The youkai and the shrine maiden were in a standstill, neither able to make a move as the ritual circle kept transporting them between the borders of the outside world and Gensokyo. Byakuren smiled and asked:

How long can you hold this seal of yours, Reimu? And when it ends, do you believe you can take on my creed all by yourself?

I can keep it up long enough.-grinned the shrine maiden-Maybe your youkai friends would like to join our chat? Because we're gonna be here for a long time.

You're buying the humans time? How noble of you.

Nobility my ass, they've offered me better donations in a week than I received during the rest of my life! Can't lose clients like that!

As they talked, the portal circle seemed to stablize, and they were in an open field filled with flowers, green, red, yellow and blue fairies flying above them. They were in Gensokyo.

Reimu, that's enough of you.-said a new voice in a calm yet menacing tone.

The shrine maiden and the inded youkai turned their heads to see Yukari's face appear upside-down from inside a black gap horizontally floating in mid air. Then a new horizontal gap appeared below Reimu, swallowing her up and ending her spell.

Sorry for any trouble this idiotic child may've caused you. I'll make sure to properly discipline her.-said Yukari before disappearing inside her own gap.

I humbly apologize for letting myself be distracted... What would you have us do now, Byakuren-sama?-asked Toramaru with her head lowered, kneeling behind the monk magician.

Byakuren studied her scroll for a moment before closing it and replying:

I sense that Sakura still ended somewhere else in Gensokyo, I'm sure of it. Go and spread the word. The card mistress is in the fantasy land. Great rewards to any one who can guide us to her!

Her youkai followers didn't need any more instructions and took flight in separate directions.


Sakura's eyes slowly opened. She felt groggy and drowsy, as she usually did after using too much magic in a short amount of time. Above her was a thick, dark canopy of trees, blocking most of the sky and only letting a few weak rays of light reach the ground. Sakura seemed to hear faint giggles and chirps coming from an undetermined direction. The air was cold and damp and carried a strong, almost overwhelming smell of mushrooms. Stranger still, she felt faint magic all around her.

Sitting up and looking around, the card mistress saw Syaoran kneeling behind her and focusing on his Rashinban board, while Tomoyo knelt at her feet with her eyes staring back at her. She no longer had the amulet on her forehead, but seemed to be doing fine as she smiled at the red-haired girl:

Ah, Sakura-chan, you've woken up! I'm so glad!

What happened, Tomoyo-chan...?-asked Sakura as her brain worked to remember the recent events.

After you lost consciousness, Hijiri and her servants got us at their mercy... -started to tell Syaoran-I failed to save you as you fell, Sakura-chan, but Hijiri used her magic to catch you in the end. She then started a ritual to take us to Gensokyo. Reimu came back then, but she couldn't act because the youkai had us as hostages. Tomoyo and Meiling however managed to provide a distraction to release you and me, and then Reimu took the chance to attack the youkai and keep them busy as the portal ritual was operating. I managed to pull us out from there as we were escaping, but it was still pretty close.

I'm sure you did your best, Syaoran-kun. But where are we now...?-asked Sakura, still feeling too tired to stand up.

I... Don't know. But the magic readings I'm getting from around here are unlike anything I've ever seen. It seems like we still ended in Gensokyo after all, but in a completely different place than Hijiri and her followers wanted to go.-replied Syaoran.

Suddenly there was a sound of rustling leaves from the side, and Meiling jumped down from a nearby tree's canopy. She didn't have the amulet on her forehead anymore either, but her voice seemed refilled with vitality as she spoke:

It's no good, Syaoran-kun, I climbed all the way up to the top to scout around and there's no signs of civilization anywhere around us, just trees as far as the eye can see, and I'm sure I saw some things flying that weren't birds or planes... Oh, Sakura-chan, you're awake already!

Oh, hi Meiling-chan! I must thank you for helping me and Syaoran-kun...-smiled Sakura.

It was nothing, really-blushed a bit Meiling-Anyway, the sun is setting and it looks like it will be night pretty quickly. We should set camp here. There's a near small river and nice smelling mushrooms growing everywhere in this forest, we can use those for food...

