was time to volunteer her assistance. She did so by jutting her hand into the air like she was in class almost immediately.

"If you let me touch my forehead to yours I can look into your memories and see if we can get a better idea of where to start looking!" she declared, volunteering herself. The green-haired girl paused for a moment, realizing that likely didn't explain much of anything. "Um, I'm a satori, so I can read your mind to see if there's anything that might help that you might not be thinking of right now!"

@ERode@Lightning

He smiled down at her and nodded. Both was always the right choice in this situation. Finding an empty spot seemed to be a good choice too, as well as having her make a decision.

"Okay. You can get us both some takoyaki and I'll get the crepes. Then we can go somewhere to enjoy them."

He started to move in the direction of the crepe stand. She should be able to manage a little on her own. Visiting both stands at once as well would mean avoiding any trouble if they happened to become busy later.

@raineh daze

Standing in front of the takoyaki vendor confronted Hoshiko with the worst dilemma possible when the man running the stall asked her how much she wanted. At least, being a festival stall like this, it was pretty clear what she was going to ask for... but she had no idea how much August would want to eat! Or how much she should get to make sure that she could sample as much of the food on sale tonight as possible.

"Ah... two... no... four? Ah... three!" the girl said, unable to decide and eventually opting for making sure that there was enough that she hadn't gotten too little.

Though it was rather hard to carry it all...

@VitaVitaAR

Oh, so she's not really going to walk around, right. Why wouldn't Suzuka just fly up and look for that someone, huh? That sounds so- aw, that's not going to work. There's a reason that's not going to work, and that's because oh hell the Chief's right, Makiko's god damn right, why the hell haven't she thought of this? That could've saved a lot more time than just walking around and breaking your neck from trying to find whoever had green eyes and brown hair.

"Alright, I'll look for her quick," Suzuka said, nodding and giving a quick thumbs-up. "I'll be prepping up a bit and..."

Suzuka achieved liftoff.

"Now where was she...?"

There were a hundred brownhairs at the crowd, and a similar hundred greeneyes. A dozen had exactly both of them, but nearly all of them looked too young to be raising a child.

---

The forgotten phone on the desk within Suzuka's room shed a tear, as it futilely vibrated to a message the tennin would never lay eyes on.

At least while it was still useful.

Fortunately for Hoshiko at nearly the exact moment she was contemplating how to carry that many Takoyaki, a boy fell right out of the sky and landed with a small crash and a puff of dust a little ways away, still dressed in a school uniform rather than any sort of relaxed clothing for the occasion.

"Hmm...nope...still can't find that girl anywhere..."

Tenchi's more than human strength meant that he was very, very good at jumping but unfortunately not always so good at landing without making a scene. He had a mobile phone in one hand and had apparently been staring at a text message before he landed, but looked around and spotted Hoshiko at the Takoyaki stand after the dust cleared.

"Oh, Hi there Mori-San! Could you use a hand? I was looking for someone, but I'm not having any luck!"

While waiting for the crepes He checked the message tha he had gotten several minutes ago. Not having seen any little girls that matched the description, he put the phone away. There was no sense in sending a useless reply.

August turned back with crepes in hand. It looked like Hoshiko had done well too. He was about to suggest that he carry her up onto the roof to keep an eye out for the missing girl when they were approached by someone.

"Ah, Dojima. I had been just about to suggest looking from the rooftops. It should be easier to spot someone from up there."

Ah, so mochi-pounding was going to be interrupted after all, in the name of doing MYO work. Shooting a sympathetic glance towards Aoi, who should be off-duty all things considered, Hiraku flipped out his own phone, confirming that the group-wide text that Ren sent had actually passed. Yup, there it was, even if it didn’t seem like anyone else in the group checked that out yet. Should he call? Naw, they were probably just too busy walking around to notice the buzzing of their cellphones. Though in Makiko’s case…

Hiraku smirked. She probably took the whole mantra of ‘don’t bring your cellphone to work’ too seriously and left it somewhere, if that exorcist girl even had one to begin with.

“Reading memories and searching through the crowds is good and all,” Hiraku said, nodding at the parents, “But the town DOES have a PA system we could use. Didn’t the police set up a Lost Child Station or something? Maybe someone brought her there?”

