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Merelisa Shaynore     In the empty sky above an idyllic canopy of green, a sparkle of light pops into existence like a new star. The tiny sparkle spins around itself faster and faster, until expanding to open up into a yawning portal in the sky, peeking into an extradimensional tunnel of black with high-speed streaks of iridescence. After a few seconds, a spaceship launches out of it, careening wildly through the air with a muffled ''Wahhhhhhhhhhhhh--!'' coming from inside, until its unstable spiraling crashes it in the forest below.

    At the same time, a new warpgate destination links into the network, already flashing with a distress signal from the spaceship beyond. The alarm comes through as a warbling MIDI tone, eventually decoded into 'CRASH' and 'HELP', without any further information coming through. Almost nothing is known about the planet it's coming from, either-- until just now, there was no warpgate for easy transport, and no known sapient life, so it's completely uncharted, and whoever responds has to be ready for anything.

    Starting with the fact that there is, in fact, still no real Warpgate. Instead, the wormhole spits you out a hundred feet above the trees, after an unusual growing roar like air rushing by your ears at incredible speed, suddenly cutting out to silence except for the sound of birds tweeting and a faint lingering twinkling noise. There's a moment where glittering lights hang around you in the air, letting you slowly glide down towards the clearing where the spaceship crashed, until they vanish and you plummet the rest of the way.

    The trees you fall past are incredibly tall, with thick branches and trunks all like redwoods, like they're normal trees scaled way up. After breaking through however many branches there are between you and the ground, the clearing of dirt where the spaceship fell is just starting to have the dust settle from the crash. The spaceship, embedded upside down in the ground, is a bright pink and cutesy egglike shape, bedazzled with painted-on stars and hearts, its single heart-shaped porthole for exit sticking straight up a dozen feet in the air. After a few seconds, it hisses open, and a dizzy-looking girl clambers out, fumbling around for the ground, missing, and then faceplanting in the dirt. A second girl pokes her head out after, blearily asks, "Is it safe, lun?", before falling out the exact same way and landing on the first girl, bouncing and rolling off.

    "Uwawawawa...." The first girl pulls her face up from the dirt with a whine and a pained expression, which vanishes instantly when she sees the Elites. She springs to her feet, hands wide apart above her head in an explosion of excitement that lifts her up in a hop, exclaiming loudly, "--Aliens!!!"

    "Hello! I'm Hoshina Hikaru! I love stars and constellations! And as a Precure, I'm traveling and protecting the universe along with my--" Hikaru cuts off, distracted mid-sentence, and scurries over to the second girl, still lying on the ground, and picks her up by the collar of her jacket, shaking her a bit while her head lolls around weakly. "Lala? Hey, Lala? Are you okay?" "Oyo...."
Merelisa Shaynore     Both Hikaru and Lala appear to be teenage girls, each with identical pendants around their necks, circular with a heart and circumscribed star on them. Hikaru has hot pink eyes and hair, worn in twintails with a blue headband with stars patterning one side, and a pink ruffled blouse underneath short, sporty overalls. Lala has green hair and eyes, with button-pins on either side of her head with pink hearts, along with a retrofuturistic bolero jacket over a white dress, and a belt-pouch styled like a ringed planet. She also, on further inspection, has pointed ears, and sprouting out of either side of her head are long, thin tendrils like antennae, ending in little yellow orbs that seem fully prehensile.

    Neither of them look like galaxy-hopping material, as Hikaru shakes Lala around worriedly while she blearily un-spirals her eyes from the impact. It's hard not to match the aesthetic designs of their outfits, and those pendants they're wearing, to the heart-and-star-covered spaceship though, and they undeniably did come out of that wormhole still rippling in the sky. They don't seem wounded-- Lala is just dazed and a bit scuffed-up-- but the spaceship is in dire condition, dented with cracks along its large windows, and a fin missing from the symmetrical trio that obviously should be on the bottom.

    Eventually Lala comes to with a shocked "Lun?!" and pops to her feet, brushing dirt off her dress and bowing frantically in apology. "I'm sorry for the undignified first impression! My name is Lala, lun! Investigator, Eighth Rank, from the planet Samaan, lun! Are you the inhabitants of this planet?"
Echolalia Echolalia is very excited to help a spaceship in need. She leaps through the Warpgate without a second thought.

And then... She falls! She screams as she plummets until she says, "Oh wait I can fly!"

Her wings pop out of her back and flaps a few times as her descent slows down, glancing around until she sees the spaceship and landing lightly on the ground.

''--Aliens!!!''

Echolalia is surprised to see two kids hop out of the spaceship. She doesn't argue against being an alien. She sort of is one, after all! But she smiles and waves a hand towards Hoshina Hikaru before--

''I'm Hoshina Hikaru! I love stars and constellations! and something about a precure? You bet!''

"Oh! I'm Echolalia, I love stars and constellations too! Is your friend okay?"

Lala does seem okay, though Echolalia can only judge based on how she looks and acts. Neither of them look galaxy-hopping material. Echolalia does but her wings vanish now that she no longer needs them and she's trying to parse the latest introduction.

''My name is Lala, lun! Investigator.''

"Oh nice to meet you Lala..." A long hesitating moment where she's unsure if she's supposed to add 'Lun' to that or not but she said Lun before saying it. Maybe she's Lun Lala Lun? Just using Lala should be safe. Hikaru used the name Lala. It's a good thing everybody calls her Echo over Lali or even Lalia even if she'd very much prefer that, specifically, for today.

"Investigator Eighth Rank... Wow..." Echolalia says, clearly thinking this is actually a much bigger deal than is strictly the case.

"Um, we are actually Outsiders here too. We heard a Distress Call and we came to help! I'm Echolalia, I love stars and constellations and I also travel around and protect the universe...! I'm happy to tell you both all about Ran sometime...!"

Now she actually takes a moment to get a look for exactly where they are. "Geeze if only Mia was here she could probably repair the ship... But I wonder what kind of place is this."
Hiromi     Hiromi is not here. Hisako, a favorite among her miko, is. Her ears and tail, the same brown as her hair, certainly mark her as a possible alien, though the red and white mode of dress tends to be familiar to Earthlings. Her bow is slung when she appears through the wormhole, and her ornate bronze gauntlets are on her hands, ready to encounter danger -- though not ready to be falling through the air.

    Her "Ahhhh!" fades away to a "Huh...?" when her acceleration downwards doesn't continue, but she is instead gliding toward the point of interest. "Um? Hello? Thank... you?"

    Then she's falling again. "Ahhh!"

    A number of branches break before she gets ahold of one tree with her hand, which immediately causes loud, splitting damage to the tree, but leaves her arm surprisingly intact. She slides down while hopping between trunks for the final few tens of meters. It might be good that the people she's gone to help didn't see the first part, and might be too bad they didn't come out quickly enough to see the last part.

    'I'm Hoshina Hikaru! I love stars and constellations!'

    Hisako strikes a pose with fist-to-palm and bows. "I'm Hisako. I love... um, running in the woods. I'm traveling and training on my... own." The fact that she isn't nearly the only person to respond to the distress call leaves the last part with an implied question mark of uncertainty, and instability on her feet.

    'Are you the inhabitants of this planet?'

    "Oh, no, my home is across the sea." She doesn't know what 'planet' means.
Rita Ma      Is it going to be hot? Cold? An airless rock? Rita spends much too long fretting over her outfit. She settles on her usual dress shirt and skirt combo, substituting the lighter cropped jacket for something warm but easily-sheddable.

     There. Surely she's accounted for every possib--

     "Ah--?"

     (Isn't your life supposed to flash before your eyes?) she has just enough time to think. (Wait, but I'll live, so maybe you don't see it if--) "Aaaaa!!!" Thump.

     Rita, fortunately, is a tough girl. She sits up in the clearing, rubs the back of her head blearily, coughs up dust, and sheds her jacket when the temperature has time to seep into her skin. Standing, she offers a hand up to whoever's landed near her, and looks around to find...

     "--Aliens!!!"
     Forgetting that she looks perfectly human right now, Rita covers herself up with her arms and flinches back as if she were being called out as obscene. "What?? No!! I'm--"

     "And as a Precure, I'm..."
     Oh thank goodness. So they're familiar with strange afflictions. In her daze to beat the alien allegations, Rita forgets her ideologically-consistent stance that she isn't sick. "... That! I'm pre-cure too."

     "I'm Rita Ma! Um, from Earth! It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm here to help you; I think we all are! At least, I heard there was a crash, and I don't see any other spaceships, so..."

     After offering a hand to shake, she steps back, crosses her arms behind her back, and taps the ground with the toe of her foot awkwardly while looking around. It's hard not to be captivated by the towering trees for a while! She's tree-beautyscaling them against the one back home. But then something jars her.

     "... Lala, Hikaru, why'd you come here? Does this planet need saving too? If you just want to go back home, I can just..." She mimes throwing, meekly. At the warpgate, a hundred feet up.
Combaticon "Last-nanoclick assignment. Warpgate investigation. Let's go."
"Slag yeah!"
"Uh-- sure. No problem. I can carry you both."

    A jet black helicopter with glowing red canopy glass drops suddenly through the portal, spinning wildly from the instability of the transit. There's a good deal of shouting and static sounds as the vehicle struggles to regain control. Descending at an entirely unsafe speed through the overgrowth, it manages to hit the ground at a mostly safe velocity-- bouncing once on the gear, dragging a long skid in the grass with the rear tires, before coming to a stop.

    The canopy hisses, rises, then splits in half-- the front half sliding forward while the back half slides backward. Immediately, a pale blue and white robot spills out onto the ground with a hiss of static. In the cockpit's back seat, a much larger green robot shakes with laughter.

    "You gotta check your gyro, Depthcharge!" Grasping the canopy edge, the largest of the duo hauls herself up and out, slamming into the ground with heavy steps. She reaches down, collecting the smaller of the pair in one hand and picking her up to place her back on her feet, "That was nothin'."

    Depthcharge wobbles when set down, but manages to stay upright. As she recovers, she whirls on thehelicopter itself, "The only 'bot who needs a gyro adjustment is this hunk of junk."

    "I couldn't help it!" The third voice comes from the helicopter itself. Panels unseal and lift up, the entire vehicle unzipping and rearranging its components, simultaneously shrinking down into a third humanoid black and gray robot, "You don't even know what kind of turbulance that was. Idiot."

> "--Aliens!!!"

    The cybertronian trio cease their bickering, glancing towards the two crash survivors. Brawl's big red visor clicks, dimming for a second in a way that could be a blink. After a moment, she places her hands on her hips with the faint clink of metal on metal."Well, you ain't wrong."

    "Are you two undamaged?" The smaller black and gray robot asks, taking a step forward, "We were sent after the distress beacon. Is there any other crew?"

    The midsized blue and white machine folds her arms, eyes dimming as if closed. In a low voice, she mutters, "Organics again." One eye lights up crimson and she unfolds one arm, projecting a hologram from her wrist, speaking louder, "Well. Let us see what the damage is."

    The big green 'bot straightens her posture, "Name's Brawl. The little one here is Vortex, and the moody one's Depthcharge. How did you wind up here? Doesn't seem like it was on purpose." She leans back, glancing up at the wormhole/warpgate through the treetops.
Futaba Nuki When a warpgate like this appears out of nowhere, it's only natural to jump right into it. That's the sort of thinking Futaba operates on, and it's just the thing she needs to get her head back on straight. With only a quick message back home telling everyone not to wait on her for dinner, she makes sure to get her scarf on straight before stepping right on in and finding herself much higher than she probably should be. Letting her honed ninja instincts kick in, she flips herself backwards and tucks in for what's sure to be a sick landing, but...

The landing sure is taking a while, isn't it? From that height, it should've only been a few seconds, but she's still spinning and still hasn't felt the ground. Eventually, Futaba stops spinning, noticing that she's only floating down slowly, and she props her head up on her palms as she settles into a prone position instead. "Huh. Ain't th-"

And then the sparkles vanish, and she falls flat on her entire front side. Futaba holds that position while trying not to let it be known that she just bit her tongue super hard on that unexpected landing, opting to stay quiet while she looks over her surroundings.

By the time to spaceship opens, the pain's subsided, but she still hasn't gotten up yet. Playing it cool, she peers at the pair of faceplanters, smirking when the pink one calls her and everyone else aliens. "Aliens? But you're the one comin' out of a spaceship!"

Laughing cheerfully, Futaba finally springs to her feet, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her track jacket while kicking her feet up dramatically as she saunters on over. "Futaba Nuki, eater of snacks and ninja hero, at your service. Uhh." She leans over, peering at the green one. "She gonna be okay?"

