Disclaimer: I do Not Own To Love Ru.

Waking up to the sound of alarm bells, Rito opens his eyes and smacks the clock on his dresser drawer. Groaning as he wakes up, he realizes that the bedroom he is in reflects his old room. He then remembers the craziness of last night, and that he had offered up his physical room in lieu of using this one. He looked at the desk, and fought the urge to tear open the desk and find the mysterious letter Lala had inserted into it. She had meant for him to find it, right? After all, she wouldn't have bothered breaking into his Cyber House using the backdoor she had left inside it, and not expect him to open it...

He shook his head, knowing that these were all thoughts Adam wanted him to think. Bladix had told him that he couldn't harm Rito because he had burned away any means of control by expunging the nanites that had been trying to revive Bladix within his blade. Rito wasn't sure if the same applied to Adam, as Bladix had also told him that 'something new' would be replacing him, and that something had been revealed to be Adam. The child like avatar of the Ninth Blade, a consciousness, a soul, made from pieces of himself that had been changed by Nemesis' TransGenes, and the remaining bits of Bladix that still clung within Rito and the blade. The composite entity wasn't exactly malicious seeming to Rito, rather he seemed to have a bit of a untrusting, if aloof attitude towards Rito himself, probably due to Bladix's memories of not being able to control him. Perhaps he was also influenced by Nemesis' memories if they were passed on genetically, since it seemed while Adam seemed distant he was worried about Rito abandoning, or rather outright destroying him, an attitude Rito could very well compare to Nemesis when they first met.

Realizing he didn't bring a spare change of clothes in with him last night, he silently cursed his inability to move some spare clothing over into the duplicate room. He really hoped the girls had all gone down for breakfast, so he could at least grab his clothes and hurriedly get ready to eat. Walking down to the exit portal, he quickly activated it and walked through into his physical room. He catches a glimpse of something, but nothing definite, and quickly finds a pair of golden strands holding a pillow smashing into his face and into the floor. He struggles under the increasing force, struggling to take a breath in, as he claws at the offending object to clear his airway. "Yuuki Rito, you saw, didn't you?" Yami states from somewhere above him, though he has no clue as to what she is referring, "I assured myself you would have more tact offering your room to three women, but I find your old habits are still as perverse as ever, Rito Yuuki." Suddenly Rito feels a very heavy weight on his stomach, as the force of the pillow lessens yet remains on his face.

Rito realizes he must have walked in on Mea and Yami changing, though he found that improbable, as both girls literally wore the same outfit, just using their nanites to shift it into a new form and presumably clean it at the same time. Finally the pillow is lifted off his head by a smiling Nemesis, who was also sitting on Rito's stomach and chest. "You just have the worst timing, Rito," she grins, "Yami was just transforming from a particularly skimpy nightgown-" Suddenly Nemesis disappears in a flash, as a wicked looking blade lashes out and lodges itself just next to Rito's left ear. Gulping, he notices Yami's neutral expression, and hopes she had been aiming for Nemesis. He hoped.

"I-I'm s-sorry Yami," Rito states, "I was hoping you had already gone down to help with breakfast-" Yami sighs, closing her eyes as she does so.

"No apology is necessary, just hope Kuro doesn't hear about this," she states in return, "Ever since he's regressed in age, his emotional control has gone down to match, he's becoming highly irrational regarding anything to do with me..." Rito gulps, and gets up from the floor. Brushing himself off, he is surprised to find Mea handing him a stack of folded clothes.

"For you, Rito Senpai, because I figured from Yami's tardiness in changing this would be a possibility," Mea states, "Your lucky perversions happily quantify in a situation where three beautiful women are sleeping near you, and we happened to 'fit the bill'." Rito doesn't know whether to be thankful or offended that his accidents were expected, but then again knowing he was going in blind, his chances of indecent exposure had been highly likely... He sweat drops at that, laughing it off slightly before leaving his room to get ready to have breakfast with everyone.

Upon reaching the kitchen with everyone already at the table and eating, he happily sees Nakajima up and about with everyone. "Rito!" he states, and everyone turns to see Rito and the others enter into the room, "Get some food in you, we'll need the energy for what we have ahead of us!" Rito agrees, moving for the delicious breakfast on the table. After consuming most of his breakfast, he takes in everybody around him. Lala, Nana, Mikan, Mea, Nemesis, Yami, Kuro, Nakajima,and Celine. The only one missing was Momo, and a sad pallor hung over the table as everyone ate in contemplative silence.

