The morning was overcast as students made their way across the many paths, sharing their conversations in the cool morning air with the smell of the recent rain still emanating from the moist pavement. Among them was Ryūko, Satsuki and Mako who were approaching the school. Ryūko and Satsuki held a foreboding look as it was obvious their anticipation of the events to come was circulating in their mind.

They made their way to the lockers and Ryūko spoke to Mako softly as she swapped over her shoes, "Mako, you should head home after school, this could get dangerous."

Mako placed a croquette in her mouth, her face filled with melancholy, "Ok..."

Ryūko placed her hand on Mako's head and snuggled close to her for a moment "Everything's gonna be ok... you trust me, right?"

Mako nodded her head and Satsuki looked in concern from behind Ryūko.
The three made their way into the class, looking over to see the empty seat at Nui's desk.

"Crap, maybe I scared her from coming to school." Ryūko said under her breath to Satsuki as the three settled down into their seats.

All of a sudden, the door to the class opened revealing Nui who stood at the entrance, she then immediately started walking towards Ryūko and Satsuki's desk. The tension raised as Ryūko and Satsuki expected the worst from the quickly approaching Nui.

Nui was in front of them as Ryūko was about to raise her voice, when suddenly, Nui immediately bowed surprising all three.

"I'm sorry!" Nui shouted arousing further surprise.

"W-what?" Ryūko was caught in utter confusion taken aback by this turn of events.

"I'm Sorry!" Nui shouted again, all the class' attention was on this strange occurrence.

"What do you mean you're sorry? We're the ones that's supposed to apologize to you!" Ryūko exclaimed in frustrated confusion.

"Oh er... sorry..." Nui appears to regather herself, with a look of guilt on her face, "It just felt like I did something wrong... so I wanted to make things better so we could be friends."

Nui' look of sadness further confused Ryūko, "You didn't do anything wrong, it was just a misunderstanding, we're sorry."

Satsuki chimes in to agree with Ryūko "She's correct, we deeply apologise."

Nui's eye brightens up and she blushes a bit in response to their apologies "T-thank you..." she the wandered over to her seat sitting down and pulling out a text book to review her notes.

The day passed by with lesson after lesson with Ryūko and Satsuki keeping a watchful eye on Nui as she goes from almost asleep to alert in the span of a few moments in a lesson. They reached the last lesson of the day, and as the bell rang to signify to time to head home, the plan was in effect.

Satsuki stepped carefully towards Nui and spoke in a calm, tentative manner, "Nui I was hoping we could spend some time together to try and make up for the horrible mistake me and my sister made."

Nui perked up upon hearing Satsuki's words, "R-really?!"

Satsuki nodded to reassure Nui "Yes, I believe you deserve some reparations for our awful acts."

Nui blushed heavily seemingly rather flustered "W-well... thank you, I'll tell you what time I'm available..."

Satsuki calmly responded in affirmation "Of course."

Satsuki returned to her desk to see Ryūko return as well from the back, "Were you successful?" Satsuki questioned.

Nui suddenly started spouting loudly from her desk, "Huh?! Where is it!?"

Ryūko then revealed to Satsuki she is holding a stylish inkwell pen.

Satsuki walks back over to Nui showing concern, "What's wrong Nui did you lose something?"
Nui looks up at Satsuki worriedly "my pen... it was inkwell and its really nice! I thought I had it just a moment ago, but it's gone!"

Satsuki put her hand on her chin putting on an expression of thinking "Wait are you sure you had it today?"

Nui mixes her worried expression with confusion "Huh?"

Satsuki began to elaborate "Well back in the alleyway yesterday I saw an inkwell pen, I wasn't sure if it was yours or someone else had dropped it there, it had this white and pink styling, with these swirly lines."

Nui looked further confused "That does sound like mine, but then how?-"

Satsuki interrupts "Well how about me and my sister come with you to that alley way to help you check?"

Nui flails her arms around seeming shocked by the proposition, "I-I couldn't possibly ask you-"

Again Satsuki interrupts, "Trust me it's no trouble at all, besides this is a good opportunity for us to make it up to you about our grievances."

Nui blushes heavily while looking down at her desk. "O-oh okay..."

Ryūko and Satsuki nod at each other subtly before following Nui out of the classroom. Ryūko waves at Mako who waves in return frowning and letting out a quiet whine of concern.

Nui walked onward, glancing nervously at the girls who walked behind them. Her thoughts were overrun with worries and fear, yet she was unable to leave the path she agreed on.

