Chapter 3: Chained by Fate
As the whims of the Scarlet Devil were currently being satisfied by Shina, many of the residents, including fairy maids and grotesque hobgoblins, crowded the porch around Sakuya and Patchouli to observe their master at work.
"The clouds are very well-made, Lady Patchouli." Sakuya spoke up pleasantly as the bustling sound of her co-workers surrounded her.
"It was a simple matter of condensing vapor into a cumulonimbus form." She replied with a sentence more wordy than necessary. Yet, it was that level of detail of hers that continued to hold Sakuya's attention.
"Just don't push yourself too hard. Here," Sakuya whisked out a dish and a fresh cup of tea out like a magician doing the same to a rabbit from a hat, "I made a fresh batch, just to your liking."
Patchouli took the cup without looking away from her friend, and had a quick sip before giving thanks, "You picked the leaves from the Forest of Magic?"
A tiny smile showed up for a brief moment as she placed the cup back onto the dish and lowered it to her waist, "Excellent, I feel replenished already."
Her voice remained stoic, even while expressing the utmost sincere appreciation.
Some louder hustle soon came from the crowd, as Meiling was trudging her way towards the front of the crowd. She was in a panic, and limply accosted Sakuya by her shoulders the moment she broke through.
"Sakuya! Patchouli! The chi of the skies have been disrupted! The Lord of Thunder Feng Lung has come to exact vengeance upon those who have defiled the heavens!"
Though Meiling's eyes were as wide as quarters, Sakuya glanced over the shoulder with a smile and said, "Ah, glad you could join us. Relax, enjoy a cup of tea."
She pulled out another cup from thin air and held it over the shoulder without spilling a drop. Meiling blinked a few times then backed away with the cup in hand, downing the whole thing while it was piping hot.
"Oooooh, oolong tea." Meiling face turned pinkish red as she rubbed the side of her face and melted into bliss from this tongue-tingling delight. But then she snapped back into a state of panic and rushed between the two, swinging her arms out.
"Come on this is urgent! Where's the Mistress?!"
Patchouli closed her eyes and leaned her head back to sigh, "For a gatekeeper, your vision is shockingly narrow."
After that snide remark to bewilder her co-worker, Patchouli raised her puffy right sleeve up as slow as molasses towards the sky. Meiling turned and was able to ascertain Remilia's location in an instant.
"What's she doing up there?" She put a hand over her forehead and squinted, "And...isn't that Shina?"
"The guest you let in is facing her in a Spell Card duel." Patchouli replied.
"This is good," Sakuya commented a serene and gentle happiness, "Milady hasn't gotten to stretch her wings for a while now. This ought to alleviate her boredom for a couple days."
"Can Shina even use Danmaku? Id've sworn that boy would've faced Remilia," Meiling's eyes popped wide and she started to glance around the porch, "Say, where IS he?"
Patchouli brushed her arm out to swiftly sweep the matter under the rug, "Don't worry about it, just enjoy the show."
High above, Remilia kept her posture of aggression going for a full minute before shifting just her eyebrow as a way of saying 'Huh?' Shina was loitering around with a hand clenched before her chest and her eyes narrow. She LOOKED ready to fight, but nothing about her stance screamed of the fire and passion that had held the vampire's intrigue so easily before.
"Don't tell me you've gotten cold feet..." Remilia grumbled, only to take a more prideful approach to her foe's state of mind, "Or perhaps you've become bewildered by my full vampiric charm, fufufu."
"Not...not at all!" Shina stammered, not exactly making a convincing argument there. She then curled her fingers just below her lower lip and chuckled, "It's just...I'm embarrassed to admit it but..."
"Spill it, I don't have all day." Remilia remarked with her arms lightly crossed.
"I...don't have any Spell Cards." Shina's whisper still reached the vampire's acute ears, and her response was little more than a baffled raise of the brow.
"That's it? Seriously?" She slacked her jaw and ruffled her head, losing the vigor she had built up before.
"Look, do you know what Danmaku is?"
"Of course! Marisa showed me!" Shina proudly proclaimed.
"They're just bullets. If you can fly, you can make bullets. Its that easy." Remilia smirked.
Shina tilted her head with a small and confused frown and thought, "I...don't think those are even tangentially related."
She then looked up and asked, "But I thought you needed spell cards to have a spell card duel?"
