[x] Wait until after the tournament for Ran to be available to help.

I walk over next to Meiling and Cirno, minding my spacing from their blunt weaponry. While a stray swing wouldn’t cause any flesh wound, it’s still idiotic to get hit at all.

“Meiling,” I address the woman a few paces away.

She lifts her wooden sword away from Cirno, the fairy holding her icy facsimile in a high guard. Perhaps Meiling was in the middle of explaining how to block from that angle.

“Tanner, what have you come here for? The exhibitions haven’t ended already, have they?” Meiling asks of me, sword unnaturally held upright. Her eyes drift to my talking partner and greets, “Ah, Kasen, hello. Did you have interest in my training after all?”

Kasen remains quiet as I answer, “We came by to check on how you’re doing training Cirno. It’s a very short amount of time before she needs to be ready. Is training her with a sword advisable?”

“I thought it would be cool!” Cirno gleefully announces, brandishing her weapon above her head.

“She insisted,” Meiling replies, tossing in an amused shake of her head. “I’ve had a long time to learn that Cirno learns only what she wants.”

“I can’t say I envy the task, admittedly,” I concede. Cirno ruts an undictioned complaint my way at that.

“Is that enough to help her fight someone skilled with a sword, though?” Kasen questions, intentionally letting our previous topic go undiscussed.

“Hmm…” Meiling ponders her explanation. “From what I could tell before, Meira is a lot like Youmu. We saw them match speed and strength.”

“Meira was lucky that Youmu didn’t go all out, though. Had she used her more impressive moves we might not be talking about this,” Kasen criticizes. “That doesn’t mean I expect someone that doesn’t know how to use a weapon to defeat her, however.”

“Hang on, you’ve grabbed my attention,” I interject as I hold Cirno’s head an arm’s length away. “If Youmu could do more, how much more are we talking?”

Meiling illustrates for me, “Youmu is fast. Fast enough for a human to not find by eye. Faster than I could possibly halt from passing me. She could put more power to her strikes, but in speed I disagree with Kasen’s thought. Youmu went the speed she meant to. Meira still caught her and stopped the passing movement.”

Kasen appraises, “I can’t argue with your judgment. I’ve not fought the Konpaku girl before, myself. Only witnessed her lose to liquor.”

I dismiss Kasen’s off comment to continue picking Meiling’s brain, “If you mean they’re on equal footing, just how fast would that make them?”

“From what you said earlier, you know about Shameimaru’s speed. Imagine that on the ground. That’s their speeds,” Meiling concludes.

“So are we expecting Cirno’s swordsmanship to counteract that speed in some way?” I drill on the main subject.

“No,” Meiling simply answers. “I expect Cirno to do what she wants.”

I run my fingers over my forehead in thought.

“I believe you’ve lost us,” Kasen notes, deadpanned.

“Ah, well, Meira seems like Youmu,” Meiling defends her position. “If someone fights her that does not have a style or tactic it will throw her off.”

My fingers stop as I focus on Meiling and complete her thought, “Because she’s trained against you so much. She only fights wild Youkai near the village. Normally fighting animals she doesn’t have a real method for fighting people, only countering calculated actions.”

“Uh…” Meiling emptily replies. “I’m not sure I understand you. Something seemed to make sense, so that’s fine…”

“I see you’ve saved me the trouble of finding Meiling as well,” a voice comments next to Kasen. The sharp and cold tone makes it easy enough to guess who it’s from.

I turn around and ask the maid, “Is it really already time?”

“Time?” Izayoi enunciates. “I suppose it is so. How unfortunate that you have not way to accurately tell the time. Oh, no, I forget myself, as you surely have that wrist bound time keeping device. But, then, why are you surprised by the time? Had you not heard the announcement from Milady that the exhibitions were finished and required a fifteen odd lapse before the second primary rounds?” she ends, shying behind her hand in presumption.

“Are you finished?” I show no mirth. “I left the room again, I know, but there’s things happening that I can be there for.”

“Things such as the winner of the exhibition rounds? Whom you now have no idea of their identity? Those such things?” Izayoi retorts, enjoying herself in this vitriol.

“Enough!” I relent. “Let’s head back, then.”

“With the three of you as well,” Izayoi notes, looking between the other women present. Well, other women and Cirno, anyway. “I trust you know the way to return, as there is still more of the ring to repair on my end.”

I grunt in affirmation. The maid pops out of existence from where she was standing. Meiling pats my shoulder as she passes by and states, “She seems to like you.”

Whether she’s being serious or not is beyond me. Does every member of the internal mansion outwardly torment people they are fond of? I guess it’s about the same as a certain someone’s proclivity to rest atop my shoulders when she’s around.

“Cirno, can’t you just fly?” I bicker.

“That’s no fun!” Cirno pouts, holding her crown in place as she bends into view.

Kasen giggles with a knuckle to her mouth at the opening of the gazebo.

“Kasen,” I address.

She checks over her shoulder to make sure Meiling has walked far enough, and turns back to say, “You didn’t need to stay quiet about that idea of yours. Still, you considered my wishes, so, thank you.”

“We’ll get back to it after all this. I’ll have to explain the idea to Ran and brainstorm if it would even work,” I inform the hermit. Cirno shakes around on my shoulders begging to be part of the conversation, to which I grapple her from knocking me over.

We walk back to the waiting room to some mild chit chat about Cirno’s current thoughts for beating Meira. I can’t say I have any real expectations in this scenario, after all I didn’t really think Cirno would make it past the first round in this ruleset, but she’s a bundle of surprises. Her confidence can’t be taken at face value, though, so her bluster only really falls on deaf ears.

The waiting room has been largely emptied out now that the exhibition matches are done. Only the odd Youkai hangs around to keep watching, the rest losing as some point in their independent brackets. Biten still sits close by Meiling, for whatever attachment the Youkai monkey found. Nobody else stands out as the winner from the exhibitions, so they’ve probably left to enjoy the festival themselves while the primaries are happening. The lack of conversation leaves a placid air as the remaining competitors size each other up.

A member is missing from the group, though. I can tell at a glance because her presence was by and large… larger. Hoshiguma isn’t here yet. Everyone else is: Chen, Cirno, Meiling, Jo’on, Kasen, Reisen, even Meira. I’ll have to ask Patchouli what that’s about.

I initially go to where the primary brackets were posted and see they’ve gone missing. I stroll up to Patchouli and find the sheet on top of a pile of books to the witch’s side. Left unguarded save for the attendant keeping watch on all of miss Knowledge’s literature. I thank the demonic redhead to no reply and turn my attention to the group. They’re all anxious in their own ways for things to get started again.

“I’m sure you all remember the order that you’re up next, but I’ll briefly list it off right now,” I start. “Meiling, Jo’on, you’re up first. Soon as Izayoi is here you’re going. I don’t think I have anything I need to warn either of you about, unless there’s any questions.”

I pause to give them a chance for exactly that, but neither vocalizes. Meiling shakes her head confidently, Jo’on… looks like she wants to say something on her mind, as is often the case, but recognizes now isn’t the time for that.

“Alright, moving on,” I proceed with the spiel. “Kasen, Reisen, you’re after them. Then we go Hoshiguma and Chen… oh boy, alright…”

“And what do you mean by that?” Chen perks up in contest.

“Nothing!” I insist. “But, where is Hoshiguma? If Izayoi found everyone she should be here too.”

“Shelve the thought for a moment,” Patchouli advises. I glance beside me to see if she’s properly joining the conversation or merely chiming in. Hopefully she means to talk about it after I’m done.

“Fine…” I stuff the topic and look back over to Chen. A passing thought escapes my lips, “Wait, I just realized, didn’t you also sign up for the exhibition matches, Chen?”

“Uh,” Chen intelligently mutters, looking away while playing with her fingers.

“There… was no rule against the idea,” Kasen ponders. “I wonder if those knocked out from the first round thought the same.”

“Never mind, it doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things,” I deflect the discussion. No reason to clue everyone in that I don’t know the victor. “Anyway, Cirno and Meira you’re up last. I’ll talk to you all briefly before you go. Other than that, I’m right here for the time being. Dismissed.”

I added in a little habitual piece in the end, but nobody noticed the oddity, so I let it pass. Meiling and Jo’on approach, still waiting for Izayoi to come grab them.

“Like I said, you both heard the rules last round, and I don’t think you two are in danger of killing one another by accident,” I brief. It may have come off as dismissive, but I’ll live with it.

“I know,” Meiling agreeably states, “I thought Sakuya would know to look here first.”

“Ugh,” Jo’on gags. “I didn’t realize how bad she would be. The voice alone is grating like the grasshead’s sunny airheadedness.”

“What?” Meiling recoils in shock. She stares aghast at Jo’on for some semblance of a reason that the goddess is so volatile. She’s leans forward and cautions, “Have we met before?”

“No, but I’ve heard a thing or two about you. I can’t believe that a Youkai like you even exists,” Jo’on accuses.

“Ha?!” Meiling squeals. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, and that’s kind of the problem,” Jo’on persists.

I get my arms between them and shove the two apart. A moment longer and they would have actually been in each other’s faces. “How many times do I have to say it. Save it for the ring if you want to pull smack talk or whatever this shit is,” I command to Jo’on specifically. She clicks her tongue at me, but that’s about it.

In the next moment the doors fly open as Izayoi struts in to quickly collect the competitors. Without a word or a moment to question she drags the two off for the first round.

“Damnit, she probably knows where Hoshiguma is,” I gripe.

“The large oni left earlier,” Patchouli speaks up without glancing from her book. “She made mention to me that she was going out to find Ibuki. As you were not here at the time, she felt the need to report such to me. Thank me for doing your menial work.”

I heave a disgruntled tone from the back of my throat, cross my arms, and say, “Thanks and screw off.”

Hoshiguma left? How would she even find Ibuki? Damnit, I guess I really did miss something important. I didn’t think I would be jumping the gun so dramatically, though.

One problem at a time, Tanner. I’m coordinating the rounds and a contender left, forfeiting her place in the bracket. Chen’s not going to be mashed into roadkill, so that’s good.

… Gotta make sure that thought never slips out.

Now how to approach this upset in the bracket… I take a glance at the roster in my hand, inspecting the names as if they would have some sort of answer lying within. Overall it’s gotten to be one hell of an eclectic group, that’s for sure. If it’s already this strange, then…

“Hey, Patchouli,” I address the witch. She doesn’t vocalize a response, but circles her hand for me to continue. “Think we could use the winner of the exhibition matches as a replacement? I mean, assuming it wasn’t Chen.”

“I believe it is your responsibility to make that call. You were the one to set up the exhibitions in the first place. Whether they arbitrarily go at the end or now won’t be very different in Remi’s eyes. Now cease your prattle. I am not your coworker,” Patchouli assesses, being surprisingly helpful.

I consider her response, and decide that it would be best to do that if Hoshiguma did in fact suddenly leave. The replacement would make more sense in this context than to simply skip Chen forward in the brackets. Albeit, it might be someone that Chen fought in that same group. Would be quite comical, even if unlikely.

I return to the discussion with Patchouli, and emphatically spout, “Oh, wise and most beautiful magician, might you grace me with the knowledge of who won the exhibition matches?”

In an absolute show of discipline, the witch remains silent. Not even a budge to her exterior can be seen as her might of will does not allow any lightened mood to present itself from my exaggerations. I remain utterly ignored, without the grace that I might banter with someone while she turns a page.

“Was that too much?” I ask.

“Entirely. I can’t say I understand what you were even attempting to emulate,” she leaves the thought out to hang.

“Sorry…” I respond with an embarrassed scratch at my cheek not kept in check. “So, could you tell me who won the exhibitions, please?”

She points to the paper in my hand. I pass it to her, expecting her to write the name directly, but instead she turns it over in front of me. I lean in to find small and nearly illegible script in a corner of the sheet with the name...

[x] Pick anyone to be the exhibition champion. (Write-in)

[x] Yes, anyone that hasn’t been discussed already.

[x] This isn’t limited to being sensical, either. Just don’t make it a noncombatant.

---

So, next update will not be where this choice becomes notable. I plan to make next update be very centered around Meiling vs Jo’on because despite appearances, this is still a Meiling chapter at the core. As for this choice, this is very much intended to be for fun. I really do want to see you all might agree on in more of an ‘anything goes’ sense.

[x] Pick anyone to be the exhibition champion.
-[x] Kaguya

… Kaguya. Kaguya? As in… Kaguya Houraisan, one of the moon people? I didn’t peg her as a very fisticuffs oriented person. Or trained in any martial practice at all, for that matter. She’s a princess who had legends made about her supposed transcendental beauty, so it’s odd to even imagine her throwing hands with the… well… ‘pro brawling’ collective here. I could be less nice in that thought, but at least half of them are alright.

“How did Kaguya rise through the ranks?” I ask Patchouli. “I can’t even fathom the way she must fight with these rules.”

Patchouli lowers her book momentarily, thinking back on the matches she sat around for, and interprets, “It was much like a military’s close combat techniques. The lunarians have their own methods of combat, and it seems efficace enough to take armed opponents bare handed.”

I scratch at my temple attempting to parse the visual of an immortal girl in noble dress performing soldier grapples. I come up short and comment, “What? She fights bare handed? I thought that even though lunarians aren’t human they still had a lot of the same physicality.”

Patchouli raises her book once more, reproaching my assumption with, “Grossly inaccurate. But given, it is correct to assume their physical strength is much the same as that of a human’s. It is also impossible to tell what the years spent on Earth have done to Kaguya and her retainer.”

“Oh yeah, we haven’t seen miss Yagokoro,” I state. “You don’t think Kaguya snuck out of their mansion, do you?”

“Don’t you have enough concerns at the moment?” Patchouli retorts my passive curiosity.

The mirror cackles to life with vicious giggling. The sound of a child taking pure joy in doing something they shouldn’t be. Scarlet’s merriment takes over the waiting room and the arena, and with it all eyes are on her.

She stands from her honestly gaudy throne and begins to announce, “Welcome one and all to the next rounds of the Scarlet Tournament! I know that you have all been waiting keenly for our greater chosen fighters to come around once more, and be not afraid to say so, for I have too! Let them know that you are ready to receive them with boundless excitement! Make yourselves loud enough that they might hear you from where they wait!”

She crescendos the last sentence and swings her arms open to the crowd, signaling a warhead of cheers greater than the start of the tournament. People are settling into Scarlet’s corny persona as the host.

“Scarlet Tournament?” I hear Chen stifle a giggle next to me.

