A Trio's Tale
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2022/09/05 (Mon) 03:39
No. 203863
▼
You can vote on every character's individual "choices", but you may only vote on a single character to "control.”
[[ ]] The youkai
I walk up to a brown dirt clump with a big section for a “body” and a small one for a “head”. “Wake up!”
It gets up and cranes its “head” to look at me. “What?” it says.
“Another incident,” I said.
“Awesome! Time to solve it!” The clump got up and busted its arms and legs out. “Where’s the bad guys?”
“Well, this incident is quite serious, so I—”
“Aw, it’ll be easy!” the clump said. “Remember the winter incident? The red smoke?”
“You died in both of those incidents before you even got to where the incidents were coming from…”
“So?” the clump shrugged. “I always come back after three days, and magic isn’t hard to regain even though I’m an incident resolver.” The brown blob flexes its arms in an exaggerated motion several times, bouncing its forearms around rapidly. “In fact, you should be the one on the bench for this based on your danmaku history, but who cares? The ice fairy doesn’t care.”
“She’s like an ant to a lion compared to you, but I relent. You can come.”
The dirt clod jumps up, and before you can tell it to wait for you, it rockets toward the human village like a beetle scuttling away from a prying finger. “We need to get to the village to locate the incident!” The voice trails off as the clump-turned-meteor gets farther away.
“…darn.”
{...}
“HEY!!! Zappers! Dirt clod! Brown boulder! Wait for me!”
No use. The little fairy was out traveling to “resolve” the incident. I’ll be surprised if he gets past the first peon of the incident “organization” that these events always seem to have. It would be much easier if he would actually focus on winning spell card duels, but showing off with flashy projectiles and recklessly getting hit is what his usual attempts at resolving an incident turn out to be. That, and not actually managing to find out who the mastermind of the incident even is.
I suppose it’s an extreme view of the spell card rules encouraging non-direct combat, but they were barely specified to be anything other than “no eating humans” and “beauty”. Something about “property destruction” too.
It’s not a great system, although there’s technically only one major failure I’ve witnessed personally. The amikiri-kamikiri war. Two recent youkai species that somehow survived against all odds (of having the very niche tie-in to hair and nets).
Unfortunately, the kamikiri now see the amikiri as too “goofy” and are trying to beat them into submission to not cut the nets of random humans. It’s not my fault there are so many malicious youkai girls with nice hair in Gensokyo (that don’t carry around nets). Wasn’t the original oath of kamikiri only to stop youkai-human marriage? Either way, we probably would have beaten each other to a pulp, but the rules state that beautiful “danmaku” must be used during fights, and it has to be nonlethal (code word for “weakened”, from my observations). Just means that the conflict drags on in a slog of win-lose-win-lose because of the similarity of amikiri and kamikiri and soldiers on both sides being able to fully recover in 30 minutes.
It also really annoys the tengu, who neighbor our villages.
“Rustle, rustle, rustle,” goes the forest. Alright, looks like wandering on the tengu mountain to “recruit” Zappers was not a good idea. Normally, this would have led into a straight up fight, but the moon was making all the youkai really reclusive. Don’t know how though.
Time to zoom out like the wind circles that carry fallen leaves. I dove through the green covers of the trees, slashing through the branches. Wooosh. Yippee. Then, I retracted my extra hands back into my wrists. I now see a red trail zooming around firing lasers at something. That’s Zappers all right. Already on the opposite side of the human village flailing around; looks like he forgot to “locate” the incident.
Well, I have two options here. Either I blaze through the village in a bout of glory and probably run into trouble or I take the long way around and eventually catch up to him. In other words, either I get shot down quickly or Zappers gets shot down and I get shot down after not realizing he was already shot down when arriving.
[ ] Blazing fast through the village
[ ] Long way around, after all Zappers said “slow and steady wins the race” (he definitely needs to follow that advice…)
[[ ]] The human
“Miles! Dinner is ready!”
“Coming, Mom.” Clicking furiously at the screen, eyes a bit droopy. Just a little more gold to buy that item…
“Come down in five minutes! Eggs are getting cold!”
“Got it!” I tap away and check a number at the corner of my screen. 20,000.
Back at the shop, I click on the “buy” button and get the sword. Checking for the upgrades, I looked and saw that it would cost 5,000 gold for a reforge. An easy quest would give 2,000, and the gold from enemy drops would be around 3,000.
I set out to complete the quest (and dealing with other players trying to ambush me). When I got back to the shop, my gold totalled 4,785. “One more quest. One more.” The only one available gave out 10,000 gold, but I could always use the excess for something else.
“MILES! GET DOWNSTAIRS THIS INSTANT!” Dad shouted, booming voice bouncing itself up the stairwell.
I picked myself off the computer and trudged downstairs. At least this isn’t a multiplayer game.
Dad huffs audibly. “It’s been 20 minutes since Mom called you.”
“When are you going to finish your homework?”
“After dinner.” I eat my stone cold carrots and beef in silence. Mom and Dad were arguing about my grades, but I tuned them out. Table slam as usual.
Two hours after dinner, Mom came up and saw me playing on the computer, and she turned off my computer and told me to go brush my teeth and get ready for bed.
When I was brushing my teeth, I was adrift in a mental state of elementary school. Despite a star-studded history back then, I’m here now, one out of millions that want to escape the real world to live in a video game (or whatever other things count as “fictional”). I heard another argument downstairs. Whether it was about school or Mom’s clothes or taxes, I ignored it. Table slam two. More screaming.
…what? I’m in a forest, although it isn’t full of evergreen trees. No snowy grave today! On the other hand, I still needed to rinse my teeth, and the cup wasn’t teleported with me.
Wait wait wait, why am I worried about toothpaste poisoning? I’m in a random forest! MAGIC! I’m about to become a chosen one! I spit out the minty bubble foam in my mouth and flexed my fingers. No magic. “Well, toothbrushes aren’t exactly great wands.”
“Maybe I got lost at some park or natural reserve.” The trees looked a little too weird to be native to Mississippi, but it was worth a shot to get some attention. Unfortunately, I still had toothpaste foam in my mouth, so yelling was out of the question. No chances should be taken on poison and dying on a free vacation. On second thought, it would be nice to find a building to stay in, because it was really cold. “Maybe this is just a bad dream.” Apparently survival scenarios are not restricted to being stuck on an island at sea with a bunch of palm trees at noon.
Calm down, calm down. Food, water, shelter, air. One down, three to go. A walk should set myself straight in the thinking department. Despite the pestering from Mom to get off the computer and exercise not working at all, walking was fun. Mostly because I got to see new things and not because of the exercise, but it was fun.
I set one foot in front of the other and marched forward.
{...}
I was miserable.
After the “walk” when I got here, I lost track of time and collapsed. Turns out fatigue is a thing. It’s been three days of hand-dug toilets, drinking in the same river where I shower, sleeping against tree drunks, and random mushrooms and the occasional berry. Yelling turned out to be completely useless for some reason, best guess is that whatever’s stopping me from finding “people” is the culprit. Hopefully the prophecy or whatever kicks in and I can leave this very large forest. It’s been nothing but trees like how trees are used in bad horror games to make the game “creepy” with as little effort as possible.
Granted, I was pretty creeped out by the forest, due to the magicky sounds that kept going off in the distance and itchy rashes I kept getting on my legs. And it also seemed like the moon was out for longer than the sun. Maybe this is a werewolf story or something.
Wait, is that…oh, it’s another small pond. I already saw enough of those when I was still on that mountain.
Hold on…bamboo? Ok. My first thought was “China”, but I doubt fantasy worlds would be that unoriginal (along with a bunch of other things that should have showed up instead of just “tree”). Probably not going to run into any English speakers, but it doesn’t feel like people will literally be from Mars, either.
Now, there’s some girl who piped up something in…Japanese? Yeah, Japanese. Someone noticed me. Drat. More chattering came from above. I couldn’t understand it at all, but there was obviously more than one person flying around up there.
“Attention! Don’t move!”
More Japanese followed that phrase. This is interesting.
[ ] Stand still. Easy way out. It’s not like people are deliberately setting up death-trap worlds to catch humans.
[ ] Obvious ambush. RUN!!! {specify a place to run to}
[[ ]] The “tree”
“Welcome back, Tree!” a bargoer exclaims quite loudly.
“Great way to say hello,” I remark as I toss some yen to the man. People stare at me.
“I’m just a dream!” I shouted, voice unsteady. “No youkai here! Or mechanized suits!”
That only seemed to get more attention. “Listen!” the bargoer says. “This man makes a living off of scaring school kids into doing their homework! Is it likely that that is the case, or is the ‘monster’ actually a guardian of the kids? You’re probably just seeing things; youkai don’t exist just because they’re plastered everywhere on posters to look cool!”
That seemed to get the crowd to go on about their day, although a bit more confused than before.
“Thanks,” I said. The man grinned. “Next time, please do not say anything.”
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I got it,” said Shinnoaki.
“Hey, it’s the tree! How—”
Shinnoaki put his finger to his mouth to nonverbally shush the others. They caught on and shut their lips.
“You can talk, just walk closer so you don’t have to shout and get everyone’s attention.” About half of the group went inside the bar.
