The Matter of Advancing the Front

Medics from the mothership descended in a frenzy and began hauling medical equipment around, pumping the reckless girls suffering from food poisoning full of medicine or giving them stomach pumps one by one. A row of Medical Pods had been parked along the small square by Sage Path. The monsters with the biggest appetites were already lying inside. The energetic Marisa and Ibuki Suika, who was used to drinking from huge bowls and tearing into chunks of meat, were both snoring away. The former was glowing blue all over from radiation poisoning, while the latter's heavy metal poisoning had turned both her horns green. Yakumo Ran had crawled into a Medical Pod on her own, her large tails dragging listlessly along the ground and shedding fox fur all over the less-than-twenty-meter path. Wen Wen had still been clutching her camera when she collapsed, and the suspicious little notebook in her hand documented an earth-shaking, ghost-weeping case of mass poisoning. Yuyuko was miraculously still healthy. After eating hundreds of pounds of grilled meat with excessive arsenic compounds, she did not even gasp for air—because her respiratory system had owed her lungs a shutdown for a very long time.

Youmu was one of the luckier ones. Faithfully following the orthodox doctrine that "a servant should only eat after her master has finished," the rigid little girl had fortunately escaped the food poisoning crisis and become one of the last third of Gensokyo creatures at the scene still capable of walking upright. She was now helping the medics force medicine down Reimu's throat. Reimu rolled her eyes while desperately trying to confirm how much of the medication could be reimbursed, declaring that if it could not be reimbursed, she might as well just die.

In a corner of the square sat a pair