queenoflogs | A funny thing happened...

Entry tags:

A funny thing happened...

Characters: Signum and Marisa
Date: June 7
Summary: A trip to the Wild Places gets sidetracked by plot hitting them in the face. Literally.
Warnings: Quite probably abusive language

After deciding to head to the Wild Places to meet up with Marisa for some demonstration (and possibly firepower coordination against the Queen), Signum thinks nothing of flying over towards the River. She was comfortable with the Gardens' layout by now, and while she knew her flight would fail as soon as she entered the area of chaotic magic, flying still shaved a great deal of time off the journey, and she'd made this approximate trip several times before while testing the Gardens' extent and borders.

Which is why it surprises her immensely when she smacks head-first into a wall of nothing where previously there had perfectly flyable air, just as the River was coming into view. The resultant shock and pain leave Signum letting out a rare stream of angry curses as she tries to figure out what happened, which knowing her luck would be when her new ally shows up.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"If she's anything like me, I'll love to meet her!" Marisa replies, hovering now about a couple of metres above ground.

"The Wild Places are still technically part of the Gardens, aren't they? My guess is that someone is messing around in the Wilds, and they made a barrier to prevent anyone from interfering! It's another incident!"

Behind Marisa, shadowy wisps, barely visible, begin to gather and form.

Signum spots the shadowy effect, lands, and readies her sword again, thankful that she was already transformed and wearing her armor.

"I think we're about to see the results of this plot," Signum comments, but before she can continue, another, lighter voice calls out from the trees behind her.

"Oh, I see now yer gettin' all worked up!" a playful voice with a far more serious edge to it calls out from behind Signum. She whirls, expecting to spot another enemy, but instead sees nothing but a grinning little girl in a wheelchair.

Thousands of questions explode into Signum's mind, beginning with 'why are you nine again' and 'how did you get out here in a wheelchair', but she can only vocalize the most pressing one: "...Hayate?"

"Who's tha-?" Marisa begins, but is cut off by a swish of ofuda flying just past her head. Red on white - it couldn't be -

"Looks like you're up to no good again, Marisa." an all too familiar voice sounds, and she looks up to see a girl, no older than she was, holding a gohei in one hand and a slip of paper in the other.

"Reimu?!"

"Makin' me come back for you...you're so slow, Signum," chides the younger-looking of the interlopers as she wheels forward in a shaky way over the rough ground. Signum darts forward to help the child but is stopped by an absolutely murderous glare.

"Ain't you figured out how to escape yet, Signum?" 'Hayate' demands. "I swear, you're so goddamn stupid! How're you gonna protect me in here? Oh wait, that's right, ya can't do that anyway 'cause you're dead!"

"I'm..." Signum stutters and pauses, "w-what?"

"What do you think happens when you let some whore with anti-magic powers stab you through yer fat chest?" the child demands angrily and vulgarly. "So stupid. And to think I used ta like you for bein' my dumb muscle. Couldn' even do that right, an' ya left me all alone. Even here, I had ta move on on my own. Me an' Vita an' Fate an' everyone left you because yer too dumb to live. Yeah, even dumber'n Vita."

Signum's eyes narrow just a little at that. That was crossing a line. "But...Hayate, I...I want to be with you. That's all I've ever wanted..."

The wheelchair-bound girl glares at the knight with the force of an open-palmed slap. "Swords don't get ta want things."

Marisa starts towards Signum, thinking of demanding the wheelchair-bound girl to lay off of the warrior, but a flurry of needles that she barely manages to dodge means that her distance away from Signum increases.

"Well? Aren't you going to use any of that powerful magic of yours?" Reimu states, releasing another barrage of ofuda at Marisa with a casual sweep of her arm. "Or maybe... you can't."

Marisa growls, partially in frustration and with a creeping fear growing in her gut. "Get the hell out of my way!"

