Chapter Text
Pain pounded on every surface inside of her skull like a caged animal, as The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa slowly blinked herself awake. Morning light, dull and sickly yellow, spilled onto her face, filtered through the window of her inn room, blindingly harsh and intensifying the pain of her hangover until she covered her eyes with one hand. Perhaps she had a hair too much to drink after all.
She righted herself on the futon slowly, her normally pristine-kept head of gold hair disheveled and frayed after so much tossing and turning. She breathed slowly a fresh lungful of comforting dust and must. She really had started to like this place, small as it was.
This would be the final morning she woke up to these walls.
After her talk with Mami-san, her memories might have gotten hazy, but the way she had resolved herself to that remained vivid. She would likely remain scared of the prospects of flight forever; this only meant she had to flee while scared. It was the right thing to do. It was the thing she deserved.
Magicking her hair into proper shape as she stood up and staggered around the room, she took stock of what needed to be done. Thankfully, she had killed off the last of her food in a drunken haze, so nothing went to waste there; it did, however, imply one last shopping trip for the road. Simple enough. She glanced at the table, and the back cover of the book she had rented from Suzunaan; surely, just one more time, she could be the kinder Marisa and return it. The nice girl running the place deserved that much. She packed it into her pouch delicately so that it remained unharmed.
Handling the book on amateur magic reminded her; to head out on her own, she would likely need spellcards now. That wasn't the first time she'd ever had that thought, but it was the first time it hit her with its full weight. Surely by this point, she could scrawl something together from everything she'd learned. Put together with what she'd always watched the real, genuine article that is Kirisame Marisa perform, it might be enough to defend herself in a pinch. That sounded like a fun exercise, at least.
... For the first time, as she handled her pouch, she really took stock of how little actually belonged to her. A couple of stolen books, a spare change of identical clothes, some toiletries, a handful of knickknacks she'd pick-pocketed in suitably Marisa-like fashion, all things she could collect in a neat little pile arranged for Sekibanki to come and spirit away, and... that was about it.
It was a sobering thought to have. It was encouragement enough to commit to this being the day things changed, as if she needed more. Riding a deep sigh, she reached for the hat hook--
And it was gone.
She stared, then she flinched, then she gasped, and turning around, she began tearing up the bedspread in a frantic search. She never went anywhere without that hat. That hat was the most important part of her fiction, her silhouette, her entire identity. It was crucial; without it, she could hardly be Kirisame Marisa at all. The entire disguise would be compromised. How could she have lost it? Where might that have happened? Did she drunkenly walk herself the whole way home without it? How many people saw her without it? Did they see her ears? What could she--
Now staring into a mostly-empty chest of drawers, overcome with all of these thoughts at once, she gently slapped herself in the cheeks with both hands, and pulled the bags under her eyes.
Calm down.
That hat... meant a lot to her. She found it fulfilling to wear, in a silly way. It was a lot to the part she played in this village. It made up much of the shape of Kirisame Marisa.
That person was not going to be her anymore once she left this village.
Whether she liked it or not, whether or not she'll miss it, she decided, this is a blessing in disguise. A goodbye would have been necessary, one way or another. Cut herself free, cold-turkey. She just needed to stay calm. To stay calm, stay smart, and go about one singular day without her hat. Without Marisa's hat, she corrected herself. It was never hers to begin with, after all. It was for the best.
She calmed herself with a simple routine of cleaning the room she freshly tore apart. Mami-san had a good point; reassembling the blankets and pillows upon the futon wasn't especially fulfilling, but the occasional thanks from the innkeeper felt nice. She wanted to part on a good note. She wanted to stop thinking about how final it all was, too, but apparently that was proving difficult.
At the end of that simple task, she slung her pack over her shoulder haphazardly, and brushed her bangs from her face. She steeled herself for the goodbyes to come, the last use she would get of her in-character voice. Alright. Suzunaan first. The rest comes later.
And she disappeared herself through that door.
---
The setting sun in the west dyed the sky a deep, hazy, serene purple. The dirt streets of the Human Village slowly cleared of all but the usual suspects making up the night crew. The cicada cries slowly died down, and the first among the crickets began singing for the changing of the guard. A world frozen in time, yet caught in perpetual motion, drawing the curtains on one day in preparation for the next.
