On the hardships of taking it easy (provisional title)

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This is the first version of my first fanfic, ever. Let's see how bad this is:

Chapter 1. Zon means Sun

Once upon, at around the turn of the 1800s, a dutch merchant in Japan, one Jan van der Zon, left the port city where foreigners should be kept by the Shogunate orders, to wander the country selling his particular wares: tomes and items of magic. His reputation and his own magic powers were more than enough to keep the authorities out of his case and so he came and went more or less as he wanted.

Since many of his customers were the ever more reclusive youkai, he ended up setting shop in Gensokyo. Being a magician of considerable talent, schooled at the European hermetic tradition, Jan was about as afraid of the common youkai as he was of the shogunate officers. Luminous, blazing spells were his speciality.

That he enjoyed using light magic was readily apparent: Jan had, to speak bluntly, a shining personality, which coupled with a devilish handsome look and a winning smile made short work of human and youkai hearts. It was kind of impossible to hate the guy, even if he was short-changing you or declaring his superiority in all matters scientific and arcane. He was a rogue, and kind of a dick, but that just meant he fit right in his adopted home.

Jan ended up getting hooked by a local beauty from Gensokyo's human village and was looking forward to live the rest of his days in that secluded place, drinking sake and trying to "take it easy" as they would rather say there. What neither him neither Gensokyo's other residents were counting with was that the guy was pretty much a wellspring of "Yang", the positive, sunny and masculine basic energy that is one of the universe?s building blocks. Jan was a guy with a positive, can-do attitude so strong that he started to tip Gensokyo's delicate magical balance. When politely told to stop emanating as much positive energy as a second, human shaped sun, Jan proudly unveiled a Solar Temple he had built in secret and declared himself the Shining Master of Sunlight, cackling madly in the process, if you?d believe some of the witnesses. The current Hakurei shrine maiden had to intervene at what was by then a full blown incident. Since this all happened in the first half of the XIX century, there was much swooning, monocles were dropped in shock, the whole works.

The incident got resolved as peacefully as they usually are in Gensokyo, and at the Solar Temple ruins the battered and bloodied Jan surrendered and sworn to abandon his ways for the chance of keep living, if possible there, as magicians tended to enjoy when their antics provoked a reaction more like angry neighbors calling the cops after a loud party than a full blown inquisition. The council of the youkai sages gathered, concluded that Jan's magic blood was at home in Gensokyo anyway and said they?d allow Mr. van der Zon to keep living there with a couple of small conditions: first, he'd have to agree to stop using that pesky western magic and second, he should swap his foreign, solar name for a suitably gloomy native name. That was less of a punishment and more of a kind of magical medicine to try to fix his too-positive aura. Jan gravely pondered the matter and agreed with the terms, seconds later. From that day on, he was to be known as Kirisame Jan (with "Jan" written in meaningless kanji, to boot).

Jan Kirisame?s life after his short bolt with villainous megalomania ("the Gensokyo disease") was long and fruitful. He made good of his promise to never use magic again, but could never stop being a fountain of luminous smiles and bright laughter. He fathered 8 children, boys and girls, who in a shockingly disregard for how recessive genes should work all shared their father's blond hair and light eyes. Jan turned back to commerce and went back to being a shopkeeper full-time. He died well in his 90's, old enough to see the Great Barrier closing. For him, that seemed like a most excellent decision.

The youkai sage, who had to channel more Yin energy into Gensokyo during decades just to balance Jan?s effect is rumored to have said ?at least a piece of good news!? when the word of his passing came, and then returned to make battle plans against vampires. Those were not exactly quiet times.

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2. Afternoon at the Tower of White Jade

One day, when a bit over a century had gone by since Jan died, Yuyuko told Yukari:

"Oh! And you know what? Jan wants to be reborn. He told me he?s dying to see Gensokyo again!"

Yukari, the youkai sage, stared at the ghost sipping tea besides her and blinked. Sitting behind the two friends, the servants Ran and Youki glanced at each other. That glance meant a "sigh", in their silent shared language, born of centuries working together for such unreasonable mistresses.

"Jan can't be reborn in my land!" said Yukari, snapping her fan closed. "Why isn't that fool doing time in hell anyway?! Is there no justice in this world?"

Yuyuko sipped more of tea, took the last manju from the small wooden box sitting between her and Yukari and devoured it. Youki moved forward, kneeing and looking dignified all the way, took the empty box, stood up and went inside the house, his ghostly half trailing behind.

"I'll talk him out of this silliness." said Yukari, standing up.

"I don't think you can do that now, dear." answered Yuyuko, still sitting. "Since this morning I can't feel Jan here."

Yukari, that by then had started a somewhat brisk march towards where she thought Jan was, froze mid-step. She turned back to face her friend.

"Yuyuko... Why aren't you telling me these things before they turn into an incident?"

"Oh it was so sudden..." shrugged the ghost. "Just yesterday he was telling me that he had his fair share of flower viewing, and today... 'poof' "

Yuyuko said "poof" together with a hand gesture of closing and opening her fingers, one that was a rather decent mimicry for fireworks and, it also seemed, for souls returning to the great wheel. Yukari closed her purplish yellow eyes and tapped the closed fan lightly against her temple.

"This is not good... this is not good at all..." said the gap youkai. "Not only we're without a Hakurei shrine maiden, but now that useless rake wants to return... Raaan~ why don't we have a new miko in training yet?"

"The search continues even now, lady Yukari." replied Ran. The fox?s eyes had been closed for the whole time and if you knew how to look you'd see the tendrils of magic leaving her.

