?-?-?
"Chiyuri! Are you getting all these?" Yumemi said excitedly as she watches through several panels of light showing how Reimu, Marisa, Ellen, Kana, Kotohime and Rikako are taking down the massive swarm of fairies, each girl using her own set of skills.
"All of them! Getting lots of data from this alone!" Chiyuri answers while busy moving back and forth from one panel of light to another. "I hope our computers have enough memory capacity to record all these..." The assistant shrugged as she remembers something.
Yumemi's response is to slap Chiyuri on the back of her head. "I designed each of these computers with ten thousand petabytes of memory! They can record everything I need!"
Chiyuri rubbed the back of her head. "I was just saying..."
Yumemi continues her observing of the girls fighting the swarm of fairies. "When I present all these to the academy, the first thing I'll say in my presentation is going to be 'I dare science to explain all of these!'" She told herself.
...
Outside Mysterious Ruins
Even in such a massive swarm, Gensokyo's entire fairy population (and the almost equally massive amount of Kedama they brought along) are severely outmatched by the girls that came to the pillar of light.
Reimu threw out Ofuda that each followed a fairy at random and then explodes, knocking out several in one go. The shrine maiden trainee also used the Ying-Yang Orb to plow through even more fairies in succession.
Marisa started out with the Orreries Solar System spell. The orbiting multicolored orbs turned out to be surprisingly effective at taking out a huge crowd with their firing multitudes of danmaku and lasers independently of one another, while the barrier the spell throws up around Marisa protects her from incoming fire. Although the fairies' combined danmaku barrage eventually wore down all four multicolored orbs, which in turn dispelled the witch's barrier, forcing her to resort to casting the less flashy but more efficient attack spells.
Ellen's method of taking down the fairies is to repeatedly cast one spell over and over again. All this spell did is to put the fairies to sleep, but nevertheless allowed the fluffy-headed girl to quickly incapacitate a lot of fairies. The amusing part is that Ellen's hair gets messier each time she casts the spell, a drawback she either didn't notice or have already gotten used to.
Kana's method is rather strange: she appears to be grabbing and throwing the fairies toward one another...without physically touching them. She also sometimes swing her uprooted metallic sign like a club, bashing through any fairies and thrown Kedama that do manage to get very close to her.
Kotohime is the simplest with her method. Aside from firing her long gun with an unusually good accuracy (while flying, no less) that took down at least one fairy for each shot fired, the self-proclaimed police constable apparently brought several dozen sticks of dynamite with her, which she uses to blow up a large number of fairies. How she lights the fuse of the dynamites in the blink of an eye is anyone's guess (possibly magic).
Rikako is the odd one out with her method. She used no magic whatsoever during the entire course of the fairy hunt, instead opting to fly around with the rocket-equipped backpack, while shooting at fairies with what appeared to be a crossbow made out of scraps that fired darts very rapidly, with almost no delay between shots. Every fairies would fall out of the air within three seconds of being hit by one of those darts.
Because the fairy swarm is so huge, the fairy hunt lasted over an hour, with the girls racking up huge scores for their effort. The fairy swarm is still huge, though by that point, they were already having second thoughts about picking fights with a shrine maiden trainee, two witches, a poltergeist, a (self-proclaimed) police constable, and a magician-turned-scientist all at once.
"Let's get out of here!" A fairy called out to her fellow fairies as all of them (at least, the ones that haven't been knocked out yet) began to retreat from the vicinity of the Mysterious Ruins. What makes it ironic (for Reimu, at least) is that the aforementioned fairy is a Doom Fairy, the same type that was empowered by Mima's dark sorcery from the Fairy Forest over a month ago. Even more ironic is that she was just one of several Doom Fairies mixed amongst the fairy swarm, and they too were retreating.
The slowest of the retreating fairies is promptly shot in the back by Marisa.
"Aaaand 'nother point goes to the witch with the stars~" Marisa said, twirling her magic wand in her right hand.
Kotohime flew close to Marisa and then slams the stock of her long gun at the witch's face, causing her to almost fall off her flying broomstick.
