Wait a minute, this isn't Rei I!
Yeah, remember when I said things were gonna get less and less 1 to 1 with Evangelion? That kind of starts right here. Your regularly scheduled Ramiel two-parter will still come out next week, don't worry. There also probably won't be too much 'game' chapters, although we'll have to see of course, and they are still parts of the main plot rather than vignettes from it. There may be another non-game chapter that isn't part of an episode too, we'll just have to wait and see...
And hey, it's my fic and I thought this would be fun to write. Womp womp.
CHAPTER 5 - The Scarlet Mist Incident
"So he's doing better?"
It was another late night at TOUHOU, which meant that they were in the deepest bowels of the giant facility. A whole geofront between them and the surface apparently wasn't enough to shield them from any possible risk that they'd see a hint of moonlight, so TOUHOU had a lot of bowels to choose from, at least.
Apparently, though, the lunacy effect was real even under all those layers of earth, steel and concrete. After all, Reisen was obviously going insane if she was actually initiating a conversation. Misato did a pretty poor job of hiding her surprise at that; There'd been entire nights when, bereft of someone to talk to, she'd brought whatever paperwork she had to do to whichever rabbit hole Reisen had was working in just for some company, only for the two to not share a word.
"He? Oh, Shinji… yeah, he's doing a lot better. Obviously there was nowhere to go but up, but… I think he needed friends more than anything, and he got them. I didn't think he had it in him, honestly, I guess he's even stronger than we thought if he could overcome his hedgehog's dilemma."
"What's that?"
"Oh, it's something my friend Ritsuko told me- uh… a while ago." She tried to ignore Reisen's thinly-veiled dirty look at the mention of her college friend's name. Reisen and Ritsuko had a… 'professional rivalry'. "Anyways, even if a hedgehog may wish to get close to another hedgehog, the closer they get, the more they hurt each other. Even if they were in a freezing-cold blizzard, they can't huddle together for warmth, so they have to pick between hurting themselves and slowly freezing to death. Humans are the same way, especially humans like Shinji. He'd almost rather freeze to death than bear the pain of closeness." Misato slumped onto the office chair she'd brought in. "Guess I was wrong, though. Is it messed up if I say I'm kind of jealous?"
"I suppose. But what's a hedgehog?"
Right. Misato hadn't known what they were when Ritsuko had brought them up, either. Hedgehogs weren't native to Japan.
"They're little spiky creatures, like mice in armour- look, anyways, he's doing better. Question answered."
"And you're okay with him hanging out with Reimu?"
Misato smiled, refusing to rise to Reisen's little barb. "Of course! The more the merrier, plus she's literally next door after all." Well, next door out in the country was still a ways away, but Misato owned the closest property to the Hakurei shrine you could get out there. Their house was practically in Gensokyo itself, even if 'Gensokyo itself' was such a fuzzy thing as to basically be useless... The Great Hakurei barrier alone- ah, whatever. You can't let yourself be held back by common sense in Gensokyo, right? Misato shook her head to banish the confusing thoughts from her sleep-deprived brain. "At any rate, he still might not be getting that many phone calls, though."
Her coworker hmm'd and returned to typing. Misato tried to lean over and see whatever she'd been working on, but the series of overly-complex diagrams and dumps of pure math, chemistry, and what Reisen affectionately called 'alchemy', which looked like if you took every confusing part of every science you could think of and mixed it with those magic circles you saw in tropey anime, scared her off.
"So, what're you working on again?"
Reisen sighed, and tried to rub a bit of tired out of her eyes. "You wouldn't get it… well, I don't know how to explain it." She did, actually. She just didn't know how to without making Misato's eyes glaze over at best… or making her have a breakdown and start screaming about the folly of man at worse. She'd done the latter before, which wasn't really fair since neither of them were men and Reisen wasn't even human.
Misato, obviously, didn't know that. "Try me."
"Are you familiar with the western concept of the homunculus? The artificially-made human? When we're not dealing with the Onis, I've been working on that. You see, the problem starts with the prevalence of Triploid cells in our models-" and just like that, Misato's eyes glazed over. Mission complete.
"You beat me, I already don't get it." She returned to her office chair and went back to pretending to do her paperwork. "I seriously wish you and Ritsuko could be friends, you guys are both a lot better at all this new-horizon-of-science stuff than I'll ever be."
Reisen knew it'd cause a fight, but she couldn't help herself but mumble out "That momma's girl?" To her surprise, Misato snorted.
"See? She's said worse about you. I think you two would get along."
"I'll bring it up with her the next time we meet." She let the obvious sarcasm dribble over her words. The scientist and the alchemist had met on infrequent, but rare, occasions… usually to verbally beat the tar out of eachother in press conferences and UN general assemblies as the two clawed over eachother to try and get funding for their respective organizations. TOUHOU was far ahead now, what with actually having fought angels off, but the literal years of shit-flinging with NERV had long since soured her opinion of Misato's so-called best friend.
