Gensokyo One-Shots

by mewmaster93

A series of one-off tales in the fantasy realm of Gensokyo. A battle between bands, a trip between feuding enemies, and the other side of a Double Dealing incident are just a few of the many stories that shall be presented to you. Who knows which of your favorite Touhou characters shall take part in these tales or what type of light they shall be painted in.

2. Goddamn it, Seiga!

Story 2: Goddamn it, Seiga

"Hmmm? Oh, you have returned yet again. Did my previous tale fill you with enough intrigue to grasp your attention and bring you back for another, or did some other force call you to this place? Tee-hee, of course, it is entirely possible that I'm not speaking to the same people that I did before. News of my first tale could have traveled far and wide across the medium you call the internet, and I may be speaking to different people. If so, I am quite sorry, but I must ask that you return to the first tale and at the very least read my introduction before returning here. I do not like to waste time repeating myself, after all.

So, what is the story I have planned for you today? Well before I reveal that to you, let me mention something I happened to pluck from the outside world just recently…No, not the outside world connected to Gensokyo, but rather the outside world where myself and others are considered to be fictional. Hmmm, you've turned pale all of a sudden? Do not worry, I have no intention of crossing the border of static and electricity to enter your world…That would certainly not be beneficial for either one of us.

Anyways, as I was saying, I happened to pluck a few of those stories called 'Doujins' and transferred them to paper format for easy reading…One particular tale that humored me went by the name of 'Solar Eclipse', where that newcomer hermit and her jiangshi attempted to breech the Hakurei Border for the Crown Prince, and in the process ended up converting the shrine maiden of paradise into a jiangshi to accomplish that goal. Tee-hee, there were definitely many humorous moments in that tale, like the very implication that I would ever trust Ran with anything as important as the defense of the Hakurei Border or that the Hakurei maiden could be turned temporarily into a jiangshi.

But the story nonetheless got me thinking as I continued to prowl through the Doujins. I was very intrigued by how many different ways these writers interpreted the denizens of Gensokyo, especially with how many times I saw myself getting paired off with the Hakurei maiden. While the very idea of someone like me who has evolved beyond the need for love showing attraction towards anyone is silly, it was still an intriguing sight to behold. I feel as though I am going off-track from my original purpose though, so let us get back on the right road.

The point I wish to bring to your attention today is that I hold no disdain for those of you who wish to show us citizens of Gensokyo in differing lights. From what I've noticed, that seems to be part of the appeal towards our world. However, one does not have to just resort to grim dark 'end of the world' stories or tales of romance in order to depict us all in a new light. What those of you call 'slice of life' just as easily suffices.

And that is what the subject of my story shall be today. In keeping up with what I mentioned before, I shall tell you a simple tale about a rather unordinary day for the Hakurei shrine maiden, and the hidden side of a particular hermit I mentioned before. Now then, shall we begin?"

It all began near the end of the summer cycle. The leaves were beginning to fall from their elongated branches as their colors faded from a delicate green to a crisp dark red. The festive gods began to emerge and take advantage of the extra faith they'd be able to obtain from the shift into autumn. While many a Youkai and human enjoyed the shifting of seasons, there was one particular individual who did not. At the edge of Gensokyo, along the great border keeping the land of fantasy sealed off from the outside world lied a single run-down shrine atop a long, moss covered stone staircase.

Surrounded by trees, this Shinto shrine attracted the presence of fallen leaves rather easily as the seasons shifted from warmth to the crisp fall cold. The one person who mostly took residence inside of this shrine hated the coming of autumn with as much passion as she could muster. Her name was Reimu Hakurei, who is usually referred to by the title of "Shrine Maiden of Paradise" to the Youkai that fear her and "that strange girl" by the humans who loathe her. As a shrine maiden of an undefined age, it has always been Reimu's job to keep her shrine tidy and deal with the many monstrous Youkai in Gensokyo. Unfortunately, fate could not have chosen a worse personality to give to someone of such importance.

If asked to describe Reimu in a few words, most people would say that "lazy", "aloof" and "lacking in effort". If it were not for her presence outside the shrine, you would never even assume that someone was taking care of it. The shrine barely had any luster to it, having been captured by the decay of time without someone who would actively take care of it inhabiting it. Reimu Hakurei didn't really care to keep up her shrine, and she only made a couple adjustments every now and then simply out of what little care she has towards her duty as a shrine maiden.

So what does all this have to do with her dislike towards the falling leaves? Because for someone as sloth-ish as Reimu, the leaves imposing themselves onto the stone walkway in front of her shrine forced her to actually work. It wasn't because she wanted to clear the walkway or nothing, but rather because if she didn't she knew all too well that it would more trouble for her or company to wade through the leaves. In other words, Reimu was merely taking the lesser of two evils. Most of the time, it can only be assumed that she only pretends to sweep the walkway to portray an image of cleanliness to those rumor-loving humans down in the village.

With the first layer of leaves having fallen upon the ground, it was time for cleaning to commence. Wearing her usual red-and-white miko attire with detached sleeves and skirt included, Reimu brushes back her long and loose brown hair and groans as she picks up her small width broom and heads outside of the shrine. The clouds above were scattered and grey, doing little to help the shrine maiden's mood as he moves towards the leaves. With a scoffed expression and her eyelids shut roughly, Reimu starts at the steps of her shrine and begins sweeping back and forth quickly.

As expected, Reimu doesn't try to get every single leaf removed from the walkway, but instead goes for the lazy approach of just brushing left and right without a care to remove most of them out of the way. With this method of sweeping, it doesn't take long for the shrine maiden to reach the halfway point, but even this amount of effort left Reimu feeling annoyed as he took a moment to fold her arms atop the stick of her broom and look on with a dull expression as she moaned "I really wish these leaves would just disappear forever…"

Looking towards the sky, the shrine maiden departed into her own mind as she thought "Its been almost six months since the last incident…Come on Gensokyo, give me some random Youkai or another immortal human to deal with. It would be REALLY great if you have me someone related to the leaves, maybe I could push them into preventing them from falling around my shrine…"

Sighing at the futility of her imagination ever coming true, Reimu buries her head into her arms and says in a mutter "Forget it, I have better odds of someone actually coming to my shrine and giving a donation…"

Reimu then stopped loafing around and went back to work, albeit reluctantly, and continued sweeping for a good ten minutes until the walkway looked somewhat more presentable. The shrine maiden then swung the broom over her right shoulder like she was wielding her gohei and said in a proud enough tone of voice "Well, whatever…That's good enough for one day."

As the shrine maiden turned around and began to walk back towards the shrine, she noticed something odd at the top of her steps that made her squint her eye to get a clearer look at what it was. Draped in a strange black cloth stood a hunched figure in front of her donation box with one pale white arm putting a few gold yen pieces inside. But Reimu didn't realize the action occurring and immediately assumed that the figure was out to steal her box.

