Well this sure is something. The writing is very good, but the wacky meme Eurobeat-powered opening did NOT prepare me for ruler-straight survival horror and gory battle scenes. I'm not clear on what this fic is aiming to be.
For the second time, Chris slowly woke up on the floor. He had the taste of vomit, and oddly enough, strawberries in his mouth. Chris couldn't decide if that was better or not than just plain dirt.
He groaned and sat up, rubbing the back of his head, mussing up his tousled brown hair even further. Kid Win glanced around his surroundings with a bleary eye.
The cottage had been real. It looked a bit homier from the inside, although that wasn't really saying much given that he'd seen the outside while drugged up to the gills on hallucinogenic mushroom poison.
It was good to know that it hadn't been some sort of dying hallucination, although Kid Win supposed it could still be possible this was all some surreal fever dream- the sort where you got trapped waking up inside of the dream over and over again, but not in reality.
The girl who had rescued him from a painful and embarrassing mushroom-related death earlier was there too, working at a wooden standing desk in a small area clearly designated as a workshop, with bare stone floors and mechanical tools lining the walls.
There was a clear split between the workshop and the rest of the house. The workshop was utilitarian and almost completely bare, aside from countless schematics spread out across every spare inch of available tablespace and the full bookshelves lining the walls.
The rest of the house was slightly better, but not by much. It was decorated in an old-fashioned way that honestly reminded Chris of his grandma's house, full of frills and white lace and a few paintings of flowers on the walls.
There was a leather couch, and a brick fireplace, and a pendulum clock hanging on the wall above a wood-burning stove, but not much else in the way of creature comforts aside from a few old-timey oil lamps and a wooden table.
That wouldn't have been that bad- it would have been rustic and sort of charming, if Kid Win hadn't suddenly noticed the creepy dolls lining every surface in sight.
The dolls had been real, not just a figment of his imagination, and they were everywhere. They were sitting on the couch, they were atop the fireplace, they were on the tables and every last one of the bookshelves.
They were in every style and size Chris could imagine. Some had faces that looked like masks, while others had faces that were less 3D, painted onto a smooth, round surface.
There were just so many of them. Some had painted eyes, with too wide faces and too thin lips, while others had pale, fragile looking faces and slender bodies with glass eyes set behind plastic sockets.
Kid Win could even pick out the giant shape of something vaguely humanoid in the corner, hidden partially by a tarp.
There were dolls with red hair, and black hair, and blonde hair, in every size and shape imaginable. Some of them were even moving, tottering around on stubby legs or flying about with miniature tools in their hands as they went about their tasks.
Thankfully, most of the ones up and about were cuter ones, like the type that Kid Win had seen earlier outside. Their puppet-like faces were still clearly mechanical, but they were far enough out of the uncanny valley that their round, glassy blue eyes and round white faces were more adorable than scary.
The cute clothes they were wearing helped. They were wearing neat blue dresses and had shoulder-length blonde hair, with red ribbons tied into it. They looked a lot similar to the girl hunched over the worktable in the corner, except slightly less menacing due to being the size of Chris's hand instead of taller than him.
Chris shuddered slightly as he made eye contact with one of the lifeless dolls sitting on the mantelpiece. He eyed the door. Maybe he should make a break for it- he was getting major heebie-jeebies right now.
The girl continued working in the corner, apparently not yet having noticed that he was awake, despite the noises that he had made earlier, before registering his surroundings and falling dead still and silent. The house was completely quiet aside from the living dolls, the sound of Chris's heartbeat, and the metallic noises of the girl tinkering on her project.
Now that he was fully awake, he could make out what the girl was working on. Surprise, surprise, it was another doll. She was up to her elbows in its clockwork guts, fiddling about inside with a small set of watchmaker's tools.
Kid Win licked his bone-dry lips in apprehension. Chris's throat was absolutely parched- probably from puking his guts out earlier. He was willing to bet that he'd lost a lot of fluids during that.
Slowly, Kid Win got to his feet, moving as quietly as he could.
The girl paused her work, the noise of her tinkering coming to an abrupt halt. Chris instantly found himself holding his breath involuntarily.
"Ah, you're awake. Good." The girl reached up and grabbed a dirty towel off a rack, before wiping her grease-stained hands off and turning around to face Chris.
Now that he wasn't in a horrible drug-induced hallucinogenic haze, Chris noticed a few extra details.
She had soft, large blue eyes and fair skin that contrasted nicely with her golden blond hair.
She was wearing a red headband that Chris thought looked really good on her.
Her sky-blue dress had a pink sash with white edges tied around her waist as a belt. She was also wearing another pink ribbon tied around her neck like a scarf, and a starched white shawl around her shoulders.
Her pale, thin lips quirked upwards in a slight smile as she walked over from where she'd been working.
"I apologize for not putting you on the couch, but, well." She gestured at him gingerly.
Chris looked down, flushing as he registered the fact he was still covered in his own puke.
"R-right." He rasped out. His throat was still dry, and his entire mouth tasted like crud. He coughed. "Can… can I have some water?"
"Of course." She nodded. "I can put some tea on as well, if you'd like."
"Yes, thanks." Kid Win coughed, making his sore throat ache even more. "Tea sounds good."
The dolls flew over to the kitchen and retrieved a kettle, in addition to a single teacup.
It was pretty impressive, how the dolls managed to lift something so much larger than themselves. As he watched, the dolls placed the teacup on the table in front of him, before carefully pouring water from the metal kettle into it.
Kid Win wanted to ask about them- if she was controlling them manually through some kind of non-verbal means, or if they were truly autonomous like they appeared.
Before that, he picked up the teacup and gulped down the water. It felt like nectar to his parched throat.
While he had been drinking, the dolls had also brought over a plate of cookies.
She waited for Chris to finish drinking before speaking again. "My name is Alice." She offered. "And you are?"
"Oh, I'm Ch-" Chris coughed, pounding his chest with his fist. Wow. He'd really just almost outed himself there, huh?
"Kid Win." He said, after clearing his throat. "I'm Kid Win." He offered a handshake on reflex, falling back onto his PR training to make up for his lackluster social skills.
She hummed. "What a strange name." Alice paused, looking down at his hand with an odd expression. Chris glanced down awkwardly. Was there something on his gloves…?
The moment stretched on into an uncomfortable silence. Chris slowly started to turn pink, before withdrawing his hand. Maybe a handshake was too forward? He hadn't washed his gloves recently, and he'd slept on the floor and there wasn't a mirror anywhere so his hair was probably stuck in full bedhead mode-
Chris suddenly became painfully aware of the fact he was still covered in vomit and dirt. Oh wow. No wonder Alice didn't want to shake his hand.
