View source for 2024-08-10 - To Labyrinth

{|class="toccolours" cellspacing="2"
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! style="background:#CC6699; border: 2px #CC0033 solid; font-size: 110%;" align="center" colspan="2" | '''To Labyrinth'''
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|'''Summary''':<br>
''Setsuna, the Device-Wielders and their friends chase Northa back to Labyrinth to rescue Chiffon, the Momozonos, and perhaps the very memory of magic itself...''
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|'''Who''':<br>
[[Setsuna Higashi]], [[Honoka Yukishiro]], [[Lera Camry]], [[Fate Testarossa]], [[Mikoto Minagi]], [[Nori Ankou]], [[Nagisa Misumi]], [[Kyouka Okazaki]], [[Endo Naoki]], [[Westar]]

GM: Pink Moon Stick
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|'''Where:'''<br>
Yotsuba Clover Town
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|'''OOC - IC Date:'''<br>
8/11/2024  - 6/17/16
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|}

 *+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+ Yotsuba Clover Town +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
   On one horizon, there is mountain and forest; on the other, city and sea.     
   Here there is Yotsuba, a town named for its clover-carpeted hills. It's hard  
   to say if it's any luckier than neighboring towns because of it, but it does  
   feel a little easier to smile around here. Yotsuba is a town for families,    
   with no real pretense of hipness, and enthusiasm spills from every store      
   awning, town council meeting, and local festival. Streets are broad and       
   brick-paved for walking, and the architecture and decorations are             
   birthday-cake pastel against the rich green shrubbery and hills.              
                                                                                 
   Like so many Japanese towns, Yotsuba is built around its shopping district.   
   Clover Town Street runs straight down the middle of town, marked on either    
   side by large archways bearing its name. Greenery, lamp posts and benches     
   cut down the middle. Shops of all kinds line both sides: florist, tofu,       
   candy, supermarket, and accessory, to name a few. Most of the businesses      
   here are locally owned, and their proprietors live on their upper floors.     
                                                                                 
   Yotsuba Park is the social center of the town. With broad pavilions and       
   famous donuts, it is popular enough to be lively and spacious enough to       
   avoid crowding. Its amphitheatre regularly hosts performances, as well as     
   the beauty, dance and idol competitions that have become popular among        
   locals lately.                                                                

 <Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

PREVIOUSLY ON BATTLE FANTASIA

The magical girls make it to the Pericosmic Array and discover that the long-hidden vault of stolen Hearts of Magic, seized by the Knights of Belka from a dozen other worlds in times long past, is on Earth in the form of the lamb baby fairy Chiffon, who has long been in the care of the ferret fairy Tarte from the Kingdom of Sweets, and more recently that of the Fresh Pretty Cure, Setsuna Higashi's team.

Unfortunately, they find this out about fifteen minutes after the Queen of Belka, who has survived these long millennia by abandoning her humanity. It seems that she was Northa all along -- Northa, among the mightiest AND craftiest foes the magical girls have ever faced, who has already inflicted terrible harms on them in the past, including orchestrating the theft of all their henshin devices, stealing all their summer homework to ensure they were unavailable to stop her plans on a crucial day, and, a lot more seriously, dousing everyone in the Sorrow she and other Labyrinth agents had collected, via youma attack, over the course of years. That last one left a mark. It took a traumatizing trip through a mansion of nightmares to overcome.

Northa, who -- as the magical girls look on in horror, half a universe away, through the lens of the Pericosmic Array -- explodes the sanctuary of the Momozono home in Clover Town Street, capturing Chiffon and bringing her back to Labyrinth... as well as three more vine-cocooned, person-shaped captives, for a little insurance against pursuit.

---

THEN

Setsuna, with the power of her red key, can transport everyone to Labyrinth. But it's likely to be a trip of significant duration and perhaps the greatest danger yet faced -- not an absence that will go unnoticed from Tokyo, and one that bears the real possibility of no return.

Everything feels different, this time. It's up to the magical girls to decide if and how to get their affairs in order.

Though they aren't totally without logistical support.

Lindy Harlaown, Fate's mom, Tuner conductor and ex-TSAB officer, is an extraordinary resource for just this kind of major operation, willing and able to make phone calls, provide cover stories, and, also, make sure everyone eats a good meal and drinks some water before they leave. She is pinched and pale with stress, but somehow as gracious as ever, cool under fire. She may not be the captain of a ship anymore, nor the leader of these girls, but she can give them a place to sit and collect themselves.

Also, she can give them intel.

It doesn't look good...

Screen after screen all display the same horrible vision. Another world -- the Kingdom of Sweets, with its mixed ferret and animated ice cream populace -- Midchilda, the modern-day inheritor of Belka's magitechnological aspirations -- and more, so many more, as many permutations on fairy realm and magical world as exist in the many dimensions -- are all falling.

No. They have all fallen.

The sky is slate gray, and so is the ground. All color is gone, drained. The water is still; there is no wind. And the inhabitants -- people and adorable fluffballs alike -- are standing still, still as statues. But it quickly becomes apparent that it would be kinder if they ''were'' statues. Their eyes are empty of all light.

Their lips move in sync, in some monotonous chant, though these feeds are visual-only.

From a distance, it looks like something like a tower is on every world's horizon. Enhanced, it is thinner than that... a bundle of evil gray cables, disappearing beyond the sky, beyond orbit, beyond the ordinary concepts of spacetime. Breaking all the rules.

They crackle, however, with a purely cyan light -- not the nasty green typically associated with Labyrinth energy, but another power entirely.

("Puri pi! Purikyua!" burbled Chiffon playfully in the bath. Gorgeous cyan radiance embraced the sponge, the soap bar... even, with an impossible gentleness, individual bath bubbles, which engorge to the size of peaches and rise to float overhead along with the fluffy infant herself, whose chubby, tiny paws flex with innocent glee as her big fawn eyes are reflected in every iridescent sphere.)

"It's happening here, too," says Hayate urgently. She is in her chair today. There is too much going on for her to want to risk an accident with her canes. "Look."

The Harlaowns do have a regular television (if mostly for plausible deniability, in case Lindy has one of her normie mom friends over), and it is tuned to the news.

There is a cable rising out of Paris, and even as they watch, color is draining into it, and so much more. From an aerial view, one can easily the expanding radius of the grayed-out zone. It will certainly cover the whole world in hours, if not sooner.

A French newscaster, subtitled, is giving a panicked report about a mysterious attack--

--and then his eyes, too, empty.

"Everything for Lord Moebius," he utters, in a strange, listless monotone.

NOW

Once they're each ready, the group assembles at the Yotsuba Park fountain, the chosen meeting place where Setsuna will lead everyone to Labyrinth. The fountain knows nothing of impending doom; it burbles as gaily as ever at the end of a Clower Town Street that is muted in mood, given the dire international news on every channel, but still possessed of green grass and park benches and a donut truck. The sky is, for now, a very pale blue, the blue of early mornings and of clouds too high and too wispy to pick out individually; more the idea of clouds than clouds themselves.

Tarte and his girlfriend Azukina (a pinker, softer ferret fairy) are here first. The former has a green fabric rucksack slung over his back that's almost as big as he is. He looks frantic with worry for the universe in general and Chiffon in particular, but also resolute. 

They are holding paws with each other.

 OOC: This sceneset has a lot in it -- the revelation of the fall of the magical worlds and the attack on Paris, an invitation for
 people to get their affairs in order in terms of telling their parents something (or not, if it's not applicable, or if you'd
 rather just handwave Lindy taking care of it for them, or otherwise not engage with this beat, it is thoroughly optional), and
 finally arrival at the fountain/departure gate for Passion Airlines.
 
 <Pose Tracker> Setsuna Higashi [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

Setsuna Higashi walks alone into a house she knows to be empty. The living room, the site of so many friendly conversations, hs no one in it; the television is off, Keitarou's armchair unoccupied. Setsuna herself is de-henshined, walking in just as an ordinary girl in red and white. 

It's hard. It's very hard. But she wants to remember this place, in case... 

In case she doesn't come back.

So Setsuna steps around, despite the dim; she turns on a light, but it doesn't really make her feel much better to be able to see in detail. She remembers mostly what isn't here. Until..

"Secchan?" 

From the kitchen come two people; Keitaru and Ayumi Momozono, rushing towards their foster daughter. "You're here!" Ayumi says, "Oh, I was so worried when that woman came--"

Keitarou is not ''stoic'' really, but he is quieter. He sees something in Setsuna's eyes, and she proves it soon after. ...Not before she rushes to hug Ayumi, and then Keitaru though. "Mom!" Setsuna says, her voice choking slightly. "Dad..."

Setsuna has never been a particularly touchy individual in the sense of hugs or contact, so it's a surprise. But within moments, they're talking again. "There's something very wrong," Keitarou says. "I can feel it. But we'll keep you safe, Setsuna, now that you're here."

Setsuna's heart both fills and threatens to break, at that. But... "No," she says. "It's my turn. To thank you, for everything you've done for me. To keep ''you'' safe. ...I know I never explained where I came from, but..."

"You never had to," Ayumi says. "And you still don't. Where you came from isn't as important as who you are now, Setsuna. Remember that."

"Mom, I..." Setsuna pauses, then, and looks around. "Wait..."

"Where's Love?"

-=-=-

In the end, it was hard to convince them to let her put herself in danger, but the understanding that she was from another world--the same world as Northa--was part of it... and ultimately, it was clear that Setsuna would go regardless. Her parents gave their blessing--an extracted a promise to return safely with Love. Now...

-=-=-

Setsuna Higashi is there, when the others arrive. Her eyes are dry; she is as stoic as she ever was, very little emotion showing in her expression. But the ''weight'' on her shoulders is practically tangible. The pall over proceedings is nowhere more prssent than it is on the girl whose world's forces they seek to topple.

"Everyone..."

Setsuna looks up, and she will meet the eyes of each person who is willing in turn. Her red eyes are wine-dark like the sea, and she looks to Tarte, too. "...I know it's not just for me," she says. "But thank you."

"I thought..."

"I thought I would never go back," Setsuna admits. "But now I'm going with my friends. It will be dangerous. I don't know what Northa has planned for us... And the other Fresh Pretty cure have been captured by her. Peach, Berry, and Pine... I'd be on my own, if you weren't with me. But we'll go."

"I won't run away any longer. I will stop Lord Moebius and Northa both!" 

Her fear is not gone. But there is something stronger than her fear here. Someones stronger than that fear. And some of those...

Well. Ayumi and Keitarou Momozono are there, to see her off. "Be careful," Ayumi says again to Setsuna, for what may be another time. "...Remember that you can come home," Keitarou says. "I expect to see you both--you ''all''--when this is over."

"...I'll bring her back. Love. And Miki and Buki, too. I promise." 

"And yourself?" Ayumi presses. 

"...I'll do my very best."

 <Pose Tracker> Honoka Yukishiro [Juuban Public School (11)] has posed.

How many times did they have this exchange?

"Itte kimasu," said Honoka. I'm leaving, and I will return.

"Itterasshai," said her grandmother Sanae. Be safe.

Honoka Yukishiro arrives at a jog, which means she's a bit dewy and breathless; she is no athlete, not like her partner. Hers are other strengths.

One of them is that when she arrives, a certain serenity arrives also. She exudes a mix of calm and confidence that washes over the park like the surface of a tranquil, cool lake. 

That hasn't changed about her, but it is more pronounced than it used to be, because in some ways she feels less like a child and more like an adult. Not a full-on Mom Magical Girl like Lindy, but definitely a person with a foot in both worlds. If she's become older and wiser, it's probably because she's also become sadder; someone who has faced terrible adversity and emerged from the other side different than she was before.

But stronger, too.

Although perhaps she sparkles a bit less innocently than once she did, she burns more fiercely than ever at her core.

She greets the group with a familiar nod, and Setsuna, particularly, with an outstretched arm. Her hand closes over one of the other girl's shoulders, and squeezes, ever so gently.

"We'll get them back," she promises. And Honoka never lies.

Withdrawing after as much of an embrace as Setsuna wants -- Honoka herself is very reserved and has become more, not less, touch-sensitive over time, making this a significant exception -- she bows respectfully to the Momozonos, and, after a fashion, repeats herself.

"We're leaving," she tells them earnestly, "And we will return."

 <Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.

Lera Camry is as ready as she can be for the trip. She has faced Northa before; she remembers many days, but most prominently, the day that she killed Setsuna Higashi. It was only through becoming a Pretty Cure that Lera got her back. She has always been grateful for that.

But she has always been angry at Northa since that day. She has always been scared of Northa since that day.

	* * *

"That's bad, y'know?" she says, softly, as she looks at the screens showing so many different worlds. Midchilda is one of many, but it's the one her amber eyes are stuck on. That's home -- or it ''should'' be, with its snow-capped mountains and green fields and bright, shining cities. But right now, it doesn't have those.

