Before Nova Touhou Episode Two: Lordess of the Nomadic Desert War
by Thedude3445
The world had fallen to ruin.
Gensokyo was over.
Not long after the wedding of Marisa Kirisame and Alice Margatroid, not long at all unless you are a being who views time at an extremely slow rate compared to the normal human or youkai, the world erupted.
Nobody knew when.
Nobody knew how.
And now the rivers had dried up. The grass had withered. All of your favorite pairings had been declared non-canon.
Both Marisa and Alice along with all of their children were killed, and Nitori took her own life shortly afterwards.
The status quo had shifted.
As had the sands that were now omnipresent in this new non-society.
But one little girl rode her motorcycle through the wasteland, unfazed by all of this.
Because this one little girl- this literally little girl who was exceedingly short even for a magical fairy- had a mission.
Too bad she forgot what it was.
Dressed up in motorbiking gear and wearing oversized goggles over her chestnut face, her drill hair flowing in the impossibly-dry wind, Luna Child came to the realization that she was probably going to die out here.
Out here, in the endless expanse of sand and dust and decay and sass. Except the last part wasn't really the fault of the terrain, but rather Luna Child's rather talkative bike Jupiter.
"Lovely weather we're having, eh?" Jupiter quipped. "Sandstorms up ahead. Gotta get my bathing suit on!"
Its comments were usually like this.
Luna Child never responded to Jupiter, not now nor ever. Partly this was because she was very afraid she was having severe hallucinations and replying to a hallucination would be confirmation that she was no longer mentally well. But it was also because Jupiter said complete nonsense that sounded like a sitcom joke but to an audience that didn't exist.
Nothing existed out here, really.
With no more Gensokyo, there was nothing. No-one. Nowhere.
So the girl with the mission she couldn't remember rode across the desert in search of a destination she could not figure out.
And she did so for a very long time.
Kind of boring, she had to admit.
She really wanted some plot to happen, and fast.
Luckily, she was right in time to run into a small caravan of a few carts, wheeling their way from one transient location to another. Traders of some sort. And the goods they carried were sure to be a target for miscreants and bandits across the land.
Luna Child decided in that moment she would not be a bandit. Merely a traveller.
But in case the situation changed, she would not bar herself from taking part in thievery if the opportunity arose.
Life out here in the ruins of Gensokyo required taking advantage of the opportunities presented to oneself.
"I sense a caravan," Jupiter said, just a few paragraphs too late to be useful information.
There were two figures at the front of the caravan. One of them, the caravan's driver, Luna Child instantly recognized as Byakuren Hijiri, a famous Buddhist priest from the stories Luna's mothers used to tell her as a child. Her long, kinda-purple-but-turns-red-at-the-fringes hair was distinctive and gave her a trademark as a powerful spellcaster and one of the rare final boss characters to make it through the cataclysmic events that preceded this story.
Not the previous episode of Before Nova Touhou where Alice and Marisa went on a date to McDonald's, of course. The events succeeding that, but preceding right now.
And also preceding Luna Child's unknown mission.
You know it.
Stop pretending.
Luna Child rode her motorcycle in front of the caravan, forcing it to stop in its tracks. This would be the moment where she would hold up a pistol to the driver Byakuren silently and Byakuren would immediately throw her some food or possibly currency,
She did not have a pistol, however.
She simply nodded.
Byakuren nodded back.
Luna Child joined the caravan.
"Wow, what a REVOLTING development," Jupiter said.
She no longer saw the second figure in the caravan she saw beforehand. For now it was only Byakuren. So she tied Jupiter to the side of the first cart and hopped on.
It was the first time she had sat down in... well, at least ten seconds since she got off her bike.
"I take it you're one of the three Fairies of Light," she said. "Sorry about what happened to Star Sapphire. I heard it was very difficult to look at."
Luna Child tried not to think about those times anymore.
In fact, she had forgotten what Star Sapphire had looked like, anymore.
All except for that final image.
An endless maze, a labyrinthe painting of abstractions and mathematics.
When Star Sapphire had been converted into modern art, there was no looking at her the same way again. No-one could disagree with that.
"You look like you have a mission to accomplish, Luna Child," said Byakuren. "A mystery to solve, a secret to uncover. Well, so do I."
She looked at Byakuren with a bit of distrust. Having only just met for the first time, there was no telling what was actually going on in her mind. Maybe she wanted Jupiter for herself.
