Whether it's for the first or umpteenth time, hello. And of course, a very happy and very late New Year's to all of you! :D

This year, my New Year's resolution is "Write and finish a story about Touhou." I needed a character I could build a plot from, one who could be very funny to write with, and one who I hadn't battled yet so that I didn't have canon dialogue in my head to slow me down. I also wanted to pick somebody I haven't written yet, so it narrowed down to Shinmyoumaru pretty quickly :)

This is a comedic adventure where she'll do cool things, funny things, and probably get really upset once or twice along the way. In her own way, though, I think she's like Touhou's first princess: Kotohime. At least, my portrayal of her is ^_^;

But enough of my rambling; let's begin Shinmyoumaru Sukuna's daring and exciting adventure to find her missing treasure!

Gensokyo was a land of many youkai. Some had a higher standing than others, in one way or another. Somebody with a high social standing, for instance, may boast the lowest physical standing of all. Like, say, a tiny princess. A very tiny princess. Her name was Shinmyoumaru Sukuna, the kobito princess. While her stature was miniscule, she had spirit that could easily be enough for ten. Naive, yes. Unaware of how dangerous the outside world could be for somebody as tiny as her? Certainly. Afraid? Never. Even if she lost in all three cases, that fearless spirit of hers could explain why she took on a miko, a witch, and a maid whose knives were a tsukumogami experiment on Shinmyoumaru's part. Partially thanks to the power of the Miracle Mallet, she simply didn't see any reason to fear anything. Of course, in the end, she was still tiny.

Where others saw a needle, she saw a sword. Where some saw a thimble, she saw a drinking glass. As such, unless she used the Miracle Mallet to become bigger, overlooking the dimunitive princess was an easy task. But she didn't let that stop her. As she awakened from her night's sleep in her bed – one that looked like it could have belonged in a toy house instead of a palace – she reached to her sides to grab two of her most valued possessions. Her right hand gripped her "deadly sword," and her left hand took firm hold of the bedsheets. Wait...that wasn't right.

Shinmyoumaru's body jerked up like a puppet on a string, and the kobito princess frantically looked to her side. She always slept with the Miracle Mallet at her side! Ever since Seija showed it to her, it was the one thing she held to tighter than anything else! How could it go missing like that!? Maybe she knocked it over in her sleep? Deciding that wasn't unreasonable, Shinmyoumaru hopped out of bed, put on her usual pink kimono and the bowl she used for a hat, and started searching around. She probably spent a good thirty minutes checking around the large (for a kobito, at least) room, before coming to the conclusion she was trying to avoid at all costs. The Miracle Mallet was missing. Stolen, most likely. It wouldn't just go missing in one room, much less one she'd checked so thoroughly. So who took it? With her trusty needle in hand, Shinmyoumaru stepped out of her room to begin her investigation. The best place to start, she decided, was around here. Who could have either taken it, or seen the person who did? The kobito's mind pointed to one person and one person only.

The tiny princess dashed about the palace's halls, in search of the biggest person living there. Many other kobito didn't get why Shinmyoumaru allowed Seija Kijin to stay here after blatantly lying to further her own purposes. Of course, most kobito also weren't sure why Shinmyoumaru was in charge to begin with, short of her bloodline leading back to Issun-Boushi. While many of her decisions – especially as a leader – were questionable, the kobito race didn't outright ask questions about why she made them out of respect and love for their leader. Letting Seija stay at the palace despite her manipulative fabrications was the most recent of these choices. Typically, Seija slept in a room down the hall from Shinmyoumaru's. That also made her a prime suspect for taking the Miracle Mallet. Bursting into the room as hard as she could and clearly wearing herself out doing it – the doors were colossal next to her – Shinmyoumaru had to shout so she knew the amanojaku could hear her. "Seija! Where's the Miracle Mallet!?"

"I can't hear a word you're saying," Seija said, setting down a pinky finger to lift Shinmyoumaru on, which the kobito climbed onto. "Your lungs are too tiny, Shinmyoumaru. It's a hassle to watch where I'm walking to avoid crushing you guys." When the two were at eye level with one another, Seija asked "Now what were you saying, exactly?"

