Dissonance

Event XXXI

The Chapter of Darkness

Setsuna's head hurt and just trying to open her eyes was painful. The blinding light of daylight was too much for her worn out self. Abandoning her attempt to get up, she just tried to go back to sleep. She didn't drink that much and still, she had quite a headache. The tiny space she had seen when opening her eyes had been filled with Ellen's hair. Over the last few weeks it had finally returned to its normal color, which was not that much different from the dyed black look she had before.

Feeling Ellen right below her, Setsuna realized she had to be lying on top of her. Her memory was a little fuzzy on the exact details of the last couple of hours before she passed out but she was always a responsible sort that didn't really get into trouble.

Moving her arms just a little, she could feel where Ellen's face was. It would be a little gross because alcohol always left some really bad morning breath, but she still wanted to kiss Ellen awake. Groaning a little as she turned, and rolling off Ellen, Setsuna felt like the couch hadn't been that big the night before. Feeling Ellen's breath on her face, Setsuna got a little closer and shared an early morning kiss with one of her two lovers.

She still couldn't believe that it was all working out for her. It had happened so quickly, falling for Ellen, being stricken with guilt over kissing her, and explaining everything to Love. And then they all came together. Ellen had been so cute with how embarrassed she was by Love in the beginning.

The kiss tasted a little different from what she expected, but Ellen had been drinking too. Underage drinking in Japan was really something almost no one cared about. Alcohol was still sold in vending machines around the country and most shops just had an Are you an adult? Yes or No prompt on a digital pad instead of carding. Setsuna only really understood how different from other nations Japan was after traveling with Love. She also didn't know what to do about Ellen when they went back for good. With the situation as it was, would Ellen still have a band, a home? What about herself?

Putting her arms forward, around Ellen's waist, Setsuna smirked. "You ate too much Ellen..." Leaning in for another kiss, Setsuna snuggled up against her girlfriend. She was surprised when someone put their arms around her waist and snuggled against her back. Who… who was it again that we had been talking to?

"Setsuna… you need a shower..." Ellen said over a yawn, the voice coming from behind Setsuna. It only took a second for Setsuna to realize she was cuddling, and had kissed, someone else. Why does this keep happening to me? Forcing her eyes open, making a grimace because it was still blindingly bright, Setsuna found the sleeping face of one pink haired girl in front of her. And then it dawned on her. One of the new Cures… she reminded Ellen and me of Love so we hung out… I think. There were mental gasps where Setsuna started praying they really had just been hanging out. Opening her eyes a little more, she could see that the new Cure was still in a swimsuit. As was she herself.

Slowly pulling her arms back, Setsuna didn't want to raise a commotion. Slowly turning on the spot, very slowly, Setsuna faced one Kurokawa Ellen with her eyes still closed. "Morning, Ellen."

"Can we pretend it isn't morning..." Ellen yawned right after she said that. She didn't feel like getting up yet. But at least she opened her eyes. And the first thing she saw was one long arm from a pink haired girl reaching over Setsuna, hugging her from behind. "Who… is this again?"

"Cure Heart..." Setsuna couldn't remember her real name right on the spot. It was M something. She did remember really getting along with her, because she was a little bit like Love, but this situation was making her uncomfortable. Thankfully it didn't take much to get away from Heart. The couch had been transformed into a make-shift bed without their noticing, the back moved down to form another part to sit and lay on.

Ellen really had to force herself to get off the couch. She didn't feel sick or really bad, just very tired. Looking out the door, they were still within that private showroom, she only saw two other girls awake. One of them was Lemonade, the other was that new girl from Moonlight's group. Her… sister, I think. Both of them were standing out on the veranda, sipping something hot enough to give off steam from white cups. Ellen couldn't see a kitchen anywhere in the penthouse, which was odd, so she wondered where exactly they had gotten that.

She had found out last evening that favor, the currency of Dissonance, didn't really work the same way it used to. There was no more wishing for things. Only paying for it at the store or the bathhouse. It was a little inconvenient, Ellen thought at the time. But if it helped prevent another Mirrors or whatever happened during the Masquerade, she was all for it.

It was a little chilly to walk around in a swimsuit. The surfing top kept her warm and the hot pants were not actually uncomfortable but she still wanted her clothes back. The only problem was that there were clothes everywhere, strewn all around the room. And not just clothes, but underwear too. Ellen was fairly sure this hadn't been the case last night. Or maybe she just didn't remember.

Transforming, because she was too embarrassed to walk around in a swimsuit early in the morning, Ellen left the security of their room. Cure Heart just now started to toss on the couch, rambling and murmuring. Setsuna also transformed. She wasn't as embarrassed but she was cold because she only had a red bikini to wear. Following Ellen, Setsuna left Cure Heart behind.

"Going to sleep in swimsuits was not one of our better ideas," Beat said to Passion, the two of them very slowly walking towards the veranda. There were a lot of Cures still fast asleep on the large bed and so the couple pulled their steps a little. Both of them had fairly large heels when transformed, and on the marble floor it would be quite loud if they walked normally.

"I kissed Heart thinking it was you." Setsuna brought up as they were halfway through the room and Ellen stopped, just smiling at her partner. "You're not upset?"

"Accidents happen. Right? Love will understand too." Ellen was not really worried about this. It really was just an accident and maybe Heart would not even remember any of it.

Urara wasn't bothered by the cold at all, because it really wasn't that cold for someone that wasn't hung over, and stood outside on the veranda in just a yellow bikini that was, for Urara's taste, almost covering too much skin. It didn't really show off her breasts enough. Noticing the two transformed Cures coming towards herself, Urara nodded to them as a replacement for saying anything.

Yami was also awake and still wearing that special swimsuit from the night before. Mostly because she hadn't figured out how to control her transformation just yet and because she didn't just want to go around and take someone's clothes.

"Hangover?" Urara finally opened her mouth when both Beat and Passion stepped outside.

"Only a little." Setsuna felt okay, all things considered. "Are you not cold?"

"No. Because it isn't cold. You just think it is because you're hung over more than you think." Urara sipped her hot coffee, a brew that was strong enough to wake the dead. Even she wasn't in the mood to continue drinking in the morning. Not to mention that Ako would be bitching about it if she smelled vodka or scotch on her first thing in the morning.

"Where did you get the coffee?" Ellen was one of the few people that didn't have much trouble getting along with Lemonade. Although this was only because they had the same job, Ellen was glad to see that beneath the crude, angry, cynical shell, there was a sort of reasonable person.

"Buffet." Yami answered for Urara. She was in a good mood, despite the slight headache. Even the pain was welcome, as it made her feel alive. By the time Yami had woken, Lemonade had already been up. But since she didn't really know what to talk to her about, she instead only asked where she could get something to drink and Urara pointed her to the lobby, like a normal person would have. "There's a door down in the lobby. Coffee is free between 6 and 8." Yami had seen a sign that said so. Other than those times, the buffet cost money to attend.

Passion covered her mouth when she felt a yawn come on. She couldn't help but stare a little at Yami and her swimsuit. I was pretty sure she was actually much slimmer than that, Setsuna thought but didn't really want to ask about it. Everyone had their reasons and quirks. Right there, outside, were also Miki and Inori, both of them still asleep in the canvas chairs. They're going to be freezing when they wake up.

Someone coughed inside the penthouse. All four of them looked to see who it was. To Urara's surprise, it was Nozomi, who looked more dead than alive. Dream raised her hand and waved to the four that were awake before retreating to the bathroom. Moments later, the shower went on.

"I guess she'll never be good with drinking." Urara wasn't really surprised. If she remembered correctly, Nozomi worked three part-time jobs to pay for her education, to become a teacher. That didn't leave much time or a budget for going drinking with friends.

Setsuna and Ellen both looked at each other and said Coffee in the same breath. For Passion, it was a necessary evil to keep up with Love in the morning. Ellen on the other hand liked the taste. And it helped her focus.

Taking the elevator down into the lobby, the two Cures didn't plan to go back up for a while. Their receptionist was already awake, or still awake, and not paying any attention to them. As far as Sasorina was concerned, the less she had to do with the Cures, the better.

The door to the buffet was just a little inconspicuous and easy to overlook. Behind it was a very large dining room with a small station at the front, like the things they had in the subway stations. The buffet was separated into three sections from what they could tell and each section had their own station. Things became immediately clear when they noticed a big sign hanging over their heads that listed prices. 3 Day pass. Normal, 100, Expanded, 250, Premium Luxury, 1000. There didn't seem to be any kitchen anywhere in the skyscraper, which was problematic if one of the girls wanted to cook for herself. And the convenience store didn't really offer much in the way of ingredients to cook either.

There wasn't just one coffee machine but in fact eight of them. And they came with an instructional sign mounted on the wall above them, too. Free from 6 to 8 AM. 10 for one jug.

"10 favor I guess?" Ellen guessed and poured what was left in the jug into two white cups. There were several dozen cups stacked next to the machines, and a small tray at the end of the table to put away dirty cups. Ellen wondered if they were magically cleaned.

There was nowhere to sit in the dining hall unless you paid the entry fee and the moment they stepped into the lobby, their receptionist glared at them and pointed at a sign next to her. No eating or drinking in the lobby.

Ellen reached for pockets she didn't have to check for a key she didn't have and wondered where exactly she had put it. She really hoped she wouldn't have to ask for a replacement because 200 favor was quite steep. "Want to go outside?"

Since Setsuna was only wearing a swimsuit in her normal state as well, and did not have her key on her either, she agreed. Thankfully it looked like as long as Marine welcomed everyone, they were able to go up to the penthouse again, to get their keys.

Two Cures, each with a white cup between their hands, walked outside and a beautiful blue sky greeted them. The stone plaza was still surrounded by a thick fog, and they both assumed that was just how it worked. Early rays of sunshine were breaking over the fog walls, bathing the place in warm light. It was such an amazing change from before that they just stood there, in front of the door, gazing in awe.

Setsuna noticed the change first. Last night, there hadn't been a big wooden board with slips of paper on it. Or had there? It had rained, and she was focused on exploring the place, so maybe she had overlooked it? Curious about the papers attached to the board, Passion walked over to the board. It was somehow satisfying to hear each step produce a resounding sound out there. It was like she was really somewhere outside, in a mystical place. In a way it reminds me of that one video game that Love liked.

The board had a metal sign nailed to the top that said Quests and Setsuna was not sure what to make of this, especially after just thinking of video games mere seconds before. Made of solid wood, a light brown, it was mounted against two poles, reaching into the ground. The board itself was an uneven square with slightly rounded edges, as if they had been subject to the elements for a long time. The surface was rough and the quests were attached to the surface by nothing, they just stuck to it.

The papers were split into two categories; larger and smaller ones, both of them looking like plain pages of paper, but they felt strangely metallic when Setsuna touched them, and refused to budge when she tried to pull one off. Reading one of the larger ones it really did read like some kind of game quest. "Write the script of a play and put on a performance. Reward: Clothing Store will be added to the [Store] location." Setsuna didn't know what to make of that. Taking too greedy a sip from her coffee, she burned her tongue.

"What's this?" Ellen joined her partner, enjoying the feeling of sun on her face. She knew it couldn't possibly be the real sun because they were in some sort of crazy dimensional whatever space, but it sure felt like it was. Ellen checked out the larger pages. "Oh, here is one that sounds interesting. Put on a live concert. Reward: Instrument store is added to the [Store] location. A live concert?"

"Hold a swimming competition. Requires unlocking the Beach Location. Reward: Upgrades Public Bath by 1 stage." Setsuna kept reading the tasks. "Are we being made fun of?" Setsuna was no stranger to people taking advantage of others, especially if those other people were in a strange situation. Was their receptionist pulling their leg?

"I always thought rats were nocturnal." A voice that made Setsuna immediately uncomfortable came from the other end of the plaza. Northa, general of Labyrinth, had emerged out of the fog and was now headed straight toward the bathhouse. "But it looks like this one rat is happy playing pretend."

Not even looking at Setsuna, Northa vanished back into the fog, on the bathhouse path. The Arena was open every day from 11 AM to 2 AM, deep in the night. The mock battle facility opened even later than that and closed earlier. Outside those times, she was basically free to do whatever she wanted as long as she didn't try to use her powers against the Cures.

Setsuna's expression was hard. Northa irritated her. But she wouldn't fall for her tricks. She was just a shadow of the past and Setsuna was long over that.

"Don't listen to her." Ellen was glad that there had been no other female members of the Minor Kingdom. Following the existing pattern, if there had been, she would definitely be seeing her around somewhere.

"Morning..." A tired looking brunette that neither of them had ever seen before just greeted them as she walked past them, coming out of a path that both Setsuna and Ellen didn't recognize.

"Who are you?" Setsuna asked and hoped she would get an actual reply.

"I run transfer registration. I'm..." The woman yawned. She exerted so much listlessness that Setsuna was becoming more tired just looking at her. "Regine."

Ellen looked at Setsuna and slightly turned her head, whispering in Setsuna's ear "Isn't that the name of one of the new Cures?"

"I think that's Regina." Setsuna couldn't believe she remembered that but couldn't remember Heart's name.

"Right, right… If you want to register, you need to do it before 1 PM. I open at 8 AM." Regine pointed in the air above the center of the plaza. "You can look at… oh right, you haven't… gotten the clock yet." She yawned again and wandered off, towards the bathhouse road.

"From whose history is that one?" Setsuna wondered if that had ever been a credible threat.

"A bath doesn't actually sound like a bad idea." Ellen wanted to go right now but with that Northa woman in there, she couldn't. It would just be stressful for Setsuna. "Should we go later?"

Setsuna could almost read Ellen's mind. "Thank you." The tiniest blush on Beat's face made sure Setsuna knew she was right. "Yeah, let's go later." Walking back towards the lobby, their coffee finally at a temperature where they could drink it more easily, the two women didn't really look forward to going back up to the penthouse to search for their keys.

Setsuna didn't really need hers because she was going to stay with Ellen, who had a room on the 50th floor, but it was a bad idea to just lose her key.

Up in said penthouse, people were slowly waking up, one by one. Reika was one of the early risers but she couldn't quite get out of bed. Rhythm was totally clinging to her, which was a problem. Their long hair was also tied together in places. And that was nothing before the fact that she found herself, and Rhythm, naked. She distinctly remembered going to sleep with some clothes on, even if they were only swimsuits. And she also remembered that Rhythm was Rouge's girlfriend and that woman had a temper like a chimpanzee.

Attempting to free herself, Reika managed to get away without waking up Kanade, even though it took considerable effort. Transforming while still under the covers, Reika then moved out of bed and felt sore all over. This level of feeling sore was worse than when she had been hit by an RPG that ended up collapsing an entire building on top of her. She remembered going to sleep and then nothing, so what exactly was causing her to feel so sluggish? Did she… do something with Rhythm?

Looking around, two Cures were cleaning up after the place, sorting clothes on the empty couch in front of the fireplace and piling up keys on the small table next to it. White and Egret were moving about the room, both of them cleaning in a way that made it appear like they were quite used to cleaning up after another girl. They were also avoiding eye contact, Reika noticed.

Out on the veranda were Berry, Pine, Lemonade and the new girl that belonged to Moonlight's group. Yami, I believe.

"Reika, can you come and check which clothes are yours?" Honoka called out and there were several muffled groans from the bed, girls that didn't want to accept the reality of this thing called morning already being upon them.

Moving over to the substantial pile of clothes, Reika found at least her underwear quickly. Egret kept stealing glances at her, which in turn made Reika self-conscious of her size. She wished she could switch with Akane or Miyuki, because having big breasts really just got in the way in her line of work. No matter how much of a pig criminals were, they wouldn't bother to stare at her tits instead of shooting at her.

"Reika, could you… just come over here for a moment?" Mai was painfully aware of what alcohol could do to a person, especially now that she woken up right next to Honoka and she had had bad flashbacks of that one time she and Honoka had accidentally swapped partners. And there was reason for concern with the way Beauty looked.

Reika herself was unaware of this but when Mai led her to the bathroom and in front of one of the mirrors, Reika understood. Her neck was covered in hickeys. And after pulling the seams of her costume a little, she realized that it was not just her neck. "Do you have an idea who they are from?" Mai knew pretty much who was dating who and since Sunny and March were both on another team, she could rule out any legitimate source of hickeys.

Reika wondered how she was going to get out of this. Certainly not by lying or trying to ignore it. So many problems only existed because someone said It's nothing or I don't know when those were bold lies. "I carried Rhythm to bed because she looked like she was about to fall asleep standing. It looks like the alcohol worked in quite a spectacular way on her."

"Do you remember anything?" Mai planned to work some relationship first aid. Things like these always resulted in drama when left unattended.

"Beyond going to sleep, no, I don't." Reika appreciated Mai's help but she really didn't need it. "I will talk to Kanade. Thank you for your help." Reika wondered if she could borrow some make up from Marine. She didn't want to walk around looking like this.

In the meantime, more of the other Cures had woken up. A few of them already left the penthouse in the hunt for coffee before it became a paid commodity, while others were staying behind and cleaning up. Komachi had chosen to help with the clean up.

Yuri had woken up as well, with an unbelievable headache that got only worse when she realized she was still wearing that ridiculous swimsuit that Erika had tricked her into wearing. I am definitely going to pay you back for this humiliation, Erika. Transforming on the spot, Yuri was greeted by an absolutely miserable looking Miki and Inori. Both of them were sniffling and looking really, really bad. Before Yuri could even ask them anything, they both sneezed and a passing Mint handed them some tissues. "Did you sleep outside?"

"It… got really cold… achoo!" Inori was cold, despite being in her Cure form. Apparently not even magical energy would clear up a cold.

Miki was just as miserable if not more so, because she couldn't really get close to Yuri without getting her sick as well. "I'll go to my room and take a shower. See you in the lobby later?"

Yuri felt bad for Miki and just ignored her cold. Grabbing Berry's hand and closing the distance between them with a quick step, she kissed her, paying no regard to what the others thought. "Don't worry about it. And thank you for giving Yami and me some time to ourselves last night."

Inori smirked. "You know, the way you worded that," The smirk grew wider. "It implies something other than getting to know your sister." Inori didn't know why she said that but the slightly shocked look on Yuri's face and the mildly irritated look on Miki's were funny to her somehow.

Miki deliberately ignored Inori with the maximum amount of silent contempt she could muster that early in the morning. "I think your sister is being influenced by Erika a little too much." Miki was not exactly on great terms with Marine, having stolen Yuri from Erika's sister. But despite that, they managed to get along somehow. "She's still… walking around in that swimsuit." Miki saw one or two of the others were also still in their swimsuits, like Dream. The corner of Yuri's mouth made a sharp turn downward as she heard that.

Yami was, meanwhile, getting used to being an actual person. Tsubomi was already awake and the two of them were in the pool room, where it was a good handful of degrees Celsius hotter than in the penthouse in general. Tsubomi was one of the few who hadn't changed out of their swimsuit yet. She hadn't succeeded in waking up Erika, who had just barked, growled and tossed in her sleep when she tried to wake her, but she didn't want to stay in bed either. Taking a swim early in the morning, after brushing her teeth and getting the weird taste out of her mouth, was not bad at all. She could get used to living in this place.

Yuri's sister held her stomach in pain because she was laughing so hard at the story that Tsubomi had told her. "So… so Erika just.. went up that.. what was it, rainbow bridge, with her arms straight forward, like superman and everything?" Yami was in danger of turning blue, laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.

Tsubomi imitated the pose and puffed up her cheeks just like Erika had done that one time. She couldn't keep a straight face and burst into laughter herself. It was not even that funny until someone else was laughing so hard at it. "I didn't think you would be… this kind of person if I'm honest." Tsubomi was surprised to learn that Yami was not nearly as serious as Yuri was. She was a little more like… an odd middle ground between Erika and Yuri.

Spotting her sister from the corner of her eye, Yami watched her come closer, walking slowly through the room. The sun that shone through the sunroof, the glass ceiling, made her look much more friendly than she probably was, this early in the morning. The weather, the sun, was a drastic change from last night, and it gave the room a completely different feel, brighter, warm, welcoming even. She had to take care not to look straight up, the light of the sun would be blinding.

"Yami." Yuri averted her eyes briefly, mildly annoyed. "Are you still wearing that? Come and get dressed."

"Why can't I?" Yami tried to imitate a sexy pose she had seen last evening but didn't quite get it right.

"I am going to throw Erika into the fog." Yuri remembered exactly where that pose came from. "Everyone else is getting dressed. We'll have to get something to eat and then figure out how everything works now."

Yami didn't really want to leave in the middle of a conversation, but listening to her older sister was probably a good idea. "See you in a bit Tsubomi."

Watching the two sisters walk towards the clothes that Honoka and Mai had finished sorting, a pile that had shrunk significantly already, Tsubomi jumped back into the pool to do a final round before drying herself off and getting dressed too. I wonder if I can just keep this swimsuit. Everyone else seems to be keeping theirs. Swimming, Tsubomi felt refreshed. She was still going to take a shower afterward, because she wouldn't get the smell of alcohol, chlorine and drunk people out of her hair otherwise.

Yami and Yuri had briefly locked themselves in the bathroom where Yuri finally freed herself from that stupid swimsuit. She was so irritated with it that she just threw it in the bathtub and left it there while she got dressed. She didn't pay a lot of attention to Yami because no matter how new a person she might be, she seemed to have at least basic knowledge of how to dress herself and such.

Yami finished first. "I don't get why you're so upset with Erika." The younger sister leaned against the door and waited for Yuri to finish getting dressed. "What's so bad about that swimsuit that you get so mad?"

"Erika's obsession with breasts is irritating. I don't need any fake breasts enhanced swimsuit because I don't need to compensate for anything. Momoka and Miki like me just as I am." Yuri finished dressing and grabbed the swimsuit. She would just throw it on one of the chairs by the swimming pool. Erika could do whatever she wanted with it.

They were barely one step out of the bathroom when Yuri noticed that Yami hadn't actually taken off the swimsuit but just put on clothes over it. "What are you doing?" Yami escaped before Yuri could pull her hand. Getting a few steps away from her sister, Yami turned around and smirked. Meanwhile, Yuri put on her most serious face, trying to make her sister see reason. "Yami!"

"Just let me. I like it. It doesn't hurt anyone." The green haired girl continued to smirk and walked back towards her older sister. "I get to enjoy being around other people normally for the first time. Can't I just have fun for a while?"

Yuri saw it impossible to argue with that logic. "Fine. Just don't use Erika as an example. I'd rather you learn from Tsubomi or even Passion and Beat. One Erika is as much as I, or anyone else, can handle." Yuri felt relieved somehow. This tiny little moment of confrontation proved that Yami could be reasoned with. Something that didn't really work on Erika.

"I'm still figuring out what kind of person I am. Erika is really funny, but how isn't she constantly exhausted after acting like that all day?" Yami just kept pace with Yuri now, the two sisters walking towards the veranda. Walking past the bed, Honoka and Mai were working on waking up the last few stragglers. Marine and Rhythm.

Both of them were all snuggled up together now because everyone else had left the bed. White and Egret knew no mercy and pulled the covers off them without a second thought. Marine immediately reacted as if she was a vampire that was exposed to pure sunlight, wriggling on the bed and eventually giving up. Rhythm on the other hand behaved like a human and just woke up, groaning and grumpy. Egret saw that she was as covered with hickeys as Beauty was. That is not going to end well, Mai thought.

Out on the veranda sat Lemonade and Muse, already dressed. And they were not the only ones that had gotten dressed. The pile of clothes was almost gone now.

"Urara you stink," Was the first thing that Yami heard Muse say to the other yellow Cure.

"You'll get used to it. The shower in my room is shit, so until our team has their turn in the bathhouse, I am gonna stink." Urara really was just too lazy to get out of her chair. And it was true, the showers in the cheapest rooms were cramped and the water temperature was unreliable.

Ako threw a key towards Urara, that would have hit her in the head if the vocalist didn't catch it out of reflex. "Take a shower in my room then."

"The keys don't work if someone else uses them." Urara had tried that last evening with Komachi's keys out of curiosity.

"I don't know if I have a girlfriend or a daughter I need to take care of." Ako got out of her chair and slowly walked away. Urara followed with a groan, knowing that if she went on a stubborn streak, she would just end up fighting with Ako.

"I guess Lemonade likes older girls?" Yami sat down on one of the empty chairs. From what she saw, Ako was clearly the older one between the two.

"Their relationship is something I like to stay out of. Beat probably knows more. Or Dream and Mint. Their respective teams."

Yami took a deep breath. It was really hard to memorize all those names. She remembered Lemonade because she was really rowdy and had quite a distinct way of talking. She was crude, rough, unlike most of the other girls. Erika was very hyper and direct but not even remotely as crude. "How long did it take you to remember everyone's name?"

"I met them once before we came here so it didn't take me that long." Yuri had a good memory. Ironically, she didn't remember if that had always been the case or if it was because of her studying for school.

"Between us sisters it looks like the older one got the good memory." Yami joked and leaned back in her chair. "I didn't know being one of the good guys could be so much fun." Yami stopped joking around for a moment and closed her eyes. "Thank you, Yuri."

Yuri blushed. She didn't even remember how she brought Yami back. "Don't thank me. I can't remember anything about how and why. But I'm glad you're here."

Yami made a fist and covered her mouth with it as she startled to giggle. "You're glad? You're such a super formal girl, Yuri. I'm your sister, you can just say you're happy."

"I am not exactly happy about the way your personality is developing." Yuri replied with a frown. "Have you decided on a name for your alter ego already?"

"Yep. Did so yesterday, when I threw Erika into the pool. Black Lily is a nice name." Yami liked it. It was a bit simple but there was nothing wrong with that. White was also just called White and her outfit was mostly white. Simple was fine!

It's a little on the nose, Yuri thought. But Cures picked their own names, so it was fine. They pick their own names? So did the other teams pick their names based on a theme or is that just coincidence? Yuri had never thought about this before. Is it even true for every Cure that they pick their own name? "Cure Moonlight and Black Lily. Doesn't sound bad."

"Yuri, I've been wondering but why are you and… what was her name again? That blue Cure? Why are you going out? You are, right? I mean, You're Moonlight and there's a Sunshine on your team too, aren't you two partners?" Yami didn't really have much to go on, regarding who was partnering with who.

"Itsuki is actually seeing a girl from another team, Melody. Hibiki is her name. Hibiki is, or used to be, the partner of Rhythm. The blonde girl that looks a bit younger than everyone else, a white Cure." Yuri was struggling to explain this to her sister.

"So are Cures just gay by default? Looks like everyone here likes girls." Yami had basic knowledge of how society worked and most simple things. Such as the statistical improbability of what was going on around there. Maybe this was one of those things that weren't simple and she just didn't know about whatever good reason was behind this.

"You're asking me some really hard questions." Yuri was not bothered by her sexual orientation but she did think it was very, very suspicious that most Cures had a female partner and that those who didn't were just single. "I think we only have a handful that aren't dating another Cure."

"So there is no problem telling you that I think your girlfriend is totally hot." Yami could barely contain herself when she saw Yuri's face, who was torn between confusion, embarrassment and wanting to tell her how inappropriate that was.

Yuri couldn't possibly deny that Miki was hot, as Yami put it. But to hear her little sister say that about her girlfriend, that just wasn't right. Seeing her bothered and helpless expression, Yami started to giggle, and then burst into laughing. "Yuri, relax, relax." Yami shook her head. "I am just pulling your leg a little. She's hot but I would never think about your girlfriend in some kind of inappropriate way."

Leaning back into her chair, Yami felt like this was not actually as fun as she imagined. It was funny for a moment but she didn't want to put her sister on the spot like that. Slouching in her chair, Yami relaxed. I don't understand how Yuri can hate that swimsuit. It feels nice. Maybe I'll keep it and wear it sometimes under my clothes. I think I can tease her that much at least.

Back inside the penthouse proper, Marine was being carried into the bathroom by Tsubomi. Erika still smelled like alcohol really badly and she desperately needed a shower. Kanade on the other hand had a private moment with Reika and tried desperately not to freak out. "I don't remember a thing!" Waking up when the covers were pulled away from her, and a very embarrassing realization following right after, she had transformed and later gotten dressed.

