Monster Hunter Gensokyo

A Touhou fanfic inspired by Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International series

-Written by Achariyth.

Disclaimer: Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. While I haven't made this a true Touhou/MHI cross-over, enough MHI influence exists in the scenario that I will pull this fic if requested by representatives of ZUN, Larry Correia, or Baen Books and I also request that any other fansite that might post this work do the same.

The time comes in every girl's life when she finds herself searching for the answer to one of life's little mysteries. In my case, what do you use to kill a giant armored zombie damnbeast?

Sure, you might think that I'm pulling your leg. I admit that I'm not going to tell you a sea story about killing a stampeding armored zombie damnbeast with a paper clip, household chemicals, and a rubber band. But Reimu does pay me to think about such things. After all, the time to find out you need a harpoon gun with an underslung chainsaw is before you need to cut your way out of the damnbeast's gullet, not while you are being digested. And of course, someone's got to build the thing.

Since Gensokyo is what it is, a child of 1800s Japan and all, that someone is me. My name is Nitori Kawashiro, and I am a Monster Hunter.

Did I mention that I really love my job?

"Satyrs? Why did it have to be satyrs," I groaned. Marisa and Alice had just walked into the cluttered piles of machinery that made up my laboratory and informed me of the bad news.

I hate the goat-legged lust demons. Sure, all they say they want is a drink, good food, and good companionship, but no village wanted to deal with the inevitable orgy or the fatal surprises nine months later when little demons literally burst from the swollen bellies of the impregnated. And, as a race, they have yet to learn that "No! Godsdammit!" really meant no. Basically, satyrs combine all the horrors of being pawed by drunken frat boys with the terror of Rosemary's Baby.

And the ultimate indignity for the young women they prey on? They're horrible in the sack, or so Suika says, and I'm prone to believe her. Actually, after they killed one of my classmates, I'm prone to killing them with fire and then scattering the ashes to the four winds. I hate them worse than the lusca that plague my people. At least sharktopus makes for good sushi when the mission's over.

"Well, it is spring. Maybe they got lost on the way to Cancun," Marisa said. She pawed through the piles of machinery. Like a magpie, she picked up anything that caught her attention, especially anything that caused loud, flashy explosions. Considering I'm in the business of loud, flashy explosions, if I didn't keep an eye on her, I'd find my workshop stripped bare.

The doll maker shrugged. She always carried around a chained leather-bound book. Like Marisa, I wanted to see what was inside the book from Makai. I'm sure I could make something awesome from the contents. Unlike the witch, though, I could wait patiently and not pester the doll master in the process.

Alice spoke as she made a slow orbit around my workbench, Shanghai in tow. "Some silly girl that should have known better than to wander around by herself stumbled into a pack of them last night. Fortunately, she slipped away before they could slip her out of her clothes. She told her father, who ran to the village council."

"Dad called me soon after," Marisa winced as she slipped something bulky into her pockets. Mr. Kirisame might have been on the village council, but Marisa was content to speak to him once a year, if that. She never explained why. "Anyway, Reimu's ecstatic. Do you know the bounty for just one satyr?"

Like most governments worldwide, the Japanese government paid bounties for specific dangerous monsters. When she found out about that, Reimu had finally married her love for solving incidents with her overwhelming desire to get paid.

"I don't know. One, maybe two hundred thousand yen?" I said, lifting a box of custom-made silver-tipped ammunition onto my workbench. I spilled a bag of various pistol and rifle magazines next to the box. Rounds rapidly disappeared into magazines as quickly as my fingers could move. "Hardly seems worth the ammunition."

No one completely understood why silver was so effective against evil. I've always wanted to learn why, but there's always some new weapon needing testing or another mission to go on. Of course, the fact that silver's involved makes any experiment I might do too expensive for Reimu's penny-pinching ways. Maybe one of these days…

"You should know Reimu better than that. Try ten times that," Alice said, watching as Shanghai grabbed a speed loader and a magazine. The doll quickly loaded the magazine and reached for another loader and magazine.

"That's convenient," I said, stacking sets of loaded magazines on the table. Alice always surprised me with what her dolls could do. I never expected the help, but I was grateful for it. Danmaku still had its place on our missions, if our prey was inclined to follow spell card rules at all. If not, heavy metal poisoning solved the problem. "So what's the plan?"

Hopefully, our fearless leader had an idea more complicated than see evil, kill evil, and get paid. Since her usual approach to solving incidents ran along the lines of beating the hell out of everyone in her path until someone aimed her towards the big boss, I wasn't holding my breath.

