Eirin hands you a cup of tea, and gestures for you to sit down, across the small table from her. “Thank you for your time, Meiling.”

You shake your head. “It's no problem, really. Glad to help.”

Eirin sighs. “She won't even come out of her room anymore since she got that game. Even Mokou's started to miss her.”

You sip your tea. A nice, simple green tea. “What game?”

Eirin shrugs. “I don't know. I've never bothered to learn the names or the titles.”

Maybe she'd be more willing to come out of her room if more people shared her hobbies. But you leave that thought unsaid, as that would be rude and uncalled for. “You know she won't go easy.”

Eirin shrugs. “Whatever. She's immortal. Punch her through the wall if you have to.” She pauses. “Please don't punch her through the wall. I have to replace those.”

You take another drink of her tea, and savor the warmth. I've been around for thousands of years, and still the tea soothes and calms. “Alright,” you say, draining the last of the tea. “No time like the present to get started.”

“She's just upstairs,” Eirin says. “Follow the noise, I guess.”

–

You pad lightly up the stairs, following the sounds of battle and violence, occasionally interspersed with catchphrases you can't quite make out.

Finally, you reach the room all the noise is coming from, and you slide the door open, to see Kaguya mashing buttons on her controller, eyes glued to her massive television.

“Hey Kaguya, what's up?” you say.

“'Sup,” she grumbles.

“What are you doing?”

She groans. “What does it look like?”

Small talk isn't really getting you anywhere, is it? “Looks like you're spending time in your room, alone, playing video games again.”

She pauses the game, turns to me, rolls her eyes, and lets out a dramatic, long-suffering sigh. “Eirin sent you up here to get me out of the house, didn't she?”

No point denying it. “Yup.”

“Not leaving. So go away, unless you're going to punch me through a wall to get me outside. Just do me a favor and punch me through the wall that doesn't have my TV or games, would you?”

“Eirin did say that was an option, yes.”

Once again, Kaguya rolls her eyes dramatically, and turns back to the game, where she unpauses it and goes back to playing. She's playing an absurdly fat man who's chucking bombs into large groups of people and laughing evilly.

Maybe you should take a different tack to get her out of her room, so you sit and observe the game for a bit.

And then your eyes wander to the lower-left corner of the screen, where the name of her character is displayed: Dong Zhuo.

“Oh, man, that takes me back.”

“What does?” She doesn't bother to pause for conversation's sake this time.

“Dong Zhuo. I knew the guy. He was a colossal dick.”

Kaguya smirks. “Yeah,” she says, “and I'm best bros with Amaterasu.”

“You are? Awesome! You should introduce me some day.”

Kaguya rolls her eyes and huffs. “I was being sarcastic, nimrod.”

“Oh.” Which is a damn shame. You'd really love to fight Amaterasu. How many times does one get to fight gods? Okay, sure, there was that one time you fought the 'God of War', but in the end he was just a regular dude too. Bitchin' beard though.

You think for a moment. “Hey, you want to meet Dong Zhuo?”

She pauses her game, and sets the controller down very slowly. “What.” Just a flat what.

You shrug. “I got contacts, man. Dong Zhuo and I go way back, but again, he's kind of a dick. Maybe I should introduce you to someone cooler, like, say, Sun Jian? Really a damn shame how he caught an arrow so early. Wish I'd been there to stop that.”

“You were there??”

You shrug your shoulders. “You didn't know that? I mean, I know you're old and all, from like the tenth century or some shit, but this was even older.”

She turns to you. “So what you're telling me, is that you can go back in time, and introduce me to these people?”

“And then we can fight them! It'll be awesome!” You stop for a second. “It's not really back in time, though, I think. I'm not real sure on the particulars on how this works. I had Yukari explain it to me once, blah blah blah, borders, self-contained universe because popularity blah blah blah. Apparently there's self-contained universes for any popular-enough semi-historical event or series of events.”

“So I could go kill Hitler if I wanted to?”

Kaguya's thinking about this way too hard. You scratch your head. “I... guess? Maybe? Look, I don't know how to go about finding Hitler or whatnot. I just sat out that whole sordid affair. Western wars never really had that... you know, gravitas to their heroes?”

Kaguya shakes her head. “So, what, we go to ancient China and beat up some dudes?”

You point to her screen. “You were just doing it there. What's so odd about doing that? This is like that, just better.”

Kaguya dutifully picks up her controller, saves her game, and puts it back next to the game machine thing, and turns off the TV. “We're going.”

A feeling of glee washes over you. This was easy! You're sure Eirin will be thrilled. “Awesome! Pack your stuff, and we'll go!”

