Hundreds of fairies were swarming ahead. The buzzing and shouting had given way to noisy munching as the fairies were increasingly settling on the train car to eat the protein bars that Yukari had (most probably) intended for Human Town. They were as intimidating as a swarm of sentient locusts.

It takes a few seconds to imagine how scary a swarm of sentient locusts would be.

“Fairies don’t eat human flesh,” I said, mostly to comfort myself as I walked up. Some were looking at me.

“Typically, no,” said Patchouli through the comms crystal. “Especially not when they’ve just had a nice artificial snack.” And indeed, the nearest youkai simply moved out of my way as I approached. Why bother me, when they’d gotten theirs? They were eating gobs of extruded nutrient bars.

“Mice do though,” said Nazrin through the psychic connection.

“What are you doing there?” I asked. The mouse youkai must have returned to the library. That she was available on such short notice suggested that after work she didn’t go far–or perhaps that she often came back after the humans had left.

“I used my dowsing rods to search for food, and it sent me here,” she said.

“Are you sure you didn’t actually locate the projection of an image of food?”

“I’d hoped for more donuts. Can I get some of those bars when this is all done?”

“Sure,” I said as I inched forward. “That means it worked after all. I don’t think we’ll need your help for this, but I’m glad to have you.” I was getting closer to the box car, and now fairies surrounded me. Some pelted me with garbage. Perhaps predictably, they were simply throwing the wrappers on the ground.

One of the fairies coughed, one among several, and suddenly my concern swung around from my own fate to theirs. Some of them were surely doubling their mass by consuming a protein bar of their own size. Chocolate was bad for dogs. What was bad for fairies? Would the foodstuff wreak havoc on their digestive systems?

I may have been projecting some of the foraging issues from Human Town onto the small creatures.

“Do fairies even poop?” I asked.

“They don’t after they eat like that!” said Arnold. Sasha and him were hiding behind me, but Patchouli was using telepathy to bridge the gap, a nice thing for her to do.

“The fiber intake of fairies is extraneous to our concerns, right now,” said Patchouli. “Now is a good time to make your move. They seem to have worn themselves out for the moment.”

I walked up to the train car. All of the fairies were eyeing me suspiciously. One tried to hit me with an artificial chocolate chip, and the one next to her grabbed the first’s chunk of protein and took off, starting a chase that drew six or seven more participants. A few of the fairies were still trying to yank the rail car open. They were bigger than the rest.

The larger the fairy, the more she commanded the respect and allegiance of other fairies. Fairies had a constantly-shifting web of alliances of convenience. Fairies may or may not be made equal, but they did not remain equal for long. They used their power for status-gathering itself, and the fairy that grew the biggest was always the most successful fairy in (social) battle.

Whichever fairy actually came out on top looked like a matter of chance to me–especially since they had an intuitive and compulsory desire to make any fight as evenly-matched as possible–but nevertheless, the biggest fairy was the most powerful. Someone had to win, and statistically, someone would win quite a lot.

Fairy size would naturally follow a power law distribution. Cirno was at the far end of that distribution, the strongest and biggest in Gensokyo, but there were fairies that were close to her in size. The three fairies in front of me were vying for second place, I suspected, because they were as big as human children.

There was a blue-bowed fairy with dark hair who was already facing me. There was a shy fairy with blond curls who fretted over the sideways door. Finally, there was an orange-haired fairy that was yanking on the sliding door handle furiously (albeit in the wrong direction). She kept shouting “Heave!” even though the other fairies weren’t pulling anymore.

Fairies are largely but not wholly incapable of working together. So while the insectile and birdlike fairies dispersed as I approached, these three turned to regard me coolly, a single unit, their shared goal of opening the door set aside but not forgotten. I felt hundreds of pairs of distrustful eyes on my back, and the three more threatening pairs on my front. These three were the only ones big and confident enough not to move out of my way.

“Hey,” said the orange one from atop the car. “It’s a human!”

“Thanks,” I said. “Sunny Milk?” She was the dumbest one, I suspected, so she was the leader.

The fairy put her fists on her hips and stood up straight. “My greatness precedes me!”

“My good friend is a fan.” Wiki was a fan of Touhou, at least. He’d warned me about all the named fairies of Touhou, and I’d recognized these three. They were the Three Fairies of Light. “I’m Jake Thorne, student of danmaku.”

