Scene #9063: Star¤Twinkle PikCure 5 ~ Cave-in! The Nottraider's Return!

Owner	Pose
Merelisa Shaynore	The time has come for the decisive expedition to rescue Yuma! The X-Ray Detector has pinpointed the source of the stellar radiation, both Hikaru and Lala have finished their preparations, and by the looks of it, they're finally getting along betteragain after talking with the Elites earlier. The evidence of this, even before seeing them or hitting the ground after hopping out of the wormhole, is that the spaceship has moved to somewhere else, like Lilian suggested. The new base of operations is one that half of the Elites have seen before, but to the other half, it's bizarrely appeared out of nowhere to overlook a path down the cliffside. A cutesy castle, structured like a princess castle toy but full-sized, instead of anything practically defensible, was built entirely out of the grass and twigs-as-logs, along with whatever other natural or discarded accoutrements could be scrouned up for the project. There's conical roofs on top of symmetrical towers, topped with makeshift leaf-flags carefully engraved with the starburst symbol of Polaris, the north star, and a functioning drawbridge using giant twine in place of chains. The spaceship is resting on a conveniently flat stone nearby, dragged over and dolled up to look like a landing pad. Hikaru and Lala are right nearby it, glued to each other's hips, back to usual, or even a little closer. Whenever they don't have a reason to be apart, they tend to gravitate towards each other, and whenever she's comfortable within reach, Lala has an antenna bulb lightly touched to the back of Hikaru's hand. So all's well in the world! After some fussing around where Hikaru clumsily tries to set up accomodations and rewards for her pikmin for helping her build the castle, while Lala giggles about how oblivious they seem to all of it, it's time to set out. Lala leads the group down the cliffside and into the forest, guided by a radar-green display floating above the lens in her glove, and Hikaru guides her so that she doesn't walk into any trees while her attention is directed down. It's an uneventful walk with the path mostly cleared out already, but the paranoid feeling of being watched builds uncomfortably, even for the Precures. The destination Lala points out lies inside of a particular cave that tunnels down into the base of a mountain, sloping below ground level. The dim glow of Lala's antennae and the display above her wrist, along with Echolalia's hair and whatever other light the Elites have at their disposal, become the predominant sources of lighting the way, until reaching a wide open cavern deeper down. Lala spins around slowly, carefully monitoring her reader to pick which of the several tunnels out are the correct way to go, but she's interrupted before long. A rumbling sound rattles the cave, shaking loose dust and pebbles from the ceiling. A muffled chorus of ""Nottrei--!"" sounds from all around the cavern, and grey-suited-and-masked Nottraiders unpeel themselves from the stone walls where they'd blended in. A blueshifted-black distortion warps the air at a local point in the chamber, and a tall man with teal skin and green hair with a bald spot on top steps out, taking his place on a high ledge. He swings his double-ended spear down at the group grandiloquently, in order to monologue.
Merelisa Shaynore	"Precures! Did you really think you could outsmart the great Kappard? You've fallen right into my magnificently designed trap!" He raises up his spear, and dark green energy lances out of it and strikes the ceiling, splashing out through the rock and shaking the ground again. In tandem, the Nottraiders slam in unison on the wall, enhanced strength along with the magic quickly building up into causing the rock to crack and shudder. As rocks crumble down and seal off the paths forwards and backwards, black portals wink into existence around all the Nottraiders and whisk them away, leaving just Kappard alone. "Your fate is sealed now! Even with your new 'friends', there's no chance of you digging the way to your precious Yuma! Soon enough, you'll come begging for me to free you-- which, graciously and magnanimously, I will accept. But only in exchange for your Star Color Pens! Ah hahaha!" With waning trickle of sunlight snuffed out by the corridor sealing off, Hikaru and Lala's worried glances at each other are only lit from below by the soft glow of Lala's antennae. As your eyes adjust, though, other faint lights pop into visibility, with large beetles with bioluminescent shells clinging to the ceiling, and other odd red blips of light going on and off. "You won't take them from us, lun!" "Yeah! We're stronger than ever before, Kappard! How did you even know we were coming here?!" "Huhu, my genius would merely be lost on your primitive minds." "Oyo... he probably saw us scouting around for the past few days, lun...." "Ohh...."
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite takes a look towards the new castle-like construction, and after a moment gives an approving nod. "Built outta local resources, that's prolly some good camoflague to have." Being defendable isn't such a big deal when it's less likely to be noticed in the first place. That and the duo have plenty of friends and allies now to call in if they did need to kick out any unwanted company. "A'right, let's get this rescue mission rollin' out." Corona takes a moment to pull her goggles off her stetson and put them on properly over her eyes, both for protection and because their link to her analytical devices are her primary means of scanning. Along with her exceptional hearing thanks to this big fennec ears, she's got little trouble navigating with the group through the tunnels regardless of the lighting levels. Until of course there's an interruption. There's always an interruption. Just this time instead of the local giant wildlife it's those dumb Nottraiders being pains in the fluffy keister. One's being a big windbag, while his stoogies knock loose rocks to block off the tunnels. Then run like cowards through their portals. Corona lets out a soft sigh, rolling her eyes though no one can see it behind her goggles. Then turns to the Precures and the rest of the Elites while jabbing her thumb back in Kappard's direction while he's trying to postulate (badly in her opinion). "This guy ain't got no idea who he's dealin' with does he?" Then nonchalantly goes back to work on the analyzer built into her arm gear. Likely already working on dealing with the situation they've been put in instead of bothering to give this dingus any more undue attention.
Sarracenia	Seeing the two best friends back together is bittersweet for Sarracenia. Will her attempt to mend things with her newest best friend go as well when she gets the chance? She is not confident about it. Still, she smiles at Hikaru and Lala being so unbearably cute together. "It is good to see you two back together. I have not known you long, but it was still quite odd to see one of you without the other." she says. Sarra is once again in her jress with the long black gloves, and once again has brought space-themed sugar cookies with thick frosting layers to share with the girls and whoever else would like one. And for some reason her previously back-length hair is pretty short today and styled in a cute pixie cut. She is really hoping no one says anything. The princess follows close behind the girls, living vicariously through their friendship. When they reach that dark cave in the side of a mountain (is it an actual mountain or just a hill?) she pulls out a fire flower and poofs her outfit into fire colors so she can carry a flame to help light the way. 'Your fate is sealed now! Even with your new 'friends', there's no chance of you digging the way to your precious Yuma!' Sarra looks around at the gathered mooks as they disappear, then at Kappard. She smirks lightly. "You really are not familiar with multiversals yet, are you?" she says in agreement with Corona. Sarra does not go for her explosives for once. Instead...she pulls out her hammer, the head already unleashing that prismatic glow. "These rocks will not even slow us down." she says as it infuses her while she walks toward the rock pile leading further into the mountain. It fully surrounds her as she reaches the pile, then there is a spark in her eyes before...she starts to hammer like a demonic rock crusher, aiming to turn the rocks blocking their way to dust and knocking some of the smaller ones toward him like cannon shots.
