Stage 5 – Tiffany's dream, Endless Toy Store
The girls find themselves in a gigantic toy store. It's filled with human children of all types and ages, all of them playing happily with the various toys or with each other. The two girls notice that most of them are playing with dolls, and most of the toys are doll-related. As they walk around the place, they also get the feeling they're being watched by an unknown figure. This figure keeps running around the allies and climbing over the shelves. Reimu quickly gets tired of this and spins around to where she thinks the figure is.
Reimu points at the spot with a sharp cry, "ENOUGH! Whoever you are, show yourself! I'm tired of this game!"
A new voice has a pout in its tone, "Aw man… But games are so much fun! Don't you wanna stick around and play with me?"
The girls turn to see a female and very tomboyish-looking doll yokai sitting on one of the wore a pair of blue corduroy overalls with red buttons and a frumpy orange sweater with red and yellow stripes. The overalls had many pockets on them and were filled with many kinds of voodoo equipment and she had one big one on her chest that said "GOOD GIRL" in big bright neon orange capital letters. She had four giant pins that were jabbed into her back and sides with skull-shaped tips that were colored red, blue, green and yellow. She had a bunch of freckles on her cheeks, baby blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair in two braided pigtails that went down to her neck. She wore dark red socks and a pair of red juvenile sneakers on her feet. She was very young-looking; she didn't seem to be much older than six.
She did a handstand, then flipped up and over them, then cartwheeled over to them and did a quick bow. This was Tiffany Mardi Gras Beignets, who the dream belonged to.
Reimu cocks a brow at the doll yokai. "And… Who are you?"
The doll giggles and waves it off like that's a silly question. "Hi! I'm Tiffany! You wanna play with me? Don't worry about the pins and needles; I'll only use them on ya if ya deserve it! …Gosh, that came out wrong…"
"Uh… Right. Look, we just want you to wake up. We're not interested in playing with you."
Marisa gives a hopeful smile. "Yeah! But if you want to play that much, we can do it after this Incident is over. OK?"
Tiffany clasps her hands behind her back and slowly rocks from side to side. She looked at both of them, and they noticed she had a cold, scary gleam in her eyes. She gave them both a toothy, friendly and happy, yet strangely creepy and wintry smile.
Tiffany put a lone finger to her chin, musing with a grin. "Hmmm… …Sure!"
Reimu looked at her incredulously. "Wait, really?"
Marisa laughed and clapped with obvious joy, "Cool! That was easy!"
Tiffany waved a finger. "But… There's a catch!" She claps with a strangely dark giggle. "You have to play a little game with me. A game I've been looking forward to playing with you ever since you started messing with my friends…" Her smile turns dark, devious and scary, putting her hands behind her head. "My favorite kind of game: an all-out bare-knuckle brawl. But looking at you two, I think I'll "just" settle for a Spell Card Battle. So what do ya think?"
Reimu slammed her fist into her open palm. "Fine by us! Come on, Marisa, Let's take down this doll! …Wait, what is she-"
Marisa took in Tiffany, who now dashing at them with a wild look in her eyes. It quickly became all to clear to her just what kind of doll she was. "Oh no… Reimu, look out! She ain't no ordinary doll! She's a-"
Tiffany got to them before Marisa could finish. With deft hands, she yanked out a few threads of hair from each of them and quickly but casually stuffed them in her mouth, swallowing them whole. She then yanked out one of the many big pins on her body and plunged it into her left leg, but she wasn't the one suffering. The girls felt like they had just been stabbed in exactly the same place.
Marisa clutched the fresh pain, as if she could squeeze it away but was having little luck. "…She's a voodoo doll. She can use voodoo magic!"
Reimu bounced away with a fiery anger in her eyes. "What the hell was that!? What's voodoo magic?!" She waved between Marisa and the doll, as if that was all somehow Marisa's fault.
Marisa curled a few fingers to her chin as she explained as if a battle wasn't about to begin, if not already technically started, "A unique type of magic practiced in the southern areas of Gensokyo! It clashed with my other magic so I didn't bother ta learn it, but it can do some really weird stuff, ze! But what it's most famous for is transferin' damage!"
Reimu raises her hands at Tiffany with a confused grimace. "So, what, we can't hurt her without hurting ourselves?! How is that fair?!"