"It gives you more of an advantage, but that's it. The shrine maiden always gets by with just Danmaku," Remilia closed her eyes and smiled, "Though perhaps that has more to do with her curiously powerful natural talent."
"Alright...Alright! I got it!" Shina, having ignored basically everything Remilia just said, pounded her open palm with a fist while a light bulb went off in her head. Then, she swung her body to the left and thrust the right wrist, which wore a bracelet with two stones attached, right up against the center of her chest.
"Now don'tcha blink Remilia! You'll be the first person in all of Gensokyo to see this!" She crossed her other arm up, using the boney bump on her wrist to hit the stone with the two guns crossed on it.
Remilia glued her eyes wide open and leaned out as a crystalline light sparked out from Shina's body for a few brief seconds. As it faded out twice as fast, Shina had gained a new appearance and a slight increase in power. Her hair was now lighter and silver-ish while her eyes glowed brighter like shined aquamarines. Her legs up to the knees were covered in slender blue military boots, while the rest were protected by silver stockings. Her main outfit consisted of a white and green striped skirt and a sapphire sleeveless shirt with rivets going vertically around it, and a few inches cut off for the midriff. Finally, there were her fingerless black gloves, each of them holding a pistol of see-through bluish aura.
Peering through the backs of her guns as they were crossed before the face, Shina faced down the vampire with a heat that could eclipse the sun and swung her arms out.
"If Reimu can do it, then so can I!" She exclaimed with a vibrant vigor.
Remilia's body tingled from head-to-toe like the nocturnal cold, and her chuckles started outside her control, "Fufufu...You're just full of surprises aren't ya! But that just means that I made the right call!"
She thrust her wings out as far as the membranes would allow, being whipper into a frenzy so great that not even a skate through the heart would be able to calm her now.
"I can't wait any longer! You must be made mine forever!" Remilia swung her right hand up and summoned a blood red Spell Card at the edge of the palm, its glow reflecting and magnifying the terrifying, greedy gaze in her eyes.
"This shall be a two-card duel. Squirm as long as you can, for Remilia Scarlet now begins her hunt!" She sliced through the spell card with a clean swipe that scarred the air in a luminscent violet, all while declaring her first attack's name with pride, "Fall of Night 'The Beginning of the Harvest'!"
The familiar sound of activation rings out as far as the onlookers can hear, and Remilia started to be enveloped in a foggy blood red aura. From a mythical glyph behind her, six rows of six body sized crystallic violet spheres flew out and walled Shina in on both sides. Shina's heart pounded against her chest quietly at first as her eyes stirred around at her surroundings.
"Ok, ok...This is pretty simple so far." Her attempts to hype herself up were instantly cast down to hell by Remilia, who flooded Shina's vision with dozens upon dozens of head-sized red-white orbs between her walls of Danmaku.
"Crap crap!" Her eyes widened and she made a hasty retreat as the Danmaku sprawled about in various random directions trying to peg their target. A couple of the bullets nicked Shina's limbs as she swung her arms out, mimicking what she'd imagine a vampire's nibbling would feel like. With a wince of the eyes she tugged onto the triggers of her pistols and fired many bullets of aura in a constant stream towards the vampire.
Remilia smiled and held her arms out as the raw power of her Danmaku made her dress flutter as though grazed by a haunting breeze. She took the bullets head-on like a thick steel wall would a speeding car and launched a second wave of the tinier bullets the moment the first wave vanished.
Shina could only back off so far before her aim would start to waver, but with a distance of a hundred feet between her and the vampire she was able to exploit the larger gaps between the bullets to evade them with swift, simple movements. She twirled both pistols around in the hands and bit down on her lower lip as she clasped them between her fingers once more.
"I need a better rate of fire than this..." Her mind was racing far too fast, and the brain would soon drift right out of her skull if she didn't apply the brakes and better plan her attack.
Twirling to the left to evade a particularly nasty, condensed barrage of Danmaku, Shina thrust her arms straight out and replaced the pistols with SMGs while still holding down the triggers. Her fingers grew sore in only a couple seconds as she fought against the gun's recoil and bombarded Remilia with her power.
The lack of a reaction beyond the dozens of 'twangs' signifying an impact left Shina in a state of concern as to how much energy was being drained from Remilia's Spell Card. The vampire remained steadfast in her confidence, and as the second wave of Danmaku finished its duty her smirk began to rise.
