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[Chapter Count]
(1894 entries)(+48 chapters last thread)

[for phoneanons who can't access the dead threads, here's the last thread. Link to all others in the 'all entries']:
https://warosu.org/jp/thread/49513413 | 36th thread

[pastebin for the finale (for writers, full of spoilers)]
https://pastebin.com/zqS1Krp7

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RESUME!
>Hana and Reimu together manage to seal away whatever curse Anon developed inside him successfully, a furnace, with Anon understanding he's now not entirely human anymore. Reeling, he tells Reimu about Ran's death and unwinds all his spite for her, bringing Hana to tears, who had forgiven Reimu and differentiated the woman she's redeemed herself into and the past monster into Mom and Mother, respectively. Anon and Reimu realise Hana blames herself for everything bad that's happened to them, Reimu living on borrowed time and because she was too weak to resist Yukari's machinations, hurting her father. They agree that while their relationship is dead, they can still act as a family for Hana, which they do. Aunn soon joins. Marisa and Kanako tag along and after some conversation, Anon is sent back to the Moriya and Reimu and Hana join the others to kill Yukari;
>Meanwhile, Chen wakes in Yamame's arms and is told about what's happening after they saved everyone from the underground. Yamame tells her the homes of her family are gone in the destruction. Chen sobs on that and then on herself with the plague she's left with after Ran reconstructed the gap within her, Yukari's shadow much more prominent now and actively poisoning her mind and manipulating her feelings and emotions and encouraging behaviors she's appalled by. Yamame manages to keep that in check briefly, but then Toutetsu comes from the temporal mist and her words have Chen realize Ran died. Anon comes around a while later with both Aunns in tow and Chen talks to him, and though Anon is terrified of Chen's shadow, which is now Yukari's, he hugs and comforts her enough. Chen then asks to be brought to the others after she senses the war is over;
>Yuyuko has an epiphany that, if Yukari is now powerless without the gap, she can argue for her survival and have her exiled at hakugyokurou rather than let the others kill her off;
>Suika descends into the Underground and finds Yuugi holding back the concentrated power of an entire nuke. She's landed a few seconds to build incredible protections and some nice words before the nuke goes off and kills Yuugi. The froggy goddess does indeed stop the nuke from ravaging Gensokyo, but it's too much effort and she feels herself slipping. Okuu comes to help;
>Yuuka, Mima and Sakuya manage to put Seiga on the ropes, but she's smart and uses the explosion of the HSE to escape. She's later killed off by Mokou, who was hanging around the bamboo forest of the lost with Kaguya. Yuuka and Mima fight the feral Kirin and are brought to a compromise where Yuuka keeps killing it again and again through its regeneration while Mima purifies the Kirin and maintains protections to stop the temporal mist from mercing them. The Kirin is reborn days later, time not passing within the temporal mist, Mima dies (temporarily), and the Kirin cleanses Gensokyo from the temporal mist. Yuuka joins the battle;
>Briefly empowered by the meaning of the four-leaf clover Sekai gave her, Kasen manages to cripple Yukari and send her towards the tree, destroying her Senkai in the process. She reattaches Douji's arm and completes the merge, meeting Yukari on the tree. Underneath the tree, Patchouli and Meiling finish the ritual and Sekai is reborn, but she's still downloading her data from the tree, so Remilia goes to join the battle against Yukari to protect the tree and her mansion. The others soon join. It's Hana, Reimu, Kasen, Marisa, Kanako, Byakuren, Okina and Remilia against Yukari. Battle ensues, and it's ugly. Yukari is staunch and powerful against a bunch that can barely touch her properly while buffed by the sword. Okina develops a plan to throw her off that involves cutting down the tree and goading Yukari with threats of targeting her baby. Yukari is furious and blunders, but it turns out she'd constructed a plan on top of Okina's and used herself as bait during the attack to steal Reimu's float while she was vulnerable from having another chakra core dead, getting damaged in the process but harnessing most of Reimu's new power and stealing away her invisible mikos. She turns the tables against the others and is on the cusp of killing Kasen for good, but Yuuka, after the temporal mist is dispelled, joins the fray with a big-ass sunflower and laser in tow. Hana gathers the others, now with Sanae and Suika who were imprisoned in the mist, and settles on using her powers to snag away the invisible mikos who Yukari used for support, which would attract Yukari to her and give the others ample time to whale on her. The plan works and Yukari suffers a generational jumping: she loses one arm, the sword is taken by Kasen, she gets stabbed through the chest and has half her face blown to bits by Reimu. Yuuka passed out from exhaustion. Yukari's left defeated on the ground and Hana prepares to mercy kill her but is stopped by Yuyuko and Youmu at the last second, who came from nowhere to vouch for Yukari's and her child's lives;

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>>50274399
>After Reimu shatters her Gohei against Yukari's face, she has a moment for herself high up in Gensokyo's stratosphere. She apologizes to her lineage for being retarded and the Hakurei god, who'd come around to talk, accepts it. He then prattles about Reimu's power when she tries to turn it off before it kills her but gets cold feet, saying he had hidden from her that it'll kill her should she keep it on or turn it off because if she knew that power would get her killed no matter what, she wouldn't have used it against Koutei, Douji, or Yukari and would have lost the war. Reimu resigns, knowing he speaks the truth, and scrambles to spend her last minutes with Hana, but Marisa comes around, and Reimu tells her that she won't be able to uphold their promise. Marisa spergs hard, but Reimu ignores her and goes to meet Hana. Feeling free and relieved since her death is guaranteed, she starts floating;
>Hana seethes that someone could feel merciful enough to protect Yukari and has a prickly exchange with Youmu before Kasen interjects and Yuyuko starts begging for Yukari's life, saying that she's not a danger anymore and that she'll keep her from doing anything dangerous to Gensokyo. Hana doesn't buy it, but she feels sympathy towards the child inside Yukari, as they're in the same spot she's been in her whole life before the Solstice. Kasen gives her the entirety of the choice, stating she'll be on Hana's side no matter what she chooses. After some back-and-forth, Hana decides to spare Yukari only to keep her sibling safe. Yukari immediately seizes that moment of opportunity, though she reckons she's not capable of fighting anymore. Thus, she impales herself on the onikirimaru and, dissociating in her near-catatonic state, uses Reimu's power to float. Rather than use them to fight, she runs towards Yuyuko, intending on stealing her manipulation of death to have everyone's deaths insured. Hana notices that and rallies the others so they protect Yuyuko, but Yuyuko, after a brief exchange with Hana and vagueposting a command, runs towards Yukari. The others try to stop Yuyuko, but can only marginally hinder her. Hana is fuming and decides to put down Yuyuko before Yukari can have power over death but is stopped by Youmu, who's just as distressed as she is but believes in Yuyuko, who'd said she wouldn't ally with Yukari. Hana tries to ignore her by using her noneuclidean movement but is intercepted by emo Youmu from lost world, who she observes overlaps normal Youmu in the noneuclidean world. They have a quick scuffle, and just before Yukari and Yuyuko meet and the latter could say something to the former, Reimu uses the fucking neckbreaker to engage Yukari. Infinitely floating above another's float proved a dangerous thing when the power from one slash Reimu floated over generated enough energy to atomize a chunk of Yggdrasil;
>Kanako saves Hana and Youmu from being obliterated by the shockwaves of the tree hitting its stump. The three have a quick talk about what to do, and Hana and Youmu have a shouting match before Youmu makes a point that gets the other two thinking. Hana grapples with her mental for a bit, comparing this cataclysm to the underground one and though there she froze and had to be saved, after her family was reunited, she found strength within to poise herself and keep herself from panicking. Youmu says that Yuyuko tried to say something to Yukari, and that would most likely throw Yukari off the float, thus explaining why Yuyuko told her to be ready. Hana decides to create an opportunity for Yuyuko;

SURELY it'll end this thread.

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>>50274443

>>50274443
2026 baby. Epilogues, extended epilogues, rewrites, sequels, stories set in the same universe.
This is a franchise now.
And it is never letting you go.

The current arc is looking to be the longest so far, currently only a little bit behind the size of the third arc of the finale.

>>50274702
What about the SEX tho?

>>50277003
Sex? People read this for the sex?

>>50277049
I don't think any of the sex in here was particularly well-written, let alone erotic, and I'm glad it's gone.

>>50277049
No, but. BUTT

>>50277064
True, I only ever read this for the politics.

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I was scrolling through some old threads and I saw this post
https://warosu.org/jp/thread/47515133#p47619600
I just want to let everyone know that this year, Meiling tops Patchouli.

>>50277110
Blessed.

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Black spots swim across my vision, and beyond them swims a cloud of stars. Beyond them and nebulas and the ethereal dust that drifts aimlessly across the universe, what lies beneath the mortal shell of all beckons me… But I cannot go there yet and mingle with those who vie to gobble up the Land of the Backdoor and reach Earth, to enthrall 10.9 billion living souls and 117 billion coursing the Sanzu—the Styx, the Vaitarani or the Wangchuan, whatever humans decide to call it—, metamorphosing this beautiful pale blue dot into their realm of decay. I have a duty to each one of them.

Mind reels and slowly makes sense of my surroundings, one hand clasped to that which Kasen Ibaraki had entrusted me with. I’d passed out after opening the self-replicating labyrinth of backdoors—without the sword firmly held between my fingers, I’d have died there.

It doth shun me, for I’m neither of its mothers and cannot wield the Manipulation of Explainable Phenomena nor Reimu’s Float or her flames…

… Yet, it remains a catalyst. Barely a centimeter of blade is left.

Someone small was carrying me; the horns with beautiful adornments tell me it’s Suika. Yuuka Kazami is being carried too by that man whose faith had relinquished me—his mother should whip him, but alas—and neither Byakuren Hijiri nor Sanae Kochiya are to be seen… My best bet is that they’re right there in the distance, urging those of the Myouren and the Moriya, the Tengu and the Kappa, to flee the Mountain, for a shadow looms greater upon its maimed frame. Great branches fall from its canopy only to disappear—a small mercy.

Yukari had dropped a nuclear bomb under Youkai Mountain, and somehow it'd been restrained; she then punched a wound across its stomach and flooded its insides with a crumbled world; somehow, it survived.

Now she wants to squash the entire thing. I mustn’t allow her.

“… Suika,” I call the oni, eyes switching away from the mountain to another towering presence past the blur of lifted silt and ash. A beacon of power, ignored yet there, pulsating with power. The oni looks at me from below, my cheek cradled to the top of her head. Limbs felt like hindrances, the stomach had glaciated, and a chill had run up to my esophagus; there it thrummed a resonance that robbed me of words. It is the weight of fear, tempered by the resignation this broken blade instills within me.

Winter had been long, and though I ought to see the bloom of spring, it seems it’s not meant for me.

It’ll be for Chen, who believed and forgave me; for that simple catholic from whom I gathered such raw faith and understanding; for Satono and Mai, waiting atop Youkai Mountain.

“B-Bring me there,” I say, eyes illuminated by the emerald glow cleaving dust. “… Kasen gave me this sword to keep me alive, but I’ll… use it for a much better purpose.”

The others kept going without us. Had they heard me, or had Suika spoken to them? Had the grip of despair such a situation conveys kept their minds focused only on their survival and the survival of their people? I couldn't tell.

My eyes never left Koutei’s forgotten seven-branched sword.

Ears boomed with the slow grind the tree had against its stump, gravity urging it to rest and level an entire section of Gensokyo, once more forever imprinting onto the land the misery Yukari propagated in her madness; Yuuka’s sunflower, cut through in Reimu’s and Yukari’s scuffle, had long had its head tumble to the ground, its stalk crushed by the weight of an entire mountain condensed into hammer wood.

Yukari had sealed the Backdoor with her Gap.

The magic negation plundered from a dragon’s extension would suffice.

Suika had spoken—emaciated and wide-eyed—words I didn’t—couldn’t—listen to.

I had lunged off of her, the hurt of hitting the ground little compared to what lingered from the battle. So much was taken, so much faith spent, and a tarnish I don’t fully comprehend ravaging everything inside, pulling and eroding yet never fully killing. It would never hurt quite like the decisions I made that brought me here hurt.

A lost goddess sheltered behind the mask of a monster. I could feel something wearing that mask.

—hands crawl towards the slumbering sword of viridian—

An enabler of Gensokyo’s worst tragedy.

A relic of the Age of Gods.

Even though humanity has moved on, my duty to those whose shoulders such an age and what came after were built upon remains. Their compass, their stars.

The Goddess of Backdoors won't fail 130 billion souls.

… I won’t wanna fail Mai and Satono.

Hands pick me up and pass the arm without the word behind her neck, supporting my weight. Suika walks me towards the sword, and I am… grateful—Koutei’s skeleton, destroyed.

It fed the land of Gensokyo with its blood, bone, and marrow.

The harvests for a thousand years shall be of exceptional quality.

I won’t be here to dwell upon that quality, but they will.

One hand rests against the seven-branched sword; the other prepares the broken blade.

… My last stand.

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Youmu’s way of ‘joining’ Mom came about with her sword slitting towards her throat with eyes as hard as steel and honed technique. Her intense expression and movements nearly stripped away from me the details of the ragtag plan we’d thrown together. So focused was Mom on keeping Yuyuko and Yukari separated that the attack came with the voracity of a beast, poised to kill… had it not been for my Sacred Gohei biting the nodachi’s shock steel and deflecting it away. The force sent me reeling into Mom’s arm and the both of us tumbled away.

