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Chapter Text

Luna Child closed the lid of the offering box and hurried back to the edge of the Hakurei Shrine. Climbing over and into the bushes, she hopped down into a small opening where Sunny and Star were waiting eagerly for her return.

“Good work over there! Reimu’s going to be so surprised when she opens the box.” whispered Sunny, excitement clear in her voice, before pausing for a brief second. “Wait... you didn’t get caught, did you? You were there for a while.”

“No, everything was fine” Luna whispered back. “That Kappa device was super awkward to set up, so it took a while. Actually, why do we need one in the first place? Star’s never needed anything like this before.”

“My normal fuses wouldn’t work for this – we need it to go off when she opens the box” Star whispered. Silence fell over the forest as the three fairies watched through the leaves and waited for Reimu to come out. The whole forest seemed to be holding still in anticipation, and as the seconds stretched on to minutes a troubling thought crept into Luna’s mind.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Luna whispered nervously “Reimu always gets really mad when people mess with her offering box. Aren’t you guys worried that she might hunt us down, and then...”

“And let Cirno beat us? No way!” Sunny exclaimed, jumping up briefly before ducking back into the hedge “I heard she was planning something huge for this year’s contest, so we’ve gotta go even bigger! There’s no way we’ll be able to set up something like that before midday!”

“Besides, how will she even find us?” Star followed up, a soothing calm carrying through her voice. “We’ll be gone by the time she’s looking for culprits, and with you and Sunny keeping us hidden she’ll never be able to track us down.”

‘I’m pretty sure she knows where we live.’ Luna thought privately, but she didn’t see any point in sharing. Sunny and Star clearly weren’t going to be convinced, and she didn’t see any deactivation method on the instructions they got with the fancy fuse anyway. ‘I guess it won’t be that much worse than the exploding snowmen, or when we attacked the shrine, right?’

A poised silence once again fell over the surrounding woods, the whole world seemingly awaiting the inevitable blast and whatever fury followed on from it. A nervous energy slowly built in Luna’s stomach as the early morning sun peeked out of the treeline. What if Reimu somehow ended up catching them? What if the device failed to trigger? What if Cirno managed to pull something even better? ’Calm down Luna, you’re worrying too much. Everything’s going to go fine. We’re going to win this year, Reimu will forget all about it in a couple of days like she always does, and nothing’s going to go wrong.’

And so the three fairies waited, patiently, for their hard work to be rewarded...

And waited...

And waited...

...

“When is she going to get out here?” moaned Sunny, clearly tired of waiting for Reimu to emerge. ”Is there any way to make this go any faster? Hm...” she trailed off in thought.

“I’ve got something.” Star replied, pulling out some coins from a pocket and handing them to Luna. “Reimu really likes money, so if we stick some coins in her box it’ll be sure to attract her attention.”

“...I guess I’ll go do that.” sighed Luna, crawling back through the shrubbery. Sneaking over to the offering box, she dropped the coins into the slot and let the sound of metal falling on metal ring through the shrine.

The sound of someone jumping up from their futon immediately echoed back from the shrine, followed quickly by running footsteps. Not wanting to be caught red-handed, Luna dashed back to the bushes and dived down behind them... and straight onto Sunny, who had the unfortunate luck to be hiding just where Luna had jumped. Sunny gave out a yelp of surprise as they collided, and they both fell into a groaning heap on the floor.

Quickly muting any sounds leaving their hiding spot, Luna pushed herself from the ground and turned to Star, who was trying and failing to hide her amusement at the impact. “We can’t all tell exactly where everyone is at all times.” she grumbled, smoothing out her dress “You could show a little sympathy, you know.”

“Yeah, you could have warned me that she was coming!” Sunny added, also picking herself up from the collision and pointing at Star.

“Sorry, sorry” replied Star, still carrying a bit of mirth ”but it’s hard not to laugh. Besides, you aren’t really hurt, are you?”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s the thought that coun-”

KA-BOOM!

“Prank successful!” Sunny cheered, the prior argument all but forgotten in the wake of their victory “Now let’s get going before Reimu comes looking for us... Star? You okay over there?”

“Sunny, can you take a look at Reimu and tell me what she’s doing?” Star asked quietly, a fear Luna didn’t recognize creeping onto her face and words. “Quickly!” she added, cutting off a confused question from Sunny before she could even ask it. As Sunny started bending the light to get a view, Luna was listening intently for what could have spooked Star so badly. Nothing – not even a birdsong in the distance, just an eerie silence that was quickly growing suffocating in Luna’s ears.

“She seems to be just... lying there...” Sunny reported, a trepid confusion lacing her words “Maybe... she’s just gotten so lazy she can’t- Star, where are you going, she’ll see you for sure!”

But Star didn’t listen as she jumped up, taking off into a half flying run towards where Reimu was. Sunny quickly dashed off after her, yelling something about their cover that trailed off as she approached the shrine. Luna jumped after them, a fearful anticipation rising within her as she looked to see what was so wrong.

Sunny standing half way to the shrine, frozen in horrified shock-

Star leaning over Reimu, frantically whispering something and faintly shaking Reimu’s shoulders-

the red of Reimu’s outfit slowly pooling out onto the wooden floor of the shrine-

the faint acrid smell of explosives mixed with a metallic scent that slowly permeated the area-

a steady drip of blood through the floorboardsThis wasn’t supposed to happen why is this happening this was just a prank noone was going to get hurtitwasn’tmeanttogolikethisthiscan’tbehappeningthiscan’tbehappeningthiscan’tbehappeningthiscan’tbehappening

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk stared at the scene in front of her, her mind running in circles as she struggled to comprehend what was happening. Reimu was meant to be untouchable, what was she doing bleeding out on the ground? ‘This has to be some kind of dream.’ Sunny thought, sqeezing her eyes closed and ignoring the roaring in her ears ‘This is some horrible nightmare, and any moment now Luna’s going to wake me up and say we’ve got something to do.’

The sound of retching behind her pulled Sunny out of her trance, the faint smell of vomit forcing her back to reality. Calling back to Luna, Sunny ran over to the shrine and knelt down next to Reimu, inspecting her for any sign of life- ‘Don’t think about the blood don’t think about the blood’ . Despite the soot, torn clothes, and splinters lacing her face Reimu looked almost peaceful, and if it wasn’t for the blood and complete lack of movement Sunny could almost be fooled into thinking she’d just fallen asleep – that and the chunk of wood protroding from her gut.

“Star? Is Reimu okay?” asked Luna, her voice so weak it would have been hard to hear had Sunny not been listening for any sign of life around her. Sunny looked up to Star, silently hoping for some kind of miracle – something like “Yes of course she’s fine, and this is going to win me the pranking contest for sure!”, but deep down she knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Star didn’t seem to notice Luna’s question at first, instead continuing to stare down vacently at Reimu, but after a few seconds she recovered from her trance and looked up at Sunny and Luna. “I-I don’t know.” she replied, still wearing a look of blank shock. “I can sense something from her, but it’s very weak...”

“What are we going to do now, Sunny?” Luna asked, bringing a whole new set questions to Sunny’s mind. ‘What are we going to do now? Reimu’s hurt – we’ve got to do something. But how do humans get well? Can humans recover from- no, of course she can. She has to, right?’ The air felt cold and clammy – or was that just her?

“We should be leaving – something’s coming!” whispered Star, interrupting Sunny’s thoughts. Looking over at a patch of the trees with fear, she grabbed onto Reimu’s sholders and tried to pull her up. “Quick, help me pick up Reimu and get out of here!”

Sunny quickly grabbed onto Reimu’s legs - ignoring the slight stickiness she felt – and together, her and Star hoisted Reimu off the ground. She immediatly started bending the light away from them as they ran as fast as they could into the woods, Luna following along behind. As they left the courtyard of the shrine, another question wormed it’s way into Sunny’s mind.

‘What have we done?’

________________________________________________________________________________

Cirno marched confidently through the woods surrounding the Hakurei Shrine, ready to settle who was the storngest prankster once and for all! While yes, the Three Fairies of Light would undoubtedly pose some challenge – they were some of the best in Gensokyo, after all – but there was no way they’d beat what she’d done with the fishermen’s boats. ‘This one’s going to be in the bag! They’ll have to admit that I’m the strongest when they hear about how I froze the entire pier solid right as the fishermen where about to set off, and when Eternity wakes up and Lily finishes her yearly rounds, they’ll all be hearing about how I’m the the bestest, most awesome fairy in all of Gensokyo!’

“Umm... Cirno? I think we’ve walked past this tree before.” Daiyousei called out from behind Cirno, interrupting her chain of thought. “Yeah, I think our ‘Strongest Navigator’ might be a little lost.” added Clownpiece, sounding a little irritated at their lack of progress.

“Hey, I know exactly how to get to their house!” exclaimed Cirno, ignoring the slight voice in her mind telling her that that tree did, in fact, look rather familiar. “All these trees just look the same, so of course you might think we’ve passed one before.”

“Really?” said Clownpiece, a mischievious grin creeping onto her face. “Then which do we go next, Cirno?”

‘Good question...’ thought Cirno, looking around at the nearby forest. Choosing to ignore the problem of where to go for now, she instead turned back to Clownpiece. “I must know how to get to their house, I’ve been there before!” she replied, doing her best to project an aura of confidence.

Unfortunatly for Cirno, Clownpiece wasn’t fooled. “Yeah, from the Shrine.” she countered. “You’ve never even been in these woods before, you think all the trees look the same!”

“And who said we should avoid the Shrine?” shot back Cirno “Maybe you should be leading the way. Or are you lost too?”

“Anybody would be lost after you’d led them in circles.” replied Clownpiece, her mischievious grin growing wider. “And going near the shrine when we know that the Three Fairies are pranking is just asking to get exterminated by Reimu – especially for someone as weak as you.”

“No way! I’d beat her and we’d be on our way super quick!” Cirno retorted. “In fact, I’m going to go there and show you right now!” she continued, stomping off in the direction the Shrine was in.

“Cirno, Clownpiece! The Three Fairies’ house is this way!” Daiyousei called down from a nearby tree, interrupting Cirno’s stride and saving Reimu from her wrath. Daiyousei jumped down and ran into the woods, beckoning the other two to follow along. Cirno ran after her, her argument with Piece forgotten almost instantly. Clownpiece ran after her, scrambling to catch up.

A few minutes later, the three of them burst out into the clearing surrounding the Three Fairies tree. Running up to the front door, Cirno gave a quick knock before calling out “We’re here!”

“No need to rush quite so much, Cirno.” Clownpiece called out from behind, her and Daiyousei catching up to Cirno. “It’s not even half way to midday.”

“You’re only saying that because you lost!” replied Cirno, pride at her small victory shining out of her. Clownpiece didn’t give any retort to that, instead just rolling her eyes a bit. The three of them crowded around the door, Clownpiece and Cirno taking a quick break to catch their breath after the running they’d just done.

As soon as Cirno had recovered a little, she turned her attention back to the Three Fairies’ door. Knocking on it a bit harder, she called “Hey, where are you! We’re here!” before flinging it open and jumping through to a sight she never expected .

Luna was frantically rifling through her stash of books, a half of them strewn across the floor around her. Sunny was sitting in front of a washtub, furiously scrubbing one of her dresses like she wanted to wear a hole through it. And Star was sitting next to the table, staring blankly at Reimu lain out on it with her red-and-white uniform stained further red. As Clownpiece and Daiyousei walked in behind her, Cirno could only think one thing.

‘What on earth just happened?!’

Chapter Text

Clownpiece ran through the door of the Three Fairies’ house as soon the scent of blood reached her nose, only to be stopped dead in her tracks by the sight of Reimu’s body lying on the table. Myriad questions swirled in her mind at the sight of Gensokyo’s great protector lying fallen in front of her, ‘How did this happen? Who’s going to replace her? How’s everybody going to react to hearing about this? How are they taking th-’

Before Clownpiece could think any more about what had happened, Cirno spoke up. “Okay, you got me! You’re going to tell me how you got Reimu to join in.” she said, leaving Clownpiece stunned at the sheer stupidity of her conclusion. ‘Does she really think this is a prank?!’

Star slowly looked up from Reimu’s body, her, Sunny, and Luna seemingly only just noticing that they had visitors. “There’s no prank.” she replied dully, her eyes still somewhat unfocused.

“C-come on, you three.” Cirno said after a few seconds, the slight tremor in her voice betraying her trepidation. “Call this off, this isn’t funny anymore.”

“What part of this do you think was ever funny?!” yelled Sunny, causing everybody else to jump in shock. “Reimu’s really hurt and all you can think about are pranks?!”

‘I don’t think she’s just hurt...’ thought Clownpiece, but looking at her companions made her hesitate to say anything. The guilt and grief in Luna, Star, and Sunny’s minds was obvious to Clownpiece, and even Cirno’s bottomless pool of energy had seemingly been stopped in it’s tracks. ‘I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon enough.’

Instead, she took a deep breath and called out, “Hey girls, enough moping around! We’re going to help Reimu back up, and we can’t do that while just sitting here doing nothing! Star, Reimu is still here, right?”

“Y-yes, I think so.”

“Good” ‘At least she hasn’t been taken yet.’ Turning to Cirno, Clownpiece continued onwards “Cirno, I need you to freeze Reimu – as cold and as fast as you can.”

Cirno nodded and stepped forward, but as she did so Luna spoke up. “Are you sure about that, Piece? Cold is usually really bad for people.”

“Umm...” ‘How do I say this..?’ Clownpiece didn’t think that saying it was to preserve her would be appreciated, but she wasn’t sure what else to say. Fortunately, Cirno jumped in to provide an excuse.

“That may normally be the case, but people who are hurt or sick really like being cold!” replied Cirno, a bit of her normal enthusiasm returning to her. “The number of people who’ve realized my awesomeness and come out to beg for some ice for their injuries is incredible!”

“I guess...” Luna said as Cirno reached out and touched Reimu’s body. A blast of cold air filled the room as hoarfrost rapidly formed on and around Reimu. Clownpiece shivered, the sharp chill in the room seeping through her clothes and into her bones. She wasn’t the only one feeling the chill – Luna huddled up a little more in her corner, Sunny stepped back towards a window, and even Star had retreated a little from Reimu’s body. Only Daiyousei and Cirno seemed to be unaffected, and Clownpiece idly wondered how Daiyousei never seemed to get cold despite constantly hanging out with Cirno.

“I’m going to go and find someone who might be able to help out – remember to keep Reimu cold.” Clownpiece called back to the others as she turned to leave the house. “Also, if anybody else comes here looking for Reimu, do NOT let them get to her.” Quickly running over to the door – she didn’t want to have to answer any questions about who she was looking for or who might be looking for Reimu – she jumped outside and ran off to find a secluded spot.

‘Hopefully Lady Hecatia knows what to do now.’

________________________________________________________________________________

Star Sapphire stumbled outside, blinking in the sunlight. Daiyousei had suggested that she take a quick walk outside shortly after Clownpiece had left, saying that she “Wasn’t doing yourself or anyone else any good by just staring at her” and that they’d call her if they needed her. Star had refused at first, but Daiyousei had insisted and before long, Star found herself stepping through the front door.

The weather outside was nice – a bright early spring day with a slight breeze – but Star couldn’t appreciate the nice day. All she could think was Reimu lying motionless on the floor, blood pooling around her. Everything about Reimu looked dead – even Star’s ability couldn’t detect more than a faint whisper of life from her. ‘Almost like a ghost...’

‘Come on, Star, pull yourself together!’ Star thought, taking a deep breath and letting the crisp morning air reinvigorate her. ‘Clownpiece is going to come back with a way to get Reimu back up, and in the meantime Sunny and Luna need you to be strong and supportive.’ Standing up a little taller and pushing down the lingering thought that Reimu was dead, she turned to go and reassure her companions before noticing a strange presence in the trees.

“Hello?” Star called out, looking cautiously for whatever was in the bushes. A deathly chill descended over the clearing, seemingly stifling even the sun’s warmth, and the air fell completely still. The sounds of nature surrounding Star seemed to grow muffled and distant – assuming they hadn’t been choked out entirely – and the plants and trees surrounding the presence was were wilting. Just as Star was about to call out again – whether it was to the person in the forest or to Luna to get everybody out here, she wasn’t sure – a figure emerged into the clearing.

The figure was tall and extremely thin, to the point where it looked like all of their flesh had been sucked out of them. They wore a dirty, raggedy white shroud, and their skin was gray and blotchy. Darkness oozed out of their cloak and holes in their skin, forming a cloak that obscured most of their finer detail. A dreadful aura eminated from the figure, and Star noted with an edge of terror that the grass around their feet was withering and dying.

“LITTLE STARLIGHT” The figure said, it’s voice filled with a finality that demanded attention “YOU HAVE SOMEONE THAT DOES NOT BELONG HERE.”

“I-I don’t think there’s anybody here like that.” Star replied, trying to think of a way to get the figure to leave. This was clearly the thing Clownpiece was warning them about, and somehow Star knew that if this person got to Reimu, they would never see her again. “Maybe you’ve got the wrong place?”

“NO.” The figure replied, taking a step forward. “THIS IS DEFINITELY THE RIGHT PLACE.”

‘Come on Star, think of something!’ Star thought, her mind racing for any way to stop the figure’s march forward. “Maybe we could talk about it?” Star said, quickly running in the figure’s path. “I can go and get some tea if you want.”

“I HAVE NO NEED OF YOUR HOSPITALITY, AND THERE IS NOTHING TO DISCUSS.” The figure said, stopping in front of Star. “DO NOT STAND IN THE WAY OF WHAT MUST BE.”

Star tried to come up with something else as the figure resumed its advance, but it was clear that nothing she said would convince them to stop. Whoever this figure was – ‘Don’t think about what they are’ – Star couldn’t let them take Reimu away after what she’d already done. Taking a quick breath, she pulled out a Spell Card and prepared to do battle.

“Shooting Star: Comet Stre-”

Before Star could even finish declaring her Card, the figure turned to her and materialized a scythe from nowhere. Stepping forwards, they swung the handle at Star’s legs, causing her to fall to the floor with a shocked cry. Planting the scythe’s handle on Star’s chest, the figure reached down and picked up the fallen spell card, staring at it for a few seconds before crumpling it up and tossing it aside.

“NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR GAMES.” The figure said, sounding a little disappointed. Star tried to scramble back up as the figure removed its scythe from her, but a foot planted on the hem of her dress stopped her escape attempt. She shot a blast of light into its face in the hope that it would be forced to release her, but her panic betrayed her, and nothing came out but a faint flash. As the figure raised its scythe up high, Star squeezed her eyes shut.

‘I’m so sorry, Reimu...’

“Get away from Star!” / “Hey, ugly! Over here”

Star’s eyes snapped open at the simultaneous yells of Sunny and Cirno just as a beam of brilliant yellow light and a stream of icicles impacted the figure’s back. It stumbled, and Star was able to pull herself free. Scrambling backwards, Star jumped to her feat as a blast of icy energy struck the ground around the figure’s feet. She ran around the now immobilized figure, dashing past Sunny and Cirno.

“Who’s this?” Sunny asked, turning to Star. “Yeah, what’s their problem?” added Cirno, preparing to launch another attack at the figure.

“They’re here for Reimu!” replied Star, her heart still beating like a drum. “Quick, we need to get her away from here!” she continued as the figure shook the ice off of their feet.

Star quickly ran back indoors, quickly followed by Sunny and Luna. Dashing over to Reimu, Star picked up her shoulders – ignoring the burning cold on her hands – as Sunny grabbed her legs. Lifting Reimu off the table and going towards the nearest window as quickly as possible, they got there just as Daiyousei burst through the front door, dragging a struggling Cirno behind her. Luna unlatched the window and Sunny and Star climbed through, closely followed by Luna, Cirno, and Daiyousei piling through after them. As they ran into the woods, Star could almost feel the gaze of the figure on the back of her neck, seemingly saying that their escape was futile.

Chapter Text

Luna Child collapsed to the ground, energy completely spent. She had been running full-tilt for upwards of 30 minutes, and her legs, feet, and lungs were all burning with the exertion of it. She tried to push herself back up – that figure could still be after them – but her muscles simply refused to cooperate.

“Hey, Star! Can we stop for a bit?” Sunny asked, looking back at Luna. “Think Luna needs a rest now.”

“I don’t think anyone’s following us...” Star said, looking worriedly at the trees behind them. “I guess we could stop for a bit.”

At Star’s confirmation, Luna fully gave into her exhaustion, sitting down with her back against a nearby tree. Sunny and Star carefully set Reimu down in the shade, and Cirno leaned over her and started to blow some more freezing air onto her. Walking over to a patch of sunlight, Sunny started breathing into her bone-white hands, while Star looked intently back at the path they had come from, seemingly watching for anybody chasing them.

“Star, are you okay?” Daiyousei asked gently, walking over to where Star was keeping watch. Star didn’t respond, and after a short silence Daiyousei hesitantly reached out to her. “If they hurt you, you can tell us.”

“Who were they, anyway?” Sunny asked, looking over at Star. “What was their problem with you?”

“Yeah, and why did you all run away!” Cirno yelled, jumping to her feet. “There’s no way they could have beaten all of u-”

“That was a Shinigami.”

Cirno’s speech was cut short by Star’s declaration as everyone stared at her for a moment, reacting to the revelation. Much as Luna didn’t want to admit it, the idea made too much sense to deny. She wasn’t near them for long, but the way they made the surrounding plants wilt and the chilling aura they emitted felt like clear signs of their identity to her – that, and the scythe they wielded.

“Are you sure, Star?” Sunny asked, slight dread creeping into her tone. “But that would mean Reimu is...”

“What, did you think she was just taking a nap?” Star snapped back with uncharacteristic force. “She’s been dead this whole time, we’ve just been too stupid to realise it.”

“But, but, she can’t be dead! There’s no way!” Sunny yelled desperately. Turning to Luna, Sunny grabbed her by the shoulders, tears filling her eyes. “Come on, Luna, tell her it’s not true!”

Luna tried to reply, but she couldn’t find the words. Reimu’s death was undeniable and she could tell that lying to Sunny would just make things worse, but something about Sunny’s pleading, tear-filled eyes stopped Luna from saying it. Sunny seemed to be taking her silence as an answer, and was shaking Luna’s shoulders. “Come on, Luna, say something!”

“Sunny, she’s not lying.” Daiyousei said, gently pulling Sunny off of Luna. At that, Sunny seemed to collapse into herself, falling to the ground despondently. Luna knelt down next to Sunny and reached a hand out to try and comfort her, but she wasn’t sure how to do so. ‘What do I do? Say that everything’s going to be ok? We both know that’s not true – everything’s the opposite of ok.’

After a few minutes of contemplative silence, Cirno said “Hold on, Piece went off to get help – maybe she has a way to reverse this?”

“She does come from Hell...” mused Daiyousei. “She might know someone who might know someone who can bring her back.”

“Yeah! All we have to do have to wait for her to get back.” continued Sunny, jumping back up off the floor.

‘I’m not sure it’s quite that easy...’ thought Luna, but she didn’t end up saying anything. Seeing the normally chirpy Sunny so down was soul-crushing, even if her turn around did seem a bit quick. ‘I guess it might work out.’

However, there was something Luna did have to say . “Isn’t the Shinigami going to catch us at some point? Clownpiece said not to let them get to Reimu, but there’s no way we can beat a Shinigami”. Turning to Cirno, Luna continued. “And no, Cirno, we can’t beat a Shinigami.”

“Easy!” said Sunny, jumping towards Luna. “We’ll just go somewhere they can’t go! Like...” she trailed off, thinking. “Aha! We’ll go over to Alice’s place for a bit.”

“No way!” Luna yelled. “Alice lives next door to Marisa! If she finds out want happened, she’d hurt us.”

“Hmm...” Sunny thought. “Maybe we could go to the mansion? They have loads of fairies there, I’m sure they won’t mind a few more.”

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea...” Daiyousei said. “That lot are kind of weird – and they probably won’t appreciate a sunlight fairy in a house full of vampires.”

“Hmm,” Luna said, trying to think of somewhere. “We could go to the flower field... We should probably call a fairy meeting over this anyway, so we may as well hide out there.”

“That’s a great idea!” yelled Sunny after a few seconds. “Nobody other than fairies goes out there unless there’s a big event.”

“Are you sure about that...” replied Cirno, not sure about the suggestion. “The flower lady’s really scary.”

