It was late at night, and Shota was scrounging around in his room, looking for any money and loose change he had lying around.

"You think this'll be enough to convince him?"
"Oh sure. If I know him, he can't resist a little legal tender!"

"Don't you have any money of your own, though? I'd think a godlike dragon would have something stored up."

"Oh, I could never get into the whole hoarding business. Wasn't really my thing."

"It's fine, this should work. Now we need something nice to present it in…"

"Shota-baby, don't you think this is all a bit much? Staying up late, spending your own money? Surely it would be fine if you just-"

"You heard how that news anchor flubbed on TV. If we wait too long, they'll move the book again, and we won't know where to find it. Besides, it's my fault Tohru and Elma are in this mess, so it's my responsibility to fix it. My family always takes responsibility for our magic."

"If you're so sure, then alright."

After some preparation, the two went off in the early morning to take care of business. A few hours later, it was morning once again. The Kobayashi family on the other side of town was having a nice breakfast together, recounting the incident that occured the other day.

"I still can't believe the two of you got attacked by some guy on the street. Then again, with SA cases being as high as they are in Japan, I can't say I'm surprised."

"It wasn't a pervert, it was a dragon hunter from the other world! He was out for our blood!"

"We were forced to eliminate him with our combined dragon breath, and we disposed of his remains in a volcano."

"Lady Telma, you're so cool! I wanna have super powerful breath like you two!"

"Kanna, I could have died. And Elma may have followed suit. I hope no other dragon hunters come after us."

"Yeah, I'm not too keen on losing either of you. Be more careful, please."

"Which one of us do you care about more, though? I mean, I'm your live-in maid, and I do all the cooking and cleaning."
"But I help Kobayashi out with big projects and stuff at work!"

"Tell us, who do you care about more?"
"Honestly, I'd say you're both important to me, even if you weren't combined. Tohru, you're a huge help around the house, cooking and cleaning like you said. You make it so I'm at 100% when I go to work. Elma, you're a huge help around the office, tackling big projects and whatnot. You help me get home at a reasonable hour. You're both kinda helping me and each other out at the same time. Does that make sense?"

"I suppose so. Guess the two of us have been working together more than we thought, huh?"

"Seems so."

"Glad to hear it. Anyway, Kanna, you need to get to school, and we need to get to work. Come on."

"Okay!"

Later, Kanna was walking along the road with Saikawa by her side. Saikawa had parts of her memory erased by Lucoa so she wouldn't remember seeing Telma together. However, she still had her suspicions.

"Hey Kanna, there's something weird I wanted to talk to you about. I have this blurry photo that I don't remember taking on my phone. I can make out your living room, but I don't know why I took it."

"..."

"And I remember having this weird dream-and you know it's a weird dream when you can remember it for so long-I remember seeing your maid, right? I saw her connected to that dark haired girl. I think her name was Elma, I've seen her around a couple times. But they were joined end to end. I don't know how to explain it, but it was so weird and freaky!"

"I think it sounds cool."

"Huh? How is that cool? It was like a freak show or something!"

"I think having two big sisters would be really cool. And having them stuck together like that would be super cool!"

"Um, well, if you think it's cool then so do I!"

"Speaking of your maid, I haven't seen her in a while. Georgie says she wants to talk maid stuff with her, but she hasn't been around. Is she ok?"
"She's great! I love her!"

"Ok, but is she ok physically? Is she feeling sick or something?"
"She doesn't want to be seen right now."
"Um, ok?"

Kanna couldn't very well let Saikawa know about their predicament. She couldn't let Saikawa know a lot of things, really. She would tell everyone, and that'd be no good! She had to keep it a secret, especially after what happened last time…

Meanwhile, Kobayashi and Elma were having an average day at work, chipping away at the new big project dumped on their plates. Tohru was listening in on their conversation too, because what else could she do?

"Hard to believe we've been like this for this long, huh? I've almost gotten used to it."

"Did Shota ever get back to you? You know how he's doing with that book?"

"He said something about the book being moved somewhere, and they need help to get it back."