Echolalia	Echolalia is so happy they're back together again. The dynamic duo! Of course, there's still the terrific trio to bring back together which means the Hunt For Yuma is back on! But it's hard to not bask in it. She helped! She's sure they would've found their way back together eventually--they're both very sweet girls--but this is certainly a less rocky way to get back together than it could've gone. And it's just very sweet. It makes her think of Dysnomia. Maybe she should actually pin her down for a PRIVATE private chat sometime. In person. Maybe she should apologize for not taking her feelings into consideration as much as maybe she should've. Handled it better. ''That's prolly some good camoflauge to have.'' Echolalia gives Corona a strange look, and then back to the castle. She gives a small little laugh but otherwise pays little mind as she focuses on preparing for the trip ahead. Echolalia's hair is a big bright yellow, popping and swirling excitedly when suddenly... Nottraiders! Are raiding! ''Precures! Did you really think you could outsmart the great Kappard?'' "Woah!!! How'd you figure out where we were so easily?!" Echolalia says as her hair pops into no less than three mini fireworks." Between wondering about this mystery and the fact she's just kind of all absorbed into the monologue, she completely forgets to reinforce the cave until it's too late! ''Oyo... he probably saw us scouting around for the past few days, lun...'' "But I was so careful..." The miniature pops dim to a glum blue. Echolalia is real bad at not being noticed. "...But you're here too, aren't you? And ... I can just float through the earth come to think about it...Oh but I couldn't take anyone with me..."
Futaba Nuki	Seeing Lala and Hikaru hanging out together again has Futaba practically buzzing with excitement. Why wouldn't she be? She had been fairly worried for the two earlier, but things between them seem to have been mended and then some. There's the urge to rush over and shake them excitedly not unlike the way her own sister shakes her (affectionately, of course), but her reputation as a cool ninja means she has to settle for just watching them afar, chuckling lightly in barely hidden amusement. "That's more like it... Alright! Let's get this search started, huh?" Clapping two oversized hands together, Futaba once again takes on the shape of a larger-than-normal orange pikmin to waddle alongside those following Lalal following Hikaru as a sort of bodyguard or larger decoy. The feeling that this might actually be necessary only grows with time, and she even hangs out at the cave's entrance first to make sure everyone is inside before following everyone in and rushing to rejoin the Precures up front. "Dark in here... Think we'll run into anything real creepy?" She asks while extending her head dongle and putting out a bit of fire to help light the way. When the Nottraiders show up with their tall teal leader, however, Futaba's quick to-actually, she holds back at first, because she hasn't seen minions like this in a hot minute, and... She really, really wants to see what they're capable of first. It's only natural, being a hero and therefore someone that has to give the enemy a chance to show their threat level. "Kappard! Kappard?" Her gaze goes up to the bald spot, then to his torso, and then she frowns slightly. "Looking a little dry up there, bud..." She comments, sliding over to Natsuki and elongating herself so she can stage-whisper to her larger sister while gesturing at the bald spot. "Hey. You think he's-" She looks back to Kappard and puts her hands together in the maybe-universal symbol of time out, then continues. "You think he's gonna be okay, showin' up to fight like that? I bought some of that sparkling water, but I dunno if that's..." While she's on that train of thought, the ceiling starts coming down, and Futaba fulfills her duty as a protector of some of this group by stretching herself out like a big orange pikmin-themed tent, moving to keep the ceiling above everyone here from collapsing more than it already has further ahead and back. "Whatever you're gonna do, guys, make it quick! There's... Eh?" On her way up, Futaba sees those blips of light and glowing beetles, and she lets her head swoop around to take a closer look at those. "Huh. Now what do we got here? You guys livin' up here?"
Combaticon	It is the complete trio of Brawl, Vortex, and Depthcharge who arrive this time. After getting their bearings, the three robots fly lazily to the new location. There's some remarks from Vortex about how cheerful the girls are, some grumpy sounds from Depthcharge, and Brawl just nodding slowly. I knew you could do it, kid. There's a bit of a three-way disagreement on who will accompany for the mission to rescue Yuma which devolves into a shouting match between Depthcharge and Vortex that's-- easy to ignore, honestly. Even when the fight gets physical, Brawl just shrugs with her visor dimmed. She shows not even the slightest interest in breaking it up, excusing their behavior as, "Decepticon things. Best to let 'em get it outta their systems." And then she just ditches the two there at the castle. Neither 'bot notices the largest of their number has even left with everyone else. "Young 'bots," Brawl shrugs, her visor dimmed as if her eyes were closed, "Can't live with 'em, can't melt 'em down for spare parts." That's about all she has to say on the subject of her bickering comrades, whose altercation mercifully is lost in the forest of giant grass before long. Brawl remains in robot mode for the walk, hands swinging at her sides with each step. Seems she's in a good mood. When the journey takes the group underground, she supplies a light source via the headlights of her vehicle mode, now located up behind her shoulders on the bulky tread mountings. Rumbling has her stop. Tons of mooks emerging from their camouflage against the walls has Brawl shifting into a readied battle stance. Her right arm separates and the armor cover slides back while a rotary-barreled machine gun slides forward over the back of her hand, locking into place. "Depthcharge mentioned losers like you were scurrying around," the Decepticon intones in a decidedly more hostile tone than usual. She glances back with a twist of neck and waist when the entrance collapses, returning her gaze to Kappard. In the enhanced darkness, the glow of her visor stands out far more than it normally does. The mooks are already disappearing, forcing her attention to focus entirely on him and his declaration. > "...But only in exchange for your Star Color Pens! Ah hahaha!" Brawl leans forward. The cannons on her back angle 'down', combined with her torso angle to aim directly at Kappard's perch, "I got a couple Star Color Pens for you right here!" The cannons don't shoot shells (this time) but rather a rapid one-two of bright purple laser bolts at the Nottraider commander, "Just call me Cure Brawl!"
Hiromi	Hisako's already seen the castle, though at the rate the pikmin bring in new items to set down and add to it -- not particularly the best construction methods for permanent installations, but she's no expert, either -- means there's still more for her to see upon arrival. The attempts to treat the pikmin are of particular interest, and she remains invested in Hikaru's attempts to get some sense of... anything, that isn't a transport order, through to them. Is this a limitation of plant life...? LATER: A muffled chorus of ""Nottrei--!"" sounds from all around the cavern, and grey-suited-and-masked Nottraiders unpeel themselves from the stone walls where they'd blended in. "What... are they people? But, they don't have faces. Are they masks? Can they see through them?" Hisako seems to be leaning toward 'not people, just people-shaped' as an answer. She has no experience with creatures only capable of saying their name. She's getting ready for a fight when they start leaving, with only their leader(?) staying behind. 'Even with your new 'friends', there's no chance of you digging the way to your precious Yuma!' "Um... um. I have..." As if worried she's messing up some carefully planned challenge by admitting this, Hisako sheepishly raises her hand. "I brought magic for digging... because we were going into a cave, so it... seemed important...?" She slides her other hand into sash loop where she keeps some of her paper talismans. Last time, she used something to harden the ground, and before that, it was something to extend the ground, but while underground, having an opposite tool made more sense to her.