Ran's eyes quickly opened, however, when she heard a voice she loved shouting the by then familiar cry of "Ran-sama~". Sending the scan to background processing, she turned to where her beloved Chen was coming, at full speed.

Ran still didn't get tired of listening or looking to Chen. In a century or ten, maybe, but right now she was shamelessly in love with her cute servant and shikigami. It was almost a millennium of repressed maternal instincts going all out on the nekomata that she and Yukari found in mainland China, years ago.

Nominally, Chen started going with Yukari and "Ran-sama" to the long and lazy afternoons spent at the Tower of White Jade to train and socialize with Youmu, Youki's daughter. The real truth was the Ran used any excuse to have Chen always close at hand. The sight amused Yukari and Yuyuko. It was like one of those freak accidents of nature that you saw sometimes at the news: "She-wolf found taking care of a baby bear!". Yukari liked specially how irrational Ran was around all matters Chen, which was the single breach in the cold, rational facade her shikigami had decided to put up in the last centuries. Chen and fried tofu, but then again, Ran didn't actually lose her cool around fried tofu anymore and what's the fun of an always serious servant? How did Yuyuko put up with Youki for so long, anyway?

Chen and Youmu looked about the same age-wise, meaning that they could pass for human girls of about twelve years old. The pair was much older than that, of course: Chen in "total years", because you had to count the decades she had spent growing as a cat, Youmu in "years in a human-like body", but small details like those meant precisely nothing to the folks there. Both were exactly as child-like as their bodies suggested, only Youmu did a very good job of hiding that from everybody, herself included.

So one girl ran excitedly while the other ran, if that was possible, stoically, to the grown ups. They were probably returning from their training to report. Ran observed with a passing annoyance how Youmu was clearly holding herself back to run besides Chen. Sending a single thread of her own power into Chen via the Shikigami link, Ran increased her girl's speed twofold. Youmu stride went slightly wider and they kept running side by side. "Youki must be cheating with his girl's training..." she thought, and then Chen pounced her at a double speed hug/snuggle, turning the pair into a jumble of entwined limbs and golden tails. Mostly golden tails, going by volume. Youmu stopped as if inertia wasn't a thing and bowed to her father.

The results the girls had to report ended being exactly the same: "Youmu-chan is stronger when we fight at close range!" Chen would say. "Chen-san always wins if she gets some distance." Youmu would say with a timid smile. To which their respective masters would tell them to keep striving and do their best. And then the girls would wash themselves and bring tea and sweets and... where were Yukari and Yuyuko now?

Ran glanced at Youki and was glanced back. Their mistresses used to do irresponsible stuff like that, all the time. Distances for Yukari were mostly irrelevant, and Yuyuko could pop at anyplace of her domain at will.

So Ran decided to just ignore them and concentrate on the moment?s Chen-ness. She hugged the girl presently at her lap and was hugged back. Sitting properly besides them, in a way that could be used to illustrate "Samurai" at a dictionary, both Youki and Youmu lowered their eyes to their cups and sipped tea. Their ghostly halves floated above them, an indistinct white haze.

Yukari and Yuyuko, the irresponsible mistresses, were floating inside a swarm of ghost balls. Truly, you couldn't throw a stick anywhere at Yuyuko's realm without hitting a ghost ball, but here they were in such quantity that they formed a stream. Two streams, in fact, moving leisurely up and down, depending if they were entering or leaving the realm.

"See?" said Yuyuko, pointing with her fan. "He's not here anymore."

"I wouldn't know..." muttered Yukari, annoyed enough to feel like swatting the ghosts balls away from her. So she wasn't Yuyuko, and couldn't unerringly tell which human or youkai, or whatever, each ghost ball (who all looked exactly the same) had been. But she knew pretty well how to feel auras, and Jan's sunny aura was anywhere to be felt.

"This is unfair! It's too much trouble~" groaned Yukari, unfairly. "The great barrier is in such a delicate state now, without a Hakurei sitting at the shrine, and the outside world is so filled with Yang energy already. If a fountain of Yang like Jan returns to Gensokyo, it'll be a mess! A mess!"
Yukari turned to Yuyuko, who of course was looking elsewhere, pink and baby blue fan demurely covering her mouth. Yuyuko, much like Ran, had those naturally shifty look and the uncanny knack of apprehending most of the world with the eyes seemingly closed. In Ran, that look was "foxy", while in Yuyuko it was "noble" or "pensive".

Yukari was having none of that. By a cruel destiny's joke, doing the shifty, almost closed eyes look looked "silly" or "mindless" with her. She glared at her friend until the ghost was forced to half open one eye ("demurely") and look back.

"If I have Jan killed when he reenters the living world ? he'll just accumulate good karma for the 'unfairness' of his murder." hissed Yukari. Yuyuko followed her friend intently now. Once you got past the artsy, bubbly airs Yuyuko put, you met a hard, no-nonsense core of praticality. Yuyuko had one of the cruelest, unfairest abilities Yukari had ever seen, and at a very basic level the ghost princess learned to deal with it by being absolutely serious when the situation absolutely demanded, and incredibly light-hearted everytime else. She was serious now.

"So you must resort to indirect means." said Yuyuko, staring at Yukari: "When a human is to be born, a section of the Ministry of What's Right and What's Wrong does all the paperwork: They plan the body the human will have, how his karma will affect his life, and so."

"Ugh... I'd rather not deal with the Yama." said Yukari, turning her eyes away. She was about to return to her thought-inducing tic of taping the closed fan at something (usually her temple) when Yuyuko continued:

"The Yama heads another section, of course. The celestial you need to talk to regarding human births is another one, I can introduce you two."