It's flat, grey, and dead; its people move, as one, and speak in unison.

She shivers. Then, she looks at what Hayate points out. "This is ''really'' bad."

	* * *

She didn't have affairs to put in order. Her mother is on Midchilda; Lera didn't need to look to know that she was with those masses. She spent some time with Setsuna... but most of it was quiet. Not distracted, not distant, but quiet.

They've talked about going to Labyrinth before. In many different ways, and sometimes as an argument in the early days.

Not like this, but it's still a promise to be fulfilled.

Now, she stands -- Soaring Sky resting over a shoulder, as a broadsword; Broken Ground as a clockwork shield, at her side. She exhales, then, and looks at the fountain. She glances at Honoka, too, as she arrives; Lera smiles.

Then, at Setsuna. She smiles at her. "Hey," she says. "I told you... I'd be with you, wherever you go, y'know? And if we have to go back there..."

There is a glance at the Momozonos. Then, she looks back at Setsuna. She steps closer, then puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Then let's go. And we'll all come back!"

 <Pose Tracker> Fate Testarossa [Infinity Institute (5)] has posed.

The idea of an alliance with Jail still makes her uneasy, the way he agreed to giving 'You' away so casually when Setsuna set the terms, it's upsetting - upsetting in a way similar to her own mother, yet entirely different. But what choice did they have? Northa is the Queen of Belka...

... Fate was quiet, as things were logistically put into place, but she looks anxious and stressed in an entirely different way from Lindy. Screen after screen, she watches images of horror. Fairy Kingdom after Fairy Kingdom. Watching them all become enslaved, automatons to her will.

She can only imagine how Setsuna feels, going home. Knowing Chiffon is involved, returning to Labyrinth - facing the one who killed her. It's so upsetting... to know that Northa was waiting in the wings, planning, plotting this, for so long... this horror.

Once in the park, she listens... she looks at Setsuna once she's finished, "You keep saying 'I'... We'll be with you for this, all the way to the end." Despite the mild admonishment there, there's a gentle smile, as she notes to her, "You're not alone, not this time."

She then looks towards Lindy Harlaown, and while she's not... prepared to say the words, there is something she will say, perhaps it is because she is inspired by Passion to say it.

"... You invited me into your home, a home you let me help you build with you." She bows down, her blonde twintails dipping to each side as she tells her, "If all of us must fight to protect that - then not only can I fight - but I know without a doubt, we'll win."

Straightening back up, she looks to Lindy, but it is a vow to more than just her, it is one to Lera too, and Nanoha, and Endo, and Nori - to everyone who's been there for her every step of the way, "I promise you - when this is over I will return to it."

 <Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

	Mikoto Minagi's family knows. Her Brother, obviously; Mai, too. Mikoto talks to her, and assures her she won't be lost, when she visits Labyrinth. More importantly -- she won't let ''Setsuna'' go. (A reasonable concern, given... well.) She asks Mai to take care of things back here, on Earth -- and she asks ''her'' to take care of that side of things, because she knows Mai has family, still here.

	No -- it's not her family who stop her, on the path.

	"Mikoto-chan!" That's the brown-haired Aoi Senou, hurrying up with grey Chie Harada behind her. "Did you see what's going on in Paris?!"

	"You know, right?" Chie asks, her face drawn, behind her square glasses. "All that weird stuff..."

	"... yeah," Mikoto nods, turning, a hand on the strap of her sword-case. "'That stuff'. Everyone'll forget when it's fixed..." A light pause, a shrug of one shoulder, "probably."

	(Feels like the world's ending.)

	"But -- you're going out there?" Aoi asks, grasping Mikoto's other hand. "Mikoto-chan, you're still our junior. It can't be you!"

	Mikoto squeezes her hand, and smiles, to her. "Mm-hmm," she says. "It's me. But it's not 'cause it has to be. It's 'cause I want to," she says, brightly. "I'll protect Chie and Aoi, too!"

	"Then..." Chie puts a hand on Aoi's shoulder, as she takes a step back, reluctantly. "Then -- we're counting on you."

	"Thanks!" Mikoto smiles, as she turns, and hurries off of campus.

	~*~*~

	And then she's here, at the Yotsuba Park fountain. She drops down from a building, and lands like a cat; straightening up, she walks the rest of the way, and keeps walking towards Setsuna.

	Hup, she squeezes her right around the belly, in a big hug.

	"Setsuna's okay?" She asks, looking up to her, before she straightens up and lets her go. She smiles, bright and confident. "Let's go together."

	She could say a lot about where they're going, but...

	... Setusna already knows.

 <Pose Tracker> Nori Ankou [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

"Mother; father.

"If you are reading this I do not think I will be returning. 

"It's nothing that you did. One day I hoped to talk about it with you, but perhaps it would be best, in the final analysis, if all that you knew is -- I was trying my best, my absolute best to be the best even --" 

Nori's eyes squeeze tightly. She doesn't want to cry, given what comes soon. 

Only one drop touched the nice paper. 

Brushing it aside, Nori resumes writing. 

"I hope that you will both get to see Momotaro grow up and go on to big and wonderful things. 

"Don't worry about me. 

"I don't have any regrets at all. 

"With

A pause. One long enough for a tea break. Nori picks up after: 

"With love, 

"Nori Ankou 

Nori folds the letter, then; she puts it in the envelope she already addressed. The necessary postage was affixed. The last step is a sticky note on top of the envelope, which she sets in a very obvious place on the countertop of her kitchenette:

'If I'm not here and you've come in, please drop this in the mailbox. 

'You can have my things for your trouble.

'But if you don't put it in the mail,

'I'll haunt you. 

NOW 

La Sirene de Diamant walks down the path. Accompanying her, on shoulder-top ride, is Batiste, the estimable otter. 

In the sunny daylight, which does seem to be making her squint a little, she does look peculiar; the nimbus of glimmering unlight makes her seem almost cell-shaded, the inverted radiance mostly drowned from visibility by the sunny day. 

"... Heh," la Sirene de Diamant says as Keitarou lays a charge upon them. Her head tilts down, and she smiles, if in a faintly rueful way. 

Batiste speaks up instead. "It is our delight and our honor to stand with you again," he squeeks. "There have been many times where one person made all of the difference in the world, and we have several more than that right here!" 

It's a small note. La Sirene de Diamant raises her head then, and turns to look at Fate with a faint smile. Then, to Setsuna: "I think that Fate put it better than I could hope to. There's too much out there, I think, that we haven't had the chance to see and to do and to ''be''... no one has the least right to take it away." 

She reaches up to sweep a hand through her hair. "... That's all. I have no regrets for any of it." Maybe, perhaps, she exaggerates; but maybe only a little. 

 <Pose Tracker> Nagisa Misumi [Juuban Public School (11)] has posed.

Tokyo is a city of many screens, not a few of which face the street directly. By now, everyone knows what's happening in Paris. The cicadas, though, are out of the loop. Their rhythmic summer buzzing follows the rubber hush of Nagisa's bicycle wheels on the path, as she rides down to the park. Leaning the bicycle against a probably-not-totally-legal parking space she makes out of a streetlight, she jogs down the broad paved boulevard to TAKO CAFE, a pastel-colored food van occupied by a single young woman in a red kerchief and purple apron.

"Akane-san!" she calls.

"Yo," the adult answers, standing up and dusting her hands. "Nagisa-chan. This isn't your usual time."

Coming to a stop under the cafe's awning, Nagisa glanced at the radio next to Akane's elbow, currently chattering about Paris at a low volume. "You heard the news, I guess."

"Yeah, pretty horrible stuff." Akane pulled on some filmy plastic gloves and sprayed down her iron with oil. "Crazy world out there."

"Y-you don't have to cook," Nagisa hastened. "You didn't close up shop?"

"Hm? Paris is pretty far away." Glancing back, Akane caught the worried look on Nagisa's face, and set down her preparations for a moment, turning to her. "I don't worry about things I can't do anything about," she says, leaning on the counter to look down at her young friend. "Besides, people still gotta eat."

"So that's how it is," Nagisa looks down. "Only worry about things you can do something about."

"Nah." Akane looks over her tiny little fiefdom of three white tables and nine white chairs. "If I can do something about it, there's no reason to worry."

Nagisa looks up at her crossly. "So you just don't worry?"

Akane smiles crookedly. "I think people should get paid to worry. So I only worry about what my customers pay me to worry about."

"So you just worry about takoyaki," Nagisa said skeptically.

"Sou," Akane agreed placidly. "All I worry about is takoyaki."

Nagisa cleared her throat a little, and nodded. "Akane-san."

"Hm?" Akane picked up her tongs as she stood up again.

"Could I get a..."

Akane looked back at her quizzically, giving her tongs the traditional click. "Six or a dozen?"

Nagisa blinked, then smiled ruefully. "...six," she relented. "I'm in a little bit of a hurry."

Akane grinned. "That's the perfect time to order takoyaki, she said."

-=-=-

The same jog that brought Honoka here, brings Nagisa about a minute later. To her, it's just a mild warm-up, a stretching of the limbs. It's not very fair. But then, where Honoka brings serenity, Nagisa brings... a different sort of aura.

"I've got two takoyaki left," she announces. "They're sorta squished! But they're super..."

Nagisa takes in the dissonance between her lackadaisical tone and that of her comrades, and trails off. Her eyes fall on Setsuna, sympathetically.

"...Fresh," she concludes.

Nagisa falls more readily to solemnity than she used to. She's gotten taller, and lost some baby fat. Her golden tan deepened more than usual last summer and it's lasted through the year. Exuberent though she is, she comes across as a young woman now, not a girl, which can be mournful when one was so magnificent a paragon of girlhood. Time has its costs. And, it's clear when Nagisa smiles like a soft sunrise at her partner Honoka as she embraces Setsuna, it has its rewards.

The way Nagisa waits by that hug is so contented that somehow it manages to encourage Setsuna to continue it, rather than passively hurry her out of it. But whenever it does end, she hugs Setsuna too, harder, tighter, and briefly. "Pretty Cure take care of each other," she adds simply. And, as she steps back, "and magical girls do too."

Fate sure is getting big, isn't she? As she folds her arms, Nagisa looks upon her with a mixture of approval and sadness. Kids shouldn't need to do this sort of thing... but then, Nagisa feels like she started when she was a kid, too. She wonders where little Ako Shirabe is right now. She wonders if her friend Buki is okay.

Lifting the brown paper to-go bag with its two squished takoyaki, she offers it to Mikoto.

 <Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

"Are you--" Clara almost shouts, but catches herself, and then hisses silently. "Are you ''crazy''? You know what telling them is going to do, right?"

Kyouka takes a deep breath, and then slowly lets it out. "Yeah, I know."

She's sitting backwards in the chair at her desk, looking out into the middle of her room. Her arms are folded on the back of it, and she's resting her chin on top. Clara, meanwhile, in her human form (sans ears and tail, for the moment), is pacing back and forth on the floor.

Clara stops, and turns to face Kyouka, her expression serious. "Look, I can... I can cover for you. I can use an illusion to look like you, take your classes--" A thought occurs to her, and she asides, "... maybe bring up your grades in grades in Math..." She shakes her head. "Look, the point is, just... be really sure about this, okay? There's no going back."

Kyouka studied Clara thoughtfully for a moment. "... Here." She got up, went to her closet, and retrieved a small box tucked away in the back, and from it produced an envelope. Silently, she handed it to Clara, who opened it and began to read the letter inside.

"Dear Mom and Dad, if you're reading..." Clara glasped and flinched, thrusting the letter away from her and recoiling back. She regarded the mage for a long, silent moment. "... Kyouka..."

The girl shrugged a little. "That letter was a 'just in case'. We're... we're way past 'just in case'. So... they deserve to hear it from me. Besides, I never liked this whole... keeping secrets business anyway."

She turned and headed downstairs.

Her parents were there, chatting at the kitchen table. Both had a cold cup of coffee that was sitting untouched. Kyouka sat down at the table and took a deep breath. "Mom, Dad, something happened to me about seven months ago that I need to tell you about. It's not... well, mostly not bad, but just... let me explain."

----

There had been a stunned silence, after she had finished explaining everything. Neither Drew nor Yuki said anything for a long time. Until Yuki jumped to her feet. "Absolutely ''not''!"

Kyouka winced. "Mom, please--"

"No! I won't have you just, just... galavanting off to who knows where to face some kind of magic-eating minotaur--"

"Mom," protested Kyouka quietly. "It's not that kind of labyrinth."

Yuki leaped to her feet and stomped her foot. "I don't ''care'', whoever put you up to this, you can just tell them that-- that you're not interested! That it's too ridiculous to put the fate of the world on the shoulders of my baby girl, and, and..."

