Chapter 31 – A Beautiful Day for a Disaster
Minazuki 28, Monday, Forest of Magic – a dense, humid forest taking up a large area near the center of Gensokyo. Its closest part is distanced from the Human Village by over 4 kilometers if one travels by the northern road and by more than 10 kilometers if one decides to take the western road. It is a place enshrouded by many mysteries and legends. People rarely ever venture there, although there are some who prefer the isolation that this forest provides and have settled to live here.
One such unusual human is Marisa Kirisame. A self-proclaimed ordinary magician, whose house is located on a small clearing somewhere deep inside this vast forest. The house is a western-style L-shaped 2 storey wooden construction with the second floor being the attic. Due to her hobby of collecting all sorts of things, often times even without understanding what most of them are, her home was considered simply as the messiest house in Gensokyo. Marisa was just reading one of her "borrowed" books while drinking a cup of tea when she heard someone knock on her door.
"Huh? Who could it be?" she wondered as she got up from her comfortable armchair and carefully stepped over all the various odds and ends littered all over her house.
"Oh, it's Reimu." she muttered as she peeked outside through a window to look at the person standing at her door.
"Hiya, Reimu~! Nice to have you visit, ze." she greeted her good old friend as she opened the door for her.
"Hello, Marisa. I've come to talk to you about something…" said Reimu with her face unusually serious.
"Oh… uhh… Sure. Come in." Marisa beckoned to her. "And try not to trip over my stuff…"
"Would you like some tea?" asked the witch as she tried to clear up the mess out of Reimu's way.
"Umm… okay I guess." shrugged the shrine maiden, knowing that Marisa couldn't ruin the tea unlike her tamagoyaki.
Marisa nodded and led the way into her kitchen. "Okay, just give me a minute... Ouch!" she exclaimed suddenly as she stepped on something sharp. "Damn it…" she muttered while rubbing her heel.
"Don't you ever clean up?"
"Uhh… Do what?" grinned the witch sheepishly and looked down to see what she stepped on. "Oh! Look, Reimu, mahjong tiles! We've been looking for those the last time at your shrine, right?"
"Yeah…" murmured Reimu absentmindedly.
"So what did you want to talk about, huh?"
"Right… I wanted to ask you a favor like last time… for the Tanabata festival."
Marisa put some water in a tea kettle to boil and nodded agreeingly. "But of course, Rei-Rei. I'll help you send out invitations. Hey, by the way I was just about to visit Alice, so we can ask her if she's going to do that doll show of hers this year as well…"
Reimu was relieved to hear that she could count on her friend's assistance and smiled. "Yes, let's visit her first. But I was just thinking… Maybe we should have something new at the festival this year."
"A new attraction?"
"Yeah… Something that will attract a lot of curious people to come to the shrine. Something that will be remembered for a long time to come… And not just by Akyuu-chan."
"I hear 'ya, ze. Maybe we'll think of something if there's more of us to discuss it."
"Maybe we should hold a Spell Card tournament or something." Reimu suggested.
"Hey, that could be pretty interesting." confirmed Marisa and served tea for her miko friend. "Maybe we should invite some new folks for such an event. Like…I don't know... Utsuho or Byakuren…"
Reimu's face quickly turned to a surprised one. "Eehh… I'd still like to have my shrine standing even after the tournament would end… Utsuho's just…"
"Overpowered?" asked Marisa in order to help Reimu find the right word.
"Yeah… That and a bit bridbrained too." commented Reimu as she drank the tea. "But Byakuren-san is a very good idea. She's also powerful and popular with the people from the village, to my dismay…" she finished the sentence with a bitter-sounding tone. Ever since the new temple was founded near the village, it got many followers which meant that the Hakurei Shrine got even less visitors than usual.
"And unlike Utsuho, she won't go blasting away your shrine by accident." added Marisa.
Suddenly, Reimu frowned in a spaced-out expression and looked outside the window, sighing heavily. "If only Yukari would come too… I'm starting to miss that old youkai."
