For most average people in the world, it would seem a very unlikely event to be calmly and civilly sitting in front of a person who has made it clear that their intentions are to murder you. Remilia Scarlet, however, was likely as far away from the category of "average people" as possible by the laws of physics. Following this, it should not be surprising to find the young vampire sitting behind the desk in her study with her companions Patchouli and Sakuya on either side of her and staring right at Ran Yakumo, who had tucked several of her fluffy tails beneath her to make a comfortable surface for sitting. Chen, the shikigami's shikigami, had made it very clear that she was not going to let Ran "escape" from her sight again, and therefore the cat was happily wrapping one of her mistress's tails around her body and nuzzling her cheek against it. Although Ran was typically sensitive about others touching her tails, gazing at the purring Chen getting so much pleasure from them rendered her helpless against forming a smile on her lips.
"So, if what Patchouli says is true, you have come here to murder me, correct?" Remilia asked, her voice surprisingly casual for the topic at hand. Elbows on the desk, she pulled herself closer to the fox, intently staring her down.
Ran, in response, softly dipped her head, her perked-up ears flattening against her head. "Indeed, that is what I have been ordered to accomplish tonight." While the logical thing to do after hearing this may have been to restrain Ran, the general feel of melancholy radiating from the fox made Remilia raise an eyebrow more than anything.
"I think an explanation for just what you mean behind that is in order, Ran," Patchouli said. "If you were really aspiring to kill Miss Remilia, waltzing into her mansion and stating your intentions without making any attempts to complete them would be a bit counterproductive, correct?" Patchouli placed the great brown tome she had been carrying on the desk and clasped her hands together behind her.
Ran released an uneasy sigh, carefully contemplating her response. After taking a moment to look at each person in the room and the title on the cover of Patchouli's book, which read "The Subjection of Shikigami", the fox finally nodded. "I agree; it's only fair if you know exactly what's going on." Ran patted the purring Chen on her head and cleared her throat.
"Seeing that your skin is pale and your fangs are once again protruding from your mouth, may I assume that you have already discovered Yukari-sama's transforming of you into a human and convinced her to undo it, Miss Remilia?" An affirmative nod from Remilia and Sakuya was the response, and Ran's expression brightened ever so slightly. "Well done; that makes my job here easier. If Yukari-sama was able to realize that she was the cause of your transformation, I can hazard a guess that she connected this to the memories of Reisen appearing before her as she woke up. She wouldn't have remembered performing the actual task, but she must have assumed she had done it during the period of her memory wipe.
"You're probably wondering how I know about the precise details of the incident that took place this afternoon, right?" Ran induced a cough to create an excuse to look away from the others, during which time she wiped her golden eyes free of the moisture that had begun to linger in them. Chen briefly paused her production of content mews to look up at her mistress with curiosity, and Patchouli and Remilia discretely exchanged worried looks. "Well, the truth is… I was there to witness it. When I heard voices coming from my mistress's bedroom, I immediately rushed in to find out what was wrong. It was there and then that I saw the lunar rabbit staring right into the eyes of my beloved Yukari-sama and giving her strict instructions. I immediately pulled out one of my most powerful spell cards and commanded Reisen to leave at that instant or be utterly annihilated in battle. This declaration, as Cirno and her group of imbeciles know all too well, has always been effective at scaring off any intruding fairies or youkai. Reisen, however, did not move an inch, not even to look at me. Instead, she simply stated, 'My mind directly tapped into Yukari's nervous system at the moment. If you don't wish for her to receive immediate, permanent, and severe neural or spinal damage or even death, stay where you are and don't even think about attacking me.'"
After quoting Reisen, Ran could no longer be discrete about her tears, and she let them flow freely from her eyes as she softly wept. "There, there. It's okay, Ran-shama," Chen said in a comforting manner, affectionately wrapping her arms around her mistress's waist in an embrace. Patchouli, Remilia, and Sakuya all looked on with sympathetic glances.
When a few moments to release tears had gone by, Ran wiped her damp cheeks with her hands and managed an apologetic smile at her shikigami. "Thank you, Chen," she said. "I know I shouldn't cry, but I suppose there are some times in life when one has no choice but to. Being there to observe Yukari-sama in peril and being utterly helpless to save her was one of the most horrible moments I can remember experiencing in my life. It's something I hope none of you ever have to experience in your lives."
Sakuya shuffled her feet uneasily. "Indeed," she said. "I'm counting myself very lucky that this situation has not ever happened to me and my lady. However, how does this all relate to Miss Remilia's plight?"
Ran filled her lungs with a deep breath and let it out again slowly. "I'm certain Yukari-sama would not remember this, but as Reisen was controlling her, she gave not one, but two commands. The first one, as you know, was to turn you, Miss Remilia, into a human. The second one… was to order me to murder the Scarlet Devil tonight."
