Scene #8839: Give An Inchling And They'll Take A Mile

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	"Sniffing around for a way into Lobotomy Corporation HQ" is something that's gotten a nonzero number of City denizens killed. Between Wing secrecy and an overly-curious human life, the laws of the City practically demand that they take the pragmatic route of simply executing the offender to prevent public knowledge of the horrors within. Shinmyoumaru is, of course, neither human nor a denizen of the City, but the quality that ranks most in her favor is the fact that she's a member of the Concord. When her (clumsy) investigative attempts get noticed by Angela, she's given a warpgate code rather than a bullet between the eyes. When Noyo is told that 'someone who knows her' is coming to the facility, she's pale as a sheet expecting to be punished; instead she's directed to meet Shinmyoumaru by the warpgate and show her around the facility, answering her questions 'within reason'. Seems pleasant enough, right? Minutes before Shinmyoumaru's arrival... "And I don't even know what 'within reason' means! I'm not sure if it's safe to show her the Abnormalities, or-- what if she wants to look around our department? What am I supposed to tell her about the Well?! Hell, I barely understand it!" Noyo, having burst into the Extraction break room where Vincent is currently lounging, paces back and forth around the couch, hands running through her hair. "Damn. Bundle of nerves, aren'tcha?" "I thought I had this handled! But everything here is so different from my other branch, and I can't even ask the Captain for advice because she's not even here half the time! People die over this kind of stuff! I've seen it!" Noyo slams her hands on the back of the couch, leaning forwards to stare right into Vincent's face, which she matches with a cool gaze. "Honestly, I'm shocked ya haven't given yourself an aneurysm already. I can't even guess where you work up all that energy from." Despite that, Vincent swings her legs off the couch, stretching her arms lazily. "Well, no point in letting you freak out alone. You say she's a princess?"
Petra Soroka	The artificial warpgate at Lobotomy Corporation opens up inside a containment cell in the Control Department, on the top floor of the facility. When Shinmyoumaru steps out, the tan walls and bare concrete floor are lit dully green by screens on the wall, showing data and internal news she doesn't have any context for. The facility stinks like blood and bleach, seeped into the very foundation of every room and hallway, familiar enough to the residents to not even be noticed. Cells line the halls, with heavy steel doors and a single thick porthole window, revealing various otherworldly horrors contained inside, while employees in tan armbands bustle around with carts of yellow-black striped boxes or attend to the cells. Noyo and Vincent, both in EGO gear, wait outside the warpgate. Noyo, with a cape made of vines and leaves draped over her suit to form a suggestion of a robe, and pointed elfin ears, can't settle down enough to sit. Vincent can, sitting on a pile of crates with a foot tucked undernearth herself; she's wearing a tattered red hooded cloak with short sleeves, beneath which is a black and red suit covered in belts. Her sleeves are wrapped in bandages that seem to be crusted with old blood, even though they're on the outside of the clothes. On either side of her hips is a hooked crescent blade and some sort of gun, matching in their brutal and somewhat-archaic aesthetic. They both have black and gold armbands on, distinctly different from any of the employees in this department. When Shinmyoumaru steps through, Noyo stops ranting and hops to attention, automatically bowing slightly in greeting. This happens no matter what state Shinmyoumaru is in when showing up. "Hello! Welcome, Princess Sukuna! I've been given permission to show you around, so let me know anything you'd be interested in seeing!"
