Quick Authors Note:
Phew, almost 4,000 words. The most I've ever written for anything besides school.
I was planning to fit the rest of EoSD in this chapter, but realized I forgot patchouli existed.
I also realized how much I write when I get motivated, and how big this chapter would be if I tried to end it all in one. So expect a part 6 of this arc MINIMUM.
Again, I'm winging this shit. I have no idea what the story will look like in, like, 3 chapters. I'm going in absolutely dry, no lube, no planning, nothing.
But fuck it, we ball.
So I'll try to at least make it enjoyable.
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Viewing: The Scarlet Devils Perfect and Elegant Maid
Moonlight was leaking through the stained windows, illuminating the massive hall. All sorts of valuable looking pottery and art lined the absurdly tall walls.
Walking these halls, was a silver haired maid. Her azure eyes looked ahead without a trace of hesitation or doubt. As she walked through the giant, maze-like mansion, she passed by the unmoving fairy maids, who were absolutely not doing their jobs.
Usually, the maid would throw a knife at each fairy goofing off, but the mansion was currently at maximum security. So while they weren't good at doing anything they were told to do, they did make good distractions for intruders. Instead, her destination was the front gate.
As she stepped out of the mansion, she looked up at the barely visible moon. Had she not used her ability, it would have been tinted a bright red, thanks to the mist. At this rate, it would be thick enough to blot out the sun.
"As the Lady intended. Everything is proceeding smoothly, now we just need to secure the defenses."
Opening the gate, the silver haired maid looked to the right to see a red haired woman. Her arms were crossed as she leaned on the gate wall.
She was wearing a beret that covered her eyes, and a rather artistic rendition of a Chinese dress.
It seemed she was asleep.
Seeing this, the maid sighed, a sight she would never show anyone, and released her dominion over time.
She clicked her stopwatch, and immediately the silent and still surroundings suddenly became noisy. As time began to speed up, the monochrome colors started to become more vibrant.
The beret and Chinese dress were now green, embroidered with gold, suiting the red-head amazingly.
Seeing the gatekeeper snore so peacefully, the maid almost smiled, before remembering she was sleeping on the clock.
"Hong Meiling."
"Bwaah! I'm not sleeping Sakuya!"
'You obviously were though?'
At Sakuya's voice, Meiling stood at attention immediately, causing a vein to appear on the maid's forehead.
"You're lucky I'm not in a position to discipline you like usual. We're currently in a rather precarious situation, so I'd appreciate it if you would do your job."
Meiling shivered, and with a grim expression saluted.
"Yes ma'am! Probably nobody will get through this gate without me at least trying to stop them!"
"I'd rather you stop everyone."
Sakuya desperately wanted to sigh, but she had an image to keep up.
"Anyway, the lady's plan must be carried out. Do your best."
Sakuya offered some words that she thought would be encouraging, but to the sleepy gatekeeper they were more so threats.
'The lady said to keep out intruders, so do just that, or else.' That's what it sounded like.
"Yep, just leave it to me!"
Meiling offered a shakey smile of reassurance, which had the opposite effect. Sakuya simply deadpanned at her false bravado.
"Alright, I believe in you..." She lied.
"Hey, you don't believe me at all do you! What's with that face!-"
Before Meiling could get another word in, Sakuya clicked her stopwatch, and time came to a halt.
When the gatekeeper blinked, Her boss was gone.
"Aaah, whatever! I'll show her! I'm the Dragon Warrior Hong Meiling, Gatekeeper of the Scarlet Devil Mansion!"
Meiling began angrily shouting to the air.
"Who would dare seek entry when I'm here! Those courting death, come forth! I, your father, am ready for you!!"
The ground rumbled as the gatekeeper flared her intense Qi, she's here because she deserves to, and she would not let her image be tarnished further.
Suddenly, Meiling sensed a mana signature far in the distance. Looking straight ahead, she could see a bright blue light rapidly approaching.
"Haiyaa, I was just kidding... I haven't even warmed up yet..."
