AN: Well, here's my first Touhou fanfic - an attempt to make a metaplot of sorts using the Touhou characters from EoSD onwards. More often that not, the plot will diverge from canon - characters showing up differently and at different times to the way they did in canon, etc.

Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1: A Maiden's First Dream:

Have you ever had a dream so good that you don't want to wake up? You bury your head under your pillow, pull the covers around yourself, curl into a warm ball and struggle to stay in that fuzzy state of half-sleep?

If so, I envy you – you have the luck not to be a denizen of Gensokyo; to have a decent night's sleep without being woken by chattering fairies and youkai inconsiderately gliding over your home; to be able to wake in the day at your leisure, look up at a no-doubt familiar ceiling, rather than the beaming face of a certain blonde witch; hear the sweet chirping birdsong outside your window, rather than a loud "Wakey-wakey, Reimu! Get up, get up, got things to do!" before she bustles off to make an impromptu breakfast as much for herself as for me. She's already gone by the time I have the wits to mutter anything halfway intelligible, so I resort to stuffing my head under a pillow, but it's already too late to avoid slipping into full wakefulness.

My name is Reimu Hakurei, sole owner, occupant and tender of the Hakurei shrine. I am by trade a shrine maiden, a fortune-teller, and occasionally, when required, a hunter of youkai. I also have the dubious honour of being the best friend of the golden-eyed woman currently making a din in my kitchen.

She is called Marisa Kirisame, and though she's the same age as me, she acts like someone a decade younger – a raging flood of excitable, enthusiastic reckless chaos, dammed only in the slightest by such things as physical limitations. In an ordinary human, that would be fine – a bit eccentric, but manageable. Unfortunately for me and the world at large, Marisa is a magician; less of the "card-tricks, rabbit-in-a-hat" variety and more along the lines of "blowing a hole through your roof if she so much as sneezes". All in all, a recipe for disaster, or at the very least a major headache if left to her own devices.

As it is, by the time I'd reached the kitchen, she had already filled a pot with water and set it on some… thing – a octagonal chunk of metal, inscribed with trigrams. On the counter beside the pot lay almost the entirety of my food stores, and Marisa was fussing over them, sorting them into piles, humming a song all the while.

"Marisa… what is this?" She turned, bright smile beaming, and after following the line of my gaze to the octagon, gave a proud flourish.

"This is the Hakkero! Best invention ever – magic goes in, stuff comes out!" she accidentally brushed a finger against it and leapt away with a yelp. "Hot stuff," she continued, occasionally sucking on her finger. "Got a feeling it'll come in handy lots – right now for boiling water, tomorrow who knows?"

That's something else I have to mention – Marisa has a very odd way of speaking – very fast, very jumbled, often missing out unessential words, and accompanying her speech with wild, frantic arm gestures. The more excited she gets, the less understandable she becomes, and whenever she has a new spell card or invention to show off she's barely able to string together lucid sentences.

"And it's safe, right? It's not going to blow up or anything?" Folding my arms, I fixed her with a patented Hakurei Glare, and she gave a nervous laugh in response.

"Well… it should work. No reason not to, but never actually tried it. Thought maybe explosion in my house wouldn't be such a great thing – huge mess, lotsa books, y'know?"

"So you thought you'd test it out here?"

"Yep! Reimu's house is a lot better than mine to test this stuff – not near forest so no risk of forest fire, not much valuable stuff to lose, and... and… I'll turn it off." Wilting under the glare, she turned to deactivate her magical item. At that moment, the water came to the boil with a piercing whistle, and the pot exploded.

"Whoo! See that, Reimu? See that? It worked!" Marisa crowed and whooped from the spot she'd landed – on top of a few sacks of potatoes. Shards of metal had embedded themselves in the walls and ceiling, and the better part of a potful of boiling water had landed at my feet. This last thing was the reason I wasn't replying – instinct caused me to fly to avoid having scalding water hit me. Instinct doesn't have brakes. So whilst Marisa babbled about the success of her Hakkero, I was having a nice view of the shrine's front yard, now with dislodged tiles rattling down the roof and smashing themselves on the ground – my head having passed through the roof whilst the rest of my body dangled out of the new hole in the ceiling. "Whoa, Reimu! What're you doing all the way up there!? Did you see it, Reimu?"