"You're not going to like it," Alice said, making a moue of disgust. "Grab your gear, I'll explain on the way.

"Okay," I said, walking toward where my Interceptor tactical combat armor vest hung on a wall next to an M-4 carbine and a half-dozen pistols. "Oh, Marisa?"

"Yes?" she said demurely. The witch ambled to the door. My eyes caught Alice's, and she moved to block the door.

"Empty your pockets," the doll master and I said in unison.

I work for the Company. I think it is called Hakurei Security Resolutions, LLC, but as Alice handles all of our paperwork and no one calls it that, I'm not really sure. My paycheck's automatically deposited, so it's not like I have pay stubs to check.

As mentioned earlier, we kill monsters. More accurately, half of us do. We currently have two teams: Team Reimu, which handles monsters, and Team Youmu, which handles spirits. I handle the technical support for both, but mainly shoot with Reimu, alongside Marisa, Sanae, and occasionally Alice, who, with her dolls, practically acts as a team of her own when she's not handling all the administrative work for the company.

Team Youmu is just as varied as Team Reimu. Sakuya and Reisen compete with each other for bounties and Youmu's attention, while Mima just relishes the chance to wreck things, people, and spirits, even if she has to get Youmu's permission first.

We're also breaking in a set of Newbie hunters, whom you'll meet soon.

We might not yet be the foremost hunters in Japan but we get plenty of business from both sides of the Hakurei border. That suits me just fine as an engineer. I get to keep up with what the humans consider state of the art in many fields and I get to bring it back to marry it to the cutting edge of Kappa magical technology. My sister engineers aren't so fortunate, and they beg to go with us. Most cannot make it past the first day of training, though.

Since I am what many would call a monster myself, you might wonder why I'd be a part of a group that kills monsters. It's simple, really. Many of the same creatures that would prey on humans aren't opposed to snacking on tengu, kappa, fairies, and youkai. Also, whenever humans are attacked, they tend to retaliate by indiscriminately slaughtering anything and everything that looks, sounds, or acts like what they encountered. So whenever a monster gets a sudden craving for human flesh, dozens more innocent monsters usually die as a result. It is in my own self-interest and preservation to eliminate those man-eaters before human mass hysteria levels my village and salts the earth where it used to lay.

Other creatures might be stronger, smarter, or fiercer, but no one holds a grudge like humans.

And did I mention all the cool toys I get to play with?

Anyway, the company got its start when Reimu learned of the bounty program and realized she could actually get paid to solve incidents. Her first mission, tracking down a giant mutated spider, netted her more than her previous two years of shrine offerings. After that, she stopped begging for donations at her shrine, hired on many of her friends that had helped her solve incidents, and took on as many jobs as possible.

Like this one.

As I sat motionless in a fallow field, I reflected on the plan. Alice was right; the plan sucked.

Reimu constantly pounded home one simple truth: knowing your monsters lets you kill them quicker. In this case, satyrs would drop everything to potentially bed a nymph. We didn't have a nymph, just a foul-tempered piece of ice fairy jailbait. As a hunter, you learned to make due with what you had. I just hated to use any hunter as bait, even one as loud as Cirno.

"Stop woolgathering, Rookie, and fix those straps," Reimu Hakurei said, scowling at Wriggle Nightbug. Tonight she had traded in her robes for utilities and tactical armor. How she found red and white armor was beyond me. Her orbs floated next to her, but she relied more on the M-4 carbine hanging from the tactical strap across her chest.

The other Newbie hunter rolled her eyes and tightened the straps holding Cirno's arms over her head. The girl had a good head on her shoulders, even if she tended to be flighty. Like the others, she wore tactical armor, although where and why she found that cape was beyond me.

"Let me go, Reimu!" Cirno yelled, squirming against the bonds pinning her against the scarecrow in the middle of the field. Her red face made for an interesting contrast with her blue dress. "Or when I get out of here, I'm going to shove this pole up your fat miko butt."

Marisa had dug up an age deceiving pill to aid Reimu's scheme. No longer did the ice fairy look like she was on the verge of adolescence. Now Cirno looked like a sixteen-year-old human girl with ice crystal wings. Normally, I'd expect that to be no big deal, but Reimu and Marisa shot daggers at the nymphet whenever she wasn't looking.

I'd be jealous myself, but she couldn't design inventions or draft blueprints worth a damn. Kappa boys loved a good engineer who was also good looking. Cirno couldn't build herself out of a wet paper sack.

