Shrine Maiden (A Modern-Day Touhou Quest)

You wake with the ashes of her dream still burning on your tongue and your shintai gripped between-

*Chirp*

Eyes gummed over from sleep crack open, and Rei glares down at a familiar dark blue blanket draped awkwardly over her shoulders.

Where…?

She shifts slightly, trying to ease a twinge in her back, but the motion upends whatever precarious balance she'd managed while asleep and sends her sliding. Rei grunts as her shoulder bounces off the floor, but the collision—and the sight of a cheap plastic windmill—jars a memory loose.

That's right, there was a spell and a…

Rei looks down at the weight resting comfortably in her hand—an orb, split by a sinuous line, half purest white and half crimson. There was nothing special about it. No strange sense of… fear and trepidation. No aura of magic or golden glow or anything visual like that. It looked a bit like an oddly painted pool-ball, and yet….

She closes her eyes and lets the orb slowly fall from her fingers onto the floor. She hears it as the smooth… whatever it was made out of starts to roll down the gentle slope of her hallway. More than that, she can feel it as it bounces lightly off the hallway and continues rolling toward the Honden—returning to its altar since she no longer needed it.

She flexes her fingers slightly. A familiar weight settles once again in her fingers. Rei opens her eyes and looks down at the orb—the shintai—once again sitting in her hand.

It was hers. Bound to her in some way that she didn't understand. Yet, instead of concern, she felt calm. As though being attached to this orb was natural… was right.

Find the third piece of your panoply…

The memory of the voice from her dream whispers in her thoughts, and she wills the shintai back to its resting place in the Honden.

She pushes herself up from where she'd slumped over onto the floor and wraps her blanket around her like a cape. She had things to do. Things that had nothing to do with her orb or magic or anything like that.

Rei shuffles down the hallway only to pause as she spots a flicker of black and white curled up in a corner by the kitchen. A ball of black and white that was shivering in the predawn chill. With an amused huff, she unspools the blanket from where she'd wrapped it around her and drapes it over the blonde before continuing her trek to the kitchen. It was time for tea and breakfast…

Hopefully, there was some leftover pizza.

A few minutes later, Rei is munching on a leftover piece of pizza crust—pepperoni, thankfully—with one hand while her other wraps loosely around a steaming cup of matcha. Her thoughts begin to drift. Carried along with the sway of sunlight dappled through the leaves overhead.

If the shintai was one piece of her panoply—whatever that was supposed to mean—and she was supposed to find a third piece, then that probably meant she already had a second piece to go with the orb. And only one thing she'd picked up since arriving in Gensokyo seemed to fit the bill.

Closing her eyes, Rei reaches out and tugs at a thin strand seemingly coiled around the connection between her and the orb. Something falls into her lap, landing with the soft fwump of falling cloth. She opens her eyes and stares down at the Miko outfit she'd bought at a thrift store draped chaotically across her lap. Well, it was nice to know that if she ever needed a change of clothes, one was no more than a thought away.

Kind of lame for magic, but the voice did say to grow strong, so…


The sun is well clear of the tree line before she hears the shuffling sound of another person wandering out to join her. Still wrapped in that navy blanket, Marisa blinks at her sleepily, "Oh, hey, ya' still alive- I mean ya' awake."

"Alive?" Rei quirks an eyebrow in sarcastic amusement. She studies the black rings around her friend's eyes and the distant look on her face before handing over a cup of tea she'd taken just a single sip from. "You look like you need this more than me."

"Tell me 'bout it," the blonde's jaw cracks audibly as she yawns. She sleepily reaches out for the tea, seeming content to let it sit in her hands for a moment before she downs the whole cup in one gulp. "Thanks."

Rei stares blankly at her completely not-in-pain friend before gesturing over to where her kettle is heating over the coils of her Thermo-Cooler. "I just poured that."

"It's a spell," Marisa shrugs away her incredulous look and flops down to the porch next to a closed pizza box. "Made it myself… an' fuck me if it ain't take a month of experimentin', but now food's never too hot or cold."

"That would probably come in handy when cooking ramen noodles," Rei scoops a spoonful of matcha into a cup and pulls her kettle off the burner. "I always have trouble waiting for it to cool."