"Mau?" Celine states, her cheerful obliviousness to the situation leaves her the only one with a smile on her face as she eats, "M-au?" She looks around fussing as Mikan goes to figure out why Celine is starting to become upset. "M-a-u-m," she says more forcefully, "Mau-mo?" Mikan drops a rag she is using to wipe up the food Celine has spilled, and looks the plant child in the eyes, full of curiosity and wonder. "Momo?" Celine asks Mikan, cocking her head with a worried expression towards her, "Mau?" Surprisingly it was Nana who begins crying, rushing out of the room and up the stairs to her own bedroom. Celine doesn't understand what it was she said, but she begins to understand that the reason everyone is upset, is because of Momo. And the last time everyone was sad it had to do with Rito. "Pa-pa?" Celine states, her eyes beginning to well up with tears as she looks straight at Rito, "Momo g-one?"

Rito smiles sadly at Celine, and before she could start crying he gets up and grabs her, holding her tight. "She's okay Celine, no need for tears," he says trying to sooth the whimpering child, "She'll be back soon, I promise, she's just away right now..." He hugs her close and tight, and tries not to cry and choke out his words. "We said some mean things to each other, but Momo's super strong, you know that!" he states, giving her to Mikan as he pulls away to go to Lala, "We'll get her back, don't you worry, just wait and see!" He hugs Lala from the back, grabbing her hands in his as he puts his head in the crook of her neck. "Don't you worry, we'll get her back, you and me," he states, not knowing who he was trying to convince now, "I promise you, we'll find her." Lala looks up at Rito, and gently wipes away a stray tear, putting a smile on her face.

"You're right," she says smiling, "We're going to get her back Rito, Celine, everybody!" She looks out towards the surrounding friends and family. "Azenda better watch out, because once we find her, she's going to wish she never crossed us!" Lala states, "Besides, knowing Momo, she's already beginning to regret it!"

Dark Side of the Moon

'Two days,' she thinks to herself, 'Zastin will be back from Deviluke, in two days.' She is currently in a locked room, barely any resemblance to a prison cell, but a prison cell it is. She had her heart broken, she was beaten, and kidnapped all in one day, and now she was a prisoner of one of her sister's power crazy stalkers. Not to mention a former assassin Queen, who was quite a 'Witch with a capital B', who would have more than likely killed her if she wasn't going along with the former psycho's plan. No doubt they would try and approach Lala with ransom demands, because they knew their window of opportunity was closing. More than likely, they assumed Rito would have had enough time with his sword to become a brainwashed slave, that they believed they could just walk up to him and he would hand Lala over to them. 'More like he would hand their ass to them on a plate,' she thinks with a smile, 'Rito's a dummy, but he had the upper hand with his basic sword skills alone, and when combined with his natural gift not even Azenda would be able to hold her own against him.'

She knew that was a fact just from experience, when Rito had managed to not only embarrass her, but actually overtake her without Azenda putting up a fight because she believed he was inconsequential. No doubt they would both take Rito slightly seriously now, after their underestimating him before, but they hadn't seen the effort she had seen Rito put in to try and better himself. He had done his best to try and stop getting into messy situations he couldn't easily explain away, even if he failed sometimes just because the universe or some higher power thought it was funny. She had also been told by Zastin just how serious he was about learning swordplay, a skill that took effort and concentration beyond just swinging a blade at your enemy. And she had been the one to push him to do these things, she realized it now.

It was funny what a sleepless night of contemplation could get an adrenaline fueled mind to think about, to come to conclusions she had long ignored. 'He was always trying to be kind to me, trying to tell me he wasn't interested,' she muses to herself, 'But like my mother says, I'm too much like her.' She thinks back to her time visiting Deviluke, when her mother had approached her with knowledge about her Harem Plan.

"When I was young... I used every means, fair or foul, to make Gid look my way," she had said to her, when they met in secret, "Back then, it was really vexing me... the one man whose sense of self was so strong, he wouldn't yield to my 'charm'." She had looked away, lost in the memories of her youth as she told Momo of how she met her Father. "Because I thought he was destined for me... 'There's no one but him'," she says, smiling dreamily, "I kept pressing on him and making myself appeal to him... because I didn't want to give him to anyone." She then stared her directly in the face for the next part, which had hit Momo hard at the time, while she was still lost in her indecision. "Momo... Out of all you three sisters, you resemble me the most," she had said, "It's fine to be considerate of the people around you... but don't take it too far."

