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Chapter Text

Remilia Scarlet was sitting on one of the many westward-facing balconies of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, with an oversized parasol shielding her from the hateful light of the setting sun. One hand held a cup of suspiciously red tea, and the other propped up her chin as she listlessly watched the light fade away.

It was the middle of January, and the vampire princess was bored.

This wasn’t a situation that had ever ended well for anybody involved.

When she heard footsteps approaching from behind, Remilia subtly altered her posture to adopt an air of regal indifference, but she still kept her eyes fixated on the horizon until Sakuya quietly cleared her throat and said, “You wanted to see me, mistress?”

“Yes. I did,” Remilia said, and let another several seconds pass in silence before she added, “I am in need of diversions,” in an almost accusing tone. She idly swished the contents of her cup side to side as she spoke, then glanced up to the maid expectantly.

Sakuya merely inclined her head in an understanding nod. “I’m afraid that the Southern ballroom is still undergoing remodeling after the, ah, outburst that Ms. Reiuji had at the gala last week. The Northern one is hardly in any better shape after the last incident with Lady Flandre, and with the weather the way it is, the gardens aren’t going to be of any use for some time…”

Remilia scowled, and Sakuya knew enough to go silent as her mistress took a sip of tea and considered matters. “So, what you are saying,” Remilia finally said, “is that there is nothing to do.”

“Well, if you’d like, I could see if Lady Patchouli would like to join you for a drink. The wine cellar still has several new bottles that you—“

The Scarlet Devil waved her hand dismissively, cutting Sakuya off, and she took another sip of her tea. In her long, long life, Sakuya had never seen anybody else who could drink tea angrily. She waited patiently, hands clasped in front of her, until Remilia finally reached some conclusion.

“No, I need entertainment. I’ve already spent too long in the library this week, thanks to this damnable snow. And even if the ballrooms were clean enough to have company over, what then? Everybody passes an afternoon talking about how they’ve spent the past week sitting next to the fire and reading?” The vampire trailed off, grumbling under her breath, then continued a few seconds later, in a rather annoyed tone of voice. “How is it that humans even survive the winter?! Spending the entire season huddled up in their, their cottages, and not even able to fly? What do they do to keep from mad from boredom?”

“Ah, well.” Sakuya glanced up toward the ceiling as she considered this weighty topic. “Sleigh riding, caroling, making snowmen…” The way Remilia sighed in response suggested that none of these sounded particularly interesting to her, but Sakuya continued. “… ice skating, ice fishing, snowball fights…”

That last item made Remilia perk back up, and she glanced at the maid curiously. “Fights? As in bloodsport?”

“… ah. No; I apologize for being unclear,” Sakuya replied, dipping an apologetic bow. “Everybody makes balls out of snow, and they throw them at each other. The goal is to get hit as few times as possible, while hitting as many other people as you can.”

Remilia frowned thoughtfully at that, and stared into the depths of her drink, deep in thought, for several seconds. Finally, in a rather incredulous tone, she said, “Do you mean to tell me that normal humans partake in danmaku battles for fun every winter, using balls of snow?”

“Well,” Sakuya said after some consideration. “I suppose there are similarities between the spell card system and snowball fights, yes.”

“Amazing. Humans are such fascinating creatures at times.” The statement would sound patronizing to anybody else, but Sakuya had long since learned to stop thinking of herself as a normal human. Remilia nodded to herself along with this verdict and then continued, musing out loud. “I wouldn’t want to participate, myself, of course. Such a simple sport would be child’s play after sparring with Patchy. But it does sound like a good way to practice for combat, this snowball danmaku, does it not? I’d be doing a favor to the weaker youkai of Gensokyo if I introduced them to it. And it has been some time since I saw a good fight…”

Remilia trailed off, swishing the remaining liquid in her cup with pensive energy, and Sakuya knew better than to interrupt. At this point, the conclusion was already foregone in her mistress’ head—it was just a question of how long it would take Remilia to realize it. Fortunately, in this case, she didn’t have much of a wait before Remilia announced, “Yes, I think it’s decided. Sakuya, I’d like you to deliver a job to the tengu printing house: “The Lady Remilia Scarlet would like to graciously invite all youkai of Gensokyo to participate in the newly-discovered sport of Snowball Danmaku…””

 

---

 

“”… last youkai standing will be named the winner, and will be entitled...” … master, what is this?”

“Hmm?” Eirin looked up from her work distractedly. “Oh, Tewi brought it to me. Apparently they’re plastered all over the place.”

“Er. Okay.” Reisen glanced back to the flyer for a moment before she hesitantly asked, “And… why is it hanging on my door?”

“Oh, well! It says the reward is a boon from the Scarlet household. It would be a perfect way for me to finally get access to their garden; they grow several varieties of herb from the outside world that can’t be found anywhere else in Gensokyo.”

“… er, and…?” Reisen prompted, although she was already dreading the answer.

“And, Udonge, you will be representing Eientei.”

Reisen wilted, with one of her ears flopping down to hang dejectedly over her face. “… but why me?!”

“Well, you are my bodyguard, so it’s only logical for you to fight in my place. You can hardly expect Kaguya to participate in something so crude as a snowball fight, and Tewi… well, if you can get her to agree, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to take her for one afternoon. On top of which,” Eirin said, with her voice growing sterner toward the end, “You still owe me for all of those jars you dropped last week, and this will be a perfect opportunity to repay your debt. If you win, that is.”

Reisen was wise enough to know when it wasn’t worth arguing with Eirin, but she still gave a sigh along with her glum nod to make it clear that she wasn’t happy about the situation. After a moment, she glanced back to the flyer. “So, er, when does it start…?”

 

---

 

“Tomorrow!”

“… tomorrow?”

“Right!” Sunny Milk slammed the flyer down on the table with both hands, nearly sending the contents flying. Luna quickly hurried to grab her teacup and prevent a mishap, then shot the other fairy a glare as she pulled it into her lap. The other two were oblivious; Sunny simply beamed over her finding, while Star Sapphire leaned in curiously.

“See?! And the winner gets, um, a boot. From the mansion.”

“Ah. … that’s a ‘boon,’ I think.”

“… a boon! … what’s a boon?”

Luna looked up from blowing on her tea. “It’s like a favor,” she explained, then brightened up as the implications hit her. “… so if we win, then the vampire lady in the mansion will do us a favor?”

“A favor!” the other two shouted in unison, and Sunny added, “We could get her to let us stay there during the Summer!”

“Or have her take over the shrine for us!”

“Or give us enough sake for the rest of our lives!”

Luna leaned over the table to squint at the flyer upside down. “’Snowball danmaku’… even if you call it that, isn’t this just a normal snowball fight?”

“Ah, hmm.” Star Sapphire looked down and tapped her chin. “It sounds fancier, though.”

“Who cares?!” Sunny snatched the piece of paper back up. “Whatever it is, we’re going to enter, and we’re gonna win, because we’ll have a secret weapon!”

“Hmm?” Star glanced over. “We have a secret weapon?”

 

---

 

“Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaka.” With that, a slab of snow slammed down to seal off the makeshift igloo, but Sunny was undeterred.

“Oh, come on! It was only that one time! And you already got revenge on us for it!”

Cirno’s voice, from inside of the house, was not pleased. “Yeah, well! I still don’t see why I should help wimps like you.”

“Because!” Sunny said. “You can be our secret weapon!”

“And help us win a new house!” Star added happily.

“… you actually probably would be really useful against the actual youkai.”

At that, the door cracked open again, and the ice fairy’s blue eye peered out. “There’s going to be youkai there? And it’s a fight with snow?” she asked, with her voice betraying her interest.

“Mmhm!” In unison, Sunny and Star shoved the flyer up against the crack in the door. “It says that all of the youkai are invited! Since you can make ice, we thought that…”

“—that I’m gonna win!” Cirno leapt up excitedly; her head smacked the roof of the igloo and made it collapse around her, but she paid that little mind.

