“I can’t help but notice a pattern here…” I said.

“What’s that?” asked Arnold. “I mean, we’re all men, but maybe there’ll be women in the second group.”

We were walking through the woods with twelve strangers and a fairy maid. The fairy was Maroon; she was our guide and escort, since none of us were approved to travel alone. As for the strangers–

They were all big burly immigrants to Gensokyo.

“I’m the shortest guy here,” I said. “By like four inches!”

“Huh,” said Arnold. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“I envy your vantage point.” They weren’t skinny guys, either. I was going to the Scarlet Devil Mansion with a lot of beef. “I don’t think this is a coincidence.”

“Oh, yeah, no way,” said Arnold. He walked fast to match pace with the man in front of us. “Hey dude, what’s your name?”

“Bruno,” said the tall, pale man with a braid. Arnold gave him our names, then went straight for the most important question.

“So, Bruno, what color of sword did you lift?”

“Pardon?”

“I got to the blue katana.”

“Blue katana,” he said. “Of course.”

“Me too,” said another dude. “I’m Chris, by the way.”

“Same,” said yet another stranger.

“Your name is also Chris?”

“No, I also lifted the blue katana. My name is Diego.” He bowed with a flourish. “One of my names is Diego, that is, and none of them are Chris.”

“Oh,” said a fifth man. “That’s funny, because my name actually is Chris.”

“Arm wrestle for the name?” said the first Chris.

“Sure, punk, because I lifted the indigo sword.”

“The broadsword!” exclaimed Arnold.

“Bullshit,” said Chris, or perhaps Bruno. I was having a hard time keeping track.

“And you?” someone asked me.

“Uhh… I’m Jake. I only managed the yellow cutlass.”

“We all start somewhere,” said four dudes at once.

“I bet they hired you for your good looks,” said one, who I was pretty sure was Mr. Speedo from Marisa’s danmaku lesson, but I couldn’t quite be certain because he was wearing a yukata. “The rest of us will be manual laborers.”

“I put my cooking skills on the application, actually,” said Arnold.

“Me too!”

“Well, I prefer to mop the floors, scrub the deck, hold a palm frond, that sort of thing.”

“I was an honest-to-God sailor in the Outside World.”

“Oh? So what?”

“So I could scrub the deck.”

“These people are weird,” said Maroon, rubbing her eyes. She was flying, but also spinning in an attempt to look at each speaker. I was kind of impressed at her omnidirectional movement.

“We’re going to a mansion, not a ship.”

“Either way, I’ll wrestle you for the mop, too.” He stopped and pretended to circle the other man with his fists up. “Wanna spar before the lesson?”

“Let’s focus!” shouted Maroon. Her voice was cheerful but a little strained. I noticed there were bags under her eyes. She must have gotten up early to come get us.

“Of course, sorry Miss Maroon.” The gaggle of buff men fell into line behind the fairy.

We walked for a few more minutes, and in that time the conversation resumed. They started talking about whether there were sources of protein in Gensokyo other than chicken and eggs. At some point one dropped to do push ups, and two more lifted him up and told him to stop fucking around.

“Don’t keep Miss Maroon waiting,” said Diego. “That’s bad manners.”

“I feel a bit out of place,” I said to Maroon as we walked.

“Me too!” she squeaked, her cheeks flushed.

I narrowed my eyes. “Do you like strong men?” It was kind of endearing, but all of those present were at least three times as tall as her, so it was also kind of horrifying. I hoped none of them liked fairies.

“Yes!” she said, oblivious. “I’m not used to people following my orders.”

“Ah, that makes more sense.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Fairies were supposedly somewhat shy around humans, in addition to all their disagreeable qualities. Perhaps the bigger deal here was that Maroon was at the bottom of the totem pole at the Scarlet Devil Mansion, not even rating a mention in the games. She must have never led a group of people in her life.

