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Merelisa Shaynore     There's no urgent mission to get done today, and no call to action put out by the girls. The reason a few of you are here anyways is because Lala sent out a brief notice that she's repaired some of the tactical systems that the spaceship has available, so she'll be working on the plan for the upcoming expedition. The repeated use of the singular first person pronoun, plus the stiffly proper and polite way she phrases the notice-- 'devising a plan of action to be maximally efficient without being overly demanding of your time, lun'-- suggests that she's still not at all over the argument she and Hikaru had last time, and could probably use some company, during her devising.

    The Precures might have reassured you that the spaceship functioned as a home, but before seeing the inside of it, that could've meant anything. Images of cramped technical chambers like a pink glittery ISS, or the makeshift mess of two girls trying to make do with living together without the typical amenities of a stable home, are dispelled when the heart-shaped door whirrs open and drops down a ramp up to let you inside. Instead, the 'foyer', as it were, is a single room spacious enough for a half dozen people to sit in comfortably, lit by the daylight coming through the bandaged-up star-shaped window taking up most of one wall. Compared to the raucous pink and yellow of the exterior, the interior is more muted but still *adoringly* cutesy, cushioned with soft purple and yellow, with pillars of teal metal built into the walls likely containing other facilities. In the center of the room is a big, star-shaped table outlined in purple, with a horseshoe-shaped command chair at one end, and two little chairs situated at the others, all neatly piled with ruffled pillows of various sparkles and colors.

    There's artwork-- hand drawn and endearingly amateur-- of alien locales, along with printed photographs of the two girls in Situations (a lot of which involve costumes?), strung up with colorful ribbons along the walls. A half-drawn curtain obscures a set of bunk beds, and which one belongs to Hikaru is instantly clear by the wall tapestries and strings of star-lights and piles of esoteric creature plushies decorating the space. There's a meal calendar pinned up beside one of those pillars, doodled all over in a dozen colors of stars and hearts, neatly detailing the division of food that the Elites brought, with notes in different handwriting suggesting stuff like '*sparkle sparkle* LOOK FOR GIANT GREEN ONION *sparkle sparkle*'. It's all as tidily cozy as you can imagine a spaceship being, while still being lived in and loved, like a seamlessly synergistically shared bedroom.
Merelisa Shaynore     The mood, on the other hand, isn't as cozy. Lala is sitting in the command chair when the Elites come in, hands clasped in her lap and shoulders drawn. She touches her antennae to the heart-patterned sensors on each armrest, and a brief pulse of electricity makes them glow to life, making AI's sourceless bleep-bloops sound throughout the ship. She doesn't look visibly unhappy-- she's not frowning, and eyes aren't melodramatically bloodshot or anything-- but her stoically neutral expression feels sharply negative in comparison to how expressive she's been around Hikaru-- who is, notably, absent.

    Lala barely shifts when the Elites come in, with her back stiffly straight away from the cushions on her chair, and her gaze still focused on the table. "Hi, lun. Thanks for coming, even though you didn't need to, lun. Since last time, I fixed up the hologram table, so now that the X-Ray Detector can point us in a direction for where Yuma is, I'll use it to model our route there so we don't have to waste any time. And then, AI can scan us and assign us roles to maximize our teamwork efficiency"

    Her antennae tip-tap in a pattern across her armchair sensors again, and the surface of the table starts glowing blue. Miniature models of the spaceship and surrounding clearing bweem up in the middle as translucent flickering light-shapes, and then gradually the surrounding forest gets filled in more and more, down to all the rocks and the rivers frozen in place. Lala adjusts another setting quietly, and the canopies of the trees turn near-transparent, letting the forest floor be easily visible from all around.

    "Um... so it was detecting stellar particles around... this direction, I think, lun...."
Combaticon     Completely to spite Lilian after last time, Depthcharge just-- left, after dealing with the Snagret and recovering the X-Ray Detector. No doubt causing a significant delay in the X-Ray Detector's installation and testing. She had no intention of returning.

    Brawl has other ideas.

    "Put me down you deranged piece of machinery!"

    "In a cycle."

    "Right now, moron! At least use your flight system-- you are going to offline us both!"

    The bulky green tankbot slams into the ground from the sky portal as if she had just hulk-jumped from across the continent. Wedged under one arm is the smaller blue Depthcharge, trying unsuccessfully to brace herself with next to no leverage. As the dust settles, Brawl steps out of the small crater she'd created and boards the ship itself.

    This necessitates both ducking her head and swiveling her turret around to aim the cannons down just to fit under the heart-shaped headframe, but she manages it without denting anything. Only once inside does she pry her smaller companion loose and set her down on her feet.

    "You're gonna be nice, right?"

    "We are Decepticons," Depthcharge folds her arms, eyes dimmed as if closed, "Neither of us is under any obligation to be--" When her eyes open she beholds Brawl backlit by the ship interior's ceiling lighting, almost a silhouette save for the ominous glow of her crimson visor. With an ominous ratcheting sound, her turret rotates slowly back into the normal up-pointing resting position.

    "--Yes, of course."

    "Thought so," Brawl leans back, immediately shedding the ominous lighting produced just by the angle of her lean. One gargantuan hand raises, "Hey Lala. Thanks for the invite. You got it working?"

    While Depthcharge steps forward to lean her hands on the holotable, Brawl just sits on the floor-- hard enough to shake things, not hard enough to break things.

    "You 'think'?" Depthcharge tilts her head slightly to the alien mahou, "Is it in need of calibration, then?"
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite missed whatever occured last time. But you don't need to be a genius to read a bit under the neutral demeanor Lala was trying to present. She was just doing a really good job of keeping it down so she can focus on the matters at hand, and that's respectable. "Well y'all know what they say 'bout a pinch of prevention over a pound 'o cure," drawls the space cowboy vixen as she saunters over. "So a li'l plannin' ahead never hurts. Nice to see y'all got yer livin' space back in order too." She spends half her time on a spaceship, she can appreciate the need for some level of comfort." Her eyes fall upon the holotable, though initially admiring it more for the machine it was than what it happened to be displaying. "Purdy elaborate level of tech you got going here after bein' fixed up. Let's see what ya got."

She just chuckles a little to herself as Brawl figuratively and almost literally drags Depthcharge in. Corona leans back against a bulkhead where she's got a good view of the display and waits for Lala to start giving the details.
Lilian Rook     'devising a plan of action to be maximally efficient without being overly demanding of your time, lun'

    Well, that's worrying enough that Lilian has to show up. Though it's not as if she didn't want to.

    'Hi, lun. Thanks for coming, even though you didn't need to, lun.'

    Lilian sighs before speaking. The 'it's that bad, huh' kind. Given the low urgency meeting, she's dressed 'casually' instead of for a forest romp involving megafauna and magical girl villains, though she has to remove her late autumn coat at the door. Fashionable boots for the English rain, leggins that don't have to be too thick just yet, wool skirt and button up fitted cardigan over a low blouse, she actually looks like she came over from her walk home herself. Her bracelet fits, but her earrings are simple enough to be at odds with her hairpin.

    ' Since last time, I fixed up the hologram table, so now that the X-Ray Detector can point us in a direction for where Yuma is, I'll use it to model our route there so we don't have to waste any time.'

    "Oh." says Lilian, taking a moment to think. "That's actually quite a good idea." follows, delivery flat and simple for lack of real flaw to find in it. "I'm glad that you're maintaining a productive state of mind. Most people are the type to panic or sulk and get nothing done in these sorts of situations." Lilian says lightly enough to not rub it in, but hardly avoiding the elephant in the room.