“Nice to see you again,” someone piped up.
“We thought that people had finally found out you were a real youkai and turned you in.”
“Hey, maybe it’s the alcohol finally catching up to us and making us see weird things.”
“I am not an alcohol expert,” you say, “but I am sure that this is just a dream—for you guys, at least—and I’m really a generous human.”
“That’s exactly what a maneater would say!” Shinnoaki yelled. “Looks like I better call the police!” He pretended to grab a phone and tap its keypad rapidly.
The men aside from him sighed and went into the bar. When he finally stopped his act two minutes later, he said, “Well, see you later, enjoy your sunlight!”
And he was gone, too. Forgot about keeping quiet as always. At least the general vicinity of the few people nearby seemed to have written him off as a bit crazy, but now they were staring at me. I trudged down the street, one foot on the street, the other on the sidewalk.
“I’m a dream, that person is crazy, we’re kids playing pretend,” I said.
Life wasn’t easy. The origins of having random tidbits of youkai packed inside of me—including some not even native to Japan—seemed to have affected whatever magic I possessed, stifling my flight capabilities. At least I could slowly but surely play to the sympathy of the more naive youkai before eating them, especially with the “prepubescent the height of a basketball hoop post” look. Aw, who am I even fooling? Most victims turned out to only be a bit startled.
Not that I liked it. Eating youkai was only better than eating humans because it helped keep a lower profile. Regular animals might have been an option, but getting noticed while mauling a fox or bear was generally terrible in the long run, considering the weird hybridized youkai form I had was (based on my guess) interfering with belief increasing my strength, so more fear just meant it was more likely for me to get hunted down.
“Hey.”
Turning my head, I saw a completely clothed figure around the corner, ski mask and all. “Hello, I’m a tree.” Looks like they’ve been waiting for me. I tried not to sweat.
“I understand your plight.” Seems like this person could read me like a book. “Here’s a deal: go—”
“I’m listening, but I may not follow whatever orders you’re saying.”
“Nah, it’s easy. Just travel about 20 kilometers to—”
“The mountains?”
“Yes, that place—it’s called Gensokyo. Look for a shrine, a bit of a beaten up one. It’s a great place for youkai to stay. One rule: don’t mess with the humans in a village. You’ll get killed by the shrine maiden from the shrine I mentioned earlier.”
The figure disappeared behind the corner. Wouldn’t hurt to try their advice, giants are giants when lumbering toward something after all. Although I wished they had clarified if the shrine was the “Gensokyo” or only a part of it. Probably the former. Lethal shrine maiden? Eh, probably not a big deal.
{...}
Uh…this is Gensokyo? Right? I’m in some non-Euclidean repeating space, so there has to be magic, right? Maybe the squirrel from earlier (that I regretted not eating) was magical all along and was using mind control to get me to untangle it from my branch-hair.
There’s a human girl adorned in a brown yukata that doesn’t appear to have any supernatural abilities, as well as a dual-horned youkai drinking from a gourd chained to her waist. So…oni visit the Gensokyo shrine. Or maybe it’s a youkai shrine with a youkai shrine maiden (which do exist based on past encounters). Who knows? Either way, definitely Gensokyo!
The girl is now directly in front of the oni and pointing a finger at her. If I had to guess what she was saying, “i have come to stop you” was my best shot. It only serves to add to befuddlement, however, considering that the kid looked less like a youkai exterminator and more like they got lost while trying to be a youkai exterminator.
On another note, I saw some fireworks with no trail coming from the ground to the left of where you currently are. They seem decently far away.
For the other attractions, there’s another mountain, but it’s too far away to see anything besides some buildings, and there’s also a pile of houses, which you assume is a village of some sort. You decide that since the village is near the path to the fireworks that you just noticed do not originate from the ground, you’d go to the village after visiting the fireworks, and then scan the entire surrounding areas to see where to go from there.
Funnily enough, the village appears to be centered between the mountain I just climbed, and the mountain that was too far away for me to see any minute details on it, making it a handy waypoint for finding places to go to.
Despite being hungry, I decided against trying to hunt animals, as Gensokyo being a refuge for youkai would mean most, if not all of the animals here were hardy youkai that could use magic. Usually, the answer would be photosynthesis, but it’s currently nighttime.
Also, the moon seems…hmm, can’t put my finger on it. Photosynthesis is useless instead of barely usable during the nights right now.
[ ] Go to the fireworks, they look interesting, and hopefully no one bumps into me unexpectedly
[ ] See what the oni and the human are up to, I need to get used to talking again (outside of saying “THIS IS A DREAM! NO YOUKAI HERE!” and Shinnoaki coming to the bar every week)
Anonymous 2022/09/05 (Mon) 04:19
No. 203864
▼
>You can vote on every character's individual "choices", but you may only vote on a single character to "control.”
A bit confused on what this means exactly. Does this mean we format the votes like this?
[X] youkai
-[X] choice
[X] human
-[X] choice
[X] tree
-[X] choice
In which we control multiple characters.
Or is it like this?
[X] tree
-[X] Choice
In which a voter controls a single character.
Anonymous 2022/09/05 (Mon) 05:51
No. 203865
▼
Tenses don't work that way in English at all. I'm sorry, but this is a headache to even try to read, much less understand your clusterfuck of a voting scheme.
Good luck, I guess.
!SdkoAQMIkY 2022/09/05 (Mon) 12:42
No. 203869
▼
>>203864
No,
[[X]] youkai
[X] choice
[[ ]] human
[X] choice
[[ ]] tree
[X] choice
The story will only have the POV of one character, but I'm letting the vote briefly decide the actions of the other characters.
>>203865
Thank you for the criticism.
Anonymous 2022/09/07 (Wed) 03:21
No. 203887
▼
Since you're going for multiple view points, I highly recommend you use the [ div ] function to help separate the POV's. (Make sure that there's no spaces for it to work)
Like this,
[ ] Blazing fast through the village
[ ] Long way around, after all Zappers said “slow and steady wins the race” (he definitely needs to follow that advice…)
[[]] The Human
For my choice,
[x] The Yokai
-[x] Blazing fast through the village
Speed is key!
Anonymous 2022/09/07 (Wed) 03:25
No. 203888
▼
File
166252115334.gif
- (169.92KB,
498x373,
THIS IS A DREAM! NO YOUKAI HERE!.gif)
[[ ]] The youkai
[X] Blazing fast through the village
[[ ]] The human
[X] Stand still. Easy way out. It’s not like people are deliberately setting up death-trap worlds to catch humans.
[[X]] The “tree”
[X] See what the oni and the human are up to, I need to get used to talking again (outside of saying “THIS IS A DREAM! NO YOUKAI HERE!” and Shinnoaki coming to the bar every week)
Post 0.9
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2022/09/25 (Sun) 04:16
No. 203928
▼
Since the vote tied, have a bonus segment since each individual plotline hasn't become too complicated yet. The next post will have the vote options.
Alright, talking is good, talking is great, talking is marvelous, talking is radical.
“Salutations, I’m a drea—I mean Tree.” you said as you walked up to the oni and human.
“That’s good. I’m Suika. No name?”
“Roko,” the human chimed.
“Well, Tree is a fine name, right?” Of course it wasn’t. What was I thinking? There's a oni right here, it's not like someone will drive a tank through these mountains and shoot me.
“Moving on then. This human here is trying to exterminate me.”
“Not now! But I will!” Roko shouted.
“You are an oni,” I said. “Why are you worrying about extermination? In fact, you should be busy—what’d you just do?” I turned to Roko. “What’d you just DO?!”
Roko had just been socked hard in the jaw by Suika, yet she was still standing there, no blood or even a bruise visible on her face. This had to be some 10,000-year-old youkai that showed up—and it had to be the day that I was making progress on digging myself out of the life of deluding humans while looking really stupid.
“You see why I can’t beat her up?”
“No, what you should be asking is how the hell this is even possible.”
“More likely than you getting here with that hilarious outfit.” Suika poked me on the shin.
“Well, when youkai decided to make the decision to switch to human form, it was also hilarious,” added Roko. “Don’t know why they didn’t copy gills from fish, Japan’s not all mountains.”
Oh yeah. The ludicrous outfit you wore to actually scare kids into doing their homework; it was somewhat profitable of a scheme. Strawberry jam and ketchup were well below the budget of desperate parents, although I’m not sure if they were desperate, confused, or laughing at the low-quality getup. Failing to get a job usually meant getting the cops called on me, so I started including “must tell other parents about me” in the cost as well for a (near) assured job opportunity when I snuck back into a city for the second time.
“Ok, it was for assassination,” I stuttered. “I mean, intimidation.”
That got her out of her thoughts. Roko walked up to me and said, “You have five seconds to explain yourself before I kill you!”
Analyzing Roko for a moment confirmed that she wasn’t a human, and also not a youkai based on an animal. Guess that option was off the table. Not like it was ever on the table, now that I think about it.
“Time’s up! DIE!!!” Ow. That youkai could punch hard. Elder youkai things, I guess.
“Anyway, I’m a bit off my game. You’re bound to find good fights when you live for a thousand years.”
