Comedian in Paradise ch. 3
Night
Sans awoke with a startle. He looked around his surroundings, and then at himself. Slowly, memories of the day pass through his mind. He died(?), absorbed the humans soul, and through mysterious means, arrived on the surface.
When he remembered that he had absorbed the humans soul, he sighed and held his head. "Hoo, boy. Talk about a soulful evening. Surprised I didn't knock out earlier."
Glancing at his now dark surroundings, he hummed to himself. "Welp, now what do I do?"
Thinking back on what he needed right now, food and a home, he decided to get up and wander some more.
"Hopefully I can find some people, I'm not very confident in my outdoor survival skills.."
Sans walked onwards, passing by various fauna and weird creatures not found in the underground.
Picking a yellow berry from a bush, he flashed his eye and checked it.
Ping
_____________
Warden berry
A local berry that is very rarely found, can be used in all sorts of tinctures and concoctions.
Extremely poisonous
_____________
"Oh..."
Sans dropped the berry and wiped his hands on his sleeves. Feeling apprehensive about touching unknown berries from then on, sans thought back to his CHECK ability. It usually wasn't that descriptive, just a name, and attribute.
He doesn't know where the lore drop came from, but decided not to complain. He continued walking in a random direction.
Occasionally taking a break and taking in the atmosphere, The night was about half over when suddenly, the bushes rustled.
"!!"
Sans was instantly on high alert. He anxiously waited for the suspect to reveal themselves, only for a small humanoid figure with wings to fly out of a bush and continue on with its business.
Although he was briefly shocked by this observation, sans didn't let his guard down. Because in the corner of his eye, was a warped patch of space. It was slightly darker than it's surroundings, like a wet spot on grey clothes.
Sans was about to look directly at it, but thought against it. Pretending not to notice, he continued walking, whistling to look as though he were blissfully unaware. Seeing that the suspiciously dark space was following him, he continued with his act.
He was doing this to discern their intent. If they had it out for him, they'd attack. If not, they'd leave him alone.
Feeling a pulse of magic behind him, sans stopped in place. It seemed they dropped their camouflage. How this encounter would go would determine how it would end.
Turning around he saw a short blonde human. She was wearing a black vest with a white undershirt. Complete with a similarly black skirt and topped with a red ribbon.
'Certainly not what I was expecting, but better than it could have been.'
Slightly relieved that it was just a child, but still on guard due to their magic, sans ACTed and struck up conversation.
"Sup kid. What are you doing out here at night? Where's your parents?"
She does nothing
"?" Sans tilted his head. Walking closer to the child Sans held out his hand for a handshake.
"The names sans, nice ta meetcha."
The blonde remains still.
"Mister, are you a human?"
"???"
Sans becomes confused. Why did she say it like that? "Uhh, I guess I am. Somewhat."
At this the blonde child smiles, and sans freezes. Because what sans sees in her mouth are not square human teeth, but pointy fangs, like a carnivores.
"I guess that means I can eat you then..?"
Sans' eye sockets go dark. And for the first time, checks the girl.
________________________________________
*Rumia, Yokai of the Dusk
*LV : 5
*ATK : 25
*DEF : 18
*HP : 38
*Is the person in front of me the edible kind?
________________________________________
Seeing the title in front of him, it is clear. Shes not human, nor monster. And it seems she's not looking to chat either.
The skeleton gathers his magic, resulting in his left eye flashing blue.
"Well, that's not how you greet a new pal. You can try eating me, but I have to warn ya, I'm all bones." Sans responds with a wide grin.
Rumia reacts, and attempts to jump on sans.
Miss
Sans sidesteps the humanoid bullet with relative ease, and watches as she goes straight into a tree. She crashes into it with a thud, knocking it down, before promptly standing back up to face her prey.
"Not gonna make this easy are you?"
"Not exactly fond of death, y'see" Sans replies while shrugging.
"Fine, I guess I don't mind burnt human."
"You sure you don't feel like knocking down another tree first?" Sans taunts.
"Danmaku!"
