Some of you good folks may have seen this fanfiction elsewhere, but for a lot of you, this is your first time. Welcome!

According to the fiction ratings, this piece should fit snugly in the T category, but there will be a few scattered scenes here and there that are... stronger than the usual fare. Not romance or sex, mind you; I mean death and violence. If these are an issue in that any reader is disturbed by the contents, leave a comment and I shall change the rating accordingly.

As for the genre? I know it says "Family/Drama", but more accurately, it should be "Family/War Drama". This is very much a political/historical fiction; I'm an International Relations major, after all. If this kind of thing is your cup o' tea, sit down and have a read!

Alternate names for this fic? I'm tempted to make the working title Zolst Ligen in Drerd ("You should lie in the earth!"). But no. Though my "friend" Betty actually gave me the idea of Satori Eye Z as the alternate title, so you can probably call it that if you like.

Needless disclaimer: I'm just leasing these characters from ZUN. Thank you for such awesome games, by the way!


Shall we?


The White Rose of Chireiden

Act I - Before the Former Hell

Part 1

Beneath the land of Gensokyo, Hell blazed.

This itself was nothing notable, but the problem was that now, Hell was blazing- and so was the rest of the Underground City. The forces of Makai had broken through, and led by the Vermeil Devil's maid, they stormed into the Underground City, and Chireiden.

Makai's troops were all demons, fitting for the goddess Shinki, lady of Pandaemonium. Chireiden had incurred her wrath by their desire to gain independence. So Shinki had of course sent her troops into the capital, the Underground City, and its federal district of Chireiden. And after taking Chireiden, it would only be a matter of hours before the seat of local governance was taken - the Palace of the Earth Spirits. It was the perfect opportunity, too; Shinki had ensured that there was a distraction of the highest caliber, one that required the attention of Chireiden's entire army. The otherwise fighting youkai and satori of the Underground City were, in other words, miles away when Shinki began her offensive. She had sent a small contingent, a battalion or two, to supposedly poison Chireiden's water supply, and let a bit of false information slip that she had sent her entire army there, to begin a surprise attack on the Underground, which had merited the attention of all of Chireiden's forces, but left their capital wide open to attack.

And attack Shinki did. Yumeko laughed as, preceded by hordes of spiny, bristling demons, she strode confidently through the smoke into the first of five rings of defense surrounding the Palace. The rings were successively higher and higher, and their entrances were not all in one row. It was a maze of sorts, giving any defender ample time and area to be able to repel attack as invaders fought their way through the rings. But whoever had designed the castle's defenses had not counted on the invaders' sheer, overwhelming numbers. Yumeko had decided, with the help of the strategist Mai, that she could sacrifice ten of her demons for every one citizen of hell and still come out victorious.

Smoke was billowing everywhere. The houses of the Underground City were sprawling, strewn in a vaguely circumscribed pattern, which surrounded the federal district of Chireiden in a protective sphere. And even further in was the Palace. But Yumeko's troops had taken the Underground City unawares, marching quickly through a back tunnel, a service pathway to Hell, which Shinki's daughter Alice had found one day by pure chance while playing with her dolls.

So they were able to storm at least the outskirts of the city and quickly start torching the outer ring of houses before anyone was even aware of what was going on. And because all the houses were built of wood and thatch for the most part, the fires quickly spread, engulfing half the city in flames and slowly making its way from the eastern half of the Underground City to the western half, destroying everything in its path and devouring everything with its flame, homes and the youkai living in them alike.

Making her way through the blazing embers of the inner city, she had been shocked to see her advance force suddenly disappear into the ground. She saw that it was a trap... a spider trap. The Kurodani clan of spider youkai were protecting their city the only way they knew how. And as the trap behind her suddenly sprang, leaving Yumeko and only a guard of about twenty demons at the head of the invasion force, fireballs rained down from the cavern's ceiling.

The Underground City was, after all, an immense cave, all lit up by the Hell of Blazing Fires. All sorts of creatures lived here.

