While it wasn't Remilia Scarlet's direct intentions (though it would still be a lie to say she did not appreciate it), journeying through the hallways of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, either on foot or in flight, nearly always left one with an unsettling, foreboding feeling within his or her heart. It was as though there was always a dark pool of madness lurking just below the surface of reality waiting eagerly in anticipation for the perfect moment to make itself known and flood the hallways in its insane liquid. When Remilia appointed Hong Meiling as gatekeeper in order to provide a friendlier and less threatening image of the mansion years back, she likely did not know that it would be this very youkai who would destroy the dam holding back the pent-up fluid and cause it to flow into activity.

All it took was a sharp kick to revert Remilia from her cool, charismatic self back to the terrifying Scarlet Devil, notorious and frightening to all. This was not the kick Meiling had first delivered to prevent the vampire from chasing after her sister, but a second one aimed directly in the solar plexus per Sakuya's advice to free herself from the binding and immovable grip she had been placed in. Remilia's response was to leap backward a step or two, completely unfazed by the kick, and cackle in delight over the walking dish of Chinese food that stood before her. "Cool and savory as a youkai like you would likely have or hot and sweet like a traitor's blood ought to be… any guesses as to how your blood will taste on my lips, China?"

"Like air, since I don't intend to let you taste a single drop of it," Meiling answered firmly, holding up her fists in a battle stance but remaining vigilant about running at any given moment if it would prove necessary.

"What wishful thinking," Remilia chuckled, her crimson eyes nearly boring holes into her prey. "It's a shame that I'm going to have to crush it for you."

As the vampire stared her gatekeeper down, her wings opened up again toward opposite ends of the library. At that point, Meiling realized it would be suicide to let herself remain there without running, frozen in fright from the daunting figure before her with wings spread like a praying mantis's. Closing her eyes in an almost serene manner, she inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times and concentrated intently on being aware of and accepting the fear within her mind. Fortunately, the Chinese youkai had become very adept at meditation, and thus she was successful in quickly dominating the terror that had ruled her body and regained control over her legs. Without waiting for Remilia to inevitably swoop toward her in a typical vampire-like fashion and attempt to bite her neck, Meiling leapt several feet forward and proceeded to dash as quickly as she could to the old door of the library.

Once again in the hallways of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Meiling tried to focus her mind on one thing: running. As Remilia mockingly called to her in a voice that seemed to echo from every direction, it was "the most dangerous game of hide and seek in your life", and losing would mean giving up more than a healthy dose of blood, and likely the plan she and Flandre had organized as well.

It was rather bewildering, she thought to herself. While sprinting as fast as she could down the corridor, she had no idea where her vampire mistress currently lay. The most logical conclusion, considering that Remilia did not begin pursuing Meiling as the gatekeeper left the library, was that she was somewhere behind her, jumping stealthily from shadow to shadow to close the gap between her and her meal.

However, as Meiling reached the end of the current hallway and flung herself up a set of elegantly carved, ornate steps leading up to the next floor of the mansion, she remembered something that the young, knowledgeable, reincarnating Hieda no Akyuu had written in her first history book of Gensokyo in the section concerning vampires: they apparently have the strength of an oni and, more importantly, the speed of a tengu.

Meiling wasn't sure if the facts were true; after all, Akyuu never included sources in her articles, and certain claims about the well-known denizens of Gensokyo seemed more like high school gossip than indisputable facts. Even so, she considered, it would be foolish of Remilia to not instantly halt her progress with a devastatingly powerful spell card and instead simply chase the gatekeeper down without possessing the aforementioned abilities. Of course, if she did indeed have that sort of strength, it would be pointless for Meiling to waste her energy on attempting to run away.

"Keep going, China!" the girlish yet refined voice of the vampire encouraged mockingly. "I'm sure you can outrun me if you try hard enough."

Meiling sighed and looked around in all directions, trying to address her directly. "Miss Remilia, I would appreciate it if you didn't tease me like this. If you want to come taste my blood, you should simply get on with it already."

"Oh, but what would be the fun in that?" Remilia giggled sadistically. "I've held back for years from chasing down a hapless, little victim in these hallways, so why should I cut this game of cat and mouse short so quickly!"

"How cruel of you," Meiling muttered bitterly. If she continued on with her current action, she realized in despair, it would simply go on and on until she would reach the point of exhaustion and then be subjected to a humiliating, merciless defeat, no breath remaining in her lungs to even whisper a word of protest. A new plan of stalling for time until Remilia would lose her blood-induced state of madness was needed, and she had to put it into motion immediately.

Without bothering to even check the label on the door to her immediate left in the dimly light hallway, she gave it a sharp kick at its hinges, causing it to crash inward and then rest crookedly on one side of the inside wall like a wounded animal. With the interior of the room exposed, Meiling leapt inside and quickly surveyed her new surroundings. The lavender walls, floor, and bedspread of what could now be identified as a small, personal bedroom and its neatly stacked bookcase made Meiling assume with fair certainty whose room it was, but she set that thought aside as she focused on the main issue at hand. Spotting a deep purple, velvet reclining chair that looked ideal for reading on backed against one corner of the room, she hopped into the triangular crevice between the chair and the two walls and crouched down as low to the ground as she could.

As long as Patchouli stays out of her bedroom or is at least in a good mood, Meiling thought in relief to herself, I should be safe from Remilia here. Well, for now, anyway.

Still, even with Meiling having found a hiding spot, it was not very difficult for Remilia to determine which room the gatekeeper had escaped into with an entire hallway of perfectly straight doors and one collapsed, lopsided one. "Hey, Meiling," Remilia laughed in delight as she stood in front of the busted door, "you do know that hunting down elusive prey only sharpens my craving, right? In my current state, I might be able to drain you completely dry and still have room for a taste of Sakuya!" That made Meiling shiver in her spot of refuge behind the chair, but thankfully nobody could see her doing that.

Remilia cheerfully skipped into the room with a joyous expression on her face, her skirt billowing behind her from the movement. It occurred to Meiling that, in spite of all her constant attempts at retaining full charisma among others, the girl did carry some natural resemblance to her sister in personality and attitude. If Remilia wasn't so preoccupied with maintaining her image as the older sister and head of the mansion, she thought, she could be very close to her sister, and I might not have become stuck in this situation.

"Now where, oh where, could my little China be?" Remilia asked in a singsong voice. The vampire dove toward the grand, queen-sized, lavender bed lying against the center of the west wall. Her knees slid from the momentum against the light purple plush rug in the middle of the floor fast enough to get her to the edge of the bed but not too fast as to get rug burn. "Is she under here?" she wondered aloud, flipping the part of the bedspread that hung over the edge and touched the floor upward with a grin. "Is our little gatekeeper hiding under the bed from the big, scary bogeyman?" Her crimson, glowing eyes, pierced every corner of the rectangular area with a sinister light, but they did not illuminate anything living, if dust bunnies don't fall under that criteria. "Well," she announced, "there's only a few places you can hide in a place as sparsely furnished as Patchouli's room, so what do you say we finish things up here—HEY!"

Something had grabbed onto Remilia's two little feet, the only part of her exposed from under the bed, and was proceeding to drag her feet-first from her searching position. As Remilia whipped her head around and freed it from the hanging bedspread to spot what had grabbed her, careful to make sure her head did not bang against the underside of the bed, she was surprised to look into the eyes of someone who was certainly too aloof to be Meiling.

"With all due respect, Miss Remilia," Patchouli said, a half-smile brightening her dull eyes, "I prefer to think of it as simple and uncluttered rather than sparse. Now, could you perhaps be kind enough to tell me why on Earth you broke my door down and hid under my bed?"

Remilia grinned wildly at Patchouli and licked her lips. "Meiling is attempting to escape the rightful punishment I'm giving her. Not that she can, of course; I ordered all the mansion exits to be locked, but she's still trying to hide from me. Anyway, since she couldn't have had enough time to set a decoy before hiding with me chasing her just slowly enough to give her a fair head start, it's pretty obvious she's hiding in here. With her being so uselessly lazy, it's actually a hit surprising that she didn't pick the bed as a hiding spot!"

"You're... 'punishing her'?" Patchouli questioned, an inquisitive look in her eyes. "What did she do to you that would warrant something like that?"

Remilia sniffed, clearly annoyed at having been stalled in her chase as she gazed around the room for her hidden prey. "Flandre found out about her true inheritance and status in the mansion, and she seemed none too pleased about me covering it up all this time and keeping her in the basement, to put it lightly. So she and Meiling conspired together to expose the truth to Gensokyo, and she actually managed to flee the mansion with the deed as evidence in her hand. I sent Sakuya out searching for her, but I frankly needed to punish someone at this very moment; those peaceful blood donation meals I've been eating lately just can't compare to a live victim, and the Scarlet Devil has reached the limit she can go to without going crazy or something."

