March 2018 Prompt Fills

by UnmovingGreatLibrary

Summary:

(Even more) pairing-based prompt fills, from a custom list of prompts.

Contents:
1. Shou and Nazrin - Hero
2. Yuuka and Meiling - Garden
3. Junko and Hecatia - Dress Up
4. Aya and Hatate - Because of You
5. Maribel and Renko - In the Moonlight
6. Marisa and Mima - Beginner’s Luck
7. Komachi and Kasen - Vacation
8. Kogasa and Sekibanki - Secret Admirer
9. Reimu and Marisa - Exhaustion
10. Tojiko and Yuyuko - The Little Things
11. Mokou and Kaguya - A Good Idea at the Time
12. Yuugi and Satori - Only Human
13. Alice and Narumi - Damaged

Chapter 1: Shou and Nazrin - Hero

Notes:

Requested by an anonymous Tumblr user.

Rain drummed on the roof. Nazrin's fingers drummed on the table.

It was almost midnight. Shou had set out before dawn, and still, so much later, she was still nowhere to be seen. Dinner had come and gone, and the idiot had missed it. A slightly more pragmatic corner of Nazrin's mind whispered that she should just write the day off and go to bed, but she ignored it. She was here as the eyes and ears of Bishamonten, and she'd only been in the position for a matter of weeks. Whatever had happened today, she needed to stay informed to advise him appropriately.

Finally, heavy footsteps approached the door, and it swung open. Shou stepped inside, soaking wet and hunched over. As she started shrugging her cloak off, Nazrin hurried over to take it from her.

“You're late,” she said accusingly.

“Yes, I am,” Shou said. She shot Nazrin a tired smile and a nod of thanks, then straightened up as she took the cloak. It was easy to see why. As much water and mud as were soaked into the thing, it weighed half as much as Nazrin did.

“Did you catch the bandits?”

“I did. It took all day to track them down, but... once they saw what the Jeweled Pagoda could do, they surrendered pretty quickly. The village said they'll be sending some offerings tomorrow as thanks.”

“Oh. Good.” Nazrin strained to slide the cloak onto a peg, then sighed in relief once she'd offloaded the thing. “The money will help feed all these stray youkai Byakuren keeps rounding up.”

“But...” Shou hesitated. “One of the local lords has been shaking the locals down for money. I think I should have a word with him tomorrow.”

Nazrin eyed her, then scoffed. “Do whatever you want. Just go to sleep for now. A scraggly Bishamonten who's too tired to stand up straight isn't going to impress anybody.”

---

“Ahhhh...” Shou sprawled out on her bed with a groan. “I'm beat.”

“You look like hell,” Nazrin said flatly. “I take it the lord wasn't as easy to impress as those bandits?”

“He... took some convincing to come around to my point of view.” Shou smirked wryly, with just enough of a fang showing past her lips to serve as a reminder that she was a tiger. “But I think the locals will appreciate the help.”

“You think? Didn't you even tell them?”

Shou gave a slight shrug that suggested her shoulders were still tender. “They'll find out soon enough.”

“It's not going to inspire any belief if you don't let them know. Besides...” Nazrin slapped a wet cloth onto Shou's back, and allowed herself a little enjoyment from the way she flinched in response. “You didn't even need to get involved in the first place. That village was already going to start paying their respects to us.”

“Mmh. Maybe so. I need to visit the village again tomorrow, anyway, so I can tell them then.”

“... why are you going again?”

“There are...” Shou trailed off, a low rumble somewhere between a groan and a purr rising in her throat as Nazrin started washing her wounds. For a youkai, something so minor would be healed within a few hours anyway, but that didn't do do a thing to stop them from hurting right now. “... two of the families in the village. They both have a claim to the land in between their farms, and they've been fighting over it for years. I want to settle the matter before somebody gets hurt.”

Nazrin narrowed her eyes with a sigh, but let it slide for now.

---

“One of them punched me,” Shou explained, as soon as she was inside the door.

She gave Nazrin an almost apologetic grin as she said it, a wide, doofy tiger grin that set off Nazrin's nerves. The fact that it was beneath a black eye didn't help. “He punched a living avatar? Did you strike him down as punishment?”

“Er, well, no...”

“What, then?” Nazrin stomped over to her, drawing herself up to her full height. That didn't mean much. She barely came up to Shou's chest if she stood on her tiptoes. “Did you teach him proper respect?”

“I warned him about being ruled by one's emotions,” Shou said, in a voice of infinite patience. “His anger clouds his judgment, and if he'd punched a human, it could have—“

“And you didn't even need to be there in the first place, master! You already got that village indebted to us! We're getting their alms and faith anyway, so you don't need to—!”

“Alms?” Shou cut her off, looking down at Nazrin in confusion. “'Is that what you think it's about?”

“Er.” Nazrin paused, a slight flush rising to her cheeks, but she refused to let herself show too much. She'd dealt with Bishamonten herself. She wasn't about to get flustered in front of this mere youkai. “A-ah. Well, of course, it's all in service to liberating all beings from the cycle of suffering, but...”

“That's pretty important, yeah.” Now that Nazrin didn't look prepared to wrestle her to the ground, Shou took the opportunity to step past her and slide down to the floor, sitting cross-legged and rubbing sorely at her eye. “I'll admit that I'm still trying to wrap my head around this avatar thing, but even if it didn't help the temple, and even if it didn't help people attain enlightenment... I'd be wasting all of this power if I didn't try to help people with it, I think.”

Nazrin stared at her in flat disbelief. “That could be the most naive thing that I've ever heard.”

“Sorry. I suppose that's just how I am.”

“... unfortunately, it sounds exactly like something he would say, so I can't actually criticize you for it.”

“Oh. Well, thank you. I could—“

Nazrin stepped over and tugged Shou's swollen eye open for inspection, cutting her off. “It isn't like I can stop you if you want to run off and play dashing heroine every day, anyway. It would be less work for me if you try to come back in one piece, though.”

Shou's good eye blinked in surprise, followed by a smile. “I'll do my best. I'm sorry that your master is so irresponsible.”

“It's fine,” Nazrin said. She removed her hand from Shou's face and took a step back, quickly turning her head aside to hide the slight smile on her lips. “I'd be out of a job if you weren't.”

Chapter 2: Yuuka and Meiling - Garden

Notes:

Requested by CountFrogula

When Yuuka returned from her daily walk, there was somebody waiting outside of her cottage.

Visitors were rare. The humans had long ago scared themselves away from trespassing in the Garden of the Sun. Even most of the youkai held some heavy superstitions about it. But there she was, a girl waiting patiently with her hands clasped behind her back, looking out over the field of sunflowers.

She raised her arm in a broad wave as soon as she spotted Yuuka. This only encouraged Yuuka to move more slowly as she approached.

"Good afternoon!" she shouted, as soon as Yuuka was within conversational distance. "You're Yuuka Kazami, right?"

Yuuka came to a stop, resting the tip of her parasol on the path in front of her, and measured the girl up. She was big. Just big, in the same sturdy sort of way that oak trees were. In case that wasn't hard enough to miss, she had bright red-orange hair, too. "I am," Yuuka said. "Can I help you?"

"Oh, I should introduce myself first. My name is Meiling Hong." Meiling extended a hand for a shake. Yuuka eyed it without a trace of interest. After a few seconds, Meiling pulled it back. "... er, and I'm a gardener. I've heard—well, it's hard to miss that you have a lot of sunflowers. I have a pretty big garden, but there aren't very many varieties of sunflowers around Gensokyo. I was wondering if I could buy some seeds off of y—"

"And what gave you the impression that this is a store?"

"Er, well, nothing, but—"

"I raise these flowers for myself. What price should I assign a piece of my own joy, do you think?" Yuuka allowed herself a slight, vicious smile. "Could I ask for one of your fingers in exchange? Or would an arm be more comparable?"

"E-er, no, I'm sorry! I didn't realize...!"

"I'm sure you didn't," Yuuka said flatly. She lifted her parasol and walked around Meiling, at a casual pace that almost invited her to protest. She didn't, though. Before Yuuka stepped through the door to her cottage, she added, "My flowers are only for people who can earn my respect. But do have a good day."

---

The girl was back again. Or, rather, she was right outside the door as soon as Yuuka opened it, today.

"Good morning, Miss Kazami! I'm sorry, I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot. I, er... Well, I obviously didn't realize how much your flowers mean to you. I'm sorry!"

Yuuka wasn't about to be won over so easily. "But since you're still here, I assume you mean to ask me again."

"Well... You said you'd only give them to somebody you respect, right?"

"I did."

"Then... I'd like to duel you for them."

"Would you."

"I would!"

"And you understand who I am?"

"I do...!"

"… well. If an annoying insect wants to be exterminated, it isn't in my nature to say no."

