Void of Fantasy - Amor Fati

[Serp]

So, I had an idea for a fic, and I got really passionate about that fic, started storyboarding it in my head, and after weeks of planning, began to carefully craft the first few sentences.  This is not that fic.  This is the fic I decided to throw together in order to polish up my rusty writing talent.  It should be a rather lighthearted piece, without anything terribly thoughtful or depressing to get hung up on.  And if you believe any of that, then I've got a bridge on the road to Chireiden to sell you.  >:3  I've put off posting this for long enough, so let's get rolling.

---

    It was another slow day at the Hakurei Shrine.  Reimu was lounging in the sun out front, wearing a bikini and dark sunglasses.  She hadn't slept well the night before, and so the sun's warm rays had an easy time lulling her into a drowsy state.  Her mind wandered from sleepy half-formed thought to sleepy half-formed thought.  Presently, she was pondering the idea of modesty.  A bikini was a funny thing, she thought, an uneasy compromise between the desire to feel the air and the sunlight without any clothes in the way, and the desire not to be seen violating society's unspoken laws about bare skin.  But then, why couldn't she just do away with the bikini and let her desire to sunbathe have free reign?  After all, it wasn't too likely that someone else would see her on this otherwise-deserted asteroid outpost on the edge of the Gensokyo solar system.

   Had she been a bit more wakeful, Reimu might have been provoked into action by this line of thought, but her sleepy mind wandered right past it.  She instead began to wonder, not for the first time, just why the Hakurei Shrine had been stationed out in the middle nowhere like this.  Reimu would much rather have lived and worked on the Human Planet, which was large enough to have its own self-sustaining atmosphere, as opposed to this little asteroid that needed to have an artificial one generated to be at all habitable.  But Reimu's employer, Sukima Corp, had insisted that the shrine be built here.  For that matter, Reimu wasn't sure why it was called a ?shrine? at all, with its carbon fiber structure and lack of ceremonial functions.  Complaining about that point had earned Reimu a stern letter written by the president of Sukima Corp herself, a woman named Yukari Yakumo.  It insisted on, among other things, the ?necessity of parallel continuum nomenclature? to the Sukima Corp business model.  President Yakumo was known to be very eccentric despite her prowess as a businesswoman, but Reimu couldn't think of any reason to call something a shrine that clearly wasn't.

   That was about as far as Reimu's conscious mind ran before exhausting itself and sinking into sleep.  It was at that most opportune moment that she received a telephone call.  ?Hzzwha!??she managed to approximately say as she sleepily flailed around looking for the phone, before remembering herself and pressing a finger against the side of her ear to accept the call.

   Reimu's neural implants recognized the gesture and went into action.  The chip wired directly into her optic and auditory nerves began accepting signals from the transceiver embedded in her skull, and she heard a soft hiss of static as a semi-transparent window appeared in her field of view.  The window showed her an old bearded man ? not that most people would identify him as such on a first meeting.  This old man had been bred and genetically engineered to fight wars in environments hostile to human biology.  His wrinkled and leathery skin was a dark green, and his shoulders were obscured by a thick, blocky carapace that had deflected countless bullets.  Yet his soldier days were long behind him, and presently he looked less like he was fighting a war, and more like he was especially amused to have woken someone who was sleeping past noon.

   ?Genji,? Reimu said by way of greeting, then yawned.

   ?Good morning, Reimu,? Genji replied, barely suppressing a chuckle.

   ?Have you got a job for me??  Reimu spoke quickly to avoid giving Genji an opportunity to chide her about her sleeping habits.

   ?Yes, and it's urgent.  In fact, you should be able to see it from there, if your eyes are open.  Look at the sun.?

   Reimu, whose eyes had started to drift closed again as Genji spoke to her, scowled and sat up to look.  Something was off about Gensokyo's sun, certainly.  She took off her glasses and squinted, then shook her head and spoke again.

   ?It looks like it has a red tint.  What's going on, Genji??

   ?You can barely tell from there.  From the Human Planet, it's obvious.  Even on the daylight side, the planet's surface is hardly brighter than a moonlit night.  And it's getting darker.  Something's making a huge red cloud between the planet and the sun.  The Shrine's asteroid is in the cloud's penumbra.?

   Reimu stood up and bounded back towards the shrine in the asteroid's low gravity, but kept speaking to Genji.  The transparent window showed to her by her ocular implants shrunk and moved to the corner of her field of vision as she went.  ?What's it made of?  And what's making it??

   ?Your guess is as good as mine.  We're only just now hearing about this.?

   The shrine's maiden went into the building and took a sharp turn down a staircase.  She emerged into an underground hangar.  Along one wall were lined dozens of weapons, from conventional pistols to laser guns to missile launchers, and a small red-white spacecraft sat with its hatch opened, waiting to be used.  You don't need gohei and shimenawa when you have ritual instruments like these, Reimu thought to herself.

   ?Time to earn my paycheck,? said the shrine maiden, and she grabbed a heavy ray gun off the wall.

   ?Be careful, Reimu.  Gensokyo is an unpredictable, dangerous place.?

   ?I don't need you to fly me around the system anymore, Gramps.  Just leave this to me.?

---

   Less than half an hour later, Reimu was ready to go.  Her role as Sukima Corp's ?shrine maiden? was rather like a bounty hunter or some sort of special forces strike team.  The Human Planet had a small police force for handling its own troubles, but it had no official fleet of armed spacecraft, and the few private individuals that owned such spacecraft had little motivation to get involved in system-wide incidents.  Sukima Corp had an arrangement with the local authorities, to station a resolver of such incidents in the system, with the understanding that the Human Planet would subsidize her presence there for its own good.

   At least, that was the way it was supposed to work.  In practice, the payments were rather sporadic, and since Reimu herself was payed on commission, that meant that her own paychecks were also sporadic.  About this, too, Reimu had complained to Sukima Corp, asking whether she ought to be stationed elsewhere if her placement here wasn't bringing Sukima Corp any revenue, and yet again a letter written personally by President Yakumo was sent to brush aside her objections.  Worse still, there was virtually no contact between the Gensokyo system and the rest of the galaxy, so unless Sukima Corp pulled Reimu from the system, she would be stuck there living in relative poverty on the whim of the Human Planet's donations.

   Even so, at least Sukima Corp had spared no expense in arming its shrine maiden.  Reimu heard sporadic reports from the rest of the galaxy about battleships over a kilometer long, about spacecraft carriers that boasted over a thousand fighters each, and about superweapons capable of cracking a planet like an egg.  In her line of work, those things would be superfluous and unwieldy.  Reimu owned only one spacecraft, a modified fighter model that measured about ten by ten by three meters.  Most of the craft's volume was taken up by the small nuclear reactor that powered it and the ion jets that gave it its maximum acceleration of over 30g's.  The cargo hold, accessed through a small loading ramp in the back, and the cockpit, which rested in the center of the craft with no external windows, took up a comparatively small volume.  The spacecraft's weapon pods were modular in design, and could accept a wide variety of different loadouts depending on the nature of Reimu's mission.  This time, she had opted for a system of homing missile pods complemented by a couple of rotary coilguns to deal with anything that stood between her and the completion of her mission.

   The last finishing touch to complete the ship was its paint job ? red and white boldly emblazoned, two solid colors slashed through each other like a coat of arms.  Reimu stood surveying her craft, having changed into a skintight synthetic latex bodysuit colored red and white to match it.  It didn't look like much of a uniform, and some might say that she didn't look at all prepared to go into combat.  Those people would be wrong.

   Reimu walked up her spacecraft's loading ramp and past the rack of weaponry and equipment that she had packed for the trip.  She climbed through a hatch into the cockpit and sealed it behind herself.  Wordlessly, she sat in the form-fitted pilot's seat and held out her hands.  Her neural implants recognized the gesture and came to life again, sending a wake-up signal and identity verification to the spacecraft's computer.  In less than a second, a holographic interface flickered and drew itself in front of Reimu's fingers.  She pressed a few of the illusionary buttons, then leaned back into her seat.  A viscous amber liquid began flowing into the small cockpit, filling up the airtight compartment.  As the fluid level reached her neck, Reimu breathed out and then, with a fearlessness that came only with practice, dunked her head into the liquid and breathed in.

   The liquid filled her lungs, and after a moment of instinctive panic in which she feared drowning, Reimu relaxed again.  The liquid was a perfluorocarbon compound with dissolved oxygen, which could be breathed comfortably and without any ill effects.  Most humans in normal conditions can't tolerate sustained acceleration above 10g's.  Beyond that point, the varying densities of organs and tissue cause them to be crushed against each other, and bodily cavities like the lungs will collapse.  The perfluorocarbon, with a density closely matched to human flesh, and combined with a number of surgical modifications Reimu had been subjected to, allowed her to survive sustained accelerations even above 20g's unharmed, and short maneuvers that put her through g forces much higher than that weren't out of the question.

   The fluid had finished filling the cockpit.  Reimu went through her pre-launch checklist as the craft's AI did a once-over of the engines, jets, weapons, life support, and various software.  Satisfied, Reimu pressed the button to initiate the launch countdown.  A small counter appeared in the corner of her field of vision, an image superimposed onto her mind by her neural implants.

   10...  9...  8...  7...  The hatch leading to the upper levels of the shrine sealed itself closed, the weapons racks were drawn into the wall as retracted blast shields slid up from the floor into place to cover them, and the spacecraft's loading ramp folded up to enclose the cargo hold.  There was a whoosh of air followed by complete silence in the hangar as its atmosphere was vented into space.  The ion jets began to glow a faint red, and Reimu felt as much as heard a low hum through the fluid surrounding her as the engine came to life.

   6...  5...  4...  3...  Several holographic windows appeared arrayed around Reimu, showing the various views of the ship's cameras.  All but one just showed the inside of the hangar, but the largest one, the frontal view, showed the hangar bay door slowly opening.  With a perceptible lurch, the landing gear came up, and the ion jets took over the job of holding the spacecraft aloft.  The holographic throttle lever by Reimu's right hand began to glow more brightly to signify this, and Reimu moved her hand to ?grip? the image, readying herself for launch.

   2...  1...  LAUNCH  -  Reimu saw the notification that all systems were operating as they should.  She saw the long launch tunnel ahead of her, and at the end, a few small points of light ? distant stars whose light had traveled across the galaxy to end up here.  She resisted the urge to go full throttle and obliterate the hangar with her exhaust.  Instead, she eased her hand forward, and the engines gave her the appropriate power.  The spacecraft glided down the tunnel and emerged into the space of the Gensokyo system.  All of Reimu's cameras now showed the starry sky, and behind her, she saw the little asteroid on which was built the Hakurei Shrine, getting smaller every moment as she ventured off.

   Without looking back again, Reimu flew off towards the sun, to resolve this latest incident.  She was completely focused on her mission, and she would let nothing get in her way.

---

   And it wasn't long before something tried to get into her way, either.  Reimu had just started to think about how unexpectedly boring this mission was, when a bright holographic warning screen appeared in front of her, its flashing red glow illuminating the whole cockpit.  She glanced down at the displayed tactical map.  The icon for her own fighter was centered, with several small asteroids indicated by dots.  The map was not to scale ? combat and maneuvers in space happen on such a large scale that if the relative sizes involved were respected, either the icons would be too small to make out, or the map would be too large to fit in the cockpit.  As Reimu watched, dozens of other spacecraft emerged from hidden ports in the asteroids, forming up into small squadrons and converging on her position.

   Piracy had come a long way since the days of wooden ships full of rough men traveling the high seas in search of undefended merchants' booty.  If such a romanticized sort of pirate still existed, then Reimu hadn't yet had the misfortune of seeing him.  The Gensokyo system simply lacked the volume of merchant traffic to make traditional piracy profittable.  Instead, certain unscrupulous organizations would try to prey on interplanetary travelers by scattering small, weak drones across the inhabited galaxy.  Drones would arrive in a system, find a nearby asteroid or other piece of debris in which to nest, and hibernate there until they detected a ship passing by.  Then, they would come alive and attempt to swarm the detected vessel using a very simple combat AI.  If successful, the drones would drag the disabled craft to a nearby secret hangar and send out a confirmation signal so that the pirates who deployed them could come by and pick up their loot.

   A slight smile spread across Reimu's face as she saw her tactical display light up with enemies.  She reached out with both hands, her movements sure and decisive even through the thick amber breathing fluid, and her hands closed around two holographic joysticks.  A high-pitched whirr sounded through the hull of her craft as the rotary coilgun array began to spin.  She set her sights on the nearest cluster of enemies and pulled both triggers.

   A stream of small ferromagnetic slugs came shooting out of the front of Reimu's craft at a speed great enough to punch a hole through just about any armor in the galaxy.  Most flew off harmlessly, but Reimu had ammunition to spare.  One by one, each of the drones in Reimu's path got hit by the occasional lucky shot and got crumpled into scrap.  They weren't made to withstand this sort of punishment; most merchant craft packed nothing more dangerous than an industrial mining laser, if even that much.  In civilized space, regular interplanetary patrols caught enough of the pirate droids that the occasional merchant craft lost to a missed pocket of them was considered an acceptable loss.  In Gensokyo, though, you had to be well-equipped to go into the void and live to tell the tale.

   Another warning sounded, alerting Reimu to the fact that even if the droids in front of her were being shredded into little pieces, more squadrons were coming around the sides to flank her.  She casually flipped her thumbs up to press the tops of the two holographic joysticks, and the spherical missile pods mounted on the back of her craft flipped open and released their payloads.  Her visual cameras showed the missiles being launched off to the sides, then erupting with plumes of exhaust as they homed in on the hostile targets.  In the distance, she could pick out the faint bursts of light as the missiles found their marks.  She checked her tactical display again, and saw a few more dots moving towards her: unguided torpedoes launched by the pirate drones that had been lucky enough to get into range.  Reimu adjusted her course slightly and watched the torpedoes fly harmlessly by.  With that taken care of, the tactical display was emptied of threats.

---

   Reimu closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath of the breathing fluid.  It feels good to be fighting again, she mused to herself.  Everything is so peaceful and boring at the shrine, but this...  This is the life I signed up for.  There's something romantic about blowing up pirates in deep space, isn't there?

   She opened her eyes again, lazily surveying the tactical display.  It was completely empty, without a single enemy icon on it.  That struck Reimu as a little strange.  Most of the time, some of the debris left behind would be large enough to appear on the tactical display.  For that matter, it looked as though all the asteroids had disappeared, too...

   Reimu's eyes widened.  On pure instinct, she reached out, grabbed the joysticks, and jerked them both to the side.  Her craft accelerated explosively, enough to send her reeling to the side and set her ears ringing.  Yet even through the sudden shock, Reimu noticed a shadow pass by her craft on the visual cameras, blotting out the light of the stars for a moment.  If she hadn't dodged to the side right then, that shadow would have...  She didn't know what it would have done, but she doubted it was anything beneficial to her.

   With practiced force of will, Reimu carefully considered the situation even as she brought her craft around to face her unseen attacker.  With a series of sharp gestures, she reverted the tactical map to its state five minutes previous.  The asteroids and bits of debris from the destroyed pirate drones showed up again, but her attacker was nowhere to be seen.  I must have flown into a trap, Reimu thought to herself.  With her radar rendered useless, Reimu turned to her visual cameras.  The placid field of stars, empty of enemy ships, mocked her.  She felt suddenly rather foolish to be flying around a brightly colored craft in a battle where the only way to spot your foe was visually.  And if her sensors couldn't find her foe, then her missiles wouldn't be able to lock onto it either.

   But even if her assailant couldn't be seen, its presence could still be inferred...  For just a moment, Reimu had seen its silhouette against the background of stars.  It was bigger than her own fighter, she thought, but not by much.  All I need is a lucky shot... there!  Reimu saw a few stars wink out for a moment, and she reacted immediately, squeezing her triggers and firing wildly into the darkness.  There was a spark of light as one of the slugs hit home, and Reimu tightened her aim on that spot.  More flashes let her know that she was on target, and Reimu smiled triumphantly to herself.  The battle was won.  Nothing could survive being perforated like that.  She released the triggers, then nudged her own craft forward for a closer look.