"'Swhy I made the spell. Aww…" The blonde's smirk shifts into a pout as she flips open the pizza box, only to see that it's empty. Gold eyes turn in her direction before fixing on the half-eaten piece of crust sitting in her lap. "Got any more crust."

"I've got…" she trails off as she flips the fridge part of her Thermo-Cooler open and starts pulling out drawers. "Applesauce. A thing of vanilla pudding. And a bag of wrinkly-looking carrots that I should probably throw out."

Marisa drums her fingers on the porch in thought and shrugs. "I'll go with the puddin'."

Rei grabs the plastic container and tosses it over to her friend. "Spoons are in the kitchen if you want."

"Nah, I got this." Suiting actions to words, the blonde pulls the foil lid back just a touch, tilts her head back, and starts drinking from the pudding cup.

"That works too, I guess." She ignores her friend as she tilts her head back down and begins to scoop the remnants of pudding out with her finger.

Marisa slams the pudding cup down like she'd just taken a shot and grins. "Could still go for some pizza, but whatcha gonna do?"

"Eat a carrot instead?" The two girls share a look before simultaneously smirking and shaking their heads.

"Whatcha got planned for the day?" Marisa leans back on her hands and lets her head fall back to look at the sky. "I've gotta get some laundry done, an' then it's back to the 7-Eleven for an evenin' shift."

"If you're going to the laundromat, could you take some of my stuff too?" Rei smiles gratefully when her friend shrugs and nods. "Gardening mostly. I'm going to clean up around the graveyard, and then I promised to help Nitori out with her cucumbers."

"Cool. You wanna talk 'bout the magic stuff now or tonight?"

A quick bit of mental math flickers through her head before Rei decides, "Let's do it now. I can always go back later to finish up if I need to."

"Fair enough." The blonde crosses her legs and leans her elbows forward onto her folded knees. "For my part, the spell went off without a hitch… though it did damn near drain me dry of magic."

Rei nods at that and tries to put her thoughts in order. She'd seen something amazing in her dream, but more than that, she thought she knew what some of it meant. "I think I saw the founding of Gensokyo."

"No shit, really?" Marisa's eyes widen momentarily before narrowing in concentration. "How far back do ya' think ya' went?"

She sorts through the specks that she remembered of what had looked like civilization, but the body she'd been in had paid very little attention to any of that. "There was a village off in the distance and a lot more trees than there are now. And one of the… beings in my dream said humans lived in squalor, but more than that, I couldn't say."

"Hmm…," her friend taps at her lip thoughtfully. "I bet the library's got some old stuff on what Gensokyo used ta be like, so maybe we can narrow it down from there. What else."

"The beings in my dream were trying to fix a spell they'd cast that had gone terribly wrong." More than any particular moment in her dream, Rei remembered the anxiety and fear that had coursed through that other her. "They were scared. Almost terrified."

"Scared ain't good, least of all for magicians." A frown crosses the blonde's face briefly before it smoothes away. "Do ya' remember what they were tryin' ta fix?"

"An imbalance of…" The word dances on the tip of her tongue before a vision of the sky cracking and turning to night flickers through her memory. "The spell was absorbing yang energy, and they said it would continue until it reached a critical point…"

"And then boom?"

"Boom may be an understatement. It sounded like it might have been enough to sink Honshu…" A shiver of that other her's fear courses through her, "maybe all of Japan."

"Well, since we're still here, they fixed at least that much." Her friend grins, seemingly unaffected by the averted calamity, which was… probably fair. She lets the borrowed emotion fade away as her friend continues. "Though an imbalance in yang energy may explain why folks're so… ya' know."

Rei thinks about it for a moment before nodding. "Perhaps the time weirdness too."

"I think ya' might be right 'bout that; good catch." Marisa nods. "So do ya' think the weirdness in Gensokyo is unintentional, or do ya' think they fixed it this way on purpose?"

For a long moment, Rei is silent. She thinks back to the parting words between that pink-haired woman and the other her. It sounded like they thought the other her's sacrifice would fix things. Yet, how did that match what was going on in Gensokyo now? "I think they thought what they were doing would fix everything, but I don't know."

"So prolly a side effect of the fixin'... least we can call it that for now." Her friend stares at a point over her shoulder and drums her fingers against the porch. After a moment of silence, she stops drumming and asks, "How much of the magic specifically do ya' remember?"