“Star Sapphire,” said the blue one, pointing toward herself. Then she indicated the blonde fairy. “Luna Child.”

“Those sound like pony names,” said Arnold, making me jump.

“Who was that!” shouted Sunny, looking around wildly.

“Over there,” said Star, pointing behind me. “A bigger guy, hiding behind a tree.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be outside our range?” I asked. The whole reason I’d had to reveal myself was that Patchouli needed me to get closer!

“He followed you, presumably so that he could continue to provide commentary,” said Patchouli. I turned around but I couldn’t tell which tree he was behind.

“I followed you, to protect you if necessary!”

“Ponies are nice,” said the blonde one, quietly.

“What are they?” asked the blue one while looking at her fingernails. Then she stuck a finger in her nose. She’d probably checked to make sure she got one without bits of protein bar on it.

“I don’t know, but they sound nice.” While those two had a conversation, the orange one was staring at me in growing horror.

“This human… is haunted!”

“Only by my friends,” I said, before I realized how awful that sounded. “Anyway, I’m here to respectfully ask you to leave the train car alone, please.”

Sunny shook her head, her fear thrown away like drops of water.

“That’s not how you ask for favors!” the bright fairy objected. The other two fairies squared up behind their orange leader. “You know danmaku, right?”

“I do.”

I appreciated her open mindedness. I had just told her that I was a student of danmaku, but that didn’t mean I knew much about it. You could count on a fairy to not make assumptions. Unlike the youkai of the rebellion, she’d check before fighting me.

My favorite reading and writing student hadn’t been able to read or write for many weeks before she finally made the leap, so it wasn’t as dumb as it sounded.

“Then fight us!” said Sunny.

“Alright,” I said, psyching myself up. I’d defeated a lot of fairies on my expeditions, albeit none with the powers these three (probably) had.

“If we win, you’re going to help us open this door,” said Star Sapphire, the blue one.

I slowly nodded. “And if I win, you’ll take one or two protein bars as payment for driving all the other fairies away.” Hundreds of fairies all around us, who had been angrily staring at me, now turned toward the three with confusion and scarcely-diminished will to conflict. I smiled. That they'd been thinking of joining the other fairies' side, instead of my own, suggested that I was the stronger in this matchup.

Patchouli had taught me that fairies wouldn’t form a balanced battle if you preemptively maneuvered them into fighting each other. An intervention could change the battlelines. And they were easy to manipulate. They were like children, after all.

“He’s not very nice,” mumbled Luna Child, the blonde one.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Deal!” said Sunny. She burst with yellow danmaku. I took to the air to battle them. All around us fairies dispersed: they did not know which side to join, so they stayed out of it.

The Three Fairies of Light disappeared, but I was ready for that. After encountering Rumia, Wiki had sat down with Sasha, Arnold, and I to go over weak youkai and their abilities. We’d suspected we might be encountering them later, and it was later already.

Sunny could manipulate sunlight. She used that power to make her and her allies invisible. I used red vectors to sweep the place I’d last seen them, and they were revealed again.

“Good reflexes,” said Patchouli.

“Jerk!” said Sunny as she soared into the air. Star Sapphire zipped off to my left, flying away. Luna Child stepped forward and tripped off the front of the box car. I felt bad for her. She could fly, but she couldn’t necessarily walk.

“Oof,” said the blonde fairy as she sank in a snow drift. Sunny was right in front of me, bursting with danmaku bullets, so I pelted her with red vectors.

“Behind you,” warned Patchouli, and I soared higher.

Star Sapphire was faster than she looked, to sneak around me so quickly, and it would have worked great if she’d been invisible and I hadn’t had observers with panopticon vision. I would not let them surround me.

“Akiba Summer is better than Conviction Mines,” Patchouli reminded me. The librarian was right. If I used my favorite spell card that presented a gift to youkai, it might draw other fairies into the fight. It was a good thing that I had two options.

“Ak–”

“Silence!” called out Sunny. Luna stuck her hand up out of the snow toward me, and the world went quiet.

‘--iba Summer!’ I tried to shout, but it didn’t work. I’d been silenced.