“No, we,” Luna corrected her. “With your snow powers, and us hiding you and keeping lookout, there’s no way we can lose. We’re gonna win!”

“We’re gonna win!”

 

---

 

“We are going to win,” Alice repeated, emphatically clapping her hands together. “Not because we have the most firepower, but because we have numbers and strategy on our side.”

She turned back to the wall and pointed at a topographical chart of Gensokyo, with several red Xs pointing out key locations. The dozens of dolls before her, standing in ranks, leaned forward as they all craned to see.

“The games begin tomorrow. It…seems like every youkai in Gensokyo is a potential opponent, but that just means that we’ll have more weaklings to take care of on our way to the high priority threats. We’ll depart an hour before sunrise; the darkness should give us plenty of cover to make our way to the human village. On nights with a full moon, that half-beast schoolteacher heads home just after dawn, and we should be able to ambush her with no casualties. If Fujiwara is in the area, Beta group will distract her with suppressive fire while Alpha and Gamma groups get to cover. After that, we’ll take up positions along the main roads here, here, and here,” she tapped the map to point out the spots, “and attack targets of opportunity until our position is uncovered. When that happens, we’ll retreat under covering fire to the steps of the Hakurei shrine, where we should be left alone long enough to regroup for our assault on Youkai Mountain. If everything goes well, we can eliminate half a dozen opponents and still make it home in time for tea. … are there any questions?”

 

---

 

“Yooooo, Reimu! I’ve got a question.”

The shrine maiden reluctantly looked up from her comfy position seated at the kotatsu and sighed. “Can you shut the door, already? You’re letting out all the heat. This place is drafty enough as it is, you know.”

Marisa just laughed as she stepped inside, although she did shut the door. “Yeah, well. D’you think I could stay here the next few nights? I’ve got the blacksmith in town working on a few custom pieces for me, so I’m gonna need to stop in and see him a few times a day to make sure he’s not screwing anything up, but I don’t wanna fly there from my house that often. The last time I flew that far in this kinda weather, my butt was almost frozen to—“

Reimu raised a hand, cutting Marisa off. “Nobody, including me, wants to hear about your butt.” She took a sip of her tea and savored it, pointedly ignoring the witch in front of her for a moment, before she continued. “But, if you promise not to talk about it anymore, I guess you could stay here for a while. I could use some help cleaning anyway”

“Ah, well, I dunno about that,” Marisa said as she flopped down onto the floor across from Reimu. “It's a shrine maiden's job to clean her own shrine. If I went and helped ya, it'd just upset the natural order of things. … oh! Speaking of which...” She rummaged in one of her many pockets for a moment, then pulled out a heavily-creased flyer and tossed it across the table.

Reimu shot Marisa a questioning glance as she unfolded the paper, then read over it with a frown. It took her a few seconds to interpret everything from Scarlet-ese to normal speech. “... a Gensokyo-wide snowball fight? Don't they realize how disruptive that would—ah, no, it's the vampire. She probably just thinks that makes it even better.” Reimu sighed and flicked the paper back across the table. “What do you want me to do about it?”

Marisa shrugged and pocketed the paper. “I just thought it'd be interesting to you, is all! So you're, er, not gonna try to stop it?”

Reimu slid back down, retreating into the warmth of the kotatsu. “If I tried preventing every occasion where some youkai did something stupid, I'd never have time for anything else.” She waved it aside as she retracted to the point that barely more than her head was sticking out. “It'll blow over. Besides, what kind of self-respecting youkai would be interested in a snowball fight?”

Chapter Text

Reisen had already figured this whole thing out: She didn't really want to be involved with this snowball tournament... or any other activity that required her to spend all day outside in the winter, for that matter. But, Eirin had insisted, so she had to at least make a visible effort. She just had to have a single fight, and make sure people knew, and after that, she would at least have something to point to to say that she'd tried.

Such was it that even though it was barely past dawn, Reisen was already hiding on the roof of a building in the human village, with a ready supply of snowballs next to her. This was also part of her plan. She knew Keine Kamishirasawa's daily routine well enough to know that she'd be passing by here on her way to unlock the school building, and of all of the people in Gensokyo that Reisen might wish to piss off by smacking them over the head with a snowball... well, Keine was one of the better choices. Or at least one of the ones who was least likely to bear a grudge.

The moon rabbit stuffed her hands in her pockets and huddled down for warmth as she waited, peering over the edge of edge of the roof. The village was already awake, with dozens of people strolling up and down the street, but fortunately nobody seemed to notice an unlikely pair of rabbit ears sticking up from a building. Nobody was watching the rooftops.

... and neither was Reisen, which explained why she didn't notice when an orderly line of dolls marched out along the roof across from her. It wasn't until a voice came from behind her that she looked up. "... what are you doing up here?"

Reisen jerked upward and spun around, finding herself face-to-face with a slightly confused-looking Alice Margatroid, who continued, "You weren't planning an ambush too, were you?"

"A-ah, no, well...!" Reisen glanced over at the pile of snowballs laying next to her, and decided it was a little late for lying. "... well, yes, actually."

Alice nodded thoughtfully at that, taking note of the snowballs herself. "You're participating in the fight, then?"

Reisen felt a chill in the depths of her stomach. One that had very little to do with the weather. "I am, but... maybe we can work together?"

"Mmh, the rules didn't make allowances for teamwork.” The dollmaker pursed her lips thoughtfully for a moment. “... I apologize in advance for this." And with that, Alice simply pointed at Reisen and announced, "OPEN FIRE!"

It took Reisen just a split second to realize what that meant. When it finally clicked, the rabbit scrambled to her feet and took off at a dash, just before two dozen tiny snowballs arced across the street and landed in the spot where she'd previously been. With a simple manipulation of wavelengths, she blurred herself from sight, then leapt over the edge of the roof. Invisible though she was, the cloud of snow that puffed up from her landing was a bit of a dead giveaway, and the rabbit took off running down the street, while snowballs rained down from above.

The villagers had realized that something very weird was going on—if they didn't notice the invisible rabbit elbowing them out of the way as she ran down the street, it was hard to miss the dolls flying along the rooftops, raining down snowballs. Or perhaps the youkai dollmaker chasing after her and shouting, "BETA GROUP, SUPPRESSIVE FIRE!" A murmur of surprise echoed down the street, and most of the smarter villages gave Alice—and her line of fire, for that matter—a very wide berth.

It was hard to keep up her invisibility while moving, and Reisen could feel it slipping. She turned and ducked into an alleyway before it faded totally, hoping to throw her pursuers off, then turned down another, only to find herself facing a floating barricade of dolls. The rabbit spun around and ran back the way she came, headed down a different alley, turned a corner...

and ran head-first into Keine Kamishirasawa. The two fell sprawling into the into the snow, with both parties giving surprised squeaks from the impact and Reisen on top of the historian. She hurried to stand back up, but already, she could see that the ends of the alley were being blockaded by walls of dolls. Reisen froze, but the dolls held their fire and parted to allow Alice entry as she rounded the corner. Keine was bright enough to realize that she'd walked—literally—into something that she wanted no part of, and started standing as well. "I... really don't know what this is about, but..."

Alice cut her off, raising a hand. "If you'll both hold still, I'll try to make this as painless as possible. Now then..."

Reisen shot Keine a single, almost apologetic, glance, then shot into the air like a rocket. A few tiny snowballs chased after her, but it was nothing compared to the barrage that crashed down onto Keine below her.

---

 

The problem with ghosts, Youmu had long ago decided, was that they only ever thought of themselves.

Coincidentally, the problem with humans was also that they only ever thought of themselves. But still.

These twin problems always came to a head in graveyards. Humans buried their dead ancestors and thought that they could just shamelessly forget about them, while the ghosts of the dead greedily thought that their descendents had nothing better to do than attend to them. It all led to a bunch of ghosts constantly complaining that their graves were surrounded by weeds, mossy, or just not visited all that often. And somehow it always fell to her, as one of the few people who could freely travel between the lands of the living and the dead, to resolve these issues.

