~Kasen's Great Battle: Defy the Crabs from Hell~

It was a normal day in Gensokyo.

"Reimu! Good golly, Reimu, you've gotta see this!" Marisa burst into the Hakurei Shrine, carrying a large reddish-brown crab in a bucket. It had four long, spindly legs, four rather shorter legs and a pair of heavy pincers.

Draped languidly over her kotatsu like a human doily, Reimu groaned and rubbed her eyes. "Marisa, I'm trying to sleep..."

(Like I said, it was a normal day in Gensokyo.)

"Come on, you can sleep later! Just look at this crab!" insisted Marisa, shoving the bucket right in Reimu's face.

Reimu yelped at the sudden close-up of its eyestalks and jagged mandibles. "G-get that away from me!" she screamed, leaping up and clinging to a couple of wooden beams in the ceiling.

Marisa burst out laughing. "Reimu, you've fought the goddess of Hell! You've tussled with Yuuka, Shinki, Sariel, even Eiki! You're not scared of one little crab?!"

"...No! Of course not!" said Reimu huffily. She dropped back down in a flouncy little heap, stood up and tried to look dignified. "You just surprised me. I have to be ready for action at any moment, so I sometimes overreact a little."

"Sure you do," said Marisa, smiling a knowing smile. "Thing is, though, you really need to see this crab from the back."

Marisa turned the bucket around. Reimu's jaw dropped.

"Oh, my gods! It's-! It's-! It's got a face! On its shell!"

A few round lumps on the back of the crab's shell formed a bulbous nose and a stout pair of cheeks. Some thick grooves in the shiny rust-brown carapace formed a curly, grimmacing mouth and a furious pair of eyebrows, with a couple of thin, angled whorls standing in for eyes.

"Cool, isn't it?" said Marisa proudly. "I found it curled up in my fishing boat. It'd nibbled clean through one of the oars!"

Reimu nodded numbly.

"I've never seen a crab like this before!" Marisa continued blithely. "I mean, there was the giant one that tried to eat Ichirin, but even she didn't have a big face on her back! D'you think it's some kind of a youkai? Or a mutation?!"

"Um..." Reimu was completely lost. "Since when did you have a fishing boat?"

Meanwhile, a friendly hermit who definitely wasn't an oni was taking a walk in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.

"Tra-la-la-la-la-la!" Kasen was singing purely on principle. "Good morning, trees! Good morning, birds! Good morning, fairies pretending to be dinosaurs!"

The fairies ceased their roaring and gave Kasen a friendly wave. Then the triceratops bit the allosaurus in the neck, prompting a spirited debate about historical accuracy.

"Ahhhh, I love the forest!" Kasen managed to inject a convincing squeak into her voice as she skipped down the lane. Komachi would never have bought it, of course. "The sun is shining, the birds are singing..."

"...Just like a roller coaster, victory in a stadium! Who can stop me tonight?! I'm hardwired! And who can something something?! I'm made of fire! You make me feel... INVINCIBLE!" shrieked Mystia, with no particular tune in mind.

"...Well, quite." Kasen cleared her throat. "La-la-la! It's a beautiful- oh, forget it." With all the nonsense going on around her, being twee just wasn't worth the effort.

It took Kasen a few minutes to get out of earshot. She roamed through the cool, quiet paths in companionable silence with herself, praying silently that no-one else would show up and ruin her good mood. It really was the perfect day for a walk, and nothing could disturb her so deep in the maze of bamboo.

"Help! Help! Get it off me!"

Kasen started. A woman was screaming in pain and fear somewhere down the track. "Um, hello? Are you all right?!"

"The crabs are attacking! The crabs are attacking!"

Kasen could only look on in amazement as Mokou came tearing down the shady forest lane, pursued by a veritable tide of beige and reddish-brown chitin. A hundred pincers snapped in the air, a thousand legs clicked and clattered on the compacted earth. Mokou's boots and trousers were stained yellowish-blue with the blood of crabs she'd stepped on, and every other bit of her was stained red.

"Good grief..." Kasen took a deep breath. "Dragon Sign: Rage of Skyfire!"

Having just shouted out the name of her attack, Kasen was forced to take another deep breath. After that, however, there was no stopping her. She spat out a blazing-hot ray of concentrated lightning and swept it over the ground in front of the crabs, sending smoke and scorched soil flying into the air. The crustacean army screeched to a halt behind the charred trench.

Safe beside Kasen, Mokou collapsed in a heap on the ground. "Gods, I'm glad you came along... And kind of pissed I didn't think of breathing fire, but there we are."

"Mokou, you... What in Susano-o's name is going on here?! Crabs don't belong in the forest!" cried Kasen.

