In the event of a Water Landing…

AN: This idea had been outlined for a while, but I finally got around to actually doing it ^.^ It's mostly because of my amusement at the possibilities with the "Magical beings not understanding nonmagical items" concept. Merry Christmas ^.^ This would take place during Cage in Lunatic Runagate after the ship crashed, if Marisa had picked up a few things at Kourindou in preparation for the moon invasion.

Marisa:

It was more of a problem with things being too quiet rather than being too loud, Remilia aside. Marisa had felt it before, and knew that it probably meant something was about to go horribly wrong. Well, she hadn’t felt this exact feeling before (The bucket-house and the moon were new), but something close to it. It was as if a little noise in the background that had been bugging you for a while suddenly decided to shut up. Which, you know, was probably good in a lot of situations; but usually something shutting up meant something also was shutting off. And sometimes, something shutting off can be bad. Very bad.

So yeah, “things shutting off when they’re not supposed to” is something magicians learned to pay attention to and learn from if they wanted to avoid having their things catch fire. Or sparking… Or whatever it was that happened that one time that never actually happened. (And if anyone asks, Reimu’s hair was always brown, and Marisa’s was always blonde, and the Shrine never had a turtle pond to begin with). Unfortunately, with the junk in the lower compartments gone, the only thing that Marisa could think of that would have been making any kinda noise (Besides Remilia’s eternal bitching) was whatever Reimu was doing to keep the ship/house/thing on its way to the moon. And if that stopped…

Well, Marisa’s usual plan of action would be to slap a precautionary circle on whatever the spell was supposed to be doing and get the hell out of dodge. Unfortunately, Sakuya had already explained that breaking down the walls for any reason (Much less a [Blazing Star] at full speed to avoid the impending shitstorm) was a bad idea when they were all in space. So, no flying the coop on this one.

The next indication that things were going to hell rather quickly was when Reimu stopped praying and stood up. Her statement that “Something’s going to happen!” was unnecessary at that point. No shit, Reimu. You + not praying + only flying because of some god decided to let us = problem.

If there were time, that probably would have been an awesome line for the situation (The No Shit, Sherlock one, not the math). Problem was, the floor appeared to have decided it was a good time to leave.

Fortunately, Marisa had honestly kinda expected something like this would happen. It happened 2 weeks later than she would have bet on, but at least there seemed to be a place to land rather than that… whatever the hell they traveled through on their way here. Because she had appraised the trip as a “No way in hell this is going to work” class vacation, she happened to have stopped by Kourindou to pick up a little something in case of emergencies. Or maybe for a laugh, in case things actually did work out.

“Reimu, grab on to this and pray that your god has somehow survived with no faith for your entire life and isn’t pissed that you can’t even get people to visit your-“

Reimu:

Normally, Reimu would have never listened to Marisa’s suggestions without at least 2 good explanations for why she should do it and at least 1 explanation for how she could expect it to work in the first place. Especially after that one time at the shrine that Marisa denies ever happened and refused to apologize for (Saying “Hey, I didn’t think that would happen, you didn’t really like those people on Youkai mountain anyway, and now it doesn’t seem as mean beating up Alice” didn’t count). Then again, normally the two of them had time to bicker between shooting fairies, blasting evil Youkai, and moving at high speeds in a relatively uncontrolled manner. Well, actually they could do all three, since the vampire had brought along three of her maids, her other maid, and they appeared to be falling very fast.

She supposed it wasn’t really all that unexpected. Though the presence of a vessel and a worshipper was technically the bare minimum to call upon the gods, it was still a little lacking in terms of what some gods, especially popular ones like the Sumiyoshi, might have expected for their services. Still, by the lackluster and prompt response to her prayer, Reimu kinda expected them to be bored with the whole worship routine and assumed they just decided to grant her requests without thinking about it because that was something they were always doing. Then again, a bored god probably wasn’t the best person to rely on if something interesting came up, like say a ship held together by literally nothing but prayer heading toward the moon. And if the sudden impression of “You’re done” was anything to go by, a rapidly descending ship that had technically reached its destination was probably highly amusing to a god of travel.

So, with no other option and a feeling of “It probably can’t get worse”, Reimu grabbed onto the object Marisa thrust at her.

-

The previous silence was shattered by the rather high-pitched screams of the fairies, a roar of “SAKUYA!”, the sound of wood shaking itself to bits, and a curious *hiss* and *thwump*.

