Hakurei Shrine
"So someone's been messin' with the weather?" Marisa asked out of curiosity.
"More or less." Chiyuri answered as she placed a small device on the kotatsu. "I'll let the professor explain the details."
Yumemi pulled out from the pocket of her coat another small device that resembled a sheet of glass, and tapped on it. As she did so, the device on the desk activated, projecting a holographic scale model of all five human villages - Touhou-Ri, Seihou-Ri, Hoppou-Ri, Nanpou-Ri, and the Central City (why the City is classified as a village, only the village elders know) - in their proper locations, along with the sky directly above the villages.
"Here's what I found after three days of meteorological analysis." Yumemi began... only to immediately pause as everyone else in the living room of the shrine save for Chiyuri and Ruukoto gave her a confused stare. "Weather research. That's what I've been doing in the past three days." She explained in layman's term.
Reimu, Marisa, the Little Witch Mob, and the lesser shrine maidens all let out a collective "Oh."
"Anyway," Yumemi then resumed without missing a beat. "my analysis of Gensokyo's weather in the past three days has turned up something really unexpected. This is how Gensokyo's sky behaved during the first four weeks of Winter." She pointed at the hologram, which depicted the sky as it usually is: just the amount of clouds that a normal Winter should have. "And this..." The professor then tapped a few times on her controlling device, which caused a stream of pink to appear in the hologram. "...is how it is behaving right now."
"Notice the pink stream, which none of us here were able to see with our naked eyes." Chiyuri added. "It doesn't behave in a natural way..."
Marisa approached the hologram, and inspected the pink stream. "That looks like something's bein' siphoned out of Gensokyo..." She said.
"What is being siphoned? To where?" Reimu asked. She is already suspecting something about the pink stream.
Yumemi tapped on her controlling device again, causing the holographic representation of the human villages and the pink stream in the sky above to shrink, or rather, causing the hologram representation to zoom out, revealing the entirety of Gensokyo (including even tiny details such as Ellen's magic shop that is located close to the Hakurei Shrine) that there are more pink streams coming from every direction.
All the pink streams are converging into a single spot in the sky, where they are abruptly cut off by what is represented in the hologram as a black circle.
"That's where." Yumemi continued. "Call it a portal, a dimensional rift, a GATE, or even a Stargate..."
"Whatever's causing this is not from Gensokyo..." Chiyuri added.
Reimu and Marisa turned toward each other, then back at Yumemi's hologram, then at each other again, and then at the still unconscious Lily White.
"Someone's literally stealin' Spring from us." Marisa said to Reimu while keeping her gaze fixed on Lily. "Us, as in all of Gensokyo."
Reimu remained silent for a while, keeping her eyes on Lily at the meantime. Then she spoke, "No matter who or what is causing it, this is another Incident, and it is my duty as the Hakurei Shrine Maiden to end it..."
"Ya ain't doing this yourself!" Marisa told Reimu, as she then pulled out her twin revolvers. "We're gonna do this together, cause we're the freakin' Guardians of the Sanctuary!" She emphasized her point by twirling both revolvers.
In the process of twirling her twin revolvers, the witch accidentally pulled the trigger, unintentionally firing a shot into the ceiling.
Everyone froze and went silent in reaction to the accidental discharge, even Marisa. Though it's out of awkwardness for the witch, and out of being spooked for everyone else.
"Point that somewhere else!" Yumemi cried out.
"Learn your trigger discipline, young lady!" Chiyuri called out Marisa for her recklessness.
"My final conclusion as to how much responsibility Miss Marisa has: zero." Ruukoto noted with the most sarcasm she has ever expressed in a year, which is still very little.
The Little Witch Mob collectively face-palmed at their senior's recklessness-induced carelessness, while the lesser shrine maidens shook their heads.
Reimu let out an exasperated sigh. Why did I even become friends with her in the first place? She mentally lamented.
Marisa slowly and awkwardly holstered her twin revolvers. "Whoops. Good thing mom ain't here, or else she'd never let me hear the end of this..."
...
A few minutes after Reimu has thoroughly chewed out Marisa for her reckless usage of guns, the two girls stood in the middle of the snowed-in shrine grounds, staring at the portal high in the sky (that remains invisible to both the naked eye and magical senses).
"What are these again?" Reimu asked Yumemi as she pointed at the tiny device she currently wears in her left ear, and the identical one in Marisa's.
"Looks like the headphones I use when I'm listenin' to my awesome mixes, but a whole lot smaller." Marisa said, gesturing at the music-playing device that she has secured next to one of her gun holsters.
"They're earphones. Communicating devices." Yumemi answered, adding the second part to clarify for Reimu.
"Like the crystal balls Marisa uses to talk to her friends?" Reimu asked.
"Sound only, but yes." Chiyuri provided the answer.
"Anyway, since nobody can see the portal with their own eyes, I gave you two these earphones-" Yumemi then holds out the small hologram projector in her hand, projecting a smaller hologram of the portal to show to Reimu and Marisa.
Unlike the earlier hologram, this one also displayed the position of Reimu and Marisa, who are represented as tiny yellow blips on it.
"-so I can track your position and guide you two to the portal." The redheaded professor then continued her explanation. "However, this device is not designed to detect any creatures, be they human or Youkai, so I can't tell if someone's headed your way."
"So you're gonna be our mission control for this one?" Marisa asked.
"To a limited capacity, yes." Yumemi answered.
Everyone then turned toward the invisible portal in the sky.
"This will be the second Incident that I'm going to solve as the Hakurei Shrine Maiden..." Reimu said, holding the Sacred Hakurei Gohei in its parasol form in her hands.
"And the second bout of the Guardians of the Sanctuary!" Marisa declared as she once again pulled out her twin revolvers to show off. Though she refrained from twirling them, having learned her lesson from back inside the living quarters of the shrine.
That still didn't save her from getting slapped in the back by Reimu for her scenery-chewing declaration.
"Why did I even agree to you naming our two-person team 'Guardians of the Sanctuary'...?"
F this quarantine...
Everything in the world and our lives have gone absolutely bananas, no thanks to COVID-19. In my case, being stuck in my house for two months has made me so stir-crazy that I have somehow contracted ADHD, leading to me easily getting distracted by everything else. The looong delay of this chapter's arrival has nothing to do with Writer's Block or lack of motivation. It's just me becoming too stir-crazy because of the quarantine, on top of said quarantine making other aspects of my life utterly bonkers and confusing.
"And that, as they say, is that..."
Afterwords end here.