   The enemy craft had been painted black, but its unpainted innards glinted in the red-tinted sunlight.  It was just another pirate drone, albeit of an unfamiliar design.  I haven't seen one like that before...  Oh well, I'd better move on and get back to a region where my sensors work properly.  Then I can move on and resolve this incident.

Chapter 1:  Amor Fati

---

## Welcome to the Sukima Corp private database.
##
## Access is restricted to Elohim security clearance.  Please enter your username.
##
## > hanm07072089
##
## Please enter your password.
##
## > ********

## Please select a category of information to review.
##
## e) Events
## l) Locations
## o) Organizations
## p) People
## t) Technology
##
##  > t
##
## Please select an entry to review.
##
## > rumia

## Rumia
## Unmanned military spacecraft
## Fielded by: Federation of Solar Colonies
## Purpose: Abduction, reconnaissance
##
##  The Rumia was originally designed by the FSC Black Ops, but it was long ago reverse
## engineered by pirate organizations for usage in ransom kidnappings and hardware
## scavenging.  The craft is programmed to position itself in the path of its target, release a
## cloud of radar-absorbing chaff, approach the target unseen, and engulf it within an
## internally shielded cargo hold.  Engulfed craft have their weaponry and propulsion disabled
## by powerful electromagnets.
##
##  The Rumia relies on stealth and surprise to complete its mission, so once it has been
## detected, dispatching it is just a matter of using the appropriate weaponry.  Its hollow
## interior makes it structurally weak, so magnetic slugs are highly effective.  Its ion jets are
## shielded, however, and its hull is carefully kept at background temperature, so heat-
## seeking missiles are ineffective.  It is not a main battle spacecraft, and it is rarely fitted
## with any weaponry of its own.  The Rumia poses no threat to military or merchant craft
## larger than its cargo hold.

[Tengukami]

I've often thought about how a space Touhouverse would be. It's off to a pretty good start, too.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

I began grinning stupidly when I realized where this was going.

(Am I a bad person for thinking of a CODEC conversation in the "phone" scene? Or of Metroid when it described her as something of a mercenary?)

Regardless, this is awesome. It took me a minute to figure out what "hanm" was supposed to stand for ...

[IcedFairy]

Poor Rumia, doomed to mook status via mass production.

Also I love the way you did fairies.  Though you think they'd ask Reimu to clean them out more often.

Oh wait, then they'd have to actually pay her.

[Kasu]

Haha.  This is pretty sweet!

[Alfred F. Jones]

I would love to buy a bridge to Chireiden, thank you very much. >:<

But yes, this is awesome, please continue, etc.

[Serp]

(Am I a bad person for thinking of a CODEC conversation in the "phone" scene? Or of Metroid when it described her as something of a mercenary?)

I actually wrote that part before I went on my Metal Gear Solid Let's Play binge, but reading over it again, it does kind of look that way, doesn't it?  "Hold on, Genji, our production budget's running low, let's switch to nanocommunications!"  Just kick me if I start turning Wriggle into The Pain, though, alright?

Regardless, this is awesome. It took me a minute to figure out what "hanm" was supposed to stand for ...

Uh oh, looks like we've got a smart mark.  You're going to love Phase 2 of this fic, I can already tell. :3

Poor Rumia, doomed to mook status via mass production.

Rumia's pretty consistently in the top 15 of my Touhousort, so I'm not exactly happy about it either.  Oh well, maybe I'll find some way to make up for it later.

Anyway, I'm going to try to keep a weekly schedule of updates here.  Hopefully I still managed to proofread it effectively.

---

   Reimu felt the acceleration in her bones as she pushed the throttle forward and watched her fighter's speed climb.  Within a few minutes, her sensors came back online and her navigation software was able to plot a course to the red cloud.  A holographic window opened next to her tactical display, showing a diagram of the Gensokyo system, with Reimu's ship centered, the Hakurei shrine just behind her, the human planet a little more than half a Solar astronomical unit away, and the red cloud just a bit farther than that, between the planet and the sun.

   By pushing her craft to its limit, Reimu could probably get there in less than six hours by conventional methods.  But Reimu's engines were only designed to fire at full capacity for a few seconds at a time in emergencies.  If she overtaxed them now, she might damage them, and end up stranded without a working craft until Sukima Corp could send out some replacement parts, which could take days or even weeks.  But with the nature and purpose of the red cloud still unknown, Reimu didn't want to take any more time than necessary to resolve this incident.  She wanted to travel faster than her ion jets could take her – she wanted to travel faster than light itself.

   Faster-than-light travel had been known about for centuries.  The expansion rate of the universe is such that the distance from our galaxy to the galaxies at the farthest edge of measured space is increasing at a rate much faster than 300,000 kilometers per second.  At first glance, this would seem to contradict the theory of special relativity, which states that no object may travel faster than the speed of light, but theory and observation are reconciled by one fine distinction.  The edge of the universe is not moving away from us – the space between us and it is just expanding, increasing distance without movement.

   This counter-intuitive and somewhat spooky phenomenon was ascribed to “dark energy” in the decades before engineers finally managed to harness it for the good of humanity and thus kick off the age of interstellar colonization.  By compressing the space in front of a craft and expanding the space behind it, one could move between distant planets and stars with complete disregard for the speed of light.  And at the forefront of that research had been Sukima Corp, headed by Yukari Yakumo.  All drives capable of producing such an effect were colloquially referred to as Sukima drives, and the process itself was called “gapping.”

   It was this technology that let Reimu communicate with Genji's station on the human planet without any lag, and her personal spacecraft had one powerful enough to send it across the Gensokyo system.  It couldn't be used on just a moment's notice, though.  The space around the craft needed to already have some curvature of a magnitude related to the spacecraft's rest mass in order for the bubble of curved space to be formed...  or something like that.  Reimu struggled to recall the formula for a few moments before shrugging and focusing her mind on the tactical display.  The physics of it weren't her problem to worry about.  All it meant to her was that she needed to reach a critical speed before her Sukima drive could come online and bring her to her destination.

---

   Reimu was quite careful about not letting her mind wander when she was on a mission, and it was times like this that proved the importance of that care.  If she had been less attentive, she might not have been ready for what happened next.

   The tactical display lit up suddenly, displaying a solid wall of white dots ahead of Reimu's craft.  Above that, a warning sign appeared:  MINEFIELD DETECTED.  The spacecraft had been accelerating to gapping speed, and was moving far too fast to stop and find a way around.  There was nothing for Reimu to do but tackle the threat head-on.

   She pulled back all the way on the throttle, and the craft's forward ion jets flared up.  The finely engineered hull didn't so much as creak at the sudden change of acceleration, but Reimu felt like she had been punched in the stomach as she was jerked forward.  Recovering quickly, she began firing her coilguns into the rapidly approaching cloud of white dots.  A fraction of a second later, the forward visual cameras grew bright with sudden activity.

   As the mines detected nearby motion, they exploded, releasing a billowing white cloud into the vacuum of space.  Less than a second afterward, the cloud's expansion was halted as it spontaneously crystallized into a lustrous, translucent, diamond-like solid form.  It was a non-lethal weapon by design, not that that was any comfort to Reimu, with the speed she was travelling at.  The sudden drag from being caught in one of those clouds would probably shear Reimu's craft in half, or failing that, it would pulverize Reimu against the inside of its cockpit.

   Fortunately for Reimu, the coverage of the minefield was not complete.  Between the shifting masses of crystal was a clear path, easily large enough for her craft to fit through.  Maneuvering would be tricky, with her forward jets firing at full power, but there was no other option.  Still firing her coilguns, Reimu sharply steered through the gap.  The ferromagnetic slugs triggered further explosions through the minefield, clearing a crystal-lined road ahead.

   Dodging, dipping, and twisting her way through the gaps, Reimu continued to decelerate her craft.  The further she went, the easier it became, as she had more time to consider her next move.  Every time she came out into the open, she fired off her coilguns to trigger the next wave of mines.  It can't be much longer now.  This minefield can't last forever.  Movement on the tactical display caught her eye.  It was another craft, coming straight for Reimu through the minefield, yet it wasn't triggering the undetonated mines it passed.  Then that must be the drone set to retrieve the victims of this minefield.

   Reimu changed her course, steering for a nearby gap to her side.  On her rear camera, she just barely had time to see a blue-white drone pop up over an icy crystalline crag and fire off a cluster of missiles before she turned the corner and lost sight of it.  Behind her, there was another cloudy explosion, and a moment later, the path was sealed with another layer of crystal.  The enemy dot on Reimu's tactical display began to fly around, searching for another vector of attack.  If I try to face it head on in these close quarters, it will probably be able to ice me.  I need to shake it off if I can.

   Reimu's craft had slowed down enough that she had plenty of time to plot a course through the minefield.  Alright.  Let's see what that thing is capable of.  She pushed the accelerator forward, increasing her speed now, aiming for a valley between two huge crystal blocks.  The blue-white drone popped up from a nearby gap just a moment too late to get a clear line of fire on her, and so it followed her through the valley.  Reimu swerved and banked, no longer aiming for the opposite edge of the minefield.  Now she was just taking the most dangerous path she could, even backtracking at times through areas she had already been through, hoping that the drone would either break off the pursuit, or better yet, smash into the crystal and destroy itself.

   But the drone managed to keep up.  Reimu would only occasionally catch a glimpse of it coming around a corner behind her before Reimu herself turned again and lost sight of it.  And then, Reimu came out into a wide-open cave.  Behind her, the drone finally managed to get a clear shot, and fired out waves of missiles to its sides.  The missiles arced and began to converged on Reimu's position.  Reimu fired her emergency accelerators and ducked through another gap, just barely outmaneuvering the missiles.

   It had been a lucky dodge, but it looked like Reimu's luck had run out.  Ahead of her was a dead end.  The mines in this area had all been triggered, and the clouds had merged before crystallizing, resulting in a cave with just one entrance – the one she had come in through.  Damn!  Looks like this is it...!  If I can't shake it off, and I can't avoid getting frozen, then the least I can do is reduce that drone to scrap, maybe buy myself enough time to escape.

   Reimu flew around the edge of the cave, then shot back towards the entrance at full throttle.  She fired her coilguns at that one entrance, hoping that she could at least destroy the drone before her weapons and jets were encased in ice.  And then the drone came out, its sights already set on Reimu's craft.  Reimu's shots punched holes in its armor, but all it needed was one missile to end the battle.

   But that missile never came.

   Taking enough magnetic slugs to rip it to pieces, the drone just sat there and let itself be shredded.  Reimu flew past it and out of the dead end cave, and the drone did not follow.  It was dead.  What in the world...?  Did I pierce its AI core with a lucky shot?  No, it would definitely have redundant systems for that...  Oh, I see.  There was one plausible explanation.  All drone AIs are by default programmed with a set of basic self-preservation behaviors.  They avoid bullets shot at them and they don't fly into walls.  They also don't fire missiles when their target is so close they'd be caught in the explosion themselves.

   That sort of thing made sense for a main battle combat drone, but a pirate drone using a non-lethal weapon doesn't need to care about being caught in place as long as it catches its quarry too.  If they had been a little more competent, the pirates in charge of this drone would have removed that bit of behavior from the drone's repertoire.  What shoddy programming.  I suppose I shouldn't complain about a pirate's idiocy, though.

   Reimu navigated her way out of the minefield with little trouble after that.  After triggering just a couple more waves of mines, she found a path into a clearing where her coilguns didn't set off any more explosions.  She tentatively began to accelerate away from the field of crystal behind her, and finding no more obstructions, started to bring herself up to gapping speed again.  Two ambushes outside the shrine, before I even got a chance to engage my Sukima drive.  What rotten luck.

---

   This time, Reimu managed to get her craft to gapping speed without further incident.  After a few minutes of acceleration, she saw the indication that her craft was up to speed:  SUKIMA DRIVE READY.  Reimu shut off her jets, checked that her destination coordinates were set to the edge of the scarlet cloud, and then pressed the button to engage the drive.

   Traveling faster than light actually didn't feel at all different from cruising through space normally.  The only difference was in the limits of one's interaction with things outside the craft.  Reimu's tactical display was completely blank as she slid across the Gensokyo system.  The stars ahead of her seemed to be smeared slightly across her cameras, while the space behind her appeared to be completely black.  If she tried to fire her weapons, or if she blundered into some massive obstruction on her path to her destination, the bubble of warped space around her craft would pop and she would end up drifting through space normally again.

   So, Reimu just relaxed and floated in the amber breathing fluid while she waited for her arrival.  The Sukima drive's computer at first estimated a total travel time of 1 minute 21 seconds, but that figure fluctuated back and forth a bit.  The journey ended up taking 1 minute 23 seconds, and Reimu was inundated with data of all sorts upon her arrival.

   The exterior cameras showed Reimu a field of red.  To her left, the sun was dimmed and tinted red.  To her right, the human planet was a small red-purple dot.  All around, the field of stars was dyed red.  And ahead of her were billowing red clouds, thick enough that she couldn't see where they were coming from.

   Her other sensors reported a number of interesting facts.  Firstly, there was a gravitational field holding the cloud together.  The center of the cloud must have had a strong source of artificial gravity.  Reimu's spacecraft automatically took a sample of the cloud's material and did a quick field scan of its molecular properties.  It wasn't corrosive or otherwise harmful to her craft's equipment, and a simulation of the mist's interaction with several bodily tissues indicated that it would only cause minor irritation in the lungs if breathed.  The material's only remarkable feature was how well it managed to absorb light at such a low density.  The cloud's volume was slightly greater than that of the whole of the Human Planet, but stored at only a few hundred times atmospheric pressure, it would have been possible to ship the entirety of it into the Gensokyo system on a single interstellar freighter.

   The mist dispensers had to be deeper in the cloud.  Reimu turned her attention there now, and thought she saw some dark shapes milling around.  A glance at the tactical display proved her suspicions: a small fleet of defensive craft was moving into formation to greet her.  These are main battle drones, designed to repel an invasion.  She checked her fighter's status.  Running a little low on coilgun slugs...  Plenty of missiles, though.  No structural damage at all.  I can take 'em.

   The formation of drones inside the cloud opened fire with a volley of torpedoes, and Reimu fired her jets, dodging to the side and advancing forward.  She engaged her missile pods, leaving a wake of exhaust behind her as each projectile found a target and rocketed off to destroy it.  The tactical display was alight with torpedoes, volley after volley converging on Reimu's position.  She banked her craft to the side and through a gap in one of the waves, passing so close to one torpedo that its dot on the tactical display passed right through the icon displaying her craft.  But it was worth it, as most of the torpedoes fired at her were now far off course.

   The formation of drones, now full of holes due to the barrage of missiles, parted to the sides, spreading out to fire on her from all directions.  But before she could bring her craft around to engage them, one new dot entered Reimu's tactical display from the center of the cloud.  It's fast!  Reimu barely had time to dodge to the side as the new craft flew past in a green blur and fired a stream of its own coilgun slugs at her.

   A loud thud sounded through the craft as one of the enemy's slugs hit Reimu's craft.  It glanced off the sloped side armor, leaving no more than cosmetic damage, but it sent a bolt of adrenaline through Reimu's system nonetheless.  It was the first time she had been so much as touched by enemy fire, this mission.  Gritting her teeth, Reimu made sure she wasn't in the path of any drone torpedoes, then spun her craft around to focus on the new threat.  That green fighter is no drone.

   Reimu launched a volley of missiles, then flew to the side in anticipation of the enemy's next wave of coilgun rounds.  That move payed off.  The enemy started to fire at where Reimu had been, tried to sweep its fire around to where she had moved to, then swerved to avoid Reimu's missiles, sending its coilgun slugs in wild arcs.  Reimu easily dodged between them, maneuvering around behind the green fighter, and fired off a short burst from her own coilgun.  There was no sound in the scarlet cloud, but Reimu could still practically hear the satisfying crash of metal on metal.  The green craft was hit, and its pilot seemed to realize that she was at a disadvantage, as the craft's jets flared brightly in an attempt to escape.

