March 10th, 1945
6:00 AM
It was a bright and cheerful morning in Gensokyo, with the sun having just risen. Fairies frolicked through the forest, dodging sunbeams and giggling as they went. The White Wolf Tengu set out on their morning patrols, some still half-asleep, while those who resided in the Human Village began to wake up, ready for yet another day of their lives.
There was, however, one notable oddity, which sparked a great deal of interest amongst those who noticed. It was, as far as they were aware, as if a huge metal bird were flying through the sky. What to most people in Gensokyo would be seen as some sort of fantastical creation, was in actuality an impressive specimen of modern human engineering: a Boeing B-29 Superfortress. To those who resided in fantasy, of course, such terminology would be understandably met with a confused stare at best, much as an encounter with the supernatural might be viewed in the outside world.
The men within the plane, however, were completely unaware of their current predicament. They only had two things on their mind, the first being how thankful they were at the moment for the pressurized cabin they had been blessed with, as they otherwise would have had to deal with the freezing cold air outside of the plane. Unfortunately, that was small comfort for them, considering the other topic at hand.
"We should've reached Tokyo six hours ago." Second Lieutenant Stevens, the co-pilot, noted with a mixture of genuine confusion and frustration in his voice. "Hell, we should've reached the strait by now."
"We need to hurry, otherwise we're going to run out of fuel." First Lieutenant Smith said solemnly from his seat at the front of the cockpit, his gaze still straight ahead even as he spoke. "It's already looking like we're going to have to make a landing in either China or the Soviet Union." The chances of either going well for the crew were slim at best, but they didn't have many other options with just how FUBAR their mission had gone from the onset.
In contrast to the relative youth of the rest of his crew, who ranged in age from their twenties to early thirties, Smith seemed as if he were already an old man. Now in his late thirties, the stress of his life had added up, leaving him looking as if he were much older than that, even having several wisps of gray in his otherwise blonde hair.
"Yeah, if we ever actually get there." Stevens snarked as he continued to scan the horizon in the hopes of catching sight of the ocean.
"Miller, we're still heading west right?" Smith called out.
"Yeah, we're still going west." Second Lieutenant Miller, the plane's navigator, said with a tired sigh. Miller had recently turned thirty, something which annoyed the black haired man almost as much as how quickly his facial hair tended to grow, leaving him with a near constant stubble despite his best efforts.
"And you're sure the compass isn't broken?" Stevens asked, turning around from his seat at the front of the cockpit, and having to duck his head due to his height.
"For the fifth time, yes, I am very much sure of that. Would you like to take a look at it yourself? Again?"
"Can you think of any other explanation for all of this?." Stevens asked, to which Miller could only return a shrug. "Wilson, did you get the radio working yet?!" Stevens yelled out across the cabin.
"Not yet!" A younger voice called back. "I mean, there's nothing WRONG with it, as far as me and Padron can tell, there's just nobody picking up on the other end." Wilson, the plane's radio operator, replied. "I've been looking at it for like six hours now, and I'm long since out of ideas of what may be the issue. Hell, even Padron has no clue."
"I can vouch for him, the radio should by all rights be working." Padron, the plane's engineer added. "I'm no electrical technician, but even I can tell that the thing is in working condition."
"So what, you think they just cut off radio communications entirely?" Miller asked,
"I never said that, don't be ridiculous. Whatever the issue might be though, we have no clue." Pardon replied.
"And we're sure Wilson isn't just fucking with us?"
"Bite me, Stevens."
"Why are you two always like this?" Padron groaned. The crew had been together for three years now, and the two had argued like this since day one.
"He's right, now really isn't the time for joking around." Smith said with the resigned sigh of somebody far too used to this kind of nonsense.
"What the hell are we supposed to be doing instead then? Staring out at the big blue sky?" Stevens said. "Not sure about you, but I've seen plenty of it by now."
"Well, at least there aren't any clouds out right now." Miller idly commented. Endless blue lay in front of them, and endless green lay beneath.
"Yeah, there's just a whole lot of nothing as far as the eye can see. Whoop-de-doo." Wilson snarked.
"Can you two jackasses either cut it out, or actually have some banter that's worth a damn?" Jenkins, the bombardier, said, something which the rest of the crew quickly echoed in agreement.
"Screw you, Jenkins." Stevens and WIlson said simultaneously, not for the first time, as Jenkins laid back in his seat.
"In your dreams, maybe. Besides, the landscape's beautiful. The two of you need to learn to appreciate the finer things in life."
"It's just the same ground repeating as far as the eye can see. Are you sure we aren't flying in circles, because I swear we've passed by that mountain to our left already." Stevens said, gesturing towards the prominent summit.