Yuuka stepped past Meiling, closing the door behind her and walking some distance away from her cottage. Meiling followed, crossing out onto the lawn until she was across from Yuuka. She took a deep breath and lowered herself, stretching out into a combat stance, her every limb trembling with tensed muscles. "I'm ready, then...!"

Yuuka's only response was a curt nod. When she hadn't moved after a few seconds, Meiling crept forward, her arms raised defensively. She thrust an arm out, and a shotgun spray of rainbow bullets shot from an open palm. Yuuka stayed rooted to the spot and allowed them to patter against her body.

Yuuka raised her umbrella leisurely, and leveled it at Meiling.

Building force glimmered on the tip, warping the air around it. It discharged with a thunderclap, a blast that flattened the nearby grass. Meiling was slammed into the ground, and not even that managed to slow her down. When she came to a stop, she was sprawled out at the end of a long furrow.

"Well, look at that. It seems that I won." Yuuka lowered her parasol and continued on her walk. “Do take care of yourself, Miss Hong.”

---

Today, when Yuuka opened her front door, she found a basket of flowers practically shoved into her face.

"Miss Kazami, please accept my apologies!"

Yuuka leaned back enough to give herself room to breathe. "Apologies for what?"

"For the past two days, really...? I guess it was probably pretty annoying, and..." Meiling lowered the basket, and barely dared to raise her eyes from it. "I guess I should have accepted your decision to begin with. I'm sorry."

Yuuka glanced down at the basket. The flowers were in a riotous mix of colors, and left her wondering if the girl had ever been educated in the language of flowers. Any language of flowers, for that matter. If there was a message in there, it was something very muddled, but involving a sisterly love for betraying emperors. "And these are?"

"... I'd like you to have them?" Meiling added hopefully. "As an apology. Oh! And there are some preserves in there, too. The fruit came from my garden, but my coworker's the one who made the preserves."

Yuuka begrudgingly inspected the basket's contents. She had to admit, it was an impressive array of flowers. “... there's a moth orchid in here.”

“Oh. Yes! There is!”

“A foreign plant like that is hard to raise in Gensokyo, I would think.”

“They sort of are. I had to make a little greenhouse for them... and still provide a lot of shade... but it was worth it, don't you think? They're really pretty.”

Yuuka reluctantly nodded, and slid her hand down to try lifting one... only to find that it was rooted in place. Hidden beneath the layer of leaves halfway down the basket, a dozen tiny pots held the plants' roots. “You didn't cut them, either?”

“Er, well, no... I thought you might want to replant them! And it always makes me feel bad to cut them when they still have a month or two to bloom...”

“The reason you shouldn't cut them is that it kills them before their time, not because it puts you in a bad mood,” Yuuka complained, but without much force to it. “... you can collect seeds from my sunflowers, but only if you take care not to hurt them in the process.”

“Oh! Really?”

“Yes.”

“It's just... yesterday, you called me, you know. An 'annoying insect.'”

Yuuka stepped past her without acknowledging the comment, and offered her parasol over to give Meiling some shade. “Follow me,” she said. “I know just where you should start.”

Chapter 3: Junko and Hecatia - Dress Up

Notes:

Requested by ClockworkSampi

Junko, the nemesis-sage, the eternal enemy of the moon, the purified embodiment of fury, spake: “I like the colors of this one, but I know not of this 'Invader Zim.'”

“Oh, yeah, don't sweat it.” Hecatia took the t-shirt from her and held it up for inspection. “There's lots of stuff with this guy on it at one of the places I shop, though. I think he might be some kinda modern youkai?”

“I see.” Junko nodded and gravely considered this. “The ways of the Earth have grown strange since I last visited.”

“It's not so bad when you get used to it. Anyway, come on, hun. Stop wasting time and pick something. We've gotta get your style updated for, like, the current century.”

Hecatia's wardrobe took up an entire room, and it was truly a marvel to behold. There were four racks of shirts, each twice as long as a man was tall, each hanging with garments that challenged the boundaries of good taste. Some were completely covered in gaudy patterns. Others were black, and looked rather smaller than Junko was accustomed to. She plucked a particularly egregious example from a hanger and held it up. “Is this some manner of handkerchief?”

“Eh? Oh, no, that's a shirt. They call that a 'tube top' these days.”

“It seems very... small.”

“That's the selling point! That one might be a little modern for you, though. Alright, so, look. Black's obviously your color, and you know I'm into that. If you can rock the goth look, why fight it? So, what I'm gonna say is...” Hecatia hurried across the room, a couple of miniature planets clanking at the ends of their chains behind her. She stopped at one of the multiple dressers that lined the back wall, and rummaged for a few seconds before holding up a pair of black stockings. “... we start with these.”

“... I am afraid I don't understand. Are those pants, or are they socks?”

“Y'know what, don't worry about it. Just leave everything to me and we'll have you stylish in no time, alright?”

---

The next half-hour one of the strangest in Junko's extended life, as Hecatia became an overbearing whirlwind of clothes. She was forced into three separate outfits, only for Hecatia to decide that they needed yet more tweaks. She was subjected to an endless parade of jewelry and accessories. At one point, she held very still while Hecatia decorated her face and chattered endlessly about the benefits of winged eyeliner.

At the end, Hecatia led her in front of a floor-length mirror, and Junko stared at herself.

The pure simplicity of her robe had been replaced. Now, she wore a skirt in black-and-red tartan, and even that was strange and foreign to her—pleated, and cut at an angle, so that it ended below her knee on one side and just above it on the other. Beneath it, she had very long socks, which Hecatia had repeatedly stressed were to be called 'stockings.' The shoes she had been put in were taller at the back than the front. An unnecessary belt hung at her waist, with a thin strip of skin showing between it and the garment above it, which was called a 'tank top' and emblazoned with, of all things, a skull.

There was jewelry, too. Junko tugged at a piece of it. “I still do not understand the use of these 'bangles.'”

“Don't worry about it! It's aesthetic, okay? Just like the lipstick. Besides.” Hecatia stepped up alongside Junko and wrapped an arm around her, guiding her gaze toward the mirror again. “The real question is, do you like it, or not?”

Junko uneasily studied her reflection, and a slight flush rose to her face. “Well, it is very... aesthetical, as you said.”

“Yeah, that's it, that's it! So anyway, you can keep all of that, and next time we'll pick out something even nicer, 'kay?”

“I'm not against that... although please give me more forewarning next time. If you want to play dress-up, I'll not deny you, but it's very time-consuming.”

“Hey, we aren't even done yet. I never said I'm finished with you, did I?”

Junko frowned down at her outfit. “But you just got me into these clothes. Do you want me to change to another set so soon?”

“Nah, nothing like that.” Hecatia moved in closer, and her arm gave Junko a squeeze. “Getting you into the clothes is step one. I've still gotta get you out of 'em, y'know.”

Chapter 4: Aya and Hatate - Because of You

Notes:

Requested by matiasalbcam

“Oh, hey, reading up on my paper? I didn't know you were so desperate for leads that you had to crib off of me. Pretty sad, Hatate, a real sorry display.”

Hatate lowered the crumpled copy of the Bunbunmaru. Crumpled, because she'd refused to give the paper even a single sale, instead sneaking around the tengu village until she could find a used copy to pilfer. The Bunbunmaru, because, well...

“Hey, it's totally fair to keep tabs on the competition.” Hatate rolled the paper up, then smirked, jabbing it up right beneath Aya's nose. “Besides, the way I hear it, we're neck and neck in the newspaper competition. Maybe this year, I'll do better than your dumb rag and get the grand prize.”

“Hey, hey, no need to get worked up about it. Besides, I'm a shoo-in.” Aya pushed the tip of the paper down from her face, then tapped the headline. “Since I have the best story of the year and all.”

Hatate did have to admit that it was hard to beat EXCLUSIVE: Interview with the Hidden Sage. Technically, it was a story anybody could have written. The great tengu had lifted the tacit ban on news about Okina Matara, deciding instead to dispel her mystique by reporting on her like any other Gensokyo resident. Aya, though, had a bit of an advantage, since she'd had a face-to-face spell card battle with the goddess right when she decided to reveal herself...

“You were super lucky to have that story fall into your lap, and you know it!” Hatate paused to calm herself. “... besides, there's still two weeks before the judging. Plenty of time to find something that'll blow your dumb story out of the water.”

“Hmm, is that so?”

“Yeah! What kinda rival would I be if couldn't even do that much?”

“Hey, that's a good question. You'd better get busy looking. It'll be pretty sad if I win and you don't even get in the top five or something, won't it? I'll have to look for a better class of rival.”

“Y-yeah, well...! I'm gonna... beat you so bad that you'll be wondering if you're even good enough to be my rival...!”

Hatate wasn't very skilled at witty comebacks. Aya seemed more amused by it than intimidated. “Well, we're going to find out either way, won't we? I'll look forward to it. It will be fun seeing the look on your face.”

