#Koishi vs Miss Merry

[mageofsleep]

Koishi vs Miss Merry The Prologue, Silly but very long story

alright, before I begin this is was all meant to be lighthearted shitposty but got wayyyy too wordy. 🥲 It's a little bit related to these two, but it's self-contained and can be read without them. Also, it was meant to be a hifuu story, too.... I will edit this post and post part 2 later Please click "Read more" after you're done with the first paragraph

In the forests of Youkai Mountain, there’s a small market stall run by a tengu reporter, selling books and cawing at youkai passersby, “You should read this book report! As the war between humans continues, sailors from the land of Portugal have arrived in Japan! They’ve been selling specialized weaponry to profit from the war for economic gain! Some of these sailors have been sighted and killed right here on Youkai Mountain by fellow youkai! There are treasures flying about Gensokyo that have been lost and forgotten about! Just as there are wars between humans, wars between youkai are being fought right here in Gensokyo over treasures!” A satori with mint green hair, Koishi Komeiji, strolls along the path and becomes curious, “Hmm? Treasures? Por…tugal?” The tengu cheerily answers Koishi, “Good morning! Would you like to buy one? It’s all about treasures! Gensokyo is scattered with treasures worth plundering! You satori could read my mind and find out that it’s no lie! Give some of those long weapons to the kappa for their research and they will most surely reward you. Act fast, I couldn’t publish a whole lot of them, so what you see here is all I have.” Koishi says, “Well, I can see that you’re not lying. Hmm… I’ve never seen a tengu journalist talking about technology and writing book reports like that… I’ve only seen papers about trashy gossip and drama from the tengu. Hmm…” The tengu then reassured Koishi “Nothing to worry about! These papers aren’t that speedy as that gossipy tengu Aya, but they are packed with information! You see, if you buy this book, you’ll have more knowledge about the treasures and inventions better than others!” “Hmm… Maybe it could convince my sister to go outside and treasure hunt with me, too! She’s always shut-in our little house. She’s so sleepy and I think she’s starting to grow sickly from being indoors so much, too. The tengu hesitated, “Ummm… Yeah… Y-You have a nice day, now,” The tengu then thought, “You can get sick from being indoors for too long?” Koishi replied to her thoughts, “As long as you adventure outside every once in a while, you’ll be healthy and won’t be sick, too! Can’t write reports when you’re always sleepy and tired, y’know.”

Koishi happily strolled away with her purchase, but the tengu cawed back to her, “Wait! I forgot something! Come back!” Koishi turned back, and the tengu gave her a small felt bag, “As my very first customer, I’m obligated to give you one half of the treasures I found while I went outside for once, as a bonus offer. I’d hate to spoil the reading a bit, but since I’m thinking about it, anyways, and you can read minds, I had to let you know that they are one of the most valuable treasures. I was ordered by my boss to find any treasures that landed on the Mountain for her, and found these bags of seeds by the corpse of the sailor at the foot of the Mountain that nobody seemed to bother taking. No native Outsider had gotten a hold of these, either. If you plant these now and take good care of them, then they will allegedly grow unique and sweet fruit next year. Once they do, that will make Gensokyo one step ahead of the rest of Japan!” Koishi took the bag of seeds and continued her journey to her house while reading the book report.

Koishi entered back down to her and her sister Satori’s small little house on the skirt of Youkai Mountain with the tengu book report and seeds. “Satorin! I’ve got some stuff!” Koishi sees Satori sleeping with her head on her desk with stacks of paper, and her quill taken off from her hand, as it had dripped strands and drops of ink onto the paper. “Satoriii! I’m too late! She fell asleep!” Koishi tries to shake the shoulders of Satori in order to awaken her, but she had barely opened her dark baggy eyes. Koishi rests her sleepy sister against the chair, and places the bag of seeds on the desk. Koishi tries another method to wake her up one more time, “Satori! You look so sick, you need sunshine! I got a book for you to read! It’s a book report about treasures from the tengu,” Koishi said as she opens the book to a random page and hands it to Satori. Satori was enticed by sketches of a mansion, and her eyes opened up even more. Koishi continues, “The tengu who wrote it even gave me these seeds, too. She told me to keep them safe, they might contain strange fruits we don’t know about! Maybe we can go outside together, get some fresh air plundering for treasures, or even garden! Also, I wanna try out that memory digging hypnosis magick you taught me!” Satori sighed, “Oh alright, Koishi… I do want to see what sorts of information we can dig up with that skill and our mind reading powers. I guess I’ll go outside, but let me finish reading this first.” Koishi beamed with excitement, “Yay! In the meantime, I’m going to brew some remedies for exploring and for you since you are so ill from being inside all the time.”