That is a good point. I bend down and try to pluck the girl spinning around and kicking me, and I proceed to knock my index finger around like a curtain.
“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” Suika interjected, pulling Roko off me. “We’re not finished yet,” she said with a grizzly tone. “But first…” The oni took a swig out of that gourd chained to her waist.
“Come at me, foul—”
“Much better. Destruction in Three Steps!”
”OH GOD HELP!!! THIS WASN’T IN THE STORIEEEESSSSS!!!” Roko screamed, as Suika grew to be larger than the shrine, as well as exhaling a bunch of foggy air everywhere.
“WOOOOOO!!! LET’S GOOOOO!!!”
Eh, you’ll learn that not everyone can be a hero, even if you can literally survive getting hit by an oni. Although it would have been ideal for the oni to not have dragged me into this by charging directly at me (and the shrine, but that’s the miko’s problem).
Oh dear.
Post 1
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2022/09/25 (Sun) 04:39
No. 203929
▼
Faster is better.
I dive down and screech forward. Still no tengu trying to interrupt me. Good.
The flat ground of the forest was approaching, so I bent upward and soared right above the treetops.
Soon enough, I encountered a bunch of fairies. It was supposed to have been a cakewalk, but unfortunately the fairies were really damn strong because Zappers apparently trained a few of them 500-something years ago, and once he was finished with them, he said to use their knowledge to teach other fairies.
That should have been the dumbest idea ever that would have instantly failed, but it worked, although his pupils probably got the idea to teach some of their own tricks. Now there’s always some fairies (SMALL fairies, to be more exact) around that can each dash out of the way of incoming fire, navigate through danmaku, and sometimes even use a spell card.
It’s…less than ideal when trying to resolve an incident. I ducked out of the way of a line of fairies that curved back and followed me. Untrained ones would struggle to have not crashed into a tree.
Luckily, following the original fairy of extreme power had its benefits. Like getting ambushed by fairies for “training” (even though the guy training them had stated that that was not part of the lesson). Even if these less-than-pleasant experiences weren't enough for practice, I still had one more “ace up my sleeve.”
“Dodge this!” one of the fairies yelled.
“Switch to bird formation!” another one shouted. I looked back and saw that they were organizing themselves into the same pattern birds use when migrating—a V-shape. Tough to handle, but not impossible. Actually, it’s not really gonna make a difference.
I’m past the Misty Lake now; it’s feeling a bit warmer. Zipping into the village, I duck into a random house.
“Start shooting the houses!” one of the fairies barked.
“Hey…didn’t the big guy tell us not to do stuff like that to humans?”
“Shut up!”
The squabble soon turned into a fight, in which the fairies were shooting at each other angrily, shredding their own numbers. That was good, but now there’d probably be a panicked set of parents and kids wondering why I just charged into their house.
“Sorry about all of—” I said preemptively. Turns out that no one was here. Ok, wha? Well, the less talking, the faster I get back to Zappers.
I opened the door and casually strolled outside. Bullets flew into my peripheral vision as I checked out the village. It was mostly the same, but the merchant stands were a bit cobwebbed from disuse. The crops were starting to choke a little, reaching for whatever sunlight they could get.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a tall woman said as she blocked my way.
“Uh, what’s up Keine?”
“Leave now, intruder!”
Lemme give you a tip. Breaking into someone’s house is not a good idea, especially if you didn’t check if there would be anyone there to take offense at it.
PICK ONE
[ ] Don’t antagonize third parties for dumb reasons
[ ] Destroy a bunch of netting on the windows of the houses to gain more power
PICK ONE
[ ] Run past Keine
[ ] Fight
Anonymous 2022/09/26 (Mon) 02:31
No. 203930
▼
PICK ONE
[X] Destroy a bunch of netting on the windows of the houses to gain more power
Hooligan option!
PICK ONE
[X] Run past Keine
You do not fight the guardian of the village. Instead, you run; otherwise, you get headbutted.
>Oh yeah. The ludicrous outfit you wore to actually scare kids into doing their homework; it was somewhat profitable of a scheme.
>Failing to get a job usually meant getting the cops called on me, so I started including “must tell other parents about me” in the cost as well for a (near) assured job opportunity when I snuck back into a city for the second time.
It is a hard life being a tree.
>At least I could slowly but surely play to the sympathy of the more naive youkai before eating them...Aw, who am I even fooling? Most victims turned out to only be a bit startled.
I just realized the tree is a cannibal, which I find somewhat amusing.
Noticed some second person and the first person being used:
>“Salutations, I’m a drea—I mean Tree.” you said as you walked up to the oni and human.
>I bend down and try to pluck the girl spinning around and kicking me, and I proceed to knock my index finger around like a curtain.
I assume the first person is meant to be used for this story instead of the second person.
Post 2
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2022/11/13 (Sun) 05:20
No. 204086
▼
People matter more than belongings. So, I'll just break some windows and run away.
I lean forward and pilot a crash course toward Keine, which got a look of surprise from her, but only for a fleeting moment. Against tripping her while dodging a close-range strike over just bailing for the windows, the obvious choice was the latter.
I veer left really early and with one big slash I cut into all the houses on the street.
"Stop destroying the houses of the village!"
"Better than you abusing kids!" I shouted back.
More bullets flew towards me. “I am the guardian of the village! You are a brute that is a copycat of that fairy!”
What? I’m not a copycat of Zappers; what is this lady thinking? “Hey, I—”
“Nonsense!” Keine interrupted. Quite early of an interruption too. “You seek to be an incident resolver, yet all you do is break things in the village and fail anyway!” The teacher made a childish posture of someone getting shot out of the sky.
Ok, this isn’t Keine. Not that I know her much, but news from the tengu papers generally paint her as the nice and kind mentor. Although from what I’ve seen, bashing people’s heads with your own isn’t really nice and kind.
“Alright, alright, I may need—”
“Just look at the families that you’ve decimated!”
Some fairies flew into the holes in the houses, most likely to attack the families inside. Wait, why am I feeling bad for these humans? They’re not there!
Well, they were not there, but now I see them flooding out of the houses. “Guess the invisibility spell someone was using wore off,” I said, and then turned to Keine.
“Uh…yes! Feel bad!”
“Can’t throw a pity party right now, I’m busy with something else. Guard the villagers for me!”
“HEY! Stop! You’re really going to run after trashing the village?! Who even are you anyway?!”
[ ] My name?
Don’t make it completely silly, this story will get a little more serious down the line. Also, I have the next update finished already.
Anonymous 2022/11/13 (Sun) 05:51
No. 204087
▼
[X] Blazer
If the friend is named Zappers, it makes sense to me to choose a similar name. Moreover, this youkai blazed through the village to be fast while causing havoc.
Post 3
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2022/11/13 (Sun) 18:55
No. 204091
▼
“Blazer. Later!” I thought the suggestion from Zappers was really over-the-top, but I wasn’t about to get chummy with anyone adjacent to “area with buildings recently damaged by me.”
With the extra vigor from the windows, I zoomed off towards the fight unfolding at the bamboo forest. More fairies tried to interrupt me, but it was way easier to beat them back now, so I wasn’t that worried. An earthquake shook the stalks, drawing my suspicions, but Zappers brought up frequently how earthquakes were genuinely useless for combat in Gensokyo (even as a joke) because almost everyone was able to fly. It couldn’t be from him.
At last, I arrive at the fight and pull Zappers out of the danmaku field.
“What’s the big idea?!”
“The big idea is that you don’t beat up random people that are not involved in the incident.”
“Uh, you did that too, Blazer.”
“For entertainment purposes,” I clarified. “Sorry about that! My friend gets a bit overenthusiastic sometimes!” I hollered to the other person.
“Go away and take your psyc—”
“SOCIOPATH, not psychopath!”
“Please leave already!” I pull Know-It-All forward and rip off some of the flaming chunks of earth on his body. Zappers got the idea and warped off the rest of the flames with fancy light beams. A waste of energy as usual, but I didn’t have the mental stamina to tell him to not do that and brace for the upcoming argument.
“Ok, why did you think that person was involved with the incident?”
“Because new area, new bad guys.”
“But you’ve already been to this place!”
“But I got lost every time I went here.”
What?
“Zappers, do you know where we’re headed?”
“I don’t know. I thought I was supposed to be the dumb one.”
“First Keine uses some dumb logic and—”
“Just help Reimu instead! I didn’t need you anyway.”
“I was saying that—”
Another earthquake shook the ground, interrupting me.
“Can I go to the earthquake? Please?” Zappers begged. “I wanna save the humans there.”
“What do you think the answer will be when I was about to say your logic was dumb?” Maybe the bigger fairies that were barely taught by Zappers would be a good backup option at this point.
“Pleeease???”
“Well then, how are you going to get out of this place?”
“I’ll use magic!”
“THEN USE MAGIC RIGHT NOW TO MAKE US NOT LOST!!!” I shouted angrily while leaning forward toward him. "USE YOUR BRAIN FOR MORE THAN FIVE SECONDS AT A TIME!!!"
That took him by surprise; he looked a bit fearful now. “No, because then we would be traveling to a hostile location with me low on energy!”
Seriously? Is this the best help I get?