Such was it that she found herself spending her scarce free time moving up and down the rows of ancient tombstones in the cemetery next to the Myouren temple, pulling weeds from the graves and occasionally brushing the snow off of particularly large tombstones.

She was somewhere around tomb number 24 when a vicious ghost leapt out. A vicious ghost that was, for some reason, carrying a purple umbrella. “Boo~!”

“Kyaaah!” Youmu leapt a full body length backward, but somehow managed to draw a sword as she stumbled to her feet, and almost instinctively fell to a fighting stance.

The ghost laughed and did a happy little dance in an entirely un-vengeful manner. “Don't worry, I'm not a monster! … well, I guess technically I am, but I'm not going to eat you or anything!” With that, it took a few  awkward moments to peel off its skin, revealing itself to, in fact, be Kogasa Tatara. She seemed rather unconcerned about the sword pointed in her direction, as she held up the white sheet that had served as her disguise and inspected it with a nod. “Not bad...”

“Oh. It's just you.” Youmu sighed with relief, but then flushed angrily and pointed an accusing finger at Kogasa. “Y-you can't just jump out and scare people like that! … besides, dressing like that, you'll give real ghosts a bad name!”

“Aww...” Kogasa looked back up from her outfit, then frowned thoughtfully. “But it really works better if I dress like that. … I sure hope being a karakasa isn't going out of style, too...”

Youmu sighed and sheathed her sword. “However you look at it, jumping out and scaring people is annoying, but it's not any of my business, as long as you don't dress like a ghost.” With that, she bowed. “Now then, I should get back to work. Please excuse me.”

As Youmu started heading down the row toward the untouched tombstones, Kogasa stared for a moment, then hurried to walk alongside her. “A-ah, hey, wait! You're a youkai, right? Then maybe you can...!” she held her umbrella to the side with one hand, while the other patted down her pockets until she produced a folded-up flyer.

“I’m not a youkai. I'm a half-phantom,” Youmu said, as if it were a point of pride. Still, she took the leaflet and read over it as she walked.

“U-um, well! That's close enough, isn't it?” Kogasa kept at a safe distance, but still leaned in eagerly to watch Youmu read over the flyer. “And the snowball thing sounds fun!”

Youmu was a bit of a slow reader, but Kogasa waited patiently as she made her way through the text. When she finished, Youmu shook her head and held the paper out again. “I fight with my swords, not with snow. Now, if you'll excuse me.”

“A-ahh, not even a little?!” Kogasa slowed down and looked after the gardener sadly. “But I've waited all day for somebody to come by...!”

“I don’t care.”

“Oh, come on! Please?”

Youmu turned hesitantly and glanced to Kogasa. “... if I do this, will you promise not to scare anybody else while dressed like that?”

“... but it works really well! And...!” Kogasa drooped and stared down at the snow as she considered the agreement. After several seconds of consideration, she nodded glumly. “... okay. Deal.”

Youmu gave Kogasa an appraising look, then nodded once and turned around, unsheathing Roukanken and lowering herself into a combat pose. "Then let us begin."

Kogasa blanched at this. “Hey, um, using a sword in a snowball fight is a little unfair, don't you think?”

“I am a warrior.” Youmu replied, sounding a bit like she was trying to convince herself as well. “My Roukanken is as much a part of me as your umbrella is of you.”

“Oh. Well... in that case, then I get to use my umbrella too!” Kogasa raised it in front of herself uncertainly and shifted her feet a few times, doing her best to mirror Youmu's stance. “And it doesn't count if you hit it, okay?”

“Very well.”

The pair simply stared at each other for several seconds, with neither willing to be the first to move. When they did, it was almost in unison, both girls crouching down and grabbed a handful of snow with their free hands, followed by another moment of anticipation before Kogasa abruptly tossed hers with a little, 'hup!' of effort.

Youmu instantly set into motion, sprinting toward the karakasa and not even hesitating as she sliced the snowball in two. In response, she tossed her own, making Kogasa give a squeal of surprise and hop backward to shield her body with her umbrella.

The snowball impacted against it harmlessly, but before Kogasa could recover, another snowball smacked against her umbrella. And then another, and another. The youkai stumbled backward under this onslaught, then fell down, with her back resting against a tombstone and her umbrella shielding her entire body.

Half a dozen more snowballs thudded against the umbrella, and Kogasa just let out a whimper as she cowered behind it, much to Youmu’s chagrin. “Come out! Do you want to fight, or not?”

“W-well, I do, but...” Kogasa peeked around the edge of the umbrella, then quickly darted back behind it as another snowball flew her way. With that opening, Youmu dashed up and lunged over the top of the umbrella, snowball in hand. Only the fearful look on Kogasa's face made her pause. “I-I'm sorry! I surrender! You win!”

Youmu frowned, but she relaxed. “You really shouldn't pick fights with people if that's how you're going to be.” Kogasa nodded quickly, but still the snowball kept moving downward. She stared at it wide-eyed, then shrunk back and quivered as it kept inexorably drawing nearer... and nearer. Finally, it tapped her on the head, drawing a single fearful squeak from her.

“... It's official now.” With that over with, Youmu took a single step backward and tossed the snowball aside.

By the time the karakasa peeked over her umbrella again, Youmu already had her back turned and was sheathing her sword. Kogasa breathed a sigh of relief, but still only reluctantly left her cover. It was several seconds before she spoke up again. “It... did scare you though, didn't it?”

“... ah.” Youmu froze up for a moment, then glanced over her shoulder. “Maybe... a little,” she admitted hesitantly.

Kogasa frowned as she looked at the discarded costume. “Well... a deal's a deal, so I still won't wear it. I'm not sure what I will do if I can't dress like a ghost, though... all I really know about scaring people is old ghost stories.” A moment later, she perked up. “... you probably know a lot of ghosts, right? We could trade stories!”

Youmu, who was pale to begin with, blanched. “O-oh, er. No, thank you...”

“Oh, come on, I bet I know a couple that you don't...”

“E-er! I, I really don't think I should.” Youmu took a slow step backward and raised her hands.

“Please? It will be fun! Like, do you know the one about the vengeful ghost who sneaks into people's rooms at night and flays off their—”

“I!” Youmu practically squeaked the word out as she stumbled backward again, finding herself suddenly quite aware that some of the shadows in the graveyard were rather dark. And that tree in the corner was creepy. “I don't need to hear it, thanks!”

“Oh?” Kogasa tapped her chin. “If you already know that one, then, what about the story about the well full of corpses, and every full moon the ghosts drag—”

“N-n-no thank you!” Youmu was pale... well, paler than usual... at this point, and sort of jog-stumbling her way toward the gate.

“Hmm, that one too?” Kogasa pursed her lips and looked at the ground for a moment. “... Ah, I know! The one about the ghost of the woman who was buried under a...” She looked back up just in time to see Youmu's retreating form as she slammed the gate behind her.

The karakasa sighed and pouted. “If she didn't want to hang out, she could have just said so...”

Chapter Text

It was mid-morning, and the roads were scarcely populated, with most people preferring to stay close to home. The only things breaking the silence were the birdsong-like sound of Mystia Lorelei whistling under her breath and the clatter of the cart she was pulling through the snow behind her. She had done pretty good business over the last night, especially considering that even some youkai were afraid to go out during a full moon, and she was debating just where to spend the money as she walked… which left her entirely unprepared when somebody bellowed, “FIRE!”

Dozens of dolls popped up from the foliage lining the road, and Mystia had just enough time to see that they were each holding a little doll-sized snowball before they unleashed them. Wave after wave crashed into the sparrow, and just before she was buried, she could see that some of the dolls were already rolling new snowballs and throwing them.

Nobody had ever accused Alice Margatroid of leniency in combat.