"I mean, really, there's nothing else to see from up here but the sky, the ground, and maybe the birds I guess." Wilson said with a sigh.
"Uh, guys..." Walters, one of the gunners, chimed in, his voice laced with a bit of static owing to the intercom system. The gunners were located in a separate compartment of the plane, and could only communicate with the rest of the crew either through the intercoms or the long 'communication tube' that connected the two pressurized compartments, which allowed for somebody to crawl through in the case of an emergency.
"Something the matter, Walters?" Smith asked, concern evident in his voice. The last thing they wanted right now was enemy fighters, seeing as they were isolated from the rest of their squadron. And besides, maybe it could get them out of this strange limbo state they'd found themselves in, although that was probably just wishful thinking.
"We have several... things flying by, and they're not enemy aircraft, but..." Walters said, pausing as if he were unsure of what to say next.
"But what?"
"Look for yourself. One's passing by to the front now."
"Copy."Smith said with a sigh. "Alright, we have several targets flying by, apparently they aren't planes, so be on the look-out for... something."
"Not really that helpful a description." Miller couldn't help but sigh as well, the exhaustion having started to get to him.
"Well it's the best you're gonna get. If anyone sees anything, say som-" Smith froze mid-sentence, as did everyone else, instead staring slack jawed at the front of the plane.
Well, it was bird-like, at least, or had bird features might be more accurate. What seemed like a young woman, with short black hair and black crow wings of all things, appeared in front of the cockpit, seemingly just as confused as the soldiers inside the plane. On her head was a weird looking red hat with two tassels that somehow wasn't falling off her head despite the insane speed she had to be moving at to keep up with the plane. After a moment, she opened her mouth and started speaking, but whatever she was saying was completely inaudible. it was as if she were expecting them to be able to read her lips.
Silence dominated the cabin before the bird woman, or whatever she was, felt the need to tap the plexiglass that separated the freezing cold outside from the bewildered looking men within.
"What the fuck?" Miller muttered, shattering the spell of silence that had dominated the cabin.
Within moments, everybody was screaming as hysteria started to set in. As the soldiers started to panic and yell at one another, the woman seemed to get annoyed with them ignoring her. She raised a leaf of all things as if she were planning on swinging it at the plexiglass.
Smith took the plane into a dive, much to the surprise of both the crow woman, as well as his own crew. Seeing how she was currently flying, all logical considerations had clearly left the table at the start, and so if she looked as if she were going to try and slice open the cockpit with a leaf of all things, she might very well be able to do just that, Smith rationalized. Seeing as the cabin was pressurized, the results likely wouldn't be too pretty. Even if she couldn't, being near her probably wasn't a good idea regardless, both for their safety as well as hers.
After descending several hundred feet, Smith pulled the plane back up straight, not wanting to rip the wings off.
"Smith what the fuck?!" Wilson shouted, his arms clinging to his seat in a death grip.
"She was about to do something, and I have no interest in finding out what it was." He said, shooting the younger man a glare, who quickly backed down in response. They both knew what he was saying sounded completely absurd, but Wilson couldn't fault his thought process, even if it was hard to call it logic. Smith sighed, before activating the intercom. "Are we in the clear?" He asked the gunner crew.
"Negative; targets are still approaching. Also, what the hell was that?" Brown, the head gunner, radioed back.
"One of them tried to do something to the plexiglass at the front." Smith explained.
"So you just, what, dove down?" Brown's voice screeched out of the intercom.
"She isn't here anymore, is she?"
"Maybe, I don't see any signs of that one, but there are others who're catching up to us." Brown said. "If the last one was a bird, these ones seem to be dogs."
"How're a bunch of dogs flying?" Stevens asked rhetorically. "Are pigs up next?"
"Forget that. How the hell are they keeping up with us?!" Padron couldn't help but shout, the ridiculousness of the situation getting to him.
"WIlson, any updates on the radio?" Smith was desperate for any possibly good news, even though he knew the answer before he asked it.
"Still nothing, no matter how much I wish otherwise!" Wilson yelled back, although the radio was the last thing on his mind at the moment.
"I can confirm that there are five more targets approaching us." Woods, the tail gunner, said. "I don't know what they are, but they don't seem to be friendlies."
"Mind elaborating, Woods?"
"They're armed, although I think it's only with swords and shields." Woods said with a hint of confusion. "Permission to engage?"
"Swords? Are you shitting me?" Jenkins muttered. "What the hell kind of medieval bullshit have we dropped into?"
