I put my hands up. If Marisa shot the Mini-Hakkero at me I’d be totally screwed. The junk filling her home to the brim might get out of my way if I dove at it, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t fly fast enough to dodge the laser from fifteen paces even in ideal conditions. My broken ankle and leg brace made it beyond impossible.

“I’m Jake Thorne,” I said. “Student of danmaku.”

“Kirisame Marisa,” said the witch. “Ordinary Magician. I kinda remember ‘ya, a lackey for the vampire?”

“Um. I suppose so.” I worked for Okina, technically.

“What I should have asked ‘ya is who you think you are. ‘Cause I think you think you’re a home invader.” She smiled and stretched. “On a mission, perhaps?”

There was an explosion of movement behind her. Black and white clothes flew down the stairs and swirled around Marisa, displacing her pajamas in a blur of activity.

Her hair combed and braided itself. There was a single braid on one side of her face. Marisa was in her standard black and white buttoned dress. Her tall and wide witch’s hat fluttered down and landed on her, making her seem smaller. The nightclothes flew over the piles of junk to land in a washing machine on the other side of the kitchen. The lid slammed and it turned itself on.

I was having a hard time understanding how she’d changed clothes. The magic I could accept, it was the topology that didn’t make sense. I hadn’t seen her dress fly down over her head, and she hadn’t hopped to let her pajama bottoms escape. Did they unsew themselves? Were they attached with velcro?

Nevertheless, the ‘ordinary’ magician had changed in front of me while keeping a weapon pointed at my face the entire time. I’d glanced away from the weapon, but I hadn’t seen anything interesting except for the magic.

“Home invading’s an admirable profession,” she said. “If left to professionals. You were talking to yourself, an amateur mistake.”

“I’m just here for my hat,” I said, pointing at the hook on the wall. She tilted her head.

“My hat, ‘ya mean?”

“No, it’s–” I started to say, but she wiggled the Mini-Hakkero and I lost my nerve.

“Hah. I was thinking that Patchy sent ‘ya to try to take back the books? I see you’ve got some swag.”

I looked at the magical crystal that was still hovering beside me. I’d forgotten about Patchouli!

“There’s no way she wants you to get the hat,” said Marisa. My hat was for farmers, to block the sun, so the misunderstanding made more than zero sense. Perhaps more sense than my certainty that I needed it to continue my mission to the underground.

“Patchouli, are you there?” I asked. No response came.

“I’m Marisa,” said Marisa. “Did ya’ escape from an asylum or something?”

“No, Miss Knowledge was using telepathy to communicate,” I said.

“Pff. She’s a showoff, that’s ‘fer sure.” When I’d last heard from the librarian she was starting to vomit from motion sickness. She had probably left the viewing table and the library. “Why ain’t she talking to me, then?”

“She’ll be back in a moment. She’ll explain, so please wait patiently.”

“Sure thing,” said Marisa. “I love waiting.”

She fluidly put her Mini-Hakkero into a pocket as she stepped off the stairs and toward the kitchen. The piles of junk repositioned themselves around her. The witch expertly caught a flying frying pan as it tried to sail by. I put down my hands.

“I aim to get a whole fifteen minutes of waiting a day. I need practice, y’see. I sometimes don’t meet my goal, but, y’know.” She turned on a gas oven, and slammed the pan down. “It’s the thought that counts.”

“What are you doing?”

“Makin’ breakfast,” she said. “You gotta whack ‘em good. Stuns ‘em for a bit.” She went to one of her refrigerators, and used her hat to catch some flying eggs. Then she jumped and backhanded a stick of butter out of the air. “I’ll tell ‘ya what. If Patchy’s vouched for ‘ya before I’ve finished eating my scrambled eggs, I’ll let ‘ya go!”

“With my hat?”

“Eh.” She walked over and smashed the eggs into the pan, shell and all. A moment later the shells flew off into the garbage, while the shredded yolks remained. An instant scramble.

“Where do you get your food?” I asked. Butter was a rare commodity in Gensokyo. My stomach was rumbling from the mere memory of it.

“Miss Yakumo was paying me with the stuff,” she said, shaking her head. “Gotta eat it before it goes bad. Want some?”

“Um, yes please,” I said. “Will I owe you anything?”

“Nah,” she said. “You’re either a guest or a thief, and neither them’s got to pay, do they? I’ll admit I don’t host either of those, all that much. Just a sec’.”

She gestured and her broom flew out from the closet and into her hands. She lined up like she was a kendo swordswoman and slowly stepped forward. While dishware flew around her she swung downward and slapped a plate out of the air. It shattered into a hundred pieces. Then she smashed another.

With a gesture the plates healed themselves.

