Chapter 7: The Fall of Love
Alex quietly strolled out of the portal he had ripped open from Senkai and wandered out onto the front steps of the Myouren Temple. He lifted his head up, not fully intending for this to be his destination. But now he'd have to deal with the stares of the gathered Youkai and Byakuren regardless.
His head remained hunch in a sullen state of existence as their eyes tempered onto him as their primary point of focus. Byakuren's in particular were hard to handle, as in a way it reminded him of her yet again.
"What am I supposed to say?" He asked himself in the face of this mass confusion, "They couldn't have known that Miko was planning to go out this way..."
He closed his eyes, hoping that sealing his view of their judgmental stares would help him concentrate. But there was no answer to muster up that would satisfy all parties. He just wished he could turn back the hands of time and reclaim the life that was lost.
But the stone was a disobedient pup...And if it was as simple as snapping his fingers to fix every mistake he made, then he'd never be in this predicament to begin with. It was his blade that did the dirty deed. It was his hands that snatched the life from out of Miko's body and crushed it in an instant. There was no point turning away from what he'd done...And no point lying to them about how it happened.
It was Futo who ultimately pressed him first on this matter. She stepped out amongst the crowd, teetering on the edge of the stairs with barely any stability to her thimble legs. She looked cold, and the front of her dress was soggy.
"She must have been crying the whole time..." Alex bit his front teeth down and muttered a hoarse "Damn it all..." as his heart sank into the pit of his stomach.
"Where is my Crown Prince?" Futo asked, her melancholy whisper but a sign that a part of her already knew the truth.
He opened his eyes partway and couldn't direct his full attention to the Shikaisen. All he saw was her stamp one foot on the ground and throw her fists down in a child-like rage as she asked again, "I asked...Where is my Crown Prince?!"
"She went-eth with you alone! And alone you return-eth! S-So where did she go...?!" Her quibbling lips and sagging eyes weren't enough. Now she was digging her fingers into her palms, her body antsy to just hear something, ANYTHING, to the contrary of her beliefs.
"Futo, calm down..." Ichirin tried to calmly put a hand on Futo's shoulder while looking mournful herself, but Futo just swatted it away and screamed, "UNHAND ME!"
She then threw that very same hand accusingly towards Alex and yelled, "He murdered her! He murdered the Crown Prince!"
With a deep sniffle while biting her lower lip, Futo met the silenced Alex and gasped at him, "Why...why won't you say-eth anything?!"
"...What am I supposed to say?" He asked himself again with a more pained tone. Upon shaking his head he raised it higher and remarked, "That's right. I...killed Toyosatomimi no Miko."
Futo froze up and stumbled back with her right sleeve drawn up below her chin. On the verge of fainting, it was Tojiko that came to help her stay upright. Alex glanced over at Byakuren. She was subtly holding her breath, but her paling skin and trembling hands revealed that she was devastated by this news as well.
He raised his head and tried his best to put a positive spin on what happened, "She chose to go of her own free will...In the hopes of protecting all of Gensokyo from me. To the very end, she loved everything about this world...Especially its people."
"...She wouldn't want you to mourn her death." All that sounded right both in his head and aloud. He then let out a long sigh and gripped his hands tightly inside his pockets.
"...I know I can't force anyone to fight a battle they don't want any part of. I just assumed out of everyone I came across, you guys would've been jumping at the chance to get payback on Yukari."
He raised his right hand to scratch the side of his head and grumbled, "But forget it. I won't bother you about it anymore."
He gave one firm look at Byakuren and warned her gently, "Oh, and there's something Miko wanted me to pass on."
That wasn't true, but he felt it was worth noting anyway, "She tried to find Kokoro in the Human Village but had no luck. You might want to send out a search party for her."
Leaving the sight of Byakuren's quiet, gasping face in the back of his mind as he turned around to face the forest outside, Alex hung his shoulders and began moving forward one dragging step at a time.
"Crash!"