"Granted. Give whatever the fuck these things are hell." Smith said after a moment of thought. Whatever they might be, they most certainly were not friendly, and the bird had at least looked vaguely Japanese. It was doubtful that would hold up if he were being court-martialed, but that concern was far from the top of his sleep-deprived mind.
While the cabin couldn't see it, fighting quickly broke out behind the plane, as several white haired wolf-eared men and women rushed for the plane, halted only by the sudden hail of gunfire smashing into them and turning them into chunks of meat. Or at least, it should have. Certainly, the impacts seemed to stun them, and one or two were very clearly wounded and bleeding, but none had chunks torn out of them or limbs mangled from the half inch wide chunks of lead smashing into their flesh at three thousand feet per second, as logic would normally dictate.
"Are we even hitting them?" Jones, another member of the gunner team, groaned with frustration.
"I swear we've gotten some hits, but they don't look much worse for wear." Walters said after firing another burst for good measure, letting out a tsk when they sailed right through the air instead of making contact.
"I think some of them are bleeding, so must've just been glancing blows." Brown confirmed, although he wasn't that sure himself. A Browning M2 would mulch any soft target, glancing blow or not, but somehow it was barely scratching whatever these things were.
"Or the turrets aren't even working again." Jones banged the top of his console with his hand, before wincing.
"I'm seeing lead flying, so at least some of them have to be fine." Brown said, politely ignoring Jones' hisses of pain.
The new turret systems were strange for everyone involved. Most had been previously trained to man guns directly, a skill that had been rendered redundant. Now there was no need to expose themselves to the freezing cold air to try and gun down enemy planes directly. This came with tradeoffs, such as how finicky the things were, often prone to malfunctions or breaking, simply due to how new the technology was. Additionally, not being able to directly control the guns made hitting targets that much more difficult. Luckily, onboard computers helped make up for that by automatically adjusting the turrets to ensure they remained on target. Of course, that only helped so much when your enemy was seemingly able to dodge bullets.
"Why the hell did we uninstall the 20mm?! Feels like it'd be useful right about now!" Jones shouted in frustration after another burst of bullets failed to do much of anything to his targets.
"Command wanted us to remove all of the guns, remember?" Brown replied with a roll of his eyes. "The fact we could get away with just getting rid of that was a miracle in and of itself. Besides, the damn thing misfired more often than it actually worked."
"Still, what the hell are these things that they're able to catch up to a plane mid-flight?" Walters mused, a slight smirk on his face when he saw a shot finally connect with one of the flying wolf people, although it seemed to do little actual damage.
"Not like it matters. They seem to be backing off." Brown said with a sigh of relief. The three gunners watched as the group of strange people (if they even were people) retreated off out of sight. With a bit of room to finally breathe, Brown activated the intercom. "Woods, how're things at the tail?"
Rather than be met with an answer, there was only silence.
"Woods?" He asked again, waiting for a reply. "Shit, you think they got him?"
"With what?" Walters asked with a snort. "The swords?"
It was then that bursts of pale... something tore their way into the cabin from outside, much to the surprise of the gunner crew. They seemed to be orbs of some kind, but whatever they touched they punched straight through.
Luckily for the crew, they weren't at a high enough elevation for them to have to worry about a lack of oxygen. That was, of course, little comfort considering they were currently under fire.
"With whatever the hell that is, evidently." Jones said, before he activated the intercom. "Sir, they're turning fire!"
"With what?"
"Fuck if I know! Looks like magic ghost shit or something!"
"What are you..." They heard Smith begin to ask, before he paused for a moment. "Copy, we're getting nailed by... whatever it is as well. Keep me updated if they try and come back in again."
"Will do." Jones said, before he closed the intercom link."
"Walters, please shut your mouth in the future." Brown said with a brief glare once Jones
"Fuck off Bro-" Walters began to retort, before several shots tore through his chest. His now ragged corpse tumbled to the ground wordlessly.
"Shit, Walters!" Jones yelled out, before another spray hit the console next to him, causing sparks and bits of metal to shoot out. Jones hissed in pain, staring at his friend's now lifeless corpse, before he was dragged back to reality by the sparking console. In a panic, he stood up to grab the fire extinguisher, worried an electrical fire might start, only to be thrown down to the floor as the plane lost elevation, and there was a loud burst, throwing even more bits of metal around the small space.
"Brown, what the hell are you doing?!" Jones screamed out as he pushed himself back up, coughing as the thick scent of smoke filled his nostrils. He turned over, although his leg seemed very resistant to such a move, filling him with agony if he so much as moved it. Despite this, with some effort he managed to force himself into an upright position. The first thing he noticed was the fires that had already broken out and had left surrounded him. The second was Brown's corpse sitting limply in his seat, a chunk of metal piercing through his throat.