“Hana…?” Mom whispers, rather aloof, her one arm wrapping tight around me, eyes forward like a predator’s. Feels safe.

“I’m fine.”

Never one to ignore an opportunity, Yukari had slipped away towards Kasen-nee and Yuyuko, with Youmu following to protect her lady—had it not been for expanded worldlines, I wouldn’t have seen fleeting realization blossoming in the phantom’s pinkish eyes, which faded away quickly. Youmu could’ve very much dashed forward and put pressure on us, a more effective maneuver than sticking close like a teddy bear. She knows we know. If Marisa-sensei realized it too, she didn't care, her broom hissing against the ground. “Hana-chan, are you alright?!” She asked with haste, eyes darting frantically between me, Mom getting up, her Hakurei crimson wings stretching and compressing as she prepped herself—where’s her Gohei…?—and the leaning tree. Before words could even leave me, the winds carried whispered words from the woman that, by the next moment, had joined the scuffle with her howling winds that scraped bark from the tall roots and bewildered Yuyuko and Youmu, though did little to stop the ancient Youkai, her graceful movements and ease in handling Danmaku and Kasen-nee’s powers a telltale of the reaches of her authority.

“It must be believable, the battle. Otherwise, she'll know.” Kanako-sama’s whispers reached the three of us, but likely not Kasen-nee, who flailed at her wit’s end. The wound across her chest—so very close to the heart—oozed blood. She’ll understand it in time.

“Let’s go—!” I rally the two, brandishing my Gohei, but Marisa-sensei’s unabashed desperation and passionate words knocked out the wind from my lungs.

“H-Hana-chan, talk to Reimu, please!”

“Marisa…” Mom echoes, voice drowned by the growls of the dying tree.

“NO! DON’T ‘MARISA’ ME!” She hisses. W-What is happening?! Had Mom done something to sensei…? Why is she— “Hana, make your stupid fucking mother see r-reason, please-da-ze!” Her eyes are back to me, puffy with thick tears. Bravery left me like water drained from a hose, a sudden burst of worry and fear hacking up my spine. The world is ending; everything around us is crumbling or overloaded with the frantic sounds of battle. What could have Marisa-sensei’s mind so enslaved that she would put all that mess as background noise and focus on Mom…? A single glance at Mom showed aloof resignation, a curdling hint of shame beyond the Floating features, which was quickly killed as Mom took off towards the battle.

“M-Mom—!”

“—You retard, come back here!” She bites, golden eyes turning to me and softening in the worst way possible: she’s on the brink of hopelessness. I felt small, even if she stared at me from beneath. “Hana, she’s going to fucking kill herself-ze! She can’t stop her p-powers or whatever—she’s dead-set on dying!” Marisa-sensei uttered, rage bathed in fear.

Fear for Mom’s existence, which she’s apparently forfeited.

Mom is dying—c-choosing to die…?

B-But she…

… She just got here! Mother was smothered and tossed away into the cold past where she belongs; Mom crawled out of the pit and came back to me, to Father. Why is s-she…?

Arms around me, protecting me. Holding me tight. Family.

She wants to take it away from me so soon.

N-No. No… I don’t want that…

For the first time in more than a decade, I possess so much to me. Why does she want to take away that warm embrace and kind words from me like this? Don’t I deserve a modicum of happiness for once in my life…?

I do.

I deserve it.

… But I won’t be given it.

So I’ll take it.

The child would’ve begged Marisa-sensei for guidance, for a plan she could follow. My expression hardens, body relaxes to the likeness of a predator before they pounce, and I hear the Ordinary Magician choke. “… Marisa-sensei…” I coo, eyes moving to Mom’s back, her wings unfolded and graciously following her movements as she tangled with Kanako-sama’s winds and Kasen-nee’s destructive power against Yuyuko’s gracious dance and the floral annihilation of her Danmaku, her face hard. “We kill Yukari, and then we save Mom.” Words absolute.

A sniffle echoes, but those golden eyes soon harden too, a dashing, shaky smile taking over her features. “C-Count on your sensei, Hana-chan—her life belongs to us-ze,” a smile that, eventually, steadied with the weight of truth: “… She owes us that much.”

If she’s not willing to give, I'll take it.

We will be a family, yes, and we will be happy.

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With Marisa-sensei calmed and this throbbing heart of mine steeled—warm arms wrapped around, nestling me close to the organ under ribcage, muscle, and sinew. I’ve never possessed as much as I do now. Yukari and Mother took so much away from me—a lot that I’ll never get back—we joined the scuffle in the mud with haste, the clock ticking much closer now, an invisible noose tender to the skin of her throat, compressing the airways and pulling ever uncomfortably on the bone. Sweat beaded, the theatrics stretching me thin and across my frustrations, thunderous and clawing like a mad beast. I wanted to cry, but I rather met the silver-haired swordswoman’s blade in and out from the worldlines, the continuous overlapping between silver and purple making me sick to my stomach; winds howled, lifting the dust from the ground, and the lean swiftly grew from an omen to an avid threat, branches scratching heavens and pulling the night sky like lines drawn across paper, sullying the barrier.

Kasen-nee screamed at Yuyuko and Youmu, questioning them, I take; all I heard was buzzing inside my ears. Stomach churned, knees felt weak, and tears threatened to overflow. So much happening—I never possessed as much as I do now—, so much demand.

My sibling inside Yukari’s belly.

—Someone who could understand me. A child of disgrace—

The tree falling.

—Sekai. She’s my sister—

Mom’s dashing towards her imminent death.

—My mom and my Father—

Father in the line of danger again.

—My family—

I want to puke and to curl up and never look at these problems again, brain constricting and the inherent bloodlust that carried me through the Solstice, instilled there by Remilia Scarlet, vanished into a thin and trembling thing. The last time I met my limit, I froze and crumbled like a statue; Mom had to protect me with her body—she was ready to die, as she is now.

To Marisa-sensei I had spoken so boldly, yet under the expression; the urge to take from fate’s hands what is mine…

Fear.

It feels cyclic, I ponder to myself as everything happening before me blurs into motions and feelings: Youmu fights me and Kasen-nee; the winds cannot reach the laser-focused oni, her snake pupils on an even more focused Yukari; Mom and Kanako keep the facade going—

A pressure unlike any other.

The tree is falling.

Cyclic death; cyclic catastrophe and degradation of my mettle.

Again and again, loss and destruction. Fear that no matter what, when the end comes, I’ll stand alone, and those three words that couldn’t leave my lips will go forever unheeded.

No matter the facade I put on or the words I spell to myself, the fear is there.

… Fear, therefrom when I was just six…

—Worldlines reveal: for the briefest of moments, Yukari’s eyes were on the great falling tree. Scarlet tendrils had shot out from the stump to stabilize it, yet they ripped like elastic bands.

A breath comes to me, grip on the Sacred Wood firm.

… The child would never carry that weight alone. She’d crumble under it.

For the last time in this war.

This fear is mine.

The child lives in the past.

Hana Hakurei surges forward, hammering through the non-Euclidean world and past the purple-haired Youmu. Her red swords stood down. I pounced out of the wordlines right by Kasen-nee, hand on her shoulder in a vice grip. She looked at me.

“Let her,” a simple whisper loaded with a stare that only we shared.

There was no nod, no words. She saw fearless eyes.

She understood it.

The weight of the tree pressed the atmosphere like a boot aimed for an anthill, an unfathomable volume of gleaming wood hanging in the air as it fell apart and tumbled like a drunken beast. Yukari moved aloof yet boomed with purpose, her daughter’s construct spelling doom for Gensokyo—a distraction like any other. Kasen-nee and Mom were pushed away; Youmu’s blade flurried against the Sacred Wood and Marisa-sensei’s desperate star-shaped spells, and Kanako-sama’s winds nothing but a breeze to Yukari Yakumo.

Sakura blooms, and a veil of gold bears down onto her. Cursed blade rises high.

I am ready.

The pink-haired woman smiled sadly. Her lips parted.

“I love you.”

Aishiteru.

A single word echoed.

Yukari Yakumo’s aloof expression shattered.

For but a second, she stared at Yuyuko Saigyouji with disbelief.

And then a few Sakura petals embraced Yukari’s face. One brushed against my cheek as the worldlines split and my body materialized by Yukari’s, the Gohei ready.

The petal felt cold, like holding a corpse’s hand.

It spurred images from that wretched festival: people's eyes melting away.

In that second, Yuyuko had prompted Yukari’s death.

In that second already gone, the Gohei struck, meeting the side of her neck with a vengeance. Not cleaving, but bludgeoning everything in its path like a gavel.

It was silent, the kill.

Yukari's head flew, blood ebbed, and then it dropped to the cold ground with a quiet thud.

I looked into her one eye. She didn't look back.

Yuyuko caught the beheaded body.

She cried.

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>>50277434
>>50277428
>>50277422
two years writing towards it, and it's suddenly in front of you and then past. Damn… it's quite the bizarre feeling
more soon

kill this fanfic already please

>>50277623
No.

>>50277623
Please don't I'm trying to read through it all and no ending would be the biggest blue balls imaginable. Threads like these are the only thing salvageable about /jp/ these days.

>>50278510
I'm still pissed I wasn't fast enough to catch the Mokou bus and the KMS threads

>>50278580
Kek

>>50277623
NO

That's a lot of stuff happening. I wonder how many insults Kasen threw at Yuyuko and Youmu?

Yukari is dead!

I think at the end of this I'm gonna need a proper chart saying who's alive, who's dead, who's where, who's injured, who's dog got killed, who's house blew up, who's dimension blew up, and who's a lifelong enemy of who
there's just too much solstice to keep track, I fell off for a week or two and when I got back I was completely done for

>>50281292
>Yukari is dead!
Dont fall for it.

>>50281314
...yeaaaaaaaaah that's fair

>>50281314
if she comes back again I think we'll be veering into hack writing territory

>>50281304
Anon...
>>50274394
>[pastebin for the finale (for writers, full of spoilers)]
https://pastebin.com/zqS1Krp7

>>50281474
It's not detailed enough. I didn't even realise Koakuma had been injured at some point until I went back to reread some bits.

>>50281321
It's the perfect karmic middle finger to finish a villain obsessed with finding love no matter the cost: a love confession that ultimately kills her, she really should keep her lazy dead ass on the ground .

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>>50281304
>who's dog got killed
no one's! It's quite the miracle~

>>50284977
A bunch of white wolf tengus were assassinated in cold blood by Yachie so she could save her sorry hide.

>>50281474
I ain't reading that. For my sake. BEGONE SPOILERS YOU DO NOT BELONG IN THIS WORLD YET

>>50288222
It's not full of spoilers anymore since it reached end of set 4 speculation with Yukari's death.

>>50288264
Oh.

>>50288264
Yeah I'm pretty sure at this point all that's left is general talks between characters, Kasen taking over, and Sekai being born properly.

>>50288337
Yukari immediately hijacks the Sekai body through reincarnation with her memories intact and the powers of every woman who's ever seen the HSE. She returns straight to the battlefield and flips everyone, flipping Onikirimaru whole and accidentally flipping Reimu into living so that they can fight 5 minutes before Youkai Mountain blows up.

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>>50289729
>Yukari immediately hijacks the Sekai body through reincarnation with her memories intact and the powers of every woman who's ever seen the HSE. She returns straight to the battlefield and flips everyone, flipping Onikirimaru whole and accidentally flipping Reimu into living so that they can fight 5 minutes before Youkai Mountain blows up.

>>50289729
oh fuck

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A wave of nausea, cold dirt and the smell of blood. Air booms through the nostrils and body jolts awake, fed noradrenaline that quickens the pulse and narrows the mind. Sekai? Is she safe—my daughter…? Fleeting blurs of blue and the closing ritual, bright tentacles of magic pulsating in tandem with falling above, the sea yawning to smother us. It hadn’t; Meiling arms had shot up and once more tonight had met great strain, eased little by Remi’s blood magic. Something had hit the tree, the hammer against the nail, seen by how it’d lunged down… Gingerly, one hand placed against the beating heart. A hurried thrum. Not good.

This body of mine, this lethargic blood, isn’t adequate for taxing matters.

… Had either stopped me even once in matters of Sekai?

“You’re awake,” a sudden—familiar—voice says, and sight broadens from the narrow tunnel to my surroundings, and they land on Sakuya, who cradles Remi’s head in her lap. The landscape of the Scarlet Devil Mansion is the second familiar thing, the mansion’s impeccable facade marred by the construction beginnings around the roof, geared towards the Voilé. Remilia had struck through the observatory to get to us, I’d been told by Koakuma… that little devil—is she safe, I wonder? I cast a solemn prayer that she is, yet I linger not. Eyes shift to the mistress and immediately a punch to the heart: her back was… peeled, for lack of a better word. Her wings melted to puddles that drenched Sakuya’s immaculate apron, and the meat and muscles eaten away by the power of her bloodline. Ears buzz: the memory of atmosphere compressing and threatening to pop us from within like party balloons.

She’d fought the natural force that is pressure to keep our bodies together.

A hurry, however, impedes me from giving the vampire my full appreciation. “The girl—where is the girl…?” I look around in a rush, ignoring the cold bite of the night and the horizon missing a monumental aquamarine tree.