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	The downside with inviting Shinmyoumaru to look at something is twofold. One, she will take you up on it. And two, she treats just about anything as an invitation. Having been unable to safely leave the Shining Needle Castle for so, so long, she has been trying to make up for lost time in overdrive since she started to travel in the multiverse. And, knowing nothing about Lobotomy Corporation except that several someones she have spoken to apparently work there, and that Noyo said that if she ever found her way there she'd be happy to show her around, Shinmyoumaru took that as solid fact as opposed to, for instance, something polite to say in the moment. But though she's good at getting into places whether they want her to or not, she's more used to wandering into things like castles and shrines. It's a little harder to just walk on in to Lobotomy Corporation - it's not like she can just slip in a minimally secured air vent, mousehole, or supply drop-off, and she hadn't managed to do more than make her interest obvious on her own. Fortunately for her, her attempts were not especially vigorous and not malicious at all and she was perfectly happy to instead accept a guide. That this lets them keep as much of an eye on her as anything else is lost on her. Shinmyoumaru decided to show up in her most common guise, and the one she was in at Sundew; a mostly human-looking girl about four feet tall. She looks young, both because of her height and the fact that she has a kind of round, 'cute' face. Noyo was, to all appearances, not wrong to guess she was a child - fourteen seems about right, though she claims to be older than that. She is wearing a red and black kimono-styled dress and has a little wooden hammer painted with stylized trees hanging at her waist, tied securely to the obi-like sash. It is intensely magical, because Shinmyoumaru hasn't really twigged to the fact that this is a place that secures deviant objects and they might not like her walking around with something like that. Also fortunately for Shinmyoumaru, she put shoes on, or at least zori. Walking through Lobotomy Corporation in bare feet sounds awful. Shinmyoumaru looks up and up at the two. She recognizes both, though Vincent only in passing - but she smiles to see them anyway. "Hello!" she says, brightly. "It was nice of you to show me around, I've never seen anywhere like this before!" There probably isn't anywhere else like this. Her nose wrinkles a little at the smell, but she does not immediately comment; her attention is more taken by the people she can see, both those two and the other employees bustling around. She's nosy. She watches where people are going for a few moments before she looks back. "I like your outfit," she says to Noyo, because she isn't nearly as taken by Vincent's bloody bandages. "I tried making things out of leaves once but it really doesn't work except maybe once, they go dry and crunchy too fast. How did you get them to stay so green?"
Angela	Angela is not going to ask someone to show Sukuna around if she intended to do so herself. Angela is having to investigate a growing number of agents interested in Unionizing and she has to educate herself on Unions so she can properly have Hod create a video about the dangers of a Union to tge agents so they'll stop. Right now Angela just doesn't want the hassle with the historically deadliest meltdown of the facility coming up. Control Agents are working in Control. Nearby, Random and Rook are kiting a murderous scarecroe through the halls, staying juuust out of its striking range while trying to lure it away from Extraction and the recent arrival when-- Massive telekinetic force crushes down upon the Scarecrow Seeking Wisdom until it caves in on itself, leaving a large grotesque egg behind that vanishes back to its cell shortly after. "Ah," Binah, whose voice Sukuna might recognize, is standing some distance away. Unlike on the video pad, her true form is of a black honeycomb patterned box robot with thin metallic limbs and one singular eye. "I thought since my lovely Agents were showing you around, I best join in on the tour." Binah says smoothly. "Please Noyo. Proceed as if I am not here." "I like your face," Parker adds, still wearing that flesh mask, having arrived with Binah. "I am also part of the team, eheheh..."