Jones, however, did not have enough time to actually process any of this, although if he had it would have likely left him a broken and hollow man for the rest of his life. The only things on his mind were the heat, his leg, and the knowledge of his own impending death.
"Sir, they're firing back!" Smith heard Jones call out from over the intercom.
"With what?" Came Wilson's confused reply.
"Fuck if I know! Looks like magic ghost shit or something!" Jones yelled, his voice a mixture of frustration, terror and bafflement.
"What are you..." Smith began to ask, before several strange looking orbs pierced into the cockpit of the plane. Their sizes varied greatly, some being as small as a bullet, while others were as large as a volleyball, but all of them simply traveled through the hull of the plane as if it were paper.
"Copy, we're getting nailed by... whatever it is as well." Smith said, dumbfounded. He remained locked up in his confusion for a moment before the reality of the situation dragged him right back out, and with a growl of annoyance, he grabbed hold of the controls, and the plane began lurching into evasive maneuvers. There was only so much one could do with a bomber to try and avoid incoming fire, but one could hardly fault Smith for trying.. The front of the plane now sported its own fair share of holes, courtesy of whatever was being fired at them, and seeing as whatever it was could tear its way through metal, it surely would not be pleasant if it hit flesh, Smith reasoned.
His suspicions were confirmed when another burst cut its way in, leaving Miller with several more holes than he had been blessed with beforehand. The man let out a yelp before he collapsed out of his seat onto the floor of the cabin with a loud thud.
"Crap, Stevens, you know first aid right?" Smith asked, having yet another concern to add on to the list.
Stevens glanced at the unfortunate Miller, and swallowed audibly. "I'll see what I can do, but... fuck, I can see clean through him..."
"I... can still hear you, you know." Miller coughed out weakly.
Stevens unbuckled himself from his seat, before running across the cabin towards Miller, clutching the first aid kit in his hands. As he ran, he narrowly avoided another burst of the orbs of light
"Shit, shit, shit." He muttered, before crouching down over the prone Miller."Alright, try and keep pressure on the wound." Steven said as he opened the first aid kit, desperately searching for some bandages and a tourniquet.
"Hang on, this is gonna get bumpy." Smith said.
"This is a bomber, Smith, are you trying to get us killed?!" Jenkins yelled at the older man.
"Normally we'd have the rest of the squadron to cover us, but we're out in the middle of nowhere all alone. If we die in either case, I'll take the one where I at least try to avoid it." Smith said, before he pulled the plane into a sharp turn.
The plane groaned, much to Smith's displeasure. It was hard for him to hear it over the rest of the crew screaming in panic, so the fact it was audible at all only made it more worrisome.
"How're things at the back looking?" Smith asked into the intercom, but before he could get an answer, a different problem became evident.
"Uh, Smith?!" Padron said with a gulp.
"What?!" Smith called out, before the sudden pull of gravity told him all he needed to know.
In an ideal world, Smith would've come up with something encouraging for his crew, or at least acquitted himself well with some deep final words. Sadly, this was not an ideal world. Instead, he joined the rest of the crew in screaming as the plane began to rapidly lose altitude on its rapid descent.
The moment before impact, it felt like time froze as Smith stared at his impending death. It was a field of beautiful flowers, and what looked like a green-haired woman standing beneath an umbrella seemed to be staring up at him with an annoyed expression on her face and her hand raised palm out in front of her, as if she were motioning for him to stop. And then the sight vanished entirely, replaced by a black abyss filled with countless staring red eyes and then-
March 10th, 1945
1:00 PM
When Smith opened his eyes once more, he found himself sitting in an armchair in what seemed like a parlor. It was hard to tell how long he simply sat there, staring at nothing before he truly came to, and realized that he was, at least seemingly, still alive. It might have been a few seconds, or it could have been several hours.
He blinked several times to make sure he wasn't just hallucinating in his final that failed to have any effect,, he pinched himself several times to double check. When that too failed to wake him up, he was considering slapping himself to triple check, when he heard a knock on the old wooden door in the room's corner.
He stared blankly at it, unsure if he was supposed to go and answer the door himself, before the question was answered for him with the door opening. From what seemed to be a hallway stepped a yellow-orange haired woman of indeterminate age wearing a white mob cap with some strange looking accessory on the sides reminiscent of ears, and some Asian-style dress that he couldn't recognize. She also happened to have eight long fluffy tails. In any other circumstance, that would've, understandably, elicited a response from him, but he was still too dazed to fully process how a person having a tail, let alone eight of them, could have any implications.
