I've always wanted to write something like this ever since I've scrolled through the kirby x touhou fanfiction collection, sad that there aren't many that do this lol
And so I thought to myself: fine I'll do it myself.
Enjoy y'all!
Chapter Synopsis for People using the mobile web version of fanfiction net!
(Ch. 1) - [You are here]
(Ch. 2-5) - Kirby's Dreamland 1
(Ch. 6-9) - Dyna Blade
(Ch. 10-11) - Slice o' Life, Gourmet Race
(Ch. 12-14) - Revenge of Meta Knight
Reimu was expecting to cross the Sanzu River, not to wake up drowsily from a nap that she didn't take considering the fact that she literally passed from old age. She crowned a kid from the village to be her successor shortly before she did pass so it wouldn't be a bit of a problem once Gensokyo needed a shrine maiden like her to deal with an incident, she now has someone to take that position now.
She may have forgotten the name of that particular kid
Her eyes looked around, yawning.. She can see two giant figures around her, smiling at the small Reimu..
..
Wait a minute
'Don't tell me..' She murmured in her mind, both her eyes widening.
"Awh, she looks so cute!" A Poppy Bro dressed in silly clothing along with what looks like a party hat commented with a large gaping smile, while the other would nod with a tired yet content smile
"Indeed.. Her eyes are now open.." The other replied, which was then recieved with a "d'awww" from her husband
'Did I just get reborn!? Without the Yama's judgement!?' Absolutely absurd. How did that even happen?
Her dotted eyes would twinkle before she started sniffing, her uncontrollable emotions slowly overtaking her as both Poppies would widen their eyes, looking at each other as the muttered the words "oh no" under their breaths
After all, she is now a baby for the time being, and babies are prone to emotional scenes like these.
And with that, she bawled her eyes out to her hearts content, with the other Poppies desperately trying to find ways to comfort their child who has just gained consciousness after a month.
In a corner of Cookie County, a young Poppy Bro had become one month old there.
Welcome to Popstar, Reimu Iyori
...
...
Reawakening after just dying for some reason(she'd rather not say how she died even as a Youkai Magician, that's just too embarrassing for her). One from Gensokyo would normally expect to just go to the Sanzu River and wait for the Shinigami there to carry you across the river in order to be judged by the Yama.
This time however, she didn't meet the Yama, nor did she ever cross a lake by Komachi's boat. Instead however, she had just awakened in a place that's just incredibly different, inside someone's home it seems..
And worst of all, she was small again! She's in some sort of a crib as if she was being treated as a baby.
Looking around, the young Marisa would spot many things from her current resting place. A table with quills and pencils on them that's barely lit up by an abnormally thick candle that had just melted halfway through it's wax, shelves containing what looks like wooden dolls of all kinds(most seem humanoid but other than that, all of them don't resemble anything human) and rows of books that never had japanese symbols on them, only english which was a language that Marisa had barely grasped even in her years of studying in grimoires.
Most of these grimoires were translated anyway, borrowed from certain magicians that she knew of.
And then her eyes laid onto a figure sleeping on a couch, a vaugely humanoid being with black cat ears, and get this: no mouths, hands shaped like balls, and shoes with no visible legs, what the hell!? Is that supposed to be her mom or something!?
Not like she knew her mom from.her previous life in the first place..
Curious, she would grasp the bars of the crib with her bare hands(which also resembled the figure's ball-shaped hands), and stood up shakily. Gods her feet are giving her up..!
She successfully stood up, albeit with some support from her holding onto the crib's rails for dear life, she would lean in closer with raised eyebows, her movement creaking the crib she was on.
And at that moment, the sleeping figure would grumble and rub her eyes, before opening them shortly after.
She was greeted with the sight of her baby immediately standing up and looking at her with big eyes that seemed to shout 'wtf?'
It was at that time that Marisa would yelp and fall back towards the crib she layed on, her eyes now eyeing the wooden ceiling above her.
Her mother stood silent for a while before giggling, then they turned into bolstering laughter to which Marisa could only respond with a pout.
In a secluded place in Grass Lands, a region in Dreamland with a rather apt name, A small keke, or rather a witchling would suddenly become aware of her surroundings
Welcome to Popstar, Marisa Kasake.
LIVING IN DREAMLAND
Reimu Iyori
"Only Shrine Maiden of True Dreams"
Reimu's parents were no doubt, very "explosive" and it was very clear when she saw her father hurl what looked like a bomb with star markings on it's surface at a poor dummy for practice.