"There was a circle—really more like a wheel—that one of the beings made. It had five spokes connecting the inner circle to the outer one, and she used…" Rei digs through the cascade of memory for an unfamiliar word. "Something called cinnabar and quicksilver and…"

"Well, the wheel's a bit of Taoist imagery… though I ain't never heard of one bein' used ta form a spell circle… an' cinnabar's definitely somethin' the Immortals used in their magic so…" Marisa grins, her eyes suddenly alight with something almost like greed. "Lemme run to my car right quick, an' ya' can draw the circle out for me an' how the magician used the reagents."

Rei blinks as her friend springs upright and turns to run back into the shrine. "Somehow, this seems less like a Gensokyo mystery thing and more like a personal one."

"Ain't they the same thing? We gotta know more 'bout magic if we're gonna solve this mystery." Marisa tries to defend herself but wilts in the face of an amused smirk and a raised eyebrow. "Ok, fine. If ya' insist."

"Of course." Rei's smirk widens at the antsy tapping of her friend's foot as the blonde settles back onto the porch. "I think the spell activated when the body I was in sacrificed herself in the center of that spell circle."

"Willingly?" Marisa stills to complete motionless until Rei nods in agreement. "Whew. Sacrificial magic's a dangerous thing ta toy with, but if she did it ta herself, then hopefully, that's a differen' story. Anythin' else."

"Right before the dream ended, the body I was told me to 'find the third piece of your panoply, grow strong, and we shall meet again someday.'" For the first time this morning, her friend fails to mask her shock completely. The blonde's mouth drops open, and her eyes widen.

Despite her friend's shock not being the most reassuring of signs, Rei can't quite keep the smug smirk off her face. "Oh, and I can do this now."

With a thought, her shintai vanishes from its place atop its altar and reappears in her open hand. "Tada."

"Ya' fuckin' wit' me." Marisa tries to scowl but can't quite get it to stick and ends up grinning. "Heh. I guess we're really partners in crime now."

"I can do magic." Saying the words somehow makes everything that had happened real. Rei's grin widens to match her friend's. "Better watch out, or you'll soon be the second-best witch in Gensokyo."

"Keep dreamin', Miko," the blonde smirks as she drawls out the word. "An' I might jus' let ya' be my 'prentice."

Rei matches the smirk with one of her own but doesn't immediately respond. After a moment, the spark of competitiveness fades, and the two girls turn to look out onto the grove of cherry trees in her backyard. "So, what now?"

Marisa holds up her hands in a way that almost seems like she is trying to guess the angle of the sun and sighs. "Chores an' work for me… gardenin' for ya."

"And after that?"

"Suppose we can start wit' the library." The blonde muses. "Maybe if we can narrow down when things started, we can get a feel for what to look for next."

"In that case, I might as well get started." Despite her words, it takes Rei another handful of minutes before she gathers enough energy to stand. "I'm going to get my stuff and go clean up the graveyard a bit. You can stay as long as you want."

"Nah, I should be gettin' on too." Marisa stands with an exaggerated groan. "The dryers at the laundry place take for-fucking-ever."

Minutes later, the girls are packed for their days and standing before the faded torii. Rei shifts her duffel bag full of gardening tools to her other shoulder and raises her now free hand in a wave. "Later, Marisa. Feel free to stop by whenever. I'll set up a futon for you."

"I might just hold ya' to that." Her friend waves in response and then pulls her car door open. "Later, Rei."

Rei watches, more than a little bemused, as her friend peels off, accompanied by squealing tires and clearly unsafe driving, before she turns her attention toward other things. It was time for something completely unmagical.


[AN]
I more or less expected this conversation to take up the whole chapter, but hopefully, it strikes the right balance between exposition and characters. Since we're diving right into another mystery option, I think this will be another 3 - 5 part mini-arc. Part 2 should be out sometime this weekend.

The graveyard is different. Not in terms of the memorial stones placed in arcs that trailed aesthetically across the rise and fall of the hilly ground. Or the scatter of gravel away from walkways and the sprawl of weedlike vines that garland all but the newest gravesites. At least not as far as Rei could tell. Yet there was something off.

With senses sharpened by the shintai still sitting contently in its Honden, she could feel… something flowing sluggishly between stagnant pools. Something that felt different from the aura that surrounded her pervert-boss and different from the faint buzzing remnants of Marisa's spell. Was it magic?