It'd make much more sense than dragging a kid around the district-wide festival hoping to bump into her parents, at least.
@VitaVitaAR@Lightning

Makiko watched Suzuka ascend into the air, then heard her cell phone's message tone(Missile Aya's newest single, it was the opening for a new anime too!) With her free hand, she dug her phone out of her bag.

Huh, that was lucky! One of the little girl's parents had run right into Ren-san, so they wouldn't have to keep searching for her all over the place! Smiling, she swiftly texted the kitsune back.

I have Sayuri-chan right here! We'll go to the lost child station!

"Sayuri-chan," she began, "We've already found your parents! We'll meet up with them at the Lost Child Station, okay?"

Sayuri's eyes seemed to shine for a moment.

"R-really...? You found them so fast?" she asked, trembling, "Th-thank you, onee-chan!"

Makiko smiled at the little girl as she put her phone away and patted her on the head once more, before looking upwards towards the tenin.

"Oii, Suzuka-san!" she called to the youkai, waving her hand in the air. "Ren-san found her father, let's take her to the Lost Child Station!"

Up in the air, however... Suzuka might notice a strange thrumming noise from behind her. However, if she were to look, there would be nothing visible, and the sound would be long gone.

@AtomicNut@easy modo

"You're right that is a good idea, Hiraku." Ren said nodding her head. "I think the police did set something up and if I can recall its that way!" she said pointing toward the entrance.

Just as the Kitsune was about to lead the way her phone began to beep with a very boring sound. "Oh!" she let out as she unlocked her phone and read the text. Her face lit up and let the man know of the great news. The fathers face looked ten years younger, he let out a long sigh of relief. "Thank the gods," he said as he ruffled his hair.

Ren looked at the other two members and said, "You guys can get the mochi, I'll take him to the station. It's really a one person job anyways." The kitsune gave the pair a thumps up and began to led the man to the station, though she really wanted to pound the mochi, duty called.

Trying to keep all of the takoyaki in her arms was difficult enough even without being surprised by Tenchi's dropping in from nowhere, and the white-haired girl's startled response left one of the containers precariously dangling from one arm. Not that she, of all the people in this district, should have to worry about dropping something. "Ah, thank you, Dojima-san... could you take hold of the one falling off?"

It might have been part of the Organisation's duties to help out with things like people lost in a festival, but for clear reasons, Hoshiko was not a person to expect to be any use in such a hunt. Except for spotting the person by accident, the girl was too small and skittish to actually prove useful. Finding one person only to misplace her in the process would only make things worse.

Then August came back: "I didn't know how much you wanted, so I got more in case..."

"Oh, that's right, isn't it?" Aoi said with a little bit of a nervous chuckle, rubbing the back of her head. She felt a little bit silly forgetting about obvious things like the PA system and the lost children station. Those were kind of obvious things to keep in mind in this sort of situation, weren't they?

Thankfully, it seemed like Ren quickly got a response to the father's relief, and that she'd be taking him to wait at the police station until the little girl was taken there.

"That's good!" the diminutive satori said, nodding cheerfully, "But are you sure you don't want anyone else to come with you just in case?"

Certainly, the idea of getting to stay behind and pound her own mochi was appealing, but Aoi didn't want to neglect her duties as part of the Youth Organization either! Still, though, all that mochi pounding... ahhh, but it was so important to help a family reunite too, even if it seemed like things would be fine what if they weren't?!

While Aoi was wracked with this clearly difficult decision, she suddenly felt... something. It wasn't possible for her to discern what, but her antenna picked up a strange feeling, that seemed to disappear as soon as it appeared. Her antenna twitched as she looked around.

"... Did anyone else..." she trailed off. It wasn't likely anyone else did feel that, but...

@ERode@Lightning

Tenchi reacted quickly, stepping in and scooping up the falling container of takoyaki with his bandage-and-charm-covered right arm and sporting a rather apologetic expression.

"Sorry about that, Mori-San! I didn't mean to startle you! I was just looking for-"

Tenchi paused as he noticed August returning, using his free hand to wave.

"Oh, hello! I was thinking the same thing, um, about the girl, but it's actually pretty hard to see what individual people look like from way up in the air, it turns out! I could try it again but I'm not sure I'd do much better..."

Tenchi was holding onto one of the containers of Takoyaki now, though he would probably jump up to look again if August insisted. He didn't know quite what to do, though on second thought maybe he had jumped too high the first time around and he should have tried to jump lower in order to pick out fine details as he went past.