   But before Reimu could press the attack and finish her foe off, another wave of drone torpedoes forced her to dodge around.  She spun her craft around again, but watched the departing green fighter in her rear camera.  Go on and flee.  Lead me to your master.  Reimu fired off a few short, controlled bursts from her coilgun, mindful of her dwindling ammunition, and launched another volley of missiles at the more distant enemy drones.  The waves of incoming torpedoes were easily dodged now – the drones were just buying time for their commander to escape.

   The last few drones at the edge of Reimu's tactical display pulled back and out of sight, most likely to regroup.  By the time they come back, I'll have already landed.  She brought her red-white craft back around to face the center of the cloud, and accelerated into its gravity well.

--

   The red mist was getting denser the further in she went.  Her tactical display was empty of enemy craft.  She was surrounded by billowing red mist, the same on every side, with no landmarks at all...  Until she saw something up ahead.  There were more shapes in the red mist.  It looked like a building of some sort.  And now her tactical display showed one enemy – the green fighter from before.  It held its distance from Reimu, and an indicator light on her display showed that the other craft's pilot wanted to talk.

   Alright.  I'll bite.  Reimu pressed the button to open communications.  A holographic window appeared in front of her showing the other fighter's pilot, a red-haired girl sitting in a cockpit full of red breathing fluid.  It made it look like she was sitting in a tank of blood, but the half-dismayed half-determined expression on her face took away any frightening aspect that she might otherwise have had.

   “This is Hong Meiling.  Remember that name.  Intruder to the Scarlet Devil Mansion: Identify yourself!”  The girl, Meiling, frowned at Reimu.  She can't possibly expect me to turn back now, can she?  Reimu would have sighed, if she had been breathing air at the time.

   “Intruder?  You're the one that attacked me while I was just going about my business, gatekeeper.”

   “I attacked you, but you attacked back!  Don't try to act innocent!”

   “I am innocent.  After all, you're the ones that are causing trouble for the Human Planet.”

   Reimu saw the girl grinding her teeth.  “Fine,” Meiling said, “Then you shouldn't mind if I trouble you a little too!”

   “Bring it on.”  Reimu closed the line of communication and boosted towards the green fighter.  Meiling did likewise, flying up to defend her territory.  Both Reimu and the other girl fired their weapons at each other.  Reimu banked to the side to avoid her enemy's coilgun, and the green fighter corkscrewed on its way to Reimu to throw off her missiles.

   Meiling had learned from the previous encounter.  Rather than breaking off to the side for another pass, she made a direct line for Reimu, drawing a bead on her with a steady stream of coilgun rounds.  Did she see how reluctant I was to use my own coilgun?  Reimu glanced at her ammunition counter.  There was enough for one more burst of fire.  Will it be enough to take her down...?  One way to find out!  Let's see whose fighter can take the most punishment.  It was like a game of chicken, and Reimu had just called Meiling's bluff.  The two fighters boosted right for each other.

   Reimu's missiles flew out to the sides and then homed in on Meiling's craft.  Reimu's coilgun rounds shot past Meiling's.  Reimu was jolted around in her cockpit by the impact as several of Meiling's smaller coilgun rounds slammed into her craft.  There was a sharp jerk as one of her jets took a direct hit and momentarily failed.  Reimu's eyes were glued to the visual display, as she saw her missiles arc together behind Meiling's craft and then swerve off into the red mist.  Meiling was coming too fast for the missiles to home in on her.  The coilguns were having an effect, though – the green fighter's armor was dented and perforated.  All it would take was one lucky shot to something vital.

   Then Reimu's coilgun ran out of ammo, and just a moment later, the two craft passed each other.  Damn!  Did she notice that I ran out while I still had her in my sights?  Evidently so, as Meiling, brought her craft around in a wide, steady arc, positioning itself to finish her off.  Reimu's missiles were fine for destroying drones, but against a more maneuverable craft like Meiling's, they served only to block off escape routes and herd them into a wall of coilgun slugs.  In short, Reimu had just lost the only weapon that had been effective against Meiling.

   Reimu's mouth was pressed into a fine line as she pushed her fighter's jets to the limit, spinning around and flying down, towards the center of the cloud – the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Meiling had called it.  Meiling accelerated to follow.  She thinks I'm going to try and make a landing in my desperation.  Good.  Reimu dived deep into the Mansion's gravity well, low enough that she caught a glimpse of the structure itself through the mist.  It really does look like a mansion...  how decadent.  Reimu swung through a half-orbit of the structure, taking advantage of its strong artificial gravity to slingshot herself around, picking up some distance from Meiling's craft.

   The damaged ion jet sputtered, but Reimu wasn't worried.  And now she thinks I'm trying to flee.  Come on.  Come and catch me...   Reimu launched herself away from the mansion, then spun her craft around.  She was flying backwards now, watching the silhouette of the mansion get smaller and smaller in front of her.  And there, flying up to meet her, was Hong Meiling.  Catch this!  Reimu shoved her hand forward, pressing the one button on her weapon console she hadn't touched yet – the bomb.

   The bomb was launched from the belly of Reimu's fighter.  Inside it was a small quantity of antimatter suspended in a magnetic field.  The useful thing about antimatter is that when it comes into contact with any normal matter, the antimatter and the matter it comes into contact with are both annihilated, their mass converted with perfect efficiency into energy by the equivalence formula E = mc² – ten thousand times as powerful per unit mass as a nuclear bomb.  There was only a microscopic quantity inside this one, as antimatter was one of the most valuable substances in the galactic marketplace.  But you didn't need a whole lot of antimatter to achieve the desired effect.  It was a trump card given to Reimu by Sukima Corp just in case a situation like this one came up.

   Reimu's cockpit went dark as all but the most vital systems shut down to shield themselves from the radiation.  Her jets turned off and her momentum carried her away from the bomb.  Her arm was still held out, clenched into a fist.  There was only one dim light in the cockpit – the display showing Meiling's craft approaching, heading straight for the bomb.  The green fighter's jets flared up.  Meiling realized what she was flying towards, tried to dodge, to put some distance between herself and the blast–

   “Seal!”  Reimu pulled her arm back, and the warhead detonated.  There was a flash of light bright enough to light up the whole cloud, and the tremendous energy made a shockwave so powerful that Reimu could hear the roar in her ears and feel her teeth chattering.

   Then the shock subsided.  The holographic displays all came back on, and Reimu surveyed her handiwork.  The explosion had cleared a massive hole in the cloud, and Reimu could clearly see the Scarlet Devil mansion sitting on a small, grassy asteroid below.  Meiling's craft was intact, just barely.  Half of it had been shattered, and bits of green machinery were drifting down towards the mansion.  The hull had been breached, and the cockpit had several long cracks running through it.  The red breathing fluid was dribbling out and into the vacuum, making it look like the green fighter was spurting blood.  The craft's jets were dark.

   Meiling's fighter fell down towards the mansion, spinning slowly in the absence of any control.  Something seemed to halt its fall for a moment, but then it continued falling until it smashed into the asteroid and sent up a cloud of dust.  Reimu followed after it.  She examined the place where the fighter's fall had been slowed.  There was a thin, transparent membrane there, presumably to keep the red mist outside.  Meiling's fall had torn a hole in it.  Reimu flew through that hole and landed a few yards from Meiling's craft.  The Scarlet Devil Mansion towered over her craft.

   Alright, Reimu thought to herself, now that I'm finally here, I can start the mission.

---

## Welcome to the Sukima Corp private database.
##
## Access is restricted.  Please enter your username.
##
## > hanm07072089
##
## Please enter your password.
##
## > ********

## Please select a category of information to review.
##
## e) Events
## l) Locations
## o) Organizations
## p) People
## t) Technology
##
##  > t
##
## Please select an entry to review.
##
##  > cirno

## Cirno
## Unmanned military spacecraft
## Fielded by: Interstellar Commonwealth
## Purpose: Counter-piracy missions
##
## The Cirno is a patrol drone engineered by the Valhalla Design Bureau in the Interstellar
## Commonwealth as a non-lethal deterrent to space pirates.  Rather than standard
## explosives, the Cirno uses missiles filled with a disabling agent that immobilizes and
## captures any craft caught in the blast.  In an ironic twist, reverse-engineered Cirno
## models are highly prized among the same piracy organizations they were designed to
## combat, as captured craft may have their crews either ransomed off or disposed of at the
## leisure of the pirates, while and the craft itself may be recovered and sold or scavenged.
##
## The active ingredient in the missiles used by the Cirno is a chemical compound with two
## isomers, or stable states.  Under high pressure, the compound is thick, dense, and
## gelatinous.  This is the state in which the compound is stored in unfired missiles.  Upon
## the missile's detonation, the compound is exposed to the vacuum of space and expands
## rapidly, becoming momentarily gaseous before spontaneously crystallizing.  The crystalline
## structure thus formed is of a hardness and strength comparable to diamond, and craft
## encased inside those crystals find themselves unable to escape until recovered by
## whatever force deployed the Cirno in the first place.
##
## Please select a category of information to review.
##
##  > p
##
## Please select an entry to review.
##
##  > hong_meiling

## Hong Meiling
## Person of interest
## Nationality: Makai Empire (Refugee)
## Occupation: Security guard
##
## Hong Meiling is a soldier trained by and fleeing from the Makai Empire.  She is currently a
## member of Remilia Scarlet's household.  The circumstances of her disputes with the Empire
## are currently unknown to Sukima Corp.
##
## Hong Meiling is known to be among the most skilled martial artists in the galaxy, but as
## she is allergic to nanomachines, her personal combat ability in most conceivable practical
## circumstances is negligible.  She is more dangerous as a pilot than as a footsoldier, but
## even in that respect, the other members of the Scarlet household outclass her.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Hmm. Is that outright killing off Meiling there? That's ... welll, up to you, really, but it's definitely making me go "Hmm." I was expecting at least some sort of ejection-thing.

[IcedFairy]

What shoddy programming.  I suppose I shouldn't complain about a pirate's idiocy, though.

"I told you to do things the NORMAL way.  But no.  You had to take the EASY way out and just use freeware targeting AI."

Hmm. Is that outright killing off Meiling there? That's ... welll, up to you, really, but it's definitely making me go "Hmm." I was expecting at least some sort of ejection-thing.

Those cockpits make it sound like ejecting is a bad idea, since the fluid acts as an atmosphere substitute.  On the other hand Meiling's craft didn't explode, and she has crashlanded close to help.  I'm betting on alive.

[Serp]

Hmm. Is that outright killing off Meiling there? That's ... welll, up to you, really, but it's definitely making me go "Hmm." I was expecting at least some sort of ejection-thing.

Nah, I'm not cruel merciful enough to just kill her off like that.  Wait warmly for next week's update.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Kay. |3

[Serp]

So much for weekly updates, eh?

- - -

   A blue-haired girl sat sipping tea and watching a bank of security monitors.  Most of them showed the interior of her mansion, where nothing of note was happening beyond the routine upkeep duties of her maid drones.  The screen displaying the field in front of the mansion, however, showed an intruding spacecraft sitting on her lawn.

   The girl put down her teacup and folded her hands, resting her chin upon them.  Moments earlier, the monitor had shown her the end of the battle between her gatekeeper and the intruder.  Eternally bathed in scarlet light as she was, the girl had thought she saw a blue tinge in the pure white light of the antimatter explosion.

   It brought back some old memories.  Not of her relatively happy childhood with her family on a colony world ? those might as well have belonged to another person.  No, her memories were of cold metal walls, and windows showing the black of space.  An atmosphere that was somehow both sterile and brutal, filled with screams and gunfire, and above it all, an agonizingly bright blue sun.  Even remembering it was enough to make her head throb with pain...

   ?Mistress??  The girl was snapped out of her memories by her waiting maid's question.  ?Shall I deploy our defensive forces??

   The girl shook her head.  ?No need.  Let the intruder come to us.?

- - -

   The minutes passed in silence.  No guards came out of the Scarlet Devil Mansion to repel the invader.  The invading craft and its defeated adversary were both motionless.  Finally, the loading ramp of Reimu's craft opened, and its pilot walked out.

   Reimu had changed out of her bodysuit and into the outfit she wore when working on her feet.  A red skirt, slitted on both sides to avoid restricting movement, a red vest lined with pockets, and two long white detached sleeves.  Their purpose was to announce the presence of Sukima Corp's shrine maiden, not to serve as armor.  With the way Reimu fought, plates of external armor would only have slowed her down.  She tossed her head, sending the last few drops of amber breathing fluid flying, then tied her hair with a large red and white-frilled ribbon.

   As for her weaponry, she had brought plenty inside her fighter's cargo hold, but on her person, she carried only a few guns.  Reimu had always preferred solid projectile weapons to particle beams, and her shotgun would be effective for punching through the metal plates of the drone enemies she expected to face.  She also had an automatic pistol holstered on her hip, and on her back was a large plasma arc launcher for anything too big to be taken down by small arms fire.  Her vest was packed with spare ammunition.

   The shrine maiden surveyed her surroundings.  The red cloud had quickly flowed back into the vacuum left by the antimatter bomb, and it was leaking into the sphere around the Scarlet Devil Mansion through the hole left by Meiling's ship.  Even as Reimu watched, the hole began to get smaller, cutting off the flow.  It was a self-repairing barrier, intelligently spreading itself thin in order to cover up the wound.  Should be easy enough to tear it open again on my way out.

   It wasn't difficult for Reimu to see her surroundings, even without relying on her eyes' enhancements to look outside the visible spectrum.  This was because the surrounding cloud was actually glowing with a harsh red light.  The cloud's material phosphoresces red light with the energy it absorbs from the sunlight.  Interesting.  Reimu could just barely tell where the white on her craft ended and the red began.  Everything was bathed in scarlet.  I'm going to be sick of the color red by the time this mission is done.

   The Scarlet Devil Mansion itself sat in the middle of a grassy field.  The grass looked like a very dark green, almost black.  If it's not just a trick of the light, it must've been genetically engineered to live on this rock.  Reimu turned her attention to the mansion.  It was sprawling, with four tall stories, few windows, and a sloped roof broken by a clock tower, of all things.  It looked like it had been deliberately designed to resemble a renaissance-era villa, though the construction materials were decidedly modern.

   Reimu had considered jumping from her fighter onto the roof, and having her craft hover outside, but that would leave her without an easy escape route if her communications with her ship were disrupted.  She could probably blast through the front doors into the lobby, but that would be playing right into her enemies' hands...  Sudden motion off to the side caught Reimu's attention.  Meiling was climbing out of her wrecked fighter.  A malicious smile spread across Reimu's face, and she walked over to her defeated enemy.

   Meiling fell off the wrecked hull of her craft and landed on her hands and knees.  Dazed as she was, she still heard footsteps and saw a shadow fall on her.  Grasping the grass with her hands, Meiling launched a sudden kick, using her whole body for momentum and swinging her foot around in an arc at head-level.  It was a skillful and deadly move, mastered after years of practice to turn the tables when one's opponent has the upper hand.

   But in this case, Meiling might as well have not bothered to fight back at all.  Reimu's reaction times had been cybernetically honed to several orders of magnitude better than the quickest natural human's.  Reimu watched Meiling's foot crawling toward her like she was kicking through syrup, then reached out to stop it.  Reimu grabbed Meiling's ankle with one hand and her leg just above the knee with the other.  She twisted ? strongly enough to throw off Meiling's balance, but not strongly enough to break her bones.  Meiling lost her grip on the ground, did a half-twirl in the air, and landed face-first on the grass.

   Reimu held onto Meiling's ankle and literally dragged her back into her own red-white craft.