Natsuki Nuki	Without the impending danger of Natsuki's Pikmin - and the Pretty Cures, one supposes - the sky-falling routine of arriving at the warpgate and tumbling down is so usual that Natsuki does not even bother making a grand showing of it. Bad weather slips as grey mist and night-darkening cloud down from the aerial entrance, giving the overtall forest a raking Autumnal shower that that lands and lingers at the original bivouac of onion and spaceship. Moving on, catching the clue and cue in moving day after a brief surveil, Natsuki emerges from the camp-storm and starts her hike through the forest path alone. Dressed in dark leather pants and matching jacket, askew red t-shirt showing a slice of midriff due to a side-tie that depicting a dulled brass sunrise-and-sunbeams over a horizon of yellow lines, boots with light heel and v-ing untie at the top, and a pair of big sunglasses riding high on the brow among white hair and orangetuft tiger-ears. Her outfit hard evokes a motorcycle riding getup street fashion'ed up, though she currently lacks a combustion engine chariot. Happy about Lala and Hikaru being back together and able to preen about it being due to her wise hard-love sisterly advice, Natsuki jams thumbs hooked into jacket pocket ends and goes on the nature walk behind the Precures with a pleased strut. "Good thing the onion has a fortress now, the little guys won't be as vulnerable to... messed up frogs or whatever," Natsuki trails off, pleased but not quite straight-on going for it, and seeing the girls touching deelie to hand and hip-attached is fine-for-now-she-guesses satisfying. Natsuki birdcalls up her gang of red pointy-nosed goons and follows without argument after, enjoying the different-from-home nature walk at a sedate pace down into the cave, until... 'Precures!' "Another one?" Natsuki complains, rolling red eyes as her tail snaps up from the midriff-escape, sweeping seaming-eyed curl of overocular attention at the Nottrei appearing all about. Even if she's showingly nonplussed - her evil snake of a tail stares at the shifting and slamming, splitting into two, and three eye-covered limbs and sweepingly looming about her back before Kappard is left alone and the cave-in finishes. Then, condensing back to a smear of scales coiling from her back, Natsuki's tail 'calms', and the chimera woman rolls her right arm in stretching annoyance. "Do you really think you can stop us with some heavy rocks?!" Natsuki growls loudly. "Begged to be freed? You'll be begging for mercy! I'll be real generous, too, when I get you!" She continues on to threaten. Chirping her Pikmin into action, Natsuki takes a few steps in the darkness, crunching over fallen stone with boots and leaps right after Brawl's highlight-bright blaster beams in a pounce up to Kappard's perch. Oh, how she wants to get her hands on him! Mostly to throw him down, of course.
Rita Ma	Rita's relatively rugged today, knee-length sundress topped with a delicately-colored open denim jacket to go with hiking shoes. Spelunking is like hiking, right? But down instead of up. Rita's sure that's right. Seeing the girls get along again puts her in a good mood. She smiles as she walks, hands resting awkwardly in jacket-pockets like she's unused to them. In a quiet moment alongside, one comes out to point at Lala's glove-lens: "Lala, why doesn't your Cure outfit have that too? It seems really useful. Do you just have one?" ---- The second the villain Kappard appears, Cure Glow gasps a sharp breath and... grabs Futabamin's antenna like she's going to fucking chuck her. Deep nerves are concocting a vague plan: throw to distract, cloak, slip behind, tear apart. Good chance, mid-risk. Then she glances over to Hikaru and Lala. They're... bantering? They're bantering. That's what Precures do in this situation, evidently. Absentmindedly letting Futaba go, Rita drinks in their tone and cadence, barely paying attention to the Nottraiders banging on the walls. Right. Cure Glow should say something like: She raises an indignant little fist. "They've done more to deserve those star pens than just play a dirty trick, Kappard! Don't insult them by saying you should have it!" "... You shouldn't be scared, though," she says, slipping into a softer confiding cadence as she leans in. Untrue to her name, Cure Glow doesn't glow in the dark, but neither does it seem to bother her at all. "Hisako has her digging thing. And Ms. Rook can do teleporting magic. And lots of other things." ... Hey, what are those little red blinky lights, though? That doesn't seem organic. Her eyes slide over and squint.
Lilian Rook	The sight of the space ship is all Lilian needs. Not only does it tell her that the make-up went well, it tells her a second even more astonishing fact: someone actually listened to her. It's enough to put her in a much better mood than the one in which she arrived. The fact that Hikaru had spent all this time on a silly castle nearly misses her, then is turned to warmly considering that it was likely originally meant to be a serious fort and only later devolved into a pretty palace once the joy of making it took hold. Lilian is still fondly thinking about it even after she makes time for Street Pass, all the way until the group is deep in the cave, and then her attention wanders to her own little will-o'-wisps, and then she starts fuming a little bit that even the handy light magic she mastered at ten years old looks like a bunch of stellar bodies orbiting her, and then there's literally a Nottraider right there and who even is this bastard?! 'Precures! Did you really think you could outsmart the great Kappard? You've fallen right into my magnificently designed trap!' Okay well he's clear about it at least. "I see. So once you've obtained the only things that could be used to hold you to that bargain, you'll honourably keep up your end and let them go?" says Lilian, slightly more concerned about the tangibles than she really should be. Somewhere not quite serious and not quite sarcastic, she hovers in the mysterious middle zone of ambiguous attentions. "Someone who would hide in a cave to ambush unsuspecting girls obviously can't be trusted. Did you think it wasn't obvious that you'd simply leave them here after taking both the Pens and Yuma?" 'And Ms. Rook can do teleporting magic.' Lilian stiffens up. The metaphorical animator is drawing an enormous sweat drop and wiggly jitters on her by the time she says "A little cave-in like this is no obstacle to us. You'll be defeated today as always." §Wait, do they actually defeat him regularly? Have they defeated him before at all? Surely, right? There's probably a whole rapport and everything. God please let him be a serial loser.§
Merelisa Shaynore	"Lala, why doesn't your Cure outfit have that too?" Earlier, Lala looks strickenly sheepish when Rita asks, and wraps her fingers around her wrist to pull the hand with the lens on it to her chest. She looks down at it, with the displays and the analyses by the AI's synthesized feminine voice, and struggles to come up with an answer for a few seconds. "Um... since, when we turn into Precures, we 'draw' everything on... I guess I just draw over it, lun. But it doesn't matter that much, because if I need to talk to AI while transformed, I can, as long as the spaceship's nearby, lun." Later, while all the banter and cavern collapse in the cave is going on, Hikaru's squashing her face into a rock wall, arms splayed out in slumped-defeat. Lala is beside her, reassuringly running an antenna along her back while tapping in requests to the AI to calculate the odds of various plans working. "Uwaaa... I should've brought the pikmin...." "You didn't know, lun. And it was really sweet of you to try and give them an onsen, even though it made them look like a soup, lun." "So... we'll just have to dig our way out ourselves!" "AI says that's only got a... 0.000129% chance of succeeding." "Wehh-- we'll do it anyways! [[Never tell me the odds]]!" "Oyo--?! Really?" "N-no, no, it's a movie quote!" "They've done more to deserve those star pens than just play a dirty trick, Kappard! Don't insult them by saying you should have it!" "They've done nothing but allow power to fall into their hands! I, Kappard, will seize it!" "We use our powers for good! We protect people!" "All you ever do is hurt with your power, lun! We'll keep being Precures, and we'll keep defending Yuma from people like you, so she can grow up happy and strong, lun!" Rita's banter was received well! She slots in so well with the girls' dynamic that they pick up her beat instantly and bounce off of it. "You really are not familiar with multiversals yet, are you?" "Hahhhh? All I see here are backwater solar primitives, barely fit to lay eyes upon me." Kappard looks down at Sarracenia and Corona with a sneer, waggling his spear around condescendingly. "Undoubtedly, it is you who are unfamiliar with the might of the Nottraiders. Once we claim the Star Drop and eliminate the Precures, the universe will be ours for the taking, under Lady Mujinko's benevolent rule. You cannot thwart me." The countdown until Kappard is thwarted begins at 60 seconds! "I'll be real generous, too, when I get you!" "I got a couple Star Color Pens for you right here!" Brawl's barrage of missiles explode around Kappard, some of the ones aimed more closely to his body being caught on the edge of his spear. He emerges from the cloud of smoke smudged and charred, a far downgrade from his smirkingly overblown portrayal. When Natsuki jumps at him, he's forced to barely fend her off with his spear, catching claws on both ends of it and then retreating by backflipping away to a different ledge. "Ahhh, I see there are brutes among you. And quite an array of unfamiliar aliens, as well. Regardless, all worlds will fall to the Nottraiders eventually, even whatever planet is host to..." Kappard waves his hand dismissively at Brawl. "... you."