A stray eye behind its sunglass wandered down to the bottom-right of her monitor, and noticed vaguely that it was three A.M. She'd meant to go home early tonight, but as always the demand to try and finish her work gripped her hard and forced her behind desks. She obviously wouldn't be heading home now, she might as well just finish up and sleep during the day, but she could use a coffee and a walk. She looked up, wondering if she should get to work on the Oni's recovery processes, but was only met with the dark, massive room and a sleeping Misato hunched in her chair. That was as good a sign as any, wasn't it?
Reisen saved her 'progress', really there hadn't been any progress, and closed the program she'd had open. Without certain assets that would be in Ritsuko's hands for the time being, the Bofeng project was on ice.
She really ought to talk to Ritsuko. Or kidnap her.
o0o
It was nice to be back in the status quo, as much as Reimu would bemoan not waking up to someone making her breakfast.
As status quo as anything could get when TOUHOU got involved, of course. Misato still lived a twenty-minute walk from the Hakurei shrine, there was still seemingly more casual crossings of the barrier than ever, and there was still this perpetual feeling that something was about to happen. At least Sanae wasn't moping around like she'd been for a couple days. Shinji was back to living with Misato, too.
It was weird to think about that as the status quo, but it wasn't like Reimu could do anything about it. Shinji now visited the shrine regularly. Actually, him and Sanae had become Reimu's biggest donors, even if it was usually through groceries. They mostly visited when they had no classes for the day, which apparently was on 'weekends', which Reimu had now come to get an inkling around, since they were apparently a two-day period following five-day periods of work. It had been a shame when she realized she was actually remembering these weekends- she'd always enjoyed that timeless, dateless feeling that the endless summer allowed for.
And yet, today was Saturday. She sighed, that wasn't information she'd learned consentually. Her fellow pilot and his classmate would be stopping by tomorrow, 'Sunday', a day which Alice's intermittent visits had quickly slotted into, too. It wasn't like she was ungrateful, or anything. She wasn't.
Reimu sighed, and pulled herself out of bed- she hadn't gotten to sleep anyways, and she could use some fresh air- and just wished that things would stop changing. Humans coming into her shrine from the human side, giant robots she had to pilot, giant monsters she had to fight, it was all too much. She opened her Shoji doors, the ones facing the backyard, and then tried to breathe in a refreshing gulp of air-
Only to start coughing after inhaling nothing but smoke. A pinkish, scarlet smoke had blotted out the sky completely, and it was thick enough that it'd easily be continuing on over her shrine into the human world. And, if Gensokyo caused problems for the human world, then the human world would retaliate, and a couple of schoolchildren visiting and a day job fighting monsters would be the least of her worries.
"Well, finding the cause of all this is a shrine maiden's job, isn't it?" And for once, Reimu felt almost excited. This wasn't some job that creepy tall humans or creepy vengeful spirits had demanded she do, this was the kind of thing a Hakurei shrine maiden should actually be doing!
She stepped outside, fully onto her patio. She could already make a guess at where the mist was coming from. It was hard to breathe deeply, but with the wind blowing through her hair she still felt as light as the air, no, lighter than it. She could already feel herself floating from the ground in that all-too familiar way. With a breath, she was off the ground, gently floating like she was completely weightless. It must've looked completely fantastical, but to her it was something completely normal. As she flew into the night, she absentmindedly mused to herself something along the lines of "For some reason, the lake over there looks suspicious…" veering in its direction like a guided missile as the words themselves were swallowed by the wind.
Back at the shrine, Shinji had dropped the groceries he'd been bringing in shock. It was late, but he was supposed to have a sync test tomorrow, and didn't want Reimu to go another week without anything but rice to eat. Of course, none of that seemed to matter now, when he'd just seen his fellow pilot fly away into the night, straight into the source of that strange, red mist. "Mi… Misato would know what to do." He said it to himself as he turned and began to run back from whence he came. Back down to the human world.
o0o
Thank god for the night shift.
Not really, of course. Misato was sure all the late nights were slowly wearing away at her sanity in a way that nothing since the Impact wars had before. It would certainly explain how this world of fairies, magic and nonsense had come to mix with the hard science of having to kill angels with giant robots piloted by children… uh.
Nonetheless, the night shift had its perks. For example, when Shinji came bursting through the front door in the middle of the night, raving about Reimu flying and her shrine being consumed by red smoke, Misato was still wide awake, sitting in the living room and boredly flipping through channels. It'd taken a while to calm him down, for sure.
"None of this even makes sense, anymore! I thought Reimu was a human, at least!"
