Title is an artifact. This fic is inspired by
this webcomic by KimikoMuffin and the following Danbooru pool:
[nsfw]http://danbooru.donmai.us/pool/show/1442[/nsfw]
Let us begin....
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Chapter 1: Immutable Cherry Blossom
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It was a secret that would shake the very foundations of Gensokyo. Its disclosure threatened generations of hard-won peace. Upheaval would be inevitable; the aftermath would truly deserve the title of Revolution.
Reimu of Hakurei was bored with danmaku.
She had grown tired of the patterns thrown at her day in, day out. The only reliable source of surprises were Marisa Kirisame and *Stage 5 Bosses*. All the rest were so bland that Reimu yearned for the hazily-remembered days in which she could *bomb* opponents into submission with raw spiritual power. She was tired of how the spellcard rules not only dictated what she could do but also what she could think. Her intuition told her that her days of straddling the border of life and death for a living existed; but the links between such a life and the present were tenuous at best.
She had faced most of another incident. She was already chafing at its similarity to the earlier Scarlet Mist incident; the first three *Stages* were wastes of time, while the fourth was somehow relevant to the item of concern. The fifth *Stage* consisted of a zealously loyal servant, who would inevitably segue into a more powerful mistress.
Still, Reimu excelled at what she did. She wove through Youmu Konpaku's increasingly dense shots without trepidation, firing off wave after wave of amulets and ofuda all the while. Her movements were precise and measured, carrying her to safety while keeping her target within the firing arc of the amulets.
Reimu was not alone in her fight. Youmu was also being assailed by torrents of knives and magic missiles. Sakuya Iyazoi and Marisa had also set out to solve this incident.
Youmu, for her part, resisted the onslaught, a plethora of wards outright deflecting most incoming projectiles. Shots that bypassed this first layer were parried by her two blades.
However, Youmu, true to her post, stood her ground (in the air), moving to control the motion of the intruders instead of avoiding projectiles. She was like a rock in a waterfall; though seemingly impervious, her defenses were incrementally weathered away until her wards finally failed. With one last parry, Youmu turned and fled to her mistress.
Yuyuko Saigyouji stood at the base of the Saigyou Ayakashi. The ancient tree was surrounded by a sinister air of vitality, the unmistakable life found in the eyes of hungry tigers. Youmu emptied a final bag of glowing cherry petals into the tree's roots, where they were absorbed. After a pregnant pause, she turned to her mistress.
"Lady Yuyuko, more spring essence is necessary."
"Then we shall borrow some from our guests," responded Yuyuko, pulling out a spellcard.
Then, she took said spellcard and tore it in half.
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Sakuya did not find the display unnerving as Reimu and Marisa did. Thus, she was caught off-guard by the unchecked tide of malice that roared into her mind following the local suspension of the Spell Card rules.
The powerful magic that followed could only be described as a wave of cold, merciless death. Sakuya noticed the fingers of her right hand curling in a parody of rigor mortis despite the continued beating of her heart; her left, on instinct, had already activated her stopwatch. Despite the cessation of time, the magic continued to operate, the ignored fire across her chest and face turning into an icy chill. Immediately, Sakuya tried to cut losses, but the hand that held the watch was already afflicted. Extrapolating from the rate of spread, Sakuya estimated three minutes before the magic would completely envelop her.
She inverted the settings of her stopwatch; though stilling the world was often more useful, the cessation of time within a small area was used often enough to warrant the inclusion of such a function. In a moment, she was on the ground, her body an immovable post in the flow of time.
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Reimu choked back a cry of surprise when the tide of death washed over her barriers. She was expending energy at an alarming rate, feeling drained five seconds into the onslaught. Each ward she summoned was torn away almost instantaneously, doing almost nothing to staunch the advance of the chills that ran through her bones, a chill that left fingers unusable and arms sluggish.
Reimu instinctively knew but did not acknowledge that the chill was death, distilled into some exquisite liquor that seeped into her body and mind drop by drop, a late baptism for her first trip into the netherworld.
The chill seemed to slow as her arms stopped moving. Reimu's pulse slowed. Marisa's shoe fell to the ground far too slowly, and Reimu realized that she was somehow perceiving the world far faster than before. As her gaze returned to her hands, still frozen at some indeterminate point in the process of summoning amulets, she noticed strange threads dancing across her body, familiar despite their novelty.
This is the shape of this magic The thought entered her mind unbidden but accompanied by an unshakable sense of certainty, as if she had uncovered this fact before and had tested it to her satisfaction.
She reached out to touch a thread. Despite being almost completely paralyzed, she caught it and held it firmly.
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Marisa knew that the spellcard rules were not absolute. Forays into passive magic drawing from the environment revealed a much more lenient set of rules that shared their spirit of the written rules. As long as measures to prevent permanent harm were taken, allegedly illegal techniques continued to draw ambient power instead of fading. A sufficiently powerful or clever Youkai could make a show of breaking the rules to intimidate without being stopped as long as the rules written into the flows of magic were obeyed.
Therefore, the suspension of the rules were tantamount to killing intent.
Marisa had her mini-hakkero readied since Youmu's defeat. The moment Yuyuko stopped talking, Marisa had begun her spell.
Yuyuko's wave of death was a freezing touch that corroded Marisa's wards and stiffened her extremities, but the output of the magical furnace seemed to warm her, vitalistic flame fighting back otherworldly chill.
However, Marisa's Master Spark could not be fired indefinitely. The limitations imposed to make it a legal card on paper meant that it could continuously fire for no more than 20 seconds at maximum output. As the spell began to fade, Marisa felt the cold spreading faster than before.
Marisa fired again, this time without a spellcard. A column of flame emerged from her hakkero, which she attempted to aim before realizing that her eyes had closed. Her eyelids did not respond, leaving her blind as her ears were assailed by the roar of the untamed flames of the hakkero, which she aimed in what she believed to be the general direction of her assailant.
The warmth of the spell spread inwards, permeating skin and flowing through Marisa's veins. She felt stronger with each heartbeat.
At some point, the warmth became uncomfortable. Nausea followed, and Marisa's eyes began to open. She was struck by a sense of emptiness, as if her mind was suddenly too small for its throne in her skull.
Suffice to say, she was changed.
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