Chapter 3

The Touhou franchise is owned by ZUN, and as such I own nothing in this story other than my own original creations.


After what felt like an eternity, Marisa finally saw the owner of the house wake. Good thing too, from what she could tell, Alice definitely had at the very least a cracked rib. That's not even mentioning the amount of bruises she could've gotten from... actually how did Alice get into the situation she did? She definitely isn't the type to let her opponent get this hard of a hit in too easily.

Not like that mattered, as soon as she got those answers, she was already planning to take Alice straight to Eientei for medical treatment. Little did she know the answers she would get would cause her to scrap those plans almost immediately.


Alice was somewhat surprised. Her recent memory was still a bit foggy at the moment, however, from looking at her surroundings, she could deduce two things. One, she was at her house, which is actually what surprised her, since she knew for a fact she was flying towards the direction of the culprit, which she knows was away from her house. Two, she was hurting. A lot.

"Ah, you're awake." Immediately she looked to her right, only to find a certain witch she suspected had said those words... and then felt a sharp pain in her neck immediately afterward. "Ow!" "Don't strain yourself too much, you look pretty beat up." Beat up? Ah, now she remembered. She actually had found and fought the culprit in the Bamboo Forest. It didn't end well for her. Though that still left two questions. Firstly, where was the extra pain coming from? She knew she only got a cracked rib and maybe a small rupture in her lung at most in that fight, so why was she hurting all over? Secondly, why was she back at her house? It was that question she had an idea on.

"Did you carry me back here?" As soon as she said that sentence, she started coughing up blood. But she had suspected the witch might have been responsible for getting back from her little fiasco.

"As convienient as that would be, I actually have no idea how you got back here. All I know is that it resulted in you having a new hole in your wall." So she didn't carry her back here. However, looking to her left(a lot slower this time), she could confirm Marisa's words. There was indeed a new hole in her wall. That combined with her newfound pain, suggested that Xhi threw her all the way back here, and she got majorly bruised from the impact. That only left more questions though. For one, just how strong was Xhi for her to be able to throw her all the way back to her house. And if she was that strong, why wasn't she outright killed right then and there. Those were questions she couldn't answer, however, not without more evidence.

"I guess you want to know how this happened." She spoke in a much softer voice out of fear of hurting herself again. "You bet I want answers, you're not the type to get hurt this badly, ze!" Alice sat up as slowly as possible. "I don't know if you will believe me, but I minus well tell you the situation. After all, based on how you're acting, I don't think you know what's going on."


Marisa furrowed her brows when Alice finished her story. She hit the nail on the head. She didn't have any idea an incident was going on. But if what Alice said was true, it also meant taking Alice to Eientei wasn't a valid option. Who knows what Xhi could have done to them.

"Alright change of plans. You head over to the Hakurei Shrine and recover as soon as possible. I don't know if Reimu knows what's going on, so it would be a good opportunity to tell her. I'll head over to the little shack you described and see if I can teach our culprit a lesson." Alice soon retorted, "That's a great idea, except there's one problem." Marisa tilted her head in confusion. "What are you talking about?" Alice then looked down at her body, slowly looked up at Marisa, and then said in the most forceful voice she could, "I'll give you one guess."

Marisa nearly facepalmed at what she said. For some reason, she never considered the idea that Alice couldn't walk at the moment. "Point taken. Fine I'll take you there myself." Marisa proceeded to do just that.


Reimu was not happy at the moment. She and the others she was housing at the moment had been trying to find any clues on this "killer instinct" for a couple of hours, but no matter where they looked, they always seemed to run into dead ends. They had made zero progress this entire investigation, which was not only frustrating to everyone involved, but also a testament to how sneaky the culprit was.

They're group was about to go check the Forest of Magic when they suddenly heard a knock on the door. At this point Reimu had finally given into her anger. "Arrgh! Who's at the stinking door!" As she got to said door, she slammed it open and prepared to yell at her visitors to leave, when she saw something that didn't just stop her, but made her catch her breath.

First off, Marisa was at her shrine, which at this point of the investigation was odd, and left four options given the current circumstances. One, she came here solely to crash, which would aggravate her to no end at this point. Two, she'd succumbed to the "killer instinct" and was looking for a preemptive strike, which would have been bad for not just herself, but also the extra occupants as well as the shrine, which probably would have made her angrier than the first option. Three, she didn't know about the incident until now and was coming to look for clues, which Reimu had none so it would be a waste of time.

As for option four however, that related to the other person at the door. It was the very bruised, but still very recognizable figure of Alice Margatroid, who had her arm on Marisa's shoulder, and she could've just been looking to drop her off to recover. In which case, considering she was housing Reisen and Yukari for the duration of this incident, it was good timing on her part. She decided to hopefully exploit that last option.

"Hey Yukari, can you fetch me a healing potion from Eientei real fast, we got a problem." Reimu shouted behind her, before turning towards Marisa and saying, "Was that what you wanted?"

Marisa made a cheshire grin before saying, "What are you, psychic?" Reimu smirked back before replying, "No just working towards the best outcome." "Wait, did you just say Yukari was here?" Marisa suddenly shouted with the appropriate expression on her face. Reimu rubbed her posterior lacrimal crest before replying, "Let's just say there is currently an incident that has gotten extremely out of hand."