If you thought about it, she’d been promoted when we were hired. An unexpected promotion to manager would make anyone uncomfortable.

“You’re escorting us,” I said. “In fact, I’d say you are protecting us. Thank you.”

She put up a fist. “I will protect you with my life!” At this a chorus of hell-yea’s and thank-you’s came from the group.

We were approaching Misty Lake. It was foggy, but I could still make out the bush I’d hidden beneath.

“Do you mind if we stop here to catch our breath?” I asked.

“I can keep going,” said Arnold.

“Of course,” I said. “But the lake is beautiful, isn’t it? Let’s enjoy our first foray into Gensokyo at large!”

“Sure!” said Maroon, and then: “Halt!” The men halted. The fairy giggled and flew a few feet higher.

“Okay,” said Arnold. “But just for a bit. I’m so excited to start the lesson! I can barely sit still!”

“I’m glad,” I said, staring out into the water.

“I love the lake,” said Maroon. “I sometimes come here when I’m not working.”

“You don’t say,” I said.

“It’s better in the afternoon, when the fog goes away.”

—

“We are here!” announced Maroon as we approached the gate.

The Scarlet Devil Mansion was a giant white-stuccoed building with a clock tower in the middle. It was surrounded by a red brick fence with cast iron bars that were twelve feet high with spikes on top. It occurred to me that the fence was useless, because so many in Gensokyo could fly. Perhaps etiquette demanded that we approach the gate, but the tall fence was an affectation.

Once we were there we spoke to the gate guard, who (according to Wiki) might also be an affectation.

“Took you long enough,” said Hong Meiling. She was a tall, beautiful woman, whose features defied nationality. Her red hair was braided on either side of her face and very poorly contained by a green beret. She wore baggy white pants and a green uniform top. Meiling stood by the gate to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, looking out at us with a cool, somewhat-tired gaze.

She’d been dozing until we got close, I was ninety percent sure, but the fatigue seemed to be burning away as I watched.

“Miss Hon,” said Maroon, making me realize I knew nothing about speaking Chinese. “I’m so sorry we’re late!”

The possibly-a-dragon waved a hand. “It’s fine, Maroon. I take it there was no trouble?”

“None!”

“Good. You are dismissed.” Maroon fluttered over the gate and toward the mansion, not bothering to wait for it to be opened. Meiling smiled at us after she was gone.

The gate guard sized us up as she walked forward. The closest man struggled to keep still as she walked around him. She didn’t go so far as to touch him; only to look up and down as she walked.

Meiling did the same to all of us, even me. If she found me deficient she didn’t say anything. After several awkward, silent seconds of examining us, she stood in the middle of our group.

“Welcome to the Scarlet Devil Mansion. I’m here to give you a lesson as a sort of advance payment. You’ll be working all day after this, but the Mistress has said that I should test you now, even if our lessons will be in the evenings, otherwise.”

“What kind of lesson?” asked a man.

“A fun one.” She spun, sending out a spiral of bright red danmaku, and I threw myself to the ground. To my surprise I was the only one who attempted to dodge, and even more surprising was that I succeeded.

Then Meling adopted a fighting stance and I had flashbacks to nearly getting destroyed by a buddhist nun. The difference was that Meiling wore pants. I wonder if that said more about Hijiri or Meiling.

“Impressive,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about my dodge, or about the others, because to my incredible dismay the dozen men all around me also got into fighting form. They were adopting stances from various disciplines. Even Arnold was putting up his fists as he dropped his ax.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“What are you doing?” I hissed at him as I stood up.

“Fighting. Duh.”

“This isn’t smart!” I said, my voice rising to a cry as he leapt forward. Meiling threw a Chris or a Diego or somebody into the wall behind her, like a piece of wet laundry. Arnold got there second and she punched him in the solar plexus with her balled fist. He went flying.

The idiot! He was going to be killed! I ran to him as he coughed, his ribs broken or worse–or what I thought was coughing. I realized he was actually laughing.