“I sincerely hope that that isn’t the name she’s going to feed to the tengu,” Kasen coincides.

After a few moments Scarlet levels her hands and slowly lowers them to silence the crowd. She giddily retracts them as she continues her speech, “Yes! I think they heard that! The first two for the round probably felt that! It is my pleasure to reintroduce the first contestant to this lineup! The Scarlet Devil’s own personal guard, the mystical master of martial arts hailing from the Chinese nation! Hong Meiling!”

A few seconds pass as Meiling ducks under the rope netting to enter the ring, attempting to shirk off a roaring crowd. She stands tall but eventually gives in, her posture loosening and a hand bracing the back of her neck as she waves back to everyone around her, appealing to the image of a humble warrior bowing. The crowd loves her. The first performance she put on with Biten was spectacular in a very straightforward way so it’s no surprise that the spectators think highly of her.

God forbid anyone find scraps of the old eighties-nineties pro wrestling scene. Gensokyo strikes me as somewhere that would latch onto that shit like crack. Ah, but, there was also really real wrestling in other countries, too. Oh gods, what if they find the Mexican luchadors? Thoughts of these brightly colored lunatics in equally bright leather masks is disquieting, and I should heretofore never address this thought again.

“Tanner, is something the matter?” Kasen asks from across the group watching the mirror.

“Nothing, was just thinking about how much I dislike scripts,” I scowl away the erstwhile thought.

“Oh, uhm, alright?” Kasen confusedly replies.

Scarlet clambers the room to once again silence themselves as she invites in the next person, announcing, “Her opponent for this round will be the insidious troublemaker. The disastrous god of wealth. A public enemy who would claim her own bounty given the chance! It is Jo’on Yorigami!”

Jo’on enters to nothing but jeers. Whatever she did to Ichirin in the last rounds put a real target on her back. Despite this, she enters the ring with a smile, standing proudly with the rancor around her. She clasps her hands together and congratulates herself. The disdain only fuels her arrogance. It doesn’t take a keen eye to see she’s full of so much hot air that she should be floating off.

I’ve not properly seen Jo’on in a fight. She was ganged up by Sanae and Mokou when I last had the opportunity. I still remember the welt that grew from the bridge of her nose, but it was a two on one fight and I doubt that she was sober for it. Here today she’s out to break faces.

She stands opposite of Meiling, not preparing for any sort of combat and instead settling into a contrapposto. She’s outright relaxed looking, as opposed to the more high strung view I have of her. Some of that view may be my own fault, but I shouldn’t defend her too much. That smug grin is worse than shit-eating.

Scarlet lets the crowd have their fun putting down the clear antagonist of the bracket, and raises both of her hands high to shout, “FIGHTERS!”

Meiling lowers into a side position with most of her weight put onto the back knee. Her hands are offset towards her opponent, perhaps to prepare for an instant strike like with Biten. Jo’on remains casual, but eyes Meiling closely. She must want to make sure Meiling isn’t going to feint her stance into an attack herself.

“BEGIN!” Remilia shouts with more might than her small frame could muster, opening her arms as wide as possible. Her sheer presence sounds over the crowd, taking their attention. Everyone is quick to shut up and watch. Scarlet as well takes her chair, interested in how the round will play out.

No movement happens to start. Both women stand motionless, waiting for the other to do something. I catch Jo’on’s eyes narrowing, but that might be my imagination from the mirror’s distance.

“You know,” Jo’on starts, whipping a folded fan out from one of her coat pockets and pointing it to Meiling, “you’re something of a wimp, aren’t you?”

Meiling stares in disbelief at her opponent. She may be in her readied stance but it appears more like she’s frozen to the position.

“Hah?” Meiling utters with a questioning sideways look to Jo’on. Her tone screams how stupid she thinks the comment was.

Jo’on shrugs nonchalantly, “Well, just look around you. A cheering crowd, bunch of people wanting to fight, an arena built just for the whole thing. This tournament is for your little vampire to prop you up as some serious powerhouse when really you’re nothing to write home about.” She drops the smile as she finishes, “That cheerful attitude of yours throughout this is just disgusting.”

“I think I heard enough,” Meiling retorts.

She dashes forward out of her guard to rush Jo’on with several punches. Jo’on takes them directly, making no attempt to block the hits. The last hit strikes Jo’on straight in her nose, whipping her head back. Meiling retreats to a different guard with a hand forward and the other balled at her waist, Jo’on eases her head back down. A supple drip of blood comes from her nostril. After a heavy breath out she smiles. A nasty, insidious smile meant to scare children into listening to their parents.

She swings her folded fan from the side into Meiling.

Meiling slides below the strike, knocking away Jo’on’s hand upward by shooting the fist at her waist. This stops whatever the fan would have accomplished. It may have not been much in the first place, though. Meiling doesn’t notice as she draws back her guarding hand, seeking to hit Jo’on center mass, but a fist coated in golden flames rams into her jaw from below, clenching her teeth as an unwanted courtesy.

The sheer force imparted is enough to straighten Meiling’s knees, lifting her nearly to full height. Jo’on follows through with a returning punch, ducking her head to the side as Meiling tosses in a counter jab to no avail. Jo’on’s flaming hand folds Meiling into the ground, and I can see that it wasn’t just a punch, but a grab at Meiling’s throat. Jo’on looks down in satisfaction at the winded martial artist. No sooner does she let go that she adds in a soccer kick to Meiling’s ribs, separating the two once again.

Meiling staggers to her feet, blood coming from her teeth and broken skin around the neck.

“Pathetic,” Jo’on insults. “It felt like you were trying to love tap me. What kind of Youkai are you, anyway? Using the fancy practices of humans, not very Youkai-like by my standards. You know what, don’t answer that. You’re just comedic relief here. Some idiot that stands in front of a gate asleep. Everyone knows you don’t actually do your job.”

Meiling stands upright, returning to her first guard position, ready to accept Jo’on’s next assault should it come. She stares with a fire in her eyes, teeth still clenched from being hit.

“Do you have nothing to say for yourself? This is gonna be boring if so,” Jo’on taunts.

Meiling does not respond to the prodding, but it does seem to have an effect on her as her brow continues to furrow in rage.

Jo’on dashes forwards in a blur. Not the lighting speed that Youmu and Meira have achieved, but fast enough that you can react but not might act. Meiling is better than that, though, deflecting a low punch from Jo’on’s charge and opening the girl to a massive blow that Meiling twists her arm and body into. Her hand shoots out a brilliant rainbow, a consistency like pressurized water, sending Jo’on spiraling across the arena into the net. She falls back to the ground on her feet, limp but standing.

She bends up and makes a show of cracking her neck. She slowly walks forward and says, “So there is some bite to this dog. Honestly, what is your deal? You’re docile to humans and serve under a different Youkai. Isn’t that, like, opposite of how Youkai are supposed to act?”

“Please stop talking and fight,” Meiling asks of her opponent. While her words are still polite, you can hear she is not at all taking to the hostility.

Jo’on stops walking a couple paces from Meiling and puts her hands in front of her face, what would be expected of a boxer. Meiling starts to pace about her as she bobs in place, waiting for the chance to strike. Jo’on reaches a fist out several times, Meiling lightly swatting them away. The exchange brings to mind a cat pawing a toy.

A swiping kick to Meiling’s front leg does nothing to her balance, the leg returning to position relatively quickly. While it’s possible for Meiling to have capitalized on Jo’on’s wide motion, I could spot the moment that Jo’on was planning to block with her available arm and retaliate. I’m sure Meiling noticed it, too.

Jo’on pirouettes into her guard, bouncing as she waits for Meiling to advance. The guard stalwartly remains on the defensive, leaving the first action up to Jo’on’s whim.

This seems to be clear to Jo’on, as she slows for an instant before belting out a left and right jab inside Meiling’s guard. Meiling sweeps an elbow at her opponent, but Jo’on rotates her head with it, causing it to scrape across her scalp. She crosses above Meiling’s strike with her own. A left hook coated in blinding light lands square on Meiling’s jaw, sending her reeling. Jo’on sticks to the retreating Meiling and sends a few extra straights into her abdomen before being pushed away. She waits out Meiling’s next move.

Once again Meiling bends over, not fatigued, but certainly winded by the intensity that Jo’on flaunts. She coughs up more blood between breathes. She pauses upon seeing the blood on the ground, unconvinced that that’s her own.

Jo’on relaxes and continues her taunting, “You protect this place? You don’t even look like you can protect yourself from me. And we’re in a fucking favorable match for you.”

Meiling refuses to show any emotion over the provocations, slowly returning to her guard, but it’s clear she’s losing ground like this. Jo’on remains unimpressed by the display of determination and glances around the crowd. She settles on Scarlet, the little vampire looking more than unhappy with the way things are going. However, it isn’t Jo’on she’s directing her eyes to, but Meiling.

Jo’on points to Scarlet and presses her luck further than I thought it could go, saying, “Oh, you agree with me?” Scarlet looks to the fool, bewildered by her forwardness. Jo’on offers a hand in Meiling’s direction and happily asks, “She’s probably never won a fight when it mattered, has she?”

Scarlet crunches her hands into her chair before standing up. Her wrath is now turned to Jo’on with unsuppressible rage. The blood in her eyes can be seen from our perspective in the mirror. Her wings unfurl and beat. She leans in to–

“Stop!” Meiling cries. Scarlet whips her head back to her subordinate, remembering where she is presently. She relaxes her bat wings and releases the tension in her face. Jo’on’s grin stays plastered as she looks over to Meiling, who continues, “If you want to fight me, then fight me!”

She wipes blood from the corners of her mouth and puts up her guard. It’s different than the times before, though. Now she’s put her hands into fists and stands a bit higher, weight centered further forward, and bouncing from the balls of her feet. Jo’on sees the adjustments Meiling is going for and her smile turns from wicked to vile, teeth displayed like she’s ready to bite.

“How cute, you’re trying to copy me?” she concludes as she approaches once more. Meiling holds a fist forward, to which Jo’on stares for a brief moment before bumping with her own, quickly crouching into her comparatively brutish form. They begin to circle one another cautiously.

When the caution gives way they trade blows, and I quickly realize how Meiling’s adapted. She’s fighting with some fluidity, the motions on occasion recognizable to the tai chi that she often performs, but the strikes are more akin to what Jo’on does. Punch, and punch hard. Punch so hard that the only way to make them harder is to put magic into the punch.

They go ballistic, firing cannons for arms into one another at every open second. If they aren’t swinging they’re blocking the other person’s swing. The colors they emit shine in hundreds of mixtures, splashing every which way as some impossible liquid and plasma combination. Their forearms rapidly develop bruises and cuts from the constant shearing and compressive forces applied. They snap into each other’s hold at one point, their arms locking against one another as they punch in unison, identically ducking their heads to the side. In a snap reaction, Jo’on uses her opposing hand to hook Meiling’s cranium, while Meiling herself launches a knee into Jo’on’s gut with her back foot.

Jo’on’s hook misses Meiling’s head by a literal hair, but her upper arm sails into Meiling’s face, clotheslining her. Combined with the motion of folding atop Meiling’s charging knee, they fall onto one another in an exaggerated twist. Meiling, pinned under Jo’on, pushes the girl’s lighter frame from her.

Jo’on tumbles back to stay on her feet after landing. At some point, Meiling knocked the smile out of her. Not to mention a tooth. She added some swelling to her left eye, too. Meiling drags herself off the ground, looking no better, honestly. Swelling on an eye and her lower lip, the upper lip torn open and bleeding, and that’s just the damage to her face. She took far more hits to her body.

Looking at each other in a brief spell of silence, they wind up matching fists and clash. Their fists, one of golden light and the other a rainbow, become energetically volatile, shaking each woman as they try to overpower the other. This energy compresses further, and further, soon they both put what they were fighting with all into a singular point in front of them, creating a point mass of magical energy emitting strobes of light. If I had to guess, they want to make the mass turn supercritical and explode on their opponent. Meiling shouts and pushes their fists together with the mass of torrential light squashed between them.

In the next instant, a flash occurs, and dust from the arena’s recent construction flakes up in a dense cloud around a central fireball.

Next to me, Patchouli holds a hand up from her book toward the mirror, a faint energy alight under her palm. She lowers it again when the cloud starts to dissipate.

Beneath the dust, Meiling lies on her back. Her hat flew off and her clothes are in tatters but she’s still consciously breathing. Heaving, rather. On the other side, Jo’on tumbled into the dirt, launched out of the ring entirely and draped with the outer netting. The thing must have stopped her from flying into the stands. And it may go without saying, but there are scorch marks against her arms where even the sleeves have burnt off.

The crowd lay silent, taking in the scene.

Meiling uses whatever muscles or tendons still work to force herself up. She struggles to do so, her arms giving up midway, and so she relies on her legs alone to do it.

With worn out, maybe even broken, arms unable to raise, she instead raises her voice up to the ceiling, declaring, “I PROTECT THIS HOME!”

Everyone explodes. The audience, the waiting room, everyone. The only sound that exists is cheers for Meiling. Whether it be for defeating the bastard of the bracket, putting on the most impressive match yet, or for showing an indefatigable love for her duty.

She looks around, taking in the sound, trying to control her breathing despite numerous internal injuries. She turns to Scarlet, her master, who gives a standing ovation for her. Scarlet smiles genuinely for what feels like the first time that I’ve met her. I can’t see Meiling’s face at this angle, but I’m not very worried about that.

She collapses to her knees and keels over, coughing blood onto herself.

[Please wait warmly for fighters to be carted back to the waiting room...]

---

That one felt pretty good. I actually studied a very specific match from straw weight female MMA to get an idea of how Jo’on might fight to keep things grounded. At first I had her do a Shoryuken, chuckled to myself, and immediately said, that’s not really this cutthroat bitch, is it? I worked toward a more ideal fist fight scenario that while not as magical captures the identity of these two outside of danmaku rules. To my wants, anyway.

[… Continued]

“Well that was dramatic,” Chen comments. “I kinda wish that idiot god kept going with the insults. She kinda stopped before they were getting good.”

“You should let the gate guard have her moment of glory,” Kasen admonishes.

“Oh come on, the vampire was even smiling weirdly. I bet the witch agrees with me,” Chen persists.

Patchouli raises an eyebrow and replies, “Those two read too much childish fiction. It might be rooted in their heads to act like buffoons.”

Chen nods vindicated, continuing, “See? It was dumb. Two against one on this.”

