You Wake Up
"Urgh, my head…" Reimu groaned to herself. Well if you fell from the sky and landed on the ruins of your own shrine I'm pretty sure you would've done the same as well. "AAAAAAAHHHH!" echoed a couple voices in the sky, and just as Reimu was about to find the source of the screaming, her face was squished by the torsos of Marisa, Kogasa, and Nitori respectively. "Ow, my back… who the hell is dogpiling on top of me?!" Marisa yelled, before Kogasa replied back with "I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY!" "Urgh… what happened?" Nitori said, standing up, while her weight was piling atop Kogasa, whose torso was piling atop Marisa's, whose torso was piling atop Reimu's spine. "Hey, wait a minute, this doesn't look like Gensokyo at all, everything's on-" But before Nitori could finish her sentence, Reimu couldn't take all the pressure from the dogpiling anymore and burst into anger, toppling the tower of Gensokyans. "GRAAARGHHH!"
Everyone atop Reimu fell from the back of the irritated shrine maiden and fell on their bum. It hurts, obviously. "Owowow, do you really have to hurt our bums that hard, Reimu?" Marisa replied, displeased with Reimu's painful outburst. To which Reimu replied angrily, "Oh I'm sorry, DO YOU WANT TO BE SAT ON?!" Marisa then became as silent as a sloth. Y'know, sloths being slow reactors and all. "Anyway, I may not know where the hell we are now, certainly not OUR Gensokyo, but I do know the troublemaking youkai behind it all, so," Reimu then glared at Kogasa intensely, "Kogasa." She continued sternly. "Y-y-yes, Reimu?" the karakasa replied hesitantly. Of course she should, Reimu's not a friendly face when she's aggravated. "Care to give a good reason why you decided to get us into this mess?" "H-hey, for the record, if there's anyone to blame here, Nitori was the one who gave the idea to scare you two…" "Don't you dare pin this blame onto me!" a clearly aggravated Nitori yelled. She did not borrow her camo to a karakasa just for her to pull a Seija and make a run for it. (Pulling a Seija = Gensokyo speak for backstabbing, named after the infamous Seija Kijin, an amanojaku who started a youkai revolution with the inchling princess Sukuna Shinmyoumaru only to betray her trust as in reality she is only teaming up with her to gain control of her Miracle Mallet, a relic that can grant any miracle of desire, and allows its wielder to change in size.) "You were the one who came to me and asked if you could lend my kappa tech for your childish antics! And for the record, this all wouldn't have happened if that rat over there didn't take away my number 2 wrench!" Nitori pointed at Marisa, which angered her. "Hey, for the record, I was gonna actually return it once I'm done using it to fix my hakkero!" "Yeah sure, the kleptomaniac rat, RETURNING a "borrowed" item." In case it wasn't obvious, Marisa wasn't exactly a great (ahem) "borrower". "You got something to say to me, kappa, then say it to my hakkero!" "Hakkeros don't talk, you dumbass!" "They talk alright, talk in flames!"
The whole party bickered until something stamped its feet onto the ruined shrine, and a familiar voice called out from all the stamping. "Ah, another party of otherworldly trespassers." Said a soothing, calming voice. It was Mamizou Futatsuiwa, clad in pitch dark armor, riding atop some sort of abomination with an arachnid body, a cobra head, and the hooves of a horse. "Although were the sages really that desperate to save this ruin that they had to send such a disorganized band of heroes to return it back to its former glory?" Along her were a pack of smaller tanukis, riding moderately sized single-eyed tarantulas with a set of canines sticking out, as if they were plastered to the face.
