Outside Mysterious Ruins
"So, this is just a duel of strength?" Reimu, hovering in midair as she gets prepared for the duel, asked Marisa for clarification.
"Magic strength." Marisa, hovering next to Reimu while sitting on her flying broomstick, clarified. "Ya can actually punch an' kick your opponent if you need to. But the whole point of the duel is to see who's gonna kick who's butt! With magic~!"
The witch then flies toward Ellen, who's hovering at a distance directly opposite of Reimu's position.
"Any questions you wanna ask?" Marisa asked Ellen.
Ellen absent-mindedly look around the surroundings before turning back toward Marisa. "Uh...what am I supposed to do with Reimoe again?"
"It's Reimu..." Marisa corrects the fluffy-headed girl. "Ya just put her down in whatever way you can think of. Without killing her, of course~" The witch humorously stressed the last part. "Put Reimu to sleep...if you can. So to speak..." Marisa added, remembering how absent-minded Ellen can be.
"Does Remiu want to be put to sleep?" Ellen asked while blinking as she tried to understand what was told to her.
Marisa face-palmed. "Geez, you're really literally empty-headed..." The witch then points at Socrates, who is still lying on Ellen's left shoulder. "And put the lil' fellow down. Ya don't want him to get hurt, do ya?"
It took the fluffy-headed girl several seconds to (not quite) get what Marisa was talking about. "Oh, right!" Ellen then passes her cat to the witch. "Please take good care of Socrates. He likes his milk warm~"
Reimu heard that, and knew what Ellen had (mistakenly) thought of. "I...don't think we will be occupied for long..."
...
Down on ground level, Kotohime nudged Rikako with her elbow. "Has she never fought anyone before?" The self=proclaimed police constable asked Rikako.
"Other than those fairies just now, I haven't the slightest idea." The magician-turned-scientist answers, while simultaneously smiling about how amusing the exchange is.
"Even the girl who created me isn't this...strange..." Kana comments.
...
Marisa retrieve Socrates from Ellen's shoulder. The cat meowed in dissatisfaction in the process.
"Ya can have him back after this is over. Just sayin' to ya..." Marisa said to Ellen.
Ellen tilts her head slightly and smiled. "Now be a good kitty, Socrates~"
...
?-?-?
Still unbeknownst to the girls at the Mysterious Ruins, two people were spectating the fight they are about to have.
"Now this is getting interesting." Chiyuri comments as she looks at a panel of light that showed the girls. "Shame that we've got no popcorn."
"Then how about some sandwiches?" Yumemi suggested, whilst keeping her eyes fixated on the panel of light. "I prefer mine with some strawberry jam." The professor added.
"Its always strawberries with you, professor..." Chiyuri remarked.
Yumemi's response to that remark is to apply a karate chop on her assistant's head. "What do you know about strawberries, anyway?!"
Chiyuri rubbed her head. "That you seem to be go cold turkey if without strawberries for a long period of..."
Yumemi turned toward Chiyuri and showed her a death glare with a creepy smile.
"I...I'll be in the kitchen if you need me..." Crept out by Yumemi's response to her earlier statement, Chiyuri said before walking out of the room, shivering the whole time.
After that brief moment, Yumemi turns her attention back on the panel of light, which showed Marisa retreating back toward the ground while carrying Socrates.
"This reminds me..." The professor told herself while looking at the panel of light. "It has been a long time since I last got into a fight..."
...
Outside Mysterious Ruins
"Are ya ready?" Marisa asked both Reimu and Ellen. Though since there is quite a distance between the ground where Marisa (along with Kana, Kotohime and Rikako) stood, and the altitude Reimu and Ellen are at, the witch technically shouted at the latter two.
"What?!" Reimu, who couldn't hear Marisa from that high up, said.
"I said: Are ya ready?" Marisa repeated, shouting louder.
"I can't hear you!" Reimu responded, still unable to hear the witch.
"Darnit..." Marisa cursed under her breath as she face-palms.
Rikako took something cone-shaped out of her rocket-equipped backpack, then held the smaller end of the cone over her mouth, and aimed the larger end at Reimu. "The witch is asking if you are ready." The magician-turned-scientist repeats Marisa's question for Reimu, her voice coming out much louder than Marisa's shouting. Although the strange brief but high-pitched sound that the device emitted the moment the sentence began caused Marisa and Kotohime to cover their ears, and also bothered Socrates enough to make him do the same.
Reimu heard the sentence (the high-pitched sound preceding the sentence didn't bother her so much from that distance) this time. "Well, yes, I am ready." The shrine maiden trainee answers back loudly.
Marisa puts her hands down. "What the heck izzat?! Its so freakin' loud!"
Rikako glanced at Marisa. Finding the witch's outburst amusing, she said, "Its a megaphone. Makes one's voice sound much louder."
"Mega-wha...? Marisa said as she doesn't quite understand the phrase. She then snatches Rikako's device from her anyway. "I'm gonna be borrowin' this 'til-"
Kotohime immediately points her long gun at Marisa's face. "Until you die?" She asked in an interrogative manner.
"Only if you're an ageless person!" Marisa explains as she pushes the muzzle of the long gun away from her face. "But since ya ain't one, I'll be givin' it back to ya within the month!" She then takes her hat off, and stuff the megaphone into it, somehow - the megaphone is actually bigger than the witch hat - and then puts the hat back on her head.
Rikako notes where Marisa had put the megaphone into. "Storage hammerspace? It has been quite a while since I used one myself..."
...
Up at where Reimu and Ellen are...
"What are we waiting for?" Ellen asked Reimu.
Reimu looked around the surroundings, then back at the fluffy-headed girl. "I don't know. Do you?"
Ellen puts a hand to her chin and tilts her head slightly. "Do I?" She asked herself.
Reimu sighed. The shrine maiden trainee holds her gohei out along with some Ofuda. "I sure hope you do, because this will hurt either a little bit or a lot for either one or both of us."
Ellen blinked twice. "It will?" She asks absent-mindedly.
But before the fluffy-headed girl can start thinking about it, Reimu has already begun attacking by throwing several Ofuda at her...
Okay, I lied for a bit in the previous chapter's Afterword. While I did say that the fighting will begin in this chapter, it ended up beginning in the end of this chapter when you would've expected it to be somewhere in the middle.
Anyways, I'm sorry for delaying this chapter for three weeks. I got a really difficult college assignment to do, and had to allocate practically all my free time into finishing said assignment so I can submit it on time and not fail the subject. Unfortunately, I expect there to be more just-as-difficult assignments in the future, so any hiatuses that occur again are not by choice.
"And that, as they say, is that..."
Afterword ends here.