Some time later, a group of snowball-armed dolls surrounded the Mystia-sized pile of snow, then stood guard as Alice crouched down and inspected it. She looked a bit worried at first, until some movement from the pile suggested that something was still alive under there. With that, Alice gestured forward, and a handful of dolls rushed up to start digging. Soon enough, Mystia’s hand was uncovered, and Alice grabbed it to tug the youkai up and back into the land of the living.

Mystia coughed and sputtered, then flicked her wings to send snow flying in every direction before she whirled to face Alice. “W-what’s the big idea?!”

“Oh! I’m sorry about that. It’s just that I’ve found that some youkai still try fighting back even after they’ve been hit. The rules don’t really say what happens if somebody who’s already disqualified hits you, so I thought it was better to play it safe and eliminate the risk of return fire…” Alice idly dug through her pockets as she spoke, and offered the snow-plastered sparrow a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

Mystia only glared at it, and Alice shrugged and slid the handkerchief back into her pocket. “What rules? Don’t tell me that shrine maiden is changing things up again…!”

“Ahh, well, you see, the Scarlet Devil Mansion has—“ A doll floated up to land on Alice’s shoulder, then leaned in close to her ear. Mystia’s sensitive ears didn’t hear a single peep come from the doll's mouth, but Alice still nodded to it, then turned to flash the sparrow a soft smile. “I’m sorry, but my sentries have found something suspicious nearby. Please excuse me.” Before Mystia could even gather her thoughts, the magician dipped an elegant curtsey and turned to leave.

“Hey! What about my cart?! You still haven’t even—“ But, Alice was already disappearing through the underbrush, leaving only a sparrow-sized pile of snow and hundreds of tiny footprints to prove that she’d ever been there.

---

 

“Hmm. Very suspicious indeed.”

Alice—and her ever-present small army of dolls—was looking over a few sets of footprints, winding in the snow between the trees. Small, but not small enough to be from one of her dolls, and fresh. This far out from the village, it had to be a youkai, which meant one thing: There was prey nearby.

Alice pressed up against a tree for cover, then began dispatching orders to the troops in a whisper. “You three—move forward, follow the footprints and see where they go.” Three dolls saluted, then started off, hopping from footprint to footprint to make their way through the waist-high snow. “You three—move backward along the trail and see if you can find any clues about where they came from.” Three more dolls saluted and moved off in the opposite direction. “Three more up into the trees to keep a lookout, and everybody else will advance to the top of the hill to look for more favorable terrain.”

The magician glanced out around the tree to make sure the coast was clear… but before she could take a step, she was stopped by a soft ‘WUMPF.’ Mere meters away, the snow under the three dolls who were following footprints collapsed, dumping them into a pit. Moments later, Alice could see three sets of bobbing bows occasionally peek up out of the pit, as the now-trapped dolls hopped up and down to try jumping to freedom.

“… you can fly, you know,” Alice reminded the three dryly; the dolls stayed in the bottom of the pit for a moment, then floated up, landed on its edge, and bowed sheepishly to their owner. And, somewhere nearby, somebody giggled.

Alice tensed up and raised a hand. In response, every doll turned their eyes from their tasks and scanned the area alertly, with some of them already starting to roll snowballs.

“… Luna! She can hear us, you didn’t—!” It was a rather loud whisper, and cut off abruptly at the end.

In response, Alice flattened herself more firmly up against the tree and analyzed the situation. Tracks ending at a pit trap. A voice nearby that none of her sentries could see. She was fighting somebody invisible who could fly. Quickly, Alice pointed out a series of three spots in the air. A barrage of tiny snowballs convened on one… then the other… and on the third time, they smacked into something. A fairy fell out of the air and landed in a snowbank with a loud, ‘oof!’ leaving a mound of silvery hair and a white hat sticking out of the snow.

Dolls closed in around their victim, with snowballs raised to bury her, but Alice held up a hand to stop them and peeked around the tree to see Luna Child pushing herself up out of the snow with a sigh. “Of course, it had to be—“

“I heard you speaking to somebody. If you can point out your accomplices, I'll...”

Before Alice could finish that sentence, she was cut off by a triumphant cry of, “Bakabakaba-kaaaaaa~!” from above. Half a dozen dolls fired at the source, but it was too late. The battlecry's end was punctuated by the heavy thud of a shoe connecting with a tree trunk, and the branches above Alice gave a single shiver, then unloaded an entire winter of accumulated snow in a single, heavy blow.

---

 

It was a few seconds before Alice was able to push her head up out of the small mountain of snow she was buried in. When she did, she found herself looking up, for a change, at four fairies. The recently-buried Luna Child was brushing snow off of herself and grumbling under her breath, while the other three were standing triumphantly over their prize. And Cirno was the most triumphant of them all; before Alice could get her bearings, the ice fairy smashed a snowball down onto her head with both hands. “I win again!”

Alice coughed and shook her head to get rid of the bulk of the snow, then pushed herself up to standing, making chunks of it slide from her body to roll down the mound around her. “Yes, you got me, I'll admit.” She looked over the fairies assembled in front of her with a frown. “I didn’t know that teams were allowed, though.”

“Ah! We’re not a team!”

“You’re not…?”

“Nope! We’re…” Sunny Milk glanced to the other fairies, as if trying to remember something, then continued, “Four people who are fighting alone, but sometimes we just happen to all attack the same person at the same time!”

“And if we’re the only ones left at the end, we’ll have our own snowball fight to decide who gets to ask for what they want!” Star Sapphire added brightly.

“Ahh. That’s very clever. … but what stops one of you from attacking the others while they’re not looking, to help their chances later on?”

“Nah! Nobody would—“ Sunny’s explanation was cut off by the sound of a rather oversized snowball smashing against Star Sapphire’s head. She whirled around to find the black haired fairy looking rather stunned, with Cirno looking proudly at her handiwork.

“H-hey! Why’d you do that?!”

“… what?! It was a good idea!”

“No it wasn’t, now there’s only two of us!”

Sunny tackled Cirno, and the two fell to the ground fighting, while two fairies, a magician, and dozens of dolls looked on uncomfortably. After several seconds of this, Alice turned to the two snow-plastered fairies and offered a wan smile. “Well! Since we’re all disqualified anyway, would you two like some cocoa? I think we’ve all had enough cold for one day.”

---

 

A rabbit-shaped pile of scarves, coats, and blankets was carefully draped over a tree branch that overlooked the road. To be more accurate, it was a rabbit-shaped pile of scarves, coats, and blankets that contained an actual rabbit somewhere, but one would be hard-pressed to prove that from most angles. Only a pair of crumpled white ears sticking out of the top and two red eyes peering from the depths betrayed its inhabitant.

And yet, despite all of that, Reisen was still cold.

It had taken her a good ten minutes to lose the pursuers Alice had sent after her, and that was a lot of high-speed flying for the middle of Winter. After that, though, she’d mostly just been cold and bored. The only youkai she’d even bumped into were the dimmer sorts of fairies and beasts, which were all too stupid to read the flyers anyway.

It probably had something to do with the fact that Reisen had headed straight out of the human village after that attack, and she was now fairly far out into the wilderness. There was no reward for eliminating people, after all! If she just hid out here until dark, she could go home and have dinner, and nobody could really say she’d done anything wrong.

The lunar rabbit was too absorbed in daydreams about dinner to notice that she wasn’t alone, until a snowball thudded against the tree, right between her ears. Reisen nearly leapt from the branch in response, and after frantically looking around, her gaze settled onto Komachi Onozuka, leaning against her scythe in ankle-deep snow.

The shinigami raised one hand in greeting. “Hey! Pretty cold, huh? Are you doing that snowball thing?”

Reisen had to calm herself back down before she could manage to respond. “Well… I guess. … but shouldn’t you be... collecting souls, or driving a boat, or whatever it is you do?” She had to admit, she wasn’t exactly sure what it was that shinigami did, apart from the fact that it probably didn’t involve snowballs.