“Oh,” said Marisa, “Bad luck, that one’s upside-down.” Swing; smash. “There’s a clean one!”

“Seems like a lot of effort to go to, to work around a spell,” I said.

“To you. No wonder you’re such a bad criminal.” She hooked a spatula out of the air and slapped it against her thigh until it gave up. “Smashin’ and grabbin’s way more fun than havin’ to remember where you left something!” She deftly shattered two teacups by jabbing them with her broomstick, only to heal them and set them by the stove. She put on a kettle, one of the few things that couldn’t fly.

I supposed it was because the kettle was always out, always used in the same place, and often full of dangerously hot liquid. Marisa wasn’t crazy.

I considered it, and decided she was partially insane. All of her other possessions were trying to dodge and escape her. It would be exhausting to deal with, and she probably had to remember the general location of all the junk anyway. On the other hand, it might make for good danmaku practice, in a sense, because everything was automatically dodging. It might even help her hone her reflexes.

“You have a point,” I said. She nodded and continued to cook. Marisa hit a bell pepper like a baseball, defeating it, then strangled it over the eggs. It crumbled into tiny cubes. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Go fer it,” she said. “I’m pretty questionable.”

Instead of pumping her for information about Yukari, or asking about youkai, magical items, powerful danmaku, the youkai rebellion, or even trying to get back my hat, I asked her what she thought about the humans of Human Town.

“I like ‘em,” she said. “Many are lecherous. It’s refreshing.”

“Huh?”

“The old humans were all afraid and stuff. These ones are so forward.” The eggs had already been scrambled, and she was scraping them onto our plates. “A lot of ‘em are fans. Too bad for ‘em that I’m probably a lesbian.”

“Uhh… probably?” How could she not know?

“Haven’t decided yet. Hadn’t been thinking about children until recently.” She waved her hand to clear the table, and sat in a chair without checking what was there, because it would move. The witch gestured to another chair. “The selection’s been piss-poor, too! Say, can’t you do danmaku?”

“Uhhh…” Was she preparing to battle me, bed me, or murder me? I was not prepared for this. I sat down.

She laughed. “Well, you didn’t come here to steal anybody’s heart, that’s for sure!” She poured some tea. “I’m going to say yes to one of ‘em soon, see if it does anything for me. Or maybe three, gotta test it fairly.”

“I, uhhhh….”

“God dammit you’re stupid!” She sipped her tea. “Anyway, tell your friends!”

“I… I will, actually.” I made a note to tell Arnold that the witch might be looking for a date in the near future. If he timed it right… I didn’t think he wanted kids, though, or to be a datapoint in an experiment. I also had no idea whether he’d be interested in Marisa like that. Without putting it delicately, she wasn’t very feminine.

“I like the old-style humans too, don’t get me wrong. They’re fine in small doses.” She made a face as she tasted her scrambled eggs, then squeezed some honey onto them from a small plastic bear.

“Do you care about protecting the humans of Gensokyo?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation toward familiar ground.

“Obviously.” She took another bite and offered me the honey bear. Honey on eggs was weird, but so was Kirisame Marisa. “I stay up all night doing it.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Well, there’s another way you can help the humans of Gensokyo,” I said as we sat down to breakfast at five in the afternoon.

–

“A delightful proposition,” said Marisa after I asked her to join the human resistance. She caught a napkin that tried to take off and used it to wipe her face. “I’m usually ‘da brains and ‘da muscle of the operation. It would be fun to delegate for a change.”

“If our negotiations go well, you won’t even have to fight,” I said. “Either way, there will be benefits for all of the humans in Gensokyo.”

“Oh yeah? Even me?” She sat back in her chair. “I’m already getting basically everything I want from the youkai. And more!”

“Well, do you want human students?”

“I hate teachin’.”

“Ah, well, if you wanted… a boyfriend or girlfriend to visit from the village, it would be safer for them after humans earned more rights.”

“I’m more of a go-get-em kind of lady than a come-hither kind,” she said, sipping her tea. “I hate having visitors.” I held in my reflexive apology for visiting.

“Er, well, if you decide to have kids, it will be safer for them.”

“What youkai would dare attack Kirisame Marisa’s kids?” She finished her tea.

“None, especially not if Miss Kirisame negotiated better treatment for the humans.” I finished my own tea. “Think about it. It would be a safer world to have children in.”

“I will think about it. Oh, and time’s up.” She drew her weapon and pointed it at me before I could even stand.

“Pa–” I started.

“Darn,” said Marisa. “I can hear ‘er.” She looked at the crystal and waved. Then she frowned. “It’s my hat, now.”

Don’t worry, said Patchouli's voice in my mind. I’ll convince her. In the meantime, go retrieve your hat, just in case I fail.

