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This was a ballroom. No other word comprised so much scarlet plush and gold. Chandeliers of wrought brass blazed sextuple-split light from their crystalline candles. The matching, motley paint on the walls was still very new; fairies in the deeper reaches of the mansion could be glimpsed sporting it like veteran scars. Half a dozen hues in the honour of a goddess revivified.

And beneath them, believers thronged.

Maids scurried in strength around and around the ballroom, some laden under trays of colourfully glazed pastries and some – the guests’ gauche attentions. The job posting had been undiscriminating; here and there, therefore, it was possible to see a furry tail or ear or wing failing the human spot-check. The Scarlet Devil Mansion, nevertheless, was where everything went; and the human and youkai maids conducted themselves, if nothing else, with fewer spilled drinks and pulled pants than even the most disciplined fairies.

And this was Sekibanki. Sekibanki stood in a meticulously selected “there” rather than “here” at the farthest-flung end of the ballroom, scowling. Sekibanki was, pointedly, not drawing herself a cup of punch from the nearby bowl; she furthermore wore an unimpeachably ironed headdress, ruffled half-apron and a puffy-sleeved dress with a skirt designed to pin the guests’ attention low and away the parts of her which could’ve otherwise given them distress. Insofar as these facts, it could be surmised Sekibanki was a maid among maids at the beck and call of the Scarlet Devil and her pet goddess’s. Insofar as the chitty back in the pocket of her cape, that would’ve been correct.

The chitty hadn’t the half of it down.

Sekibanki sighed. The man beside her gave her a curious, sidelong glance. Sekibanki maintained it was a man because he listed off as one: a head (hah!) and shoulders taller than she, a cheap waistcoat over his linens, arms with longer reach than was their own good. Considered from the other end of the ball, he was misfortune waiting to happen on the way home.

“… It is nothing, sir,” she said frostily, st

Miss Keine Kamishirasawa of the history school swept around the staff room like a maître d’ moments before a bomb went off in the kitchens. The pageant of her done-up raincoat coming more and more undone by the jiggle would have been more arresting if Miss Keine hadn’t been apologising profusely or, for preference, doing what she was apologising for, which was to say producing from the cabinets of the room ever more pressing paperwork. On the broad, military-style desk by the staff room’s single, rain-greyed window, assignments and typeset fill-in-the-blanks piled up architectonically.

“Thank you once again,” said Miss Keine with rattlesnake speed; “and, once again, I am sorry. This really, really is an emergency. I’ll make this up to you, of course I will. Thank you. And, I’m sorry. This is the last set, promise.”

A thumb-tick file thumped on the desktop, fanning out its immediate neighbours. It looked not unlike a card-riffling accident.

The man behind the desk stared. A faint smile hovered around the outskirts of his lips. It was a smile that met your daughter’s mysterious boyfriend of two weeks. He twirled a fountain pen between his fingers as though contemplating deforestation.

“… It’s,” he said, manfully self-controlled, “fine, Miss Keine. All in the job description, isn’t it… just?”

The flurried teacher gave his odd pause no second guess. She bowed as low as her waist. “I’m so sorry, Taiki!” There was some consternation as her coat popped suddenly half-open, but soon gone. Miss Keine straightened up and smiled in a distracted way. “It is the Kijou; their son is marrying a very conscientious woman next week, and they wanted my eye over the wedding contract. The parents, too, have some qualms, I hear, since they are nobility and the girl hails from priestry; there is the matter of the dowry for that cause, or omitting thereof, religious clauses, landing issues, vows, it’s a right mess…”

Taiki nodded along to the teacher’s bumbling, wearing an expression made from his work. He held his breath like a thrashing fairy.

In the woodchip-scented, under-desk gloom, the fingers which’d hooked under

The sole daughter of her late clan abiding, Taishi Lord’s counsel and cohort, a Tao adherent of not inconsiderate pedigree, Futo of the Mononobe family made a face. Observationally, she rapped her knuckles on her cage’s bars.

This it was. Stout bamboo poles in a lattice, twined together with waxed sinew and tin wire. Yea-tall thing, enough spacious to pace about albeit not to repose. Gaps ample enough to stick a head out and peer down the precipice of the rock shelf and the vertiginous, distant landscape below. Mayhap a shoulder, should she wedge one in sidewise – yet not on her life her chest or her proud hips. Nowise to go in any case except straight up or down the sheer, craggy cliff face of the lofty Youkai Mountain.

Indeed, indeed. It was much, much a cage. And it couldn’t hold her.

To avow so, Futo puffed herself up like a fish and flung a selection of choice taunts at the lone Tengu patrolman left behind to watch her.

