>>49379736
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Seiga smiles. Her arms sprang open to expose the whole of her naked body, blue hair swaying while illuminated by the shine of a budding yin-yang, the tiara—the frozen body of a centipede—holding back the fringe from cloaking those wide and glee-fueled eyes. “Make me!” She answers Mima, the Kirin flowing like a river as it bashed against the sigil and devoured it, its Hakurei robes, prowled by the parasites that had made a home off the corpse Seiga tailored to mimic Hana, rocked upon contact, and the nasties were thrown overboard, crawling the ground towards us three like a mindless flood. A sickening display of power. “Or perish trying!” She took off towards us, much like those parasites had.

I met her halfway there, the sunflower hanging to my hair, its stem stabilizing the wound through my neck, shining bright with a light not much different from sunlight—his smile, though unlike sunlight, it doesn’t provide as much—, my brow drenched.

Without my umbrella to channel magic, amassing power will take a while, so I’ll have to rely on Danmaku and a direct approach to combat.

Gladly, I’m not alone.

The Kirin—it’s not Hana. It looks like her, but it’s not—stretches bizarrely, its centipede-like connection to Seiga’s hair twisting and waving to accommodate its method of movement, its horns aimed to kill and puncture to the tune of a two-fold deluge of Danmaku, mine rushing towards Seiga, a page from Junko’s book taken and its composition solely meant to kill; the wicked hermit’s had morphed into caricatures of centipedes and maggots and every manner of disgusting bottom-feeder, no longer a show, but a lightless flood of parasites, Chinese Hanzii written throughout her body glowing like a blasphemous bible, a beacon of carrion. Yin-yang burnt into mud and shaded forest, wards made of moonlight dispelling the Danmaku or redirecting it towards the living things whose capacities were unknown for now; a range of sharpened knives stopped the Kirin before it could reach me, its putrid body contorting and firing back every knife it could after bathing them in golden bubbles, Sakuya dodging her repurposed knives as if in a dance, which she partook in with elegance.

With the path wide open, I dodged the Lunatic Danmaku, a breeze compared to what I’ve experienced in the past, and ignored the Kirin, its attention turned to Sakuya, and tackled Seiga. Her body swerved out of the way of the nails aimed at digging into her smug face, a fluidity like that of a river, which remained as she dodged every attack I launched at her, flailing roots emerging from the earth and the trees gaining life of their own to crush her—all thwarted—, the sunflower blossoming in a myriad of gold hues as it fed from my memories with Anon. “Can’t seem to land a single hit, Yuuka Kazami? Fighting against Mother Nature itself! The Feng Shui courses the balanced alchemy of my body, guiding me out of harm’s way—you’re no longer her avatar!” She reiterates with the trademark gloat of anyone sycophantic enough to ally themselves to the Yakumo. Sakuya is forced into the defensive, meaning the Kirin had leveraged its focus back to me, hundreds of feet working in tandem as it threw itself around me and its host, imitating a snake’s coil, a veritable downpour of Danmaku and lasers hindering a quick getaway. I tried cutting through a breach in the lunatic patterns; Seiga pursued after me, hairpin aimed at the stem that connected the sunflower to my hair.

Knives flew, and the Kirin screeched like a banshee, Hana’s mouth—no, not Hana—opening wide as if a loose bag and cloaking all the knives in golden bubbles, their pattern tracking towards Sakuya…

… Who was already on the move when the knives flew, the maid’s impeccable movement capable of dwarfing the distance in a second and passing us, the blades screeching towards me and Seiga. The hermit’s eyes narrowed, and she cut the air in front of her with the hairpin, time enough for me to somersault away and land by Mima, the Lunar Staff loaded with an overwhelming amount of magic that almost matched my sunflower—

—She hissed, and all that magic was usurped into thin air, the Bagua of 16 trigrams gyrating slowly beneath her ‘kneeling body’. “Ah, you disgrace of an apprentice,” she stammers, an earthquake thrumming the land and beyond. “… The first attack failed,” Mima muttered, recomposing herself and watching attentively as Sakuya dodged the Kirin’s lasers, Seiga’s Danmaku and the infestation crawling on the ground, mindlessly swarming her legs and intending on crawling up. Through it all, the maid was focused and quiet.

“The power she’s cultivated is like Reimu’s float, but much more volatile…” A droplet of sweat cascades down. “If the Feng Shui she’s commented upon can be uprooted, then we might manage something.”

“… I see—in that case,” My eyes narrow as she pulls a simple-looking knife from somewhere in her dress, her green jewels fixed on Seiga's rank braid. “We cut the evil at its roots.”