"Oh, she is, she's just also a Hakurei shrine maiden. You know what this means, though, right Shinji?"
Shinji shook his head. He had literally no idea what to make of anything he'd seen over the last hour.
"Reimu's solving an incident, and now's my- our chance to help her! Come on!"
"Eh?" But with a flurry like he'd never seen, Misato had ran outdoors. Shinji could do nothing but lamely follow as she headed off towards Reimu's shrine, to the entrance of Gensokyo on foot, way faster than he'd ever seen her run.
o0o
There were no fairies that stopped her on her journey to the lake. For the past fifteen years, the fairies had left the lake to different parts of Gensokyo, with the post-Second Impact climate change rendering the formerly misty lake practically tropical diminishing its allure. The lake was a youkai lake, now. Fortunately, youkai were Reimu's specialty.
"It sure feels great out. There aren't that many evil spirits out during the day, so it was smart to come at night. Even then, though… as romantic as it is at night, I know she would just say 'only weirdos are out at this hour.'..."
"Did you just call me a weirdo?" A voice echoed out through the darkness. The scarlet mist made an already dark night almost pitch-black, so Reimu didn't see the speaker.
"...Who are you?"
"Wh- You were just shooting at me! Are you night-blind?"
Reimu sort of laughed nervously. She, being human, was night-blind, in fact she didn't even notice that she'd been shooting at someone. When she had an incident to solve, she almost became a youkai-hunting machine, floating through them and putting them down like she was mowing a lawn with a scythe. If the speaker was a youkai, Reimu wasn't gonna feel bad about shooting at them indiscriminately, and if they were a human, maybe they shouldn't be getting in her way!
"Humans can't see very well in the dark."
"Oh… But I feel like I've seen people who only work at night!"
Ah. Reimu could guess who she was talking to now. There really wasn't any way that Rumia could've caused this incident, but Rumia was still, at least vaguely, in front of her. "I have no problem with you grabbing them and eating them for dinner."
"Is that so~?" She could practically see the girl-shaped humanovore batting her eyelashes innocently.
"You know, you're in my way."
"Hmm, is the person in front of me the edible kind? Humans that work with Junko usually don't taste that great, but I'm still hungry."
Ugh. Reimu was honestly more annoyed about being associated with Junko than the fact the youkai of the dark was acting like she could actually win the fight. She had no idea how Rumia even knew about her stupid TOUHOU work, that was a secret she kept from basically everyone on the Gensokyo side, and it wasn't like Rumia would be talking to humans. Had Alice been talking? Hell, had Sanae, or someone? Was this girl stalking her?
It didn't matter. She had bigger things to worry about than this little turd. "I'm not good food for you. I'm more like medicine. Medicine that tastes bad."
Without another word, the fight begun. For a second, Reimu was worried it might be a struggle to fight in pitch blackness, but that worry was alleviated when the youkai of the dark's energy balls ironically lit up the space between them. Reimu easily dodged the blasts, as she was more than experienced in doing so, swerving narrowly past some of them and expertly weaving straight through them otherwise. The youkai shot wave, after wave, after wave, but they were all completely ineffectual against the power of a Hakurei shrine maiden. Reimu's own attacks, a funnel of talismen and needles, tore through the youkai like she was paper, and although Rumia tried to pull out two spell cards of her own in succession, there was really no competition between the two. An ofuda talisman that Reimu flung through the air was the final nail in the coffin, landing squarely on the youkai's forehead and then beginning to sizzle as she yelped in pain, fleeing into a bubble of darkness and flying off completely randomly, back into the dark.
"Of course, you wouldn't know good medicine from bad without tasting it." Reimu felt like a badass getting to say that. Finally, the Hakurei shrine maiden was actually back.
o0o
"Geez, hurry up! You're a boy, aren't you?"
Shinji was getting tired of Misato repeating that.
Honestly, he was getting tired of Misato's orders as a whole. The two had walked all the way up the stairs to the Hakurei shrine, which made it the third time tonight that Shinji'd climbed up its massive staircase. When they'd walked straight through the shrine and came out the other side, it honestly felt…
wrong. Like a violation. "Miss Misato-"
"Shinji! Which way did you say she went?" Misato had gone to the back of the shrine, and opened the Shoji that led to its patio, offset from the central door in front of the donation box. She, fully on the patio, was leaning over its railing and trying to look straight up, past the shrine's roof.
"She jumped out and just floated up, I didn't think to look where-"
She'd pulled out a pair of binoculars, the same pair she'd had when she was first picking up Shinji, and started scanning the horizon wordlessly. It was ironic, with Misato's shrine maiden garb she'd almost looked normal here, only to mess up the aesthetic once again with the overly-modern binoculars.
"Miss Misato? Why exactly are we here?"