"Nui?" Ryūko's words made Nui jump, "The streets that way" Ryūko pointed out to Nui gesturing in a direction to their left, her words were passive aggressive sounding more on the lines of accusations than corrections.

"O-oh r-right..." Nui shook where she stood, her nervousness displayed all over her face as she turned to walked in the direction pointed out by Ryūko. They approached the alley way,

Nui's eyes were fixed on the ground, and as she entered Ryūko and Satsuki stopped at the entrance. "So, do you know what kind of position it would be?"

Neither Satsuki nor Ryūko answered causing a moment of silence to occur.

Nui turned around displaying the fear on her face, "you're gonna beat me up, again aren't you?"

Satsuki replies cold and commanding, "That won't be necessary."

Suddenly, a few needles seemed to rain upon Nui from above planting themselves in her body. "I... can't... move..." Nui struggled to speak as her body stiffens in place.

Three large machines fall from above revealing themselves to be DTRs piloted by nudist beach agents. Nui's consciousness began to leave her as she heard an agent say "target secured" before her vision completely fading out.

Nui awakened in a clear white room on a matching bed attached to the wall. She looked around her seeming nothing else in this featureless room.

"Oh crap... oh crap oh crap oh crap!" she began to panic, looking about the room, "I'm in an experiment chamber!"

She was interrupted by the room suddenly shifting around her, objects started to phase in to the room, becoming less and less transparent, mannequins situated around the walls, various toys, dolls and teddies coloured in many shades of pink as well as fittingly coloured pink cushions and pillows all appearing within the room. This only served to confuse Nui till eventually she saw a little girl in a pink frilly dress appear scribbling on a piece of paper on the floor. The child disappeared to enter the room once again and the room appeared to change to reveal largely different locations including larger chambers, bathing areas along with various cities and shady places. She continued to watch as the life this child unfurled in front of her eyes in a matter of minutes, showing her to be the original Nui Harime, experiencing the life this doppelganger watching seemed to have forgot.

returning to the alley way, the agents approached the unconscious Nui's body, one speaking into an earpiece, "Preparing for extraction."

However... they are stopped in their tracks. The shock filled the air as red fibers appeared to rise out of Nui, they began to swirl around her body which began to rise and float into the air, the agents fired more needles at Nui but the needles they fired appeared to the hit out of the air by the fibers.

Ryūko attempted to shout above the chaos "What the hell is going on?!"

But her question would go unanswered as the fibers continued to swirl. All of a sudden the fibers cease their moments and gather around Nui forming a ball of red fibers, however a gap seemed to open up revealing a dark space, a single eye appearing in that space resembling Nui's eye then another object beside it, a purple eye patch resembling the kanji for "Nui" her original eyepatch. The ball blows apart revealing Nui Harime standing where in the same place she collapsed now with her original large pigtail twirls, her large pink bow, her original grand couturier outfit and most strikingly; her purple eye-patch. The agents attempted to Fire upon her again, but to no avail, as Nui easily dodged their attacks and with a mere flick of her wrist the agent's DTRs fell apart. Nui turned to Ryūko for a moment who was frozen along with Satsuki in their bewilderment. Nui locked eyes directly with Ryūko before she jumped from wall to wall of the alley way till she had reached the roof tops of the buildings.

The Nui in the white room witnessed a great many things, all of which appeared to be from the life of the previous Nui. She was speechless, the more she knew the less she understood and yet it all made sense. She never thought too hard about her past, but the more she had thought about it, the murkier it became. She had no past and yet she was here inexplicably. The room suddenly started to fade around her becoming transparent, revealing her to be floating above the ground and moving at a high speed while another version of herself dressed in a frilly dress leapt across roof tops while acting like she was merely skipping, a vision of the past brought back to life.

"W-what the?!" the floating Nui appeared shocked looking about in a panic.

The sight of the floating see through doppelganger seemed to capture the attention of the grand couturier who stopped almost casually to look inquisitively at the other Nui. "Oh! Hello there~ wait, that's odd... my doppelgangers aren't usually floating, or see-through for that matter"

The floating Nui looked down at her hands to see that they really are see-through, "This is weird, like really really weird."

The grand couturier placed her fingers on her chin seemingly in contemplation, "And you're a lot more talkative too..." She suddenly smiled with a realisation like a light bulb lit up in her mind, "Oh I know! Since you seem quite independent, I'll just call you clone Nui, and you can call me true Nui! A good way to separate us, right?"

Clone Nui seemed to become rather worriedly frustrated, "Are you not concerned at all with the fact that you CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD!?"

True Nui seemed to shrug this off "Oh relax Nui, it's not like I have the time to take this all in right now, this is meant to be a high intensity chase, plus doing a big talk down of all this would absolutely kill the pacing."