Before Hatate could embarrass herself with another half-hearted retort, Aya leapt into the air and took flight. Soon, she was just another figure zipping across the village's skyline.

Hatate slumped back down onto the bench with a sigh, then glanced at her notebook. The front page had all of her potential leads jotted down:

• fights at the Prismriver concert?
• talking dog in human village
• tropical weather at Hakurei shrine
• idk think of something???

She pursed her lips and pulled her pen from the spine, then dramatically crossed out the entire list. That done, she unrolled the Bunbunmaru and opened it again. “There has to be something in this thing I can work with...”

---

“This year's newspaper sales were higher than ever,” the announcer said, his voice booming across the crowded hall. Every crow tengu with an ounce of pride ran a newspaper, and even the weird stuff like The Gensokyo Human-Watching Report (top story: Why Don't Bald Humans Wear Hats? An Investigation) stood to win some of the smaller awards. Those had all been announced over the course of the night, though. Only one award remained. “So competition over the grand prize for paper sales was fierce. Considering the year's events...”

Hatate hung her head and did her best to ignore him, clenching her hands anxiously in her lap. Down the row, Aya shot her a pointed glance; Hatate glared back until she looked away.

There was no way of knowing how it was going to shake out. The last reports had put the Bunbunmaru at rank number two, with Kakashi Spirit News all the way down at number seven. That had been a whole week ago, though. They never released figures so close to the awards. Over the few days before the information blackout, her sales had been catching up, but there was still a wide gap to overcome. She tried to run the math in her head again. She'd been 150 sales behind, and if she was making 17 more sales per day...

She realized that Aya was staring at her again, and shot back another glare. This time, Aya mouthed something. Hatate's expression softened into confusion, until Aya hissed, “That's you!”

Hatate lifted her head and turned her attention back to the announcer. “--kaidou?” he called into the audience, sounding at a bit of a loss. “Is there a representative from the Kakashi Spirit News here at all?”

“Oh. Oh! Um!” Hatate bolted up from her seat. “Yeah! That's me!”

A round of polite applause and soft laughter rose from the audience. In a daze, Hatate walked toward the front of the room. The announcer thrust a hefty trophy into one hand, then shook the other. She numbly returned the handshake, then pivoted to stare out over the room.

A hundred faces stared back.

“U-um. Ah! I guess I won, huh?” Hatate stammered. A slightly louder wave of laughter followed.

She took a breath to gather herself. She was a reporter, dammit. She was supposed to be good with words. Besides, this was a moment that she'd been rehearsing in the back of her head for weeks. “I, um. Well, sorry if I'm a little out of it. This is a really big honor and stuff, and I'm... not used to winning this kind of thing. It used to be that barely anybody knew the Kakashi existed but me. … even my parents thought it was just wasting paper...

“But! Er, that stuff's all in the past. I've learned a lot about reporting the past few years. Enough to know that, sometimes, you need to go past the obvious stuff and look at what's below the surface. That's kinda what led to my big story this year, Inside the World of the Backdoors. Everyone was reporting on that Matara lady, right? But I got the idea to track down one of the doors she'd left open and slip into her world to report on it, to get inside her head and her powers. Reporting isn't just about getting the easy stuff. It's about getting the hard stuff, too. That's what I've figured out lately. I...”

Hatate trailed off, as a particular set of eyes in the audience caught her gaze. She fumbled with her words. “I, um. I mean...” She tried glancing away, but it was no use. Defeated, she sighed. “At least, that's what I wanna be able to say. Fact is, the Kakashi really did used to be a dumb waste of paper. If it was just me, I never would have got the idea to start investigating stuff firsthand. Or had the motivation to do it anyway...”

She grimaced, but she knew what she needed to do. “Aya, get up here.”

For once, Aya actually looked at a loss. Only after Hatate irritably waved her forward did she rise and hurry up to the front of the room.

“If you wanna clap for me, you've gotta clap for her,” Hatate grumbled.

In the audience's confusion, the applause started slowly. It took a few seconds for it to become loud enough for them to converse privately.

“What the heck are you doing?!” Aya hissed over to her.

“Look. Your paper's still a dumb rag, but... even having a dumb rag for a rival is better than nothing, okay? If I didn't need to kick your butt, I wouldn't have even gotten top five this year.”

“Not sure I get it,” Aya said. She shook her head, and as the applause died down, had to lower her voice to add, “But I'll return the favor when I win next year.”

Chapter 5: Maribel and Renko - In the Moonlight

Notes:

Requested by nitori-tesla

”Please state your name for voice verification,” the bus demanded, for the fourth time.

“Maribel Hearn. That's Mae-ri-be—”

”Maritime Harp does not have an account or has not been registered. Please state your name for voice verification.”

Renko stepped forward and rested a hand on Maribel's shoulder. “Charge it to Renko Usami.”

There wasn't even a pause this time. ”Understood. Seventeen hundred yen has been debited to the account of Renko Usami. Have a nice day.”

The bus's door slid open, and with a sigh of relief, Maribel started down the steps. “I don't know why people in Japan have so much trouble with my name...”

“You have to admit that it can be hard to get your head around,” Renko said. She came to a stop and looked out over their surroundings. Endless fields of rice stretched off in every direction, fading into a darkness nearly indistinguishable from the night sky. The only exceptions to this pattern were the light-covered forms of automated farming equipment looming above it, kilometers off.

Renko hefted her bag over her shoulder and led the way, walking down a narrow bridge of empty land between two vast rice paddies. It went on for what felt like kilometers before it intersected with another path, and they turned at a right angle. Only after zig-zagging a few times did they arrive at a slightly larger clearing, a small island filled with only shaggy grass, hidden from every direction by isolation and the endless rice.

It took a few more minutes for Renko to dig a small hole with a trowel. Then, they each upended a bottle of water into it. Their puddle was complete, and the full moon was reflected in its surface.

Renko took a step back to inspect their handiwork, glancing from the puddle to the actual moon above. “Do you really think this will work?”

“We agreed we wanted to go to the moon, right? Besides, um...” Maribel leaned forward and extended a hand, gingerly dragging her fingers along the puddle's surface. “It feels... right. I can't explain it, but the moon is right here. All I need to do is reach out and grab it, I think.”

“Right...” At face value, it sounded crazy. When Maribel was the one saying them, though, Renko had learned to accept a lot of crazy things. She lifted her bag again and prepared for... whatever came next. “Just remember to close it up quick if it starts looking... vacuum-y.”

“Right!” Maribel glanced from the puddle to the sky. Her eyes drifted shut, and she rested her hands on either side of the puddle. Slowly, her hands moved side to side, like she was trying to tease open the pathway between worlds by tickling it. An electric tremble ran through the air. The universe held its breath in anticipation.

Nothing happened.

Maribel opened her eyes again and stared at the puddle in confusion. “Um, hm. I felt something, but... hold on, let me try that again...”

---

“I don't understand,” Maribel sighed, as she slumped down to the ground on her back. “The boundary is right there. It just... refuses to open for me.”

Renko slid down to sit next to her. “Maybe it's locked on their end. The moon might have a really intense No Solicitors policy.”

“That's kind of what it felt like, actually.” A pause. “But, um. The morning bus doesn't come until six AM, does it?”

“Right.”

“And right now it's... ten PM or so?”

“Ten-oh-two and twenty-one seconds,” Renko answered automatically.

“... we really didn't think this through.”

“No.” Renko sighed. “We didn't.”

Maribel scooted over to rest her head in Renko's lap, staring up at the sky. Renko stiffened up in surprise, but allowed it. “Going to sleep already?” she asked.

“Just getting comfortable. … hey, um. Renko?”

Something about the tone of her voice just made Renko tense up even more, shifting uncertainly beneath Maribel. “Er, yes?”

Maribel struggled to stifle her growing smile. “I spy, with my little eye, something that is... white.”

All of the tension drained from Renko's body in a single long sigh. “You sounded like you were getting ready to propose or something, not ask to play a children's game.”

“You don't have to play if you don't want to! Oh, um, or one of us could propose, I guess. I always thought you'd be the one to do it, though...”

“A-ah, no, this is fine. But, er. I'm going to say it's the stars.”

“Oh! You're right! How did you get it on the first guess...?”

“Well, I mean, you can only see about three things from that angle...”

“Well, fine. Anyway, now it's your turn.”

“Fine, fine. I spy, with my little eye...”

---

I Spy lasted for most of an hour.

Shiritori went for rather less time, because Renko knew too many names of chemicals and elementary particles.

At the end of the hour, they were both on their backs in the grass.

“'m getting sleepy,” Maribel mumbled.

“Then you should sleep.”

“Mmhm. ... hey, Renko?”

“If you're asking to play a game again, I'm going to be annoyed, you know.”