Yumeko grit her teeth and jumped to the side, straight into one of the burning houses. Yoriko, the leader of the Kurodani clan, followed her with her sight, surprised. Behind her, her small troop of spider youkai, all members of the Kurodani house, tried to maintain order as youkai ran to and fro in and out of the flames, hauling buckets of water back and forth to their burning homes- or if they were wiser, fleeing the burning city entirely. Of course, Yoriko could not have known that Yumeko's forces were so many that by this point, they had encircled the entire Underground City. They were only waiting on Yumeko's word to strike-

And there it was. Yumeko had made her way to the top of the water tower, and while Yoriko's attention had been divided between wondering where she was and trying to keep calm, Yumeko had climbed to the top of the tower and set off a signal flare. It was one of the new spellcards, a minor one by modern standards; but in those days, when spellcards were just getting started, this one was magnificent; a sparkling green flame that rocketed upwards to the ceiling, visible for miles around.

At that point, the entire demon army let out a simultaneous roar and began stamping their feet. Shrieking, cawing, bellowing, squawking- Shinki's troops began their march into the burning city, their feet and claws thudding against the ground in such a way that the earth shook beneath them. The tremor passed through the entire city, making its residents scream even more than they had been before.

"What is going-" and then a knife thudded into the back of Yoriko's neck and went right through. She didn't even have a chance to scream. She fell, headfirst into the hole she had herself helped dig to trap the soldiers. Yumeko landed lightly on the ground, and the Kurodani clan shrank back from her, their backs to the pit.

Yumeko smiled at them and took out a dozen knives from her apron.

In less than thirty seconds, Yumeko's personal invasion force was marching on, stamping on the corpses of the Kurodani clan as they went. Only Yoriko's daughter Yamame saw, hidden in the shadow of a large rock in the middle of one of the streets of Chireiden. Yumeko walked past and her eyes looked over her; if she saw Yamame, she gave no indication of it, and she continued her march into the center of the city.

Yamame trembled, then turned back down the street and ran as fast and as far as she could to one of her little spider-holes, where she would end up hiding for the rest of the invasion.

Despite this display of power from Yumeko and her guard, the other residents of the Underground also put up some resistance. After marching on from the Kurodani clan's massacre and fighting their way past the armed citizens who had hastily formed a militia of sorts to stop her progress, Yumeko encountered the princess of the bridge, the only stone bridge that united the living area of the Underground City with the federal district of Chireiden, spanning the Mizuhashi Chasm. Pandora Mizuhashi, the hereditary keeper of the bridge and recent mother, saw her approaching. She looked down at the stones beneath her feet, the bridge that she had spent her whole life guarding, and the bridge which her daughter would have otherwise inherited, had it not been for this.

Pandora raised her lance, the spear of the Mizuhashi family. With just one blow, the cornerstone of the bridge would shatter, and the entire thing would go down. She whispered a final prayer for her young daughter, then brought it down, seemingly not noticing the knife in between her eyes that Yumeko had just thrown. Her eyes still looking down, the lance slipped from her hands and Pandora toppled over, falling to an inglorious final resting place at the bottom of the chasm, the lance falling with her, clattering against the sides of the chasm as it fell.

And so it came to pass that Yumeko had made it to the outer, fifth ring of defense, blocked by an enormous stone door which had been closed to her. Her huge army was busy looting and torching the city, slowly making their way inwards. Yumeko was poised to start marching on the Palace itself. Fireballs that were still raining down from above had taken out a good amount of her demons, though, which was worrisome.

Still, she decided to march on. First mistake. Yumeko had taken all of two steps when suddenly, a wooooooshing sound was heard, and a purple-brown-white flash appeared-

"I'm Suika the strong, and now I'm going to kill you for destroying this city!"

"That's just Suika?" Yumeko whispered aloud in her hiding place. As soon as the oni had appeared, Yumeko had dived to the side again, letting her men take care of it. This would have worried her if she had thought that they had the slightest chance of winning, or else they might have lived to tell the tale. Suika was now at least twelve meters tall, swinging into the hordes of demons with her chains and fists, devastating them with each blow. Yumeko turned her head slightly, peering over the stone gate behind which she was hidden, and watched as Suika wreaked havoc. "If that's just Suika, then I really don't want to meet Yuugi-"

"Vermilion Sign - Last Moment of the Corpse!"

