There is something I wish to admit to you all before the end comes. I...may not get another chance to say this in the privacy of these words you read.
...I'm scared. Rather, that I can be scared. I am frightened immensely by ideas of loneliness or loss. Its a remnant of my human self, I suppose. Yet I appear to have a knack for driving others away. I antagonized the original Hakurei maiden by accident. I drove Kasen away with my unyielding ideals for Gensokyo. I played too aggressively to gain Kokoro's attention. And Reimu...
…
I'm stubborn. I admit that as well. If I wasn't, how could I have managed to get this far against the Phoenix of Destruction? But that also makes me stagnant. Gensokyo, its ways and its people, have changed while I am the same as I have always been. There's such a thin line dividing the identities of "Maribel" and "Yukari" that it makes me wonder if I am who I say I am or simply a mask protecting a traumatized child...
...What is the point of my rambling, you may ask? Like I said. The end is coming. It is but a few chapters away. Then I may finally close this book, this part of my life, forever. And I'd like to leave you all with all secrets laid bare.
But enough of my meager distractions. Its time to draw the curtain closer on this final battle...
Chapter 18: The Fall of Fantasy
Amidst the vortex drifting between a far-off dream and an enclosed reality, Reimu crossed her arms before her chest and had long, silvery needles pinched between each finger.
Alex raised his sword and expected them to be tossed his way. The moment she budged he brought his sword down and lashed fired down her body.
She remained silent as the air around her as she tossed those needles diagonally in eight different directions. They bounced around dangerously close to Alex's comfort zone and weaved a web around his line of sight. Thimble strands of energy comprised the web, which was woven with such care as to leave gaps big enough for Alex to push through.
But Reimu would soon complicate matters by sending strings of glowing yin-yang orbs along the web. Alex swung his sword up with a swift, rough motion of his wrist and found his flames sliced up by the strings.
He slanted his eyebrows and glided inches at a time through the gaps, keeping a careful eye open for any of the traveling Danmaku. The orbs were barely the size of baseballs but made up for it with their speed.
Alex used up energy to send fireballs out until he could build strength in his blade. Then he took it in both hands and stabbed it between one of the gaps, hitting Reimu dead in the head with a beam of fire.
It may be a Spell Card duel, but it was getting annoying that she showed no signs of fatigue.
When the orbs reached the edge of the web they ricocheted around like a set of pool balls off the cue. Alex felt his body winced as they connected this way, but kept concentrating his fire on Reimu regardless.
It took more than thirty seconds of constant pressure before the web unraveled and Reimu relented to use her fourth Spell Card. She raised it up from the ether the same as the rest and activated it.
When they transitioned from the vortex the change in environment was nowhere as sudden as the rest had been. The Hakurei Shrine was dragged back into the vortex where it morphed via a misty distortion into becoming the Myouren Temple.
The dimension was white and foggy, empty like Miko's Senkai. So thus is was only appropriate that the Taoist's Divine Mausoleum stood as the Myouren Temple's reflection. Alex stared at the temple's front gates and those of the reflection, swearing that he saw their owners staring at him disapprovingly even after he blinked and rubbed his eyes.
Reimu closed her eyes and smiled a bit, no doubt enjoying the vanity of his struggle, and the weight of sin weighing heavily on his soul. But the time to drift between past, present and future was long passed, and with one hand raised high to the heavens she announced the Spell Card's name as, "Answer my Depression 'Ten Undefined Desires'!"
A dull ping echoed from afar as three rings rippled out from the bottom of the Myouren Temple. Then Reimu was found floating in the center of Byakuren's lotus sign, which the priestess once made great use of in her Spell Cards.
"Why did it have to be her.." He pondered aloud in his head, "Why did it have to be someone who would never take a life that brought me so close to the edge of death's door?"
He let out a lone, dry chuckle at how it might have been better had he died then...But only if Yukari had been slain beforehand.
"This isn't the time to get distracted..." He slowly raisd his blade to the right and with a limp pair of eyes faced the immediate enemy ahead and swung a wave of fire at their body.
Reimu closed her eyes as the four corners of the lotus lit up and retaliated with rings of red and yellow Danmaku. Alex pushed onward through the rings and kept a steady assault up until giant, cloudy fists took swings at him from the left AND right.
