東方要塞 ~ The Western Impact
Touhou Yousai ~ The Western Impact
Touhou Project / Team Fortress 2 crossover fanfiction by FinnOtaku
I don't own the games that are being used as the base of this work of fiction. Touhou Project is owned by Team Shanghai Alice and Team Fortress 2 is owned by Valve.
Chapter 5: Meet the Fairy
"Stay with me, doctor", Heavy said as the two were making their way deeper into the enemy territory. "I do not like this..."
"Indeed, vere iz everyone? Usually ve'd be at each other's throats by nov..." Medic concurred as he kept charging Heavy with his Medigun, checking up on the device's übermeter every now and then.
They had smoothly reached to the second part of the facility, but instead of the excitement they had upon entering the facility, the mood had slowly decreased to a mild confusion, and now insidiously shifting towards a nerve-wracking uncertainty. As their usual facility infiltration was completely missing the part, where they're supposed to try and suppress the opposing force, they were both beginning to doubt their Spy's quality of deduction.
But as the two of them had crossed a bridge over the small pond, furiously trying to catch any sign of enemy activity...
"Why the hell does every ammo crate have two rockets sticking out of 'em?" the two of them suddenly heard, coming from ahead. "I don't get it..."
Wait, that voice!
Both of them slowly got to a wooden fence that cut the view to the clearing ahead, and they cautiously took a quick peek to the other side.
And it was just as Heavy had thought: it was the RED Scout, the same who had smashed his head in earlier that day, seemingly trying to find ammo from a box with a three-bullet symbol on it. As it implied that the man was out of ammunition, Heavy seemed to find this a perfect time to make the Scout pay for his earlier actions. He took a good grip on his minigun, with a huge grin on his face.
But as Heavy turned around, planning to tell the Medic his plan, he found the doctor eagerly loading syringes in his improvised medical gun, with a grin even wider than his own.
"Doctor, what are you doing?" Heavy asked cautiously, as the Medic had finished loading his syringe gun.
"Mwhahaha... Just a moment, Kamerad", Medic chuckled with a mad grin on his face, as he took another peek behind the fence, "I didn't get a chanze to try out my nev mixture of anesthetics today, and now I have zis perfect immobile target..."
"Why's everything all jumbled up with these boxes, dammit!" Scout shout out, as he was digging deeper into the wooden ammo crate, tossing some of it's contents around him in the process.
As Medic had confirmed that his target was too busy with it's task at hand, the doctor slowly moved out of the cover, and quietly crouched to take better aim.
But the more he tried to aim, the more his mind was going ahead of itself, already imagining the cries of agony from this young caucasian male. As a result, his arms became quite wobbly, but that didn't seem to bother the doctor much, or he simply failed to notice.
...
PoPoPow! Pow! Pow!
The medical darts gently flew upward, before reaching the peak of their trajectory, and beginning to descend towards the general direction of the unsuspecting Scout. For a moment, it actually seemed like that the darts were going to hit their target, until...
ToToTock! Tock! Tock!
...Tock?
"...Doctor, do baby men say tock when they get hurt?"
"Uuh, hang on... Tock, tock, tock... No, not that I knov."
The two of them tried to locate the landing spot, scoping every wooden surface around the Scout that could've made that sound. But as the results seemed to get fruitless, their eyes began to wander all over the place, but ironically enough, it was only then they finally caught the sight they were looking for.
All of the darts had hit the ammo box, the one the Scout was searching through, right on the middlest bullet of the crate's logo. On any other occasion this would've been quite an achievement, but now it just made the Medic extremely mad, as he was furiously biting his lower lip, in attempt to suppress his frustration.
"Ahaa! Found you, you bastard!" the Scout suddenly exclaimed, but after their initial shock, Heavy and Medic quickly realized that he had just found some bullets. Or by the looks of it, a bullet.
"...Wait, I can't do a damn with only one of these! Uuugh, let's see if we can find you some frie... Huh? W-Wait, what the hell?!"
"...Uuh, doctor, I don't think it's meant to do that", Heavy whispered, as he stared how the wooden box - the one hit by the darts - was slowly turning green, and rotting away in the Scout's hands.
The Heavy didn't seem to be the only one with the thought, as Medic quickly took one of the syringes out of the medical gun, and inspected it closely, trying to make out what he had written on the small label.