Komachi shrugged and straightened back up, then rested her scythe’s handle across her shoulderblades. “Kinda boring today! Pretty much nobody dies during winter, and the ones who do? They’re mostly people who aren’t very enlightened to begin with. I haven’t seen a ghost that was aware enough to talk in, I dunno, three days? Anyway.” The shinigami gave her person-sized scythe a few idle swings with one hand as she chatted. “The snowball thing sounded fun, and I am definitely owed some time off, I think. Nobody will notice a few ghosts waiting for a day or so.

“You're the first person I've seen all day, though!” Komachi continued, heedless of Reisen's complete lack of interest. “It's like I have to walk for three hours just to get somewhere with people around! Nobody ever comes to visit the Sanzu. Not that I can blame them, but it's not very convenient for me, you know?” The shinigami finally seemed to realize that she was rambling, and offered a sheepish smile before she concluded, “So do you wanna fight, or not?”

“Not really,” Reisen almost instantly replied... and then, with a sigh, continued, “… but there’s probably a pot of boiling water waiting for me at home if I say no,” Reluctantly, she rose to standing, shedding the layers of blankets and scarves like a cocoon, then dropped down to the ground. Komachi waited patiently as Reisen stretched and worked some blood back into her limbs, and finally the lunar rabbit gave her a sidelong glance. “… so, how do you want to do this?”

Komachi considered the question for a moment. “… count of three?”

“Sure.”

Komachi nodded and gave her scythe a few more swings to limber up before she began. “One…”  The shinigami lowered herself down and scooped up a handful of snow. Reisen seemed content to stay standing in place, while her eyes began to glow a dull red.

“Two…” Komachi packed the handful of snow into a ball and tossed it into the air to get a feeling for its weight.

“… three!” In an instant, the distance between Komachi and Reisen vanished, as if the entire world were being pinched together in a single spot. The shinigami grinned at this accomplishment as she thrust a snowball forward, right into the moon rabbit’s face… and through it, revealing the image in front of her as nothing but an illusion. In the moment she took to recover from her surprise, the real Reisen reappeared behind her and chucked a pair of snowballs, which Komachi only barely managed to bat out of the air with her scythe. “Hey! Not bad, not bad!”

Reisen was silent, and her now-glowing red gaze blurred, leaving afterimages as she dashed to the side and faded from sight. Komachi followed the rabbit’s line of motion, and so wasn’t entirely caught by surprise when hundreds of snowballs apparently materialized out of thin air. “But try… this!” With a single expansive gesture from the shinigami, the world exploded outward; what had been a rather small clearing grew in every direction until it was hundreds of meters across. The snowballs—one real, hundreds illusionary—crashed to the ground well short of their target, and when the world snapped back to its normal size, Komachi used its motion as a springboard, launching herself across the gap toward the attack’s source, with a snowball in one hand and her scythe in the other.

Komachi landed in a roll and chucked her snowball, just in time for another attack from Reisen to come sailing over her head from behind. She whipped her scythe’s handle backward in an arc, and it smacked against the rabbit’s ankles, sending her sprawling to her butt on the ground.

“Pretty good, pretty good…” Komachi laughed as she approached the downed rabbit, then reached down to grab another handful of snow. “I fought fair, though, so you can’t hold it against me when—“

Reisen’s eyes burned red again, and with a single manipulation of waves, Komachi’s voice became twice as loud… and incredibly high-pitched. The shinigami staggered and grabbed her head, while the icicles for a dozen meters in every direction exploded into showers of ice. It was a momentary distraction, but it was enough. Reisen tossed one last snowball, and Komachi hurriedly stretched the ground between herself and the attack… just enough for it to smack against her legs, rather than her face.

The two youkai stayed in their positions, slightly winded and still tensed up for combat, staring at each other for several seconds. And then, abruptly, Komachi broke into laughter. “Alright, alright, you win. Just don’t do that to my ears again, yeah?”

She offered Reisen a hand, and the lunar rabbit reluctantly tugged herself up to standing, then started brushing the snow off of herself. “Gaaaah… I’ll be lucky if this outfit isn’t ruined, too,” she sighed.

“Oh, come on, you won! Where’s your good cheer and stuff?”

“It stayed inside where it was warm.”

---

 

For the first time in several days, Remilia was enjoying herself. Patchouli, on the other hand, was terrified.

It had started as a simple request: The vampire wanted to borrow her telescope to watch the mischief she'd unleashed. Somehow, things had ballooned from there, and now it also needed to be able to see through walls, lock onto people's heat signatures, pick up sound from miles away, and see through clothes. Patchouli had denied that last request, but the thing was still covered in half a dozen talismans and more than a few very tricky runes of animation.

And Remilia was jerking the thing around like a damned toy.

“... Remi,” the magician said flatly. “As I already said, that is a knob for calibration, not a handle. If you need to—”

“Right, right,” Remilia replied. “I just need to get a little better view of... kya-hah! She's down!” Remilia looked away from the telescope, toward a group of fairy maids who had been enlisted into manning a chalkboard. The chalkboard currently read:

• Rumia

• Mes Mis Mystya Bird: elemenated

• momjimmy wolf tengoo

• Alice: elim out

• Chin: out

• kene: out

• Karakasa: out

• Youmukonpakku: is a humman too so does that count???

• raisin

• some fairies: ???

• food godes: out

Fairies were not known for their writing skills, but it was enough for record-keeping.

Remilia gestured at the chalkboard. “The moon rabbit—what was her name again?”

“Inaba Reisen, mistress.”

“Yes, her. She just got that lazy shinigami. Um.”

“Onozuka Komachi, mistress.” Sakuya somehow managed to keep a very patient tone through all of this.

“Right. The rabbit got the shinigami, so write that down.” With that, she went back to scanning the horizon for more fights, while two of the fairies cooperated to carefully write 'SHINEGUMMY: out' on the chalkboard..

Patchouli chose the momentary silence to speak up again. “... Remi, as I have stated three times, that is not a handle. If you break it off, I'll have to import a new telescope from the outside world, and the gap youkai has been raising her prices—”

“Lady Patchouli,” Sakuya interjected, “I'm sure that I can help the mistress with your telescope, if you'd like to return to your studies.”

Patchouli shot the maid a glare, while Sakuya merely met it with a carefully-practiced neutral expression of her own. The magician was the first one to break. It was entirely too cold out on the balcony to stay out here supervising Remilia all day, after all. “... very well. But see that she treats it with care. It is a delicately-tuned instrument for reading the movements of the celestial spheres, not some common... astrolabe, built to be manhandled.” Before she even finished, Sakuya was already gently pushing her back toward the interior of the mansion, with Patchouli seemingly intent on grumbling the whole way, but the trip ended abruptly when she ended up face-to-face with a very upset-looking Reimu, who was dragging Meiling behind her.

“... ah. Ms. Hakurei, welcome,” Sakuya said, as she gently slid Patchouli to the side so she could address the shrine maiden directly. “It's so nice to see you again. I didn't think that we were expecting visitors today...?” She glanced to Meiling with the last statement, and the gate guard only laughed anxiously and looked away.

Patchouli huffed again and muttered, “Worthless.”

Meiling drooped. “S-she overpowered me! The shrine maiden has beaten all of you before, I don't see why it's different when it’s me and...!”

“Yes, yes. Thank you for leading our guest in, Meiling,” Sakuya said, already in the process of closing the door on her. “Please return to your post, now.” The gate guard tugged her hand back just in time to avoid having the door shut on it.

Reimu's earlier anger had lapsed into confusion as she watched the brief display of inter-employee bickering, and it took a moment for her to rekindle it again. Then, she stepped past Sakuya and shoved a flyer into Remilia's face. “Anyway, what do you call this?!”

“It looks like a leaflet to me. My, don't they teach shrine maidens how to read these days?”

Reimu was undeterred, and tossed the paper aside. “Don't you realize what you've done?! Youkai are fighting each other in broad daylight! Two of them fought in the middle of town, in front of dozens of humans!”

Remilia grinned, showing off one pointy fang. “Yes, I know. Funny, wasn't it? Ahh, the look on her-...”