"I see that you've woken up." The woman said, her voice soft yet firm.
"I... guess I have." Smith said, still unsure if any of this was real or not.
"I'm sure you're... very confused at the moment, but hopefully we can have things sorted out and you'll be on your way soon." She said, before a distant voice shouted something, unintelligible "Pardon me for a moment." The woman bowed, before she vanished into thin air. Even in Smith's addled state, this still stuck out to him as being noteworthy enough to register.. Because she quite literally vanished, as if she were there one moment and then gone the next.
"My mistress will see you now." The woman's voice suddenly said from behind him, causing him to nearly fall over in surprise.
"Ah, don't... do that, please." He said after taking a moment to regain his composure.
"Do not do what?" The woman asked demurely, although he could see the hints of a smile on the corner of her lips.
Unsure of where to even begin, he simply walked out of the room, not even reacting when the woman was already outside waiting for him.
"This way." She said, before leading him into the depths of whatever building he'd found himself in. Leaving the parlor, any semblance of a Western household quickly fell away. It was like the room was a novelty of some sort. Smith didn't know much about foreign architecture, but he vaguely recognized the way that Japanese housing was typically depicted back from a newspaper article he'd read a few years ago, specifically the flooring. What was before polished hardwood was now made up of matting of some kind. What the material was, he had no clue, but he could at the very least recognize the style.
The dimensions of the building, however, made absolutely no sense. They'd made four right hand turns at identical length hallways, and had ended up somewhere completely different. Without much else to do, Smith tried to come up with something to distract himself, eventually settling on the woman's tails. Now that his mental faculties were starting to return to him, they stood out to him as being particularly strange, although at least somewhat understandable compared to much of the rest of this bizarre world he'd found himself in. She had eight of them, which alone would have been baffling enough, even without the rest of the current scenario. He remembered hunting with his grandfather years ago, and could recognize them as belonging to a fox. What fox tails were doing being attached to a person, however, he simply could not figure out.
The room he was brought to, however, was not what he was expecting. He'd been taken from the sole Western styled room in this whole building, and been dragged through an entire building built in Japanese style. The fox woman knocked on a door, and after waiting a moment, opened it and ushered him in. What was waiting for him was a strange hybrid of East and West, as well as historical and futuristic. Tatami matting floors combined with western styled furniture; old fashioned Japanese art as well as some strange looking screen that seemed to be glowing.
"Ah, hello there." The fox woman's supposed mistress said as he entered the room. Seated in an elegant velvet armchair, Smith tried to get a measure of her. She was a relatively tall blonde woman, who at first glance looked as if she were in her mid 30s or so, but looking closer, it was impossible to tell whether she truly was young or old. It was as if she were both at once. The only thing that betrayed her age were her eyes, which were definitely much older than a measly three decades. She wore a long purple dress and a pale pink mob cap decorated liberally with red ribbons.
"How long has it been since I last had guests, or well, a guest in this case?" The woman said with a small smile, fatigue evident across her face. "I'm Yakumo Yuk-" She paused, before she seemed to realize something. "Apologies, I'd forgotten about the difference in the order of names between east and west. As I was saying, my name is Yukari Yakumo, and I have the pleasure of welcoming you to Gensokyo. Would you like some tea?"
"...Tea?" Smith said, still struggling to process much of what was going on.
"Oh, would you prefer coffee?" The woman asked, sporting a thin grin as she waited for his confirmation.
"...Actually, coffee sounds great." Smith said reluctantly, unable to refuse the offer. As an officer, he didn't have to deal with the same garbage the enlisted did, but even he missed the actual taste of quality goods. Not to mention having stayed up for so long trying to find his way the previous... whenever, he wasn't sure how long he'd been out, but he didn't feel very well rested.
Besides, she didn't sound like she'd be taking no for an answer.
"Raaaaaan! Coffee and tea please!" The woman called out.
Smith expected to have to wait, but the other woman, apparently named Ran, appeared almost immediately after being called, carrying a small tray with a cup of tea, a kettle, and, much more importantly, a steaming hot mug of coffee.
The moment it was placed in front of him, he couldn't help but take a tentative sip, just in case it was poisoned or something. It was black, bitter, and so much richer than any of the garbage he'd had to put up with for the past few years.
"Would you like anything else?"
The woman looked to Smith, who, after draining half the mug, remembered he was having a conversation. He shook his head, satisfied with this much.
"I must say, you seem rather calm considering the circumstances." Yukari said after taking a sip of her tea, her soft smile never leaving her face.