The maid moves to speak, but the bundle in her arms is faster, and Remi shuffles her head just a tad—she’s careful with her lower movements, sinew, muscle, and bones steadily stitching back together—so her scarlet eyes are on me, much to the chagrin of Sakuya. “… Hey, slowpoke,” she mumbles. “Your offspring is by the Misty Lake—educate her more appropriately, would you, Patchy? She didn’t even thank me for Blood Springing us to safety~” I absentmindedly pat the dirt. Moist and grimly ferrous, saturated with blood. Perhaps that’s why I lost consciousness. Lesser people would’ve been liquified and joined Remi's eternal fountain.

A beat, then an echo of fear. W-Where is—

“Save the panic. Meiling woke up first and went ahead,” she upholds her light mood, even if I can see the inflating and emptying of her lungs through the gaping wound smeared across her backside. Sakuya makes a noise, and Remi sighs, nodding at her.

The wound goes deeper than what’s visible. She’ll starve again, as per her choice.

Moonlight illuminates a gentle smile and softened eyes as they meet mine. Unfathomable cosmological threads could’ve fashioned only for me the word peace, and I wouldn’t have needed to look upon such creation, for I trust Remilia’s smile would’ve told me it all. “… Go now, Patchouli. They’re waiting for you.” The next moment, Remi and Sakuya are gone with the breeze.

Seen only by the silver witness that is the moon, I stand from the pool of cold blood. Body, despite aches and profound fatigue, works—Sekai's doing?

I gulp a lump of excitement before it could grow strings and propel me forth like a mad puppet and hurriedly cross the courtyard, movements bumpy, skin shivering, eyes on the gates.

One year in that cage, watching a man rot under the thumb of a monster.

Steps pick up. I ignore the rage of the body.

Long months of preparation

Adorned iron gates, I pass through them. The worst is behind.

Ritual of Body, of Mind and of Soul. Those three shall forever remain the three most gruesome undertakings I’ve ever had to experience in my life; I know that for a fact—

—Body stops, a presence in my peripheral view.

Meiling is crouched down, bearing softened eyes and a small smile curving up the sides of her mouth. Both hands hold her chin, her hair flames and her eyes coral reefs beautifully illuminated by pale silver. Words remain unspoken; my eyes follow hers. The Misty Lake stands a mirror to the moon, its shine warding off a great dark. Gensokyo’s skyline was clear; quiet had overtaken the land.

It was as if not a second of war had stirred.

… But it did, and it’s finally over. The strife, the uncertainty. The gambles.

My reward perches by the shore, watching the glistening waters.

“Why are you here and not with her?” I ask Meiling.

She hums. Small. Awed. “And rob you of the sight of her as she drinks of life outside the cage for the first time…?” She gets up, beaming with a meek laugh that soothes into weary joy as her eyes fall on me. “… It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there too.”

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A blink, eyes scan her battered face. What an odd thing to say, yet so very Meiling. Her coral eyes, often burdened with this unexplainable urge to… behave so vivaciously. The lexicon fails me—or perhaps it’s a faltering mind—, for words cannot describe what burns inside, and though I distinctly remember mineself struck with similar thoughts after my squabble with Sekai’s bedridden vessel over the pages of the Book of Ymir, this time I bury the introspection for a moment not this, where our daughter awaits there. Alive, breathing. Hazelnut hair blows soft to the tune of the wind; she’s hunched, mantled in this big blanket around her. Maybe Sakuya gave it to her? Or…? Ah, when had I begun approaching her? I didn’t even realize I and Meiling were walking.

Thoughts die as she turns, hair swaying, and wine-red eyes on us, a blend of the sourest grape and blood thick and rich. Full of light, looking straight into mine. My legs could’ve broken, and I wouldn’t have noticed; such is the foolish human heart—let me dwindle in such foolishness and embrace it like Meiling does. I’ve talked to a book for far too long. “… Remi has told me you did not thank her for her politeness in saving our lives,” I tell my child. My breathing child—a minute where Meiling stood by my side, and we watched the building of the HSE reduced to ashes. Sekai had died. Sekai giggles, and the sound booms in my heart, and blood rushes.

… It’s indeed over. The birthplace of the School of Mímisbrunnr, a theater of experiences and sights Patchouli Knowledge had never imagined herself taking part in. Tucked away amidst the certainty of the papyrus for an eternity, safe and calm and in a complete stasis.

Sekai’s smiling face in the moonlight is a dot to an i and a cross through a t. “I wanted to feel dirt underneath my feet—it’s moist,” she says. “And drink water—it’s cold—and breathe air—it’s nice.”

The Remnant is long gone, yet I can’t decipher if I had assimilated it into the sea of memories or it had assimilated me. Doesn’t matter, not here and not now. “Man, you’re lucky Sakuya couldn’t be bothered to scold you~” Meiling spoke, closing the distance and ruffling her hair. It looks so very tender. I closed in too, and after Meiling took her hand away, mine, almost hesitantly, patted her head once—twice. Fluffy, warm. Small and rather empty inside. A lot of space reserved for what I can teach. I want to teach my daughter plenty.

Ah… She has nice hair. “C’mon, get in! It’s cold,” she unravels her blanket like a bat’s wings, and just now I see a small purple flower she holds, freshly plucked from the ground and missing one petal. Meiling and I each take a side and sit down. Warmth spreads quickly as we snuggle close to her. The gatekeeper wasted not a moment before enveloping the girl with an arm. Sekai hummed and pressed against her side; she was like an ant resting against a boulder—

—A hand of hers catches mine under the blanket. I squeeze it. Then…

Silence.

For a moment, then another. There’s a lot to be said—matters on her Father, the poor man might not even remember the visage of his daughter during the play-war; those she wishes to grow close to and those she relishes each growing centimeter of distance from; her future and past—and the time to say those things will come. Sekai stares at the purple flower, solemn yet smiling, before letting her eyes wander up to a million stars and the crowning silver jewel; roaming eyes don’t stop, and they shuffle to Youkai Mountain and the lake.

Sekai takes in the world around her with a smile, holding my hand and nestling to Meiling, kept warm inside and shielded from the cold by the blanket that holds us three huddled together.

It’s been a long time since I cherished the outside.

Suddenly, she stretches her free hand towards the Moon, holding the purple flower as if offering it. “… It smelled nice. Cozy,” she whispers. “It tasted awful; I coughed a lot,” she cringes. Huh…? A question formed yet never saw the light of night, for the flower rose with the wind and deformed out of its petals, which bled into the darkness. The outstretched palm became a pointing finger and, starting from the moon, Sekai drew patterns across the sky like an artist on a canvas; certainly so, purple, twisting lights religiously followed her digit. Meiling and I watched as Sekai drew an Aurora Borealis across the night sky. “… It was the first thing I killed here. I’m so sorry.” She whispered, not with sadness or loathing, but with a small plea that did not dampen her smile for a moment. She then lowered her hand and pulled us two closer to her, and the three of us watched the dancing lights.

Snow soon followed, and the horrors of the great war sank under a blanket of white, muffled yet there anyway, in the minds of every living being. Beyond this shore, those people linger.

But for now…

I squeezed her hand; we huddled nicely.

… Gensokyo watched the sky blaze with purple life as the winter solstice came to a close.

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>>50291032
>>50291025
that's it for these three for now~!
Hana next, more soon!

>>50291025
>>50291032
Finally, I was starting to miss my favourite definitely not gay mothers and their child. Glad to see they got the cute reunion with Sekai in person that they deserved!
good timing too since I was starting my version of their epilogue soon

>>50291025
Patchy boobs.

>>50291032
STANDO NAME: AURORA BOREALIS.

>>50291561
>Spoiler
Good on you Anon, I hope you have fun writing your ending.

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>>50293840
I'd go with [ Around the World] because the Stand stands around the Sekai~
>>50291561
>spoiler
nice to hear man, good writing!

>>50295538
>Picrel
Nightmarish sekai

>>50295538
>[ Around the World]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdRcfkrisqE
LALALA

>>50291032
>“It tasted awful; I coughed a lot,” she cringes.
What do they say about women and being retarded?

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>>50296060
was thinking the daft punk one, but that works well too~
>>50299734
don't be harsh on her, she just wanted to taste something for the first time

bumpo

>>50303117
I'm a blue da ba dee da ba da!

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>>50305678
Does it even matter? I don't want to keep going without her...

>>50307271
I don't want to keep going without RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN. Yet here I am!

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Air sucks in—chest aches, lungs over-expand—, then leaves. Rushed, yet controlled. My eyes watch her single purple eye as it lolls to hide behind the eyelash with that sort of languidness attributed only to the dead. Her jaw hangs low; her blonde hair cascades all around and soaks up the crimson escaping her disembodied neck, gravity guiding the loose neck components down the torn flesh. Blood seeps out from her other wounds, pooling in the ridges of the nose and the bags under her eye and the craven frown of her forehead, rivuleting small droplets that plunge off her chin to the ashen soil. She smells vile.

I’m looking at her head, which I chopped off.

I’ve killed Yukari Yakumo.

Every detail is committed to mind; nothing of what I’m seeing there laid on the ground is to be forgotten. Memories surface and threaten to send chills up my spine, yet I remain—breathe in, then out—, and though the now doesn’t replace them, the smug evil that shone in her violet eyes disappears under the unfocused gaze of death, and… Nothing. Nothing springs to the forefront. No celebratory glee; no single-minded desire to scream to the skies and proclaim victory over a villain that’s destroyed me and my Father my home, and my land. Only a most hollow feeling that sucks the joy of the kill and snuffs the sated bloodlust.

… And I wouldn’t be able to play dumb to its origins, eyes fixed on the pink-haired ghost. She hugs the cadaver and sobs so loudly. Matters not to her that Yukari's neck oozes blood that does not hose up but impotently pumps out as the heart rasps its dying beats. It drenches her blue kimono and hair; her face smeared in drying blood under the gust of night. So much red… It’ll take forever to clean it all—stop lying to yourself, Hana. Look down—, and her hair? It’ll probably never smell right again—look down. You know what you’ve done—, and…

I…

I look down, towards her belly. She’ll die too, my sibling. Sekai.

Robbed of her fate, as I'd been of mine for so long. But I had been lucky; was given a chance to right the wrongs and take back what was mine, sowing something much better.

Such sowing ended up with me taking Sekai's chance away.

I’ve murdered my sibling—

—Eyes look up—look away, away—as I suddenly remember her tree was to crush Youkai Mountain and me—I should allow Sekai’s tree to crush me as payback—, and eyes go wide. The meager light that lit the area spawned from the gleaming stump, and as such I hadn’t noticed that a yawning slab of flat wood had conquered the skies. Seen from below, nothing but darkness. Worldlines split, revealing them open Backdoors from above. The gargantuan tree disappeared within the void of the Backdoor, quietly and with the authority to swell upon the world the power of its weight and size revoked. How had Okina mustered such a power in so little time, a Backdoor spanning kilometers, and with her faith tainted…?

Soon, the tree was gone, and the Backdoor fizzled out of existence as if a shadow during an eclipse. Stars bathed Gensokyo, and winds howled.

Her crying slowly subsided.

My sister…

… Thoughts drown as another one takes priority; the body stiffens up: M-Mom. Eyes scurry from the sky and promptly lock upon her, teeth batting together. She was on her knees, unfolded wings of flames limp against the ground. Something in how her gaze softens tells me she didn’t even bother watching the Backdoor consume Sekai’s Tree like me and the others, red eyes poised on something I could gauge mattered much more… Lungs burn, eyes do too— “—Miko-chan…” The phantom had ceased her sobs and, with assistance from a spooked Youmu, lifted herself and the dead body from the ground, her back slumping forward and feelings I don't care about swimming in her eyes. Her lips parted to say more.

Gohei pointed at hers, Youmu instinctively bracing her nodachi. I didn’t move, nor did I look away from Mom. Marisa-sensei looked at me with urgency—she knows she can’t reach Mom, not like I can. “… Leave,” I whisper to the phantom. “Take her away. I never want to see her again.” Worldlines shy away from her expression as these words leave me.

This woman tricked the person she loved—was it real? Or merely a ploy to kill Yukari…?—, induced her death through her power. Whatever expression lies there, I fear it.

I don’t want to look into that mirror.

Yuyuko sighs. “… Youmu-chan, if you’d be kind?”

“O-Of course, Yuyuko-sama,” green in the face, Youmu fetched the disembodied head from the ground and placed it on top of Yukari’s graying stomach. A noxious feeling rippled inside watching the frozen lips touch the place where life used to grow in.

Without as much as a peep, the duo turned and left the battlefield.

Nothing that can distract me remains.

Eyes never left Mom, whose gaze grew weary.

“H-Hana-chan, do som—” Marisa-sensei starts, but I’m already there, holding Mom’s hand.

She’s got seconds.

Before words escaped me, her wings enveloped us both, and we vanished inside a cocoon of flames.

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>>50308523
editing the rest of the batch tomorrow, not feeling very swell tonight
more soon~!

>>50308523
They forgot to destroy it all, she is gonna rise up from the dead!

>>50308537
Take care!

>>50308591
If she rises from the dead kinda retarded, amnestic and lobotomized like Yuyuko did maybe it wouldn't be that bad?

>>50311353
The hagmaxing would be real.
And wholesome I guess because it mean Yukari wouldn't fuck things up.
right

>>50311356
But it does essentially mean she gets away with it all. Like, yeah she doesn't remember, but it doesn't change the fact that she's still around and still (probably?) using the powers she stole from other people

>>50311366
If she is braindead forever, that's something I could accept. It's basically a fate worse than death.

>and still (probably?) using the powers she stole from other people
That IS problematic.