Merelisa Shaynore	"Did you think it wasn't obvious that you'd simply leave them here after taking both the Pens and Yuma?" "Mmm? I, Kappard, always uphold my end of a bargain. Rest assured that these girls-- once they are indeed mere children, instead of particularly naive warriors-- shall go free once my aims are accomplished. My honor is unimpeachable, even to those who would attempt to suppress my grand ascent." "...But you're here too, aren't you?" "Huhuhu. Your lack of imagination belies the fruitlessness of your cause. Lady Mujinko's blessing would not be stymied by something so insignificant as fallen pebbles, unlike your pathetic Precures." "I brought magic for digging... because we were going into a cave, so it... seemed important...?" "U... hu... I see." Kappard drops his hand from where it smugly tapped its back to his cheek, laughter dying out as he realizes Hisako is serious. "It seems the Precures have allied themselves with more formidable players than I previously thought. No matter." It's so matter. "With Lady Mujinko's assistance, the Nottraiders will persist at every turn, no matter how far you try to run away. Our conquest is inevitable. It is owed. So farewell for now, Precures. Perhaps, if you find yourselves outmatched still, I may deign to hear your pleas for help." With that, the black singularity swells into existance behind him, and when he's enveloped by it, it redshifts and teleports him away, vanishing without a trace. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmibFaIfkIo& With Kappard gone, only the cave itself is left. The absence of a light source in his glowing spear is starkly felt by everyone who can't see without one, with the glowing beetles barely illuminating anything beyond their own bodies. The suppressive hush of being deep underground under millions of tons of rock doesn't last long, though, as everyone gets to work undoing the cave-in. Up high, making sure that the destabilized ceiling doesn't worsen the cave-in, Futaba can take a peek at the beetles. They vary from football-sized to tent-sized, which would be a lot more notable if everything wasn't like that, but she can also see where they get their bioluminesence from. The patches of mushrooms that they're gnawing on all have glowing blue fluid running through their stalks and caps like veins, and the beetles glow the same color, like flamingos eating shrimp.
Merelisa Shaynore	Meanwhile, what Rita spots all around in the darkness, mostly buried by rocks or trashed in corners where they've likely sat for a long time, are supersized electronic toys. Eight-foot-tall battery-powered robots, often with limbs broken off and wires showing, or a child's yellow plastic flashlight toy, and other less identifiable things whose main remaining parts are blinking red electronics that only communicate that they can't turn on. Using both hands to press buttons on them doesn't work, because they're not powered! Lala wanders over to where the flashlight is after Rita points it out, because these kinds of toys are as new to her as they probably are to Rita. Curiously, she prods at the bashed-open battery compartment with her antennae, and when a little spark of electricity jumps from the deelieboppers into the wires, the bulb flashes back on, illuminating the cave with a bright-and-slowly-dimming beam. "Oyo--?! It lit up!!" Over by the tunnel that Lala pointed out, rubble smashed by Sarracenia's hammer gets carted away by Natsuki's pikmin, gradually clearing the way. Hikaru joins the pikmin in lifting rocks away, having fun waddling around with them held above her head in a mimicry of the way the tiny red idiots do it. Hisako's digging magic makes the job much faster, and though it's slow going forwards, eventually.... "-- Nebulamazing! Lala! Come look, look!" In a small offshoot divot along the tunnel, is a big yellow onion-thing with tripedal legs, just like the red one that the pikmin came out of. Just barely avoiding being crushed by the cave-in, one singular blank-eyed yellow pikmin is standing nearby it, absolutely coated in rock dust. Hikaru runs out of the cave waving to Lala to bring her over, and then dual-hand waves up at Futaba on the ceiling. "Futaaabaaaaaaaa!! Throw us down some of those mushroooms! We have to feed these new pikmin!" Lala approaches the onion cautiously, like she's a little mutually scared of a wild cat. Her antennae reach out ahead of her like disarming hands, undulating lightly. She carefully pulls out a little rag and pours some water on it, holding it closer to the pikmin as she delicately kneels down nearby it. "Ohhh... it must've been so scared, lun." If it was, it doesn't look like it. "Hey, come here, and I'll wipe you clean. I promise I won't-- won't hurt you, lun." The vague walk cycle of the pikmin brings it a little closer and it brushes up against one of Lala's antennae, sparking. When the electricity passes between them, both the pikmin and the deeliebopper glow a little brighter, and Lala looks completely flabbergasted. "Oyo--?! It zapped me back, lun! It's got a charge too!" She very carefully, wide-eyed and wincing in anticipation, guides the antennae bulb on top of the pikmin's head to establish a circuit, and the little guy placidly waits there, seeming as pleased as any pikmin gets. Lala's smile slowly widens in delight, looking around to make sure everyone's seeing this too.
Corona Arclite	"Thank heavens he left. Was startin' to think his real trap was borin' us all to death." As usual a little snark is all Corona is going to bother saying on the matter when there was other things to deal with. There will be other times to kick that blowhard's ego in the seat of the pants. Sarracenia and Hisako are digging, Natsuki has pikmin clearing the rubble. Corona, who is accustomed to working in mines and caves, pulls some expandable struts out of her inventory and sets them up to reinforce the tunnel being made so it doesn't collapse back on top of them. She does the same to the entrance of the offshoot where the giant Pikmin spawner is found, so it will be easier to recover it and whatever kind of the critters it produces. "Guess this batch have some sorta bio'lectricity."
Combaticon	Brawl rears back, swinging up the gatling cannon on her arm. Natsuki is too close to risk it up until Kappard gets away from her; but he's already disappearing by the time the bullets reach him, pelting the stone behind him. Her gunfire ceases, though the barrels keep spinning with an ominous whir for several seconds. Only once she's certain he's actually gone does the weapon spin down and retract back into her forearm. "Slag, I missed." She doesn't seem terribly upset or intimidated by a threat to invade her home. Whoever does that, she reasons, is gonna have more on their servos than they can handle. For now, the immediate problem is being trapped in a cave. Straightening her posture, she turns slowly in place, casting her headlights across the broken robots and toys. Lala and Hikaru make a discovery, prompting her to turn towards them with a mmm? sort of sound. It's about when Lala is cleaning up the little yellow veggieman and discovers its electrical properties that Brawl comes to a stop a pace or so behind Hikaru. The pink Precure calls for mushrooms. Her visor dims as if her eyes were closed in thought, brightening again with a little 'pip' noise. Brawl's chestplate forks fold down with small mechanized noises and she reaches in with one hand, rummaging. After a bit, she pulls out a single glowing pink cube about the size of a rubik's cube toy, "If they do electricity, maybe they'll like this. Lala, here, take it." She holds out the energon cube to the minty-colored magical girl. Once Lala takes it, Brawl taps the top with a fingertip, breaking the singular cube along subtle faults and splitting it into 27 identically sized, smaller cubes. She then turns her attention to the digging efforts, more anxiety in her body language, "Not sure how much use I'd be, diggin'. More like I'd bring the whole hill down on top of us."
