Out Like a Lamb

(First written from November 16th, 2022 to December 22nd, 2022)

Out Like a Lamb

Glossary

This section details various relevant parts of the story. Underlined entries have links to pages that explain them in further detail.

Ability Card: An item from the Touhou Project series; it’s a card that gives its holder a special ability. “Regular” Ability Cards and Replica Ability Cards are produced through different means, but have identical effects.
Animal Realm: A land from the Touhou Project series, located near Gensokyo and populated by animal spirits. The saying “might makes right” defines the Animal Realm, and if animal spirits want to survive, they must join gangs and live under their leadership. The Gouyoku Alliance is one of these gangs.
“Black Water”: A mysterious liquid filling the “Sea of Petroleum” deep under Gensokyo, which briefly flooded the land’s surface before “Out Like a Lamb” happened. To many, it has the appearance of crude oil, with the term “black water” coming from those who don’t know what oil is. Its true form is the blood of condemned, evil souls. Yuuma Toutetsu once tried to harness the power, claiming that it was similar to oil anyway in how it used living beings as an energy source (based on how fossil fuels come from remains of organisms such as zooplankton and algae).
Cirno: A fairy from the Touhou Project series, who lives in Gensokyo, and an old friend of Daiyousei.
Daiyousei: A fairy from the Touhou Project series, who used to live in Gensokyo. Fairies in Gensokyo have the ability to return to life after a fatal experience, and this has happened to Daiyousei before.
Danmaku: A Japanese term that literally means “barrage” or “bullet curtain”. In the Touhou Project series, it has a more precise meaning pertaining to swarms of magic projectiles that are unleashed in fancy patterns. A danmaku festival was held once for the sake of showing off these patterns.
Dual Lamia: A character from the Puyo Puyo and Madou Monogatari series who lives in Ruin Stage. She has the body of a human from the waist up, and the tail of a snake below that.
Flandre Scarlet: A childish vampire from the Touhou Project series. She lives in Gensokyo, and Okina used her to destroy Yuuma when Yuuma was corrupted by “black water”. She has the ability to turn into a bat, which leads to her getting called a “bat kid” by Yuuma in this story.
Gensokyo: A fantasy world from the Touhou Project series, home to youkai and and similar mythological beings.
Gouyoku Alliance: A gang from the Touhou Project series; they reside in the Animal Realm, led by Yuuma. The gang is rather disorganized, with Yuuma largely doing her own thing, and the animal spirits she “leads” largely following her example and doing their own thing.
Kogasa Tatara: An umbrella from the Touhou Project series, who became a youkai years ago. In The Chaos Zone, she briefly got involved with the incident with Yuuma and the “black water”, and saw the true form of the “black water”.
Okina Matara: A goddess from the Touhou Project series, who watches over Gensokyo. She was the one who flooded the surface of Gensokyo with “black water”, to draw attention to Yuuma’s plans deep in the “Sea of Petroleum”.
Plains of Passage: A location from Shovel Knight, a video game released in 2014.
Ruin Stage: A location from Puyo Puyo~n, a video game released in 1999.
“Sea of Petroleum”: From the Touhou Project series. A strange realm deep, deep within Gensokyo, filled with what many perceive to be “black water”. Its true form and name is the “Abandoned Hell of Blood Pools”.
Takane Yamashiro: A youkai who lives on the Youkai Mountain as a businesswoman, mainly through the sale of products.
Whistling Plains: An area seen in the ending sequence of Mega Man 3, a video game for the NES released in 1990. The area has no official name, with the name “Whistling Plains” being invented for The Chaos Zone.
Youkai: A supernatural entity from Japanese folklore. Many of my Chaos Zone characters are youkai who coexist with humans and other sapient creatures.
Youkai Mountain: A location from the Touhou Project series. A large mountain in Gensokyo, where many youkai live.
Yuuma Toutetsu: A sheep-like creature from the Touhou Project series, who leads the Gouyoku Alliance. While she resided in the Animal Realm long before “Out Like a Lamb”, she eventually moved to the “Sea of Petroleum” deep under Gensokyo, trying to harness it to bring terrifying power to herself and the Gouyoku Alliance. The affair ended with her going out of control, and she had to be destroyed by Flandre Scarlet. She came back to life afterwards through unknown means, drained of her power. Yuuma wields a giant spork as a weapon.
: This is a Hell Raven from the Touhou Project series, used in The Chaos Zone to censor swear words. This is part of a greater inside joke of Mega Man RPG Prototype and Chaos Zone where swear words are censored by birds.

