Chapter 1: A Celestial's Descent

Above the Earth exists a collection of separated realms that is said to house the purest of departed souls. These realms go by many names, and some of them are said to be connected to other worlds. One such realm is known as Bhavaagra that houses mainly Celestials, former humans that either gained immortality and ascended to this holy land or achieved perfect Nirvana and ascended in spiritual form. However, Celestials are not the only holy creatures to touch upon the sacred lands of Bhavaagra. Angels, the holy denizens that take residence behind the fabled pearly gates, are prevalent in this land. They interact with the Celestials peacefully, caring not about their methods of entering the holy lands so long as they did not do so with wicked intentions.

However, there is one particular Celestial that the Angels show a hint of disdain towards. She is known mainly as a delinquent amongst all of Bhavaagra simply because she was brought to this holy land by her parents instead of through her own effort, and thus her lack of enlightenment has led to her causing trouble across Bhavaagra in an attempt to cure her boredom. The Celestial's never satiated her boredom though, their minds too sharp-witted to fall for the juvenile tricks of this young, misguided girl. The girl's actions did sometimes bring disgrace to the Hinawani clan through which she was born, but in the end the one known as Tenshi Hinawani cared little about such matters simply because she didn't known any better.

Eventually growing tired of trying and failing to prank the other Celestials, Tenshi became interested in the fantasy realm of Gensokyo, which Bhavaagra floated high above. With the use of her Keystones and the legendary shape-shifting sword Hisou no Tsurugi, Tenshi hoped to create an incident in Gensokyo that would attract many to try and resolve the problems she created and in turn ease her troublesome boredom. However, she didn't realize the gravity of her own plans, and though the first act of her incident was rather harmless the final one threatened to destroy Gensokyo in a gigantic earthquake if it wasn't foiled. Eventually the incident was resolved with Tenshi losing most of her boredom after fighting most of Gensokyo's strongest…Though the mischievous Celestial had the misfortune of gaining the jolly and childish oni Suika Ibuki as a guest in the process. It has now been a few years since that "Scarlet Weather Rhapsody"…

The land of Bhavaagra contains a plentiful bounty of cherry blossom-like flowers on the ground and trees filled with luscious peaches. The tips of the famed Youkai Mountains of Gensokyo poke up through the ground in a line at the edge of this holy land, the view of the fantasy lands shrouded by the uppermost layer of clouds. There is no sky so to speak, for this place lies on the precipice between the ground and the atmosphere into the depths of space. But despite the position, the sun usually beats down upon Bhavaagra. As of this very moment, the childish Celestial Tenshi was standing beneath the peach trees, using the Hisou no Tsurugi, which had taken the form of a spiked prodding device, to pluck a fruit from the closest branch so she could eat it.

As usual, Tenshi was wearing her white buttoned-up blouse with a red bow at its collar while a blue dress with a light-blue bow wrapped at her back is worn below it, an apron with similar colors to the blouse that also has a rainbow-patterned shard link around the edges draped in front of the dress. She also had on her brown lace-up boots and a black hat decorated with peaches, but instead of keeping her blue hair long she had decided on this day to tie it up into a braided ponytail. After pulling the peach from the tree she takes it off of the tip of the Hisou no Tsurugi and looks at her face's reflection in the shiny surface of this succulent fruit, her dull dark red eyes signifying just how bored the Celestial currently is as she makes her sword vanish in a wavy pattern and stuffs the front of the peach into her mouth, chomping down on the juicy delicacy and narrowly avoiding the pit with her front teeth as she begins to chew.

She put too much food in her mouth though, for each bite she takes releases a bit of peach through her lips. Her cheeks puff out for the initial bites as she walks out of the sacred garden with a bored look in her eyes, and with the fruit muffling her voice she says "Breh, it iff so boring around herf these dayfs…" Gulping down the first half of the peach, Tenshi moves on to the second part, tossing the pit away behind her without a care as she chews the peach thoroughly "How long hafs it been since I caused troubfle down in Gensokfyo?" Swallowing the remainder of the peach, Tenshi starts to become reminiscent, closing her eyelids and thinking back to the past when she created an incident. Most of her memories deal with her battles though, especially the times she chuckled in glee as she was getting beaten up by various Youkai and humans who she happened to anger.

