It's about time this got an update, I think.

I wrote this story so it could be about ALL of the Myouren crew, but so far it seems to only be about Nue. Thankfully, that changed in this chapter, which is mostly about Murasa and a little bit about Shou as well, and a couple chapters in the future will probably be about Shou as well. Speaking of Shou…nah, you'll see by the end of the chapter :D


"She ran off in a hurry," Murasa said, going back to her dinner like it never even happened. "I wonder why?"

"I have an idea," a tiny clever commander answered. "When Christmas was coming up, Nue burst into the kitchen asking for an extra steak with her dinner. Meanwhile, that very night, the extra disappeared in the middle of the meal, and I know she couldn't eat it that fast. She'd also asked me to just go along with whatever was said to me if Yoshika started talking about a conversation I don't remember having." Getting up to her feet, Nazrin boldly finished "Ladies, I believe our Nue has developed a crush on Yoshika Miyako!"

"No way!"

"You're kidding!"

"On Yoshika?"

"I knew it all along~" Byakuren was the only one who didn't look surprised. "I was paying attention to Nue's actions when I thought she was acting a little odd, which was on the same day that we had our first meal at the Mausoleum; the day Nue first met Yoshika. If you recall, Nue had been feeding Yoshika her meals the whole time since then, with a big smile on her face the whole time. Word got to me that Murasa once joked that the best way to her heart was through her stomach, and that was the same day that Nue begged me to teach her to cook."

"You heard about that?" Murasa sunk in her seat a little. "It was just a joke…I didn't know she actually wanted a little slice of Yoshika's heart."

"In short, I knew about it the whole time, and let love take its course~"

"And Hijiri wins the prize again," Murasa said in applause. "So the punishment to make her a better cook wasn't just for her, then. It was so that she could win Yoshika's heart."

"Yep~"


In front of the Dream Palace Mausoleum

"YOSHIKAAAAAAAAA!" Nue sprinted up to the jiang shi, bowl of meat salad in her arms. "YOSHIKAAAAAAAAA!"

"Oh, it's Nue! Hey!" From the look on her face, Nue seemed like she was over the whole food poisoning scare from yesterday. It was certainly an interesting Christmas at the Dream Palace Mausoleum, and someday everybody would look back on it and laugh probably. That would be good. "What's up?"

"I was just wondering. If you're out here all the time, how often do you eat?"

"Two square meals a day. A breakfast, and a really big lunch!"

"Here! I made you a dinner! I figured you must get hungry being out here all the time, so I just decided to make you something tasty to munch on!" Nue could eat later. She wanted to get Yoshika's take on Nue's new and improved cooking. Getting a big forkful, Nue said "Open wide~"

Munch munch munchgulp. "Mmm…"

"S-So? How is it? Way better than the last thing I made, right?"

"Actually, I kind of preferred yesterday's dinner better."

"!"


Myouren Temple

"I'll go last," Murasa said. She really didn't mind going last at all. It seemed odd at first for the ghost of a sailor to volunteer to take the last bath, but then one had to consider one thing. Being last meant she could stay in the bath for as long as she wanted to, though sometimes she stayed in the bath for so long that people forgot she was even there, and when she dozed off in the bath one time about two months ago, everybody freaked out and declared her a missing person, only for her to come out for lunch that day, wrinkly as a prune. "Nue can just knock when she gets back and I'll wrap up."

"Very well, then. We'll have Shou go first," Byakuren decided.

"W-Wait," the tiger youkai protested. "I-I took a bath this morning!"

"Liar~"

"W-Well, um, m-my doctor said…w-water is gonna mess up my immune system! O-Or something like that…"

"Me? I'm your doctor~"

"U-Uh…"

"We do this every day. Nazrin, I trust you can take it from here?" With that, the Youchrist went on her way, taking the bath before Murasa's. Shou's baths were usually short yet disastrous, but what more could one expect from a feline youkai like Shou Toramaru? Everybody else fared much better.

"Alright," Nazrin said, gripping her master by the legs and yanking hard, landing Shou flat on her face. "Come on, Shou-sama. Let's get you bathed."

"Let go," Shou shouted, clawing at the floors in a futile attempt to not get dragged off into the torture chamber called a bath. "I'm warning you! I bite! Grrrrr!"

"Cats don't growl."

"Tigers so growl! And they bite, too!"


A few baths later

"And then I'm up," the ghostly sailor said happily as Byakuren made her way by, fresh out of the bath. She and Nue both looked forward to baths, though Murasa wasn't sure why Nue looked forward to them. Murasa got to embrace her nature as a ghost sailor, and there were a few toy boats hidden in the bathroom that she could sink…but why Nue? Murasa could only draw up one conclusion. The six-winged youkai was hiding something…her true form! It made perfect sense! That was the voice Murasa heard last week! She knew she wasn't crazy! Her plan was decided. Take her bath, then lie in waiting for Nue to take her bath, hiding somewhere in the bathroom (currently, the plan was to hide in the toilet, since the bath faced away from it) to see what exactly Nue's true form looked like.

KSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Until then, there was a bath and a handful of toy boats waiting for Murasa. The sailor waited until the water was hot enough, tossed in her boats, stripped down, and hopped in. In Gensokyo, there was no ocean, and there was only that little lake near the Scarlet Devil Mansion. That meant no boats other than Futo's flying boat, which could not sink since it didn't go over water. That meant that Murasa was among the weakest of youkai in Gensokyo, since she couldn't use her abilities, whereas even Nazrin and Shou could use their ability to find things (though Shou's seemed to be more like the power to lose things) and had that going for-

SHK!

"Hey," the sailor shouted. "Knock before you come in!"

"Sorry," Shou said, not looking at Murasa. "I think I just left something in here is all."

"Heh. I was just thinking about the way you tend to lose things, too. Maybe if I imagine a very cute girl, I'll find one~"

"Hmm, it's not in here. Well, thanks. Bye."

"I wonder…" Just as Shou made to close the door, Murasa decided on some harmless fun. SPLASH! Just a little parting gift to warn Shou to knock next time. No malicious intentions or anything.

MEOW! HISSSSS!

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" That was hilarious. She didn't even know Shou meowed! But if she let her mind get distracted, then Murasa would forget about her awesome stakeout plans to spy on Nue during her bath. Hopefully, if there were somebody reading her thoughts, they wouldn't get the wrong idea. Without the need to hold her breath, Murasa kicked back, relaxed, and submerged herself completely in the water. This was another reason she loved taking baths so much.


Meanwhile, in Byakuren's office

"I still can't believe she actually did it," Byakuren said, looking at the bandages on Nazrin's hand. "I guess we'd better punish Shou, then."

"Please be merciful," the youkai in question said. "It was instinct, I swear."

"I know. For the next seven days, I will hold onto the jeweled pagoda you carry around."

"Yes, ma'am." Shou reached into her clothes for it…then tried the other side. Maybe in the back? Could it have gotten into her sleeves? "…I don't have it."

"…"

"We have to think of something," Nazrin said. "Maybe she should go find the pagoda. I've already found it some fifty times, and a few of those times it wound up in the oddest places…" Nazrin wouldn't go into detail on those places, because she did not like being near any of them.

"Yes. Shou, your punishment is to go find the item you've lost, and return it to me so I can hold onto it for seven days. And until you find it, you answer to Nazrin."

"Don't worry, Miss Hijiri," Nazrin said, getting up to her feet. "Under my leadership, she'll find it in no time. There's a reason our mice are the best mice in Gensokyo." That was why she was COMMANDER Nazrin.

"Hey," Shou exclaimed. "There it is!" The finger of the tiger youkai pointed out the window. "I'll go get it right-"

FWOOSH! Something flew across her vision, outside the window. Whatever it was, it moved real fast to leave behind a sonic boom like that. Now that that was done with…they took the pagoda!

"…I'll go find them," Shou said, getting up slowly and making her way out of Byakuren's office. And of course, as her luck so far would have it, just as she opened the door to leave the office, it started raining. "…"

"Keep going," Byakuren said sternly. "It's your responsibility, as well as your punishment, to get it, so go get it." Byakuren didn't enjoy being stern or authoritative, but there were some times when she just had to, or else she would probably lose control of the whole bunch living in the Myouren Temple. And that would be very bad.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!

"Yes? Come on in."

"Hey, it's me," Murasa said, stepping in wearing a set of sea-green pajamas. "I just popped in to say I'm done my bath, and I'm gonna hit the hay pretty soon. All this Nue stuff really knocked the wind out of me."

"Very well. Good night, Murasa."

"Night." With that, Murasa left. Only she wasn't going to bed just yet. She had one Nue Houjuu to spy on, and Murasa had just seen her getting back. That meant Murasa had to move quickly. Time to do what ghosts did best. Turn green, disappear, and re-appear someplace else. In this case, the bathroom. Murasa opened up a cupboard and stepped in, making sure she had a good and hidden view of the bath. Nue would be here soon to take her bath. At last, her true form would be revealed…


Shou may not be in the Myouren Temple for the next few chapters while she tries to figure out who stole her jeweled pagoda. On the note of Shou, she's the HARDEST STAGE 5 BOSS OF ALL!

Seriously, most others I can handle, but Shou I've never even fought on Normal and lost to her on Easy. It's the curvy laz0rs, really, combined with Murasa being the strongest Stage 4 boss. Murasa and Shou are the only reasons I've never fought Byakuren, and she's the only final boss (in the Windows era) who I've never fought before. And out of them all, I've only beaten two :O

I beat Remilia after some 10 months of hard practice, and Eirin I beat by using up all my continues, almost all of my lives, and LOTS of bombs. Somebody please tell me why I'm not nearly as good at dodging bullets as I am at writing stories about the people shooting the bullets!