    'And then, AI can scan us and assign us roles to maximize our teamwork efficiency'

    "Ah . . ." Lilian starts glancing around the room quickly, looking for anything that could be construed as 'the AI', or any sort of cameras. "Scan . . . what? Exactly? That's rather a lot to insist on, don't you think?"

    'Um... so it was detecting stellar particles around... this direction, I think, lun....'

    Now she's hesitating to fully approach the hologram table. She can see it reasonable well from afar, given her eyes, but it's an uncomfortable position to watch from. "You think? Is the X-ray emitter damaged?" Lilian raises her voice a little more to be heard clearly. "It sounds as if the input you're getting is imprecise, or fragmented."

    Still, despite the operational talk, her wandering eyes clearly begin tarrying with the sparkly calendar, the stuffed bunk beds . . . Lilian had at least expected different rooms. This all seems much closer than two friends who were lumped together by fate. It almost stings to look at, empty of Hikaru as it is.
Rita Ma      Rita, weighed down by concern, is back in her plainer work clothes, rolled-up-dress-shirt-and-skirt. The leather tote on her shoulder, thumb-hooked-through-straps awkwardly, is laden down with tupperware containers: one full of sugar cubes for the pikmin, the rest full of home cooking.

     Poor Lala. They don't fight often, do they? But that just makes it worse when they do...

     She cranes her head through the open heart-doors, gasps softly hand-over-mouth, and sheds a little of that weight. "Lala... oh, it's wonderful here! I'm even kind of jealous! The bunk beds, the toys, who made those drawings? When I'm redecorating, I ought to--"

     Her awed-wandering eyes freeze when they touch Lala's. Her mouth hangs open for a second, then shuts in a sheepish smile. Not the time. "Um, right. Business." A glance cuts across to Lilian: oh, god, it is that bad.

     Fluffy rice, cold spicy raw crab with a thick sheaf of napkins, a thermos of warm seaweed soup with little cups, and a few little cans of tea are carefully arranged around the edge of the hologram table, with Rita constantly glancing back at Lala to make sure she isn't disrupting anything or crowding the table by doing so.

     She serves Lala first, Lilian second, and herself last, with an I-know-you-can't-eat-it-but-it'd-feel-rude-to-leave-you-out perfunctory-smiling offer to the Decepticons, forks and/or metal chopsticks included, and then finally sits down. (Her own bowl is crab-only.)

     "'Assign roles to maximize our teamwork efficiency'... does he know that much about us already?" Cure Glow says while chopstick-tapping her red-stained lips, not-quite-warily. Then, with a bit more concern: "What kind of scan? Isn't too many of those in one year bad for you?" Getting them mixed up with X-rays is the least of her real worries.
Tamamo     This will be Tamamo's first visit to this world, and her first in-person meeting with Lala. Rather than her usual outfit, she's dressed more casually. Rather than her other usual outfit, she's dressed more warmly. To be more clear, her knit sweater and puffy jacket suggest she's come here directly from someplace wherein November weather is to be taken seriously. Or, maybe, she's just sensitive to the cold... or it's just that comfortable... or some combination of the above. She lets the jacket loose, a bit, on arrival.

    "Hello, Ms. Lala! We have not 'seen' each other before, have we? I hope you do not mind my having come without great preparation. It was only today that I found I could find time, and... oh, yes, of course. I am Tamamo-no-mae, as your ears may tell you." As ever, her outfit is tailored to allow comfortable space for three fluffy tails. In good health, her ears stand straight as she takes in the ship's interior. In all likelihood, no one ever mentioned her physical form to Lala beyond that she's some type of star spirit. "Oh, but this is so well-appointed! It is lovely what you have done with the space. Mhm, yes, it has that feeling of being 'lived-in,' no? Did you draw these pictures, or take these photos? Or, perhaps... would you like some hot cocoa?"

    A thermos and travel mugs appear from inside her jacket. "No, I suppose it is too warm on this planet, at the moment, is it? To forgo hot drinks in a jungle is well." She doesn't look at all overheated, herself.

    It takes longer for her to reach the actual point of everyone being here than it may for others, at which she gives the map a closer look. She tries several angles. "Oh... from here? Can you determine the nature of each obstacle, with this, or is it only a matter of mapping? A map is ever useful, of course, though I would prefer one which displays the known leylines of a place. Generals have need of scouts for such purposes, I suppose."

    She bustles about, somehow never looking directly at the reveal of a partially enclosed bedroom.

    "Are the others also coming, or would this be too crowded? I would not expect chairs for a vast meeting, of course, in a ship for three." She wasn't there to see the argument.
Merelisa Shaynore     When Brawl crashes in the clearing, the whole rocket rattles and bounces around. Lala is jolted in her seat with a startled "Oyo--?!" with her antennae tensing and crinkling up, and the hologram table flickers chaotically. She tries to hastily smooth out the ruffles in her hair and dress like an embarrassed cat, so that she can reset back to her stoic reservedness when everyone else comes in, but she's still got a cowlick sticking up from the impact that she accidentally passed over.

"Neither of us is under any obligation to be--"

    Depthcharge, specifically, gets Lala to look up from the table with a tight smile, eyes shut. It's hard to even read her as being 'cold' or 'unhappy', with the tiny limited motion of her lips and microexpressions, rather than being 'powered-down' in a way, like there just isn't enough energy in her system to spare for emoting more emphatically than that.

    "Um, please don't worry about it, lun. I won't ask anyone to do anything; you've all been really helpful already, lun."

"Lala... oh, it's wonderful here! I'm even kind of jealous!"
"Nice to see y'all got yer livin' space back in order too."

    Lala sneaks occasional glances up from her work to assess everyone's reactions to peering around the spaceship. It hasn't slipped her mind that this is the first time that the Elites have been invited to see the inside, and her preoccupation on Hikaru and the mission to save Yuma isn't so great that she's forgotten to be a bit concerned with that. Given the way that Hikaru's bunk looks (cluttered, not dirty), it's easy to imagine that the tidy state of the spaceship is mostly her doing.

    "It's-- thanks, lun. I was given the ship when they assigned me this job on Samaan, lun." No one was really commenting about the literal architectural structure of the interior, but that's what she responds to.

    The purple outline around the holographic part of the table is, actually, perfectly sized for plopping a bowl of rice onto. Lala takes a pair of chopsticks-- she's never had cause to use a fork before-- and bows her head to Rita a few times. Poking at the squishy lump of crab in her bowl, Lala says, "Thanks for the meal, lun. Um-- what's this? Is it a kind of gummy?"

"Hello, Ms. Lala! We have not 'seen' each other before, have we?"

    "Oh! Tamamo-no-mae!" Lala perks up out of surprise, trying to straighten up her back even further from where it was and reflexively planting her hands on her knees like she's being called on by a teacher. She sinks a bit after the initial jump, not slouching at all but grinding to a halt like her toy crank fully unwound. "Um, sorry for the-- today won't be very interesting, lun. It's just boring planning, lun."

    She continues peering at Tamamo for a little while longer, though, like she's trying to somewhat furtively puzzle out something that's bothering her. "You *do* look really different from Yuma, lun... we-- we've been to a planet of people with dog ears, but not a star with dog ears, lun."

"The bunk beds, the toys, who made those drawings?"
"Did you draw these pictures, or take these photos?"