A hard object collided and broke upon the back of his head, which caused his soul shield to protect him. Shards of white porcelain glass fell upon his shoulders and slid to the ground as he froze in place and slowly swiveled his head back. Two more objects, now identifiable as plates, were thrown into his face by Futo.
Biting her teeth with the ferocity of a tiger, she had to be quickly restrained under arms by Tojiko and Ichirin combined. They dragged her back but Futo kept kicking and flailing at Alex, screaming all the while.
"You murdered her! You murdered the Crown Prince in cold blood!" The tears from her face onto the ground alongside the spit she spewed in proclamations of anger, "Y-You don't feel a thing! You're a horrible, heartless monster!"
"That's enough Futo! The Crown Prince-" Tojiko's attempts at defusion only backfired as Futo's anger grew louder, "WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING HIM?!"
She then spun around to Ichirin and yelled at her, "AND WHY ARE YOU?!"
Fighting their restraints with all she had, Futo pointed a single finger at Alex as he hung his head to avoid their sight, "We...We let him into our homes...We gave him our things! A-And how does he repay us...?"
Futo hung her head against her chest and the tears rolled down her cheeks in tiny streams as the bitterness of her heart proved too overwhelming to ignore, "B-By taking away the person who inspired me the most..."
Alex felt his body tremble from the legs up to his waist. He bit his teeth together and whispered to Futo, "You need to be quiet already..."
"If you're truly sorry...Then bring her back!" Futo was able to stand strong on the front steps, as Ichirin and Tojiko's arms became as limp as jelly.
Alex repeated what he had already told himself, only this time aloud, "There's no way to turn back the clock for her..."
"Then what are you going to do?" Futo forced the question into Alex's face much like the plate she then threw straight at him. He winced as it collided with another soul shield, and continued to stare blankly at the girl as she threw plate after plate at him.
"How are you going to replace...the most precious thing in the world to me?!"
Each time glass broke, Alex's brows dipped further and further down, until eventually they reached their limit, and he raised them right back up and froze a plate in mid-air with an effortless thought. Then he spun it faster and slinged it right back at Futo's face.
A big, cloudy hand dropped down and squeezed it gently in its grasp. The hand was attached to a living cloud with an old man's face and a big, fluffy mustache. Normally this creature, known as a nyuudou, was a gentle giant...But now, he was glaring with the fury of the storm at his backside. He crushed the plate as he pulled his hand up, revealing Ichirin standing behind it with a golden hoop in each hand and her expression as stern as her cloudy friend.
"Futo's right. If you really were sorry for what you did, then you'd find a way to repent, not turn tail and run!" She bellowed with a heart full of bravery.
And she wasn't alone. One by one the other Youkai of Myouren Temple raised their heads up high and drew their weapons or signature items towards Alex. Byakuren widened her eyes and firmly put her foot down to exclaim, "Stop! This isn't the time to pick a fight!"
"Yeah. You better listen to your boss." Alex firmly agreed.
"Or what? You'll kill us all too?!" Murasa yelled with a vicious smirk.
Alex's eyes narrowed as he began to pull both his hands from his pockets and remark, "There are bigger things going on here than your grudge against me! Now lay down your arms!"
"Never! A remorseless monster like you doesn't deserve to exist in this world!" Shou exclaimed at the top of her lungs, a sensation that made her feel so alive even as her heart raced nervously against her chest.
Alex snapped his teeth together and growled for a few seconds as the stubbornness of the gathered Youkai was starting to irritate him, "Don't forget who your enemy is! Its Yukari Yakumo!"
"Maybe she is...But she sure as heck didn't kill a member of our family!" Nue proclaimed while floating with her trident sitting behind her back.
Byakuren was completely at a loss for words watching her followers stand so tall against this foe. It filled her heart with fear, and at the same time pride. A volatile mix of emotions for sure, as its confliction left her unable to move.
"You're right! She just did shit that's much MUCH worse!" Alex yelled while flailing his arms down.
"AAAAAAAAAAA!" Kyouko opened her mouth wide and let out a horrifying scream. The others hastily protected their ears, but Alex was not so lucky. He was blasted with a high decibel echo that his shields couldn't protect him from. His knees hobbled over a bit, and he could feel a bit of blood leaking from his left ear.
