Another enemy had emerged already in the past few days. Kainatrol, a woman in a white and red suit, had appeared to other members of the Lily Class and used mind control to try to track down a Moon Piece. At the same time, Ogata Mia, a classmate, had screamed at Asa and revealed that everybody gossiped about her escapism, and Yoko had said something about seeing another strange woman confronting Kainatrol and resisting her powers. Moreover, when they transformed into Pretty Cure to save Mia from Kainatrol, she just vanished without fighting. At this point, Kawada Asa was in a very bad mood.

Now, five pairs of her panties out of the total of ten that she owned had vanished off the clothesline hanging from the apartment balcony.

"Mooom!" Asa turned her head backwards, pushing a piece of blue hair out of the way. "Someone took-"

"Asa, keep it down!" Inside the apartment, Kawada Chikane huffed and picked up her bag. "You'll bother the neighbours at this rate. If something blew off in the wind, you can find something else to wear and then look for the missing clothes later. I can't help you right now, I've got work!" She ran out the door into the hallway, leaving Asa on the balcony to pout.

"You know what?" She opened up her transformation phone and looked at Starry, the little orange creature, inside it.

"What ~susu?"

"This is the worst week ever."

Futari wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon

Episode 3: The Enemy is a Panty Thief? Won't This Raise the Rating?

"Yeah, did you hear?"

"Of course I did! Isn't it creepy?"

Apparently, Asa hadn't been the only one to lose her undergarments that night. The halls and classrooms of Clair Academy were buzzing with rumours about panties being stolen from clotheslines, not just in her area, but all over town. Without their homeroom teacher present, the girls of the Lily Class were sitting on desks and standing in circles, whispering to one another.

"You know, I bet it's nothing," Hoshi shrugged, leaning away from Asa and towards the clique who had gathered just in front of them. "Just one of those stupid boys from the Rose Class on a dare."

Fujisawa Suzu, a bold girl who managed to ace every class without going to cram school, leaned back and twirled one of her dark green pigtails around her finger. "What, you mean like Nakayama's brother or that what's-his-name guy with the hair dye?"

Omemi Emiru adjusted her black, round glasses, allowing them to gleam in the classroom's fluorescent light. "That would be Yokote Haruka-san. It sounds likely enough, given that he recently got caught trying to look in the girls' change room, but you never know."

Izumi Misaki tilted her head to one side. "But stealing panties not even a week after he got caught with that? The guy would have to be an idiot."

"He'd have to be an idiot," chimed Misaki Izumi beside her, tilting her head to the other side. "But maybe he is an idiot."

"He is an idiot," Izumi Misaki replied. "Anyone like that is an idiot."

In their corner, Yukari turned to Yoko from listening to the gaggle of other girls. "Hey, Yoko, aren't you worried? This guy could take your panties, too, you know."

Yoko shook her head. "It's not my panties I'm worried about. We don't even have a clothesline. I am concerned about the other students, though. They shouldn't have to live in fear of this person, whoever he is."

Yukari laughed a bit. "Come on, Yoko, you're not even the class rep, but you act responsible for everyone else anyway."

"I did run, you know." She frowned.

"After I had to push you." The other girl facepalmed and ran a hand over the top of her head to her crown braid. "They would have voted for you if you'd been a little more approachable."

Yoko sweatdropped. "Again, Yukari? I'm not some scary monster, even if you seem to think that everyone else -"

"Morning, everyone!" The door burst open, and all the girls rushed to their seats. A black-haired woman in a crisp blue business suit - much too formal for a teacher, but she wore that sort of thing regardless - walked in with a plastered smile on her face.

"Morning, Ami-sensei..." said the class, with a few "morning, Nakata-sensei"s in there from the newer students.

Ami-sensei kept up the fake smile and plunked a pile of papers and folders on her desk. "Now, I know we're all talking about the latest gossip, but if I hear anything about panty thieves in this class, someone's going to regret it, okay?" Her left eye twitched a few times.

Ogata Mia raised a hand from her front-row desk. "Ami-sensei?"

Twitch. "Yes?"

"They stole yours, too, didn't they?"