    Sure enough, one of the drawings on the wall is of a cave-like dwelling with some bipedal pomeranian-type aliens, covered in a thick layer of fur. It's next to a photograph of Hikaru with her hands clasped to the top of her head and her eyes squeezed shut in the middle of a squealed 'ITA--!', a blurred bone spinning out of frame from where it clearly just fell out of the sky and bonked her. The pretense of avoiding looking at them is paper thin, and the wall of photos holds Lala's attention a lot better than the holograms do.
Merelisa Shaynore     "Hikaru draws them. She draws a lot, lun. I usually hold the camera, but-- um, it was her idea to make documents and records like that of all the planets we've been to. There's-- on the end, lun." Lala points, only raising her hand a little bit above the arm of the command chair to minimize movement. There's a photo of what must've been shortly after the crash on this planet, with Hikaru and Lala still dirty and scuffed-up, each holding the end of a leaf that's large enough to cover both of them shoulder to shoulder like a tent. Unlike almost every other previous planet, there's no drawing of the little bug-eyed alien inhabitants to go along with it.

"Most people are the type to panic or sulk and get nothing done in these sorts of situations."

    Lala's antennae crinkle up a bit, and she squeezes her hands between her thighs with her eyes back on the table. "Um, that wouldn't be very efficient, lun. It's better to just keep focusing and working, anyways, so..." Her voice drops into a sulky grumble, "So we can get Yuma back and get off this stupid planet and leave those dumb pikmin behind, lun."

""Scan . . . what? Exactly?"
"'Assign roles to maximize our teamwork efficiency'... does he know that much about us already?"

    Lala looks surprised at the hesitation, and points up at the domed ceiling of the spaceship. At the top is a trio of lens-speaker-light-type circles, that glow faintly when indicated, and evidently count as close as 'pointing at AI' as is physically possible.

    "AI's been gathering data on everyone through my glove, lun. If it scans you, then it can assess what you'd be best at doing, based on your mindset and strength and things like that, and then it'll tell you what you're supposed to do to make the mission most efficient, lun. It has trouble scanning Hikaru, but, you're not... that's just different, lun."

    Rita's suggestion worries Lala visibly, because she's implied that she's been getting scans like that her entire life. "Um, AI? Are scans bad for you, lun?"

    "Not to worry, Ms. Lala. Samaanian scanning technology uses frequencies lower than Earth scanning technology, so there isn't any risk of cellular damage. Please tell me when your friends are ready." "Lun. That's good."

"Is it in need of calibration, then?"
"It sounds as if the input you're getting is imprecise, or fragmented."

    "Um-- no, lun." Lala abruptly claps her hands to her cheeks and bonks her antennae together in front of her face, causing a brief sparking of electricity to refocus herself. "It's all fine, lun! The machinery is working fine. I was just a little distracted, lun. AI, extend the hologram out in the direction of the coordinates we found earlier, and then zoom in so it fits."

    The hologram bweeeeeems to scroll to one side, placing the miniature rendition of the spaceship in one corner of the table near Rita, with hills on the opposite end that extend up to Lala's shoulders before being cut off by the projection. Lala pokes at the base of the hills with an antenna bulb, indicating the cave tunnels disappearing into the ground.

    "The particles were being emitted from somewhere around here, lun, and we have to cross all the forest to get to it. Once we do that, there's a bunch of different caves that it could be... and we could get lost underground if we're not careful, lun."

"Are the others also coming, or would this be too crowded?"

    And now Lala cools down into stasis again, shoulders drawn. "Um, Hikaru's not coming, lun. She's out working on... something or other."
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite nods a bit as the pictures and such are explained. "Good to keep documentation of past expeditions." Even if more in pictures and less writing. Each to their own methods. As for the explaination of where the AI is getting information though Lala's glove she just chuckles a little. "Nuttin too weird about that." Corona taps a finger against the device strapped to her left forearm. "My analyzer does similar things." Pause. Then a shrug. "Though only things it's actually directed at, not passively."

But her attention is quick to shift to the holographic display as it alters to indicate a different location. "Looks a bit ways off. Gonna pro'ly need more than just yer little flower posses" in other words the Pikmin "to carry it back." She glances over at the Combaticons, noticing Vortex isn't with them this time. And there's other options as necessary. "Though sure we can work that out as needed."

So her gaze turns back to the display. Ears perk up at the mention of caves and tunnels in the mountains. "Then we gotta be careful." One hand reachs up to adjust her hat so the brim doesn't dip forward and obscure her view of the display. "But doncha worry none miss. Ah'm familiar with a thing or two 'bout handling caverns, and know an expert or two to ask iffen needed."
Merelisa Shaynore "Gonna pro'ly need more than just yer little flower posses to carry it back."

    Lala tilts her head at Corona, confused for a moment, before realizing what her misunderstanding was. Her tiny fractional shake of her head with her eyes closed is reminiscent of a doll, reserved enough to almost be invisible.

    "Um, Yuma can fly, lun. And if she's hurt, then... then Hikaru or I will carry her back." She droops a little more. "I hope she hasn't been too lonely...."

    After a few seconds of wallowing in that unhappy thought, Lala gets back to business and crouches down beside the table. She pulls open a drawer and takes out the dark pen that Eyewon was using, pinching it between her fingers like she's unsure how safe it is to touch. "Probably, we'll run into the Nottraiders again, now that they know where we are, lun. But this Dark Pen... I don't actually know what it is, lun. And AI doesn't have access to all its databases still, so scanning it doesn't find anything. It looks like *our* Star Color Pens, but... Eyewon's not a Precure, lun."
Combaticon     Rita's offer of tasty homecooked food prompts Depthcharge to straighten her posture. Her mouth even opens but no sound comes out-- interrupted instead by Brawl slamming one beefy fist into the opposing palm. The smaller 'bot's eyes shift towards her larger companion without turning her head or body at all.

    "Sorry, but no thanks. That's not somethin' we can process," Her head shifts towards Depthcharge, who folds her arms and closes her eyes.

    "As Terrans say; it is the thought that counts," The acidic edge is in her tone, but she's at least trying (to avoid getting crushed like a beer can).

    When the scanner is indicated to be working properly, her eyes dart sideways with the slightest scowl. So she really wasn't needed after all. After a moment, those eyes dim/close again. There's still a lot to do where her expertise is no doubt necessary.

    Brawl scrapes a fingertip against her faceplate, focused on the holographic map as it expands out and refocuses on new terrain, "I don't mind gettin' analyzed. You're pretty talented, huh AI?" She leans back, looking up where Lala pointed.

> "But this Dark Pen... I don't actually know what it is, lun.

    "She was annoyingly good at keeping me from taking it," Depthcharge's tone comes complete with a short jet of steam from between her shoulder panels, "If the enemy comes at us again, they will probably continue to use that device until it is taken from them or destroyed." One eye opens, "Assuming how it was used prior, we should prepare for additional amplified variants of local wildlife in the mission zone."

    Behind her, Brawl-- well, her eyes aren't visible behind the red visor, unlike the individual optics of her fellow robot. After a moment, she lifts one hand to cradle her faceplate, tapping a fingertip against painted metal. The opposing hand supports the other, making the giant machine quite obviously thoughtful when she emits a soft 'hmmm'-like buzz.