"I'm not sure I'd describe it as calm."
"Oh?" Yukari said, an eyebrow rising just slightly enough to be noticeable.
"Ever since we showed up in this place, the world's stopped making sense, so I'm just rolling with the punches until I wake up in an asylum or logic reasserts itself." Smith said, before taking the last sip of his coffee and placing the mug down on a small table next to his seat. He was very much tempted to ask for more, but he didn't want to push his luck.
There was a lull of silence as the two stared at each other, although Smith felt oddly nervous, in contrast to the woman across from him. If she weren't so tired, she seemed as if she wouldn't have a care in the world. Whether that was an act or not, however, he couldn't tell.
"So what, did we die on our mission, and this is purgatory or something?" He finally settled on asking.
"Purgatory?" Yukari asked with a laugh. "I expected your first assumption to be hell."
"They wouldn't have coffee this good in hell." Smith said, lifting the empty mug. "All they'd have down there is the instant garbage."
"Ah, but couldn't this be the devil testing you?" Yukari's smirk widened mischievously. "Perhaps I'm trying to lure you into eternal damnation."
"Maybe, but being damned would just be you sending me back as a footslogger. Not sure why you'd make things so needlessly complicated."
"But isn't that kind of complication what your devil is oh so fond of?"
"Beats me." Smith said with a shrug. "I tended to sleep through Church growing up."
That seemed to actually get a surprised snort of amusement out of Yukari.
"I mean, I probably shouldn't be admitting to that, but I'm sure however the afterlife might work they'd probably already know about that.""
"Just to clarify, you are aware that you aren't dead or dreaming, correct?" Yukari asked.
"Yeah, right." Smith said with a roll of his eyes. "A literal fox woman just served me coffee, and you're trying to tell me that this is reality? Is this supposed to be a test on acceptance or something?"
"I'm serious." She said, before something similar to the portal that had swallowed him earlier appeared above the table in front of him. From out of the portal came a set of dog tags that should've been left with a body, hitting the table with a clink. The room was silent, as Smith could do little more than stare at the small piece of metal and chain.
"One of your crew members bled out before we were able to secure you all, I'm afraid."
Smith seemed to sober up immediately as soon as he truly realized what was going on. "But.. Miller... I... what?" He hadn't even thought about what might have happened to the rest of his crew, but now the possibilities rushed through his mind. "How could..." He muttered softly.
"-any of this be real?" Yukari seemed to giggle as she finished the thought for him. "Yes, I do get that a lot."
Smith stared blankly at Yukari, before he instinctively reached out to grab the dog tag from the table. As soon as his hand moved near it, it dropped away into the same eye-filled portal they had come out from.
"Now now," Yukari cooed, "I can't be giving you anything until you promise to cooperate."
Smith glared at her, before the true depths of the situation he had the misfortune of being in truly dawned on him. After a few moments he swallowed nervously, clenching his fists tightly, before he finally spoke through grit teeth. "What is it you want?"
"First, some clarification and information. Is that alright with you?"
"Would it matter to you whether it was?"
"No, not really." Yukari said, staring directly at the man.
They remained in silence for several moments, simply staring at one another, but for Smith trying to match her gaze felt like hours. Her eyes bored far deeper into him than he could ever hope to match. Eventually, he broke his gaze, and nodded his assent.
"So, I assume you're with the Air Force?" Yukari began.
"US Army Air Forces." Smith clarified, the more easygoing atmosphere having dissipated and been replaced by something more solemn, at least on his own part.
"Oh right, it was post-war that the split happened." The woman let out a small chuckle, as if the nonsense spewing from her mouth was supposed to make some kind of sense.
"Sorry, I was never the biggest fan of American history."
'Then again, maybe she could see the future or time travel or something?' Smith thought to himself. The situation already went far past the point of credibility, so what was one more ludicrous idea added to the list? Or she could have just been screwing with him. The longer he spoke with her, the more he began to lean towards the latter option.
"Honestly, I'm most thankful to be able to have someone to speak some other language with. Japanese is a beautiful tongue, but, as they say, variety is the spice of life. Ran only puts up with it on occasion, but I can tell that she gets annoyed using any foreign languages, and it's hard to blame her considering what she is."
"Ma'am, truthfully I have no idea what she, or anything else around here for that matter, actually is. I've had to put up with a lot of bullshit bombshells today, and I really am not in the mood for any of this."
"But you seemed perfectly fine with it before." Yukari said, with a hint of mock offence.