Petra Soroka	"Well, I can't promise it'll be that nice to look around, eheheh... it's just a workplace, in the end." Noyo's awkward little laugh is a jarring contrast to her normal voice, in that typically her voice warbles some but overall stays smooth, but her laugh is clipped and nasal. "It's sort of scary and unpleasant, too, so if you were hoping it'd be somewhere nice like the Sundew Castle, then..." "M-Miss Binah!" Noyo practically jumps in the air when Binah calls out, having not noticed that she'd come up in the elevator after the other pair. "Of course. And... hello, Parker." Vincent clambers off the boxes, giving a nod to Binah, and takes a few steps to loom over Shinmyoumaru (by virtue of being a foot and a half taller, though still shorter than Noyo). "What's with the interest in touring a place like this, huh? Are you just taking an opportunity to wander around and gawk before going back to your galas and castles?" "Vincent. Please don't say things like that, not to a visitor." "Binah told us to pretend like she wasn't here; wouldn't be right for me to disobey a direct order." "That was a direct order to me, technically... augh...." After squinting her eyes at Vincent-- a brattily-combatative expression matched by the much more downplayed smirk on Vincent's lips-- Noyo starts leading Shinmyoumaru through the main chamber towards the elevator, apologetically trying to maneuver around the other employees, babbling a bit while she does. "My own department-- the team Vincent and I, and, ah, Parker, and Binah, are part of, is on the very bottom floor. Right now we're on the highest floor, in Control Department. There's nine total, but I wouldn't have time to show you around all of them, and they're mostly the same in terms of agent work, besides. Not entirely the same, but I don't imagine you know much about the basics at all, here, so the details might be overwhelming." And on the subject of her gear, when Shinmyoumaru compliments it, "Oh! Well, it's an EGO--" Noyo glances at Binah to make sure that's an okay thing to say, pressing the button to call the elevator. "It's gear that we make from the Abnormalities here, which are a kind of... monster. EGO is almost like a living organism itself in some ways, since it takes its shape from the energy and psyches of the Abnormalities, and it's meant to combat them. Imagine an EGO as a sort of skin, even though Parasite Tree's EGO-- mine-- looks like plants, and Vincent's looks like cloth." "Real pleasant way to put it." Vincent's snark, leaning against the back of the elevator, snaps Noyo out of the educational lecture she was going on, making her freeze up with one of the leaves on her shoulder pinched between her fingers. Noyo looks mortified. "Oh no, is it that grotesque? I'm so sorry, Princess Sukuna, there's... well, I'm not sure if you've picked up this impression yet, but... a lot of L-Corp is like that. If you'd prefer, we don't need to go any deeper into it." The elevator doors open up, after a significant stretch of time despite how fast they move, in the Extraction Department. In stark contrast to Control, Extraction is cloaked in shadow and black marble lined with gold. The recognizable structure of 'an office' or at the very least 'a bunker' isn't visible at all down here: alien rectangular pillars of pitch black jut down from an impossibly high ceiling beyond where the light reaches, their faces covered in nonsensical golden inscriptions. There's considerably less activity down here-- probably in part because the entire team besides the clerks are in the elevator.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Unions are important. Shinmyoumaru peeks to look at the giant scarecrow before it gets out of sight. "What's that?" she blurts out, immediately, about a half second before it gets squashed into an egg. She makes a face again - But it's not like she turns away from it. It's gross, but if you spend any time at all in the not-human parts of Gensokyo you get used to a surprising amount of violence very quickly. And while Shinmyoumaru is not on good terms with youkai as a class, there are some individual youkai she doesn't mind. She still wants to know what it is (was), though she lowers her finger and stops pointing. Binah's voice she recognizes, but not Binah herself; it takes her a moment to place voice with ... face, or at least box. "Hi," she says, more casually, because Binah just asked Noyo to pay no attention to her. (The desire to not be paid attention to is a confusing one for Shinmyoumaru.) Parker is less pleasant. "I'm using it," Shinmyoumaru responds, very firmly. "It keeps my head together!" She's not sure if what he's got is a real face. She doesn't want to take the risk. Even a fake mask of her would be... well, she'd rather not see other people walk around with one. She's much happier to talk about other things. "Actually, I wanted to see it because I'd never seen anything like it. Not everywhere needs to be like Sundew Castle! It'd be boring if everywhere was, honestly." But Vincent looms... Shinmyoumaru has an advantage here, such as it is: just about everybody tries looming at her, sooner or later. She's used to it, and isn't intimidated by proximity and height alone; she rises up to tiptoes, which honestly doesn't make much of a