Through his gritted teeth, his breathing was rapid. 'TANGINA MO, TANGINA MO, TANGINA MO, TANGINA MO, TANGINA MO, TANGI—!'
"Beckitzer." Sakuya's voice was sharp, cutting through his spiraling depth of hellscape prison mind. She slowly stood, her expression grim. Her hand went to the soft fabric draped over her shoulders, the dark blue coat, still humming with the protective energy that had saved her life.
He turned slowly, his wild, conflicted gaze of grief and despair at her.
Sakuya's fingers tightened on the coat's collar. "This had saved me," she stated, a simple, absolute fact. "Your power, woven into this cloth, defied their lethal attack. This is the reason I am still standing here."
She let the weight of the truth settle between them. She was not just a witness to his failure; she was living proof of his capability.
"They have taken her. They have countered one of your arts." Her eyes bore into his. "But they have not yet countered you. The man who acts, even when it costs him. The man who gives a stranger the coat off his back." She took a single step forward, her gaze unwavering.
"That is the variable of their calculations had missed. So I will ask you only once: Will you let them be right, or will you prove this coat was not a fluke?"
It wasn't comfort. But in her sharp expression and unwavering resolve, he saw a ghost of another strong woman, Amy. A memory surfaced, clear and calm: "Whenever you're overwhelmed, just inhale and exhale, alright, sweety? Take it easy…"
He inhaled, a slow, deliberate breath, momentarily closing his eyes. He held it, then exhaled, the tension in his shoulders bleeding away. When his eyes snapped open, the storm in them had been channeled into a clear current.
"Thank you," he said, his voice steady. He looked at the empty space where the portal had vanished, then back at Sakuya. "I have a plan. The plan is this."
He reached into his rune pouch and retrieved two flat, intricately rune-engraved cards. Then, he unholstered his rune revolver, holding it out to her by the barrel.
"The gun is a temporary gift. I still need it back," he stated. "To use it, just aim and pull the trigger. As for the cards, one for you, one for Reimu. They're my version of a Spell Alteration, or in this case, 'Rune reality: Deny'. They don't just counter magic; they locally disable any active supernatural and narrative phenomenon. Basically a cancel button for reality itself. Tag this to Reimu so that she can activate it and she can cancel her current state."
He met her gaze. "Will you do it?"
Sakuya looked from the weapons in his hands to his face. She did not take them immediately. "You are entrusting me with your creations..."
"Don't get sentimental. I'm entrusting you with a tactical advantage," he countered. "They're only a backup plan for what I'm about to do. And they certainly won't be expecting it to come from you."
A rare, genuine smile, thin, touched Sakuya's lips. She reached out and took both the revolver and the rune cards. The revolver felt strangely warm and alive in her grip.
"Then let us ensure their surprise is absolute," she said, tucking one rune card securely into a hidden fold of her maid's dress. The other, she held ready. "What is your next move?"
"The scent of that portal through the void itself is still hot," Nowa said, his voice a low growl. He pulled a rune-etched cog from his pouch, then he slammed it onto the ground.
It shattered, and reality complied. In a flash of geometric light, it reconfigured into existence, forming a vehicle modeled after a Rusi Classic 250 motorcycle, reforged in rune-steel and brown-gray chrome. Its engine, a complex core of runes, thrummed to life.
In one practiced motion, Nowa swung a leg over the seat, his boots finding the pegs. The leather creaked as he gripped the handles, the front wheel pointing toward the fading resonance of the portal. He looked over his shoulder at Sakuya, his eyes burning with grim purpose.
"Hop on. We're chasing that son of a bitch, across realities."
Sakuya didn't hesitate. In a fluid motion, she mounted the bike behind him, one hand instinctively holding the rune revolver secure, the other gripping a strap on his T-Shirt. She was the Scarlet Devil Mansion's chief maid, and she was about to ride a magic motorcycle into the gap between dimensions. Her expression was unshakable focus.
"Will this work in a non-Euclidean space?" she asked, her voice perfectly calm.
"Yeah, It's my alternative and safest form of reality traversal," he said, the rune-engine roaring as he throttled in neutral. "This is better when it's a dual precision strike. I'm counting on that card shot." His gaze, reflected in a side mirror, was deadly serious. "As for the gun. Don't shoot unless I say so; it will use Reimu as a shield if you shoot recklessly." A pause, making sure she gets the idea before continuing. "Make sure it lands a hit on that bastard."
