Hey~, happy early new year! Might as well upload a new random story, as an early new year's gift.
Anyways, as usual, this is a random fic I'll be writing with me focusing on [A Gamer's Fate]. Unlike the others, which are mostly stories with me having no clue on where to go, I do have an idea on where this fic is going, so do expect a schedule. It'll be the same as [A Gamer's Fate], with each chapter coming roughly two weeks each time, so if you're interested in this, do take note!
Now, some context before you read on:
-This story is basically me using Fate's [Install] mechanic and somewhat changing it to suit my style. So Hanako will have seven different Touhou character she can use, and she'll be able to use their powers. Unlike [Install] though, she won't need to switch out, meaning she'll have all 7 character's powers inside her. But that doesn't mean she'll have access to use them all though, 'cause that'll be overpowered.
-This won't follow DxD plotline (at least, not completely). This fanfic begins 1 year before Issei dies and becomes a devil, so Hanako will have some time to establish herself. The progression won't also follow the anime/light novel, since I'll be cutting, modifying, and switching around the order of some of the events.
-The Touhou characters won't appear directly in the DxD world, but they will exist, mostly inside Hanako's dreams/mind.
-No lemons. For the time being.
-Oh, and the MC's obviously a girl, since, well, Touhou.
Anyways, enough from me. As usual, if you have anything you want to say, anything you want to add, do leave a review! For now, enjoy!
Hanako remembered that night when she first learned of the magical world hidden under the normalcy of her everyday life. It was a year ago, on a particular summer night.
She'd been enjoying a small summer festival, waiting on her lonesome as her parents went out to buy some food for them to bring home. Sadly, she'd left her phone at home, so she was left bored as she sat and nursed her aching feet.
Then, by the corner of her eyesight, she spotted a strange tent located at the end of the line of stalls. She saw it, stared at it as she debated in her mind, before giving in to her curiosity and walked over. She stood before it for several seconds, wondering why something so out of place was even here, before she entered.
And inside, she saw a simple table, two chairs, and a beautiful foreign lady sitting by the table, a smile on her face as she saw Hanako enter.
She introduced herself as Merry, and invited her to sit down with her. Blinking, Hanako sat down and asked what she was even doing here, and with a smile, Merry simply pulled out a book and asked her,
"Do you believe in magic?"
She said no. Magic was magic, and it wasn't real. Despite her answer, Merry only smiled and asked again.
"How about the supernatural?"
Hanako didn't answer. She couldn't really. After all, though she was a staunch supporter of logic and science, she couldn't say that the supernatural isn't real either. There were still many questions left unanswered, too many mystical things that even science can't explain.
Merry took her silence as a positive and smiled, opening the book she'd brought out earlier. Curious, Hanako leaned in, and she listened as Merry told her of a hidden world of fantasy, where magical beings lived, where youkai and magic are commonplace, and where all that is forgotten is brought to.
A world known as Gensokyo.
Hanako was skeptical, but accepted the explanation anyway. The book had pictures of it, of the landscapes Gensokyo had, and they were all beautiful. Whether it be fake or real, it didn't detract from how pretty the pictures made Gensokyo look.
But then there were two pictures that mentioned the Hakurei Shrine and the Moriya Shrine, and Hanako stopped for a moment.
'Those names are real.' She'd thought. She didn't quite remember where the Hakurei and Moriya Shrine currently are, but she's heard and seen pictures of it, so she knew they were real. But to see them placed inside this Gensokyo was jarring, to say the least.
Then, as Merry flipped through the book, she saw pictures of several different people, some human and some not, all colorful and distinct from one another. She described them, told of their stories, of what they could do.
Hakurei Reimu, Shrine Maiden of Fantastical Paradise
Kirisame Marisa, An Ordinary Black Magician
Izayoi Sakuya, Perfect and Elegant Maid
Konpaku Youmu, Gardener of Azure Sky
Shimeimaru Aya, Crow of Wind and Rain
Cirno, Ice Fairy of the Lake
Remilia Scarlet, The Scarlet Devil
Yakumo Yukari, Border of Phantasm
Only Yukari didn't have a picture. Merry said that she simply didn't have a picture of her.
