The trip to the lake's shore is silent and peaceful, with Yuuka holding onto the little girl like a baby. She has a hand on the back of her head the entire way, petting her over and over with a relaxed yet faint smile. She walks at a steady, slow pace that she is pretty much known for by now and is held down anyways by Takara. She's light, though, so it isn't much. She's also a bit too tall to let lie on Yuuka's bosom, so she just lets her head rest on her right shoulder. She holds the girl with both hands, letting her parasol linger just on her arm by its crook handle. The sun above burns brightly and painfully in the currently hot midday, but Yuuka endures it to hold tightly onto the girl. The hold is not too tight and powerful, just enough to keep Takara latched on but still comfortable, unintentionally showing off the great control of her strength that she has as if it were perfectly natural. About 10 or so minutes in, Yuuka can feel Takara yawning on her shoulder and also yawns instinctively. She laughs after that with just a light giggle at how simple the act is and how much the current menial task at hand contrasts with the previous events that had taken place that very day. More minutes pass, Yuuka starts humming to herself while still steadily walking and holding tightly onto Takara. At one point, she asks, "Are you comfortable?" No response is given, making it clear that she's fallen asleep simply from how calm everything is. "Maybe she's just tired." Yuuka thinks to herself and continues walking. She hasn't noticed until then that Takara had her arms wrapped around her neck the entire time, giving a light hug.
Just as all is well in the world, someone has to show up and ruin it. So, Marisa spots them both from high above with her ludicrously good eyes and thinks aloud, "Is that Yuuka...holding somebody?!" She sounds absolutely shocked that such a thing could exist. Then again, a lot of things make Marisa sound shocked, so that isn't really saying anything out of the ordinary. Regardless of how she actually feels, she decides to fly down in front of Yuuka in a rowdy manner. She crashes straight into the ground. Yuuka recoils at the sudden appearance, not helped by Marisa's screaming as soon as she gets up, "Stop right there, corpse smuggler!"
Yuuka covers up Takara's ears and shushes Marisa in a quiet but loud-enough-to-be-heard volume, "Ssshh! Shut the fuck up, you stupid witch!"
"Oh, I got you now! Didn't I, corpse smuggler?" Marisa, again, screams as loud as possible. She has gotten up and stands straight, pointing her finger at Yuuka accusingly. Sort of like Pheonix Wright.
"You're mistaking me for that Kasha." Yuuka corrects her, making a meta pun. She pauses for a moment, then gets back on track, "I said shut it! Don't wake her up; get out of here!" She points towards the invisible door.
Marisa simply huffs and frowns, but then switches to a grin, "Who's that? Your latest victim?" she begins to pester Yuuka about it again. She's still being obnoxiously loud.
"What!? No, you idiot, it's a child- I thought I told you to get out!" Yuuka starts to say in a small bout of panic and frustration. She makes her distaste of the sudden change in atmosphere clear with an angry gritting of her teeth.
"Oh? Get out to where? It's outside!" Marisa decides to be clever, which pisses Yuuka off since what she means should be abundantly clear. Nonetheless, Marisa acts foolish.
"Go home!" Yuuka nearly yells, but keeps herself quiet.
Marisa grins yet again, but wider. Just as she is about to speak, a barrage of flowers hit her in the face! She bends backwards with her hands on her hips and a mouthful of flowers. She stays silent while Yuuka walks towards her and whispers, "I swear, if you scream one more word, I will punch you so hard that the Netherworld will feel it."
Marisa backs up and says in a less excited voice after wiping the flowers from her, "Whoa, no need to be violent, flower girl!" She doesn't really want to fight, obviously. Yuuka just gives her the evil eye. Marisa clears her throat and persists, "Who's that?"
"None of your business." Yuuka scolds her rather bluntly. She tries to pass Marisa up, but is grabbed on the shoulder.
