The sun gives a blinding welcome as you emerge from the train car, landing onto beaten boards of the platform with a thump. A good stretch and a few paces shakes off most of the stiffness from hours of uncomfortable sitting.

Framed by reddish foothills, the town sprawls out before you. It has the chaotic arrangement typical of a gold-seeking surge and the usual decay after the rocks had been picked clean. Painted, worn facades define the uneven contours of the main street. Overlooking this central axis is a prominent peak-roofed building that you’d guess would be the town hall, but even this monument reveals fading colors and lost shingles. Further away from the center, the structures dwindle, houses giving way to shacks, giving way to boulders and sand. A narrow stream glimmers its way between the mountains, through the town, vanishing under a bridge supporting the tracks. Spindly trees and mats of grasses huddle by the precious water and you can imagine the find it was for the first arrivals in the area. Hanging off the station is the name of your destination: Sage Springs.

All in all, you must admit the view was nicer through dust-coated windows.

A wagon-scarred road parallel to the raised railway separates you and the station from the main body of town. It joins the main street almost perpendicularly, forming a bent “T” shape. The handful of passengers who had also gotten off are already dispersing across it, leaving you alone on the platform.

The train’s bells and impatient whistling slice through the air and you give the machine more space. Turning your head to follow the departure, a few bored faces can be spied through open windows and underneath, cast iron wheels turn as mechanical might heaves against its own weight. The gust from the rolling mass ruffles your clothes and forces you to intercept your hat before it can take flight, but it also feels pleasant against the late morning heat.

The train slides away to continue its eastward journey, leaving behind a backdrop of pasty dryland and scraggly bushes. The flatter land allows the valley’s mountains to circuit the horizon unimpeded. The train leaving also means

Autumn hangs over the city of Gensokyo like gray purgatory. The colorless leaves shrivel on their branches until they pluck themselves off, tumbling through stagnant air into the city streets. Raking them is pointless, since they’re quickly stomped into bits of nothing by unconcerned passersby. The sun refuses to push through the thick overcast that’s lingered over the entire month of October. Yet winter still sleeps. What’s left is a bland, dry chill that I always feel but never quite seeps into my bones. As a miserable guy in the middle of my thirties who spends most days outside on my feet, I deeply prefer the mild, dreary weather to the heat or snow we could be getting instead. But as a human who can just barely remember the red, orange, and yellow vistas the trees of Gensokyo provided when I was a young boy, my heart weeps for the fading autumn season. And ironically enough, the name of the woman I’m meeting today is Minoriko Aki.

My phone buzzes at my side. I already know who it is, so I take many extra seconds to pull it out of my coat, flip it open, and put it to my ear. “Yes?”

“She still hasn’t shown up yet?” the tiny speaker blares into my ear. It’s the shrill, frantic voice of my benefactor that I’ve become very familiar with—but never particularly charmed by—over the past decade.

“I think you would know better than anyone, Hatate,” I quip back. “Aren’t you watching the cameras?”

My employer, landlord, and overall dictator of my current living situation, Hatate Himekaidou, mutters a smorgasbord of curses that drift in and out of the required volume to be picked up on the receiver. I stretch and then return to leaning back against the side of my apartment building, waiting for my new client. It’s an awkward, lonely spot between the big city and the edge of the Great Youkai Forest. Despite the city’s outward development, humans still want to stay as far away from the forest as possible, and most youkai can’t afford to own property. So, the two-story, six-room apartment building—along with the adjacent warehouse—became a great deal for Hatate. After we met, she moved me right into the empty room at the end of the ground floor, furt

The hard, sturdy, and durable nature of clay has proved it to be an effective material of construct, as seen in their usage in potteries, statues, buildings, et cetera. But, part of what makes it so reliable is not limited to just that, it is due to its ability to soften its texture when mixed with water, making it easy to change its shape as one would like.

A dampened clay, like the one I am handling right now, will lose its tough exterior trait, and it will adjust itself to comply with the forces given to it. This one is no exception. When I mixture it with little water, it makes itself easier to change its proportion. Its structure follows as my rough skin - whose texture does not contain the characteristics of plump, living, mammal skin and is relatively similar to coarse dirt - guides it to shape.

With the help of a potter’s wheel, I change the clay mound in front of me to have a broad half-circle shape with its base facing upwards, then I press its lateral sides to shape it into a torso-like piece. After that, the wheel continues to spin as I pick one scraper from my side and use it to trim the base surface, leaving a hole in its medial area while the trimmed part peels into a spiral waste.

After being satisfied with my work, I bring the chest piece to my hold and turn around to the other being in the same room as me. The woman- pardon. The Goddess in my view is busy managing her latest project, a human-sized haniwa using a warrior helmet for its head and a lamellar armor for its torso, though the latter part is not complete yet as it is still in my hands.