"Oh my," Patchouli said, stifling a chuckle, "that's certainly... unfortunate for you. See, this is why I warned you about setting up such a fragile system of combating the catastrophe to begin with, what with locking your sister in the basement this whole time and all."

"You did nothing of the sort!" Remilia argued, her arms crossed in frustration.

"Oh yes, I most certainly did," Patchouli replied, a small, dark smile beginning to work its way across her lips. "You were so devastated by everything that had happened that you were willing to do anything just to keep your household together. Flandre being sentenced to a lifetime of house arrest was the only obvious solution posed to you, and so you took it without a second thought. I implored you to wait and think things through until a method of less extreme measures became apparent, but of course you would have none of it. With the way you decided to act, something was bound to happen, and then your 'great' plan would fall apart faster than that magnificent charismatic image of yours."She tried to choke down another snicker, but this one couldn't be contained.

Remilia stared unusually calmly at her librarian, making not a single sound in the dark bedroom. "Patchouli," she finally growled softly after a few moments, lightly pushing the librarian back a pace or two, "you are very, very lucky that you have anemia and therefore don't have blood succulent enough to taste. Yes, you're quite fortunate, because if you didn't, you'd better believe I would have absolutely no problem with draining your vessels bone-dry. Just keep that in mind."

Having voiced her threat very clearly, Remilia relaxed her intimidating pose and relaxed again, though the terrifying sense of hunger still gleaned in her eyes. "I only did what was asked of me; why don't you go laugh it up with everyone else because Flandre couldn't handle her unwitting role in the scheme of things!" She snorted and looked disdainfully at Patchouli. "Maybe I should have chosen to confide in Meiling on this instead of you; she might be quite dumber than you, but she does care for Flandre as much as—or maybe even more than—I do, and she wouldn't be dryly scolding me like this when things start to fall apart."

"Well, you certainly dropped the ball on brainstorming better ideas to handle the aftermath of a disaster than putting away such an energetic, curious girl like Flandre for good, but I suppose you're right about being forced into acting that way by her." Patchouli diverted her vision to the corner of her room that housed the recliner and reduced her expression to a flat gaze. "Regarding the other subject, though, I think you pretty much had no choice but to keep me in the loop for this situation. I don't think Meiling would have been able to emotionally or intellectually handle it, and Sakuya obviously wouldn't have been suitable for being an assistant to developing the plan.

"Anyway, if I can put it bluntly, having an episode of blood craving and going mad from it right now is absolutely detrimental to our efforts of finding out the identity, motives, and plans of those who tried to kill Miss Remilia earlier this evening and are attempting to set a revolution into motion. I realize that by announcing this, Meiling," she said while maintaining her stare at the recliner, "it seems a rather cruel and uncaring act on my part. Rest assured, however, that in the ultimate outcome of things, it's the most efficient way of dealing with things and will cut your suffering to a minimum." She turned back to the vampire, who had begun to look all around the room in an attempt to discover where the one Patchouli was addressing lay. "Meiling is hiding behind the reclining chair in the corner of the room. Drink her blood until you return to a calm, normal state of mind."

At that very moment, the embers in Remilia's eyes were rekindled, and she pounced on the chair, fangs glistening in the dim light of the bedroom. Meiling yelped in fear as she stood up and revealed her (already known) presence to the room. She attempted to escape the cramped hiding spot she was stuck in, but hopes of that were quickly dashed as the young vampire put her hands on her gatekeeper's shoulders and launched herself into the space behind the chair as well, her target being the Chinese girl's soft, fleshy skin at the base of her neck.

"Well, China, looks like our little game has finally come to a close," the beautiful, fearsome, and terrifying Scarlet Devil, the character of history and legends, announced to the youkai cowering before her.

"Patchouli!" Meiling wailed at the last moment before she would succumb to the extraction of her blood. She wanted to implore the witch to give her even a small bit of assistance, get help from someone else, talk Remilia down from going through with the punishment, or at least show the slightest bit of sympathy, but she found she could do little in her current state but shout the girl's name. "Patchouli! Patchouli!"

"My apologies," Patchouli called out casually amid what had evolved from Meiling's pitiable shouts of the witch's name into horrendous noises of skin being impaled, the sinister sound of drinking, groans of seemingly sensual pleasure, and terror-stricken whimpers without even looking up as she rifled through the drawer in her bedside table. "We just need Remilia off this thirst for blood tonight as soon as possible. I'm anemic and thus would likely die from blood loss, Sakuya isn't around to provide her sanguineous services, and unfortunately Koakuma has not yet been captured; it would have been quite satisfying to punish her by appeasing our Scarlet Devil's hunger with an offering of her treacherous blood. Sadly, you're therefore the only suitable candidate for the activity. You should not be worried for your life; contrary to what she says, she only drinks enough to fill her light appetite, so you should certainly survive this with little physical trauma."

The witch's fingers stumbled upon various trinkets and items she presumed she had lost long ago at the same time Meiling sobbed loudly, "P-Please, Remilia-sama, forgive me for all I've done that's upset you! I'll guard the gate twenty four hours a day for the rest of my life and never sleep a second again if you want! Twenty five, even!"

Remilia paused her drinking for a moment and gazed at the quivering, sweating, petrified gatekeeper with a cruel smirk. "Would you be willing to accept that you can never see Flandre again and forfeit to me all the details about the little plan she's carrying out? I'd let you go right now if you did that."

At that moment, even amid the supreme feeling of trauma that enveloped her, a definitive change of attitude came over Meiling after hearing that. She managed to choke down her fright for the moment and frown defiantly, ignoring the natural terror she felt from being in the dangerous Scarlet Devil's presence. "That... that's not going to happen. I can't do that." Remaining loyal to Flandre was what seemed to be one of the only things keeping her from having a complete breakdown, and she wasn't about to relinquish it.

Remilia cackled in amusement, tracing a carefully manicured fingernail gingerly over the gatekeeper's cheeks. "Oh, quit being such a foolish martyr clinging to this stupid sense of 'loyalty' you have toward my sister! Sakuya's unmatched in stealth abilities, so she's inevitably going to bring in Flandre very soon. Your one ticket out of here is going to delightfully slip away if you reject it, and for no good reason, too!"

"As terrifying as your punishment is," Meiling muttered, using up the last bit of courage her adrenaline would give her, "it's nothing compared to selling out Miss Flandre to you. Slice me into a hundred pieces if you want; Hong Meiling will never betray her true friends! I shall sooner accept your punishment than do that."

Remilia, even after being thwarted in her attempt at emotional domination, licked her lips sensually and giggled into the night. "As you wish! This delectable blood of yours is the real prize, anyway; it's more important than whether or not you break and concede both Flandre and your free will to me. I was curious about whether or not I could completely eliminate your emotional spirits, but it doesn't matter much to me right now."

In the middle of half-listening to the tense conversation taking place, Patchouli finally came across a small, blue, L-shaped, plastic object with a metal canister placed inside. "Ah, there's my inhaler," Patchouli said to herself, dropping the object into a pocket of her nightgown before turning back to the spectacle occurring behind her recliner. "Well, anyway, Eirin and I asked around to find out if anyone knew the whereabouts of Youmu or her mistress Yuyuko, who seems to have escaped from the library and has also gone missing for about an hour now. The only one who gave a reasonable answer was Tewi Inaba, Yuyuko's companion while in the holding room, and that was after Eirin had coerced her into speaking with some rather sharp words about possible discipline she could get into if she did not comply with us. Regardless, however, I'm off to discover what lies in the place she mentioned that would ensnare both Youmu and Yuyuko: Kourindou. If it proves fruitful, I should be one step closer to getting to the bottom of tonight's incident and helping young Chen see the one who condemned her maternal figure to death brought to justice. Wish me luck, Miss Remilia."

Remilia's only response was a loud murmur of pleasure, but it was sufficient for Patchouli. And so, Meiling's last hope of being saved from the horrific nightmare she had been placed in for supporting her friend Flandre nonchalantly strolled out her bedroom door, appearing completely indifferent to what she had just walked out on. The gatekeeper could only hope that her mind and spirit, the last things she seemed to hold over Remilia, would carry her safely through the rest of the night and not betray her as well.

Darkness. It was the single concept Wriggle Nightbug had begun to think she would only perceive from here on out as Yuuka Kazami journeyed along somewhere with her and Rumia in tow. Being held hostage next to the friend who projected a ball of darkness all around her that would erratically shift in size and shape as its owner felt nervous or scared didn't help matters much at all for the firefly.

Even so, Wriggle couldn't help but get the notion that her life could be snatched away before the darkness of the night would end. It was a mystery to her why she and Rumia were even needed as part of the ongoing plot. She had done her best to remain quiet, neutral, and avoid causing an angry argument when Cirno and Mystia had begun butting heads regarding what to do about the supposed revolution. It didn't take intelligence to realize the tense atmosphere in that situation, and so both Wriggle and Rumia had agreed it would be best to avoid taking a side in the situation and simply bow out of the conversation when the opportunity called for it.