Don't touch the mushrooms.-warned Syaoran, dismissing his Rashinban board- The things growing on this forest don't feel natural. Anyway I've managed to detect a stronger magic presence not too far from here. Or many different magic presences in the same place. We should investigate it first.

Wouldn't it be safer to rest here for a while more? Sakura-chan still looks tired.-asked Tomoyo

Most of Youkai are much more active at night. In this kind of place we're too vulnerable once night falls.

I'm feeling better already, let's go to that place you detected, Syaoran-kun!-cheerfully said Sakura, standing up and starting to walk. She did felt tired, but that place sent chills down her spine. She was pretty sure it was full of ghosts, so the faster they got away, the better.


Hakurei Shrine

It was a run-down building, even if it had been rebuilt from scratch just a few years earlier. To be expected since the shrine maiden was the only one living on it, and her constant extermination missions left her little time for maintenance. Or more accurately, when she was not dealing with such troubles, she would mostly laze around, at most sweeping the floor. Although other youkai normally passed by, they were even less interested in helping with repairs. And human worshipers had dwindled to almost none due to the shrine maiden's famed bad humors and tales on how her shrine was infested by youkai. Reimu once had acquired a robot maid to clean the shrine from a traveler from the outside world from another time, but it had long ago broken down and there was nobody in Gensokyo who knew how to repair it, so it now rested at the shrine's basement, covered in dust and webbings, all but forgotten.

Suddenly two borders opened over the open front area, and from one fell Reimu, slamming her butt in the cold hard stone below. From the other popped Yukari's head, standing up this time.

Now, Reimu, what part of "Bring the magic girl to Gensokyo" you exactly didn't understand?

Give me a break, Yukari. She's just an human magician from the outside world.

She's the living proof that the world outside our borders can sustain great magic once more. No, she's the reason why it is possible.

Ah, what do you care? I thought you cared about Gensokyo above everything else?

Reimu, remind me, why hasn't you been slain by youkai yet?

Because my bloodline is essential to maintain the border of Gensokyo in one piece, and if I die it would be a short matter of time until this whole place collapsed, taking all the youkai down with me?

Correct. Now imagine if the border was doomed to collapse anyway...

Hey, don't joke around! That thing's been holding up for centuries now!

To empathize her point, Reimu flew up and swung her gohei to an apparently empty spot, but where she knew that there was one of they key parts of the Great Hakurei barrier, and slammed her gohei into it, producing a blue shockwave in mid-air.

See, holding perfectly together...

A glowing red crack appeared on the area of air struck by the gohei, splitting open in a floating glowing gap, that quickly started to expand.

Crapcrapcrapcrap didn't meant to do that!-shouted Reimu, unleashing a barrage of amulets to stop the smaller cracks from spreading, before summoning multiple translucent barriers to cover the main rend, that slowly disappeared.

As you can see, Reimu, the border is already quite fragile. I've been doing it my best to close any unwanted gaps that appear, but truth is, the Great Hakurei border was an improvised and desesperate work from the start, little more than a necrotic fantasy to try to get us more time. It's been slowly decaying ever since it was created. That your bloodline needed to keep it up is now reduced to a single individual doesn't help matters either. There's only so much patch-work repairs I or you can do before the whole thing will come crumbling down. Which shall happen fairly soon from what I feel, even if you cannot. That's why I tried to lead those invasions to the moon, to see if we could secure ourselves a new magic land. You know how those ended. I was getting really desesperate looking for a solution, when Sakura the Card Mistress shined a ray of hope for me, her magic shining brightly from nothing in such a short amount of time. Although I now wonder how much of that magic as from that Syaoran kid, since they seem to be always acting together... But point is, with that kind of magic that can bloom even in the outside world, we can save most youkai and humans from Gensokyo before it collapses.

...Did Byakuren know?

Oh, no. Only you and me, and my shikigamis. It would be complete panic in Gensokyo if word got out the Great Hakurei border is collapsing for good. It would only make it come down even faster.