He backs off in an instant and widened his eyes as a giant ghastly anchor rammed in a straight line towards him. He shifted to the right into one of the rings of Danmaku and the anchor crashed into an invisible wall, spreading dozens of watery bullets up towards Reimu.
The fists obscured the anchor and came out frequent enough that there was only a tiny space in the back of the arena for him to move around in. It wasn't difficult to get attacks off on Reimu, but dodging? Not so much. It wasn't long though until Alex heard the Spell Card breaking noise push away the Danmaku in his path.
And yet, the environment did not shift back to the vortex. Instead, the Myouren Temple and its "reflection" began to quiver like they were foggy shifted by the gentle winds of morning.
The atmosphere darkened to the dead of night and in a flash of light the two temples had changed positions, with the Mausoleum shining as bright as gold through the darkness. Reimu turned her body aside and was protected in the back by Miko's six petal, two-layered flower she used for some Spell Cards.
"Answer my Depression 'Ten Undefined Desires -2nd Half-'!" She spoke softly.
The flowers blossomed and stretched out to be fifty feet wide and tall, then released its knife Danmaku in the form of multiple rings. It alternated between the outer and inner petals, then kept repeating this until the whole sky was filled with its "pollen".
"You also came close to stopping me..." Alex thought as he drifted between the knives, "Would you have been able to succeed...If you knew everything about me? I doubt it..."
Joining the initial Danmaku wave was a wooden boat different from the last that traveled left-to-right and sprayed foggy blue Danmaku across the sky, filling in the gaps the flower failed to touch.
Then came sets of yellow arrows that zig-zagged throughout like the shape of lightning bolts. Red arrows traveled between them in a similar path between the yellow ones, albeit somewhat slower.
It was just more annoying clutter to get around. But at least there was a little more space to maneuver around, and that was all he could ask for.
All these gimmicks and memories of the fallen warriors wouldn't best him. Surely Reimu couldn't be thinking that was she? No, there had to be some other trick up her dangling sleeves.
"A way to stop me without killing me..." He murmured aloud, "What does that mean?"
After another grueling, drawn-out battle of dodging and attacking Alex finally broke this Spell Card fully and the two returned to the vortex beyond time and space. Alex cockily raised his blade at the waist and smirked, "You're running out of tricks, Reimu."
"I'll fight to my last breath," Reimu turned her back towards Alex and glared at him with one red, glowing eyes, "Because I can't save Gensokyo...You'll be damn sure I'll avenge it!"
Dozens of chains composed of white seals shot out from the expanse of nothing at Reimu's back and whipped around a bit until finally settling upon thrusting themselves at Alex's body.
He zipped to the right and the chains broke upon an invisible wall, dispersing the seals to the four winds. Another set lashed out almost right away, so he went up to avoid it and kept attacking with the hot air off of his blade.
The chains got increasingly more aggressive to the point of one emerging the immediate second after the last emerged. In this snowstorm of seals Alex persisted on evading each and every one he could, gliding around Reimu's body and attacking her faster and faster.
But as to who would give way in their tactics first...Well, that should have been obvious from the start.
Reimu faced forward and the onslaught of seals reached its end. Alex floated up a few feet close to the shrine maiden and raised the tip of his blade to her unflinching face while waiting out her next Spell Card.
"Well? What's your next move?" He asked before being shoved back by the shockwave from Reimu's fifth Spell Card.
As it shattered softly the environment changed to become the endless, inner halls of the Shining Needle Castle. Alex knew where he was despite having not personally attended a visit to the place. The floor, however, was clear glass that allowed a full view of the moon floating in space.
In this atmosphere Reimu looked more like a twinkling star than a ghost. A deadly star mind you, but a star nonetheless. Reimu spoke the card's name as "Acceptance for The End 'Double Dealing Lunacy'" and then three large spheres appeared and formed a triangle at her backside.
Yellow for the Moon, Blue for the Earth, and Red for Hell. The spheres were perfect representations of those respective realms flaws and all. The one for Earth took prominence over the rest and surrounded Reimu's body. Then a small grey moon appeared and rotated around her, with a pinwheel of red star Danmaku firing off her in multiple directions.
The moon offered itself up as an umbrella, so Alex took it without hesitation. He directed his shots around the moon and slowly chipped away at the Earth shielding Reimu. Each fireball hit shrunk the barrier's size.