Hiromi	'U... hu... I see.' Oh no. Oh no! She did ruin the challenge. Hisako wrings her hands, feeling terrible. At least it went for one or two exchanges, first. 'Our conquest is inevitable. It is owed.' Hisako lets out a breath, relieved that there was a backup plan. Once Kappard is gone, Hisako is briefly blind, though a very tiny amount of light is still pretty good for her. She has to move carefully, but doesn't act without a sense of confidence in where she's stepping. While she gets to work using talismans to melt away instant tunnels, and her gauntlets to tear into the earth (which they do uncannily well), Lala gets a brighter light on, and the wolf-miko has to stop and blink mid-clawing motion to adjust again. "Ah...?" It's when the discovery of the onion is made that she says, "Should I come over there? Oh, just a moment," and she leaves Sarracenia with the rock-crushing duty long enough to go and take a look. Lala's smile slowly widens in delight, looking around to make sure everyone's seeing this too. "Oh--! But why is it under here? Is it a root? I thought plants needed to reach the light. Is it cut off?" She looks back and forth between Lala and the pikmin, subconsciously smiling by means of Lala's infectiousness. "Should we bring it back to the castle, too, or would it be safer here? We can make the tunnel wide enough." She reaches out, but stops, remembering she doesn't have a 'charge' of her own. Will they shy away from someone who doesn't?
Futaba Nuki	"Dang. You guys really are bigger up close. Or are we just smaller..?" Futaba comments aloud as she squints at the giant beetles in front of her, stubby appendages embiggening to actually shove at the ceiling rocks and hold them as still as she can. Hearing all that fun going on below, though, has her stretching her head back down towards Hisako when she entions having digging magic. "You ain't got something for... Uh. Reverse digging in there, too, do ya?" She gestures at the ceiling with her head, then starts pulling her head back up. "Might need something to keep this all up while we're digging things up more ourselves, y'know?" "Futaaabaaaaaaaa!! Throw us down some of those mushroooms! We have to feed these new pikmin!" "Whoa. You got some new buddies down there? I got you covered!" Futaba calls down compelte with two hands cupped in front of her non-mouth to project her voice somehow, then turns to the bioluminescent beetles with something resembling an apologetic tilt of her head. "Oh. Sorry, just gonna borrow some of this. Hope ya guys don't mind, but we're in a bit of a pickle here!" She explains, talking to the beetles as though they might be like the sentient tools she's so used to chatting up at home. She checks around those mushroom patches for particularly juicy looking ones, then plucks/carves them off with regular/knife hands and starts tossing them down for the girls and all those various pikmin. "These guys up there were glowing pretty hard, even the huge ones! Pretty dang cool, and I'm wonderin' if that's got something to do with eating all these!" She gestures at the mushrooms as she drops them mostly towards the ground, trying not to drop them on anyone's head or anything. Curiosity gets the better of her, though, and she soon chomps into one herself to see if it gets her glowing, too. Lala joining the pikmin in developing a big charge, however, gets Futaba to really hurry about down and over. "Whoa! You alright there, Lala? Lil guy?" She looks from Lala to the antennae bulb, then at the pikmin Lala's connected to. "Really lookin' stellectric there! You think this might work better with more of 'em holdin' on? Or..." Against her better judgment, Futaba offers her hand to Lala, then holds her hand off to the other side in case anyone else is dumb enough to try this with her. "But why is it under here? Is it a root? I thought plants needed to reach the light. Is it cut off?" "That might not be a bad idea... If we can dig this thing up and bring it back, maybe we could use it as a power source back at the castle and REALLY get a spotlight goin'!"
Sarracenia	'even though it made them look like a soup, lun.' Sarra can't help a giggle at Lala and Hikaru's cute banter. She has an overwhelming urge to hug them so that their cheeks squish against hers, but even she is not that parasocial. "Did I mention how nice it is that you two are getting along again?" she asks with the warmest smile the princess has perhaps ever had. 'They've done nothing but allow power to fall into their hands! I, Kappard, will seize it!' "Taking power does not mean you deserve it! All you deserve is more missiles if you want to hurt these girls!" Sarra calls out, then blinks. "...wait...did you say Lady Mujinko is a benevolent ruler? I find that hard to believe given the powers and fiendishness her followers have displayed so far!" Rita and Lala go to that flashlight, and Sarra yelps as the cave is suddenly very bright. It slowly fades, leaving her blinking at the stars in her vision. "Ehehe...stellarific." she says with a bit of a giggle, reaching out to try and feel her way along until her vision clears again. Just in time for the discovery of a new pikmin and more cuteness. "Oh my! Perhaps you will have your own little following of pikmin now, Lala!" Sarra says, approaching and crouching down to be more approachable herself. 'Futaba holds out her hand...' And Sarra, being somewhat dumb sometimes, reaches out to take it. "What are we doing?"
Echolalia	Echolalia doesn't mention that she could also just move the rocks out of the way by asking nicely largely because she figures that'd ruin some of the adventure. She wants to be ready to help but doesn't want to be overbearing about it. She's seriously worried about putting a damper on these girls' moods. She has kid siblings herself and knows how little things can seem so important and big and all encompassing. rThe reason she didn't interfere with the FIGHT is largely just because with missiles and everything, she kind of felt that she'd feel like a bit of a bully. Sure, this guy is responsible for a cavein and seems to be part of some kind of bad guy team? Out to ... She's not really sure, but cause trouble with Precures? She tries to remember some of the details of the last fight and fails because she's just purely in the heaven of appreciating Lala and Hikaru friendship times that she kind of stopped thinking about the people trying to stop them. ... They do seem like they have that sort of stuff handled, usually. After some exploring they come upon a new pikmin and Echolalia marvels at the weirdness and newness of life and, of course, Lala's adorable reaction to befriending a pikmin--just like she wanted! "Voltaicredible!" Echolalia looks briefly to Hikaru for confirmation. "I think they like you, Lala? Isn't that great?" She beams happily. "And with all that powered down stuff, maybe they can help us powering stuff up?" She glances to Hiromi as she brings up an important question. "Some plants prefer the dark. Too much light actually causes them problems." She's not sure that's really the case for pikmin though and she frowns thoughtfully.
Natsuki Nuki	Natsuki hadn't been completely ignoring Futaba's lean-over before leaping up, nor did she lack eyes on her head (or several sets up and down her tail in irregular places) to see the wet dollop on Kappard's head. "When you bow down," She calls while the passage of her black-curling claws swipe whistles through the air. "I know you'll spill!" Quick as Natsuki is to outleap a frog, she doesn't lay hand around the nimble Nottraider for his spear. With reaching hand speared aside and Natsuki swung perpendicular away to a cave wall, the chimera in dark leather and red achieves air control by tail spearing to wall temporarily to swing her safely back to cave ground. "Brute!" Natsuki repeats, incensed, shouting up. "Come down here, spear-devil, and we'll salute before the match!" And, ostensibly, bow as well. "Have a match with the wolf, little frog, are you scared?!" Unfortunately, she has nothing to say in support for Brawl's planet - but she does cross her arms and smugly offer up a toothy grin as it is revealed that among a large gang of aliens and local plant guys: someone can dig! She can tell it 'so' matters, and the curl of her eyebrow is every accuasation to the syllabic recitation of 'u - hu - I see'. Since her Pikmin are already gathering up the rocks and effectively helping trundle rocks out of the way, Natsuki does a quick circuit of the area, arms momentarily swelling with gorilla-esque width as broadened palms fling away fallen rocks over struggling little guys and trapped gangs -- a quick count semi-neurotically finds no additional losses and all accounted for with a sigh of relief. 'Come look, look!' Ditching a big rock she was one-handing on a gaggle of five Pikmin to take together, Natsuki shifts and climbs through the cave to find Hikaru and Lala. Finding the fresh Onion, and Lala deeliebopper-bonding with the pleased wild pikmin, Natsuki slows up and grins a bit wider herself. She's caught by Lala turning back, and switches from 'warm approval' to a 'cool, nodding affirmation' after she's caught, before heading over to check one of the loose electrical sources of wiring herself. "Hey, look who's forming a special connection how, hah?" She observes, not quite at Lala, and her hook-curl of a questionmark aimed at a sparking wire and not a colorful Cure. "Well, Energon, now, that's a raw rock of 'power' to you, isn't it?" Natsuki asks as Brawl produces the cube-that-becomes-smaller-cubes. "Do they all 'make change' like that?" She asks of the larger-breaking-to-smaller process.
