#oh and Kasen's dragon

[throwaway-yandere]

To whoever may read this letter,

I hope you are having a good Irodori Festival! I know I am. Learning about the different Kasen has been a very fun so far, and I hope to learn even more!

Ah, but these last couple of days have been pretty rough. The current season has a nasty cough going around which I seem to have caught. My nose is also constantly running, which means I have a pack of tissues with me at all times.

Hopefully, you stay safe and healthy during this festival! Maybe if I figure out who you are we can meet up! (When I'm not sick, anyways...)

-Honey on a Stick 🐝

cw: none, no yandere whatsoever, but the letter is so phcking irredeemable for plot reasons hAHHAHAHAH- (and also, this brainrot is the reason why I thought of this event lmao. wanted to write something with this premise after playing the recent windblume festival.) congrats, Honey, you're the first one who received a non-yokai letter. but at what cost, really?

From this yandere genshin secret pen pal event

✥ YOU GOT A LETTER FROM YOUR SECRET PEN PAL!!!

"What on earth is this letter? Is this even a letter? Why did you use nearly half of the stickers you bought from the Irodori booths? Just what is this?! Why is there a crumpled dead leaf here with a wet stamp? Hold on. Did you just stamp a dead leaf and taped it?!? You BIG LUMMOX.”

“This, my friend, is how professionals press leaves on a parchment.”

Tighnari’s ears dropped, horrified. 

“Cyno, is this how little you think of us forest rangers? You are ruining the reputation of my subordinates— why did you even insert a dead leaf here? No, wait, genuine question: what are you hoping to achieve? Is this for aesthetic purposes or are you trying to inflict your pen pal with The Withering?”

“Relax, my dear ranger, Blue Eyes White Dragon—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Big Ears here knows what he’s doing.”

“Well, I sure hope Big Ears knows he’s doing a terrible job 'cause this letter looks like it belongs in the biodegradable trashbin,” Tighnari groaned. “You’re supposed to press flowers, not damn weeds.”

“… Oh, that didn’t occur to me.”

“Seriously?!”

After visiting Mondstadt together, Big Ears' "subordinates", which include "Blue Eyes White Dragon, the TCG master," and "Fructose, the amateur alchemist," have chosen to travel to Inazuma after listening to Tighnari's advice. As expected, they were rather out of place during the festivities. They were unaware that they would be attending another festival shortly after Sumeru's events, but fortunately, Thoma was keen to make them feel at home. The "Fixer" claimed that he experiences homesickness as well and said, "why not join the Pen Pal or Yokai event to be distracted for at least a little while?”

Unfortunately, Cyno is more than dedicated to his new and self-proclaimed title.

“I’m going to MURDER you.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t you laugh at me, Cyno!”

“Who is Cyno? My real name is Nyco, the Best Sumeru Forest Ranger—”

“Oh, shut up already!” Tighnari groaned, pinching his forehead. "Give me that damn letter—”

"Language."

"Collei is with Sayu—"

"You mean Fructose is with Sayu."

"Cyno."

Cyno cleared his throat.

"Fine. Inspect my letter to your heart's content."

Tighnari snatched the literal (and brittle) leaflet from Cyno's hand. He examined the contents, his gaze filled with scrutiny. 

"Oh, your poor pen pal... Already sick and this letter is about to make them feel worse."

"Big Ears is plenty charismatic, isn't he?"

"No, he isn't."

"My jokes there are my best ones."

"Your best joke is my worst joke, and you're proud of that?"

"Honey will like it."

"If they did, I'm taking Collei and leaving you here in Inazuma."

"Understood. Come back once I have pollen in love with Honey. I'll invite you to our wedding," Cyno joked. An untrained ear would've missed the teasing lilt of his voice, and Tighnari had more than enough experience to know when his friend is in a light mood.

Tighnari did not sigh nor groan. He had come to terms that his best friend is hopeless. Instead, he handed Cyno back his letter, visibly disgusted.

"Take this back. I'm gonna go ahead and write a eulogy for my deceased Mahamatra friend. Be right back."

"You mean Bee right back?"

"OH MY— ENOUGH, BIG EARS— I MEAN, CYNO!!!"

Cyno chuckled softly to himself as Tighnaru stomped away, ears up in the air as though he can't bottle up his frustrations anymore. 

As Tighnari left, Cyno looked at the letter he received again, smiling.

