#sorry i just woke up im just sayin whatever now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

takerfoxx · 4 years

Text

IM Swiftly Descending Darkness, Chapter 7

Down.

Deep down, down, down.

Down into the dark. Down into the cold. Down into the place devoid of light, devoid of kindness, devoid of hope.

Down into the place of pain. Down into the place of despair. Down into the place from which there is no escape, the place set aside for those of the blackest of souls, of the darkest of hearts.

Down into the prison set in the furthest reaches of existence, down into the place intended to swallow the progenitors of evil and suffering, down into the place of Judgment.

Down into the dark.

Down into the cold.

Down into chains.

And then…a face. A pale, beautiful face, framed by long hair so dark that it melts into the darkness that frames it. It is not the face of a man or a women, but of an ethereal creature whose beauty defies gender, defies mortality, defies humanity.

But it is a cruel beauty, to be feared rather than desired. It is beautiful like a wildfire is beautiful, like a hurricane is beautiful, like a black hole is beautiful, and so much more destructive, so much more malicious.

Its eyes are closed, though not in sleep, but in waiting.

Its eyes are closed, but its mouth is moving, curling up into a poisonous smile.

Rumia’s eyes snapped open.

The view she was greeted with was at once familiar, yet alien. The wooden slats of a slightly slanted wooden roof were above her. She knew those slats, every single line and nick and knot. She saw them when she went to bed and they were the first thing that greeted her when she woke up.

And yet she couldn’t stop staring at them. No, that wasn’t right. They shouldn’t be there; she shouldn’t be there! She ought to be seeing…

Darkness.

Rumia’s right eye twitched.

Cold.

No, she was home! She was in the Aoki Yume’s Children’s Home, the only home she had ever known! This was normal!

Chains.

Then why did it look so unfamiliar? Why did she feel so out of place?

“Rumia?”

Rumia turned her head toward the voice. She was greeted by a nut-brown, heart-shaped face, one with large, dark eyes and shiny black hair that hung over one shoulder in a tightly knotted ponytail.

Once again she was struck by a wave of recognition and confusion. Who is this person? whispered one part of her mind.

What do you mean? answered another. It’s Melissa Garcia! You see her every day!

“Estas despierto!” Melissa said excitedly, which was something neither part of Rumia understood. “Oh, gracias a Jesús!” Then she cleared her throat and said slowly, “Are you all right?”

Rumia didn’t answer. She just stared.

“Rumia?” Melissa waved her hand in front of Rumia’s face. Her dark eyes frowned in concern. “Can you…Can you hear me?”

Rumia opened her mouth to respond. “Who are…” Then she stopped. No, wait, that wasn’t right. “Melissa,” she said. “What happened?”

Before Melissa could answer, someone groaned in discomfort and confusion.

As Melissa ran over to see to the person in question, Rumia struggled to put her thoughts in order. What the hell had happened? They had been…okay, there was the fight at the market, that much she remembered pretty well. And after that had been flying lessons. And then-

The spider’s long, gaunt face stretched as it opened its mouth wide. Inside was a black pit, filled with row after row of quivering teeth.

Rumia shivered. Right. The spiders. The kidnapping. The forest-

The slender creature turned its faceless visage toward her. It reached out with one stick-thin limb, as long as Miss Mokou was tall.

Rumia covered her face. No, please. Make it stop.

Eiko lay upon the table, her torso split wide open. The spiders were feasting upon her innards, ripping away chunks of meat and offal with their teeth. Her face was still visible, the pale flesh now splattered with her own blood, the eyes plucked right from the sockets and yet still managing to convey the terror and pain she had been feeling in her final moments.

No, no, no, no!

The spider had them, had ensnared their legs. It was dragging them back, pulling them to their deaths.

And then…and then…

What had happened then?

She had vague memories of something explicably twisted, something to do with…skeletons? Skeletons and sand? It had been horrible, that much she was certain of, but try as she might, she couldn’t recall more than a few fleeting images.

Rumia struggled to sit up. She was in the sick room, where kids who fell ill or were injured were kept to recover, as well as to prevent diseases from spreading. It was a small room surrounded by cabinets, with several sleeping mats spread on the ground. She was lying on one of the sleeping mats, with others around her. She saw Haruko and Hayate, still unmoving and unresponsive. Kana was there too, looking even more unwell than usual. Keine seemed to be sleeping unsoundly, if the way her closed eyes and jaw was tightening up and her face shone with sweat.

Kohta, however, had also woken up. He had been the one groaning, and was now sitting up as well, with Melissa kneeling next to him.

“Ugh,” he said as he rubbed his forehead. “What…where…”

“Sick room,” Melissa told him. “Um, are you all right?”

Kohta squinted at her. “Who…what…?”

Melissa swallowed. “It is me. Melissa Garcia. Do you not know me?”

“Melissa?” Kohta blinked his eyes several times and shook his head. “Oh, right. Melissa. Hi.”

“Hello. Are you…” Melissa reached over to touch his shoulder.

Kohta violently recoiled. “Don’t touch me!”

Melissa quickly withdrew her hand. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

“Don’t,” Kohta repeated. “Just don’t touch me. Don’t.”

“Um…” Melissa’s eyes flicked from Kohta to Rumia to find them both glaring at her. “Er, okay?” She nervously licked her lips. “Are you…okay?”

Neither Rumia nor Kohta said anything.

“Right.” Melissa stood up. “I will go get Miss Satoko then.”

She hurried from the room, leaving the two of them sitting together in silence.

…

Joshua sat on the edge of his bed, bowed head in his hands. His lips moved silently but fervently, in time with the prayer he had been repeating in his head and heart over and over ever since that night in the Youkai Forest.

Lord, grant me strength. Please. I don’t know what to do. I need your guidance now. Jesus, please.

It had been three days since the children had been taken by the spiders. Three days since he had plunged into the forest alone in hopes of finding them. Three days since he had seen the cruelty suffered by poor Eiko on her last day. Three days since he had been thoroughly reminded of the stark evil that prowled his new home’s darkest corners.

Three days since he had seen his friend Fujiwara no Mokou for what she really was.

Joshua had seen and even done his share of things that he would like to forget, and that night was filled with more than its fair share. But nothing would ever compare to those few minutes, when he had sat by himself in the middle of the scorched remains of the spider’s lair, Eiko’s butchered body sitting in a filthy sack next to him, hands covering his ears as he tried not to hear what Mokou was doing to those spiders.

Please! Mercy, I beseech yah!

But no matter how hard he pressed his palms to his ears, no matter how loudly he prayed, he could never shut out their screams, nor the cold, pitiless sound of Mokou’s voice.

Mercy? You have the gall to beg me for mercy? Did you show mercy to that girl? Tell me: when she screamed, did you laugh? When she cried, did it make you feel powerful? When she stopped moving, were you disappointed that your fun was over?

No! I’m sorry, we wun’t do it again, I-AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

And then the smell of burning flesh, already hanging thick along with the stench of ash and rot, had suddenly grown.

I can go as slow or as fast as you like. I can break, I can pop, and I can burn. Slow cook or searing flame, whatever I choose. And if you don’t want me to start getting creative, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know. You do that, and I’ll simply turn you all into to ashes so you can resurrect good as new later. One quick flash-fire, and it’ll all be over. Or I can draw this out. Your choice.

Yes! Yes! Questions! Ask yah questions, I’ll tell yah everything!

Tears had dripped down Joshua’s face then, just as they were in the present. Crouching by himself in the forest or sitting safe and sound on his bed, it made no difference. The sounds of agony and the reek of death were just as fresh.

Good. Now, word has reached me that this whole endeavor wasn’t even your idea. Not at first, at least. You were put up to this, by a Human from the Human Village, weren’t you?

At this, Joshua had stopped shaking and praying. And though he knew that he probably ought not to, he had removed his hands from his ears and listened.

Yes! Yes! Summin from dere! Came tah us, ‘e did. Sayin’ ‘e would pay us tah go aftah dah orphans! Said ‘e would t-t-take out dey deffinses, dey charms an’ shit!

Take out their defenses? Someone had really gone out of their way to stir up evil youkai against the children and had promised to leave them helpless? And it had been another Human?

Who? Who was it? What did they look like?

I dunno! Never saw ‘em face!

Oh, that is not the answer you should have given me.

No! I swear, I dun’t-AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

The sounds of the spider’s had screams mixed with a burning hiss.

I swear, I swear, please no more. Never saw ‘is face. Wore a big ol’ cloak, ‘e did. Short fella, kinda chunky. Stank o’ fear. Squeaky voice.

Joshua stood up and made for the door.

Hmmm, well, that’s not exactly a whole lot to go on. Gotta do better than that.

Dat’s all I know! Dat’s all!

He made his way through the hall and down the stairs.

You know, I think your burnt bits are distracting you. Making it hard to remember. You think if I take those hands off it’ll jog your memory?

No! I swear, dat’s all I ‘ave!

To the front door and out onto the porch.

Well, if you say so. I guess we’re done here.

Yes! Yes, please! End it!