difference. "We don't have any galas. Not like the one at Sundew, anyway. I am looking around because everything is new but I'm not just going to run back and go to a party or anything!" Shinmyoumaru crosses her arms, her cheeks momentarily puffing out in annoyance. She decides to explain. It's not like she's ashamed of any of it. "I'm an inchling. Inchlings are really, really sm - weak. Except for me. Everybody overlooks us, or takes us for granted, and nobody cares. Nobody even remembers us anymore after the youkai beat us so long ago, so if we had a gala, nobody would come. But I'm going to change it. I'm going to meet people, and go places, and that means I'm going to come here and see what this place is all about. I'm not the kind of princess that doesn't do anything, like Sarracenia is, so don't talk about me like that!" Shinmyoumaru nods to herself, even though that doesn't really follow. "Anyway, I was curious. It's not safe for most of us to leave the Shining Needle Castle at all, so we don't have 'corporations'. I don't think there are any in Gensokyo anyway." She doesn't seem real worried about it. Shinmyoumaru is good at staying out of people's way, when she chooses to. Noyo doesn't have to work to make Shinmyoumaru maneuver around people - she does it herself, though she does peer at what passersby are doing, if anything she can identify. Is it grotesque? Maybe, but... "Oh, neat! It's like monster leather!" Though she mostly sews cloth, Shinmyoumaru works with leather occasionally, and 'monster leather' is both understandable and perfectly sensible to her... even if 'monster leather' is apparently vines and cloth. "I guess it would come from a plant youkai then. Monster. Or a cloth one... I've never sewn anything like that." The elevator opens. Shinmyoumaru looks out. She clearly does not recognize what the room is at all, other than 'big'. "Is this..." Shinmyoumaru guesses wildly from all the marble and gold. "...a temple?" It's not a warehouse; warehouses have things in them. Part of it reminds her of home; the Shining Needle Palace is so empty in places, too. But in other ways, and more ways, it's completely alien.
Angela	Binah doesn't smile as she has no lips but you can sort of imagine one being there as she says, "Oh at ease, Noyo." as if she were talking to a cadet rather than an Agent. "I'm still in trouble for crime." Parker complains to Noyo. "What kind of world do we live in where crime is punished?" Binah bobs their body at Vincent and then cackles a bit when Vincent just asks if Sukuna is here to GAWK. Yeah, no, Binah is loving this so far. "When Tamamo came we started with just one layer at a time." Parker chirps as she twists into a handstand for a moment before flipping back around to her feet--seemingly purely out of whimsy and boredom. Parker fits in better in the facility than in the outside world. She is more comfortable with Abnormalities than people. She's quite good at Works as a result but a total disaster outside of it. "Your EGO is pretty." Parker tells Noyo. Binah gives Noyo the nod, "Of course, though we won't be able to show her the Well. We do not know how strong her mental defenses are and we wouldn't want her to go mad." Parker seems confused by Shinmyoumaru. "Yes? That is what faces are for?" She frowns. "Weirdo."
Petra Soroka	Vincent puffs out a sigh at Shinmyoumaru, leaning back to lace her arms behind her head while following along with Noyo. "You really are more of a kid than you say you are, huh? Hope you like what you see, Tiny." That's all she has to say about that, infuriatingly. She seems preemptively tired and bored moreso than pointedly mean, though. Noyo, after a few seconds when it becomes obvious that Vincent isn't planning on adding anything else, picks up the pause, standing at the front of the elevator as it goes down and feeling the intense need to fill the silence. "You don't have corporations at all? Who runs the government if there's no Wings? I can hardly even imagine it." When Parker begins bemoaning the sorry state of crime in the world (that it's punished, rather than allowed), both Noyo and Vincent speak up at the same time. "Shocked they didn't just give it to you, what with that incredible heist you pulled off. Why'd you even want it, anyways?" "I don't want to encourage you too much, Parker, but you really ought to be more careful when breaking the law. Paying attention to how the world punishes you for crime is how you know to avoid it in the future." Vincent leans forwards, away from the elevator wall, to raise an eyebrow at Noyo, who flushes and looks away. "Well, with what the Captain said about your warpgate privileges, I suppose any advice I give you is already moot." When given the opportunity to talk more about EGO rather than crime, Noyo relaxes some (at least, now that Binah's given her permission to). "Leather in a sense, maybe. I would still say that a more appropriate comparison is skin, as a living organ rather than tanned and processed. It's--" She stumbles over her words briefly when seeing Vincent's look at her immediately diving back into the gorey descriptions. "It heals itself, the EGO does. But it does come from a plant... Abnormality, the Parasite Tree. I should be able to show it to you through the window. when we're down there."