"Honey, we'll be home soon. We haven't met yet but welcome to the family. I have a hunch that Fructose is going to adore you..."

"..."

"No, Collei is going to love you."

[itsuki-minamy]

"AYAKA" (VOICE DRAMA 09)

Translation: Naru-kun Audio: Here

>> Previous chapters: 01/02/03/04/05/06/07/08

Yukito: Alright, let's move! Come on! Hey, can we go to Shinoshima by train?

Yako: The teacher moves using the Shukuchi technique, but... because we don't have enough training...

Yukito: I was wondering if we should go by boat or something... Is this something that can move freely?

Yako: Beyond the island of Yonnoshima there is a hidden kingdom where ordinary people cannot enter. The means of transportation to get to that place is in charge of the Kasen Shrine.

Chatarou: In other words, now that the teacher is gone, we are the ones in charge!

Yako: It seems that, in the old days, as Yukito-kun said, they used a ferry... Gliding through the natural barrier in a vehicle equipped with a life preserver. The basic principle of that. Also, by the sea train route. It also has the magical meaning of connecting seven islands like a dragon's spine.

Ibara: Come on, because the reasoning is good.

Chatarou: Hey, don't cut suddenly, on one side.

Ibara: It's time to go.

Chatarou: That's right!

Yukito: Ichijou-san-san... Ibuki-san and the others must be worried, I understand. Let's hurry.

Chatarou: Ah... Oh, what's wrong? Is it a worried face?

Yako: I think we should hurry too. The teacher is...

Chatarou: Well, I'm worried too, go ahead everyone!

Yukito: Uh, somehow... isn't the train fast?

Chatarou: It's funny, it shouldn't go that fast.

Ibara: The power of the life line is getting stronger.

Yako: Ah... Maybe due to the influence of Yukito-kun's power...

Yukito: Eh... is it my fault?!

Chatarou: Haha, that's great, it's a limited espresso.

Yako: We'll get there soon!

Ibara: Yanagi Yukito... Well done.

Yukito: Ah, thank you...

[roaringwish]

wait i thought yachie was a dragon? just a turtle one

So this ask sent me digging and here's what I found:

She's a Chinese cryptid called jidiao (吉弔) that's described as a tortoise with the head and tail of a dragon, which is what the wiki says.

Recently I found this ask where Clarste, a translator said that it's easiest for us to view her as a type of dragon, but a jidiao IS its own species.

On archive.org I found the text transcript of the book A Chinese Bestiary by Richard E. Strassberg where they mentioned jidiao:

"He cited a [dragon turtle] related species mentioned in medical texts, the Jidiao, which has a turtle’s body and a snake’s head."

So, from the point of view of non-touhou mythology she’s even less of a dragon fhgfjgh

The other source I found is this website, that gives a pretty detailed description of them, and it says (from what my translator understood) that when a dragon lays two eggs one of them will become a dragon, and the other a jidiao, which Would make Yachie a dragon technically...? But like a lesser dragon I suppose, the rest of the article wasn’t kind to jidiao.

This one also describes them a beings with a snake head and a turtle body.

It also has this image of them, which I think is cool and I also think there’s a 70% chance that ZUN used it as a reference for Yachie.

In conclusion, I don't see her as a Dragon dragon, she's more of a separate species to me (even if her parents were dragons) that has both dragon and tortoise qualities, but I think the myths leave it up to interpretation...? Sort of...?

[isolaradiale]

Lost in Space 02

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[aardvark-123]

Gensokyo Festival Day 20: Kasen Ibaraki and the Cranky Crustacean Caper

I tried to mimic the mystery-of-the-week formula used in Wild and Horned Hermit for this story. Emphasis on “tried”.

It was a normal day in the beautiful Eastern Wonderland.

"Reimu! Good golly, Reimu, you've gotta see this!" Marisa burst into the Hakurei Shrine, carrying a large reddish-brown crab in a bucket. It had four long, spindly legs, four rather shorter legs and a pair of heavy pincers.

Slumped over her kotatsu like a human doily, Reimu groaned and rubbed her eyes. "Marisa, I'm trying to sleep..."

(Like I said, it was a normal day in the beautiful Eastern Wonderland.)

"Come on, you can sleep later! Just look at this crab!" insisted Marisa, shoving the bucket right in Reimu's face.

Reimu yelped at the sudden close-up of its eyestalks and jagged mandibles. "G-get that away from me!" she screamed, leaping up and clinging to a couple of wooden beams in the ceiling.