"Neither do I. But considering the state I woke up in, and the state you are in, plus the condition we were in together when I first woke up… there is really only one plausible explanation." Reika talked to Kanade in the pool room and everyone else had the decency to stay away.

"Why does every relationship I have turn out like this?" Kanade wanted to just go back to bed and pray she'd wake up and it was all a nightmare. "Rin is going to dump me."

"I have my doubts about that. You should just explain to her what happened and that you have no recollection of agreeing or doing it. I have to tell Nao about this as well."

"How are you so calm? Aren't you the least bit worried that Nao will be mad you cheated on her with me?" Kanade felt sick as she heard herself say that out loud.

"Probably. But keeping it a secret and it coming out later anyway would be a lot worse and ruin your relationship for sure." Reika didn't want that to happen, not because she had slipped. "Rouge will probably be mad but she will understand that you came to her, honest, and told her." It only occurred to Reika after the fact that she didn't even think about what would happen with Nao.

=== DISSONANCE ===

Regina had woken up in a room to which she had no key. It was Melody's room, which had been lent to her. Because of the absurd way the system handled her and Ange, Regina and her other half were both assigned to one of the cheapest rooms. And there was no possible way for two people to fit in there. Catching wind of their plight, Hibiki had generously offered the key to a room she didn't need because she was going to crash with Itsuki, who had a room on the 50th floor while Hibiki's was only on the 25th. Regina and Ange played rock paper scissors to determine who would get the extra room.

Contrary to the dark team, the light team was assembled entirely in the dining room. As it turned out, it was possible to just have the team pay for the buffet and it would work for everyone for 1 day. It multiplied the cost by five however. 500 team favor so everyone could eat as much as they wanted for that one day. It was good until the next morning at 8 AM.

They had all separated into little groups. Nagisa, Saki, Kaoru and Michiru were all together, watching Nagisa and Saki engage into what amounted to stuffing as many pancakes into their mouth as possible, before choking. Kurumi, Hikari, Hibiki and Itsuki also shared a table but they were working through the idea of trying every single option of cereal available. Hibiki gave up first, so full that her stomach was sticking out a little.

"What is the penthouse like?" Hibiki hadn't been up there. Hikari hadn't spent the night there but she had seen the place at least.

"It's like a castle." Kurumi smiled. Actually, I think the castle was not as luxurious as that suite. It makes Karen's place look like a simple abode. "They definitely pulled out all the stops for the top ranking Cure."

"I'm jealous." Hibiki was ranked 6th, which was not bad at all. But Itsuki's room was already a lot better than hers so she could only imagine what the penthouse had to be like.

"All this power and they still make us fight." Hikari was not too thrilled by this. She was also in a bit of a bad mood because there was no kitchen for her to use. It was a real step back as far as she was concerned. "And they even took away the wish granting."

"Well, it does look like it was causing a lot of problems." Hibiki was not too bothered by it being gone. Looking straight behind her after turning in her chair, the four new girls were sharing a table as well. "You girls probably don't know about this, but before everything was rebuilt, again, we could just use our money directly for what we wanted and, poof, it appeared out of thin air. We spent a lot of money getting that garden that way." Hibiki sounded like she was bragging and she had reason to. She was at the halfway point to a thousand earned favor. Even Kurumi had only 816 earned. A display screen in the lobby listed the ranking, they had found out that morning.

"Why was something so convenient discontinued?" Alice could only imagine the things she would do with a magical currency like that.

"We had two major problems. First time, Dream wanted to end the fighting and- oh, you know, Dream is the boss of Aqua over there. And the boss of our top ranking girl. Anyway, she tried to stop the fighting with her powers and it backfired like hell. She used her ability to override the system during battle and pacify everyone. Wow, I tell you, words can't describe the results of that." Hibiki paused and took a deep breath.

"The second time was even worse than that. We still don't know why, but all of a sudden we were all living together and had evil copies of ourselves going after our lives. It was like straight out of a horror novel." Hibiki didn't have very fond memories of that. "It all ended with Dream going Super Saiyan and-" Hibiki paused when Itsuki pushed against her from the side. "What?"

"Do you honestly expect someone else here, beside me and Erika, to know what going Super Saiyan means?" Itsuki barely managed to speak normally with her mouth full of cereal.

"I know. Seriously, who doesn't?" Regina shrugged. "I mean isn't that basically standard Japanese culture at this point?"

I don't know about that… Itsuki was a little weirded out by the girl.

"So Dream went into super power up mode with all our powers combined and- Your name is Regina right?"

"Yes and no, I have no idea what you're referencing now. Just get on with it." Regina wasn't about to have an anime discussion over breakfast.

"She and her evil mirror clone went at it so hard this entire space thing here was broken to pieces. Happy and her group showed up during that and it was just chaos. So after that we got an all new system and stuff. And not long after we ended up in some sort of time loop that none of us really remember at this point. And now this. So it was probably discontinued because we got a bit too creative with things, like creating a new location."

"Mamo working in a store is a system and a problem I don't understand." Regina stuffed an entire bagel in her mouth and then filled up with orange juice. Alice looked at her strangely. "What? Come on, Mana and Rikka aren't here, what's the point of me pretending to have any table manners?"

"You're a funny girl." Hibiki thought they were going to get along pretty well. She reminded her of Marine somehow. "I've been meaning to ask but how old are all of you? I'm probably one of the youngest here since I'm just about to turn 17. Like in 2 ½ months or something."

"I'm the youngest of the group and I'm almost 4 years older than you. But I'm also the one that's the most fun," Regina bragged and smirked. "If I didn't have Mana I could show you how much fun."

Itsuki turned around as she heard that. "Hey."

Hibiki burst out laughing. "Sorry but you can't compete with that." Gesturing a large circle in the general direction of Itsuki, Hibiki smirked back at Regina. "I don't know what kind of girlfriend you have but I already got my jackpot."

"That sure is a conversation," Karen said, walking by. It was difficult not to overhear them from a few tables away. "I see the pattern of Cures being attracted to Cures is holding. I remember three of your names, Rosetta, Sword and Ace, but what are you called?" Karen let almost Punk slip as a suggestion but she kept her tongue in check.

"I was thinking of just doing what those two on the next table are doing and go for some Not a Cure name because my powers are special but… eh." Regina didn't really like anything she had come up with.

"Your entire team is based on the four suits of cards, yes?" Karen had figured out that much.

"Heart, Diamond, Rosetta and Sword, so mostly, yes. I'm Ace, which stands at the top of each suit." Ange was just enjoying some morning tea and sweets. So many sweets that Regina had been teasing her about her figure again.

"The only other card that stands out would be the joker. Shiny Luminous. Milky Rose. So why not something like Wild Joker," Karen suggested and continued on towards the door.

Rin and Love were waiting for her outside. Karen actually wanted to spend a little more time with the new Cures but they seemed… cold in a way. Rosetta specifically seemed nice on the surface but Karen could tell. Beneath that friendly, small talk making surface was nothing but death on the inside. After having met many famous and rich people, she could tell them apart from normal ones. With what she had read and seen of their world, Karen was not all that surprised, but it still worried her.

Meeting the two Cures on the plaza, they were going through that thing called the Quest Board. Karen had dabbled in one or two video games during long flights, mostly on her tablet, but she still thought it was a little uncharacteristic of Rin to be so curious about this. But after checking what these quests were actually about, it made sense to her. They entailed things like sports contests and various others. One that stuck out in specific was a Test of Courage task.

"What are these for?" Karen wasn't sure what the purpose behind these quests was. Of course each of them listed a reward, but what was the reason behind this? To give them something to aim for? Were the quests and rewards just to keep them occupied? Well… if Nozomi was kept busy, she might not have come up with the idea of using Utopia to stop the fighting. It was starting to make sense to Karen now.

"There are some really weird ones. Clean the dining hall. Reward: Free standard pass for the team for 1 day. Repeatable. So if we clean up ourselves, we get to eat for free?" Rin was browsing the smaller hangouts. They were all some kind of repeatable thing.

Love looked a little bit worried from hearing that."It's a lot of work to clean a room that size." Love had worked as clean-up staff in a few places that held big receptions. Even with 30 to 40 people it took between 2 and 3 hours. She didn't really mind working but these receptions had really intense schedules for clean up so it was really stressful. When she did that work, Setsuna always took off early so they could relax together.

"I think we should wait until after the battle before we take on any of these." Karen was particularly interested in the permanent quests because they offered some very interesting rewards. But it was all tied together to some ridiculous chain of requirements. And out of all the permanent quests she wanted to do one specific one. The band. An instrument store meant she could get a violin and she really missed playing it.

"You think we're back to just all out brawls?" Rin wasn't really a fan of all those rules and conditions they had to deal with before.

"There would be no point in having an extra screen for combat rules if that was the case. But it looks like the rules are out of our hands now." Karen had enjoyed the negotiating, even if it usually amounted to just picking the least intrusive options to create the biggest profit. But since the archaic system from before was entirely gone, there was really nothing she could do about it now. One of the permanent tasks, Enact a Medieval Siege between teams, was promising the ability to remove or add one rule, but it was best to wait and see how everything worked first. Another quest, the one at the far bottom left, listed the ability to remove a Day Condition, whatever that was, every 3 days.

"I am going to ask the receptionist a few things. Rin, Love, could you get some paper from the general store and just scribble up these requests so we don't have to constantly walk back here?" Karen was a fan of efficiency. Transcribing the tasks and possibly distributing them was a good start. Maybe put someone in charge of maintaining them and picking out what should be done.

"Sure!" Love was reminded of working part-time in a restaurant, taking orders with pen instead of a digital device. "Oh this one might be nice. Helping out in the general store for a 50% discount." With so few customers, there couldn't be much work. And 50% off was pretty significant.

"Pretty sure Karen is right and we should put that on hold until later." Rin wasn't all that eager to start working in this place. It sounded like a drag. But as she looked, she found an interesting one. "Swim 20 kilometers a day. Requires 10 people and the beach. It doesn't say everyone has to swim though." Swimming was an excellent substitute for soccer training. Rin wanted to stay in shape. "What's the quest to unlock the beach?"

"Having a real beach sounds amazing. They really can do anything in this place." Love liked this new base a lot more than the old one. The missing kitchen was a problem but everyone had their own room, the rooms were better in general and it kind of resembled a miniature town.

Rin tried to follow a chain of quests backwards but she got lost halfway and gave up. "Let's go get that paper."

Back inside the skyscraper, Karen was trying to extract information from the receptionist, Majorina, who was too busy reading a fashion magazine that Mamo had brought over early in the morning to really want to reply. But as she kept ignoring Karen, it became difficult to breathe and she was starting to feel really faint. OkayI… I got it.... "Day conditions..." Majorina needed a moment to properly come back to life. She hadn't really experienced the consequences of refusing to do her job until now. It had felt like something was squeezing her insides hard enough to turn them into goop. "Day conditions are pretty much what it says. The system randomly assigns a condition to all of you, on both sides, and it changes once a day at 12 PM. They last 24 hours." Majorina felt better now but she totally blamed that blue Cure for what had just happened.

"What about these tasks or whatever they are called?" Karen wanted to squeeze as much information out of her as possible. The more she knew about the new system, the less nasty surprises there were waiting for her and everyone else.

"Exactly what it says they are. Can't you read? Put together stuff and the system rewards you. And here I thought the blue Cures were supposed to be the intelligent ones." Majorina realized that as long as she conveyed information and answered truthfully she could be as abusive as possible. With her words anyway. "Or maybe this counts as the intelligent ones among Cures. That standard must be pretty low."

"When are the combat rules updated? And when are team members exchanged?" Karen wasn't going to take this cheap bait.

"10 AM. 6 PM. Are you done bothering me?" Majorina wanted to get back to her fashion magazine. Now that she had unlimited youth, she was definitely going to find some better clothes. Thankfully, everything was free for base employees.

Karen checked the clock on the wall behind the receptionist. It was 9:55. The rules would pop up in a few minutes. "There used to be a list of combat rules. Does it still exist? And if so, where can I find it."

"By Pierrot, you're persistent! Check the damn info brochures. They have the rules, opening times and what not. Leave me alone already." Are all adult Cures this annoying? Question after question, does it look like I enjoy working here? Well it is better than being dead at least.

Karen had already figured out that the people, the former villains, working in this place, had to answer truthfully if they knew. Taking a look at the brochures, they really had all the information she wanted. Opening times, closing times, offers. Although the prices looked like they were adjusted for Yen and not favor. 350 for a pack of potato chips? 250 for a can of cola? Karen didn't know if these prices were plain wrong or not.

"About the prices-" Karen was interrupted by Majorina jumping out of her chair, slamming her magazine on the desk and shouting at Karen.

"Go ask Mamo!" Majorina didn't know the store specifics or the arena specifics. She was in charge of the housing, nothing else. It was bad enough already she had to cover that idiotic quest board and the business hours of everything as well.

I'll do that later. Karen looked through another prospect that detailed the exchange and how it worked. "After paying the exchange fee, which amounts to 5000 favor-" Karen paused and rubbed her eyes. Did she need glasses? Looking again, she checked for other misprints because there was clearly a decimal point missing. That was more than five times the sum that their top ranker had achieved in total. But she couldn't find any other misprints. "5000 favor, the occupant that wishes to change factions will have to be present 6 PM or her payment becomes forfeit. In the case of no one within the other faction being willing to exchange but the occupant is present at the scheduled time, the payment is returned." So there is no mandatory team member exchanging anymore? "In the case of no willing participants, no exchange takes place. The highest ranking participant of each battle can choose to change factions and one randomly selected member of the opposing faction will be escorted to the exchange location." That is going to be terrible. Karen could already see a mountain of issues with randomly replacing someone on the other team.

The info brochure didn't really say much else. There was a quiet beep when the rule screen updated and Karen eagerly took a look. Gravity, Countdown Clock, 2 in 1, Belka Explosion and Bound by Bond. Karen had to look up what each rule actually did. She remembered there had been a lot before, something like a hundred. The brochure only listed 33 now and some of them were a little odd. Doing some quick calculation, the standard modifier was +90% based on just Gravity and the Belka Explosion. The others were all situational and limited to specific people.

The rule screen had switched when Karen looked up again. Mandatory participation: 18. She groaned. I should have expected this. It looks like they are starting us off with one big battle. Hearing the front door open, Karen looked at Rin and Love who were discussing some kind of food.

"Really? You can make Borscht?" Rin was impressed. It was a famous Russian food and she kinda wanted to try it. Her reason for that was really shallow but that didn't really matter.

"No, I meant I know how to make it. But between Setsuna and me, she's the good cook." Love had gotten in trouble before, over pretending to know how to make actual edible food that wasn't hamburgers. Admittedly, she had gotten better since then.

Just as the three gathered up, the new Cures left the dining hall and entered the lobby. Of the four, Regina was walking slightly ahead of the other three. "What'cha doing?" She was a little bored. Or bored might not have been the correct term. After years of being constantly on the run, trying to prevent war from escalating and people from dying, with little success, she couldn't settle down. There was a really bad, uncomfortable feeling down in her stomach and she couldn't shake it. The bad quality of the rooms didn't help and distracting herself with food only worked for so long.

Makoto on the other hand was feeling uneasy for a completely different reason. She had drowned out all the horrible things around her by keeping herself busy. She even missed Rikka teaching her medicine. Now that she had nothing to do but spend time with Ange, bad memories were flooding in. About Davyi, about what had become of the world. She had never cracked under pressure before, and she wouldn't now, but this complete lack of pressure was throwing her off immensely. Everyone around her seemed to just take what was happening in stride.

"The rules for today's battle just came up. It's also mandatory participation for everyone." Karen explained this to the six Cures present. "Since this is the first battle under the new system, it'll be a new experience for all of us. But it will also be your first battle against other Cures, so if you want I can explain it to you in a little more detail."

"It's just beating up people. How hard can that be?" Regina was actually itching to go. It would take her mind off what Mana and Rikka were doing all alone on the other side.

They were doing even worse than Regina was. Mana had not spent a single night without one of her partners in years, and it had now come back to bite her. The moment Passion and Beat had gotten away, she started to have nightmares of her friends dying, falling prey to the war. When Mana was finally kicked out of bed by Urara, who had volunteered to do just that, she woke with a horrified look on her face and cold sweat all over her.

"Wow, you alright?" Urara showing concern was so unusual that Tsubomi started being concerned as well.

Mana was tough. But she was not without weakness. "I don't think so." She had learned years ago that lying about whether you were okay or not when someone asked only invited more problems and feeling even worse.

"Do you feel sick?" Tsubomi stood in front of the intensely pale Cure Heart, who reeked of sweat.

"I'm gonna be fine. Just give me a few minutes." Mana had never thought that just being asleep without someone by her side would result in such horrible dreams. She was definitely going to stay with Rikka tonight.

"Fighting demons?" Urara knew that look on Heart's face. That was the look you got when your world was falling apart and you realized it for the first time.

"Demons?" Mana needed a moment to think about that. She knew that forcing a smile, right now, would be pointless. It was completely pointless to pretend she was doing okay. "Something like that. A nightmare."

"Can't blame you. That was some real apocalypse level shit you girls had going on in your time. Makes what the rest of us experienced look kind of irrelevant. The whole if we hadn't won the world would be toast anyway aside I mean."

"After fighting off the Selfish, I never expected things would end up like that." Being able to talk to people helped Mana feel better. Even though this woman was a bit… crude.

"Well, you're out of there now. I know it's pointless to tell you this, because it would be pointless to tell me the same thing, but you should move on. Yes, that's easy to say for someone else and hard to do yourself, I know that, but you'll be miserable as hell if you don't."

"You're a strange person for a Cure." Mana had thought this before, when the woman tied up Makoto with her chains right after regaining consciousness.

"Everyone's got their cross to bear." Urara shrugged. It wasn't her job to explain herself or her history to Heart and it certainly wasn't her job to pick her back up after she had fallen. She was already going out of her way to tell her from experience that clinging to bad situations that no longer applied was a terrible idea.

"Have you seen Rikka?" Mana wanted to see her. Just being near her would probably make her feel better already.

"That's your partner, right? Blue Cure, blind, pretty damn hot?" Urara couldn't quite make out what the strange look, that showed up only for a moment, on Heart's face meant. "Come to think about it, I didn't see her leave so she must have gotten up even before me or something."

Mana, still in her swimsuit, got off the couch. "Thank you."

"For what?" Urara thought that Heart was a really strange person. Is she thanking me for telling her to let go and move on? Is her head alright? Just asking herself that, Urara smiled awkwardly by herself. "Clothes are on the couch. Me and Ako are the last ones here, beside Blossom and the hot runt."

Urara left the room with Mana. Ako, who was transformed despite being dressed, stood in front of a flat screen that was displaying some text, white on black background and nothing else. "The rules have been released. For today, anyway." The flat screen operated on touch controls and Ako was able to check the details of each rule by tapping on the rule itself. "Looks like it will be a pretty serious brawl."

"Rules?" Mana was already finished switching clothes. She had just grabbed her clothes, vanished into the bathroom and appeared back outside in less than 30 seconds. "Any place I put the swimsuit?"

"Keep it, keep it." Erika was lying flat on her bed, face down, but she still registered what was happening in the penthouse. "Muse, any fun rules?"

"Look at it yourself." Ako was still not the friendliest of the group and never would be. "We'll have to discuss them before battle regardless because a couple of them require that."

Urara checked the rules herself. "That's going to be an interesting fight. These multipliers are off the charts."

"I'm gonna beat them all up and keep my palace!" Erika's claim, muffled because she was still face down on her bed, didn't impress Lemonade or Muse. Erika was strong but didn't really excel at anything.

Mana was already gone when Urara turned around to check what had happened to the oldest of all the pink Cures. I better talk to Nozomi at least. I got a pretty bad feeling about that one. The look on her face, that wasn't just any normal nightmare. That's exactly the kind of face I made when I went through my worst moments. Urara was not one to care too much but she didn't want to have another incident on her hand because she ignored signs of trouble. Nozomi would know how to deal with someone that was fighting their demons, instead of letting them roam free like Urara herself did.

Tsubomi finally finished cleaning up. She was used to this because the work with her parents involved a lot of cleaning up. Not nearly as much as Erika's room often did, however. "Erika, get up!" Tsubomi pulled on the girl's arm but she wouldn't budge. "If you make me transform to get you out of there you are going to regret it!" Tsubomi really didn't mean that but these small threats worked on Erika all the time.

She's so cute when she pretends to get angry. Erika was obviously completely on to Tsubomi's fake threats but she really liked to to make her a bit mad. If she started to pout, that was a bonus, because she was like a really adorable oversized hamster then.

"Meh, I don't feel like eating anything..." Erika always let Tsubomi pretend that it was her who pushed the buttons of the designer. In truth, it was the other way around and Erika enjoyed that.

"I'll feed you so get out of bed already!" Pulling another time, Erika at least rolled over and repeatedly touched her lips with her index finger.

"I am out of here before I puke." Urara couldn't witness that any longer. "Ako, let's go find White and discuss the setup of the rules."

Ako was glad that Urara was not like Tsubomi or Erika. She couldn't handle childish behavior like that very well. Which was ironic, because in truth, the 18 year old Muse was just a facade, a transformation spell she could use.

The lobby already held most of the Cures on the dark team. Setsuna and Ellen were passing out a list of quests just so everyone was on the same page. Thankfully, there were enough battle rule brochures to outfit almost everyone with a source of the rules.

While Setsuna and Ellen had been busy with the quests, they had met White, who was just talking a walk early in the morning. She was the one who inquired about the Day Condition from the receptionist. It was shortly after 10 now, so they had two hours until something was going to happen.

Urara spotted Komachi and Nozomi amidst the chaos and headed straight there. Ako didn't really want to bother following Urara around everywhere so she looked for Kanade and found her, a little by the side, wearing a scarf despite it being pretty warm. I probably shouldn't ask. Ako didn't want to make Kanade feel any worse than she probably already did if she had to hide something.

"Ako." Kanade was glad to see a friendly face. Well, as friendly as could be considering what an ass she had made of herself with Hibiki not too long ago. Things were getting better, and she was starting to get along with Hibiki again, but it was going to be awkward for a while.

Ellen saw both Ako and Kanade together so she separated from Setsuna for a moment and walked over there. Noticing that Kanade was wearing a scarf, Ellen's mouth worked faster than her brain did. "Are you cold?"

Oaf, Ako thought. But at least she was there to help Kanade out. "You're going to partner with Passion, Ellen, right?" Ako was aiming to partner with Urara. Since the rule enforced that everyone had to pick a partner, she would either pick Urara or Kanade.

"Huh? Yeah. I'm sorry, Kanade, but my long range is going to work better with Setsuna." Ellen didn't understand why Ako had forcibly changed the topic until she spotted a bit of a blue and purple spot on Kanade's neck that the scarf didn't cover. Oh.

Kanade still thought that Ako's relationship with lemonade was very strange, to say the least, but she couldn't bring that up, not after she was dating Lemonade's best friend. I want to see Rin.

"This is going to be a really hectic battle." Ako wasn't that confident that she was going to make it until the end. She wasn't weak, but unlike a lot of the others, her specialization was ultimately neither purely offensive or defensive.

"I hope I don't run into Hibiki." Kanade thought that she was finally on the road to recovering their friendship so she didn't want to end up fighting Hibiki.

"I am much more worried about the new Cures. We know basically nothing about their powers, or their combat style." Ako could sense that they were strong, all Cures were, but there was something different about them. Living in such a dark world for so long surely had taken a toll on them and influenced how their powers developed. "Everyone here kept developing their powers as a just in case scenario but those six actually had to fight."

Ellen was surprised to hear Ako talk like that. "You sound almost scared of them."

"You should be, too. The two we have on our team, the pink and blue one, are 25 years old. If they became Cures at the same age as everyone else here did, they have been Cures for 10 years. And I say it again, we know basically nothing about their powers."

Now that she thought about it that way, Ellen did feel a chill. "But they're on our side."

"And there are four more on the other side. I'm most worried about their yellow Cure. She made some kind of energy boxes back on their plane. If she is a barrier type like Mint, things could become pretty dangerous." Out of all the Cures present, the ones of her own team, including Ako herself, were possibly the most suited to take on Mint because their attacks didn't rely on pure energy or physical connection, so a barrier had limited effect.

"Where are those two anyway? Heart and Diamond, I mean." Ellen hadn't seen them since she woke up and she already regretted thinking about that because of how Setsuna had accidentally kissed Heart.

"Heart ran off, probably looking for Diamond." Ako preferred to call people she didn't know all that well by their Cure name.

Mana had passed the stage of looking for Rikka already, having found her in the garden area, where Rikka had retreated to. It had been rough, getting out of the penthouse on her own and making it there. But the silence of the early morning made using her vibration crystals relatively easy. Rikka just couldn't stand being around so many people right now.

"In the end, we couldn't save anyone. I never found a cure for the curse energy. Everyone died. Even if that world doesn't exist anymore, everyone died. All because I didn't see the danger that magic possessed." Rikka couldn't blame Mana. She only saw the good in people. For Makoto, Aguri and Regina, it was basically their homeland. And for Alice, it was a great business opportunity. She was the only one with no strings attached and she should have seen that their idealistic view of what magic being available to the world meant was flawed at the very core.

"Rikka…" Mana sat down next to her oldest friend and took her hand into her hand. "You shouldn't blame yourself for it. We were still teenagers. And if you're to blame, then so am I. I always thought that people all had good in them, down at their core. That, if given the chance, they would use magic for good, to better the world."

"It was always my job to stop you when your ideology got out of hand, Mana. If it was helping out too many people until you were all worn out or this. I should have thought about it. Wars and terrorism don't happen because people are unanimously good on the inside." Rikka slowly leaned against Mana, resting her head against the woman's shoulder. "10 years ago we set the world on a path of destruction by not doing anything to stop it. And when we finally realized what was happening, it was too late."

"What good is blaming yourself going to do?" Mana could tell that pretty words were not going to really make a lot of difference. "In here, we have a chance to re-do everything. To put the world back together in a way that doesn't end like this."

"Mana, being able to re-do doesn't mean we didn't fail." Rikka's obsession with failure had never gotten any better. Even back in second grade of middle school she had felt down for a while just because she lost her spot as the number 1 in the grade in terms of testing scores.

Mana was about to say something when someone whistled really loudly and attracted their attention. It was Egret. "Heart! Diamond! We're going to discuss the upcoming battle. Everyone is required to participate in today's battle so we need everyone to attend!" Mai didn't want to go through the entire garden because she had been looking for those two for a while now. It was still a nice place, with an open sky, trees, and even critters. She could see a handful of squirrels that jumped from tree to tree and there were some small birds too.

Rikka didn't wait for Mana. She could contemplate her failure later. Right now she had to focus, she had something to do. She had been in her Cure form all morning, because it was pretty much impossible to find her way all on her own, and now she switched her crystals back on to navigate through the garden. Mana followed right behind her.

The easiest place to decide things was not the lobby but the plaza outside because it had the most space. Honoka was leading the group. Upon seeing Mai and the two stragglers emerging from the fog, Honoka raised her voice. Muse had created a small platform for her to stand on.

"Assuming that everyone has read what today's rules are, there are four matters we need to address. First, the pairs. Second, we need to choose who is going to benefit from 2 in 1. Third, general tactics because of the Countdown Clock. Fourth, I would like to hear from Heart and Diamond what kind of fighting style they employ and what their powers are. They can inquire from any of us about our powers before the battle but it will be most efficient if they tell us about it here." Honoka wanted to win this battle, more so than any before in Dissonance. The multipliers of the rules were insanely high.

The Cures were all amassed in a half circle in front of Honoka, leaving about two meters and change of space in front of her. And Yuri stepped up, eager to address the second point. "Everyone is aware that my little sister joined us just yesterday. Since she is still figuring out the proper use of her powers, I would like her and myself to both pair and take advantage of the 2 in 1 rule." Yuri didn't want her sister to get taken out quickly and end up with just a pittance because she hadn't had time to properly figure out her powers.

