A quick note I will put here instead of anywhere else… there have been questions regarding whether or not Shining Sunlight will be my final multi-chapter story for this fandom. The honest answer is that I do not know, I haven't really looked that far ahead and a lot of things can pop up between now and the end of this story. As of writing this AN, Shining has a soft chapter count target that should guarantee that Shining remains ongoing for another year or so if everything goes well. But even though it is still a while until Shining will supposedly end… who knows?

Special thanks to LightZephyr for the beta read of this chapter.

Disclaimer: I do not own BanG Dream! Girls Band Party, nor do I, in any way, shape or form, intend to pretend that I do.

"I am going to enjoy this…" Tomoe muttered in a dangerously low voice, cracking her fingers before getting in position in front of her laptop and scanning her screen to see what she could do. Unfortunately for Tomoe, her avatar did not have a lot of flashy skills or moves to take advantage of because of its low level.

That did not stop Tomoe from trying to find a way to get back at Ran.

Tomoe's efforts were ultimately rewarded the moment she opened her inventory.

When Tomoe saw that she had a handgun available to her she thought the fight would be a short one. Based on the appearance of Ran's avatar, Tomoe figured that Ran wouldn't have the fastest character in the game. With that thought fueling her desire to finish the fight as soon as possible, Tomoe betted everything on her ability to attack from a distance and Ran's seeming lack of mobility and defensive capabilities.

Tomoe was right about the mobility part; Ran's avatar moved in a slow manner that left her open to the ranged assault Tomoe could bombard her with. The fight should have been a quick one in Tomoe's favor in the current situation…

"Why… won't… you… DIE?!"

Which was exactly why Tomoe looked on in shock as Ran's avatar scrambled back on its feet, the ninth gun wound contrasting nicely against Endymion's red body. It wasn't even that Tomoe's aim was that far off; quite the contrary, even. Tomoe managed to land eight of her nine shots around the upper part of Endymion's torso while the ninth had gone straight through Endymion's forehead.

But Endymion was miraculously still standing as if it didn't even take any damage at all.

"Don't you want to escape this prison?" Tomoe hissed through gritted teeth in the hopes of convincing Ran to throw the match. A soft voice in the back of the redhead's mind asked her why she couldn't take the high ground and forfeit the fight herself, but Tomoe knew that she was much too competitive to do that.

Unfortunately for Tomoe, she wasn't the only member of Afterglow inside the dome who was born with a competitive nature.

"Why do I have to be the one to die?" Ran was quick to respond with a question of her own, expecting a rebuttal from Tomoe but receiving silence instead. Despite the words leaving her mouth, Ran knew the reason; unlike Tomoe's avatar, Ran's avatar did not seem like it packed much of a punch. The easiest way for them to escape was for Ran to let Tomoe win, but this came with two big issues.

The first was that Ran was just as competitive as Tomoe was, if not more so. Ran hated to lose, she hated to admit defeat, but more than anything she hated showing her weak sides to her friends. Even after begrudgingly accepting that it would be for the best for Tomoe to win this impromptu fight Moca forced on them, Ran was presented with the second issue.

Her avatar just would not die. Ran knew that the attacks that Chaos managed to land on Endymion were significant, perhaps even decisive; each shot managed to slice off over half of Endymion's total health points with each hit, but Endymion managed to shake those hits off. The mechanical body of Ran's avatar was clearly showing the wounds from battle, but it was still alive.

'Maybe they don't have the same bodies we do, so a hit that would hit a vital organ in our bodies would not necessarily be a life-threatening hit to them?' Ran thought to herself in an effort to figure out what was going on. She knew better than to simply assume that the game was converting every aspect of the real world perfectly; the fact that none of the avatars Ran had seen so far even resembled any of their owners had been proof enough.

Ran had quickly figured out that while Tomoe could attack from a distance, the distance was still rather limited, so Ran took a few steps back to where she was outside Tomoe's range. It was only then that Ran dared to tear her gaze from her laptop's screen to see what state Tomoe was in.

Wondering if Tomoe had managed to pick up on as much as Ran had in the redhead's blind rage, Ran decided to take matters into her own hands.

"Don't you think something is wrong?" Ran asked Tomoe in as calm a voice as she could. To Tomoe's credit, she managed to pick up on this and made a conscious effort to calm down. As Tomoe was doing this, Ran seized the opportunity to try and talk some sense into her friend, "You can attack from a distance, but it doesn't seem like I am dying anytime soon."