"Why should I listen to you?" the red-white shrine maiden replies, sending yin yang orbs and red bullets at Marisa now. "Everyone knows you're just a pretender. You're no different from an ordinary villager - no, you're less than one. Go back to the village and let us real fighters handle it!"

The witch grits her teeth. "SHUT THE HELL UP!" she shouts, and a white corona begins to glow around Marisa.

Signum can't do anything now but stare ashamedly at her feet as the past Hayate continued her diatribe. Why would she do this? Why wouldn't she do this. After all, Signum was a failure as a knight and as a protector. She wasn't there when Hayate needed her...never.

"How could ya even think I forgave you for what happened ten years ago?" the tiny girl demands. "Ya only ever made things worse, then got yerself killed like an idiot! An' it was your fault in the first place! Almost fifteen years I couldn' walk at all because of your stupid Book! I wish I'd never met you...no, I wish you never existed! That's my wish! That's how I can be happy! Bein' a whole person and not gettin' dragged into stupid wars that'll get me killed!"

All Signum can do in the face of this diatribe from the person she loves most is cry silently, tears running out from under her bangs as she hangs her head like a whipped dog. That was all she was. A dog who couldn't even perform a simple task like staying by her master.

Until she starts thinking. Obviously, Hayate was unhappy with her. She deserved it. She was the lowest of the low, an honorless, useless waste of matter. However...was she really unhappy with everything else?

"You don't..." Signum starts, haltingly, controlling the need to sob. "You don't like...even being a mage?" she asks. There was something wrong here, and it was something that was sneaking around the edges of her mental eclipse self-loathing. The girl in the wheelchair seems a little taken aback, although for all she can tell, Signum was ignoring her and talking to Marisa.

A smug smile appears on Reimu's face when she sees the corona. "Really, Blazing Star? That's not even danmaku. But I suppose I shouldn't expect any more from the likes of you..."

"EAT LASER!" Marisa half shouts, half screams, and charges towards Reimu, propelling herself with the power of a Master Spark. The other makes no signs of moving, and she smashes into the other girl -

- only for her to disappear in a puff of white smoke. The momentum keeps her going though, and she smacks right into the invisible barrier of the Wild Lands, getting a very painful knock to the head that makes her woozy, but not unconscious just yet.

Signum turns at the loud and familiar smacking sound, seeing Marisa on the ground and the other girl she'd half-been paying attention to nowhere to be seen. While not as good as a punch to her own face would have been, her rational mind does start to reassert itself a bit.

"Hayate...did you come back just to hurt me?" Signum asks, turning sadly to the girl again. "You didn't need to. If I'm not worth your attention, I'm not worth your attention. But...what you're actually saying," she pauses, taking a deep breath.

"You're not Hayate," she concludes. "Hayate is the most kind and unselfish person in the world. Even if she heaped on me all the abuse and scorn I deserve...she wouldn't give up on helping people out of pettiness."

She looks up, finally meeting the phantom's eyes. "I'm a failure as a knight, but I at least raised her that well. Now you have until I finish helping that girl to begone, before I strike you down for daring to use my Master's form!" she concludes, turning on her heel away from the stunned-looking illusion to go check on Marisa.

"Miss...Marisa. Are you alright?" she asks, even as the fake Hayate disappears and more shadows swirl behind her.

"Ow."

That's all really Marisa can say in response - her head feels like it's splitting open, and considering what just happened, wasn't very unlikely. She shakily gets to her feet, using her broom to support herself, and still manages to glare balefully at the Hayate apparition.

"Screw off, why don't cha."

The shadows almost seem to glare back at Marisa and Signum, even as they reform into a different shape - a tall, muscled, confident woman with long, pale hair. Almost a palette-swapped doppelganger for Signum but for the cruel smirk and more modern clothing.