“No, um!” Maribel laughed under her breath. “It's just... a little funny that I have so much trouble sleeping at home, but here in this big empty field, I feel fine. Don't you think?”

“I guess that's true. You could—“

Renko was cut off, as Maribel scooted over and pressed right up against her side. “It must be because you're here,” she announced.

“A-ah, is it.” This time, it took rather longer for the tension to drain out of Renko's body. With a sigh, she patted along the ground until she found her coat, then pulled it over across the two of them. “Just get some sleep. I can keep an eye on the moon for the both of us.”

Chapter 6: Marisa and Mima - Beginner’s Luck

Notes:

Requested by an anonymous Tumblr user

The summoning circle flared up, its lines glowing with arcane energy. The air trembled, and the candles dimmed. The reagents placed around its edge burst like popping balloons. In the distance, a single crow cawed ominously, and the bowl of water in the center of the circle turned to boiling black arterial blood.

Wisps of pure darkness rose from its surface. They knit themselves together in the air, first forming the silhouette of a human, then taking on more definition. In a rush of cold wind, the figure was complete, throwing her arms wide as a crescent moon staff appeared in her hand.

If there was one thing Mima had learned over the years, it was how to make an entrance.

“Tell me, mortal,” she said, her voice booming. “Why do you dare disturb the hated enemy of all humans? Speak now, or your soul is forfe—“

“Hey, wait!” hissed her summoner, taking a hurried step closer. “Keep it down! My dad will be super mad if you wake him up!”

Mima paused, as the smoke cleared and she started to get a better look at her surroundings. She'd been summoned a few times in her long existence. Basements were a traditional place for this sort of thing, but this was more of a cellar. The summoning circle was in between stacks of wooden crates and boxes, and on one side, it came within centimeters of a burlap sack full of potatoes. The circle itself was a bit creative, too—at one vertex, the creator had used a one-eyed rag doll as a symbolic representation of humanity. Another had fulfilled the need for a mirror with a cheap outside world hand mirror, made mostly of pink plastic.

And then there was the summoner. She was short. She was wearing a night gown. She was shrinking back from the circle uncertainly after her outburst, and she was, at the outside, eight years old.

“You're a kid,” Mima said.

“Yeah?! So what?!”

“And you made the circle wrong. I didn't even have to honor the summons, I was just curious. Like right here. Why did you use a carrot?”

The girl pouted. “I dunno where to get mandrake...”

“I could eat you right now, you know.” Mima drifted forward, grinning down at the girl. “It would barely even be my biggest sin this week.”

“Well, um...!” The kid was rapidly recovering from her surprise. She puffed her chest out and straightened up, and still barely even came up to Mima's hips. “I called you here to challenge you to a fight anyways!”

“A fight? For what?”

“... 'cuz the book says if I can beat you in battle, you've gotta grant me a boon...”

“Oh. That does sound familiar... Gongsun, from the Tang Dynasty?”

The girl nodded hesitantly.

Mima's smile sharpened. “He was a fool. I would have destroyed his soul myself, if I could've been bothered.”

“Y-yeah, well...!” The girl lunged forward, pointing a finger straight up at her. “You've still gotta fight me anyways! Since I summoned you and stuff.”

“You still want a fight? Well, be my guest. I look forward to your screams~.” Mima snapped her fingers. Green fire flared up from the ground. When it vanished, the two were gone.

---

“Hey, wait! Where are we?!”

“I didn't think that root cellar of yours would be good for a fight. It's much roomier here.”

That part was undeniable. Mima had taken them straight from the cellar to the middle of a forest clearing. She couldn't even remember where this one was. She'd used it for eons, whenever she needed a suitably dramatic backdrop. Some of the cairns around the edge had collapsed since her last visit, though. A pity. It was rare for her to find something older than she was.

“So, then.” Mima hovered to the center of the clearing and reclined in the air, her wisp-tail retracting under her. “Come, child. I want to see you try to destroy me.”

“Okay, uh...” The girl took a step back and raised a hand, but didn't move further. “You're just gonna sit there?”

“What, is that too intimidating? If you can't even beat me when I'm relaxing, you don't stand a chance, do you?”

The girl pouted, but the point seemed to get through to her. After a moment, she started mumbling and weaving her fingers through arcane gestures. Mima studied them without concern. There was some advanced stuff in there for a child, but nothing to be worried about.

The girl thrust her hand out. A glimmering missile of light streaked through the air. Mima gestured dismissively toward it, and it fizzled out in a puff of smoke.

“Try again,” she taunted.

“Rrh...” The girl grit her teeth. This time, her gestures were quicker. The second missile flashed out with more force, and Mima swatted it aside.

“Is that the best you can do? Pitiful.”

Mima uncoiled her wisp and began slowly hovering forward, while the barrage only grew more and more desperate. She raised her staff in front of her, and every attack splintered into nothingness as soon as they reached it. “I really won't forgive you for wasting my time. I'm sure you have some family waiting for you in the afterlife, though...”

And, with a desperate little squeal, the girl dove forward, through Mima's barrier, and past her.

Mima whirled on her, but too slowly. She spotted the girl just as a white-hot bullet of light buried itself in her gut.

For a moment, the two stood in silence—the girl gasping for air and trembling, and Mima, watching in dull surprise as the glowing hole in her stomach knit itself back together.

“Hah!” She built up to a low cackle, until she was bent double in the air. The girl watched this response anxiously, then gave a few weak giggles alongside it.

A shove from Mima's staff knocked her to the ground. Mima applied just enough pressure to pin her in place, like an insect in a collection. “Would you like to know something, child? You just did better than any exorcist has managed for the past few centuries. Maybe if you tell me what you wanted, I'll humor you for a few minutes.”

The girl squirmed beneath the staff, clearly scared for her life, but she had the spine to steady herself. She planted her hands on the ground and looked up, meeting Mima's gaze dead on. “M-my name is Marisa Kirisame. I want you to train me to be a real magician.”

Chapter 7: Komachi and Kasen - Vacation

Notes:

Requested by phantomwing

As usual, Kasen's morning routine started before dawn. She woke up and sat by the window, meditating to the rising sun. Once it was in the sky, she recited sutras for exactly an hour, and only then, once her spiritual needs were taken care of, did she make herself a meager breakfast. Once she was all done eating, she opened her front door and prepared to start her day in earnest.

And, almost immediately, tripped over the prostrate form of a shinigami.

“Ow, ow.” Kasen pushed herself up and rubbed the spot where her forehead had bashed the floor, then glanced back over her shoulder. “... what are you doing here?”

“Mmh? Oh, g'mornin'.” Komachi stirred in place, but seemed like she was in no rush to stand up just yet.

“Is that really any way to greet me when you're sleeping on my front step? … I'm going to assume you at least weren't camping out to kill me, or you'd be more, er... alert.”

“Mmhm, that's right.” Reluctantly, Komachi yawned and stretched, taking her time to get a running start at waking up. She finally rocked herself up to sitting and rubbed at her eyes. “I'm on vacation!”

“Va... cation?”

“Uh-huh. The outside world population keeps growing, so they've hired another shinigami to help share the work load. They've got her working the Gensokyo route while she learns the ropes, since it's usually pretty uneventful. So! That means that yours truly gets a few days off!”

“And... what does that have to do with you sleeping outside of my house?”

“... a-ah. Er. Well...” Komachi shrank down a bit, and when she spoke again, her voice was rather more... restrained. “I've never gotten time off before, so I don't really have anywhere to stay. I was hoping maybe I could crash at your place for a bit?”

“Crash at my...? You want to live with me?”

“If it's not too much trouble.”

“We're a hermit and a shinigami. We're natural enemies.”

“Well, yeah, but ya get along with me pretty well anyway, right?”

Kasen grimaced, but had to concede the point. “I do have an empty room,” she admitted with a sigh. “I don't have an extra bed, but if you were willing to sleep outside, I don't think that will be a problem.”

“I mean, I'd be fine with sharing yours, but you don't really seem like the cuddly type.”

“E-er. No, I'm not.” Kasen hurriedly rose to standing if only to give her an excuse to change the subject. “I need to feed my pets now. Do whatever you want.”

---

'Whatever Komachi wanted' turned out to be tagging along after Kasen, mostly. She took a bit too much enjoyment out of throwing meat to the eagles. She scooped up the raijuu without permission and let him crawl all over her for five minutes while Kasen frantically tried to catch him. She scratched the dragon behind the horns until he purred, probably setting back three weeks of strict discipline training.

“Man,” she said at the end, stretching. “Taking care of that many pets seems like a real hassle.”

“It doesn't take as long when somebody isn't trying to pet all of them,” Kasen pointed out. “... and I try to keep busy, so if you came here to relax, I don't think you're going to enjoy yourself.”

