Chapter 1
Reimu sighed as she put the cover back onto her box and went back to cleaning her shrine.
"Looks like I'm rationing what's left of my food for the next month or so."
Just as she got out her broom, she heard something hitting the shrine grounds and smelled something burning.
"Oh great. I hope no one started a fire."
The red and white shrine maiden ran outside and to her surprise, she saw a person wearing red samurai armor looking around. Surrounding him were several burn marks on the floor that quickly dissipated moments after she came out.
"Who are you?"
"Cross sensei! Mission accomplished," announced a samurai wearing red armor. "I managed to recover the artifact. It's in here."
To prove his point, the samurai procured a bag and opened it to reveal a golden idol that had several small jewels on it. He then presented the bag to another samurai that was wearing gold armor.
"Well done Ryusei. I will take it from here."
"We're splitting 50/50 right?"
The gold samurai nodded and handed him a pile of small gold squares.
"I'll be back with the rest later. In the meantime, I heard they've got a really high paying mission for something called the Zodiac Amulet," replied Cross.
He got up and left to turn in the artifact.
"Zodiac Amulet…"
Ryusei picked up his payment and walked out of the room and entered a large hall full of stands and merchants. While there, he picked up a wanted item poster that had the picture of a gold amulet with thirteen large emeralds on it.
"Wanted. Zodiac Amulet. Reward: 10,000 pieces of gold."
Upon reading this, the samurai ran off to his room and pulled out a book which contained pictures of various artifacts as well as a map of their last known location.
"Ah. There it is."
Ryusei got out a map and piece of paper.
"It's in Kyoto, Japan. Destination Earth."
He picked up several weapons and items before leaving.
Minutes later…
"Hey Ryusei. Need a portal?"
"Yeah. I haven't made any new portal cards with my symbolizer. Besides, I'm out of paper."
The red samurai had called his ally a few minutes ago to help him travel to his destination. Usually, he'd travel using his symbolizer's ability to create objects and portals out of thin air but since he lacked proper control, he needed to use paper to aid in his creation. The problem is, he ran out of paper and forgot to stock up on some in his last trip.
"Right. Your destination is set," informed the man.
"Good. How long should it take?"
"To Gensokyo, eh a few seconds," replied the man. "At the Adventurer's Guild, places that take years only take a second or two at most."
"Gensokyo? I said Kyo-"
"Cya!"
Ryusei's ally flipped a switch and before Ryusei could do anything, he found himself being surrounded by a large amount of light. Once the light faded, he was no longer at the Adventurer's Guild. He was now at an old run down shrine that was surrounded by trees and overgrown plants.
"Where the heck am I?"
Reimu was waiting for the samurai to answer her question. Her gohei and needles were ready in case her new visitor was a youkai.
"Where am I?" asked the mysterious samurai.
"You're at the Hakurei Shrine," informed Reimu. "Now tell me who you are and what are you? Human or youkai?"
"Woah! Easy now!"
Ryusei took off his helmet, revealing his short and messy black hair and raised his hands as a show of surrender.
"My name's Ryusei and I'm a human samurai. Who are you and where the heck is the Hakurei Shrine?"
Reimu lowered her gohei and put away her needles.
"My name is Reimu Hakurei. I'm the shrine maiden around here and you're in Gensokyo. Judging by your looks and reactions. You're from the outside world aren't you?"
"Outside world? Am I on Earth?"
Reimu gave him a puzzled look.
"What? Where are you from?" questioned Reimu.
"Earth SE 0079," replied Ryusei. "Some people like to call it Samurai Era Earth."
Reimu looked confused while Ryusei continued to observe his surroundings.
"Ryusei. I think we need to talk."
The samurai and the miko were now sitting outside watching the scenery. It took a while for Ryusei to clarify things to the miko who finally told him where he was and where his desired location was.
"I see. So you're from an entirely different dimension."
"Yeah. My world isn't too different from yours but has a bit more tech and the youkai are viewed as allies than enemies."
"And you're trying to go to the outside world which you visit on a near daily basis and retrieve an artifact that is worth a lot of money."
"Pretty much."
"Yeah, I'm not gonna let you do that. Get used to it here."
Reimu got up and began to leave.
"I really hope you're joking."
"What? You want me to send you back to your home or the outside world? No, not happening."
"Really? Why is that?" asked Ryusei.
"Cuz one, I don't want to send you back, and two, I'm flat out broke. I haven't eaten in like three days and I don't have any money for food," answered Reimu.
"So you can send me back," commented Ryusei.
"No! I never said that!"
"You said you don't want to send me back. Not that you can't send me back," informed Ryusei. "You're a shrine maiden right? Don't you get donations or a stipend to live off of?"
Reimu pointed her gohei at him.
"Don't. Ever. Bring. Those. Up," threatened Reimu.
"Why? Do you get zero donations?"
Ryusei narrowly dodged her gohei.
"Bring that up again and I'll-"
"Sorry," apologized Ryusei. "But you're pretty easy to read."
He waited for the red and white miko to calm down before pulling out his dagger which he began to take apart.
"Sorry about that. It's just, I don't get zero donations," explained Reimu. "I get some now and then but the amount is really small. Sometimes, I don't have enough to eat or buy food. I've only gotten this far because sometimes, some of my youkai visitors are kind enough to leave some food behind or invite me to parties."
"Ah. I see," commented Ryusei. "Here. I'm not sure how much these are worth here but in my world, what I have in here is about $10,000."
Reimu watched as he hit the sheath of his dagger several times to reveal a small pocket which contained about seven gold squares. He then handed her the gold before reassembling the dagger and moving on to his red and gold katana.