Dropping the broom without any hesitation, Reimu sprung into action with three paper seals being drawn between her right fingers as she dashes forward and exclaims "Hey! Get your hands off of that!"

As the shrine maiden rushed towards the figure, the person withdrew their hands and started to turn around. Reimu's right eyebrow rises as she looks towards the front of this cloaked figure and sees that they are completely shrouded in shadow. It wasn't that the way the cloaked was positioned was keeping the person underneath from being seen, but rather that someone had cast a spell on the cloak to keep their identity hidden. Reimu slowly began to lower her arm as she stopped a good five feet away from the cloaked figure, and the head of the person creaked up to look at the shrine maiden.

"A fair donation, for such a fair maiden…May fortune smile upon you, Reimu Hakurei." The person spoke in a distorted voice that Reimu didn't recognize, and as the shrine maiden paused in place with her eyes focused strictly on the cloaked figure they began to waddle around her body and left the area of the Hakurei shrine in a matter of seconds.

Reimu raises her eyebrow out of suspicion towards the figure, and thinks to herself "Was that a human or a Youkai?"

The shrine maiden decides that if she goes and checks the donation box for signs of activity, she might learn a little more about her mysterious visitor. But when Reimu steps onto her shrine and leans her head forward, her eyes sparkle with a golden sheen as she is captivated by what she saw. Dropped into her donation box were a good sum of golden yen pieces. Shifted into a state of greed that doesn't usually show up, Reimu's mouth open slightly as a light glaze of saliva drips out from the bottom of her lip.

"H-H-Ha ha ha! Oh this is great! Fortune has smiled upon me! I'M RICH!" Reimu exclaims as she drops onto her knees and digs her grubby hands into the donation box, her earlier thoughts regarding the suspicion towards the cloaked figure dropping immediately as she shifted the position of the coins around with her fingers and raised a good chunk of them close to her face so she could better look at their golden glow.

"Heheheeheh…" With the most devilish Cheshire grin on her face, Reimu buried her face in the golden yen and sniffed it, confirming their genuineness as her heart palpitates in joy. "HEHEHEHEHEHE!" Cackling like an ecstatic madman at this point, the shrine maiden only pried away from the golden yen pieces when she happened to notice something odd in the middle of it all.

Dropping the golden yen at her kneecaps, Reimu peered into her donation box and picked up a single piece of gold. It was different from the rest of the yen pieces in that there was no diamond shaped hole in the center. In fact, some strange kanji was adorned on the front that Reimu didn't recognize. After examining the gold for a few moments, the shrine maiden merely shrugged her shoulders and dropped it back in, then swiftly proceeded to swerve herself to the left and drop right on her back. She then swung her arms are her donation box and hauled it over herself, letting the golden yen pieces come down like a heavy rainstorm until she is almost completely buried in money.

With eyelids sealed in almost unnatural bliss as she waves her arms back and forth and lets the cold chill of the golden yen tingle her body with every second that it touches her skin, Reimu finds herself feeling almost like a kid again as the gold clinks with each passing moment that her limbs move outward and inward. "So this is what it feels like to be riiiich…" She states in a blissful moan.

Reimu then widens her eyelids open and says with a mischievous grin creeping up on both sides of her face "There's only one thing I can do now that I have all this money!"

Gathering up as much yen as she can into the pockets of her skirt, the shrine maiden makes a mad sprint across the walkway in front of her shrine, blowing aside all manner of leaves in her wake as she descends her staircase with her superhuman speed, caring little about the weight of all the yen as it rattles inside of her pockets as she makes her way through the forest and heads towards the Human Village.

As she nears her destination, Reimu slows down her sprint to a respectable speed and grinds her feet along the ground to halt herself the rest of the way. A wall of dust rises up on both sides of the shrine maiden's body as she brakes to a stop, the noise of her feet grinding against the ground alerting the wandering humans of her incoming presence in the process. As a crowd of a few humans look towards Reimu at the entrance to the village, their eyelids sink with looks of indifference on their face and they continue on with their business without a care in the world.

Reimu, on the other hand, looks smugly upon the humans as she folds her lips into a way too goofy looking grin and squeezes her eyelids until there was merely a slit open for her vision. The shrine maiden then closes her eyelids and casually strolled into the village, swinging her arms back and forth with her head held up high as the yen continues to rattle, only Reimu swings her hips back and forth slightly to make them rattle louder so the humans could clearly hear the contents of her pockets.

Some humans turned their gaze towards her in confusion, but it wasn't until the glimmer of gold struck the eyes of one of the adults that discussion traveled through the village. "How did she get any money?" "This is a nightmare, this is gonna make her even more insufferable" and "It was probably all counterfeited by a god" were some of the many sentences that traveled through the village and entered the ears of Reimu Hakurei, causing her to snicker behind her smile as she walked towards a single destination.

Near the center of the village lied a lone sake shop, a place that Reimu had always wanted to check for herself ever since the oni Suika Ibuki introduced her to the drink but never once had the money to afford such a luxury. But now the shrine maiden could not only swing apart both sides of the cloth representing the door of the lone wooden building, but she could walk up to the portly bearded owner of this shop behind his tiny wooden desk and proclaim in a straightforward manner "GIVE ME ALL OF YOUR BEST SAKE!"

The man turns towards Reimu with a surprised yet indifferent look on his face as he boldly states without fear "Ha! Sorry shrine maiden, but your loud noises still won't pry even a single drop of sake from my shop! I told you before, if you want it, you have to pa-"

As he wipes down a bronze sake dish that he had spent days crafting, the portly man fails to notice as Reimu digs into her pockets and slams a good dozen or two pieces of golden yen on the desk, at which point the man turns to face all the money and nearly has a heart attack not simply because of the amount of yen but because of the person who was giving it to him. And that was not the beginning of it all, as Reimu dumped more and more yen onto his desk, causing the old man to drop his durable sake dish against the ground and put a small unfixable dent into it while he clasps the wall behind him with both hands almost in fear of what he was seeing.

Stuttering in an attempt to come up with a single word to describe what he was seeing, the portly man watches as Reimu leans forward with her elbows atop the golden yen pile as she grins and says to the man in a blissful tone of voice "I'll take it all to go now~"

After a good ten minutes of the sake owner calming down and Reimu fusing a bunch of seals close together with some magic to create a large cup-like net, the shrine maiden walks out of the store with a smile on her face and about thirty or so stone pots of finely brewed sake piled up on top of the net of seals she made. Grinning like a madman, Reimu began to walk out of the village with sake following close behind and her eyelids shut as she merrily swung her arms through the air and earning glares of ire from all the villagers as she walked.

