HAYO, Hex here with the long overdue chapter 1 of what was supposed to be the first story in my series. Some of you might be familiar with my (3+ year old) story, Coming of High Danger, which is actually supposed to be the second story. Well, if you've read it, the two released chapters have been rewritten. So, you should probably go back and read that.
But I really shouldn't make you guys wait anymore. It's time, for…
…right, anyway.
In the realm of Gensokyo, very rarely does something "strange" occur. I mean, when you think about it, nothing's truly out of the ordinary- pretty much anything can happen in this strange subdimension. Fairies can start wars, gaps can eat people*, a seemingly harmless mushroom can turn into a youkai**, and more. So when you think about, no matter what happens in Gensokyo, it's pretty much normal, no matter how crazy or ridiculous by one's standards it may be.
With the exception of one thing.
When a strange being comes into Gensokyo, and starts raining cursed destruction (hence the title) on the realm, without any explanation, things can get pretty crazy. But let's not start there. Let's start earlier.
In fact, let's look at the day before, where we find everyone's (potentially least) favorite lazy shrine maiden, sleeping in her futon, despite the fact that it's noon and she should've woken up at least an hour ago. Does she care? No, of course not.
From the west comes a rather easily recognisable black (and anything but ordinary) witch, flying on her broom like a real witch should. This witch, namely Marisa Kirisame, lands in front of the (completely aesthetic) gate, and walks over to the door.
"Oi, Reimu, you in there? Don't you know you're not supposed to sleep past noon, ze?", the witch said as she knocked on the door, waking said shrine maiden, and receiving an irritated groan in response.
After a couple minutes, a clearly very grumpy Reimu opens the door and smacks Marisa upside the head with her gohei as hard as she could, sending said witch stumbling back a bit, falling on her rear as a result. "Just what the fuck do you want, Marisa? I don't appreciate being woken."
Marisa chuckles, apparently not very fazed by the hit (which is further emphasized when her formerly crumpled hat spontaneously returned to it's original state, suggesting it had absorbed most of the impact and the sudden attack was the only thing that had cause the witch to back up), then responds, "Well, stop sleeping in so late, ze. And tone down on the language, jeez." Standing back up, the kleptomaniacal witch continues. "Remilia said she wanted to speak with you about something, ze. Something about 'fate' and some event occuring soon? I don't remember, daze. Either way, you should probably go talk to her, ze." With that taken care of, the witch immediately pulled her broom out of her hat (I have no clue, don't ask me), hopped on it, and flew away, leaving Reimu to stand there with a clearly irritated look on her face.
Sighing, the shrine maiden slipped her gohei into one of the many hidden pockets in her sleeves. "Eh. Might as well go humor that brat. See what she has to say."
Going back in briefly to grab her charms and needles, in case any youkai decided to be annoying along the way, Reimu immediately took flight, heading in the general direction of the SDM.
*,**: These are references to WillieGR's Sukima series, and Kimiko Muffin's Adventures, respectively.
Scarlet Devil Mansion, about 2:00 PM
About ten minutes, a couple fairy-fights and a dark-aligned youkai later, Reimu lands in front of the SDM's gates, just in time to see Sakuya berating Meiling for falling asleep on the job for about the five millionth time. The silver-haired maid turned from the red-haired gate guard, who currently has a couple knives stuck in her head. "Ah, miss Reimu. The mistress is right inside." She then immediately returned to punishing Meiling, leaving Reimu to sigh and head in.
As soon as she walked in, she immediately noticed several things off- First, Flandre was standing against the wall on the right, watching her sister with amusement. Second, said sister was pacing back and forth in the center of the foyer, clearly quite nervous about something. Third, the room appeared to be darker than usual, as though Remilia's mood was rubbing off on the area around her (which according to Aura Dynamics is exactly what's happening).
Standing just past the door, Reimu watched Remilia, who obviously hadn't noticed her yet, pace back and forth, with some degrees of amusement. Noticing the shrine maiden, Flandre lets out a giggle. "I know, it's so entertaining watching her do that!"
The blue-haired vampire in question stops and glares at her little sister, then notices Reimu's presence. "Reimu! There you are. I was started to get worried you had fallen into a coma with your laziness."
Immediately whacking the annoying vampire on the head with her gohei for her comment, Reimu started tossing said gohei up and down, clearly a little annoyed with the vampire. "So, what's so important that you needed to have Marisa come over and wake me up for, hmm? Another case of paranoia related to a wave of youkai?"
Remilia pouts, rubbing the new bump on her head. "Hey, that was a misunderstanding. I didn't realize that they were going to completely miss the mansion. That's also a completely different scenario."
Reimu sighes, putting her gohei back in her hidden pocket. "Okay, what is it this time? Some crazy youkai decided to plot and attack the mansion? That wouldn't be enough to warrant calling me, you could handle that yourself."
Remilia casts an annoyed glance at Flandre, who is currently giggling uncontrollably, then turns back to Reimu. "I… don't know. All I can tell is something bad is going to happen tomorrow. For some reason whenever I look that far ahead all I'm met with is darkness. And also, this…"
Raising her hand, the vampire conjured an image of what appeared to be bright green fire, which seemed to burn with an intensity above that of any normal fire. After a couple seconds, her hand dropped, with the image dissolving, and several sweatdrops appearing on the girl's head. "That's as best as an image I can get of it. I'm not good with the ethereal imagery stuff, so it's too exhausting to get anything more."
Reimu, having already memorised the image, tilted her head in confusion. The fire looked familiar, but she couldn't identify where she knew it from, or even how she knew it existed. Maybe there was something in the Incident Records in the shrine?
Shaking her head to clear it, the shrine maiden turned towards the door. "There's something vaguely familiar about that… I'm going to go take a look in the shrine's records. Check with Patchy to see if she has any books on it." With that, she immediately left, heading out the door and flying back to the shrine, leaving Remilia standing in the foyer, completely unsurprised by the maiden's abrupt exit. Sighing, she headed down to the library, following Reimu's suggestion to ask Patchy.
At the Shrine…
As soon as she reached the shrine, Reimu immediately went inside and into the back, where all the records were stored. Inside, there were shelves litterly stuffed with scrolls, books, miscellaneous papers, and more- obviously, Gensokyo had quite the history.
Taking a deep breath, the shrine maiden started pulling scroll after scroll off the wall, sifting through them and trying to find where she had read about that fire. "Fairy wars… scarlet mist… Makaian invasion… miscellaneous youkai and fairy attacks… …storm of ring-shaped pastries?... nothing about green fire."
By the time Reimu had emptied one of the shelves (out of 5), the floor was literally littered with paper, be it in the form of scrolls, books, or just loose leaf, and already the sun was starting to set. The black-haired girl let out a long sigh. "This is going to be a LONG night."
And so she set to work, digging through every single one of the 5000+ pages in the room, trying to find that one record she remembered reading about green fire.
Touhou, Gensokyo, and all associated characters are owned by ZUN.
Scenario (mostly) is owned by me.
Eh, not the best for a first chapter, but it'll have to do for now. I'll probably end up running back through at some point and rewording/rewriting some of it. Oh well.
Reviews welcome, but friendly reminder, I do not tolerate rage. Criticism is welcome, but delivering a pissed off review about SOMETHING (I've had one before, I wouldn't put it past anyone to send another) is completely unnecessary. Write calmly, please.
…but yeah, next chapter should be done by next Sunday. Until then.
-Hex
P.S. To tide you over, go on my profile, go into my favorites, and go read "The Scarlet Queen and the Rose Cross". It's a fantastic fic and I seriously recommend it for anyone who likes Flandre, or really just Touhou in general.