"I knew it...this card's still got some tricks up its sleeve!" Shina stopped in the center of the two walls of spheres, which had begun to move after an extended period of silence. The Danmaku pushed forward and, at the same time, swung towards each other. As they neared the center, Shina flipped back and was enveloped by the light the bullets cast as she passed between him.
Her body spun around, and she began to worry about stuff as minute as her nose and kneecaps touching the bullets. To her, these beautiful spheres were now as deadly as poison ivy. It wasn't a good omen that her heart felt ready to burst from the chest by the time she slipped through the Danmaku unharmed, and not even thirty seconds had passed.
Stalling herself in the dead center of the battlefield, Shina caught her breath and felt her arms sweating. But Remilia had more than enough tricks up her sleeve to exploit the girl's poor naivety in Danmaku, and the full extent of her spell card's pattern had yet to blossom.
With only a couple hasty breaths to her name, Shina widened her eyes and looked around. She was surrounded by dozens of those tiny red-white bullets, which had been called forth by the larger orbs as they made their pass.
Gasping mid-breath, Shina retreated as the Danmaku collapsed upon her, but not without taking her weapons and firing pot shots at Remilia while she could. But as she halted her retreat ten feet away, a ghastly, bat-like shriek penetrated her ears and wailed within her soul. A second later, a swarm of dark red, ethereal bat-shaped Danmaku flew away from her stomach and over to Remilia.
As the vampire absorbed the bullets into her body she sent out another spray of red-white orbs from her glyph and gazed upon the steadily withering Shina, whose head began to droop as she fired aimless shots, only few of which hit.
"Don't tell me you're tired already! Come on, fight like your life depended on it!" Remilia's endurance and vigor were endless, no doubt a blessing of her vampiric heritage. And yet, Shina believed there was more to it than that.
"She's not just a vampire, she's one of the elite veterans of Gensokyo. Its not that my bullets ain't doing diddly-squat, she's just not gonna show weakness to a newbie!" Shina pulled back on her arms to graze some of the bullets that flew her way. The first wave in this rotation was at an end, and the second was heralded by the unnerving sound of thunder clapping from the clouds.
"I gotta step up my act fast, or I'm gonna be stuffing biscuits full of human flesh for the rest of my life!" Shina pulled away from the onslaught of bullets as they flew about, a few of them nicking against the sides of her legs as she took her guns and fired upon Remilia.
"There's gotta be something I can do to get an advantage...Think Shina! Think!" Closing her eyes up tight like windows shutters, she caught the glimpse of something curious with her ability to see aura. The bullets all radiated with a faint trace of Remilia's own aura. It was so faint, in fact, that it registered just as much as a mouse's presence. But that little observation was more than enough to snap Shina's attention to an important revelation.
"Of course! Duh! I'm tryin' too hard to see with my eyes when I SHOULD be seeing with my aura..." Shina bopped the side of her head with the barrel of one of her guns, which caught Remilia's attention with resounding curiosity welling up on her face.
The walls of Danmaku began to cross paths for the second time, but this time Shina squinted her eyes and paid super close attention to how they moved.
"Concentrate, concentrate, CON-CEN-TRATE!" She pumped her mind up with words, while the adrenaline in her body did the rest of the work. As the bullets were inches away from intercepting she sprung to action and flipped her body out vertically, spinning in place at the right position between the rows to slip on by.
But as she was suspended between the narrow gap with breath held to pull in the chest, she applied some aura to her bootsand assaulted Remilia with a spray of bullets from the heels. The vampire grimaced in a 'blink and you'd miss it' moment but restored her bountiful charisma by the time the Danmaku had gone its course.
Shina landed back in a similar position to before, but this time pumped her fist before the chest and figuratively patted herself on the back, "Nice! Nice! That's the ticket!"
Then the bombardment of Danmaku the larger orbs left behind started to swarm her way, and she widened her eyes and reprimanded herself in a haste, "D'oh! That's right!"
She applied shotgun heels to her boots and kicked back with a sharp burst of speed, managing only to nick five or so Danmaku in the process. The rest converged and disappeared, leaving Shina mere moments to figure out the final trick to this Spell Card.
Her heart was racing, but this time the reasons were positive. She was getting excited, and the sweat glossing her smooth skin was a manifestation of hard-work and pure determination. Her breaths were stablizing, but she was grinning like a lunatic.
