Laziness of Daemonic Wastrels

[TAKE IT CACODEMON!!]

<Notes: Yes, that was a shitty attempt at making the title ZUN-ish.

It was suggested that I hide who Yukari was, but since this is a Touhou board, you can deduce the obvious rather quickly.

Have brain bleach on hand, 'cause it's a doozy.>

There was once a man. Not very righteous, or courageous, but he was a man, nonetheless.

Way down yonder in the suburbs of Los Angeles ? far from the plains of Texas where rangers challenged bandits ? he resided. A strange turn of events that eventually solved themselves had come up recently, the only thing to show for it was his friend dead of a heart attack. His other friend, a big loud feller by the name of Walter Sobchak, fared better, but they did wind up getting kicked out of a bowling tournament, much to their great displeasure.

However, this man ? birth name Jeffery Lebowski, but going by the title of The Dude ? was in for another mystery tonight.

Jeffery ?The Dude? Lebowski hadn't replaced his car yet. He didn't mind ? saved him gas money and the dirty looks of the pimply teen on the Arco who glared at him every time he pulled over to fill up and fill out a check for the sixty-cent donuts.

The Dude, you see, was a man of simple pleasures. You know, smoking a lot of thai stick, bowling, White Russians, avoiding nihilists and home invasions. It'd been three months since the last break-in into his house, but it's not like he could tell, anyway, the place still was exactly as it was ever since Treehorn's thugs tore the place to splinters and scattered everything on the ground.

Which was why The Dude was caught by surprise when he found three figures standing in his living room, and they did not look happy at all to see him.

?Er, ma'am ? ladies ? you're in the wrong place, man ? gentlelady - I ain't the richer Lebowski ? er, ladies -?

Which was all he managed to stammer before the middle ?gentlelady?, a blonde woman with a bizarre hat that reminded The Dude of a diaper, grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up, hissing threats, most of them involving sending him to some unspecified place where he'd have unpleasant things done to his body.

At least he wouldn't be slammed into the toilet this time.

?Listen up, punk. I don't know who you are, or what you're after, but remember this: Gensokyo is MY territory.? The lady had an Asian accent (Japanese? Chinese?), the sort that indicated that they learned English rather late in life. ?Next time I see any trace of your empire wandering around, I WILL send you straight to Hell, literally,? the ?literally? flying out like steam from a cracked engine.

?I, uhm, I-? The Dude was still processing and trying to figure out what ?Gensokyo? was, or why the girls behind this woman had tails, or why they dressed like someone from a kung-fu movie, and thus couldn't afford a decent answer.

?Shut up. Just make sure you stay out of it.? She turned away from him with as much contempt as she could muster to the two figures behind her. We're going to go get some tea before we see the next few vandals with no sense of property.?

Unbeknownst to the Dude, the woman accidentally made her portal home a bit too big, accidentally dumping the Dude conveniently in Gensokyo as they gapped home.

And, well, I ain't gonna say it, but like them old tales of gunslingers fightin' t'save a town or two from bandits n' injuns, this Dude's gonna be a hero, along with his deputies and side kicks...

?--

?Heavy Weapons Guy?, as his job title said, was a man of simple pleasures. For example: his job wasn't hard. Pick up his minigun, aim, fire, enemies are dead. Very simple.

Food was simple, as well. Sandwiches aren't hard to make: meat, cheese, condiment, bread. Instant, quick meal. Occasionally, the sandwich talked to him, usually pleading not to eat him or to murder whatever intruder was in the base, the latter of which was a good idea.

His teammates called him simple as well, but he didn't really understand why. That wasn't simple. If it wasn't simple, it wasn't worth doing or knowing about, in his opinion.

Right now, he was enjoying a sandwich, contents unknown, on the battlements of a place they called ?two fort?. Simple name, at least. It was a good day today ? plenty of sandwiches, lots of killing, no spies in sight.

He was about to take a huge bite that would completely obliterate the meal when a hand snatched it away from him.

Anger: also simple. And lots and lots of anger flooded his brain as he rose up like a giant beast, hefting his minigun and pointing it at the culprit...

Also simple: Cuteness. The culprit was a red-haired girl wearing some sort of weird headband with adorable cat ears poking out and this adorable fake tail and an adorable, innocent face that smiled, even as it bit away at his precious sandwich.

The Heavy couldn't stay angry at anything so cute.

?AWWWW, YOU ARE SOOOOOO SMALL,? he bellowed, dropping his minigun and bending over to pick up the little girl and give her a big hug. Luckily for the girl, there was an ?a-hem? behind him.

The Heavy turned around, looking at two women with silly hats, even sillier than the hats they wore around here. One had a bunch of fluff behind her, waving ? what did they call them? Ah, yes, tails ? and the other one looked relatively normal, if not annoyed-looking.

?You are Heavy Weapons Guy, correct?? The woman spoke in flawless, if not heavily accented, Russian.

?THAT IS TRUE,? The Heavy roared.

?Then you will be a good dog and run to your Administrator to relay her this, since she is rather hard of hearing: she stays off Gensokyo or her corporation turns to dust.?

?VERY WELL,? the Heavy affirmed, feeling not at all threatened. These women were tiny and could not crush HIM to dust, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't be able to fire his minigun anymore if his parent company turned to dust.

?Very good. Now run along and tell her that.?

The Heavy watched them disappear into a rather large looking hole in the air with eyes poking out of it with as much concern as a bored New Yorker watched a train wreck, then left to use the Engineer's teleportation device that would send him directly to the COLR HQ.

Unfortunately, due to the woman's rather sudden presence in the area and her method of transport, all sorts of otherworldly particles were spewed about, the result being every teleportation device in the area transporting its users every which way but where. For example: the Spy that went in after the Heavy wound up in a dark place where his head was bitten off by a giant sandworm cosplaying as a clown. Luckily for the Heavy, the teleportation sent him ? predictably ? to where the Dude and the next two people were headed instead.

---

My name is David Wong, and right now, I'm being assaulted by a furry cosplayer, some anime freak girl with cat ears, and Maria Ozawa for no particular reason.

I'm going to assume you've never read my book, John Dies at the End, which you should read to support my lifestyle of hiding in my house and muttering to myself in a drunken stupor that John, my friend who is definitely alive, stops calling me about some strip club in St. Louis called ?These Bitches Show Your Their Titties?. Well, I have this book-

?ENOUGH ABOUT YOUR BOOK!? Maria Ozawa shouted at me. The Soy Sauce ? a drug from that book I'll keep namedropping, John Dies at the End, so I can move out of this place and avoid John some more, is an evil chemical substance that tunes its users to the multiverse so they know nearly everything at once and gain God-like powers, but also turns them into holes in reality where evil things like angry demons that happen to look like giant penises attempt to get through to control our world - told me that her real name obviously wasn't Maria Ozawa, and it continued tell me that she's a Japanese demon-thing that controls the gaps and spaces between things and could go dimension hopping when she felt like it. It also told me she slept days on end and fancied the furry cosplayer and the anime freak with cat ears, and that some drunkard in Japan with a beret was the cause for these three ladies bursting into my house and assaulting me. And not in the sexual assault way, you sick fucker. Just the physical contact sort.

Okay, not really. Maria Ozawa ? yes, she's not the Maria Ozawa, and the Soy Sauce was drawing a blank on her name - apparently thought me the avatar of Korrok, a rather unpleasant God who caused me a lot of trouble in John Dies at the End, which you should purchase, and responsible for letting some sort of ugly creature into some Asian realm which the Soy Sauce conveniently translated as ?Land of Illusions/Fantasy?, depending on your flavor of Japanese. Whoops, I spoiled the plot of this story. Ha, ha, big deal. You're reading this for free, go out and buy a book, like John Dies at the End.

