Uh, edit for the last chapter. Reimu was too lazy to go, so it is Marisa who's going with Teddy. I better start doing stuff with the weather now. Oh, and has everybody noticed that the clouds around Reimu's area has disappeared since the ripping to shreds of that youkai? Is it a coincident? I don't know. Conspiracy theories, plz?
WHOOSH! An ice-studded branch passed nearby, dangerously close to the two passengers of Marisa's Magical Broom Express.
Marisa was thinking while flying with Teddy on the broom to the Human Village, "Well, he's a not-so-bad guy. He certainly does help, and possibly of his own accord. But I wonder why he was wandering around like that? People don't normally do that. OOPS! Almost flew into that branch there! Better pay attention next time."
Teddy was looking out at the landscape. Well, the landscape after the weather patterns had dropped their loads of unnatural precipitation. For instance, they were flying above a forest that had ice statues on top of the branches, as well as more ice statues falling down. But when the statues seeming hit the ground, they seemed to melt into the layer of statues that already built up on the ground, not to mention the strange, dark misty shapes that seemed to patrol the grounds.
"Thank goodness that Jetless Corporations manufactures such strong umbrellas," he thought to himself. The umbrella had taken hits from hundreds of icy statues, bounced off thousands of ice shards, absorbed several bolts of lightning, sent several incoming fairies bounding off as if hit-and-run accidents had occurred (the fairies weren't lucky. They got smashed into paper-thin papers and slid off the umbrella's water-proof and slick surface.), deflected ice knives that spun around at ridiculous rotational speeds, and generally lasted through the entire ordeal with the two sheltered underneath taking minimal damage.
Marisa saw a region without any bad weather conditions except soft, light, and magically-conjured snow. She flew over it.
WHAM! Marisa's Magical Broom Express smacked into an ice wall that suddenly rose out of nowhere and was derailed.
"ACK!" the two yelped as they were propelled off of the broom by the impact. However, the broom remained lodged in the ice wall, which wasn't an ice wall at all but a statue, while the umbrella was sent drifting a small distance away.
The two tumbled into the snow. Teddy was fortunate to fall onto his back into the snow. Marisa, however, was less unfortunate. She ended up being jammed headfirst into the snow by the impact.
"Hey, Red-and-White! Get up and fight me! Eye am the strongest, and I demand a rematch!"
"Red-and-White" struggled valiantly to free her upper torso from being stuck in the snow, while muffled yelling came from her.
Teddy was debating whether he should help Marisa or not. "I could help free her by pulling on her feet… but I'm afraid of, well, suddenly being a pervert. And I don't want to be one, and I don't want to be tempted! But Marisa doesn't seem to be able to get out of this snow on her own… Argh! What should I do?" His ethics and friend-helpful nature conflicted with each other. "Ugh. I'll just close my eyes."
Cirno watched as the human with the messy hair angled his head with the horizons. She watched him adopt a pose kind of like a zombie, arms outstretched. She wondered what was this human trying to do.
Teddy reached to where Marisa was at, grabbed her feet, and shut both eyes. "Ok… Here I go. One, two, three, PULL!"
POP! Marisa was freed from her snowy prison, while Teddy lost his balance when he pulled Marisa.
"Ouff!" he grunted as Marisa awkwardly fell onto him. "Oh crap. Now this was what I was afraid of." Imaginary voices were jeering in his head, singing, "AWKWARD, AWKWARD! YOU LOVE THIS, DON"T YOU, HUH? DON'T DENY IT!"
…
While struggling in the snow to get free, Marisa was thinking, "Ouch. Aww, I'm stuck headfirst in the snow." She attempted to push the snow with her hands to push herself out, except the snow got easily crushed. She felt two soft, warm hands grab her ankles. They paused, and then suddenly pulled. She felt the snow slip by, and popped out, while landing on the now-unbalanced Teddy.
"Huh, so that solves the problem, ze," she said out loud. She realized that she was on something warm.
"Uh, Marisa? Can you get off of me?"
"Huh? Teddy?" she looked, and realize, somehow, that she was on top of Teddy's chest. "Oh, right." She quickly got off before anybody, like that annoying reporter Aya, could take a picture. Speaking of Aya, Marisa thought to herself as she got up and brushed the snow off of Reimu's miko outfit, where is she now? Maybe she's coped up in her house because of the weather. She looked around, and saw Cirno. Staring.