The yamabiko was still frightened, but she swallowed that fear like a wad of spit and gripped her broom tightly as she said, "W-We...We're not going to let you hurt anyone else!"
Alex took out some of the blood from his ear onto one fingertip and stared at it. Then he rubbed it out and turned that stare towards the others.
"Fine..." He growled heavily under his breath, "Then come and fight."
Kogasa, Nazrin and Shou, being the weakest physically of the bunch and having no special abilities to speak of, attacked Alex simultaneously with realistic Danmaku. Shou used her Jeweled Pagoda to gather the treasures from within the temple and increase the radiance and power of her curved lasers, which burned through the skies like blinking comets.
Alex dug his feet into the ground as one soul shield stood in perfect defense of this assault. He winced just a bit in annoyance and let them unleash their rage, for how futile it'd prove to be.
"Unzan! Hit him with everything you've got!" Ichirin requested while swinging her right fist towards Alex.
Unzan let out a deep, deep hum and expanded to the size of the temple. Then he wound up both his fists and thrust them out faster than missiles, pounding away at Alex's shield like a hammer of god. His feet budged a couple inches back after a hundred of those punches in conjunction with the Danmaku.
"They can't do anything about my shields..." Realizing this brought Alex to pity their desperate attempts at fighting him.
But his glare didn't sag in the slightest, "But this is their decision. And I will not hold back..."
Alex swung his hands right up and caught Unzan's fists by the finger. He barely had a put the squeeze on them to keep them in place. He raised his brows and murmured, "That's right, you're a cloud spirit. So that'd mean..."
The cloudy material that encompassed Unzan's form began to get vacuumed into Alex's body through his palms, causing the panicked nyuudou to try tugging away in vain. He added more mass to his body, but that just made Alex pull him in faster.
"U-Unzan?!" Ichirin screamed as she swung her right hand up and watched the nyuudou looking down on her with a quiet whimper. He redirected his mass into a tiny hand extending down from his chin, and was inches away from reaching his friend's. But that goodbye was cruelly robbed by Alex finishing his absorbtion of the spirit's mass, which caused a spurt of fire to burn out from his body.
He closed his eyes and his heart started racing as he quietly murmured "Nine..." which set Ichirin's heart ablaze with rage.
"ARRGHHHH!" She flung across the temple grounds in a single, tearful leap and rammed her right ring towards Alex's face. He swung his eyes open and halted the ring an inch from his shield and bent it inward, coiling it around Ichirin's fist as she cried out in pain.
"You chose this fight. Don't forget that..." Alex then flicked his right hand up and with barely a care forced Ichirin's bound fist into her face and sent her hurtling across the ground. Her heels were ground up, where her weakened body then crashed against the foot of the stairs and the back of her head split open.
"...Ten." Alex remarked while hanging his head.
"I-Ichirin..." Byakuren quietly mumbled amidst her trance.
"You'll pay for that!" Murasa yelled while flying towards Alex alongside Nue, "Shou! Aim for the ground, then the shields!"
"Got it!" Shou raised the Jeweled Pagoda up higher, and the lasers fired off towards the ground. Thanks to the Pagoda's power, anything the lasers touched turned to jewels, so along with terraforming the ground she managed to splash Alex with the lasers' effect and encase the area around his body in gemstone.
"...Really now?" He murmured with slight curiosity.
Outside his line of sight, Nue threw a Seed of Unidentification onto the jewels and with some slight distorting they took upon the appearance of floating water. Alex narrows his eyes and shook his head, "Water? I already know this is fake."
"Yeah! But I see it as water..." Murasa swung her anchor down and took great pleasure in declaring, "And that's all that I need!"
Alex suddenly felt like his lungs were filling up with water and started gagging for air. He grabbed onto his neck with both hands while his vision was growing faint. Through the faintest traces of life his body endured, he focused upon the jewels along the ground below Murasa.
