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There was neither star nor moon when they cleared the confines of the twisting caves.

And suddenly there were no dark walls, no more black ceilings hanging ponderously aloft, a weight of a thousand tonnes of earth and stone bearing down on one’s head from every square inch above. And the world was tall and wide, beautiful and limitless. The evening was in full wane now, and the night was in reign, cold, though warmer still than the deep underground.

Garion breathed deeper the cool rain-scented air.

A long time had passed since last he had seen the trees and the mountains, the grass and the sky. A long time it had been since he walked in the surface world; and such was his wonder that he paid but the scantest attention to the yawning chasm whence they arose, which loomed now behind: a rent in the green expanse of beech- and oak-wood. The eyes of the blond man and his roguish cat-eared chauffeur, however, were locked ahead: where a distant hill loomed and glowed, like a star borne from dark earth.

And what a star that was!

The hill itself sparkled with dozens of lamps and small fires, but even at its foot snaked a comet-like tail of even more lights: tens, hundreds of stalls and attractions spread along the meandering highway that joined the shrine and the town and the rest of the Land. And now that grey highway glowed with cheer and merriment, and even from so afar the music and the talk of dozens of adults and children alike could be heard, carried for miles by the wind.

Please refer to >>/shrine/33238 before reading on. Thank you. And now for your unscheduled update.

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It was later that Garion rose finally from the steaming water of the bath, braced now, warm and invigorated.

As he climbed from the sumptuous tub and sauntered, dripping, to wipe himself on one of the downlike towels, he recalled again yet that which had transpired after the concise exchange between him and his hostess; for it caused him great perplexity – so great in reality he had spent all bath turning it over in his mind.


“I'll take these to your room,” said to him the tiny woman. She had stood by then, and helped him remove his rucksack and coat. Shamed though he was, Garion was weary, and he did not push her away, though he might wish. “Go and bathe,” she ordered next, even as she still undressed him; “you smell, Garion, and I wager you are dead on your feet from all the hiking and tramping. Cold, too, I bet. Get it out of your bones. And don't be afraid to take your time. I'll go to the kitchen and see if I can round up everything you'll require in the meanwhile. See me there when you're done. I'll be waiting. Why? I thought I'd like to watch as you work, Garion, that's all. I might just learn something myself... well, among other things. Oh, and please, don't let it bother you—not at all. I can wait. I'm quite good at that, actually – wouldn't you agree? No, don't answer, please; I wouldn't want you to wrick your tongue assuring me of your best intentions. Anyway, I'm pleased to say that my sister has returned—finally, I might add—and so has my other pet, Utsuho – so that'll be all five of us eating tonight, counting you. A lot of work to make food for that many, isn't it? But don't worry – I won't fit in all that much, I don't think. I've been feeling as if I had a brick sitting in my stomach ever since last night. I wonder why. No, don't speak; I don't really care to know. Anyway, that's it. Go, Garion, and don't concern

>Well, only one way to get rid of something like this...

Urgh, one thing's for sure, you can't stay here in Rin's presence. Not right now anyways. Your mind is in an awkward phase right now. It would be best to leave her be for now since she seems intent on sleeping a while. You should check on her later though as she still seems a bit under the weather.

You walk out of the bedroom and gently close the door shut tight. Afterwards, you head out into the living room and lay out on the love seat, feeling rather exhausted. This is all too much for you to handle. You swear you're about to burst. It's horrid enough there's some serious moral issues going on here. I mean, what are you gonna tell Satori? Hi I'm fucking your pet cat? You swear, if you ever muttered that phrase in the human village, you'd be hanged. Not hung the way you are now, of course. You can't believe Rin has degraded your standing to this. Your urges, your desires, your...lust. You could go on and criticize the girls you know, Marisa for being too childish looking, Alice for being too lanky and proper, and Keine-sensei for simply having two gigantic marshmellows you could suffocate in. Rin's body is practically perfect. Admittedly, it's probably the first female body you've seen naked in a very long time. But...still.

Even against all the repression you can't help but feel that maybe there is some sort of genuine attraction to Rin going on here. I mean, while you get along really well with Marisa, and talk occasionally with Alice and Keine-sensei, with Rin, it feels so...natural. Talking with her is pretty much always fun and never boring, and although you haven't taken Rin out much since the invident with Marisa, the times you did were an utter blast. You look forward to taking her to the human village again, even if she herself had to repress all her ugly talk about death around the people. You two started off on odd ends at first, but after you got to know each other, it got a lot better. Especially after you got over your stubbornness with not wanting to get along with her, brought on by the fact that you had to live

It's the dawn of a new day. The morning sunshine leaks in, filtered mainly by your curtains. Your room is that of a highly victorian style, looking like it came straight from england.

