-IIXII-

"Fancy seeing you here, Reimu!"

"Now is not the time for that, Marisa!"

The two friends separated when a couple of Banshees swooped in from above. Plasma projectiles rained down heavily upon them. Thankfully the two had no issues maneuvering through the heavy plasma fire thanks to their experiences in aerial combat.

"Heads-up!" Marisa grinned. She pulled out a glowing jar and tossed it right over her head. One of the Banshees had apparently changed course to pursue her, but a terrible fate awaited it when it came into contact with the jar.

BOOM!

"Score!" cheered Marisa.

Reimu glared at the magician. "Marisa! This isn't a game! You were supposed to stick with the Hell Raven!" she yelled out amidst the plasma fire coming from a nearby Banshee. "What are you doing out here?"

"Couldn't keep up! The Hell Raven was too fast!" Marisa laughed, much to Reimu's dismay. "So instead I decided to check out an enemy outpost to see what the folks there were up to. As you can probably tell by now, I ended up getting chased out! Haha! Oh, I also found Koishi along the way. And I may have accidentally painted a target on her back for these things to shoot at."

Reimu immediately felt an overwhelming urge to smack the magician for being so reckless. And to top it all off, she ended up putting someone, a bystander at that, in harm's way. She'd be sure to deal with her later once this was over.

"Speaking of Koishi, how's she holding up? She took a pretty big hit back there!"

Reimu sighed. "Minor injuries. She'll be fine, no thanks to you."

"Ouch."

"Let's just focus on these pesky things for now," Reimu decided. She did a quick spin just moments before a green projectile could connect with her. She glanced behind her and spotted a Banshee on her tail. There were quite a number of them as well in the far distance, but most, if not all of them appeared to be more focused on Marisa than anything else. The magician was likely viewed to them as a much larger threat, or so they had thought. "How many of them are there?"

"A lot, but I took out like half of 'em with mini-Hakkero. So by my estimate, I'd say around a dozen." Marisa pulled out a couple more jars containing explosive magic, grinning from ear to ear. She then casually tossed them behind her, causing her pursuers to turn away to avoid the oncoming danger. "Or less, I dunno."

BOOM!

Reimu flew upwards in a wide arc to swiftly get herself behind the T-26B that was targeting her. She noticed its quick attempt to maneuver out of her way. Leaving no room for hesitation, she quickly sent out a large blue orb of energy into its backside. And apparently that was all it took for her to blow it to bits.

"Nice one, Reimu!" Marisa commented.

Reimu turned to Marisa, and was baffled to see the rest of the T-26Bs on her tail. She counted a dozen, but one ended up exploding right after she was done confirming when it attempted to maneuver through the magician's blue lasers.

"I got it, Reimu! No worries! Leave it to-"

Reimu was having none of it. She closed her eyes and held out her arms. One at a time, numerous orbs of different colours began to materialise around her. She then swiftly sent the orbs flying into the Banshees, forcing them to cease their chase for the magician in order to spread out.

As the shrine maiden predicted, none of the pilots made it out alive. One after the other, the Banshees exploded upon contact with the colourful orbs. Soon enough, only Marisa and herself were the ones left to view the aftermath.

But apparently the magician wasn't too happy about it.

"Man, what a buzzkill..." Marisa sighed, looking awfully dejected. "I still wanted to play around with those guys..."

"Marisa, I need to have a word with you."

Just then, Marisa felt a chill run down her spine.

-IIXII-