Chapter 11: Marisa

Marisa arrived at the Hakurei Shrine that morning to find Reimu in a rather familiar and distressing situation. Only this time, it came along with an added nuisance to make matters even worse. It had been bad enough when Kana had opted to possess the Hakurei Shrine a few months ago, but now she had Rumia as a partner in crime. The shrine's interior certainly showed signs of Kana's handiwork; furniture propped in bizarre places, shattered dishes, and Marisa even noticed what looked like Reimu's bed thrown atop the shrine's roof when she'd entered.

"Kana and Rumia got to you too, huh?" Marisa asked, as she sat down beside the shrine's center table. Reimu sat on the opposite end with her head face-down on its surface, groaning irritably.

"Three days," was Reimu's only response.

Marisa blinked back her surprise. "That's rough, Reimu."

"What'd they do to you?"

"Well uh, nothin' directly. Surprised you didn't hear about it." A loud giggle echoed from elsewhere in the shrine, Kana's voice no doubt, briefly interrupting Marisa. She paused, waiting to see if the troublesome duo were going to barge in, but then resumed once the shrine fell silent again. "I think it musta been Rumia, but someone stole some of my clothes last week, see? I didn't think nothin' of it at the time, but a few days later, a whole buncha stuff I never even saw starts turnin' up at my house! Now I mean, I wasn't really complaining. Free stuff, right ze? But turns out Rumia was stealin' all this stuff from people in the village, posin' as me! So I get a buncha people barging in, accusing me of takin' their things!"

Reimu finally raised her head off of the table, and Marisa could immediately tell that it must've been days since the poor shrine maiden had actually slept. She stared at Marisa in silence for a few seconds, before she finally asked, "How much of it did you actually steal?"

"Hey, I didn't steal anythin' from the village since we were kids!" Not that she would admit to, anyway. "I mean, I guess I did borrow a few books from Kosuzu without askin', but I was gonna give em back, eventually!"

"Oh please." Rumia chose this moment to appear from the darkness beside Marisa, materializing from her thighs and up. She draped herself onto Marisa's shoulder, with one arm latched around the other girl's body to keep her from moving away; something that Marisa tried to do the moment she noticed that Rumia didn't have a single scrap of clothing on her. Reimu, who also noticed this, simply slammed her head back down on the table with a loud groan. "I've seen the collection of books you've borrowed. Among other things. When's the last time you actually returned one of them?"

"H-hey! I ain't some kinda common thief!" Marisa tried to pull herself away, but Rumia's grip held strong. She was clearly making Marisa uncomfortable, and it was all the more reason for Rumia to keep a hold on her. "Why'd you have to go trashin' my reputation like that?"

"Then you're just an uncommon thief," Rumia clarified. "Maybe they wouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly if they didn't already have a reason to believe you might already be a thief~?"

"They thought it was me 'cause you went and stole my clothes, and dressed up as me while ya did it!"

"Oh lighten up.~" Kana popped out from the floor beside Marisa, on the opposite side as Rumia. She wrapped her arms around Marisa's. And, like Rumia, she was equally unclothed. Had they been anyone other than Rumia or Kana, Marisa might not have been quite so horrified. "Rumia was just having a little fun. Is that so wrong~?"

"W-well, no... but..." Marisa tried to tug herself free yet again, but was held back by both Rumia and Kana this time. "Do you have to go doin' stuff at other people's expense...?"

"Not my fault none of you decide to play along," Rumia said, sighing in exasperation. "Why do you all have to make things just so difficult for yourselves?"

"We're not hurting anyone.~ ... Most of the time.~" Kana put a hand to her lips, partially concealing a coy smile. She then turned her head to look at Reimu, who still had her head down on the table. "You sure you wanna go laying your head there, Reimu? I mean, considering what Rumia and I did on th-"

"I heard what you were doing!" Reimu shouted back at the deviously giggling poltergeist. "You've probably done it on every surface in this whole shrine over the past three days! And I need to sleep somewhere!"

Kana fell silent, and put a finger to her lip in thought. "Say, Rumia? Is there anywhere that we forgot?"

"The ceiling, maybe?"

"No, no. We did that on Tuesday." Kana gave the question some more thought, with Marisa still uncomfortably trapped between the two. "How about the storage closet?"

"You idiot, that was the first place we went, and Reimu found us there." Rumia casually bumped Kana on the back of her head, with no real force. "I was closer. The roof was the only place we didn't yet, because it was raining yesterday."

"Oh, duh! Silly me.~" Kana then tugged lightly at Marisa's arm, and leaned her head in close to the magician girl's ear. "Hey, Marisa, you wanna come up to the roof with us~?"

"Wait, what!?"

"You didn't strike me as being some kind of prude, Marisa," Rumia said, pulling Marisa back in her direction. "It's okay, I don't bite. Kana might, though." Rumia grinned, flashing her dagger-like teeth. Kana then playfully nipped at Marisa's neck.