"Oh?..." Yukari turned back to her friend, a hint of a smile returning to her lips.

"She's not the straightest arrow in the quiver and can be bribed." stated Yuyuko, who then sighed, snapped her fan shut and turned her attention to the streams of ghost balls. Yukari's smirk was a full blown grin now.

?

A year or two passed. A new shrine maiden candidate, a baby from the outside, was found and brought into Gensokyo. Everybody had their breath in relief moment, then partied hard, and then resumed trying to take their lives easily. Everybody other than the handful of youkai and ghost (incidentally, the very ones in this story, so far) who had to do the heavy magical lifting to keep the great Hakurei Border from imploding until the new shrine maiden had the decency to stop being a baby and started doing her part. Which should take at least a decade.

And then Jan van der Zon, aka Jan Kirisame, was reborn into Gensokyo, among his descendants. But people, even the learned people who knew how to look at those things, did not recognize him. Or rather, her.

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3. The girls are growing up...

Reimu had lived alone in the Hakurei shrine since she arrived as a baby brought from the outside world. When she was but helpless, women from the human village worked in turns to care for her needs. This was a chore for them, and it was like if the baby noticed and resented that. Unlike most babies, she didn't cry much but kind of unnerved the human women by staring and doing little else. The women stopped coming to the shrine when Reimu was about two years old and could toddle around and go potty on the outside. From then on, she was really alone there, turtle aside.

She was both blessed and cursed with a knack for noticing pretty much everything. From the obvious things, like her human caretakers not liking her, to the most subtle things, like the other beings who also cared for her, the ones who entered the shrine invisible to leave food, clothes or medicines when nobody but Reimu was watching.

So, there was Reimu, alone in the old and empty Hakurei Shrine, turtle aside. Of course, if you wanted to be really precise about it, there was also a number of mice, rats and countless crawling and slithering things taking residence there, but those hadn?t the shrine maiden?s well being in mind. The turtle, however, had. He took his job in very turtle-like way, that being slow, serious and deadly. He could but didn't like to speak, so the girl's days were mostly filled with silence. Crickets and cicadas answered to her baby talk.

Of course, for those of you paying attention, if you actually try to rise a human baby like this, you'll end with a feral child who knows no language and cannot properly work as a human being, so Reimu's education didn't consist only in leaving a toddler toddling alone in a derelict shrine. She was being properly educated, but in dreams.

Reimu wasn't allowed to dream as other people dream for the longest time. It took her a while to not be scared from the rare times when she was "free" on one night and had a plain, senseless, stream of consciousness dream. The purposeless of those dreams felt really weird to the girl until she got a bit wiser, a few years later.

Reimu's "usual dreams" were like this: first she was in the pond behind the shrine. There she climbed on the back of Genji, the turtle that could but didn?t like to speak, and that, as far Reimu thought, was already there by the time the shrine was built. Then Genji effortlessly took to the air, and they went to one of the places where Reimu was educated.

There were just a handful of those places: "The flowers' place" or "Tower of White Jade", as she heard the proper, surely sarcastic, name, and the "messy place", or "Mayohiga", the inside of a cozy, if rather messy, house. If not these, she'd fly over the country, to learn the places? names. Other times she'd be taken to a lot of different places, all equally called "The Great Hakurei Barrier", and there her teachers would endlessly drill her on what to do.

Her teachers were mostly the same two people, again and again: There was a nine-tailed fox woman using one of those cheap festival fox masks, and a very large man with his face hidden in an equally very large wide brimmed samurai straw hat. Fox and Samurai, teaching a baby girl first the basic things all humans should know, then the basics of magic and hand-to-hand fighting, and then the myriad of other things that learned and holy humans were also expected to know. All of this were happening during said girl's forced lucid dreaming. You can guess how well that went.

How it went was: surprisingly well. The girl soaked knowledge from her teachers, from her ambiance, from thin air. At about four, she could tell the Samurai was very sick and she was pretty sure even the Fox got startled and scared when she asked what he had. Some times she could spot other people from afar, usually the same four other people: A couple of ladies, or a couple of girls. Reimu mostly wanted to go play with the girls, but that wasn't allowed and time was always short.

Compared with her dream life, Reimu's wakeful hours seemed dead and for a while she entertained the notion that dreams and reality were swapped: Reality where you ate, went to the latrine and waited until you could start dreaming to do other things. Her teachers corrected her from this mistake, but could not meet her on reality yet ?for an important reason that you?ll learn when you?re older.? Reimu was told to read, run around or just ?play? during her awake time.

So she started leaving the shrine to explore as soon she got old enough to walk with sure steps. She had very faint memories of having her dreams interrupted by violent noises outside. She would get up from her bed, run towards the commotion and then she would find a heaving, mortally wounded youkai at the shrine's porch, with a nearby Genji trying and failing to look just like a harmless old turtle.

After what seemed like a handful of such bloody incidents, the hungry or petty youkai agreed that she was too much trouble and then the entirety of Gensokyo was open to her, as far as her childish legs could go. Maybe attracted to her kind, she started her walks towards the human village.

That didn't go so well, at least in the relationship front. People from the village were always very nice and polite to her, and at all food shops and stalls she could simply walk in, ask for anything and be treated by the shopkeeper. It was already mentioned that Reimu was unusually perceptive for her years, so one thing she knew, even then: "Somebody is paying for what I get for free at the stores." She didn?t take too much, in any case.