"Any objections?" Honoka asked and thought that was a reasonable choice. Even if Moonlight's sister had no experience, she certainly should have the power. And giving that power to Moonlight would make her really strong.

Nobody spoke up. Basically everyone who had their partner present wanted to use that rule but it was limited to use one pair. It allowed them to merge into one person with access to the full power of both. But in turn, if they were knocked out, both of them were out. And not every pair benefited from it all that much. Ellen and Setsuna had vastly different combat styles, so they didn't think that it would be very useful to combine their powers like that.

Another prime candidate would have been Berry and Pine, who would have benefited greatly from combining Berry's technical skill with Pine's speed. But they could see why Moonlight had asked and they weren't selfish enough to try and argue the point.

"Next, the pairs. I assume most of you have someone in mind already. Everyone that decided on a pair, please move behind me and stand together so we can cover strategy next." Honoka was used to giving orders. As one of the most intelligent Cures around, she was also one of the few who had been charged with taking command since the very first day here in Dissonance. Usually, she was not really the type to order others around. Unless it was Nagisa.

Mana was surprisingly okay with someone else taking control. She was not in her best condition, far from it, and neither was Rikka. To top it all off, she might be one of the oldest ones there, but all these other Cures had already gone through a lot of hardship together, so she was basically a newcomer in this place.

The pairs formed up rather quickly and it was mostly actual couples or at least team members. Marine and Blossom. Lemonade and Muse. Beat and Passion. Moonlight and Black Lily. Pine and Berry. Heart and Diamond. Dream and Mint. The only ones left were Mai, Rikka and Kanade. Mai walked forward towards Honoka, leaving Kanade to partner with Beauty. Neither of them said a word and instead just walked to the other side, taking a free spot. With eight pairs, plus Honoka and Mai in the center, they had decided strategy.

"Due to the Countdown Clock providing the most significant boost, we should aim for a defensive battle. But not too defensive as the Countdown Clock will cause a knockout when it reaches zero. A knockout by Countdown Clock will happen for everyone at the same time, which will invalidate the Bound by Bond bonus. So we should aim for the battle to finish somewhere in the 12 to 15 minutes mark. Make sure that if you lose your partner you regroup with someone else as you only lose the bonus from the partnership if both of you are rendered unconscious. Heart, Diamond, could you come forward and briefly explain your powers before we continue?"

Honoka jumped down from the platform and, together with Mai, she switched places with Mana and Rikka.

"I'm Aida Mana. In a way, I'm the leader of the group of Cures that recently joined you all. All of us have specialized abilities. I personally focus on close quarters combat exclusively." Mana wanted to keep it short and not too personal. They didn't need to know that she chose this type of fighting so she could feel the pain of those she took down herself so she would never lose the feeling of how terrible a thing it was to fight humans. "My specialization is to heal my own wounds. If necessary, I could exert enough magical energy to completely re-attach a severed limb or close a hole the size of a fist in my torso." Mana saw a few strange looks being directed at her. "Yes, those things happened before. Because of my reliance on support from my team I lack any means to attack at range or without physically connecting." The idea of fighting other Cures was still a very weird concept to Mana but after everything she had heard, it was like an all-out fight that had no real consequences after it was done. Her power would likely come in handy.

"So how strong are we talking about?" Urara was curious about this. "If you specialize purely in physical combat with self-healing or whatever, you have to be pretty darn strong to go head-to-head with knuckleheads like Black, Bloom and Bright." B, B and B. The three idiots. Urara chuckled as she realized how well that worked.

Mana looked to Rikka for help. She didn't really know how to explain this in quantifiable terms.

"Come down here and we'll do a quick test. I'll lock you up, everyone pulls in one direction and you pull in the other." Urara really just wanted to teach that new Cure that they shouldn't underestimate their younger counterparts.

"Don't come crying to me if this blows up in your face." Ako whispered to her partner.

"Stop. There is no point in getting one of our own injured just hours before the battle." Yuri didn't want to diminish their chances of winning.

"Who made you boss?" Urara already didn't like taking orders from White, and now Moonlight was butting in as well?

"She is right. You can just see for yourself in the battle. Knowing her style of fighting is enough for now." Honoka didn't want to see an argument break out.

Urara let it go because she could sense that Ako was really going to be pissed off if she pushed for it. "Fine. What about Diamond?"

Rikka didn't bother to get up on the platform. "I specialize… well, this might be difficult to explain. Essentially, I manipulate vibration of atoms. Atoms vibrating is what generates energy and heat. I reverse the direction of their vibration and override their composition in such a way that the energy they generate is magical energy. The final result is that I can drop entire areas of space to far below of the absolute point of zero. In practice, it will freeze the very molecular structure of anything I hit. Even the tiniest vibration, from a grain of dust in the wind for example, would completely shatter any frozen structure."

Even Honoka didn't have an easy time understanding that. Reika understood it a little more than Honoka did and everyone else was basically still trying to comprehend the initial part of that explanation. "In terms of combat behavior, it is difficult for me to function in active combat for long periods of time because the intense vibrations of a battlefield are extremely stressful and without using my crystals to pick up vibrations I cannot aim my attacks. It also takes a few seconds for me to properly manipulate atoms, so any targets moving at extremely high speed pose a challenge for me." Rikka finished her explanation.

On the other side of the fog, the light team had a similar assembly. The pairs were already decided and so was the 2 in 1. Rose and Luminous. Black and Windy. Bloom and Bright. Nagisa had opted to go with Windy instead of Bloom because she wanted some ranged support. Happy was with Peace, Sunny with March. Melody with Sunshine, Sword with the Ace/Joker combination. Rin had had teamed up with Karen and Alice ended up with Peach as the leftovers.

Karen had taken up the position of handling the assembly. And much like Honoka, she asked the new Cures to explain their powers. Alice went first and instead of jumping on the small platform she had made earlier, she created a small one just next to herself and sat on it, then slowly floated upwards.

"I'm Cure Rosetta, Yotsuba Alice. I specialize in barriers. A long time ago my specialization was fighting in close combat with the barriers as weapons but due to a leg injury I was forced to adjust to a new style." Creating a large sphere several meters above her, Alice flicked her fingers and the barrier crushed the air inside it down to a tiny amount. When the sphere disappeared, the emerging air was like a powerful gust of wind. "I still fight offensively with my barriers. While they're not indestructible, they can withstand a lot of damage before breaking and I can move and manipulate their size at will. If I had to name a special move, it would be what I just showed you. My maximum range is 1500 meters radius. Depending on what I can work with, it is possible to create a small neutron star." Alice saw the worried look on Cure White's face. "There is no reason to worry. Even if I do create a small neutron star, it burns out very quickly and it will not explode."

"What's a neutron star?" Hibiki whispered to Itsuki who suddenly looked desperate. "You don't know?"

"That sounds like some astrology physics stuff. You know I'm more the physical type." Itsuki wasn't stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but how many normal people knew what a neutron star was?

Alice didn't bother to get off the barrier and instead floated towards Peach, inviting her to sit on it with her. Love saw no reason not to, and it was surprisingly fun to just sit on something that was floating in mid-air.

Makoto went up front next. "I'm Cure Sword. Kanzaki Makoto. I'm specialized in mid-range and disruptive combat." Forming energy in her hand, Makoto created a solid hilt with a blade made purely from energy. "As my name implies, I fight with a sword. Unlike a regular sword made of iron or any physical matter, my blade cuts magical energy directly." Makoto ceased the demonstration for a moment. Clicking her fingers, four identical swords appeared around her. "I can direct a number of blades remotely, up to a range of 5 meters. There are also various types. Purple, the magic cutting sword. Red, a microwave based sword that scorches organic matter. And blue, a weapon that has a similar effect to Diamond's powers. It causes instant frostbite when hit." Makoto cycled her swords through the colors as she explained it. "If I had to name a special attack it would be this." Makoto focused really hard and then nothing seemed to happen. "Above."

Looking up, the Cures saw a singular gigantic sword float horizontally above them. "That is Senhime. It means the princess of thousand or the war princess depending on how you write it. I can break that blade into a thousand smaller ones and rain it down on an area." Makoto let the blade dissipate. "I can only do this with the purple blade, the magic cutting one. And it takes quite a lot out of me."

"That is kind of like your Abbadon, Kurumi. But I think you're cooler than her." Hikari smiled a little at her friend.

Kurumi was a little embarrassed that Hikari thought so highly of her. She wouldn't let it show on her face, though.

Makoto returned and both Ace and Wild Joker stepped up. "I'm Ange Madoka. Since we're seen as one person by the system, for reasons we can explain at a later time, we will explain our powers together since they originate from the same source. Each other. Both of us decided to not pick a specialization and instead steadily improve in every area. We can't rival any of our team members in their respective specialization but we are all around independent." Ace quickly showed off her array of weapons. "As you can see I can fil just about any void. The only special move that Joker and I are capable of is the Dragon Glaive Ace Shot. And we cannot showcase that here."

"I'm Aida Regina, and since Ange already explained pretty much everything, I can take it easy. She makes her weapons, I use this baby." Regina summoned her spear. "In our world it was one of three legendary treasures and we kinda used up the other two. My entire fighting style is based on it. And just in case you're wonder-" Regina threw her spear away, into the fog. Then she clicked her fingers and a beam of light returned out of the fog and materialized back into the spear. "Nope, I can't lose it."

"Okay then, we should talk strategy now." Karen was impressed by the new Cures but not enough that she would ask the others to base their movements around them. The only one that looked exceptionally powerful was Rosetta but Karen didn't quite believe that she was truly capable of creating a neutron star just by compression.

On the dark team, the strategy meeting had just finished. "The optional scenario is for as many of us to last as long as possible. Keep that in mind. If you still have your partner, don't be afraid to jump in and save someone who lost theirs." Honoka figured they had covered everything. "Since everyone is already here, I'd like to speak about some of the more troubling information I found within the brochures. It appears that after today's battle, there will be significant inflation on everything. To swap teams will amount to paying 5000 favor-" Honoka heard multiple surprised gasps. "And everything at the store will be significantly more expensive. This includes the dining hall as well. This means that winning is more important than ever." Honoka paused a moment to let that sink it. "But there are positive things to talk about as well."

"As all of you have noticed by now, there is a board with quests on it just over there. Those serve as a means to expand this complex and earn temporary rewards." Honoka had ulterior motives. She wanted that library. And the beach.

"Everyone saw the list that was passed around earlier." Marine was awake but still only at 75% of her usual energy. Which was already enough for everyone around her. "It's pretty obvious we should start the band task immediately. I know I can learn an instrument in a few days but it might take longer for others." Erika skillfully dodged Tsubomi's angry look. "And while we put together a band-" Erika shot an intense glance at Cure Beat and Lemonade, the latter glaring back. "We can do the cooking competition. Having a kitchen sounds like a good idea because if that dining hall is getting as expensive as you say, jeez, we should cook our own stuff."

Tsubomi could have sworn she saw the words cake cake cake pop up all around Erika. Cake was a category 3 dessert, which cost 1000 favor already to use for 3 days and would cost 10000 favor after the battle.

"Is that a good idea, with Luminous, Sunny and Bloom on the other team?" Miki wasn't very confident about her cooking skills and she knew that Inori mostly ordered food nowadays.

"We got me, Rhythm, Passion and myself." Erika was absolutely confident in her cooking skills. Following the recipe, throwing in some fitting spices, voila, masterpiece of food!

"You counted yourself twice, water flea." Urara nearly burst out in laughter when she realized how well that worked.

"That's because I can work at twice the speed of anyone else!" Erika just ignored her insult.

"Do you want me to tell the new Cures about your precious nickname, Cure Fanta?" Ako whispered to Lemonade whose laughter literally got stuck in her throat and she started to cough.

"Instead of doing a show of hands or deciding on a whim, we will hold a paper vote on which task to tackle first. The band task, however, sounds like a reasonable thing to start immediately since we have a number of talents on the team right now."

"It says a maximum of 10 people can be in it, that it is shared between teams, and they get a designated room for practice independent from the complex." Urara remembered this exact task pretty well. "Who here played music before?"

Of the 18 people, only two raised their hands. Beat and Lemonade. "I'm so surprised, if I fall over it is definitely not because of disappointment but because of shock." Urara had expected better.

"Before we get carried away with forming bands and theater groups, the first day condition is coming up." Honoka took back control. "We have no idea what it will actually manifest as, so please be careful."

"Does these power that be guys not know that you don't blow your entire budget of surprises on the first 24 hours?" Marine shrugged. "They can't come up with new nonsense all the time, right? I mean, how much silly stuff can they possibly force on us after quests, new rules, new base, random stuff happening to us every day and whatever I forgot." Erika was entirely unimpressed with the way things were managed. "I would have timed it so that the day condition hits when we were all asleep! Pow! Instant surprise and chaos when waking up! And everyone would be squirrels! Or dogs! Wait, dogs sniff each others' butts. No dogs. Cats. But they lick each other." Erika frowned. "Animals are kind of gross."

While Erika was indulging random thoughts, Yuri had taken one of the quests from the board. One of the repeatable ones. "Heart, Diamond, both of you have zero favor to your name and we need 4 people for this quest. Would you like to help?"

"Sure." Mana was glad that she could be of service. "Rikka?" She wasn't going to decide for her partner, however.

"This takes me back to our days in middle school." Rikka smiled a little. "I suppose I could show them that being blind does not mean I am not a threat." She was really looking for something to keep her occupied. To take her mind off her failure.

And so, not five minutes later, the four were stared down by Northa, who was filing down her nails into perfect murder instruments. A lot of the former villains were confined to their human disguises but surprisingly, Northa was apparently human enough already. "The training hall, is it?" Northa looked irritated that she had to do her job. Pressing a single button she pointed to the right hallway. "End of the hallway, door to the right. First 60 minutes are free for today, after that, every additional 60 minutes are 150 favor."

So the 250 extra for everyone are only 100 extra for those who do the quest? I guess it's so those who pay it are actually using it. Yuri figured that Yami was going to need a lot of practice to make up all the time she had lost. Yuri was the only one between the four that had any money. "We will need two hours." Yuri didn't actually know how to pay. The coin purses were gone.

"Hold out your filthy hand." Northa waited for Yuri to follow through and hold out her hand. Northa held out her hand as well, beneath Yuri's, so that there was a direct line between their palms. Two small golden portals opened and fifteen silver coins fell out of Yuri's portal and ended up in Northa's. "Now get out of my sight."

"From whose past is she?" Mana was curious where a woman like that came from. Mamo was rude but not like that.

"Peach's group. Three of her group are on our side. Berry, Pine and Passion. The tall blue cure with the long ponytail, the short yellow one with the big breasts and the curly hair. And the red one with the long hair that is dating Beat, another blue Cure with purple hair." Yuri figured that using colors to describe them was the easiest way for the new girls to recognize them.

"You don't need to worry about Mana forgetting names. She is not as smart as I am but she is really good with people." Rikka walked with Mana, led by the hand, and was suddenly pulled to the side when she was about to walk into a wall. "It might take a while before I will get used to this place. It is so much bigger than the plane."

"How does it work? Using your crystals to see I mean." Yami had just followed Yuri until now but she was a little curious about these Cures. Didn't Tsubomi mention last night that she developed healing powers? Can't she heal the poor girl's eyes?

"Everything in the world vibrates, we just can't really see it. I pick up those micro vibrations with my crystals and it basically paints an image of what my surroundings are like in my mind. Try to imagine a pitch black space that has a lot of white outlines all around. That is what the world looks like to me when using the crystals. It uses a lot of magical energy and it really gives me a headache when there is a lot of noise since sound is a lot of vibrations to pick up." That was why Rikka didn't like going into the hangar aboard the plane. It was the least shielded from the engine noises.

"Stairs, four steps, four steps." Mana said and after taking four more steps, Rikka knew that there were three actual steps up and the fourth was flat ground again. It had taken a lot of time to get used to being blind, and there were still sometimes unexpected situations. Such as putting on a new swimsuit. Which, come to think of it, she was still wearing beneath her Cure outfit.

"I really need to change clothes before the battle." Rikka wasn't uncomfortable with her body, she just didn't think it was appropriate to walk around in swimsuits.

"You have four hours. Two, after we're done sparring." Mana had already memorized the important time tables. That much was easy for her.

Bringing up clothes, Yuri glanced to her sister, who was the only one among the large crowd that hadn't transformed because she still didn't really have a good handle on doing it on command. And she was still wearing that stupid balloon swimsuit. Nobody else seemed to even look at her twice anymore. Not that Yuri could blame them. If you had Erika and Lemonade on your team, you were already maxed out on strange things. "First we need to tell you how to properly switch your transformation on and off."

"That's gonna be handy. But now that I think about it, what happens if you transform, strip and wear something else. Does it vanish when you cancel out?" Yami enjoyed learning new things so far. She had kept an open mind about almost anything so far.

I don't actually know that. Yuri had never even thought of that because to her, transforming meant fighting. But for Yami, it didn't have that kind of intuitive implication yet. "We can pick out some ugly clothes later and test it if you want."

"Erika is gonna flip if I just transform-vanish some clothes. So lets totally do that." Yami didn't just want to push Yuri's buttons. Seeing Erika act out was really funny too. She was so tiny and full of energy that it was just hilarious to see her all angry. Like a guinea pig that got to drink coffee.

While they spent the next 45 minutes just teaching Yami about transformation and some basics about energy management, and the rest of the dark team discussed a few more details in terms of strategy, the band and the theater group, the light team had found a way to contact the other team.

And all it had taken was asking their receptionist about it. Putting together a written note, maximum size was one A4 page, the receptionist could send it to the other team. Letters were priced at 500 favor unless they specifically addressed coordination of a task, a quest, in which case it was free.

It was the best way to communicate regarding the tasks shared by teams. There were three volunteers on their side that wanted to be in the band, Aqua, Sword and Melody.

"You're not joining?" Hibiki was hoping that Itsuki could pick up the guitar or drums, maybe the bass.

"I don't need to follow you everywhere, Hibiki. I like music but I'm totally fine just listening to it. I wouldn't have any time to play an instrument back home and I think there are probably enough girls here that want to try and play." Itsuki poked Hibiki's cheek. "But I am definitely looking forward to hearing you play."

"Why are you so convincing? I was planning on bringing up what happens if one of us gets shuffled out but if you bring up the others like that, I'll just look selfish." Hibiki let out a sigh. "In case you're worried, I don't think Kanade will be there."

"Worried about what exactly?" Itsuki faked ignorance and made Hibiki a little mad. Puffing up her cheeks a tiny bit, Hibiki looked away with a loud Hmph!

There were a few more volunteers for the theater group however. Miyuki, Yayoi and Nagisa. Hikari decided to join at the last moment and that brought in Kurumi as well. They needed a minimum of 8 people and they filled five of those slots already. The group could hold a maximum of fifteen people. The quest did have a number of rules listed on the backside. The auditorium they would receive to practice, that was shared between teams, was for practice and not a cheap way to bypass the issue of being in different teams. Usage of the auditorium was limited to four hours a day while the band room had a limit of six hours per day and pretty much followed the same rules.

By the time they got an answer it was 11:30. "Hey, Cure Splash, your reply is here." Majorina was just starting to give up on trying to get all of them to stop bothering her. She couldn't refuse to do her work and it looked like they had no intention of actually being scared of her.

Karen had stayed behind in the lobby and was memorizing the new combat rules. She had expected a reply from the other team sooner than that. Leaving the rule pamphlet on the table, Karen went to receive a folded piece of paper that Majorina had just left on the desk. In a way, Karen was glad that their receptionist was not Anacondy or Arachnea. Or one of the men, if that was even an option.

The reply was a lot longer than she expected. Lemonade was aiming to join as a vocalist and said she was okay with taking turns with Sword. Beat was also joining but not as a vocalist, since she and Lemonade covered similar genres of music, but as a guitarist. Passion put herself down as a maybe, if they didn't find anyone else that would pick up the bass and learn it. Karen of course knew about the relationship between Peach, Passion and Beat so she figured that she should talk to Love about this.

Before she could even turn around, someone looked at the letter from the side. Someone rather enthusiastic and with a very large blond ponytail, "You're Regina, right?"

"Did the band fill up?" Regina had talked to Makoto about music and while Makoto had repeatedly told her it was hard work, Regina thought that it would be pretty cool to learn an instrument. Mana couldn't hold a tone in a bucket and Rikka was blind. Alice expressed no interest. And after pouting about it when Ange said so, her other half changed their mind and said okay. Ange used to play the violin and since Karen was going to be in the band, she could get some lessons from her.

"Right now the volunteers include Lemonade and Beat from the dark team, and Melody, Sword and myself from the light team."

"Put me and Ange down. Because this whole system is stupid, we count as one person apparently. Ugh!" Regina was still annoyed by this. And to make it even worse, they still needed to recharge. And they needed to do it before the battle too. Ange was already on the way to their room. "I'll pick up the guitar. You can never have too many of those. And Ange is probably gonna ask you about giving her some refreshers on the violin since she used to play. Thanks." Dashing off without waiting for a reply, Regina was torn between a good and a bad mood. The ridiculous treatment she received was annoying her but all in all it was way more fun to be in Dissonance than that ruined, dying world.

"She reminds me of Marine… in a bad way." Karen put down their names anyway but with a division mark between them and a small note saying that the system is treating them as the same person. I actually haven't heard from them why the system is doing this. Noticing Rin from the corner of her eyes, who had just come back from a short tour around the complex to get more used to where everything was situated, Karen waved her over. "Have you seen Love? Both of her partners are in the band so I thought she might be interested."

"Ellen and Setsuna are?" Love's voice came from right behind Karen.

Karen nearly jumped over the desk, so startled was she by the sudden appearance of Love right behind her. "Since when have you been there?"

"A few seconds? I saw Rin walk up so I decided to check if you got a reply." Love wanted to peek over Karen's shoulder but she wasn't tall enough for that. "So Ellen and Setsuna both joined? What's Setsuna gonna play?"

"She says she will pick up the bass if nobody else does. She was probably talked into joining by Beat, right?" Karen ignored Rin taking a look at the list and then looking not very impressed.

"She wouldn't join if she didn't think it would be fun. She can be kind of stubborn." Love thought about it for all of five seconds. "Okay, I'll join too. I am good with my hands and feet and I got a good sense of rhythm, so I'll try out the drums."

"Love, will try out the drums." Karen said the words out loud as she wrote them. "That actually fills all the spots and all the important instruments. Urara and Sword doing vocals, Beat and Joker playing guitar, Ace and myself on the Violin. Melody will be playing the keyboard. Passion on the bass and finally you on the drums, Love." Turning to Majorina, who was already looking annoyed but ready to work, Karen handed over the paper. "Please send this to the other team."

"Yes, yes." Majorina folded the paper and got out of her chair. She wore a tiny golden key on a string around her neck, which allowed her to open a door behind the desk. Any of the Cures would have to actually jump over the desk to get to that door, which made them wonder how Majorina got out of there without doing the same. Using the key to open the door, she stepped through what looked like solid fog, the door slamming shut and locking itself the second she was gone.

"I wonder what this day condition is going to be like." Love was always excited to try out new things. "I just hope there isn't going to be something like a Nakewameke invasion."

"A what?" Rin had no idea what that was supposed to be. "Is that like a Kowaina or a Hoshina?"

"Are those monsters that possess stuff and people and transform them?" Love couldn't really imagine what those were.

"We all had our own enemies to fight. Makes sense that they all used different types. Although Hoshinas and Kowainas were limited to just inanimate objects." Karen hid a little smile by putting her index finger before her lips. "Just imagine how overwhelmed our old enemies would be with us now."

"There would be no point in collecting anything of any kind. Just storm their base and kick their asses." Rin figured she would just burn through masses of Hoshinas with her Hell ability. And she was pretty sure she'd produce some charcoal cockroach if she came across that bloody eternal henchman.

"I think that would have ended really badly if I had tried that. Setsuna might not be one of us now." Love was pretty bothered by that prospect.

"Just how many former enemy turned friend Cures do we have? I know the two sisters from Bloom's team were like that. Passion. Beat. Oh right, Moonlight's sister, too, apparently." Rin tried to count them all.

"I am pretty sure I remember Rosetta telling me that their Joker was also one of their enemies for a long time." Karen hoped she didn't get that wrong.

"That is some scary seductive power going on there." Rin looked at Love, who raised her hands. "Don't even pretend it wasn't like that!"

"But it really wasn't. We befriended Setsuna and when her old masters killed her off, she was revived by our powers."

"I've seen Nanoha, I know exactly what befriended means, Love." Rin only knew the show because of Urara. She could absolutely not tell anyone about that, though. Urara would lynch her and literally hang her out to dry.

Love was put on the spot. "I keep telling you, we fell in love after we beat Labyrinth!"

"You mean you returned her feelings after you beat- what kind of name is Labyrinth even?" Rin found it funny enough to snort.

"Rin, we're not ones to talk after dealing with organizations like Eternal and Nightmare. It's like all of our enemies participated in a worst name for an evil organization contest." Karen was embarrassed just bringing up an enemy organization called Eternal. They weren't very eternal in the end.

Love started to laugh when she heard those names. "Eternal, really? That is so much worse than Labyrinth!"

"What's going on?" Nagisa and Saki came in through the front door. Both of them were quite sweaty after running a few laps around the garden. As usual, it ended in a stupid competition of who could do more laps and they both gave up when they realized they had to battle later.

"Reminiscing about old foes. What were your enemies called, Nagisa, Saki?" Karen preferred to call people that were not present by their Cure names but after spending a few weeks in this place with them, she addressed most by their first name when they were there with her.

Nagisa cringed. "We dealt with the Dusk Zone. Then we had to fight a group called the Seeds of Darkness." Nagisa expected the reaction that followed. Rin and Love, both, started to laugh, unable to hold it in.

"Seed of Darkness is a movie. It came out in 2006 or 2007 I think? And I am pretty sure there is a band called the Dusk Zone." Saki pointed out one after another and even Karen couldn't hold it in any longer, covering her mouth with her hand. Rin had to hold on to the desk to not fall, because she was so far bent over.

"If you're so knowledgeable, what were your enemies? Both you and Mai never really talked about them!"

Saki paused. "Dark Fall. And I know it's a video game from 2002."

Majorina had enough of them loitering in the lobby. If they wanted to have that stupid conversation, they could have it outside. With a single move of her hand, the five of them went flying through the magically opened entrance and landed out on the pavement. That took the wind out of their sails. "I should have seen that coming." Karen rubbed her butt. She wasn't transformed so this had hurt a little.

Yayoi had been startled by a number of Cures coming flying out of the skyscraper. She had been looking through the quests on the board. She was going to ask Miyuki to suggest doing the Mahjong Parlor quest as one of the first ones because it would let people gamble for favor. Yayoi was surprisingly good at it. At one time she had researched it for a story and became intrigued with it. After asking her editor about it, she was taken to a mahjong parlor. It was illegal to bet money on gambling like that, especially for a minor, but she enjoyed playing just for fun.

And for a tokusatsu fan like her, everyone obtains a special power was just the ultimate lure. She had seen the anime series Saki so many times, she would be unstoppable. "Rinshan Kaihou!" Yayoi whispered to herself and smirked.

"I think the day condition should hit at any moment now." Karen wished she had a wristwatch. Or a cellphone. It was just really inconvenient to not have a handy source of time. Although there was a quest to add a big clock to the plaza. And some street lights for when it got dark. Just as Karen called out to Peace, the clock hit 12. The weather changed abruptly to what could only be called a violent typhoon, a super typhoon, the strongest classification there was. All six of them immediately transformed to withstand the winds that went nearly 200km/h. And even as Cures, a typhoon of that magnitude was just plain horrible to deal with.

Peace was the least physically capable of the six but was quickly grabbed by Bloom, who had the least trouble enduring the winds and actually setting one foot in front of another. Least trouble was a term that didn't properly convey that even Saki had to try really hard to not get blown away. Karen, Rin and Love stuck with Black, moving in a four people cell to towards the nearest exit. The fog.