"I don't know. I was just taking a paddle in the stream when some wise-guy crab came over and pinched my toe. I kicked it away and went somewhere else, then a bunch more came swarming out of the woods and tried to nip me to death." Mokou spoke very casually for someone who had just been chased by a ravening horde of pincer-wielding arthropods. "So I booked it, and I may have panicked a little."

"A little. I see." Kasen's face was completely inscrutable. "Why would the crabs want to kill you, though...? It would make sense if they wanted to avenge their comrade, but why would she attack you in the first place? Could it be..." Kasen frowned. "Mokou, is it possible that your feet stink?"

"Yeah, maybe..." Mokou unlaced one of her boots and took a sniff. "Oh, gods! Eeeurgh! Th-that's utterly rank!" Eyes watering, she put the boot back on as fast as she could. "Better than before I washed them, though..."

"I'm glad to hear it!" said Kasen earnestly. "We need to do something about these crabs, though. I'll go and talk to Reimu-"

"Hey, Kasen! Hey, Mokou!"

"Oh, Amaterasu, it's that bossy hermit..."

Marisa and Reimu were strolling along the path, the former holding up a wooden bucket and the latter looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else.

"Reimu, Marisa, what good timing! There's something strange going on with the crabs-" began Kasen.

"Forget that, check out this crab I found in my boat!" Marisa ran over to Kasen and shoved the bucket in her face.

"You... have a boat? Wait, the crab has a face on its shell?!" Kasen shook her head to settle her muddled thoughts. "That's... That is not good. Not good in the slightest. Marisa, where exactly-"

"Ohhhh, my days! L-look at all the crabs!" gasped Reimu, flinching as she caught sight of the crab legion. She shivered and edged closer to Marisa.

"Eh? There's more than one?" Marisa looked up from her bucket. Her jaw dropped. "HOLY SHIT CRABS FOR DAYS WHAT IN THE NAME OF-!"

"Let me see yours," Mokou interrupted. She leaned over the bucket. "Yeah, that's definitely a shell shaped like a- AAARGH!"

With a piercing battle cry, Marisa's captive crab pounced on Mokou's face and started pinching at everything it could grab hold of. Emboldened, the legion of crabs surged forwards over the rapidly-cooling trench.

Kasen grabbed the crab and wrenched it off Mokou's face, making her scream as her nose stretched to breaking point. Kasen threw the crab into the midst of its comrades with a clatter.

"Aaaaaugh..." groaned Mokou, wiping blood off her face.

"Wh-what do we do?!" wailed Reimu, wide-eyed with panic as the crabs advanced on her.

"Retreat to my place! The crabs'll never find us there!" ordered Kasen. She leapt into the air and soared away, only looking back when she was almost among the clouds to make sure her friends were following.

"Reimu, Mokou, Marisa... It probably won't be a surprise to you that those were no ordinary crabs."

The foursome had gathered in Kasen's airy living room for tea and fruit salad, with a little debriefing on the side.

"They are known as heikegani," Kasen went on. "The spirits of ancient warriors who perished on the sea, reincarnated as crabs who still carry the fury of their human forebears."

"Oh, you mean the angry faces?" said Marisa.

"Exactly."

Reimu chewed thoughtfully on a slice of pineapple. "I don't understand why the crabs would hate Mokou. She's never exactly positioned herself as an enemy of crabs."

"I am kind of a noblewoman, though," Mokou reminded them. "Maybe the samurai who turned into the heikegani were enemies of my dynasty..."

"Indeed we are!"

The four heroines gasped dramatically in perfect unison. They looked up in amazement as a tall, heavy-set woman kicked down the door and sauntered into the room, decked out in crimson samurai armour and claw-like gauntlets.

"I will never forget the day the Taira clan was humiliated by your snivelling Fujuwara ensemble. Hundreds of us, all dead, and for what? So you idiots could live to feud and murder another day?!"

"...Wait, hold on. The Taira? Weren't the Minamoto your rivals?" said Mokou.

The heikegani lady's face went red. "Sh-shut up! You don't know a thing about our history!"

"I was there, you idiot. I'm Fujiwara no Mokou, daughter of Fujiwara no Fuhito, probably his last descendent. I know who the Taira's arch enemy were. Are. Whatever."

"Well, you're my rival now, got it?! And that witch, with her mighty battleship! I must have it!" snapped the heikegani.

"Ba... Battleship?! I wish... What are you talking about?!" cried Marisa.

"You know perfectly well!" The heikegani turned her furious citrine eyes upon Marisa. "Have the Kirisame not given their name to a mighty steel ship, more than a thousand tonnes in weight and bristling with firework launchers stronger even than those built by the Chinese?!"