    "I ain't the most experienced with protoforms, but--" The hand at her 'chin' moves, gesturing out towards Lala, "Are you, like... Doin' alright?"
Rita Ma      "Um-- what's this? Is it a kind of gummy?"
     Rita pauses with a whole crab leg, deniably disguised by its thick sauce marinade, to her lips. "Oh!! It's--"

     Lala's pikminpinions slam up through Rita's memories like an icy spike. Her chopsticks drop the leg. "A-are you... Lala, are you a vegetarian?" Oh no what if she thinks it's gross because she's an alien what if her culture doesn't eat animals at all what if she realizes I'm an awful gross-- "How about you just have the rice and soup, Lala!!"

     At the slightest sign of dislike or confusion, Rita does a quick foodswitch that magicians would be jealous of. A blinking outline is left behind. Dwee?-dwee?

     She has just enough time to studiously examine the map and (mmm, mmm) nod with a scholarly focus while nibbling her food- she does actually eat crab like a civilized person; at least, while anyone's watching- before another problem (re)emerges.

     "... so there isn't any risk of cellular damage."
     "Oh! That's..." Rita remembers that this takes away the one excuse she'd come up with. Her eyes slightly glaze. "... good!"

     "Please tell me when your friends are ready."
     Rita looks at Lilian piteously, like a raccoon that's gotten a six-pack stuck around its neck coming to a human.

     Whether or not that buys results, she swish-pivots back to Lala hurriedly, hands on her knees and leaning forward. "Ahhh... um... Lala! That still might not be such a good idea. Do you remember when I told you that I had to keep some things secret about how I became a Precure? That..." Oh, god, she's struggling. Her mouth smiles but her eyes are desperate. "... Some bad things might happen, if the wrong people knew?"
Tamamo     'Um, sorry for the-- today won't be very interesting, lun. It's just boring planning, lun.'

    "That is quite alright, of course. I merely wanted to meet you, and offer a little support, even if I might be unable to stay overlong." Tamamo's perfectly pleasant as she puts the cocoa back away. It simply disappears when out of view.

    '...based on your mindset and strength and things like that...'

    "Mindset...? Oh, can it read minds?" That would be very important to know, for reasons other than protecting her own thoughts. Though, it doesn't sound like it can. Tamamo looks up toward the scanner(?) position with some skepticism.

    'Um, Hikaru's not coming, lun. She's out working on... something or other.'

    Tamamo leans over to Lilian to ask, "There were several others here, as well, no...?" She only had a partial picture of the story so far, based on what Lilian's yet to tell her.

    Those drooping shoulders are a puzzle, but Tamamo doesn't immediately have the pieces to put it together past some instant suspicions. And voicing those is rude.

    'You *do* look really different from Yuma, lun... we-- we've been to a planet of people with dog ears, but not a star with dog ears, lun.'

    Tamamo tilts her head in casual curiosity, "Dog ears...?" It takes a moment before her expression turns aghast, and her hands raise to the top of her head. "Dog ears?! No, no, my dear -- these are fox ears! Surely you can see grand fluffiness of my tails? The red that borders to white--?!" The completely unexpected nature of the confusion bares Tamamo's utterly scandalized reaction, getting to the point of moving her right tail to hand to show the lighter underside.

    The fact that Lala would have no basis for knowing the difference slips below, in Tamamo's mind, her immediate opinions about dogs.
Lilian Rook     'Lala... oh, it's wonderful here!'

    Seeing Rita is a relief. A cautious one, though, judging by Lilian's expression. It wasn't always like that. But out of the handful of people who would have come, she's glad that it's her. Though she hadn't planned on eating, Lilian thanks Rita sincerely the moment she gets her bowl, not missing the significance of being served second, and actually seats herself at the table. For whatever reason, breaking out utensils feels a little too 'presumptuous' for this sort of private space to her, especially with Lala in this mood, and so she incidentally furthers the bit by floating little balls of rice and crab up to her mouth with gestures of her index finger, pointing and dragging bit by bit.

    'Oh, but this is so well-appointed! It is lovely what you have done with the space. Mhm, yes, it has that feeling of being 'lived-in,' no?'

    Tamamo is a less complicated relief. It isn't the sort that comes from being glad that someone stuck with something, or 'one reliable face in the room', but that sort that suggests she was hoping for something already. She jumps up to take her jacket from her, folding it neatly over her arm to put aside from the food, then sneaks in a quick squeeze.

    "Oh I should have thought to bring something cold myself!" says Lilian. "I brought so much the first time I was worrying that it'd be a bother to heap even more on. I don't think I can give gifts with the same sort of grace as you can. You know? Oh but it'd be a shame for it to go to waste . . ." That Look means she will definitely have chocolate drink if nobody wants it.

    'Oh... from here? Can you determine the nature of each obstacle, with this, or is it only a matter of mapping?'

    "I suppose it can't show much of the local fauna, but the sheer size of these little stones and shrubs and creeks makes them the obstacles that limit our range of movement before nightfall." Lilian looks for a relative clear point on the freshly scrolled map to point at, potentially (asking politely, then) scrolling it back to an earlier one if none can be found closer. "I was wondering if the ship might be able to get airborne well enough to move us closer to another part of the first, where we haven't explored as thoroughly. Naturally, as we recover the closest parts, the remaining modules will only be scattered further from us, and require longer and more inefficient travels to reach. It'd be best to place ourselves square in the center of a higher density of wreckage."

    'It's-- thanks, lun. I was given the ship when they assigned me this job on Samaan, lun.'

    Lilian pauses with a glob of rice and crab halfway to her lips. "Really?" She blinks, looks down at the star-shaped table and heart consoles. "Was it pink like this when you got it? With the windows and the bunk beds? Or did you heavily remodel it at some point later?" Lilian struggles to imagine this AI-driven worker society that declares people adults at thirteen and assigns them jobs for life having any sense of whimsy like this. It has to be Hikaru's work. She bets it was styled like a 19th century factory floor when Lala got it.

    'You *do* look really different from Yuma, lun... we-- we've been to a planet of people with dog ears, but not a star with dog ears, lun.'

    "Fox ears." Lilian says, automatically. For no reason, she scoots a little bit closer to Tamamo, though they're already adjacent. "She's being polite." probably means 'not flaming and glowing'.

    'Um, that wouldn't be very efficient, lun. It's better to just keep focusing and working, anyways, so...'

    "People are inefficient creatures by nature. That's why your planet invented the AI, isn't it?" says Lilian.
Lilian Rook     'So we can get Yuma back and get off this stupid planet and leave those dumb pikmin behind, lun.'

    Lilian's preferential 'you really don't like that they ignore you' is unpredictably curbed at the last second by absentmindedly saying "I hope they'll be fine on their own." instead.

    'AI's been gathering data on everyone through my glove, lun.'

    Lilian is staring at Lala's glove misgivingly the instant she says it. "Um. Ordinarily you have to collect informed consent for that sort of thing." Lilian says. "That sort of private information isn't something you should be taking from people at-will."

    'If it scans you, then it can assess what you'd be best at doing, based on your mindset and strength and things like that, and then it'll tell you what you're supposed to do to make the mission most efficient, lun.'

    Lilian turns her head to Rita and shares a dread look in silence.

    "I'd rather you not do that." says the other 'Precure' in the room. "Well, in the first place, it's impossible to retrieve information from a singularity after all, so there's no point." Lilian takes advantage of the Bit with absolutely mercenary shamelessness, now that it suits her. "And isn't that sort of embarrassing? Even if it would work, I'd feel sort of unhappy if someone could just consult an AI for my weight or measurements."

    'There were several others here, as well, no...?'

    Lilian leans in, murmuring "I imagine they must be looking after Hikaru. I hope so, at least. I'd feel terrible if we all abandoned one of them."
Merelisa Shaynore "A-are you... Lala, are you a vegetarian?"