This response seemed to further frustrate clone Nui "What the hell are you talking about!?"

True Nui casually pointed in front of them "That!"

Seemingly in response, a nudist beach helicopter raised from below the side of the building, baring down on true Nui with a large spotlight. Clone Nui in the brief moment noticed she did not have a shadow, and so she considered the possibility of not physically existing in that reality for the time being. A panel slid open on the front of the helicopter causing a machine gun to extend out and train it is aim on true Nui. It began firing again what seemed to be needles, which true Nui evaded and continued skipping across rooftop to rooftop.

Ryūko and Satsuki did not move far from the alley way since Nui's escape. They were being guided by a nudist beach agent towards what appeared to be a pest control van parked close a few meters up on the other side of the street. As they approach the van, they noticed a figure standing outside the door to the van who responds to their approach.

"Trouble just has a way of finding you doesn't it Matoi?" the voice was rough and filled with untargeted malice and as they grew closer they saw that the voice belonged to none other than Tsumugu.

He stood with a lit cigarette of course, wearing his classic dark green combat vest paired with his matching dark green khaki trousers, both of which bearing many black straps with metal buckles some of which holding thread spools like grenades. His face also the same with his black notch on his nose and red Mohawk, his eyes fierce making obvious his experience and his battle-hardened nature.

"It's been a while Tsumugu, you haven't changed one bit." Ryūko replied, her voice passively aggressive, yet not hostile in nature.

Tsumugu took a puff of his cigarette before responding in kind "Yeah well, retirements been kind, you did alright to keep those parasites within your body in-check." Before Ryūko had a chance to respond, Tsumugu pointed with his thumb to the door of the van, "They're waiting for you in there, get in quick, we don't have time to lose while that freak is still out there."

Ryūko and Satsuki slid open the door, revealing two nudist beach agents sitting in front of several monitors and radio equipment, they spoke into headsets connected to the radios via cables while the monitors show first person views of nudist beach agents piloting DTRs, while other monitors show feed from a helicopter's point of view watching Nui skipping across roof tops while the helicopter's machine gun bears down on her. Mikisugi stood behind the agents in full nudist beach gear, so not much clothes at all, a black belt wrapped around his waist bearing many compartments similarly coloured with a gun slot situated directly over his crotch area, he had a black band covering his neck, and black boots. Both the belt and the covering on his neck bared the nudist beach insignia, a pair of underwear surrounded by a red circle with a diagonal redline striking through the underwear connecting with the circle.

He greeted both Satsuki and Ryūko with a simple "Yo." However Mikisugi's greeting was ignored as they had no time for such pleasantries.

Satsuki was the first to respond, "What is the current situation?"

Mikisugi looked past the lack of greeting in recognition of the chaotic events, "We're dispatching as many agents as possible but she's just as tough as usual, any agents that manage to catch up with her get knocked on their ass, no fatalities as of yet since she seems to be in too much of a hurry."

Satsuki was cold and clinical about the situation in her reply, "And what is our strategy?"

Mikisugi responds in his usual casual demeanour, "The strat' is to chase her to the point we can back her into a corner, which will be possible with your help, once she's in that corner we'll try to take her in, and if that ain't possible, then either you two or Tsumugu will take her out."

Mikisugi proceeded to pick up two cases in the corner of the van, then passed them to both Ryūko and Satsuki, "These should help with that."

Inside Satsuki's case contained her duel wield long and short katana blades Bakuzan Kōryū and Bakuzan Gako, them looking the same as the day Satsuki last used them, with their white hilts and black blades that gleamed from whatever light that touched them.

As Satsuki pulled them out of the case Mikisugi commented, "I know you gave them to us thinking you would never need to wield them again, but I'm afraid now's about time for you to do so."

Satsuki nodded in agreement, "Yes it seems it is..."

Within Ryūko's case contained what appeared to be two large sized tailor's daggers. It's three blades on each hilt were coloured with red edges on their sharp ends with their blunt ends being coloured black.

Mikisugi commented on Ryūko's removal of these weapons as well. "They're the tailor's blades, duel wield spec, and are specially designed for one such as yourself."

Ryūko looked at Mikisugi as he commented then looked back down at the weapons, "yeah these should work just fine."

One of the agents sitting in front of Mikisugi then spoke up to gain Mikisugi's attention, "Sir, the target has reached the designated zone."

Mikisugi then raised his voice in an order, "Alright! It's go time!" The van then started moving, quickly gaining speed with Tsumugu following close behind on his motorcycle.