"No! Don't get too excited, it ain't anywhere close to over yet!" She couldn't stop grinning, but at least had enough self-restraint to close her eyes and start concentrating on Remilia's Danmaku.
"There's still those bats...Now where didja come from little batties?"
There was a subtle set of ripples coming from behind her, as though a bubble had just burst. Then, the flaps of tiny wings pushed aside the air as they zipped straight towards Shina's back. She smirked and breathed in deep through the nostrils. Her body thinned as she held it as long as her lungs could hold, and with movements becoming as loose and versatile as a snake's she twirled to the right and grazed past the swarm of bats that attempted an ambush.
Remilia absorbed that Danmaku back into her and grinned as she fired off another barrage of red-white orbs, all while proclaiming in delight, "That's more like it! But it'll take more than ballerina twirls to mistify the great Remilia Scarlet!"
Shina whipped her weapons out and started firing with a clear and precise focus. All her bullets struck Remilia dead-on while she continued to move around the Danmaku strewn about. Thus, the first wave of this rotation passed on by with only a couple of the tiny orbs nicking her body.
"Ok, I'm starting to get the hang of this..." Shina could feel the pressure in her muscles lightening up, but that combined with the Danmaku she's gotten hit with so far has started to wear her down. She gulped a little and remained focus. Losing concentration for even a second would lead to her being flooded by Danmaku.
"Time to kick this up a notch!" The barrels of her guns lengthened until they could stretch from her shoulder to the elbow, and a scope formed atop the other part of the weapons. As the second wave reached its end, she swung one rifle up and pulled on the trigger. A sharp, speeding bullet rammed into Remilia faster than she could blink, pushing her body back an inch.
"What the hell..." Remilia murmured while biting her fangs down, only to be struck by a second bullet from Shina's other rifle. At that point, a single sweatdrop flew off the side of her forehead and touched the edge of the right wing.
The walls of Danmaku stirred to life again, and Shina discarded her rifles to glue both arms to her hips. She then leapt up and spun between the large bullets, spraying bullets through her feet in a condensed funnel shape. After a hundred or so bullets managed to strike Remilia, something peculiar occurred.
All the Danmaku she had mustered up shattered with a resounding blast, along with the glyph floating behind her. She levitated solemnly in the air, spurned further away from her foe by the recoil of her Spell Card's defeat. Shina landed far away in front of her and gasped, rubbing her eyes as though assuming this was a dream.
"I...I did it?!" She hopped and swung her arms into the air. Her heart raced but her body felt warm and fluffy with the joy of victory. Remilia froze up, letting only the gentle flutter of her wings keep her afloat, while her face left doubts as to whether she was surprised, happy, or upset.
Down with the peanut gallery, Meiling widened her eyes in a manner similar to Shina and remarked, "The Mistress actually lost a spell card to her? That's crazy! Just who is this girl?!"
"Calm down," Patchouli said unperturbed, "Our visitor is just lucky that Remi hasn't faced anyone in a Spell Card duel for a while now."
"But now that the rust's been shaken off, milady will surely secure a decisive, overwhelming victory." Sakuya noted with exuding confidence and a well-hidden smile.
"Excuses excuses...She ain't rusty, my star pupil is just that good!"
Patchouli, Sakuya, and then Meiling turned to the left and saw Marisa standing around like she'd been there the whole time. A hefty looking bag with plenty of corners protruding out was hoisted over her right shoulder. While Patchouli glared at her hot enough to melt diamonds, Marisa flashed her a wave and smile before saying, "Howdy!"
"...I sincerely doubt that girl could learn anything from you besides delinquency," Patchouli brushed her cap up while raising and opening a spell book with the other hand, "No...This girl has more to her than meets the eye."
A blood red seal starts to form below Patchouli's feet, as she casually murmurs a complex paragraph long incantation all to herself. When she is done, the seal flashed light up from around the rim and then vanished in an instant, while the librarian sealed her book with a slam and held it adjacent to the shoulder.
"But...as usual, Remi predicted that this would happen. Now comes the true test of this stranger's capabilities."
Up in the sky, Shina waved her hand around and called out to Remilia with plenty of concern, "Heeellooo? You alright Remilia?"
