>Into the river! It's time to hit up the Kappadrome.
> You finish up your final preparations. It's go time.
> There's only one river in the mountain that links to the reservoir, and it's completely unmarked. You only know where to enter thanks to memory, and it's a secret that no-one shares. As you are on the verge of diving in, though, you pause for a moment. It feels as if you're being watched...but a quick glance behind you shows no sign of a stalker. You shrug, not bothering to look further - it isn't as if anyone could follow you, anyway.
Thankfully, the path through the reservoir is just about straight - this would have been too much detail for you to remember. You've been away for so long...hell, you never once considered going back until this offer came up. It was a harder choice than you're willing to admit, but who could possibly turn down a lifetime's supply of cucumbers?
No-one will recognise you. No-one has any reason to. Regardless, you decide not to bring up your surname when you travel around the city. Nitori will do. Your last name will just be a hassle here.
> After a good half hour of swimming, you're all too relieved to make it to the other end of the reservoir. You pull yourself out of the water, taking a little time to sit down and catch your breath. The passageway serves two purposes at once - it makes it impossible for other youkai to get in, but it also makes leaving and entering for the kappa a real hassle to the point where most people just stay in the city all their lives.
It doesn't have a name to the rest of Gensokyo, but among the kappa the city is known as Kuromizu. Built by the combined efforts of many generations, the city is more technologically advanced than any other in Gensokyo, and compared with the outside world it isn't too shabby either. Where Kuromizu has the edge, though, is in how it uses the water magic of its residents to fill in the gaps; elevators are run by flooding and emptying chambers beneath the lift, for example, and anyone who can conjure water from nothing can easily create a perpetual hydroelectric engine. (That's a full-time paid job, though, and boring as hell, so it's not exactly one that the kappa brag about.)
The gender imbalance of Gensokyo is as present as ever here. Only the female kappa are ever graced with the water magic that runs the city, and thus the men are typically reduced to manual labour, or studying technology on its own without the magical get-out clauses the kappa rely on. From the moment you were born you were taught to appreciate being a woman, but it never really worked on you; you were too busy with your first experiments to care for femininity, or indeed anything else your parents insisted you live up to...
> You're about to start making your way into the city properly when you hear two clicks from your sides.
"State your name and business, stranger."
"Yeah, or else."
Oh, great, the guards. You forgot about them. Kuromizu had a small but well-trained police force called the Sea Serpents, whose main goal was to stop any youkai who may have found a way through the reservoir. The rest of Gensokyo favoured fancy danmaku; the Sea Serpents were perfectly content with filling a target with lead. Currently, two of their number have their weapons primed on you, both female (unsurprisingly) and each wearing a special-order Second Skin. The taller one is looking down on you with disdain, while the younger girl takes a moment to stick her tongue out at you. You would like to not get shot any time soon, so now is probably time to start talking.