Noting the heart and astrology (astronomy? She'll look it up later) motif on both of them, the ninja strokes her chin lightly while her ears twitch idly atop her head. She lets out a relieved sigh when Lala gets herself together, waving her hand dismissively/reassuringly (?) at her bows. "Aah, don't worry about it. Not every introduction can be a winner, but you've gotta try 'em all to figure which ones are. Anyway. Name's Futaba, and I'm from Earth! Can't say I've been here before, so I'm-"

A beat, and then she nods with a dramatic little shrug. "Okay, I guess I am an alien to this place. Think we should try to blend in a little better?" As she says that, she transforms her head into that of a stereotypical 90s alien, complete with fourteen head and fully black eyes. "Or... Uh. Is your ship gonna be okay?" She asks while faking a nasally voice badly and gesturing at the girls' upside-down spaceship.

Another pause, and then she looks between Hikaru and Lala. "... Also, what's a Precure?"
Corona Arclite New warpgate, distress call for help, hardly the strangest start to an adventure that we've seen.

The 'warpgate' exiting into the middle of open sky, that's a bit more of a complication.

Fortunately for Corona she was riding on her hoverbike and after a bit of disorientation is able to throttle up the turbines to 'catch' when they drop out of the slow descent and keep from accelerating much farther downward. Terminal velocity is not something she wants to start the introduction to this outing.

Dropping past the giant alien foliage the hoverbike hits the ground with a bounce, a skip, and then a skid to the side as it has the downside of not having any actual traction until it thuds into the side of one of the giant tree trunks and ends up at a kitty-wampus angle against it. While Corona tumbles off over the handlebars.

The foxy woman clad in modified duster and stetson is quick to spring back onto her feet and dust herself off. "Well, ya know what they say 'bout any crash ya can walk 'way from." Then ambles over towards the rest of the gathering around the impact site. "Speakin' of crashes... Howdy, ma'ams." Said stetson hat is grabbed in one hand on top and tipped towards the ones she presumes are the survivors of the crash being they're the ones she doesn't at least vaguely recognize in some way.

Then a pause. Her tail flicks. "Well, technically, we'd be aliens too, since this ain't our world."
Lilian Rook     Given her last deployment was a(n extremely weird) formal dinner with a new hire, and before that, and before that, a relaxed five day planning session aboard a ship, and security detail for a conference, and before that-- Lilian takes distress call almost the instant it's sorted into the priority board, uncertain of whether to feel relief or immediate regret.

    As one of if not the fastest responder the Paladins have on call, split-second emergency unknowns like this one sort almost immediately to her line during ops triage; so Lilian is used to them, occasionally enthused and occasionally vexed by them, and never bored of them. She exits through dispatch at Aegis Astray with high hopes of escaping yet another crowded social mission full of the same old faces and leaping right into fiery action. The shocking descent from low airspace is promising; Lilian course-corrects with her antigravitic magic before she can even be startled, even accelerating to reach the crash site faster. Her few experiences in space have prepared her for--

    Not this.

    "Huh?"

    Just the sight of the completely absurd little spaceship is enough to shock her into silence. To Lilian, space means vast arks of long-dead aliens floating lost in the void as cold, high-tech tombs. This is just too . . .

    "Cute . . . ?"

    Lilian lets the word hang as the pair of girls bumble out of the hatch and make the exact same pratfall landing. They look totally normal to her. What was with that weird message? They're using-- is that Japanese? Lilian temporarily dedicates about 110%% of her brain's available resources to working this out, chugs through the backlog of things she has to file away for later, and then mentally loads that she's being spoken to about three seconds late. She only catches up after staring pensively off into space with the same look on her face as focusing on a very important phone call.

    'Hello! I'm Hoshina Hikaru! I love stars and constellations! And as a Precure, I'm traveling and protecting the universe along with my--'

    "Ah. Hold on. This is an emergency, isn't--?" Lilian says in slightly shellshocked Japanese. Using the same language as a stranger is the quickest way to convince them that you're normal, after all. "Beg pardon, but I don't know what a 'precure' is. Could you slow down a moment? Is anyone injured? How many are in your crew?" Lilian says, counting Lala with her eyes and then growing more stilted as she looks very hard at the ship and tries to force herself to imagine there are four or five adults in there who are fleeing an exploded planet with two teens they took on board beacuse someone gave up their seat.

    About ten seconds later, Lilian jolts straight and says, "And I'm not in an alien!" She can't help herself thereon. "Or, rather, if you're not native to this planet, aren't you aliens?"

    'I'm sorry for the undignified first impression! My name is Lala, lun! Investigator, Eighth Rank, from the planet Samaan, lun! Are you the inhabitants of this planet?'

    Oh thank god. The other one is normal.
Lilian Rook     "It's a pleasure to meet you, Lala. I'm--" Lilian thinks very hard about the proper address in return for someone who seems to culturally accept that Job and Rank is the correct introduction to strangers. "--Lilian, Commmander, Immune, Ring of Solstice . . . lun?" Lilian purses her lips at trying to figure that out. It's not an honorific or anything, right? And it's not placed like an 'over'. What function does it serve? Trying it out didn't make anything clearer.

    'Are you the inhabitants of this planet?'

    "I'm afraid not. I arrived here just the same as you." Lilian says, silently congratulating herself for not showing up armed. Her armour and accessorization is probably pushing it already for poor, sweet, innocent Japanese Teenager And Alien Friend, the most docile and soft-hearted arrangement of beings known to humanity. "May I inquire what sort of business lead you here?" Please say planetary explosion. Pleeeaaaase.
Lilian Rook     'That! I'm pre-cure too.'

    §Ohhh. Of course. How did I not realize?§

    'I'm Rita Ma! Um, from Earth! It's a pleasure to meet you.'

    §Wait, was I supposed to specify Earth? No that just goes without saying right?§

    'I'm Hisako. I love... um, running in the woods.'

    "--Hisako?"

    Whatever explanation there is for Lilian turning around and looking surprised is probably unremarkable.

    'Organics again.'

    "Could we perhaps refrain from being racist towards the cute children who fell out of the little pink rocketship for ten seconds?"

    'Okay, I guess I am an alien to this place. Think we should try to blend in a little better?'

    Lilian makes a relieved vocalization. Excellent. So everyone is on the same page. "Yes. We should--"

    §Oh my god why a martian.§

    "--introduce ourselves, to each other. Since I don't know you." Lilian says, lifelessly.
Combaticon > "Could we perhaps refrain from being racist towards the cute children who fell out of the little pink rocketship for ten seconds?"

    "It's no different than you calling us 'Robots'. Get over yourself. Not every designation is an insult." Depthcharge replies without glancing up from her scanner readout.
Natsuki Nuki During her time in Concord Acquisitions, Natsuki was taught by her seniors and mentors that some of the most opportune times in the development of new connections to the warpgate network was in the first six hours. If there was a world-collapsing crisis, a first claim to be made, or a tumultuous choice to make - the first six hours was when it usually happened.

So, of course, Natsuki got the hottest leads sent right to the top floor suite of her club in Osaka, to see if any lit her opportune sense on fire. It was just...

After interacting with her baby sister - the blessed Futaba - Natsuki couldn't really feel satisfied with a deal well closed and her books firmly in the black. Even with everything else set up, it wasn't the dull-aching scar of her father that drove her to dissatisfaction but her vapidly uncomprehending sister's dull eyes still so far away from the truth.

"How am I going to get that sister of mine?" Natsuki schemed at her desk, clacking keys pressed and pointer-perusing one fresh lead, under an hour old. Something that...



Across her desk, with a big brick satellite cell-phone, reclined her brother Takeshi. The short tanuki-late-teen was still chewing on the crossword for the day on rolled newspaper when he took the call, looking up at his oldest sister with a hoping-he-wasn't-interrupting hopeful 'ahem'.

"Well, Futaba just called out of dinner." Takeshi informs, then pulls other hand off phone-mouth to downshift and murmur a quick "Oh sure mom I'll come home."

Meanwhile a thrush-cry laugh emits from Natsuki's throat, 'hyoo-hyoo-hyoo' with a curling-purr ending while "... and I've found something exactly like that idiot baby sister would go for! It's perfect!"

Takeshi has to turn away and shield the receiver, but Natsuki doesn't notice his 'Nothing mom, just the wind' in her rush to pick an outfit and leap out the window to make the warpgate in downtown Osaka.

---
Natsuki Nuki Appearing mid-step in empty air in a 'street fashion' disguise, Natsuki is a white-blonde haired vaguely Osakan Tanuki-tiger hybrid with a black chitin-scaled serpentine headed tail. She wears a white puffy jacket over a black silk button-up, white and yellow skirt that her tail escapes over the top of, puffy hanging socks about her ankles, and designer white sneakers that are probably for basketball but have never seen a court with tiger pins and patches already applied.

Natsuki dips slightly in the hanging sparkles while dark mist clouds and coagulates under her. Held, for just a second, the chimera woman crosses her arms and balances on her dark-spreading layer under her and then catches a snap-to sight of her sister and pounces immediately with a growling-triumphant I-told-you-so "There you are!", springing across the empty air and off her cloud platform to tackle her slowfalling sister.

This goes poorly for Futaba, when the younger Nuki falls out of the air.

This goes poorly for Natsuki, when her target drops and she overshoots, tumbling her own self down the quickly-oncoming Extremely Long Large Forest Of Infinite Branches (Failed QTE edition). As she falls, momentum broken by tree-mass, the stormcloud she had perched on before drops as if called out of the sky, racing and zigzagging through the branches to gather once more around Natsuki before she reaches the ground . . .

. . . leading her to, smoothly, float out of the treeline like nothing happened, running a dark-fuzzed hand over her hair to return it to the state pre-branching and pristine and using the rake of black-nailed fingers to get the leafy vegetation from out of her bangs.

'Aliens? But you're the one comin' out of a spaceship!'

While Hikaru gets her 'uwawawa'-s out of the way, Natsuki has plenty of runway to trot off her cloud with a hop, approach Futaba from behind, and swat an arm onto shoulder to give her sister a little reminder. "And we just dropped out of the sky. Are you from here?" Two sets of red eyes, one high, corrective-knowing and sisterly, and one low, serpentine-swayed about the sister's other side, glare at Futaba. "No wonder you didn't notice I was gone."

Turning back to the investigator (eighth rank) and her travelling precure companion, she remembers to introduce herself with a fist to side and fanged grin. "I'm this undignified alien creature's older sister, Natsuki."

Natsuki is able to keep that confident 'I'm the much better version' cool grin for a heartbeat and a half before the eyes on her serpentine tail spot Futaba getting out her best Culturally Insensitive Ayy head to embarrass everyone.

Gripping Futaba by the back of the head and rattling them into they were normal again wasn't an option, but Natsuki still tried to scruff and rattle the Gray Futayyba until she stopped being a doofus while chiding her.

"Stop. You're embarrassing *both* of us!" She hisses.
Sarracenia      Distress signal! That means people in trouble, which means more heroic adventures! Sarracenia has the Sundew Sovereign prepared immediately for departure and the airship takes off at top speed toward the area.

     When they reach the area though, it seems it is only a small wormhole instead of a proper gate. So, Sarra is forced to leave the magnificent Spanish galleon-style warship that is her airship and dive in.

     Which lets her out...in midair! She blinks in surprise before laughing. She has plenty of experience skydiving thanks to her power-ups and so just enjoys the trip down, swaying this way and that with her arms held out to steer herself. Her hair and dress flutter terribly in the wind, but she is grinning the entire way down.

     It is only when they near the trees that she finally pulls out a power-up. Her customary leaf power up. But, just as she is about to use it she is surrounded by those lights. She floats with them for a few moments...until their sudden release makes her yelp and quickly use the power up to gain the usual raccoon ears and tail. She navigates canopy safely and lands in front of the egg ship.

     And...peers at it in a combination of suspicion and intrigue. The only people she knows who might use egg things are Eggman and Petra, and that puts her on guard. At least until those two girls stumble out. The princess giggles just a bit.

     'Aliens!!!'

     "I am not an ali-! ...wait, I suppose I am an alien to another alien." She shrugs and smiles, then waits as they try to shake off the impact. When they introduce themselves she curtseys and smiles. "Hello! I am Princess Sarracenia Sundew, Crown Princess of the Sundew Kingdom~ Please to meet you both! I do not live on this planet, but I do like stars!"

     'And as a Precure, I'm traveling and protecting the universe along with my--'

     "Precure?" Sarracenia is unfamiliar with that term. But, the girls look like magical girls to her. "Is that some sort of magical girl?" she asks.

