The Thief, the Witch, And the house

[Marisa Kirisame]

Marisa looked at the gem with interest as she walked around Nippur with Victor. Marisa sighed as she put the gem away and looked around. The sun was slowly sinking below the rolling sand dunes of the verse and the ordinary magician was quiet as she walked around.

“So uh I gotta ask why a little thing like you decided to come all the way out here to help?” Victor tried to start a conversation and Marsia after a couple seconds of consideration spoke with a carefree tone in her voice. 

“Meh, I was bored and was hoping something really fun was going to happen like a giant incident life back home.” Marisa’s eyes shined with excitement as she smiled widely. It wasn’t a lie per say she told Victor but it wasn’t the whole truth either. “So I have to ask you . . . Do you believe that the things that go bump in the night are real?” She spoke as if she didn’t care about the outcome as she looked at the some of the houses that haven’t been taken.

Soon the two got a third as Alice finally found the love sign magician. “Marisa, where do you want these books?” Marisa sighed as she pulled out a white cloth blanket and put the books neatly into one stack and tied the cloth together before putting it on her broom to carry around with ease.

“So uh . . . can I ask your name?” Marisa decided that if she was going to be working with these people she should at least make a somewhat serious effort to learn their names.

Victor chuckled as he spoke with a pleased and joking undertone. “My name? Why its Victor Wolfe, little lady.”

Marisa nodded keeping that name in mind. The ordinary magician soon found a decrepit, two-story, cottage and smiled as she walked up to the old broken door and pushed it to the side with a bit of a struggle. Inside it to most people would be a major hazard but to Marisa it was perfect. “I’ll be taking this house. Honestly, this is all I actually need here.”

Marisa was leaving identifiable footprints as she walked through the settled dust and cobwebs. Victor was a bit surprised by the choice of a clearly dangerous house but quickly got over it as Marisa started to get to work sweeping the dust into a pile.

Marisa was muttering plans for the building being used for commercial uses or at least the front door area. Marisa stopped sweeping to go look up in the other areas of the house. In the back of the first floor, there was a kitchen area and a dining area by the design of the layout with a really small bathroom in one of the corners.

Marisa walked carefully up the stairs as Alice was busy on the lower floor. She reached the top of the steps to see a single hallway with a total of three rooms. Marisa walked to the closest door before opening it with trouble as the door’s hinges had long since rusted causing Marisa to sigh and just break down the door.

After a few times ramming into the door it slowly fell over before a loud crash could be heard throughout the house causing the others to jump but soon heard Marisa’s muffled voice followed by some coughing. “That was intentional! *Cough cough* I probably will have to do that a couple more times.”

Marisa looked in the room to find that it was most likely when the house was still being used a study. On first appearances, it was fairly small with a square window that opened outwards; there were a couple bookshelves on the right side of the wall filled to the brim with books of varying value and worth. Under the dirty window, there is an oak desk which looked like it was beautifully crafted once upon a time. As Marisa walked over to the desk she saw it had two drawers on each side and a place for a chair to be slid in. On the desk, there were ink stains and glass along with yellowed papers that had long since lost there to use and were unreadable to anyone

Marisa walked over to one of the shelves and pulled off a book flipping through it to find that the pages had been eaten by moths and other bugs. Marisa shook her head as she pulled each book out speedily checking for anything that might be useful and tossing everything else out.

It was a long, and tedious process as she put her whole attention span; into making sure she wasn’t tossing out any papers or things that might help her. As she was on her last couple books someone shook her shoulders and she screamed as orbs floated a few feet in the air, prepared to fire as she spun around floating and looking around before seeing that Victor had frightened her and was laughing.

Kirisame huffed in annoyance even though she probably would do the same thing and floated back down as the orbs floated . . . somewhere; heck nobody knew where she kept those orbs not even her. It was against all laws of common sense; that she never knew where they went when she wasn't using them for combat purposes.

"Please, don't do that." Marisa rubbed the bridge of her nose as she shook her head. The black-white witch put down a red leather book before picking up the last book from the shelves. It had the promise to be something interesting due to its purple cover with a magic circle on one of the covers.

Marisa opened the bookbinding and disappointingly closed the volume up before putting it with the rest of the books. The book was absolutely useless in any research or references. She picked up each book before dumping them out of the window with a sad look; for others to use as tender or whatever they want.

She got to her then went to check the other rooms. In one room it was a very plain small room as if it was for a child. Marisa shook her head as she went to the other room. In the last room in the upstairs, it was uneventful also with nothing of interest to the witch.