That was bullshit, I thought–this wasn’t Dungeons and Dragons. Calling my attacks was just a trick to trigger them mentally. I kept firing vectors and strafing. Luna finally took to the air to join the other two.

It shouldn’t matter whether I could hear it, right? Unless hearing my own voice was somehow part of the mental pattern of activating the spell card? I tried to imagine my own voice in great detail as I spoke into silence, and it still didn’t work, and I swore again.

“He said ‘Akiba Summer! Fuck!’” said a koakuma over the psychic connection.

I blinked. The demons read lips, which made no goddamn sense with the translation spell, but here we were. It had taken Patchouli less than five seconds to instruct them to route around the silence.

“He said ‘good reflexes,’” said the koakuma.

‘Repeat this in my own voice,’ I mouthed. ‘Akiba Summer!’

“Akiba Summer!” said the koakuma in my voice. That time the spell activated, and I bathed Star Sapphire in danmaku flame.

She didn’t seem hurt or even all that scared. Sunny Milk tried to say something and no sound came out.

“You can’t defeat–stop silencing me!” said the koakuma, in Sunny’s voice. Luna wasn’t fooled–she knew it wasn’t her leader speaking.

‘No!’ mouthed Luna. The koakuma didn’t say anything, perhaps because there wasn’t sufficient data to imitate the quiet fairy. Luna stuck out her tongue at me and fired danmaku in all directions. I hit her back with focused fire. Sunny gesticulated wildly.

“No, you idiot, it’s Sunny speaking!” A moment passed and the demon resumed with a koakuma’s voice. “I apologize for lying, even when echoing another’s words.”

“Wut,” said Luna.

The fairies disappeared again. Now there was no sound, and no visual confirmation. I was able to shoot Luna to reveal her, and Star I caught just in time, but Sunny was nowhere to be found.

The communication crystal spun in place and twisted: Nazrin’s power, unasked for but extremely timely. I fired in that direction and hit Sunny at almost point blank range. She came back into view, pouting.

“I hate you!” said the koakuma through the psychic connection in whiny tones. “Also a lie, incidentally,” she added, much more refined-ly.

I kept fighting the Three Fairies of Light. Sound resumed as I defeated Luna. Star fell soon after, with a resignation that didn’t betray much disappointment. Sunny was the only one left. She fought until the bitter end.

–

“Take that!” said Sunny as she battled the other fairies. They were quickly dispersing. Already consuming two crates of protein bars had been enough to make this a fight not worth having, especially since Arnold, Sasha, and I were helping the Three Fairies of Light with cleanup.

“I enjoy working together,” I told the trio as I sent another fairy away. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” said Sunny, forgetting that I had compelled her to help just a few minutes before. “You’re really strong.”

“Eh. I had help.” I didn’t mention that the fairies had also teamed up, and had still lost. I didn’t want them to feel bad that a good habit hadn’t paid off. “Patchouli, can you tell who’s in the car?”

“It would appear that there are three humans. Since you’ve defeated the fairies, I suggest you open the door yourself.”

I flew atop of the tipped car and pulled on the door. It did not budge.

“We are here to rescue you,” said Patchouli.

“Who the heck are you?” called back a man. I heard his voice in stereo: both over the psychic connection, and as a faint sound from behind the door.

“Jake Thorne. Raghav sent me.”

“You saying it doesn’t prove much.”

“I know him,” said a feminine voice. “He’s here to save us.”

“Maribel?” I asked.

“Yep!” she said. “I’m part of barrier maintenance, although I’m not a miko.”

“I thought you couldn’t use danmaku?” I yanked on the door again. It was jammed shut, having fallen off its rail, and it weighed several hundred pounds. I had no idea how they’d gotten past it or put it back into place.

“That’s why I’m not a miko,” said Maribel. Her voice was shifting down the car. “Danmaku’s really difficult.”

“Isn’t it super dangerous for you to be outside the village?”

“I get two escorts,” she said, her voice even further away. “So less dangerous than you’d think.”

“It’s worth it,” added the man. He was also moving down the car. I followed the sound. “She’s really good at finding weakened parts of the barrier!”

“And treasure,” added the third person, also a man. “If you hadn’t noticed.”

That accounted for all three humans. Renko wasn’t here. That made sense; of the two college students, Renko was the less adventurous. That was one of many ways she defied her ‘canon’ portrayal.