"I think...if I put a little less power into the jump I might be able to spot her? Although I really would like to enjoy the festival..."

It wasn't that he didn't want to help a little girl, it was just that, with all of the MYO alerted Tenchi was almost certain that someone else would find the girl first. Besides, the food in his arms looked incredibly delicious. Well, that sort of thought process was probably what happened when an entire population encouraged you to be as carefree and lazy as possible out of mistrust, after all. The Youth Organization and its' students were probably the only people that not only treated Tenchi normally, but encouraged him to use his abilities.

Yes. Operation Shirk-Responsibilities-and-Hand-Off-the-Problem-to-Someone-Else was successful. It really was a good idea to read up on what the police were doing for the festival, huh? Always paid to be aware of those things, especially when your focus was on having as much fun as possible. Still, it was a shame that Ren had to go off to lead an adult man through the festival.

“Sure thing,” Hiraku said, masking his disappointment, “We’ll save a big portion for you, yeah? Well, Aoi, time to work out those arms of yours, eh? Five kilograms of rice to mash through, after all.”

Rolling up his own sleeves, Hiraku was about to head back to the stall in order to complete the transaction, when the satori’s expression became serious. Her antennae were twitching, and internally, the blue-haired youth was groaning about the possibility that she just detected another troublesome incident nearby.

“What’s up?” he said, “Detected another lost child?”
@VitaVitaAR

The festival was always something Hotaru, unlike her fellow citizens of the Imaginary District, disliked. Her social anxiety was brutally attacked in such a large crowd, so much to the point that she had fainted from stress just a few years ago. Ever since then, Hotaru has tried her very best to get out of going, but as the head priestess of the Grand Shrine so nearby, how could she not join in the festivities? It would make her seem cold.

So, now she took along one of her spirits each year with her, for some familiarity. This year it happened to be Inugami's turn, and now the hound spirit walked beside his lady with utmost distaste, clawed hands tucked in the sleeves of his black and gray haori and ears pricked. He also disliked the festival... but for different reasons.

A human child ran up to him, and quite roughly snatched his floofy black tail, screaming: "Puppy, puppy!"

A low growl rumbled in Inugami's chest, he already beginning to withdraw one of his hands from the sleeve until Hotaru crouched at eye level with the child. She gently moved the kid's hand away, her warm chocolate eyes soothing and convincing. "Puppy doesn't like that, sweetie. You'll get lost out here. Run along to your parents before you get hurt, okay?" The child gave a toothy, stupid grin that only a young kid could wear well, before skipping off.

"... Please never call me puppy again, my lady..."
"I wouldn't think of it. Come on, let's get a treat... I'm a bit worried with leaving Juju and Nure alone at the shrine..."

The two wandered over to one of the many stands, looking for something sweet, and Inugami looking for something to drink— preferably of the alcoholic nature, perhaps some good rice sake.

"Oh, that much should be perfect. Did you want to eat on the rooftops so we can keep an eye out for the missing girl?"

He looked up at the top of the building. It would be easy to climb up there, even carrying someone. Dojima, he was sure, would be able to make it up there on his own. His presence also solved another problem. He couldn't exactly climb with his hands full.

"Hey Dojima, could you hold these too while I climb up?"

Tenchi gave the two of them a big grin as he took over holding the Takoyaki.

"Oh, sure thing August! I guess that way we can do two things at once." He seemed relieved that there was a way for all of them to enjoy the festival and help search for the girl and her parents at the same time, or perhaps it just inherently appealed to his easygoing nature to be able to work and relax at the same time.

"That building looks like a good spot. Ah! But how will Mori-San get up there?"

With her arms now relieved of most of the burden, the girl was now able to focus more on their proposed eating spot. She didn't have anything against the height; it would be nice to be somewhere out of the way to eat and maybe watch fireworks later without being crowded around. Tenchi brought up a pretty major point, though: she had no way to get to a rooftop. She couldn't climb or jump like the youkai and their relatives in the district and she wasn't a fully trained mage like her cousin.

There was no way that she was getting to the rooftop under her own power. The one ability she did have that might be able to do that... well, she wasn't even sure if she could lift a person that way and didn't want to try. Especially not with the added complication of trying to levitate herself to such a height...

"Ah... maybe there's stairs?"

@Dblade26@TheFake