| ~Hakurei Shrine~ > Patchouli's Scarlet Library |
| Disruption in the afterlife. (a crossover story) |
| << < (2/2) |
| Esifex:
That's actually a very clever handwave. I like it. |
| Paul Debrion:
?You?re not going to smoke when I?m around!? Wriggle exclaimed in a rather irritated tone. ?Why?? Petrarch asked. ?I hate the smell of tobacco.? Wriggle said. Wriggle glared at Petrarch causing him to pause for a moment while he realized his error in judgment. ?Sorry, I forgot.? Petrarch said as he put away his pipe. Petrarch had nearly forgotten that tobacco is a natural pesticide. While it surely wouldn?t be enough to be harmful, as an insect youkai Wriggle would have found the smell especially irritating. Perhaps she would have also been offended that a human would be use a substance that is poison to insects for recreational purposes. ?Are you sure you can?t fly?? Wriggle asked again. ?I never learned how.? Petrarch said jokingly. Wriggle was beginning to become frustrated at the slow pace they were going. She wasn?t accustomed to travelling with people who can?t fly. Come to think of it she rarely traveled any significant distance with a human at all. Through a gap in the trees they could see a column of smoke rising in the distance. ?Do you know where that smoke is coming from?? Petrarch asked. ?It looks like it?s coming from the Forest of Magic.? Wriggle explained. ?Is it on the way?? Petrarch asked. ?Yes.? Wriggle replied. Petrarch stopped thought for a moment. Perhaps there was a way they could at least cover that distance easily. ?Why did you stop?? Wriggle asked. ?Where there is smoke, there is fire. I think I know of a little trick that will speed things up a bit? Petrarch said. ?Help me gather a bit of firewood.? Wriggle had no idea what he could possibly have in mind, but if Petrarch was going to work some magic she definitely wanted to see it. He hadn?t done anything remarkable since they started this little trip to demonstrate that he was anything more than an ordinary human. They gathered together a few branches into what was little more than a pile of sticks. Petrarch explained that they wouldn?t be there to put it out so there shouldn?t be too much fuel. ?Ok, now for the interesting part.? Petrarch said. He seemed to pull a strange object out of nowhere. It appeared to be a rattle of some kind consisting of a human skull at the end of a short rod. He pointed the face of the skull at the pile of sticks. Suddenly it shot out a ball of fire that ignited the wood. The ?skull rattle? disappeared from his hand almost as suddenly as it appeared. ?I?ll be heading rather quickly to wherever that smoke is coming from.? Petrarch explained. ?Try to keep up.? At this point Wriggle was still somewhat confused. ?How will you?? Wriggle said. Before she could finish Petrarch picked up his attach? case and stepped into the small fire. Seemingly unharmed, he muttered a few words and immediately burst into flame and disappeared. In his place a fireball appeared that floated up a short distance into the air and hurtled towards the source of the smoke in the distance. Wriggle immediately gave chase. This fireball that Wriggle assumed to be Petrarch in some form was travelling very quickly and she could only just barely keep up with it. She wondered whether anyone would see them at this altitude and whether anyone would wonder why she was following some mysterious ball of flame. As they came closer to the source of the smoke, the forest opened up into a small clearing, which revealed the source of the smoke. It was a decently sized two story house that was covered in vines and had what appeared to be a garden of mushrooms in front of it. An unusual amount of smoke was pouring from its chimney. Wriggle came to a landing nearby and watched as the fireball flew slightly past the chimney, did a small loop, and flew straight down through it. Wriggle didn?t know whether to laugh or to be concerned, as this turn of events may or may not turn out well for either of them. This was the house of the eccentric magician known as Marisa Kirisame, and who knows how she would react to a stranger suddenly appearing at her fireplace. She thought she could already hear shouting from inside the house, though she couldn?t understand a word of what was said. No doubt Petrarch had just arrived. Wriggle slowly and cautiously approached the front door the house. She instinctively disbanded the small group of light emitting fireflies that usually followed her so she wouldn?t be easily spotted, though in all honesty she didn?t know what she was trying to hide from. She hesitated for a bit, and then knocked on the front door. __________ |
| Paul Debrion:
Ok, to explain why this hasn't been updated in quite a while, I'm stuck. To go into a bit more detail than that, just about every way I think I can proceed with the story doesn't seem like it will turn out as well as I want it to. The root of the problem seems to be that I'm not accustomed to working with this kind of source material. You may have noticed that my writing seems rather dry and dull so far. Normally I would rely on providing constant intrigue and thought provoking ideas to compensate for this. To put it bluntly, I keep your brain working so you won't notice that I can't make my words pretty. Usually this approach works for me, I'm good enough at making things unusual and interesting enough to keep it going. Unfortunately, I'm finding that this approach doesn't work as well in a fantasy setting like Touhou. I'm finding that Touhou's kind of "suspension of disbelief" makes a lot of things seem less interesting. In fact, the whole reason I brought in the Shadowman crossover to begin with was to provide some seriousness and depth to the story that I could utilize later, but unfortunately that fell flat on its face as the crossover doesn't fit well enough to be used that way. Needless to say I didn't think this through as well as I should have. In short, I'm going to have to put this on hold for now. I might come back to it later if I can figure out a way to make it work, but right now I'm not sure how I'd be able to continue and keep it as interesting as I would want it to be. Anyway, if there was anyone following this, I really appreciate that you were interested in this attempt at a story. |
| Esifex:
Heeeey, don't give up. :C A few of my stories are flopping about like fish out of water, so I know what you're going through. If you have another project in the works, though, that usually helps. Go back and forth. In fact, my current crossover story is such a side-project; I have an attempt at a silly story in hiatus while I do LhB, but I think it's about to be the other way around. Either way, I'm terrible at silly stories. ...might end up sending that plot to someone else to do... |
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