Soon she and Victor went downstairs to see surprisingly that Alice was busy with her dolls cleaning up the dust and stuff. It was to be honest a well-oiled machine like Alice had done this many times before. Victor had this slight nagging question in the back of his mind as Marisa didn't use her omnilium to just summon anything she would desire to help fix the house up.

"So Marisa why are you working your back off and renovating this house? It seems like any piece of land would be better than this old house."  Victor picked up one of the books from the sack and saw it was about alchemy. And the book underneath the white covered book was a book on different strands of mushrooms.

"Well, Victor a magician can't tell their methods to there madness." She talked with a knowing and cunning voice, and after that continuing to sweep and generally clean out the debris and dust from the house.

[Victor Wolfe]

Knowing more about madness than the little witch probably thought he did Victor chuckled to himself and decided to explore the cottage more, the smell of dust and mould settled on everything around them, but the place did show potential, and perhaps the girl just wanted to gather the fungus and webs to make potions, she did seem to know a thing or two about alchemy. 

Still compared to the rest of the new recruits Victor had seen this one was a breath of fresh air, not as serious as the other mage and more appealing to the eyes, and she didn't bring the head of his sloppy seconds to the throne room, Victor was curious about the white-haired person of unconfirmed gender. But that could be dealt with at a later date, assuming that they survived whatever mission the Golden King bestowed upon them. Remembering his first task, infiltrating another group of primes only to spring the most dangerous and effective trap in the history of this world, taking a huge risk to his own life. Erik had been asked to help take out one of the dunes most notorious bandits until he sacrificed himself alongside Victor and Gilgamesh. He was sure that the new recruits would also be given hard tasks, to prove themselves worthy of the New Babylonian colours. 

heading up to the second floor Victor reached the bedroom, a lone mattress lay on the floor covered in adult magazines and used rubber contraptions, a man with a scraggly beard and torn clothes appeared to be resting on the mattress. coughing loudly the hobo awoke with a startled look on his face.

"You looking to buy some death sticks?" he asked, opening up his tattered trench coat jacket to reveal what judging by the name and the way the guy asked where probably some sort of new narcotic, Victor thought about it for a minute or two, he was a politician now and scandal would not look good, but he had worked so hard already, couldn't he just enjoy one little buzz?

"Nooo, Yeeee... that is not what I am here for good sir, for you see I have a special once in a lifetime offer for you, and I mean, once in a lifetime" Victor smiled to himself, making sure the girl wasn't heading up the stairs yet he stalked forward nimble as a cat, his feet making almost no sound on the old wooden floors as his eyes glowed blood red, predatory intent filling the room. 

The drug dealer felt a chill down his spine as he instinctively stood up and backed away until his back was to a wall, as his hands felt a window behind him. His breathing was heavy and panicked like a fawn trying to scurry away from a hungry wolf. Victor took his time as he approached, a hand gliding down without hesitation to his golden dagger, a motion he had carried out hundreds of times in the past.

"well, you see as a member of the homeowners association I see that you have not kept this place up to the new standards and thus are being evicted, we already have a new resident so you have ten seconds to leave" Victor started to count down with each second the blade getting closer to the dealers throat.

"I thought you said you were making me an offer?" he said in a panic as he tried to distract the bloodlust of the assassin who just smiled back at him, his eyes full of sadistic intentions "but I did, I am letting you live like all the other incompetent scum I have had the displeasure of dealing with today, you are at three, two..." closing his eyes the hobo yelled

"OK OK, I will leave!" he raised his hands to try and block any attempt at an attack causing the assassin to chuckle. 

"Good choice, now since you only have two seconds to get out of here let me help you out with that" he said as his knee rose from a standing jump, colliding with the squatters chin and sending him flying through the window, his hand reaching into the trench coat to grab a sample of what he assumed was the new craze on the streets as Glass shattered onto the floor, followed by a crunch outside. waiting a few seconds Victor heard the scurrying of injured footprints, knowing he hadn't killed the guy he breathed a sigh of relief. Rushing over to the stairs Victor shouted down "I slipped and broke a window, do not worry, I will fix it in a bit"  

Knowing he did not have a lot of time before the witch would decide to head up and check the room Victor quickly started to extract the objects in the room, breaking the broken furniture and mattress down, until he was left with a blank slate of a room. kneeling down and focusing on his surroundings the ideas in his head started to take shape as the wallpaper stained and torn became the same shade as Marisa's hair and the centre of the room became filled with a large heart-shaped double bed. finishing it off with a rose Victor grinned to himself as his plan to seduce the witch seemed to be going off without a hitch, until his communicator started to beep.