The moon started to shrink as well, making relying on it less than optimal. But when Alex got too close to it to try and make further use of its protective prowess, the moon expanded to twice its original twice and shoved him away. It stung quite a bit, for even as a shield, the moon still counted as a piece of Danmaku.
Upon reaching the size of Reimu's head the Earth barrier popped, along with the Danmaku associated with it. Before Alex could get a shot off on her she was covered up by the sphere of the moon.
Alex felt a pure chill run down his spine and looked back to find that the corners of this hall were being run over by hundreds of red, blue, violet and yellow orbs the size of his body. They all gravitated upon his location, so he quickly got to work attacking Reimu's barrier while zipping around the orbs, which seemed to have no end.
What's worse was that some orbs grew to cover more space while others shrunk to hit Alex unnoticed.
It could have been because he was so deep into the duel, but this felt like the toughest Spell Card so far. But much to Reimu's chagrin, he refused to yield. His stubbornness was top-notch, being both the best and worst quality about him.
And yet again, he prevailed against the odds and broke through the moon's barrier. He taunted Reimu with a smirk but she remained sternly unamused as she surrounded herself in Hell's barrier.
She rapidly launched rings of crystal blue Danmaku across the room, the individual bullets rebounding back as lasers. Alex moved the moment the rings started, but...
While his brain said "Right" his body went "Left". When he wanted to go "Up" he instead went "Down". This fried the circuits in his brain for a moment or two, but then he was quickly up and running at his normal pace.
But it was still an endeavor to make sense of this warped perspective, and the lasers ran amok across his body while he fully worked it out. He thus chose to assail the shield with large waves of fire to make up for lost time.
There was one moment where he blinked, and then the perspective of the world was flipped upside-down when he opened them back up. He tirelessly kept attacking from a stationary position to avoid having his brain screwed with any longer.
It was reckless, and utterly stupid of him, but like many times in the past it worked out for him in the end as he broke through the final shield.
And from there, the Spell Card's effects came to a close. But instead of returning to that vortex they arrived back in the real Gensokyo. Alex hunched forward, panting and sweating with his vision somewhat blurred.
He glanced a bit around then smirked at the withdrawn Reimu, "What...you giving up already?"
The shrine maiden closed her eyes as Alex kept egging her on, "Come on! Draw whatever pathetic Last Word you've got so we can end this!"
"No," She replied, "I've got no more cards to play."
"...I thought you were going to beat me in six cards? I've only counted five." Alex lorded over Reimu.
"I said you'd lose in six cards. I never said they'd all be mine." Reimu said while softly shaking her head.
"What are you talking about?" Alex said with barely contained laughter, "There's no one left besides us!"
"You're wrong. There's one more. Someone who we've all neglected to consider when it comes to Spell Card duels..." Reimu started to raise her right hand far towards the cracking sky.
Alex thought deeply on this. Who? Who could he have forgotten? Surely not Yukari. There's no possible way she'd join in. Hecatia, perhaps? Sure she was alive, but...
"No, it doesn't make any sense. There's no one left who..." Alex paused as the whole of Gensokyo trembled, like a pulse of life was running through its veins. Light flushed out from behind the shrine like a sun that'd been split open, and Reimu raised her voice to the heavens.
"Hear me! I am your voice, your soul, your feelings given form! If you wish to fight then fight! I will be the one to make your dreams reality! I, Reimu Hakurei, the Eternal Shrine Maiden, call for your name...!"
"Is she summoning a God?! What is this...feeling around me?!" Alex tightly bit his teeth down as the realm trembled some more.
When I said I'd reveal all the secrets I had left to say, I meant it. There is one very, very important secret about the world I cherish, that no one besides me knows. Yes, not even the other Youkai Sages, which erected the barrier to seperate Gensokyo from the Outside World, know this particular truth.
There was an idea behind the creation of Gensokyo. To separate the supernatural from the mundane society, which was advancing to no longer require the support of the supernatural to sustain them. Gensokyo was to be a place where Youkau, gods and anything mysterious and enigmatic could live their lives as they wished, without ever having any fear of disappearing.
But this gave birth to some complications. Belief was the fuel that sustained these creatures. If there was not enough belief towards these creatures in Gensokyo, then they would vanish. If people believed in them enough outside Gensokyo, then they would possibly return to the Outside World and be hunted down like animals, probed and prodded for all their secrets.