Ami-sensei turned blue with shock and sunk into her chair, wailing. "This is a nightmare! I'm too old for this! A teacher shouldn't have to suffer the same pain as a student! Otherwise, why would I have even come here? I should have picked a job that paid better, but oh, no, I had to think that it would be fun to be a teacher! Now I'm just reliving the pain and despair of having my panties stolen off the line like some teenage girl, and furthermore, my students don't even respect me! Life isn't fair! I shouldn't deal with this! I deserve a promotioooon!"

The students looked at each other, exchanging "thought so"s, shrugs and short laughs. Ami-sensei sobbed into her sleeve.

After school, Asa had supposedly left the building like normal, but ducked into the elevator when no one was looking and ran out and back to the classroom when everyone had gone. As expected, Yoko was waiting there for her.

"There you are, Kawada-san." Yoko pulled her transformation phone out of her bag and opened it up. "So it's my turn tonight?"

"Yes ~susu!" Starry popped out of Asa's phone and bounced over to the other girl. "Have you seen anything suspicious today, Yoko?"

"Absolutely." She nodded. "You've heard about it around the school, right?"

Asa's ears perked up. "Not really. What is it? A store that appeared and became really popular overnight? Or an idol who's having her shows sabotaged? All I've heard about is that dumb old panty thief."

Yoko sweatdropped. "Actually, it is the panty thief."

Asa pulled back and made a face. "Uh... do you really think that has anything to do with the Etherium? The stalker did, but that was one time!"

Yoko glared. Asa shut up.

Starry blinked at the both of them. "Yoko has a point ~susu. We should probably start investigating that, even if it's not likely. After all, even if I know why they attacked the Garden of Days, I don't know anything about who the people of the Etherium are ~susu."

The blue-haired girl shifted and looked out the window, almost expecting another 'stalker' to appear. "Well... I guess they might be panty thieves."

"Then it's settled." Yoko held up her phone, and Starry jumped into it. "Tonight, we'll go around the areas of town where the thief appeared before. He'll probably be back looking for more panties."

Asa bit her lip. At least she lived in one of those areas. "Are you sure he won't go somewhere he hasn't been?"

The grey-haired girl nodded. "Kawada-san, think about it. The panty thief has been stealing from clotheslines. I live in the northeast, where he hasn't been, and I can tell you that most of the people there use dryers."

"I guess." She got up and put her transformation phone away. "I don't have a real phone, so Starry can help you find me, okay?" Asa ran out of the room.

Yoko stared at where she had been and blinked. "She doesn't have a phone?"

Binbeat, the young boy in a rumpled white and green Etherium suit that looked far too itchy and uncomfortable, banged on the keys of an organ that wasn't in the void the previous day. A few steps behind him was a pile comprised of things that were also not in the Etherium before, these being many different pairs of women's undergarments.

"I'm awesome! I'm awesome!" He scream-sang, pounding on the keys of the rusty old instrument without a care for tune or assonance. The offensive noise would echo through the Etherium, but things like sound only mattered just enough to function. It was like that with everything. Time, space, all of it existed just enough that the void wouldn't implode, and little enough that it could still be called a place of nothing.

Mekuramast materialized behind him. "Awesome or not, that awful din will bother the Boss if you keep this up."

Binbeat stopped and swung his legs around so that he was facing the magician. "Nah, it'll be fine. Boss won't get mad if I grab all the Moon Pieces from that town. Look at everything I already got!"

The young man turned his head towards the panty heap and adjusted his bejeweled eye mask, frowning. "I see. Forgive me if I say that your... collection would be easier to obtain than the Moon Pieces." He looked back at the child. "You did hear from that animal tamer, didn't you?"

"Geez, just say her name." Binbeat stood up on his piano bench and stretched his arms out. "Yeah, Kainatrol told me Pretty Cure was back. No way they're as tough as the old Pretty Cure, though. They're brand new. It's fine."

Mekuramast made a face, and then cringed as Binbeat sat down on the keys of the organ itself, making another terrible noise. "Pretty Cure is Pretty Cure nonetheless. On the subject of Kainatrol, however, if you knew who I was talking about, I don't see a problem."

Binbeat yawned. "You two have been fighting for a hundred and fifty years, or something. It's boring by now."

"Tsk," the young man said. "How would you know? You've only been with us for ninety-five."

"Whatever," Binbeat said. "I'm gonna get a Moon Piece. Maybe some more panties." He and his organ disappeared, leaving the underwear pile.

