It was a fine, sunny spring day in Gensokyo, and Marisa was spending it in bed snoring.

Not that anyone could blame her. She had spent the most part of the previous night helping to resolve an incident — though in Marisa's opinion, it was really to an actual incident as a hill was to a mountain. Cirno and her gang of youkai friends had tried to stir something up, and had caused quite a headache for her and Reimu, but the real problem was the much stronger youkai they had managed to annoy. It had then decided to go on a rampage, coming dangerously close to damaging the Hakurei shrine and, more importantly, Marisa's house, and had been a ginormous pain in the ass to put down.

All in all, though, it had been a relatively tame incident, all things considered, and after she and Reimu parted ways Marisa had been looking forward to sleeping in the next day.

Her plan had gone uninterrupted up until noon, when there was a knock at her door. Marisa, being asleep, did not hear it and kept right on snoring. The knock repeated with more force, but still she slept on, and presumably the being behind the knocking got fed up and entered anyway.

"Sleeping," the figure said, having seemingly appeared out of nowhere right beside Marisa's bed. If you knew her, you would notice that her blond hair was in a state of disarray, and the bows on her puffy pink dress were lopsided and partially undone. "I suppose I have no right to talk, all things considered, but it's really only right to at least check up on your friend, correct? I've been running around all morning looking – get up!"

With that, Yukari Yakumo opened a gap beneath Marisa and dumped her out of bed and onto the floor.

"Ayaaaaah!" Marisa was awake and on her feet in an instant, only to fall over in the next. "Eh?! Who's there?! What's – "

"Reimu has gone missing," Yukari said. "After you two finished resolving the incident, she never returned back to the shrine. You were with her the entire time, so it's your responsibility to help me find her."

"Whaaat?" Marisa stood up and rubbed her eyes. "Wait a second, I'm too tired for this. You're saying that after she told me, 'Bye, I'm going home," she didn't go home?"

Yukari frowned. "It… appears that is exactly what I'm saying. At least, she wasn't at the shrine last night, and she isn't there now, so I assumed…"

Marisa yawned and stretched. "Looks like she got a little lost on the way back! I'm sure she'll turn up, wake me up in a few more hours."

Before she could flop back down on the bed and resume her snoring, Yukari grabbed her arm. "Marisa, Reimu doesn't just get lost."

"Not when I ask her to, she doesn't!"

"This is serious. What if some youkai got ahold of her?"

Marisa laughed at that. "A youkai? Getting Reimu? I don't think so! Come on, I know you like the girl, but Reimu can take care of herself!"

"The Hakurei Barrier is failing," Yukari said. Marisa shut up.

Not for very long, though. "You should have said that from the start! What's going on? What happened to it? It was fine yesterday!"

"Well, it's not fine now!" Yukari snapped. "The Hakurei Barrier only works if somebody of Hakurei descent is at the shrine, which is why the shrine is so important, which is why Reimu is important, but usually it doesn't fail for months after a shrine maiden leaves, so something is very, very wrong and gods help me, you are coming to the shrine with me to talk to Genji."

Marisa's eyes widened. "You mean turtle dude? Man, I haven't seen turtle dude since... since Reimu was flying on him. That was ages ago! What do we need him for?"

"He's the guardian of the Hakurei family, and he'll be able to tell when there's someone with Hakurei blood in them. Either he'll be able to find Reimu, or he'll be able to find someone to stick at the shrine until we really do find Reimu."

"Someone to stick at the shrine? What are you talking about? Are we going to replace her now?"

Yukari rolled her eyes. "Didn't I just explain this? We aren't going to replace Reimu, but the Hakurei Barrier is failing now. We need somebody with Hakurei blood at the shrine in the next two days, at most, and though I'd like it to be Reimu, the sooner we find somebody, the better. I know for a fact that at least one of Reimu's grandfathers was a bit promiscuous, so hopefully she should have a second or third cousin running around somewhere. I don't think the shrine will accept anyone more distant than that."

One look at Marisa's face and Yukari knew she had lost her. "Wait," Marisa said, "where does turtle dude fit into this again? And why do I have to come with you?"

"I told you, you were with her last. Just get your clothes on and come with me."


"So turtle dude can sense Hakurei blood?" Marisa said when they were flying to the shrine. "Why can't we just ask him, 'Hey, where's Reimu?'"

"Because," Yukari said, "he is not a tracking device; he's only able to sense it within a certain range. And that range does not include all of Gensokyo."

"Well dang, it was worth a shot, though. So we're going to get turtle dude, and then..."

"We are going to fly all over the place with Genji and see if he can find her."

Marisa snorted. "That's one of the worst ways to find somebody I've ever heard of."

"Do you have any better ideas?"

"Of course! If Reimu's missing, that either means she's decided to stay out too long, or she's been kidnapped. And if she's been kidnapped, then we need to start looking for likely suspects." Marisa took a hand off her broom and pointed. "Like her!"

"Like who?" But Marisa was already steering her broom down into the trees below before Yukari could get an answer. "Marisa!"

Yukari groaned and followed her down.

She landed in a small clearing where Marisa and two others were standing; one was a black cat youkai, with a green dress and red hair done up into pigtails, who Yukari dimly remembered as being one of the youkai Reimu had fought while in the underground, while the other was someone Yukari recognized instantly.

"...did not kidnap anyone, certainly not Reimu, and no, we don't have the time for any danmaku duels." The person speaking to Marisa was Satori, the Mistress of the Palace of the Earth Spirits. It was rare – exceedingly rare – for her to be above ground, which almost definitely meant that something was wrong.

Yukari's suspicions were confirmed when Satori said, "You don't know anything about Utsuho, so we'll continue searching elsewhere. 'I'll just follow them and see what they're up to,' you're thinking. Please don't."

"What's this about Utsuho?" Yukari asked.

Satori turned to her and without missing a beat, said, "You and Marisa are searching for Reimu Hakurei and the Hakurei Barrier is failing. From your mind, it seems to be a much more dire situation than Marisa thinks it is."

"Yes," she said. "It is dire. If you'll pardon me, I can't read minds like you do, so you'll have to tell me. What happened to Utsuho?"

"Okuu left!" the cat youkai blurted out. Yukari was confused for a moment before remembering that 'Okuu' was the nickname given to Utsuho by her friends. "Just shut down the reactor nice 'n tidy, left a note saying she was going to the surface to be an incident resolver, and now we can't find her!"

Marisa laughed. "Okuu the incident resolver, eh? Well, with danmaku the size of your head, I can't say she won't be good at it!"

"Please do not say that to her face," Satori said. "You'll only encourage her. Orin and I are trying to find her before she manages to do any damage to Gensokyo. We thought she might visit the Hakurei Shrine first, but if Reimu's missing, going there won't help us."

"Hey," Marisa said, "you think she has anything to do with Reimu running off? Maybe she saw Utsuho coming and thought, 'Man, I'm going to hide in the mountains until this incident is over.' I know that's what I would do!"

"Of course not!" Orin said. "She just wants to be like you 'n Reimu! She'd never do anything to hurt anyone! Well, I mean, not on purpose. And she might if they break into our home."

"Hey, that was once, and it was Kanako's fault, anyway!"

Yukari pursed her lips. If there was a hell raven with the power of nuclear fusion running about... well, being away from the reactor would lessen her power slightly, but she'd still be able to do some real damage if left unchecked. As innocent as wanting to be an incident resolver might be, Utsuho had no control over her powers. If she started going around trying to shoot things...

"We need to find Reimu," she said. "Satori, I'm sorry we can't be of more help, but making sure the Hakurei Barrier stays up is our top priority right now. We'll keep an eye out for Utsuho."

"Thank you," Satori said. "Likewise, we'll watch for Reimu."

Orin waved at them. "See ya!"

Satori nodded and she and Orin walked away, Orin slipping into her two-tailed cat form as she did. Yukari glanced at Marisa, but she was already getting back on her broom.

"Hey, what if Okuu's behind the barrier failing?" Marisa said once they were back in the air. "I mean, they said she went to the shrine first. Or they thought she did, anyway. Maybe she accidentally blew up something important."

"I would have noticed when I went there this morning," Yukari said tiredly. "Besides, you can't harm the barrier with brute force."

"Everything breaks once you throw enough danmaku at it, trust me on this."

Yukari sighed and wondered if she should have just left Marisa to sleep the day away.