Petra Soroka	Stepping out into the main room of Extraction, Noyo slows from her brisk walk towards the hallway when Shinmyoumaru remarks on the ominous aesthetics. She'd only just gotten used to them, over the past few weeks, and she makes an odd expression thinking about how the environment nearly filtered entirely past her perception even when purposefully on a 'tour'. "Ah... I couldn't tell you exactly what the purpose of the decor down here is. As a general rule of thumb, the deeper you get in the facility, the less... traditional it is; my previous facility in a different District only had the upper four. Extraction is at the very base of Atziluth, the deepest in the facility, and... well... there's a lot of secrets down here." When heading out of the main room, down the glossy black halls, the only available light emanates from the faintly luminous carvings in the walls, and fractals running through the black ceiling of the same glowing gold. Lights also blink in red and green screened panels besides the steel containment cell doors, and generic florescent light shines out in cylinders through the porthole windows. "Here," Noyo announces after a short walk from the elevator, "Is the Parasite Tree. The Abnormality that my EGO came from." Through the window is a massive green tree, easily four times Shinmyoumaru's height, with green for its trunk and green leaves instead of branches. At face height-- for a human-- is a face with a pensive expression nestled between coils of 'trunk' and 'leaf'. The leaves wave gently in a lack of wind, within the sterile steel cell marked with hazard lines and warnings. Understandign that this needs more explanation, Noyo goes on: "Our job, in general, is to extract Enkephalin from these monsters. Enkephalin is an... energy resource, generated from their certain emotional responses, which depends a lot on the individual Abnormality. Back at my old branch there were only seven types, but there's far more here. Some, for example, need a combatative urge facilitated; Irae's work involved shouting at it and swatting at it until it worked itself up into a frenzy. Parasite Tree is gentler, my work often consists of getting rid of weeds or caring for its body. That's not to say it isn't dangerous, but.... Well, they're all dangerous. That's the nature of the work."
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	"It depends on the crime?" Shinmyoumaru is far more okay with some crimes than others, and some things she doesn't even think are crimes, but... Parker is weird. Even she can tell that, and she hangs around a literal demon of contrariness who likes to do and say things that are the inverse of what you'd expect, so her grasp of what is normal can sometimes be a little bit off. (It's probably a good thing that Seija isn't here, but Shinmyoumaru didn't invite her.) When Vincent calls her 'Tiny', Shinmyoumaru's eyes narrow. She's going to remember that, though all she does immediately is puff out her cheeks again in irritation and rather dramatically turn away from her, to speak to Noyo instead. "No... well, we don't really have one government? There's the human village, but I've only been a couple times, and then there's the fancy manor, and I've never been there, and a lot of ther places, but they're mostly run by youkai and you can't trust youkai," Shinmyoumaru says, firmly. "Maybe we should get one. Maybe I'll make one!" ... "I want to see the plant," Shinmyoumaru agrees. Living hide, or skin, or whatever... it's enough to make her forget to ask about the Well Binah brought up, which is what she had been going to ask about. Short legs or not, Shinmyoumaru keeps up. "Secrets?" She seems delighted, even if there aren't any in sight right now. Maybe they're going to go see one. The Parasite Tree sounds like a secret. Shinmyoumaru hops up and pulls herself up against the door so she can actually look through the window, feet dangling. If Parker laughs, or even does something sort of vaguely laugh-like, or really comments at all, she's probably not going to respond well. But mostly she looks through it, at the Abnormality tree. And she listens. It's easy to assume Shinmyoumaru doesn't, but she really is interested in basically anything anyone is willing to tell her. "Oh, so you work with them!" This seems to draw a positive reaction. "It's nice that you do more than just take it for granted. I mean, even if it's dangerous, you could just leave it at that, but you're treating it well." That it is still locked into a room is... well, Shinmyoumaru can see that, but she couldn't leave her home for years, either, so it doesn't seem so strange, perhaps. "...though it's weird to see a tree growing underground, isn't it?" Shinmyoumaru lets go and drops back down, dusting her dress off when she lands. "I mean, the sun's - " Shinmyoumaru waves her hand. "Up there somewhere." She hasn't seen any of the rest of the City, either, or she might think better than to use it as an example of somewhere sunny. She's not even entirely sure that this place is underground, though she's made an assumption.
