"Pan paka paaaaaaaan~!"

Witchie bristled with annoyance from the spot where she waited, outside of her dwelling in Lulukoko. "Dessie, do you have to do that every time you show up somewhere?"

A couple of tear-drops appeared in the green haired goddess' eyes. "W-Well, yes! It makes me look cool to do that when I appear!"

Witchie's face went flat at first. She barely managed to muster the energy to lift a brow an uncomfortable silence later. "…You… Really think so…?" She asked doubtfully.

Before the nature goddess could start to cry about it, Inari suddenly appeared behind her, patting her comfortingly on the back and sparing them the wails. "Now, now. Dessie's proclamation is very charming and unique. Don't be rude, Witchie."

Witchie pouted and puffed back, on the verge of being temperamental. "Hey, don't call me rude when you both show up late and one of you is crowing like a rooster!"

"A rooster-?!" Dessie pouted deeply, unable to keep from wailing now.

Inari, now pushed past her limits, growled back. "Was that REALLY necessary? Ugh, nevermind." She quickly added when Witchie began to smirk, clearly about to answer affirmatively. Inari instead urged on, "And we were NOT late! We were right on time!"

But Witchie still smirked, despite Inari's protest. "Aha! But don't they say in Tsuyukusa, that if you are 'right on time' that means you're late?"

Inari went bright red. They did say that in Tsuyukusa... But to use it against her was too much! "H-Hey! Didn't you say this special spell had to be cast at a certain time? If you keep blaming us you really will make us too late!"

She had scored a point there herself, and that finally wiped the smirk from Witchie's face. "Oh fine! Let's get on with it then! Alright now, mighty and sacred alter!" She suddenly cried, turning around and splaying her hands out into the air. "Hear our prayer! Our human friend from the crossroads hasn't visited as much since they got married! They used to talk to us all the time about their farm and their plants and animals and fishing and all kinds of interesting stuff!"

Inari implored the alter, as well. "It's true. We miss our friend. But we don't want to impose either. We want to be part of their world. So we ask special permission to let their lover be able to see us and converse with us, so that we may get to know them better too!"

Dessie finally dried her tears and added her power and wishes to the alter. "Then hopefully, if their lover can see us, our friend who lives at the crossroads won't have to worry about their lover seeing us and we can all hang out! Then maybe our friend will visit us more because they won't have to worry about their family thinking it's odd!"

In unison, the three little goddesses in training cast their wishes together to form the spell, and spoke the last part of it together. "Bring us the lover of our friend at the crossroads, so that they may meet us all and tell us all the details of their love and life with our dear friend!"

Their power shimmered and glimmered and pooled together towards the alter… But then suddenly, the world began to shake! Existence itself seemed to shut on and off again several times in sequence, the whole world being cast from light to complete darkness. Each time another resident from one of the Trio of Towns would appear in the sacred grove around them, one after the other. By the time it went back to normal, all in all Wayne, Ford, Ludus, Yuzuki, Hinata, Lisette, Komari, Kasumi, Iluka and Siluka were laying haphazardly around each other, in a daze, some of them groaning.

The three goddesses, now very scared and at alert, sensed that there were a few others around them too. Each of their elder sister goddesses were around them, invisible but unmistakably in their presence. To the little spirits, they boomed angrily via telepathy, so that the recovering mortals were spared, "Do you have ANY idea what you have just DONE?!"

Dessie immediately burst into tears, and Inari and even Witchie wasn't far behind her. They already sensed it but the elder deities were soon to explain it, in unison, "You're lucky we managed to get here in time, or you might have undone existence itself!"

"W-Waaaah-!"

The elder gods sighed and relented just a bit, "Silly little sisters, your wishes were ill-spoken…"

Witchie was the first and only one to dare try to talk back, "Hey! We were very specific in what we wanted!"

Exasperated, the greater goddesses roared back, cowing her, "You FOULED up the spell Witchie, admit it! First you riled up all the spell-casters and put them in an agitated mood right before the spell, then you worded the spell poorly, and finally, you failed to realize what you were dealing with when you called upon the power of the crossroads! There's –always- extra power when you're dealing with crossroads!"

The three little goddesses shrank down again, bowing their heads in shame and apology. "We're sorry! SO sorry! Please help us big sisters!"