Kasen rolls her eyes up, shaking her head to show her distaste in the argument. I grab Chen’s hat and lean her this way and that.

She groans in distaste but still allows me to speak my piece, “Feel free to think that, but for the love of the gods don’t tell Meiling that to her face.”

She ducks under my hand in means of escape. With a smirk and wagging long nail, she retorts, “I’ll make sure to let the vampire know, then.”

“Do what you want you little imp,” I refuse to play along with her empty nonsense. Turning to the rest of the group I call out, “I need Reisen and Kasen up here for the next match.”

“Yes, I’m here,” Kasen notifies me from the side. I didn’t expect her to have walked off or anything, but I felt the need to get a direct callback.

“Alright, and where’s Reisen?” I ask no one. I search the current members at the mirror, so few as they are. Reisen’s gargantuan rabbit ears are not among them.

I look across the room over to the improvised first aid station from hours ago to see Reisen doing something with her stuff. Her back’s turned away, but she holds what she’s working on up to the light of the chandelier and I can see the pistol from the first round. A little excessive to be cleaning it between matches, but I can’t knock ‘over’ caring for a weapon as opposed to the opposite.

“Reisen!” I call across the way. She whips her head back from her weapon and realizes that it must be time to get moving. She carries the gun in one hand and her box of medical supplies in the other over to the mirror.

She sets down the box on one of the small round tables littering the room, probably covered in dried alcohol still, and makes a show of taking out numerous supplies from ointments to salves to gauze. Clearly intended to treat the previous competitors of their likely wounds in a fist fight. I don’t think she knows the extent that they were going at it, though.

“They’re gonna need more than that, mind,” I openly comment.

“Why? What happened?” Reisen asks looking over her shoulder, confused by what that should mean.

“They decided to go nearly all out from what I witnessed,” Kasen elaborates.

Reisen scrunches her eyes at the statement, inferring, “You don’t mean one of them split the other in half, do you?”

“No, but their arms have seen better days,” Kasen morbidly chuckles.

“We can continue this part of the discussion when they’re back,” I redirect the two. “First we need to talk about any specifics for you two fighting.”

“I don’t believe I have anything to ask,” Kasen opens, gesturing for Reisen to take over the discussion.

“Ah… well… there is one thing,” Reisen alludes.

She turns to Kasen and steps close before quickly rounding her pistol on the woman’s gut with a loud bang piercing the room. Everyone jumps in anticipation, most ready for combat. I for one only freeze momentarily, as does Kasen, for that matter. She looks down at her red tabard to see a gaudy mark left of the fabric, but not much other damage visible.

She brushes the spot tepidly before asking Reisen, “What was that?”

“That…” Reisen begins, searching the ground for the projectile she fired. With the dark red carpets, draped across the ground in various patterns and embroidery, finding anything small would be a chore. She instead pulls out the magazine from her ancient looking pistol, revealing the black bullet tips and explaining, “Was a rubber shot. I wanted to test if it would do anything at all to you, but it seems not.”

“Ah, because you need to be able to damage me with your attacks. That much makes sense,” Kasen concludes. A sound reason, albeit hasty and could have been explained upfront.

Reisen stows the black bullets in her blazer and unsheathes the real deal. Silvery bullet tips that are very obviously live ammunition. “Would you mind if I tried this on you? I think you’ll heal it off before the match if I shoot you somewhere like your thigh,” Reisen makes a perfectly reasonable request of her opponent.

“Reisen, what even are those bullets,” I ask, thinking on how their shape is loosely nine millimeter rounds but they’re pointed at the end like a rifle round. Some kind of abomination for what pistol rounds are usually used for.

“Penetrating rounds,” Reisen tells me, handing over the clip for me to get a better look. “Even for riot control we ended up using them due to the amount of armor people would wear… don’t tell master I said that, actually.”

She steals the clip from my hand as I process this madness and loads it to her weapon. Her opponent is confused at first when Reisen gestures to her firearm, but realizes soon after that the rabbit wasn’t making idle chatter before. Kasen looks over my way for some opinion on the matter.

“I mean… she’s got a point, as stupid as the point itself is. If her bullet can’t hurt you, then she’s at a major disadvantage in these rules. Up to you if you take her up on it,” I answer, trying to stay neutral to the subject. Also being hypocritical of my earlier enforcing, but I’m not going to mull on it. Perhaps I’m giving my own nurse the benefit of the doubt.

Kasen sighs, “Fine, if you must know, then I’ll let you test.”

She lifts her leg in a striking stance as Reisen lines her up in front of the closest empty wall. At this point the room’s doors finally swing open. I turn from whatever madness is happening next to me to see the previous contenders. First in is an unconscious Jo’on carted by Izayoi, looking just as ragged as I expected. I wonder how much her outfit cost in total, considering that she’ll probably need a whole new set. Meiling, however, walks without any assistance, surprisingly. Her arms seem to trail behind her, so I don’t think they’ve gotten much better since she left the ring.

Another gunshot goes off. I whip back around to see what happened and find Kasen clutching her leg. She winces at the pain but doesn’t seem to be worse for wear asides from that.

“Yes. Yes, I think that hurts a lot,” she admits through thinned lips.

“S-sorry,” Reisen apologizes in earnest. “Do you need me to wrap that? Blood is coming out.”

Kasen declines, saying it will heal quickly, and they share a quick back and forth as Izayoi wheels Jo’on over, but I’m focused on something else. There doesn’t seem to be any mark in the wall behind Kasen. I expected a bullet hole from a gods damned full metal jacket rifle round even if it was fired from a relic of a pistol like Reisen’s. That really puts into perspective how tough an oni is, I guess.

“And what might be happening now?” A voice asks, tone sharp enough to raise hairs on the back of my neck.

“They’re doing some prep work, miss Izayoi,” I answer the maid’s question. Whether I sounded confident or not is up to her to decide.

I turn to see her glancing from me to Kasen and Reisen and back. She doesn’t state her disappointment in our conduct, at least not in words. Instead she chooses to close her eyes, lift her eyebrows, and take a lengthy breath through her nose. In similar annoyance she pushes Reisen and Kasen towards the doors out of the room, apparently knowing explicitly who was going next. Reisen weakly protests that she should perform some preliminary treatments on Meiling and Jo’on, but Izayoi doesn’t comply any such suggestion. They flee the room before Meiling even has time to strike up conversation.

She stares at the doorway that Izayoi scuttled through, before turning to us and asking, “I wanted to ask her, but she was deathly silent on the way back. How was my match?”

Getting a good look at her arms, I can see why she isn’t even attempting to move them. She might still be recovering the basic functionality for everything that isn’t her upper arms. Her hands are charred like burnt wood. Her forearms look like a single, continuous welt more than they do usable muscle. I can only imagine the labyrinth of micro and macro fractures her bones have suffered during the bout. I instinctively busy myself by retrieving some of the supplies Reisen fetched and hovering about Meiling, doing what little I can of first aid against the flood of wounds she has. Whether I’m applying any of the liquids correctly is a moot point with how bad this is.

How Meiling can casually stay conscious let alone hold conversation with the likely pain is beyond me.

Patchouli cuts directly at the earlier question, “Could have done without the end.”

“Patchouli!” I pause to bicker at the witch for her tactless behavior.

“Ehehe,” Meiling weakly chuckles. “It didn’t feel weird in the moment but I guess I understand.”

“Do not pass the subject off entirely, yet,” Patchouli warns. “Why do you even question yourself as the one to win? Did you fight purely to satisfy Remi’s desire for base conflict?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” Meiling denies. “Why did I ask? I don’t think I know.”

I wrap some bandages to at least convince myself I did something, and look Meiling in the eyes to follow her thought with, “Did you maybe think about some of what Jo’on was saying out there? Forgive me if it’s not my place for saying, but at least some of it didn’t sound superficial. Or not meant to be, anyway.”

“You’re quite correct, it isn’t much of your station to say so,” Patchouli mocks my passive tone.

“No, no, I think I know what he’s thinking,” Meiling halts Patchouli’s berating. “Maybe. This time. I haven’t before.”

I feel something internal crack at the added note and concede, “Maybe I’ll just be quiet…”

“Finally,” Patchouli sighs in relief.

Meiling frets about as I step back over to the medicine box for more supplies. She is quick to apologize, “Ah, I didn’t mean to be rude… Did you not have enough wrapping for my hands?”

“Reisen didn’t take anything out for the burns,” I curtly reply. Opening the box is akin to opening an entire lab of chemicals. As I suspected, it’s somehow deeper inside than outside, and contains a dizzying amount of chemicals the like that I would have no hope of finding what I need. I calmly close the box and set it down in front of Patchouli, stating, “You’ll have better luck with this than I will.”

She opens the box and immediately counters, “This is all labeled in outside world chemistry nomenclature. In what way will I have an easier time than you?”

“I’m not a chemist. You kind of are,” I inform the temperamental magician.

She mumbles some obscenity or another to herself, but figures arguing would undermine her own vaunted position of being more knowledgeable than the layman. She leans over and starts digging through the endless bottles and packets.

“Tanner, about what you said,” Meiling chimes in from the side, “I don’t think Jo’on’s insults meant anything.”

An attention grabbing shout comes from the mirror. Seems it’s time to start the next match.

“We’ll come back to this conversation,” I tell Meiling.

Patchouli still sifts through the box, attempting to find something to use on Meiling’s burns. And Jo’on’s, for whatever that’s worth.

“How many of those jars do you think shrink appendages?” I joke with the witch.

She looks closely inside and guesstimates, “At least two. No, given that moon doctors propensity for the odd, three.”

“FIGHTERS!” Scarlet sounds in the mirror. “BEGIN!”

We direct our attention to the arena. Kasen and Reisen size each other up. Wait, not quite. Kasen isn’t circling Reisen directly, so there must already be illusions on the field to confuse Kasen.

Kasen sports a new accessory. The chain with attached tetrahedron Ibuki left behind is wrapped on itself, secured to Kasen’s unbandaged arm. It doesn’t appear to have any practical application in mind, only a memento Kasen wanted to hold onto.

Reisen stops being careful as they wind around each other, instead skirting to Kasen’s left side and firing a bullet to the ribs. Kasen evades further shots by diving back, rolling her right shoulder to fling her bandages in the direction of the shot. Reisen sprints forward and beats aside the grasping hand with her baton, attempting to duck into Kasen’s blind spot, most present from where she jumped. While it might seem like Kasen would be in short range to engage Reisen, she’s still turned around after throwing her arm. All Reisen needs to get out of close track is the second that Kasen uses to turn her head to her opposite side.

Sure enough, as Reisen passes directly behind Kasen, the hermit pivots from a hand to face her. She’s escaped Kasen’s sight. Reisen has almost full reign to move around as Kasen searches a fake crowd. They’re back to the slow engagement. It’s strange that Kasen is being pushed back like this. I figured she would have some kind of trick to engage in this fight.

“Closing your eyes? Really?” Reisen legitimately questions Kasen’s next move. “You understand that blocking your senses doesn’t mean I can’t target a different sense to confuse you, right?”

Kasen stands firm, eyes closed, posed similarly to how Meiling would, though leaning forward instead of back. Reisen takes the chance to fire upward, testing Kasen’s awareness. Kasen looks around without a focused point, having no idea where the sound originated.

“What happened?” I ask aloud.

“Reisen made the bang happen all over,” Meiling answers. “A scary power, she has. But I thought Kasen was focusing on Reisen’s qi, not noise.”

Reisen takes a few pot shots in Kasen’s direction, one of them landing true. A similar bout to before takes place and they’re back to the slow pacing. Ready for the other person to move at any time.

Kasen opens her eyes and comments, “I still need more practice sensing qi. It’s easy to lose focus.”

Reisen furls her brow at Kasen’s levity, and calls out, “Are you still out of it, Kasen? You’re not normally this passive.”

“And if I am? Doesn’t that mean an easy win for you?” Kasen questions.

“I don’t really care to fight. My master told me to, honestly,” Reisen shrugs, weapons in hand. “But this is just kinda sad. I’m really hitting you while you’re down.”

Kasen chuckles without enough push to sound convincing, saying, “That’s big talk for the middle of the match. Do you think you can keep that up?”

Reisen stows her baton, declaring, “I think I can do better than that.”

She brings the free hand to her eyes and stares in Kasen’s direction. Kasen staggers from… something. Reisen isn’t directly attacking her with magic, I don’t think.

“I wondered if she would use that part of her power,” Patchouli commentates. “’Parlor tricks’ she said. When she can do that.”

‘That?’ Whatever it is, it’s worrying.

Kasen shakes her damage off and stands back at the ready. She picks a direction, and flings herself at it. Despite Kasen running at open air, the very real Reisen jumps at the sudden shift in pace, moving to keep up her illusions. Suddenly the two are in a cat and mouse game. Kasen picks a direction and recklessly blasts towards it with whatever means available: jumping, running, grappling the netting with her bandaged arm, even flinging herself from the cracks in the arena’s stonework.

What would I call this attitude? Feral, maybe? Not something I’d associate with the polite woman Kasen usually is. If Reisen manipulates insanity, does that mean she can enrage someone like this? Is it truly an on-off switch in the mind? Terrifying.

Kasen runs rampant for a few dozen seconds, tearing across the arena faster than Izayoi did. Reisen does her best to pepper bullets at her opponent while only barely escaping the oni’s grips. It doesn’t work out in every trade, though, as Kasen sometimes forgoes the attempt to grapple and instead throws her arm like a wrecking ball. She tears through the net at one point in her haste.

After her blitz, Kasen stalls out, walking along the ground to catch her breath.

Reisen does the same, panting on one knee, and saying, “See? You can be more active if you try. Did you get what was bothering you out of your system?”

“No,” Kasen focuses on her arm with the chain, unfurling the fashion statement and grabbing the end. Several bullet holes dot her body, blood dripping onto her clothes, only leaving the red tabard largely unaffected.

“No?” Reisen repeats with more than a hint of concern.

“If I’m going to get worked up like this I should focus on winning the fight. So far you’ve hit me a lot more than I have you,” she blandly states, trying her best not to smile in her madness.

It is at this moment where Reisen realizes that making an oni as mad as possible was maybe not the best idea. The next moment Kasen swings her bandages and chain in tandem, trying to hit everything around her, while Reisen looks to be running for the hills.

Reisen is struck in the side, launching into the netting. A terrible situation for her, as I’m not sure if she could manipulate the ropes traveling in a wavelike motion. It leaves an obvious indent in the otherwise stable wall. Kasen seems to agree, as she looks at her exact position and rounds on the rabbit faster than a bullet.