"Cerulean Sign - Traitor's Honor!"

Yumeko turned all the way around just in time to see two shadowy figures divebomb from the darkness above Suika and release two devastating blasts of energy, one red and one blue, straight at the oni. Caught unawares, Suika was sent flying back at least five meters. Her hair was set on fire at the same time that her legs were now frozen. The confused oni saw that she had been defeated, and she tried to flee, but instead, Suika toppled over and was summarily overrun by hordes of demons. Still, she managed to dissolve herself just in time before any of the injuries, minor though they may be to an oni, accumulated.

And just like that, Suika was defeated.

Yumeko emerged, making sure to do it from behind her troops instead of the stalagmite she had been hiding behind. "Well done, Yuki and Mai."

The two magicians turned to look at the maid and smiled as one. "We just got lucky," Mai said simply, brushing her blue hair back with a hand. "Most people down here have never seen or heard of a spellcard, our reports said. I just came down here to the field to see if it was true."

Both Yuki and Mai were early adopters of the new spellcard system. Yumeko hadn't approved, until she saw what they could do for Alice's rather destructive tantrums, at which point she had agreed to let Yuki and Mai practice their new techniques so long as they promised that once they got the hang of it, they would teach Alice how do use them. But Makai had been rather forwards for its time; very other few places in the aboveground had adopted the new spellcard system. It seems that the Underground City hadn't even heard of them, much less how to defend against them, which meant-

"They don't know that they have to graze or dodge, you see," Yuki continued, in line with Yumeko's train of thought. "If we catch them unawares, we can take down the castle's defenders fairly easily, I'll bet. What do you think, Mai?"

Mai nodded. "What do you want us to do, then, Yumeko?"

Yumeko considered- or was about to, when she saw one of her demons fall to a well-aimed fireball from up above. She glared upwards, up to the roof of the cavern. "Up there. We've been pelted by fireballs ever since we got here. Take them out, and more importantly-" here she looked at Yuki- "Take their place. Rain down fireballs upon the Palace of the Earth Spirits. As for you, Mai, help Yuki take the place of... whoever the hell it is that's throwing fireballs, and after you're done, circle above me and my men and rain down icicles on whomever crosses our path."

Yuki and Mai backed up, put their feet together, and saluted. "Understood." And then they took off, into the air. She looked to the task at hand; breaking the stone door that blocked her path. With a wave of her hand, she put her demon forces to the task, and waited behind them as they systematically demolished the door.

In the meantime, Yumeko kept her head up, watching Yuki's ascent into the darkness. Keeping focused on the small flames beneath Yuki's feet that propelled her upwards and through the air, Yumeko watched as Yuki finally reached the top of the ceiling, and was now going along, half floating and half maneuvering around the enormous stalactites that portruded from the roof of the cavern. She made a mental note, wondering why these defenders from the roof weren't using the stalactites as weapons, and she concluded that they must not be terribly strong, or at least not strong enough to lodge these stalactites from their place.

And they weren't. Yuki finally found them. They were a horde of Tsurube-otoshi, riding up to the roof in buckets attatched to a rather complex pulley system, and they were throwing fireballs at the demonic horde, taking potshots at them. Yumeko noted, dryly, that they might have been spreading even more flames, but then she reasoned that they could probably shoot a fireball down at her troops and still manage to hit one; such were their numbers.

Yuki advanced on them, hiding in the shadow of a stalactite. Up there, the smoke did not reach, but the flames of the city were the only thing lighting up the cavern, as the Hell of Blazing Fires' magnificent obsidian gates were being shut against intruders. The progress was slow, and Yumeko could tell that they were preparing to barricade themselves in, or at least keep the Hell of Blazing Fires out of the hands of Shinki's hordes.

But then she heard a shout; Luize the observer had noticed. Carried aloft by two spellcards grafted to the bottom of the soles of her shoes, Luize was the most adept flier in all of Makai, and with her arrows, she struck down an enormous amount of youkai, fleeing the Underground City and not realizing that she was bearing down upon them in the air. It seemed that most people in the Underground City had never seen anyone fly.