“Stuff?”

Meiling shrugs. “We'll be there for a couple of weeks at least. So, you know, get yourself a weapon. The essentials. I'm sure I can manage to bum stuff off of people. They'll be thrilled to see me.”

“They? Did they... know you?”

Now it's your turn to roll your eyes. “Well, duh, of course they did! It was a nation at war, and do you know any stronger warriors than me?”

“I... guess not,” she says. “Did they write about you in the Romance?”

This is a bit of a sore spot for you. “Yeah, Luo Guanzhong did. He 'embellished' the narrative more than a bit, and didn't do so particularly favorably to me. We had a rocky relationship, he and I.”

“Relationship? You were a thing?”

You shake your head. “No. And that's probably why he wrote me as such an awful person. Dumb, too. I might not be as smart as Zhuge Liang, but he was just unfair. Anyway. Pack your stuff, and we'll go.”

“What do you think I'll need?”

You shrug. “A weapon, I guess. Everything else is incidental. If you haven't got one, I've got a bunch.”

She looks at you hopefully. “A cool weapon! One that shoots lasers and explodes and I can throw it at people and it'll come back-”

You hold out a hand to stop her. “I think I've got exactly what you need.”

–

“A ball.” She doesn't sound pleased at what you picked out for her.

“An orb!”

“An orb is a ball.”

“An orb is a fancy, magical ball.”

“While you have that big- er, what even is that?” She gestures at your weapon that you've grabbed from your weapon rack, in its place of prominence.

You thump its butt against the wooden floor of your modest home. “A halberd.”

“Great. You've got that and I've got a ball.”

“Orb! Trust me, it'll do everything you asked for!”

She still seems skeptical, but less so. “Fine. If this sucks...”

“If it sucks we can get you something new. Maybe steal the Seven Star Sword.”

“Why can't I have that?”

“Because I don't have it here, duh.”

Kaguya pouts a little more, but the two of you head out to the Hakurei Shrine.

–

“Hey! Reimu!” you shout, at the shrine maiden sweeping the path. She looks up, eyes the weapon you're holding, slung across your shoulder, and tenses slightly.

“Look, Meiling, do we have to do this right now? I'm kind of busy, and my schedule's full.”

“Your schedule's never full, Reimu, I know that.” And then you realize why she tensed up, and you start to laugh, a big belly laugh that makes Kaguya look at you funny from the corners of her eyes. “No, no, you misunderstand, Reimu, this isn't for you. Kaguya and I are going on a trip.”

“What, outside Gensokyo? You know the barrier's up for a reason, right?” She grumbles the next part under her breath. “Never seems to stop people from getting in, though...”

“Yeah, but I'm just going home for a bit. You won't begrudge me that, will you?”

Reimu sighs. “Fine, whatever. Drop me a donation and I'll open a door for you.”

You come up to Reimu and slap her on the back. “You're the best, Reimu. Can I trouble you for a charm to let us back in, too?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” She roots around in her sarashi and pulls one out for you, slightly crumpled and sweaty. You stow it away in your small backpack.

“Thanks, Reimu, you're a doll.”

She grumbles a bit more, and looks meaningfully at the donation box. You drop a few coins in. She picks up her gohei from the shrine behind it, and leads us to a small, sandy clearing behind the shrine. “You know the drill, Meiling. I open the door, you walk through it, it takes you to where you want to go.”

Kaguya finally takes this chance to pipe up. “How does it know where we want to go?”

Reimu looks at her blankly. “Fucked if I know. It's shrine maiden magic. Don't think about it too hard. How are you immortal?”

“Well, I dran-”

“That was a rhetorical question. Don't care.” She waves her gohei half-heartedly in the air at empty space. “Hocus pocus, make these nerds go away-cus.”

You cock an eyebrow at her. “Hocus pocus? That doesn't sound very religious.”

She gestures at the simple wooden sliding door that's appeared before the three of you. “Doesn't matter. It worked. Now go away.”

She wanders off, leaving you and Kaguya alone together, at the threshold of the door through the barrier.

Kaguya looks at you one more time before you open the door. “What name did you call yourself back then?”

You think for a moment. “I've gone by a lot of names over the years. Now, I'm not entirely sure, it's been a while but I think...





“...that they called me Lu Bu.”

SELECT YOUR HISTORICAL PERIOD:

[ ] Early Spring 190, Battle of Hu Lao Gate
[ ] Autumn 194, Assault on Puyang
[ ] Winter 198, Siege of Xiapi
[ ] Other event?