"To help Reimu, Shinji. I thought you'd be all for it, eh? Remember how you saved the day- uh…"
Shinji chose not to dwell on that day. "I mean, I guess, but… does she need our help?"
Misato sighed, putting down the binoculars in apparent defeat. "Shinji, we force a lot more responsibility on you and Reimu than we probably should, but that isn't because we want to. TOUHOU helps however it can, and that includes letting you two be kids whenever we can. Reimu got the wrong idea from all this, and thinks it's her job to go off solving problems, for Gensokyo and for TOUHOU both, whenever possible."
"Wait… you don't know what's causing this red mist, do you? This isn't like an angel attack, is it?"
"It almost definitely isn't, but the thing is we don't know! Reimu has no idea what she's getting into, so she definitely shouldn't be doing it alone-" Misato's eyes narrowed as she noticed something in the distance. She took out the binoculars again and focused on a patch of sky she'd only grazed before. She audibly gasped at something which prompted Shinji to join her on the railing.
It was hard to see without the binoculars, but far in the distance, a series of faint flashes of light were blinking in and out of existence. It was so far away that it looked as if it could've been streaks of lightning, but the flashes were far too regular. At any rate, Misato's reaction made it obvious that the little flashes were anything but natural. "She's gone in the direction of the misty lake! I knew it, come on!"
The two descended into Reimu's backyard, and then ran off, Misato in the lead, into the forest.
o0o
It was morning, now, apparently Reimu had either been flying for a while or tossing and turning for a lot longer than she'd thought. Of course, you couldn't see the sunrise over the smokey red mist, but nonetheless the sky was still slowly brightening.
Honestly, it was a shame that the mist was blotting out the sun, because it was also doing a really good job at shading its endless summer heat. This was the first time Reimu could fly through the area without ending up soaked through in sweat in… years, maybe. She hummed as she found herself flying over the misty lake. Maybe, once she found the source of the scarlet mist, she could make a deal with them. One day of smoke a week to keep Gensokyo cool-
"AH!" The space directly in front of her lit up with giant energy-darts which Reimu just barely managed to weave around. She hadn't even realized she was under attack, but this time she didn't have the excuse of being physically unable to see her enemy. Nervously, Reimu looked down below her, but she couldn't see anything but the expanse of the misty lake, almost serene. And then, a second burst of the spearhead-shaped darts flew out, forcing her to weave again. Someone was attacking her! Blindly, she started firing her own needles into the water, after which a youkai popped her head out.
"Shrine maiden… are you going to stop that mist?" The speaker, who looked more like a meek little girl swimming for fun than the source of those high-speed energy bullets, sounded absolutely terrified to even face her. Surely, this couldn't be the source of those attacks.
"Sure am, although it'd be a lot easier if your friends down there stopped shooting at me. Could you make them cut it out?"
"Ah… that was me." The girl seemed almost embarrassed by it, but as she rose out of the water it became clear that she wasn't just a girl swimming. She had ears that looked like the fins of a fish, and, just barely under the surface, it was obvious that she had a tail. She was a mermaid-youkai! "I can't let you stop the scarlet mist, if it blots out the summer sun the misty lake might actually cool down! For the last fifteen years, it's just gotten hotter and hotter, and now all the fairies have left!"
Reimu sighed. She knew that it wasn't an option for Gensokyo to go without a sun, even if Japan's eternal summer felt just as bad at times. Not to mention what would happen when the outside world lost their sun. "We need a sun, even if it hasn't been kind lately. If you won't let me pass peacefully, I'll have to pass through by force, and that isn't a fight I think you'll win."
"I have to try. In the name of the misty lake being cold again, I, Wakasagihime, will do anything I can to stop you!"
Reimu didn't feel as great as fighting the clearly terrified mermaid as she had about fighting Rumia. It wasn't as fun fighting people who thought they had no other options. Nonetheless, the fight began.
Wakasagihime's attacks were faster than they were strong, although they were definitely fast. The patterns that her danmaku took, swirling like whirlpools and flicking towards her like, and amplified by, the powerful waves of the mermaid girl's tail. Her attacker's danmaku pushed the limits of the human eye to respond.
And yet, when it came to a Hakurei shrine maiden, the human eye wasn't a limit. To Reimu, these were the danmaku of someone unused to fighting, and they were absolutely lousy with gaps that she could practically float through. As she flung the ofuda at the fish-woman, she still didn't feel really good about it, but at least the job was done.
"Here I thought that mermaids liked to keep to themselves. Welp, everyone's a critic."
And the Shrine maiden flew off. On the other side of the lake, quietly sitting on a tidal island even after clouds of scarlet mist poured out of its interior, was a western-style mansion. The Scarlet Devil Mansion, which would be her next stop.
o0o
"What now?"