"...Gah, insect repellent?! Verdammt noch mal!" Medic let out, as he began to stuff the syringes back to his pocket, while mumbling... something that Heavy assumed to be German swearing.
But before Heavy could even wonder about this "insect repellent"...
"Aaah!" Scout shouted, and as Heavy and Medic turned their eyes back to him, they quickly realized that their gaze was met with his.
Chert, he noticed us! Heavy thought.
"Wh-What the hell are you doing here?! Y-You can't be here! You can't!"
As Heavy realized how the situation would go down from now on, he tried to go for a pre-emptive strike, before the man in front of them would make a run for it.
"Time to hide, you coward!" Heavy yelled, as his minigun began to spin. But Heavy quickly came to realize his bad choice of words, as they actually seemed to encourage the man to do as told.
By the time the minigun began to spit out it's custom made bullets, the Scout was already speeding off to find a shelter. Heavy tried to aim his fire towards the man, but the attempt was quickly flattened by a wooden wall, cutting the visual on the Scout.
"Hrm, I will find you, little man..." Heavy mumbled, as he ceased his minigun for a moment. "Come along now, doctor... Doctor?"
But the Medic's attention was still on the syringe gun, as he now seemed to have found the right set of syringes. He also seemed to be more anxious to experiment his new compounds now, as the grin on his face was beginning to resemble to that of a madman... Not that it was unusual, though.
"Now, doctor! You can try that later!" Heavy shouted, as he took off to find the Scout. As he was being left behind, the Medic's attention was forcefully turned back to the situation at hand. He soon had no choice but to go after the Heavy, reluctantly taking out his Medigun.
Leave the facility, get to the mansion, gather some intel. That's what the Spy had in mind for his solo expedition, but there was one major flaw he had overlooked right from the phase one: his exit.
His team's earlier "visits" to the site had been provided by an abandoned mine tunnel, leading to a mine shaft near the rocket launch site. So without second thoughts, he started heading for the tunnel, in hopes that the shaft would somehow provide an exit.
The good news were that upon arriving, he found that the strange act of cutting and pasting had actually affected the mine shaft as well. But the bad news was the way he had figured it out: the shaft, along with the small canyon outside, had flooded with water. And it was then the Spy realized that the tunnel within was facing right towards the lake outside the fence.
Not wanting to get his suit wet, he decided to head back towards the rocket launch site.
"Let's see, if I'd be a red-suited hard hat wearing Texan and wanted to go outside the facility, where would I go?" Spy thought out loud as he was making his way back to the center of the facility, smoking some more tobacco while at it. "I would start by the rocket site, but I didn't see any kind of an exit while checking the control rooms... I could go and check out every single door I can find, but that would take way too much time. So the most foolproof plan would be..."
The Spy stopped by the metal fence, the one that held the sight of the mysterious red mansion on the other side. He can't go under it, he can't go over it, he doesn't know how to get around it, so that leaves only one choice. One based heavily on his knife.
"Ugh... Sacré bleu... One of these days, it seems..." Spy said as he took out his butterfly knife, starting to cut down the fence.
Uuuuuh... I wonder if this was a good idea after all...
"Hehee, I can't wait to see what's waiting for us! This'll be a small step for a fairy, but a huge step for the fairy-kind! ...Hee, you like it, Rumia? It's kinda like in that one book."
"Mhm..."
Even though I did agree on this, what if there are some really strong beasts waiting for us where we're going?
"What do you think we'll find? Some hidden treasure? Some secret Mysti eel stash?! Aaaaaaaw, I'm so excited!"
"Mhm..."
Even with our forces combined, we wouldn't stand a chance if there is even one as strong as that Hakurei maiden...
"...Hey Rumia, how many fingers do I have?"
"Mhm... Eh? Sorry, what did you sa-?" Rumia finally snapped out of her thoughts, to the sight of a sour-faced ice fairy, holding up nine of her fingers.
"Rumia, you were really spacing out just now..."
"I-Is that so...?" Rumia said, trying to pretend that that wasn't the case, with poor success.
"What is it, Rumia? You're not one to space out that bad..." Cirno said with a troubled look on her face. After a while, she took a hold of Rumia's hands. "Come on, you can tell me. What's on your mind?"