As you wish. Hey, you know how there’s actually a couple kind of fire that you can’t recover from? That’ll burn your body so completely that those meager magics holding it together won’t be able to stitch you up?

Down the steps, onto the front path, and into the grassy lawn.

You ain’t no Dragon! YOU AIN’T NO DRAGON!

No, I’m not. Dragonfire is unfortunately in short supply around here. But I got the next best thing.

The…The Phoenix’s Daughter! Yer dah Phoenix’s Daughter! NO, PLEASE! PLE-AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

The now-dead spider’s final screams still echoing in his ears, Joshua found Mokou out in the field. She was walking all along the perimeter fence and slapping paper charms to the posts.

Upon their return, one of the first things Mokou had done was go out and inspect all of the magical wards they had set up around the estate. It had been just as they feared. All the charms had been sabotaged, rendered powerless. Which meant that even if Kana hadn’t accidentally blown herself and the others past the fence, the spiders would have been able to get in anyway. The implications of that were horrifying to think about.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Joshua approached her.

“Um, Mokou?” he said.

“Josh. Good,” Mokou said, giving him only the quickest of glances. “Come and give me a hand here.”

Honestly, at this point Joshua really didn’t want to see what was undoubtedly more bad news, but he went over to her anyway. “Look, I know we haven’t really talked much since, you know, the forest, but-”

“Then talk while you’re helping me,” Mokou said, shoving a handful of charms into his hand. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“What our charms being sabotaged means. What that spider told us means.” Though Mokou didn’t raise her voice, the anger seeping through was palpable. “This wasn’t just some dumbass youkai looking to score a meal growing too bold. This was a set-up. A hit. Eiko was basically assassinated!”

“Assassinated?” Joshua tried to wrap his head around the concept. “But by whom? Who would do something like this?”

At this, Mokou said nothing. She just shot him a meaningful look.

After a beat Joshua said, “You don’t know that for sure.”

“He’s still the number one suspect,” Mokou said.

“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean-”

“I’ve been gone digging up whatever info I could find,” Mokou said as she walked from post to post, sticking pieces of paper onto each one. “And I’ve learned a few things. Nothing conclusive, but enough to point fingers in Skinner’s direction. And you have to admit, it tracks.”

“And if it is him?”

“Well, then my job just got a whole lot simpler.”

Joshua felt the blood leaving his face. “Job?”

“Yeah. Protect the house. Protect the kids. If the reason we’re getting attacked by youkai is also the reason that all the Humans are turning against us, then that means there’s fewer people I gotta go after.”

“Go after,” Joshua repeated. “You mean, like you went after those spiders?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Mokou said without shame. Her hand squeezed into a fist, crumbling the burnt charms to dust. “Joshua, I know why you came out here to talk to me. I know you saw a side of me you didn’t like. I get that. But understand this: you cannot make me regret what I did to those spiders. It’s not going to happen.”

Just the small reminder of what had happened to those spiders send a shiver up Joshua’s spine. “Yes, but-”

“No,” Mokou said. “No ‘but.’ No arguments. I don’t subscribe to your religion, and I don’t care about your god. I’m sorry you had to be there for that sorry business, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. After what they did to Eiko, they deserved no less. Hell, I’d bet anything that that wasn’t the first kid they did it too either. Or Human. So save your speeches about forgiveness and mercy. I don’t care. And if I have to do the same to Skinner and every single one of his followers to prevent another one of our kids from ending up like Eiko, then so be it. They already tell stories about me. What’s one more?”

“Mokou, no,” Joshua whispered.

Annoyance flashed through Mokou’s maroon eyes. “Joshua,” she said, warning in her voice.

“No,” he said hastily. “I mean, you can’t just go kill everyone connected to him. That’ll just prove his point and set the rest against us. Besides, even if he is to blame, odds are he’s hiding this from his followers. They’re all worked up about youkai, so do you really think he’d tell them that he’s been cutting deals with them?”

“Don’t care,” Mokou said. “They come at us again, then that’s on their heads.” Then she frowned. “Though I guess you have a point. Don’t want to go making any martyrs. That never turns out well.”

Joshua wondered how much personal experience she had with that. “Just please wait until we learn more,” he said. “As for the spiders, well, I know I’m not going to change your mind about that.”

“Good.”

“But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.

Mokou quirked a silver eyebrow. She leaned up against the fence and waited.

Joshua had been trying to work out how to word his question over and over and had yet to come up with a satisfactory way, so he decided to just say it. “Mokou, who are you?” he said. “Or rather, what are you?”

…

Satoko sat alone in the basement of her family’s orphanage, just her and Eiko Goto’s body.

When Mokou and Joshua had emerged together from the forest with their missing children draped lifelessly over Mokou’s shoulders, Satoko had feared the worst. They had been too late, the children were all dead or dying, and had only been returned to them as corpses.

To her utmost relief, Mokou had assured her that the kids weren’t dead, only unconscious, and they would be waking up in time. Satoko had felt like massive stones were being rolled off her shoulders. They were all right. Despite all the odds against them, their family was still whole, they had survived yet another outside attack.

And then she had noticed that Mokou only had six kids with her when there should have been seven. When Satoko had asked about Eiko, Mokou only looked over to Joshua, who was carrying a filthy burlap sack over one shoulder. And when Satoko had inquired about what was in the sack, Joshua had said nothing; he didn’t need to. The look in his eyes had told her all that she needed to know.

This of course was not the first time that one of the orphans of Aoki Yume’s Children’s Home had died before coming of age. It wasn’t even the first to occur in Satoko’s lifetime. Hell, it wasn’t even the first to be murdered by a youkai. Gensokyo was full of dangers, all of which were especially deadly to children. At the end of a path that led from the back door, sitting nestled in a small grove of pine trees, was their private cemetery. Satoko’s ancestors were all buried there, as were any of the other helpers that had passed away while working at the orphanage. But most of those buried there had headstones bearing two dates that had gaps between them that were altogether too short.

Satoko had had to bury too many during her life. She had buried her parents, her elder sister and her uncle. She had buried Mr. Matsuda, Miss Kyouko, Miss Lillian, and Mrs. Oa. But while all of their deaths had been sad and painful, they had at least all been due to the ravages of age.

Burying Shuna, Kenta, Eru, Tobi, and Kano had hurt so much more.

And now she was going to have to bury Eiko.

And the worst of it was that she shouldn’t have to.

The fingers of Satoko’s right hand slowly squeezed themselves into a fist and uncurled again, only to clench right back up. Mokou had found something. They hadn’t much time to talk, but Mokou had said that there was more to this than a simple youkai attack, that someone had set this up, someone Human.

The number of people who were set against the orphanage was far larger than it had any right to be, but this was beyond the pale. Wasn’t it enough that they had turned their backs on parentless children, that they had driven them away and denied them support, that they now also actively stirred up dark spirits to murder them? And the same dark spirits that the children themselves were accused of trafficking with no less! It was nothing short of monstrous!

At the very least she knew who was ultimately responsible. This had Nathaniel Skinner’s gloved fingerprints all over it.

I should just let Mokou kill him, Satoko thought bitterly. Him, and everyone else listening to him. What were they going to do about it, isolate her family even more than they already were? Keep trying to kill them? That bird had flown.

Then, as she sat in the dimly lit basement with nothing more than a dead child and her own bitter thoughts for company, Satoko heard something.

It was very faint, so faint that she wasn’t sure that she wasn’t imagining it. It was a little like a soft moan of fear, the whimper of a sleeping baby beset by nightmares.

Satoko listened intently. No, her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. She was hearing it all right. Someone was softly crying to themselves, someone down there with her. It sounded like a little girl.

And it was coming from Eiko’s shroud-covered corpse.

Satoko slowly breathed out. Well, it was happening again. This was to be expected, after all. She had had to prepare many of those who had passed away under her care for burial herself, and dead bodies were unfortunately not as silent as one might hope. Gas got trapped, their insides shifted, and they could sometimes be alarmingly noisy.

Trapped in what? She was mostly eaten! Her stomach, her intestines, and her lungs are all gone!

The muffled weeping was getting a little louder. Satoko remained sitting where she was, staring at the still form on the table.

She had to be imagining things now, because she was quite certain that she just saw something move beneath the shroud.

Satoko slowly rose from her chair and walked over to the body. Her heart was pounding quite loudly now, and her hands had started to tremble.

This is nothing, she told herself. You’re just weary and scared. You haven’t slept well in days. Of course you wouldn’t be all there. Just let it lie.

Instead, she reached down with one hand and gently pulled the shroud away from Eiko’s face.

The whimpering stopped.

When Mokou and Joshua had shown her the remains of Eiko’s body, her face had been completely gone. Her scalp and hair were still in place, but those monsters had ripped away her lips, cheeks, and nose, exposing the skull beneath, which was smiling its red-stained grin back up at Satoko. Her eyes were gone too, no doubt plucked out and swallowed like a pair of grapes.

Satoko had stared a long time at the ghastly visage. She had seen the ravaged remains of children under her care before, and would no doubt do so again before Death claimed her in her turn, but there was something truly disturbing about the carcass now lying before her, something that terrified her. This wasn’t just some cruel turn of fate, this was deliberate cruelty against an innocent, set in motion by those who should have worked to protect her.

