#1:
>>123033 3.5E magic versus touhous. Which is more broken? TUNE IN AS WE FIND OUT!
[X] A variety of awesome write-ins.
“Well...” you pause, suddenly at a loss. You rarely have time to “do anything,” and when you do, it’s stuff like casting magic mouth on baubles in shops so they scream “PICK MEEEE” when somebody picks them up. “I don’t know. What do people do for fu... uh. Wait.
Wait,” you say, your dialog breaking down as something Keine said earlier registers. “Did you say
stop time?”
“Sakuya? Yes.”
The throbbing drumbeat of your pulse is suddenly audible in your ears. “Really.”
“Yes.”
“How many times a day?”
“What do you mean?” Keine looks puzzled.
“I mean,” you say, your voice taught and steady, “how often can she use this ability?”
“Whenever she wants, apparently.”
The edges of your vision start to blur slightly. “And how long does it last?”
“Well nobody can
time it- I trust the reason is self-evident- but long enough, I guess. She stops time to get her housework done faster.”
Housework. The word booms and echoes through the chambers of your mind.
Housework. After all the sacrifices you’ve made to harness arcane powers beyond the ken of most mortals, and this maid can
stop time indefinitely to do.... housework.
You feel it coming, the oncoming pressure wave as the F-bomb blossoms into its full fury.
“FUCK! Does
everyone in this lunatic abortion of a demiplane have some ludicrous bullshit power or something? YOU!” you shout, rounding on a surprised Cirno and thrusting an accusing digit. “What the hell do
you do, breathe fireballs made out of unicorn giggles?”
You hear a dull
thud vibrate through your skull, and find yourself looking up at Keine from the floor. Her mouth is moving, but the words are distant. The thought that she just headbutted you swims vaguely to the surface.
“Thank you,” you say dully, “but I think it’s just temporary.”
Keine sighs and kneels by you, placing a hand on your shoulder. “You must be having a hell of a time with this world,” she says gently.
You sigh, and slowly struggle to your feet. “I’m lucky Cirno led me to you,” you tell Keine. “Without you to explain things, I’d probably be slaying hats on sight by now.”
“Well I couldn’t just
leave you,” Keine says, shrugging. “It’s not right, how half these women treat every newcomer that stumbles in as a plaything...”
“Still,” you insist, “I’ve been a little more trouble then most.”
Understatement of the year, you add silently. “Until we go for my spellbooks... is there anything I can do for you?”
“Do for me?” She looks puzzled.
“Yeah,” you say. “There’s got to be
something. I mean, I speak so many languages I’ve almost lost count, I’m not bad with calligraphy, and you’re a historian, right? “Well...” she says thoughtfully, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “I
have been working on this project... I’m trying to put together a condensed history of Gensokyo, written in the common tongue. For the school.”
“A textbook?”
“Yes. All the full records are written in Draconic. Somebody who could read that....”
***
After a good hour of transcribing Draconic texts into ‘Japanese,’ you feel much more relaxed. The familiar scent of paper and ink, the familiar tasks of sharpening pens and putting down orderly lines of script are the first vaguely familiar thing you’ve done since getting here. Keine’s enchanted hat can supply the plain language for the textbook easily, but your own comprehensive knowledge of Draconic is needed to make sense of the complex passages in the old histories.
“How’s it coming?” Keine asks.
“Great,” you say. “It’s nice to have an uneventful hour.”
You both tense, glancing at the door, but nothing happens.
“I don’t mind the commotion so much,” Keine says. “Most youkai or humans of note get into all sorts of crazy escapades on a regular basis, but I don’t get drawn into them as ofte-”
“HEEY!” bellows Cirno as she bowls into the room, gripping her hair in frustration. “I’m booored~” she drones in dour tones. “Can’t I help you sharpen pens or something?”
You eye the girl with newfound respect as your heart returns to something like a normal rhythm. There’s no way it’s coincidence- she’s got a natural talent.
“I guess we could take a break,” Keine says hastily, popping the corks into the inkwells.
“A perfect time for you to explain that faith thing,” you remind Keine. “Reading all these histories got me kind of curious; I saw it mentioned a few times.”