Marisa insists of her, "Come on, don't be cold. Let's see ~ze!" She begins to reach for Takara, but Yuuka slaps her hand and gives her another evil eye. Marisa, being stubborn like she is, still tries and gives Takara a small tug and pat on the head. This disturbs her sleep enough to half-wake her up. As soon as she notices, Yuuka steps on Marisa's left foot with her left. Marisa just barely holds in a scream of sheer pain and simply covers her mouth with both hands. She squeals audibly and starts to tear up, backing away when Yuuka lets go and tends to Takara.
"Yu-Yuukaaaa..." Takara starts to coo in a non-sexual manner, so Yuuka quells her upset cries with "there-there"s and such. "Who is that?" she asks, turning her attention to the whimpering Marisa.
"A bad person." Yuuka tells her, almost teasingly but also serious.
Marisa cries out in protest, "Hey, I'm not a bad person!"
"You called me a corpse smuggler." Yuuka retorts immediately, in disgust. Marisa isn't sure of how to respond to that, so she just shuts up.
Marisa starts to leave now and yells, "I'll be Bach!" before heading off on her broom with a potentially broken left foot and toes.
Yuuka groans despite the problem leaving. She stands still for another few seconds, then sighs and says, "Go back to sleep."
Takara complies, drifting off once again as Yuuka continues her stroll through the garden. That encounter ate up a bit of time, but not enough to be too much of a worry.
They carry on once again, now exiting the flower field and entering a small, open field that separates the field from the Human Village. She gives a sigh upon realizing that she'll have to go right back through there. "Do we have to go there? Can't we just take a trip to the shrine?" Yuuka starts to complain to her passenger. Takara gives no response, so Yuuka suddenly gets the idea to just fly overhead while she's asleep. She sprouts out her giant, plant-like wings and bursts off of the ground while keeping the girl close. On her way, she notices Kourindou down below and decides that it might be a good idea to stop by.
She lands down with less of a presence than before, then just walks straight in with wings retracted. Rinnosuke greets her with a quaint "Hello" but stops short of finishing the greeting when he notices Takara. "Where did you find her!?" he yells out just enough to wake her up again. Yuuka attempts to set the girl on her feet, though she mostly just limps tiredly off. Upon turning around to see who is about to assault her, Takara's eyes widen and she stands straight up with an open smile. Both of them appear extremely happy to see each other and run in to give mutual hugs. Rinnosuke picks her up in the middle of the hug and holds her tighter and tighter, completely overjoyed that she isn't dead or meeting with some other terrible fate. Yuuka just stares where she is, smiling at the two and waiting for her turn.
About a minute passes before the two let go, at which point Yuuka chuckles and asks rhetorically, "Did you miss each other?"
Rinnosuke puts the girl down and nods, "I was worried. Did anything bad happen?"
Yuuka says nothing. She simply walks back towards Takara and picks her up again. "Do you plan on keeping her?" she asks seriously now.
Rinnosuke shrugs, "If she wants to stay here. I'm just glad she isn't hurt."
Yuuka nods in agreement, "Well, she can decide on her own." Takara leans back a bit of distance away from Yuuka, and the two look at each other for a moment before Yuuka finally asks, "You want to decide now?" Takara just shakes her head. "We...will have to wait." Yuuka tells him. "Oh well. Have you anything interesting today?" she changes the topic suddenly.
Rinnosuke is caught off guard by the sudden topic change, showing so visibly with a strange hand gesture that can only be described as the physical manifestation of "OhmygodwhatthehellwasthatIamsodead". He answers her, though, "Oh, not too much. I mean, I don't have anything from the outside world or any plants you don't have yet."
"That's a shame. I'll go then." Yuuka very plainly says as she heads out the door while holding onto Takara.
Rinnosuke stops her right at the doorway with a hand on her shoulder and asks, "Wait, where are you going?"
"The lake." she answers, then adds the question "Why?". She doesn't look back at him, just stands still and leans her head in his direction.
Rinnosuke then thinks for a second and makes an offer, "Might you be interested in some fishing equipment?"
