Rising Star (Complete At Last)

~Hakurei Shrine~ > Kosuzu's Grand Bookstore

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MysTeariousYukari:
Go with whatever you think is best :) I would like it to continue, but if you end it here, I won't complain.

FinnKaenbyou:
Epilogue

I missed the days when my room had a roof. It made it easier to sleep in.

"Nnngh..."

The sun was glaring down on me. There almost seemed to be a face on it, staring straight into my eyes and muttering 'Get up, it's morning'. I'd stare back at it, but I appreciated my eyesight.

And I appreciated sleep a whole lot more.

"Oh, forget it...the day can wait a little longer."

I rolled around in bed, burying my face in the futon. A few more minutes were hardly going to kill me.

After the dowsing rod jabbed itself into my back, it became obvious that there were forces more powerful than the sun calling on me to wake up.

"Ow! Alright, Nazrin, I'm getting up..."

Nazrin continued poking at me as I scrambled to my feet. This was more or less our morning routine now - Nazrin got up at the crack of dawn, and made sure I woke up alongside her. Breakfast was the first order of the day (thank Vaisravana so much of the kitchen was still standing), and after that we found ourselves engaging in our daily training.

It was a different style of training from the ones we had practiced before, though - one that was, by our standards, relatively new. But lots of new things were happening nowadays.

This was Gensokyo, after all. Incidents came and ended along with the seasons, more or less. We were more or less in the aftermath of some weird underground geysers popping up, and no-one above the surface really knew what had happened down there. The tengu would put out a news report soon enough, but that had to be taken with a metric tonne of salt.

I'd heard the stories about the Hakurei family suddenly falling out of the spotlight, secluding themselves to their dusty temple in the distance. I had wondered why for years, but eventually the thought slipped my mind as I continued with my daily life. Even without a temple to preach in, a servant of Vaisravana had duties to follow.

Then the Hakurei Border came into being. The priestess of the generation, Chihiro Hakurei, claimed that it was a precaution to 'keep youkai from doing any more damage to humanity', and that she would serve as its police force if anyone tried to disturb the peace.

I didn't believe her for a second. I saw her ancestor's expression as the temple of Vaisravana burned. The Hakurei family had never approved of the brutality that mankind had shown to youkai - while there were definitely feral beasts among us, culling entire races for the crimes of one or two individuals was a disgrace.

I would have thanked her, but she would never have remembered me. Humans were a strange race in that way, so unique and yet so fleeting.

If only you could see this now, Hijiri.

She would have loved this place, wouldn't she? A world where youkai could exist in peace, without the constant fear of persecution that drove their lives beyond the border. It would have been wonderful if she could see it. Ichirin, and Murasa too.

Every so often, I'd stop to think about it. To think about everything I'd lost in that fire. My friends, my home, my idol. I'd tear up over it, bring myself almost to the verge of tears.

Invariably, that would be the moment when Nazrin put a hand on my shoulder and reminded me that I hadn't lost everything. As long as I had her, I would get by.

So the two of us made a simple existence together, surviving in the ruins of our old temple. The last few years had been devoted to a new sort of training - for a method of battle that had only existed for a few years now.

"Hide wherever you want, but you won't escape this rod of mine!
Search Sign [Gold Detector]!"

Nazrin held a simple paper card in the air dramatically, and a flurry of golden bullets emerged from within. They flew around in random directions, with the intent being that one of them would be fortunate enough to hit me. They weren't a problem.

The green lasers that followed, though, definitely were.

"Gh-!"

My sidestep had earned me too much momentum, and before I could stop myself I had jumped straight into the path of one of the golden bullets. This was where I was supposed to unleash a counterspell and fight back with my own danmaku pattern.

Instead, I simply let the bullet slam into my chest. This was the same weapon that had 'killed' Murasa the first time I had met her. But things were different now.

The bullet let off a dramatic and colourful array of fireworks as it collided with me. It propelled me backwards and sent me to the floor, but compared to what Murasa had went through it was totally harmless. It was merely an aesthetic system, designed to reveal that Nazrin was the winner of what was known as a spellcard duel. It was another rule that stopped humans being victimised by youkai - and as such, it meant there was no ill will against youkai on the part of Gensokyo's small human populace.

"What was that? You had plenty of time to declare a spell, Shou. You had better not be going easy on me."

