Disclaimers: I don't own Touhou, the characters, or the plot of this story.
Wait a second, I do own the plot!
This fanfiction has been rated T for course language. Reader discretion is advised.
A/N: So, I've been playing Touhou for the last two months or so, and I can't pull myself away. This fic is a result. This was originally going to be dark as hell, because I'd had a dream that was the basis to this story (Mokou got raped in it! What's wrong with my mind man!?), but then I realized I can't write tragedy and pain worth a damn. Stories are supposed to make you feel good anyways, so I changed it to humour. I think it was actually less work to do so, in the end. Anyways, here we go! This is my take on the eternal enmity between the Hourai Immortals.
A/N P.S.: This has been on my computer since July, mostly finished. I decided to just slap an ending on it and put it out. Hope it didn't turn out too bad.
Keine Kamishirasawa and Fujiwara no Mokou were sitting in the former's home, drinking tea. It was a pleasant evening, and all was peaceful. Right?
Peace, when you live in a place as crazy as Gensokyo, is not exactly welcome. The two of them had been spending the last few minutes thinking up something to do. They'd drawn a collective blank so far, but Keine suddenly had an idea.
"So, Mokou, why's there such deep hatred between you and Kaguya?" She asked.
"Do you really need to know?" Mokou's response was less than friendly. Keine plunged on regardless.
"I don't need to, but I do want to. It seems pointless, holding a grudge for 1300 years. Did something else happen?"
There was a pregnant silence. Keine figured she'd stumbled onto something. She pressed her advantage.
"I could always look it up on the full moon, you know."
That broke the dam.
"Look, don't do that. You won't like what you see. Seeing as how you're so curious, I'll enlighten you. You won't like what you hear any better than what you would've seen, but at least it'll be straight from the source."
Mokou seemed taut as a bowstring. She took a deep gulp of tea before launching into her tale.
"You're right. The grudge I hold is no longer that of the Fujiwara clan. That grudge passed a time ago. She's wronged me, personally. More than once, in fact.
I suppose it all started about 400 years ago, before the Great Hakurei barrier separated this place from the outside. I had just moved into Gensokyo. I'd been searching for Kaguya for the last 900 years, and had given up hope, more or less. There was no goal left for me, nothing to strive for. I decided to separate myself away from humanity. I figured there'd be no better way to be an immortal recluse than to settle in a bamboo thicket in a region unmarked by any cartographers. If course, I happened upon her."
400 years ago in the Bamboo Forest, give or take a century. Let's see you live a millennium and be good with dates.
Kaguya Houraisan, exiled Lunarian princess, was taking a leisurely walk with her trusty aide, confidant, physician and general evil genius partner in crime, Eirin Yagokoro. It wasn't leisurely because she wanted to relax. It was leisurely because she didn't want to finish up too quickly; there was nothing else to do, after all.
"Eirin, could you think of anything to do? I wish for something to break this monotony! We've been in these lands barely ten years and it's already boring!" She asked. There was quite an amount of annoyance in her tone.
Mokou had decided to take up residence in the very woods they were currently walking through. She'd been gathering bamboo to build her shack when she had heard their voices. She couldn't believe her luck. The very enemy she had sworn to take revenge upon was right in front of her, unprotected.
She dropped her cargo of bamboo to the floor as quietly as possible. With so many years behind her, this was quietly indeed. Neither of the exiled Lunarians heard her. Good, she thought. She'd probably only have one chance before their guards were raised.
She snuck up behind the two, who were still chatting and wandering aimlessly. All the better to mask her approach.
"Hmm, should I knock her head off her shoulders? Perhaps I should Phoenix Punch her heart from her chest instead. Oh yes, I like that idea." she whispered to herself.
With a plan in mind, she lunged with all the speed of the fabled firebird. Neither of the two in front of her had time to react as Kaguya's heart flew out of her chest.
Taking advantage of Eirin's distress, Mokou ducked back out of the path. Revenge is a dish best served hot, and now she was satisfied. She ghosted back to the clearing where she had started to build her shack, and went back to it with a significantly more jovial air. Clan Fujiwara had finally taken revenge.
It had all gone exactly as planned.
Back in the present.
"Why is this story in third person?" Keine was confused, just slightly.
"Immersion."
"You remembered everything that was said?"
"I've found it's hard to forget first meetings. Especially with that moon bitch." Mokou was spitting venom.
"You punched her heart out?"
"And roasted it at the same time."
Mokou took a sip of tea and a breath of calm before continuing.
"I didn't exactly get the last laugh though. I thought she was dead, but of course, she's just as immortal as I am. That was my first win against Kaguya, and the only for the next two hundred years, give or take. Considering we fought daily, and sometimes even more often, you can imagine how badly I compared to her strength."
Keine didn't want her friend to dwell on past defeats, but she wanted to know what happened after.
"Daily? Then when was the next fight?"
"The day after my totally epic sneak attack."
The day after the totally cowardly surprise attack.
"Come out, come out, little phoenix. I want to KILL YOU."
Kaguya seemed threatening enough when she wanted to be. Mokou was not in the least cowed though, even though her revenge hadn't fully taken effect. Kaguya seemed to be just as immortal as her, but didn't Mokou kick ass yesterday? She could do it again, for sure! She jumped out from the bamboo, directly in front of Kaguya, and proceeded to commit a grave error; boast about her victory against her mortal enemy mere feet away.
