YAGAWAGA!
Enjoy. Oh and dont forget to RNR. Your comments are greatly appreciated.
Moriya shrine
Night
The four humans sat down around the table, each holding a steaming cup of green tea. Each had questions and the need for answers on their minds.
"So, care to explain everything that has happened to us.. and you?" Renko asked.
Dutch sighed heavily. He knew that sooner or later he would have to tell his companions about the Lunarians and their designs for him but he did not expect for the cat to be out of the bag so quickly.
"Very well, I'll tell you. But first, I have to request that Sanae leave the room. The information that I have is highly dangerous to possess. It would be in your best interest to leave the room." Dutch placed specific emphasis on the danger.
Sanae opened her mouth to protest but stopped. She understood the underlying reason behind his words and decided to comply with his wishes. Bowing, she stood up reluctantly and left the room.
Renko's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What is so important that you would request our host to leave the room?"
"The dangerous kind. Yukari, I presume that you are listening. I need your support to hide this conversation." Dutch called out. To be truthful, he did not know without a doubt that the gap youkai was truly there but past experiences told him that she would not avoid watching him tangle with dangerous enemies.
"My my~ So eager to ask for my assistance. But I see your point. The room is sealed. No one outside can hear anything." Yukari's voice rang out. Dutch nodded in thanks and refocused his attention on his companions.
"What were those things?" Maribel asked.
"Magically animated drones similar to the ones we encountered in the outside. They were equipped with powerful weapons and their one and only purpose is to assassinate. And before you say anything, yes, I am the target." The young man had anticipated the question before it was even spoken.
"Why?" Renko asked. Such a simple word and yet it asked for so much.
Dutch prepared himself. One simply does not tell his companions that he managed to piss off a super advanced civilization without preparation.
"Apparently I have something the controllers of the drones want. Something that they are willing to kill to retrieve." He decided to hide the lunar aspect of the problem as long as he could. It would keep them safe.
"Why don't you just give it them?" Maribel frowned in consternation.
"It won't matter. They want both me and the object in question." Dutch answered.
"It's that glove isn't it." Maribel appeared to have figured out quite a bit all by herself.
Dutch simply nodded. "Yes it is. Which comes to the second part of the explanation."
He took a deep breath. "In a month, they will be coming to meet me. After that, I will be returning with them to their realm. At best, I will be gone for an extended period of time. Worst case scenario... I will die and you will never see me again. I place my bet on the worst outcome as the more likely possibility."
Renko and Maribel froze at his statement.
"B...b...but why? Why would you die?" Renko spluttered, shocked by the revelation. It always was the death that you could see coming that garnered more reaction.
"Because they have a rather negative view of everything that is not similar to them. They are actually kind of like a space Nazi." Dutch said, hoping that his joke would alleviate the atmosphere.
Seeing how Maribel was trying to cover her horrified face, it failed miserably as a joke.
Dutch sighed. Such information would bring a reaction from any person. He just hoped that they did not do something rash.
'Vale, you heard that?' Dutch knew in his bones he would have a lot of soothing to do when he returned to his cute daughter.
'I did.' The entity sighed mournfully in his head.
'Please hold your words. I have more for you when I return to the vault.'
'Okay.' Vale mumbled softly, her voice awash with emotion. Dutch felt alone in his head once again.
He returned to reality and faced his companions.
"I'm so sorry. If only you had not decided to come with us, this wouldn't have happened." Maribel whispered, horrified at what was going to happen to her friend.
"Don't be." Dutch muttered, his tone sharp.
"If I hadn't, the two of you would have met that bastard alone. To the world, you would have become just another group of missing young woman lost in the woods. The Mask would have acquired the vault and the world would be all the more in danger. In any case, one life for two is a good trade-off." He merely nodded to himself, unperturbed by the cold harsh logic of his words.
Renko slammed her hands down on the table. "How can you be so calm while saying such things?" She hissed.