It wouldn't be far. In fact, if she remembered right, it would only be at the end of this long road.
The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa, braced against a wall just around the corner, sucked in a sharp breath and psyched herself up. You can do this. You don't have to answer anyone's questions. You just have to go.
She put the sun at her back, and began to walk.
Her steps were almost mechanical in her effort to keep a natural-looking march. Each blink squeezed her eyes for just a little too long, trying to shut out the rest of the world watching. It was a nighttime stroll; she wasn't up to anything strange at all. Perfectly normal behavior for a perfectly normal girl, one who certainly hadn't been living a false identity for a calendar year of her life.
She kept telling herself that as she felt the piercing blows from every little sidelong look she received. Everyone who stopped and waved at her, tonight of all nights, especially as naked as she felt without her hat, it felt wrong. It felt nauseating. She passed by the man whose cart she'd stomped all over, who glowered offhandedly and strayed closer to his side of the road. Who could say if he saw that something was wrong. Who knows if they could tell her walk was not innocent.
"Miss Marisa!" A small and familiar cry pulled softly away from his mother's held hand, turning to greet her, "Thanks again for helping with my ball the other day! You were super cool!"
She felt sick just hearing that. She wondered if that boy would end up missing the girl she pretended to be all this time.
"Goodbye! Goodbye, Miss Marisa!" The boy continued calling out as she hastened her pace, surely embarrassing his accompanying mother. She balled up a tight pair of fists and avoided all eye contact. Gods' sake, this road felt longer than it was yesterday.
"Oy, Marisa!"
Another voice called out to her.
This one, though, clutched down tightly upon her heart. Her walk stalled with one leg in the air. She froze in place entirely, in fact.
"What are you doing way out here? I thought you were still napping at the shrine--!"
Despite herself, she turned to look.
The Hakurei Maiden, signaling she slow down with a waving hand, seemingly alerted by the words of that child, called out to her friend, none the wiser.
At least, she probably was, until the eye contact caused a spike in the poor girl's heartbeat, and the spell concealing her ears abruptly failed. They popped to full rise quite enthusiastically, all things considered.
Suddenly, there was a fox youkai who stole the shape of Kirisame Marisa in the middle of the human village, stalking about at dusk, standing like a deer in arrow-sights before the Hakurei Shrine Maiden.
You don't have to answer anyone's questions. You just have to go.
Immediately and without thinking, The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa burst out into the sprint of a prey animal, pivoting about on her heel and taking off down an alleyway. She needed the shadows, she needed to hide, she needed to break the line-of-sight and get away. She needed to ignore the obvious yelling of the most dangerous person in all of Gensokyo, and the way it turned every head this side of the village her way, and she needed to escape.
She clenched her jaw so tightly she nearly felt something crack, as her legs carried her at maximum velocity. Her nice loafers shredded themselves against dirt and stone and grass. She took every other turn, just to feel like she was losing her pursuer even some small amount. The occasional sound of a dainty footstep touching down between flightful bounds told her otherwise.
Diving in and disappearing herself through an open window and ducking low to catch her breath-- how long was a metalworking shop on this block?-- she checked herself and her pockets. The spellcards she'd hastily crafted were still there. They wouldn't be any real use, not against the shrine maiden herself; she knew that, of course she knew that, but they were there. They were a last ditch effort, or a smokescreen, or in the worst of all cases, they would be her proof that she tried her best.
This was only enough time for an amulet to fly through the window after her, its imbued homing magics curving it almost one-hundred eighty degrees, slapping aggressively onto the floor in front of her. Not distantly enough, she heard that voice call out playfully, "Come out, come out, wherever you are! You don't wanna play this game forever!"
She took for the front door, past the baffled store owner as she leaped entirely over a countertop, bolting across the street, trying to keep herself vulnerable as little as possible, but even that afforded a few needles tossed her way, as the maiden's unrelenting flight crested that very building she'd just fled from. They cut close, but as if by divine indifference, it wasn't close enough, only shredding her skirt; a price she was elated to pay at this point.
Overhead, Hakurei Reimu's chase was almost leisurely; she skipped across rooftops, taking some measure of the distance, incidentally keeping herself from causing any property damage as she picked and chose her various armaments at her disposal. Like a nightmare in red-and-white ribbon-clad monochrome, she practically smiled away, thinking absolutely nothing of this average, everyday youkai extermination.