A little blush spread on the face of the Youkai of the Dusk.
W-Why does it always feel so embarrassing when she does that?! Rumia thought to herself, trying her best not to seem too flustered.
"Uum... Well, I was just thinking that..." Rumia was about to say, when Cirno's expression suddenly went serious, as she furiously began to look around the woods.
"Hm? Cirno, what's wro-?"
"Shh, did you hear that?" Cirno hushed, as her hand began to emit a light-blue glow, and the air slowly began to cool down around her.
Unsure of the fairy's sudden change of attitude, but mostly because of the possibility of an otherworldly assault, Rumia prepared herself for the worst, as the shadows cast on her sleeves began to turn darker and darker, until the darkness began to leak out of her clothes like smoke.
When the fairy finally had locked her attention to one of the nearby bushes, Rumia took her defensive position, trying to pick any sign of the thing that had captured the fairy's keen attention...
...
Ribbit...
Eh?
Ribbit... Ribbit...
Wait, isn't that...?
"It's a frog!" Cirno yelled in excitement as she leapt into the bushes, throwing her ice spells around attempting to capture the specimen in question.
"Wha-? Don't scare me like that, you dummy!" Rumia yelled after the fairy, with the mixed feelings of relief and slight anger. But her words went seemingly unheard, as Cirno ventured deeper into the woods.
Geez, how can she be so carefree at a time like this? Rumia thought to herself. ...Though, that determination really is something, even at a time like this.
...Hmm, I wonder if myPokelife would be as eventful ifPokeit wasn't for that RedPokeMistPokeInciPoke
"Hey, hey! Cut it out alrea... dy..." Rumia pushed away the thing that kept poking her head from behind, but as she turned around to express her annoyance, her gaze was met with a man nearly two feet longer than her. And the thing that had poked her was the man's finger, almost as thick as her neck.
The following few moments went to the two of them staring at each other, until the man finally spoke up.
"You, little girl, Heavy has some questions for you."
"Come on, Dai-chan, I'm sure Mysti's just fine", Wriggle said, as she and the green-haired fairy walked by the road that bordered the Misty Lake. "So please, could you let go of my hand? I can't feel my fingers..."
"B-But what if something snatches you right when I let go? Wh-What if there's a really, really huge monster here waiting among the woods, waiting to snatch us one by one when we get separated?"
"Well, if there is something like that around here, why would it need to snatch us one by one?" Wriggle said, with a sarcastic tone. Something the fairy didn't seem to take note however, as the fairy's grip suddenly got tighter and tighter.
"Owowowow! Joke, joke! It was a joke!"
"How could you joke around at a time like this?!" the fairy exclaimed, with an extremely upset tone of voice.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeh?!" the two of them suddenly heard, and it was then they realized that they had reached their destination.
"Wha-? That came from the Mysti's shack!" Wriggle yelled, as she swiftly got herself off the dumbfounded fairy's grip and dashed the remaining distance to the shack's front door.
Wriggle slammed the door open.
"Mysti! Are you oka-!"
"Wa-Wakasagi-san, you're a princess?!"
...Huh?
"No, no, no, that's just this silly name I was given, I'm no royalty or anything... Hm? Ah, hiya, Wriggle-chan!"
After she had calmed down, Wriggle finally managed to properly observe what she could see beyond the door.
The benches by the grill were occupied by two, one of whom she recognized as the mermaid from the lake outside, greeting the bug girl by waving both of her hands. Wriggle greeted back, with a bit of a clumsy hand gesture.
The other occupant she recognized as Mystia's band partner, the one that makes more noise. And by the looks of it, this was her first time meeting this mermaid, or at least their first time talking about the latter's name.
And last, but not least, on the other side of the grill, was the owner of the shack, giving an odd look to the bug girl.
"Hm? What's wrong, Wriggle? You don't look so good", Mystia inquired, as she was preparing a fish-salad based packed lunch.
"What? ...Oh, no, I-I was just a bit startled by that cry just now, that's all", Wriggle tried to explain, but Mystia gave her a long doubtful look, as she knew that the bug girl wasn't much of a startling type.
And after a while, the green-haired fairy had finally gathered her courage and entered the shack as well.
"Ah, you're alright, Mysti-chan! Thank god..."