Rita Ma	Lilian stiffens up. Even in the dark, Rita catches that in her peripheral vision. Lilian's monotone sweatdropping after makes her swallow and fretfully frown. "I mean... but her teleportation takes a lot of setup, so..." Is that true? Maybe. Her eyes slide back to Kappard, where she nodnods and mmmhmms to echo Lala and Hikaru. (They like her banter!! Oh my gosh!!) "And what's a man of 'unimpeachable honor' doing serving someone shady who wants to take over the universe! Honor like that isn't a virtue at all!" This feels so weird, she internally reflects. How do normal heroes do this all the time? Not attacking Kappard before he goes into the portal feels like being a cat straining not to chase the laser dot. - - - - The electronics immediately strike her as something to be reverent of. Eyes-wide, breath-caught, she reaches out and hoverhands an enormous toy. "Ms. Rook? Weren't you saying something about that one oil barrel? Who did make these?" "They look just like..." Rita glances between an eight-foot-tall plastic robot toy and Brawl. "Um. Nevermind." The yellow pikmin has her quickly scurrying over, and its elfishly adorable appearance and electricity powers both get a cumulatively adoring 'ohhhh' while Rita cranes her head to peep around Lala. "You're so sweet to them, Lala," she says, wondering but fond. "I wonder if the big bulb had a skylight or something before, and it fell in because of Kappard?" She fishes around in her bag, and withdraws her couple of remaining sugar cubes to offer to the un-grubbified pikmin with a friendmaking smile. Then she reconsiders- and puts the cubes in Lala's hand, instead. "Here. I think you should feed them! You're the one who found them."
Hiromi	'You ain't got something for... Uh. Reverse digging in there, too, do ya?' "Usually, yes, but, I used it last week, so... my apologies, Futaba!" Hisako calls up, effecting a bow. <J-IC-Scene> Echolalia says, "Well I'm sure the Archwolf is plenty kind. Hisako's been a complete sweetie sweetie sweetie." <J-IC-Scene> Sarracenia huffs. "That is why I was-..." Then, she mmphs defeatedly. "...yes she has." "Oh, thank you." Hisako's tail wags while she forgets where to put her hands, in danger of entering flustered flailing at any moment. "That's the first time a fo--" Wait. Was 'foreigner' a bad word? People often seem angry when saying it. She's suddenly unsure. 'Multiversal'? 'Alien'? Is that worse? "--person from another world said that about me." She needs to cool down. "And yes! She's been very kind." Of a kind of kindness. At the moment, she doesn't feel up to elaborating intelligibly. Misrepresentation is forbidden.
Combaticon	> "Well, Energon, now, that's a raw rock of 'power' to you, isn't it?" "Yeah, pretty much," Brawl answers Natsuki matter-of-factly, "You could say that's my lunch, but I'm pretty energized so I don't need it right now." > "Do they all 'make change' like that?" "They're made to do that, yeah," Rummaging in her chest compartment, Brawl pulls out a second cube and holds it out for Natsuki to inspect, "Think of 'em like crystals. You got these grooves here, yeah?" She points them out with her fingers, "Fracture planes. Hit 'em hard enough and they'll break apart on those lines, easy." She shrugs, "Only goes down so far, but if you need a bunch, it works." > "They look just like..." The eight foot tank robot pauses, catching Rita's eyes on her. She straightens her posture-- from Rita's perspective, standing right next to an oversized action figure, "Huh?" > "Um. Nevermind." With a tiny servo-whir, Brawl shrugs and returns her attention to Lala and the yellow Pikmin.
Lilian Rook	'Um... since, when we turn into Precures, we 'draw' everything on... I guess I just draw over it, lun.' Lilian will remember this. 'AI says that's only got a... 0.000129% chance of succeeding.' "The AI didn't run a physical scan, remember?" says Lilian, chief proponent of saving Rita from a physical scan at the time. "It only knows what it knows. Trust in our abilities." Digging deep to once again find that one still-hot coal inside of her, Lilian closes her fingers around the warmth she feels towards these two girls, and uses it to force out the words, "Compared to the weight of a singularity, this entire mountain is nothing." 'They've done nothing but allow power to fall into their hands! I, Kappard, will seize it!' Words come automatically to mind. Lilian's lips part, then her tongue stills, and a second later on the thoughtful precipice, she continues in another way. "When fate bestows its gifts, a girl shalt accept and bestow them upon no other. Thou shalt not deny thy sisters that which they hath earned; the form of love is without end." The colours of vantablack and infragold spring to her fingers, wound 'round the lattice of magic drawn on space. ' My honor is unimpeachable, even to those who would attempt to suppress my grand ascent.' "Thy station is thee and thou art thy station! Speak always with its authority, and do not speak that which would tarnish it!" Lilian slams the two disparate halves of her magical circle together ahead of you, summoning up the roiling bright-dark snarl of an impending death ray. "And only when ones seeks to tear down the station of another is he without value!" 'So farewell for now, Precures. Perhaps, if you find yourselves outmatched still, I may deign to hear your pleas for help.' Lilian fires straight through the sputtering remnants of the portal. She does an impressive job of carving up the cave wall behind it, drawing a skittering gash several feet deep through the rock. Accepting reality shortly thereafter, Lilian puffs a loose strand of hair away in downplayed frustration, and looks to the rest of the cave. 'We have to feed these new pikmin!' "New . . . ?" Lilian hurries over to the sound of Hikaru's voice, adding a few more lights to her little ghostly constellation. The sight of the new Onion gives her a moment of pause, where she gestures to send her new lights up to surround it, taking in the strange shape of it once again and wondering at the different colour. "Lala, perhaps it would be best if . . ." 'Oyo--?! It zapped me back, lun! It's got a charge too!' "--You tried it! There! See? Isn't that great!" Lilian sharply turns chipper. Clasping her hands together and bouncing up on her toes was natural, but she was totally just about to warn Lala away from trying again, because being disappointed hurts twice as much the second time. "I told you that it could be any number of factors! It seems you've discovered a new species that is better suited to you!" "Species? Cultivar? Hmm . . ." Lilian begins nobly sacrificing her field snacks for the cause, then patient-excitedly pointing out spots to Lala where she thinks would be appropriate to try sending her pikmin. She even suggests asking AI about where the dangerous spots to dig are! Inclusive! "If we truly are stuck, I'll do my best." Lilian says to Rita. "But I'll have to save my magic for-- space, warping, like that, until then."
