Is it not a terrible thing for a parent to lose a son?

-PROLOGUE-

Are you watching?

There was a full moon in the sky, and a drunken Gendo Rokubungi on the earth.

He didn't really notice, of course. He'd had a long night of drinking, and a longer night of brooding before that. In college, much like his life before, he'd become all-too used to nights of both. Even tonight, one of his fellow grad students added to his humdrum existence. He'd just wanted to drink his sorrows away, but the bastard had tracked him down and spilt a drink all over him. Any other day, he would've beaten the interloper black and blue, but tonight…

He sighed into the cool night air. He didn't know why he didn't punch that guy square in the jaw, actually. It might've been the Deja-Vu he felt in that exact moment, like he'd done this whole song and dance before, but he had just made the man piss off and gone back to his drinking. He had bigger things to worry about than that scum. SEELE… christ, he didn't want to worry about that. He didn't even want to think about what he'd learnt. Even for a man like Gendo, a couple days of drinking and rumination after reading parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls were warrented. He knew there was so much more about SEELE, but even from his low position he could look up and see the coming storm.

So, the night had went. He'd been kicked out of the bar around four in the morning, not that he'd even cared, and forced out to stumble around the streets of his college town. He didn't have a destination- honestly, he didn't want a destination. He was perfectly content to get lost, walking aimlessly through the blood-red forests of his college town of Kyoto, walking along the path so lined with red spider lilies…

He stopped. It may have been autumn in Kyoto, but the leaves were never this shade of red. The red that the leaves were was… unnatural. It was as if the leaves had been dunked in pure blood every day for years, until the color had soaked in so deeply that it would never come out.

Gendo may be drunk, but he doubted he was so blitzed as to walk out of his university town altogether without remembering a step of the journey. There also wasn't a forest like this anywhere in Kyoto, especially not with this many spider lilies. Where was he?

He wasn't put at ease when the only thing he heard was the sobbing of a child. He didn't particularly care about children crying, he'd never been someone who cared about children, but he could at least get an explanation out of them. He walked towards the sobbing's source.

When he found the child, he found them in a clearing off the red forest's beaten path, a clearing as scarlet as a ground cherry. The little girl- blonde, an oddity in Japan for sure- was dressed in a black vest, a black shirt, and was wearing a small red hair ribbon.

"Child." Gendo hoped he sounded more authoritative than your average drunk college student. "Do you know where this is?"

The little girl sniffled. "Aren't… Aren't you gonna ask why I'm crying?"

"Ah. Why are you crying?" Said Gendo, completely tonelessly.

"I'm just… I'm just so hungry…"

o0o

Junko hated travelling through Gensokyo. The land she had secretly made her home these last couple years, her own personal Senkai, was fine, but it lacked the critical resources she required for the plan. Those resources, a mix of materials to amplify her own powers even further, the required supplies to refine Hecatia's fairy army when the time was right, and a couple things to just flat-out bribe the goddess into helping her, weren't hard to get exactly, compared to the outside world that she had been wandering for gods-knew how long, this land practically paved the roads with magical items.

No, scarcity wasn't the problem. It was travelling to get them. Junko wasn't exactly supposed to be in Gensokyo, and the uppity child that controlled this land's barriers would have her head, or at least try her damndest to get it, if she found out that Junko was here. That wasn't even mentioning all the myriad problems that could crop up if someone else found her. Yukari would kick her out, but that Hakurei shrine maiden… Junko'd never admit it, but that fearsome woman might be able to kill her in one fell swoop. Not conducive for her revenge.

And thus, here she was in Muenzuka, two hours before dawn, rooting through corpses for 'compact discs'. Hecatia's favorite music, the ones that always sounded like someone had trapped twenty yokai into a piece of plastic, were a rarity, even in terms of Muenzuka, but if she wanted the Hell Goddess' favour, this is how you got it. After all, she needed to play along. In all honesty, Junko couldn't help but hate it.

