Title: Yukkuri Experiment Author: Anonymous Pastebin link: http://pastebin.com/tY39ZM8K First Edit: Friday 3rd of March 2017 01:15:26 AM CDT Last Edit: Friday 3rd of March 2017 01:15:26 AM CDT I have decided to try the experiment. It is the most ambitious, and perhaps the most twisted one of them all, but if it succeeds, the reward would be oh-so-enjoyable.   The koyukkuri twitches on the stalk. After previous experiments, I’d long since realised that newly-born yukkuris from the shop would be the best for this idea – while wild yukkuri were cheaper, this Reimu would be worth the extra price.   It falls off the amputated stalk, landing gently on the pillow I placed beneath it. Standard practice, of course. This one didn’t have any sisters with it, though – I had only needed the one. Not to worry, it would have plenty of company soon enough.   The koyukkuri opens its eyes. “Yu?” It says. Of course, I’m there to greet it. “Take it easy!” The phrase is such a trite one, yet it’s become so integral to the yukkuri-related community in Gensokyo. “Take it easy!” it repeats. I have a treat for it, and it happily chews on the stalk it just dropped from. After the small meal, I bring it to the playpen where it’d be spending most of its life as a koyukkuri. The area is padded, and easy to clean off. Not to mention the steep sides makes it impossible for the Reimu to get out without some sort of ingenuity beyond its capabilities.   I play with it for a while, before it gets tired and snuggles up to a soft bed. I’ve got some actual work to do before I go to sleep, but I take a few precautions before I go and attach a device to the back of the sleeping Reimu. Waking up the next morning, I see the koyukkuri shitting on its bedding. Not a very smart thing at all. The yukkuri shrieks as a bolt of electricity courses through it, and it leaps off the bed as if it was on fire. ”Reimu! What’s wrong?” Hurrying over, I hide the remote control back in my pocket before leaning down to hold it. There’s still a bit of poo coming out of its backside. Ew. ”Hurts! Reimu hurts!” I put on a sympathetic face and pet it. ”I wonder what happened..? Ah, I know!” Clicking my fingers, I point up at the ceiling where I have a tiny television set into the ceiling. It is surrounded by a picture of another experimental yukkuri – a “Sikiku” as the creator had called it. The yukkuri yama’s body was wreathed in lightning and the shawl of an Iku type – while the actual yukkuri had not lasted long, but the smiling picture of it was perfect for my needs. Right now, the television that it was ‘holding’ had a skull and crossbones on it. “Reimu, that’s the little Miss Punishment Yukkuri. If you do something wrong, she’ll punish you with lightning!” The koyukkuri wails. “What did Reimu do?” And I pointed at the bed. ”Miss Yama doesn’t like it when you do poo poo on your bed! You should go do poo poo on a toilet!” ”Toilet? Yama should take it easy!” The Reimu defecates onto my hand, and I press the remote in my pocket. “Ow! Son of a-“ Mental note: Don’t activate an electric shock device on a yukkuri when it’s contacting you. ”Hurtts!” I drop the yukkuri onto the small hole, and it relieves itself without further zaps. The conditioning itself without making the yukkuri hate me is one problem solved, but it’ll take more than one zap to teach the yukkuri – if they can truly be said to learn anything. I play with it a bit more, letting it chase a small feather on a string around the room. It seems to be still cheerful even after the earlier punishment, and I’d set the Yama Sign to a smiley face. It tires itself out and after eating a piece of orange it settles down again onto the now cleaned bedding.   I ponder the thought of a life as easy as a yukkuri’s, just eating, sleeping and playing, then consider my own position, so near the Kappa’s technological mountain, compared to the humans down at the village. I still had to work, but the Kappa were more than willing to let humans test their gadgets and even pay them to do so. It was far, far from a troublesome life.   It had been a week since the koyukkuri had fallen off its stalk, and it had grown significantly on its diet of sweetened vegetables and fruit. It seemed to have learnt toilet manners and was getting along nicely. Having finished making my recordings, I prepare for stage two. The next stage is a bit risky, and I am slightly apprehensive of accidentally killing the koyukkuri. I hadn’t really gotten attached to it yet, but it’d be a pain to have to bring up a new one all the way from birth again. ”Hey Reimu! Come here to mister!” It jumps happily into my hand and I throw it into the air, catching it as it falls. ”It feels like flying in the sky!” The burbling is quite cute, I admit. “Reimu, would you like a sister?” ”Yu? Reimu would love a sish!” I laugh, and tell it to take it easy.   