Here's a question: is Cure Sword invited to the get-together? I know that Alice hired her alter ego so that she wouldn't just be a homeless vagrant, but I don't think we've had formal introductions yet.
Alice: *sips from her teacup* "I'm frankly at a loss to know what more I can do. I've dropped subtle hints. I've dropped obvious hints. I had a signed invitation, for Cure Sword, bemoaned I couldn't give it to her because I couldn't meet her, handed it to Kinzaki-chan, asked her to throw it away and she-!"
Sebastian: "She dutifully deposited this invitation in the trash can outside your office, young mistress."
Alice: "Did she at least open it?"
I believe that "insurgents", particularly orginized ones as is the case here, generally tend to fall under the larger umbrella of terrorist group, yes.
Thinking about what happens if it does come down to cqc inside the MCAT compound structures and the following scenario occurred to me.
Take a hallway of Onogoro mages. Have a Senshi dash down it at 200 km/h. Would the results be more or less akin to a bowling ball smashing into a set of pins?
Thinking about what happens if it does come down to cqc inside the MCAT compound structures and the following scenario occurred to me.
Take a hallway of Onogoro mages. Have a Senshi dash down it at 200 km/h. Would the results be more or less akin to a bowling ball smashing into a set of pins?
Take a hallway of Onogoro mages. Have a Senshi dash down it at 200 km/h. Would the results be more or less akin to a bowling ball smashing into a set of pins?
You know who moves at 200 miles per hour, not the same amount I know, Dash from the Incredibles. At those kinds of speeds you can pull off some funny bullshit.
Thinking about what happens if it does come down to cqc inside the MCAT compound structures and the following scenario occurred to me.
Take a hallway of Onogoro mages. Have a Senshi dash down it at 200 km/h. Would the results be more or less akin to a bowling ball smashing into a set of pins?
Thinking about what happens if it does come down to cqc inside the MCAT compound structures and the following scenario occurred to me.
Take a hallway of Onogoro mages. Have a Senshi dash down it at 200 km/h. Would the results be more or less akin to a bowling ball smashing into a set of pins?
I guess the thing to do would be to modulate their speed so when they run through the formation, they leave a trail of injured-enough-to-be-broken mages that they can dash away from. There was some talk about how the Senshi's magic is how they are line breakers but not skirmishes, but it occurred to me that they could exploit their physical/agility enhancements in such a way to run that kind of work.
Anyway, we do need to kill that third wave ASAP. It's got a bunch of heavy stuff and if they reach the frontlines as it stands now with the second wave still intact and in their current positions, it WILL come down to CQC. We can't afford to let them close. If the attack choppers can't get a bead on them, they should just withdraw so Nanoha can be freed up to do it instead. If they can, Nanoha should still launch her own attack alongside then, so she can both contribute to the bombardment while still covering them.
Basically our options if we don't want it to be guaranteed to come down to CQC are either:
1. Launch a counterattack to at least regain some depth and (if possible) destroy the second wave.
OR
2. Kill the third wave with a mix of the choppers, Senshi, and Nanoha before they reach the front.
Hopefully, something will come of Raising Hearts analysis of the targeting spell. Whether it be RH figuring out how to block the spell, or track it to the source of the rockets and allowing Nanoha to spare her focus on other tasks.
Hopefully, something will come of Raising Hearts analysis of the targeting spell. Whether it be RH figuring out how to block the spell, or track it to the source of the rockets and allowing Nanoha to spare her focus on other tasks.
Yes, please. I'm getting stressed because of the Godbinders limiting our options, and with Lord Bojo's forces causing major, major problems and Wave 3 approaching, it's starting to show.
I wonder if Cologne would be willing to give the senshi some training. It feels like all of the senshi are very much high power, low skill fighters. They just sorta brute force their way through problems, which works and makes sense for what has been going on with them, but still isn't ideal. I think theybare particularly like this for physical combat, more of our prowess comes from magical stuff than martial arts in most cases. With how prone they are to punching problems getting more skilled at punching problems would probably be a good idea. Cologne is probably the best trainer we could reasonably get access to and I bet she would be very willing to train the senshi what with us being the enemies of their enemies, their benefactors, and being women.