Uh-oh. I had been hoping to get away from giving an explanation, but if she thought I was going easy on her she'd inevitably want a rematch. Sooner or later the truth was going to come out, so it was probably best to talk now while Nazrin was still relatively calm.

"Uh, yeah...well, there's a story behind that."

Nazrin's ear twitched in curiosity. It was now that she became aware that something in my usual attire was missing.

"Well...remember yesterday, when I took a trip to the Human Village to buy some rice?"

"You dropped it, didn't you."

The jewelled pagoda, the artifact Vaisravana Himself had entrusted me with, was missing.

"...Sort of. I looked around the area I dropped it, but I think it fell into the river..."

I twiddled my thumbs, feeling my self-respect collapse into the negatives. Nazrin looked angry for a moment, but eventually she let out a heaving sigh, looking off into the distance behind me.

"I assume you want me to look for it...?"

"Please and thank you. Oh, and don't let anyone know about this, 'kay?"

Nazrin didn't respond. She just stood in place, paralysed, looking out behind me in awe.

"Nazrin? Are you alright?"

Still nothing. I waved a hand in front of her eyes, clicked my fingers, poked her side. No response. Her mouth slowly opened, and her left hand pointed upwards into the sky.

"Huh? Is there something in the-"

I followed her finger as I spoke, and sure enough what she had witnessed was enough to silence me as well. Something impossible was floating in the air. Something absurd, something that had disappeared centuries ago.

But as impossible as it was, the Palanquin ship sailed through the sky regardless.

"...Nazrin...am I dreaming?"

She poked me in the back with her rod again, smirking with a hint of nostalgia as I flinched.

"Guess not."

The ship felt like it took an eternity to land, but in actuality it couldn't have been more than two minutes. The ramp on the deck slowly lowered itself until it reached the ground.

All of it impossible.

And the two people to emerge from within?

"K...Kumoi-san! Captain Minamitsu!"

"It's Captain Murasa, goddammit! Now get up here and give me a hug!"

Well, they were impossible as well.

-----

The worst part about seeing those two disappear had been having no idea where they were or if they were even still alive. Imagine my relief to find out that they'd simply been buried underground nearby along with the Palanquin, only to be pulled out of their sleep by one of the geysers the latest incident had brought around.

I thought for a moment if this might all have been the work of some omniscient youkai, planning things behind the scenes for the best possible ending.

Poke.

"Shou, you're daydreaming again. Not when we have guests."

"Ah, sorry, Nazrin. Thinking of something ridiculous."

This was the second time we'd taken in Murasa and Ichirin as guests, though this time space was much harder to come across given that we only had half a temple left. Eventually we managed to find somewhere to place a table and sit together as a group in the main hall, amidst the collapsed roof and destroyed statue of Vaisravana.

We exchanged silly trivialities. We told them about Gensokyo, about all the new youkai who'd emerged since, about the spellcard system that had been invoked in their absence. I tried to ask them what they'd been doing since we last met. They hadn't been doing anything, they'd been 'buried underground goddammit why are you asking silly questions get me a drink'. They asked the same question of us, and Nazrin and I honestly couldn't come up with a single interesting incident that had happened since...

"...since the attack."

Mentioning that was enough to kill the atmosphere entirely. Nazrin and I stared down at our cups of tea. Ichirin looked awkwardly at Unzan, while Murasa just chugged her drink and slammed the cup into the floor.

Maybe ghosts didn't have a concept of heat. I certainly wouldn't have been able to down a cup of tea in one shot like that without scalding my throat.

"Toramaru-san...can I ask you a question?"

Ichirin seemed nervous as she spoke up, afraid she was about to ask something absurd.

"That ritual the Hakurei maiden performed. Did you recognise it?"

I felt my body shiver a little at the question. It wasn't because I didn't know the answer - I had done my research since, and I knew what Misato had done - but because I knew she wasn't going to like it.

"...Well. I looked into it, and the ritual is apparently known as the Trial of the Makai Butterfly, a ritual designed to punish those who flirt with immortality. Basically, what it does is it traps the target in their own little prison in Hokkai, Makai's farthest outskirts. They're trapped there for the rest of eternity to contemplate their mista-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. We need you to answer something, though."

Murasa cut my sentence short, glaring across at me from the other side of the table. Determination was blazing in her eyes with absurd intensity.

"This ritual. Can you reverse it? Can we bring Hijiri back?"

