Mountain top, Bhava-Agra, Gensokyo
The entire mountain was shaking as every artillery cannon fired at the same time. This was their fourth volley, aimed towards the FOBs that the tengus had marked. As one, the Celestials reloaded and waited for the order to fire again.
Tenshi was dividing her attention between the map and looking through her binoculars at where the impacts were. So far, they had knocked out about 95% of the NATO artillery and were mopping up the rest. The blue haired Celestial felt a growing sense of hope with the amount of red Xs that were disappearing from the map. She was also impressed by how precisely their artillery was hitting.
Starting at the edge of the boundary, the shells were falling in a perfectly straight line. They were spaced out to cover as much area as possible. The next volleys made it seem as if a wave was coming from Gensokyo towards the rear of the NATO formation. Everything, infantry and vehicle, was being destroyed. Then a piece of shrapnel landed in the middle of an ammo depot.
A fire is started and sends cooking rounds everywhere. Ordinance specialists don't even bother trying to contain the fire, instead they yell for everyone to fall back as artillery rounds hit closer and closer. Another ammo depot is destroyed with a direct hit and a fuel tank is next. The only units that aren't in immediate danger of the Celestial artillery were the ones that had made it past where the Great Hakueri Barrier was.
But those troops were still having to face their own problems. The GDF had managed to rally together and join up with a detachment of the LDC at the Human Village and were lunching attacks on armored units. On the other side of the forest, the 4th Regiment of Royal Foot were decimating every NATO unit they ran across. In the Bamboo Forest, Eirin had left only one survivor of the two Special Forces groups that had tried to attack Eientei.
The Celestials were forced to duck as a flight of A-10s were lining up for an attack run, only to be shot down by another flight of GDF F/A-18s. The attack planes spin out of control, almost hitting the Celestials. The wreckage falls into a lake that Tenshi had always spent time fishing during her younger days. Staring at the oil and fuel that began to rise to the surface, she couldn't help but wonder how many of the fish that would die were ones that she had caught and let go.
The sound of a small twig breaking reached her ear, causing her to stab the ground and raise a wall. She was almost too late as it almost didn't stop a hail of gunfire from hitting her. Raising another wall to protect the rest of the Celestials, she closed her eyes to feel where the attack came from. Once she counted all of them, she had a dozen rocks float in front of her. Then she uppercuts all of them and lowers the rock wall in front of her.
Running forward, she sees that it was a squad of British Special Air Service soldiers that were trying to kill her. Her dozen rocks had destroyed their firearms and gave her the chance to finish them. But she wanted a fair fight, so she puts her P 38 away and readies her sword. The men draw batons and knives and run forward as well. The first one to reach her immediately receives a kick to the face.
Tenshi follows up with a pommel strike to his stomach, cracking his body armor and his ribs. Then she grabs his arm in a lock and swings him around to take a blow from one of his comrades. Kicking him away, she parries a knife slash with her blade and closes the distance quickly. Close enough to feel each other breathing, she pauses for a second to sneer at her opponent.
With a savage punch to the throat, Tenshi forces him to stumble as he gasps for air. Then she grabs his knife and stabs him in the leg with it. Letting him fall, the Celestial grabs his head and gives it a quick snap. Grabbing one of the soldier's fists as he tries to punch her, she head butts him and makes him stagger back. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see another one move towards her.
Turning to face him, she gets in close. He responds by starting an uppercut with his knife. The Celestial dodges and rolls on his back while he stumbles forward. In the middle of her roll, she brings her sword and cuts his throat. Then she slashes twice and slams another soldier into the ground by his head. Snapping her leg behind her, she catches a third soldier in the chest and shatters his armor.
The first one that she had fought, the soldier with the broken ribs, was trying to crawl away from the fight. Tenshi steps towards him and raises both of her hands into the air. A keystone appears and she slams it into his skull. Spinning around, she throws it into another one that had hesitated.
Two SAS soldiers jump her at the same time, bringing her attention back. The first one tries to full body tackler her and lands on his face when the Celestial sidesteps. He turns on his back and throws his knife. The second one gets grabbed by the throat and swung around to be used as a shield. The knife hits him in the throat and fatally wounds him. Then Tenshi shoves him to the side and jumps forward.
She plants her sword into the soldier and rolls to the side. A butterfly knife stabs the space that she was just in, cutting a little bit of her hair. Kicking back, she feels an impact and sees the knife fly out of the soldier's hand. Grabbing the knife out of the air, she stabs him in the side and breaks his arm for good measure.
The last one left, a grizzled veteran, stared her down. Tenshi could tell that he was going to be a formidable opponent and was looking forward to this. Another flight of NATO aircraft flew low over them, and they met the same fate as the first flight. The ground shook with the Celestial artillery that was being fired. The Celestial pulled her sword out of the ground and stood at the ready.