So why did Mystia insist on having the two of them join her? This was what had baffled Wriggle as she lay in captivity for the past four hours, and it came into focus again as Yuuka briefly halted her movement for a second, likely to shift the way she carried the two or tend to a sore muscle. Clearly, it was part of a premeditated plan, even though the firefly wasn't exactly sure what that word meant when her mind stumbled upon it. The way Mystia happily and eagerly reassured them by saying, "Don't worry about it; by the time tomorrow comes to a close, you'll be heroes in the eyes of every youkai in the land!" only served to further strengthen the fear and confusion the little insect was harboring. Not only did she lack any talents or abilities to her knowledge that would allow her to become a hero among youkai, she contemplated, but why would "heroes" require being gagged and bound from movement?

Of course, Wriggle decided as she noted that the rate at which Yuuka was walking while carrying her and Rumia along had greatly increased, it all likely had to do with the fact that Mystia seemed to have gone crazy. The little firefly wasn't sure if insanity could be cured or if Mystia was going to be stuck with it for the rest of her life, but it was pretty obvious that her wide, empty eyes along with the way she acted to her friends and her decision to join the extremely dangerous Yuuka Kazami with any sort of plan were signs of the sparrow's sanity lapsing. However, the most disturbing thing she exhibited, in Wriggle's opinion, was the final line she spoke before flying off into the forest and leaving her two friends in the care of Reisen, who promptly sent them to be held by Yuuka in the old antiques shop: "Well, I'm off to give that fairy Lily White a hands-on demonstration on how to break every part of her body, one by one. Maybe then she'll finally realize she made a horrible mistake messing with the wrong bird." In all the time she had known her friend, Wriggle could not remember a single instance when Mystia had harbored a serious, unwavering grudge against someone else; not even the one against Yuyuko after the ghost seemingly ate her was very severe. She shuddered to imagine what exactly it was that Lily, such a seemingly cheery and harmless fairy, had done to upset the sparrow this badly.

Yuuka's movement stopped again, and this time she let out a sigh as if she would not begin walking again for a little while. The ball of darkness controlled by Rumia bounced around wildly and changed shape like an amoeba in response, appearing like a drop of jet-black in a sea of dark, navy nighttime. Although she couldn't be seen in such conditions, Yuuka smiled wistfully as she quietly observed what the youkai was doing.

After she gently lowered the two onto the damp, grassy ground she was standing on, she turned her attention to the smaller firefly youkai. "Wriggle?" she called out softly in the kindest voice she could muster. "Are you still awake?"

"Mmm," Wriggle murmured nervously through the bittersweet vine gag in her mouth, trying her best not to say anything that would offend the flower youkai while forgetting that she couldn't actually say intelligible words at the time.

"Good. There's something I should tell you about, and here seems like an ideal place to explain it." She took hold of the bittersweet vine gag in Wriggle's mouth and gently tugged at it to demonstrate what she was about to talk about. "If I take this away, do you promise not to scream?"

"Mmm-hmm." Likely due to being in such close proximity with Yuuka, a tiny wildflower growing in the dirt next to Wriggle began to slightly bend toward the firefly.

"Very well then." Yuuka slowly dragged the vine out of the mouth it had begun to bind itself to, and Wriggle immediately closed her mouth to relax her tired jaw before opening it again briefly to spit out the taste of the plant.

"Th-thank you, Miss Yuuka!" Wriggle stuttered, still trying to relax her mouth back to normal. The wildflower began to bend even further, lightly brushing against the exposed skin on the girl's arm. The feeling of its petals softly rubbing against her bare skin gave Wriggle a minor tickling sensation, but she focused on what Yuuka was about to say instead of a flower brushing against her.

Yuuka lightly grasped the firefly's other arm and looked into where she guessed her eyes were in the darkness. "I might as well get right to the point and spare you any tension of wondering about what I'm going to tell you: I'm setting you free."

"Wh-what?!" Wriggle tried to keep as calm of a composure as possible in case she was being led into a trap, but it was difficult to remain placid after such a claim as that.

Yuuka quickly scanned the area around her to check for eavesdroppers, although it was a rather futile action to try while being surrounded in impenetrable darkness, before returning to Wriggle. "When Reisen and I first engineered this plot for a revolution of Gensokyo that would transfer power to the weaker youkai of the land, one of the key points we discussed to ensure success involved the use of you younger youkai and your innate talents—or one of you, at least. Reisen and I agreed that Rumia would be critical to the plan, but she wanted to bring you along, too, using your life as a bargaining chip to either motivate Rumia to perform our needed activities or to convince your fairy friends to avoid intervening."

"I see." Although Wriggle knew the eventual outcome of the discussion, she couldn't tell how it would get there from here and what strings would become attached along the way. She twitched a bent antenna as she intently listened to and tried to commit to memory what the flower youkai was saying.

"So," Yuuka continued, "I decided that if her presence isn't necessary to putting the plan into action, I shouldn't keep around an innocent little youkai and use threats on her life as a way of coercing others into submission. It's not portraying a good image of me to the ones who will benefit from the revolution, and quite frankly, I'm tired of others associating me with doing and enjoying such, monstrous, sickening activities."

"Come again?" This was a new sort of angle Yuuka was going toward, and Wriggle, though still frightened, was curious about what she meant by it.

"You heard right." Yuuka sighed tiredly and opened her umbrella to the stars, spinning it slowly as she looked up nostalgically into the night sky. Wriggle could tell that something important was going to be said from a stance like that. "Apparently, since I'm very old and strong, I can't have a lighthearted attitude about me without others assuming that my jokes have darker connotations to them. I say teasingly a single time, 'Genocide is just another game', and all the residents of Gensokyo start believing that I'm an evil monster who's out to get them in a serial killing spree." She stooped to the ground and lightly stroked the petals of the creeping wildflower, which rustled blissfully in response. "And it's not helped by the fact that I'm extremely aggressive in protecting my friends and floral children but still strive to keep my temper as I deal with those who would threaten them. They assume the worst because I would rather stay calm as I attack them and drive them off than succumb to rage and become a uncontrolled danger to the entire land, though I admit that's a part of me I refuse to and probably can't change. Vexing, really."

Wriggle's eyes widened to the point of almost bulging out of their sockets, and since Rumia had finally settled her darkness orb down, the firefly could finally gaze into the melancholy, longing, ancient eyes of the flower youkai. They were a far cry from what Youmu had perceived as cruel, heartless orbs of fury when she had first met them three hours before. "I... never thought about it that way before." Wriggle's sense of wonder and astonishment quickly made way for her intrigue. "If that's how you really are, though, Miss Yuuka, couldn't you just start acting friendlier toward everyone?"

Yuuka laughed humorlessly and spun her umbrella once. "As if I've never tried that before. If I start doing that, everyone assumes I'm just putting up a nice facade to cover up an especially evil plan and then run away in fright. In fact, I'm rather surprised that you're taking this all in with a cool head and not getting scared or accusing me of lying. Granted, I suppose the fact that I do use a faux polite and amiable attitude to scare others into submission when the situation calls for it isn't helping matters, but with the public opinion of me as it is, it's really one of the only ways I can act to successfully accomplish what I want. And besides that, I'm a... well... never mind about that." She rested her umbrella against the ground like a cane and sighed, smoothing out the wrinkles in her vest to keep her hands busy. "I guess I've brought it upon myself to be found frightening among others, but you have to understand that it's not my wish for everyone to treat me like this. Believe me, Bug Girl, if I could live peacefully among the people of Gensokyo without getting them so afraid—as long as they would keep their damn fingers away from my flowers—I would."

"And yet you're running a campaign to get rid of all the oppressive youkai and humans in the land," Wriggle replied quietly, silently hoping she had used the big word she had only previously heard and not said correctly. Ordinarily, she would be far too terrified to boldly contradict or even say almost anything to Yuuka Kazami, but hearing what seemed to be heartfelt words from the scariest youkai in the land gave her a certain courage to be more upfront with her speech.

Yuuka allowed a sunny smile to cross her lips, ripping off first Wriggle's left arm, then her two antennae, and finally force-feeding the dismembered body parts to the intensely bleeding and emotionally traumatized insect. Or so she would have, if the rumors spread about Gensokyo on how the flower youkai responds to things said to her that she doesn't like were true. Instead, she simply shook her head patiently at the firefly. "It's a very complicated matter, but the eventual outcome should be peaceful, tranquil, and non-violent, if everything goes as planned. Then, maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to live in a world that isn't scared stiff by the mention of my name."

Having reached an appropriate endpoint for the conversation, Yuuka looked downward at the short insect, smiling kindly. "Wriggle... let me express my gratitude toward you."