Yuuka looks back at him for real this time and thinks on it. "Sure, what've you got?" she says after a minute.
Rinnosuke shows her to a collection of nets and poles that appear slightly shoddy, but still functional. Then again, they also look really old, so it's to be expected. "This it?" Yuuka asks him in a casual manner.
"Yes. I suppose you want to know what I want for them." Rinnosuke confirms her, then immediately assumes the question. Yuuka nods to, as well, confirm the assumption. "Well, it's free. The least I could do for you helping out the little girl."
Yuuka is slightly surprised by his out-of-character generosity. Despite her surprise, she doesn't show much more than a slight widening of the eyes. "I guess I could take them." she says in a rather monotone voice the next moment.
"Alright. Should I...?" he begins to ask, hoping she'll catch on to the question. Yuuka nods again, then turns around. Rinnosuke hoists the nets up on her shoulder like a drape, attempting to tie the rods and lines up with them and succeeding to a degree. It might just be to show off his skill with tying knots. "Alright, I think that's it. Sorry I don't have any bait." he says as he finishes.
Without another word, Yuuka shifts her arms up and heads out again. She exits the store and checks to see if Takara is asleep; she is. Instead of sprouting wings again, Yuuka decides to take things a bit slower and just hovers up into the sky this time, slowly gliding in the direction of the lake. She thinks to herself while leaving, "I thought I heard him saying 'goodbye' or 'come back soon' or something like that. Oh well; that was rather awkward." A rather mundane thought.
Another few minutes of travel later and they pass over the surrounding forested areas to reach the shores of Misty Lake, which is still shrouded in fog as always. This day, however, it is a bit less damning with the visibility being enough to easily see the silhouette of the Scarlet Devil Mansion and Youkai Mountain in the distance and through the fog. It is rather calm, with few battles happening or fairies causing general mischief. Then again, they could be hiding in the mist for someone to come by whom they may harass. One would be quite sure they wouldn't bother Yuuka at this point in time, however. She knows this and lands near the shore without much worry and maybe even a little overconfidence in the intelligence of brainless immortals.
"Hey, wake up, we're here." Yuuka says to her little girl while shaking her lightly. Takara writhes around in her grip for a moment, then opens her eyes and yawns like the cutest damn thing in the universe. It even makes Yuuka approach nigh-nosebleed levels of Moe Overload.
Takara wakes up a bit more and wiggles out of grip to stand on the ground and look out at the lake. Her eyes widen a bit at the sight and her only words are a very quiet, "Wow." She turns back to Yuuka and notices the brown, shoddy equipment, then asks about it.
"Well, we have something to do. Have you ever gone fishing?" Yuuka answers with a follow-up question. Takara just shakes her head. Yuuka isn't that surprised, but still somehow disappointed. Regardless, she takes the crap off and throws it to the ground beside her. She begins to sort it out and figure out what to do while Takara just wanders off near the shore to look down into the water whimsically. Suddenly, something cold and soft hits Yuuka's back. She immediately freezes in place and turns her head slowly to see who it is. Who else but Cirno armed with snowballs!? She throws another, but Yuuka simply stabs it in midair with her pointy parasol. Then it happens again. Then again. She keeps it up until the tip is encased in snow. "...Shishkebab." Yuuka simply comments after a moment. It does, indeed, look like a snowball shishkebab. She does what one does with a shishkebab and takes a bite out of it. She scolds Cirno, "It's cold and tastes like dirt. You're a terrible cook."
Cirno screams like a baby and hits her in the face with another, then yells at her in a panic, "Get out, get out, get out, get out!" Yuuka raises an eyebrow and wipes the snow off of her face. She sort of just stares at the fairy who is now trying and failing to gun her with more snow. They all just miss. When she finally runs out, Yuuka gives a thumbs up, probably to patronize Cirno. The fairy runs away, crying in fear. Yuuka sighs and turns her attention back to unfurling the equipment. Takara is nowhere to be found when she looks, but she decides to not worry about it yet and just focuses on the task.