With all the trouble that I got de-escalating situations of tengu trying to just destroy the kamikiri village so the noise would stop, I probably should have just tried rushing to whatever new location the trouble was coming from on day one, but then the village wouldn’t have been in a lax enough state for me to have blown through all the windows for strength; ever since the moon started acting weird, everyone just wants to go to bed due to “security reasons”.
With the human village shut down, most other youkai gave up and called it a day (haha). Since everyone is staying at home, it makes it really obvious that the neighbors are waging war on each other for petty reasons (at least for the tengu).
Zappers was now on his knees while still flying and doing some weird dance he probably stole from a religion. Better than having a breakdown, at least. Still, what a guilt-trip.
Although knowing Zappers, there’s definitely a joke I’ve missed. I’m sure the complaints of short-fuse fits of tears and crying (which are suspiciously nonviolent) is proof of that.
[ ] I will let the little nuisance go. I can deal with this incident myself, or at least stop him from annoying the regulars from doing their job. He can actually do small amounts of good when left alone, anyway.
[ ] I will keep Zappers around. As long as he is aiming in the general direction of the “bad guy”, things should be fine. Also, I might be in here for a loooong time without a “not lost” spell from him.
[ ] “No, there are a bunch of fairies in the village right now. They’re blowing it up. Keine needs help.”
Anonymous 2022/11/13 (Sun) 23:27
No. 204092
▼
[x] “No, there are a bunch of fairies in the village right now. They’re blowing it up. Keine needs help.”
heheh
Anonymous 2022/11/13 (Sun) 23:36
No. 204093
▼
[X] I will keep Zappers around. As long as he is aiming in the general direction of the “bad guy”, things should be fine. Also, I might be in here for a loooong time without a “not lost” spell from him.
Getting a bit of a sense that Zappers and Blazer’s relationship is similar to that of the big fairy and the ice fairy.
>Zappers was now on his knees while still flying and doing some weird dance he probably stole from a religion.
I’m really curious about what this dance would look like.
Post 4
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/01/21 (Sat) 19:42
No. 204257
▼
[X] I will keep Zappers around. As long as he is aiming in the general direction of the “bad guy”, things should be fine. Also, I might be in here for a loooong time without a “not lost” spell from him.
“Never mind, you are needed, at least for now…”
“This is obviously a trick to ditch me once you get to the battles!”
“What?” He’s not wrong, in a way, but seriously?
“Just kidding, we should get going.” Zappers stood up.
Finally, we’re moving somewhere. Not like we can get anywhere with this cursed bamboo maze forest, though.
Wait, the magic. I forgot.
“The magic to make us not lost?”
“Yes, I have that!”
Nothing happened.
“Nothing should have happened other than me knowing where to go!”
“Was that mind reading?”
“No, it was answering a variation of a rhetorical question!”
Alright…big fancy words that make no sense. This attitude needed to have been out two minutes ago. Whatever.
As we flew through the forest melting through fairies, it almost felt like we were in a game because of the constant stream of targets to fire at. All moving in moderately hard patterns, but nothing too hard.
“You think we’re actually inside a video game?”
Hard head turn from Zappers.
“Please don’t talk about that. One of my friends is…don’t mention anything about it,” mumbled Zappers. His eyes actually looked a bit…normal? They weren’t weirdly wide open and accompanied by a half-grin half-grimace like when he was explaining why he didn’t prefer sugary sweets over other food (too energetic already).
“Leaving it at that, then.”
“Thanks, Haruka.”
Well, that was touching.
Then Zappers started saying that all the current incident resolvers were terrible at their jobs because all they had to do now was look at the very obvious, prolonged light show to find where the incident was since the average fairy didn’t immediately go down in a single hit anymore.
I ignored him.
We arrived at a big house. It looked like the houses in the village, except much, much bigger. And way fancier. There was also light coming from the inside.
“Awesome! Let’s move!”
“Not yet. We need to be aware of traps,” I said, as I slashed a window and—ow. The windows were blocked off with lots of bamboo, preventing me from breaking them. There are probably some talismans in there too.
“Ok, no more free power-ups. Dang.”
“We can just use the door!” Zappers said, as he opened the door and dodged a bullet. “They spotted us, big oaf.”
“Please stop blaming me.”
“But it’s your fault!” pouted Zappers. “I think I see someone inside.”
“Whatever, cover’s blown.” I step into the room. Looked nothing like what was in that red mansion. There was a girl with long hair and another girl with slightly less long hair. Wait, second person was also taller, so probably not exactly a girl.
“Two youkai?”
“They are two strangers, Reisen. Friend, maybe foe.” said the shorter-haired woman. “Seeing as you aren't as rash to engage in combat right away or accuse us of being troublemakers, we don’t have to resolve this by fighting.”
I’m on a time limit for the window-based strength, but these women don’t seem that bad, I suppose I—
“Nah, we’re here to stop you. DIE!!!!!”
And it’s FIGHTING TIME! HIGH NOON! PURGE THE EVILS! ZAPPERS AND BLAZER, WE’RE HERE TO AMAZE!
Shove! Kick! Roundhouse! There goes Reisen! Wow! This is what I wanted, right? Now that I think about it, this is a very good outcome for what that kid could have done. Usually it’s “accidentally” running into a laser and dying.
“BLAZER!!! GET THE WINDOWS!”
I watched as the shorter-haired woman moved toward the remaining few windows.
“Eirin, should the windows be covered over the princess?”
“Once I exhaust this youkai’s power, I will cover the corridors.” said Eirin. She swept around and webbed red lasers at us. Zappers did an aileron roll to the side and avoided the lasers, but not before plowing through a bunch of bullets.
“Not bad!” shouted Zappers. “Hey! I need some—OUCH!”
No problem. I rush to Eirin and dive down and back up, moving out of aim from the bow in her hands. I try to think of a cool thing to say, but I’m completely lost mentally. Feels like I can’t get a grip on bullet games. Why am I here? The war at home. Why do I care when I can just ignore my village until it dies down? Because the tengu are going to swoop in and clean up both villages if I don’t.
“Uh…bully?”
“HEY! Now isn’t the time to hate on spell cards! GET THE WINDOWS!!!”
I wasn’t really sulking about spell card rules at that moment, but yeah, I could probably help more than thinking hard. I grab Eirin, fling her into the floor, and dash for the windows. An arrow whizzed toward me, bullets spiraling out of it. I reach out to block it, but it pierces through my hand. Well, I can’t slice with a broken hand, but I can still dodge.
Eventually, I reached the windows and attempted to cut them, Only, I ended up “swiping” them off due to being in a panic. I wasn’t sure if that gave less of a boost than actually cutting them, but you don’t worry about this sorta thing when you have two (apparently big shot) youkai to win against.
“Wow, you are bad at danmaku!” said the fairy. “I lose to—”
“I haven’t even bothered to use my lunatic eyes…”
“I SAID I LOSE TO—”
A wave of bullets shot out, turning invisible as they approached me. So it’s another invisibility person.
“Is that all you got?”
“Curse of the Heavens, Apollo 13!”
Gah, here’s the part where Zappers runs into a bullet.
“Here’s the part where I win,” he said, as he ran into a bullet.
What a waste. I focus on navigating through the field of color. It’s a bit tricky managing two fields of bullets, but I made do and whacked the bunny-ears girl. Eirin took notice and began shooting at me.
“Leave Blazer alone and pick on someone your own size!” Zappers sprayed bullets at the two.
“I’ve yet to see anything from you!” shouted Reisen.
“Exactly!”
That got a reaction out of the archer. I thought I saw her shift to Zappers, but I was shot in the arm with another arrow. One good arm left. I know hesitation when I see it, though.
“Nothing but a bunch of rejects from taking-over-the-world school!” spat out the miniature fairy. “You won’t win against real enemies!”
“Impressive speech. You are but a fairy. I am Reisen Udongein Inaba, and your…whatever. You won’t last under the gaze of the full moon!”
“The fairy is using magic, Reisen.”
“Magic? Alright, fair guess!” Zappers zips around, stalling for time.
This fight is taking too long; we might have well just waited for someone else to beat them up. Shouldn’t Zappers be pulling out some sort of super powerful attack right now? Do the one thing you’re good at when fighting. Wait, is Zappers signaling to me or something? Looks like he’s…telling me to go ahead? Is he telling me to skip this fight? Is that even possible?
(!) That corridor looks open to me. Eirin and Reisen seemed to be guarding it, so that’s where the leader should be!
[ ] 100% focus on getting through the hallway.
[ ] If I get followed, start fighting.
[ ] Stay behind and help Zappers, so he won’t invent some dumb excuse to leave me hanging because of “hypocrisy”.
Anonymous 2023/01/22 (Sun) 05:59
No. 204258
▼
[X] 100% focus on getting through the hallway.
Scurry! Scurry! Scurry!
>Haruka
Who?
Anonymous 2023/01/22 (Sun) 22:31
No. 204259
▼
[x] 100% focus on getting through the hallway.