Marisa shakes her head with a thoughtful hum. "Naw, she'll have ta get more'a our hair or something like that to do that kinda thing! I'm sure we can take her, but we'd better not underestimate her, OK?"
Reimu clenched her fists, taking on a far more battle ready stance. "Got it. I'm really more of a long-range fighter, anyway. Now, let's get her!"
Tiffany smiled cutely as her face took on an alarming transformation, looking like some unseen force was cutting it up to the point where it looked like it was starting to fall apart.
"Heeheehee… HAHAHA! Oh… I'm gonna enjoy this! THIS IS GONNA BE FUN! LET'S PLAY!"
No sooner had she gained her new, terrifying face, Tiffany jumped back and started spinning back and forth while shooting out hundreds, if not thousands of large pins and needles in all directions. A few made contact, but otherwise their adept fighting skills allowed them to fly backwards and upwards to dodge the projectiles. They quickly countered with powerful Spell Cards and they hit Tiffany, but she just seemed to take the hits even as they continued firing away at her long after the Spell Cards were used up.
"…WOW! Your Spell Cards are really cool!" Tiffany laughed with glee, and then got that cold, scary look in her eyes again, "Let's see how ya handle one of MINE!" Based on what the girls just experienced, they quickly surmised that her spell cards will probably all be voodoo magic related. Reimu turned to Marisa and was about to ask her what she could expect from someone who used this kind of magic, but before she could finish, Tiffany used her first spell card: Voodoo Sign "Crawfish Étouffée Cards". She closed her eyes and summoned eight giant cards that had different animals on them: An alligator, a snake, a firefly and a frog. She turned them around, shuffled them and began to maneuver around them, bouncing off of every surface while scattering even more pins and needles. The two girls collectively shrugged and started to shoot at the cards, but they found that the cards made a shield. Not only that, but while hitting them only once destroyed them, it also triggered an attack!
The alligator cards summoned floating burning alligator skulls that breathed out waves of blue flame, the snake cards caused waves of vipers to appear on the ceiling of the toy store and fall down on their heads, but there short pauses in between the waves for them to weave through. They then hit the firefly cards which made eight lights appear on the floor that released large laser beams, and this one was the hardest to dodge. Finally, they hit from the frog cards, and with loud croaking sounds made waves of musical notes fly out from the sides of the toy store shelves that exploded when they got near.
Eventually though, all eight cards were used up, leaving them free to shoot at Tiffany again, who this time countered by creating four purple screaming faces of fire around her that each spat out a fireball at them before vanishing. She kept on creating the faces, but they kept blasting away at her. Soon she was forced to use another Spell Card, this one being Voodoo Sign "Seafood Gumbo Guillotine".
She then split into five copies of herself that flew around shooting fireballs at them. One of them stopped, smiled and pointed up. Looking up while doing their best to avoid the fireballs, they saw that she had created a floating guillotine with a rope attached to a small straw doll. Not wanting to know what would happen if the doll reached the guillotine, both girls shot at it, but the doll, rope, and guillotine proved to be invincible. Reimu and Marisa decided to hit the copies of Tiffany instead. "Split up!" shouted Reimu, "You take two and I'll take three! But keep your distance!"
As they struck each one, it exploded, but fortunately none of them ever got too close. Eventually they were able to destroy all the clones before the rope around the small straw doll reached the floating guillotine.
The last Tiffany the girls blasted at turned out to be the real one and was sent sprawling, slamming into a nearby self, causing a pink plastic tea set for girls to land on her head. She looked at it, frowned and tossed it away. The girls looked back up at the guillotine, and much to their delight, it was vanishing.
They then turned to Tiffany and noticed that she was doing cartwheels. They were confused and wondered why she seemed to be so happy – They were winning, weren't they? – But then spinning blue flames shoot out from her hands and feet at the girls. But they saw it coming; and they both focused on dodging the flames using their vast jumping and spinning skills while shooting back at her.
Tiffany's grin grew even wider and a lot more unnerving. "Spell Card number three!" she shouted with glee as she held up three fingers. It seems she was enjoying this fight a lot more than Reimu and Marisa were.