"For what?" Wriggle twitched her antennae furtively, still amazed at what had been revealed to her.

"Well, for being a person who could listen to an old lady tell her tale of woe, I suppose." The flower youkai ruffled the insect's hair playfully with one hand, still keeping her warm smile about her. "Even if you don't believe a word I said to you, I'm thankful that I could just let out my feelings to another on what might be my last day in Gensokyo, either in freedom or in life completely if my plan with Reisen fails and I'm caught. So, I mean it: thank you, my cute little bug!"

Looking up suddenly as if she had forgotten something, Yuuka picked up her umbrella and opened it again. "Anyway, I should be moving on now. If I don't arrive with Rumia in hand soon, she's going to start wondering about what I've been doing." She laid a single hand on the winding bittersweet plant that had wrapped itself tightly around Wriggle, and just like that, the winding vine began to uncoil itself from the firefly's body. As Wriggle began to profusely thank her, Yuuka simply put an index finger to the insect's lips. "No need to say anything; just go ahead and fly away from here. We're currently standing somewhere close to the base of Youkai Mountain, so you should be able to find your way to the Misty Lake and your friends fairly easily."

Wriggle quickly looked around in the area to try to spot any traps the youkai may have set, but she failed to find any in the darkness of the forest even without Rumia's darkness orb in her eyes. As the thought of her friend crossed her mind, she looked over at the little girl constrained by bittersweet. "Wh-what about Rumia, though?"

Yuuka smiled pleasantly and patted Wriggle lightly on the shoulder, gestures that no longer seemed frightening coming from the youkai. "Don't worry about her. She's not going to be hurt in any sort of way; she's just going to help us a little bit. After tomorrow evening, she'll be perfectly free to go wherever she wants, and neither she nor you will be bullied by stronger residents of the land or threatened by extermination any longer."

"...Really?" Although it was a relief to hear Yuuka acting peacefully and her expression of thought seemed quite sincere, there was something about the claim she promised about the plan with Rumia seemed a bit off to Wriggle. Of course, even after hearing the lament, she was not about to press Yuuka with claims of bring deceitful, but she couldn't help but still be worried for Rumia's safety and about whatever ulterior motives the flower youkai possessed. In the end, however, Wriggle decided to let it remain a gnawing itch in the back of her mind and not try Yuuka's patience, instead resolving to think it over and come to a conclusion in the safety among her friends. "I-I suppose I should get going then."

As Wriggle looked back on what had just happened to her as she scurried away into the woods and left Yuuka to continue journeying onward, she wondered what the future would hold for her and her friends. Would Rumia indeed stay safe in the hands of Yuuka, who all of a sudden admitted to not wanting to be as scary as she was? And would Wriggle herself stay safe as the "revolution" that seemed rather fishy would come into motion? The firefly was not one for standing in the face of danger in the past and would likely hide in a cave based on instincts, but she felt it would be quite necessary of her and her friends to not back away from this incident if they hoped to get to the bottom of it without losing their limbs, minds, or even lives.

To say that the young Flandre Scarlet was amazed by the world outside the Scarlet Devil Mansion was a gross understatement, one that ought to be punished with an explosion brought on by the vampire herself. After she stopped flapping her wings a relatively long time after clearing the library window, Flandre decided to spend a moment taking in all her surroundings.

To her, the land of Gensokyo bore a striking resemblance to the fantastic illustrations in some of the picture books Remilia had bought her, so much that she half-wondered if she had either been dreaming this entire time or would catch sight of fairy tale knights, dragons, and princesses running around in the open plain she was floating above. Indeed, the rolling meadows situated beyond the forests that enveloped the Misty Lake were full of shortly cut grass that looked prime for frolicking through as long as one did not mind running into a couple of man-eating youkai along the way. On the far edges of the horizon, Flandre caught sight of a thickly grown forest that seemed to exude an air of wonder, chaos, and noise all at the same time; a relatively close village protected by strong, tall brick walls with a mysterious bamboo forest beyond it; and, almost too far away to see, a grey, dead land dappled by unidentifiable blue and pink glowing lights that appeared to be floating on top of the sky itself. Taking it all in, Flandre was almost too astounded to remember her ongoing feud with Remilia.

"Gensokyo's so pretty," Flandre gushed, wrapping her arms over her heart and around herself. "Someday I think I'll go explore the whole thing with Meiling if I get the chance to; I can't even begin to imagine what kinds of wonderful things and people I'll find in every little nook and cranny!" Just as the girl had begun imagining her own adventure for another day, her mind wandered upon thoughts of her older sister again. "And Remi wanted to keep me in the basement for all time and forbid me from seeing any of this. I can't believe it!"

With thoughts of her sister and her current situation returning to her conscious mind, Flandre set aside staring at the green, picturesque meadow she was flying above and focused on the plan she and Meiling had quickly developed. Turning around backward to face the direction of the mansion that had held her for so long, she looked at a great mountain rising out of the earth just next to the Misty Lake in an almost perfect rounded cone shape, seeming to hold a lake of its own at the very summit of the peak. "That must be the Youkai Mountain Meiling says everyone's been going to and talking about lately, huh? Looks like a big pimple on the land's face!" She giggled softly to herself at her silly simile before looking serious again as she attempted to recall her exact instructions.

"So, somewhere on that big mountain, there's a huge, cascading waterfall forming the entrance to the home of lots of tengu, both the wolf and crow variant. One of them is Aya Shame...me...mar...me...merimar... something, and she would definitely take interest in my story. Then she'd print it in her newspaper and spread the news around to everyone who lives in the land, and Remilia would have to start treating me with respect and letting me live like a normal person or else be thought of as a heartless tyrant by everyone else. So all I have to do is show her the deed," she said as she took out the precious document from her dress and examined it closely, "and I should be free from a lifetime of hell." Flapping her wings of rainbow prisms again, she began to soar off toward the mountain, still looking around in wonder at all the different sights that caught her eye. "And if Aya refuses to help me," she continued to herself as she flew to destination in the half-moonlit sky of Gensokyo, "I can always head across the Sanzu River—wherever that is; I guess I could ask someone—and tell that ultimate judge woman Shikieiki about what's going on, and then Remi definitely wouldn't keep depriving me of my rights after that! Meiling is so smart to come up with plans like this one; Sakuya must just be jealous when she apparently acts rude to her." Even though the girl had become rather short-tempered and bitter toward her sister in recent days, she still carried a natural, childlike optimism that was ironically carried about her like radiant sunlight, one of the very substances that could severely weaken her.

As a matter of fact, as Flandre flew overheard en route to the waterfall on Youkai Mountain, her presence caused the land traveler Marisa Kirisame to look above into the sky after feeling as though a ray of sunlight had fallen on her and marvel at why in the world she would think the sun would suddenly rise in the middle of the night.

"You're crazy," her traveling companion Alice replied with a quiet laugh to herself after Marisa explained to her why she suddenly looked into the sky, and Alice's right hand doll Shanghai made a strange, amused tittering noise with a lighthearted smile to concur. "Not only because you expected the sun would suddenly rise at two-thirty in the morning, I mean; just wanting to take a walk outside at this time of night and then suddenly getting the urge to go visit the underground is insane enough, especially after you just resolved a pretty hectic incident down there a month ago. I think Yukari and Yuyuko are getting some fierce competition in the Department of Wackos now!"

Marisa wiped her forehead of sweat with her forearm and scratched the back of her head, laughing lightly. "Harsh," she said pleasantly, grinning at Alice. "I just think Miss Satori would appreciate a little visit, 'specially since her pets and sister are the only company she ever gets. The least I could do is return the hospitality she showed me last time, you know?"

"In the middle of the night when this big incident is going on?" Alice folded her arms and raised one eyebrow in doubt. "Moreover, why choose to brighten up Satori's day when her home is so secluded? I'm sure Kaguya or Komachi would feel the same amount of appreciation—or a lack thereof, perhaps—as her, and are definitely easier to get to. Hell, you could even go to Bhava-Agra and drop in on Tenshi more easily!"

"Nah," Marisa replied in a nonchalant voice that almost suggested she had completely ignored what Alice had just said, "I just wanna go back to see the Palace of the Earth Spirits again! If that's too much to agree to, you shouldn't have started following me in the first place, ze."

Alice snorted and gave her partner a sardonic glance. "If I didn't notice you leaving the mansion in this zombie trance of yours, nobody would be there to keep you from falling off the face of the earth and landing your picture on the side of a milk carton! Be thankful at least one person in Gensokyo is willing to babysit you here and make sure you don't get into trouble."

Marisa grinned with amusement, dropping to her knees and proceeding to mockingly grovel at Alice's feet. "Oh, Divine Goddess whom I have entrusted my life to, how can I, a mere human in the presence of such a powerful and beautiful youkai, possibly repay the massive debt I must have incurred by asking of you such a formidable task?"