!SdkoAQMIkY 2023/01/24 (Tue) 00:08
No. 204261
▼
>>204258
I attempted to imply that "Blazer" was a nickname given by Zappers for the whole "beat up bad guys" schtick, and that Haruka was her actual name. Since the name another anon gave me was for what basically amounted to character creation, I thought I could get away with "editing" it with the justification of "Blazer would probably not be a name in Japan". I tried to keep the changes insignificant, but should I not change "character creation" choices at all, even if I'm trying to add a plot point and not alter the choice itself?
ah damnit 2023/01/24 (Tue) 00:10
No. 204262
▼
that was supposed to be a spoiler LOL
Anonymous 2023/01/25 (Wed) 00:28
No. 204264
▼
>>204261
If you want to change character points like a name, you won't hear a complaint from me, but I have to say the line after the Haruka,
>Well, that was touching.
I read as sarcastic as if Zappers had overlooked Blazer’s name, which considering him being a fairy and a bit wild, it kind of fit in my head. Perhaps I'm just reading Blazer’s thoughts in a different light than intended.
Post 5
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/01/28 (Sat) 05:29
No. 204265
▼
No more fighting. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this.
WHOOSH shouting from behind me, and then a pause.
“As skilled as you may be, you still fell for it.”
“Fell for what?”
“You don’t know it, but you walked into a false—”
“Moon?” This woman is probably operating under Zappers’s thinking process. “I’m a bit confused on how a fake moon would remove light.”
“Let me explain. I blocked the lunarians from—”
“Aliens?”
“Let me finish.” Eirin spat out, the last word ricocheting off the walls. Too bad I was already a billion kilometers ahead of her.
The supports on the walls blurred away so fast that they went in the opposite direction, and then they went so fast in the opposite direction they went back in the regular direction. Like when Zappers would spin a toy top REALLY fast and the patterns would do that too.
Am I getting anywhere? No? Probably why no one does this job. Time to move even faster.
Blasting off at even greater speeds, I shot into—space? Wherever I am, it’s high in the sky. I can even see Marisa, Reimu, Sakuya, and—hey! They stuck together this time? I mean they were already forming duos; why didn’t they think of just lumping everyone together to make combined spell cards that annihilated everything?
I slowed down, as the end appeared to be near. The moon glowed brightly, its rays shining on my eyes.
“A random youkai?”
Turning around, I saw a regal woman in a red dress and pink shirt with long black hair. I could tell she was supposed to be one of those beautiful women in legends; The five objects that looked like some superpowered artifacts only confirmed my thoughts.
“KAGUYA! Am I going to encounter the big bad wolf next? Cinderella?”
“Maybe,” Kaguya shrugged. “How did you even get here?”
“My friend is busy with your—”
A tap on my—oh no. Eirin’s right behind me.
I attempted to swat away the bow, but my good arm missed by a lot and got another arrow shot through it, so I tackled Eirin, but she easily pushed me off. Time’s finally up.
“We can start explaining everything now,” said Eirin. “As you may know, Kaguya is from the tale of the bamboo cutter.”
“What does bamboo and men dying treasure hunting have to do with—”
“Ah-ah-ah, I am getting to the part about the moon. In respect to Kaguya returning to the moon at the end of the story, it’s because she is considered a lunarian; an inhabitant of the moon who does not like impurity—anything related to life or death. We haven't returned to the moon, though—we only came down to the Earth and stayed here.”
Anything related to life or death…that’s a pretty big thing to hate. “How is that even possible?” I said, thinking how stupid these lunarians were. “You’re existing right now!”
“True,” said Kaguya.
“You’re agreeing with me?”
“Despite reeking of impurity, you do not understand how much the lunarians loathe it,” murmured Kaguya. “A testament to their belief that they will become immortal by staying ‘pure’. However, I became immortal, yet merely thinking about becoming immortal is considered an impure act for associating with death by avoiding it.
And ironically, Eirin and I are removed from the concept of life and death entirely due to being truly immortal, but we are still considered impure.”
Ok, these guys are beyond stupid. According to Eirin, these brain-damaged weirdos built good enough tech to fight off an invasion from Gensokyo—must’ve evolved building skills instead of the understanding of…I think Zappers called it “permanence”?.
Anyway, their goal right after kicking out Kaguya for trying to live forever was to stay “pure” was to live forever. Aka they don’t have what Zappers calls “permanence”. No wonder why Eirin and Kaguya fled from them.
“Now that you’re up to date on what’s happening,” finished Kaguya, “could you call off your operation with that fairy that got into a sugar sack?” Heh, good one.
“So you’re telling me to go away.”
“Yes.”
“Then return the moon back to normal—if the humans get out of their beds, you’re free to go.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to negotiate,” said Kaguya, tensing up. The five treasures started emitting white smoke and glowing.
“There is almost nothing left to fight over, anyway,” added Eirin. “The lunarians set to retrieve us will most likely give up in a day or two. The duos that showed up in the past few days were dispatched by Reisen—what makes you think you can stop us, and then stop the lunarians?”
Drat. Is this how the incident is going to end? Next time, I’ll have to break every window in the village and then some to win.
“You could send your fairy pet up—”
“PET?!?!! He’s not my pet!”
“Of course, I wouldn’t recommend underestimating lunarians,” said Kaguya. “We have you on the ropes right now.”
“Hey, don’t give up!” A…terribly drawn image of Marisa popped up. “I know you can beat these losers!”
“Win this so we can go home already!” Now it’s a woman in a white dress (drawn like a cloud with a purple splotch on it) and Reimu. “We wanna sleep!”
“Hallucinations are a side effect of looking at Reisen’s eyes,” Eirin said, snapping me back to reality.
Guess it’s that and getting sick of teaming up with Zappers.
Come to think of it, am I a bad “friend”? All I do is find Zappers sleeping somewhere and wake him up to get him to. When I tried to get him to solve the amikiri and kamikiri fighting, I bugged him so much about it that he blindly went in and told everyone to “get along”. When that failed, he just destroyed both sides with magic. It could have been his fault for handling the situation poorly, but it could have also been mine for passing on my problems to him.
Well, when I asked him about it, he said, “You can’t win every time; this is nothing compared to what happens between some other friends here—and there was no sarcasm for the word ‘friends’! I’m not going to not be your friend if you won’t not be mine.” Maybe the first part applies right now.
Or this IS his super powerful attack, and the—
“The things you cannot cut are next to none!” Youmu. I admit that’s a good line—for Zappers’s standards. Wonder what Sakuya’s gonna say.
Anyway, the copies (that were probably drawn by a blindfolded, above-water squid) could suddenly turn real and save the day. Definitely sounds like a Zappers thing to do.
Either I surrender so I don’t dig myself into a bigger hole, stall for time to prevent Eirin and Kaguya from taking extra caution against the “illusions”, or fight back to sort of distract them from the thought of reinforcements while also saving myself if they don’t magically appear out of nowhere.
[ ] Surrender to avoid stirring up too much trouble.
[ ] Stall for time to avoid drawing attention to the possibility that reinforcements might show up. {Write-in}
[ ] Fight back to show everyone I won’t go down easily.
[ ] Something completely different {Write-in}
Anonymous 2023/01/28 (Sat) 16:07
No. 204266
▼
[x] Stall for time to avoid drawing attention to the possibility that reinforcements might show up. {Write-in}
-[x] Are you actually immortal or just pretending? Do you even know for sure? If you're not really sure, you might wake up the next morning and be not immortal again. Not to say your method sucks, but if you can "become" it, you can also "unbecome" it. And since means of entering that state were fantastical, would you even understand means of exiting that state if they came across you?
gaslightchamp.png
lunarmadness.png
Anonymous 2023/01/29 (Sun) 05:05
No. 204267
▼
[x] Stall for time to avoid drawing attention to the possibility that reinforcements might show up. {Write-in}
-[x] Are you actually immortal or just pretending? Do you even know for sure? If you're not really sure, you might wake up the next morning and be not immortal again. Not to say your method sucks, but if you can "become" it, you can also "unbecome" it. And since means of entering that state were fantastical, would you even understand means of exiting that state if they came across you?
Post 6
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/04/01 (Sat) 15:13
No. 204370
▼
“Are you actually immortal or just pretending?”
“How foolish,” frowned Eirin, proceeding to aim her bow at me, but Kaguya stopped her.
“Let her finish.”
“What I’m saying is that…” I thought hard, preparing myself to freeze the immortals in thought. ”Uh, how are you even ‘immortal’?”
“I am a doctor, although I do not use the white coats to signify my status like you people do.”
“But I’m not—”
“Not related. I can make any medicine in existence. However, true immortality is not physically producible as an effect.”
“So I helped her!” piped up Kaguya.
“Yes, princess Kaguya can control eternity.”
We’ll see.
“How did you even figure out how to convert an ability into medicine?”
“Inconceivable levels of intelligence.”
Not a Gensokyo troublemaker for nothing.
“Why were you born with it?”
“...you are actually acting this stupid?” Kaguya crossed her arms and squinted disapprovingly at me with one eye. “Fight back already.”
“Let’s say, hypothetically, you got it for no reason. Shouldn’t that mean you could lose it for no reason too?”
They didn’t look amused.
“Start shooting, Eirin!”
Damnit, should’ve left this sort of explanation to the person that made fairies an actual threat and always has everyone view his weird riddle arguments as coherent and worthy of attention.