"Hæh?"
sans is taken by surprise when the yokai bombards him with a multitude of red and blue balls of magic. Still, it's not like he's new to this.
Sans locates the safe spots in the bullet pattern, and ducks and weaves his way through them with little to no effort, he's dodged much faster projectiles. Using his peripheral vision, he charts out a course in his head and follows through. Run there, jump over that line of bullets, side step, then duck.
Rumia, shocked at how easy this human is making his way through the barrage, redoubles her efforts. She begins spraying out a line of bullets, each one amping up in multitude.
Sans now has to try a little harder to not get overwhelmed, but he's still making it look easy, causing rumia to get upset.
"Argh! Just stay still!"
Sans attempts to speak, but the yokai starts combining her bullet patterns. Sans finds this a little difficult, as the weak spots in her previous attacks are now covered by more bullets. As if that wasn't enough, Suddenly sans hears rumia yell out.
"Night sign - Night bird!"
And suddenly the difficulty doubled. Sans ducks a bullet headed straight for his head and sweatdrops. He barely recovers when he has to dodge a barrage of bullets, fanned out a couple of meters. Slipping between bullets, and grazing laser beams- LASER BEAMS?!?
Sans just barely sidesteps the beam, with it just nicking his jacket sleeve. He doesn't have much respite however, as he's assaulted with more lasers. On top of that, the bullets haven't stopped.
'no doubt she'd certainly give a lot of people trouble back home.'
He slips and slides through more cracks, grazing more bullets. He moves his leg, a bullet flies by. At the same time, he bends over backwards to avoid a barrage of lasers.
Eventually, sans realizes that she isn't going to let up. So, conjuring a medium sized bone, he flicks his wrist at the yokai, and the projectile shoots off at a relatively fast speed. Rumia, focused on trying to weave her own intricate attacks, spots it soon late, and is dinked by the bone.
"Argh!!"
The bone knocks right into her, and rumia let's out a heavily pained expression. Sans can see her HP go down by 8, as well as another 5 due to karma. bringing her down to 25 HP.
'what the heck?? Where did that come from??'
Stunlocked by the nature of the attack sans takes advantage of the pause, and uses short range teleportation to close the distance.
"What's wrong? You were the one with a bone to pick."
Rumia jumps and lets out a startled gasp as sans uses his blue magic, swiping his hand and tossing rumia into another tree, hard.
-6
Rumia falls to the ground as she groans in pain. Quickly regaining her composure, she slipped another card in her hand and shouted.
Darkness sign - Demarcation!
Sans, who was about to follow up, suddenly had to retreat backwards as a dense wall of bullets flooded his face.
The attacks came at multiple angles, requiring sans to wait for an opening to slip through. Rumia did not stay still either, waving her hand and firing bullets in his direction.
Sans was starting to get overwhelmed, and as soon as the lasers came back, he lost his patience. Holding out his hand, a monochrome flash appeared in front of him. Within the fading light, was a dragon like skull, steadily charging a bright blue ball within is maw.
"Eep!!"
Rumia took a glance at the dragon before diving to side. The beam tore through all of Rumia's bullets, and lit up the forest like fireworks.
The yokai looked at where she was standing. The grass behind her was charred and the trees were burnt, which couldn't have been good. Remembering she was in the middle of a fight, rumia attempted to stand back up, before she turned blue and was slammed back into the ground.
Sensing magic below her, she attempted to move away, but was too slow.
-10
A massive bone pillar slammed into her, knocking her into the air. Briefly losing consciousness, rumia snapped back just in time to see blue bones stabbed into her.
She was about to scream in pain before realizing that it didn't hurt. However, moving to remove them administered a frightening shock.
-2
"I wouldn't move if I were you."
Sans walks up to the yokai's crumpled form and checks her. 7HP. Rumia looks up, and freezes in fear. The human she had just tried to eat, was now standing over her with multiple floating bones aimed directly at her head.
"Wait, wait wait wait! It's my loss okay?! I'm sorry for trying to eat you!"
Sans doesn't let his guard down, but disappates his attacks. He feels slight regret for thrashing this child so badly, but it seems like this was an unavoidable event.