Alice rolled her eyes and nodded at Shanghai, who proceeded to lightly whack the back of Marisa's head with her tiny hand. "Knock it off, you idiot." Still, as Marisa scrambled back onto her feet, cracking up uncontrollably the entire time, Alice chuckled softly to herself. "Divine Goddess. Heh, I guess I wouldn't mind it if everyone kneeled and called me that whenever I would enter a room."

"See what I mean?" Marisa chuckled, brushing off any dust that had accumulated on her apron from kneeling on the ground and continuing to walk by her friend's side. "You're destined for power and greatness, Alice! Someday you'll reign over Gensokyo, and then maybe you'll command me to return your romantic affections!"

Marisa was hoping and expecting to get an embarrassed blush on her companion's cheeks from that, but Alice simply rolled her eyes and ordered her doll to slap the magician again, which she seemed to do with much pleasure. "Fat chance of that," she retorted. "If anything, when I have enough strength to enslave all of Gensokyo and take over as its supreme empress, your job will more likely be licking the Mary Janes my doll army members wear until they sparkle, all the while lying on the cold, hard ground beneath me!" Alice smiled wryly at her friend who bore a mystified look on her face upon hearing that. "Who knows; you might enjoy that even more than being my romantic partner!" With a couple of quick directions from her mistress, Shanghai eyed Marisa with a teasing grin and, from her position flying between the two girls, extended her tiny foot toward the magician, waggling it playfully in her face as if to request the service right then and there.

Marisa turned to Alice with a questioning glance in her eyes, but then laughed good-naturedly as she patted the doll that faced her on the head. "That's a very nice offer, but if it's all the same to you, I think I'll pass on playing your perverted domination and humiliation games, okay? Thanks."

Alice smiled wryly, shrugging her shoulders. "All right. It'd be just as fine for me to force you into becoming my broken slave once the land is mine if you don't want to be one right now."

The smirk was quickly wiped off Alice's face, however, as both she and Marisa all of a sudden caught sight of two moving figures approaching them from further on in the forest surrounding the base of the mountain. The movement of the two people who both appeared to be clad in blue dresses was erratic and shaky, and it appeared to Marisa as though they were leaning on each other for support as they walked. "What are those guys doing?!" Marisa anxiously quickened her pace into the woods toward the two, and Alice began to run beside her in order to keep up.

"C-Cirno," one of the two figures that Marisa and Alice now identified as fairies whispered. She wore a barrage of scratches and burns all over her body and seemed beyond the point of exhaustion from the look on her face, but turned her head weakly to her companion, who appeared to be in even worse shape than herself with much of her facial skin charred and blistered to a bizarre red and black mix. "I think we're finally saved!"

"Oh," Cirno replied in a hoarse, cracked voice, not turning her head to her friend or even bothering to slow her movement down. Now that the adrenaline from fighting "Hina" had dripped away from her body, escaping from Youkai Mountain had begun to feel like an incredibly old person's struggles to get out of bed in the morning while fighting arthritis to her, and the burning, throbbing pain that punished her legs every step she took had reduced her thought capacity to nearly a tenth of what it was before. Thinking would have allowed her to contemplate the pain she felt even further, and so the natural solution for her was to reduce herself into no longer thinking about almost anything. Realizing that she would have likely succumbed to the pain, failed to make it off the mountain, and perhaps dragged down Daiyousei with her if she had done anything else, Cirno had set her mind toward walking at a steady pace against all other possible obstacles.

Still, now that she had stumbled upon help and safety in the midst of the horrid night, she couldn't help but replay the image of the vicious fireball danmaku striking her over and over again while "Hina" looked on with a ruthless grin on her lips. While the thought caused the burns spread all over her face to sting cruelly and bring white-hot pain to her nerve endings, it also sent a shiver down her spine as she wondered about what could have happened to her if Reisen had not showed up to subdue the curse goddess. Up until now in her life, it had been almost unthinkable to her, but the notion that she could have died became a very real, chilling thought in her mind, and her body shuddered violently at the possibility.

"Cirno?" Daiyousei asked again gently, laying a hand on her friend's cheek but quickly recoiling after hearing a weak cry of pain in response. "Are you all right?"

"My god," Marisa exclaimed as she finally caught up with the two fairies, a concerned look on her face as she took notice of the scars and burns that decorated their bodies. "What did you two do? You look like you just escaped nuclear warfare or something!" The magician looked more closely at Cirno's face, or what remained of it beyond the vicious layer of burns, and nearly jumped in horror. "Holy crap! Cirno, your face… what the hell happened to you?!"

"Hina," Daiyousei mumbled, standing between Cirno and Marisa and pushing the magician back a step or two as she stood a little too close in the fairy's comfort space. "The girl offered to help us… and then she brutally unleashed fire attacks upon the two of us! Didn't even feel like normal danmaku back there; those spell cards were like torture devices!"

"I'll say," Alice agreed grimly as she looked at the two. "It looks more like she shattered your bones and then dragged your faces through a bonfire than beat you in a danmaku duel! Why would such a calm, docile goddess want to assault you so badly, anyway?"

"No idea," Daiyousei replied before feeling her legs buckle beneath her, causing Marisa to grasp her firmly by the shoulders to keep her standing. "We were just asking for help on finding Reisen to get our friends back, and Hina then started acting really oddly and asked us to 'let her relieve us of our misfortune'. Actually, we probably would have died out there if it hadn't been for Reisen jumping in and shooting her down, at which point we had no choice but to run away."

Marisa raised an eyebrow and turned toward the looming mountain up ahead, trying to contain any possibly unfounded excitement while still handling the sight of the ice fairy's face resembling a lump of charcoal. "Reisen saved you? You mean to say the one behind the incident with the vampire tonight... is just beyond this path?" In response to the fairy's weakly nodding head, she smiled broadly at Alice. "C'mon, then! The underground can wait; let's crack this case and win a little respect around the land by apprehending the rabbit, ze!"

Alice shot her friend a disgusted look and crossed her arms, motioning to Cirno and Daiyousei. "And leave these two to slowly die in the middle of the woods like wounded deer? What kind of heartless monster do you take me—and yourself—for?!" She looked down kindly at the two fairies who were now leaning on the ground and was met by the stares of two sets of utterly grateful eyes.

Marisa sighed impatiently. "Look, at any other situation I'd agree, but we're right on the path of a girl who's executing a plan that will undoubtedly spiral out of control and hurt everyone if unstopped. If we don't continue on quickly, she's going to go someplace else, and we'll lose the opportunity to nab her quick and easy like this!"

"Fine," Alice snapped, a small scowl on her face. "You go to the mountain and bring back Reisen. I'm going to show a little human decency here and help these two get back to the Scarlet Devil Mansion to receive treatment from Eirin."

Marisa grumbled to herself, annoyed at the rather condescending look of disdain she was being given from her friend. "Don't treat me like the bad guy here, Alice! Not my fault I wanna help keep Gensokyo as a whole safe instead of just two fairies who'll resurrect again anyway."

"Just go already, then," Alice replied. "It'd be better for you to be an asshole who stopped Reisen from doing anything else bad than for you to just be an asshole, one who let the rabbit slip through her grasp."

"All right, that works for me," Marisa replied a bit too eagerly, ignoring the feeling of disgust Alice seemed to be harboring toward her. "I guess we'll meet up again afterward at the mansion, then?" Without waiting for a definite reply from the irritated girl, she proceeded to run off toward the mountain, eventually swapping ground movement for flight with the broom in her possession after coveting about thirty meters.

"Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that," Alice muttered bitterly to herself as she watched Marisa vanish off into the distance. "Go ahead and play incident solver, Marisa; it's not like there's anyone around who needs our help here." Her gaze returned to the bruised and battered fairies lying on the ground and she scooped them into her arms, Cirno being held in the right side of her embrace and Daiyousei on the left. "Let's go, then," she announced to the children staring up intently at her with wide, unblinking eyes, almost as if she were telling a story around a campfire that the two had fallen into. "We need to get you back to the mansion so the Lunarian doctor can fix you up, okay?"

Daiyousei, still keeping her gaze fixed on Alice, cocked her head slightly. "You mean... you really want to help us?"

Alice rolled her eyes sarcastically as she looked down at the fairies with a small smile. "Nope, I just said that because I want to tie you both to heavy boulders and drop you into the Misty Lake so you drown. Really, why else would I want to let Marisa go on her own if not for rescuing some hapless little fairies?"

Cirno began to cough violently, causing Daiyousei to glance at her friend sympathetically and worriedly before returning her gaze to Alice after the ice fairy calmed down again. "To be honest, though, I think Marisa's right. Even though Cirno and I are in a lot of pain, we will regenerate after a little while, so it'd be better to go after Reisen than help us."