The five treasures burst into action, shooting rainbow, red, blue, and gray projectiles at me. Eirin was following up with some sort of multi-laser thing that sprayed bullets everywhere.
“Nice work, genius!” a Reimu clone said.
“Shut up, I’m trying to dodge!”
“You have to stay INSIDE the lasers!”
Hmm…oof. Yeah, I’m doing this spell card incorrectly. Too late now, annndddddd woah what’s going onnn
“She should be neutralized by now.”
Hands up! Hands up! Move my hands around! C’mon, what happened?
“GET UP!”
That’s the witch…
“I gotcha!”
I thudded into a clone Marisa’s arms.
“Woah, you’re heavy!”
“You’re like 12 years old or something!”
“You’re 200!”
“How abnormal…” said Eirin, flying down to my height. ”You’re still conscious with an arrow driven through your head.”
“That’s ‘cause we have the power of friendship!” the Marisa clone said.
“Yes, it’s friendship with a poorly crafted illusion.”
“Wait,” said Kaguya. “Eirin, why are we seeing illu—”
A yellow flash of light blasted forth, followed by an earshaking boom that rocked the skies.
“I SAID WE HAVE THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!”
From the gleaming pillar that had formed from the flash, Marisa, Reimu, Sakuya, and Youmu flew out. They were accompanied by four others—I recognized two as previous incident causers, and one as the purple lady, but I wasn’t sure who the person following Marisa was.
Blah blah blah, Zappers is now taking things seriously and using fancy—
“God Sign, Genealogy of the Celestials. Revival, Seimei Yūgi, Game of Life.”
“Hey, that’s not allowed!” shouted Reimu. “One spell card at a time!”
“You all outnumber us ten to two, so this is only fair,” said Kaguya.
“Fair point, but I’m not a politician! Reimu is!”
Better get going. I reached for the arrows in my arms, pulled them out, then saw someone else approaching.
“Zappers, watch out!” I screamed, lungs bursting to get my voice to him.
Unfortunately, it was too late. Whoever it was managed to get a shot in, turning Zappers into a pile of dust…annnd it was apparently a fake and Zappers is behind them now. I gotta get closer to see what happened; too bad I’m not feeling so hot from all this fighting. How long has it been? Only 10 minutes?
Stupid eyes…jeez, it looks like the other person dodged and roundhouse-kicked Zappers. They’re good. Augh, why does flying somewhere take so long when I haven’t cut—
“OW!” A stray explosion hit me! Who caused it?
“Got you!”
If a 12-year-old carrying me was as odd as a crow with a white feather, a 5-year-old doing the same thing was as odd as a crow with only white feathers.
“Alright, I’m dropping you to save the other person! I baited her out with lots of illusions! Alsothere’sanarrowinyourhead!”
It’s definitely Zappers, and I definitely need to get off of him right now!
I leapt off him and dove straight into a bullet. I could feel my cheeks burning as Zappers stared at me. Whatever.
The massive amounts of colored stuff floating in the air made it impossible to approach Eirin and Kaguya. I think the incident resolvers gave up trying to have a proper duel and started using multiple spell cards at the same time too because I saw multiple patterns flying out of one location. Flying in to fight would just mean getting flung right out a second later.
“Seriously? I manage to find a way to not surrender, and my reward is to not be able to do anything at all now?” I thought to myself, as I pulled out the arrow in my head.
Looks like this is how it ends.
The chaos finally died down, and everyone seemed pretty exhausted.
I flew over to Reimu. “How’d it go?”
“Well, we won. That’s a good thing.” Reimu scowled at me. “Why couldn’t you have helped us, though?!”
“Outta gas.”
“What the hell does that even mean?!”
“The basic youkai ran out of basic youkai things to do,” another voice said. It was the small vampire girl.
“Shouldn’t you be out of blood or something at this point?”
“Why,” said the vampire, “good question! I do not have a rampant, insatiable thirst for blood that needs to be satisfied constantly to function.”
“Thanks for telling your maid to…assist me,” Youmu said.
Sakuya remained silent.
“Believe whatever you want,” replied Remilia.
“Where’re the guys behind all this?” asked Marisa.
“Alright! I got ’em!” Zappers chimed, holding up the two lunarians by the back of their collars. “Now turn the night back to normal!”
“As soon as you get your impure hands off of me.”
The fairy released his grip on the two, and then tried to harshly spit out “fess up”. It came out like a squawk from a dying bird.
“We are hiding from the lunarians by installing a barrier to stop them from reaching us.”
“Gensokyo already does that to everyone inside.”
“SEEeeE??? There was no need to get into a petty fight over this!” mocked the fairy. “It’s not like they organized a massive operation that disrupted the entirety—OWIE!”
“Shut up and let me handle this. Now leave!”
“That was some good handling,” I said, causing Reimu to shoot a mad look at me.
The talk played out like all the past incidents: An overly long conversation that defeats the purpose of starting a fight if both people could obviously solve the issue by chatting.
Why couldn’t I have handled it instead of her? I guess I did try to sorta start a fight with the two moon people by saying “my knowledge of the supernatural is better than yours”. Still mad that they also decided to be just as dumb as me and also solve things with violence.
“We’re baaaaack!”
“Of course we’re back, what goes on inside that head of yours?” The vampire started acting extra irritating to the witch. “There are more pressing matters to attend to.”
“Such as?” said Reimu.
“Another outsider. Looks western to me,” said Marisa. She slid open the doors and revealed a thirteen-something boy sitting there.
Better introduce myself after ruining my reputation with Keine. “What’s your name?” I said in English, but that was not an introduction. “I’m Blazer the…uh…”
“What’s your name?” Zappers repeated.
“Miles.” The boy didn’t look too good. There was dirt all over his lower legs and a ton of bruises and scratches on his feet.
Remilia said something complicated in English, and it went back and forth between her and the outsider before his face got mad and he stopped talking to her.
“No worries, we’ll deal with him…” Zappers said, his voice switching from deep to another accent of deep and then robotic and on and on. Everyone else was unimpressed, and Miles was staring at the fairy, who then proceeded to shift a leg back, raise his arms to be directed at Miles, and spread his fingers. Energy appeared in his palm, shaped like an owl’s eyes.
Miles scooched back a little.
“You…you…YOU…I can’t think of anything cool to say. Die!”
I heard a zzzzzt sound, but I couldn’t see if Zappers vaporized the kid’s ribs or not since he was blocking a lot of my vision.
“As plausible as that would be, no, I did not bring that human here.”
“Yukari, I’m not mad at you,” said Reimu. “You can admit it.”
I was expecting Zappers to respond with “but I’m disappointed”, but he was (presumably) telling the newcomer about what place he just landed in instead. Another fakeout?
“I simply do not throw gaps left, right, upside-down, sideways, and inside out. There is no point in feeding one youkai when all of them are in trouble.”
“By the way, why do you need to fix the moon?”
“Not fix,” said Reimu. “Take back.”
“Explain?”
“Eirin replaced the real moon with a fake moon, which isn’t exactly the same as the real one,” said Marisa.
“…how is it not the same as altering the moon?”
“Yeah, it is kinda the same, now that I think about it…” Marisa grinned sheepishly. “But we wanted to clear that bit up. What about the outsider?”
“We can…take care of him.” That got a reaction out of the kid. Weird. He doesn’t know Japanese. I assumed Zappers activated translation magic just to scare him. That fake gangster talk isn’t going to keep working.
“Good for that sad sack of flesh,” said the vampire.
“You seem to be one too,” said Youmu.
Marisa came in and pushed the two girls aside. “Let’s not start any more fights, ‘kay?” She looked like this sort of thing happened before. “I’d like to believe we can hold an alliance for more than a few hours at a time.”
“Youmu—”
“Yes, Lady Yuyuko!” The swordmaster turned to face the ghost, face pulled back like she was in the middle of doing something hard.
“Relax. I wanted to voice an agreement with Marisa; I would’ve pulled you away even if you attacked Remilia before anyone else could interrupt you.”
Yuyuko tugged at the lady in the white dress’s shirt’s shoulder. “I believe that would be enough explanation for these two?”
“Yes. Blazer, you will have to make do with understanding what happened with us and the moon. I can’t give answers, I need sleep.” I noticed some slight eye bags under her eyes.
The eight incident resolvers flew off into the new day. The sun was starting to shine a bit.
Zappers and the kid continued talking to each other. I bent over knees-to-chest right next to them to watch.
“Woah, a bit more time! Haha!”
The kid seemed afraid of me, but he resumed talking to the fairy as soon as he realized I was just watching.
Zappers turned to me. “Well, it may pain you to hear this, but he also plays video games, like me.”
“Well, you missed the mark of what I actually hate about you by about a mile,” I said, shrugging, “but go on.”
“He hates his life back at home and is going to live here to escape real life.”
“...what?”
“He hates going to school.”
“What’s…school?”
“Training to get stronger, but for your brain. Keine, dummy.”
Mhm, right. There are weirder situations. “Why doesn’t he want to go back? He clearly didn’t land in somewhere fun: he’s not in a place where people understand English and surrounded by things that kill humans and generally don’t die to humans.”
“Oh, uh, yeah, he’s suicidal apparently. Good luck!”