"Before I thought I was either dead or dreaming, and I even had actual, honest to god coffee for the first time in years, and the best coffee I've ever had at that. I would be willing to put up with this nonsense for a few minutes for that alone, but there's a limit to how much I can take, especially once I'm told that one of the men under my command is now dead, and, by extension, realize that I didn't just imagine the past half hour of my life."
"Right, right." The woman waved away. "She is a shikigami of mine possessing a Kitsune, for clarification."
"I don't know what any of that means."
"Now, what were you doing in Japanese airspace?" She asked, bringing the conversation back on track and refusing to elaborate at the same time. Smith wasn't sure whether to be relieved or annoyed.
"And why do you need to know that?" Smith raised an eyebrow as he spoke.
"Well, I can make several guesses, judging by the payload of your aircraft. I assumed you might have been headed for Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but the Incendiary bombs you had rendered that a moot point, especially after reports of a massive fire bombing over Tokyo."
Smith froze up, before he simply shook his head in resignation. "If you already knew that much, then why even ask?"
"I was hoping that you'd be more forthcoming with information, although I can't fault you for not doing so. It would've made this much easier if you were, although I would have lost any sort of respect for you."
"Am I supposed to take comfort in that?" Smith mumbled to himself, although the snicker he heard from across from him told him that the woman could very much hear him. "Before I answer anything else, do you think you could clarify the situation for me somewhat?"
"Fair enough." Yukari replied with a smirk. "As I said before, you've entered Gensokyo."
"What does that even mean? Gen-what?"
"It translates roughly to Land of Illusions, or Land of Fantasy, depending on how you read the kanji."
"Oh, so I've entered wonderland? Where's the rabbit with his pocket watch then?"
"Probably in the Bamboo forest." She said nonchalantly. "Anyhow, Gensokyo itself isn't the topic of our conversation. The fact that you're here at all is the issue at hand, because any of you getting through the barrier should have been impossible." Yukari explained
"Seeing as we did, that evidently wasn't the case."
"Obviously, but that's the thing. It should have been impossible. I built the barrier myself. I know what is allowed in, and what is not. I set the exceptions, and while there were certain bugs over the years in terms of allowing incorrect entry, there's a limit to what should be capable of entering. Of all things, a military bomber, and its crew, belongs near the bottom of the list."
"Not sure how the hell I'd know. We were en-route to Tokyo, all of the planes flying in single file as we crossed the ocean." Smith explained, tapping a finger against the table in front of him as he spoke. "We were at the back, so we had sight of every one else in clear view. Right before we arrived at the Japanese Islands though, we hit a big patch of fog, or something like that. I'm not sure what else to call it, but as soon as we entered it, we were cut off entirely."
"And you flew into this cloud of fog?" Yukari asked.
"We didn't exactly fly into it so much as it flew into us. It was like a cloud drifted over onto us or something. In hindsight, I should've been more suspicious at the time, but I wasn't exactly expecting magic or whatever the hell you've got going on here.. There was a lot of turbulence, and I thought maybe a storm had come out of nowhere, but after several minutes we flew right on out of it, and were over solid ground."
Yukari nodded. "Do you remember what time it was that you lost contact?"
"It was around... 23:30," Smith said after a moment of thought, " maybe a little bit after that, that we stopped receiving radio transmissions."
"I imagine you would have been near Tokyo by then, which is quite a fair distance away from here. Was there anything besides the fog that stood out to you as odd?"
"Odd. huh?" Smith stopped to think, trying to recall the previous night. It simultaneously stood out clear in his mind and blurred together near seamlessly, and left him with a headache just trying to drag the memories together into anything remotely cohesive.
"I think Brown mentioned something about seeing fireworks, or something like that."
"Fireworks?" Yukari asked, perplexed. "In the middle of war time, on a date with no significance?"
Smith shrugged. "Hey, I didn't see any of it myself, so your guess is as good as mine."
"It seems I'll have to speak with your colleagues as well then." Yukari said with a sigh. "A shame, I was hoping that we could have figured out the issue right here and now."
"Where are they anyway? In fact, where are we?" Smith asked, as it dawned on him that he had no idea how he'd gotten to this place. Seeing as he'd assumed he had died, the issue hadn't seemed particularly important at the time.
"We're within the barrier that separates this land from the Outside World." Yukari explained. "It's where I make my home. As for the members of your crew that survived, I can assure you that they're safe. For now, I'm keeping them in stasis until I can figure out what to do next."
"Do next? You mean you aren't going to just let us leave?" Smith asked, confused. " We didn't mean to enter whatever God-forsaken hellhole this place is-"
"Gensokyo isn't Makai." Yukari idly commented, which Smith promptly ignored.
"-so we'll happily get out of your hair if you just let us go."