Honestly, Hanako found them far more interesting that she probably should. She spent a lot of time simply asking questions, asking on what they did and could do, and why they would do as they did. She feared she was boring Merry with all her questions, but the woman was just as kind, smiling at her with interest and amusement as she answered her questions.
And just as suddenly as it began, it ended, with Merry closing the book and giving it to her, telling her to read it if she's interested. Hanako was happy of course, she liked reading quite a bit, but the book was clearly Merry's. But as she looked up, the words in her throat froze as the seat across from her was suddenly empty, Merry nowhere in sight.
Hanako blinked, and blinked again. She stared at the now empty seat, rubbing her eyes to see if she was somehow seeing it wrong. But, no, the seat remained empty. She even touched the empty seat just for good measure, and there was nothing.
Confused and very much nonplussed, she left the tent with the book in hand. She took a gulp of air, an attempt to calm herself before she turned to bid the tent farewell.
But she couldn't, because just like Merry, the tent was no longer there.
She stared at the empty area for a full minute or so before she turned and left, not quite sure what the hell just happened. 'It could've all been a fever dream.' She initially thought, but she wasn't sick, and the book in her hands was very much real, so that couldn't be it.
Before she could think anymore of it, she heard a scream coming from the nearby forest. She quickly turned towards where it came from, but she then noticed something.
No one seemed to notice. It was as if the scream didn't even happen.
But it did, right?
The scream came again, and fighting against her instinct, she ran towards the source, worried for whoever was the owner of that voice. She ran into the forest, shielding her eyes against the twigs and tripping slightly. The scream came again, louder and more desperate, and Hanako ran faster.
Soon, she broke out into an open clearing, with no one in sight.
Well, no human that is.
In the center of the clearing was...a monster, one with the bottom of a spider and the body of a deformed human, its hand replaced by a long, bloody claw. Hanako shivered as she watched the distressed expression on its face slowly morph into one of sadistic glee as its eyes found her. She took a shaky step back, and grinning, the monster took a step forward.
Then, she tripped.
"Ah!?" She cried as she fell, the book in her hands falling away. Shaking, she turned and tried to stand, but she remained frozen, her limbs locked in place as the monster stood just above her, licking its lips with no small amount of glee.
The monster was looking for a prey, and it'd found one.
Overcome by fear, Hanako shouted.
Or, she would've, but her voice was stolen when the monster stabbed its claw through her chest. Hanako stared blankly at the monster, her vision dulling as she tasted the iron of her blood dripping from her mouth.
She was dying, she realised.
She was dying, and she couldn't do anything.
She felt tears pricking her eyes, and she let them fall. Her life was ending, snuffed short by whatever this thing was, and she couldn't do anything. Her parents and friends would suddenly find her missing, and when they'd find her, she'd be nothing but a rotting corpse surrounded by dried blood.
Or maybe she wouldn't even have a corpse, her body eaten after this monster had enough fun watching her bleed to death.
Ah, she was growing cold. Her life was fading.
Distantly, she noticed the monster finally pull out its claw, letting her dying body fall onto the grass, painting it red with her blood.
She was cold. So, so, cold.
Freezing over and feeling her strength finally fade, Hanako closed her eyes.
But then, the next thing she knew, she felt warm, the cold that was breaching into her body suddenly missing. She gasped, eyes opening as she lurched up from her the grass, sweat pouring down her face as she placed her hand on her chest.
And she stopped.
Because there was no hole in her chest.
'What?' Confused, she took a look around herself. Her yukata was thoroughly ruined, with a hole punctured right where the monster's claw went through, the grass around her was red with dried blood, and she saw Merry's book not too far away from her, open and lying face down into the grass.