Opening her eyelids with a look of surprise on her face, Tenshi blinks twice and says "Huh…Why am I recalling all of that? Did I enjoy all that pain? Geez, hope nobody ever finds out about that…Wouldn't want to be labeled a masochist after all." "What is this about being labeled a masochist?" A voice filled with laid-back yet partially mischievous intrigue is heard coming from behind the Celestial, who freezes in place for a moment before slowly creaking around and seeing her messenger and sometimes guardian Iku Nagae descending from the atmosphere. The lady was garbed in a fancy white and red shirt with a long black skirt wrapped around her thinly waist. On her short violent blue hair is a black dancer's hat with a red bow that has two long ribbons dangling around in the air before she lands on the ground. Entwined along her arms and blouse is a white and red shawl that occasionally glows scarlet along with the red on her shirt.

Though she was usually a peaceful messenger, Iku gave a stern look only towards the spoiled Celestial Tenshi, mostly because of the latter's actions a few years ago. Tenshi, realizing that Iku was not the person she was worried about appearing, lets out a light sigh and chuckles, saying nonchalantly to the messenger of the Dragon Palace "Oh, its only you Iku. For a second, I thought you were that annoying Oni." Iku smiles, unamused by Tenshi's weak attempt to change the subject away from her inquiry. But before she presses the matter, she looks down at the child and says to her "Alas, the Oni has returned to the surface world for the time being. She will be back though, so in the meantime…Why were you talking about masochism?"

The Celestial turns around and shrugs her shoulders, responding to Iku with "I was just thinking about the incident I caused before and how fun it was. I kind of miss that feeling of joy, so I was considering going back down to Gensokyo and causing a little mischief to see if I can cure my boredom." While Iku had no problem with Tenshi's rather blunt honesty, she didn't like the idea of another incident being caused by her, mainly because she was the one who got beaten up the most due to a large amount of misunderstandings from the residents. With her right hand extended and an uneasy grin on her face, Iku gently pleads to Tenshi "Now now, I don't think we need to go and cause any trouble down below after what happened last time."

Tenshi rolled her eyes, turning back around towards Iku while kicking one foot out mid-spin as she says with arms folded behind her head "Oh come on Iku! You have to agree that it was a lot of fun the last time around. Heck, from that brief trip of ours a week or so ago I could tell that there were a lot of new faces wandering around Gensokyo, so I can have even more people involved in whatever incident I cause!" "…Or I could save the people a lot of grief by telling them of your presence ahead of time." Iku says, bluntly reminding the bratty Celestial about her involvement in her defeat the last time around. However, with a sly smile on her face along with her Cheshire-like glare Tenshi counters Iku's threat with "Like you have it in you to take initiative against me."

Tilting her head slightly while hiding a cold glare behind her shut eyelids, Iku rebuts Tenshi's noting of her glaring personality flaw with "No, but it would be such a shame if you left and the Oni 'accidentally' found out about your plans to start another incident." With those few words, Tenshi's haughtiness crumbles apart as she recalls the first time she met that drunk demon bitch Suika Ibuki, and how without barely any effort the Oni dominated her and forcibly took a part of Heaven for herself. For Tenshi, Suika Ibuki was her greatest fear made reality, and even worse was the fact that the oni was more often than not her next door neighbor. Realizing that there was nothing stopping Iku from telling Suika whenever the oni returns, Tenshi waves her hands in front of her chest and begs to her "Ok ok ok! What if I promise not to cause any wanton destruction or mess with the weather? Can't I be allowed to go down and pull a simple, harmless prank?"

Iku weighs heavily on Tenshi's pleas. After all, would there truly be any harm in allowing the Celestial to perform a few simple pranks down in Gensokyo? If Tenshi's boredom was cured by allowing her a little freedom, then that would solve a lot of Iku's own headaches in Bhavaagra…About 99.9% of them in fact. So for her sake and everyone else's in Bhavaagra, Iku said the words that acted as the key to Tenshi's cage "Alright Tenshi, I won't say anything to anyone…But only if you stick to your word and perform only meager, harmless pranks…I will know if you do anything else." Giving a stern final warning to the Celestial, Iku turns around and floats back up towards the atmosphere of Bhavaagra, leaving behind a joyous Tenshi who quickly rips out a holy rock encircled with shimenawa ropes known as a keystone from the ground, causing a slight tremor through the holy grounds around her as she leaps on top of the sleek surface and flies off towards the clouds hovering around the Youkai Mountain tops.

