A/N: Well, this'll probably be the first story I'm uploading onto this account. Uh… Tsuki-Sennin's first story on here is a Touhou/No More Heroes crossover. I mean, Touhou has been crossed over with nearly everything under the sun, and No More Heroes has a relatively small crossover section anyway. But you're not here for some guy who only just made an account a few days ago, are you? You're here for this.
Touhou: Beam Katana Chronicles
Prologue: Spiriting Away
It was a quiet summer Friday sunset in the city known as Santa Destroy. Students were returning home from their latest bouts of drinking in Gold Town, Body Slam Beach's tanners and would-be surfers returned to their motel rooms in sunburned shambles, businessmen and prostitutes were sharing quality cheap dinners at Suplex Pizza or Burger Suplex, and in the shadowed alleyways assassins were slicing each other down with beam katanas and baseball bats, with each skirmish was punctuated with the occasional gunshot.
Travis Touchdown hadn't had time to appreciate the darkness of Santa Destroy. He had pulled up to the graveyard his faithful mechanical beast of a bike known as the Schpeltiger II. He dismounted his faithful steed, and approached a headstone in silence. He crossed his arms, and looked down.
Travis Touchdown was a man, of about 30 years of age, who wore a light red leather jacket, blue jeans, and yellow aviator shades that shielded his blue eyes. He worked as one of many assassins in the United Assassins Association. In fact, he was the highest ranked assassin in the country. He's on an official hiatus at the moment (as the Association is currently disbanded), but occasionally some random jerk-off will challenge him to a fight. It didn't happen today, but it's been happening more than usual lately.
Once he had finished his silence for Bishop, he turned around and rode his bike home.
Home just so happened to be a shitty motel, one of the oldest still standing in the city in fact. Motel "NO MORE HEROES" and the people who stay in it are cheap, poorly maintained, and one police investigation away from condemnation, if they put the effort in. But fortunately, the Santa Destroy Police Department doesn't know the meaning of the word "effort". Travis remembered reading a forum post way back in the day asking if someone could live in a motel. The guy wondered if it'd be better than living in his 1100$ rent apartment. Travis verdict? Yeah, you could, especially in one as derelict as Motel "NO MORE HEROES".
The place had two stories, and Travis lived up top. The doors were a teal color, and the outer walls were something close to a buttery yellow. On the roof Travis had stopped in the parking lot and jumped off the bike, heading upstairs to take a well-earned sleep after a day of performing odd jobs. He opened the door, and took a seat in his armchair in front of the TV. His hotel room had three major areas, the Living Room, the Bedroom, and the Bathroom. His living room was where he kept most of his stuff, like his extensive collection of Luchador Masks, his Bizarre Jelly merchandise (including that coffee mug that misspelled Blueberry as "Raspberry"), his Superwild DVDs, punk CDs, and a portrait of his master Thunder Ryu above the flat-screen.
Nothing on TV really caught his eye after he spent 30 minutes watching the latest episode of "Bizarre Jelly 5: Creamy Parfait Smile!" on the DVR. While Travis was enjoying the intricate character development, the stunning animation, the battles with the Glaston units and the demons, the anarchistic ass-kicking enacted by the Glastonbury, and of course the wonderful music, he couldn't help but feel like he was being… watched. He tried to put these out of his mind as the "To Be Continued" text popped up on the screen immediately after Strawberry learned about the identity of the Masked Lady Thornberry, who turned out to be at the vice principal of their school. ("Yeah!" Travis said. "Knew the voices sounded similar! They can use aliases for the seiyuu all they like, they'll never pull a fast one on me! Man, do I feel good!")
He went over to check his answering machine.
"You have -TWO- new messages."
The machine beeped. "Hi, this is Diane from Beef Head Video. Just calling to remind you that one of our videos… uh… 'Princesses of the Tennis Court: Love-40 between Girls' is due for return tomorrow. Please do so, Mr. Touchdown. Thank you, and have a nice evening."
Shit, he forgot about that. Better return it before he goes to bed and avoid hassle. He might as well walk there.
The machine beeped again. "Hello, little brother. Just calling to let you know that I'll be dropping in for a visit. I promise this message won't be as long as last time. Anyway, I don't have much time to explain why, so I'll tell you as much as I can."
Henry Cooldown's Irish accented voice paused for a brief second. What the hell is happening with him? The pause continued for a solid 5 seconds, until he then continued, sounding slightly more jovial. "I imagine you're not gonna be home till around 10 PM, Pacific Standard Time. No need to pick me up from the airport, I'll come by on my own at around… I'd say, 2 PM tomorrow. I've picked up rumors of someone looking to kidnap you. If you plan on going out between when I expect you to hear this message, and when I'm supposed to arrive, please bring all of your beam katanas with you so that you at least have something to defend yourself with."
"Jeez, what does he think I am, a fucking moron?" Travis groused.
"I know you believe me to think you're a fucking moron or whatever, but I ask that you take this seriously. I have no idea what this person is capable of, or what they would want with someone like you, but it most certainly can't be good. I ask that you take an extra precaution and only eat from freshly opened sealed food. And when you go to bed, make sure that you lock the door."