"And she just went along with it with no resistance?" Remilia asked, smirking and crossing her arms as if Yukari showing weakness somehow benefited her. "I do hope her pitiful case of subservience toward a lowly animal isn't contagious, for it would be a dreadful shame if I were to become the moronic slave of a rabbit as well!"
"So that's what you think of Mistress Yukari, huh…" Chen softly growled, extending her fingernails into cat claws and glaring at the vampire. Ran, however, chuckled amusedly to herself; it would be a lie to say that critical words about her mistress had never crossed her mind in the past.
"Now, now, my lady," Sakuya said gently, sensing the animosity that was radiating from the nekomata after her mistress's last comment, "I may not care for the boundary youkai any more than you, but let's not forget that she was being controlled by Reisen's terrible illusions at the time. I don't think anyone would disobey the rabbit in circumstances like that."
This seemed to cool down the anger of the cat, and Ran cleared her throat to return the attention to her. "Anyway," she continued, "Yukari-sama relayed the command, directly ordering me to kill Remilia Scarlet. When this was done, Reisen walked straight out of the bedroom and left Mayohiga just like that. I would have chased after her and given her a most painful punishment, but I was so shocked and overcome by what I had just heard Yukari-sama order me to do that I simply stood in place for at least two minutes. Murdering an innocent vampire, of course, is probably the very last thing on the list of tasks I would do for my mistress. After I was able to recompose myself, I remembered how my power and authority over Chen weakens as we get further apart, and so I came up with the idea to flee to the other side of Gensokyo. If I could distance myself from my mistress, I theorized, perhaps I would be able to keep myself from fulfilling the order I was given."
"So that's why you wouldn't come when Mistress Yukari summoned you!" exclaimed Chen, who had finally pieced together the events of the evening in her head.
Ran smiled warmly at her shikigami. "Precisely. However, as the minutes dragged on, my body began to feel more and more compelled to approach the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Eventually, no matter how strongly my mind commanded me to stay put, I couldn't stop myself anymore. That was the moment when I entered this building and told everyone of my orders."
Chen scratched behind her ears in puzzlement, cocking her head slightly. "I'm sorry, Ran-shama, but I don't get it. You've said, 'My apologies, Yukari-sama, but I can't complete that request' to her in the past. Sure, she'd hit you with her parasol for it, but it still meant you could deny something she asked of you. So, why can't you do that now?" The cat pointed downward toward the floor. "Heck, she's still loaded up with drugs and lying unconscious on the floor of the library, so disobeying her should be even easier now."
Ran placed a hand on her shikigami's shoulder and looked her straight in the eyes. "Believe me, Chen, I wish it were that simple. However…"
"The relationship between master and shikigami is quite a powerful bond," finished Patchouli, who cleared her throat and motioned to the book she had placed on the table. "When a creature becomes a shikigami, she not only submits to master by giving up her free will, but also her complete mental and body processing. Simply put, the shikigami's health is directly related to the way she serves her master, and if the master wished it so, she could easily kill her underling." The librarian strode over to sitting fox and addressed her directly (without any need to kneel down, for Patchouli was short enough to reach Ran's seated eye level). "Yukari asked you to kill Miss Remilia in the form of a direct order, correct?"
"Indeed. Reisen stressed the point that Yukari-sama should word it in the form of 'I command you, Ran.'" The kitsune tilted her head at angle to jog her memory. "In fact, I think this is the first time Yukari-sama has ever given me an actual command. Usually she only asks me to do her bidding."
Patchouli took a moment to groan and rub her temples with her thumb and forefinger, pacing back and forth between Remilia and Ran. "I can understand why she wouldn't ever give you direct commands. Reisen, or whomever she is an underling to if that is the case," she concluded, "thought this plan through quite clearly. From what I have read, when a master orders her shikigami by directly wording the request in that way, it becomes a mandatory command that cannot be denied under any circumstances. If the shikigami attempts to actively refuse the command, her body becomes unable to handle the idea of disobeying a direct order and it self-destructs, shutting down all vital processes and inducing death. The same thing has also happened if the shikigami does not attempt to fulfill the command to the absolute best of her ability. To put it simply, if Ran does not succeed in killing Miss Remilia or attempting to with her best effort by fighting tooth and nail, she will die herself."
While Remilia gulped and looked downward at her shoes uncomfortably and Sakuya put a hand to her mouth, Chen gasped and stared at her mistress in disbelief. "You can't be serious!" she cried. "Ran-shama, that's not true, is it?"