Yukari soon arrived and handed Reimu the healing potion, who then started to hand it to Alice before promptly realizing she might not be able to hold it. Reimu the uncorks the bottle herself and puts it near her mouth before saying, "Here, drink up." Alice promptly does so, and soon takes her arm of Marisa before saying in a noticeably softer voice than usual, "Well I'm not completely healed, but I'm at least able to walk again."

Marisa had turned around at this point saying, "Well, I'm off to the Bamboo Forest, you guys can up with each other while I'm there" before flying off.

"I should probably tell you guys why she's heading there, shouldn't I?" Alice soon inquired. "Catching up indeed." Yukari retorted.


Marisa had soon found the shack Alice described, though it took quite a bit of scrounging. Alice wasn't kidding when she said it was hard to find, and she didn't even know the forest went this deep.

As soon as she landed, however, someone opened the door, just like what happened with Alice, and the exact person Alice described to boot. And that face did seem oddly familiar.

"Oh. Now what would an ordinary magician be doing at my house?" Xhi said with a confused expression on her face. "You must be this Xhi I've heard about." Xhi seemed somewhat surprised at that for a brief moment. Ah, so you've heard of me." She said with a sudden smile on her face. "I suppose that means introductions aren't going to be necessary." Marisa grinned. "I don't think I would have wanted introductions anyways."

As soon as that was stated, she sped forward on her broom, hoping to impale her opponet. Xhi immediately dodges the attempted strike, to which Marisa rounds and starts shooting a volley of magic missiles. Then Xhi does something Marisa didn't see coming. She makes a giant amount of blood suddenly appear from the ground on both sides of her, before having it converge and crystallizing it into a shield, blocking the entirety of Marisa's attack. 'So that's her ability. To manipulate blood. Rather creepy but I can work around that.' Marisa then flew above her opponent and threw down a couple of bottles, hoping to catch Xhi off guard with the magical energy contained inside. Xhi saw this coming however, and created three tiny balls of blood in response, then threw them up to the bottles. Marisa was confused by this course of action, that is until the balls hit the bottles, where they then exploded on contact, revealing them to be makeshift grenades. Unfortunately for Marisa, this combined with the magic in the bottles created a sizable smokescreen, which Xhi soon used as an oppurtunity. Within seconds, the woman was suddenly above Marisa and proceeded to execute a devastating butterfly kick on the back of her neck, spiking Marisa downwards at a diagonal angle, straight into the ground, cracking the earth with the force of her fall.

'Owie, Alice was right, that smarts.' She soon manages to get off the ground. 'I can barely stand after that.' Xhi soon landed a distance away, and started walking towards her. "Not this time!" Marisa suddenly shouted, and soon flew straight to Xhi's side a couple yards away, charging up her signature attack. "Master Spark!" As soon as she said that she charged right next to Xhi, before unleashing a massive rainbow-colored laser straight into her face.

Marisa soon collapsed, beaten and battered from that fight, surprisingly heavily scarred from that last attack despite her knowing it had no recoil problems, yet smiling. 'There's no way she could've stayed conscious after that.' At least, that's what she thought. But as soon as she looked forward, her heart seemed to stop. Her eyes widened. She had seen something that could very well terrify her for years to come. Standing right in front of her was Xhi, her opponent, who despite taking a Master Spark point blank, had zero visible injuries. 'Is she even human?!' Xhi soon looked down and said, "You lost this fight the moment you stepped to confront me. I suggest you leave while I'm giving you the chance." Marisa didn't need to hear anymore, she immediately got on her broom and flew away, fleeing the vicinity without another word.


Xhi looked up at the fleeing Marisa, who now had clear terror in her eyes, all her bravado burned away just like that. She smirked ominously before heading right back inside. She still had buisness to take care of, after all.


Reimu was pleasently surprised at Alice's side of the story. Not only had she managed to figure out how the "killer instinct" was spread, she also managed to figure out who did it. That was where her bruises came from, a confrontation with what was likely a very strong culprit, who's ability they couldn't quite pin at the moment. She was also surprised to hear that was where Marisa was going.

Though that still left many why's. Why was the culprit's house as deep in the Bamboo Forest as it was? Was it truly for privacy, or was there another factor they hadn't seen yet? Why was a human even causing an incident on this scale? It certainly couldn't have been on a whim like most youkai, so what was her reason. And why was Xhi even powerful enought to pull something like this off, anyways?

She couldn't ponder on that for long, however, as she soon heard a knock on the door. She went to go open it, and when she did, her breath caught again. This time, Marisa had come back with several burn marks and quite a bit of bruising, though unlike Alice, she was still able to walk. Still, the fact she had come back with injuries this bad and the incident hadn't been resolved yet could only add up to one thing. Marisa had lost. Badly.

Reimu could only say one thing in response to this. "I can already tell we are in for a much harder fight than we originally thought."


Chapter 1 set the stakes, Chapter 2 introduced the character, and Chapter 3 made her terrifying. On the note of her ability being introduced here, I think you can figure out what her sword is made of now. I do think this chapter was a bit rushed despite ultimately being longer than the other two so far, so if you don't like the content here I can fully understand that.