Tiny artificial clouds formed at the top of a glass tank. Tubes fed into the top, with a large plastic jug of some sort connecting them with a large mechanical machine beneath the tank. As the Lily Class looked on, the clouds began to taper downward and condense. Raindrops dripped from them down to the puddle at the bottom.

"As you can see, our weather machine works perfectly!" Misaki Izumi smiled, no doubt resenting the whispers in class of 'oh, so they can sound like normal people when they're separated'. "Alice, explain."

Her partner, Mitsuishi Seira, sighed a bit and nodded. "We've managed to recreate all forms of precipitation... as you can see from the crack in the glass over in the corner. That's when we tried hail."

"I see!" Ami-sensei started clapping. "Give them a round of applause for their science project, everyone!"

The girls of the class clapped along, and the presenting duo wheeled their contraption over to the side of the room and sat down in their desks. Ami-sensei stood and looked over her sheet.

"Hmm... Next, Kawada Asa and Nakayama Yoko with their project, 'Anatomy of a Motor Vehicle'!"

All eyes turned to the back of the room. Asa was on one side of a worn, wooden red wagon, tugging it up the aisle, while Yoko was pushing it along on the other side. Thanks to the weight of the car engine they'd rested in the wagon, it wasn't moving very quickly.

"I still think we should have seen if it could run on burning spirit," Asa grunted.

Yoko wheezed. "Suit yourself."

Futari wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon

Episode 10: Snowed In? This Town's Too Warm, Right?

"...and so we'll show you how the engine works." Asa smiled. "Turn it on, Yoko!"

Yoko nodded. She turned her head to glare as the class erupted into little gasps and whispers, effectively shutting them up.

The teacher blinked, put down her paper and immediately teared up. "Ah!"

Asa and Yoko looked up at her. "What's wrong?"

Ami-sensei ran to them and clasped her hands in front of her, an aura of sparkles visible around them. "I just knew this would work! You're even on a first-name basis! The social change inside this school will bring justice to the world!"

Asa sweatdropped. "Uh, Nakata-sensei..."

"No, no, no!" She shook her head vigorously. "You've been a part of my class for two months now, Kawada-san! Everybody else calls me Ami-sensei, so you should be no exception! The unity of the class will foster truth, friendship and respect for all!"

Asa rubbed the back of her head. "Okay! I guess it's Ami-sensei, then, huh?"

Yoko blinked. Their teacher was even more intense than Asa, wasn't she?

The core of the Etherium, that ornately carved white room, was the site of another meeting. The Boss had decided to attend, judging from the ripples that occasionally appeared in the air.

"Good job, Tachimany," he said in a voice that echoed around the room. "Though it's disappointing that you didn't bring back any Moon Pieces, we now know the identities of the new Pretty Cure, or at least what they look like."

"It was nothing." Tachimany gave five identical smirks and shifted into seven little flower girls.

"We just thought..."

"...someone here..."

"...needed a lesson..."

"...in who was useless."

Kainatrol glared at them. "You got lucky."

"If you would hold off on infighting for a moment," the Boss interjected. They shut up. "Good. Now, our objective is the Moon Pieces. Up until now, Pretty Cure have been an occasional deterrent to achieving that objective. However, they have at least one Moon Piece, and-"

"What are we waiting for?" Binbeat stretched out his arms. "I'm outta here. I'm not gonna get shown up by a dumb old he-she." The childish agent teleported out, leaving his older companions to stare.

Tachimany shifted into two businessmen and frowned. "Calling us that was uncalled for. Insult aside, we're not even a singular person."

Mireyes rubbed her forehead under her veil. "That boy never changes, does he?"

The lunch bell was more than welcome for the Lily Class. Yoko approached Asa's desk as everyone else filed out. "Are you..." She looked to the side, clearly not used to this sort of thing.

Okamoto Yukari popped up beside her, giving a smile as big as her glasses lenses. "I think she's trying to ask if you want to eat with us."

Asa stood up and pulled the convenience store-made lunchbox out of her bag. "With the both of you? Sure, why not?"

"Hey, hey, hey, hold it."

The three of them turned around to see Kondou Hoshi, hands on her hips, her short brown hair even more of a mess than usual. She was glaring squarely at Yoko between the other two.

"Can I have an explanation?" Hoshi marched forward like she was going to beat somebody up. "You, Nakayama Yoko, basically ripped Asa to shreds last week when you decided you were going to let her down to look after Okamoto and said it was just fine because you weren't friends or anything. Now all three of you are buddies again? You're even calling each other by your first names!"