Marisa's face flushed a bright red. She jumped, letting out a surprised cry when one of the two grabbed her from behind. "N-no, uh... that's fine, really! Y-you two go have fun, ze.~"

"Not a whole lot of fun, are you?" Rumia's expression changed almost instantly. Marisa couldn't decide which was more terrifying; the lascivious grin Rumia had had a moment before, or the angry glare she was giving Marisa now.

"More of you for myself, then.~" Kana said. She finally release her grip on Marisa and latched herself onto Rumia. "Come on Rumia, we'll leave these two alone and go have our fun.~" The two then vanished into Rumia's darkness without a trace. If they really had warped off onto the shrine's roof, they were at least being quiet about it for the time being.

Marisa breathed a sigh of relief, and slouched forward onto the table. Remembering what Kana had revealed a few minutes earlier, she reconsidered, and then sat back up. "I almost miss the violent Rumia."

"At least if she was killing someone, I'd have an excuse to send everyone after them again." It was a morbid thought, and neither of them truly meant it, but they were both sick of their lewd antics of the last several weeks.

"Did you hear what they did over at the Scarlet Devil Mansion two weeks ago?" Reimu propped her head up in her hands, and then shook it in denial. "I was visitin' the library there when Patchy told me. She said the two of em showed up one afternoon and started capturin' everyone in the mansion as part of some weird game. And then they locked Sakuya and Meiling down in the basement with Flandre til Remilia realized they were missing, and found em."

Reimu's expression didn't change, but Marisa attributed this more to her total exhaustion, rather than a lack of interest. "How long were they down there for?"

"A few hours, at least," Marisa shrugged. "Patchy said they probably woulda been down there longer, but Meiling started screamin' and cryin', and that's how Remilia found em."

"They've been pulling similar crap all over Gensokyo, apparently," Reimu said flatly. "Byakuren said they tried molesting several people from her temple. And then Nue started playing along with them, til Byakuren finally chased the two out."

"Well at least they've only been stickin' to Gensokyo, far as I've heard. I talked to Miasma, and she said neither of em have shown up at Mugenkan. She did say that Mima's been hangin' around there, though."

"Weird." Neither of them had seen much of Mima since her return to Gensokyo. Reimu was perfectly fine with this, but Marisa was disappointed that she hadn't had a chance to catch up with her old magic tutor. "Sukuna probably had the worst luck of anyone during this whole Rumia and Kana ordeal, though."

"What'd they do to Sukuna?"

"You don't want to know what they did to Sukuna," Reimu said in the most serious tone Marisa had probably ever heard out of her friend. She didn't push the subject. She decided she didn't want to know. "She'll probably be traumatized for life."

"That bad, huh?" Marisa sighed again. The two then heard the sound of Reimu's bed being thrown off of the roof, where it then landed on the shrine's main pathway with a splintering crash. Kana laughed loudly from above them, which was followed by a thud against the roof, and some exchange of dialogue between the two that Marisa couldn't make out. "... Guess they're still up there." Reimu groaned again, and slumped forward onto the table, cradling the top of her head with her hands. "What are we gonna do about these two, huh? I don't think we can let this go on forever, ya know."

"Hope they get bored." It was not the answer Marisa was hoping for. She gave Reimu an incredulous look. "I can't fight them off by myself, Marisa. Maybe Kana, if she was by herself. But Rumia would wipe the floor with me."

"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself," Marisa said. "You did pretty good against Rumia back in Makai, remember? You were the first one that got free of those shadow copies of us that she made. You prolly would've finished her off by yourself, if she didn't get that big power boost from the atmosphere out in Makai."

"I still had help from the rest of you," Reimu pointed out. "Miasma's the one who nearly beat Rumia to a pulp. Twice. And Alice was the one that finished the job at the end."

"We all worked together, yeah. But we wouldn't have won if you weren't there, either. Come on Reimu, you're one of the strongest people I know.~"

"Not strong enough to beat Rumia," she muttered quietly.

"Yukari's not even strong enough to beat Rumia on her own! You remember she said that Yuuka had to help her out to even manage to seal her powers? But you, Miasma, and Alice all nearly beat Rumia during that first fight here in the shrine. That sounds like a hell of a lot better than even Yukari and Yuuka managed to do." Marisa stood up, and walked toward Reimu. She dropped onto the floor beside her friend, and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Don't be so down on yourself. You just get grumpy when you're tired, ze.~"

"Ugh, whatever." Reimu didn't even move. She was practically speaking directly into the table now.

"Well hey, how 'bout I bring Alice and Miasma along tomorrow? If those two are still around causin' trouble, the four of us can chase em back to Makai."

"Fine." Reimu slumped off of the table entirely, finally, and collapsed on her side against the floor. "But you'd better tell those idiots up there that they owe me a new bed."

Marisa glanced back outside, and once again took notice of the broken remains of Reimu's old bed lying in front of the shrine. "Hah, yeah. You got it, ze.~ Maybe I'll blast em off your roof when I leave, huh?"

"Then you're going to owe me a new roof."

"Trust me Reimu, I think you're gonna want a whole new shrine after everythin' those two have done in here."