This was evil.

However, all of that was gone now. Eiko’s face was once again whole and unharmed. Her eyes were closed, as if in sleep.

Then Satoko gasped. Eiko’s mouth was moving, the plump lips slowly moving up and down, like she was trying to speak.

Satoko stood frozen with fear, staring unblinking as Eiko’s mouth opened ever so slightly and closed again, over and over, like she was trying to tell Satoko something, something important enough to return for from beyond the grave.

Her mouth finally fell open, and out crawled a fat-bodied black spider. It crawled up Eiko’s face, toward her eyes.

Then something knocked loudly on the basement door.

“Miss Satoko!” Melissa’s voice called from the other side. “Venga rápido! They are awake!”

Satoko couldn’t help from crying out in shock as her whole body jolted. Panting, she held a hand to her thundering heart.

The spider was gone. As was Eiko’s face. It was again a ravaged horror, the flesh ripped off, leaving her bloodstained with its rictus grin and hollow eye sockets.

Satoko hastily pulled the sheet back in place and hurried toward the door. Melissa was there, hand still raised to knock.

“Yes!” Satoko said, perhaps a bit too loudly. “Thank you!”

Melissa nodded. She was about to turn to go, but then her gaze shifting to a spot beyond Satoko. “Ah,” she said. “Is that…”

Satoko quickly moved her away from the door and shut it tight. “Don’t look, Melissa. Just leave her be.”

“Okay,” Melissa said hoarsely. “Um, Miss Satoko?”

“Yes?”

“Is it…” Melissa’s brow furrowed, as it often did when she needed to search her mind for the right word. “Regular? No. Expected?”

“Normal?” Satoko suggested.

“Right! Is it normal that Rumia and Kohta would be…angry after waking up?”

“Angry?” Satoko was puzzled. “How do you mean?”

“They seemed…angry. And…a little mean?”

“At you?”

Melissa nodded.

Sighing, Satoko laid a hand on Melissa’s shoulder. “Well, they’ve been through a lot. I imagine they’re still scared and confused, so don’t take it personally.”

“They didn’t look confused,” Melissa said after a pause. “They just looked angry.”

Satoko

…

Joshua had been bracing himself for Mokou’s response the whole time. Would be angry? Take offense? If he pressed too hard, might she even turn violent? He didn’t think so, but then again, he had been learning a lot about her that he could never have previously guessed at.

But instead, she laughed. “Oh wow, you just up and said it,” she said. “Honestly, I thought someone would’ve tried prying that out of me my first week.” Then she thought for a moment, and then amended, “Though I guess a few of the kids got real persistent with their questions, but they’re easy to wave off.”

“I’m serious though,” Joshua pressed. “Mokou, you were dead. I saw that knife bury itself in the back of your head! It went right into your brain.”

“It did,” Mokou said with a nod.

“That should have killed you!”

“It did,” Mokou said again.

“So…why are you alive? How did you get up? Are you a youkai?”

Mokou laughed again. “Well, that’s actually kind of a complicated question.”

That was not the answer Joshua had been hoping for. “How? It’s a yes or a no question!”

“Not really,” Mokou shrugged. “See, the thing you gotta understand is that ‘youkai’ is actually kind of a fluid term. We use it as a catch-all for any magical creature that came out of something that wasn’t, well, magic before, but it kind of encapsulates a whole lot of variety.”

Joshua stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’m listening.”

“Well, see, you got your elemental youkai, you got the ones that come from animals, you got the ones that seem to pop out of whatever odd garbage people left lying around, you got those weirdly specific creeps, you got the ones that I guess come from abstract concepts that I’ve never really been able to figure out, you’ve got your wide variety of spirits.” Mokou drew a finger down the side of her face. “Then you got the ones that come from people. Some of them fall into that whole weirdly specific conditions category, but you also got those that manage to turn themselves into youkai on purpose. A lot of magicians do that. They got a whole ritual for it. In one go, they get eternal life and a new wellspring of magic, so you can see why it’s popular.”

“And is that what you are?”

“Nope.” Mokou straightened up and started walking. Joshua followed her. “I’m something…different.”

“Explain, please.”

The place Mokou led him to was a ring of old logs surrounding a patch of sand, in the middle of which was a smaller ring of stones. On warm summer days they would light a bonfire and all the children would circle around on the logs, listening to someone tell stories.

All the adults took turns as the storyteller, but Joshua and Mokou were the favorites. Joshua would regale the children with stories he had brought with him from the Outside World, as well as those found in the Bible. He wasn’t especially picky too. The saga of Samson was told alongside the journey of Bilbo Baggins. The legend of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves sat comfortably alongside David and Goliath.

Mokou’s tales were of a different sort, ones with fewer heroes and a great many more monsters. She would whisper of bloodthirsty spirits and twisted demons, creatures made up from the bones of the condemned that formed in executioner’s fields or severed heads that crawled about on spider legs, and almost every one of her stories had a bad ending. If Joshua’s stories made the kids laugh and cheer, hers would leave them shivering.

Joshua had a feeling that this particular tale would be no different.

Mokou sat down on the storyteller’s log, with Joshua sitting down on the log next to hers. She held out a hand, flexed her fingers, and a ball of red flame appeared in the air over her palm. A gesture, and it leapt to the ring of stones and filled them with flame, despite there being no wood to feed the fire.

“Wish we had some marshmallows,” Joshua muttered, mostly to himself.

Mokou stared blankly at him. “Some what?”

“Er, sorry. They’re, uh, a kind of campfire snack. Basically puffed up balls of sugar that you’d stick on sticks and roast in the fire.”

“Oh. I see. Outside World thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh,” Mokou said. She shrugged. “Okay. Well, it’s like one of those stories you like to tell the kids. What’d’ya call them again? Fairy…legends? Fairy myths?”

“Oh. Fairytales. Um, we don’t have fairies where I come from, but they show up a lot in really old children’s stories, so we just call old stories about magic fairytales.”

Mokou favored him with a thin smile. “You’re a fool if you think that you don’t have fairies. Or magic for that matter. They’re just not out in the open like they are here.”

“That’s probably true,” Joshua conceded.

Mokou turned her attention back to the fire. “Anyway, how do they start again? Oh right. Once upon a time, there was a terrible princess who lived on the Moon.”

Joshua had readied himself to listen a great deal and speak very little, but already Mokou had made a point that he needed to have clarified. “I’m terribly sorry, but it sounded like you just said that there was a princess who lived on the Moon.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Joshua stared. “And you mean that literally.”

“Obviously.”

“There are people. People who live on the Moon.”

“Yes, lots.” Mokou was starting to sound a little impatient.

“Oh,” Joshua said, still staring. “So they’re aliens then.”

Mokou shrugged. “Well, so are you, and so am I, if you really want to get technical about things. But yes, that would be correct.” A beat passed, and then she said, “You seem perturbed.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that Gensokyo took a long time to get used to. Now there’s aliens from the Moon.”

Mokou sighed. “Fuck, Josh. Get used to it! There is literally a bunch of snobby assholes who live on the fucking Moon! Like, they got a whole city up there and everything! How is that in any way weirder than anything that goes on down here?”

“Not by much,” Joshua admitted. “But even so. This is new.”

Mokou rolled her eyes. “They call themselves Lunarians.”

“Lunarians?”

“Yeah. Because they’re from the Moon.”

“Oh. Well, that’s…” Joshua struggled to put his disorganized thoughts into words. “…sort of basic.”

Mokou pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “We live next to the Youkai Forest, which is a forest full of youkai. To the northeast is the Youkai Mountain, which is a mountain full of, you guessed it, more youkai.”

“Okay, I get it,” Joshua sighed.

“And we’ve been dealing with assholes from the Human Village. Hey, try to guess what kind of place that is, and what most of its population is?”

Joshua held up his palms. “All right, all right. So magical people aren’t exactly the most creative when it comes to names.”

“Can I continue my story please?”

“Go ahead,” Joshua said, motioning to her. “I’m listening.”

Mokou turned her head and spat. “Right. So, once upon a freaking long time ago, there was this spoiled rotten twit of a princess up on the Moon. And she is just the worst. Like, okay, she was far from the firstborn so she’s not getting the throne, but she’s still royalty, so she lives in luxury and privilege, never wants for anything, and yet that’s not enough for her. So she decides that she wants to live forever.”

Joshua blinked. Wow, that was a lot of unexpected vitriol. “Oh. Uh, does she?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it? I mean, the Lunarian royal family is the next best thing to immortal anyway. All this took place centuries ago, and her dad is still running things, but noooooo, that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to be completely immortal. As if in, actually live forever instead of just a really long time. Recover from any injury, no matter how severe. And if anything did manage to off her, then…who cares? Her body would just rebuild itself, and she’d be good as new! If anything about her was good to begin with.”

“And it…worked?”

