So anyways, this is just the tenth excerpt from a part two of a certain story I have been writing. The first part is long as hell, and the second part is going to be longer than hell. This is an excerpt from the second part like I said, yeah, and there are some references to past events. This second part is set right after the first, and the protagonist has been living in Japan with a few hospitable people for a year now. The things he references, of course, are entirely up to you. Kishin, The Asura Crisis. Depending on your knowledge of different Anime and/or one single game, you might even get the two sisters reference. Then again, it is pretty vague, and I'm sure there is a whole hell of a lot of anime with two sisters in it, so I'll leave it up to your imagination for now... In this protagonist's whole story line, he's had a hand in a few things that happened off in America, Nevada state. Of course, I guess I'll hold off on showing what made him come here to Japan after the whole crisis and such. Now he seems to have stumbled on something entirely (Perhaps not so entirely?) different. Also, this entire story- There are a metric ton of references to a lot of different anime and games, and there are quite a few crossovers too. So far, it's just Touhou and a few mentions of the events that went on during Soul Eater. The manga, that is. The anime veered off like a fish driving a car. Anyways, yeah. I'm not sure if this can be categorized as crossover or regular, so I'm just sticking it on regular because the crossover option only has two selections.
Touhou is owned by Team Shanghai Alice, and Soul Eater and references of it- Asura Crisis, Kishin, all that- They belong to Atsushi Okubo. Or Square Enix. Eh.
Also, HOLY SHIT. There isn't a sub-category for Touhou.
Come to think of it, had he even bothered washing the clothes before he went out? Clef chuckled. Cigarettes and complexities made a person want to be alone. Maybe it was just him. The night was a cold one, almost to the point of where he could see his own breath. He had chosen a sort of scenic route this time, taking a sidewalk path next to a forest that was rumored to be cursed. What kind of curse, however? The curse of walking corpses, the curse of Kishin, or some other kind of supernatural madness? He had enough experience with Kishin to deal with them, should one come around. Walking corpses had been in movies for years now, and all you had to do to them was a bullet to the head. What was he even talking about, planning for Kishin and resurrected corpses? The Kishin were dealt with after the Asura Crisis, and walking dead people were either third-rate movie actors or actual demons themselves. A shadow whizzed by and Clef felt his messenger bag lift from his shoulder. Interesting, he thought. Here he was planning for more bullshit when he should have been planning for genuine shit.
The thief decided that concrete was no longer a way to go, and in an attempt to make an escape, he vaulted over the sidewalk railing and into the forest. Clef shouted more obscenities at the man before jumping and running down the forest slope himself. It was not necessarily a mountain's climb back up, but more like a steep hill. The thief rammed through thickly leaved branches and made a nice, clear path for Clef to chase him with. He was too busy thinking to tackle and grab him; He was deciding on whether to beat him with his fists or use a branch. At least he was keeping a steady pace with the man. Let him tire out, then break his fucking legs. And arms. Should he go for the fingers, too? No no no, he was thinking much too violently. If he was going to be the brother of two sisters, he had to be nicer. Alright, how could he be any nicer to this jackass in a ski mask? He chuckled- Clef felt a rhyme ring in his head. Okay, he agreed with himself. He would simply break the cheekbone and the nose. Up ahead, the man appeared to have found himself some sort of abandoned building. The thief jumped comically over a box and ran into the house, slamming the door shut. The house was an ancient, feudal age construction of paper walls and raised corner shingles. Through a tear in the wall, he watched the man desperately search for another exit. Thanks to helping out the younger sister with her history lessons, he could identify the place as some sort of religious shrine built around maybe the Yayoi or Edo period. He believed that most shrines back then had at least two exits. When the man finally found and opened the back door, Clef was right there waiting for him.