The elder gods again sighed in suffering, begrudgingly beginning the reparation process. "In order to do that, in order to fix this mess you created, you have to finish this spell you mucked up, and most importantly, realize WHY you mucked it up! You silly things called upon your friend at the crossroads. But you didn't realize that there are many other versions of our world, existing in other dimensions! You nearly caused every possible lover of every possible person at the crossroad to appear here! You're lucky we stabilized the spell. Instead of just about a dozen people showing up, you could have been crushed by countless human bodies before tearing the cosmos asunder…"

Dessie, Inari, and even Witchie gulped with deep fear at the grim and dark fate they had just very narrowly avoided, and bowed again deeply to their sisters, this time all staying very silent as a form of apology. So instead of any protests from them, it was the groaning of the humans that could be heard.

The Greater Goddesses motioned towards the mortals with the wind. "It won't be long before they start to notice…"

The little goddesses stopped bowing for just a moment and looked back behind them. Almost immediately Witchie piped up, "Hey, what's up with Wayne…?"

And almost in tandem with her as she said it, Ludus also began to ask the very same thing, "Hey, what's up with Wayne…?" He asked, wonder in his voice.

Wayne blinked back at him, wondering why he was calling him out specifically. "Whaddya mean…?"

"Your eye." Ludus went on, "Your scar. What happened to that big scar you've always had on your left eye?"

Wayne blinked openly at that, completely taken aback. "S-Scar?"

Ludus pressed on, sure of his recollection. "Yeah, the scar over your left eye! You said you got into a lot of scraps as a kid, and that one day you picked a fight with the wrong delinquent, and he pulled out a pocket knife and slashed your left eye! So ever since then you stopped getting into scraps, and that's why they call you Right-Eyed Wayne!"

Wayne took a step back in shock. "H-Hey! Now I'm sure I would stop getting into scraps right away if something like THAT ever happened to me, but that never happened!"

Ludus started to get angry at that. "What, you calling me a liar? You think I don't know what my own friend looks like, you weird doppelganger?"

Iluka heatedly defended her foster-brother. "Yeah, I remember Wayne always having a scar on his eye too! But I thought it was his right eye…?"

Suddenly she seemed a little unsure, and then Siluka mentioned, "It was definitely his right eye that had the scar. But then, Iluka, what happened to the scar on your hand from when you injured it as a kid, that time we were lost at sea…?"

The two sisters looked at each other silently after that, very concerned, while Ford also spoke up in Wayne's defense, "Ahem! I have been Wayne's doctor for several years and I can say definitively that the man I have treated has NEVER had a scar over either of his eyes!"

The scar-less Wayne sighed with relief as his old friend defended him. "Thanks Ford, ol' pal…" He replied slowly, so grateful that he neglected to mention that this new Ford had no scar on his own face as HE remembered – A burn from a fire in his childhood that had inspired him to become a doctor… Instead, he simply mentioned, "Hey, you guys… This is really weird. What in the heck is going on…?"

All of them looking around at each other, they all realized it in unison. They all remembered each other's faces, but at the same time, each was just a little bit and yet completely different than it should be…

The major goddesses finally addressed their younger counterparts once again. "Alright. Now you must proceed with your spell. You wanted to converse with the lover of the crossroads, get all the 'juicy details', as it were. Well, now every one of them must do so, must tell you about their lover who lives at the crossroads, how they met them, how they look like, their history, all that they know of them, and all the romantic details of their courtship and married life. Each and every one must confess them all to you and everyone around them before they are allowed to return to their normal life. Now go on, they can see you now, go impose on and embarrass them!"

Suddenly in the eyesight of all the mortals around them, the three little goddesses felt immensely ashamed instead of grand and glorious like they had been planning. However, all of the mortals around them were looking at them in wonder, apparently realizing wordlessly what they were on their own before the child gods began to speak.

Inari was first to address them, ever the professional… Or at least, she was trying to be. "U-Um… So, it is we! I mean, us? Oh dear…" She sighed, no longer trying to salvage how awful this must look. "Look mortals, it is indeed us, the guardian deities of your towns. But you really shouldn't praise us at all…"

"We messed up BIG TIME…" Witchie admitted heavily. "BIG TIME. Bigger than I've EVER messed up before…"

Dessie simply sniffled and cried like a little child after a very strong scolding…

Inari went on for them, "We made not just one, but two unforgivably large errors… We worded a spell too poorly, and we invoked a power that was much greater than we realized. The power of the crossroads… We asked to talk to the lover of the person who lived at the crossroads, because we used to talk to the person at the crossroads, and we missed them. But we didn't realize that, unlike all of you, who exist in every alternate version of this reality, even if a little different each time… Apparently the person who lives at the crossroads is a COMPLETELY different person in every one!"