Dutch affixed her with a sharp look. "Because when dealing with such situations, I learnt to disengage my emotions. I can let my emotions run wild later. Now is the time to think clearly about what is to happen next."
Suitably chastened, Renko sank back . "How did you learn to do that? What was your life before us?"
"A tale of monsters." Dutch simply muttered, darkness clinging to his tone.
Vault
Dutch entered the vault.
The first thing he saw was Vale floating there, her head drooped in sorrow. It looked so heart breaking that Dutch simply walked up to her and gave a hug. The entity returned it with silent sadness.
"Why?" She breathed, her voice like a breeze sighing through the trees.
"Because it has to be. In a way, it's the price I will have to pay for creating you. But I don't care. It's a prize worth paying for." Dutch answered. Vale's grip tightened to his statement.
"If I was not-" Vale started, but she never got any further.
"Don't you ever say that! You have a gift. Don't you dare waste it on just me! You are too precious to me for just that!" Dutch hissed.
He softened his tone. "Besides, we don't know what would have happened if we did change the past. All we can do is prepare for the future."
Liquid stained his fatigues.
Moriya Shrine
Maribel gazed despondently at the full, pearl of a moon.
Somehow, tonight, it seemed so, so bright.
Her friend stood next to her, staring at the same object, her mind otherwise occupied.
"How could he be so uncaring for himself? It's his own life he is talking about." Renko whispered, attempting to understand her companion's carelessness for his own life.
"Have you not learned anything from your time with him?" Yukari asked, sticking out half-way through a gap. Against her reputation as a troll, she now adopted a serious expression.
"Explain." Surprising, it was Maribel who said that statement. Her friend, beaten to the punch, closed her mouth and nodded in agreement.
"Through all of the times that you were in danger, haven't you noticed that he put himself in even more danger? Or that he has constantly kept things away from you for your safety? Perhaps you did not realize that he only ever revealed his problems when he could not hide them from you any longer?" Yukari simply ticked off each point on her slender fingers, her eyes shut adopting a lecturer's demeanor.
"We know! But there is nothing we can do. We are too weak to help." Renko answered, her voice trailing into a mumble.
Yukari opened her fan and covered her face. "There is something you can do. Get stronger. Learn from the inhabitants of Gensokyo. The two of you have great power, you just need to learn to use them. Show me that strength and adaptability that humanity is capable of. Then perhaps, you can impress on him the importance of his own life to himself."
Renko nodded, a fire ignited in her eyes. When she turned to Maribel, she could see the same reaction in her.
"So when do we start?" Renko asked the youkai of boundaries.
Tengu village
Palace
"Lord Tenma. Are you sure of this?" One of her closest advisers asked.
Tenma faced her with a determined face. "I am. The village is prosperous and there is no threat to it. I believe it is time for me to see what my people see with my own two eyes."
A stunned silence cloyed the atmosphere of the throne room. Tenma expected this. While it was not scandalous for the tengu lord to take a break, her breaks were rare and far between. The last time she could remember taking a break, she spent just a day in the palace lazing around before heading back to work. And that was several hundred years ago.
"It was the human wasn't he? He has changed you lord Tenma." One of her more vocal advisers asserted loudly.
Tenma resisted the urge to beat the adviser senseless. "Contrary to your belief, the human did not change anything. He has simply highlighted something that I have missed. Which is why I am taking this endeavor. And his name is Dutch. You will address him properly as he is still under the employ of the tengu lord."
More stunned silence greeted Tenma's statement. Tenma sat resolute on her throne, her eyes challenging any one who dared speak against this statement.
Less than a day after Dutch left, the whole tengu village had known of Dutch and his actions. Most approved of his actions, the minority concentrated on the White Wolf section. The White Wolf were getting increasing brutish of late and the attack had managed to cool off their ambitions but at a cost.