Ran's eyes slowly traveled all around the study before returning to Chen's. The fox brought one of her bushy tails up towards her side, and she stroked its soft fibers while planning her next words carefully. "I'm afraid so, Chen," she said. "While fleeing this evening, I plotted out a flowchart of all my possible options and their results in my mind. Refusing to obey, letting myself get captured while halfheartedly trying to murder Remilia, legitimately attempting the assassination and getting attacked by all the powerful beings that live here… every outcome I could think of led to my death. The only way I would be able to escape this dilemma alive would be to have Yukari-sama cancel the order herself. By the time I realized this, however… she was already forced unconscious by the sleeping drugs in the food she was given."
"This can't be true," Chen softly murmured, trying not to let the others hear the quiver in her voice that signified tears. She turned her back on the other four beings in the room and fixed her gaze on the elegantly decorated walls of Remilia's study. From this angle, the cat could see a twitching string of several rainbow crystals hidden behind a thick curtain, but she didn't think anything of it.
"I'm sorry, Chen," Patchouli said, her voice containing a surprising amount of sympathy considering its stolid owner. "Truly, I am. I know this is terrible, but it is indeed the reality of the situation. Koakuma must have drugged Yukari to ensure that she wouldn't be able to stop her shikigami from completing the task. It might be a bit inappropriate to say this, but I am impressed on how clever the whole plan is, killing someone by using a powerful youkai who literally cannot refuse to comply."
Remilia drummed her fingers on the desk, staring intently at one specific crack that had snaked its way all throughout the wood. At one point, the crack diverged into five others that went their separate ways for a little while before fusing together again. "So… now that we've identified the whole situation, what do you plan to do about it? I may be an undead vampire, but I still would prefer to not die tonight." She giggled softly at the irony of her statement and began tracing her finger along one of the paths of the crack.
"But of course," Ran said. "I have no intention of being the one to end your life. To be honest, I made up my mind on what I should do before I even set foot in this mansion." The fox picked herself up from the ground and slowly paced towards the desk and the three girls behind it. "Patchouli. Or Sakuya. Or whoever it has to be, since it really doesn't make a large difference. Every passing second, the urge to complete my mistress's order and kill Miss Remilia rises by a small increment. It won't be long before the urge dominates my willpower and I actually attempt to fulfill the command." She looked at the two directly with earnest golden eyes. "I know there's no way out of this situation for me, but I don't want to drag the vampire down with me. So, promise me this: you'll stop me before I have a chance to complete the order I was given. If you need to use lethal force, then so be it."
"B-but Ran-shama…" Chen whimpered quietly from her corner. "I don't want you to die." It took all her power to keep her tears from spilling out from her eyes, but the young shikigami managed it, as she did not want to have a complete breakdown in public.
Ran turned away from Patchouli and Sakuya to face her nekomata shikigami. Taking a few strides, she covered the distance of the room in seconds and wrapped her arms tightly around Chen's body. The kitsune tried very hard to formulate words of comfort for her young cat, but even after several moments of intense brainstorming, no such words came to mind. She decided to simply settle on holding Chen in a loving embrace. The three members of the Scarlet Devil Mansion found that they could only look on with sympathetic gazes, and even Remilia couldn't bring herself to say or think any pompous remarks. It was quite an abnormal moment to be witnessed in the land of Gensokyo.
While the land encompassed by the Hakurei Border was not overly large (likely only a few dozen kilometers in diameter), it still posed a formidable challenge of crossing from one side to another for those without a fast method of travel. Although Koakuma possessed wings on her back, her flight speed was anything but impressive. In fact, even her running speed, which was one of the worst of anyone's in Gensokyo, was faster, and it was therefore the method she was using to traverse the roads on her journey. It took a great deal of effort on Youmu's part to follow the devil at such a slow pace as to not be seen, but she had managed to do so for the past hour. At about quarter to eleven, Youmu had taken notice that the path Koakuma was taking seemed very familiar, and as the open fields began to return to a dense and thick forest climate, it dawned on her that it was the same route she had taken earlier that evening to get to Kourindou.
Koakuma stopped her running gait to rest against one of the trees marking the beginning of the Forest of Magic, and Youmu ducked behind a particularly overgrown shrub in turn to stay hidden out of sight. The moon, currently in its first quarter phase, was able to shine a weak beam of light into the dark depths of the forest, and the antique shop along its borders was lit up. After taking a few moments to catch her breath from all of the running she had to do, Koakuma took one look around her. Failing to notice the gardener behind the bush lingering outside of the forest, the devil rushed the final meters necessary to reach Kourindou. Instead of walking through the front door like a typical patron would do, she slipped around the perimeter to the very rear of the building and entered the back door.
"So this is where your little base of operations is located," Youmu muttered, peering at the moonlit shop her object of pursuit had entered. "I should have known I couldn't trust that sneaky little shopkeeper, especially after he framed Lady Yuyuko and everything." Without delay, Youmu reached out and grabbed the floating Myon, holding it up to her face. After a second or two, the phantom changed its color into one resembling a rich shade of lavender.