Misato didn't know 'what now'.
Despite being on foot and chasing a girl who could fly, their pursuit of Reimu hadn't actually been that bad. The two of them had managed to get through the forest of magic unmolested, and were now standing at the eastern edge of the misty lake.
The lake which they'd just watched Reimu fly straight over, into the thick mist. Not only would they not be able to track her further, they didn't even know where she'd be going past the lake. Maybe they shouldn't have followed her so closely...
And geez, Misato could use a drink. She'd had a bit of a one-woman party last night and was finally suffering the hangover for it. Hair of the dog that bit you and all, but where was she gonna get a drink out here? Trying to suppress the ache, she pushed a palm into her head, and then when Shinji noticed she played it off as wiping away her hair. "Isn't it obvious? We go around!"
"Miss Misato-"
"Yeah, what is it?" She said it as saccharinely as possible, for two reasons. One, so Shinji would feel bad about inevitably asking to go home, and two, to try and telegraph 'we're having fun, this is an adventure!' to the boy.
Surprisingly, he didn't balk, although it took him long enough to collect himself that they'd already started walking along the lake's edge. "Why am I here? You said this would be dangerous for Hakurei, right? Won't it be even more dangerous for me?"
…Shit, he was right, wasn't he? Agh, she didn't even realize he'd been following her against his will! "The thing is…" lie, lie, think of a lie, "The reason it's dangerous for Reimu is because she's alone! The whole solving incidents idea isn't bad on paper… honestly, it's pretty similar to how you guys fight off the angels. We just can't have you guys doing it alone. You probably should have started learning the basics of Gensokyo sooner rather than later, to boot."
"Why?"
"The angels are deeply linked with whatever… 'alchemy'," Misato really didn't want to call it magic, "that makes Gensokyo tick, and that same… field of science is what makes the Oni work the way they do. Because of that, not only is it good for you to get the basics of how things work out here, it's also a good idea to get you used to it, in case angels start manifesting in Gensokyo." That last part was a bit of an oversimplification. If angels started manifesting within Gensokyo, TOUHOU would probably still send the pilots to fight… but you can't exactly fit an 80-meter tall Oni through the doors of the Hakurei shrine. They'd be armed with basic firearms and the prayer of every single staff member that the angel they'd be facing was child-sized.
Shinji made some vague noise of agreement, and seemed to absorb the information as they walked along the lake's shoreline. It was a big lake, and it reminded one of Lake Ashi, although it was probably less than half its size. Then again, it could've been double the size of Lake Ashi for all they knew; They were in a world of mist, and couldn't even see the sun because of the scarlet mist on top of it. There was really no way to tell how far they'd gone.
Of course, though, when a burst of rainbow crystals shot through the fog like stray bullets, their source might be a good place to start.
o0o
Reimu stretched out her arms, trying to get the slight soreness out of her muscles. Fighting the annoying door guard wasn't very interesting, but it still wasn't easy to fight a well-rounded martial artist. Nonetheless, she was a Hakurei shrine maiden, so she'd elegantly beaten 'Hong Meiling' over the head until she'd yielded, and forced her to guide Reimu into the sprawling mansion. She'd brought her to what she'd assured Reimu was her mistress's quarters.
"So, why do you even work for vampires anyways? You almost seem like a human-" And, when Reimu turned behind her, the Chinese girl was gone. Figures.
"Ah, well." She flung open the doors, and immediately realized she'd been tricked. The only thing that was in front of her was an impossibly vast library which obviously stretched far above where the roof should have been. Probably, at least. The library was also horribly lit, so it was hard to tell if the library even was endless, or if it was just so totally dark that it had become formless.
Walking into the library was like walking into a canyon, and even after Reimu took flight again, the infinite corridors of bookshelves showed no sign of giving way to a wall or even a clearing. Although it was only with half a mind, Reimu still noticed that the small army of fairies that challenged her even here were being garnished with magical, almost living books, which autonomously blasted waves of energy and laser beams that almost managed to pin her several times in succession. It was almost a relief when a demon librarian tried to stand in her path, because at least she did it alone, but when the devil fell Reimu was back to the chaotic assault of blasting energy. Wasn't this supposed to be a library?
"You! The red-white one! No rampaging in my study!"
Eh? She wasn't the one doing the rampaging. Still, the voice shocked her. Maybe Meiling hadn't been lying, and her master really was in the library. "Your study? Wait… red-white?"
"The tombs in this library are worth more than your shrine makes in a hundred years! There is no library this grand in even the human world."
After most of the libraries were flooded after Second Impact, sure. Although… "My shrine doesn't get that many visitors."
The purple girl in front of her- was she wearing pyjamas?- looked around sheepishly, like she had to confirm her books were still there. "Oh. I guess they wouldn't be worth that much, then… um…"
"They'd be worth more if you could actually read them. How can you see anything when it's this dark in here?"