Then couldn't you just have asked for Sakura's help? She's a pretty nice kid, always eager to do the right thing.

Yukari grinned, showing two rows of sharp teeth inside her mouth.

We're talking about unleashing thousands of youkai in a world overflowing with millions, no, billions of helpless humans that forgot to properly fear the night and what lurks in it. Here in Gensokyo you already struggle watching over an handful of humans confined to a tiny village. What do you think happens when there's multiple cities across several continents to watch over? There'll be no way to keep their hunger for human flesh in check, at least not at the start. There will be great chaos before a new order rises. Even if we managed to convince Sakura initially, she would soon turn against us and seek to seal us away for good once her fellow humans start being devoured en masse. She must be submitted first, to make sure she won't turn against us later on.

What about Byakuren and her whole talk about equality and peaceful co-existence? You seemed relatively fine working with her.

We speak different words, but with the same meaning. A world where youkai and humans have the same rights will still be ruled by youkai, because we have greater power to use and abuse said rights. Humans who dislike this should just become youkai themselves. Byakuren simply lies to herself in that everybody would get along when some are almost immortal beings of great power and others are short-lived tasty morsels. In her own way, she's even more naive than Sakura.

Then why do you need me, an human?

You have your uses. The Hakurei blood coursing trough your veins would lose its ancestral power if you became a youkai.

And what makes you think I'll collaborate with you after hearing all of this?

Oh Reimu, that's simply because you've already been submitted.

Excuse me, but I don't remember being your servant.

You still don't understand it after all this years, do you Reimu? If Ran is my tool, my shikigami, the Hakurei women are my weapons, my warriors to deal with troublesome youkai. You've been born and trained to exterminate youkai precisely so you can deal with my kin that would disrupt my operations. Not much different than an human who trains vicious dogs to reign in their more unruly fellow humans. Since just as I'm willing to do anything to ensure that me and my brethern keep existing, many youkai would rather go out in a last blaze of glory. Sometimes you went of your own accord thanks to the indoctrination you received. Other times I had to directly push you. In particular against the lunarians. I guess since they weren't youkai, you didn't feel nearly as compeled to fight them, but you still did so when I commanded you. And those times that you failed and some other human couldn't pick up the slack, I had to get my hands dirty.

But I fought you! Multiple times!

I was simply and personally sharpening your edge. You should feel grateful I care that much for you.

Nonsense! I fought you out of my own will!

Yet when I crushed your shrine to rubble as punishment for trusting that celestial, all you could do was cry helplessly.

I-I exterminate youkais! I don't take orders from them!

Then why do you always have more youkai visitors than humans? You've proved doubly useful as a nexus point for my kin's relationships. All the gatherings of youkai you had at your shrine, they greatly help me keep tabs at the situation and dealings in Gensokyo. Indeed, you've been quite a good weapon in both war and peace. But when the great border collapses, that will all be for naught.

...You know, Yukari, all I'm hearing from you now is "Please, Reimu, exterminate me good".

Reimu wouldn't stand for this anymore and reacted like she usually did when she felt frustated when talking with someone: by unleashing a barrage of amulets and needles at said individual. Yukari frowned and disappeared back insider her gap, before re-appearing under Reimu's feet.

My, my, still acting rebellious even when your very survival is at stake? I would discipline you now, but I fear that due to your screw-up and reluctance on recognizing it, I have to go myself find where Sakura, Syaoran and those other two humans ended in Gensokyo before they get eaten or worst.

Reimu tried to step on Yukari's head, but the youkai was faster and all the shrine maiden's feet hit was the cold ground below.

Running away, are we? Show yourself you coward! I'm not finished with you yet!-screamed Reimu, blindly throwing more amulets and needles around and swinging her gohei at the air, hoping that Yukari would show up again from an unexpected angle. But she was completely alone now at her shrine. Again.


(Author's notes: Yeah, shorter chapter than usual, but I already put two bigger ones online today, and I feel like this has some important points about this plot. I seem to just keep on writing and when I notice it I have over 20 pages of text and have to divide it in chapters.)