The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa took a left. She took another left. She took a right this time. The tightly-knit buildings of the village offered her whatever cover they might, with all the attachment to its layout she'd built up over time-- which perhaps was not as much as she'd have liked, but she knew this part of town, right? Surely, just this way--
The bench was empty. At some point, this vague notion had become her only plan, and yet, the bench was empty.
Of course the bench was empty. Mami-san had literally told her she would be out of town. And yet, she picked tonight. Why did she pick tonight, of all nights? Why did she have to be so foolish? Why did she ever let herself dare to want something better? This was the only thing that could have possibly come of it. She should have known better.
Berating herself to tears as she bolted past that spot, trying to push herself forward past her fond memories shared there, she gasped for air as her lungs burned white-hot, as her legs pushed to their limits. It was this way; it wasn't the right road, but it led in the same direction. Just keep at it, and--
A burning touch slapped into her spine. One of those paper talismans hit its mark, and its sealing magic was like a branding iron to her youkai body, human shape or otherwise. She stumbled, but desperately tried not to slow down; if she slowed down, it would only have been the first.
One more alley; one more turn, a final chance to get some headway. Dipping into the dark and knocking over a garbage can in the process, The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa sprinted fiercely, every last drop of herself and her all put into this final stretch-- this was where Sekibanki and Kagerou told her to go, and it was already outside the village, surely she needn't run much farther, surely.
Spotting the proverbial X that marked the spot, a bush with a shred of red fabric innocently caught on one bough, she almost put her hands together for the majestic headfirst dive she made into it. Concealed at least partially, she found her prize at last; all her remaining worldly belongings, and half a month's worth of food, arranged nice and tidy and kept in a checkered red-and-blue cloth pouch tied on the end of a stick. Sekibanki's handiwork, just by color. Oh, rough introductions may have been one thing, but seeing that dullahan girl keep her word alone made her so unbelievably precious to this girl in her most desperate hour.
Hiking the stick over her shoulder and stumbling back onto her feet, the fabric of her clothes catching on thorns and twigs in the shrubbery, the fox youkai whose cover was so thoroughly blown pulled herself free,
and her heart sank as she came to face the Hakurei Maiden directly.
Standing one foot in front of the other upon a rooftop, imposed powerfully in front of the full glow of the moon, Reimu fanned a choice selection of alternating needles and paper charms between her fingers. "Guess the joke's on me for thinking your kind were getting smarter, huh?" Her voice projected loud across the distance, something she'd had years of practice with in battles against youkai. "Really? Sneaking into the village directly? Dressed up as Marisa, of all people? Come on, you didn't even remember the hat!"
The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa did not get to retort with a witty response. She didn't have the same skill at raising her voice. She really wished she did, because it would have made her a more convincing copy of Marisa, but she simply didn't.
"Well, let's get this over with; you've got a lesson to learn!" A flick of her other wrist drew a card from her sleeve.
Spellcards. Right, that was the step that came next. This was the part where she almost certainly suffered and died. Hands trembling, she reached into her skirt pocket, messily crumpling the paper her cheap imitation cards were sketched onto. She hardly even remembered which was which.
She took out her first card, and held fast onto a prayer to no god in particular-- any that would happen to be interested in sparing a poor idiot fox who deserved what she had coming.
She hadn't finished remembering her card's name by the time the Hakurei Maiden had unleashed hers; her Spirit Sign, "Fantasy Seal", erupted forth into a beautiful, terrifying storm of light and color and sound and fury, raining hell in every direction, each massive bullet veering mid-flight as if trained directly upon the fox youkai.
The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa didn't declare a spellcard.
Closing her fearful eyes, beneath her bated breath,
she called the name of a friend.
This meant she didn't see the waft of smoke at the edge of her vision.
Dashing in valiantly from stage right in a blur of shadow and fur, with a flick of the wrist suddenly and magically ballooning the shape of a smoking pipe up into something akin to a cartoonishly oversized hammer, raising one leg up and striking absolutely immaculate form, a powerful and heavy swing came crashing forth. Less like mortal combat and more like taking a bat to a ball, one mighty swing shuddered the air and sent ripples through the leaves of the nearby trees, and the foremost bullet of Fantasy Seal hurtling through the air, bashing the others away harmlessly as it sailed high into the night sky.