“She wants to fight us, Jake!” he said, leaping to his feet.

“But–”

“It’s danmaku. It doesn’t hurt you, goofball!”

“Your shirt has a hole in it,” I said, lamely.

“Fuck my shirt!” He ran back into the fray. “I’m a getchu, Maylin!”

I sighed, and for a moment I regretted dodging what was, in retrospect, an invitation. Meiling continued tossing men around with a gleeful expression. Some were trying chops or kicks on her, but she blocked them effortlessly and precisely before throwing them all the same.

It made me wonder whether her arms and legs counted as her person, for danmaku–shouldn’t hitting them also count as hitting her? And what would Isaac Newton have had to say about danmaku?

Once I thought about it, the games had tiny hitboxes. Maybe parts of people could be immune?

A man tumbled past me, making me jump out of the way. Did he count as danmaku when Meiling chucked him? He ran back into the fray.

Meiling roared and made a leaping kick. That blow went through Diego’s head, causing him to stumble back instead of breaking his neck. I wondered why some blows sent people flying and others went through. I had the absurd thought that his head wasn’t in his hitbox.

Nobody seemed to be getting hurt.

I wasn’t there to learn from Meiling, per se, but I could still learn something. I realized I could also show up the meatheads. I stuck out my hand, and concentrated on my will to growth, and to do something useful even if the others were fucking around.

At the last second I thought that using a ranged attack during a melee spar might be considered rude.

“En garde!” I called as I released three red vectors of danmaku.

They shot out, one straight for her and one off to each side. I couldn’t control the amount very well, yet, but I’d ensured that these were going right for her. It was focused danmaku. That was appropriate for this interaction, because I was the ‘outsider beseeching’ in this case. Keine had taught us that defense was always unfocused and omnidirectional, while offense varied in directness but was more or less always targeted.

On the other hand, if a single person was fighting many, the single person was supposed to use direct fire as a matter of honor, or something. Maybe I was doing it wrong; Meiling was fighting all of us.

Meiling danced between my bullets and straight toward me, growing in my sight until I couldn’t deny that she was just a bit taller than me.

“En garde?” she asked, from way inside my reach. She had a feral smile. Meiling spun, kicking my feet out from under me and producing a flurry of danmaku shots–

–several of which hit me and filled me with a desire to impress her and also strike her body because that would be impressive indeed–

–but she wasn’t done. Her arm locked with her fist as solid as rock. I could see her coming in for an uppercut like a meteorite–no, an eruption–and since my feet weren’t on the ground I could do not a damn thing about it except hope I wouldn't be thrown all the way back to the lake.

I was like a baseball tossed up for a bat!

Maybe it’d just go through my stomach and I’d get a chance to try and punch her or something. That’d be fun. That’s all I wanted. If I could punch some dudes–Meiling, rather–it’d make me so damn happy.

“Yoink,” said Sakuya, in a landscape that was suddenly black and white and frozen solid. Except for me. I fell on my backside.

“What’d you go and do that for?” I said. “It was just getting good!”

—

I was bouncing on my feet as we walked away. Part of me wanted to go back through the gate and smack Meiling across the face while time was still frozen… but I resisted. That wouldn’t have impressed anyone.

Listening to Sakuya outline a basic plan for training the fairies had given me a chance to calm down, at least. I’d tutor them individually after testing their abilities, she said, and pick one or a few to focus on. The others could catch up later.

I tried to pay attention to where we were going. Sakuya led me through another open gate and a courtyard with seven varieties of plants that were probably more colorful when time flowed. We went around to a back entrance to the mansion. She could still open doors when time was frozen, I discovered.

I hadn’t ever thought about fairy shoes until I saw two dozen pairs sitting in a pile at the worker entrance.

“Don’t they fly?” I asked. My voice was thunderously loud in the perfect silence of stopped time.