When it sleeps that night, I turn the device up to full power and give it a full three-second jolt. The yukkuri is barely awake, but blacks out almost instantly due to the pain. I prepare my tools quickly and take it to the surgery desk. I had already dissected a number of Reimu yukkuris earlier, and their parts lie on the table already.   One quick stroke with the scalpel cuts it in two, the beanpaste core separating nicely as it goes. Quickly, I add more paste filling to each of the separated sides, and put a new yukkuri eye on both of the paste sides. Then, lifting it up carefully, I baste the new bean paste with sugar water and carefully drape the thin sugary wrapping of another yukkuri over the surface, suturing and patching the skin to make it fit (cutting a hole for the new eye to see through). A bit of moulding makes the new bean paste more rounded and I dump the first half into the supersaturated sugar solution while dealing with the next one. Hair is a bit of a problem, but I manage to stick on some of another Reimu’s hair onto both of them.   After the job is done, I carefully add another device to the second yukkuri half before checking on both of them. They’re both still alive, it seems. Good – the success rate for this operation was only about two in three, but it seems to have worked. I put them both into a special case with a sugar drip on each of them to let them recover before moving off to check my other experiment.   “Uuu! Uuu!” The Remilia flaps in its cage, smiling idiotically. I smile back at it, knowing it’d be a great help eventually. ”Dinner time!” The foodstock yukkuri scream as I dump them in the cage.   “Wake up, Reimu! Take it easy!” The Reimu on the right wakes up first, blinking a bit as it gets its bearings. It must be confused – having half of its “brain” cut away might have done some permanent damage to its personality, I begin to fear, before it sees me and shrieks for a second. “Yu! Take- Yuu!” “Take it easy! What’s wrong?” ”Take.. it easy..!” It calms down for a bit, wondering what had happened. By now, the Reimu on the left has woken up and smiles. “Yu?” it asks.   “Reimu, I’ve got a surprise for you!” Both of them seem to have not noticed the pain they went through last night, though the one on the left seems to have difficulty focusing with its new eye. I lift up the section of the cage that separated the two sections, and it takes them a couple of seconds to realise what’s on the other side. “Take it easy..?” “Take it easy!” “Yu-!”   They seem to like each other. It’s not surprising, considering they’re effectively the same entity, just split into two. I chuckle, and let them get to know each other as I start reviewing some of the Kappa inventions. At night, I take some needle and thin rubber tubing to each of them. There’s a couple of small handheld pumps that I received as a present from the Factory, and they’ve been very useful to me in some of my earlier experiments. Now, I gently prick both of the koyukkuri with the thin needles, poking it all the way into their core sections.   The pump is a bit stiff, but after pushing it a couple of times it becomes easier. I don’t pump it too much, perhaps shifting around about half the insides of both yukkuris before stopping. I pull out the needles and clear them out, not wanting stale bean paste left inside them. The yukkuri don’t wake up.   ---   “Yu?” The Reimus are confused when they wake up the next morning, their memories once again disjointed and split. I hope the internal damage isn’t too severe. They seem to be slightly worried, though, approaching the other more tentatively today. No worries. I hold off on proceeding with experimenting further while I wait for them to heal up. For now, they can enjoy their peaceful play with themselves and I.   ---   The Remiyra has grown a body! I still have no idea how it occurs, but it looks quite a chubby child now, rather than just a disembodied head. I haven’t bothered training this one, for obvious reasons, but the smell of rotting bean paste is getting slightly cloying – when I open the door to its cell the smell spreads out to the other rooms far too easily. I decide to spray it down with a hose to clean it off.   