    "... Lun? What's that?" Lala watches with bemusement while her crab is taken away, but she's equally happy to be presented with just rice and seaweed soup. "I like rice and seaweed. That's what onigiri's made of, lun."

"You're pretty talented, huh AI?"

    AI beep-boops in its lenses on the ceiling, processing the compliment. "... I am behind in my updates with Mother. Likely the other Samaanian AIs have developed data that I don't have access to, making me the least advanced among them. However, I still have many capabilities, and Miss Lala and Miss Hikaru excel at creating novel scenarios for my dataset."

    Maybe being bad at taking compliments is hereditary. Or... whatever adjacent form of family and influence a bonded AI from birth counts as, whichever direction that influence goes.

"Mindset...? Oh, can it read minds?"

    "Um... sort of, lun...?" Lala turns her gaze upwards to silently ask AI to explain, because despite being a fixture of her entire life, the process was never explained to her, apparently.

    "Negative. Behavioral analysis alongside biological data and physiological indicators of mood and stress allows me to construct an approximation of your current and baseline mindset to 99.5% accuracy. However, phenomenae such as 'reading thoughts' are impossible."

"Dog ears?! No, no, my dear -- these are fox ears!"

    This appears to be a grave cultural misstep!!!! Lala's eyes widen and she stands up from her command chair to shuffle around in restless distress before sitting back down and reassuming her primly withdrawn posture. "Um, I see the ears, lun! And the tails. They're very nice. Yeti is also really fluffy, lun...." After a few more seconds, she blurts out, pointing at Corona a bit rudely, "Is a fox like that, lun?"

"Was it pink like this when you got it? With the windows and the bunk beds? Or did you heavily remodel it at some point later?"

    Lala shakes her head, a teeny-tiny fond smile on her face even despite the circumstances. "Nope, lun. It got damaged in the crash back then too, lun, but when I was rebuilding it, Hikaru insisted we make it cute. I didn't want to at first, but she convinced me it'd be fun. We spent a whole *week* on it, doing painting and decorating every day when she got off school, so that it'd be 'our' spaceship. Everyone back home would be *horrified* to see it now, lun."

"People are inefficient creatures by nature. That's why your planet invented the AI, isn't it?"

    Lala tilts her head to the side, lips pursed into a microscopic pout. "... Lun. Because it's better to be efficient. So I have to be, lun."

"Um. Ordinarily you have to collect informed consent for that sort of thing."

    "Huh?" Oh no.

"And isn't that sort of embarrassing?"

    "Um... is it, lun?" This is apparently the first time that this has ever been suggested to Lala. "Hikaru doesn't get embarrassed.... why would it be, lun? AI needs the data to be as efficient as it can be, and no one can authorize AI but me, lun, and I won't... ask for that kind of stuff. It's part of a profile, lun."
Merelisa Shaynore "... Some bad things might happen, if the wrong people knew?"

    Of course, Lala's no stranger to Precures having nefarious villains looking to turn power to their own evil ends. Lala's own power is from a magical source that has to be kept safe from the Nottraiders at any cost, and information is a necessary front of that war, which she knows better than anyone. But in this spaceship-- Lala's home, as long as she's away from Samaan-- there aren't any Nottraiders, just Precures and their allies.

    So there's only one conclusion Lala can draw from that. She manages a small reassuring smile at Rita, one that probably looks pretty familiar, and sits back down in her chair with the Dark Pen clasped in her lap. "You're right, lun. It's smart to be careful. We've only known each other for a couple weeks, lun."

    Lala looks down at her lap, fidgeting with the pen, rubbing it with her thumb until void-black swirls and sparkles come out of the dimly magical surface. "I only landed on Earth six months ago too, lun. It feels long, but... it's really not, is it? So I guess it's natural that...."
Corona Arclite If being pointed out as an example bothers Corona she doesn't show it. And considering some of the weird places she's gone and people she's seen in the Multiverse that have also given her strange looks, it probably doesn't phase her much at all. She just adjusts her hat a bit, the large triangular ears jutting up at either side of the stetson. "I'm closest to a subspecies known as fennec foxes. Highly adapted to livin' in arid environments." It's a little more complicated than that, technically being a frontier colony world race that has very fox-like qualities, but she doesn't want to make the matter any more distracting and confusing than it already is for Lala. Not when there's other multiple matters to be attending to.
Tamamo     'Fox ears.' Lilian says, automatically. For no reason, she scoots a little bit closer to Tamamo, though they're already adjacent.

    Tamamo can always count on Lilian in these moments, which pop up surprisingly often. She returns that little squeeze, without changing the apparent direction of her focus.

    'Is a fox like that, lun?'

    Somewhere between the assurances, anxious reaction, and taking more than a literal two seconds to think about it, Tamamo visibly calms from her upset state. She glances toward Corona. "Foxes on Earth are... usually smaller, but..." There are really too many rules and exceptions to go into, so she finishes with the technically correct, "That is so." It's good enough just to be clear that she is in no respect, even slightly, a dog. Tamamo's sunny disposition returns by degrees.

    'I'm closest to a subspecies known as fennec foxes.'

    "As she says." Then, slightly more helpfully, "The foxes Hikaru would know would be 'red foxes.'" Tamamo simply assumes that Hikaru is Japanese, and not from some other place in the multiverse that has Japanese names and cultural traits by pure coincidence.

    'I hope they'll be fine on their own.'

    Thinking of the pikmin, Tamamo says, "I would like to see these creatures, come to that."

    'Negative. Behavioral analysis alongside biological data...'

    "Oh, I see. That would require spending a great deal of time in your sight, I suppose?"

    '...so that it'd be 'our' spaceship.'

    "That sounds truly wonderful. I have spent time in creating 'spaces' on my own, but to do so with a... close friend, is quite something else. To discover things on your own, and to move about and pursue your own quest, rather than merely accepting a place and an explanation handed to you, is very satisfying, is it not?"

    'You're right, lun. It's smart to be careful.'

    Tamamo looks between Lala and Rita for a moment, before saying, "Might I see that pen, for a moment? I have some expertise in divining the secrets of magical items. I shall take the greatest care, worry not."
Lilian Rook     'Negative. Behavioral analysis alongside biological data and physiological indicators of mood and stress allows me to construct an approximation of your current and baseline mindset to 99.5% accuracy.'

    Mmmmmm don't like that.

    'Is a fox like that, lun?'

    Lilian fussily calls up the prettiest picture of a fox she can find on her smart device (taking her an extra thirty seconds to scroll through duds that simply won't do it justice) to then show Lala.

    'Everyone back home would be *horrified* to see it now, lun.'

    "They don't have the best taste, do they?" Lilian says, scrolling through galleries, slightly distracted. "Even if this isn't my style, I can easily appreciate the effort that went into it. The way it looks now is impossibly charming. You can sense the hopes and dreams of two exemplary girls emanating from every surface." Lilian double taps to enlarge a photo, and turns the screen with a little 'there!'

    'That sounds truly wonderful. I have spent time in creating 'spaces' on my own, but to do so with a... close friend, is quite something else.'

    "Oh isn't it just?! I knew you'd get it!"

    '... Lun. Because it's better to be efficient. So I have to be, lun.'

    That gives Lilian a little bit of lip-chewing pause. Even if she were the type to actually believe that it's not important to worry about efficiency, she still wouldn't want to say something so uselessly pithy at this point. She slices the sentiment down to the part she can tackle. "Even if something is ideal, it isn't quite the same thing as 'something you must be'." she says, struggling to spin up examples on the spot.