?I will let you run to your God and tell him that if he screws with my land in any way, I will kill him, and if he sends pathetic goons like you to my land, we will rise up and crush his forces like insects. If he desires to keep vomiting and urinating in his blind rage, he will do the smart thing and keep his grubby paws off my land.?

Then they were gone after a void ? a void filled with leering eyes ? swallowed them up.

And me.

Again.

At least John would stop calling me.

---

?Uh. Can I help you ladies...??

The woman blinked, unsure if this... vision wasn't some sort of stupid reality warping trick. No, apparently, this next man was... a sentient box of french flies that flew who answered the door.

Truly, he lived up to his name of ?Dr. Weird?, if this was the right man.

?Ma'am??

?...Stay out of Gensokyo or else.?

Then the woman and her friends, who would spend the rest of the day in awkward silence, took a strange-looking portal out.

?...Oooookay.?

Frylock, of Williams Street, New Jersey, rolled his eyes with a sigh, shut the door, and went back to repairing his matter displacer (read: teleporter), already counting down the seconds until something bad happened. Weird visitors demanding something vague from him was common (this was, after all, New Jersey), and every time someone showed up, something exploded or got vandalized, and he was tired of having to clean up the mess. At the very least, Master Shake and Meatwad were off on some cruise that lasted two months and Carl was driving to Oakland, convinced he'd get rich off an e-mail scam trick, so Frylock looked forward to getting some time to actually hear his damn thoughts.

But, like with the Heavy's incident, the woman's presence had made the teleporter go haywire. As soon as the wrench he picked up closed around a bolt, it immediately activated, sputtered obscenities at Frylock, and sucked him to the same place where a Jeffery Lebowski, a Heavy Weapons Guy, and a David Wong would be spat up.

---

Yakumo Yukari was unbelievably tired as she gapped home. That ... batch of french fries... would be her last stop for a while.

She had dealt with trespassers attempting to using Gensokyo for their own whims before, but having to gap to countless places, dumping creatures and lost humans back where they belonged, and more often, having to speak to said ?lost? humans' boss to tell them to stay out of Gensokyo. The other Gensokyians were more than capable of defending themselves against hostile outsiders when Yukari wasn't able to be everywhere at once. Actually, she could be everywhere at once, but that just made her tired and grouchy.

Twice, she had fallen asleep when Ran rattled off the report from every Gensoykian that, yes, there were no more creatures to take care of in Gensokyo or its surrounding areas. If anything, it would mean a peaceful night's rest. As soon as Ran stopped talking, she kissed her and Chen good night, told the two that she was not to be disturbed under any circumstances, and promptly fell unconscious on the floor.

---

That's a tad little convenient, but hey, if the missus stayed awake, we wouldn't have much of a story, and if that happened, well, who'd stay around to listen to little ol' me? And every story needs a little convenience, eh? Speakin' of story, it ain't a good proper western if we don't get in our villains stompin' in on their high black horse, twirlin' mustaches and guns and makin' a ruckus for our heroes to go investigate, mm?

---

Agent Smith is his official program designation.

Agent Smith has a kill/death ratio of 1337/10. In the thousands. Somehow.

Agent Smith is not a nice program.

Also, there's him exploding in a blast of light at the end of the third Matrix movie. (You can yell at me for spoiling your films later.) The last time it happened at the end of the first movie, it corrupted him and sent him off the grid, turning him into a virus instead of proper deletion.

Now that this is the second time he's blasted off the grid ? especially when he was deleted around the same time a massive energy outburst from the Matrix's power supply, with a few reactors here and there overloading with enough energy to blast a chunk of the Earth away ? something's odd happened to him.

Namely, he's now flesh and blood. Proper flesh and blood, not simple possession of meatbags. He did not like getting used to things like ?gravity and physics that cannot be altered to fit an Agent?, nor was he fond of the stench of humanity everywhere in this grass field near a lake. He tried to infect an odd little human, some child wearing a blue dress and fake wings, but his hand only bounced off her before he was turned to ice and punted a good kilometer or two.

When he thawed out, he did find something to like: his horrific, life-threatening wounds healed up rather quickly for some odd reason, and, something he even liked more, that he wasn't alone when a familiar hand helped him out.

?Good, good!? Smith spoke, gleeful as a child on Christmas Eve. ?I still have friends.?

The whole field was completely taken up by an army of Smiths.

You could hear the evil laughter for miles out...

---

A bit further away, a rotten, nasty humanoid fell heavily on its face.

It came from the Zone ? or, if you're not the casual sort, from Chernobyl, Ukraine, having wandered into a series of portals that had expanded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. You see, this creature's Chernobyl isn't similar to yours, dear reader. The Zone is a place of deadly creatures and anomalies that literally rip the strongest men to shreds.

This creature, named a ?Controller? by the men and women who scrounge a living in the Zone (called Stalkers), is no exception. It's not a regular Controller, deadly as they are by themselves.

Normal Controllers, for example, are extremely susceptible to rockets to the face. Not this one. It would take a particularly strong explosive to make sure it was dead.

Normal Controllers cannot raise the dead ? they need a living mind, for obvious reasons, and they can only warp attacked humans into slobbering slaves of the Zone. This one can, bringing life back to long-dead hulks... with an extra limb or two.

Normal Controllers have limited telekinetic abilities. Their most basic, and only, attack is rather hard to describe, but the feeling is easy to explain ? it feels like having your soul torn out, punched half-to-death, and stuffed back in with all the care of a bored postman up against a tiny mailbox. Most Zone dwellers like to say that they can pull all sorts of crazy shit with their minds ? illusions, yanking weapons out, forcing you to commit suicide, hurling heavy objects, kinetic attacks ? but those were from rookie Stalkers who confused them with Burers. (We'll get to Burers much later. Better yet, you can Google them.)

This Controller could do all that, and a bag of chips.

Where normal Controllers only have an area around them, approximately twelve or so feet, that interferes with mental processes (usually manifesting as severe headaches, inability to think clearly, vertigo, nausea, imbalance, and incontinence), this Controller could warp the very ground that it stood on into parts of the Zone.

...Which it couldn't do, for some reason. It was confused. This Controller was only as smart as its brethren (read: not very), and couldn't figure out why. If it was as smart as, say, a man with below-average HQ, it would figure out that it was due to the magic in the area.

But it can't, because it's a Controller.

Annoyed, it shambled off, looking for brains to eat.

---

The Nihilanth was completely ashamed of itself.

Not only was it beaten by a mere human ? sure, a human foretold to defeat it ? its Empire was in ruins, its people enslaved by the Combine or working with the humans, interfering with all sorts of plots in the vast multiverse, and he no longer had an ounce of control over everything.

And it was somewhere that it was not familiar with, and definitely did not like. Its giant, bulb-like head was still torn open from the Freeman's assault upon it, and it wouldn't heal any time soon.

It gave a great sigh, wandering aimlessly and occasionally attempting to blast the screaming humans that spotted it hovering amongst the fields of this strange land. Unless it found somewhere to stay put, it wouldn't be going anywhere and there'd be more humans to come and kick it while it was down. At the very least, the Runes did not say what would happen after his defeat, but right now, things weren't looking good.

The Nihilanth wept, burying its face in its hands.

Emo bitch.

---

Somewhere near the entrance to Makai, a massive Pentagram slashed itself in a forest basin's ground. If there had been anyone around to witness it, they would feel the air buzz and throb with unlimited malevolence, and roar with the millions of the voices of the damned.

Then they would have fled in terror as two massive daemons of Hell arose, inch by inch, from the Hellish symbol of power, wicked smiles on their faces. They were a marvel of Hell's bio-engineering, now capable of rapid fire rocket and plasma barrages after the last Cyberdemon's defeat at the hands of one human warrior.