Marisa burst out laughing. "Reimu, you've fought the goddess of Hell! Are you seriously afraid of one little crab?!"

"...No. Of course not," said Reimu huffily. "You just surprised me. I have to be ready for action at any moment, so I always react rather intensely to stuff."

"Sure you do," said Marisa, smiling a knowing smile. "Thing is, though, you really need to see this crab from the back."

Marisa turned the bucket around. Reimu's jaw dropped.

"Oh, my gods! It's-! It's-! It's got a face! On its shell!"

A few round lumps on the back of the crab's shell formed a bulbous nose and a stout pair of cheeks. Some thick lines in the carapace formed a curly, grimacing mouth and a furious pair of eyebrows, with a couple of thin, angled whorls standing in for eyes.

"Cool, isn't it?" said Marisa proudly. "I found it curled up inside my fishing boat. It'd nibbled clean through one of the oars!"

"Since when did you have a fishing boat?" said Reimu, completely lost.

Meanwhile, the friendly hermit who definitely wasn't secretly an oni was taking a walk in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.

"Tra-la-la-la-la-la!" Kasen was singing purely on principle. Komachi would never have bought it as a sincere happy tune, and Kasen wouldn't have blamed her, but she still had to show willing.

"La-la-la! It's a beautiful- oh, forget it." A peaceful walk in the forest was too much fun to ruin by being twee.

Kasen roamed through the cool, quiet maze of bamboo in companionable silence with herself. It really was the perfect day for a walk, and nothing could disturb her in such a maze-like thicket.

"Help! Help! Get it off me!"

Kasen started. A woman was screaming in pain and fear somewhere down the path. "Um, hello? Are you all right?!"

"The crabs are attacking! The crabs are attacking!"

Kasen could only look on in amazement as Mokou came tearing down the shady forest track, pursued by a veritable tide of beige and reddish-brown chitin. A hundred pincers snapped in the air, a thousand legs clicked and clattered on the compacted earth. Mokou's boots and trousers were stained yellowish-blue with the blood of crabs she'd stepped on, and every other bit of her was stained red.

"Good grief..." Kasen took a deep breath. "Dragon Sign: Rage of Skyfire!"

Having just shouted out the name of her attack, Kasen was forced to take another deep breath. After that, however, there was no stopping her. She spat out a blazing-hot ray of concentrated lightning and swept it over the ground in front of the crabs, sending smoke and scorched soil flying into the air. The crustacean army screeched to a halt behind the charred trench.

Safe beside Kasen, Mokou collapsed in a heap on the ground. "Gods, I'm glad you came here... And kind of pissed I didn't think of breathing fire at them, but there we are."

"What in Susano-o's name is going on here, Mokou?! Crabs don't belong in the forest!" cried Kasen.

"I don't know any more than you do. I was just taking a paddle in the stream when a crab decided to pinch my toe. I kicked it into some rapids and moved somewhere else, then a bunch more came swarming out of the woods and tried to nip me to death." Mokou spoke very casually for someone who had just been swarmed by pincer-wielding arthropods. "So I ran for it, and I may have kind of panicked a little..."

"A little. I see." Kasen's face was completely inscrutable. "Why would the crabs want to kill you, though...? It makes sense that they might have wanted to avenge their comrade, but why would she attack you in the first place? Could it be that your feet stank?"

"Yeah, maybe..." Mokou unlaced one of her boots and took a sniff. "Oh, gods! Eeurgh! That's rank!" Eyes watering, she put the boot back on as fast as she could. "Better than before I washed them, though..."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Kasen earnestly. "We need to do something about these crabs, though. I'll go and talk to the shrine maiden-"

"Hey, Kasen! Mokou!"

"Oh, Amaterasu, it's the bossy hermit..."

Marisa and Reimu were strolling along the path, the former holding a wooden bucket and the latter looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else.

"Marisa and Reimu! There's something strange going on with the crabs-" began Kasen.

"Forget that, check out this crab I found in my boat!" Marisa ran over to Kasen and shoved the bucket in her face.

"You... have a boat? Wait, the crab has a face on its shell?!" Kasen shook her head to settle her muddled thoughts. "That's not a good sign. Marisa, where exactly-"

"Oh, my days! Look at all the crabs!" gasped Reimu, noticing the crab legion clamouring in front of them.