So I kidnapped humans from the Outside World, and built a village in the center of Gensokyo where they could live in peace...But with one caveat. They had to offer their belief and fear to the Youkai to keep them alive, and in turn the Youkai would do little to lay a hair on the humans. Some have obeyed these laws, other have fought against them to prove their superiority.
It wasn't the most perfect plan, but I wished to maintain the ideals upheld by the first Hakurei Shrine maiden...The same ideal world that I dreamt many a times of when I was human.
But all of this isn't a secret. It is common knowledge to all who have heard of Gensokyo. Whether through living there, or through whispers in the static between our worlds.
No, the true secret is that my actions had an unintended consequence. A consequence that, in some manner of speaking, made me a mother.
Taking into consideration the fact that a dedicated belief in something makes them reality in Gensokyo...Or that a lack of belief in something in the Outside World causes them to be magically created in Gensokyo...
What does this mean for the land we Youkai and Humans alike walk upon? Is Gensokyo itself not also bound to these rules as we are? After all, information about Gensokyo, scarce though it may be, has trickled its way through the ears and minds of generation after generation beyond the barrier's creation.
Perhaps a dreamer dreams of such a land...Perhaps a silly little high-school girl with dreams of grandeur has drifted into this land on one or two occasions, and taken a picture as proof this world exists. Whatever way it manifests, the existence of Gensokyo still lingers in the Outside World to this day...
Why is this land named Gensokyo, you may have wondered time after time again...
Gensokyo roughly translates to "Land of Illusions" or "Land of Fantasy". This world started off as a dream, an illusion of the mind in a young girl's fragile heart...Then it became reality, which drove the woman to become detached in a never-ending flight of fantasy.
Yes. That's right. When I spoke of being a mother, I was not referring to a human child...Nor of a Youkai scion. The birth I refer to was merely the act of putting a spark of life via belief into a once dormant world.
So tell them all, Alex Whiter...What is this great truth upon which I am trying to relay?
"No...It couldn't be...!" Alex swung his head around, his teeth snarled in a panic as he swung his head around and watched the bright light gush out like a tidal wave across the entire barrier, mending its wounds and filling it with the mosiac glow of an aurora borealis.
The pulse of life in the world grew louder and louder, then became a heartbeat of anger that quaked the very ground he stood on. Alex spun his head at Reimu, his eyes wide, his pupils the size of pine needles.
"This land is a living being...! Gensokyo itself...is a Youkai!"
"That's right..." Reimu spoke, her mind unified with his, "Gensokyo has cried and quivered in sadness and fear as you've run rampant across it! It was too scared to fight back, in fear that you would kill it in retaliation!"
As her voice echoed throughout the lands, Reimu's eyes turned hollow grey, shining like a diamond as she uttered with her arms swung down, "But it shall fear no longer! It will fight to take back the beauty that you've tainted! It shall fight to avenge the friends you stripped away from it! This isn't my Last Word...This...!"
The glowing light pushed wide apart as a massive, towering Spell Card rose up over the Hakurei Shrine. Reimu then swung her right hand down towards Alex, whose body was giving in to the sheer majesty of Gensokyo's radiance given form, and declared with an echo that spoke with the voices of all Hakurei Shrine maidens who ever stepped foot on this land.
"LAST WORD! ETERNAL GENSOKYO!"
The card shattered in a brilliant spectacle of dazzling lights, all of which floated down around Reimu and Alex and grew to the size of people. Each of the lights were shed off these figures, revealing the bodies of every person who had lived in Gensokyo on this very day.
Even people Alex had left alive, like Komachi, Hecatia and the Fairies, were amongst the massive crowd. They were all staring at him. They all were pissed. But there was one notable exception...Yukari, was of course, nowhere to be found.
Alex grit his teeth and felt cold all over his skin. He locked his sight onto Reimu, who floated amongst the crowd with Marisa at her side, who quickly waved at him and pulled her right eyelid down with her tongue sticking out.
"This is beyond any Spell Card ever made...!" Alex declared as his brain was fried trying to comprehend just how many people there were. They had to have numbered in the thousands! And there was no way, not a single way possible, for him to escape.