"Yeah, that may be, but I'm not about to say 'screw you' to two fairies who clearly are in a hell of a lot of pain," Alice replied. "Marisa's only matched by Reimu in danmaku talents, so I seriously doubt she's going to have any problem taking Reisen down alone. And anyway, if you two did actually manage to find the rabbit, that means you've tracked down the number one suspect in this incident so far before Reimu, Marisa, Patchouli, Youmu, Eirin, Yukari, or even I could, and that's pretty damn impressive for only two sprites. I'd say the least you deserve is proper medical attention for those godawful wounds of yours."

"Miss Alice," Cirno croaked, slowly turning her charred, blistered face toward the doll-loving youkai, "...thanks."

Alice looked down at the fairy and did her best to smile even while feeling horrified at staring at the injured face. "Like I said, you don't have to thank me for this; I'm just trying to be a Good Samaritan like any normal human, as in any besides Marisa, should be."

"Well, yeah," Cirno whispered, "but... even though I hate relying on others for help when I get into trouble, you're really saving our backs here."

"Exactly," Daiyousei concurred, eagerly nodding her head. "I think what Cirno's trying to say is that if there's ever something our team can do for you in exchange for your act of getting us to safety right now, you should just ask, and we'd be happy to help."

Alice put some effort into keeping her smile intact, not wanting to deflate the innocent vitality and happiness the two fairies were radiating by admitting that she doubted there was anything the group of youngsters could ever do to help her. "Why, thank you. That's a very nice offer!"

Daiyousei pouted scornfully, crossing her arms in a childish way. It was a mannerism usually reserved for Cirno herself and rarely employed by the fairy acting as the voice of reason within the group, but since the ice fairy was somewhat incapacitated beyond speaking simply, it fell upon Daiyousei to use it. "I know you're thinking that there's no way we could ever be useful to you, and you're not the first person to think that, but I promise you that we'll be able to pay you back for this someway, someday!"

At least these two are vigorously offering to help me instead of anyone else, Alice concluded to herself as she continued to progress toward the mansion with Cirno and Daiyousei in her arms. If such innocent, naïve children started declaring their debt and willingness to do anything to pay it back to somebody more manipulative, they could end up carrying out someone's horrifying dirty work with smiles on their faces, blissfully unaware of how terrible their actions truly would be. One of Cirno's icicle wings accidentally gently brushed against the bare skin of Alice's right arm, and she shuddered to herself. How chilling.

Judging from Flandre's eager expression as she stared at the magnificent series of waterfalls marking the territory of the Youkai Mountain tengu, it would be difficult to believe that vampires such as herself were actually vulnerable to water. It was easy to see why she would be captivated by the great natural landmark, for nowhere else in Gensokyo, certainly including the Scarlet Devil Mansion basement, could hundreds upon hundreds of liters of water be seen crashing down from the summit of the mountain to break into a fountain of white foam on the rough, jagged rocks below. After cascading down the cliff behind it and producing a tranquil yet mighty sound, the clean mountain water proceeded to meander its way down toward the ground level. The crashing motion on the rocks generated a pleasant mist that softly dappled on the forehead of Flandre, who stood alongside the base of the falls with a serene smile on her face. If in her place, Remilia might have become horrified at the prospect and would demand a parasol immediately, but her sister was hardly bothered by the light spray and decided to take a moment to behold the half-moonlit scene of beauty before pressing onward.

Although Flandre had never been to the Youkai Mountain before and so had no previous experience to compare this one to, she took notice that she was just about the only living creature in the surrounding area. For a placed named "Youkai Mountain", she thought to herself, I don't think I've met a single fairy or demon since I've gotten here. The lack of other beings in the area helped to preserve the peaceful atmosphere of the waterfall, but it was still rather unsettling to her to be isolated with absolutely nobody around for comfort, a feeling in the basement she had been accustomed to but hoped to be freed from once and for all.

"Hello?" Flandre called out, a very slight note of anxiety in her voice. "Is anyone in there?" The only response to her question was the steady, quiet roar of the cascading waterfall, and there was no sign of life behind it at all.

After a few moments without any answer to her question, the young vampire frowned in concern and opened her wings of glowing prisms, flying vertically until she reached the top of the waterfall. There, she hovered in place and began to call again. "Please, aren't there any tengu living here behind the falls? I just need to talk to Aya Sha-whatsername about an important story she should print." Like before, the sound was heard by the same people who would hear a tree falling in the forest.

Eventually, however, there was indeed a response. Flandre heard a very soft groan coming from the top of the waterfall, one that continued to amplify in volume and irritation until it finally resembled a horrified scream. This was sustained for several more seconds before it came back down just as it had risen, melting back into a sigh inaudible beyond the crashing sound of the water. At that moment, Flandre flew up to the ground beside the river cascading down the falls. There, she caught sight of a bundle of wild, unkempt ginger hair strewn all over the grass, out of which two ribboned horns had sprouted. The person this hair belonged to slowly turned over to lie on her back, and she proceeded to release another sigh. Her normally cheery, youthful face was now flushed, her bloodshot eyes lazily half-opened. Flandre easily detected the pungent stench of alcohol about her even several meters away, and as the young vampire reached her side, the girl softly whimpered. She cradled her head in two quivering arms as tears lightly formed along the corners of her eyes.

"Please..." she whispered as softly as possible, barely louder than a wisp of a breeze, "...kill me already." Speaking seemed to pain her greatly, for she then moaned in agony, softly rubbing her temples.

"You want me... to kill you?" Flandre questioned. "Why would you want to die, Miss...?" Her question trailed off as she wait for the girl to say her name, and she watched with wide eyes of childlike wonder for a response.

"Just do it," the girl croaked in reply. "I can't handle this much searing pain... it's agonizing."

Flandre frowned in concern, cocking her head slightly at the suffering girl. "I'm sorry; I guess I don't understand. Why are you in so much pain?"

The girl's migraine pounded mercilessly each time her body's veins pulsed with infernal pain, and her stomach sickeningly lurched back and forth like a pale green ship. If her body nerves had not been completely obscured by her headache, it would have felt as if she were gently rocking on the surface of a stormy sea instead of lying on solid ground. Being expected to answer Flandre's questions in her current state galled a temper already short from the headache, but her head ached with too much pain to allow her to bitterly tell the vampire off. Instead, she whispered one final word before completely collapsing onto the ground, tilting her head on one side and coughing up a stream of acrid, yellow bile that dribbled down her chin: "...hangover."

Flandre's mind immediately leapt toward an idea, for she wanted to help the horned girl overcome the torturous pain she was in. "You mean the horrible pain you get after drinking too many spirits? I think I remember those! Meiling used to tell me about how she sometimes got them after going to parties on her nights off. I can't recall her saying that they were ever this painful, though." As her nostalgic smile faded, a serious look replaced it. "I think I can cure you of your pain, but you need to be absolutely still for me; don't move a muscle. Can you do that?"

The girl had absolutely no reply, and she did not move an inch from where she lay.

"I guess I'll take that as a 'yes', then," Flandre said, a slight note of uncertainty in her voice. Nevertheless she knelt down closely to the girl's head, brushing away the wild strands of hair that had gotten caught up in her face until her face was completely exposed. When she had finished doing this, she extended an open hand, palm-side up, toward the girl's forehead and began to concentrate strenuously in her mind. "I just need to find your mind's eye," she murmured thoughtfully, "and then I can crush it and completely put you out of your misery."

Upon hearing this an absolute wave of panic and terror spread through the girl's body, and it was potent enough to almost blot out her aching head. She was finally able to piece together the clues she had briefly taken note of to figure out that her companion was none other than the terrifying Flandre Scarlet herself: the vampire she had read about in the newspaper as being a childish menace who would happily use her power to destroy anything without minding the possible consequences of her actions. A chill ran down her spine as she watched the vampire enthusiastically describe her way of using such destruction constructively. Being completely helpless and immobilized by a combination of her migraine and fear only made being in Flandre's death-bringing hands worse, for she lacked even a single chance to defend herself fairly. She could only hope the feeling of her brains combusting would pass quickly.

"Ah ha!" Flandre exclaimed as she stared excitedly at what appeared to be a tiny, red, glass marble floating in the palm of her hand. "There's the eye. And now... kyuu!" Her fist closely tightly around the marble-like eye, and when she opened it again, nothing of it remained.

The roaring waterfall was once again the only audible sound for a few seconds as a pale blue mist dissipated from the area, never to haunt Gensokyo in its completely composed form again.

"God help me!" the girl moaned, trying to weakly shield her forehead with her hands. "This is no way for an oni to die!" After a moment of sobbing softly, she finally realized that she was hearing herself cry through ears that were still connected to a functioning mind and that aside from her fingernails lightly digging into her forehead, she felt no pain from her head at all. "How...?" she started, staring widely at the vampire who seemed quite proud of herself. "I thought you said you were going to blow up my mind, Flandre! How in Gensokyo am I still alive?!"