"Eh? There's more than one?" Marisa looked up from her bucket. Her jaw dropped. "HOLY SHIT CRABS FOR DAYS WHAT IN THE NAME OF-!"

"Let me see yours," Mokou interrupted. She leaned over the bucket. "Yeah, that's definitely a shell shaped like a- AAARGH!"

With a piercing battle cry, Marisa's captive crab leapt onto Mokou's face and started pinching at everything it could grab hold of. Emboldened, the legion of crabs surged forwards over the rapidly-cooling trench.

Kasen wrenched the crab away from Mokou's face, making her scream in pain as her nose stretched to breaking point. Kasen threw the crab into the midst of its comrades.

"Retreat to my place! The crabs'll never find us there!" ordered Kasen. She leapt into the air and soared away, only looking back when she was almost among the clouds to make sure her friends were following.

"It probably won't surprise you to learn that those were no ordinary crabs."

Kasen, Reimu, Marisa and Mokou had gathered in Kasen's airy living room for tea and fruit salad, with a little debriefing on the side.

"They are known as heikegani," Kasen went on. "The spirits of ancient warriors who perished on the sea, reincarnated as crabs who still carry the fury of their human forebears."

"Oh, you mean the angry faces?" said Marisa.

"Exactly."

Reimu chewed thoughtfully on a slice of pineapple. "I don't understand why they'd have such a grudge against Mokou. She's never exactly positioned herself as an enemy of crabs."

"I am kind of a noblewoman, though," Mokou reminded them. "Maybe the samurai who turned into the heikegani were enemies of the Fujiwara clan..."

"Indeed we are!"

The four heroines gasped dramatically in perfect unison. A tall, heavy-set woman had kicked down the door and was now strolling into the room, decked out in crimson samurai armour and claw-like gauntlets.

"I will never forget the day the Taira clan was humiliated by your sniveling Fujuwara ensemble. Hundreds of us, all dead, and for what?! So you idiots could live to feud and murder another day?!"

"Um, weren't the Minamoto clan your main rivals?" said Mokou.

The heikegani lady's face went red. "Sh-shut up! You don't know a thing about our history!"

"I was there, you idiot. I'm Fujiwara no Mokou, daughter of Fujiwara no Fuhito, and probably the last surviving member of his clan. I know who the Tairas' main rivals were. Are. Whatever."

"Well, you're my rival now, got it?! And that witch, with her mighty battleship! I must have it!" snapped the heikegani. "Prepare to die!"

Kasen sprang up from her chair. Her bandaged arm blazed with pink light as she swung it repeatedly into the heikegani's head.

"Ow! Ow! Stop! Please! I'm sorry!" the heikegani wailed. "Stop hitting me! I thought the spell-card rules were sacred!"

"She's more the fighting game type," said Reimu, taking a casual sip of her tea.

Heikegani are a real species of crab, complete with angry, stylised samurai face designs on their shells. Genuinely. Legend has it that heikegani are the spirits of Taira clan samurai who were defeated at the Battle of Dan-no-ura. In reality, they probably evolved their human-like faces to dissuade people from eating them.

By the way, the crab woman wasn’t talking complete nonsense when she mentioned Marisa’s battleship. There is an actual Japanese warship called "Kirisame". Those North Koreans had better not try anything, ze: http://www.seaforces.org/marint/Japan-Maritime-Self-Defense-Force/Destroyer/Murasame-class_DAT/DD-104-JDS-Kirisame.htm

[ikunagae]

Sumireko knows in her heart no picture of Satori can be taken. ignoring the whole tentacle third eye wrapping all around her body (does it originate in her?? as she's seen Koishi send out more tentacles than she should from her wrists), Satori looks starving constantly, not that old (yet talks like she's a jaded old lady), and has bright pink hair with pastel clothes. please Satori, your fashion choices isn't helping. maybe Sumireko'll say she's a weird cosplayer

well i’m sure they take at least one selfie. another inexplicable girl in sumireko’s scrapbook that renko will have to puzzle over for hours in the future.

maybe she does excuse her youkai friends as weird cosplayers. mamizou? oh she’s just a filthy fuckin’ furry is what she is. kasen? she’s just... really into dragon ball, and wanted to learn martial arts and stuff, and so she dresses like that, y’know? nevermind the fact mamizou’s ears are definitely real and you can see her tail move in the video and stuff. it’s... it’s really good props. she’s a very rich furry, is all.