“She’s not that bad.” Daiyousei said. “She’s actually pretty nice if you don’t cause trouble – she helped me figure out my Danmaku.”

Cirno still seemed unsure, but she didn’t say anything else. After a few minutes of silence, Sunny walked over to Reimu, calling back to the others. “Well, guess we’re going to the flower field! Come on, let’s get going!” Reaching down to try and pick up Reimu, Sunny flinched back upon touching her. “Cirno, could you please help out? She’s a bit too cold for me to carry.”

Cirno and Star picked up Reimu, and Sunny led everyone towards the Garden of the Sun. Luna followed along behind, trying to share Sunny’s newfound optimism. It was nice to think that everything was going to go back to normal, even if it was hard to believe that Clownpiece would come back with some kind of miracle solution.

‘I hope you’re right, Cirno...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Daiyousei walked through the woods, lagging behind the rest of the group. Everyone seemed to be sure that Clownpiece, but Daiyousei wasn’t so sure that she could actually do what everyone was expecting – and she wasn’t sure what to do if she wasn’t able to bring Reimu back. ‘How will Sunny, Luna, and Star take it? Star and Sunny already seem to be barely keeping it together as it is. What’s Cirno’s going to do – she seems to be doing okay, but I’m worried... And what’s Marisa going to do?’

Daiyousei’s musings were interrupted by a sharp Thunk! from the woods. Everyone turned towards the sound just in time to see a sphere of darkness emerge from the trees, which lowered in opacity to reveal Rumia.

“Hello, Cirno.” Rumia said dreamily, floating towards the group. “What are you all doing together?”

“Umm... Hello, Rumia?” Sunny replied guiltily. “We’re just going to the flower field for a bit – what are you doing?”

“Looking for lunch.” Rumia said, looking towards Reimu with intent. “Actually, you seem to have found it already. Can I have some?”

‘Great, she’s hungry.’ thought Daiyousei, as Rumia started drifting towards Reimu. Trying to keep Rumia from food was incredibly challenging, and Daiyousei could sense that a fight was coming soon. Cirno also seemed to be getting ready a fight – putting down Reimu and stepping towards Rumia.

“No, Rumia, you can’t have Reimu!” yelled Sunny, stepping between Rumia and Reimu. “She’s not your food!”

“Is that so?” Rumia wondered, tilting her head inquisitively. “But she’s not using it, is she?”

“It doesn’t matter, you can’t have her!” exclaimed Sunny. “And besides, Piece is bringing her back!”

“Hey Rumia, I’ll get you some fish at Mystia’s after we’re done.” Daiyousei said, trying to calm the situation down. “But you can’t have Reimu – she’s not for you to eat.”

“You’ll get me fish?!” exclaimed Rumia, her eyes lighting up. Floating right up to Daiyousei, she grabbed her hand and started trying to drag her away. “Come on, let’s go get some fish!”

“Rumia, we aren’t done here!” yelled Cirno, jumping in front of Rumia. “The fish will have to wait a bit.”

“But I’m hungry now...” pouted Rumia, letting go of Daiyousei. “Can’t we get fish now?”

“Here, take this and give it to Mystia.” Luna said, interrupting the growing argument and giving Rumia a few coins. “She’ll give you some fish to eat.”

“Is that so?!” Rumia replied, looking incredulously at the money. At Luna’s nod, she jumped into the air, reforming her sphere of darkness. “Thank you, Luna! Time for fish!”

“Remember, don’t drop them!” Luna called after Rumia as she floated away into the woods. Everyone relaxed a little as Rumia’s aura disappeared from view, and with Cirno rejoining Star on Reimu carrying duty the group resumed their journey to the Garden of the Sun. Still, Daiyousei was worried – Rumia wasn’t the smartest, but even she would probably talk about what was happening here, and who knows how far the news would travel?

‘Mystia, I hope you can keep this discreet...’

Chapter Text

Marisa Kirisame was leisurely flying towards the Hakurei Shrine, admiring the view of the surrounding forests. The vibrant colours of the new leaves and early flowers made a nice change from the monotonous whites and browns that had filled the past few months, and Marisa idly wondered if she should maybe tell Lily that she’d done pretty well this year.

‘Maybe later,’ she thought, putting the idea on hold. Finding Lily would be pretty time consuming, since she was active almost everywhere, and Marisa had no idea where her home was. Besides, any attempt to talk to her right now would probably just be met with Lily’s signature yell of “It’s Spring!” followed by her either shooting a volley of cherry blossom Danmaku or simply flying away.

Noticing that she was coming up on the Shrine, Marisa descended to land on the front path. “Hey, Reimu! How are you doing!” she called out, stepping through the gate before noticing the damage done to the shrine. The place where the offering box should be had been replaced by a hole in the floor and broken bits of wood were lying around the courtyard. Some of them were even jammed into the walls. “Need any help cleaning up this mess?”

No reply came from the shrine, and after a few seconds Marisa shrugged, assuming that Reimu wasn’t home. ‘She’s probably gone to hunt down the culprit.’ she thought, walking up the path to see if she could find if Reimu had left any form of note. ‘I wonder who it was...’ she thought as she climbed the steps outside the shrine. ‘Maybe Tenshi got bored again?’

Marisa’s idle musings were interrupted when she reached the top of the stairs and stepped in something... sticky. Looking down at the ground, she felt a twinge of dread a she saw she had stepped on large pool of blood spread across the floorboards. Suddenly acutely aware of the eerie silence – punctuated occasionally by a drip from beneath the floor – Marisa barrelled through the door, almost smashing into it in her haste. “Reimu, where are you?!” she yelled, looking around at the shrine’s interior.

As Marisa frantically searched the shrine, she found the it completely empty, with no hint as to where Reimu could be. The shrine seemed to have been abandoned in a hurry, too – her futon had been left on the floor, and there was no sign that she had had any form of breakfast. ‘Come on, Reimu, where’d you go?!’ Marisa thought as she searched through the various cupboards and boxes in the hope that she’d find Reimu hiding in them, to no avail.

‘Calm down, Marisa. You won’t be able to do anything like this.’ Marisa thought, taking a deep breath. ‘Now, how to find where Reimu is...’ Going back outside, she knelt down to examine the ground, trying not to think to hard about where all of the blood came from. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Marisa to notice the mess of bloody footprints all over the floor – a dense trail of small red prints surrounding the bloodstain and leading into the forest. While she wasn’t sure who could have done this, it didn’t matter much to Marisa – what mattered was catching up to them before they got too far away. Jumping onto her broom, Marisa rocketed into the woods, hot on the trail of whoever had been here previously. Dodging and weaving through the trees at incredible speed, she desperately raced to try and catch up before it was too late.

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Marisa flew out of the forest, hot on the trail of whoever had hurt Reimu. The tracks through the forest had lead her to a clearing, and it didn’t take long for Marisa to recognize the massive tree that the Three Fairies live in. Taking a moment to catch her breath – and recovering from the occasional branch she’d run into – Marisa started looking around for the next place to go, only to find a major problem. While there was a lot of paths out of the clearing, Marisa couldn’t tell which of them was fresh – and there was no way she could check all of them.

‘How am I going to find Reimu like this?!’ Marisa thought, before an idea struck her. ‘I’ll go ask those three where they went! Star must have sensed where they’ve gone.’ Walking over to the tree, she stopped upon noticing that there was an air of death around the clearing and an open door on the side of the trunk.

Marisa walked over to the tree , curious – and slightly concerned – about the seemingly abandoned treehouse and damaged clearing. Looking though the open door, Marisa was shocked to see the state of the room – blood staining the table and books scattered all over the floor. Slowly melting frost bloomed from the bloodstained table, and the wood around the door was discoloured and decayed.

‘Who could have done this?!’ Marisa thought, looking at the devastated room. Whoever had come through here clearly didn’t want the fairies to tell anyone what happened, and looking at the blood on the floor made Marisa’s blood boil – especially since the deathly aura around the clearing implied that they were meant to be silenced permanently. ‘They’re just kids! They’re annoying sometimes, true, but that’s no reason to just kill them!’

Taking a deep breath, Marisa tried to calm down and centre herself – there wasn’t any way she could catch the culprit while so mad. The chances that any of the fairies were actually gone for good was pretty low, especially since the only one who actually seemed to fall didn’t even live here. Still, they didn’t seem to be nearby, and Marisa didn’t think they’d be back any time soon. All this left Marisa back where she started – with no idea where to go are who was behind this.

‘Wait, I’ve got it!’ Marisa thought, another idea coming to mind. ‘I’ll go and ask Cirno what happened – she must have some idea of who did this.’ Knowing Cirno, she was probably at her home, sulking and freezing some frogs after yet another defeat, so she should be easy to find. Besides, Marisa kind of wanted to check up on her – whatever happened there looked painful. ‘I didn’t even know fairies even had blood...’ Running outside and jumping back onto her broom, Marisa climbed out of the trees and set off to the Misty Lake, a trail of stars left in her wake as she pushed her broom to go as fast as it could.

‘Hold on, Reimu, I’m coming!’

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk lay down on the grass, looking around at the sunflowers surrounding her and letting out a long, tired sigh. She had been maintaining her invisibility over the group ever since they had left the Forest of Magic, and now that they were in the relative safety of the Garden the difficulty of using her ability for so long was catching up to Sunny, leaving her completely exhausted. Lying down and feeling the nature around her, Sunny closed her eyes and could almost imagine that everything was normal – that they were hiding away from Reimu after a successful prank.

Unfortunately, reality quickly returned when Sunny opened her eyes – they weren’t in some little clearing, giggling about their latest escapades. Instead, they were hiding in the Garden of the Sun, trying not to look at Reimu’s body. A sunflower fairy peeked out from behind a flower, and Sunny could see a confused and slightly shocked look cross their face before they disappeared back into the garden. ‘Does she even know what’s happening?’

“Hey, Star, are you doing okay?” Daiyousei asked gently, interrupting Sunny’s thoughts. Looking over at Star, Sunny could tell the answer – she was staring blankly into her hands, almost like she was trying to look through them. She didn’t respond, and Sunny wasn’t sure if she had even heard Daiyousei’s question.

“Those hands look cold,” Daiyousei continued, reaching out a hand and taking a small step towards Star. “Need any help warming up?”

“No, I’m fine.” Star replied flatly, looking slowly up at Daiyousei. Meeting her gaze, Sunny almost couldn’t recognize the person looking back – the knowing, confident look that Sunny knew and took comfort in was almost completely gone, replaced by a haunted, empty gaze. She seemed almost dead inside, and seeing Star’s devestated state made Sunny feel terrible.

Daiyousei also seemed to be concerned about Star’s state, but she didn’t say anything more, instead backing off and sitting down next to Cirno. Sunny almost said something herself, but something about Star’s demeanor stopped her – she just couldn’t find the words to bring it up. Instead, she just lay back down and tried to block out the silence around her.

“So, what do we do now?” Cirno yelled after a few minutes, breaking the silence. Energy exuded off her, although Sunny felt that it was a bit forced – like even Cirno was feeling the gloom and was trying to inject some cheer. Jumping up from the ground, she continued “We shouldn’t just sit around here moping – there’s got to be something we can do!”

“I don’t really think there is anything we can do now.” Luna replied, sitting up off the ground, bursting Cirno’s attempt at energizing the group. Cirno started to deflate as Luna continued “All we can do is sit tight and wait for Clownpiece to get back.”

“Really?” replied Yuuka, “You can’t even introduce yourself to your host? How rude.”

Everyone jumped as Yuuka Kazuma silently emerged from the flower fields, seemingly phasing through the sunflowers. Sunny scrambled to feet, standing up straight and trying to look respectable as Yuuka walked into the clearing. “Oh my, I was told that Reimu seemed to be tired” Yuuka said, looking down at Reimu’s body. “But I never thought she’d be this lazy – she looks like she’ll never wake up again!” Holding her hand over her mouth, Sunny fumed as Yuuka started laughing at her “joke”. ‘How could she laugh at Reimu’s death!’

“What are you doing here?” Luna grumbled, pushing herself up off the ground, and Sunny winced at Luna’s obvious dislike of Yuuka. ‘She might be insensitive, but we shouldn’t disrespect her! She’s going to kill us!” Yuuka didn’t seem to take any offense at Luna’s comment, however, instead just laughing it off. “Why wouldn’t I be in my own garden? Especially when I hear that five Great Fairies and a sleeping Miko have just arrived? Now how about we go to my house, and you tell me about what happened over some tea?”

Yuuka walked over to Reimu’s body, and Sunny was slightly shocked when she just picked her up and hoisted her over her shoulder. ‘I knew Yuuka was strong, but not that strong!’ Walking back towards the fields, Yuuka gestered with her free hand and the flowers seemed to step aside, making a path that she walked into. She beckoned for the fairies to follow her, and seeing little choice Sunny did, the rest joining soon after.

________________________________________________________________________________

Sunny stepped out of the pathway and immediatly stopped in awe of the sight in mansion of her. It seemed to be made of many trees and plants merged together, with walls made of barked wood, doors made of thick leaves, and windows with woven vines covering them. The entire building split into multiple massive trunks that towered into the sky, and the strange curves and shapes of the various branches and walls made it look as though it had naturally grown over hundreds of years. A sprawling canopy of branches and leaves shadowed the entire area, and whole building seemed to glow with nature’s power.

“Wow...” breathed Cirno, her voice filled the same amazement that Sunny was feeling. “You’ve had this place the whole time?!”

“Of course I have – did you think I slept in a shed?” Yuuka replied with a small smile. “Besides, it’s not like I use it for much – mostly receiving guests and keeping the various things I’ve acquired over the years.” Walking towards the house, the door opened itself and she stepped inside, the fairies following behind her.

The inside was also impressive – a giant hall, roofed with leaves and lit with glowing berries. Various plants and mysterious objects lined the walls of the room, and a table with six chairs grew out of the centre. Walking into the room, Yuuka split herself in two – one of her placing Reimu on a table in the middle of the room and the other one peeling off and walking into a side room. “So, what happened to Reimu?” Yuuka asked, sitting down on one of the chairs. “I imagine it’s quite an interesting story.”

The fairies joined Yuuka around the table, and Luna started retelling the story of the past day. Sunny quickly stopped focusing on the discussion, not wanting to relive the past day, and started looking around the room. All sorts of different things were scattered throughout the room – a painting of Yuuka standing next to a person with insectiod wings, a shining golden apple with a single bite taken from it, and a bloodstained sword with strange runes etched into its blade – and Sunny wondered what the story behind each of the artifacts were. Well, some of them she wasn’t so curious about – the skull hanging off the wall like a hunting trophy made Sunny a little ill.

The other Yuuka returned with tea, placing a cup in front of the fairies before seemlessly merging back into the Yuuka sitting at the table, her own tea in hand. Focusing back on the discussion at hand, Sunny picked up her tea and took a sip – it was apple and blackberry flavour, with just a hint of sweetness. It was nice, but Sunny found it hard to enjoy the beverage while listening to Luna telling Yuuka about the terrible things that had happened and trying not to look at Reimu’s body.

“So, you accidently killed Reimu while trying to beat Cirno in a pranking contest.” summed up Yuuka, quietly laughing as Luna finished her retelling of the day’s events. Sunny’s unimpressed look was mirrored by both Cirno and Luna, and Yuuka’s laughter quickly withered under their glare. “My apologies,” she said, sitting up a little straighter. “I was just surprised to hear that the great Hakurei Reimu died to a fairies’ prank. But you’re right – this is a serious problem.” Standing up, she continued with “I’ll get rid of Reimu corpse, and you five can stay over here until everyone calms down. Don’t worry – I’ll make sure your houses are still there when you return.”

Listening to Yuuka’s plan, one thing immediately stood out to Sunny as a problem. “Wait, we need Reimu – we can’t just get rid of her!”

“Hmm...” Yuuka thought, a pondering look crossing her face. “Well, I can see that she meant a lot to you – you want something to remember her by? Well, I don’t think that you having her head would work out very well, and I don’t know of any pictures of her – maybe you could have her ribbon?”

“What? No!” yelled Cirno, mirroring Sunny’s thoughts. “We want her up and about, not her head as some trophy!”

“And you think the hell fairy is going to go and do that?” asked Yuuka, slight irritation creeping into her voice. “No-one in the afterlife will break the rules that much if a Shinigami has been personally dispatched to deal with this, and if Clownpiece has told you otherwise she’s either tricking you or mistaken herself”. As she got up and started walking towards Reimu, she looked back towards the stricken fairies, and her face softened a little. “I know it hurts, but the first death is hardest.”

“What if we do it ourselves?”

Everyone stopped as Star stood up, staring straight into Yuuka’s eyes. Even Yuuka herself seemed surprised – her face momentarily shocked before changing to something Sunny found worrisome. “Really, Star? Are you sure about that?” she said, her voice filled with a dangerous edge.

“Yes.” Star replied defiantly. “I-We did this, so we should go and undo it.”

“Hmm...” replied Yuuka, her parasol appearing in her hand. “And what about the rest of you? Do you also intend to go and defy the laws of the world for the Hakurei Miko of all people?”

“Yes,” Sunny stated, swallowing down her fear. Standing up to Yuuka would probably be painful, but she couldn’t stand by and leave Star on her own.

“Yeah, and you can’t stop us!” Cirno yelled, stepping forwards, and while she looked confident Sunny noticed the slight tremor in her voice. Next to her, Luna and Daiyousei walked forwards silently, joining Star. Looking at Yuuka, Sunny saw her face staying hard before giving way to a strange wistfulness, and the pressure in the air started dissipating.

“It has been a long time since anybody did anything truly great...” Yuuka mused, placing her parasol back down. “Very well, I give you my blessing – good luck on your quest.” Walking over to Star, Yuuka knelt down, reaching out her hand and conjuring a strange necklace in it. “Put this on Reimu - it should prevent the Shinigami finding her for a time.”

“Thank you.” Taking the necklace, Star bowed to Yuuka and walked over to Reimu, placing the item around her neck. As she did so, Sunny got a good look at it – it was made of braided vines and adorned with a flower that glowed with life, and Sunny could definatly see how it would block the Shinigami’s senses. Calling over Cirno, they picked Reimu back up and carried her out of the house, Sunny, Luna and Daiyousei following closely behind. As they stepped outside and away from Yuuka’s scrutinizing gaze, Sunny looked up, wondering what the future had in store for them – and how they were going bring Reimu back.

‘No need to worry, Reimu, you’ll be back before you know it...’

Chapter Text

Mystia Lorelei handed Aya a grilled lamprey on a stick and a cup of sake, carefully studying her to try and gauge the crow tengu’s reaction. She hadn’t planned for Aya to drop in, and having the reporter for the Bunbunmaru here was making her more than a little nervous – a bad review at this time could be disasterous. However, she was planning on expanding her business beyond just a food stand, so she supposed she should probably get used to more important customers. ‘Please like it, please like it...’ she thought tensely as Aya took the first bite.

Fortunately, it seemed like Mystia’s worries were unfounded – Aya’s face lit up with delight upon tasting the eel, and the sake also seemed to be more than satisfactory. The food and drink was gone almost instantly, and Mystia relaxed significantly – it seemed like a scathing review of her stand wouldn’t be showing up in next week’s paper. In fact, maybe the opposite would be the case – a good review would be the perfect start for her new shop. “Is there anything else I could get you, Miss Shameimaru?” Mystia asked, speaking as politely as possible and wincing internally at how stiff it sounded – she wasn’t used to this fancy talk.

“Yes, actually – have you heard of anything interesting happening recently?” Aya asked, carefully placing the cup back on the countertop. “My paper’s meant to be out in the next couple of days, and all I’ve got is an article on Cirno causing trouble for the fishermen. And please, call me Aya – I’m just a reporter, after all.” she continued, pulling out her pen and notebook.

“No, actually – it does seem fairly quiet right now.” replied Mystia, a little concerned that Aya would be annoyed that she couldn’t help before an idea struck her. “Actually, maybe you could write about my stall – I’m planning to expand it to a full-sized shop soon.”

“Keep up like that, and I might think you’re just trying to get a good review out of me!” Aya said, although instead of reproachfulness all Mystia could hear in her voice was amusement. “But that does sound pretty good, actually – just tell me where you’re planning to set up and I’ll see what I can do.” She started writing in her notebook, before looking back up at Mystia. “Just checking – this isn’t an extension of the night-blindness thing?”

“No, nothing but honest business.” replied Mystia, shaking her head. “And I’m going to be on the trail out of the village – I’ve already talked to some people about building the shop, and-”

CRASH!

Mystia and Aya both jumped as something large and heavy hit the back of the stall, causing the whole thing to shake. Making her excuses to Aya, Mystia quickly dashed to the back – if that was who she thought it was, then no amount of publicity would make up for the devastation wrought on her stock by leaving them alone. Running out the back, she found exactly what she expected – Rumia, lying on the ground and rubbing a bump on her head.

*Sigh* “What did I say about flying around inside your darkness?” Mystia said, any optimism she’d gained from meeting Aya draining away almost instantly. While she did consider Rumia to be a friend, the darkness youkai’s ability to eat a seemingly endless amount of food and complete lack of understanding of money was extremely frustrating to deal with while running her stall. “I know it might seem nice, but you’ll keep crashing into things like that.”

“But the sun feels so mean...” Rumia said meekly, picking herself up off the floor before jumping up to Mystia, seemingly forgetting all about her accident. “Anyway, can I have some fish?”

“No, you can’t – they’re for the customers, not you.” replied Mystia, although internally she wondered why she even bothered. Every time Rumia came around, she left with at least a double portion – either out of sympathy or just to get her to go away. ‘Maybe I should have just kept yesterday’s leftovers – she’s not exactly picky...’

“Is that so...” Rumia sighed despondently, looking sadly into her hands. “But I thought these shiny things were turned into fish...”

“Huh?” Mystia said, looking at Rumia’s hands, where she did in fact have some money – enough for at least three servings. Feeling somewhat concerned, Mystia looked back up into Rumia’s eyes. “Where did you get that from?”

“Luna gave them to me.” Rumia replied, a look of hard concentration on her face. “I found the light fairies and Cirno carrying Reimu through the woods, and she gave me these when I asked for food."

“Carrying Reimu?” asked Mystia, trying to keep the rising dread out of her voice. While that did answer the question of where the money had come from, hearing that the Three Fairies had done something to Reimu was even more worrisome. “What, was she sleeping?” ‘Please let her just be sleeping...’

“Yes, she’s sleeping – sleeping foreeever.” replied Rumia, her innocent voice confirming all of Mystia’s worst fears. “Now, can I have some fish?” she pressed, floating right up to Mystia’s face.

“Sure, I’ll go and get you some.” Mystia said, her mind racing with fear. “But only if you tell me where the fairies were going.”

“Is that so?!” cheered Rumia, backing off and gaining a focused look. “They were heading to the flower fields – maybe they wanted to hide her in the sunflowers?”

Mystia stepped back inside the stand, Rumia following closely behind. Normally she would never let Rumia into the stall – that was asking for her entire stock to vanish into her stomach - but right now her food supplies were the last thing on her mind. Innumerable questions ran through her head – how did Reimu end up dead? Was it the fairies, or did they just find her like that? How would this affect Gensokyo? As she absent-mindedly put a massive helping of eel onto the grill, though, she did notice something that made her even more concerned for the future.

Aya Shameimaru had vanished.

________________________________________________________________________________

Luna Child walked along the path through the fields, on the way to the Human Village. Cirno and Daiyousei had taken Reimu back to Cirno’s house to keep her safe and cool while Sunny, Luna, and Star was going to find a cure, and the first place they were going to was the human village.

“So... who are we going to talk to, exactly?” Sunny asked, speaking up from her position next to Luna. “We don’t actually know many people there...”

‘Hmm... that’s actually a good question.’ Luna mused, slowing down a bit as she thought about the question. “Maybe we could go and ask Kosuzu?” she replied after a bit. “She’s very smart, she might know something useful.”

“Wait, who’s Kosuzu?” Sunny exclaimed, turning to Luna. “I’ve never heard of her, and humans in the village don’t normally like us very much.”

“She runs the book store in the Human Village – I’ve been there a few times.” Luna replied, looking back at Sunny. Suddenly, a slightly troubling thought crossed her mind. “Actually, did I remember to return all of the books I borrowed?”