Tenma wondered who leaked the information regarding Dutch. Most likely it was one of the White Wolf commanders. But she had a nagging suspicion that it was one of the Hanataka tengus who just so happened managed to link the two together, released that into the Hanataka rumor mill and cause all the measures taken to hide Dutch's identify be for nought.
At least she managed to hide Dutch's name from the village. Only she knew and she intended to keep it that way. Giving him the seal was a good idea. It meant that he could disregard any tengu except her. Somehow, it gave her a happy feeling.
A side effect of the rumor mill was the labeling of Dutch as 'Tenma's pet human'. While initially hilarious, it got old really quick. Although it did give her a rather delicious mental image of Dutch waiting on her every beck and call. She started to salivate unconsciously.
What the hell was she thinking?
Tenma mentally chastened herself. She was doing that more often in recent times, she noted.
Unaware of the very unlordy way their leader was thinking at the current moment, the tengu advisers gave their appropriate answers to Tenma's statement. Her statement was with merit and they did not want to summon the wrath of Tenma on them, lest she decided to send her pet human after them. Word of how the human managed to slip past tengu security back to the palace was a story that most of them could recite on the spot, that was how much they heard of the same story. Even though it was formed through the questioning of multiple youkai, it was a story that was widely accepted in the village. If a shrine maiden was capable of fighting her way from one end of Gensokyo to the next, an outsider could sneak his way through the tengu village.
But with each telling, the story got more and more unlikely. If the latest versions were to be believed, Dutch literally went through a company of wolf tengus standing at attention unseen whilst dancing the can-can. And that was the more modest version.
Even youkai twisted information.
All the matters of the day finished, the tengu advisers departed. Tenma returned back to her quarters through the secret passage. Inside, she released all her pent-up emotion with a sigh.
She managed to finish all the important matters for the next week or so she was fine on that end. But something of the heart concerned her again.
She was excited for tomorrow, make no mistake about it, but even through the fire of adventure was ready to be satisfied, she could not help but feel that the journey would be a tad...lonely.
Her heart ached for company. To be more specifc, the company of a particular human. But even though Tenma knew that if she needed, she could easily summon Dutch, she did not want to disturb him. The human had his own life to follow and this journey was hers alone.
With an aching heart, Tenma stilled herself from reaching for a writing brush. Instead she turned to the other necessities that she had prepared for the journey.
A simple red-white shirt with autumn under tones formed her top. With a red skirt for the bottom and a fluff-ball-less Tokin for the top.
As Tenma stared at the simple clothing, she remembered once when she decided to play around with the palace staff. Wearing a palace staff uniform and without the regal expression she held in front of her subjects, she walked around the palace.
Surprisingly, most did not recognize her at all. The only few that did were her personal staff. Taking advantage of the situation, they gave Tenma a list of tasks to do. The tengu lord played along, curious to see what went behind the scenes in the palace. The experience left her with new found respect for her personal staff and an exhausted body. Who knew taking care of her took so much work.
After the experience, Tenma had her personal staff swear to secrecy about her little experiment. The discovery that she could blend into tengu society by simply dropping the regal expression was something she valued. Having accidents occur because due to the act of respectfully acknowledging her presence was something she disliked greatly.
As she took off her hair pin and let her sleek silver hair fall, a knock on the door made her turn.
Standing tall and respectfully, her chief of personal staff waited at the door. With long, snowy hair tied into a pony-tail and a pair of wolf ears that constantly checked for unnatural sounds, the White Wolf tengu bowed to her leader. She wore the standard outfit for the White Wolf tengu with the palace guard symbol of the maple leaf in front and held a katana, simply lethal in it's design and lacking the ornaments that would have went into decorating a weapon of the palace. She kept silent, awaiting Tenma's permission to speak.
"Please Eri, the time for formality is past. Speak freely." Tenma glanced askance at the tall White Wolf tengu waiting at the door. She always felt amused by her chief of personal staff's inherent formalness. It was something that Tenma could never get out of her, no matter how hard she tried. Eventually, Tenma gave up, realizing that sometimes, you can't have your way.