After thirty seconds the bodied Remilia is screaming and body parts are flying off and I realise why it’s not a good idea to try hosing down yukkuri. Oh well, they’ll grow back. I hope. On second though, I go back and stick the fingers and legs back onto it, using more sugar water to get it on properly. I wonder who, exactly, supplies all this sugar.. Gensokyo doesn’t exactly have the right climate for sugar plain plantations, but there never ever seems to be any shortage.   It couldn’t be refined yukkuri paste, could it? No, of course not. That was a silly idea.   Today, I think I’ll see if I can get them to learn how to read. A difficult challenge, I admit, but I had been spicing their food with cream from Patchy yukkuri, and that should help a bit. I’ve already increased their vocabulary to an eight-year old’s speech – not a huge accomplishment, but still good in my eyes. I have seven of the Reimu now, having repeated the cutting trick multiple times. It had not always been successful, with five of the halves expiring on me. Still, it had not been a total waste, as I had managed to use their materials instead of other yukkuri to fix up the others. The more they keep their own, singular mind, the better. I think I had managed to work out the right time to split up my Reimu without harming the overall mind too much, and I had been busy mixing their minds up every night. Gods, I need a break. Still, I persevere. I do not make much progress. Though they’re still playful, they have no tolerance for studying, even when I give them small jolts of electricity to keep their minds aware they’re supposed to be working. They appear quite sullen at time – one of them shouted at me at one point! ”Yu! Stupid mister! This is boring! Reimu is hungry-ZYYAAAA!!” I must admit, I might have overdone it on the zapper that time – but I definitely didn’t want them seeing me as just a servant. “Oh dear!” I exclaimed, putting on an act. “Look at Miss Punishment Yama! Can anyone read what it says?” Some of the Reimu looked a bit sullen, but one piped up. “Yu… Ta…ke it ea..sy with... Mister?” ”That’s right! I think Miss Eiki wants you to take it easy with me! Hey, let’s take a break and play a game!” “Yu! Take it easy!” A couple of the luckier yukkuri get to see the outside world as I hold them up to the window. They would all get part of the memories eventually, after I spread their cores around. I decide ease off the teaching from then on. Literate yukkuri was only a mild accomplishment, but I was still after something much better.   I think it’s time to proceed to stage three. The Kappa are slightly weirded out by my requests, but after some humble begging and appealing to their egos, they promise to make the equipment. Kourin says he’s going to see what he can do to provide some of the materials. Meanwhile, the dissection of one of the failed twins have shown my theory was correct – the bean paste cores DID grow back to its original size if they’re split in two, meaning that the total mass of the ten yukkuri was now around a double-handful of solid goo. They’ve grown up quite a bit, and now each one was the size of a basketball. As they sleep, I take the two original Reimus and shock them. It takes a bit off effort to get them out of the cages unnoticed, and I have to grab another that woke up. Before it knows what’s going on, I shock it and leave it there for later.   At the operating table, I slice a small gash into the shocked Reimu, exposing the core. I then stick the needle in the second, pumping more and more of the second’s core into the first. Eventually, the entire core is transferred, the first Reimu now looking slightly enlarged. I deftly cut the husk of the other Reimu up, separating hair, skin and the outer beanpaste into separate containers – these are to be refridgerated for later use.   That morning, the yukkuri are in a state of alarm. “Yu! Sis is missing!” “Yu? Reimu saw Mister taking Sis Reimu!” Calm them down is difficult – while they haven’t been exposed to much danger, they’ve been experiencing time through several different viewpoints – while they’ve only been alive for a month and a half, their combined experience was more like nine months or so. They’re starting to get suspicious. Time to spring my backup plan. “Maybe they went someplace.. Let’s have a look for them, shall we?” I open the door, revealing the Remirya. ”Oh no, it’s a Remirya!” I play up the danger, backing away from it. One of the yukkuri bounces forwards, and I silently curse myself for not realising they didn’t know to be afraid of predators yet. ”Uu! Uuu!” The Remilia does what it does best, and treads on one of my Reimus. It