The mage smiled haplessly. "It's... not really the kind of thing someone puts you up to. At least, it wasn't for me. I just..." She reflected for a moment. "... knew the right thing to do, and did it. Sometimes that's all it takes, with this kinda stuff."

The older woman turned away, hugging herself. "But it isn't ''fair'', I can't stand the idea that... that..." Her voice started to tremble and then tapered off.. and soon Kyouka realized she was sobbing.

"Mom--" said Kyouka, rising to her feet.

But Drew was up first, drawing Yuki into a tight embrace as he rested his chin on top of Yuki's head. "Dear..."

Yuki said something unintelligible into Drew's chest.

"I know," said Drew gently. "I know..."

Eventually, the older woman settled down. Kyouka waited, awkwardly for the right moment to say something more. Clara, however, had sensed it was time to make her exit and had retreated upstairs.

"I just..." Yuki sniffed as she pulled away from Drew's chest. "... I just... I made my piece with ''you'' not coming back someday, but for Kyouka... You can't just... ''spring'' this on me a-and then just... I need time, I..."

"I wish I had more time, Mom." Kyouka's eyes were misty but she was doing her best to hold it together. If she broke down now, that'd just make it harder. "But the other worlds have fallen. They're attacking Paris. I wish I'd told you earlier, but I wasn't sure how you'd handle all this magic stuff, and... If I don't--"

"Don't you ''dare''!" snapped Yuki.

Kyouka forged ahead. "If I ''don't'' come back, I just wanted to let you know that... you were great, even the times we were fighting, and I learned so much from you, and you too, Dad, and I'll try my damdest to come back, and..." Her voice was cracking, and she tried to force the next words to come out.

Suddenly, Yuki grabbed her daughter and held her close, and the two shared their grief and fear for a good long while.

----

"Well... I guess I can't stop you, then," said Yuki, much later.

"Not really, but... I..." Kyouka rubbed at her eyes, which were still red. "I iknow it's a lot to ask you to be okay with this, but..."

Yuki took a deep breath, sipping from a cup of tea. Her eyes were red, too. "Let's say... I understand it. I'm not... ''thrilled'', but..." She puffed up her chest. "If yuou're going to do this, I expect you to give 110. I won't have any daughter of mine doing sloppy work out there, you hear me?"

Kyouka grinned, faintly. "You got it."

"Right. Well." She stood up and moved over to the kitchen. "Even if you've got magic, you'll need to keep your strength up, and..."

Kyouka watched Yuki move around the kitchen for a moment, and then glanced to her Dad, who had been silent this whole wile. "... What about you, Dad...?"

Drew reached over to ruffle Kyouka's hair. "I get it, kiddo. Go knock 'em dead."

----

There had been more hugs. And more crying. And more preparation. But Kyouka had given them Lindy's contact info, and she showed up at the meeting spot with dry eyes and a determined set to her jaw. She was dressed in jeans and a tank top, and had a backpack with her. Clara was with her, in her human guise, wearing the lab coat that served as her barrier jacket.

She slammed a fist into an open palm. "Alright. Let's go kick some butt."

 <Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (12)] has posed.


Scrub scrub scrub...

After the incident at Izakaya Joji, Endo comes clean.

He's had some practice at that conversation - he's done it before, in a world that doesn't exist anymore. It wasn't exactly the same, but there were familiar notes. Chiaki Naoki's response to her son's secret is not disappointment or anger at being kept in the dark, but mostly exasperation.

"Why can't you just not worry me for one day," She says. "Why are you like this?"

And that was that.

Wosh wosh wosh...

"Eat it." Endo's mother says, planting two plates of katsu curry down on the table between them. She's said next to nothing since Endo haa explained what happened at the Paracosmic Array. She's ignored him for most of the day, working diligently in the kitchen until near afternoon.

They make it about halfway through the meal before she speaks again.

"You're just like your father. If it was him, he'd probably do something even stupider."

"I know."

"We both worked hard for you, you know. You were supposed to go to a good school and become a good company man who'd take care of us." She continues.

"Aah"

"...I don't want to be the last one to die." She says, her voice finally breaking.

Endo spoons up a mouthful of curry, swallowing hard and taking a swig of water to buy time. "I have to go." He replies. "But I'll be okay. I promise."

"I'll disown you if you don't. I'll tell everyone I don't have a son." Ms. Naoki wags her spoon at her son, her eyes with with tears.

Endo laughs, and his mother does too.

And then they part, hugging tight.

"I love you."

Wipe wipe wipe...

"There." Endo lays the smooth, soft cloth aside and admires his handiwork. He's been at it for thirty minutes, having taken the time to make this one last stop on the way to the meetup.

Matsumoto Naoki's headstone, one amidst a long row, gleams in the dim light. Endo, squatting in front of it, lets out a heavy puff of breath.

"Well," Endo notes, "I guess that's good enough. If I don't clean for a while, you can complain to me in person next time." He smiled, the curve coming unbidden to his lips.

Then, after a moment of contemplative silence, Endo stands.

He bows once, scrubs his eyes clean, and starts the walk to Yotsuba.

Walk walk walk...

Endo wags his hand from a distance as he approaches his converging friends. He gives a wide smile, unburdened by doubt or unwilling to let the people he cares about see any that still might linger.

"I'm ready." He says, giving a nod to the gathered. "Whatever happens, we'll get through. Let's go save everyone and unplug the planets!"

 <Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

Jail is indeed here, in the body of the older Fate clone. Hayate and Nanoha aren't, and neither are many other magical girls; the decision has been made to attempt a last-ditch countermeasure against the approaching darkness which requires a great deal of sacrifice from a great many people (OOC: and helpfully explains why they're not here). It's too late to defend Paris, but maybe it's not too late to save Tokyo, or at least delay its fate for as long as possible, to buy Setsuna's strike team time to resolve things at the root.

Jail leers a little at Fate (through her own eyes, in a way, which makes it worse, in every way). Some extremely nasty thoughts are dancing behind those ruby spheres, obviously; he shares them only with his 'daughter,' on a very tight telepathic band.

&lt;&lt; You have bonded remarkably well to a replacement mother, my dear. Then again, you did it once before. &gt;&gt; Because Precia wasn't really her mother, through at least one interpretation of her origins. Jail's not the type to share credit, or anything else. &lt;&lt; I suppose it is a part of your package. Think of it as a gift from me to you. &gt;&gt;

Lindy manages not to cry at Fate's sweet words by the ''barest'' of margins, but there's definitely a film of moisture over her gaze.

"And I promise you, Fate-chan - that we will be here to return to." 

Then she skewers Jail with a look, and it's likely that a second conversation occurs at the speed of thought, with or without telepathy. He mugs a chastened expression with Fate's soft lips, but says nothing more aloud, or silently.

 <Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

	Nagisa lifts that bag of takoyaki, and Mikoto's whole ''face'' lights up. It starts at her eyes, too gold and too bright and sometimes -- but not right now -- too ''catlike;'' it spreads to her smile, lifting her nares and her cheeks and the lines beneath her eyes, jaw lowering to make room for her grin. "Mm!" She hums, happily, as she takes that squished little snack, and lifts one of the takoyaki up to Setsuna.

	The other, of course, disappears into the eternal furnace of her maw. MONCH.

	"It's good!!"

	With that, she's ready... and she hopes Setsuna is, too.

	(And Fate, who she has a specific, sunny smile for, as Linkrun chimes.)

 <Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.

Lera looks sideways at Fate. She flashes a smile; it's a similar thought to Nagisa. She ''has'' gotten taller. She tips her hand to her brow, with the arm with Broken Ground on it. "Ready, Fate?"

There's a look around, too. At Nagisa and then at Kyouka. She smiles at them both, before she looks at Mikoto. She flashes her a quick grin; it's a little forced, but forced cheer beats the alternative. Then, she looks at Endo.

She nods. "Yeah," she says. "Time to get our homes back to the way they should."

Then, she looks at Jail -- and she gives the clone of a frown, but nothing more. She can't hear those thoughts, after all.

She looks back at Lera. She smiles, then she nods, and steps to her side. A flash of red light erupts around her.

Her amber eyes go wide.

"Wait, wait, crap, I forgot my phon--"

She vanishes.

 <Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

Kyouka gives Jail a silent glare, knowing he's there in that clone body. She doesn't have anything to say to ''him'', but...

She does reach out to offer Fate some reassurance in the form of a hair tussle.

She nods firmly back to Setsuna. She said her piece already, that they'll get her family back. And a grin for Lera, despite the grim circumstances.

They're only gonna get through this if they believe they ''can'' make it through this, after all.

 <Pose Tracker> Fate Testarossa [Infinity Institute (5)] has posed.

Fate bobs her head at Lera, looking at Mikoto eating Takoyaki... in wonder, before smiling, at that, and 'Setsuna's' correction, before blinking in surprise at Kyoka's hair tussle...

Jail is galling, even now - still utilizing her body so casually, the threat obvious, the lack of worth, him - watching her, with those eyes that mirror her own, and when he sends her that telepathic message, all can see her stiffen.

&lt;&lt;She's not a replacement anything.&gt;&gt;

Fate replies, suddenly, trying to sound calm - but unable to keep the heat out of her own head. She cannot say the word yet, on what Lindy is to her...

... she just knows, replacement is wrong.

&lt;&lt;And even if you helped give me life...&gt;&gt;

Her eyes slide from the Ruby eyes of 'You' to Lindy.

&lt;&lt;... you didn't give me that.&gt;&gt;

It surprises her, for a moment, to see the tears in Lindy's eyes, and within a moment there's droplets of water forming in her own.

Precia would never have cried for her...

"Then, please wait for me. I promise..." A smile forms on her face as she looks from Lindy to all the rest, to Mikoto eating Takoyaki, to Nagisa, to Lera, to Endo, to Passion, and Endo, and despite them all knowing this will be a long trip, as Akarun rises, to consume them within crimson light.

"...we won't be long."

There's no time to register that Lera forgot her phone before-!

 <Pose Tracker> Setsuna Higashi [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

The Momozonos step back; the reassurances the others give them, like Honoka, are appreciated. ...Even if it's a little strange to know these things. Like that Setsuna's young girlfriend has a SWORD of all things, or how wise and responsible Honoka looks. 

Setsuna, too, appreciates each. "Thank you," she says to Honoka, and gives a wordless smile to Lera who tells her what she's told her before. "I remember," she says. "...Wherever we go, if you're with me, I can do my best." 

Honoka's hug is a comfort; so is Nagisa's, when it comes. And Nagisa... "...Yes," Setsuna agrees with Nagisa. 

"...'We', then," for Fate. Fate, who understands better than most what it's like. And Mikoto... Mikoto gives her a hug. Setsuna puts her arms around her friend in turn. "I'll be okay," she says, which isn't quite the same thing that she asked. "...Since we're all going together." 

Setsuna knows. 

Keitarou nods with a little surprise but much dignity to Batiste. And Setsuna looks to Nori. 

"Yes," Setsuna says. "These feelings that you've all shown me... we'll protect them." 

Kyouka is there, and Setsuna nods firmly to her resolve. Then, she looks to Endo. Unplug the planets... "Yes," Setsuna answers. "We'll... unplug them. Moebius doesn't get to decide for everyone!" 

Once they're all ready--or at least willing to say as much--Setsuna lifts her Linkrun, and looks to the little red key fairy floating around her. "Akarun," she says, and the little fairy is shaped like a key; there's a reason for this. A key, with a heart-shaped base and a little ribbon.

"It's time."

"Kiii!" With a flash, Setsuna engages her Linkrun--and a bubble of brilliant red light surrounds the group. There is a 'pop' as they disappear from the park, and...

 <Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

&lt;SoundTracker&gt; The Emissary From The Maze - Fresh Precure OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uQjzu6C2dk

Being teleported by Cure Passion's Akarun (a key-shaped fairy, they have fairies for everything these days) is normally instantaneous, but like the Maiden of Dreams-assisted Dimensional Transfers that have been going on lately, this one takes a bit longer. Rather than being due to interdimensional distance, there's a sense that it's because of resistance. But there's nothing that the light of happiness cannot soar through given time, and soon enough the column of lights -- each of them suffused in a pillar of their own color -- lands, all at once, in another world.

Although more and more technology is hidden behind the walled garden of sleek phones and application-style software, most people have, at least a few times in their lives, seen the most accurate point of reference for Labyrinth: 

A motherboard. The biggest motherboard imaginable, bigger even than those clunky ones you put into your desktop towers. 

Setsuna, apparently, comes from a place that, if it isn't LITERALLY the world you might have imagined lived inside your computer, is an extremely high concept metaphor.

The ground is very flat -- artificially flat -- machined, as it were, and made not of earth or even stone but some gray plastic material, interspersed with panels of washed-out green. The streets are narrow, but not winding at all -- everything is laid out in a precise, exacting grid. The buildings are many, tall, dense, and rectangular; angles sharp enough to almost cut; dimensions varying from the boxy hugeness of a GPU to slender cardlike buildings that for all the world resemble parallel sticks of memory, if RAM was eight or nine stories tall.