MERCY 🤍 FIGHT
"Don't feel so hungry anymore huh?"
"No way! I won't attack you, just no more bones please." Rumia rapidly shakes her head.
"Cool." Sans says, as he turns around and leaves.
"Eh? Wait, huh? you're leaving? Just like that?" Rumia blurts out. This guy had just beat her up, and now he was just walking away?
"Yep." Sans replies bluntly. He makes sure to dematerialize the blue bones.
But then he stops.
"Well, on second thought, I do have some questions for ya."
Turning around, he shoots the yokai a menacing grin.
"...gulp."
________________________________________
He asked her some questions about where he was.
"First off, where am I?"
"The forest of magic?"
"Forest of magic? No- Okay, can you gimme something broader? Like the country?"
"You mean gensokyo?"
"genso- what?" Sans looked completely confused.
"???" Rumia was equally confused, untill she had an epiphany. "Hey, sans right? Are you an outsider?"
"Hmm, is that what you call people who ain't from here?" Sans queries.
Rumia nods, "more specifically, humans from the outside world." To which sans blanches,
what does she mean 'outside world'?
With a bad feeling, sans asks her a question. "Hey, there's not an impassable barrier separating here from the rest of the world is there..?"
"Uh..." Rumia looks awkward.
Sans face palms and mutters to himself, 'from one prison to another, huh... At least this one isn't underground.' sans quickly regained his composure and asked rumia to tell him more about gensokyo.
And so, rumia gave sans a quick run down. Apparently, this was a place separated from the outside world, which allowed yokai to exist. Kinda like the underground, except the yokai isolated themselves.
Occasionally, people slip through the Hakurei barrier, and end up here.
'How are these barriers so good at keeping things in, but so bad at keeping people out?' sans thinks to himself.
Even more confusing, was how he got here in the first place if gensokyo was on the surface. Seeing nothing that made sense, sans gave up that train of thought quickly. after that fast lesson, sans finally asked her where people were, and she pointed him in the direction of the human village.
As Sans watched the yokai fly off, which he still didn't understand, he headed in the direction of civilization, feeling a bit nervous.
He hasn't had many good experiences with humans recently, and the past 24 hours had been entirely too eventful. He just wanted to crash into his bed back home.
Even worse, he felt like he was being watched during the entire fight with rumia, who he had gotten acquainted with. He looked around for a presence, but it seemed to have disappeared.
"Welp, not much I can do about it. Let's just get to that village, yeah? Hopefully they're more peaceful than the human I know." He said to no one in particular, and set out once more.
Meanwhile...
"Well, it seems the new arrival is getting used to his situation quite well."
"Fufufu, he seems quite capable, if not, a bit lazy. There's more to him than meets the eye though." A blonde lady in a purple and white dress is laying her head on her palm.
"The underground. Interesting. I'm surprised I didn't notice it sooner, especially considering that barrier that bears a shocking resemblance to mine." Her eyes glow slightly before the light fades and she sighs. "It's a shame that almost all of those monsters are dead, I would have offered them a place in gensokyo had I found them sooner."
The yokai had only found the underground after the residents had all been slaughtered. She barely even noticed the two until they had their final exchange.
"To think they would all perish to a single human. What could they have possibly had to make such a thing possible?" The lady questioned the mysterious power of the human.
"Well, it should be entertaining I suppose. It appears there's conflict on the horizon." The gap yokai sits up with her legs crossed, and covers her mouth with her fan. She seems excited.
"Those Scarlets are planning something. It seems like reimu will have to move out for the first time since putting the system in place. So what role will you have in this I wonder?"
Saying this, the mysterious woman closes the gap she was looking through. She leans back and crashes on a beanbag chair she had... acquired... From the outside. Relaxing her body, her she thinks about the judge's fight with Rumia.
Thankfully, He was holding back quite a bit.
She had seen the force those bones were capable of. Even then, rumia is gonna be feeling that last attack in the morning. She just hopes he catches on to the spell card system before someone gets seriously hurt.
Yawning, the mysterious woman leans back into her beanbag, and slowly lets sleep take her away.