As the sun sets behind the mountains a lone fairy emerges from her slumber and flies to Misty lake to play, however upon arrival… she is speechless for a moment and then suddenly shrieks “What the hell is this!?” Shattering the peaceful silence of twilight. “How dare someone freeze my lake” she continues but then seems to calm down only to suddenly thrust her palms out in a front of her yelling “Take this!”. The little fairy continued for a few moments before slumping seemingly exhausted. After pausing to get her breath back she stood back up and then clenched her fists at her sides and closed her eyes in deep concentration, this time the temperature began to drop sharply. Going from merely cool to freezing in a matter of moments, as mist began to rise off the ground, she screamed “Icicle Fall!”

However before the sun had begun to set a rabbit was preparing to leave on her journey, “honestly, why does master always send me out on weird errands like this…” she muttered unhappily. After leaving her home she continued to mutter “well… at least Aya might be wrong about this” and then the pet took flight towards a certain lake. Arriving a short time later over what she hoped was her destination “what’s with this fog?” she wondered aloud as she circled lower to try and get a better look… And narrowly avoided being skewered by a falling icicle “Wha-” she began and was interrupted as she served to avoid another icicle and then she no time to think as the sky above her darkened.

Staggering and breathing heavily the gasped out between breathes “How-did-th-ey-all-miss,” and  collapsed as she was struck by several red bullets from the sky. The perpetrator of this unprovoked (accidentally provoked at least) assault landed beside the stricken youkai
“Well that was easy, or rather I think I overdid it” Reisen worried as she crouched beside her fallen foe.

Cirno opened her eyes to find an unfamiliar face hovering over her and to discover that she had a splitting headache “Are you okay?” the weird thing with things sticking out of it’s head asks.
“I can’t believe your cowardly tactics you monster, attacking me by surprise like that,” the ice fairy accuses. The monster seemed momentarily taken aback before replying
“Huh? But I’m a rabbit, besides you’re the one who attacked me first.”
“Don’t try to fool me! There’s no such thing as rabbits and I’ve never attacked anything as ugly as you are. But now that I’m warmed up it’s time for payback!” she cries before firing a stream of icicles at Reisen.

Who easily avoids them “look you’ve only just regained consciousness, it’s dangerous for you to be moving around like this,” she cautioned the fairy, who redoubled her efforts in response. “Fine if that’s the way you want it you can take another nap,” she said with a sigh. “Invisible Full… huh!?” she says, interrupted by a column of ice and freezing cold air as it erupts from the lake.

Seeing her opponent falter, the ice fairy dives towards Reisen and is promptly surrounded by another of the supernaturally cold blasts from the lake, caught off guard she falls inertly into one of the now many holes in the ice.

“Well that’s her taken her off at least, though things to seem to be getting worse,” the moon rabbit observes as she hovers above the lake which was rapidly becoming obscured by a freezing mist. “No it’s definitely worse now,” she said, seeing a large indistinct shape rise from the lake. As it continued to rise it’s form resolved into that of a huge pale misshapen frog of some kind. “You sure are an ugly youkai,” she quipped as it continued to rise towards her.

As she awakened shrouded in darkness and unable to move, Cirno quickly began to panic. However after a few moments she realised that she was encased in a block of ice, so using her powers she freed herself by transforming the ice. While surveying her surroundings she attempted to take flight only to find herself unable to fly.
“Oh great now I can’t even fly and I’m stuck in some stupid place,” she complained to the world in general. Then almost in reply to her complaints the ground began to shake and another block of ice suddenly materialised around her. But this time it disappeared on it’s own a moment later to reveal her transformed surroundings.

“What is this gross stuff?!” Cirno wondered aloud as she carefully picked her way through the room which was now covered in thick sticky strands. Then suddenly and predictably a giant spider appeared before her. The spider however was unusual, even for a giant spider, in that each of it’s eyes was adorned by a stylish monocle. Then as if to confirm it’s strangeness it began to chant arcane phrases and wave it’s limbs in strange gestures. Cirno tilted her head to the side in bemusement at the strange creature but as she began to feel the power building in the air around her she forced herself to act. Hurriedly drawing on her power she created a wall of ice between her and the spider. Then she was forced to shut her eyes against the blinding light generated as a ball of fire impacted on her wall and exploded with a great sea of flame. When she could open her eyes again she saw that despite the impressive pyrotechnics her wall was unscathed. The spider on the other hand was now nothing but a charred husk.
“Take that you pathetic whatever you are,” she taunted and laughing she went over and prodded it with her foot. The body promptly disappeared and she was pinned to the ground by the spider’s ambush. Cirno briefly struggled against it’s iron grip but quickly realised the futility of it. Instead she, with great concentration, stuck her tongue out at the spider, which promptly swallowed her in response.

Smoothly flying just out of range of frog-like monster’s clumsy swipes Reisen countered with a wave of red bullets which the monster shrugged off with a gurgling laugh. Before lunging through the air towards her once more, this time Reisen waited until it was right on top of her and fired a red beam from her eyes. It’s claws missed her so narrowly that her hair rippled as it fell from the sky. Seeing that it’s head was now nothing more then a smoking ruin, Reisen brushed some invisible dust from her jacket and smiled in satisfaction. She floated down until she was hovering right over the hole the monster had erupted from and peered inside. All she could make out was more ice and she wondered if the ice would disappear now that she’d defeated the monster. But naturally her thoughts were interrupted by a blast of cold that plunged her into frigid blackness and repaired the ice.