As the sparrow and the yamabiko began to exchange confused looks with each other, they quickly noticed that the mermaid didn't seem to be as clueless.
"Hmm... So even Wriggle-chan got freaked out by that lights thing, huh?" Wakasagi mumbled, as she was digging down her dish of tempura.
"Well... I think that was more about certain fairy's wild imagination..." Wriggle said, as her head leaned towards Daiyousei, to which the fairy replied with bit of a clueless, questioning glance.
"Eeh, is that so? You know, I was really surprised when one of those things ended up near that red mansion. There was suddenly this huge current that sucked everyone near the riverbank in this small strange cavern."
"Really? ...But, you managed to get away from it?"
"No, I got sucked in pretty badly, I even got a few bruises here and there", Wakasagi rolled up the sleeve on her left arm to show her red-ish elbow. "But! Thanks to that, I have found..."
The mermaid turned around to face the table, took something in her hands, and turned back to face the two, with a little wooden box in her hands. During this time the two of them had taken their time to walk to the others.
"Ta-daah! A brand new treasure chest! How is it, how is it?"
Wriggle took quite a long look on this strange looking box, a one with a steel frame and a black logo of... something the bug girl could only describe as three oddly shaped barrels. While the box seemed like a good candidate for a small treasure chest, there was one thing that stroke Wriggle a bit odd. Odd enough to speak up her mind.
"...Uum, Wakasagi-san, wouldn't wood, like... get all soaky and fragile, if it's kept underwater for too long?"
But instead of sharing her solution to this practical problem, the mermaid just stared at the bug girl for a while, until she slowly turned her eyes back on the box.
Oioi, say something now, would you! Are you telling me you didn't realize something that...?
"Ah! You're right!"
...Obvious, Wriggle thought as she covered her face with her hand, out of shame.
"Hmm... I guess it can't be helped then", Wakasagi said, with bit of a disappointed look. "Hey, Kyouko-chan, do you think you might need something like...?!"
But as the mermaid had turned her attention to the yamabiko, she finally noticed Kyouko's strange posture: trying sit calmly, only to give the exact opposite impression. Her eyes were practically burning with desire to join the conversation, but something seemed to hold her back pretty harshly.
"K-Kyouko-cha-?"
"Bwaaaaaah! I can't take it, I have to ask! What are you talking about?! What lights?! What cavern?! What's with the chit-chat?! What's with the box?! I need know! It's in my nature!" Kyouko finally let out.
As the yamabiko was catching her breath, Mystia found herself in bit of an awkward situation. She was also a bit curious about the subject just now, but as her friend had just expressed her unawareness in such a flashy way, she wasn't quite sure whether it would be appropriate to keep going with it or not. But as everyone else seemed as uncertain on how to go on with this, Mystia finally decided to break the ice.
"Uuhm... I'd... like to know as well, if you don't mind... D-Did something happen?"
That seemed to turn down the tension a bit, as everyone else loosened their stiff posture.
"Uuh, well..." Wriggle mumbled, still a bit flustered by the yamabiko's outcry. "Where should we start?"
Eeeh... This ended up more boring than I had expected, Meiling thought as she went over everything she had seen so far.
As Meiling had made her way inside the facility, the first sight she found was that of a flooded canyon, with submerged railroads going beneath the water's surface. Thinking of not leaving any stone unturned, she ended up taking a couple of dives to the flooded man-made cave beside it, but only to find some regular mining tools floating around and a couple of fishes.
After some searching around, she decided to take a break by one of the round metal platforms, one overlooked by a huge red silo and something pointy in the distance.
"With a spectacle like that, one would assume there would be something strange in a place like this", Meiling moaned as she was lying on her back on the platform. "But no, there's only sand, sand, and even more of that frigging sand! Aaaw, I'm so bored!"
But as Meiling leaned her head to her right on the platform, she suddenly caught a glimpse of something white and longish, lying on the platform a couple of feet away from her.
She quickly sat up, and reached out to this strange thing, and after a closer look, she realized that she had found remains of a smoke. And as she took an even closer look, she noticed that the smoke's filter was still a bit wet from spit.
So there is someone here after all! Meiling thought triumphantly, but as she was about to try how the remains smelled like...
"Excuse me..."
"Aaah!" Meiling shouted out of surprise, as she swept her hand behind her, to the approximate direction of the sudden call. And by the sound that followed, the hand seemed to hit right on it's target.