"Will you hurry up?" Travis moaned again. "I need to take this back before I get in trouble."
"Don't worry, I'll hurry up now. I also suggest not hanging out around Akashic Points or anything supernatural. Not that I have any power to stop you, but at least I can sleep on the plane knowing that I tried. Good night, little brother."
The message ended there. Travis sighed as he armed himself. Whatever shit will await him, he wasn't sure. What he WAS sure about was that he could handle it.
"C'mon, you fucker! Come fight me!"
Well, shit. As it turns out some dude had shown up to duel Travis at the counter. He even has him up at gunpoint. So THIS was the guy Mr. Sir Henry Motherfucker himself was worried about? What a scam!
"Uh, could you please wait a second? Mr. Touchdown's finally returning something on time for once." Diane said from behind the counter, not even looking up from the computer. "Also, if you're gonna fight, could you please take it outside?"
The dude scowled, and stormed out, leaving Travis and Diane alone.
"Will you be renting anything else, or…" Diane asked, checking her phone.
"Nope, I'm just gonna go home and go to bed." Travis shook his head.
"Have a good night." She called.
He honestly was too tired to deal with some random asshole right now, but if it'd make the bastard's night to get himself wrecked by him, then he suppose he'll have to do it. He pulled one of his blades off of his belt… the Tsubaki Mk. III would do. He twirled it around in his hand, steeled himself, and stepped outside…
Except when he went outside, the punk was nowhere to be seen. All that talk, and the guy just left.
"Hey, asshole! Where'd you go!? You're gonna challenge me and just leave? What the hell?"
At least he thought he left. No, as it turns out, he was apparently hanging out in a creepy hole in space time just suspended in the air which almost immediately when he came out. Not like that's a big deal, right?
Well, the punk, when he fell onto the blister-inducing Santa Destroy asphalt like a ragdoll, immediately scampered away, screaming all the while. Clearly it was a big deal to him, and Travis was inclined to agree.
"Shit… that's it, time to bolster my defenses." He muttered, and that was all of what the rest of Santa Destroy heard of Travis Touchdown for the night.
Travis slept with one eye open, as it were. His Scottish Fold Jeane had taken to standing guard against whatever thing her master was paranoid of. Travis could handle lots of things. Cool, controlled drifters, psychotic girls with psychotic weapons, armies of trained hitmen, some of the biggest, most out there freaks the world has ever known.
So why did he feel this sense of dread going down his spine?
He sat there in his bed, waiting for Henry to come over. 1:00 AM, his Strawberry alarm clock said.
His eyes fell heavy, but he was still paying attention.
He felt his weariness overtake him. His body leaned forward. Couldn't hurt to shut his eyes. Maybe the kidnapper's power wasn't making holes in the fabric of reality, maybe it was some kind of selective invisibility. Yeah… no need to get all worked up. It's a flimsy excuse, but it worked enough for him…
Snores filled the motel room. The man who owned it had fallen to a deep sleep. The one who had stepped over the boundary of privacy had entered. She cast her eyes at the man sleeping in the bedroom, who had a grey cat on his chest. He didn't look like much, especially when compared to the people the woman had battled in the past, but she knew that this one would be the key to the incident that will soon overtook them both.
The woman was wearing a purple Chinese-style tabard with various symbols over a pale pink Western-style dress with black hands with white designs on the sleeves, and her blonde hair topped by a mob cap with a pink ribbon. Her golden eyes scanned the bedroom. She opened up a gap, not unlike the one the man saw earlier that evening during his short-lived confrontation with the punk. The cat rolled idly off of him and onto the bed, not even bothering to acknowledge her master's disappearance.
Travis Touchdown woke up to find himself in Destroy Stadium, of all places. He certainly didn't have a sleepwalking problem, but there couldn't be any other-
The hole. Travis realized. He would've ignored it otherwise as some kind of sleep-deprived, but from what he could see of the sky, he imagined it was almost dawn anyway. Besides, the clutter he used as a make-shift barricade would've been difficult to get through.
"Shit, this guy is supernatural, even for my standards." Travis said. He fumbled around slightly, and sure enough, he was still fully armed with his beam katanas, strangely enough. Therefore, he placed his hand on one of them.
"You'd do well to be careful, Travis Touchdown." A female voice cut through the silence, seemingly right behind Travis. He whirled around, with his now blue-bladed Blood Berry beam katana in hand. Only to find that the woman was not there. "Behind you."
Travis whirled around, and fell down to the ground in surprise. A woman was standing there, who seemed to have finished opening her pink parasol.
"Good morning, Travis." She said. "I see you are on guard."
Travis scampered back up. "Who the hell are you?"
The woman had taken to sitting on one of those weird gaps. "My name is Yukari Yakumo, and I wish to test your skills."
Travis scowled. "Well no offense, Yukari, but I just woke up, and I usually like to eat breakfast before I bisect people. I'll be using whatever cash you have on you to pay for my meal at Gloomy Cafe!"