I wish I was still asleep. It's far too early in the day, and intuition tells me that any day that begins this badly can only get worse.

---

It took some coaxing, but together, we eventually managed to pull me back into the kitchen, Marisa still wearing the same large grin.

"That was a great success," she said, picking up the still faintly-glowing Hakkero as I glanced around the kitchen.

"What do you mean, 'great success'? Your Hakkero wrecked my kitchen." Marisa snorted at that.

"Ah, small things, easily fixed. The house didn't blow up, right? That means it was a success. I'll help fix up, but first breakfast – my treat. Come over to my house, Reimu, I'll rummage up something." Well, she'd just decimated what food I had, and an insistent little rumble informed me that I was in fact too hungry to turn her down.

"Sure, let's go," I replied with a sigh and an unsaid 'you will help fix this hole, Marisa.' The blonde witch grabbed her broom and raced outside, and I followed after her. As she began to take off, I gave a quick check to the donation box at the front of the shrine.

Even in normal circumstances, the Hakurei Shrine isn't in the best place to get regular visitors – the main human settlement in Gensokyo is on the other side of the notoriously dangerous Forest of Magic. Difficult to navigate through, and full of wandering youkai who would devour a human without hesitation, a normal human would have to have a tremendous amount of luck to get through. There's only a single human I know of that lives there, and no prizes for guessing who that is.

Even if one were to navigate the forest, they would then have to climb up several hundred steps on a rather unforgiving slope. It's hard to bear a grudge against them if they aren't feeling particularly charitable after all that, but a donation box full of nothing but dead leaves is still a less-than pleasant sight, especially considering my lack of food. I've thought about moving closer to a village, but in the end it's just too much effort to bother with. Marisa's already in the sky, circling the shrine by the time I've closed the lid, and so I fly up to join her.

Yes, fly – I'm not exactly a normal human either; I have two special abilities – one I was born with, and one I received when I became a shrine maiden. The ability I was born with was flight; it's as natural to me as walking. In most places, I'm sure it would be a fantastic ability, beloved and envied in equal measure. However, in Gensokyo, it's just a skill – one you have to work hard at to achieve, but achievable by most nevertheless. In some cases, my "gift" is even inferior to the flight of others – Marisa can fly faster than I can, for instance. However, unlike her, I can fly pretty much indefinitely; a marathon runner to her 100m sprinter.

Nevertheless, flying has a lot of benefits – flying over the forest of magic means we can avoid a great deal of trouble, and it will be far quicker than walking. Marisa completes her latest lap around the perimeter as I reach the same altitude, and gives me a wink.

"Come on, slow-poke! Belly's rumbling, and sooner we get home, sooner we can fill it up!" She laughed, and with a click of her heels sped off into the distance. I made no effort to match her speed, but instead took an easier, more leisurely pace, taking in the sights of Gensokyo from the air – the vast expanse of deep green that was the Forest of Magic, the great mountains jutting out over the horizon, the way the sun sparkled over Lake Elf and its islands… Wait, when was there a building on that island? I started to call out to Marisa, when my stomach made its grievances known again. Well, the building wasn't going to go anywhere soon – it could wait until after breakfast.

---

Marisa's house was a little cottage in a clearing. One would say it looked more like the house of a retired old couple retreating for a life of peace and quiet than the house of a witch living life at breakneck speed – there were a couple of patchwork repairs on the thatched roof, and the garden was rather unkempt, but it seemed perfectly fine from the outside. That all changed once you passed through the front door. From then on, it was a labyrinth of odds and ends littered haphazardly over the floor; clothes, books, and various trinkets I had no idea of.