Piercing a hole right into the layer of clouds, Tenshi arrives in the mythical land of Gensokyo, which is currently experiencing a nice warm breeze and fresh sunlight. It was starting to become summer time, which means the temperatures were going to rise and everything was going to become even livelier. Of course, the spoiled Tenshi doesn't care too much about the simplistic beauty of nature around her. After all, if the luscious lands of Bhavaagra didn't affect her, what could sparkling waterfalls and lily pad paved ponds do to catch her interests? With arms folded in front of her chest as she rode against the powerful breezes hovering above the Youkai Mountains, Tenshi looked around and commented on the scenery with a great deal of superiority in her voice "These lands are rather drab…Were it not for its interesting people, I would say Gensokyo is even more boring than Bhavaagra…"

With that, Tenshi lifts her head up away from the ground and suddenly feels a mighty gust blow right past as her as a speedy figure flies across the air as a black and white streak. As she plants her hand on top of her hat to keep it on, the Celestial looks at the blur and quickly realizes just who went by her. It was Aya Shameimaru, Gensokyo's resident news reporter and famed tengu of the Youkai Mountains. Tenshi remembers that Aya once interviewed her after the incident she caused, and maybe now Tenshi could use her to find out about the recent events transpiring in Gensokyo so she can find out who to prank. The problem though is catching the speedy tengu…Which Tenshi grins at the thought of, thinking to herself as she commands her keystone to fly at rocket speeds "Perhaps this will be fun after all…"

The Celestial flies across the air, her hand placed tightly on top of her signature hat as her ponytail swerves around behind her because of her velocity. In a few seconds Tenshi catches up to the tengu reporter, meaning that Aya wasn't running at full speed today. The red-eyed Tengu has semi-long black hair, part of it draped over her pointed ears. She wears a thin white blouse, black short skirt along with a red tokin on her head. On her back are black crow wings, and on her legs are black stockings and stilted wood red shoes. The last item of note on Aya is the leather bag wrapped underneath her left arm, which carefully carries all of the newspapers she plans to spread to the general populace.

However, instead of continuing to perform her duties she tilts her head upon feeling someone riding beside her and catches a glimpse of the keystone riding Tenshi, her eyes widening momentarily in surprise before she immediately stops in place and straightens her body gracefully, the Celestial ending her flight a few seconds later and backing up to end up directly in front of the tengu, who extends her arms out beside her hips and balances herself in the air with a few steady flaps of her wings…Which admittedly is all for show considering she doesn't need them to fly. After recognizing the Celestial, Aya says in a gleeful tone of intrigue "Hey, you're that Celestial, Tenshi Hinanai!" Tenshi, with a casual air about her, says as she sits down on top of her keystone with dress and legs draped in front of it "Actually, its Hinawani." She didn't want to be too rude to the tengu, especially since she needed a newspaper in order to start with her pranks.

"Ah, my mistake." Aya apologizes. "So what do you want? I'm on a bit of a tight schedule today." The tengu then points out the urgency of her trip, though the smile on her face means that she doesn't seem too concerned about being late. Tenshi, reaching into a pocket on the side of her dress, pulls out a large silver yen piece, placing it above her folded right pointer finger and in front of her thumbnail before saying to the tengu with a wink of her right eyelid "Give me one of your newspapers, I'm interested to see what's going on lately." With a flick of the thumb the yen piece flies over to Aya, who catches it in her left hand upon recognizing the high monetary value of it while gliding her right hand into her bag to pull out a paper that she quickly tosses over to the Celestial. Out of all the people in Gensokyo who were involved in the Scarlet Weather incident, Ayay had the least reason to dislike Tenshi, so she served her the newspaper with a constant smile on her face.