Different chip-like buildings are different colors, but they all fall within a pretty tight spectrum of greens, grays, and the occasional teal. There are no windows anywhere, but there are doors, and also exhaust ports, indicator lights, and so forth; these are the familiar green that backlit Soular's data diamonds, back in the day. Eas' comrade was, is, a traditionalist -- it is the color of Labyrinth's energy, so of course he used it for his own. To him, personalization and dilution are the same thing, at least when it comes to the hometown aesthetic. Everything for Lord Moebius, and surely his tastes are absolute.

This place, then, is what all the other worlds will become, after uncounted years under his control.

The group has landed on the rooftop of a building maybe two stories tall. This affords them a relatively limited view of the immediate environs (as there are many taller buildings, though also shorter ones), and no view at all of any people. From this angle, at least, Labyrinth seems quiet as the grave. Or it would be, if not for the soft continuity of an electric hum. Green only makes one sound here in Labyrinth. The softness of trees do not exist.

However, this also makes it all the more notable that they can see something new: At the middle of it all is one building that does not look like the other ones. Natives -- and visitors -- have never seen it before.

It looks huge even though it's far away, well across the city, which is ominous as to the implications of its real size. Those who dreamt with the Golden Skein might remember what it looked like to gaze up at the Space Elevator of Ancient Belka, before monsters came down it to attack: ''too'' tall to really conceive of, ramrod straight even as it appears to curve. The planet itself is what's curving instead.

Everyone, of course, saw the cables that descended into a dozen, a hundred, a thousand other worlds, including Earth. So everyone can easily make the even more direct inference, too: this is where the cables came from. Or, said differently, there is where the cables lead. It is cylindrical, like a giant cable itself, only obviously far larger than the one that was, on TV, taller than, but also narrower than, the Eiffel Tower. JUST how big it is remains to be seen, but a good starting point is 'absurd,' not only in sky-piercing height but also in circumference.

It's too far away for any great details to be picked out, but there is one that is exceedingly obvious and straightforward: 

Unlike the greenish cast of rest of the city, the various lights and ports along the capital-t Tower glow with that familiar, beautiful, terrible cyan.

Chiffon is surely there. Chiffon is surely ''powering'' it...

 <Pose Tracker> Honoka Yukishiro [Juuban Public School (11)] has posed.

Mikoto and Setsuna taking the last of the takoyaki means that Nagisa's hands become empty, but they do not stay that way for long.

When they alight on the tower, Honoka and Nagisa are still holding hands.

 COMBAT: Nori Ankou transforms into La Sirene de Diamant!
 COMBAT: Endo Naoki transforms into Barrier Jacket Zerstörer!

 <Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

They won't be long. 

And then -- 

La Sirene de Diamant's eyes widen as the new world is revealed. She is not familiar with the guts of computers and so she looks around with baffled and enigmatic wonder as openings and spaces and shapes fill the area. "So this is Labyrinth?" she says, before looking *down* -- aha, they're on top of a building. 

But you know who does know how to use a computer? 

That's right. 

"My goodness! This is astounding -- I've never seen anything LIKE it! It's like that old film, cousin, do you remember it?" 

"... Roman Holiday?" guesses la Sirene de Diamant in a low mutter. 

"No, no, less old," Batiste enthuses. "Oh! It's so different - I wish our errand was less dire!" 

La Sirene's head turns to look towards Mikoto and Setsuna, and then turns the other way to look towards Honoka and Nagisa. Her eyes, after that, slowly turn towards Lera. But looking towards Lera also reveals - "I suspect I see where we must go," she murmurs, folding her arms over her gem-studded chest for a moment. 

"... Indeed," Batiste says, glancing towards that baleful cyan glow. 

 <Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

	Something's fighting...

	But Mikoto comes to Labyrinth, anyway.

	An artificial feeling at the back of her throat draws a growl from it, as her lips lift over her teeth. Her cheer flees from her face, because she can't smell any ''leaves.'' No grass. She can't taste the air, the way air has a ''taste,'' lived-in and breathing true.

	Her nostrils flare, though, so certainly there's still air -- though it's still alien, to her.

	She doesn't like... being here.

	In a place like this, she...

	(She thinks of Westar-senpai, the way he struck out on his own, the plans he shared with her, the plans he didn't. Those donuts weren't green, the way this is.)

	It isn't quiet, to her. The electric hum is almost like an ''assault,'' and she paws at an ear, her snarl pulling back into a grimace of dismay as her noises grow more displeased. She ''wants'' to pull Miroku out, but Setsuna hasn't transformed, and so reluctantly she keeps it in its case for now. She'll... trust her, on this, though that tower-cable soars up, as the infinite does.

	Suffering under the artifice of Labyrinth, Mikoto comes to slouch next to Fate, scowling deeply. "Don't like that," she mutters, to ''another'' senpai. "Or that," she adds, spreading her malaise to Jail wearing someone better's face, because now she's ''grumpy'' of ''course'' she's paying more attention to him.

	Her conclusion: "It's bad."

 <Pose Tracker> Nagisa Misumi [Juuban Public School (11)] has posed.

Even as Akarun's light envelops them, Nagisa's thumb slips around the back of Honoka's hand, and rubs there. To reassure, and for reassurance. The black columns of light is attached quite closely to the white one, as it passes through space and stranger dimensions. They overlap, in fact, a Venn diagram of two girls who are very much the opposite of the other, who have in common one another's palms.

Nagisa and Honoka continue holding hands as they take in the surroundings. Nagisa's eyes are saucer-wide as she glances around, each building stranger than the last. It takes her a little longer than most to understand the relationship all this has to a motherboard, but as she starts to piece that together, she moans aloud. "Oh no," she says. "I'm not good at this sort of thing..."

But blinking, she releases her partner's hand so she can put her own palms together, turn to Honoka, and bow slightly. "I'm in your care," she says.

Walking over to the edge, Nagisa looks down at the 'street.' She happens to stand near Lera during this. "I don't like being up here where we can get spotted," she says seriously. But a little smirk crosses her face, and she elbows the other orange-haired girl. "Make sure you're really okay spending every other New Year's holiday in this town," she says, before jogging over to the adjacent end of the roof.

"Stairs here!" she calls. And pausing a moment for Honoka to rejoin her, she climbs down the fire-escape-like staircase, keeping a careful eye out.

Once on the ground, Nagisa swipes the side of her nose unconsciously with a thumb as she looks up at the cyan light. "That place, huh..." she says, looking back at Batiste. She whistles a little. "Seems like a lot of energy."

Nagisa may not be anything of a scientist, but she's seen 'energy' quite a bit in her Pretty Cure career.

Walking in that direction, Nagisa and Honoka instinctively watch opposite sides of the street, though the blue eyes of Nagisa's partner take in a lot more useful information about the structures they are passing than Nagisa's bewildered amber. "This place... it's really weird," Nagisa says softly. She casts a sympathetic look at Setsuna.

 <Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (12)] has posed.

Endo's transport beam color is, of course, purple. Not like Kyouka's violet, but dark like a bruised galaxy. It is somehow far less sinister than the gray and green color scheme that greets the group upon their arrival. Endo is in his magical form by the time they arrive, dark armor, flowing cape, and big sword. 

"Aah..." He breathes, "This place looks like what you probably look like inside, Stern."

&lt;NO.&gt;

"Ok." Replies the boy, his eyes sweeping slowly across the landscape. It's hard to avoid looking at the cyan tower and the lines stretching out across the horizon. He glances up, then to Setsuna, then the rest of their group.

"That, right?" He asks, pointing a finger at the line stretching skyward. "Let's go smash it." He assumes that's what you do to all sinister looking things.

And he sets off to do that, stepping up to the edge of the rooftop and taking flight toward their objective. He makes sure not to outpace his allies, though. Which is easy, because Endo doesn't go very fast.

 <Pose Tracker> Setsuna Higashi [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

The taste of takoyaki lingers. ...Another thing they don't have in Labyrinth. Obliquely, Setsuna wishes she'd thought to bring donuts. 

The hum is familiar; it was omnipresent for her, once. Now, it returns as if she'd never left. Indeed, ''most'' of Labyrinth is exactly the way she left it; the towers, the smalelr structures, the green glow... 

Except for that cyan radiance, coming from, "Chiffon," Setsuna worries. "What are they doing to you...?" 

She shakes her head. Asking here won't give her any answers. Instead, she looks to the stairs. "No one's looking for us," Setsuna says to Nagisa, her voice a little... blank. "...That might change. But it's true right now." 

That's why she hasn't transformed yet. Mikoto has followed her lead, which Setsuna appreciates. And Batiste's enthusiasm--

It ''almost'' makes her smile. "...It's different from Earth," she says. "In a lot of ways." 

"But this is where I come from..." 

She heads for the stairs, expecting the others who havne't yet to follow, and moves down off the rooftop. On the way down, she staggers her movements just enough to end up next to Lera, and quietly reaches for her hand. 

Nagisa calls it really weird, and Setsuna shrugs. "...I'd say 'it was home', since I think that's a saying..." 

"...But we didn't have concepts like 'home' when I grew up here." 

"Yes," she says instead to Endo, and her destination is also the tower. "Earth computers do look like this inside..." A pause. "But we'll smash that tower."

 <Pose Tracker> Fate Testarossa [Infinity Institute (5)] has posed.

Fate had been told about what Labyrinth looked like once upon a time, by Soular, but it's one thing to hear about it, and another thing to see it. The towering computer parts that rise unto the sky, as she looks around, it reminds her of the pictures in her science textbooks about how the computer came to be, and it's parts...

... and then she spies that distant structure, too large for her to really comprehend its true dimensions, eyeing it.

"Yes." She agrees with Batiste and Nori, as Setsuna explains noone is looking for them, before Fate notes to Lera and Endo, "Ordinarily I'd say we should fly to do some reconnaisance, but if they're not looking for us, then we shouldn't provoke them... so maybe we look around on the..."

She looks down, evaluating what word to use...

"... streets?"

Before she looks at Mikoto and... closes her eyes for a moment, "Me neither, but for now he is..."

She can't say the words 'our ally' because he doesn't feel like it.

Anyhow, she works her way to the edge of the building, and then moves for the fire escape that Nagisa pointed out, still not transformed.

Now - one should know - she assumes the Denizens of Labyrinth to be like...

... Eas ...

... Westar ...

... Soular ...

Just perhaps less strong, and thus Fate gets an entirely incorrect impression of what the people here are like... thus, she looks around to spy actual ''residents'' in particular - perhaps, one around her age, that might be approachable.

Though she's seen enough spy media now that she remains slightly hunched over as she walks, looking for people, which she knows increases the checks to spot her by a lot.

When she spies a suitable candidate, assuming she does at street level, she notes to Lera, "Alright. Maybe they know something. Let's act casual and find out if there's a good approach."

And whoever they might approach, she straightens and tries to use every ounce of what she'd learned from the Executives of Labyrinth to address them... "Hello - I am a Denizen of Labyrinth and servant of Lord Mobius, just like you."

Fate notes to them, holding up Bardiche the Triangle, and hiding one side of it like he's a Data Diamond. &lt;Get Set.&gt; Bardiche intones then pauses, &lt;For Lord Mobius.&gt; He adds, helpfully, after a moment.

<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.

They reappear. Lera exhales; she appears in a flash. She sighs about her phone -- and then she looks at Mikoto.

Lera whistles, lowly, as she looks around Labyrinth. She heard so much about it; what she sees matches all that she heard, and then some. The straight lines; the rigidness and uniformity of it. She stares for a moment, then she edges a little closer to Setsuna.

Then, she looks up at the tower that's risen up from the ground. A giant cylinder -- no, a giant cable. Her eyes widen; then they narrow. She whistles, lowly.

"...That must be it," she says.

She swings Soaring Sky over her shoulder; the Device latches onto the back of her Barrier Jacket, lockin into place. She exhales, before she looks at La Sirene, and then back at Setsuna.

"I wasn't sure what to expect," she says.

She looks at Mikoto -- hesitates a second -- and then she nods, before she looks at Nagisa; there is a moment before her eyes widen.

She turns red. "W=Wait! Every other New Year--uhm--oh, gosh--"

Her face turns the rest of the way red. More red, somehow. She hurries after her, down the stairs. Though, there is a glance at Endo as he flies. She decides to stay on the ground, but she keeps an eye on him. And she keeps an eye on Fate.

So when Fate approaches someone, she walks up behind her. She nods, seriously.

Then she looks at them, and adjusts her collar.

"How do you do, fellow Labyrinthites?"