"The Miracle Mallet! Somebody took it! You haven't seen it, have you?"

"Nope."

"Don't lie to me again, Seija! I really don't want to have to tell you to leave!"

"No lies this time, I really haven't seen your mallet. I tried meddling with it once already, remember?" Setting her dimunitive friend down on a table, then sitting down at its chair, Seija continued "All the other kobito would leave the mallet alone since they know how harshly you'd probably punish them once you found out they had it. It could always be somebody outside the palace."

"Outside, huh? Yeah, you're right! Who would take it, though?" That was a real puzzle, that one. Only kobito could use it, and the entire kobito race lived in the Shining Needle Palace. Maybe a collector? Or a history buff? Or worst of all, maybe the oni had come to take it back! That would be a disaster only a princess could resolve! Getting up to her determined and dimunitive feet, Shinmyoumaru proudly exclaimed "I know who our thieves are! The oni have come to take the Mallet back, so I'll go win it back from them!"

"Are you sure you can fight an oni?"

"Issun-Boushi did it, right?" Holding out her trusty Shining Needle Sword, the kobito said "He killed an oni with this mighty sword. If he can do that, so can I!"

"Right..."

"Seija, you keep the palace safe! If the oni come again to invade us, they can stomp all over the other kobito and kill them all! I'd hate to come home to genocide, so I'm counting on you to defeat any oni that come inside!" Jumping down to Seija's lap then climbing her way down the amanojaku's leg, Shinmyoumaru made her bold way out to find and stop the thieving oni from locking the Miracle Mallet away where she wouldn't be able to ever reach it again, like a top shelf. She had to move without delay! The fate of the Miracle Mallet, and maybe the entire kobito race, depended on it! The tiny princess ran with all the speed her itty-bitty legs could muster in a mental race against time, kind of hoping her guess about the oni was at least a little off.

A couple hourslater; unknown location...

This forest is really thick... Shinmyoumaru shifted and pushed her way through possibly the densest concentration of plant life she'd ever seen; all she could see in any direction was pure green. It was no small (no pun intended) feat in her mind to reach civilization at this rate. She wondered what kinds of monsters may lurk here, in this dense forest...well, a forest from her standpoint. The reality was that the Human Village – despite their friendly relations with the kappa and their technological prowess – hadn't discovered the lawnmower yet. She was just troublesomely caught in somebody's front yard after making the wrong turn. In truth, she'd been running in moderately erratic circles for some time now, swinging her needle this way and that and mistaking it for cutting down the vegetation that blocked her view. Then, suddenly, a pair of fingers picked her up by the arm and lifted her out of the grass.

"Hey!" the princess exclaimed. "Put me down! I'm on an important mission!" Struggle as she may have, the inch-tall princess was no match for what looked to her like hands the size of buildings. Nor the silver-haired woman who owned those hands.

"Oh, it's just you again."

"Wait, I know you! Hi there!" When the kobito was set in the palm of this woman's hand, the princess cheerfully asked "How are the knives?"

"Normal again. May I ask what you're doing?"

"Braving the deadly forests of Gensokyo, of course!"

"...you mean the schoolhouse's front yard?" An elegant finger then pointed behind the princess, to what was indeed a schoolhouse. To Shinmyoumaru, it looked enormous, but it was really an average-sized schoolhouse for a class of average-sized children and an average-sized teacher. "And I'd like to amend my question. What are you doing without your little hammer?"

"Oh, that!" Sheathing her deadly needle, Shinmyoumaru said "The Miracle Mallet was stolen by the oni! Maybe they thought I wouldn't be able to get them like Issun-Boushi did, but nobody messes with Shinmyoumaru Sukuna and gets away with it!"

"You're going the wrong way," Sakuya deadpanned. "There's only one oni in Gensokyo, and she's completely harmless."

"No way! I've been tricked all this time!?"

More like you just don't know what you're actually doing. "Sadly, I don't know exactly where they live, either. If you'd like, we could ask somebody closer to an expert on the subject about the oni and their whereabouts." Not letting the kobito princess deny her offer, Sakuya made her way into the schoolhouse. She had some business to attend to here, but it wasn't so urgent that she couldn't spare a few minutes.