Mekuramast facepalmed. "Children."

"Takashiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"

"I'm comin', I'm comin'!" Yoko's twin brother groaned and walked to the door from the kitchen. "What do you want?"

Yoko, in a worn old T-shirt that her parents would never let her step out of the house in, was leaning into the house from the door to the garage. "Takashi, did you take my wrench?"

"Which one?" He shrugged. "You've got, like, twenty of them."

"The one that's missing." Yoko glared icicles at him. "I've got them colour-coded and clearly labelled, and number sixteen isn't where I put it!"

Takashi smirked. "I grew up with you, sis. The whole 'Ice Queen Nakayama' staring isn't gonna work on me."

"You're calling me that, too?" Yukari was so going to get it for this.

"Go find your wrench," Takashi said, walking out the door beside the one that Yoko was halfway out of. "I'm going to the gym."

"Takashi, get back here!"

A little voice came from the garage. "Yoko!"

Yoko blanched and shut the door tight. She ran down the steps over to the family car, where Starry, in his real form, was waving a pink wrench with the number 16 taped onto it.

"Yoko, I found this behind the radio ~susu!" He offered it up to her.

She sighed and took it. "Geez! He always hides my stuff!"

The little orange thing peered around the garage as Yoko put her tool back. Flattened cardboard boxes lay underneath the car to catch any drips of oil or grease as she worked on it. Open tool kits sat on one side of her work area, and boxes with new and salvaged car parts were scattered on the other. "What's all this ~susu?"

Yoko blushed and turned her head aside. "Car stuff. I guess you could say it's my secret hobby. No one knows except my family. It's too weird for a girl like me to be into fixing and working on cars."

Starry tilted his head. "Why's that ~susu?"

"Look," Yoko said. "You know how Kawada-san watches kids' shows with spandex and superheroes, right? And how everybody knows that, even though she only transferred in this year, and people avoid her and talk about her behind her back, right? That's the last thing I want to have happen to me."

Starry petted her hand with a small paw and frowned. "Asa is very nice, even if people think she's strange ~susu. It's the same with people thinking you're scary, Yoko."

Yoko groaned. "Even you say people think of me that way?"

"Yoko!" came a voice from inside the house. "Supper!"

"That's my dad," she sighed. "Starry, get back in the phone, okay?"

Kawada Chikane rushed through the small apartment, buttoning the cleaning uniform for her night job with one hand while picking up her things with the other. "Now, Asa, you know what to do. Instant ramen's in the cupboard, the microwave's working again, I'll be home at one so you'd better be in bed before then..."

Asa tried to stand in her mother's path. "Mom, I've been trying to talk to you all day! There's a panty thief and -"

"Asa, I'm sorry, but I don't have time right now." Chikane dodged around her daughter, thrusting her half-empty coffee cup into her hands, and ran to the apartment door. "I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?" She checked all her things and left.

Asa slumped her shoulders and turned to stare at the door slowly closing, her mother already gone. "You never do." She checked her transformation phone - okay, Yoko's was still out of range - and then the clock. Wait, did I even set a time to meet Nakayama-san? With a shrug, she went for the instant ramen in the cupboard.

After one change of clothes into something presentable and a half-hearted excuse about going to see a friend, Yoko was running through the residential areas with a purse on one shoulder and her transformation phone in her hand in front of her. "How far is it?"

"Not that far ~susu," Starry said. Asa's signal had just appeared on the top screen.

"I haven't even been here before." Yoko stopped and looked up and around. It was a residential area, not as nice as the one she lived in, and just past the school. There was someone building something on a small deck. Wait, was that...

"Ami-sensei?" Yoko quickly stuffed her transformation phone into her pocket.

The teacher looked up from her work and waved. "Nakayama-san! Don't mind me, I'm just setting a trap~"

"...a trap?" Yoko raised an eyebrow at it. From what she could see, it was set up to drop a bucket on the head of anyone who would touch the clothesline. It was also clunky, extremely obvious, and put together backwards so that the bucket would actually fly in the opposite direction and end up in a tree. She had to wonder about this woman.

"Of course!", she said. "For that deplorable panty thief who's been through the neighbourhood! Take my underwear, will you?"

Yoko sweatdropped. "You go do that." She started to walk away. "It's backwards, by the way."