Keine sketches out the basics of the faith power principle, recruiting Cirno to help her move stacks of already-referenced texts to the back of the study as she does so.
“So how does this tie into your histories?” you ask.
“Well, like you said earlier, things are remembered one way or another in posterity based on variations in subjective recordings of actual history.”
“.... oh,” you say softly, realizing. “So by tweaking that account, you can alter what people believe, and...”
“Precisely,” Keine says, staggering a little as she takes a of books from Cirno. The little fairy is stronger then she looks. “It’s especially notable because the humans in the village here have little faith in Gods anymore, even though they live amidst the supernatural- which is why our resident demigods have turned to youkai- but they
do have faith in science, technology, and hard facts.”
”Which just happens to include your histories,” you finish.
“Yes. Even though almost no townsperson
can read them, and fewer still
want to, they don’t doubt their accuracy. These histories have been kept faithfully by many factotums before me.”
“So what was all that about ‘creating’ history in your other form?”
“When I’m in the hakutaku form,” she answers, stowing another pile of books, “I have access to all information in Gensokyo.”
You blink. “What.”
“
All information,” she confirms. “For one night only, but during that time, all secrets are mine. It’s the main reason nobody doubts these histories; all my predecessors had this power as well. And in that form- and as the shift draws closer- I can affect history more directly, like that trick I pulled with your injur- ah, dammit.” The pen tucked behind Keine’s ear just emancipated itself, rolling behind a storage chest.
As she leans over the chest to retrieve it, holding her hat on with one hand, her rear is nicely outlined through her dress, and you can’t help but take a good look. And another. Her attire isn’t saucy in the least, but it’s still clear that Keine has a lovely figure.
Some instinct makes you glance to the side, where you see Cirno smirking at you gleefully.
She knows. She saw it- the lustful glance, the way your eyes followed the lines of Keine’s figure, all of it, and now she’ll make you pay for the threats, the bad scare, and most grievously of all, leaving her out of every conversation. Her mouth opens to deliver the fatal words-
-and a flying book smacks into her with the full force of your magically-augmented strength. The hefty tome sends her sprawling.
“What?” Keine queries, looking up from her search at the noise.
“What?” you ask innocently.
From the corner Cirno sits up and draws in breath for a booming denunciation.
“Ohdearjustlookatthetime,” you say swiftly, springing to your feet. “We’d better check on my chest, it might be here by now.”
“Uh, okay,” Keine says, a bit surprised by your change of front.
***
Retrieving a heavy wooden chest with complete stealth will be impossible, so you decide to go in force with your two companions. The flight is short, with Keine leading the way since the landscape looks rather different from the air. Cirno flies behind you, and you can feel her glare on your back the whole way. It makes you a little nervous.
You land near the clocktower. Keine is already on the ground, staring at the wreck of the airship and the dragon corpse beneath it. She’d already seen Aya’s picture, but you suppose it looks bigger in real life.
“Keine? The chest is in here,” you say, gesturing at the tower.
She slowly tears her eyes from the giant corpse and turns to face you. For a split second, you think you see fear in her eyes.
Which is weird, you think, since she’s been consistently underestimating your capabilities since you got here.
“FOUND IT!” Cirno bellows from inside the tower.
“DON’T TOUCH IT!” you holler. You didn’t ward the thing (why bother, when it’s stored on the Negative Energy Plane?) but you don’t need her sampling any potions of haste. You find Cirno arms-deep in the chest, as you suspected.
“Geddout,” you instruct, catching her by her collar and pulling her away. “Don’t want you melting your face off.” She sticks her tongue out at you and pouts. Kneeling by your chest, you quickly look for your precious grimoires.
“... some of my spellbooks are missing,” you say softly.
“What?” Keine asks.
“Two of them,” you say, inventorying the chest. “Not here. The chest isn’t damaged, the spell worked perfectly. Somebody took them.”
“I think I know who,” Keine says with the dour tones of the long-suffering.
Somebody has taken your spellbooks.
How does this make you feel?
[ ] Amused (who’s gonna be able to read them?)
[ ] Irritated.
[ ] BLOOD AND THUNDER
