Thread 18
>>144306 Thread 19
>>148938 Thread 20
>>156003 In which justice is... INEVITABLE.
[X] Kirisame’s Shop – intercept Youmu first.
[X] Cirno
[X] DOUK
“Aye-Aye, Commodore,” you say, snapping a sarcastic salute at Mokou. “I’ll run down Youmu, then, and you and Keine can chat with bunny-babe.”
“What about meeeeeee~” Cirno drones, toppling against your legs limply.
“You’re coming with me, squirt,” you say, ruffling her hair. “And Duke.”
“You’re taking
Cirno... into
Kirisame’s shop... after the bullshit you pulled the other day?” Mokou says, utterly aghast. “Are you a complete idiot, or are some parts still missing?”
“I have Duke this time,” you say with a smug air of knowing.
Duke turns to Mokou and meets her default hostile glower with the smooth, overwhelming pressure of the Serious Look. Mokou glares back, unblinking, weathering the intense gravity only a regal canine can express.
“... fine,” Mokou relents in a low voice.
Duke’s granite visage nods ponderously. Dropping one mighty hand on Cirno’s little shoulder, he wheels about staidly and strides away with Cirno in tow. Mokou rolls her eyes and turns away herself, marching down the street.
Keine sends you a glance and a strained little smile – oh, the trials of friendship – and then mouths two words.
Be careful. You smirk, and mouth two words back.
Be prepared. ----------
Kirisme’s shop is bustling with shoppers when your trio arrive, with even more passers-by peering through the windows curiously. You turn to ask Duke something, and find thin air. Someone
chuffs from nearer the ground. You look down to find a handsome Alsatian-breed canine looking over his sleek black muzzle at you, triangular ears perked attentively.
“Good choice,” you say. All things considered, you need the lowest profile possible for this encounter, and that’s-
“-oh maaan the witch-bitch’s daddy’s crap-peddling place?”
-going to be hard enough already.
“Best behavior, Cirno,” you admonish her. “We’re just here to catch Youmu.”
Her eyes light up. “Like the GHAST-BLASTERS?”
“W-what?”
“The ghast-blasters! They zap people with lightning guns and then they slide this magic box under ghouly thangs and it’s like SWHOOOOOOOM-BAM!” she concludes with a vigorous clap. “Sucks ‘im in for ever and ev-”
“No!”
“But she’s a ghost!”
“Half-ghost.”
“Ghost enough!”
“We’re not here to
catch her!”
“But you just
said we were.”
You sigh gustily. “Blame the translation spell. Anyways. Let’s go.”
Cirno hangs back, prompting a quizzical look from Duke. “I can’t.”
“What? Why?”
“Papa ‘Risame threw me out and said not to come back.”
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing!” Cirno wails, stomping her foot. “I just... I was with some
friends and, you know, it all got...”
“Complicated,” you finish.
“Yeah, and-”
“-unwise actions were taken by your friends, that you participated in because you blindly trusted their judgment.”
“Yeah! And then-”
“-you lagged behind to explain the situation, being the responsible, innocent and unwitting party while your so-called ‘friends’ ran out the back door like the cowards they were.”
“YEAH!” Cirno agrees. “Wow, how do you know it so well?”
You gently clamp your hand over Duke’s muzzle.
“Lucky guess.”
Duke settles for a small sneeze to pollute your air of dignity. “Well, don’t worry. Today you’re with me, a respectable gentlemen.”
Duke’s sneeze is none too small this time, and even Cirno gives you a look.
“Well, I mean, I’m good at bluster and I know big words-”
Dog and Fairy glance at one another, mouths taut with doubt.
“I’ll make
polite threats, okay?”
Cirno’s frown radiates dubiousness. “Just let him do the talking, okay?” she says, patting Duke’s flank. The Archon chuffs, front paws hopping off the ground as he sounds his assent.
You emit a huff of your own. “
This is why wizards seclude themselves in towers and train dragons to eat visitors,” you retort indignantly. Knowing when to cut your losses, you march into Kirisame’s shop, a man on a mission.
The place is full of people, mostly curious browsers. Nonetheless, sheer volume is keeping the proprietor’s mechanical cash-box
ching-ching’ing steadily. Shelves and walls are crammed with a bewildering array of items, all useful in their own way, though no two for the same person, it’d seem. Alchemical beakers and tubes sit between tea-pots and paintbrushes, books are stacked haphazardly near combs and eyeglasses, and an area near the door plays host to gaudy attire of all kinds and sizes. You even take a moment to admire a stack of little glass jars with threading for metal caps built right into the glass.