What?! Why’s he treating this like I’m supposed to be the one to talk him down from hanging himself? “Listen, you’re the one that knows English. Go babysit him yourself.”
“What about Remilia?”
“Too stuck-up.”
“True. However, the young chap is quite skilled in close combat. I sparred with him, and he outmaneuvered—”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I said, as I slapped the fairy in the face. Why is Zappers labeling this kid as some sort of combat master? “He’s not winning a fight anytime soon.”
“Then fight him.”
Which I did, easily knocking him down by flying into him. Zappers said something in English to him. He got up, head down and slouched over.
“Alright! I will see you in the future! Goodbye for now!”
And Zappers flew off. I thought he would teleport, though.
It was about a week after the big incident. I barely spoke with anyone after incidents. “Not worth my time when I have to deal with this,” I thought to myself as I opened the door to my temporary bedroom after the incident.
“Good morning, Haruka!” A disgusting smile met my face. It was one of the higher-ups in the amikiri village.
I drilled a hole into his eyes.
“Straight to the point as usual. Expected. But that doesn’t change the fact that a member of our village resolved an incident by herself!” He left the room.
Watch, he’s going to say the kamikiri are gonna be screwed over by this and that the amikiri will be seen as the true
“This is a vital step into exposing those kamikiri as lecherous perverts and fraudsters of amikiri!”
Close enough.
“Anyway, today’s the day that I go free, right?” I looked at the door to outside.
“Yes, it is. Everyone’s waiting for yOU!!!!!”, the voice pounding in my head as I heard the last few words. I’m not one to get stage fright, but I hate this sort of cheery gathering full of lies about other youkai over humans that honestly don’t care about us.
I pushed the doors open. So many happy faces. I’m the bad guy for being irritated by them. There was a stage that was a bunch of planks stacked together.
A man walked into my view onto the planks of wood stacked together to speak.
“Seven days ago, a brave member of our village resolved an incident that had altered the moon, blocking a tiny amount of moonlight. This then escalated into the moon staying in the sky for up to 50 hours, and then weeks at a time.
Our brave lone wolf Blazer stepped in and destroyed the aliens which had tampered with the moon, who were Eirin Yagakoro, a mad scientist, and Kagu—hey, wait a second. The bamboo princess? WHAT?”
The speaker hurried offstage. Lots of chatter surrounded me, most of it licking my boots. Calm down cult members, you all can do what I do too. Not to mention getting called “selfish” whenever I come back after leaving the village to do anything other than literally save Gensokyo. Bunch of phonies.
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry about that! It turns out that yes, that was Kaguya the bamboo cutter. I mean, Kaguya from that story. She’s gotta be powerful, even as a princess, right?”
You’re right, but I don’t have to tell you that. Not sure what I could trick them into thinking, though.
I need to think about my choices first so I don’t try and speak like I can verbally rush down anyone I come across when I can’t. Like last time.
[ ] Say Eirin and Kaguya were powerful and earn credit for stopping them, but make the amikiri-kamikiri war worse
[ ] Say Eirin and Kaguya were average people, which will probably get me get stuck in the amikiri village for running off to do nothing, but at least it won’t paint a target on the kamikiri
Anonymous 2023/04/02 (Sun) 07:25
No. 204371
▼
There's the kid, now where is the tree?
Imagine intentionally choosing to make an ongoing conflict worse for personal acclaim.
[X] Say Eirin and Kaguya were powerful and earn credit for stopping them, but make the amikiri-kamikiri war worse
Anonymous 2023/04/02 (Sun) 15:27
No. 204372
▼
[X] Say Eirin and Kaguya were powerful and earn credit for stopping them, but make the amikiri-kamikiri war worse
it's like choosing between two suspicious items in the back of the fridge with no expiration date listed
you just know they both went bad, the only question is which of them is worse
Post 7
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/04/13 (Thu) 04:10
No. 204380
▼
[X] Say Eirin and Kaguya were powerful and earn credit for stopping them, but make the amikiri-kamikiri war worse
I walked up to the stage that looked like an oversized child was trying to build something with trees. The speaker looked at me with delighted eyes, silently pushing me to go on.
“Alright, yes! I just stopped an incident on the level of the red-white and black-and-white women needing to interfere, and they also needed to get help from the vampire and someone else.” Not sure who Yuyuko and Youmu were supposed to be. Either related to the group behind the winter incident or some mercenary the regulars had to hire.
“Amazing!” The speaker cheered. “Blazer has firsthand experience of it: They just stopped two people on the level of Reimu and the magician!”
“Her name is Marisa!” I shouted. “Announcer, remember that!”
The crowd began their applause. It was about 60 people—not that much compared to the amount of youkai in this village.
“So, Marisa and the—”
“Reimu and Marisa!” Thinking about Zappers’s drawn-out speeches in the human and youkai towns where he did some gesturing with his arms to draw more attention, I curled up a hand like I was holding a peach. “Two undefeatable humans, both unable to stop this new threat. I saved everyone by defeating Eirin and Kaguya, the would-be end of Gensokyo!”
I clenched my fist to look cool. “So, what am I to you?”
A noise of “hero” and “savior” and “strongest in the village” erupted from the crowd. I hate this stupid place and its stupid people and their stupid cries, but I have to keep up the act.
“Fear not my departure! I am leaving the village to look for other incidents to stop!”
The man that was speaking before had shaken off the shock from my speech and sort of pushed me aside. “We can focus on the kamikiri knowing that Blazer will save us from trouble!”
Looks like they think I’m a sort of secret weapon now. Darn it.
I got out of that stupid village. Now I’m in the forest and about fifty steps to the base of the mountain.
Stepping through the woods, I realized that I would be trespassing on tengu land if I actually reached the base of the mountain.
Where am I even going? It’s like I’m being controlled to wander around everywhere away from humans, unlike actual youkai who are noticed by them.
Am I boring? Nah, that can’t be the case. I realized I don’t make humans notice me two seconds ago, which would mean I’m not boring, because I’m abnormal because I’m not recognized by humans. Wait, does that mean I’m boring?
My head hurts because of this. I should be happy that I’m out of that stupid war. Everyone involved in it isn’t even trying to make the other side look bad; they’re literally five-year-olds calling each other “evil”. How did this whole thing start anyway? I don’t remember.
Zappers is probably busy teaching Miles Japanese or something. He could also be teaching the weak human how to fight, but if Zappers did any long-term training to help anyone more powerful than fairies the same size as him, there would already be lots of people with their own mansion at best or destroying everyone with their insane power at worst.
That gets me thinking. I'm not sure why Zappers hasn't already gone beyond pretending to take over Gensokyo to actually making an impact. I forgot if he started any serious incidents or not. Don't know who to ask, though.
The tengu were also okay to be around. Maybe I should talk to some of the guards to show them that amikiri (and kamikiri) aren’t all crazy people.
The human village is…not very interesting. If I want to go to the big house the immortal people live in, I guess I could stop by it for five minutes since it’s on the path to the human village.
I would go back to my own village to stop the war if I wouldn’t immediately get attacked for not seeing the other side as bad. Plus, I want to make peace, not beat everyone in a fight. Otherwise, I would have already given Reimu a heads-up about what was happening and let her tear through both villages.
Free from the village, but free to do what? I can’t do anything I want to do and I don’t want to do anything I can do.
[ ] Go somewhere… {Write-in}
Anonymous 2023/04/13 (Thu) 05:36
No. 204381
▼
[X] Youkai Mountain
Time to go to the peak and overlook the lands.
Post 8
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/04/15 (Sat) 00:53
No. 204382
▼
[X] Youkai Mountain
Stepping through the woods, I walked up to the slope of the ground. About thirty seconds in, I came across some guards.
“Halt.”
“Blazer, amikiri.”
There was only one tengu here. There should be more…
“Do not enter the mountain; it is our territory.”
“Anything cool happen at your job?”
“I will entertain your boredom; not many orders have been issued yet,” said the guard. “Guards are not soldiers in this village. By default, they usually wait for more specific orders before leaving their posts instead of moving around.”
“So you sit around and do nothing?”
“You could say I wish to do so. I stand alert instead of letting my mind wander aimlessly.”
“Lemme through.”
“Leave.” The guard pointed their sword at me.
[ ] Challenge the guard to a spell card duel.
[ ] Leave.
[ ] Claim that I should be let through because I stopped the incident.
Anonymous 2023/04/15 (Sat) 01:07
No. 204383
▼
[Lie] Claim that I should be let through because I stopped the incident.
Post 9
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/04/16 (Sun) 04:22
No. 204384
▼
[Lie] Claim that I should be let through because I stopped the incident.
“Alright, I’m here to stop future incidents.”
“...what? The tengu are dealing with your problems: the loud riots that never stop. I wish the amikiri were behind the last incident so it could be revealed that your noise was causing the sun to go away.”
This person got it pretty mixed up.
“I’m sorry about that, but I can stop the noise. I’m the one who stopped the night from being permanent.”
That got the guard to put their sword away from my face. “Obviously, you are not able to accomplish that by yourself if you paid the tengu a visit. You want the tengu to spread information that the amikiri are noble heroes fighting the scummy kamikiri and get backup for your war.”
