Chapter Text
(Hey guess what! I'm dyslexic and deluded myself into thinking I can write! Find all the grammatical errors and win a prize! The prize shall be gratitude and also invectives!)
Boom.
"Boom" was not an uncommon sound in Scarlet Devil Mansion. One end of the manor served as a lair to a powerful and amoral magician devoted to her craft, while dozens of faeries serving as maids had could be found anywhere in the house, among the accumulated magical artifacts, the kitchen, and any number of cleaning supplies. Anyone who spent a reasonable amount of time in Scarlet Devil Mansion would grow used to the sound. The thick walls certainly helped in making the occasional boom sound less bad.
"Uuuugh," said a woman of moderate height, her long red hair somewhat singed and her smart dress disheveled. Sprawled upon the ground face-up, she squinted and tried to force her vision to focus. Then she rubbed her head and muttered, "What happ-OW!" One of the bat-like wings on the side of her head smacked into her face with a meaty sound, cutting her off.
"Muuuu..." came a sound from a human-shaped heap clad in purple-and-white-striped pajamas, crumpled against a bookshelf and barely moving. The heap wriggled while making the noise, then seemed to give up as the noise faded.
"...Mother fucker," said a third figure, an average-sized woman clad in a dark blue maid's uniform. Through a groan, she picked herself up from a pile of books that she had landed on. "Geez, you really need to lay off the whatever that was, Patchy!"
The maid took a moment to stretch, then screwed up her face into a beetle-browed grimace. As the red-haired woman rolled onto her hands and knees, the maid said, "Hey, my wings aren't working! Patchy, what did you do!"
"Stop shouting," said the pajama-clad heap in a muffled voice. "It'll be fine, whatever it is..."
"My wings aren't working!" the maid said, as she balled her fists and glowered at the white and purple heap. "This is a serious problem!"
"Uh..." said the red-haired woman as she stood and looked at the maid, the hitherto-folded wings on her back twitching. Then both of the wings on her head closed on her face like a pair of wrought iron gates, the smacking noise nearly as loud as the resulting cry of "Ow!"
The maid stared at the red-haired woman. After a moment the wings on the latter's face opened and extended straight outward, permitting her to stare at the maid in turn. After a moment of silence, punctuated by some futile wriggling from the pajama-clad head, the maid cried, "Why are you me?!"
"I could ask the same of you," said the red-haired woman, frowning and causing the wings on her head to fold tightly. The wings on her back then extended upwards as she reached up to rub her head.
The maid looked down at herself and frowned. Her brow beetled once again as she took her apron in hand and lifted it up. She ran her fingers over its frills, staring at the plain white surface of the apron as though she expected hidden text to make itself known. "...Oh," she said after some moments. "Guess that explains that."
The red-haired woman rubbed her face, the wings on her back descending and nearly touching the ground, and looked back to the maid. Then her eyes roved back and forth, taking in the damage. There wasn't much left of the table that was in the middle of the room, just a leg here and a corner there. Broken glass covered the carpet, which was easy enough to get rid of. It was going to be less easy to deal with the mysterious blue and yellow stains upon the deep red carpet. Further out, a couple of bookshelves had toppled, and a few more had poured some of their contents on the ground from the shock. Those would be Patchouli's problem, at least. "What happened?" she muttered.
"Patchy screwed up. Duh," said the maid.
"I meant more specifically," the red-haired woman said, her face impassive and professional.
"That's pretty obvious too, you know," said the maid, as she raised an eyebrow and turned her palms upward. "I mean, the real question is how long it's going to take Patchy to fix it!"
The red-haired woman turned her head toward the heap of white and purple stripes as she finally managed to unroll herself and crawl onto her knees. "Yes, Koakuma, that is an excellent question."
"What question?" said the pajama-clad woman, as she adjusted her sleeping cap from her eyes and looked between the two. "You're both fine."
"I'm stuck in Sakuya's gross body, you idiot!" cried the maid, fists balled at her side.
"He-" said the red-haired woman, before a headwing smacked into her face again. "Gyah! How do these things work!?"
The pajama-wearing woman stood up and started to straighten her clothes. She looked between the glaring maid and the red-haired trying to pull a headwing from over her eyes. "Ah, this is a pickle," she said.
"Huh?" said the maid, her glare melting into a frown.
"Well, I would have to research this," Patchouli said. "It's a highly irregular occurrence for two minds to switch bodies without extensive preparation, and this discounts whether or not the aura phenomena-"
"So what you're saying is we're stuck," the maid said loudly.
"...For the foreseeable future," Patchouli said.
Silence reigned over the library for a moment. Patchouli finished smoothing out her robes and turned her attention to her tangled hair. A book tumbled from a nearby shelf onto a pile. "That is not acceptable," said the red-haired woman at length.
"There is little I can do about it," said Patchouli. She frowned at a tangled lock of hair and began to pick at it. "If you are lucky, the issue will correct itself. Otherwise, it will take some rather intriguing research toward fixing it. In a way, this is a rather fortunate accident-"
"Break time!" said the maid, turning and walking away.
"Hey!" said the red-haired woman. "Koakuma, you come back here this instant!"
"Ah ah ah, I'm Sakuya now!" the maid said, before she turned and ran for the door. As she did, she lifted the hem of the dress and began to pull it off. "Wahahahaha!"
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" cried the red-haired woman as she took off in hot pursuit. Both sets of her wings flared out in response, creating space for her arms to pump. Ahead, the maid had shed her dress and tossed it aside with more laughter. The red-haired woman instinctively reached to grab a knife, slowing a little, before stopping the motion. Of course she wouldn't have any knives! They were just ahead now, sheathed to a now-visible garter on the left leg of her purloined body! Giving a snarl, she redoubled her speed, her wings flaring out further. The distance between them closed, just a couple yards, as the maid seemed more interest in wriggling out of her brassiere than running at top speed. The red-haired woman prepared to pounce, before a fierce ache slashed through an unfamiliar limb, and suddenly the ground fell out from under her!
The world spun and came to a painful halt, punctuated by the sound of falling books and further pain upon her head and shoulders. Dazed and her limbs refusing to listen to her, her mind worked quickly to reconstruct what had happened as she tried to move her hands onto the ground and push herself up. There was a sharp pain, to the left... Ah. The wings. One of them must have extended and caught on a bookshelf. And the rest fell into place; it was enough to cost her her footing and then she fell. Then books fell. A couple books fall away from her as she struggles, and then a nearby voice said, "Let me help with that."
"Thank you, Miss Patchouli," said Sakuya, as she tried to stand up and was rewarded with an unexpected ache in her right wing. The pajama-clad magician pulled her to her feet. Sakuya looked toward the doors and frowned upon seeing them open and her underwear on the floor nearby. She reached back to massage the aching wing, doing her best not to think about how strange the action felt. An odd thought came to her. "How did Koakuma get my dress off without removing my apron?"
"Everyone has a talent," Patchouli said. "Don't ask me how she developed that one."
"Very well," Sakuya said. "Would you be so kind to fetch me some knives from the kitchen? I need to stop her before she can pull any more mischief."
"I suppose so," said the magician. "In the meantime, look on the bright side. At least now you can tell whether or not you have a cute butt- Mukyu!" The magician falls to the ground, hands folded over her torso, above her kidney.
"Why would you say such a thing!" Sakuya said, glaring down at the magician.
"I....thought you were...still bound...as my familiar..." Patchouli said, curling into a ball.
"Ah, an experiment, I understand," said Sakuya, before bringing her heel down on Patchouli's other kidney.