Scarlet Mansion
"Y'know, that library back there had a lot of cool books I would've loved to get my hands on." Marisa lamented as she and Reimu left the Voile behind and traversed through another one of the mansion's corridors. "Shame that it all went up in flames."
"That was inevitable when you have a danmaku fight in an enclosed space." Reimu said as she flew to Marisa's right. "Like I pointed out back at the village: collateral damage."
"Yeah, yeah. I get it." Marisa responded. "A lotta heroes got into big trouble by causin' a lotta collateral damage, even if it was unavoidable-"
Both girls paused - in both speech and movement - as they took notice of their surroundings.
"Izzit me, or is this part of the mansion missin' something?" Marisa wondered.
"If you're talking about the security, then yes." Reimu acknowledged as she took her gohei out. "It's too quiet."
"Maybe that's cause we're gettin' close to the evil overlord who lives here?" Marisa offered an answer. "I mean, the decals in this hallway sure suggest it is the ca-"
Reimu suddenly shot her left hand out at the front of Marisa's face, surprising the witch as she came to a halt in midair.
On closer inspection, it seems that Reimu has caught an ornate silver knife that suddenly appeared barely an inch right in front of Marisa's face. The shrine maiden also caught in her left hand an identical-looking knife that appeared, also barely an inch, right in front of her own face.
"We're not alone." Reimu said as she let go of the ornate knives, which disappeared before touching the floor.
Marisa raised her magic wand. "So we've got ourselves an invisible person now?" She wondered as she scanned the corridor.
"No..." Reimu said as she carefully looked around. "When the knives...popped into existence just now, I can only feel the enemy's presence for a split second. Whatever abilities they have, invisibility isn't one of th-" She paused as her intuition suddenly went off like it did back at the fight against Meiling. Her subconscious practically screamed at her to get down, which her body did without any conscious input. "Get down!" Reimu, with conscious input, yelled at Marisa as she got down.
Marisa didn't even question it, as she dispelled the flight magic on her broomstick and intentionally crash-landed onto the hard marble floor.
Both girls looked up just in time to see a wall of the same ornate knives flying past where they had been a moment ago. The knives disappeared all at once after flying past their intended targets.
"What kind of ability is that?!" Marisa exclaimed while nursing her forehead for hitting the floor too hard. "We almost became human pincushions!"
"I don't know..." Reimu said as she got up and summoned the Ying-Yang Orb. "But I know that fighting them won't be easy..."
Reimu's intuition went off again, as she then lunged forward to dodge a rain of knives that suddenly appeared.
Marisa noticed the knives just in time to roll out of the way.
The knives, with their targets having got out of the way, clattered against the marble floor. Each of the knives quickly disappeared almost immediately afterwards.
"No shit." Marisa cursed as she got up. "We're dealin' with 'nother teleporter like that sadistic demon maid from Makai."
"I hope not..." Reimu said with a shudder, recalling everything that had happened during the fight against Yumeko last year.
"Me too." Marisa said, also with a shudder. "One excruciating torture session is more than enough f-"
Marisa was interrupted when a knife suddenly appeared and drove itself into her chest. Shocked expression hung on the witch's face as she moved her free hand toward the knife.
Reimu screamed as she tried to run over to Marisa to help her. But then her intuition went off as her arms raised themselves to catch the knife-wielding hand of a person who suddenly popped into existence, with the tip of the knife practically touching the skin on her forehead.
As the shrine maiden mustered all her arm strength into keeping the knife from going any further, she found herself staring into the pair of bright red eyes the enemy has.
She then raised her left leg in an attempt to kick the enemy in the abdomen, only for the enemy to vanish before her feet can connect, causing her to trip forward.
Reimu threw her arms forward to break her fall and avoid face-planting into the floor, only for the latter to happen anyway as a foot pressed itself on her back, forcing her to lie flat against the floor.
Reimu turned her head just enough to see out of the corner of her eyes the enemy putting a knife against her neck.
"Perhaps you and your friend will be the first two people of this land to try and fail a raid on Lady Scarlet's mansion." The enemy said with an icy cold tone.
Perfect Elegance
Izayoi Sakuya
"Let I, Izayoi Sakuya, be a lesson on why it is a mistake." The enemy, now identified as Sakuya, said as she raised her knife-wielding hand up, ready to stab the knife into Reimu.
Sakuya's execution of Reimu was interrupted as she paused to stare at a potion vial that Marisa dropped on the floor. Sakuya didn't know what the potion vial is, so she just looked at it in confusion...
But Reimu did, so she closed her eyes right before it went off in a blinding flash.
The blinding flash broke Sakuya's concentration and caused her to reel back.
Reimu took this opportunity to shoot Sakuya several times with danmaku before finishing her off by launching the Ying-Yang Orb straight at her face.
Surprisingly, that wasn't enough to knock Sakuya out cold, but it did hurt her enough to force her to withdraw, as she vanished into thin air once again.
With Sakuya out of the way, Reimu quickly got up and went to Marisa.
"Please tell me you are all right!" Reimu said worriedly as she removed the knife from Marisa...
...To find that it never even reached Marisa's skin, as the witch apparently wore a piece of armor under her clothes.
"Chillax, I'm perfectly fine!" Marisa announced as she stood up, no worse for the wear. "That did hurt a little bit, though."
Reimu is now less worried and more confused. She knows why Marisa pretended to be hurt, but not where the armor came from. "Marisa, where did you..."
"I took a detour before we met at the rice fields." Marisa casually answered.
Reimu raised her eyebrows. "What detour?"
...
Gensokyo Police Force head office; Touhou-ri Village
"Chief Sonozika..." A police constable reported to Kotohime. "We've had a break-in in the armory."
Kotohime looked up from the investigation reports filed during her predecessor's tenure as police chief that she was just going through. "Please tell me that the bazookas and Gatling guns are all still there..." She hoped.
"All of them are still accounted for." The constable replied. "It was a piece of body armor that went missing."
...
Scarlet Mansion
"Let's just say the GPF ain't gonna be happy to see me when we get back..." Marisa explained with a shrug.
Reimu rolled her eyes in response.
"In any case," She changed the topic. "the enemy we fought just now - Izayoi Sakuya - is a very tough one, and my attacks just now didn't knock her out. So she might come back any moment now..."
Got hit by a case of writer's block for this fic (but strangely enough not for Luna Nova: School For Witches). So here's a boss preview for this incarnation of Sakuya. Pads not included.
And that's it, I have nothing else to say in the Afterwords this time. So...
"And that, as they say, is that..."
Afterwords end here...