Yukari sweatdropped and rubbed the back of her head. "I totally understand if you're feeling left out..."

Hoshi pointed her finger at Okamoto. "Listen for a second, will you? It's not that!" She turned her attention on Asa, who was quivering with an odd expression on her face. "Asa, you're being too nice. Why are you guys suddenly friends again? Why did you become friends in the first place?"

Asa waved her arms. "Hoshi, seriously, they're good people! It's a long story, okay? Besides, you can go sit with the other girls again now."

Hoshi stood there for a minute. She finally sighed and crossed her arms. "What, Omemi and her fanclub? They're nice if they like you, but I don't feel like dealing with them right now." She locked eyes with each of the other girls. "If you're gonna insist on this, then let me come too. It's just lunch, so it's no problem, right?"

Yoko sweatdropped. Yukari smiled. Asa brightened and gave the thumbs up. The odd group made their way to the lunch area.

Not many people had been on the roof that day. It was probably too windy, so they were all eating indoors. It was in this way that a small boy in a foreign-looking white and green school uniform that had been outdated for nearly a century managed to materialize and climb through the window to the Lily Class' room without anybody noticing.

"Booooring." Binbeat stuck his tongue out at the empty classroom. "Are Pretty Cure really gonna be here?" Silence; of course, no one else was in the room. He wandered around for a little bit, pulling a marker out of one person's bag and drawing a hideous blob-monster on the desk of the person next to her. The boy grinned at his handiwork and drew on a few more desks before tossing the marker in the corner, scattering the contents of Ami-sensei's tissue box across the room, and writing in a strange language on the chalkboard. Pretty Cure were long forgotten.

He moved over to the other end of the board and tripped over the edge of a large contraption.

"Ow!"

The boy grabbed his eye mask out of the air and quickly put it back on before he stood up, not caring about the rest of the mess that was now settling down around him.

"What is this thing, anyway?" He poked it a few times and stood on his tiptoes to read the inscription. It didn't make any sense. Other worlds' writing systems were hard to get used to; he hadn't even bothered with the writing on that other sign where he'd taken the strange-looking bread from. Binbeat shrugged and pressed a button. The machine whirred to life, water pumping at the side, and snow began to fall inside the tank.

"Whoooooaaaa."

That was totally awesome. Binbeat's eyes filled with stars and his head with visions of stealing the science project. If he had a weather machine, it would be snowing in the Etherium forever and he could declare a snowball war on everyone! That would make it a whole lot less boring over there.

He drew out a Hidoinaa crystal. No way was he lifting this thing.

Most of the students were gathered around tables and desks, eating in groups. The whispers had picked up when the four girls entered the room together, but Hoshi just glared in their general direction and sat down. The other three looked at each other sadly.

"I'm guessing this happens often with you." Hoshi made a face.

"For the past month, really." Yoko turned away a bit. "It's not too late to turn back, you know."

"You don't get it." Hoshi leaned on her hand to prop up her head. "It's always too late. They just pretend it's not and keep whatever you did as hidden ammo in case you mess up again. I'm sick and tired of them."

"...Me too."

The four spun their heads around to the end of the table, as did everybody else in the room, at least the Lily Class and their age-cohorts. Ogata Mia fidgeted, her hair bow drooping at the back.

"Can I sit here?"

"Oh, sure!" Yukari moved over and Mia pulled up a chair. The lunchroom noise got louder again.

"Wow," Hoshi laughed. "We're a weird group, all right."

Yoko turned pink. "I'm not weird."

"You're as weird as I am," Asa chirped.

"That's not exactly reassuring," Yoko sighed under her breath.

"Everyone!" Someone at another table stood up, and everyone turned to her. "Look out the window!"

Snowflakes were flying everywhere outside, left, right and diagonal. The snow was quickly covering the trees with their falling leaves and the ones that were still stubbornly green, and thick, grey clouds were covering the sky.

Yoko raised her eyebrows. "Does it not snow often here?"

"In Kazahana City? Not for years." Mia blinked. "It's too warm."

"Hmm..."

"Whoa."

The Lily Class stared at the mess that their room was in. Desks had been overturned, the entire chalkboard had been covered in writing, someone's paper-mache volcano was bubbling over, and papers and boxes were strewn across the floor.

"What a mess..." Yukari balanced on tiptoes to her desk, trying not to step on anything on the floor.

Yoko clenched her fists at her sides. "This is absolutely unforgivable!"

Asa sweatdropped. "Uh, Yoko..."

"What?" She whirled to face her teammate with an Ice Queen Nakayama glare.