Thinking back to Rito this past year, how he had gone from happy to sad with the loss of Haruna, then pick himself up when he was told to make a choice. But she had seen it with her own eyes, when she watched Lala and Rito in his room, as Lala tried to break through the wall of isolation he had put up. She had tried to ignore the feeling of jealousy, justifying that he only tried to break up with her out of his own selfish desire to keep his family, to keep the Earth safe from her father. But in his room, when he asked to be alone with her, when he tried to tell her in the kindest manner, before she blew up on him and then Haruna, the girl who hadn't even tried to talk to him showed up... Momo realized that Lala had been right, Rito had changed after interacting with Bladix. He had been so indecisive, so damn annoying not knowing who he wanted, and yet he had chosen Lala, she could see it in his eyes when he spoke to her that day. She had always wondered why her mother had thought she was being considerate to others, to Lala. Now she wondered if she had really understood what her mother had been getting at.

Flashes of green hair and blood, sent shivers down her back, as she thought back to Nakajima's attempt to save her. She hoped that he was safe, getting patched up in some hospital after someone managed to stumble upon him. He may have been creepy as hell, a slight stalker from time to time, but when she thought back to all the things he had done for her, she knew he had her interests at heart, even if it got in her way. He seemed to be the unanimous leader of the Venus Momo Fanclub, which had been great at first having boys of all kinds fawning over her every whim, but had grown to be a bother when they took it too far and didn't let anyone near her. More than once she had sworn he had it out for Rito, believing him to be some kind of 'super-pervert', no doubt because of the fact Yui Kokegawa, the school's head of the moral comity, had put him up with the principal in terms of perversion. Looking back, she could laugh at the time a whole group of them, including Nakajima, had brought in illegal air pistols, just so they could threaten Rito with them.

She was laughing, even when the door opened and the slime ball and her toadstool walked in. Lacospo probably wouldn't take kindly to her calling him Azenda's lackey, but Momo could tell Azenda was the one who truly believed she was running things. She also knew she could use that against Lacospo, to cause him greater annoyance still. She was quite surprised to see what appeared to be a small dome in Lacospo's hands, with a shard of something metal suspended within it. It piqued her curiosity to be shown something knew, unless he planned to torture her with it, than she began to wonder just where he planned to hurt her with the small, ineffective sliver.

"Ah, I see you become curious about what this is?" Lacospo asks, setting the container for the piece of metal, down on the desk in her cell, "It's something I find is worth just as much as you are, Hime-sama, if not worthwhile to get your hands on." He puts his hands behind his back, as he stares Momo down with a delightfully, evil smirk. "It seems you were right, since A.D.A.M. has not contacted us yet, I must assume you were telling us the truth, and that Rito has compromised Bladix," he states, looking to Azenda, and nodding slightly, "You see, we can be civil about this, no need to go to such violent extremes, dear." His words drip thick like sweet honey towards Azenda, but Momo knows that an angry bee still buzzes in the Tyrant's head, because she is a killer. "Since that is the case, I've decided to let you know that we've come to the conclusion that ransoming you off, is in fact our best interests," Lacospo states to Momo, "In fact, we'll even be offering this shiny sliver of metal to Rito in addition, for meeting our demand." Momo merely raises a brow in confusion at this.

"Ah, I see you're still confused, that's okay, I know how hard this must be to catch up with, but I have big plans, and ransoming you off is just the first step," the toady continues, smacking his purple lips, "Rito will not only be giving up his right as a marriage candidate to Lala, but Lala will willingly chose to come with me and become a part of my own harem, if it means saving her sister..." Momo smiles in return, knowing that Lala would be stubborn, and refuse to jut up and waltz into the lion's den. "Oh, do you doubt me princess, well, I think you'll find that this little shard of metal is more crucial than you realize," Lacospo states with a knowing smile, "Did you know, when I had Azenda fix Bladix, I kept the smallest sliver I could get my hands on, just enough to compromise the blade's integrity?" Momo blinks in confusion, as Lacospo starts talking. "Oh, yes, did I mention that I expect Lala and Rito won't give up without a fight, without Rito coming to me and trying to win the fair maiden's heart back, one last time?" he states, "Oh, he'll walk right into my trap, after he valiantly tries to save Lala, and I will manage to strike him down with something not even Rito could expect?"

Azenda moves, and pulls out a silver box from seemingly nowhere. She opens it up, and realizes that inside it is another sword. This cutlass has a single ruby encrusted into its hilt, along with a wicked and deadly looking curved blade to accompany it. Momo looks up at Lacospo, as Azenda closes the case and returns the sword to outside her cell. "Why are you telling me all of this?" Momo asks, "How do you expect me not to tell them about your plans?" Lacospo gets a wicked grin, and he turns to Azenda with a smile.

"Shall we tell her now, dear, or wait until we contact Rito and Lala?" he asks, before turning back to the container holding the metal shard, "Well,let's just say I won't be telling them that this shard of metal is going with you as part of the deal... in fact, I think they'll be quite too preoccupied dealing with something far more important..." He snaps his fingers, and Azenda brings out a gag and some hand cuffs. "Please make this easy on yourself Momo," he states, looking back at her, "We wouldn't want you getting hurt too badly, before we even get Lala to surrender herself, now would we?" By the time Lacospo leaves the room, he can barely hear the Devilukean girls muffled screams.