About 10 minutes later, everything is sorted and set out as evenly as she could get it. No sign of Takara, still. Yuuka calls her, but no answer. At this point, she's a bit worried and goes to the edge of the lake to look around the shores. Still, no answer. Despite walking for what seems like an hour, she finds nothing and just goes back the way she came with her head low, staring at the cold dirt. She eventually returns to the setup spot and grabs the old pole that has already been strung with a line, bobber, and hook. She sits down by the shore, not even bothering to bait the hook before tossing it out. She sticks the thing into the ground and just sits there, curled into an upright fetal position and looking out into the fog. She sits there, waiting, waiting, waiting for something; just staring off into nothingness and idly wandering in mind alone. For a long while she sits there with nothing happening, nothing quite well, all just grey and empty. It is less of in a bored manner and more in a lifeless one, like she had just turned into a sad statue.
After another short time, a familiar figure comes up from behind and says, "I'm back." It's Reimu, staring down at her with a rather agitated look, but one that is also vaguely confused at what she's looking at. Yuuka gives her no acknowledgement. "Hey," Reimu calls her again "what's your problem?" Yuuka stiffens up and tries to look as stoic as possible but also convey that she doesn't feel quite like fighting. Reimu is ignorant and begins to yell as she draws closer, "Hey, did you hear me!?" She grabs Yuuka's head with her right hand and stares down at her, demanding, "Talk." Just as she does this, Yuuka grabs her forearm and grips it like an aggressive vice.
She looks up at Reimu and growls in disgust, "Get your hand off of me, you damned miko." Her voice is incredibly deep and very clearly more than angry. Reimu yanks her hand away and keeps the injured part close to herself. She backs up and grits her teeth in a small amount of surprise mixed with frustration. Yuuka simply glances back at her and begins to stare with her eyes wider than usual. They glare at each other for a solid minute before either says anything. Yuuka scowls at her just as she's about to speak, "It's your fault that this has happened. You, that fraud, and the foolish scribe. Just leave me alone already." Reimu can't say anything in response except for a faint grunt and unintelligible hesitations.
Just as Yuuka is about to turn her head away and ignore her, Reimu calls out to her, "What are you talking about!?" in an almost offended tone.
"Like you don't know." Yuuka scoffs.
"I...don't."
Yuuka stands up after that and begins to walk towards her rather slowly with her head down and with a rather limp posture. She comes close, grabs Reimu's chin with two fingers and pulls it down until they're staring at each other. "If you came looking for a fight, you're about to pick it. With this sheer obliviousness to your own actions - take responsibility already; you know what you did, don't you? How couldn't you unless you're still just a child?"
Reimu reactively slugs her in the face and screams, "Shut up!" at the same time. She slowly realizes what she just did as Yuuka just turns back to her with an even more agitated look.
"I see." she says, simply backing away and turning towards the lake. "Leave. For once, I do not wish to fight you." She sits down by the lake's shore and starts to wait once more.
Meanwhile, Reimu thinks to herself, "She's pretty intimidating today. I won't take that, though...I'll just attack and see what happens!"
With that, she points at Yuuka and yells, "That's it! I challenge you, then! 2 spells, that's all!"
Yuuka stands up again, slower than last, and asks, "If you win...?"
"You tell me what your problem is! Oh, and you treat me." Reimu demands.
"And if I win..." Yuuka begins to refute, turning towards her "...you leave me alone."