"Oh yeah? You couldn't lay a finger on me! I was unstoppa-HURK" Kaguya took full advantage of her opponent's ineptitude and caved her skull in.
"Real women don't talk with their mouths full of their brains. Teehee. Night, night."
Right in front of Kaguya's unbelieving eyes, Mokou resurrected.
"You... You've also drunk of it?"
"Don't you remember me? You killed my father, you shamed my family, now I'll kill you!"
"If you've also drunk of the Hourai Elixir, whoever-you-are, you should know it stops me from being killed."
"You didn't let me finish. Now I'll kill you, again and a-HURK"
Kaguya eyed her fallen enemy with disinterest.
"You stand no chance."
Back to the present.
"So yeah, instead of me killing her, again and again, she killed me, again and again."
"This still doesn't sound all too dark though. It sounds like what you do on a regular basis."
Mokou's eyes seemed to flash as she was reminded of the darker happenings. One in particular.
"You see, it went from her kicking my ass to parity, eventually. Except it wasn't sunshine and rainbows. Right when I got over what she'd done to me and mine, she committing a grave crime against me, personally..."
Roughly 200 years ago.
Mokou figured life wasn't so bad anymore. The rift between Kaguya and her had become a mere crack, and their mutual homicides were more out of boredom now than anything else. Of course, there was always bound to be real conflict. Their continued strained relation into the present was not a fluke, after all. It may have been cordial, but it wasn't friendly. And it was going to get worse.
The two were sitting in Mokou's shack, drinking tea. Mokou took out some tobacco and proceeded to roll it into a cigarette.
Kaguya reached across, took the rolled cigarette, and flung it outside, in one crisp motion.
"That stuff is bad for you, you know?" She stated, completely clueless as to the rage she had just caused.
Mokou inclined her head down to the table in consternation. Her smoke, thrown out, just like that. Who cares about health? She was immortal. Kaguya must not want her to live, to truly enjoy life. She must still want to wreck Mokou, that was the only possible explanation. Well, she could play at that game.
Mokou thought about what she could do in revenge. And revenge it was going to be. She'd not suffered such a slight, direct or indirect, since the moon bitch had previously dishonoured her family. This was obviously a call to war, again. And she had thought Kaguya had changed, too. Can't make a bitch into a person, after all.
Back to the present.
"Seriously, what happened to cause the rift?" Keine wasn't amused.
"What do you mean seriously? Paradisiac cigarette was broken! This incident was unprecedented serious affair!" Mokou raged. Now that Keine looked closely, her friend was starting to heat up. This was bad. Her house could burn down. Literally.
"Okay, so it was a big deal. What'd you do in revenge?" Keine asked. She wanted to diffuse the current fire as quickly as possible, and if that meant listening to a completely childish revenge plan, so be it.
"There's no big story to be had. I burned down Eientei." Mokou said smugly.
"How did you even manage that?" Keine's mouth was open in shock. One does not simply burn down the residence of a crazy genius physician and a controller of eternity.
"My plan was to take out the moon bitch at my shack, wait until Eirin rushed to retrieve her body, then wreck their home," the smugness had not disappeared in the slightest,
"and it worked flawlessly."
Back to the run down, underused excuse for a shack.
Mokou gathered all her flames for one big blow. She couldn't kill the moon bitch, but she could take her out so Eirin would be lured to save her, and then Operation Phoenix Wrath would commence.
"Mokou, are you alright? I'm so-" Kaguya was cut off just then by the biggest fireball Mokou had ever released.
When she'd cooled down, she couldn't resist a bit of smartmouthing.
"No, you're not sorry, you're dead. At least for the moment." Her victory quote done, Mokou dashed off to Eientei.
Once she arrived, she was greeted by an unwelcome sight; innocent rabbits.
"OKAY EVERYBODY, CLEAR OUT BEFORE I CLEAR YOU OUT!"
And thus the unwelcome sight cleared up. Hooray.
"Mokou? What are you doing here? I thought you were enjoying tea with the princess?" Eirin had wandered out to find out what the commotion had been caused by. Perfect.
"Right, about that. She's back there, right now. I don't think she could handle all the soot in the house or something. She's out. Maybe you can do something for her?"
Eirin was a bit curious. Why hadn't this popped up before? Whatever, she could get the story from someone she trusted more once she got there.
Waiting until the doctor got out of range, Mokou slowly charged up all her fire. This was going to be good!
"GET SOME, YOU PILE OF STIXXXXXXX!"
Back in the clearing, because there was no longer a shack there.
"Did you hear what I just heard?" A prim and proper princess asked her aide.
"I do believe so, my princess." Responded her aide.
"Good thing she didn't knock me out for too long. Wait 'till she sees this! MUHAHAHA!" Prim and proper, sure.
Of course, while Mokou was burning their mansion down, they had taken the liberty of exacting revenge.
"How many pounds of tobacco do you think we destroyed?"
"Enough to provide a counterweight to her temper, I would think."
Into the present, for the final time.
"You know, Keine, I don't think I ever truly won, She always had a counter..."
The were-hakutaku in question didn't know what to do. Not about comforting Mokou, but if she should burst out laughing or kill herself by holding it in. A tough decision.
She made the wrong one.
A/N2: This was my first fic with a new writing style and a new fandom, so don't hesitate to tell me what to change or fix, and that's to include major plot points. Anyways, thanks for reading!