- - -

   ?Objectively speaking, I see the need to tie up your captive, but is the crotch rope really necessary?  Ow, ow!  Not so tight!?

   ?Silence, prisoner.?  Reimu stepped back off the loading ramp and tugged on the rope she was holding.  Meiling waddled out after her, a suspiciously complex rope tie wrapped around her body.  It pinned her hands and elbows immobile behind her back, crisscrossed around her torso, and looped around her neck to form the leash Reimu held in one hand.

   ?My name's Meiling...?  Meiling muttered.

   Reimu ignored it.  ?Show me the best way into this mansion, prisoner.  If we walk into a trap, you're going to suffer for it.?

   ?Alright, alright.  The least heavily defended entrance is the library one.  I'll lead you there.?

   Reimu followed her captive around the side of the mansion.  There was a small metal door there, tucked away to avoid spoiling the mansion's anachronistic aesthetic.  Next to it was a retinal scanner.  Under Reimu's watchful gaze, Meiling leaned down and put her eye to the aperture, and a moment later the door slid open.  A rush of warm air blew back Reimu's and Meiling's hair.  Reimu stepped into the mansion and tugged Meiling in behind her.

- - -

   The library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion was suffused by a hum of cooling fans and a soft purple light.  Rising from the floor were dozens and dozens of pillars ? server computers, each covered in blinking lights, clicking and humming as they ran.  They were each a little taller than Reimu herself and were placed at intervals of a few feet, leaving a grid of aisle space for maintenance and foot traffic.  Needless to say, there were no paper books in sight.

   The dense placement of the servers meant that Reimu's line of sight was only clear for a few feet in any given direction.  The sudden klaxon of the alarm gave her only a moment to react before a pair of defense drones darted from cover and opened fire.

   Even with all the advances in artificial intelligence and weaponry, humans were still irreplaceable on the battlefield.  Whether in border skirmishes or in total war, the simple fact was that humans were an abundant and easily replaced resource, and a nation's industrial resources were better spent on guns and ships than on android footsoldiers.

   But for private individuals and corporations that needed to defend their interplanetary turf without worrying about keeping mercenaries supplied and loyal, drones were still a viable choice of security guard.  For point defense, either stationary turrets or turrets on rails set into the walls or ceiling were a popular choice, but for a mobile defense unit, a humanoid design was almost exclusively favored.  A wheeled or treaded drone would have a harder time maneuvering to avoid fire and take cover around corners, to say nothing of stepping around furniture and traversing stairs, and a flying drone for defense in a gravitational field would just be extravagant.

   The drones attacking Reimu now were like human beings of average height and skeletal build, with metal plate skin painted in blazing scarlet and firing submachine guns built into their hands.  Reimu released Meiling's rope ? hauling around a prisoner would just burden her in a firefight ? and darted to take cover behind one of the server computers as the drones opened fire.  Meiling ran out of sight, and Reimu didn't bother keeping an eye out for her.  The girl wouldn't be a threat, tied up as she was.

   The rapid popping of the guns gave way to a tapping of metal on metal ? the footsteps of more android guards rushing through the forest of processors towards Reimu's position.  They were firing a steady stream of suppressing fire in Reimu's direction.  Bullets pinged into the computer she was hiding behind and flew by on both sides to dent the casings of the ones behind her.  Of course, they had been built to be bulletproof.  Either this wasn't the least fortified entrance after all, or the person in charge of this library was extra paranoid about having her hardware damaged.

   If Reimu stayed where she was, then the drones would eventually circle around the sides and surround her.  She spotted another safe spot behind a computer across the aisle, waited for a lull in the gunfire, then hefted her shotgun and darted out into the open.

   Half a dozen android guards immediately spotted her, and their guns began to track along with her movement.  Some were standing out in the open, some were halfway leaning around a computer for cover.  The drone AIs were disturbingly good at recreating human movement patterns at times.  Reimu aimed her shotgun at the closest one and pulled the trigger.

   Recoil slammed into Reimu's arms, but it wasn't strong enough to make her aim waver by even an inch.  A clump of close-packed metal pellets left the shotgun's barrel and joined the storm of bullets in the library.  It would be suicide for a normal human to step into that mess, but Reimu's enhanced vision and reflexes were such that she could pick out the individual bullets carving their trajectories through the air.  She could see exactly where each drone was aiming its gun, and move subtly to not be in their paths.  Her feet moved, propelling her across the library floor, and she hunched down slightly as one of the drones aimed at her head.

   The cluster of buckshot from her shotgun spread out ever so slightly as it flew towards the first doomed drone.  Reimu didn't bother to watch the tight group of pellets slam into the drone's metallic chest, punching a cluster of holes through its vital systems and knocking it off its feet.  Instead, she just adjusted her aim, firing at the second drone in between footsteps.  With surgical precision, Reimu quickly and efficiently shot each of the drones into scrap.  She ran through the hail of bullets fearlessly, trusting her far superhuman reflexes to keep her alive.

   There was only one small mistake on her part.  A bullet that she noticed a moment too late slammed into her arm.  And it did feel like a slam ? Reimu's skin had been modified to be its own armor, giving it a property called dilatancy.  At a light touch, like anything a human would face in everyday life, it behaved like normal skin, but when subjected to a force sharp enough to pierce it, it momentarily become hard enough to resist damage.  It was a technology that had been applied to bullet proof vests for centuries, but only recently had it become available for integration into the human body.  The bullet flattened on impact, its piercing force converted to a blunt impact, and fell to the floor as Reimu ducked behind another computer.

   The crashes of six androids falling to the ground replaced the din of gunfire, and the library was quiet for a moment.  Reimu examined her arm.  There was a small pinprick in the skin of her upper arm with a dot of blood forming on top of it.  It was nothing to worry about.  But Reimu had spotted something more troubling as she ran across the aisle.  In the background, she had seen another drone approaching, one clearly unlike the others.  It had been sculpted into a feminine shape, painted in a glossy black, and had ornamental wings on its back and head.  There's no way a simple mook would have that much care put into its construction.  I need to watch out for that one.

   Sudden movement caught Reimu's eye.  More drones coming around the right side.  They had been sent to flank her, just as she had expected.  This is no time for cold feet.  If I don't move now, I'll be surrounded.  Reimu sprang into motion, holding her shotgun in one hand and reaching into her vest with another.  She pulled out a tag of paper with a bright red warning label on it.  The tag had a dot of high explosive on it, wired to a detonator.  Reimu charged straight towards the black drone, throwing her hand out behind her to toss the explosive tag at the group of flanking drones.  The black drone held its arm forward, and a panel slid aside to reveal a heavy minigun installed there.  Reimu was close enough now to see the inscription on the drone's forehead -  KOAKUMA.

   The spinning gatling barrels of the minigun fired out a stream of high caliber projectiles.  Reimu ducked and dodged to the side.  The explosive tag detonated behind her with such force that she felt the wave of pressure.  No interference now.  Time to take this thing down.  She held her shotgun forward and fired.  The scatter shot made a dent in the drone's torso armor, but didn't penetrate.  Charging straight forward, she fired again.  Another dent.  Koakuma adjusted its aim, and a hail of bullets blocked Reimu's advance.  The shrine maiden ran to the side, taking cover behind a computer, feinted as though she was going to run across to the other side, then pivoted on her heel and came charging back out the way she came, closing the distance to the drone.

   Reimu saw holes being punched through the library's computers by the minigun fire.  This Koakuma must be the library's last resort, damaging the hardware like that.  The drone had been fooled by Reimu's feint, but it brought its gun around again.  Reimu dived forward.  Her feet left the ground and she fired once, twice, three times as she flew through the air.  The stream of bullets crossed her path, and she felt a tingling in her arm.  She had taken a hit, and the high caliber bullets were too much for her skin to just shrug off.

   But it had been worth it.  Reimu landed on her feet behind the android.  It started to turn around, struggling to get her back in its sights, but Reimu didn't give it the chance.  She fired her shotgun, point blank, at its back.  KOAKUMA stumbled forward.  She fired again, punching a hole straight through its body.  Then she fired two more times just to be safe.  The drone fell to the floor of the library, wrecked beyond functionality, and the shrine maiden stood above it.

   Reimu ejected the clip from her shotgun, grabbed a fresh one from her vest, and loaded it into place.  She pumped the slide action and heard a satisfying click ? not a necessary procedure for a modern shotgun, but she liked the feeling of knowing that she had a cartridge chambered.  The wound on her upper arm was bleeding and tingling, but before she could properly tend to it, a red light began flashing overhead.  The terminals on the computers all flashed a warning message for a moment, and then the pillars began to sink into the floor.

   Apparently the explosion of Reimu's tag, the hazard of the drone's minigun, and the clearing of all defensive forces from the library had prompted it to go into a secure lockdown.  Reimu thought quickly, and realized that with no pillars to use as cover, she'd be exposed to attack.  Swinging around with superhuman speed, Reimu drove a fist into the nearest processor tower, slamming through the casing and crunching through the circuits within.  She felt a dull ache in her hand, but the effect was worth it.  That one tower stopped sinking into the basement storage compartment.  Its screen displayed an error message.

   The others all descended into the floor, leaving the library quiet without their cooling fans running, and empty without their structures to obstruct the shape of the library.  Only then did Reimu realize just how big this mansion's library was.

   ?Wait.?  Reimu was so confused and startled that she spoke out loud.  ?This room...  One of the towers I saw outside should be over there...  And where are all the windows??

   The floor was featureless now except for the scrap metal of the destroyed drones, but Reimu saw another shape rising up from a hangar down below.  It was a suit of powered armor ? a machine built to be directly piloted by the human wearing it.  Reimu quickly took cover around the malfunctioning computer pillar.  She poked her head out and watched as the armor stepped off its platform and onto the floor of the library.  Looks like I got someone's attention.

- - -

   A girl's voice rang out over the armor's loudspeaker.  ?You, red-white girl!  Stop running amok in my library!?

   ?Are you in charge here??  Reimu replied, talking over her shoulder with her back to the computer.

   ?My name is Patchouli Knowledge.  The mistress lets me keep my archives here.  I'm not letting you through.  Leave now and I'll send you the bill for the damage you've caused.?

   ?I'm not leaving until your mistress stops blotting out the sun with her scarlet cloud!?

   ?Then I suppose you're not leaving.?

   Reimu balled her hand into a fist.  ?Your mistress is causing too much trouble to be ignored!  You had to know that someone would try to stop you.?

   ?The mistress does as she will.  An irrelevant pest like you is worthy of neither her notice nor my own.  I'll take care of you and then go back to finishing this book before supper.?  Reimu heard the hum of Patchouli's energy weapons charging up.

- - -

   A suit of powered armor is a means of engaging in combat for those that are either unable or unwilling to to use the standard biomechanical enhancements.  Without superhuman reaction time and bodily durability, the pilot first and foremost requires armor that can cover all points and stand up to small arms fire.  This concession to human frailty requires a tradeoff of speed for armor thickness, and most suits of powered armor take this to the extreme, enclosing their pilots in a walking main battle tank.  Sensors within the suit detect the pilot's movements, and the suit's hydraulics amplify them a hundredfold, allowing the pilot to wield weaponry too heavy to be normally considered man-portable.  In a straight fight, the only advantage a biomechanically enhanced footsoldier has against a suit of battle-ready powered armor is that of greater mobility.

   All of this ran through Reimu's mind in the instant it took to appraise the tactical situation.  In the open library, with all but one of the pillars retracted into the floor, going out into the open would get her fried ? going on the attack would be suicide.  So, there was nothing to do but prepare.  Reimu put away her shotgun and flipped open the pouch on her vest that contained her explosive tags.  She heard the grind of machinery and felt the floor shake as Patchouli approached from the other side of the server.  Reimu pulled out a tag and pressed it against the computer, smoothing it flat so that it stuck there.  She then quickly pulled out and pasted another explosive tag, and then another, and another.  Need to lure her a bit closer, now...

   The heavy machine's footsteps slowly approached, then stopped.  Reimu heard a hiss of gas, and then the air to either side of her erupted in flame.  A flamethrower, of all things...!  She saw a tongue of flame lick one of the explosives tags.  Oh, crap.

   Reimu jumped away with all the strength and speed she could muster.  The tags detonated a moment later, spreading a concussive wave strong enough to shake the whole mansion and throwing Reimu through the air.  She flipped and landed on her feet, then spun around to survey the damage.  Of the server tower, there was only a melted crater left, and a cloud of dust and debris was settling to the ground.  Patchouli's suit of armor was standing, just barely.  The minigun on its left arm and the flamethrower on its left shoulder had been slagged, while the damage to its left leg had made it immobile.  But the energy weapon on its right arm was still glowing, and the right shoulder seemed to have a ballistic launcher weapon of some sort.  Reimu reached into her vest and grabbed a tag with a blue warning label on it, then dived to the side.

   Energy weapons, whether they fire electrons, neutrons, or simply lasers, all rely on the same basic principle to damage their targets.  The stream of near-lightspeed particles or coherent photons impact the target's surface and transfer energy to it on the molecular level.  If the energy from a single weapon were diffuse, it'd have a hard time boiling a glass of water, but when concentrated, it can quickly heat a tiny point by hundreds of degrees and cause deep burns or even vaporization.  Because they travel at near the speed of light, they can't be dodged, superhuman reflexes or no, and the only way to defend against them is to stop the beam from concentrating on a small area.

   Reimu was employing two defenses to that end.  The first was her movement ? as she flew through the air, Patchouli fired her beam, hitting the shrine maiden's shoulder, but Reimu's movement caused the beam to trail down her arm, leaving a severe but shallow burn in a line of seared flesh, and vaporizing a cut in her sleeve.  Reimu threw down the blue tag, and it exploded in a puff of smoke, acting as her second defense.  The beam was attenuated by the cloud, and the point where it contacted Reimu suddenly felt warm, but not painful.  Reimu quickly raised two fingers to the side of her head, and her neural implants recognized the gesture, overlaying an infrared view of the battlefield onto her vision.  The smoke bomb blocked her sight, but she could see the glowing red silhouette of the powered armor with her thermal vision as she landed on the ground.

   ?I was calculating Euler's number with that computer, you fool!?  Patchouli brought her mortar cannon to bear.  A series of deep thumps sounded through the library as she lobbed explosive shells at Reimu.  The shrine maiden broke out into a run, darting out of the cloud just to throw down more smoke tags to cover her advance.  She zigzagged as the first mortar exploded behind her, narrowly avoiding the second one sent to cut her off.  She ran with superhuman swiftness and grace ? if she stumbled here, she wouldn't be able to outrun the next blast, and even her enhanced body wouldn't be able to survive a direct hit with a mortar shell.

   There was a pause in the explosions as Patchouli adjusted her sights to Reimu's new position.  That damaged leg hindered her ? she couldn't turn to follow the shrine maiden's advance, and that's what would be her undoing.  Reimu landed on the ground, planted her feet, reached behind her back, and pulled out the plasma arc launcher.  The barrel of the weapon extended and lit up as Reimu braced the weapon against her shoulder.

   ?Calculate this.?  Reimu pulled the trigger.  The arc launcher was essentially just an oversized plasma welding torch.  A jet of inert gas is directed at the target and ionized into plasma as a strong electric current is passed through it and the target.  In essence, it's a gun that shoots a stream of lightning, melting and frying anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its path.

   The library erupted into a blaze of light, heat, and sound.  Blindingly bright lightning flickered between the tip of Reimu's gun and across Patchouli's armor.  Reimu felt the weapon heating up against her shoulder, and her ears were assaulted by a din of thunder, but she kept up the stream of fire on her target.  Finally, the gun overheated, and with a last flicker of light, the coolant cartridge popped out and landed on the ground, glowing white hot and smoking into the air.

   Reimu pulled out another cartridge, loaded it into the gun, and slung it back behind her.  She surveyed the remains of her opponent's armor.  It was crisscrossed in charred lines, the weaponry and joints had been melted and fused into useless lumps, and it had fallen onto its back, motionless.  Reimu walked up to the fallen machine, stepped up on top, punched her hand through the brittle shell that remained of the cockpit, and pulled the pilot out of the smoldering wreck.

