Reimu stirred the cup of hot chocolate on her hands as she stared at the rainy scenery before her eyes.
It was a rainy day in Dreamland, the grass and the sakura trees would all be soaked in water and dew as raindrops clattered onto the hard solid bricks and the now mud-ridden ground, a danger to those with slippery feet.
Dreamlanders at this time of the month tend to stay home and hang teru teru bozus - most notably Cool Spook replicas - on the window frames, hoping for sunnier weather by the time the next day rolls in.
So yeah, she's not getting visitors anytime now, her Broom Hatter coworkers were taking the time to revisit their families.
Sure they were the silent bunch but they gave Reimu a sense of companionship, something that she herself can appreciate every now and then, so it feels lonelier around this part of Dreamland..
She sipped on her hot chocolate mug, never in her next life would she imagine drinking something like this, not even in Gensokyo..
"Sigh.." she exhaled, scratching her hair "I wonder what's next.." She stood up from her seat on the stairs and dusted her bum, opting to go inside and enjoy the warmth of her shrine home.
But just as she was about to enter inside, her nonexistent ears would pick up the sounds of splashing and stomping of puddles, the Poppy Sis turning to look at the shrine entrance to find a Cappy hopping towards the shrine at sprinting speed with a terrified look on his face
"S-shrine maiden! Help me!"
"What? What's the matter?" She'll spare some of her time to converse with this dreamlander. "Something's got to you?"
"Y-yeah, I just n-need a little help with something back home uh.." He stuttered, the Cappy unable to form a rather coherent sentence leading the Poppy Sis to rub in between her eyebrows
"Ugh, just get straight to the point or I may lose patience, it's raining geez.."
"Okay okay!" He waved his arms around, before clutching his mushroom cap with uncertainty "Okay so I was walking home under clear skies alright? And I feel something chilly pass by me but I shrugged it off at first"
"Uhuh" Reimu folded her arms, listening to his story with narrowed eyes
"And then bad things started happening! My dishes started flying around, my living room became a mess overnight and worse of all, my collection of jewels were being scattered with no one touching them! And I was just there screaming my heart out!"
"Ah.."
Ghosts, how could she have known hmm? Dreamland already has its fair share of ghost beings that she's seen of before in books and such, but unfortunately she barely has seen one in person, just yet.
"Alright, let's take a step back first" She raised both hands in front of her "So you want me to take care of that sort of stuff?"
"Y-yeah? I-I've heard that shrine maidens deal with that sort of s-su.. stuff.." He nodded rapidly, wiping away sweat with his other hand. "P-please..? Anything to shoo away whatever's harassing me?"
She shrugged "Well if you got the money anyway-" She paused upon seeing the Cappy present a sack in front of her, he then proceeded to untie the sack and open it up to her, revealing a bag's worth of star coins inside.
"Well you have my interest" She grinned "Give me a second to prepare.." And the Poppy Sis would walk back inside her shrine to grab her gohei.
She would walk back outside while conjuring up a few ofudas in her hands, examining it before wondering if she can also modify these to fit her new job. They've helped in beating up Dreamlanders so far but what about exterminating the paranormal?
"Aaalright!" She called out to the idle Cappy, all the while she shuffled her ofudas back into her hand, slinging her gohei on her back with a smirk, she's in it for the money of course she would be confident "You got yourself an exterminator on your hands now! So mind leading the way?"
"Oh! U-uh yeah! Right away!" He nodded, gesturing the miko to follow behind her "Follow me..!"
(...Girls are preparing, please wait warmly…!)
She held her parasol just slightly above her head from the rain, her eyebrows furrowed at the sight in front of her. Right next to her, her client gaped in horror at the current condition of his.. rather ruined house.
The word "ruined" seemed to be the most suitable descriptor for it's current condition because it was WILD to see that the house itself had already deteriorated over hours long of haunting, and the client didn't even knew this would've happened!
"O-oh the stars..! My house!" he shouted, kneeling over in defeat "How.. How am I.."
She patted her back, her gaze hardened at the sight in front of her, if this is the result of a dreamlandian ghost haunting a particular location, then it's about time she takes the paranormal seriously.
"Let me deal with it" she assured "I can assure you they'll be gone by the time im done"
"Y-yes.."
She grunted, walking towards the ruined house with a gohei in hand and a parasol on the other. She'd set the parasol down near the entrance before she placed her hand on the knob of the door, attempting to open it.
It didn't budge.
…the Cappy spoke up from behind her "I don't remember locking the door like tha-"
She immediately knocked down the door with a slam of her shoe
"Nevermind! You do your own thing!" he immediately shouted with surprise.
She walked inside and took a glimpse of her surroundings, as expected the interior of the house was covered in scratches and burn marks, countless pottery were scattered across the now dirtied floor alongside many other scraps and everyday items.
She has never seen such destruction from something like this, not even in her previous life.
"Wow, they really made a mess of this place" She muttered under her breath, taking careful steps across the room so as to not step on something sharp.
She would hear a haunting giggle coming from behind her, the Poppy Sis turning to her back immediately with her gohei at the ready, her gaze hardened even more.
"If you don't show yourself, I can at least force you to..!" She would keep on stepping back a few feet, up until she finally heard a voice coming from behind her
"Tee hee! We're coming to get tya!"