So the free treats were nice. But mothers moving their kids away from her with greater or lesser skill at hiding exactly what they were doing wasn't. When she went for the direct approach and asked why she wasn't allowed to talk with the kids she heard excuses ranging from "My plain child is no worthy companion for the Hakurei Shrine maiden" to "we're afraid of the youkai around you." Which in the end were both the same: Reimu Hakurei was "special", and by "special", the people at the human village understood "closely followed by hungry monsters".

She tried going to the temple school once, but the teacher there, Miss Kamishirasawa, took her in her arms and said: "Oh, miss Hakurei, you poor thing..." and that was that. Reimu didn't like her condescending attitude, wanted down, and left.

Reimu was maybe around 7 years old when her explorations of the human village proved unfruitful for anything but free sweets and tea. She had memorized the name of every human family living there, but she moved with an invisible circle of avoidance around her, so she gave up trying to warm up to the humans and moved on. What even she couldn't know was that one of the several kids the was denied access to by a worried parent would grow to be her closest friend.

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4. The Melancholy of Marisa Kirisame

Marisa was dying to talk with the famed Reimu Hakurei, but her mom pushed her unceremoniously to the inside of shop and apologized to the visiting shrine maiden. Later, mom told Marisa in a hushed tone that Hakurei maidens were bad news: Why, the last one had died messily about a year before Marisa was born. Everybody at the village was horrified then, but somehow the very youkai had produced a new maiden and installed her at the shrine. She was now being trained. "The poor thing." Marisa's mom had said. "Miss Keine told me they rarely live to be twenty, it's a fate so sad..."

Marisa at about 7 years old was the kind of kid who was always sporting a scrapped knee or elbow. The pretty dresses her mom insisted on putting her in tended to get soiled in minutes. Marisa's universe was by then much smaller than Reimu's: It consisted on her family's combined house/shop/warehouse and selected houses and common areas of the human village. It was way too small for Marisa, who runned instead walking, shouted instead talking even she was told again and again that that was not proper behavior for a girl. It had to be the bad influences.

The bad influences, if you listened to her dad, Heruman Kirisame, had a definite human-like shape: assistant shopkeeper, Rinnosuke. A half-youkai employee at Kirisame's shop, Rinnosuke was already there when Marisa was born and was useless and guilty of anything wrong that happened at the Kirisame's househood, if you leaned an ear to Heruman.

An usual day for Marisa would be her dad shouting at Rinnosuke for whatever reason, her mom sad in the kitchen or by the counter and she being left to her own devices. She and Heruman never got along. Not that she was abused, or beaten, the kind of horror stories the kids whispered at the playground. Heruman never rised his hand to hit her, but never held her hand, or hugged her, or sat her on his lap or over his shoulders, or did any other fatherly thing, in fact. He didn't look at her straight in eyes. He was an overall bitter man, and his bitterness was just worse when his own daughter was around. Marisa learned this very early in her life and avoided her old man.

It actually took Marisa a while to figure hers was a pretty sad house. Her mom was the kind of melancholic soul that stared longly at windows, her father was the wreck just described. This left Marisa to Rinnosuke. Rinnosuke never hugged her, either, but took her in hand from place to place in the shop, asked her to do chores and didn't exactly mind when she climbed to his lap during the long hours he spent reading or building trinkets.

The things that were already rather bleak at the Kirisame's househood took a sharp turn into straight bad melodrama about a year after Marisa's not-meeting with the visiting Hakurei Shrine Maiden, when her mom got sick and after a suffering for a couple of months, died. Her mom's funeral was during an incongruously sunny summer day and Marisa found first hand how much did it suck to not have someone to hug you back in those circumstances. Mr. Kirisame didn't even looked at her direction those days, looking instead straight away and barking orders, so even staying by his side was out of question. She hugged the stone faced Rinnosuke instead, who kind of let her say there and even put his hand in a way you could describe as "stoic" on her head.

The burial was also the second time Marisa saw Reimu, which came for official shrine maiden business. Marisa was feeling as miserable as humanly possible that day and looked tearfully to the child miko, for that occasion dressed entirely on white, of about her exact age, seeking sympathy. Reimu withstood that look of despair with one full of a feeling Marisa hadn't a name for, but that had a strange calming effect, then waved her gohei a few times over the tomb, said the proper words for a parting human soul, and left.

A few days after Marisa's mom's death the bad blood between Mr. Kirisame and Rinnosuke came to a high point and both men came to blows. Or rather, Heruman punched Rinnosuke, who didn't punch back, while a terrified Marisa watched from a hidden place. Harsh words were traded, or rather, Heruman called Rinnosuke every single bad name Marisa knew, and a couple she never had heard before, before finally accusing the half-youkai of "betraying me, and ruining the Kirisame?s name". Rinnosuke, a trickle of blood running down his nose, replied that "the foolish man brings hell even to the paradise" to which Heruman rised his hand to punch again, but this time Marisa saw Rinnosuke's eyes glow, and her dad lowered his hand and left the room, in fear and/or anger.

Rinnosuke left too, for good, without anger or at least without showing it, at the very next morning. A tearful Marisa, who was already a mess by that time, hugged the half-youkai and didn't want to let him go, and probably ended crying more into him there than she had cried at her mom?s burial. She was a pretty strong girl overall, but the world looks rather unfair when it?s crumbling down around you and you're just eight. Again, Rinnosuke put his hand at her head and this time he gently tousled her blond hair and told simply that he'd see to open his own shop, in a place befitting his name, and that she should be a good and strong girl, and persevere.