"Fufufu..." The vampire's lips began to crease into a smile as she bridged her fingers before the chest, "Tell me Shina...How much do you know about vampires?"
"Huh? Isn't this an odd time to be throwin' out a pop quiz?" She responded with a fluttering of the eyelids.
"Just answer my question please." Remilia demanded with a soft but somewhat impatient tone of voice.
"Well...I know you guys hate sunlight, garlic and wooden stakes. You suck people dry for blood and love to sleep in coffins...Oh, and there's a rare breed of ya that sparkle a lot!"
"...I'll...pretend I didn't hear that last one," Remilia's whole body squirmed with an abnormal sensation of fear for a few moments before she could compose herself all prim and proper, "But yes, you do understand the basics of vampirism."
"However!" Remilia erupted with pride, "There is one thing about vampires that very few people know. From the day we first bear our fangs from the womb to the moment our bodies wither to dust, our perception of time is warped beyond comprehension. The fleeting days of youth become a blissful, eternal avalon, seasons pass in the blink of an eye, and what was once embraced as the dawn is now feared like the dusk."
"But when the full moon rises and shines its pearly rays through the chilling twilight, both humans and vampires alike are unified in their perceptions of time. The humans cower in their humble abodes, and the vampires prowl the night in search of satiation for their curiosity. Blood, flesh or soul...A vampire holds absolute dominion over all in the night!" Remilia swings her head back and stretched her claws out as the clouds surrounding her began to part.
Shina widened her eyes and swung her right arm out to exclaim, "Remilia! The sun's about to come out!"
"Your dawn shall naught be your savior." The clouds cracked apart and thin rays of crimson light came gushing through for Remilia to bask in all their glory. As the clouds all dissolved into a misty vapor behind her, Remilia's eyes shone bright as her body became enveloped briefly in shadows.
A blood-red moon laid behind her, its power enveloping the skies above the mansion and turning them a grizzly shade of scarlet. The blast that signaled the summoning of a spell card rang out, this time with a graver sounding echo.
The winds howled around Remilia as she crossed her arms and spread her wings far and wide, her body becoming one with the reflection of the scarlet moon. Chuckling haughtily to herself, the vampire proclaimed to her shocked opponent, "Don't get cocky child, for the hunt has just begun!"
The daughter of the night then leaned out and uttered the two words that would remind Shina forevermore how serious Spell Card duels can get.
"LAST WORD..."
Throwing her arms to the air without a care, Remilia decreed with all her authority, "Immortalization of the Scarlet Night 'Vampire's Dominion'!"
The moon itself launched a flurry of bat-shaped Danmaku that zigzagged past Remilia, all while covering the skies with the familiar red-white bullets in their wake. Shina flew to the center of the bat's flight paths and waited to see what trickery would come next. Six of the bats stopped neatly aligned in a row with Shina in the middle and began firing a large rotating scarlet laser and whipped around so hard they began to curve.
Shina had just a second to escape, and flew higher up while bending her legs closer to the waist. The lasers grazed the heel of her shoes and vanished alongside the bats after they made a full rotation. Meanwhile, the bullets they left behind scattered to the four winds, many of them pelting Shina along the way.
She flipped back and called upon her rifles again. She landed directly in front of Remilia and pulled the trigger, but as the bullet sprung forth from the barrel the vampire zipped twenty feet to the right in an instant. Her body looked the same as before, showing a lack of exertion on her part.
Shina paused and blinked while the vampire threw her right arm over the opposing shoulder and exclaimed, "You're five-hundred years too early to keep up with me, Shina!"
She clawed the air with the back of her fingernails and sent out a couple spirals of red-white diamonds in an ever-growing circle. The Danmaku was fast, but as it got bigger in circumference the space between each bullets grew large enough for Shina to slip between.
But then another swarm of bats came flying from the moon, complicating matters. Had Shina decided to press forward to evade the diamonds, she'd run into some of the orbs. So instead she sacrificed a couple hits to the gut via the diamonds in order to take aim and fire another shot at Remilia. Her trigger finger pulled as quick as a wink, but the vampire swung her head aside and lost only a couple hairs to her name.
"Shoot...!" Shina grimaced and swung the weapon down before retreating to the right. The bats lined up next to her and started scathing the skies with their laser beams, forcing her to lower.