She blinked, took a look in front of her, and froze in both awe and fright at the giant iceberg before her. 'W-When did this get here!?' She then noticed something buried deep in the iceberg, and she soon realised that it was the monster, its monstrous form trapped deep inside, its face twisted with eternal shock and fear.
"D-Did I do this…?" She asked, and as if responding to her, her leg suddenly warmed up, and she was surprised to suddenly see ice spikes grow from her left leg. It was almost as if she'd somehow sucked in the heat and froze the air, and...she wasn't quite sure what to think of it.
So, as she's done for much of her life, she bottled up everything, picked up the fallen book, and left the clearing, intent on calming down first before she tried to make sense of what happened.
Of course, she'd forgotten that her parents had gone off to buy some food in all the chaos she recently experienced, and they were very much worried when she returned with a ruffed up and reddened yukata.
She told them that it was her tripping and landing on some ketchup, something that they sadly believed, considering how frequently she tripped while wearing the yukata.
That night, she learned of the other world; a world of magic and monsters. She saw one of those monsters, died to it, and lived once more.
She was, to put it frankly, absolutely terrified.
So as soon as she returned to her home, she rushed up to her room, locked herself in, and flipped through Merry's book, hoping for some answers to whatever she just went through.
She did.
Her eyes widened as she got onto Cirno's page, detailing her usage of ice, and how she seems to do so by absorbing the residual heat in the surrounding air.
So, she reached a conclusion, no matter how insane it seemed at initial glance. Merry, or the book she gave, maybe even both, had somehow saved her from dying to that monster and gave her Cirno's power over cold.
And if that's the case, would it also give her the power of the other 6?
That'd been a year ago.
Since then, she learned a plethora of new things, many of which sent her stress level up to the roof.
On a certain weekend, Hanako's parents had gone out of town for work, leaving the girl all alone for the entire day. Seeing it as a free day for her, she busied herself with researching about the supernatural on the internet, and consistently getting sidetracked by other things. Before she realized it, night had come around.
The implication sunk it fairly quickly.
She'd missed out on an entire day's need of food, and she felt nothing. She didn't feel any hungrier, nor did she feel tired. She didn't even feel the need to drink anything.
With building terror, she brought out Merry's book and flipped through it, stopping by the page about Youkai.
'Generally, Youkai require no form of nutrient sustenance. Some, like man-eating youkai, can gain energy and pleasure from eating humans, but most youkai only require sleep to keep themselves alive.'
She was a youkai.
She'd been turned into a youkai, and she didn't know of it until then.
At that moment, Hanako stepped back, took a deep breath, walked to her bathroom and proceeded to shout into the sink for a good twenty minute or so.
She felt much better the next day, but still very much anxious. After all, what if she wasn't just some normal youkai, but a man-eating one? What if she was something worse!?
Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case. When her parents came back, she didn't feel any particular need to feast on them or anything, so she seemed to be safe.
The only thing her worry accomplished was getting her parents to also worry over her, which she quickly deflected before moving on.
She'd also gotten herself used to her new control over ice. It'd been rather annoying at first, with her unknowingly creating ice spikes any time she was surprised or hurt. Thankfully, no one noticed that, and she soon got that under her control.
Her control over her ice improved over the year, with her training it when she's sure no one was in the vicinity. It mainly involved her finding out the best way to expel the heat she gathers every time she creates some ice, as that was the one downside of Cirno's method of cold manipulation.
Creating ice did tire her out though, but not so harshly that she needed to go through cardio training to increase her stamina.
She does do some jogging every Sunday morning though, just to build some stamina.
A side effect of all that was increasing her attunement to magic, with her becoming more and more sensitive to any sources of magic. Not that she knew what the magic was, but she could at least sense them.
Which was how she, for the first time, saw just how much magic Merry's book was giving off. Hanako had to take a step back slightly when she first saw it, shivers crawling up her spine at the sheer intensity. 'S-Stop!' She'd wished, and as if the book heard her plight, the intense magic it gave out disappeared completely.
That was when she came to the next conclusion about this strange book.
It was somehow alive.