Before she could affirm, he twisted the throttle fully and released the clutch. The motorcycle didn't just accelerate; it phased. The world around them, the blood-stained floor, the eerie walls, stretched into impossible, neon streaks and then dissolved entirely as they punched through the skin of reality. On Nowa's cheeks, the extra two pairs of eyes slid open, their irises scanning the chaotic, non-Euclidean torrent of the void, navigating the un-navigable.
Behind them, the corridor they had just left contorted inward with a sound of screaming spacetime, and then collapsed into a single, silent point of nothingness.
Outside the rift, Ran Yakumo, who had been pouring every ounce of her energy into stabilizing the exit, suddenly stumbled forward as her anchor-point vanished. The golden threads of boundary energy she had been weaving snapped back at her with a violent recoil.
The rift imploded, vanishing from existence with a final, sickening pop of null-space.
Ran stared, utterly shocked, at the empty air above the lake. "What the—?! This is bad! The entire subspace has collapsed!"
Marisa, wounded and leaning on her broom, shot up in a panic. "Huh?! They're still inside! What do we do?!" Her face was pale, the grim reality dawning: the Hakurei Miko, the SDM's head maid, and their only hope against Zero were all gone.
Ran's nine tails bristled, her mind racing. "A collapse of that magnitude... nothing inside could have survived. The spatial coordinates have been completely erased from the boundary's record. It's... it's as if it never was… Is this another one of Zero's backup designs…?"
Marisa's fists clenched, her knuckles white. "No. No way. That damn Old-timer doesn't get to die in some stupid void!" Her voice was fierce, but it trembled, betraying her terror. "There's gotta be a way, Ran! You're a boundary genius! Think!"
Ran's ears drooped. "Without Lady Yukari's full power, to reconstruct a collapsed reality... it's impossible. We would need... we would need a power that can rewrite existence itself from scratch."
"Then get the gap hag to work!" Marisa said, pointing a determined finger at the empty space where the rift had been.
Ran gave a sharp, worried nod. Her hands moved in a complex pattern, weaving a smaller, personal boundary directly to Yukari's sanctum. She stepped through, expecting to find her master already devising a counter-strategy.
Instead, she found Yukari Yakumo lying prone on the floor, unconscious.
"Milady!" Ran cried out, her composure shattering as she rushed to Yukari's side. She gently cradled her master's head. "Wake up! Please!"
Yukari's eyes snapped open, wide with a panic Ran had never seen in her. She gasped, her hand flying to her chest. "A... a nightmare..." she whispered, her voice ragged. Her eyes focused on Ran with a confusing alarm. "What happened? Why are you here?"
"Milady, our connection was severed! Just moments ago! Did Zero do this?" Ran's eyes scanned Yukari for any sign of injury, any tear in her essence, but found nothing. Her form was pristine, her power seemingly intact.
Yukari pushed herself up, a hand to her forehead. "I... I can't remember." The admission, coming from her, was more frightening than any declaration of war. "The last thing I recall is leaving Chen at our household and entering here to check Gensokyo's status. Then... nothing. A blank space." She looked at Ran, her expression genuinely lost. "It's as if a page has been torn from a book, and I didn't even hear it rip."
Ran felt a cold dread seep into her core. A physical wound could be healed. A missing memory, especially from a being as ancient and powerful as Yukari, was a void they couldn't fill.
"The rift to the enemy's domain has collapsed," Ran reported, her voice tight. "Nowa, Lady Hakurei, and Sakuya were inside. We... we believe they are lost."
Yukari's head shot up, the last of her disorientation burned away by shock. "What?!" She stood, her power flaring instinctively, but it was unfocused. "How long was I...?"
"Minutes, at most," Ran said. "But Milady, if you cannot remember, then we have no intelligence on what occurred. We are fighting an enemy that can not only counter our powers but erase our very awareness of the attack."
Yukari's face hardened, a familiar cunning returning to her eyes, but it was now laced with a new, profound caution. "An enemy that attacks the story itself," she murmured. "This changes everything. If he can remove my memories... then no one is safe." She looked at Ran, her expression grim. "We are not just fighting for Gensokyo anymore, my dear Ran. We are fighting for the integrity of our own minds."
Silence descended upon them, heavier than any physical blow. The collapse of the rift, the missing memory, the enemy's methods, it all pointed to a single, terrifying truth. They were no longer playing a game of spells and boundaries, but fighting for the right of their own stories to exist at all.
A feather of Nowa's burned silently to ash. Having fulfilled its purpose.