[Doll TF, Suiting]

“Just a little more, and this should…”

Deep within the Forest of Magic lived a young lady known for her skills with dolls. Alice Margatroid, the Seven-Colored Puppeteer. A former human who had been raised in Makai only to return to Gensokyo as a Magician, peddling her new skills to those that might need them. Sadly, not many truly needed the services of a Puppeteer, so she was left to her own devices more often than not.

Today, she was busy working on her latest masterpiece. Compared to the many puppets that she had crafted over the years, this one was entirely made of plush material to give it more of a soft and charming appearance, which would hopefully increase her profits once she marketed it to the human village. If the kids were anything like how she imagined they were, they’d love her latest and greatest piece of work.

Unfortunately, crafting such a specimen required a lot of focus. The final stitches were incredibly precise, and…

“Yoooooo! Alice! Are you home, da ze?”

The entire house shook as the door to her home was kicked open rather rudely by a familiar and ever-annoying guest. A certain black-white magician who she had become deeply acquainted with during her time in the Fantasy-ruled land of Gensokyo. Marisa Kirisame. And judging by the footsteps that echoed throughout the house after she arrived, she wasn’t the only guest either.

“Must you always break and enter, Marisa?” A yawn echoed from one of the other visitors, immediately identifying her as the frail yet powerful Patchouli Knowledge. Whenever she actually used her legs, it wouldn’t take long for that long-lived magician to spend all of her natural energy leaving her in a sleepy haze until she sat back down. “I swear, that’s the only thing you know how to do. You don’t knock and ask how I’m doing or anything…”

A brief flap from a pair of wings indicated that somebody potentially worse than Marisa had joined the duo. “It makes for an exciting story whenever you two end up feuding, Miss Knowledge, so I don’t think she should stop her acts any time soon!” The annoying journalist, Aya Shameimaru, had her voice echoing throughout the house as she let out a brief laugh.

“You’re not helping matters, Aya. And what’s the matter with that formal speak? You always act so casually, what’s changed?” The lavender-haired girl asked, only to be directed towards the different cap on the Tengu’s head. “...Ah, you consider this an actual job. That explains it. Carry on then, not that you’re going to get any good content here…” She yawned as she continued along, hoping that she could get a moment to lie down soon…

Marisa ignored her two hangers-on as she barged straight into Alice’s room, grinning all the while. “Yoooo, Alice! You didn’t answer when I knocked on the door, so I had to kick it in! Man, you’ve really been reinforcing that thing, it took a good three or so solid kicks before it budged, da ze!” The thieving witch seemed all-too ignorant of her blatant disregard for personal property, something that just made the blonde Puppeteer mildly seethe with rage.

“Marisa.” The owner of the home said as she carefully stood up from her chair, her eyes gleaming red as wires extended from her fingers. “Tell me why you’re here, now, or I’m going to skewer you so hard that you won’t even be compared to cheese.” She was mad, and the aura that radiated off her body just intensified that rage.

The black-white kept grinning, not at all bothered by the killing intent that her friend gave off. She just took off her hat and put her hand into it, before pulling out a familiar-looking book. “This is yours, isn’t it? Patchy told me to bring it back to you when I got beat by her last time, and she was really insistent on making sure that it got home, da ze.” She didn’t seem apologetic about what she had done, but it was nice to see the kleptomaniac bring something over that actually mattered instead of just some dumb mushroom.

“She’s weaving a lie, Alice!” The voice came from the other room as Patchouli slowly made her way into the younger girl’s workshop, coughing a little from how dry the air was inside the room. “I… She came to me and asked for help, and never specified why. She just took me along. If she had just told me that she wanted to return one of your books, I would’ve called her out on not returning mine!”

Aya meanwhile stuck to the back, taking pictures of the three girls and their surroundings as much as she possibly could. She was there as a journalist, after all. She needed as much content she could grab so that she’d have an appropriately sized story to go with it all.

“...So, what you’re saying is that Marisa, for once in her ever-annoying life, decided to be nice and actually return what she had borrowed?” Alice asked aloud, retracting her strings and making her dolls carefully fall to the ground in the process. Both the Witch and the other Magician nodded, prompting the blonde to sigh as she fell back in her chair. “You could’ve just started with that, instead of blowing down my door and ruining my latest project.”

