"Flan, wake up!"
"Flan thinks she saw heaven..." Flandre was still woozy, only vaguely recalling that someone had beaten her through underhanded tactics.
"Don't say crazy things! Did that angel give you last rites or something? How dare she!"
Fortunately, the protagonist of this incident was the type you could actually reason with, and she'd built a rapport with Reimu from the start—someone who could be talked down with words.
They'd only just gotten started, but the fight couldn't be allowed to continue. If those two kept going—neither able to land a clean hit on the other—Reimu would end up unconsciously re-clearing every boss she'd ever fought before she even found the kid's weakness.
The terrifying part was that aside from veterans like Lady Yukari who'd lived through it firsthand, hardly anyone seemed to realize they'd been used as targets for the redirected aggro.
Never mind Lady Yukari, who'd been sleeping soundly in her futon. Just the punches spent lighting the lamps had already stirred up no small amount of chaos across Gensokyo.
"What's this?" Ran brought Yimi to a stretch of farmland and plucked a tuft of green from the soil.
"Cat grass."
"Catnip, to be precise. For kittens, it's like a stimulant with no side effects." Ran had experience raising young cats.
She produced a pouch and held up the wheat stalks already gathered inside. "And what's this?"
"Don't know." Yimi circled behind her and tried to wrangle all nine tails together into a hug.
Ran didn't stop her. Patiently, seriously, she explained: "This is food that humans eat. Its wheatgrass can also help cats pass the hairballs that build up from grooming."
She reached down and yanked out a patch of the catnip—plants that had put down roots despite needing no external nutrients—only to watch endless seeds instantly reclaim the cleared ground. Once they blanketed the surface, they began encroaching into places they had no business growing.
"But if cat grass fills every inch of Gensokyo, other crops can't grow. People can't even walk normally. Have you seen that narrow path through the forest? People trampled it into existence—as long as nothing grows over the trail, nobody gets lost."
"The catnip you've seeded won't die. It just keeps multiplying. Eventually it could fill every corner of Gensokyo. Think about it—where would you even live?"
Ran noticed the kitten's ears droop.
A good child who actually listens. The mess she'd caused was enormous, but at least she wasn't the fairy type. That alone was a relief.
"And the cat thing—you really do see everyone as a cat?" Reimu trailed behind them with her arms folded, looking thoroughly displeased.
She still wanted to smack this brat's behind. What kind of troublemaker gets away scot-free? The Saint who'd met her gaze hadn't stepped in to discipline the kid—that meant the authority to do so had been passed to her, right? Every incident, she'd thrash whichever culprit she caught.
"Miss Reimu makes a good point." Ran patted Yimi's head, rubbing it the same way she did with Chen.
"Cats and humans are two different species. Perhaps certain practices can transform non-human beings into a humanoid form, but humans are humans. Cats are cats. Foxes are foxes and bugs are bugs. That's how it's been since birth. Would you call a bug a cat?"
She rubbed Yimi's ears. "Besides cats themselves, nobody finds catnip pleasant. And even cats wouldn't use the stuff as a meal, would they?"
What?!
Yimi's small mouth fell open.
There aren't only cats and mice in the world?!
She'd seen a blue cat-bug on a screen back home too—you can't trick her!
"Your own ears should tell you that much." Reimu chimed in from the side. "Humans don't walk around with cat ears on their heads. Even Green Bug's got antennae on her forehead, not ears."
Kitty felt her entire worldview flip upside down.
Everything without cat ears... isn't a cat.
Mama and Grandma don't have cat ears. Kitty really isn't Mama's biological child!
"Get it now? Good. Now undo the incident and apologize to me properly... I didn't call you names, so stop crying!"
"Not crying." Yimi rubbed the moisture from her eyes with her sleeve. "You lied to Kitty..."
"Miss Reimu, you can't raise your voice when a child's crying."
"How should I know? I've never raised one before..."
Compared to past incidents, this one's fallout was relatively contained—thanks to Ran Yakumo's timely intervention. A few more minutes and quite a few people would've come running to get involved.
Resolving the incident wasn't simple. The Third Magic's effect had fundamentally altered the species itself. Every strand of catnip born from it could grow rapidly and propagate endlessly without any external nourishment.
Mayohiga.
"Found it! This one—all the teeth marks on it are mine!" Chen pushed through the overgrowth to reveal the very first catnip plant, the one Yimi had personally planted the day before.
"Chen, you knew about this and didn't report it, didn't you?" Ran spotted the blind spot. She fixed her shikigami with a stern look.
Chen clutched her head and peeked up meekly. "I'm sorry, Lady Ran... it just felt so much nicer to chew than my regular cat grass, and before I knew it..."
"You... sigh."
"Wait, that's it? You're just giving up?!" Over on the sideline, Wriggle voiced her displeasure.
All they'd done was blow up the Scarlet Devil Mansion and it was over? They hadn't even settled the score! This was supposed to be the great revival of insectkind!
"Someone who couldn't last three seconds doesn't get to complain." Reimu grabbed a fistful of ordinary cat grass that Mayohiga already had growing and stuffed it into Wriggle's mouth.
"Ptooey! Ptooey! What IS this?!" Wriggle recoiled in horror.
"Normal catnip. It repels insects. Yuuka seems to have modified the seeds somehow—the incident catnip is the only variety that doesn't affect fireflies." Ran encircled the first plant with a bottomless iron bucket as she explained.
Wriggle turned and seized Yimi's hand. "Please—you MUST end this incident."
"Mm..."
Yimi crouched down, reluctantly poking her gohei into the dirt beside the plant.
The first cat grass to ever enjoy the Soul Materialization of the Third Magic. In theory, every strand of incident catnip across Gensokyo was its descendant.
Once upon a time, this had been a wonderful thing to the kitten. But after Ran's explanation of the damage it caused, its standing in Yimi's eyes plummeted—no longer treasure, now just something that needed destroying as fast as possible.
Whoosh—
Above her head, compressed into an enormous sphere, hovered every last sprig of incident catnip and every seed in all of Gensokyo. Using the gohei she loved so much, Yimi had forced an exchange with the "Progenitor of the Incident Catnip" below—trading it for all of its offspring.
Ran hurled a Spell Card to incinerate the lot, then tossed another into the iron bucket to destroy the original plant.
"Goodbye, Kitty Happy Grass." The kitten crouched down to bid it farewell, still reluctant to part with it.