During her several months or even two years growing up, she learnee that her species were apparently called Poppy Bros or "Poppies" for convenience. They all had a natural affinity for explosions as seen in front of her.
Rina Iyori, her mother had been carrying her the whole time, smiling at the display of violent explosions and fireworks in front of her while Reimu held one hand onto her mother's clothing, with mouth gaping and all that.
"Do you like the flashy show dearie?" She asked to her child, eyes still wide open before Reimu was forced to squint them from the flashing lights of her father's explosive bombs
"I can teach you how to do so if you grow up!"
Reimu was trigger happy when it comes to solving incidents yes, but the idea of going wild with literal bombs the size of her whole body as powers didn't seem to sit well with her for some reason
She would rather not let her future self wield this sort of stuff, lest she ends up with far more destructive potential compared to her Fantasy Seals.. Or so she thought.
..Other than that, life was slow, but she was growing up as days passed by. She learned more of Popstar as time goes by, her parents both homeschooling her for several years.
She learned about the species and races of these lands, how peaceful it was(to which she heavily doubt it), and some history here and there. The young Poppy though didn't really cath on all of that.
However there was something that bugged her.
for some reason, Dreamland and the rest of Popstar as a whole didn't really have a dominant religion of sorts. No seriously there's barely anything that could be called a religion there.
Sure there seems to be SOME worship surrounding the sun and moon of this land but other that, there's nothing interesting..
How odd.
Anyway, it wouldn't be long before Reimu had finally grown to her teenage years, or rather what the denizens of Dreamland would consider teens of that age.
But let's move on to the part where she finally got to wield explosives, or rather a variation of it.
"Just feel that energy..!"
"Hmm" Reimu hummed in response, trying to at least follow what her father was saying, both of her arms were raised as high as possible to the sky
Macky Iyori, a Poppy Bro Sr was standing by the sidelines, his hands shaking with a eager grin, waiting for his daughter to finally get to learn some self defense just incase she came across grumpy Dreamlanders.
"Now once you can feel it inside you, try and metaphorically grab it! Then you pull it into your haands!"
And so she did with no troubles at all, it was like harnessing the power of the Hakurei God..
Huh..?
"Eh?" Her father was confused too
Reimu would open her eyes and blink, not feeling something round in her hands, she lowered them with an eyebrow raised.
Instead of a round black bomb, there were two ofudas that she was holding onto, each were as big as her hands with red star symbols painted onto the paper slips instead of kanjis.
"Is this supposed to be..?" Macky walked forward, crouching down just to get a better look at his daughter's newfound weapons
"I.." Reimu trailed off, before looking up at the dummy in the distance
Instinctively she would walk forward with Macky staying in his place with anticipation, both Poppies silent. Even Rina, her mother ran out just to see what she was about to do, she was watching from the windows of their house after all
Reimu then took on a fighting stance, one that she did everytime before she learned how to fly back in Gensokyo.. And then slung the ofudas away, each one of them homing into the dummy
The Poppy parents all watched with sparkling eyes as the two Ofudas which one would've thought would just flutter to the ground, begin to float and home in into the dummy
There it stuck onto the dummy, before each would glow with a brilliant bright light, it almost blinded the two Poppies watching too!
"..." And Reimu watched it explode, both her eyebrows were already raised upwards in surprise as she shielded her eyes from the dirt that were lifted into the air.
She would then slowly turn towards her parents with a nervous look, sweat trailing down her temples.
"Did I.. Did I do it..?" She asked
Her parents stayed in their positions for quite a while, as if they were trying to comprehend what just happened. Then each of them would suddenly tackle her with joy and laughter, to which Reimu would only respond with a surprised "YAAH!?" and later, a resigned hug back to her parents, a smile slowly forming from her face
And then it was now the day after, with Reimu sitting outside on the stairs that led to her family home, eyes staring at the forest in the distance and the mountain that laid a castle there ontop for some reason.
She raised her hand to her face, eyes scrutinizing her rather simplistic hand. No fingers.. she had a hard time grasping that thought during her first week in Dreamland.
To think that she was able to harness the power of the Hakurei God here, let alone even conjure up ofudas from her hands, it was just surprising from her
Usually back at Gensokyo, she would only draw these paper slips for most of the day and store them somewhere else, mostly in the sleeves and pockets just so she could use them later on in spell card fights, these kanjis would use some part of the Hakurei God to hurt youkai.
These ofudas didn't come from magic after all, they were handcrafted. She was still human back in the day, not youkai that uses esoterica to conjure up their thrown weapons.