The lupine lackey shook his silvern, dog-eared head alongside the pom-poms of his tokin whence he knelt quietly on his overcoat – yet ignored elsewise the likening of his chic ponytail to that of a mangy spaniel’s. He dripped more oil from a bamboo tube onto the waterstone before him and carried on whetting his curved, vicious-looking cavalry sabre. Good job, too. Went to show he cared for his quarries’ comfort, even if said comfort should come in its finality. Scrape-scrape-scrape it went, a clarion call to flee for humans and versant fauna likewise.

Sated – on that front if not others – Futo deflated into silence. Her own impressive hat had been lost someplace in the turbulent circumstance of the previous hour, and her knees were a mite chilly in the upland breeze, but the spry shikaisen kept herself drawn. Smart. An etching-perfect pantomime of a pert, female captive. The sword’s grinding ground away her patience as well, although she knew it for what it was; of this, she was iron-certain. The insides of her confoundedly unremoved clothes piled on the proof. Tension electrified her like one of Tojiko’s bad moods.

Futo

Something was broken in Gyutan, the Oni.

Had to be. It was, at any rate, the only explanation for contemporary happenings Gyutan would drink to. He was not a man or, rather, Oni who took especial pleasure in being brusque and forceful on women. “Good lad” was the term applied to him often by the older Oni, which tended to translate in the younger, streetwise ones’ vernacular as “schmuck.” And a schmuck, rhyme such as it might, did not tend to fuck.

Half-right, they were. Gyutan was by no book definition a fucker, but he did have a girlfriend. They had met in the vast construction yards of the Underworld’s New Capital and, via his aforesaid schmuckery, had leased to her the vantage point of his shoulder and the foghorn of his throat. Her name was Yamame Kurodani, and she was the architect of the (to be) grand (future) city. They’d gotten on like uncles, which was to say they’d spent evening after evening sequestered in Yamame’s workshop – away from everybody else though very much nearby a vat of moonshine that kicked like a horse with a bee up its bunghole. The tiny earth spider could hold her booze like no bottle’s business and, to Gyutan’s thrilled horror, got hopelessly randy when drunk.

Half-right because, owed to her modest persuasion in the spatial area, Yamame could fit at the extreme wettest Gyutan’s middle finger, and not even up to the third knuckle. She’d fitted it, however, with much fervour and almost shameful frequency, in return enlightening the callow, young Oni on why the earth spiders, Yamame included, were fabulously able to swallow a man whole.

And they’d drunk. Oh, how they’d drunk.

They’d drunk their treacherously undulating way into the preliminary years of the New Capital, always arm-in-arm, always sharing a cup and a spot on the floor in the mornings. They’d been silly, in love and, as these things go, inseparable. Up to a point.

Then, the Ministry had called in. The mighty Ministry of Right and Wrong which, having an aeon in the past fled the realm for greener pastures, had let their hounds slip into their whilom estates to find them o

Part of Spooktember >>/gensokyo/16356

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Meekness is no flaw. Capitulation is not defeat... if you know what you’re doing. I know what I’m doing. I’m Kiketsu. When your guard is down, their guard is down, and that’s when you strike.

... I’m going over this in my head to remind myself how impressive I am, and how important my job is. It’s me who has to do it! It’s Yachie-sama’s plan, and I won’t let her down!

Ahem...

“Did we take a wrong turn?” the human... well, half-human that I chose speaks up.

We can’t take wrong turns. There’s no other turning to take. This is the Sanzu River. Without a guide, traveling over it is dicey...

... We were supposed to meet Yachie-sama, and she’d take us to the Beast World.

“Otter spirit?” the girl refers to me. If I was in a proper body, I know it’d shiver.

「We’re fine!」 I lie, speaking through her mind. 「Uhh... H-How about I take over for a second?」 Maybe if I’m in control I can... figure things out...

“‘Take over’?” she asks, cocking her head to one side. “What do you m—”

I possess her.

She’s so strong... Are all half-phantoms like this?

This is definitely enough to take down that crafting god...! Yachie-sama’s always got a plan!

... I don’t know how to handle this... “body” thing well.

I look down at this “human” through her eyes. She’s got a sword here. Two swords here.

I draw the shorter one (the longer one was already out). I swing both ahead, trying to figure out her sensations.

I’ve felt everything she’s felt since she accepted to join up with me, but feeling her physical sensations and living through her sure are different...

「Wh-What’s going on!? What are you doing?」

I smile, to relax her.

“Not to worry, Youmu—I know the way so I’ll take us

The reception went on.

In the Sun-tower of Old Hell’s New Capital, beneath the suspended mass damper, near on to five score souls had convened around long tables and benches for a grand feast. It was sweltering hot. The air overhead seemed itself to sweat, blue with tobacco smoke and aswirl from cries of “Ho!” and raucous laughter. On the tables, plucked at by hands unconcerned much for hygiene but very much the dibs, greasy roast, vats of mushroom soup, pickled lizard eggs, sheaves of unleavened bread and dried algae were liberally served on wooden and ophite trays. In the gathering hall’s murky heart, over the incandescent firepit, a whole, skinned carcass of a cave bear revolved on an iron spit, looking argumentative about the whole “apex predator” thing.