I close my distance from my creator, her delicate blue hair flailing in the air as she solely directs her focus to her work. She is the being responsible for my existence, the only divine that is worth my faith, the sculpture goddess that has never committed any war crime throughout her time in Gensokyo.

“Keiki, my Highness.” I bow respectfully as I show the result of my hard work to her. “I’ve finished my part. Take as you like.”

The Goddess turns to face me, wearing her green apron that serves as a protection for her clothes from the dirtiness of the workplace. “Ah, thank you.” She

// INITIALIZING CONNECTION...

// CONNECTION ESTABLISHED...

// RECEIVING...

Dear human spirits: you are fortunate in being addressed by your rightful superior in the Animal Realm — and unfortunate in being what you are. My name is not important, as my lordship over you is unique, absolute, and without competition, and also down here I don't even have a title or rank to warrant such formalities.

Your kind is born from the animal's imagination, from attempts at conceiving a being thoroughly beyond, above, and against the beast's own ways. You are in turn called upon to deliver to beasts the most valuable of inspirations and advices. In our realm's brutal struggles of the strong devouring the weak, only the human and humane can surprise, and allow one complete subjugation of another. That is your value, as resources, in this plane. You, summoned by this particular evocation, owe me your forms; and in turn I entrust my life with your wisdom, always carefully propitiated with in the twilight language.

The Type 57 Portable Workers' and Soldiers' Council (Counsel?) being used to evoke you is a piece of mobile technology which stands at the cutting edge of the ethical and efficient harnessing of human spirits. Since the advent of portable oracles and conjurers, no longer required are the painstaking offerings of incense, ritual cakes, and praises typical of 'visualizations' of human spirits. With modern conjurers, as you must be familiar with, multitudes of spirits vote on presented options or nominate their own — to multiply the supernatural prowess behind each beast spirit's decisions, as is standard of modern evocation. This new model also supports inquiries on the fly: I will be happy to answer questions concerning my plane whenever they come up, to the best of my knowledge and ability, regardless of the numbers asking them or their relatedness to the matter at hand. May our relationship be symbiotic, and our dialectic adventurous.

... Well, those are the formalities. The u

Previous thread: >>63805
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“Let me see your hand for a second.”

“Sure,” says Momiji, obediently raising her hand up. “What’s up?”

Wordlessly, you grab it. Momiji patiently awaits your next move, but you merely lower your head in embarrassment and interlock your fingers with hers.

“Gallagher,” Momiji says, a hitch of curbed delight in her voice. “Did you... did you want to hold hands?”

“I just thought that this was the most appropriate course of action to show you how I feel. And I didn’t want to leave any room for doubt. Obviously, if I had to say anything, knowing me, I’d just stumble over my words for five minutes straight because I’m no particular expert on articulating my emotions.”

“And you say that you aren’t affectionate?”

♫: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiK7nqraLAo
[祭炎 - 東方PARTYBOX02 (GET IN THE RING)]
Lyrics: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Lyrics:_%E7%A5%AD%E7%82%8E
Music Collection: https://mega.nz/#F!1BdBzIKZ!bhLzijfM3iyphpueDOKf0g

The sky is changing.

Note: Don't be afraid of letting me know what you think. I like compliments, I like criticisms.

Histories of Yatsugatake, a Suika backstory short: >>>/shorts/2180
THREAD 1 >>65260 THREAD 2 >>65548 THREAD 3 >>65922
THREAD 4 >>66462 THREAD 5 >>66845 THREAD 6 >>67429
THREAD 7 >>67966

Alright, lets see how this goes. I hope you all enjoy.

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A briefing dataslate was, Reimu would always think but never voice in front of her old superiors, nine times out of ten just a way for someone who loved the sound of their voice to fill any time they found themselves without a captive audience. They’d invariably be infested with details not pertinent to whatever her task actually was, and even before she'd officially graduated, she'd long assigned one functionary or another to pre-read and summarize them for her, and allow her to spend the time doing something more productive, like rearranging her shelves or shoring up her Regicide skills. Almost invariably the summary document would be little more than a couple of paragraphs, and maybe a five-minute chart of some organizational structure or political situation that the original author had decided needed to be a fifty-minute novella. Brevity was, in many cases, the soul of wit, and finding someone who could happily read a dozen pages of self-important drivel and yet wouldn’t produce her own had personally been one of the crowning achievements of her early inquisitorial career. The woman in question was ever skilled at summarizing important details, and Reimu was yet to find a case where her adjusted text would contain something she didn’t need to know.