But due to a lack of attention, Reimu runs into someone from behind nose first and is pushed back a good couple of feet into her pile of sake as she slowly opens her eyelids and says "Hey! What's the big ide-"

Upon taking a good look at the person she ran into, the shrine maiden's expression turns towards one of annoyance as she recognizes the figure and says "Ugh…Its you."

The person turns themselves around gently to glance down at the shrine maiden. It was a regal gal of above-average stature but with a slim figure that looked almost masculine. She had very light, almost platinum blonde hair that was styled to look like either ears or horns as well as grey eyes that looked to be holding back a fountain of wisdom within. In her thin right fingers was a wooden rod called a shake that she laid against the bottom of her chin as she looked down at Reimu. The girl wore purple headgear that was similar in appearance to headphones from the outside world, and her clothes consist of a purple dress under a white vest with elaborate trimming.

The girl said with a calm smile on her face that perfectly contrasted Reimu's boisterous nature "Ah, the Hakurei shrine maiden, what a pleasure it is to see you here today."

Reimu scowls and murmurs under her breath "The feeling isn't mutual." The girl raises her right eyebrow as though she heard the whisper, but the shrine maiden proceeds to smirk and glance up at the gal as she puffs her chest out and declares proudly "Hahaha, you aren't just looking at any ordinary shrine maiden now! For now my riches extend to the high heavens, dwarfing even the fortunes of princes and gods!"

Reaching into her pockets, the shrine maiden pulls out a large sum of money with both hands and holds it all out in front of her body, a few pieces of yen dropping onto the ground before it is quickly pillaged by the younger humans as they kneel down beside the unsuspecting Reimu. The girl standing before the shrine maiden looks down in shock at the amount of money being shown before her, and with a smile still on her face she says "Ah yes, you do seem to have acquired a large amount of wealth."

"Yes I do! That makes me better than you Miko!" Reimu says, utilizing an incredibly crazy form of logic that the one called Toyosatomimi no Miko merely brushes aside without so much as a word. Looking down at the pile of coins in the shrine maiden's hand, Miko happens to notice the golden "yen" piece with the mysterious Kanji on it. Taking her left hand down, Miko quickly plucks the mysterious coin out while Reimu closes her eyelids.

Miko examines the coin over the span of five seconds, and her glare suddenly becomes more serious until she's snapped out of her train of thought by Reimu exclaiming "Hey! That's my golden yen piece!"

Miko glances over at the furious eyed Reimu and slowly places the mysterious yen piece back in with the rest of the pile, saying with a smile on her face as she taps her shaku against her chin "For now you are welcome to enjoy your fortune. But in time greed only brings misfortune…I hope you realize that before its too late."

Miko then walks past the annoyed and puzzled Reimu, her eyelids slanting in concern as she thinks about the yen piece she saw. However, the shrine maiden stuffs her golden yen pieces away and states in a disgusted tone of voice "Ugh, I hate that so-called 'prince'."

Trying to let Miko's presence not ruin her amazing day, the shrine maiden turns around and starts to walk out of village with the sake following close behind in the net. After traveling through the forest and ascending the staircase to her shrine, Reimu's eyes widen in utter shock. All the leaves were gone from sight, bringing a super wide smile on her face as she merrily starts to walk across the cleaned stone walkway, thinking deep down that she would never have to clean the leaves in front of her shrine again.

Reimu walks towards the porch of her shrine and sits down on it, letting the many sake bottles fall down to the right of her body by disabling her seals. The shrine maiden then pulls a loose board off to the left of where she sits and reaches in with her right hand as she bends over to the left, pulling out a red sake dish to help herself drink the sake that she bought. One bottle is popped open with a single flick of Reimu's right thumb, and she happily pours the sake into the dish. The beautiful clear liquid flows into the dish and splash back and forth, glistening within her pupils as drool slips between her lips.

Once the sake has been poured, Reimu glances over her right shoulder at her donation box and looks at all the money that still lies within, thinking to herself "Life is great…" Something that she hadn't really let come to mind for quite a long time.

The shrine maiden lifts the dish up and takes a sip from her sake while tilting her head towards the sky, enjoying the greatest warmth flowing down into her gullet as the sky seems to be parting to reveal the sun. Everything was going right for Reimu at that moment, and she loved it.

After a good hour or so of indulging in sake, the shrine maiden falls unconscious on her back, her right arm slunk beside her head as she moans cheerfully and a drunken blush appears on her face. Night starts to fall along Gensokyo, and as it does two figures walk up to the Hakurei shrine with a snicker on their faces. They both look down at Reimu, and with their faces distorted in laughter one says to the other "Alright, lets go on to Phase 2!"

The two figures then rustle through Reimu's shrine in the dead of night while the shrine maiden is unconscious, and once they are done they leave without making any sound to wake her up. Night passes rather quickly for the sleeping "beauty", and one more figure shows up to do stuff at the shrine without her knowledge. The morning then comes, and with a blissful night rest Reimu quickly wakes up and stretches her arms into the air and lets out an almost purr-like yawn as she regains full consciousness.

Reimu, merry from the sake and money she had obtained last night, blissfully closed her eyelids and kicks her feet in the air, but hears something rustling as she moves and quickly opens her eyelids to see what created that noise. The shrine maiden then freaks out and her heart skips a beat as she sees before her a ludicrously sized sea of fallen leaves that extends to the arch at the top of the staircase to her shrine. The sea of leaves was as tall as half of her body, and its presence proved to be a terrible start to Reimu's entire day.

"WHAT THE HELL!" The shrine maiden exclaims after staring at the leaves in disbelief for a good ten seconds before she rises to her feet and stamps down on her porch as hard as she can with her right foot. She couldn't believe how many leaves there were, especially since she knew she didn't leave THIS many out yesterday. Something was definitely up, but the leaves were just a prelude to Reimu's problems.

Glancing off to the right from the corner of her eye, Reimu notices that all of her sake was now gone, an amazing feat considering how many bottles there were in total. But the worst was yet to come for the shrine maiden, as with a quick turnaround Reimu noticed that her donation box (and by extension all of her golden yen pieces) was gone. All that remained on the ground was that single piece of "yen" with the Kanji on it. Reimu quickly picked this "yen" piece up and glared it at, her body twitching in absolute anger as she tightly clenched the piece in her right hand and the front of her hair shades over her eyes as she grits her teeth.