I looked again at the ice fairy, if you could even call her that any more. Marisa had dressed her in Daisy Dukes and a thin white T-shirt tied high enough up on her body to accentuate long toned legs, a flat stomach on a waspish waist, and a bust that, while average elsewhere, still put most of the girls from Gensokyo to shame. I resolved to hit the ab machine about a couple hundred times more than I normally did.

"Are you sure we can't gag her?" Marisa Kirisame said, cradling an automatic Saiga 12-guage in her arms. Her dress might have been traded in for midnight armor, but the witch's hat always remained. Like most of the team, the sight of that witch with a street howitzer unnerved me. Reimu let it go, however, mostly because it kept Marisa from trying to find anything bigger.

"It'd defeat the purpose," Reimu said, glaring at the ice fairy. "And I'm not fat."

"Come on, Rookie, a little solidarity here?" the fairy said to Wriggle.

"Stuff it, Newbie," she said, ratcheting a wrist strap tighter than she needed to.

"If it makes you feel any better, I would have rather used Sanae," Reimu said. "But satyrs have a thing for nymphs."

Sure, satyrs would chase nymphs all night long, but if Reimu were deep in her cups, she'd admit that she was saving Sanae for a tentacle monster. Maybe that's why Sanae suddenly had religious duties she had to attend to tonight.

"Try not to spook too early," Marisa said, eyeing the horizon. "You wouldn't want to scare your suitors away."

"Like you do?" Cirno said. She sounded the satyr's universal mating call in a high pitched and slurred imitation of Marisa. "I'm soooooo drunk! Woo-HOO!"

"I don't sound like that," Marisa said, pouting.

"Yes, you do," Reimu muttered. She cleared her throated and pointed to the treeline that we had prepared as a fighting position. "Come on, back to your places. Her guests should arrive soon."

They came at dusk, just before Marisa and Wriggle finished shouting catcalls until their throats grew hoarse. In the treeline opposite to us, we could see the occasional flash of goatmen with well-muscled human torsos and furry goat legs wearing nothing but thick coarse fur to cover their obscene masculinity.

Cirno flashed one look at the leader and shrieked like a horror movie scream queen, struggling against the bonds keeping her against the scarecrow. As she did, the four of us settled our cheeks against the stocks of our weapons and waited.

"She's pretty good at that," Wriggle said, shaking her head. She held out her hand, and a dozen fireflies flew away, spreading out all over the field. Not that they gave her light, but an insect youkai was practically a goddess in the insect world. I figured that they told her what they say somehow, but I don't speak firefly, and Wriggle loves her secrets.

"Almost makes you think she's really scared," I said. Not that Cirno would ever admit to being scared, being the self-professed Strongest and all.

"She just needs to keep it together for a few more minutes," Reimu said. "We won't get our bonus if we don't get them all."

The satyrs, about a dozen horny lust-crazed demons in total, stepped out of the woodline. Their leader pointed at what he thought was the town's offering, and the field filled with wolf whistles, all too frank assessments of Cirno's body, and absolutely vile suggestions for interpersonal relations.

I pulled my earplugs from my armor and slipped them into my ears. It helped block out the goatmen's bleating, but not by much.

The leader sauntered up to the scarecrow, calling out lewd suggestion that caused the blood to drain from Cirno's face. He reached out to grab a handful of ice fairy, but stopped suddenly as a Colt 1911 pistol jammed itself into his ribs.

"That's no way to talk to a lady," Cirno said. Damn, but that fairy moved fast. She had slipped her bonds, retrieved the pistol hidden inside of the scarecrow, and stepped away in the blink of an eye. Maybe she had been taking lessons from Sakuya.

What? Did you really think we'd actually leave her out there alone without a way to protect herself?

The pistol's hammer fell. Black ichor sprayed out of the demon's back as silver-tipped lead perforated and tumbled through infernal flesh. Cirno's finger spasmed on the trigger until the slide locked back. The last of twenty rounds flew out of the mush that was once the leader's abdomen. He clutched his gut, collapsing wordlessly.

The rest of his pack jeered at the fallen leader before whooping and hollering at Cirno. Only lust demons would mistake a belly full of lead for playing hard to get.

My sights centered on one I labeled One Horn, for obvious reasons.

"Not yet," Reimu cautioned, not even raising her head off her weapon. "You might hit her."