The Komeiji twins wander around the foggy mountain and come across two different paths with the sign at the top pointing to the left that says, “Forest of Magic” and the sign below it that says “Misty Lake”. Koishi exclaims, “There shouldn’t be any more treasures on the Mountain since the tengu took them all, so we should head downwards. Where should we go first? I bet the Forest of Magic has magicians with tons of knowledge on treasures that we can memory dig from!”  Satori then warned her, “Koishi, some of those magicians are pretty scary, even for satori like us. Some of them are weaklings, sure, but some know terrible spells from youkai who live in an underground world deeper than Hell. Some know how to give us headaches for reading their mind… some can even forcefully close our third eye with magic stitches that seals it forever… I think we should take another path.”  Koishi turned to Satori and startled, “They can do such a thing?! Wouldn’t that just make us lose our ability to read minds?”  Satori replied “I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard scary stories from other satori on the mountain. Our third eye is our ‘heart’, so if the stitches seal the eye, then the ‘heart’ is also sealed. Another story is that those whose hearts are sealed are forever forgotten.’” Koishi shivers, “Why would such a thing even exist? Do other youkai hate and fear the satori as much as humans do? How do you know this stuff when you’re always in your room?”  Satori tells her, “Koishi, maybe you’re a shut-in yourself if you don’t know those horror stories. Anyways, Let’s try that lake with fairies and mermaids. Fairies are weak enough and we can grab some information from them with our memory digging hypnotism. Same goes for the mermaids, too.” Koishi agrees with her, and they continue their descent from Youkai Mountain to the lake.

Later on, a purple magician aimlessly wandered through a foggy forest on the Mountain. She passed a cliff and heard a youkai communicating with her, "So she says, 'Well... I think I’m lost, but I guess I have to make my way to the top somehow.'" Another voice was then heard after, "'Well, I know it's a mountain filled with youkai, but I just hope that I don't encounter anything uninteresting,' How silly this human is!" The purple magician turned around and looked at the cliff behind her: she saw the two Komeiji sisters. Satori had continued to mock her thoughts "'Oh dear, not just a youkai, but a satori…’” and Koishi followed “‘Weren’t they banished to Former Hell?’ Huh? Satorin, this one’s thoughts are a bit silly… What’s she talking about?” Satori had replied “Here to climb the mountain to the oni? Might as well write your wills.” Satori looked at the human magician more carefully and mocked her once again, “‘Oh dear, I must’ve landed in a time period where they were still on the mountain,’ Hmm… I think this individual isn’t human, Koishi, she might be the Gensokyo Sage Yukari Yakumo. That youkai is more terrifying than us satori, she can set up barriers that block our ability to read her mind! The barriers are filled with nonsensical readings that might give you a headache, sister, so try not to read them too much.” The magician chimed in, “I don't know if I'm even human either, but I’m pretty sure my name is Maribel Hearn, not Yukari Yakumo.” Koishi cheerily says, “Oh, a human who speaks her mind for once. This silly human’s name is ‘Maeribeu’ or something. Satorin, she might be a sailor! Thinking she’s in the past! Oh goodness, in her mind she says she’s from Ireland and moved to Japan, she wants to find the oni at the summit.” Satori then followed after, “Pay attention and read carefully, sister. Look, ‘At least they think I’m someone else, a stronger youkai even. I might be able to just walk away from them and just head to the top,’” Maribel walked away from the two and continued to traverse through the forest, Koishi was shocked, “Oh right, right! We were supposed to prank humans like her and warn her about the mountain, but she’s getting away! It would be very tragic of a silly human like her to die. We have to chase her and prank her before the other youkai kill her, sister!” Satori replied to Koishi, “If you say so, I’m too lazy to prank today, though. I do want to see what interesting things you can do with pranking her, so I’ll just follow you. Maybe you can test your new skills of hypnotism that I’ve taught you on this human, Koishi.” The Komeiji sisters continue to follow Maribel deeper into the steep forest.