Unfortunately, there was no one around to flee in terror at their grand entrance, much to the two Cyberdemons' chagrin.

On top of the Icon of Sin mocking their impromptu name (?The Smasher Siblings? What sort of stupid name is that?!?), and having to colonize a land of mortals and souls with no backup, now they had to deal with no one giving them any attention.

What a dark day.

---

Echoes persist
Repeating endlessly, dead
In Gensokyo

?

Well, of course it's terrible, I just made it up on the spot, the Gravemind muttered to itself. This was odd. It should be dead, not somewhere else, and especially not with half a human ship fused to it, uncomfortably trying to shift the mass of metal away. It couldn't feel any presence of Flood activity here. It could feel food out there, teeming and waiting for consumption, but as before, nothing to command.

All it could do was sit and jiggle uselessly in the sun and ask itself how it knew the land it was transported to was called ?Gensokyo?. How convenient?

---

And now, dear readers, we come to our heroes riding in so gallantly on their horses to save the innoc-

---

Temporarily, the other narrator was hit with four bodies flying through the multiverse, on their way to Gensokyo. They spent the rest of the way getting slammed into each other by unseen forces, and when they reached their destination, the gap spat them out in front of a Shrine. Namely, the Myouren Shrine.

[Yukarin]

Okay, is this like Half-life + Doom + Halo + MIB + TF2 + Maria Ozawa + Touhou thing you got here?

I'm very dizzy now.

[TAKE IT CACODEMON!!]

That's not Maria Ozawa. David (in the first bit of that book, anyway) kept assigning celebrity names to people he ran across when they didn't even fit.

And yeah. I did warn you about the brain bleach...

[Kips McKipzerson]

A massive crossover? I only know most of the series, But can you give us a list from whos from where?

And why the fuck isnt freeman one of the main characters geezus

[TAKE IT CACODEMON!!]

<Author's Notes: Asides from the... er, special Rinnosuke and a few tweaks, like Byakuren's new hobby I made to make a musical reference below [if you can guess it, you get an internet cookie], I'm going to try and stay true to what little canon characterization there is. So no, we won't have USC Yuuka, or Tsundere Mokou, or NEET Kaguya, or evil bastard Yukari. Yes, I have this story on Fanfiction.net, but I can't edit any of my Touhou stories, for some stupid fucking reason.
I'm also extremely fucking iffy on how the Temple/Shrine/Ship works, and with Byakuren's characterization at the end. If someone more knowledgeable about Undefined Fantastic Object can tell me I'm dead wrong about this, please do.
On to the show.>
---
The Dude managed to stop making these odd whimper-scream noises to take account of where he was.

Forest clearing, lots of leaves, dead bodies. Oh, man, did Eddie lace his thai stick? The Dude had been pondering how to make it clear to the cops that he didn't kill anyone when they started getting back up, earning another whimper-scream from the Dude before he realized they weren't zombies and were otherwise fine and healthy. Besides one that kept flailing and screaming on the ground. And the one of the bodies was a flying... box of fries with a goatee.

"Uh. You three okay?" The box of fries asked.

"Yeah, just... where are we?" The Dude asked in a tone that couldn't properly convey his surprise of asking a living box of fries about his present location.

"Hell if I know," the box of fries said, raising its, er, fries in approximation of a shrug. Yeah, Eddie definitely laced his thai stick, that kumquat...

"What's wrong with him?" The box of fries asked, pointing to the somewhat haggard looking man screaming like a girl and still flailing like he was falling from the sky.

"Hey, man," the Dude called out to the flailing man, "you're fine now, come on, man..."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" was the flailing man's only response.

"I HEAR BABY," the other man roared. The Dude hadn't noticed him until now, and given how... gargantuan this guy was, he wondered how he had escaped notice until now. This man could have stuffed an entire army of Walters into a locker. This guy was massive. And Russian. Walter would have hated that.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" wailed the flailing man again, even more girly than the last scream.

"STOP CRYING, BABY!" The Russian man roared.

"I don't think that's going to help, big guy," the box of fries said, moving over to the flailing man and floating down to his level. "Hey, calm down. Calm down. You're safe now."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- Oh, hey, I'm not dead." The flailing man stopped his flailing and tried to act as if he didn't spend the last few minutes screaming like a little girl.

The Heavy cocked his head at this flail-less development. What did the tasty fry man do? All he did was say something and then man baby stops. Why wasn't it so simple for him? When he said something, man babies tended to cry more until man babies became full-of-bullets babies. Then they were just dead babies.

"WHAT DID YOU DO?" the Heavy asked.

"I calmed him down, what does it look like?" Tasty Fry Man said. "Also, don't even think about it," Tasty Fry Man said as he slapped away the Heavy's bear-like hand that reached out to grab him. "It doesn't look like it, but I'm not really tasty."

"WHAT? YOU LIE. YOU ARE POTATOES. GOOD FOR EATING."

"Yeah, and you'll end with a bunch of untasty blood, some stomach acid, and intestines pushing my waste around in your mouth if you tried. And trust me, I'm verrrry hard to swallow."

"...OKAY," the Heavy said, conceding defeat in utter annoyance. He was hungry and there wasn't a sandwich in sight, which made him angry.

When I stopped screaming ? not a girly scream, one of those manly gasps of surprise - I looked up at the two... things, and then to Jeff Bridges. No, I'm not assigning random names out of my ass again ? it was the actual fucking Jeff Bridges. And he was dressed as The Dude. I was definitely high.

"Jeff Bridges?" I asked, stupidly. No shit it's Jeff Bridges, I cursed at myself. My brain tended to spew obvious questions out before it finally realized what it was doing was dumb.

To my surprise, Jeff Bridges went "Who?"

I'm pretty sure Jeff Bridges isn't that much of a character actor, and I definitely didn't see cameras or other stupid tricks that would tell me this was some sort of Candid Camera prank set up by John and some dick TV producer, in which case I could not tell you how much I would be relieved and/or angry at that bastard.

Ignoring Jeff's question, I got myself up and looked around. We were in some forest, but at a clearing, like someone just sawed off a chunk of land and replaced it with grass. There was a pretty steep hill nearby, and it had stone stairs placed straight down the middle, going up and up and up and up.

I had another sinking feeling that I'm going to be spending a while with Jeff Bridges, who was either playing a joke on me or way into his character, and some box of french fries from some cartoon I once saw when I was bored, and some disproportionally, grotesquely muscled Russian man. I really had no opinion on this, other than that I would like to get home as soon as I could, mostly because John would come over and fuck my house up again by spraying beer everywhere, maybe throw a party or accidentally bust my TV, and then Wally's Vid-ee-oh would fire me for missing a shift. Come to think of it, that last thing would be a good thing for my sanity in the long run.

---

Frylock was a lot less confused than the others, having been accustomed to suddenly being dumped into random dimensions run by absolute whackos where there was a very likely chance that he'd get killed. Whether or not the "absolute whackos" or "very likely chance that he'd get killed" bit would be proven true later, given the last transporation fisaco involved a Hitler-worshipping Nazi Tyrannosaurus Rex shooting up his house, Frylock was sure the track record wouldn't be broken any time soon.

"Okay, uh, fellows, listen up," Frylock said in his best leader-y voice. "We should get introductions out of the way if we're going to find our way out of this mess, since we're going to have to stick together if none of us want to get hurt. I'm Frylock."

"Just call me The Dude," the man who looked like Jeff Bridges said, flipping his sunglasses on.

"I AM HEAVY WEAPONS GUY, AND THIS IS MY WEAPON," the Russian man said, proudly lifting up his minigun for the others to see.

"David Wong," the man who had been screaming simply said. "And yeah, I know. I'm not Asian. I changed names."