Awakening in same chamber where Cirno had met her fate Reisen struggled to move her limbs but found herself swathed from the neck down in sticky resilient webbing. Glancing around she saw the monocled spider regarding her with what seemed like great pain, though it’s hard to tell with spiders, even ones as wizardly as this. She stared quizzically at the spider as it stood watching her but remained unmoving. Eventually it’s legs began to gradually flex and Reisen, thinking it was tensing to spring, shut her eyes and awaited death. However what she received in instead was better then death, slightly at least, a generous coating of chilled spider juice with extra pulp. As the messily exploded it left a rough likeness of itself in ice behind. Inside the centre of the ice hung the fairy she had fought earlier.

Cirno dismissed the ice and floated to the ground, laughing triumphantly though her face was pale and she was noticeably trembling. She staggered for a moment before getting a hold of herself and walked over to the still trapped Reisen.
“Trapped like a rabbit in a spider, that’s also a wizard’s web I see,” Cirno taunted. Clearly her razor wit was too much for the rabbit, who simply glared at her wordlessly. Deciding to take pity on her Cirno freed her from the webs, after subjecting her to a mere five minutes of her devastating intellect.

Reisen’s eye twitched noticeably as she struggled to contain her anger towards the arrogant little fairy. Though it was clear wasn’t an enemy she was extremely annoying and also seemed to be rather exceptionally dense. However drawing on her years of experience of being antagonised by a certain similarly annoying rabbit she managed to suppress it. Deciding it would be best to just ignore Cirno she looked around for some kind of exit but saw nothing that even hinted towards one.
“Any idea how to get out of here?” she asked tersely.

Cirno bent down over a portion of left over spider before responding “I bet if we wore one of these monocles we could escape,” she said, holding up the monocle she’d salvaged for inspection. Finally out of patience Reisen took a deep breath in order to shout but simply exhaled softly instead when Cirno disappeared.
“I hate you,” she said, cursing the world in general but Cirno in particular. At which point the chamber she was in promptly started to collapse. Reisen hurriedly located a monocle and donned it before disappearing.

She reappeared a short distance from Cirno who seemed to be settling in for a nap despite still being covered in juice from the spider who was also a wizard. However the lake seemed to be returning to normal at least but it seemed little consolation for what she’d been through. Now that her task was completed Reisen wanted nothing more then to get home and wash all traces of the spidery wizard off her. But first she called out to Cirno “Thanks…I guess,” Cirno raised her head slightly and shouted sleepily “Well I am the strongest,” before curling up again and going back to sleep. As she flew towards her home she wondered how she best to explain what had happened to her master. But more importantly what the hell the spider had been doing there or why it had been wearing monocles.

I was thinking that it’s interesting how different the impressions people can be. As well as that people can give off such conflicting impressions.

The personal example that brought this difference to mind was when I recalled a conversation with two homosexual friends of mine (whom I met only fairly recently).

Basically they made mention of the fact that it was surprising that I was friends with them despite not being gay or bi. My response was something along the lines of “people are just people”. After which one of them commented that they wished everyone could be like me. I have also had other people remark on my compassionate and generally ‘nice’ nature as well.

Which is nice and all, but on to the other experience which illustrates how different people’s impressions can be. In the past I previously frequented the shoutbox of www.anime-sensei.net where I was regarded as both close minded and ridiculously cold and logical. An opinion of me with which I am also familiar.

Now in both cases I was being entirely honest and I feel that both of those opinions (except being close minded) accurately reflects who I am. As for the reason behind acting in such a contrary fashion, I’m not entirely sure I understand it myself. As far as I can remember (my memory is very vague for the most part, particularly when it relates to interacting with people) in all cases I reacted as I felt appropriate.

And if anyone is wondering how I can have a personality so seemingly at odds with itself (or just think I’m some kind of sociopath) it is due to the fact that I operate entirely by logic. And being kind to others is logical which rests on the concept of mutual benefit. After all we all live in the same world so therefore it’s illogical to inflict harm on another (in any form) merely for personal gratification.

Though to be honest I’m also too disconnected to feel enough ill will towards someone to actually want to do them serious harm (physical, mental, financial ect). But hey that’s just me.

I’m a little worried about if it will look the same as it does in the photos after all it’s pretty cheap. I’m not really that big a fan of Saber as a character but I like her character design, particularly the alter version. For those of you who aren’t familar with her she’s basically a dark version that appears in the Heaven’s Feel route of the visual novel.

Ugh this really feels like advertising but I’m not being payed for this. I wish I was though..

I’m still not sure that it is honestly but I figured I may as well give it another try. I spent about $400 (AUD) on trading cards recently, weiss schwarz cards to be exact. So now I have Japanese trading cards which I can’t read in the slighest, but I’m hoping it will give me more motivation to learn.

Then again they also are quite nice to look at in the first place. I bought 4 booster boxes, which is 640 cards in all. I bought one box of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Fate/Stay Night, Phantom ~requiem for the phantom~ and Lucky Star.

I actually really wanted an Angel Beats box but the site was sold out so I went with Phantom instead.. I haven’t even seen Angel Beats (due to not being able to download anything much atm) but after reading a blog post about Tenshi and her resemblance to Protoss I thought that I definitely should.

If anyone’s interested in the site I used it’s http://www.1999.co.jp/eng , the fact that shipping is currently 50% off for paypal users made it quite appealing. I don’t have any photos unfortunately, however I may have some in the future. Because I’m sure people are aching to see what I’ve been spending large amounts of my tiny income on.

Also I wish they had Touhou cards for this system.

There are also three patches available the first hides the ui, the second replaces the font with a different one, the third replaces the music with the original music and the fourth contains the sprites from the PS 2 version. The company who translated it changed the music and more importantly they didn’t use as many tracks as the original.

There might be issues with the third or fourth patch but the rest should work fine they should all also contain readmes detailing how to install them. So good luck with that.