Maribel had carefully tried to walk along very steep terrain and found shrubs bearing small pome fruit. She inspected them carefully, but found that they were still not ready to be harvested. While distracted, Koishi had talked behind her, “I wouldn’t eat those fruits if I were you, they’re pretty sour and can make your face scrunch up and maybe even kill you! We wouldn’t want a dead human while trying to read her mind, right?” Maribel became startled and fell down. Koishi continued, “Maeribeu, right? Would it be okay if I called you Miss Merry instead?” Satori scolded Koishi, “Koishi, you scared our test subject and killed her. How are we gonna find another human to test the hypnotism I’ve taught you now?” “Aww…” Koishi poked Merry’s head with a stick and read her mind “‘Hmm, I don’t think she’s dead, I’m still able to read her mind. See? She thinks, ‘Oh dear, these two are not going to leave me alone, huh. Well, I guess I could make a report about the satori for my studies, instead.’” Koishi turned back to Satori and excitedly claimed, “Satorin! This’ll convince Miss Merry to play with us, too!” Merry, annoyed by Koishi poking her head, tries to stand up. Once she stands she tells Koishi, “Alright, Koishi, I’ll play with you. Do be warned that I do know some magical skills myself, though.” Merry takes out a strange rectangular device with a set of lenses to the side. Koishi mocks her mind one more time, “‘Bullets from youkai turn to nothing with thi-’” but Koishi was interrupted by a flash, "Aaah!" and a shudder was sounded from the strange device. Koishi recoiled back, “Wait! Restart! Let me start first! I attacked from behind you, so it's only natural that my turn is first! Also, if you lose, you have to play with us again! I’ll start by testing this skill that makes you think of your true inner secrets and traumas!” Koishi spinned lasers towards Merry and scattered simple yellow bullets of light throughout the field. Merry’s vision had grown darker and darker throughout until she could see nothing but the light of the danmaku. Merry had felt as if she had died, and this feeling is what floods her thoughts of precious memories and traumas.

“I see them now… This skill makes it so I can dig up precious and unforgettable memories and traumas stored in a hidden part of the mind that satori can't read by forcing one to think of them! But Miss Merry’s precious memories… they are a bit strange… I feel a bit of a headache but… It’s like they are from another world! Or more worlds than one!” Koishi said, “Miss Merry is no ordinary human who landed on the mountain… She’s a magician who studies minds from a world stranger than Gensokyo, or maybe even the future! Precious memories of the future, of leaving her faraway country to Japan. There’s tall, rectangular prismic buildings… And she’s always with another girl who studies the forces of nature and things that are tiny and unseeable! She’s traveled to Paradise… to the Moon… to Hell except it had a big castle in the middle… and then there was another stranger Hell??. She’s traveled to the past and seen the formation of Japan by Izanagi… As a matter of fact, the girl standing before us isn’t really her, but a doll of some sort, that she created to possess and traverse these strange worlds without endangering her real self who’s just sleeping in her room in the future! What a strange human!” Satori tries to read the trancing Merry’s mind as well, but she develops headaches and passes out from the information she’s read. Koishi shocked, “Oh no!! Merry put sister Satori back to sleep! I’ve got to have vengeance!! Alright, so I’ve narrowed it down to three choices: A battle with a silvery blade maid of a vampire, visions of a fiery Hourai immortal, and a battle with a cat-like chimera youkai from a spacey place with wings! Although, there isn't enough information about their attacks, as each one of them ended with her waking up in the end, so I will collect them and do each of them in order.” The bullets of yellow light and lasers continued to rotate. Merry had started to develop migraines and vertigo after trying to just dodge and time out the attack, but then remembered that she can’t time out Koishi’s attacks because they are not spellcards. She then tries to use her strange device to flash against the bullets and Koishi. “Eek!” Koishi recoiled against the flash once more, “That strange device, it’s a ‘smartphone’? Spellcard rules? Don’t worry, my first attack will be from your future! My next trick is to use the attacks of the blade maid you’ve battled once before! This one will have a timer.” Despite delivering an attack to Koishi, Merry’s headaches continue to develop into more severe migraines. Koishi scatters knives throughout the field. Knives are placed behind Merry, but she was too distracted by her migraines to pay attention to the patterns. The knives then, all at once, quickly jolt towards Merry. The ‘doll’ that Merry is possessing is destroyed and disappears before Koishi.