“Don't play dumb with me, Scarlet! There's no way humans are going to see that kind of thing without getting worried! I've already had five complaints, and that's just this morning.” Now that she'd had a chance to vent, Reimu calmed down a little and crossed her arms. “So, how do you want to solve this situation?”

“Solve...?” Remilia frowned, then shook her head and returned to the telescope. “Let the humans worry. It will be over in a week, at most.”

“A... a week?” Reimu's cheeks turned a rather dark shade of red. “That isn’t acceptable.”

“Don't care.”

Reimu had to resist the urge to kick the vampire in the butt then and there. “... I will give you one day. If this isn't over by tomorrow evening...!”

Remilia glanced back from the telescope. “Then? What will you do if it's still going?” she asked, with an amused smirk.

“If it's still going by tomorrow evening,” Reimu said seriously, “I will be forced to declare this an Incident. It's upsetting the balance of Gensokyo and terrorizing the humans!”

“And hurting your shrine's donations,” Patchouli said neutrally. Reimu only shot her a glare, while Remilia sighed.

Remilia and Reimu glared at each other in silence, until Remilia conceded. “Fine, fine. I'll see to it that the fights conclude by tomorrow evening. Are you happy?”

Reimu peered down at her. It wasn't like the headstrong vampire princess to surrender so easily. “By tomorrow evening. You promise?”

“You have my word,” Remilia said solemnly, “as the head of the Scarlet household.”

Reimu still didn't look convinced, but with that, there was nothing left to fight over. She sighed, but nodded. “Well then. See that it happens.” With that, she turned to head back toward the door. Sakuya moved to open for it, but Reimu hurried to grab the handle.

“I can show myself out.”

“Of course,” Sakuya said. “Thank you for your visit. It is always a pleasure.” Somehow, her voice showed no sarcasm, but Reimu still grumbled as she stepped past the maid and exited.

After the shrine maiden was gone, there were several seconds of silence before Sakuya looked back to Remilia. “Is it really okay to promise that, mistress? After all, some of the players are kilometers apart... they might not even see one another by tomorrow afternoon...”

Remilia was already glued to the telescope again, and didn't even look up from her survey. “It will be fine, Sakuya. However, I'm going to need you to take another job to the printing house for me...”

Chapter Text

It was still pretty early in the morning when the first snowball thudded against the Hakurei shrine door.

“Hey, Reimu!”

Another few snowballs. “Heeeeey! Reimuuuuuu!”

A few expectant seconds passed, then snowballs started smacking against the door steadily. “HHHHHEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY REEEIIIIIIIIIIIIM—“

The shouting cut off when the door finally slid open, although rather than the shrine maiden, it revealed a rather grumpy and still half-asleep Marisa. “Oy, oy. Quiet down, jeez. What’s goin’ on…?”

She trailed off as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and got a good view of the scene outside the shrine. In front of her, mere meters past the wall, somebody had built a two-meter-tall fortification out of snow, almost completely blocking the gate. Peeking out over it were the faces of Sunny Milk and Cirno, both of them with snowballs raised and ready. They frowned when they saw Marisa. “… you’re not Reimu.”

“Yeah, no, I’m not. And I really doubt she wants to talk to fairies at, jeez, what is it? Four AM?”

Cirno flushed and stood up, with her hands on her hips. “Yeah, well, tell her to get out here! We’re gonna have a snowball fight with her!”

Marisa stared at the fairy for a moment, then yawned and turned away. “… Actually, you know what? Reimu died. Yeah. So you should go home,” she said half-heartedly. “I’m goin’ back to bed.”

“W-wait, hey! There’s no way that stupid shrine maiden…!” Before Cirno could finish her thought, the door closed, and Marisa stumbled back to her futon.

“Nngh, who was that?”

“”s just those fairies. They wanna have a snowball fight.”

“Mmh, that’s…” yawn “… nice.” Already, Reimu was drifting back to sleep.

---

 

When Reimu woke back up hours later, she’d almost forgotten about the early morning interruption. She rolled out of bed and got dressed, and it wasn’t until she opened the shrine’s door that she realized that something was really amiss.

Mostly due to the fact that it looked like somebody had set up a small festival outside. The wall of snow was still there, now even taller, and now complete with fairy-sized guard towers. Several fairies were clustered around the top, along with a very beleaguered-looking Reisen Inaba, and along the wall itself, she saw Wriggle, Rumia, Letty, a handful of lesser youkai she didn’t immediately recognize... and Momiji Inubashiri, who really ought to have know better than to get involved in all of this. To the side, in a spot that offered a good view of the shrine doors, Mystia had opportunistically set up her food cart, around which Yukari, Yuyuko, Tewi, and Eirin were making small talk. Next to it, in an even better vantage point, Remilia was reclining in an improbably-placed chaise lounge, while Sakuya held an umbrella over her.

The shrine maiden froze up for a moment, and the various youkai and Lunarians outside of her shrine were too wrapped up in their small talk to even realize that the door had opened until Reimu spoke up. “What… do you think you’re doing out here?”

Every eye turned toward her, and it was Remilia who spoke up first. “Ah! Well, you did say that you wanted the snowball fight done by this evening, so I took the liberty of changing the rules a little.”

Reimu grumbled, well aware that this likely didn’t mean anything good from her perspective. “And that means…?”

“Well, in order to speed things up like you asked for, I simply had no choice but to…”

“Spit it out, Scarlet.”

Before Remilia could respond, Cirno gave a rather more succinct explanation. “Gotta hit the shrine maiden to win!” She tossed a snowball along with it, which Reimu, distracted though she was, easily sidestepped.

The rest of the wall’s denizens, now roused from their boredom, started hurriedly unloading their own snowballs, and Reimu ducked behind the relative safety of the shrine’s door, then peeked out toward youkai who were gathered around the food cart. “And all of you! What do any of you get from this?”

“Hmm? Isn’t the prospect of seeing you get hit in the face with a snowball by a fairy reward enough?”

“Can it, Yukari, I meant everybody else.”

Eirin crossed her arms. “Tactical adviser.”

Yuyuko looked up and sheepishly pulled two skewers worth of lamprey out of her mouth before answering, “Ahh, well, Lady Scarlet was nice enough to send us an invitation, and you always throw the best parties…”

“Party!” Tewi agreed.

“… this isn’t a…!” Reimu had to duck behind the door again as a well-aimed snowball whizzed past. “… party.”

Yuyuko frowned thoughtfully, then turned and ordered another drink anyway.

Reimu sighed and looked back to Remilia. “You know that this isn’t what I meant when I…”

A subtle nod from Eirin was all the signal Reisen needed for her surprise attack, and Reimu barely noticed the rabbit moving in time to hide behind the door as half a dozen now-invisible snowballs whizzed past.

“… right, I’m going back to bed. This had better be gone when I get back up.”

---

As the door to the shrine slammed closed again, Sunny let out a huff of disappointment. “How are we supposed to hit her if she hides in there all day?”

“That,” Cirno said, “Is why I said this plan’s dumb!”

“No it isn’t!

“Yes it is!”

“No it isn’t!

“Yes it is!”

“Star and Luna said it’s good, and they’re our tactical advisers!” The two had taken on the title, after Eirin’s arrival gave them the idea. In actuality, it mostly meant that they threw slightly fewer snowballs than the others.

“Yeah, well maybe they’re dumb too!”

The four fairies glared daggers at each other until Luna crossed her arms. “If you’re so smart, then, what’s your great plan?”

Cirno grinned at the question, then stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I,” she announced, “am gonna make a really big snowball and drop it on the shrine.”

Everybody considered this for a moment, and Star raised a finger. “Ah! If it were really big, it would smash the shrine open and hit her!”

“Yep!”

“Well…” Sunny said reluctantly. “That does sound pretty great.”

Before she could continue even further, Reisen peeked over. “Not to eavesdrop, but that really does sound like a good idea.”

“… really?”

“Really. … why don’t all of you go do that, and I’ll keep watching the door in case she comes out?”