“Hmm?” said Sakuya at a reasonable volume. “Oh, they do indeed. Some don’t remember they’ve forgotten their shoes until they turn up for work the next evening.” She dropped a pair of slippers in front of me, so I put them on. The new inside shoes fit perfectly.

“I guess fairies are habitual late sleepers,” I said.

“Of course not. Also, I would appreciate it if you remain quiet while time is frozen.”

I nodded, and held in my questions like ‘how does sound even work during frozen time,’ or ‘light that is slowed is redshifted, not monochrome’, or ‘does talking make a sonic boom or something, even though moving somehow doesn’t?’

Sakuya led us onward. I tried to put on a stoic face, like a professional, even though she’d retrieved me while I was literally falling on my ass. We were zig-zagging down red-carpeted hallways and through spotless sitting rooms.

I didn’t think she was trying to get me lost until we cut across a great hall filled with paintings, went into a storage room for a bit, then came back out into the same great hall a hundred feet further on. We walked down it for a while, cut through another room with a mineral collection in it, and finally stopped in front of a door painted with the profile of a fairy that was about to pick her nose.

Why was there a fairy picking her nose on the door? I knew if I questioned anything I’d probably risk losing some of Sakuya’s respect, so I tried to come at it from an angle.

“Are these the fairies’ quarters?”

“No,” said Sakuya, slowly, and with some apparent concern for my sanity. “We’re at the library. So you should be quiet,” she added, with her finger up to her lips.

I realized I’d misinterpreted the image on the door, and my desire to present some sort of professional or regal facade disintegrated in the acid of my embarrassment.

“Can anyone even hear us with time stopped?” I asked.

Sakuya blinked, then unfroze time. “I forget about that, sometimes. No, they cannot.” Without another word we entered the library.

It was bedlam. A dozen screaming fairies were battling with danmaku in a free-for-all that went in every direction. I thought it was a fight between fairies, but magical tomes were swirling in the mix and blasting anything that came near them, as well. I watched one of the fairies shoot up and away from the brawl; she bounced off a metal plate that manifested from nothing, and fell back into the chaos.

Patchouli Knowledge was sitting at a desk piled high with books, and also reading. She lifted a hand; another fairy pinged off a giant flying boulder and fell back toward the center of mass in the battle. The summoned boulder vanished as fast as it appeared. Patchouli lazily lifted a finger toward us, causing a purple magical barrier to intercept some stray danmaku that was heading our way.

I’d seen her glance away from the page to do it, so her powers weren’t limitless.

“Actually,” I said to Sakuya, “Maybe stopped time would–”

“Good luck,” she said, disappearing instantly.

I walked toward Patchouli’s desk. Danmaku continued to rain down, but the magical disk moved with me and kept any from intercepting me. Ahead I saw Maroon, who was holding a box of crayons and softly crying. She sniffed. She was the only fairy present that wasn’t screaming and fighting.

“Welcome, Mister Thorne,” said Patchouli. “Good timing.”

“Thank you, Miss Knowledge.” Saying the English word felt a little weird. I wished I could just call her Head Librarian or something. “Is it good timing?”

“Yes. I’m glad you are here to witness your would-be students frolicking.” A page turned itself in front of her and her hand gracefully moved to point at the ceiling. I wondered why she bothered keeping her left hand on the book at all, when she clearly had telekinesis.

There was a thud as a fairy impacted the floor right next to me.

“The Scarlet Devil Mansion is a much more violent place than I had imagined,” I said. I went to offer the fallen fairy a hand. She shook herself off and glared up at me.

Her mouth stretched from ear to ear with dozens of spindly teeth; her eyes were yellow with diamond pupils; she hissed at me while wagging a forked tongue.

“FUCK!” I said. Then her face melted back into that of a young girl’s.

“Sorry!” she said. “Forgot who I was talkin’ to!” She made a peace sign, giggled, and flew back into battle.

“That’s a fairy?”