I wonder if Cologne would be willing to give the senshi some training. It feels like all of the senshi are very much high power, low skill fighters. They just sorta brute force their way through problems, which works and makes sense for what has been going on with them, but still isn't ideal. I think theybare particularly like this for physical combat, more of our prowess comes from magical stuff than martial arts in most cases. With how prone they are to punching problems getting more skilled at punching problems would probably be a good idea. Cologne is probably the best trainer we could reasonably get access to and I bet she would be very willing to train the senshi what with us being the enemies of their enemies, their benefactors, and being women.
Well, Ranma has just taken over the Tendo dojo a few weeks ago, and they could use some more students. I remember way back in the beginning of this quest, we were looking for a dojo for Usagi to learn at, which we never actually did accomplish in the end. That's kinda how the whole Ranma thing came up as a crossover in this quest. Ranma themselves are even listed on our Elite Units under the "Allies" section.
Kagome and Inuyasha aren't even on there, and we've actively worked with them more than Ranma.
Should be noted that Makoto does have formal martial arts training, being from Nerima in this canon. Minako's hand-hand education is more informal, but a graduate from the "school of hard knocks" is still a formidable diploma to have under one's belt…
Well, Ranma has just taken over the Tendo dojo a few weeks ago, and they could use some more students. I remember way back in the beginning of this quest, we were looking for a dojo for Usagi to learn at, which we never actually did accomplish in the end. That's kinda how the whole Ranma thing came up as a crossover in this quest. Ranma themselves are even listed on our Elite Units under the "Allies" section.
Kagome and Inuyasha aren't even on there, and we've actively worked with them more than Ranma.
Should be noted that Makoto does have formal martial arts training, being from Nerima in this canon. Minako's hand-hand education is more informal, but a graduate from the "school of hard knocks" it's still a formidable diploma to have under one's belt…
UsagiQuest Eas is an authentically and seriously dangerous operative when she puts her mind to it. She's got real tactical and operational savvy, she succeeded in playing not only her middle schooler opponents but MCAT itself while armed with essentially nothing but her own sheer grit, determination, and ability to talk her profoundly stupid and callous boss into authorizing expenses.
If Cure Love isn't careful MCAT's gonna poach Cure Passion from her. Eas is future MCAT leadership in the making there. Possibly even a future director.
If Cure Love isn't careful MCAT's gonna poach Cure Passion from her. Eas is future MCAT leadership in the making there. Possibly even a future director.
Pretty sure the Senshi's get their paycheck from themselves (being basically the Board of Directors of Crystal Millenium and all) and most of the Cures... well, don't get a paycheck at all.
These people literally have no customs agency. They willingly outsourced that job to company with such heavy ties to magical Russia that I wouldn't surprise me if it came out that Ivan effectively ran their 'borders'. I wouldn't assume that they have anything.
Worth keeping in mind is that until we showed up and started Doing Things, Japan was considered a magical backwater of no real importance run by a bunch of backward insular hicks with massivly over inflated egos.
Do you think that politician who was talking up Onogoro and insisting that Japan already had a fully functional magical government is ever going to live down Onogoro not having customs?
Rifleman can be mass trained in a matter of months, while older forms of combat required years of dedication and training on top of supplemental upbringings.
Well, the thing is, runic rifle ammunition seems (given what the TSAB slings around) to be a transitional phase weapon. It's really only 'good' insofar as it lets you take a mass-trained but unawakened army and give them a weapon that can shoot magic things which would otherwise be effectively immune. Notice that each individual Onogoro samurai is taking, like, multiple .50 caliber runic rounds to put down, or a veritable storm of rifle fire.