"Maybe this time, she won't resist the temptation to show herself when she'll see all that fun, food and drinks. Maybe a Spell Card tournament is just what we need in order to lure her out."
"You know, I'm starting to have doubts…" spoke Reimu, resting her chin against her palm. "I mean… nobody and I mean really nobody has seen her or heard from her for such a long time… Not even her shikigami. It's like they literally disappeared from the face of the Earth."
"Well, if you got any good ideas on how to find her, let's hear 'em."
"That's the thing – I don't. She's not in Gensokyo, so I thought I'd ask Yuyuko and Satori to keep a lookout in their respective realms, but there are yet other places where she could be."
Marisa giggled. "Obviously! There's still Makai, Heaven, the Dragon Palace, Sanzu River and Higan and the outside world, of course… and the Moon…"
"No, I don't think she's THAT stupid to try and provoke the Lunarians after having her butt kicked by them twice…"
"Says who?" opposed Marisa. "Have you been there personally to see what happened to her during the first war? Or even the second…?"
"Well, no, but my intuition tells me that she's not on the Moon."
Marisa shrugged, not too sure what to think either. "Either way, there are still quite a few places besides the Moon where she could be right now. Including Mayohiga. Even if Satori said that she couldn't see her mental activity through the amulet in Gensokyo, we all know, or to be more exact, we DON'T know if Mayohiga can even be considered a part of Gensokyo…"
Reimu snickered amusedly. "You're right… Just imagine it: we're all looking for her like crazy while she's lazing around in her home, not even curious about what's going on in Gensokyo."
"I bet it's just as you say." Marisa said with optimism. "Now, how about we paid Alice a little visit?"
"Oh, sure, let's go." nodded the miko and finished the tea in her cup. "At least her home is always clean, unlike yours…"
"She doesn't need to store so many things under one roof."
"Oh, and you do? You don't even know what half of that junk is."
"That's why I'm studying to understand it." smiled the witch and stood up from her chair.
"You should just leave that up to Rinnosuke. And when do you plan on returning that mound of books you stole from Patchouli?"
"Hey! She's a youkai with a long lifespan. But me, I'm just a normal human. She can have them back when I die, ze."
"That's like saying: The sooner she kills me, the sooner she can have her books back."
"I meant after I die a natural death…" Marisa completed her own statement.
Reimu giggled again and followed her into the corridor. "Yeah, if you call her reaction to you stealing her books as natural, then your death by her hands will indeed be natural." she jested while walking over the doorstep of Marisa's house.
Marisa followed her outside and locked the door of her house by simply pointing her finger at it.
"Let's walk instead of flying." suggested the blonde and put on her trademark hat.
"What's the matter? You're trying to lose some weight?" Reimu tried to poke fun at her.
"Nope. Just feel like walking for a change…" replied the witch as she began walking down the path leading from her house.
During the short walk to Alice's house, the witch and the miko exchanged trivial news from their everyday lives, not paying much attention to anything else. Alice also lived in the forest just about 15 minutes walk from Marisa's house. Her home was European-styled as well, made of bricks as well as wood. It had only one floor, but it had a small tower-like extension which was almost twice as tall as the house itself. From a distance, it was somewhat similar to a church. A thin, white smoke rising from its chimney revealed that Alice was at home and probably cooking something. Marisa nonchalantly led the way to the house of anther one of her good friends. By a couple of knocks on the door, she summoned the attention of the house's tenant.
"Yo, Alice-chan~! It's me and Reimu~!"
As a response, they heard the door being unlocked from the other side and opened. But instead of Alice to welcome them, there was her doll, Shanghai, with a curious expression on her face, floating in midair and eyeing the visitors.
"Gee, Alice, can't you at least answer the door by yourself?" called Marisa into the house.
Shanghai smiled in response and made an inviting gesture. Reimu and Marisa shrugged and entered the white house with a dark-blue tile roof.