“They all have names, human,” said Patchouli. “Needles is an imp. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t belabor the fact. She’s sensitive.” Another page turned. “We provide them with prosthetics, when necessary.”

“D–did you choose her name, or did she?” I suspected that Patchouli Knowledge was particularly bad at picking names, if she named them after their teeth.

“Ojou-sama named her, actually. Needles is good at sewing and needlework, as you might expect.” She turned another page. A gesture, and there was another crash. “She likes pine trees, so the name is appropriate in multiple ways. Also, this is approximately eighty percent intensity, just so you know.” Her voice was harsh and clipped; perhaps she was concentrating on preventing shelves from falling over with her magic.

“I see. Well. We’ll have to calm them down before we can test them.”

“I already have a contingency for that,” she replied. “While we wait, would you like me to recount the events that set them off?”

“Yes.” I had resolved to accept any information whatsoever that any youkai offered me, but especially from the one literally named Knowledge.

“When Maroon came back, I invited her to sit down with a coloring book. Fairies understand cause and effect quite well, despite what you might think, and it was immediately inferred that the coloring book would have to come from somewhere. I’d given the others coloring books earlier this morning. Emerald recognized a potential threat to her possessions, which are few, and began a dominance display. Cerulean leapt to Maroon’s aid–”

“I didn’t ask her to!” said Maroon.

“–unrequested, causing a fight to break out. Sunbeam and Dewdrop each owe Emerald and Cerulean a favor, respectively, so they entered the conflict as a method for discharging their debts. What’s more, there is lingering resentment between Needles and Sunbeam–”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t tell them apart. Maybe one day I’ll be able to, but for now you might want to talk about them in the abstract.” I was pretty sure that the green-haired one was Emerald, but I hadn’t really absorbed Needles’ friendly face and they were all wearing identical maid uniforms. Hair color wasn’t enough to distinguish them with certainty.

“I’ll skip straight to the punchline,” said Patchouli, dryly. The pages in the book in front of her fluttered, as though she were thumbing past them. She gestured and a stack of thin paper books–coloring books–floated across the desk. “I made extra. There was never a shortage.”

“I’m sorry,” said Maroon.

“It’s not your fault,” said both Patchouli and I, although in very different tones.

“If they were fighting over coloring books, this could have helped,” added Patchouli. “That’s not what they’re fighting over, so it doesn’t. Let this be your first lesson about fairy behavior. To understand why a fairy does something, you must understand the context. Fairies never exist in isolation, and they are five-dimensional beings.”

I would try to take the lesson to heart, at least the part I could understand. Fairies were nature spirits; it made sense for them to be particularly affected by their environment. The library was clearly too small a place for them. I wondered if they’d calm down faster outside, or whether making them wear maid clothes affected them, somehow. The psychic energy that made up most of the denizens of Gensokyo was still incomprehensible to me.

I was in a library so maybe I could figure some things out by reading. However, there were practical matters to attend to first.

“Why do you want them to read?” I asked.

“Well, I can’t provide them with an iPad.”

“...what?”

“Books are the pinnacle of entertainment in Gensokyo.”

“This is just to distract them?” Also, Patchouli was behind the times if she didn’t recommend an iPhone or iEye.

“There is no ‘just’ here,” said Patchouli. “We have many reasons. I can make up a few more for you, if you’d like.”

As she spoke there was a change in cadence in the fight. Several of the fairies fell still. Then they all stopped what they were doing as they fluttered down to the floor.

“Excellent,” said the Head Librarian. “Observe, as context enters this room.”

The fairy maids (and imps, and whatever else) lined up in front of the desk. They adjusted their maid clothes and stood up straight. Their grimaces, snarls, and errant teeth disappeared. An almost robotic professionalism overcame them, like they were roombas shaped as little girls, just waiting to be released on the carpet. Even Maroon dried her tears and leapt over the desk into her place at the end of the line.

Remilia Scarlet entered the library.