Remilia flew to the left and swiped her claw out to send out another barrage of diamonds while the moon did its thing. Something clicked within Shina's mind as the vampire participated in the spell card, and with her arms feeling as light as feathers she swung one rifle up and fired at Remilia's chest.
The bullet struck her right as the Danmaku fired off, and Remilia noticeably grimaced in surprise. Shina raised her brows and registered the event as curious, but had to focus more on evading the Danmaku that still came her way.
This time around there was enough of a gap between both waves for her to zip straight through, edging her closer to the vampire's location. Remilia peered down from the corner of her eyes while Shina squinted and pointed her rifle upward. Another shot was fired, and Remilia tucked her wings in to avoid it.
"Why ain't she movin' like she did the first time?" There wasn't a chance to spare even the tiniest second of thought in this heated ballet of bullets, and Shina's punishment for thinking otherwise was for one of the bats to ram into the side of her body.
Though that caused the bullet to vanish and make an incomplete trail, her body became a lot more tired, as if a one-ton boulder had rammed her in the face. Her vision blurred for a second before she shook her head and flew back, escaping the menagerie of Danmaku that'd become threatening in a bit.
"Geez louise, Danmaku hurts! A few more hits like that and I'll plummet like an anchor!"
After reaching the back of the line where the bats had ended up, Shina ducked her head to avoid the lasers they fired and dispelled her rifles. Remilia was about to make her next move, and after enduring the Last Word for this long Shina had finally concocted something resembling a plan.
"She's only 'dodging' from left to right because it's a part of her Spell Card. She has to wait things out otherwise!" With a firm nod of the head she clasped her hands together with enough of a gap between them to hold the handle of the weapon she was creating.
This weapon held some resemblance to a megaphone but the edge of the front glowed bright. Shina held down the pressure plate on the handle and began firing off a stream of halos towards Remilia. In response, the vampire bit her teeth down and endured the onslaught while she fired off the diamonds, which forced Shina to move away and lower her weapon.
"Tsk...! You've got a lot more versatility than I was expecting! But that won't be enough to save you!" As she remained absolutely certain in her triumph even now, Remilia watched as her Danmaku scraped against Shina's body and forced her still to catch her breath.
"She ain't wrong..." The blurring of her vision lasted a couple seconds this time, but with a solid gulp she slanted her brows down and held her weapon up to take a few shots at Remilia while she's still.
"But ya can't keep that facade up forever Remilia! I'll wear you down first!"
As another swarm of bats emerged Shina lowered her gun and focused more on evading. She flew over to the center of the bats by tucking her stomach in to avoid the bullets left behind. Not even given a chance to gasp that air out, she curled forward and "rolled" along the air to scrape underneath the lasers.
However, her particular height lengthened the roll a little too much, pushing her into a few lingering wisps of Danmaku before they started to move around. Not just that, but when Remilia made her move there was less of a gap between the diamonds for her to slip between. Had she not thrown her arms up and twirled back to get some distance, a dozen of the diamonds would have scraped her body.
Instead, only a couple managed to graze her body, and she was in a prime position to begin launching more halos towards Remilia. The lack of any signs of weakness in the vampire was starting to get bothersome, but she kept pressing on as though her body was fresh and full of youthly vigor.
"I gotta get some room to breathe..." She noted while squirming to evade the tightly spread barrage of Danmaku, especially as more bats came to deliver their payload.
"Wait...Duh! Marisa literally rammed that lesson into my head..." Widening her eyes and feeling like an absolutel dingus, Shina pulled away from the bats and pointed her weapon down, creating a plate of aura extending out from the toes. Taking in a deep breath, she created and pulled the trigger of a rocket launcher right as the bats held still.
A bright and powerful explosion wiped out all the Danmaku within a twenty foot radius, leaving just a thin line of bullets near Remilia. The vampire grit her teeth and zipped to the left, having a nasty scowl as her own spell card left her a slave to a now vulnerable course of attack.
Shina shot forth through the thin cloud of smoke and still grasped the rocket launcher tightly. Remilia swung her claw over the shoulder and felt her hand tingling. Gnashing her fangs together as her eyes widened in a frenzy, Remilia began to swing while Shina thrust the barrel of the rocket launcher right up to Remilia's face and closed her eyes.
Both sides launched their attacks at the same time in an all-or-nothing gambit to secure victory. However, Shina's rocket exploded point blank and consumed them both in smoke, obscuring the results from the onlookers down below.