Soaked to the bone after less than one minute out there, six Cures eventually appeared within the bath house. And were promptly turned away. "This is the Dark Team's period of usage. Leave." The Light Team's time ended at 10 AM, nearly two hours ago.

Forced back out into the storm, they fought their way back through the typhoon and managed to get into the garden. The weather in there was not much better. A heavy rain squall was hammering down, and while the plants were enjoying the fresh water, the Cures did not.

Their third attempt finally landed them back in the skyscraper, where a number of Cures were watching the outside through the one entry and exit. Kurumi and Hikari were there, with a worried look on their faces. "Miss Majorina, how often does the weather change?"

Majorina was caught completely off guard by that high pitched cutesy voice being so formal with her. "Every 3 to 6 hours. The earliest it can change is 3 hours after the last change, the latest it will change is 6 hours after the last change."

"Thank you!" Hikari smiled and her beaming smile made Majorina feel uncomfortable. Was it even allowed to be evil towards something that adorable? Bad End or not.

"Hikari, stop converting the villains. She looks like she's about to go to heaven." Kurumi hissed to her best friend. "You need to be careful with your smile. It's too powerful."

"I have no idea what you're saying, Kurumi." Hikari was legitimately confused. "But doesn't this mean we have to go through that to get to the Arena later?"

Rin shook her head like a wet dog and got water everywhere. "You got to be kidding me." Walking up to the receptionist, Rin looked like someone had emptied a few buckets of water over her. "No umbrella is gonna withstand that out there!"

"Looks like you'll have to get a bit wet then. Or you can play hooky on the battle and get thrown into holding." Majorina really wanted to see that. She was ever so glad that whoever was in charge of the weather had a sense of humor.

"Holding?" This was the first Rin heard of it. Karen had followed Rin, albeit slower, in case Rin was going to get herself into trouble. But now she wanted to hear what this was about.

"If you don't show up for the battle you lose half your favor. Not just what you have on hand, also what you accumulated so your ranking will plummet faster than a wolf full of rocks thrown over a cliff." Majorina really hoped that they all got thrown into holding. Maybe, and just maybe, except that very cute looking pink Cure. Shining Luminescent or something.

That's an awfully specific example, Karen thought and wondered what had happened that made her say that. "What happens in holding?"

"I don't know. But it is also where you end up if you mess up or refuse an order from one of us when you end up working for them due to your low score." Majorina was really looking forward to this. She already had a list of unreasonable demands that most of them would likely reject and end up in holding. She had only been told it was an extremely awful place.

"That part about refusing orders is bothering me." Karen ignored Majorina's smirk and turned away from her. "If there is no rule against unreasonable commands, it will basically always end in being sent to holding, whatever it is. The most obvious conclusion is that Holding is just the like a holding cell at a police station and, or, similar to the exile."

"I thought we were finally rid of that." Rin groaned. "Well, we'll know for sure after the battle. Nothing we can do about it right now." Rin wanted a towel. Or ten. "I am going to my room."

"Karen realized only now that it was past 12. "What is today's day condition?" She asked Majorina who just pointed at a small display above the combat rules display. It listed a type and an effect. "Ineffectual: All Cures are given hiccups between 6 AM and 10 AM as well as 6 PM and 10 PM." Karen made a very complicated expression that was part disbelief, part being annoyed, part disappointed with herself and part blaming herself for expecting something different.

"Hiccups?" Love had stopped by the reception for a moment on her way to the elevator. "That's all?"

"Looks like it. It does say Ineffectual." Karen made eye contact with Majorina who disliked this blue Cure very much. "What other categories are there? What other day conditions exist?"

"Positive, Negative, Strange and Ineffectual are the four categories but I have no idea what's in each category. Now bugger off." Majorina didn't like how humid it got in the lobby with all those wet people around.

"Well, at least it looks like we won't really have to worry about it being something awful," Love said before she left. Rin had already taken the elevator so Love took the small door next to it that led to the stairs. Since she was already in Cure form, going up 10 floors was easy.

Karen also took the stairs. Nagisa and Saki were not that bothered by being all soaked. They were going to take a shower anyway. They would get something to eat first. The buffet was always open and their 1 day pass that the team had paid for was still valid.

Kurumi and Hikari walked past the reception, toward the elevator, and waited. Hikari thought that maybe, just like the dark king, if she was nice to the sexy witch woman, she would become more amiable too. Waving to her and smiling, Hikari smiled even brighter when the woman waved back for a moment, realized what she was doing and quickly looked away, embarrassed she let a Cure manipulate her.

On the other team, Sasorina was being depressed. She didn't even have the energy to be very uppity with the Cures who got the letter from the other side. The typhoon outside had caught all but the four sparring Cures by surprise, and it was too much water and wind for the desert apostle.

"Where do we submit the form for the band?" A soaking wet Ellen asked. They had all been outside when the Typhoon hit, on their way to work on the garden. The quest was immediately canceled, which had no repercussions thankfully, and the Cures retreated to the Skyscraper to ask what was happening with the weather. Honoka and Ellen were asking Sasorina different things and the almost lethargic receptionist was having trouble keeping up.

"There's a form on the back of the band quest." Sasorina looked at White. "What were you saying?" The rain just sucked all the evil, and all energy for that matter, out of her.

Honoka had already heard about the holding and the weather. About to repeat her last question, she was also just about done with the receptionist. She preferred the arrogant version that didn't need to hear every question twice. "I asked if the inflated prices that the information material talks about are going to be permanent."

"Yes. Basically, day 1 was like a welcome back kinda thing. I suppose. I don't know the reason. But prices are going way up because of the new combat rules and stuff." Sasorina didn't really want to continue talking. "Anything else?"

"No." Honoka turned away. Conveniently, most of the team was right there in the lobby. Yuri, Yami, Mana and Rikka were not there because they were still sparring. Ellen and Setsuna had stepped back outside to fetch a quest. "Okay, I have two things to explain to everyone."

"You can do that in ten minutes." Ako cut Honoka's attempt at control off right at the base. "It is our team's turn to use the public bath right now, so we're all going. This is the only chance we have to take advantage of the microscopic prices."

That is actually a great idea, Honoka thought. Her outfit was sticking to her skin, and she was cold. Being a Cure didn't really do much to protect you against getting really, really wet and cold. "In ten minutes then."

Moving like a unit through the Typhoon, it was, of course, Marine who had the bright idea of testing out what would happen if you just jumped high into the air and barely measured 160cm and weighted somewhere around 50 kilos. The simple answer became very obvious to Erika when it started being difficult to see the others all the way on the ground. The wind was changing directions a lot, which made it surprisingly difficult to actually hit the fog and just fall down.

Tsubomi was embarrassed to ask Lemonade for help. "Could you get her?"

Urara simply kept walking and ignored Tsubomi, but the grim look that Ako was giving her made clear that she didn't approve. Much less so than with her usual antics. Throwing one chain to Blossom and Ako, Urara flung another chain high in the air. The winds were strong enough to carry the metal and after about ten very long and very irritating seconds, there was a sudden pull from the other end. Tsubomi, Ako and Urara slid over the ground for a few meters before Nozomi and Miki intervened and pulled them back.

Marine was pulled back down and there were tons of leaves, even one small branch, stuck in the catastrophic mess that used to be her hair. "That was awesome! Tsubomi you should try- ouch, what was that for?!" Marine had received a solid fist to the head from Urara.

"The next time you pull an idiotic stunt like that you can spend the next couple hours being a goddamn twig in a storm." Urara went ahead and this time, Ako thought that her behavior was justified. Nozomi and Miki didn't have much to spare in the way of understanding either.

"Erika, you can't just go and do crazy stuff like that." Tsubomi was more worried than angry. "We don't know enough about this place. And really, how were you planning on getting back down?"

"Use a lot of energy blasts to create downward momentum. Blast myself down, basically." Erika had it all figured out.

Up ahead in the bath, the first Cures had already paid. The hand to hand portal was very convenient. When asked if that worked to lend other people money or pay for them, Mizushita just shook her head. She seemed more relaxed than some of the other working folks in the complex. To their surprise, Mamo was there as well, keeping Mizushita company. "Did Heart and Diamond get lost?" Mamo had quickly gotten used to the situation, all things considered. And she got along with Mizushita and Regine. That Northa woman scared her a little, though.

"Sparring." Honoka replied as she paid. Mamo sat in a comfortable seat behind Mizushita, behind the desk, reading a fashion magazine while the public bath owner did her job. It was all wood furnished and they could still hear the typhoon howl outside.

The main room was small and only had a few seats to wait for stragglers. There was also a couple locker boxes for valuables but nobody had any on them. They didn't think anyone would try to steal their stuff anyway. The workers couldn't attack them, so there really was no point in worrying about that.

Right after the entrance, behind some thick slices of curtain, was the changing room. There was a lot of bare skin going on because it was simply one big room. Clothes could be left in baskets or hung up on two very, very long iron bars that circled through the room on the ceiling. It was really hot inside the bath, too, so wet clothes would dry pretty quickly.

A few slightly envious glances were exchanged here and there, most of them targeted at Ako who was not only tall but also pretty well developed all around. Honoka and Mai had seen each other naked plenty of times before, on occasions like this, too, so they weren't really bothered by it.

Carrying towels into the big main room, the bath, Honoka and Mai were the first ones in. There was a big sign in the changing room that had informed them it was not allowed to take towels into the water, but thankfully the big bath had plenty of elevated wooden blocks to put down their large, white, fluffy towels.

The main bath, for now, offered one very large tub that had three levels of depth. The most shallow was such that it was designed for very short people, such as the not-transformed Ako or Erika. The level between, where the bath reached further into the ground, was deep enough to be submerged when sitting down. And the final level was already deep enough to let even the taller Cures stand and be submerged all the way to their shoulders.

The bath itself was about 11 meters wide and the room, the tub spanning the entire room by the side, was about 10 meters long. Of those 11 meters width, the tub took up about 9 meters. Plenty of space for a full team to get it. Although all 18 in one part of the tub would be somewhat crowded. The room ended in a sliding door, which Honoka found was a nice touch. Said sliding door led to an outdoor hot spring, carved from stone and quite deep. Various spaces, such as the edges, were elevated so people could sit, but the depths of it were about two meter deep. At 7 meter radius, it was possible to go underwater without having someone step on you.

Getting into the medium depth part, the hot water really warmed them up. It was a great temperature, hot but not scorching. Miki and Inori joined the two and Mai's eyes inadvertently went to Inori's chest. Wow…

Miki noticed this and chuckled. "You owe me, Inori."

"You're an artist, Mai, right?" Inori had expected that someone would stare. Or multiple people would. She was the shortest out of the four and the shortest in her own group. But she was also the most developed, in both scenarios. "I guess they don't get in the way much when you're painting."

"No, I suppose not." Mai felt embarrassed that she had been caught staring. Nagisa, no, Saki, was not that big. Not nearly. It just came back to her that her memory and feelings were still messed up. Not all that much anymore, really, but it still bothered her.

"If mine were that big I would have to pay a hefty extra sum to have bras custom made because I teach dancing." Miki was glad that her charm was more in her height, balance of proportions and her legs. "I think this is the first time I've seen most of the others without clothes. Or any of them for that matter, excluding the mass occupation of the shower after the final battle against the mirrors."

"Nothing you haven't seen before, I would guess." Honoka was pretty normal all around. Tending a bit more to being top heavy, but that didn't bother her. Nagisa liked it.

The four of them were joined by Komachi and Nozomi now. If intentionally or not, Komachi sat right next to Inori, which let the other five compare the two busty girls side by side. "Could you please stop?" Inori asked with an ever so slightly irritated expression. There was not much to do in the bath other than talk and look at others, so it sort of came naturally to stare a little but Inori was uncomfortable being the benchmark for comparison.

Urara and Ako walked past the group of six and headed towards the sliding door. While it was raining outside, it turned out that the outside part of the bath, the hot spring, was actually covered by a magic half dome. The rain hammering away against the sphere was surprisingly relaxing for Urara and both of them closed the door behind them.

"I've been meaning to ask this… but how exactly did those two happen? Muse doesn't talk and Lemonade always seems pissed off." Mai was really curious how an unlikely couple like that came to be.

"I don't really know anything about Muse to begin with, much less how they became an item." Miki was now getting interested as well. "She is pretty tall. Maybe as tall, or even a bit more than you two." Miki looked at Honoka and Mai as she said that. "Every group has a Cure with a pink color theme as their leader. I mean, I do too. Love is a good boss." Miki chuckled when Inori gave her the look. "So how come both of you are white themed? I mean, it makes sense for Honoka because she is Cure White, but still."

"You're asking some strange questions." Honoka had never really thought about that. And did it really matter? "You feel more like a leader than Love does, Miki. And your theme is blue."

"Well, I am Aono Miki after all." Miki's pun made everyone groan. "It just so happens that you're Yukishirou Honoka and-"

"Don't say it! Don't say that Snow is White!" Nozomi tried to stop her and realized too late what she had said herself. "Oops."

"At least she you didn't say anything about Nozomi's last name." Komachi was glad that the puns were over.

"What's wrong with Yumehara?" Nozomi was awful at making connections between languages so the pun was lost on her.

Komachi sighed while everyone else laughed. The six became eight when Setsuna and Ellen joined. And the puns weren't over. "Setsuna, we were just talking about how Yumehara Nozomi here is called Cure-" Miki didn't get very far.

"Miki, your puns are as awful as ever. Every time you try to be funny with puns, Aono always becomes Oh No!" Setsuna was dealing out the damage now and the other women laughed again.

Tsubomi and Erika went straight past the larger group and to the deep part, where Tsubomi would just enjoy floating, submerged all the way to her nose, while Erika was diving down, submerged completely and entirely, for over a minute.

The last two to show up were Reika and Kanade. They both hurried right past the others, covering themselves with their towels, heading outside, where it was much darker than inside. "What's wrong with them?" Nozomi had turned around and followed their rather hurried steps all the way to the sliding door.

"I thought pretty much everyone knew by now. They had a little trouble with alcohol last night and ended up giving each other a lot of hickeys." Ellen had observed them carefully avoiding each other all morning. Upon seeing the shocked faces of almost everyone else, she realized she might have been the only one. "Was it really a secret?" Ellen blushed rather strongly and sunk deeper into the water.

"Reika is in a complicated situation with Nao and Akane and Kanade is seeing Rin." Komachi explained quickly since Nozomi didn't seem to follow.

"Speaking of relationship trouble, how come you're the only one here that doesn't like girls, Nozomi?" Inori was really curious about this.

"It just didn't turn out that way." Nozomi didn't feel like talking about Coco. Those were some painful memories.

"Setsuna, you and Love were a thing when we all arrived here right? So how did the two of you end up with an extra serving of Ellen?"

Ellen blushed even more now and so did Setsuna. "We… connected because we went through similar things." Setsuna took over explaining. "We were in an unfamiliar situation… Love was on the other side. We were apart for the first time in years. And Ellen was just really cute and beautiful so things happened."

"Things? Plural?" Komachi couldn't help herself.

"We kissed. Once. I was totally freaking out after it because I was cheating on Love with a girl I didn't know that well. I felt awful."

"And then? I'm on the edge of my seat here." Miki was a sucker for these types of stories.

"Well, I made it to the other side after being stuck in exile and told Love everything after I recovered. And Love being Love, she didn't mind at all, which made me temporarily feel even more awful. Because Ellen got stuck in exile after that-"

"God, I remember that. Of all the people to get stuck it had to be the super pretty one that could sing everyone to death." Miki was lacking a bit of tact and Inori poked her in her side, underwater. "Not that I am blaming you, Ellen. I can only imagine what would have happened if Muse had gotten stuck. She's like the princess of that same magic country you're from, right?"

"Yes. Ako has access to a lot more powerful hymns than I do, like Replekia." Ellen realized that they wouldn't know what that was. "Think of it as the queen of the queendom singing the song with a massive choir and then she collects the energy of the choir and uses it to fire a giant energy cannon. That's why only the royal family has access to that, and only the women." Ellen didn't mind at all talking about this.

"So when Ellen got out of exile, how did you go from feeling awful and Love forgiving you to being a trio?" Inori wanted to hear the end of that story as well.

"Love just went and asked Ellen if she wanted to be part of our relationship." Setsuna and Ellen both blushed, holding hands underwater where the others couldn't see. They were really glad Love was so understanding and pushy.

"That is such a Lovely thing to do that- Hey, stop, stop, I won't do it again!" Miki was being bombarded with water by Honoka, Mai, Komachi and Nozomi, who had heard one pun too many now.

Outside, Reika and Urara were on their own respectively, enjoying just the sound of the rain on the barrier a few meters above them. Ako was worried about Kanade in the meantime. "So you and Beauty both don't remember?"

"No." Kanade felt awful. "Things with Rin were just improving and I was really getting attached to her."

"Everyone makes mistakes. Urara hit me in the face when I told her I'm actually just 13 years old and this adult body is the result of a special magic I can use. And it wasn't just a slap, she really hit me. But that was it. No drama, no tragic break up. She did say that she doesn't want to be around me when I'm in my middle school form but honestly, I've kind of gotten used to this body already. I think the others would treat me with less respect, too, if I was walking around with all of my 133cm of height and no breasts or butt to speak of."

"I think Lemonade is rubbing off on you quite a bit. You never used to talk like that." Kanade was not unhappy with this change. Ako had always been a bit stiff.

"I was trying to get across that if you're just honest, you might get hurt, emotionally or physically, but it's always the best chance to just continue whatever weird relationship you have with Rin. And bonus, Rin is probably a lot like Urara. If she is, she won't care too much about you having a drunk episode and getting intimate with Reika." Ako paused and took a very slow, very calming breath. "Urara, if you don't take your hands off my boobs I am going to drown you."

That only made the yellow Cure squeeze harder, trying to put a crack in Ako's stone face. When that didn't yield results, Urara instead rubbed her own boobs against Ako's back and smirked at Kanade over Ako's shoulder. "I love her, but see what I put up with?" Ako asked, completely calm, just before she pinched Urara's hand really hard, bent her arm around her back and then pushed Urara underwater.

Kanade couldn't see Ako's flushed face anymore and Ako was glad that was the case. "Point being, messing up is part of any relationship. Go ask White or Passion about it." Ako pressed Urara down some more until she suddenly lost her footing and slipped underwater herself. Kanade moved away, but not out of the hot springs.

She was ambushed by Reika, who had made a decision after thinking about her situation a lot. Feeling Reika's hands on her shoulders, Kanade whirled around. "You scared me."

"I'm sorry. But I thought I would talk to you now, privately, while those two are… engaging each other." Reika could see that their little fight turned into something else.

"You better not be trying to apologize because it was probably my fault." Kanade had already gone down this road before. She had fucked things up with Hibiki so much because she couldn't see her own fault in things.

"That is not it. Our encounter last night made me think about my relationship with Nao."

"Is she the jealous type?" Kanade had some experience with those.

"On the contrary. I think she wouldn't really be bothered much by this. But after thinking about my life, her life and how we are together… I decided to take a step back. Akane loves Nao, too, and this odd changing partners relationship is making things difficult for all of us." Reika really believed this. The prospect of telling Nao, knowing how she would react, how she herself would react to that reaction… Their relationship just wasn't a healthy one. Or one that had a long future.

"You're breaking up with her because of what we-" Kanade was hoping she hadn't just destroyed someone's relationship.

"No. Our relationship was fragile for a long time now. I love Nao, but I think everyone involved would be better off if I looked for someone else." The most obvious reason that told Reika her relationship was failing, was that she didn't even feel sad or crushed when she thought about breaking it off with Nao. It was just a decision. Like deciding what to have for dinner. That in itself depressed Reika but it also told her it was really for the best to stop this.

"I'm sorry, I-" Kanade still felt responsible someone's relationship was going down the river now.

"Since we almost certainly already kissed last night, would you mind letting me at least remember what that feels like?" Reika wasn't trying to steal Kanade away from Rin, but she wanted to at least remember what it feels like to kiss her.

Kanade needed a moment to correctly parse that. And then she blushed. "I don't think that's a good idea. I already have to explain all these hickeys to Rin."

"I can't blame you." Reika knew she was in a bad position to ask anything of Kanade right now. "It was probably wrong of me to ask you that in the first place." Reika tried to hide it, and she almost succeeded but she looked a little dejected.

Kanade now felt so bad that she rushed forward and quickly kissed Reika. Not with passion, not for long, not strongly enough to leave an impact. "I was curious what it is like to kiss a blue Cure. Nothing else." Kanade wasn't being honest with herself, and Reika just accepted it.

"In that case I'm honored to have been the one." Touching her lips with her pinky, Reika smiled.

=== DISSONANCE ===

Yami was lying flat on her back on the ground in her transformed state. She could change at will now, as long as she focused for a second. But in terms of actual combat, she lost her wing so her old style just didn't work out for her very well.

Mana was squatting next to the tired Yami and poking her arm. "You okay?"

"What do people say when they're so tired they feel like they can't be any more tired without being dead?" Yami had no idea it was that much work being a Cure.

"Dead tired?" Mana suggested.

"That's how okay I am," Yami replied.

"From what I can tell, you're more suited to energy control type stuff. Like Rikka. You have a lot of power and you channel it well but your execution is all wrong. Punching and kicking with energy like Moonlight does not work out for you because you're not the physical or technical type." Mana had a keen eye for judging people. Especially when it came to combat styles.

"I had a lot of time to refine my techniques so it makes sense she can't just imitate them." Yuri knelt next to her little sister. "We have about half an hour before the bath switches sides and 90 minutes before the battle starts. Are you going to be okay?"

"After lunch, sure." Yami rolled over and picked herself off the ground. "I always just fought with the dark energy I had and used my tact. This is a lot harder."

"I think you should still try to specialize in darkness related attacks. Or rather than darkness, since that has some obvious problems with the connotation darkness has, you could try shadows. I think you did pretty well at spatial manipulation when you used your powers to create a makeshift portal to escape from Mana."

"I did get stuck. Did my butt look good at least?" Yami made the silver and blue Cure groan with a big smile on their faces.

"Definitely," Mana had a completely straight face.

"Do you have any plans for after the battle?" Yami liked the shocked face that both Yuri and Diamond were making. "I haven't exactly had the chance to go on a date in my last life, and you seem like a woman that knows how to handle a first timer."

"Yami!" Yuri couldn't listen to this anymore. "You know she's dating Diamond!"

"And Rosetta, and Sword, and Ace and Joker." Yami counted them on her fingers. "Isn't it kind of unfair for one woman to monopolize all those girls? So it's fine if I ask Diamond out for a date then?"

"No more Erika for you!" Yuri was not going to let Erika corrupt her little sister.

"You're so easy to get a rise out of, Sis."

Rikka couldn't believe that girl.

"If it's just a date, I'd be happy to help." Mana didn't think Rikka would mind. She got to be with her anyway for as long as the others couldn't use the exchange.

And now Rikka couldn't believe Mana. Both the blue and the silver Cure spoke in one breath. "Absolutely not!"

"I think instead of us two, they should be going on a date. Look at how in sync they are. Now that I think about it, Yuri's girlfriend is a blue Cure." Yami was further teasing her older sister because it was just too fun to see her get all riled up.

"My heart belongs only to Mana." Rikka blushed just the tiniest bit before she continued. "And Regina. But you knew that already, Mana, right?"

"Hard not to notice. I'm glad it didn't just all hinge on me being there." Mana walked over to where Rikka sat on the floor, transformed and with her mask on. Yuri had actually helped her figure out something about her own powers. It would take time to figure out something workable but if it did, she could at least get around a little more easily without being held by the hand.

The door was slammed open by Northa. "It reeks of Cure in here. And the smell of sweat is something else, too. Get out, time is up. Or pay up."

"We're leaving." Yami looked at her sister. "Why is that old hag always pissed off?"

Northa really, really wished she could tear them apart. "You have 90 seconds before I kick you out."

Making a dash for it, Mana carried Rikka without a second thought, the four arrived in the arena lobby. Just beyond the doors was a raging typhoon. "When did that happen? Did Erika piss off the weather somehow?"

She's already assuming that Erika is at fault here. I think she'll fit right into our team. Yuri knew how mean it was to think that but she didn't care. "None of us have access to anything better than a shower with unstable temperatures. And we are mostly broke."

"Erika's bathroom is big enough for the four of us." Yami didn't really understand why Yuri blushed over that idea. "It's not like we wouldn't be naked in the public bath, right?"

Mana had no problem at all with that but Rikka worried about unnecessary harem expansions. Given Mana's really good figure and personality, that was a legitimate concern for her. It was reassuring that most Cures seemed to be in stable relationships but this girl, Yami, had already asked Mana on a date. She couldn't risk that.

"Let's go." Mana didn't even stop to think about the same thing that Rikka was worrying about.

"Hell yeah, talking a walk in a storm!" Yami went out first and immediately changed her mind. "Actually, storms suck!"

Getting through the typhoon was no mean task. Yami could hold her own but Yuri had to help Mana because carrying a person through a typhoon, one that had winds going over 190km/h, was not a pretty thing. Making it back into the skyscraper, Yuri, Mana and Rikka all suffered extensive hair damage. Yami was lucky because hers was short, even when transformed.

They were lucky and found Mint plus Dream in the lobby, just coming out of the dining room. Nozomi waved them over immediately. "You're back. Get a shower in quick and get something to eat. The team pool paid for the buffet so we don't have to pay the inflated price later." Nozomi was still stuffing her face with some french fries. She carried around a small basket.

Yami immediately stole a handful from Nozomi who just watched with her mouth wide open as Moonlight's sister made all the fries vanish. "Is Erika inside?" The Penthouse was locked whenever Erika was not inside.

"She's up in her room with Tsubomi. She didn't really take so well to a hot shower after a hot bath." Nozomi, just like everyone else, hadn't really thought about the fact that the storm might outlast them. So when they went back through the typhoon, they were as wet, cold and miserable as before.

So everyone had gone to take showers right after taking a long bath. Erika had generously offered people to take turns and warm up at the fireplace, treating her penthouse like some sort of community luxury suite. She was earning a lot of friendship points for that from people.

"I am going to starve to death if I don't eat before I take a shower." Yami was about to enter the dining hall when Sasorina whistled. "What?"

"You're not going in there like that. It is bad enough the lot of you is ruining the carpet."

"Want me to get you something?" Nozomi felt sort of compelled to help out where she could after that massive disaster not too long ago that was entirely her fault.

"You're not taking food out of the- What is that in your hands anyway?" Sasorina couldn't really see because a stupidly tall silver Cure and a stupidly tall green Cure were in the way.

Yami immediately grabbed everything that was left in the basket and stuffed it in her mouth. She looked like a caricature of a hamster. Dashing off before Sasorina could come and take a look, Yuri shoved Dream back inside the dining hall and went after Yami, who was already inside the elevator.

Mana and Rikka got swept along and with the four of them in the elevator, they all questioned how it was possible to fit that many fries in one mouth. Yami couldn't talk until they were entering the penthouse. Erika was flat on her back on the bed and had Tsubomi sitting next to her, slowly fanning air to her. The veranda was closed off because of the typhoon but luckily it seemed the furniture was magically nailed to the ground out there.

"Yo, Erika! Lemme borrow your shower with these hotties here!" Yami displayed about as much tact and shame as Erika did.

"Sure, go ahead..." Erika didn't even look up and just raised her hand and waved dismissively. "Hot water… is dangerous..." Erika ached.

While the four stragglers vanished into Erika's bathroom, Yuri and Rikka only after some convincing by Yami and Mana respectively, the dark team was quite busy.

On the other side, things were more relaxed. Or, depending on where you went, very, very heated.

"It should be a fairytale! We're magical girls! It doesn't get more magical than that!" Miyuki was arguing so loudly that both Akane and Nao were staying away from her. But what was even scarier than Miyuki was the tiny Yayoi facing their pink leader head on and even out-doing her in the shouting department.

"That's such narrow thinking! What we need is a super hero story! A fallen hero, rising again, making new friends! An anti-rival! Robots! Cool gadgets!"

