Disclaimer: I do not own the franchise, nor am I affiliated with Team Shanghai Alice. If I were, I'd be busting my butt off making the next cool Touhou game.

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I copied this from somewhere, 'The Tale of Rumia.' Thanks, man. :D

Touhou Manokyoukai: The Borders Between

Prologue

Darkness. In that place there was only deep, unfathomable, undeniable darkness. No, it would be too generous to it a name. But to be in it was to lose all physical sense, to be floating endlessly in a place of nothing and everything. Human minds, finite and foolish, cannot begin to comprehend such a concept. So incomprehensible it was that to claim understanding of it would be the same as losing one self within it, to be part of the nothingness where existence ends.

But Yukari Yakumo knew what it was, and what it held within its bosom. The Youkai of Boundaries boasted great power, greater than anything and everything that existed within the land of Gensokyo. And yet she felt a sliver of fear run down her spine as she gazed at the unknown existence, chained down by countless tendrils of deep darkness.

"Yukari-sama, is something the matter?" the nine-tailed kitsune asked, standing by the great youkai's side with vigilance and concerned. Though the way the tips of her tails curled and the subtle uneasiness on her face said that she'd rather be facing the Lunarians single-handedly than stay for one more second in this place.

"Worry about yourself first, dear Ran. I'm afraid you'll start shedding off hair any moment now," Yukari said, a small smile gracing her red lips. Half of her body rested inside the comfort of her own portal, which was probably a large reason why she could stand to stay and stare at the existence she feared.

"Why are we here in the first place? We were supposed to be at the Hakurei Shrine for the spring feast. We didn't even say anything before we vanished into thin air."

Yukari's smile tightened and her eye twitched as she tried to dismiss the faint movement she detected as mere hallucination. But youkai as powerful as her rarely get delusional. "Ran," she said. "Look into the darkness, and tell me what you see."

The fox youkai squinted, trying to look past an entire wall of black, but managing to reach only that which Yukari's own light penetrated. "…I admit, Yukari-sama, that I see nothing. Nothing at all," she said.

"Exactly," said Yukari in a way that she expected Ran's answer to explain itself. Given the look of confusion on her shikigami's face, she continued. "What you see is Nothing. Or more exactly, a non-existence that yearns to erase all forms of existence – simply put, to reduce all to Nothing."

"I… don't understand," Ran said, becoming more unsettled by the minute. "Isn't 'nothing' supposed to be just an expression?"

Yukari chuckled, like a mother would to an ignorant child. "I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of Yin and Yang, my dear. Tell me, what is its basic tenet?"

Ran answered slowly. "That there is balance in all things?"

"Correct." Yukari waved her hand, creating a ball of the brightest light anyone's ever seen. Its brilliance rivalled the sun, and Ran could feel the tremendous amount of energy radiating from it – enough power to decimate an entire continent. For a while, it drove back the darkness, the genesis of existence in this dark abyss. All of the kitsune's doubts, fears, worries, sorrows, hatred were all washed away in the welcoming warmth of the new sun. She was almost convinced that it was all Yukari's idea of a practical joke, as she so often did with the denizens of Gensokyo.

And then it was swallowed up in a blink, so fast that Ran almost didn't catch it. The great brilliance that lit up the darkness disappeared in a flash, and the shadows came washing over them like a tidal wave; cold, heavy, oppressive.

"It… It can't be," Ran gasped, and she felt a great fear creep into her once again, stronger than every single negative emotion the light orb took away. She trembled slightly, her tails swishing around nervously, and if her dress wasn't in the way one of them would be tucked between her legs.

Yukari was still smiling, though her eyes were hard with apprehension. "Balance in all things, Ran. Light and Shadow, Good and Evil, Life and Death," she pointed to the darkness with her parasol, not unlike a fencer before performing the coup the grace. "Existence and Void."

The great shadow moved, shifting against the darkness that held it back. Ran visibly jumped back, yelping like a fox and hiding behind her master like one. Yukari lowered the parasol and stood still, but her smile was completely gone. This time she could no longer lie to herself; the seals were weakening, and she was quickly running out of time. All the parallel worlds were in danger of being sent to the Void. The violet-clad Youkai, representative of her dimension, had less than thirteen months to figure out how to stop the cataclysmic event.

"And so Chaos comes to bring all into the Void," Yukari flicked her wrist, and then they were back at the Forest of Magic; or rather, they were standing on the dirt pathway between the forest and the Human Village. Ran let out an audible sigh and slumped back onto the grass, the light breeze brining a liberating sense of relief within her. But she immediately stood up again after a sharp, intense glance from her master.

"What should we do now, master? How can we defeat something that doesn't exist?" Ran asked anxiously, patting the dust off her dress.

Yukari stayed silent, instead turning to her right. The kitsune followed her gaze seeing a shabby-looking house that looked like it had been abandoned for years. But Ran knew better. She raised a questioning eyebrow at Yukari, clearly at a loss. The violet-clad youkai merely laughed as if she hadn't just been face-to-face with an undefeatable force that could not be stopped until there was absolutely nothing left.

"We're going to go shopping, my dear," she said with that ever-present smile of hers. "And I think Kourindou is the best place around."