Not hate her, of course. Hecatia may have lacked seriousness, lacked willingness to fully contribute to the plan, but she was a nice woman. Even, maybe, Junko's friend. It was just all these… jumping through hoops. The plan was essentially ready to go. Between Junko's magnificent power and Hecatia's powers and resources both, they could launch the plan tomorrow, but here she still was, playing errand girl! It'd just be nice if there was something she could do to hurry things along, right? Just some other way-

A scream took her out of her musings and digging through corpses- ugh, broke a nail. She wasn't one to care about humans, not really. This was Muenzuka. If she interfered with every random human that wound up here, word of her existence would spread through the Yokai like wildfire, and eventually compromise her existence in Gensokyo. No, that wasn't why she'd noticed the human's presence somewhere in the scarlet forest.

She'd noticed because of the smell. The horrific stench, not just of death but of death compounded hundreds of times. What kind of mere victim of Muenzuka smelt like that? She had to go see. As she flew, obliterating trees whenever she couldn't just bend them away, the scent only grew stronger, more pungent, until she found its source: a man, if you could call him that, trying desperately to get his arm out of a youkai's maw.

The man wasn't very panicked, oddly enough. Obviously in pain? Of course. But he acted not like someone fearing for their life. He, to Junko's bewilderment, acted almost annoyed by the whole thing. His face was filled with nothing but rage, as he kept desperately pulling his being-devoured hand out with one hand while hitting his attacker's head with the other. Junko sighed.

She was already here, after all. Without even a word, she opened her hand, summoning a charged blast of pure energy. The youkai could only look up for a moment to see the attack before it smacked into her, blasting her past the horizon. Junko's attention turned to the man, who had stumbled back to his feet. A trickle of blood inhibited his attempt to compose himself and look intimidating, but even confronted with a woman in a long, black chinese dress wielding impossible power, he still managed to seem not at all phased.

"Human."

"Yes." The man responded, once again unphased. Junko tried to keep her surprise off her face.
"You are an outsider from this land. You have been brought here by a powerful youkai for reasons unknown to me." Junko didn't word it as such, but it was a question. 'Are you an outsider?' Was its first half.

"That is correct."

And then, Junko asked the question's second half. "Then why are you drenched with the abominable stench of death? You smell not like a man who has killed countless time, but as man who has died countless times. That should be impossible. Explain."

"Mankind is a species doomed to confront death every day. I am no excepti-"

Junko grabbed him by his collar, and lifted him with the strength only a being of fantasy could wield. "That is not what I meant. You have died before. Many, many times. I saved your life for no other reason than a mild curiosity over how that would be possible, and talking to you is an exercise in satiating that curiosity. I could kill you now, and I still have no qualms against it unless you tell me what you've done to die and come back, apparently many times."

The smartass still didn't as much as flinch. Junko internally dreaded whichever non-answer the man would provide next, and was already roaming through the mental aisles of her killing spells, when the man started to chuckle- no, laugh.

"I- you're laughing? What's so funny?"

"Because I don't know, although I believe after the month I've had that I might have a few guesses. Forces beyond your comprehension and beyond my power… I've only just joined them at the bottom, but the men at the top make the world dance to their tune. I don't know what happened to make me smell of this, and I don't know where this place is, but it all seems too perfect. Is this a test from SEELE?"

Junko released her grip like the man had been on fire, only leading to him laughing once more. Who, no, what was this man she had just saved? She had to find out. If not for intellectual curiosity, then for the possibility that whatever he was talking about may interfere with the plan. She straightened, looming above the man.
"I have questions. If you wat to live, you will answer them all."

Gendo sat up, composing his expression in a far more smug, neutral, expression. "Fine. But if this is a test from SEELE, I only ask you do not be too harsh in your assessment. If I've 'died countless times', I have nothing to fear, I suppose."

"Who is SEELE?" She kept her expression stony.

"They are the ones who control mankind behind the shadows and, I assume, are going to shepherd in its next step of evolution. They haven't told me much, yet, but I'm sure even what I know right now will be of great interest to you."

Junko nodded, and sat down in front of him. Part of her was sure this madman was speaking nonsense. Some normal human with delusions of grandeur, a charismatic megalomaniac who, at the end of the day, didn't have any power outside his own head.

And yet, such a strong stench of death piqued her curiosity. There wasn't any harm in just listening to him, was there? Her and Hecatia's plan would still be there after he was done speaking.