“We’ll go and find a doctor” Star said curtly, looking back from her position further ahead with a sour expression. “That’s who humans go to when something’s wrong with them. Now let’s get moving, we don’t have time to stand around.”

Luna watched with concern as Star resumed her determined march forward, not even checking to see if the others were following along. Beside her, Sunny seemed to be about to try and say something, but as Star kept walking she instead ran after her, Luna following behind. Still, Luna was concerned – something seemed to be wrong with Star, and she felt like she should try and help.

‘Maybe I’ll wait until this is done...’ she thought as she caught up to Star’s determined stride. They’d all been upset by what had happened, and Luna didn’t have any idea what she could say to help. ‘She’ll probably get better after we’ve brought Reimu back, right...’

*click*

Luna’s thoughts were interrupted when she heard strange snapping noise from a nearby hedge, although Sunny and Star didn’t seem to have noticed it . Curious, she looked over at the source of the sound and was somewhat suprised to see a person dressed in black and white hiding in the bushes. ‘There’s no way Star hasn’t noticed there’s someone nearby...’ she thought as she looked closer, trying to guess who it was.

Before she could fully identify the figure, though, Star whirled around to face the bushes, clearly caught off-guard. “Who’s there?!” she yelled in shock, causing Luna to wince – any chance to plan out their response had completely vanished. Sighing internally at how quickly things had gone out of control, Luna turned to the bush and got ready for whatever was going to happen, Sunny also jumping around to face the potential threat.

“Ayaya, so scary! Guess it’s time for me to go!”

The bush rustled briefly before Aya burst out of it in a explosion of leaves and feathers. Luna watched, stunned, as she rocketed into the air, flying rapidly towards the Youkai Mountain before disappearing into a speck on the horizon. “Quick, after her!” yelled Sunny after a brief moment, jumping into the air and flying off after Aya’s escape path. After a moment of hesistation, Luna and Star took off after her, although Luna wasn’t sure was Sunny was going to do. ‘Guess I’d better follow along with whatever this is.’ she thought as she tried to keep up with Sunny’s flight. ‘I just hope that nothing too bad is going to happen...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Marisa Kirisame landed back outside the Hakurei Shrine, frustrated at the fruitless endeavour she’d just gone on. Cirno and Daiyousei hadn’t been anywhere near the lake, and no-one Marisa had talked to there had seen them since they left early this morning. It hadn’t taken long for Marisa give up looking for her, instead going back to the Shrine to see if she could find some other clues. ‘She probably wouldn’t have remembered anything anyway...’ she thought, striding into the Shrine before stopping upon noticing that one of the doors was open.

“Hey, who’s here?” Marisa called out, pulling out her mini-Hakkero and advancing cautiously towards the open door. While it would be a bit strange for the culprit to come back so soon, not many people come out to the Shrine in general, and it never hurts to be careful. “Come on out, whoever you are!”

“Greetings, Marisa.” replied the intruder as they emerged from the door, and Marisa relaxed significantly when she saw it was Kasen Ibaraki – while the hermit could be a bit strange, but Marisa didn’t think that there was any chance that she was the culprit. “My apologies for sneaking around in here – I noticed the blood outside and came inside to check on Reimu.”

‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ thought Marisa, returning the mini-Hakkero back into her pocket – Kasen would absolutely do something like that. Out loud, she said “So, did you find anything? I’ve been looking for the person behind this, but the trail’s gone cold.”

“No, unfortunately.” replied Kasen, shaking her head. “How about you? Maybe if we work together, we’ll figure something ”

“Not really.” Marisa said, starting to pace around the room with frustration. “I followed their trail out to the big tree where the Three Fairies live, but I lost it there. Couldn’t even ask the fairies where they went – the culprit attacked their house and drove them out.” Her voice rising, she stopped walking and looked straight at Kasen. “They even killed one of them! Who does something like that?!”

“Hmm... that’s definitely troubling – especially the bit about the fairies.” Kasen said, deep in thought. She didn’t say anything more for a few minutes, and Marisa started pacing again, desperate for something to do. ‘I should be out there finding the culprit, not standing around here with no idea where to go!’ As she continued walking back and forth, though, an idea started to form in her head and she started running to the door – maybe she did have a clue after all.

“Marisa, wait a moment.”

Marisa stopped and looked back at Kasen, already half way out the door. Her face was inscrutable, but something in her voice made Marisa think she was almost... worried? “With all of the incredible things Reimu has done, a lot of people may not realise that she’s only human.” she continued, looking straight into Marisa’s eyes with a strange intensity. “You shouldn’t blame them for forgetting that.”

Shaking off the strange feeling that Kasen’s words had given her – ‘It’s just Kasen preaching again.’ – Marisa ran outside and jumped onto her broom, setting off into the sky. While the tracks maybe be somewhat hard to identify, one thing that was obvious about them was that they were small – child-sized, in fact. That, along with the completely destroyed offering box that looked like it had been blown apart, could only lead to one conclusion for the culprit.

‘Guess it’s time to raid the Scarlet Devil Mansion again...’

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk dashed quickly through the Great Youkai Forest, rushing to catch up to Aya. She’d touched down just before entering the Youkai Mountain’s airspace to avoid detection (and because her wings were a little tired), and she was running as fast as she could to try and get to Aya’s house before sundown – she didn’t want to be out in the Youkai Forest at night. ‘Hopefully Aya will let us stay over...’ she thought, looking around at the already dark and menacing woods surrounding her. ‘There won’t be any hard feelings, right..?’

“Hey, slow down!” called out Luna, surprising Sunny and making her stop. Looking back, Sunny saw Luna sprinting to try and keep up, not noticing the tree root sticking out of the ground in front of her. Her foot got caught in the root, and with a pained cry she fell forwards straight onto her face. “We aren’t all as fast as you...” she grumbled as she pushed herself back up, Star walking up behind her.

“Are you sure this is going to work, anyway?” Luna asked, dusting herself off and testing her foot. “Aya’s the fastest in Gensokyo – there’s no way we’ll catch her.”

“She’s still got to write her article, right? So we’ll find out where she is and get her to stop!” Sunny replied, grabbing Luna’s hand and pulling her along. (although a bit slower than before) “Now come on! The sooner we get to her, the easier she’ll be to convince!”

“What’s the point in going out here, anyway? Everyone’s going to know what happened sooner or later, so we should just be focusing on Reimu.”

Star’s curt statement cut into Sunny, deflating all the enthusiasm she had built up in an instant. While Sunny hadn’t forgotten about Reimu, the excitement of chasing Aya had pushed it from the forefront of her mind, and Star’s terse comment had brought it right back. ‘What are we doing here, anyway?’ she thought as the three kept going, her mind quickly filling with doubt. ‘We aren’t going to make it to the village before night now, and we don’t know how long Reimu has. Maybe Star’s right – we should have just stayed on track-’

“Watch out, everyone – there’s someone up ahead.” Luna whispered, pulling Sunny back and interrupting her darkening thoughts. Now that Luna mentioned it, Sunny could hear a heated debate coming from just in front of them, and when she peered through the trees she was shocked to see the Aki sisters arguing in a nearby clearing. ‘What are they doing out now?!’ Sunny thought as her, Luna, and Star ducked behind a tree which, strangely, had golden leaves. ‘Autumn isn’t for another six months!’

Apperently, Sunny wasn’t the only one who wanted to know that. “What are you doing here, Shizuha?!” Minoriko asked, although Sunny thought it sounded more like a scolding than a genuine question. “Spring’s only just begun, and already you’ve started turning the leaves?! This is going to ruin the balance of nature here!”

“But it’s the right time for it.” Shizuha replied, not seeming to be fazed at all by Minoriko’s anger. “Can’t you feel it, too? It’s time for death, not life.”

“That’s... true, but we still can’t start autumn early.” Minoriko replied, sighing in frustration. “It’s spring, no matter what it feels like, and we can’t just jump ahead because to our time. Now come on, let’s find Lily and see if she can fix this mess.” she continued, before her and Shizuha walked away.

Shizuha and Minoriko’s footsteps gradually faded into the distance, and Sunny gave a small sigh of relief as they disappeared into the forest. Taking a moment to be sure that they had left, Sunny and the others popped back out of their hiding spot and continued walking through the woods, taking care to avoid the direction the Aki sisters had gone. The near-encounter with the Akis had reminded Sunny that outsiders weren’t allowed onto the mountain, and while she didn’t know how that applied to fairies she didn’t want to find out. “Make sure to be on guard for people following us.” she whispered to Luna and Star, being careful not to make too much noise. “We don’t want to get caught by the tengu-”

“Halt, intruders! State your purpose or leave here at once!”

Jumping at the sudden sound, Sunny whirled around to see Momiji Inubashiri right behind them, sword and shield at the ready. Instinctively, Sunny readied her ability, but looking at the dog-like features of the White Wolf Tengu told her that her invisibility probably wouldn’t be helpful here anyway – they’d been definitively caught.

‘...too late’

________________________________________________________________________________

“-so we need to find her and stop her from telling everyone.” Luna Child said to Momiji, explaining in general terms what they were here for. While she didn’t want to tell Momiji anything, she couldn’t see any other way to get through other than convincing her to let them past. ‘Please don’t ask what she’s found out about us...’ she thought privately – she didn’t know what she would say then.

Fortunately, Momiji didn’t seem to be that interested in the details. “So, Aya’s gotten so desperate she’s started chasing fairies for gossip...” she thought aloud, and Luna was pretty sure that she was convinced. “Fine, I’ll go and talk to Aya and see if she’s willing to talk to you – stay here until I get back.” she continued, jumping into the air and flying towards the mountain.

As Momiji disappeared into the distance, Luna sat down on a nearby log and quietly beckoned Sunny and Star to join her. Sunny walked over and sat down next to her, but Star didn’t even seem to notice her, instead being lost in her own thoughts. ‘What’s wrong with her...’ Luna thought, looking at Star as she stared blankly into the distance. ‘She doesn’t seem to even be here...’

“Star, are you okay?” Sunny asked quietly, seemingly mirroring Luna concerns. Hearing the question, Star glanced over to them and for a moment Luna thought she might actually say something before she turned back away.

“Yes, of course.” Star replied flatly, walking away into the trees as Luna struggled to figure out what to say. She stopped only a few metres away, but to Luna it felt like that distance was insurmountable – she just didn’t know what she could do. ‘Maybe we should talk about something else?’ she thought before dismissing the idea. ‘No, she wouldn’t like that... *Sigh*. Star’s always been the one who’s good at this sort of thing.’

“You know, when Momiji told me someone had finally come all the way out here just to stop me from publishing, I never thought it would be a band of fairies!”

Snapping out of her thoughts, Luna looked up as Aya swooped down and landed hard in the clearing, a gust of wind blowing out from the impact point. Sunny immediately tensed up at her arrival, and Luna could see why – Aya had clearly come out here ready for a confrontation of some kind. Stowing away her fan, Aya pulled out her notebook and pen, before putting on a smile that did absolutely nothing to alleviate the tension Luna was feeling.

“Now, what was it you wanted to say to me?”

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk’s mind raced as Aya looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something. Aya was known for her hawkish pursuit of news, and Sunny hadn’t really thought about what she’d say to try and convince her to give up her article. Still, she had to try – if Aya reported on this, they’d all be in trouble. ‘Come on, Sunny – you can do this!’ she thought, taking a deep breath and trying to dispel the tension. ‘Just ask nicely and be polite, and maybe she’ll agree to stop?’

“Aya- Miss Shameimaru?” Sunny said, trying to sound as respectful as possible. “Could you please not write about Reimu? Please?”

“My, that was really nice!” Aya said, an amused lilt in her voice. “But I’m afraid I can’t do that – the people deserve to know about this. Besides, I would have thought you three would love the attention.”

“What?!” yelled Sunny, jumping up in outrage. “Why would we want that?! Why would anyone want to be known as Reimu’s killers?! That would be-”

“Really? I didn’t know that – thanks for telling me.”

Sunny sat down hard, all of her fury instantly replaced with dread. She hadn’t even considered that Aya might not know about what happened, and her thoughtlessness may have just just cost them everything. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ she thought, a sickening feeling in her stomach. ‘Aya’s never going to stop following this story now – what are we going to do?!’

“So, what happened? How did you do it?” Aya asked excitedly, either not noticing or not caring about Sunny’s distress. “Was it an accident, or did you do it on purpose? Was it a failed duel, or some kind of prank?”

‘Wait, that’s it!’

“Hey, Aya! If you aren’t going to stop your article willingly, then we’ll just have to make you!” yelled Sunny, pulling out her pack of Spell Cards and trying to look intimidating. Luna and Star joined her after only a brief moment of shock, their own Cards at the ready. “Come on, let’s get her!”

For a few moments Aya simply stared, shocked at Sunny’s brazen defiance – but she quickly recovered her confidence. “So that’s how you want to do this? Very well, then – but if I win, I expect you three to fully subject yourself to my interview. ” she replied with unwavering confidence, taking to the air and pulling three Cards of her own. “Now, I think three Cards should be plenty and enough to decide this – don’t you agree?”

Looking up at Aya’s imposing figure and self-assured smile, Sunny suddenly started to feel a little unsure – something about Aya’s cocky attitude made it seem like she was absolutely sure of her victory, and Sunny was reminded of the stories she had heard of Aya’s incredible power. Still, she couldn’t back down now – they had to stop Aya somehow, and if Sunny refused this duel Aya would really never give up. “Alright, then!” she yelled back, taking a deep breath and following Aya into the sky, Luna and Star beside her. “Ready or not, here we come!”

________________________________________________________________________________

Star Sapphire flew up behind Sunny, ready to join her in her fight with Aya Shameimaru. While she didn’t care much for fighting journalists – they had more important things do to than that – she kind of had to back Sunny up in this. ‘Let’s just get this over with...’ Star thought, getting ready to join in. ‘Hopefully this won’t take long.’

“Sky Sign: Elfin Canopy!”

As Sunny declared her attack and activated the Card, Star quickly flew over to her position to the right of Aya. Luna took the position to the left, and together they started firing a spread of bullets to box Aya in. Sunny started charging her own blast to tag Aya, and Star was a bit surp r ised to see that she didn’t even seem to be trying to get out of the trap. ‘What’s she planning...’ Star thought, as Sunny finished readying her attack.

*Shing!*

With a brilliant flash of light, Sunny shot out her burst of Danmaku, sending streams of magic through the maze of illusory fire. Aya seemingly vanished from Star’s senses, and for a moment Star felt a stab of panic surge through her, as the fear that they had once again done something terrible started rising up within her. Before the thought could even take hold, though, it was quickly dispelled by Star picking up Aya location again – now hovering a good distance in front of them, well out of range of the Spell Card.

“Nice try, but I’m not going to just stand there and take it.” Aya said, idly playing with her own Card as Sunny preemptively ended the bullet pattern – there was no point continuing with Aya so far away. “Now, let me show you how it’s done! Wind God: Wind God’s Leaf-Veiling!”

As Aya held up her Spell Card, a massive storm of magical leaves exploded out of it, swirling and dancing around her before flying out in every direction. Star jumped aside and dodge the various bullets, but there were just too many of them for Star to keep track of, and she quickly started feeling the distinctive sting of Danmaku impacts. Sunny and Luna didn’t seem to be doing any better, either – getting hit repeatedly by the seemingly random attacks. After a few minutes of desperate dodging, the attack concluded, giving Star and the others a few moments to recover.

“Had enough yet?” called down Aya as Star regrouped with Sunny and Luna, both of them noticeably scratched and scuffed. “We could always skip to the interview if you want.”

“What, you think we’d give up just like that?!” yelled back Sunny defiantly, already holding out her next Card and flying back up to face Aya. “Not a chance! Light Sign: Rutile Flection!”

The Spell Card activated, and waves of bullets started pouring towards Aya from behind the Three Fairies, Star and Luna sending their own Danmaku towards her from their position behind Sunny. Sunny flew forwards with the stream of bullets, and as Aya once again watched and waited Star started to feel a little hopeful – she clearly didn’t know the trick behind the Spell Card. ‘I’m sure we’ve got her this time...’ thought Star as Sunny activated her ability, causing all of the bullets to bend around her and fly out in a massive cone. ‘There’s no way she can dodge all of that, right?’

*click*

Star looked on in shock as all of the bullets vanished, revealing Aya holding her camera up to her eye. As Aya stowed her camera back away again, Star thought she saw a flicker of worry on her face, but it was quickly replaced by confident smile. “What, did you think something that simple would hit me?” she said, with a cocky smile that made even Star annoyed. “Now, watch this! Illusionary Dominance!”

Aya declared her Spell Card, and rocketed off to the side, shooting out waves of Danmaku as she flew. Massive walls of bullets closed in on Sunny, Luna, and Star as Aya blasted around them at blinding speed, and although Star tried to weave through the attacks she got hit several times by bullets she didn’t spot. As Aya slowed to a stop in front of them and the bullets passed them by, Star flew back slowly to the group, wincing at the lingering pain.

“You really should save all of us the trouble and just give up.” Aya said smugly, and Star had to admit she was probably right – they were just wasting their time and energy. Sunny seemed to be willing to continue, though, pulling out her third Spell Card – and Star wasn’t going to just abandon her in the middle of a fight. ‘Come on, Star, push through – we’ve only got one more Card.’

“Sunny, stop – this isn’t working.”

Sunny stopped in the middle of presenting her third Card as Luna spoke up from behind her. “What else can we do?!” she yelled back, whirling around to look at Luna. “We can’t let her tell everyone about Reimu – there’s no way we’ll be able to help her while everyone’s out to try and kill us!”

“Yes, but we can’t beat Aya head-on!” replied Luna, waving at the state of the three of them. “Maybe we could try and convince her?”

‘I don’t think that would work...’ thought Star, as Sunny seemed to pause for a moment. ‘There’s no way she’ll back down after we’ve started a duel.’

“Wait, I’ve got it!” cried out Sunny, springing back around to face Aya. “You two keep her distracted – I’m going to sneak up on her.” she continued before vanishing from sight. ‘Thanks, Sunny...’ thought Star, sighing internally and pulling out one of her own Cards – while she could tell that Sunny wasn’t running away, her leaving them to face Aya was still annoying. ‘I guess it isn’t a bad idea, though – we may as well try it.’

“Star Sign: Twinkle Sapphire!” / “Moonlight: Moon Stillness!”

Star and Luna both activated their Spell Cards at the same time, creating a massive sphere of lights around Luna, Star, and Aya that rapidly started filling up with star-shaped bullets. Aya tensed up as the barrage approached, ready to fly away at a moment’s notice, but she didn’t need to – none of the bullets were actually aimed at her. Even as Luna’s motes of light closed in around Aya and broke formation, none of them actually flew directly at her – clearly, she had realized the same thing that Star had. As the bullets cleared and the two Cards slowly timed out, Aya was left in the exact same place she had started in – she hadn’t even needed to move an inch to avoid the attacks completely. For a moment Aya just floated there, confused, before her expression morphed into amusement, and then outright laughter.

“Really? That’s what you went with?!” laughed Aya between the chuckles. “You do realize you have to aim at your opponent to hit them, right? I guess what they say about fairy’s intelligence is true after all.” Recovering from her fit of laughter, Aya looked around and continued, now looking a little more irritated. “Did the orange one run away? Well, no matter – I’m sure you two can provide me with all the information I ne-”

“Flickering Light: Fatal Flash!”

Aya jumped in alarm at the shouted voice right behind her, but it was too late – Sunny had already activated the Spell Card and placed it in Aya’s pocket. She blasted into the air at incredible speed, but no matter how fast she went she couldn’t escape the Danmaku, being hit over and over again by the bursts of light no matter where she went. Watching Aya bounce around the air in panic, filling the evening sky with radiance and crow feathers, Star expected to feel overjoyed at their victory – but other than a slight satisfaction at seeing Aya humbled, all she felt was emptiness. As Aya smashed through the tree canopy and crashed into the ground, one thought filled Star’s head.

‘Did we need to do any of this?’

________________________________________________________________________________

“Give up yet? Or do we need to do another round?” Sunny Milk called out, flying over to where Aya had crash-landed. Despite her outward confidence, though, internally Sunny was worried – if Aya wasn’t done fighting, there’s no way they would be able to trick her like that again. ‘Hopefully she’s not going to be too mad...’ she thought, watching Aya’s reaction carefully as she lay on forest floor.

Thankfully, Aya seemed to be embarrassed, not angry. “No, I’ll admit it – I underestimated you three.” she groaned, pushing herself off the ground and weakly trying to brush herself off. “Guess I’ll have to find something else to write about...” she continued, slowly limping away.

‘Well, I guess this is over with...’ thought Sunny, watching sadly as Aya hobbled into trees. ‘So why doesn’t this feel good?’ In her head, she knew that they should be getting moving – they had important things to do, and it was getting late – but something about Aya’s pained walk and ruined clothes made Sunny feel awful. ‘Don’t worry about her – she’s a powerful Youkai, she can handle it.’ she told herself, but it did little to alleviate the guilt she was feeling.

“Aya... maybe we could figure something out?”

Sunny’s thoughts whirled, instantly filled with doubt about what she had just said. ‘Why would I do that?!’ she asked herself as Aya stopped and looked back quizzically. ‘We were done here – talking to her more is just going to cause us more trouble!’ Still, she felt she had to do something, and after a few seconds an idea came to her.

“It’s quite late, and we don’t have anywhere to stay nearby.” Sunny said quietly, trying to sound calm – she didn’t want Aya to know what she was thinking. “Maybe if we told you about some other story, you could let us stay in your house for the night?”

“Of course – if it’s newsworthy.” replied Aya, perking up a good deal. Completely turning to face Sunny and pulling out her pen and notepad, she eagerly continued. “What do you have, then? Let’s hear it!”

“Well...” said Sunny, trying to think of something Aya might consider newsworthy. It didn’t take long though – after only a few seconds, she remembered something she had seen earlier that day. “There’s a confused autumn goddess a short way behind us – is that interesting enough?” she said, waving at the path behind them. “She’s started painting the leaves already, even though it’s spring.”

“Really?” asked Aya, looking at Luna and Star. After a few seconds, Luna nodded in confirmation, and Aya’s eyes lit up with excitement at the news. Writing a quick message in her notebook, she tore out a page and handed it to Sunny. “Here, give this to the guards – they’ll show you to my house. Don’t go looking in my study, okay?” she said before flying off towards the direction Sunny had indicated. As she disappeared into the gloom – still moving somewhat unsteadily – Sunny lead Luna and Star further up the mountain, holding the message Aya had given them and trying to push down the bad feelings that still lingered. ‘See, now we have a place to stay for the night instead of being stuck out in the Youkai Forest. Everything’s fine, now!’

‘Right?’

Chapter Text

Remilia Scarlet sat on the Scarlet Devil Mansion’s balcony, holding a cup of tea and surveying her future domain. As always, Gensokyo was beautiful – lingering snow giving way to new growth in a stunning display of the natural cycle. Still, Remilia felt uneasy – something seemed to be wrong.

“Mistress, do you need a new cup of tea? Your current one appears to have gone cold.” asked Sakuya respectfully from her position behind Remilia, and as she said that Remilia noticed that she was correct – the tea had grown distastefully cool. ‘How long have I been here for?’ she thought as she nodded absent-mindedly at Sakuya, before a worrying realization came to her.

“Sakuya, would you please review the Mansion’s security?” asked Remilia, as Sakuya reached for her teacup. Sakuya paused for a moment, perhaps trying to judge Remilia’s seriousness, before taking a deep breath and composing herself.

“Well, Meiling is as strong as always, and the new maids are significantly more effective in combat than what we had before moving.” said Sakuya, always the picture of decorum. “Miss Patchouli and her magical defenses has been growing more capable ever since we travelled to Gensokyo, both from the wealth of knowledge here and her repeated conflicts with Miss Kirisame – although her health is still poor. And, of course, you are the pinnacle of strength and power, as always – and I am willing to do anything to serve you.”

“Good.” nodded Remilia, putting down her tea cup and getting up from her chair. “Sakuya, inform Meiling to be on her guard over the coming days, and make sure that Flandré’s room is secure. If anything concerning happens, do not hesistate to inform me – I shall be discussing matters with Patchouli.”