"Alright. Well, since those stairs usually indicate civilization of some sort, and that this forest doesn't look very nice and comfortable, let's hope there's someone up there who can tell us where the Hell we are..."

---

Unbeknownst to the four, someone was already on the stairs.

A lone figure ascended upwards into Myouren Shrine, frowning as they climbed the steps. The shrine these steps led up to had been long destroyed, but the stairs themselves were immaculately clean, as if a miko still cleaned them. No doubt the Temple's ghostly captain, Minamitsu Murasa, placed it up here out of spite.

Rinnosuke Morichika was annoyed at having to close the shop far before closing time and travel some distance to deal with some matter that no good merchant would conceive of doing in a million years. Why would a shopkeeper, a rather busy one who only left the store for item collection for his inventory and to sell and purchase items to persons unable to reach his shop, attempt to rob a customer's house? It was ridiculous, but as a shopkeeper, Rinnosuke had a responsibility to dissatisfied customers.
If anything, it must have been Marisa and Reimu, but that tiger youkai, Toramaru Shou, insisted that it they had caught Rinnosuke red-handed, and wouldn't say anything else on the matter. Curious. Rinnosuke had a suspicion...

When Rinnosuke reached the top, Nazrin and Shou looked like they were just about ready to eat Rinnosuke's face. Given what Shou was, that was rather likely.

The two led Rinnosuke to a room that had been used for rice storage up until recently. It had one bound-and-gagged figure hanging upside down by one foot, muttering something through the gag and occasionally attempting to flail wildly to no effect. Rinnosuke stood there, blinking for a good half minute, before finally turning to the two.

"What sort of illusion is this?" Rinnosuke asked, disbelieving her eyes as she looked at... herself hanging from the ceiling. Same clothes, same glasses, same figure, everything was the same... except for one detail hanging out of the imposter's ripped pants and a distinctly flatter chest.

"Mmph mphh mpph," the imposter replied, before spitting enough of the rag stuffed into his mouth to speak a bit more clearly. "Since when did I grow breasts?"

---

"I HATE STAIRS," the Heavy declared, lugging himself up the steps. If it wasn't for the Russian's ponderously slow movement, they would have reached the top of the Shrine in a few minutes. Frylock counted, oh, fifteen minutes wasted with the Russian, and they were only a quarter of the way up.

"Screw it. Hey, Mr. Guy, mind waiting here for a bit? The rest of us are going to go up and we'll be back down once we get some information. Think you can handle that?"

"DA," the Heavy confirmed.

"I hope they have food at the top," the Dude muttered. The Heavy interpreted his statement as "they definitely have food up there" and charged up the steps, reaching the summit in a minute, at the expense of knocking down the other three all the way down the stairs.

---

After several bouts of my head having meet-and-greet sessions with the edges of the cold, hard stone stair, I finally stopped bouncing around. I nearly puked when I stood up to spit gravel out of my mouth.

"I guess I should have warned you two about the stairs," Frylock said, rubbing what counted for his head.

"What's his problem?" The Dude asked, annoyed, trudging back up the stairs. "And how the Hell can he get up there so quickly? I don't think that thing's human, man, I'm pretty sure humans can't move faster than cars."

No one answered, so we restarted our journey back up the stairs.

We were up halfway when we heard something rusting below us, like a pack of creatures decided to go picnicking in the grass. I turned around and gave another of those little manly screams when I saw who was down there.

As if to confirm that I was high (and not in the "I'm above him" sense, smartass), Hugo Weaving, the[/b] Hugo Weaving, was standing in the clearing of the woods, in full Agent regalia. Make that several Hugo Weavings ? probably forty or fifty pouring out of the woods and getting into a neat soldiers' formation behind the leading Hugo Weaving. I spent watching most of the trilogy half asleep, so don't blame me if I'm surprised that there's more than one Hugo Weaving.

"Well, well, well. It looks like we've got a few brave little guardians," Hugo Weaving called out.

"Hey, man, we're not... guardians. Do we look like someone who'd guard a place like this?" The Dude gestured at his bath robe and at me and at Frylock, backing up, since I remember Hugo Weaving not being a very nice person in The Matrix. Oh, and the fact he has guns and we don't.

Hugo scoffed and reached into his coat pocket, which, knowing the movie, meant he was getting his gun out. We turned and ran.

Hugo Weaving fired.

---

The bullets only hit stone, turning the lower half of the stairs into swiss cheese.

Unknown to our heroes, they had managed to avoid being turned into holey corpses due to a number of factors.

For example: Agents are used to having the Matrix bend the rules for them. Sure, they're no slouch in gunslinging or strength, but their standard issue Desert Eagles, without the Matrix to help them, are fucking heavy. It took the Agent horde a precious few seconds to readjust their aim, thrown off by the weight, and even then, they were still off ? they never used a gun's sights (believing them to be there just because they looked cool), relying on the Matrix's targeting data instead.

In addition, to say .50AE Desert Eagles are notorious for having massive recoil is an understatement. Firing it properly with both hands is a hassle, let alone with one, and Agents tended to fire their sidearms one-handed. Normally, Agents offset this with the Matrix lessening the gun's recoil for them and enhancing their strength, but Smith was now flesh-and-blood and only as strong as his appearance suggested.

The first volley went wild, knocking a few of the Smiths into each other or having the gun's recoil smack them in the face. By the time the Agents got their shit together and readjusted their aim, they were out of the pitiful range of the Desert Eagle.

---

Rinnosuke ? the female one ? was in the process of expositing the reason why there were two Rinnosukes when there was a distinct boom.

"What is that?" Nazrin asked. It sounded like fireworks, but... more... impressive.

Rinnosuke flinched, suddenly breaking out in a cold sweat. "Human firearms," she explained, "and they're definitely not the sort of firearms I sell." She flinched again when there was another barrage, dissolving into a tempest of cracks, each getting closer with every instance.

"What're those?" Nazrin and Shou asked at the same time.

"They're lethal weapons," both Rinnosukes said, simultaneously, before the real Rinnosuke stuffed the rags back into her imposter. "Anyway, they're devices that fire something a lot like danmaku, but much more dangerous and much less pretty. They move extremely fast ? you can't dodge them unless you're like the Scarlet Devil maid. Did you do something to infuriate the local populace? I thought everyone was okay with Byakuren-san."

"No, the nearest human settlement is twenty kilometers away, and they don't have the manpower to stage an attack like this." The others turned to the new voice in the room ? it was Murasa, the Temple's captain, wiping sweat off her brow... and blood off her anchor. "Besides, it's definitely not them. The boarders all look the damn same."

"Mmph," the imposter said.

"Nazrin, Shou! Repel all boarders! Morichika-san, I'll need you to come with me to meet Byakuren-san ? the burglar's fine here,'' Murasa said.

Rinnosuke nodded and reached for the door when it was blown off its hinges, smacking directly into Rinnosuke's head.

"My, my, what do we have here?"

The voice was male, dripping with malice and contempt. No one in the room had heard anything like that before in Gensokyo. Rinnosuke's imposter actually whimpered a bit. When the sawdust and smoke that billowed from outside the door cleared enough, they got a clear look at the intruder.
It was a man, wearing some sort of dark glasses and black-and-white clothing that seemed to be made of pieces. Rinnosuke ? both of them ? recognized it as a Western business suit from the outside. So it definitely wasn't another youkai causing a ruckus-

A boom rattled the room. Now the man was holding something large and metal in his hand, and it was smoking. Nazrin fell onto Shou wordlessly, a massive red splotch on her gut spreading throughout her clothing.

What Shou did to the man would be whispered about by Rinnosuke to scare shoplifters away from her store.