squeals and tries to get away, but the Remilia picks it up and takes a bite out of it. It shrieks. “Hey, get away from Reimu!” I charge at it, pulling the yukkuri out from its teeth with a slight tearing sensation. Not worrying too much, I pretend to struggle with it, letting it bite my finger and shouting myself. The yukkuri, now having a saviour, start cheering for me. One of them even charges forwards and headbutts the Remilia. Having won their loyalty again, I pull off the experiment’s head. ”Uu?!” ”Take that, you beast!” The Remirya is surprised, and I manage to throw the head and now lifeless body into its cell and shut it there again. Then only do I turn to the hurt Reimu. Oh no.. It looks like it might be too late for this one as well. I take it away to the operating table.   --- “Sorry, I couldn’t save your sister.” The remaining seven look sorrowfully at the ribbon accessory that I showed them. They believed it, of course – it was a damn close thing that that Reimu had survived at all. It wasn’t going to last long, anyway – I was going to transfer its core to the original before it died of its wounds. But it looks like the others had calmed down at least.   I take the time to preserve the body of the Remirya. I’ve examined the bodies of other Remiryas before, and this one has developed a small digestive system and what looks like internal organs. It’s an excellent thing. Pumping out the bean paste of the Remirya, I inject the spare paste that I’d harvested from the other two Reimu husks. Their cores had already been injected to the sleeping original. I hope that the transfusion doesn’t cause any rejection or other complications – I’m certainly no expert in Yukkuri antibody systems. Still, stuffing the body in the fridge should help.   I feed the Remilia a couple more livestock yukkuri as silent thanks. It still looks cheerfully at me, so no harm done. You can rely on them to be predictable, if nothing else.   --- I’ve decided not to take chances, and have put all the yukkuri into cold hibernation. The original Reimu is slowly healing as the bean-paste core of its sisters is reintergrated into it. Some of the parts have arrived, too - the mould being the largest.   I take out the Remirya’s body – and notice a change already. Somehow, the clothes have changed into a shrine maiden’s outfit. I gash the bottom of my Reimu, where its “foot” would be, and place it on the body. The wound heals up with a bit of bean paste. Would it take?   It lives! I feel like Dr Frankenstein, madly laughing as his creation takes its first faltering movements. “Yu..?” The Reimu moves its arm to rub its face as it wakes up. Then it sees the arm and starts gesticulating wildly. “Yu-! What’s this? Reimu feels weird!”   I hold up a mirror to it, so it can see itself. “Yu..! What’s that? That Reimu looks silly!” Damn. No sense of self. ”It’s you, Reimu! It’s your reflection!” ”Yu? What’s ‘reflecton’?” Aargh! Holding its pudgy hand, I wave its arm up and down in front of it. It seems to catch on, lifting its other arm up and down, learning slowly how to move. I help it sit up slowly, gently pulling it forwards. “Yu! Reimu has a body!” ”That’s right!” This wasn’t exactly a new procedure – other yukkuri had been given bodies beforehand. But it was a very important step.   Reimu got to its feet and managed a step before falling over. “-Uu!” Uh oh. “Hey, Reimu, are you ok? Take it easy!” ”Take it easy!” I’ve finished transferring all the cores into my bodied Reimu. The last step is so close, yet Kourin hasn’t come through yet. Reimu is asking about her sisters, and I haven’t been able to come up with a good excuse. Its been holding its head in its arms on occasion, when I’ve been out of sight. It must be disorientating to have had so many overlapping memories. That reminds me, I need to remove the Yama television set and the picture before she realises she can smash it.   ---   I took my Reimu out for a walk today. It was apprehensive at first, but it was entranced by the scenery of Gensokyo. Youkai mountain is as impressive as ever, with the beauty of the red sky behind it making it shine like a monument to our utopia. I pointed out some good wild vegetables that grew in the surrounding area to the Reimu, and it was happy to see other, wild yukkuri. It chased one of the Marisas, and I laughed when I saw the Marisa bounce away in fright from it.   