“Yes, my mistress.” said Sakuya calmly, taking a small bow as Remilia strided back inside. As Remilia opened the balcony door, though, Sakuya spoke up again, now sounding slightly apologetic. “Mistress, may I ask what exactly we are defending against?” she asked, and though she was as elegant as ever Remilia could tell she was worried. Remilia looked back at Sayuka, but before she could say anything they were interrupted by a loud *THOOM* from the front gates, accompanied by a brilliant flash of light.

“Sakuya, with me.” commanded Remilia after after only a few moments, spreading her wings and flying off the balcony. As she flew around to the front gate, now blown directly off of its hinges, Remilia quickly tried to divine what was going to happen – but the result was the same as what she had seen before.

Gensokyo’s fate was grim.

________________________________________________________________________________

Marisa Kirisame stepped over the unconscious body of Meiling and strided through the destroyed front gate. While a small part of her was saying to wait until daytime, that was almost completely drowned out by her desire to rescue Reimu. ‘Sorry, Meiling’ she thought as she walked through the gardens. ‘But Remilia’s gone too far this time.’

* whoosh! *

Marisa scowled as Remilia landed hard in front of her, Sakuya floating down behind her. “Greetings, Marisa!” she said airily, seemingly ignoring the destruction behind Marisa “To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit-”

“Cut the crap, Remilia!” yelled Marisa, pointing her Mini-Hakerro at Remilia and pulling a vial of liquid from her pocket. “Where’s Reimu?!”

“Reimu? I haven’t seen her in days.” said Remilia confusedly, infuriating Marisa even more. “Why? Did something happen?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know!” yelled back Marisa. ‘How dare she feign ignorance?!’ “Someone’s kidnapped her, and your footprints are all over the Shrine! Now, let her go!”

Remilia didn’t reply for a few moments, and for a moment Marisa thought she looked genuinely shocked, but she recovered so quickly that Marisa wasn’t sure that she even saw anything. “And why do you think it was me?” asked Remilia confidently. “Most people’s footprints look exactly the same.”

“Not yours – there’s no-one else your size who has the ability to hurt Reimu.” replied Marisa, her tone accusatory. “Especially since there were at least two sets of tracks.”

“Don’t bring Flandre into this – I would never involve her in something like that.” yelled back Remilia, her eyes flashing red. Marisa flinched at her anger and Remilia took the moment to keep going, walking slowly towards Marisa. “And why would I want to hurt Reimu? She’s a central part of Gensokyo, getting rid of her would throw the land into turmoil.” Now directly in front of Marisa, Remilia flew a few inches into the air and got right into her face. “Marisa, you’re in the wrong place.”

As Remilia turned on her heel and marched back towards the mansion, Marisa stood and stared, trying to figure out what just happened. Thinking about it, Remilia was right – it didn’t make sense for her to be the culprit. Still, Marisa didn’t know what else to do – she didn’t have any idea who else could have done it. Sighing, she turned around and walked defeatedly back through the gate, before pulling out her broom and drifting back towards the Shrine – maybe she could find something else.

‘Where’d you go, Reimu...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Clownpiece picked up a fresh chalk and finished drawing a complicated diagram on the floor, hoping she’d remembered it correctly. While the basic form of a summoning was fairly universal Clownpiece had only seen Hecatia’s sigil a few times, and accidently summoning someone else would be extremly bad. Really, she shouldn’t be doing this at all, but she didn’t really have any choice – Hecatia wasn’t in any of the places they would normally meet, and Clownpiece didn’t have any idea what else to do. ‘Sorry, Hecatia...’ she thought, placing her torch in the middle of the sigils and raising a knife. ‘Please don’t be too mad...’

* S tab ! *

Clownpiece winced as blood fell on the torch, causing the flame to flare up and turn a dark maroon colour. The various runes and sigils lit up with dark purple glow, and faint smell of brimstone filled the air. Clownpiece watched anxiously as the ritual completed, but nothing appeared, and after a few minutes she started to worry that she’d gotten the summoning wrong. ‘Come on, work...’

WOOMPH!

Clownpiece jumped back as the flame exploded out to consume the entire circle, burning away the chalk patterns. As the embers cleared, Clownpiece saw a folded note lying next to the torch, signed with Hecatia’s symbol . Clownpiece eagerly reached out to pick up and open the note, but her excitement quickly faded when she saw the contents.

Greetings,

Congratulations on the successful summoning, Piece – it was well put together, and I’m very proud of your ingenuity. Still, you shouldn’t do that again – a lot of people have traps set up to answer these sorts of calls, and I don’t want you to get hurt. As for whatever you are contacting me about, I’m afraid I can’t help you – while I’m sure it’s very important, I’m just too busy right now. Something major has come up down here, and I can barely spare the time to write this message, never mind visiting in person. I trust that you can deal with the issue yourself, and I’m sure that whatever you choose to do will be the best decision.

In full confidence,

Hecatia.

Clownpiece was on her own.

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk walked out onto the path to the Hakurei Shrine, taking a quick breath before walking up to the shrine itself. She’d had an awful nightmare last night that had really shaken her, and she wanted to check that Reimu was okay before starting her day. Besides, she wanted to talk to someone about it, and she knew that Luna and Star would tease her about it. ‘Come on, Sunny’ she thought as she hesitated outside the shrine’s front door. ‘There’s no way that Reimu is actually dead – you’ll open the door and she’ll be absolutely fine.’

* Knock knock!*

“Come in!” called out Reimu from inside the shrine as Sunny knocked on the door. “I’m in the kitchen right now, so I’ll be a few minutes.” Sunny slowly slid the door open and walked inside, sitting down on a mat on the floor. ‘See, Reimu’s fine!’ she thought as the door to the kitchen opened, but her heart stopped when she saw what was on the other side.

“Hello, Sunny!” said Reimu’s corpse, causally walking into the room. Her dress was torn and stained a deep red, blood dripping on to the floor wherever she walked. Her face was covered by her tangled and matted hair, only a single accusing eye staring out of the dark mass and straight into Sunny’s heart. Worst of all, though, was her midsection – a colossal gash was torn right through it, bloody entrails hanging out of Reimu in some kind of macabre display. “What’s wrong, Sunny?” she asked after a bit, cocking her head curiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

Sunny turned to run as Reimu took a step towards her, but when she looked back she saw that the door had somehow closed behind her. In fact, the whole shrine had changed – the walls had turned decrepit and rotten, and large holes had appeared in the roof. Through them, Sunny could see the sky had darkened, the early morning sun consumed by a dark shadow that left only a faint halo of light. She tried to escape through the destroyed roof, but her wings seemed to fail her, and with sticky squelch sound Reimu was right behind her. “Come on, why not have some tea?” she said, gently leading a terrified Sunny over to the table and sitting her down in front of it.

Reimu sat opposite Sunny, and a pair of tea cups appeared in front of two of them, Reimu slowly drinking from hers. Sunny watched as she took a sip out of her own cup, retching internally – the tea tasted horrible, and when Sunny looked into the cup she saw that it had turned into a vile mixture of blood, pus, and other liquids. Still, she kept drinking it – despite her horror, Sunny was unable to do anything other than drink the ‘tea’ and talk innocently with the undead Reimu. ‘Please, stop!’ she begged internally, as the world slowly started fading into a black void, leaving nothing but Reimu’s baleful eye. ‘Luna! Star! Anyone, please stop this!’

‘This can’t be happening...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Luna Child walked through the door of the Suzunaan book store, holding on tightly to a pair of books on astronomy. She’d finished them yesterday evening, and wanted to return them and get something else to read instead. ‘Hmm... that looks interesting!’ she thought, taking down a book with a picture of a dragon on the front. ‘Now I just need to find Kosuzu.’

Peeking around a bookcase, Luna saw Kosuzu and Heida sitting in front of a desk, reading a thick book on alchemical ingredients. Walking out, Luna crept over to the two of them, trying not to be too intrusive. “Umm... Hello?” she said timidly, not wanting to disturb them. “I’d like to return and borrow some books, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No problem! You’ve come at just the right time.” Kosuzu replied, looking up and beckoning Luna over. Luna walked over to the two of them, holding out the books for Kosuzu to examine. As she did so, Luna briefly glanced down at the book on the table, but a shiver of fear ran through her when she saw what page they were reading.

Fairies and their alchemical uses.

‘I’m sure it’s just a coincidence...’ thought Luna worriedly, but her blood turned to ice when she looked up and saw Kosuzu reaching out to grab her and Heida holding a paring knife. She turned to flee, but in her haste to get away she tripped over her own feet and fell flat on her face, the books she was holding flying out of her hands. She scrambled to get back up again, but before she did so Kosuzu stepped her boot on her back, pushing Luna to the floor. “There’s no need to struggle.” Heida said serenely, slowly walking over to where Luna was. “There’s nowhere to go, so you may as well give up.”

Stab!

Luna cried out in pain as Heida plunged the knife into her left leg, blood welling up from the wound. Kosuzu picked Luna up off the floor – her grip like iron despite her small frame – and together with Heida she strung Luna up in ropes dangling from the ceiling. Desperately Luna tried to fly up, maybe detach the ropes from the roof, but before she could escape Kosuzu grabbed onto her wounded leg, sending pain running through her.

“Could you please get me her wings, Heida – I’ve always wanted to fly.”

Luna redoubled her struggles as Heida smiled cruelly and walked out of view, but it was all for naught – with a brush of cold steel on her back and fresh wave of pain she lost any feeling in her wings. As Heida placed her now limp and bloodied wings on a nearby table, Luna squeezed her eyes shut to try and block out the pain. ‘Sunny, Star, anyone! Please help!’ she thought as Kosuzu pulled off her blood-soaked socks and slippers, before stabbing her other leg and letting the blood flow into a bucket she placed beneath her feet.

* knock!*

Luna’s eyes flew open as a knock sounded on the door, before it opened and revealed Alice Margatroid and Marisa Kirisame. “HELP!!” she yelled out, hoping they might rescue her, but neither of them seemed to be that concerned – instead strolling causally over to where Luna was hanging.

“Help you? After what you did to Reimu?” said Marisa, cocking her head. “Fairies who go harm humans need to punished. Now, Alice” she continued, turning to Alice and waving at Luna dismissively. “I believe that you wanted a heart for your new doll?”

Alice nodded and made a hand gesture, and two dolls appeared next to her and started floating towards Luna, Alice and Marisa watching passively. Luna tried to struggle, but she the blood loss was sapping her strength, and all she could manage was a feeble wriggle. Scalpels appeared in the dolls hands, and without a pause they simultaneously plunged their knives into her chest, cutting off her screams. The world turned grey and fuzzy, and as the room faded to black Luna saw nothing but dead, heartless gazes from everyone else in the room.

‘I’m sorry, everyone...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Star Sapphire stood in front of Aya’s worktop, trying to focus on the meal she was preparing. Last night’s sleep had been fleeting and restless, but if Star wasn’t ready in the morning Sunny and Luna would get worried, and Aya would probably want an early breakfast as well. ‘That’s the least we owe to her after what we did to her yesterday.’ she thought as she blearily cut some vegetables. ‘That crash looked like it really hu-”

Ouch!

A stab of pain abruptly woke Star up properly, and when she looked down she saw that she had accidentally cut her own finger instead of the ingredients, blood blossoming from the deep gash. Sighing, she put down the knife and slowly walked outside into the early morning sun – she clearly needed a boost to get through the day. ‘I should have done this earlier...’ she thought as she closed her eyes and focused on the light of the countless stars pouring down from the sky. ‘Well, no use thinking about that now, I suppose .’

A refreshingly cool sensation flowed through Star as she absorbed the starlight into herself, chasing away the tiredness clouding her mind. ‘That should do for now.’ she thought, letting out a small sigh – while that wasn’t a substitute for actual sleep, it should do for now. Now reinvigorated, she turned her attention to her bleeding finger, pushing some of the light into it and feeling the wound start to heal in respon-

‘Unlike Reimu’

Star paused as a sudden thought entered her mind, completely interrupting her attempts at healing herself and leaving a smaller – but still very noticeable – cut behind. She tried to start again, but her body and spirit refused to cooperate, and the intrusive thoughts kept coming. ‘Reimu’s lying dead on the floor because of you, and you can’t even take a little cut?’ continued the thought, berating Star in her own voice. ‘Pathetic. This is what you deserve.’

Star turned and ran, fleeing back inside and slamming the door behind her. ‘I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryPleasestop I didn’tmeanitthiswasn’twhatIwanted’ Star begged frantically but her mind didn’t relent for even a moment, and after a few moments her legs gave out and she stumbled against the door . Slowly sliding down the door, she lay on the floor and squeezed her eyes closed, her chest bursting and tears streaming down her cheeks. After a few minutes, though, her heart and mind slowed back down, and she pushed herself back up off the floor, the cruel thoughts still lying in the back of her mind. ‘I guess that I should finish the food...’ she thought, brushing herself off and pulling her sleeves down over her hands – she didn’t want Sunny and Luna to see what had happened to her.

‘I guess I can heal myself up later.’

Chapter Text

Luna Child watched as Sunny walked out of the woods, waving goodbye to Aya before following Sunny back onto the path to the village. Aya had offered to escort them off the mountain, and although Luna didn’t think that she had their best interests in mind after last night she didn’t really care. ‘Maybe we could get her to come all the way to the village?’ she thought, looking hopefully at Aya. ‘Maybe she needs something from there...’

Before she worked the courage to say anything, though, Aya waved goodbye and flew away. ‘I guess we’re on our own...’ Luna thought, fear rising in her chest – while she did occasionally go to the village they still weren’t really welcome there, and with Reimu gone the villagers would be even more suspicious. ‘They probably won’t have heard about Reimu’s disappearance, right?’ she said to herself, but that did little to stop her worries.

‘At least Star seems to be doing better...’ she thought, looking over at Star and trying to distract herself. While she seemed tired and her mood was still somber, Luna was glad to see that yesterday’s near-unresponsiveness was mostly gone. Still, Luna felt like she should ask her what was so wrong, but before she could say anything Star’s determined expression was replaced with sudden terror.

“The Shinigami’s here! Run!”

Luna looked around, suddenly acutely aware of the eerie silence that filled the world – while she liked peace and quiet, something about the muffling aura terrified Luna to the core. Star turned to run, but before Luna could follow her the Shinigami emerged from the bushes and walked out onto the path behind them, cutting off their escape.

“GREETINGS.”

Luna inched closer to Sunny in the hopes that they could make an escape, but oddly enough the Shinigami didn’t seem to be attacking, instead just staring at them. “Ar-arent you going to attack?” Sunny asked after a few nerve-wracking minutes, mirroring what Luna was thinking.

“NO” replied the Shinigami impassively, although Luna thought it might sound a little insulted. “WITHOUT THE MAIDEN, FIGHTING WOULD SERVE NO PURPOSE.” Walking up to the three of them, the Shinigami knelt down in front of them and continued. “I MUST ASK, THOUGH – WHERE IS SHE?”

“W-we’ll never tell you! Reimu’s staying with us!” Sunny yelled defiantly, although Luna could tell from her voice that she was terrified.

Hearing this, the Shinigami stopped for a moment before letting out a deathly rattle that send shivers up Luna’s spine.

“YOU SHOULDN’T BE CONCERNING YOURSELF WITH THIS – THE MAIDEN IS NO LONGER OF THE LIVING, AND NOTHING CAN CHANGE THAT.” intoned the Shinigami after a few minutes, breaking the silence. With that, the Shinigami got back up off the ground and walked away, stopping only to say a final few words.

“FORGET ABOUT HER AND LIVE YOUR LIFE, AND LEAVE THE DEAD TO THE DEAD.” they said, before disappearing back into the trees.

As the Shinigami left and the deathly aura faded, Luna gave a sigh of relief and relaxed a bit, although she still felt a bit unsettled .

“O-okay everyone, let’s go!” called out Sunny after a few moments, trying to sound confident. “We aren’t going to let this slow us down, right?” Luna followed along as Sunny continued down the path towards the village, walking quickly as if making up for lost time – but as the three of them approached the village Luna’s apprehension only grew stronger. ‘What if they catch us? Will they throw us out, or would they do something worse? We’re going to have to talk to someone, what if they tell everyone else?’

‘Are those nightmares going come true?’

________________________________________________________________________________

Sunny Milk gestured to Luna to stop her silencing field before knocking on the door of the village apothecary. Sneaking into the Human Village had been surprisingly easy – not many people were up this early in the morning, and with Luna dampening their footsteps and her hiding them from view getting past the few villagers who were around was easy. Still, they couldn’t hide forever, and as the three of them waited for a response Sunny had to admit that she was feeling a little anxious about what might happen next. ‘I hope this works...’ she thought as the door was opened, revealing an older man in fine (although slightly worn-looking) robes.

“Greetings! What can I help you with- oh, it’s some of you lot.”

The apothecary’s demeanour, though helpful at first, quickly turned sour when he saw who was at his door. “Go away, will you – my wares are not candy.” he said scornfully, looking down at the three fairies with contempt.

‘Hmmph! Of course we know that!’ Sunny thought as he started closing the door again, so annoyed by his attitude that she momentarily forgot what they were here for. ‘They taste disgusting anyway.’

Fortunately, Star wasn’t quite so hot-headed. “Sir, that’s not what we’re looking for.” she said politely, bowing slightly. As the apothecary stopped closing the door and looked at them strangely, Star continued. “Actually, we need your help.”

“Really? I didn’t know fairies could even get sick...” he said curiously, reopening the door and beckoning the Three Fairies inside. “Now, what’s the problem?” he continued as they all went into the storefront. “This better not be the setup for a prank, or I’m calling the exterminators.”

“No, it’s not a prank, and it’s us that need help – at least, not directly.” replied Sunny as she and Luna sat down on a pair of chairs, Star standing near the door. “It’s Reimu – something’s seriously wrong with her, and we need your help.”

“Reimu?” the apothecary said, suddenly alert. “As in Reimu Hakurei of the Hakurei shrine? What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s dead.”

Star’s reply seemed to catch the apothecary off guard, and for a few moments he said nothing, making Sunny feel more than a bit uncomfortable. ‘Does he know it was us?’ she thought as he gazed strangely at the three of them, but if he did he didn’t say anything, instead just sighing and sitting down on the floor.

“I’m not going to ask what happened – I doubt you would answer honestly anyway. ” he said wearily. “But unfortunately, I can’t help you with this – humans don’t come back from dying.”

Sunny and the others stared at the apothecary in shock, her hopes dashed by his blunt reply. “Can’t you do anything?! Please, we’ll get you anything you want, just don’t leave her like this!” she begged, unable to accept the refusal. The apothecary just looked at her sadly, though, and after a few minutes Sunny’s desperation slowly turned into despair, tears forming in her eyes.

‘Please, no...’

*sigh*

“Fine, there is one thing I can think of.” said the apothecary, shaking his head in resignation. “There’s a traveling doctor called Reisen who visits every so often, and she can cure stuff I never even thought was possible.” Getting up off the floor and opening the door, he continued. “She should be around today, so you could go and see if she could do something – I wouldn’t get my hopes up, though.”

‘Yes!’

Sunny sprang back off the floor, making Luna and Star jump with her sudden movements. “Thanks for the help – if you need anything, just come find us and we’ll help out!” she called back as she ran past the apothecary, eager to follow the lead.

‘I knew this couldn’t be it!’ she thought as she charged out of the door, the others running along after her to avoid getting left behind. ‘There’s no way this could end like that!’

‘It can’t end like that...’

Chapter Text

Luna Child peeked out from behind a tree, looking nervously at the large crowd in the village square. Sunny had lead the three of them to the village center to try and find Reisen, but when they arrive they quickly found an issue – seemingly everyone in the village had turned out in a giant meeting, completely filling the square. ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to sneak through that.’ she thought, trying to see an opening. ‘Even if nobody realises we’re there, someone’s going to bump into us.’

“What are they talking about?” Sunny wondered, looking at the crowd. “Luna, you’ve got good ears, do you know what they’re saying?”

‘I suppose that could be good to know...’ thought Luna, focusing on the crowd. The many voices were hard to discern, but after a few moments she started catching a few snippets.

“What’s happening?”

“Is the statue broken?”

“Is this an incident?”

“Did the Dragon abandon us?”

“I’m not sure...” Luna whispered, looking back at Sunny. “They seem to be worried about there being an incident, but other than that, I don't know.” ‘What does that have to do with the statue?’

“Hi!”

Luna jumped in shock as someone spoke directly behind her, whirling around to see a girl about her height looking back at her. She had short black hair and brown eyes and was wearing a plain gray woolen dress that came down to just below her knees. As she stared up at the fairies with wonder, Luna couldn’t help but feel worried – despite her none-threatening appearance, her blowing their cover would spell disaster.

“How did you find us?!” Sunny said, sounding as shocked as Luna felt. “We were supposed to be hiding!”

“Yeah, you were pretty well-hidden – I couldn’t see you at all!” the girl replied, her voice filled with excitement. “But we were playing hide-and-seek, and when I went to hide here I found you got here first!” Before Luna could stop her, she called out to her friends. “Hey everyone, over here! I’ve found some huge fairies!”

Luna felt fear rising in her chest as other children emerged from various hiding places around the square, running over to where the three of them were hidden. ‘This isn’t good...’ she thought as they crowded around the tree, looking at the them curiously and talking amongst themselves.

“Wow, those are some huge fairies! I’ve never seen anything like that!”

“Maybe we should tell someone about this...”

“No way! They’ll just mess everything up.”

“Those wings look amazing! Are they real?”

Luna’s heart started racing as the children crept ever-closer, her chest tightening. ‘We need to get out of here!’ she thought, looking around for some kind of escape. Before she could make her move, though, someone grabbed onto her wings from behind, sending a stab of pure terror running through her whole body. The world almost seemed to melt away as terrifying visions filled her mind – them plucking her wings off and wearing them themselves, breaking her legs and laughing at her crawling away on the floor, tearing her arms and legs offanddrawingscribblesinherblood.

Luna wrenched herself free and ran towards the exit, not even feeling the pain in her wings as she pulled away from her assailant’s grasp. The mass of bodies surrounding her were knocked aside with a strength born of terror, and she charged through the gap and fled into the streets leading away from the square. She ran through the alleyways, trying to find a way out of the village but in her state of terror all the houses looked alike, and after a few minutes she stumbled and fell on her face. She tried to pull herself back off the floor, but the fall seemed to have sapped away all her adrenaline, and she could only manage to stumble over and into a nearby bush, curling up and trembling in fear.

‘Please, don’t hurt me...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Sunny Milk walked past the various houses, looking around to try and see where Luna could have run off to. Her and Star had ran after Luna as fast as they could, but between her head start and Sunny having to deal with the angry mob that had been following them they had lost sight of her, and at this point Sunny was just guessing where she could have gone. ‘Where’d you go, Luna?’ she worried as she turned onto another street. ‘We should stick together, not run off on our own!’

“Sunny, look! Over there!”

Sunny’s thoughts were interrupted by Star pointing out a large bush in a nearby garden and, when she looked a bit closer at it, she could see a small figure hiding in it. “There you are!” she said as she ran over to the bush, her relief clear in her voice. “We’ve been looking all over for you! What happened back th-”

“Stay back!”

Sunny jumped to the side as a beam of off-white light shot past her, leaving a mark where it hit the wall across the street. “Woah, Luna! It’s me, Sunny!” she called out, ready to dodge anything else shot at her. Nothing else came, though, and after a few minutes Sunny cautiously crept towards the bush, Star following behind her.

As Sunny crawled into the bush, Luna looked up from her position crouched on the floor. She was clearly terrified – she was trembling, and her eyes were wide and filled with tears. “A-are they gone?” she whispered, looking hopefully at Sunny. Sunny nodded, and Luna burst into tears, collapsing onto the floor. Hesitantly, Sunny stepped forward, kneeling down next to Luna and putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘What do I do...’ she thought, looking sadly at Luna – she wanted to do something more, but she didn’t know what to say.

“I know that this is scary, but you don’t need to worry.” whispered Star, trying to sound confident. “As long as we’re together, nobody will be able to catch us!” Although Sunny didn’t think she sounded convincing, Luna seemed to be comforted by it, drying her tears and getting up out of the bush. “Now, let’s go find Reisen!”

“Really? What do you want to talk to her?”

The three of them jumped as Sekibanki walked up behind them, looking somewhat irritated. “How did you find us?!” Sunny yelled, her eyes darting around the area. “Is anyone else following you?”