>>50311366
>>50311375
She needs to be in contact with onikirimaru to have those powers, so without it and the gap she's pretty much just a strong yogger.

>>50311353
That sounds more like epilogue territory, if you feel like writing that.

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“Thank you, Hana.”

Words die on my tongue like snuffed bonfires.

Flames rose and gathered around us, high and closing like petals of a shy bloom. The layer of ash gave way to a spring of liquid fire, and though everything was ablaze, her hand cradling my cheek burned brighter. It’s not the first time I’ve been inside this—Mother meditating on the shrine’s pond, flower of crimson hiding her from the outer world—, and last time I was in the firestorm's core, before Sanae-san brought me to her shrine, we meditated together, and I had a dream the mind couldn’t parse. Mother reverted to her small, childish frame, and Father was with us, not gone nor suffering. It had been such a merciful dream…

A new light shines upon it; intake of air ceased by her whispered words just now. Her eyes admire my face as if precious, the way they flare with glassy life, tears she’s refusing to shed.

Paper-like Hakurei mikos with expressionless facades, made for battle. The dream, a scribble of our lineage, not for war, but to soothe the mind. That had been Mom's wish: to ease me. It wasn’t a meaningless dream…

… She's been here for longer than I can imagine.

Lips tremble, eyes wide. Hands reach for hers and hold it, grasp it—where's my Gohei? I don't care—keep it from moving away, disappearing. Mom's lips quirk up, but the fatigue is tremendous. Wings melted into the steady stream of weakening flames, powerful once yet now unable to even damage clothes.

“For what…?” I whisper. I shouldn't—so little time—but I do.

“For this, and so much more. I didn’t deserve the weeks of attention you’ve given me, the aid in my weakness, in battle… The last death you're giving me now, Hana,” she says without a hint of hesitation. My stomach sinks, skin grows pale. A sound escapes my mouth, small, shattered and pathetic. I hate it. “The death I deserve would've happened inside the shrine whilst still the broken home I'd made it into, had someone not saved me… I-I'm so grateful I escaped that person, Hana. To think you might understand that feeling just as well as I do.” The glass breaks, and tears come, tallied by laughter. Her thumb caresses ever so sweetly. I'm not laughing. “It was hard for you too, wasn’t it…? Escaping the person I made you into.”

Immense flame. I have followed her with my eyes for as long as I've known myself as a person—a child looking at her Mother's back, yearning to be that person. The ugly truth was revealed in time, yet the looming shadow the flame cast remained there. Yukari happened, and then this war. I left the shadow and stood by her, and we fought beyond our limits. We fell, and we got back together. We carried one another.

My mom, Reimu Hakurei. I stood by her.

Flames fizzle, power drains.

Fading away.

Childhood of light and shadow; a now by her side…

… I have never envisioned an adulthood where there was neither her shadow nor her bonfire.

Such a world… I don't want it. The one where I'm a murderer and a monster that would defile her own Father is already my reality! Nothing of that I can escape or change—a w-world where I lost my Mom just as she clawed out of the pit to be mine again…

That mustn't—won't—be allowed!

She receives no words, yet huffs in small delight anyway. Flames creep up, and rather than just swimming under and on Mom’s body as always, they eat through, like a horde of starved parasites. A whine leaves me, but she doesn’t let go of my hands. “Ah… I put that snotty baby of mine on the path to become another me, yet she fought against it. Again and again, I tried putting her down, and she got back on her feet, spit on my face and became someone reliable to her Father, to her land. She defeated the biggest fucking hag ever and saved everyone.” Her pain is clear. She swallows it down and squeezes my hand tighter. “Me being proud of her is worthless, so I hope she’s proud of herself. She’s come so very far.”

Flames eat her. My blessings reach to hers, but they meet a wall of fire.

Nothing I attempt with my blessings would save her.

My mom is dying.

“D-Don't say t-that, please… There must be a way!” I shriek, grasping her hand with the same strength that cleaved Yukari’s neck. Mom doesn’t move away from me. “W-We thought there wouldn’t be one against Hieda, Yukari, or Koutei, but there was! We fought, and we fought, and we were rewarded—YUKARI IS GONE! FATHER IS FREE!” Breathing grows a hopeless process; lungs struggle as they burn not from ash or flame, but sheer emotion. My everything is tearing itself apart. “W-We have all the pieces; everything is in order! I-I can have the life I was always meant to have. I can be… be…” A choke. The urge to puke fights that of forcing my arm inside my mouth and ripping my guts with a bare hand. Dizzy. “Be loved. I can be loved! I need this *you* with me for that!”

This world unfolding before me, a world without her, ignites rage within.

I won’t allow it…

… And If my blessings won’t do, I just need something else.

Those flames are mine too.

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>>50313119
still sick, still should be in bed since I gotta be back at work soon. Editing calls to me like the green gobli mask…
last of the batch tomorrow, hopefully
more soon~!
>>50308591
appreciated man, thank you

Think I'll be majorly disappointed if Reimu lives after all this. Hoping Hana tries, but fails.

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>>50313119
>>50313668
I want her to live but...
Soon I'll be screaming REEEEEEEEEEEEEIMU, along with RAAAAAAAAAAAN.
Or should I scream REIMUUUUUUUUU instead?

Yea take care my little ranamony!

>>50313846
It'd be sad, but at the same time, relieved that it doesn't throw away all of Hana's character development just so she doesn't have to lose Reimu.
A lot of the HSE has been rooted in (at least I feel) the idea of not always getting what you want. Hana couldn't get her father out, Yukari couldn't get Anon to love her, Patchouli couldn't get Sekai a perfect body, Kasen couldn't escape Ibaraki-douji forever, Alice couldn't score, etc
But Reimu has arguably been one of the few characters to get what she wanted. She redeemed herself in Hana's eyes, saw her daughter grow into a person who could take care of herself, and she gets to die knowing that she's saved everyone she cared about and seen Yukari die.
Honestly, I can't think of a better way for anyone to go out.

>>50314920
But, what about Anon.

>>50314925
What about Anon?
He's better off without Reimu.

>>50314956
But they could at least make peace. D:
But on a more serious note, Reimu doesn't seem to think about Anon very much, which I think is just... sad.

>>50314925
NO ONE CARES ABOUT ANON
but in all seriousness, he was barely a character for most of the story. Obviously he couldn't free himself from the HSE and he couldn't be with Hana. He couldn't say no to anyone and he couldn't stay with Ran either.
But he's had no real agency and didn't really have many actual wants in the first place, so I don't really feel like including him here.

>>50314967
I feel like that's a bit wrong, since he has a character... but it's true being the breeding stud doesn't give him much agency.

>>50314963
I think it's very telling of Reimu's redemption that she doesn't think about Anon anymore. Their love doesnt exist anymore and though I imagine she holds feelings for him, she doesn’t let them blindside her to what's important now: Hana. The Reimu from the past would obsess over him, destroy what she built, but our Reimu let go and stayed with Hana to the very end.

>>50314978
His character is sitting around being sad his life is shit and getting raped.
Oh yeah, he also cares about Hana, so as long as Hana more or less gets a happy end its fine in my book.

>>50315023
I haven't seen things like that,though even if their relationships doesn't exist anymore, it felt coldhearted to me. Valid POV.

>>50315027
You forgot about RAAAAAAAAAAAN and Chen.

>>50315037
Ran wasn't pregnant so she wasn't protected by the plot.
She was always going to die.

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Thus, I lay claim.

Booming hills of flames extend to the tune of a gentle cradle of the hand, both mine holding Mom’s between the two of us. Her body had folded over, and a shrill cry rang from between her teeth, like the groaning of a dying animal. I couldn't focus on it over the screams of spanning flames, which rose mountain-like before me, blessings forgotten as I reached them the way I reached her before Koutei breathed his last; before Yukari made her fatal mistake. Almost immediately, pain. Consuming pain, strenuous pain. Pain that hatches only when the mind and the body die repeatedly; pain reserved for those that Yomi-no-kuni eternally torments.

The pain Mom's been shouldering by herself for the last hellish 45 minutes—the entire war—, the pain of dying seven times yet opposing Yukari's madness regardless.

It slices through me like the claws of a beast, feeding on something deep and invisible, a fountain of power that makes me gasp and tumble forward, eyes wide.

My eight chakras.

Mom's only arm impedes me from face-planting, her breath laborious and for just briefly, the flames had stopped eating her. One fiery wing unfurled wide, weak and trembly; a weight on my back tells me where the other is. But Mom doesn't mind that, a veritable roar leaving her tear-stricken self: “STOP, NOW!” It fades into a whimper loaded with frustration and ache. “… S-Stop it, Hana—it is not yours, this death. It's mine to bear. You don't deserve a second of my pain,” seconds are the correct terminology, for a long and perilous icepick had nestled on top of my chest, invisible and unbothered by the raging flames. Mom's the source of her power; I merely tap into it, a bucket against a sea. It wielded Mom 45 minutes of use as it ate through her chakras…

I have only 45 seconds until flames consume me.

45 seconds until I'm snuffed.

Everything I've fought for; sixteen years of pain—of watching her from behind, years of pure hell—, a mere hour of standing by Mom—erased. I'll die my first death in four seconds.

Body freezes; the weight is too much. My hands dive into the suicidal blessing, and it's a mere girl with her hands dipped into a profound pond. Tears thicken. It's not fair! I-It's not! Nor right, nor ideal. Things were wonderful for so little time. It's the woman who birthed me, not that twisted monster who wore her face; it's my family there, they hug me and say such sweet words. They love me like the world, and they're my entire world. It should've been given time to blossom… I would like her to see me, to drape me in a wedding gown, to hold the children I'll have someday and one day she'd lie on her bed, gray and wrinkled—happy—and we'd bid our farewells.

Hana, Reimu, Anon and Aunn.

The Hakurei family.

Three seconds until my first chakra is devoured. Hands holding hers quiver maddeningly, lungs do not welcome any air, and eyes are broad. I… I cannot welcome this death when I've promised Father I—we—would be back.

And then, those hands are pushed away so softly, and the claws of a destructive blessing recede. Body feels weak, limp; spent in a manner that no sleep would ever ward off. It hadn't been by choice. Mom pushed my hands away and severed the connection. Not a moment later, the ravenous blessing resumed consuming her.

I'm allowing this. My fear, my weakness.

“… W-Why…? Why can't you stay—why must you welcome death so easily?” Eyes meet hers, and a shame gnaws at my heart at witnessing how her red bow singes into embers and pitch-black threads go alight. “Why do you want to die, mom…?”

Her answer bears no hesitation: “I don't.” She places my hands on my lap and doesn't leave them. “I want to live, Hana. With you, your Father, and everyone else. I p-promised Marisa I'd live. That I'd see her children, and… Chen needs me. The poor girl has suffered so much, and she loves even more,” a rasp, the truth behind a facade, yet not the erosion of it. Justifications, and they filled me with dismay. “… There's nothing else I wish for other than to strip myself of these powers and be with whom I love. But I can't, Hana, and I won’t allow you to go down with me.” Words cleaved from stone sprouted from a mouth whose depths were permeated by orange and red fire. “I’m glad that I could live one last hour by your side, after being dead for two decades~!”

Tiredness, such acute tiredness.

“I don’t want this world… this world without you,” I whisper at her.

A burning hand pats the top of my head, embers to the billowing breeze—the fire bloom withers around us, too little food to keep it standing—, her gaze of crimson most soft. “It’s the hand you’ve been dealt. It isn’t the first time fate has given you a shitty hand… and I know it won’t be the last time you’ll overcome the odds.” She’d called her pride useless. The pride I hear renews the garden of my heart. “… Our beloved daughter, Hana Hakurei.”

Mom’s eyes linger beyond me.

I turn. Father watches.

A pull of quiet pain, and I turn back to her.

Mom’s gone.

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Embers dance in the night as the breeze swats them away. Away from me.

“… N-No… No, no, no… Come back to me—don’t l-leave me now…” Ushered whispers do nothing to halt the howling winds.

Body works beyond me, and I recover my footing, stumbling forward and reaching amidst the motes of dissipating warmth, my expression frozen with the lack of her closeness, grasping nothingness to nourish an emptier heart. The sky is dark and peppered with stars; the moon hangs above, and in every direction, Gensokyo has been burned by Yukari’s acidic war, barren and lonely and destroyed… But that’s not truth. Not anymore. Green grass sprouts to the tune of the oldest song, that of wind, and all around the trees toppled rise. Ashen wasteland under moonlight turns lush with reeds and flowers and every strand of natural diversity.

Gensokyo breathed anew.

I hold in cupped hands a fleeting mote of Hakurei-red fire, press it to my tattered ascot.

Eyes scurry around, watching the land be rewritten with bated breath, and soon they lay toward the gigantic stump of Sekai’s Tree, where Keine-sensei stands—others too, Kanako-sama and… Marisa-sensei and Father, whose arms carried the cat, a Gap disappearing behind him. I can’t bear to meet their eyes—, and she’s flanked by Toyosatomimi no Miko, who investigated the tree with interest, unlike sensei, who held her gaze with mine.

Her gaze showed nothing but pity for me. She knows. Gensokyo will know too.

Chen had watched Mom before she faded away; consumed by silent tears, she crawled out of Father’s arms and marched to the burned spot amidst newborn flora. Soon enough, she’d buckled to her knees, despondent; the Aunns clung to the fringes of Father’s clothes, watching the dead myrtle with wide, disbelieving eyes; Marisa-sensei couldn’t keep neither body, hands nor speech steady, eyes wild as reality came to her no matter from which angle she looked, meeting my gaze then… A hint of blame, passionate rage. Both crushed by frustrated tears.