And as she slung that pipe over her shoulder like a mighty battleax, Futatsuiwa Mamizou put her hand above her eyes to admire the way her batting arm hadn't deteriorated with age. "Hah! Y'know, out past the border, they call that one a 'grand slam'! Y'should be proud ya got to see somethin' like that!"
With jellified knees, The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa collapsed onto herself, staring up into a massively fluffy tanuki tail hanging out the backside of the best friend she'd ever had. It was big enough that it almost fully obscured her ability to see Hakurei Reimu pitching a fit twice as hard as she'd pitched her opening spellcard. Almost.
"Are you kidding me?!" As if she'd never had that maidenly poise to begin with, her voice now echoed in a whining tantrum, "What the hell is this?! What's this annoying granny doing here?!"
Thumbing her grin, Mamizou retorted, of course, "Aw, come now, I'm not--"
And The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa found her voice, and righteously shouted back at the haughty maiden, emboldened for the sake of a true friend, "She's not that old!"
Enjoying the fullness of the circle things had come around in, Mamizou cackled heartily. Reimu was less amused; rather, she was entirely livid, stamping her foot down and probably making life very hard for whoever might have lived in the second floor of that house.
"This is an official Hakurei-brand extermination in progress, you know! What do you think you're doing?!"
"Ah, just helpin' an old pal pack up shop n' move house; ain'tcha familiar with that one?" Mamizou's one-in-a-million smile glinted off the waning sun, only infuriating the maiden further, and she loved every second of it.
"Hey, hey, don't go soaking up all the credit, you furry sponge!" Another person's voice joined the fray-- a chosen spokesperson among multiple of Sekibanki's heads as they all floated up from behind Reimu, who tossed her own head side to side, all at once becoming very outnumbered. "I'm here to be about eight or nine times as annoying as she could ever be, so myeh!"
"W-what the--?!" The scant few seconds Reimu needed to decide which head to attack first served as a distraction for one to suddenly lengthen itself a glowing neck to wrap around the shrine maiden, which served as a distraction for another to get a mouthful of her long brown hair, which served as a distraction for yet another one to literally just bite down on her ankle-- "Ow! Damn it, get-- get off...!"
And all of this served as a distraction for Mamizou to pick a distraught and frightened fox youkai from her place on the ground, taking her hand proudly and dusting her off. "Y'aint too banged up now, are ya? Reckon I showed up just in the nick a' time for once."
The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa didn't know what to feel, or in what order-- but the thing she blurted out first was, "What are you even doing here? You told me you'd be out of town!"
And the trickster of a tanuki in front of her smiled, winked, and said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "Where d'ya think we are right now, dearie?"
It stunned her to silence, that thought, imagining how hard this wise old girl had been playing her from the start, as easily as a woodwind instrument.
"Now," Mamizou dipped low to snatch up and inspect her nameless friend's dropped bag of things, "Y'know how you just got yerself right heated for a friend for a minute there? Real proud a' ya by the way."
Taking the stick incredulous and awestruck like an apprentice took up a sword, The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa nodded.
"Take that feeling, n' all that passion, and do a darlin' friend of mine a favor. For me, 'kay?" A finger planted firmly against the girl's breast, right over her heart. "Promise yer gonna do yerself right out there."
Watching her tanuki friend turn back to face the Hakurei maiden, who was now blasting bullets wildly in nearly every direction to stave off Sekibanki's petty and unrelenting assault, The Girl In The Shape Of Kirisame Marisa nodded. She nodded, and she began to run once again, and she spoke for herself, in the voice she'd trained for herself so well, "I will! I'll do it!"
"Don't go lettin' me down now, y'hear?" Mamizou adjusted her glasses to watch her friend run, into the dark of the night with the setting of the sun at her back. "You're the only one who can pull that kinda favor!"
"Quit-- Ack!" Shaking a particularly tenacious set of chompers off of her leg, Reimu tried to reclaim some control over the situation. "Quit acting like you can just run away! Get back here!"
"Ah yeah?" Several more of Sekibanki's many, many heads suddenly bounced up from sight unseen, towards Mamizou's magical hands. "Y'really wanna take that gamble?"