What would I even do if it was?

Rei didn't have an answer. Fortunately, she didn't need one. She'd come here to start cleaning up the graveyard, and while the probably-not-good gathering of magic might end up being part of that cleaning, she was going to start with something more mundane. Weeding. Anything more than that would require a trip to Yuuka's shop, and she just wasn't up to dealing with the green-haired flower lady today.

Plus, who knows how she'd react to my shintai…

Focusing away from the stagnant probably-magic, she stares across the graveyard toward the uneven line where the space cleared for plots fades into forest. It was maybe five times as large as her shrine and the grounds around it. Large enough that weeding would take most of the morning, but thankfully not so large that she'd need to come back another day to finish up.

Letting the duffel bag slip from her shoulders, Rei starts rummaging through the tools she'd brought. She hadn't brought any weedkiller—the chemicals were too harsh—and she hadn't thought ahead to make some of her own, so she was left to pluck weeds by hand. Or rather by…

She pulls out a walking-stick-sized piece of bamboo with four metal prongs on one end and a nice plastic-wrapped handle on the other and smirks. Weeds wouldn't stand a chance against her old-lady weeder, and she might be able to show up at Nitori's later, only minimally caked in dirt and mud.

Propping her weeder over one shoulder like a spear, she saunters off toward the oldest section of the graveyard. She'd start there, with graves that had become forgotten… just like pizza-girl had asked.


The sun slowly rises in the sky as she moves through the oldest parts of the graveyard, plucking green shoots wherever she finds them and idly studying the granite memorials as she passes. Unlike her mother's, where the stone itself still looked new—despite the signs of what seemed like at least months of neglect—these stones bore unmistakable signs of aging.

Rei steps back from picking weeds near a gravestone worn almost completely smooth by wind and rain and takes a moment to admire her work. She runs the sleeve of her t-shirt across her forehead to wipe away sweat and nods in satisfaction. That was the last of the really old-looking ones. Now, she could move over to her mother's side of the graveyard and take care of the plots there. After a quick break.

Moving over to where she'd draped her duffel bag across a stone bench, she plops down and starts rummaging. A bag of chips comes out first, followed by a slightly dented, pre-packaged cookie, and finally, a water bottle that had disappointingly warmed up far beyond the brick of ice it had been when she'd packed it.

If only I could find some magic that would keep me from getting hot and sweaty…

After a brief lament that her only magic powers involved summoning things she didn't need, Rei rips open the cookie package and chomps down. Chocolate and sweetness hit her in a wave, and she perks up—nothing better to help you focus than a blast of sugar, no matter what Auntie said. In moments, her cookie is reduced to a dusting of crumbs, and she turns her attention to the chips, this time oil and vinegar, rather than that far too fishy flavor she'd picked up last time.

Her chips didn't last any longer than her cookie, and after a few moments of enjoying the peacefulness of the cemetery, Rei stands. It was time to finish this chore. She still needed to meet with Nitori about her cucumber patch.

Energy restored by a rush of sugar and salt, Rei pops up to her feet and turns toward the next section of the graveyard, bottle of lukewarm water gripped loosely in one hand and her weeder in the other.


"Rei. You actually came."

The vaguely familiar voice draws Rei from her trance-like state of plucking weeds. She blinks as thought starts to return to her mind and turns around. It was…

"Hey, pizza girl," she lifts her old-lady weeder in an idle salute. "It took a bit longer than I'd thought, but I'm almost done weeding."

"It's Youmu." The silver-haired girl turns to look at the cemetery grounds where hundreds of weeds had been pulled and left to dry in the sun and frowns. "When I said… I didn't mean that you had to…"

"It's cool." She waves away the stuttering apology. "I think I'm kind of like the town Miko or something anyways, so…"

"Did you umm… it feels…" Pizza-girl—Youmu— shrugs her shoulders helplessly and turns an uncertain stare toward her. "It feels a bit… brighter, but oh, umm… maybe it's just the sunlight. I normally come later in the day."

"I don't…" Whatever Rei was planning to say trails off as she takes in the graveyard with senses granted to her by her shintai.

A knot of something—she'd have to remember to ask Marisa if the stuff was called mana or chi or magic or something else entirely—over by the graves she had weeded looked a bit less… solid. "Maybe it just looks cleaner without all the weeds everywhere."