"Yes?" Patchouli's voice echoed from inside of the ghostly spirit. After the conversation she had just had with Ran, it would make sense that her voice would carry a bit of angst in it, but the gardener failed to notice it.
"I have some good news," Youmu announced. "Koakuma finally reached her destination, it seems. If she noticed me following her, she's hiding it very well, so I think we've finally found whom she's dealing with."
"Wonderful," Patchouli replied, although her gloomy tone easily overwhelmed her optimistic words. "Where has she gone off to, exactly?"
"It's—" Youmu started, but stopped as she was interrupted by a short echo of static after her first word. "Huh?" The gardener held up Myon closer to her eyes and carefully looked it over. The lavender color signifying the communication with Patchouli was rapidly fading away, and in its place was a shade of blue so light it was very difficult to directly distinguish from white.
"Um…" Youmu began, "is there someone else trying to talk to me here? Who is this?"
"Yoooooouuuuummmmmmmuu!" an unmistakable voice wailed from within the phantom. Youmu was so surprised from the very sudden and loud shout that she actually dropped Myon from her grasp, letting it fall to the ground.
"L-lady Yuyuko?" she stammered, quickly picking the phantom up off the ground again to talk through it.
"You guessed it!"
Youmu groaned. "Why are you calling me, Lady Yuyuko? Didn't Patchouli tell you I'm on an important mission right now?"
"Oh, forget that," Yuyuko said cheerfully. "I'm still waiting on that dinner you promised to make me ages ago!" The voice of the ghost princess was much louder than that of the librarian's, so Youmu tried to shove Myon into the bush to muffle the sound.
"Please," Youmu hissed, "keep your voice down! If I get caught, this whole thing is going to fail."
"Youmu, you silly girl, aren't you forgetting the number one rule of serving me? 'The princess and her dinner come before all.' I want to eat something now!"
"My god, you're in the Scarlet Devil Mansion, for crying out loud! I'm sure Sakuya or someone would be happy to make you a snack while I'm here spying on Koakuma at Kourindou."
Yuyuko laughed whimsically, her voice echoing loudly into the silent forest. "Spying? How rude of you! I suppose all of those lessons on manner and etiquette have fallen on deaf ears then?"
Youmu sighed and slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. "I'll make something for you after I'm done with this mission, okay? Right now is a really bad time for you to be talking incoherently about pointless things."
In response, Youmu heard a slight rustling noise from the other end of the communication as if the device was being moved. "Hey there, Youmu," a different voice with an equally loud volume greeted. "This is Tewi. So, listen: I've been locked up in this stuffy little room with only your ghost princess friend as company for more than two hours now. We've been chatting and getting to know each other for a while, and she seems to be a really friendly and nice person. Still… she keeps mentioning about how much she loves the taste of a good rabbit stew, and she's been looking at me kind of funny for the past few minutes. You think you could maybe finish up with what you're doing there and help an innocent rabbit out? Thanks."
It would seem as though a recurring trend had emerged in people who run very fast being very impatient, and Youmu was no exception. She knew that being disrespectful and talking rudely to her mistress often ended badly for her, for although Yuyuko often seemed airheaded and would easily forget ordinary things, she had a remarkably good memory regarding what she wanted to remember and would often spring punishments on Youmu for things even the gardener had forgotten about. In situations like this, however, one must sometimes make an exception to rules about being polite to ghost princesses.
"Lady Yuyuko, are you still there?" Youmu asked in an unusually calm voice, though her heavy panting was evidence of the fact that she was actually not calm at all.
"I sure am!" Yuyuko answered happily. "Now, about that dinner we're planning: I want two grilled chicken breasts, but make sure they're not overcooked. The first one needs to have a spicy wasabi marinade, and the second one—"
"Shut up!" Youmu bellowed as loudly as her vocal cords could manage. At this point, she figured that if anyone had overheard her conversation, they would have already done so beforehand. The gardener gave her phantom a sharp punch in the fluffy center, and its color changed back to a pure white. Even if it is not rigidly connected, hurting an appendage of one's body is a rather painful practice, but Youmu didn't mind. It felt surprisingly satisfying to completely shatter the silence in the Forest of Magic, and so she proudly emerged from the bush and marched towards the old building of Kourindou.
About halfway between the overgrown shrub and her destination, Youmu became aware of a very subtle tickling sensation on the back of her neck akin to that of a leaf or flower petal brushing past the skin. In fact, that was exactly what the gardener initially guessed it was by the way it felt, and she casually brought her hand up to swat it away. When her hand connected with the object touching her neck, however, Youmu felt her stomach contort in sudden shock as she realized she was actually touching something hard, cold, and metallic.