The fairies glanced among themselves, then raised their fists in unison. “Let’s do it!” With that, they fluttered away and began their project, leaving Reisen alone at the fortifications.

The moon rabbit sighed with relief and slumped down against the wall. “Finally, some peace and quiet…”

---

By mid-morning, the siege of the Hakurei shrine was well advanced. After an ill-fated attempt by Reisen, at Eirin’s urging, to break in, Marisa was now sitting on the front steps, idly jugging the Mini Hakkero and a snowball and guarding the door. Somehow, the fairies had managed not to get distracted from their plan, and all four were busily building a snowball… which, mostly thanks to Cirno’s abilities, was already twice as tall as anybody involved with the siege. Several of the youkai participants had wandered off, and Mystia had followed them after packing up her food cart.

And Remilia was getting bored again.

“Ahhh, can’t fairies do anything right?! This is taking forever! Where did the rest of the actual youkai go?!”

“I think that most of them don’t have the patience, mistress. And those that did mostly got eliminated yesterday.”

Remilia hmphed. “I should have let everybody else back in. That doll magician would have gotten her in ten minutes.”

“Even so. She can’t stay in there forever.”

---

 

Just before noon, Youmu arrived. By the standards of the past hour or so, this counted as a monumental occasion, and most of the crowd watched with idle curiosity as she walked over to Yuyuko. The two had a brief, hushed conversation, after which Youmu sighed, then walked right up to the shrine’s steps. Marisa watched her with idle curiosity at first, then straightened up her posture a little, with the Mini Hakkero ready in hand just in case. “Goin’ somewhere?”

“Yes. Lady Yuyuko,” Youmu said, in a tone that stressed that this was definitely Yuyuko’s idea and not her own preference, “has asked me to fight the shrine maiden. Please stand aside.”

Marisa raised one eyebrow at that, then stretched and yawned, deliberately putting off her response just to infuriate the other girl. “You’re usually pretty reasonable, y’know? So you oughta know that I can’t let you in there.”

“My duty demands it.”

“Yeah, well, see, here’s the thing. I’m supposed to make sure nobody gets in there and smacks Reimu with a snowball. That’s my duty. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’d be hilarious, but I owe her a favor, and I really don’t need her whining at me right now.”

Youmu frowned at this, and her phantom half gave an agitated little bob in the air. “You’re saying that I’ll have to fight you to get past, then?”

“Hey, you said it, not me,” Marisa said, but didn’t really offer any opposition to the idea. “Are we doing this snowball-style, or the normal way? … If we do spellcards, you’ve gotta take responsibility for fixin’ up if we break anything.”

“Then... snowballs, it is,” Youmu said, struggling to retain as much dignity as she could while proposing a snowball fight. She was on official business for the princess of Hakugyokurou; she had to maintain a sense of decorum. Even if the aforementioned princess was sprawled on the ground barely a hundred feet away, half-drunk and gorged on lamprey. … Youmu would just have to have enough dignity for the both of them.

“Fine, fine,” Marisa sighed as she rose to standing. “Let me go grab my broom.” She glanced suspiciously over her shoulder to make sure that nobody was getting ready to make a break for the door, then quickly slipped through it... and took her dear time in retrieving it, again, just to spite Youmu. After a good three minutes, she finally emerged from the shrine again, with her broom slung over her shoulder, and walked post Youmu out to the middle of the courtyard. “So, are we doin’ this, or what?”

Youmu nodded slowly and unsheathed her sword as she followed. “... Yes. Whenever you’re ready...?”

Marisa merely nodded and climbed onto her broom, then made a show about getting comfortable, scooped up some snow... and without further warning, vanished in a puff of snow as she took flight.

Youmu lowered herself into a fighting stance, with Roukanken raised in front of her in one hand and a snowball in the other, and warily watched Marisa as the witch flew a wide circle around the temple. And then, abruptly pulled off a hairpin turn, leaving her pointed straight at the half-phantom, hunkered down against her broom for maximum speed. Marisa didn't even bother to throw her snowball, and instead just released it and let inertia carry it toward her target. Youmu sidestepped the attack and hurled her own snowball as Marisa reached the low point of her bombing run, but the witch was moving too quickly; she momentarily dipped down to let her scoop another handful of snow and took to the skies again.

All eyes had already been on the little show taking place in the courtyard, but it wasn't until the exchange of blows happened that some of the dimmer and more distant observers realized what was going on. "H-hey!" a voice from the fairy ramparts exclaimed. "They're fightin'!"

Somebody from the wall decided to join in the fun and chucked a snowball at Youmu, which the bewildered half-phantom only barely managed to dodge. And then another, and another. A squeak of rage came from the top of the hill, where Cirno, late to the party as usual, saw another chance to backstab and took a break from building the now-massive snowball to smack Sunny Milk over the head with a smaller one.

That was the end of the orderly fight. The wall erupted into a shower of snowballs as fairy turned on fairy and youkai turned on youkai... and a few of them turned on the observers. Within minutes, the fighting had spilled into the courtyard, and there were holes broken through the wall as its residents hurriedly disassembled it for ammo.

The commotion of the fight drew even more participants—a wandering Koishi Komeiji somehow became involved, leaving a trail of bewildered youkai behind her as she meandered about smacking people with snowballs without even being noticed. Yuyuko dove into the fight with drunken abandon, while Eirin made a quick retreat (but only after ordering Reisen to do Eientei proud.) Either Yukari returned or Mamizou decided to take on her form—nobody could agree which it had been after the fact, because she disappeared before the fight ended, and neither woman would admit to being present—but everybody could agree that whoever it was, she'd been focusing on dropping snowballs down people's shirts. And all through it, Sakuya stayed loyally by her mistress' side, deftly shielding her from stray attacks with a parasol, while Remilia laughed her butt off.

By the time the fight reached peak chaos, it had regained a small crowd of observers; it had been a long winter, and any entertainment was good entertainment at this point. Aya hovered overhead with a camera, while Hieda no Akyuu arrived just in time to observe the commotion from a well-guarded palanquin parked some distance away, frantically taking notes on the action. A few braver souls from the human village even came up to investigate the noise... mostly because Keine had come too, so they could hide behind her.

And, unnoticed by anybody, Reimu had left the safety of the shrine to watch the fight with a mixture of annoyance and confusion, as the front of the building vanished under a growing layer of stray snowballs. She knew that nobody was going to stay and help her clean this up. Nobody ever did.

---

 

So, as noisy as the courtyard was, it was little surprise that almost nobody noticed when Suika Ibuki stumbled up to the top of the hill overlooking the shrine. She'd already been heading there anyway, but wasn't expecting to see this. The oni stared at the sight in front of her for the few seconds that it took her alcohol-fogged mind to sort out exactly what was going on, and then her face spread into a grin.

"Heeeeey, Reimuuuuuuu~!" Suika shouted over the free-for-all. "Can I play too?"

No response.

"Hey!! I want to...!" Suika cupped her hands over her mouth this time, forgot what she was saying in the process, and settled for another, "Hey!!!"

No response.

The oni was starting to get agitated. She waved both hands over her head, making her wobble unsteadily as she struggled to maintain her balance. "R-EEEEEEEEI-II-IIIII-M-UUUUUUUU, hey, I'm gonna come down there, okay...!"

Still nothing. Suika grumbled and stopped waving, then took a moment to get her bearings again... and that's when she noticed the five-meter-tall snowball sitting at the crest of the hill. The oni grinned and sized the thing up, circled it curiously, then effortlessly hefted it up onto her shoulders. And then, Suika started a downhill charge toward the shrine.

The sheer bulk of the moving snowball managed to attract the attention of a few participants, at least. Cirno squeaked in shock and took off to try stopping the thing, while Reisen spotted it and took off running in the other direction. And Marisa, in the middle of a rooftop battle with Wriggle, froze in place... with a hand placed on the insect's head to keep her at a safe distance for the time being. It only took a moment for her to assess the situation, and then the witch took flight in a flash.