Unable to bear it, she reluctantly hopped onto her broom and flew away.

Kasen-nee came to the charred patch on the ground and kneeled by the bakeneko, this blonde woman already on her other side, hugging Chen tenderly like a mother would. The oni’s chest rusted with dried blood, her only hand held the broken red blade, and tired eyes inevitably found my own. The same stare we shared before Yukari’s doom, infested with the promise we’ll grieve together soon. For now…

… Father approaches. My eyes strayed away from his.

Again legs moved by themselves, and I trudged onwards through the grass, eyes on the fiery mote pressed to the ascot—the last of her existence, soon to fizzle away—, tears fluttering without end and head so very heavy it was as if packed full of lead. The last of the bonfire that has guided me my whole life, either with her light or with her shadow. Not even the land remembers her sacrifice, artificially healed. Father’s stride is soon to catch up with mine. “… I’ve just stepped over a vine, Mom,” I coo at the mote. “It was green and, for a beat, I thought it was a snake. T-Those things scared me shitless when I was a kid… You were there to protect me the one time it was actually a snake. You were so cool then, so fast… What if there’s a s-snake here, Mom? There may be, and y-you won’t be here to protect me,” vision blurs, the mote bleeds into the dark night, and my hands uselessly fall to my side.

Yet, despite watching as the specks of red melted away, I kept wandering forward. One hand opens and my fingers leisurely brush past flowers and tall grass.

“… But that doesn’t matter, does it?” I ask.

The night's long, neither bonfire nor shadow. An unknown world.

I walk forward anyway.

“Even if there were a snake, I’d be able to defend myself. Defend Father, a-and… everybody else. I’d look so cool too, w-wouldn’t I…?” It’s freezing. Warmth is gone.

The war has come to a close. There’s only forward.

I’m a murderer. I ended the life of my sibling—stripped her of the chance I was lucky to be given.

I’m a monster who defiled her Father, willingly played right into a monster’s hand.

I let my mom die because I didn’t want to die her many deaths.

… And even so, she was proud of me, of what I’ve become. She understood the pain it was to grow into this person and away from dancing monsters and the wrath crested inside.

I stop amidst flowers; moonlight soaks me, the breeze whispers.

Mom believes I can protect the land.

… Her beloved Hana.

Three words I couldn’t spell, yet they boom to the forefront as talisman-ridden arms wrap around my neck and pull me close, warding off the cold. Father and I watch the stars and the dark, where Mom’s flames have faded towards. “… I love you.” I say.

I love my Mom; I love my Father. His hug tightens.

“We love you too, Hana,” he adds: “… Welcome back.”

And I cry. Wailing, ugly, tears pouring down like a storm.

Mom and Father hold me tight throughout it.

They love me—believe in me.

I am loved.

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>>50317345
>>50317339
with these chapters, I declare the war of the solstice and Arc 3 of the HSE completed~! What a crazy ride this arc has been, almost an entire year to see it through, and I couldn't be happier with finishing Hana's and Reimu's characters and setting up others like Chen's. I loved every second I spent writing and editing, and I already want to keep on going~I'll soon post my post-war and epilogue chapters, with some light teasing into the future, since I do intend to write part 2 eventually. Hope you've enjoyed thus far
more soon~!

>>50317353
>Part 2
Dear mother of god

>>50317339
>>50317345
Whelp. REIMUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

Assuming the land will even want a Hakurei Shrine Maiden anymore and won't go into... something.

>Her gaze showed nothing but pity for me. She knows. Gensokyo will know too.
Oh so now she care. Will they really?

>>50317353
>Part 2
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

>Renko died and Yukari got her hack powers because of it.
>>Ran died and Chen got her hack powers because of it.
>Yukari had the means but was too late to prevent Yuyukos death, which sent her into a spiral of despair.
>>Chen had the means but was too late to prevent Reimu's death...
It just doesn't end.

Now that we're at the end, I wonder if any of the old writers are still lurking here. Anyone writing epilogues?

>>50317487
>Assuming the land will even want a Hakurei Shrine Maiden anymore and won't go into... something.
Not like they'll be given a choice. Hana is the top dog now, has a whole platoon of reserve mothers with gods, a reporter and a sage and she's the hero who killed Yukari. She's untouchable, physically and politically.

>>50320669
Going by the Ao3 comments, Ayanon and Cirnoanon never stopped reading but I don't know if they've only been reading the ao3 uploads or have been commenting in the threads.

>>50320761
I mean, it's not like Keine cared.

>>50321329
Self-preservation above all else, a very jewish trait.

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>>50325081
>>50321329
she cares in her way, it was all part of the keikaku so Hana wouldn't fuck her siblings in the future

>>50326022
Her rapesiblings.

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>>50326067
we're past that station I'm afraid

>>50327990
HashtagJustice4Anon
HashtagPayTaxes2Anon

>>50329147
What do you mean taxes I'm not banking that dude.

>>50329162
Vergil should pay his taxes and child support.
But people who raped Anon should pay Anon's taxes and parent's support!

>>50329168
>rape
if he didn't want it he shouldn't have got an erection

>>50329186
I AM THE VAGINA THAT IS APPROACHING

>>50329186
You're supposed to be dead Yukari, fuck off.

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>>50329168
>>50329162
>>50329147
no need for taxes or remunerations in the Tiāncháo, just trust the plan, Anon is about to have the best years of his life~!

>>50329168
>Vergil
I wonder if we'll ever get another chapter of the HSE×DMC shitpost but this time is just Anon telling Vergil his daughter is dead.

>>50332881
>chapter of the HSE×DMC
Link please.

>>50332952
>https://archiveofourown.org/works/51884125/chapters/139731271
// Yukari/Maribel Sparda, 'Christmas' special 1-2
>https://archiveofourown.org/works/51884125/chapters/157915225
// Children's Day Special, FEATURING DANTE FROM THE DEVIL MAY CRY SERIES

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Looking around, it’s hard to believe that war had just razed the land. That in every direction the eyes would meet destruction. It’s not the case anymore thanks to Keine’s silent action, yet lingering above the flora, I watch with my back turned to the remaining stump of Sekai’s tree—somewhere out there, she’s alive—the most remarkable souvenir of the war: it shimmers hazily yet skirts the spectrum of purple. Northern Lights.

I’d seen them once when the Sengoku Period stirred too many memories and I traveled the world to escape that familiar bloodshed. Blankets of snow, stacked upon one another high; the darkest nights I’d experienced. Glistening white, dancing sky of beautiful lights. This shouldn’t be happening here, but it is, and the only person I can picture spraying that ink upon the canvas of night is Sekai.

Sekai exists; therefore, so does the war.

Of course, Gensokyo won’t need such a sight to know. Humans and Youkai will gaze upon the ghost of the Immortal Tree and know. Children, grown post the war, will read their history books, and they'll understand and misunderstand to their hearts’ content… And to think many of them won't know a world before her tree.

These kaleidoscopic lights are Sekai’s gift not to those that’ll come after, but to those that were here before she came. Those who fought hard—a teenager in her father’s arms amidst moonlight and flowers, passed out from exhaustion and a broken heart—, those who endured and have been tasked with great tribulations in the years to come—a silent child, present at the moment yet with eyes that are a thousand miles away. She kneels by smoldering dirt. The moonlight reveals behind her the shadow of a parasite that won’t let go.

… And those that are no longer here.

I stop before a monument of faded stone, its godly power sapped and repurposed—concentrated—, mimicking the form it had when it was Koutei’s implement and comprised the size of stacked buildings. His skeleton was gone for good, returned to the earth, but his sword had remained, and in it Okina had apparently found use, even if at a cost. “… I wonder what was going through your mind,” I speak to the wind, approaching the small seven-branched sword stabbed into the faded stone. It glows a familiar green, which merges, reflects and fights back Sekai’s purples to create a crashing ocean of stars and nebulas.

A charred skeletal hand holds its handle. It is crumbling.

“Beats me,” Suika says, though I don’t follow her voice, eyes on the reformed sword before they shift to the broken red blade I carry in my only hand…

My mistake, my errors—in the end, people still had to pay up for them.

A loud guzzle of sake echoes, and the smaller oni hops off from the stone pommel of Koutei’s faded sword with a sigh. “Maybe she wanted to do one last act of heroism before kicking the bucket, thinking that’d overshadow all the bad stuff.”

Flashes through the mind: red-and-white, pitch-black hair and crimson eyes.

Did it overshadow yours, Reimu?

Sins are mine—all mine—so is their weight.

… If only I…

A moment of silence unravels, we both looking at the skeletal hand gripping firmly the handle, as if burdened with infinite purpose that transcends flesh and neurons.

Suika drank from the mouth of the bottle, then poured some sake onto the bones before offering me the last sip. I drank it in respect and returned an empty bottle, which she tucked away into her sash. A hushful ritual, not worthy of a goddess’ status. But who am I to judge?

Most Makaians I killed won't ever get individual recognition.

“Ah, I should go now,” the moment dies with the oni’s words. She doesn’t maintain even a semblance of a smile. “There’s much to be done in the Underworld, and with the chaos, someone strong gotta be there to straighten people up.” The lax peace every layer of the land experienced in the twenty years Reimu upheld the Spellcard Rules has been shattered. Those who’d take advantage of that are many, more than she and Yuugi together would be capable of handling… Suika waves, walking away from me.

It’s time to take responsibility for my sins.

“I’ll see how I can help.”

She pauses and, unlike the reaction I was expecting, she scowls. “So that’s what it took…?” She’s not referring to Okina or the dancing lights—the war—but rather something that fills her with as much guilt as I have in me, a bloated thing, and warrants such a bitter remark. The blame for Reimu’s death is shared, and she sighs at the quiet I offer. “… I say such foolish things when I'm sober.” Suika sails into the night the next moment.

Failure mine, failure hers. Everyone who watched the slow descent into the monster—the fires that burned her family—and stepped away will feel this same crushing weight. It crowns my mountain, and eyes loom to the red blade…

No.

This is not the answer. I’m not that animal anymore.

I stab the cursed blade into the ground and, careful with the bone hand, take the seven-branched sword.

“Yo,” Okina waves at me.

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Any other time, I’d have had a more suitable reaction to the truly supernatural and unexplainable than just releasing the sword and taking a step back, a curse whispered under my breath. Maybe wide eyes and a gasp, the crane posture taken and body prepared… Unsurprisingly, the war had drained even that, and my reaction was milquetoast. “What?” I mumbled.

She cocks up one eyebrow and leaves her spot against the dull sword, her eyes briefly up to watch the Northern Lights. “… That doesn’t happen here often.” Okina—or whatever this is—says. She squats down and shifts to the sword and broken blade on the ground, supporting both elbows on her knees. Her eyes had landed on the skeletal hand, and a wave of shame coursed through me. “Did you do it? Or was it Yukari?” She asks, and, feeling no ill intent, I kneel and scoop up the seven-branched sword, eyes on her.

Is she a vengeful spirit—morphed into something else…? She appeared the second I touched the sword fashioned into the image of Koutei's. “What happened to you? Didn’t you die…?” I disregarded her question.

If Okina cares, she doesn’t show it. Or maybe I read her wrong. We have been estranged from one another for decades now. “I very much died,” she nods to the skeletal hand. “Took my all to unwind that Backdoor while channelling the remaining power of Koutei’s sword—it cleansed my faith, yes, but also everything else like a swooping tide… Still, I remain,” her hand waves aimlessly, and when nothing happens, she scowls. “Have lost authority over the Backdoor, however.”

Not a ghoul with her aspect, not a foolish Yamauba about to be crushed. I mirror her scowl and, with eyes on the small—in comparison—viridian blade, try to gauge a line of events. The Onikirimaru had been born from the blended and fermented souls of the agonized and zealots, perfected by Yukari’s understanding of barriers and boundaries… Yet, with Sekai’s presence, it lost its meaning to enthrall and became a mirror to harvested spiritual powers.

A sword of broken souls, channeled by a goddess with its core—her faith—tainted.

Okina watches me in silence, letting her hand trail the broken red blade of the Onikirimaru, the fingers sinking as if liquid. Eyes narrow: blades of grass hadn’t been crushed, they dance in tandem with the breeze; the lights of the Aurora Borealis skim through her body as if translucent. She’s not there in the physical world. She came to be only when I touched the rebuilt Onikirimaru.

Things tie together like a spider's web, and my frown creases. Okina grimaces. “By the look on your face, I don’t think I’ll like the answer…” Empathy swelled, and rather than using words, I focused on the seven-branched sword, searching it with that same focus from the rare occasions I’d channel the Gap… As expected, its sister sprung up, and one Backdoor opened. Okina watched with a glassy gaze.

I inspect the seven branches. The other seized powers are… gone. Had the sword lost its mirroring properties…? “Onikirimaru used you the same way you used it. Most likely to repair itself. A goddess’ soul and the leftover power of a dragon—fused,” I doubt that’s the extent of it, but alas. “… Do you feel different?”

“I’m dead, Kasen,” she clicks her tongue, soon deflating, her right hand gripping the face and a handful of hair. “I cannot fucking believe I was denied a proper death. I should’ve expected Yukari would’ve dragged me into you guys’ mess…”

I allow her the silence, parsing the situation myself. A moment ago, she was a casualty; now, she’s a prisoner inside a puzzle few can even look inside—I merely call upon the Gap; Yukari was born with it; Chen is too young and unexperienced, and…

… No. Sekai isn’t an opinion here.