"Uh, I should- do you mind giving me a moment to clean up?" Chris cringed internally. "Do you have a bathroom I can use?"
"There's a stream out back behind the house. I'll instruct the dolls to give you some privacy." The girl sounded more amused than affronted, thankfully. "It's only a few paces away. You can't miss it."
She gestured towards a backdoor behind her. "I cleared out the more dangerous species of magical flora near the cottage awhile ago, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about being poisoned again." She paused, mulling something over.
"Do be careful, though." She added after a moment. "Some of the more ambulatory species of carnivorous mushrooms start migrating north around this time of year."
…Obviously, Chris really wanted to ask more about that little horrifying statement- but it was just way too awkward. He could ask Alice more questions when the front of his armor wasn't painted with chunks of yesterday's breakfast.
Chris stood up hurriedly and left through the back door, closing it carefully behind him.
There was a small clearing around the house. True to Alice's word, he couldn't see any giant mushroom spores or man-eating plants roaming about, although there were a couple of smaller mushrooms growing around her house. A few of them were glowing strange colors.
Alice said that they shouldn't be poisonous, but Chris steered clear of them anyway as he walked towards the small stream at the edge of the forest clearing.
He crossed paths with a pair of dolls carrying a full pail of water between them back towards the house. Chris stopped and turned his head curiously to watch them for a bit. Another trio of dolls opened a window from inside the house, letting the water carriers enter.
After glancing around hesitantly, Chris shucked off his armor. He always felt incredibly awkward wearing nothing but the skintight bodysuit underneath- while it was padded in places, it was a bit more revealing than Chris was comfortable with.
The hard-shell plates had gotten the worst of the vomit, so Chris decided to leave the black bodysuit on for decency and protection.
Chris was still somewhat self-conscious about the suit, even after all this time. Somebody muscular like Aegis or lean and wiry like Sophia could pull off spandex, but Chris was still lanky and somewhat awkward, which made him glad for the armor bulking out his form.
He was in decent physical shape, for his age, but Chris could still count his ribs in the mirror, and his stomach wasn't anything near flat.
Kid Win wouldn't exactly be winning a fistfight with a fully-grown gangbanger anytime soon, so it was a good thing that his gear gave him plenty of ranged options.
He checked his reflection in the water. Thankfully, none of the vomit was on his face or neck. Most of it had gotten on the armor, which was waterproof enough to wash. He didn't have any soap on hand, but he did the best that he could to clean himself up.
He glanced at the woods, his earlier idea of making a break for it flitting through his mind. Chris hesitated, before shaking his head. Alice wasn't even trying to keep him from leaving. Besides, he reasoned, if she'd wanted to do anything unpleasant to him, she had plenty of chances already while he was sleeping off the hallucinogenic mushroom poison.
His hair was matted together with sweat and dirt. He tried to fix it, awkwardly trying to part his bangs to the side, before giving it up as a lost cause.
Chris didn't have any way to dry off his armor. He resorted to shaking as much of the water out as he could, before picking it up and carrying it with him in a large, clanking stack of metal.
He knocked before pushing the door open. Alice wasn't in the living room where he'd last seen her. Chris glanced curiously around the house. There was another kettle on the stove, which had a wood fire burning underneath it. Had the dolls done that too?
Chris wondered if they were flammable. It looked like they were wooden, but it was Tinkertech- it wouldn't be particularly outlandish for a Tinker to whip up something to fireproof wood. Even without powers, he was fairly certain that some product along those lines existed commercially.
He turned his head, looking in the small workshop- and Alice had gone back to tinkering. She seemed pretty focused, too. Chris didn't want to disturb her- he knew how grumpy some Tinkers could get about people interrupting them.
Kid Win himself had a bad habit of entering a fugue for hours on end without taking any breaks. He often forgot to eat, sleep, or watch his posture while he was working. The other Wards told him that when he was in really deep, he would bat their hands away when they tried to physically take his tools to get him to stop.
Sitting down while hunched over at his desk for hours was murder on his spine, but Kid Win was still young. Besides, even if he developed a bent spinal cord like his parents always nagged him about, he could probably just ask Panacea to fix it the next time he got hurt in a Cape fight.
It was considered rude to interrupt another Tinker while they were working, not to mention dangerous. Kid Win's tech could be volatile at times- usually not enough to literally explode in his face if something distracted him for a couple of seconds, but that was really the key word there. Usually.
Still though, he abruptly realized- it was probably even ruder for Chris to stay there standing awkwardly in the doorway, watching Alice, for several seconds, without saying so much as a single word.
"Hey." He said, like a moron. "I'm back." He added.
"Ah. Yes, I noticed when the door opened." She said. Oh, sweet snickerdoo-
"Please, go ahead and take a seat. Make yourself comfortable." She gestured at the couch without turning around, seemingly deep in focus as she peered through a magnifying glass to work on something inside of a doll with a tiny screwdriver. "Now, would you mind waiting for a bit? I'll be with you in a moment- I just need to finish tuning this small part first."
Chris nodded, before realizing that Alice couldn't see him and stammering out a half-muttered acknowledgement. He put his armor down on the floor, and sat down on the couch as his ruddy cheeks burned with embarrassment.
The tea kettle on the stove started to steam and tick rhythmically as the metal expanded from the heat.
The dolls brought out a nice, neatly embroidered mauve carpet and rolled it out over the patch of floor where he had woken up. Kid Win guessed they'd probably put it away temporarily, so that he wouldn't stain it with his puke.
He collapsed backwards onto the plush couch, before looking at the plate of cookies the dolls had laid out onto the table earlier.
Chris paused and sized them up for a moment, remembering what his parents had told him about taking sweets or food from strangers- before shaking his head to clear away the brief flash of paranoia. If Alice had wanted to drug Chris, or run sketchy experiments on him, she'd had plenty of opportunities while he was knocked out.
…When he phrased it like that, Kid Win couldn't help but suddenly be a little bit worried. She didn't seem like a wet Tinker- and surely he would have noticed if she'd cut him open and put something mechanical inside, right? But she'd also given him some kind of vial, though-
No. No, Chris was being silly- Alice hadn't hidden anything from him so far. She'd healed him and let him rest on the floor of her cottage. That was all. Chris was being silly and paranoid.
Pushing down his nervous jitters and anxiety, he reached out and grabbed a chocolate-chip cookie, biting down into it before he could develop any second thoughts. As soon as the sweet, crumbly dough and chocolatey goodness hit his tongue, Chris swiftly realized just how hungry he was.