This time, the Spell Card was Voodoo Sign "Muffuletta Masks". She snapped her fingers and five masks appeared in puffs of green smoke. Four of them were small, but the last one was massive. The small masks start rotating around the girls while the large one hovers as if getting ready for a strike. The small masks started spitting green poisonous mist at the girls while the big one spat out big rings of fire. They didn't go away either, so Reimu decided to counter with one of her own spell cards, Scattered Spirit "Fantasy Seal –Worn-". She began to fly around in a triangular shape while a circular barrier protected her, and every time she reached one of the edges of the "triangle," released a huge volley of talismans and red balls of spiritual power. The masks didn't stand a chance, and Tiffany herself was hit pretty hard as well.
Marisa decided to help her friend out with one of her own spell cards, this one being Light Sign "Earthlight Ray". Marisa released the Spell Card seeking to blast Tiffany with her star bits while beams of blue light rose up from the floor at random. Tiffany was caught off guard momentarily and was hit by the star bits but reacted in a remarkably nimble way, spinning and jumping from left to right and was easily able to avoid the lasers while never taking her eyes off the girls even as she continued to toss more pins and needles at them. Both Reimu and Marisa marveled at the sheer quickness of the living voodoo doll.
Tiffany, while leaping left and right, stopped her jumping around and threw a giant yellow pin connected by a rope towards the girls. Reimu was able to dodge it, but Marisa was stabbed and pulled towards Tiffany who then delivered a surprisingly powerful punch to her face that sent her flying across the room.
"Yikes! I didn't think she could hit that hard, ze!" says Marisa breathlessly as she pulls herself off the floor.
"Hee hee hee… HAHAHA! Man you guys are really good at this! Now watch this trick!"
She then used her fourth Spell Card, Voodoo Sign "King Cake Cookbook". Taking out a big red and blue book from somewhere behind her; she began to read from it, chanting in some weird foreign language. As she chanted storm clouds that were a dark grayish brown formed above their heads and started raining down corrosive mud from above.
They were able to dodge the mud though, and eager for payback from that last punch, Marisa decided to counterattack with one of her favorite spell cards: Love Sign "Master Spark"! She immediately blasted Tiffany with the gigantic laser while scattering her biggest star bits everywhere for good measure. Much to her delight, the attack hit and seemed to really hurt her!
But Tiffany just liked her lips in anticipation as she got back up and prepared two attacks. She started to do a series of axe kicks that released explosions of chicken feathers then quickly turned into a leaping, spinning uppercut that released a wave of poisonous swamp water. After she did these thirty-two times, she flung out her hands, releasing a strange wave of blue energy that started to form to the girls' right.
The girls instinctively moved away to the right to avoid the punches and kicks. But Tiffany's plot worked and the girls had no time to react to the second attack. The blue wave engulfed the girls and the entire surrounding area including Tiffany started to grow around them. Reimu was confused at first, but then she realized something. "Wait. The room isn't growing… We're shrinking!" she screamed.
"I told ya! Voodoo magic can do some really weird stuff, ze!" replied Marisa.
"Never mind that! She's coming right at us! We need to move now; I do NOT want to get squashed!"
Sure enough, Tiffany launched herself into the air and started trying to jump on the girls. They were barely able to dodge the first one, but she kept on trying to step on them. Fortunately after ten of these attempted stomping attacks, the curse wore off and they grew back to normal size. "Phew! I'm glad THAT'S over with!" said Reimu as she wiped off her brow.
"I'll say!"agreed Marisa, "Now I know why Wriggle keeps telling us to watch where we step!"
Tiffany seemed disappointed by this, and she pointed at them. They were confused by this, but they sensed some kind of presence behind them and turned to see their own shadows trying to attack them! They were able to quickly fly off backwards and the shadows vanished after that, but Tiffany just pointed at them again and the attack repeated itself. The girls were ready this time though, and were able to dodge it more easily. After six more attempts, she stopped and made her own shadow attack them, this time taking the form of a big rattlesnake that tried to bite them. They were able to dodge this attack too, but it lasted for twice as long.
Now Tiffany started motioning to the sky and what looked like giant chicken feathers started to fall from the sky. Maris and Reimu saw the attack coming and started moving around like mad avoiding the feathery razor-sharp projectiles as they impaled the ground with a loud "Thwip!" noise then exploded when they hit the ground.