Angela	Why did Parker want the forks? "I liked how they looked." Parker says. "So shiny. Easy to find in the dark..." Extraction is easily the darkest part of the facility and not just because it's deep down below the Earth. "Kept stabbing myself in the face while eating lunch..." Then she grins a bit viciously. "Heheh.... They think they recovered all my spoils but Parker showed them. By stealing many forks, they missed the ones that mattered, Neheheheh...." Parker's leather mask continues to be smiling. She considers Noyo and adds, "Ohh...Not getting caught... Yesss, Noyo. You know a lot about crime, I didn't expect it... But I'm proud..." She wipes a tear from her leather mask, then more tears start falling until Parker pushes her hand into her face several times and then one fist to her own face until they stop tumbling out. "Yess...stay inside the inside face..." Binah follows along quietly placidly. She seems content to just watch everything going on. She seems to be enjoying herself. SHe doesn't say good job or anything like that even as the tour progresses--offers no encouragement--that's not really her style. But she doesn't seem upset and hasn't insulted Noyo OR Vincent OR Parker yet or--worse!--told a story. So this is about the best Binah most people get. "Real crime," Parker explains to Shinmyoumaru. "Not fake crime. The good kind of crime. It's obvious what's good crime and what's not." "No one government?" Binah asks. "How do you protect yourselves from Outsiders? ... Ahh, I suppose from what I've seen, the individual populace all have great powers but it seems to me like there would no doubt be a lot of chaotic situations and bad behavior that would have to be put down by the community when everybody has a great deal of strength to them. I would frankly expect a catastrophe every other week." ''Though it's weird to see a tree growing underground, isn't it?'' "Records has one that isn't even an Abnormality, heh..." Binah says. "GRowing trees where they are not meant to be is hardly natural is it? Ah, that's what you said, more or less. Let alone a sun indoors, hm hm hm.."
