krisslanza !l6ZeLPD4F6 2009/11/15 (Sun) 00:38 No. 103873 ▼ File 125824552945.jpg - (273.83KB, 800x600 , e8ce00c625ada6d5bd6456ceb1c18412.jpg)
[x] You haven't done it before, but you're pretty sure you can cook up some curry and rice...
-[x] Remind her that you arranged a duel with Cirno tomorrow afternoon.
-[x] Ask how she might prefer things.
Heading down the street to the grocery store, you quickly purchase a bag of rice and find an easy solution to tonight's dinner – instant curry powder. While perhaps a bit overly simplistic, you had a rather good garden back home in which to spicen up tonight's meal, and besides you had always been a little curious as to how curry tasted anyway.
After purchasing the few ingredients for tonight's dinner, you promptly return home to find the miko lazily sprawled on the counter, reading one of the many Bunbunmaru's you had stored behind the counter. Upon hearing you enter, she casts a glance over at the bag in your hand.
“So what's on the menu tonight Reina?” asks the miko, sitting up on the counter, placing the newspaper away, “You really need to get a couch or something, and probably look into getting some better reading material then Aya's newspapers for reading material.”
Opening the bag to reveal the few supplies within, you shrug, “Curry and rice, I hope that'll be fine? And you might not like Aya's paper, but I don't think it's a bad paper...”
“Only because she isn't discreetly slandering you, or getting you all buzzed up on alcohol before interviewing you...” Reimu sighs and shakes her head, “she likes you or something, I swear.”
You shrug, “Aya is a nice pers – well, tengu I guess... point is she's nice. Anyway, I'll get started on dinner now.” heading into the kitchen, rummaging around for various cooking utensils, you note the miko patiently waiting at the table, “Ah yes before I forget, I have an appointment of sorts tomorrow at around noon with Cirno.”
“An appointment with Cirno? You mean a danmaku duel? With Cirno?” the miko looks like she's on the verge of bursting into laughter, “Geez Reina, sure wanting to get some real practice in eh? Guess if she beats you, I'll just have to work you ten times as hard!”
“Is Cirno just really that bad or something...?” you ask with a slight frown.
“She's a fairy Reina, fairies aren't good at anything. You'll find out yourself tomorrow, you shouldn't be late I don't think this whole thing should take very long... and anyway, if you end up late I'll excuse you or something. Cirno will understand if I'm involved.”
Nodding your head, you step outside for a moment to rummage about your garden to pick some various plants for the curry. When you return you add them to the curry mix, the rice almost done.
“So tell me Reimu, since you'll be staying the night would you prefer sleeping in the guest room, in your own futon, or uhm, well you can sleep in my room if you like?”
The miko pauses and rubs her chin for a moment, “I guess since you offered... I'll just take the futon. You're not a heavy sleeper are you? We need to head out pretty early, so if you're still sleeping, I'll just have to wake you up myself~.”
“I'll be up, don't worry about it. I'm a pretty light sleeper.” examining your cooking carefully, you nod, “Well looks like dinner is done. Enjoy Reimu!”
Dinner is mostly silent, aside from the miko's cheerful exclamations from the food and her compliments on your cooking. Reimu ends up eating the bulk of the meal single-handedly, which isn't much of a surprise all things considered, and heads upstairs to use your bath before heading off to bed. You use the little bit of time that gives you to do some touch-up work, before the miko announces her exit from the bathroom.
Once she frees it up, you take a bath yourself and get changed into your nightclothes before crawling into the warm sheets of your bed. It doesn't take long before you drift off peacefully into sleep.
~
Rather then be woken up to someone's voice, or the blare of an alarm, you instead feel the impact of something on your forehead. Yelping you sit up in bed and rub your forehead, cracking an eye open you see a rather annoyed looking Reimu by your bedside. Judging from the fact her hands were empty, she had probably hit you in the forehead with her fist.
“Ooooww... guess it's that time, huh?” you ask, glancing up at Reimu.
“Yup! Now get out of bed and get dressed, I'll be waiting downstairs, hurry up, hurry up!”
As you climb out of bed and hurriedly get dressed, you hear the miko's footsteps grow fainter as she heads downstairs. Once you're dressed, and you've made yourself look decent real quick, you head downstairs with the grimoire in hand. Reimu, more or less, pushes you out the door before scooping you up in her arms and floating up into the sky, slowly flying towards the Misty Lake.
The miko heads towards a seemingly normal looking island admist the lake, as she descends towards the ground you can make out Aya seated atop a rock, and in addition a short girl wearing a green cap with her hair up in pigtails, busily sorting through odd looking equipment.
“You're late!” exclaims Aya with a sigh, “Me and Nitori have been waiting so patiently.”
“The equipment isn't all set-up yet anyway Aya, so them being late just means less waiting for them.” points out Nitori matter-of-factly,
The miko glances over at all the various equipment with a frown, “Geez, how did you move all this here...?”
“It took a few trips, I had Momizi pitch in before she went to go visit some shrine or something.” answered the tengu with a shrug.
Looking over it yourself, you can't even place it, although you can make out what looks like some suits amongst all the stuff.
“Just what is all this...?”