The Backdoor I had opened shuts tight, and Okina looks at me, her posture lurched and expression dark. “Ah… I guess there’s a caveat in all of this: Gensokyo hasn’t lost the Backdoor so it won’t get swallowed by cosmic entities poking holes in the spaces that the Hakurei Barrier cannot patch.” She squints— “That responsibility is yours now,” —then chuckles. “Be glad you have a teacher who knows how that thing works.”

I attempted to share her smile, but my train of thought hadn’t halted and, inevitably, came to the other side of that coin. “… And the Great Hakurei Barrier must be upheld by someone who naturally wields the Gap. My limited capacities would be bandages on a wound.”

Her smirk fades into a deep sigh. She doesn’t know Sekai exists, and from the little I saw through Douji’s eyes, she and Chen seemed to have bonded. It’s not sweet medicine for either of us. “… That poor girl didn't even start mourning her losses. To have her manage something like the Hakurei Barrier would be torture, Kasen. There’s gotta be another way.”

There might be. Eyes go up to Sekai's Aurora.

Would Sekai accept that mantle after being bound by Yukari for so long…?

I doubt it.

… The thought of asking Chen to become the next Gap Sage leaves me ill.

My options aren't merciful.

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>>50335264
>>50335255
post-war chapters now, because the last punch - or in our case, the gohei lawnmower - solves only the questions of violence~
a few more chapters of tidying things up, and we'll have a small time-skip
more soon!

>>50335255
>Children, grown post the war, will read their history books, and they'll understand and misunderstand to their hearts’ content
That's gonna be hard to misunderstand a rape hotel.

>>50335264
>Have lost authority over the Backdoor, however.”
It's Okinover.

>… The thought of asking Chen to become the next Gap Sage leaves me ill.
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

>>50335824
>That's gonna be hard to misunderstand a rape hotel.
No shot it doesn't get heavily censored or outright changed into something eise.

>>50335994
That would be the Unit 731 or Rape of Nanking of Gensokyo, and God that would be infuriating.

Add to that the possibility of the kids fucking each others and this is just

>>50335994
who's gonna censor it though? yukari's dead and the place basically only actually existed for her
I doubt many of the youkai who went there actually care much about that

>>50336017
Keine and her groopies, who else?

>>50335271
Okina should have died and stayed dead.

>>50336046
Let's ritually sacrifice her to make RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN or REIIIIIIIIIIIIMU come back!

>>50336664
Komachi ain't letting another one escape, Eiki would take away her job and give to Kutaka.

>>50335999
The Japanese have a track record of twisting their deeds during wars, so it'd be in character for it to happen.

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I’d long fantasized about the day Reimu would die. Butchered by a Youkai she was too tired to deal with; perhaps she’d hit her head while drunkenly flying, plummet to a lake and drown. Frozen outside during winter; alcoholic coma into cardiac arrest. Each thought on that venue was tinged with shame, but it was offset by the hammer of retribution and the hope for a better tomorrow just beyond her claws. A nagging in the back of my mind would sober such thoughts—she’s too strong to lose a fight; she’s too sturdy—and they’d then fade back into mixed boredom and dread of everyday life…

… Never did I put an ounce of thought into what I would feel after her death.

Myself from three years—one year. Four seconds inside that cage, one second outside. So much time lost—wouldn’t have ever expected to be filled with hollowness after watching Reimu go up in flames.

No happiness, not a modicum of relief. I'd felt that hearing Yukari was dead.

Finally.

Yet, Reimu’s death didn’t give; it only took away even more. A seething rage not mine threatened to erupt, denied by the strength of the girl sleeping on my lap.

Eyes shifted from the odd sight that’d taken the skies back to Hana, who had collapsed amidst her spell of tears, flabby and stretched as if a rag wrung far beyond her limitations. Both Aunns had tried to cuddle her and lighten her load during the maelstrom of tears but ended up only sharing in her dejection. They cried and cried, and now they’re out. Hana’s hair is in disarray, her clothes are worn-out and her ascot has been reduced to frayed threads kept together by a miracle. The old clover hairpin I made her is nowhere to be seen. I see that grisly arm scar from before this war—a jagged welt that’d gladly healed properly…

Talisman-clad hand touches the scar, and I wince.

I can feel the icy breeze and the real dirt and flowers around and beneath me as well. They’re all real. This is the freedom I longed for. With protections in place to veil from the world this raging furnace, booming with hatred and hunger and red with anger—a small patch of forest, reduced to ashes when the fire within came out of control—, I can’t feel the warmth of Hana’s skin.

Hugging Chen earlier felt like holding a moving doll, porcelain surface cold, and it took her shaky little head—she’s lost so much; so much I cannot give—pressing against my chest for me to get moving…

… If I’d arrived one second earlier, Chen with her new powers could’ve…

“Hey,” Kanako’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts, and I look away from Hana’s sleeping face to the goddess who’d kneeled beside me. Tired and spent, yet beaming with relief. It irks me, seeing that smile. I keep it to myself, not keen on delving on why I feel that way. “Would you like some help with those freeloaders?” It’s a snickering, so tender tone, her hand lowering to stroll across Hana’s hazelnut strands, her red eyes—lighter than Reimu’s, the color unmatched—softening.

“It’s fine. They need their rest,” I tell her.

“Make it all of us,” she sighs, looking up towards the Aurora Borealis. “… It’s been a long day and much longer months. For her, and for you—especially for you.” A flare of bitterness. Already? Can’t that wait, if only for today? The taller woman reads that quiet burst, her cheeks reddening. “S-Sorry, I must’ve overstepped. I thought…”

“No, no,” I pacify her, chastising that reaction of mine. The woman fought for me against all odds; rudeness is her reward? “I understand, it’s just… What Yukari did to me—to my daughter—isn’t what I want to spend my first day of freedom on,” before I could think better, one talisman-clad hand joined hers on Hana’s hair, trying to feel something yet receiving nothing. I bite back the distaste. Not here. The goddess pats my hand, as if to keep me anchored. “Give me a week. A week should be enough. Not to heal, just to detox a little…” Hana squirms at our combined touch but doesn’t wake up. She’s such a heavy sleeper…

Takes a lot from me to not have tears flow to the forefront.

Kanako gasps, but holds my hand throughout…

Not n-now.

—Reimu's dead—

The thought surges. I can't suppress it.

—The mother of my child. Hana had faith in Reimu—

I search the familiar tree for Chen. She isn’t by the burnt patch on the ground. That blonde tsuchigumo must’ve taken her away. Chen loved Reimu, Ran… Yukari.

She's lost so much…

—R-Reimu's d-dea—

“Hello.”

Suddenly, my head is void. Emotions quell. Only a void. Before me stands someone I know was in the vicinity yet paid little attention to. Keine-sensei looks… different. The stern teacher—the desperate woman—is gone, and two demonic horns sprout from her head; those soft eyes, however, stop me from feeling threatened. Kanako’s hand holds tighter for whatever reason.

Why is she tense? It’s just Keine-sensei.

She’s a good person.

“Hello,” I answer her, staring from below.

“My apologies for disrupting you two,” Keine-sensei smiles coyly. “But I’d like to speak to you, Anon.”

“… Okay,” I say.

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>>50345251
could edit only one tonight. Rest of the batch tomorrow
more soon~

>>50345251
Reimuu didn't think about him at all before she was gone, Anon can't stop thinking about her after she's gone...

>>50347393
For Reimu, beating, raping, and making a man fall in love with her was tuesday,
But for Anon she was his entire world.

>>50347691
Fuck... He's never falling in love again, is he?

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Words that leave me usher a most unnatural sensation, feelings quelled and trampled by this sudden wash of… Calm. The raging furnace silences temporarily, its influence melting down to a mere whimper. A cowering beast. What is it afraid of?

My heavy heart is released from Reimu’s grasp—her beautiful red eyes, her pallor-white skin, her pitch-black hair—, mind focusing solely on Keine-sensei, who looks at me rather embarrassed, her gaze on my hand on Kanako’s. I pull it away, and the goddess’ frown creases. “No, Anon.” She bites with narrowed eyes. Why is she contesting my words…? It’s what I said. I meant them. “You’ve just told me you’re in no mental headspace to do anything but simmer in your freedom; Keine can wait—”

“—She’s right, Anon-san,” Keine-sensei interjects and takes a step back, the silver dome that's her hair framing the moon high above. She looks so very natural with those horns. Her words, methodical and loud, quieted Kanako’s, who was trying to keep her voice down not to wake up the girls… who didn’t even so much as twitch in their sleep? “My anxieties don’t supersede your health, physical or otherwise, Anon-san. I sought you now because, for the foreseeable future, I cannot realistically assume I’ll have free time to deal with individual matters. Gensokyo depends upon me at every turn with Yukari’s war over,” she smiles, the patent weariness of the working soul reflected there alongside every shade of glimmering purple. “I’ve become ruler of the Human Village after Hieda lost himself and vied for its destruction. As a citizen, you’re my responsibility now, and I’ll be there for you, Anon-san.”

Comes to mind the image of this same woman sitting across the table, locked in a desperate bind, crying and shaking. Hunched over, begging for an escape out of her lie. I hear no falsehoods in the words she’s just spoken, and confidence dances like the Aurora.

I believe in her.

Kanako doesn’t. “Where were you during the war, then?” She gets up and moves to stand between us. “You didn’t fight for him like we all did, even when I and others fought for you in your war!” Attempts to keep control over her temper were audible, yet the length of the fight seemed to have loosened the tongue.

“You're right, regretfully. Besides protecting the people of the Human Village, who are now waiting beyond this realm of time, I was terrified of Yukari and the threats she’s laid upon my family.” Keine-sensei meets her words with ease, looking at the taller goddess from below. Her words take away the air from me. What…? “She’s told me she’d have my twin babies eaten had I shown any intent of fighting on your side,” her eyes shift from Kanako to me, and they’re so very sad. “I wasn’t, and still wouldn’t be if she were alive, strong enough to defy her. You’re a parent too, Anon-san. You understand doing everything for the children—even cowering in fear as people much stronger than you fight your fight.”

Kanako hisses, yet soon quiets. Even if I can’t see her lips, I know she’s looking for a rebuttal, but before it could come out, I reach forward a talisman-clad hand and hold her autumnal skirt. “It’s fine, Kanako! It’s fine,” the goddess bites her tongue and looks at me, confused. I show her a smile, whatever damaged it might be. “… Could you take Hana and Aunn to the Moriya Shrine, please? Give them a bed, a warm room,” my gaze turns to Keine-sensei, who had tried to conceal her sigh of relief. “I’d like to hear her.”

Her frown deepened, and she looked every bit displeased, a moment of silence stretching. Kanako is concise in her thoughts, even in the heat of feelings.

Soon, she reined herself in and let her protective flair whittle down. “Fine,” red eyes meet Keine’s. “Don’t push him, and be cautious of what you ask. If I come to know you’re looking to take any sort of advantage from him…” Kanako finishes; the trailing of that last sentence is all the implication needed.

Keine-sensei merely tittered, long silver locks bouncing. “You treat the man as if he's made of sugar~! I promise my intentions are wholesome,” my cheeks go red, as do Kanako’s, who'd choked and yelped, the latter cut midway through by one hand. She’d forgotten the sleeping ones— “They won’t wake up.” Sensei says matter-of-factly, her smile unchanged…

… Still, shivers run up my spine. So very certain—truth.

She did something to them. Nothing bad.

Yes, nothing bad.

Neither Hana nor Aunn woke up as Kanako effortlessly scooped them into her arms and shoulders. “Bring him back safely to the shrine,” Kanako says, to which Keine-sensei nods, and before lifting flight, the goddess found my eyes. “… Take care.” I nod to her and before long she’d slipped into the night, unseen even with the dancing purple lights cresting the sky.

Keine-sensei and I remained, our eyes meeting. “It's good to see you well, Anon-san.” She smiled kindly and stretched out a hand…

She's a good person.

… I took it after little deliberation, and she helped me to my feet.

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A dry chuckle trudges its way out. “I wouldn’t say well, Keine-sensei, not yet… Free is enough for now,” words bitter and with no gravitas, but I say them anyway, eyes narrowing as they wander to her pale hand on mine, only now noticing her clothing. A cloak darker than Aya’s feather embraced everything but her head, hair, two hands and naked feet, outlined by purple hues shining from above. Why such clothing…?

The question slips from my mind as she hums, pulls away her hand, and walks towards the tall vegetation unbothered.

“It is the minimum you deserve, but I doubt Hana-chan will settle for minimums—the way she’s fought the Solstice and, even before that, in the war Hieda waged against me… She’s a wonderful girl, Anon-san,” she nods, though I don’t follow immediately. She spoke of Yukari’s war as if— “Accept my apologies: the matters I want to talk to you aren’t wholly wholesome.” The small smile doesn’t vanish, only remains. Something under my skin tells me it shouldn’t have remained. It isn’t the demonic furnace, for it whimpers deep inside.

Suddenly, the air had grown stale, as if injected with cedar smoke.

Papyrus laden with inverted text danced under her fingers and the darkness of night.

What…?

“I took the liberty to keep our conversation private, of course. Not entirely dulled it to the Wind Goddess, but she’ll hear something different from what we’ll discuss…” After a moment of silence, Keine-sensei looks away sheepishly. “S-sorry for how blunt I’m coming across—underhanded tactics such as these aren’t my forte.”