The reason Onogoro has a problem here is that their total awakened population is much smaller than public Japan's, and the amount of actually good premade magical kit they have is even smaller, so that what is deployed to this specific battle may represent a nontrivial fraction of all they have that is good enough to constitute first-line equipment.
What is the likelihood of the various Pretty Cure teams we are friends with running into a team we haven't met yet and pointing them our way? Or pointing us in their way?
Pretty Cure teams tend to operate in their own separate cities made up for that specific season; the only teams that are likely to cross over without our involvement are teams that actually live in Tokyo, which may include several future ones for all I know. Tokyo's a big place but at least it makes it easier than if you have to be 500 miles from home to meet the new girls.
However, at this point any new Pretty Cures are likely to be pointed to us by someone, if only because we've made the national news and are on very good terms with the new national agency whose job it is to keep track of this to the point where they literally have a "Pretty Cure Affairs Desk."
Makoto would have been able to hold her own as a Ranma secondary character before awakening as a Senshi. Minako is a dangerous enough street-fighter to keep up with Makoto, though she does it in large part by being dangerously pragmatic and mixing her spells with her unarmed combat.
It's the other girls who are "unskilled" by the standards of anime martial artists. Minako and Makoto are up there.
Sure, they're getting more +Prowess from physical and magical enhancement than from sheer martial arts skill. But then, when your bonus stack comes from "I am strong enough to literally suplex construction equipment, and also I have a black belt in karate," the former is going to be doing more for your bonus stack than the latter almost by definition.
[Ranma characters cheat by having ki martial arts that confer the requisite level of superhuman strength and durability]
This… this is what Eas never wanted, and everything she could have dreamed of, somehow both at one. She's here, right in front of Love, seeing the total focus and the concern on Love's face. It's still her, and the gently disguising magic of a Pretty Cure can't fool Eas, not now, can't hide her best f- her rival- from her.
Both of them land softly. Love doesn't pounce right away, and Eas needs a moment to make sure everything's still working, that she doesn't need to compensate for faltering augmentations- please not yet.
Pretty Cures are distractible, of course. And- and Eas' cochlear implants aren't at their best, maybe, which may explain why it isn't until that gap between their clashes that they both notice the approaching sound. Their heads turn in the direction of the crashing in the forest, and so they both see Miki and Buki stumble out of the underbrush. Love was dressed in the same clothes she was wearing yesterday, but Miki and Buki are wearing fresh clothes- well, quite dirty now, but only because they've clearly been slipping in the dirt and bumping into branches while running full tilt through the woods.
Buki calls out, gasping. "Love! There you are! We've been looking for you for an hour!"
Miki takes a second longer to come to a stop, and when she does, she looks angry. Her brow is furrowed; her arms are folded across her chest. Her voice is quieter. "Sets- no, Eas. I should have known you'd be here too. You always were watching Love."
For a wild moment of fancy, Setsuna imagines finding words, finding something, anything to say that would make all three of them just… stop. To surrender. To throw away their Linkruns and stop fighting against Mobius. To leave this to the Sailor Senshi, or Earth's civil compliance forces, or anyone at all else, anyone else to face the vicious, cruel killer Eas can so easily imagine Mobius sending to take Eas' place.
But if there are any such words, Setsuna doesn't know how to find them.
Miki starts to raise her hand, holding up her Linkrun, ready to transform, but Love holds out a hand. "No." Miki and Buki freeze. "Please. Leave this to me." And as Eas stares at her, wondering, she goes on. "Stay out of this. This is between me and Setsuna."
She- Love can't possibly… Eas' feels a dull ache in her head. Tears are trying to gather, and her augmentations are blocking the vestigial reflex to keep it from clouding her ocular implants.
But if Eas' augmentations want her vision clear, the world seems to have other ideas, and starts crying in her stead. The clouds open up, and the first spray of soft drizzle is quickly followed by a downpour of heavy, spattering droplets. Eas moves first, darting forwards despite the increasingly treacherous footing. And whether it's because of the rain, or something else, for the first time, Eas manages to land a blow that connects properly.