Furious that he was being interrupted he angrily grabbed the device, it was a message from Dave, asking him to come and explain what had happened to the bandit that was currently in a near comatose state in their holding cell. As tempted as he was to just say screw the guards he knew that in the early stages of rebuilding he would have to play along with them. 

Marisa had made her way upstairs but before she could say anything about the new decor of the room the assassin rushed over to her kneeling down to eye level with her "I thought that you could use a place to rest after all the hard work you are doing miss, and to answer your question from earlier yes I do belive in the things that go bump in the night, I am usually the one who makes them go bump in the night, unfortunetly I really do need to run for now, but if you want to know more about what I like to do with, gifted women like yourself then give me a call and perhaps we can test out the bed and floor boards, make sure they are... strong enough" he said has he handed her the rose and rushed off to see what the stupid guards wanted.

[Marisa Kirisame]

As Marisa looked at the rose in her hand she was stunned and honestly confused. By the time that Victor had left the house, she had finally got her brain to work somewhat. “Wait what just happened?” She was clearly confused as she looked around, her mind trying to make heads or tails of what just happened.

It didn’t help that she lived for most of her life alone, in a forest, where pretty much all humans in Gensokyo thought she was a weirdo or even that she should be killed for using magic even if she was really good friends with the shrine maiden. She would have to tread that path carefully should she want to continue … somehow.

Reeling herself back into reality she decided to leave the room for later when she could decide if the bed. She soon walked back downstairs with the rose in hand. Once she reached the bottom floor she saw Alice had brought in a Table and a couple chairs while drinking a cup of western tea. The love sign magician settled herself on one of the chairs before setting the rose down.

Thinking about the shrine maiden it brought her anger at the thought; that she could laze around and never do anything all the while still being able to take down gods, and insanely powerful youkai even if the Spell card rules were not around. 

Marisa sighed as she got up and started to form a few double sided shelves for stocking and selling purposes; She decided that in a few days time she would go looking for things she could possibly sell magical or not. Once the shelves were formed she started to push them into place grunting as Alice just watched with interest with a grin that spoke numbers about them.

After a good fifteen minutes, the magician had finally got the shelves where she wanted and went into the kitchen area to find out just how bad it was. The witch almost threw up her lunch as she came into contact with the sight of the kitchen area. It was disgusting with mold and other nasty stuff covering and touching things like the sink.

Marisa steeled herself as she walked forward and summoned a wet rag and bucket filled with water. She dunked the rag in the bucket and started to scrub the immensely dirty surfaces of the kitchen. In the meanwhile, Alice was busy reading some of the books Marisa had asked for as she was bored and didn’t want to help.

She never understood why a human would take such a chance and go into a Miasma filled forest; away from other humans and live there. A crash was heard and some cursing right after. Alice sighed with disappointment as she closes the book and sets it on the wood table before getting up and walking into the kitchen area. She could see Marisa was muttering a slew of curses as she looked at the chipped countertop.

Marisa sighed as she shook her hand trying to take away the pain. When the human magician turned and saw Alice she frowned before rubbing the bridge of her nose. "What do you want?" Marisa questioned the seven colored puppeteer with a hint of poison in her voice. "Don't you have better things to do like play with your dolls?"

Marisa pulled out a piece of paper before starting to write down items she needed for the house. Paint, brushes, tools, various parts, etcetera. Once she had filled out her list she headed out back into the streets of Nippur for the bazaar. Alice, on the other hand, scoffed at Marisa's insult clearly not affected by it. She soon went back to reading and generally being unhelpful to Kirisame, while drinking some tea.

Marisa soon reached the bazaar and could hear the sounds of people hard at work rebuilding Nippur. Marisa, after ducking and weaving through the hoards in her perspective, found a person who seemed to be selling goods for ones home. As she approached the man she pulled out her list and started to look. "See anything that catches your eye, pretty lady?" the man said in an aging voice.


She scratched the side of her head as she looks. “Yea, I just need some supplies like nails, and paint.” She didn’t know if someone was going to have good cans of paint but she would rather not spend the time looking a lot for a can of paint or two.

The old merchant scratched his whiskers as he got up and started to walk over to a cart and started to dig through it thoroughly. “Give me a minute and I will see if I have what you want Ma’am.”

After a good couple of minutes, the man pulled out a couple cans of paint and a sack where the sound of metal hitting metal could be heard. He set the stuff down and sighed as he internally calculated the cost. “It’s going to be this much.” Marisa sighed as she pulled out an orb of Omnilium and cut out roughly what the price was and handed it to the person before taking the supplies and walking away.