With Mamizou drawing nothing more than a fistful of leaves from her person and throwing them to the wind, each one was snatched up by a courageous dullahan face, and each time with a puff of smoke and popping sound, they were transformed into a near identical copy of the very fox youkai for whom this escape was arranged. Assuming their new and unfamiliar bodies in stride, Reimu got to watch each one flee after the original, all taking slightly different directions in the process through the trees.
"Ugh...!" The shrine maiden groaned aggressively as she took flight and spun herself free from all of those obnoxious floating heads, which stuck out their tongues and made otherwise offensive faces as she drifted down to the ground.
"Aww, wussamatter?" Mamizou's coddling voice bloated with sarcasm as the maiden stepped up to get into her face, as if she could from six or so inches below. "If you got yer heart set on chasin' that one li'l lady, pick one n' get movin; Y'might even be halfway done 'fore winter, if'n ya start now!"
"What's even the deal with you two?!" Shouting with no regard for anyone who might be trying to sleep at this hour, Reimu shook her needles just centimeters from Mamizou's face. The tanuki was not intimidated. "You especially, you oughta know me better than this by now! I was only ever gonna scare her straight, come on!"
Headlessly, Sekibanki's body walked up the road to the rest of them, tucking one of her heads under her arm like one might carry a kickball, and that head was naturally the one which spoke for her, "What, do you think you didn't just give her, like, ten years worth of nightmares? Give yourself some more credit, you're even better at this than I am." Another disembodied Banki bounced up necklessly and contributed, "You really put pulled a-head of me that way!"
Shrugging with pride, Mamizou snapped her fingers and returned her pipe to its regular size, so that it might slot nicely between her lips once more. "See? All part a' the plan. You really oughta learn to trust an old girl to her tricks."
"Are you old, or not?! Make up your damn mind!"
---
A fox youkai, stumbling and exhausted as she tripped her way through the low brush, now hardly at all in the shape of Kirisame Marisa, with her clothes tattered by sticks and scuffed by dirt, her comfortable illusion all but shattered, collapsed to her knees beneath the starlit canopy of the Forest of Magic.
She'd made it.
This thought, clear and singular, forced itself through the surface of the roiling ocean of emotion she had been experiencing for days uninterrupted. She breathed it between every gasp, clean and bright and vacuously empty as the night air. She felt her tail hang limply and free from her backside for the first time in years. She'd made it.
She had no idea what was to come next, as the soil bit into her knees through her poor dress. But she'd made it. She kept her promise.
She was plummeting. But she was in motion. As long as she built her wings on her way to the ground from here, that was all that mattered. It would be worth it. It had to be.
It had to be worth it.
It... had to be.
"... Marisa? Is that you?"
An unfamiliar voice approached from behind, heralded by the soft crackle of grass and twig as she stepped off the foot-beaten dirt path, all noise that had nearly drowned beneath the pounding in the fox's sharp ears. A girl whose height was just shy of 'average' even after counting her large conical hat, craned her neck over a bush to observe the lonely intimacy of this moment, confounded by the commotion and ruckus at such a godless hour.
This lonesome fox youkai, each breath bloody and metallic from running farther and faster than she had ever done before for any reason, hearing someone call out a name that was never hers, looked back with a face that didn't quite belong to her yet. One with blueish eyes.
"... Nope," she denied almost casually, disguising the tears that rolled down her cheeks with a pained smile as a sob shuddered her voice. "Just someone who really, really wishes she was."
That straw hat slanted to one side as the girl's head tilted, as if the sentiment would make sense at a slightly different angle. "... My. What an odd thing to say."
The fireflies that claimed the Forest's night drifted every which way, swimming among the stars that lingered in the fox's vision as she fought back tears with every fang and claw she could yet muster. She forced herself through, even as her teeth packed into a tight grit.
And then, suddenly, this stranger smiled back at her.
"... But, then, I suppose that makes two of us?" A thickly braided rope of black hair spun cutely around an idle finger. "Marisa really is a wonderful girl, when you get to know her. Anyone would want to be like that, right?"
The aimless symphony of the crickets and the night sparrows filled out an otherwise silent space.
Receiving such an unexpectedly positive spin on such a strange social fumble she'd made, the young fox turned back and stared wordlessly. People really are a funny folk, she thought.