Grabbing Reisen with her bandages, now larger than their torsos, Kasen drives the rabbit into the bottom of the arena. Reisen is given no quarter, as without even a moment to get away Kasen cycles her ornament and fist down into the ground on the spot. For about five straight seconds Kasen shakes the earth. After the first few I realize that we can feel the vibrations from here. Kasen smiles with sinful joy in her eyes.

A crater is left in the spot where Reisen lay. Her front side is a bloodied mess, bad enough that it’s hard to see her outline. If she plans to get back up, that would be the biggest surprise today. I don’t say that lightly.

Kasen breathes heavily, her rage waning in the passing seconds. She leans back, looking down at her display of violence, and not too proud of it. However much of the blood covering her is hers or not is a question I think I’d rather not have answered.

“Yeah I’m glad I didn’t fight that thing,” I can hear Jo’on comment from the wheeled table.
[Please wait warmly as Sakuya retrieves another body…]

---

There will be votes, I promise. Maybe not now, but at some point. I pigeonholed myself this chapter by giving Tanner so little agency throughout. With votes up to ‘ask someone to do something’ or ‘token response just to generate votes’ it’s not so interesting for me to think through the consequences.

You know what, instead of a normal vote, how about this: who do you all think is going to take the tournament at this point. You could either argue canonicity of the achievement or worm your way into my mindspace to try and predict me. That should give you all something to really think about.

[… Continued]

“You wake up and the first thing you do is throw an insult,” I point out Jo’on’s maddening nature.

She sits up from the table she was carried in on, clutching a blanket close to cover over what remains of her excessive outfit. Izayoi had the surprising care to pick up her miniature top hat at some point after carrying her in. Jo’on lets her legs trail from the table, further joining the conversation.

“Well it’s the first thing that comes to mind,” she counters. Meiling looses a sigh at the woman. She rounds a glare on Meiling in return.

Before she starts another tirade I interject, “Woah, now. Don’t you know Kasen? Even for a bastard like yourself it’s a bit much to call her a ‘thing’ isn’t it?”

She looks about cautiously with a blackened eye, wary of the people around her. For obvious reasons, she keeps her good eye closest to Meiling.

“We’ve fought once. Doesn’t mean I know her well. What I do know is that deep down she’s a weird one, weirder than you, miss docile Youkai,” she gripes to Meiling.

“I’ve decided to not let your taunts mean anything,” Meiling firmly resolves to her antagonizer.

“Tch,” Jo’on clicks, showing a split in her lip at the motion. “Taunts, you say. Everybody thinks all I do is talk shit. Where’s the credit for being able to harm and manipulate with just words, huh?”

“Do not act as if you were some higher actor. None here care about your status of duplicitous divinity,” Patchouli warns from her… rather high and mighty throne.

“What is your deal, anyway?” I further pester. “Who are you to judge other people when you’re probably just as much of a dumbass?”

She snorts, teetering in amusement as she claims, “See, he gets it. We all have our bad sides. Mine’s pretty big, I’ll give you that. Those that hide it, or try to act like they don’t have one, they’re the kind that get on my nerves.”

She keeps her eyes pinned to Meiling as she speaks. I can hear Meiling’s arm wrappings stretch in return. I avoid looking so as to not draw further attention to the sound in the silence of the room right now.

Jo’on gets up from the table on shaking legs, spooking a couple of members in the room back a step. She puts a finger to Meiling, a grimace twisting her already contorted face, continuing, “You saw what that hermit was like. Her calm and collected manners are just bullshit to cover for herself. I see it as a lesson, even if you all don’t.”

Meiling stares from Jo’on’s finger up to her face, and asks, “What are you trying to say?”

“That I don’t resent you for having to fight that hermit next. After all–“

A loud bang bounces through the room from the entrance. The door is swung wide open as someone enters.

It isn’t Izayoi carting Reisen, nor Ibara on her lonesome. It’s a girl with long, straight black hair, cut to exact proportions. She wears a pink top with a red and wide brimmed dress bottom. It somewhat reminds me of the casual look of Patchouli’s clothes, but even larger in aspects. It also hosts plenty more embroidery and ornamental ribbons to look less like nightwear than the sad state of the magician’s clothes.

“I am here!” the girl announces proudly to the room, arms open as wide as possible, even letting her sleeves droop. She looks around in the silence, expecting some form of greeting. She spots our group by the mirror and scurries over to repeat the motion and announce, “I am here!”

“You are still not more important than anyone else in the room, Kaguya,” Patchouli curbs her enthusiasm. By her words this must have happened during the exhibitions, too.

Kaguya pouts at the lack of reaction from our lovely magician. She quickly trails her eyes across the people here and counters, “Clearly you’re the only one to think that. The others are left speechless at my presence. That girl has collapsed in her excitement of my arrival!” She points to Jo’on who has found her legs give in the few seconds that she wasn’t begging for a fight.

“As if!” Jo’on denies. Meiling bends down to help her up, to which she doesn’t seem pleased by, but she also doesn’t decline the support.

“Oh there’s no need to be shy,” Kaguya chirps. “You can admit that you’re overjoyed to see me in the flesh.”

Jo’on grunts from Meiling’s shoulder, “If she’s going to keep talking, knock me out again.”

“I certainly could,” Meiling says, hopefully as a joke.

I decide now would be a good time to redirect the conversation and ask, “Miss Houraisan, are you here for the next round?”

Kaguya giggles from behind a sleeve, “Why indeed I am. I’m glad that the servant is at least polite enough to properly greet me. It’s a little lacking in fanfare, but pleasant nonetheless.”

I choose to let the comment pass. For one, I kind of am acting as a servant, but also, she’s not exactly wrong about everyone inside the mansion being rude. Patchouli especially hasn’t relaxed once today.

“Kasen and Reisen are returning as we speak, so you have good timing… Actually, how did you know to come here now?” I question.

“Whatever do you mean? The maid hailed me while I was enjoying your festival grounds,” Kaguya answers with a curious glance.

Right, of course that would be the case. “Right, just checking. Chen, front and center!” I bellow.

“Don’t yell. I’m right next to you, you know,” Chen whinges from beside me. She walks beside Kaguya, a bit mixed in expression. “What happened to the big oni?”

“She had to take care of something, apparently,” I reply. “Miss Houraisan won the exhibition matches, and while it was intended for her to fight the winner of the seeded bracket, I thought it would be better to have a replacement than to move you up the bracket by default.”

“I quite enjoy the idea of playing with a cat for once. I’ve gotten so used to the docile nature of the rabbits when you get a hold of them,” Kaguya speaks her mind.

“And there you have it, Chen. She’s good with it, so get ready to get out there and fight her.”

Chen gives Kaguya a confused look, maybe even like she’s being led on. “What do you mean ‘there you have it?’ She doesn’t look like she’s built for this competition at all!”

Kaguya takes no heed of the insult, instead wrapping her arms down around Chen’s neck and lightly squeezing the cat back into her, saying, “Oh aren’t you a cute one? You remind me of a friend of mine. Always acting aloof when really you’re paying the most attention.”

Chen squirms in her grip a bit, face drooping in disdain at her choke hold. Ah, but that might not entirely be an exaggeration, as she clamps her eyes shut and starts tapping Kaguya’s arm for release.

“I, uh, think she doesn’t like that, miss,” I inform Kaguya.

“Hmm? Oh, so it seems,” Kaguya laxly responds, releasing Chen from her bear hug.

Chen gags a bit when catching her breath, and states, “Maybe the oni would have been better…”

“Here, Meiling, if I have determined this salve correctly it will either heal your burns or turn your skin blue,” I hear Patchouli comment from the side.

I pinch my brow thinking about the nonsense at hand. This entire room is becoming dysfunctional, and we’re still about five matches left in the tournament.

I see another table wheel in from the door, still swung open from Kaguya’s entry. Izayoi wheels in Reisen’s broken body, still a bloodied mess from Kasen’s rampage. In behind them is Kasen herself, looking more serious than usual, and having tied her triangular chain ornament back to her arm. The real arm, I mean. Still strange to me that her bandages are a magical appendage and not a physical limb.

Izayoi settles the table topped with rabbit roadkill in place of Jo’on’s, wheeling the first table a few paces out. She and Kasen both head me down, looking for something or other. Izayoi is quicker, retrieving the next contestants. She only pauses for a moment when I tell her that we had to swap Kaguya in for Hoshiguma. She gives no opinion on the matter and steals the two girls away with the table in tow. Hopefully we won’t have further use of it at this point.

Kasen takes her turn to speak with me. Her outfit’s specked with holes all about, Reisen’s bullets piercing the cloth, but doing so little damage that Kasen’s skin has already healed.

“Tanner, focus,” Kasen gets into my face, reprimanding me. “I have something important to talk about.”

“Huh, what? What’s this all of a sudden?” I utter, taken aback by the sharpness in her voice. It’s suddenly more… lucid than before, more directed and purposeful. “Is this about after the tournament? Like I said, we need to wait for Ran.”

“No, I’ve decided to change the plan,” Kasen declares. “I will have Reisen help me instead. I believe her power might be able to perform some of your idea. I also think that I can’t wait too long, after all. Every minute is less chance I have.”

“Hey, calm down, what’s gotten into you?” I intone against her sudden determination. “We agreed that not much will change between now and after the tournament, didn’t we?”

“I changed my mind,” Kasen remains resolute. “I will be taking Reisen and leaving for now.”

She turns and I have to catch her by the arm, sliding forward like I’m not even a real amount of weight to her. A few eyes turn to our conversation, uncomfortably close for any sensitive subjects, even if the other contestants don’t particularly care about each other. Well, maybe Jo’on isn’t a good example, everyone else is fine.

“Hey, hold your horses,” I beggar. “Think this through a little more, why don’t you? Reisen’s not even in a state to help you right now.”

“Are you telling me to wait, then?” Kasen replies, eyeing me over her shoulder. Her gaze drills through me a lot like Ran’s, disregarding my thoughts as worthy of attention.

“You could at least wait for her to wake up, yeah?” I rationalize.

She doesn’t seem to weigh the thought, only consider how far I’m willing to bullshit her. Somehow, though, my voice win’s out and she replies, “So be it.”

Kasen rips her arm away from my grasp and stations herself next to Reisen’s distressing form. She doesn’t attempt to treat Reisen or even glance down to the rabbit, only wait at the side.

Is this an after effect of Reisen’s spell? Kasen’s personality is obtuse compared to before her match. I don’t want to put stock into anything Jo’on said, but all the same Kasen isn’t just the kind and polite lady from my first impression.

The mirror cracks to life with Scarlet’s voice. I look into the mirror and spot Izayoi standing next to her. Right after I register the maid’s presence she once again vanishes into air.

“Welcome one and all!” Scarlet announces to the crowd, never seeming to stick to any single script. She downplays her voice for the next sentence, detailing, “Sadly, Hoshiguma has left, but far be it for anyone to control where an oni’s whims take her! To take her place in the next round will be the victor of the exhibitions! The lunar princess herself Kaguya Houraisan will be joining the bracket for victory!”

The crowd gives a modest cheer, nothing like the previous round’s vigor. It could be a sign of people leaving for the day. I would be surprised if any humans have stuck around, but the other side of the population are just fine with nightfall. For the yamawaro it was their recreational time, much like humans. For many species it’s their time for the haunt.

Scarlet picks up the announcement again, “Now to properly introduce her, please give a hearty cheer to the first fighter this round. The reclusive and mysterious undying lunar princess, Kaguya Houraisan!”

Kaguya steps under the netting with an ornamental folding fan covering her lower face. She struts toward the center like she were on parade, with wide steps that kick up the front of her dress. She turns to Scarlet, back towards the mirror, and gives an excessively gentle wave to the host.

Scarlet smirks at Kaguya’s demure presence, and moves on with her speech, “Her opponent for this round is the vixen feline of the Yakumo family. She who seeks to prove herself to be worthy of a name, Chen!”

Chen arrives into the ring, none too happy with her greeting. She stares up at Scarlet with a vigorous anger she doesn’t often show. I always felt like the last name thing might have been a touchy subject, which is why I never asked, but maybe it’s worse than expected. She glances to Ran as well, who remains unphased by the backhanded introduction. She shakes her head and returns her attention to the opponent taking up center stage.

“Alright, miss high class,” Chen says, “apparently I have something to prove, because fighting a single person reflects my worth on the Yakumo clan. Like that isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Kaguya lowers her fan to show a kindly smile to Chen, and asks her, “Are you sure you haven’t met Mokou before? I think you would get along famously.”

“Enough prattle, the both of you!” Scarlet scolds their banter. The two in the ring keep silent, Chen extends claws from her hands in preparation. Scarlet raises an arm to declare, “FIGHTERS! … BEGIN!”

Scarlet throws her arm down and Chen shoots toward Kaguya. Gauging her speed, she’s slower than Konpaku and Meira, but certainly faster than Meiling. I’ve seen her fight before, over a month back, now. At that time she was fighting Cirno under spellcard rules, but that didn’t add much to her game plan. When in today’s ruleset, she’s only limited by not being able to use the red and blue energy orbs she calls oni. Everything else she does remains the same: a trailing swipe across her opponent here, using her nimble movement to hit from behind there. I remember the motions, with their feline insistence on subverting or surprising.

Kaguya, however, is neither. She practically dances with her open fan. Her wide brimmed clothes trail around her in cyclic motions, and despite Chen’s best efforts, not a scratch can be seen on the cloth. Chen stops for a moment in frustration, attempting to observe how Kaguya is achieving this.

Kaguya flourishes her dance onto one foot with fan raised high, and prompts the cat, “You really should meet Mokou, I’m sure she’d love telling you about how I learned to dodge every punch she throws.”

“How the hell does that relate to how I fight?!” Chen wails in bafflement. She charges forward, low to the ground, and seeks to claw at Kaguya’s supporting leg with her speed.

Kaguya does the inexplicable, and flips from her foot to sit above Chen in air. Chen’s vision is still forward, so she doesn’t even see Kaguya grab her ankle from above. The sudden shift in weight causes their combined momentum to stall Chen out. Although she finds footing with her free leg, her body naturally attempts to use the caught one next, instead tripping her. She plants onto the ground, Kaguya quickly rounding upon her.

