Cirno cut through the spring morning haze over Misty Lake, skimming her icy wings across the water's surface. She kicked up a cloud of sand as she landed on the north shore to greet her three fairy friends. Lily White, the herald of spring; Daiyousei, the mist fairy; and Eternity Larva, the swallowtail butterfly fairy, were in the midst of an argument as she arrived.

"You're late," chided Eternity Larva, flapping her wings in annoyance.

"Hi Cirno! Sorry we started without you," said Daiyousei. "We've been playing hide-and-seek, and I think these two need your help. They've been having trouble finding me, and I think they're getting a little bit frustrated."

"It's just not fair," said Larva. "It spoils the game; you don't even need a hiding spot, you just melt into the mist. You're, like, made of mist. You have the home field advantage when we play here. If we played in the flower meadow where all the butterflies are, it would be more-"

"Forget about all that," said Cirno with a dismissive wave. "I've got huge, huge news. The humans and youkai have a new game, and it's way cooler than the kiddy stuff you were playing. They call it Perfect Possession, everybody's talking about it, all over Gensokyo. And I know how to play! I'll teach it to you."

"Spring is here?" asked Lily White.

"I watched the kappa in the ravine playing it. It's kind of like playing tag, but with teams. You have a two person team, and one person is 'it' and can tag the other person to switch bodies with them. Then the other person can tag them to switch back. The fun part is, you play danmaku as a two person team, in one body, and fight against another team doing the same thing. You can switch back and forth between different partners in the middle of the fight to use different attacks or just if somebody needs a break. It's really cool. Let's try it out!"

"OK," said Larva, "so to play this Perfect Profession thing we need to form teams of two-"

"I'm on Cirno's team." Daiyousei staked her claim right away.

"I guess I'm with Lily then. You good with that, Lily?"

"Spring is here," agreed Lily.

Cirno explained what she could remember of the kappa's technique, how the player who was "it" was supposed to meditate while her teammate cleared her mind and mentally invited the possession. After a little trial and error Daiyousei and Lily White were able to possess Cirno and Eternity Larva. The battle lines were drawn.

Cirno struck a pose. "Go! Dai-chan!" Daiyousei popped into existence to replace her.

"That was a weird feeling. This is a really funny- waaaa!" Daiyousei dodged away from a divebombing squadron of butterflies.

"The fight's already started, you can't just sit there like a dumbo," taunted Larva. "Let's go!"

Daiyousei whipped a line of mist bullets at Eternity Larva, but they were met by a mass of fluttering wings coming the other way. Larva kept up the pressure with a steady barrage of insect danmaku, forcing Daiyousei to repeatedly dive into the lake mist to evade. When she did manage to get a quick barrage of mist off, Larva blocked it easily and counterattacked with twice the force. Daiyousei tried to get an advantage by swimming into the mist and popping up from behind, but Larva was ready for it. As soon as she emerged, a thick cloud of rainbow-winged butterflies was waiting for her.

"Cirno! Help!"

Cirno swapped instantly into existence, spraying shards of ice in fierce waves that blasted away the butterflies and made Larva break off her attack.

"Wahooo! My turn now! I'll freeze you like a baked Alaska!"

Interlocking blades of ice shredded through the misty air, and now Larva was the one on the defensive. Cirno laughed her head off as Larva dodged from safe spot to safe spot amid the frozen barrage, grazing just a hair's breadth ahead of the ice. Slowly and steadily, the butterfly fairy was being driven out to the center of the lake.

"I've got you now! There's nowhere left for you to hide! This is why I'm the best at hide-and-seek!"

Larva ducked away from the slicing crystal shards. "Spring is here!"

A cluster of springtime sunlight bullets announced the appearance of Lily White. Cirno swerved briefly to sidestep them.

"I was wondering when you were gonna get your turn, Lily." Cirno paused her barrage to accumulate ice energy in her body. The mist around her froze as the temperature dropped, giving her an eerie halo of ice crystals. "Now the party can really start! Let's have some fun."

Lily White squared up, warm sunlight enveloping her body, and gave Cirno a steely look. "Spring is here."

Lily waved her hands like a maestro conducting a symphony, and a cloud of fluttering sakura petals came weaving towards Cirno. Cirno dodged her way through the orchestra, picking up speed as she drew closer and leaving a contrail of frozen mist in her wake. The danmaku got denser as Cirno neared the source, but she was in tune with the pattern now, moving in rhythm with the bullets. She had nothing to fear.

"I'll finish it in a single blow! Cold Body: Super Ice Kick!" Cirno closed her eyes and thrust forward a forceful freezing foot. The air around her was jingling with flash-frozen ice crystals.