"It's settled." Reimu agrees as she starts to rise from the ground. Yuuka does not rise, but instead just stands there, staring Reimu down as she begins her first attack. Reimu quickly flies upwards and immediately begins to zoom in circles around Yuuka at a relatively high speed, enough to pass by her vision every second. Yuuka doesn't pay much attention until she suddenly begins tossing rapid-fire amulets in the typical 4-pronged fan shape. She flinches slightly but manages to stand perfectly still and completely avoid them all. Reimu is a bit impressed that she didn't move and get hit. She rectifies this by firing off several randomly oriented, red light orbs that are larger than either of them. With these, she also drops a yin-yang orb that hits the ground just to the left of Yuuka and bounces right over her head. Yuuka sighs as 3 of the orbs fly straight at her, then she leaps straight up with a burst of speed that is rather unlike her. She grazes past the yin-yang orb and forces Reimu to reorient her aim, during which time Yuuka decides to unleash two black orbs with a yellow outline that quickly make their way from her, then slow down, and then home in on Reimu with linear acceleration. She hesitates and stops firing and moving for a second to register what they are, then remembers to dash backwards at the last moment as the worm-like blasts come in from her flank and fly right past her front in an intersection before flying off into the distance and fading away.
"You know how to make those!?" Reimu yells in utter surprise that such old danmaku was still being used. She gets shut up when she notices that a huge barrage of seemingly randomly fired flowers have a near-miss with her. She charges to the side to avoid another follow up of a thin laser being dragged towards her. While charging, she starts firing off occasional cones of amulets, followed by an aimed, wide stream of Persuasion Needles. Yuuka decides to be lazy and move just fast enough to the side to graze the needles and slip just past the outskirts of the cones, as the amulets have a pretty unreliable density. After about 10 seconds of constant streaming, Yuuka decides to throw a curveball and shoot off a static omnidirectional blast of several dozen red balls. Reimu stops firing for a moment, but quickly realizes that she's in no real danger and continues to pressure Yuuka. She gets a bit frustrated at having to try and does so, now starting to send off a very spread-out barrage of flowers directly at Reimu, who begins to waver like a sine wave to try and mess with her. This doesn't work very well, and Reimu finds herself about to be trapped in the barrage a few seconds later. She panics instead of thinking and pulls out her first card, which she declares, "Dream Sign 'Evil Sealing Circle'!" All of the danmaku around her is instantly destroyed when she uses it, then at least 22 streams of amulets begin firing from her center that then split like branches into over a hundred more streams in total, all practically covering the surrounding area in thousands of amulets every second!
Though the sheer numbers are high, it's only for looks as the streams merely prevent Yuuka from moving in a large area. She sticks to the center of the small area that the streams have restricted her to, not daring much to try and navigate through them with her more than leisurely flight speed. Reimu stays like that for a few seconds, but then throws out at least 46 of those giant yin-yang orbs back and above her, which then fall back down and harmlessly to the sides. That section of the attack was completely pointless and wouldn't have hurt her anyways. Yuuka chuckles a bit at that and decides to start firing her rapid-fire barrage of spread-out flower danmaku. Reimu begins to rotate rather slowly to change the overall trajectory of the attack while launching off a nearly sold sphere of tiny white pellets that freeze some point out and almost directly in front of Yuuka. She begins to back up and follow the talismans as they drag to her left when the tiny pellets all transform into scale danmaku and launch themselves outwards one by one. They spread out fairly wide and allow her to just graze through them with minimal trouble. She continues this cycle for another dozen seconds but at some point misses a sudden rotation and gets caught by one! She gets slapped straight in the face with an amulet and gets flung out-of-bounds, but she returns just a moment after. The spell resumes and she takes better care to stay in the middle. She eventually cancels the spell and sends Reimu flying out-of-bounds as well.
Given the time, Yuuka decides to declare her own attack which she names, "Directed Chaos 'Logic Survey'." Reimu attempts to remember everything that Yuuka can do, but can't quite figure out from the name, what she's about to do. Yuuka points her parasol at her and closes it, then a huge, shadowy orb envelopes her and begins to slowly collapse as the edges fire off diagonally fired and alternating white pellets with practically uncountable numbers. Luckily, they only travel away. Reimu begins to panic, however, and attempts to dodge the non-existent attack that is launched at her, only to almost be met with the blasts. She backs away right back to the center and looks a bit surprised. As the orb deflates, Yuuka opens her umbrella back up to launch an all-encompassing spread of white pellets that slowly make their way toward Reimu. Only 3 short streams of the pellets get within the orb's previous location, so Reimu figures to only slip between two of them. The bullets slowly fade and fly away, then Yuuka unleashes the same pattern again. Reimu stays completely still and waits for the spread shot to move slightly to the right, of course while now firing off her own rapid-fire homing amulets to pelt Yuuka. This doesn't go on for long before the spell is cancelled out and they begin to circle around each other and let off more aimed shots.