He munched down onto the platter with gusto. They were really good cookies, or maybe Chris was just really that hungry. It was actually a bit stale, he realized, but Chris wasn't complaining.
Eating sweets on an empty stomach wasn't ideal, but it was way better than nothing. It was bad for his blood sugar, apparently.
Chris didn't really care about that, but apparently his dad was pre-diabetic, so there was a chance that Chris might develop diabetes later in life.
Chris finished eating and wiped the crumbs off his fingers onto the plate, before putting it back down onto the table. A pair of dolls whisked it away, before putting the dish in the sink and washing it.
Kid Win's thoughts turned back to his host. Alice was still busy with her tinkering, and showed no signs of stopping.
Maybe he should thank Alice for the cookies- but she probably wouldn't appreciate being interrupted now. He'd have to do that later instead.
He settled in to wait for her to finish with the component she was working on.
The pendulum of the clock above the mantelpiece ticked back and forth. Aside from its periodic metronome, the occasional click or rustle of shifting cloth from Alice's movements in the workshop behind him were the only noises in the still house as Kid Win waited.
The unmoving dolls everywhere, covering every surface, started to feel like they were staring silently at him. The ones that looked like smaller versions of Alice had fallen motionless as well, without any tasks to perform.
He was starting to get a bit antsy. He turned back to look at Alice.
…It had been a whole lot longer than 'a moment' by now, right?
Chris turned around and settled back in, his back sliding down as he strung out over the couch. The pendulum continued swinging back and forth, the dull, repetitive ticking noises slowly seeming to grow louder and louder amidst the oppressive silence, filling up his entire world.
He glanced to the side, before quickly averting his eyes as he met the empty stare of a medium-sized plush doll sitting next to him on the couch. Was it just a stuffed plush, or was it actually alive, like the others? Some kinda unfinished prototype?
Chris looked over his shoulder again after what felt like a small eternity. Alice was still tinkering.
Was she in a fugue state?
…He wasn't sure. It was hard to tell, just from looking at her back. Maybe if he waited just a little bit longer, Alice would finish up soon and come talk to him.
Chris glanced up at the clock. It'd been almost fifteen minutes by now. That 'small part' sure was taking a long while, huh.
Well, sometimes things like that just happened while Tinkering- some finicky little components and processes required long, uninterrupted periods of intense focus. It varied from Tinker to Tinker, but there were a few times when other people had interrupted him during a critical process- ruining his project and spoiling hours of previous work.
Chris didn't want to be that judgemental or inconsiderate towards Alice, especially since he was a guest in her house.
…Besides, Kid Win didn't really have a leg to stand on when it came to leaving people on hold while Tinkering. The number of times when he'd distractedly mumbled "just a minute" and left other people hanging were probably somewhere in the dozens or low hundreds by now.
It was pretty bad manners- even Chris, with his subpar social skills could sorta recognize that. But in hindsight, he hadn't really understood why on an emotional level before now.
It probably wasn't anything personal against him, he knew, but it still felt… kinda bad.
Despite his reassurances to himself, Chris couldn't shake the thought- that maybe, Alice was ignoring him intentionally.
She seemed like she was a whole lot more interested in her Tinkering than she was in talking to him- which was absolutely normal behavior for a Tinker, but Alice had seemed a lot more sociable at first.
Now that Kid Win took the time to think about it… hadn't Alice done more or less the bare minimum for hospitality and common courtesy's sake, before going straight back to her Tinkering as soon as possible?
She'd been courteous and polite to him, but in hindsight, Chris was starting to think that maybe, that was all it'd been. Politeness.
She didn't seem to really care about him at all, which was… absolutely fair, given that he was a complete stranger who had arrived on her doorstep and vomited all over her lawn out of nowhere.
Chris was acting weird and obnoxious. He could sit still and wait a couple minutes more- Kid Win would want the same courtesy extended to him, if it was him in her shoes.
If anything, Alice had been incredibly kind and patient, given the circumstances. Chris was the one who was intruding into her house and workshop here. Heck, she'd even given him cookies…
He slumped down into his seat. Man… this day- could definitely have been way worse, but it still sucked. The couch was comfortable, at least. So long as he ignored the honestly incredibly creepy dolls sitting next to him and all over the house.
The dolls everywhere were still really weird, but Chris didn't think it was as big of a red flag anymore compared to back when he'd first woken up.
Some tinkers were specialized in creating different versions of just one object- focal Tinkers, if Chris was remembering the terminology right.
It didn't take much mental legwork to figure out what Alice's Tinker speciality probably was. Lucky her. Kid Win fought down a sudden wave of irrational jealousy, vigorously shaking his head.
He searched for something to occupy his attention while he waited, but didn't find much.
There were some books on the shelves- a miniature library, lining the walls. A lot of them were old, ancient-looking tomes, with the titles on their spines written in a wide variety of languages, most of which he couldn't read.
They looked kind of interesting, but Chris felt like it was a bad idea to touch any of them without Alice's permission. The books looked like antiques. Maybe some of them were even rare, expensive collector's items, although they looked well-read. The pages were creased. There were colorful bookmarks in some of them, and there wasn't even a hint of dust on the shelves.
Chris wished that he had his phone on him- his personal phone. The Wards-issue one in his pocket didn't have any games installed on it. He pulled it out anyways and fidgeted around with the messaging app for a bit, before quickly growing bored. There wasn't any signal all the way out here, wherever here was. Figures.
Without anything else to distract him, his thoughts continued spiralling, re-focusing on the topic of Alice.
She had been nice to Chris at first, but then had swiftly started ignoring him in favor of her Tinkering.
She was a lot like his mentor, Armsmaster, in that way- although the girl was definitely a lot nicer and more polite than him. Those little acts of kindness and consideration were something Kid Win couldn't imagine Armsmaster ever slowing down and taking the time of day for.
Most of the time, Armsmaster didn't even bother saying "please" or "thank you" to Kid Win. He was the head of the local Protectorate. Armsmaster gave the Wards orders, not polite requests.
Was that an unfair comparison? Armsmaster wasn't very well-liked by most of the Wards. He was too strict and uncaring. He was sharp-tongued, and rarely gave positive feedback.
Aegis and Gallant were more or less the only ones who had never openly bad-mouthed him at some point, and Kid Win figured that was mainly because those two always tried to set a good example for the rest of them.
Kid Win didn't know any other Tinkers, though, so he wasn't sure who else to compare her to. All of the other Tinkers in his city were Villains, and it felt like that'd be an even more unflattering comparison to make.