   Patchouli hung limply in Reimu's grip, dazed.  The purple-haired girl still wore her purple-striped pajamas.  Reimu had to shake her a little to bring her back to the here and now.

   ?Hey!  Which way do I go to find your mistress??

   The defeated girl was wheezing, gasping for breath as she replied.  ?Th...  That door leads to a hallway with a staircase at its end...  The mistress lives in the...  in the master bedroom on the top floor...?

   ?And is she also the one causing the space inside this mansion to be all weird??

   ?N-No.  That's...  There's someone here who likes to play with time and space...?

   The library had been wrecked almost beyond recognition.  There was a big crater where Reimu's explosive tags had gone off, several cracks in the floor from Patchouli's mortar barrage, little pieces of flaming debris around Patchouli's totaled suit of armor, and the scrapped remains of the destroyed drones lying around everywhere.  Among them was Koakuma, wrecked beyond functionality but with its AI core still running, albeit malfunctioning badly.  With its sensors and processors badly damaged, it glitched and attempted to run one last program.  The voice synthesizer crackled and came to life.

   ?COMMAND ACKNOWLEDGED.  YOU HAVE SELECTED . . .  PLEASURE FUNCTIONS.?

   And with the last of its energy, Koakuma popped open a compartment in its abdomen, and out writhed half a dozen segmented steel tentacles, which grasped at the air for a few moments before falling limp and deactivating for the last time.

   Reimu and Patchouli stared at the drone's carcass, Patchouli with a mortified expression, and Reimu with an amused one.  ?I'll just leave you to that, then,? said the shrine maiden.  She dropped the librarian next to the wreckage of her armor and strode off to the library's door.

   ?W-Wait...!?  Patchouli crawled on her hands and knees after the shrine maiden, wheezing.  ?I...  I didn't...   I didn't enjoy it or anything!?  With that, she collapsed to the floor, muttering to herself after the door closed behind her adversary.  ?'Calculate this,' she says, that doesn't even make any sense as a one-liner in context...?

- - -

## Welcome to the Sukima Corp private database.
##
## Access is restricted to Elohim security clearance.  Please enter your username.
##
## > hanm07072089
##
## Please enter your password.
##
## > ********

## Please select a category of information to review.
##
## e) Events
## l) Locations
## o) Organizations
## p) People
## t) Technology
##
##  > t
##
## Please select an entry to review.
##
##  > koakuma

## Koakuma
## Ground defense platform
## Fielded by: Makai Empire
## Purpose: Facility defense
##
## This model of defense drone is only known to us through some leaked units that have appeared among the defense forces of those
## who have been able to obtain them from the Makai Empire by whatever means.  Its performance is comparable to that of other elite-
## class footmobile drones, and the extra cost of obtaining a foreign model makes large-scale adoption into the Sukima Corp Security
## Force an inefficient prospect.  However, the opportunity to personally examine the technology of the Makai Empire may be worth
## seeking one out.
##
## Recent intel suggests that certain bootleg models may be equipped for ?pleasure functions.?  Unit may bear further investigation.
##
## Please select a category of information to review.
##
##  > p
##
## Please select an entry to review.
##
##  > patchouli_knowledge

## Patchouli Knowledge
## Person of interest
## Nationality: Aql FSC
## Occupation: Librarian, Scholar
##
## Most of our information on Patchouli Knowledge is a matter of public record.  She was born and raised on the Federate colony world
## Aql, and she fled upon reaching adulthood to avoid persecution.  The circumstances of her membership in the Scarlet household are
## unclear, as are her personal feelings about the mistress.  She doesn't appear to have a goal beyond accumulating academic
## expertise on a wide variety of subjects, but it would be dangerous to make any assumptions here.
##
## Patchouli is compatible with nanomachines, but she suffers from quite literally crippling overspecialization.  Her medical records
## show that she had weak health even before enhancing her body, and rather than curing those ailments, she went with a package
## designed to maximize body-machine interface, and specifically, brain-machine interface.  This lets her personally read and process
## information at an extremely fast rate, but in combat, she must rely on a suit of powered armor.  Not a major threat on her own, but her
## influence within the Scarlet household should not be underestimated.

[Iced Fairy]

Ah, the other story that I had been casually wondering about lives.  Excellent  .

Alas poor Meiling, denied even your old inneficient speciallty.  And alas poor Koakuma unit, prevented from performing any of it's... varied fuctions.

And I'm sure the Koakuma unit came like that.  And that Patchouli in no way altered or enhanced it.  Absolutely certain.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Ah, I was just thinking about this the oth--

crotch rope

pleasure functions

... okay, this is now the awesomest fic ever. Also, cyborg-ninja Reimu = win.

Man, I wanna play some kind of space-sim games now!

[AJC]

lol this makes me laugh because i'm consisterng doing a R-type X Touhou crossover

[Silent Harmony]

For a second I thought KOAKUMA

Spoiler:

was going to explode.

I was pleasantly disappointed.

[Serp]

And I'm sure the Koakuma unit came like that.  And that Patchouli in no way altered or enhanced it.  Absolutely certain.

Sure hope so, 'cause any tampering would invalidate her insurance claim.

... okay, this is now the awesomest fic ever.

You know, I wasn't really in an ero-ero mood when I came up with those points.  It just sort of happened.  Wonder what that says about my subconscious.

For a second I thought KOAKUMA

Spoiler:

was going to explode.

I was pleasantly disappointed.

I'm just defying all sorts of predictions here.  The expectation is dead Meiling and exploded Koakuma, but the payoff is crotch ropes and tentacles.

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Okay, but joking aside, this is still plenty of awesome. *looks into X-Wing and Wing Commander and the like, nyar*

[Serp]

   The maid and her mistress watched the aftermath of the battle from the library's security camera.  The shrine maiden walked off the screen, leaving the librarian laying on the floor.  ?So, what do you think?? asked the blue-haired girl.

   ?I can take her,? replied the maid.

   The mistress nodded.  ?Then go do so.?

   As quickly as that, the girl was left alone with her thoughts.  She hadn't expected the Human Planet, backwater colony that it was, to be able to mobilize its defenders so quickly, nor so effectively.  There would have eventually been an attempt to shut down the Mansion's mist factory at some point or another, but the girl had hoped to have set foot on the Human Planet itself by that time, trusting the defense of the Mansion to her servants and drone guards.

   Now, if the maid failed in her mission, the mistress herself would have to bloody her hands.  It's been a long time, the mistress thought to herself.  Without her maid to call her to the present, the mistress let her mind wander into reminiscence.

- - -

   Damp, cold, dark, concrete rooms and hallways filled with claustrophobic tunnels and blind corners.  Dim red emergency lights illuminated glistening moisture leaking through the walls, making it appear as though they were smeared with blood.  It was a setting from a nightmare, where one might flee from some faceless monster over the course of a night's sleep, waking up in a cold sweat just at the moment of being caught.

   The blue-haired girl was huddled down in one of the rooms.  She wore drab prisoner's garb, frayed cloth shirt and pants torn by days crawling through the tunnels, and her scrawny form was covered with dirt and dust.  Her leathery wings were folded neatly behind her back.  She heard a small noise down one of the nearby passages, and she began to crawl off to investigate.

   She was cautious, but not timid, and there was no dread in her mind despite the nightmarish situation.  After all, she wasn't having a nightmare.  She was the nightmare.

   Voices began to echo clearly down the passage, and the girl increased her pace.  Her clawed hands and bare feet dug into the concrete as she crawled, spider-like, along the walls and ceiling, through twists and turns and branches in the concrete tunnels.  She suddenly emerged onto the ceiling of a great cavernous room, with pillars reaching from the floor to the ceiling.  A small group of humans moved across the floor below her as she watched from her upside-down perch.

   They were dressed as she was, as prisoners, but unlike her, they were armed with assault rifles.  They were swinging their guns left and right as their wide eyes darted around, searching for the monster they had been sent to kill.  The girl heard their hearts beating rapidly, their breathing quick and frantic.  She could see the heat rising from their bodies in the cold room, the sweat on their frightened faces.  She smelled their fear.

   There was one other thing the other prisoners had that the girl didn't.  Around their necks were thick collars with little electronic packs embedded in them.  They were there to help the guards control them.  Prisoners who refused to fight, or who tried to escape, were given electric shocks to make them obey.  The girl didn't need any of that.  She found it fun to chase her prey through the maze of tunnels.  She enjoyed hearing their screams.  When she was tearing through groups of helpless humans, she felt truly alive.  She didn't need a collar to make her fight, because her blood boiled with the need to hunt.  She was a natural-born predator.

   The girl set her gaze on the human trailing at the back of the herd, spread her wings, bared her fangs, and leapt off the ceiling.  Her victim felt a gust of air, turned to look over his shoulder, and had his throat torn out before he even saw his killer.  There was a gurgling gush of blood, a thump as the prisoner's body fell to the floor, and then the room erupted in chaos.

   The humans, already on the edge of panic, spun around and began firing wildly.  The girl jumped backwards and landed in a crouch.  Her bright red eyes widened, and she could see the bullets tracing their scattered lines through the darkness.  She jumped backwards again, landing high up on the side of one of the concrete pillars, clawed her way to the far side, then jumped again, launching herself across to the other side of the cavernous room.

   With the darkness full of gunfire and shouting and chaos, only a couple of the humans realized that the girl had flown from where they'd last seen her, and it was impossible for them to convey that information to their fellows in time.  Even so, as the girl jumped down to the floor a second time, she was met by a hail of bullets.  Most simply missed.  The rest did nothing to hinder her.  She felt their impacts against her body, but she was too caught up in her bloodlust now to care.

   The girl charged into the group of humans and brandished her claws.  Without breaking her pace, she swung her claw at a human as she ran by him, slicing through his belly like a knife through butter and leaving him to fall to the ground behind her.  The next human stood in her path, and as she approached, he raised his gun up to his chest, as if to protect himself.  The girl brought her claw up in a flash of movement, raking across his face, and then when he recoiled backwards in pain and surprise, she punched him with a closed fist in the chest, snapping his ribs and collapsing his chest.  Through the gunfire, she heard a footstep behind her, and spun around, backhanding the prisoner across the face strongly enough that his neck snapped and his head turned all the way around.

   The prisoners didn't even realize that their numbers were being whittled down.  The girl quickly looked around and saw that most of them were firing indiscriminately into the shadows, while the rest were too rattled by the gunfire and the screaming to realize that the monster was already among them.  One human was so panicked that he emptied his weapon into one of his fellow prisoners.  The girl also noticed one human running away down a tunnel, and she decided to let him go.  There was plenty of blood here to sate her.

- - -

   Less than a minute later, the girl was leaping through the air towards the last human in the room.  He had just started to raise his weapon when she tackled him to the floor and slammed the back of his head against the concrete hard enough to crack his skull.  Ravenous, the girl brought her mouth to the human's neck and bit into his jugular vein.  She closed her lips around the wound and drank, feeling the blood pump into her mouth in time with the beating of her prey's heart.  Before long, each pump of blood began to get weaker and weaker, until the girl was finally full.  She stood up and stretched her wings.  Her face and chin were covered in blood, the front of her loose shirt was soaked with it, and her claws were stained red.

   She still wanted more.  Her stomach was full, but she still wanted to hunt.  It hadn't been enough.  These few confused fools had died too quickly.  The girl thought for a moment about chasing down one of those who had fled into the darkness, perhaps to toy with them a little.  But before she could go, a steel door opened in one of the walls.

   It revealed a squad of soldiers clad in combat HazMat suits and equipped with heavy weaponry.  They were guards sent there to take the girl back to her cell.  Ordinarily, she would have gone along without too much trouble, but behind them, she saw a point of light ? somehow, it was bright enough to strain her eyes, even as small and far away as it was.  The girl thought about leaving the facility.  If she were free, she could go back into the city.  She could hunt as many people as she wanted.  In that moment, she decided to escape.

   The soldiers were better trained and better equipped than the prisoners who had been sent in to die, but the girl was still faster than any of them.  She bolted towards one of them, knocked him down to the ground, and charged down the tunnel towards the light.  She squinted her red eyes to see through the brightness, and thought she could make out a shuttle sitting unattended in the barren wastes outside.  She could escape.  She could fly that anywhere she wanted.  Soon, she would be able to shed all the blood she wanted?!

   Then she burst out into the light, and felt every nerve in her body explode in pain.  She stumbled to a stop.  It felt like her skin was on fire, and somehow the unbearable pain twisted through her whole body.  She thrashed and spasmed uncontrollably and fell down on her back, and her eyes naturally turned skyward.  In the moment before she was blinded, she saw the source of her torment ? an enormous ball of blue fire in the sky, stretching almost from horizon to horizon.

   The girl screamed and shrieked like a wounded animal and tried to crawl through the dust back into the shade.  Moments later, she felt the soldiers' hands grip her shoulders and begin dragging her back to her cell in the darkness.

- - -

   The mistress drifted back to the present.  The security monitors showed her that the shrine maiden was clearing out the last of the mansion's drone security force.  The maid was approaching her position on another monitor.  Soon, the battle would be joined.  The mistress tipped back her cup of tea, emptying it, then set it down and left the room.

- - -

   Three shotgun blasts rang out in the mansion's hallway, signaling the end of the battle.  Three maid drones, cleaning implements hastily converted into weaponry, crashed to the carpeted floor.  Reimu landed lightly on the ground and lowered her shotgun.  All the defenders of the mansion had converged on her position, forming a last line of defense against the invader, and been destroyed in turn.  Reimu reloaded her shotgun, then ducked into an alcove and leaned against a wall.  It was her first opportunity in awhile to take a breather and evaluate her situation.

   The pinprick from the low caliber bullet that had hit her in the library had healed completely, without even leaving a bruise.  Reimu's accelerated healing rate could handle most such wounds automatically and within a few minutes.

   The wound she had received from Koakuma's minigun had pierced all the way through her arm and out the other side.  It had healed as well, but only due to some field first aid applied by Reimu during a break in the battle.  One of the maid drones had given her another such wound with a high powered rifle in the last skirmish, so Reimu took the opportunity to patch that up as well.  She flipped open a pouch on her vest and pulled out a small tube of paste with an application nozzle.

   Reimu had a nanomachine lattice running through her body that detected any wounds she received and clustered around them.  Alone, they could speed up the recovery process by several hundredfold, but for healing in the middle of a mission, a further boost was needed.  The paste in the first aid tube was infused with undifferentiated cells grown from Reimu's own tissue.  When it came in contact with Reimu's body, the nanomachine lattice would stimulate the cells to replace the muscle, bone, tendons and any other organs that had been damaged.

   The bullet holes had left trails of blood down her arm, staining one of her sleeves.  Reimu lifted her arm, then jammed the nozzle into the hole.  She pressed down on a plunger, and the paste filled the cavity.  Finally, she tucked the empty tube back into her pouch, pulled out a simple bandage, and wound it around the wound.  Within a few seconds, she felt an intense warmth as the nanomachines took the building blocks she just gave them and started to rebuild.  It was simple thermodynamics ? for work to be done, waste heat had to be released.

   And that heat had to come from somewhere.  It was a principle that held true for the unmodified human body, and superhuman feats required superhuman energy reserves.  Varied synthetic molecules stood in for lipids and carbohydrates, but the basic principles were the same.  The energy was stored throughout Reimu's body, and if she ran out, she'd be reduced to a level little better than a natural human.

   Reimu had heard the energy called by several colloquial names, varying by local tradition.  Chakra, qi, mana, even ?spirit energy.?  The meter superimposed in the corner of Reimu's field of vision was labeled simply ?ENERGY,? and it was mostly full.  That was good.  Recharging her energy wouldn't be as simple as plugging in a battery or swallowing some sort of energy pill.  The nanomachine network was too fine and complex for such a simple solution.  Reimu's metabolism would have to take care of the job.  Enhanced as it was, it still wasn't infinitely efficient, and the shrine maiden would probably end up eating enough to feed a small village over the next week to restore her reserves.