"Hataaah!"
"...Eh? A... a tengu?" Meiling said, as she had gotten up and taken a good look on this stranger and her clothing. But she quickly noticed that she's not the one the Chinese girl has came to know, mostly because of the tengu's twin-pigtail hairstyle.
And as Meiling had calmed down from the initial jolt, she realized that her countermeasures might've been slightly overestimated, as the tengu girl was now lying on the ground, incapacitated by her blow.
"Owowowow... Is... Is this how the Scarlet Devil Mansion treats journalism, dammit...?" the tengu wailed on the ground, holding her hands on her sides, probably in hopes of easing the pain.
"Ah! N-No, I was just a bit startled when you came up to me all of a sudden, I-I didn't mean to..."
"Bleah..."
"AAAAAH! J-Just hold on, I'll patch you up right away!" Meiling exclaimed, as she quickly got herself next to the tengu, beginning to heal the stranger with her powers. But as her hands began to emit a light-green glow and she placed them above the tengu, something finally occurred to her.
...Wait, what happened to the smoke? Meiling realized, when she noticed how freely she could swing her hands around. ...Well, better just heal her up now and get back to work, I need to see what kind of a visitor we have roaming around here...
"Hehee, I'm gonna call you... Jeffrey!" Cirno chuckled, as she made her way out of the woods, with a frozen frog in her grasp. And after a while, she finally caught a glimpse of the road and her blonde-haired friend. But as she was about to call out for her, Cirno realized that something was off.
She noticed a large man, seemingly talking aggressively towards her friend, and the latter being helpless under the pressure. Out of instinct, Cirno's began to gather speed and took a tight grip on the chunk of ice in her hand.
"I choose you, Jeffrey!" Cirno yelled, as she threw her frozen frog towards the man. And the chunk of ice hit him right on the head, making the man flinch for a bit.
"Ah! Cirno!" Rumia exclaimed, as she turned her head to the woods and noticed the fairy.
"Ha! How do you like that, you big... mean...?"
But suddenly, Cirno realized that the man was now facing her, with a furious look on his face, and his hands equipped with...
"Wha-?! W-WHERE DID HE GET THAT FROM?!" both Cirno and Rumia exclaimed in shock, as the man had pulled something large out of... somewhere.
They didn't really know what that something was, but it sure made some strange humming noises.
And the pointier end was facing right towards the fairy.
Ratatatatatatata!
Driven by rage, Heavy kept shooting blindly towards the direction of the surprise attack, determined to take down the one who had just made his already bad headache even worst. Even though he knew he shouldn't waste too much ammo on a single target, his logical reasoning wasn't quite enough to match his overwhelming aggression.
One may wonder, whether he would've used all of his available bullets, if it wasn't for this one blonde-haired distraction.
"Hey, hey! Stop it, she just took it the wrong way!" The blonde-haired girl yelled over the gunfire, grabbing his vest to grab the man's attention. And seems like she was successful, as the man ceased his attack to reply.
"But that little girl just hit my head with a rock!"
"She probably just thought you were trying to hurt me or something! And besides, it was a frog, a frozen frog!"
"A... A lyagushka?"
Although probably not her intention, the girl's confusing statement distracted Heavy's killing intent well enough for him to calm down. And as he slowly did, he finally began to realize the inequality in power between a frog and a gun, when he eventually noticed all the gunsmoke and gun shells around him.
"Uugh... This could have gone better..." Heavy mumbled, frowning upon his first social interaction in this strange new world.
"Eeh?! You only realized that now?!" Rumia replied, a bit dumbfounded by the length of time it took for him to realize his major overkill. "Really, who would even think about... Oh, wait, nevermind..."
Rumia realized that she had came up with an answer - or a couple of them, in fact - nearly as quickly as she had came up with the question.
"Anyway, good thing you didn't pull anything worse than this", Rumia said, glancing over the smoke left by the man's earlier actions.
"Khm? W-What are you talking about?" Heavy replied in confusion, as he finally realized that the girl hasn't shown any signs of disbelief, sorrow, or even a single tear. "She just took Sasha's bombardment head-on, there's no way she could still be alive!"
"Hm? How come?"