"Well well," says the ersatz form of Cypha of Huckebein, "I see ghosts really d--"

This phantom, however, disappears immediately as the space it was in is filled with heavy, rapid-fire slashes from Signum's weapon in its chain-whip form and incoherent battlecries from Signum. Followed by more attacks with the chain-whip lit on fire. Signum wants to be thorough here.

Well after the image has disappeared, Signum stops attacking it.

"...ah. They are illusions."

Marisa takes some time ro recover before speaking. "Yeah. Looks like their purpose was to try to hit where it hurt." As much as it pained her to say it, anyone from home knowing just how much effort and time she had to put into training her magic just to stay level would have killed her. It was just that it coming from Reimu shook her up more.

"It's just too bad for them that I got angry instead of sad!"

"...Yes," Signum agrees, trying to make sense of all this in her head. If that wasn't really Hayate, and it clearly hadn't been, then what did this all mean. Had she said anything untrue about Signum? Herself, perhaps, but Signum?

She elbows the phantasm of Cypha in the face as it reforms behind her, dispersing it again. Hell, but that woman was annoying, even when merely duplicated. But no, there was nothing in the words that she didn't already feel in her heart.

"This probably means there's some hostile force at work here again," Signum says to Marisa. "Or the Queen broke something, yet again. That said..." She pauses. To admit to this girl she barely knew what her problems were? Her past mistakes?

"That said, anger is probably the best response. Listening to what one really thinks about oneself...it could be crippling," she admits. The shadows reform into an image of Vita with a huge metal blade through her chest and a taunting expression. Signum swipes the phantom's hat off and, looking offended, it again discorporates.

"I wonder how to get rid of them..."

"Didn't the Queen make a broadcast at the beginning of the month?" Marisa asks, releasing a trail of star danmaku at an apparition that took the form of Mima, blasting it back into puffs of smoke. "I bet it's something she pulled, so we'll have to get her to change it back to normal!"

To Marisa, that, of course, meant giving her a good beating. It was overdue, anyway, for pulling her here.

"That's the nature of shadows, ze. They're weak, so they have to use tricks to get an advantage!"

"Tricks?" Signum asks, in spite of herself.

She then shakes her head to clear it. "You're probably right, and this is some petty revenge by the Queen, turning our own regrets against us."

She turns, and takes a step back toward the center of the Gardens, shadows still plaguing at her, tugging at her, but not reforming yet. They'd wait until she was untransformed, at least. "Marisa...I know I promised you a demonstration of power, but I need to get back and make sure this isn't happening to my friends. My best friend and her daughter are here, and they might be vulnerable to this," she explains.

"Will you be alright finding some other means of striking back at the Queen? I really don't think you should go about it alone. Not against this kind of enemy."

"I'm cool with that! Besides, I think you've already given me a demonstration of some of your abilities." Marisa says, cocking her head towards where the shadows were. She'd have to warn Alice and the others about the apparitions at some point, as unsavory as helping Tenshi and Yuka was.

"I'm sure we aren't the only ones attacked by these shadows ze, so there'll be others going to solve this incident too. I'm sure I'll be fine! I can take care of myself."

"I can believe that," Signum says.

She takes to the air again, preparing to head away from the Wild Places and check on Fate and Vivio.

"...thank you, Marisa," she says, nodding, "it's good to know someone here is at least reasonably reliable for backup. And if that phantom was to be believed, you sound like my kind of mage, too. A hard worker."

"Yeah, well, no need to go spread it around." Damn that stupid apparition: of all the things to spread, it chose the one thing she didn't want anyone, not just people back home, to know about. She'll have to beat the shadows up extra hard for that.

"You ain't too shabby yourself, so remember that the apparitions are full of crap!" Marisa mounts her broom, rising back to the air and her element. "Anyway, I'm gonna go back and ask around if anyone's discovered anything more about them. Something good might have came up!"

Signum nods, and turns to part ways. "If you need anyone to watch your back, you can probably find me at the onsen."

And with that, she's gone in a whoosh of jacket and fire motif.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A funny thing happened...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject