Meanwhile, from ground level, a stunned Hong Meiling looked on as the hole in the sky ripped open seemingly out of nowhere and hummed so forcefully she could actually feel it in her bones. To her, it seemed as if some otherworldly force bent on destruction was making its grand debut in Gensokyo.

Her first instinct was to warn the mistress. She vaulted over the gate, blew through the front doors of the mansion, and started running down the halls straight to Remilia's bedroom. She didn't care if she was asleep, there was a hole in the sky and she needed to know, NOW.

As she plowed through the fairy maids like a mad bull, a focused Sakuya was busy tidying up the china cupboards before she heard what she swore was a freight train coming down the halls. She paused her work and saw the fairy maids get tossed in all directions while a green-and-orange blur came straight towards her.

"OUT OF THE WAY!" Meiling screamed before Sakuya, who had just barely fathomed what was going on, came just shy of getting bulldozed before hastily stopping time in order to sidestep Meiling, freeze her in place, and try to figure out what on Earth was going on.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked in her typically sharp tone. "Why are you not at the gate? What's the hurry and where are you intending to go?"

"No time to explain," Meiling replied. "I- we gotta warn the mistress! Something's happening!"

"What is it?" Sakuya asked. Meiling then showed her to a window with a clear view of the wormhole in the sky. "THAT is it."

It took Sakuya a second to understand the ramifications of what she was seeing. Slow as Meiling was at times, she did know a threat to the mistress when she saw one. Her refined expression soon turned into a face of pure, wide-eyed terror as she stared at the enormous hole emanating in the sky.

A split-second later, they were in Remilia's bedroom trying desperately to wake her up. The summer climate meant that she wasn't at her best, so she was none too pleased about waking up in the middle of the day with a pair of panicked voices screaming into her ear.

"Wake up! Wake up! WAKE THE HELL UP, REMI!" Their desperate voiced echoed inside the vampire mistress's ringing ears and head as she rolled over and up, revealing a less than kept face with messy blue hair going every which-way, half-open eyes with dark bags under them, and a mouth from which groans of displeasure were emanating. She looked up at the two wondering what the hell was going on that would warrant this behavior when all she wanted was some beauty rest.

Her head turned towards Sakuya first, and with a choppy, raspy voice, she grumbled "what is it?"

Meiling attempted to respond, but her panic and anxiety at that moment foiled all attempts at a coherent sentence. "There's a big-uh-there-a-ah-dah-buh-la-kooh-la-fra-da-"

Sakuya's hand slapped across Meiling's trap as she turned towards her mistress with a sharp but very clearly concerned look on her face. "There's a huge hole in the sky outside."

"Oh, is that so?" Remilia rasped as she still shook herself awake. Typical Remi, Sakuya figured; even in a crisis she always kept her composure despite her immature tendencies at times. She handed her mistress a robe and led her out to the back balcony, which was always shaded thanks to a charm they wrung out of Marisa the one time Meiling stopped her stealing books and defeated her in a duel. There, she pointed out the hole in the sky, which Remilia studied. She quickly surmised that this was not Yukari's doing, nor was it likely that any other group such as the Lunarians or Celestials would be behind this anomaly.

Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the wormhole closed up, and the disturbance dissipated.

The two women at her side, still visibly shaking in place, attempted to regain their composure to ask her of her thoughts on the matter.

"Well? Sakuya inquired. Meiling was still too terrified to speak.

Remilia thought silently for a few seconds before turning around to her maid and replying "something bad has happened. And if nothing is done..." She paused, looked down, then looked up again before continuing. "...if nothing is done, then all of us – this whole land – we are all fated... for disaster."

Sakuya was stunned. Remilia had never responded with quite this sort of tone before. Not during the endless night, not during the faith incident, not during the religious war, not during Seija's uprising and not even during the recent lunar crisis. This, she could tell, THIS, whatever it was, easily trumped all of those.

"Disaster?" she asked.

"Whatever is behind this, it clearly wants Gensokyo destroyed or disrupted in such a way as to endanger its balance and the lives of every living thing here. It has the means to do so." She paced around a bit, and then turned around to the maid and the gatekeeper. "And this may be its calling card, its way of signaling our doom."

"What should we do about it? Meiling asked. "We can't just stand here contemplating our dooms!"

Remilia, in spite of her disheveled appearance, still managed to give her that piercing look of playfulness that suggested maybe she shouldn't have asked that question.

"Obviously," she told the gatekeeper, "this is a job for the shrine maiden. So I want you to go track her down and bring her to me."

Meiling took a second to suck that sentence in. "M-me? But, what about the gate? What if that blasted magician, her lover and that doll-thing they call a kid come by to, er, borrow books?"

"Realistically, given that hole in the sky, I think stealing books is not going to be very high on their respective priority lists right now," Sakuya responded. "And besides, it's about time you got off your napping ass and solved an incident for us," she said with a smile.

The gatekeeper looked between the two in front of her for a few seconds, before looking straight forward, realizing the task she was given. After all, she never ignored the lady's orders, and dark times were facing her home.

So she puffed up her chest and bellowed out "yes ma'am! I will go find the shrine maiden and then I'll beat up the ne'er-do-well causing this mess!" The goofy expression on her face really sold it, as Remilia couldn't help but smile and smirk.

After that, she promptly ran to the edge of the balcony and jumped over the railing.

The mistress and her maid couldn't help but stare forward confused. As Sakuya walked over to the railing and saw Meiling scramble across the ground in the general direction of the shrine, wondering why she didn't just fly, she looked over her shoulder and saw that her mistress had already shown herself back to bed.

She looked forward again and mumbled to herself "y'know, I've worked with that strange woman for decades and I still don't get everything she does sometimes, even if I just excuse it as her being a youkai."

After that, we went back to roughly where she was working before this whole mess started, trying her best to peel her brain off of the disturbing scene she had just borne witness to. But she knew, in the back of her mind, that whatever this was, it was only the beginning of an incident the likes of which Gensokyo had yet to see.

Across the valley, similar reactions were erupting in response to this strange wormhole. The Taoists interpreted it as Chang'e somehow tearing a way into Gensokyo. The residents of Eintei thought this could be another invasion attempt, despite the peaceful resolution of the Lunar incident; perhaps one of them didn't get the message. Sanae saw it an frantically started conjuring up miracles to try and counter it. Even in the underground, whose residents didn't physically see it, Satori still sensed widespread terror on the surface about something horrible, causing her to toss around going up there with her pets to see what it was.

And those were some of the more measured reactions. In the human village, discord spread like wildfire as people were running about back into their houses or the nearest building, screaming and cursing at the wretched hole in the sky all the way. Because of how muddy the streets were from the night before, mud kicked up all over the place, causing people to slip and fall and kids and small animals to be trampled in the frenzied panic. Dogs were barking up a storm and the chickens were scattering all over the place.

The discord made its way to the schoolhouse, where Keine hurriedly rushed the kids back inside to try and shield them from whatever threats might spill out of the ominous portal looming over the town. Among the kids wondering what was going on and confusingly rushing back inside was not biologically human, but rather an animate doll in a yellow dress with a smaller doll floating behind her.

As the herd tried to cram into a too-small door, she took a moment to turn back and stare at the gaping maw that tore itself into the sky above. Her moms had described many crazy incidents, including one with a similar portal and spring being sucked through it, so she wondered if this was possibly a repeat of that incident. The past winter had been long, and she wasn't sure she wanted it to come back so quickly.

"Sunshine, dear, what are you doing? Get inside now!" Keine grabbed her hand and dragged her in just as the portal above closed.

Inside, all the kids were chatting among one another, trying to come up with explanations of what they just witnessed, but to no avail. Their teacher, miss Keine Kamishirasawa, walked in with Sunshine, her face still half-paralyzed with fear. She ordered the living doll back to her seat and stood in front of the class. Everyone could tell she was immensely terrified, but they were too nervous or confused themselves to really question it.

She set her things down and addressed the class. "Class..." She hesitated before continuing. "...in light of what has just happened, we will be practicing lockdown for the rest of the day. No more recess until it is time to go home." At first some of the kids groaned about there not being any recess, but upon recalling the bedlam going on just outside the school's walls, they changed their minds about the matter.

Being in school for just a few months, Sunshine didn't really understand the concept of this "lockdown" other than that it involved not going outside for the rest of the day. She also still wasn't too good with emotions yet, but she could tell something was seriously wrong, in the way miss Kamishirasawa was acting, the way the other students were acting, the mayhem going on out in the streets... she wasn't too terribly sure how to take it all in. So, she decided to just act concerned about it like the other kids, even if she didn't understand what was going on; after all, the more like them she could be, the less many of them gave her a hard time about being a doll and the more she could fit in.

Barely a few minutes passed by before a horde of parents were outside the schoolhouse, asking to take their kids home early for the day. Keine was annoyed by this given that she still had important lessons to get to for her 3rd-6th years, a group that included Sunshine, but given recent circumstances she decided not to question it and decided to let them off early. That way, at least, she could devote some time at the town hall crafting a response to this latest incident.

As she dismissed the class, Sunshine made her way down the hallway looking for her moms. Once outside, she saw them, clear as day, looking right at her.

Before she could even speak up, Marisa grabbed her, threw her on the back of her broomstick, and the three of them took off back towards home.

At home, Alice offloaded Sunshine's books and bags while Marisa gave her the rundown on what just happened.

"So... mom," she stumbled, still not that great with words. "What happened?"

"Well," Marisa started, "me and your mom were out huntin' mushrooms so we could sell them at the market tomorrow, when all of a sudden, she was like 'Marisa, look over there!' and she pointed at the sky. So I look and, well, a big, huge hole opened up and scared the living daylights right outta both of us! So we knew, right then, 'we need to get Sunshine home right now, otherwise she's gonna get run over by dumb, panicky villagers!' And you know, she didn't complain one bit."

Sunshine took her turn by explaining how everyone was out enjoying lunch recess before a couple of kids pointed out the sky distortion, which some were looking at when it opened straight up, revealing the violet-blue void with the white light at the end with fishnet patterns flowing out, and how the teacher called them back in as soon as it happened. She also described the general pandemonium in the streets and how it seemed like the whole place was falling apart.

Marisa took this all in before it hit her: this was a barrier incident, and barrier incidents required only one red-and-white clad shrine maiden for the job. So she got some things together and began to head out.

Alice came back from the other room when she spotted Marisa gathering things together like she was going somewhere. "Where are you going?" she asked. Marisa replied "the shrine. Reimu's gonna need all the help she can get, and we missed out on the last incident with the Lunar invasion so this will make up." She grabbed Sunshine by the hand. "And I'm taking pipsqueak with me."

Alice was furious upon hearing that last bit. "No, absolutely not! She's staying here where it's safe, I'm not letting some wormhole eat her up because of you!"

"Why not?" Marisa shot back coyly. "It's not like it's going away, if anything it's just beginning. And besides, this'll be her first real incident, and there's sure to be more, so why not now while it's fresh?"

Alice sighed. Marisa was always hot-headed and headstrong in her ways, and she did make a fair point: this would catch up to them if nothing was done. So she responded "alright, fine. But, if she's going, I'm going with you."

Marisa nodded. "You got it, girlfriend." The puppeteer threw together some combat dolls in a basket and got a couple spare decks off the shelf, and in no time flat they were outside. Marisa thought about taking the Black Arwing for a spin, but decided that would probably be overkill for the freaked-out villagers and youkai who's minds were already overloaded by the wormhole. Maybe if the situation got even more out of hand, but until then, she was content with her broomstick.

The trio flew straight to the shrine, and upon arriving were surprised to see another, unrelated figure had beat them there. Just as they landed, Meiling made it up the last of the steps, and was huffing and puffing as she staggered towards the shrine when she spotted the magicians. Of all the people she wanted to see right now, she thought, these were probably clear on the bottom.

She approached the magicians. She wanted to say something that clearly expressed her displeasure, but she just got done running a marathon so all she could manage was a slightly annoyed "hello."

"Well, hi," Marisa responded. "Fancy seein' you here. I take it the lady sent ya?" Meiling nodded in response. They all knew why they were there.

As they approached the shrine, they skipped the wash basin they were supposed to use before entering; when you're dealing with a crisis, what's skipping the proper procedure once gonna harm anyway? They also walked past the donation box, but Sunshine couldn't help but leave an offering, so she tossed a couple coins and made a quick wish before catching up to her parents and the gatekeeper at the front door.

Marisa banged a couple times. "Reimu, you there?" There was no response. She banged a couple more times a little more vigorously. "Reimu, this is Marisa, c'mon, we got an incident to swat!" Still no response. Marisa then just thought "screw it" and threw the sliding doors open and started looking everywhere for the errant shrine maiden, but she wasn't to be seen.

"Where is that blasted brunette when you need her?!" she scowled, looking all over. It was then that Alice suggested "maybe she's already out trying to resolve the incident." Marisa turned around with a frustrated expression and yelled "GEE, YA THINK?!" As they walked out the back to see if she was there, Meiling walked in file behind Sunshine, and couldn't help but stare at Ichigo levitating behind the living doll child. If only she had a doll assistant, she thought, that would make guarding the gate easier since she didn't have to be awake half as often.

"She's not here," a voice called out. Marisa instantly knew who its owner was. They looked over in the direction it came from, and saw a gap where a small pond normally was. Out of it crawled Yukari, still as much of a troll as ever, but this time she seemed much more focused and serious.

"I thought you were supposed to be sleeping," Marisa said. "You always do that, y'know."

"Not when an incident of this magnitude crops up, I'm afraid." She clearly sounded different. Usually, when she spoke, it was with a slight haughty air with a dash of demeaning and sarcasm, but this time her tone was noticeably more serious and grave. That's when you knew it hit the fan, Marisa realized: when Yukari was actually dead serious.

"So, I'm assuming you know where she went?" Marisa inquired the boundary youkai. Yukari didn't hesitate. "I'm afraid so," she responded, "for it seems... she was a little too zealous in investigating this incident."

Of course.

They didn't really need an explanation to puzzle out what had happened to her. "That damn idiot, always rushing to save the day without caring about her own safety, you'd think the Hakurei shrine maiden would be a little more careful when literally the weight of this valley sits on her shoulders," she snarled.

"Now," Yukari responded in a rather subdued tone, "what an interesting assessment. Is that not what some would call, the pot calling the kettle black?"

Alice tried hard to hold back a snicker at that statement. As much as she didn't care for the hag sometimes, she had to admit, that was too true to balk at.

They stared at the sky where the wormhole had been hours before. Meiling was still confused, so she spoke up. "So, now, what does this all mean?"

"Well, for one, she'd better not be dead without a replacement," Marisa said, "'else this place'll come crashing down on our heads. Or at least that's what I've been told."

"No, she's not dead," Yukari replied. "Not yet, at least."

"Well then, where is she?" Alice asked.

Yukari took a moment in her response before delivering a crushing statement.

"For once, I do not know."