Mokou nodded. “She already had some kind of magical gift to sort of…I don’t know, freeze objects in a state of permanence. Like, if she used it on a vase or pot or whatever, then sure, you could smash it, you could chip it, you could grind it into dust, but it would just put itself back together piece by piece, heal all the cracks, and be exactly how it was. Forever. She just figured out a way to apply that power to people.”

“Um…”

“She was friends with the head scientist or whatever. And they managed to brew up a kind of potion from her power that you could drink. And hey presto! Immortal.”

“I guess there’s no point in asking if it worked.”

“If it didn’t, then her dad would have just executed her and saved us all a lot of trouble,” Mokou said with a derisive snort.

That gave Joshua a start. “Execute his own daughter?”

“We’re talking about a rich and arrogant king with like a double-digit number of kids,” Mokou said flatly. “Like, a high double-digit.”

“That’s…huh.” Joshua shook his head. “You know, there once was a time would I would find the story of Moon people turning themselves immortal to be a silly children’s tale, but now it just seems not the least bit implausible.”

“Right? But they didn’t like that for some reason, and gave the two of them the boot. So they went and hid in Japan.”

“How long ago?”

M: =tells him=

Joshua’s mouth fell open. “Mother of God.”

Mokou tossed a stick into her self-sustaining fire. “I doubt it. She never had kids, and even if she did, any offspring to pop out of her would be just as profane as she is.”

Joshua hesitated. As strange as Mokou’s story was, he felt that he had figured out where it was going, and one point in particular was making him uncomfortable. “Mokou, don’t talk of yourself like that. Regardless of what you might have done, that doesn’t make you-”

Mokou made a disgusted noise deep in her throat. “The hell? Josh! I’m not talking about me! I’m not the fucking Moon princess!”

“What? B-But I thought-”

“Good fucking gods, no!” Mokou slapped her palm across her forehead. “This isn’t my story yet, it’s just the background! I wasn’t even born when all that happened.”

“Oh.” Joshua winced with embarrassment. “Um, sorry for assuming.”

Mokou waved his apology off. “Whatever. So yeah, they got kicked off their rock and ended up on ours. And because they weren’t really the kind to think things through, they forgot to bother with the whole ‘laying low thing,’ it didn’t take long for word to get around that there’s a super-hot immortal Moon princess in town, and before they knew it she was the most eligible bachelorette in the land. Men were lining up outside her door, all seeking her hand in marriage.”

“Now this is really starting to sound like a fairytale,” Joshua remarked.

“Well, I’m sure she’s inspired a few of those.”

“Something tells me that you’re not exactly fond of this Moon princess.”

Mokou laughed at that. “What gave it away? The sound of absolutely contempt in my voice, or the way every single one of my muscles clenches tighter than a ferret’s sphincter whenever I mention her?

“Er, all of the above?”

A long silence fell between them. Mokou continued to stare into the fire, her body unmoving, all except for the fingers of her right hand, which clenched and unclenched over and over. “Yeah, I hate her,” she said at last. “Like, a lot.”

“Why?”

Again Mokou fell silent, and Joshua sat and waited.

So far Mokou’s tone while telling her story had been contemptuous, mocking, and irreverent. But when she finally started to speak again, her voice was soft, low, and contemplative. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl born to the prestigious Fujiwara family. Now, this girl loved her family very much. Her father was strong and kind, her mother sweet and gentle, her brothers loving and encouraging and great fun to be around. And her family’s wealth and influence meant that she wanted for very little.” Mokou took a deep breath, and it caught a little in her throat. “But this girl had a problem, one that cast a shadow over her happiness as she grew older. And that was that her family kept dying.”

Mokou stopped talking. Joshua wondered if he ought to say something, to inquire further. But no. This was her story, and he was going to let her tell it at her pace.

“The first to go was her mother,” Mokou said at last. “Thanks to a hereditary wasting disease, this girl watched her grow weaker and weaker every year, slowly breaking down until she couldn’t even leave her bed. Every second she was in constant pain, and could barely drink water without coughing up blood. And her father wasted away with his wife, but in spirit rather than body.”

The fire had started to change. Though it burned on still despite a lack of a fuel source, it was growing lower and darker, and it was producing far more smoke.

Smoke of what? Joshua wondered, but he felt it wise not to ask.

“The next was her brother,” Mokou continued. “You see, the girl’s family had a problem. An enemy. Another prestigious family was actively trying to destroy them?”

“Why?” Joshua had to ask.

Mokou waved off his question. “It doesn’t matter. Something stupid, from before even her father was born, and it just kept escalating like those things do, until it was like there wasn’t a time when they hadn’t been enemies. But for most of the time, it was just them trying to, you know, humiliate one another, sabotage each other’s business plans, maybe a surprise raid or two, nothing really out of the ordinary for that time.” She took another deep, shuddering breath. “And then one day they received a box, a box with no note or message or anything. And in it was her brother’s head.”

Joshua stared into the smoke so he wouldn’t have to see the look on Mokou’s face.

“Well, with one wife and one son down, that was pretty much half of her father’s family,” Mokou continued. “And since, you know, the disease that murdered her mother was hereditary, and only hit the women, she was next, and there was nothing she could do about it. Even before she became a woman, she could feel it growing inside her, like a hungry black pit deep inside her, just eating her from the inside-out. Soon it would be three of them gone, and with the Sonozikas pressing them harder and harder, who knew when her last brother would wake up with a knife in his heart or take in a mouthful of poison?”

Joshua started at that. “The Sonozikas? Wait, you mean-”

“The same,” Mokou said with a bitter laugh. “Yeah, here’s a spoiler: they ended up winning. They’re still around and running the Human Village, whereas the Fujiwara family is only around because its remaining member literally can’t die.” She shook her head. “Anyway, to move things along, the girl found out that there was someone very special living among them, a bonafide Princess from the fucking Moon, and an immortal one at that. Beautiful, powerful, forever young, and completely and utterly safe from things like disease and assassinations and slipping and cracking her head on the stones and having her guts ripped out, her brain flash-cooked, her head taken right off her shoulders, her entire body reduced to ash or sliced into tiny pieces and spread all the way across-”

“Mokou!” Joshua cried. “Please, I don’t need to know those details!”

Mokou laughed again. “Yeah, sorry. I guess you wouldn’t. Anyway, word got out that this princess was being courted by everything in Japan that had two legs and a functional penis, and there was supposed to be some kind of quest, a sort of wander the country collecting these rare treasures, and the one to bring them all back would win her hand. And the girl convinced her father to give it a shot.”

“Um…” Joshua frowned. “Ah, I’m sorry if this is out of line, but…”

“Why?” Mokou shrugged. “Well, I didn’t know better then. I just heard ‘immortal’ and ‘princess,’ and felt that if my father was to remarry, then it ought to be someone he wouldn’t worry about losing, you know? And I was kind of hoping that she would share her secret of immortality with him and my brother. Not that it ended up mattering, as he ended up coming home a year later, empty-handed and humiliated.”

“Oh.”

“The quest was a scam,” Mokou said flatly. “Pure and simple. A complete wild goose chase. Turns out, the princess already had all of those treasures locked away in her closet, and was just sending those men off just so they would leave her alone, without caring that she was also sending them into some of the most dangerous places in Japan. See, this was before Gensokyo took in all the gods and monsters and youkai and the like, so the country was a lot like Gensokyo is now, and most of those who went on this quest never came back. My father was one of the lucky ones to have survived. Too bad the journey destroyed his health and drained his wealth so that he had to sell off most of his land just to avoid total ruin. And he didn’t forget that it was me that told him to do it.”

Joshua had nothing to say to that at all.

“So yeah, total disaster,” Mokou said. “On the bright side, it got the Sonozikas off our back, seeing how they were the ones who bought most of those properties. I guess they felt that doing so meant that they won. Which, okay, it did.” She clicked her tongue. “Anyway, a couple years go by, and the girl’s just getting weaker and weaker. She tried to stave it off, but with her family’s wealth gone, they couldn’t afford the same treatments that kept her mother alive as long as they did, and even if they did, it wasn’t likely that her father would have bought them.”

“That’s terrible,” Joshua said softly. “To just let one’s own daughter waste away like that.”

“Whatever,” Mokou said. “But then they heard an interesting bit of news. Turns out that the Emperor was one of those seeking the Moon Princess’s hand, and he just plain refused her bullshit quest and wasn’t interested in taking no for an answer. So hey, good for him. But she said no anyway, and that made him angry. And I guess that she figured having the ruler of the country you’re trying to hide in would make one’s eternal life kind of difficult, she tried for making a kind of peace offering. She gifted him with the same potion that made her immortal in the first place.”

“Oh,” Joshua said. “Oh. Well, that’s quite the gift.”

“Maybe, but he didn’t think so, seeing how it just made him even more angry. So much so that he tried to destroy it.”

“Er…why?”

Mokou shrugged. “Fuck if I know. Maybe he thought it was a trick, maybe it’s because he was already an old man and the potion didn’t give you your youth back, so being stuck like that forever would wear off its novelty pretty fast. But anyway, even though he might have been smarter than the rest of her would-be fiancées, he was just as dramatic, because instead of just pouring it onto the ground and sending a bunch of his men to drag her back in chains, he decides to straight-up send it off in this grand caravan and have it thrown into a live volcano!”