"Huh?" Ami-sensei blinked and looked it over. Yoko could hear a "Noooooooo!" as she walked away and brought her phone back out.

"Your teacher is kind of weird ~susu," Starry said. "It reminds me of how Asa reacted when she found out what Pretty Cure really was ~susu."

Yoko shrugged. "She's always been like that-" She suddenly halted, looking up and around with a bit of a quiver in her eye.

"Huh?" Starry asked.

Yoko turned the phone around so that the little orange creature could see the dusty, overgrown, littered space in front of them. "Starry... are you sure that we have to go this way?"

"That's the park Asa goes through to get home from school ~susu! Even if the tracking device were broken, this would still be the right way ~susu!"

Yoko shook a little, still mostly keeping her confident face on. "Do you even know where this is, Starry?"

He paused. "Hm... That sign over there says it's Sapphire Park."

"Exactly!" Yoko snapped. "We're all the way on the south end of town! It's run down and looks awful from here on, and it's probably dangerous! My parents would never let me go anywhere near here!"

"Huh?" Starry looked very strange stretching his head out of the phone to crane his neck back at the petrified girl. "But it's perfectly safe ~susu. Asa lives right down there in the Morning Garden Apartments ~susu."

"She lives there?", Yoko asked, as if any apartment block on that side of town was not, in fact, intended for living in unless you were a chemically mutated rat on drugs.

"Of course ~susu." Starry nodded. "Let's go ahead!"

"No way." Yoko turned the phone around and looked again at the tracking display. "I'm not taking one step past that park. Let's wait for Kawada-san to come to us."

A woman leaned against the window, twirling her red hair - lighter than Kainatrol's, but darker than Mia's. She tilted her head, holding the receiver of the phone with her other hand.

"Yes, I'm sure. ...Yes. I saw them transform myself. Hiding in between the potted plants outside the strip mall. Honestly. ...What? No, I don't know who they are. All the school kids look the same to me these days. They're definitely from Clair Academy, though, unless they went out and made knockoffs of the uniform to look like they go to a nicer school than they actually do. Do kids still do that these days? ...Yes, she was there. ...Yes. All right, just keep a look out." She hung up the phone. "This is exactly what I don't need."

Yoko shifted on the bench outside of Sapphire Park. She clung to her phone and glared at anyone who might pass by, fully ready to start screaming and running the second they talked to her. There hadn't been more than two or three people at all, though, and they'd barely even looked at Yoko before deciding that there was something wrong with someone so apparently antisocial. This hadn't made her feel any better.

"You know, if I get murdered within the next fifteen minutes, I'm holding you fully responsible," she hissed.

Starry gulped. "Look at the display ~susu!" he said. "Asa's right here!"

"What?" Yoko jolted her head up. Sure enough, a blue-haired girl, still in her school uniform (did she ever bother to change once she got home?), was running out the front gates of Sapphire Park. Asa stopped about a meter away from Yoko, teetering on the edge of the sidewalk.

"Nakayama-san! Starry!" Asa wobbled backwards and quickly stepped forward onto solid concrete.

"There you are, Kawada-san." Yoko stood up and brushed off her pants, trying to look as confident as she did at school. "Let's transform and look for this panty thief."

"Transform now ~susu?" Starry tilted his head up at her.

Yoko glared. "It'll be safer."

Asa blinked. "Huh? Safer?"

"Can you just shut up and do it?" Yoko said. Asa gulped and drew out her cards. Yoko did the same and looked around the block.

"No witnesses. Let's go."

"Dual Infinite Phase!"

The sequence began as it had the previous times. When the lights and strange feelings ended, Cure Night in her asymmetrical blue dress and Cure Sunday in her pink and orange uniform posed and made their speech.

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

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

"We are Pretty Cure!"

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

"...to ensure a peaceful era!"

Sunday turned her head to Night. "Wow. I guess we really do do the speech even when nobody's around."

Night sighed. "Let's just find this panty thief."

"Okay!" Sunday crouched down and sprung up above Night's head, the nearby fence, and the nearby trees. She landed on the roof of a small house with a dynamic pose.

Night stared. "What are you doing?"

"Roofhopping!" Sunday turned around to look at her partner and waved. "All heroes do that. We'll be able to find the panty thief way easier."