    "It's 'better' to be rich and famous, to have hundreds of friends, to be highly educated in everything, but those goals aren't realistic, or even necessarily possible. You don't often have to achieve any of them to do all the things that are important. Most of the time, focusing on what will get you working 'well' must come before what gets you working 'best'."

    'Huh?'

    "Y-yes? There are waivers and everything." Lilian says, dazedly pantomiming writing a signature.

    'Hikaru doesn't get embarrassed....'

    "Well . . . she's . . ." Lilian takes a deep breath. "Not exactly typical for a human."

    'and no one can authorize AI but me, lun, and I won't... ask for that kind of stuff.'

    Lilian exhales with the timbre of 'I knew this was going to be difficult'. An elbow goes up on the table, fingers rubbing her temple. "It's not about whether or not you know, Lala; of course we trust you. It's that the AI knows. And isn't it meant to be synchronized with 'Mother' every so often?"

    'You're right, lun. It's smart to be careful. We've only known each other for a couple weeks, lun.'

    Lilian makes an uncomfortable frown, but can't think of any way to improve the situation.

    After all, she's only a 'sympathizer'. Not one of them.
Lilian Rook     'I only landed on Earth six months ago too, lun. It feels long, but... it's really not, is it? So I guess it's natural that....'

    "Six months is a lot of time when it comes to relationships. Especially when you're young." says Lilian. "Think about it. That's three or four percent of your entire life, isn't it? Twice that if you discard when you were too young to even make friends. It's just that . . ."

    "Six months is long enough for people to fall in love." Lilian says. Standing up from her seat, she takes the two steps required to get behind Tamamo, and leans against her back, wrapping her arms around her waist. "So it's obviously a long enough time for people to fight and argue. The longer you know someone, the more likely it is that you'll eventually disagree on something. It'd be crazy if you didn't."

    'Might I see that pen, for a moment? I have some expertise in divining the secrets of magical items. I shall take the greatest care, worry not.'

    "I've wondered too." says Lilian, then briefly squeezes her eyes shut into a flutter of blinks. "According to its previous owner, it's allegedly a 'technological device', but it hardly seems like one."
Rita Ma      "Everyone back home would be *horrified* to see it now, lun."
     Despite being in a pinch, Rita finds time to smile with distant warmth. "Horrified...? But it's beautiful. It's two hearts filling a space together, right? Homes are amazing like that."

     The shared look leads into a little 'ah' of surprise from Rita, and she slips over to Lilian's side, sunnily indulging in her support.

     Surely the reason Lilian doesn't want to be full-body-scanned is pure allyship. She's supporting her! If there are any other conceivable reasons, they're a long long way from Rita's mind. She intrudes to take Lilian's arm, in exactly the same way you'd take a stuffed animal for comfort.

     "We've only known each other for a couple weeks, lun."
     "Ah--!" The one syllable that comes from the back of Rita's throat is rich with heartbreak-realization. Instinctively, she reaches out with her other hand, as if Lala were teetering on a precipice.

     She can't let go of Lilian to comfort another girl. That'd be bad. But she can't pull Lilian away from Tamamo either. That'd be bad too. And she can't remain attached to Lilian while refusing to close the gap with Lala- so-

     Rita interlaces fingers with Lilian and then stretches their combined armspan out like an astronaut's tether to half-crouch by Lala's command chair. She offers Lala her other hand. Of course her eyes drop to the Dark Pen- oh no, that's bad-

     But no. I can't be staring at that. A bad magic thing can't seem like the reason I'm being nice to her. So she drags her eyes back up.

     "Cure Milky... hey. I trust you," she says, and her voice is quavery-pleady at first. No; if I tiptoe too much, she'll feel like I think she's dangerous. Even though her pen might be. Um. "Six months is a long time, like Ms. Rook says. I lived a lot of places for less than six months and they're still in my heart. And two weeks is long enough to know you and Hikaru are the most amazing magical girls I know. When people's hearts are strong, they can grow together fast, right?"

     "It's just..."

     She glances back at Lilian, who's talking about AI, and that's true, but it's not her crux. Turning back to Lala, her smile is strained in a different way.

     She feels like an outsider. An 'alien'. Something other people need to protect themselves from. You can do it. Deep breath. Eyes sincerity-shimmer. "... there's things about me that a lot of people don't like. And I know... if you learned them, you wouldn't really stop liking me. I trust you, but... I'm still afraid of losing you as a friend. Even though I shouldn't be. Does that make any sense at all?"
Tamamo     'Six months is long enough for people to fall in love.'

    "That is true," Tamamo says, adding, "according to my research," in a tone tinted with mischief. She then luxuriates, visibly, in Lilian's embrace.
Merelisa Shaynore "I would like to see these creatures, come to that."

    Since Lala had originally mentioned both Yuma and the pikmin, and assumed Lilian's well-wishes were to Yuma's health, she assumes that Tamamo must mean Yuma too. Yuma is a bit of a 'creature', even if she's also the Precures' friend, and Tamamo's never met her to be convinced of her personhood. Lala points at a photo on the wall, with the green and yellow space-blorbo being held in Hikaru's arms while Lala's antennae reach out of frame from standing beside her to hold the camera like a selfie stick.

    "That's Yuma, lun. Um, the glowing yellow one." Plausibly, in terms of aliens, either one could be the other Precure, and the pink-haired girl could be the weird star-beast.

"Oh, I see. That would require spending a great deal of time in your sight, I suppose?"

    AI bleeps and makes processing dial-up noises for a few seconds. "My estimate is between five to fifteen minutes, although non-Samaanian traits may complicate my scan."

"I have spent time in creating 'spaces' on my own, but to do so with a... close friend, is quite something else."
"Oh isn't it just?! I knew you'd get it!"

    There's a certain kind of girl that would boneheadedly draw no conclusions from that set of comments from Tamamo and Lilian, and another kind that might get confused, or object, or brush past it. Lala is none of those, and less decisive than any of them.

    She ducks her head, simultaneously flushing from the praise and looking faintly queasy. "... Lun. It makes me really happy that we did it."

"Most of the time, focusing on what will get you working 'well' must come before what gets you working 'best'."

    Lala turns that over in her head, twisting the pen around like a physical representation of her thoughts. A worried expression flickers across her face, and she glances up to Lilian with drawn eyebrows before looking away and smoothing her expression out again.

    "But I *am* working well, aren't I? It's not hard for me to do, lun. It's really easy. I'm just naturally like that; the opposite of Hikaru, lun."

"Six months is long enough for people to fall in love."
"When people's hearts are strong, they can grow together fast, right?"

    Lala squeezes her fists against her thighs, eyes shut, building up tension until she abruptly leans forwards in her chair and raises her voice for the first time today. "I'm worried about *losing* her, lun! Hikaru was my first friend ever, and I like her a lot and I'm scared of fighting because I don't know *how*, lun! AI doesn't know how to analyze relationships!"

    Lala heaves a big breath in and out, antennae crungled and buzzing like an electric socket. "I like her and that makes me just want to apologize, but then I get mad because she's still being so *reckless*, but then maybe *I'm* wrong because the pikmin don't look like they care at all, lun! But then every time I think about it, I just get so awkward and confused, and then all I can think to do is avoid her, and I hate hate hate hate that! I hate it, lun!"