Oh, right. England...you only just recently learned of the existence of the outside world. Yet you're already quite used to the idea. Gensokyo is only but so big. The world outside must be even bigger. Supposedly they're much more technologically advanced too. Gensokyo went through it's industrial revolution a while ago. Factories, clockworks and steel run the majority of the land now. Youkai are still as prominent as ever though, despite the fact that they used to be against this kind of revolution.

The central city, the capital Risou, is where everything happens. All the work, circulation, everything. You just happen to live in one of the upper quarter areas with your parents and little brother. Your house is actually several stories tall, but it's divided into three separate living quarters, other people happen live in the other two. You live in the quarter highest up, not to mention your room is on the top floor, so your balcony gets quite the view. Your parents are but ordinary workers, your father is an engineer, much like your grandfather, and your mother is a stay at home mom for the most part. You yourself are but 14 years old, with your little brother coming in at half that, 7. Your parents are somewhat young for having children such as you and your brother, but it was something of a wish of your grandfather.

You choose to think about your grandfather a little later. You need to get up. You hop out of bed and open the curtains. Another beautiful morning. The sun is still rising. The people in the lower quarters must still be living without direct sunlight. The streets, though small, are empty. Transportation in the capital is limited strictly to small steam powered trains, mainly used for mass transport. Any other method of getting around has to be done on foot without any help from wheeled mobiles and such, so the streets are fairly thin. As a result, a lot of buildings are often packed and knit closely together. You could probably throw something into the window of an

Silent night,

"You idiot, Okuu!"

Holy night,

"Immoral cat!"

All is calm,

"You big-breasted clumsy three-eyed oaf!"

All is bright,

"And you're an unlucky cat always in heat!"

[x] Create a deadly neurotoxin to spend time.

“Eureka! Saw that, idiot rabbit? Of course you can't! I just created something strong enough let you die in a fearsome and painful way! And what you understand? NOTHING! Freaking nothing! I envy you sometimes, being idiot must be a blessing. But I do enjoy that genius brain of my. Thanks to it, I could create.... THIS!”
Raising the bottle over your head, you scream in joy. What you made is something horrible, a disgusting poison from your twisted yet wonderful mind! A wonderful poem, to death, and torture! A disgustingly perfect and slow death! This is what you made, by mixing average neurotoxin to aphrodisiac! According to your prevision, the victim will first feel horny its body will slowly goes numb, and in the end, be totally paralyzed, leading to a death by asphyxiation! Of course, you're still alive during the whole process, to make things worse! But isn't it better to die while having a boner? Hey? Besides, you're pretty sure that hanged peoples died while ejaculating! How elaborate from you, because, in the end, anyone being poisoned by this will leave this world in an orgasm. Man, you are so horrible and twisted, you actually love yourself for being like that! Now, if you could just turn this liquid into a gas, everything would be perfect. Perhaps if you use another toxin?
“Professor?”
Oh. Someone spoke. And that's not Reisen. Nope. That's that chain-smoking brown haired girl with a nice hat, Renko Usami.
“Hello Renko. Hey, it rhymes. So what's up? Wanna have an innocent and totally not suspicious drink?”
For some reason, she's avoiding your eyes, not looking at you directly. That's not bothering you, since you're far more bothered by the fact that she's smoking in the laboratory. But you're not going to lecture her, she's old enough to know what she's doing.
“He's coming.”
“Mmm? Who? Zalgo? The Antechrist? Reagan?”
“The one you're supposed to get rid of.”
And with that, she disappears. Just like that. You just blink, and “poof”, she's no longer here. That's funny, when you think about it. It'

"So, sort this out for me, Suika," Yuugi half-yelled over the transmitter. "You're saying that Marisa's dead, Yuuka's dead, and the Enma is missing?"

"A-yup!" It was easy to tell which of the two had been imbibing recently. "Yuuuugi, the boring ghost is missing too."

This was news to Yuugi. "Marisa was killed by Yuuka, Yuuka was executed by the Enma, and now she's missing because she probably did something she wasn't supposed to do." Yuugi cupped her chin in her free hand, her sake sloshing around in her almost-full saucer. "So why is she missing?"

"I dun know," came back the reply. "Even Yukari can't find her."