The Lunatique

Rito joins Lala in front of the console screen, along with Yami and Nana. When Lala had gotten the call from Momo's phone, she hadn't quite expected it to be Lacospo, nor did she expect him to admit to kidnapping Momo. He had told them he would make contact with the Lunatique, providing Yami promised not to interfere, lest something horrible befall Momo in the time it took them to even be able to do anything. Now Rito stood gripping Lala's hand, as they waited for Lacospo's call.

When the ship's visuals lit up with a view of Lacospo's ship, Lala, Nana, Rito, and Yami were all shocked to see not only was Momo tied up and gagged, but that she was beaten and bruised as well. "Well, Lala Hime, I'm surprised to see you didn't let your dog sniff around," Lacospo states tauntingly, "Azenda, my darling wife, was so looking forward to doing bodily harm to Momo, so much so in fact..." Everyone stared in shock as Azenda retrieved a small piece of shrapnel, no bigger than a toothpick, and shoved it into Momo's upper arm.

"Lacospo, that was uncalled for!" Lala cries out, as she hears her sister's muffled cries over the communications, "If you threaten her with more bodily harm, if she dies before you return her to us, I swear you will receive the death penalty with no trial... by my own hands, if necessary!" Lacospo merely sneers at the princess, knowing she couldn't do anything without knowing where Momo, or his ship, was.

"I just wanted to assure you that we were serious about the ransom demands we are about to make, and Azenda thought it would be better to show you just how serious we are," he responds, "Don't worry, Azenda knows her craft, where she hit Momo will merely go unconscious if not treated within the hour, she won't have lost enough blood to be critically endangered for another fifteen minutes after that..." Rito bites his tongue in anger at the toadstool, who he knew was just playing games with all of them, trying to get them riled up and unable to think clearly. "Now, as for out demands..." Lacospo states, "In return for Princess Momo, we'll expect that you, Princess Lala, will willingly accompany us to Deviluke, after preparations are made..." He smiles, and turns his attention to Rito. "You, Rito Yuuki, must give up your mantle as Heir to the King of Deviluke, and remove yourself as a marriage candidate to Lala Hime," Lacospo states, "Do this, and with Lala's full compliance, you will be able to save Momo's life in time, and I will become the next King of Deviluke, after Lala Hime is married off to me in four days time."

Rito is about to fire back an angry retort to his ridiculous demands, before Lala speaks up in return. "Very well, though I cannot ask Rito to withdraw his candidacy as a potential marriage candidate, I will comply with making you my husband of choice; if it means you return Momo to Rito exactly after I step foot on you ship," Lala states boldly, "As he has been chosen by King Gid of Deviluke himself as Heir Apparent, as ancient law states, if Rito is able to come to Deviluke within two weeks time, he will be able to contest our marriage and duel you for your position, your title, and all your possessions, with exile or death as victor's choice." Rito is abut to object, but he feels Nana press onto his shoulders before he can. "Do these terms sound agreeable?" Lala asks, "If so, I will be prepared in fifteen minutes to go with you from the location of Sainan High, so that Momo can get proper medical treatment as fast as possible."

Lacospo, Azenda, and Momo all looked shocked as can be at the princesses willing sacrifice. "Very well, this is... agreeable," Lacospo says hesitantly, rubbing his chin, "I will allow you time to say your goodbyes and have Azenda meet you on the roof of the Sainan High School, with Momo in tow." He leans into the camera and waggles one of his webbed fingers. "But no tricks, just you and Rito, no one else," Lacospo warns, "Or else Momo may not make it in time to be saved!" Lala nods, and the connection is cut. Rito turns to Lala to berate her, before Nana moves in and begins to hug the now crying girl.

"It'll be okay Lala, Momo will be fine when we get her to Mikado Sensei, that was smart of you to do..." Nana states, then looks back at Rito, "Rito, I know what you want to say, but let me tell you that Lala was very tricky right then, she just lied to Lacospo's face." Rito looks shocked at that, wondering just what she meant by that. "There is no ancient law giving you time to prepare, she just lied to Lacospo to get his guard down," she states, "Since Father is not expecting Lala to have made her choice for three more weeks, Lala has just bought you time to not only save Momo, but to confront our Father about Lacospo's intentions, and to set a trap for him." Rito nods, understanding now, and he goes to comfort his crying Fiancee. He would do everything in his power, whatever it took, to get her home safe after this. He would make sure everyone was safe.