She made a point of it, today more than ever. She traveled halfway down the mountainside gathering medicinal herbs. She meditated at the base of a waterfall. She sent hawks to spy on the human village and the shrines to make sure there were no spiritually pressing matters that needed her attention.

Despite hours of this, Komachi didn't complain until it was near evening. “Okay, okay, you're a hardworking hermit, I get it. Even a hermit has to eat dinner sometime, right?” Quickly, she added, “And don't try telling me that you just eat mist or something! I know better than that.”

“I do need to eat dinner, yes. … oh, I hadn't thought of that. I only have enough food at home for one person.”

Komachi didn't seem concerned, even though her stomach chose that moment for a thunderous growl. “Tell ya what, let's just find a good restaurant in the village. My treat.”

---

Kasen visited the village on a regular basis, but she didn't dine in it often. When they finally found a restaurant and walked inside, it made things pretty awkward, since hermits weren't really known for their love of fine dining. Bringing Komachi, a complete stranger to the villagers, only made it worse. She heard the wait staff whispering as they hurried off to fill the order, and sensed eyes on the pair of them for a few minutes more.

She waited until they were alone to say much. “... we might get fewer stares if you hadn't ordered three plates of food, you know.”

“Ehe. Sorry, I can't help it! I really don't get to eat out that often.”

“I suppose you don't.”

“Oh! Speaking of which.” Komachi reached inside her robe and pulled out a bulging coin purse, then upended it on the table. Money spilled out—more than Kasen had ever seen in one place, and in more varieties than she could imagine. Modern yen coins sat next to corroded green mon, foreign currency, and even a few small discs of pure gold. The flow only tapered off when Komachi closed the bag again, and it still looked completely full. She dug through the change on the table. “How much is food at this kind of place?”

“It, er. Well, you'd have to check the menu.” Kasen didn't even manage to look up from the pile as she spoke. After a few seconds, though, another thought occurred to her. “... if you have that much money, couldn't you have paid for a room at an inn instead of staying with me?”

Komachi stiffened up, and judging by her expression, Kasen knew she'd caught her red-handed. “A-ah, er...!” she stammered, and her face burned red. It didn't last long. “Ah, yep, you caught me. I thought it'd be a good way to keep an eye on ya.”

“... am I really being judged so carefully?”

“Huh? No. I just mean, you know. You're always out meditating and stuff when I stop by. I thought if I spent a few days around your place, you'd have to open up and show me what you're actually like when you manage to relax. Assuming that ever happens, of course.” Seeing the look of surprise on Kasen's face only emboldened Komachi further. She scooped up a few coins and dropped them into Kasen's palm, grinning. “Here, that should cover my room and board. And hey, while we're at it, feel like drinking tonight? It's all on me.”

Chapter 8: Kogasa and Sekibanki - Secret Admirer

Notes:

Requested by guldfaxe

Everything was in place. Sekibanki's heads were strewn throughout the forest. She'd saved up enough power to go all-out tonight. It was one of the first warm nights of the year, certain to lure humans from the comfort of their homes into the nighttime countryside.

It was time for some scaring.

That was still easier said than done. She'd been waiting along the road for most of an hour, and had yet to see a single human. In the meantime, she'd already planned out her dinners for the week and put together her grocery list. There were only so many ways to kill time in the dark. Finally, when she was starting to consider going home for the night, she heard footsteps approaching.

Showtime.

The clouds shifted in the sky, masking the moon and casting the night into the darkness. An owl gave a single forlorn hoot in the distance. A fog rose up from the ground. The human's footsteps sped up.

One by one, she opened her many sets of eyes, leaving the forest to either side of the path filled with burning pinpricks of red light. Slowly, her heads drifted forward, bobbing in the air. As soon as her victim noticed it, they broke into a sprint. Her heads closed in, a wave of creepy giggles passing from mouth to mouth.

And, as her victim drew near, she stepped out of the underbrush. There was no head on her body, and she spread her cape wide, blocking the entire path. ”Join us!” her many mouths cried from the underbrush, in voices that ranged from hisses to delighted cackles. ”Jooooin us!”

Her victim was a girl, barely even in her mid-teens. She'd probably snuck out for a midnight rendezvous with a lover. Now, instead, she screeched to a stop, almost tripping over her sandals. For just a moment, Sekibanki got to savor the results of her hard work—the wide-eyed expression of terror and disbelief on the girl's face, the way her hands balled into uncertain fists by her sides. She froze in place, and Sekibanki raised her hands, making grasping motions toward the girl's head.

That was enough to get her moving again. With a screech that could have broken glass, the girl turned and scrambled off.

Sekibanki waited until she was out of sight to relax and give a sigh of satisfaction. “One or two more like that and I'm all set,” she said conversationally to herself, from one head to another. “Back into position.”

Her heads started drifting back into the forest, but she was interrupted by sudden, thunderous clapping from the other side of the road. “That was really good! I've never seen a human that scared!”

Sekibanki turned fifty or so eyes toward the source. There, barely even hidden in the underbrush, was Kogasa. She didn't stay hidden for long, either. She bounded past the weeds, beaming over at her. “It was really good! You were like 'joooin ussss' and she was like 'aaah!' It worked really well, I think!”

“You were watching?”

“Oh, um, I was! Sorry about that! I'm kind of a fan of your work!”

Sekibanki stared at her, deadpan. “A... fan.”

“Uh-huh!”

She could see this was the kind of conversation that she was going to want a body for. She waved most of her heads back toward the forest, while one drifted over to settle onto her neck. She grabbed it and wrenched it into place, then looked back to Kogasa again. “... explain yourself.”

“Oh, um! Well, it's pretty simple, I think? Sorry, I probably moved too fast. Just, I've spent a long time trying to find the best ways to surprise people, so I ended up watching how you did it a few times!”

“That—you've been following me?”

“O-oh, um, sorry! I guess it sounds kind of weird when I put it like that.”

“It does, yes. … if you've watched me before, why did you show yourself this time?”

“Oh, well! I was just wondering if... maybe, you could help me out? I... don't always do very good at surprising people. Everybody says I'm too old-fashioned of a youkai to really be scary or anything, and sometimes they even laugh...”

“Yes, I think I've seen you. You're the one still does things like jumping out at humans and shouting 'surprise,' aren't you?”

“Not just that! One time I tried telling ghost stories! … but it's kind of hard to get them all out before the people just get bored and walk away...”

Sekibanki drew her cloak around herself, scowling disdainfully. “I've perfected my techniques over decades. I'm not going to hand them all to an... amateur.”

“But...!”

Sekibanki shook her head. “Go.”

Kogasa hesitated, but when Sekibanki didn't back down, she wilted. Even her umbrella seemed to droop. “I understand. I was just hoping that, um, maybe we could be friends or something. You're practically the scariest youkai I've ever seen, so...”

“... the scariest?”

Kogasa gave a glum nod. “Uh-huh... Nobody else can make lots of heads like that. But it's okay. I'm sorry to bother you...”

Sekibanki grit her teeth, but there was no way around it. With anybody else, she could convince herself that they were trying to manipulate her, or read their regret as passive-aggression. It was impossible with this girl. She was just... too pitiful.

She sighed. “Well... there aren't many humans out tonight, anyway. I could... show you a thing or two, I guess. If you mess up, it isn't like it will blow my cover for the whole night or something.”

“R-really?”

“Yes.”

“Really?!”

Kogasa lunged forward, and before Sekibanki knew it, she was wrapped up in a hug. The long, floppy tongue on the umbrella was dangling dangerously close to her face, and she shied away from it. “I just said yes, didn't I?! Don't make me reconsider.”

“Oh, sorry...!” Kogasa took a step back, but she was still grinning from ear to ear. “I don't know if I can make extra heads or do that thing with the moon, but I'm willing to learn whatever you want to teach me! Oh! Oh! I can make my eye glow red, though! If that—!”

Sekibanki raised a hand and cut the girl off, if only to make sure she didn't just keep going until she passed out. “First things first,” she said, and looped an arm around Kogasa, leading her into the underbrush. “Now, let's start with talking about the factors that impact human fear...”

Chapter 9: Reimu and Marisa - Exhaustion

Notes:

Requested by transgirlcelestialudenberg

After enough time around Reimu, you got used to the week-long bursts of activity.

This time, it was the Hakurei Urban Legend Festival. The urban legend phenomenon was probably unique to Gensokyo, Reimu had argued, which meant that they were a local specialty that was worth promoting and celebrating. The fact that she'd decided this about three days after the Myouren Temple announced they'd be hosting their first public Bon celebration, and just happened to schedule her festival for the exact same period, didn't seem like much of a coincidence.