"Mamizou?" Marisa exclaimed. "You look a bit… different. Have you…?" "Grown in elegance? Style? Grace? Power? Little old Mamizou's gotten more elegant since the last band of heroes, hasn't she?" the tanuki arrogantly replied, to which Marisa replied without missing a beat, "I was gonna say that you've gained quite a bit of weight, but yeah let's go with that." Reimu, Nitori and Kogasa tried hard not to laugh at the statement but ended up letting the laughter overtake them anyways, so it was of no use. A moderate fraction of the tanuki juniors also smirked at Marisa's statement about Mamizou's "weight gain" but were silenced quickly by her blood-shot glare. "Funny, veeery funny. Yep, laugh it off. Laugh at the face that'll be YOUR DEMISE." At which point, Marisa started laughing, and then after a brief fit of laughter replied "I'm sorry, you? Killing us?" "Yeah, we've beaten you before during that incident with the Taoists, we can sure as hell beat you up again" Reimu added to Marisa's statement. At that time, Nitori and Kogasa stopped laughing, as they've never faced the tanuki head-on before, but they do know the power she exudes, being an Extra Stage boss and all. With that knowledge in mind, they were worried of engaging in combat with the superboss of Ten Desires. "Uhh guys, I know you're both incident resolvers and all, b-but is it really that wise to take on Mamizou? She can be r-r-really scary when she's angry…" Kogasa hesitantly replied. "Yeah, and my power reader indicates readings of unearthly strength, which I guess same can be said for most of us youkai so that means nothing, but this is like, unearthly levels of unearthly power!" Nitori replied, with her power reader in tow. To which Marisa replied "C'mon guys, we've kicked her butt once and we can do it again, that dark armor is clearly just for show!" and Reimu added "Yeah, it may be a different universe and all, but in the end of the day, she's the same old Mamizou, if anything she should be scared of us." Reimu added. Mamizou, readying herself, heard the conversation and was visibly furious. "Hah, you think you're so great, thinking you can walk over me like I'm some rodent on the grasswalk. But just like the other heroes before you, that confidence will lead to your downfall! Prepare for battle!"
With battle declared, the heroes pulled out some of their spell cards to get rid of their collective enemy. "Dream Sign! Fantasy Seal!" "Star Sign! Satellite Illusion!" "Battle Machine : Fly! Sanpei Fight!" "Halo : Karakasa Surprising Flash!" And the foreign Mamizou was then blasted away, opening a gap that'll get them back home and then they were back at their Gensokyo at- just kidding, you really think I made this fic just to end it off so early? Yeah right. The spell cards ended up fizzling out because of the lack of required MP to perform it (MP is short for Magic Points) and Mamizou laughs as all that pent-up fear quickly dissolved from their lack of experience. "You absolute buffoon, did you really think those spells will work on little old me, without the proper amount of MP needed to activate it? Tsk, tsk. Rebellious braggarts like you ought to be punished!" With that, she pulled out a spell card of her own, yet it feels so foreign, so not the Mamizou that our heroes once knew. This wasn't new for Reimu and Marisa, but it was for Kogasa and Nitori, since they've never met any alternate counterparts of fellow Gensokyans before. "Nightflame : Guided Darkflame Pillar!" And from her arm launched a straight forward giant dark fireball which would transmogrify into a pillar of darkness, heavily bruising the heroes. "Pathetic. You're not even worth being personally finished off by me, the Great Mamizou Futatsuiwa!" After gloating to the severely bruised heroes, she asked for her tanuki underlings to bring the "Rookie Crusher", which was a garbage bag fueled with techno junk and what seemed to be a compound of green, mouldy stuff. "(cough) (cough) D-dammit… low on MP…? What the hell… does that mean?" Marisa exhaustedly replied, to which Nitori replied back with, "I think… this universe follows a different rule… in comparison to the one we're used to… I don't think we're in the same P2W cash-grab mobile RPG world anymore…" After the tanuki throwed the garbage bag in front of them and opened up its contents, Mamizou said to them, with the most evilly seductive of voices and alongside the most mischievous of grins…
"This should be enough to finish you off. And good riddance too, your arrogance has put you into one of my worst books. RISE, JUNIOR JUNK GOLEM, AND RAVAGE THESE PEASANTS UNDER YOUR FILTH!"
Mamizou enchanted the bag of trash, and it turned from a mixed bag of rotting things and scrapped metal into a junk-bodied cyborg, ready to strike the heroes with one final attack. Before she could witness it though, Mamizou and her tanuki brigade cackled evilly and disappeared into the shadows.
"So… this is how it ends, huh?" Marisa replied. "Marisa… if you have any final words… say them now, I don't think we'll last long enough to say them in our Gensokyo, so if you've got anything to spit out… well, best we do so now." Reimu continued after Marisa. "Alright fine… I love you… Reimu… I never got the chance to say it, but from the Incident at the Hakugyokurou… I've always loved you! I never bothered to say it out of fear that you may reject me, after all, the idea of a witch falling with a shrine maiden… simply preposterous… but since we're gonna die anyway… I may as well say it now… better late than never, am I right…? Heh heh…" Reimu silenced herself for a while and blushed a bit, before replying to her confession. "I love you too… Marisa…" "D'awww…" the two other girls said, pissing the couple off a bit but it won't matter. A pile of junk is gonna kill them anyway, and no one can hear them cry. The junk monster roared wildly as it was about to crush its prey to a tender human steak. "WRRRRAAAAARGHHHH!"
But then, came a distant yet familiar voice. It yelled out,
"Flashlight Barrier!"