 <Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

There is a long, long teleport, at least by normal standards. Kyouka's had a few of those recently, trips to memories, or through time, or through time and space both. It doesn't really get any easier.

It also doesn't make it any easier knowing where it is they're headed to. Or knowing that she's leaving her parents behind to face...

Well, nothing, if they can put a stop to it.

They ''have'' to put a stop to it.

But they arrive in a world quite unlike anything Kyouka has seen so far--even in the memory of a memory of all of the worlds that the Ashen Knight visited in her desperate search for allies--and to draw the wrath and attention of her former comrades-in-arms while the Pillar of Cephiro carried out her plan.

But those were a memory of a memory, a copy of a recording. They left an impression, but there was always the remove of living someone else's senses.

She sucks in a sharp breath, as the landscape is finally revealed to her. So much... uniformity, is the first thing she notices, as her eyes scan the landscape. It's an old habit of hers, that when she goes to a new place she looks for interesting lines to follow, ways that she could break from the norm, take a path not only less traveled but not even conceived of yet.

There's... not a lot to work with, here. Everything is so flat, so uniform. So... inorganic.

She might not have Mikoto's keen senses to immediately miss the presence of leaves, but she knows what it's like to see a place where people ''live''. There's a certain atmosphere, a liveliness. To her, that's the thing that sticks out most as missing first.

"Wow. You have ''three'' whole building colors to choose from," mutters Kyouka. She pauses. "Sorry, Setsuna-chan. I know this is where you're from, but..." She doesn't want to diss her friend's home. She believes that all places have their own things that make them interesting.

She'll have to save that conversation for later, though.

But she staggers back a step when she finally takes notice of the giant cable extending up to the sky. "Whoa--" And up, "... ''damn''..." And up. "Okay, I don't know how I feel about the scale of that thing but also I have a feeling that's where we need to go so I think that feeling is only going to get worse."

Clara looks about ready to wig out. Her fur would be bristling if she were in a form that had any right now. "Geeze, just--" She shivers. "Let's get this over with already," she mutters. She takes a deep breath to steady herself.

 <Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.

They reappear. Lera exhales; she appears in a flash. She sighs about her phone -- and then she looks at Mikoto.

Lera whistles, lowly, as she looks around Labyrinth. She heard so much about it; what she sees matches all that she heard, and then some. The straight lines; the rigidness and uniformity of it. She stares for a moment, then she edges a little closer to Setsuna.

Then, she looks up at the tower that's risen up from the ground. A giant cylinder -- no, a giant cable. Her eyes widen; then they narrow. She whistles, lowly.

"...That must be it," she says.

She swings Soaring Sky over her shoulder; the Device latches onto the back of her Barrier Jacket, lockin into place. She exhales, before she looks at La Sirene, and then back at Setsuna.

"I wasn't sure what to expect," she says.

She looks at Mikoto -- hesitates a second -- and then she nods, before she looks at Nagisa; there is a moment before her eyes widen.

She turns red. "W=Wait! Every other New Year--uhm--oh, gosh--"

Her face turns the rest of the way red. More red, somehow. She hurries after her, down the stairs. Though, there is a glance at Endo as he flies. She decides to stay on the ground, but she keeps an eye on him. And she keeps an eye on Fate.

So when Fate approaches someone, she walks up behind her. She nods, seriously.

Then she looks at them, and adjusts her collar.

"How do you do, fellow Labyrinthites?"

 <Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

&lt;SoundTracker&gt; Labyrinth's Theme - Fresh OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF0zs-WWr4c

Despite being literally on a grid, Labyrinth is also kind of a maze. This is, of course, appropriate, but the ''reason'' such a place is easy to get lost in is still notable: because the blocks are very, very difficult to tell apart. There is virtually no signage, just row after row of mysterious humming buildings. Although there's no ceiling overhead, just endless gray sky, it's still an exceedingly claustrophobic set of streets, even by Tokyo standards.

Fortunately (kinda), the group has the Tower as their Polaris. It's assuredly visible from street level. It's probably visible from underground somehow, it's way too tall...

They also have Setsuna, of course, who knows that she's in block SO-4985. Then -4988, once they've crossed a street. With her native eye she's also able to spot a screen, which changes its display of slowly trickling vertical lines of greenish-white code-runes to a static menu page.

Amazingly given the environment, NOT like the navigation kind of menu. Nagisa or Mikoto's first interpretation would be the correct one.

But that means that, any second now--

"SHIFT 3 IS OVER," an artificially bland woman's voice announces -- everywhere, ringing out simultaneously from speakers on street corners as far as the eye can see. "IT IS TIME FOR SECONDMEAL. PROCEED TO YOUR ASSIGNED CAFETERIA." 

As though this has awakened a sleeping giant, the hum of electricity begins to... thrum. Very steadily. Too steadily. The first analogy might be to a pulse, but no one's heart is like that naturally.

Suddenly, the streets are full of people.

They are not lifting their knees high enough to really be considered marching, but it is uncanny, not in a good way, that only a single set of footsteps can be heard. Footsteps broadcast in awful unison by every pair of feet in the city.

In this particular block they're walking five abreast. No one is holding anyone's hand, to be sure. Or looking at each other, or, really, at anything at all except where they are going.

They're all wearing the same uniform; gray jumpsuit, with a giant black data diamond symbol across the chest. White socks, black slacks. Everyone's hair is kept practically short, though there is some diversity there, as well as in their skin tones and facial features...

...and ages. In the last row of this group walking by, one of their members is a towheaded child. It looks like he or she (it's difficult to tell; cultural anthropologists might ask a larger question about the meaning of gender in this uniform society, but other than Baptiste there are none on hand) is struggling to keep up. They take abnormally large steps, like a not-so-fun game of The Floor Is Lava that will surely only end when they make it to their destination. Indeed, it's not a game at all. Their arms teeter out to the sides, frantically, as they start to lose their balance and topple forward.

"Oh no!" says Tarte, his ferret eyes goggling a bit at impending disaster. He wasn't raised to let kiddos take a tumble.

"Hello - I am a Denizen of Labyrinth and servant of Lord Mobius, just like you," says Fate.

"How do you do, fellow Labyrinthites?" asks Lera.

The child manages, precariously, not to fall after all, as though sheer surprise has levitated them an inch above the ground. They stop moving, though.

They're the only ones -- the adults continue their too-steady walk towards lunch.

The child looks at them and frowns very slightly. Their expression briefly puzzles through a contradiction, and then they reply, in the cutely familiar voice of a younger sibling slightly enjoying correcting an older one: 

"Sh. We haven't been ordered to talk." 

But beneath that subtle pleasure in being Right when others are Wrong, there are other, stiller waters running deeper. Curiosity. Bewilderment. More than a little fear.

They cast a panicked look at the column that is now leaving them behind. They need to catch up, but they're too small to do so without taking at least twice as many steps as everyone else...

 <Pose Tracker> Honoka Yukishiro [Juuban Public School (11)] has posed.

Honoka is not the type to dutifully chuckle at her partner's antics; she's overserious at the best of times, and these are quite the opposite. "Nagisa," she whispers, both warningly and sadly, when she overaccurately describes the place they're in, in the earshot of the one who once called it home. Or... didn't, as she explains.

"Thank you for bringing us to the place that you are from, and making us feel welcome," she says to Setsuna, quietly. There's a lot more that goes unsaid, but her eyes, which linger in the other girl's face for a long moment, contain the silent compassion-without-pity of a staunch friend.

The blaring loudspeaker startles her less than the drum of dozens of footsteps unnaturally united. When she sees the extraordinarily regimented existence that is life under Moebius, Nagisa once again finds herself holding her hand.

Honoka hasn't lost her stiff upper lip, but her hand is trembling. She gives her a swift, urgent squeeze.

 <Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

"Yes," Batiste answers Nagisa, very quietly. 

La Sirene has heard where the stairs are; she whirls about and strides in that direction. "Good idea," she comments to Endo. "I suspect they might object, but you never know..." 

"At least we know which way to head," Batiste remarks, and then they descend to the street. Batiste runs to the other side of La Sirene's shoulder, the one facing towards the buildings, and contorts himself a bit to look like a fashion accessory. 

Setsuna is the native, and so they follow her. 

"Huh?" La Sirene remarks, looking upwards. "... Are we near a factory?" 

AND THEN: CROWDS! 

The million marching feet of Labyrinth surround them. La Sirene shrinks up a little - scrunching herself, folding her arms tighter. She is not a fan of crowds. But then they are faced with a child, to whom Lera and Fate have addressed. 

One who was left behind. 

She asks Setsuna quietly: "What should we do?" 

 <Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

	ASSIGNED CAFETERIA, a bland woman's voice says, as Mikoto's soul ''visibly'' leaves her body. Her mouth gapes; she tilts forward, with a rusty creeeeaakkkkk. Her arms hang slack about her body, as despair (nay, ''sorrow'') washes over her face.

	Fate and Lera take the lead, and Mikoto, behind them, ''stares'' as the child chides them both.

	She takes a deep breath, and one might wonder, briefly, if she's about to start ''screaming,'' like the unpleasant sensory stimulation here has completely overwhelmed her psyche and she's just going to ''check out'' for a while --

	-- oh, no, she's just stepping forward beside Lera.

	"Don't worry," she assures the child. "We got ''special'' orders. So talking's okay right now."

	Don't ask why she's such a natural at this.

 <Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

This place gets even worse at street level. The same-y look of everything makes it hard to mentally keep track of how far they've gone. There's no chance of 'oh, here's a vender with a street cart and an aromatic ''something'' I can't wait to try' or 'here's a street performer doing a cool dance I haven't seen before I wonder how they do that turn' or 'hey that little shop looks like it has some neat stories'.

There's just... uniformity. Everywhere.

Kyouka chafes at uniformity.

"... ''assigned'' cafeterias?"

And suddenly comes the terrible answer. Hordes of identically-dressed people, marching with a tempo and a choreography Kyouka is sure her mother would envy if not for everythig else it implied.

And a child admonishes them for talking when they're not supposed to. But is going to struggle to catch up. Kyouka watches, conflicted. She's fast, when she transforms--she could grab her, put her back in line, and zip back--but the transformation isn't exactly ''subtle'', is it?

Telepathically, she projects to Setsuna (it's not breaking the rules if nobody can tell you're doing it, right?) &lt;&lt;Setsuna-chan. What's going to happen to that kid if they can't get back in line?&gt;&gt;

There are two ways to take that combination of words and Kyouka ''really'' only wants to think about the more literal one right now.

Clara, though, has another concern to share with the group. &lt;&lt;We're going to stick out like this. I can cast a minor illusion to help us blend in better...&gt;&gt;

 <Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (12)] has posed.

Endo has seen Tokyo from high places dozens of times, even before he could actually fly. He's used to the chaotic jumbles of Shibuya, or the lazy flow of the city suburbs. Labyrinth is...not like either of those or anything between.

The boy watches as the people move in regimented and lockstep lines, traveling to their designated eating zones. He hovers in the bland sky, keeping an eye on his companions below and occasionally the streets around. Slowly, he drifts down until he touches the roof of one of the shorter buildings nearby. Morbid curiosity compels him to try and find a good place to peek into a cafeteria and find out what the nutritionary content of second meal is...

 <Pose Tracker> Nagisa Misumi [Juuban Public School (11)] has posed.

Nagisa avoids troubling Lera further by teasing her blushy reaction, but she does look satisfied by it. She is less satisfied by Lera's lying abilities.

"This is what it's like to watch me try to be sneaky, huh?" she sympathizes with Honoka as she watches Lera attempt to 'blend in'.

"Ah," Nagisa catches Honoka's admonition instantly, an apologetic wince passing her face. "Thank you," she echoes Honoka.

The reflexes that have saved Nagisa's little brother Ryouta Misumi from more than one collision between his soft skull and the edge of a table or counter set off as the local Labyrinth child wobbles, and when they recover, Nagisa exhales in relief, a sororal mixture of recrimination and gratitude on her face. "Mou, make sure to watch when you're--"

A soft hand fills her palm. Honoka's handhold is almost incapable of ''startling'' Nagisa if she is aware Honoka is around at all, so natural has it become for them to hold hands at any time, for any reason, for no reason. But there are times when what it communicates can surprise her, and Nagisa looks over at her partner, her tongue at the back of her front teeth as she considers what to say. Instead, after a moment, she rotates her palm against Honoka's, disengaging their fingers, only to mesh them more directly, her digits slipping between Honoka's to nestle through her knuckles, instead of around the back of her hand. She then takes a step closer, so their forearms connect as well, keeping some pressure on them for a moment.

"We'll come back," she says, without knowing for sure whether that is possible. A year ago, perhaps even thirty seconds ago, someone else probably would have had to tell the impulsive Nagisa that. But Nagisa has gotten better at listening to her inner Honoka, in those moments when the Honoka at her side cannot speak. Staring at the child, thinking about Ryouta, Nagisa shakes her head.