   All that mattered at the moment was that she had enough energy to complete the mission.  Standard functions consumed only a small amount of energy, superhuman feats consumed a bit more, and healing burnt the most energy of all.  Reimu turned her attention to the only other wound she had received.  The long burn mark left by Patchouli's laser had hardly healed at all since the battle where it was received.  That was troubling, but expected.  Burns took a long time to recover from, even for Reimu.  Fortunately, this one was only skin-deep.

   ?Nothing more to be done, then.  Time to move on.?  Reimu stepped out of the alcove and into the hallway.  She blinked.  There was a blur of motion at the far end of the hallway, and suddenly another girl was standing in her path.

- - -

   The two girls stood at opposite ends of a long hallway, sizing each other up.  They both knew each other to be enemies from the circumstances, but neither wanted to be the first to make a move.  Reimu carefully took note of her adversary's features, knowing that even a minor missed detail could spell death in the battle to come.

   She was dressed like a maid.  A frilly headdress, frills on her short skirt and blouse, and an apron worn over it all.  In other circumstances, Reimu might have thought her to be a noncombatant.  But this maid was definitely a warrior.  If the way she stood with her feet planted in Reimu's path wasn't evidence enough, there was also the matter of the many knives sheathed in her apron and in a holster on her thigh.  She didn't have any guns, though.  That means she's either a fool, or else she's... something different, Reimu thought to herself.  She had learned to be wary around the unexpected, and so she called out to the maid, hoping that the enemy would give away something about herself, and perhaps reveal a weakness.

   ?A maid.  You don't seem to belong here.?

   ?An intruder.  You definitely don't belong here,? the maid replied.

   Smartass, Reimu thought.  Out loud, she asked ?Just what do you think you're doing here?  Why go to all this trouble to blot out the sun??

   ?The mistress dislikes sunlight.  With the Human Planet in the shadow of this cloud, she will be able to move as she pleases.?

   ?And I don't suppose there's anything I could say to get you to let me through and talk over this issue with her personally??

   ?I'll never let the mistress be put in danger like that.  I, Sakyua Izayoi, will bring you down right here.  I've watched you fight Patchouli.  I know what you're capable of.  But you've never seen anything like me before.  It's time for you to die.?

   The maid reached for a knife.  Reimu raised her shotgun.  But before she could pull the trigger, something unexpected happened.  There was a sudden feeling of vertigo, a shift in the air around her, and suddenly everything turned blue.  She fired a cluster of buckshot out of the gun, and watched it turn blue and begin speeding away even faster.  The shrine maiden didn't even have time to wonder what was going on before Sakuya's arm flew forward, launching a knife at Reimu at impossible speed.  Reimu twisted to dodge the knife, which slowed down and turned gray again just before reaching her, giving her just enough time to dodge.  Sakuya's arms became a blur, throwing a rain of knives, and it was suddenly all Reimu could do to stumble backward, dodging the blades.  One slashed across her hip, and she winced ? not from pain, but because she was worried.  Bullets made small piercing wounds, but these knives would cut her open, and slashing wounds left a lot of wounded flesh to heal.  Even now, Reimu thought about the mission, trying to come up with a strategy that would let her beat the maid with enough energy and equipment to spare for dealing with the mistress.

   The blue light faded, there was a break in the hail of knives, and Reimu took her chance.  She fired her shotgun, tracing Sakuya's movements.  The maid ducked, dodged to the side, ran up a wall, kicked off the ceiling, and flipped to the ground, throwing a knife as she went.  Reimu was able to dodge it easily.  She's not so tough.  Only a matter of time until-  Reimu paused to reload, prepared to charge toward Sakuya and put an end to the fight, and then the blue aura lit up again.  Reimu had just a moment to notice how it seemed to tinge everything outside a small bubble around herself, and how the blue glow was even more intense around Sakuya, before she was forced on the defensive again. 

   Sakuya was a blur of movement, too fast even for Reimu's eyes to follow, and her knives flew so quickly that Reimu didn't have time to reload, didn't have time to do anything but dodge and stumble backward.  How can she move so fast?  The shrine maiden's thoughts were scattered and confused.  Her retreat brought her back to a wall, and she dodged to the side and down another hallway as half a dozen knives thunked into the wall where she had been.  She took a few steps backward, and Sakuya cartwheeled into view, picking up the knives on the ground and spinning back up into a throwing position.  Her motion was not only speedy ? it was also efficient, graceful, elegant.  Reimu fired her shotgun two more times, and Sakuya just pivoted and twisted around the bullets, turning her dodge into a spinning throwing motion and sending Reimu reeling back for a graceless retreat.  ?Damn!?  Reimu shouted in frustration, turned her back on Sakuya, and ran for her life.

   Her legs kicked at the ground with so much force that they tore through the carpet, and she dodged from side to side as she ran, blindly trying to throw off Sakuya's aim.  The blue aura faded again as Reimu turned a corner, but she didn't stop.  I can't keep fighting like this.  I need a plan.  She pumped her arms and leaned forward, running down the hallways as fast as a speeding car, turning corners by kicking off against the walls and leaving dents and cracks in her path.  Sakuya's going to be mad about having to clean this up...  No, no she's not, because I'm going to be the one that wins!

   Reimu stopped abruptly and spun around.  She reached into her vest and pulled out her bundle of explosive tags, then began throwing them everywhere, on the floor, the walls, the ceiling.  Then, she jumped backward.  Sakuya ran around the corner, knives at the ready.  Reimu brought her hand up.  The aura returned, its glow turning Sakuya and the tags a deep blue.  Sakuya stepped into the ring of explosives, and Reimu made the detonation sign.

   But there was no explosion.  The maid charged forward.  Reimu landed on her feet.  She tried to raise her gun.  She was too slow.  Sakuya passed through the edge of the blue aura, right in front of Reimu, there was a flash of red light, and then she slid her knife right between the shrine maiden's ribs.

- - -

   Reimu gasped, then coughed.  Her heart tried to pump, but only spasmed, cut almost in two by the blade.  Her hand went limp and the shotgun dropped to the ground.  Sakuya's cold eyes looked down at her.  Wet red blood spread across the shrine maiden's vest.  In that instant as the maid had closed in, Reimu had seen the whole world outside the two girls go from blue to red...  blue to red...  Everything had been going so fast, but now that her body was impaled, Reimu's mind was racing, frantically searching for an explanation, anything to explain what had just happened, how she had lost so suddenly.  The maid's impossible speed, the blue aura, the way that things slowed down just as they reached her, and most of all, why the explosive tags hadn't gone off.  It seemed like it would be obvious if she just had more time, more time to think, but now she didn't have any time at all.  The red aura was everywhere now, just like the blue one had been, but it too stopped just short of Reimu, and Sakuya was too close to be tinged by it as well.  Behind Sakuya, a piece of rubble fell from one of the holes in the wall Reimu's foot had made.  It fell so slowly, crawling down through the air as though it was thick as molasses.  Does time slow down when you die...?  Blue to red...

   Reimu's eyes widened and her hand shot up, grabbing Sakuya's wrist and holding her hand in place, which was in turn grasping the bloodied knife.  ?Wavelength,? she said, then coughed.

   Sakuya tried to pull back, and her other hand reached for another knife, but Reimu grabbed it with her own free hand.  Sakuya tried to pull away, but Reimu's grip was too strong.  The shrine maiden took a step forward, and Sakuya stumbled a step back.  The boundary of the red aura moved with them.

   Reimu coughed again, and this time there was blood in it, but she was smiling.  She felt her blood burning, a great warmth spreading inside her.  Nanomachines activated by her heart's failure, carrying oxygen through the dead, unmoving blood throughout her body.  It was a temporary solution, a desperate measure that ate up energy like nothing else, and when the energy ran out, Reimu would be as dead as any normal person without a working heart.  But until then...

   Reimu pushed another step forward, and Sakuya fell back another step.  The explosive tags were behind Sakuya, still tinged red as Reimu saw them.  But she had just realized where that red color had come from.  Reimu's hand formed the detonation sign again around its grip on Sakuya, and she wasn't surprised this time when the tags didn't go off.

   Manipulation of time.  A sphere around me that makes me move slower than the rest of the world.  A sphere for herself to make her move faster.  That would be the one we're in now.  Shouldn't be possible, but it's the only thing that makes sense.  And so light that travels from a fast region to a slow one is blueshifted, and redshifted for the other way around.  And if it does that to light in the visible spectrum, then of course my radio detonation signal would be shifted as well.  So, all that's left to do is...

   Reimu looked up and smiled.  This fight was won.  As soon as we're close enough...  Sakuya turned her head and followed Reimu's gaze to the spread of explosive tags she was being pushed towards.

   ?You fool!  You'll kill us both!?  Sakuya gritted her teeth and her muscles flexed as she struggled, but Reimu was stronger.

   ?It'll take more than a little explosion to kill me.  Your time is up.?  Reimu shoved forward, and saw one of the explosive tags pass within the boundary of distorted time, turning back to its normal color.  She braced herself, closed her eyes, and formed the detonation sign one more time.

- - -

   There was a flash of light so bright Reimu could see it through her eyelids, a pressure wave that passed through Reimu's body like a punch, and a boom so loud it defied comprehension.  Reimu's nerves were overloaded, and even through the neurological buffer that kept her from being overwhelmed by the pain and light, she was rendered senseless by the explosion.  It took a few moments for her mind to start working again.

   Reimu opened her eyes and saw that she had been thrown halfway down the hallway.  There was a huge hole in the floor and walls, through which other rooms and the floor below the one she was on could be seen.  Rubble was strewn everywhere, and Reimu laid among it.  Her vision was still blurry, but she caught sight of Sakuya laying further still down the hallway, with her limbs strewn out at odd angles.  She started to crawl away with one arm, apparently the only limb that was working properly, then looked over her shoulder, met Reimu's gaze, and began to crawl away more frantically.

   Reimu shoved herself to her feet, took a lurching step towards Sakuya, then collapsed to one knee.  Her visual field lit up with half a dozen warning messages.  She looked down at herself and realized that the knife that had been in her chest was gone, and the wound was bleeding heavily.  Weighing the choice between catching Sakuya and living another five minutes, Reimu slumped to the ground and leaned her back against the wall.  Sakuya crawled out of sight.

   If she had the breath to waste, Reimu would have sighed.  Nothing's ever easy.  She reached into her torn vest and pulled out the rest of her medical paste.  Slowly and carefully, Reimu went about treating her injuries for what she knew would be the final fight.  Her intuition told her the end was close.  But if this were an easy mission, I'd be done by now.

- - -

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## > hanm07072089
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## > ********

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##  > p
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## Please select an entry to review.
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## > izayoi_sakuya

## Sakuya Izayoi
## Person of Interest
## Nationality: Unknown
## Occupation: Personal servant
##
## Sukima Corp has little data about Sakuya Izayoi.  She does not show up in the records of any FSC or Commonwealth database, and
## no mention of her has been found by contacts within the Makai Empire.  She's only appeared recently as an apparent servant of the
## Scarlet household, and to take her maid role at face value may be unwise.

## Her fighting style eschews guns entirely, instead relying on thrown knives.  This is unusual, to say the least, but she has been shown
## to be quite deadly with them.  There are also reports that she can ?change the flow of time.?  This does not correspond to any known
## or even suggested technology, as such a thing should be impossible outside of relativistic effects.  Whether it's illusory or the product
## of some hidden technological breakthrough is unknown.  On top of these mysteries, blood samples of Sakuya that we have obtained
## show that she is a carrier of an unusual 15% of the genetic markers associated with nanomachine allergies, yet she displays
## physical abilities well beyond those of natural humans.  Obtaining more intel on this subject is a high priority for Sukima Corp.

[Iced Fairy]

Hm...  Pretty brutal.  But then I guess that's what happens when you play with knives.  And a little insight into the vampire.  I wonder if there will be more exposition later, and about another someone....

Also I found the total lack of information on Sakuya amusing for some reason.  It's fitting.

[Kasu]

That had to be the most exciting chapter yet.

[swamp147]

Wow, just read through all the chapters, and I love it.
These parts made me smile
- koakuma's pleasure functions
- badass reimu with plasma arc launcher holy balls that is awesome
- the way you portrayed sakuya's abilities

looking forward to more!

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Yeah, it seemed to be a bit more violent than usual, but it was still a good read.

[MysTeariousYukari]

Dear Yukari-Sama! That. Was. AWESOME!! I just read through this, and I am loving all of this. I also pictured Meiling to be piloting a Mech when I read that part The RUMIA was kinda funny, as was the CIRNO,

Spoiler:

Ice Sign "Icicle Fall ~ Easy"

then came the KOAKUMA and and Patchy-Mech I thought of her Flame Thrower as Agni Shrine or Royal Flare, is that even accurate for your intentions? Yes, I am comparing this to the game like crazy with every bit I read, but oh well :V

[Serp]

Well, if you're drawing those parallels, I wonder if you've also connected Reimu wielding a shotgun to the fact that Reimu is the shotgun shot type in EoSD, or Reimu's quip about an easy mission being over by now to the fact that EoSD Easy ends after Stage 5. :3c

[Serp]

   As Reimu lay against the wall of rubble, the seconds stretched into minutes.  She had used the rest of her medical paste, taken off her torn and bloodied vest, and wrapped bandages around her chest like a sarashi.  Her breathing was deep and slow, and her eyes were half-closed.  She was conserving as much energy as she could while her heart healed.  Finally, she felt a spasm in her chest, irregular at first and then evening out into a steady pumping.

   Reimu took one more deep breath, then carefully got back up on her feet.  She swayed a bit, then steadied herself, stretched out her arms and her legs, and walked around in a small circle to make sure everything was working properly.

   ?Alright.  Good as new.?  She said as much to put a brave face on things, but in truth, the fight with Sakuya had taken a lot out of her.  She had spent over half her energy reserves, she was out of medical paste, and the newly rebuilt flesh in her chest was still tender and weak.  If she took any more damage there, her heart might stop again, this time for good.

   Reimu looked around, then spotted her shotgun lying where it had been blown by the explosion.  She picked it up and did one last equipment check.  A handful of clips for her shotgun, plenty more for her pistol, and a few disposable heatsinks for her plasma arc launcher.  She had used the last of her high explosive tags in the fight with Sakuya, but she still had plenty of smoke and flashbangs.

   It should have been plenty to take care of a sheltered girl so sickly that she couldn't even go out in the sunlight, but Reimu had a bad feeling nonetheless.  What kind of girl must she be, to command the allegiance of Patchouli and Sakuya?  Reimu wandered down the hallway.  Patchouli had said that the mistress would be on the top floor, so it was just a matter of finding the right room.

   Reimu came to a pair of ornate double doors, decorated with gold leaf and scarlet engraving in abstract, vaguely disturbing designs, like a Rorschach test painted in blood.  The focal point of the mansion.  This must be it...  She slowly opened one of the doors, shogun held out in front of her.  The room was dark, lit only by a few dim red lights on the walls.  Reimu's enhanced eyes picked out the silhouettes of the walls, the furniture.  It was the image of a noblewoman's suite.  Reimu opened the door fully and stepped in.  She could make out doors leading from this sitting room to the bedroom and the study, but there, sitting in a throne atop a dais on the far end of the room, was the dark form of the mistress herself.  The shrine maiden spoke out to her foe.

   ?So, I finally get to see you in person.  I think it's about time we settled this...?  She closed the door behind her and took another step into the room, getting a better look at the mistress.  ?Young lady.?

   The other girl wore a slight smile.  She stood up and stepped forward, into the red light.  Reimu saw that she was wearing a pink dress and poofy cap, and her blue hair had a purple tinge in the light.  Her features and stature were those of a young girl, perhaps in her early teens.

