Hi-yo! New writer here!
After seeing the stories my cousin has spent the past two years writing here, and the attention they've garnered, I've decided to join him here, and get into story-writing myself.
Who's my cousin, and what stories did he write, you ask?
Well, my cousin goes by the penname Lt Col Summers, and he's the writer of the Fantasy Blitzkrieg series. As far as his profile tells me, he also wrote stories for Metal Slug and Team Fortress 2. I'm not interested in either of those...
Here's what he didn't mention when he wrote Fantasy Blitzkrieg and Gensokyo Untold: the idea of the Council Of Sanctuaries and Neverland Convention were not entirely his ideas. Summers and I have had discussions on how to portray them the way he did (well technically, only mentioned in passing, with little plot significance as of now)
Anyhow, like I said before, my cousin's pseudo-career here is what made me want to take part in writing my own stories.
In this case, I'm not going the military route (I'm more of an anime guy) with this Touhou fic. Rather than creating tons of original contents, I'm going to use canon materials as the base of my stories.
In a sense, you can imagine this story I'm about to write as a sort of remake of Touhou according to how me and Summers would've envisioned.
Well, off to write some stories!
Forewords ends here.
Magic...
The element of the supernatural...
Some says its a product of a sentient mind's dreams...
Others say its just unexplained science...
In truth, these statements are both correct and incorrect.
Some form of magic stems from the dreams of a sentient spirit...
Some forms of it has its roots buried deep in implausible imaginations...
This is the story of an individual...
...Whose life was spent in a land of magic...
A land called Gensokyo...
This is her story...
A young maiden's chronicles...
...
Somewhere in the land called Gensokyo, there is a Shinto shrine.
With no resident priests or shrine maidens taking care of it in the past months or so, the shrine's courtyard has been overtaken by withered leaves, as well as the occasional birds pecking around the piles of leaves for any signs of worms or caterpillars to feed on.
Then, something made the birds flap their wings and take to the air.
It was an individual. A girl about 14 years old, has purple hair tied into a ponytail with a red ribbon, and is wearing traditional Shinto shrine maiden clothing. She slowly climbed up the shrine steps, carrying in one hand some textbooks wrapped in silk cloth, and stopped just under the Torii gate.
Young Maiden of Paradise
Hakurei Reimu
"ホームよりよい場所がない." [There are no places better than home...] The girl, Reimu told herself with a smile.
Reimu then slowly walks toward the shrine. She took care to take off her shoes before stepping onto the shrine veranda, and putting down the sack of textbooks next to the shrine's donation box. The shrine maiden then turns back toward the shrine courtyard.
"中庭をきれいに掃除する必要があり、私は私が必要な残りの部分を持つことができます." [I should sweep the courtyard clean, and then I can have the rest I needed...] Reimu told herself.
She turned back toward the shrine and walked inside. One minute later, she came out with a broom in hand, as she begins sweeping the leaves on the courtyard into one pile. That being said, the courtyard is rather large, and every inch of its surface was covered in leaves.
...
As she wasn't really in a hurry, Reimu took her time with sweeping the courtyard, and five minutes later she is done with only a quarter of the courtyard.
She then pauses the sweeping to stretch her back. "どのように疲れる." [How exhausting...] She said. "私は迅速に行うこのを取得する必要があります." [I should get this done quickly...]
As that was said, something drew the shrine maiden's attention onto the foliage surrounding the shrine. It was the ruffling of a bush.
"だれです? か?" [Who's there?] Reimu called out to the foliage.
No response came...
"私はそれを想像していますか。" [Am I imagining it?] She wondered if such was the case.
Then another ruffling came, from the exact same bush.
Getting confused by the ruffling, Reimu slowly approached the bush while holding the broom with both of her hands.
As she neared the bush, Reimu extended one hand to push the bush aside and see what's causing a ruffling.
Almost instantly, something darted out of the bush at a very high speed, knocking Reimu down by socking her right in the face.
Groaning in pain, Reimu picked herself up from the ground as she massaged the part of her face that was socked.
