Flandre's Quest (Touhou) World - (Madness Quest)

[X] Go down the planet
- [X] Sightsee around the village with Satsuki


You smile and nod more firmly. "I think I'll go down with Satsuki and look around a bit." Fate nods back.

"Alright. Do you need any help with Satsuki?" You shake your head. "Then when you get to the teleporter they'll send you down to the church. Introduce yourself before you go out, in case there are any specific locations to avoid." You bite back a sigh and hop to your feet. Fate reaches out as you start organizing the building and village plans. "I'll take care of those. Don't worry, just go and enjoy yourself." You frown, then shrug and bow politely.

"Thank you, Fate." You slip away and head to your room, where Satsuki still sleeps soundly. Of course, it's no trouble getting her into the wheelchair - you strongly consider simply carrying her, but it would probably send the wrong signals to someone. And as Fate said, once you get to the teleporter, a technician sends you right down to the nave of the church. You set Satsuki down on one of the benches so she can adjust to the local conditions and wake up when she's ready. A door at the far end opens and a crag-faced man limps out, frowning toward you.

"You aren't the Sister sent to help?" It takes you a moment to unpack his odd accent, then you shake your head.

"Someone from the Church did come with us, but I'm working for the Bureau right now. I am the one who's going to deal with whoever's attacking the Church, though." He frowns at you, then stumbles, barely catching himself against a railing, and it's only because you fly over to hold him that he doesn't fall to the floor anyway. Before you can get him to sit, however, a tone quite unlike a bell goes off, and a flash of light reveals Sein. She looks around, a little lost, and pales a bit when she sees you with the old man.

"Father Maurice! I'm Sister Sein - are you alright?" He nods abruptly and, after a deep breath, manages to hold himself up with his own strength and walks to a bench. You frown at him, wondering what's wrong, but it's probably nothing you should worry about.

"I live yet, Sister. Ahh …." His eyes flick back and forth between you and Sein, and she smiles tightly.

"Yeah, I know. But she really is good at what she does - Lady Carim said that if she can't deal with whoever's doing this, it's not likely that anything short of a Bureau battlegroup could stop it." The man's eyebrows shoot up and he stares at you. You simply smile and shrug; the flattery, true or not, doesn't hurt, but you'd like to know just what constitutes a 'battlegroup' before getting too excited.

"Anyway, that's not supposed to happen until tomorrow, so once Satsuki wakes up, I'd planned to do a little sightseeing. Is there anything that's considered to be forbidden, or that I shouldn't go to for other reasons?" He frowns thoughtfully before shrugging with a wry smile.

"I would have said the forest, but if you're that strong, the night-demons should leave you alone."

---

You and Satsuki walk out of the church and the first thing you do is try to find the moon. It's strangely dark … you scowl. If that is the moon, it's horrible disappointment, much too small and somehow a sickly-brown color that leaves you faintly disgusted. The snow is a disappointment, too - flaky and crunchy, and too thin on the ground to do much with. Oh, well. "Come on, Satsuki!" You rush out to the edge of the churchyard, arms flung out to your sides, and Satsuki scurries after you, carefully holding the skirt of her maid uniform. The camera-Device Father Maurice let you borrow hangs around her neck, flying about as she shifts her weight over the uneven dirt path.

"Um, Flandre-sama? Where are we going?" You grin and shrug.

"Sightseeing. Around the village, first, and maybe the forest if the village is boring." Which you rather expect it to be, given its small size. Satsuki tries to mask a frown and you giggle. "Oh, don't worry - you'll still be learning things." Her head cocks to the side adorably and you giggle again before waving for her to keep following you and walking away. The church is set away from the rest of the town a bit; still within sight and sound, but distinctly apart. The different architecture and construction doesn't help, either.

"There aren't any street lights …." You nod as Satsuki catches up to you.

"Supposedly the night-demons disrupt any attempt to improve the infrastructure in a meaningful way around here. Oh, the farms work, and little things can be kept safe with those little chimarae." Satsuki peers down at the figurines that dot the edges of the churchyard and the street. They look like caricatures of human beings, although many are damaged in some way - missing an arm or leg, or having had an eye torn out. "The belief is that the night-demons will attack the dolls instead of people. … Is something wrong?" She reaches out to touch one, then jerks her hand away after hesitating.

"I … I don't think so." You give her an odd look before shrugging and moving on.

You wander about the village for a few hours, examining the buildings with their tall peaked roofs and few windows, inviting Satsuki to try and guess why they were built that way. According to Father Maurice, the village is still deeply suspicious - nearly every aspect of the architecture is based around appeasing or deflecting the night-demons, and you don't meet anyone for fear of the same entities. You take the time to explain some of the more practical explanations for things - that houses with extra-large doors probably have livestock that are brought in during particularly bad winters, for example - that she simply has never had the opportunity to learn due to her living in an advanced city. You even teach her a bit about the architecture, which is a bit curious, including what appears to be at least two layers of logs, or reinforced planks for the less respectable homes, for the outer walls. A very curious detail, that, considering the greater difficulty of creating a plank compared to simply hauling a log into place. Of course, there is a reason for that ….