Meiling whined while preparing herself.
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Viewing: The Comedic Judge of The Underground
Sans was currently barreling towards the mansion. His blaster ran out of "fuel" and he was just riding the momentum.
As he was narrowing in on his destination, he realized it was even bigger up close. The long, red brick runway alone was overwhelming, but the massive manor towered over every building he had seen in Gensokyo.
"How is anyone supposed to even walk here? Not everyone can fly y'know?"
Unfortunately, 'not everyone' only referred to sans, as just about every yokai/empowered human COULD fly, unassisted at that.
Still, the mansions grandness could only be compared to the Kings Castle in the underground, which dwarfed it by the way. He doesn't think anything will scratch up to Asgores palace. Not in this life or the previous.
As he quickly approached the manor, sans felt an energy signature in the distance, it was unfamiliar and had a feeling not unlike healing magic.
Squinting his eyes, he saw a multicolored rainbow aura flaring menacingly. Just as he was registering what he was seeing, he noticed dozens of fast moving rainbow bullets racing towards him.
Sans gripped his Gaster Blaster and leaned hard to the left. Unfortunately it wasn't enough, as he was about to taste the rainbow.
"Unfortunately I'm not big on Skittles."
Engaging an emergency barrel roll, the bullets passed through the gap in the blaster, slightly scratching up the blaster, but it was fine. Swinging back up, he held on tight to not throw himself off.
"I gotta stop doing those." Sans lamented.
But they work, and he's safe.
But soon enough another barrage was sent out.
"Gimme a break.."
Sans swiped his hand and sent out a group of bones to intercept the fast moving bullets. The collision between the two magics created minor explosions in the air, obscuring sans' vision.
Unfortunately, this meant he couldn't see that he missed one.
Out of the smoke came a sonic projectile, so fast it left a light trail. Sans only had a quarter of a second to react, in which he could only move his head 6 inches to the left.
Not knowing if it'd be enough, he closed his eyes and prayed.
Whish
Miss
Releasing a breath he didn't know he was holding, sans looked forward as he passed through the smoke, and his attacker came into view.
A red haired woman wearing unfamiliar green clothing.
Sans lowered his altitude until he was barely scraping the ground, and came to a halt. Dismounting the blaster, sans and the woman came face to face. She was in a martial arts stance and had a tense expression on her face.
It seemed she didn't want to fight.
"Heya."
So sans struck up a conversation.
He didn't want to fight either.
"...?"
"The names sans, I would say nice to meet ya, but you nearly shot me out of the air."
"Ah, I'm Hong Meiling, and sorry about that, I was just doing my job." She loosened her fighting stance.
'By preemptively shooting down every thing you see huh?'
Meiling scratched her cheek nervously.
"Your job? Then would you happen to be the gatekeeper for this place?"
Sans didn't fail to notice the giant gate that seemed to span the entire island.
"Of course! Only someone as strong as me could protect such a massive mansion!"
The gatekeeper noticeably perked up and puffed her sizable chest in pride.
"It would seem that way. But hey, I kinda have something to discuss with the vampire here, you mind letting me through?"
Sans knew she wouldn't have tried shooting him down if they didn't mind, but it was worth a try seeing as she seemed rather amicable.
"Ah, sure go right through."
Meiling turned to unlock the gate but froze.
"Wait! No, sorry, um, our mistress isn't exactly taking visitors y'see..."
'Aw, so close.'
"So it's no dice? That's unfortunate, I really gotta talk to her about this mist."
"'No visitors! No exceptions!' That's what Sakuya said."
Sans furrowed his brows.
"Sorry pal, this isn't something I can give up on."
Meiling looked slightly troubled.
"I can't exactly give on this either. Otherwise Sakuya will put more knives in my back. So uh..."
Meiling reassumes her fighting stance.
"No hard feelings?"
Sans sighs, and also gets into a battle stance.
"Nah."
The two stared at each other briefly before shouting in unison.
""Danmaku!""