(Years later, Marisa would lose her sleep some nights, covering herself in her sheets out of shame of the stuff she blurted to Rinnosuke that day. Time and stress made her records of those sad days kind of hazy, but she was pretty sure the phrases "don't you want to take me?!" and "let me be with you forever!" were uttered. "Geez... I was such a stupid useless brat..." older Marisa would think, and blush).

To Marisa's credit, she persevered almost one month before leaving home herself. Being there alone with a father that didn't accept her ended being too much. On the day she finally left, she confronted Heruman, forced him to look at her and said that she'd rather to really have Rinnosuke as a father. She was fully expecting to receive a punch as Rinnosuke got, but Heruman, after a moment where his expression turned to one of pure rage, turned his back to her and said: "You're not my daughter. Leave." She obliged.

Funny thing is, Marisa?s plans right then were to somehow arrive on the Hakurei shrine without being eaten in the way and live with the shrine maiden there. She figured that if one human girl could live there safely, two also could. While marching down the path to the shrine, trying to decide on the better introduction (was "Hi, I'm Marisa! We met just a month ago, at my mom's funeral." too sappy? was "Hi, I'm Marisa, let's be friends and go on adventures!" too terse?) when Mima got her.

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5. Going places with Mima

The evil spirit had been tipped by Rinnosuke and if Marisa hadn't left the house by herself, Mima?s plans were to break in and steal the girl, anyway. Mima was, for the lack of a better term, a criminal in Gensokyo's strange status quo. Forever on the run from the shinigamis that would take her to gods know what punishment at the Enma's court, nobody (herself included) could remember for sure when exactly Mima had been alive. She was a ghost, or an "evil spirit" as she proudly proclaimed, for as long as she cared to remember. For the last centuries, she had taken part, as a goon, partner or a mastermind, in most of Gensokyo's "incidents". The bad blood between her and the Hakurei shrine maiden was legendary, with Mima having personally offed at least a couple of maidens before. Surely, she had been "exorcised" for more times she cared to admit, but she had this knack of keep coming back for more. That could as well be her main power: Mima would be destroyed, imploding in hellish smoke and cackling laughter and then the lands would be safe again... for a time.

Mima had also taken part in Jan van der Zon's Solar Temple plot because that was just the kind of insane villainesque stuff she loved. Rinnosuke, who by then was called Suisei and was just a brat Jan had found, named and adopted as his valet, was likewise into that mess too. From Jan, Mima sucked the knowledge of western magic as a sponge. She took grimoires written in Latin, half a world away, had her evil cackling way with them, and what emerged was Mima's Most Excellent Magic System, which consisted in: Blowing things away with magic, really hard.

So, when Jan's plot was overcome by the then current Shrine Maiden, Mima was exorcised, van der Zon became Kirisame and Suisei became Rinnosuke. Since then, whenever Mima got herself back together, the first thing she did was stop by her old fellow to find out which year it was and how things were going. To Rinnosuke, who had sworn off crime after that single fateful occasion, this was usually a bother which resulted in Mima dragging him to one of the less reputable watering holes in the realm to get both hammered, and other than the very onis, Mima was probably Gensokyo's heaviest drinker.

This time, however, when Mima appeared in a swirl of evil smoke near Rinnosuke and slapped him on his back, he had a favor to ask: One of Jan's descendants was in a rather bleak place, and needed help. And oh, she had about the same magic talent than than old man, Rinnosuke had been sure to check.

Mima was ectasic. Maybe the centuries of being Evil had turned her evilness into, well, something else, but while somebody of a more traditional mindsetin her circumstances would think "hey, that?s a chance to help back the family of a man who helped me a lot, nice!", what she thought was: "hey, that?s a chance to mess with Gensokyo by giving forbidden magic back to the fool who teached me in first place, nice!" and the end results were one and the same.

Mima took Marisa screaming to Gensokyo's skies in a tight hug, laughing all the time. The youkai who were waiting to get the drop on the girl, a bit ahead at the trail, looked to the ridiculous display of magic, shrugged, and went to look for dinner elsewhere.

Now, it would be unfair to say that Mima brainwashed Marisa. She, however, pretty much overwhelmed the girl. She was loud, talked and looked dirty, congregated with the worst kind of scum in Gensokyo and had no working notions of personal space. She shoved magic at Marisa's face, watched in delight as the girl naturally picked up the spells and started plotting. Soon, she said, her arm wrapped around Marisa's neck, Gensokyo shall tremble!

Marisa still felt some shame from the stupid things she did under Mima's literal wing. A Tengu-taken photo hidden in her deepest drawer didn't let her forget the brief months when she was almost 10, and decided that cutting her hair short and dying it bright red would be more appropriate for a follower of Evil. When she respectfully asked Mima if she could do it, the answer was: "Sure thing! how about you getting a tattoo, too?"

She declined the tattoo.

Oh, and Marisa met Reimu Hakurei, soon enough. Meeting Reimu from the hurting end of her gohei was more than enough to make a would-be villain to repent. Not Mima, of course. For the course of about six years, Mima made good of her promise and took Gensokyo for a wild, nasty ride. While much property was destroyed, the Tengu made a killing business selling newspapers and at the end of it, Marisa went from being a tearful little girl to a fully grown, hardened tough case, at the ripe old age of 14.

Or so she thought. One day, Mima approached Marisa and Reimu (by some wacky turn of events everybody was in rather friendly terms whenever Mima wasn't actively trying to do Evil) and said: "Girls, Mima-neechan has urgent business to attend elsewhere, so you two be sure to keep this ball rolling without me. Don't forget to drink lots of sake, and to take it easy!"

And then she seemingly exorcised herself, and was nowhere to be seen.