"Huh? Black-and-White?"
"Yes, Cirno, it's me, Marisa."
"B-but, Black-and-w-White—" she spluttered.
"Long story, Cirno."
"What happened, Black-and-White? Why are you wearing Red-and-White's clothes?" Cirno had a really puzzled look on her face. She thought she saw Reimu, but saw Marisa instead. In Reimu's clothes.
"How 'bout this, ze. I borrowed Reimu's clothes."
Cirno's puzzled look slowly vanished while she contemplated this. "So you killed her? But Eye wanted to kill her! That's no fair!" she complained.
"Uh, Cirno? Reimu's not dead."
"I wanted to—oh wait, she isn't? Then how did you get her clothes? Didn't she wear them?" Cirno inquired.
"Da~, ze, do I have to explain this?" Marisa flailed her hands around in frustration. She did not like how Cirno's stupidity is making the fairy believe that she killed Reimu.
"Uh, can somebody enlighten me on what's going on?" Teddy suddenly interrupted their talking.
"Who's that?" asked Cirno, and pointed her small finger at Teddy.
"His name is Teddy, and he is a…" Marisa debated calling him a friend right now. Ah well, she decided, he seems nice enough to be a good person. "…friend," she finished.
"Is he strong? Eye can prove that Eye'm stronger than him!"
"Well, he doesn't exactly know how to shoot danmaku."
"Oh." Cirno seemed disappointed. Then she stared in disbelief. "I thought everybody knew how to shoot danmaku."
"Well, not everybody," answered Teddy. "Although I need to learn how to."
"Fight me, then. Eye'm stronger than you, and I can prove it," boasted Cirno.
"Fine, fine." Teddy answered. He stared at the child-like ice fairy, and then checked whether his backpack was on his shoulders. Yes, it was.
"Eye will start," spoke Cirno. To test Teddy, she shot a quick pattern of icy danmaku at him. They took the form of omnidirectional snowflakes.
Teddy carefully watched the danmaku. "Hmm… right, left, right." He leaned to the right, then the left, and then back to the right, allowing the danmaku to pass by. He felt one nearly touch his ear. "Wow! That's cold!" he muttered, reaching into his backpack. He pulled out a cylindrical metal tube that had a handle on it and a trigger. Just like a bazooka.
"Eh? What is that?" asked a clueless Cirno. She watched as Teddy pointed it at her. He pressed the trigger.
*Click, click, click*
"Darn. I forgot to add something," he muttered. Cirno became interested in what Teddy was doing, and dropped the spell card she had in her hand.
Teddy started rummaging around in his backpack. He still couldn't find what he wanted, so he placed his head in there as well. Marisa realized that that backpack was no ordinary one: why would a person be able to fit his/her head into it, as well as that cylinder?
"Here we go!" announced Teddy, smiling. He pulled out a stick that had a bottle attached to it.
Flashback
"Eh?" Marisa thought as she flew over a clearing. "Ah, there he is!" She saw Teddy handling a strange object. "I wonder about what it does, ze," Marisa wondered. "Maybe I can steal it!" She flew to where Teddy was at, but saw him take out a smaller twig that somehow burst into flames. She watched as Teddy held the fire-twig to the thing on the stick.
Fzzz! The string lit on fire, and sparked.
WHOOSH! The rocket flew towards her.
"Oh, Craaaa…"
End of flashback
"Teddy, is that the thing that you launched at me before, ze?"
"Uh huh." He loaded it into the cylinder.
Marisa quickly crept to where his backpack was. She picked it up, and looked into it. She saw nothing but darkness.
"Hmm…" she wondered to herself. She turned it upside-down and started shaking it.
*Fwump*
*CLATTER CLATTER*
Bottle rockets began to fall out of the backpack. In huge numbers.
"Uh, Marisa? What are you doing with my backpack?"
"Eye'm the strongest, and Eye demand an explanation, Black-white!"
She replied, "Hmm? Oh, I'm just looking if you have anything worthwhile to borrow." She flipped it right-side up. "Meh, ze. Don't you have anything else in there than those whatchamacallits?"
By now, there was a rather large pile of bottle rockets. Teddy cautiously stepped away from it.
"Well, I do." He motioned for Marisa to come to him with the backpack. Marisa walked/shuffled through the snow over to him.
"Give me my backpack back, Marisa."
"Why?" she replied.
"Well, I need to get something from it."