"Don't tell me…" Youmu gulped inaudibly to herself. Very slowly, she began to rotate her head around to identify the source of the object touching her neck. Peering into the darkness of the night, her blue eyes made contact with a pair of red ones. Although there was sufficient moonlight to see the person behind those eyes, Youmu could have identified her based solely on the crimson orbs piercing the darkness. After all, the personality and demeanor of a person can often be determined simply by observing the appearance of their eyes, and there was only one woman in all of Gensokyo with such a temperament to reflect the razor-sharp, cruel, immobilizing gaze Youmu was being subjected to. Any other person ambushing the swordmaster would quickly find herself collapsed on the ground with a blade across her neck, but this particular one only chortled to the night as she received no resistance at all. Youmu kept her hands away from either of her two swords to avoid getting into a fight she could not possibly walk away from victorious.
"Good evening, Miss Youmu," the woman greeted. As soon as those first words were released from her mouth, Youmu recognized the voice as being the same one that Koakuma had talked to over an hour ago. While the manner by which she had spoken to the devil had been fierce and intimidating, her current voice was as silky as the surface of a completely tranquil lake and carried an utterly irresistible charm to it. It was this pseudo-friendly way of speaking along with a charismatic smile to match it that made Youmu's heart beat like a timpani; she knew she would have been in less danger if the woman appeared angry and threatening.
"Um… h-hello, Yuuka," Youmu stammered, her eyes fixed on the metal object, which she had identified as the tip of an umbrella, touching her neck. When staring down the umbrella belonging to Yuuka Kazami, one should always be aware that he or she could be blown away by a heavily focused blast of energy at any given moment, and Youmu knew this only too well. No matter how fast she could run, the speed of light would always be faster, so attempting to flee would be futile.
"Such lovely weather we're having, no?" Yuuka said amiably. It brought her much pleasure to steadily increase the tension and fear in a situation, and making seemingly innocent small talk was one of the best ways to do that. "What brings you to the Forest of Magic at such a late hour of the night?"
"Well… I was just…"
"Following a certain red-headed demon friend of mine?" Yuuka guessed. As she smiled pleasantly and gently rotated her umbrella, she noticed that the gardener was slowly attempting to back away from her. Yuuka, in turn, shook her short, wavy, green hair lightly and advanced toward her.
"Actually, no," Youmu answered quickly. "I had just gone on an errand for Lady Yuyuko and lost my way and ended up in the Forest of Magic and was just about to leave, you know?" She grinned innocently and began to turn around to escape when she suddenly felt the arm of Yuuka wrapping around her back and resting on her shoulder. It was a friendly motion that a close friend might do, but the fact that Yuuka was grasping her a little too tightly and the flowery umbrella was still pressed against her neck showed that the gesture was anything but affable.
"Nonsense," Yuuka laughed, her lovely voice ringing into the night air. "I was just putting a kettle of tea on the stove. It would be quite rude of me to not invite you inside for a cup, wouldn't it? Please, do come in for a bit before you leave." She leaned in toward Youmu's right ear and lowered her voice to a gentle whisper. "That is, of course, if you don't wish to suffer a most painful and brutal murder."
Youmu shuddered to herself as she heard these words along with feeling of Yuuka's arm holding her tightly to the youkai's body. Within that body and beneath the layers of a white long sleeve shirt and a red-plaid vest and skirt, there lay an enormous fountain of pure strength and energy. In fact, Yuuka was likely the strongest youkai of all of Gensokyo in terms of raw power, even beating the mighty oni. If she wished to, she could effortlessly kill the gardener with a simple motion of her arm by strangling, choking, or snapping her neck. However, Youmu could tell by the way that the flower youkai was forcibly escorting her toward Kourindou under the pretense of tea that she was not going to die immediately. Being captured by Yuuka and knowing this, of course, only made Youmu more terrified of what was going to happen to her in the near future.
While Yuyuko's hand fan had reverted from the viridian color it had displayed during contact with Youmu to its typical blue and red gradient one a couple of minutes ago, she still held it up to her face as if she were talking to her servant.
Tewi, who was reclining against the wall on the other side of the tiny room, yawned and looked at her ghostly companion. "Err... you do know that she, well, hung up on you quite a while ago?"
"Hah!" Yuyuko chuckled, lightly fanning herself. "You're a funny one, little bunny! Do I look like an idiot to you?"
Tewi snickered to herself. "I know I'm a good liar, but all the same, I think I'll decline on commenting on that." Reimu Hakurei, who was sitting on a chair in between the two detained in the room, started snoring loudly and mumbled out loud in her sleep about Marisa stealing the donations from her shrine. "Man. I knew China was a terrible guard, but I never thought I'd see someone who's worse than her!"
"Let's see exactly how awful she is, shall we?" Yuyuko donned a mischievous smirk on her face, walked over to the snoring shrine maiden, and slapped her across her face with the paper fan.