So she’d been rather unpleasantly surprised when the slate Kosuzu had handed back to her, with the face of someone who knew full well she may as well have set a ticking time bomb to explode on some other poor functionary, had been only slightly amended, with all six omissions each being described as briefly as possible, like someone attempting to right a sinking watercraft with a teacup. ‘Omitted, two paragraphs, ass-kissing” was the fourth of these footnotes, and Reimu took that as a pause to collect her thoughts, and massage away a bit of her growing headache.

She’d been introduced to the rogue trader who was supplicating her aid during her apprenticeship, and an unfortunate coincidence of who some of her earliest acolyte recommendations were and who her teacher was had caused said rogue trader to assume a kindred spirit, and

I decided to have fun and do a self-contained little something. Very likely with daily updates. And yes, as you might expect from the title, this story draws from other things. No, you needn’t have read it to know what’s going on nor in order to participate. Things should either be self-explanatory or anything that’s essential to know will get quality™ exposition to fill the reader in. The idea, as always, is to cut loose and enjoy the energetic spirit of things.

I’d appreciate comments in general, particularly when voting, as they help keep me fueled for the quick pace of things. I’ll be forthright and say that I may pick outcomes not only based on number of votes but if anything was said too. And even if a vote doesn’t win, I’ll try to work in stuff from reader comments if it makes sense to include. Not to mention that, in case of a tie, I may go with whatever reasoning in the comments that seems the most fun. So don’t be shy and say whatever comes to mind! Feel free to reply to your peers. The idea is to encourage engagement instead of just going through the motions. Anti-democratic, I know, but whenever you get around to writing a silly story with fast updates, you’ll get up to make up the rules.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the ride.

I have been suffering for a while from a disease called, watching too much disgaea and my brain going all tingly when I just happened to see an image of Seija and Renko traveling through hell. Hence this now exists too.

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Your head hurts like a motherfucker, and you’ve had extensive experience with exactly the kind of person who warranted the term during your search. (Isami somewhat more so, if her drunken rambles could be at all trusted) so you knew exactly what you were talking about. Or thinking about. Whatever.

You just know it’s not due to alcohol, because you’ve sworn it away the day you saw drunkards fly about in a bar and throw booze and chopsticks around like it’s a normal sight and not something that almost stopped your heart.

The air is strongly scented with something like a cleaner version of a diesel-fueled firebomb, a sort of thin but intense burning scent of rotten eggs like aroma, and the ground on which you’re sprawled on in your typical thrashing prone posture felt warm and soft and moist, sort of like you’ve fallen onto a bucket full of glue on the beach, not that that ever happened to you.

You push yourself up on addled limbs, raising a heavy head, blinking the sleep from your eyes – which is immediately a sign that something is off, because your left arm hadn’t worked in a while, ever since that bitch with the cat claws had torn you up actually. But, well, that could wait, because the rough stony ceiling not a few feet up, combined with the scent of blood coming from the hexagram beneath you, promises nothing good. You move to draw your ‘legally’ obtained taser to no avail, neither do you find your ‘totally not looted’ firearm, instead only finding a flashlight and some minor girl stuff in your handbag alongside some survival items. Still the flasher is hard enough to really send off a blow to someone’s skull if you swing it hard enough so you’ll make do.

Anyway you scan your surroundings again, as expected you’re in some cave, the soil of which is made of a blackish, warm stone? The ground is too smooth and even to be of normal origins. That aside the e

Episodic Adventure, lots of butchered English. Updates come at a ratio of 1 to 3 days. Not expected to be more than some short fun, in total x episodes have been prewritten. This is the tutorial.


Disclaimer: What you’re about to view are recordings made by a professional. We do not reimburse anyone who follows this advice and ends injured or maimed or suffers any sort of grievous injury from attempting to mimic said professional. Knowledge and the ability to use it are separate things.

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In dem Norther Hemies, inside a secret land'o fantasy. Laa creatures that have been bejingled from the dark minds'of you's fellow mengos. These mystic fella folks now in da cutesy pie camp are known as yoo-kay. Dis is da venture of yous fella Hunter as she shows you the wonders 'o all them smegickal fiddlers

The scene shifts to show such a creature in it’s natural habitat. The bamboo forest with its green allures and mysterious aura all apparent to the viewer. Finally it zooms into a creature that most of the outside would know…that of an Night bird stealthily stalking its prey. An unaware and probably soon to be eaten rabbit. She seems ready to pounce at it from any moment.

Narrator: Yoo-kay's also known as Mythical Beast Maidens or Lil Cute Murder Girlies. Dam names be strong describers of what cucumbers in's dem pant pockets: Dem be creatures that do not exist no more or have been forgotten like yo''s old ma grocery orders. Though many 'o em be known as ferocious man-enjoyers. Dem Mystic Missies can have a softer angle to em.