But before Heavy could even comprehend the girl's reaction, his attention was quickly caught by the sight that slowly revealed itself behind the gunsmoke. If his confusion were to be a diagram, this would be the part where the blue line shoots off the charts and on the wall.
Slowly, the smoke kept fading out, revealing a huge, spiky ice sculpture, with the spiky part of the sculpture pointing right towards him and the blonde-haired girl. And when the light eventually penetrated the smokescreen, Heavy began to spot golden glow beneath the sculpture's icy surface, quickly realizing them to be his bullets. That seemed to explain the shape of the thing, as the sculpture got wider and wider as it extended towards the woods, almost like every bullet he had shot just made another layer of ice, after making contact with the bullets that came before.
But what halted the initial bullet? That's what Heavy was about to find out, as the sculpture suddenly began to topple down, eventually hitting the ground and shattering to pieces.
"Haah... Haah... Tha... that was a... close one..." Cirno panted, wiping the remains of ice from her frosty hands. As she walked over the piles of shattered ice, her gaze was eventually met with that of an extremely confused man.
"Hey, you! What's the big idea, assaulting a young girl like that?! Don't you think you should state your intentions first before you..."
But the man suddenly pulled up his humming thing again, pointing the ice fairy with an expression of both confusion and fear.
"Aah! Wait, wait, wait, there's an explanation for that!" Rumia yelled over the humming sound, and this time, the man seemed to be more willing to hear them out, as the humming ceased right away and he put his thing down. Rumia let out a sigh of relief, but quickly noticed the ice fairy's oblivious expression.
"Cirno, your..." Rumia uttered, circling a finger in front of her own forehead. Cirno seemed to catch the point, as she began to try her forehead, and she quickly felt something that didn't seem to belong there. It was something hard, sticking out in the middle of her forehead, but there was enough contact surface for her to take a good grip on it and pull it out.
"Owie... Hm? Oh, you did manage to get one through", Cirno noted, as she recognized it as one of the man's pointy danmaku. A mischievous grin spread on the fairy's face. "Hmph, you think you'd stand a chance in a danmaku battle with these? It didn't hurt at all, those puny little things!"
But as Cirno was showing her sign of victory with a wide grin and two sticking fingers, her feelings of superiority were quickly fading away, as she was staring in the huge man's furious eyes.
Even if danmaku against him were to be a piece of cake, the look on the man's face didn't seem like one to rely on that humming thing alone. And for once, in front of an average human, Cirno felt a bit frightened. The man didn't have much of a magical aura, that much was certain, but she was completely unable to tell, whether his physical strength would be able to make up for that fact. This unusual uncertainty made cold sweat drip down on the fairy's cheek.
"You... What are you...?" the man grunted, as he put the humming thing down and began to crack his knuckles.
"Are you sure you're going to be fine, you don't need an escort or anything?" Reisen asked, as Youmu was taking her leave.
"I think I know my way around here well enough", Youmu replied, as she opened the front gate of Eientei. "And if those light things would've done something strange, we would've probably heard about it by now."
"Well, you certainly have a point..." Reisen concurred, as she followed the half-ghost a few steps outside the gate. "See you later, Youmu!"
"Yeah, see you!" Youmu shout back, as she took off and quickly disappeared among the bamboos.
...Well then, what should I do now? Maybe I should go check our inventory, I think we were running low on ibuprofen...
Reisen closed the gate and walked back to the building, but as she had taken her shoes off...
"Ah, Udonge!" Eirin suddenly called out, walking down the corridor. "Looks like that ghost friend of yours has left already... Say, have you seen Tewi anywhere?"
"Huh, Tewi? Didn't you send her to check up on that light thing that ended up in the forest? 'Cuz me and Youmu were... You know..."
"Oh, yes, about that", Eirin said, as she took out a piece of paper, and handed it to the bunny girl.
"Hm, what's this? Wood... Glue... Rice paper...?" Reisen read the contents out loud. But before she could wonder about the list's purpose further, she quickly recalled quite a number of occasions with a strikingly similar note, and her face was nearly as quick to reflect on that. "Ah!"
"You know the drill, next time you go to the village, take the wagon with you and gather up these materials. Oh, and this time, it's your treat."
Reisen looked up to her master, trying to make her change her mind on the last part with teary rabbit eyes.