When she was brought inside, Shinmyoumaru's eyes were treated to a new world (for a very generous definition of "world") of gargantuan desks, massive pencils, and sheets of paper big enough to build houses from. And sitting at the biggest desk of them all – one she could have easily used as a sports stadium – was a tall woman with the lightest shade of blue possible making up her hair. Given where she was sitting, it only made sense that the blue-haired girl was the teacher here. Lessons of what was and wasn't proper for a princess came to mind once Shinmyoumaru was placed on the teacher's desk.

"I brought somebody wanting to learn," Sakuya said. Then she turned, said "Keine, she's in your care now," and left. Leaving the hakutaku teacher and the kobito princess to communicate. To some, speaking to a total stranger could have been awkward, but some people had no clue what "awkward" meant, so to speak.

"What do you know about the oni?" the little princess inquired.

"Oni?"

"O, ni. Yes, the oni. I need to find them before they can get away with my prized possession!"

Why does everybody expect me to know everything around here? "I'm sorry, but I can't say I know much about the oni. All I know is that the Hakurei Shrine has an oni living there."

"Of course!" Crossing her arms in a wonderfully proud expression, Shinmyoumaru felt like the entire case had just opened itself. It was as though the universe itself was cracking open and pouring all its secrets into the kobito's tiny body, giving her a shocking revelation the likes of which would leave King Solomon befuddled and bamboozled. "The miko was an oni in disguise all this time!"

"I think-"

"No, no, listen!" Not even noting the look on Keine's face that described how terribly wrong she was, Shinmyoumaru continued on. "She first came to the Shining Needle Palace to try and take my Miracle Mallet by force, and when that didn't work she knew I was too powerful while I had the mallet! So she snuck in under cover of night and stole the mallet so that she wouldn't have to fight me again!" Turning toward the door, Shinmyoumaru pointed her needle of doom toward the door, shouting "To the Hakurei Shrine, sensei! I need to get there before Reimu can sell the Miracle Mallet for something stupid like money!"

"Actually, I'm pretty sure you're mistaken."

"That's just what she wants you to think! I've never heard of an oni this cunning before; she didn't outright lie to you guys, instead just making herself seem as human as possible until everybody believed it! You're coming with me, sensei. I'll need a teacher's smarts to overcome a fearsome foe as clever as this oni!"

"Uu..."

"Hurry! She may be selling my Miracle Mallet on whatever twisted black market the oni have as we speak!"

"...class, please continue studying," Keine said, getting up to her feet. Clearly, there was no arguing with the kobito in front of her, so the best thing to do would just be to get her to the Hakurei Shrine then come right back. Scooping up the tiny girl on her desk, Keine made her way out of the schoolhouse. No doubt she was delusional about the entire scenario; Reimu wasn't an oni, and even if she was, there was no oni black market she was aware of. Out of the usual incident-resolvers, the most likely person to steal a unique and priceless treasure she couldn't even use would have to be Marisa, but no doubt Shinmyoumaru had something crazy to say about her too. Some things are best left not asked.

"Faster, sensei, faster! Oni are nocturnal beasts, so we'll strike the nest during the day!"

You're thinking of owls.

Loli princesses are now traveling by teacher...

I guess for Shinmyoumaru, "loli" is an understatement. The furthest I got in DDC was almost halfway through Stage 5, just as bullets were beginning to do U-turns and I was running low on lives & bombs. When I first played Touhou, my biggest problem was that I used my bombs too much and never had them when I needed them, but now a few years later, it's that I don't use them nearly enough and die when I shouldn't have. Sekibanki and Benben have been helping me slowly work on my bomb problems, though, so at this rate I might even beat this story's star by the time the story's done :)

I'm not sure at this precise moment if I want a world where everything works like Shinmyoumaru thinks it does, or if I want one where nothing works like that. I bet the world inside the cute lil' princess's head is a fun place to be. Don't forget to leave reviews & favorite and/or follow the story if you liked this first chapter :D