“You aren’t gonna shoot me, right?” I asked Marisa, but I was actually communicating my hesitation to Patchouli. The inability for her to talk to both of us at once was a hindrance. After a moment Marisa lowered the magical wooden furnace.

She can’t. Her house would burn down. I’d been played for a fool. At least it came with free food.

“I found it, fair and square,” said Marisa. She wasn’t talking to me. She went to the sink, and the dishes scrubbed themselves as she approached, probably out of fear. “I thought he wanted the books!”

I knew better than to interrupt. I pushed out my chair as well.

“Yeah, well, you could come and take ‘em back anytime.”

I looked at my hat. It still hadn’t moved. As I took a step forward the junk was dislodged, but the witch wasn’t paying attention anymore and it moved quietly.

“That sounds awesome. I should go to Hell again, for old times’ sake!”

Marisa glanced at me. I stopped approaching my hat, and tried to appear nonchalant. The witch frowned and began to walk toward me, but she also stopped short.

“I suppose, but I’m no stranger to moonlightin’! ‘Sides, it’d take like three tries?”

Their conversation continued. I slowly inched my way toward the hat. The moving items made my movement super obvious, perhaps, but Marisa was undoubtedly used to ignoring them. She was pacing back and forth herself.

“I didn’t say anything about the leg ‘cause that’d be discrimination, but did ‘ya notice the broken leg?”

I was within arm’s reach of the hat. I looked at it, and back at Marisa.

“I don’t care how many people he’s in cahoots with!”

Negotiations were breaking down. I just had to be fast enough, I thought. I prepared to jump on the hat. I could probably catch it, Marisa had done the same half a dozen times.

“Why?” she said, stopping short. “Who cares ‘bout a fairy?”

All I wanted was to have my hat back so that I could leave. Before I could make my move, the hat jumped out and landed on my head. I was taken aback. It had moved on its own right back to me.

Marisa sighed. “Sorry. Okay, it is his. Sorry.”

I let out a breath. I’d gotten my hat back. Marisa had been convinced; I was safe. I licked my lips, and tasted the residue of honey.

“No,” said Marisa with a frown.

The taste was growing stronger. The witch’s brow was furrowed.

“I’m hanging up now.”

It didn’t work that way, I thought, just before Marisa shot the crystal with a star-shaped bolt of magic and it exploded. The pieces slowed to a crawl in mid-air, then settled all around me like grasshoppers that had been disturbed.

There was an awkward silence. I noticed that Marisa’s cheeks were red. The honey taste wasn’t fading.

“Patchouli hates it when I do that,” I said, trying to defuse things.

“No kidding?” she asked. “Me too! And you are already on a first-name basis, huh?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I meant Miss Knowledge. I forget sometimes. I’m a foreigner.”

“Hmm. You know, that girl’s very shy. She doesn’t ask many people for help.” The witch took a tornado-like step toward me. “She doesn’t help just anybody.”

I nodded quickly. “She’s hard to understand. I think she hates me.” I didn’t, but the look on Marisa’s face was scaring the crap out of me. The honey taste was quickly burning off, and I couldn’t imagine it was being replaced by anything good. Neither could I imagine why she’d been afraid in the first place.

“She doesn’t hate just anybody, either. It’s weird. You’d think she’d come to get her books herself at some point, wouldn’t ya?”

“She, uh, she never goes outside. It’s not safe.”

“Funny, she told me the same thing. And yet…she just threatened to come here and force me to give up the hat. With danmaku.” Marisa stared at me. “Unless I misunderstood. Maybe she was gonna send one of her little servants. Maybe she was blustering, or lying. Does she lie to you?”

“I don’t, uh…”

“Get out of my house, Mister Thorne.”

I hastened to obey, sending all of her junk into a whirlwind of activity. Marisa followed me to the door, which opened in front of us automatically. She had her broom and I was afraid that she’d start shooing me like a mouse.

I didn’t hesitate to cross the threshold. It was a mistake. No sooner had I touched the grass than she drew her Mini-Hakkero and fired.

“Master Spark!” I heard her say after a huge beam of light engulfed me. I was a bug in a stream from a fire-hydrant made of light. The clearing’s radius was one Master Spark’s length away from the house, I noticed.

I stumbled to get out of the beam because I couldn’t roll. Danmaku couldn’t hit you multiple times per second, or I’d have lost instantly. Only the doorframe prevented her from tracking me with it.

The compulsion was for me to give her the hat back, which I thought was kind of bitchy, and also for me to submit to her, which I didn’t want to do, and also half a dozen other things that I didn’t quite understand. It was a maelstrom of emotions, just like the maelstrom of garbage.