Self-assured in her victory, Murasa had her celebration and her life both tragically cut short when a jewel spike shot up from the ground and impaled her through the heart. This freed up Alex to regain his breath, where he then quickly punched the "water" with a gentle fist to shatter the jewels bound up in an illusion.
"...Eleven." He coldly murmured as he pulled the spike free with a thought and watched Murasa fall flat onto the ground.
Nue dove down and stabbed at Alex repeatedly with her trident, prompting him to mention, "Do you even know that Mamizou was killed by Yukari for being willing to help me?"
"Please, like I'd ever believe YOU!" Nue attacked faster in a rage while the Danmaku users kept on firing at him with a greater intensity.
Alex reached out between Nue's thrusts and grabbed her by the neck. He pulled her in to slam her against his shield full force, causing her to drop her trident and bleed from her face, "Believe me or not...Its the truth. And if she was alive to see you now...She'd be ashamed."
Alex left Nue with a jewel spike through the stomach and then threw her across the ground towards near Kyouko's feet. The yamabiko let out a frightened peep and then opened her mouth wide for another yell. After counting Nue amongst the dead on his hands, Alex swung his right hand up and forced the air Kyouko'd scream back into her lungs, causing them to burst.
Alex felt his heart wretch at the sight of her collapsing onto the ground, and thus quickly closed his eyes and murmured the number "Thirteen."
"Don't look away you monster!" Futo yelled before throwing a dozen plates at Alex to draw his attention towards her and Tojiko, who were combining their fire and lightning into an incredibly large and powerful sphere.
"Now! Stop thy cowardice and face this head-on!"
"Everyone..." Byakuren's body was twitching. The sight of death surrounding her, along with the survivors will to fight, was breaking the dour mood she found herself in.
Alex raised his right hand up high and remarked, "Here, let me help you."
He squeezed his hand shut and caused their sphere to collapse inward. Futo and Tojiko had but a second to look up in awe before the whole thing burst open, wiping out a large chunk of the temple and scorching alive anyone still standing and willing to fight.
Alex closed his eyes and dropped his arm to the hip with a heavy heart as he whispered, "...Eighteen."
"That's enough!" An explosion of raw power radiated out from the right of Alex, and the next second Byakuren was wailing on his soul shield with her skin covered in a multitude of rainbow colored runes.
Her fists pounded at him like lightning raining down from the very heavens, but was little more than a mild irritant for Alex. He grit his teeth and growled "You too?!" with great offense before swinging his right arm straight up and blowing Byakuren back with a heavy gust of wind.
She braced her arms before her face and then lowered them while catching her breath. Alex lowered his brows and shook his head as he tucked his hand into his pocket. Silent at first, he suddenly jerked his whole body forward and exclaimed, "What the hell is wrong with all of you?!"
He bit his teeth down and yelled, "Why are you all running headlong into death, huh?!"
Byakuren put her fists up and spoke through a ragged breath, "We...We'll all die one way or another. I...I saw Yukari's power firsthand."
"And so did I!" Alex slammed one hand against his chest and looked absolutely offended. He jerked his head away from the sight of the monk and scoffed, then coiled his hand into a fist and declared upon facing her once more, "Why the hell else do you think I'm doing this? Because I LIKE it?!"
"NO! Its because alone, we're nothing to her...But together, we can STOP her!" Alex's face turned a light shade of red as he raised his head up high and screamed, "All of you idiots are just playing into her hand by fighting me, don't you fucking get it?!"
Byakuren's eyes trembled and a cold sweat started to form on her tensing face.
"This could've been easy...But you people just had to go and make it difficult for all of us! Goddamn it! Don't-" His infernal rant seemed to have no end...Until all of a sudden something caused his soul shield to pop.
He widened his eyes and looked around. There was no one behind or in front of him besides Byakuren, but when he looked down he saw a small, distorting object lodged into his shield. The shield couldn't manifest its full protective properties, because it had no clue as to what was even threatening it.
"...What the?" He looked up and over to the left, where Nue was on her knees with barely the strength to stand. She grabbed onto her bleeding out gut with one arm and let the other one plummet away from her smugly satisfied grin.