Reimu:

 When Reimu came to, it was to the sight of Marisa tying some sort of metal can to a rope and tossing the object away. Admittedly odd, but not actually that concerning, seeing as this was Marisa in question. At the very least, this action seemed more mundane, and thus was less concerning than anything Marisa could have been doing (Again, the “Incident that never happened” came to mind. The last thing anyone wanted to hear when waking up is “Mornin’ Reimu, we better run before it goes off, ~ze!”). Still, it was always necessary to ask what exactly Marisa was doing, if only to give yourself more time to contemplate on how many levels her plan was a bad idea.

“I get the feeling I won’t like the answer, but Marisa, what are you doing?”

“Anchoring the sides so we don’t flip the raft over, ~ze”

Ok, that… wasn’t so bad actually. It certainly showed a decent amount of forethought and might save them some trouble in the long run, since they didn’t want the ra-

Wait.

“Raft?”

It was at that point that Reimu finally looked down to see that she and Marisa were indeed on a raft, and that said raft appeared to be floating on a body of water. Well, that explained a lot of everything and nothing at all at the same time, didn’t it?

“Ok, where to start?... First, where are we? Second, what happened? And third, where did this raft come from?”

“I was kinda hoping you could answer that second one, seein’ as you were in charge of getting us to the moon. As for where we are, I think we’re on the moon, unless those guys at Eientei also had a fake Earth somewhere they just decided to put up.” Marisa explained, pointing towards what appeared to be the Earth in the sky.

“And the raft?”

“Got it from Kourin when I went ta go find some stuff for the trip. Apparently, it’s what people Outside use in an emergency, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to bring one along.”

“Bring along how? Last I checked, you didn’t have anything this big on you when we were flying, or else we probably would have dumped it with the other parts of the ship.”

“Stuck it in a storage bag with my other stuff, duh. Where do ya think I keep my broom and stuff when I’m not usin’ it?”

That… actually explained a lot. Reimu had often wondered where Marisa always seemed to produce her explosives from when exterminating, and it certainly answered why she didn’t seem worried about getting launched into the air when they were looking for Suika. And that definitely explained how she always managed to get out of the SDM with so many books and where that stuff from Mayohiga went.

“And the ‘stuff’ you got for the trip?”

“Oh, right! That’s over here, lessie…”

As Marisa started pulling random-looking objects out of a bag at her side (Creating a tremendous amount of noise doing so), Reimu began taking stock of the situation. As far as she could tell, the two of them appeared to be on some kind of lumpy yellow raft made of a type of hard cloth, floating in what appeared to be some gigantic lake of some sort. The corners of the raft had ropes leading off the sides, which presumably were attached to anchors of some sort… hopefully?

“Marisa, those are anchors, right? Not fishing lines or something equally nonsensical?”

“Of course they’re anchors! What kinda idiot would try to fish on the moon?”

For the sake of their long-held (if somewhat inconsistent) friendship, Reimu wasn’t going to answer that. Instead, she went over to the nearest rope and gave it a cautious tug, just to make sure. Curiosity (and self-preservation instincts) satisfied, she finally concluded that the two of them were relatively safe for the moment, and unlikely to capsize if they tried to move around.

“Hey Reimu, can ya help me out here? Some of this stuff got stuck.”

Well, wasn’t that rather concerning. Even after removing enough random items to fill a good portion of the top section of the ship, it seemed Marisa still had even more items in her storage bag. Reimu moved closer to help Marisa extract what appeared to be several bags that had gotten tangled up with the cords on the storage bag and as she did, she noticed something that seemed to have escaped her notice before.

“Hey Marisa… why do you smell… well, awful?”

At that, Marisa’s face adopted a chagrined expression and she placed on hand on the back of her neck sheepishly.

“Well… my contingency spell went off when we hit the water, so I got doused a bit, even though the fall didn’t really knock me out. Gotta work out the activation trigger when we get back”

“Contingency spell?”

“Yeah, it’s supposed to splash me with some smellin’ salts if it detects that I got hit too hard or crashed into something. Had to make it after I started using [Blazing Star] and kept knockin’ myself out when I hit trees”

Again, that amount of forward planning was rather odd for Marisa. Perhaps a few collisions with some trees knocked some actual sense into Marisa’s head. Reimu briefly wondered if she could get Suika to try and replicate this miracle if necessary.