Asa rubbed the back of her head. "...nothing."

"Incoming!", someone shouted behind them. Just as the five and whoever else was inspecting turned around, Ami-sensei elbowed through the crowd of students at the door and gaped at the mess.

"It's... it's..."

"Terrible?", Yoko offered.

"Annoying?", Hoshi shrugged.

"Tragic!" The teacher threw her hands up to the ceiling and wailed as if she were pleading to the fluorescent lights above. "Such vandalism during the lunch hour, when no one was here to stop it! This must have been a carefully cultivated attack upon the Lily Class! Why else would a day be chosen where your beautiful science projects were all gathered here to be defiled? Just look at that poor project in the corner!" She pointed to one with bread crumbs scattered where the display used to be. Its posterboard read 'THE FORMATION OF MOLD ON DIFFERENT TYPES OF BREAD'.

"They stole our bread?" Mia blinked.

"Why would they?" Hoshi scratched her head.

"Because they're terrible people!" Ami-sensei may or may not have had a tear in her eye. "They've targeted the Lily Class for some unknown slight and made it so that we'll have to clean up this mess! What's more, they've done it on a day when we're snowed in! I can't even teach class until the room is cleaned up, and we're trapped in here!"

"Did she just say we were snowed in?" Izumi Misaki looked to her friends.

"She said we were snowed in." Misaki Izumi nodded. "It's this weird weather."

"Yes, it's got to be the weather," Izumi Misaki said. "Because it's very weird."

Ami-sensei sniffled and started picking things up off the floor. "If those boys in the Rose Class did this, they're all getting two weeks of detention for this injustice!"

Mitsuishi Seira tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder and made her way to the window. "Oh, come on! This much snow gives us a snow day? There isn't even five centimetres yet! This is pathetic!"

Omemi Emiru laughed a little as she and her cohorts walked over there. "Kazahana City just isn't prepared for snow, or did you forget? You really are a foreigner at heart."

Seira frowned. "Come on, girls. It was only a few years I spent out of the country."

"It doesn't matter, Alice." Emiru adjusted her glasses. "Enjoy this 'pathetic' snow while it's here."

Asa carefully walked up to the seething Yoko and put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, Yoko?"

"What is it now!", Yoko snapped.

Asa gulped but stood her ground. They were friends now. "Can't you hear something?"

Yoko took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Maybe... She opened them again and ran over to the side window at the front of the room, trying her best not to step on the mess. Asa rushed behind her, but may or may not have left footprints on somebody's homework. They forced the window open and stuck their heads out into the air, getting snowed on.

"What are they doing?", whispered one classmate at the back of the room.

"Who knows?", said another.

Asa and Yoko listened closely and then looked at each other.

"An organ?", Yoko asked.

"Uh-huh," Asa said.

"You mean..."

"Of course."

Misaki Izumi surveyed the room. "Hey, Alice, where did you put our project? I don't think it's here."

"It's definitely not here," Izumi Misaki chimed in. "Where did you put your project?"

"Ami-sensei!" Asa pulled her head back into the classroom and ran over to the sulking teacher. "Hey, Ami-sensei, can we be excused? It's to find the person who trashed our room."

Ami-sensei clasped her hands and looked up at her with stars in her eyes. "Absolutely! The two of you, fighting for justice against the terrible vandals and saboteurs who make this society corrupt and painful! It's like something out of a dream! You may go at once!"

As Asa and Yoko ran out of the classroom, a pink-haired girl raised her hand. "Can I go, too?"

Ami-sensei sat straight up and narrowed her eyes. "Certainly not, Araki-san. You just want to skip."

She grumbled. "It was worth a try."

"Oh yeah! Oh yeah! I'm awesome! Oh yeah!" Binbeat banged on the keys of the giant ivory organ that he'd summoned on top of the roof. "This is the best idea ever!"

"Hidoinaa!" The weather machine had turned into a Hidoinaa and, instead of snowing inside its tank, was spreading snow all around the school.

Asa opened the door to the roof and stared. "...Well, at least we know where the weather machine went."

"Hey, you guys!" The little boy had noticed them, and he stopped playing the organ and hopped off the seat, clutching his side and grimacing as he did so. "What are you doing here?"

Yoko pointed dramatically. "I should ask the same thing of you! You vandalized our classroom and ran away with somebody's science project! What did you think you were doing!"

Binbeat held his stomach. "You're mad about that? You're the ones who put out that gross food. I feel sick now 'cause of you..."

Yoko blinked. "Don't tell me..."