Flandre laughed cheerfully, lightly tousling the oni's ginger hair. "No, silly! I said I was going to put you out of your misery, and that's just what I did! You're feeling much better now, aren't you?"

"Well, yeah, but..." The oni's sentence faded into silence as she glanced incredulously at Flandre, and she continued by muttering softly to herself. "Probably coulda said in a less suggestive manner, but whatever." She then smiled broadly at the vampire, lifting herself off the ground to stand up. "Anyway, unless I'm seriously delusional and am now dying in a gutter or something, I got rescued from that horrible hangover by you! Thanks so much, kid! I owe ya one."

Flandre's cheeks glowed a soft, rosy shade as her eyes fell to the ground from receiving the words of gratitude. "It's nothing," she said shyly. "I've wanted to have an opportunity to use my healing powers on someone for quite some time now, and I'm relieved that it worked out so well on you."

The oni's smile faltered slightly as she scratched her head behind her horns. "Healing powers? Thought you had the supreme mass-destruction ability."

Flandre grinned broadly, almost jumping up and down as a little kid about to reveal a juicy secret would. "Five years ago, I'd say the same thing about myself, but things are totally different now!" The vampire sat on the earthy ground cross-legged and continued beaming at the oni as she began her explanation. "Once I learned how to control my emotions and not blow stuff up on a whim, I did some thinking down in the basement; besides enjoying the occasional visit from Meiling, it was about the only thing I could do to pass the time with the restrictions Remi had placed on me. Being naturally curious about myself, I decided to experiment with my ability of being able to destroy anything and see how many different ways I could make use of the power."

"Oh, I get ya," the oni interrupted, looking thoughtfully at her companion. "I figured I could use my power over density not only on myself to make me giant or thin as a mist, but on populations to move random people where I wanted them to go as well. Yep, Gensokyo's a place that allows for some really out-of-the-box interpretations of general powers."

"That was my thought process," Flandre continued. "'Physical things are easy to destroy,' I thought to myself, 'but what about mental ones?' I dabbled for a little while in getting rid of things in my mind like doubt, fear, boredom, and anger. From there, I started wondering about using my powers in the reverse fashion of their traditional purposes: 'destroying destruction', if you will."

She stood up at once as her story reached a climax. "That's when I discovered there was nothing stopping me from making the world a better place by destroying disorders and sickness! I figured I could get rid of not only things like tumors in the body but also less tangible ailments like joint and organ aches or pains, fatigue, and, yes, hangovers, all by closing my fist around the specific problem's eye. This is Gensokyo, after all, and so I realized I could take advantage of the lack of common sense laws in the land by destroying general concepts instead of only physical, perceivable things: a flu itself instead of the countless individual viruses causing it. By concentrating carefully, I also learned how to destroy things in a unique manner; explosions may be stylish, but if I was going to put my powers to good use, I needed to devise a less extreme method of obliteration: disintegrating the object in a simple 'fading away' manner. Then, after practicing for months to get surgeon-like precision of control over being able to destroy the exact entity I would have in mind, I finally was ready to start healing people in Gensokyo. Seeing as you, my first patient, seem fine and totally cured, I think my idea was a complete success!"

The oni stood back, rubbing the back of her head as she stared at the young vampire in wonder and astonishment. "So the sister of the Scarlet Devil has now decided to use her powers to heal sick people in Gensokyo? That's... incredible." She glanced around at the ground they were standing on just above the spout of the waterfalls before grinning sheepishly. "I'd propose a toast to that, but I guess I lost that magic sake gourd somewhere after I crashed here. Sorry about that!"

"That's okay, Miss..." Flandre began again, looking curiously at the oni. "Sorry, but I don't think you've told me your name yet."

"Suika. Suika Ibuki, one of the Four Devas of the Mountain. Nice to finally meetcha in person instead of just reading about you being depicted as a psycho killer in that old rag Bunbunmaru, Flan! Since you saved me from dying of a hangover, how 'bout you and I be friends?" She smiled cheerfully, extending one strong hand toward the vampire, who gripped it tightly in a firm handshake after a moment of consideration.

Suika inhaled deeply and gazed into the night sky above her, smiling wondrously. "Heh... to be honest, not drinking sake and being sober ain't so bad. Yuugi and the others might be right about me being less of an oni than them, but it feels kinda nice to have a mind clear of alcohol for once." As what she had just said resonated within her mind, a sudden nervous lurch manifested itself from within her stomach, and her eyes widened in worry. "Oh crap!"

"What? Did your hangover come back or something?"

"No, that's not it," Suika answered quickly, wringing her hands and causing the geometric shapes attached by chains to her wrists to bounce up and down. "I almost completely forgot about the rest of the oni I was drinking with at the Former Hell party! My guess is that someone must've poisoned our sake with some really freaking potent fried beans; they're the only things that could shut down my liver like that and put me in that deathly hangover." She chuckled nervously, lightly stroking her forehead. "Man, did that thing hurt like hell! Wanting suicide to get outta it was kinda cowardly of me, but still... I wouldn't give that to my worst enemy!

"Anyway, I can't remember at all how I wandered from down there all the way up to the Youkai Mountain waterfalls, but I'm gonna guess the rest of my buddies did the same kind of thing. Since you said I'm the first patient you've had, they all must be scattered around in the Former Hell suffering from some pretty godawful migraines. 'Specially Yuugi; that girl was putting away the sake like it was going out of style!"

"I'm sorry; that must have been really rough for you." Flandre stared at Suika with a sympathetic gaze until finally smiling diplomatically. "Tell you what; since you've been so friendly toward me like Meiling often has, I'd be happy to go underground and check it out for you after I deliver my story to Aya, all right?"

Even amid her concern for her fellow oni, Suika laughed heartily at that. "You're giving that pesky little crow a news article to print? Maybe you are as much of a lunatic as the media makes you out to be, Flan!" She giggled and then calmed down again, wiping her forehead dry of sweat with her forearm. "Just kidding about that, of course. But anyway, s'gonna be kinda hard to do that at this time of the night when the tengu are such little bitches about keeping their territory free from intruders; it's one of the reasons we oni just said 'To hell with it!' and moved off the mountain a while back. You might wanna come back tomorrow morning if you need to get into their hideout."

Flandre shook her head vigorously in protest, slightly upset by being discouraged from completing her mission. "I can't do that! To be honest, I kind of had to break out of the mansion to come here. Meiling's serving as a diversion to keep my sister from coming after me right now... that is, unless she's already fallen to that monster of a mistress, which could have definitely happened."

Suika fell silent for a second or two, carefully pondering what to say next to the young vampire whose eyes had filled with distress at mentioning her sister. "Might not be none of my beeswax," she finally said, sitting on her haunches to reach Flandre's eye level and looking at her earnestly, "but what's goin' on between you and your sister that would make you bust out of the mansion like a refugee? I know we oni get along with each other a lot better than most people, but still, I dunno if sisters engaging in warfare with each other over a puff pastry or somethin' like that is normal. Maybe I could help ya sort out your problem to pay back the nice favor you just did for me and all."

Flandre stared at the friendly oni for a moment, pondering whether or not to trust her with the details of the story before they became printed for all of Gensokyo to see. Having become acquainted with Remilia, Sakuya, and Patchouli via combat in the past and being unusually disliked by the latter of those three as Flandre had learned in stories they had told her, Suika could have been a conveniently placed trap her sister hired who would capture her and send her back to Remilia. After weighing her options, however, she breathed in deeply. "My story's about the truth concerning Remilia: how she is actually a heartless vampire who locked her sister in the basement under the claim of insanity in order to avoid sharing the mansion with her."

"Beg pardon?" Suika widened her eyes, gently rubbing her ears to ensure they hadn't misheard. "What are you sayin', Flan?"

Flandre fished out the deed she had carefully held onto from her dress and handed it over to Suika, who looked it over thoroughly with disbelief in her eyes. "Now, I might be wrong about this," the vampire said, "but I'm pretty sure that Remilia didn't wish to follow our father's posthumous instructions about giving both of us equal rights to the wealth of our mansion; that's why she spread the idea that I was emotionally unstable in order to confine me to the basement and enjoy the fortune by herself, or so she confessed to Sakuya this evening. She must be trying to find me as we speak to lock me down and therefore shut me up again, to be sure." She shuddered softly to herself, grasping Suika's right wrist tightly between her two hands for support. "That's why I have to get the word out about this plight right away to all of Gensokyo in order to shame Remilia into letting me live like a normal person. If I don't, she's going to permanently seal away or destroy the only bit of evidence that can be used against her and then condemn me to a miserable fate of wasting away in the cold, moldy basement until a wayward gust of wind carries away the dust my body will become." As she touched upon a very real possibility about what the rest of her life could be, her vision became blurred with a gentle layer of tears, and her lip began to quiver. "I... I just want to be able to live normally without being treated like a monster by everyone, especially my sister."