"Uhhh… Alice?" called the magician as she didn't see the dollmaker anywhere. Instead, a whole band of dolls in little maid uniforms were doing housework – dusting the shelves, washing the dishes, wiping the floor, two of them were stirring soup at the stove and two were even having a mock swordfight with butter knives. It was already well known to both Reimu and Marisa that the dolls weren't self-conscious, but each of them was controlled by Alice's magic strings. However, the girl in question wasn't even in the kitchen. Shanghai waved her hand again and flew into another room. The guests followed her into the living room where they found the manipulator of all the dolls sitting comfortably in her armchair, sewing miniature dresses for her dolls. Only when her guests entered the living room, she put down the needle and thread and looked at them.
"Hello, Marisa and Reimu. Please, have a seat. I'll bring you something to drink and the lunch should be ready any moment now." she said with a nice smile and with an elegant movement of her hand, she summoned a pair of dolls. One was carrying a plate with home-baked biscuits and the other one brought two glasses with apple juice. Reimu amusedly watched the dolls serving her and whispered to Marisa: "I wish I had some trick like that to help me with my chores at the shrine."
"But she still has to control each of them individually." remarked Marisa and helped herself to one of the biscuits. "Sort of makes me think that it's actually even harder work to manipulate each of them in order to do some chores, ze…"
Alice just smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "Dolls are my biggest hobby and controlling them to act so lifelike makes my house seem like a livelier place."
"Say, Alice," Marisa addressed her and beckoned at the shrine maiden, "Reimu here is making plans for the upcoming festival and…"
"…And I'd like to ask you if you'd be willing to do a doll performance this year too." Reimu finished Marisa's sentence. "But of course you could think of some new show with your dolls."
"Oh… Right… The festival's here soon…" murmured Alice absentmindedly. "I really lost my track of time."
Reimu gave Marisa a sidelong glance and looked back at Alice. "So… is that a yes?"
"Umm… yes, of course, I'll come to the festival to perform. I'll have to think of what kind of show to do…"
"Well, you still have more than a week, so take your time to think about it." said Reimu and adjusted her position in one of Alice's comfy armchairs. "Anyway, do you have any interesting news, Alice?"
"News? Well, no, nothing interesting has ha…."
Her sentence got interrupted by a sudden and urgently sounding knocking on the door of her house. The blonde dollmaker looked surprisedly at Marisa and Reimu. "Was someone else coming with you to visit me?"
Marisa just shrugged. "Nope."
Curious about who could be knocking on her door, Alice stood up from the armchair and went to take a look for herself. Just as she opened the door, her eyes looked down at the person, or to be more accurate, persons who were desperately looking back at her. They were small girls – half Alice's size. Their wings that were not directly connected with their bodies were an infallible sign that they were fairies. They were all already familiar to Alice. One of them had short golden hair with short braids on sides, blue eyes and was wearing a red and white dress, remarkably similar to Reimu's outfit. The second one – a brown-eyed blonde had her hair styled in intriguing spiral-like curls on both sides of her head. She was wearing a white one-piece dress with black ribbons tied to the front side. Her skirt's hem was also adorned by yellow symbols of lunar phases from crescent to full moon and then a sun symbol. She was also wearing a mob cap, very much like the vampire Remilia Scarlet, but hers was white with black ribbons to match the dress. The last of the fairy trio had gray eyes and long black straight hair styled in hime-cut and decorated by a blue ribbon. She was wearing a blue dress with white sleeves and yellow star patterns on the front side of her skirt.
Their names were: Sunny Milk, Luna Child and Star Sapphire and they were more commonly known as the Three Mischievous Fairies. Usually not the type to show up in front of other humans, but they always liked to play various pranks on them, however, with miserable success rate.
Alice gave them all a once-over and raised a brow. "What are you three doing here?"
"Umm… Alice-san…" started Sunny tentatively. Her voice was shaky and her face bore a frightened expression. "Something terrible happened~!" she cried out and flailed her arms.
"Umm… maybe I should do the talking." said the black haired Star and gently pushed her fairy friend aside to assume her place. "Alice-san…" she started calmly.
"What is it?"
"Please help us~!" she panicked and without even asking the dollmaker for permission, she bolted right into her house.