Once Marisa reached her shop she entered and sighed before putting the supplies next to the door and putting her hat on the table. She looked at the peeling paint and huffed in annoyance. The Magician opened one of the cans of paint and saw it was robin egg blue and she nodded clearly happy with the paint choice. She pulled out one of the brushes and realized that she should take the paint off. She then grabbed a paint scraper and started to carefully peel the old paint to an extent.

Time passed as the witch did slight renovations here and there with what knowledge she had. Plans were slowly being developed for how she was going to refuel her hakkero and her research. It soon came to a point where she was exhausted; Alice had left the building to who knows where at this point and so Marisa after sweeping up some paper; kicked off her shoes, walked to one of the chairs and went out cold after sitting down.

[Marisa Kirisame]

As Marisa woke up she rubbed her head and face while she started to look around the storefront. “How many days has it been since I was brought here?” Her voice saddened at the chance that Gensokyo was somewhere she probably couldn’t reach now even with magic, aided by the fact that omni had decided that she was its plaything. She got up looked out one of the dirty windows and saw that it was morning?

That brought up a very good question to the magician. How did time work here? It didn’t seem like it had been enough time to warrant it being morning. The Magician pulled out a piece of paper and started to write on it with a semi-flair in her writing that essentially told anyone who came inside that she was gone for a few days. After that, the love sign magician grabbed her broom and walked to the weathered, old, sturdy door and opened it. The heat hit her and she remembered just how much she hated really random weather.

The mage walked out to the gates of Nippur and sat on her broom before flying off in a random direction in the dunes to go hunting for items that could be sold. While in the air she could tell the temperature was only increasing in severity as she landed for a few minute break.

She summoned one of those liter sized bottles of water and started to drink from it slowly and methodically. Soon half the water was gone and she pocketed the rest of the water for later use and soon was back up in the air on an expedition of sorts.

The hours seemingly passed with no overly serious problems. Truly the witch was glad for that simple stroke of luck in her favor and soon the sun was starting to set over the dunes. She shook her head as she landed near a dune exhausted. she weakly stood up and dusted the sand off of her before sitting down and pulling out her mini hakkero. She smirked as she looked around and turned on the small flames giving a minimal amount of light. She looked around seeing movements just near the top's of the dunes or maybe it was nothing. This systematic movement in the dunes was starting to freak her out as she grew quite drowsy even with all the disturbances.

She soon laid down even with her groggy mind telling her not to and went to sleep. Meanwhile, a group of people came upon her sleeping body and pulled out ropes.

[Marisa Kirisame]

As Marisa slept lightly she could hear the dripping of water nearby and the light hitting her face. She opened her eyes and tried to rub her eyes but felt the ropes rube her wrists. She muttered under her breath in anger and fear as she looked around the gloomy sandstone room from her spot on the floor.

There seemed to be a wood plank that acted as a bed and a single bucket that acted as a latrine, with an incredibly durable metal door. She stood up carefully before gingerly walking to the “Bed” and sitting down on it. And taking a look at her clothing or pretty much lack of. She realized that her items had been taken off of her probably in case she tried to escape.

She sighed pushing the problem to the side as she couldn’t really do anything but think and sleep at the moment till something happened. She curled up on her side and touched her shins as she frowned in disappointment. She hated how she got in this situation so easily and had really no way out of it, no tricks, magic, or even the strength that some of her friends had. No, she just had her wits left to her. 

“Heh, I’m really a poor magician if I can’t even get out of this.” She smirked at her own plight and sighed right after. She hears metal scratching on metal as a pair of eyes were searching the room before locking onto the magician of love-sign. She sees the viewing port close back up and the door opens with a creak as the thing walks in.

The thing chuckles as there face is hidden behind a snow-white mask with an expressionless look on it. the man wore a black trench coat and had a bandaged arm reminiscent of Kasen. Height wise they were a couple feet taller than Marisa and build fairly stocky. "So you're the new prize, the others got huh? I mean not much of a prize to be perfectly honest but you may be worth a couple hundred at best." The thing chuckled in a way that was impossible for a human, as it interlocked its fingers possibly contemplating what to do.

Marisa glared at the thing struggling against the tightly wrapped ropes as it walked slowly and menacingly towards her. "Stay away!" She retorted as she kept as far away from the thing as possible in the tiny room. Normally she would have had a retort in store for this creature, but as it openly laughed which caused her to go red-faced with anger and lash out missing by a good couple inches causing it to become dead silent as it pulled out a blood-stained knife as it touched it's pointer and thumb to the metal.

It soon spoke with a calm voice laced with poison and anger. "Apparently I'll have to teach you whelp the rules here. You don't realize it but you will be sold off to someone. They will own you to do whatever." The voice deadpanned as it walked up to the pint-sized witch and pressed the knife right up to her neck. "Or I could just kill you right now for your little transgression."