Rin was sitting with Akane and Nao. The former because she wanted to discuss some heat attack combinations, the latter because Nao was really the only one that had a similar job. And she liked the green Cure. "Have they ever considered the actual novelist on my team is going to want a piece of the script writing too?"

"I don't think there is any room in that argument for what other people want." Arguing in the penthouse, Kurumi had let everyone in because it was impossible to go anywhere in that storm, Miyuki and Yayoi both tried to win through sheer willpower of shouting longer and harder than the other one. "What happened to ultra happy I wonder."

"If Urara was here to see this she would be ultra fucking happy alright." Rin went pfft right then and there. "So she sells books-" Rin pointed at Miyuki, who was just gritting her teeth and growling at Yayoi like an angry dog. "And she is a mangaka?" Rin now pointed at Yayoi, who was hissing back like a violent cat.

"Yep." Akane enjoyed some mineral water. Those two had been going at it for over 20 minutes now. At some point, all negotiations and compromises between Miyuki and Yayoi had failed. One was a really big tokusatsu fan, the other preferred classic fairytales. "They should be out of steam soon though."

Before they could continue to argue, Regina walked up to them, bonked Yayoi on the head with the shaft of her spear and hit Miyuki in the head with her fist. "Both of you shut the hell up! If you want to shout against a wall, there is a typhoon outside that will happily hear your complaints and-" Regina was grabbed by her collar and dragged away by Ace, still shouting and complaining.

Yayoi and Miyuki looked at each for a long moment and it appeared like they would make up. Then they both started again. "Robots!" "Princes!"

"Okay, I've had enough of this. They are from your team, you wanna tell them to stop or do I have to throw them out? Kurumi looks so pissed I think she'll break them in half if they don't stop soon."

"It's so unlike both of them to get that stubborn and loud. Well, I guess that is what happens when passions clash." Akane got out of her chair. "Nao, you grab Miyuki." Walking over to Yayoi, Sunny grabbed the short girl by her arm and just dragged her away. She was strong enough for that. Throwing her into the private show room, where nobody was right now, Akane closed the door, and sat in front of it. "If you can't behave you're getting a timeout."

Miyuki on the other hand was locked in the swimming pool room, where Melody and Sunshine were relaxing. And they looked at Miyuki like she was a suspicious person. It took a minute for Miyuki and Yayoi to calm down and then they realized what huge bothers they had been for everyone around them. Miyuki had never known she could get so emotional over fairytales. Yayoi knew she was passionate about her work but she didn't get this loud even when her editor axed an entire chapter.

"Thanks. I was about to throw them out because they were annoying everyone else." Kurumi had made the effort of coming over to Rin, who sat by the minibar but didn't drink anything alcoholic. She wanted to be in top condition in the battle in about an hour.

"I told Nao and Akane you were going to break them in half and I actually expected you to do that if they kept arguing." Rin noticed the irritated look on Kurumi's face. "Can you blame me? You have that whole iron maiden thing going on, because of your metal themed combat style."

"You know an Iron Maiden is actually a medieval torture and executioner tool, right?" Kurumi might have been a NEET but she was not stupid.

"That sounds a lot like the way you fight. Out of all of us, you're by far the most brutal. And Urara crushes her opponents with her chains so that sure is something." Rin raised her arms in front of her chest. "Just glad you're on our side."

Nagisa looked over the back of the couch. "Anyone want to sub in for Saki? She is so bad at playing old maid that this isn't fun!"

"Nagisa!" Saki was embarrassed by how bad she was at this. "You're barely any better!"

"Isn't this an issue of Kaoru and Michiru being too good instead?" Love offered up and sat down in front of the couch, next to where Michiru was kneeling. Saki, Nagisa and Kaoru were spread out on the couch.

"So the republic was originally a kingdom and-" Hikari looked at Ange, then Regina and then at Ange again. "You two used to be the same person, the princess? And Cure Heart brought you together? That is such a nice story!"

"Technically we're reincarnations of Marie Ange's heart. There was a third one, what was left of her body, that was reborn as a baby. We don't know what happened to her after the republic barricaded itself though." She probably died though. Ange really had no illusions about Ai. If the curse energy was wrecking havoc in the human world that much, and humans were fairly resistant to it, the magical creatures of the republic were at its total mercy. And disease had no mercy.

"And you're… all seeing Cure Heart? I mean… dating her?" Hikari was pretty flustered by this idea.

"Pretty much." Regina let herself fall backwards on the bed. "But Ange and Makoto are gonna stop doing that to see each other, right? I mean it looks like you're not really missing Mana all that much."

"We're not deciding anything until we can actually talk to Mana." Makoto didn't like Regina's tone.

"That's just code for you're going to get out of the way. Leaving Mana for me, Rikka and Alice." Regina waved her hand like she already knew all about Makoto's plans.

"I am not sure I will be maintaining my relationship with Mana in this situation either. I love her but I always felt that out of us five, I was the only one that was primarily physically attached to her." Alice would have never ended things if they had been stuck on that plane until the end of days, but in here? Where there were many opportunities and beautiful women? She didn't need to burden Mana. And now that the threat and suffering inflicted by their world was gone, Mana wouldn't really need her help much longer, if at all.

"Mana is a beast in bed so, I can understand that, but really, just like that? So it's just down to Rikka and me now? Wow." Regina was impressed by Alice's determination. "Anyone you got your eye on, Alice?"

"I wonder." Alice didn't really want to talk about that out in the open like this.

"You're all so mature, talking about your relationships like that." Hikari eyed Kurumi in the distance of the room, where she kept talking to Rin.

"Probably because we haven't really had the chance to talk to anyone that is like us ever since we lost our fairy partners." Makoto touched the crystal embedded in her chest. "I'm sorry but I won't be talking about that to anyone for a while." She didn't even want to wait for Hikari to ask.

"Ange and I didn't have partners and it was still a horrible time." Even Regina looked depressed just thinking about it. "But enough about us. What's this between you and, whats her face, Milk Rose?"

"Milky Rose. You need to stop pretending you're stupid, Regina. Rikka would be mad as heck." Makoto didn't like it when Regina acted dumber than she was.

"Leave me be. It's relaxing and if I get it right it lightens up the mood." Turning over, Regina rested her head on her hand, elbow pressed into the mattress. "So Luminous, you and Milky Rose. I can almost cut the sexual tension between you with my spear."

"Don't say that. We're just really good friends." Hikari got flustered when she thought about Kurumi that way.

That's how Mana and I started out, too, all four of them thought at the same time and shot glances at each other. Regina specifically got up and sat there with her legs crossed. "If Rose keels over it's because your words stab harder than my spear can."

"Don't listen to her. Regina likes to see relationship drama everywhere because all she ever did in high school was play games, watch anime and read manga. No real education." Makoto was glad that she herself had taken a different path.

"Hey, Akagi taught me mahjong, Initial D taught me how to drive and Dragon Ball taught me that you better be seriously specific with any wish granting device. If that is not good life advice, what is?"

"I suppose that academic interests all went to me when Marie Ange split her heart." Ange only now realized how confusing that story must have been. "To explain my name, I'm calling myself Ange because I look just like she did. The human who adopted me gave me the name Aguri. The Ange we talked about earlier is not me."

"Ah, yes, you explained that earlier." Hikari was a good listener.

"Did I?" Ange looked at Makoto, who just nodded.

In that moment, Karen whistled as loud as she could. "We have 30 minutes to get to the arena and ready. We're leaving now! Better early than getting thrown in the punishment room."

Akane and Nao let the two prisoners out of their rooms and while they didn't apologize to each other, they looked equally guilty and didn't argue at all on the way down. Several Cures opted to take the stairs while Regina simply jumped off the veranda.

19 soaked Cures arriving in the arena, a welcoming looking Poisony led them to the main gate in the center hall. It connected to a small room that only had a few seats in it. They had 11 minutes now and they were all soaking wet. "Rin, can you turn on the heat for a little bit?"

Alice would have created a safe passageway through the typhoon if they had waited, but nobody had thought that far ahead. But just as she thought that she should tell them, that it was no problem to create a temporary passageway between the arena exit and the skyscraper, did it get really, really hot in the room.

"Wow, are you doing that?" Akane was surprised by how hot Rouge could make a single room. Clothes were dried in a matter of seconds but hair needed a little longer. After 35 seconds of intense heat, Rin switched it off.

Nagisa and Saki both noticed that the new Cures were off in a corner of the room. "The look in their eyes scares me." Nagisa had seen the eyes of almost every other Cure during battle so far. But none of them looked like that. Cold, almost like they just switched off all emotions.

"Can you blame them? Imagine living in a world where people have the power to hunt and kill you. And you go around and see nothing but death." Saki had heard about the situation from Mai aboard the plane.

"Still… they're supposed to be Cures like us."

Nagisa was not the only one that noticed the unnaturally quiet and focused atmosphere around Sword and the other three. Regina, Wild Joker, had her spear already in hand and Ace was holding a sword, much like Sword herself was. But the coldest out of them all was Rosetta. So much that even the powerful Kurumi was wary of her.

I figured that they would come into this with some battle experience, but this is… scary. Kurumi was really worried, not about the four on their side, but about the two that weren't. Ange had told everyone earlier what their powers were. Heart and Diamond were going to be a problem. She would need to go all out against those two.

The mood on the other side was not much different. The otherwise kind and ever helpful Cure Heart was looking no different than a killing robot from the future, Urara joked. I hope I am not actually jinxing us here, the yellow Cure thought.

But worse than Heart was Diamond. With the crystals on her arms, legs and the mask on her face that covered her eyes and nose, she looked less like a Cure and more like the boss of an evil organization.

"Watch out for Milky Rose and Luminous. They are very close. Milky Rose is already a considerable threat on her own but if she is powered up by Luminous' ability, our chances go down a lot."

Two minutes. Idle chatter died down. Everyone was nervous. Not just about the battle but also about facing one of those new Cures. They looked really strong and the aura they gave off was that of a veteran soldier. In a way, they were the ones that actually put the Legendary Warrior title back into play.

One minute. On the light team, Love was trying to get a feel for Alice's mood but she couldn't make sense of it. It really felt like she just flipped a switch and turned off all positive feelings like sympathy or mercy. She could sense fear, however. That was something that was required on the battlefield. Fear. The need to survive.

And the gates opened. Stepping within, the 37 Cures found themselves on two opposing sides of a canyon that was roughly half a kilometer deep. The battle was on. Before the dark team could even start an attack, Alice went all out. Creating a massive barrier that encompassed the entire enemy team she materialized a small sphere within her hand and quickly made it shrink, the larger barrier shrinking with it in real time, the barrier uplifting a massive amount of stone.

Hibiki and Itsuki, combined into one form, noticed the aura of danger that permeated from Rosetta. And so did Peach, Rosetta's partner. The light team hesitated for a second, but when the shrinking barrier around the enemy team was suddenly frozen solid despite just being energy, they jumped into action.

Sunshine was first, singing as she flew over the massive gap that separated both sides. Hibiki's ability was perfect for the physical orientated Sunshine, boosting her strength, agility and technique many times over because she was using it exclusively on herself.

Ahead of everyone else, the yellow-pink combination met with the mightiest foe they could have encountered. Heart. Suddenly in front of them, Itsuki barely had time to block before a barrage of punches and kicks hailed down on her. None of them were strong enough to really damage her, but it halted her progression across the canyon in mid-air and now both of them were falling.

Power of the Sun, far away, great star in the sky, Itsuki just kept singing to maintain her enhanced state. Seeing lots of openings, Itsuki observed for over ten seconds, just blocking, before she retaliated. "Sunlight Staccato!" Three strikes, as fast as light, hit Heart directly in the face. Blood splashed on Itsuki's face; who had underestimated how strong she was now. But the aggression the system imposed on her didn't really let her be bothered too much by it. The two of them landed at the bottom of the canyon just then, kicking up a lot of dust around them.

Sure that she had taken down Heart in one swift strike, Itsuki turned away, only to feel a chill when Heart grabbed both of Itsuki's arms with her hands from behind. Her jaw was unhinged and one eye was destroyed but it just rapidly healed itself. Holy hell. Itsuki unleashed a powerful kick to her back, right against Mana's jaw.

Heart took the hit head on. Her jaw was broken and she couldn't have spoken if she tried to. And still she held on to Sunshine, a cold determination in her eyes. The injuries she sustained healed themselves right in front of the pink-yellow combination. It didn't even take three seconds. What is she made of?! Hibiki asked her partner in her thoughts.

Before their situation could continue as a stalemate, Beat and Passion jumped in. And while Itsuki, or rather Melody, could enhance herself and others, Ellen could do the opposite. Hitting a disturbing and painful chord on her guitar, Ellen's sound waves not only canceled out all positive effects of everyone around her but vibrated the air so heavily that the ground beneath them cracked.

Jumping forward, Setsuna attempted a flying kick against Sunshine, who jumped off the ground and parried the kick with a kick of her own, all while Heart held on to her arms. Sunshine landed on the ground, now behind Heart, throwing Heart over her back, thinking that this way, the girl had to let go. But instead of letting go, Mana let both of her shoulders be dislocated and landed on her feet, right behind Sunshine, restoring the position of their original stalemate. That sight didn't just scare the hell out of Itsuki but even Ellen and Setsuna.

Even though her arms were unnaturally bent backwards, Mana didn't see any reason to slow down. Her grip on Sunshine's arms was unusually strong and tight, refusing to let go under any circumstances. If the yellow Cure wanted to be free, she had to rip off her hands.

Unleashing a barrage of kicks against Sunshine, who was less than a meter away and couldn't block in time, Mana didn't pay any heed to the horror she was inflicting on her own team mates.

Ellen pulled Setsuna out of the way when she sensed something approaching from above. And sure enough, Black, Bloom and Bright came falling down to the bottom of the canyon, all three of them locked up tight in golden chains. They didn't quite reach the bottom but were hanging there, unable to get free. The sudden stop had shaken them up quite a bit. A purple flash flew through the canyon, zigzagging through the air from side to side, cutting through the chains, something that Ellen didn't think was possible.

With the three suddenly free and seeing one of their own in a pinch, all three of them attempted to gang up on Heart. Who didn't seem fazed in the least when Black and Bloom hit her with a combination attack right in the chest, sending her flying together with Sunshine, because Heart still refused to let go.

Her chest literally dented in, bones repaired themselves and tissue regenerated. Mana finally let go of Sunshine to repair her arms and put on her knuckles. Jumping right back into the fray, Black tried to finish the job but was kept at bay by Beat, who bombarded the physical fighter with ear deafening sound, strong enough to rip apart steel bars. Nagisa could endure but it took everything she had to not go down on her knees. Bloom tried to help but she was busy fending off the much more technical Passion, who kept using duplication techniques to avoid suffering any direct hit.

Bright, on the other hand, had free rein and teamed up with Sunshine. Surrounding Cure Heart, Bright gave Sunshine a dangerous look and Itsuki immediately took a defensive stance. "Fullmoon Destruction!" Bright hit Heart so hard that the pink Cure wasn't just sent flying. Her limbs were bent in unnatural ways, dislocated or worse. She hit the canyon wall, bounced off it and hit the ground hard enough to give the impression that she was a toy that an angry child was throwing through the room. And still she rose, blood evaporating, wounds closing, bones mending.

Itsuki stopped singing for a second. "This is the worst possible enemy for our type. Let's lure her up top." Restarting her song, Itsuki could readily tell just how much difference it made. She was two or three times as strong, as fast, compared to normal, and that was after accounting for her improved abilities from the 2 in 1 rule.

Far above them, hundreds of meters, raged a battle of a different kind. A green barrier and a yellow barrier were fighting for supremacy, trying to break each other with pure force. Rikka remained on the dark team's side of the canyon, using her crystals to their full effect, seeing black and white outlines of everything that was happening, even on the bottom of the canyon.

The air above the massive gap that separated the sides was full of energy blasts. Rikka took careful aim but she could tell that people had been warned about her. Sunny and Rouge stuck together in a center unit, moving around, raising the temperature so much that there was a 1.5 second gap between Rikka locking on and being able to actually freeze the area. And that 1.5 seconds was enough to get out of the way. Usually.

An impressive mid-air battle took place between Muse and Joker, the former using her magical platforms to rise, the latter simply using propulsion from her spear to fly. "Unlimited Blade-" Muse was suddenly hit by golden chains, before Regina could finish her attack call, and pulled out of the area while Regina herself was grabbed by Ace. Less than a blink after that, the entire area, leftover light from the spear and platforms that Muse had created, were all frozen solid and instantly dissipated into untraceable dust.

Rikka saw that she wouldn't be able to freeze anyone like this. Cures were too fast. A group, Beat, Passion, Black, Sunshine and Heart, just reached the top. Beat and Passion were handling Sunshine while Heart was simply ignoring any sustained damage and punching away at Black, who was accumulating damage, little by little. Her arms looked like she was fending off a crazed animal, full of gashes and cuts. Just how much punishment can she take? Nagisa had never seen anything like that. Her offensive power was lacking, her agility was not that high and her energy control didn't seem to exist at all. But in spite of all that, Nagisa couldn't see any way to beat her if this kept up. "Blacklight Devas-" Nagisa had to make a split second decision whether to continue the attack or abort when Heart rushed in, head first, ready to use even a headbutt to ensure she was not the only one that was going to get hurt by this. "Devastation!"

Black energy exploded so close between Mana and Nagisa that both of them were flung through the air like baseballs. And once more, Cure Heart just regenerated the burns and the tissue damage like she was completely invincible. And she left that exact impression on Nagisa. "Ignore her! She's like a killer robot from the future!" Nagisa was suddenly caught by golden chains and flung through the air, hammered against the rough and massive cliff again and again.

Setsuna and Ellen evacuated the premises when they saw a blue Cure shooting right into the midst of the brawl. Setsuna was the more agile between the two. Bright, Bloom and Sunshine were still there, holding on to the sides of the cliffs or simply in mid-air when their opponents suddenly fled. Itsuki, retreat! Hibiki shouted in her mind.

Saki made it out in time but Michiru was too slow, too focused on brute power. Attempting to take out the blue Cure before she was frozen solid, she completely underestimated the intensity of Diamond's ability to control her energy. Her muscles, the blood in her veins, everything was freezing before she could get even close to to her enemy.

Rikka had no mercy whatsoever. The only directive in her head was Destroy the Enemy and that at all costs. "Totaler Stillstand!" Rikka froze a dozen square meters all around her with such intensity that Bright turned into a blue sculpture.

Further up, Saki could feel her increased strength and mobility, from having Michiru on the field, vanish. Those two are crazy.

Up above, Moonlight had jumped high into the air, easily two hundred meters. "Moonlight Cascade!" Readying several silver portals, Yuri made use of Yami's energy to widen the scope of her bombardment attack. While she usually specialized in pinpoint strikes, she did have a few ranged and large scale attacks for when the occasion called for it.

And the enemy she aimed at was down on the ground, right next to Rosetta. "Trust me and don't move. Hikari!" Kurumi spread her arms and flung them backwards, creating a singular massive metal rose behind her. "Abbadon!"

This contest between the combination of Moonlight and Black Lily versus Milky Rose powered up by Shiny Luminous forced enemies engaged in mid-air battles apart and to the ground. Myriads of lethal metal fragments shot through the air, meeting silver-black blasts of energy that rained down from above. A massive display of deadly fireworks took place until both sides reached the limits of their attack.

Kurumi immediately saw herself head to head with her leader, Nozomi, while Moonlight was being surrounded by Ange and Regina, both of them waiting for her to come falling down. Kurumi was powerful and her specialization allowed her to deal damage even through Nozomi's blocks and defense, but Nozomi was fantastic at channeling her energy through an opponents defense, causing internal damage.

Alice still had her hands full with the barrier Cure of the dark team, green and yellow barriers bursting, being crushed and canceling each other out all over the sky, ripping holes into the canyon and occasionally flinging other Cures around like ping pong balls across a table.

Nozomi was about to land a decisive blow to Rose's face when she felt an unknown hand touch her back. "108 Stars of Light." Hikari had canceled her aura at the last second to land a surprise attack on Dream. Energy pillars burst out of Dreams body, dealing enormous damage to her, scorching her internal organs and causing tremendous pain. But it wasn't quite enough.

"Rose Blast!" Using a suicide attack on Milky Rose, Nozomi literally blew out the light in Kurumi's head. The energy rippled through her entire body, disrupting every single nerve. Already unconscious before she hit the floor, Kurumi was quickly joined by Nozomi, who had not expected Luminous to have such offensive power.

Alice had no time to warn Luminous of the danger she was in and created a barrier in front of herself, using it to push herself back as hard as possible. Not half a second later, Luminous was turned to solid ice.

Having returned from the bottom of the canyon, Sword pushed through the chaos to avenge her fallen comrade and attacked Diamond. But they both knew each others powers. For Diamond, a single hit by the purple blade would be fatal. For Sword, just being around Diamond was possibly lethal.

Down on the bottom of the canyon were a green and white streak. March and Egret were in a competition of speed. Distraction as little as a fraction of a second, even 1/30 of it, could potentially decide their fight. Any time one of them attempted to launch an attack and slowed down to aim, the other would counter. The canyon looped into itself on the north and south ends, like warped space, and the two were dealing minuscule damage to each other with each loop.

Both sides believed they set the other one up. Honoka was hiding beneath a large formation of rocks, carefully calculating the time they took for each lap to time her intervention. On the other side was Peace, trusting her intuition. When the two speedsters approached again, both of them sprung into action. "Whitelight Illumination!" "Great Lightning Hammer Strike of the Thunder God!"

Both March and Egret were annihilated by the sudden attack. Trying to dodge, they each ran right into the attack of their own team member. Just then, Windy appeared right behind Peace, while, almost simultaneously, Pine landed next to White, the yellow speedy Cure a little wobbly on her legs. About to ready her next attack, Peace was furiously cut by wind blades and fell to the ground, bleeding heavily from dozens of deep cuts.

Pine's Domination? When did she…? Was all that Yayoi could think before deciding she would rather take down her own team member before letting the other team use her. The bottom of the canyon exploded in a ferocious explosion of lighting, strong enough to cause static so powerful that it reached all the way up top, causing hair to start behaving oddly. Peace succumbed to her wounds just moments after while Windy, Pine and White were all electrocuted, their consciousness blown away. A four-way knockout.

Karen and Rin were holding off Muse and Lemonade, holding a mini strategy meeting because they could see Cure Heart, still alive and kicking, fight Peach head-on, taking a lot of damage that in the end didn't amount to anything because she could just heal herself. Love on the other hand figured that this healing had to come from somewhere and if she just kept forcing her to heal, she would eventually run out. Even if she couldn't survive until then, others would.

"Sword! Distract Mint!" Rin shouted as hard as she could, her voice carrying all the way over to the other side. Blossom was there, the last line of defense if someone should try and attack Mint head on and in close range. Mint was absolutely necessary to keep alive for as long as Cure Rosetta was up and fighting.

Makoto immediately switched from fighting Moonlight, who was not too troubled with keeping both Sword and Ace at bay, and raced towards both the pink and green Cure "Senhime!" Creating the massive sword above Mint, Makoto came to a sliding halt and started to rain down the blades. Mint was forced to abandon her defense against Rosetta right there and protect herself and Blossom.

Sword took intense damage as her blades kept rupturing and breaking the multilayer barriers that Mint continued to produce, she was too close to the barrier, and Ace was in trouble dealing with the combined Moonlight plus Black Lily on her own, but the goal was to free up Rosetta. And Sword took orders without really thinking about it.

Love was hitting her limits in every way; endurance, damage and energy reserves. "Rosetta, trap her and me in a barrier and make it as everything-proof as you possibly can!"

Alice obliged while Muse made an obvious attempt to go after the barrier Cure. She was far too dangerous. But Rin had anticipated as much and put herself between Rosetta and Muse, her hellfire claws burning hot enough to slowly melt the stone beneath her feet. "You're not getting through."

Ako didn't hesitated to surround Rouge with magical piano key platforms, launching projectiles at her in a never ending barrage. Rin was forced on the defensive, using both Hell and her claws to defend, while Muse slowly walked around her.

But Ako was too slow. Love found herself within a very small barrier with Cure Heart. "Lucky Shuffle!" Releasing a lot of energy within the barrier, none of it managed to leak out. And with just that, Love and Mana switched abilities. Mana realized immediately that her healing ability was gone and she didn't understand how this new ability worked.

But now that she couldn't heal herself anymore, she intuitively used her energy into enhancing her physical attributes. It was crude and wasteful, but it worked. With a single powerful strike, Heart destroyed both the barrier and broke Peach's right shoulder. A second strike followed and Peach's hip was broken as well. Because Peach was still conscious after that, Heart aimed for her head next. Much like she didn't understand Peach's ability, there was no way that Peach would grasp how the regeneration worked. It was an on-going, conscious act of self-preservation and healing.

Her fist flying towards the now grounded Peach, Mana stopped the instant she sensed a loss of consciousness in her enemy and turned around, facing Rosetta and Rouge.

Sunny showed up as backup and now Karen was in a pinch. "Solar Rain!"

Rosetta was freed up but she felt weaker than before now because Peach was gone.

And on the other side, Ange and Regina both lost power because Sword fell prey to her continued assault of Mint. Still, Ace and Joker managed to keep Moonlight at bay with help from Happy, who had taken Blossom completely out of the picture. And Mint had no time to intervene in the battle on-site because another colossal barrier encompassed the canyon, both sides of it, and she had to counter it.

Down below, Miki had fought Sunshine and lost. But now, Itsuki was outgunned in multiple ways. Diamond and Beauty had teamed up and they were rapidly turning the canyon into a frigid wasteland. With both of the heat Cures, Sunny and Rouge, busy up above, defending Rosetta and attacking Muse and Lemonade, the ice Cures had free rein.

This is really bad. There is no way we can outlast them. Hibiki had no delusions about beating a tag team of Beauty and Diamond. At least she could communicate with Itsuki much faster than any form of speech would allow. If we're going to go down, we should take both of them out with us. There is a way.

Itsuki didn't really like this idea of a suicide attack. But things were looking grim for the light team. A number of them were already taken out and Diamond especially was like a walking one-hit K.O. machine. "Alright."

Reika sensed that they were about to do something dangerous. "Infinite Armory!" Ice weapons sprung out of the ground everywhere and Reika rushed towards her enemy with a large sword in each hand, ready to cut off their limbs if necessary.

Rikka could sense the same thing but she needed a few seconds to properly use Ewiger Stillstand and even if she used that, it would destroy Beauty as well. This single moment of hesitation became a fatal mistake just a moment later. Between the many forms of her Stillstand attacks, she needed to draw upon the one with the most range and intensity here because Sunshine was very fast and strong.

"Sunphony 100-Fold Impact!" Loaded up with enough song energy to make the very core of a very small planet shake, Itsuki hit the ground and caused a very real earthquake that not only crushed the ground beneath her but also collapsed the cliffs above. Reika and Rikka both lost their footing. And not even Reika could find secure footing on all the frozen rocks, not while they were falling. Rikka on the other hand was suddenly overwhelmed, the vibrational sensory input too much for her.

Seeing the confusion, Itsuki wished she still had the energy to escape. But while her hand wouldn't move, Hibiki's did. Forcing their shared body beyond its limits, Hibiki overexerted the muscles in her legs, which were already burning from the blowout of using the suicide attack, and jumped up while both Reika and Rikka were falling.

You're the best, Itsuki thanked her partner in her thoughts. But their salvation was short lived. As they continued to rise, they were suddenly face to face with Marine, who had moved around so much that nobody could really keep track of her. Goddammit Erika, Itsuki thought.

"Bye bye!" Erika smirked. "Iron Maiden!" Copying Lemonade's signature attack, Erika tied the combined Cures up in azure colored chains. They could have broken free if they still had energy reserves left, but not like this. Erika had waited for just this moment.

Falling to the collapsed frigid wastes below, the cliffs still shaking and rock slides following, Sunshine and Melody figured that they had at least taken out two of the most dangerous Cures.