Chen tries her strength, propping her body up by the arms, but Kaguya predicts the defense, and drops onto the her. Even for a Youkai with strength greater than a fully grown human, the full weight of another person to the small of her back. Chen puts up a momentary resistance, but the impulse of force causes her arms to lock into position, vulnerable to Kaguya’s next move.

Kaguya swings her legs in front of Chen’s arms, moving in such a way as to not have her dress cover Chen’s face, and clamps her fingers under Chen’s chin. From there Kaguya starts to wrench her legs and arms back as hard as she can. This does little to Chen for the first few seconds, but after that her arms unbuckle and she falls chest first against the stone, arms folding like a bird’s wing. Her neck isn’t faring better, the Hourai immortal having more strength than I’d expect and cranking Chen’s head as far as it will go. I can see it now that she’s working one arm down to the front of Chen’s neck for a proper sleeper hold.

I can’t say I’m terribly surprised by the refined princess doing a move closer to wrestling, as everything in Gensokyo stands to surprise the average person, but I’ll admit it is quite the visual.

Chen uses the back of her legs to kick Kaguya, but the force generated is paltry against a dedicated hold. Chen next pushes with her arms only to find her raw strength isn’t enough to carry Kaguya’s full weight upward. The last thing she has the time to try is to roll over, putting Kaguya under, but the motion gives Kaguya enough chance to settle her arm against Chen’s neck.

Now with a clenched arm in front, Kaguya presses Chen’s head forward with her opposing arm to complete the choke hold, and it’s only a matter of seconds that Chen has before passing out.

“Ask Mokou how much wrestling we do as well. I’m sure she’d love to answer,” Kaguya comments in the brief moment she has to taunt.

With her body scraping for a last gasp, Chen flails her limbs wildly. And when that doesn’t work, she stops moving entirely, knocked out cold.

“I believe we have our winner,” Scarlet concludes. “Kaguya Houraisan has taken out Chen by knockout! Give the victor her due!”

You can hear the surprise in the crowd’s voice as they cheer. It doesn’t last for long, but it was there. I’m glad, since that means I wasn’t the only one surprised by Kaguya’s choice of fighting style. The crowd fires up again after that, realizing how clean of a match that was for the princess. Dare I say that might be the most one sided round I’ve seen yet. That’s pretty scary since I know Chen is no slouch.

“Kasen, what are you doing?” I hear Meiling ask behind me as Kaguya continues to wave to the crowd.

Kasen holds a wooden box and fills it with leftover sake from a nearby table. She doesn’t drink it, though. She approaches Reisen’s bloody body, none of us having the gall to even act like we could treat her otherwise. She lifts the rabbit’s head and begins to tilt the filled square cup down Reisen’s gullet.

“She’s not dead, you know,” I comment. “That’s some kind of last rites for the dead, isn’t it?”

“What?” Kasen gawks like I just said something stupid. “This is going to heal her, what are you talking about?”

I process the statement, and answer, “I don’t know. How was I supposed to know it would do that? Does it really do that?”

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t do it!” Kasen raises her voice.

A cough comes from the table, and the bloody pile rises to life. She looks at the group surrounding her and notes, “Guess I’m still alive, then.”

“You’ve looked better, though,” Jo’on adds.

Reisen looks down at herself, checking the many places that are soaked through in blood. She doffs her blazer to show herself that the front is the only thing so poor off. Looking closer at her clothes, it looks like there’s a big hole in her shirt at the abdomen, but her clothes are otherwise close to pristine past the blood. Gods know how much damage was pummeled into her during her fight.

“Is this all my blood?” Reisen asks, a wistful calm belies her usual personality.

Kasen snatches her from the table and closely explains, “That is your blood. You’ve been out cold for an entire match. I healed you with my medicine box. Now I’m going to take you to help me find Suika. Do you follow?”

Reisen stares blankly, hardly standing on her own legs. Some realization comes over her as she slowly gets bug eyed and panics, “Your box?! That cup that turns people more like an oni?!”

“Oh, so you know it,” Kasen states in wonder. “I don’t know how, but that does make this quicker. You’re all healed, come on, we’re going.”

“Wait, wait, wait! I don’t want to be an oni!” Reisen cries, finally understanding that she’s being kidnapped.

“You had one drink, you’re not going to change. Now let’s find Yuugi’s progress,” Kasen retorts, dragging the rabbit behind her.

“Hang on, Kasen!” I jump in.

“What now?” she commands. I’m clearly hitting some kind of temper she wasn’t tapping into before.

I clear my throat, covering a brief second to gather my thoughts and argue,

[x] “We still need you for the tournament. I know you’re itching to do your thing but could I ask you to stick around?”

[x] “Go do your thing. I’ll figure out something or other for the tournament. Maybe…”

[x] “Well…” (Write-in)

---

Deciding to post this right now, but it’s late at night so I’ll have to reread in the morning to do more intensive proofreading.

As for the vote, I think I will commit to this being impactful in an expected way. As for what that implies, I’ll let you all interpret my intents.

[x] “Go do your thing. I’ll figure out something or other for the tournament. Maybe…”

“I hope you mean that. I will be angry if Izayoi or Ran come to find me,” Kasen warns.

“Yes, yes. Just go before I change my mind,” I deter any inquisitive line of thought. Both for me and for Kasen. This is gonna be troubling if Izayoi decides to go after her, since it’s not like I control her. I mean, I don’t control Ran, either, but Ran would at least listen to my reasoning.

“Well, now what?” I ask myself aloud. I’ve already put a substitute in for Hoshiguma, but can I get another one? Who would I even get? It’s not like I can use someone that’s already lost. At the same time, though, I can’t just leave a semifinal round open.

“How rare it is for you to be stuck in thought,” Patchouli mocks my inner monologuing from a different book. “Whatever will you do without Ibara to fawn over?”

“Patchouli, I was not fawning over her,” I refute the notion entirely.

“And yet you were so gallantly announcing your intent to help her with problems that only superficially involve you,” she berates with the most emotion I’ve heard her use so far.

“Screw off, that isn’t what it’s about.”

Jo’on groans from beside Meiling, looking better from her previous wounds, “You two should get a room, jeez.” Biten stands behind her, aggravated that we haven’t kicked out the jester for all her musings.

“Shut up,” I weakly retort.

“Silence, wretch,” Patchouli does a better job at hers.

“I would also like you two to not be at your throats,” Meiling chimes in, gesturing half healed hands between us. “Please?”

I bury my forehead in my hand realizing how juvenile we’re being. Patchouli raises her book above a tinge of red on her cheeks.

“So what will you do, Regis?” Patchouli asks, using my name for a change. “Is there another happenstance you plan to use?”

“I can’t think of anything. The current roster is already packed with my first choices, and the likelihood that someone I could choose was in the exhibition matches is also high. I can’t slot in someone that lost at a different point in this tournament and call it a day,” I admit.

Patchouli shuts her book and looks at me to say, “If you’re going to have another exception I imagine Remi will want to hear of it. She’s fickle, but not entirely unfair. Of course, she might banish you on a whim.”

“Is that so, miss Patchouli? I don’t think the mistress would mind,” Meiling interjects.

“It’s Remi we’re talking about, what goes through her mind would take many more centuries of scrutiny to understand,” the witch protests. “She wanted to run a coliseum and now it is losing it’s legs. I doubt she’s content with half measures.”

“That’s… good to know,” I mete out. I’m a little taken aback from her shift in mood, but nonetheless I make sure to say, “Thanks for the tip, Patchouli.”

“Consider it a concession for my friend,” she touts. “I would never want my friend to be slighted from uncharacteristic expectations.”

Meiling steps by Patchouli’s chair and comments, “See? You can be nice.”

Patchouli looks up to the dopey sounding guard with disgust. For as rude as the words are, Meiling manages to say it so innocently that I can’t bring myself to consider it sarcasm. Sadly, Patchouli still kinda deserves sarcasm in my mind.

The doors break open, and Izayoi steps back into the room, dragging a cat and a princess from behind. One slides on their heels by the collar, the other is held in an arm lock that Kaguya herself should be envious of. That is, if she weren’t the one under Izayoi’s entrapment.

“Let me back out, the people wish to see me! Oh how wondrous it is to be cheered for!” Kaguya swoons, struggling against her captor. Looking again, it appears Izayoi had to tie Kaguya’s feet together to not let her get away.

As for Chen… she’s awake, at least, but it doesn’t look like she’s got much life in her body. Or… no, more like she just isn’t moving her body.

Izayoi drags the two back to our holdout in the opposite corner, tossing them down like sacks. Kaguya is disappointed to have been taken out of the spotlight. Jo’on claps her wrist while keeping the blanket over her figure, joking that it must have been hard work for Izayoi to take care of two children in such a masculine fashion. Jo’on is swiftly gifted a knife to pin the blanket to her chest.

“Next members,” Izayoi demands with some breath taken out of her.

“You’re gonna need to wait a few minutes, we’ve been discussing something else,” I inform.

Izayoi stakes her eyes into me, a hint of frustration peeking through her voice as she says, “If you continue to stand about and not perform your duties, then mayhaps Lady Patchouli would be better suited. You could instead stand outside of the mansion. And not come back.”

“Spare him your petty workaholic fixations, Sakuya,” Patchouli defends me. “Ibara left and there does not seem to be a suitable replacement this time. Take him to Remi to report.”

“Lady Patchouli?!” Izayoi gasps, stricken by the turncoat’s words. “Whatever has gotten into you?”

This strikes a serious chord with Patchouli, who rounds on Izayoi with an entire monotone dissertation, “Hm? Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose I’m beside myself with having to sit by this blubbering oaf and an entire crowd of people who would like nothing more than to commit violence on one another. If only there were someone with enough sway to tell Remi that this was all a terrible idea and that we’re lucky no significant damage has been done to the house or guests yet. Meiling, would you know any individual that might fit that criteria?”

Meiling staggers at her sudden inclusion in this war, and mutters, “Uh?! Uhm, n-no, Lady Patchouli.”

Izayoi tries to argue with Patchouli, but stammers in response, leaving her to fold a finger over her lips and collect her thoughts. “I will take him to Milady, Lady Patchouli,” Izayoi says, curtly bowing before rounding on me again. “Make haste.”

“R-right,” I falter at Izayoi’s insistence. I clear my throat and call, “Cirno, Meira, front and center!”

“Hi old guy,” Cirno merrily greets me from below my side.

“’bout damn time,” Meira stirs from meditation atop a table. She approaches with some agitation left in her eyes.

“Any questions from either of you?” I ping the two.

Meira raises her hand, stating, “Yeah I’ve got one. Can I kill her?”

Cirno puffs in anger at Meira’s cocksure attitude, and we all look at the fairy as I think through my answer.

Right when I go to speak, though, Izayoi answers for me, “No. You are not allowed to. Unless you wish to clean fairy dust out of the stonework. Fair warning that Cirno leaves a lot behind.”

“Hey!” Cirno puffs again. “Who are you calling messy!”

“The fairy that I need to clean off the walls more than the maids,” Izayoi dismissively retorts.

“Why do you ask that, Meira?” I get back on subject.

“I wasn’t expecting to get the chance to put her into the ground. I wanted to make the most of it,” Meira answers, arrogance emanating on full display.

“So you… know each other?”

Meira looks at Cirno with disdain as the fairy continues to complain to Izayoi. She answers, “In a sense. I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Alright. Any other questions?”

“None.”

“Alright. Izayoi, let’s get going,” I command of the maid.

“’Let’s?’ Do you mean alone? What of the next round’s fighters?” Izayoi picks out, holding the fairy’s errant fists at bay.

“I do mean alone. If you bring the next fighters along Scarlet isn’t going to wait for my explanation, and then it’s gonna be more awkward to tell her that the round after isn’t gonna be done.”

Izayoi considers this point, and relents, “I suppose she would do that.”

We start to walk, but then I remember something important, and kneel down next to to an immobile Chen, asking, “Hey, you good?”

She turns her eyes my way and seethes, “That bitch broke my neck when she was choking me. It’s gonna take a while to get up. So, no. Not good.”

“Well, have fun healing up,” I jest to the sour cat, falling back in behind Izayoi.

She leads me out of the room and through the halls. The red starts to really blend together between floor and walls, everything looking the same as we traipse through the floor. It takes several minutes to get to our destination. At first we follow the signs pointing to the arena but then brush past one that points to an open door. Looking through I can spot the arena about a floor below, stands with patrons line the outer edge, with this door being the exit.

We turn a corner shortly after, and take the first closed door. Izayoi puts a hand to the door, but stops for a moment.

“Best of luck,” she taunts before opening the door and ushering me in.

“Make sure to keep Meira in check,” I lie in return. I don’t have anything substantial, but wanted something to badger Izayoi with.

Inside I get a better view of the arena spectators. The place is now a cavalcade of the colors and shapes of Gensokyo. Horns, wings, tails, flashy clothing, everything that would usually signal inhuman individuals dots the stands. Not a drab colored work cloth in sight at this point, and that’s likely for the best. I am the most alien in this crowd.

“Well, don’t stand around, Sakuya, tell me what you need to,” Scarlet commands in my direction.

I’ve been lead to the platform Scarlet and Ran have been sitting at. There’s a door just behind her throne I hadn’t noticed through the mirror. I wonder why they bothered with this layout if neither of them even took a break. Hell, why did they bother with this layout when they had to break the geometry of the room? I can see the door I looked through high above and definitely not the same planar distance away.

“Miss Scarlet,” I greet as way of correcting her.

“Ah, that voice,” she mulls and glances sharp red eyes from aside her throne. “Regis. This is an odd visit. Is there a problem with the next contenders?” she asks, returning to her view of the arena and leaving only her white puffy hat for me to see.

Ran turns to look at me as well. She seems more on autopilot still, but is definitely listening to me.

“That is… no, not this next round. The one after that,” I explain. “Kasen has left, likely not to return before the match.”

I pause to wait for Scarlet’s reaction. She takes a few seconds to think on the information, leaning further into her chair and scratching the armrest. She then responds, “It may come as a surprise to hear that I was most looking forward to that match in particular. Someone of Ibara’s skill would be the best fit to push my gate guard to her limits, something she hasn’t done in a long time. And whose fault is it that isn’t coming to pass?”

Ran shifts her eyes over to Scarlet to argue, “Miss Scarlet, you cannot be so petty as to–“

I raise a hand for Ran to stop. She looks back and forth, her face shifting by arc minutes more than usual. This might be a first for her to try to rebuff someone on my behalf, but we need to let whatever random bullshit Scarlet decides come to pass. This isn’t an issue of legitimate responsibility, but of things not going in this child’s way.