"I'm not night-blind, unlike you."
"I keep telling people I'm not… um, are you the owner of this mansion?"
"What do you need from the mistress?" It seems like Pyjama girl wasn't the owner of the mansion.
"There's too much mist outside. It's becoming a problem."
"Oh. Then I absolutely can't let you see the mistress."
She wasn't the source of the smoke, either. Reimu was sort of still disappointed, the whole incident-solving thing was a lot more work than she remembered. Still, though, she was having a blast. "I won't let you stop me!"
"By the way, who are you?"
It didn't matter who Reimu was, except for the person who'd kick this girl's ass to get past her. And, almost immediately, she did. The girl's danmakus weren't easy at all, of course. She was a magician, like Alice, but a magician experienced in the five phases of Feng Shui, as well as of the sun and moon, and her attacks hit like a truck. An immediate barrage of energy beams accompanied by strobing laser beams, an attack that Reimu immediately had to weave through. The beams came in two separate waves, almost covering the entirety of where Reimu could even go, and even the tiny gaps the Shrine Maiden could manage to fly through were covered by separate, following balls of energy. It was a masterfully-executed danmaku hell.
And then, the spell cards came.
Narrow lasers that sought her out and pinned her into an extremely thin column in which she could move. Burning fires she, once again, had to jump through the narrowest gaps within, with the heat singing the edges of her dress. The fire quickly became great masses of earth energy, almost seeming like crashing boulders as the massive, yellow balls fell into her like a landslide. And then, as the fire begat the earth, the girl's next spell mixed them together into a brutal flow of both elements that flowed like lava. A mixture of fire in wood, like a forest fire perhaps made from that lava flow, and a second flow, this time of toxic mercury, arced across the library straight at Reimu, and she could only wonder… "How the hell is this library still intact if fights like this happen every time there's an intruder?"
And then, just like that, just as the magician's terrifying powers hit a new height in front of her, they petered out. When the smoke and fumes cleared, the girl in pyjamas was hovering there, covered in ofuda that Reimu had thrown, seemingly unaffected by them. But not unaffected by her own attacks, as she was coughing up a storm.
"Hack- HAAAACK, Koakuma- Koakuma… Chosenasago… get the Chosenasago…" She quite literally fell out of the sky, falling into a coughing fit as the demon librarian rushed through the halls with a yell of "Miss Patchouli!"
"Hey!" Reimu called down. If she'd been stuck here, the least she could do was get something out of it. The magician girl, 'Patchouli', apparently, looked up at her with a bit of honest-to-god fear in her eyes. "Why does this mansion look this big from above?"
"There's… someone in this mansion who likes to mess with time and space." Was her response between fits of coughing. Reimu just flew ahead, finding a way out of the library before too long.
Only to immediately walk into another flurry of energy blasts. There was a veritable army of fairy maids in the main hall of the mansion, all loosing blasts of energy, or knives, or darts, or apparently whatever they could get their hands on, straight at her. It was the kind of situation that Reimu couldn't actually describe how she overcame, it was just one of those times when she managed to do it without thinking, weaving through the missiles without even thinking about it, and having far too many near-misses when it came to the missiles curving just around her. It'd have been nice to have a minute of respite after Patchouli's torrential magical downpours, but Reimu was the Hakurei Shrine Maiden. And the Hakurei Shrine Maiden didn't need respite when there were incidents to solve.
One of the indestinct maids that Reimu didn't really separate in her mind from the horde had managed to get away, though, and now Reimu was in pursuit, weaving through energy blasts that lit up the hall like they were miniature suns. To Reimu, they were nothing.
And then, the maid slipped away, behind the legs of another. Another maid, who was standing right in her path, completely nonplussed. "You humans are getting in the way of my cleaning again."
Reimu let out a breath. "You don't seem like the mistress of the mansion."
"What are you supposed to be, a guest of the mistress?"
Reimu got real quiet at that. She knew, and she was pretty sure the head maid knew, that she was here to fully stop the mistress. She then proceeded to fail to think of an excuse.
"You may not pass. The mistress rarely meets with people, especially ones who open the door for myriad humans to rampage around her mansion."
"Why do you keep saying myriad humans? It's just me. You have a library right there, maybe you should study your grammar more." The maid stared blankly at her for a moment, judging her. Reimu could already feel the fight coming on, and she was giddy to just get it started by now, so she continued. "So, are you the one spreading the mist for your master? It's a nuisance either way, so I'll have to ask you to stop before even more humans notice."
"My mistress prefers the dark. Daylight is bothersome, especially when summer never ends."
"Not everyone can get used to the dark. Would you stop it?"
"Ask the mistress yourself."