"We never had to worry about overpenetration when we used danmaku," Marisa complained. Not that the witch tended to worry about collateral damage, but we all had to adjust to the fact that unlike danmaku, bullets almost always hit things beyond their targets. Sure, Cirno might be a fairy, but if we hit her by accident, she'd make our lives a living frozen hell once revived.

The remaining satyrs charged the ice fairy, whipped into a frenzy by lust, blood, and the desire to dominate. Cirno threw her empty pistol at the nearest, before frost shimmered in her hands. The closest satyr fell to his knees like a pole-axed steer, an oversized ice mallet lodged in his fractured skull.

Marisa's age bending magic had turned an unassuming mischievous tomboy ice fairy into a raging tsundere ice queen. And by the way she spun that hammer about and through any satyr in her reach; she was in full tsun-tsun mode.

I hated to consider the alternative. If those were love taps, I'd hate to see the nymphet strike in anger.

The butt of the hammer slammed thrice into a satyr's solar plexus before the heavy mallet head shattered on the demon's skull. Cirno screamed and threw the remains into another satyr, pinning it to the grounds. Ice shards flew across the field as she spun frantically, imbedding inches deep in whatever unfortunate object that crossed their path.

"Watch it!" I shouted, rolling out of the way of a shard that landed where my head once was.

"Get out of there!" Reimu shouted. She looked over at me and scowled, tapping the side of her carbine with her finger trigger. I looked down and growled, taking my finger off the trigger. I must have done that while I was rolling. Having a finger rest on the trigger at any time other than in the act of shooting was a cardinal sin.

Out in the field, the grown-up ice fairy spun to a halt, teetering precariously as satyrs encircled her, laughing

Marisa swore, pulling out spell cards from her belt and slipping them into a mounted clip on the side of her shotgun. "We need a long gunner."

I agreed with her. A sniper would help tremendously, but only Reisen had the marksmanship skills worthy of that title, and Team Youmu was off on a mission tonight.

"She's too busy hitting on Youmu," Reimu said, peering down the sights of her carbine. Youmu's little love triangle had become a near constant source of gossip for our team. "Dammit! I don't have a shot."

"500 yen on Sakuya," Wriggle said, lobbing a smoke bomb. Green show billowed from the small canister that landed at Cirno's feet.

Somehow, in all her frantic attempts to regain her balance, Cirno had evaded the groping hands and demonic tackles. The fairy leapt out of the smoke and into the air, screaming as she dove towards our hiding spot. "LETTY!"

She flew past us, crashing headfirst into an open blue box hidden in the brush. Oaths and the clang of metal on metal escaped her hiding place.

Fortunately for Cirno, but unfortunately for the company's bottom line, Wriggle's smoke bomb confused Cirno's suitors. The satyrs yelled at each other, with the cry of "Where did that feisty honey go?" being the mildest by far.

"They'll get away!" I hissed. My sights filled with nothing but green smoke. Sure, we could have flooded the smoke with indiscriminate fire, but there was no guarantee we'd hit what we wanted, and bullets always landed somewhere, usually some place unwanted. Besides, Reimu trained us to be stingy with our fire. The money to buy silver-tipped bullets didn't grow on trees, after all.

"Does anyone have a shot?" Reimu said. The barrel of her carbine wavered through her assigned field of fire. Marisa and Wriggle both yelled, "No!"

"Oh, boys," Cirno purred, dragging something long and heavy out from the box, a metal linked belt draped over her shoulder. "I've got something to show you. That is, if you're all real men."

How the hell did the girl with a century long childhood sound so seductive?

Raucous cheers sounded from behind the smoke. The more adventurous called out suggestions as to what Cirno could show them; those suggestions died in the sound of angry bees.

I never understood the longstanding tradition of giving the smallest members of the team the heaviest weapons, but Cirno had taken to her mini-cannon with all the fiery passion of, say, satyrs toward nymphs. Wild horses couldn't drag Cirno away, and believed me, we tried. Even the combined firepower of Marisa, Yuuka, and Mima all chain casting Final Sparks could not pry the cannon out of Cirno's hands in the moments after she had ecstatically vaporized an entire treeline. She had even named it Letty after her oldest friend, although I knew the snow-woman would be having words with her once she woke up.

"She's a hunter!" rasped one satyr.

Another laughed harshly. "So what? That'll make it more fun when we catch her. You bring friends, sweet cheeks?"

A laser-like stream of tracers lashed out across the field in response, burning holes through the billowing clouds of smoke.