Marisa had to admit that the shrine looked pretty impressive. Even from the air, it was hard to miss the banners she'd hung up for it. Along the front of the building, she'd arranged podiums for what few urban legends she'd managed to corral or bribe into participating, arranged in a tidy line on either side to coax people up to the donation box and back. A space had been cleared for stalls along the path leading up to them, and most of them were bustling with preparations. A small stage in the center was ready for Kokoro to put on a performance of Shinkirou.

It looked like everything was all set. There was just one thing she couldn't find...

“Yo,” she said, landing in a dead stop on the pavement. “Y'seen Reimu?”

“I paid the fee,” Nitori said defensively. She didn't even look up from straightening the row of Nessie plushies along the front of her stall. “I'm allowed to set up a shop.”

“No, that's not what I mean. Just, is Reimu around right now?”

“Oh. … I haven't seen her, no.”

“Right, huh...”

She asked a few more stall owners, but none of them had seen anything. She flew down the path to the human village, but Reimu wasn't in transit, nor was she in the village trying to drum up some last-minute interest. It only really left one possibility.

Once she was back at the shrine, she walked straight to the front building and threw the door open. “Hey, Reimu! Are you here? What gives?”

No reply presented itself, but the inside of the shrine was enough to keep her intrigued. The front living area was a mess, filled with sign-making materials and stacks of flyers. It looked like everything she'd been preparing for the festival, but Reimu wasn't working on it. Curiously, Marisa stepped inside and started poking around.

She wasn't at it for long. In the next room over, Reimu was curled up on a futon, draped with the lightest sheet she could find and surrounded by discarded clothing. She eyed Marisa as she approached, but wasn't able to rasp out, “Hi,” until she was nearly close enough to touch.

“Hi. You look like crap.”

Reimu grimaced, but didn't disagree. “I think I worked too much in the heat. I passed out this morning.”

“Oh, huh. That sounds like a real pain.”

“Because it is a pain.” Even that mild outburst sent Reimu into a short coughing fit. When she settled down, she turned her eyes toward the front of the building, where the sounds of the preparations drifted through the wall. “... I guess I can't stay in here all day though, huh?”

She started pushing herself up off the futon. Marisa hurried over and held her down with both hands. “You're sick! Just stay put, okay?”

“I'm supposed to be running a festival.”

“Just... don't worry about it, alright? I'll take care of everything!”

Before Reimu could protest further, Marisa had already turned and run out the door.

---

Being stuck inside throughout a festival was frustrating, really. Through the thin walls of the shrine, Reimu could hear crowds outside, but there was no telling how big they were. There was the occasional shout, and she hoped that it was excitement instead of something horrible happening. Later, music picked up, and she could at least be pretty sure that it was Kokoro's performance.

Several more hours passed after that before the front door opened again, and Marisa shambled in. “Whew. Man, I'm beat.”

“How was it?” Reimu asked, trying to hide the urgency in her voice. “Did everything go smoothly?”

“Shouldn't you be more worried about recoverin'?”

“If it was a disaster, it's going to hurt my shrine's reputation!”

“Kinda late to worry about that too, I figure.” Marisa smirked, and remained infuriatingly silent until she'd slumped down to the floor by the foot of the futon. “It went pretty good, though. I was able to call in Kasen and Aunn to help out. I wasn't sure what you'd wanted to do with those things around the front of the shrine, but Aunn sat on one of 'em and told jokes all night. Seemed to go pretty okay.”

“That's not what the festival was supposed to be about...”

“Yeah, but nobody minded it. Plus, she's really good at jokes, it turns out. She's got this one about this duck with a dog's head—“ Seeing the dubious look on Reimu's face, Marisa stopped herself. “It's funnier if she tells it. Anyway. More important...”

There was a sack over Marisa's shoulder, and now she shrugged it off and slid it over, then tugged out the knot holding it closed. It fell open to reveal a steamer basket and a few jugs. “... you're still sick, right? Not gonna get better unless you take care of yourself.”

Reimu eyed the assortment, but the smell alone was enough to tell her what was inside the basket: meat buns, hand-made by Kagerou, the ones she only brought to festivals that took place suspiciously close to a full moon. A werewolf could, it turned out, pick the really good cuts of meat. And, as her growling stomach quickly informed her, she'd barely eaten since yesterday. She pushed herself up to sitting and opened the basket, and was halfway through one of them before she managed to mumble out, “Thamff,” past a mouthful of food.

“Just tryin' to help. Oh, and.” Marisa uncapped one of the jugs and grabbed a cup from the bedside, filling it to the brim with water. “Gotta stay hydrated, y'know. Probably why ya passed out in the first place.”

This time, Reimu finished gulping down a mouthful before she responded. She glanced down to the pile of food with a smile. “You know, helping me when I'm sick is one thing, but you didn't really need to run the whole festival for me.”

“Eh, what're friends for? 'sides, it was fun.” Her duties finished for now, Marisa unceremoniously slumped over to sprawl on the floor next to Reimu. “... plus, now I'm exhausted, so it's your turn to pamper me. Pass me a meat bun.”

Chapter 10: Tojiko and Yuyuko - The Little Things

Notes:

Requested by an anonymous Tumblr user

The main issue, after the first few centuries, was finding ways to spend all the free time.

There wasn't a lot for Tojiko to do inside the Grand Mausoleum. Truly, it was filled with all of the treasures that Prince Shotoku had accumulated during her life, piled with gold and incense, manuscripts from the mainland and the rarest of alchemical ingredients. … apart from maybe the manuscripts, Tojiko would have traded any of them for a lantern and a good book. Or paper. Paper would be nice. You could do a lot with paper.

Nor could she venture far outside of it. As one of the restless dead, she could only comfortably move so far from the shackles that bound her to this mortal plane, and those Earthly Shackles were mostly sleeping soundly inside the mausoleum, and had been for the past seven centuries or so.

But, there was one place where the spirits of the deceased were always welcome.

She'd gotten used to the strange rush of movement that came with traveling between the planes of existence. So, too, had the servants at Hakugyokurou grown accustomed to her visits. When she made it to the top of the seemingly endless stairs, the girl who was sweeping the front courtyard barely even looked up. “Oh, welcome back. Shall I see if Lady Saigyouji has time to take a visitor?”

---

After being sealed in a tomb for centuries, visiting the Netherworld always struck Tojiko as... well, otherworldly, but in more senses than the word usually meant. She'd grown accustomed to viewing the world in brief spark-lit glimpses, and even more accustomed to seeing nothing but darkness. It made it hard to keep her self-image straight between visits. Had her legs been wisps ever since she'd died, or had they just blurred from existence as she forgot what they looked like? Her hair—had it always been green?

Footsteps outside the door interrupted her self-examination, and Tojiko straightened up just in time for it to open.

Yuyuko Saigyouji, the ghost princess of Hakugyokurou, stepped in and smiled. “Well, Miss Soga. It's rare for you to visit again so soon, isn't it?”

“I don't know. How long has it even been?”

“Ah, to my reckoning? A little over four weeks.”

“I wouldn't have known,” Tojiko said dryly. It was one small blessing of living in a tomb: No solid measure of just how slowly time was passing.

“I suppose you wouldn't. Do you have any news?”

“I saw a rat, likely two weeks ago,” Tojiko said, with a bitter grin that said she was relishing every facet of how ridiculous the statement was. “I shot a spark at it and it ran off.”

“Quite the excitement. Oh, how about this.” Yuyuko paused as a servant entered and poured tea for the both of them. “I've heard that in the world of the living, there was recently an invasion from the mainland. Apparently a typhoon sank the entire thing. Isn't that interesting?”

“I suppose it is.” Tojiko took a long slurp of her tea. After the first few centuries of shooting at rats in an empty tomb, little things like table manners seemed much less important.

“We're lucky to be around for long enough to see such things, I think. If I'd just died as a human, I never would have heard about it.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Tojiko grumbled. Her annoyance wasn't subtle, when it presented itself. A static charge ran through the air around her, until it was practically thrumming with energy. “You have servants and a garden. You aren't locked in a crypt with nothing but moldering books and your own murderer.”

“Hmm, well, no, but... it's also nice to be able to move through objects, don't you think?”

“That isn't comparable at all!”

“Isn't it?” Yuyuko tilted her head in apparent confusion, then slid her arms beneath the table. Her hands poked up through its surface, phasing straight through the wood, and she held her fingers in the shape of crude mouths. “I imagine that it's really convenient for puppet shows, for one.”

It was a patently absurd statement, but Yuyuko managed to say it in a completely earnest deadpan. Tojiko stared at her in disbelief, but even she couldn't stay angry at something like that. The static around her discharged, leaving a few sparks crawling across nearby surfaces before they dissipated. She turned her head aside in annoyance. “That still isn't the same!”

Yuyuko allowed herself the slightest titter, but kept her expression deadly serious until it was safely hidden behind a paper fan. “Oh! And there's the matter of food, of course.”

“The convenience of not needing to eat?”

