Chapter Text
Clear blue skies and a beautiful Sun. These are undoubtedly of a typical summer day in the ultimate fantasy land of Gensokyo.
You could argue such perfectly pleasant weather should be considered the norm, and typically, days that deviate via storm or snow or UFO are outliers. There's something to be said about "fantasy" and the extreme effect it produces in the local climate. The extraordinary, however, is separate from the atypical in a place like this, and despite the impression the Gensokyo Chronicles or a certain Tengu's newspaper may give you, those situations designated as “Incidents” are decidedly not the of the typical Gensokyo day.
Not even extraordinary (which here may as well be ordinary) weather can compare when magical bullets may rain down in greater amounts than any precipitation.
Of course, even then the so-called bullet hell isn’t exclusive to atypical days.
“MARISA!!!”
Nor are explosions, both of the fiery and verbal kind.
Case and point, the situation taking place just outside the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Or rather, the situation which had just escaped the interior of the Scarlet Devil Mansion via an explosive exit and a once loyally sturdy window, now reduced to atomized glass shards and torn drapes.
“Always a pleasure, Patchouli!”
Darting through the shattered and melted Master Spark victim is a blonde figure adorned in white and black and a big recognizable hat. Starlight burns in her wake, giving the broomstick under her something like an iridescent contrail, and several books under the arm not holding tight to the broom’s handle give her pursuer something like an excuse to beat her half to death.
“GET BACK HERE YOU DAMN–!!!”
Assuming the pale and purple and white figure right on her multicolored trail can keep up. It’s looking unlikely though. The one following has shot themselves in the foot in their anger.
“No one likes a sore loser, ze~☆”
These two are Kirisame Marisa and Patchouli Knowledge, of course. Also undoubtedly of a typical day, though not every day, is the situation playing out right now.
The Ordinary Magician has performed yet another heist from the Unmoving Great Library’s great library. And yet another attempt to stop Marisa has been thwarted at the last possible second by Patchouli’s lacking physical health.
This time specifically, it hits her as her shouting becomes loud enough to echo across the Misty Lake.
“Haack–!!”
Patchouli falls from the sky, a harsh coughing fit forcing her descent to the lake’s shore.
Curse this… frail constitution…!!
Her entire body shudders and heaves. It’s only decades of experience that allows her to hit the ground softly, rather than in a crash. Still, the feeling isn’t pleasant—neither the landing, nor the hot rage, frustration, and embarrassment twisting and ripping from gut to chest, the sheer humiliation of yet another unfair failure burning at the corners of her eyes.
Damn it! Damn her!! Damn it all!!!
It’s almost more humiliating, but she forces herself to look up and over the lake at the swiftly departing thief. If nothing else can be gained from this, then at least the data may serve her in the future. At least this terrible sensation can fuel her going forward. That is the silver lining she forces herself to accept.
This is the typical outcome, after all. For all her knowledge and magical expertise, she’s bound to the limitation of her body. It helps little that Koakuma cannot put up a fight (though in her defense, not many can against the girl widely considered as Gensokyo’s second strongest human), and Sakuya gave up a long time ago, deeming it an unnecessary effort.
And the less she says about that gatekeeper's effort, or the lack thereof, the better.
That means, when it comes down to it, Patchouli Knowledge is the only one both able and willing to protect her great and unmoving and constantly thieved library.
Just once!
Yes, this is the typical case, but that doesn’t mean she accepts it. That doesn’t mean she’s at all fine letting her precious collection diminish via the actions of a single upstart Magician.
Just one time, I want to—
And so, even as she fails once again, Patchouli Knowledge looks up, through hot tears and a violent coughing staining her hand with specks of blood… and in the process, she just so happens to catch sight of something remarkably atypical within a situation which she had reluctantly acknowledged as par for the course.
“Huh?”
A short distance in front of the fleeing Marisa is what can only be called a rip.
Not quite a gap, but a rip straight through reality. Though they’re certainly similar.
Marisa hadn’t seemed to notice it. Having slowed down somewhat after Patchouli’s abrupt descent, her attention then seemed to go toward something below her on the Misty Lake’s surface.