     Sarra takes note of the others here after that. She offers a wave to Rita. She stares for a few moments at the Combaticons. While a transforming vehicle is somewhat cool, their banter is not as cool. The Nuki clan also receives a wave in greeting with a bit of preference toward Natsuki since she seems to be a fan of princesses. The miko with wolf(?) ears and a tail and the actual fox are unknown to her, but both receive a greeting similar to the one she gave the magical girls. She also looks Corona over with interest. Points for being a fox, for having some definite style, and perhaps most of all...a cool hoverbike. "Oooh. Where did you get that?"

     And of course...Lilian is here. Sarra has already introduced herself at least twice, so she figures she is covered in the introduction category.
Lilian Rook     'I'm this undignified alien creature's older sister, Natsuki.'

    §Oh thank god.§

    "A pleasure to meet you. I'm happy to hear that you'll be accompanying her on this trip. It appears to be her first time." Lilian says, very formally, staring really closely at Natsuki bullying Futaba.

    'It's no different than you calling us 'Robots'. Get over yourself. Not every designation is an insult.'

    Lilian takes a deeeeeeeeeeeeep breath, squares her shoulders, turns away from the Precures (so they can't read her lips, and speaks in a very harsh stage whisper, "No one here is muttering 'Robots again' like a snotty little complaint under their breath where everyone can see. They're children. So be nice."

    'Hello! I am Princess Sarracenia Sundew, Crown Princess of the Sundew Kingdom~'

    Challenge Quest unlocked! Lilian - Be Nice [Extreme]
Hiromi     "Oh, a ninja hero--!" Hisako's tone of admiring appreciation, whether for ninjas or for heroes, is cut off when Futaba becomes an unknown creature. Worse, an unknown creature with huge, all-black eyes. Hisako makes a startled sound, coming on guard with a whispered, "A shapeshifter?!" That's probably not good.

    The introduction of a sibling has her keeping her distance, though now more out of confusion. "Or... an illusion?" Still whispering.

    Lilian's appearance is more firmly welcome. "Oh, Lilian! You're here, too! You haven't been back in so long. Yuki asked me if I'd seen you, just the other day." Hisako's stance relaxes immediately, and she bounds over. "Sumi didn't say much, but..." Possibly carrying by tone a 'but she usually doesn't,' "...should I let you know when she's back from her trip, too?" So that they could meet again.
Corona Arclite Right, introductions. It's been a while since Corona's seen 'new' people so she kinda forgot that. "Corona Arclite. Engineer. Gadgeteer. Gunslinger." And just leaves it at that because the first two are hopefully going to be more important than the latter for this task.

Besides that's all she's really got to say when there's other things to focus on, like the wreck of the magical girl spaceship. She ambles over to see how Depthcharge's inspection is going
Futaba Nuki "There you are!"

"... Sis?!" Futaba blurts out in surprise just before that landing, but not quickly enough to not bite her tongue on landing. It most certainly did not go well for her at all, no matter how hard she tries to casually pose like a gray rabbit.

She's able to stand up properly by the time Natsuki comes out of the trees, too, looking excited like she did during their first meeting in so long. She snickers in that semi-embarrassed 'aw, caught again' kind of way, too. "I'd be way longer if we were from around here. Gotta match up with those trees and all!" She chimes in with a snicker, then gets that actual-guilt slump at the follow up.

She doesn't actually have anything cringe-witty to say about that.

Futaba does, however, go back to her usual loosey-goosey cheerfulness by the time Natsuki's shaking her around. "Abababa... Relaax! I'm only embarrassing you!" She shouts with a doppler-esque reverb as her head smears back into its usual configuration of human-y-but-masked before long. Her legs wobble around beneath her while Natsuki still has that hold on her head, too, but she still keeps it together long enough to wave over at Sarracenia in greeting.

"I'm happy to hear that you'll be accompanying her on this trip. It appears to be her first time."
"A shapeshifter?!"

"Pfft. Ain't that the case for everyone here, Miss Rook? I mean, sis is the coolest and all, but still!" Snickering despite the dizziness, Futaba plants her feet into the ground to steady herself enough. "I'm at least... Like. Seventy percent there."

Peering at Hisako, she raises a hand stiffly and waves, then stretches her arm waaay over to offer her a noodly handshake. "Shapeshifter, no illusions here! Still haven't mastered that ninja skill yet, but one day!"
Hiromi     Hisako, who knows more about shapeshifters than handshakes, tests Futaba's hand for being an illusion by poking it. She still has her gauntlets on, so it's fine if she touches something strange.
Merelisa Shaynore "... That! I'm pre-cure too."

    Hikaru's eyes widen with near-literal sparkles and excitement, and Lala's antennae scrunch up in shock as her mouth gapes open. Hikaru dashes past her outstretched hand like slipping within the reach of a sword, darting around her to inspect Rita up and down much *more* thoroughly, which was exactly the opposite of what she'd hoped.

    "*You're* a Precure too?! I thought it was just me and Lala! What's your name?! I'm--"

    Hikaru backs up to form ranks with Lala again, striking a pose with her hand stuck in the air, matched by Lala confusedly also striking a pose (feet shoulder-width, hands in a heart in front of her chest) before even recovering from her stunlock. "--The twinkling star that shines throughout the universe! Cure Star!"

    "And I'm... the Milky Way... stretching across the heavens...? Cure Milky--? Hold on, Hikaru, aren't we getting ahead of ourselves, lun?! She doesn't have a Star Color Pendant, lun?!" Lala breaks her pose to point at Rita's chest, and Hikaru curls a finger in front of her mouth to lean in and squint for a closer look. "Oh... what kind of Precure are you? Are you American?"

"Investigator Eighth Rank... Wow..."

    Echolalia's awe at her title makes Lala stiffen up a bit, one of her antennae squirming around to scratch at the back of her head awkwardly. "Oh... I'm okay, lun. Eighth rank isn't actually... very high... sorry...."

"I'm Hisako. I love... um, running in the woods."
"Oh! I'm Echolalia, I love stars and constellations too!"
"Anyway. Name's Futaba, and I'm from Earth!"

    Meanwhile, Hikaru has immediately busied herself with invading as many people's personal spaces as possible, in order to prod at their appendages. With a constant stream of 'oooohh's and 'ahhhhh's, she pokes at Echolalia's wings before they pull away, gasping in surprise when they do, then scurries behind Hisako to tug on her ears, then on Futaba's ears too.

    "Nice to meet you all! How are you all so *different* from each other even though you're on the same planet? Are you part of the Starscape Alliance? Hey, hold on, you're from Earth? But you--" While she's questioning Futaba's status as an Earthling, Futaba's head melts away under her hands, and Hikaru yelps in shock and bounces backwards away. Her complaint, though, isn't that she seems scared at all. "Hey, I'm an Earthling, and I can't do that at all!"

    Hikaru looks around at the others who've proclaimed their earthly origins, or, for Lilian, started talking in Japanese, trying to figure out in her head how this could possibly be the case after toppling out of a wormhole in a spaceship. When she comes to her conclusion, she leaps up from where Futaba and Natsuki's appearance knocked her onto her butt, and stands in front of Lala with her arms spread to either side defensively. "Wait, you're not the government, are you?! We're just filming a movie, if you are!"

"--Lilian, Commmander, Immune, Ring of Solstice . . . lun?"

    Lala puffs out a cheek at some part of Lilian's greeting, but steps beside Hikaru to direct one of her glowing yellow antennae-orbs at Lilian sort of like a... handshake? "I don't think they're with the government, lun. If the Earth government could travel to other planets, then the Starscape Alliance wouldn't even need us to hide from them. But then..." Lala raises her wrist up to her mouth, speaking into a gem embedded into an armwarmer, that has LED readings and displays inside of it, like a three-dimensional screen. "AI? What planet are we on?"
Merelisa Shaynore     The spaceship dimly lights up, pulsing in time with the digitized voice emanating from the armwarmer device. "Uncertain. My processors took quite a lot of damage within the wormhole, and my ability to connect to local data sources has been cut off along with my radar. However, checking the databases I have available to me, I have determined... that I do not know. There is no record of a planet like this within the Starscape Alliance's databases."

    "Oyo... then where...."

"We were sent after the distress beacon. Is there any other crew?"
"Is anyone injured? How many are in your crew?"
"Or... Uh. Is your ship gonna be okay?"
"May I inquire what sort of business lead you here?"

    Now Hikaru joins Lala in dropping her head and getting serious. Both of them look back to the open porthole a dozen feet in the air on their busted-up spaceship, Hikaru lingering on it for a few seconds longer like she's expecting a third person to come out.

    "We were... trying to escape from the Nottraiders, after they found us while we were looking for a part of Yuma on a planet." Lala chimes in to make Hikaru's explanation make more sense. "The Nottraiders are always after them, but they're our friend, so we became Precures to protect them, lun." "Mhm, yeah. But they got too close, so when Yuma tried to warp us away, their ship came along in the wormhole... and so they kept attacking, and we got in an accident."

    "We ended up crashing here, but Yuma's gone! They got separated from us somewhere in the wormhole, so they're probably lost on this planet somewhere...." "And my ship's all messed up and can't launch anymore...."

    So there was a *third* crew member, but not 'an adult', probably. It sounds like 'Yuma' is a peer of theirs, and the three of them just operate this spaceship themselves. No wonder it looks like it was decorated by, well, a couple of very ambitious teenage girls.

    It's only once the forest starts to come to life again that you realize how quiet it had been. The shock of the ship crash landing scared every little critter into hiding and shushed the birdsong, and once one brave chirp breaks the silence, all the others follow. The ambient sound of mating calls and animal cries doesn't exactly match a typical Earth forest, as you quickly realize-- there's strange chittering noises and clicking like machinery, and the steps of what has to be some *massive* animals occasionally rumble the ground.

    *Everything* seems kind of massive, actually. Not just the trees, but even the brush on the ground, like the grass and herbs, grow higher than any of your heads. 'Twigs' are as thick as your torso, boulders the size of Hikaru and Lala's spaceship have moss so thick that you'd be wading up to your chest in it, and suddenly, that birdcall feels a lot more worrying, if its source is scaled the same way.

    Hikaru and Lala yelp and grab at each other when a heavy footstep in the woods shakes the ground, Lala's antennae trembling and sparking a bit at the ends. "They're somewhere out there... so...."
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite idly raises her arm to fiddle with the analytical device strapped to it... but then stops as there's a chirp. Several more.

Then loud footsteps and outright mechanical sounds, causing her large highly attuned fennec ears to stand practically upright on either side of her hat. That and a bit of cautious paranoia has her taking a few steps back from the crashed ship and turning around. Then the other way. But by now the sounds have become too great and numerous for her to pinpoint anything.

Not to mention the sheer scale of the wilderness around them starts to sink in once she's paid more attention to it. While not falling haphazardously out of the sky.

Bottlebrush tail flicks back and forth a few times, clearly showing aggitation. "Not to be the one sourin' the mood, but we oughta find yer friend as quick-like possible." The vixen points up at the larger than redwoods surrounding them. "Iffen the forest is this giganormous, imagine what lives out there. Rawht likely gonna be some fearsome beasts contendors to be sure. Not to mention iffen yer Nottraiders or whatever they's called followed you."

Corona adjusts her duster jacket, and this time one can see the large guns holstered under it on either side of her tool/utility belts. "No idea what's actually makin' those steps, but ain't never heard nuttin' like it before. Best be ready to defend yerselves."
Hiromi     Hisako's ears are definitely attached to her, but only a little more so than most other people's ears. She looks wide-eyed at the approach, her head jerks up when tugged, and she gives a, "Kahh?!" before her ears flatten and her hands (carefully) cover them. "What-- why pulling--?!"

    'Are you part of the Starscape Alliance?'
    'Wait, you're not the government, are you?!'

    Somewhat recovering after a few moments, entirely visible in the way her ears slooowly relax to being upright again, "I'm a miko of the Archwolf, and practitioner of the--" the term after that only barely translates, highlighting that she's speaking something somewhat close to, but not actually, Japanese, "--[Natural Way]. Is the Milky Way... also an enlightened path?"

    She'd ask what a Precure is, but it was already asked by several people, and Hisako's already feeling crowded with so many elites around.

    She's feeling a lot more confident on having it repeated that Precures are (1) protectors, (2) fighting against something, and (3) missing a lost friend. Hisako understands all of these things perfectly. She raises her gauntlets, clenches her fists in front of her, wags her tail, and nod-bobs with a little, "Nh!"

    She says, "I understand! You need to search this place for your friend, and your enemies might have followed you!" She quietly repeats to herself, committing to memory, "'Yuma.' 'Nottraiders.'"

    More loudly, "Got it!" And with that, turns to go and look through the forest. Yes, it's probably full of monsters, but that's a normal state for frontier lands. She only pauses when she gets twenty paces away and, one ear flattening, realizes that every direction is equally likely to be the right direction. Her steps are more hesitant after that, but she still doesn't look over her shoulder until she's sixty paces away.