…No, it was definitely an unfair comparison to make. Alice wasn't anything like Armsmaster- he was being rude just by comparing the two. Alice seemed nice- the first thing she'd said to him was an apology, followed by an offer of tea, neither of which were things Armsmaster would ever make.
Armsmaster would never give him cookies, either.
The bizarre, alien mental image of Armsmaster standing in the middle of the Wards' common with a jumbo-sized platter of cookies, handing them out one-by-one, surrounded by the Wards nibbling on them like human-sized chipmunks popped into Chris' head out of nowhere.
He shook his head, clearing his distracted thoughts. She'd probably just gotten too absorbed in her work and forgotten about Chris. Alice didn't seem the type to intentionally snub someone by ignoring them, especially not after she'd been so nice to him earlier.
Still, though, Kid Win didn't want to interrupt Alice's work, but… He glanced at the clock- twenty-five minutes- this was starting to get ridiculous.
He peered curiously at Alice's back as she continued working, oblivious to his awkward stare.
He wondered what kind of project Alice was working on. He rarely got to see other Tinkers' tech outside of cape fights, aside from Armsmaster's.
Curiously, he carefully stood up and walked over into Alice's workshop, before taking a look at some of her work laid out on the tables. Just looking couldn't possibly hurt, right?
Alice's blueprints were meticulous and well-detailed. The dolls were automatons- with limbs and mouths operated by mundane clockwork, their gears spun by a box-shaped motor inside that Kid Win couldn't make heads or tails of.
There was a mainspring to store mechanical energy as tension, a ratchet preventing the gears from turning backwards, and a large key to wind up the mainspring, but he couldn't see anything that would actually turn the key.
It didn't seem like there was any source of propulsion to explain the flight, either. There were inexplicable symbols and lines painted on the inside of the chassis and on the wooden case of the windup motor. The paint inside baffled him. They almost seemed more for artistic purposes than anything practical, but why would anyone draw art on the inside where it couldn't even be seen?
No, it had to serve some purpose that Chris just couldn't figure out.
Maybe Alice had some sort of small-scale telekinesis? That would sorta explain the stand-alone key, as well as the doll's ability to fly.
The runes could be related to a secondary power- Rune had the ability to control objects after she took a second to inscribe glyphs onto them. Maybe Alice had something similar, although Tinkers usually didn't have other powers. There were exceptions though, mostly grab-bag capes and people who were part of a group trigger.
A small detail written in the margins abruptly caught Kid Win's eye.
The chemical composition of the paints contained a large concentration of liquid arsenic and mercury. Both of those chemicals were toxic. They were dangerous to touch or even breathe near, let alone paint with.
There was a skull-and-crossbones, as well as a brief note written and underlined in clipped, yet neat Kanji underneath the chemical formula. Chris couldn't read Japanese, but it was obviously a toxicity warning sign.
Kid Win caught glimpses of the quicksilver-green paint inside the doll's wooden chassis as Alice worked on it.
She wasn't wearing any protective equipment. It was… probably fine? Tinkers were usually immune to accidents and health hazards related to their Tinkering. It was theorized to be some kind of Manton limitation, some kind of safeguard to prevent powers from harming their user.
One time, Kid Win had touched two exposed live wires of the opposite polarity at the same time while repairing his hoverboard in the field without even realizing it until later- despite the voltages involved having been enough to ordinarily induce cardiac arrest.
He racked his brains, recalling his limited chemistry knowledge and trying to figure out why Alice would use two widely-known toxic chemicals in her paints.
Liquid mercury had some use as a conductor. It wasn't particularly impressive as either an electrical or thermal conductor, but the fact that it remained liquid at room temperature gave it some niche uses.
Arsenic was highly toxic and almost useless as a liquid, but it was useful as a doping agent for n-type semiconductors. Mercury was a metal, though, not a semiconductor- so there was no reason to mix mercury and arsenic together, aside from the color, maybe?
It had to be something more esoteric, but Kid Win's power, as useless as it was, couldn't come up with a single thing.
He turned his head, and another schematic laid out on a table in the corner caught his attention. The scale of the project was huge- it was another automaton, but this one was the size of a walk-in refrigerator.
Chris glanced at the giant, vaguely humanoid shape under the tarp in the corner. He guessed he knew what that was now.
He wandered closer, peering at the design plans. It really was just another doll, but scaled up by a hundred. The chassis was almost twice his height, more than ten feet tall. In comparison, the other dolls were small enough to fit neatly in the palm of his hand.
The first few drafts seemed to use huge, cumbersome gears- wildly impractical to manufacture, let alone maintain. The next few tried to accomplish the same results with more parts, using a system of pulleys and many smaller gears instead.
It was strangely antiquated, like an ancient clockwork robot he'd heard of as a stray mention in a history textbook.
Chris figured the decision to use clockwork probably involved some sort of power synergy at play behind the scenes. The odd design quirk of a windup motor, without any visible winding mechanism, had to have some power-related explanation behind it- but it seemed wildly impractical to design something this large and complicated as a purely classic mechanical system.
Resource limitations probably also came into play at some point. He didn't see any electronics at all- which probably meant they weren't anywhere near civilization right now. That was disturbing, but Kid Win quickly got swept away in his intrusive Tinker thoughts.
There was a wood lathe, a small forge, and a machining press in the workshop, so it was likely that Alice had to manufacture a lot of her own materials from scratch. It was interesting- his Physics teacher always said that engineering was design under constraint, and designing a project under tight material constraints like these seemed to be a fascinating challenge.
"...Wouldn't it still make more sense to use a hydraulic system, though?" He wondered out loud by accident.
"Hmm? Ah, sorry. I got a touch carried away- did you say something?" Alice glanced up from her work and tilted her head towards him with a curious stare. Kid Win was too distracted to be embarrassed by his slip-up.
"A hydraulic pump-operated system would provide higher power efficiency and more precise force output with less fine-tuning." He muttered to himself. "There'd be less maintenance too- a clockwork system like this has too many small moving parts, and all that friction means that things will break even sooner."
Alice said something in reply, but Chris couldn't hear it through the deluge of his powers flooding his brain.
A miniature storm of thoughts whirled through his mind. "Hydraulics offer more stability, too."
"The current design requires constant power to counteract gravity and keep the arms lifted, not to mention all the other disadvantages. It might work fine for the smaller dolls, but the design isn't efficient or scalable. Better to throw it out and start from scratch. Yeah… yeah, a hydraulic system would work better for this..." He took a pen out from one of his undersuit's pockets and clicked it.