"Can we please, come in, Alice-san?" asked the curly-haired Luna staring at the youkai girl with pleading eyes. "W-We can explain everything, just…please~!"
Alice took pity of the frightened little fairies and nodded. "Please, come inside."
Both Sunny and Luna leapt up and hugged their savior tightly. "Thank you, Alice-san~!"
The dollmaker looked at them confusedly, shrugged and took the fairies inside. Just as the two fairies let go of Alice, they noticed Marisa and Reimu who also entered the kitchen to see who came to visit Alice.
"Oh no, Sunny, I told you this was a bad idea…" whispered Luna to her friend. "The miko is here too…"
The sunlight fairy just shook her head and opposed. "That's actually a good thing that she's here too. And even that thieving witch…"
"Oh would you look at that, Reimu…" smirked Marisa as she also recognized Alice's guests. "The three troublemakers in the flesh…"
Reimu also looked at them with suspicious eyes. "What's up? Did one of your pranks backfire on you again?"
Alice showed the two humans her palm in order to silence them so she could ask the fairies what was the matter.
"O-Our home…" stuttered Sunny and wiped a tear from her eye. "Attacked by an army of other fairies… Burning… We had to run."
"Your home? Where is that?" asked Alice calmly, trying to soothe them.
"We used to…live here in thi … in the Forest of Magic." replied Sunny through her sobs. "But we recently relocated to a tree near where the miko lives. Now it's burning… everything is burning~!"
Reimu immediately widened her eyes. "A fire?! Near my shrine?!"
"Doesn't that have anything to do with your crazy little fairy war against Cirno?" Marisa joined the interrogation.
"We've already reconciled with Cirno-chan~!" cried Sunny and wiped her tears into Alice's dress. "And even if we didn't, she's not the one to send other fairies to fight her enemies. She's the one who likes to do everything by herself."
"Hmm… true." admitted the witch. "Cirno's not likely to start fires, but rather freezes things…"
"That attack sounds more like the one in Kazemura." Reimu thought aloud. "But if there's a forest fire near my shrine, we need to go there and put it out this instant!"
"We… we tried to find the miko and ask her for help, but she wasn't there." continued Sunny, looking a little more calm than a few moments ago. "And now…" she stopped her sentence halfway.
"And now what?" wondered Alice, making several of her dolls gather around the poor fairy and pat her soothingly on the head.
Suddenly, Star Sapphire crawled timidly from under the table and gulped. "Now… I can feel those fairies followed us! They're coming!" she panicked and crawled back into hiding.
"Wait, what?" asked Alice, not too sure what the fairy meant, but her question was answered in a few moments.
Star was joined under the table by her other two fairy friends when suddenly, a loud crash and a sound of breaking glass came from the living room of Alice's house. Before she and her two human guests could react to it, another couple of similar sounds came from the bedroom and even in the kitchen, the windows were forcefully broken and random fairies began swarming the interior, wreaking havoc upon Alice's household.
"Kyaaaaaah~!" screamed the frightened fairies under the table. Marisa, Alice and Reimu weren't exactly calm either. At first they just shielded their heads with their arms from the fragments of broken glass from the windows and for a few seconds just stared in panic at the chaos that erupted everywhere around them. Marisa blasted a few of the fairies with rapid-fire blue shots coming from her palms, managing to leave a few holes in the walls of Alice's kitchen. The fairies that got hit immediately disappeared in a bright flash of light. But dozens of them came pouring in through the broken windows, ready to take over the place with their sheer numbers. They fired their danmaku at everything and everyone. Even Marisa got a few shots.
"Ow…! Damn you, little…" she cursed as she was hit in the palm, trying to shake off the pain.
