Alice Reimu was just an ordinary Touhou. But that all changed when one day, all the cherry blossoms in the universe became perfect. "This… This will not do. Not at all," she said. "I must… travel to the Underworld to kill the Perfect Cherry Blossom tree!"
So Alice set out on her journey, flying across the magical Land of Touhou. (She was flying because she was a magical girl. All girls in the Land of Touhou were magical. They could also shoot deadly energy balls at each other, like in Dragonball Z.) But, as she soon found out, danger was lurking in every corner of the sky! Thousands of villainous magical demi-fairies suddenly came out of nowhere, materializing themselves out of thin air from nothing more than their energy essences. "Wow!" Alice said. "Looks like I have company!" But the hex pixies had something else in mind: destruction!
A billion bolts of blue energy balls were materialized by the pseudo-sentient sprites, and they were all sent shooting straight at Alice. "Oh goodness!" Alice said. "I didn't sign up for this lunacy!" She immediately focused all her chakras in order to slow down her flight (so she could pay more attention to carefully dodging each individual energy ball, which was exactly how she was taught to defend herself back when she was in Touhou School). With the finesse of a leaping gazelle, Alice Reimu successfully navigated the surprisingly predictable patterns that resulted from the paths the billions of energy balls ended up falling into. "Teehee, that was easy after all!"
"Do you always talk to yourself after a battle?" a mysterious voice shouted at Alice. She quickly looked around for its source, but she could not find it. "They may have been easy foes for you, but I guarantee you, I'll be much harder to defeat!"
"It-It can't be!" Alice said, but it was. "My old nemesis… Marisa Chen."
"That's right!" Marisa said, revealing herself from behind her veil of shrouding magic. "I am Marisa Chen, and I am here to… destroy you!" Marisa manifested a shield of hundreds of energy balls around herself. Then she shot them out in all directions. Alice had no trouble dodging the two that went towards her.
"I don't want to fight you, Marisa-sama Chen-chan!" Alice said. "We can still be friends! Please, just show me the entrance to the Underworld and then we can go our separate ways."
Marisa thought hard about this. "Hmm… Okay!" She reabsorbed all her magic balls back into her trap card. "The entrance to the underworld is this way, follow me." Marisa flew away, and Alice hesitantly followed. She did not fully trust Marisa yet, but she had no choice. It was either follow Marisa, or continue flying aimlessly in the sky for several hours.
After several hours of flying in the sky at Marisa's lead, the duo came to a halt at four huge wooden pillars reaching above the clouds. Alice looked upon them in awe. "Is this the entrance to the Underworld?" she asked.
"Yes," Marisa said. "But there's a catch." Suddenly, three more magical girls materialized in the sky above the pillars. "For you to enter the Underworld, you must fight the Prismriver Trio in a duel!"
Alice did not seem surprised by this turn of events. "So I just have to defeat you three and then I can get into the Underworld? That's it?"
The red Prismriver scoffed at Alice. "I hope you have enough trap cards left, because you're gonna need 'em! Are you ready, sisters? Battle formation omega epsilon!" The trio of magical girls positioned themselves into a triangle and began circling around each other while launching energy balls and energy daggers of all colors in all directions.
Alice sighed; she was completely used to this kind of thing by now. She dodged the energy blasts as they came her way, while shooting energy blasts of her own at the triangle of witches. "Is that everything you've got?" Alice said. "Come on, at least give me a challenge!"
The Prismriver Sisters, Guardians of the Gate to the Underworld, cackled evilly. "You want max power? Fine! We'll give it to you!" Suddenly, eighty quadrillion energy beams were shot directly at Alice and everywhere around her.
"!" Alice gasped. She tried dodging the energy beams, but more just kept coming. It was only a matter of seconds before she found herself cornered, with nowhere else to move. This was it, she realized. There was nothing she could do but wait for the end, and hope it wouldn't hurt.
It did.
The residual energy of the beams slowly faded, and the sky returned to its regular blue color. The Prismriver Sisters, smiling triumphantly, returned to wherever it was Marisa had summoned them from.