He squeezed his blade until the veins popped out of the back of his hand and screamed with his mouth salivating and his irises a furious shade of red, "YOU'RE ALL JUST DOING WHAT SHE WANTS YOU BASTARDS!"
He charged straight for Reimu post-haste and she swung her right hand down. Immediately the denizens of Gensokyo went flying, their bodies enveloped in twinkling stardust that made them shine bright like comets.
Alex took this as a personal sleight against him, an attempt to prey upon his fears, and burst into flames to ram into Reimu with the fury of an asteroid. A couple of the people rammed into his body and they alone were able to force him back ten feet in an instant.
His body felt like it was being ripped away at, the essences of who he was shedding off his back with each collision of "Danmaku" that struck him.
"Tsk...!" Alex flung his right hand back and blasted the incoming Danmaku with a cone of fire, frying them to dust.
Then Mokou and Utsuho forced aside the flames with the swing of their hands and rammed into Alex's body, their great heat manifesting the effigy of a three-legged Phoenix.
He got right back up as they vanished and endured the pummeling of a dozen more obstacles before taking the charge to Reimu once more. This time his neck was bludgeoned with the blade of Komachi's scythe in combination with Youmu's blade attacking from the back.
He felt like his head had been decapitated and even briefly saw it rolling on the floor. He gasped for air and burst into flames, blowing up dozens of the Danmaku that charged at him.
He made a few feet of progress before Meiling came swinging her leg up at his head. He ducked under it only to find himself face-to-face with Kasen, who pounded the back of his skull into the bottom of the gatekeeper's leg. Then Suika and Yuugi dove in and smashed him to the ground with a single combined punch.
Alex wasn't bleeding, far from it, but his innards may as well been puree from how much was coming at him at once. He dug his heels into the ground and thrust both his hands out with flames large enough to swallow the mighty oaks bursting forth.
"I WON'T LET HER WIN, YOU HEAR ME?!" He screamed against the pervading light that sought to see him fall.
Before he clapped his hands together all the followers of Taoism and Buddhism banded together and dogpiled on his arms to hold him back, giving Miko and Byakuren the opportunity to drive their legs into his chest and make him wheeze for air.
The flames broke free from his body and he hobbled to his knees, grasping the pit of his stomach. He forced himself back up and rapidly pummeled at the air around him to fend off the Danmaku as he crawled along the ground towards Reimu.
Remilia and Flandre teamed up and delivered a heartwrenching claw strike down his chest, felling his offense and causing him to be dragged back by the Danmaku that followed after.
He drilled his feet into the ground and burst forward towards Reimu, who steeled her gaze with an iron fervor as he smashed his way through Danmaku after Danmaku to get to her. But when he was inches from her face he was bound around the stomach by a familiar five-pointed star.
Sanae winked at Reimu and Marisa from behind Alex and held her gohei tight while Yorihime, Toyohime and Eirin worked together to create a giant arrow from the energies of all their Lunarian comrades and fire it upon Alex's chest.
When it punctured him metaphysically it may as well been his death call. But after slamming and bouncing against the pavement until he was at the gate of the shrine he dug his fingernails into the dirt between the cracks and went charging forth, his chin but a few feet off the ground.
He ripped off large chunks of the floor and flung them into the crowd before they could get their chance to attack. Thinning the crowd left him confident in being able to strike Reimu in a single burst of speed.
But he was wrong. Oh so very wrong. The tengu flocked to his location like a swarm of crows and attacked from all sides before he could blink. This kept him suspended in place for Ran to roll through his body, with Chen following close behind.
When he opened his eyes he saw Mamizou and Hecatia staring at him from a few feet away, their backs to one another. Mamizou took her pipe from her mouth and shook her head, and Alex felt ready to snivel and cry as he bitterly bit his lower lip and watched the two strike him in tandem.
Upon the residing guilt fading away, Alex kept flying at Reimu with all he had. This time Kokoro stood valiantly between her and him, wielding her naginata behind her back and glaring at him with one angry, veiny eye. In conjunction with Tenshi the two slash away at him with their weapons, ripping large chunks of his essence from his body while the Danmaku continued to pile on him from all corners.
Alex slammed his fists down by his hips and let out a earth-shattering scream and flames forced his opposition aside. Worn and battered but not beaten, Alex buckled his fists and flung himself at Reimu, who was merely a few feet away.