"How about I do it instead!" And she swooped around and slapped a ofuda on a ghostly figure's face, the figure revealing itself to be a Booler as the ofuda shined brightly before exploding right in front of its face. Sending the ghost-like being into a wall and it's body flopping to the ground, unmoving..
"Boolers.." Her first encounter with souls and it's of the common kind..
A face peeked out from the corner of another far away room, their face distorted into that of shock while another peeked out with surprise
"Oh no!" The first one spoke up "They sent in someone to rekill us!"
"idiot, you meant exorcise us!" Another voiced their thoughts out loud
"Doesn't matter!" A third voice spoke up "She's facing this way!"
Surely enough, Reimu had her face turned towards the Boolers, her glare piercing each Booler and scaring them out of their wits, surely if looks could kill the ghostlike entities would've already shriveled up into thin fine atoms which would've then scattered away
They knew what that glare meant anyway.
"RUN!"
The three Boolers began flying around wildly as Reimu began pursuing the two Boolers, conjuring up a few more ofudas along the way and scaling down their explosiveness so as to ensure little gets damaged along the way. She began throwing them
A few thrown ofudas would slap against a wall and explode like firecrackers, the sounds prompting the two Boolers flying away from her to speed up even more, their fear surging
"JEEZ LOUISE! KEEP IT UP!"
"I- I CAANT-" The Booler catching up to his friend would look behind him as a ofuda flew towards his face, slapping into his cheek and exploding.
"NO! JEREMY!" The Booler up ahead cried out as he flew into a Bathroom, flying back and locking the door in front of him, he then proceeded to sigh out in relief as he slowly flew to the ground to rest
"Aw… this was a bad idea in the first place…" He muttered.
And then the door blew up.
He covered his face with a wince as the hinges of the door clattered to the ground, the door was then promptly opened by Reimu, grabbing it's sides and proceeding to set it on the wall before glaring at the ghost
He gulped..
…
The third Booler shivered from within the closet
This was a terrible idea from the start, him and his buddies all suggested the mere idea of it, which then grew into something much bigger. At that time they all decided that it would be great to scare a random Dreamlander out of their home and claim it as theirs, but as usual he came running for help instead of finding a new one..
Said help came in the form of a miko whom he remembers were people specialized in this sort of stuff..
And that included exorcism..
Currently he's hiding within a closet, the Booler checking at the gaps between the two closet doors for any signs of the miko, and surely enough he'd hear firecracker explosions coming from beyond the doorway.
He breathed in and out, Dreamlandian ghosts don't really need to breathe but breathing techniques help a lot with coping with your current situation, especially when you're being hunted down by someone stronger.
Finally, she'd show up, the Poppy Sis walking into the room as she scanned the room for any signs of the Booler.
Said Booler kept on shivering in fear, his eyes still locked onto the shrine maiden from the gaps that gave him limited visibility
'This sucks this sucks this sucks..!'
And then she walked out of view.
The silence afterwards was deafening.
"I just wanted a house all to ourselves…"
"Then you should've picked a spare one idiot" A feminine voice spoke from behind the closet doorway as she peeked through the gaps in the closet, her eyes locked onto his.
He screamed.
…
"Oh that doesn't sound nice"
It has been 10 minutes or so ever since Reimu entered his house to perform some exorcism to ward away the haunters that declared his home as theirs, and frankly? The sounds of explosions and crashes seem to worry the Cappy that much. He wiped some sweat off his forehead as the rain transitioned from mildly intense to a light shower at best.
A girlish scream would be heard from a house before sounds of firecrackers exploding would be heard from inside, making the homeowner sweat drop.
"...Is she okay?" He assumed the origin of the voice to be the miko that he hired earlier but at this point he's not really sure
The front door opened up, revealing Reimu covered in soot as she carried with her three bloblike figures on her side, carrying them with just her disembodied hands
"Here" She dropped the knocked out Boolers on the porch "These guys have done too much damage to the house interiors so" She shrugged "I'm terribly sorry for your house"
"N-no worries…" He lets out a relieved sigh as he pulls out the same sack of star coins from his cap, before offering it to the miko, she happily accepted it with a nod "Now I just have to clean up my house then, thank you so much!"
"Hm" She acknowledged his thanks as the Cappy went ahead and back into his house..
Before she giggled like a maniac at the sack of coins in her hands..
"Ooohohohehe.. So many Star Coiiins.."
…
Kirby waddled across the crystal-decorated floor, his eyes scanning his beautiful surroundings.
It had been several minutes into the adventure when he first fell down an unsuspecting hole, sure food was nice but then there's these cool trinkets that he keeps on finding every now and then! He resorted to inhaling them and keeping said trinkets in his stomach until he could spit them out.
A twinkle caught his eye, making the puffball turn to look at a particular spot in the crystal caverns, surely enough there's a pile of debris blocking the way which was hiding something for Kirby to find.
He ran over to the rubble and inhaled the rocks, spitting them out to his side and checked in to see what was there.
A great spherical ball was revealed to Kirby, themed in red and white with two dots on its face, each dot the opposite color of where it is..
It seemed like it was waiting for Kirby to pick it up
"Oooaaah.." Another trinket for him to see! He inhaled the strange ying-yang-esque orb down and continued on his merry way.
Unto parts unknown!