Night sighed. "Well, at least it'll be safer than walking on the streets." She leapt into the air and landed on the roof with a grimace. "I feel dizzy already."

"Come on!" Sunday began to jump from roof to roof, running with her arms out like an airplane. "Whoohoo!"

"Does she have any idea how stupid she looks?" Night muttered and followed after.

"Moon Piece, Moon Piece!" The child Etherium soldier scream-sang through an alley, chasing off cats with his awful noise. "Where am I gonna find one?"

It was a good question. It wasn't like he could sense them. That was why they kept going on wild chases, but the place they'd landed in was pretty small. Even this poor neighbourhood wasn't all that dangerous, unlike how it would have been in someplace bigger. Of course, if it were dangerous, he'd have no trouble blowing anything up that got in his way. Until he did find a Moon Piece, though, the three pairs of panties that he held triumphantly on a stick like flags were good enough for him. Binbeat marched on, arms swinging at his sides, searching.

Cure Sunday looked down on the alley from the roof of a decrepit house. "Look at that."

Night turned her head and quirked an eyebrow. "Panty thief, huh? Can't believe it turned out to be just some kid."

"No, look!" Sunday pointed furiously at the child. "No school in the whole town has that weird white uniform! It looks like something kids would wear a hundred years ago! And look at that eye mask!"

Night groaned. "Look, kids will wear anything. It doesn't mean..."

"Come on! Fancy white outfit and a jeweled eye mask! Even the colours! That whip lady was red, and the magician guy was blue, and this kid's green!"

"It was a riding crop, that's different from a whip -"

"You know what I mean -"

"What's goin' on?"

The Cures froze in the middle of their bickering and slowly turned their heads. Floating in front of them was the kid, holding his panty flag high in the air.

"Hey!" Cure Sunday jabbed her finger at him. "I told you! I told you, okay?"

"Lucky guess!" Night crossed her arms and tried to hide her embarrassed blush. "What we need to do is get the panties back!"

Binbeat made a face at the two girls. "You're really weird. Don't tell me you guys are the new Pretty Cure. The old ones were way scarier than you."

Night looked at her partner. "What does he mean, old ones?"

"It's too early to ask about that." Sunday shrugged. "It sounds like something you'd find out once the season was almost over."

"This isn't a TV show, okay?"

Binbeat flailed his arms, sending a pair of panties flying from his "flag" into someone's yard. "Hey, you losers, I'm trying to fight you!"

Pretty Cure snapped into a more threatening stance. "Then fight us already!"

"Hahaha, fine!" He jumped backwards in the air and pressed down on something invisible in front of him. The sound of organ keys clashed through the night, and a black diamond appeared, floating in midair like the boy was.

"That's the thing that the magician guy used to make the Hidoinaa!" Sunday pointed at it. "Watch out!"

"You fought Mekuramast?" Binbeat raised his eyebrows. "He never said anything about that. Whatever, that guy's weird. Come on, now face my Hidoinaa!" He whipped the stick in his hands upward, sending the two pairs of panties that were resting on it flying upwards. The diamond shot up after it, merging with one of them in the black light. Once it faded, Binbeat had caught the other pair in his hand, and before them stood a giant pair of white lacy panties with a glowing Halloween-pumpkin face.

"Hidoinaaa!"

Pretty Cure just stared.

"Hidoinaa..."

"...Panties."

Binbeat twirled, sticking the other pair on his head and tossing the twig behind him. "Kyaha! Isn't this the greatest monster you've ever seen?"

Night made a face. "It's something, all right."

Sunday got back into her battle-ready pose. "It doesn't matter what it is, let's fight it!"

The two girls leapt into the air and attacked the Hidoinaa. Sunday kicked it in the face, sending it a little back, but the elastic shot back and sent her flying. She crashed back first onto a concrete roof, moaning and twitching. Night spin-kicked the panty monster, managing to turn it around, and landed back on the building she'd jumped from. She diverted her attention from the Hidoinaa and roofhopped over to her more blindingly coloured counterpart.

"Sunday! Are you okay?" Night knelt by her and began to fumble and try to pick her up. "How badly does it hurt? Is anything broken?"

"Yeah, I'm okay..." Cure Sunday forced herself to sit up, leaning a bit on the other girl.