This was what I hadn't wanted her to ask. I felt my heart sink before I'd even started to talk.

"Well...the ritual needs an item that has emotional value to the subject in order to work. That's why Misato collected the remains of the Tobikura. If we were to collect those pieces and take them to Hokkai, I could use the pagoda to release the seal..."

I hung my head, feeling more powerless than ever as I had to admit the downside in this plan.

"...But that's the problem. The Tobikura fragments would have been scattered after the ritual. They could be anywhere across the world, at any point, in any form. They might even be outside of Gensokyo now. So...it's impossible."

Silence. I didn't have the nerve to look either of them in the eye after saying something like that - they'd come to me looking for hope, and I'd shot them down completely.

It took Nazrin poking me in the side to build up the nerve to look again. I opened my eyes, expecting to meet a pair of distraught faces.

Instead, Ichirin was looking at me with something resembling elation, and Murasa was as cocky as she had been when she asked the question in the first place.

"See, tiger, that's the strangest thing. 'Cause we found a few things floating in the sky on the way over, and they seemed awfully familiar."

My heart skipped a beat. Murasa reached down into a pocket on her shorts, pulling something out.

It couldn't be. Could it? It was absurd, almost impossible.

But I'd already been through enough impossible today. A little more on top shouldn't have been that shocking to me.

"That's...!"

Murasa placed a single piece of the Tobikura on the table, slamming it down dramatically like a decisive move in a game of Go.

"Alright, kiddies, don't get too excited. There are still plenty of these out there for us to find before we can celebrate."

Nazrin and I stared at it in awe for a few seconds, and before we knew it we were wearing the same silly faces as they were. Ichirin turned to Nazrin with a new look of hope on her face.

"Nazrin-san. You'll help us find all of these, won't you?"

Nazrin didn't even take an instant to think it over, nodding as fast as her neck would let her. I motioned towards her as well, a silent reminder of 'you'll need to find the pagoda as well'. She did her best to contain a sigh, which for Nazrin wasn't very well at all.

Murasa's attention turned to me.

"Well, tiger? You're in, right?"

She stretched a hand out towards me, beckoning me to shake it in agreement. I took a second to stare at it, at that outstretched, ghostly hand, and comprehend exactly what it represented.

It was a chance to set right a mistake that had been made hundreds of years ago. An opportunity to save an innocent woman from unfair imprisonment. A chance to pay back a debt from centuries past.

It was something I would have asked for only in my wildest dreams. I had dismissed it as impossible - I didn't have the means to find the fragments, assuming I even could find them. But in the space of two minutes, my life had turned itself on its head.

That happened a lot to me, in retrospect.

"...Well, I was planning to spend today taking a relaxing walk by the riverside, but I think that sounds a lot more interesting."

I clasped Murasa's hand firmly, almost expecting to slip through it rather than actually shake it. Had I been waiting for this moment, silently praying to Vaisravana for a chance to make up for my mistakes and to set free the woman who had given me everything I valued in life?

Perhaps.

Well, if so, he'd certainly been listening.

"Alright, Captain. Next stop, Hokkai!"

-----

A lot of humans assume by default that youkai are extremely intelligent. That they have the brain to go along with their brawn, and that they're capable of useful, witty conversation.

But going on a quest across dimensions to save an imprisoned friend? For some reason, no-one ever seems to think we're capable of that. They think that even the smartest among us are doomed to live every day in just about the same manner, never doing anything revolutionary. A happy enough existence, if a rather dull one.

We're going to prove them wrong. Makai won't stop us. Hokkai won't stop us. Nothing will stop us. This is a rescue that's been 700 years in the making, and we aren't going to let anything get in our way now.

Hijiri...just hang on a little while longer. We're coming for you.

-----

RISING STAR
FIN

-----

Over 63000 words. Literally longer than various novels. Six months of on-and-off writing. The most complicated and thorough piece of fiction I've ever written, and possibly the longest I'll ever write.

And to think it started as an experiment in writing the first-person POV.

Thanks to everyone who's commented and contributed. Until next time.

MysTeariousYukari:
Honestly, happiest ending to a story I have gotten in a while, bravo!

Alfred F. Jones:
I am very proud of you, Rou. Well done.

Fetch()tirade:
1. Copy text.
2. Make a book.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
5. Sued by ZUN.
forbidden 5th panel ftw

This was great. There's nothing more to say.

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