"Change of plans," Murasa said when the noises of tearing flesh subsided. All of you, we're going to find Byakuren-san and Ichirin, the sooner the better. Leave the burglar! Help Nazrin up, Rinnosuke-san-" Murasa swung her anchor when she was finished, crushing the next intruder's throat. Curiously, he looked exactly the same as the first...

---

The Dude was the first to reach the top of the stairs and found the Heavy wearing several spines around his neck, lovingly extracted from the dead Agents around him.

"Aw, come on, man, that's just tacky!" The Dude said, disgusted. The Heavy didn't hear him, busy roaring and screaming and firing that minigun of his, sweeping the deck clear of a stampede of Agents. More were climbing up over the sides from all directions.

"Hey, Mr. Russian? We're going to have to find somewhere to hide if we want to keep on breathing," Frylock said. Surprisingly, the Heavy had heard this, putting his finger off the trigger with great resentment.

"WHY?" The Heavy asked, annoyed and a few steps away from eating the flying fries.

That was when a horde of Smiths erupted through the decks. The Heavy resumed blasting away, but the gun ran dry in ten seconds.

"That's why."

They ran.

Below decks, there was a distinct lack of murderous men in suits. Most of the doors were either locked or too small to accompany all of them.

Especially the Heavy.

There was, however, one interesting door that opened itself, revealing a half-naked man with silver hair, glasses, and some sort of satchel on his chest, bound-and-gagged and hobbling out, mpphing around the rag stuffed in his mouth.

"Man, this is getting weirder every minute," the Dude moaned. Frylock got the rags and ties off the man, who promptly spoke in clear, nearly accent-less English.

"I'm guessing none of you are behind this attack, huh?"

"No," David said, too scared out of his mind to think of a proper sarcastic response.

"I'm also going to guess you none of you have no clue what's going on, right?"

"Not a damn clue," Frylock said. The place suddenly rocked, almost turning on its side, and then all five of them felt the sensation of the entire structure being lifted into the air.

"That can't be good," the Dude moaned.

"No, this Temple's got the power of flight." Rinnosuke looked over the four, adjusting his glasses. "Well, at least I know you're not locals. Any Gensokyian would have known this."

"...Huh?" David asked.

"GET THEM!" The band of Smiths that had followed them below decks screamed, drawing their handguns and firing. Our heroes ducked, sparing them from the first volley, and ducked into a conveniently placed hallway adjacent to them.

"Oh, by the way," the bespectacled man said in-between handgun blasts, "I'm Rinnosuke Morichika, and I can detail my life story when I'm not in danger of getting killed by men in suits. Follow me, I know where we can get out of here!" A gunshot punctuated Rinnosuke's sentence, and a bullet made a nice, round hole in the wall where his head was a second ago. More and more Smiths were coming in from everywhere ? blasting holes in the decks to drop down from above, or splintering and rising from below like zombies from the grave.

Rinnosuke threw open a heavy oak sliding door and slammed it shut when the others were safely inside, and yanked the tarp off something that took up most of the space in the room.

"DAYUM," Frylock suddenly spat out, eyes widening and nearly popping out of their sockets when he saw what was under the tarp. The Heavy whistled, impressed, when the Dude and David gaped at it like retards.

"It's a beaut, ain't it?" Rinnosuke said, proudly.

---

Previous to her career as a magician, Byakuren Hijiri was particularly interested in mechanics and gadgetry. Namely, vehicles of all sorts. Even if Byakuren could fly, she found these roaring metal beasts quite fascinating, and at some point, managed to talk some kappa into teaching her some mechanics and building. She made quite a few cars and bikes, but angry bands of youkai/human bigots kept tearing her creations to shreds every time they stormed into the Shrine. When Byakuren was unsealed and the Myouren Shrine was restored to its former glory, she was now free to pursue her hobby, now without fear of having racists reduce them to a puddle of slag.

This was her first project after her unsealing. Rinnosuke had sold her the designs and a few key parts, and one of the kappa, Nitori, gladly exchanged the rest of the parts and tools for some cucumbers. It had a few kinks, but one was bound to be rusty after being sealed for two centuries, so.

The design was based on a composite of hot rods through the fifties and sixties, with some Asian flair thrown in (which would make most car enthusiasts fly into a rage in real life), adding some aerodynamic touches here and there in addition to the big-honking-engine. No need for gas, since it was powered on plentiful magic. It was roomy enough to stuff ten Oni in there and still have no personal space invasion, despite the exterior only being slightly bigger than average hot-rods, thanks to the magic of dimension-bending. The tires, chassis, shocks, everything were Nitori's best ? you could have driven off a cliff, right into a field of Sakuya's knives and get crushed by Suika's gigantic foot, and the car would still be as good as new, just with one very dead driver in it. It would take something stupid-powerful ? far beyond the range of anyone in Gensokyo, that is - to damage it, let alone put a dent in the side.

Byakuren was proud (but not too proud, given Buddhist teachings) of her latest piece of art.

Byakuren built this car. It's a love affair ? mainly Byakuren and her hot rod.

And now our heroes would be taking it.

"Who's driving?" Frylock shouted. Normally, David would have leaped into the seat without a thought, but being scared out of his mind and still confused about where he was made him freeze up at Frylock's query. The Heavy picked him up and brutally stuffed him in the back seats, while Rinnosuke threw the keys to the Dude, who, for his part, was simply ecstatic that he had a new car.

But he didn't show it, because he's the Dude.

As soon as the Heavy was done stuffing David between Frylock and himself, and Rinnosuke slid into the passenger's front seat, the Dude turned the keys. The engine roared to life like a sealed beast finally free from its restraints.

"I'd like to thank karma for giving me a new car," the Dude squealed right before he punched it. It sent the car screaming out of the holding room like a magician out of Hell as the heavy double-doors splintered into a thousand little pieces. The car drifted to its side, crashing against the bulkhead and crushing a few Smiths against it, before roaring down the hallway, tossing Smiths high into the air or smashing them under the tires.

"WHICH WAY?" the Dude screamed, watching the hallway sharply fork into two.

"THE ONE THAT DOESN'T VIVISECT US!" Frylock screamed back.

The Dude chose right, which happened to conveniently be filled with more Smiths to run over. The Smiths were reacting, setting up impromptu roadblocks with whatever they could lay their hands on ? boxes of food, shelves, anything vaguely heavy, the occasional metal table with five or six Smiths behind it, Desert Eagles at the ready. Needless to say, in a fight between a moving metal monster roaring at nearly 100 MPH versus twenty pound boxes of food, a flimsy metal table, and five or so chumps standing behind it, the moving metal monster won. Messily.

Except when the moving metal monster had to fight Mr. Giant Wall as it suddenly registered to the Dude's vision. The hot rod was flying too fast for the Dude to pump the breaks, and...

---

The Temple's inhabitants were topside, below decks now completely overrun with the strange men. Byakuren got the bullet out of Nazrin's gut and healed her up, blood loss and all, and wasn't bothering with trying to non-lethally deal with the Agents. She had just spent ten minutes trying to reason with a squad of them, and all they would do was shoot her, taunt her, and rant something about destroying this land and everyone in it. Even Shou and the youkai/human bands that constantly attacked her temple centuries ago were never as... vile as these men were. She really didn't like to kill people, even in self-defense, and especially with something as horribly grisly as tossing them over the side to their deaths. Worst of all, she was killing on her temple's grounds, right in front of her followers! Talk about bad examples. The blood on her hands and on the ship would never wash off...

Byakuren's followers (and Rinnosuke), on the other hand, had a lot less qualms about killing the strange men, gleefully tearing the crowd to pieces of shredded meat with danmaku of their own, or in Rinnosuke's case, a really big shotgun. The strange men's own weapons were mostly empty, and aside from the occasional boom from a man who still had those "firearms" on him, the strange men were relying on hand-to-hand combat. They were excellent at it, managing to knock down Shou several times before being blown away by a wave of danmaku, but Byakuren and company still had the ranged advantage. The intruders were already thinning out in numbers, especially now that they were in the air, stranding the horde on the ground. Curiously, these men couldn't fly. They could leap a great deal higher than humans, but that was it.