"Spring is METAMORPHOSIS! Spring Butterfly: Midspring Wingbeats!"

Eternity Larva appeared just before Cirno reached Lily White, and summoned a storm of butterfly wing scales flying criss-cross against the grain of Lily's sakura petals. Cirno opened her eyes in shock and twisted out of the way of the slashing scales at the last second, letting the storm graze past her. Unfortunately for her, the momentum of this dodge took her running at full force into the densest part of the petal storm.

Sakura petals slammed into Cirno's torso and knocked the wind out of her. She gasped for air but got a mouthful of flowers instead as the pink blizzard engulfed her. Palpably hit and unable to see, Cirno lost control of her flight. She spiralled down and impacted the surface of the lake with a splash, followed by a crackle as Cirno's rampaging cold energy froze a block the size of a sake barrel out of the lake. The newly created iceberg bobbed in the center of the lake and Cirno sprawled out flat on it.

"Ooof, two on one. That packed a punch..."

---

Deep beneath the surface, Wakasagihime sighed. Overall, Misty Lake was a great place to live, but the neighbors could be so very noisy.

---

After Cirno paddled her iceberg to shore, the four fairies sat on the sand and relaxed. Noon was approaching, and as the air warmed and the mist thinned a bit, it was turning into quite a nice day.

Eternity Larva, especially, was enjoying herself. "I won, I won! I'm the queen of Perfect Procession and today's strongest fairy! Take that, Cirno."

"Spring is here," Lily White reminded her.

"That's right!" Cirno put her hands on her hips. "Perfect Possession is a team game. It's not your win and my loss, we were fighting as teams."

"I'm sorry, Cirno," Daiyousei said glumly. "I was just holding you back."

"I didn't mean it like that, Dai-chan. It's not your fault either, it's the team. The team lost, not us. Anyway, you two wouldn't have known how to do Perfect Possession if I didn't tell you. That means if it's anybody's win it's mine."

"Oh, is that how it works? Huh. Congratulations, Cirno." Larva stretched out in the sun. "Well, it was a fun thing to try once. I think I like playing normal tag or normal danmaku better. It's no fun that only one team member gets to play at once, and I got a creepy feeling, not having any body while I was waiting for my turn. Let's play something different next."

"We've barely scratched the surface of the fun we can have with Perfect Possession," Cirno said. "That combo attack you did at the end was really cool! I wanna come up with lots of different combo attacks like that. There's four of us, so there's," Cirno made a brief attempt to count on her fingers, "a bunch of different combinations we can try. There's so much we could do with these powers, are you really gonna be a coward and quit while you're ahead?"

"I thought it was your win," Larva said, confused.

"Are you really gonna be a loser and quit while you're behind? Come on, I'll pair with you for round two. I have a cool idea for a white butterfly snowstorm danmaku..."

"Sorry, Cirno. I think I'm gonna head for the Garden of the Sun. I'll talk to you later, OK?" Eternity Larva beat her powerful wings and set off into the sky.

"Spring is here," concurred Lily White, and followed behind her.

"Well, I thought Perfect Possession was really neat," Daiyousei said, putting her hand on Cirno's shoulder. "Do you want to try to work on some combo attacks for the two of us to use?"

"What's the point, without Lily and Larva. You need two teams to play Perfect Possession. A super special technique may as well be a melted ice cube if you've got nobody to use it on."

"Even if Larva's being a spoilsport, you said Perfect Possession was popular with the humans, right?" Daiyousei grabbed Cirno's hands. "We just need to find a pair of humans that are into it and show them how we fairies do it better."

"You want to go pranking." A mischievous grin spread across Cirno's face. "I'm always up for pranking."

"If we get into a danmaku battle with some humans and do a super cool combo attack, that would sure surprise them, don't you think?" Daiyousei returned the mischievous grin. "So let's practice our Perfect Possession and figure out a combo attack that'll blow their minds."

Cirno and Daiyousei spent that afternoon practicing their Perfect Possession synchronization. At first Daiyousei would panic when she swapped in; she'd freeze up harder than Cirno's danmaku and completely ruin the timing. As they practiced and practiced, she grew more used to it and became able to smoothly continue the combos Cirno set up. The pair worked out all the details of their combo attacks: the precise timing of the swaps, the bullet pattern offsets to create devilishly difficult but still legal danmaku, and most importantly, they managed to come up with spell card names they could both agree on. Thus armed with awesome new techniques, they set out in high spirits, looking for Perfectly Possessed humans to blow away.

And Wakasagihime finally got some peace and quiet.