"I don't like it either."

With surprise, Nagisa watches Mikoto attempt to speak the way a Labyrinth resident might. Glancing at Kyouka, Nagisa chews her lip. "What we look like doesn't seem to bug anybody yet... they're walking in groups of five, right?"

Casting her eyes around her, Nagisa counts her companions. "Two, four, six... um, we'll need Batiste to walk..."

Still holding Honoka's hand quite close, Nagisa steps forward and turns a little, so that she and her partner are standing between Nori (and Batiste) and Setsuna.

"Let's walk like this, maybe? And then the rest of the group can do one..."

 <Pose Tracker> Setsuna Higashi [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

Setsuna turns and just ''looks'' at Honoka for a moment, just as blank as her voice was--but her expression breaks into a soft, sad smile. She does remember how to emote, after all. "Thank you," she says softly back. Then, at Nagisa's teasing and Lera's reaction... Setsuna actually manages a soft laugh. It's hard, but it's real. ...Somehow, she doesn't imagine visits here, though.

"Block SO-4985," Setsuna reflects as she looks around. "...-4988." She sees a screen, and looks at it. She doesn't point it out. Mostly because the voice rings out, and Setsuna ''freezes'' in place for a brief instant, as if half afraid that her body will start obeying the instructions of its own accord. 

Maybe a little more than half. But that doesn't happen. 

The streets are full of people, and Setsuna rushes quickly over toward a building to stay out of the way. But her friends... do not do that. Her friends instead take the entirely reasonable step of trying to gather information. Unfortunately, Labyrinth is not a reasonable place. 

Nevertheless, at seeing that 'difference' in this one child, Setsuna's heart aches. Just as surely as they can't keep up, she had her own issues fitting in. And now... 

Setsuna rushes over quickly--not running, but walking, walking with longer strides than her height would make easy. La Sirene asks what to do--

And so does Kyouka, but in her head. Setsuna shakes her head at Kyouka, and then adds to Clara, "That won't be necessary." She says it maybe a little too quickly. She doesn't want to wear that uniform again even as an illusion.

Mikoto said they had special authorization. "That's right. We're on a mission right now." This isn't even a lie! "So you're allowed to walk with us, and catch up to the cafeteria with the others as we pass by." 

"Everyone, make sure to walk camly. We aren't authorized to run." 

She brushes Lera's lower back with her hand, trying to reassure her a little without making it too obvious to the child. 

"But we don't have to make you say anything else. Everyone, let's go, or they'll be late." 

"...And Nagisa's right. Group up." She falls into line. For now. It's remarkably easy.

 <Pose Tracker> Fate Testarossa [Infinity Institute (5)] has posed.

The bleak designations of SECONDMEAL and ASSIGNED CAFETERIA do give her some ideas of what this place is like, as the streets become covered in people.

As they approach, Fate nods succinctly at Lera's greeting as if to say 'Yes good, acceptable greeting' because it is easy to imagine Westar saying such a thing. But then she lurches forward as if to catch the child when they're about to topple over - by some miracle, they keep upright, and so Fate doesn't end up laying a hand on them.

As they correct her, Fate puzzles, until Mikoto says it's okay because of special orders and Setsuna then steps up to save the day by noting they're on a special mission, and they're allowed to walk with them.

Fate then considers the problem and looks to see if Mikoto has any SUPER FRESH fried Octopus balls left - seeing none, she slowly reaches to her school backpack, which has a Shiba Inu with a scarf emblazoned on it. Then unzips a pouch, and gravely produces... a candy bar.

"We have permission to provide you with a special..." Pause, "...Second Meal as well, if you come with us."

She nudges Lera as if to say 'Try to sweeten the pot.' and will hand over the candy bar before she starts to head back to get into the Nagisa line.

(She chooses a position right next to Batiste who will assuredly hike on his hind paws like Nagisa suggested, right?)

 <Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.

When Setsuna laughs, Lera looks back at her. She flashes a quick smile at her -- and maybe hearing her laugh is a little victory, all of its own.

She hurries up, though, then.

"Erm--" Lera stumbles when the child they talked to says they aren't ordered to talk. She stares at her, with confusion, and then looks at Fate.

Thankfully, Mikoto is better equipped at this than Lera. (Who, perhaps, should not have undertaken a plan if it would fall apart the moment it stopped working. Shh.)

She looks at Fate, when she nudges her. Then, she nods, and reaches into her pocket. She produces...

...a granola bar. She extends out to the child. "Here," she says. "An ordinary Labyrinth nutrient awesome bar."

Mercifully, Setsuna takes the lead. Lera looks at her -- with a relieved expression -- and then she nods quickly. "Right," she says. "Important mission. Walk slowly."

She sighs with relief. She is, as Nagisa observed, a very bad liar.

She falls in next to Setsuna and the child. She walks slowly, but she looks to her girlfrend. Her expression becomes more worried. "...I didn't really understand until I saw, y'know?"

 <Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.


From a lofty and sneaky perch, Endo chooses to bear witness to a sight that will haunt him when he's eighty: the perfect stillness of the cafeteria lines, except for when they all take a single step forward in unison. The exactitude with which each person eats their meal, and the total silence.

Worst of all, the unspecified nutritional glop that is extruded onto each tray in a single gray blob. It contains regulation jiggle but no other identifying attributes. Yet each serving is disturbingly identical. Like how chicken nuggets, despite seeming jagged and irregular, are actually all the same six or seven molds, but there's only one mold and definitely no hot crispy breading.

Truly, this is hell.

Back on the street, the child's curiosity wins out over their fearful need to immediately rejoin the group. They nod with credulous severity as first Mikoto, and then Setsuna, confirm the existence of a special talking mission.

"Acknowledged," they say quietly, but trail off a bit, staring at Nagisa strangely -- that 'watch where you're going' perhaps made a bigger impact than it was meant to.

They obediently and quietly walk with the others. Indeed, nobody seems to take any real notice of any of them as long as they're walking properly together in groups of five.

When the group makes it to the cafeteria (at which time everyone else can get a less birds-eye view of what Endo saw, through the entry), the child hesitates -- breaking OFF from a group is not natural to them, clearly. 

Tarte reaches up and holds their hand in his little paw... and then Fate and Lera fill their other hand with something ELSE.

The child seems even more taken aback by this twist. Whatever control this society has exerted over its members has not totally stamped out their ability to think, it seems, and surprise slowly transforms across their face into suspicion, like dawn slowly breaking over a vast and barren field. They want to argue.

But they also want whatever this is.

Tarte encourages them. "When you're feeling down, sweets make everything a little bit better." Azukina seems slightly scandalized that he would even provide that proviso, but then, she's been a full-time denizen of the universe's capitol of desserts until today. Tarte's vast lived experience on Earth has taught him that sweets don't make everything ALL THE WAY better. At least, not just one candy bar.

The child wavers visibly, then stuffs both bars in their mouth all at once (including the wrappers, but... they'll figure it out, surely) and disappears into the cafeteria.

They do peek back over their shoulder after a few steps, though. And so do a couple of nearby adults, who glance over curiously -- they can't help but notice this group of weirdos under the disruptive circumstances of the kid's solo arrival.

Keeping it moving, they cross the city swiftly and without further interruption. There are occasionally other groups of people on their way to SECONDMEAL. There are also some narrow alleys -- shortcuts -- where they can't walk five abreast, but also where there is no one to see them...

It is a long, quiet, deeply oppressive journey.

Then it ends.

By the time they make it to the base of the Tower, it fills their entire field of vision, like an apparently infinite-height Great Wall. The city falls away all at once, startlingly revealing that there is no visible base, either, only a vast circular chasm into which the Tower endlessly descends. A moat made out of dead space...

The Tower wall is singular though not smooth; it is essentially a cylinder composed of interlocking metal plates; like a truly epic cable bundle there are occasional smaller cylinders rising out of the main trunk, here and there, which conceivably contain separate rooms of some kind. The Tower is uniformly gray, which makes the teals and greens of the city positively vibrant in comparison; not just dour but dismal. The color of all the fallen worlds, reprised in every inch of it, except where that cyan light leaks out from the occasional port. 

There are a few almost-normal-sized cable clusters running out of the tower to the sides of its hole, connecting it to the rest of the motherboard like fat power lines. The only visible entrance (though one cannot by any means see the full circumference of this thing, and wouldn't if they walked for an hour) is blessedly nearby; a doorless tunnel that leads inward, connected to the mainland by a slender silvery bridge, which is, in turn, between the two pillars of a security gate.

But the gate, and the bridge, are largely irrelevant, because there in front of both of them stand three figures: two very familiar, and one not at all, unless your name was Eas.

 COMBAT: Hayato Nishi transforms into Westar!

 <Pose Tracker> Westar [Infinity Institute (U)] has posed.

They've won. After years - years! - of trying, of battles and setbacks and schemes no one bothered telling Westar about, Labyrinth has won. They've obtained the Infinity...Heart...the thing they were after, and soon, all worlds will belong to Moebius.

Westar might feel more satisfied if he'd actually been involved in the finding of Infinity instead of it being a Northa Thing, but it was never about credit. Everything, all of it, was for Moebius. As for Westar himself, he followed his orders, gathered Misery, menaced people, and that...probably contributed to this day. Probably.

Unlike some people, he stayed loyal.

He stands at the threshold of the bridge as proudly as he ever did when commanding a Nakewameke. A yellow Data Diamond gleams from the belt of his black-and-grey uniform, bare arms folded across his chest as a light-grey cape ripples behind him. Mint-green hair frames a stern expression, glowering and silent, hiding that mixture of frustration and determination as he stares down the approaching invaders.

(...His mission really is over at last. The confusion of multiple writing systems will soon be a baffling memory. No more need to reconcile the conflicting schedules of classes and student-run festivals. No more food stalls with unexpected flavours - from which he's memorized any useful recipe by now, probably. And after this, no more meddlesome Precure or other magical girls to fight and argue with!)

The idea of anyone invading Labyrinth is laughable, and Westar almost does laugh before remembering the comport expected of an Executive. Lord Moebius is right here, and Westar needs to...behave as expected of a Denizen of Labyrinth. To focus himself, he looks over the approaching figures, trying to identify them.

It's all too easy. He knows them. All of them, from the countless struggles of his Nakewameke. Precure and Siren, HiME and Device-wielder, he has fought them all. Some - like Cure White, Cure Black, La Sirene and the Wolf Fighter - he'd only faced sparingly. Others - Camry and Naoki - he clashed with more frequently. And then...there are those he actually fought alongside in the past. His gaze flits from Testarossa, to Minagi, finally resting on Higashi herself.

For a fleeting instant, dead hopes spark in his heart, the thought that Eas might actually be returning to them for real this time - but dreams have no place in Labyrinth.

A thought strikes Westar. He doesn't voice it immediately, long experience telling him how much his words are valued, but he lets the idea percolate a bit. He and Soular have fought these people a lot. Admittedly, Westar has basically lost every encounter, and there's no guarantee that the home-field advantage would meaningfully change that outcome. But he's pretty sure he can annoy them, get their attention and trade punches for a little while. And that's all he really needs to do.

Lord Moebius's triumph is...inevitable, and delaying the invaders may be all that's needed to cement that victory. Yeah. That makes sense, he can voice something to that effect, and Westar even manages to finish thinking those deep thoughts in time to pre-empt whatever Soular was about to say. Probably something about a chance for glory or pride or pointless things like that.

"Lord Moebius. We've fought this bunch before. Give your servants the order, and we can go keep 'em busy while you, uh, finish the important stuff." His jaw is tense as he keeps his gaze fixed firmly forward. He's made his case. One word, and he can charge in and hit something, which is what he's supposed to be good at.

 <Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

"Yes, my Lord," echoes Soular, Westar's more silvery, slender and slippery counterpart; the nerd to his jock, in Earth lingo, though he would rather kill himself than deign to make such a coarse comparison. "Defeating Pretty Cure is our duty. I beg of you, grant us one more chance and we will finally--"

"FAIL," interjects Lord Moebius. This guy sure knows how to end a sentence.

&lt;SoundTracker&gt; Fuhrer Moebius - Fresh OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osSoVrEPL-g

He is seated on a throne with a gear-style base which floats between, behind and above Soular and Westar. He is bigger than both of them put together, yet neither muscular nor fat; just larger in scale. Perhaps he would be ten feet tall if he stood; ten feet of old, bald man. He has a big head, literally as well as metaphorically. He wears the same black data diamond sigil as his people, but on a golden cowl that rises behind him into a point, very nearly a crown. He is swathed completely in a white robe, trimmed with black and violet geometries that vaguely evoke circuitry without being literally circuits -- evidence of the existence of art in Labyrinth. It hides his figure entirely, so all of that about his build is really projection from his face, which is mostly jowls, hairless dome, and cruelty. No wrinkles. That sense of timelessness comes from something else about him. The sense of raw power, perhaps.