"Hey! What's the big idea?!" Marisa exclaimed as she keeps herself from falling off.
Kotohime rests the barrel of her long gun over her right shoulder. "Fairies can't die, but that doesn't mean its morally correct to shoot them when they're already retreating!" The self-proclaimed police constable said.
Ellen tilted her head in confusion. "I wonder what is she talking about?"
Reimu shrugs. "About not attacking fairies when they are running away...?"
Rikako appears next to Reimu suddenly, her rocket-equipped backpack surprisingly silent. "Something like that..."
Reimu (and everyone else) continued watching Marisa and Kotohime arguing with each other. Then the shrine maiden trainee suddenly remembers something.
"Hey, you! Your name's Asakura Rikako, right?" Reimu directed at the magician-turned scientist. "Kotohime - whatever she really is - mentioned that you're a magician...who ran to the heretic's way. Why?"
Rikako glared at Reimu. "Religious people like you won't understand it..."
Reimu crosses her arms. "Try me." She dared.
Rikako didn't comply. "I can't. You don't look smart enough..."
Reimu cocked her eyebrows on hearing that. "Me? Not smart enough?! I'll show you!" She said, steaming with anger as she prepares several Ofuda in her hands.
Rikako acted like she knew this would happen. She nonchalantly raised her scrap crossbow and pointed it at Reimu.
Although the two didn't get to start fighting each other due to a sudden outburst by Ellen.
"Hey! We cannae determine who won if we don't tally the scores!" The fluffy-headed girl said.
That statement caused everyone to fall silent on the spot. Kana, who hasn't spoken very much, raised her eyebrows upon remembering it.
"Holy expletive! I totally forgot 'bout that!" Marisa exclaimed. "Exactly how many fairies did I knock out?!" The witch became frantic over the matter, and began flying around in circles.
Kotohime shook her head and face-palmed. "I can't believe a police constable like me actually forgot something so crucial..." She uttered to herself.
Kana slammed the sign part of her uprooted road sign against her face in embarrassment. "Verdammt..." [Damn...]
Reimu covered her face with her hands. "Some shrine maiden I am going to become..."
Rikako took something out of her coat pocket, and began tapping on the myriad of buttons on it. Whatever the magician-turned scientist is trying to achieve, she seem stumped just a minute into doing it, as indicated by her confused look and scratching her head.
Ellen looked at everyone else, and wondered, "Did I say something wrong?" Meanwhile, Socrates meowed lazily while resting on its master's shoulder.
That's when Marisa stopped spinning in circles. "Ah, jeez! Guessin' its time for Plan B!"
Everyone placed their attention on the witch.
"What's that?" Reimu asked. Though the shrine maiden trainee doesn't seem to be confused about Marisa's idea, but rather the phrase itself for it is technically from a different language.
Crossing her arms while seated on her flying broomstick, Marisa let out a proud laugh. "Well, then! Since none of us knew how much of them fairies we all blasted down, I say we consider it a tie! An', we're gonna hold a tiebreaker, 'cause there can be only one winner!"
Kotohime cocked her eyebrows. "And your idea of a tiebreaker is?"
Reimu crossed her arms, as though preparing for something. "Don't suggest what you're thinking, Marisa..."
Marisa responds by pointing her finger straight ahead, not at anyone in particular. "An ol' fashioned duel of raw power!"
Reimu immediately frowned upon hearing that. "I knew it..." She lamented.
Well, I hate to make this chapter look incomplete. But since my college classes timetable doesn't give me enough free time during the weekdays, I was unable to meet my self-imposed one week deadline even without an exam incoming, and ended up delaying this chapter by a few days longer than a week. I had to get this posted ASAP, so I rushed everything after describing how the girls took down the fairy swarm.
Case you're wondering, that something Rikako took out of her coat pocket, and "began tapping on the myriad of buttons on it" is a pocket calculator, described so because this story is told with the tech-blind Reimu in mind.
"And that, as they say, is that..."
Afterword ends here.