"... Although, I'll admit, I've never gone so far as to... pack the hat to complete the look? But, I can admire the ambition!"
Her blinking tightened. What hat? She wasn't wearing her hat. She would know; she felt naked without her hat, leaving her ears bare like this. She touched the top of her head where it belonged, and--
A sidelong glance caught her packed bindle in its periphery. In all the rush and hurry, somehow, apparently, she had missed the obvious black shape protruding from it, standing out uniquely, as if it had been packed in haste. Considering the care with which everything else in that bag seemed to be handled, it seemed... uncharacteristic of Sekibanki's handiwork.
"Since you already have it... I can be the judge here; I want to see how you look with it on."
Was this... a joke? Was it all at her expense? How, existentially, was she meant to perceive fate treating her this way? These were the thoughts haunting the fox's hands as she undid the tie on the sack, unfolding it neatly onto the grass so as to not dirty her trail rations, or her precious few remaining possessions. Taking that wide-brimmed witch's hat in both hands, she stared long into its inner seams.
... Marisa's face may have been pretty, but it had never been about just that.
She liked the way she wore the hat. She really did like the hat an awful lot.
It was always difficult to put on with her ears in the way, but not impossible. It came to rest back in its natural spot on her head, rustling her hair about to comfortably cover everything, trying to angle it appropriately to hide an unsightly bend in its cone that had formed. She wiped her cheek clean with her forearm as she turned to this person examining her in the dark of trees and of stars.
And this girl gave a humble giggle in return. "... Well, I can see the resemblance, but... Nah. It's not quite the same."
"D-do I..." The Girl Who Once Stole Marisa's Shape had started to blurt unthinkingly, before realizing what she was about to say. And then, upon reflection, she chose to let herself speak. "... Do I at least look cute in it...?"
The stranger's face bounced effervescently between piqued curiosity, and a composed, welcoming smile. "Of course! It's a good look around here, or, so I've noticed."
Bending the brim to cast a longer shadow over her face, the fox touched her cheek, and realized who's face had just received that compliment. Her magic had long run out over that desperate chase, and she didn't even notice. Her fingertips felt warmer on her skin.
That hat made of straw tilted skyward, admiring the way the night sky peeked through the branches above. A braid brushed over her shoulder, and the stranger asked, "Well, 'Girl Who Is Most Certainly Not My Friend Marisa'," her words puffed up proud to claim some scant shreds of bravery, "I don't think that alone makes for a good enough reason for me to leave you alone in the cold."
A careful hand reached out across that distance between them.
"Would you settle for my roof over your head tonight? I wouldn't want to see someone left to pick the leaves out of their own hair..."
... A pause. A long, nerves-ridden hesitation. A pair of shy blue eyes looking up and down the contours of that hand in the dark.
... She reached back--
"... Oh, darn it," the stranger clutched a tiny fist and suddenly kicked the dirt, turning about face, "there was definitely a good joke in there somewhere! 'Leaf-ing you to the leaves in your hair'? Something like that--" And she covered her face behind both hands, left of all confidence, "Ohh, I'm ruining everything here...!"
It was only then, for the first time in that conversation, that the young fox youkai finally picked up on this other girl's audaciously strange behavior. This, she realized, might just be the only person in all of Gensokyo as anxious as herself.
"That..." The Girl Trying To Find Her Own Shape rose slowly from the dark, and, adjusting her hat underneath the soft halo of moonlight, standing amid streaks of glittering silver which pierced through the shadow of the branches above, her blue eyes lit bright. "... That would be really nice, actually. Thank you, stranger."
"Ah...?" Her head snapped back to re-establish eye contact, and she practically gasped, "O-oh, where are my manners? I'm Yatadera Narumi, a jizo-turned-magician!" Clasping her hands to her chest was as much poise as she could present herself with. "And you are?"
"... Tsukino. Kudamaki Tsukino."
"Aw, what a lovely name!"
"... Thanks. I picked it myself."
"Ooh, really?"
"Yeah. I... liked my sister's better, so I took it, and changed one or two characters."
"Well, I hope I get to meet your sister as well, so I can thank her for being such an inspiration."
"... Heh. You might just be the first person who's ever said that, I think."