HAYO, Hex here again, with the SECOND rewritten chapter of CoHD, which I actually started immediately after finishing Chapter 1… or at least, I started this bold part. The bold part that I have no idea what to call.

ANYWAY

Let's move on.

In the SDM…

Reimu sighes in annoyance, leaning against the nearest wall briefly. Already ten minutes had passed and no one had any luck in finding Flandre. She had already found Remilia and filled her in on what was going on, but she was having no luck on anyone else.

Rounding a corner, she stopped at about the tenth four-way corridor she'd found since she'd started searching for that mishievous vampire, facepalming in frustration. "Why the hell is it that whenever I'm trying to do something productive, someone ALWAYS has to make it difficult?"

As if in response, a disembodied giggle from the sneaky little sister echoed through the halls, sounding both close by and far away at the same time.

Picking a random direction, Reimu turned down the left hall, briefly pausing in front of a simple table on the side of the corridor, complete with vase and tablecloth- strangely, one of only two in the entire mansion, the other being exactly opposite from it. The shrine maiden quickly dismissed it as an unlikely hiding spot- if Flandre was indeed as good at hide and seek as she said, she would be smart enough not to hide someplace obvious like that. (Little did she know, that was exactly the fact that the little vampire was hinging on.) She continues down the hall, rounding a bend, finding a set of stairs going up. Sighing in annoyance, Reimu heads up the stairs.

Back at that table, anyone paying enough attention would notice the figure of a certain blonde hiding beneath the tablecloth that the shrine maiden had completely ignored. Quietly poking her head out, Flandre looked down the hall curiously, as though having expected Reimu to have caught on, then simply lets out one of her trademark giggles, sending one of the fairy maids into a panic, as though afraid the adorable blonde had found her and was going to… *cough*, play with her, which of course would constitute pain. Lots of it.

Moving on, on the opposite side of the mansion is Marisa, who is also having no luck. She had, however, found our missing chief maid, who apparently was not using her powers on account of "Flandre never forgiving her if she did," which in all honesty makes sense when you're talking about vampires. They're proud, y'know?... anyway.

The ordinary magician was presently walking down one of the many halls in the mansion, tosses her hakkero up and down for no other reason than because she could. And also because she needed something to distract her while she was "searching" (read: not actually searching) for Flandre.

Of course, that wasn't all she was doing. She was also pondering on the fact that it had been a full ten minutes and Seronin STILL hadn't shown himself. Was he waiting for something? Was he doing something else while they were preoccupied? Or was it neither? She had no idea, and she might never know.

At least for now.

After rounding 5 bends, encountering 3 4-ways, and running into a dead-end, Marisa sighes in annoyance. "Just where the hell is this little devil hiding? I guess she wasn't kidding when she said she had never been beaten at hide and seek, ze."

Just then, a familiar, monotone voice from just behind Marisa was heard. "You have no idea."

Startled, said magician immediately spins around to face Patchouli Knowledge, the mansion's resident magician, and also librarian.

"The girl may not be the smartest in terms of overall intelligence, but she sure as hell is smart when it comes to where she hides. Always somewhere someone wouldn't think to look, either because it'd be too obvious of a hiding spot, or because just because it'd be an extremely unlikely one, for instance hiding in the wall. She's done that before. The only reason we found her was because she got stuck and Sakuya had to get her out. Of course, finding her is about a thousand times harder when you can't go off of sound because she's spreading her voice across the entire mansion." The purple-haired magician paused to catch her breath, only to go into a brief coughing fit. Clearing her throat, she then continued. "So I don't presume you're here to play hide and seek. Come for more books?"

Marisa stared blankly at Patchy for a couple seconds, still processing all the bean sprout had just said. "Ah, yeah, well, we've got Seronin running around again and we needed to make sure Flan was alright, ze. Just our luck, we have to go on a Wild Flandre Chase. I've had no luck, and I doubt Reimu has had any either, ze. This little devil is pretty good."

Patchy simply sighes. "Well, I guess we could do with two extra pairs of eyes and ears. If that lunatic is truly back, then we're going to have to make sure he doesn't find Flandre. She may be powerful, but she is fragile,* and probably wouldn't stand a chance against him on her own."

*This is how I portray Flan, more often than not- a Glass Cannon. Powerful, but very fragile.

2 hours later…

Reimu at this point was banging her head against the nearest convenient wall. She had somehow managed to find her way all the way through the mansion (encountering Marisa twice, along with Patchy once and Remilia thrice), all the way back to the set of tables she had passed 15 paragraphs ago. Flandre's taunts in the form of giggles had ceased about half an hour ago, leading the shrine maiden to suspect that either she had fallen asleep, or she simply got bored.

Sighing in frustration, Reimu punched the wall, which of course did absolutely nothing. Leaning against said wall, the woman suddenly sensed movement underneath one of the tables. Slowly walking over, she gently lifted the tablecloth, to see a sleeping Flandre curled up underneath. "Clever little girl… hiding somewhere that would be so obvious no one would think to look there."

Gently scooping up the dozing vampire, making sure not to wake her, Reimu made her way back to the foyer, then down into the basement, heading past the library (which in this touhouverse is located in the basement), and then slipping through a large pair of solid metal doors, into Flandre's room. Setting the girl on the bed, then pulling the covers over her, the shrine maiden sighed, evidently satisfied that she had found her in time. Turning around, she walked towards the door.

"You know, I was originally thinking about joining your 'Wild Flandre Chase' as that witch put it. But you know something? It's a hell of a lot easier when you just have to stay in one spot and someone else does all the work for you."

Immediately spinning around, Reimu sees Seronin standing in the shadows right next to Flandre's bed. She hadn't even noticed he was there. Said master of curses walks over to Flandre, to which Reimu immediately summons her gohei and flings it at him, only for it to be dodged. She immediately pulls out her Fantasy Seal spellcard, prepared to unleash it on the bastard, only for said bastard to bring up an excellent point. "Are you sure you want to do that? After all, I'm close enough to her, you risk hurting her as well. Now, wouldn't that be counterproductive." As if to prove his point, he summons a ball of raw energy and points it at Flandre, who is blissfully unaware of what's going on in the room.

At this point, they were at a stalemate. One of them had a spell that could very easily do a lot of damage, very quickly, while the other had an orb of energy that could potentially kill an unsuspecting youkai in one shot. On top of that, by using her spellcard Reimu risked causing collateral damage and hurting Flandre, while if Seronin released his ball of energy said shrine maiden would instantly unleash her spellcard. This stalemate was only broken when Sakuya suddenly appeared, filled the air with knives (facing Seronin, of course), snatched Flandre, and vanished.

Almost immediately, two things happened simultaneously- 1. Seronin redirected his orb and fired it towards Reimu, and 2. Said shrine maiden immediately activated her spell card, filling the room with large, multicolored orbs very easily dwarfing Seronin's in size. The resulting combination resulted in a powerful explosion, filling the room (and the hall) with smoke, and blasting the doors off their hinges.

Touhou, Gensokyo, and associated characters and spellcards are owned by ZUN.

Seronin Yurami is owned by me.

Scenario is (mostly) owned by me.

Henix Aurorus for most evil bastard 2013. I'm making you guys wait, not a week, not a month, but, yeah, until Unwelcome and Unholy Destruction is complete. Yep.

In case you're going "what?", I've officially decided that I'll be starting and finishing Unwelcome and Unholy Destruction FIRST, then I'll finish the rest of this, then proceed with Vampiric Destiny (the story after this one), and then with subsequent chapters.

So yeah. Feel free to hate me for giving you guys such an evil cliffhanger. ^_^