With her emotions focused only on one thing, Reimu fails to notice someone descending through the sunny sky. It was an ordinary magician with a witch's hat wrapped with a purple bow and a series of black clothes that fit the witch's ensemble she has going. While most of her blonde hair is covered by the bottom of the hat the rest extends down an inch past both of her shoulders, with the left side tied to the braid by a purple ribbon. She wears maroon colored shoes with small purple ribbons on them, and a red ribbon around her neck finishes off her clothes. As this ordinary magician glides through the air on her customary broom, she glances down with her brown eyes at the Hakurei shrine and notices the sea of leaves that has suddenly come to be.

Saying nothing on the matter, the magician notices Reimu standing with her back turned towards her and exclaims "Oy, Reimu, what's going on here?!"

The magician descends from the sky, but instead of leaping off of her broom as she gets close she flips herself so she is now sitting sideways along the length of her ride since she didn't feel like landing atop the leaves. The shrine maiden doesn't responds at first, causing the magician to exclaim in a much louder tone of voice "HEY REIMU, YOU ALIVE THERE?!"

Reimu quickly turns towards the magician and glares at her with furious eyes, her lips curled into a devilish scowl as she stamps her right foot repeatedly against the ground and causes the very shrine to quake as she exclaims to the magician "SOMEBODY STOLE MY GODDAMN DONATION BOX MARISA!"

The magician, now identifiable by the name Marisa Kirisame, barely flinches in surprise at what was said by her friend. Chuckling to herself, the magician waves her right fingers in the air as she leans her left hand against the broomstick and smiles, saying to Reimu just a moment later "Oh come on now Reimu, you probably just lost it somewhere in your shrine. Retrace your steps, what happened yesterday?"

The shrine maiden had not been entirely lost to anger, and with the straightforward words of her friend Reimu calms down for a moment and thinks back to everything that happened yesterday. Most of her memories before she fell asleep are hazy thanks to the sake, but she nonetheless recalls most everything else. "Well, first I went to sweep the leaves from my yard, and then some cloaked person visited my shrine and gave me tons of money! I used that money to buy tons of sake, I ran into that egotistical Taoist prince afterwards, and then I came back here to drink sake without a care in the world."

"Well there's your problem!" Marisa declares in a boy-ish tone of revelation as she snaps her right fingers in front of her body and says to Reimu "You must have gotten so incredibly drunk that you ended up doing something with your donation box while you were in the middle of a stupor. Just go do a quick run down of your shrine and you'll likely find it."

Reimu, before she turns around and heads into her shrine, remembers the golden "yen" piece she had grasped in her hand and holds it up so Marisa can get a good look at it, saying in a puzzled tone of voice "By the way, if someone did end up taking my donation box, why do you think they left this behind?"

Marisa merely shrugs her shoulders, keeping her balance on her broom intact for the one moment that her arms are detached from it as she says to Reimu "Don't ask me, I know nothing about gold."

"But you're a magician!" Reimu exclaims in a peeved tone of voice to her friend, only to be met with a response of "Yeah, but gold and shit is more in line with alchemy, something I don't dabble in during my spare time. Now if Patchouli was here talking to you-"

The shrine maiden shrugs her shoulder and lets out a deflated sigh, letting go of the coin as she turns around and says in a indifferent tone towards Marisa "Whatever Marisa, I get the point. I'll try and find the donation box now."

Reimu then heads into the shrine, and once she has traveled a fair distance Marisa's cheeks puff up wide as her eyes widen in a childish manner and she tries her hardest to contain her laughter. With her left hand leaning on top of her broom, Marisa reaches into the back of her skirt and quickly pulls out Reimu's donation box, which has been painted with dark-purple, light-brown and black color that blend together like gradient on all sides. Letting out a light snicker, the Ordinary Magician thinks to herself "Hahaha, can't believe Reimu is falling for this so easily."

Looking down at the shrine, Marisa continues to think with a mischievous smirk on her face "Everything is going smoothly. Thanks to my partner's help yesterday, I was able to snag Reimu's donation box while she was unconscious and paint it in the colors of that Buddhist Reimu dislikes. Now all I have to do is place it back where it belongs and wait for Reimu to come back, and once she reacts to the paint job I'll reveal everything we've done."

Marisa then takes a look down at the coin on the ground and says to herself "Though I have to wonder where this odd coin came from…Oh well, none of my concern."

The Ordinary Magician starts to lower her broom towards the porch of the shrine, but before she puts the donation box down she hears and anguished scream that nearly shakes the ground around the shrine and actually frightens Marisa to the point that she thought the place was under attack by a powerful monster before she recognizes the noise and says in a scared stuttered "R-Reimu?"

Retracting the donation box in front of her chest, the Ordinary Magician watches as out of the blue the roof of the Hakurei shrine has a large hole blown through it by a human-sized red and white yin-yang orb that was quite clearly kicked into the air judging by how fast it thrusts through the sky and disappears without a trace. Reimu emerges through the hole of the shrine with her eyes barely visibly thanks to the hellish red glow that illuminated her pupils. With a dark grey aura surrounding her body as two yin-yang orbs float beside her, the shrine maiden said in a deep raspy voice that would be more fitting on a demonic male "I will find whoever stole my donation box, and I will fuck them up."

Reimu then presses her body back and launches herself through the air like a scalding black bullet, the wind pressure from her launch nearly sweeping Marisa off of her broom as she tries to turn and watch where her friend is flying off to. With her hat now tilted to the right, the ordinary magician glances up in frightened disbelief from beyond the rim of her hat and says in a stuttering tone of voice as she presses the donation box close to her chest "H-Ho boy, this got out of control rather quickly."

"Yes, I would say that's a fair assessment." A second person says in a laid back, serene tone of voice, causing Marisa's beating heart to skip as she flips around and sees someone floating in the air above the porch of the shrine.

It was a woman of unknown age that wore the excess of her blue hair in the shape of two Chinese style loops that are secured in place by a relatively large hair stick. The lady wears a simple teal dress with a floral design and a white and blue vest with Chinese patterns alongside a flower that is secured by a belt around her waist. Though the woman had a youthful demeanor, she simultaneously had an air of wisdom around her thanks to the gentle white cloth she rides atop of along with the way she extended her legs and laid her hands on both sides of her body.

With a tender smile at the mischievous Marisa, this mysterious woman glared down with her blue eyes and said "I thought you planned on placing the donation box on the porch. So why did Reimu suddenly depart in search of said object?"

Marisa, recognizing that the woman wasn't a threat to her life, let out a sigh of relief and said to her with a nervous chuckle slipping through her lips as she rubs the back of her head with her left hand "W-Well, I guess I didn't time the donation box placement well enough…Or I severely underestimated how badly Reimu would react to the box disappearing."

"Mmm-hmm…" The mysterious woman responded in a serene murmur, proceeding to smile as she says calmly to Marisa "I do admit that we probably went too far with this prank. Go ahead and tell her the truth and we can call this whole thing off."