    "Excuse me... Mr. [Artificial Spirit], do you know which way your friend is?" She doesn't know what 'radar' means, either.
Sarracenia      Sarra's own ears and tail go unnoticed next to the real things. And her questions about the hoverbike are overshadowed by the inspection of the crashed ship. Both things are understandable, but the princess still cheekpuffs poutily with a little hnph and crosses her arms at being ignored.

     'How are you all so *different* from each other even though you're on the same planet?'

     Sarra shrugs lightly. "Well, we are aliens after all. Not just to you, but to this planet as well. Space travel is a little different where we all come from." says the slightly more pouty and grumpy princess.

     Sarra listens to the precure's story with some concern. "Why are you all out here in your own spaceship anyway? You seem a bit young to be...flying or crashing spaceships. Or fighting...what is a Nottraider?" Sarra doesn't mean to talk down to them, but she doesn't really approve of the whole magical girl idea in general. She has never seen it go well for those magical girls who are not adults, and rarely even for those that are.

     The forest sounds coming back are enough to get Sarra to look around, and when she does she stares a bit. "Were we...shrunk?" she wonders. Her home has some big plants, but not like this. The chittering and heavy steps set her on edge, and she reaches into her purse to slowly pull out her hammer. "If this forest is anything like the one I live in...we should find Yuma. Quickly." Even the plants try to eat you in the Sundew Jungle.

     "...but where do we start?" Sarra asks, looking toward the two precures. "...and how is Yuma gone if you were both locked in the ship when we got here? They were not in the ship with you? What do they even look like?"

     Sarra waits but does not linger after the answers are given. She takes off running, then with a wag of her raccoon tail she takes to the air to try and find this Yuma. And maybe get eyes on whatever creatures are around here.
Natsuki Nuki 'A pleasure to meet you. I'm happy to hear that you'll be accompanying her on this trip. It appears to be her first time.'

Tone and posture shift perceptibly, Natsuki using thumb and index and middle fingers to rattle and scruff her sister while looking away. Nod-bowing, indicating first and showing the moment of deferent alignment through her grip on Futaba being 'arglebargleblagh'-d at high speed also guiding her into a slight bow-angle. It's only respectful! And Futaba has subjected everyone to her deep and abiding little sister uncoolness.

"It's a pleasure to meet you too." The words, 'pleasure', and a little relief in tone, instantly place Lilian into the 'cool' category of the Yokai-woman's immediate understanding so she nods back with a little 'she's a lot' dip of the head and shuttering of dark 'facemask' pattern over red eyes. "I'd say sorry in advance, but this doofus can apologize for her own foolishness." Natsuki decides, shoving her sister forward with the release and return to a loose armcross that curls fingers about bright white puffy jacket bicep.

'A shapeshifter?!'

Turning white-blond framed head to brow up at Hisako with an appraising stare, Natsuki walks gaze down then up to face, then up to ears, and then down to midbody and Futaba somehow going right for bright hand shake with a noodly arm.

Once more dripping with the regret of someone who no longer can claim 'no relation, nothing doing', Natsuki sighs and lifts fingers to brush at brow and stroke temple with a dug-in finger. "We're shapeshifters." She confirms, pinky-pointing to Futaba.

"She's super weird and dumb about it. I," A puff-chirping from the throat and confident click-tch of the tongue accents her tone. "Am totally normal and cool about it." A beat and a half threatens to become two, before Natsuki eases off of just only shoving around Futaba.

"She's an okay ninja." Then the bully continues, sotto-voice. "Stands on enough lamp-posts, though, like a dork. Find a dark tree-shadow to hide behind, don't glorify those polluting things."

'Oh... what kind of Precure are you? Are you American?'

"Oh," A suddenly comprehending look towards Rita is cast, before utter noncomprehension reveals itself in perfect Romanized Japanese. "Yankee girl?"
Natsuki Nuki This doesn't last long, but unfortunately might be a first impression that sticks, as the chimera gal has a barrage of questions to answer as Hikaru invades her personal space to have her ears fluffed -- which gets a startled 'huh?' out of Natsuki, utter surprise as she's ambushed by a very active little Precure. The tail, alerted behind her in a muscular raise that up-periscopes the broad head, coiling about and observing, getting grabbed like a snake from the bayou, at mid-length and near neck, actually causing the demon tail to hiss and waggle about and Natsuki to seize up and loom about Hikari until her evil snake is released to hug it about with her arms and have the evil head spool hurtly in her arms.

Leaning down to kiss her cursed evil snake tail on the top of its head while it angrily glares out from hugging-sleeved coat arms, Natsuki sighs. "Osaka, actually." Since this girl seemed like a Tokyo type of toucher for sure. "We're shapeshifters." She repeats, her pantherine orange ears flicking atop her head. "Don't you believe in spirits? I thought you were open-minded space explorers."

Speaking of space exploration. . .

"Did we get shrunk on the way in?" Natsuki can't tell precisely but the scale gives her an idea. "Somewhere out there? Do you have a scanner, or, a map, or, are we just going to go window shopping in the giant forest?"
Rita Ma      There's just a moment that Rita has free to smile back at Lilian- "aren't the trees amazing, Ms. Rook!"- stare awed at Natsuki, and awkwardly smile-and-wave at Natsuki's tail. Then she's being girlswarmed.

     "Ah-?!" Holding one arm out and the other in against her chest, she strikes an awkward balance between 'opening herself for examination' and 'flinching from scrutiny'. Her eyes dart in a failing attempt to track Hikaru dashing around.

     By the time she realizes oh no, they meant something specific... she's in far, far too deep with the glittery-eyed admiring curiosity to fess up. Anyone familiar with Rita's expressions can watch her die in real time. Anyone unfamiliar... well, maybe she's just socially awkward!!

     So she makes an awful, terrible decision.

     "Oh... what kind of Precure are you? Are you American?"
     "Ahh... I'm Korean, actually!" "Yankee girl?" "I'm not a Yankee Girl!! I'm sorry for being-- wait, you're blonde too, so don't be mean! And I just dropped my Star Color Pendant in the fall!" Behind her back, tentacle-biomass prints itself into a lump of chromatophore-colored bone just like their pendants, and she holds it out as if she'd just been keeping it in her palm.

     "I'm... Cure Glow!" A weight forms in her heart. She really hopes she guessed the theme right. "A soft light to show the way!"

     Two seconds after saying it, she realizes she ought to strike a pose; then she spends another second thinking of a pose; and then she makes a finger-and-thumb circle in front of one eye while cocking her hips and resting her other hand on them, as if cheekily peeping something through a spyglass. "D-dah!!"

     "I'm... really new at things," says Cure Glow (Fake), deflating. "But, I'd love to help if you'd let me! You just need to find your friend, right? I'm sure she's..."

     Rita looks around, registers the idea of a forest full of huge birds, and corrects to "I'm pretty sure she's okay somewhere!" At least, I'm pretty sure I don't smell blood...
Combaticon > "Are you part of the Starscape Alliance?"

    Brawl and Vortex both pause, glancing at each other. After a moment, the shorter of the two glances back towards Lala, "Don't think I've heard of that one. The three of us are from Cybertron."

    Raising one big fist, Brawl taps her chestplate with a clink-clank, "And affiliated with the multiversal Concord. Never heard of any Starscape Alliance. Sorry, you two."

> "And my ship's all messed up and can't launch anymore..."

    "Fortunately," Depthcharge speaks up, "Your-- Spacecraft," she has to take her time actually calling it that but does eventually get the word out, "Can be repaired." Raising the hand projecting the hologram, she sweeps it to one side. The hologram expands into a detailed analysis. Most of the systems are either guessed at or just labeled with question marks, but most of them are also highlighted in red.

    "UN-fortunately, many key systems are indeed missing. Likely scattered all around the area. To get your vessel spaceworthy again, these parts will need to be recovered." The blue and white robot lifts her left hand; the forearm splits open and her hand retracts, extending a cybertronic multitool, "I can begin the superficial repairs and install components as they are recovered. Actual recovery will be up to-- Someone else."

    "I'll pitch in for that," Brawl raises her right arm, fingers clenching and elbow bending in a flex-like posture, "Vortex can probably get a lot of scouting done too, right?"

    "If it's safe to fly, maybe," Vortex's optics are fixated up through the dense, oversized foliage as the birdsong twitters back to life, "With plants this big, who knows what the animals are like."

    When animal noises return and something big starts making its rumbly presence known, Brawl raises her other arm and twists at the waist. Her body unfurls and expands, rearranging from a large burly humanoid robot into a four-treaded tank with a twin-gun turret, fully sized and scaled for human use. The turret swivels slowly through the surrounding plants, "Come on out, big fella. I'm big, too."
Echolalia ''Eighth rank isn't actually... very high... sorry...''

"Oh! I'm sorry!" She's now assuming Lala is an overachiever, unfortunately. "Gosh, I don't even know what Precures are but they must be amazing if they're this strict..." Echolalia says before running that back because if there's only two precures, how do you get to be eighth rank? Maybe she means the only precures in this sector. That makes sense. She admires the poses. Gosh, she thinks, this is so cute.

Echolalia's wings have the general color and shape-vibe as the aurora borealis. Hikaru can push her whole hand through if she wants! It's tingly! Echolalia giggles as if she's being tickled but doesn't seem to mind it. Kids do this sort of thing. But she does say, good-naturedly. "Now now, you know you should ask first before doing all that."

She isn't from Earth but she feels the need to clarify again, "Er this isn't actually ''our'' planet. We're visitors too."

''You're not the government, are you? We're just filming a movie, if you are!''

For some unsettling reason, Echolalia looks towards Rita and gives her a knowing wink.

Oh there's an AI. But is it an AI that can lie? Echolalia doesn't know for sure one way or another but it seems honest in this case. So maybe it's an AI that can tell the truth.

"A part of Yuma?" Echolalia asks. She thinks for a moment and then adds, "Well maybe we can help you lok for your friend! What do they look like?"

ACtually, she thinks, she can probably just look for someone with a fancy outfit like theirs right? Really, what are the odds that uh...

She takes another look around. She blinks a few times and then a look of pure joy fills her eyes.

"Giant treeees! Giant herrrbs! Goshh how do they get so big, I should take samples and bring them back to Hronn with me...!"

She gives Hikaru and Lala a thumbsup and adds,"But that's...for later! First we find your buddy!"

And with that Echolalia closes her eyes and reaches out mentally--she's searching, of course, since this is probably someone person-shaped like the other two--for someone on foot along the ground that is approximately human-weighted moving around. Well, about what their humanweight would be relative to all this.

She's a little uneasy about taking to the sky after hearing that bird.
Futaba Nuki Hisako's test proves that Futaba's hand is, indeed, a hand and not an illusion! It's just a little wiggly because she's stretching her arm out a lot (including some unnecessary loops and curves to look more noodly).

Natsuki nudging her head down does get her to settle down again soon enough,t hough, complete with actually bowing and taking her energy down from an 11 to an 8. When Hikaru and Lala (and eventually Rita) start posing, however, she starts vibrating while getting an intensely studious look on her face. There's new (to her) magical girls to commit to memory, after all, and cool new arrivals don't show up every day! Besides...

They're children. She has to be encouraging, even if it's not hard to want to.  She closes her eyes while listening to their  introductions, inhaling deeply while murmuring to herself. "Cure Star and Cure Milky... Cure Glow, oh that's..." Suddenly, her eyes shoot open, and she slaps her thigh with one hand before gesturing broadly with an outstretched towards the pair. "Cure Star! Cure Milky! Cure Glow! Defenders of the cosmos, shining beacons beyond the skies, Space Precures!"

She settles back down a moment later, visibly more relaxed and grinning contently while squatting a little to let Hikaru mess with her ears more easily. They're soft, they're fuzzy, and they're cleaned quite well despite how rough and tumble Futaba generally appears to be (notwithstanding her tumbling and tousling courtesy of Natsuki). "Something like that? Aaah... Cool stuff, very cool."

When she thinks that Hikaru and Lala aren't looking, she throws Rita a knowing wink.

"Are you part of the Starscape Alliance? Hey, hold on, you're from Earth?"

"Never heard of this Starscape alliance, but yeah! Me and Natsuki here are shapeshifters from Japan." She explains without explaining much, sputtering a bit at Natsuki commenting on the differences between them. "Hey, heeey. I'm not that weird!" She protests, pauses, then puffs her cheeks up a bit before crossing her arms over her chest with a defiant little-sister grin. "And I am absolutely an awesome ninja. And lamp posts are strategic!  They're like... Upside-down spotlights!"