Merelisa Shaynore	"Oh. Sorry, just gonna borrow some of this. Hope ya guys don't mind, but we're in a bit of a pickle here!" The beetles don't seem to mind Futaba's presence, or recognize it at all. Carving them off is easy, eating one is bitter but manageable-- she doesn't start glowing, but maybe she would if she ate them every day for her entire life from birth, or just decided to be bioluminescent all on her own-- but the important thing is when she pulls away. Though Kappard's magic shook the entire cave, the Nottraiders concentrated their smacking near the tunnels themselves, so the cavern ceiling isn't all that damaged. Corona's reinforcing around the tunnels is enough to be pretty confident that they'll stay up, in mission-time if not geological time. After Kappard has teleported away, Hikaru runs up to Lilian, breathless and wide-eyed. She gestures around with her hands, flailing to fill in the words that she's momentarily too excitedly out of breath to get out coherently. "Was that a magic incantation?! A whole spell you cast? Like, with occult stuff? Twiiincoooooool~!!!" Hikaru mimes out punches and other clumsily martial motions to go along with her ranting. "I only do stuff like, 'Star Punch!', kablow, or 'Star Impact', boooom, or like that! I read a lot of occultism books when I was younger but none of them worked!" "If they do electricity, maybe they'll like this. Lala, here, take it." "Lun?" Lala looks up at Brawl from where she's squatted down, taking a moment to refocus from her nervous excitement. She takes the cubes in her hand, bemusedly at first, but then quickly puts together what Brawl means. "Lun! If I feed them... but what if...?" Hikaru approaches with armfuls of the mushrooms that Futaba drops down, and squats down beside her. Lala looks to her with vulnerable uncertainty, asking for permission and support with her eyes, and Hikaru smiles and nods. They overlap their hands, with an energon cube placed on the intersection of their palms, and hold it out to the pikmin together, but when Hikaru's hand gets close, the pikmin startles and waddles away. Hikaru and Lala look at each other silently, and then-- burst out into a fit of laughter. "Ahahaha, they just have preferences!" "Eheh... oh noooo, Hikaru, ehehe...." "Alright, you got it, Lala! I'll stand a little away so I don't scare them!" Hikaru stands up, and then impulsively gives Lala a hug around her back to a shocked 'oyo--?!' and Lala's quickly reddening face, before flouncing away. After recovering, Lala pinches the energon cube between her fingers and tentatively holds it out as an offering to bait the yellow pikmin closer again. Whatever dull chemical processes function as a single brain cell slowly chug through their analysis of the foreign object, and then it snatches it out of Lala's hand and proudly marches it over to the onion, where it gets sucked up and processed into a seed. The seed pops out and falls into a crack in the rock, sprouting into a pikmin's stalk seconds later, just like normal. "Oyo-- it worked, it worked!" Lala hisses quietly while rocking on her heels in excitement, like the new sprout is a baby she has to be careful not to wake. "You think this might work better with more of 'em holdin' on?" "Work better...?" Lala seems just as confused by Futaba's attempts to chain them together as Sarra is, but like Sarra, she also obliges and taps her antenna bulb to Futaba's hand, with the other papped on the pikmin's head. ... Nothing happens, because Lala's body doesn't conduct electricity! And neither does Futaba's, unless she wants it to; the amount of charge that the pikmin have is practically negligible static electricity, they just have enough to be able to conduct Lala's higher potential.
Merelisa Shaynore	When the second pikmin pops out, though, Lala modifies Futaba's plan. With a few nudges and encouraging words that accomplish nothing at all, and then the most feeble fwee through the whistle Lilian gave her, Lala gets the now-two pikmin to link together. When she touches her antenna to one, the glow propagates through both, and Lala looks both scientifically vindicated and delighted. "Linking up was smart, lun!" "I thought plants needed to reach the light. Is it cut off?" "If we can dig this thing up and bring it back, maybe we could use it as a power source back at the castle and REALLY get a spotlight goin'!" "Some plants prefer the dark." "I wonder if the big bulb had a skylight or something before, and it fell in because of Kappard?" While Lala stands up to try and inspect the ceiling-- using AI to scan for faults that might break and collapse on the onion, or where light might have maybe been able to filter in before the disruption-- Hikaru takes point on the treatment of Weird Creatures. She curls her fingers around her chin, affecting scholarliness, and considers the yellow pikmin. "Hmmm... when I would go hiking with my dad when I was a kid, he said, even when we found a twincool thing, not to move it too far from where we found it, unless we knew what it was. Because the cooler something is, the more sensitive to the environment it is too, and it'd be terrible to hurt something like that just because you wanted it for yourself. So I think it's like Miss Echo said." Hikaru raises up a finger decisively, declaring intent. "If we take it, we'll build a whole new wing in Castle Polaris to keep it safe! Or we won't move it at all!" With the rest of the food everyone offers her, Lala builds up a fairly sizeable army of pikmin with rapidly growing surety. Her minions swarming around her ankles, Lala plants her hands on her hips and declares with her antennae lightly crackling, "Lun! Now, time to get out of here and save Yuma! Once and for all, lun!" Lala immediately gets distracted hitting every interaction button she can around the room in hopes it'll help. She chains pikmin together to charge with electricity and work the flashlight up to daylight strength, gets various garbled noises out of a busted supersized radio, yelps when an RC car revs up and kidnaps some of her pikmin in its seat, and Hikaru is right there running alongside her and laughing along. Eventually she stumbles across the remains of an electric hand drill, with a bit like an industrial bore. Gently, she two-handedly lifts up pikmin one at a time to place them into the torn-open battery compartment, lining them up from end to end. She touches her antennae to the ones in the middle, and then puffs out her cheeks in concentration to pump electricity through them and into the wires, while the pikmin peacefully glow and crackle. The drill bit starts to turn, slowly at first, and then faster, enough to chew through rock at however fast the drill can be moved through it. "Hey!! Everyone! Let's all try to carry this together!"