"Ah, watch your feet – bit messy, just a bit. Food'll be ready soon." She tiptoed over, across and around the detritus on the floor. I chose to hover a bit, about a foot above the ground, and levitate over.

"No, Marisa, I'll be making breakfast. The last thing we need is for your house to catch on fire."

"No worries – tweaked Hakkero on the way – won't blow up again, promise! Sure as… as… okay, you can cook."

The patented Hakurei Glare can work wonders sometimes.

Breakfast turned out to be a couple of bowls of soup (I may have offered to cook, but that didn't mean I was going to do anything fancy) cooked in a slower but safer way than Marisa was used to. She made sure to let me know several times how she was going to starve to death before I was done, but quieted down soon enough once food had actually arrived. I let her finish her first bowl before asking the question I'd been meaning to since she woke me up.

"So, what did you mean when you said we had "things to do" today?" Marisa stopped, spoon halfway to her mouth, and smiled. The sort of small, catlike smile someone does when they know a secret you don't, and intend to milk it for all its worth.

"Maybe you didn't hear all the way from shrine, but strange things've been happening." She counted off on her fingers. "Crops being spoiled; people waking up not knowing where they are or what they've done all day; some people just disappearing and not coming back. Just bam! Gone! Big mystery; nobody can solve it. Whatcha think?"

"How long has this been going on?"

"Couple of days now. Meant to come find you earlier, but had some problems needed fixing." She pointed out the window at her garden. "Came back here, found bugs creeping-crawling all over – size of cats and dogs. Had to wipe 'em out with Stardust Reverie."

"Oh? But that would have destroyed your garden, wouldn't it?"

"Yep. Sure did. Wasn't happy, but had to be done. Strange thing is, woke up this morning to come get you, and new plants already growing. Strange stuff." She shrugged. "Ah well, just a small thing. Fast-growing plants can wait – we've got some youkai to go after first."

I gave her garden another look, first. Even considering that this was the Forest of Magic, this was pretty strange. The plants were already at knee-height, and were still growing even now, slowly moving towards the sun. At this rate they'd be bigger than me by this time tomorrow.

"What type of plant is this?"

"Eh, beats me. Not really a planty-person."

"Those are Helianthus Annuus," said a voice from behind us. "Sunflowers. I've been spreading them throughout this region." Both Marisa and I turned, to see… nothing but more trees. "Hey! I'm up here! Here!" The person who had been speaking was perched on a treetop, one hand pointed at us, the other on its hip. A pair of antenna protruded from a short mop of green hair, and in the wind, its cloak fluttered dramatically.

"Ah! Reimu, it's a youkai!" Marisa pointed back, and the figure folded its arms and chuckled.

"That's right. My name is… ah!" Before it could finish the sentence, I had produced and thrown an Ofuda at it – a rectangular piece of paper inscribed with charms. As soon as it touched it, the Ofuda detonated, and blew the youkai out of the tree. Snapping branches announced its descent before it finally thudded onto the ground. "Y-you… you can't do that! You have to let your opponent introduce themselves before you start a fight!" It quickly leapt to its feet.

"Reimu Hakurei. Marisa Kirisame. Introductions over." I pointed at myself, then Marisa, and drew another Ofuda from my sleeve.

"Urgh… fine then! I was going to go easy on you two, but not anymore!" the youkai shook a fist, and put two fingers in its mouth to whistle. A moment later, the ground shook, a thunderous buzzing din sounded and creatures began to pour out of the woods around the bug youkai.

"Eh, they don't look so bad… We can take 'em, right, Reimu?" Marisa hefted her Hakkero in one hand and a wand in the other, before a shadow fell on us. We looked up at the same time to see a beetle larger than her house land, blocking the sunlight.

"This could be a problem," I muttered, as the bug youkai grinned at us from behind its multitude of servants.

I really wish I was still asleep.

---

AN: Reviews are always greatly appreciated, since this is the first thing I've written in about a year, and my first foray into the Tohouverse. And please don't hesitate to tell me if you don't like the way I treat a character or if you think my humour sucks, etc.