"W-Will you shut up already...You damn hypocrite? The only one...making things difficult...I-Is you...Ghhcck!" Blood spat up from her throat and onto the ground, with her eyelids beginning their deathly sag.
"...Go get 'em for all of us...H-Hijiri...And...T-Thanks for taking someone like me in..." Nue collapsed flat onto her face before she was done.
A shock rumbled through Byakuren's heart and forced her to cry. She turned and hung her head, the shadow cast by her hair obscuring all but the tears rolling down her face. Alex began grabbing for the strange object on his shield while dryly commenting, "...I respected their will to fight, even if it was pointless. But this could have been averted."
"...Myouren..."
Alex raised his head and found Byakuren squeezing her fists and spreading her legs along the ground.
"Shou, Ichirin, Unzan, Kyouko, Murasa, Nue, Nazrin, Kogasa, Futo, Tojiko..." The back of her hair started to rise like a cape in the wind, while the ground cracked apart into a small crater beneath her feet.
"What on Earth is she doing...?" Alex felt goosebumps rise along his arms and legs and without realizing it, he tried to hasten the removal of the unidentified object. But as he worked to no avail, the power he felt was growing beyond his ability to ignore it.
The runes around Byakuren's body shone brighter than the sun in the morning and began to raise off of her skin. With a tight scowl and hardened body, the monk murmured three more names with increasing, tearful agony, "Mamizou, Kokoro...Miko..."
"Thank you...for everything..."
"And...I'm sorry I wasn't stronger..."
Alex froze up and reeled his head back as Byakuren's runes shattered like glass. An ember of neon light, much like the flames of Alex's ultimate technique, flickered before the monk's heart, only to then burnout and consume her whole body like an inferno.
All that remained of Byakuren's presence was the hollow glare of her violet eyes amidst the flames, which burned straight through Alex's body as she was poised to strike. Before he could blink, she had smashed the ground up in her wake and stampeded towards him with a hurricane blowing aside any further debris.
Alex bit his teeth down. That was the most he felt he could do in that time. For he was no longer dealing with Byakuren Hijiri, the disciplined Superhuman Buddhist. No, he was not even dealing with a Superhuman. Those runes had been her chains, keeping her within reasonably mortal limits. And now with the strength of her love, and her rage, she broke through her restraints and became something even greater...
THE BURNING PRIESTESS OF PASSION: BEYOND SUPERHUMAN BYAKUREN HIJIRI
"Shi-!" Before he could even get a word out edgewise Byakuren had already hammered her fist into his chest.
Alex was thrown far off his feet and blown through approximately a dozen trees, all of whom went flying hundreds of feet into the sky. His body was now bent in a crooked "c" shape with his ribs feeling as comparatively brittle as crackers.
Byakuren blazed a trail through the destruction she made in a couple seconds to clobber Alex in the waist and nail him to the ground with her bloody knuckles. Her body was a fireball of continuously releasing energy. Too strong to be put out, too bright to be ignored.
She continued to uproot the trees in her wake with Alex's head, with him unable to go anything about it but grin and bear it. He had barely managed to push his eyes open before she propelled off him and swiftly landed on the ground with a sweeping upward kick, blowing him dozens of feet into the air with an earth quaking shockwave.
She vaulted all the way back to the trees that were still flying in the air and flung them like they were as light as twigs, hopping off to another one the moment one was tossed. They smashed and broke apart against Alex's body, spinning him around and around and riddling his skin with splinters.
Byakuren rode the last tree personally and grabbed onto Alex's shoulders the exact moment it shattered. She drove her feet into his chest and put everything she had into propelling off and sending him hurtling to the ground right outside the Human Village.
Skidding along the ground drew blood from his roughened back and wings, upon which Byakuren worsened the pain by crashing to the ground, picking him up by the neck, and ramming him against the village perimeter. The cracks broke out to the far corners of the wall, and the impact point broke apart and frightened the villagers nearby.