Sekibanki sighed deeply, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t bring anyone else.” she said, sounding even more annoyed. “Now, what do you want with Reisen?”

‘Wait, what do I say?’ thought Sunny, trying to figure out what wouldn’t cause future issues. “Well, there’s this human we’re friends with that’s gotten hurt, and we want her to heal her.” she said slowly after a few seconds, hoping she’d managed to convince her to help without giving away too much.

“Hmm...” said Sekibanki, and for a few moments Sunny was worried that she might have figured out what was going on. After a few minutes of thinking, though, she shrugged, her gaze wandering off of Sunny. “Whatever, I don’t care. Reisen’s from Eientei – you’ll probably want to visit them.” Turning around and striding away, she looked back at them with distain. “Now, will you all go away before you cause even more trouble.”

Sekibanki walked away and, as she rounded the corner, Sunny relaxed a bit and turned to look back at Luna and Star. “Well, I guess we’ve got our new location!” she said, trying to sound as positive as possible. “Now, let’s get going! If we’re quick , we should be able to get there before nightfall.” As they walked briskly down the road towards the edge of the village, though, (or at least where Sunny thought was the edge of the village,) Sunny was actually starting to feel hopeful – while she didn’t know much about Eientei, she did know they were amazing healers, and if anyone could fix Reimu, it would be them .

‘They will be able to fix her, right?’

Chapter Text

Luna Child walked quickly down the road, eager to get away from the Human Village. ‘Let’s get this over with...’ she thought, picking up the pace to keep up with Sunny. ‘Maybe we’ll fix this before everyone gets too mad?’

“Look out, everyo-”

“IT’S SPRING!!”

Luna jumped as Lily White fell out of the sky, landing right in front of the three of them before Star even finished giving her warning. “What are you doing here?” she grumbled as her now rapidly-beating heart slowed back down. “Aren’t there lots of other places that need the news?”

“I saw you three looked down, so I thought I’d come and cheer you up!” Lily replied, Luna’s curt response not dampening her cheerful energy in the slightest. “I was actually on my way to the Misty Lake, but it looked like you really needed some good news.” she continued, twirling happily in the air and throwing out some glowing cherry blossoms.

‘Thanks, Lily’ Luna thought, a faint smile appearing on her face. While the news wasn’t that interesting – she knew what the date was, after all – Lily’s cheer warmed her heart. ‘I really needed that.’

“Wait, you’re going to the Misty Lake? You can’t go there!”

Sunny’s exclamation reminded Luna of what was there, and her heart sank like a stone. ‘If Lily goes to the Misty Lake, she’ll find Reimu for sure!’ she thought, trying to think of something to say as Lily looked at them curiously. ‘ If she finds out what’s happened, she’ll be devastated !’

“I wouldn’t go there – Cirno’s causing an incident.” said Star, interrupting Luna’s worries. “She’s taken Letty’s disappearance pretty hard this time, and she’s decided to make winter last all year. If you go there, she’ll fight you, and we all know you can’t beat her.”

“Really?” asked Lily, looking hopefully at Luna and Sunny. Luna nodded back in confirmation, and she felt a small pang of guilt as Lily’s cheerful mood deflated. ‘Sorry, Lily...’ she thought, following Sunny as she led them away from Lily. ‘We’ll make this up to you later, promise!’

“Hey, Sunny! Wait up!”

The three of them stopped walking as Lily called out after them, Luna looking back at Lily with a mixture of relief and trepidation – while it was nice to see that she seemed to have recovered her cheer quickly, Luna was worried that whatever Lily was looking for would cause another diversion to their already long journey. ‘Please don’t be anything too difficult...’ she thought, as Lily bounded up to them. ‘We really don’t have the time.’

“Could you please help me host a springtime party?”

‘Huh?!’

“What’s a springtime party?” asked Sunny, sounding just as confused as Luna was. “What do you need us for?”

“Cirno’s causing an incident, and that’s going to make everyone a bit sad.” replied Lily enthusiastically, looking over at Sunny. “So we should hold a big party to cheer them back up again! And what I need you for, well...” Lily paused for a moment, looking a bit embarrassed. “My house... isn’t really big enough. Could I hold it in your place, please?”

Luna was about to turn her down, but before she could say anything Sunny spoke up. “Sure, Lily!” she said, leaving Luna stunned at her reply . “Of course we’ll help out!”

“Great! Then let’s go!” cheered Lily, taking off and flying in the general direction of the Hakurei Shrine. Before Sunny could follow her, though, Star stepped in front of her, blocking her path. Luna quickly put up a silencing field around the three of them – this was going to be heated, and Luna didn’t want Lily overhearing.

“What are you doing, Sunny?!” yelled Star, locking eyes with Sunny. “Have you forgotten what we’re meant to be doing right now? We don’t have time for this!”

“No, I haven’t forgotten!” replied Sunny, sounding a bit annoyed. “But if we leave Lily on her own, she’ll go to the Misty Lake and find out about Reimu for sure. Besides, if we don’t do this we’ll make Lily sad, and that would be awful!” Sunny and Star faced each other for a few seconds, before Star sighed frustratedly and stepped aside, falling in behind Sunny as she flew after Lily. After a few moments, Luna flew after them, still unsure about the new plan. ‘Is this really the best plan?’ she thought, rushing to catch up and ignoring the growing pain in her wing – while she didn't want to say anything, she wasn’t sure if the diversion really was a good idea.

‘Hopefully Sunny is right about this...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Sunny Milk flew down after Lily, landing in the clearing around the big tree they called home. Star touched down shortly afterwards, followed distantly by Luna who seemed to be having some trouble flying. ‘Um... Luna? Are you okay?’ thought Sunny as Luna descended unsteadily and concerningly quickly. ‘That doesn’t look right.’

* Thud! *

Sunny winced as Luna crash-landed in the edge of the clearing. ‘That looked painful...’ thought Sunny as Luna lay face-down on the ground, quietly groaning. ‘I should probably go and help her out.’ Before Sunny could do anything, though, Lily ran over to her, concern plain on her face.

“Are you okay? Do you need any help?” she asked, helping Luna up off the ground. Seeing Luna’s bruised and disheveled look, Lily looked at her with sympathy for a moment before a gentle white light surrounded her and Luna’s hands. It spread to cover Luna completely, and when it faded all of her various scrapes and bruises were completely gone. “Thanks, Lily.” she said, brushing herself off. “I really needed that.”

“No problem!” replied Lily proudly. Looking around at the clearing, though, her face fell a little. “Wait, what happened here?” she asked sadly, and as Sunny took a good look around she could see why Lily was upset – large patches of the grass were dry and wilted, and even the tree itself looked somewhat unhealthy. ‘That’s going to be hard to clean up...’ she thought, looking at the damage. ‘We’re going to have our work cut out after this.’

“Never mind! Here, I’ll help!”

Sunny looked with awe as Lily flew around the clearing, leaving a trail of white sparkles that regrew the grass wherever they landed. After a couple of passes, Lily landed in front of the tree, leaving the clearing looking as good as new – in fact, Sunny thought that it more lively than before. “There, that’s better!” she said, walking up to the front door. “Now, let’s get started!”

“Wait, don’t go in there!” yelled Sunny, suddenly remembering the state they’d left the treehouse in. “Our house is a bit of mess.” she said, feeling somewhat embarrassed as Lily looked at her curiously. “Don’t worry, we’ll clean up before the party.”

“...Okay!” replied Lily after a few moments, and Sunny was relieved to see that she’d apparently accepted the excuse. “I’ll go and invite everyone!” she continued, running back over to Sunny. “Would this evening be a good time?”

“Sure!”

With Sunny’s reply of affirmation, Lily was off, flying up into the air. She didn’t get very far, though, stopping at the edge of the clearing and looking back at the three of them. “Star, could you go and find Eternity Larva?” she called out, seemingly only just remembering something . “She’s probably still hibernating, and I don’t know where she sleeps.” W ith that, she left for real, Sunny giving a sigh of relief as she disappeared over the treeline. ‘That was close...’

Dismissing her worries, Sunny turned back to face Luna and Star, trying to look confident. “ Star, you remember where Eternity’s house is, right? It should be easy to find her. And Luna, could you clean up the main room? We can’t have anyone over with it like this. ” she said, Luna and Star nodding in agreement. ”I’ll go find some more supplies – there’s no way we’ve got enough food and drink for this.” With that, the three of them split up, Sunny running down the path towards the Hakurei Shrine.

‘Hopefully this works out alright...’

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk crept up on the Hakurei Shrine, looking around to make sure that no-one was there. While they did have most of the stuff needed for an event like this, they would probably want some sort of drink, and the wine that sometimes appeared in the shrine was both the best and most available Sunny knew of. ‘Hopefully the stuff’s appeared by now.’ she thought as she cautiously climbed up the steps, looking through the door to make sure that nobody was there. ‘It has been a while since we’ve last been.’

Seeing that no-one was home, Sunny snuck into the shrine itself, looking around the interior. The room was cold and empty, with a thin layer of dust covering everything. ‘This is way too creepy...’ she thought, quickly running into the back room – for some reason, Sunny found the deserted shrine extremely unsettling. ‘Yes!’ she thought when she looked into the room – a bottle of wine stood abandoned on the altar, and Sunny dashed over to pick it up. ‘Time to go!’

‘Why? It’s not like anyone’s here.’

Sunny paused mid-stride, taking another look around the shrine. There were signs of Reimu’s absence everywhere, from the abandoned futon lying on the floor to the now completely dried bloodstain on the porch, and Sunny was finding it hard to stay positive in the face of those grim reminders. ‘Don’t worry about it!’ she told herself, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. ‘The people at Eientei will fix her up again, right?’

‘Right?’

‘Then why am I here instead?’

The question sprang into Sunny’s mind, completely interrupting her attempts to reassure herself. ‘That’s easy! We can’t disappoint Lily.’ she told herself, but the words rang hollow in her head – she knew that wasn’t the real reason she wanted to do this. The empty shrine, already creepy, now seemed almost haunted, the dust-covered floors serving to remind her of her what had happened. Suddenly running, she quickly dashed out of the shrine, trying to escape the claustrophobic walls – but no matter how quickly she ran, she couldn’t escape the real reason she didn’t want to continue with her mission.

She didn’t want to find out if Reimu could actually be saved.

________________________________________________________________________________

Luna Child walked back into the tree house, carrying a big bucket of water. Picking up a scrubbing brush and dunking it in the water, she started scrubbing down the table, trying not to think about what she was cleaning up. ‘Should we be doing this?’ she worried as she cleaned the blood off the table. ‘We should be out helping Reimu, not throwing a party.’

‘No, we have to do this.’ she thought as she kept wiping the table, trying to scrub the stains out of the wood. ‘We can’t let Lily know what’s happened.’ Even though Lily was normally friendly and cheerful, Luna didn’t want to see how she’d react to the news. ‘We’ll just have to go a bit faster.’ she resolved, finishing with the table and walking over to books lying on the floor. ‘Don’t worry, Luna – she’ll be back before anyone knows it!’

‘Reimu’s going to know.’

Luna stopped halfway up the stairs to her room, the book in her hands momentarily forgotten. ‘There’s no way Reimu won’t know what happened to her.’ the thought continued, worming its way into her head. ‘She’s going to tell everyone else about it, and they’ll all get furious. We’ll have to hide away for ages, and that’s if nobody catches us...’ she worried, shivering at the thought of the things that might happen to them.

‘No, no, stop worrying about it!’ Luna thought, shaking her head and resuming reshelving her stash. ‘Reimu’s super lazy, she might not even tell anyone about it! Besides, if Reimu’s safe and sound, no-one’s going to be that mad.’ she told herself, pushing the thoughts into the back of her mind and putting the last few books back on the shelves.

‘She’ll still care.’

Luna paused on the way back downstairs, the intrusive thought stopping her in her tracks. ‘Even if she doesn’t tell anyone, things won’t go back to normal. She’ll never want to see you again.’ it continued, a horrible feeling seeping into her stomach. ‘So? We can just move house!’ She thought, trying to push the feeling down, but the idea of cutting ties with Reimu just made her feel even worse. The room seemed to twist around her, and her legs gave out, sending her falling to her knees.

*Urlk!*

Luna looked down at the floor, now covered with the remains of her breakfast. Strangely, she felt a bit better – whereas before she felt an almost visceral panic, now she just felt a numb sadness. ‘I should probably clean this up.’ she thought, staring at the vomit, but it took her a good few minutes to muster up the will to actually get up, walking over to the bucket and brush and picking them up. Slowly hauling the water up the staircase, she started scrubbing up the mess, wrinkling her nose at the rancid smell. As she cleaned, a somber realization settled in her mind, weighing down her thoughts.

‘I liked being friends with Reimu.’

‘But it’s too late for that now.’

________________________________________________________________________________

Star Sapphire crawled down the tunnel that led to Eternity Larva’s winter home, still unsure of what she was going to say to her when she got there. ‘What if she asks about what we’ve been doing this winter?’ she worried as she neared the end of the pathway – while they’d done a fair amount of stuff over the past few months, it all seemed so irrelevant in the wake of what had happened. ‘Should I just tell her about it?’ she thought as the air started to get warmer. ‘No, we shouldn’t worry her.’

“Oh, Star! Hello!”

As Star crawled out of the tunnel, Eternity Larva turned to her, waving at her. Unlike last time, she wasn’t asleep, instead sitting next to a table in the middle of the room. “What are you doing here?” she asked, looking curiously at Star. “Wait, where’s Sunny and Luna?” she continued, now a bit worried. “Is there something wrong?”

“Ah, well, umm...” Star said, freezing up at Larva’s question. ‘Come on, Star! She’ll realize something’s wrong if you keep up like this!’ she thought, taking a quick breath and composing herself. “We’re hosting a big party to celebrate spring, and we thought you might want to come!” she said out loud, trying to sound excited. “Sunny and Luna are busy setting it up – it’s at our place this evening.” ‘Please don’t question it...’ she thought, looking at Eternity Larva hopefully.

“Sounds amazing – I’ll be there!”

Star gave an internal sigh of relief as Eternity Larva jumped up out of her chair, her eyes shining with excitement. ‘Looks like she bought it!’ “Great!” she said aloud, trying to match Larva’s energy. “Well, I’ve got to go and tell everyone else. See you there!” she continued, turning around and crawling back into the tunnel – she didn’t want to talk to Eternity any longer than necessary. ‘Sorry, Eternity Larva – maybe later.’

“Umm... Star? Are you sure everything’s fine? You seem a bit worried.”

“Wh-what? Yeah, everything’s fine!” replied Star, caught off-guard by Larva’s question. ‘Star, you idiot!’ she berated herself internally, annoyed at her lack of believably. 'You were all nervous, and now she’s caught on!’ “Just got a lot of places to go!” she continued, trying to be reassuring.

“Okay, if you say so.” said Larva, but Star could tell from her voice that she wasn’t convinced. “Guess I’ll see you there!” she continued, calling after Star as she crawled up the tunnel, trying to escape before she made things any worse. Popping out of the ground at the other end, she took a brief look around to reorient herself before quickly walking towards the Shrine, her mind filled with disappointment in herself.

‘Sorry, Larva – you shouldn’t be involved in our mess.’

________________________________________________________________________________

Lily White flew down towards a large stream, landing next to a decent-sized pool. The stream was crisp and clear, with lily pads floating on the surface and fish swimming through the water. A large fairy named River Song wearing a dark blue dress was sitting calmly by the pool, her shoes sitting next to her and her feet dangling in the water. As Lily descended towards the river, she took a deep breath and got ready to yell out a cheerful greeting.

“HI, RIVER!!”

“Eek!” yelled River, jumping and falling into the water. A few moments later she resurfaced, spitting out water and a small fish. “Hello, Lily...” she grumbled, taking off out of the water and landing next to Lily. “What do you need..?” she continued, waving her hand and sending all of the water flowing out of her dress. ‘Oops...’

“Sorry, River...” Lily said, feeling a bit embarrassed. She quickly recovered, though, eagerly jumping up to River. “Here, maybe this’ll make things better! We’re holding a party at Sunny’s place to celebrate spring! Wanna come?”

“Sure!” replied River, immediately perking up. “That’s the place behind the shrine, right?” Lily cheered and jumped into the air, but before she could leave River called out after her.

“Should I go and tell Cirno and Daiyousei? My stream empties out into the Misty Lake, after all.”

“No, unfortunately – Cirno’s causing an incident right now.” Lily said, looking back at River and shaking her head. “She’s trying to stop spring from coming.”

“Really? I haven’t heard of that...” replied River, looking at Lily curiously. Lily nodded in confirmation, and after a few minutes River sighed. “Well, we should probably leave her to it.”

“Yeah...” replied Lily, briefly sighing as well. “Well, see you at the party!” she continued before flying away, not letting the issues get her down. As she flew to towards the next spot, though, a strange thought entered her mind – was Cirno actually doing anything? ‘Hmm...’

‘No, it must be true!’ she told herself after a few moments, dismissing the idea. ‘Why would Star be lying? That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Besides, something’s causing spring to be less lively – there’s definitely something wrong...’

Chapter Text

Luna Child stood in the corner of the room, watching as various fairies and youkai filtered in and started the party. Sunny was at the door, greeting everyone as they arrived, and Lily was rushing around the room, filling the whole room with cheer. Star was cooking up the food they had brought out of storage, filling the whole room with a delicious aroma. It was shaping up to be a truely amazing celebration.

And Luna couldn’t enjoy any of it.

Her mood was still somber, despite the cheerful atmosphere. Everywhere she looked, she saw people happily celebrating, and all she could think about was how they would react if ever they found out what had happened. ‘Surely they can see that something’s wrong?’

“Hey, Luna! Over here!”

Luna looked over as River Song called over from the main table, her and some other fairies sitting around a plate filled with sausages. “You should try some of these!” she said from around a mouthful of food. Swallowing down the food, she continued. “They’re really good!”

Luna slowly walked over to join them – she probably should try to act like things were normal, and the food did smell pretty good. ‘Hey, maybe this isn’t so bad...’ she thought as she picked up one of the sausages.

“Hey, what’s this stuff? Did you spill some sort of drink?”

Luna looked down at where the fairy had indicated, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw that there was a small bloodstain on the table. ‘What do I do?!’ she worried frantically, trying to think of some way to distract them, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. The room suddenly seemed too small, the gazes of the other fairies feeling hostile on Luna’s back. “S-sorry, everyone, I’ve got to go.” she stammered out, jumping up and quickly running upstairs, slamming the door behind her. ‘They must know something’s up now...’ she worried , leaning against the door and trying to calm herself, to no avail – her mind wouldn’t stop thinking about what she’d just done.

‘There’s no way they can’t tell.’

________________________________________________________________________________

Star Sapphire picked up a plate of food and walked over to the table, placing it in front of a group of fairies. She was keeping herself busy cooking for the party, both to distract herself from what was happening with Reimu and excuse herself from having to talk to the others. ‘Hopefully nobody notices me...’ she thought, walking back over to the stove. ‘I really don’t want to talk to anyone right now.’

“Hey, Star! Over here!”

‘Never mind.’

Star walked over to where Wriggle Nightbug had called out to her, mentally steeling herself. “What is it, Wriggle?” she asked, sounding as friendly as possible. “Do you want anything different to eat ?”

“No, no, the food’s fine.” replied Wriggle, dismissing Star’s attempts to escape the conversation. “But you’ve been working away at that stove for the entire party, you need a break! Here, let me tell you a story – I think you’ll find it fun!” Seeing no way to escape it, Star sat down next to Wriggle, hoping this wouldn’t be too long.

“So, this story happened late last autumn.” Wriggle said, Star settling down to hear the story. “I was flying around looking for somewhere to hide for the winter when I saw a human walking back to the village.” she continued as some other fairies wandered over to listen in.

“Now, I knew this particular human, and he was absolutely awful – earlier that year, he had an entire nest of hornets murdered!” Wriggle said dramatically, although Star wasn’t sure if that was all that bad – she didn’t like hornets either. ‘I think that’s perfectly normal...’ she thought as Wriggle continued her story, although she didn’t say anything – she didn’t want to annoy her. ‘Maybe it’s different for insect youkai.’

“So, when I saw this human I knew I needed to do something – the spirits of the slain insects were crying out for their vengeance!” Wriggle continued, really getting into the swing of things. “So I went off to find the nearby forest fairies, and got them to set up a trap for him in the woods for me to lead him into.”

Wriggle took a quick break from her story to drink a glass of wine, and as she started up again Star started to zone out, letting herself simply enjoy the food and company. ‘Maybe we needed this...’ she thought, half-listening to Wriggle as she went on to describe how she got the human to walk into her trap. ‘We’ve been stressing out a lot lately, we need a rest.’

‘Really? Aren’t you forgetting something?’

Star jumped in her chair as a voice jumped into mind, reminding her of what had happened. “Sorry, Wriggle, I’ve got to go now.” she said, getting up and stepping away from the table. “We’re running out of food.”

“Really?” Wriggle said, looking at Star as she walked back over to the stove. “Oh, well – I’ll tell you the rest later!” she continued, and Star felt a little bad at her disappointment. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to stay with the group – the idea of partying with everything that was going on made her feel ill.

‘Sorry, Wriggle, but I can’t stick around.’

‘I don’t deserve it...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Sunny Milk stood by the front door, watching on as the party got into full swing. Technically she was meant to be greeting everyone as they arrived but, at this point, there probably wouldn’t be anyone else coming. ‘I should go over and join in...’ she thought, but before she actually got moving she was surprised by the sound of a knock on the door. ‘Who could that be? I thought everyone was here.’ she thought, cautiously opening the door.

“Hi, Sunny!”

Sunny threw open the door when she saw Clownpiece waiting on the other side, letting her into the house. “P iece, you’re back!” she cheered as Clownpiece stepped inside. “Come on in, it’s great to see you again!”

“Thanks, Sunny!” said Clownpiece, looking around at the celebration. “Looks like everyone’s doing well, too – this looks fun! How’s Reimu doing?”

Sunny stopped and looked back at Clownpiece, her mouth hanging open in shock. ‘Did she forget what happened?!’ she thought, staring incredulously and Clownpiece. “She’s dead, Piece – we thought you knew that!” Sunny said, barely managing to keep herself from yelling. “And where have you been, anyway?!” she continued angrily. “We’ve been looking all over for a way to bring her back, and you’ve been off doing who-knows-what! We really could have used the help...”

“Hey, calm down!” replied Clownpiece, holding up her hands in surrender. “I’ve been trying to talk to some people in Hell, but none of them are answering my calls.” Looking at Clownpiece’s sheepish expression, Sunny sighed, looking down at the floor in guilt.

“Sorry, Piece...”

“Eh, don’t worry about it – you must have had a stressful few days.” replied Clownpiece, waving it off. “Besides, I’m here now, so things should be better now. So, what’s the plan?”

“Well, we’ve left Reimu with Cirno, and we’re going to go to Eientei after the party...” Sunny said, but before she could continue she spotted Lily and Eternity Larva running over, Eternity, Luna, and Star following along behind. ‘What does she want?’ Sunny thought, looking at Lily’s more serious expression. ‘Wait, has she figured it out?!’

“Sunny, Clownpiece! We need to go to the Misty Lake!”

‘Huh?!’

“Wait, that’s what you wanted to talk to us about?!” said Luna, mirroring Sunny’s surprise. “Didn’t we already say why that’s a bad idea? There’s no way Cirno will let you past without a fight.”

“Yeah, that’s true...” said Lily, her voice filled with determination. “But we can’t just leave her out of this – she’s the one who needs cheering up most of all! Besides, there’s no way she could beat all of us at once.”

Sunny tried to think of some way to dissuade Lily from her plan, but seeing her earnest and determined gaze made it hard for Sunny to say anything to counter it – especially since everything Lily had said was true. Cirno was often somewhat down in early spring and, while she was very strong, there was no way she could beat all six of them, even with Daiyousei helping her. ‘Come on, Sunny, think of something!’ she told herself but, before she could come up with anything, Star spoke up, sounding somewhat defeated.

“Sunny, Luna... I think the game’s up.”

________________________________________________________________________________

Eternity Larva followed behind Sunny, Luna, and Star as they landed outside Cirno’s igloo, a slight feeling of dread in her mind. She’d known that something was wrong from the moment she’d seen Star’s nervousness, this seemed bigger than she could have imagined, and a big part of her didn’t want to find out what it was. Her sense of dread only increased as Daiyousei walked up to them, looking surprised and concerned. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?” she asked before looking back at Lily and Larva. “Wait, are you sure you should be bringing them around? Lily won’t take it well...”