The only surviving members of the light team were Aqua, Black, Rouge, Sunny, Happy, Bloom, Rosetta and Ace plus Joker.

Karen, Akane and Saki were surrounded by Lemonade, Muse and Heart. Especially the last one was trouble for them. Saki was outmatched in pure physical force all of a sudden because Heart now used her energy to enhance her physical strength instead. Karen and Urara knew each other too well to fall for any cheap tricks and Muse had problems because Sunny was the superior ranged fighter between the two.

Over on the other side, Komachi was running out of energy. She really didn't enjoy doing it but Komachi kicked Tsubomi in the face to bring her back from Happy's dreamworld. But the kick had no effect. Happy couldn't handle Rhythm's mental attacks, which confused reality and made it difficult to tell what was actually happening.

But she was still the leader of her group and she wouldn't go down like that. If she had learned one thing from their fight against Pierrot, then it was that not everything could be solved without an approach of raw force. Jumping Rhythm and ignoring the energy blast to her stomach, Happy put her hand on Kanade's face. "Bad End!"

Kanade started screaming as if she was being roasted alive and impaled at the same time. Happy coughed up blood and could just barely stand. The energy blast that she had just accepted must have done some really bad internal damage.

Taking a step towards Tsubomi, to inflict Bad End on her as well, Miyuki would apologize to Rhythm when she got the chance. But before she could get all the way over there, she was suddenly surrounded by four red Cures. "Quad Mirror Impact!" Setsuna hit the pink Cure strongly enough to knock her out standing.

Meanwhile, Moonlight was running out of energy and stamina both, even with the reserves of her younger sister. Ace had taken significant damage and Joker was not doing much better. They're tenacious! Yami thought and was worried if they were going to make it out of there all right. The countdown clock was all the way down to 275, which was really nice but unless they ended the battle soon, it would result in a draw. And that was probably bad.

"Regina. Let's do the thing." Ange couldn't see them beating Moonlight without some desperate measures.

"Which one? There's like three I can think of!" Regina dodged an energy sphere from Moonlight. All three of them were a good deal away from the rest of the battle. Even the faster Cures would need nine or ten seconds to bridge the distance. Moonlight couldn't hope for reinforcements but neither could Ace and Joker.

Yuri used their indecisiveness to regain some composure and control her breathing. Whatever they are planning to do, we're still fast and strong enough to avoid it. It really helped to be able to think with someone else, Yuri believed.

Rushing straight at Moonlight, Ace and Joker looked like they were going for a frontal attack. They hadn't said anything else after Joker's question, so Yuri had no idea if this was just stalling for time or the actual desperate measure they were putting together.

Fending off both of them at the same time with her immensely quick reactions that were only boosted even further because of Yami, Yuri was still wary of anything unusual.

Regina backed away while Ace continued her assault. Keeping Moonlight moderately busy, Ace jumped away when Regina's spear started glowing in a red light. "Gaia Bane!"

Yuri could not react in time because she reacted after considering logic. Yami on the other hand reacted on instinct and focused all their energy right where Yuri's heart was. It hit them like a missile, throwing them backwards. There was a deep cut in her chest but it was stopped short of doing any fatal damage. She hadn't even seen the spear move. What kind of attack was that? Yami couldn't believe something physical could move that fast.

What kind of attack was that? It looked like… almost as if it didn't obey Newton's third law. "Did you bend space, just now?" Yuri's posed a question, trying to gauge Regina's expression to see whether she was right.

But to Ace and Joker, this didn't even matter. Yuri had dropped her guard after surviving the attack and Ace had gotten right behind her. Ace kicked the back of Moonlight's right knee with her full power, the silver Cure falling backward. Quickly putting one arm around Moonlight's neck, her other arm around the silver Cure's right shoulder, Ace immobilized her enemy and let herself fall to the ground, taking Yuri with her.

Regina used her spear to leap high into the air. "Sorry Ange!" Raising her above her head, Regina screamed and screamed, loud enough, angry enough, her mad scream surprising and unusual enough to briefly distract all those that could hear her. Launching the spear above her head, into the sky, the spear turned into a massive sphere of light energy that slowly formed back into a gigantic spear. "Alpha SRX!" Regina knew this was going to come at the cost of both herself and Ace, but they couldn't let anyone else take out Moonlight after dedicating so much time to beating her.

"Heaven and Earth Hyper One Shot Sure Kill Cannon Mark II!" Regina called and slammed her fists together. Most of this was just theater, but that was how Regina worked. It was her focusing catalyst.

The entire canyon trembled when the massive spear fired a gigantic energy beam towards the ground, engulfing Moonlight and Ace together, both of them feeling the skin on their bodies burn away, screaming in agony for a long handful of seconds before the sweet release of knockout came. Regina passed out together with Ange despite not suffering any direct damage from the attack.

Urara seemed momentarily distracted by the distant attack, so Karen took the opportunity to close the distance on her. But she had walked right into a trap. Side stepping Karen's attack, Urara shot a chain around her ankles and then around her neck. Connecting them together, Karen was slowly choked to death.

Nagisa, Saki and Mana were facing off some distance away from the canyon proper, in the craggy wasteland that stretched on in the distance. "I can't believe… she's a Cure." Nagisa was at her limit. Her right hand was broken and it was her dominant hand. Her magical energy reserves weren't looking good either.

Saki's condition was not much better. Nothing was broken but she felt pain throughout her entire body, having sustained severe internal damage. Breathing was becoming so painful that it was also difficult to just see and stand. Mana on the other hand was bleeding so much that it was difficult to tell where exactly the wounds were. Most of her skin, her clothes and especially her face and hair was covered in blood. By Nagisa's and Saki's estimation, she should already be dead. And yet she was there, standing, energy focused around her knuckles.

Nagisa figured that trying to outlast or outnumber Heart was just not going to work. If they wanted to win, they would need desperate, horrible measures. "Saki… we're tearing off her arms."

"Nagisa?!" Saki couldn't believe she would suggest something like that. And before they had any chance to discuss it, Mana rushed towards them, each of her steps crushing the ground beneath her. She was like an unstoppable monster, no matter what kind of ability she was forced to use.

Black sacrificed herself, took a hit straight to her right shoulder, which outright snapped the bones in half. Ignoring the pain, Nagisa slammed her healthy arm against Heart's throat, pushing her onto the ground, and used everything she had to keep her from moving. "Saki!"

But she was already there. Stomping on Heart's right shoulder, Saki twisted her arm and when Heart didn't even seem bothered by her shoulder being dislocated, Saki closed her eyes, looked away and tore off the limb.

What followed then was a nightmare scenario for the light team. Heart spat in Black's face, which caused Nagisa to rise up in surprise and disgust. Sitting on top of Heart, Nagisa couldn't prevent her from using her legs. Pushing herself up from the ground, she disrupted Black's balance, forcing her to move forward, far enough for her to slam her forehead against Nagisa's, whose vision gave in and she fell over.

Bloom backed away on instinct, out of fear, despite the aggression the system superimposed on everyone. The torn-off arm of Heart on the ground, the Cure rapidly bleeding out from the gaping wound, she advanced towards Bloom.

Rushing in to finish Heart before Heart could finish her, Saki made the colossal error of losing her cool. Heart's right foot crushed her throat in a single blow and Bloom fell to the ground, unmoving.

The only surviving members of the light team were Sunny, Rouge and Rosetta. And two of them decided that they had very little chance to win at this point. They knew that Mint was still on the other side so they abandoned all defense and left behind Rosetta, who immediately took to the air to continue her barrier battle with Mint. She was not going to last much longer either but she was already starting to win.

Passion and Beat were in mid air. Marine was trying to free Blossom from Happy's mind trap. Rin knew she would need a serious power boost to have any chance of fighting. And there was one easy way to get one. Jumping down into the canyon, Rin pulled Akane close and forced a kiss on her. Instead of passion, Akane felt like she was being sucked dry by a vampire.

Good thing Akane's resistant to heat. "Hell, times seven!"

The cliffs within the canyon turned to molten rock just seconds after the extremely intense heat gushed out from Rouge, the Cure acting like a super powerful microwave. The heat rising up above, the unlucky Passion and Beat were both boiled alive, losing consciousness just short of making it out of the air, crashing into the side of the canyon and falling.

But she hadn't counted on the possibility that there were others willing to use suicide attacks. Just above them was Heart, bleeding, her skin burning. You've got to be shitting me! Rin couldn't believe what she was seeing. It's got to be at least two-thousand degrees around me!

Akane didn't have enough energy left for any kind of sustained fight but she could at least get rid of Heart. "Solar Blast!" Creating a single flaming sphere right in the path of where Heart was falling, Akane then executed a second command. "Burst!"

The explosion was strong enough to throw Heart completely off course, slamming right into the molten lava of the former cliffs. Seeing Heart still attempt to free herself, to get out of the lava, Akane couldn't believe that the woman didn't just lose consciousness instantly. Just how absurdly tough was this woman? Seeing Heart's struggle was futile, Sunny, having exhausted the last of her energy, passed out the moment she felt relieved. Even Cure Heart had a limit. Sinking into the lava, even her body couldn't win against that. Rin ran out of steam right after that, the extremely intense heat that emerged from her vanishing into thin air. It had been enough to melt the cliffs but not enough to melt the surface area as well.

Up above, Rosetta had finally won over Mint. Komachi could no longer put up enough of a fight to protect herself or Blossom, who was still trapped in Happy's dream world. Rosetta already saw herself as the victor, so much that she neglected to pay attention to the ground beneath her. Lemonade was still there. And before Alice could protect herself, Urara managed to tie chains around Alice's weak legs, pulling her down.

Putting up a barrier in thin air and holding on to it with her hands, Alice engaged in a contest of physical strength with Urara. But this was just a distraction. Before Alice could react, again, Muse had used her platforms to make it all the way up there. "Forte Fortississimo Staccatissimo!"

There was a massively loud blast of noise that could be heard even in the chaos of the bottom of the canyon, where Rouge was balancing on a floating rock. It hurt to hear even down there.

Luckily for Urara, Ako had placed a sound block on her, temporarily deafening her girlfriend but keeping her conscious. Rosetta had blood running from her ears, her ear drums completely blown out, her consciousness gone. Urara and Ako both knew there wasn't enough time to go after Rouge, system imposed aggression or not.

With Rosetta out of the picture, Mint slumped to her knees, finally able to catch a break. Blossom was there with her, still trapped in Happy's wonderland despite the fairytale loving Cure having been long since rendered unconscious. The battle was almost over and they had survived until the end.

With Rosetta down, the countdown timer was now at 48 seconds and Rouge was the sole survivor of the light team. Rin couldn't see anyone even trying to get to her down where all the lava was now filling the canyon and she could sense that the countdown clock was about to cause a draw. So she waited. The clock ticked down and Marine was just now jumping off the cliffs. But it would take too long to get down there.

And when the clock had reached just 10 seconds, Rin jumped into the lava. And the battle was over.

=== DISSONANCE ===

Urara could feel every bone in her body and they all hurt. Nothing a nap wouldn't fix. She didn't even have bruises this time. "Ah, that was fun." Urara was one of the types that enjoyed going all out against other Cures.

All 18 of them were not transported to their rooms but into the waiting room inside the arena. The same room they had been in before the battle.

"Explanations about all-out combat between Cures were certainly not exaggerated." Rikka was freezing and had a number of bruises. After falling into the collapsing ground in the canyon, she had been crushed by frozen rocks weighting tons. Feeling her legs, arms and face, Rikka had a million theories how all her injuries had been treated or removed.

"I didn't think Peace would take us both out. And Windy." Inori was disappointed. She was probably the one that scored the worst, at least she thought so. "Sorry about that, Honoka."

"With everyone participating, something like that was bound to happen to someone." Honoka didn't blame Inori. "But for you to take over Windy of all people… do I sense ulterior motives in that selection?"

Inori hid any and all embarrassment, if she had any to begin with, with perfection. "Her Stormflair is one of the strongest abilities we have. If we are ever fighting against Cure Heart, it will be our trump card against her."

"Speaking of the devil." Urara left Ako, who was really tired and wanted a strong coffee, and walked across the room to where Mana was sitting on the floor, leaned against the wall. "Are you sure you're human? Or a Cure? And not some kind of futuristic cyborg that is completely unstoppable?"

Mana didn't feel like talking. Her ability to regenerate was intended to be used to demotivate her enemies and give up after they realized they couldn't possibly beat her. Not to fight like this. "You probably scored high as hell. I usually don't bother, but you, and you, too, Diamond, probably saved the hides of a few of us. So thanks."

A few of the others were impressed that the Cure Lemonade personally thanked someone, especially Marine, who was exhausted after running around for almost the entire battle. "Let's go home. I'm totally pooped."

Before they could go anywhere, Northa showed up. "Highest scoring, Mint. You can choose to transfer to the other team right now. Go report in at the outpost if you want to. Lowest scoring, White. You report in at reception, you got unpaid work ahead of you." Northa looked annoyed nobody had died, even though she knew that was impossible. Even Cure Heart, who had ended up submerged in molten lava, had no more than irritated skin, like a light sunburn. Leaving the room full of pests as quickly as possible, Northa hoped that White would be assigned to the Arena. She could do all sorts of horrible things to her.

Komachi saw this as a chance to get back to Karen. "I'm sorry to do this to all of you, with Rosetta on the other team and everything, but I want to see Karen, so-" She was hit on the back by Erika. "Marine?"

"Less talking, more getting your girl." Erika was grabbed by her collar by Yami, who felt pretty tired all around, and was raised up in the air. "Yami, lemme go!"

"You're too loud. Think about the people with a headache. Like me." Letting Erika flail around in mid-air, Yami eventually let her down when Tsubomi gave her a pleading look.

"Results are in," Ako said, standing in front of a display. The same display that showed the rules before, now displayed a few charts. The order in which combatants were knocked out, how much their modifier was and how much they earned. The modifiers of those that survived all the way to the end were a staggering 1863%.

"4367 favor! Woohoo, I'm rich! Rich! Time for another party." Erika almost jumped in the air when she saw she didn't actually score that high. Her base gain was a measly 221.

"I got more than double your payout." Urara looked very smug about it, too. She ranked second, scoring 10,385 favor in one go. That was because her base gain was 544.

Mint was still higher, with a base gain of 700 but even that paled compared to what Heart and Diamond had scored. 1025 and 891 respectively. A lot of eyes went towards Heart, who still lacked her usual attitude.

Compared to that, Honoka had only scored a base of 188 and with a measly multiplier of 376%, she didn't even make the cut for 1000 or above. And she was only 3 favor lower than Mai.

"The numbers don't add up. There is 250 more than there should be." Reika had calculated it all in her head.

"Yami, Mana, Rikka and I completed a quest. Plus 250 favor for everyone. Looks like it isn't added to the base gain." Yuri thought that it was pretty obvious how it was all calculated. All the valid modifiers added together and then used on the base gain. The quest reward was just tacked on at the end. And with how high some people scored, 250 extra was really just small change.

The first few of the group already left. Among them, Mint and White. The typhoon had thankfully changed into something else. But regrettably into something almost as bad. A drought. It was unbelievably hot outside, easily 60 degrees Celsius, temperatures you would find only in deserts in the middle of the day. The air almost hurt to breathe.

"The weather hates us. So absolutely no change from the real world. A+ realistic weather system." Marine hated the drought a lot more than she disliked the typhoon. Transforming back into just Erika, she still felt the sweltering heat penetrate all the way to her bones.

Komachi said her goodbyes to her team in a hurry and headed into the fog. Honoka was the first to enter the skyscraper. She really hoped Marine would throw another party because her penthouse had an Air conditioner. Not even the rooms on floor 50 had that. And now, after the battle and feeling all tingly because of Peace's attack, she had to work.

"Now that I think about it, the gravity didn't really feel any stronger than out here. And there were no exploding people." Erika hadn't really paid much attention to those things during the battle but seeing them pop up as conditions on the results screen had refreshed her memory.

"I hate to think we already broke the system." Miki was not really looking forward to another catastrophe. "And it's ironic that the only people who ended up scoring enough to actually use the exchange have no reason to." She only scored around 2.500 but she didn't want to transfer away from Yuri anyway.

"You want to leave?" Yuri let her sister walk with Erika and Tsubomi and fell behind, to where Miki was.

"No silly. But I would assume White, Egret, Rhythm, Pine, Beauty and Dream would want to." Miki put her arm around Yuri. "You looked pretty cool when you fended off Milky Rose."

"How did you end up?" Yuri wanted to know how her girlfriend did. They hadn't really fought on the same side much before this. And now that she thought about it, she didn't really remember when she got so casual and friendly with her. Their relationship had still been very new from what she remembered. But this wasn't bad at all.

"Tried to trade blows with Sunshine but she was their 2 in 1, with Melody. She hit like a magical truck." Miki had a sore back. "I heard Beauty talk to Rhythm that it was her who took Beauty and Diamond out of the battle."

"That 2 in 1 rule really is something. Even when you're knocked out, you get 400% bonus, too." Yuri hoped the rule would show up again. A lot, hopefully.

"Countdown Clock feels even more crazy. You saw Marine's multiplier right? Almost 2000%. That's insane. And Mint got like 10x what Marine had, from all battles before this one combined, in one go."

"This explains the massive inflation." Yuri would have preferred everything stayed in smaller numbers. Inflation had a tendency to spin out of control. But it would have been hard for anyone to ever catch up to Marine like that, especially those that just joined and had nothing to their name at all. Like Yami.

Ellen and Setsuna asked at the reception about an obvious problem. An instrument shop was supposed to be added after the completion of the quest that required them to already have instruments. "That's just phrased in a terrible way. The shop actually opens up the moment a team hands in the band form. Just go to Mamo's store, third floor." Sasorina felt oddly at home with the blasting heat outside. And she was lucky. She was going to have one unlucky Cure as worker today.

Telling Urara and about the instrument store, the three headed straight out. Ako didn't care to come with them at first but reluctantly went after them because she assumed they knew not nearly enough about instruments to buy something decent.

The rest of the team quickly went their separate ways while Honoka got stuck cleaning the Lobby. Mana and Rikka went for something to eat even though they weren't really feeling like it. But their survival instinct, something they couldn't just switch off, told them to eat when they could and especially after a battle.

Yami and Erika, who were becoming increasingly close friends, much to the worry of Tsubomi and Yuri, were heading for the buffet as well. And both of them were starving. Luckily, the buffet was still open and they had only paid 500 favor out of their team pool. "What was our team pool at anyway?" Erika hadn't actually paid attention to that.

"Something like 170,000 I think." Yami didn't know if that was a lot or not since she didn't know what the score had been before.

Erika did a spit take without actually having anything in her mouth. "What? Are you sure you didn't miss a comma in there?"

"If Mint got 13.000, is it that odd the team would have 170.000?" Yami saw that she still had a lot to learn. Like how to do proper spit takes.

"I dunno. It's a ton though!" Erika turned around and looked at the changed prices sign. "Or maybe not. Paying the buffet out of the team pool is like 5000 favor, just for the basic stuff."

"But there is a battle every day, right? So if we get like 100.000 or something every day, we can eat like kings and queens."

"I wouldn't count on those high numbers popping up all the time," Miki said. Yuri, Miki and Tsubomi had followed them, too worried to let those two be off on their own.

"The countdown clock is what really drove up the multiplier. That and the Bound by Bond." Yuri figured that with 33 possible rules, if there are going to be just 4 at a time, they wouldn't show up that often.

"It looks like team favor is calculated by adding together everyone's gain and multiplying by two." They had walked past the table where Mana and Rikka were eating. Rikka had done the math in her head and explained it as the others walked by. "Probably because we won."

"If we're getting that much, we should make use of it." Miki thought that if the inflation had driven up prices so much, buying instruments would be impossible for individual Cures right now.

Erika and Yami had barely sat down when they heard an enormously loud crash, a table flipping over and a bunch of dishware breaking. Regina had jumped straight through the room and flown right into Mana's arms. She had not been prepared for that and now Mana, Regina and Rikka were down on the floor. "Mana! I missed you!"

"Wow, they're really in love." Erika smirked wide. "We should try that sometime, Tsubomi."

"Absolutely not." Tsubomi could already predict what was going to happen in a few seconds.

"Hey!" A very pissed off looking Sasorina burst into the room and saw the chaos that had unfolded. "You three, cleaning duty! White, help them!" Barking orders, Sasorina left as quickly as she had come.

"Re-gi-na..." Rikka was really annoyed. But not for long. After embracing and kissing Mana, Regina turned around and picked up Rikka, carrying her in her arms. "L-Let me down this instant! Hmpf?!" Rikka was kissed pretty passionately by Regina as well.

An embarrassed looking Ace showed up as well. She hadn't actually wanted to switch teams but Regina would have been absolutely insufferable if she didn't agree to it. And Makoto had joined the band, so she would at least have people to spend time with. She wasn't that worried about her. Makoto was a tough cookie.

Letting the ice Cure down, Regina grabbed Mana's hand and pulled her up as well, all three of them together. "We were the highest scoring on the light team so we came over in a hurry!"

"So someone was replaced." Miki wondered who. White and everyone present were ruled out, which left about 10 people it could be.

"We can probably just look at the team list in the lobby." Yuri was glad that there were a number of informative displays all over the lobby.

It was nobody from the band group either because all three of them were in Mamo's store. And to their surprise, Mamo was not even in a bad mood. She really got along well with the bathhouse owner. Even back when she worked for King Selfish she hadn't had any other female co-workers she liked. "Prices are up now, girls."

It was, in a way, super creepy to see a welcoming and somewhat friendly villain. Much creepier and suspicious than an obviously scheming enemy. "Third floor, right?"

"Oh you're here for the instruments? I was wondering when someone was coming back. Stairs and a new door popped up earlier today and I had no idea." Mamo reached for a pack of gummy bears. This job is not bad at all. I get to chat with Mizushita most of the day, can eat as many snacks as I want and most of all there is no slave driver breathing down my neck to actually do anything.

Why is she so friendly? Ellen was suspicious of her. But for now, there was really nothing much she could do about her suspicions. Taking the stairs up to the third floor, Mamo followed them through a Staff Only door that directly warped to a similar door on the third floor.

There were numerous instruments in every nook and cranny of the third floor. From guitars, to keyboards and drum sets. And the prices were astronomical. 220,000 for a guitar?! Ellen felt dizzy just looking at that price. It was a really nice guitar too. But an acoustic one, and she didn't really play those. There were cheaper ones too, ranging from as cheap as 32,000 to as expensive as nearly 700,000.

Urara needed a mic stand, not exactly an instrument. They were all in the far back of the shop and varied in price and quality as much as the other instruments. Urara looked at several different models. Thankfully, microphones were generally a lot cheaper than professional instruments. While a good custom made guitar at professional level could cost as much as a million Yen, a good, professional, microphone could be had for as little as 33,000 yen. And they would need more than just a good microphones but also amps for the guitars, microphones for the drums specifically, bass amps, another amp for any keyboard. And with these prices, it was questionable if they could even afford it.

Urara walked to the third floor register, and talked to Mamo. "What is it going to take to get a deal on this stuff? 700,000 for a guitar is impossible even with these new rules."

Can I even do that? Mamo wasn't sure that was allowed. But since she didn't really receive anymore instructions she figured it was something she could decide for herself. "Hm, I wonder. Oh, I have a nice idea." Mamo thought this was a nice chance to… do what exactly? Tease them? How is that the first thing that came to mind? Mamo resigned herself to this. She was selfish, not some kind of comic villain that was hell bent on destroying everything for no reason. "I will let you pay off the instruments in installments. You can work them off too." Maybe… with your bodies, Mamo smirked by herself as she thought so.

"What else? That can't be all." Urara had haggled down shop owners before but it was never this easy.

"Invite me to the next party. I am going to die of boredom just minding the shop every day." Mamo figured that if Regina could manage to fit in, it should be a piece of cake for her.

"Urara." Setsuna had heard part of that conversation. Because she knew what Northa was like, she really didn't want this to happen. Leading Urara to the back of the shop, Setsuna still lowered her voice. "There is a quest for working here that gives us a 50% discount. We should be able to afford to just pay for things if we wait a few days."

"We're looking at something like a million favor, after that discount. How many weeks do you think that is gonna take?" Urara could see where Setsuna was coming from. "She's from Heart's past, right? Let's just ask them if this is going to work out."

"Okay." Setsuna was okay with that. She had gotten a second chance, and so had Ellen. Just because Northa had been evil 'til the end didn't mean that everyone was going to be like that. And from how the woman interacted with Urara, Setsuna didn't really sense that same evil vibe that Northa had in Mamo. She seemed more self-centered than really evil.

Urara approached Mamo, who was looking pretty bored already. "How much do you know about instruments?" Urara was going to stall for time while Setsuna would hurry back to the Skyscraper to ask Heart and Diamond about Mamo.

Meanwhile, the light team had an unexpected arrival. Or two, actually. Komachi had swapped over, and as it turned out, she had replaced Alice, which was very ironic. The other one was Mai, who had been forced to join the light team because Regina and Ange swapped over. Not that she minded at all. She finally got to be with Saki. The catch was, she was also with Nagisa.

Komachi was put in an empty room on the 10th floor. Mai got another empty room on the same floor. Their ranking, and with that their rooms, would only change after the next battle, no matter how many times they changed teams.

Saki had already welcomed her girlfriend. "I guess we're really lucky!" Rubbing her cheek against Mai's, Saki was really glad she was back. The two of them were down in the Lobby, where Bright was giving Majorina a shoulder massage. Michiru was glad to see Mai again, too.

Nagisa was there as well. "Mai, is Honoka doing alright?"

"She is doing a fine job leading the pack," Mai joked and smiled at Nagisa. There were still some leftover feelings from when their memories had been all messed up, but not enough for either of them to interpret that smile as something it was not. "What is Michiru doing anyway?"

"She ended up being the one that scored the lowest. So she has to work for Majorina." Saki answered. "It doesn't look like she really minds. Maybe I'll ask her for a massage later, too."

Majorina let out a relaxed sigh. "I never knew a massage could feel so good." Being young all the time had just one drawback. Her shoulders got really, really stiff. And this girl's hand felt really good. Maybe being not a bitter, disgruntled old woman was something she should get used to. "Please… continue."

"Someone is warming up to the right side of the fight." Nagisa couldn't say that with a straight face. The young witch leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Wow, I need to ask Michiru for a massage, too. That looks amazing.

"That battle was something." Saki still felt her hand shake a little when she thought about Mana. "Cure Heart was… amazing."

"You mean terrifying. I know we've been joking about her being a terminator but it isn't really a joke. We tore her arm off and she still took both of us out." Nagisa wished she could talk to Honoka about ways to stop the unstoppable Cure. Kaoru's Stormflair was one option but that took out Kaoru as well. Mutually Assured Destruction.

"You did what?" Mai was surprised to hear that they had done something like that.

"We thought we had no choice. We beat her and beat her and beat her and she wouldn't go down. You saw that movie, right? Terminator. She was just like one of those. No pain, no emotion, only killer instinct." Saki was strong and a capable woman but she was not exaggerating. She really felt that this was true.

"So you tore her arm off?" Mai sounded more curious than appalled.

"Lot of good that did. She headbutted me so hard, the lights went out." Nagisa couldn't even imagine what sort of mental fortitude you needed to calmly ignore your arm being torn off and keep fighting. A broken hand was already distracting but a whole limb being ripped off?

"She kicked me in the throat after I tried to attack her. Nagisa is right. She really was like a terminator. And this was after Peach went in and took away her self-healing. Before that she wasn't nearly as powerful but she was practically invincible then." Saki played with Mai's hair as she explained this to her girlfriend. "I wouldn't have agreed to do something like that if I saw any other choice."

"Scary. I hope I never have to go up against her." Mai wasn't feeling very confident about taking on someone like that. That was more Honoka's territory. Or those with mental interference attacks, like Kaoru and Inori.

