I own neither this quote nor the Touhou Project series of games, the latter belonging to ZUN and Team Shanghai Alice.

A shiver ran down Kasen's back.

The rose-haired, one-armed hermit felt, in quote: "a disturbance in the force."

She told her eagle pet to search around the Mountain, to be particularly observant if something was wrong.

A modest, two-story, 19th century-style building stood before the two.

"...and here we are, at the Bunbunmaru newspaper office!"

"It's design is quite different compared to the rest of the village, isn't it?" said Shizumu. 'All the other parts of town look like a traditional japanese village.'

"True. Those old fogies don't get the beauty of the west's architecture."

"Correction: you're probably in the top 20 oldest Tengu here."

She shot a glare at him, and moved on.

"Now that you know where my office is, let's drop you off at the Moriya Shrine."

With a wave of Aya's leaf fan, a sudden gust of wind dragged the oni upwards.

"Why the hell did we have to walk up the mountain, then? These gourds are heavy as hell..."

"I wanted to talk with you for a bit. No better reasons, really."

'This hag...' thought the kettle about the pot.

"I'll see you later, then."

"Bye, bye, ojī-san!"

The wind carried him through the air, lifting him up like a bed of strings. Birds surrounded him at a distance, careful of it. After reaching the top, the wind sped up and made him crash into the ground. Luckily, he managed to throw up the gourds, and caught one of them. The other fell onto his head safely. It still hurt.

"Birdbrain..." he grumbled.

He stood up, wiped off some leaves, and looked in front of him.

-Moriya Shrine, Youkai Mountain.-

The snake statues, the onbashira, and the frog imagery already were making him sick.

'Time to get on with this.'

He headed into the shrine, curse seals in sleeves. He hoped he didn't have to use them.

He let his horns show.

He passed the donation box, and pettily took a 500 yen coin. A door suddenly opened. A small, blonde girl stood there.

"Oi, thief!"

"I'm just looking for compensation. Having your own home taken away from you is a quite horrible experience, you know?"

"500 yen fer compensation?" the little girl muttered. "Oh well; Kanako, it's t'at guy Sanae talked about!"

A taller, much adult-looking purple haired woman came out. A shimenawa rope floated behind her. Both of these people had faith running through them.

'So I can assume the small god is Suwako, and the tall one, Kanako.'

"I come in peace, with gifts. I am here only to have a small conversation and ask one or two questions."

Shuten opened one of his gourds, containing home-brewed sake. He was pleased at it's scent, the gods even more so. He closed it, and let himself in. He followed the gods to an open room with sights of the central pond in the shrine.

Suwako told Kanako to bring snacks to eat with the sake.

"First off, why did you want to expand your shrine to the Underground?"

"Well, we've got a branch shrine in most places on the surface. Setting our sights higher was obvious, so we decided to go over to places like Former Hell, where the Oni could worship us."

"Is it not enough that you have multiple shrines with active mikos?"

"You see, Sanae is our only one."

"What?"

"Sanae is our only shrine maiden, and she's on the path to becoming a arahitogami (Living Human God), so we can't rely on her for much longer."

"So why take over another god's shrine, instead of advertising for your shrine and let people join in?"

"Convenience, 'n we thought whatever mikos you had would become ours."

'What a brat.' the little god thought, clenching his fist, almost tearing through the skin.

Kanako came back with rice crackers and various dishes. She offered a dish to Shizumu.

"I already have my own masu, thanks." he wound down and let bygones be bygones. Not like it was excruciatingly painful to have his shrine corrupted by a pair of incompetent gods.

Shuten put his hand into his sleeve. Kanako went away quietly to another room

'She must be busy.'

"Now, those curse seals ye'r carrying there are mighty interesting."

"Whatever might you be talking about?"

"Ya know ye'r not the only god with those in their arsenal, right?" Suwako pulled out a green coloured talisman. Fear could be felt within it.

"A new lesson can be learnt every day, I suppose."

After pulling it out, Shuten poured the sake into his box, and took a sip. His black and purple curse seals were laid out on top of the table, symbols down, careful it wouldn't stick, after having put down his box.

"Woah, ya really need to have a lotta care 'round these kinds 'a curse seals. One wrong move, and even that weirdo rabbit girl would go mad."

"Do you mean Udongein-san? Why?"

"Oh, you don't know? She can drive people to lunacy using her eyes."

'Good to know if I ever come back to the bamboo forest.'

"Thank you for telling me that. Anyways, what's so interesting about my curses?"

"You're the interesting part." said the curse goddess. "You ain't a curse god."

"Huh? You need to be a curse god for making these?"