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Sans felt a fuzzy but cooling feeling engulf him, quite unlike DT(determination) which was warm and invigorating.
As soon as he felt the ground beneath his feet, he grinned broadly. For sans, who had always fought on the ground, flying while dodging was extremely difficult. Such third dimensional movement was entirely unfamiliar.
So he felt rather lucky that his opponent seemed to favor the ground as well.
The proof that the spell card system was active had been confirmed, and sans wasted no time taking the initiative. He had been too courteous letting others take the first move, resulting in an uphill battle.
Immediately, sans waved his hand, and a wave of bones came bursting from the ground. Meiling swiftly side stepped the attack and responded with a shotgun of rainbow bullets.
At such a close range, he couldn't avoid the blast completely, and threading the needle was too risky.
'Lets block.'
Quickly raising a shield of bones, the bullets pelted it harmlessly, not matching their strength from earlier.
However Meiling was not quite done. Dashing towards the wall of bones, she lept over it and aimed down at the lazing skeleton.
Sans, however, was nowhere to be found.
Meiling landed on the ground with confusion, before feeling the mana below her twist. Hastily moving from her place, a massive bone pillar rose where she was just standing.
But as she narrowly avoided the attack, the mana distorted once again, forcing another dodge. The process repeated multiple times, all the while Meiling was desperately searching for her attacker.
As the pattern continued faster and faster, the battle field eventually became too dense to move around swiftly.
By the time Meiling realized what was happening, she was trapped between multiple bones with no way out.
A dense jungle of bones had sprouted in front of the mansion, and Meiling had no idea where her opponent was.
When a new bone sprouted underneath her, she would dodge, and crash into another one.
The situation would drag on until she wasn't able to attack, or she found her opponent.
"Man, of course I have to get the difficult opponents first thing in the morning."
"???"
It wasn't morning.
It seemed like sans had found someone with a more atrocious sleep schedule than him.
However, he had no time to feel kinship, as the gatekeeper pulled out a yellow card in frustration.
Belatedly realizing what it was, sans could barely teleport away before she shouted.
"Flower Sign - Gorgeous Sweet Flower!"
She glowed a bright yellow before exploding into a pattern of bullets, mowing down the terrain sans had worked hard to create.
Teleporting to what he thought was out of range, he watched the pattern play out with a look of astonishment.
The spell card quite lived up to its name, as bullets formed large images in the shape of a flower. With each pulse, 6 new petals would sprout, sending out the previous in a wave of destruction.
It's power was no joke, either.
The bone spikes that were as thick as a human torso shattered with just a few bullets. In the face of the onslaught, they looked like twigs, and sans was rather glad he got out of there. If he decided to hide behind a pillar, he'd be the one getting snapped in half.
Least to say, he was very impressed.
Walking amongst the shattered bones, he approached Meiling with his hands in his pockets, seemingly defenseless.
Meiling, who was rather exhausted from the use of her largest spell card, felt like running away when she saw sans completely unharmed.
But unfortunately, she had nowhere to run to. And even if she did, boss Sakuya would find her somehow.
So as soon as the two fighters made eye contact, Meiling rushed forward with great speed, intending to force sans into close quarters.
However before she could get too close, everything started to shake. Looking down, Meilings eyes widened. Forcefully stopping, she knelt down low, and jumped with all her might.
Springing upwards, she found herself fifty meters above sea level before her acceleration stopped.
The ground far beneath her suddenly broke and crumbled apart, as it must have been over forty massive pillars that reached for the sky, each pillar at least 5 meters in width.
Luckily, it seemed the gatekeeper had jumped high enough, as the bones stopped just short of her. Landing on one of them, she quickly scanned the surroundings and saw her opponent standing on another pillar in the distance.
The red haired Meiling and the white haired Sans glared at each other briefly atop a jungle of bones. Then, at a silently agreed upon signal, the two summoned their bullets and fired at will.
Neon and cyan bullets streaked across the sky as two figures were zipping and teleporting across the wild terrain.