The elevator let out its characteristic ding and two Cures stepped out of it. Hibiki and Itsuki. They had spent a few quality moments in Itsuki's room on the 50th floor until now. It was 4:30 PM now and they were going to get something to eat before the day condition came into effect. "Hiccups. I mean, really, is that something great powers come up with?" Hibiki was pretty entertained by this.

"It does say Ineffectual for the category so maybe there is some other stuff." Itsuki wondered what kind of things would be in the Negative category.

"If we all get turned into cats and dogs, I definitely need to re-introduce you to Ellen." Hibiki thought that would be extremely funny. "Her original form was a cat and everything. Oh, Kanade would go absolutely bonkers if she had soft paws herself. It would be the Apawcalypse. Ouch, hey!" Hibiki was gently bonked on the head by her girlfriend for one awful pun.

"Hey, Nagisa, Saki." Itsuki raised her hand and waved to them. "I see at least one of you got their girlfriend back."

"Aren't I the luckiest girl in the world? And now I am even luckier because I got her back!" Saki tried to be clever. Mai hugged her nonetheless. She really loved Saki, no matter how bad she was at saying clever things.

"In a few years, that's gonna be you, Hibiki." Nagisa said to the younger girl. Hibiki was not quite 17 yet, which made her one of the youngest Cures. Although there were fewer years between Hibiki and Nagisa than there were between Nagisa and Heart.

"I'd never cut my hair that short." Hibiki paused. "Oh, hey, Itsuki, that means you'd be Saki and I'd be Mai."

"I don't know if I'm ready to have that much muscle on my body." Itsuki joked. Saki was very fit. Fit enough to participate in the Olympics even. Itsuki was fit too, but more toned than muscular. Her training came from martial arts and running, not so much from real muscle training. "And you are definitely not artsy enough to be anywhere close to being Mai."

"Hey! I'll show you how super artsy I am when the band starts performing!" Hibiki was absolutely sure her piano skills would translate flawlessly to playing the keyboard.

"I'm surprised you didn't sign up for the band." Nagisa was pretty friendly with Itsuki since they were both the physical type.

"Hibiki is a big girl. And if I'm the hot groupie that lusts after her I can scare off all the others so she's all mine." Itsuki knew full and well what saying that would do to Hibiki's face and she enjoyed it.

Nagisa tried to both snort and laugh at the same time, resulting in a very funny noise. "You two really are great together. We don't have many couples from different teams. Maybe we would have more if we all got together when we were younger."

"Any younger than this and I think I would go to jail for seducing poor underage Hibiki." Itsuki continued to tease her partner who promptly stepped on Itsuki's foot.

"I'm a consenting adult, the law can't touch us. Now, Ako and Lemonade, that's a different story." Hibiki realized too late what she was getting herself into.

And Nagisa was out. "I am not touching that topic. I don't want to end up being a flag hung from a pole." Raising her hands and slowly backing away, Nagisa entered the dining hall.

"Hibiki, you shouldn't bring that up," Itsuki whispered to her partner. "Most of them don't know Ako is actually not as old as she looks."

"I know. I put my foot in my mouth because I wasn't thinking." Hibiki couldn't believe she was still doing that. And she had gotten so good at being honest about her feelings, too.

Makoto came through the front entrance while Hibiki continued to regret opening her mouth. She was somehow the only one of her team that had been left behind. And she didn't have the money to transfer out. "Hibiki… Is it okay if I call you that?" Makoto didn't feel very secure without Ange on the same team. She had just been talking to Alice about Regina and Ange transferring out, when Alice disappeared in front of her, too.

"Hibiki is fine. We're going to be in the band together so calling me anything else would be really silly." Hibiki was quick to try and make friends but she could tell that Sword was going to need some time. "Is the store still blocked?"

"Yes. But Beat, I mean Ellen, is actually in the band room already and told me that Lemonade and Passion are trying to negotiate a deal with Mamo. It looks like Mamo offered us to work off some of the cost and pay her by inviting her to parties and such."

"Mamo? You mean the lady that runs the shop?" Hibiki hadn't memorized her name yet. "Ah, Itsuki come back! Stupid!" Hibiki hadn't noticed that her girlfriend had walked away and was already in the dining hall. Saki and Mai were just entering as well.

Majorina had fallen asleep and so Michiru thought she was okay by just taking a break and getting something to eat before hiccups started.

Speaking of the band made Love appear from the dining hall. Seeing Sword, she quickly approached her. "Is calling you Makoto fine?"

Makoto was glad nobody here, beside her own team, knew that she used to be called MakoPi by some fans of her career. She was so glad that that was a thing of the past. "That's fine."

"Can you tell me a bit more about Cure Heart's powers later? I fought with her and I still can't believe someone can take that much punishment." Love realized how she must come across. "I'm a little jealous of that, I mean. I'm sure it might freak out a few of the others but I think it's a great ability. If it wasn't a battle until one side won by knockout, I feel like nobody would even try to fight her."

Someone immediately figured you out, Mana. Makoto smiled really wide, which confused Love. "Mana was always about fighting by making the other party surrender or reaching a compromise. She'd be really happy to see you come to this conclusion."

"Any news on the band?" Karen and Komachi had popped out of nowhere. The elevator had been in use so they briefly transformed and jumped down the stairs. That also explained why Komachi was a little out of breath.

"I think the others might be asking Mana and Rikka about Mamo and whether it is safe to trust her." Makoto figured that with all these former villains here, it was hard to tell whom they could trust and who not. Looking at their peacefully sleeping receptionist, Makoto thought that that was probably not one of the villains she had to worry about.

"Can we? She looks like she likes tacky makeup too much but other than that, she didn't really feel threatening."

Makoto thought about it for a second. "Mamo is… well, our enemies were the Selfish. That's really all they are. King Selfish was the really bad one that wanted to destroy stuff and take over worlds but Mamo was mostly just trying to get attention and do whatever she wanted, I think."

"So she's harmless?" Hibiki had already guessed as much.

"Mamo was not the brightest so I don't think she is even capable of scheming against us. She probably just really wants our attention." Makoto felt almost bad for Mamo, talking about her like that. She had never been that threatening in general. If she had stuck around after the Proto Selfish had been destroyed, she might have even turned out like Regina.

"So going by the people we have here. Hibiki, you are going to play the keyboard, yes?" Karen just wanted to go over their roles again. Komachi, meanwhile, was clinging really hard to Karen.

"Yep. I used to play piano, so that should be easy to pick up." Hibiki was pretty sure of herself. If it didn't go as planned she would still have something to complain about to Itsuki and get comforted over it. Either way, she won.

"And you are going to pick up drumming, Love?" Karen was not a particularly great fan of that instrument. It didn't really stand out so well on its own.

"I'll try. But I picked up a lot of skills while I traveled so I'm pretty sure I can do it. I have a good sense of rhythm too."

"It's almost funny how we have a Cure Rhythm that has not-very-good sense of rhythm," Hibiki said as she rolled eyes.

"That's a pretty cruel thing to say, Hibiki." Love didn't really approve of trash talk like that.

"Sorry, just something that came to mind and popped out before I could quality check it. Still working on that."

"You are going to play the first violin while I sing." Makoto finished up for Karen. "A violin is thankfully very versatile so having two of them will probably not be any issue. I am more worried about Lemonade since she is also going to be doing vocals."

"Urara's voice goes pretty deep when she sings. She used to have a really high-pitched cutesy voice but that just stopped at some point." Karen didn't really want to tell all of them about Urara's past. It was not her call to make.

"I'm more from a pop music background." Makoto was glad that it was not going to end up as a competition. She didn't really want to make enemies out of anyone here.

"Beat is waiting in the band room. Just take one of the roads into the fog. You should probably go say hello, Peach."

"Jeez, call me Love. Getting called by my Cure name is so strange when I'm not fighting something." Love patted Makoto on the shoulder. "I don't know what you all went through over the years but you're among friends here. Even if you don't think of us as friends yet."

She reminds me of Mana. Makoto wondered what would happen if someone put Love and Mana in the same room. Would they just spontaneously burst into some kind of friendship black hole that sucked in all non-friends and made them into friends? Both of them pulled one of their enemies in and were even dating them now.

"I haven't actually taught anyone the violin ever before." Karen steered the discussion back towards music.

"Ange played before. Or at least she has memories of playing of her previous life. How do I explain this… they were the same person before, and the memories of that person are still with Ange now." Makoto was at a loss how to properly explain the story behind Aguri and Regina in a few words.

"If she ever played before it shouldn't be too hard. She will probably have to put in a lot of hours to be good enough to play live on stage, though. Mastering the violin is a life long task." Karen was a professional player and she was very good but she wasn't even one of the 20 best players in the world. That was a very, very difficult title to reach.

"We're going to be awful for the first week anyway." Hibiki had no illusions about that. "Ellen, Makoto, Urara and Karen are the only ones who do music professionally. And we have three total newbies plus two that are picking instruments back up. And even if they're on another team now, you can still see Ange during band practice." Hibiki smirked wide. "You two have a thing, don't you?"

"It's complicated." It really is. I don't think a relationship can be much more complicated than ours.

"That's what everyone says," Hibiki was right. They really did.

"It's complicated." Ange told Setsuna as she accompanied the red Cure to the music shop. If they were negotiating with Mamo, it was best that someone from her team was present. "Our relationship is kind of strange, too. But I love Makoto. That one day away from Mana made it clear that I actually love her more than Mana."

Entering the shop, Mamo immediately tensed up. Ugh. Ace. "So you're part of the dark team now?"

"There is no need to be so tense, Mamo." Ange found it almost cute how Mamo reacted to her. If she, Ace, in her current form, were to fight the Mamo from back then, she could have beaten her up with such ease, it was not really even interesting to think about.

"That's easy for you to say. I was the one that always got beaten up by you lot." Mamo was not really mad about that anymore. It had been a while.

"You weren't exactly giving us much choice." Ace and Mamo exchanged tense looks for a few seconds. "So you want to go out and mingle with your old enemy?"

"It's not like you don't have like half a dozen of those already running around as Cures anyway." Mamo thought that if that bratty Regina could do it, why would she have any trouble at all?

"That does remind me of the time you masqueraded as Cutie Mad-" Ace was surprised by the reaction that followed.

"Stop, stop! Don't you dare tell anyone about that!" Mamo couldn't believe that was catching up to her.

"So you want us to work here to pay off the instruments?" Ange was not really suspicious of Mamo. She was a little too much of a simpleton

"Unless you have 700.000 favor for one guitar just lying around." Mamo wasn't about to just hand out freebies.

"What do you even have in mind when you say work it off. I don't see this place being very busy and requiring a lot of work."

Mamo was silent for some very long, awkward seconds. "I can think of a few things."

"Such as?" Ange was just enjoying messing with Mamo now. It was obvious she really just wanted company since she couldn't just leave the store and always hang out at the bathhouse.

"You're really a pest, Cure Ace. If you don't want the deal, just say no." Mamo was really irritated now. She went out of her way to be nice and that Ace just kept making fun of her.

"I never intended to say no. But since the low scoring people are forced to work, and sent to holding if they refuse an order, I had to know if you weren't planning on abusing this to harm the others." Ange showed Mamo some compassion. "I'm sure Regina would like to work here."

"Anyone but her." Mamo groaned in an agonizing way. "She was already annoying when she was that little girl and everyone thought she was King Selfish's daughter. I can't even imagine how annoying a grown version of her is."

She can be pretty annoying, Ange thought. Thinking about Regina, I'm feeling pretty drained… we should probably charge before we go to sleep or we'll be dead tired tomorrow morning. And we still need to do something about finding someone to lend us a room.

"So what now? You're going to work off the instruments or not?" Mamo didn't have a lot of patience left, not for this.

"We will." Not that we have much other choice, considering the costs.

=== DISSONANCE ===

Ellen liked the way they set up the practice room. There were enough chairs for everyone, although they weren't all that comfortable due to space concerns, and they had arranged the more bulky tech in the corners, so it was actually possible to walk through the room. In the end, they had incurred a massive debt with Mamo and not actually spent anything. Ange and Makoto had assured them that Mamo would maybe try to pull one or two annoying stunts but nothing actually dangerous.

The room might have been about 8 meters long and maybe 6 meters wide. It was a big room but it didn't really feel that way after putting all the instruments in there. They hadn't gone for the truly over the top expensive things like that one 712.000 favor guitar or the bass guitar for 354.000 favor. All in all, their incurred, combined debt was roughly 978.000 favor, which was still a pretty ridiculous sum.

But they now had everything they needed. Except songs, scores and enough hours to teach the newbies. Ellen found it really difficult to handle Regina because she was so close to her right now that she could almost feel her breath.

I always thought Love had a penchant for girls that were formers enemies but it looks like Ellen attracts them even more. Setsuna found that much funnier that she should have, but there was no chance of anything happening between those two. Their personalities didn't match at all. Not to mention, Regina was already seeing two other people and one of them resembled Love a great deal.

Karen was busy correcting Ange's pose and refreshing her memory on how to hold the instrument and the bow, and how to actually read notes while doing so. Luckily, Regina picked up reading notes rather quickly and Ange already could. Setsuna understood a little and Love was working hard, which was to say, she had to start from scratch.

They wouldn't get any meaningful practice in today, they all completely understood that. Love was carefully testing out the drums while Setsuna was getting some tips from Ellen. Regina immediately hurt her fingers and got frustrated. And to everyone's surprise, Love was the one who stopped her from leaving.

I need to absolutely avoid having Love and Mana in one room. They might just fuse into one super womanizer that can't be stopped. Makoto thought as she did some voice tests with Urara. What the others had said was true. The otherwise pretty well-balanced sounding Urara went really deep when she started doing vocal practice. Makoto on the other hand went up, not down.

"So you used to work as an idol? Industry didn't burn you?" Urara would never not be bitter about that time of her life.

"Probably thanks to my manager. I eventually stopped most of the idol stuff and focused on just singing and acting though. When you get older, you know… people just stop caring. So I got out before things went bad." Makoto could sense that something had happened between Urara and the industry and she had the good manners to not pry. "So how exactly do you want to handle this? Should we focus on having multiple songs and just split them into rock and pop?"

Urara instead gave her a few examples of bands that utilized multiple vocalists. "I'm fine with changing who does primary and secondary vocals on a song by song basis but sitting a song out is just gonna be real shitty for either of us."

"Well, I'm not against that." Makoto was happy just working with others and singing again.

"You might not be as stuck up as I thought you were, after all." Urara on the other hand was going to really enjoy this. She missed making music and she missed having a band. A team brought people together but a band did an even better job at that. Especially after the second or third big fight and a few times getting maximum wasted.

Makoto was a bit appalled by that choice of words. "Very direct, aren't you?"

Regina managed to play four correct notes in a row and was really happy about that. "I'll be a rock star in no time flat!"

It was around 5 PM now. They had two clocks in the room, mounted on the walls. One analog one that showed just the time and another one, digital, that counted down continuously. They had six hours a day to practice although they didn't think they would find that much time.

"Since we're here, Hikari asked me to to convey a message. She wants to do the cooking competition for tomorrow's breakfast, so we get the community kitchen." Karen relayed the message as wished. "Can anyone from the dark team tell the others?"

"Which one is Hikari again?" Regina still couldn't remember all their names. Or even half of them.

"Cute. Blonde. Pink Cure. Always with a purple haired girl?" Karen tried her best to describe Hikari to the new girl.

"Oh. Her. I think it should be illegal to be that high on the innocent-cutesy scale." Regina didn't really care much for that type.

Karen chuckled. "I'll tell her that. I'm sure she'll take it as a compliment."

"We'll tell everyone." Ellen raised her hand, taking a short break from showing Setsuna how to carry a bass guitar properly. She knew only very little about playing the bass, but thankfully, the instrument shop also carried self-help books for learning all sorts of instruments.

"How long have all of you known each other?" Makoto was still sitting with Urara and a little nervous. She might have been seven years older than the yellow Cure, but there was something intimidating about her, and not just her crass and crude behavior.

"You mean like, on a team basis? Or inter-team?" Urara didn't mind making some small talk. She and Makoto weren't going to have a lot going on for the first week or so, depending on how much the newcomers practiced. It was pretty much their job to come up with a song however. "Nozomi got all of us together something like five years ago. The others, I dunno, I met 'em once or twice before but we had a lot of shit going on so it wasn't really more than Oh there's more Cures and that's that. So getting to know them for real, something like three or four weeks, maybe a month, I wanna say? Hard to keep track of the days."

"You seem pretty close considering it's only been that long." Makoto wondered if she was going to be as close with everyone else as Cures like Peach or Aqua seemed to be.

"We went through a lot. This here is so much clearer and easier to understand than what we first arrived in. Rooms were fucking awful, actually I take that back, everything was fucking awful. And then the whole mess with the evil clones happened and they were all comically evil for no reason. And I didn't even mention all the drama. Holy shit, be glad you didn't see what went down between Melody and Rhythm." The blonde vocalist couldn't believe what kind of drama went on in this place sometimes.

"Should we draw lots on who has to go help Mamo out first?" Love figured that they should do this now, while everyone was together.

Makoto volunteered. "Lemonade and I don't really have anything to do until we start writing scores and we need to see how far everyone gets with learning their instruments. I'll talk to you about scores tomorrow, Urara." Makoto hoped that calling the girl by her name was okay.

Ellen had her hands full with Regina and Setsuna. Love found it funny that there were entire groups of former foes turned friends now. They only needed to add Moonlight's sister to that and the two kinda weird girls from Bloom's group and it would be perfect. Love had quickly proven she had a good sense of rhythm alright but she was struggling with the next one. Reading notes.

Ange was getting instructions from Karen and a little embarrassed that someone else had to correct her posture. She used to be a princess in her past life but apparently those memories were not that reliable now.

Hibiki did fine on her own for now and was getting used to an actual keyboard. But she was also focused on reading a self-help book for learning the keyboard. It wasn't nearly as good as having a teacher, like Regina and Ange did, but if Love could do it, she wouldn't let herself be done in.

"See you tomorrow." Makoto sounded happy as she waved and left. The actual practice room was most of the location but there was a tiny waiting room just outside, with two vending machines. Maybe, and just maybe, they could all fit into that room at once, but only if a good third or so sat on the lap of someone else.

Returning to the light team, Makoto ran into Rouge, who seemed to want to talk to her. "Just who I was looking for. You're doing vocals in the band, right?"

"Yes." Makoto had no idea what she was getting at.

"Don't let Urara harass you. If you stand up to her, she'll see you as an equal. She can be a real pain in the ass so just tough it out." Rin figured she owed her teammate that much of a warning. "And believe me, she'll get there, screaming at others and throwing stuff at them."

What the heck. "I'll keep it in mind." Makoto wasn't sure she was going to be able to do that.

"I really mean it. Shout back. Stand up to her. That's the only way you get Urara to respect you."

"Thank you for the warning, Rouge."

Waving goodbye, Makoto headed to the store. It was still unbelievably hot outside despite the sky being colored in a deep red of sundown already. Days were almost exactly 12 hours long. The sun started to go up at 5:30 AM, being in full view at 6:45 AM and started to go down at 5:45 PM, night kicking in completely at 7 PM.

"Mamo?" Makoto looked around and found the woman grabbing so many bags of snacks she even had one in her mouth. "I'm here to work."

Mamo hurried back to the register so quickly she nearly stumbled over her own legs. Quickly spitting out the bag of snacks in her mouth, Mamo pretended this had never happened. "Start sweeping. The lot of you brought in a lot of dirt." Mamo figured that if she had someone else working there she wouldn't have to do anything. But that, of all the Cures, Sword would show up was a bit of a disappointment. Spending over 10 minutes eating snacks and watching the grown up Cure Sword, Mamo got bored again. "You're gonna sing for the band, right?" Might as well talk to her before I die of boredom.

"Yes. Together with Lemonade. The yellow Cure that was here earlier." Makoto didn't stop sweeping. She was already almost done since the store wasn't really that big. She would do the third floor next.

"The seriously rude one? What kind of name is that for someone like that?" Mamo pulled off the wrapping of a nutrient bar and took a bite. It was kind of sour. Ew… "Want a nutrient bar?"

Makoto accepted only because she thought Mamo would get all upset and the atmosphere would become awkward if she refused. Nutrient bars were basically a staple for her, both from her time as a songstress and because of the situation with produce in the dying world. Eating it and then continuing her work, Mamo was still annoyed.

"You don't talk much. You lot were pretty talkative when it got to berating me back in the day." Mamo had no idea what to actually talk about.

"Well, you were attacking people and causing a lot of havoc. And that time when you acted as Cutie Madame, well, I don't really know what to say about that." Makoto was somehow feeling second hand embarrassment from it.

"I was following orders. King Selfish would have had my hide if I didn't do what he wanted. And then I got tricked by that good for nothing Bel. It was so annoying to do what he said. And in the end the big bad Proto Selfish was blown away and the rest of us were left to figure out what we were gonna do next." Mamo leaned back in her chair and opened a pack of potato chips instead.

"So what did you do?" Makoto finished sweeping any dirt, small pebbles and what not, up and put it in the trash can next to the desk.

"Ira got himself killed by the humans." Mamo seemed rather indifferent about it because she really was. "I only know that they captured Bel while he was sleeping. No idea what happened to him later. I got done in by some really big explosion when I was touring some town in… what was it… that country that had this evil dictator nearly take over the world?"

"Germany?" That is some way to remember the country, Mamo.

"Yes. I just saw a massive wall of black, crushing buildings in front of me, and next thing I can remember, I am here. Seriously, what is wrong with your world?"

"It ended." Makoto's answer was so short that Mamo misunderstood.

"Huh? What do you mean it ended? You just swept up some dirt."

"No, our world. That wall of black, that was all of Germany being wiped off the map. And a few years later, after all these other Cures appeared in the world, curse energy got so thick that most likely nothing survived it."

What the hell. Mamo didn't have any immediate reaction to this. She would be okay with King Selfish taking over a world but the humans destroying their own world? Not even Bel or Ira would have been that stupid.

"I thought you would be happy the world ended. Wasn't that what you were trying to do?" Makoto was surprised to see Mamo so appalled by this story.

"Are you crazy? Ending a world with so many delicious parfaits and snacks? How stupid would someone have to be?" Mamo shoveled some more potato chips in her mouth. "Taking over is one thing but killing everything in it? That's just bad. Domination, not examination."

"You mean extermination." Makoto grinned.

And Mamo got all flustered. "Go sweep the third floor."

"Yes." Makoto thought that if this was going to be the work they had to do for the instruments, they really got off easy.

Mamo stayed behind on the first floor. "The world ended? And even that insane Cure Heart couldn't stop it?" Mamo felt a shiver. "And I thought King Selfish was scary. Humans make us look like we're harmless."

And Mamo was not the only one employing a part-timer. Majorina had really nothing to do most of the day and she also had nothing she could make Bright do. I never knew boredom could be this bad. Always working on new inventions to beat the Cures, and most of the time immediately losing said inventions, she had always been busy, reviving Pierrot. But now that he was gone and she was forever young, what was she supposed to do?

Playing old maid with Bright, who was annoyingly good at it, Majorina was just killing time now. And Bright was assigned to her for two more days. If I was getting a worker, couldn't I have gotten someone cuter? Or sexy at least. There are all sorts of things I wanna try out. Drawing the old maid again, Majorina lost the sixth game in a row.

"You used to fight against Cure Happy and her friends, is that right?" Michiru was just trying to kill time as well. Majorina was awful at card games.

"For Lord Pierrot." Not that we were very successful in that. Majorina didn't have a lot of success experiences fighting the Cures. Now that she thought about it, she distinctly remembered being purified by Cure Happy. It was odd that she was back in this state. Although she vastly preferred her voluptuous looks to being a silly fairy creature. "In the end, we lost."

"My sister and I lost to their kindness." Michiru put on a smile. "We saw that there was no future in Dark Fall, so we left." Well, it was more complicated than this, but without Saki and Mai giving me permission to talk about it, I won't. Michiru's fierce loyalty to Mai and Saki had never lessened. It was thanks to them that she and Kaoru were Cures in the first place. And it was also thanks to their generosity that they stayed Cures.

"That seems to be a running theme. Cures taking in their former enemies." I think I am fine like this. I wouldn't want to wear one of those tacky Cure outfits. I'm young now and forever, but I'm not a teenager anymore.

"My Sister and I. Passion. Beat. Moonlight's Sister, although that appears to be a different case. And there is Joker, from the new group. 16% of all Cures used to be enemies." Michiru could calculate stuff like that on the fly without really thinking about it.

And Majorina drew the old maid again. "I've had enough of card games." Throwing her cards on the desk, she really didn't know what to do with Bright. She had to stick around until 8 PM today and from 4 PM to 8 PM tomorrow and the day after.

Sitting there in awkward silence, Michiru just listened to the sounds of the quiet lobby. A number of Cures had gone to the garden, since it was relatively cool there.

"Want to take a bath?" Majorina just couldn't stand the silence anymore. She would almost prefer Cure Happy or Cure March to be the part-timer. This girl just really didn't know how to make conversation. Not that I'm any better.

It was an odd feeling; to have all your reasons for loyalty, for hatred and evil doing be taken away. She could eat, slack off and pretty much do whatever she wanted in this place. But being given such freedom after spending what felt like a life time serving a master with great loyalty, she was really lost on what to do.

Michiru just quietly shook her head. The light team would get their next turn at 10 PM, and she was most likely gonna use it then

"In that case, you're going to tell anyone that asks that I will be right back." Majorina got out of her chair and jumped over the desk, slowly walking away.

She's got a really nice butt, Michiru thought before the witch disappeared through the exit. Sitting there all alone at the reception, Bright wondered if she had been worried for nothing. I thought she was definitely going to try and make me do something unreasonable, like wanting me to strip or have sex with her. Maybe I'm not attractive enough? Outside, Majorina sneezed.

The public bath was mostly empty. Happy, Sunny, Peace and March were there, enjoying a leisurely soak and Majorina almost didn't go in when she saw them. But she was already undressed and carrying a towel so she just tried to ignore them. Why am I so worried about them seeing me naked? I have a much better body than they d- Wow, that March sure… grew up. Majorina needed all her willpower to retain her composure as she walked past the group of four. Peace too… Walking past them, she slid open the door to the hot spring and was greeted by a very strange sight. Mamo, naked, was harassing Cure Sword, naked, while a woman with long brown hair watched, strangely embarrassed by what she was seeing.

"Oh, Majorina, come in." Mamo had run out of things for Makoto to do so she dragged her to the bath.

"Mamo. Sasorina. What about work?" Not that I'm one to talk.

"I closed up for an hour." Mamo was free to do this. In theory, the store was supposed to be open 22 hours a day, but she could close up and put a sign there that she'd be back soon. A lunch break she could do a couple times a day.

"I left Cure White in charge. I had to get away from her." Sasorina still felt her head ring. "Mamo, do you have any CD players in your shop?"

"Doubt it." Mamo was just playing with the hair of the very, very embarrassed Cure Sword now. Forcing her to transform and then strip had been a stroke of genius.

"You can't just tell her to shut up?" Majorina got in the water near Sasorina, who had a far more modest balance than both Mamo and Majorina.

"I did. The silence was killing me even more than her talking." Sasorina didn't know what to do so she ran away.

"Can you not pawn her off to Northa or Regine?" The water felt quite good on her skin and she particularly enjoyed the sensation on her breasts. Being young is fantastic…

"Not according to the rules. She asked me a hundred things about my old boss, about Blossom and the other Cures. The questions never ended. It felt like I was being held prisoner behind my own desk."

Maybe I'm not so bad off with Bright after all.Majorina figured and stole a few glances at Sasorina's face. She's pretty good looking. Not as good as me, but she has this exotic feel to her.

"You two need to be more creative." Mamo approached the two receptionist, leaving a heavily flustered and embarrassed Cure Sword behind. "Don't you go anywhere, Sword!"

"Aren't you a little too old to be molesting Cures in the bath?" Sasorina thought that if she tried that, White might blast her in the face, detention or not. And how did this even pass as not attacking them. What Mamo was doing was clearly not sitting so well with that purple Cure.

"Beats sitting around and being bored." Mamo smirked wide. "Or would you rather I try that on you."