"Not like t'at, it's the quality 'n quantity 'a' t'em that makes it hard for normal gods to replicate. I assume you got a lot of fear after beating our shrine maiden to the ground, right?"

"I'm a bit hurt by that, but yes, I did."

"I'll guess your first one appeared on you a couple minutes later, 'cause ya dun look like the kinda guy ta do taboo magic."

"I used to be an oni, after all."

"And yet, it don't seem like any kinda normal starter curse."

A look of confusion came into Shuten's face.

"These are made from pure fear. There ain't no corrupted talisman to keep these bound. Talismans usually weaken the fear energy tah be able to carry them on ya, but these dun have t'at protective layer. They seem ta inject the curse into whatever they stick tah. How ye'r carryin' 'em around is completely alien tah me."

"You were right, this is quite interesting. I never did put them into any, now that I realize. Well, start drinking! I didn't bring these gourds to just look at them."

We raised our cups.

-3 A.M., The Moriya Shrine, Youkai Mountain.-

As Shizumu argued against Suwako about which of their descendants was better, a young, green-haired and sleepy-looking girl popped into the conversation, ready to tell her grandest-mother to drive the volume down, and curious who she was screaming at at such early hours in the morning.

"There ain't no pride in robbin' an' pillagin' cities! Why do ya think *hic* that Ibaraki of you's is better than mah sweetheart?!"

The plates, myriad of empty, half-empty bottles and sake dishes rattled as she slammed the table with her fist.

"Now you're just insulting my culture! Congrats! You're being RACIST! Is there pride in THAT?!" the Oni responded, while he threw sloppily an overloaded seal at Suwako, missing by an entire meter at close range.

"M-mom, can you please keep it down...? My head hurts..."

"Look at'er! She's got manners! MANNERS! There ain't no way sum tomboy, brute delinquent can accomplish more than a civilized member a' society."

"I'VE KILLED THOUSANDS OF THOSE!"

The room goes pin-drop silent.

The mass murderer started sobbing.

"..."

"What are you both talking about?" said Sanae, in a quite frightened tone. She still remembered the beating he gave her, though that was off-set after having watched him sleep for a couple minutes. Multiple maternal instincts took over after seeing the little oni cry. She picked him up and patted his head.

"You, an' this barbarian's monster-daughter."

The "barbarian" kept on weeping while emptying the second gourd into his throat. As his horns shrank back into his head, he calmed down.

"What are you doing here? It's quite late." the green-haired girl asked, after putting him down.

"Who are you?" he said in a drunken stupor " My name is Shuten Shizumu. You might know me as Shuten-douji, the great Oni King!"

As Shizumu spoke his better-known name, the girl's eyes started to shine like lightbulbs.

'Wait, what is she going to do?'

"Woah..."

As faith flowed through his body, the gacha game he used to be addicted to shot through his mind, and his spirit body changed into a small, horned girl's, with pale white skin and two red horns. His physical one was dead drunk on the floor, unfortunately.

"Uu~" Shizumu held his head in shame.

"He stole the vampire-girl's catchphrase!" mocked Suwako, as she pointed at the little girl.

He was furious, and desired divine retribution on the frog-spawn once again, but that faded quickly after he digged into one of the rice crackers on the table and took a deep breath.

"I've always waited for the moment I could meet someone like you here!" Sanae jumped at Shuten, and hugged him like a plush.

"Choke, breathe, can't, aaahhh..." The drunk god collapsed in the shrine maiden's arms.

"How are ya makin' any descendants like that? Bwahahah! Ya look even more like a kid now!" the frog kept on croaking.

Everybody laughs as the Oni suffers.

-A corner of the Hoshiguma household, Former Hell.-

A drunk, standing Shuten faced the wall.

"How many hawers more~?"

"Until you're sober."

"Aww~" he took another swig of the gourd he held. He ankwardly had to drag his arms along the wall to lift it up.

"You keep doing that, and you're not going to get out ever."

"But I like drinking..." he childishly said.

"It's your fault for not listening."

"Sawrry~"

"I don't hear repentance in those words."

"Mmh..." he started to pout.

'He really acts his appearance out when he's drunk, huh?'

"Did you lose anything on your way back?"

"Uhh... let me check..."

He carefully digged around in his sleeves.

"Cellphone, check... Coin bag, check... Blessings, check... Curse seals, not... there..."

Eyes widen. Hoshiguma clutches her head in annoyance and horror. Shuten immediately sobers up.

"FUCK! The curse seals!"

He may or may not have tripped more than a couple times on his way home. Hoshiguma had picked him up (literally) at the cave's entrance. Only Yukari knows how far they had spread. The night wind blew with force.