Marisa blinked, sniffled, and turned to Reimu, tearfully: "Reimu... What are we gonna do now~~"

Reimu passed the sake to her friend, who for all her brightness was severely lacking in faith sometimes: "Relax, Marisa. You heard the evil spirit: Take it easy."

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Criticism is much appreciated. I'm not a native speaker, I never wrote long fics in English (and the ones I wrote in native portuguese were badly written in my teen years about 20 years ago).

This fic is the result of me thinking too hard about shooting games about girls in silly hats. I believe ZUN has created a great series that inspired a lot of people to create something even greater. With each new fan work that's made and enjoyed, Gensokyo becomes richer. This story is my attempt to join this party.

[CrowCakes]

What I can say is that all 5 stories have lots of potential to improve. I'm going to stop here, because I can't think straight right now. I like the conversation between Yukari and Yuyuko, though.

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What I can say is that all 5 stories have lots of potential to improve.

Which is a gentle way of saying "it's currently lots of bad". Could you (and/or other of the readers) please provide more specific criticism?

I'm going to stop here, because I can't think straight right now. I like the conversation between Yukari and Yuyuko, though.

The first part of what you said can mean: "Your writing is so bad that kind of broke my brain, brb." I hope it's not that

As for Yukari and Yuyuko, thanks for liking it

[CrowCakes]

I'm supposed to be sleeping right now. :V

When I said lots of potential, I meant that the structure of your writing makes it easy for you to add more sentences, or paragraphs, even. There's so much room for more description everywhere, I'm beginning to feel like Parsee. (horrible joke, I know)

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Chapter 6. A special ability to end all special abilities

So, Reimu Hakurei, the revered but destitute Hakurei Shrine Maiden had for best friend the rogue magician, poster child for harsher punishments to arcanists, Marisa Kirisame. For all the stupid things they had already done together, by the time their 14th birthdays were coming you'd think they'd be talking about retirement already, but that was not the case. A few miles outside their country, girls their age would be in the mid year of junior high, making plans for the incoming summer vacation, and would busy themselves chatting and playing games at their cell phones and talking about boys.

Reimu and Marisa had never attended one single day of school and had an experience with boys that consisted in talking naughty things about Rinnosuke during one of the many sleepovers at Hakurei Shrine (Mima's idea of dragging the duo to a "reputed male brothel" a year ago had had consequences that would be hilarious if not so painful for the other patrons and staff). The girls played their games too, of course: The shogi board and the hanafuda deck never had a chance to collect dust since they were both restless, but their favorite game happened to be the "training to stay alive" game, where both girls would fly dangerously fast and close to the ground, throwing high speed projectiles at each other, full contact style.

Marisa's "magic missiles" and Reimu's empowered ofudas had about the same properties, hurt-wise, which were terrible. You got hit by one of them and flesh would tear and bones could break. Reimu's harmlessly named "fantasy seal" (aka: high speed homing burning lights) and Marisa's not so harmlessly named "Master Spark" (aka: huge freaking laser out of nowhere, that she and Mima stole from a monster they met at the dream realms once) were the kind of stuff that could take down a jet fighter. Militaries from the outside would go crazy and kill to wield that kind of power in the form of quickly muttered prayers or magic sigils. Of course, outside they had "guns" and ?missiles? being produced in industrial quantities, so the great barrier existed to protect Gensokyo from the outside world, and not the inverse.

The writer digress. Reimu had risen to the top of Gensokyo's food chain via a combination of intimidation, dodging skills and relentless violence, and was growing worried about it. One day, when Marisa arrived to play, Reimu was sitting by the porch, without a cup of tea or sake in hand, her brow furrowed. So, something bad was already happening, thought Marisa.

On the subject of digressions, let's stop for a whole while now and say that the two girls where pretty much distinct: Reimu was tall for her age, not freakish so, but she was as tall as a regular japanese girl from the outside, who had grown in a full protein diet, while the regular Gensokyo humans were still in the rice/herbs/fish shavings food economy. Maybe the youkai who secretly guarded her had put something in her milk. Maybe it was simply genetics. She was tall, this got noticed and commented ("that Reimu is surely tall for her age. Maybe she's not fully human, you know..."). Not until years later, when Sanae arrived and was even taller than Reimu, that the talk changed, to: "shrine maidens are surely tall, you know..."

Somewhat off-puttingly for someone with Reimu's frame, she had the sweetest, highest voice, that she wielded almost as lethally as she did with her Yin-Yang orbs. She could be nice, or sing, and people's humor soared, or she could be sarcastic or just plain angry and humans and youkai would be sent reeling, looking for shelter.

Marisa, for starters, didn't look japanese at all. Her forefather's absurd, probably magic, genes ensured that successive breedings with normal Japanese humans produced more and more European looking, fair haired, light eyed humans. In Marisa's case, she didn't even look fully human, with those yellow eyes. Fox eyes, as they said on Gensokyo, eyes as Rinnosuke's, eyes strange enough to ruin her father's mind and make him suspect the half-youkai who wished nothing else but to serve his late mentor?s family.

So, you have this misplaced Caucasian-looking girl, ?gifted? with a short, wiry frame. Marisa's growth spurt was still to happen, or so she fervently hoped, because Reimu was a full head taller than her. Marisa hadn't much of a figure, either, something she was expertly hiding now by dressing in the blackest, widest dresses she could gather. Her short stature was further disguised topping her messy blonde head with a huge black and white witch hat that Rinnosuke made for her years ago. These days it was actually a lot of hats and hat parts, all huge and black, that Marisa mixed and matched until she was satisfied with her look for the day.