A pause, and then she makes another vaguely agreeing gesture. "Trees're better, yeah. At least, if there's enough space to stand and keep my scarf flappin'." She admits, flicking her big red scarf behind her to make sure it's still flapping for emphasis.

Lala mentioning an Earth government gets Futaba to raise an eyebrow. "You mean the... Wait. The Earth you're from just has the one government?" Futaba doesn't know how to feel about that idea. Relieved? Concerned? If the Starscape Alliance needs to hide it from them, then maybe more concern. Hearing a voice from the spaceship certainly helps explain the concern, and she claps a hand against her chest confidently for emphasis. "Well, don't worry! We're not lame like that."

"So Yuma's a... Hmm. In pieces, eh? And if the ship's jacked up..." Futaba closes her eyes again for a moment, crossing her arms over her chest again while her scarf continues to flap all over the place. Once she hears the forest coming to life, her eyes shoot open once again, and she points in the direction of where she thinks/feels the giant footstep just came from. "Then... Let's go that way! I've got a good feeling we'll find your pal over there."

She's making this all up in her head, of course, but she sounds extremely confident about her guess anyway. "And don't you worry about the giant... Uh. Everything around here. You're in good company!" She declares without a hint of hesitation, flicking her oversized tail forward and showing off another transformation trick by turning it into a fist the size of herself. Of course, with the strangely huge everything around...

Well, she's sure it'll work out. Maybe. Hopefully. She has to be brave for these girls!
Lilian Rook     '--The twinkling star that shines throughout the universe! Cure Star!'
    'the Milky Way... stretching across the heavens...?'
    'She doesn't have a Star Color Pendant, lun?!'

    §Oh.§

    §Well, I don't get it either. Good luck Rita.§

    'Oh... what kind of Precure are you? Are you American?'

    Lilian barely doesn't snort out loud.

    'Nice to meet you all! How are you all so *different* from each other even though you're on the same planet?'

    "We're on the same planet as you, aren't we?" says Lilian. "And you're a little bit different from your friend. It's because we come from all different places, isn't it?"

    'Wait, you're not the government, are you?! We're just filming a movie, if you are!'

    Lilian fails to help a little snort-chuckle into the back of her hand on the second try. She turns halfway aside and clears her throat. "Well, I'm not." She looks very suggestively at Sarracenia. "I couldn't say the same for everyone here, though."

    Just after, Lilian gets to be sort of relieved by Lala offering a handshake. She's probably like, eight years younger than she is, but that precocious professionalism of hers is just soooooo!! exactly like Lilian was at that age too. The cute little antenna gives her a moment of pause; Lilian doesn't have any extra limbs to compare it to (and, she begins to realize, is the only one but Sarracenia who doesn't), so she very carefully returns it with a fingertip. Her weirdly-fit armour, as usual, feels warm like touching bare skin. Physical contact is slightly disjointed with the sense of touching.

    A second later, Lilian has thought through every possible meaning of that cheek puff, and says, "My apologies if I've caused any offense. I wasn't certain whether it would be inappropriate to exclude, but I understand the attempt wasn't called for."

    'AI? What planet are we on?'
    'Uncertain.'

    "Oh my." Lilian gasps quietly, and gently touches her fingertips to her lip. "It's been a long time since I've seen one of those." Not since the man she remembers less for his technology than she does for how it felt to almost have a father, for a little while.

    'We were... trying to escape from the Nottraiders'

    §Yes! Planetary escape! I knew it!§

    'We ended up crashing here, but Yuma's gone! They got separated from us somewhere in the wormhole, so they're probably lost on this planet somewhere....'

    "I see. That is an emergency, then." says Lilian. Imagining another klutzy teenager stranded completely alone on a wild planet like this, the unique mixture of fascination and amusement in Lilian's voice slowly simmers away and becomes something close to reassuringly adult. "It doesn't look as if we'll be able to rush off in search of them all that quickly, however. I hope they know to stay put."

    Already looking out into the gigantic under(over?)brush, Lilian gently taps her chin in thought, saying "I don't suppose they have any means of being located? A transponder? GPS? IFF? Smartphone? We'd be do far better getting off the ground, for now, but there's no point in going above the canopy, so our search radius is very limited . . ."

    'I'd say sorry in advance, but this doofus can apologize for her own foolishness.'

    "Don't worry about it. It's not as if I'm the one who'd be offended." says Lilian. She gesticulates a little wave. "I'll greatly appreciate your keeping a close eye on her. It appears to be spectacularly easy to get lost in these surroundings. I don't think I've been specifically trained for an environment like this, so I'll be doing my best to improvise, and may not have the luxury of watching out for each of us equally."
Lilian Rook     'aren't the trees amazing, Ms. Rook!'

    "That they are." Lilian says. A tiny smile starts to come back to her. "I don't see anything that diverges from what I'm used to so sharply that I'd feel uncomfortable; besides the size of it all, of course. We should--" The rumble through the ground slows her to a pause, wherein she stops just to look around and take in the riotious forest sounds. ". . . decide travelling arrangements. Column order, watch priority, group sizes, that sort of thing. We'll have to strike a balance between distance endurance and emergency readiness, too."

    That's simple enough thing for Lilian to decide on. Her sword alone is plenty enough to handle the vast majority of what could come up. The Lady in Black is comfortable to 'wear', but straining to keep manifested for long periods. She should be traveling light.

    Exhaling deeply, Lilian unhooks the pendant around her throat, contemplatively examines it up against the glow of the ship, whispers something private to herself, and then brandishes it like the glamered sword it is, dispersing her armour at the same time. Magic like black ink wicks away from Night Mist as if dissolving weightlessly into water, and armour disintegrates into physical spirals of blackness studded with little glittering stars of gold, leaving her with just what she was wearing-- and could reasonably gather up-- before the emergency crash notice had hit.

    Which is most of her 'Liliana Lycoris' costume. Today was a Supervillain Simulation rehearsal. Her hair comes loose, because she hadn't done it up with the extra props, and she still has her nails painted like usual-- the glittering gold stardust ripples on jet black-- and she'd at least made sure to remove those showy heels for theoretically practical boots (still raided from the costume locker, unfortunately), but that's definitely the same look otherwise.

    "Be normal." Lilian says, vaguely in the direction of Elites, bravely maintaining a chin-up posture about her slightly embarrassing detransformation. "All you have to do is follow me." she says, then picks a completely random direction to look in-control. She's going to sneakily curve it around to a trail she'll precognitively divine along the way.
Natsuki Nuki 'I'm sorry for being-- wait, you're blonde too, so don't be mean!'

Natsuki, preening lightly for a moment in the turning, smirks smugly as she transitions from 'ho ho ho! you've fallen for my trap!' to the revealing of her master plan. "Don't apologize for having great hair, Cure Glow." Natsuki rumbles with full smug cheer, hitting the familiar 'kyua guroo-chan'. "I think you're trying for 'Cute Power', but with your look and just a little color, you could get some 'Bold Power' too!" Natsuki breaks into birdsong laughter, pressing fingers into face and tossing back in her continued amusement at the Bullying Cycle going on, rubbing palm across her tanuki-type eyemask and then sweeps down her cheek.

"Blond is beautiful." Natsuki affirms, stuffing closed fists into jacket pockets and waving them forward to strike a few poses as she moves to keep after Futaba before she does something else stupid, like turn into a satellite phone to call up a clue.
Merelisa Shaynore "I'm... Cure Glow!"

    For better or worse, it seems like Cure Glow completely sold her lie to Hikaru and Lala. Both girls are enraptured, and Hikaru grabs her hand excitedly. "Wow!!! What are the chances we'd find another Precure right when we need help? 'Cure Glow'! That's sooooo galacticool!"

    Lala cups her own pendant in her hands, holding it close over her heart while looking at Rita's. One of her antennae reaches out towards Rita's hand, like a handshake, and the bulb on the end crackles with a small spark of electricity if she touches it. "Rita... did you meet one of Yuma's family? Is there another Star Drop like them out here for us to protect? We'll help you too, lun! Just let us know, lun!"

"Is the Milky Way... also an enlightened path?"

    "I... think so, lun?" It doesn't seem to matter to Lala whether Hisako is speaking Japanese or not. Lala herself isn't, even though Hikaru is-- so they've just always been mutually intelligible, and treat that as normal at this point. "Samaan isn't even in the Milky Way; it's in the Starscape Galaxy. But I'm fighting with Cure Star in the Milky Way Galaxy, to protect the whole universe, lun!"

"Gosh, I don't even know what Precures are but they must be amazing if they're this strict..."

    That comment from Echolalia makes Lala shrivel up a little more, almost like she's guilty about something. "My family on Samaan doesn't... actually know about me being a Precure, lun...."

"My apologies if I've caused any offense."

    When Lilian's finger touches Lala's antenna, the bulb glows a little brighter and a spark of energy jumps between them-- it feels like a static shock, but Lilian intuitively understands that it's some form of communication, even if it's not clear what it means. Lala claps both her hands to her cheeks like she can retroactively force the air out and undo the faux-pas of demonstrating discomfort, and looks down at the ground.

    "There's no offense, lun! Um," Being treated as a professional infuses her with energy, though, and she promptly recovers and provides Lilian with a more thorough explanation. "Yuma's magic lets me and Hikaru understand each other, but they don't fill in for cultural differences... I still have trouble with honorifics sometimes, lun...." "I like how you talk, Lala! It's what makes Lala, Lala!"

"I hope they know to stay put."

    Hikaru and Lala glance at each other at the same time, identically worried. "Well...." "Oyo...." "If they don't want to be carried, then they'll be too heavy for a bird to lift up!" "That's right, lun! But Eyewon's probably searching the forest for them too...." Is that still true if the bird is the size of a jet? Either they haven't processed how much of a size scale difference the wildlife could have, or they're just totally certain that, at least, Yuma is 'heavy'.

"The three of us are from Cybertron."
"And affiliated with the multiversal Concord."

    Hikaru is excited at the new Lore Drop by Brawl and Vortex, but when she looks to Lala for elaboration, Lala seems just as lost. She consults her armwarmer again, "AI? Where is Cybertron? And what is the 'Concord'?" "Uncertain. I have no information on either of those locations." "Lun...."
Merelisa Shaynore     Then the ship blips on again after briefly going dark. "Update: one instance of 'Concord' found in my crash logs. Before I lost connection to the local networks in the impact, I sent a distress call out to fourty-four thousand, six hundred and thirty six receivers. Of these, six thousand, nine hundred, and twenty were affiliated with an organization known as the Concord."

    Lala presses her lips together and lowers her wrist. "So it's some sort of government like the Starscape Alliance? How far away are we, lun...?"

    The phrase 'government' reminds Hikaru to insist to Futaba, "Earth has lots of governments! There's Japan, there's China, there's America, there's Mexico, and there's a bunch of others! But *none* of them can know aliens exist, or it'd be a breach of the galactic contract, and since Lala's the official rep, she'd get in a lot of trouble!"

    "I'd go to jail, lun!" Lala says with so much emphasis that she leans partway forwards on her tiptoes, fists extended down and antennae flared out to the side, eyes squeezed shut.

"She's an okay ninja."
"And lamp posts are strategic! They're like... Upside-down spotlights!"

    Much to Natsuki's dismay, after Hikaru tumbles back from her slithering tail, it seems like the excitable girl is convinced of the exact opposite outlook on Futaba's coolness as she'd hope. She strikes the same dorky pose besides Futaba, absent only a scarf to flick, nodding in full support of her lamppost shenanigans.

    "You're a *real* ninja?! Twincool!!!! Have you ever been in any real cool duels?" Is that something ninjas are necessarily known to do?? Is she just as dumb as Futaba is about this?

"Don't you believe in spirits? I thought you were open-minded space explorers."

    The Hikaru-cyclone immediately moves on, right back to Natsuki, doubling in excitement even from a moment before. "You're a *youkai*! I know what you are! You're a *nue*! I've seen one before, in my dad's books! That's *starvelous*!"

"...and how is Yuma gone if you were both locked in the ship when we got here? They were not in the ship with you? What do they even look like?"
"A part of Yuma?"

    Hikaru gradually tuckers herself out of energy, partly because worry adds a weight even when surrounded by a throng of fascinating new weirdos. Hikaru digs around in the pocket of her overalls for a phone-- a flip-phone, unfortunately, so the odds of Yuma conveniently having a smartphone GPS seem low-- and shows a picture on it. It's a picture of Hikaru, in a school uniform, cradling some sort of yellow creature in her arm. Bipedal, sort of, but uniformly yellow with a green blob for a 'face' and two biiiiig tendrils with magenta-gradient coming out of the sides of its head instead of arms. It's also about the size of a baby, not a teenage girl.