Chris grabbed a sheet of construction paper and began scribbling furiously, feeling the Tinker in him take control as the compulsion to create overtook his conscious mind.
The schematic came onto paper in bits and pieces. It was rare that Chris got a chance to look over another Tinker's work, let alone one this detailed and self-explanatory. He cross-referenced Alice's design notes laid out across the table, feeling inspiration rush through his mind.
How could he make something this large fly? His hoverboard used electrostatic fields to levitate, but he didn't have the parts necessary to make something like that.
Where did the power to operate in the original design come from?
It was like magic- the energy to turn the key and wind up the mainspring came from somewhere else. It was supplied externally. Chris didn't know where from, but it was simple enough to replace the clockwork system entirely- he could just use a high-band radio frequency to transmit power wirelessly to an internal receiver in the engine instead.
He could tweak the combead in his helmet to do it. His suit's internal battery could provide enough energy to run the design for a few hours, easily, before he needed to recharge.
Did the automaton already have weapons designed for it? The smaller dolls seemed to use lances and swords, but something as large-scale as this should be equipped with something more effective.
Kid Win raised his head and opened his mouth to ask, only to find that Alice was leaning over his shoulder, looking at the blueprint he was working on.
It wasn't difficult for her to see over him. She was a good head taller than Chris, after all.
Chris flushed beet-red as he registered just how close Alice was standing to him. His eyes snapped back to the table as he felt his heartbeat start to speed up.
Thankfully, she didn't seem to notice. Alice hummed, her eyes fixed on the blueprints on the table. "Fascinating…"
She reached over him, the white frilled sleeve of her dress brushing against his shoulder on accident as she pointed at the power transceiver in the schematic. "Could you tell me what this device is meant to accomplish? I'm broadly familiar with the principles of fluid mechanics behind the proposed hydraulic system, but I've never seen anything quite like this component before."
"Y-yeah. Course." Chris muttered quietly, as he fought to keep his nuclear blush from spreading across his face. He quickly turned his attention back to the project blueprint, giving Alice a brief top-level overview of his design.
As Kid Win got into the details of his project, Alice watched and listened curiously. Every so often, she politely interrupted his monologue to ask him to clarify on some detail or another.
As the discussion went on, Chris became more and more animated, growing increasingly enthusiastic as the conversation went back and forth. At some point, Alice had taken out a notepad and was alternating between recording his words and looking up to ask him more questions.
As Chris talked about wave-particle duality and watched Alice swiftly jot something down on her notepad with a laser-focused expression, he couldn't help the goofy smile that spread across his face.
Yeah. He was right. Alice was nothing like Armsmaster.
First time writing in this genre, so feedback would be much appreciated. I wanted to write something more light-hearted and fluffy. One of my goals with this fic is to experiment with different genres, something which I think having so many different POV characters will help with.
The Tinkerbabble, I'm not so sure about- I know that Tinkertech doesn't conform to traditional physics or engineering, but as a STEM major, I can't just write random gobbledygook- my brain is fixed onto things that are either real or theoretical. It feels more natural and intuitive to base the dialogue off of things I already know about. Maybe I should read more science fiction.
Kid Win is a high-school sophomore or junior. I'm not sure how much it makes sense for him to know about engineering- I know he has ADD and dyscalculia, and that Tinker powers don't give people actual engineering knowledge, but I'm going to go ahead and make this version of Kid Win someone who's deeply knowledgeable and passionate about science, even if it doesn't make perfect sense with his canon character traits.
His role models in Armsmaster and Dragon make a point of learning the actual science because they believe it helps with their Tinkering- it makes sense for Kid Win to want to do the same thing, even if his difficulties with math would make pursuing a conventional degree in STEM more difficult than average.
Kid Win is driven to become a better Tinker- if he believes learning about science and engineering will help with that goal, he'll do his best even if it's difficult and brushes against his insecurities about his dyscalculia.
I'm aware that Tinkertech is black-boxed so that ordinary people can't understand it, but Alice isn't familiar enough with the technology in question to notice it at first glance.
I'm going to go ahead and say that Tinkertech based off of mundane technology like this would make some sense to a layman, but it has errors and shortcuts taken in it that wouldn't work normally.
It'll also have the limitation of degrading like normal Tinkertech, but it can be reverse-engineered. Canon talks about advances in technology like better phones and computers coming from reverse-engineering Tinkertech, so it can't be completely incomprehensible to a normal person.
There are a number of issues with this chapter that I'm not sure about, like whether the characters are in-character, or whether some details make sense with canon, but I think this version is interesting enough, I've already written it, and I'm not going to waste time rewriting a perfectly good chapter when I could push forwards instead. Blegh.
"Do be careful, though." She added after a moment. "Some of the more ambulatory species of carnivorous mushrooms start migrating north around this time of year."
Aww he's infatuated. Now how long until Alice's neighbour's barges in for tea? Might actually be good for him if he's able to learn magic to complement his tinkertech.
Are all the chapters of the same number happening simultaneously or is there some kind of chronology to these? The contrast between Gallant and Sophia getting their shit kicked and Kid Win and Vista sorta making friends is quite amusing.
Magician are like tinkers, so engrossed in their work that they literally tinkered away their basics needs just for more tinkering time.
... And may be assholes.
Still, Chris just got a new friend (to munch off) and a tinkering partner. Maybe Alice can help Chris discover his specialty.
A collaboration with Alice huh?
For some reason I wasn't expecting that. Though in hindsight it makes a lot of sense. If he has been near the kappa, they would have just enough technical know how to tell something is weird about his tech and his ideas. And they have enough knowledge of magic to tell that isn't what his stuff uses either. So a collaboration if equals between them wouldn't be possible.
But Alice exists in a sort of sweet spot when it comes to knowledge of technology and interest in technology to allow Chris to collaborate with her.
But for some reason, when the reveal of where Chris ended up was given, I did not think about the possibility of them working on a project together.
As an aside, I do always find it funny that magicians in Touhou use toxic substances as part of their magic research and that is why some (read: Patchouli) are physically frail. Though typically they "use some protections" to limit what gets into their system.
So with the new chapters let's see who's still to show up/who got dumped where:
Taylor: Youkai Mountain smack dab in the middle of in Kasen's pond. Currently being tended to, might or might not end up becoming an Oni.
Sophia/Shadow Stalker: Youkai Mountain on the Tengu's doorstep. Currently running away like a little ***** with a ticked-off wolf tengu pack in hot pursuit.