Byakuren squeezed tight to the point of suffocating Alex, forcing him to gasp for air while his eyes and face turned white. She wore that menacing stare, boring in deep for any sign of the boy's guilt. But all that she'd find was his panic and fear. The guilt lied all in his heart, which sank heavier than an anchor weighed from its ship.
She jerked back and threw him back into the forest, where his shoulder smashed apart a tree halfway through. Byakuren snagged the top half out of the air and rammed it down upon Alex's face, drawing a small puddle of blood from his nose and causing him to accidentally inhale the splinters as he gasped for air.
As his insides were ripped away at from those miniscules nuisances, Byakuren ran alongside him and pummeled his body with alternating left and right hooks. The strength of his rib cage was starting to fail him, and it wasn't long before his mouth joined his nose in expunging blood.
Byakuren planted a hand firmly on his chest and sent a shockwave throughout his body, briefly numbing his heart. Then she used her monsterous strength to pile drive his weakened body deep into the dirt. Dirt went flying high up in a wave and also wound up lodged inside of Alex's bloody wounds, enflaring the pain that was already ridiculous for any normal human to be expected to endure.
Byakuren let go only to deliver a firm sweeping kick to the top of his legs, which disabled their ability to move by breaking the bones. Alex continued to grit his teeth throughout this whole ordeal, waiting for his opportunity to strike. But there was no hope of that. She simply outclassed him in speed.
He was of two minds on this. On one hand, he deserved this pain for robbing her of her followers and family. On the other hand, yet again another figurehead of Gensokyo was wasting this incredible strength and determination on him and not Yukari. If he were to go out like this, it would be such an incredible insult, and no doubt Yukari would laugh about it until the end of days.
After breaking his legs, Byakuren proceeded to keep breaking his spirit. She drove her feet into the ground and resulting shockwave launched Alex high into the air. She pursued after him and punched right across his body like a rocket.
Then she turned around and punched right across him again in the same direction. Then again. Then again. Then once more for good measure. Eventually she had to stop because of the Hakurei Barrier getting in the way, and decided to punch him twice as hard in the opposite direction.
Midway towards the ground, Byakuren intercepted him with a punch squarely in his chest. His body became disheveled around her fist, and if his rib cage wasn't broken, then it was now. His heart rippled and stopped for a brief moment, which at this point was a miracle that saved him from the immense pain spiraling out of control in his body.
Byakuren then flipped back and rolled her fists around in the air before her chest. Her body exploded with a single burst of heavenly light and with the visage of a lotus at her back she barelled into Alex's body multiple times from multiple directions in the span of a couple seconds.
She snapped his wings in two, broke his arms and twisted his right leg. And that was just the stuff that was the least painful to describe. By the time Byakuren had decided to end her assault, Alex was more a bleeding sack of flesh than a living being. But he still hung on with what little, crucial breath he had saved.
Byakuren narrowed her eyes through the flames and grabbed onto Alex's neck, dropping him straight to the ground outside her broken temple. She rammed him through the ground until his head was perched on the staircase, surrounded by the stench of blood he had helped to create.
His breath ragged his and heart heaving with a heavy thump each beat, Alex stared deep into Byakuren's eyes and saw both rage and an immense sadness. Any tears she now shed were burned up by her power in an instant, leaving only anger to carry on the weight of her fight.
She reeled her right fist back and squeezed it until the blood ran dry. Alex held on with every gasp he spat in her face. He wanted her to drop that mighty hammer and pulverize his head into paste. His confident glare edged her to do so.
With her body trembling, that fist came crashing down...Just a few inches to the left of his face. The shockwave of her punch rippled out to the Myouren Temple and made the rest of it collapse into a pitiful heap. Alex widened his eyes and his gasps came out faster with a tiny bit of excitement in each one.
Byakuren's trembles worsened, and Alex knew exactly why it was. With a shame only he could understand, he tiredly whispered into her ears, "Even after every other oath you broke as a Buddhist...You...You couldn't bring yourself to take my life."
"..." Byakuren's eyes began to close, and her body drew closer towards Alex. The energy surrounding her flickered out of sight, and all that was left was a woman with deeply wrinkled skin and dried up colorless hair. She laid out flat atop of Alex's left arm, and the way she was positioned led him to finding out that she no longer had a heartbeat.