Before Patchouli can spot the cause for Marisa’s distraction, however, the rip suddenly bulges. Then, something or more like someone rockets from within, slamming past Marisa herself and spinning the Ordinary Magician around like a tornado.
“Whoa!”
Marisa stops unwanted spin by yanking on her broomstick with both hands, though the swirls in her eyes show that it wasn’t without some disorientation.
Wait, both hands?
The implications of this are not available for recognition yet, as the unidentified something or someone (not quite an Undefined Fantastic Object, probably) crashes into the lake.
FWOOOOOOOSH!!!
And expectantly, given the angle and velocity at which it or they were traveling, an utterly massive splash is kicked up from the impact. As is the source of Marisa’s distraction from earlier.
“What the-!!” Is all Marisa manages, before a chunk of ice twice her size smashes into her and knocks her off her broomstick.
Cirno, who was relaxing on that chunk of ice in the middle of the lake and had somehow rode atop it like a snowboard when it was kicked up, staggers back in the air from the point of ice/human impact.
“Um…” Though not nearly as idiotic as most make her out to be, it is still a rare moment of clarity that has the ice fairy staring in disbelief between the broomstick floating empty in the air and the unconscious form of Marisa floating empty-headed on the lake’s surface. “...does that count as a win?”
“Such an odd turnabout.”
“Gah!!”
Having gathered herself and forced her magic to fill in the gaps physically, Patchouli Knowledge floats next to the puzzled Cirno with an equal puzzlement of her own. Though she tries her best not to show that to the now-fearful looking fairy.
“If not exactly a win, you may still consider this a joint effort victory.”
Patchouli says, forcing a poised image unreflective of her weakened status of approximately a minute ago. She surreptitiously wipes her bloody palm on the back of her dress. Of all times to not have a handkerchief…
“Good work, Cirno.”
“You know my name?!”
“Your’e aware of my name, are you not?” Patchouli gives her an unimpressed look. “Of course I know it.”
Cirno frowns. “You’ve never called me by it though…”
“We’ve crossed paths a scant number of times, no? You were never worth it before.”
“Haah?? But I’m the strongest!!”
Patchouli scoffs, her gaze wandering to the water below. “Were you not just questioning your own victory? Is lacking confidence fit for the so-called– ah is that it?”
As if on cue, the surface of the lake is broken once more. This time, it’s from something leaving the water, specifically a dome of semi-translucent green energy. More importantly though is the humanoid figure curled up inside the dome.
Sphere. Patchouli corrects herself, as the sphere rises fully out of the water. Quite the unique barrier spell. I want it.
“What is that?” Cirno blinks. “It’s leaving…? Oh, it stopped.”
Indeed, the glowing green sphere beelined for the shore out of nowhere, then abruptly disappeared, revealing…
“A young woman. The other half of your joint effort, it seems.” Patchouli casts a spell to turn the air in front of her into something like a lens. Then, she squints. “Hmm. Remi doesn’t have an older sister, but that certainly looks like a grown-up Flandre from here… curious.”
“Flandre helped me beat- um, distracted Marisa so I could beat her?”
For an idiot fairy, she’s strangely cognizant. And a bit wishy-washy.
“That’s Lady Flandre to you, assuming you don’t wish Remi’s wrath. Also, no, that's someone else.” Patchouli blinks. “Is that…? She has my books.”
The instinctive possessiveness at the sight of her books in another’s possession is easily squashed. This new arrival has no reason to bear her ire, and in fact, Patchouli recognizes that she owes this young woman a favor at minimum.
As well as the bemused Fairy of Ice still floating beside her, if only for bestowing on their resident and recurrent book thief a well-deserved (if unintentional) physical retribution where Patchouli herself could not.
Patchouli allows the spell to fade, just as the young woman on the shore heaves rainbow colored vomit. She glances to the side.
Speaking of floating nearby…
“Cirno, grab Marisa’s broomstick.”
“Hah? Don’t boss me around! ” Cirno gives her a suitably irate look. “I’m the strongest you know! Just look at Marisa down there!”
The urge to smack the mouthy fairy around certainly exists, but Patchouli squashes that as well. This situation is far too atypically favorable to waste.