"Maybe…," the girl doesn't sound like she quite believes that to be true, but instead of questioning further, she changes the subject. "Do you umm… do you want some help?"

"I'm about done for the day." A lost, almost forlorn, look crosses the other girl's face and tugs something awfully close to where she keeps her feelings about her mother. Rei sighs internally, already seeing her free time vanish in front of her. "but next time, I'll start planting some flowers, and you can help with that if you really want."

"Really?"

The earnest relief in Youmu's voice is almost painful to hear, and it strangles any lament she'd had over the loss of her free time. "Yeah. Since I started, I might as well finish, right?"

"Right." Silver hair swings wildly as the girl nods her head. "You can call me whenever, and I'll… Oh, but the fall semester starts in… no, I can make time… I just need-"

"You know where the shrine is, right?" Rei cuts through the increasingly frantic babbling coming from the other girl.

"Yes. I-" She stops as an amused smirk crosses Rei's face and nods once. "Yes."

"Then just stop by whenever you have some free time." Her smirk shifts to something a touch gentler, more genuine. "We'll pick up some flowers from my pervert-boss and spend the day planting them."

"Your boss is a…" Youmu mouths the word 'pervert' rather than say it.

"More or less." Rei shrugs, feeling no desire to defend Yuuka to anyone else—not that the old, whatever she was, actually needed or wanted defending. "But she pays well and lets me work with plants, plus she's been teaching me about ikebana, so it's not all bad."

"If you say so…"

It doesn't take a genius to hear the skepticism in the other girl's reply, but that doesn't bother her one bit. "You'll get to see for yourself when we go buy flowers. I'll need the help carrying them if nothing else."

"I umm… but… maybe I can… umm…"

"Don't worry. Yuuka's not too handsy." Rei's smirk widens as wide blue eyes focus on her.

"Handsy… I…"

For a moment, she debates letting Youmu steep in her growing panic, but just for a moment. The girl seemed to be getting genuinely worked up. "Relax. She's really more into harassing shrine maidens than anyone else, as far as I've seen."

Youmu almost slumps in relief before turning a concerned look toward Rei. "But aren't you… does she umm…"

"It's fine. I think it's just how she is." She waves away the concern and glances at where the sun is slowly beginning its descent. "I've got to go. I promised Nitori I'd help out with her cucumbers today."

"Ok." The girl nods. "Thanks for inviting me to help clean up the graveyard."

"I'm not going to turn down free help." Rei grins. After a moment, Youmu smiles softly as well. "Later, pizza-girl."

"It's Youmu."

"Sure. Later, Youmu."

"Bye, Rei."


Since Rei didn't know where Nitori's cucumber patch was—presumably somewhere near her actual house—she had to go to the next best place to find out, her store.

A blue head of hair perks up from behind a counter at the chime of the front door opening, and Rei smirks at the swipe of black grease covering the inventor's cheek. "Oh, hey, it's you. Sorry, I'm just in the middle of…"

Nitori trails off mid-sentence, and the distraction in her face fades to focus. "You look different… did you change your hair?"

Idly, Rei reaches up to tug at a lock of hair held back by a bright red ribbon. "I got a few new hair-ties at the thrift store; maybe that's it."

The look Nitori gives her indicates that she clearly doesn't think so, but she lets it go. "How's the Thermo-Cooler and the KP Mk-20 working out for you?"

"No complaints here." Both of the things she'd bought from the probably-a-kappa had worked out far better—and for far less money—than she could have hoped. "I'm actually here to repay that debt I owe you for the Thermo-Cooler."

"Right! My cucumber patch!" Any skepticism about Rei's new look or curiosity about the equipment she'd bought vanishes from the girl's face in favor of a burst of enthusiasm. "I've been trying forever to get someone to take a look at what's going on, but Yuuka's always so stingy."

She had always seemed more pervert than stingy to Rei, but perhaps that was just the difference between a shrine maiden and a probably-a-kappa. "She's not that bad… well, she's probably all different kinds of bad, but what can you do?"

"Exactly. Plus, she's terrifying."

Nitori says that in the same tone, one might say the sun rose in the east today, and she found it hard to disagree. Yuuka was pretty scary.

"So, what's up with the…" Rei runs a finger along her cheek.