"...She pushed herself beyond her limits," Alex groaned as she looked towards the sky, "And when you go that far, there's always a cost to pay..."
Another corpse. Another innocent life stolen. How many did that make now?
"Nineteen..." He whispered alone in the agony of the night, his broken body surrounded by a pile of corpses that he'd only be grateful to become a part of.
And it was only going to get worse, just like Miko said. There was no way possible that no one saw Byakuren's endeavor. She managed to prove to all of Gensokyo that he could bleed. That he could be broken. And from there, anyone who still had doubts about who to fight would more than likely choose the easier way out.
"Which means one way or another, more people are going to die..." Alex spoke raspily with dread.
"Ha...Hahaha..." Though it pained his heart, he gently laid his head back and broke down into laughter for a good half a minute.
Then he laid his head back down and pinched his lips together into an uneven smirk. With a shake of the head he asked, "Shina...What am I supposed to do now?"
Meanwhile, at the Hakurei Shrine...
Reimu was still sitting on the porch looking out to the horizon. Marisa was with her off beside the steps, but now they were joined by a few faces new and familiar.
One was a gal with short blonde hair that had a red hand in it. She wears a light blue dress with long white sleeves and a long pink ribbon going round her neck and another around her waist. She carries a black spell book sealed by a lock under her right arm and had a few puppets floating around her. She is...
The Seven-Colored Puppeteer: Alice Margatroid
Sitting to the right of Reimu was a girl even shorter than Marisa. She has mangled orange-brown hair with two slightly thick and twisted horns atop them, each wearing a nice blue ribbon. She preferred to walk around in a tattered pale pink blouse, a long purple and pink skirt, and three chain accessories around the belt. Obviously, she was an oni, and as such spent her current time drinking sake from a small gourd.
The Tiny Powerhouse of the Devas: Suika Ibuki
And the last person was Patchouli, was in the midst of delivering a proposal to Reimu, "We are preparing particular measures to counteract the Phoenix of Destruction's powers. But Remi would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us, Hakurei."
"I told you I'm thinking about it, ok?" Reimu coldly brushed her off, much to Marisa's annoyance.
"This ain't the time to be thinking Reimu!" She bluntly blurted out while running in front of her friend's face and swinging her arm towards the horizon, "This is worse than an Incident! People are dying out there! We gotta act now or all of Gensokyo's gonna go up in flames!"
"I know that! I know that! Can you give me a break?!" Reimu flung her arms up with immense frustration and then planted her hands back on her lap.
Suika raised her gourd up to Marisa and said in a youthful, drunken voice, "Yeaaah...Just take a break and take a drink!"
"Not NOW Suika!" Marisa blurted. The oni retracted her offer with a shrug and cheerfully drank from the gourd, "More for me then!"
Marisa groaned and looked to Reimu, who was in the middle of pondering to herself, "...What if he's right though? Maybe we should be going after Yukari instead."
"Don't joke about that Reimu. Yukari's done some shady shit, but she's never gone and threatened the peace of Gensokyo like he has!"
"Hrrmm..."
"REIMU!" Marisa was on the verge of grabbing Reimu's shoulders and slapping her when Suika stamped and quaked the porch with one tiny foot.
"Now I'll need you to settle down there Marisa," She said with a bit more sagely attitude, "Reimu's got the right of it really."
Suika laid down on one arm and with bright red cheeks said, "Gotta think these things through. Rushing into matters is what got the Brain of the Moon killed after all."
"If we wait too long then Gensokyo's done for!"
"Reimu! Reimu! Reimu!" A tiny and chipper voice hollered from her feet.
"Huh?" Recognizing that voice immediately, Reimu looked down and saw Sukuna bouncing around with the Miracle Mallet in her hands.
"Oh its you. What do you want?" She said with a somewhat dismissive attitude.
"I want to help stop the bad person! If we use the Miracle Mallet's power, we can make him go 'Poof'!" She sugggested that with the most unassuming smile that it even eased Marisa's tension a little bit.