Emma: Youkai Mountain on the Tengu's doorstep. Missing part of her arm, suffering from blood-loss and taken captive by the Tengu. Presumably going to be given medical treatment so she doesn't bleed out (need her alive to answer questions).
Madison: Youkai Mountain on the Tengu's doorstep. By all indications uninjured and taken captive by the Tengu.
Dean/Gallant: The Youkai Trail potentially near the Human Village. Conned by Mystia into being a meat-shield before being beaten unconscious by Reimu. By all indications she left him there when she left.
Chris/Kid Win: Forest of Magic near Alice's house. Currently recovering from a magic mushroom exposure and having a nerd-fest with Alice.
Missy/Vista: Belly flopped into the Misty Lake. Warming up by Daiyousei's campfire. Will likely be interacting with more fairies in the near future.
Dennis/Clockblocker: Unseen as of yet. Considering his power and behavior, dropping him in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost might be thematic.
Carlos/Aegis: Unseen as of yet. Considering his abilities he'd be the one most likely to have a chance of survival being tossed into the Underworld/Old Hell (Oni play rough).
Rory/Triumph: Unseen as of yet. Should still be a ward at this point in the timeline so up for grabs.
Dean/Gallant: The Youkai Trail potentially near the Human Village. Conned by Mystia into being a meat-shield before being beaten unconscious by Reimu. By all indications she left him there when she left.
In Mystia's defense, it seems like while she complained about Reimu threatening to exterminate, she was going to just give up and pay Reimu in the end before Gallant decided to be a hero and stood up for her. No idea if Mysty took him with her in the aftermath or not, given how his actions may have led to her business getting shut down permanently.
Thanks! Your Suika fic is probably one of my favorite Touhou stories on the site. There's a painful dearth of Touhou content on SV these days. I think there's only a couple that have updated within the last six months.
As Chris talked about wave-particle duality and watched Alice swiftly jot something down on her notepad with a laser-focused expression, he couldn't help the goofy smile that spread across his face.
Man, Chris really did get the better end of the deal here. Not to mention Alice, who's probably going to come back to the rest of the group with a new mobile weapon platform.
Well this sure is something. The writing is very good, but the wacky meme Eurobeat-powered opening did NOT prepare me for ruler-straight survival horror and gory battle scenes. I'm not clear on what this fic is aiming to be.
I'm not sure either- I'm experimenting right now, and I think the general answer is everything and the kitchen sink. This was only supposed to be a one-shot, but people seemed to really like the concept so I more or less just ran with it.
They say that you should try and set expectations with the first chapter, but that wasn't really possible given that I had zero plans for this.
Different character POVs have somewhat different genres. Case in point, this last chapter is almost pure comedic fluff, and the following chapters will be psychological horror with intense themes of interpersonal violence.
Survival/psychological horror sums up a good amount of it, but I also want to write light-hearted fluff and character pieces. I think that's not so bad- there's the risk of severe emotional whiplash, but it's also good to have light-hearted moments interspersed between heavy, psychological bits to avoid draining the reader's emotional batteries too much.
This approach allows me to run rapid-fire trials on which genres I might like to write and what works in a long-form story. Not sure if it'll make for a cohesive narrative or not, but I'm sure it'll be a fun ride, and people seem to be enjoying it so far.
Sophia - Survival Horror
Emma - Existential Horror
Madison - Maid Shenanigans (kidnapped by Yokai to be a servant... "Romance")
Dean - Misunderstanding Comedy
Kid Win - Scientists in love... Horror.
Taylor - Healing and Spiritual Enlightenment (XianXia style)
Vista - Babysitter Slice of Life (culminating in: Why the hell did I want to be an adult?)
Piggot - Doom Slayer Origin Story
Well this sure is something. The writing is very good, but the wacky meme Eurobeat-powered opening did NOT prepare me for ruler-straight survival horror and gory battle scenes. I'm not clear on what this fic is aiming to be.
If it helps, i think of each character's parts as separate genres.
Kid win is essentially having a normal isekai - transported, embarrassing position, meet first local, get on well, his skills are expanded and he helps the people he meets. He's the Kirito, but with flying laser skateboard.
Taylor isn't in the adventure yet, but Ibara kasen is basically continuing the tone of wild and horned hermit throughout the treatment. Basically a 'not my circus, not my monkeys' observer to other people's mischief and hijinks stories. She is the titular hermit though, which in touhou maps to a cultivator, just with more enlightenment and less focus on punching (not none though, she does fight off the reaper every time someone thinks to try and enforce her mortality), so maybe Taylor will go that way.
Dean has fallen into pure slapstick land, but he hasn't noticed yet because of the horror paint job.
Sophia... Yeah, survival horror is where she landed.
Missy, starting with done wilderness survival, but she's surrounded already with basically nice people who are mainly dangerous because they don't really understand the idea of danger. 'humans don't respawn when they die? Well how long do they take to respawn then?' etc. If she goes in the mansion the genre could become anything from Downton Abbey to adorable fuwafuwa to urobuchi.
I liked Redoubt- Chris got into a relationship with the main character, Saiko, a shield tinkerer/social thinker with a manipulative streak and an extremely vicious mentality towards her enemies.
It was a good slow-burn, and the character development on both ends was great. People are understandably often leery of OCs, but Saiko was an absolutely fascinating character and I'd recommend it wholeheartedly.
I'm just waiting for Aya getting a whiff of this.
"Breaking News! Powered Outsiders invade Gensokyo! Is this the beginning of a new age? Read more on the next page!"
Those poor wards, Aya is a god among paparazzi.
Blood, prolonged death, disembowlment, animal cruelty, graphic description of offal
Momiji 1: The Howling Winds of Mount Youkai
The trees swayed in the breeze. The scents of Fall in the Great Youkai Forest were in full bloom; the fresh scent of sap seeping out from between the cracks in tree bark as it solidified into resin, the musty odor of decaying leaves and fungi, the earthy aroma of the soil after the rain last night.
The Japanese maple trees were shedding, and the ground was coated with a fresh layer of the comfortingly familiar red three-pronged foliage.
Momiji's ears twitched as she picked up the sound of dead leaves crunching underfoot.
She turned her head and sniffed at the air as the wolf ears atop her head swiveled, tracing the sounds and scents back to its source.
Momiji breathed in, and out. She drew back the string of her bow to its full weight, holding the bowstring without so much as a quiver in her well-toned arms as she aimed in the direction of her prey.