In any case. Luize was now alerting the demonic hordes to the obsidian gates, which were slowly, inexorably, swinging shut. A mass roar, and then the entire western half of the demon army swung to the right, rushing at the obsidian gates to keep them open.

While all this was going on, the eastern half was still getting struck down by fireballs. But then they stopped. Yumeko turned her attention upwards again just as a scream resonated from the roof of the cavern. Yuki had, with several slashes of a blazing dagger, begun to cut down the tough rope that kept the tribe of Tsurube-otoshi suspended in the air on their pulley system. One yank, and the Tsurube-otoshi screamed as they shook on the rope. Three of them tried to make their way to the witch, and several of them aimed fireballs at Yuki, ready to shoot her down.

But they never got the chance, because Yuki had finally made the rope break. It was rapidly tearing apart, strained by the weight of so many Tsurube-otoshi in their buckets. And then it gave out entirely. Yuki quickly released the rope, to not get rope burn, as the Tsurube-otoshi, still attatched to the rope and otherwise unable to keep themselves above the ground, plummeted to the stalagmite-covered floor below. Some of the Tsurube-otoshi died from the fall; some of them were impaled on the stalagmites; some were smashed against the rocks.

Not a one of them got back up.

Yumeko flashed a congratulatory thumbs-up at the ceiling, and Yuki noticed it and gave a strained smile in reply. Then she disappeared into the maze of stalactites, to carry out the second phase of her orders.

Just then, the maid heard a crashing sound. She turned just in time to see the five-meter-tall door, as well as the surrounding wall, crumble entirely at the claws of her demon guard. The outer wall had been fortified to the point that it was about six feet thick, but now she had breached it.

"I doubt the rest of the walls are as fortified," Yumeko said aloud to herself. "Usually, the outermost wall is always the strongest, because it's made to withstand barrages of all kinds." She stepped over the rubble, her boots crunching against the broken rocks. Inside the wall, she found that breathing was a bit easier, because embers from burning houses weren't flying in the air every which way, and there wasn't much smoke in the fifth ring yet, though it was still hot.

Behind her, her demon hordes swarmed into the breach, spreading around the ring, torching everything flammable they could find. It seemed that in comparison to the Underground City, which had been attacked unawares, Chireiden itself had had plenty of time to react, and everyone there was gone, doubtlessly having barricaded themselves in the center. Yumeko raised her eyes, eyeing the towering turrets and palisades of the Palace of the Earth Spirits.

A flash of pink. Yumeko blinked and squinted. Was that just a stray ember she had seen?

But she didn't have enough time to consider it any further. Because a new threat had arisen. Sudden screeching was heard to her left; Yumeko wrenched her attention away just in time to see the enormous Yuugi Hoshiguma emerging from around the corner, armed with chains on her arms, a grin on her face, and an enormous mace in her right hand (not to mention a sake dish in the other).

"Aah, you're Shinki's maid, ain't ya?" Yuugi laughed even as she smashed a demon's head into the wall. "It's a nice day for fightin', ain't it? I don't suppose you're strong, eh?"

Yumeko grinned. Yuugi was a bit taller than she was, though Yumeko was over six feet tall. They shared the same hair, too. And the same lust for fighting. Though she had a horn in the middle of her forehead... Yumeko figured that this was Yuugi, the other oni she had been warned about. 'Yuugi The Strong.' The maid drew some knives from her apron. "Of course I am!"

Yuugi winked, kicking a demon into the air as she did so with as much effort as Yumeko would use to lift a feather. "Good! I would invite you to get drunk with me, but when I have an opportunity to fight someone strong..." Yuugi yawned as she set her dish of sake down and thrust her fist into a demon's skull. She wiped her hand clean of gore on the wall. "You understand. I hope you're stronger than these guys, though."

Yumeko took a deep breath, then smirked. If Yuugi, an oni, was putting her sake dish to the side... then she was deadly serious. She drew a longer knife, a falchion, from the inside of her right boot.

"But of course I am, oni!" And with that, Yumeko threw herself into battle against Yuugi.

Comments? Criticisms? Quiversful of arrows ready to strike me down for all the adverbs I used and haven't edited out? I welcome them all. Tell me what you think!