== Yukari Yakumo: Play some chess.
You went to see your girlfriend today. Made a whole day of it, really, as you often do, although of course you're markedly not sober in any way because you never are. You left the house to Ran, gave her some peace and quiet to finish her fucking fanfiction or whatever she writes all day. You've gone to see Yuyuko and that's all you care about.
Yuyuko is, of course, right where you left her, because she can't actually move. Being an eldritch entity (that devours souls) currently bound to a remarkably evil tree, she doesn't really have the ambulatory muscles needed to get up and move. Probably for the best, because if she *could* move, the apocalypse would be over and done with in a day or two.
She screams something in a vaguely angry, vaguely pained sort of demonic black speech, and you nod and reply that yes, it's still winter outside of the Netherworld. Yes, forty more people froze to death. Yes, you can fudge some numbers to get their souls delivered right to her. Yes, Chen's girls killed off about a hundred more and yes you have the souls she ripped from them right here. The screeches quiet to a discontent rumbling after that, and you toss the bottles into the pulsing black void between time and space that used to be a tree and used to be the love of your life. Or still is. You don't know. You smirk at her next growls, and you reply in the most infuriating sing-song tone you can muster, because that still amuses her and it's the least you can do after failing her so completely a thousand years ago.
She wants your soul.
As always.
And, as always, you giggle and stroke the outer edge of the maddening death-blackness, feel the nothingness creep into your fingers for a moment before pulling away. You tell her of course she can have your soul, but she has to win it first, and you pull out the chess set. You remind her, teasingly, that this is how Death is supposed to do things, darling, want a drink before we begin?
She can't drink, anyway, but you feel it's only polite to ask, and so you ask that soulless little girl that tends the tree too, because she at least has the requisite esophagus.
The little girl stares a hole into your head and remains utterly silent.
More for me, you declare cheerfully, and down the entire bottle of rice wine in one go. Then three more. By the time you actually start setting up the board, you are blind-drunk and it's not reacting very well with the other shit you have in you that's keeping you as high as a kite. You are actually blind in one eye at this point, but that's temporary and you don't worry because this case of vertigo you have is like being on a rollercoaster except on solid ground! Wheeee! Ah, fuck, you said that out loud.
You're not worried about losing that soul of yours, anyway, because you cheat like a motherfucker and always have and always will. Yuyuko doesn't mind. She probably doesn't have the presence of mind to care. Just like you! God, you love her. She's the only reason you have to live.
You propose to the snarling tree-demon at least four times while you're playing. She doesn't respond.
== Yukari Yakumo: Get fucked up.
You wonder who the hell this new voice in your head takes you for. You have been well and truly fucked up for about a week straight now, and if this new shit that border-hopping shopkeep brought you is as good as he says it is, you will remain fucked up for at least another two. You don't sleep anymore. You can't. There is nothing good for you in that hell of feverish nightmares, so you've given it up entirely. Hopefully the habit will shave about seven thousand years off your lifetime. You already have a coffin, tombstone, and witty epitaph lined up. Your death cannot come fast enough.
You take another squint at the bottle in your hand. You can't actually read all the little words on it anymore, as your ability to focus your eyes left you about a day ago and hasn't come back since, but it's a nice cliche and you do so anyway. Maybe it will get that girl in front of you to go away. Can't she see you're currently in the process of forgetting your own name?
Oh god, she's saying something. You can't make out what, exactly, because the humming and buzzing and whispery water in your ears is rather loud, but whatever it is, she sounds good and pissed off about it. You drag your eyes away from the neat shifting patterns on the ceiling and to somewhere around where you think the girl is, and through all the new colors drifting in front of your eyes you think you see an abundance of orange and black.
So it's the new Hakurei girl. Yeah, she always was kind of a bitch. Maybe she would have been nicer if her mom lived long enough to give her a name, but as it stood, the task had gone to your dumb fucking fox who had picked out Reimu for whatever reason. The kid was a zero, all right, a pyromaniac zero. Whatever, at least she was alive, at least she hadn't been picked off by the cats, at least she wasn't starving. Everyone was zeroes, here, and you don't have enough lucidity left to give a single flying fuck.
Is she still talking? Fucking hell. You wish she'd shut up so you can get back to watching the ceiling. But she just keeps standing there and bitching, bitching, bitching - oh great, now she's touching you with that damn divine rod. You're sure it burns, but you can't actually feel it very much, just some faint prickling sensation along your cheek.
You mumble something probably incoherent, and hold out the half-empty bottle to her like some kind of a peace offering. Her face is close enough to yours that you can make out her eternally pissy expression, and you offer nothing more than a mellow grin in response. Her mom's been dead for twenty years, and the only lesson you can teach this kid is when to fold 'em - fold 'em, get trashed, and stop giving so much of a shit. You stopped giving a shit a thousand years ago, and you've maybe brushed against the broadside of happiness once or twice since then. You're not sure. You can't remember very much of those thousand years.
She stares at you for a good long minute before snatching the bottle and hell yes, bottoms up, kid. It literally knocks her off her feet - the shopkeep upped the ante on this shit to youkai-grade, but the kid's always been a tough one, and she manages to go for a full five swallows before her back kisses the floor and the bottle falls out of her hand because her muscles just won't let her hold it anymore. She lays there for a bit, breathing (and a small droplet of drool drips down her cheek), until she finally breaks out into some lopsided grin, stretching her hand lazily into the air and swirling her fingers around what looks to you like a tiny galaxy.
You laugh.
It starts out as a giggle, moves up to a chuckle, goes through a few more escalating phases before it graduates to a full on sustained belly-laugh and you lie on your bed laughing like a madwoman because hell, that's what you are. You laugh, and laugh, and she joins in.
The two of you stay very fucked-up for a while, and that's just the way you like it.
== Yukari Yakumo: What's your name?
Your name? Hahaha, what the fuck's a name?