Meiling was chasing sans down while trying, and sometimes failing to avoid attacks.
Meanwhile, whenever sans felt he was too close to Meiling, he teleported away.
'Im not an idiot, I can tell she's a martial artist. The moment she gets in close range, I lose.'
While he wasn't inept at close combat, he definitely wasn't on her level.
Unfortunately, Meiling knows this too.
While sans had been wearing her down from a distance, She too had slowly but surely been pushing him into a corner.
So when sans teleports out of range again, and finds himself on the edge of the little bone arena he had prepared, he cant help but feel shocked when Meiling suddenly dashes at him with an unprecedented speed.
While Meiling was approaching sans, he went into bullet time. His perception of time sped up due to adrenaline, causing the surroundings to slow down. Why did she suddenly become so fast? When did she push me into a corner like this? Did she do something? Sans wracked his brain for an explanation, and came to a conclusion.
'Ah, she tricked me.'
Meiling had tricked him. She fooled sans into thinking she was only capable of that speed, when in reality, she could go much faster. So when sans found himself in a poor position, she could catch him off guard.
This was what she was waiting for.
And there was another factor that Meilings insane battle sense caught onto, that sans didn't think she knew.
He couldn't teleport at that moment.
First of all, teleportation required absolute focus. The last thing he wanted was to find himself clipped into his own attack, like some poorly made game.
He could only manage to defend himself while doing it. Attacking at the same time was impossible.
Second of all, there's building the magic, then using it. And building it takes time, exactly one second.
Sans had been repeatedly teleporting to gain distance throughout the entire fight. Of course she would notice when the constantly pressuring attacker goes completely still for one whole second.
And one second was all she needed.
So when Meiling suddenly approaches sans within less than a second, he curses at the fact that he's been led into the matchup he wanted to avoid.
Unable to dodge fast enough, and no time to teleport, sans summons a bone and tries blocking in that fraction of a second.
His perception of time slows back down.
And it barely works.
PWACK
'Holy shit...!'
Meilings palm strike breaks the bone in half, and nearly pushes sans off the pillar.
"Oh, sorry about that!" Seeing sans buckle under her attack, she felt slightly bad and apologized.
Looking down at his numb arms, sans feels a sense of immense fear, and relief.
Fear, at the fact that if it was before he was transported, the shock from that blow alone might have killed him. And relief, at the fact that this was no longer the case.
'Blocking with my body is dangerous.'
"Nah, I'm fine. Lets continue."
Meiling nods with confirmation, and rapidly approaches sans with a lethal right hook.
'So fast?!' sans thinks in exasperation.
He tilts his head backwards and narrowly dodges, but Meiling doesn't stop at that. She follows with an uppercut to his gut, and sans has to back step to get away, nearly falling off the bone pillar.
Meiling follows with a flurry of punches and kicks, all of which would leave sans on the hospice. Sometimes he's unable to dodge completely, and has to block with a bone, wearing him down immensely.
He barely had any time to create an attack before the next blow would come, and it was only a matter of time before he was a beat too slow.
So he had to take the initiative.
Blocking a particularly nasty punch, the bone sans was using to block once again snapped. But this time, even the pieces flew from his hands.
He staggered backwards towards the edge and seemingly had trouble recovering, not unlike a video game character having their guard broken.
Of course, Meiling saw this, and her romance for martial arts took over. She decided to do something that was against her better judgement, and go for a big finisher, something sans couldn't block.
Retrieving a red card from somewhere, she kicked herself forward so as to not lose the opportunity.
She jumped with a flip, spinning in the air once or twice, while lighting her foot ablaze with her rainbow Qi. When all was said and done, she descended apon the staggered skeleton with a dastardly rainbow axe kick!
"Qi Sign - Dragon Descent!"
Immediately, as though it were all just an act (it was), sans looked up and leaped to his right, narrowly avoiding a direct impact.
The kick connected with the ground, and a loud crack echoed across the field.
The shockwave of the attack blew sans away, and he struggled to hold his ground.
