Hakurei Shrine

Reimu quickly took to the air as the Bewitching Lotus begins its assault on her.

The shrine maiden trainee counterattacks by firing danmaku at the Bewitching Lotus. The monster flower, being a flower, is unable to dodge the counterattack, but makes up for that by simply being tough enough that the danmaku did absolutely nothing to it.

"No effect?! But how?!" Reimu is very surprised by the fact that her attack is completely ignored despite being a direct hit.

"Be careful, Reimu!" Genji warns. "Bewitching Lotuses may be immobile and have little to no intelligence, but they are extremely powerful! A previous Hakurei shrine maiden almost died fighting one!"

As soon as Genji finishes that, he found himself being grabbed by Ruukoto and hoisted over her head.

"I am sorry, Mister Genji, but it is too dangerous outside." Ruukoto says as she runs inside the shrine building with Genji in tow.

Now Reimu is left to fend off the Bewitching Lotus on her own.

The Bewitching Lotus fires another barrage at Reimu, which the shrine maiden trainee dodges. But one danmaku managed to graze Reimu by the side of her waist. She felt the danmaku cutting not too deep into her skin.

The danmaku drew blood.

This reminded Reimu of her first encounter with Mima, whose danmaku back then also drew blood. "Fine. If you want to be exterminated, then so be it!" Reimu says to the Bewitching Lotus in response to the attack, not expecting the monster flower to respond back.

Reimu begins her assault anew with a barrage of Ofuda, followed by launching the Ying-Yang Orb at the Bewitching Lotus.

The Ofuda barrage exploded around the Bewitching Lotus, followed by it taking a direct hit from the Ying-Yang Orb, which stunned it for a brief moment, but otherwise have little to no effect on it.

Reimu went pale. She has basically expended all available options (at least, the ones she know as a trainee) and yet the Bewitching Lotus shrugged them all off. "Godsdamn, what does it take to defeat this monstrosity?"

Just as the Bewitching Lotus is gathering more magic aura for a counterattack, something small fell into its center from the sky...

...Which then exploded in a cloud of white mist, followed by what appeared to be frost spreading all over the Bewitching Lotus.

The monster flower became still as a statue after the frost has finishes forming all over it. Then just a few seconds later, it shattered into several hundred tiny pieces like a glass sculpture being thrown against the floor.

Reimu blinked. She doesn't understand what just happened. At the same time, she is glad that something has taken down the Bewitching Lotus.

Ruukoto and Genji took a peek from inside the shrine too see why it suddenly became silent.

"Whew, just in time..." Says Marisa as she descend upon the shrine grounds. "Ya oughtta thank me, Reimu, 'cause that thing looked like it was about to rip ya a new one."

Reimu lands. "Thanks for the rescue..." The shrine maiden trainee then notices something else. "Marisa, who is that you're carrying with you?"

Marisa dismounts from her flying broomstick, slowly this time as she is carrying someone over her back. "Oh, right! I was just coming to tell you about her!" The witch then lays the person down on the ground.

On closer look, the person appears to be a young lady with purple hair at medium length, and wears a long blue dress. She has an apron with a white cross on it (Reimu is reminded that Okazaki Yumemi had a similar-looking cross as a pendant), and she also has a pair of white wings. Both the wings and her clothes appear to have scorch marks and burn damage, indicating that she came out of a very violent danmaku battle not too long ago. She appears to be unconscious at the moment.

"She just suddenly came knockin' on Miss Mima's doorstep, already lookin' like this..." Marisa explains to Reimu. "Went out cold after uttering 'Youkai attack' something something..."

Reimu's eyebrows twitched. "Youkai...?" She then eyes the lady's white wings. "She doesn't look human, either..."

Marisa took her magic wand out from her hat. "If anyone's gonna explain what's goin' on, its her."

Reimu glares at Marisa. "Do you have to do everything with a magic spell?"

Marisa isn't intimidated. Instead, she simply frowned before putting her magic wand away. "Then what else are ya thinkin'?"

Before the witch can get an answer, the winged lady suddenly coughed as she begins to stir.

"Uh...never mind..." Marisa tells Reimu. "I think she's comin' to, anyway."

As the winged lady regained consciousness, she slowly opened her eyes to get a bearing of her surroundings. When she does so, she noticed Reimu standing near her...

...And immediately shot up from her lying position, gasping in panic.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Calm down!" Marisa tells the winged lady as she comes to her side. "Its okay! This is Reimu. She's a friend." The witch says.

The winged lady looked back and forth between Reimu and Marisa, breathing rapidly for another minute or so before calming down.

Reimu kneels down next to the winged lady, then asked, "What's going on? What did you mean by 'Youkai attack'?"

...

The winged lady slowly explained everything to Reimu and Marisa.

"So let me be clear about what you just told us..." Reimu says. "Your name is Matenshi. You are just minding your own business as a lesser Youkai at an empty plains. Then suddenly, sunflowers started growing in the area near this usually lifeless mansion." Reimu mentally pictures what she was told as she repeats it. "And with the sunflowers came a huge burst of magic energy..."

"Which, in turn, caused all the nearby fairies and such to go absolutely nuts, shootin' up everything they can see." The second half is continued by Marisa. "Ya barely managed to get outta there in one piece. Then ya stumbled upon Miss Mima's hideout where I found you, and that's how it went on your side, ain't it?"

The winged lady, Matenshi, nods.

Marisa turns toward Reimu. "What'cha gonna do 'bout this?" She asks.

"What else?" Reimu answers. "If the Bewitching Lotus came here because of what she said..." The shrine maiden trainee points at Matenshi. "Then I need to put an end to it before everything goes out of control!"

"But Reimu..." Genji approaches. "You have yet to complete your training. What can you do against whatever may be causing it?" The flying turtle attempts to dissuade Reimu.

"But who else is qualified to do it?" Reimu shoots a response back at Genji. "There is no way in Gensokyo that the village's peacekeepers can handle it. They handle petty criminals, not some powerful supernatural being." The shrine maiden trainee turns to look at the crater that the Bewitching Lotus emerged from, eyeing the leftover magic energy that is slowly leaking out of it.

Reimu notices that the magic energy is travelling toward somewhere distant in the southwest, completely unaffected by the wind blowing from that direction.

"And I know where to start looking..." Reimu says, before she took off into the air, heading toward the direction the magic energy is travelling to.

Marisa stood there awkwardly as she watches the shrine maiden trainee take off on her own. "Did she gain weight recently?" The witch asks as she turns toward Genji.

Genji stares at Marisa awkwardly for a few seconds, before nodding a tiny bit.

"Figures." Marisa remarks.


Yeah, I know Matenshi is from Story of Eastern Wonderland, but since I omitted her from the SoEW arc in this fic, I would feel guilty if she doesn't even get a tiny appearance in the story. So I moved her here, where she tells Reimu and Marisa about the beginning of the Lotus Land Story incident.

Don't be so surprised that the Bewitching Lotus went down so easily. It wasn't very tough either when you fought it in LLS (it is just the stage 1 mid-boss, after all).

Let me be honest that this version of Yuuka isn't going to be malicious or sadistic in any way. Her infamy as the Ultimate Sadistic Creature in fanon is pure flanderization of two of her canon lines in LLS, and I'm going to have her react entirely differently to those two lines than she did in canon.

Next up, Reimu and Marisa comes across a Youkai with an attitude.

"And that, as they say, is that..."

Afterword ends here.