Now she didn't need to make more ofudas, as she can just conjure them up from her hands. The only thing that made her raise an eyebrow as how it can explode, damnit she was looking forward to an explosion free fighting style even, but maybe it's inevitable that she would use them sooner or later, after all she was born a Poppy Bro instead.
Moving on from that, she also had a question in mind about how she was able to harness the power of the Hakurei God IN THIS REALM in particular just to conjure up ofudas in her hands, this isn't Gensokyo, a land of fantasy. It's Popstar!
Unless she was able to get an answer from the patron god or even get it's name to which she's still unable to get much to her frustration, she'll only have to let these questions remain unanswered for now.
Now then, if there's barely any kind of religious people here, maybe she could use that to her advantage and construct a shrine for her god and get these juicy donations..?
She might need to convince her parents to do so.
...
Marisa Kasake
"Keke's Ordinary Witchling"
Keke Kasake.
That was her mother's name but she seemed to prefer being called Keke instead. She has the same first name as that of her species name(even though half of Dreamlanders still call the Kekes here as Witchlings..) Though she didn't complain that much, there was a satori who has a name like that after all.
Over the past few years Keke had been teaching her daughter how to fly on a broom, it would take a few attempts just for her broom to finally obey Marisa's subconscious commands because most of the time it resulted in her losing control over it.
It may had led to her crashing towards the ground at break speeds, but thankfully food here can heal even broken bones so she was able to fix herself up in no time with her mom's cooking.
And once they got over that, it was pretty just them comfortably living in the woods. Heck Marisa even got to taste some of Keke's homemade dishes made from the fruits in the forest!
The ordinary magician with the help of her broom was eventually able to fly up and read some of her mother's grimoires on the shelves to see what was inside.
Most of these books seem to just be regular novels which didn't really interest the former Youkai Magician that much, but two of them however were of interest to her.
One was about affinities, way different than the magic learned from her world. Reading into it, apparently most of Dreamlanders or rather Popstar in general had affinities to certain elements or gimmicks, from flames to swords, or even absurd ones like yoyos and bubbles?
She scratched her cat ears in confusion
"Absurd.." She muttered out to herself, flipping more of the pages shortly before closing it, Popstar was weird.
...Fast forward to another two years with Marisa now deciding it was better relearning on her star magic, essentially it was how she got around in Gensokyo even after the spell card rules came into place.
Star Magick was taught to her and passed down by a certain ghost magician, it had helped her conquer almost half of her opponents in spell card duels.
Problem is though that she needs to construct her own mini-hakkero though, a tool that served as both a weapon of mass destruction for flashy lights and conveniences like heating.
Unfortunately she has NO idea where to start.
For beginners, the Mini Hakkero she had was originally made with metals, all handcrafted by Rinnosuke, a talented shopkeeper in Gensokyo. but they easily rusted, ruining her weapon.
That was when he came into the picture again and finally replaced the iron and all the metal components with "Hihi'irokane", a mythic metal that seemed to never rust, always in peak condition. And thats where she's currently stuck in.
Even if she built the Hakkero with any ordinary metals, it would eventually rust over easily and then she'd have to repair it all by herself, a tedious process in which she would want to fly away from.. Not to mention how much Star Coins it would take for her to repair it..
"Da ze.." She shook her head, looking around as she peacefully drifted above a forest on her broom, watching Bronto Burts fly by alongside small round birds "And building a house by myself was much easier than trying to find materials for my hakkero.."
Sigh
The small Keke silently complained.. then Marisa turned her broom to look at the many locations of Dreamland..
"Hey.. Maybe I could visit some of these places, see if there's anything interesting in them..!"
And Marisa zoomed off.
...
the Keke wore the same deadpan expression ever since she began to clean her home up, her daughter left on her own it seems, but she didn't mind it.. until now that is.
Keke would stop washing the dishes to see who knocked the door in her lonely abode, putting down the soap before waddling over to the front door and opening it
She gasped.
Marisa, her daughter had apparently gotten at least two Scarfies stuck onto her hand and feet, each of them still with eyes swirling yet their mouth stuck onto her.
The former human seemed to even have her clothes ripped and her broom damaged.. Just what was she doing while she was out there!? Did she get caught in some sort of trouble!? Her eyes darted at the Scarfies on her, and felt a twitch on the muscles on her eyelid.
"H-hey ma.." She weakly replied, giving her witchling mother a happy look, then she glanced down and struggled to get the knocked out Scarfy out of her hand
"..." Keke blinked, and gave her a Deadpan look that seemed to span almost an entire hour.