Dark figures appeared, baying for what I hoped was only blood. As the demons rushed towards us, my carbine recoiled in my hands before I realized I had pulled the trigger.

Wriggle and Reimu added their fire to the uproar. Clickety-boom clickety-boom punctuated the cacophony as Marisa manually cycled her automatic Saiga shotgun. The witch just did not maintain her gear.

Silver streaked across the shrinking gap, punching through limbs and bodies. Satyrs dropped but regenerating demons stood up moments afterwards. Still, a lucky head shot or two thinned the pack, and a satyr practically evaporated when Letty's tracer stream touched it.

Demonic stench overwhelmed the odor of spent cordite. I gagged. Why in the world would any girl let something that smelled so foul anywhere near her, much less touch her?

Old One Horn towered suddenly before me. It doesn't take long for humanoids to run 75 meters. I raised my carbine, fired one shot, and swore as the bolt locked to the rear, empty. I tossed aside my carbine, the tactical strap keeping it close to my armor's chest plate.

"I just love getting a girl out of uniform," he purred in a low Barry White-like voice. He lunged at me, his corded muscled bulging. I slid a tanto knife from my belt, sidestepped his grasping arms, and buried the blade up to its handle in his chest. His eyes bulged as I worked the blade back and forth, seeking his great black heart.

Two hands grabbed my shoulders in what felt like a vice grip, and some Thing yanked me backwards off my feet. I stared upwards, getting a nasty up-the-kilt view of a curly-haired satyr. Curly grinned lasciviously as he tore open the Velcro binding my armor together.

I shrieked. Lying on my back surrounded by lust demons was a nightmare come true. One Horn ripped my knife from his chest and reached for my now kicking legs. And the nightmare looked like it was only growing worse.

I reached down by my thigh and drew my backup pistol, a lovingly maintained Colt 1911. I didn't even need to aim; the beastman flooded my field of view. I pulsed the trigger, walking fire from One Horn's thigh up to his forehead before the back of his skull shattered out and away from me.

Curly snarled, seizing my wrist and slamming it against the ground until I dropped the pistol. A cloven hoof stepped down on my shoulder, pinning me to the ground.

"I will take my time making you mine," he hissed, kneeling down until I could smell his hot, fetid breath.

"Aw, but I thought you were here for me."

Curly froze, clutching his gurgling throat as a leaf-shaped blade of ice slipped through his fingers. Ichor rolled down from his neck in rivers, right into my face.

I coughed, spitting gore. Unfortunately, my mouth was wide open when arterial ichor showered my entire body. I squirmed, turning to the side only to see Curly's open-mouthed head bounce away. A heavy pressure crushed my into the earth.

"Are you okay?" Cirno asked. She dropped a stained ice sword by her feet before rolling Curly's lifeless body off of me. She pulled on my armor, trying to stand me up on my feet, but I spilled out from it. I sighed, trying to wipe my face clean as I rolled to my feet, my backup-backup piece in my free hand.

Further down the field, a satyr reached into the haze surrounding Wriggle. Something like smoke gathered around his arm. He screamed, pulling back a bony stump gnawed clean by the insect queen's mites. Marisa and Reimu stood back to back, knives flashing as they cut through air and monster flesh; a trio of headless bodies crumpled at their feet and another trio of monsters pawing at them. All in all, seven satyrs lay on the ground dead.

"Look out!" Cirno yelled. I looked up, and leapt out of the way of a charging beastman. And now would be the time to mention Nitori's First Rule of Combat:

Don't Stop to Count the Bodies.

I felt the chill as a wall of frost flew by, stopping the rampaging lust demon in its tracks as the frost crystallized into a thick pillar of ice.

Cirno looked at her hands in amazement, a wide smile lighting up her face. "I can freeze the whole world!"

I shuddered at the thought, even though the engineering part of my mind pointed out that she'd be a couple magnitudes short of her goal. Hopefully, there would be time to talk her out of it later. I walked up to the pillar, standing behind the frozen demon and waited.

Cirno smiled evilly, and the ice by the goatman's neck thinned. Placing the barrel of my .38 against the base of the satyr's skull, I took care to cover the point where the brain met the brainstem and pulled the trigger. The inside of the ice column flooded with black gore.

"Enough of this," Reimu shouted, pulling a glowing card from a pouch on her armor. "Last Word: Fantasy Heaven!"