Visual Aid: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/prettycure/images/5/54/Fresh_Pretty_Cure%21_Moebius_pose.png/revision/latest?cb=20170201173229 

"THAT THEY ARE HERE AT ALL IS PROOF OF YOUR INCOMPETENCE," he intones. He isn't screaming or even yelling, but something about even the least of his utterances demands all-caps. Every word is huge, revelatory. He is the most important thing within his world.

Now, the most important thing in every world...

"I TIRE OF MAINTAINING YOUR DATA. MY FINAL ORDER TO YOU IS THIS: KNOW THAT AS YOU ARE DELETED YOUR RESOURCES WILL BE REPURPOSED FOR THIS BATTLE YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO MY VERY DOORSTEP."

And then -- terribly -- a hole opens. A hole in the world. A hole in existence itself.

It is red, rather than black, but very clearly much the same premise: it will swallow anything near it. And what's near it are Soular and Westar; Lord Moebius himself seems quite immune to its pull, though the hair and clothes of his Earthling visitors are not. It immediately whips up a high wind. Lightning crackles across it, around it, and through it, all the color of blood.

Soular's eyes widen bigger than Setsuna has ever seen them. "A... Delete Hole!" he gasps, white-lipped. His final instinct is to disobey Moebius and flee, but it is too little and much, much too late; he is consumed in an instant, into this hungry maw of annihilation, and gone...

 <Pose Tracker> Westar [Infinity Institute (U)] has posed.

Westar was braced to charge, feet dug into the surface below. They dig in a moment longer than Soular, as he turns to stare up at his ruler, the one to whom he has devoted his loyalty all his life.

He turns back to foes and allies-turned-foes, and wonders briefly about that 'friend' word they kept throwing around. The expression on his face is...not disbelieving, not even grieving - a defeated laugh, almost.

"...hah. Sorry. Looks like I was just garbage after all."

His stance gives way to inexorable force, and with a pitiful smile, Westar is pulled into the maw of oblivion.

 <Pose Tracker> Pink Moon Stick [Admin] has posed.

In their final moments, Lord Moebius reaches out both palms and drains motes of gray light from both men. A vein across his forehead bulges with puissance. Power was already roiling off of him in waves, but now it's fever pitch.

Then the Delete Hole closes, winking back out of existence like it was never there... like an executioner's axe which could reappear anywhere, at any time, without warning.

"WELCCOME TO LABYRINTH, PRETTY CURE." It's ''unlikely'' that this would-be God-King whose 'would-be' is looking more outdated by the minute, thinks they're all Precure, but it's possible the term 'magical girl' hasn't made it here yet. The prophecy of the legendary warriors, on the other hand, surely has.

From high upon his throne he gazes down his fleshy nose at this motley assembly of intruders.

"I KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE... I WILL NOT SURRENDER INFINITY TO ANYONE." 

Behind him, the Tower's leaked cyan light pulses not with some kind of distant, friendly recognition but with the will of its master.

 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick transforms into Lord Moebius!

 <Pose Tracker> Setsuna Higashi [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

Setsuna doesn't smile at the child with the two bars, but she smiles at Fate and Lera when they go. "...I wonder if they'll figure it out," she says, and is glad to see that, at least for this one denizen of Labyrinth, a day was different. If nothing else... 

Lera's victory earlier is followed up. Setsuna feels a little better, despite the difficult journey. Her steps match the others easily, but given ''who'' she's walking with, she doesn't mind as much. And besides... 

Lera looks to her, and Setsuna shakes her head. "It's allr ight," she tells her girlfriend. "That's not my life anymore." 

"...Maybe..." 

She can't dare to voice that hope. Not yet. 

Her spirit is strong, now. As long as she's with her friends, she can conquer her fear. As long as she's with them... 

Until the figures come into view. Until she sees not just Lord Moebius, but Soular and Westar, and Setsuna finds herself with her heart in her throat. "...Westar," she starts, "Soular..." 

"Lord Moebius..." 

She resolves herself to fighting them again, perhaps for the last time. Soular and Westar speak, and Moebius--

FAIL. 

He gives a final order, and Setsuna's eyes widen in alarm. "NO!" she cries, but has to stop short to prevent ''herself'' being drawn in. The color of blood. 

And in that moment... She remembrs, the day Soular told her about his feelings for Westar--the feelings that it was ''good'' he didn't ahve to worry about, because Moebius would decide it all for them. She remembers, too, the times Soular was cruel to her. And she remembers the times that he helped her even when he didn't have to...

She remembers Westar. How he was always trying to get them to work ''together'', and how she rebuffed him every time. How he always wanted her to come back. How he was stronger than people gave him credit for, and maybe part of that was how ferevently he believed. 

"Never," she whispers fervently to Westar, though he is gone. "You were never garbage!" 

She turns, and her eyes are red for more than just their color. She sweeps out a hand to point at the one she once served. 

"They trusted you!" Setsuna shouts, injustice pounding in her ears like blood. Her voice is uncharacteristically hot, emotional. "We all did! 'Everything for Lord Moebius', we said! And now--And now--!" 

Her voice breaks, "They were my friends!" Setsuna manages. "...The only friends I never realized I had... I didn't get to tell them! I didn't--" 

Setsuna's hand goes suddenly for her Linkrun, though tears sting her eyes. She does not often cry. She does not often show feeling this much. But in the face of Moebius...

"Pretty Cure!" she calls. "Change-u!" Red light begins to surround her. "Beat... UP!" 

Light ''suffuses'' the area, a bonfire of power that radiates throughout this part of Labyrinth. It is crimson, and Akarun shines with it. Setsuna ''jumps'' back, somersaulting through the air and landing on the road behind. At her shins, at her arms, on her body--the cloth armor of Pretty Cure appears. Finally, the four-leaf clover--though only one of those leaves is here, now, ready to fight. 

Her tiara and headpiece appear, hearts and diamond both. Her hair lengthens, pinkens, and her eyes grow bright. 

"Freshly ripened!" she calls, "Cure Passion!" 

And then... 

"Soular... Westar..." 

Cure Passion ''charges'', sprinting the distance in an instant, moving so fast that she may as ''well'' have teleported. 

"Haaaaaaah--!" 

She SLAMS her fist straight for Lord Moebius, anathema to all she grew up with.

 COMBAT: Setsuna Higashi transforms into Cure Passion!
 COMBAT: Cure Passion has used Passion Flash on Pink Moon Stick.
 COMBAT: Cure Passion has cancelled their attack on Pink Moon Stick. If there are more attacks that need to be +cancelled, please
 hold all +attacks until the process is complete.
 COMBAT: Cure Passion has used Passion Flash on Pink Moon Stick.
 COMBAT: Lera Camry transforms into Barrier Jacket Dynamic!

 <Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.

It's a long and draining path to the tower. They get the girl to the cafeteria, but the sameness of the place -- and the dreariness and the unpleasantness -- take a toll. But Lera can think of the way the child at the granola and candy bars, all at once.

Maybe, she thinks, it will be okay.

She slows as they come to the base of the tower. She looks over all of it, but settles on the gate and the bridge.

The way ahead.

Lera knows Westar and Soular. She fought both more than once; before Setsuna stopped being Eas and after. She looks between them and frowns, hand reaching over her shoulder. There is a soft click, as she pulls Soaring Sky off her back. Her eyes end up on Westar.

"Westie..." She frowns.

She stops, though, as Moebius begins to speak. In a terrible, commanding, and yet monotonous tone. This is the Moebius she heard somuch about; it's the first she has ever seen him. Her eyes widen sharply, though, at the Delete Hole.

"Westar! Soular!" she cries out. "Get away from that thing!"

It isn't enough. She knows that, even as she says it. She sees them pulled in, one after the other. Her hand shakes around Soaring Sky's hilt.

Cure Passion goes tearing forward. Lera sucks a breath in.

&lt;Lera!&gt; Soaring Sky chimes. &lt;Let's do this! For their sake!&gt;

"You don't have to tell me twice, buddy," Lera says. Soaring Sky ignites; fire leaps and dances up the blade, before she goes running straight for Moebius. She leaps a second after Passion, and then comes crashing down beside her. Sky chops down.

And the fire explodes off the sword, as she gets closer. &lt;Corona Crash!&gt;

 COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Corona Crash on Pink Moon Stick.

 <Pose Tracker> Fate Testarossa [Infinity Institute (5)] has posed.

Fate thinks of 'You' for a moment, as she watches the child with the candy bar and nutrient awesome bar. "Ah it's-" The wrappers, but they figure it out. For a time, she tries to remember, was she like this, when she first encountered Earth Sweets? Perhaps, but she was so...

... well, the love affair began anyway. And on the oppressive journey, Fate considers everything that's at stake, truly.

All the people - she loves and cares about. The little moments at school - and after, or at the Midori-ya with Nanoha. Helping Lindy with shopping, or telling her about her day at school. Or listening to Arisa squabble with her, or Suzuka enthuse about her new cat...

... these things feel like happiness, and in this grey place, such things can only exist if she forces herself to think about them.

Up the tower they travel, down the tunnel - within, until...

... she hears Westar offer to fight them, and Soular as well, and Fate is about to say something as simple as 'You don't have to do this' even though it feels different...

... but instead she feels her heart twist on the word FAIL, because as the delete hole opens...

... she understands how this ends...

... in the same way, as lightning descending from the heavens...

"NO!"

Fate cries out that word, as they vanish, and at Westar's final words, her eyes waver, then become droplets of water begin to well up. As her jaw sets, and there's anger there.

Because she knows what it's like, to be treated by garbage, by someone you give absolute loyalty to.

'They trusted you...' Setsuna says. Fate looks at her hands, remembering Nanoha's words, her hands - they feel smaller than ever, in this moment. But...

"How could you." She whispers, even knowing the answer already, "How could you. They were supposed to get away, like me - like Setsuna. So we could all eat donuts together again... They were supposed to wake up. And realize..."

Holding up Bardiche, power flares from it, lightning crackling as it surrounds her in a Helix of violet and gold.

&lt;Get Set. Drive Impulse - Ignition&gt;

A flash, like a photonegative, but without the expected roar of thunder, a polearm falls into her hands, but it's head splits open, and three cartridges pound into it, as it erupts into a long blade.

&lt;Blaze Form - Zanber Mode&gt;

A white cape falls over her shoulders, framing her, with tears still in her eyes.

&lt;Sprite Zanber&gt;

In a flash, she's off, that long blade swelling with energy, like static in the air, as she gives a cry, and tries to bring it down on Mobius with magic rip apart even dimensions as she cries out...

"...YOU'RE NOT WORTH SERVING!"

 COMBAT: Fate Testarossa transforms into Barrier Jacket Blaze!
 COMBAT: Fate Testarossa has used Sprite Zanber on Pink Moon Stick.

 <Pose Tracker> Endo Naoki [Juuban Public School (12)] has posed.

Endo descends as the group approaches the long bridge in front of the tower to join the rest of the magical girls, just in time for the group to run into Labyrinth's defenders. He's crossed paths with their creations before, if not the dark generals themselves. Endo hefts Fallen Stern in preparation, sparing a short glance to his friends before focusing on their two opponents. He expects this will be round.

He does not expect that there will be a third.

The appearance of Lord Moebius is startling in its intensity. He is a very large old man. Both in size but mostly in sheer presence; there are few other people Endo has encountered that have radiated such an immense power.

A power demonstrated by the concise erasure of his two subordinates.

The knight is, for a moment, shocked. Endo's eyes go wide, and he shouts, "Don't!"

He doesn't have the kind of connection to either Wester or Soular that Setsuna or some of his other friends do, but such an act demands a visceral response. "Those were your own people!" He shouts indignantly.

Setsuna and Lera start the charge, so Endo joins in too. He sprints forward, following Fate, letting out a growl of frustration as he brings his Device up in a vicious arc to strike in the wake of his two companions.

 COMBAT: Endo Naoki has used Blauverschiebung on Pink Moon Stick.

 <Pose Tracker> Mikoto Minagi [Ohtori Academy (11)] has posed.

	Mikoto wonders if the child will be all right. She remembers the first time she swallowed the plastic packaging of a snack; she only had to make that mistake ''once,'' when she first came down from the mountain.

	(She's not just worried about the choking hazards they're facing up against.)

	"Westar-senpai!" Mikoto exclaims, and doesn't think to control the way she's speaking. "Soular!" She knows them both; one helped usher her into darkness, and the other helped tutor her in its methods. She has feelings for them both, though her kinship with Westar inarguably burns more brightly -- even though Westar's companionable nature had been beaten down so much by the time he took her under her wing.

	(There's a reason they never attacked ''together.'')