"Is this actual gold?" asked Reimu.
Ryusei nodded while he repeated the same process with his katana's sheath and handed her 20 more.
"H-how did you?"
"Like I said, I earn these through the artifacts and missions I do at the Adventurer's Guild. I have a lot more back at home but right now, this is what I have," informed Ryusei.
"Why your swords?" asked Reimu. "Like if you lose your sword, you lose your money as well."
"Well. That's true but it's also one of the safest places to hide our money. Robbers tend to ignore the sheathes of our blades since most of the time, they're very plain looking and serve no purpose other than protecting our swords," answered Ryusei.
"It also helps that due to how our sheathes are designed, a robber can be very easily tracked down with just the sheath alone. So in the case that we are being robbed, the only thing the robbers would take would probably be the sword itself."
"That's pretty clever," commented Reimu. "Can you wait here for a few minutes, I'm gonna go buy some food and supplies with this."
Ryusei nodded and watched as the red and white shrine maiden left the shrine to get something to eat. Moments after she left, he pulled out his poster and examined the jewel and his map.
"I guess it can wait. I'm at least on the right planet and country."
After several hours of waiting, Ryusei saw Reimu flying back to her shrine with a ton of food and supplies.
"Ahh! Finally I don't have to worry about food."
He watched her put away all the items before joining her at the table.
"Well," started Ryusei. "You feeling any better?"
Reimu nodded.
"Thanks for the money. They're worth quite a bit here and thanks to them, I was able to not only buy food for this month but also pay off my tab to Rinnosuke."
"Ah. Well, can you send me back?"
Reimu shook her head.
"I'm not going to. What will I even get out of this?" replied the shrine maiden. "Besides, I don't even know where you're from so I can't send you back properly."
"You can send me to the outside world and I can find my way back from there," informed Ryusei.
"Naw. I'd rather not. Besides, the last time I trusted a guy from outside, I got scammed and nearly ended up losing my clothes and much more," replied Reimu. "If you really want to go back, ask Yukari who's hibernating right now."
Ryusei facepalmed. There was simply no way he was going to finish his mission now. He did not know where he was and the only way out was to ask the shrine maiden in front of him for assistance.
"Okay, what do I have to do to gain your trust and get sent back home?" asked Ryusei.
"Well you can start by becoming a follower of my shrine," informed Reimu.
"Sorry about that. I can't," informed Ryusei. "I'm a Christian so I don't believe in Shinto. I'm not converting either."
Reimu looked at him shocked.
"The heck? I thought you were Buddhist or Shinto for some other shrine. What kind of religion is Christianity?"
"Yeah I figured. Most samurai are Buddhist or Shintoist but there are a few Christians like me out there. Christianity is the belief that-"
"Oh it's that one," realized Reimu. "That certainly explains why you have cross emblems on your armor."
Ryusei nodded. "Any other options?"
Reimu shook her head.
"Looks like you're staying."
"Wait!"
Reimu turned back to see Ryusei pull out a piece of paper.
"You still need money, right?"
Reimu paused and listened intently.
"How does this sound? Both of us will go to the outside world and recover the artifact together," suggested Ryusei. "Afterwards, we can split the payment and the two of us can go back to our former lives and pretend that this didn't happen. I don't need that much anyways."
Reimu thought long and hard before she gave her response.
"How much is it?" asked the shrine maiden.
"The artifact is worth 10,000 pieces of the same gold I gave you," informed Ryusei. "Do you want 50/50 or 60/40?"
"70%," answered Reimu. "Once this is done, I get 70%. In addition to that, you will show me and tell me what you know about the outside world and your world."
"Deal."
Reimu got out her ying yang orbs and pulled out one of her amulet seals.
"Stay still. This isn't going to be very pleasant."
Author's Note: Hello reader or readers. This is my first story where an OC is one of the central focuses and main characters of the story. I've been planning this entire fic ever since I started writing "Reimu's Youkai Babysitting Business" in hopes of giving my OC, Ryusei, a proper backstory and detailing how he first met Reimu. Usually any story I write that is centered around an OC tends to get really messy so I hope I started off on the right path and foot.
Originally, this was suppose to be a simple meet up and quest with two characters but it ended up turning "How Reimu would react, interact, and adjust if she were to visit the outside world with someone from a different universe?" Sorry if Reimu is a bit OOC here. I usually try to stay as close as I can to canon but since Reimu's character is pretty inconsistent, it's pretty easy to overlook a detail or two without even knowing it.
The OC is a mix of self-insert and original character for a video game that I plan on making in the future one day. The idea behind him was to create a character that no one in Gensokyo would ever to expect to show up in their world but also mold him in a way that would allow him to seemingly fit in and relate with Reimu's world. For some time, I was debating on whether I should have Ryusei be a normal outsider or a person that had the power to travel to the future. In the end, I turned him into a samurai from an alternate universe as it seemed the most fitting for the story and what I had planned back then.
As a side note, Ryusei's combat skills are going to be more stronger than Reimu's in this story simply because of his experience and the fact that he isn't playing by spell card rules. If the fights were spell card based, then Ryusei would automatically lose due to him not knowing how to use or play danmaku at all.
Regarding relationships, well, I didn't write this with the idea of OCxReimu in mind but I'll leave it up the interpretation and address more of this later. I've pretty much finished writing this whole story by now and just going through it again to make a few changes or so.
I'm also going to keep the swearing to a minimum if I can and make it as lighthearted as I can but eventually there are going to be some dark themes and troubled backstories so I'm rating this a T for now.
Read and review(if you want) and hope you enjoy your day!