[Mirrinus]

Let's Play Labyrinth of Touhou Plus Disk - Chapter 1

Spoiler

Mari! How are you feeling?

Good, good, thank you. Honestly, you don't have to ask me that every five minutes, you know.

I'm just worried about you, that's all. I don't want a repeat of what happened last time we were here.

That's very kind of you, Renko, but I can take of myself now, thank you. Or do want me to bring up how I trounced you at the Indigo Plateau?

Ugh, that again? I'm never going to live that down, am I?

Let me see...nope.

Never mind then...let's just explain what we're doing here.

What? Oh, right, I almost forgot. Anyway, I suppose it's best that I start at the beginning, since many of you guys weren't with us when we first started. As you all now know, the strange space incident that occurred last year was my fault. I lost control of some sort of deep reality warping power within me, and created a strange dimension where nothing made sense. While Gensokyo was ultimately saved from it, as Yukari has publically announced, the truth is that the space still exists, sealed away just beyond Gensokyo.

In fact, we just stumbled across its own daughter dimension recently! That was...interesting.

So that's why we've come here: to make sure this strange space is safe and no longer a threat to this world or any other.

But we've run into some setbacks...

Specifically, no one seemed to want to help. We asked the Hakurei miko, and she said no. Granted, that was probably to be expected, but the same thing happened when we asked the black-white witch, and the puppeteer, and the...

It wasn't until we got to Hakugyokurou that Yuyuko let slip about Yukari's meddling. I can't believe she would actually-

And that's why we had trouble finding help on this little quest of ours. But all was not lost! When we returned to the human village, we finally found someone willing to lend aid to us. Well, at least once we convinced her that we were human.

She was actually surprisingly helpful! She even said she had a friend who might be willing to come along as well. Although, I have no idea how she was planning on convincing her...

While that helpful woman went to go fetch her friend, we set off to look for more help. Luckily, help found us when we ran into two youkai being chased by the Hakurei miko. They practically begged us to help them out!

Oh yeah, that was pretty funny. How did you convince the miko to leave them alone?

Eh, I just told her that a wealthy dignitary was currently on his way to her shrine, and she dashed off just like that. Too easy.

Well, once we saved those youkai, we pretty much conscripted them to join. The green-haired one actually seemed terrified when we told him where we were going, although the other one didn't seem to mind.

I don't think she even understood what we were doing.

Eh, by hook or by crook. With that recruitment, we realized that the less well-known beings of Gensokyo probably didn't get the memo from Yukari, so we thought they might be a gold mine of untapped potential.

Uh...Mari, you ever wondered why the lesser-known folks are, well, lesser-known?

Hush, Renko! Not in front of them right now! Er, what I meant to say was, we left for Youkai Mountain with this in mind, and were able to find another member. She was a goddess to boot! Although, I can't fathom just how a goddess could be so little-known...

I think that was sort of a soft spot with her, Mari. Poor girl seems to have some self-esteem issues.

And speaking of issues, we also picked up a shy little kappa who didn't seem to listen to a word we were saying. She kind of just looked away from us and began talking to a pile of gadgets and contraptions she was carrying with her. She kept muttering about testing some new super-weapon, so we offered to help her test it out on some excellent targets. That really seemed to get her attention, although she still hardly said more than three words to us.

With most of our roster now filled, we met back with the kind human woman from earlier, who suggested we go looking even further up Youkai Mountain, near where the celestials dwelled. Apparently, Yukari had a very poor relationship with one celestial in particular, so we figured she wouldn't have bothered to show up there with her message.

But Keine was very adamant about not talking to the actual celestial, wasn't she?

Yes, that was really quite odd. Thankfully, we were able to find someone else there to help us out.

She seemed all too glad to get away from her work, actually. I love it when people are willing to walk into the maw of danger with us.

It's amazing how desperate some people were that they would actually be willing to come with us rather than stay where they were. We have that to thank for another poor girl, who was so abused at home that even the dark, deadly perils of another dimension were preferable over it.

Don't you feel a bit guilty for preying on the insecurities of these people for our own mission?

Well, it's not like they were all on the rebound. One of the last to join us was actually remarkably excited for the opportunity to come with us, even after hearing and understanding the immense danger we were going to be facing!

Although, the reasons she gave for coming with us sounded weird and confusing. Something about getting to keep everyone's corpses once they died? What's that even suppose to mean anyway?

Now, now, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Just be thankful we were almost ready to go. All we lacked was someone who could show us the way through the major parts of the labyrinth. Someone who experienced it all firsthand, yet still wasn't high-profile enough for Yukari to keep an eye on.

We found the perfect person for the job as she was fleeing from the Scarlet Devil Mansion, screaming about being used for the librarian's spellcard experiments. All we had to do was have Mari open a portal into the strange space, and advertise a way of escape.

Maybe we should have told here she was going back to that place, because she did seem to freak out when-

Well, that's the story of how we all got here! Now, what do you all say to that?

What? What do you mean misrepresentation? Didn't we just explain the whole story to you? I mean, sure it was a bit late, but...

Well, too bad! We're not getting out of here until Mari opens another portal, so until then...

Renko, you can stop goading them now.

Welcome to the Labyrinth!

~ Renko Usami

~ Maribel Han

I changed Maribel's text color from her earlier appearance because I was afraid her original color would be too hard to read if used for her expanded role here. Hope it helps.