Alice didn't hesitate to defend her home. She mobilized her own platoon of dolls, armed with miniature shields and lances and used them to fight off the crazed attackers. Several of her dolls fell a victim to the berserk fairies, but she managed to align the ones with shields into square formations and successfully barricaded all of her broken windows. With her other hand, she ordered the lancer dolls to hunt down all the fairies that were now trapped inside her house, but still threatening everyone and everything inside. However, now that all her windows were covered up by her doll shield maidens, it was completely dark inside. Only the chaotic fairy danmaku lightened up the place. Marisa hurriedly conjured up a light-providing white energy orb in her palm and made it levitate just a few centimeters below the ceiling. Now Alice's lancer dolls could effectively charge the fairies and impale them with their miniature weapons. The mortally wounded fairies immediately burst in a white flash and left only white smoke. However, a second wave immediately rushed in from the living room and the bedroom, setting several pieces of Alice's furniture ablaze.
"My house!" screamed Alice in shock. The fairies now began taking out the dolls with shields by shooting them from behind. It wasn't too long before Alice's barricades have fallen, allowing more fairy reinforcements to pour into her house. With a snap of her fingers, she summoned Shanghai to her aid and the little doll unleashed a bright-red laser-like beam out of her hands, instantly burning every fairy it touched. However, this also helped the fire inside her house to spread faster. "Oh…. This isn't good." she groaned and ordered Shanghai to take her time to aim and shoot the beam only briefly, so not to start any more fires. The fairies' retribution was swift. With their fresh reinforcements pouring in through the broken and unguarded windows, they overwhelmed Alice and sent her to the ground by a series of shots, hitting her various body parts.
"Alice!" screamed frightened Marisa as she saw one of her best friends hit the floor. The very moment she did so, all of her other dolls followed suit and lay motionlessly on the ground.
Reimu, in the meantime, took out her gohei wand and like with a sword, she slashed the annoying attackers with it, effectively making them disappear. Those that were out of her reach, she disposed of with her blessed ofuda which she used as a sort of thrown weapon.
Marisa furiously clenched her teeth and out of her pocket she took out a small wooden octagonal object with eight trigrams printed in a circle on its front side. Reimu knew all too well what it was. It was Marisa's miniature magic furnace known as mini Hakkero which she used to unleash some of her most powerful spells. The witch put the mini furnace in front of her mouth and was about to mutter her spell when Reimu put her hand on her shoulder.
"No, Marisa! You'll wreck Alice's home completely!"
"Don't you see what's going on?!" asked the witch and ducked immediately to evade several shots from the fairies. "Let me do it, Reimu! It might be our only way!"
The miko just resolutely shook her head, drawing out her own Spell Card. "No! Cover me while I take care of this with less collateral damage!"
She then made a break for it, smashing few of the fairies out of her way with her trusty gohei and running into the living room. Marisa put away her Hakkero and supported Reimu's effort with conventional shots, taking down as many fairies as she could.
Meanwhile Alice groaned on the floor and stirred about.
"Hey, Alice, you okay?" asked the witch, throwing a brief glance at her youkai friend before continuing her fire support.
Reimu, despite the assistance provided by Marisa, was now completely surrounded by a cloud of fairies and bombarded from every side. But this is exactly what she wanted to do in order to achieve her plan. Before she collapsed from the repeated hits of enemy danmaku, she activated her Spell Card: "Divine Arts "Demon Binding Circle"!"
The card flared up in a bright yellow light and the energy connected with Reimu's raised hand. A wide spinning octagon of similar light and color showed on the floor around her. The next second she crouched and touched the floor with her charged-up palm, immediately becoming bathed in an extremely bright pillar of orange light erupting upwards from the place where she had touched the floor and slowly broadening until it was as wide as the octagonal pattern on the floor. Since it took up nearly the entire living room, all the fairies inside were obliterated and vaporized instantaneously. Once the light died out, however, Reimu's figure slumped down on the floor like a rag. She had halted the fairy invasion, but didn't stop it. Now she was lying on the floor in a burning living room of Alice's decimated house.
"No! Reimu!" yelled Marisa and bolted from the floor to aid her friend in need.
Alice opened her eyes, slowly looking left then right, still finding it hard to even understand what was going on. But something like an inner voice or perhaps instinct drove her to stand up now and she obeyed.