They had realized this just a moment ago, when each goddess telepathically shared with each other an image of the girl they thought was the same person when talking to each other. Her image had been completely different in each of the three pictures they provided…

"So, uh, now…" Witchie started to hesitantly admit…

Until Dessie finally just burst out, "WE'RE SO, SOOOOO SORRY! We j-just wanted to hear some r-romantic stories and get to know our special friend's lover and family! Now b-because of our mistake, you all have to tell us all about your lover and your life with them, and until you do, we can't put the worlds back to normal!"

Witchie finally just sighed and conceded, "Sorry…"

Inari bowed deeply to the mortals. "Our deepest apologies…"

Their mistake was admittedly pretty phenomenally huge, but it was hard to hold a grudge against a being infinitely more powerful than you, which you have worshipped all your life. And extra hard to do so when they were just so gosh-darn cute besides…

So finally the mortals all sighed, and resigned themselves to the task ahead of them. "Well then…" Wayne spoke up. "Who goes first? Like what, do we do this spin the bottle style…?"

Ludus shrugged. "Well, we all have to do it eventually. So, how about the least shy and most outgoing of us just go ahead first, and the shyer ones can just volunteer when they're ready?"

Everyone in attendance nodded silently. Then Ludus went ahead and raised his hand. "I'll go ahead then! Aloha everyone! My name is Ludus! I mean, I guess we already knew that but…" He cleared his throat and skipped over the blunder, "Okay, so. My lover who lives at the crossroads. Let me tell you all about them…"

Well, to start, her name is Sali. S-A-L-I. It's pronounced just like Sally, but it's Sali. She's got brown skin like me, with lavender eyes and amethyst hair. But her family is light-skinned, with blonde hair. She's adopted. Her adoptive father was a tough but loving man. He wasn't sure about her starting a farm at the crossroads, not because he didn't think she was strong enough necessarily, but because the family that had abandoned her as a child had once come from either Lulukoko or one of the surrounding islands. But she didn't come there to try and chase after her missing parents, she really wanted to be a farmer. She's a darn good one too. She's got a preference for Summer crops. Her banana and coconut trees have the most amazing fruit, and her pineapple juice and jams have won awards…"

Clearing his throat, he paused to think for a moment, before continuing, "She, um, likes to wear this really pretty and colorful tube top outfit when she's working out in the sun… Hehe, when winter comes along she's so out of her element, she finds it hard to want to put on the extra clothes, even in the bitter cold! She's definitely a summer child. And well, haha, so is the child we had together last year! A Summer Son. We named him Sami."

Several of the others clapped in congratulations for him. The shyer ones simply smiled. He continued after they were done, "It's kind of funny… When Sali first came to town, I kinda saw her as a lot like my ohana, like Iluka and Siluka. I kinda saw her as a sister. But then I realized that she probably didn't think of me as a brother… And that I didn't want her to, either. It's just, things were always so easy and uncomplicated around her, so natural, as if we were already ohana from the moment we met. And she told me that the ohana that had left her didn't matter to her, because me and the twins were her ohana now… We like all the same kinds of crops and foods. We like the same kind of bright colors and tropical styles. Our house is a very colorful jungle-theme abode, with lots of purple and blue. Cerulean tile floors and turquoise-painted walls. There's always a light, positive vibe going on inside. Like the warmth of sunrise, the ocean breeze, or the sand between your toes. Yeah. Our love is simple like that, but just as wonderful…"

As he finally finished, the group around him was left in an impressed silence, before again bringing forth applause, this time from everyone in attendance.

"The sand between yer toes, huh?" Wayne grinned after he was through. "Well, that's kinda funny. Because my gal, her name is actually Sandy… Although, hey, one quick thing before I tell y'all about her – Ludus! That Wayne you know, does he still get a lot of attention from the ladies with that big ol' scary scar he's got?"

Ludus rolled his eyes back at him. "Dude… Are you kidding? He's probably got more fangirls than you because of it!"

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