“Indirectly, but it was my fault,” I state. “When pairing Ibuki and Ibara in the first round it left a personal affair open that I did not have knowledge of. I attempted to convince Ibara that I would help her attend to it after the tournament… sorry for volunteering you for that, Ran.”

Ran raises an eyebrow at the apology, not expecting me to have offered her service in the first place. She makes a short guffaw but I continue my report.

“Ibara changed her mind during her match with Reisen, instead deciding to not wait and taking Reisen with her,” I finish.

“And so you believe that Ibara is to blame for not giving her time to the tournament she signed up for?” Scarlet summarizes.

For the briefest of moments I contemplate saying yes. It would be so easy to, and in a sense true, but it’s also very dishonest to how I was assuring Kasen I would assist her. Does refusing assistance mean she can be treated as a neutral party outside of my jurisdiction? I don’t fully buy that.

“No, I don’t believe so,” I refute Scarlet’s claim. “Honestly I don’t believe anyone is truly at fault for the her leaving. They weighed their personal affairs above this event. I can sympathize with the behavior even if I don’t condone it.”

“How very lax of you,” Scarlet tells me, “but also how very droll. Someone should be punished for what goes awry. But, if you tell me the oni are not to be punished for going back on their promise of participation, then that only leaves one other person.”

“I realize,” I grunt.

“Mm, but what is a suitable punishment?” Scarlet wiles to herself, propping her head from the armrest. “I cannot say that you didn’t support your end of the deal, as the tournament is happening mostly successfully. A missing participant to the semifinals, though…”

I can feel my face heat up as I wait. Scarlet is probably taking her time to stress me out, but it’s working in her favor. Anything short of not allowing me to do my job is what she’s implying, but that might still be something less than fortunate.

She lifts her head and sticks out a finger to say, “I think I have something in mind. After today, you will not be allowed onto the mansion grounds for any reason. Consider it a punishment of letting those under your observation roam free that you will not be allowed the same.”

That… doesn’t sound immediately so bad. Ran squints at the declaration, though, so I must be forgetting something.

Oh, right. I wanted to talk to Patchouli about the weird spell I’m under… but she doesn’t go outside much, does she? That’s a blaring issue. I’m not sure I can argue better terms, though. In Scarlet’s eyes that might be a trivial sentence, something that doesn’t affect me in the slightest since I only need to speak with Meiling for another day or two as part of my work. I can’t necessarily let on my situation so frivolously.

“My, you’ve gone quiet, dear coordinator,” Scarlet chuckles. “You’ve received a greater punishment than I thought. If that is the way fate has decided it, then I will not change your sentence.”

“Milady, the human swordswoman and the ice fairy are prepared to enter,” Izayoi states from my side, standing against the back of the throne. That would explain how Scarlet knew when the rounds were going.

“Thank you, Sakuya. Regis, why don’t you stay and see this round in person? No sense in allowing you to miss this true oddity you’ve created,” Scarlet directs me.

“R-right,” I agree.

Izayoi disappears once more as Scarlet steps from her seat to the edge of the podium. She announces to the crowd with ample volume, “Welcome one and all! The next round will begin now!”

[Please wait warmly…]

---

I didn’t expect this section to take up enough space to edge out the fight until another post, but I also want to make sure that I stuffed this information in here and give the fight a good showing. The conundrum I find myself in.

[… Continued]

Scarlet spreads her arms and continues, “Entering the stage first: the scrappy ice fairy that is forever the underdog, Cirno!”

Cirno enters on the right through a door inlaid at the bottom of the stands. She’s taken off the cape and crown for this fight. I can catch a brief glimpse through the door and see the same red carpets as the rest of the floor, which is just as confounding as the rest of the doors in this building.

Cirno enters the net and draws one of the crystals making up her wings like a weapon, the icicle thinning and elongating until it takes the shape of her ice sword. This is news to me that she can reshape ice. Would that mean her magic treats ice like a liquid?

No, I believe I somewhat understand how her power works, but I shouldn’t bother focusing on it right now.

“Her opponent for the round: the last human in the running and willing to go the distance through hardheadedness, Meira!”

Meira enters from the opposing side, ignoring Scarlet’s backhanded comments and keeping her eyes trained on Cirno even before stepping under the netting. She glances between Cirno’s face and the ice sword. It’s clearly a mimicry of her own sword. The blade, the weaved handle, the crossguard, all of it is the same as her own. In Cirno’s mind, I’d bet it’s only happenstance that she used the most recent sword she’s seen as her reference, but there’s no way for Meira to know that. It’s a declaration that Cirno’s better to the point of beating her opponent with their weapon, and yet the taunt is accidental.

Meira draws her blade, readying her stance without a word. Cirno’s innocuous action has turned into an added taunt for whatever grudges Meira is holding.

“BEGIN!” Scarlet shouts through the room. Standing next to her makes it loud enough to mistake for using a megaphone.

Cirno and Meira waste no time on banter, each brandishing a blade and closing in slowly. Meira squints at Cirno’s ice blade in interest, perhaps knowing that isn’t Cirno’s usual fighting style. She may also be wondering why Cirno decided to use a blade instead of some crude blunt weapon of ice like before.

Their blades click against each other and Meira takes the first move, raising her blade a minimal amount to cleave down in a diagonal towards Cirno’s shoulder and hand. Cirno responds in time to whack the sword away from her and sidestep away. She releases a hand from the grip and throws her fist to Meira’s face.

A low volume click rings as Meira catches Cirno’s punch with her hook, and I see Cirno’s hand has a layer of ice for protection. She did bring in a blunt weapon, her hands are coated in ice as a layer of armor. The prior round she was fine with covering her hand entirely, leaving them unable to manipulate objects, but this round she’s changed her strategy to account for holding a sword. I think I understand what Meiling was working on with her, now. That was only the first exchange, though, we need to see more of what happens.

Meira attempts to bring her sword up from the side but is caught in Cirno’s crossguard. They are now locked together, staving off a hit that could cause notable injury to their opponent.

The two pry against their holds. Cirno torques Meira’s arm across her body, maybe going for a way to smash the side of her hand into Meira’s fist with some give. Meira fights against this by lifting her elbow to draw on her larger muscle mass, meanwhile she twists the blade under Cirno’s low guard. They’re acutely aware of how close to hitting the other they are, but that also means being hit in return.

A snap in motion occurs as Meira scrapes her sword under and connects with Cirno’s side and in the same movement Cirno drags Meira’s arm aside and punts the center of her face.

They back up from each other, Cirno checking for blood on her side and Meira checking the bridge of her nose. Sure enough, Meira finds a spot of blood dripping alongside the bruised area she probably doesn’t feel yet. Cirno… doesn’t appear to have taken any notable damage. There’s a cut in her dress, but no blood comes from it. A fairy can bleed, I may need to add. They and their bodily remains disappear into a fine dust when they die, but before then it’s easy to mistake them for any mortal being.

How did Cirno avoid getting cut?

Meira takes a moment to find her voice and tells Cirno, “I see somebody helped you. Using a sword for defense? You’re just full of surprises. I’m getting better, too.”

Meira crouches down and brings her sword back. She breathes in slowly. Cirno spectates the move, curious as to what Meira is planning. Honestly, I am, too.

Meira launches forward, sword in line with Cirno’s head. The speed is nothing new for today, slow enough that I can barely see her. Where Youmu was a bullet, Meira is an arrow. Still barely any time to react from the range she’s at, though. Cirno shows that she’s barely capable of keeping up.

She raises her sword in the same instant that Meira is upon her, their swords clicking together from impact. They each go flying, Cirno a few paces to her side, matching her steps to the imparted velocity, Meira blitzes out to the netting. Meira impacts, her hook tearing through numerous rungs of the rope before arching her fingers from the grip on her sword. The strain rips her hand from the weapon but she reflexively falls from the net to grab it again.

With further show of instinct she lands on her feet, but one thing about this exchange is made clear: she’s not fighting with the same refinement that she took against Youmu. She builds up power to launch at Cirno, repeating the process.

Scarlet looks on nonplussed by the spectacle. “She seems to have lost herself,” she comments together with the clang of the swords happening over and over. “Her last match was far more impressive than this farce. She looks more like a wild beast mocking the technique used against her.”

“Truly,” Ran agrees with the vampire. “Mayhaps it’s a showing of her experience protecting villagers from mere chaff.”

“It’s more that she’s under some kind of influence,” I inform Ran. “I hope Cirno can win so that Meira will go and seek some kind of treatment.”

“Why ever would she do so?”

“Because she agreed to so long as I didn’t kick her out, is the short of it.”

“You have faith in the fairy?” Scarlet asks. “She’s so far below me to the point of being comedic relief. It was beautiful irony to see her defeat that lout of a tengu, but I don’t imagine her standing against a serious opponent.”

“Well… let’s hope my faith isn’t misplaced.”

“Dangerous words in this realm, dear researcher,” Scarlet notes.

Meira continues her assault, launching across the arena back and forth, gaining speed and better controlling it each time. Cirno holds on, but not by much, only raising a guard just before it’s needed. Neither side is gaining momentum from their trades, only managing to drive the other off. Cirno gets a glint in her eyes, that moment when she has some breakthrough of an idea that tends to backfire.

She keeps her sword raised in defense, but places her offhand to the back of the blade, extra bracing on her block. Meira flies again, colliding her sword into Cirno’s, but this time she falls to the ground with the fairy in tow. They slam down dramatically, losing grips on their swords which scatter away as one.

The blades slide past Meira, who’s quicker to her feet. She scrambles for hers as Cirno’s getting up. When she picks it up, though, she finds the ice sword comes with it. Cirno’s created a block of ice at the end of Meira’s sword stemming from the original ice sword jutting out. While this doesn’t necessarily neuter Meira’s sword as a weapon, I don’t think Meira is the right build to effectively swing a sledgehammer as her weapon of choice.

Scarlet sniffs with a bit of mirth at the ballsy play, watching Cirno as she stands to a similar stance that Jo’on used. Cirno knew she’d lose her sword in the process, but since she was only using it to block Meira’s own sword, that might have been by design.

Meira gets up and tosses the bulky sword amalgam at Cirno in frustration, the fairy dodging aside the projectile. “You think this changes anything? You’re not beating me again!” Meira then states, near manically.

She charges at Cirno, leading with her hook as if it were meant to swing. Cirno deflects it while trying to get in a quick jab. Meira swipes it away with her own block. They go back and forth, dancing between attack and defense, their blood running hotter by the second. Cirno stands her ground against the assault, making sure to not be driven back a single step.

Wait. Again? As in, they’ve fought before and Meira lost? That would explain that bit of history, but why would Meira be so mad about losing one figh–

Cirno is a fairy. A fairy is stereotypically weaker than a trained human. Meira loses to Cirno. Ersatz, Cirno is stronger than a trained human or Meira is a poorly trained human who could lose to a fairy. It’s easy to assume the latter given Cirno’s unfortunate personality.

Man, that ‘fortune’ word has been coming up a lot, lately.

Cirno attempts to take the initiative and punch before the next chance Meira has to bring down her hook. Meira was expecting this, though, as she deflects Cirno’s fist just the same but also steps into Cirno’s guard. Cirno attempts to retreat from the position, her left hand not in the right position to hit back, but Meira takes the opportunity to lower her hook before swinging, snagging Cirno’s chest before she can get away.

Cirno takes a couple uneasy steps back before balancing. She pats the tear along the front of her dress to ensure that there is once again no blood drawn.

“I thought I felt something earlier,” Meira determines. “You’re wearing armor.”

Cirno grits her teeth, eyes widening at the accusation. There isn’t anything in the rules to stop someone from wearing armor, as only the hits are counted for points, so there must be some other reason Cirno was trying to hide it.

Could that have been a suggestion from Meiling? Something to make sure Meira wouldn’t tear Cirno down in the first minute until she’s disarmed? That doesn’t seem to have deterred Meira a whole lot. I underestimated how quick she is with that hook, but I should’ve seen that coming given how it literally replaces a hand.

Cirno grabs another one of her wing crystals, the sixth one not having been replaced after making the sword, and forms it into a block around her hand much like an oversized boxing glove. Now that she’s been found out, she decides to rush in for the first damaging hit. Meira weaves out of the way as Cirno gets used to the extra weight and stabs her shoulder on the pass. She jerks her hook back, ripping some of Cirno’s dress but more importantly a piece of the ice that was covering her. It had been adhered directly to her skin, and as such some skin came with it. Cirno trips on the ground and groans at the pain, a layer of blood surfacing from the wound she can’t hold onto with the glove.

Meira has drawn first blood, and her eyes are that of a predator’s.

“There we are,” Scarlet states, grinning wide.

Meira descends on the weakened combatant, aiming to strip more of her protection like bark from a tree. Cirno takes a swing with her glove as she’s rising but Meira predicts the move and drops down to swipe at Cirno’s shin. Another piece of ice skids across the stone, pale skin coupled to it. The ice’s transparency made it impossible to see before, but now that we know Cirno applied a layer of it to parts of her body, it’s obvious where they would be.

Meira patiently chips away at Cirno, disassembling the fairy piece by piece. With each pass Cirno becomes further pained and exasperated, trying to hit Meira at all through her pain. With each pass also, the number of blood red spots on her body increases, another place that the armor is stripped and several layers of skin with it. It reaches a breaking point as Meira pushes Cirno’s glove out of the way to tug at the side of her chest. Cirno grabs Meira’s arm to force the hook back towards herself, releasing the play and thus her, but Meira presses a leg into her gut to gain needed leverage.

It’s a disquieting feeling to hear Cirno scream and roar in pain as her breastplate is pried off, the effort in no way quick.

“Should we stop this?” I ask of the two Youkai next to me. They do not respond to the question, the answer readily apparent.

Meira kicks Cirno a distance away, the large piece of ice crashing on the floor, shattering like glass. Cirno drops to the ground like a corpse, the top of her dress torn to reveal a plain of red across her chest. Her face twists in pain as she shambles back to her feet. Her breath has become haggard as she’s been losing the ability to ignore the torn skin and blood loss about her body. While her face is nearly pristine, that’s the only thing left that way and her expression reflects that.

“Not what you thought it was, you little shit?” Meira taunts with the same frown she’s worn this whole time. “You won’t win if you let just that get to you. I haven’t even given you any deep cuts.”

“How much is left of that one?” Ran openly ponders to us.

