[h2]Fujiwara no Mokou[/h2]

The sudden blackness—well, this was annoying, huh? Something to keep her out of the way, and she didn't really have a good way out except for dealing with… whatever this was. It was [i]definitely[/i] ugly to look at, all emaciated and [i]especially[/i] the multitude of eyes.

And she wanted to know if she was pretty? Well, this [i]seemed[/i] familiar, like one of those urban legend things… but, well, she'd been out of the loop for most of that incident and her interest had really been on the [i]balls[/i] more than anything. With the way stories went, it was probably a bad idea to say no. Or yes. Or anything at all.

"Not really."

But what did she have to lose here? Making whatever this was [i]angry[/i] would be the fastest way to get it to fight. 

The revealed gaping mouth and jagged teeth, now? That had worked. And the all-too-familiar feeling of blades slicing into her body. Possibly the first time it had been [i]scissors[/i], though, and she didn't want to have to stick her limbs back on to hurry it up this time, so—

Funny thing about metal was that it was easier to warp when it was hot. And if the fire got so hot that it burnt her? Well, aside from the minor damage to her shirt, that didn't matter to Mokou. And with that free, now she had room to manoeuvre and take flight. Avoiding giant shears that came from everywhere and nowhere wasn't easy at [i]all[/i], but at least danmaku prepared you for that sort of thing.

As for retaliation—fire was the obvious one, but this [i]was[/i] something youkai or youkai-adjacent, and that really brought up the advantages of an exorcism. Just throw ofuda in between trying to not get [i]too[/i] chopped up and—

Well, they'd explode anyway, too, but they'd always been handy in the days where Gensokyo was a lot more violent and she had nothing to do with her time but kill the youkai that were causing trouble in the forest.