Sarracenia	While she is waiting to see Futaba wanted to hold hands, Sarra is assaulted by the accusations that she is a brutish, punkish, goon of a princess. And by the realization that some if not all the accusations might be true. She deflates slowly, ending up seated on the ground with her legs curled up on either side of her while she stares blankly in the general direction of Lala's pikmin. So, she is quite surprised by Lilian coming up and...suddenly being almost as cute as the girls by turning very chipper and bouncing on her toes excitedly. It is even more surprising after the spectacle of Lilian going full knight mode on that annoying Kappard. "...cute..." Sarra says very quietly. 'That's the first time a fo----person from another world said that about me.' Sarra is surprised again, but in a more cheerful kind of way that lifts her spirits some after the terribly inaccurate and unjustified character assassination. She smiles to Hisako and giggles a bit at the tail wags. "Well, that is unfortunate. It is quite true, though! Perhaps I should use that word more often myself?" Sarra pauses, then tries it out. "You are a...sweetie." Sarra considers. "...hmmm...no, I am afraid I cannot use it in such context. People will accuse me of being old even more often. How about cutie instead?" That seems like a fair compromise. 'And yes! She's been very kind.' Sarra lets out a small 'mm' at this. "...I suppose I can believe that. It was hard for me to understand at the time, but she did try to help me some time ago with something she told me. Not to fight without meaning, without defining what winning would be and what losing would be, and not to let others decide those meanings for me or draw me into fights on their terms." Sarra shrugs lightly and smiles wryly. "I am not sure I can say I took those words to heart, but I have tried to fight with more of a purpose." Mushrooms are selected to be the food of choice for the pikmin, and Sarra has plenty of those to spare so pulls out green and red mushrooms to add to the food store. Of course, some pikmin might end up a bit bigger than the others for a little while after a red mushroom. She watches with a happy smile as the two girls go around the cave powering up the various things. And of course, when called to help carry the drill she is quick to join Hikaru in the task. "Lead the way~"
Natsuki Nuki	> Energon! "Your lunch, hah?"Natsuki asks, her faintly covetous look given to the energon cube hidden by her inspection of big electronic parts, so when she gets an answer like 'this rock? food!' she's one part curious and one part hungry. "What's it taste like?" Natsuki receives a cube of energon energy from Brawl's chest compartment! Taking the tutorial cube in one hand, she brings it centered to her chest in both arms and turns the big cube over, taking a faint sniff test of the cube before getting to the seams. "Fracture planes. So they're made to break. Well, they're pretty as a jewel!" She praises, right before the bare smack of a palm at point breaks cube into eight neat pieces, holding them in a loose stack while taking one much more fistable cube and underhanding it into the air besides her. From her back, her tail swings up to intercept 'dropped' cube and catch subdivided cube in fanged jaws like a cartoonish snake jawbreaker. Offering back armful of 7-lesser-cubes to Brawl with a faint smirk, Natsuki's very attitude begs and forbids a reaction both. "Yeah, never - mind on that 'what's it taste like'." She assures the large robot, while her tail jaws down on the cube farther rather than swallow whole, breaking cube into smaller sub-pieces to close around the 'lunch'-piece. "Heck of a crackle, right? A zzzing." Hikaru and Lala making up - over the Pikmin having preferences - draws a look-away and warm snort from Natsuki, chuffed that the kids finally got it and that no permanent scars were earned or contracts struck. Instead, the girls are stronger-fused together, and... They're still stuck in a cave. Well, Lala and Hikaru is. Natsuki isn't stuck in a cave, that'd be stupid! And hey look, there's a drill! Pulling off jacket to tie about waist under fall of cube-crunching tail, Natsuki twists off the leather arms and pops her knuckles wet-loud. "Come on, Futaba, unless you're turning into jumper cables or something, there's some work to do! Don't laze around!" Then, with red sleeves rolled up growing arms, Natsuki gets on one side of the big drill and gets heaving. Treating it like festival preparation or raising a frame, Natsuki is genuinely all over doing a little lifting and shoving. "And if you need some extra charge -- well, let's not eat up Brawl's lunch!" Natsuki jokes, laughing with a birdcry hyoo-hyoo-hyoo.
Echolalia	Echolalia is not normally good at noticing when she's flustering someone but was she about to call her a foe?? Oh. Multiversal? ... Was she going to say...Ah! She IS from another world. It could be worse, she thinks, she could have been called an alien. And sure, she kind of IS an alien but like in terms of vibe she doesn't think she really counts. "Well even if it hasn't been said before, I'm sure it's been ''thought'' before...!" She smiles happily at hearing how kind the Archwolf has been but she certainly has an image of her head in how the Archwolf expresses kindness. Sometimes kindness is hidden but you can usually see it through the actions they take, she knows. That's how she knows Dysnomia's also a super sweetie pateetie absolutely. Echolalia appreciates Hikaru's kindness and care towards the strange pikmin entities. Echolalia is a botanist so she mostly jives with weird plants than creatures that move around on their own(?) like these pikmin but being able to care responsibly for pikmin is probably a sign of a good heart. She gives a little fistpump when Lala declares it's time to save Yuma. Frankly, with all the buildup, she's kind of DYING to meet Yuma herself. She moves to help aim the drill with her hands rather. "Your dad sounds like a pretty cool guy," She asides to Hikaru. "My dad a lot of stuff like that to me when I was a kid."
Futaba Nuki	"Usually, yes, but, I used it last week, so... my apologies, Futaba!" "Not a problem, Hisaako! Ol'... Uh." Futaba snaps her fingers a few times as she looks over at Corona, then points at her with a sudden remembering-type of expression. "Corona! She got it. Should be safe to keep things movin' now." She answers, having already moved to join hands with Lala and Sarracenia to see if they conduct electricity. And while she's moving... from 'warm approval' to a 'cool, nodding affirmation' "It seems you've discovered a new species that is better suited to you!" She gets to see not only her sister, but also Lilian being surprisingly animated Lala. She feels two separate twinges in her chest, inhaling sharply at the first at a sudden light feeling hitting her at how adorable they're both being with her. "Oh, dang... I didn't know either of you could even make those kinds of faces!" The second twinge is considerably less pleasant, once she realizes where it's coming from: When was the last time Natsuki looked at her like that? Futaba inhales again before laughing it off, still grinning from ear to ear as she usually does. "Well, I knew you could, sis, but Miss Rook..." That's better. She can't let that keep her down, so she'll just have to focus on the cuter aspects of this entire journey with everyone helping the Precures. Sadly, holding onto Lala and Sarra doesn't quite get the reaction she was hoping for, but Lala's quick thinking with the new pikmin does seem to work! Feeling rather vindicated at that moment, Futaba starts to bring a hand up to her face to brush her nose in that stereotypical way she occasionally does, then stops when she realizes she's holding onto Sarra and Lala already. "Come on, Futaba, unless you're turning into jumper cables or something, there's some work to do! Don't laze around!" "... Hmm. That ain't a half bad idea, actually. Buuut since you asked so nicely~" Clapping her hands together, Futaba scurries over to join Natsuki on the other side of the drill. The orange pikmintaba turns into a regular Futaba, and then her limbs all bulk up until they look like a gorilla's on at least three types of steroids. "Ain't done the jumper cable bit yet, but I'm sure it won't zap the heck out of me once we get these all set up." With that affirmation, Futaba is sure to get her brain zapped out of her, but at least it'll be spectacular.
Combaticon	Once Lala accepts the little pile of energon cubes, Brawl leans back and props a big ol' hand on her hip. Her face doesn't really express well, but there's still a sense of satisfied 'go oh' in the microgestures, the slight nod of her head, and the slightly changed angles of her visor rim. Quiet encouragement is what the beefy Decepticon has to offer. The mystery of pikmin preferences is brought to light. As Hikaru ducks back to give Lala space, Brawl tightens her free hand's fingers into a fist and offers it to the small girl for a bump. Mercifully, Brawl holds her hand steady so Hikaru can choose how hard to actually hit those metal knuckles. She likes these organics. They make the old gears feel new again. A little NOS in the ol' carburetor. > "Oyo-- it worked, it worked!" There's a slight upturn to Brawl's... expression? like she's a bit smug that energon worked for the yellow pikmin. How exactly she conveys that is once again down to microgestures and slight shifts in posture, somewhat obscured by the lights blaring off her shoulders. > "Heck of a crackle, right? A zzzing." "I think it's a little different for most organics," the tankbot offers helplessly as Natsuki comments on energon's flavor profile. Her arms come up in a little shrug, distracted with this discussion while Lala makes more pikmin and explores their properties with the various electronic toys and gizmos, "I know it isn't toxic, at least. Most folks distill it into a liquid first." Her visor narrows slightly on one side, as if regarding the Nue with a raised eyebrow, "You're the first organic I've met who went right for the crystallized stuff, other than these yellow turnip guys." She reaches out to take what Natsuki offers in return, dumping the remaining cubes back into her chest compartment. Some shouting gets her to glance up across the cavern-- > "Hey!! Everyone! Let's all try to carry this together!" "That's more like it!" Brawl makes a fist, slamming it into the opposite palm with a sudden metallic noise. As the strongest of the Combaticons, she'll more than carry her weight when it comes to a giant hand drill; opting for a position near the center so that her great height and strength creates a solid fulcrum over which the others can turn or aim the drill. She can't dig without using explosives; and thus, risk bringing the roof down on everyone. But 'pick up heavy thing' is something Brawl is also pretty good at. Finally, a way she can contribute to escaping.