“Yeah, I know...” sighed Star, looking at Daiyousei. “But we just couldn’t stop her – she deserves to know.” Daiyousei didn’t look convinced, and after a few moments Sunny spoke up, sounding defeated.

“Please Dai – we can’t keep this up.”

“...Alright, then.” replied Daiyousei after a few seconds, turning and walking back into the igloo. “Lily, you might want to brace yourself...” Eternity followed Lily and Daiyousei into the igloo, but what she saw inside stopped her in her tracks.

Cirno was standing over the body of Reimu, lying dead on a table. A frigid cold radiated out from Cirno, almost driving Eternity Larva straight back outside, but she couldn’t just leave – this was too important to run away from. ‘What happened?!’ she thought, looking at the frozen blood staining Reimu’s dress. ‘Isn’t she supposed to be super strong?’ Besides her, Lily ran to Reimu’s side, looking angrily at Cirno.

“Cirno, stop that! You can’t just freeze people, it’s really bad for them!”

Elbowing Cirno out of the way, Lily leaned over Reimu and started gently blowing warm air onto her, trying to revitalize her. “Come on, Reimu, you can do it!” she said, an edge of desperation in her voice. “Get up, please!”

“Lily... I don’t think she recovering.”

Lily stopped and looked back at Larva, her eyes filling up with tears. “Of course she will!” she yelled, running over to grab her shoulders. “She has to...” Eternity didn’t say anything, though, and after a few minutes Lily let go of her, collapsing onto the ground. Eternity Larva knelt down, putting a hand a Lily’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort her, but it felt nowhere near sufficient in the face of what had happened.

‘How did things go so wrong..?’

Chapter Text

Star Sapphire sat up out of her bed, stretching her arms and looking around the room. ‘That was a strange dream...’ she thought, climbing out of bed and putting on her dress and boots. ‘Well, time to get the breakfast ready! I wonder what Sunny and Luna want to do today?’

“Hello, Star.”

Star jumped in shock as a voice spoke up behind her, letting out a surprised yelp. ‘Who’s there?!’ she thought, slowly turning around – someone sneaking up on her was normally impossible. ‘How did they even get there?!’ What she saw when she looked back, though, turned her blood to ice.

“How are you doing?” asked the ghost of Reimu, staring vengefully into Star’s eyes. Her usual outfit had been replaced with a bloodstained white kimono that obscured her feet, and her hair was ragged and matted. “Well, I hope” she continued, floating slowly towards Star with her hand outstretched. “After all, we wouldn’t want our lovely little killer to not be enjoying herself, would we?”

As Reimu approached, Star turned and ran, charging down the stairs at incredible speed. Half way down the stairs, she tripped, tumbling down the rest of the steps and landing on her face at the bottom.

“Hello, Star! What’s the hurry?”

Star felt a wave of relief flow through her as she heard Sunny’s voice, but that quickly turned to terror when she looked up and saw her and Luna sitting around the table. Sunny’s face was bruised and bloodied, and her nose was crooked, like it had been smashed with something large and heavy. Besides her, Luna was looking even worse, with three massive claw marks ripped through her chest. Both of them were staring serenely at Star in spite of their injuries, but something about their gaze made Star even more unnerved. “What happened to you?” she asked anxiously, not even sure if she wanted to know the answer. “Did Reimu get you?”

“What? No! Don’t you remember? You hit me with the door.” said Sunny, getting up off the chair. “Yeah, and you left me behind when we were running away from a youkai.” added Luna, getting up as well. “What did you think was going to happen?” Star turned to run as Sunny and Luna advanced on her, but when she looked back she saw Reimu floating down the stairs – she was cornered. As the three of them closed in on her, blood started pouring out of their wounds, filling up the entire room. Star tried to swim up, but she couldn’t find the surface no matter how hard she tried, and as the light faded all she could see was Reimu, Sunny, and Luna looking down on her coldly.

*gasp!*

Star Sapphire sprang up out of bed, jumping out of the covers with fright. After a few minutes of deep breathing she managed to calm the edge from her fear, but in its place came an overwhelming regret. ‘They’re right, you know – you’ve caused all of them so much trouble, and for what? So you could laugh at their pain?’

‘No, no, that’s not what I wanted!’

‘Really? Then why do you keep doing it?’

A second wave of guilt struck Star as she remembered all the other times she’d tried to blow up Reimu. ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve done this, or even the second.’ her mind told her as she ran out of her room, trying in vain to escape. ‘You’ve been trying to do this for years, don’t act like this isn’t what you want.’

Star stumbled down the stairs, her mind still filled with swirling images of her past sins – her and the others dropping a snowbank full of cutlery on Reimu, or swapping her dumplings with poisonous mushrooms. ‘You know what you’ve got to do.’ she thought, picking up a knife and walking over to the sink. Scarlet blood bloomed outwards, and Star watched as the memories flowed down the drain, leaving her blissfully numb. She stared impassively for a few minutes before her mind fully cleared, slowly walking over to a cupboard and grabbing a roll of bandages. Quickly wrapping up her arms, she climbed back up the stairs crawled back under her blanket, slowly falling into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

‘It’s alright, everyone – this is what’s right...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Cirno sat outside her house, looking idly up at the stars. The crisp and clear night was extremely cold, and since Reimu didn’t need her at her side she was going for a quick break outside. ‘The stars do look pretty good tonight.’ she thought, briefly glancing around before standing back up – stargazing was a bit too boring for her. ‘Time to find something interesting to do!’

“Hi, Cirno.”

Clownpiece walked over, sitting down heavily next to Cirno. “Hey, how’s it going?” she asked, choosing to ignore Clownpiece’s poor mood. “Surely you and Sunny’s lot have figured something out by now!”

“Unfortunately, we’ve got nothing – Sunny and the others are going to go to Eientei, but I’m not sure that’s going to work.” replied Clownpiece tiredly, slowly looking up at Cirno. “Are you sure you don’t want to stop? I know that you weren’t very close to her, at this might not work out.”

“Nah, no way!” Cirno replied, jumping up and posing dramatically. “There’s no way a little thing like this will get me down!”

“Heh, of course not...” said Clownpiece, smiling weakly and looking wistfully into the distance as Cirno nodded proudly at her comment. ‘Yeah, you better believe it!’ As Cirno started walking away, though, Clownpiece called after her, saying something that Cirno never expected her to ask.

“Cirno, why do you want to be the strongest so much?”

Cirno stopped and looked back at Clownpiece, suddenly unsure of what to say. “I’m just trying to show everyone how awesome I am!” she scoffed, and thankfully Clownpiece didn’t push it, instead just rolling her eyes and walking off. Even as she left, though, her question still stuck in Cirno’s head, and after a few moments she found an old memory springing to mind.

“Yeah, you’d better run!”

Cirno shook her fist at the retreating forms before quickly running back to help Daiyousei. She’d caught the mob of human children trying to drown her in the lake, and they’d immediately started running in the face of a storm of hailstones. “Dai, they’re gone!” she said, pulling her out of the water. “You don’t have to worry anymore, I’m here!” Daiyousei didn’t respond immediatly, but after a few moments she sprang to life, gasping and opening her eyes.

“What happened?! Are you okay?” asked Cirno as Daiyousei coughed up a lungful of lake water. “I-I’m fine...” replied Daiyousei, shakily pushing herself off the ground. “And I don’t really know what happened – I just flew over to say hi and they all jumped on me and pushed me into the lake. Maybe they thought that since I’m a lake fairy, I’d like the water.”

“What?!”

Cirno yelled in outrage as Daiyousei tried to wring some water out of her dress, shivering violently. While Daiyousei was trying to downplay things, it was obvious to Cirno that they were doing it for fun. “How dare they?!” she yelled angrily, ready to give chase. “When I’m done with them they won’t even remember what a warm day is !”

“Cirno, calm down! You’ll just get yourself hurt...” said Daiyousei, grabbing onto Cirno before she could fly away, and much as Cirno wanted to deny it she knew that Dai was right – chasing after them wouldn’t end well. “Hmmph...” grumbled Cirno, sitting down heavily next to Daiyousei. “It’s not fair...”

“Don’t worry, Cirno – It’ll be fine.” said Daiyousei, looking over at Cirno. “I’ll recover, so there’s no harm done.”

“No, it’s not fine – they hurt you, and it’s far from the first time someone’s done that! I should be able to do something about this!" yelled back Cirno frustratedly. “In fact, that’s exactly what I’m going to do” she continued, getting up and marching back towards her house. “Next time someone comes ‘round looking for a fight, I’ll teach them not to mess with us!”

“Cirno, are you sure about that?” asked Daiyousei, sounding worried. “What if some super strong Youkai shows up – surely you know you can’t beat them?” she continued, running after Cirno. This time, though, Cirno wasn’t dissuaded.

“Well then I’ll just have to get stronger!” replied Cirno, her determination carrying into her voice. “I’ll become the strongest in all of Gensokyo, and then nobody will be able to mess with us again!” As she said that she looked at Daiyousei, half expecting her to object again, but instead she was watching on with admiration.

“Thanks, Cirno – that sounds really nice...”

‘That sounds really nice...’

Shaking herself out of the memory, Cirno looked pensively into the distance, now thinking about how her resolution had gone. ‘I guess things have gotten better...’ she thought, considering the state of Gensokyo – ever since Spell Cards had been introduced, things had been getting a lot better. ‘Maybe I should thank Reimu for tha-wait...’

Cirno turned around and walked back into the igloo, her realization redoubling her resolve – without Reimu around, the Spell Cards might just disappear, and in any case she needed to come back so she could thank her for all she’d done. ‘Don’t worry, Reimu’ she thought, stepping inside and re-applying her freeze.

‘After all, with the strongest on our side, there’s no way we’ll fail!’

Chapter Text

“Reimu! Reimu, where are you?!”

Marisa Kirisame walked slowly through the forest in the early hours of the morning, calling out forlornly into the trees. While that probably wasn’t going to work, she couldn’t think of anything else to do, and she couldn’t just do nothing. ‘Reimu, where’d you go...’

“Hi, Marisa!”

‘Huh?!’

Marisa jumped and spun around, shocked to hear someone right behind her. ‘Phew...’ she thought as she looked behind her to see Rumia looking up at her innocently. “Ah, it’s you!” she said out loud, standing up a little straighter. “Don’t sneak up on people like that, I almost blasted you!”

“Is that so?” replied Rumia, looking at Marisa quizzically. “What are you doing here? Are you looking for something?”

“Yeah...” said Marisa sadly, looking down at Rumia’s curious expression. “Have you seen Reimu anywhere? She’s gone missing.”

“Reimu? Yeah, I’ve seen her...” replied Rumia pensively, and Marisa’s breath caught in her throat at the news. “Really? Where is she?!” she said, desperately jumping towards Rumia. “Please, you gotta tell me!”

“S-she’s with Cirno – I saw her and the others dragging Reimu away.” said Rumia, nervously backing away from Marisa. She kept talking, but Marisa wasn’t paying attention to her, instead trying to understand what she had just been told. At first she couldn’t believe it – Cirno beating Reimu just seemed too absurd to take seriously – but the more she thought about, the more sense it started to make. ‘Cirno out that day, and I know she was in the area...’ she thought as Rumia disappeared into the treeline – the frost she’d found in the Three Fairy’s house and the small footprints around the shrine were all telltale signs. ‘It must be her – there’s no-one else it could be!’ she decided, mounting her broom and quickly flying off towards the Misty Lake.

‘Don’t worry, Reimu – I’m almost there!’

________________________________________________________________________________

Marisa swooped down on Cirno’s igloo, surprising a lone Daiyousei sitting outside. “Oh, umm, hi, Marisa!” she said nervously, looking round as Marisa broke hard in mid-air before jumping off onto the ground. “What brings you here? If you’re looking for Cirno, she’s playing outside – come back later and I’ll-”

“Where’s Reimu?!”

Daiyousei stopped talking as Marisa angrily cut her off, flinching and glancing back to the igloo. “R-Reimu? I don’t know – isn’t she at the shrine?” she said, but Marisa wasn’t listening to her, instead striding past her towards Cirno’s house – Daiyousei’s guilty expression had all but confirmed her suspicions. Daiyousei ran forward to try and block her path, but she quickly shrank back as Marisa pulled out her Mini-Hakkero, pointing it at her with it’s core glowing ominously. ‘Oh no, you don’t...’

“Hey! Leave Dai alone!”

‘Of course the idiot’s here...’

Marisa rolled her eyes and turned to face Cirno, who was glaring at her from the entrance of her house. “What have you done with Reimu?” she demanded, locking eyes with Cirno and looming threateningly over her. “Don’t bother denying it, I know she’s here.”

Unfortunatly, Cirno wasn’t intimidated. “What, and you think you can just march in here, threaten Dai, and we’ll just roll over without a fight?” she replied, defiantly meeting Marisa’s gaze. “No way – you’ll have to beat in a duel before I say anything! Now, pick your cards – 3 should be enough. Ice Sign: Icicle Fall!”

*sigh*

“Alright, then.” said Marisa, pulling out her own Spell Cards and dodging the volleys of magical icicles falling from above. “And once we’re done here, I’ll make sure to melt you down so hard, you won’t come back ‘til next winter!” she continued as last few icicle bullets vanished into the ground. “Love Sign: Master Spark!”

A gigantic beam of light poured out of the Mini-Hakkero as the Spell Card took hold, and for a moment Cirno looked worried before she disappeared behind the roaring beam. Sending a few volleys of star-shaped shots out for good measure, Marisa dismissed the card and waited for the light to clear – that would probably be it right there. ‘There’s no way she can stand up to a proper Spell Card-what?’

“Is that all you’ve got?” taunted Cirno, and Marisa was shocked to see that she didn’t even seem to have been hit at all. “Huh, I thought you’d be stronger. Hail Sign: Hailstorm!”

Cirno activated her Spell Card, and Marisa quickly started moving to avoid the storm of ice shards that shot out from clouds of mist that had appeared around her . ‘How did she do that?!’ she thought as she dodged the icy bullets, her distraction letting a few shards get her . ‘I’ve never seen anyone just eat a Master Spark like that, let alone some stupid fairy! No matter, I’m sure she can’t do that forever.’

“Light Sign: Earthlight Ray!”

A stream of stars blew away the last of the of Cirno’s attack, and as they flew towards the ice fairy volleys of light poured out from behind her, lighting up the early morning sky in a dance of colour. This time, Marisa kept the Spell Card up for it’s full duration – she didn’t want a repeat of the last result, and clearly Cirno needed to be taken a little more seriously. ‘Well, that should do it.’ she thought as the light faded. ‘That was a little harder than I thought, but there’s no chance she’s still-wait, what?! How!’

“Really? I’d have thought an incident resolver would be a bit better at this.” said the still untouched Cirno, throwing something aside and scoffing at Marisa’s incredulous face. “It’s almost embarrassing, actually – wait, is that how you use that word? Eh, doesn’t matter” she continued, pulling out her last Spell Card. “Frost Sign: Frost Columns!”

Marisa quickly darted aside as a magical ice chunk flew past her, spitting out ice bullets in all directions. Cirno was forming and throwing some more after it, but Marisa was too focused on figuring out just what was wrong with her own attacks. ‘What’s going on?! It’s like I’m trying to attack a wall! How is she-’

‘Wait, that it!’

Avoiding the last of the bullets, Marisa pulled out her own Spell Card and took a quick breath – if her hunch was right, this might be painful. “Blazing Star!” she called out, squeezing her eyes shut and holding on tight as the Spell Card activated, surrounding her and her broom with light and sending her speeding towards Cirno like a comet. ‘Well, here goes nothing...’ she thought, bracing herself for collision. ‘Hopefully this isn’t too painful...’

*smack!*

Marisa felt a harsh jolt run up her broomstick and into her arms, almost knocking her off even with the shock absorbing enchantments she’d built in. Opening her eyes, she saw it was just as she suspected – Cirno had erected a wall of ice in front of her to absorb all of her bullets, completely nullifying the attack. “Hey, that’s cheating!” she yelled indignantly, pulling the front of her broom out of the ice. “You aren’t allowed to use non-Danmaku attacks during duel! Stupid fairy!” ‘How dare she?!’

“Oh yeah? Well, you still lost, so take that!” replied Cirno, looking at Marisa with a smug expression all over her face. “Besides, Reimu’s going to be fine – Sunny and the others are going off to Eientei right this moment, and I’m sure they’ll find some way to bring her back there. Now, you lost, so say sorry to Dai and go away!” Cirno turned and walked back towards her igloo with pride, but Marisa wasn’t focusing on that – there was something far more important that was taking up all of her thoughts.

‘Bring her back?’

‘Reimu’s dead?!’

Marisa pushed past Cirno and dashed into the igloo, ignoring her cries of protest. The air inside was absolutely freezing, her breath instantly clouding up in front of her face. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, revealing what she had been dreading ever since Reimu had gone missing – her body, lying dead and cold on a table. She was wearing her normal outfit, now scorched and stained with blood, and a jagged wooden spike was impaled through her stomach. ‘Why would she do this? HOW could she do this?’ thought Marisa, still not wanting to believe her eyes. ‘I don’t understand – how could Reimu let this happen-’ she asked herself, when suddenly a memory crossed her mind.

“You’re in danger too, Marisa! Something’s aiming for the shrine!”

‘Those three tried something like this before’ she thought, thinking back to the blasted walls filled with knives she had found when Sunny, Luna and Star tried to take over the shrine before. ‘We laughed it off at the time, but now...’

‘Now, it’s too late.’

________________________________________________________________________________

Cirno stood outside the igloo and waited for Marisa to come out, feeling somewhat worried. ‘I probably shouldn’t have said that...’ she thought as Marisa emerged, quietly reaching into her pocket for some more Spell Cards. ‘Hopefully she won’t be too mad – right?’

“Marisa, are you alright?” asked Daiyousei, hesitantly reaching out her hand. “I’m sure things are going to work out fine, just wait a-”

“No.”

Daiyousei blinked as Marisa cut her off, her voice disturbingly quiet. Her expression was dark and angry, and as she walked purposefully towards the two of them a stab of fear sent shivers down Cirno’s spine. ‘She’s going to do something bad, isn’t she?’ she thought as Marisa approached them and walked straight past. “Hey, were do you think you’re going?!” she yelled out, stepping in front of Marisa and pulling out another set of Spell Cards. “Do you need another beating-”

*Bam!*

Cirno let out a pained gasp as Marisa backhanded her in the face, knocking her to the ground. She quickly pulled herself up to a sitting position and reached for her now-dropped Cards, but before she could grab any of them she saw the glowing form of the Mini-Hakkero pointed down at her face. “Why should I care about the rules? You clearly don’t.” said Marisa coldly, staring down at Cirno with fury. “Besides” she continued, Cirno scrambling back and raising her hands over her face as the light in Marisa’s hands slowly grew brighter. “Weren’t Spell Cards Reimu’s idea?”

Rainbow fire poured out of the Mini-Hakkero, and for a brief moment Cirno felt a searing pain all over her before she lost her feeling entirely, her body falling to the ground. “Cirno!” Daiyousei cried out, running over and cradling her charred corpse, tears forming in her eyes. Cirno tried to muster the will to get back up and stop Marisa from leaving, but she couldn’t find the motivation – after all, wasn’t this what they deserved? As Marisa mounted her broom and took off towards the Bamboo Forest and Daiyousei slowly dragged her body back into the igloo, a single thought entered Cirno’s mind.

‘Sorry, everyone – I really screwed up this time...’

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk pushed through the dense bamboo stalks, leading the way towards where she thought Eientei was. Her, Luna, and Star had all gotten up bright and early, and with their wish to restore Reimu lending energy to their wings they had manage to fly to the Bamboo Forest in less than an hour. ‘Looks like we’re making good time.’ she thought, holding open the path for Luna and Star to climb through. ‘At this rate, we should be at Eientei before mid-morning!’

“Sunny? Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

‘Well, assuming we can find it...’

Sunny turned around to face Luna, but before she could speak up and say that of course she knew where she was going, why would Luna ever doubt her she looked around and realized that they might have a problem. The dense bamboo prevented her from seeing further than a few feet in front of her, and the high canopy stopped her from seeing the sun to find her way. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find them eventually!” she said instead, trying to sound confident. “We just have to find a path.”

“And how will we find a path?” asked Luna, not convinced by her confidence. “This is the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, I’m not sure there even are any paths. Actually, why are we walking? Couldn’t we just fly out of here?”

Sunny was about to agree with her, but one look around told her that that probably wouldn’t work – the canopy was just too thick. “Well, there must be some way to find the way!” she said instead, trying to think of another solution. “People go there all the time, so there must be a path.”

“Hmm...” thought Luna, seeming to accept that idea. “I suppose that’s true. Well, let’s go find-”

“Sunny, Luna, quick! Someone’s coming!”

Sunny and Luna’s argument was interrupted by Star’s warning, the three of them diving for cover and Sunny putting up a cloaking field around them to hide them from view. Fortunately, the dense bamboo was working in their favour now, giving them plenty of time to hide themselves before the stalks parted to reveal Mokou. “Huh, where’d they go?” she said as emerged, looking around confusedly. “I’m sure I heard someone around here... Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.”

‘Wait, maybe we should talk to her.’ thought Sunny, climbing out of their hiding place and ignoring Luna and Star’s looks of shock. ‘She lives around here, so surely she knows the way around!’

“Oh, it’s you – what are you doing here? Not causing trouble, I hope.”

Sunny bristled slightly as Mokou spotted them, somewhat annoyed at her flat tone. “Hey, that’s not the only thing we do!” she said as Luna and Star revealed themselves as well. “We’re actually looking for Eientei – could you show us the way?”

“Eientei? Why would you want to go there?” asked Mokou, looking at Sunny skeptically. “I didn’t think fairies could get sick.”

“It’s not for us.”

Mokou paused for a moment when she heard Luna’s statement, her non-plussed expression replaced with slight concern. “Go on.” she said, looking down at the three of them. “What happened?”

‘Wait, what do we say?!’ thought Sunny, suddenly unsure of what to say. Fortunately, though, she didn’t have to say anything – Star spoke up instead. “We... made a mistake, and now Reimu’s dead.” she said, looking at Mokou guiltily. “We’re hoping that the people in Eientei could bring her back. Could you please help us?” Mokou didn’t say anything in reply, and for a few moments Sunny was worried that she might force them to leave – but her fears were soon put to rest.

“Sure, I’ll help you out.” said Mokou, beckoning the three of them to follow her as she walked away. “Now come this way, and watch your step – you don’t want to get caught by Tewi’s traps.” As the three of them followed her through the bamboo shoots, Sunny felt a spark of hope rising within her – things seemed to be going well.

‘Reimu’s going to be back soon – I know it!’

________________________________________________________________________________

Luna Child walked along the path through the forest, following behind Mokou as she led them towards Eientei. Mokou had found a path pretty soon after they’d met her, and Luna was relieved to not have to push through bamboo stalks to make any progress. Still, she was a bit worried – while Mokou did seem to know where she was going, how did they know that she was leading them to the right place? ‘What if she’s leading us into a trap?’ she thought, looking around suspiciously. ‘We did tell her that we were involved in Reimu’s death, loads of people would want to hurt us for that!’ Before Luna could worry herself any more, though, her thoughts were interrupted by Star yelling out a warning.

“The Shinigami’s here! Run!”

Luna jumped and whirled around, a stab of fear shooting through her as the Shinigami stepped out of the bamboo forest and onto the path behind them. Strangely, though, Mokou didn’t seem to be concerned, instead just looking slightly resigned. “What’re you here for? Finally figured out how to get past the Elixir?” she asked, sighing and turning to face the Shinigami. “Nah, no way I’m that lucky – you’re here for Reimu, aren’t you?”

“YES, I AM.” replied the Shinigami, walking over to face Mokou. “SHE ISN’T MOVING ON BY HERSELF, AND THESE FAIRIES SEEM TO HAVE HIDDEN HER. WILL YOU HELP ME, FIGURE OF HOURAI?” it continued, and for a brief moment Luna thought about what might happen if Mokou accepted – although fortunately, her fears were unfounded.