    "That's Yuma. The Nottraiders call them a 'Star Drop'... they're the core of a star that went into supernova, that got launched all the way across the universe and landed on Earth, where I met them. Lots of people are looking for them, since they're supposed to grow up into a star someday, but they all want to do terrible things with them." Hikaru shows the picture specifically over to Rita too, and says hopefully, "Have you met anyone like Yuma, Rita? Is that how you became a Precure too?"
Merelisa Shaynore "Why are you all out here in your own spaceship anyway?"

    While Lala quietly murmurs, "'Princess'...?" and not-so-subtly trying to peek under Sarracenia's tanuki hood for a crown, Hikaru puts a hand to her pendant and declares, "Yuma needs our help to grow! Lala and I promised to protect them, so we'll stay with them and collect all the star fragments around the galaxy until they're ready to grow up, and we'll never let anyone awful get their hands on them. That's what it means to be a Precure."

"Excuse me... Mr. Artificial Spirit, do you know which way your friend is?"
"Somewhere out there? Do you have a scanner, or, a map, or, are we just going to go window shopping in the giant forest?"
"UN-fortunately, many key systems are indeed missing. Likely scattered all around the area."

    "As miss Depthcharge says, many of my functionalities were lost in the crash. This includes my environmental scanner, unfortunately. If we can recover my X-Ray sensor, we may be able to detect Yuma by the high quanities of radiation that they create."

    And speaking of the scattered parts, when Sarracenia takes to the air, she finds one almost immediately. A circular fabric-looking piece, with a box hanging below a metal frame, likely some sort of solar array to capture power. It's sitting a short distance away from the crash site, beyond a big rock that looks like it's partly crumbling to pieces already, but still blocks the path from it to the ship. It definitely isn't safe to fly for long, though-- she passes by a birds' nest in the branches the size of a semitruck, and below her she can see a bunch of other two-legged creatures with massive mouths lumbering around, ready to swallow any Elite-sized snack whole.

    If Sarra points it out to the others, they can all march off in that direction-- and even though none of the big land creatures are nearby, Brawl's tank will help with bursting through the rock wall in the way. But as the Precures line up with Lilian-- clustering around Rita by default, having interpreted her into a new 'trio' that they're dying to explore-- her detransformation hits them with a second wave of incredulity.

    And Hikaru is the one to respond first, with a glowing Glitteriffic!!! You *too*?!?!" She tries to get a look at the 'pendant' in Lilian's hands, on her tip-toes. "I thought Rita seemed a little old for a Precure, but you're, like, *mysterious* old, like an elegant type--"

    "Hikaru! You shouldn't call people old! Besides, I'm an adult too, and you wouldn't call me old, lun!" "Eheh, eheh, sorry...." Lala barely manages to get through that light admonishment before turning her attention to Lilian too.

    "Um... your outfit's really pretty, lun. Feel free to, to show us the way, lun!"
Echolalia Echolalia grimaces as she steps in it again but is quickly distracted by an amazing yellow creature or, rather, the picture of the yellow creature. "Oh!" She says. "No wonder I didn't sense them. I was feeling out for something about your size but that's much smaller."

And then she murmurs, "Twincool..." with a quiet sort of respect. "Glitteriffic...?" Though she's less sure she gets that one. Glitteriffic. Glitteriffic. What is the secret meaning here...?

"Oh word? They're a Star Drop...?" All this Star Drop talk directly seizes her attention. Her eyes widen ever so slightly and then she grins and jumps in on that side of the conversation herself.

"Well I haven't met a Star Drop... But I do know a Star. Ran, I mean, the one I mentioned before..!" She babbles. "But she's more of a grown up star...!... It's really really important we don't let anything bad happen to Yuma..."

She's firmly convinced their goals are perfectly aligned, more than even before.
Corona Arclite 'Lots of people are looking for them, since they're supposed to grow up into a star someday, but they all want to do terrible things with them.'

    The implication of some nefarious folk getting their hands on some manner of power equivilent to a star is enough to make Corona take pause for a moment. She can think of way too many ways that could be abused, regardless if it's literal or metaphorical.
    "Well then." A pinch of two fingers to the brim of her hat and pulling it forward thoughtfully for a moment. "Good of reason as any to hustle along and find them, and find the greebles to put yer ship back together. Before they fall inna wrong hands." Or get eaten by a giant creature. Or the dozens of other things that can go wrong lost in an alien wilderness.

    She makes a face briefly at 'glitteriffic' but belays making a comment on how rediculous it sounds. Not important right now.

    When Sarracenia calls out that she found one of the components Corona is quick to respond, but comes up short at the stone obstacle in the way. She hmms softly. Jabs a thumb at the stone. "This looks like a problem that can use a Brawl sized solution." Then takes a moment to adjust her gloves. More importantly, adjust the intergrated gear that will amplify her strength for a short time to help move the solar sail-type device back to the ship without roughing it up any more than it already is.
Merelisa Shaynore     There's not really any 'good' path through the woods, just routes to navigate that have more flat area than towering rocks and trunks, and where the head-height vegetation isn't as thick. Sometimes it drops off to be practically palatable, and in one of those segments where the group can actually *see*, a weird plant sitting on the ground to the side catches Hikaru's attention. A red bulb, half her height, squats on the ground with a trio of long rootlike supports, and when she curiously approaches it, it raises up into the air.

    "Oh! The plants here are sooooo cool...." "Hikaru! Be careful, lun! It could be dangerous!" "No, hey, look at this! It's a tiny little... plant creature...? Hey, it's cute!"

    A flower in the ground burrows up when Hikaru kneels down beside it, popping out of the earth to walk around as a knee-high, red humanoid little guy. She pokes at the leaf coming out of its head, and it reaches up at her finger with its tiny little arms, and she giggles when she lowers her finger so that it can grab it. "Aww, hey, little guy! I'm not gonna hurt you!"

    The pikmin wanders around her in a small circle, and then eventually flops sitting on the ground helplessly. "Are you hungry? Hey, hey, Lala, can you give me a cosmo gummy?" Lala, now fully invested in these Tiny Men, slides open the planetoid belt pouch she's wearing and pulls out a shooting star-shaped gummy, and rushes over to try and place it in the pikmin's hands overexcitedly. "Let me try and give it, lun!"

    The pikmin shies away from her fingers, and Hikaru waves her hand between to gently part them, and then plucks the gummy out of Lala's hands. "No, see? I think you need to be gentle, even though they're plants, like...." She places it in its hands, and it holds it triumphantly above its head, marching back to its elevated onion home and immediately burying the gummy. A second later, a new pikmin sprouts from where the gummy was planted, and it joins the first in orbiting Hikaru.

    "Ahahaha! Another one! And look, they're following me around!" "Why'd it ignore *me*, lun...."
Combaticon     "It is settled, then, Depthcharge's eyes become obscured by a dark, polarized guard and she approaches the ship, "I will get started here."

    Sighting no immediate threats, Brawl centers her turret. She's about to transform back when Sarracenia calls out a direction to go. Vortex hops on top of the turret housing, draws her hand back, and points, "She pointed that way!"

    "If you're tired of walkin', just ride on me," Brawl's voice echoes from within the tank's hull. She rotates in place with the grinding of caterpillar tracks, then advances slowly through the enormous grass 'forest', unsubtly paving the way for those who'd prefer to walk.

    "'Star Drop', huh..." Vortex settles into a seated position, her legs hanging off the back of Brawl's turret as she listens, "Can't say I've heard of that. So it's the seed of a star..." Her eyes click dark and bright again, like a blink, "And your friend."

    "I'm a bit curious about these Nottraider guys," Brawl calls out, "What's their deal? They're the ones who blasted you, right? Think they chased you here?"

    There is a big crumbly stone in the way, far too big for anyone to lift. Brawl might be able to. But Brawl doesn't intend to lift it. Instead, she trundles to a stop and lifts her central hull further off the ground on the four tread arms. Vortex's rotors fan out and spin up, taking her up just a bit into the air-- still below the height of the grass-- as Brawl's turret swings around. The two cannons retract and, from the back, a huge single cannon extends.

    "If those guys *are* here, I'll show 'em what blastin' really means! Cover your audio receptors!"

    This is an obstacle that could probably somehow be solved by these little red plant creatures-- but far be it for Brawl to pass up a chance to show off. The artillery cannon lets off three reports in quick succession, launching a trio of explosive shells in a high arc to account for the relatively close target. They're still in the air when the tank emits a ratcheting mechanical noise and reverts, compressing itself back into a(n unreasonably big but still roughly) human-sized robot. Steam hisses from vents in the sides of her neck as she shields her eye visor to watch her shots land.

    Vortex, meanwhile, lands a few meters from Hikaru and her new friends, folding the rotors up against her back once she's on the ground again, "Locals, you think?" She pats herself on the chestplate in a few places, eventually producing a glowing pink chit of Energon. Holding it out to the Pikmin in two fingers, she gestures with the other, "Baa weep graanaagh-weep ninibong..?"

    Eheheh...! The tankbot doesn't look away, but the way her posture changes implies she's directing her laughter at her fellow robot, "What in Primus was that nonsense?"

    "It's a universal greeting, stupid!" Vortex shoots over her shoulder at Brawl.
Rita Ma      "'Cure Glow'! That's sooooo galacticool!"
     "Galacticool?!" Rita's in no position to object. The hot guilt weighs her down, but the sparkly joy buoys her up, and she lets herself get swept up, squeezing Hikaru's hand and bubbling over into a breathy little laugh. "Ah... thank you..."

     She leans over to peep at the picture a second later. "Awww. So when the Star Drop grows all up with the Precures' help, they become a new star, and the sky stays full of lights forever..." Cure Glow breathes it with awe, but then she realizes she should pretend she already knew that, and plays it off like she was explaining for everyone else. "... So you're doing a really important job, you two!! I'm glad you're taking pride in it. You should."

     "Rita... did you meet one of Yuma's family?"
     "Have you met anyone like Yuma, Rita? Is that how you became a Precure too?"
     "Oh," says Cure Glow, dazedly sinking. "Um."

     Arms crossed behind her back, she sways uncomfortably and tilts her head. "That's sort of like how I became a Precure. But I'm supposed to keep the details a secret, Cure Milky! If I ever need help, I'll call on you, but let's hope that doesn't happen. Okay?" A bit of relief at probably-successfully explaining herself creeps into her eyes-shut smile.

     - - - -

     "With your look and just a little color, you could get some 'Bold Power' too!"
     "Oh? You think so, Ms. Natsuki?" After the disastrous radio conversation, Rita has run herself out of energy to object to 'Bold Powaa'; she pulls a lock of her hair forward and examines it in the light, as if she might be unfamiliar with its hue. Her lips press.

     "Well, maybe if I wore a lot of pink... or red, maybe... you're 'bold' in white, but when I wear white it looks 'pure'? I guess that's because you have the black tail to set it off," she thinks out loud while the group moves, tapping her lips with one finger in rhythm with her steps. "Natural features do a lot, huh?"

     Walking as part of the trio boosts her spirits a whole lot, and almost helps her forget the weight of the lie. Absentmindedly, she thumbs her 'Pendant'.

     "There's a lot of monsters here," she murmurs about the scary wildlife that she can glimpse through the trees, though tension doesn't choke her appreciation for the natural beauty. "Or are they just 'animals'? No, they definitely seem like monsters, don't they?" The distinction is important to Cure Glow, for some reason!
Sarracenia      'She looks very suggestively at Sarracenia.'

     Sarra huffs. "I am 'the government' of my kingdom, I suppose. But, I am not -your- 'the government'. I quite like heroic adventures and protecting others! So, no need to worry~"

     'Be Normal.'

     So, following Lilian is 'normal'? Sarra turns watever direction is opposite Lilian. And tries not to huff too hard in jealousy of that outfit. It still stings that she is sure she could not pull off such an outfit in that wonderfully villainous color-scheme...if at all.

     Sarra is indeed a princess! And unlike some princesses she wears both a headband and a crown, both of which would be visible upon closer inspection by Lala. There is also a burgundy metal lily on a silver stem that is serving as a hair ornament. Although...Sarra hasn't realized she is in her full on tanuki power-up outfit. She meant to pull out a leaf, after all! "Indeed~ And you are unlikely to meet any other princesses like me. I am a princess who is also an aspiring heroine! So, now that we know a bit more about Yuma, let us find her! ...him? ...them."

     'Lots of people are looking for them, since they're supposed to grow up into a star someday, but they all want to do terrible things with them.'

     Pictures of Yuma are provided, and Sarra blinks at the look and the story. "Yuma...is she related to lumas, I wonder?" She frowns lightly. "That anyone would want to harm such cute creatures is worth of a hammer swing in itself! Lumas are adorable!"