Just when it seemed that Mokou’s story started to sound at least a little grounded in reality, it took another fantastical turn. “Okay,” Joshua said at last. “Why a volcano?”

“Fuck if I know!” Mokou said again with a dramatic gesture into the sky with both hands. “He up and died not long after, so I never got the chance to ask him. But whatever, you don’t pull a stunt like that without wanting people to know about it, so of course word reaches the girl that the secret of the Moon Princess’s immortality is headed across the land to be thrown into a fiery mountain. So she decided to steal it.”

“Right,” Joshua nodded. “Because of the disease.”

Mokou shook her head. “Nah, it wasn’t going to be for me. At that point I already resigned myself to death. But with my family half gone and the rest disgraced and me being dishonored in my father’s eyes, then fuck it, what did I have to lose? Maybe if I got that much for him, so that he could be immortal, or my remaining brother, or his new wife if he managed to get one, then maybe I’d be redeemed in his eyes. That, or I would die in the attempt, but honestly I didn’t care about that.”

“Well, obviously you succeeded,” Joshua remarked. “I mean, not in the way you were planning, but you did manage to steal the potion from the caravan.”

“No shit,” Mokou said, giving him a sidelong glance.

“How?” Joshua asked. “I mean, I imagine it would have been guarded.”

Mokou didn’t answer. She just stared long and hard into the fire, the look on her face completely blank.

“Mokou?”

Several more seconds stretched past, and when Mokou finally spoke, her voice was rough. “You don’t need to know that. Just know that things went sideways pretty badly, and by the end of it, the girl was lying in the road, potion in hand, while she bled into the dust.”

“Oh.” Joshua wondered exactly what had happened to make Mokou clam up like that, especially after having discussed several other things of a sensitive and personal nature.

“Well, this girl was now scared,” Mokou continued. “She knew she was to die soon, but for some reason the thought of dying now, before when the disease was to take her naturally, terrified her. And in her pain and panic she did something terrible.” A slow, thin smile spread across her face like a knife wound, one completely devoid of humor and joy. “She drank the potion herself.”

“Anyone else would have done the same,” Joshua said.

Mokou didn’t seem to have heard him. “It was only supposed to be a sip. Just the smallest of sips, not enough to turn her immortal, but enough to heal her hurts, maybe even burn the disease out of her! But the second the potion touched her tongue, she couldn’t stop! Three quick gulps, and it was gone!” She closed her eyes. “And then the pain started. It was like she was being immolated from the inside out. You see, the potion had not been designed with normal Humans in mind. The girl was not some long-lived Lunarian Royal, she was just a normal girl with a weak body, and it wasn’t strong enough to withstand the changes the potion was trying to bring upon her. Her hurts were healed, yes, and it did burn the illness right out of her, but everything else burned as well.”

To Joshua’s alarm, Mokou had begun to burn as well. It was small, but tiny, flickering flames had appeared on the back of her hands and her shoulders. She didn’t seem to notice though. Her clothes weren’t even browning.

“Her organs failed over and over, only to being forced back into working condition, only to fail again. Her bones and muscles dissolved, only to reform in their own soup. Her skin was sloughed right off of her, only to be replaced again and again. Blood poured from her like a river, but never seemed to run out.”

Now the fire was spreading up her arms. Joshua was torn between trusting Mokou’s claims of being fireproof and saying something to warn her. Certainly, everything she had said and done had given him every indication of her not having anything to fear from the flames, but that sort of thing was hard to recall when your friend is literally self-immolating right in front of your eyes. “It seemed like it would never end, that she was cursed to remain in that perpetual state of destruction and rebirth, writhing in agony on that dirt road forever.” Then, as the flame rose up to wreathe her head like an Angel’s halo, she turned to smile at Joshua. “And that is when it came to her.”

Joshua started. “What?”

“The Phoenix,” Mokou said. Her voice had something Joshua had never heard from her before: reverence. “The fire bird of the morning. At first she thought that she had imagined it, that it was just her own pain-addled mind conjuring up delusions, that the flame she was seeing was her own eyeballs boiling in their own juices. But then she heard it speak inside her head. It told her that she had taken something not meant for her, and she was unable to handle its power. That her imperfect body could not adapt and would never again be whole, unless she accepted its help.”

“Help?” Joshua swallowed and scooted a few feet from her. Mokou might be unharmed by the fire, but he had no such protection, and he was starting to feel the heat radiate off her body.

“It would bind itself to her,” Mokou said, still oblivious to the fact that she was very much on fire now. “You see, it was growing old. Phoenixes are creatures of rebirth. They are born, they grow old, and they die, incinerating themselves in their own flame. But from their own ashes they are born anew, young again. But it had done so too many times, and with every rebirth it lost a little more of itself. It was too weak to continue the cycle, just as the girl was too weak. But together, their respective, imperfect forms of immortality might stabilize one another. They might metamorphose into something whole.”

“So, you accepted?” Joshua said. He tried to make the question sound casual, but that was very difficult to do when the person you’re talking to was burning like a torch.

“Well, I was screaming in the throes of unbelievable agony, so I was exactly in a position to refuse,” Mokou responded. “But as I lay there suffering, it entered me. And then the pain really began. Its fire scorched me. And I don’t just mean my body, that was burnt up in seconds. I mean it scorched me to my now immortal soul, burning away every single drop of mortality and impermanence within me. Time ceased to have meaning. Seconds stretched into unbearable, indescribable years. And through it all, all I could do was wish for death, anything to make the pain stop.” She paused for a moment, and then the fires covering her changed, turning from scarlet to gold. “And then my body started to grow back. In the heart of that inferno, my bones forced themselves into existence, reforming and joining together. My organs regrew and reconnected, my meat and ligaments puffing up like tumors, and then skin crawled all over that horror, sealing it all inside. And unlike before, it wasn’t destroyed again.”

She paused again. In her silence, Joshua was finding it very hard not to stare at her, and it wasn’t just due to the absurd novelty of her being on fire.

Mokou had always been lovely, but Joshua had never thought of her in those terms. For one, until that very hour, he had always thought that he was old enough to be her father, but now he knew that the age difference was weighed far, far, far in the opposite direction, and to an absolutely ridiculous extent at that. For another, even if they had been around the same age, there had always been something that felt dangerous about Mokou, something beyond her rough nature and mysterious past, something that told her that she was someone to be kept at arms’ distance.

Joshua had of had always cared for her as a friend and a member of their strange family, and he knew that she loved the children as much as he did and would do anything to protect them, but he knew the look of someone who had stepped onto a bad path and walked it for a long time. He had seen that look many times back during his time with the Military, and when he had been in rehab. Hell, he had worn it himself for quite a while. And while he always did what he could to help those who had it to leave that path as he did, he knew when someone had a self-destructive nature, and Mokou most certainly did; he had seen that about her even before she had revealed just how thoroughly he had underestimated the extent of the damage.

But in that moment, as she sat there bathed in golden light, softly describing being transformed on both a physical and spiritual level, she was the most beautiful thing Joshua had ever seen. And not in any desirable or sexual way; she looked almost angelic, an ethereal being far beyond his comprehension that a lowly mortal like him had no business breathing the same air as.

Which, when one thought about it, was exactly what she was.

“It was the weirdest damn thing,” Mokou said. ‘I was lying there, naked in a dirt road, staring up at the sky. I could barely remember my own name or what had happened to me. The pain was gone, and yet it…wasn’t. I still felt the heat, but it didn’t hurt anymore. It was like hot coals had been sealed up in my stomach, but my stomach had been reinforced with steel, if that makes any sense. And I was changed, changed and made to never change again.”

Then she sighed, and the flames suddenly snuffed out all at once, both the ones covering her body and the burning sphere in the center of the circle, and she was just plain old Fujiwara no Mokou again, the prickly, yet well-meaning, cook of the Aoki Yume’s Children’s Home. “Anyway, that’s why I’m immortal. The end.”

Joshua was already reeling from everything that he had seen and heard over the last hour or so, but this completely knocked him off his gourd. “Wait, what?” he gawked. “But what happened next? Where’s the rest of the story? What did you do after that? What happened with your father, or the Sonozikas, or the Moon princess? What have you been doing all this time, and-”

“No.”

“No?”

Mokou stood up and brushed off her pants. “I told you why I’m immortal. I told you why I didn’t die, and that was more than I usually like to tell. Everything else, everything I’ve done since then, is my own damn business. So, the end.”

Joshua looked to the scorch mark in the ground and the smoke rising from it. He still had an endless bounty of questions, but now that he thought of it, Mokou was right. This was none of his business. Her story was obviously heartbreaking, painful, and horrifyingly long, and she had told as much as she felt comfortable telling.