"Ha Ha! You guys should've seen that look on her face when I socked her!" A childish voice announced from above the roof of the shrine.
From where she stood right now, Reimu sees that several more figures darted out from the foliage surrounding the shrine.
As she looked closer, the shrine maiden found that the one who socked her in the face was a fairy. There were several other fairies surrounding the first one, and they all appear to be hoisting Kedama - small fur-covered creatures with a weird facial expression that remains constant through their whole lifetime - in their hands.
Knowing the kind of personality fairies have, Reimu elected to clear her throat before she called out to the group...
"Hey!" The shrine maiden called out angrily. "What was that all about?!"
The fairies all turned their attention toward Reimu, stared at her for a few seconds before they all burst out laughing.
"Look, everyone!" The first fairy told the others. "She tried to be intimidating to us!"
"A normal human!" Another fairy chimed in.
Reimu became angrier at how the fairies treated her words. "Just you pipsqueaks wait, I'm coming after you!"
The shrine maiden couldn't even take one step forward as the fairies immediately tossed the Kedama in their hands at her, knocking her down once again. The petite fur-balls then hops all over Reimu, keeping her pinned to the ground.
The fairies laughed loudly as they watched Reimu being helplessly pinned to the ground by the herd of Kedama.
"Now that's what I call a furry-cious moment!" The first fairy said. "Okay, that's enough fun today. Let's get going!"
With that said, the fairies flew down and collected the herd of Kedama rampaging over Reimu, and quickly left the scene with some of them still chuckling at what had just happened.
Reimu laid where she was left at, feeling angry about being humiliated and, worst of all, bullied by fairies.
The shrine maiden slowly picked herself up from the ground and dusted herself clean, before...
...She snaps the broom in half with her bare hands alone, her anger having become fiery rage.
"Those fairies...! What they just did is something even nice girls will get very angry at!"
Reimu then storms back into the shrine's main building, and just a few seconds later, she came out holding a gohei in her hand.
"I am so going to show them what happens when they mess with the Hakurei shrine maiden!"
Reimu made her way toward the Torii gate, and stopped under it before turning back at the shrine.
"Genji!" The shrine maiden called out.
An unusually large turtle slowly trotted his way toward the shrine maiden from behind the shrine.
"Heh, getting bullied by fairies before your career officially begins..." The turtle, Genji, chuckled. "Just like your mother on her first day..."
"Leave your reminiscence for later!" Reimu told Genji. "We are going after those fairies!"
Genji let out another chuckle. "Same reaction as your mother..."
With a swift move, Reimu jumped onto Genji's back, standing well balance on her feet.
Genji let out a sigh this time, as he, by some truly supernatural means, flew up into the air, his movement mimicking that of an actual turtle's swimming motion.
"Life never changes... at least for me..." The turtle told himself.
With that, Genji took off toward the direction the fairies had escaped toward, all while Reimu remains balanced standing on his back.
Well, how about that? The intro of Highly Responsive To Prayers not recreated, but redesigned based on how me and my cousin would've remade Touhou if we've bought the license from ZUN.
As Young Maiden's Chronicles was supposed to be a (fan) remake of Touhou, expect more than 75% of the materials to be slightly or heavily altered - whichever comes first - as you read on. I'll try to list everything in Young Maiden's Chronicles that are altered from the original canon, starting with the intro of HRTP.
The intro - In the original HRTP, its Reimu swearing to seek out and punish whoever wrecked her shrine while she was (implied to be) away from it when it was wrecked; Here, Reimu starts out getting bullied by fairies, and she tries to make them pay back.
Reimu herself - In the original HRTP, she's stated to be an 11 years old preteen; here, she's a 14 years old teenager who, judging by the sack of textbooks, could be a high school girl.
Finally, some of you might notice my cousin's habit of putting references to other works almost all the time in his works, and then listing them down in the Afterwords section, or just skips the listing if there aren't any references in the chapter to begin with. Well, while I'll be putting as many references as I can in my works, I'm not going to list the references, so you'll have to seek out the references yourselves.
And that, as they say, is that.
Afterwords ends here.