“You misunderstand. That broomstick is a spoil of war, and I do believe you and your new friend over on the shore have joint custody of it.” Patchouli then gestures at Gensokyo’s newest resident just in case Cirno somehow misunderstood. “I wish to acquire it from you. Retrieve it, so we may retreat to my chamber in the Mansion and-" She coughs into her hand. Not out of malice or to hint at a double meaning to her words, but literally because she needed to. Damn that Marisa. "...converse. So all of us may converse.”
“Spoils… the Mansion…” Cirno is understandably torn, her own desire warring with a completely warranted caution toward the Scarlet Devil Mansion and the maid that all fairies fear instinctively.
Well, that last part might not be true, but there are certainly enough horror stories circulated among fairykind to simmer to establish a sort of instinctive uneasiness.
So, to sweeten the pot, “Additionally, I will have Sakuya provide a more than sufficient number of snacks and drinks for our meeting.”
However, the thought of said horror story serving her in particular is enough for Cirno to push aside that uneasiness.
“You still have a taste for chocolate ice cream, yes?”
Patchouli settles the matter decisively, having a passing memory of the ice fairy enjoying such a treat at one of the numerous Hakurei-hosted post-Incident celebrations. The treat in question being both chocolate and ice cream is beyond enough to go along with Patchouli’s whims.
“Lead with that next time!” Cirno cheers, darting off immediately. As if with a mind of its own, Marisa’s broomstick makes a passing attempt to avoid her, but it ultimately fails to avoid capture.
It only takes another moment to catch up with Patchouli, who herself is already descending upon one of her new favorite Gensokyo residents.
Well, soon to be resident. She’d only just arrived, after all.
-
Ugh… K-brot and ersatz coffee taste just as bad coming up as they did going down.
Tanya scoops up some water and uses it to rinse her mouth, then spits leaving behind only a disgusted grimace and a sense of regret at her poor breakfast selection.
Calling it a “selection” implies some measure of choice, however, and given the lacking rations and rapidly deteriorating situation on the frontlines, she didn’t have even the illusion of one.
…and why was it rainbow colored?
That shouldn’t be possible. Fairy and Pixie were only ever semi-mocking, semi-referential callsigns. Not that she would know if fairies or pixies or any other sort of mythological humanoid would vomit rainbows.
It’s never quite been her priority, per se, and that’s leaving out the fact that any sort of priority on research in that vein could earn her any number of much worse callsigns. Imagine if she were called, say, Witch. Or maybe even Magician.
Actually, that last one isn’t so bad.
Tanya takes another moment to catch her breath, carefully avoiding any heaving or relapses.
Now, where the hell am I?
The last location the Empire’s favorite supermage could remember being in exhibited exactly none of the characteristics of her current location. For one thing, it was snowing at night and surrounded by land only.
This place is warm and sunny, and she’d crash landed in a lake. Very different.
Not to mention the air. It tastes weird, like the buzz in the back of her throat when scraping past one of… well, she doesn’t know the long-since dead girl’s name, but the feeling of this place “tastes” to her innate sixth sense like a godly or perhaps ungodly amount of magical energy.
Tanya forces herself to stand, a brief flare of magical energy alleviating the shakiness in her legs. She takes a step back from the shore then, and it’s here that she notices a few relevant details.
First, she managed to cast her active barrier, flight, and that mild enhancement. This isn’t strange on the surface, until one considers that her Type 95 and Type 97 had, for some reason she’s having trouble remembering right now, reacted with one another and, for lack of a better term, imploded.
That’s probably how she ended up here, actually. Wherever here happens to be.
Second, upon stepping away from the shore, her foot kicked against something. Looking down tells her that this something is one of several large, thick, and objectively arcane-looking books. Like, they’re almost stereotypically fictional in appearance.
That, or Catholic. She’s not sure which she prefers here.
Third, she’s not alone.
“Pardon me. You wouldn’t happen to be from another world, would you?”
Tanya looks up, spotting what she can only describe as a witch, or perhaps a magician, accompanied by a fairy holding a broomstick.
How…?
Rather than a mental shriek or a shout resembling any sort of fury, she’s honestly just resigned at this point.
Tanya sighs, uncharacteristically dismissing her audience and/or the potential threat of their presence. This is just... she just needs a moment, okay?
…how does this shit always happen to me?