Marisa settled into an observation point a dozen meters in front of and above the snowball, with Cirno elbowing her for space. "O-oy, Suika, you can't just throw that...!"

"Sssssure I can!" the oni assured her in a slur.

"That's my snowball, give it back...!" Cirno squealed.

"No, really, it—that thing's as big as the shrine, you can't just—"

"WATCH OUT!" Suika bellowed, ignoring Marisa now.

"—put it down now or I'm gonna—!"

"HERE...!"

"Damn oni, never reason with 'em..." Marisa mumbled to herself as she hurriedly patted herself down.

"I...!"

"Where the heck'd I put it..."

"COME...!" Suika skidded to a halt and hefted the snowball back for a mighty throw, just as Marisa finally found the Mini Hakkero and drew it out. With a snowball the size of a house heading for her, she had no choice. The witch whipped her weapon up, and with a single frustrated grunt, blasted the thing with a Master Spark.

A two-meter-wide beam of incandescent energy plowed into the middle of several tons of snow, making an explosive blast of heat and steam. In a split second, the core of the snowball vaporized... and the remains exploded outward. Half-melted snow rained down on everything in sight, and for several seconds, the world went white with slush and steam.

When it cleared, the fight had stopped. The luckier youkai only had a centimeter or two of slush splashed across their backs, and some of the unluckier, smaller ones had been blasted against the wall and plastered with the stuff. Marisa had gotten knocked ten meters backward by the force of the blast, and her hat was nowhere to be seen. Cirno was buried in a drift somewhere, Wriggle was on her back on the shrine roof and buried up to her chest, and Reisen, who had already been halfway down the hill toward the human village, had been knocked from her feet and sent tumbling through the snow. The shrine itself was buried under half a ton of snow and ice, and everybody was momentarily too stunned to fight.

Everybody, in fact, except for Remilia, who was safely behind a parasol that had shielded her from a wave of slush. Sakuya, unfazed by the coating of snow stuck to her dress, gave the parasol a shake to jostle the stuff free and lifted it up, and Remilia cackled with delight at the scene in front of her. "Everybody got hit...! NOBODY WINS!"

Chapter Text

In the aftermath of the explosion, pretty much everybody had lost their taste for the cold and moved inside for the traditional Gensokyo post-excitement drinking party, despite some very vocal protests from Reimu. The inside of the shrine was cramped with a dozen or two youkai, fairies, and humans, and half of them were gathered around Remilia.

"I'm the one who blew up the stupid snowball, I should be the winner!"

"I made it! I ought be the one...!"

"... don't see how that even counts, it wasn't a snowball, it was...!"

Somehow, Sakuya managed to slip out of this mess after placating the more argumentative participants—which was hard, because Remilia was arguing more than anybody—and approach Reimu. The shrine maiden had taken a seat in the corner with a dish of sake. If everybody else was going to drink the contents of her pantry, she had supposed, she might as well get a little for herself. Reimu eyed the maid warily as she approached, and her suspicion was almost immediately rewarded.

"You will, I hope, not be holding the mistress responsible for the damages to your shrine?"

"Responsible?" Reimu grumbled. "I know better than to think that anybody in that shack of yours is responsible." She tilted her dish back and emptied of its contents, then scowled up at the maid. "And what if I do?"

Sakuya took this display of abuse gracefully—to do so was practically her job description—and continued without missing a beat. "It just occurred to me that you were under the awning when the explosion happened, and in the aftermath, everybody was so disoriented that nobody was paying attention to you."

Reimu's suspicion was replaced by confusion. "And...?"

"And, that if you were to say that you hadn't gotten hit by anything, and I were to back you up, nobody would be able to provide evidence otherwise. And it's easily arguable that you were a participant in the contest, once the mistress made you a target."

Reimu eyed Sakuya, and poured herself another dish of sake as she considered this. "Are you proposing," she asked cautiously, "that you'll lie to your boss just so we can say that I won a dumb snowball fight?"

"A snowball fight whose prize, might I remind you, is a boon from the Lady Scarlet."

"And I suppose if you do this, you want me to consider us even."

"Naturally. If you ask for her to take care of cleaning the slush and ice off of your shrine," although Sakuya knew well enough that Remilia wouldn't be the one doing the cleaning, "it will be clean by tomorrow morning, the mistress will have had her fun, and we can—"

"... no," Reimu cut her off, then perked up a little as she considered the possibilities and tossed back another mouthful of sake. She could shovel snow off her roof. Or better yet, just let nature take its course. "First, I want all of the food and drink these youkai have taken replaced. Actually, twice as much."

"Done."

"... and I want somebody to fix the leak in my roof before Spring comes."

Sakuya didn't even miss a beat. "Also done."

"... and..." Reimu slowed down a bit, as she mentally calculated just how much she could get out of this bargain. "... I want somebody to weed my garden this Summer. Two—no, three times."

"I’ll... see what I can do."

Reimu nodded, reluctantly accepting that she'd probably gotten all the concessions she was going to get from the household, and finished her drink. Finally, she said, "You're kind of scary when you want something, did you know that?"

"Thank you." It was the most earnest-sounding thing she'd said all night. "Does that mean the deal is acceptable?"

Reimu sighed, with a carefully-practiced tone of exasperation, "Yeah, I guess we're even."

---

The revelers finally took a hint and started trickling out of the shrine somewhere around midnight, leaving just a few very inebriated participants—and Suika, who'd been planning to do so anyway—sleeping on the floor. When Reimu woke up the next morning, she managed to chase off the last few stragglers—except Suika, who had once slept through being rolled into a pond when Reimu was in an even fouler mood—and leaving Reimu with some peace and quiet for the first time in a day or two.

Reimu carefully pushed a small pile of empty bottles aside to give her room to eat breakfast... which was very basic, since most of her food had been eaten. She’d slid the door open to get a little light, and could see that it was warming up enough to melt some of the snow. As if on cue, a few drops of water splashed down in the middle of the floor, and Reimu shot a vaguely annoyed glare at the leak in her ceiling. Maybe she'd need to call in some favors early.

Not that that was the greatest of her worries. Every corner of the shrine had accumulated bottles and dirty plates and bowls, and in the middle of the floor, somebody had unrolled several scrolls and painted stick figures on the backs. Outside, the courtyard was a trampled mess of mud and snow, thanks to the hours-long fight that had taken place, and the area beyond the shrine's walls—and the half-melted, drooping remains of the snow barricade—wasn't much better. There were footprints up and down the hillside, a few discarded articles of clothing sticking out of the melting snow, and from her vantage point, Reimu could already see that a rather disheveled-looking Star Sapphire was sleeping on a tree branch.

Finally, after several more minutes of watching the scenery—involving a brief burst of interest when the fairy outside rolled over in her sleep and fell into a snowbank—Reimu stood up. No sense in putting it off cleaning any longer. She grabbed her broom and started heading out to clean off the steps, then paused when her foot landed on something. A newspaper. Freshly-delivered, judging by the fact that it was the only thing out here not covered in mud or snow. Which could only mean...

Reimu cautiously lifted the paper and unfolded it, and her worst suspicions were confirmed. The headline read Hakurei Shrine Hosts First Annual Youkai Snowball Fight Tournament, complete with several photos of the fight. And the body... yes, there it was. A post-action interview with Remilia, in which the vampire declared the event a stunning success and promised a repeat next year.

She’d have to complain, of course. Half of her job was just making sure that the youkai remembered she was watching. But, who knew, maybe it would make her life easier in the long run. Every youkai that was participating in a snowball fight was one less youkai who had time to do something to upset the balance of Gensokyo... or steal from her donation box.

Reimu sighed and folded the paper back up, then set it on her table. For now, she had other things to worry about. The shrine was a mess. Remilia needed some more scolding. She should probably check to make sure that none of this was Yukari’s doing. And the human villagers would need some reassuring that she was still doing her job despite all of this.

Maybe, just maybe, she could clean up all the messes before the second snowball fight started.