Marisa had a low voice, more suited to a boy than to a girl. Reimu found it cute, Marisa blushed if you happened to take notice, because as far as the witch was concerned, she was the girlishest of the girls. She liked frills in her clothes, bows in her hats and always weared a cute braid in her hair. Of course, she did all that with the grace of a hyperactive monkey. Likewise she had a rather coarse way of speech, more suitable for a gangster than to a girl, something that she first caught from Rinnosuke, and that was further refined (the inverse of refined, in fact) with Mima, but she would always use the feminine way to say ?I? and then be offended if someone commented on it.

Back to the shrine porch: Reimu waited until Marisa was close and looking expectantly to her to stand up and proclaim: "Marisa, I had one of those special dreams last night and learned a new technique..."

Marisa giggled nervously: "Eh... Why don't you show it to me now, then? Good thing I didn't even dismount..."

Reimu nodded, took her gohei and walked to the empty yard before the shrine. Marisa willed power to her broom and flew in a slow, wide ascending circle, looking at Reimu the whole time. While the girls weren't callous enough to straight up sneak attack murder each other, the "train to stay alive" game was exactly that. Reimu was about to try to kill Marisa with holy magic, and Marisa was expected to escape that.

Reimu put some power into flying and effortlessly took over. "Look at her..." though Marisa, a mix of admiration and jealousy: "a few months ago she still need old Genji to fly... Now you'd think she's from a bird family."

Reimu concentrated, which made her eyes become empty as she focused inwards. She was chanting something very quickly in her beautiful voice. "I should nail her with a magic missile just to teach her a lesson..." thought Marisa "...leaving herself open like that." and she even gathered the deadly piercing energy in her hand for just that when Reimu finished her incantation:

?Fantasy Heaven!? she said, and then she went away.

That shouldn?t happen, thought Marisa, who was in the uncanny situation of seeing Reimu disappear as if being taken directly away from her, even as if she was circling around the shrine maiden during the disappearance act. ?W-wait, Reimu?!? Marisa called, suddenly alone at the yard. She was still looking nervously all around, up and down, thinking that "geometry doesn't work like that!" when the attack came.

Out of nowhere, dozens of empowered ofudas were materializing in thick lines and starting to move towards Marisa, gaining speed in the process.

?Oh... it?s one of those, uh?? thought the witch, relieved because now she was seeing the attack. The witch made herself a smaller target by hugging her broom and put more speed into her flight. Reimu had several of those homing attacks, that once you knew what was happening were actually easy to avoid: a last instant move to the sides and you?d be safe, as the projectiles weren't smart to do a full turn. If you couldn?t move away with enough speed, however, which was about all the time if you couldn?t fly, then you?d be in for a world of hurt and some months bed-ridden, if you were lucky.

Marisa dodged the first waves, power gathering in her right hand for a counter attack. There was a vague Reimu-like emanation floating not far from where the miko had disappeared, so Marisa sent some of her high speed bullets straight at it. Her attacks passed through the phantom, harmlessly. "Tsk, it's a decoy..." thought the witch, and turned to look for the real shrine maiden.

The real Reimu was nowhere to be seen or felt. More and more waves formed, and Marisa quickly noticed that their density was increasing, fast. Seconds of tense dodge passed, feeling like hours.

?R-reimu! Stop, I want out!? cried Marisa, now in near panic, as dozens upon dozens of homing amulets darted by. Her black dress was being ripped, her hat was long gone and she was covered in cold sweat. Way to bring memories of Reimu's worst, with an attack like that. At the last moment, when Marisa was sure Reimu did indeed plan for the longest time to elaborately murder her, she felt the deadly divine energies everywhere around her collapse and wink out of existence. Into existence popped Reimu, by reversing that strange way of disappearing she had used. Marisa straight crash-landed, just slow enough to not break her legs, for once very happy to feel the solid, non lethal earth again. Reimu landed softly, and opened her eyes.

Marisa ran to her. While the witch?s first idea was to punch Reimu in the mouth, training to face real danger was the whole point of their little game, so she compromissed by angrily prodding the taller maiden in the chest with her still shaking index finger: ?Hey! Hey you jerk! You almost killed me there!?

?I almost did, didn?t I?? muttered the maiden, her eyes returning to focus. She then noticed Marisa?s insistent prods and grabbed her friend?s hand. ?What did you think about that technique??

Marisa blinked: ?I what?! It was... well, it was amazing! I couldn?t find you at all, so I couldn?t counter-attack and disrupt your shooting. I thought I was gonna die! Did you end it because you spent all your magic??

?No, I cancelled it because I figured that by that point you?d be in serious risk.? answered Reimu. "I didn?t spend my power at all, see?? she said, leaving the ground and calling the Yin Yang orbs back to her side. The ever changing spheres hummed, brimming with divine power.

?Whoa, whoa, alright... Amazing...? Marisa muttered, trying to process what she was seeing. ?If you still have power, we can try this again after my heart stop pounding so hard. Just give me a hint of how to spot the real you... Then I?ll surely give you a proper fight and you will learn to dodge while doing your new attack.?

?I don't need to dodge in Fantasy Heaven, Marisa.? Reimu said again. ?I wasn?t hidden, I wasn?t even here, at all.?

?You the what?!? Marisa cried. By then, the witch was tearing up.

A few minutes later, the two girls sat by the porch, now properly equiped with their teacups. Reimu brought sweets too, but Marisa didn?t touch them and could only stare into the distance as Reimu explained how Fantasy Heaven worked:

?...and then I wait in a safe place I create and work on sending more and more homing amulets back into reality against whoever was standing against me. My power is continuously renewed at the safe place, so I can, in theory, remain there forever, shooting away. In practice, I did it for two hours when I woke up, earlier today.?