To be truthful, Joshua felt like he was intruding just by having heard as much as he had. He had known that the mysterious young woman with the rough-around-the-edges personality that the kids had dragged in nearly dead (though he now supposed that she had actually been dead) from the snow had a dark past, but he had never imagined anything on this scale. His friend was literally one of those tragic monsters of legend, the kind who had started off as a simple Human only to be doomed to wander the earth forever due to one, avoidable mistake. She was of the same sort as the Wandering Jew, Stingy Jack, or even Cain himself. Who was he to demand anything from her?

Furthermore, how was he supposed to treat her now? Did they just go back to the way things were and never bring it up again? As tight-lipped as Mokou had suddenly become, Joshua knew that the rest of the story would reflect poorly on her. She had killed people, of that he had no doubt. She had probably killed a great many people, and a lot of them had probably been innocents, people who had been in the wrong place and the wrong time.

Furthermore, he knew that she had done other things. Her torture of those spiders had been cold, efficient, and spoke of a wealth of experience. The few bits she had dropped about the Moon Princess, wherever she was, were nothing short of horrific, and he was willing to bet that those talents had also been employed against those who couldn’t simply regenerate from death and dismemberment.

By any decent metric, Mokou was a monster, one comparable to Vlad the Impaler or Jack the Ripper.

And yet…

“Go ahead,” Mokou said.

“Eh?”

One arm crossing her chest to rest on the opposite elbow, Mokou rolled the wrist of the other. “Decent guy like you hearing a story like mine probably changes how you see me. And I think you’ve put together some of the pieces of the parts I didn’t tell you. So tell me, oh Man of God: have I earned my damnation? Is there something wrong with the universe that I’m never going to see it, that I’m going to be walking the earth long after Gensokyo is gone, after the Outside World had crumbled away, after the rest of humanity is extinct, that I will see the Heat Death of the universe and what lays beyond it? I know a thing or two about your God, as well as all the others, and most of them have some sort of endgame in mind for everything. But no matter what it is, I’m going to come through it, and no matter what perfect world comes out of it, it’ll have my soiled feet walking it.” She grinned. “Kind of seems a little unjust, don’t it?”

Joshua breathed in and out. Wow, this was so very much above his paygrade. He thought in it, letting the various parts of his mind and heart argue it out. As he did, Mokou stood and waited.

Joshua breathed in and out. Wow, this was so very much above his paygrade. He thought in it, letting the various parts of his mind and heart argue it out.

Unfortunately, nothing inside him could come up with a satisfactory response. This was so far above him that his mind felt crushed just by thinking about it. If he had learned that Mokou had been a murderer or something similar, then yes, that would probably change the complexion of their relationship, but not in any meaningful way, as he had known many killers and worse in his time.

“It’s okay,” Mokou said at last.

“Huh?”

“You don’t know what to make of me. You don’t know what to think.” She nodded solemnly. “It’s okay. I understand. It’s too much to take in all at once.”

Joshua stared down at the ground. “Mokou, I-”

“I’m a monster,” Mokou said. “The kind they make stories of, one as dark and evil to ever wander the black corners of the world. I’ve always known that. But I want you to understand something, Josh. Even if you end up hating me, I’m still your monster. Yours, the kids, Satoko’s, Haruna’s, Shion’s, Haruhi’s, all of you. I’m on your side, and I swear if anything tries to hurt any one of you again, then they have to go through me first. And they’ll find that a lot more difficult than they bargained for.”

It was a nice sentiment, but Joshua was still unable to wrap his head around the situation. “Okay,” he said. “But why?”

Mokou quirked an eyebrow. “Why what?”

“Why…Why do you care? Why do you care so much about these kids? Why do you care about us? It just doesn’t make any sense!”

“Ouch, man. That hurts.” Mokou stuck her hands in her pockets and rocked back and forth on her heels. “And say what you want about me, but I’ve never purposefully gone after anyone innocent, especially not kids. That’s a level of evil that I always swore I’d never fall to. Simple, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not!” Joshua said, wringing his hands in agitation.

“Why not?”

“I…” In his struggles to articulate his thoughts, Joshua suddenly recalled a terrible story his platoon captain used to tell, a story that Joshua had always found incredibly troubling, mainly because he knew it was true. “Okay, you told your story to make your point, so here’s one to make mine: once upon a time, there was a soldier walking through a valley where the enemy had destroyed a village, and he find the body of a little girl lying on the side of the road, run through with a sword.

“Now this soldier feels like someone had punched him right in the gut, and he falls to his knees and takes the girl’s body in his arms as he cries. ‘Why, God? Why would you let something so terrible happen to such a beautiful child?’

“But the soldier still has a mission to do, and there is no time for burials, so he leaves the girl and continues on his way. Soon he finds two more dead little girls, their heads cut off, and he stops and starts weeping again, condemning the cruelness of the world.

“Soon he finds two dead little boys and three dead little girls, and he again cries for them, but he doesn’t stop. A few minutes later he comes across a full dozen dead children, and though he shakes his head at the terrible sight, he neither stops nor cries.

“And finally, before he’s left the valley, he comes across an entire elementary school, all of the children executed, their bodies just left for the flies. And he barely even looks at them before continuing on his way.”

“Damn,” Mokou said after he was done. “And I thought my story was gruesome. You trying to one-up me here or something?”

Joshua slowly breathed out. “My point is, you’ve lived hundreds upon hundreds of years. You’ve seen so much dead: men, women, and children. You’ve also caused quite a bit of it too. Normal people like us, we must be like mayflies compared you to, gone in a blink of an eye. So why do these kids matter so much, when by your standards they’ll be gone before you notice.”

At this, Mokou’s face turned serious, all hints of wryness falling away. “Good question,” she said. “Really good question. And I guess…Okay, look: I may be a monster, but the two years I’ve spent here with you guys, cooking for you, working with you, helping you, playing with the kids and everything is the first time for as long as I can remember that I felt like…like something other than a monster. Does that make sense.”

Joshua stared up at her. Then he slowly nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does.”

“Good,” Mokou said. “So at least we know where we stand. But for now-”

Suddenly some kind of clamor was being raised over at the house. Joshua heard people shouting and running, and then Shion started calling to them from the porch.

“Hey!” she yelled. “You two stop slouching about and get over here! The kids are waking up!”

Joshua and Mokou exchanged looks of surprise. Then the two bolted toward the house.

…

“Kids!”

Rumia and Kohta started at the sudden exclamation. They looked up to see Miss Satoko standing in the door of the sick room, her crease-lined face lighting up and her eyes wet with tears.

“Oh, thank the gods, you’re all right!” Miss Satoko practically fell to her knees in front of the children and threw her arms around Rumia and Kohta both. A little taken back by the sudden display of affection, Rumia glanced uncertainly at Kohta from over Miss Satoko’s shoulder, who shot her the same look back. Then the two gingerly wrapped their arms around the woman in return.

“I was…I was so afraid…” Miss Satoko whispered. “When you disappeared, I thought I would never…” Then she drew back and smiled at the two. “But you’re here.” She cupped their faces with her hands. “You’re all right.”

Rumia flinched at the touch. For some reason, her palm just felt way too warm. “I’m…we’re…”

“Shhh.” Miss Satoko pressed a finger to Rumia’s lips. It hurt. “It’s okay. We can talk later.” She leaned forward to kiss the top of Rumia’s forehead. “Just rest for now. It’s enough to know you’re alive.”

Rumia instinctively drew back from the kiss, but stopped herself. What was she doing? Miss Satoko kissed their foreheads all the time! Still, it felt…wrong this time. Her lips felt hot, like a branding iron was being pressed against her brow. Still, she gritted her teeth and bore it.

“Miss Satoko?” Kohta said. His voice still sounded weirdly creaky and hollow. “W-What about…” He coughed. “What about the others? They won’t wake up.”

“Don’t worry, they’re fine,” Miss Satoko said. “It’s just that…” She made a face. “Well, the spiders stung them, you see. They still need to get it out of their systems. But they should be waking up soon.”

Rumia cast a dubious look over to Kana, who was still breathing shallowly.

“Okay, but how did we get…home?” Kohta said. “Because I don’t…”

Miss Satoko stroked his hair. “Mr. Joshua and Miss Mokou found you in the forest,” she said. “They said you were lying unconscious, like you had fallen asleep, and they carried you back.”

“Miss Mokou’s back?” Rumia whispered. It still hurt a little to talk.

Miss Satoko nodded. “She got back right after you two went off. As soon as she found out what happened she went right after you.”

“Oh.” Rumia’s face twisted up as she tried to put all of her scattered thoughts in order. “Uh, are we…in trouble?”

That made Miss Satoko laugh a little. “No, Rumia. I mean, normally, yes you would be, because what you did was very foolish and dangerous. But I think what you went through was more than enough punishment. I’m just glad you’re still alive.”

“Alive,” Kohta whispered. He suddenly sat straight up. “Alive! Miss Satoko. It’s Eiko! She-”

The smile vanished from Miss Satoko’s face, to be replaced with naked pain. “I know, I know,” she said hoarsely. “Mokou told me everything.”

“What?”

“Miss Mokou and Mr. Joshua…found her too. They brought her home as well.”

“Brought her…you mean her body?”

Miss Satoko swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”

“But…the spiders! They would’ve-”

“The spiders won’t be a problem anymore.”