And then Marisa got the scolding of her lifetime from her only parent.
...Girls are growing up.. Please wait warmly...!
Reimu would waddle onto a hilltop, with a massive backpack on her shoulders and she pulled a bag on wheels with her other limbless hand.
She had already convinced her parents about this project since they both knew she had power to do some self defense, with her ofudas and a purification rod that she brought from a household store not far from here.
The local Waddle Dees here were even happy to build something that she saved up for. Star Coins are kind of easy to earn around here, just do some errands and protection stuff and you'll earn a few or more in no time.
Besides Poppy Bros around these areas are pretty well known for their destructiveness hence some people tend to hire them for protection during travels in exchange for the local currency.
And here she is! She would set down her backpack and bag down, bith her parents really packed up all kinds of necessities and goods just for her to live alone comfortably..
The Waddle Dees wearing construction hats infront of her all stared at their completed building, and then they all turned to Reimu, noticing her appearance
"Ah Miss Reimu!" A multi-lingual waddle dee spoke up, waving to her. Although Waddle Dees tend to speak in wanyas only, some do learn English here, Popstarians seem to call it Common instead. (Which made her wonder, is there some form of Japanese language here in Popstar?)
"We've completed what you requested! is it good enough?"
They all moved out of the way to reveal a traditional archway, to which Reimu would pass through with a smile, and there her shrine is.
A red traditional building for blessings and a place of worship, if the Hakurei God were to finally reveal itself to the denizens of this subregion, it would've been in this place in particular.
Her parents had questioned it at first with confused looks once they saw the blueprints, but eventually they supported it with warm smiles. Reimu had hoped her previous parents were like this if they stayed around to the very end..
"Its.. amazing!" The Poppy Sis turned to face the construction crew "Thank you all for putting your time and effort into this.."
"Wanya!" They all collectively said as each Waddle Dee raised their arms, their faces giving her a happy look. Even if they didn't have a mouth to show their appreciation, they could still do it with their body language!
Reimu nodded before turning towards her shrine.. Or rather, The Iyori Shrine..
Once the Waddle Dees all returned back home, she would settle in with her bags, now dressing appropriately for the shrine.
After she stepped outside, a spring breeze would blow past by, making her cover her face from the leaves fluttering by the wind.
She would glance towards the distance with a look that seemed like she was contemplating something, her eyes soon locking onto a star that seemed to fall from the sky.
She would shake her head with a smile before grabbing the broom to begin sweeping the shrine grounds, cleaning up any debris left over from construction.
And thus the Iyori Shrine finally opened it's doors to anyone.
...
Marisa would walk back before facing her epitome of hard work, wiping her forehead and letting out a relieved exhale, all the while her mother watched from the sky with both eyebrows raised.
In just a matter of days, the young witchling now dressed in black snd white signature clothing had finally finsihed building her own house all by herself, a house that just so happened to be in the middle of a forest that had several Whispies watching over it.
She didn't seem to mind the appearances of living trees however, many of the Whispy Trees even left her alone when she began her construction! Though she had to beat up at least one of them just by her wits and her chosen weapon, a stave of all things that her mom brought for her.
Made of hardwood and cobbled up stone with nails and such keeping it from collapsing, it was incredibly impressive to the natives of Popstar, but to Marisa it was her personal work that she found fun, a good way to waste time even.
Marisa would soon turn towards the Keke in the skies, her mom, ignoring the local animals and denizens that stared at her home in awe. It's not uncommon to see a Dreamlander build their home in real time, but none did it alone.
"Sooo whaddya think eh? Issa cool da ze?"
"...I mean.. Yes my dear?" She shrugged, before gripping onto her broom with a chuckle and a sigh "If that's what you wish then I don't think I can be stopping you anytime. I'll visit here and then because I will be worried from time to time alright?"
"Yeah yeah ma" She shrugged her off casually, before waving at her mom who was already going home.
Now that she has an entire house to herself..
"I wonder if there are a few books I can borrow around Dreamland?" She wondered to herself.
Magicians from across Popstar felt a chill crawling up their backs.
[Edit: 17/2/24, Even though Marisa and Keke here are called Witchlings, they WILL still be referred as a 'Keke' in the story, much like how Satori Komeji has the same first name as that of her species name
I'll probably do the same with the other enemies who have LEGAL names, such as a Joe or a Hailey as their official species name, and give them a unique species name that'll probably make sense in the future.]