	She hears something in Westar's request, though. If they can fight them -- if they can ''reach'' them -- maybe they can --

	Lord Moebius has no intention of letting that happen.

	"WESTAR-SENPAI!" Mikoto howls, lunging forward, as he says he was ''garbage'' all along. "That's NOT TRUE!" But she can't reach them. They are data; they are gone.

	Setsuna, Mikoto realises, is data too.

	"RrrrrRRRRRRRRGHHHHHH--" She howls, discordant, as she tears Miroku from its sword-case, tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. She can't say the things she wants to say, when there's nothing but red-hot anger in her mind. She can't say it, but perhaps that's fine; Fate's said everything she could have said, and far more eloquently than she.

	She just screams, as she charges forward, bringing herself in revolution again and again as Miroku carves brutal new etches through the engraved floor before she lifts the whole blade up to meet Lord Moebius.

	Even if it's hopeless --

	Even if it's futile --

	Can't she fight a sad fate like this, anyway?!

 COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi transforms into HiME Mikoto!
 COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi has used Obsidian Blade: Destruction on Pink Moon Stick.

 <Pose Tracker> La Sirene de Diamant [Ohtori Academy (10)] has posed.

Illusions sound like a good idea, but La Sirene doesn't respond beyond an "un" of assent. 

Then Nagisa raises a good point. They should move in groups of five. She looks towards Batiste. 

With a grim nod, Batiste accepts his destiny.

But he is not called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice (of being stretched out and walking on his hind feet for kilometers). The child is fed, and seen, at least, to where she (they? La Sirene is not sure) should be. But then they walk. 

She thinks, partway through the journey, that she should sing a song. 

And for a while, la Sirene does no such thing. It feels... it feels wrong. 

But some time later, she does begin to hum. It sounds a bit like someone idly drawing a bow across the deeper-voiced strings of a violin, though, of course, mostly like humming. 

Gazing at the wires, la Sirene asks Endo, "I don't suppose...?" But cutting such a conduit might be a measure they *have* to do, but not something where they should *begin*. What if what-has-been-taken simply splashes out? What if it never returns to where it should be? 

But soon enough - "You!" says la Sirene, gazing on Westar. She remembers him. 

Or, as matters soon develop, she remembered him. Her eyes widen for a moment. Silent in shock as Westar, as Soular, are abruptly drawn inwards and sucked into -- into nothingness? 

But even so, this man before them, this Lord Moebius, doesn't hesitate to draw something out of them too. 

"Resources?" la Sirene says. 

She takes in a deep breath. 

"RESOURCES????" la Sirene *shouts* -- and it is a sound that fills the hall as she clenches fists on either side of her legs, leaning her head forwards. 

"YOU SLEW THEM... FOR "RESOURCES"???" 

"They fought like devils for you, tormenting Earth for your designs, tireless and maddening I can tell you this much, and all you can say is -- FAIL??! They were people - more people than you, you ancient ghoul!" Setsuna might have prompted her, but her self-amplified voice rings outwards as she stomps forwards. Even as Lera bursts into the air. (Batiste leaps off la Sirene's shoulder and runs for the edge of the space, because he doesn't want to be right there, right now.) 

"Let he who drowns the loyal for the scraps of their flesh and bone be left asunder on the shore, where sea comes in and out," la Sirene continues onwards. "Let futility clamp on the withered flesh of his heart, until his eyes are opened -- and if open they will not, let bird and crab torment him!" 

Her left arm snaps up. "LES MYSTERES," she cries out, right hand raising upwards: 

"-- COME!" 

 COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant has used Les Mysteres on Pink Moon Stick.

 <Pose Tracker> Kyouka Okazaki [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.

Nagisa points out they haven't bothered anybody with their appearance yet. "That's true... maybe they haven't been told to watch out for anything suspicious..."

That feels mean to say, somehow. Even if it might happen to be true.

Batiste makes 10... "Orrrr Endo could walk with us."

Kyouka nods to Setsuna to signal that she'll follow her lead, then. Clara, for her part, mutters, "Suit yourself." Kyouka gently elbows Clara's side, and the two have a brief telepathic exchange.

She'll leave the lying about missions to other people. It's not that she's bad at lying, she just has a distate for it. (And also she's a little bad at it.)

However they arrange the lines, though, Kyouka and Clara both get into a line of five.

It galls, Kyouka, to see that kid have to resort to suspicion, but... she supposes it fits, in a place like this.

Still, eventually they make it all the way to the base of the tower. The scale of it is almost incomprehensible. "I was right," she says quietly. "This feels ''way'' worse up close."

And even more worse is that they ahve to enter that thing... and even worse than ''that'', somehow... is that they're expected. Two faces Kyouka doesn't recognize, but a third one that she does. She can take a guess at who's on the chair, though.

And no Northa, she also notes. That doesn't make her feel much better, though.

But then-- Mobius gives an order. Deleted.

''Deleted''.

She can only stare, in shock, as the red hole springs into existence. "You... you can't just..."

She only met Westar the once, in the park, fighting against a scarf robot. Listened to how he wanted to bring Labyrinth's way of life to Earth. She remembers, quite clearly, yelling at him to get off their planet.

But she also remembers the conversation she had with Setsuna afterwards, where she had come to understand her friend a little better, and listened to her feelings, past and present, about Westar.

She had hated what he wanted to do to their planet, but she had never hated Wester himself. Or would have ever called him garbage. He was a product of his environment, after all, and Setsuna saw something in him.

She finds it much easier to hate Mobius, though. She feels anger well up within her and grabs it tight, lets that flame flow through her. And not just for Westar and Soular--for the city and country she's started to consider home, finally. Her parents, Wolfy, her friends.

Countless, untold magical worlds...

"Grr.... You ''bastard''. Those-- those were people! Not just-- resources to be allocated!" One foot slides forward, her hands adjusting to a fighting stance without thinking--almost without transforming. "Clara. Keep the others safe." (She mostly means the mascots.)

"R-right!" In a soft flash of green light she takes her much smaller fox form, with impossibly bright red fur and two tails. "Everyone, on me!"

"Strike Wolf!" she shouts as she starts running forward.

&lt;Standby ready,&gt; announces the device.

"Seeeeeeet up!" A bright, riotous burst of light violet energy erupts around her as she runs, and suddenly she leaps high into the air, trailing energy behind her. It bursts at the top of her arc, in that one perfect moment where motion ceases. The bright neon purple of her new barrier jacket, armored gauntlets and boots, a long belt, tied in back, the two ends drifting behind her.

Then she kicks at something, a purple gem in the hell of her boot bursting with energy as she ''surges'' forward, no longer an arc but a straight line, directly towards Mobius. She twists, midway, bringing her foot ''hard'' against Mobius with a cry of "Faaaaaaangbreaker!" More violet energy surrounds her boot as it lowers, then explodes on contact.

 COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki transforms into Barrier Jacket Fang!
 COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki has used Fangbreaker on Pink Moon Stick.

 <Pose Tracker> Nagisa Misumi [Juuban Public School (11)] has posed.

Nagisa grimaces when the granola bar comes out, but it's too late to stop it. As hard as it is, when evil is in control, sometimes you have to go along and get along for a bit, and this is not the sort of dire problem that should be already cracking their resolve to blend in. Nagisa herself finds that almost intolerable... but they need to make it to Chiffon.

Nagisa is not totally convinced the kid isn't going to eat at least part of that wrapper. Oh well. They wouldn't be the first.

Who is Nagisa to talk about being strict on blending in, anyway? Because as her group of five marches, she does her best not to emote too much or talk loudly, but at no point does she even consider letting go of Honoka Yukishiro's hand.

Nagisa halts with the others as a familiar pair of faces finally show themselves. She and Honoka have always had their own villains to deal with, but they know Westar and Soular, sure enough. Particularly the former, whose persistance and ebullience set him apart from so many fallen dark lieutenants. Not to mention his sheer brawn.

"Westar," she says, not really a greeting, not really a warning to her allies. It just has to be said. "Soular."

Others state the name of this third figure, though Nagisa had been able to infer.

Already holding hands with Honoka, Nagisa for once actually has to step away from her in order to prepare for transformation, to create the most comfortable and familiar 'V' shape with their arms. "We'll make this quick," she promises Setsuna, as Westar states his plan quite directly. Another pair of magical girls might instead try to evade him, given the importance of time. But though this duo has the benefit of the brilliant mind of Honoka Yukishiro, they have also been equipped with a hammer of brute force so impossibly large that even a genius relegates most combat problems to nails.

But what had been intended as a transformation stance suddenly becomes the posture with which Nagisa and Honoka cling to each other, as they witness a horror. In Soular's lithe, dark androgyny, Nagisa sees a flash of Pisard, in the moment of his death. In Westar's bluff, earnest menace, she recalls Gekidrago. And in a dizzying moment of guilt, she makes a connection between the granola-eating child who was never given choices, and the dangerous villains being torn apart in front of her.

It costs her a few seconds. But to Setsuna Higashi, this pain is both a thousand times greater, and far simpler. As Setsuna-nee-Eas finishes her transformation, Nagisa and Honoka make eye contact and hastily begin theirs.

Pretty Cure Transformation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPrRBPdlUTE

Rainbows twine. Two hearts meet, trust, and *resonate*. In quicksilver they lance back to earth, girded now in black and white raiment respectively.

"Emissary of Light," Nagisa announces herself, and in this place she truly finds herself an emissary, a representative of a distant Queen, here in the realm of a far darker king. "Cure Black!"

As the sparkles fade, Cure Black finds Cure Passion much too far ahead of her, ahead even of such swift allies as Fate Testarossa. Expelling a frustrated breath out of the corner of her mouth in her version of a curse, Black glances to her partner. "Huwaito," she requests, with a determined look in her eyes. When she gets an equally determined nod back, she jogs backwards a few paces, then sprints forward, lifting her foot to plant it on White's joined hands.

The supernatural might of Cure White becomes a spring, and Black is fired forward, a combination of her own leap and White's formidable upper body strength sending her sailing at Moebius far faster than she could run. She leads with her knee and elbow, just letting White toss her bodily into the enemy. But the moment her feet hit the ground, Cure Black's arms cock, and she unleashes a hammering torrent of blows.

Westar won't get his chance at that fistfight with Cure Black. But she'll pour plenty of punches into his boss for him, all the same.

"HAAAA-CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA!" Cure Black roars, trying to distract Moebius from finishing that third and most tragic deletion... the one Cure Passion no longer is capable of fearing the way she should.

 COMBAT: Nagisa Misumi transforms into Cure Black!
 COMBAT: Honoka Yukishiro transforms into Cure White!
 COMBAT: Cure White has used Blacku Hawk Up on Nagisa Misumi.
 COMBAT: Nagisa Misumi accepts Cure White's Blacku Hawk Up, taking 0 Fatigue damage!  Nagisa Misumi is Cheered!  
 COMBAT: Nagisa Misumi has used Hundred Fierce Fists on Pink Moon Stick.
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to dodge Cure Passion's Passion Flash, taking 35 Fatigue damage!  
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick cleanly braces 34 Fatigue damage from Lera Camry's Corona Crash, taking 6 Fatigue damage!  Critical Hit!
 Lera Camry is Psyched!  Pink Moon Stick's Block ability activates!
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick dodges 24 Fatigue damage from Fate Testarossa's Sprite Zanber, taking 16 Fatigue damage!  Pink Moon
 Stick's Fade ability activates!
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 18 Fatigue damage from La Sirene de Diamant's Les Mysteres, taking 15 Fatigue damage!  Pink Moon
 Stick's Block ability activates!
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick perfectly dodges 56 Fatigue damage from Mikoto Minagi's Obsidian Blade: Destruction, taking 0 Fatigue
 damage!  Critical Dodge!  Pink Moon Stick's Fade ability activates!
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick braces 13 Fatigue damage from Endo Naoki's Blauverschiebung, taking 20 Fatigue damage!  Pink Moon Stick's
 Block ability activates!  Stagger applied to Pink Moon Stick!
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick partially dodges 2 Fatigue damage from Kyouka Okazaki's Fangbreaker, taking 9 Fatigue damage!  Kyouka
 Okazaki is Psyched!  Pink Moon Stick's Fade ability activates!
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick fails to brace Cure Black's Hundred Fierce Fists, taking 47 Fatigue damage!  Critical Hit!  
 COMBAT: Mikoto Minagi has saved her current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: Fate Testarossa has saved her current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: Cure Passion has saved her current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: Lera Camry has saved her current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: Kyouka Okazaki has saved her current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: La Sirene de Diamant has saved her current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: Endo Naoki has saved his current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: Pink Moon Stick has saved her current combat state for later!
 COMBAT: Cure Black has saved her current combat state for later!

[[2024-08-18 - The Labyrinth Reloaded|TO BE CONTINUED]]

[[Category:Logs]]