The village itself, rather than being laid out in a grid, consists mainly of circles of buildings, and while the walls are no longer present, you can easily see where they should be, both protecting each building and each circle of structures. The 'streets' between the circles are wide and simply dirt paths beaten grassless by ages of people walking over them. Eventually you reach the village outskirts, and a small, lonely hill with the crumbling ruin of a tower overlooking the trade-roads and river, as well as your real destination, the forest.

"Are you ready to enter the dark domain of the night-demons, Satsuki?" She looks apprehensive but nods. You chuckle and rub yourself into her side. "Don't worry, I'll keep you safe."

"F-Flandre-sama …." You grin and skip down the hill toward the tangle of trees.

"Supposedly, the night-demons used to rule the land. Long, long ago, of course, but that's the reason for some of the weird things in the village - not just warding off the night-demons, but also to protect against them. In most places, the expense of planks and the additional space they provide make them the choice for the wealthier builders, but here, where protection against the terror of the dark is a high priority, a double-layer of solid logs is considered more important." The forest is quite pleasant, almost impenetrably dark and with an air of quiet hostility that really sharpens your senses.

"But … that was a long time ago, right?" You nod.

"Mm-hmm. Apparently when the Belkans first came here, the night-demons fought back. The Belkans tore down their places of power, killed their leaders, slaughtered the lesser night-demons, and drove them away. But they weren't able to kill all of them, and supposedly they still attack humans when they can. They're believed to be responsible for natural disasters, for sabotage and grave-robbing, for kidnappings of children - everything that can't be explicitly linked back to human hands gets blamed on the night-demons." All in all, it sounds like a wonderful place for youkai to live.

"Why doesn't the Bureau do something about them?" You shrug.

"Bureau's looked and didn't find anything …." You walk through a clearing and look up at the sky, barely visible through the canopy. As you look back down, you slow to a halt and stare at one of the trunks. After a few seconds, you're rewarded by the humanoid creature leaping toward you. It's not much bigger than you - taller, definitely, but with a stick-thin and emaciated body - mottled green and black, with two enormously oversized claws growing out of the back of its hands. It shrieks as it hurtles through the air toward you, flaps of skin running along its arms and down its sides betraying some sort of flight, or at least gliding ability, and its long tongue flops outside its oversized mouth. You catch it by the throat and it hacks, thrashing for a moment, before staring intently at you with softly-gleaming green eyes.

"F-F-F-Flandre-sama …!" You grin at the creature and its slack jaw clicks shut, severing its tongue - which disintegrates as it falls through the air. It doesn't seem particularly bothered by it, and almost looks like it's smiling back at you. Then light flashes and it shrieks hideously and throws its head back. A frill or ruff uncurls from its head, more webbed skin splayed out from spider-leg-like spines, and it spits at you, a stream of noxious liquid that turns into a spray of mist by the time it reaches your elbow. Your eyes tingle and your tongue feels like its burning, but the effect isn't that bad, and instead of attacking you, the creature plunges its oversized claws into its own skull and rips it apart. It doesn't appear to bleed, simply dissolving like the tongue, the air around it rippling like the air over a hot flame as it vanishes. You shake your hand out and spit to try and clear your mouth.

"Well - I suppose the night-demons do still exist." Satsuki wraps her arms around you.

"I'm sorry, Flandre-sama, I'm sorry!" You reach up and pat her shoulder.

"Sorry for what?" She whimpers quietly for a moment.

"I … I took a picture of you and that, and that's when it … when it …." You sigh and pat her shoulder again, gently pushing her so you can turn around.

"There, there, it's alright. I'm not hurt, and we got to see something new and interesting! And - you took a picture? Does it show the night-demon?" Satsuki blinks and holds out the Device, pressing the buttons Father Maurice showed her to display the recent images. She flinches when the most recent one appears in the air - it does indeed show you holding the night-demon, and you study the creature more closely. It has elongated forearms and very short upper arms, and its legs are bowed outward even while hanging - no doubt constructed differently from a humans in order to facilitate springing from a tree. It's also scaled, with the black and extremely dark green portions of its skin having more obvious and thicker-looking scales than the lighter green. And, of course, it has the interesting trick of becoming nearly invisible while flattened against the tree - you only saw its eyes gleaming in the dark. "Interesting …."


What do you do?

[ ] Keep exploring the forest. Maybe there are more!

[ ] You're here for another mission entirely. Return to the church.
- [ ] Show Father Maurice the image and write out what happened. Maybe some confirmation will make the Bureau look into the night-demons again.
- [ ] Teach Satsuki.
- - [ ] Etiquette.
- - [ ] Politics.
- [ ] Just make sure Satsuki is calm and wait for the church to be attacked.

[ ] Other?