Smiling herself, the magician nodded her head and declared, "That's a great idea! Good work Sukuna!"
"Ehhh...you sure about that?" Suika said with a suspecting raise of the brows, "That thing's kinda cursed to twist the user's wishes against them y'know?"
"Quiet Suika!" Marisa barked out, then turned and pulled Sukuna off the ground with a smile, "All we gotta do is word the wish right and its bye-bye Phoenix of Destruction!"
"...I suppose its worth a shot," Patchouli sloppily shrugged her shoulders and remarked, "So first we have to fill the Miracle Mallet with magic?"
"Yeah! With the three of us putting our all into it, the Miracle Mallet'll do anything!" After Marisa's triumphant thumbs up, the three magicians funneled their magic into Sukuna's artifact until it was glowing bright and golden. Suika and Reimu watched on with varying interest, though the tiny oni was more concerned with filling her gullet with sake.
"Alright! Now I just gotta make the wish right?" Sukuna squeezed the mallet in her hands and her heart pounded like a tiny drum, "Iiii wish..."
"Wait wait wait. Word of warning. You'd be wasting the wish by directly targeting him. Trust me on this." Suika said while slyly raising her brows for a moment.
"Ummm...Ok!" Sukuna nodded her and squeezed her eyes shut to deeply concentrate, "Then I wiiiish..."
She swung the Miracle Mallet up high and exclaimed, "For something good to come and stop the Phoenix of Destruction for good!"
The Miracle Mallet released all its light in a bright and beautiful spark that lasted as brief as the blinking of all their eyes. Marisa looked up to the sky and muttered, "Uhhh...So where's the problem solver?"
Sukuna lowered the mallet and gave it a couple shakes, "Maybe its a delayed reaction?"
"Or maybe the mallet's just not strong enough to stop him?" Reimu remarked, letting out a deep sigh before standing up and making her way off the porch, "You shouldn't be putting your faith in miracles Marisa. Sometimes, you've just got to-"
Reimu suddenly clutched her chest and let out a raspy gasp. Her eyes trembled, and then her body fell right off the porch and landed face first in the dirt.
"...R-Reimu?!" Marisa rushed to her aid and picked her off the ground, going straight for the wrist and checking for the pulse.
"N-No...This..." Marisa's mouth became an uneven smirk, "This is a joke right?"
Sukuna clutched the Miracle Mallet to her chest and then threw it aside while leaping over to Reimu, who Marisa put on her back to keep her cradled underhand. Sukuna bounced on Reimu's chest and raised a ruckus that she knew she couldn't ignore, "C'mon Reimu! Its your good friend Sukuna! Get up and lets have some fun!"
Slowly over time the oomph of Sukuna's bounces lessened, and then she collapsed onto her knees and her eyes began wobbling, "R-Reimu its not funny anymore..."
Marisa stared at Reimu's closed eyes and kept gently shaking her body without a word. The rest of the folk gathered here were quiet about what was happening for a few seconds, until Patchouli decided to divert the attention away from the mournful scene by remarking, "I need...to let Remi know...And prepare ourselves for what's to come. Are you coming with Alice?"
The puppeteer nodded her head and the two flew on out of there, with Alice glancing back at Marisa for a brief moment. Suika then swung her gourd onto a chain and hauled it over shoulder as she leapt off the porch and crash-landed away from Reimu.
"...So that's that huh?" She picked up her feet and headed for the staircase. Marisa raised her head, bitterly bit her teeth, and grumbled out to her, "Where are you going?"
"...Where else?" Suika hung her head and with a smirk that diverted the steady flow of tears she shed she reached the staircase and remarked, "To war."
Marisa and Sukuna remained at Reimu's side, but they were not the only ones who mourned. Thunder and lightning roared throughout the sky, and rain began to fall all across Gensokyo in buckets. And then...the tiniest cracked started to form in the barrier behind the shrine...
It was the beginning...of the end. And all Marisa could wonder was..."Why?"
Next Time: To War