Once the Celestial grabbed it with her right hand, she was quickly taken off-guard by a brief flash of light, her eyelids blinking to recover from it as she looks up and sees Aya floating in place with one of her fingers rising up from the top of her signature camera with a merry grin on her face. The Celestial quickly proclaims in disbelief "Hey! What's the big idea tengu?!" Waving her camera around as a brimming smirk crosses her face, Aya says to Tenshi "Just picking up a picture for my next news article 'Infamous Celestial Tenshi Hinawani Reads a Commoner's Newspaper'! But anyways, I got to ride, so thanks for the cash!" After putting her camera and yen piece away deep inside of her bag, Aya turns ninety degrees to the left and kicks against to air to rocket away, the sudden breeze she creates ruffling Tenshi's hairs as the Celestial stares her way with a dumbfounded look in her eyes.

"Geez…What a crazy tengu…" Tenshi quietly says, turning her attention towards the paper she acquired a moment later and opening it up to see what its contents hold. "Hmmm….Bunbunmaru Newspaper special report…Oh? Wonder what's so special about this article…" Tenshi's grin widens like that of a mischievous cat, and with great intrigue brimming in her eyes she continues to read the article deeper. "The recent religion duels between the propagators of the Shinto, Buddhist, and Taoist factions have been settled thanks to the menreiki youkai Hata no Kokoro, but don't despair youkai and humans, there is still a chance for you to hear the grand story behind this incident! For the next week in the Human Village, a Kagura will be performed by the incident solver herself that will be sure to leave you emotional…And not because she will be making you feel that way about the spectacle with her powers! As someone who has gotten an advanced showing of 'Hopeless Masquerade', I must say that-"

Tenshi quickly pauses, caring little about Aya's opinion on the Kagura as she goes back a sentence and rereads it, repeating some key words in her head twice over "Emotional…Her powers…" As her eyes widen, so too does her smile, which becomes as broad as her face and as tall as the area between the lobes on her ears and her chin. After a grand series of wicked thoughts brew inside the Celestial's head, she says to herself "So…This Hata non Kokoro person can manipulate other people's emotions, eh? Looks like I've got myself a great way to prank people. All I have to do is head down to the Human Village and it will be easy to get her to assist me ." With the info she needs now stored in her mind, Tenshi stands on top of her keystone and tosses the newspaper away without a care. She then flies off towards the direction of the Human Village, remembering its location from the last time she was in Gensokyo.

It doesn't take very long considering the speed of her keystone, but when she arrives at the village she realizes something rather important "Oh wait…I don't know what this Kokoro person looks like." The look of realization on her sweating face is one for the picture album, but after her eyebrows twitch a few times Tenshi shakes off her concerns and proclaims to herself while pounding her right fist against her flat chest "That's alright, I'll just look for a girl with a young appearance, colorful hair, and a weird choice in clothing! That's how you identify all of the important people in Gensokyo after all!" Of course, the flaw in Tenshi's logic is that there are about 10 or so people that go to the Human Village that fit her specifications, meaning that it would be hard to peg down Kokoro specifically.

The Celestial spends about an hour floating out of view above the Human Village until she starts getting incredibly bored trying to find the Youkai she wants and with a frustrated gritted of her teeth she thinks to herself "You know what…I'm just going to wait for that 'Hopeless Masquerade' dance of hers…It'll be easy to identify her if she's the only one involved in it." Thus Tenshi sits on her keystone, looking at the center of town where a stage appears to be and continues to keep herself out of sight as a crowd of humans begins to gather in front of the stage, which as the Celestial notes is rather plain in design. "Hmm…This Kokoro person doesn't appear to be one to show off. Wonder what they will look like…" Tenshi anticipated the appearance of the menreiki youkai immensely, so much in fact that she nearly leaned herself off of her keystone as she stared down at the stage as the crowd silenced themselves and prepared for the entrance of the grand performer herself.

Without warning, the entirety of the Human Village is covered in a dark blue shroud, the colors fading from all but the humans and Youkai who came to watch as a thin yet tall wisp of aquamarine fire spawns above the center of the stage. Tenshi's eyebrows pop up in surprise, and she thinks to herself "Interesting…Very, very interesting…" From the wisp of fire emerges a figure surrounded by a ring of eight different masks, all of them dispersing along with the wisp as the being spreads her arms out and opens her eyelids. Three masks then return, floating around her with a pale blue glow around them. The Celestial is shocked to see that this Youkai is even younger looking than she is, but doesn't have any doubts in her mind that she has found Hata no Kokoro.

