It was a peaceful day in the realm of Gensokyo, all was calm.
Sort of.
"Eye'm gonna get you, froggie~" a childish voice called from the shrubbery.
"Kero" burped the frog.
"Eye hear you, froggie~" the childish voice called once more, almost in a sultry tone.
"Kero" burped the frog.
"..."
"Kero"
"GOT YA! FREEEEEEZE!"
"..."
"Kero"
"For the love of Youkai Jesus, why can't I freeze anything?" Cirno whined, upset with her current dilemma. For the past few sunrises, the infamous ice fairy has had a bit of trouble freezing frogs as she usually does.
"Cirno, I know this is worrying you, but do you have to be so loud?" Daiyousei questioned. "That's Mystia's thing." Daiyousei was well aware of Cirno's problem, but entirely displeased with the conveyance. Being a good friend to a complete idiot can get tough sometimes…
"Yes, Dai, I have to be loud! Someone who knows how to make me freeze stuff again might hear me and help out!" Cirno exclaimed, even louder than before. "Not that I can't do it myself, eventually..." she finished rather weakly.
Daiyousei wasn't one to expend her patience very quickly, but she had been dealing with Cirno's antics for at least a week now. "Well, I hope that you get your freezing back, but Wriggle said she needed my help earlier. I think it had something to do with setting up an orphanage for beetles in the village or something..." she said with the slightest hint of reluctance, "So I'm going to go and help her with that, okay?"
"Fiiiiiiiine, but promise to come back after, I swear I'll have my freezing back by then!" Cirno stated with no small amount of unfounded confidence. "Alright, I guess." Dai said, entirely unconvinced, but attempting to be nice.
"Thanks Dai! I swear I'm gonna amaze you!" she replied. Daiyousei nodded and took flight away from the lake and towards the human village, fully expecting to be kicked out by Keine for the sheer ridiculousness of the daunting task she was about to take part in, convincing anyone that bugs were of any importance to them.
"Wait, what's a Jesus?"
Cirno was very hard at work, devising an ingenious plan to get her freezing powers back. Her mind being pushed to the limits of it's tiny cage in her little ice fairy head.
Which meant she was drawing herself freezing things in the sand on the lake shore with a stick.
It sorta looked cool.
"Hmmmmm, just maybe..." she contemplated, a semblance of a plan formulating in her head. Something to do with stealing candy from somebody, surely.
"Hey, Fairy! I overheard you saying you want power, right?" An unknown person bellowed from seemingly nowhere.
"Huh? Uh, yeah! Give me my freezing back, thief! Show yourself or I'll blast you to bits!" Cirno yelled at the air in front of her.
"Ahahah! You're funny! A powerless fairy like you shouldn't be slinging around threats like that!" The voice mocked from the safety of its hiding place.
"Hey! Don't treat me like that! I'm Cirno, the strongest fairy around, so show yourself and we'll see who's powerless!" Cirno taunted, ready for a fight with someone she couldn't even see. Not the brightest of people.
"Enough games I suppose, I was looking for a good fight. I don't know if you'll provide it though." The voice said, this time coming from directly behind her.
"Ack! Hey, don't sneak up on people like that!" Cirno yelled obnoxiously in the face of the person behind her, continuing the trend of being unnecessarily loud and annoying.
Cirno turned around fully and took a step back, the one standing before her was just slightly taller than Cirno herself, perhaps because she wore actual shoes. Her hair was golden, almost radiating glamorously in the afternoon sun. She held an oddly colored torch in her hand, which actually radiated glamorously, because it was on fire. Her fairy wings refracted the sun in an equally glamorous and blatantly showy way. She wore what was possibly the oddest combination on colors Cirno had ever seen, with a tri-colored dress with stripes and stars (which somewhat reminded her of that "lunar loonie" in the bamboo forest) in red, white, and blue. Her thigh-highs were the same odd color. To top it all off, she wore a gaudy purple hat twisted in odd ways with green blobs of fabric on the ends.
In other words, she was a red white and blue weirdo, even to Cirno.
"I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not." The newcomer stated in a matter-of-fact manner. "Now, you said you'd blast me to bits?"
"Uh, yeah, but you showed yourself so I won't now. HA!" Cirno made her epic comeback, which fell short a few chromosomes.
"So you don't care that I called you weak? I suppose you really don't want a bit of the power I hold, since you're too afraid to fight for it." The newcomer made her epic comeback, which made no effort to hide her opinion of the dimwit ice fairy.
"Hey! Nobody calls Cirno weak, because I'm not weak! You're the weakling, weakling!" She rambled on, making little grammatical sense, and digging an even deeper metaphorical hole. "I'll show you I'm not weak, watch!"
Cirno made the first move, blasting a flurry of kunai danmaku at her oddly garbed opponent. The newcomer dodged with ease, shooting back a few fireballs at the resident ice fae. Cirno made a clumsy dodging attempt, unprepared to be fired upon.
"Uh, hey! You weren't supposed to dodge it!" Cirno yelled at her now distant foe, completely missing the point of what a fight was.