Everyone at the mansion went silent and widened their eyes, even Patchouli. A couple seconds later, the visage of the scarlet moon began to crumble like a stained glass window, and two rings of scarlet light dispersed like mist from the smoke.
The moment a pair of specks plummeted from the smoke, Sakuya widened her eyes and reached for her pocket. She vanished from sight and reappeared in midair with a silky white parasol with a lilac croqueted rim, snagging Remilia in her arms and giving her the protection of the parasol's shade as the sun shone through once more.
Shina, whose eyes were barely open, was caught by Meiling in a single bound. The gatekeeper smirked and didn't say a word as she and Sakuya carried the weary battlers back down to the porch. The fairies and hobgoblins then quickly scattered back into the mansion.
Marisa laid her hands against the back of her head and let out a haughty laugh towards Patchouli, "Hot damn! What was that about me being a bad teacher? Not even an hour after learning about Danmaku and my star pupil's laid your mistress out like a dirty carpet!"
"Don't be ridiculous. It is obvious that Remi is victor." Patchouli scoffed and turned her head away from the naughty little witch.
"That little prop you made for her broke easier than yer windows. Obviously my pupil won!" Marisa might as well have been sticking her head up with a nose as long as a tree branch at that point.
"The Spell Card served its purpose, obviously the magic would be dispelled at that point." Patchouli said with stern confidence.
"Hey! Quit arguing you two." Remilia spoke up with slight indignation in her tone. After giving her thanks to Sakuya, who reciprocated with a gentle bow, the vampire hopped off her arms and crossed her own against the chest, with only her dress looking a bit tattered.
"Hrrrmmm..." Her gaze was cross and narrowed in on Shina, who was still cradled in Meiling's arms and breathing slowly to regain her energy. Remilia's emotions were an enigma to all around her as she floated up and looked down at Shina.
The girl perched her head up and looked into the vampire's eyes, then started to wiggle her arms and legs around. Grinning with a slight wince in her eyes, she commented in a jolly voice, "Danmaku's really tiring. My body's gonna be stiff for weeks..."
"Good grief..." Remilia sounded disappointment, but not in Shina. Shaking her head, the vampire smirked and reassured her, "Your body just isn't used to it. As long as you don't push yourself, you'll recover quickly."
Sure enough, the fuzziness in her nerves subsided in a matter of seconds, and she was able to swing right out of Meiling's arms. Though her landing WAS a little rocky.
Shina looked up and was surprised to find Marisa standing right in front of her. The witch waved her hand and said, "Nicely done rookie! You sure showed that vampire who's boss!"
"Marisa...? What are you doing here?!" As Shina's gaze started to gravitate towards the bag of stolen books, Marisa nudged her body in front of it and said in a normal haste, "Not important! Come on, you should be celebrating your victory!"
Blinking twice and facing Remilia, Shina inquired, "Did...did I win? I kinda blanked out at the end there."
Remilia crossed her arms and lowered her head with a subtle murmur. As the gentle flapping of her wings kept her afloat, she murmured out a surprising response, "Seeing how no one here can confirm who won, I believe its safe to say that this is a draw."
"A...draw?" Shina's eyes grew wide in disbelief.
"Yes. So alas, it seems it is not your fate to serve under me...yet!" Remilia's eyes awoke with the same powerful charisma she usually had as she proclaimed, "But I haven't given up! Someday, somehow, you shall come to know the joy of serving under the Scarlet Devil!"
"Hehehe...I'm sure it would've been fun." Shina closed her eyes and placed some fingers up by the chin, then giggled some more.
"Though our duel ended the way it did, I...suppose I can reward you with that secret I had for providing me with some moderate entertainment."
"Oh! I-I honestly forgot all about that!" Shina gave the vampire a serious look and held her arms before the waist.
"Actually, I just reaaaaaally want to know what happened to Alex-"
As though sensitive to the mere mention of the boy's name, part of the wall at the bottom of the mansion exploded loudly behind them. Shina twisted her body around while the others faced it with widened eyes.
"That came from the basement!" Meiling exclaimed in a panic.
"The basement? O-Oh no, that could only mean...!" Shina quickly grew worried as the smoke seeped through the hole, and a slightly insane child-like giggle followed...
Next Time: The Lost Child