Marisa looked at him, then at the backpack, and then back at him. She grudgingly gave it to Teddy, but then took his cylinder.
"Hey! Cirno! I got something for you!"
"What is it?" asked the Strongest.
Teddy pulled out a small box. He opened it and pulled out a match. He tossed the box at Cirno, and she caught it.
"Take one of those sticks in there," he motioned to the match he had, "and strike it against the box."
"You mean like this?" Cirno pulled out one of the matches, and then started bashing the box with it. The box, which was wood, stubbornly remained intact.
"No, no," replied Teddy. He pulled out another match box. "Like this." He smoothly put the match head against the rough red area of the box. "You put the match head—"
"What's a match head, mister?"
"Uh, the red part of the stick. See the clump?"
"Yeah, Eye do."
"Put it against the rough red part of the box." Cirno did.
"And now," he said, "strike the head against the box, like this." He jerked the match against the sandpaper, and the head burst into fire.
"Cool! Eye wanna do that!"
"Of course you can. Don't you have a box, too?"
"Oh. Right."
Cirno attempted to replicate Teddy's actions, but failed. She also failed to notice that she was standing on the pile of rockets, because she wanted to investigate them.
Marisa could see where this is going. "Uh, Teddy? Shouldn't we be going to the Human Village now?"
"Oh, right. I forgot about that. So long, uh, what's your name?"
"My name's Cirno, the strongest fairy ever! And what's your name, mister? You do seem nice."
"I'm sure you're the strongest, and my name's Teddy," replied Teddy, and gave her a patronizing smile, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Marisa, however, didn't hear the sarcasm, because she was turned around to tug her broom from the ice statue. Of Cirno. She grabbed the umbrella, too.
"Yay! I done it!" squealed Cirno with delight. She had caused a match to catch on fire. She dropped it, pulled out another match, and repeated the process.
"Umm, wouldn't that be a little too dangerous?" Teddy said to Marisa.
"Don't worry, ze. She's an ice fairy, and fairies die and resurrect all of the time."
"Uhh, but shouldn't I stop her from lighting up the rocket pile?"
"What's a rocket, ze? Oh, those things." She looked at him, and grinned from ear to ear. "Let's get out of here while we can, ze."
"Eh? Uh oh, I don't like that look on your face—ack!" He was looking suspiciously at her when she jerked him by his collar and force him to sit on her broom. She got on, and WHOOSH! They were off again.
Cirno continued to ooh and ahh at the matches.
Marisa stopped the broom in midair, and teddy asked, "Why are we stopping?"
"Heeheehee…" Marisa laughed maliciously, and shot a laser towards the rocket pile.
Whoosh! A bunch of the rockets lit on fire.
Teddy stared at her with disbelief. "Did you just spell her doo—"
"Lalalala, I can't hear you, ze!" SWOOSH! Marisa's Magical Broom Express shot off again.
Teddy did a facepalm. Unfortunately, since he couldn't use his hand to facepalm, because he didn't want to drop again (safety precautions), he facepalmed on Marisa's shoulder.
"Eh? What are you doing, ze?"
"Facepalming. Don't do that again, please."
"I can't promise that, ze!~"
In the distance, they heard a lot of banging noises, and a shrill fairy voice screaming, "AAHHHH! EYE DON'T LIKE THIS!"
…
Cirno ran around like crazy in the midst of the colorful explosions of sparks and light. "HELP! DAI! HELP ME!" She ran/tumbled away from the rocket pile.
"Oww. That was mean. Hmph," she thought. She, of course, didn't look at herself, and would've have seen that she wasn't injured in anyway. Except for her pride.
She waved her fist at the distant Broom Express. "Eye'm the strongest, and you've just got yourself another rival, Black-white and—"
"CIRNO-CHAN!" screamed a worried Daiyousei as she tackled Cirno. "Are you're okay?"
"Of course I'm okay. Eye'm the strongest, after all!"
Unknowing to the two, a pair of red eyes glowed from the snow, and a misty cloud started to drift towards them.
…
BWOOSH!
Two clouds of smoke drifted up into the sky.
WHAM! The Cirno statue fell.
…
"Huh? Where'd the Human Village go, ze?" Marisa was very confused. She saw the Human Village on her way to Reimu's shrine, but didn't see it this time around.
"Don't ask me. I have no idea," replied Teddy. He scanned the misty, frosted ground. A dark shape darted amongst the mist. He tugged Marisa's detached sleeve nervously, and whispered, "I saw something."