“Ah? No, I mean that it lets me eat much more. Having a mortal body would just slow me down too much, I'm afraid.”

The final reserves of Tojiko's annoyance drained out of her in a long sigh. She shook her head with a lopsided smile. “I am in the company of a madwoman.”

“Maybe you are.” Yuyuko held her demeanor for a few seconds before lowering her fan and allowing herself a more genuine smile. “... the fact of the matter is, Miss Soga, you're a spirit. All you can do is find ways to adjust to it and try to enjoy yourself, don't you think?”

“There might be some truth to that,” Tojiko conceded, taking another sip of tea.

“I'll ask my servants to find some reading to send home with you. Oh! There's been some lovely poetry over the past few centuries. I'll be sure to recommend some, as well.”

“That's... a lot more than I have to occupy me right now. Thank you.”

“It's my pleasure,” Yuyuko said, and reached across the table to give Tojiko's hand a reassuring pat. “What's the point of being dead if you can't find ways to enjoy yourself?”

Chapter 11: Mokou and Kaguya - A Good Idea at the Time

Notes:

Requested by tamanegichipolla

Chopping wood. That was one thing that didn't change from one year to the next.

It'd been ages since Mokou had gotten tired of wandering and settled down. She hadn't bothered to keep track of the years, but it was definitely long enough. Long enough for her to chop down all the trees within walking distance of her shack, watch them grow back up, chop them down again, and repeat a couple of times. How long did it even take a tree to grow? Twenty years? Fifty? Long enough.

However long it took, she was at a point in the cycle where she needed to travel farther to get firewood. That was the problem with immortality. Eternal life just meant an eternal need for heat, food, and water. If anybody stopped to think about it, they'd realize that it was just a pain in the ass.

She walked down the hillside toward a copse of trees. It stood right near the edge of the bamboo forest, in a direction she didn't travel all that often. She hadn't bothered to visit it for a few decades, and it looked like it had grown plenty.

She slung the axe down from her shoulder as she approached the trees, measuring them with her eyes until she picked one to start with. Chopping it down and hauling the wood back to her shack would take most of the afternoon. She'd come back tomorrow and take another, then another, and over the course of a week or two, the entire patch of forest would be stripped down to nothing. In the time frames she was stuck in, she was a force of erosion.

Mokou was just preparing for her first axe swing when she heard a voice from the other side of the trees.

“And that one? What do you call it?”

She paused, with the axe lifted over her shoulder.

“Those are 'minnows,' I think. I haven't talked to the locals enough to know if that's still the modern usage.”

From the conversation, it could be either humans or youkai. Either way, she wasn't going to be able to start chopping wood barely ten meters away and go unnoticed. Something about the first voice, though...

She rested the axe across her shoulders and eased herself over, creeping silently around the trees. Two figures sat by the side of a creek, with a picnic spread out between them. One was bent over, peering into the water with interest—slender, with black, silky hair so long that it spilled down her back and spread across the ground behind her. The sight was enough to make Mokou tense up, her fingers curling around the handle of the axe.

“Well, they're beautiful. Oh! I just had a wonderful idea. Maybe I could keep some as pets?”

“They don't have a long life span,” the other figure said. “Are you sure you wouldn't prefer something... heartier, princess?”

“Oh, but you say that about everything down here. Maybe you could—“

“KAGUYA!”

Mokou roared the name with such force that she felt like she was going to cough up blood, and it still wasn't enough. The two jolted in surprise, and the moment the black-haired girl started turning to look at her, Mokou knew she was right. She was already charging at them, anyway. Kaguya came to face her just in time to get an axehead to the chest for her troubles.

“H-hah! Haha!” It was a moment Mokou had been daydreaming about for centuries, but never dared to believe would actually happen. The world was frozen in time as she savored it all—Kaguya's blood gushing out past the axe's blade, the look of shock and completely helplessness on her face, the way her hands trembled as they rose up to grasp at it.

It lasted only a second or two. The other figure rose, and in a single blast of energy, Mokou was eliminated.

---

Mokou woke up again with a throbbing headache, before she could even really be said to have a head. It was a few minutes more before she was recovered enough to sit up and open her eyes.

The picnic was, understandably, gone. There was a lot of nearly-fresh blood glistening on the grass around her, though. Some of it was probably even hers. A few bloody footprints led toward the bamboo forest before they faded away into nothingness, and it was the only real sign that Mokou hadn't imagined it all.

She hadn't, though. She'd seen Kaguya. Kaguya was here on Earth.

And that meant she could find her again, too.

---

It took years.

She headed into the nearby human village, but none of them had seen anything. She scouted out the entire nearby area, putting an immortal lifetime of hunting and tracking skills to use, but she couldn't find anything conclusive.

It took years, but Mokou could spend her time like water.

When she found her again, it was completely by accident. Mokou was in the bamboo forest to check her rabbit traps when she spotted her, silhouetted against the night sky. She hesitated for a moment to reassure herself that she wasn't imagining it, but no longer. With a growl somewhere between outrage and delight building in her throat, Mokou flew up the hillside, with fiery wings blossoming behind her

This time, Kaguya noticed her coming, and even fired off a quick attack before Mokou slammed into her.

The fight rolled across the countryside. Mokou beat Kaguya to the ground and set her alight, savoring every moment as she burnt to death. As soon as Kaguya recovered, she blew a hole through Mokou's chest. Mokou recovered just as she was flying off and chased her down, dragging her back to earth for a brutal beating.

For half the night, they murdered each other, back and forth, until they were too tired to stand. … even that didn't stop them. It just slowed them down.

Kaguya slumped to the ground on her back, wheezing for air, her once-immaculate clothes reduced to charred, filthy rags. “Y-you. I know you,” she gasped. “You're... Fujiwara's daughter, aren't you?”

“Yeah. You ruined my father, and my family's name,” Mokou said, as her hand patted along the ground until she found a sufficiently hefty stone. “I'll never forgive you.”

“But you're... how are you still alive? It's been—“ Kaguya stiffened, and even in her exhausted state, the shock in her eyes was obvious. “You drank the Hourai Elixir, didn't you? How? Why?”

Mokou considered that for a moment. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she confessed, and brought the rock down on Kaguya's face.

Chapter 12: Yuugi and Satori - Only Human

Notes:

Requested by AriaBlackmoor

It was said, among the races that had been subservient to the oni on the surface, that in the ancient times when every species of youkai had its own language, the oni word for 'government' had been the same as its word for 'war.'

Satori didn't really know if she believed that, but it was hard to disprove it. The oni were normally spread throughout the underground, each living as they saw fit. Only once or twice a year did they come together as a race. When they did, they made damn sure that everybody else noticed it. The crowd around her was equal parts riot and party, with bottles, intoxicated oni, and chunks of the landscape being thrown around with roughly equal regularity.

She kept her head down and kept moving.

Near the center of the mess, she'd gathered, the most powerful oni held court. It certainly looked promising. The music was louder here, the fires were bigger, and the drink smelled a little less a cleaning solution. The crowds grew thinner. Finally, she came up on the clearing around the throne... if it could be called that. It was more a stack of stone slabs, both natural and ripped from unused buildings. Sitting atop it, in a surprisingly casual pose, was the oni she vaguely knew as Yuugi Hoshiguma.

“Oh, hey,” Yuugi said, her voice booming despite the casual tone. “What brings you here?”

Satori stopped a few steps inside the circle. She wasn't sure what kind of welcome she'd been expecting, but that definitely wasn't it. “... I've heard that my younger sister has been spotted around oni gatherings lately. Her name is Koishi—“

“Komeiji, got it.” Yuugi didn't look up, but thoughtfully swished the contents of her dish before taking another sip. “You couldn't ask anyone else?”

“Most oni have a... limited tolerance for my presence,” she replied tersely.

“Well, there you have it. It sounds to me like you're out of luck.”

“... ah. I was, er, told—“ which was really just a more socially acceptable way to say that she'd read it from somebody's mind “—that anybody could challenge you for a boon today.”

“You got it.”

“Does that not apply to other races, then?”

Finally, Yuugi looked up from her drink. “It does. Do you know what the challenge involves?”

“Er. Well, not as such...”

“It's a fight. A fistfight, none of that spell card stuff. Three rounds. You don't have to win, but you can't concede.” Yuugi paused to take a sip from her dish and let that sink in. “It's not the kind of thing for a coward who hides behind her pets. You want my advice? Go home and be glad you made it there in one piece. If we see your sister, we'll send her your way.”

“I... can't accept that. I'd like to fight you.”

“And I said go home. A satori's barely any different from a human, when it comes to a fight. I won't even have fun beating you up.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

Yuugi eyed her. When Satori still didn't move, she scoffed and shook her head. “Your loss, I guess.” She didn't seem in any rush. She casually drained her dish, savoring every drop. Then, she leapt from her pedestal with surprising agility.