"Nnngghh…" Reimu groaned while maintaining her unconscious state. "Yukari… go ask Suika… stop pouring sake in the donation box." This caused Tewi to burst out in giggles.
"She's out like a light!" the rabbit exclaimed, laughing merrily at the sleeping sentry. After a moment Tewi reached into her pink dress sand pulled out a worn wooden hammer. It wasn't the comically oversized type she was often seen with (for Patchouli would have never detained someone while letting them keep such an enormous weapon on hand), but it was still rather large among tools. "You think we should maybe up the 'whack-factor'? I'm still a little irked at her for dragging me into this whole mess, you know." Tewi produced a devilish sort of grin she often used during her pranks on Reisen and began to slowly approach the unconscious Reimu with her hammer in hand.
"That would be pretty amusing," Yuyuko agreed, "but do you suppose you could perhaps hold off on that idea for a little bit?" The ghost princess began to venture towards the doorway of Koakuma's former bedroom and turned her head back to look at the rabbit. "Since Youmu's obviously too incompetent to understand the importance of the little things in life, it looks like it's up to me to go to Kourindou and teach her myself. Having a grumpy Reimu with a minor headache trying to stop me would definitely put a damper on things, don't you think?"
Tewi's rabbit ears drooped slightly in disappointment, but she shrugged all the same. "All right, I gotcha. If Reimu wakes up while you're gone, do you want me to cover for you?"
Yuyuko smiled gratefully at her companion. "You'd do that for me? That's so sweet of you, you delicious rabbit!"
Tewi leaned against the wall with a confident expression on her face. "It's nothing; I'm always happy to do a favor for my friends." Any wise person who has had a great deal of experience in Gensokyo would know to never ask Tewi for a favor, for she was the sort of rabbit who would act like a shark and force others into her debt. However, a wiser person would know also to never attempt to fool Yuyuko, for the amount of intellect the ghost possessed beneath her ditzy behavior was astounding. Each knew what the other was capable of without even needing to hear it, and so Tewi decided to be truly honest for once with her new friend to avoid being beaten at her own game.
"So, Reimu," Tewi said to the sleeping shrine maiden. "I seem to remember you telling me about who you're madly in love with, but I can't recall if you said it was Marisa, Yukari, or Suika. Would you mind jogging my memory?" She stifled a sudden giggle in the same way a child in the middle of performing a prank call would.
"I…" Reimu almost inaudibly murmured, "…yeah."
"I, yeah?" Tewi repeated. "Oh, you mean Aya? I never knew you had a thing for crow tengu, Reimu, but if that's what you're into, okay then!" The rabbit grinned and gave the ghost princess at the door a thumbs-up sign. "Sounds like we're gonna be in for an interesting article of the Bunbunmaru Newspaper tomorrow morning, aren't we?"
As Yuyuko gradually let the door creak open, she was surprised to hear virtually no sounds echoing in from the spacious library. The only distinct noise that the ghost could hear (besides the snoring of Reimu behind her) was the gentle and steady ticking of the grand bronze clock in the center of the room. The gears within the machine were impossible to see, of course, but Yuyuko could feel the rate at which they were ticking by the way each hand slowly rotate along at its own interval. "My, is it already twenty minutes to midnight?" she wondered out loud. "I suppose time flies when you're trapped in a tiny room like that."
"Indeed," a voice from the center of the room echoed back at her. "It's already been forty minutes since everyone else left the library, but it feels like a lot less."
Yuyuko was slightly startled when she heard a reply, for it initially seemed as though she was the only one in the library besides the unconscious Yukari in the corner. After a careful examination of the entire room, however, she was able to make out the profile of a girl accompanied by two flying dolls beneath the dim ceiling lights. The girl was sitting at the center table with her back to Yuyuko and could almost be mistaken for a statue if not for the dolls orbiting around her. "Oh, you're still here, Alice?"
"That's right," Alice replied without turning around. "Yukari got drugged, Reimu's asleep, Koakuma fled the mansion, Youmu's out tracking Koakuma, Meiling's probably guarding the front gate, the rest of the Scarlet Devil Mansion and the Yakumos are off dealing with their incident, and Marisa got bored and said she was going to take a stroll around the hallways. So, that leaves me here at the library." She looked behind her shoulder at Yuyuko with an uninterested glance and motioned to the smaller doll. "Shanghai told me she heard you talking about following your servant."
Yuyuko smiled, but she tightened her grip on her fan as if preparing for battle. "Yes, I am. That won't be a problem for you, will it?"
Alice shrugged her shoulders and sighed indifferently. "To be honest, I really don't care. I know I agreed to help out this operation and everything, but I'd much rather be home in bed or working on my latest doll design. If you want to leave and find Youmu, I'm not going to stop you."
After thanking her, Yuyuko began to stroll towards the exit of the library. "By the way," she said while in the doorway, "if you don't want to be here, why haven't you left and gone home?"