    Lala's shoulders slump, finally broken out of the doll-like mannerisms she'd been doing, but only ending up equally drained. "I'm scared that we might be really different and just... keep fighting, lun. It's so easy for her to make new friends. Why would she keep bothering with someone who can't?"

    Rita immediately complicates Lala's spiraling by offering out her hand with those Precure-sparkling eyes. Lala takes it and looks into Rita's eyes with a little sniffle, shiny with tears that haven't fallen out.
Merelisa Shaynore "I trust you, but... I'm still afraid of losing you as a friend."

    Lala swallows and squeezes her hand, hesitating a long few seconds before nodding decisively. "... Lun. I don't know if it makes sense to me, but I don't need it to. AI, don't scan them, lun."

    "Please confirm, Miss Lala. This will make the mission much less efficient, introducing avoidable risks into the best outcome."

    "Lun. Confirmed. We'll do it 'well enough' to rescue Yuma, because doing it 'best' would mean making my friends unhappy."

    "Oh..." Lala sits back down in the chair, antenna bopped to Rita's fingers after her hand pulls away. "... I wonder if Hikaru was thinking about how to do it 'best', when she tried luring the monster with a pikmin."

"Might I see that pen, for a moment?"
"According to its previous owner, it's allegedly a 'technological device', but it hardly seems like one."

    "Lun," Lala hands the Dark Pen over to Tamamo without any hesitation. From the pouch on her hip, she draws out her own teal-colored pen to compare it to the black and corrupted-looking one, waggling the tip around in the air while swirls of light and glittering stardust come out.

    "Our pens weren't 'technology' at all, lun. They just appeared when Yuma made us Precure, along with our pendants. But Eyewon doesn't have a pendant-- and she doesn't have *Yuma*, either, lun."

    The first thing about the Dark Pen, after a cursory magical glimpse, is that the exterior of it *is* technology-- at least, to the point of only being a conduit for magic. There's obvious work put into the construction of the shell, but inside is an intensely strong source of magic, and by unscrewing the base, Tamamo can slide it out for further examination. A sliver of cosmic void-black nothingness, forming the tip and core like a normal pen, that isn't dangerous to the touch but does feel intensely vertiginous to even be near. It feels like a chasm a million times deeper and wider than it actually is, like you're teetering on the edge of falling into it, and it reeks of misery and bitterness. A metaphorical, literal, and emotional shard of a black hole, somehow crystallized by magic and utilized for giving bird-snakes luchador masks by a thirteen year-old girl.
Lilian Rook     'But I *am* working well, aren't I? It's not hard for me to do, lun. It's really easy.'

    "You are! For now." Lilian says, patiently. "You're doing the best you can with the situation, and that's really very good of you. But . . ." For once, Lilian leaves a point hanging both for emphasis and to really think twice. "Once we're done here, there's not much more you can do, is there? Rather than pressing ahead, you're diligently tying up loose ends. Or perhaps I should say that, right now, you're making yourself work well, rather than fixing up what would make it automatic. It's like ignoring your hunger rather than eating. And like this, you can't push further into 'best'."

    'I'm worried about *losing* her, lun! Hikaru was my first friend ever, and I like her a lot and I'm scared of fighting because I don't know *how*, lun!'

    Thus marks the bottom of Lilian's well of usefully mature wisdom. This is now about something that she herself has struggled with; and likely will continue to struggle with in the future. She falls silent to ruminate on what advice she should give Lala now, remembers she doesn't even have any, and settles.

    "I know. The fewer you have, the more you feel it when you don't get along. All of your feelings only have this one person for you to put them in, and so they can hurt all of what's inside you at once. It's terrifying to let someone have that much power over you. But that's something that can happen in six months too. I think Hikaru is probably feeling the same way you are."

    'It's so easy for her to make new friends. Why would she keep bothering with someone who can't?'

    "Then why didn't she have any before you?"

    Lilian doesn't mean it to sound negative, but it's the first thing that sprung to mind. "It doesn't even really matter whether you're right or wrong about the pikmin. You're not trying to solve a math problem. This was always about your feelings." she says. It isn't a question. "The way she uses them makes you feel uncomfortable. Even if she's right, she didn't do anything to dispel your unhappiness at all. She didn't even take it seriously. And I can only imagine it's because she didn't realize how serious it was until it was too late."

    "You're Hikaru's first friend too. She doesn't have any more experience than you do, so it's obvious that she'll fail to notice things or mess up her words. I don't think she'd have done it if she knew it would hurt you. But then when it boiled over, the both of you were so scared of losing your only friend that neither of you could talk about it like you always do."

    Lilian tries not to think about how the core of the pen makes her feel.
Combaticon     When talk gets emotional, one might expect the Decepticons to have little to say. Such an assumption is half-right. When Lala pours out her heart, Depthcharge fixates hard on the hologram in front of her with a tense frown on her face, refusing to engage. Given how she's acted about organic lifeforms before, it's not hard to guess why.

> "I'm worried about *losing* her, lun! Hikaru was my first friend ever, and I like her a lot and I'm scared of fighting because I don't know *how*, lun! AI doesn't know how to analyze relationships!"

    "That's not something a computer can teach you," Brawl speaks up. It's an odd thing to hear from a robot. So-- there's a distinction between Cybertronians and AI, after all.

    She leans forward a bit, raising one big hand to rub the back of her head with the palm, making a soft metal-on-metal scraping with her visor dimmed, "Relationships are something that can only be built between two-- people." She catches and corrects herself from 'bots' almost perfectly, "It's not something that can be analyzed or understood and it definitely can't be assembled or manufactured."

    She raises her other hand, sweeping it around the interior of the rocket, "Have a look at what you built together, though. Look in your spark and tell me you honestly believe she'd abandon you over one disagreement."

    Finally, Brawl's visor lights up and her seated posture shifts, fixating on Lala directly, "It's clearly clogging your gearshift. I'd bet ten energon cubes she's spinning her wheels just as hard. You two care a lot for one another, that much is clear even to an old 'bot like me. Even if I hadn't met you already, one look at this room tells me everything. You gotta talk to her, yeah?" Her hand lowers, resting on one knee, "It's just gonna keep tearing you up inside until you do."
Rita Ma      "... because doing it 'best' would mean making my friends unhappy."
     Rita breathes out a little breath she didn't know she was holding, and her smile softens, getting less forced by the moment. "Thank you, Lala. And thank you, Mr. AI. If it helps... Cure Glow and her friends are used to not doing it 'best'." Sheepish, not-quite-laughing.

     "I don't think she'd have done it if she knew it would hurt you. But then when it boiled over, the both of you were so scared of losing your only friend that neither of you could talk about it like you always do."
     That startles Rita, gently, upright. She turns and looks at Lilian with big soft eyes, mouth slightly open. "Ms. Rook..."

     A lot of things could be said. None of them come to her lips. But they squiggle together into an unsteady little smile again before she looks away.

     "But she's right. This is the kind of fight, I think, that comes from..." Little pause, weighing, with a head-tilt. "Both of you caring for each other more than you're used to. I think friends don't ever lose each other to that. Not for good, even if it hurts for a long while. Friends lose each other when... when 'being tired of being hurt' turns into 'contempt'. Like she says-" Brawl- "-if it isn't there, you just have to trust her and work it through."

     She gives Lala's antenna, where it's been entrusted to her, a little contemplative thumb-stroke. And- impulsively- a thought-grazing 'thank you', like she can't know Lilian did. (Surely this is a power all faraway Precures have.) She walks back to Lilian's side, and puts her hand-over-hand-over-pen, squeezing a little with her very serious look to Lala.