Marisa kicked her broom into overdrive and rammed into Alex at full speed, slamming him up against the gate before tipping her hat off and disappearing, leaving him to be assaulted relentlessly by the remainder of the Danmaku. Everyone got their licks in, even the normal humans who had no idea why they were seeking vengeance.
When they were all said and done, Alex limped off the shrine gate and hovered a few inches forward towards Reimu, who floated alone before the shrine. He raised his right hand up, but upon blinking she was right in front of him with her hand planted against his chest.
"Its over now..." She said, radiating with white heat.
Alex felt strange for a moment as Reimu drifted away from him. He swung his hand out, but found that it passed right through her body. It wasn't like before, when his blade failed to hit. Instead of him passing through her, she was passing through HIM.
He silently stared at his hands and noticed that they looked fuzzier than before, then looked up at Reimu as she raised her chin and scoffed at him.
"I have flown you out of reality. In this state, you will be able to witness the world around you, but you will never again be able to interact with it. You will not die, but you will never kill again either. Enjoy this rotten fate for all eternity, Phoenix of Destruction..."
Alex widened his mouth and screamed but no sound came out. His eyes bulged, his skin reddened, and he lashed his hands out towards Reimu as she closed her eyes and drifted off into the ether forever. He continued to yell at nothing as the world around him turned to red...
...You tried so hard Reimu. And let no one say otherwise. But there is one thing you could not have stopped, even with all the power Gensokyo had to offer you.
Upon using your Fantasy Heaven on the Phoenix of Destruction, his Gaia Temporis had nowhere to go but down. Down onto the ground it fell and then bounced. And again, my ears became plagued by its irritating, meddlesome sounds...
"Tick tock...tick tock...tick tock..."
When they were all said and done, Alex limped off the shrine gate and hovered a few inches forward towards Reimu, who floated alone before the shrine. But the world was monochrome, because time had stopped...
"...W-What's going on...?" He wondered aloud, his voice an echo in the timeless void.
"You...have to attack her the moment time resumes..." A frail, feminine voice whispered into his ears.
Alex's right eye twitched shut as a severe migraine shot through his brain. He, for the briefest of moments, recalled what it was like to not have a voice, or to be able to feel or touch anything...All because of Reimu.
He narrowed his eyes and the glow in his irises darkened as time resumed. Reimu appeared before him with her hand on his chest...
And Alex summoned his blade, impaling her through the chest in the mere millisecond of vulnerability she displayed by dropping her Fantasy Heaven to touch him.
She cobbled atop his blade with her chest bleeding out profusely with a fine white mist, muttering aloud in a weak, raspy voice, "H-How could you..."
Alex leaned his head in close to Reimu's face and whispered in her ear, "I will come back...As many times as it takes...Until Yukari pays. This is my justice, Reimu Hakurei...Die upon its blade."
He ripped the sword free from Reimu's ghastly form and she drifted back into the ether, disintegrating with a wobbly look in her eyes until not even the tiniest atoms remained.
Alex fell silently upon the ground and dropped the tip of his blade down to his feet. The light surrounding Gensokyo faded and the cracks returned in the barrier, stronger than before. He stood there and stared at the ground, feeling the immense tremors grow within the now vacant world...
Until a slow, lonesome clap, drew his attention towards the shrine. He raised his head up, anger on full display in his ravenous eyes as he saw none other than me, Yukari Yakumo, sitting daintly atop one of my gaps with my hands pressed gently before my chest.
"Well done...You survived to the very end after all." I said with a honeyed smile.
He dragged his sword along the ground like a warrior crawling back home from a weary battle. Yet his eyes still roared with vigor, and disdain that burrowed into my flesh and sinew as he stopped ten feet from where I floated.
He snarled his teeth and was quaking all over. I wondered how he could still have the strength to stand, a question I really should not be repeating to myself at this point...
"Yukari...! Yakumo...!" He growled at me, only for my hand to rise up and quell his rage just a tiny bit.
"Ah ah ah~" I teased with a smile as I leaned back into the burrow of my gap and planted my hands in a bridge under my chin, "I'm sure you'd love to tear into me once more with all your might...But why don't we save this for next time? Give it about...three days tops?"
Of course he was bewildered by my statement. But you aren't, are you?
...Ta-ta for now.
Next Time: The Connecting Thread