   ?Yes, we shall settle this.  But first, don't you think it's rude to get straight to business without introducing yourself??

   ?My name is Reimu Hakurei.  I'm the shrine maiden of Sukima Corp.  I've been charged with protecting this worthless Gensokyo system from threats like you.?

   The other girl's smile broadened slightly, and her eyes narrowed.  ?My name is Remilia Scarlet.  I am the scarlet devil of this mansion, and I'm afraid your appraisal of me is spot-on.  Once I'm done with you, I will bring a terror to this system unlike any it has seen before.?

   ?You're bluffing,? Reimu replied immediately, and with a sureness in her tone she didn't quite feel.  ?I destroyed your drone security force.  I beat your maid, and everyone else who you sent to stop me.  I've taken down every one of your defenses, and now I have you at my mercy.  You're in no position to act as though you can still get away with your plan, whatever it is.?

   ?Sakuya does take her job so seriously.  She puts her life on the line to keep me from needing to dirty my hands.  But sometimes...?  Remilia stepped forward.  She raised her hands up into the light that bathed them in red, and Reimu saw them curl into curved claws.  Remilia grinned, showing off sharp, pointed teeth that could never belong to a human.  And then, the girl spread her wings ? huge, leathery bat wings that looked to have a wingspan half again as tall as Remilia herself.  ?Sometimes I prefer to take care of things myself.?

   Reimu's breath caught in the back of her throat, and she muttered a single word.

   ?Youkai.?

   It was another one of those terms that varied between cultures.  Some called them ?synthetics.?  Others called them ?replicants,? or ?homunculi.?  The definition was the same, though.  Artificial, sapient creatures that looked human, but really weren't.  It was a vague line, in this era of cheap genetic engineering, but the rule of thumb Reimu had always learned was ?If it's born, it's human.  If it's made, it's youkai.?

   However they were defined, youkai were deemed a threat to humanity.  To enhance a human's abilities, you have to start with a human, but when creating a youkai, there's no such limitation.  The humans in power feared what would happen if beings smarter, stronger, and more talented than they could ever hope to be arose, and so anti-youkai laws were passed across the galaxy.  And youkai were still considered a threat, so much so that Reimu's contract included an explicit mandate to keep any youkai from coming to power in the Gensokyo system.

   ?You look surprised.  Yes, I am a youkai, even though I was raised as a human.  This mansion, these clothes, they're all merely trappings for which I acquired a taste long ago.  A small concession to my days as an innocent human child.?

- - -

   She was burning up.

   The fever had been climbing all day.  Before the delirium set in, Remilia had begged her father to close the curtains and leave the room in darkness.  And so she twisted and squirmed on her bed, pulling the covers around her and shivering even as sweat poured out of her.

   Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware of the door opening and another presence coming to kneel at her bedside.  She heard her father's voice.

   ?It's alright, Remilia.  Your Uncle Vladimir said he'd drop everything to come out and see you.  He's a doctor, you know.  The most talented biologist on the planet.  He'll help you feel better.  Just hold on a little longer...?

   Remilia could only moan in response.  She heard her father step out of the room, and a few agonizing minutes later, she heard the front door of the house open.

   ?Oh, Vlad!  Thank you for coming so quickly.  Please hurry, Remi's in a lot of pain, and nothing we do seems to help her.?

   ?What's wrong with her??  Remilia recognized her uncle's voice.  ?Just a fever?  Nothing else??

   ?That's not all.  It's...  uh...?  He seemed to be struggling with himself, unsure of what to say.  ?She has these...  bumps.  On her back.?

   ?Bumps??

   ?Yes, bumps.  At first I thought they were tumors, but the way that they're so symmetrical, and the way they've been growing, I...  I...?

   ?Yes?  Go on.?  Vladimir seemed to be prodding his brother, waiting for something.

   Remilia heard her father take a deep breath, as though he was steeling himself for something.  ?Look, when I found out that I couldn't...  conceive, and my wife and I still wanted children, I asked for help from your lab, so I could at least know that my children were of my own blood, but...  Vladimir, was there something you didn't tell us?  Did you tamper with my children!?  Is this another one of your God damn experiments!??  His voice raised in pitch and volume towards the end, and the last few words were shouted at the top of his voice, a whole day of worry for his daughter's life exploding into emotion.  But Vladimir's response was quite calm.

   ?So slow as always, Brother.  Never suspecting anything until it's too late.?  Remilia heard a loud bang, then a thump that shook the floor.  She opened her eyes, and saw the bleary image of her uncle stepping into the room and tucking something away in his coat.  Her mind struggled through the delirium to make sense of what was going on.

   ?Looks like you're just a late bloomer after all, my nice...  No, my daughter.  I was beginning to worry that it just didn't take.  But it seems that you'll become a wonderful monster after all.?

   Another man's voice called through the mansion.  ?Doctor!  I've got the other one loaded up!?  Vladimir looked over his shoulder, nodded, started to look back at Remilia, then did a double-take.

   ?Andrei, where did you get that black eye??

   ?The little bitch hit me,? Andrei replied.

   ?If you have so much trouble with prepubescent girls, I'll make sure not to ask you to take care of anyone that's learned to walk yet, next time.  Go wait at the shuttle, I'll be there shortly.  Once Black Ops realizes that there was a youkai-related crime here, this whole estate is going to be incinerated.  I want to be out of the system by then.?

   Remilia's consciousness faded out as she was picked up and carried out of the mansion.

- - -

   ?There's no point in trying to be anything other than what our nature prescribes, don't you agree??  Remilia's voice was light, unconcerned.  Reimu's mind was racing again, only half paying attention to the youkai's words.  This was the worst case scenario.  Facing a youkai with unknown abilities, on the enemy's turf and after being wounded in a previous battle.  Need to keep her talking, buy some more time.

   ?What are you saying about bringing terror to Gensokyo?  Just what are you planning to do??  Reimu began to slowly walk around the side of the room, keeping Remilia in her sight.

   ?I mean just what I said.?  Remilia swaggered in the opposite direction, not even bothering to look at the shrine maiden.  She gestured with one hand out in front of her, as if to demonstrate.  ?I'm going to land on the planet, go out among the common people, and kill and maim whoever I please under the red sky.?

   ?But why!??

   ?Why not??  Remilia gave an exaggerated shrug, as if to say that Reimu was the one being unreasonable.

   ?Because...  it's wrong!?  Reimu gave a flustered response.  This wasn't what she had expected at all.  She would have accepted the attack as coming from some self-righteous extremist group, or from some immoral band of raiders, but this was something different from both.  It was unsettling, and so Reimu blurted out a weak answer.

   Remilia threw back her head and laughed.  It was a horrible sound, a cackle of amusement at Reimu's expense.  ?Wrong, you say?  How convenient.  You humans throw that word at anything that bothers you.  You say it so righteously, as if it's some defining property of the universe that 'wrong' things should not be allowed to exist.  As though you're somehow noble for opposing them.

   ?And yet you never stop to consider what might make something 'right' or 'wrong.'  Never look back at history and see how right and wrong have changed through the ages, based on what human society has needed to flourish.  Never realize that your feelings of right and wrong are no more real than your feelings of hunger or fear.  Relics of an era long past, ideas imprinted on your brain by your genes, inherited from your ancestors.

   ?Look at the writings and oral traditions of the familial tribes that lived at the dawn of civilization.  See how strong their moral codes were!  And see also how different their ideas of right and wrong were, too.  Yes, the most important moral imperative was to keep the tribe strong, and to deliver merciless 'justice' to those that stood in the way of the tribe's prosperity.  An instinct ingrained into humanity by eons of natural selection, to protect our families and see to it that our genes survive into the next generation.

   ?And as the tribes grew into cities, their ideas of right and wrong changed predictably.  The instinct to protect one's tribe and family was extended outward to become nationalism, and the idea of altruism towards the general public grew into prominence.  Behold the birth of the Good Samaritan.  How superior the civilized people felt, with their wide-arching moral codes!  And yet even so, they thought nothing of oppressing and exploiting those of other nations, of other gene pools.  Even if strangers were to be treated with hospitality, the foreigner and the primitive tribesman were still dehumanized as ever.

   ?Modern people are no different.  Some believe that they have found moral truth by extending their kindness to all of humanity, but that just means that they've recognized all of humanity as belonging to their tribe.  The great heroes of the global age were never anything more than automatons acting on their own hardwired programming.  All their great works, their moral dilemmas, their sacrifices.  Nothing but expressions of their genetic destiny ? their inescapable fate!?

   As Remilia spoke, she paced back and forth in front of Reimu, making grand gestures, but rarely meeting Reimu's gaze.  Her tirade had the sound of a rehearsed speech, pieced together bit-by-bit as the youkai had found her place in the world.  There was a brief pause, and then she finally turned to look Reimu in the eye.

   ?You could call me a moral relativist, in a sense, but on the level of species, not of individuals.  What's right and wrong for humanity is quite clear cut.  Some actions are prosperous for a human, and some actions are self-defeating for a human.  But I'm not human, Reimu.  So don't try to apply your convenient labels of right and wrong to me.?

   Remilia turned her back on Reimu, and the shrine maiden saw a weapon on the youkai's back ? some sort of metallic spear.  Remilia walked alongside a table set beside the dais, trailing her hand along the pink tablecloth, and Reimu's gaze turned to follow her.  ?Then just what are you??

   Remilia smiled.  She picked something up from the table and held it up.  Reimu squinted into the darkness to get a better look.  A knife, coated and dripping with a dark liquid.  It was the same knife that Sakuya had plunged into Reimu's heart.  It's my blood.

   As Reimu watched in horror, Remilia raised the knife to her mouth.  Her lips parted as it approached, and her tongue emerged.  She touched her tongue to the base of the knife, then slowly licked her way to the end.  Her tongue left a wake of bare steel in the congealed blood, before flicking off the sharp tip and drawing back into her mouth.  Remilia closed her mouth, swallowed, and then flashed a red-tinged grin.

   ?You could call me a vampire.?

   Vampire.  The word sent a chill down Reimu's spine.  A monster of ancient folklore, a blood-drinking predator of great magical power, and nearly impossible to destroy.  Yet even if the vampire was a potent symbol of fear, it was still-

   ?Only a myth, right?  But it makes perfect sense when you understand the reason for my existence.?  The vampire continued to explain herself unprompted.  ?After all, most youkai are patterned after some animal or other theme in accordance with their function.  Dog youkai are guardians, bird youkai are scouts.  There are bug youkai like living hives, and information youkai that are integrated into machines.

   ?So why not a terror youkai?  Not the kind of fear that you feel when someone jumps out and shouts 'Boo!'  I mean the kind of dread that you feel when something horrible lurks just out of sight.  The despair of knowing that there is no escape from your fate.  The feeling of inevitable, impending death.  That instinct, left dormant in humanity for so long, that your position at the top of the food chain has been usurped ? that the world no longer belongs to you or to anything remotely like you.  It is, in a word, helplessness.  Don't you feel that, Reimu??

   She did.  It wasn't a rational thing, though it could well have been in her weakened state.  It was something visceral.  A sinking feeling in her heart.  A pit in the bottom of her stomach, filled with nausea.  Something subtly disturbing in the way Remilia paced back and forth.  The vampire's movements were more like a predator ready to pounce on its prey than like a human girl.  It was like the uncanny valley ? coming from an animal, her manner would have been natural, but in this creature that looked almost like a human, it was fundamentally not right.

   ?It's only natural that they modeled me after such a monster, for I was designed to be a weapon of terror.  A trump card that could be released into a target city and strike fear into the hearts of the civilians there.  My form speaks to the collective subconscious of mankind.  Once I began to roam the night streets, to claim my victims and defeat all attempts to stop me, it would only be a matter of time before panic set in and the city collapsed into chaos.

   ?Yes, I am a living weapon of terror.  While those that created me have long-since perished, I still live.  And like all living beings, I long to fulfill my fate.?

   Reimu shook her head.  It was too much to bear, the thought of someone taking an innocent girl and turning her into this...  thing.  ?Why...?? she murmured, then raised her gaze back to the vampire.  ?If you're not under anyone else's control, then why do you continue to live as a weapon?  Why not live as a normal girl??

   ?Ah, Reimu, you still don't understand.  I'm not a 'normal girl' that was forced into becoming a weapon.  The identity as a weapon is a part of me, an aspect of my personality.  From the start, I was bred and conditioned to be nothing more than a tool with a single purpose.  Every aspect of my body, every moment of my life since I was harvested, was used to that end.  This is all I have known and all I ever will know.  And after long years of suffering, I have come to enjoy it.?

- - -

   The buzz of an alarm bell and the grind of a gate opening.  These were the sounds that heralded Remilia's training sessions.  The door would open, and victims would be sent inside to die.  Sometimes they were armed, or armored.  Sometimes they were men, women, or children.  Sometimes there were only a few, and sometimes there were too many to count.  Sometimes killing them was trivial, and sometimes they tested Remilia's abilities.

   Every time, without fail, the victims were all killed at Remilia's hands.  Her body count reached the dozens.  Then the hundreds.  Then the thousands.  There was no sense of the passage of time in the underground structure.  At first, she kept track of the number of times she was sedated by the guards and taken into the lab, and the number of times victims were sent in to be killed by her, but the intervals were always sporadic, and she soon lost count anyway.  The months and years passed, and Remilia adapted to her new environment.

   In most anyone else, the constant exposure to those horrors would merely have led to desensitization.  But the vampire girl was different.  Her instincts, tampered with on the genetic level, and by the drugs in her food and administered in the lab, awoke and seized hold, and her mind was twisted into something inhuman.

   The taste of good food.  The aroma of fresh flowers, the feeling of warm wind flowing through the hair, of sunshine on an upturned face.  The satisfaction of a lover's embrace, and of seeing one's children and knowing that they're happy and healthy.  These sensations, innately precious to humanity, were replaced by the taste of fresh blood, the smell of sweat born from fear, of warm blood and viscera splattering on one's skin.  Claws tearing through flesh and the pain and terror expressed in the eyes of a victim.  These things became precious to Remilia, and she clung to them as everything else about her melted away.

   In the end, the vampire was nothing like the human that had been named ?Remilia.?  The wings tore their way out of her back in the first month, her excess fat was burned away and replaced by lean muscle.  Her teeth shifted and sharpened, lending her face a predatory look.  And her mind was changed even more deeply than her body.

   In the years after her escape, the vampire girl wandered the galaxy and pondered on her place in the world.  And when she reached her conclusion, she began to plan to go to Gensokyo.

   ---

   ?It's never too late to start!?  Reimu's voice was pleading.  ?No matter what they put you through, you said they're gone now, so why let them dictate the course of your life?  You should be casting aside their intentions just to spite them for doing that to you!?

   Remilia scoffed.  ?So to deny their control over my fate, I take the course opposite to what they intended...  And thereby let them determine the course of my life by defining what I'm opposed to?  Don't patronize me.  I've thought down that line and many others."

   Remilia's smile had faded a bit as she spoke about her past, but now it came back full-force as she lifted her hands to her chest, palms facing inwards and clawed fingers spread out.  ?This is how I shall achieve greatness.  By accepting completely what I am ? what has been made of me.  For all the pain and suffering that have led to this point, I regret none of it, and if I were given the chance a thousand times to change the past and save myself from this fate, then I would reply a thousand times that I have no need to do so.

   ?Rather than struggle against it, I will love fate, and embrace all that was necessary to make me who I am today.  That fate has led me here to this path.  I will not be dissuaded.?

   Reimu sighed.  It looks like there's no way to talk her out of it.  Then...  ?You say you love your fate, whatever it may be.  I wonder if you'll be so glad if your plans are fated to end here.?

   Remilia wore a predatory grin, and she tensed up, ready to spring at any moment.  ?Go on, then.  Entertain me for a bit.  I could use the warm-up.?

   There was a moment of silence and stillness.  Reimu held her shotgun pointed down, and Remilia lowered her body close to the ground.  Then, there was an explosion of movement.