Yuuka decides to let out her second card first and declares it as, "Orbital 'Stormy Sun'." She flies high up and lets loose a huge, swirling sphere of over 200 golden flowers that stop some point away, then she fires out another that stop a little farther out. They pause for a moment, then break when she moves and they start flying outwards while spinning and intersecting with each other as two separate layers. Reimu flies as far away and to the right as humanly possible, getting almost to the ground, then waits for the giant flowers to pass by and still nearly smack her in the face. While she's busy avoiding those, Yuuka gets above her and rains down a shower of random white pellet danmaku that are far less dense. Reimu zips past the second layer of flowers and through a gap in the raining pellets, then finally begins to fire at Yuuka again. She fires another two spheres of flowers and Reimu attempts to retreat again, but misjudges the speed of the flowers and gets hit from behind where four of them intersect. She gets flung into the ground by those but recovers fairly quickly. By the time she does, Yuuka has sent out the shower of pellets again and another wave of flowers. She manages to squeeze right past the waves by flying directly at them, but just barely. Another wave later, she manages to cancel it out just before getting hit by a flower.
They both take a moment to catch their breath, but resume with Reimu declaring her last spell, "Spirit Sign 'Fantasy Seal'!" She uses it immediately after declaring again. As soon as it's declared, she sends out a shockwave of amulets and orbs and a single yin-yang orb that catch Yuuka off-guard with their speed. The huge orb smashes into her and flings her into the ground again, only for her to get back up a second later. Reimu flies to her side and lets another shockwave loose. This one is easy to dodge; Yuuka only needs to jeer slightly to the right. Reimu speeds up her seals and it quickly leaves an unreasonable amount of lingering projectiles in midair. These become a nuisance to fly around but are, thankfully, not very dense. Out of the corner of her eye, though, Yuuka sees some sort of small, silhouetted figure that catches her eye. She turns her attention immediately to see it and is about to yell something, but quickly get hit directly by a stream of amulets and an orb. She gets flung again down to the ground and, this time, explodes into a golden light upon impact. She looks rather worn out, lying on the ground afterwards, so Reimu stops her spell and declares victory.
She floats down to the ground and lands softly, just a few feet in front of Yuuka who is just now standing up and looking just slightly beaten up. In fact, Reimu also looks that way. She looks down and catches her breath before speaking up, "Alright, I win. Get up and follow me." She offers her hand to Yuuka who swats it away and crosses her own arms with her umbrella hanging off of the left. They begin to leave the area, but Yuuka stops after a dozen or so paces and looks back. Reimu eventually stops and looks back at her, then calls out, "Hey, catch up!" Yuuka doesn't display that she's listening and just barely takes a few idle steps forward. Reimu groans and stomps over towards her, grabs her sleeve and tries pulling her.
She almost whispers in a faint protest, "I don't want to leave..."
Though Reimu can't see her expression, she can feel the emotion being given off. She sighs and places a hand on Yuuka's shoulder. She doesn't react much if at all. "Hey," Reimu tries to say in a compassionate tone "I know you're not alright. That doesn't mean what you're doing is acceptable right now." This kind of pisses Yuuka off; she scoffs and makes a bit of a difficult face.
Yuuka turns around and retracts her expression. "Just keep going." she says a moment later. They continue forth with the only passing statement said on the way to their next location being, "I was going to have a good time until you showed up..." said by Yuuka with an obvious hint of frustration. To that, Reimu has not real response. They simply go onwards, though only Reimu will decide where to go.