Night jerked back a little at this, quickly moving back into place to support her. "I don't see how, unless being Pretty Cure suddenly made us indestructible."

"Hidoinaa!"

The two girls gasped and looked up. The forgotten panty monster was now looming over them, its juvenile creator nowhere in sight. "Hidoinaaaa!"

"Oh, no!" Cure Night scooped up her partner in her arms and leapt over the Hidoinaa, landing on another rooftop. She put Sunday down and hesitantly helped her stand.

"I think we can fight it, but we have to make sure not to aim for the elastic!" Sunday rubbed the back of her aching head.

"That's not going to work!" Night punched and kicked the Hidoinaa when it approached them again. "All it's doing is getting knocked back! We need to actually hurt it!" She looked at Cure Sunday. "How did we do that attack again?"

"You mean the finisher?" Sunday kicked the panties. They shrunk back and then dove forward at the two girls, hitting them straight on with the elastic and shooting them into the side of a wall. Now both Cures fell to the ground in enormous pain.

"We can't even hurt this thing." Night gasped and coughed, trying to stand. "It has too much freedom to move. It'll just snap back at us and hit us into a building. Right now, we've taken a lot more damage than it -" Sunday grabbed Night's wrist. "What is it?"

Sunday gestured up at the Hidoinaa. "Can we corner it somewhere?"

Night pulled the two of them up and looked around. Her eyes set on a strange contraption in Nakata Ami's backyard.

"I think so."

Pretty Cure managed to jump over the Hidoinaa again before it crashed into them. They landed behind it and waited for it to turn around.

"There!" Night pointed at the trap. The two girls jumped onto Ami-sensei's deck and stood behind the clothesline. The monster, as usual, shot toward them and plowed straight into the clothesline. The trap sprung. Lights went on, a bucket dropped to pin part of the possessed fabric to the deck, and the monster was pelted with oranges. It started to flail around.

"What just happened?" Sunday asked.

"It'll break out any second now." Night grabbed her hand. "Let's do this!"

"All right!"

The magic circle drew itself behind them as they went through the motions of their incantation.

"Sun Limit!"

"Night Limit!"

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

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

The two girls glowed in dark blue. They aimed themselves at the monster, which was now flinging off the bucket trap.

"Pretty Cure Second Spin!"

They flew around the Hidoinaa, hitting it this way and that and burning off the negative aura with their energy. The Pretty Cure comet stopped just long enough for the Hidoinaa to shake off the bucket and float up straight. They flew right into and through it, leaving a large hole in the elastic band. The Hidoinaa burned to a crisp as Pretty Cure landed on their feet on the deck, and the panties that it had been dropped to the ground behind them. The two girls let go of each other's hands, turned around and looked at the remains of the monster.

"Uh... Night?" Sunday glanced over at her.

"What?"

"...Are we gonna have to give these back?"

Clair Academy was abuzz again the next morning. All the girls in the Lily Class were gathered in the centre of the room.

"Hey, hey, did you hear?"

"Did all the panties really go back to their original owners?"

"I don't know about you, but mine are back. I'm scared to wear them without washing them at least fifty times."

"Why not a hundred?"

Yoko excused herself and ran into the janitor's closet. She pulled out her transformation phone and flipped it open. "Starry, can you explain this? We didn't get all the stolen panties back, so why are they going back to their owners?"

Starry yawned. "I don't really know ~susu. Maybe something else happened that we didn't know about. Either way, it's a good thing ~susu."

Yoko sighed. "Well, I guess..."

"Aww, man!" Binbeat grumbled, banging on the keys of his organ. "You guys always spoil my fun!"

Mireyes shook her head and adjusted her white and purple head covering. "Your defeat was inevitable, Binbeat. You had to pay for it."

Tachimany, in single-person form, stretched out. "Those girls came after you for a reason." They changed from one young boy to five teenage girls and mimicked shocked expressions. "How dare you steal those panties!" They burst out laughing and turned into two identical salarymen. "So if you didn't give them back, you'd be Pretty Cure bait for the rest of your life, and you'd drag the rest of us down~!"

Binbeat stuck his tongue out at the shapeshifter and the old fortune teller. "That's a lame excuse. You just wanna make me miserable."

Kainatrol shook her head. "More responsible coworkers. I need them. Now."