     "... And I'll do my very best to live up to the care you've put into me, Lala. I'll try extra-hard. Thank you."
Tamamo     Tamamo has to look to Lilian to make sense of what Lala just said, having not heard in detail just what happened, but looks more thoughtful, then confident that she has an understanding, by the end.

    "To be each other's 'first'... and, moreover, and more importantly, for her to be your 'only...' I see, and understand. It is quite frightening, to think of losing something that can never be regained." Now she wants to see the pikmin even more, though it almost certainly wouldn't help the emotional side of the disagreement in the slightest.

    Having only met the Combaticons, if it can be called a meeting, during a climactic batttle on the sea, Tamamo is pleasantly surprised to be able to "Mm" and nod in agreement with Brawl. "A friendship -- even a casual friendship, that could not be termed 'love,' must weather a single argument, at the least. A loving friendship, far more so, though the fear of pain is greater. Mm... no, I apologize. That was not terribly helpful, was it?"

    Tamamo gives part of her attention to the dark and terrible pen she's holding -- or rather, to the shard of a misery singularity inside it. Awful thing. Being clearly identifiable doesn't even make it better.

    "With your ship... it has crashed at least twice, yes? And in the first place, you repaired it, and this time, you are doing so again. You might say, it is less important that the ship does not crash, than it is that it can be recovered. No matter how careful one is, a mistake shall be made, eventually, or else, a mistake shall be forced upon you by one who means you harm. What is more important, for one to live a long and happy life, is not, then, to fear that 'single mistake,' but to put oneself toward recovery when it occurs. It would be far more foolish to attempt to continue to fly while rattling at the edge danger, having merely buried the damage, to be dealt with at some unspecified 'later.'"

    Balancing the pen on her finger, "Or, perhaps, it is a fight that need not be fought, and you shall feel better with proper food and rest. Or, perhaps, I speak without knowing well enough of your life to give wise advice. Who can say? It seems to me you have done well by one another," taking in the drawings and decoration with her other hand, "and that you shall continue to do so, even if you must first argue with one another over which actions are proper for you to take."

    Her attention returns fully to the pen, holding it between two fingers, her other hand held above it, like a magician about to perform a trick. She gives one more comment, delivered as if bearing little importance and even less uncertainty. "Moreover, do not believe that you shall never make more than the one friend."

    Low, "Now, whence came you, little one...?" She traces the threads, looking back through the fated connections to find the whole of which she holds a piece.
Merelisa Shaynore "Once we're done here, there's not much more you can do, is there?"

    Lala puffs her cheeks out a bit and looks away. "There's totally more preparation I could do, lun. I could... find a place to relocate the ship to, like you said, or chart out a path to the cave, or... figure something else out, lun. There's always more preparation I could be doing."

    She turns her eyes down to her lap and fidgets with the hem of her dress, smiling with lonely fondness. "But I need Hikaru around to give me a push before anything will ever get done, lun."

"I think Hikaru is probably feeling the same way you are."
"I'd bet ten energon cubes she's spinning her wheels just as hard."

    "You're probably right, lun." Lala hiccups and wipes her eye, smiling. "There's no way she's not stuck thinking about it too. She's probably running around doing something silly, making up some big scheme to fix everything all at once, lun. I should know, since I've watched her get into fights with all sorts of people before, and they always end up better friends after."

    Being given reason to recollect on those past experiences makes Lala fall silent for a moment. As if she was given permission to ramble about those thoughts by Brawl and Lilian, and like the top layer of her subconscious is always filled with thoughts about Hikaru that it's cathartic to release, Lala blurts out an entire story without being asked for it at all.

    "One time, we were investigating planet De Cami, and they were going to arrest us because they hated our rocket so much because of how colorful it was, and Hikaru's sparkly outfits too, lun. I was ready to just call AI over and escape, lun, but Hikaru kept going 'why, why, why', and then she came up with this silly idea to decorate the outside of the ship with mud and these weird squidgy slime things, until it was less offensive to them but still looked like 'our' rocket, lun. And she was covered in mud, and she got it all over me too, and it was so *gross*-lun but it worked, and she was so happy about it afterwards for making new friends."

"Then why didn't she have any before you?"

    Lala giggles and holds an antenna bulb to her mouth, not mean-spiritedly. She's just taken off-balance by Lilian saying it so bluntly, and by the reminder of that particular connection between her and Hikaru. After a few moments of faint giggling, she trails off, looking anxious again and turning her face away.

    "That was on *Earth*, though. Ever since we started exploring space together, she's been so energetic and she's made so many friends, lun. She's so eager to meet new people, and sometimes it's all I can do to keep up with her, lun. Sometimes it feels like a matter of time before I'm just old news to her, lun. I was her 'first', but not her 'only'."

"This is the kind of fight, I think, that comes from... Both of you caring for each other more than you're used to."

    Lala dimly nods, tiredly relieved to have this much support despite how resistant she was to revealing she needed it. Emotional openness isn't an easily assumed stance on her, which would be hard to guess if the Elites only ever saw her around Hikaru, but the coaxing encouragement of everyone else brings her to a point that she can let out a drained 'fuaaahhhhh' and clap her cheeks.

    "Lun, it's scary, like Lilian said. I like her more than I've ever liked anyone before, and... I think it makes me a little stupid sometimes, lun. I don't even think I can say *why* the pikmin bother me so much, lun... any time I really think about it, it seems like such a tiny thing, but then I just get caught up in everything and--..."
Merelisa Shaynore     Lala nods at Tamamo after trailing off, and balls up her fists in her lap in preparation for an enormous task. She takes a short, deep breath, and then stands up abruptly, fists down by her side. She bows her head and clasps her antennae together in apology, then breathes out all at once, rushing through the words before losing her resolve.

    "Lun! You're right. I won't sit around waiting and hoping for it to get fixed when it's something I care about so much, lun! I trust Hikaru, so-- so, please excuse me, but I'm going to go talk to her, lun!"

"Now, whence came you, little one...?"

    The threads take Tamamo to a tiny shattered planet suspended in the boundless void of space, encircled by a ring of blinding light and vapor. Through the cracks and chasms in the planet, she can see a pitch-black center to its hollow core, a soundlessly roaring black hole. But despite the improbability, the splintered surface of the planet is patterned with buildings, and after a glimpse, Tamamo's vision carries her into a dark stone castle on its surface.

    Inside is a tall woman with long vantablack hair limned with harsh orange light. The view through the window at the planet beyond her is warped around her head like gravitational lensing, and that distorted light is practically the only way to glean anything about her silhouetted shape. The implication of a coldly star-studded dress spills off of where it seamlessly merges into her body, ruffles of incandescent cosmic dust helically swirling in the implication of sleeves around shadow-black arms. Her one eye that isn't obscured by the indistinct waterfall of hair glows orange, looking down at a young hitotsume-kozou girl who's in the midst of stamping her feet about something, and she leans and upturns her palm to the girl silently.

    Above it, a pinprick singularity pops into existence, and swirls of black peel off her silhouetted palm to orbit around it. More and more mass spirals off of her, rattling the entire castle, until the vortex collapses together into a shard of darkness like the one Tamamo's inspecting, complete with the sense of precipitous misery. Eyewon babbles for a few seconds about something, and then snatches the fragment and runs off, watched from behind by the mysterious older woman through the winding halls of the castle, precariously balanced between exuding motherly care and deep-seated, hollow resentment, before the vision ends.