There was a massive, roaring crack on the side of the ship, like lightning cleaving an old tree in two, and something fast whining out. Byakuren and company looked overboard at the source of the noise.

"Hey, Byakuren-san? Isn't that your car...?" Ichirin Kumoi, one of Byakuren's followers, asked.

"Was," Byakuren half-sighed in bemusement.

As the car screamed through the sky, the girliest scream that any of them ever heard accompanied the car down...
---
<Yeah, fuck it.>

[TAKE IT CACODEMON!!]

(Yes, I know, I'm pretty sure handling corpses is a no-no in Buddhism or something, but it's Gensokyo. We can assume there's no untouchables here, since it's Gensokyo. RENTLESSLY LIGHTHEARTED GENSOKYO.)

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CRUNCH.

By some miracle, the five men in the car hadn't been pulped into a red goo the very second the hot rod touched down. When Frylock asked Rinnosuke about it, it turned into a ten-minute long spiel on Gensokyo's physics and the car's magical abilities before David stopped screaming like a girl long enough to tell them to shut up.

?So, uh, Rinnosuke, man. Where are we headed?? The Dude asked, wheeling through the forest's road, pedal still to the metal. The sooner they were away from that ship, the better, and every second the sight of the ship got smaller in the rear-view mirrors, he felt much better about not getting shot by G-Men. Much to his surprise, the hot rod still handled like a dream, even after having crash-landed several thousand feet onto a muddy path with rocks the size of Walter's fists jutting out everywhere.

?Keep going straight,? Rinnosuke said. ?We're headed to a place called the Hakurei Shrine, we need to warn the priestess there about those... men. She's dealt with stuff like this before.?

?O... kay. So, uh, why were you tied up back there, anyway, Rinnosuke, man?? The Dude was only a tad bit nervous at handling prisoners. It's a Zen thing, forgiveness and all that... or something. Whatever, man.

?It's a long story. Okay. So, are you familiar with alternate universes? Besides the fact you're, you know, in one.?

?Mmm,? the Dude said, absolutely, positively not listening. At least he wasn't alone. The Heavy and David immediately zoned out as well, the latter due to traumatic experiences in alternate dimensions that were rather unpleasant. Frylock, on the other hand, was listening with rapt attention.

?Okay. So. Okay. I'm... okay, a shopkeeper in Gensokyo. As far as I can tell, all iterations of me are shopkeepers. I run a second-hand goods store here ? or, more accurately, all iterations of me ? and I can determine the function and purpose of any object, which is very useful for my line of work. Anyway, by chance, I received some sort of spherical object. What it does is shunt whoever uses it into a similar, but different, version of their home dimension. Unfortunately, I don't know HOW to use it, which, as it turned out, was activated by touching it. So, now, I'm here.?

?What were you doing on that ship, man?? The Dude tried to fish a joint out of his bathrobe, but every time he took his eyes off of the road, the car always seemed to direct itself to the nearest tree.

?The device, for some reasoned, dumped me there. It's a place called the Palanquin Ship, it's captained by a ghost of a drowned girl and commanded by a Buddhist weirdo. She, uh, owned this car. Anyway, so it dumped me there, and her disciples caught me and thought I was trying to rob back the stuff I... er, this universe's Rinnosuke sold them. I... apparently don't have that great a reputation here.

Suddenly changing subjects, Frylock asked about nature of the object's function, which turned into a very long and very confusing conversation about quantum mechanics, multiverses, particles that may or may not exist, cats being abused by scientists and put into poison-filled boxes, clones, and completely incomprehensible equations. Even Rinnosuke wasn't sure what he was talking about.

?AAAARRRRGH! STOP BABY TALK, HEAD HURT!? The Heavy screamed, reaching out to grab and crush Rinnosuke's throat into tiny pieces. Frylock stopped the Heavy's meaty fist with one fried appendage.

?Not a good idea, big guy.?

The Heavy spent the rest of the trip muttering low insults in Russian.

?So, what is Gensokyo, anyway?? David asked, after five minutes of annoyed silence.

?Okay, let me put it this way... instead of technology advancing like where you people come from, magic was advanced. Wait, never mind, we still have Lunar tech and the kappa and those weirdo scientists hiding in some ruins... okay, you know what? Just say it's Japan, just magical.?

?Okay,? David grunted, going back to trying to hypnotize himself by watching the endless row of trees.

?That reminds me, I never got your names,? Rinnosuke said, getting an annoyed grunt out of David. ?Okay, I'm pretty sure 'annoyed grunt' isn't your name.?

?David Wong.?

?...You don't look related to Meiling...?

?I'm not going to bother asking who the Hell Meiling is, but yeah, I know, I'm not Chinese. I changed my name.?

?Why??

?Listen, David's one of the most common English names ever, and Wong's one of the most common Chinese surnames. You try looking me up on Google or some phone book, and you're bound to get fifty billion different David Wongs who aren't me. End of story.?

?Fascinating. What about you, Russian Man??

?I AM HEAVY WEAPONS GUY, AND THIS-? The Heavy spent several seconds struggling to get his minigun from under the seats, before raising it proudly (and accidentally clocking David in the jaw with the barrel) ?-IS MY WEAPON.?

Rinnosuke looked over the gun, adjusting his glasses. ?...Fascinating,? he murmured much more quietly, spending a few seconds, praying to various Japanese deities that the Russian man didn't tear his face off. When he was sure that the deities granted his wish, Rinnosuke turned to the driver and asked for his name.

?Just call me the Dude, man. Everyone calls me the Dude. If you wanna go for the formal route, since I hear Asians are really big on this formal thing, then go for 'His Dudeness' or 'Dude-no-Sensei', man.?

?...Fascinating,? Rinnosuke said. Well, at least it was better than his first meeting with Marisa and her friends. These men didn't seem very interested in robbing him, after all.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Temple of Myouren had taken massive damage. Those strange men's metal weapons did something to the ship. Smoke and fire poured from places Byakuren hadn't thought flammable, and even after flying through several conjured rainstorms that soaked everything to their core, the Temple stayed alight. Even Murasa wasn't able to keep it afloat, but Ichirin called upon Unzan to set it down. In a second, massive, cloudy fists wrapped around the hull, still some meters away from exploding itself all over the countryside, and gently placed the ship near a human village. (Much to Nazrin and Rinnosuke's disappointment. They had been hoping for a cinematic brace-and-crash that would leave a jagged scar on the forest floor and maybe a few broken bones.)  Almost immediately, a raggedy child, cheeks tear-streaked and eyes red, came running from the forest, begging them to come quickly, saying that their village had suffered an attack by strange men with loud metal weapons.

Byakuren and company had reached the village just in time. By some miracle, no one but the attackers ? the very same men that had stormed the Temple, down to their strange weapons and uniforms - were killed. A few were gravely wounded, yes, but Byakuren healed them with ease.

?Who'd do such a thing?? Rinnosuke mused aloud as she helped Nazrin and Shou drag the attackers' corpses to a raging bonfire, somewhat annoyed at doing dirty work. Unlike all the previous ?Incidents?, as so labeled by Gensokyo's inhabitants, no one was ever killed (not counting the Hourai immortals), and it never became anything serious beyond bruised egos, a few new youkai joining Gensokyo proper, some minor power balancing, and a spot of tea at the Hakurei Shrine.