"That's fine, because you won't be decapitating me today." She waved her hand slightly, and a gap had opened up, and a beam had shot out of it firing directly at Travis. "I only wish to gauge your abilities in as controlled an environment as possible."
The beam knocked Travis into another gap, which then dropped him out of the sky and onto the pitching mound.
"Alright then, bring it on!"
Whoa there, Charlie! You know the general controls of the No More Heroes series? You know how Touhou works too, right? Well, basically, I tried to combine both series' gameplay in something like this. Don't worry, I won't interrupt the story for too long!
Travis heard a bizarre voice in his head as he sized up Yukari, who had been staring him down.
"Shit, a tutorial?" he muttered. "In a goddamn fanfiction? Why'd you think this is a good idea?"
No particular reason. I just wanted to clear it up so that someone who stumbles across this story who hasn't played one half of this shitty crossover could enjoy this story fully!
"That makes sense, but what if they haven't played either game?" Yukari asked.
Then I doubt they'd even be reading this far! My writing's dull as hell. Anyway, you two seem to be getting more and more familiar with each other, so I might as well leave you two to fighting for now. Travis! Your Blood Berry's jacked and throbbing, so make sure to take full advantage of it. You don't need a Wii Remote or PS Move controller! Just do what you do best, and our reader friends can party along! The "Heroes Paradise" port isn't all that great anyway!
He grunted for a second as he considered these words, before ultimately shouting "I will!"
Travis darted forward and swung high at Yukari's shoulder, where she casually deflected it with a slap of her parasol. Twice she repeated this process until he finally managed to stun her with a few quick hitting strikes to her lower body, and then managed to Dragon Suplex her into the Stadium's AstroTurf, where he then stabbed her with the pointed receiver of the katana. She made to stab him with the point of her umbrella, which he dodged, and then she whirled the fucking thing around, which managed to send Travis stumbling back as she used one of the gaps to teleport back.
Barrier "Curse of Dreams and Reality"
Looks like Yukari's gonna use some kinda special! These are Spell Cards, which enable humans to fight on equal footing with Youkai! No need to worry, Travis, you can use them too! Be wary though, you can only use 'em with a full Magic Gauge!
Sweet! Travis thought to himself, as he began dodging the green and blue leaves and petals of explosive energy. Now this is a proper challenge!
As he dodged, he grew closer to Yukari, he homed in on an open spot, and replaced his blue Blood Berry with the green-bladed and white-handled Tsubaki Mk. III, ready to begin swinging much faster than before. He opened up by rolling in front of Yukari, and took a rapid series of swings and slashes.
"You're quite skilled, Travis." Yukari complimented as she dropped him into a gap that in turn dropped him all the way on the other side of the stadium, sending a beam of energy in after him, then firing off fans of energy bullets at him when he emerged.
"Thank you!" Travis shouted back as he dodged the beam. "You're not half bad yourself, you know! In fact, thanks to you, I can finally do this!"
"Do it!" Yukari smiled as she brought her parasol down in front of her.
Travis gained a steely glint in his eye as his weapon's battery gained a surge of energy, and smirked as he felt time rocket forward.
N.M.H. "It's Kill or Be Killed!"
Travis's body surged with energy as he bolted towards Yukari with excitement in his heart. Yukari, feeling a similar sense of exhilaration, steadied her grip and opened up a gap. Travis thought she was going to use another Spell Card, but instead, she took the guarded against the blow, and fell into the gap with Travis in tow.
Travis was in utter ecstasy right now. He could feel the roaring of his spirit as he pursued battle with Yukari Yakumo, putting everything he had into this struggle. He shouted and dashed forward into her, ready to land the killing blow! …only for Yukari to break the clash and have him slam into a tree. The collision didn't kill Travis. He DEFINITELY heard something crack, but overall, he was in less pain than he expected. He'll likely feel it tomorrow, but hey, that didn't matter to him right now. Yukari just ditched him! What a bitch!
But this tree, however, was definitely not part of Santa Destroy's local flora. For one thing, it seemed to be still alive without a sense of stubbornness about it. On top of that, it was still relatively young, and it didn't topple over when he crashed into it.
He felt something enter his pocket. A note. He opened it up, and read all five words of it.
"Welcome, Travis Touchdown, to Gensokyo."
He looked up, and saw a nearby shrine. Time to get some sense of direction. And hopefully figure out what the hell is going on.
And thus ends the first chapter of Touhou: Beam Katana Chronicles! I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading. Also, if you're curious, yes, I am borrowing moves from Yukari's appearance in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (though it's hard to translate as I'm not very good at fighting games), and I am in fact theming Travis's Spell Cards after tracks from No More Heroes and Desperate Struggle (as well as his special moves from both games, but we're not there yet). If Travis Strikes Again comes out at the end of this year like it's supposed to, then there'll also be cards themed after tracks from there. This story will indeed have an emphasis on fight scenes.
Hopefully I'll be able to finish the next chapter soon!