A mysterious light shield appeared before our severely bruised heroes and shielded them from the junk monster's attack. "WRURGH?!" the Junior Junk Golem roared in visibly angry confusion. But before he could act again, the mystery voice chanted out a spell which ended his life for good.
"Ember Circle!"
The junk monster collapsed, and the heroes were left dumbstruck. Their lives were spared for another day. "Whew, you guys okay? Had I been a second later, you guys would've been mashed potatoes for that scrap monstrosity." The mysterious figure energetically replied. Strangely enough, after all those powerful spells, the mystery figure showed no traces of exhaustion.
Nitori, in complete shock and awe, was shocked at the sight of a complete stranger saving their butts from the ferocious fiend who was playing by a wildly separate rule than they were used to. However, at the same time it also triggered her fight or flight response. "Who are you, why did you save us and are you working with the enemy?"
The mysterious stranger replied, "Ah, my sincere apologies. I was so cooped up in saving you that I forgot to introduce myself. The name's Mari Kirisame, local white mage around the area, leader of the Borealis Rebellion, and guide to any new heroes chosen by the Sages to save our ruined world. I saved you all because… it's kinda my job really. I'm called a guide for a reason. And no, I am not in cahoots with that freak of nature Mamizou, in fact, I rival the Shadow Empress herself, why the heck would I be associates with her?"
"S-s-shadow Empress…?" Kogasa replied in hesitation, scared of the thought of a bigger badder fiend pulling the strings of the otherworldly Mamizou they just fought and got owned by earlier. "Look, we can talk this out once we make it to a safe house. That raccoon may be a small fry to me but if she sees you four alive, no doubt she'll use the full extent of her powers to rid of you properly. Come on, there's a rebel safe house just northwest from this junkpile, this shrine used to bring me precious memories, that's for sure, buuut for now it's best if we left it to its own somewhat of devices until the grounds are free of the Shadow Empress' presence." "Understood." Both Kogasa and Nitori replied, and they followed Mari to the northwest direction, heading towards a Borealis Rebel Base.
Marisa and Reimu had just gotten back on their feet, and before making haste to the base themselves, they had a bit of chat with each other to discuss their feelings. "So uhh… was all that you said about me really true…?" Reimu asked unconfidently, which was pretty out of character in regards to how cool and collected she usually is. Same can be said with Marisa, who replied with a shivery "Y-yeah… look, l-let's not think about it too much for now. How about after we get back to our Gensokyo we go on a bit of a uhh… date together, you know? I heard Geidontei's currently having a big summer sale, and no need to pay for our dinner, I'll buy both our meals free of charge! N-not saying you're poor or anything, just-"
But before she could finish, Reimu interrupted her proposal with a reply regarding the task at hand. "So that Mari girl said the base was northwest from here right?" "Y-yeah…" Marisa replied, hat down, as if to cover her red face. "Well what are we waiting for? Mamizou's gonna kill us if we don't hurry, and anything's better than this dreadful view of my shrine in tatters." "Race you there!" Marisa declared. But before she could launch on her broom…
"Marisa?"
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Regarding that proposal… I think I'd like that date at Geidontei after this is all over." Then she gives the witch a smooch in the lips before speeding out of there and into the rebel base as fast as she could.
"Hey, no fair, don't use our love life as a free head start!" Marisa hopped onto her broom and hurried as fast as she could to the rebel base before Reimu could make it there before her.
"Although… I appreciate that you're willing to take up my offer, ze…"
Author's Notes : Thanks for reading my Touhou fanfic, Maidens and Dragons! As my semester examinations are coming up, I'm afraid the story ends here for now, but rest assured, unlike most other Touhou fanfic writers, I plan to stay with this fanfic for as long as I could. Currently I've got 4 more main chapters and 2 interludes focusing on the other Gensokyans remaining in the L1 world, but that'll have to be put on hold I'm afraid. But once I'm done with my exams however, I'll be back to continuing this fanfic from where I left off! So don't drop this read yet, you may come to regret it! Or maybe not. If this fanfic isn't to your tastes then that's fine. All criticism is honestly accepted, and it really does not matter to me anyway, no matter the reception I will finish this fanfic. It'll be quite the long road, and I can't guarantee that I won't take any shortcuts to decline the read duration, but I promise I'll try my best! In the meantime though, why not go back a chapter and re-read the prologue? Not like you've got anything better to do here considering Chapter 2, 3 and Interlude 1 will take quite a while to even begin.
And yes, the title is a reference to Failboat's "You wake up" running gag.