"Foolish Alice," Marisa said as she landed on one of the pillars. "I never said you had to defeat the Prismrivers. There is only one way into the Underworld…"
When Alice regained consciousness, she had no idea where she was. But as she opened her eyes and looked around to see the hundreds of ghosts and spirits floating around her, the realization slowly dawned on her. "I-I'm in the Underworld! I'm in… Gensokyo!"
Alice got to her feet and started walking. She quickly realized she could not fly in the Underworld, so she had to find a high place to look down from, to get a good panoramic view of the region, to see where the Perfect Cherry Blossom tree was. She would have asked a ghost for directions, but everyone knows ghosts aren't good at keeping track of directions. That's why they only ever haunt their own homes; it's because they forgot how to go anywhere else.
It took a few hours, but Alice eventually climbed to the top of Youkai Mountain (not that she knew the name of it at the time) and saw, in the very far distance, her destination: Yggdrasil. The World Tree. The Perfect Cherry Blossomer.
The following weeks were very difficult. Food in the Underworld was scarce, and water was a precious commodity traded between the rich. Alice had to rely on her wits to get through this alive. She wasn't even sure if ghosts could die, but she was not about to take the chance. Not after she had come so far, and sacrificed so much. There was only one way this journey could end: the death of either herself or the Perfect Cherry Blossom tree. And she wasn't about to let it be herself.
After a grueling eighteen days, she finally made it to her destination. "At last…" Alice Reimu stood at the foot of the tree, and it was time to finish her mission. She raised her arms and prepared to unleash a barrage of magic missiles at it to bring it down to zero health.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a mysterious voice suddenly said. Alice was getting sick of all these mysterious voices showing up to stop her.
"Oh yeah?" said Alice. "Says who?"
"Says me, Yuyuko Youmuko," said Yuyuko Youmuko. "I am this tree's guardian. I will not let you harm it."
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill this tree," Alice said. "Do you know the havoc it's been unleashing in the Overworld? For the last month, every cherry blossom in the entire universe has been perfect! The Japanese economy, which is completely based on cherry blossom currency, has been ruined! This tree has brought nothing but harm. It needs to be stopped."
Yuyuko shook her head. "Nothing but harm? Even if that were true, it is going to stop being true very soon. I am sorry you had to come all this way to find this out, but this tree is not evil."
"Then what is it?" Alice asked.
"This tree's life force is connected to the life force of every other tree in the universe, in every plane of living and nonliving. The reason all the cherry blossoms in existence have become so perfect is not because this tree is evil. It is because… this tree is pregnant!"
"W-What!" Alice gasped. "How is that possible! Trees cannot be pregnant?!"
"Maybe not in your Overworld," Yuyuko said, "but things work differently down here. The border between living and nonliving, between death and birth, is thinner." A bright pink petal fell from the tree. Yuyuko caught it in her hand and examined it. "It's almost time," she said. "If you'd like, you may stay and witness the birth of the new world."
Alice shrugged. "I guess I have no choice." After waiting for so long, a few more minutes wouldn't hurt. She sat down, and proceeded to have casual small talk with Yuyuko. Alice was very glad to have another sentient living being to talk to, for the first time in weeks. They shared stories, laughs, and ultimately the bonds of a burgeoning friendship.
"By the way," Alice eventually asked, "how did you come to be the tree's guardian?"
"I was the only logical candidate for the task," Yuyuko answered. Smiling, she rubbed her fingers along the tree's bark sensually. "I am the child's mother."
"You're what?!" Alice said, but her words never reached Yuyuko. In that exact moment, the Perfect Cherry Blossomer started giving birth. A great white light covered the area. The discharge of pure life energy was so powerful that it brought Alice all the way back to the Overworld, to the exact place she had died, above the Pillars of the Underworld. She was alive once again! And so too, she realized, was a baby World Tree, somewhere else far away in the great cosmos.
Alice chuckled. "Just another normal day in Touhou," she said, and she took off flying in the direction of her home.