Of course, for some bizarre reason, many youkai and humans ? who'd never even seen any spellcard battle in their lives ? would insist these Incidents were dead serious and often horrific. Battles for survival, for lives, for Gensokyo itself, and ending in bloodshed, horror, sweat, and tears, and what Reimu fought were not pleasant youkai, but insane, man-eating psychotics who would inflict evil deeds upon everyone and everything ? and some of those would insist the Miko and her allies were no better than the youkai she fought. (Rinnosuke decided she would stop selling Outside World fiction to all the children after this.)

Maybe the Incidents would change with this... these men were invading with intent to kill. Someone was Hell-bent on murdering everyone, and if they were powerful enough to send an army of these men, they surely had more tricks up their sleeve. Nazrin's injury was a first in these Incidents (again, barring Mokou and Kaguya) ? someone had been wounded. What's more, her attacker shot with intent to kill...

Nazrin and Shou, who had considerably changed their attitude towards Rinnosuke after she clarified the mystery of the second Rinnosuke, immediately threw out their suggestions as to ?who could do such a thing?: Moriya Shrine conspiracy, magic gone horribly wrong, Yukari being bored, Ex-Rumia being a douche, Eirin's shady new drug, Lunarians trying to invade for God-knows-what.

?Saying things like that are forbidden,? Rinnosuke admonished.

After the bodies were disposed of and the villagers gave their accounts of how they bravely held against the evil horde, Rinnosuke immediately put up a bounty on the suited men. She had first announced it in the village square ? two thousand yen for every stranger killed, an extra two thousand if they retrieved their pistol, which, given how refined metals were from the outside world, would be of great value to the various ironsmiths and foundries in Gensokyo. Children were disallowed from participating, and any child who tried to join in the culling would be beaten, sternly lectured to in a manner that would make the yama cry, and would be sent to bed without supper.

The sooner these men were wiped out, the better.

One of the children ran up to Rinnosuke, tugging at her shirt and looking up at her with the most adorable eyes.

?Papa says there's gunna be a waaaar, is there, Miss Shopkeeper?? It squeaked.

?It's not a war, child. It's pest control.?

Immediately upon declaring the bounty, Shou and Nazrin volunteered to accompany Rinnosuke on her hunt, over the protests of Byakuren. Nue joined in as well. Ichirin and Murasa refused, staying behind to repair the ship. Before Byakuren could cast magic to retrieve the trio from their impending suit-guy massacre, Nue whisked the group away somewhere, her presence-warping tricks preventing Byakuren from forcibly recalling them back.

Byakuren was, suffice to say, in real need of mind-clearing meditation.

When Rinnosuke's small task force disappeared, leaving behind a very annoyed Byakuren, the small child smirked.

Phase one complete.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

?Aw, shit, they're already here!?

The hot rod pulled up to the bottom of the Shrine's steps, where there was a mess of Smiths crawling everywhere on the steps and in the Shrine itself. It was on fire and creating smoke of a rather interesting color. The Smiths themselves were smashing anything that wasn't on fire,  with an oddly straight face. You know, typical madman behavior.

?Greeaaaaat... alright, we need to get into the Shrine and get anything we can that'll help us defend ourselves better: ceremonial swords, orbs of any sort, gohei, staffs, knives, anything that can look like they can kill. If those men are here, that means they're probably in quite a few other places and this isn't going to be the last we'll see of them.?

?Thanks, Captain Obvious,? David said.

Rinnosuke ignored David's insult and adjusted his glasses dramatically. ?Alright, Dude, get us up there-?

The Dude punched it. Again. Surprisingly enough, the car didn't vibrate like [insert gratuitous, completely inappropriate reference to sex toy operation here] as it flew up the steps, pasting the Smiths who didn't get out of the way in time.

The hot rod crashed right through a flaming screen on the temple, flinging off a few Agents that had been on the car when they were hit. Immediately, Rinnosuke leapt out and began ransacking everything in sight, flinging open rooms, tearing up panels, diving in the wardrobes and sniffing pan-

?What the fuck are you doing?! Are you insane?!? David shouted at him. ?You're going to get shot!?

?Oh, right.? Rinnosuke dropped what he was holding and went back to wantonly ransacking everything.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I swear to Christ, this guy is even dumber than John.

Between staying in the car ? which was perfectly safe from all of Hugo Weaving's potshots at us ? and leaping out into a burning Shrine to search for weapons that probably aren't there and possibly getting blown away and left to rot in some Japanese animeland, I did the right, reasonable, and rational thing.

Leaping out of the car, nearly tripping over a burning beam, I began tearing everything I could find alongside this Rinnosuke guy.

Hey, this being anime, it should be retarded enough to work. And sure enough...

?Nice find,? Rinnosuke said, giving me a look and adjusting his glasses and acting as if Hugo Weaving wasn't shooting at him.

It was a Smith and Wesson revolver. Model 29. The same exact revolver Dirty Harry used. Okay, not the exact one, but stop being a smartass, you know what I meant. It felt old, like I just reached into a history museum and yanked out a priceless artifact, and it had this weird, waxy preserved... aura, to put it. The Soy Sauce told me it's been here for 211 years, two hours, and nine seconds, despite this model only having been made, what, forty, fifty years ago? This Gensokyo place was weirder about physics than I thought.

Beneath it were ten already-loaded moon clips and a shitload of bullets ? 108, to be exact, thanks, Soy Sauce, for doing all this useless information counting for me.

Much to my complete lack of surprise, when I was done stuffing speedloaders and bullets into every available pocket, another Hugo Weaving had jammed their pistol to my face, smiling at me from behind the barrel. The revolver was stuffed into my pocket, and knowing who Hugo Weaving was, if I reached for it, I'd be saying 'hi' to the Pearly Gates or whatever the crap waits for me in death.

I gave another manly scream.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Dude, in the meantime, was a bit smarter, preferring to stay in the car and crush Smiths and repeatedly run over their bodies in a wanton act of cruelty. He sent the last Smith plowing into another side room, filled with boxes and junk and GOOD NEWS it was empty of Smiths.

?Well, who dares, wins,? the Dude muttered, crawling out of the hot rod, along with the Heavy. They did need weapons if they wanted to get out of the car more often, and these boxes looked like they held a lot of things.

By the good graces of whatever deity was watching over them, the first box that the Dude ripped apart yielded something interesting.

It was faintly glowing, and looked, well, just like the yin-yang symbol, and was about the same size as a bowling ball. The Dude picked it up ? yup, heavy, just like a bowling ball. He dropped it, and the resulting shockwave left him buried in a pile of wrecked cardboard boxes and weird Asian junk. As soon as he freed himself, he picked up the strange orb. He wasn't that good at beating people, except maybe whiny nihilists, but if there was anything he learned from watching Walter beat the shit out of those nihilists the night Donny died, a thrown magic bowling ball was the best he'd get here.

Stumbling out of the storage room and leaving the Russian behind, he found another of those suit guys about to execute David. Who were these suit guys? IRS?

Whatever. It was gut check time.

?Hey, catch!? He shouted.

The Agent turned, just in time to catch the Yin-Yang orb with his face.

Time for a completely unnecessary, prose-destroying exposition dump: yin-yang orbs really aren't. They're more like medallions made to be thrown at evil spirits and demons and men and other malcontents. The Hakurei Shrine is well-known throughout Gensokyo for its pre-spellcard weaponry, back when fights were settled with good old-fashioned fisticuffs. Said weaponry was powerful, but non-lethal ? youkai extermination was in-name only for thousands of years.

This Ying-Yang orb was the very same orb Reimu had used to her first descent into Makai after the first time the Shrine had been destroyed under her care. (For some reason, it was far lighter for her than anyone else.) After that round of beating everyone in Makai senseless, Reimu had slapped a homing spell on it, so it'd hit its target dead-on and boomerang back to its user after the attack instead of ricocheting everywhere but to the miko (or, if Reimu was particularly unlucky, it'd always smack her in the groin). It was heavy, but the Dude, being an avid bowler and all, found it perfect for throwing.