"Hey, I'm not the one kicking down these paper doors!" Eirin replied with a scolding tone, to which the bunny girl reacted by a flinch and averting eyes. "Even if you know the ways of the martial arts, you really should be more careful when practicing indoors! I hope this will motivate you on that."
"Y... Yes, Master Eirin..." Reisen weeped, as she put the note in her pocket.
"But still, where is that Tewi?" Eirin moaned, as she went to the front door and took a look on the other side to the courtyard. "I told her to come back straight away when she had found something strange, that thing didn't land that far..."
"I don't really see anything strange about that", Reisen said, as she put her shoes on the shoe rack. "She tends to do that a lot, avoid her duties. Right now she's probably just digging holes again, hoping that we get worried and go look for her, only to end up in one of her dirty little...!"
"I also gave her a specific time limit, that just expired about... ten minutes ago", Eirin noted, making the bunny girl halt right on the spot.
Reisen had already took a couple of steps down the corridor, but after a few moments in silence, she slowly turned around, walked back to the shoe rack, took her shoes, put them on, and walked past her master to the front door.
"I'll go look for her", Reisen said, as she opened the door and began to dash towards the front gate.
"Please do!" Eirin shout after her, as Reisen slammed the front gate open.
Something is up. Something is definitely up! Reisen thought to herself. She knows what happens if things aren't done in time, even she wouldn't go around tempting fate like this. Seems like those light things were bad news after all!
"Udonge!" Eirin suddenly shout out again, making Reisen halt her dash and turn around. "East! The lighting thing landed in the east!"
"Ah!" Reisen sounded, when she finally realized that she hadn't even seen the general direction, where this thing had landed. Reisen turned to her left and kept running.
Still, what could've happened to her? Is she dead? Is she alive? But if she's alive, what on earth could be holding her off like this?
"Hachoo!" Medic suddenly sneezed. "Uuh... Vhere did that come from?"
He took some paper - the one you write on, oddly enough - from a table near him, made a good sneeze on it and dropped the soaked paper in a nearby trash can. But instead of falling gently on the top of the rest of the trash, the paper suddenly began to move around in the can, as if something was moving underneath it.
A bit confused, Medic reached down to the trash can, slowly moved his hand closer, and quickly snatched the paper.
"Ah, Archimedes!" Medic exclaimed, as he found his blooddirtied dove and picked it up out of the trash can. "No, I've told you, it's filthy in there!"
As Medic loosened his grip, the dove quickly took flight, and flew itself up on the strange contraption, that held the doctor's Medigun in place.
"But still, I'm quite amazed that everyzing iz still in place", Medic noted to himself, with a satisfied grin, as he looked around his surgery room. "I haven't been here in ages, and yet, not a single zing is missing! Alzough, I don't really like ze change of scenery..."
Medic took a look outside the room's window, to the strange view of bamboo, bamboo, and even more bamboo. He found the part with bamboo to be most peculiar, since the last time he checked, the soil around this abandoned hospital wasn't suitable for this plant's sustainable growth.
...No, really, he actually checked it, along with cayenne pepper, avocado, and a tomato. The doctor kinda liked that tomato, it's a shame that it had to be obliterated. You can't have that thing guarding the perimeter, they said.
Archimedes flew off the Medigun rack, and gently landed on a surgery table, placed right underneath the rack.
"But, quite frankly, why am I here, how am I here, and why bamboo... I have no idea, and I do not care! And you know why, Archimedes...?"
Probably more because of it's curiosity than replying to the question, the dove had teetered it's way to the girl who had been strapped on the surgery table, and tried to poke her face, seeing whether she would wake up or not. She didn't.
"Precisely..." Medic replied, apparently taking the poking for an answer. "As a medical practitioner, it would be quite rude to leave somezing like this unexamined. After all, it is not everyday you find a girl with natural rabbit ears and a corresponding tail..."
Chapter 5 Afterword:
The major problem I have is that I have all these ideas on how this whole thing would go, while the story hasn't actually gotten that far yet. I want to get to the good parts I've planned, but first I have to write everything else before them. :-/
Hopefully, it won't take this much time for the sixth chapter, some of you were a bit worried about whether I'll even make this chapter. But don't worry, even if this seems dead, I'm writing the story a bit by bit, you just have to be patient. :-)