This caught the black-white’s attention as she turned towards the incomplete plushie sitting quaintly on the worktable. “This thing? What’s it supposed to be?” She asked, prodding it and causing it to tip over. “It doesn’t look like the kind of thing you’d make, Alice. It looks like some kind of kids toy, da ze.” She remarked, throwing her hands behind her head as she continued giving it looks.

“Hmm…” Patchouli muttered as she took a seat on a chair in the back of the workshop, getting ready to regenerate her energy reserves. “Marisa’s observation may be crude, but it’s not inaccurate. Are you expecting, Alice? Have you two been up to nothing good when I wasn’t looking?”

As if acting on pure instinct, Alice commanded her dolls to attack Aya as the latter was about to enter and inquire about that potential scandal. “No, nonono, that’s not it at all. Don’t you start weaving lies, Patchouli. That’s the Tengu’s job.” She defended herself before clearing her throat, turning towards the plushie once more as she finished the last few stitches in a cruder manner just so it wouldn’t be laying on her desk in an unfinished state. “This… This is a replica of something I saw in Kourindou, I believe he called it a Fumo. A plushie, seemingly fished up from the border. It had all the right proportions, just the right smile, and everything.”

The blonde puppeteer paused for a brief moment as she blushed, squeezing the plushie’s sides with a soft smile on her face. “I managed to stop myself from buying it, as all of my money goes into resupplying my necessities, but I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since I saw it. It was just too cute to pass up, I’m sure you three understand.” She concluded, clearing her throat as she put the adorable plushie back on the table.

“So what’s it for, just being a plushie?” Marisa immediately asked afterward, picking it up to try and play with it a bit, only to start smiling as she squeezed into it herself. “Oh, you’re not kidding! This thing is soft in all the right ways! I could sleep on this thing and it’d still be there to smile back at me when I wake up, da ze!” Her joy could be felt as she rubbed her thumbs into the doll’s cheeks, giggling all the while…

Patchouli couldn’t help but smile at the black-white’s behavior, only to then notice the attire that the plushie wore. “...Alice, if I may? Why is it dressed like Marisa? And for that matter, what was the ‘Fumo’s intended purpose, at least according to Rinnosuke’s ability?” The tired Magician raised a fair point.

Aya peeked her head in through the puppet-infested doorway as she listened carefully. “Ah. Yes. I believe he told me that it was designed for stress relief.” Alice casually replied, prompting her blonde friend to turn pale in the face and for her to drop the plushie, while the investigative journalist started writing plenty of words in her little notepad.

“You’re cruel, da ze…” Marisa felt just a little hurt from what the plushie was intended for, fake tears rolling down her cheeks. “I can’t believe you’d do something like that, am I not a good friend, da ze?” She tried to drum up some sympathy from the other girls as she turned around to look at them…

And each of them merely replied “You’re the worst.” causing her heart to be impaled from all sides, prompting her to collapse onto the table, defeated by their words.

“Serves you right.” Alice chimed with a smile, satisfied seeing the black-white in a defeated position for once. “Then again, you did actually bring back a book of mine. One. Out of the many hundreds that you owe. That’s more than you’ve done for some time.” She continued speaking, airing out her grievances while running a hand through the witch-clad girl’s hair. “I’ll take that as a small victory. So stop crying those fake tears and get back on your feet.”

Marisa grinned a little as she lifted her head back up from the table, adjusting her hat as she put the book back down. “Geez, I can’t fake you out anymore, can I? You’re really clever, Alice. ‘s why I’ve been wanting to return all this stuff I took, but it’s kinda hard when there’s a lot of cute notes in them, da ze!”

“YOU READ THOSE!?” This time it was the puppeteer’s turn to get flustered and lose her composure, evident by how her face turned completely red. “YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO READ TH- HOW DID YOU EVEN FIND THE BOOKS THAT I HAD MADE NOTES IN!?” Her eyes were practically spinning from the embarrassment that she felt, and she was close to falling out of her chair as a result...

Aya chuckled as the wall of puppets came down after that little ‘affectionate moment’ that had broken the Puppeteer’s concentration. “Well, you two certainly do look and act like lovebirds, so maybe what Miss Knowledge said wasn’t too untrue. Perhaps I could ask you for something then, Miss Margatroid?” The inquisitive Tengu smiled from ear to ear as she flipped through her notepad, her eyes filled with devious glints. “Could you give us a detailed demonstration of the creation of such a ‘Fumo’? It sounds like a wild craze in the making, and I’m sure there’s plenty that would love to try and craft their own. Who knows, if they see your design process, they might just ask for your help more often, but you haven’t heard that from me..” Her words were as untrue as always, but that last tidbit did sound pretty promising…

Crafting a new Fumo would take days if she had to gather more materials, but there was one potential alternative. One that wouldn’t take much more than a few minutes, would give a better and more detailed view while also giving her something that she could play with instead of something small meant for children… And most importantly…

It’d let her work out her current feelings about Marisa!