“Gerber,” you marvel, reading the maker’s mark on the little tin lids. Dwarven? High-quality, practical, no frills – makes sense.
“Lookitlookitlookitlookitlookit!” Cirno chants urgently, yanking on your pantleg and pointing. You look over and see Youmu plucking absently at some reams of colorful cloth.
“It’s Youmu!” Cirno declares proudly.
“Indeed it is,” you marvel, and move to intercept. Youmu’s still plucking at the cloth absently, other arm folded against her breast, supporting a heavily-laden grocery basket in the crook of her arm.
“Youmu?” you call. “It’s me. Magic-man.”
Youmu turns, and you see she’s approaching three-quarters ghost at this point. Dark hollows under bleary eyes betray her exhaustion, but she still stands straight and bears her heavy basket stiffly.
You grimace. “Been working hard, I see.”
Youmu’s chin rises and her spine tenses like a guitar string tightening at the tuning peg’s turn. “There has been much work to do.”
“Pruning weeds or pruning souls?”
“You know what my vocation is,” Youmu says stiffly, her ghost half orbiting her with measured pace. “I. Hunt.
Goasts.”
On cue, Youmu’s ghostly half orbits between you, reminding you about your magical graffiti the other day.
“So how has
your hunting gone?” Youmu bites out, crossing her arms across her chest. “You get membership to the local racists club yet?”
You almost tell Youmu to stick her ghost-half on a stick and toast it, but Cirno’s nervous tug on your pantleg gives you pause. You rest your hand on Cirno’s head, rubbing her hair reassuringly.
“Youmu, I’m sorry.”
The corners of her mouth twitch with surprise.
“You were making Cirno sad, and I didn’t take kindly to it.” You stand with hand on fairy’s head, resolute.
The gardener of Hakugyokurou examines you carefully, then glances at Cirno, thinking. With great deliberation, she unfolds her arms.
“I understand,” she relents. “Thank you.”
You nod formally. “To answer your question, I did get to the bottom of that ‘club.’ Long story short, they’re not behind it.”
“Oh,” Youmu says, sagging a little.
“What’s running you so ragged?”
“Keeping up with my quotas while investigating the matter of enslaved spirits,” she replies. “I’ve stumbled across several more in the course of my usual duties, but none were any more forthcoming than the one on Lady Kamishirasawa’s lawn.”
“You smack’em with that cutlery-”
“-
ancestral blade of the Konpaku line-”
“-your grandma’s cutlery and they remember what ‘et em, right?”
Youmu closes her eyes and exhales a long, slow breath. “It is rather more nuanced than that.”
“Humor me,” you say sweetly.
Youmu touches the hilt of the shorter sword, worn on her left side. “The Hakurouken is said to ‘cut through a person’s confusion.’ By dispelling their confusion, they’re aided in reaching Nirvana.”
“Say whatnow?”
“Heaven.”
Your mouth quirks as you contemplate that. “How does banishing confusion equate crossing over? Most ghosts stick around because of a grudge or an obsession. ‘Unfinished business’ and all that.”
“Very rare, those,” Youmu says irritably. “It works because – okay, ghosts are primarily memories, see?”
“Not really,” you say, frowning. “Spirits still have the consciousness of the person, the soul, not just a record of their memory.”
Youmu sighs, her free hand planting on her hip. “That
is your consciousness. Your soul is shaped by your experiences, the choices you’ve made and most importantly what lessons you learned from them. Like a sculptor shaping a block of stone into a statue. The body is just... the vessel, the machinery.”
You nod, surprised at Youmu’s use of analogy. You suspect you’re hearing one of Yuyuko’s lectures second-hand. “And this is important because...?”
“Death is traumatic. Loss of the body, the vessel, lets the memories drift apart. Lose their proper order. Without a definite end-point to a life, like a proper burial and a headstone, it’s even worse. That’s why ghosts are little blobby things, most of the time.” She sighs. “It’s also why they go wandering and have short attention spans.”
“Unlike the ones that tried to waste us the other day.”
“Right. They were given coherence – remembrance – so they’d be useful as tools.”
You think on that a moment. “And the Hakurouken reverses that... so the spirit can achieve what? Enlightenment? Then they can go on to heaven?”
“Well-”
“So why don’t you just smack them all with your truth-blade, instead of leading ghost-herds through the sky?”
“I don’t have the authority!” Youmu objects. “Only the Yama can decide who’s worthy to reach Heaven.”