"Call her here and I will." The two had been slowly closing the gap between them as they had been exchanging barbs, to the point they were almost up in eachother's faces.
"Why would I place the mistress in danger?"
"Will she come if I cause trouble here?"
"You've caused trouble enough. Even so, you won't be meeting my mistress. I, Sakuya Izayoi, can stall you all I need to by stopping time itself."
That was all she said before she began her assault. Somehow, the missiles from a small army of fairy maids were nothing compared to what a single woman could muster, with a massive barrage of knives that might as well have blotted out the sky, were they not inside. Somehow, even though Sakuya was only attacking with one type of weapon, and a physical weapon rather than pure energy at that, it was almost worse that way.
Illusion Phantom - "Jack the Ludo Bile"
Reimu could see the endless barrage as it came, but it was still endless, with her weaving between the thrown knives close enough to literally see her reflection in them as they passed. She definitely felt one hit her somewhere, but she could only hope it had just grazed her as she carried on.
Illusion World - "The World!"
And that was before the maid started stopping time. She wasn't kidding, she could literally stop it. It was hell to fight her, and Reimu's exhilaration to fight an opponent like this was starting to give away to a little bit of worry. After all, if this woman was only the servant to the actual cause of the scarlet mist, would she even be able to defeat her? It'd been a while since she'd fought like this, and as she started to tire just a bit she wondered if she hadn't been too gung-ho.
Maid Secret Skill - "Killing Doll!"
Oh god, there was more? Reimu knew this had to be the end, but the maid's spell cards were something else. Her worry started to compound, and then she saw the maid prepare yet another round of those infernal knives, prepared to fling straight towards-
BANG!
That wasn't a knife. That wasn't a spell card. That wasn't even from Sakuya at all. In an instant, the energy completely drained from the room, as the Shrine Maiden and the Maid were frozen in their tracks by the gunshot that had rang through the room. In a moment, the fight was over.
Both of them could dodge a gunshot easily… when they were focused on it. But in danmaku, single bullets were supposed to be parts of a greater whole, and there was nothing beautiful from the bullet of a gun. It was efficient, unfairly quick, and hideously ugly. It didn't hit you, it clawed through you like a beast, and it was extremely poor sportsmanship. In the split second after the shot, the two just stared at eachother, wide-eyed, desperately scanning to figure out which of them had brought in a weapon from the outside world like that. Until, Sakuya reached up unconsciously, grabbed at her frilled headband, felt something, and took it off to look at it. Squarely in the middle, in a way that could've ripped straight through her head if it was just a little lower, was a bullet hole. She dropped it like it was on fire.
Reimu knew she wasn't the one with the gun, so in fear, her eyes shot behind her. Maybe 5 meters behind her, in that stupid fake shrine maiden outfit, was Misato. One hand holding Shinji like she'd been dragging him, and the other holding a pistol almost triumphantly. Hong Meiling was with them too, but she was standing away from the two humans in terror, in terror like she truly hadn't expected Misato to pull a gun.
It was Misato who finally broke the shocked silence. "Get away from Reimu, and go make your master stop the smoke. If she refuses, I'll tell her myself."
Sakuya Izayoi, the cool-headed time-stopping head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, second only to her master herself, was gone. In her place, Sakuya, the girl who was closer in age to Shinji than Misato, ran off. Meiling covered the distance to run with her. Since the fairy maids had long since cleared the hall, the three humans, the three TOUHOU staff, were left with just eachother. Shinji went to wave, but when Reimu met his eyes, he stopped himself. He stopped himself, because Reimu looked absolutely furious in a way he'd truly never seen, even when she was scolding him for piloting the Oni. Then, she locked eyes with Misato
"What are you doing here?"
The venom in her voice made Misato's confident expression shatter immediately. "Wh- I'm here to protect you! You can't just go running off like this."
"I- Shinji ran away-" The bold, strong Hakurei Shrine Maiden who was going toe-to-toe with magicians and time-stopping maids was gone too. In her place was just Reimu Hakurei.
"And ran around Tokyo for a day before spending the night safely with you! He didn't nearly get killed by having knives thrown at him! What do you think you're doing?"
"Danmaku! Solving an incident! Things I did perfectly fine alone for years-"
"You've been doing this for years? You aren't even an adult yet, but you were doing this stuff as a kid?"
"It's my job! I'm the Hakurei Shrine Maiden-"
"You shouldn't have a job like this at your age-"
"THEN WHAT'S PILOTING THE ONI, A HOBBY? You make Shinji pilot it, and he's younger than I am!" Reimu seemed to notice Shinji's presence again. "Why did you even bring him here? He could've gotten killed! Hell, you could've gotten killed, you'll probably go on everyone's shit list for bringing a gun here! I could've handled this, but you have this insistence of just showing up out of the blue and messing everything up, when everything's just fine here without you! Shouldn't you be obsessing over those damn Lunarian angels?"