Marisa continues to chuckle, saying to the woman "Yeaaah, because telling her the truth is going to put her in a better mood" in a very sarcastic voice before sighing and flipping herself around, placing the donation box on her lap as she glances over her left shoulder and says "Look, I'm gonna just try and stop Reimu before she tears apart all of Gensokyo in search of her box. I'll be back later Seiga."

Marisa then blasts off towards the sky on her broom after Reimu, and once the ordinary magician has departed far enough the hermit known as Seiga Kaku creases her serene smile into a smirk of ill-intentions. Her right arm rises as she leans forward and her face distorts into a villainous expression, completed with slanted eyebrows and a crumpled nose as she places her right fist underneath her chin and quietly says "Oh, this has all been too easy for me…"

Seiga then turns herself around on her cloth and looks down at the lone "yen" piece that lies on the porch of the shrine, saying in a deep whisper to herself "Now then, time for my real plan to commence…" The hermit then raises her hands out in front of her body and closes her eyelids while beginning to chant a spell…

Meanwhile, unaware of how duped she has been, Marisa flies through the skies of Gensokyo in pursuit of her friend, thinking all the way "Darn it Reimu, I didn't think you'd react this badly to your donation box being taken. It was just going to be a simple prank, not the precursor to an incident!"

Suddenly, a violent explosion rocks the air, causing the ordinary magician to shift her view to the right as she sees a monstrous plume of dirt and bark flying into the sky with a flash of red splitting the plume in two instantly as a small figure is sent flying towards the ground at breakneck speeds. Marisa sees Reimu standing in the center of where the plume once lies, a circle of searing red ground lying in the center of the forest below her as she keeps her right palm extended through the sky and same serious glare on her face that she had before.

A young fairy with six icy wings and a blue skirt tries to flee past Reimu, but the shrine maiden quickly zips in front of the fleeing fairy and grabs her by the collar of her shirt. Staring deep into the brave eyes of this little fairy, Reimu growls demonically and says to her "Where is my donation box you little shit? I'm going to beat the answer out of you if you don't start talking."

The fairy grabs Reimu's wrist with both arms and defiantly kicks her legs in the air to beat at the shrine maiden's stomach, putting on a shit-eating grin as she opens her mouth as though ready to say something only for Reimu to release her grip on the fairy's collar and swiftly deliver a powerful bitchslap with the back of her right hand to send the fairy rocketing through the air. The fairy flies right past Marisa as the ordinary magician moves towards her friend with a worried expression on her face as she looks at the shrine maiden and exclaims to her "Reimu, you have to stop beating people up! You won't find your donation box this way!"

The shrine maiden hears the words of her friend and turns at her with her neck creaking in pain as she adjusts the rest of her body soon afterwards, her hands floating beside her body limply as she says in a distorted tone of voice "What are you talking about Marisa? This is fucking Gensokyo, we always solve our problems by beating each other up!"

Reimu then glares forward with widened eyes as she notices something similar to her donation box laying on Marisa's lap. The shrine maiden's scowl returns as she tightly clenches her fists and forces the yin-yang orbs on both sides of her body to spin rapidly through the air as they glow a pale black, exclaiming in disbelief towards her friend "SO YOU STOLE MY DONATION BOX MARISA?! AND NOT ONLY THAT, YOU DESCRATED IT WITH THE COLORS OF THAT IMPURE BUDDHIST?!"

Marisa halts her broomstick a good ten feet away from Reimu and swings her arms in an X-shaped cross in front of her body, shaking her head nervously as she exclaims rationally to her friend "No no no, you got it all wrong Reimu, I didn't steal your donation box! I-I just borrowed it f-for…"

The ordinary magician had a terribly hard time bringing herself to tell the truth to Reimu in spite of how crucial it was that she do. It was the frightening look on the shrine maiden's face that made this matter so difficult for Marisa, and it didn't help that Reimu looked ready to attack at a moment's notice.

"Oh, you 'borrowed' my donation box? Yeah right, you think I'm going to just up and accept that reasoning you use on Patchouli all the time?! I know what's really going on here…You are betraying me for that goddamn Buddhist! It only makes sense that someone who desires immortality would try and earn the favor of an eternally youthful magician! You planned on giving her my donation box and the gold that lies within it as an offering! You backstabbing little rat!" Reimu's rant at Marisa, devoid of all reasoning, was more than enough to convince the ordinary magician that she didn't have to look at her friend hesitantly.

Keeping herself supported with clasped legs on both sides of the broomstick, Marisa quickly reaches into her dress and pulls out her mini-hakkero, aiming it at Reimu as she smirks and says "Alright Reimu, if that's what you wish to believe, then I guess I have no choice in the matter. Time to bring you back to your senses!"

Before Reimu can attack her, Marisa holds her mini-hakkero in front of her body and quickly opens the center of it, focusing magic heavily into the object to create a large and powerful beam of magical energy that spreads out in a large cone that quickly engulfs the shrine maiden. Marisa nearly blows herself off of her broomstick from the recoil of the attack, but keeps her mini-hakkero grasped tightly as her Master Spark blasts Reimu with its full power.

"Come on Reimu, wake up from this." Marisa states in her mind as she grits her teeth. The energy from her Master Spark starts to quickly fizzle out of sight, leaving a cloud of smoke in the air thanks to the burning sky as the ordinary magician pulls her mini-hakkero back and says with an optimistic look in her eyes "Hey Reimu, you back to normal in there?" Her tone was so casual it was almost as if she hadn't blasted her crazed best friend with her signature attack at near point blank range.

Reimu's figure starts to float into view in the smoke cloud with orbs following close behind on both sides, and Marisa's fingers nervously twitch in concern until Reimu's entire body pushes through the cloud without that vile aura surrounding her body. "Reimu! You finally pulled yourself to-"

Reimu dashes beside Marisa and quickly raises her left fist into the air, making the ordinary magician take pause and let out a light "Eh?" before the shrine maiden clobbers her directly atop her head with one strongly delivered downward punch, her arm being swung in front of her chest as she has an irritated pout on her face.

Marisa quickly shelves her mini-hakkero in her skirt and places her hands atop her head to rub the spot where Reimu socked her, saying in an all-too casual tone of voice "Oy Reimu, did you really need to strike me so hard?"

The shrine maiden, not in the mood for much bullshit as evidenced by the twitching of her tightly closed eyelids and indifferent scowl. "You have one minute to explain yourself Marisa. What the hell are you doing with my donation box?!"

As Reimu swipes the donation box back from under Marisa's nose, the ordinary magician lifts her head while continuing to rub her head with her right hand and grasping the broomstick with her left. Marisa then says to her friend "Alright alright, geez…I swear, you are scarier than anything in Gensokyo when you are angry…" Mumbling that last part to herself, Marisa collects her thoughts and takes her hand off her head as she flips her body around to face Reimu.