The bow was a labor of love, the recurve frame carefully constructed from a composite of wood, ivory, and sinew, held together by glue made from the bones of a strong stag. Momiji had painstakingly carved and crafted the tool herself.
She knew every last intricate detail of its make, every whorl and line on its curved surface. Its drawstring was made with sinew from the hindleg of a massive wild boar, which Momiji had hunted and butchered just three Seasons ago during the Month of Water.
She inhaled softly, activating her Thousand-Ri eyes to line up her shot. Between the trees and the leaves, she traced a path between her quarry and the tip of her arrow.
As she exhaled, she released the bowstring with a muted twang, sending the broadhead arrow hurtling towards her quarry.
The projectile whipped through the air towards its target in a shallow arc. At the last moment, the deer's ears twitched upwards and it lifted its head, turning towards her.
It took a single step forward, before the arrow struck it in its side.
Rather than the heart-shot that Momiji had lined up, the broadhead lanced through the animal's gut. The stag stumbled in shock for a moment, before breaking out into a frantic four-legged sprint through the underbrush.
Momiji had already burst into motion from the moment the deer had shifted position. She nocked another arrow on her bowstring, dashing into pursuit.
Momiji knew that she could merely wait for the stag to grow tired and bleed out. It would not survive a stomach wound. She already had the scent of its blood thick enough in her nostrils to find it from a Ri away, but the animal would suffer greatly as she waited for it to die.
It would be an ugly, honourless kill- unnecessarily cruel, and devoid of any sense of satisfaction.
Momiji lined up another shot as the prey weaved through the trees, but the second arrow missed as the deer scrambled and abruptly changed direction.
Momiji prided herself on her skill as an archer, but between the erratic movement of the wounded deer, and the dense tree cover of the deep forest interfering with her line of fire, she knew there was little chance of hitting her target now.
She grimaced as she slung her bow on its strap over her back, unsheathing her long scimitar.
She leapt into the air and took flight, weaving through the trees with instinctual grace born from decades of experience dodging Danmaku.
The forest greenery raced past as she accelerated, rapidly gaining on the injured animal.
Momiji put on a final burst of speed as she collided with the stag's flank from behind, ramming her scimitar into it as she drove her shoulder into the animal, knocking it to the ground.
Momiji shut her eyes momentarily. Her face tightened, lips twisting in discomfort as the shower of blood sprayed across her face and clothing. The deer thrashed wildly as it struck the ground, lashing out with its hooves and flailing its head all around, kicking up a cloud of detritus and dirt as its lifeblood spurted from its gashed open flank across the forest floor.
She opened her eyes. The cords of muscle in the deer's neck bulged, desperate eyes roving around in the sockets of its skull, as it frantically searched for a path of escape. The creature let out a long, drawn-out bleating scream as it struggled to climb to its feet and flee. Momiji lunged forwards and pinned it against the forest floor.
Momiji let out a pained grunt as she used her forearm to block an antler from hitting her face, before seizing hold of it and wrestling the stag's head down to the ground as she raised her sword.
In its dying throes, the animal bucked and thrashed against Momiji's grip, to the very last moment.
She brought the scimitar down onto the stag's neck with a meaty thwack, hacking through its spine and instantly putting an end to the wounded animal's struggles. The stag's legs twitched one final time, as its eyes rolled back in its skull and blood seeped from its severed stump into the dirt.
09 フォールオブフォール～妖怪の山 (09 Fall of Fall ~ Yokai Mountain - Mueseum of Marasy)
Momiji exhaled, letting out a wearied sigh as she sat down and rested for a moment. That hunt had been an utter mess. She stood up, leaning on her sword as she pushed herself to her feet.
There was blood staining her white robes, but that was to be expected. It was alright. She'd wash them later. She had plenty of extra sets of this uniform.
Momiji took out a cloth from her pocket and started cleaning her sword, wiping away the deer's blood. The metal would rust if she sheathed her weapon without removing the crimson fluid staining it- the mere idea of which was utterly unacceptable in Momiji's book.
Her weapon was an extension of herself. It was her badge of office, the fang with which she guarded the mountain. It was a symbol of her responsibility to the Tengu- to let it rust and be blemished by failing to maintain it, was tantamount to failing the Mountain itself.
Momiji finished wiping down the scimitar, softly exhaling as she sheathed it at her side. The heavy, reassuring weight was a comforting presence in the back of her mind.
She looked down at the cadaver at her feet, feeling an odd disconnect as she gazed upon the deer's broken body. The creature had suffered as it died; its last moments marked by a desperate struggle to survive, while knowing it had no hope of escape or victory.
The oily sensation of guilt began to stir inside her stomach. If she had been better, if she had concealed her presence more thoroughly, if she'd been a touch more patient in lining up her shot…
She shook her head, chasing the thoughts away. There was no use in thinking about such things.
No matter how strong or skilled Momiji became, or how many precautions she took beforehand, things were always bound to go wrong in the spur of the moment.
As both a hunter and a warrior, that concept had been drilled into Momiji time and time again. She'd adapted quickly to the changing circumstances, and that was all that truly mattered.
It was in her nature to hunt, and death was an inevitable consequence of that. It had not been a clean or pain-free death, but in nature, death was very rarely peaceful or painless.
That was just the way the world worked. There was no point in feeling sorrow or remorse over it, Momiji reminded herself.
She studied the fresh cadaver with the discerning eye of a butcher. She was strong enough to carry the body back to the village intact over her shoulders, but the wound in its side was worrisome. Some of its organs or intestines might have ruptured, potentially releasing waste or stomach acid and spoiling the meat.
It was better to field-dress it instead before moving it, Momiji decided.
She knelt down, drawing a long, serrated hunting knife from the folds of her robes before slicing open its belly and sawing its ribcage open.
After a brief inspection, Momiji grimaced. The liver had been punctured, causing bile to leak out into the surrounding meat. She doubted that part would be salvageable, but the rest of the animal should still be good.
She cut around the remaining organs carefully, severing the connective tissues and the place above where the lungs were connected to the spine, before reaching deep into the cavity and pulling all of its guts out.
The gamey smell of fresh offal and blood poured into the air. She knew that soon, the heady scent would start attracting other predators to the area. It was better for her to be long gone before then.
Momiji sheathed her knife and hefted the substantially less heavy gutted deer onto her back with a grunt, before lifting up off the ground and starting on the long flight back to the Tengu Village.
In the distance above her, Youkai Mountain loomed over the forest. From almost every part of the Great Youkai Forest, it could always be seen, its imposing form casting a long shadow across inhabitants and travelers alike. Only the deepest, darkest parts of the forest, where even the sun failed to penetrate through the dense canopy, were obscured from its sight.