At the same time, they both rush forward. Tenshi brings her right arm back, readying a strike. The man sidesteps and grabs her shoulder. In response, she head butts him. Both of them stumble back and flail at each other. Tenshi's the first to recover and slams her pommel into the hand holding the knife. The soldier shakes his other arm and makes another knife fall out of the sleeve.
Tenshi executes a quick slash that the man barely dodges. She keeps attacking, but somehow, the solider dodges every slice. He locks her sword and manages to knock it out of her hand. But the tassel coming from her pommel caught the knife and took it with it. Now with both of them unarmed, they started to trade blows.
The Celestial had adopted a boxing stance and was raining down blows on the soldier. But he had countered her by doing the same thing. For the next few minutes, the air between them was full of punches from both sides. Tenshi was impressed by how many hits the man could take and at the ones that she was getting. Then she gets a hit that knocks him on the ground.
Being hit so much had left Tenshi with both of her eyes blacken, a broken nose, and the taste in her mouth. But her opponent had taken a worse beating. He had both of his eyes almost swollen shut, blood flowing from both nostrils, severe swelling, and multiple teeth had been knocked out. Wiping her nose off, Tenshi nodded in satisfaction.
She draws her Walther P 38 and switches it to fire. Taking aim, she had to focus to steady her breathing. Then she pulls the trigger and ends her opponent's life. Staggering to where her sword had landed, she retrieves it and has a rock rise up from the ground. After she sits down, she sees Iku walking towards her with another scroll. The messenger took a quick glance around before she held out her hand.
"Eldest Daughter, looks like you've been busy lately. The ministers at the Dragon Palace will have a lot to say about this."
"They can talk all they want about it back in their safe havens. Is the Dragon angry that I didn't fall back?"
"He hasn't said anything about it. But it looks like he's going to let you do what you think is right for the time being. You fought them hand to hand, didn't you?"
Tenshi nodded. Her hands were already beginning to become sore after all the times she had punched that body armor and helmet.
"Why didn't you just shoot them? What if something had come up that you needed to take care of and you were too busy enjoying a fight? What if they had killed you because you were playing around?"
Tenshi looked her directly in the eyes.
"Because I need everyone to know that I can take care of myself, even without the weapons that Yukari gave us. My father doesn't even trust me to leave my room without getting into trouble. Before the earthquake incident, that may had been true. But not now, can't everyone see how much I'm trying to do the right thing? No matter what I do, I'm always the fool messing everything up."
"Eldest Daughter, that is not-"
"Isn't that how the Dragon Palace sees me? Some of them say that they support me, but how many of them really do? "
"Yukari Yakumo trusted you enough to help get you here."
"But at what cost? She wants me to…" Tenshi trailed off.
"Do whatever you think is best. Here, the Dragon sends you another message." Iku hands her the scroll. "The line of battle is shifting fast. You should be prepared for anything that could happen." With that, the messenger turns and takes to the sky, leaving Tenshi to recover and plan her next course of action.
Near the Hakueri Shrine, Gensokyo
The hail of Celestial artillery had cut off reinforcing NATO aircraft. Now with a somewhat more even playing field, the tengus were clearing the sky. The Scarlet Devil Mansion had also fixed its issue with targeting and was firing even more salvos at the human planes. Closer to the ground, Marisa was raining down destruction on every NATO unit she could see.
A group of Avenger Air Defense Systems had moved from concealment in a thick grove and were turning their missile launchers to face her. Then an alarm began to ring in the cockpit. Looking down, she sees that a wing of F-22s had locked on to her and were turning to fire. To make matters worse, a lucky bullet damaged the tail router of her Apache.
Slamming random buttons on the console managed to give her back some control, but the volley of missiles from both the air and ground were heading towards her. The magician slams her foot on the left pedal and jerks her control stick to the left. The agile helicopter rolls to the left, barely dodging all the missiles. Marisa is shocked at how close she had been to getting shot down.
Then the rear rotor decides to start to smoke, making her a sitting target. The Avengers on the ground open up with their machine guns, damaging the helicopter even more. More alarms go off in the cockpit, making it clear to Marisa that the aircraft wasn't going to last much longer. Undoing her safety harness, she grabs her broom and pulls the handle for the windshield.
She has to fight the downwash but manages to climb out and jumps off. The gunfire stops as the soldiers on the ground think that she's done for, until she hops on her broom and pulls out a spellcard. Flying closer to the ground, she heads for the Avengers and activates Love Sign "Non-Directional Laser". The rotating lasers cut straight through the vehicles and some of the soldiers that hadn't run towards cover.
Flying over some that had hidden in a ditch, she drops a bottle with a mushroom mixture and watches it explodes in a shower of stars. She's forced to gain more altitude as the remaining soldiers begin to concentrate their fire on her. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her Apache crash into in the ground and start another fire. But before she can look back up, she's hit by a harsh gust of wind and an extremely loud burst of noise.