The shockwave was accompanied by an indiscriminant blast of rainbow Qi in every direction, prompting sans to raise a shield to avoid being hit. It however was being punched through via sheer firepower, thus was the difference between a regular attack, and spell cards.
It resulted in sans summoning the sturdier Gaster Blaster to protect himself. Once the effect was over, he desummoned his companion and observed the damage.
A chunk of the bone pillar they were sitting on was missing, seemingly having chipped off from the initial impact, as sans was certain he heard the familiar sound of bones breaking.
The pillars in the surroundings were only faring slightly better as they were pelted by massive flaming Qi bullets, and looked like more full of pot holes than Quebec.
At the center of the destruction, was Meiling who looked straight at sans with a worn-out expression.
Her clothes were disheveled, her hair slightly frayed and skin glossy with sweat. She was breathing hard, but seemingly caught her breath in an instant, perhaps her background as a martial artist help there.
Despite her obvious fatigue, she once again shakily resumed a fighting stance and prepared to throw herself at sans again.
Perhaps that slight fatigue is why she didn't think about why sans was standing still. After all he had way more than a second to work with.
Perhaps that slight fatigue is why she didn't notice the bone pillar under her shift as she launched towards him.
Perhaps that slight fatigue is why she didn't realized she had just been pummeled by ground bones untill she found herself launching into the sky.
"...?!"
Regaining her focus, she found herself a dozen meters high, and as she reached the peak of her ascension, soon began to fall.
Looking back down at her opponent, she saw him raise his hand leisurely before it flashed a dark sinister blue. Moments after, she felt the acceleration acting on her body disappear.
She couldn't move. It was as though her body wasn't her own.
As soon as she began to bring out her diminishing Qi, she found herself accelerating towards a pillar at an unstoppable rate.
Unable to do anything else, she crossed her arms and prayed.
BOOM
Lying in a crater clouded with dust, Meiling groaned before standing up.
Sans was a couple of pillars away, and met her worn gaze with that of a similarly exhausted one.
A human body has its limits after all.
"Now that was something huh?"
A lull in the violence.
"That attack might have killed me, y'know."
Meiling tilted her head.
"Huh? No it wouldn't?"
Sans scratched his chin with an lazy expression.
'Fuck you mean no it wouldn't, look around.'
"Look pal, I don't know about your average human, but I'm not exactly sturdy."
He pointed at the center of the spell card.
"That, would have killed me."
Again, Meiling looked confused.
"I still don't understand." Meiling said, before dropping the bomb.
"I thought all attacks were weakened during a spell card duel?" She stated nervously.
'Uh?'
Sans lifted his eyebrow.
'Thats, wait...'
_______________________
"All attacks are weakened during a spell card battle. Of course, naturally strong attacks will still hurt like hell."
________________________
At this foggy memory, sans' eyes opened wide.
'I totally forgot that huh...? Man, I guess I wasnt listening after all.'
Throughout this night, he had been fighting like his life depended on it.
There was a major disconnect between an attacks appearence and how much damage it would do, so he dodged everything as though he still had 1 HP.
He hadn't been hit, so how could he have known?
"Heh... Heh heh heh, you're absolutely right..!"
Sans laughed slightly menacingly, causing the tired Meiling to tense up slightly.
He had been wondering why his attacks left little more than red marks on her skin, when usually they would leave someone black and blue.
He hadnt adjusted his strength.
"So there's no need to pull punches right?"
This whole time he had been fiddling with something in his pocket. Pulling it out revealed a white card made just this morning.
He wasn't aware of what it was really capable of since Marisa dealt with it in one go.
After all it was just play, right? who would go all out when play fighting?
But in Gensokyo, it seems like that's exactly what you're supposed to do.
Don't get it twisted, sans was utterly exhausted, and he WAS trying his best to win. But he was also trying to avoid any permanent damage.
But permanent damage might not have been possible in the first place.
So why bother?
"Marrow Sign - The Bone Zone!"
Maximum output!
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