Her new sensitivity towards magic also led her to finding just how saturated Kuoh was with magic. The air was heavy with invisible magical energy, and the ground was thrumming with magic, concentrated into specific routes called 'Leylines'.
And all that magical energy seemed most concentrated at Kuoh Academy, the school she'll be attending in a week or so.
Joy.
"Hah…" She sighed, rubbing her hands together. The nervousness pooling in her wouldn't do her any good, so she might as well use it to motivate her training.
Kikuchi Hanako was, to put it lightly, annoyed.
She stayed up late last night, so she felt fairly terrible when she woke up this morning. The morning breakfast she made was fine, if a little too salty from the salt she put. She then proceeded to miss her bus, and by the schedule, she'd be late if she waited for the next bus.
So she ran, using part of her enhanced speed as a youkai to burst her way towards Kuoh academy.
Thankfully, she wasn't late when she arrived, and so she went on to find her class.
She was then introduced to the second thing that annoyed her.
She looked around at the other girls, and noticed, with some indignation, how short their skirt was. Who in their right minds would dress a schoolgirl in a skirt that short!?
Her parents were, much to her relief, also on her side when she complained about it, so she was given a longer skirt as compensation. The other girls didn't seem to mind though, walking and chatting with their legs open to the world.
Which led to the third annoyance.
From the corner of her eyes, she noticed several of the boys leering at the girls, smirks present on their faces as they watched the short skirts flow in the wind. Hanako sighed, rubbing her eyes as she remembered the faces of those boys.
She didn't have any problems with that. She knew that the girls were very beautiful, the uniforms they were wearing enhancing their beauty, but to see such behaviour in the beginning of the school semester, just as Kuoh finally turned from a girls-only school to a co-ed?
Disgusting.
So here she was now, sitting inside class 1-A at the far corner of the room, doing her best to tune out the noises of three particularly perverted boys. She idly wondered if she could somehow drop out and change schools, maybe even move house, but it's only the first semester, and she doubted her parents had enough money to move houses at the moment.
Not that her family was struggling financially or anything, but she didn't want to burden them for such a silly reason.
With grim determination, she sighed and faced forward as her homeroom teacher finally entered the room, greeting the new students.
And it was all...slightly awkward. Nothing went wrong, she didn't say anything wrong, but she just felt wrong. She was a youkai, she'd experienced death and came back to life, and she'd just spent the past months working and training on her new abilities. Now, here she was, in a school learning with other normal teenagers.
The experience was just...jarring.
'Still, this wasn't so bad.' She thought with a smile, before she noticed one of the perverted boys from earlier leering at the teacher, and she felt her hopes grind to dust.
'This is going to be so bad.' She lamented silently.
Aight, under here will be a quick summary of certain Touhou-related topics, especially those that appear inside the chapter. This is a new thing I'm trying out, so do leave a review if you think there's something I can do different here.
Cirno: The Ice Fairy of the Lake
As her title suggests, Cirno is a fairy capable of controlling and using ice. A cheery and playful being at heart, she lives her life with no regard as to what consequences her actions might bring, though anything that she does do often than not ends up backfiring, landing her in trouble and needing her other friends to help her. She is also quite the numbskull, being particularly stubborn at some instances and refusing to learn. Despite that, she is rather observant, being able to detect when she's landed herself in trouble, and has some linguistic knowledge unlike the rest of her kind.
Cirno loves to proclaim herself as the strongest, despite being quite weak when compared to the other residents of Gensokyo. However, by technicality, her proclamation of being the strongest isn't actually wrong. Compared to other fairies, she is the strongest of her kind, and perhaps also the one who has lived the longest. Unlike some other residents of Gensokyo, when the events of the Phantasmgoria of Flower View happens, something that only occurs once every 60 years, Cirno recognizes the event and is unconcerned. This suggests that she's lived beyond 60 years.
Her particular strength however has a downside. Fairies are notorious for their immortality, with them reviving just minutes after they were slain. Cirno however, doesn't have that. The gaining of power seems to require a sacrafice.