Rumia, Kohta, and Miss Satoko all looked to the door. Miss Mokou was there, leaning against the doorpost with her hands in her pockets.

“Wh-What?” Rumia said.

“You don’t have to worry about the spiders,” Miss Mokou said. “I took care of them.”

“Mokou,” Miss Satoko said. “Maybe this had better-”

“Can we have a few moments?” Miss Mokou said.

“I don’t think-”

“I won’t be long. Just need to ask a few questions.”

“It’s okay,” Rumia told Miss Satoko. “I’d like to talk to her.”

“Me too,” Kohta said.

Miss Satoko hesitated, but then nodded. “Okay. Don’t take too long.” She kissed them both again. Rumia winced when Miss Satoko’s lips touched her forehead

She passed by Miss Mokou, stopped, and laid a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. Miss Mokou gave her fingers a brief squeeze before she left.

“Well,” Miss Mokou said as she entered the room and closed the door, leaving them alone with her. “Sure am glad you two are up and about at least. Feel all right?”

“No,” Rumia said.

“Didn’t think so.” Miss Mokou sat in front of them, legs folded and hands on her knees. “Apparently you two snuck out the moment you could. Didn’t wait for any grown-ups at all, just plunged into the forest yourselves, right?”

“Yes,” Kohta said.

“Heh. Well, that was fucking stupid, but based on what I’ve learned, if you hadn’t, someone else would’ve probably died too. So, you know, good job.”

Rumia hesitated, and then asked. “M-Miss Mokou. The…spiders.”

“What about them?”

“Did you really, you know…”

Miss Mokou nodded. “I did. Your little firework show told me pretty plain where to find them. Found the four of them trying to put out the fires with Eiko’s body still on the table. That told me enough.”

“But…they’re youkai. They’ll come back.”

“No, they won’t,” Mokou said with absolute surety. “Youkai can come back from most things, but there are a few kinds of death that keep them. And I so happen to know at least one of them.”

Rumia felt a chill sweep up her back. “What did you do to them?”

A spark flickered in the dark pupils of Mokou’s maroon eyes. “I burned them alive.” She rotated her right wrist around on her knee, moving the palm upward. A hovering ball of flame suddenly flashed into existence over her hand. “But first I broke them. Slowly. And with great deliberation. I broke them, I hurt them, I made them scream, and after they had told me everything I wanted to know, I set a fire deep inside them that roasted them until their flesh had crisped and their fat melted and even their bones turned to ash.” She closed her fingers shut, snuffing out the flame. “Isn’t as good stopping them from taking you in the first place, but at the very least I made their meal more expensive than they were willing to pay.”

“Good,” rasped a weak-sounding voice.

Rumia turned to see Haruko struggling to sit up. Her former nemesis looked pretty bad, not as bad as Kana, but she was still gaunt and haggard. Her long dark hair, usually so carefully brushed and cleaned, was a nightmare of oily knotted strands that hung in clumps around her face.

“Good,” Haruko said again. “They deserve it.”

“How long have you been awake?” Kohta asked.

Haruko coughed from deep inside her chest. “Few minutes,” she muttered. “When Miss Satoko was still here.” She looked up at Miss Mokou. “You brought Eiko back home, right?”

Miss Mokou nodded. “Me and Joshua did. We were just waiting for you to wake up before we put her to rest.”

Tears shown in Haruko’s eyes. She blinked several times, sniffed, and wiped her eyes with her arm. “Th-Thank you.”

A heavy silence passed between them. Then Miss Mokou sighed and said, “But that wasn’t the only reason I was waiting for you to wake up. See, I learned most of what there is to know about your rescue from the spiders, but not what happened after. They said that they stopped following you when you went into a place called the bone grove, which had something called the black circle. That’s where I found you, all of you. You were all lying lifeless just outside the bone grove. What happened?”

“The…bone grove?” Rumia repeated.

“Yes. A place filled with black trees that had been turned to stone, that had skeletons fused into their trunks. And its center had this circle of black sand.” Miss Mokou shook her head. “Damn. I thought I had seen every ugly corner of Gensokyo, but that was a new one, even for me. Even so, nothing happened the whole time I was in there. I tried setting the trees on fire, but they wouldn’t burn. I tried melting the sand, but it just swallowed up my fire like it was nothing, and that does not happen. But I felt like there was something in there, something that was deliberately locking me out. So I need to know what happened to you all in there.”

“Nothing,” Rumia, Kohta, and Haruko all said in unison.

Miss Mokou narrowed her eyes. “Well. That response was…quick. And unanimous. And obviously not true.”

“Nothing happened!” Haruko insisted.

“Oh, yeah? So, what, you just fell unconscious in the middle of the Youkai Forest for several minutes without anything picking you off? The spider chasing you just up and decided to leave you there for no reason?”

“Yes!” Rumia said crossly. Why couldn’t Miss Mokou just drop it? It wasn’t any of her business!

“Huh,” Miss Mokou said. “I see.”

Then, moving quicker than a striking snake, she reached up with both hands to grip Rumia and Kohta by the chins.

Rumia tried to recoil, but the fingers holding onto her jaw were too strong. And if the touch of Miss Satoko’s hand had been uncomfortably warm, Miss Mokou’s felt hotter than a cattle brand. It was searing into her skin, so much so that she could practically smell her own flesh sizzling.

“STOP IT!” Kohta screamed.

“LET US GO!” Rumia agreed. Haruko lunged forward and shoved Miss Mokou in the chest.

Miss Mokou didn’t budge, but she did raise a single eyebrow. “Well,” she said. “That answers that.”

Then she let them go.

The three of them scrambled away from her, putting as much distance between them and Miss Mokou. “What do you think you’re doing?” Kohta demanded. “Don’t touch us!”

Miss Mokou said nothing. She just calmly looked from one face to the other, her narrowed eyes piercing into theirs.

Then the doorknob started rattling. “Mokou?” Miss Satoko said from the other side. “Mokou, what was that? What are you doing?”

“Huh,” Miss Mokou said.

“Open the door! Mokou?”

Miss Mokou stood up. “Well, that’s everything I need to know. You three get some rest. Awake or not, you’re definitely not fully recovered.”

“Yes, we are!” Haruko protested. “We’re fine!”

“Uh-huh. Sure you are.” Miss Mokou walked over to the door and opened it, revealing not only Miss Satoko, but the rest of the grown-ups as well, all crowded outside the door.

Without saying anything, Mokou left the room and shut the door, leaving the six of them alone.

…

“Mokou, what the hell was that?” Shion hissed. “What were you doing to them?”

“Exactly,” Satoko said, a cold look in her eyes. “You have five seconds to explain why they were screaming before I-”

Mokou held up a finger, silencing them. “No,” she said. “Not here. Haruna’s room. Now.”

Haruna folded her arms. “Kid, you better explain yourself right now.”

“Not. Here,” Mokou repeated. “Head to Haruna’s room and lock the door.”

“Mokou, you were hurting them!” Joshua said. “They were screaming, and-”

Mokou then noticed something. She held up a palm, silencing him, as she turned her attention over to the stairs.

Practically every child in the orphanage not currently in the sick room were clustered around the top steps, staring intently at them.

“OUTSIDE!” Mokou roared.

The kids cleared out faster than she had ever seen them do. She listened as they ran, hopped, and in some cases tripped their way downstairs and out the front door.

When the thumping stopped and the door slammed shut, she turned to the rest of the orphanage’s staff.

“Okay, so now can we go to Haruna’s room so I can explain why we are now all in very real danger?” she said.

That did it. Their looks of confusion and anger turned to ones of confusion and fear. “Okay,” Haruna said. “But why my room? Why not yours?”

“Because my window still has a big hole in it from my hasty exit earlier, and yours has the thickest walls.”

“Well, I’m a light sleeper,” Haruna said, and a bit indignantly at that. “And there’s always some child walking the halls every night.”

“Right, but this isn’t something I want anyone listening in on, so if we could…” Mokou motioned down the hall with both hands.

The six of them quietly filed through the hall and into Haruna’s room. It was a very nice place for such a rough-looking woman, decorated with bright colors and several chalk drawings she had done herself.

“All right,” Satoko said once Haruna had locked the door. “We’re here. Now tell me what you did to them, and maybe I’ll consider not expelling you right now.”

“I grabbed their chins to get a good look at their eyes,” Mokou said. She pinched her own jaw between her thumb and index finger as demonstration. “Like this.”

“That’s it?” Shion said. “But they sounded like you were burning them!”

“That’s because that’s how it felt. Satoko, did you notice how they flinched when you kissed them?”

Satoko stared blankly at her. “Did they?”

“They did. In fact, I’d say they were scared of being touched at all.

“Mokou, we’re begging you,” Shion said. “Say things that make sense!”

Mokou sighed. Oh well, she was in for it already. “Fine. I already told Satoko and Joshua all this, so look them up for the details, but the long and short of it, I’m immortal.”

Haruhi made noise that wasn’t quite a gasp and not quite a hiccup, but was very similar to both.