Swinging her hands in front of her body, the ordinary magician proceeds to lengthily explain to the shrine maiden "A few days ago, I was approached by that blue hermit from the incident a few months ago. She came to my house in search of my mischievous nature, for she wanted to pull a prank on you and thought it would be fun to have some assistance from the master. The plan was simple but at the same time elaborate. First the hermit mentioned distracting you with golden yen pieces so you'd go crazy with greed and abandon the shrine for a few minutes, then she would open holes in the ground with her powers to get rid of all of the leaves, and I could jump into her pocket dimension and use a duplication spell on every single leaf.

We left your shrine before you got back, but came back later once you had drank yourself unconscious. I took your donation box and Seiga took the money back while also opening the holes back up in the ground and drawing out all the leaves that had been duplicated under your nose. I then painted the donation box to match Byakuren's color scheme since I figured it would be funny to see how you'd react to that, and you pretty much know the rest from there on out."

After Marisa finishes her explanation, she nervously smiles at Reimu, only to be met with another blow to the top of her head from the shrine maiden, who scowls and says to her friend "You dumbass! Why did you think that taking my donation box would be a good idea?!"

Marisa, while rubbing her head and letting out a quiet "Ow" looks up at Reimu with a single teardrop forming in her eye from the pain as she grins and says to her friend "I honestly didn't think you'd get so upset over this."

"HOW LONG HAVE WE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR?!" Reimu exclaims towards Marisa in utter disbelief, her right arm flailing back and forth as she holds her donation box under her left armpit.

Marisa proceeds to shrug her shoulders and nonchalantly respond to her friend with "I don't know, is PC-98 still considered canon?" which elicits an understandable "What?" from Reimu.

The ordinary magician then sighs and rubs the back of her head nervously, saying calmly to her friend "Never mind…I guess you're right, it was really dumb of me to use one of your personal belongings in a prank."

Marisa then looks up at Reimu and says with a smile on her face "Next time I'm going to just prank you the ol' fashioned way!"

Reimu slaps the front of her face with her right hand and says in a mumble that has to slip out from both sides of her palm "That's not really any better Marisa, but I accept your apology nonetheless."

The shrine maiden then thinks back to Marisa's explanation and everything that has happened so far, and something in particular caught her attention. That strange golden "yen" piece that was left on the ground where her donation box lied. Looking at the ordinary magician with a curious glance as she holds her left hand in front of her lips, Reimu asks "Hey Marisa, what was up with that odd yen piece I showed you?"

"Huh?" Marisa snaps out of her smile and tilts her head in confusion, saying in response to her friend's question "I had nothing to do with that yen piece. If anything, Seiga probably put that in with the rest of them."

Reimu then glances over Marisa's body and notices something odd in the direction of her shrine, a thin purple smog to be exact. The shrine maiden then slaps her forehead and exclaims out loud "Goddamn it, Marisa, you let that stinkin' hermit get free access to my shrine!"

The shrine maiden then sprints off through the air, blowing right past Marisa and spinning the ordinary magician around in place before she regains control and clasps her hands around the front of her broomstick, leaning forward as she rockets off and exclaims in panic "Darn it Reimu, stop recklessly jumping into things!"

Both heroines make their way for the Hakurei shrine, the smog growing thicker with each passing second until they finally arrive back at the shrine, where with a thrust of her hands Reimu uses her orbs to sweep across the walkway and blow away all leaves. The gale that is created by her motions cause the hermit Seiga to take notice. Lowering her arms away from the smog that is emerging from the golden "yen" piece on the shrine's porch, Seiga turns around and slouches against the left side of her "pure" white cloth, smiling mischievously as she watches both the shrine maiden and Marisa Kirisame land on the ground in front of her.

"Ah, welcome back to…Ahem…'your' shrine, Reimu Hakurei." Seiga says in a welcoming tone of voice, a perfect contrast to the unwelcoming glare the shrine maiden is currently giving her as she slowly starts to advance towards the hermit.

Marisa holds her broom in her left hand while pulling out her mini-hakkero in her right to back up Reimu, only for the shrine maiden to hold her left arm out to stop the ordinary magician, in a way projecting the words "I'm going to handle this myself" without opening her lips. Reimu then looks back at Seiga and says to her directly "Get the hell out of my shrine, and take your 'yen' piece with you" gesturing towards the arch behind her with a violent thrust of her right thumb of her shoulder.

Seiga straightens her posture on her cloth and looks at Reimu, grinning brightly as she stretches her arms out gloriously and says to the shrine maiden "Oh come now, I have no reason to surrender when my victory has been all but secured."

Reimu rolls her eyes upon hearing the hermit start breaking into a cliché'd villainous speech, and says to her quickly "Look, I just want to know something real quick. Do you take full credit for manipulating Marisa into helping you do whatever you are doing to my shrine?"

Seiga lays the tips of her right fingers on her chest and leans slightly to the left, closing her eyelids in serenity as she says to the shrine maiden "Why yes, I do wish to take all the credit here. For you see, it was all too easy to-"

Seiga gets barely any time to speak, as Reimu combines a bunch of seals around her tightly clenched right fist and rushes the hermit, pounding her straight in the gut with all of her superhuman strength. The hermit's body is jiggled by a shockwave radiating out from the center of her body, and after being allowed only a second to widen her eyes and hack out saliva in shock the seals explode around Reimu's fist to add further power to the shrine maiden's punch. Seiga is launched through the air, crashing into the back of the Hakurei shrine and breaking through it with ease as her body quickly descends and impacts with the ground, but the force of the punch gave her enough momentum to send her bounding back up into the air. Seiga then finally ends her flight crashing into an incredibly thick tree back first.

With the hermit's indent now left in the tree forever, the shrine maiden quickly flies through her broken shrine and uses about thirty seals to forcibly wrap Seiga's arms against her body and keep her from making a slippery escape with her powers. Reimu then grabs the hermit by the collar and tears her off of the tree, dragging her through the air behind her body until they are back in front of the shrine, at which point Reimu tosses Seiga onto the walkway. The hermit opens her eyelids and despite the damage to her body she smiles at the angered shrine maiden and says in a nonchalant tone of voice "Now that wasn't very nice, you should have let me finish."

Reimu gestures towards the growing purple smog in the sky with her right hand, exclaiming to Seiga "You're going to tell me how to fix that right now!"