I walked to the edge of the car and saw Maribel staring up at me from the broken door that would normally lead between cars. She waved at me cheerfully.

“I’m glad you stepped up,” she said. She gave me a hug when I landed next to her. “They’d probably have figured it out eventually.”

–

Arnold and Sasha went back to the human village to meet up with the retrieval party. I stayed behind with the communication crystal to protect the barrier personnel, and to help them try to fix the mess that was inside the train car. When I looked, I was dismayed.

The boxcar had originally held twenty or so pallets of protein bars. These had metal bars holding them in place and huge plastic bags between them. Now that it was on its side the bags had popped, the pallets had shattered, and all of the shrinkwrapped stacks of cases had fallen over and separated, making a thick mountain of debris that left only a small space to move through the boxcar.

Two pallets had fallen out of the open door as the boxcar came in for a landing, and the rest had fallen to pieces. Maribel and the others crawled over a pile of loose cardboard, splintered wood, torn plastic packs, and extruded protein itself. The car lights weren’t working so it was almost pitch black inside, but I could see that the lower side of the car had splintered and cracked on impact, letting in snow and dirt. The space was claustrophobic and stifling.

On the bright side, it was at least twenty tons of food. I counted the number of bars in a case, and the number of cases on a pallet. I read the nutritional information.

“What are you doing?” asked Maribel as I scribbled in my notebook.

“Math,” I said, frowning.

“Whatever, Renko,” she said goodnaturedly. Honestly, it was a compliment.

“If four thousand people eat this and nothing but this, we’ll run out of calories in about… twelve days. And that’s assuming starvation rations.”

“We might get tired of protein bars after two weeks,” said one of the barrier personnel through a mouthful of protein. I didn’t begrudge him the snack. He had a lot of physical labor ahead of him.

“I calculated seven days,” said Patchouli. “But you can and should stretch it as far as possible through foraging.”

The man swallowed loudly. “Got any water?” Maribel handed him a canteen (I had no idea where she’d gotten it from) and turned back to me.

“Well, that’s twelve more expedition attempts, at least.”

“Only eight,” I said. “Okina doesn’t want us going on the weekend.”

“Oh…” she said. “It’s better than nothing.”

“That’s true.”

“Who’s Okina?”

“I’ll tell you later.” I looked out toward the barrier, which appeared to be normal woods save for the fact that it was impossible to walk past a shimmer in the air… somewhere over there. In the sky up above was the black hole that led to the Outside World. “If any of you find a shipping manifest, please let me know.”

“Will do,” said another of the barrier personnel. He was sorting intact cases from burst ones.

“Why?” asked Maribel. She and the other man went to join the first. I didn’t, I was busy standing guard.

“I’m just curious about where a trainload of provisions would be going, in the Outside World.” No doubt it was for some billionaire’s bunker, or possibly a military stockpile–but it was being moved by train. It was a heck of a lot of protein in one place.

The labels gave values in calories, and had QR codes for machine sorting. I tore one of the wrappers carefully, right down a line of text, and the two halves stayed English.

“Can you read this?” I asked Maribel.

“Pu–puroh… teen,” she said, looking at the torn text. “The translation spell failed, I think?”

I nodded. It really was English text. “I think these are US military rations.”

Had the AI apocalypse started in earnest, or was this a peacetime stockpile? It was hard to tell–except, no, if the AI apocalypse were underway, trains wouldn’t be running. Would they? My thoughts were interrupted by a telepathic communication.

“A youkai is approaching,” said Patchouli through the crystal, making us all jump. Maribel rushed back into the car.

“What should we do?” asked one of the men. They could do danmaku, but they weren’t as good at it as I was. Not by a long shot.

“Stay here,” I said. “Protect Maribel. I’ll handle this.”

“Take to the air!” said Patchouli. I flew into the sky as the other three hid.

I looked around, scanning for threats. It took a moment for me to spot the green-haired youkai that was approaching.

It was Kasami Yuuka. She flew over to me slowly, almost lazily, as she turned her red eyes down toward the boxcar and the mess the fairies had left. When she looked back up she twirled her parasol and smiled a serial killer’s smile.

“I heard that someone had left some snacks out in the woods,” said the youkai rebellion leader.