Momiji flew beneath the treetops towards the mountain carrying the gutted stag, weaving between the trunks with practiced, graceful ease.
The mountain was the ancestral home of the Tengu- the steep, insurmountable cliffs offering a natural defense against wild animals and feral Youkai. Although admittedly- most Youkai and other notable individuals in Gensokyo were capable of flight.
Beyond that, the tall, rocky slopes of the mountain allowed the White Wolves to spot incoming intruders with their sharp gazes from a thousand Ri away, and the caves provided concealment and protection from their enemies. It was the unassailable fortress of the Tengu- it was their home.
The Tengu Village was kept as a secret from all outsiders, guarded zealously and shared with none- but exceptions had sprouted up over the centuries, Momiji was forced to admit.
The Kappa had become vital business partners of the Tengu with their technological inventions, chief among which was the printing press which the Crow Tengu's newspapers relied on. They had been allowed to enter the village on several occasions, for purposes related to their business dealings.
The pair of newcomer Kami were also somehow aware of the Tengu Village's location, judging by how the Wind Kami had come to parlay with Lord Tenma in his own palace.
It rankled Momiji's pride to admit it, but even the Tengu were hesitant to clash against the Kami. While the elders and Lord Tenma had come to an agreement with the duo, supposedly as equals, there were many among the White Wolves who viewed it as an act of weakness to negotiate with the interloper who had dared to stake a claim on what they saw as their territory.
Momiji didn't agree with them, although she kept quiet to avoid offending her peers. To act with stubborn pride and refuse to compromise was nothing but foolishness, when it came to dealing with such powerful beings.
It was the way of the world. The weak bowed their heads to the strong.
Many of the White Wolves viewed Lord Tenma's generous concessions in his dealings with the Kami as an admission of weakness, rather than a gesture of strength- despite the clear benefits to the Tengu as a whole.
The ropeway granting safe passage from the Human Village to the Moriya Shrine allowed the Tengu to demonstrate their power safely to the captive human audience on the gondola.
Tornadoes seen in the distance, powerful gusts of wind heard howling through the trees- all acts of theater put on by the Crow Tengu's magic to humble and frighten the humans from the village, without truly harming them.
Youkai were creatures that fed off of humanity's fear and belief. The Tengu's arrangement with the Mountain Kami was beneficial to both sides, but many of the rank-and-file saw it as yet another grievance against Lord Tenma's distant, impersonal rule.
Momiji stopped and looked around for a moment. The aralia trees were thinner around here, and the ground was broken up by crevasses and rocky outcroppings. The soil was coated in a thick layer of fallen leaves, a vibrant pattern of red, gold, and brown.
The entrance to the tunnels was around here somewhere. She frowned. Momiji didn't often hunt in this part of the forest, so she struggled to recall her surroundings.
Momiji's head snapped to the air as she heard a cacophony of howls split the sky above her. She swiveled her canine ears back and forth as she searched for the source of the ominous sound.
The first howl came from atop the mountain, near the village- the heart of the Tengu's ancestral home. The rest of the calls were scattered across the Great Youkai Forest and Youkai Mountain, from guards out on patrol responding with all haste.
There was a heavy sense of dread saturating the air, akin to the tension of static electricity gathering in a dark cloud before a peal of lightning, tingling at the raised hairs at the back of her neck- a whisper, a premonition of violence, a promise of bloodshed soon to come.
Something inside Momiji hesitated, for just a moment. Today was her day off. If she hadn't chosen to go out hunting, she would have been at her family home right now, and the calls would have been nothing but a faint, eerie whistle carried by the wind past her window.
Nobody would know if she pretended not to have heard. She could go home, and…
…No.
Momiji was here. She'd heard the call, and she couldn't ignore it now. What was she even thinking?
How could she ever even imagine shirking her duty?
It was Momiji's duty as a White Wolf to respond- she'd sworn an oath, to protect the Mountain and to serve the Tengu. She had a responsibility, both to her comrades and to the Tengu as a whole.
Momiji couldn't shake the eerie sense of apprehension as she looked up into the sky, listening to the last remnants of that howling chorus echo across the Mountain.
The cold autumn breeze rustled through the branches of the red aralia trees above her, sending a slight shiver across the raised hairs on her neck.
For a moment, she stood there, staring up through the crimson leaves at the looming cliff face of the colossal mountain, towering upwards into the heavens until the clouds hid it from view.
Momiji slung the gutted deer carcass over her shoulders to the ground, before drawing her bow and notching an arrow, as she rose up into the shadow of Youkai Mountain.
She let out a solitary, reverberating howl to the heavens above, announcing her presence to her compatriots as she answered the call.
I had the description and concept of Momiji hunting a wild animal pre-written from an unfinished and unreleased GATE/Touhou fanfiction, but I spent two days revising and refining it to fit the story and desired tone.
This chapter was pretty bare bones to begin with- I wrote it about a year ago, so it was a very interesting exercise to re-write my earlier work. That was the first fanfiction I ever broke 10k words with. Even though I never released it, it felt like a huge milestone in my journey as a writer.
It was a step from being unable to focus long enough to ever write an actual story, to finally being able to make the longer narratives I dreamed of into reality. Because of that, it feels almost as if I've come full circle.
This chapter was important for me to get right. Its main goal to introduce Momiji as a character- she has next to no canon characterization, so I wanted to establish a strong sense of who she is from the start, especially given the pivotal role she'll play in the Tengu sub-plot from now on.
Please let me know what you think of her- I know what initial impressions I wanted to give, but writing is subjective, and takeaways from the same text differ from reader to reader. I would very much like to know, so that I can improve my approach to character introductions.
So, uh, I assume this is a holdover from when it was a GATE crossover, but unless Yukari did some time travel shenanigans when she isekaied everyone, it should be winter. You may want to adjust any mentions of the foliage to reflect that. I'd have to go back and check, but I think the Sophia chapters may have the same issue. Also, I'm pretty sure her chapters didn't grapple with the fact that it's well below freezing, seeing as they're high up on a mountain in January.
The depiction of the hunt itself was good though. And I look forward to seeing how Momiji's own 'might makes right' view will clash with Sophia's.
Edit: if you want to do any climate/weather stuff, it should be noted that Youkai Mountain is supposed to be Yatsugataka Mountain, an actual mountain range in Japan. Specifically a larger version than the irl one. As there's a legend that the goddess of Mt. Fuji tore it down out of jealousy over it being taller, and the version in Gensokyo reflects it's original height.