Seiga's smile widens as she leans back with her legs in a criss-cross position, a single care not passing through her mind as she says to the shrine maiden "You may have caught me, but that isn't enough to force me to reveal how to stop this. But before my plan succeeds, perhaps you will allow me to reveal just why I went through all the trouble of-"

The hermit then flinches in shock as she sees a bright flash of golden light beyond Reimu's body, and in an instant the purple smog starts fading out of sight. The sunlight is allowed to seep down upon the Hakurei shrine, and as Seiga shifts her body mass in order to get a better look at what had happened she grins slyly at who she sees. Standing above the broken remains of the mysterious "yen" piece was the Crown Prince herself, Toyosatomimi no Miko.

Miko sheathes her radiant sword and turns to look at the puzzled Reimu and Marisa as she leaps off the porch and lands off the left of where Seiga currently sits. The hermit bows her head and says in an eluding tone of voice "My prince, what an honor it is to see you here."

Miko looks over at Seiga with a glance of indifference from the corner of her eye as she holds her shaku in front of her lips, only for her to brandish it at the hermit while calmly saying to her "Spare me your beggary, Seiga."

Reimu and Marisa exchange glances at each other with widened eyes of bewilderment, and then both of them look back at Miko and Seiga before the shrine maiden exclaims to the Crown Prince "What the hell are you doing here?!" in a very uncivilized tone of voice.

Miko looks over at Reimu and says to her with a smile on her face "When I ran into you yesterday and saw that mysterious 'yen' piece, I went back to my Mausoleum and decided to check up on my treasure. Sure enough, a large sum of golden yen had been stolen, and a small slit had been left in the wall the room that had an angle similar to what you'd find in a perfectly circular hole. After doing some research on the Kanji of the "yen" piece I saw, I recognized the danger you were in and came here post-haste to deal with the problem myself, since I knew you'd likely not listen to me."

Seiga, to the best of her ability, wiggles her arms in front of her body and lightly claps at Miko, saying in a genuine tone of praise "Bravo my prince, bravo indeed. Nothing gets past your perceptive eyes…Or so you probably wish to believe."

The hermit then grins and after grabbing Miko's full attention she says "The coin you destroyed? That was actually a fake. I had already used the real one to fulfill my goals long before the Hakurei maiden arrived."

Miko then responds with a sly grin of her own, stating in turn "So you think, Seiga. But I knew you would probably hide the real yen piece out of sight, so after discovering your plot I had Tojiko seek out your house and use one of my spells to seek out your unique yen piece and take it so I could deal with it later, at the same time replacing it with a fake piece that spews out purple smog so you wouldn't get suspicious."

"You only think one step ahead Miko, and that is why I am always ahead of you. You see, I detected the presence of your little follower and had Yoshika swallow the real "yen" piece. The one your follower took was just another fake I had planted." Seiga replies.

"Well played, but not a move I couldn't have predicted. For you see, when Tojiko left your house, she dropped a seal onto the ground near the entrance that would allow me to negate the effects of the 'yen' piece from within your Jiangshi once she stepped on it with her foot." Miko replies.

"Hohoho, an interesting set of items you chose to use…But I know all of your tricks Miko. You see, upon returning home after helping the magician take the donation box, I noticed the seal on Yoshika's foot and cut it off while also ripping her stomach from her body so any aftereffects on your seal wouldn't ruin my plans. After replacing the foot and stomach I stored the first stomach away into a secret hole behind my house!" Seiga replies.

"But in the process you left another of your holes slightly open. You see, my seal was double-layered, with the intent being to either neutralize the 'yen' piece or track it with some remnant magic if that were to fail. With Futo's help, I was able to infiltrate the slit you left in my treasure room and follow the tracking magic to the real 'yen' piece." Miko says.

"Ha, but what you didn't know is that a jiangshi's stomach can perfectly replicate any magical signature I so desire, and because I knew you might track it I took the piece out and tossed the perfect magic signature adapted stomach into the dimension for you to find while tossing the real piece into the pile of leaves I had the magician duplicate, keeping an energy signature on it that only I would be able to recognize." Seiga states in a proud tone of voice.

"But unfortunately, you taught me far too well Seiga, for after realizing that I was duped into following your Jiangshi stomach I went to the shrine in the middle of the night and plucked the 'yen' piece from the pile of leaves by sensing your specific energy within the pile." Miko states.

"Very perceptive…Were it not for the fact that the magician unwittingly duplicated the 'yen' piece, creating a series of fakes that all had the same energy signature as the original. And as it so happened, you took one of the fakes, leaving me with the real one." Seiga states.

"Or so you thought, for you see-" "WILL BOTH OF YOU JUST SHUT UP ALREADY?!" Reimu, having grown increasingly impatient with the back and forth plans between Miko and Seiga, expresses her great annoyance at everything with a voice that could break the sky asunder.

The two Taoists glance over at the flustered shrine maiden, and seeing a point in what she was saying Miko turns towards Seiga and says to her "Enough of the games Seiga, what was your goal here today?"

Seiga, shrugging her shoulders as well as the seals would allow her, nonchalantly says to the Crown Prince "I did it all for you my prince. My magic, sealed within a modified yen piece, was meant to curse the Hakurei shrine with misfortune. And when the Hakurei fell, your place as the savior of Gensokyo would be all but secured, and is that not a worthy prize for one of such grace and…" bowing her head, the sly hermit finishes her sentence off with a simple mutter of "forgiveness."

Miko raises her eyebrows at the hermit's attempt at humbleness, saying with her shaku covering the expression of her lips "While I am flattered by your efforts, they were all in vain. Now that we have all been revived in Gensokyo, there is no reason for myself to associate with you."

Seiga's eyes widen in disbelief, for the first time causing her to experience something other than deceptive serenity as she looks up at Miko and says to her "B-But my prince, I don't understand…What have I done wrong?"

Miko responds coldly with "That's just it. You don't understand…And never will, even if I were to instill my own lessons into your wicked heart. But I do have a punishment in mind for you nonetheless for what you have done."

The Taoist turns towards Reimu and says to her "Do you have any problems with this? Or would you like to punish her yourself?"

With those two options being delivered to her mind, the shrine maiden only takes a few moments to think about them before saying with a brush of the back of her fingers towards the Taoist prince "Meh, do whatever you want. I already punched her hard enough in the gut for what she did."

Now that Reimu had given her rather simple opinion on this whole matter, Seiga suddenly breaks into a smile as she looks up at Miko and says to her "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cut our time short today, my prince."

The hermit starts to sink backwards into the ground, catching the crown prince, Reimu and Marisa entirely off-guard as Seiga says to them "You may be disappointed in me now, but I will never stop trying to find out ways to give you the praise and glory you deserve!" Seiga's voice echoes into the air as she drops down into a hole that suddenly split open in the ground. A pale white hand quickly closes the hole up and groans, while Reimu leaps at where the hole once was to try and cut off Seiga's escape, only to unsurprisingly fail and be left lying on the ground with her right fist slamming once against it.