“O-Of course, of course I can show you a demonstration! MARISA!” The flustered Alice shouted as she stared with burning eyes towards the black-white, having awful intentions for her at this point…

The black-white wasn’t a stranger to her odd moods, but this was a new one. The desire in her friend’s eyes was one that she had never gotten a read on, and she knew that if she didn’t get out of here right now, she was in for a world of hurt. Or worse! “E-Ehehe… Y-You know, I kinda have to go talk to Reimu right about now, she said there was something about an Inciden-” She tried to lie her way out of it, but doing just that was perhaps the worst option she could’ve picked as she was unceremoniously smashed across the head by one of the puppets wielding a comically oversized hammer, knocking her out right then and there.

“What a violent way to make her stay. No wonder the two of you are meant for one another.” Patchouli muttered, not bothering to intervene as she was curious about the way that her Puppeteer friend crafted that plushie. Not so that she could replicate it on her own, she didn’t have the fine motor skills to deal with that. What she did want, however, was to perhaps request a plushie of her own once all of this was over. It’d give her some company while Koakuma was off organizing the shelves.

Alice just shot her lavender-haired friend a glare as she snapped her fingers, gathering puppets to her side. “Please watch carefully. I’m not going to easily repeat this without another volunteer.” She remarked, making both of the conscious girls tilt their heads in confusion. Why would she need a volunteer?

Both of them were then shocked to see the barrage of dolls wrap their bodies around the unconscious Marisa, each of them glowing a gentle white as they were transformed from wooden puppets into fluffy filling, slowly but surely encasing her in so much of the stuff that she was barely recognizable underneath it all. One could even joke that she was a wooly woman, that was how strange she looked at this point…

“I use my dolls to create a coffin of wool to serve as the filling for the doll, with the central component being a living person. This gives the maximum potential love that you could ever get from a doll. By comparison, the smaller Fumos are stuffed with a doll that serves as its central component instead. This is to allow for a degree of articulation that you can’t acquire with a stiff and soulless plushie.” The Dollmaker explained as she called upon more dolls using her strings, entering the second phase of crafting a fumo…

Since the fluffy filling was currently just one big cocoon, the dolls had to properly adjust everything. Some of them pulled out the witch’s arms and redid the wrapping of the fluff so that it would properly fit the limbs, while some of the others stuck her legs out the front of the cocoon and adjusted the coverage accordingly. With that, they could safely start the third stage, which was arguably the most important.

Dolls flooded into the workshop, each of them carrying fabric or sewing needles and thread. One by one they started working on covering up the cocoon with the softest fabric known to man or youkai in the entirety of Gensokyo, slowly but surely forming a coherent image. An image that looked almost identical to the smaller plushie that still rested on the table behind the dollmaker, which still sat there so it could be used for comparison’s sake.

By the time the puppets pulled back, there wasn’t a cocoon left exposed, nor was there a black-white nuisance of a witch. Instead, a full-sized Marisa-themed Fumo sat right there, life-sized and ready to be hugged and loved. That was her true greatest creation, a plushie that could love you as much as you wanted it to. And all it took was stuffing her friend in there, how convenient!

“Until she wakes up, it’ll remain completely immobile. But this is how the process of how I craft a singular Fumo. Did you two get all of that?” Alice had neglected to speak during the repositioning and sewing parts of the process, but those kind-of explained themselves, so she didn’t bother. Though as she noticed the almost shocked expressions on the two girls’ faces, she did tilt her head slightly. “Did I overdo it? Or was it that amazing?”

Aya was the first one to realize that she might’ve done something wrong but at the same time the way that Marisa had essentially been transformed and suited into a massive stuffed plushie version of herself… Well, it’d make a scoop! And a journalist like her loves a scoop! So instead of raising her voice to try and perhaps discourage her from doing something like this again, she started furiously scribbling and writing in her notepad, her face red from hiding her feelings over watching the process…

Patchouli, by comparison, was steaming. “I… Oh…” She muttered as she slowly got up from her chair, stumbling as she stepped towards the plushified witch. Almost instantly, she could feel herself falling prey to its unparalleled softness, sighing sweetly as she snuggled her way into its fluffy body. “Nnnhhh… Oh my goodness… This is better than I ever could’ve imagined… And to think Marisa could be in here too, this…” She muttered, her eyes spinning from how wonderful it felt.