“Nope, no can do.” replied Mokou, shaking her head in disagreement. “And I’m not going to let you hassle the fairies, either – you’ll have to find some other way to find her. Now come on, you three – we’ve got a doctor to visit.” she called out, turning back and walking away.

“ARE YOU SURE? YOU KNOW BETTER THAN ANYONE THAT HUMANS ARE NOT MEANT TO LINGER HERE FOR TOO LONG.”

Mokou stopped and sighed deeply, looking back at the Shinigami. “I’m sure she can wait a couple of days.” she said, her face filled with frustration. “And I’m not going to crush the fairies’ dreams just so you can keep better time – forget it.” The Shinigami paused for a moment, before letting out a deathly rattle and disappearing back into the woods. “Well, that’s that – now, let’s get going.”

“Umm... Mokou? Why are you doing this?”

“Huh? Why am I doing this?” said Mokou, looking back at Luna with slight surprise. “It’s not that complicated – you three are going through a hard time, and I thought I should help out. Besides, Reimu’s a nice girl, and I wouldn’t want to see her die young. But that’s enough thinking – we’ve got places to be!” Luna followed as she resumed leading the way, still feeling unsure. ‘Shouldn’t she hate us? She just said she like Reimu, shouldn’t she want to get revenge?’

‘Why doesn’t she hate us..?’

________________________________________________________________________________

Star Sapphire watched anxiously as Mokou walked up to the front door of Eientei, knocking hard on it three times in a row. After a few moments, the door opened to reveal a small rabbit youkai who’s expression quickly morphed into a look of terror when she saw who was at the door. “M-mokou!” she stammered out, slowly backing up into the corridoor. “I-I’ll go fetch Mistress Kag- I mean, Kaguya immediately! Pl-please wait he-!”

“Woah, calm down! That’s not what I’m here for.” said Mokou, interrupting the rabbit’s frightened words. Gesturing back to the fairies, she continued. “These three would like to see Eirin, and I’m just following along to make sure nothing goes wrong. Could you go and fetch her, please?”

“Ah, o-of course!” said the rabbit, still sounding pretty nervous. Star followed as she led the four of them inside, quickly taking them to a reception room near the entrance. “I’ll go and tell Eirin that you’re here – please, make yourself comfortable.” The four of them sat down as the rabbit quickly scurried away again, Star silently wondering if Eirin was even going to see them at all. She didn’t worry for long though, as in only a few minutes the door opened again and Eirin stepped inside, Reisen following in behind her.

“Ah, Mokou! And... you three. To what do we owe the visit?” she said, sitting down and looking at the three fairies with disdain. “If you’re looking for the Lunar Flag, please save everyone’s time and just leave.”

“N-no, that’s not what we are here for.” replied Star, although she made a mental note of where it had gone – Luna would be very happy to have it back, and Star felt that she should try and return it. ‘It’s the least I can do after all the trouble I’ve caused her...’ “It’s Reimu, actually.” she said aloud, trying to sound as polite as possible. “She’s... dead, and we really need you to bring her back. Please, can you help us?”

“Hmm... Reimu, you say? Yes, that might be possible.” said Eirin, her face pensive. “I’ll have to check her to be sure, but if she hasn’t decayed too much it should be doable.” She started to get up off the chair, but before she stood up fully a thought seemed to cross her mind. “Tell me, do you know if she’s moved on yet? It would be useful to know.”

“No, she hasn’t – there’s a Shinigami looking for her, but we’ve hidden her away..” replied Star, feeling hope for the first time in days. ‘Reimu’s going to be okay!’ she thought, tears of relief filling up her eyes. ‘She’s really going to be ok-’

“Ah. Well, I’m afraid I cannot help you, then.”

‘Huh?’

Star stared numbly ahead as Eirin stood up and walked towards the door, her hopes dashed by Eirin’s dismissal . Sunny looked like she was about to say something, but before she could Mokou interrupted her, standing up and storming over to Eirin . “What! Why not?!” she yelled, outrage clear in her voice. “You just said you could do it, and now you’re refusing outright? Surely you can see how cruel this is?!”

Eirin, however, wasn’t swayed. “Mokou, I am well aware of what I am doing.” she replied, her cold gaze unaffected by Mokou’s anger. “But raising the dead is a forbidden art, and if a Shinigami has been sent to personally collect Reimu then clearly her fate is of special interest.” Walking out of the door, she looked back at Mokou for a moment before continuing. “To defy the gods so openly would be pure folly, especially for someone who has already done so."

“Hmmph, heartless hag.” grumbled Mokou, still fuming as the door closed behind Eirin and Reisen. “Well come on, you three – we aren’t getting anything here.” she continued, sighing and looking back at the Three Fairies. Star and the others followed along as Mokou led them back out of Eientei, her mind too numbed by grief to protest. As they stepped back outside, though, Mokou stopped and turned back to face them, pausing for a moment and gathering her thoughts.

“I’m sorry it turned out that way – Eirin can be really cruel sometimes.” Mokou said awkwardly, looking at the Three Fairies with sympathy. None of them said anything, though, and after a few moments Mokou quietly started to speak again. “Look, I... I know how it feels – it sucks when people die.” she said, clearly struggling to find the words. “Just... try to remember the good times you had, and know that it does get easier after a while.” Still getting no reaction, she sighed, closing her eyes briefly before walking away, calling back to the fairies. “You know what, I’ve got a bottle of sake I’ve been meaning to drink back at home – how about we drink it together, and you tell me a bit about Reimu, hu-”

“FUJIWARA NO MOKOU, HOW DARE YOU TAINT THIS PLACE WITH YOUR PRESENCE? COME HERE AND FACE YOUR JUDGEMENT, YOU FILTHY SWINE!”

“Ah, nevermind – we’ll have to do that later.” said Mokou, rolling her eyes as the voice of Kaguya echoed out from the mansion. “I’ll meet you three outside the forest – don’t worry, the path out is actually fairly easy, just don’t take any of the turns.” As Mokou shifted her attention to the mansion, yelling out a stream of words Star hadn’t heard before, Sunny led the three of them back down the path and away from the mansion. ‘Now what do we do?’ thought Star as the three of them walked away from the fight breaking out behind them. ‘That was the only plan we had, and it’s completely destroyed. Is there anything else we can do, or is this it? Is...’

‘Is there really nothing we can do?’

________________________________________________________________________________

Sunny Milk walked slowly through the bamboo forest, leading the way as her, Luna, and Star walked down the path away from Eientei. ‘What do we do now...’ she thought, staring vacantly ahead. ‘That was our big plan, and it’s completely failed. Surely there’s another way, right? There’s got to be...’

“Sunny, what do we do now?”

Luna’s quiet question echoed Sunny’s thoughts, and for a moment Sunny couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. “Maybe we should take Mokou up on her offer – it’s not like we can do anything else...”

Luna’s words sent a stab of outrage through Sunny’s mind, and she immediately whirled around to face her. “What?! No, we can’t do that! We’ll just...” she yelled, scrambling to think of some other plan and pushing down the growing feeling that Luna was right. “We’ll go and speak to that hermit that hangs around the shrine – she’ll know what to do!”

“Sunny, I don’t think that’s going to work-”

“GET DOWN!!”

Sunny gave out a yelp as Star suddenly jumped on her, tackling her to the ground just as a bright yellow fireball flew through where her head was a few moments earlier. The smell of singed hair filled the air, and Sunny watched dumbfoundedly as the fireball burst amongst the bamboo, setting the surrounding stalks aflame. Pushing herself off the floor, Sunny looked around at where the attack had come from, her heart filling with fear when she saw Marisa flying down from above the canopy, Mini-Hakkero in hand. Her face was filled with a cold fury that Sunny had never seen before, and as she descended towards them Sunny trembled in fear. ‘ThisisbadThisisbadThisisbadThisisbad!’ she thought as Marisa spoke, her voice dripping with barely-concealed rage.

“Ah. There you are.”

Chapter Text

Luna Child looked up at Marisa as she floated in the air above them, fear flowing through her veins – she looked absolutely furious, and in many ways this was Luna’s worst nightmare. “H-hey, Marisa! W-what’s wrong?” she said, hoping for some kind of miracle. ‘Maybe this isn’t because of Reimu? It might be something else, right?’ Her hopes were quickly dashed, though, as Marisa replied angrily.

“What, have you forgotten?” yelled Marisa, her voice filled with fury. “You three killed Reimu, and now you’re trying to deny it?!” Luna jumped back with a yelp as Marisa shot a beam of fire out of the Mini-Hakkero, leaving a large scorch mark on the ground where she had just been standing. ”Quick, Sunny! Get us out of here!”

“Oh no, you don’t!”

As Luna dashed over to where Sunny and Star were standing, Marisa pulled a vial of liquid out of a pocket, throwing it down at the three of them. Luna instinctively ducked as the vial smashed on her head, her hat thankfully protecting her from the shards of glass. It didn’t protect her from the contents, though – yellow liquid splashed onto the three of them, glowing brightly as it met the air. ‘What do we do now?!’ thought Luna, scrambling to dodge as Marisa fired down a barrage of flaming bolts at the three of them. ‘Sunny won’t be able to hide us now we’re covered in this glowing stuff, and there’s no way we can outrun her!’

“Okay, we did it, and we’re really sorry!” yelled Sunny, sounding just as scared as Luna was. Marisa paused briefly as she took in the words, and for a moment Luna thought she might have calmed down. ‘Come on, please – just let us g-”

*Wmph!*

Sunny lept away as Marisa shot a blast of concentrated fire at her, the explosion it made upon hitting the ground knocking her back to the floor. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re sorry now!” she yelled as she fired down a stream of fire the sent Sunny desperately backing up to avoid being burned to a crisp. “But it’s too late, now – you should have thought of that before you went and killed my best friend! ” Marisa stemmed the flames as Sunny managed to pick herself off the ground, her and Luna staring at the swathe of burning grass – and how close it had come to incinerating Sunny’s legs.

“No, we really are sorry – we’ve been trying to fix her up ever since!” called out Luna, desperately hoping that Marisa would believe her and relax.

Unfortunately, it seemed to have the opposite effect, Luna’s words only making Marisa even more furious. “Fix her?!” she yelled, launching a fiery orb into the air above Luna’s head. “What, you think she just some toy you’ve played with too hard?!” she continued as the orb exploded into a shower of sparks, Luna let out a cry of alarm as the embers landed on her head, setting her hat and the tips of her hair on fire.

“What do we do?!” yelled Luna, quickly patting out the growing flames. “She’s going to kill us if we don’t get away! She’s gone completely craz–EEK!” Luna shrieked and jumped to the ground as Marisa started flying around overhead, raining down large fireballs that exploded on contact with the ground. The flames cleared after a few seconds, leaving Luna shaken but mostly unharmed.

“Quick, everyone! Into the forest!”

Sunny yelled out to Star and Luna, and the three of them quickly sprinted into the bamboo stalks, Marisa hot on their trail. ‘Hopefully this works...’ thought Luna as they quickly started pushing through the dense bamboo – while it would slow down their movement, the dense stalks would help them evade Marisa’s sight, and her flight and larger size would hopefully make it more of an obstruction for her than for them. As they ran, Luna noticed that the plan seemed to be working, too – Marisa didn’t seem to be chasing them, and her indignant cries had stopped. ‘Maybe things are going to work out-’

*THOOM!*

Luna and the others dove to the floor as the world filled with light, a massive beam of light sweeping through the forest. It cut through the bamboo stalks like butter, and Luna cried out in pain as she was buried under the falling wood, losing sight of Sunny and Star in the chaos. “Sunny, Star! Where’d you go?!” she called out after a few moments, crawling out from under the fallen shoots. ‘They’re okay, right? I don’t think any of them got hit...’

“Any last words?”

Luna’s heart nearly stopped as Marisa landed in front of her, Mini-Hakkero at the ready – there was no way she could escape in time. “W-wedidn’tmeanitI’msorrypleasedon’thurtme!” she stammered out, praying that Marisa might show some mercy, but her gaze only hardened.

“What, you expect me to believe that you just didn’t know that bombs were dangerous? Please – even fairies aren’t that stupid.” she said, her voice filled with fury. “Reimu liked you! I liked you! And you killed her for what – so you’d look big in front of all your fairy friends? Pathetic.” As the Mini-Hakkero started glowing inside, Luna tried to think of something else to say, but nothing came to mind – after all, Marisa was right. ‘Marisa, Reimu, I’m so sorry...’ she thought to herself, squeezing her eyes closed. ‘We really do deserve this, don’t we...’

“MARISA, NO! STOP!”

________________________________________________________________________________

Marisa Kirisame paused and looked around as Star Sapphire yelled out, quickly running over from where she had pulled herself out of the fallen bamboo. “What are you doing?” asked Marisa suspiciously as Star jumped between her and Luna, her arms held out to block Marisa’s fire. ‘Is this some kind of trick? Surely she doesn’t think this will work?’

“Please, Marisa, stop! It was my idea, I made the bomb – don’t hurt Luna for my mistakes.”

‘Huh?’

Marisa stopped and looked down at Star and Luna, her thoughts suddenly conflicted. While she knew that she could just blast through both Star and Luna , something about the way Star was looking at her made it hard for her to follow through on that. “Why did you do it?” she asked, her voice suddenly hoarse and quiet. ‘It can’t have been an accident, right? This can’t all have been for nothing!’

“I... we were just doing a stupid prank,” said Star, her head bowed in shame. “We thought she was untouchable – it was never meant to go like this.”

Suddenly, Kasen’s word came back to Marisa. “With all of the incredible things Reimu has done, a lot of people may not realise that she’s only human – you shouldn’t blame them for forgetting that.”

‘...you were right, Kasen.’

Marisa took a step back and lowered her hands, her fury draining away and leaving nothing but sadness and grief. Glancing around the battlefield, she silently took in all the destruction she had wrought – Luna and Star, looking up at her with terror and guilt, and huge swathes of the Bamboo Forest had been turned to nothing but burning piles of wood. ‘I guess I know what sort of person would hunt and kill fairies...’ she thought to herself, slowly walking back to her broom in shame. ‘I really screwed up here.’

“...Hey, Marisa – are you okay?”

‘Really?’

Marisa laughed a single, hollow laugh as Luna asked her question, glancing back at her and Star. “What do you think?” she said, too tired to properly get angry at them – not that it would do anything anyway. “Reimu’s dead and gone, how do you think I’m doing?”

“...She’s not gone yet – we’re still trying to find a way to bring her back.”

“Really? And how’s that going?” replied Marisa, her voice full of bile. “Forget it – no-one can bring back the dead, least of all a bunch of idiot fairies. She’s gone, and there’s nothing you can do to ‘fix’ that.” With that, she mounted her broom, slowly drifting upwards and setting course for the Human Village – right now, she just wanted something to drink.

‘Hopefully Geidontei is open now...’

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk slowly pulled herself out of the rubble, quickly glancing around the smoldering forest. “Luna! Star! Are you okay?!” she called out, running over towards them before suddenly remembering what they were doing. “Where’d Marisa go?! Is she still here?”

“No, she’s gone” replied Star, looking tiredly at Sunny. “And you don’t have to worry about us – we’re all okay.”

‘Really? I’m not sure...’ thought Sunny, looking over Luna and Star for a moment. Still, they didn’t have time to worry about this – Reimu needed their help. “Well come on, everyone – let’s go see Kase-”

“Sunny, I... I can’t keep doing this.”

“Huh?” said Sunny, stopping and staring confusedly at Luna. “Luna, what do you mean?”

“All... this!” yelled Luna, gestering at the surrounding forest. ”I can’t keep pushing through in the hopes that something might happen! It’s barely even an idea at this point – it’s just a hope that something will work out.”

“T-That’s not true! It’s going to work out just fine!” yelled Sunny, desperately trying to push down the feeling that Luna was right. “Star, you agree, right! We can do this, can’t we?!”

“Luna’s right – this isn’t working.”

Sunny froze in place, looking at Star with shock. ‘N-no, that’s not true!’ she thought, but the words didn’t come out – in her heart, she knew that they were right. ‘Reimu, I’m so sorry...’ she thought to herself, quietly sobbing with tears flowing down her face. ‘Please, don’t go...’

“Wha-Sunny, are you okay?!” called out Luna, taking a step towards Sunny with her hand outstretched. “I didn’t mean to it like that – we can go see Kasen if you really want to-”

“N-no, Luna – you’re right,” said Sunny, wiping her eyes with her sleeve and looking back up at Luna. “Kasen probably wouldn’t help us, and it was silly of me to think she would. We should...” ‘Sorry, Reimu...’ “We should let her go.”

“Huh?!”

“We can’t do anything – humans don’t come back to life!” yelled Sunny, Luna and Star jumping a little. “No-one’s going to help us – it can’t be done.” Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself down a little. “We should just hand her over and tell everyone what happened – the springtime parties are going to start soon, so everyone’s going to figure it out soon, anyway...”

“Huh?” asked Luna, looking strangely at Sunny as she trailed off in thought – mentioning the upcoming parties had reminded her of something. “Sunny, what is it?”

“Actually, I might have an idea...”

________________________________________________________________________________

Eternity Larva nervously looked around at the clearing outside Cirno’s igloo, taking in the burned patches of grass. Her, Clownpiece, and Lily ran over as soon as they’d heard what had happened, and she was worried about what Marisa was going to do next. ‘Please don’t do anything to rash....’ she thought before a wave of relief flowed through her when she saw the Three Fairies landing next to them, looking mostly intact. “Sunny, Luna, Star, are you ok-?!”

“Lily, can you bring back Reimu?”

‘What?’

“Huh? What do you mean?” said Lily, mimicking Eternity’s confusion. “I’m just a fairy, how could I do something like that?"

“Yeah, but you’re the fairy of spring!” said Sunny, looking at Lily pleadingly. “You bring back life to the whole of Gensokyo every year, surely you can fix Reimu back up?”

Lily still looked a little unsure, but after a few moments she steeled herself, clenching her hands. “O-okay, I’ll try it.” she said nervously, Larva and the others following her as she walked determinedly into the igloo. The other fairies looked anxiously as Lily floated into the air above Reimu, a warm green light appeared around the two of them. ‘Maybe this is going to work...’ thought Larva, watching with awe as life energy filled the room – at least, until the flow of energy slowed to a stop.

*Thud!*

Lily collapsed back to the floor, the power she had gathered dissipating back into the surroundings. “Lily, are you okay?!” said Daiyousei, running over to help Lily back onto her feet. “What happened? Did something go wrong?”

“I’m sorry, everyone – I... I couldn’t do it.” said Lily, sounding tired and apologetic in equal measure. “I just don’t have the strength – something’s stopping spring from coming.”

“Huh? Something’s blocking spring?” said Cirno, looking confusedly at Lily. “What could be doing that? Is the ghost back aga-”

“It’s the Shinigami.”

Everyone looked over at Star as she interrupted Cirno, taking in her statement. “I... guess that makes sense.” said Luna after a few moments, Larva and the others nodding in agrement. “Still, what are we going to do about it?” she continued, but before Larva could try to think of something Cirno spoke up.

“Easy! We’ll beat them and send them right back where they came from!”

Everyone looked over at Cirno as she jumped up, standing in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. ‘What’s she thinking?!’ thought Larva, her shock reflected in the other’s faces – but after a few moments Sunny spoke up, stepping forwards towards Cirno.

“Well, I’m with you!” she said, looking back at the rest of the fairies. “I’ve had enough of running away – it’s time to fight back! How about you! Are you lot coming?”

“Yeah, me too.” said Star solemnly, standing next to Sunny. “Reimu needs us, and we need to do this.”

“Well, if this is only way...” said Luna, hesitantly walking towards Sunny and Star. “Reimu’s our friend, and if this is the only way to bring her back, then I’m in.”

“Sure, why not!” said Clownpiece, shrugging and joining Cirno and the Three Fairies. “I can’t let you lot go do this without me, after all, you might get in trouble – and besides, Reimu let me stay under her shrine, I guess I owe her one.”

“D-don’t forget me!” called out Daiyousei, nervously walking over to stand next to Cirno. “I might not be as strong as you, but I’ll help out as much as I can!”

“I’ll help too!” called out Lily, but before she could step forwards Eternity Larva stepped towards her, stopping Lily in her tracks. ”Sorry, Lily, but you should stay here – we’ll need you to bring back Reimu after we’re done.” Looking over to the other fairies, Larva continued. “Actually, I should probably stay here, too. Someone needs to keep Reimu safe, and I can probably help Lily out as well – I know quite a bit about death and rebirth.” The other fairies looked at her for a moment, but after a few seconds Sunny and the others nodded in acknowledgement.

“...Yeah, that makes sense.” said Sunny, looking over at Lily and Larva. “Larva, take the necklace off Reimu – it should bring the Shinigami straight here. Now come on, everyone, we’ve got a Shinigami to beat!” Cirno and the others marched out of the igloo, a sense of nervous anticipation filling Larva as she watched them go. Shaking off the strange feeling, she walked over to Reimu, a quick prayer entering her mind as she bent down and untied the flower necklace from around Reimu’s neck.

‘Good luck, everyone...’

Chapter Text

Cirno stared out into the woods, her mind filled with nervous anticipation. The six of them had walked a short way from the igloo in preparation of the upcoming fight, and all of them were keeping a keen eye out to make sure the Shinigami didn’t ambush or sneak past them. ‘Come on, Cirno – you can do it!’ she thought to herself, but it did little to calm her worries – a Shinigami sounded like a tough opponent, and losing here could spell disaster. ‘No, don’t worry – there’s no way it can beat all six of us! Actually, maybe I should help them out...’

“Hey, everyone, listen up!” called out Cirno, looking back at the other fairies. “If we’re going to do this, you’ve got to be prepared! So, to make sure that you’re all ready to go, I’m going to tell you my super secret technique to win any fight you want! Pay attention, because I’m only going to say this once!”

“Cirno, are you sure about this?” said Daiyousei, looking nervously at Cirno. “If you do this, you can’t undo it...”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” said Cirno, meeting Daiyousei’s gaze. Looking back at the others, she continued. “It’s actually pretty easy – just remember what’s driving you, and you’ll never lose!”

...

“Really? That’s your secret?” scoffed Clownpiece, looking at Cirno with amusement. “Actually, don’t you lose loads of fights? How does that work?”

“Hey, it does work!” yelled back Cirno, a flash of anger running through her at Clownpiece’s comment. “And those fights weren’t very important – I’ve never lost a serious battle!” Before she could keep arguing, though, she was interrupted by a dark presence appearing behind her. Looking around, she jumped when she saw a tall figure surrounded by a dark aura, dressed in a white shroud.

“GREETINGS”

The Shinigami had arrived.

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Star Sapphire looked nervously at the Shinigami, waiting to see what they would do. “I SEE THAT YOU HAVE REVEALED THE SHRINE MAIDEN’S LOCATION.” they said, looking down at the fairies impassively. “HAVE YOU DECIDED TO LET HER GO?”

“No way!” yelled back Sunny, getting into fighting stance. “In fact, you’ve fallen into our trap! We’re going to beat you and bring Reimu back to life! Now, are you going to run, or are we going to have to send you packing?”

“REALLY..? VERY WELL.” replied the Shinigami, sighing in disappointment. A deathly scythe appeared in their hands, and Star gave a quiet yelp of shock as the Shinigami dashed forwards, swinging their scythe in a wide arc at where her and the others were standing. As Star jumped away from the strike, she quickly conjured a clumb of stardust, leaving it where she’d just been standing. The glowing dust quickly coalesced into a shining star that exploded in front of the Shinigami, but the Shinigami wasn’t fazed by the attack. “IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE?” they said, sounding a little disappointed. “YOU MAY AS WELL GIVE UP.”

“What?! No way! Take this!” yelled back Cirno, shooting a volley of icicles at the Shinigami. The icicles stuck into the Shinigami’s chest with puffs of black smoke, but the Shinigami barely flinched in response. Before the Shinigami could counterattack, though, Sunny shot a bolt of light directly into their face, forcing them back a step. Luna followed up with an orb of off-white light, sending the Shinigami stumbling backward. “How’d you like it now, huh?!” yelled Cirno, summoning an icy blade and running toward the Shinigami.