Cirno raises her fists again, waving for Meira to come at her. Meira takes the signal to pounce, putting all of her might into a swing directed at Cirno’s collar.

My foot comes forward subconsciously. Even despite knowing full well that Cirno can neither die nor cares when she dies, it’s rough to see her in pain like this. The fact that the fire hasn’t left her eyes only tells me she’s willing to take more of a beating.

Cirno looks fierce as she raises her lighter hand into the path of the hook, letting the implement sink through her palm and splinter off the armor through the back. It continues into her collar, but she remains standing. Meira tries to force herself back before Cirno can counterattack, but Cirno’s hand comes with her, the hook stuck.

No… no, not just stuck. Meira’s hook has been frozen into Cirno’s hand, the ice covering it so thick the weapon can no longer cut or move. In the time Meira assesses the trouble she’s found herself in, Cirno gains a second wind, knocking Meira’s temple with her ice glove. Meira staggers from the impact, dragging Cirno along with her before dropping to a knee. Cirno reels back for a second hit, stumbling to the side as Meira swings a fist into her. As much as Meira punches, though, she can’t stop Cirno from bringing her hand of ice, bigger than a hammer, into her head.

Now with an injured nose and blood dripping from the side of her head, Meira doesn’t seem to be in the dominant position.

Cirno doesn’t stop, a toothy scowl warping her otherwise friendly demeanor. She bears down her hand again. And again. And again. Meira is left to fend off the damage with a human hand and whatever magical strength she was gifted. It’s not enough to stop an effective club striking her head.

“Scarlet, you should stop this,” I tell the head of ceremonies.

“You command me?” she quips back.

“Does now look like the time? Meira’s gonna fucking die.” I force myself to not raise my voice.

“I disagree with stopping those two. Perhaps you would dare step in against my wishes?” Scarlet rounds on me with her demonic eyes, red as the blood in the arena.

[x] Stop the fight, consequences be damned.

[x] Trust Cirno to not go too far in her frenzy.

[x] Convince Scarlet in some other way that it’s dangerous to let the round go on. (Write-in)

---

Maybe I listen to a little too much metal. Maybe I don’t listen to enough. Also, don’t think that the write-in needs to be about convincing Remilia, I just think it would be the most in situation here to do so.

[x] Trust Cirno to not go too far in her frenzy.

While I don’t want to let it be known, Scarlet’s taunt does get under my skin. Whether she’s challenging me or really believes that I’m in the wrong, I don’t know. I stand back, letting things play out as they may, against my better judgments.

Cirno continues to go wild, dropping her leaden arm down on Meira. Once, twice, again and again she raises the block of ice, now splattered with Meira’s blood, and maybe some of her own from muscles rioting against their usage in the open air. Meira’s face and hair are covered in her own draining life. It’s easy to loose sight that this is a fairy and a human taking what should be showmanship of their martial prowess to be a scenario of dog eat dog. The sight is too much for me, but I keep watching out of obligation.

Cirno’s madness doesn’t seem to wither even as she tires. I’m beginning to think I made a mistake standing down.

Before I change my course of action, someone slips through the net where Meira cut it, and in the same breath puts themselves in front of Cirno’s club. The weapon swings down to Meira’s limp form, but the third party catches it with a grip tight enough to crack the ice. In one moment, Cirno was brutalizing her opponent, but now she gores Meiling with her eyes.

It takes a heartbeat for everyone in the room to realize that Meiling’s intervened, and that she doesn’t seem angry, or really showing any emotion for that matter. She stares Cirno down, waiting for the fairy to come to her senses.

Cirno, for what sense she can have with half of her skin ripped off, motionlessly stares at the gate guard. She does at some point become cognizant of what she’s looking at, and her face relaxes when she does. Now that she doesn’t feel a burst of pain, bloodlust, or a mixture therein, Cirno can’t stay on her feet. She falls to her knees, Meiling lowering her steel grip on the club to keep the fairy upright.

“Meiling, whatever are you doing?” Scarlet questions her subordinate. She steps up from her throne to stare in line with the interruption. “Did anyone ask for you to step in?”

“No, mistress,” Meiling responds.

Scarlet turns her head a bit. “And you know that I would consider that to be outside of the rules for this game?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Then what do you think you’re doing?!” Scarlet outbursts with a stomp.

Meiling releases her grip on Cirno’s arm, shavings of ice coming out with her fingers. “I couldn’t let someone like Cirno go that far. She’s a fairy, not a killer.”

Scarlet isn’t amused with the answer. I can see her patience running thinner by the second. She must have been fully expecting me to cause this debacle, not one of her own.

Cirno ignores Meiling and Scarlet, retreating into herself. She doesn’t have energy left to do anything but look with sullen eyes at her opponent, tethered by their arms, and intones the word, “Kill?” I may be the only one to notice Cirno’s grief, though.

Everyone else in the room is focused on Scarlet as she berates her servant, “What foolishness has taken you over? You’re interrupting the tournament that I set forth. Do not think that I will let this go so readily.”

“Do what you will,” Meiling stalwartly holds. “I only wanted to make sure no one died.”

“She wouldn’t have died, you idiot!” Scarlet shouts back. “In fact, she–“

A clatter resounds as Cirno is brought to her stomach. Meira is somehow still conscious after being beaten into submission. A collective gasp is released from the room as Meira grapples Cirno. Cirno is choking on her own arm as Meira wrapped the limb around her neck. Using the hook still embedded in Cirno’s hand, Meira gets extra leverage to wrench back and tighten the hold.

I hear Scarlet scoff at the display, this being exactly what she was eluding to. In the same thought, Meiling isn’t intervening out of shock. She only came in to stop Cirno from killing Meira, but now that things have turned it’s hard for her to believe that the person she was saving might not have been in danger. Thinking on it further, Ran wouldn’t hold still if a village resident was in serious peril. At least, that’s what I choose to believe.

Meira has Cirno in a sleeper hold, and if left as is she will incapacitate Cirno without resistance. Meira doesn’t take her turnabout gracefully, however. She uses her open arm to grab Cirno’s chin and forces the fairy’s neck to twist. The motion is so quick it barely registers as happening. Cirno simply stops existing in the space next to Meira, a shimmering dust exploding around the ring. Cirno’s dead, and while that is no more than an annoyance to a fairy, it’s a problem for everyone here.

The room is speechless. Nobody expected this turn of events.

I’m not sure what happens next, either. The opponent has been killed… well, ‘popped’ as the fairies like to describe for themselves. Just before that it was interrupted by an outside contender, stopping a display of brutality that went far beyond what the match calls for.

I glance to Scarlet, her brows dipped in vicious frustration. She points to the two and complains, “All of you are ruining this event! You both are hereby banned from this tournament!”

I… can’t say that is what I was expecting.

Ran is quick on the followup, noting, “Miss Scarlet, that would only leave–“

“I don’t care! I want that miscreant human out of my sight! Meiling, we will talk later!”

Before anyone else has the chance to argue, Scarlet stomps out behind her throne, frustrated beyond words. She slams the door on the way out and leaves a horrible silence in the room afterwards. It’s soon replaced by the confused murmurs of the crowd to one another.

Ran steps forward to address the spectators, “It appears there will be an unpredicated closing of events at this time. Thank you for your attendance and may you see yourself out at your convenience.”

Amidst the awkward situation Ran keeps her eyes fixed on Meiling and Meira. I look over as well to try and understand why. Meiling is helping Meira to her feet. She does, but also notes the blood drenching her face and hair, trying to rub some of it off. Where the blood comes off there are visible dark spots. Not like an injury or a bruise, more like the tone of her skin changed. Looking closer, I see the same on Meira’s hand, a darker skin tone than I remember her having.

Ran steps away behind the throne, the sight maybe confirming something for her. She breaks open the door to some complaint from the object and steps into the halls.

I follow Ran as she carries herself around the twisting corners and ask, “What are you up to, Ran? Shouldn’t you make sure nothing else happens with that crowd of Youkai?” She doesn’t reply, instead she silently steps in a direction I don’t recognize. I’m unsure when she could have learned the layout of the mansion, but she beelines for a nearby door.

She’s found one of the doors that leads into the arena, specifically one of the two used by the fighters.

She tosses out several paper dolls to cut through the rope net and passes under the clearing. Meiling is carrying Meira out by the shoulder but she stops as Ran approaches. Ran swats a hand against Meira’s forehead, showing another patch of dark skin under the drying blood. Meira’s open arm swats in pursuit of Ran’s, though the exhaustion has properly set in making it easy for Ran to catch and pull Meira from her support.

“This fool will hence be under Yakumo jurisdiction. Relinquish her,” Ran commands Meiling.

Meiling gets defensive over the sudden proclamation, retorting, “What?! You cannot be wanting to punish her for the end of the match!”

“No, you buffoon, this is a serious matter that needs to be addressed as soon as possible,” Ran expedites her explanations. She strips Meira away as Meiling attempts to keep up with the conversation.

Meiling complies, but follows us out in suspicion of Ran’s clamminess.

We make our way out to the back of the mansion, where no one passes as they leave, before Ran tosses Meira to the grass. I scold the action but she doesn’t listen to a word and continues with what she’s doing. Paper dolls loose from her sleeve to circle Meira as she struggles to sit up. Some sort of magic reacts on the perimeter, glowing a faint light around the woman. What effect this has I couldn’t say.

“Dancer, show yourself before I force you to do so,” Ran commands of the air.

Meiling and I wait in anticipation for what Ran will do next, expecting some vile force to show itself at her demand. The cooling air of a late August night doesn’t reply. Meira gives us a questioning look, begging to be informed of why Ran just captured her.

I, also, wish to know and so I ask, “Ran, are you expecting someone at this point?”

“Silence, Regis,” Ran dismisses, tossing another doll at the circle. For an instant I feel like I can see some rectangular form appear behind Meira. Meira herself seems to feel this and whips her head around to find the source.

“The hell was that?!” I exclaim. “You can’t tell me I didn’t just see that.”

“Regis,” Ran outputs without looking back, “this is Yakumo business, it would be preferable if you, and miss Hong, for that matter, would abscond.”

“I will not,” Meiling holds. She’s already defied her boss tonight, what’s another high powered Youkai? “I also think that Meira deserves to know what you are doing.”

“She is merely bystander to greater powers. It is best if none of you were involved.” Ran shows some cracks in her defenses as she could have just as easily said no instead of explaining herself.

“Do you think that Meira feels bystander right now?” I pick at her argument gesturing to Meira in the magic circle. Meira doesn’t look happy that I’m shoving words in her mouth, but she’ll get over it. “Don’t let me be the one to tell you about what’s right, though.”

“Performing one’s duty with discretion is right.” She sniffs quietly enough that she passes it off for not happening. “Though, for the three of you it may not be impactful to distribute such information. If you must desperately know, Meira is under the influence of the hidden god, Matara Okina.”

“Matara? She caused that incident a year or two ago, didn’t she?” Meiling recollects

The words sit with me for a second, next causing me to twitch back. “A god? A god strong enough to cause an incident? Ran, what are you doing? What would you do if she actually showed up? Politely ask her to leave?”

“Do not dare take such a tone to my decisions,” Ran bites, staring into my soul. “And it is not the goddess herself, but her subordinates that are the cause of this. They act on Matara’s behalf, but even they do not know the motivations of their god.”

Meiling inputs to the discussion, “So you would have asked them to leave if they came?”

“Well… that is… yes, I would have politely asked them to cease their influence on this human.”

“Are they the type to listen to that request?” I toss Ran a bone.

Ran stays quiet. Ran then looks away.

“Oi,” I bicker.

“Mind telling what happens to me, too?” Meira announces herself. “You know, being trapped in whatever spooky thing you put down.”

“You should probably watch yourself after killing Cirno,” I mention. “The whole tournament’s been stopped because of that.”

“She went berserk, what do you want me to say?”

Ran motions to pinch the bridge of her nose, but stops herself, if only barely. “Swordswoman, innate life energy is currently being brought to a higher energy than your body is accustomed to. Please note that does not necessarily mean that your magic power has increased, as that would be amplifying it, rather your energy works more efficiently. Think of burning coal as opposed to burning wood.”

“Higher energy and amplification…” I inflect. “Are you saying that magic works akin to light waves?”

“Waves, Regis. Not electromagnetic. There are several extra dimensions to magic, but the most baseline understanding can be a wave.”

“Not following, here,” Meira groans, crossing her legs and checking her hand. She presents the limb, very obviously a different skin tone than she had at the beginning of the day, and points to it with her hook. Some ice is still left on the hook from her fight, interestingly.

“A servant of Matara is causing your magic to burn your body inside out. A side effect of your spiritual energy being pitiful at a baseline,” Ran makes no effort to show tact at this point. “You are, however, a village human, and thus off limits to such treatment.”

“Oh, fooled me then. I feel so safe here, now,” Meira sneers. “Well, keep going, I guess?”

Meiling questions again, “Is it safe for you to keep going? What does keep going mean?”

“At the moment, nothing. That spell was the attempt. Now alternate methods will need to be considered,” Ran explains.

“Before that, mind letting me out of this cage?” Meira suggests. Ran… kindly… flicks a finger toward herself, causing a force to pulse into Meira, skidding her on the green.

“You were never trapped. That was the set range the spell activates from the user.” Ran turns back to Meiling and continues, “Miss Hong, what do you know about the sexagenary cycle?”

“The what?” Meiling replies.

“From there, then.”

Ran goes over some basics about the natural cycle of the world. Three heavenly lights, four seasons, five elements, making up a cycle of sixty. The sixty part isn’t important in this case, what is important is that every living thing has an affinity for these different aspects.

“So some affinity is being invoked in Meira by this god’s servant?” I infer. “That’s the reason you’re telling us this, isn’t it?”

Ran nods and finishes her explanation, “Correct. The problem is that my methods are not enough to draw out life energy of a specific temperament, thus the servant is not brought to this plane. Hong may have a chance of doing so, if we were to find the aspect that this human is drawing on.”

“So how do I try each of the twelve choices?” Meiling asks, standing ready.

“Four choices. Matara effects seasons, both in the physical and spiritual senses. Elements and lights are irrelevant,” Ran elaborates. “It is not recommended to ‘try’ each season, however. If Matara’s servant has taken to Meira, they will retaliate when a concerted effort strikes.”

“Wait, back up, what do you mean strike?” Meira points out.

Ran ignores the question. “A planned effort should be undertaken only after you learn Meira’s season.”