Eri bowed and entered. "I have selected the best katana I could find. Following your instructions, it is unmarked but is the best that I am able to find. The kitchens have also prepared a set of supplies for your journey ahead although they do not know who is it for." The two knew each other for the better part of Tenma's thousand year rule and Eri still maintained the formal greeting because well, its lord Tenma after all.
Loyal to the death, Eri was one of the few wolf tengus that did not disapprove of Tenma's extreme move. Being one privy to the bigger picture, she could not find fault with the attack. In fact, while she expected the White Wolf Tengu to be humbled by the attack, she was wholly unprepared for the runaway sucess of the endeavor.
It worried her. The human that Tenma employed was dangerous, very dangerous. If he could slip past tengu security easily, what could he manage if he decided to target Tenma? Secretly, she had assigned tengu to watch him.
She did not expect to hear that the human managed to fight off the mountain youkai. While the very act was considered possible for the higher end of the fighting spectum in Gensokyo, the mountain youkai were hunting beyond living memory and were capable of bringing down powerful magical beings that underestimated them. And yet not only did he accomplish this, but he accomplished it without magical means and with the aid of a small weapon. This only made it more impressive.
Already, the news of 'Tenma's pet human' decimating the mountain youkai was spreading. By morning, the rumor mill would be abuzz with the information. Eri had sighed when she found out. If left unchecked, Tengu could spread rumors faster than any other organized group in Gensokyo.
Eri did not want to be near Tenma on the day that she found out. Eri could see the human had wrought a change in her. Whether it was good or bad, Eri had no idea but she decided to continue to keep a constant watch on him just in case.
Tenma appraised the katana with a critical eye. Deeming it satisfactory, she accepted the blade from Eri. "How do you feel about my trip?" The lord asked her chief. As the tengu overlooking all Tenma-related actions, Eri was the most knowledgable of the tengu, specifically regarding information about her. She made her opinions regarding her action very clear every time.
Eri adopted a thoughtful expression while keeping her respectful face. "I feel that the timing of this trip is irregular but I feel that you deserve it. The head apothecary in the palace has long given up sending requests for you to relax. Perhaps it is for the best." She answered, keeping a slight teasing tone.
Tenma smiled gratefully.
"Thank you."
Gensokyo mountain range
Primary base of operation
The figure walked out of the darkness, his onyx armor and cape breaking up his shape. To the men guarding the gate, he was a cloud of death, silently drifting toward them. They bowed and opened the gate, lest they somehow incur the wrath of the grim being.
As the dark figure strode into the base, the gate closing right behind him. A soldier waited for him at the ready, wearing a load laden vest and a rifle hanging loosely by his side. His masked face only showed emotionless eyes.
"What news do you have for me?" The figure demanded, his cultured voice barely audible over the night.
"Milord, it appears that the changes to the weapons were widespread. All of the soldiers report the same thing. Their weapons now fire bolts of lethal danmaku flying at a slightly slower speed. It appears this is only confined to projectile weaponry." The soldier answered.
The figure affixed his red slit eyes in the soldier. "She knows. This is her doing." He answered, his tone accusing.
"With all due respect milord, if she knew, we wouldn't be here anymore." The solider retorted. The figure paused in thought before accepting the wisdom of the statement.
"Very well then. Is there any impact on the warriors?" The figure asked.
The soldier shook his head. The figure acknowledged the statement and waved the soldier to be dismissed. The soldier saluted him briskly and left.
The cloaked being broke up into darkness.
He reappeared on the top most tower of the fortress, darkness coalescing into an identifiable shape. Staring out across Gensokyo, he collected his thoughts.
His benefactor specifically instructed him that should the drones never return, he was given free rein. Seeing how the drones were late, he assumed the worst. His preparations were already underway.
As the figure emerged from his thoughts, he stared out at the sweeping lands once more.
"Soon, there will be order."
Below him, a relic of a bygone war growled to life.