Petra Soroka	Technically, the existence of the Extraction Department is a secret. The Well, of course, is the reason. The pillars even contain secrets; so practically everything within sight qualifies. Abnormalities do too-- but not as Extraction-specific secrets, so of all the things Shinmyoumaru could've latched on to, the Parasite Tree is one of the more benign. It's also the one that requires the least context, which is convenient for a tour. "Well, I suppose it's wrong to even consider it a tree; not in the way you're familiar with them. Er..." Talking to an alien-- both in location and in race-- makes Noyo reassess what kind of assumptions she can make about Shinmyoumaru's experiences. "If you're familiar with the same kind of trees that I am. The ones that grow outdoors in the sun." "Abnormalities, whatever they look like, aren't people, or plants, or animals. None of them really need to eat, unless it's a part of their emotional Work cycle, and the Parasite Tree wouldn't die if I didn't water it for weeks. In fact, quite the opposite," Noyo puts a finger up, excited enough by the smooth segue that she doesn't consider the actual content of her upcoming words. "It would kill me instead, and a number of other employees. Some Abnormalities function best from frustrated, such as Irae that I mentioned earlier, but others lash out and breach, or in Parasite Tree's case, draw employees towards it to kill and turn into saplings. Other factors could compel it to enter that state as well, but I won't bore you with details. Suffice to say that, despite gardening it and talking to it, the Parasite Tree is only really a label, rather than a true 'tree'." With Shinmyoumaru holding herself up to peek through the porthole window, Vincent kicks an Enkephalin box over for her to stand on instead, lazily batting it with the side of her foot. It does make it easier to look through the window without getting exhausted, but after the 'Tiny' comment, it feels a little intentional. "Kind of sounds like a fantasy land. Not having a government. Is that even fair, for somewhere like that to exist, when the fucking City does too? If you don't understand it at all... you're either totally a kid, or luckier than I could even imagine. Probably shouldn't make one, or everyone else is gonna have to kill you." "If you like that one..." Once Shinmyoumaru has satisfied her curiosity with the tree, Noyo handily moves on with the tour, getting more into the groove of it. "We've got plenty of others too, even just in Extraction. We've got a bathtub full of blood, some kind of star thing I don't fully understand, since only the Captain can work with it, and a few others. Vincent's EGO gear is from Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary, an unusual Abnormality that's able to talk and negotiate, unlike most. They're as varied as you can imagine-- exactly as varied as you can imagine, if you interpret them in a certain way. But-- I can't talk about that, I can just show you then from outside."
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Forks... "You should meet someone I know," Shinmyoumaru tells Parker. "She takes stuff, too. Though she doesn't stab herself... I think she'd stab other people if she could. Not me though." That, Shinmyoumaru is absolutely sure of. Binah asks about how they defend themselves. Shinmyoumaru is surprised - it sounds like Binah knows a bit about Gensokyo, more than she's already said. "There's problems all the time! Once, there was a red mist and we didn't get any sun at all for a while. Another time, we had the spring-est spring ever, all the flowers bloomed. Even the summer flowers. We can see them all from the Shining Needle Palace. I don't know how they got fixed, really... I was still pretty young then." She just knows Vincent is going to say something. Shinmyoumaru gets ahead of it. "I mean like five, at least for the red mist. You could call that a kid, for sure." What kind of trees does she know? "That kind! We don't grow them in the Palace, because the Palace is..." Shinmyoumaru isn't sure how weird this sounds. "Well, it's a flying palace. It's on the bottom of a flying rock... so we mostly see them when we're looking down. But we do grow things! Just not trees, there's not enough room. Mostly we grow things in the windows." A window ledge is pretty big, to an inchling. Shinmyoumaru steps onto the box. She isn't sure if this is Vincent incidentally mocking her or trying to make up for before, so she decides to wait and see and not punish her for calling her Tiny before. Even if she is still calling her a kid... "Well, it's not where most of the world is. Gensokyo is the sealed place," Shinmyoumaru says, sounding like she's reciting a history lesson. "It's where old things, mysterious things, go. Youkai and monsters and old things! The inchlings ended up in it because of the oni and the youkai... That's what I was taught." By Seija, so who knows how true it is, but Shinmyoumaru takes it as fact. "So, mostly, Outsiders don't happen much. I could take people there, though...! But I don't know if I'm lucky, or wasn't. Now I make my own luck!" "This place sounds like it's full of sealed and forgotten things, too. And if they're everything you can imagine, they're a bit like youkai, aren't they?" It helps Shinmyoumaru think of it this way, even if she is in fact mostly wrong. "Sure! I'd like to see more." It interests her, to see all these different things, taken care of. "...Though, maybe not the bathtub full of blood." Is that what Shinmyoumaru smelled? (No.) Don't worry, though. Shinmyoumaru can behave for the remainder of the tour.