He left the thief in the corner while he checked the contents of his bag. Everything was still there. Glock, cigarettes, journal, lighter, and phone. He could not say much the same for the man, however. A few teeth were scattered around him, and by the way Clef beat the man, he was probably also missing a few memories. Clef questioned himself: did he get carried away? Yes. Did he mind? As long as he got his stuff back, no. Should he feel shame? Of course. He looked around the abandoned building. When he looked through the tear in the wall, did he see a kotatsu before in the middle of the shrine? In fact, from the inside, everything looked different. There was a small fireplace with a pot over it, a few cupboards and cabinets too. The only thing that genuinely mesmerized him from this piece of history was that the tears in the wall were no longer there, and the kotatsu was fully functional. This place was not abandoned, and someone was going to be pissed about the half-dead guy in the corner. Not to mention they would also be angry about Clef intruding and having blood all over his hands. Just as he thought, a person opened the back door to the place. She was a small, young kid with blond hair and red eyes. He thought her all the more cuter because she was wearing a black dress and white, collared blouse with an odd jingle-bell shaped tie. The red ribbon in her hair made her look even more childish. Kids nowadays wore blue jeans and shirts, but this one was quite a bit different. She just looked at him, smiling. "Hi." He bluntly greeted her. What else was there to say? Her eyes went from him to the man lying in the corner, and the only word that came out of her mouth was "Food." She promptly walked over to the man, picked up his feet, and drug him out of the back door. He just sat there Indian style with his messenger bag on his lap. What the hell just happened? Clef stood up and walked over to the exit to call out to her when he realized she had completely disappeared along with the man. He simply backed up, trying to think if he was hallucinating from all the violence. No- He couldn't go insane just from that, could he? Or did he somehow break logic while beating the man half to death? Interrupting his thoughts, a girl's voice shouted from behind him. "You!" He turned around. "You're the culprit!" She was wearing an outfit that matched the style of the shrine. A red and white dress with a large red ribbon at the back of the hip and another one tying up her hair. In her hands were red little slips of paper that looked like giant cards and in the other hand was a stick with white streamers at the end of it. She reared her hand back and slung a volley of the paper cards at him. With no time to think, he somersaulted out of the way and the cards flew past out of the door and lodging themselves into a tree trunk. If he wanted to think about the situation, it was impossible now. Clef was too busy thinking about the cards. They almost flew at the speed of a bullet, and they went right into a tree. Who knew what they could do to skin? He had the Glock, but it was not like he was going to shoot a girl. Instead, he took a more peaceful route and tried to look submissive by holding his hands up. "Lady, I don't know what you're talking about." Unfortunately, she was going an opposite direction and kept yelling her head off at him. "I'll be damned if you don't! I'm sure of it! You're the one who's broken it!" He backed away into the paper wall. "Broken what?" "The boundary!" Another volley of paper cards dodged, and he got to see them slice right through a wooden section of the paper wall. "Jesus Christ." Thinking out loud was not a good idea- it just made her worse. "Who is that, a lackey of yours?!" She reared her hand back again and he tried to intervene. "Whoa whoa, lady! Come on, I don't kn-" She interrupted him with another mass of cards, which he dodged by taking cover behind a wooden cabinet. He was just a few feet away from the back exit, he could still get out. Then again, getting a bunch of cards stuck in his back did not sit too well in his mind. He shouted back from behind the cabinet. "Lady, for the love of god, can you stop throwing those cards? I'm sorry for breaking into your house or whatever, just let me talk!" He stuck his head out, but she was not there. He knew. He knew, and he slowly looked back and beside him anyways. Of course, she was there. Sticking the streamer stick right at his face. The stare in her eyes was ambiguous, but he knew what it could mean. It either told him, 'I am studying your expression' or 'I am about to fucking murder you.' All he could do was stand in place and wait for judgement. Death, or salvation. Finally, she put the cards away and the stick down. Salvation! "You know, they're not cards. Now come here!" She took him by the shoulder and drug him out into the open, next to the kotatsu. All he could do was chuckle. "What?" She sternly asked. "I guess I should have figured. You're not wearing a top hat and you don't have a mustache." She gave him an annoyed expression. "Is this what I'm not hitting you for?" "Hey, you know, a magician. They have top hats, neat mustaches, pull rabbits out of places, and have playing cards." The red ribbon girl shook her head. "Yeah, right. I have a friend that is a magician, and she doesn't have any of those." "Actually," Another voice spoke from outside, behind the back door before revealing herself. "I do have a deck of cards in my pocket here." The new girl was quite a bit