"Huh?" the shopkeeper blinks, rubs her cheek with the back of her hand, and looks down at the smear now on her hand. "Oh. That. Marisa stopped by earlier. Said her car was making a weird sound so she asked me to take a quick look."

"That girl should not be allowed to drive a car." Friend or not, the blonde was a menace to pedestrians everywhere.

"Heh. Well, we figured out it just needed a quick tune-up, but…" Nitori smirks secretively. "I may have installed a limiter on her top speed while I was at it. I won't say anything if you don't."

"Good." Rei nods in satisfaction. "Nothing wrong with taking your time on things."

"Speaking of… give me a few minutes to close the shop, and I'll walk you over to my patch." The green-ette smiles apologetically and rushes into the back room before Rei can say anything.

"Take your time," Rei calls out to the shop at large and shrugs before turning to pick up a metal block-looking thing that caught her eye while talking to Nitori.

She presses one of the half-dozen black buttons displayed on one side of the block and blinks in surprise as a pair of knife blades spring out with an audible snap. She's just about to test the edge of one with her finger when Nitori's voice stops her.

"That's the Chop-o-matic. The cutting edge—pun fully intended—of multi-use kitchen tools."

"Well, if I ever start cooking, I guess I know where to buy utensils." Rei places the whatever it was back where she found it and turns toward the maybe-a-kappa, who now has a bright green backpack slung over her shoulders in a way that looks like nothing so much as a turtle shell. Maybe-a-kappa indeed.

"Shall we?" The blue-nette gestures with one arm and leads them out of her store. They cross the two-lane road in front of the store and then turn down an alley on the other side. "My patch is actually a bit of city land that I've leased from them near the river. It was supposed to be the perfect place, but I just can't get things to grow."

"So, what all have you tried?" Rei blinks as the narrow alley gives way suddenly to a gravel path snaking alongside a sluggishly flowing creek.

"I thought it might have been animals, but the Spookinator 3000 did nothing. Then I thought it might have been a soil issue, but retilling the soil with the Dirt-Disruptor Mk 15 didn't do anything either. I also tried…"

Rei starts to zone out as the inventor starts listing ever more absurd inventions that she'd tried to address her cucumber deficiency with.

"Nothing I've tried has worked. Absolutely nothing!" The frustrated shout drags her attention back to a fuming Nitori. The blue-nette blushes a slight pink at her outburst and shrugs embarrassedly. "That's why I'm hoping someone a bit more… naturally inclined can help because all my inventions haven't worked."

"I'll see what I can do."

Her promise to try seems enough to move the inventor from her frustrated mood, and the conversation shifts to hyper-modern chess openers and how they borrowed concepts from classical shogi openers.

Eventually, the walk ends with the two of them standing in front of a fenced-off area, and Nitori turns to her and gestures. "Here it is… three acres of cucumbers."

A quick glance doesn't show anything wrong. Not that Rei expected it to. If it was something she could spot in a moment, she was almost positive Nitori would have managed to fix it already. "It may take a few hours to find anything…"

"That's what I figured," she shrugs in a way that sends ripples through her turtle-shell of a backpack. "I've got to get back to my shop, so is it ok if I just leave you here."

"Sounds good." Rei nods absently, her mind already compiling a list of things to investigate. "I'll drop back by the store when I've figured something out."

"Right. Well, I've got to get back." Nitori rubs at the back of her neck and smiles awkwardly. "Thanks for doing this, Rei."

"Nah… thank me when I've found something." Rei lifts a hand in a lazy wave as the maybe-a-kappa turns to leave. "Later, Nitori."

"Thanks again, Rei. Bye."

Rei watches as blue pigtails disappear behind a turn in the path before turning back to the cucumber patch.

It was time to get started; the only question was where.

Rei can investigate Three of the options below. She needs to uncover a certain number of clues (clues are uncovered based on her abilities) to make progress on this issue. If she fails to uncover enough clues this time, she can always come back later.

[] Try to see if there's any magic flowing through the patch.
[] Take a look at the soil to see if it looks right for planting
[] Compare the cucumber plants to see what differences there are between them
[] Look around at the fence to make sure it's in one piece so no animals can get in
[] Check to see if any invasive plants have contaminated the patch
[] Dig a narrow hole to see how deep the groundwater is and how well the soil drains