"Well, I saw something too, ze." She reached for her mini-hakkero. In front of her stood a misty figure.
"Uh, why isn't there any weather of any kind right now? There's frost on the ground, but I don't see any—"
"Teddy," whispered Marisa in a serious, deadpan voice. "Hide behind that rock over there, to your left."
Teddy could tell that it was no laughing matter right then and there. If Marisa suddenly abandoned her bright, carefree voice, then something must be off.
"Ma'am, yes Ma'am," he whispered back and stealthily crept on his tennis shoes across the crunchy, frozen crystals littering the ground. "Well, that sure wasn't stealthy."
"Well, we haven't met yet, ze. Who are you?" asked Marisa in her cheerful voice once again, but Teddy could tell that there was some nervousness hidden under it.
THA-DUMP!
"Gack! My head!" groaned Teddy. A skull-splitting headache just appeared. He felt as if somebody was pounding on his head with a hammer and adding dull shocks of electricity. Worst yet, he felt that the rest of his body was numb, and that his vision started to swim with chains. "Chains? OW!" he wondered to himself before a large, slow snowball with a hidden rock in it smacked into his head, giving him a concussion. He tumbled onto the spiky, permafrost ground, and a gash the length of a thumb opened on the back of his head.
THUD!
Marisa's cold, unmoving body, encased in a swirling cloud of mist, or rather sharp, crystallized water fragments that spun around her, slid onto the ground next to Teddy.
*tak, tak, tak* The mini-hakkero skidded across the ice.
The misty figures walked around the two, and promptly left.
*Ka-chak!* Teddy, despite his vision swimming with strange, different-colored and shaped chains, managed to take out his rocket canister and loaded it. He pointed it into the air, and fired off a flare rocket.
*Psssssssttt… ZWOOSH!* The rocket flew off.
*Clank* The rocket canister fell out of Teddy's hands and rolled away.
"M...Mari…sa…d-damn, th-this won't d-do," he muttered, and tried crawling towards the downed witch. Unfortunately, he blacked out before he reached her.
…
"Whoa… so many chains," Teddy thought to himself. He was now in the middle of a giant void of emptiness. Everywhere was dark and filled with shadows, yet seemed to be illuminated. A bright-blue chain hurtled past seemingly dragged by with a rectangular box attached to its front end, along with another chain that had golden wing ornaments attached to certain links. He turned around.
SCREECH!
"Ow," he muttered to himself, and winced at the sounds of metal on metal. Blood started dripping out of his… ears? He looked at the source of this painfully-annoying sound, and saw a shackle that was floating next to him. It wasn't moving.
This particular chain piqued his interest. It had a glass orb in its center, and the glass orb held a bright spark of light, surrounded by darkness. The spark of light continuously jumped around inside orb, as if it was an energetic, living creature. Yet he saw it slowly slow down, and looked at the rest of the chain. The links of the chain was painfully twisted, scratched, gashed. The links at the end looked very worn out, as if a cat with very sharp claws started tearing into the links themselves, instead of string. Other links were deformed, lumps poking out here and there, spikes grating against spikes. The entirety of the chain was covered with a light-blue frost, and as he watched, the metal started to grow cold-blue, as if being chilled to a low temperature. He was afraid if it would shatter into millions of tiny bits if he touched it. He saw that one link was very damaged. It was connecting the orb to the other links by only a little shred of metal, a delicate wire. As he watched, the wire continued to get thinner and thinner.
"I should do at least something to stop this chain from breaking," he thought to himself. He wondered how on earth, even though there was no earth here, he was supposed to fix it. He stared at the chain, and imagined it slowly piecing itself back together. He imagined tiny metal shards growing out of nowhere in the thin air, flying to the torn segments, becoming part of the chain again. He imagined the icy-blue of the surface glowing red, and then orange. He imagined and imagined and imagined.
FLASH!
"Huh?" He looked at the resulting flash of light that appeared in front of him. Many tiny fragments of light began to coalesce into a rectangular, flat… card? The card glowed, and disappeared, bringing this void down into shadows. The chains disappeared, and he saw his vision grow darker and darker.
…
*Kick*
"Did you see something, Shanghai?"
Touhou and its characters belong to ZUN. Teddy belongs to me. Bottle rockets, rocket cylinder, and the backpack belongs to the bag of tech I have on hand.