"Oh… ouch…" she rubbed the back of her head, and fixed her headband. "Marisa?! Reimu?! Where are you?!"
The answer to her question was Marisa dragging her unconscious friend's body out of the blazing living room. Smoke was quickly filling up the other rooms in the house and not even all the broken windows were enough to keep the air inside breathable for much longer.
"Alice!" exclaimed Marisa with relief as she saw that her youkai friend was already up and standing. "We need to get out of here! Now!"
The witch then threw one of Reimu's arms around her neck and with her free hand she opened the main door and carried the shrine maiden out. Alice, however, knew that she couldn't leave her house just yet.
"The three fairies!" she shouted and quickly looked under her kitchen table where she last saw them take shelter.
They were still there, although what she saw was quite a shock for her. Luna's body was lying motionlessly on the floor, while Sunny was sitting atop of struggling Star and strangling her with all the might she could find in her thin fairy arms. Her expression was manic and her grin twisted.
"Unngh…. Sunny-chan!" uttered Star with her last breath. "H-How… urk… could you…?"
In another moment, Star's face turned blue, her eyes closed and she stopped resisting. Sunny was still clutching her throat in an iron grip, smiling psychotically, even when her friend no longer showed any vital signs. Alice gasped in terror, but didn't lose her cool. She knew she didn't want to, but the situation didn't give her any other choice.
"I'm sorry, Sunny-chan…"
She pointed her finger at Sunny's head, closed her eyes and sent out a strong bright-green shot that punched a hole right through the fairy's temple, making her body limply fall on the floor with a silent thud.
A long moment of silence…
Only the sound of burning fires and cracking wood broke the deafening silence that settled itself in Alice's ears. She was still sitting there, horrified by what just happened and at what she just did. She tentatively stretched out her shaky hand to check any of the other two fairies' pulse. With disappointment she found out that they were all dead. Despite this, she pulled their bodies from under the table. With a snap, she summoned the last remaining dolls that were not destroyed in the onslaught and with their help she carried the fairies out of the burning house. Like a captain of a sinking ship, she was the last person to leave the place.
On the small clearing in front of her home, she saw Marisa kneeling over Reimu, trying to bring her back to life by heart massage and artificial respiration. Her attempts, however, were constantly thwarted by the unending hordes of insane fairies.
"That's it!" she exclaimed angrily and stood up. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, pulled out her Hakkero, whispered her spell into it and pointed it at the largest cluster of fairies. "Love Sign "Master Spark"!"
The mini Hakkero started emitting a loud humming sound just a second before it unleashed an enormously wide white beam of magical energy with its edges flaring up in all other colors of the visible light spectrum. The sheer force of the spell produced a resonance powerful enough to make the nearby trees shake violently like during an earthquake. Needless to say that any fairy unfortunate enough to find itself in its way was met with a quick death, which to Marisa seemed too merciful. The witch instantly took out an entire flock of the little youkai with her initiate blast and while the spell lasted, she aimed her Hakkero to other directions, trying to bring down as many fairies as she could.
"Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrggh!" she yelled in fury as she turned the beam slowly, burning down fairies by dozens. "Die, die, die!"
And the fairies obeyed. Most of them, anyway... However, there was still quite a number of them even when Master Spark fizzed out. Alice hurried to assist Marisa in her effort, knowing that she couldn't help the Three Mischievous Fairies anymore. She still had enough dolls to muster up one final counterattack. She arranged them into a wide-spread X formation and each of the dolls began firing red or blue shots to decimate the remnant of the fairy legion. Marisa again resumed her attempts to resuscitate Reimu.
"Come on, Reimu! Don't leave me now!" she urged her while massaging her heart. "You can't die! What kind of a dumb epitaph would it be: "Killed by fairies"?" she tried to jest, but anxiety was wrenching her throat and altering her voice. Reimu still didn't respond, but at least Marisa could still feel her pulse. Finally, after a long nerve-wrecking while, Reimu started coughing and opened her eyes. Marisa let out a joyful gasp.