Yukari seemed to ponder this for a moment, although he had no clue whether she was actually thinking or just playing along. After a few moments, she shook her head. "I'm afraid I can't do that."
"...And why not?" Smith asked, after waiting a moment in hopes of further elaboration.
"Because you're here." Yukari said, as if that was the answer. Smith gestured with his hands for her to continue, which she did after narrowing her eyes in annoyance.
"As I've already said, that in and of itself means there's a problem, and I need you all around to find out just what that problem is, and with four of you dead-"
"Wait, WHAT? I thought you said there was only one casualty!" He spurted out in a panic. "You just said that everyone else was safe!"
"I never said that. I specifically said that the survivors were safe. You just never thought to ask for clarification." At some point the woman had taken out a fan, and was now blocking her mouth, but Smith couldn't help but picture the smug grin that surely lay behind it. This woman... no, it wasn't a woman before him. It was a demon, a creature of malice, playing with its food for the simple enjoyment of it. He'd seen signs of it before, but now it wasn't even trying to hide it.
"Yes, it seems the Tengu didn't react well to being attacked, although it's easy to understand why when you add firearms into the mix."
"We were defending ourselves! One of them was trying to slice open the cockpit!"
"Aren't those made of plexiglass? You really thought that some random woman could just slice through it?"
"She had a leaf!" He yelled, before pausing as he realized how absurd it sounded.
Yukari giggled, although whether it was at what he had said, how he had said it, or the actual event that had occurred, he couldn't tell.
"In any other context, this would sound hilarious, but at least in this one it's probably a good thing that you didn't let her swing." She grinned.
"Look, I saw a woman with wings matching the speed of my plane. That already rings warning bells, and I wasn't about to take any more risks and just let her try."
"And the only solution you could think of was attempted murder?"
Smith grit his teeth, but didn't rise to the provocation. He didn't know what a Tengu was, but it was probably those bird people. It was still hard to process the idea of bird people, but it's hard to deny what one sees with their own eyes, and seeing how everyone else seemed to see the same thing, it was either some sort of mass hallucination, or it actually happened.
"Besides, you seem confused. I'm under no obligation to help any of you. You're the ones who've entered my world, not the other way around."
"But that isn't-"
"Fair?" Yukari said with a laugh. "Of course it isn't, but there isn't any reason for it to be. If anything, you should be thankful that I'm even willing to consider letting any of you leave, much less all of you.."
"I was going to say reasonable..." Smith muttered, much to Yukari's amusement. "And you promise we'll be able to leave afterwards?"
"I make no such promise. There's too many variables at play here to guarantee that I can just let you all go. However, while you are all here, I will make no moves to harm any of you, although the rest of Gensokyo may very well feel different. Should I manage to figure out what caused this whole event, determine that it'd be safe to let you go, and you're still alive?" Yukari explained. "Then I'll consider letting you leave, but only then."
The room was silent, as Yukari eyed Smith carefully, clearly expecting him to react poorly. Instead, he let out a deep breath.
"Not like I have much of a choice in the matter." Smith concluded. Although there was still resentment in his eyes, it was, for Yukari, a familiar sight.
"I assume you want an answer for the question you've been avoiding as well."
"What're you..." Smith said, before he realized what Yukari was talking about. He swallowed nervously, before he nodded. "How many?"
"There were four corpses on board when I... acquired your plane." Yukari said solemnly, watching as Smith's fists tightened in response.
"I'm guessing it'd have to be Miller and the gunners. They weren't even supposed to be on this mission, but they didn't want to leave us out to dry, fucking LeMay. I know that Miller was hurt badly, but nobody else seemed to be roughed up too much in the cockpit, meaning it'd likely be the people I couldn't see." Smith paused, before he realized the obvious issue at hand.. "No, wait, that'd be five. How many bodies in total were there?"
The smirk fell off from Yukari's face as she quickly caught on to what Smith was suggesting.
"Out of nine bodies, including yourself, there were four corpses, and five survivors."
"And nothing strewn around the crash site... or what would have been the crash site?" Smith asked, having to correct himself.
"Beyond bits of debris from the plane, there was nothing."
"Were there any near the tail section?" He asked, his voice a bit more urgent.
"No, I believe that part had been cut... open..." She said, the realization dawning on her.
"Our crew had ten people on board."
"Oh dear."
Author's Note
Hello and welcome to And Then There Were None. While by no means my first ride in the world of fanfiction, this is my first attempt at a long length planned story. This story originated as background details for a larger story that sort of spiraled out of control into its own thing. For various reasons, I decided that I might as well write it first. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!