"Could it be something with your avatar?" Tomoe thought out loud as she glanced back at her computer screen. After a moment's hesitation, she added, "My Chaos can attack from a distance with its gun, so maybe your avatar has an ability where you can recover your health at an absurd rate? Or where you would have invulnerability to damage at all?"

"Wouldn't having such a broken effect take away from the satisfaction and enjoyment of playing this game?" Ran asked with a frown, falling silent to allow Tomoe's earlier words to swim around in her mind. Ran's momentary distraction costed her dearly as Chaos had fired another shot at Endymion. It was only pure luck that the bullet whizzed past Endymion's side rather than hit Ran's avatar in its left shoulder.

As Tomoe cursed under her breath because her tenth shot was the first to not hit its mark, Ran berated herself for giving away such an opening to Tomoe in the first place. Even if Endymion wouldn't fall over and die easily, that did not mean that Ran could afford to be unfocused.

'Tomoe doesn't look like she is willing to talk this out,' Ran thought as she sat back down in front of her laptop. Although Ran was hurt that Tomoe would betray the momentary truce they had to fire a cheap shot at Endymion, Afterglow's vocalist managed to push these feelings away in a matter of seconds. With no emotions to weigh her down, Ran surprised herself when she realized that she was smiling.

Not only was she having a surprising amount of fun already, but Ran could feel her competitive side screaming at her to stop holding back. She could let loose and clash with Tomoe without any negative consequences.

A grin that could best be described as 'Moca-like' appeared on Ran's face as Ran tried to formulate a plan on how to fight back.

'Now what can you do to help me beat Tomoe and Chaos, Endymion?'

"What did you say?!"

Moca visibly winced at the outcry of her friend. Even though Moca had expected Himari's reaction, no amount of preparation would have prepared Moca's eardrums for what they would have to endure.

Moca and Himari were on their way back from a successful trip to the bakery when Himari had yelled those four words. The two girls were both carrying a paper bag filled with a handful of a variety of buns, the bag that Moca was carrying was visibly filled with more buns than Himari's, and were just about to re-enter the Hazawa household when they ran into Tsugumi.

Himari more so than Moca.

"Sorry about that, Tsugu," Himari said sheepishly, offering a hand to her fallen friend in the process. As Himari was helping Tsugumi, Moca had taken a hold of Himari's paper bag of buns and was currently hugging both bags as if her life depended on it. Knowing Moca's love for bread, neither Himari nor Tsugumi could deny the possibility that Moca was hugging both bags as if her life depended on it.

"That's okay, Himari-chan," Tsugumi said as she gave Himari a quick smile of reassurance. Himari was still looking apologetic even after this, something that did not go unnoticed by either of her friends, so Tsugumi tried to change the topic, "Let's hurry and get these to Ran-chan and Tomoe-chan, they must be hungry and thirsty after fighting in the game for so long."

"About that…" Himari trailed off with a menacing-looking glare directed at Moca, only to see that Moca had grown a surprising amount of interest in the Hazawa household's nameplate. Suppressing the urge to hit her friend for her attitude, Himari took a shuddering breath to try and calm herself down before attempting to get Moca to focus again, "Moca, are you going to explain what you just said?"

"I don't want to explain it twice, can't it wait until we're inside and Ran and Tomo-chin can listen, too?" Moca asked in return, not wasting any time to sidestep Himari and put herself in a position where Himari would need to go through Tsugumi to get to her. With her shield in place, Moca turned back to Himari and added with a triumphant grin, "You can either waste your time trying to get Moca-chan to spill her secrets, or get a move on and hear the truth~."

Even though Moca had technically given her friend a choice in the matter, she did not give a lot of time for Himari to give a response. As a matter of fact, Moca turned around the moment she had told Himari what she wanted to say and entered the Hazawa household before Himari had the chance to stop her.

The two girls who remained outside fell into a tense period of silence after Moca's departure. With Moca no longer within hearing distance for her to interrogate, Himari was finally free to try and process Moca's behavior and words without Moca breathing down her neck. Tsugumi, on the other hand, was left standing by Himari's side wondering what happened in the twenty minutes or so since she last saw her friends.