Nobody would want Jupiter if they knew what was really inside this machine.
Byakuren continued. "We're taking this caravan across the sands to find the Temple of the Idiot. We're trying to find the Lordess of the Nomadic Desert War."
Luna Child would have gasped, but she already figured as much.
The Lordess of the Nomadic Desert War...
The conqueror of most of what remained of what used to be known as Gensokyo, not long in the past, not long after the first Before Nova Touhou story.
"BOO!"
Luna Child turned around and saw a young human with green hair, two antennas, wearing a fashionable pinstripe suit but with no chest to speak of whatsoever.
Was this...
Years ago, Luna Child would never have even considered the prospect of it, but the times had changed drastically.
Reimu was now a stuffed animal on a dresser top, after all. Figuratively.
There was not much yet to be unexpected in this world.
And right now, Luna Child was seeming to encounter...
A male.
A boy.
Someone who wasn't a girl.
"Did I scare ya?" this being of the opposite gender asked. "The Lordess of the Nomadic Desert War will get ya, ya know."
"Stop bugging her," Byakuren said.
"Oh I get it. Because my name is Wriggle Nightbug and all my powers are related to controlling insects, so whenever I pester someone, it always HAS to be 'bugging', right? Pathetic."
"Once we get to the Temple of the Idiot, your ride on my caravan is over," the purple-haired magician told the green-haired fox. "I hope you realize this."
"I realize a lot of things."
Luna Child had to remark at this Wriggle Nightbug's fascinatingly charming look. She felt an attraction to him (this is a pronoun referring to the now-deceased population of males in Gensokyo; other pronouns used for this gender include he, his, and himself), her throat getting dry as she looked up and down his non-curvy, fairly slender body.
That was probably just the desert air.
As an aside, she really wished she had some dessert air, because it had been a very long time since she had eaten anything but spare parts from the back of Jupiter and an ice cream sandwich right about now would hit the spot.
The spot being her crippling hunger.
Wriggle Nightbug's peculiar male body was like a beckoning call to Luna Child. From his black-and-white tie over where his breasts would be if he were female to his not-too-wide hips all the way down to his slick black shoes... everything about him made her sweat.
Again, this was mainly due to the weather around her.
But it was Wriggle Nightbug too, probably.
Never in all her years did she think she would be attracted to a male.
She scooted closer to Wriggle, who was already much to close to her due to doing the whole scare-ya thing a few moments earlier. Wriggle did not recoil from Luna Child's first advance, though he seemed more focused on complaining to Byakuren, who from here on out will be known as Lotus because I can type it faster.
Lotus turned away from her two travelling companions and focused her efforts in steering the caravan closer towards the Temple of the Idiot, where the mysterious Lordess in question was said to be lying in wait, ready to either give up some treasure or be attacked and killed so that her treasure could be given up. Assuming she had treasure.
This was the perfect chance for Luna Child to make some moves.
To get a bit feisty.
Wriggle seemed to notice the hand gently placed on his forearm, which had surprisingly little hair for how chiseled his complexion suggested. "I beg your pardon?"
Luna Child let go of his arm, but then put her index finger in her mouth. She let it sit for a moment as Wriggle stared at her with a perplexed expression, and then she removed it. She guided her finger towards her target and placed it on Wriggle's lips.
Wriggle's expression softened. He smiled.
His antennas twitched around and his gloved hands grabbed both of Luna Child's arms.
"Are you sure about this?"
Luna Child nodded.
"Alright then. I can't promise you what you want," Wriggle said. "But I can promise I'm going to make you cry."
The two entered into a passionate embrace of lust and love, a mix of sweat and tears and the death of Gensokyo all wrapped up in one.
At that moment, Luna Child realized what her mission was-
Her life's pursuit for all these years riding around in the desert with a talking motorcycle-
It was to tap that ass.
You shouldn't hear the details here, but you just may be able to find the full scene in the premium expansion content in the Mature Readers version of Betwixt Nova Touhou.
It was the first instance of heterosexual sex in the Touhou canon in over three generations.
The caravan eventually reached the Temple of the Idiot and Lotus was able to find the Lordess of the Nomadic Desert War, none other than the radioactive bird demon Utsuho Reiuji.
But more importantly, Luna Child and Wriggle Nightbug found each other.
And Luna Child was pregnant.
With the future of Gensokyo.
TO BE CONTINUED...?!