“The
what!?”
“...A death god,” Youmu says, regarding you strangely. “Judges of souls. They decide where a spirit goes upon death.”
“Yeah, with six frikkin afterlives in this loony bin I guess you would need somebody to sort ‘em,” you grumble.
“What?”
You count off on your fingers. “Heaven, Hell, Higan, the Netherworld, Makai...”
“Makai is the demon realm,” Youmu informs you. She sets down her grocery basket and adopts a formal stance, one finger raised – a little like Keine when she goes all scholastic on you. “Heaven is for just, enlightened spirits, Hell for the wicked, and the Netherworld is for guiltless spirits awaiting reincarnation.”
“And Higan?”
“Just a waiting area on the other size of the Sanzu river.”
Your ears prick up. “River?”
“The barrier between the worlds of living and dead. A death-god ferries souls across it... when she can be bothered to... and the river imparts forgetfulness itself.” Youmu grips the hilt of her shortsword protectively. “A deliberate part of the process. Because it’s for the Yama to decide who ascends to Heaven, not me. Understand?”
Your face goes slack as you check into the Hotel Cogitating.
“... I guess not.”
Your mind races through the crash-course in Gensyokan history Keine gave you the day you arrived. Specifically, the part about the Hakueri Border and who formed it-
“I am a massive idiot,” you state numbly.
Duke whuffs an affirmation.
“Stuff it,” you mutter, rubbing your chin pensively. Youmu maintains a politely neutral expression. “That river – the river Styx, as I know it. Runs through Hell, all of Hell, from Gehenna on down. Hell was always Hell!”
Youmu nods politely, favoring the lunatic. “Oh, dammit,” you say irritably. “I was confused by how Gensokyo seems to have its own private heavens and hells... it doesn’t. Just seemed like it, because of the artificial barriers!”
Youmu’s ghost-half orbits her sedately as she displays the perfectly blank expression of the well-disciplined and utterly confused.
“Well. This place isn’t a full-fledged demiplane, per se. It’s a corner of the larger Material plane walled off behind a powerful dimensional barrier. I was mistaking similar planar pockets for entirely separate demi-planes because I’m a moron.”
Youmu’s face is as expressionless as her ghost-half, which doesn’t
have a face.
“You know where I’m from, right?”
“.... Outside,” Youmu states simply.
“It’s a little more nuanced than that,” you say dryly. “Like, here’s your universe-” you hold up a fist – “and here’s my universe-” you hold up the other – “and you move between them via the Ethereal, but they’re both in the middle of the Outer Planes, see?”
Youmu’s gaze cautiously pans from one fist to the other, then bores into your eyes.
“No. No, I do not see anything.”
“Um.” You think. “You have some paper?”
Youmu passes over a notebook with her shopping list in it. You turn to a fresh page and brandish a nub of pencil. “Okay.” You draw three concentric circles on the paper – all lopsided, of course. Geometer was never in the cards for you. “Outermost circle, that’s the Outer Planes. Heaven and Hell and No Fun Allowed all go here. Second circle, elemental planes. Fire and water and elementals oh my. And the center, the Material Plane, where all elements combine in equal measure. That’s the real world, so to speak.”
Youmu frowns at the paper. “And where are you from?”
“The center! But a
different center.”
“Um.”
“There’s, more then one Material, you see...” you slash lines through the center circle to create more Material planes. “And space between them for the Ethereal...” more lines- “...and the Shadow...” yet more lines- “and the Astral covers it all-” you scribble a haze over the whole thing, which now looks like leaden plaid.
Youmu’s two halves give you a look that can only be called deadpan.
“Fukkit.” You rub out the mess with a bit of wax from your pocket. Then you draw a few little islands in the center of the paper, complete with palm trees, and waves between them. “Okay, the common analogy is of islands in a sea. The islands are our separate worlds, and you can move between them through this sea. That’s the Ethereal Plane. My worlds on the other side of that ocean.”
Youmu nods. “But they all share the same heaven and hell,” she says, pointing at the outermost circle.
“Right.”
“So where’s the Netherworld?”
“In the sea,” you say. “I think it’s in the deep Ethereal.”
“What’s this Ethereal?”
“It’s a coexistent plane with the Material. With us right now, in fact. The same place, just slightly out-of-phase with the extant Universe, you could say.”
Youmu frowns. “But an ocean only touches the shores of islands, it doesn’t cover them.”