   In the blink of an eye, Reimu raised her shotgun and fired.  But Remilia was faster, putting her hand under the table and flipping it right at Reimu.  The table took the shot, and Reimu ducked as it went flying over her head, rising up again with her shotgun trained on the vampire.

   Remilia jumped with superhuman speed as the shrine maiden fired at her, the dress somehow not even hindering her movements.  With fluttering wings, she jumped to the side, landing on a wall, then launched herself off it and towards the ceiling.  Shots rang out as Reimu fired again and again, but Remilia's speed was like nothing the shrine maiden had seen before, and the vampire remained unscathed. 

   Remilia landed on all fours behind Reimu, between her and the exit, then dashed in for the kill.  Now!  Reimu spun and fired her shotgun, right into the vampire's chest...  And Remilia barely even flinched as she continued her attack.  Reimu had to duck under Remilia's outswept claw, then spring backwards to avoid the other claw reaching out to grab her.  She started to raise her shotgun, then lowered it again to strafe, dodge, and then retreat again before Remilia's whirling claws.  And this time, her withdraw was cut short by her back bumping into the wall behind her, just as Remilia pulled back her arm and closed it into a fist.  Reimu raised her arms to defend herself, and-

   The punch sent Reimu flying through the wall in a shower of plaster.  She landed on her back and let her momentum carry her further, rolling her over and planting her feet back on the ground.  Reimu rose up in a fluid motion, ejected the clip from the shotgun, reloaded it and pumped the slide in time to train it on the hole in the wall that she had just been sent through.

   And yet...  the hole in the wall just showed the empty sitting room, empty as far as Reimu could see.  She looked around to get her bearings.  The punch had thrown Reimu into the adjacent dining room, a grand hall with a marble tile floor and ornate pillars around the sides.  In addition to the opening Reimu's body had made, there was an open doorway leading back into the sitting room.  She must be hiding just behind the wall...  And she has to come through one of those openings to get to me.  Reimu swung her shotgun from side to side, and her eyes darted between the door and the hole.

   She had only just realized the third possibility when wall off to the side shattered to pieces and a monstrous screech rang out.  Remilia burst in through the wall and lunged right at Reimu.  Reimu aimed her shotgun at Remilia, started to pull the trigger, but the vampire grabbed the end of the gun in one of her claws and wrenched it to the side as it fired.  Reimu tried to pull the gun back, then was forced to release it and dive to the side as Remilia's claw nearly swept her head off.

   Reimu rolled into a crouch, and watched warily as Remilia let the half-empty shotgun fall to the floor with a clatter and began slowly walking towards her prey.  The shrine maiden carefully considered her options, her gaze darting between the vampire and the shotgun lying on the floor ? and then gasped in shock as Remilia's slow stalk became a blur of movement.  In an instant, Remilia was right in front of Reimu, swinging her claw, and Reimu could only dodge backwards, unarmed.

   A dodge, a duck, a bob, and then Remilia's fist was flying at impossible speed towards Reimu's face.  The shrine maiden raised her arm to fend off the attack, and felt her bone fracture from the force of the blow.  She was thrown backwards into a pillar, and had to duck under another punch, then turn and run away as the column shattered and the floor buckled.  Reimu looked over her shoulder, saw Remilia pursuing her close behind, and ran straight into and then up the side of the wall, planting her feet against it and letting her momentum carry her halfway up before backflipping off it and landing a few feet behind Remilia.

   The vampire spun around as the shrine maiden landed, and the two combatants regarded each other for a moment.  Reimu's gaze darted, and she saw the shotgun at the other end of the room.  She put a hand on her pistol, and feinted as though she were going to make a dash for the shotgun ? and just as she had hoped, Remilia dived in that direction to head her off.  Wrong guess, vampire.  I've got a bigger gun for you.

   With the time bought by that feint, Reimu reached over her shoulder and hefted her plasma arc launcher.  Remilia's eyes widened as she saw the weapon pointed at her, and she tensed and sprung straight upwards as Reimu pulled the trigger.  Blue lightning arced through the spot where the vampire had been a moment before, and Reimu pulled the barrel of the gun upwards, chasing her target with the destructive beam and leaving a charred, sinuous line across the floors, wall, and ceiling.

   Remilia's claws dug into the ceiling, and she launched herself again ahead of the trail of lightning, her wings flapping wildly.  She threw herself at the ground and scrambled to her feet just as the launcher overheated and the lightning fizzled out.  Reimu fumbled to eject the heat sink and load in a new one, but Remilia was faster.

   The vampire girl pulled the metallic spear off her back.  ?Let me show you...?  She held it in one hand and pulled it back, back, so far back that she was arching backwards and the spear was pointing straight up.  ?How that's done!?  The spear was thrown right at Reimu, but...  It's going to miss!  Reimu saw that the spear's trajectory was just a little off.  She took her chance, clicking the heat sink into place and aiming the launcher at Remilia-

   ?Gungnir!?

   At the moment that word was shouted, red lightning instantly burst from Remilia's outstretched fingertips, along the spear, into Reimu's left arm, then across her body and down into the floor.  Reimu's muscles spasmed, her back arched, and all five of her senses were bombarded by indescribable sensations as the nanomachine system running through her body was confused and damaged by the strong electric current.  The current running through her body gave her burns from the inside out, and her enhancements became liabilities as the signals they were supposed to receive from her brain were overwhelmed by the attack.

   The lightning lasted only an instant before the spear passed right by Reimu's head and burst into and through the floor a few feet behind her.  She swayed on her feet for a few moments and then fell down flat on her face.  Slowly, laboriously, she twisted her neck to look across the room at her attacker.  Through her flickering and jumbled vision, Reimu could see Remilia standing with her arms spread wide and her wings fluttering rapidly.  Her skin was flushed, and Reimu could see waves of heat rising off her wings.  Those wings...  They're not for flying.  They're...  heat regulators.  Like an elephant's ears.  Incredible, for her body to be able to generate such an electric current...  Reimu struggled to get her arms under her body and lift herself up, but another spasm hit her and she fell flat to the floor.

   She heard sound, flickering in and out as her ears struggled to find their neural connection with her brain.  It took her a moment to realize that it was Remilia's laughter.

   ?Ahahahah, yes, that was...  exhilarating.  You put up a good fight, Reimu, but in the end, you underestimated me, and that was your downfall.?  Remilia paced back and forth as she gloated.

   ?But you can rejoice, for I have decided not to kill you.  No, I think I'd much rather make you into my  next servant.  I'm sure that Sakuya could use the help after what you did to her.  Yes, I could get you fitted with a collar and leash, and have my very own pet shrine maiden...?  The vampire walked over to her fallen foe, kicked the plasma arc launcher out of Reimu's limp grasp and across the room, reached down, and lifted her up by the throat with one hand.

   ?Or maybe I'll send you back to your shrine.  Let you keep playing the part of 'shrine maiden', but with the knowledge that at any time, on a moment's whim, I could come there myself and make you my prey.?  Her grip tightened, her claws digging into Reimu's neck, as she lifted her victim up off the floor.  ?How would you like that, hm, Reimu??

   By way of reply, Reimu pulled back her left arm and threw a clumsy punch at Remilia's face.  The vampire caught it in her other hand without even bothering to look at it, and then with a sharp motion, twisted and snapped Reimu's wrist.  Reimu grunted and spasmed, then began kicking at Remilia with her dangling legs.  Her heavy boots connected with the vampire's shins, thighs, and belly in rapid succession, and for a moment, Remilia's grip loosened.  The vampire grimaced, then retightened her grip, lifted Reimu even higher, and then threw her down, smashing the back of her head against the marble floor.

   The impact sent stars across her vision, and she hit so hard that she felt the floor beneath her groan and creak.  And then, with a loud snap and a crash, the floor's structure, weakened by the battle so far, collapsed entirely beneath the two girls.

- - -

   Reimu's consciousness flickered, her senses going dark and her mind freezing in its tracks.  It couldn't have lasted for more than a second, but it still took Reimu a moment to take in what had happened as soon as she regained her senses.  The floor had collapsed and thrown the two girls down into a hallway below, and the raw structure of the mansion was visible in the gaping hole above.  Concrete and rebar were bare and jutting out, and the plumbing that had run through the floor had been damaged as well.  A pipe with the end torn off emptied its water from the floor above into the hallway, onto the chunks of concrete and plaster, and it was quickly dampening the carpet and forming a small pool.

   Remilia was there, just a few feet from Reimu, kneeling and holding her head in her claws.  It's now or never...!  Reimu put power into her legs, and she carefully stood up.  Control returned to her limbs.  The shotgun was poking out of the rubble within arm's reach.  The shrine maiden reached out with her good arm, grabbed the shotgun, pointed it point-blank at the vampire's head, and pulled the trigger.

   Nothing happened.  Reimu looked more closely at the shotgun and saw that it had been fused into a useless solid bar of metal.  Must have been hit by the plasma launcher's bolt.  Remilia was starting to recover.  Reimu tossed the shotgun into the air, caught it by its barrel, pulled back, and swung it full force into the side of the vampire's head!

   There was a thump!  Reimu looked at the improvised club in her hand and saw that it had been bent about 90 degrees, then looked at Remilia again to see that she wore a nasty expression and was rubbing the side of her head, but appeared unharmed.  The vampire's claw shot out to grab Reimu, and the shrine maiden leaped backwards, dropping the useless weapon to the ground.

   Reimu landed in a crouch, her good hand flat on the floor.  She looked up to see Remilia getting her bearings.  The water flowing from the pipes above was making a small river across the fancy carpet, flowing around the vampire's shoes.  I guess it would be silly to expect her to be defeated by running water, but...  An idea came to Reimu.  She looked past Remilia and saw the plasma launcher sitting on the other side of the hallway, as if it were beckoning to her.

   ?Hey, Remilia.  I just thought of something.?  Reimu spoke quietly, but she had the vampire's attention.

   ?When you threw that spear at me, you missed.  At first, I thought it was because you didn't need to hit with a weapon like that.  As long as its close enough to its target to transmit the electric current, it's fine, right?

   ?But something else occurred to me, what with the way you're so determined to blot out the sun.  I was thinking, what if you threw it like that because you couldn't quite see where I was?  What if the flash from my weapon blinded you for a moment??

   Remilia balled her hands into fists.  She gritted her teeth into a snarl and stared hatred at Reimu.  ?You...!?  Remilia charged down the hallway, but Reimu was ready for her.

   Reimu reached into her pouch and threw out a purple-printed tag ? a flashbang.  There was a bright white flash, a deafening bang, and Remilia stumbled and winced as she ran.  For most enhanced soldiers, it was possible to shut off one's own eyes and ears for the instant a flashbang went off, as long as the soldier knew it was coming, so they weren't very effective weapons in a straight fight.  But it seemed that for Remilia, that wasn't an option.

   Reimu threw out another tag, there was another flash, and Remilia tripped and fell down on all fours before pulling herself up and continuing her charge.  This won't stop her alone.  If she grabs me again, I'm done for.  Reimu charged toward her foe as she readied another tag.

   In another flash, combat was joined again.  Reimu ducked, dodged, stepped back, then charged forward again.  Remilia's movements now were wild, desperate.  Her wide eyes stared without seeing, and her mouth snarled like a wild animal.  Reimu saw an opening and dived past Remilia.

   But Remilia stuck her leg out, and Reimu tripped over it, falling to the wet floor with a splash.  Remilia turned around and lunged, clawing at Reimu on the floor, and the shrine maiden scrambled backward, rolling away from the attacks and splashing through the shallow water.  She stumbled to her feet, turned to make a run for the plasma launcher?

   And Remilia reached out and snagged one of Reimu's detached sleeves with her claw ? the one on her broken arm.  As Reimu pulled, her arm was twisted and pain shot through her mind.  Yet, for an enhanced soldier such as Reimu, pain was nothing more than a reminder of a wound, a neurochemical message that could be easily ignored.  It had no power over her.  And so Reimu pulled harder.  The sleeve ripped, then slid off her arm, freeing Reimu to make her last dash.

   She threw one more tag behind her as she ran, the flash lit up the hallway, and then she dived to the floor for the plasma launcher.  Reimu rolled onto her back, pulled the plasma launcher onto her chest and aimed it down her body, and sighted it on Remilia.  Remilia, clutching her face with her claws, looked between her fingers and saw the gun pointed straight at her.

   Reimu pulled the trigger.  Blue lightning shot out again, lancing through Remilia's chest and arcing to the surrounding rubble and water.  The mansion seemed to shake with the power of the attack, but then it ended as abruptly as it had begun.  The damage was done.  Remilia fell to the floor with a splash, and lay there, hardly moving.  A faint trail of smoke rose from her, and her wings and limbs twitched fitfully.

   Reimu stood up and walked over to her fallen foe.  ?Mission accomplished,? she breathed, then raised her good hand up to the side of her head to contact Genji.

- - -

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## Remilia Scarlet
## Weaponized Youkai
## Fielded by: None (Rogue)
## Purpose: Instigation of terror
##
## Remilia Scarlet is a weaponized youkai, the product of an illegal research and development group, now defunct, led by one Dr.
## Vladimir Tepes.  It was believed to be a normal human living in Soyuz FSC until the age of 15, when its youkai features began to
## emerge.  At this point, it was stolen by Dr. Tepes and taken to a facility at an unknown location, where its conditioning process took
## place.

## At some unknown time, potentially during the chaos of the Galactic War, it escaped containment along with one related youkai,
## Flandre Scarlet, and went rogue.  When it emerged again, it had assembled the small following of Hong Meiling, Patchouli
## Knowledge, and Sakuya Izayoi, as well as sufficient resources to maintain a spaceworthy and Sukima Drive-equipped base of
## operations, the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

## Remilia Scarlet is a weapon of terror, not a weapon of war, and was designed for use against civilian populations.  It was
## apparently designed with the vampire motif in mind, as it seems to enjoy drinking blood, an urge that was most likely cultivated in
## order to disturb the target population the weapon was to be deployed against.  Furthermore, it seems that the weapon's skin and
## nervous system can be damaged by exposure to moderate to intense light of a wavelength below approximately 500nm.  This
## may have been a measure to deter escape attempts by Remilia Scarlet, or it may have been used to condition it into only being
## active at night.  Whether this feature was intended to be removed before the weapon's deployment is unknown.

## In any case, Remilia Scarlet remains dangerous despite not being designed as a main battle youkai.  Its strength, durability, and
## reaction times are all beyond the threshold of human enhancement, and while it doesn't seem to be proficient with firearms, its
## own claws and teeth are capable of penetrating all but the heaviest personal armor.  Furthermore, it has the ability to generate a
## sufficient electric charge in its own body to ionize the surrounding air and produce a short-lived plasma, equivalent to a standard
## man-portable plasma arc launcher.  Combined with the spear it uses, ?Gungnir,? it can fire plasma bolts at range.  This makes
## Remilia Scarlet a significant threat at short and medium range.  Avoid engagement if at all possible.

[GuyYouMetOnline]

You know, I probably never would have seen this story if you hadn't come back after six months to update it. And you know what? I'm glad you did, because this is a good story. This and Dolphin Rider Koishi are two examples of how AU fics should be done. You've got some very good interpretations of the characters, although I am surprised that Marisa didn't make an appearance (I was expecting her to be a mercenary, or maybe a bounty hunter). I don't know how far you plan on taking this, but I'm hoping you go all the way through the series. I'd especially love to see IN and MoF in this style.

Anyways, yeah, good job.

[Iced Fairy]

Very very nice.  I was wondering about Remilia, and the answers do not disappoint.  Neither does the battle here, though I can't imagine it being the final battle.

Looking forward to the conclusion.

[Kasu]

This was totally worth the wait.

I can't wait to see if you do the extra stage for this, and I agree with Guy in that I'd love to see the whole series done in this style. :3

[Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin]

Oh, c'mon. There's no way he's not gonna do the extra stage, after mentioning Flandre and not going anywhere with her. :3