“I guess it was amazing then, since you both seem to be furiously interested still.” Alice chimed as she gave the oversized plushie a little rub on the side of the head. “It really is impressive though, isn’t it? I didn’t think I could make something this great, and yet here we are.” She proudly inflated her own ego, chuckling slightly as she watched the two girls continue their own endeavors…

The lavender-haired girl spoke up a moment later. “Aliiiice…” She murmured in a needy tone, pulling her face off the Fumo with a wavy grin. “I… I want to be one too! I want to be this soft! I want a whole night’s rest inside my own fluffy cocoon, so I can actually be well-rested for once in my long life!” The usually sickly girl asked, coughing after proclaiming her wants. She was getting a little too active, and she should watch her actions carefully so that she didn’t accidentally break something…

“As you wish.” The Puppeteer didn’t even think about the consequences of her actions as she snapped her fingers, the dolls gathering around Patchouli as they prepared to repeat the process all over again on a conscious girl this time. A girl that shivered and squirmed as she bit-by-bit was encased in a person-sized coffin of fluff and wool, making her giggle from how ticklish it felt…

Once the dolls had properly encased her in the cocoon, it was just a matter of reorienting her, and thanks to the Magician still being awake, it was easy for her to help them out by extending her limbs outward, which meant that they didn’t have to adjust the cocoon in any way themselves. Sewing together the fabric that served as the ‘skin’ layer was cakewalk after that, especially since the occasional squirm from the girl inside the cocoon was muted by the thickness of the wool around her.

After a few minutes, the process had been completed. Sitting on the lap of the life-sized Marisa Fumo was a Patchouli Fumo, adorned with her characteristic scowl on its face. But to compensate for the bored and offputting look on her face, she was possibly even softer than the first plushified Magician, which would make her even more huggable by extension…

The journalist who had been furiously writing away was… not very pleased with how things had turned out at this point, but she hid it behind a fake smile. She didn’t like that Alice could just encase somebody in wool and fluff, trap them like that for what seemed like an eternity, and then just play with them like a toy. That was actually very creepy, and she had a looooong article to write about her so that she could make people stay away. Yes, that was what she was going to do.

“W-Well, I’d best be off! The news don’t write themselves!” Aya chimed faux-cheerfully as she tried to fly for the exit, only to be abruptly stopped by a wall of puppets that had gathered in the doorframe, blocking her attempt at a quick escape. “W-Wha, what’s wrong, why am I not allowed to leave?” She tried to ask, feigning ignorance.

The Puppeteer merely smiled as she put a hand on the Tengu’s shoulder. “You’re going to join them. I know how you work, Aya, you’re about to make people shy away from me. But I’m not going to let that happen.” Her words were chilling, and the way her face was cast in the shadow of her Fumos made her even more intimidating.

A scream soon echoed through the Forest of Magic, serving as the last thing people would hear from a certain Tengu in quite some time…

---

As the sun was quietly setting, Alice was satisfied with the progress on her latest Fumo. After practicing on the original Marisa-themed plushie, she had managed to create two more Fumos in the style of the other two visitors that she had over today in a fraction of the time. Granted, she was now completely out of materials, but that was easily solved with a trip to the Human Village where she could show off her goods at the same time. So overall, it had been quite a productive day.

The Puppeteer yawned as she got up from her chair and walked straight from her workshop into her bedroom, collapsing onto the bed with a smile. Or rather, collapsing into the warm and comforting embrace of her three magnum opuses. The three visitors who she had turned into life-sized Fumos.

Sure, two of them weren’t exactly willing or happy to be encased in fluff and stuck like that for a potential eternity, but the Dollmaker didn’t care. They were comfy, comforting, and they radiated warm love. Just what she had always wanted. The Patchouli Fumo especially, despite the awful expression she was possibly the warmest of the three, and that just made it all the better. She could just hug the three and drift off to sleep without a worry in her mind…

Granted, she was going to have to let them out at some point, otherwise, they were going to potentially perish from their cocoons being awful living conditions, but that would have to wait. For now, she was going to enjoy their presence and their softness until she had to act…

Thus, Alice gently drifted off to dreamland with a happy smile on her face.