“But would enough force work?” I query. “You were able to make something appear for a split second, despite not knowing.”

“By technicality, yes. Hong by herself wouldn’t be able to accrue such power. You ask because you have another idea, I assume.”

“Damn right I do. We figure out Meira’s season or get extra firepower, so why don’t we…”

[x] Go ask Cirno. She once had a tan she couldn’t explain, despite normally hating the heat.

[x] Find Kasen again. By the time we find her she’ll probably be done with her personal affairs.

[x] Let’s think of another solution. (Write-in)

---

What is this? Plot progression is finally happening? Impossible. There needs to be another twenty fights before the end of this chapter, haven’t met my quota on shonen tournament arcs, yet.

[x] Find Kasen again. By the time we find her she’ll probably be done with her personal affairs.

“… Go find Kasen,” I direct. “It won’t be that hard, I imagine.”

“I don’t want to ask why you think so,” Meiling adds.

“And I’m glad you didn’t ask,” I whim. “Really it’s because Kasen should be done with what she’s up to. She made a very dramatic show of leaving the mansion, so I’m sure she had a plan to act on.”

Ran follows up on my commentary, “If you are confident in that assertion, then what direction is miss Ibara in?” Her intonation, as slight as it is, tells me she’s only asking to poke holes in my confidence. If only I were able to retort in some way.

“Pick a direction Meiling. I’m sure you’re like a bloodhound for people like that hermit,” Meira suggests from her seat on the grass. Is she too tired to stand, still?

“I know it’s a joke against servants of my mistress, but I’m not a hound. Not like Sakuya,” Meiling mutters.

“Woof,” a voice like a cold nail stabs into us. The voice comes from Izayoi, who steps out from behind Meiling. It’s safe to assume she’s not happy being equated to a dog. She steps away from us, commenting, “Our mistress is very disgruntled, Meiling. So much so that she can’t leave the mansion to deliver your punishment.”

Meiling realizes the implications but tries to play the fool, “Oh, then I’ll… see the mistress after I return. Tanner asked me to help with treating Meira’s sickness, so I need to go for now.”

I didn’t actually ask you, but you’re also not wrong that we need you. I only went with the flow of things since you helped earlier. I’ll keep quiet about that fact, though.

“I’m not sick, stop talking like that!” Meira whinges from below like a child.

“Enough,” Izayoi demands of our banter. She points across the line of us, stating, “Each of you are due for punishment. That you all are here is fortunate for me.”

“For you?” I repeat her words.

“Yes, as Milady is in no way to deliver just desserts.” Izayoi flashes a set of knives to her hands while also having a cascade of them appear behind her. “I will.”

The knives shoot all at once, like a rain of arrows, in our direction. A distance of no more that a couple meters gives Ran just enough time to stand in front of me, shielding my body from the knives. Once they pass I can see that she deflected a majority of them with paper dolls, the edge of her dress frayed from those she missed. Meiling did similar for Meira, blocking many blades with her arm, but that doesn’t stop the sharp projectiles from leaving cuts all over the two of them.

Her knives are stuck in the grass and as a far out as the garden walls. The area looks as if an explosion of shrapnel directly in our faces.

“Izayoi what the hell are you doing?!” I shout at the madwoman.

“Showing you all that there are repercussions to not fulfilling your role to the devil,” she announces.

Ran wastes no time and counterattacks, throwing her shield of paper dolls to try and bind Izayoi. The maid blips out of existence and leaves behind another barrage of blades. This time we all dodge out of the way, Meiling dragging Meira and Ran embracing me.

“Let me go, dammit! I could have done that myself!” Meira continues to complain to her guardian.

“Izayoi, hurting us won’t accomplish anything! It’s a meaningless punishment!” I beggar the air around us.

Our heads turn and turn to find Izayoi, now on the prowl. Whether she’s serious about grievously harming us or not is up to debate, but now isn’t the time to ask. Ran holds me close, a hint of sweat and nervousness crosses her brow. She’s both enfeebled and protecting me, not a state to be combating someone with Izayoi’s renown.

An instant of weight sits and leaves my shoulders in under a second. I feel a cold and sharp pain inside my collarbone while I’m interpreting what just happened. I can’t contain a groan, my teeth clenching tight enough to crack. The pain prevents me from turning my head to inspect, but a small stream of blood dripping onto Ran’s shoulder tells me what I need to know. Izayoi just stopped time to stab me. Looks like she’s able to do that after all.

She shouldn’t know about my strange healing, but that would mean she thinks I’m still an average human. An average human wouldn’t be able to brush off this wound. She wants to send me straight to Eientei.

Ran flies next to Meiling while treating me, securing the foreign object in my neck with several paper dolls. The pain is near blinding. Unlike when my entire shoulder was blown off, every nerve in my body is still intact, so I feel every inch of steel just aside my neck. I’m unsure if the knife has penetrated my airway or not, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to test.

We land, but every bit of movement only subdues me further. I don’t feel like I’m passing out, but that seems more like a curse than a blessing. I reach my opposing arm to the blade without thinking but Ran is careful to stop my base instincts from kicking in. She uses a few dozen more dolls to make a tourniquet, preventing most of the movement. Note, not all movement.

“The mouthy one is finally quiet,” Izayoi says from a distance, casually taking a stone bench on the garden path. She points a knife at Meira and asks, “What is happening to the violent one?”

“Sakuya enough of this!” Meiling shouts at her compatriot. “Meira is dying and we need to fix her now!”

Izayoi nods in understanding. “I see, and is she in critical condition now?” She turns to Ran for confirmation.

Ran holds her tongue for a second until she decides to explain, “Not yet, but soon.”

Izayoi nods again and stands up to say, “Then her punishment seems obvious enough.”

She appears in front of Ran again, swinging a knife down at me. Ran is fast enough to deflect the attack and bash Izayoi’s head, tossing the maid from her feet. We retreat into the air a distance as Izayoi reappears standing in the open grass. She tries to scratch a paper doll off her head to no purchase. The doll glows a bright blue, obscuring Izayoi’s vision. She brings a knife to her forehead to shave it off, but is interrupted by Meiling kicking her from behind.

The knife she was holding rolls away into the grass while Izayoi is stretched on the ground. The bright blue glow intensifies revealing Chen’s entry above Izayoi, claws outstretched and blue and red energy balls snapping inwards. Izayoi pops away, leaving Chen to bury her claws into the soil. Chen stands upright, spectating her surroundings.

She cracks her neck, assuring that it’s attached correctly after her fight with Kaguya. “I didn’t think there was more fighting tonight,” she jokes.

The sound of an explosion echoes from somewhere. It was definitely nowhere nearby, so it couldn’t be from the fight here. Ran looks over to the source and comments, “Most likely direction located.”

“What?” I ask as she shoves me into Meiling stamping a paper doll to my chest on top of the still functioning luck charms with the motion.

“Ibara will need explanation of how to help this Meira human. Regis has a sufficient understanding. Izayoi will be held off in the meantime,” Ran explains to Meiling’s bafflement.

A burst of movement occurs as Ran raises her sleeve to blast another set of paper dolls above us, Izayoi can be seen above them after they disperse. Chen intercepts the flying Maid to chain the assault.

Ran eyes up Meiling before swatting her hand and commenting, “Your task is clear. The location is clear, proceed.”

Meiling gets the message and grabs me by my waist, tosses Meira over her shoulder, and flies with all due haste towards the forest. Meira continues to complain about this and that as we retreat. I only wonder if Ran and Chen will be enough to stop Izayoi. Hopefully they can convince her to settle things with a danmaku match instead…

Another explosion sounds, and then another to follow that. Where they originate is obvious, but their source less so. We end up above the forest of magic, my view being only directly to the ground makes it easy to spot the myriad glowing flora of the area. If Ibuki and Kasen are fighting out there I wonder how that might affect the forest.

More importantly, would we need to stop them from fighting if they are? We need Kasen for her hermetic arts, but she needs to agree to help us for little more than good faith and virtue. She didn’t seem to care about either of those when she was stepping away from the tournament.

Another explosion sounds, very close this time. Meiling stops flying forwards. My momentum carries me into a swing that exacerbates the pain from the god damn knife in my neck. I do everything in my power to not flex the area. It doesn’t stop it from happening but does fool me into thinking that I’m able to do something for the pain.

We lower to the ground, a sure sign we’re close enough to worry about what we’re stepping into. Meiling gives me a moment to find my footing before letting go. Standing upright nearly tips me over, but I catch myself well enough. She carries Meira even as we walk, for whatever reason. Least to say that Meira is nothing but complaints over her position on Meiling’s shoulder.

We walk over to some light shining in the trees to find the dark and gloomy magic forest has a wide opening in the canopy. And given the damages, it’s new. Many trees have fallen over, some with holes taken out of them, others torn straight in half, one even looks to have been taken out of the ground by the roots. I’m beginning to think we might be on the right track. That or a very localized natural disaster occurred.

… You know, that isn’t even impossible in Gensokyo, now that I think of it.

“Ah!” a familiar voice greets us from one edge of the clearing. “What are you all doing here?!”

Reisen hops across the debris in the clearing, making her way over to us. She glances back up before slipping and falling over dramatically. She sits up with an arm over a log while taking stock of us. She’s been run ragged, if the folds and creases in her large ears are anything to go by.

“Oh my gods what happened to you?!” she panics. “Tanner, you’re injured again! Meira, how did you get a tan?!”

“Reisen, where did Kasen go?” Meiling ignores the rabbit’s questions to ask one of our own. She crouches down to eye level with Reisen, holding a keen stare to emphasize the weight of the situation.

“Uh, well… somewhere?” Reisen answers poorly, averting her eyes.

“This is serious, Reisen,” I push. Thankfully nothing seems to push into my airway.

Reisen scrunches up her face, and ears, as she admits, “I don’t know! They started fighting as soon as Suika appeared and have been tearing up the forest for the last ten minutes or so now. It started here, obviously, but they could be anywhere, which is really freaking me out, by the way!”

Damnit, so we do need to stop them from fighting. Hypothetically if we were to wait for them to be finished Kasen might be defeated, out of commission, or simply too worn out to help. That isn’t even to address the elephant in the room of how long they might fight or what else could happen in the meantime.

“Meiling, we’ll have to intervene in some way. There’s a lot of factors to those two fighting, all of which may reflect poorly on our situation,” I assert.

Meiling and Reisen look back at me, trepidation plastered to their faces. “You do know what you’re asking for, yes?” Meiling asks.

“I realize,” I stand my ground, “but if Kasen goes down in their fight we’re shit outta luck.”

“That ain’t even to talk about the racket they’re making,” Meira points out. “Shrine maiden’s probably on her way as we speak. This is sorta nextdoor, you know.”

A dark figure flies in through the trees and stops at the center of the carnage. A witch on a broom, which for Gensokyo translates to Marisa. She spots our group, colorful as we are, sitting on the edge of the treeline. She’s lost her iconic white apron, herself, making her an all black magician right now.

“What the hell is happening here?” she asks us on approach, hopping from the broom onto a log. “I miss some kind of party? I know you all were doing some martial arts thing but you look like someone forgot to declare a danmaku match. Even the old man’s hurt again.”

Is that how danmaku matches work? I suppose that tracks, given Izayoi uses her knives for danmaku normally.

“Hi, Marisa,” Reisen greets the new arrival from below, leaning against her log, “can you help us find our oni and hermit? We’ve misplaced ours and they’re going at it.”

Marisa leans down and prods Reisen with the end of her broom, commenting, “Going at it doesn’t quite cut it. I was having a peaceful session of potion brewing when I thought the sun bird herself came upstairs. I’m lucky my house didn’t burn down with my apron.”

“You’re lucky for that on a good day,” Reisen notes unhappily amidst Marisa’s continued prodding.

“Well, can’t deny that,” Marisa chuckles to herself. “Oni and a hermit, though? Did that weird Taoist piss Suika off? Odd pair that would be.”

“No, it was Ibuki and Kasen,” I inform, brushing my hand to wave away any thought of that aptly named ‘wicked hermit.’

Marisa changes her tune, replying, “Really now? Can’t say I’m surprised to hear Kasen pissed someone off, but Suika’s a tall order even for her.”

“Why are you all still dawdling?” another voice announces herself. We turn our views to a blonde girl revealing herself from behind the trees. A miniature person floats by her side. No, not a person, this must be the puppeteer Alice Margatroid and her doll. “You need to go after the two of them before they ruin the forest’s magic.”

She steps out into our view in the crater, adorned in a blue dress with extreme amounts of embroidery. The same applies for her long blonde haired doll.

“Yo, Alice!” Marisa merrily greets. “The fighting interrupt you from playing with your dolls?”

Alice glares at the merry witch but doesn’t bother to retort, she instead expands on what she just said to the rest of us, “If the two people fighting cause more openings in the trees like this one, the forest miasma will escape into the open air of Gensokyo. I hope I don’t need to explain to you all why that is a bad thing.”

“Hope you didn’t come here just to tell us that this is just shy of an incident, Alice,” Marisa bites at the dollmaker.

“We were going to try and stop them, too,” Meiling assents. She must be happy to have more people to help out. Meira and I wouldn’t be able to do anything in the first place.

“Well, as it just so happens, Marisa,” Alice bites back at the witch, stepping over to the log she’s on to gain the height advantage, “I already have a section of dolls monitoring where the fighting is happening in the forest. They’ve gotten to the Southern tip. I imagine Rinnosuke’s feeling shaken up right about now.”

“So we catch them as they take the fight back North, assuming they don’t want to leave the ground,” Marisa concludes, clapping her hands together on the broom.

They turn to fly off, but I catch them by interjecting, “Wait, hang on! What do you plan to do when you catch up to them?”

Marisa and Alice exchange a glance before Marisa turns back says, “Fight them in danmaku? Seems obvious to me.”

“You really want to duel two people in the middle of a fight? Two very strong people?” I can’t even begin to describe how wrong that sounds.

“I mean, if you say it like that…” Marisa concedes, crossing her arms to ponder the circumstance. She points back to me and asks, “You gonna tell me you have something in mind instead?”

Well…

[x] Use a rational argument? Bribe them? Promise booze? Whatever might work along those lines.

[x] Jump one of them. If we can subdue one quickly the other doesn’t have a reason to fight us. Hopefully.

[x] I can be pretty clever sometimes! (Write-in)

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Yes I’m proud of the dog of the devil joke, sue me. I’m still debating on how exactly to tie this all up, but I’m definitely close.