Alice threw her hands in the air exasperatedly, and the sudden motion caused Shanghai and Hourai to nervously scatter. "Beats me! I suppose I did say I was going to help out on resolving this incident. The general opinion people have of me is low enough, and abandoning everyone partway through wouldn't help matters, you know?" She smirked amusedly. "Besides, I probably shouldn't give that purple librarian another reason to insult me."
"Very well. Have fun with the rest of your night!" Alice's explanation was sufficient for Yuyuko, and she promptly exited the room, leaving Alice alone with her two dolls.
Alice turned back to her two dolls, which were sitting on the table and communicating much with their wordless facial expressions. "Yes, I know it's very late at night, but I don't want to go to sleep until we've reached the conclusion of this situation. You can stay awake until then, can't you?" She smiled at her last question and lightly ruffled the hair atop the head of Hourai, who began to grow a rosy blush on her artificial cheeks. "What am I saying? What kind of nonliving doll would need to sleep, anyway?"
As Alice, Shanghai, and Hourai returned to sitting in a bored silence, the ticking clock was once again the only audible sound in the Voile Library.
Under normal circumstances, it is already quite a difficult task to understand another's feelings without being well-versed at empathy. Very often a person with a stolid and unmoving expression may actually be harboring panic and fear within, especially when trapped in a deeply troubling dilemma. While Chen had known Ran for many years and had established a connection with her as a shikigami, the young nekomata could not read her mistress's emotions at all as the two of them sat together in silence in the otherwise-empty study.
Chen turned to face the kitsune sitting next to her who had dipped her head and was focusing on the floor. "Ran-shama," she whispered quietly to avoid breaking the silence so forcefully, "aren't you frightened about what's going to happen? We've only got a few minutes before you… well…"
"Die?" Ran suggested. She smiled weakly at Chen and gently slipped her right hand into the nekomata's left one. "When you live to be more than 800 years old, you eventually stop worrying about things like that. I mean, everyone has to experience it at one point or another, don't they?"
"Not Kaguya and Mokou," Chen interrupted. "They get to live forever!" She said it with a certain amount of stubbornness as if an effective counterargument would keep Ran from dying.
Ran shook her head patiently. "Oh, Chen," she said, "that's not true at all. Those feuding girls kill each other on a daily basis; their bodies simply regenerate themselves after the point of death. Still, even after they die every day, does it look like either of them feels any bit of trauma?"
"Well, no," Chen admitted. "They seem like pretty happy people when they're not murdering each other."
"Exactly! Our friend Yuyuko is the same way; if death were really such a horrible experience, I doubt she would be able to have such a jolly attitude after it. So, to answer your question, no, I'm not very frightened about what's going to happen to me." She gave Chen's hand a quick, loving squeeze. "What about you, though? I know you're trying your best to be brave about this situation, and I'm very proud of you for doing so, but you don't need to put on an act if you don't want to."
Chen forced her lips to form a smile. "Well, I guess I understand that you have no choice but to do this, and that's okay. Even so…" She slowly got to her feet and aligned her body with the front of Ran before hurling herself at the kitsune. When she made contact with the warm body of her surprised mistress, Chen wrapped her arms tightly around her back to form a tight embrace and let the tears openly flow from their ducts. "I-I'm gonna miss you so much. I love you, Mo—I mean, Ran-shama!"
Ran's only response was to pat the nekomata's back in the most comforting manner and whisper in her ear, "I love you too, my daughter." Ran and Chen had no genetic relationship, of course, but each secretly thought of their relationship with the other as being a mother-daughter type. Despite being unofficial, it was safe to say that the strength of the bond between the two of them almost certainly surpassed that of any of the actual parental relationships in Gensokyo. At this point, both wordlessly decided they could be candid and refer to each other in the manner of their true feelings.
"We'll see each other again someday, won't we?" Chen softly murmured. She wanted nothing more than to stay in Ran's warm caress and never leave it, but at the same time she wanted her sadness to be gently taken away by the kitsune's motherly hand.
Ran tenderly kissed the center of Chen's forehead and looked at her with fierce determination. "Chen, no matter where the Yama decides to sent me, if there is a way that I can use to see you again, I will find and use it. I promise."
"You promise?" Chen asked amid her tears.
Ran wrapped one of her tails of unrivaled-softness around her shikigami in a loving gesture. "I sure do."
Both animals heard a knocking on the door, and they looked up to see Patchouli Knowledge reentering the study holding both an ancient grimoire and a grave expression. "It's just about midnight," she said solemnly. "Are the two of you prepared for this?"
"I am," Ran answered. "Chen, are you ready?"
Chen savored the feeling of being in Ran's warm, loving embrace for the last few moments before she released herself from the grasp and nodded. "Let's just get this over with."