Asa sweatdropped. "He ate the moldy bread."

"Is that what that was!" He winced. "Who puts moldy bread out in the open? I thought it was free food!"

Starry popped his head out of Yoko's transformation phone. "Didn't it have a sign on it ~susu?"

Binbeat waved his arms in the air. "I'm from another world! Do you think I can read your weird writing?" He walked over to the Hidoinaa more slowly than usual. "Fine, I'll go home, but I'm taking this with me!"

"Oh, no, you don't!" Yoko took her phone and Moon Card out. "That Hidoinaa was somebody's science project! I absolutely won't let you get away with stealing it and jeopardizing their grades!"

"You tell him ~susu!", Starry said from inside the phone.

Yoko and Asa looked at each other, swiped their Moon Cards and grabbed each other's hands.

"Dual Infinite Phase!"

They felt like they were spinning through the air as their Pretty Cure uniforms materialized on them, but all anyone watching would see was a flash of light and then the two Cures standing where they had been before.

"On behalf of the light, I am Cure Sunday!"

"In the name of the shadows, I am Cure Night!"

"We are Pretty Cure!"

"We'll defend at all hours..."

"...to ensure a peaceful era!"

Binbeat stepped forward, but doubled over, looking as green as the coloured portions of his uniform. "Hidoinaa," he managed, "go get 'em."

"Hidoinaa!" The monster sent a freezing wind at the girls, cutting them with flying ice crystals. They put their arms up to protect their faces and dug their heels into the concrete.

"How are we supposed to fight this thing?" Night winced from the pain and started forcing her way forward through the wind. "It didn't snow too much in the city, either!"

Sunday shut her eyes tightly and dragged her feet forward as well. "We can do this! Just..." She opened her eyes and looked up at the monster. "We just have to find some way to beat it!"

The Hidoinaa stomped forward. The wind forced the Cures back a bit. "Hidoinaaaa!"

Night suddenly looked at her partner. "Get back!"

Sunday's eyes widened. "What?"

Cure Night jumped backwards into the air. The wind pushed her further, but she spun into a backflip and landed with her feet planted firmly on the wire fence, held up by the wind and by a hand grabbing onto the wire. Sunday nodded and did the same thing, again pushed by the monster into the fence and impacting it with her feet.

"Let's get this over with."

They grabbed each other's inside hands.

"Sun Limit!"

"Night Limit!"

A blue glow formed around them, diverting the miniature blizzard.

"You've used up your days..."

"...and you're out of time!"

They let go of the fence with their outside hands.

"Pretty Cure Second Spin!"

Cure Sunday and Cure Night launched themselves forward. The force of the wind was pushing them as much as they were resisting it. They struggled to fly forward, and the Hidoinaa looked like it was concentrating as much as a giant brainless monster could.

"Come on..." Night shut her eyes and focused.

"Let's do this..." Sunday's glare at the monster intensified.

Their grip on each other's hands grew tighter.

"BREAK THROUGH IT!"

Night and Sunday flew forward and forced the blizzard out of the way. The blue glow around them made them look like a strange, inverted comet blasting right through the Hidoinaa, leaving a melting hole and shattered glass behind as they crashed into the concrete. When it faded and the girls stood up, the Hidoinaa had burned to a crisp and the weather machine sat there, untouched. The snow began to disappear like it had never been there.

Binbeat gave a moan that was half complaining, half food poisoning. "You guys suck. I'm... I'm goin' home." He vanished into the air.

Starry popped out of the transformation phone. "Good job ~susu!"

Pretty Cure detransformed and sighed.

"For obvious reasons, we are no longer considered 'snowed in'!" Ami-sensei practically glowed as she announced this from the front of the room. "Furthermore, Misaki-san and Mitsuishi-san now have their project back!"

"Ours is still gone, though," Mia said. "At least, our bread is."

"Don't worry." The teacher pushed back her black hair and smiled. "You'll still get the mark. I didn't really want to take moldy bread home, so I made my observations here."

Mia and her partner sighed with relief. "Thank goodness..."

Asa picked up the last of the fallen papers. "Who knew this mess would take all afternoon to clean up?"

Yoko spritzed the chalkboard with water and rubbed off the erasure residue with a towel. "It's ridiculous, is what it is."

Hoshi hoisted up an overturned desk. "Well, at least we don't have class now."

Yukari giggled as she sorted her things. "You know, the teacher's still here, Kondou-san."

Omemi Emiru looked over in their direction from the back of the room with everybody else. She adjusted her glasses and the light gleamed off of them.