"Himari-chan and Moca-chan had this discussion going the whole trip to the bakery?" Tsugumi asked Himari, unsure what to say or how to lighten the mood. Thankfully for Tsugumi, Himari's brain took the sound of the brunette's voice as a reminder that Himari was not alone. This small reaction was all Tsugumi needed to know what to say next, "Let's hurry and join Moca-chan inside. The longer we are out here, the longer Himari-chan will have to wait to hear Moca-chan's answer."

Unable to argue with Tsugumi's line of reasoning, Himari allowed herself to be dragged inside by Tsugumi. Mentally, however, she was somewhere else entirely. More specifically, a single thought the bassist had since going to the bakery with Moca was still swimming around in her mind.

'Do I… or anyone, really… even know the real you?'

"Himari-chan?"

"Ah! Sorry, Tsugu, I must've zoned out there for a bit," Himari said with a sheepish grin, hoping that Tsugumi would accept Himari's excuse and drop the subject. In an effort to help Tsugumi achieve this, Himari looked around her for a possible distraction and said, "So how are Ran and Tomoe doing?"

"They are about done, it should not last long now…"

It wasn't Tsugumi who answered Himari's question, it was Moca. A Moca who was happily munching on one of the buns she had bought earlier. The bread-loving girl was quick to offer a bun to her friends before nodding her head in the direction she had walked from, "Ran and Tomo-chin are over there. If Chaos can beat Endymion, they will be free again."

"What do you mean by 'if'?" Himari had picked up on Moca's choice of words and was not about to let Moca squirm her way out of explaining it to her this time. With Tsugumi quick to follow Himari's example, Himari knew that Moca was in a losing battle.

"All right, you two got Moca-chan to talk, congratulations~," Moca sang with an exaggerated clapping motion. Moca dropped the act after only two seconds in favor of looking Himari in the eyes. Himari, in turn, took a small step back when she noticed the strong air of confidence in Moca's stance that was very unlike her usual playful confidence, "Haven't you two looked at your avatars at all since we played? Or wondered why they're all colored in one color with none of us sharing a color?"

"Now that you mention it…" Himari thought out loud as she took in what Moca was going at. It was, of course, only then that Himari remembered that she didn't do any of the things Moca had just said. Glancing at Tsugumi who was standing beside her, Himari was at least relieved to know that she wasn't the only one who was playing a few steps behind Moca, but this still left Himari with a big problem. Moca was, once again, walking in front of Himari and all that Himari could do was admit she had fallen behind, "So… do you have any idea what any of that means?"

"Just a theory, but Moca-chan is a genius so it's probably right~," Moca added the second part quickly with a triumphant smirk, one that only grew when she saw the look on Himari's face. It took Moca several seconds before she managed to stifle her laughter enough to where she was sure she would be audible again, "We already know that the avatars are pretty much unique to the player, but what if the avatars themselves hold some sort of hint to what they can do?"

"Like how Blue Chaos isn't made to be a ranged character?"

"Exactly~ as expected of our Tomo-chin~," Moca sang, seemingly unfazed by the redhead barging in on their conversation. Moca took the opportunity to throw the bun she bought for Tomoe to her friend and, without skipping a beat, added, "Does this mean that Ran and Tomo-chin figured it out~?"

"I wouldn't say that we 'figured it out' or anything… I learned that Chaos firing at Endymion wasn't working so I tried something else. Once I switched to close-range combat, Chaos did much better," Tomoe trailed off with a sheepish chuckle, not wanting to show off by saying that she had won the fight. It was still much too close for Tomoe to be comfortable with how the fight ended up; Chaos had managed to deal more damage than Endymion could negate after the two avatars switched to close-range combat, but Tomoe knew that if the fight had drawn out any longer she would have lost.

Tomoe glanced in Ran's direction and she saw that Ran had the same thought in mind. Chaos would not stand much of a chance once Endymion got stronger. All Tomoe could hope was that Chaos could keep up once everybody starts to strengthen their avatars.

The redhead then shook her head to try and get rid of these thoughts before deciding to play along with Moca, "But it sounds like Moca knows something that we don't. Care to share with the class?"

"I wonder~?" Moca tried acting innocent for a few seconds when one look from Tomoe convinced Moca she should be serious. With an exaggerated and drawn-out sigh, Moca dropped the facade and gave Tomoe the answer she wanted, "As Tomo-chin might have figured out already, Blue Chaos isn't a ranged character at all. So trying to use her as a ranged character is like trying to make Hii-chan lose weight."

"Hey!"