After freeing the bags from storage, Reimu took stock of the items that had already been withdrawn while Marisa continued rummaging with the storage bag, muttering something about her broomstick. Many of the items now arranged on the raft were somewhat familiar, but utterly useless. Then again, that was rather common for the items from the outside world that found their way into Kourindou. Among the piles of junk, Marisa appeared to have set aside several vest-like items that seemed far too thin and appeared to be made of the same material as the raft, a few square-shaped pillows of some sort, and several metal-and-plastic boxes with metal strings sticking out of them. The bags that had just been pulled out of storage had two straps on them, and looked somewhat similar to a woodcutter’s back-basket, except the outside of the bag had been completely covered in cloth.

“So Marisa, what exactly are these things anyway?”

Marisa looked up at this, seeming to momentarily give up on her search.

“Oh, those? Kourin said they’re called ‘Parachutes’ or somethin’ like that. They’re supposed to help humans Outside fall safely from really high places. You know, since they can’t fly.”

“Are you sure that’s what they do? Rinnousuke doesn’t know what things do, just what they’re called. And these didn’t really help us just now, unless you called that crash ‘safe’. And anyway, how would people Outside manage to fall that high if they can’t fly? And why would we need those? We can fly… err, right?“

“I’m… not actually sure about that. Everything here feels weirder than it does at home. I think it’s cuz there’s no magic anywhere outside the Barrier. Either way, I need my broom. And for the Outside, I dunno, maybe they fall from a ship like ours or something. Those guys at Eientei mentioned that that’s how people go to the moon, so I figured it might be a good idea to get something non-magical for when we crashed”

“…You mean if we crashed.”

“Nah, you and Remi were on the ship at the same time. We were gonna crash, no doubt about that. Anyway, you’re apparently supposed to do something to get those things to work. I think one of the books Kourin had said something about pullin’ a tab or string or something. Here, let me find that book”

As Marisa returned to her search of the storage bag, Reimu began turning the bag in her hands over. Aside from its surprisingly heavy weight, there was nothing that would have tipped her off that the object in her hands was meant for anything more than carrying objects around. As she turned the bag so the straps were facing away from her, she noticed that there was something protruding from the left strap. Tugging slightly on it, Reimu realized that the protrusion was a handle of some sort, attached to a string.

“Hey Marisa, I think I found it and- whoa!”

As Reimu pulled the handle away from the bag, the outside of the bag came undone somehow and a strange tangle of fabric fell out of the bag, spilling over Reimu. Marisa looked up.

“Huh, looks like it was filled with blanket or something. Dunno why the books seemed to think that would help if we were fallin’. Though that’s a lot of stuff for one bag. It kinda reminds me of-“

At that moment, a breeze picked up and swept across the raft, catching the parachute and dragging it – and Reimu- off the side.

“… sails”

Marisa:

After dragging Reimu back onto the boat (and ignoring everything she was going on about in the meantime. Some of those things were just uncalled for), Marisa decided to start going over the items they had while Reimu dried out.

“So I guess the parachute things were supposed to help us catch the wind and float or something. Looked like they could have done that, anyway. Probably wouldn’t have worked in the ship, since there wasn’t any way for the wind to get to us. Then these things here are supposed to float, so we could hold on to them in the water. And hey, they totally did that just now”

“Hate you. Hate you so much.”

“I think these things are supposed to inflate when ya pull on them, or you’re supposed to- hang on… ‘blow into the valves in order to inflate air vest’, yeah, ya gotta blow them up like balloons, and then you’ll float when wearing them. Course, you’d still get wet, but ya wouldn’t drown”

“Keep it up Marisa, and I’m pushing you in”

“Fine, fine, back to the rest. These things apparently don’t work the way they’re supposed to, since Kourin didn’t have a “battery” or something like that. Apparently, these things are supposed to help ya stop in case there’s a big crash or something, but they hafta be attached to a battery so they can go off automatically. Here, Reimu, give these a shot”

“No way! Get those things away from me!”

As Reimu knocked the airbags out of Marisa’s hands, it was truly unfortunate that she did so with her right hand, the one closes to the edge of the raft. Because of this, the devices fell towards the center of the raft, where the mini-hakkero was running in order to dry out Reimu’s clothes faster. As the leads to the loaded airbags made contact with the mini-hakkero, the circuit was completed and the devices deployed.

Twin thumps sounded out, followed by twin splashes.

Remilia:

From the nearby shore, Remilia sighed and pulled away from the partially assembled telescope (Patchouli requested that Sakuya record the positions of the stars from the moon, for completion’s sake), resting in the shade of her parasol. It seemed as if bringing along the exterminators was more trouble than it was worth, if their behavior was anything to go by.

“Sakuya, go out there and bring those two over here. We don’t have all day to waste dealing with them fooling around. This is a serious outing”