Tiffany didn't seem to notice though, and just used another Spell Card. This time it was Voodoo Sign "Jambalaya Jamboree". She took out another book, but this time the book was green and yellow and when she read from it in that weird language again, instead of corrosive mud, hundreds of purple will o' the wisps appeared and flew at the two girls from all directions. They were able to dodge the will o' the wisps, but without their knowing, Tiffany began to smirk dangerously and pulled out her sixth and final Spell Card, Voodoo Sign "Snowball Shadow Puppets".
Tiffany seemed to explode into a bright white light that made all the shadows in the toy store grow huge and stretch out towards Reimu and Marisa, turning into many shadowy arms that tried to grab, punch and crush them. They were able to avoid the hands though, and managed to keep on blasting her until the white light faded and the shadows returned to normal.
Tiffany, noticing this, started to regroup, doing a series of back-flips until she was about ten feet away from them. Even as she did this she began to frown a little, and started to scratch her head as if in confusion. This gave Reimu and Marisa pause, and so they asked her what the problem was.
"Eh… I'm kinda out of Spell Cards. I don't really know what to do next; I've never been pushed so far before! You girls are really good at this! We have gotta play again in the future! Now then, what should I do...? Ah-HAH! I've got it!"
With that, Tiffany started doing her spinning attack again, but this time the pins and needles came three times as fast! There was a downside to this attack, however: Once she had finally stopped spinning, she got very dizzy. As she stood there and wobbled, trying to regain her senses, Reimu and Marisa seized their chance and hit Tiffany with their strongest Spell Cards just as she was starting to shake off the annoying dizzy feeling. She looked up just in time to see the two attacks hit her.
Tiffany could only stand there in awe as the blasts knocked her right off of her feet and sent her flying into the nearest shelf of toys. Wow… she thought as she was sent tumbling head over heels, very obviously having been defeated, That was totally wicked! I wanna do it again!
Tiffany slammed into one of the shelves hard, the force of the impact causing the toys on it to fall down and bury her. She burst out of the pile and landed on her feet, but toppled over and fell on her butt. She wasn't upset, though, in fact, she started to laugh with pure joy. As she laughed, the dream began to end.
Tiffany shrugged as the dream faded away. "Oh well, I lost. That was fun!"
Reimu snorted out a quick gust of air. "Yeah. You were much more trouble than that Medicine Melancholy was."
Tiffany frowns at the name being mentioned. Her body was mostly intact, well enough to roll her eyes at it. "Ugh. Don't mention her. That doll is the worst. I love humans! So she was discarded. That's no excuse to take it out on everyone around her! Geeze."
Marisa put a balled hand at her hip. "Hey, she's getting better. I could tell from the last time we met, ze!"
Tiffany let out a little sigh, fading gently. "Yeah, I guess so. Well, goodbye! It was fun playing with you two! Let's do it again sometime!"
Tiffany waved goodbye to them as she completely vanished and the dream finally ended. Finding themselves back in the Dream World once again, they are pleased to see that the penultimate lock and chain is gone and the sphere is barely even visible anymore.
Reimu points excitedly with a grin. "There's only one dream left! It has to be Jacinta's. Let's go, Marisa." She waves for Marisa to follow her. "This nightmare is almost over!"
Marisa zips along with Reimu. "I know, right! But… I've been thinking about Frederica. Do ya think we'll have to fight her?"
Reimu frowns with thought, but wouldn't be slowed in her approach. "I have no idea if they've gotten enough Nightmare Energy to free her yet." She wags a finger with a sigh. "…But, knowing our luck, she'll be freed. She'll get freed, and then we'll have to fight her. It's like the law as far as our line of work goes." She shrugs as she draws up on that final dream. "Still, we've beaten villains like her in the past. Even if she is as bad as Doremy says or even if she's worse, I'm sure we can take her."
Marisa comes up next to Reimu with a soft sigh. "…That does tend ta happen to us, doesn't it? Oh well. Let's just beat Jacinta, free Doremy, and hopefully put an end to these constant nightmares. And then… Well, we'll see." She reaches out and they both press into that dream, to put things right.