     With answers to her questions and a new resolve gained, Sarra takes to the sky and does indeed relay the position of that solar array. And the sight of the huge bird's nest and the almost piranha plant-like creatures who seem to be looking for snacks.

     'Don't do nuttin' to disturb the critters if ya can help it.'

     Sarra takes the advice, but is a bit disappointed. Having called out the position of the solar thing she continues flying and scouting. Perhaps just recklessly at this point.

     At least, until she notices those pikmin! She flies down to rejoin Hikaru and Lala. "Oh! I recognize those! I encounter some not that long ago! ...coincidentally after responding to a crashed spaceship's distress call."

     Sarra was fairly good with these creatures last time she encountered them, so she also tries to approach them. "Hello little ones~" she says in a soft, cheerful tone.

     An approach which is ruined when Vortex uses that universal greeting. And just like last time it was used in her presence...she burst out laughing, except this time she was hunched over to try and be more approachable to the pikmin so she just literally falls over laughing. The still tanuki-suited princess rolls onto her back, shaking her head as her giggles die down. She manages to get back to her feet, and thanks to Vortex she is smiling properly "Please do not ever stop using that greeting~" she says to Vortex.
Rita Ma      "I thought Rita seemed a little old for a Precure, but..."
     Anyone actually old might be offended, but Rita looks down and smugly smiles with eyes shut while tossing her hair. "See, Ms. Rook? They think I'm mature."

     "Oh! The plants here are sooooo cool...."
     "Oh!!" Rita ducks off the tank-beaten path to follow her two new kouhais to the bulb, leaning up on tiptoes to lay a hand on its surface contemplatively. Warm or cool? Soft or firm? Moving or still? "I wonder if it lifts up like this to stop things from hurting it? But we saw a lot of big things back there. What if..."

     Then there's a little guy!! Rita crouches down by them in total hands-on-knees open-mouthed fascination. "Um, hi! My name's Rita!" she says to a little guy without a mouth, and tries gently petting the headleaf.

     "Oh, so they're like bees, and that's the beehive," is her conclusion to the feeding-and-reproduction. As if beehives made more bees just autonomously. "Maybe there's a Queen in there? But they act like you're their parent, Hikaru. I wonder..."

     Maybe guided by some maternal instinct, Rita flits off to scavenge whatever yummy-looking cuttings or fruits she can from the nearby forest, then returns with a double-handful of assorted treats and offers them to a plantcritter.

     "Here. Do any of these look good to you, Mr. Red?" If any of them are appealing, that's a great way to start building a loyal little family! There's still the matter of the ship part, of course, but if the Precures are happy with this diversion then so is Rita.
Futaba Nuki "Earth has lots of governments!"

That sounds far less concerning to Futaba, and the light sigh of relief makes that obvious enough to see. The fact that they can't know aliens exist, however, still gets an eyebrow raise from her. "Huh. That's real different from where I'm from, then. People had no choice BUT to know there's... Well, youkai around. I dunno about aliens, though."

She taps her chin a few times in deeper thought, then holds back a chuckle at the way Lala talks about going to jail. "Dang, that sounds messed up!" She starts, pauses, then furrows her brow. "Wait, even if you've got nothing to do with them finding out? That doesn't even make sense..."

"You're a *real* ninja?! Twincool!!!! Have you ever been in any real cool duels?"

Oh, Hikaru's precious. Seeing her matching that dumb/totally cool pose draws a spark from Futaba's eye, and the ninja smirks as she brushes a finger past her nose. "Don't you know it! A bunch of 'em, even. And then there was the one with the gorilla lady... Oh! And my brother, right on the roof when it was rainin' out and we had to go all out just to get everything off our chests..."

She sighs fondly, sounding like she's reminiscing about a precious memory from a more pleasant time. "Whew, that one really takes me back." She says, despite looking like she couldn't be any older than her early 20s. She's totally putting an act on to really sell it up, too, because... It's cooler if she sounds older! Maybe.

"Be normal."

Futaba doesn't respond right away, a little too distracted by Lilian going from the Lady in Black into a far less familiar outfit.  She opens her mouth in the hopes that she'll come up with something when she does, closes it again, then taps a finger to her chin. IF that's normal...

She looks down at her own clothes: Track jacket, shorts, thigh-high socks, boots. That's pretty normal, isn't it? Then again, the big scarf isn't exactly 'regular mall wear', and even dyed hair could be scary in some circles, but... They're on an unknown planet full of big things! The children have pink and green hair! There's giant bugs and plants all over the place!

Sighing lightly, Futaba scratches her head rapidly with one hand while fiddling with her leaf with the other hand. "Well, if it'll really help 'em feel better..." The ninja wrinkles her nose at first, clearly not looking forward to what she's about to do even as she resigns herself to doing so. With the girls responding so favorably to Lilian's 'detransformation', however, she does feel a smidge better about what'll come next.
Futaba Nuki Taking a page from Lilian's book with the pendant, Futaba places a hand over the golden bracer on her wrist and pushes the gem on the front. She strategically shrinks her finger at the same time, too, so it looks like she's actually pushing a button. "First form... Reseal." It glows briefly (actually her finger again), and then she shifts from her human form into that of a regular-looking tanuki. There's still a leaf stuck on the front of her forehead, but Futaba really does just look like an oversized animal now rather than a person with some creative color choices.

"There. Should be a little easier to keep anything flying around from spotting us this way." Futaba proclaims, hurrying up a bit to keep walking by the Precures. She keeps her eyes peeled for oncoming fauna in the area, trying to use her regular animal appearance to ward off attention. When they run into the strange burrowing flower...

"Whoa, cool. Wonder if all the plants out here are like this..." The tanuki murmurs as she approaches the little red thing, hunching down to peer at the pikmin from closer to eye-level. The antics between it and the girls are strangely compelling for her to just stay there and watch, too, but it's the growth of a second pikmin from their snacks that has her really going wide-eyed. "Oh, yo. A new little guy! Think it likes you, Hikaru." She chuckles lightly, then moves over to Lala and gives her a light nudge with her head. "And hey, I bet you'll have plenty more chances to try it if we find more. Just gotta try a new approach is all!"

Joining Rita in greeting the mouthless guys, Futaba keeps her head down to peer at them cloosely. "Heeey there. Name's Futaba. Good to meetcha." She speaks up lightly, holdign a paw out slowly to see how they react to her general existence.
Lilian Rook     'Cure Glow'! That's sooooo galacticool!'

    After much secret debate, Lilian is allowing Rita to tangle herself up in the persona of 'cute power Cure Glow lighting the way'. Instead, there is only an irrepressible tiny smile at galacticool. Is that girl for real?

    'My family on Samaan doesn't... actually know about me being a Precure, lun....'

    "I take it they'd disapprove." Lilian says, neutral only by value of her tone having such a carefully light touch. "I wouldn't say that has anything to do with whether it's 'amazing' or not. Sometimes families don't understand one another."

    The zap on the finger only makes Lilian curious. Too much so to just put it out of mind. She can't imagine Lala would have offered if it were a meaningless little gesture, so the sense of 'mismatched format' bothers her just enough to push up against her ample willingness to gracefully notice nothing. Without opening her mouth, Lilian shares a single wordless impulse that feels like §Hello?§

    'I still have trouble with honorifics sometimes, lun....'
    'I like how you talk, Lala! It's what makes Lala, Lala!'

    "Learning languages is far from easy. I'm happy you have such a good friend to help you through it." Lilian says, masking a kind of adoration she could imagine coming off as condescending with a kind of elegant sagacity instead.

    'I'd go to jail, lun!'

    Lilian falls silent, blinks twice in Lala's direction, and slips into a kind of passive quiet suited for being gracefully lost. A moment later, she shuts her eyes, and pushes herself to find the bare mental wire-tips that spark together about this. Something that will give her any grounding, any basis, for trying to figure out how serious this girl could possibly be. Her shut-eyed expression clouds over; first in effort, then in comprehension.

    Lilian opens her eyes, and looks at Lala in a slightly different way than before. "You've been working very hard, haven't you?" she says, softly certain. "I understand. Consider your secret safe with me."

    'That's *starvelous*!'

    Lilian, fingers to her cheek, stares off into the distance, deep in thought. One can only imagine what incomprehensibly complex tactical matters she must already be simulating in her mind, whilst this cute little juvenile conversation plays out.

    §How many of these does she have? Are they all space-themed?§

    Still cradling her cheek, Lilian leans in to Regard the Creature on the screen. An eyebrow disappears up into her bangs. "That's Yuma? The way you were talking about . . . No, I suppose that was only my own premature assumption. They're your . . . crewmate? Friend? Are they a Precure as well?" She clearly doesn't quite get it. 'Will they be able to survive on their own like that?' passes unspoken through Lilian's mind. She has to hope that a Star Drop is some sort of faerie-like being of celestial power, and not the helpless joint pet of these two girls, or it's going to be way too depressing to continue.

    'If we can recover my X-Ray sensor, we may be able to detect Yuma by the high quantities of radiation that they create.'

    That's evidence in support of powerful star being. Phew.

    Twenty seconds later . . .
Lilian Rook     'Glitteriffic!!! You *too*?!?!'

    "Huh?"

    Lilian looks down at Hikaru in total bafflement. Her moment of noncomprehension leads her to defensively clutch her necklace for no reason, hiding it as if a cutesy pink seagull is trying to take it. "N-No. My apologies, but there's been a mistake." Lilian says, wearing a dress with a dark starscape motif. "I'm not a Precure. I don't even know what that is. I said so earlier, remember?"

    In the midst of talking, the 'swirling redshifted event horizon' visual effect fizzles on behind her head, and Lilian mutters something inaudible and pinches it between her fingers, snuffing it out like a candle. "Is there an age cutoff or something? I don't quite understand the structure of--" The little star-limned black hole swirly disobediently pops back into existence, and Lilian snuffs it out again with an annoyed sigh. "All you need to know is that I'm not a Precure." Lilian sighs.

    'Hikaru! You shouldn't call people old! Besides, I'm an adult too, and you wouldn't call me old, lun!'

    "Huh?!"

    The same word for the second time in the same minute. Lilian opens her mouth in shock, chokes down the following 'no way! how old even are you?!' with great difficulty, and shakily manages "N-no offense taken. Of course. I don't age like you do, so . . ." Saying you're twenty-four is hard.

    'Um... your outfit's really pretty, lun. Feel free to, to show us the way, lun!'

    Lilian breathes deep and does her best to take it in stride. "Thank you. I don't ordinarily wear it, but this just happened to be an unusual occasion." she says, smoothing down her dress and throwing her hair back over her shoulder out of idle calming habit. Not having her cool villainous makeup on (just the normal kind) feels strange; wearing something this fancy alongside that scar, and all. Lilian does her best to imagine it makes her look dignified, and turns ahead to lead the way, forgetting entirely about the split-sunburst and magical orbits design of her ink and the villainous back window of her dress.

    . . . . . . . . . . . .

    The gigantic super woods are rough terrain; a fact which Lilian overtly acknowledges and has already advised be accounted for. She is also trained to cross terraformed No-Man's Land if necessary, and shows the years she has put into it almost immediately. She has inhumanly keen vision, a finely honed sense for paths of least resistance, and those little waves of black-static that let her perform weightless lunar hops up and down big obstacles conserve magic exponentially better than flying.

    Additionally, forests in particular are her natural home; she's been running around in ancient old-growth faerie forests since she was six; and it shows in her general aura of wellness at being here, despite her ambient alertness towards the very unignorable sounds of megafauna. Every so often, Lilian breaks a conversational lull with an Interesting Fact about something she observes in the forest, or a summary of a classic folk story about why those natural phenomena arise as she remembers them, halfway to keep the Precures occupied, halfway because she just likes using her weird pre-Christian knowledge ranks when they come up.

    Despite having an incredibly magical girl villain-styled sword, she generally avoids cutting vegetation, for whatever reason. She'd rather help boost one of the girls up than hack away at a thicket.
Lilian Rook     'Hikaru! Be careful, lun! It could be dangerous!'
    'No, hey, look at this! It's a tiny little... plant creature...? Hey, it's cute!'

    Given Lilian's track record with people saying 'No, hey, look at this!', she can't help but react more like Lala than Hikaru, getting out "Hey-- Don't run off on your own! You don't know what that is!" She lets down her caution with possibly more grace, however, when it turns out fine. Descending from a giant stone with a flutter of trailing cloth and long hair, Lilian approaches behind Hikaru while keeping a careful stare locked on the . . . bizarre little guy. As Lala rushes ahead, Lilian holds a posture sufficient for closing the gap to intervene, and then seems more relieved than not when it runs away.