The Reimu came back and gave me a hug, and I patted her head. I need to remember that this is just the final experiment in a long line of experiments. There’s no need to get sentimental over it. Having said that, Kourin has got in contact, saying he managed to get the materials to the Kappa. Once this is over, I’ll be able to sell the yukkuri to the factory and make enough to never have to work again. It might revolutionise the whole yukkuri business. I play with the yukkuri one more time. Might as well keep it happy for the final stretch.   ---   It’s arrived, the final piece. A life-sized skeleton made of hardened cane sugar. I gently pull the covers over the bed of the Reimu – the last time for this body. It doesn’t notice the zapping device that I had used the very first time on the back of its head.   The shock knocks it unconscious for the last time, I hope. I carry the body to the operating table once more. I flay it alive, separating the skin and muscle-like bean paste from the tiny organs.   The skeleton is laid out in the mould already, with a layer of treated yukkuri skin underneath it – this is no ordinary skin, but one that’s been remade according to the Great Oni mochi methods of cooking. Apparently the Oni like their mochi REALLY chewy – that stuff doesn’t break very easily at all.   Each step has to be precise. I attach the paste muscles to the bones carefully, making sure they’re not overstretched and carefully joining each part to the next. The spare paste that I saved from the older yukkuri husks is barely usable, but it works well enough as a padding and as fats. I mould softer sweets as cartilage, and lay the organs out in the ribcage. The bean paste core I transfer when I’m nearly completed, placing it gently in the sawed-open skull and placing the top half back on top. It’s a tight fit, and I fret over it for a half a minute before remembering I still need to fit the eyes. Eventually, it is done. I have modelled the entire human body, and closed the mould to let it set. It is slightly refrigerated, and has several sugar drips going into it. But still, nothing as large as this has ever been attempted before. I am nervous, to say the least. Has it worked?   The Reimu opens its eyes. “Yu?” it says. Of course, I’m there to greet it. “Take it easy!” I smile at it, nearly bursting with relief. “Taa..” ”Take...” The mouth tries to form the words with difficulty. Even after controlling the body before, can it learn to control new muscles and bone structure? “Taae ee eaay.. teach iie eaajy?” ”Come on... Take .. it.. easy!” I pronounce the words slowly and carefully, letting it see how I form the words. “Taake it easy..! Take it easy!” ”Yes!” I grasp its hand, nearly bursting into tears. It worked. It worked.   ---   The first steps are tentative, again. My Reimu’s gone through so many changes already, it’s only to be expected. One misstep sends her staggering, and I catch her before she falls. I can feel her body pressed against mine, an almost perfect replica of the Hakurei shrine maiden I had seen so long ago. But she manages to right herself, and she smiles at me. I smile back, hiding a painful feeling in my chest. I’ll have to send it away to the factory. Not today, of course – it still needs to heal. But immediately tomorrow. The very first thing. I can’t do it. I have had a terrible nightmare of Reimu screaming as she was ripped apart by unfeeling humans, as I stood in an observation chamber. I pounded on the glass walls as she cried out for me, as thousands of eyes in purple watched me and judged. It’s not just that, of course – what’s the point of giving up someone that I’ve put so much life into? I can’t abandon her. She wakes again and smiles when she sees me. I hold out my hands and she rises to give me a hug. Her hair smells faintly of sugar and freshly cooked dough.   ---   We walk in the green foothills of the mountain, simply enjoying life. It’s been a couple of weeks since my Reimu’s rebirth, and I couldn’t be happier. As the sun rises, we sit in a patch of shade, holding hands. She turns to me, and I kiss her, taking her other hand in mine. “Mm?” She’s confused, but doesn’t resist as I gently push her down onto the grassy slope. Her breathing is calm, and I watch her chest rise and fall slowly. Her clothes come off easily, and she tenses slightly as I slide my hand over stomach down towards “You...” It was Reimu’s voice, but it was coming from besides us. I caught a flash of purple-dressed lady behind her, but the main thing that caught my eye was the Hakurei shrine maiden, her eyes slightly boggling. “Ah.” There was an awkward pause. “I can explai-“ I was cut off in midsentence as she started saying something. “No, really, I can-“ “Spirit sign, Fantasy orb.”     BAD END