Suika looked at Flandre sheepishly as the girl began to blubber with reddening eyes that stared down at the ground in shame. "Aw, jeez," she muttered to herself, "now I've gone and made her cry." The oni was unsure of how to stop a troubled child from crying, so she settled on what seemed to be the most popular method of comfort: wrapping her arms around the vampire's back below her wings and drawing her into a tight (but not too strong; she didn't want to accidentally crush her into a bloody mess) embrace.

"I-I'm sorry," Flandre mumbled as she returned the oni's hug, feeling enough warmth and consolation from Suika to appease most of her tears. "I've said so many mean and hurtful things about my sister tonight, and now I'm crying like a little child. I shouldn't be acting so immaturely like this; it's just... I can't bear the thought of never being able to go anywhere in this beautiful land or befriend any of its denizens again. I must either get this story published by Aya or tell the Yama about it, not only for my sake, but for Meiling's as well. Whatever Remilia's cruelly subjecting her to right now, I have to make sure she's not enduring it for nothing."

Suika sighed, smilingly gently at Flandre as she patted her on her back. After releasing the vampire from her grip, she reached for the sake gourd attached to her belt that always helped her think when dealing with difficult problems in life, only remembering that she had lost it when her hand connected with nothing but air. After grumbling in minor annoyance, she turned back to her new friend and wiped her hand across the girl's cheeks to dry her tears. "Listen, Flan," she began. "The tengu might not open their doors to you, and you probably won't make it far across the Sanzu River since you're still alive, but there's still one person in Gensokyo who's heard your problem. I may have only just met you personally, but you rescued me from death by sake and seem honestly a whole lot nicer than ninety percent of the girls of Gensokyo. If there's one thing you should know about oni, it's that we help out our friends in any way we can. Now, I might not know anything more about this situation than you do, but I wouldn't put it past that little Scarlet Brat to act so deceptively in something like this from the way she first greeted me. We oni live by the creeds that the old cherry tree killer and his glasses-wearing, bread-in-armpits friend made: 'I cannot tell a lie' and 'Honesty is the best policy'. If she's indeed using some dirty tricks of lying to enslave you like this..." Suika smirked darkly, forming a fist with her right hand and slamming it into her left palm with a resulting boom that made Flandre jump, "...her face's gonna get acquainted with my raw strength tonight!"

Flandre sniffled softly to rid herself of the remaining tears and glanced off to the side, the crystals of her wings glowing brightly as she fell into a deep state of thought. "Would it really be a good idea to do that? My sister may be a selfish, uncaring brat, but I don't think she really deserves being pounded. She probably wouldn't be too happy with you if you did that, Suika."

The oni shrugged. "Eh, a good fight does wonders for clearing the senses; it could set her straight, definitely. You got a point, though, Flan; if we aren't a hundred-percent sure that she's doing this without having a different motive, we could end up pissing off the little chick and making her go after us with a vengeance! Are you completely sure that this is why she's locked you in the basement?"

Flandre wanted desperately to quickly exclaim "Yes!" and let Suika handle the dilemma; every moment she spent in the outside without spreading the word about her plight to Gensokyo was more time for Remilia to find and capture her once more, and she knew in her heart that the vampire would never make any more careless mistakes that could give her another chance to escape from the depths of the hell she'd be placed in. Still, a young, hopeful, innocent voice from within her mind began to make it clear that it had actually not been completely snuffed out from the dark reveal of the evening. "Optimist Flan", or so she imagined the voice ought to be named, chimed in that perhaps Remilia actually did have her sister's best intentions in heart, especially from her heartfelt pleads to let her explain the situation to Flandre. Unlike in many a case of the Scarlet Devil suavely telling a lie, she had seemed honest to her sister when she had insisted on only wishing to help Flandre even after her supposed confession to Sakuya. Flandre couldn't be sure whether or not this was the truth, but she couldn't bring herself to feign complete assurance to the honest oni; the precise truth of what had happened in her perspective was thus told.

"So she was trying to tell you some 'other reason' for why she would lock you away, huh?" Suika stroked her chin with her index finger and thumb in order to look thoughtful even though she had already figured out what to do; even though this was the case, she didn't want Flandre to believe she had irrationally devised a plan after only a few seconds of thought. "I'm personally not buying it, but we should probably hear the other side of the story. Whaddaya say we go the mansion and do a little investigating by asking her about this?"

"I don't want to do that," the young vampire replied, shuddering softly as she vehemently shook her head. "If I had stayed there earlier today and let Remilia tell me her reasons, she would have escorted me back downstairs for sure and kept the deed in her clutches. If I go back now, it's basically asking for that to happen!"

A giggle escaped from the winking oni as she held up the great yellow sphere chained to her wrist. "Not this time, Flandre! You've got an ally now who'll hold the deed and watch your back closely. If that sister of yours tries to take it or attacks you, she's getting a face full of fist!" She looked down at the empty space on her belt and sighed disappointedly. "Sucks that I don't have any sake to give her, though; s'kinda rude to come in uninvited without even a drink to offer. That stuff'd loosen up her tongue a ton, too!"

Flandre glanced sideways, trying not to prematurely return the oni's enthusiasm regardless of how it brewed beneath her surface. "Well... as long as you're really okay with helping me out here. I don't want to keep you from finding your oni friends if they're actually poisoned and in trouble."

Suika patted Flandre on the back and then beckoned to her with one casual motion of her hand as she began approaching the edge of the waterfall. "If you're indeed being hunted down as we speak, you're in greater danger than they are, even if not in terms of sickness. 'Sides, they're oni, not chipmunks! It's gonna take a lot more than some rotten beans to kill 'em! Better for me to help you out now to make sure you stay safe and then go find my buddies than the other way around. But let's go already! This night's not gettin' any younger as we just sit around and talk through it!"

Flandre watched the energetic oni disappear from sight as she flung herself off the ground next to the top of the waterfall, and as she did, the heart within her that had long remained bleak and weary from isolation and neglect in her dark cage finally began to swell with comforting warmth. She called me a friend, the vampire reflected in a calm, tranquil state of mind. Not a young mistress, dirty little secret, annoying and immature sister, or insane murderer. Just... a friend whom she's willing to help in such a time of need. Even as she felt like kneeling to the ground and profusely thanking the gods for providing her with such an event of serendipity amid the dark evening, she quickly unfurled her wings and took to the skies to ensure that she would not be left behind. If guardian angels appear to "good" humans and give them assistance in dire circumstances, I guess it would only be fitting that an oni, a type of demon spirit, would play the same benevolent role to a youkai like me.

The constant, melodious splash of clear, moonlit water tumbling down the rocky face of Youkai Mountain faded away into a gentle hum before disappearing completely as Flandre flew further away and continued back toward the mansion she was all too familiar with. Well, simple friend or guardian angel, Flandre thought as she looked down with a smile at the oni hurrying on the ground a few feet below her, thank you, Suika.

[A/N]: Even after about four months, it lives! I would say that I took a hiatus during the summer to carefully reconsider my ideas and brainstorm a new direction in which take the latter chapters of this story after reading the incredibly kind reviews of Felt95, but to be honest, even though that new consideration of how the story should go took place, I never really stopped writing for an extended period of time. It was just… very slow and meticulous writing, crafting a paragraph or two each day. I'm hoping that I can pick up the pace a little to deliver the tenth chapter (which will have the first official, equally matched battle the story has seen), since it's quite unfair to all readers of the story if it takes this long to deliver a new installment. On another note, apart from the last few chapters, I don't plan on making them all as monstrous as 15,000 words like this one. If I can get into a rhythm of writing approximately 8,000 word chapters once every other week, I should be able to finish the story before the century is up!
Anyway, even though I have made a (constantly revising) storyboard summarizing the highlights of each chapter to write of this story, I like how my writing still takes its own shape as it comes into existence. In this chapter, for example, I only had the basic ideas of Meiling being assaulted by Remilia, Flandre befriending Suika, Marisa and Alice traveling to Youkai Mountain together, etc. defined at the beginning; the fact that each scene seems to reflect a theme of gratitude between both strong and weak characters came only out of my subconscious. In fact, the Wriggle and Yuuka idea was something completely new that I made on the spot for no reason beyond wanting to giving the firefly a little more action after she has done virtually nothing, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. The interaction between the two was probably my favorite part of this chapter, and it lent itself to quite a bit of convenient exposition I was previously unsure of how to naturally relay to the reader. Maybe I should let my mind wander more and not follow the storyboard so closely.

The next chapter will see the closing of the Remilia versus Flandre arc, and the stage is being set for the real revolution. How will our protagonists survive the upcoming day when a perfect storm of destruction has begun to brew on the horizon? Until next time, readers!