---

Yukari had been busy for the past few weeks. She had allowed Shiki access to her gaps for the public "execution", had bid farewell to her previous life with her blessing of Kana and Yuuka, and then had spent a lot of time looking for Yuyuko. Youmu had let Yukari know that Yuyuko said she was leaving for a while, and that had been around the same time as the execution. She was so busy, she forgot to take back the contact orbs Reimu had used on her trip down, and Suika, having found them in the storage shed just outside the house, decided to use her power to bring one of them to Yuugi.

Yuyuko was always a whimsical being. She would be the person that would run a marathon just to enjoy all of the refreshments along the way. To someone like Yukari, while it would be child's play to track her movements, it would much rather be spent sleeping.

While Yukari slept a lot, it was only to conserve her own energy. Youkai were creatures born from emotional responses and/or fears and likes, but eventually even youkai as powerful as the Lady of Borders knew her own strengths and limits. Her own power took very little effort, but if she was to fulfill her end of the bargain to Reimu, she'd have to stay alive. One generation later, and everything seemed to be the same. Old youkai faded away, and new ones came in to take their place. Gone was Elly, Yuuka's gatekeeper, and the former youkai of death, and in

[X] If a fight is what it takes to bring this to a close... you'll just have to find some way to survive!

It's too late to run now. Hell, it's been too late to run ever since you first talked to her; you have a feeling that she made up her mind to kill you as soon as she found out that you were against her 'cause'. At this point, even if you could get Orin out of her funk and moving, trying to run might just end up bringing Okuu chasing after you up into the city, and you can't think of a worse outcome than that.

Which means you're going to have to fight here. With one last look at Orin, you stand from your crouch and turn towards Okuu, sizing her up as you mentally prepare for battle.

That cannon is still pointed towards you, but she isn't firing yet; there must be some sort of limit on how quickly she can shoot, or she would have just hit you with a follow-up after her first shot grazed you. It's too heavy for her to wield it easily, too; she has to brace herself with her free arm just to keep it trained on you, let alone re-aiming. Add in the weight of the thing slowing down her footwork and the fact that she'd be fighting one-handed, and your path is clear: you're going to have to get close and stay close until you can knock her down for long enough to give yourself a chance to get out of here.

The only problem is how. There's about a twenty foot gap between the two of you now, and If Okuu's done the same thinking you have, then she'll be trying to maintain that distance just as sure as you're trying to close it. Dodging those fireballs won't be easy at any distance, but getting closer will only make the task more difficult, and judging by the speed of that last shot, twenty feet is as good as point-blank range for this weapon. Danmaku as a distraction is a possibility, but you have a feeling that putting what little you've got up against her projectiles would be like showing up bare-handed to a knife fight. At closer ranges, maybe you could--

"Get away from Taizou, Rin."

And thinking time is over. Stepping back into a more balanced stance, you ready yourself

“I heard that when you die in extreme pain or sorrow, you become an evil spirit, only caring about his revenge. Now I'm asking you: are you in pain right now? Of course, you're laying on some rocks. That's not very comfy. But you had worse, right? Like, I don't know, when you fall on those rocks! I bet it hurts. Are you still feeling the pain? Does it still hurt? Hey, I wonder! If I can erase the pain, will you not be mad at me for scaring you? Won't you throw rocks at me if I … let's say 'heal' you. I don't really want to go into explanations.”
“Please...” Is all you manage to say. Mainly because you're badly hurt, but also because your jaw is broken. That's what you get for trying speleology without reading the manual! And maybe the rope was too short too. And maybe the rock was too hard.
You were trying to fix that hook, like you saw in that movie, but then, something asked you what you were doing, and, startled, you fell from the plateau.
That was a beautiful fall, by the way. Maybe you should have recorded it, and uploaded it on Youtube.

Oh silly you! That's right, you can't really move, since your bones are all broken! That hurts a lot, by the way. Not as much as when your mom caught you drinking beer in the family basement, but it still hurts. Thinking about it, you're wondering how will react your mother, hearing that you disappeared in a hole. Maybe she'll say something like:
“He disappeared? Lock your beer and your daughters!”
Yeah, obviously something like that.

“So, are you decided? Suits me if you decide to become an evil spirit, we're in shortage of them. Rin may pay good price for a new spirit.”
“Who's... Rin?”
“She's taking care of hell, torturing some spirits. Kinda like a caretaker, but more sexy.”
That's right, you remember the building's caretaker. As friendly as a space invader, and as sexy as a bearded woman.
“Please... Help me.”
Wow, your jaw wasn't broken in the end? My bad, I though it was. Fine, let's say your jaw is fine. But talking is still the only thing you can do. In short, you'r