Marisa paled at the death threat, gulping as her body shook with fear. Pleased the thing released the knife from her neck and walked backward. the knife disappeared somewhere and against Marisa's better judgment started to ask what happened to the knife and stopped herself in the middle of her question. 

"I mean to be honest I'm here to train you for your . . . duties you will most likely deal with." his voice turned businesslike as they walked over to the door and knocked a couple times before walking over to the ropes binding Marisa's hands together and cutting them.

Marisa rubbed her wrists as she freed her hands. She looked confused but still was quite defensive as she watched the thing's movements intently. The one thing she did know was that she was in grave danger being here but first she wanted her stuff back.

“Now, first off try anything and if you fail to escape dog; I can’t help you with your situation after that.” It walked over to the door and nodded before opening it and pulling a sack of stuff inside. “And if your good you can get your stuff back. Simple as that.” the thing spoke with little to no ill will to the mage.

It burst forward and pushed the witch to the ground and the mask seemed to start to smile, in joy or in euphoria at the sight of the girl, she didn’t know. The knife showed back up, as the thing kicked Marisa in the gut causing her to lose her breath and a small amount of blood came out of her mouth. Marisa felt tears form on the corners of her eyes as she curled up into a fetal position to cover her face and torso.

She soon felt the knife enter her arm and screamed out in pain, and the tears, if they hadn’t started, were flowing and she could be heard sobbing. “All you have to do is beg for me to stop. Just say the words and the pain stops.” The thing's voice was mocking Marisa as she wouldn’t let this thing take her mentality and break it into pieces.

She steeled herself as she spoke with exhausted breaths. "G-go to hell." She saw red as she got up and formed a fairly hazy mockery of the knife and swung cutting the thing's clothes and part of the mask causing it to bleed what seemed to be black sludge of some kind.

The thing howled in pain and rage as it yelled at the blonde witch. "I'm going to fucking murder you!" it held out its non-bandaged arm and burst forward only missing Marisa by a few inches at best-causing Marisa to sweat bullets. She reached the sack after doing what would have looked like a mixture of limping and running, pulled out her mini hakkero before aiming it at the target.

"Don't come any closer! Move and I'll shoot!" she warned the creature as the master spark started to rev up and could be heard throughout the room as she drops the mockery of the knife and holds the hakkero with both hands. the thing shook his head at her before making a break for the door. Marisa fired at the motion of the thing, with the multi-colored beam of heat and light magic.

While the building was still intact there was a giant scorch mark and the now well-done creature who after a couple seconds of being master sparked into the wall falls down and fails to get up after a few seconds. Marisa looks at the sack and for a couple of seconds just stands there like a deer looking at an oncoming car before snapping herself back to reality and digging her own stuff out along with some random stuff in there also. Most likely to be used in case she was being stubborn.

She grabbed her shoes and slipped them on before grabbing the bag and moving out of there as fast as possible. she had her orbs out and ready to help in case someone tried to blindside her. Outside the room, she could see a couple of mud brick buildings along with some sandstone buildings, and it looked like essentially an outpost with a well, and some vehicles which Marisa limped over. The two of them floated a couple inches off the ground and was reminiscent of Byakuren motorcycle. Marisa looking around climbed onto the metal vehicle and felt her skin burn at the touch of it. Causing her to yelp in pain and scrambling off of it.

Marisa sighed as she pulled out her dress and quickly put it on, muttering as she messed up a couple of the times with her messing up the process. She finally got finished and started to try and figure out how this machine actually worked. After a couple of tries and failures to get it started and to not just crash she finally got it to move in a somewhat straight line and was riding out of there.

The speeder bike was in pretty bad shape, banged up in pretty much everywhere and most of the parts had been either jury-rigged to the machine or were pretty much on their last legs in terms of usability. Marisa after a few minutes had slowed down the speeder to check her wounds. Even if she couldn't fix the wounds she could still do some basic first aid probably. thankfully nothing of major importance had been harmed in that fight, but what had was bleeding pretty bad.

She knew she would have to take care of it but she also wanted to get as far away and as fast as possible. After a good couple hours, she heard something crash as another pretty much exploded. The vehicle quickly came to a halt and fell to the floor as the metal groaned in stress.

She got off the speeder bike and kicked it in a fit of anger, and walked off; as she didn't have the mechanical know how like Nitori Kawashiro, nor did she even have the tools to work on it. Time passed and she finally reached Nippur once again and entered the sandstone gate. The wounds had long since stopped bleeding and her clothing was stained. She soon reached her house and entered disappointed that she had no items to sell to the public.