"In short, pretty meaningless and next to hopeless," Moca finished with a small shrug, completely ignoring Himari's outburst that interrupted her, "As Moca-chan said earlier, it was just a lucky guess. From what Ako-chin told me, players of the game Ako-chin plays built their characters to fit the role of the character. Ako-chin, for example, played a Necromancer role and her avatar had been made to fit that role."

"And since we skipped the avatar creating part of the game, you just assumed the avatars were already pre-programmed for the roles they would play?" Tomoe thought out loud, trying to follow along with Moca's line of thinking. Tomoe ended up receiving a nod of confirmation from Moca soon after, but this only opened the doors for the next question that had been bothering the redhead.

"But how did you figure out my character isn't a ranged character?" Tomoe asked, seeing to her surprise that Moca did not react to the question right away. Tomoe wasn't sure if this was because Moca didn't know the answer, didn't know how to explain it to her, or was just drawing out responding to Tomoe in order to annoy her. Knowing Moca, it could have been any of those three scenarios.

"Our avatars were made uniquely for the person who is going to use them," Moca explained, probably hoping or even expecting that the single sentence would have been enough of an answer. She soon realized that this was not the case and took a moment to think of a way to properly explain it to the taller girl, before trying again, "The game made the avatars for us based on what it knows about us. In other words, if the game is accurate, the avatars should be similar to the player. They would be similar to us. And Tomo-chin isn't the type of person to sit back and watch things unfold from afar, so Blue Chaos wouldn't be the type to attack from far away, either."

"I guess you're right…" Tomoe admitted, knowing that Moca made a pretty good point. If there was one person amongst them who would jump head-first into a situation, they all knew it would have been the redhaired drummer. To save what little face she could, Tomoe tried to change the subject soon after, "Are there any other things you are keeping from us?"

"Moca-chan isn't technically 'keeping stuff' away from everyone, it was just a guess is all," Moca explained as she handed Ran a bun as well. With everybody in Afterglow properly fed, Moca turned back to Tomoe with her signature smirk, "Moca-chan bets Moca-chan can find out more about the game than Tomo-chin can~."

"I'll take you up on that challenge!" Tomoe finished off the half-eaten bun in her hand in one big bite and rushed back to her laptop to try and get a head start. Tomoe would soon be followed by Moca calling out how Tomoe was being unfair and that Tomoe's longer legs gave her an advantage that Moca could only dream of.

This left Himari, Ran, and Tsugumi alone as they watched their two friends rush off. All of them had the same thought in mind, but none of them wanted to be the person to voice the thought in question. As a result, the three remaining girls ended up eating their buns in a prolonged period of silence.

A silence that eventually pushed one of them beyond their breaking points.

"You've played more than Tsugu and I have, what do you think of it so far?" Himari asked Ran in between two bites. Her voice seemed to catch Ran by surprise, the vocalist appearing to have been lost in her thoughts up until this point, so Himari asked her question again.

"I think so, though it depends on what else we learn about it," Ran explained after a moment to contemplate her answer. She then looked like she was about to say something else, but decided to save it for another time. Instead, Ran took her food with her and walked off in the direction Tomoe and Moca had run off to moments ago without waiting for either Himari or Tsugumi.

Himari and Tsugumi looked at each other to find a form of reassurance from the other. A sign that what they were about to do was what they should be doing in the first place.

The two girls nodded almost at the same time and followed their friends' lead. After all, if this was the path they were meant to walk on then they could not afford to fall too much behind.

'If Moca-chan and Tomoe-chan remain as determined as they were just now, then I have to work hard, too!' Tsugumi thought to herself. Himari, who was walking right by the brunette's side, had a very similar thought swimming around in her mind as she rejoined the game once again.

Okay, I will admit: I originally gave the colors of the avatars mainly as that easter egg/reference kind of thing to the first fandom I wrote and published for. However, as LightZephyr pointed out while we discussed how this chapter should go, it turns out that the colors I gave them fitted the avatars' playing style like how I envisioned them (I will probably have to be a bit creative with Tsugumi's and Rinko's, but hey… that's only part of the challenge). Long story short, the franchise that helped inspire the game-setting of Shining Sunlight also incorporated avatars with specific colors. And the colors were always strongly correlated to the avatar's supposed playing style. I knew about this… I just didn't originally assign their respective colors with that rule in mind.

Anyways, that's all for today's chapter! I hope you enjoyed it, please leave a review telling me what you thought, and until next time! Take care!