Background

With the Touhou series being integrated into the world of The Chaos Zone, the events of Touhou Gouyoku Ibun ~ Sunken Fossil World (a video game released in 2021) were also integrated into it, albeit mostly taking place away from where most story writing was happening; the game’s events began around October 2021 and ended within the first 3 months of 2022.

The most important things to note about the game (and how its story happened in Chaos Zone) when reading “Out Like a Lamb”:

The main antagonist of the story is Yuuma Toutetsu, the head of the “Gouyoku Alliance” (one of four gangs from the Animal Realm, a world where the belief that “might makes right” reigns supreme), who had found her way deep into the “Sea of Petroleum”, seemingly an endless reserve of petrol deep within the Hell of the Touhou series. It’s revealed early in the story that the Sea of Petroleum is, in truth, the “Abandoned Hell of Blood Pools”, a sea of blood from condemned souls. This does not bother Yuuma at all, with her comparing it to how fossil fuels came from living organisms.
While she only plays a minor role in the game, Kogasa Tatara is a significant character in The Chaos Zone‘s version of the story, being one of the characters who finds out the true nature of the Abandoned Hell of Blood Pools.
In the game, the last character who fights Yuuma, the vampire Flandre Scarlet, is the one who successfully puts a stop to her plans, destroying Yuuma’s body after she corrupts herself into a monstrous form. Yuuma somehow comes back to life after this, however, and in the end, she makes a deal with the deity Okina Matara (who helped Flandre find Yuuma) to watch over the blood pools, while still allowing Gouyoku Alliance to do as they please. “Out Like a Lamb” diverges from this somewhat, the story beginning after Yuuma has come back to life.

Story

(The story begins in March of 2022, on the Youkai Mountain, located in the larger region of Gensokyo)

(Fast-forward slightly, still in Gensokyo but away from the Youkai Mountain)

(Fast-forward; Yuuma has left Gensokyo, having passed by a village and now roaming the “Plains of Passage”)

(a flashback to when Kogasa fought Yuuma months ago)

(The scene cuts back to the present day)

(Yuuma’s explanation to Kogasa isn’t fully written out)

(Fast-forward; Yuuma is now traveling through the “Whistling Plains”)

(a flashback from Daiyousei)

(another flashback from Daiyousei)

(a final flashback from Daiyousei, its blurred appearance being because she was dying as she was seeing it happen)

(Fast-forward; Yuuma is now in an area known simply as the “Ruin Stage”)

(Fast-forward; Yuuma has returned to Gensokyo)

Afterword

For a good while after I first learned about her, I was conflicted on whether or not to introduce Yuuma to The Chaos Zone. Her purely villainous role in her debut game left me largely planning what she could potentially do as a future threat, an idea I sat on up until the Nintendo Switch version of Sunken Fossil World released, which included an additional piece of the story starring Yuuma after the rest of the game had concluded.

With some personal beliefs I had about redemption and forgiveness in the front of my mind at the time, my thoughts on how to handle Yuuma changed drastically; with the Touhou series seemingly set on keeping Yuuma a villain (something that rarely happens in the series), and thoughts on how her position may be reduced to a simple “status quo” she wouldn’t develop further from, I decided to write an alternate version of Yuuma’s story, having her talk Okina into giving her a chance to look at the world outside Gensokyo (which wasn’t an option in the series proper; only in Chaos Zone can one travel to and from Gensokyo so easily).

From here, I began to focus on Okina’s misdeeds; Okina’s actions in the series can often seem strange and questionable, and this is something that other characters of mine have seen firsthand (Kogasa in the book Grimoire of Usami, and Daiyousei both in the game Hidden Star in Four Seasons and the comic book Visionary Fairies in Shrine); I decided to have Yuuma’s trust in Okina be put into doubt from the experiences of these characters, leaving her feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place.

This is where Dual Lamia came in; as a character not tied to the Touhou series, she had no bias against Yuuma, and her own experiences with self-discovery came in handy giving a final outsider’s perspective to Yuuma, which was the final push she needed to decide to turn over a new leaf (helped by the fact that living far from Gensokyo would keep her from bothering those she had poor history with).

Overall, “Out Like a Lamb” was an interesting and satisfying experience, finding a way to redeem a character who didn’t seem like she’d receive such treatment officially, and giving her the chance to continue developing for as long as I was writing the setting.

I’d like to end with a little bit of trivia: Because I had no intentions of using Okina outside of this storyline, all of my writing on the Mega Man RPG Prototype website referred to her as simply “Hidden Figure/Hidden Deity”, with her face always in shadow; this was meant to signal that if someone wanted to use Okina afterwards, they could do so. To make the story easier to follow on this website, I changed the writing in the screenshots above to refer to Okina as if she were any other character, and gave her proper mugshots like everyone else.