“I won! I won! Miss Merry was nothing compared to a mountain youkai! She has to battle us again!” Koishi cheers, but then she turns back to the downed Satori. Koishi crouches down and tries to gently shake Satori’s shoulder in an attempt to wake her. Satori slowly wakes up. She then sits up but tries to hold her head and faintly responds to Koishi. Koishi takes out a vial of medicine and hands it to Satori. Satori drinks the vial and tells Koishi, “I told you… I told you those magicians are terrible… I think this fog made us go the wrong way…” Koishi cheers, “We’re on the right path, and we won! Miss Merry was from the future and she was possessing a doll that looked just like her. I used all my power, copied abilities from her memories, and she lost! We can go back to siphoning information and finding treasures! Then prank Miss Merry again once she comes back!” Satori sleepily responds, “Koishi… What are you even talking about? That human magician was from the future?” she then, still drowsy, smirked, “We can’t prank Merry because she’s from the future, and I lost anyways to her, so that makes it a tie. No more migraines from Miss Merry ever again.” Koishi sulked, “Well… if we live long enough, we can see Miss Merry in the future again… right?” Satori questioned Koishi, “How were you even conscious during that whole battle? Miss Merry’s memories and thoughts gave me such a headache.” “I think I can explain but let me help you stand back up so we can explore more afterwards,” Koishi helped Satori back up, they both paused and their thoughts scrambled with time travel and other worlds. Koishi then snapped out of it and clarified, “Miss Merry’s future is where humans like her study minds and become magicians, and she’s traveled to other worlds, other time periods. She has a friend who believes that everything is made from really tiny things we can’t see. If humans can end up learning tricks like that, then we youkai must grow and form new tricks, too!  We satori can only read what people are thinking about at the moment, there has to be more to the mind than just what people are thinking about. For example, memories are stored in a place of the mind that us satori can’t read unless one thinks about them at the present moment, so we needed to learn that magic about how to hypnotize people to reveal their memories and traumas. If we learn more psychic skills like memory digging, we could learn more about that side of the mind and become powerful, so much more powerful than Miss Merry even! We could do so much and change fate if we just explore!” Satori smirked, “We satori will become the most powerful youkai there is.” Koishi and Satori then continued their journey and wandered downwards from the foggy Mountain.

Afterward Notes: So for this beginning part I wrote them in the Sengoku period, because of Zanmu Nippaku who's based on a monk from that time, Zanmu Nichihaku. (their given names are spelled slightly differently in kanji and surname for the real guy is pronounced Nichihaku instead but with the same exact kanji spelling as Nippaku) There's not too much information about him either way and he's a bit enigmatic, but Nichihaku's death is recorded in 1576, or in touhou lore Nippaku from TH19 "purposely descends into hell and becomes an oni" possibly vaguely around that time. If you want to read more about the lore of Zanmu Nippaku and Nichihaku I suggest reading this post. And obviously after she turns into an oni, Nippaku from TH19 is the one who convinces the Yama and the dwellers of hell to abandon the underground/former hell in favor of a new hell. This first part of the story takes place many years before that time and the middle of the youkai expansion project, tho.

This may be obvious but the original joke is because Maribel is Merry but Koishi pretends to be a vengeful spirit urban legend named Miss Merry/Mary in ULiL that nobody in the game seemed to get because gensokyo residents dont know what a phone is. And also this part having Koishi before she closed her eye happy about her mind-reading ability... well... I know AO3 exists but also im too lazy to make an acct, i just bookmark things on my browser when i read on there, but I'll crosspost anyways if i do

The pome fruit that Merry sees is the quince of some species of Chaenomeles that is native to Japan, and is a member of the rose family (Rosaceae) and Koishi uses roses as bullets. It's a very hard fruit when its raw and very sour in general but the flowers are quite amazing to look at during the spring.