Patchouli looked at the nekomata kindly and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Chen, maybe you should step out of the room for now. I don't know if you wish to see your mother and mistress killed."
"No!" Chen shouted firmly. She kept her hand gripped tightly around Ran's. "I want to be here with her until the very end."
Patchouli looked to Ran for confirmation, and the kitsune nodded. "Patchouli," Ran began, "since you're the last person who will see me alive besides Chen, I would like to ask you my dying wish. Will you do it for me?"
"Please, tell me." The librarian was already feeling a large amount of guilt for being the one assigned to execute Ran, and she wanted to make the kitsune as comfortable as possible before her death.
"I'm not sure if Reisen is truly the one behind all of this, or if she is just answering to a higher being. Either way, anyone who would heartlessly snatch the life of a mother from her daughter, even if those titles are unofficial, is… well, there's no other word to use. Anyone who would do that is a bitch." She spat the final word of her sentence with disgust, a manner quite suitable for whomever it was referring to.
Chen looked quite surprised to hear her mistress say that, for although she would often listen to Yukari swearing, she had almost never heard Ran do so in her life.
"I'm sorry, Chen," Ran apologized, "but it's still true. So, Patchouli, my wish is this: resolve this incident. Find the one who has done this, and make sure that bitch is brought to justice! Please, do this for my sake and Chen's."
Patchouli was, as a habit, skeptical of making promises she was not certain she could keep, but she thought it would be unthinkable to deny the final request of the kitsune with such honest and pleading eyes. "All right," she decided. "I will do that for your sakes. I give you my word." Patchouli carefully balanced the grimoire on her knees and leafed through the pages within before she at last came to the one she was searching for. "Before Reimu passed the law that everyone must battle with the non-lethal spell card system, I designed a great number of spells to perform a myriad of tasks," she explained. "One of these, which I nicknamed 'Dormire ad Infinitum', causes exactly what its name implies: infinite sleep. Basically, I designed it to be a way to instantly induce death without bringing any pain at all to the victim. I knew it would have a use some day, and it would seem as though that day has come. May I use it on you now, Ran?"
Ran took a deep breath to calm the nerves that had begun to excite her stomach. "Yes, you may." She gripped her daughter's hand with a very tight force and smiled at her for the last time in all of her life. "Give Yukari-sama my apologies for having to resign from her service, all right?" She lowered her voice to one that only Chen could hear for her final words. "I'm sorry it had to end like this, but I know you'll grow up to be a strong, kind daughter I will be proud of. Don't forget the promise I made to you just now, for I certainly will not." Ran took a deep breath to fill her lungs with oxygen. "Farewell, Chen."
Chen's eyes, red from all the tears that had flowed out from them, continued to be damp, but she still held onto Ran's hand. As Patchouli began reciting a number of unknown magical words, she still held on. When Ran's eyes slowly shut, never to open again, she still held on. As Ran's lifeless body fell to the ground and its tails became still, she still held on.
The bronze clock down in the library began chiming to signal that midnight had come, and Chen kept her grip on Ran's hand strong until she herself lost consciousness and fainted, letting her body lie on Ran's.
[A/N]: First of all, I'd like to apologize for being rather late on this particular update. I did not intend to take so long to write it all out, but… things happen. I'll try my best to keep a more uniform updating schedule for the next chapters.
The original plan for the plot of this story has gone through so many revisions, the final one pretty much looks nothing like it. However, there is one moment that has been basically unchanged: that which you have just read, the death of Ran. It's, in my opinion, one of the most important moments in the story, and it will shape some of the decisions that both Chen and Yukari will make later on. It definitely wasn't easy to make the ultimate decision to kill Ran, but I feel like it's ultimately a vital part of the story.
Then, on the other side of the spectrum, there's Youmu, Yuyuko, and Tewi. To be honest, I'm a bit surprised by the lack of fanwork with interaction between Yuyuko and Tewi. Since the moment when I first saw both of them and their personalities, I thought, "These two would make good friends!" There is, of course, the problem about Yuyuko being a bottomless black hole and Tewi being an edible rabbit, but I still feel that they would get along quite well. Since the idea that Yuyuko wrote the letter has been dropped, she no longer needs to be concerned about Youmu acting strangely, and so the two go back into their regular habits. This, of course, leads to Youmu getting caught by the most sadistic person in all of Gensokyo, but maybe she deserved it for jumping to conclusions and distrusting her mistress so quickly.
The immediate threat against Remilia has been averted, but the day of destruction is only beginning. What plans does Yuuka have in store for Youmu, and what will happen to Yuyuko when she arrives there? What will be the next event in the growing conflict between Remilia and Flandre? Will Reisen finally be stopped, or will she manage to cause another unstoppable disaster? Be sure to read the seventh chapter of Temporal Quintessence!H