As Reimu shows annoyance at Seiga's escape, Miko taps her shaku against her chin in intrigue and points out "Hmm, so she had the Jiangshi ready to open an escape route…I must admit, I did not see that coming."

Reimu then lifts her body up and looks at Miko, exclaiming with her right hand thrust off to the side "Well?! Aren't you going to go after her?!"

The crown prince, still deep in thought, says to the eager shrine maiden "She may be my problem, but there is nothing I can do about her right now. Don't worry though, she'll have to try something much more complicated if she wants to get near your shrine again."

Reimu groans, twisting her head around and throwing her arms up as she exclaims "I don't even know what happened this time!"

The shrine maiden swings her legs into the air and plops onto her butt, folding her arms as she tries to wrap her mind around everything that happened over the last twenty-four hours only to come up with nothing no matter how hard she tried. Looking at the crown prince, Marisa asks kindly "So what did that hermit do anyways?"

Miko points her shaku at the porch of the Hakurei shrine and says in response to the inquiry "Seiga had crafted a single yen piece from my treasure vault to take on a different shape. With it she channeled in energies from the curse god by marking it with the kanji for 'Curse' and secretly planted it in your donation box with the help of her Jiangshi. The effects of the curse would have brought misfortune as she said it would, but the only reason for that is because of the negative karma that Reimu has surrounding her."

The shrine maiden rolls her eyes at Miko's last comments, and Marisa turns to her friend and says to her "Reimu, how could you not have noticed the kanji on that 'yen' piece?"

The shrine maiden shrugs her shoulders and defensively responds with "How was I expected to know that? I don't deal with curses or anything of the sort!"

Marisa nervously chuckles as she is quick to point out towards the forgetful Reimu "But Reimu, you tried to get that one Lunarian to blow up the moon with a curse." The comment the magician made causing Miko to visibly twitch in shock as she widens her normally docile eyes in disbelief.

Reimu responds with a blunt turn of the head and an equally blunt declaration of "OH YOU JUST WON'T LET ME LIVE THAT DOWN, WILL YOU? And what's your excuse Marisa? How could you, a magician, not recognize a curse?"

"Well I'm not the type of magician who dabbles in curses Reimu." Marisa truthfully admits to her friend, and Reimu immediately lets out an anguished sigh as she responds with a simple "This has really made me question if you are even a magician at all…"

Reimu looks towards her battered shrine and quickly collapses onto her back with her arms outspread, sighing as she looks towards Miko and asks "…So I'm guessing all that money was yours?"

Miko nods her head once, and the shrine maiden closes her eyelids and lets out a fizzled out sounding "Craaaaaap…So I'm broke once more…"

Marisa clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shakes her head, saying to her friend in a vain attempt to cheer her up "Yep, the dreaded status quo…"

Reimu flares her eyelids open and glares at Marisa, saying to her in a tone of disbelief "You know, this WAS all your fault in the first place Marisa."

The ordinary magician grins nervously after hearing her friend out, and after Reimu puts a sly smirk on her face the shrine maiden kicks herself onto her feet and flips around to look at Marisa, saying with a coy glimmer in her eyes "In fact…I should force you to repair my shrine as punishment for this whole mess!"

Marisa's eyes widen in shock at what Reimu declared, her arms swinging close to her chest as she recoils back and declares with a face-flushed expression "WHAAAAAAAAT?! Reimu, I already apologized for my part in this!"

"An apology doesn't change the fact that my shrine got damaged!" Reimu says, ignoring the fact that it was HER actions that caused damage to her shrine in the first place.

Before the two friends can continue to bicker, Miko walks between and glances over at the shrine maiden, saying to her "I am willing to overlook the things you said to me yesterday if you let me have permission to repair your shrine. Does that sound fair, Hakurei?"

The delicate tone of the Crown Prince is met with an uncivilized blurt from Reimu "And how can I trust that you'll put everything back the way its meant to be? Trust me, the last time I had someone repair my shrine they had vile intentions in doing so."

Miko smiles at the straightforward Reimu and says to her "Unlike Seiga, I have no intention of trying to establish myself in Gensokyo by getting rid of my competition. I will earn the praise of the humans and Youkai all on my own, and if that eventually means coming into conflict with you, Byakuren and the Shinto god on Youkai Mountain then that's how things will go…But for now, I would like you to consider me a neutral party and accept my help."

Reimu, barely wanting to think about Miko's unimportant words, let out a light sigh and swung her right hand around in the air, saying to the Crown Prince "Alright fine, do what you want."

Miko nods her head and smiles, turning herself around and saying to the shrine maiden as she begins to quietly depart "I shall be back tomorrow with assistance. I'm sorry once more for Seiga's antics."

The Crown Prince then leaves the area by descending down the stairs, and Reimu is left to her own devices alongside Marisa. With this minor incident apparently solved though, there appeared to be something that was still bugging the shrine maiden as evidenced by the scowl on her face. The ordinary magician asks "What's the matter now Reimu?"

Reimu grasps the bottom of her chin with her right hand and says "So the yen pieces were the property of that egotist, the donation box was stolen by you, and the leaves were hidden away by Seiga and duplicated by you…So what happened to all the sake I bought?"

Suddenly, as though to answer the shrine maiden's long lingering question, a poof of smoke causes both heroines to turn themselves around and watch as the tiny oni Suika Ibuki appears on the porch of the shrine in a resting position with one of the sake bottles Reimu bought trickling its final drop into Suika's mouth. With a blissful drunk blush on her face, the oni says to the shrine maiden "Hey Reimu, thanks for buying all that sake, it was VEEEEERY tasty."

Reimu and Marisa then gesture towards Suika with their fingers and say in unison "That's our Suika!" Which is accompanied by a very, very out of place laugh track in the atmosphere of the Hakurei shrine…

"The end…

….You may wake up now. I know the story was a little longer than the last, but it is very rude to fall asleep in front of the storyteller. Oh? You say you haven't fallen asleep? Well then, my mistake…But if that's the case, then your skills at enduring such lengthy tales have improved since the last time we met.

…Oh? You have a question to ask me this time? You are wondering just what this story had to do with the hermit's hidden side? Well you see, the answer is quite simple…This whole ordeal has been nothing more than the hermit's idea of a prank. Yes, the hermit is a bit of a jokester, even if her methods are far more dangerous than what you humans perceive as a normal prank.

Well then, with this story done and over with it is time once more for me to retreat…After all, the winter slumber soon approaches me, and that may lessen our time spent together…But I will make arrangements to have someone else tell stories if it comes down to my hibernation preventing me from doing so. Until next time, humans beyond the static veil…"

Story 2 - Finish