different than the lady in front of him. She wore a black and white dress, and an oddly large hat with a white ribbon around it that reminded him of a witch. Clef was starting to wonder why all the girls around here donned ribbons in some way or another. The girl with the red ribbon seemed surprised. "Marisa?" The Marisa girl gave her a silly smile. "Yup! I was waitin' out back for him to run out." "Oh." Clef said. Well, he was caught either way then. Even so, he wondered. "So hey, did you see the other girl out back? One with a red ribbon just like this lady, possibly carrying some jack- er, guy?" Marisa's eyebrow cocked up. "Nope, I didn't see anybody else. I just got here a minute ago." "That's not the subject!" The red ribbon girl stuck the streamer stick up to Clef's chest. "You're going to tell me why you've committed this crime." "I don't even know what the hell the crime is." The red ribbon girl sighed. "The boundary. You've broken it, and it can't be used now." "What boundary?" "The Hakurei Boundary! The one that separates the outside world and Gensokyo!" "Where the hell am I?" She pressed the stick into his chest a little harder. "Gensokyo!" He threw his hands up and shrugged his shoulders, "Well what the hell is a Gensokyo?" The red ribbon girl smacked herself in the face. "Gensokyo," the Marisa girl came up and took hold of his shoulder while explaining. "Is where all the Youkai and Humans live together. Where all your mythical Oni and monster stuff reside, y'know?" "Devils?" Clef asked. Marisa shrugged. "More'r'less, yeah. I mean, so far I've only ever met devils in a mansion not too far from here, but yeah. Devils." "Thank you, Marisa." The red ribbon girl said, going back to Clef. "Now, you came from the outside world, right?" He shrugged and nodded simultaneously; he had no idea. The ribbon girl nodded back. "Okay. So, when you entered this shrine, did you feel any change in the air, or some kind of difference in the atmosphere?" Clef simply shrugged this time. He figured he should leave the guy out of it. "I was too busy... uh, looking at all the ancient history of this place. That fire pot over there, the somehow functional kotatsu- Hey, I still don't quite get it. I came here and I swear there were tears and the walls were all messed and torn up. When I came inside, I saw stuff I didn't see before, and all the tears and problems with this place seemed to be gone." "Exactly!" The red ribbon girl said while pointing the stick up and waving it around as if she were a teacher. "You came through this door here, and when you did, you somehow entered a boundary that was specifically made to keep people out and from coming to Gensokyo. That was the boundary you broke, and now it isn't even working. There is no going out, or going in, the boundary simply doesn't work! It's as if there isn't a connection to the outside world at all, thanks to what you've done!" "Listen, lady, I didn't mean it, alright? I'm sorry. I really am. What you're telling me though," Clef walked and stuck his head out the door to see whether it was true or not. He did have his fair share of crazy never-supposed-to-happen insanity in his life. "Which I'm guessing must be true, then I'm in a different dimension?" The red ribbon girl shook her head while Marisa happily explained. "Well, you're more like, in a holed off part of the dimension, y'see? Gensokyo is a part of the outside world, 'cept, it's sort of... through a door, I guess." She looked at the red ribbon girl for confirmation, who nodded. "Yeah," Marisa said, more confident. "That's pretty much what it is." "And I broke that door?" She nodded and replied, "Yeah." He sighed. "Great. And now that this door is broken, I can't go through it or use it?" "Apparently Reimu here thinks its so broken the ceiling caved in an' blocked the doorway completely." Sighing again now that he knew what he had done, he wanted to give the Reimu girl another apology. "Geez. Look, Miss Reimu, I really am sorry about all of this." She nodded. "Yeah, Its fine. I guess I overreacted anyways." At least she forgave him. The fighting was over, but his mind went to his sisters for a second. "Wait, Miss Reimu, so I can't pass through this, right?" She nodded in reply and he continued, "Then how am I supposed to get back home?" Reimu nodded again and tapped her chin in contemplation. "Ah, now that is a problem, isn't it? Hmm... There.. there is this one person I know." He looked up at her from the ground. "Her name, Yukari Yakumo... Okay, I think you might be able to find her. Oh- My, I haven't asked your name yet, have I? I am Reimu Hakurei, the shrine maiden here." He nodded, wondering about the Yukari lady and less about immediate, late greetings. "Yes, I'm Clef. Er, Cambache." Marisa joined in on the delayed greeting too. "Marisa Kirisame, nice to meet'cha." He even shook her hand. "So, this Yukari lady you're talking about, Reimu?" "Yes. Now, she's usually awake at night, and even when she is, she still is a Youkai, might even eat you... Then there's the troublesome shikigami of hers." "Okay, can you tell me what a Youkai is?" Marisa took her role as tour guide and told him. "A Youkai's a thing that looks like a human, might not smell like a human, and definitely eats humans." "Eats humans," He responded deadpan. "Yup!" Marisa energetically replied. "Oh." His eyes trailed to the ground from the thought of the guy the blond haired girl with the ribbon dragged away into the night. In English, he compulsively thought out loud again. "Fuck."