"I suppose I wasn't supposed to suppose that I was supposed to dodge it?" The tri-colored girl called back. It confused the hell out of Cirno, who disregarded the entire statement completely, lest it implode her mind. She simply fired another wave of kunai danmaku to start the fight back up.
The opposing girl wove swiftly through the oncoming wave with grace, and responded with a light fireball volley. She kicked up the speed a bit.
Cirno, although an idiot, still had danmaku experience. She had little difficulty cutting through the sparse fireballs, again firing a wave of kunai. Which were dodged by the opponent with the same maneuver.
"You gonna do something different now?" Cirno's opponent questioned, sounding obviously bored. "I'm kinda new here, but I'm sure there are waaaay better things for me to be doing right now.
"Grrrr, FINE! I'll show you who you're messing with!"
Ice Sign: "Icicle Fall"
Cirno outstretched her arms and shot a triumphant look at her opposition, ready to show them the power of the Ice Fairy of the Lake as she declared her first spell card.
"..."
"That's it?"
"N-No! Just, gimme a second..."
"..."
"...it's been a second."
"SHUT UP! I know! Just wait for it..."
Nothing happened. Her "Icicle Fall" was devoid of any icicles at all.
"Oh come on, I can't even use spellcards?!" Cirno was bummed, unable to even attack her opponent.
"Ahahahaaa! You really are just a weak fairy aren't you? Ahahaha!" The silly hat girl guffawed shamelessly at Cirno's plight. The ice fairy was crestfallen, her head hanging low.
"I'm not..." she sniffled, eyes beginning to water. "I'm not weak..."
"You can't even cast a single spell, that's gotta be the lowest of the low! Ahaha~"
"Uhuh, I could do it earlier." she sniffled again, her eyes getting wetter with sadness. Why couldn't she use her spellcards? She just wanted to make this jerk shut up and know that she was a strong fairy. No, to know that she was the strongest fairy. She wanted to beat the new person and tell everyone about how cool she was for taking on someone that nobody knew yet. She wanted to do what Reimu and Marisa could do, beat up everyone in her way and always win because she was stronger than them. Because she was the good guy, and the good guys always win, right?
"Haha, yeah, I sure bet! You ought to prove it then, weakling! Ahahaha~" The opponent still taunting relentlessly, grating on Cirno's usually boundless self esteem.
A figure flew by overhead, and a piece of blue fabric twisted and twirled in the wind, spiraling down directly on Cirno's head. Feeling something, she reached up and grabbed hold of it, bringing it down in front of her. She wiped the tears from her face so she could see it more clearly.
"Huh," she said between sniffles, "that's where my bow went." She tied it to her hair without a second thought.
Huh!?
She felt something welling up inside of her, deep in her little fairy soul. It felt cold, but reassuring. It continued growing, filling her essence and occupying her entirety. She knew this feeling, it felt like strength, it felt like pure, raw, unbridled power. With a glimmer of hope, she wiggled her fingers in the air before her, it shimmered coolly in the setting sun.
It shimmered like ice.
Realization struck, and she acted quickly while her opponent was still distracted.
Ice Sign: "Icicle Fall"
In a split second, Cirno was surrounded by hundreds, nay, thousands of razor sharp icicles. In just another second, so was her opponent.
"Ahahah... Oh, shit."
The tri-clad girl panicked.
"Ah, wait! Wait! Don't shoot!"
The icicles stopped.
"Hmmm," Cirno contemplated, "on one condition."
"Uh, sure! Anything!" The tri-clad pleaded, absolutely not planning to escape and fireball the ice fairy when her back was turned.
"What's your name?" Cirno asked.
"Uhh, that's it?"
"Yeah, you never told me your name. I wanna know."
"It's Clownpiece. There, I told you my name, that means you won't blast me to bits, right?"
"..."
"Right?"
...
...
*pichuun*
"So, how'd it go Dai?"
"Oh, it was awful, I knew it was a bad idea from the start. I know she likes bugs and all, but everyone else thinks they're icky."
Cirno and Daiyousei were basking in the setting sun by the Misty Lake. They enjoyed themselves after the long day they both had.
"So, you got your freezing back?"
"Yeah, just like I said I would!"
"How'd you do it?"
"Uh, dunno."
They sat in silence for a few moments.
"Anyway, did you guys set up the bug hotel thingy?"
"No, we got kicked out for 'disturbing the peace'. Everyone kept telling us to give up, and that it'd never work out. I guess they were right..."
Cirno wasn't happy with that answer.
"Dai."
"Yeah?"
"Never give up."
"..."
"...oh."
They laid in companionable silence until the sun set, and were soon joined by a very weary looking firefly youkai. She faceplanted into the sand and said nothing.
"Long day?" Cirno asked.
"Mmmhmph" came a muffled sound that vaguely sounded like confirmation.
There they stayed until the sun's light had faded.
"She's your underling, why'd you let her get socked?" Junko asked.
"I just feel like she needed to learn some humility if we're going to stay here, you know. Can't have her causing too much trouble." Hecatia answered.
"Heh, yeah. That's our job, right?"
"Right."
Everyone knows that 2hus draw power from their hats.
Happy Cirno Day everyone, R&R.