An F-22 had just tried to ram her and had missed. Marisa's about to go lower to the ground but remembers that she'll have to face small arms fire. She has no choice but to fight the wing of Raptors that had her in their sights. Getting another spellcard ready, she waits until they turn to face her again.
Pouring all of her energy into this next attack, she casts Light Sign "Earthlight Ray". The nearest pair of F-22s are immediately hit and suffer critical damage. As they start to spin out of control, their pilots eject and deploy their parachutes. But a gust of wind sends them towards the Bamboo Forest.
The last fighter barely dodges the bright white lasers that come from the orbs orbiting Marisa. Then a laser hits the Raptor on its right wing root, damaging its Gatling cannon. The surprise at getting hit makes the pilot jump and miss ramming Marisa once more. She drops but still feels the back blast from the jet engines push her down farther.
She can tell that the sonic boom would be the real problem in this fight. Pulling out a pair of earmuffs that she had "borrowed" from Miko, she puts them on and casts a quick spell. She had remembered how Patchouli had explained her Copper spell and had noticed a way to modify it a little.
Casting it made her start to glow with a soft golden light. But she didn't have time to admire it much as the Raptor made another pass at her. She free falls and closes her eyes. The ear muffs and the spell both work, blocking the sonic boom's effect on her ears and her internal organs. Even the heat is dissipated by the spell, leaving only physical damage to worry about.
Dodging too much to even think about pulling out her revolvers, Marisa pulls out another spellcard instead. But then a gust of wind blows it out of her hand. She dives after it as the Raptor tries to ram her again. Just as she's about to grab it, a stray bullet flies in between them, causing her to flinch away. Then the F-22 pulls up to ram her from below.
Marisa lands hard on her side and rolls until she catches hold of the left stabilizer. The pilot's eyes widen as he catches sight of her and then tries to throw her off. He goes into a series of barrel rolls that make Marisa dizzy. The witch manages to snap her fingers and can feel her broom rushing back towards her. She waits until the plane is upside down and kicks off. Curling up into a ball, she's pushed to the side by the exhaust from the twin jet engines.
Her trusty broom catches her and gives her the time she needed to get herself together. Her hat's about to fly off, so she grabs it tight and wonders how it stayed on when she was on the jet. Spotting her spellcard floating in the wind, she rushes forward and grabs it. But she hadn't counted on the pilot seeing her and pulling a tight Immelmann turn.
The witch is still too disorientated to launch herself into the dodges that she would need to dodge and steadies herself for the impact. But her eyes open just a hair to see the Raptor in front of her.
Then the cockpit explodes as a large bullet hits the plane from the bottom and goes straight through. The resulting hole bursts into flames and the plane spins out of control, barely missing her on its way down. For the next few seconds, she sits there wondering what had happen.
A series of vibrations come from something in her pocket, bring her out of her shock. She answers the phone without even looking at the caller ID.
"Marisa, are you alright? You seem kind of shaken."
"Kourin? Was that you just now?"
"Yes, it was. Marisa, do you remember what I told you the last time you at my shop?"
"You told me that I still had some things still on my tab."
"That's right. I'm not about to write that off anytime soon. I know that you're going to pay me back, and I'm going to make sure that that day comes. And your father wouldn't be happy if I let anything happen to you."
"How did you even take that thing down?"
"I owe Yukari a special favor but she got a rifle that suits me really well. I've been keeping an eye on you the entire time, you're doing well for your first time fighting a real battle. It's a shame about your Apache getting shot down like that."
"What's going on down there right now?"
"The Lunarians have finally shown up and are fighting NATO in the forest near your house. From what I heard on the radio, they're taking no prisoners. The American commanders have been demanding that they pull out due to them breaking the customs of war. But the Lunar princesses have responded that they don't follow the rules of Earth. It's getting ugly down there, NATO's losing entire battalions to them. The rest of the GDF have finally rallied together at the Human Village and there's rumors that a special forces detachment tried to get Tenshi but failed."
"What about Reimu, have you heard anything about her?"
There's a short pause. "She's been hit with something ever since the barrier fell. Keine thinks that it might be shock from the suddenness of the barrier's collapse, but's she's recovering. Right now, she's at the Village with the others."
"I haven't seen that many NATO soldiers lately, did we break them?"
"The Celestials have finally gotten a chance to fire their artillery. They're making a perimeter that's keeping out air and ground units. With both the Lunarians and the GDF, we're finally advancing. So, all we have to do now is clean up the ones in Gensokyo and the battle should be over fast."
Looking down in front of her, Marisa could see explosions and fires as far as the horizon. Over her shoulder, the tengu pilot aircraft were playing cat and mouse with the remaining NATO planes. Then she jumped when a volley of missiles came through the exploding Royal Flares at the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Three of them hit the same A-10 and left no debris after the impact.
She watched the planes chase each other and could only sigh. The ordinary magician knew that Gensokyo could never be the same again after today. Yukari's warning about having to expand also repeated itself in her mind. But what worried her the most was Remiu's condition.