The feast’s invitees were meat of a different cut. The outcast Oni, if they sobered, filed down their cranial curlicues and generally gave themselves to reformation might – just might – aspire to be somebody’s footstools in New Hell. And, in New Hell, footstools sat around the middle of the food chain. The earth spiders in their droves, the hobgoblins and otherwise assorted, minor youkai playing their horned neighbours’ second fiddle were as good as butt-cushions themselves. The only rational excuse they were here was that the Oni were ill disposed to bear, and somebody else had been brought along to eat it. Here and there, shifty, slitted eyes flitted between it and the untouched algae.

And, there was alcohol everywhere. This comprised pitchers, boxes, decanters, cups, gargling mouths and the floor.

The Kishin chief, Suiki, prime of prime, the daemon of Chikata, lash of New Hell and the hallowed Yama, issued a growl almost of begrudgement at his solitary table. He wasn’t good on small talk or statesmanship or even spearpoint diplomacy. Surreptition, though; now, surreptition was a Kishin’s knife. No hunter of immortals held long onto their head without a dash of eighth circle chicanery. Suiki knew where he was even – and in fact best – when others didn’t.

This was presently of some advantage since, where Suiki was stationed, something rather unthoug

Exhibitionism, emotionless chikan, and quite a lot of sex, perpetrated by a mysteriously innocuous and rather muscular, clockmaking man. Main characters: Shinmyoumaru and Seija, and manipulated somewhat by Matara Okina, but our protagonist is most interested in Eiki-sama. And, really, whichever girls he happens to come across.

Thread 1 >>40336

Current vote:


And so we reach a pier, and step off (Satori awkwardly, as she is still very flustered and has yet to pull back up her panties).

“Man, you guys got intense back there!” Onozuka-san says with a laugh while minding her vessel from the pier. “You gonna have sex?” she asks.

“Would you like to join us?” I ask.

“Hmm...?” Komachi hums, looking me up and down, judging to herself. “You look nice. Sure, I’ll hit your dick.”

“Lovely,” I say, while looking down at Satori whose balance I’m still maintaining. She’s very much out of it... “Although...”

“What? You need a place to do it in? We can bang at my place. Now that I’m off the boat I can close the distance in a flash,” says the Shinigami. Right... that was something they could do, I’ve heard. “That said,” she continues, now that she’s oriented the boat toward the opposite shore. “You want me to head back and pick up the other two first? We could make this really fun, and you look like you’ve got enough stamina to handle it.”

Ah... right, Shinmyoumaru and Seija.

Well, there’s a lot to consider with that. Waiting... Satori maybe coming to her senses... perhaps Shinmyoumaru could get crushed amidst bodies...

But it’s Shinmyoumaru sex again, and we’re in a land of oni so maybe she could grow bigger and we could have sex properly... Wait, really? Can I?

Ah, but, the wait time and the complications of a five-person fuck, hmmmm... Shimi might rather I leave that for a more private moment between just us, too..

How about—


[2] “Let’s head to your place now. They can wait and as you can see, I

Quasi-sequel to: >>41058

Thread 1: >>38360
Thread 2: >>39475

[x] Find a restraint to ambush Shizuha with.

You twist around and look through a nearby crate, finding… belts. A huge pile of belts mixed with thin, wooden blocks and small widgets. You find some of the belts long, some short, some with, wait a second. Some are very short. Far too small for her waist. Too small even for a fairy’s waist.

What on earth…

Shizuha takes her first step up the ladder. Forget the belts, you need-

Those smaller ones might just fit around her wrists. If that’s so…

No time to think. You reach in, scoop out a large handful, and leap toward the ladder. Shizuha flinches as you dump them beside that ladder.

“What the…”

She turns her head sideways just as you grip her ankle and tug. She clings for a second. You tug again, tearing her free.

There’s a moment of slow, dawning realization, just before she crashes into the wood before you.

Groaning, she starts to pick herself up. Panicking, you reach into the pile and pull one of the smaller belts out. Dropping to your knees, you swing it around her exposed ankles and bind them together, buckling it tight.

“Wh- the hell?” She kicks out, half-groggy. You lean to the side, avoiding her feet just as she throws a hand out, firing out a small cluster of yellow bullets . She plants her hands under herself, pushing herself sluggishly upward.

Snagging another, wider belt, you throw it over her back. Another sloppy, wild volley launches out from her, forcing you to lurch to the side. The moment it’s gone, you drop yourself atop her back, knocking her back down.

“Who the fuck? How did you get out?”

You grunt, pulling the belt around her left arm, then around her torso. She flails, kicking the ground. You feel a burning pop as something st