"Wonder what kind of help. Hopefully they don't try anything drastic."

"Think we should help out too?"
"Maybe you should. Go find that book of yours. After all, you are the ones that need it most."

"But what about work? There's this project to get done, and who's going to cook food for us?"

"Don't worry about me. You need to get back to your old selves. Even if you do cooperate like this, I don't think you could live like this long term. Someone's bound to find out eventually."

"Miss Kobayashi, I couldn't very well leave you by yourself to do this project of yours!"

"I'll be fine. I've been through worse, believe me."

"No, we can't just leave you to suffer alone. It's like you said: we both help you out in your life. If we both leave you now-"

"Are you both fine living like this?"

"For you, I most certainly am. Besides, I'm sure Shota and Lucoa can handle it."

"If you say so. Let's just work on this project, ok? I wanna go home…"

"On it!"

Later at home, Tohru and Elma were doing house chores while Kanna worked on her homework at a brisk pace.

"Wow, Kanna. I haven't seen you work so hard on your schoolwork before. What's the rush?"

"Done!"

"Hm? Already? Let me see…"

Elma walked the two of them over to the table as Tohru reviewed Kanna's work. It looked fine enough.

"Is that all your work done for today?"

"Yep!"

"Gosh, if only Miss Kobayashi's work was this easy. She'd be done with it in no time."

"I want to play!"

"Oh yeah? Bit late to be going out, though."

"It's still light out. I wanna see your cool dragon breath!"

"Is that what you want? Ok, I guess."

Tohru took them to the large open field they had "played" in before. The grass had grown back quickly, masking any evidence of their previous battle.

"Hey, I recognize this place. Is this where you dumped me when I first got here?"
"Sure is. Now Kanna, you wanted to see that cool dragon breath move of ours?"

"Yeah! Show me!"

Tohru and Elma got on their backs and breathed in sharply. They both blew out their own flavor of dragon breath, which combined together to form a bright yellow beam of energy bursting into the sky in a pillar of light. Kanna was completely entranced in the sight.

"Whoa…"

"Pretty cool, huh?"
"Who knew our breaths worked so well together?"
"Lady Tohru, Lady Elma, you're so cool! I wish you could stay like this forever!"

"Well, hopefully not forever, Kanna. As fun as this may be, we need to be separate people. Once Shota finds that spellbook, this'll all be over."

"..."

"Hey, don't be upset. Maybe in the future we could mess up a different spell, see what happens there."

"Well I don't know about that. I think I need a break from magic spells after this."

"...I'd like to go home, please. I'm tired."

Later that evening, Kobayashi, Tohru, and Elma were having some evening booze together. Kanna had already gone to bed, and Kobayashi was feeling a bit restless that night.

"Tell me, how have things been going with…this?"

"We've been getting used to it."

"Yeah, I can barely remember what having legs feels like at this point. It's weird."

"Pretty cool that you took down a dragon hunter together. Although I'm sure either one of you could have taken him alone. He didn't sound that powerful."

"Oh by the way, We went out with Kanna for a bit today. She wanted to see that combined dragon breath move we did. It seems she really likes us together like this."
"Yeah, I'm glad someone's enjoying our predicament, at least."

"Kanna can be a strange girl sometimes. But she has a good heart, at least."

"A strange girl? You sure that's something you should be saying about your surrogate daughter?"

"Right, sorry."

"I hope they get that book soon, though. Can't really stay together like this long term."

"Kanna's gonna be so upset when we finally separate. Who knew she was interested in that sort of thing, anyway?"

"She'll be fine. I'm more worried about Shota and Lucoa. Breaking into two different police stations in the span of days isn't an easy task. And their headquarters, no less."

"They said they were going to break in tonight. I wonder if Lucoa will stop holding back her power for the mission. Maybe she'll actually succeed this time."

"Even with Lucoa constantly holding back, infiltrating a puny human fortress should be a piece of cake!"

"Speaking of cake, do we have any in the fridge?"
"Enough eating for one day! This is my stomach too!"

"Heh, I can see why Kanna likes you two so much…"