Humans were complicated.

“Look, I don’t–” I started.

Rainbow stars were bursting out from the witch, so I hastened to dodge. One struck me, and the compulsion grew stronger. I knew Marisa felt a growing contempt for me and a confusion. She didn’t even want the hat; she had a lot of those already. She wanted to possess it, but not to do anything with it.

“It’s my fucking hat!” I shouted. “Conviction Mines!”

Marisa cleared the nearest burst of danmaku with a blast from her Mini-Hakkero, completely unnecessary, and she didn’t bother flying into any others because she wasn’t a youkai. Instead she flew into the air.

“Found in the Woods!” shouted Sasha. Green trees of danmaku sprouted up all around me, providing cover as they exploded. “Run!”

I flew instead, into the cover of the genuine trees. Nazrin was chittering and fleeing ahead of us already. We ran after her.

I was forced to land and hobble. After a moment, I realized that Marisa wasn’t pursuing us. I looked over my shoulder. She was blasting the ground near her house. A lot of small youkai had appeared, probably to feast on the mines I’d left behind.

“What the hell happened?” asked Sasha as we hastened away.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

–

“So you tried to complete Sasha’s mission, and you screwed it up,” said Wiki. “Reducing the number of powerful humans we might ally from three to two.”

“Three and a half to two and a half,” I said morosely.

“Way to go, jackass,” said Sasha. “You should have left my mission to me.”

“It was going fine at first!” I said. “And hey, that’s super rich. You’ve been to the Fantastic Blowhole three more times than I have!”

“You were the one who asked for my help,” said Sasha.

I sighed. “Good point. Sorry.”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s probably not your fault. I’m honestly amazed she didn’t blast you on sight.”

“It was a low expectation mission,” said Wiki. “What went wrong?”

“I have no idea.” I said. “We had a nice conversation over breakfast, and then Patchouli talked to her with telepathy and Marisa got pissed.”

“Sounds like Miss Knowledge blew it for us, then,” said Wiki. “You’d think she’d know better. Subterranean Animism is canon, so we know they’ve worked together at least once.”

“Patchouli knew a lot about Marisa’s habits,” I said. “Although, she’d never been to her house, it sounded like. She didn’t know about the ‘tornado of garbage’ spell.”

“The what?” Our debriefing session lasted a while.

Sasha excused herself to sleep, and I practiced balancing on my crutch. Arnold kept moving the bench, until he declared that we also needed a table to balance the room. I was getting tired of going around in circles with Wiki, especially when he started theorizing that Patchouli was using me as a pawn in a social game against Marisa.

It was about that time that a fairy maid knocked on our door. It was Needles. The green-haired youkai dumped a bag with two dozen crystals in it, all of which rose into the air to float around me as the fairy cackled.

“Can I keep the bag?” I called after her as she flew away. “Dang. Emeff might not sleep well with all of these bumping against the bars.” The crystals were a riot of colors, instead of all being purple–yellows, greens, reds and teals. No two were alike.

“Don’t worry,” said Arnold. “I’ve got an empty potato sack in the cupboard.”

“Miss Knowledge,” said Wiki, loud and toward the horde of floating rocks. “Are you using Jake to prod Marisa into proposing, or perhaps to gather information about your enemy’s stronghold?”

No answer came.

“She doesn’t watch the crystals twenty-four seven,” I said.

“Ah, well,” he said.

“Let’s change the topic. Now’s as good a time as any for the debrief about the Outside World.”

“It really isn’t,” he said, giving a crystal some side-eye. “You need your rest. I don’t want to keep you up all night.”

“It’s the weekend. I can stay up late.”

Arnold and I started stuffing the communication devices into a sack. When two crystals got too close together they stopped being able to fly, which was good, because otherwise we’d have to treat the bag as a bundle of rock-hard balloons.

“You might be unable to sleep after I explain the situation,” said Wiki. “And almost the entire Human Town will be gathering tomorrow, to make up for the calorie deficit. You’ll have to repel the youkai and escort us.”

“I won’t be able to sleep?” I asked. “Why?”

“That’s what happened to me when I put it together.” Even as he spoke, he was sorting through his notes. It smelled like someone was cooking meat outside, which I realized was impossible.

“Now I’m not going to be able to sleep because I’ll be worried!” I said. “Put what together?”

“I want an unbiased opinion, so I’ve decided I’m not going to tell you my conclusion. Let me show you the evidence first, instead.” We finished putting the crystals away and set the bag by the chicken cage as a matter of tradition. “Up in the room, though.”

He was right. After he’d said everything I didn’t sleep that night. Not least because we disagreed about the new problems plaguing the Outside World.