When she landed, the cavern's floor shook with the force of an earthquake. Satori stumbled and nearly fell over.

“The first round starts now,” Yuugi said. She didn't move. She didn't even enter a combat stance, but simply watched Satori with disinterest.

“A-ah, right.” Satori crept forward toward her, moving warily and keeping all three eyes on her. Even the few times she'd been forced into hand-to-hand combat with other races, she'd had an advantage. She could see their plans in their mind's eye, and react before they even moved. Yuugi... wasn't like that. She didn't have any plans. She didn't even consider Satori enough of a threat to be worth considering.

She was right. Satori didn't even see Yuugi move. There was an explosion of white light in her vision, a rush of air, and a whole lot of pain. Something crashed down around her.

When she managed to push aside enough rubble to poke her head out into the air again, several minutes later, she found that she was a hundred or so meters away.

---

“Oh, you came back.” Yuugi sounded surprised.

“You said we were going for three rounds,” Satori said. “I-I'm here for round two.”

“What do you think you're going to accomplish here, exactly?”

Satori ignored the question. She drew herself up, and tried to ignore the way her limbs were all trembling. “Didn't you hear me? I'm here for round two.”

Yuugi hesitated, but nodded. “Then it's round two.” Yuugi walked unhurriedly over, and Satori struggled not to visibly flinch every time she moved. “Are you sure about this? Beating you up one time is teaching you a lesson. Doing it twice is just... unfair.”

“I-I'm sure,” Satori said, and raised her fists. “I haven't seen my sister in two months. She could be in trouble.”

“Well, then.” Stars exploded in Satori's vision again. This time, she was driven down, not up. There was a lot of digging to find the surface again.

---

“Still not giving up?”

Yuugi's voice was genuinely impressed, with something between shock and approval on her emotions. It was a small solace to Satori. Even with her youkai durability, she felt like she'd be sleeping this off for a few weeks. She hunched down, resting a hand on her thigh for support, and gave a gasp of relief as she stopped moving. “J-just... one more round...”

“No stronger than you are, do you think you'll even survive another hit? Youkai or not. Be honest.”

“I'll survive,” Satori gasped out between wheezing breaths. “I need to know that Koishi's okay.”

Yuugi shook her head, but slowly approached. “... well, tell you what. It doesn't feel fair if I'm the only one who does any punching. Here. I'll give you one for free.” She stepped close and leaned in, until she was face to face with Satori. “Just one, though.”

Satori eyed her uncertainly. Yuugi spurred her on. “Well? This is still a fight. If you refuse to fight, you've conceded.”

It felt like some kind of trick, but she couldn't risk it. Gritting her teeth, Satori balled her hand and drove it into Yuugi's face, as hard as she could.

Yuugi went flying a dozen meters into the air, crashing down onto her back halfway across the clearing.

The oni around them went silent in shock.

“Ow! Oh! She hit me real hard!” Yuugi bellowed from her spot. “I forfeit!”

Satori stared in disbelief, and the oni started to clamor in protest. Yuugi pushed herself up from the ground, and silenced them with a pointed glare. “You saw me go flying. I'm accepting my defeat gracefully.”

The murmurs rose to a roar of conversation, but Yuugi ignored it. She crossed the arena in barely three steps and wrapped Satori up in an arm. “Think I misjudged you. Fighting like that for yourself is one thing, but anyone who can do that for somebody else has some spine, I figure.”

“You jumped when I punched you,” Satori pointed out. “You didn't need to fake it. I would have let you hit me another time.”

“I didn't do anything like that,” Yuugi said. “Haven't you heard? Oni can't tell lies. Just so happens that I saw you were gonna punch me hard, so I pushed up from the ground to soften the blow. Standard fighting technique. Now, tell me about your sister...”

Chapter 13: Alice and Narumi - Damaged

For Alice, bad weather was always the best time to get work done.

She'd had the good luck to be running errands in the village right as the dragon statue's eyes turned a deep, dark blue. It gave her plenty of forewarning to make her preparations, stocking up on some extra food and stockpiling firewood. Now, it was paying off. The wind and rain had been pounding on the roof for days, and she had everything she needed. She could keep her head down and focus on her experiments and reading. Not even Marisa was reckless enough to fly through this mess to disturb her.

Or so she'd thought, at least. Something had been pounding on her door for a few minutes, and it was getting harder to convince herself that it was just the wind.

“Honestly,” Alice sighed as she walked over to the door, a small escort of dolls trailing behind her. “Even the wild animals know enough to stay home in weather like this. Can't you at least have as much sense as they—“

She opened the door, and paused mid-sentence. Marisa wasn't standing outside. Against all odds, the person at her door was even shorter than Marisa... and cradling a small Jizo statue in her arms.

Narumi tilted her head up, and even past the rain, Alice could tell she'd been crying. “Miss Alice, please. I need your help.”

---

It took a few minutes to get the girl inside, dried off, and calmed down enough to explain herself. As Narumi took a seat at the drawing room table, she carefully sat the statue down in front of her. One side was smeared with mud, even though it looked like she'd wiped it off to the best of her abilities. More importantly, it had broken in half around the neck. Narumi sat the head and body next to each other, but she didn't look very comfortable doing so.

“Why don't we start from the beginning?” Alice suggested, trying not to think too much about how much that muddy stone was probably scratching up her table. “Is that statue, er... you?”

“I am a statue. Oh, if my head broke off, I don't think I could even walk here... No, this is a different statue.” Narumi stopped fretting over it for long enough to look up. “This one is far too weak to come alive. I simply found it like this. I think that perhaps the wind knocked it over.”

“I don't know if the wind has been strong enough to knock over statues. Somebody could have pushed it, though.”

“... would somebody really be so heartless?!”

“Teenagers have been known to do such things, yes.”

“Oh! Humans are even worse than I thought...! I'll be here forever if I need to help people like that achieve enlightenment...”

“Maybe we should focus on the immediate issue. Why did you bring it to me?”

“I'm not very good with my hands,” Narumi admitted. “I'm a magician, not a craftsman. But I had thought that perhaps you might be able to...”

Alice had been dreading that answer. “I work with wood and porcelain, not stone,” she said. She lifted the statue's head to look at the spot where it had broken, trying to still treat it with a little dignity to avoid setting Narumi off again. She didn't really want the extra work, and if she was being truthful, she didn't care what happened to some Jizo statue. But, seeing the way that Narumi hopefully watched her every move, there was only really one way she could answer. “It won't hurt to have a look, I suppose.”

---

The question of how to join two chunks of rock together, it turned out, was not one that the great magicians and alchemists of history had given much thought to. Alice had flipped through half a dozen books before she found a recipe for any sort of cement, but it was intended for building monuments and the ingredients were measured in barrels. Not quite what she was looking for.

By the time she stepped out of her workshop with the repaired patient, two hours had passed, and she'd learned a lot more about the composition of rocks than she'd ever cared to know.

“This should hold,” she said, carefully standing the statue in front of Narumi. “It might break again if it gets treated too roughly, but...”

“Oh my, this is wonderful!” Narumi said, running her fingers along the former crack. “You can hardly even see the seam.”

“I wouldn't have made the repair if I didn't think I could do it correctly,” Alice said, with just a hint of annoyed pride in her voice. “... but if you don't mind me asking, why were you so concerned in the first place? I know that some of the tsukumogami can be protective of their, er, friends, but...”

“There's a world of difference between me and a mere tsukumogami! ... although I must admit I probably sounded like one earlier. Um.” Narumi sighed. “Tell me, do you have a family, Miss Alice?”

“I... do. Of sorts.”

Narumi nodded with a wistful smile, still running her fingers over the statue. “I don't. I came into being in the Forest of Magic without any ties or relations. It was two weeks before I dared speak to a human, and I'm still not... very good at it.” She glanced up from the statue and admitted, “This is the statue that stood down the road from me. I'm not deluded enough to think of it as family or something, but... it's all that I have.”

“Ah. I see. Well, er, consider the repair a favor between fellow magicians. The materials were cheap anyway.”

“Thank you.” Looking just a little self-conscious, Narumi lifted the statue and tucked it back into the crook of her arm. “I think I've imposed on you enough, though. I should get this back into place.”

Alice nodded, and glanced back to the pile of work she had waiting for her. She hesitated. “Well, it's still raining pretty hard. I won't blame you if you'd prefer to wait for it to clear up.”

“My, no. I stood in the rain for years. I'd feel silly if I complained about this much.”

“Narumi.” Alice rested a hand on her shoulder. “If you want to get better at talking to people, it's not going to happen if you run away from every conversation you get into. At least have some tea before you leave. It will warm you up.”

Narumi turned and stared up at her in surprised, which slowly melted away into a smile. “A-ah, er. Well, I suppose a single cup wouldn't hurt...”