Now, back to the face-crunching action.

The yin-yang orb immediately turned the Agent's face into a pulp (since the Yin-Yang orb wasn't so non-lethal towards evil people, that exposition was a lie) and gently glid back to the Dude's hand.

?Sweet. I wonder how much this'll go for,? the Dude murmured, looking over the orb.

There was the unmistakable click of guns being readied behind him, and for some reason, the Dude just had to turn around. And just like that, nearly thirty suit men had those gigantic, oversized guns out and jammed at his face, ready to turn him into swiss cheese.

What the weird suits didn't notice was the Heavy standing behind them all with that even more ridiculously oversized gun of his, covered in what looked like brightly... colored... cards?

?POW! HAHA,? The Heavy roared as he yanked the trigger.

Suddenly, the room exploded in a slurry of brightly colored bullets. It was like someone gave LSD to an MIRV and detonated it. By some miracle, the Dude and David were miraculously untouched. Russian hugged his now spellcard-covered minigun. ?YOU DID WELL,? the Heavy cooed. (Well, cooed as quietly as a gargantuan dumbass who often deafened Medics can coo.) The Dude, for his part, tried to hide the fact he wet his pants.

The three stood there, as if waiting for something to happen, when Rinnosuke suddenly gasped in ecstasy, stepping over the shredded, gory mess that used to be the Agents on the floor. He held, in his hands, something that looked like like a giant, pure black sword, impossibly, wickedly sharp. And it looked like it was made of blades. Knives jutted out of the handles, and those knives were made of knives.

?It's... perfect,? Rinnosuke moaned, his mind convulsing in how perfect it was. In fact, he was so deep in rapturous, torturous, glorious agony that he didn't notice one of the Agents rise from the ground, moan in guttural Russian, and raised his hand to turn Rinnosuke's mind into jelly.

He didn't notice the beams of lightning come from Frylock and zap the zombified Agent several kilometers into the sky, and it took several slaps from the Russian to drag Rinnosuke out of his orgasmic joy over a stupid phallic symbol.

Rinnosuke tried to pretend like nothing happened.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ransacking continued, but there really wasn't much to find. Aside from comprimising photos of the ?Reimu? person that took care of the Shrine (which Rinnosuke took an unhealthy interest in), the group had also grabbed sacks of rice, canned meat, all the moonshine and sake possible, and anything that looked like it could probably kill someone, ?Reimu?'s precious gohei collection included. Not even the outside of the Shrine was spared, the five trampling all over the Zen garden and the pond behind the Shrine.

The Dude was trying to half-assedly fish with one of the gohei things when an old turtle (probably a hundred, maybe more) suddenly popped out of the water and stared at him.

?Hey, uh. Don't mind us. We're just looking for something to eat.? This gohei thing just wasn't fit for fishing, wasit?

Much to the Dude's surprise, it said something in response. It was Japanese, in an old man's wheezing, whistling drawl.

?Hey. Uh, Rinnodude? Can you translate what he's saying??

Rinnosuke jogged over, gulping down the last supply of Reimu's liquor. ?Oh. He's asking what we're doing here.?

The Dude scratched his chin thoughtfully. ?Uh... it's going to sound crazy, but I actually come from... another world! Yeah. I'm a visitor.?

The turtle... the Dude read somewhere it was impossible for turtles to make facial gestures, but this... shelled dude was actually smiling at him. It said something, coughing.

?He says you should stay in Gensokyo for a while, provided you avoided Reimu for wrecking her Shrine. It's the third time this month. He's right, you know. It's actually a nice place, provided you ignore all the racism from humans and youkai towards each other.?

?Yeah, well, maybe when we're not not the sort in a hurry, man. That's why I like turtles. They take it easy, y'know??

The turtle said something. ?He says you're a Zen natural, and that you even look the part.?

?Gee, uh, thanks... sensei?? The Dude scratched his chin again. This Buddhist thing sounded like a cool thing back in college, and it wouldn't hurt to try now. Better late than never was the Dude's personal motto regarding educational pursuits, something that got him kicked out of unversity.

The turtle laughed a wheezing laugh and said something again, before breaking out into an unmistakable shit-eating toothless grin.

?He says he's too empty-headed to be anyone's teacher.?

?Oh, come on, man. You've been here... for... years, man, and you're talking to me about Zen already...?

The turtle was still smiling, saying more Japanese. The Dude, of course, didn't know what he was saying, but it sounded rather deep.

?He likes you.?

?Hey, man, I'm not into those sort of things.?

The turtle burst into more wheezing laughs. The Dude actually thought he was dying for an uncomfortable minute.

?He says he and you are going to get along,? Rinnosuke said. ?He's asking if he can come along on our adventure, get back at those bastards for burning the Shrine,? Rinnosuke continued, before asking something back in Japanese. After some back and forth, Rinnosuke sighed. ?This is Reimu's old pet. His name's Genji. She used him when she didn't know how to fly.?

?Wait, how can people fly here??

?Magic. Maybe I'll sell you something later when we get to my shop. She didn't know how to fly the first few months she after she got made miko, and since then he's been lounging around here, sleeping and growing even older. Well, since none of you can fly and won't for a while, we're going to take him. Who knows if that car dies on us??

?Wait, how does that work? Turtles don't fly...?

?This one does.? In response, the turtle grinned and levitated, coming up face-to-snout with the Dude. Rinnosuke snorted at the Dude's shocked expression and continued. ?Well, since none of you can fly and won't for a while, we're going to take him. We need to search the place for whatever we can salvage, because I'm pretty damn sure more of these bastards are going to get attracted by the smoke.?

?But what about his owner??

?Reimu hasn't had much use for him after she learned how to fly a few years back. He says he does like being fed and not getting beaten up by demons or youkai on a daily basis, but this place is boring.?

?Alright, fine.?

The turtle actually backflipped and clapped his flippers, and gave a long, heartfelt speech that brought tears to the Heavy's eyes (despite not knowing a lick of Japanese).

?He said he's okay,? Rinnosuke said. The Dude stared at him.

?That's not funny.?

---

Hakurei Reimu had been out getting rice bags and tea leaves. She hadn't noticed the smoke on account of having her eyes mostly focused on the ground or otherwise shut from the strain of dragging a hundred pounds' worth of groceries up the stairs.

Common sense dictates that whenever you see five men standing around with things from your currently burning residence and workplace you've devoted several years' worth of work to, the men nearest to the fire tend to be responsible for the arson and burglary, especially when they're piling the Shrine's most valued relics into one of those cars Nitori occasionally babbled about, and hopping in to make a getaway.

Common sense also dictates you get very fucking mad.

Before the Dude had a chance to explain to Genji the wonders of the modern automobile, a massive force crashed into the hot rod just as the door slammed shut, sending it catapaulting and somersaulting down the Shrine's steps and turning the insides of the car into a very angry pinball machine. (The Dude managed to stop the Yin-Yang ball from crushing someone's face, so be thankful for that.)

The Dude punched it, sending the car screaming back into the forest, one very angry miko trailing close in hot pursuit.

[canobiecrazy]

(Yes, I know, I'm pretty sure handling corpses is a no-no in Buddhism or something, but it's Gensokyo. We can assume there's no untouchables here, since it's Gensokyo. RENTLESSLY LIGHTHEARTED GENSOKYO)
*snip*

Actually there isn't much, at least in Tibetan Buddhism. The body is considered an empty vessel.

[TAKE IT CACODEMON!!]

Huh. Weren't undertakers considered Untouchable in Japanese Buddhism, though?