"It's... It's a fishing boat!" Marisa laughed nervously. "It's made out of wood! I borrowed it from a shopkeeper who isn't related to me and filed his name off the rudder, and it's not that heavy... I can even carry it..."

"Do not insult my intelligence, witch!" snapped the heikegani. "You may think you can lie to me, but by Ryujin, I will have your ship and make war upon the Minamoto!"

"Don't you mean the Fujiwaras?" said Mokou wryly.

"Y-yes! I mean no! I-I mean..." The heikegani smacked her helmet with a dull clang. "It's 'Fujiwara', not 'Fujiwaras'! We're Japanese! Our language doesn't have plurals!"

"Oh, yeah..." A distant look clouded Mokou's eyes as she remembered her past, when everyone spoke in a more formal register. She smiled. "My father was the best, wasn't he?"

The crab woman screamed. She slammed her claws into the table, cracking the wood and making the plates tremble. "No, he was NOT! He was a foul, treacherous Minamoto! I mean Fujiwara! Either way! He was filth! As are you! And you, with the boat!" She cast an appraising eye over Reimu and Kasen. "You two will be spared."

Kasen's eyes narrowed. "If you try to hurt my friends, you will not be the one doing the sparing."

"Um, what she said... Has anyone told you about the spell-card system?" asked Reimu.

"What? No, I..." The heikegani's brow furrowed. "That's strange. Somehow, I... I have always known. Attacks must be given meaning, mustn't they? And, um, people have aerial duels in which the most beautiful moves tend to be the strongest, where the goal is not to crush your opponent with superior force but to outwit her?"

Reimu nodded.

"Sounds like sissy Korean nonsense to me." The heikegani sneered and retrieved a nasty-looking bladed spear from her back. The irony of using an insult that implied being female was a form of weakness was lost on her. "Since she is so eager to face me, the hermit will die first. Defend yourself, coward! For the honour of the Taira!"

Kasen looked at Marisa. Marisa looked at Mokou. Mokou looked at Reimu.

"Suit yourself." Reimu sat back with a nonchalant shrug. "Spell-cards are completely optional, after all."

"That's right." Mokou nodded and tried to ignore the way Marisa was giggling. "Completely optional."

"They'd better be," sneered the heikegani.

"However..." Kasen clenched her bandaged fist. A bright pink glow surrounded her fingers, reflecting off the heikegani's blade. "It's your funeral!"

Kasen punched the heikegani. She staggered back with a strangled yelp. Again and again, Kasen smashed holes in her armour, then she grabbed her enemy's spear and bit it in half.

"W-wait! This isn't fair!" gasped the heikegani. Tears were streaming down her face. "You- you can't do this to me! I am Taira no Tokuko, the last of-"

"Shut up!" snapped Kasen, throwing her bodily through the door. She jumped up and down on the heikegani, then kicked her into a stout bush.

Kasen strode back into the house, dusting off her hands with an air of utmost satisfaction. "That wasn't too hard."

"It looked easy..." Marisa was awestruck. "Kasen, you sure know how to clobber!"

"Well, you know..." Kasen looked shifty for a brief moment, only to regain her composure in a flash. "We hermits aren't just pretty faces!"

Mokou nodded. "Your horns are pretty, too."

Kasen went white.

"So, about those other crabs..." Marisa changed the subject.

"You might want to lay low for a bit, Mokou," suggested Reimu. "Kasen, could you...?"

"She'll... She'll, um, need to behave herself," said Kasen weakly. "But yes. Of course she can stay oni. O-over! Over. She can stay over. Not oni. Of course! I mean, what are friends for?!" She laughed. It was painfully obvious that the laughter was fake. "Why, they're for... Taking care of one another... And stuff."

Reimu looked at Marisa, who shrugged.

"Is it all right if we stay too?" said Reimu. "Just to make sure nothing happens to Mokou."

"I suppose so."

"Great! We'll have that Tokuko lady round for tea tomorrow and talk things out," said Marisa excitedly. "Maybe get to the bottom of this battleship business! And have a proper duel with her!"

"Oh, now," began Kasen.

"Kasen, it cannot always be my shrine!" snapped Reimu. "Besides, I'm actually, um, out of tea at the moment."

"All right, then," sighed Kasen. "Just, for the love of Konohana-Sakuyahime, don't ever let Mokou take her boots off."

~Author's Note~

I liked this story a lot when I wrote it, but when it came time for editing months later, I found myself changing loads of lines and fleshing out the crab-woman's scene quite a bit. It should be quite an excellent read by now.

What Tokuko said about Marisa's ship does in fact have a basis in reality, since the Japanese Self-Defence Force have a battleship named Kirisame. Apparently, it's a Murasame-class destroyer. Those North Koreans had better not try anything, ze...