Marisa took long enough to answer, while Reimu watched and waited for what her friend had to say. When the witch did finnaly answer, Reimu felt her fears being confirmed. Marisa didn?t sound like the ever confident Marisa, at all:

?I ? I mean, this Fantasy Heaven, it?s the real deal, right? A real ultimate technique... I don?t think you need me around anymore, Reimu, helping you with this incidents business... For now on, you just win on default.?

?No? said Reimu, with enough sadness in her pretty voice to snap Marisa out of her gloomy spell and make her turn to stare at the miko: ?For now on, youkai will kill me while I sleep.?

It took Marisa a while to understand, but Reimu had collected evidence. Kind of, anyway. The Hakurei Shrine Maiden had flied to the Youkai Mountain, into Tengu town and went to their library. She was there for old newspapers and she had a rather long and sick list to show, one of names and dates.

?Eh, so Hakurei Shrine Maidens surely die a lot...? said Marisa, for lack of something more insightful to say. Reimu had done some math and was explaining her grim conclusions:

?As I already told you, a Hakurei Shrine Maiden is a post. My powers come from being the shrine maiden, and are the same for all shrine maidens. The maiden before me wielded the Yin Yang orbs, could summon the Fantasy Seal, and so on. After I?m dead, the next girl in line will likewise gain the same powers, once properly sat at the shrine and accepted into the post...?

?And, as the newspapers showed, there are no records of Shrine Maidens winning fights with Fantasy Heaven, right?? asked Marisa, that by now was infected by her friend?s own gloom.

?That?s right. If we hakurei shrine maidens learn our techniques at the same order, and the newspapers show that it's so, many former maidens went right until right before Fantasy Heaven and then died.?
?Right before... would that be... the Duplex Barrier?? asked Marisa, fearfully. She knew all Reimu?s techniques, but somehow, later techniques weren't all that more fearsome. Fantasy Seal was Reimu?s very first technique, and it was usually all she needed to finish work and call it a day.

?No, that would be the Hakurei Bounded Field.? answered Reimu, gazing at the sunset. When Marisa didn?t reply, the miko looked back to her friend to find Marisa staring at her.

?What, I can?t be bothered to show you all my attacks, right?? said Reimu, defensively.

The girls? talk went into the night, and didn?t get any more optimistic than that. Out of fear that there was some mysterious youkai murder spell and/or plot already at work, Marisa stayed for the night, to guard her friend. Reimu was feeling particularly alone and vulnerable, in a philosophical sense, so it did help that her last sight that night was Marisa, in a borrowed nightgown, sitting cross-legged besides her.

Marisa was watching her friend with a lot of mixed feelings. From their first meeting in a battle years ago, their relationship had always been "rocky", by a conservative analysis. They fought for real a lot of times after that first fateful day, but while Mima was around taking things seriously was rather difficult, so the girls didn't grow to hold a grudge, but instead bonded. Mima teased Marisa about this a lot, but when even the evil spirit took each girl under each arm and went to party, being friends with Reimu seemed like the right thing to do.

It was easy to forget that the Hakurei Shrine Maiden was a human, sometimes, thought Marisa. Reimu's biting personality didn't help to dismiss the uncanny feeling. Being the shrine maiden had always looked like all kinds of awesome to Marisa, but seeing Reimu depressed like that made the witch finally think about how heavy all those responsibilities should feel on her friend's shoulders. She suddenly wanted to do everything she could to lift Reimu's mood, so she extended her open hand to the about-to-close-her-eyes-to-sleep Reimu. The hand stopped inches away from Reimu?s face.

The miko watched as if Marisa was about to sucker-punch her, which wouldn't be un-Marisa-like at all.

?What?? the maiden finally asked, after a few awkward seconds.

?My hand, you can hold it.? Marisa answered earnestly. The situation was about to become awkward all the way into the awkward valley.

?For??

?Uh, you feel better. I used to hold Kourin?s hand to sleep, some nights, when I was sad.?

Marisa looked away, blushing. Reimu blushed too, but she took the witch?s hand anyway and held it against her chest with her two hands. No girl dared to look at each other.

?Feeling better yet?? asked Marisa, tentatively, after what seemed an eternity of feeling Reimu's heartbeats through warm miko's skin.

?Thank you, Marisa.? said Reimu. ?I feel safer, already.? which was supposed to be sarcastic, but ended sounding truer than the miko had intended.

Marisa turned to her friend baring a toothy, winning grin: ?See? Nobody will kill you in your sleep. I can protect you like this forever!?

Reimu?s blush doubled in intensity as she turned to the side, still clutching Marisa?s hand and closed her eyes, hard. Soon she was asleep, dreaming. Soon Marisa would be asleep too, awkwardly doubled over her friend, not dreaming at all.

Nobody came to kill Reimu that night, and by the morning, Reimu had a working solution for her dilemma. Marisa, otherwise, had a killer back-ache.


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comments outside the story:

1) I'm not a "shipper", but girls their age should like to stick together. My idea about Marisa "stealing precious things" is the witch has a knack to clumsly stumble into other people's hearts, like she did with Reimu here. (at least that was my idea)

2) How Reimu and Marisa sound in my head are forever tainted by Iosys. Damn you, Iosys. Marisa's deep voice in particular is perfect for her. Reimu's voice, eh, not much, but you grow used to it.

3) What's up with that Mima and her evil ways? I think I made up a character there.