"I'll drown you in quick sand." They couldn't hurt the Cures but they could attack each other. If they did, the Cures could interfere and then they still couldn't attack them. So that was a really stupid scenario.

"I'm sure Majorina here isn't embarrassed over her body." Mamo was really just unbelievably bored and riling up her co-workers was a nice way to pass the time.

"If I want someone to feel me up I can just ask Bright." Majorina flicked with her fingers and created a small wall of water between Mamo and herself. "Just how bored is she?"

"She has to mind the store, so probably really bored." Sasorina could somewhat understand that Mamo was trying to pass the time but there had to be better ways than dragging Cures into the bath.

Getting back to Makoto, Mamo reached out to tease her again but then lost interest. And Makoto was very glad about this. "Go ask Mizushita to give me some sake. You're old enough to drink, right?"

Knowing that objecting would just cause Mamo to threaten her, Makoto got out of the hot spring, covered herself in a towel and left. At least she only messes with my hair. If she starts feeling me up, I'd rather go sit in holding. For the hours she was working for Mamo, the same rules applied as if she was forced to work there.

Back on the dark team, Honoka was filling out sudoku puzzles to combat her boredom. She hadn't really thought about how absurdly silly it was to just have a receptionist sit there all day and mostly do nothing. Ace and Joker had come by to get a new key since their old one obviously didn't work. Honoka had found a page with instructions, that Sasorina most likely also just read and didn't write, that explained how to handle this. The rooms were reset, in a way, when the occupant changed. Ange and Regina had Mai's old room now but it was basically a new room.

Rosetta, Alice, had also changed teams. Turned out, the random selection had picked Alice as the one that was to be randomly replaced by Komachi, who had had the option to switch teams due to her high score. These are too easy… Honoka was bored with the sudoku because it wasn't difficult enough.

"Holding down the fort?" Inori thought she would keep Honoka company for a bit. Leaning onto the desk, Inori unintentionally gave Honoka a VIP look at her cleavage.

"Have to. Sasorina bailed. Not much I can do about it because I did have the lowest score. And you're showing off your breasts, Inori." Honoka was not even fazed by this.

Inori hadn't realized this. She turned her back to Honoka, resting her hips and lower back against the desk instead. "A bunch of the girls already went to sleep. A few are still in the band room."

"No party at Marine's tonight?" Honoka was not looking to get drunk today, but it had been a lot of fun.

"To quote; She's pooped. But a party every night is just stressful anyway." Inori didn't have any intentions of attending another party. She was lucky she didn't really catch a cold and it went away after a hot shower.

"By the way, Ace and Joker need an extra room because the system treats them as two people. I was thinking maybe Tsubomi could let them use her room."

"Setsuna could give them her key. She's staying with Ellen on the 50th." Inori was a little jealous. The rooms would change after the next battle, and as of right now, she was ranked second to last. "Where are they anyway?" Inori had taken a walk around the complex but she didn't find Ace and Joker anywhere. Heart was just watching over Diamond, who, right now, was standing in the empty dining hall, memorizing the room layout with her vibrations while nobody but Heart was there to distract her.

"Not in their room, so probably also still practicing." Honoka saw that the receptionist had a number of small labels with tiny red lamps beneath each label on the desk. You couldn't really see that until you saw behind it, though. The lamp would light up when the owner of the room was inside.

"Setsuna and Ellen are still practicing with the band as well, so they'll probably ask them. I'm sure Setsuna won't really mind." Inori was on the 50th floor for now. And to stay there, she'd need to put in some serious effort.

The 10th floor wasn't nearly as bad as the old rooms. Maybe worse than the old rooms on the third floor had been, but the lowest ranking rooms being just barely worse than the best rooms of the old complex, she didn't have much to complain about. But the motivational factor was there.

"How are you holding up, without Kaoru around?" Honoka was glad that Inori kept her company for now.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You spent a ton of time together before the masked ball. I was sure you were going to ask her out soon." Honoka was glad that someone showed interest in one of the Kiryuu sisters. They were good people, even though they took the whole loyal to Saki and Mai thing way too far.

"You're totally misunderstanding what I was doing. I was just teaching her about how people think and act. And some emotions she didn't really pick up properly."

"You're making her sound like your pet. Not a potential girlfriend." Honoka smiled. "So you don't actually like her?"

"I wouldn't say that." Inori tried to figure out a good answer to that question. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. It's hard to tell how much I was teaching her because I care and how much of it was because she might make a nice girlfriend."

"Knowing you, you were thinking about what you would do when we got back to reality. I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon though."

"The real world.. how did we end up in 2024 anyway? We all went missing from the world in 2012. I can't believe we were in here for 12 years. It felt more like a month."

Honoka had a theory. "It is possible time on the outside just flows faster than in here. But 30 days turning into 4380 days, or 12 years would be an absurd rate. Time would have to flow in here at 1/150 of it's real rate."

"What about the Masked Ball? Time would rewind at midnight. We were in there for at least a few loops. And that none of us can remember how we got out is worrying."

"Not just how we got out. But how long we were inside." Honoka had the distinct feeling that it was better to stop thinking about it.

"If you put it like that the thought is giving me chills." Inori had the same bad feeling that Honoka had. "It was a big party with plenty of chances to get away. How bad could it be?"

Honoka ran a few numbers in her head and lost a good deal of the color in her face. "From what I remember, each loop was about 8 hours long. A third of a day. If, and this is a very big if, we assume that time actually advanced at a normal rate while we were in here..."

Inori felt the hairs on her arms stand up. "365 days times 12 years. 4380 days. If we were in there without break, we're talking about-"

"13.140 loops, give or take a hundred or so." Honoka felt her hand shake a little. "But that can't be right. We would definitely remember spending 12 years in a time loop."

"I hope so. But we are definitely missing time. Nobody knows were Yuri's sister came from and why we were returned to the real world."

In that precise moment, Heart, Diamond and Beauty all entered the Lobby. "Reika, come here for a second." Honoka waved the blue Cure over. She wanted the opinion of someone else on this.

Over on the light team, Miyuki and Yayoi were arguing again over the nature of their script. And this time, Komachi was joining the argument as well. "We aren't in middle school anymore. Fairytales or stuff right out of boy's manga doesn't work at all with the actors we have!"

"Who do you think acts in tokusatsu stuff? Adults. It's all about the costumes and how good the script is!" This was the one thing Yayoi shed her shy nature for and stood up to girls much taller than herself.

"What kind of argument is it that we're too old for Fairytales? It's adults that come up with them to begin with and they're not just for children! The original fairytales were really dark, you know?" Miyuki didn't like the original Grimm works, but she had read them.

"No, she's right about that one. Everyone has seen Snow White a dozen times already. And just how much work do you think it'll be making props for a fairytale setting?" Yayoi was not on Komachi's side. She was against Miyuki's side. And this was how it worked. Everyone was against all other ideas except their own.

"We just came from some kind of dark apocalyptic future and you want to write something depressing like MacBeth?" Miyuki groaned.

"We're warriors of light. We should put on a lighthearted play, not one that will make everyone even more depressed!" Yayoi now switched sides and attacked Komachi with Miyuki.

"This is even worse than this morning." Akane watched the chaos unfold for the second time. This time it had happened in the garden. "Is Aqua not back yet?"

"Shouldn't we do something? Two of them are from our own team." Nao was watching as well, sitting a good two meters above Akane, in the crown of a tree.

"I'm just glad they are only fighting with words." Akane didn't want to get between a fired up Miyuki and Yayoi. She had never seen them argue like that, especially not Miyuki, but it looked like they could really speak their mind in a clash of passions.

A bit further into the garden, which was surrounded by fog now, instead of stone walls like before, were Melody and Sunshine, plotting mischief again. "Rock Paper Scissors! Looks like you get sparky, Itsuki."

"How are you so good at Rock Paper Scissors?!" Itsuki couldn't believe she lost five times flat in a row. One match turned into best of three, then best of five, then best of eight. But she gave up now. "If I get shocked, you are fixing my hair later."

"It'll look like you got shocked anyway tomorrow morning." Hibiki licked her lips with a big, dirty grin on her face.

And further ahead in the garden, Akane and Nao saw something strange. Melody and Sunshine were racing on the garden path, sprinting at full speed towards the three arguing writers. Miyuki had just thrown her arms into the air, entering a direct confrontation with Yayoi, while Komachi looked disappointed by their lack of insight in what made a good play.

The red and green combo watched with open mouths as Sunshine pulled ahead, grabbed Yayoi at a full sprint and just picked her up, running away with her. "Did she just steal Yayoi?" Akane couldn't believe what she was seeing. And just as she finished her question, Melody nearly crashed into Miyuki, lifting her up as well and taking her away. Melody and Sunshine went into completely different directions from there, both to a far corner of the garden. "What are they doing?"

There was a massive static shock from one end of the garden and a pink explosion from another. "Well, I kinda saw that coming." Nao still had no idea what they were thinking.

Yayoi, after unloading a massive shock on Sunshine, finally calmed down and realized what she had just done. "I'm… I'm so sorry." Kneeling next to the frizzled Sunshine, Yayoi was really embarrassed. She had been so caught up in the argument she didn't even realize what she was doing.

Itsuki exhaled black smoke and was glad she was really tough. "Did you… calm down?" More black smoke. She felt tingly all over, but that was really it. There was no lasting pain. But her face felt a bit numb.

"Huh? Ah. Yes." Yayoi only now realized just how heated the argument had gotten. And that she had been shouting at other people. Her face turned so red, she wanted to dig a hole and die.

On the other end of the garden, Hibiki was hanging from a tree, head down. "Ouch." She had been catapulted into the air when Happy blasted the ground beneath them. And said Happy was right below her, on the ground, her legs up the side of a tree. "Did that cool your head?"

"You can't just grab people and carry them away. It's rude." Miyuki didn't quite realize the glasshouse she was sitting in.

"Shouting at other people, especially your teammates, is pretty rude too. Everyone in the garden could hear the three of you arguing. Itsuki and I figured that if we didn't break you up, you'd start fighting it out with fists instead of words."

And now it dawned in Miyuki, the way she had been behaving. Moving sideways and getting her legs on solid ground again, Miyuki hid her face behind her hands. Oh god, I can't believe I went off on Yayoi like that. And someone from another team, too!

Komachi, meanwhile, was approached by Nao and Akane. And she too realized that the way she had been behaving would probably embarrass Karen a lot. It was like she was possessed by Rin or Urara. With less swearing of course.

"We're not going to take any sides, but can't you three find a way to work together? Miyuki works as a librarian and she's a real fairytale nut." Akane scratched her cheek. She didn't want this argument to create a rift between teams. Within the team.

"Yayoi is a mangaka. They're just as passionate about their work as you are. But you're all professionals, right? There's gotta be a way to compromise here." Nao didn't want to see a round three of the fight. If completely unrelated Cures jumped in and broke the argument off, it really was time to stop arguing.

"I'll… talk to them again." Now that everyone had been taken down a notch, Komachi felt really silly for getting so riled up.

The three of them got back together, while Hibiki and Itsuki joined up with Akane and Nao. "Sorry about just kidnapping your girls." Itsuki apologized with a smile.

"Ah, not a problem. It seems to have done the trick. Look, they're talking…" Akane's mouth and eyes twitched. "Miyuki, Yayoi, Mint, stop arguing already!" Akane shouted from the distance and the three Cures immediately retreated a bit further away. "Those three, I swear..." Making a fist and gritting her teeth, Akane was about to lose it. Did they learn nothing from that intervention?

"It looks like both of our teams have a red Cure with a temperament." Komachi could have sworn that at that moment, Sunny and Rouge were fully interchangeable. Minus some swearing. And both of our yellow Cures are scary when they get angry.

"So what do we do about this?" Yayoi didn't want to simply give in. But if possible, she wanted to avoid another argument.

"I know this might sound a little weird but shouldn't we check who even signed up for the theater group? So far, I only know about the three of us." Miyuki hadn't even considered that not everyone was going to be willing to participate. Not until now.

"I am pretty sure that the reception has a list of those who signed up." I can't tell them I did not even check the list before starting to argue about the nature of the story. Komachi was very passionate about her work and the genres she liked.

"Looks like they're leaving." Nao was back up in the tree. She liked high places. "They don't look like they actually made a decision."

"They probably realized they don't know who their actors are." Hibiki stretched her arms and plucked a leaf out of her hair afterward. "I'm going back to practice."

"I was wondering why you were out there," Akane said. "Taking a break with your girlfriend?"

"Yep." Hibiki pulled on Itsuki's hand and got close enough to give her a quick kiss. "Don't go to sleep without me."

I wish I was that much in love with Akane. Nao hid her disappointment well. Dating both Reika and Akane at the same time hadn't worked out as well as it could have. Not committing to just one of them, she split her affection two ways and now both of them were fizzling out. She felt like a really shitty person for hiding her feelings from both of them. She kept hoping things would get better, but they weren't. She missed Reika, but not the way lovers missed each other. And being with Akane all day wasn't really doing anything for her on that front either.

But the most strange thing was, before they had gone to that time looped party, this was such a small problem, something she didn't really want to think about, she didn't have to address. That there had still been time to fix things, to make a decision.

But now, it was like their romance had simply died off. Like a candle that went out in a strong wind or had burned through all the fuel it had. She couldn't tell if it was mutual, but if it was, Akane was very good at not showing it.

Hibiki came across a still damp Makoto and Mamo when she went back to the plaza. There were a number of thoughts she had. But one stuck out. I wonder if Mamo is the seducing type. Hibiki could totally see it. The former enemy now under her command, Mamo paid her back by doing some rather erotic things to Makoto.

The bath should be switching back to us soon. Maybe I'll grab Itsuki and take a soak before we go up to our room. Hibiki almost felt like she was just having a normal day. Excluding the brutal battle not even three hours ago, that was.

Inside, Ellen had started practicing herself. Regina and Setsuna were watching with big eyes and even gave a little applause when the blue Cure stopped. "S-Stop. It's just practice." Ellen was used to getting applause on stage but here, in the private of their practice room, it was a different matter.

Karen and Ange sat outside, in the waiting room, taking a break. "I think it would almost be faster to teach you from scratch. The few things you remember are getting more in the way than anything else." Karen didn't want to give Ange any false hope of skipping the hard work that was learning the violin.

"Oh working hard, I see." Hibiki was going to work hard, too. It hadn't taken long to figure out that a keyboard and piano were almost as different as eggplants and tangerines. "Where did our fearless leader go?"

"She left. Not much to do for her right now. Probably hanging out with Muse." Love switched the way she held the sticks again and this time it felt really comfortable.

"We still have a few hours for practice so lets get at least used to the instruments. We should try to close up a bit early so we have time to clean up." I don't want to have to clean up first thing tomorrow when we go to practice. I wonder if I should just grab the keyboard and take it with me. Although Itsuki would probably laugh at me. I wonder if Kanade would have any advice for learning the keyboard.

Continuing their practice, it was 10:15 when they all left. The clock told them they had roughly 10 minutes left to practice but they had had enough. Ellen took her instrument with her, everyone else just left theirs in the practice room, even Karen.

Setsuna and Ellen were both facing Love, each of them holding one of Love's hands. "We'll see you tomorrow, Love. Do your best in the next battle." Considering how much it cost to transfer, getting the top score was their best bet.

Both the red and the blue Cure went for a kiss at the same time and Love managed just barely to kiss both of them at the same time. "With two girlfriends this lovely waiting for me, how can I not?"

Ellen blushed a little harder than Setsuna did. "I'll never stop being happy you included me."

"You're so silly, Ellen." Love hadn't thought of her partnership with Setsuna without Ellen being there as well ever since they became a trio.

"You say that, but it won't change how I feel." Ellen grabbed Setsuna's hand. "And I'm glad Setsuna is such a good girl."

"That makes it sound like you're the bad girl. But Setsuna was a pretty fearsome enemy, back then." Love was just teasing her girlfriend now.

"And I'm only your partner now because you're like a walking friendship machine."

"Ellen, Love, Setsuna, you're gonna get kicked out any moment now!" Hibiki called out and left.

"Goodnight you two." Love quickly kissed each of them on the cheek and ran past them.

"We totally don't deserve her." Ellen couldn't imagine a better girlfriend.

"I've been thinking that for years." Setsuna shared that sentiment.

===DISSONANCE===

It was just past midnight now. The teams were largely asleep, with only a few stragglers still awake, spending time with their partner or, in one case, being out and about. Mamo happened to take a walk since she assumed nobody would come and try to shop at this hour. But what she came across was unsettling. There was a new path, but it was different from all the others. The fog surrounding this path was pitch black and whirling around the entrance in a chaotic way. Mamo wielded tremendous power here, but she was still getting a bad feeling.

It was a clear night and she could see the moon, and still, no light would penetrate past a certain point, covering the shadowy path in absolute darkness. It was as if the dark fog was eating up the light. Standing there, looking at it, Mamo felt almost compelled to go inside. Taking just a single step forward, there were still more than three meters between her and the fog. And still, she thought she could hear something. Giggling. Chuckling. High-pitched laughter. It sent chills down her back. And she still felt compelled to go inside. Taking another step forward, the voices intensified. Five. Ten. More than that?

"Mamo."

Mamo froze for an instant and then turned around. "You're… who the heck are you again?"

"Dream," The pink haired girl replied. "You could at least learn everyone's name. What were you doing?"

"Nothing. Just inspecting this new path." Mamo didn't feel quite right about this Dream character. Not in the typical way where she felt irritated by overly positive and selfless people, but more… threatened. Like something was broken inside that girl, deep beneath the surface.

"What new path?" Dream looked past Mamo, a confused and curious look on her face.

"Are you blind? That path right… there…?" Mamo pointed at exactly where the path was but there was nothing there. Am I overworked? Or do I have Cure poisoning or something? Did I catch something from Sword? "It was there just a moment ago!" Whirling back around, Mamo looked pissed. "It vanished because you..."

Mamo stood alone on the plaza. There was no one there and it was dead silent this time of the night. There was no way that Cure Dream or whatever could have run off without making even a single sound. Not with those heels.

This is way too spooky for me! Turning around one more time, the path was there again, just like before. Black, eating up the light. Taking a few steps backwards, Mamo freaked when she felt a hand and leather on her face but nobody was there. Mamo. Come to me.

Jumping all the way to the entrance of the skyscraper, she went inside, scared as hell. W-What the hell was that? It had clearly been Dream's voice, that same Dream that had just disappeared the moment she looked away.

But the Skyscraper was locked. What the hell? This does not even have a lock! It's an automatic door! Mamo pulled on the door and even tried to force it open with an energy blast, but it wouldn't budge. And there it was again, that whisper, from right behind her. Mamo.

"Majorina said that she was going to lock up for a while because the door was making funny noises." Dream was back.

"Where the hell did you come from?! You weren't there a second ago!" Mamo was genuinely freaked out now.

"What are you talking about? You turned around, pointed at the fog, there was nothing there and then acted like I didn't even exist. I know you used to fight Cures in the past, but that is really rude, you know?" Dream lectured Mamo on manners.

N-No way. Am I dreaming? Did I pass out on my desk and now I have some weird Cure related nightmare? That's gotta be it. Pinching herself as hard as she could, in the cheek, Mamo squeaked in pain. Dreams with pain are terrible!

"Oh, did you maybe mean that path?" Dream pointed right behind Mamo, at the skyscraper entrance, the one that was locked.

Mamo swung around and she was back on the plaza proper, standing just in front of the black fog. The Selfish started to turn pale but then she realized what was going on. Slowly turning around, confident she had it all figured out, she pointed at the pink haired girl. "Oh I get it. Cure Dream. You have the power to mess with dreams."

Dream cringed. "Can you not make stupid ass puns based on my name?" Her speech slipped a bit. "Maybe you're just overworked? Like I said-" Dream pointed past Mamo again. "You should go back to the shop and rest."

And when Mamo turned around again, not only was the black fog gone, but she was also in front of the path that led to her store. And turning another time, Dream was gone again. She had enough. Rushing into the fog, Mamo vanished from the plaza.

"You're horrible, messing with her like that." Lemonade snickered. "But falling for it like this, that's on her."

"Did it work out alright?" Rouge got in on the snickering.

"It's been a while since we did anything as a team. I almost feel bad for her. But if she is so easy to trick, it's hard to resist." Dream chuckled. "But let's go back for now."

"Agreed." The other two followed their leader.

Inside the skyscraper, Majorina looked at the entrance. "I thought I heard something."

Sasorina let out a yawn. "Heard what? It's as quiet as a graveyard in here and out there, at this time." She was really bored, again, and even talking to White was more interesting than dying of boredom. "So, I was saying, the whole Desertrian thing, sometimes we would get these really wacky results and- Are you listening?"

"I am sure I heard something." Majorina got out from behind the info desk and walked to the front door. Looking out on the plaza, she couldn't see anything unusual. It was still a clear night and there was just a ton of fog surrounding the plaza. The same as always. She was already turning around to go back inside when an object that didn't belong caught her attention. A large purple hat.

"So, anyone get murdered or anything?" Sasorina's voice temporarily distracted Majorina and she looked back inside, the dark team's receptionist now walking towards her.

"Just..." Majorina looked back to where the hat had been and now it was gone. Had the shadows played a trick on her? Going outside, the witch felt uncharacteristically cold. It should be much hotter after the drought like temperatures earlier. Going to where the hat had been and kneeling down, Majorina couldn't find even a single thread on the ground. I was so sure I saw a hat.

"Anything?" Sasorina had caught up with her colleague. "Do we have a Cure murder mystery on our hands?"

"I'm probably just seeing things." Majorina let out a yawn. "I'm going back to my own place. I need my beauty sleep."

"Doesn't look like you need any more of that." Sasorina joked, turned away and waved as she walked off. "See you tomorrow."

Majorina watched Sasorina walk inside and then she thought she heard someone giggle right next to her. But there was nothing so she really was sure she was seeing and hearing things now. Entering the bathhouse, Mizushita was sleeping at her desk, Majorina left right away, this time using the fog to return to the light team.

===DISSONANCE===

Ako's agonizing screams echoed through the dungeon. Her eyes about to roll back in her head, ice cold water was splashed on her face. "Speak, Assassin! Who sent you? What land are you from?!" Ako could barely see the face of her torturer. How… how many hours…

They had killed the queen. Trapped in this endless Masquerade, it had started to erode their mind. 200 loops. 300 loops. Maybe more. They needed a way out. People were forgetting who they really were. They lived through loop after loop, behaving no different than an NPC. Was their life as a Cure the dream? The fantasy? Or was it this endless Masquerade?

Ako endured the cruel torture because she knew that time was almost up. Killing the queen hadn't solved anything. Urara, her and a number of others had been captured, tortured for the truth. But it was a senseless endeavor.

Urara hasn't screamed in a while… she's probably dead… again. This was not the first time they had killed the queen. There had to be a solution to ending this loop but she didn't know how. Nobody knew. Early, in the first dozen loops, they had found out many things. The princesses were up to something and a lot of them conspired. Ako remembered that much. This time, they had destroyed the entire royal family. I can't hear Moonlight or Rouge either… so I'm probably the last one they're keeping alive.

Maybe… maybe there is no way out. Maybe we did our job and corrected the balance and this is our eternal prison so we don't upset the balance again. Ako was riddled with paranoia, constantly looking over her shoulder and seeing conspiracy everywhere. She couldn't even remember how many different princesses she had killed, how many people she had killed and whether any of them had been real or not. It blurred together seamlessly, an endless repetition with minuscule changes as those that remembered who they were attempted to end the loop.

Ako tried to stay conscious but it was difficult. They had cut the tendons right above her heel, leaving her unable to walk or even stand. Cuffed, dangling from the wet ceiling by her arms, Ako had a horrible view of the cell where they kept the thieves. It's time… any minute now… The thieves were always executed shortly before midnight.

And sure enough, archers lined up. Among those thieves were Nagisa and Honoka, shackled to the wall, surrounded by clones. They did not realize who they were. That they were special. That they were not just a thief. Their mind had temporarily given in. In 5, maybe 10, loops, they would regain some of their sense of self, when their mind had recovered enough from the endless repetition.

It was no festival. It was a prison. An eternal prison that would reset every eight hours, no matter what. Maybe… maybe we just need to kill everyone… a sea of blood…Ako started to giggle, her sanity giving in to pain and despair. "Maybe we just need to kill every last one of you."

The archers fired. One volley. A second. Nagisa had four arrows buried into her chest and the red ran hot from her wounds, dripping to the ground as the light slowly vanished from her eyes. Honoka had died instantly from an arrow to the head. Her suffering had been dealt with quickly.

One of the archers felt a stinging pain in their chest as she fired her last shot. A woman with long purple hair that felt oddly attached to two of those thieves. But Mai too, couldn't remember who she was. And she hadn't remembered for the last 20 loops.

And time rewound all the way to the start of the party. The first princess of the court, the first daughter of the queen, Ako Evangeline Escalia, looked with disdain on her one of her servants. What was I just doing… "Servant."

A servant, an Ellen, that was fully conscious of her surroundings, approached the princess and knelt before her. "What does milady wish for?" Ellen knew well just how wicked this first princess could be. Though, It was nothing compared to the psychopath the second one was or the heartless monster the third was. The first three princesses were all varying degrees of horrible.

"Lick my feet, and do it so that it pleases me." Ako's voice carried very little emotion as she subjected an innocent servant to such a task.

It was the 461st loop. And it would end in no spectacular or unusual way. Just like the next dozen loops. Only one remarkable thing happened, on the 470th loop. Hikari, as the second princess, learned about the secret source of power the queen possessed. A gemstone shining in all the colors of the rainbow, hidden somewhere deep within the castle, unreachable by anyone but the queen herself. But the knowledge was lost when Hikari was killed by poison at the feast. A servant, a Kurumi, had laced the food and drink of all the royals with a deadly poison. Trying to fight off the guards without power, her head was lopped off by a ferocious strike, instantly ending her life.

It didn't matter how many times someone died. They would always revive, always be there anew. To live through the Masquerade forever.

Only 80 loops later, in the 550th loop, 183 days after the Masquerade had started, did one Thief Miyuki find a secret route to a hidden vault, filled with traps. In that loop, every single thief, among them the real Nao and Akane, were killed, their dead bodies staining the ground in red for hours before time did rewind.

Another major incident was during the 693th loop, 47 days later. Ako, as the first princess once more but conscious of her actions, organized a push.

Her heels covered in blood, a minuscule fraction of the blood that stained the walls, Ako pointed a sword at her mother's throat. The other princesses had already been killed. Poisoned. Beheaded. Stabbed to death in secluded rooms. "Where is the prism?" The hidden gem. The source of her power to rewind time endlessly. "Where is the prism?!" Ako didn't have much humanity left. How many loops has it been? 400 now? This can't go on! I'm going insane!

"So you don't have it." The queen's voice mocked Ako. "You will never take the throne, Evangeline. You will forever just be-" The words remained stuck in her throat as her head was separated from her body, rolling to the ground.

Ako's expression was one of terror. "How long… how long is this going to keep happening? How are we supposed to find a way out of this?"

"Milady, you need to calm-" One of the guards, her armor covered in blood, tried to stop Ako from losing it, to no avail. With a single, merciless swipe, Ako cut off the guard's head.

"Die! You're not more than part of this living nightmare!" Hundreds upon hundreds of loops had warped Ako's personality and sanity to the point of complete breakdown.

Looking down into the great hall, bodies were mounting. The guards she had on her side were going around killing everyone that had survived the battle. The smell of blood was so strong that Ako was sure she would never, ever, forget it. It was ingrained into her body now. Maybe… maybe I just need to let go. Accept that we will never leave. That this will be our prison for all eternity. That there is no prism. No source of power. That it is all a lie, a false hope, to torment us, to torture us. So we try and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail. The hysterical laughter from Ako echoed all the way down to the hall. Laughing, dancing through the blood stained room, Ako gave in to the madness. Until she suddenly stopped, staring at her left hand, just before she rammed her sword straight through her own chest.

And so, time rewound again.

===END OF EVENT XXXI===


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