Seven Yin-Yang orbs spun around her waist in an ever-widening circle, bludgeoning anything unfortunate enough to stand in the way. Cirno tackled me to the ground. I felt the strong wind of the orbs passing overhead as Cirno and I hugged the earth. The ice pillar shattered, spraying frozen ichor all over us. The orbs then rushed back into her hand.

"Damn it, Red, warn us next time!" Marisa bellowed. She stood up, shaking mud and blood off her armor.

"Are they all dead?" Wriggle said. She remained in the prone, training her carbine on the nearest body. "Is the crazy priestess going to flatten everything again?"

"Sanae's not here," Reimu growled.

"She's the sane one," Wriggle muttered.

"Anyway, I'm not sure," the team leader said, glowering at the firefly. "But there's a way to find out."

I sighed, rolling my eyes as I retrieved my fallen carbine. Turning towards Cirno, I said, "I'll stake, you chop."

Every job has some task no one wants to do. In this case, it's decapitating just under a dozen demons hopefully cooling to room temperature.

It's necessary but nasty work. Evil cheats worse than Reimu on poker night and you don't want to turn around to find the demon that you just sprayed all over the walls suddenly lurking behind you waiting to eat your brain. Fortunately, not very many creatures could survive decapitation. For those that can, there's fire, and lots of it.

Unfortunately, that meant using something thick and heavy to sever muscle, tendon, and bone while dodging as much of the spray as possible. And the operative word is "chop." Sawing or slicing just prolongs the entire gory ordeal.

Don't ask about my first day of hunter training. Just don't.

So thank the gods for Newbies. I'd rather spend the time getting ichor out of my stained and dripping armor…

…And hair…and clothes…and….

I groaned as I rammed the last stake home through the satyr's heart. The ichor was already starting to set on my clothes. If I couldn't find a hose soon, I'd smell drunken frat-goat on my equipment for months.

Staking might seem like overkill, but it's often the only way to get powerful monsters to stop trying to kill you long enough to lop off their heads. By the way, a little safety tip for those would-be hunters out there; don't wave stakes or talk about them in front of the Scarlet sisters. Taunting master vampires is a great way to commit suicide, if you are fortunate enough to die.

The final head rolled away. Cirno melted the oversized crescent-bladed axe in her hands and stepped away. Somehow, that beauty-queen had avoided being covered in gore. I guess there's some benefit in the ability to freeze anything.

"Good job, Rookie," Marisa said, walking up to the ice nymph and handing her a water bottle. "Here, I'm sure you're thirsty."

"Thanks!" Cirno grabbed the bottle and gulped down the drink in long pulls. Marisa and Reimu watched her nervously as they walked over by me. Meanwhile, Wriggle was cleaning up the bodies using huge clouds of her flesh eating insect friends.

"I thought you said this would work," Reimu whispered. "She's not changing back."

"Relax, it'll take a little time," Marisa said, leaning against a tree. She glowered at the back of the ice youkai.

"How much longer?" Reimu asked.

"She seems more powerful now," I said, wiping gore and blood off of, well, everything.

"I'm not worried about that," Reimu hissed. She pointed to where the nymphet had silhouetted herself, the curves of her hips, her waist, and her bust framed prominently against the fading sun. "I'm worried about that."

"You do realize she's going to look like that for decades," Marisa said, scowling. "I didn't do all that work to kill satyrs just to release a teen tsundere ten on the world."

"That antidote better work!" Reimu demanded, her hands against her hips.

Sure enough, it didn't. The way Marisa later described it, after I had taken a three-hour shower and several shots of cucumber schnapps to drown away the smell and taste of satyr ichor, magic has a mind of its own, especially when dealing with beings made of living magic like fairies. I guess Cirno thought it was time to grow up and out.

Reimu and Marisa's jealousy aside, the night still was quite profitable. From "what's that sound" to "thank the gods that's over" had taken maybe ten minutes. In that time, we killed fifteen satyrs. Priced at two million yen apiece, and accounting for the various ways the bounty would be spread throughout the company, my personal take from tonight's little adventure would be three million yen. Not a bad haul for ten minutes of work helping make the world a better place. Plus tomorrow I get to upgrade Marisa's shotgun and Cirno's Letty, as well as work on any number of new monster killing devices.

Is it any wonder why I love my job?

Author's notes:

I've always wondered what would happen if Reimu realized she could get paid for resolving incidents, but the form had eluded me for a while. It wasn't until a little writing experiment snowballed that I had a story that flowed. If the demand exists, either by readers or the muse, I can see additional stories in the future.