Nitori pauses from her inspection to look at you, “All this? Well you see Genjii is under the lake, and none of you have the ability to breath underwater like kappa do. So you'll need this to get to Genjii without drowning!” the girl cocks her head to the side, “Ah, so you must be Reina then? The outsider? Nice to meet you, I'm Nitori Kawashiro, but you can just call me Nitori.” the blue-haired girl extends her hand towards you.
Shaking the kappa's hand, you offer a smile in return, “Nice to meet you, I guess you've heard of me from Aya?”
“More or less. She talks about you from time to time, and you were in her newspaper which she, more or less, delivers to all of us even when we don't want it.” answers the kappa with a shrug, returning to examining the various equipment.
“She doesn't want to admit it but, she finds you interesting Reina. Kappa have a fascination with outsiders like yourself, well humans in general, but you outsiders often have knowledge of technology and the kappa simply love it. In fact, they recently started making a uh... what do you call it...”
“Nuclear powered hot spring? That's an old project Aya, besides it wasn't too difficult with Utsuho's help. People seem afraid to use it though, so it's just kind of collecting dust, so to speak...” the kappa stood and dusted off her hands, “well, all the equipment is in good order. It should work just fine, of course I still need to actually get someone in one of the suits and do some testing before I'll know for certain...”
Walking over and examining the suits more closely, you can't help but notice they seem to be similar in design to more old-fashioned diving suits. They thankfully lacked the giant fishbowl helmets, but you had to guess this whole set-up was the kappa's version of diving suits.
“So we really need to use these?” you ask, picking up one of the suits and examining it.
“Unless you think you can hold your breath for several minutes or longer. While having to actually physically swim of course.” answered Nitori with a shrug, “There's only two suits anyway, just for you and Reimu. Aya will be staying up here with me since she doesn't like water in the least bit, and well, I don't need one but I have to stay here to monitor all the equipment.”
Reimu walks over to examine the gear as well, a noticeable frown on her face, “Geez, never thought I'd have to actually use kappa technology like this, you sure it'll work?”
“Of course it'll work!” snapped the kappa with a huff, “It's been tested before, though you two will be the first non-kappa test subjects and the suits are new since you can't fit into kappa-sized suits... but I'm sure they'll work just fine.”
“Very reassuring... well, guess we better get this over with.” answered Reimu, examining the suit more closely, “Just ah, how do we put these on exactly?”
The kappa sighed and shook her head, “Here, I'll show you... ok see you just need to do this, then this... you can change behind those rocks over there, then I'll get this all set-up then we can get this whole operation started.”
~
While you were a bit worried about leaving all your clothing (including your unmentionables!) in the care of Nitori and Aya, well mostly Aya, you had little choice when it came to putting the suit on. Aside from that little unpleasant thought, the whole thing didn't seem too unusual and even walking on the bottom of a lake, but still being able to breath didn't seem too odd. Reimu led the way, leading you to an opening at the bottom of the lake, and after a swim through a tunnel the two of you emerged in a cave under the water.
As you crawled out of the water and removed your helmet, you couldn't help but wonder why this was such an urgent thing.
“Hey Reimu, why did you need to get this done so soon? There doesn't seem to be anything special about this trip...”
“Isn't it obvious? It's getting cold, before long the lake would freeze over. I guess it'd still be possible to get here, if we broke through the ice, but I'm not sure how well these suits would keep us warm... plus there's the chance the hole would freeze back over and we'd be stuck.” the miko shrugged, “Maybe I was a little over dramatic but... come on, he's just inside here... or should be...”
You decided to not comment on the fact Reimu wasn't sure Genjii wasn't even here. Following the red-white further into the cave, it eventually leads into a smaller section with a small pond and the surrounding walls covered in various plants. Seated atop a stone near the lake was a giant turtle that sported a long white beard, he lifted his head to look at Reimu, then you, with curiosity.
“I never thought I'd be seeing you again child, and who is this stranger you bring with you?” asks the turtle, his tone slow and heavy.
“This is Reina, gramps. She's a well, friend, and I've been trying to teach her to fly but well...”
You didn't think it was possible for a turtle to smile, but you swear Genjii's mouth resembled one right now.
“And realized you cannot teach it? So you come to seek me out to do it instead.” the old turtle nods his head slowly, “I suspected you did not come to merely see an old friend.”
Genjii slowly lifted himself off the rock, floating mere inches above the ground as he neared you, floating up to be eye-to-eye with you. He squinted at you, as if studying you carefully.
“I see she has potential. I can see why you would want to teach her this as well, trying to get your own pupil are we child?” said Genjii, chuckling softly, “I would be delighted to teach the young girl, but for what reason should I do this? I taught you out of respect for your family, but this girl is nothing but a stranger and I cannot simply accept the reason of her being your pupil. She must prove to me in her own way, how she deserves me help.”
With a nod, the turtle floats back towards the ground and returns to his seat atop the rock, “So young one, speak and explain. Tell me why you wish to learn to fly, convince me and my teachings will be yours.”
- - -
Genjii at last!
[ ] Explain yourself child! (write-in)
[ ] Forget this, challenge him to danmaku!
[ ] Other?
Inventory:
o Maps (Gensokyo and Human Village)
o "Gensokyo" Grimoire
o Seeds from Yuuka
Spellcards:
o Apprentice Sign: Treasure Box of Memories
o Mishap Sign: For the Want of a Nail
System:
> + Reimu Hakurei