“Um.” You scratch your chin with the pencil’s blunt end. “Well, only the Deep Ethereal doesn’t touch. But the Netherworld is unlike the Ethereal, the colors and contrasts, the- the
feel has a bit of the Shadow to it.”
“What!?” Youmu says in alarm. “It’s not shady at all!”
“The color reversals are exactly like looking at the Material from a vortex on the Plane of Shadow-”
“The what?”
“Another transitive plane, like the Ethereal. Except it’s coexistent
and coterminous with other Planes, not just other Materiel planes-”
“What!?” Youmu plants her hands on her hips and leans in, peering at your diagram. “Where’s the shadow!?”
You add shading to the waves. “There.”
She glares at you, unsatisfied.
“Anyways. The Netherworld confuses because it has characteristics of all three transitive Planes-”
“
Three!?”
“Yeah, the Astral-”
Youmu groans-
“-which connects to
everywhere, including the Shadow and the Ethereal. But the Shadow and the Ethereal don’t actually border each
other, but they’re
simultaneously present in the Netherworld...” you muse, tapping the pencil against the notebook. “The barrier in the clouds had actual gates,
must be artificial, like the one that seals Gensokyo, so if Yukari can do that she could- dissolve other barriers? All three transitive planes, three realities coincident in spacetime? Or is it a naturally occurring spot in the universe-”
Duke emits an anguished whine as he collapses across Youmu’s feet, expressing deep sympathy for her plight.
“Wait,” Cirno interjects, stealing the diagram from you. “If the Ethers and the Shade doesn’t mix, then...” her face scrunches with concentration – “then you’ve got islands that are underwater in a sea that’s made of two kinds of water that’s in the same place at the same time but doesn’t touch.”
“Sounds about right,” Youmu agrees dryly.
Mokou was right. Gensokyo High never had a snowball’s chance in hell.
“Yeah well fuck that school’s out,” you mutter. “Back to hunting down bad guys and slaying their faces off. What did you manage to get out of ghooorrrrrkh,” you terminate as something hard and wooden clamps across your windpipe and something pleasantly soft presses to your back.
“The
other thing we have in common,” Marisa whispers into your ear. “We’re both book thieves.”
“Gkhhrrrgk,” you agree, flailing wildly at Duke. Duke simply cocks his canine head, and you can almost hear his deep, authoritative voice in your head.
Given your record with books belonging to others, I believe we should hear out the feisty blonde’s case. Bastard. Miserable rotten Lawful
bastard. “What we
don’t have in common is, I’m not a filthy fucking coward hypocrite,” Marisa continues. “Where’s my book, Wizard? Where’s my fucking
book?”
From nearby, you hear the click of a camera shutter. “Oh, my. Erotic asphyxiation. Two girls, one wizard.”
You feel Marisa stiffen like a board, and lament your inability to voice the apropos analogy as darkness edges into your vision.
“AYA!” Marisa rages. “You! YOU! HOW DARE-”
“He promised me an interview,” Aya says sweetly, “and if you kill him, I’ll have to run
something in the paper tomorrow, ay?”
You run through your mental armory quickly, trying to select something mildly forgiving on property damage and the continued survival of your nearby companions – in other words, subtle.
Becoming a magic-immune iron dragon swimming in lava at the speed of light suddenly seems slightly less appealing.
Slightly.
Near your legs you feel the temperature drop sharply, and you know Cirno’s about to take serious issue with your new playmates. And from what you’ve seen the little fairy has impressive power, but little finesse. Probably why you get along so well.
“Gkhrk?” you muse philosophically.
“Give it up, punk,” Marisa snarls. “Not even Feathers McFucksalot can save you now.
Nothing can stop me from getting my research back,
now.”
On cue, the front door of Kirisme’s shop is smashed clean off the hinges. The conversation and murmur of customers ceases instantly, and in the shocking, abrupt silence only the massive, ponderous sound of steel feet stomping across the floor can be heard, measured drum-beats pacing the executioner’s stride.
At the end of the aisle appears a mechanical man, his emotionless steel face and hard, glittering eyes focused squarely on you. His heavy blade is drawn with the dramatic
shing! of metal on metal, for his scabbard, like everything save his swirling red cape, is metallic.
“Wizard,” speaks the Inevitable. “Your library book... is overdue.”
[ ] MARISA HE’S AFTER YOUR BOOK
[ ] Aya, I’ll owe you an
exclusive on anything
plus that interview if you
get me the fuck out of here! [ ] Lawful Stupid + Schmuck Bait = PROBLEM SOLVED.
[ ] Other?