    'Ahahaha! Another one! And look, they're following me around!'
    'Why'd it ignore *me*, lun....'

    "Who knows." Lilian says. "If they really are plants, then it could be any number of reasons. It's not as if they can understand that you like them. It might just be some small difference in your body heat or smell or even just that you have a different colouration. The red one seems to like your friend, and she's extremely pink." She started off trying to be reassuring, and ended up watching the pikmin bury the gummy in genuine thought cradling her chin and tilting her head. "If it's humanoid, do you think it uses tools? It seems to use its manual dexterity for planting, so . . ."

    Out of sheer curiosity, Lilian unlatches her Paladins mini-medical kit (next to her totally not a fucking raygun, strapped to her thigh), retrieves a travel-sized folding scalpel, and tosses it a short distance to land near the pikmin; it's basically a machete to that guy. After a short wait, she tries one of those horridly dense nutrient bars too.
Natsuki Nuki While only a tiny bit offended at the comical invasion of space, there's something goofily endearing about Hikaru's running around enough that Natsuki eases off slowly and amicably.

Her tail doesn't, the snake-head segmented black and silently seething. Black-sclera'ed eyes lock on to Hikaru, hatefully prowling the air about Natsuki's rear arc, offended and counting the hours, the minutes, the bleak-beat seconds before stri--

'You're a *real* ninja?! Twincool!!!!'

Natsuki, having drawn her index forefinger to gum on in considerance of something she couldn't place that was important, watches Hikaru go right into the same pose as Futaba and launch right into twin enablement. Despite the sharp teeth that press in from the close of her jaw, she doesn't feel a pinch in her mouth, a pressure on her finger.

It's cute, and the feeling's fuzzy enough in her head that her tail - coiled about her right side - extends out to look back at her front and glare betrayed.

It's a disagreement, but demon grudges are beaten by sister cuteness. Futaba didn't have that many friends at all, and a doofus like her needed...

Wait! Natsuki shakes out her head, dropping her finger and waving out the sudden throbbing. Why did she care?

'You're a *youkai*!'

Risen from her moment of split-attentioned decision by being seen and noticed, Natsuki plants a hand on her collar and grins broadly. Her button ears flick, and she makes a gesture of swaying out her coat and tilting forward. Her tail, expressively in synch, moves on the same beat and rises in scorpion poise to flick out tongue, black tongue on black scales.

Then she winks a red eye. "Correct! You read the right books and imagine, don't you?" Her hands clap together, nails clicking as her smile develops with the orbit of her tail's undulation. "Being noticed is so flattering, and 'starvelous' is adorable. I think--" Hyoo-hyoo-hyoo exhales Natsuki, rising back in a sway-up and reset. "I like you! You're definitely not a doofus like my sister, even if you do things like her sometimes."

Being praised utterly disarms the white jacketed chimera-girl, and so she gives the whirlwind of the Space Invader an upnod. "Feel free to report back if I do anything cool."

Not that she'd need to do so, or her sentiments necessarily hit, considering the whirlwind girl had carried on to little colored tiny men!

Navigating with an easy forest motion joined by her angy storm nimbus, Natsuki kept up with the path with a mix of light pathfinding and cloud-step cheating, but wasn't especially helpful. Looking around for rare resources might be more fun, but, "Everything's so stupidly big! How are we supposed to find any big treasures if everything's small-ified?" Natsuki complains, not having fully contemplated the qualities of Little Big Planet adventures.

"Plant creatures?" Natsuki asks, and follows the lollipop off towards the weird onion burying ritual. "Oh hey, wait, instant sugar minions? That's rad!" Her red eyes shine with sinful eagerness as she realizes the sugar to little guy conversion. "Hold on, this could be a real hit - did anyone see any bees around here? I bet local honey or sugar would make a lot of fresh minions!" Natsuki is once again eager. Just floating around a forest paradise where she was small and a yankee tank cleared the way and churned up the earth wasn't that exciting, but this space onion treasure seemed promising already!
Natsuki Nuki 'It's a universal greeting, stupid!'

"Hate to pick sides." Natsuki says, clearly having no trouble at all. "But that greeting sucked."

'Oh? You think so, Ms. Natsuki?'

"Know so." Natsuki appraises, over a shoulder twiceover with the pivot of her tail-eyed gaze. "Bold power for you would be. . . Pink, yellow, white between colors, black..." Natsuki snaps and points, grinning with confidence. "Wide belt on sideways across. Baseball hat." Narrowing down on a feeling. "Bandanna, with a cap over top. Forebang clip."

'First form... Reseal.'

Natsuki will not get to a single Pikmin except by force of personality because Futaba immediately turns into a little two-dot leaf raccoon-dog and starts trundling around, right into Natsuki once more. "Why? Why now? We can just destroy-- I mean, defeat," She's so quick to correct with a chirp-chuff off and a smile. "-whatever attacks us. So don't keep embarrassing us in front of the *Space Inspectors* and the non-racist heroes of Earth. Being a total profile example of a *dork* is going to. . . fail your ninja mission! So fill that head of yours with stuffing, sis, these girls really do need a hero."

And maybe Natsuki wants to impress them.
Merelisa Shaynore §Hello?§

    Lala startles at the language-bypassing connection, looking over at Lilian in surprise. There's probably some deeply complex cultural nuance to the intra-species communication done through touching antennae like that, ingrained as habit even when it can't be reciprocated or understood, but it doesn't seem like receiving a 'new kind' of response bothers her.

    She raises up an antenna in a little shoulder-height wave, bulb softly glowing in a pattern like a firefly.

"You've been working very hard, haven't you?"

    "... Lun." That linguistic participle seems to have a lot of flexibility, but coupled with that tone and determined nod, it can only mean 'serious affirmation' here. "Thanks. I have to keep working hard, lun."

"I like you! You're definitely not a doofus like my sister, even if you do things like her sometimes."

    Being praised so directly, and by someone so *mystically and devilishly cool*, makes Hikaru snap to attention like Natsuki is instantly engraved in her mind as an authority figure. "Got it, Miss Nue! I think you're cool too! I'll be sure to report back diligently!"

Warm or cool? Soft or firm? Moving or still?

    The onion is still, firm, and cool, feeling essentially like any typical fruit. There's a little more give to it than a fruit with a proper rind or peel, but the outer layer is clearly protective, for whatever squooshy-feeling core she can feel inside. The idea that it might be full of a million tiny pikmin seeds that'll die if squished too hard is a good incentive to stop squeezing it before getting much more information.

    The pikmin absolutely adore Rita and Lilian's offers of food-- or, rather, they don't change expressions, or respond to anyone talking to them, because they have totally neutral faces and no mouths. Like ants, they swarm around whatever food is offered and proudly march it back home, performing only that same routine in absence of other orders or stimuli from Hikaru or the others. They definitely *seem* more plantlike than they seem sapient.

"Baa weep graanaagh-weep ninibong..?"

    Despite how silly it sounds, both Lala and Hikaru think this 'universal greeting' is actually the coolest shit ever. These planet-hopping girls, in an unfamiliar new section of the universe, have to do all they can to absorb the new set of pancultural realities to behave properly when meeting new aliens!

    "Baa... weep... granangh, weep... ninilbog. That's so cool...." "I've never heard that before, lun. AI, can you record that for me?" "I've added a new note for you under 'Unknown Galaxy', Lala."

"If they really are plants, then it could be any number of reasons."

    "That's true, lun... AI says that plants just respond to stimuli like light or nutrients instead of actually 'thinking'. But I don't know what I'm doing to give off a stimulus they don't like, oyo...." Lala still looks sort of crestfallen, and later when she thinks no one's paying close attention, she asks AI for an analysis of the pikmin to double check.

    Meanwhile, Lilian's offer of food is accepted, but her offer of a tool is met with bemusement. The new horde of pikmin all gather around it, but they just stand there blankly without interacting, until Hikaru nudges it with her finger and a small cluster of them break off to pick it up. All they do is carry it back to their onion and place it on the ground. When they're next prompted to dig for nutrient bars, they do so by hand. Dumbass little plant man.
Merelisa Shaynore     The part that Sarracenia spotted from her brief foray into the air turns out to *not* be a practical set of solar arrays to provide power to the spaceship. Instead, it's a stretched elastic cloth over a metal frame attached by springs, with a rattling engine of some sort on the underside-- it's a *trampoline*. It's also, due to that weird engine, very very heavy.

    "Oh! I know what this is!" Hikaru breaks from the travel line to run over beside the trampoline, struggling vainly to wedge her fingers underneath it and lift it up. Lala pokes at her AI on her wrist while following behind, crouching to look around the edge more mindfully to see if there's some way to get leverage.

    "This is the Fusion Trampoline. Miss Hikaru asked to install this on me when she and Lala were repairing me after the first time we crashed on Earth. It allows you to jump far higher than your typical abilities would enable, particularly on low-gravity planets, where Hikaru was curious to see if she could jump out of orbit. My primary functionalities won't be improved with this, but it may allow you to reach the wormhole from the ground."

    "But it's too heavyyyyyyyyyy... oh! Could you give me a hand?" That is... not directed at the Elites. It's at the group of bug-eyed red plant fellows standing blankly behind her in a cluster, having multiplied significantly in number after Rita and Lilian's feeding. At her request, the knee-high swarm silently surrounds the trampoline and heaves it up out of the ground, lifting it above their heads. "Twincool! They're super helpful!"

    Lala looks on with a bit of peturbation, hands on her hips. "Is it fair to ask them to do work for us, lun? It seems mean to boss them around." "But they like doing it! And I'm not forcing them." "Oyo... I guess so...."
Lilian Rook     Lilian watches Lala's little firefly blipping and thinks intensely about how adorable it seems. This results in a third struggle with her visual flair effect.

    'Thanks. I have to keep working hard, lun.'

    "Would you mind if I repeated some words of advice I once left for the people who'd follow after me?" Lilian says, letting it linger long enough to no longer be casual. "Make certain that you can tell the difference between a weak person struggling with a light burden, and a strong person struggling with a heavy one. They can look very similar from the outside."

    'But I don't know what I'm doing to give off a stimulus they don't like, oyo....'

    "There's probably not much to be done until the AI can piece together how they work." Lilian says, shrugging. She sure isn't testing whether or not the pikmin like her. It's almost as if she's avoidant of potential rejection or something! "I wouldn't let it bother you." she says, as she watches the pikmin haul off the nutrient bar and ignore the tiny tool. "Hm."

    'This is the Fusion Trampoline.'

    "The what?" Lilian can't help but shout. Startled, she stares at Hikaru with a brand new kind of worry. "Isn't that incredibly unsafe? What would happen if you did bounce out of orbit?"

    Midway through walking over to come to Hikaru's aid, Lilian steps aside slightly to let a hurried little pikmin pass, and then watches in renewed interest as they gather around to help transport the ridiculous contraption. "It seems they're adapted to follow a leader? Rather than using tools on their own, it's possible they coordinate around a more intelligent central unit. Like auxillary workers. We've only encountered the latter without the former, I imagine."

    'Twincool! They're super helpful!'
    'Is it fair to ask them to do work for us, lun? It seems mean to boss them around.'
    'But they like doing it! And I'm not forcing them.'
    'Oyo... I guess so....'

    "I'm . . . not certain which of those is correct." Lilian admits, reluctantly. "If they'll do it umprompted in nature, it's probably what they're adapted for, though. So . . . I can't imagine they mind." She sounds really unsure.
Rita Ma      Rita stays obsessed with the pikmin for a while, though only half out of affection. She pets and dotes only intermittently. Her gaze keeps drifting, not to any individual little guy, but to the patterns they swirl in when they prioritize work and navigate around each other.

     Birds in a flock, fish in a school, ants in a chain. Rita doesn't know the word for it, but she knows the thing. It's pleasant, like a lava lamp.

     She stays that way until Lilian and Lala's conversation makes her perk up and heel-twist stand-turn, swaying and smiling, rejuvenated.

     "Lala..." she says gently. The one word, in the way it aches, says a lot for empathy. It's a second before she an think of anything else: "... The 'hard-working Lala' is the only one we know. I hope you don't feel like us being proud of her is less real."

     I'd never take that advice. But I don't know what else to say.

     From there, she braces to help Hikaru with the trampoline as if she fully expects the two of them could carry it, then makes a delighted "oh!!" as the pikmin tote it off, and finally...

     While lingering with Lilian for a moment, before their inevitable return:

     "It seems they're adapted to follow a leader?"
     "I don't think that's true, Ms. Rook. They're 'schooling'. Whatever part of them do, the others follow. It's just that..." She trails off, waving at a knee-high Red Guy. "We're a really big 'part'."