“Yeah, so to just preemptively answer your questions, no, I’m not a youkai,” Mokou said. “I’m Human, but several hundred years ago I drank a magic potion that made so I’m going to live forever. And I later got super-charged with a whole lot of fire, so that’s what that is all about. But anyway, I’ve been around a long time, and know how to recognize certain things-”

“Excuse me?” Haruhi squeaked. “Uh, I know this is very important, but can we go back to the part where you’re immortal and apparently hundreds of years old?”

Shion shrugged. “Makes sense to me.”

“Well, yeah,” Haruna said. “I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“You two knew?” Haruhi said.

“Well, no, but I figured it had to be something like that,” Shion said.

“I did,” Haruna said.

“You did?” Mokou said.

“Sure. I mean, I’ve been hearing stories about the Daughter of the Phoenix my whole life, one that’s supposed to be wandering the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. Then all of a sudden the kids drag in a frozen corpse that is all sorts of dead, except no it’s breathing again in minutes, and all of a sudden those stories stop.” Haruna shrugged. “All in all, it wasn’t hard to put together.”

“Huh,” Mokou said thoughtfully. “Well, when you put it like that…”

Haruhi held up her hands and stomped off to a nearby chair. “I need to sit down.”

“So…you’re really that old, huh?” Shion asked.

“Yeah,” Mokou said. “I’ve been around basically forever, and probably will still be around after everything’s gone.”

Shion thoughtfully rubbed her chin. “How much of forever are we talking? Like, since the beginning of time, or…”

“Oh, no,” Mokou snickered. “I was exaggerating. But about a hundred years or so before Gensokyo was created.”

Haruhi jolted in her chair. “You were born before Gensokyo was created?!”

“Yeah, and let me tell you, that was a hell of a news story.”

“A-And you told…” Haruhi pressed a palm to her forehead. “Okay, I get why you told Satoko, but why Joshua? I mean, no offense, Josh. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“None taken,” Joshua said. “And, well, I just, you know, asked her.”

Haruhi stared at him for a good long time before nodding. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Satoko sighed. “Well, this is all very fascinating, but it’s distracting from the main point. Mokou, continue.”

“Right,” Mokou said. “So, I’ve been around, I’ve seen and done a lot of things, and I’ve learned to recognize certain things as well.”

“Things like what?” Haruna asked.

Mokou frowned. “Now, I only got a short look at them, but it was enough that I’d bet every single one of my remaining centuries that those kids found…something in the bone grove, something that left its mark on them.”

“What is the bone grove?” Shion asked. “Do you even know anything about it?”

Mokou shook her head. “Never even heard of it until now, which bothers me. I mean, sure, I’ve never really been the one to go digging up any of Gensokyo’s endless mysteries, but something that big really sounds like something I should have at least heard of. The spiders said that it’s a place that nobody goes to, that everyone in the forest just avoids and doesn’t talk about. Can’t say that I blame them.”

“The spiders,” Satoko repeated. “That you tortured.”

“Yeah, those are the ones. But anyway, even if I’ve never heard of this particular batch of creepy, it’s clear to me that even though I didn’t find anything specific in it, those kids did. And they took a piece of it with them.”

Satoko swallowed. “What is that even supposed to mean? What did it do to them?”

“Exactly what I said. Whatever it is, they got a piece of it inside them, and it’s influencing them somehow.”

Joshua inhaled sharply. “Wait, are you telling me that they’re possessed?”

“Hell if I know,” Mokou said. “Could be, but I don’t think so. They seemed mostly normal until I tried to talk to them about the bone grove, which is when they got weirdly hostile. And they didn’t freak out until I touched them. So I’m thinking that it’s just, you know, influencing them.”

“Is it dangerous?” Shion asked.

“Undoubtedly,” Mokou said with a nod.

Everyone fell silent as they all digested her answer. Then Shion said, “So, what do we do about it?”

Mokou thought on that. “In the long term? Not sure. But for now, keep them together in the sick room and away from the rest of the kids. Don’t let anyone go in there, and don’t let them leave, not until we learn more about what it is and what it’s doing to them.”

“No!” Satoko cried. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not going to make them prisoners in their own home!”

Mokou had been expecting that kind of reaction, and while it was understandable, this wasn’t the time to err on the side of kindness. “Would you rather one of the other kids end up dead? We already lost Eiko. You wanna risk someone else?”

“What about the funeral?” Haruhi said softly. “We put off laying Eiko to rest so they could be there. Haruko and Hayate were her friends. Are we going to keep them locked up during that?”

“Probably.”

“No,” Satoko repeated. “Absolutely not. Mokou, you go too far!”

Mokou gave a nonchalant shrug with one shoulder. “Someone has to.”

“She’s right,” Joshua said to her. “Satoko, I mean. This is just cruel. They’re already isolated from the rest of the Human community, and now you want to isolate them further?”

“If I gotta,” Mokou said. “Look, I’m not saying lock them up for life. I’ll go get the Hakurei shrine maiden. She’s an expert in this sort of thing. Hell, I’ll scare up Yukari Yakumo if I have to.”

That got a reaction from the others, almost as much as the reveal about her immortality did. “Yukari Yakumo!” Haruhi gasped. “You know Yukari Yakumo?”

“Not personally,” Mokou said. “But it’s a kind of ‘know people who know her’ sort of thing. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I can scare her down if I have to.”

“If you want to bring her into this, then do so,” Satoko said. “Bring anyone you think can help. But I am not locking them up, and they are not missing the funeral.”

Mokou scowled. “Bad idea, Satoko. When a kid gets sick, we keep them away from the others, don’t we?”

“It’s not the same thing!”

“Satoko, I think she’s right,” Haruna said in a low voice.

Satoko gaped at the older woman. For her part, Haruna merely folded her arms. “If those kids have been touched by something evil, then it’s our responsibility to do what we can to keep everyone safe. I know it sounds cruel, but we’re on a knife’s edge already. We can’t afford to take risks.”

“But that’s what Skinner and Sonozika are doing, isn’t it?” Satoko said. “Saying that we’re infected with evil to keep us isolated from everyone else? How are we any different if we do this?”

“Because number one, they’re just doing it because they’re hateful bigots,” Mokou said. “We actually have proof that something’s wrong. And number two, we intend to help the kids. They’re not.”

Satoko still looked unconvinced. “That’s not good enough, Mokou. After everything they’ve been through, I’m not going to separate them from their friends. I’m not going to treat them like monsters!”

“Satoko, it ain’t forever,” Haruna said, laying a meaty hand on the taller woman’s shoulder. “Mokou knows people that can help, right? Powerful people who specialize in this kind of crap. So we just keep them by themselves as a precaution until these people show up to take a look at things. Then they’ll fix the kids right up, and everything will go back to normal.”

Satoko looked hurt by Haruna’s words. “Haruna, you can’t be taking her side! You’ve helped raise these children even longer than I have! You know how close they are with one another! I mean, Rumia and Kohta have been fighting with Haruko, Hayate, and Eiko for as long as I can remember, and they still risked their lives to save them!”

“Think, Satoko! Think with your head! The safety of the children come first! Of course we’ll do everything we can to ensure that they’re okay, but until then, we need to be smart!”

“But-”

“What if whatever it is takes control of them when they’re asleep?” Mokou demanded. “I’ve seen things like that happen before. What if we wake up to find everyone’s throats slit? Or the house set on fire. Or-”

“Stop, Mokou! Just stop talking!”

Mokou’s gaze was like steel. “You know I’m right.”

“I…” Satoko’s eyes welled up with tears. “Fine then! If you think it’s so important, then fine! But only as long as it takes to get them help, and they are not missing the funeral!”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mokou said. “We still don’t-”

“They’re going to be there, and that’s final! And speaking of which, seeing how you’re so good with fire, you can handle the cremation. Immediately.”

Mokou sighed. “Fine. And if they must be there, then fine. But at the very least keep them apart from the others.”

Satoko bit her lower lip. “How quickly can you get the Hakurei shrine maiden here?”

“Well, I’d have to find her again,” Mokou said after thinking on it. “But I don’t like the thought of leaving, not after what happened last time. I suppose I could send someone else to look for her.”

“Who?” Joshua said.

…

Tewi Inaba looked down at the list of instructions Mokou had given her, and then up again at the tall Human who had given it to her. “You serious with this?”

“Look, we’ve had enough shit go down here, so I can’t afford to leave them unprotected,” Mokou said. “And I’m a little short in contacts that might actually find her. So yes, I am serious with this.”

“Right,” Tewi sighed. “You know, we haven’t had that crust bitch poke her killjoy ass in our forest ever since you left. It’s been kind of nice. And now you just want us to go looking for her?”

“Tewi,” Mokou said, warning in her tone.

“Fine, fine, I’ll find her,” Tewi said as she held up her palms in defeat. “But you owe me.”

“Put it on my tab,” Mokou said. “I mean, I’ve got nothing but time to settle up.”

…

Me tired.

Until next time, everyone.

#imperfect metamorphosis #touhou #the touhou project #fanfic #rumia #fujiwara no mokou #mokou

7 notes · View notes