"Reimu!" she embraced the shrine maiden before she even figured out where she was.
"M-Marisa…?" muttered confused Reimu, wondering why was Marisa holding her like that.
"I'm so glad…" whispered the witch into her ear as she let go of her. "Now…" she stood up and crossed her arms, "get the hell up and let's finish off the rest of those fairies, ze!"
Reimu nodded silently and slowly got up on her feet. Then she and Marisa teamed up with Alice to crush the fairy offensive once and for all.
When the last squadrons of fairies regrouped into a formation, ready to shower Alice with their danmaku, she drew out her own Spell Card.
"Puppeteer Sign "Maiden's Bunraku"!"
The card turned into a large, semi-transparent purple orb that was launched against the fairies, but exploded halfway, bursting into several dolls which instantly stopped and fired multiple red beams. In the same direction the dolls fired short streams of smaller blue orbs, which followed the same trajectory as the previously fired beams, further reducing the numbers of the remaining fairies. The rest of Alice's dolls scattered small red shots, the movement of which resembled falling snow. However, it wasn't falling but slowly charging towards the last of the fairies. The process was repeated a few times and then Alice's spell ran out, leaving no fairies for Reimu and Marisa to shoot down.
"It's over…" muttered Marisa while panting.
"Yeah…" confirmed the wounded shrine maiden and stared blankly at Alice's burning house as well as the nearby trees which were also engulfed in flames.
"That was quite a something, ze… But we can't sit down and rest just yet!"
Marisa was right. Something had to be done about this spreading forest fire, but none of the girls' spells were ideal for such a task. They needed to get help. Alice looked down on the unmoving bodies of the three fairies that have fled to her house in hope to save themselves from the savage fairies, but she couldn't protect them in the end.
"Hey, Alice…" said Marisa as she put her hand on her shoulder. "No use crying over spilled milk… You know that they'll be revived soon, right?"
"Then…" said the youkai dollmaker with a trembling voice, "Why aren't they waking up yet?"
"It takes a while even for the fairies to respawn." Marisa comforted her. "They'll be fine in no time, but other people and youkai may be in danger. We need to put out this fire and see if we can still manage to save your house."
"But how do you plan to put it out when it got out of control already?" wondered Alice. "You know I don't have extinguishing spells or anything…"
"Neither do I."
"We'll need to get help of someone who can use water-based spells." said Reimu pragmatically and looked up at the small patch of sky that was visible from the small clearing. "Damn! It rains a whole week nonstop, but when you actually need the rain, it's always sunny…"
"Hmm… Nitori could help us, she has water magic." reasoned the witch. "And Patchouli, of course! She's an elementalist… and even lives closer from here than Nitorin… But then again, she's quite angry with me now…"
"We have no time!" urged Reimu. "Let's get going already!" she ordered and took flight, ascending quickly above the treetops. What she saw from above, however, took her breath away…
"Uh… This is NOT good…"
"What's not good, Reimu?" asked Marisa who followed her upwards along with Alice.
"That." she made a hand gesture along the whole panorama in front of her.
Besides the fire burning below them and spreading quickly, there were several other places especially in the northeastern part of Gensokyo from where dense black smoke was rising and orange flames were lashing.
"Oh, shit!" cursed Marisa as she gazed upon other separate fire sources in the distance. "Looks like we weren't the only ones attacked. We need to get moving!"
"I'll go find Nitori!" volunteered Reimu to take one of the tasks. "It also might not be a bad idea to get Cirno."
Marisa nodded and took a deep breath. "Fine, I'll go and ask Patchouli. Alice, you try to find the ice fairy. Let's move! Go, go, go!"
Each of them jetted at top speed towards their separate destinations. While they were all flying together for a while, Alice separated from the formation right above Misty Lake to look for Cirno, the ice fairy who was known to supposedly reside somewhere in the vicinity. Marisa headed straight for the mansion and Reimu continued northwest towards the base of the Youkai Mountain to find Nitori Kawashiro – a young kappa inventor, engineer and mechanic. The only kappa she was actually familiar with.