Unfortunatly, the Shinigami hadn’t been knocked out yet, steadying themselves and meeting Cirno’s attack with their scythe. Cirno’s blade shattering into fragments, the scythe contining to slice a large gash across Cirno’s chest. “Cirno, look out!” yelled Daiyousei as the Shinigami raised their scythe for a fatal hit, but before the Shinigami could strike Cirno threw a chunk of ice at their legs, sending them falling to the ground. Acting quickly, Star fired off a stream of stars, forcing the Shinigami back as Daiyousei ran over to heal Cirno. ‘Maybe this isn’t going to be that hard...’ thought Star as Sunny and Luna joined her, firing a volley of light towards the Shinigami.

“HMMPH.” said the Shinigami, a wall of semi-fused bones blocking the Three Fairies’ attacks. Pushing themselves back up off the ground, the Shinigami waved their hand, Star, Luna and Sunny dashing aside as sharpened bones rained down around them. Luna didn’t manage to fully avoid the attacks, though, a large bone piercing through her dress and pinning her to ground. “YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELVES.” said the Shinigami, quickly dashing towards the downed Luna and raising their scythe up high. “YOU CAN STOP AT ANY TI-OOF!” The Shingami stumbled back as Clownpiece shot a stream of dark water at them, the water falling to the ground and seemingly clinging to their feet, dragging them down. “YOU WOULD USE THE POWER OF THE UNDERWORLD TO PREVENT THE NATURAL ORDER?” said the Shinigami, shaking off the strange water as Luna pulled herself free.

“What? Powers of the underworld? Natural order?” said Clownpiece innocently, looking at the annoyed Shinigami with amusement. “I’m just helping out my friends – nothing wrong with that, right?” The Shinigami growled in frustration, but before they could pull themself out of the dark water, Cirno jumped in, freezing the water solid. “Now, everyone!” yelled Clownpiece, holding her torch into the air and sending multicoloured sparks through the air. “Get ‘em while they’re frozen!”

At Clownpiece’s command, Star opened fire, summoning a glittering cloud that filled with tiny bursts of light, before coalescing into a starburst around the Shinigami’s head. Sunny shot a stream of shining needles into the Shinigami’s chest, and Luna called down a beam of light from the sky on top of them. Even Daiyousei joined in, throwing a ball of fire the splashed over the Shinigami’s back. Finally, Cirno finished the attack string, jumping up behind the Shinigami and slamming down a massive icy hammer right onto their head, shattering the ice covering their legs. ‘Surely that must do it...’ thought Star, watching nervously as the Shinigami slowly stood back up, looking significantly worse for wear. ‘They can’t still be ready for more.’

“You ready to give up, huh?” called out Cirno, standing confidently behind the Shinigami as they knelt on the ground. “You know you can stop at any time, right?” she continued, but Star wasn’t feeling so confident – something seemed to be off. ‘What’s going on...’ she thought worriedly, looking around for a bit before noticing something foreboding – dark smoke was pouring out from under the burial shroud, and Star could feel a dreadful presence building up around them. ‘They’re going to do something big, aren’t they!’

“Look out!” yelled Star, quickly backing away from the Shinigami, but by that point it was too late. The Shinigami’s cloak burst open, a wave of darkness exploding outwards and covering the entire clearing. Daiyousei and Clownpiece quickly shielded themselves, creating a cocoon of green light and a pillar of multicoloured flame, but Star had no such option. The dark energies washed over her, and...

*Thud!*

...her body fell to the ground.

Chapter Text

Sunny Milk looked down at the surrounding woodlands, silently fuming at the embarressing loss she’d just suffered. ‘That was stupid!’ she thought, trying to remember the details of what had happened recently. ‘How was I supposed to avoid that! I’m going to tell Reimu all about it-’ she continued, before remembering something important.

She couldn’t tell Reimu – she was dead.

‘Come on, Sunny – get back out there!’ she told herself, suddenly acutely aware of how long she was taking. ‘Reimu and the others need you, so hurry up and get back to it!’ Still, nothing happened, and a small voice in her head spoke up in dissent.

‘Why bother trying – you know you can’t win.’

Sunny tried to counter the dark thought, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘You know that this isn’t going to work – humans don’t come back.’ the voice continued, speaking down to Sunny in contempt. ‘You can’t do anything – stop trying to deny it.’

‘Why should I?’

The dark thoughts stopped as Sunny gave her reply, and as the voice faltered Sunny continued, driving back the doubt in her mind. ‘So what if things don’t work out?’ she told herself, feeling her mind fill with determination. ‘That doesn’t mean I should just give up! Reimu deserves better than that – we all do!’ A strange power appeared in the depths of her heart as she steeled her resolve, shining out and filling every fibre of her being with energy. The world seemed to rush by for a moment, and then-

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Clownpiece cleared away the pillar of fire around her before looking around at the battlefield, her heart sinking as she took in her surroundings. All the grass and flowers in the clearing had been completely killed, and even some of the trees at the edges were wilted and dying. Of the fairies, her and Daiyousei were the only two left standing – Sunny, Luna, and Star had been reduced to emaciated corpses lying on the ground, and while Cirno wasn’t as withered she was still worryingly motionless.

“YOUR ALLIES HAVE FALLEN, AND YOUR FIGHT IS UNWINNABLE.” said the Shinigami, floating down to the ground. The dark aura surrounding them had thickened into an almost solid-looking black smoke, and their burial shroud had been torn open, turning into pair of tattered white wings. “STOP, SO WE CAN AVOID FURTHER DESTRUCTION.” and Clownpiece had to admit that they may be right. ‘How are we supposed to win this no-’

“Nah, we’re not giving up just yet!” yelled Cirno, interrupting Clownpiece’s thoughts and catching her off-guard. Jumping up off the ground, she quickly created four ice blades, sending them flying towards the Shinigami in wide arcs. “Come on, you two!” yelled Cirno as the Shinigami swung their scythe, shattering the swords and sending a wave of dark energy at Cirno that she barely managed to dodge. “Are you going to join me, or do I have to do it all myself?!”

“What, you think I’d let you have all the fun?” yelled back Clownpiece, silently marvelling at Cirno’s limitless confindence. Shooting out a stream of sparks that disappeared into the Shinigami’s dark aura, she quickly ran over to where Cirno was standing, ready to continue the fight. “Cirno, Daiyousei, let’s get them!” she called out, looking up defiantly at the Shinigami as sighed and smacked their scythe on the ground, a pair of corpses climbing out of the ground and joining their side.

‘Come on, Piece – we can do it!’

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Luna Child drifted through the sky, looking up at the sky. ‘Finally...’ she thought as her spirit floated through the air – while she didn’t like being dead, after the last few days any sort of rest was appreciated. ‘Actually, what were we doing? It seemed kind of important...’ she thought idly, before the memory suddenly returned to her. ‘Wait, Reimu! I’ve got to get back to her!’

‘Why? She wouldn’t do the same for you.’

Luna stopped, suddenly unsure of what to do. ‘She never cared about us this much, and now she’s going to hate us all.’ continued the thought, sapping away at her will. ‘Even if we do succeed, no-one will forgive us – we’ll be despised forever.’

‘I don’t care.’

Luna quickly interrupted her thoughts, stopping herself before she went any further. ‘Even if Reimu doesn’t like us, she’s still our friend, and she needs our help.’ she thought, dismissing the dark thoughts in her mind as determination welled up within her, filling her with silent strength. The world seemed to rush by for a moment, and then-

________________________________________________________________________________

Daiyousei ran over to Cirno, placing her hands on her and quickly healing the large gash on her leg. “Thanks, Dai!” called out Cirno, jumping up and summoning an icy blade. “See? You can’t keep us down!” she yelled to the Shinigami, Daiyousei sighing as she jumped straight back into battle. The three of them had been fighting the Shinigami for a while now, Cirno attacking the Shinigami while Clownpiece focused on killing the various monsters that the Shinigami was summoning. ‘This is going surprisingly well.’ thought Daiyousei as Clownpiece dispatched the last of the corpses with a burst of yellow gas, the smell of brimstone filling the clearing. ‘Are we actually going to do this?’

“HMMPH” grumbled the Shinigami, sending Cirno flying with a blast of darkness. As Daiyousei quickly ran over to help Cirno up off the ground, the Shinigami threw their scythe at Clownpiece, the blade slicing a deep cut in her side before returning to the Shinigami’s hand. “I DID NOT WANT TO DO THIS, BUT YOU LEFT ME NO CHOICE.” said the Shinigami, dark energy leaking out of them and seeping into the ground. The ground rumbled as an army of undead soldiers crawling out of the earth, led by an imposing mounted Samurai that glared down at Daiyousei and the others coldly. As the undead warriors surged forwards, the Shinigami stepped back, floating into the air and summoning a slowly-growing dark orb in front of them. As Cirno quickly blocked the undead’s advance with a wall of ice, Daiyousei started healing Clownpiece’s arm, looking up at the unnaturally darkening sky with dread.

‘This is bad...’

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Star Sapphire floated through the air, looking down at the battle going on below. ‘You should have known things would end up like this.’ she thought to herself, watching helplessly as Cirno, Clownpiece, and Daiyousei were slowly forced back. ‘You got them involved in this, and now they’re going to get hurt too. Everything you do just ruins everything – maybe you should just stay dead.’

‘No, I can’t.’

Star interrupted herself, cutting off the dark voice with a simple thought. ‘Even if I’ve messed everything up, I can’t just sit here and mope.’ she continued, a strange power pouring out of her and filling every inch of her being. ‘I’ve got to go and make things right.’ The world seemed to rush by for a moment, and then-

-Star opened her eyes.

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Cirno backed up towards Clownpiece and Daiyousei, straining herself as she tried to keep her ice wall from breaking. No matter what they did, they couldn’t break through the wall of undead, and they’d been backed up into a corner, surrounded on all sides by skeletal horrors. Looking up at the sky, Cirno felt a sense of dread as she saw the roiling orb of dark energy the Shinigami was about to throw at them – even she could tell that they couldn’t survive this. ‘Sorry, everyone...’ she thought, looking down and squeezing her eyes closed. ‘I guess I wasn’t strong enough...’

*Shing!*

Cirno’s thoughts were interrupted by a brilliant flash of light that filled the whole clearing, blinding the Shinigami and sending their attack flying harmlessly into the distance. Looking up into the sky, Cirno felt a slight sense of awe when she saw Sunny, Luna, and Star, seemingly fully restored and more. “Hah, I knew you could do it!” called out Cirno, her voice filled with pride at the new power they seemed to have found – dazzling yellow light was shining out of Sunny, a blue-white halo poured out of the sky around Star, and the air around Luna was filled by a serene cream-coloured aura. The three of them flew down to join the three on the ground, Cirno’s pride and joy reflected in Daiyousei and Clownpiece’s faces.

“Now, let’s show this thing who’s boss!”

Chapter Text

Luna Child landed next to Cirno, turning around to look back up at the Shinigami. “Alright, I’ll take the Shinigami!” said Sunny, posing confindently in the front of the group. “Cirno, you with me? I could do with a little help.”

“Sure – if you can keep up!” replied Cirno, her and Sunny flying up to meet the Shinigami. “Piece, could you deal with this lot?” she continued, gestering down at the skeletal soldiers gazing up at them.

“Sure thing!” replied Clownpiece, saluting and turning towards the undead hordes. Luna, Star, and Daiyousei followed her, but before they could move they were interrupted by the undead samurai leaping in front of them, clods of earth flying as their horse landed in the way. “Actually, you’re going to have to wait a bit – we’re a bit busy here.” she continued, looking up at the warrior’s imposing form as they let out a gutteral noise.

“D-don’t worry – I’ll deal with this.”

“Luna, are you sure?” asked Daiyousei, glancing back at Luna with surprise. Pushing down her fear, Luna nodded and took a step forwards meeting the undead warrior’s gaze. The samurai looked at her for a moment before drawing their sword, stepping down from their horse with a growl. ‘A-alright’ thought Luna, taking a deep breath to steady herself as the two of them stared at each other, waiting to see who would make the first move. ‘Let’s do this.’

Suddenly, the samurai jumped forwards, stabbing their sword straight towards Luna’s heart. Seeing the attack coming, Luna quickly jumped to the side, dodging both the lunge and the follow-up slash and throwing out a volley of glowing orbs. The orbs burst into splashes of light on the samurai’s chest, but the warrior didn’t react, the attack seemingly absorbed by their armour. Quickly reacting to the dodge, the undead warrior turned to Luna and stepped forwards, sending Luna jumping back from their sword before flying up out of reach. Her flight giving her some room to breathe, Luna paused, taking a moment to try and think of some way to win this. ‘It’s going to take a while to get past that armour...’ she thought, looking down at the samurai. ‘Maybe there’s some way to get past it-EEK!’

Luna dived aside as an arrow sailed past her, dodging it by a hair. Looking down, she saw that the samurai had drawn a large, heavy-looking bow, Luna quickly flitting around as they pulled out an arrow from nowhere, drawing it back and taking aim. Before they could fire, though, they suddenly stiffened, collapsing onto the ground to reveal Daiyousei, her outstretched hand glowing with green light. “Luna, are you okay?” she called out, quickly running over to where Luna was floating. “They didn’t hurt you, right?”

“No, no, I’m fine – thanks for the help.” replied Luna, flying down to meet her. Looking up at where Sunny and the Shinigami were fighting, she quickly flew up to join them, beckoning for Daiyousei to follow “Come on, let’s go help them out!” she said, starting to feel a bit more hopeful.

‘Maybe we can actually do this...’

________________________________________________________________________________

Star Sapphire backed away from the crowd of undead, looking over at Clownpiece with concern. “There’s too many of them!” she said, shooting a volley of stars into the undead horde as they fell back. “Piece, do you have a plan?”

“Yeah, actually – I’ve got something!” replied Clownpiece, holding her torch into the air. “It’s going to take a while to set up, though – could you hold them off for a bit?”

‘Of course...’ replied Star, sighing and rolling her eyes. Turning to the undead hordes, she took a quick breath and waved her hand, summoning a trail of stardust that shone with a distant light. The undead flinched back from the glowing trails, giving Star time to call down a rain of lasers from the sky that lanced into the crowd from above, thinning out the soldiers at the front. The rest of the undead stumbled back from the light, and as they fell back Star followed up with a volley of stars that pierced through the undead’s front lines.

“Alright, I’m ready – watch this!” yelled out Clownpiece, her torch now glowing brightly. She waved the torch towards the horde, and Star gaped in awe as a wave of multicoloured fire flew out, washing over the undead and setting them all ablaze. “How do you like that?!” she yelled, laughing trimuphantly as the undead dropped off one by one, collapsing onto the ground and lying still. “Couldn’t handle the heat, huh? Now that’s the fires of hell-”

“Yeah, Piece, you’re very awesome.” said Star, stopping Clownpiece’s somewhat unnerving celebration. “But maybe we should go back to help Luna and Dai – we did leave them alone with that thing-” before she could continue with her worries, though, she noticed two people flying down, whirling around to see Luna and Daiyousei landing behind her. “Never mind – how did you two do?” she said, taking a deep breath to calm herself. “Did you get them?”

“Yeah, we got them.” replied Daiyousei, dusting herself off. “Now, should we go and help out Sunny and Cirno?” Star nodded in confirmation, and together the four of them flew up to where Sunny and Cirno were fighting. ‘Don’t worry, Reimu.’ thought Star as they all flew up.

‘We’re coming!’

________________________________________________________________________________

Sunny Milk flew up to meet the Shinigami, firing off a spread of glowing needles that shot through the air. The Shinigami summoned a cloud of darkness to block the attack, but as they lowered the shield Cirno flew up, throwing a chunk of ice that shattered on the Shinigami’s head. Growling with frustration, the Shinigami dashed towards Sunny with their scythe ready, attempting to slice her head clean off, but the attack failed – Sunny quickly darted to the side with a flash before firing a beam of light at them as they flew by. “Is that all you got?!” she called out as Cirno followed up with a flurry of hailstones. “You’re not so scary, you know.”

“YOU HAVE GROWN STRONGER” replied the Shinigami, shooting a burst of dark energy towards Sunny that she destroyed with a blast of light. As the the cloud of dark smoke dissipated, Sunny quickly shot a volley of glowing darts through it, using her ability to send them arcing around the shield the Shinigami formed. “BUT YOU STILL CANNOT WIN THIS – THE ORDER MUST BE PRESERV-”

“Really? Says who?”

Sunny looked in surprise as a strange glowing sigil appeared in the air beneath the Shinigami, spitting out a column of multicoloured fire that enveloped them completely before they fell to the ground smoking. “Piece! Perfect timing! I see you dealt with the things down there.” called out Sunny, flying down to meet Clownpiece as she flew up to the battle site, Daiyousei, Luna, and Star following close behind her. “Now, I’ve had enough of not being able to do anything – let’s finish this!” she continued, the others nodding briefly before flying down to where the Shinigami was kneeling. Cirno shot out a beam of icy energy that froze them to the ground, and as the Shinigami struggled to free themselves Sunny gathered up all her strength, taking a deep breath before releasing it in a massive beam of brilliant light. Star and Luna joined her with their own attacks – a large glowing blue orb that floated down next to where the Shinigami was trapped before shrinking into a blinding point and exploding, and a massive sphere of white light that appeared in the sky before crashing down. For a moment, the world filled with light that blinded Sunny completely, before-

*BOOM!*

A massive explosion rocked the world, the shockwave almost knocking Sunny out of the air. Blinking a few times to clear the spots from her eyes, Sunny looked down to see the Shinigami lying in a large crater, the dark energy around it burned away and large portions of its body destroyed. For a moment it kept trying to move, looking up at the fairies with its one remaining arm outstretched – but before Sunny could try and muster another attack, the Shinigami collapsed completely, lying still on the ground. “Star...” whispered Sunny, looking down at the fallen body in disbelief. “Did we do it?” Star nodded in confirmation, and after a few moments they all started cheering, the tension of the fight melting away. “We did it! We beat them!” yelled out Sunny in triumph, quickly grabbing Luna and Star and pulling them towards the igloo. As they flew back, though, Sunny’s good mood started to fade as the afterglow of victory left her mind. ‘We still don’t know if Lily can actually bring Reimu back...’ she thought, concern seeping in. ‘ What if they can’t do it? What do we do then?’

‘Hopefully this works out...’

________________________________________________________________________________

‘Oww... my head...’

Remiu Hakurai slowly drifted back into consciousness, groaning at the dull ache that seemed to fill her whole body. Openong her eyes, she looked around and was surprised to see that she was lying in an igloo, the evening light filtering through the icy roof. ‘Where am I? How did I get here?’ she thought as she pushed herself into a sitting position, looking around at the room in confusion. ‘Last I remember, I was looking in the offering box, and then-’

“Reimu’s awake!”

Reimu looked around as Sunny ran into the igloo, Luna and Star quickly following along behind her. ‘What did they do now...’ she thought as they ran over , but before she could say anything she was interrupted by Sunny flinging herself onto her, crying into Reimu’s chest. “You’re back! You’re really back!” she said after a few moments , her teary eyes looking up to meet Reimu’s. “Lily and Star were saying you were fine, but you weren’t getting up, and I was so worried that it hadn’t worked, and...”

‘What’s going on?!’

“Okay, what’s going on here?” asked Reimu, pushing Sunny off of her and looking over at Luna and Star. Taking a quick glance at herself, she continued with a hint of alarm. “Why are you all acting like I’ve been gone for ages? And where did all this blood come from?” As she asked her questions, the three fairies looked at each other for a moment before Star spoke up, sounding hesitant.

“Well, you... died...”

‘What?!”

Reimu looked at Star with shock, and she flinched back from under Reimu’s gaze, her face filled with guilt. After a few moments of silence, Luna spoke up, her eyes looking down at the floor. “We... we put a bomb in your offering box for a prank, and it... killed you...” she said, almost to quiet for Reimu to hear. “We spent the last few days trying to bring you back, and... we’re sorry...” As Luna trailed off, Reimu’s mind swirled, trying to figure out what was going on. ‘There’s no way this is real.’ she thought, trying to find a hint of deception in their expressions. ‘This has to be some kind of bad joke, right? Then... why do they look so sad?’ As she studied them, though, the three of them only seemed to get more upset, Reimu’s heart stinging as they seemed to shrink into themselves. “Please, don’t get too mad...” Luna said, her voice tired and resigned. “We really didn’t mean to-”

“I’m not mad at you.”

Sunny, Luna and Star looked up at Reimu with disbelief, and she stopped, suddenly unsure of what to say. “Look, I’m not going to say it was okay, but I’m not going to blame you for an accident, especially after you’ve gone to all this effort to fix it.” she said after a few moments, climbing off the table and kneeling down to meet their gaze. “Besides, if I got mad every time a fairy did something stupid, I’d never stop being angry!” she joked, trying to ease the tension. None of them laughed, but fairies did seem to perk up a little bit, slowly following Reimu as she walked outside and slowly took off into the air.

It was time to go home.

Chapter Text

A few days later...

Sunny Milk quickly ran across the courtyard, trying to avoid the festival goers and make her way to where Reimu was standing. Her, Luna, and Star had come to make a proper apology for the mess they’d made, but when they’d arrived they’d found that Reimu was hosting the first of this year’s flower viewings, filling the shrine with visiters. ‘Hopefully nobody else notices us...’ thought Sunny, dodging around Suika’s drunken walk and creeping up to where Reimu and Orin were sitting next to each other, Reimu looking at Orin uncomfortably. “M-Miss Reimu?” she said out loud, dropping her invisibility and waving at Reimu. “Could you please come over here? We’ve got something to show you.” Jumping slightly at her voice, Reimu looked down at Sunny suspiciously, and for a few seconds Sunny was worried that she wouldn’t come – but after a few moments she simply shrugged, getting up off the ground.

“Sure, I can check this out” said Reimu, walking over and waving off Orin before she could follow them. “But if this turns out to be more trouble, I’m beating you black and blue.”

“No, it’s nothing like that.” replied Sunny as they approached the bushes at the edge of clearing. “We just wanted to make a proper apology for all the trouble we caused earlier – and give you something to try and make up for it a bit.” The bushes started rustling, and after a few moments Luna and Star made their way out of them, dragging behind them a large and somewhat roughly made wooden box with a slatted top. “We know it doesn’t completely make up for what happened, but hopefully... this is a start.” she said as Luna and Star set the offering box down in front of Reimu. Reimu didn’t say anything in reply for what felt like forever, and as she stared at the box Sunny started to worry that maybe they’d done something wrong. ‘Is it too small? Did we mess something up while building it? We did, didn’t we-’

“Wow, I... I don’t know what to say.” said Reimu, her voice filled with emotion. “Th-thanks, I guess – you really didn’t have to do that.” Reaching down, she picked up the box and started walking back to the shrine, before stopping and looking back at the three of them. “You know, you should come and join us!”

“Really? After all that’s happened?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” replied Reimu, shrugging slightly. “You three seem genuine, and there’s plenty of sake to go around!” Sunny looked over to Luna and Star as Reimu walked away towards the shrine, and after a few moments they walked over into the clearing to join the party, her stomach filled with anticipation.

‘Thanks, Reimu...’

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Luna Child sat next to Sunny and Star, slowly drinking a glass of sake and trying not to pay attention to all the people around her. While Reimu had reassured them that things were fine, Luna could feel the stares of people gazing on them, and she wasn’t sure that they were all positive. ‘Is this really alright?’ she thought, glancing around at her surroundings. ‘Surely they know how much trouble we’ve caused, right-’

“Umm... Hi?”

Luna and the others jumped up as Marisa walked up to them, her mind flashing back to the burning forest. “Whoa, calm down! I’m not here to fight.” called out Marisa, backing off with her hands in the air. “In fact, I wanted to congratulate you – I saw a bit of what you did earlier, and I really underestimated you.”

“Really? Does that mean you aren’t mad at us?”

“What? No!” replied Marisa. “Well... maybe a little...” she continued, looking a bit embarressed. “Look, I know you never meant to hurt Reimu, and you’ve done more than enough to make up for it – not many people would do what you did. Now, I’m sure you’ve got a pretty good story to tell!” she said, turning back towards the shrine. “Why don’t I go fetch Reimu, and you three tell me all about it?” with that, Marisa walked back to the shrine, and after a few moments Luna jumped up to join her, Star and Sunny following behind. Sitting down next to Reimu, Luna looked into the sky, taking a small sip of her drink as Sunny’s animated description of the past few days filled the air.

At last, everything was back to normal.