“W-Why…” Words escape me. She isolated me from Kanako and made sure our conversation wasn’t heard in its truthfulness. Heart clenched horribly, dread surged, before words emerged: she’s a good person. “… Why are you doing this? What angle are you looking for with… me?”

Keine-sensei must have a good reason.

“Nothing that seeks either to injure or abuse you. Rather, I want to help you and, in turn, help myself build peace for Gensokyo in a much smoother manner.” Her nervousness was gone with the lack of screams for help or utter fear from me—I feel so calm. I probably shouldn’t be… and yet I am—, and she turned her face to the rows of flowers and lush grass. “Would you walk with me, Anon-san?” Her words enter through one ear and leave out the other, for my eyes had focused on the only distinct characteristic of her dark cloak: a massive, burning blue swastika centers it.

H-Huh…?

Am I… missing something here? This is not the usual symbol the religious carry…

… No, no. I’m probably just not aware of something spiritual or cultural that would explain this— “You’re not mistaken, Anon-san. It’s a Nazi swastika.” She clarifies and starts her pace forth. Shocked, I awkwardly follow behind her, words not forming cohesively. What the hell has happened since Yukari locked me up…? “I apologize for the shock. It wasn’t my intention.” I nod along, waiting for any explanation. Keine-sensei seemed ready to offer it: “… Perhaps you think me a deviant for parading on my back a symbol that, for the collective subconscious outside Gensokyo, is unanimously of hatred? Perhaps you agree with the meaning it was used for?” She asks questions, yet a squeeze of my heart impedes any answer. “Whatever shape your thoughts may take, I ask you forego them, for the purpose I carry it is… healing.” I listen, walking on automatic. Who’s this person? The Keine-sensei I remember isn’t anywhere in the words she speaks. “Healing of fractures left by fear and lack of union between us all, which led to suffering—your suffering.” Such sadness accompanied her words.

“I don’t understand…” I whisper, lost in the invisible threads pulled in the dark. What is the point of her urging to have a conversation with me? How does helping me even help her government whatsoever…?

“I’m seeking to heal Gensokyo, Anon-san. This symbol on my back already represents safety and peace for the people who believe in me—it meant hate, war; now, refuge.” She breathes in, psyching herself. “… One day my children will look upon it and feel serene, knowing that symbol only as the cultivation of long-lasting peace… A peace, however, that is threatened by the truth of the HSE and Yukari’s deeds.”

An ice needle pounces from the dark of night and presses its tip against my chest.

The HSE is gone, buried under Sekai’s Tree; Yukari is dead…

… But I remain.

A threat.

Our eyes meet, and my limbs go numb. The stale air around us, the icy breeze.

—Nine fluffy tails; beautiful red eyes. Hana hugs me tight—

No one will hear me if I scream.

… Then a hand pats my hair. “It frustrates me how easily you jump to conclusions. You expect the worst from people. It protects you…” Keine-sensei’s tone matches her words: doleful. Her hand withdraws. “What I want, Anon-san, is to protect our Gensokyo, and that includes you too,” firmness, despite the sadness. “But to keep our peace stable, I’ll need the truth of the HSE twisted… and I believe you can help me.”

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>>50349791
>>50349789
the whys and hows come in the next chapters
more soon~!

>>50349791
...Could haven't just...stuck with a manji, huh?

>>50349859
Zero aura.

I suspect that, depending on what exactly happens in the next chapter or so, Keine speaking to Anon will be the point where my epilogue diverges from Rananon's.

>>50350103
Wouldn't it be cool if it diverged earlier so Reimu didn't die and you could imply she and Anon got back together and had steamy reconciliatory sex? Crazy I know haha...

>>50351615
Clearly that Anon isn't going to write that.
However, you can write that if you want to try.

>>50350103
What writefag are you?

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Twist the truth…?

What aspect of Yukari's war, her actions to me, presents itself as most dangerous? A worn-out mind works through half-thoughts and explanations that lead to dead ends, my mouth shut. Speaking with nothing worth saying never got me much beyond another wound to tend to. Some are there for things I never said…

The biggest has the shape of Reimu Hakurei. A piece I cannot get anymore of a puzzle that may never be repaired.

I spoke after the silence had grown weird. “… Okay,” my eyes avoided hers.

—That includes you—

I wish I could believe those words. So sweet.

“… You are unaware of the truth.” These aren’t as sweet, but they feel assured. It’s not a shot in the dark.

She knows.

“Unaware of what?” I ask, steps halted amidst a sudden shower of dread.

“Anon-san,” Keine-sensei looks me in the eye, having stopped a few paces ahead. Dread booms. The stale odor of cedar; images that flooded but dissipated after a gentle hand ran through my strands. This moment feels like the most important in my whole life. I wish silently it may never come; I truly do. “… Counting the few hundred who have died in this month’s major conflicts or by natural causes, you have fathered an estimated one thousand five hundred children since you were trapped inside the HSE.” But it indeed does. It arrives to me.

It is never going away now that it is here.

A blink. What is that number? One thousand and five hundred? I don’t have one thousand and five hundred fingers to count all those—I have roughly one hundred and fifty thousand individual hairs tacked to my scalp.

Three with Marisa, some with Aya… Yukari died.

I have as many children as 1% of the hairs I have on my head.

The silver moon hangs, Keine-sensei’s red eyes watch me—there’s no lie—, the Aurora dances across the dark of night. The breeze has chilled considerably; stars twinkle, their visibility great tonight… I…

… I-I…

I feel nothing.

One talisman-clad hand presses against my chest. Nothing but the void—familiar void: it had devoured the screaming storm borne from the cinders of the woman who ruined me… “What did you do to me?”

No hesitation: “I've eaten the future where you experience those powerful emotions that would’ve hindered our talk,” lungs fill up, then empty. The void remains. “They’re still there, and you'll feel them all at once when I return them to you… I h-haven’t seen their contents,” she adds.

“You said… hundreds died?”

“Yes.”

“… I see.”

She nods, perhaps in respect, before resuming. “The nature of their existence poses a threat to our peace, as not only are they blessed by the Hakurei God and thus create a religious imbalance within Gensokyo, targeting one of our most important organizations—the Hakurei Shrine—but also the biological and spiritual pool of our society has been forever tipped. Should no efforts be taken to, at minimum, minimize and, at best, eradicate the imbalance, there is no guarantee that Gensokyo won’t be plunged into uncontrollable warfare of bastards vying for control of the Hakurei Shrine.”

I nod obliquely, staring at nothing ahead. Her words are absorbed. Processed. Whatever weight they might have had on me is rendered moot by the elephant whose foot crushes my chest. “… That’d be bad.”

It’s so cold; it’d be nice if I could hug Chen now.

I want to cook Hana and Aunn something.

I want my bed.

“With the other side of my power—that being the revision of the past, which I ask you to keep a secret. It’s a power only a few I trust know the ins and outs of,” I nod. It doesn’t feel like a choice, but sensei smiles appreciatively. “I can make sure the genetic pool remains mostly unaffected by replacing your DNA with other Japanese from history at large. It won’t be perfect, but it will serve its purpose as a cover for the bigger problem.” A surge of protectiveness courses inside my veins, and Keine-sensei’s eyebrows furrow.

My mouth gapes, closes, then opens again: “Don’t… don’t change Marisa’s or Aya’s,” frantic whispers. “… I want them.”

“Very well,” she says simply. The cold subsides. “But the Hakurei God is beyond my power’s reach, which leaves the blessings his bloodline imparts unaltered.” She finishes.

With the blessings around, a war for the shrine is always a possibility.

… And going by Reimu's and Hana's powers, Hakurei blessings are powerful. Too powerful. A war of bastards would destroy Gensokyo. “What do you plan…?”

“A cover-up story,” she frowns. “One that takes you off one spotlight, and thus danger, and steers you into another… And I’ll need you to help me sell it to those whom my power cannot reach—beyond the Hakurei God, an example would be Kanako-san. Even if I alter the contents of the past, those beyond me would retain knowledge of the truth.”

“How does the cover-up story go?” I really want Hana.

“… You're the sole survivor of many whom Yukari kept trapped in the HSE and, because of your mettle, you've become hermit-like and capable of bestowing blessings—which we will stifle.”

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>>50354015
kinda crazy how big some litters can be. A rabbit can conceive 5-8 in one pregnancy, white wolves 4-7… crazy, crazy stuff
next Keine/Anon chapters are the last
more soon~!
>>50350103
can't wait to see what you have in store, anon~! Good writing!

>>50354015
>My mouth gapes, closes, then opens again: “Don’t… don’t change Marisa’s or Aya’s,” frantic whispers. “… I want them.”
Sweet..

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>>50355419
you can't expect a man not to protect his favorites~!

>>50358617
Why were they green?

>>50361336
Anon has strong genes.

>>50361370
Anon is green?

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>>50361544
Anon...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

>>50338675
It's less 'letting her escape" and more like accidentally giving her time for her the time to do her anti-death BS.

>>50342111
More like, a pattern.

>>50345251
>a mountain of love
That's two mountains actually.

>>50347393
I've been telling it since day one!

>>50365151
>I've been telling it since day one!
That's just what you get when dealing with a spoiled shrine maiden like Reimu.

>>50345251
>Why is she tense? It’s just Keine-sensei.
>She’s a good person.
About that...

>>50349789
>“I’m seeking to heal Gensokyo, Anon-san. This symbol on my back already represents safety and peace for the people who believe in me—it meant hate, war; now, refuge.” She breathes in, psyching herself. “… One day my children will look upon it and feel serene, knowing that symbol only as the cultivation of long-lasting peace… A peace, however, that is threatened by the truth of the HSE and Yukari’s deeds.”
Oh that bitch.

>>50354015
That motherfucking bitch.
God I wish she could die.

>>50365200
There's a reason ZUN implied she's a Lunarian plant in WOotHS.

>>50366744
Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.
I'm so pissed, it's not enough that she got to brainwash Anon, but she got to pull this shit.

>>50366840
Kill her yourself, I'm not writing for this.
If you want to see her dead, put your prose where your mouth is.

>>50366840
At least she's trying to solve the problem and not turning a blind eye to it. That's foresight that'll prevent another Hakurei or Yukari situation.

>>50367011
That's just another way to turn a blind eye to it.
Is that what you said when Japs reponsible for Unit 731 killed themselves?

>>50367644
Not really? The nippon special didn't fix anything, but /here/ Keine says she'll solve the genepool problem and the Gensokyo bastards battle royale.
Those two problems could be solved by killing every bastard, by the way.

>>50371662
A-anon, that question was ironic, I know I'm not talking to a sociopath.

But yeah, it's just running away from the problem by saying "lie about, magic it away, and let's not mention it ever again". It's ultra cheap.
Plus, it's a way to backtrack. The lessons learned about kindness are unlearned.

>>50371671
As someone who didn't really care for the Keine storyline in the first place and especially didn't care once it got to the whole village festival swastika 'let's just do a whole quasi-finale right before the actual finale so everyone's already fatigued by it', I don't think the bastards problem and all that shit should even be acknowledged. Let it be a problem for the writer of a year from now or whenever this supposed part 2 starts up. It's just too big of a can of worms for what's supposed to be the epilogue and wrapping up of an extremley long story
I mean, if I could go back to the start of the HSE with the knowledge of where it's going, it suddenly doesn't really make sense why everyone's allowed unprotected sex with anon anyway. Yukari never struck me as someone who'd want to share. Sure, she might've let others fuck him just to toss them a bone, but she'd surely have manipulated the borders of sterility or something and not let anyone but herself get pregnant..

>>50371671
It makes sense in universe even if it's really cheap from a writing perspective.

>>50371790
But the can of worms was always there. Breeding. Pun non intended. That's what get me. It's always ignoring the problems until it's too big, and now it's Deus Ex Machinaed away? I find that frustrating.

>>50371883
>even if it's really cheap from a writing perspective.
ikr?

>>50371884
All of the breeding sex is more or less a genre convention. Sometimes things like that are better left unaddressed.
That's just my point of view.

>>50371790
>spoiler
As with every major plot point in the HSE, it started as a joke to see how much further we could push the Hana trauma, corruption and temptation. Then le slippery slope commenced.
I wonder what would've happened if we took the DMC route instead and the rape wars were the seasonal extras.

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>>50375429
The DMC Route? Devil May Cry?

Epilogue first draft completed. Probably won't satisfy anyone except me though.
20,000~ words

>>50376212
Kill nazis. Kill Citizen Keine.

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Amidst the numbness, the information is fished out and parsed: this is it. If there had been many but one survivor, I wouldn’t have to fear predators—memories threaten to surface: beasts, claiming and ravaging. The memories are halted by an unseen hand—and with the blessings stifled, Hana wouldn’t have to worry about defending the shrine, and… And so many other boons, to my family and to Gensokyo. It’s a good deal. Far too good.

… No, it’s something else entirely—it is convenient.

Nothing in life that is convenient is without clause—a blessing to keep Hana alive cost me what little else remained of Alice Margatroid.

But… there shouldn’t be anything to worry about here. It’s a deal tailored by Keine Kamishirasawa, protector of the village, someone who sat across from me and showed such vulnerability and, equipped with what I could give, fashioned herself a… life. She has children, like I do; she’s a working soul, like I was before Yukari dragged me into that place.

Sensei’s a good person with a good plan.