Kokoro's appearance shares a few similarities to Tenshi's own. Her hair is long like the Celestial's normally is but colored pink to match her empty, pupil less eyes. Kokoro wears a blouse, but hers is colored blue and has a plaid pattern to it. On her shirt are buttons of various shapes and colors ranging from the red star on the top to the purple X on the bottom. The similarities end there though, for below the blouse is a puffy, pumpkin shaped pink skirt whose bottom lip extends beyond her kneecaps. On the skirt are multiple faces that alternate between showing sadness and joy, and her feet are covered by silk white socks that have little tiny bow ribbons on top of them. The one particular thing that caught Tenshi's attention though was that Kokoro barely showed any emotion on her face, and that she had Ko-omote mask of joy floating adjacent to her face.

"Huh…So for one who can control other people's emotions, she chooses to use masks to express her own emotions." The Celestial's observation was pretty easy to catch on to, but Tenshi was proud of herself to have done it anyways. Sitting back observantly on the keystone, Tenshi watches the dance of 'Hopeless Masquerade' unfold on stage as the environment returns back to normal and Kokoro bows towards the audience. The Youkai depicts the events of the latest incident through her masks, taking out fans and dancing gracefully around each one that is summoned forth beautifully from the clear blue wisps hovering across the air around her. She doesn't say a word and there is not a single instrument being played, leaving nothing but the calming silence in the air as Kokoro dances back and forth across the stage and uses her powers to switch masks around whenever the scene changes to focus on different people. And sometimes Kokoro herself parts into the background, dropping the glow of her own mask to let the others take center stage without drawing attention towards herself.

Tenshi finds herself entranced by the spectacle, drawn into the beautiful story told through the dance of the menreiki Youkai like it was nothing she had ever seen before…As a matter of fact, Celestials never perform dances in Bhavaagra, marking such things as trivial because of their enlightenment. But despite thinking about that, Tenshi doesn't believe that it was the dance itself that got her so intrigued, but rather it was the being that was orchestrating this graceful Kagura that was grabbing her attention so tightly…And Tenshi had no idea just why she felt this way, why her chest felt warm and her face was so relaxed as she laid her body stomach first onto the keystone and rested her hands on her cheeks, kicking her feet in the air like a normal little girl filled with intrigue would.

But just as soon as the dance of the 'Hopeless Masquerade' began, it swiftly ended, the audience erupting into applause and their arms throwing rice and streamers into the sky as Kokoro bows once more and draws all of her masks out in a line in front of her skirt, having them nod as the Ko-omote mask floats beside her face once more. But even after all that has happened, the Youkai doesn't say anything to the audience, staying quiet as they all split apart from the stage and she is left alone to do her own thing. The center of the Human Village is almost vacant, and with the dance now done Tenshi figures that now would be the perfect time to descend and manipulate Kokoro into helping her with her pranks.

But as she stood on her keystone, Tenshi felt a little bit of hesitance towards following through with her plans upon looking at the Youkai and seeing her innocent, empty eyes for just a moment before she turns around and begins to float towards the back of the stage. The Celestial gets a flustered look on her red face that is swiftly shaken off with a couple twists of her head. Then Tenshi smiles, folding her arms in front of her chest as she commands her keystone to descend a few feet behind Kokoro, and to break the ice nicely with the Youkai she says politely "Hello!" Kokoro flinches, her face barely changing expressions as her previous mask vanishes in a clouded wisp to be replaced with the mask of surprise that is based on the thunder god Raiden. Kokoro then turns around slowly, looking up at the mysterious grinning blue-haired Celestial as she says to her with her shadow cast down upon the stage "Glad to meet you Hata no Kokoro. My name is Tenshi Hinawani, and do I have a proposition for you!"

Next Time: Draw the Emotionless


Author's Notes:

This is my first foray into Touhou fiction, and will most certainly not be my last. This is not my first fic, and I currently gave another one that I just started yesterday. That one gets top priority though, but I will try and work on this in-between chapters. I just wanted to write this fic because the idea just spawned in my head suddenly one day. Naturally, Touhou belongs to ZUN, and I take no credit for any of his creations that are used in this story. Feel free to review this story at your leisure, I'm not going to force you to do so if you don't have anything to say.