They completely messed it up…but I’m willing to play along.
“If you really did stop that incident, there may be an opportunity for some cooperation between you and us tengu. So,” the guard said, “are you ready to redeem the amikiri and kamikiri?”
[ ] Go along with the guard’s wrong guess
[ ] Come clean early and admit I lied
[ ] Leave without saying anything
[ ] Sucker punch the guard
Anonymous 2023/04/16 (Sun) 05:53
No. 204385
▼
[X] Go along with the guard’s wrong guess
How far can we keep on pulling this string?
Post 10
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/04/18 (Tue) 03:56
No. 204390
▼
[X] Go along with the guard’s wrong guess
“Yes, that is what I want!”
Dang it, it wasn’t what I wanted! I only wanted to go to the top of Youkai Mountain to see where to go next! I suppose I could fix things with the kamikiri after wrecking their village.
“The patrol team is to your right. Find the big waterfall that this mountain has, there should be some tengu there. If you really dealt with the last incident, you could easily beat one of them in a spell card match if they act hostile towards you.”
Lying aside, I’m actually sure I could beat a white wolf tengu, even without cutting a net or breaking a window. They’re supposed to be at the bottom of the tengu ladder, right?
There’s nothing cool around the base of Youkai Mountain. It’s just trees and the occasional small clearing. At least I can see the waterfall now.
“Hey! Over here!”
That got ‘em to notice me.
“Stop!” I yelled. They didn’t stop. Instead, they opened fire at me.
Now that I think about it, telling some guards to send just one person in order for an enemy to show them they’re strong. What do I do now?
“I’m a good guy! Stop shooting!”
“What?! Why are you invading then?!”
“Pipe down until we’ve chased them off the mountain!”
How do I get their attention?
[ ] Beat them all up
[ ] Drag one of them away and explain the situation to them
[ ] {Write-in}
Anonymous 2023/04/18 (Tue) 05:20
No. 204391
▼
[X] Beat them all up
Something overconfidence
Anonymous 2023/04/18 (Tue) 09:22
No. 204392
▼
[x] Beat them all up
remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and radical killer
Post 11
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/05/11 (Thu) 00:38
No. 204415
▼
“Alright, you asked for it!”
I charged in and landed two good hits on separate guards.
“Mitsuki GET AWAY!”
The others began to split up, surrounding me and engaging in danmaku from what they thought was a safe distance. I was too fast for them to keep up, as I had already grabbed another one of the tengu and flung them into another tengu.
“Who is this person?”
“Shut up and focus!”
Okay, there were six tengu in a V-formation similar to the fairies from the last incident. That means I can probably double slash them and knock them all out in one attack. Which I did.
“Fall back!”
It was very easy to pursue the stragglers, even though I got hit a lot. I could feel that I was going to collapse soon from being careless and getting hit a lot, but I couldn’t lose now.
I chased down the remaining tengu, messily starting up close fights with them.
“Shields up! Strike carefully!”
In response, I grabbed the shield of one of the guards and swung it around, dragging the guard around and knocking over other guards that smashed into the one I spun around, before letting go and launching them into a mountain.
Was that really it? Did I win?
Looks like it! There were a bunch of bodies lying around. That was easier than I thought. Is it just the blood leaking out of me, or can I not feel my arms? And legs.
I could take it one step further and go to the tengu village, but that feels too risky at this point. There’s the option to dig into the mountain, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to reach the top without a shovel, and I don’t have any money, so…
[ ] Shovel time
-[ ] Steal a high-tech one from the kappa village
-[ ] Steal a normal one from the human village
[ ] I can take ‘em!
-[ ] Continue fighting the tengu
-[ ] Just fly past the tengu
-[ ] Sneak past everyone in the tengu village
[ ] A better idea? {Write-in}
Anonymous 2023/05/11 (Thu) 01:50
No. 204416
▼
[x] A better idea? {Write-in}
-[x] Just go back to that guard that told us to ram ourselves into patrol. We proved ourselves, maybe they can help.
Anonymous 2023/05/11 (Thu) 02:45
No. 204417
▼
[x] A better idea? {Write-in}
-[x] Just go back to that guard that told us to ram ourselves into patrol. We proved ourselves, maybe they can help.
I can't help but feel we've been tricked somehow and this guard will now strike us down while weakened and claim credit.
Anonymous 2023/05/11 (Thu) 17:50
No. 204418
▼
>>204417
It sounded like they were near the entrance. If they're cunning like that, it might be easier to Final Burst them, go home and try again tomorrow.
Post 12
le_maymays !SdkoAQMIkY 2023/05/27 (Sat) 17:41
No. 204419
▼
[X] A better idea? {Write-in}
-[X] Just go back to that guard that told us to ram ourselves into patrol. We proved ourselves, maybe they can help.
I backtracked to the original meeting point where the guard was. “Hey! I beat up the guards!”
“Patrol, not guards, and you should be with them, not me,” the guard said.
“Well, they’re kinda unconscious now.”
“That should not be the case…danmaku aren’t supposed to hit hard enough to inflict fainting.”
Ah, danmaku this, danmaku that. I think it was the patrol team’s fault for not saying it was gonna be a danmaku duel. “They didn’t tell me to use danmaku.”
The guard sighed and frowned. “It is the default method to settle fights with…”
“It’s a bad one then.”
“Nevertheless, you are going to be exterminated by the shrine maiden, or a friend of hers for violating a central law of Gensokyo.”
That’s no good. “Why didn’t I get called out once I broke this ‘central law’?”
“Well, not everyone is as immersed into politics as Reimu or whoever established Gensokyo,” said the guard. “Random tengu patrol units are probably not as adherent to spell card rules as her.”
“Will they also get in trouble or something?”
“You know tengu, they put all the blame on others if they can.”
That’s definitely no good. I’m not sure I can do the same thing I did back there with less stamina and faster opponents.
“Is there anything I can do?”
The guard put his hands up in defense. “I am ranked low on the hierarchy, so it’s good that you want to do this by yourself. However, tengu are undoubtedly spying on us right now, and I do not wish to worsen my punishment for continuing to aid someone that engaged in unrestricted combat.”
I thought the guard was being paranoid, so I shouted for the crow tengu to come fight me. Nothing.
“I suppose the crow tengu do not have great hearing like white wolf tengu.”
“The spies?”
“They will come. Sniveling—I mean they are searching for stories for their newspapers,” the guard hastily corrected.
“What are the spell card rules, anyway? You were all like ‘Reimu is gonna snap my neck for breaking the sPeLl CaRd RuLeS’.”
“Ah, easy. One: All attacks must be beautiful and unique. Two: No killing your opponent.”
“Yeah”
“…eh…” The guard shrugged. “Ask Reimu, I’m only a—”
Before he could finish, I grabbed him by the face and lifted him up. I stood around a wrist-to-fingernail taller than him.
“Now, you are going to get yourself imprisoned for nonverbally threatening me.”
“Fancy words aside, I need help. Get me out of this mess.”
The guard shifted a little. “Me no know how to persuade chief to not lock up you!”
“I won’t hurt you for thinking I’m stupid. I just need you to get me out of the mess you dragged me into.” I let go of the guard.
“I don’t know! There’s nothing I can do!”
Is this day only going to get worse?
“Can you tell me about the tengu’s battle strategy and what shifts they take breaks on?”
“No! That’s just treason!”
“Man, you did not think this through…”
A slap hit my face. “You really think you should be doing that right now?”
“WE WOULDN’T BE IN THIS SITUATION IF YOU KNEW WHAT SPELL CARD RULES WERE!!!” The guard was sweating heavily now.
“WHY DO I HAVE TO FOLLOW THEM??!?!?! I CAN’T COME UP WITH ANYTHING COOL!!!!”
“BECAUSE IT STOPS PEOPLE FROM DESTROYING EVERYTHING!!!”
“WHAT STOPS PEOPLE FROM DESTROYING EVERYTHING IN A COOL WAY??!?!”
“Yoshimi, stop.”
Crow tengu are here!
[ ] Turn myself in
[ ] Fight
[ ] Explain the situation {Write-in}
Anonymous 2023/05/27 (Sat) 19:28
No. 204420
▼
[x] Fight
it's like trying to argue with a bunch of cogs in a machine
you're not supposed to yell and scream and stomp your foot, just jam them with something and there you go they stopped
Anonymous 2023/05/28 (Sun) 02:28
No. 204421
▼
[X] Fight
Blaze of glory
Anonymous 2023/05/28 (Sun) 06:37
No. 204422
▼
>I stood around a wrist-to-fingernail taller than him.
Out of all the height comparisons I've ever read or heard, this is certainly a new one. I can't tell if it means this Tengu guard is short or Blazer is just tall; for all I know, Blazer could just have some large hands.
For some reason, due to Zappers being a fairy and a friend, I had just assumed Blazer to be similar height to a fairy.
Anyways, Blazer has probably singlehandedly worsened the kamikiri and amikiri conflict along with the Tengu relationship, which is hilarious.
Anonymous 2023/05/28 (Sun) 06:48
No. 204423
▼
>>204422
Addendum, Blazer might also just have long fingernails for better net cutting ability.