All I gotta do is help her. “Okay, I can help with Kanako-san and… others, I guess.” I say, the headache drowned so I could lend her a smile, which Sensei reciprocated and followed with a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Anon-san. Without you, the path to a Gensokyo safe for your children and mine wouldn’t open as smoothly,” whispered under the stars and the Aurora. It sounds genuine. “There’s a lot else to talk about, of course. Some details I left out to respect exhaustion, but I do promise you'll learn about them in time. I’ll contact you when that time comes.” She marches toward me with nonchalance… Though in the dark, her coat swims, flashes of blue fire peering alongside purple washing from up above, as if to reveal something in hiding.

A chill runs up my spine, eyes suddenly water—not from sadness: my heart is yet to feel—, and breath hitches. For a brief and sudden moment, I meet her eyes, and that which hides in the dark pounces not to kill or claw, but with a stretched hand, waiting for my input.

Red eyes, gentle eyes. A question pops up, and though there’s an attempt to conceal it—there is? Why is there an attempt? It’s not me doing the attempt—, it urges anyway to the forefront: “… W-Why are you doing all this, Sensei? What do you… gain from having so much control?”

It’s not just for peace; there wouldn’t be a need for secrecy otherwise. The truth, I wonder. It's not bad; why hide it?

Her hand paused. The gentleness faded away. Horns mighty and towering; her mouth straight, if abruptly. She’d let her guard down; she didn’t expect me to see anything. Too many people I had to read, serve, in that wretched place…

S-She’s not like the patrons and monsters and their deeds.

Keine’s a good person…

… But she’s hiding something important.

“Anon-san,” she looks away—no, not away. She’s looking at someth— “Gensokyo doesn’t exist anymore. Not as you knew it before,” my breath hitches. What…? “It is a fractured place, and that entices those who’d ache uncontrollably for power, which there are many. The peace before the HSE—or rather, the quiet—has been replaced with unrest. Many have waited for this very state of affairs…” She relaxes and eyes are back on me. Gentle, kind. Pleading. “Gensokyo needs a centralized power to remain together and steady against the tide of whatever shape invaders and warmongers may take, be they Lunar or Hellish or other.”

Pieces fall together. It is the truth, raw. “You believe… you are that power?”

She nods, then: “Do you?”

Long silence, stretched silence. The headache returns in full force as that one question sends me lurching among thoughts, a sense of great drain obfuscating all else briefly. Hana can’t; she’s mourning. She’s my little girl. Kanako-san and Suwako-san? They’re outsiders; what’d that mean to the Hakurei Shrine—to Hana…? Those of the Myouren Temple suffer the same thing… Kasen-san is beyond devastated from the war; I saw so little of her yet saw much less behind her eyes. Chen now has the Gap… Gods, t-that poor girl has to carry the burden of that terrible power…

Mind loops and loops, the headache remains a pounding torture, heart had stilled. Answers were sought in the Aurora Borealis, purple as Yukari’s eyes; it offered nothing.

If Ran were here, I’d trust her to keep Gensokyo safe. She’d know what to do.

Keine-sensei’s hand catches mine. “Trust me, Anon-san; if you can’t, trust that I love my children and would do anything for them, even bear the weight of protecting all of Gensokyo,” follows a pause. “Please.”

A moment of hesitation. The furnace whimpers.

… But Ran’s not here, and the danger is.

Someone dependable, strong, must be in position to deal with it—someone to lighten Hana’s responsibilities, who won’t demand from Chen something she shouldn’t have to give.

I trust Sensei.

She’s a good person.

I swallow a bundle of nothingness, squeeze her hand, and then… I nod. “… T-Thank you,” she smiles. “Rest now.”

Before me, Sanae Kochiya.

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Hand falls to my side, eyes on the dimly lit space ahead. Delivered to the Moriya Temple, as promised… Eyes move up to the Northern Lights—such a beautiful sight; no wonder humans would find it bearable living in some of the most inhospitable areas of the world—, and my brows furrow. Had these lights helped him, or was it just a lapse of my attention…? “Strong little man, that one.” Miko places herself to my side, not an invisible spectator anymore—a strange woman would’ve made Anon uncomfortable, maybe uncooperative. Having his mind not acknowledge her was the right move. “What happened, Kamishirasawa?” She asks.

“Don’t underestimate him. He survived that place; inserted friendliness had its limits, which I ignored and thus had to commit more than what I wanted…” Despite the frustration, I keep hold of the block on his future. A meltdown now without someone to support him could be bad, set off the Wind Goddess. I run a palm across my face, letting it fall to the kashira of Kusanagi underneath the fabric of the cloak. She listens carefully. “Won’t happen again.”

That’s what she was looking for. “A teacher would know best that mistakes are the way to learning—without them, what thrill would there be in getting things right?” She shrugs, but it’s met by a mere hum. My stomach feels hollow after that interaction. So much pressure, so much demand put on a man whose everything has been sacrificed again and again to people who exploited and lacerated his soul until that… Thing was born, whatever it is. It’s frustrating how out of my reach it was, caged deep in his heart by love-made-magic. Just witnessing that peace amidst the black hole of his heart felt like desecration. Even in death, Reimu was a bulwark to her family.

Silently, I lift flight to the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.

I need my babies, Mokou. They remind me why I am doing what I am doing.

“Hm…” Miko followed, flying as if surfing through the air, her back to the ground and eyes on the Aurora. She taps her closed fan against her chin rhythmically. “… You think he’ll resist your powers again, now that his subconscious mind knows how to?”

“It is possible…” He’s my only bridge to reach those beyond me and who would be against me. Without his support, convincing the gods who love him and his family would be a challenge.

“That complicates things. A lot,” she doesn’t sound worried. I cast her a sidelong glance, searching her half-expression for any thoughts. Toyosatomimi no Miko is unreadable as ever, tenaciously halting me from reading her any further than that blush fit a few weeks ago. “… But we know it doesn’t have to be complicated, Kamishirasawa, and it’s rather hypocritical of you to avoid the much more suitable approach to our problem when you prattled unendingly to the man about peace.” Frown turns to a scowl, and I watch her under the silver moonlight.

It’s all I can do, this ugly look. She is right, after all.

There wouldn’t be a Hakurei Shrine dispute if there weren’t a Hakurei Shrine.

Anon and Hana leave Gensokyo and never return, looking for a new beginning outside the realm that concocted all of their nightmares. Without them here and without someone versed in the Hakurei branch of Shinto, the shrine would fall into disarray, making it no effort to have it torn down before the first bastard even turns one. No shrine for bastards to vie for; the God would either go dormant or follow Hana outside Gensokyo, and my list of problems to deal with would substantially shrink…

All it'd take would be to rewrite the soil of their thoughts so it bears strongly that seed, which sprouts and is then harvested.

Hana and Anon spend their lives outside—a man, denied his children—, and Gensokyo knows peace.

Miko stares at me in her smug silence, though I find solace that my attempts at reading her are bearing fruit, for a note of personal investment resides in there. She’s not only seeing our government—she’s seeing us all… Thus, I steady myself and shake my head. “This power of mine won’t ever be used to enslave people into action. Hatred and fear will be dispelled; they’ll let me close… But either agreement or refusal would come unbidden from the heart. Anon-san longed for someone who could help him and Gensokyo, and so he accepted me. I won't force him.” A pause, the forest comes into view. One hand reaches into the cloak, towards the sword of Kusanagi.

It touches briefly Hieda’s.

… I'll never be like that madman.

He dragged his family to hell with him, shaped his daughter to look as hideous as he did. My children and my spouse will enjoy a Gensokyo of peace, protected by me, away from the hatred and fire that twisted Hieda-sama.

Whatever it takes, but only when it takes. Life is too precious to be reduced to puppetry.

Toyosatomimi no Miko stares long at me, and a sliver of purple flashes across her eyes of molten gold. “Understandable.” She seems disappointed. “… Honor your high standards, Kamishirasawa. It’d be a disgrace to see them fail.”

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>>50376836
>>50376829
this is it for now; next we'll have Chen
more soon~!
>>50376212
eagerly waiting for it!

>>50376829
>>50376836
Bitch. Liar. Hypocrite. Nazi.

>>50378691
But not wrong.

>>50381093
Begone Japan.

>>50378691
I-I finally get it... .
https://youtu.be/zM5ZTpYl8Co?si=QUT8x9AlMBj4aeil

>>50383511
Does she wear a short skirt and a long jacket?

>>50384548
No, but she'd tours Gensokyo whilst picking up slack, so it balances out.

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Time had stopped, or perhaps I’ve lost my place in its flow. It wouldn’t be the first time—it would for me, not for her—, with thunder and rain and a dead cherry blossom before me, dirt caked under my fingernails and knees scraped against the gravel. Blood dried: rancid, gooey. Black paint on my frame that wouldn’t ever wash off, tainting. Yukari, at least, had a body she could bury that terrible night.

There’s nothing left of Ms. Reimu, only what the wind carried: tiny motes of fire, oxidized and repurposed in the grand scheme of things. With her, she took what else remained of me…

Time had stopped; it stopped when the Gap unfurled, and I had a quarter blink to process her death. Had I just reacted in time, I would’ve stopped it… But the Gap cannot change the past.

It's the only impossible boundary.

The Moriya Shrine lies before me; Yamame-san holds my hand and guides me inside. Some people I see past the mute, dull silence that’s become my heart: the other goddess of the shrine is here, the ends of her clothes singed and an expression of pure tiredness smeared across her face; Aya-san sleeps, the charred stumps on her back in full view. She clutches to that thing that holds her eggs, and a familiar white-wolf tengu watches over her… Goat horns, wretched in blood and mud. Toutetsu-san approaches me, already looking devastated. I tell her anyway, “Ms. Reimu died…” And what strength she had left evaporates. She attempts to hinder her tears uselessly before she storms out, cussing and trembling. I watch her go, yearning to feel as deeply as I used to, and am soon met by the discomfort Yukari marked my heart with, bleeding it dry from emotions, like a splinter just out of reach of pinched nails. Impossible even to the Gap to clip it out.

Without warmth to latch onto, I can’t feel anything.

I need someone else’s beating heart to feel.

… Yukari’s shadow finds solace in my misery, a corrupted sense of belonging flowering inside. Is that how she’s felt every time she was with me and Ran-sama? That she doesn’t belong, even if she should.

Suddenly, a realization.

So deep she was in her hole, deprived of light even if it bashed her face, that every interaction—every smile; every moment things weren’t bad—felt happening because she had to hide the truthfulness of her misery. But then, she saw an opportunity in M-Mr. Anon, when… Hana-chan and Mr. Anon left Ms. Reimu.

She took it and didn’t let go, going to every length before surrendering again to that shadowy path.

We'd both found sanctuary in him…

I press my hand not holding Yamame-san’s to my chest, feeling the hollow beating thrum. Memories surface—of feeling again in the tsuchigumo’s arms, in his arms—before the drain sucks them up and voids them of feeling, leaving in its wake but cold. Cold within, cold outside… What a terribly cold world. A thousand years without a heart in a world paused, decaying Sakura and heavy rain and a bloody bread knife; embers by Sekai’s Tree, Ms. Reimu’s smile. The Gap failed…

… How long can I be myself without my heart?

“Chen?” Yamame-san’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts, a gasp stifled. We're outside. Tents had been erected all over, and bonfires illuminated the grounds like a streak of night brought to land. Many Youkai and stray humans had surfaced to seek shelter in the shrine too; the ground cracked and lines of trees toppled, making the terrain outside mostly untraversable. Yamame-san’s family huddled further up the path, the sight cozy despite the tragedy that was the loss of their homes—they cooked and shared meals. I smell coffee—; Yamame-san focuses on me. “You weren’t listening…”

“I-I’m sorry,” I stammer. My throat hurts.

“Don’t be; there’s no need,” she kneels to my height, her face marred in soot and sweat yet with shining eyes. “I was asking who do you have to support you? You need someone.”

Huh…?

Ah. I guess I have to think about that.

Speeds through my mind the thought of living in the house I, Ran-sama and Yukari lived in, and a smog of poison that curdles on my tongue like a bulbous finger follows it.

I don’t want to go back there. It’s not a home anymore.

“What about Mr. Anon?” She prompts, and it is the Shadow that answers with yearning. To hold—to not be lost in that sea where time doesn’t pass and every hour is that hour of bitter rain, caked blood.

His eyes balloon, Mr. Anon steps away. He saw the Shadow; Yukari wants him.

He was terrified.

But I need my heart to stop bleeding.

I need Mr. Anon's heart to feel.

To her surprise, I shake my head. “… N-No. Not Mr. Anon, no…” Powering through the screech of the Shadow—I won't harm him—, a name eases into my mind: “… Mayohiga.” I miss the cats there. “It’s deep in the mountains and secluded and—”

“No, sweetheart. You should have a l-loved one's support after e-everything you've gone through…” Her sad purses my lips. She sees my loss; it was her in my position once. A coy smile blossoms after a pause. “… Why don’t you come live with me?”

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>>50387975
more tomorrow; it's gonna be quite the lengthy segment~

>>50387975
>>50387975
>Time had stopped
Hello Dio.

Poor Chen.

>>50388723
She'll heal with spooder therapy. No shot her heart isn't woven back together under Yams.

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>>50388723
chen wouldn't like Dio very much, he's blonde like Yukari

>>50392293
Nah.

Dio was cooler, and less dangerous. SOMEHOW
But less hot