Misato went pale, and had frozen completely. Shinji was still just standing there. Finally, as the silence became deafening, he spoke, as shakily as if he'd just been in a fight himself. "Hakurei, I came to help you. We both did, because Misato thought this would be dangerous and we just wanted to help-"
"It's not your jobs to help. Either of you. You shouldn't even be here, this... this is all just wrong. You two should get back to the Human side, or else-"
"Or else you might get eaten~"
The mistress of the house was an unnaturally blue-haired child. If you couldn't tell that from her shrill voice, meeting the girl in person definitely did. She was shorter than any of them... although to Shinji's annoyance the girl was just barely shorter than he was. Nonetheless, the girl absolutely exuded the air of nobility, like she was the child of a lord. To her left and right, flanking her like guards, Meiling and Sakuya didn't look nearly as smug as she did. "Now, you must be the legendary Hakurei Shrine Maiden… and her brother and mother?" She obviously hadn't registered Shinji and Misato's existence until she'd already started talking. Her eyes were wholly on Reimu. She seemed excited to meet her. "I never would have expected you to pull out a gun, or to attempt to kill my head maid like that, but I suppose I have to applaud the resourcefulness, even if your tact leaves something to be desired."
"It wasn't me, I would never-"
"It was me. Misato Katsuragi, TOUHOU. I have to ask that you refrain from attacking my pilot, or from blotting out the sun. Whatever you want to do in Gensokyo is your business, but we can't have it affecting Tokyo-3, especially when the entire region is in an active war with the angels."
Remilia did a bad job at hiding her disappointment. "But… this… Listen, I don't know who you are- well, you may have just told me your name, but- ahh… uu…" It was like a switch was flicked, and her haughtiness and charisma had fallen apart like a pane of stained glass getting a brick thrown through it. Shinji and Reimu, both independently, couldn't help but notice the girl's gaze constantly flicking between Misato's face and the gun she was still holding. "Y-your human weapons have no effect on me!" She didn't sound very sure. Even if they didn't, a bullet wound would probably still hurt, and no girl that was Remilia's apparent age would want to be shot. "And this is my mansion! You three humans should leave immediately!"
"We'll be happy to, once we are assured, with evidence, that you will discontinue the production of the scarlet mist that is blotting out the sun."
Remilia's gaze darted to Reimu's, almost begging her to speak up, but Reimu was just staring at the floor with the scarlet blush of embarrassment consuming her face. The Shrine Maiden looked like a child who'd been caught smoking. As a last-ditch attempt, she met Shinji's eyes. Shinji had nothing to say, either. None of them did.
"Fine…"
"We'll be waiting here until we have evidence of you discontinuing."
o0o
They'd waited for at least an hour, joining the little vampire at her mansion's very top as she concretely displayed the act of stopping the mist, and then they'd waited until the full moon in front of them slowly started to whiten again. It would take a couple weeks for the scarlet mist to dissipate, but it wasn't very likely that Remilia would be making any more. The whole time, Reimu looked like a schoolchild who's mom was making her do something when she'd rather be anywhere else.
Shinji didn't really say anything for the whole process. Everyone, safe an annoyed Remilia and a Misato with an unreadable expression, didn't really know what to do with themselves while they waited, at that: Sakuya had left to do the cleaning before long, obviously being nervous about standing anywhere near Misato, while Meiling, despite being taller than her, had apparently also been intimidated enough to not leave Remilia's side for even a moment. Apparently, Meiling was a youkai, although she didn't look it, and Remilia was a vampire of all things, and yet a single gun had still been enough to make everyone seem all-too-human.
He didn't remember much of the return journey. Reimu, likely to guard them through Gensokyo on their way back, had forgone flying in favour of walking with them, but she also didn't say a single word to either of them. Misato seemed happy to follow suit, so the walk back to the shrine was long, boring, and quiet. It had also apparently been an entire day, so they had the luck to be walking back in the middle of the night, the moon still being blotted out by the barely-dissipating mist. When the two of them got home, after passing through the Hakurei Shrine and the Hakurei barrier without even a word, Misato mumbled something about getting a drink, and Shinji lied in bed. Ironically enough, he remembered only then that today was the usual day that he and Sanae hung out around the shrine, and he checked his phone.
Sanae had messaged him over twenty times, wondering where he'd gone, before she'd met with Alice who'd explained the situation vaguely. Apparently the two of them had hung out for a while, and had a nice time, but Sanae's last message before going home had been nothing but gushing about how lucky Shinji had been to be solving an incident, and how fun it must be.
He turned the phone off, an indescribable feeling bubbling up as he stared up at his ceiling, not thinking much of anything.