But Eas has seen the Pretty Cures be struck by Nakewameke enough times by now to expect what happens next. Cure Peach doesn't so much roll with punches as fly with them; she'd already leapt out of contact with the ground, and seems hardly surprised to be flying through the air. She twists and kicks off a tree feet-first in a spray of splinters, rebounding towards Eas-
-The moisture in Love's eyes isn't just rain. She's crying, as Eas cannot.
And that realization is distraction enough that Eas doesn't quite have her arms up in a blocking position when Cure Peach reaches her.
Being knocked skidding through the muddy grass seems, somehow, less important than the realization that all of this has gone wrong. No one else could possibly hear her whisper bitterly to herself, "It wasn't supposed to be like this…"
No. She, Setsuna, wants it to be heard! She leaps to her feet. "It wasn't supposed to be this way!" She races forward and clashes with Love again, colliding in a concussive blast that drives away the raindrops for a split second. "I'm trying to protect you!"
It's pointless to admit it. But, damn it, she wants Love to know!
She has to let Love know!
Love leaps toward Setsuna, but she manages to knock Love's kick out of line, buying herself an opening. Love gets her arms up to block Setsuna's jab, but that's a static enough defense that Setsuna can use it, and she starts getting some momentum again. She strikes again and again, and Love is still taking the blows on her forearms, and- and Setsuna can't stay quiet. Not now. She's scared and getting more scared, and she's overheating worse and worse.
And this is all her fault!
Setsuna shouts, angrily, desperately. "When I'm with you… when we're together, it feels like something's breaking inside of me!"
Love weaves back out of range of a final punch, then twists, evading a quick, furious kick. She's… stopped striking.
Why?
Why isn't she fighting back, damn it?
She's stopped fighting back, and now she's a dancing pink-blonde blur in the rain, as Setsuna feels like a flailing fool for all that she's moving just the way she did in her training simulations back- back in Labyrinth.
Why?
Why is it like this?
Setsuna shouts desperately at the elusive vision in pink. "When I'm with you, it's like I'm losing who I am!"
Eas' cochlear implants are still working well enough to hear the catch in Love's voice even through the roaring rain.
"Setsuna-"
Eas pounces, and Peach moves to match her. Their hands interlock in midair.
"That day, when we first met-"
Eas cuts Love off.
"I lied when I told you that you were going to receive happiness!" Eas spits, angry and scared. "And you believed some stranger without the slightest hint of hesitation…"
"But then," Setsuna continues, "You went on to celebrate every little source of happiness that you found! Even when I tried to trick you, you always trusted me! You never doubted me! Always smiling and carefree-"
Something's making it harder for Eas to breathe. She should count herself lucky that the soaking rain is starting to absorb some of the heat from her augmentations. Now she won't cook herself before she drops dead of other causes, at least. But that's not too much farther off. Her body can't keep this up.
Somehow, the feverish heat in her limbs coexists with the bitter ice wrapped around her heart as she lets loose with a roar. Eas goes on the attack, putting all her heart and soul into it- when did she start thinking about herself that way- and Love matches her! Matches her. Reaches out, damn her!
Love's magic burns bright, without a thought of endings, and it's- it's- Setsuna wonders how things could have been if things were… different. Another thought foreign to Labyrinth, another bit of this world tainting Eas, tainting her to the point where there's no going back, no changing things, and there's no point, nothing for her beyond finishing what she started, reaching the final point of the arc of her life.
There's a curious thing that comes out of that conclusion, whether it's a rational decision or not. Lightness? Simplicity?
Setsuna, understandably, has trouble thinking of any word akin to 'freedom.'
She leaps into the attack again, and buoyed by that feeling, by the knowledge that it no longer really matters whether her choices are good or bad, but that she alone has made them, she isn't entirely sure whether she's touching the ground or not.
Everything seems gray and unimportant, just like home Labyrinth, except for Love. Eas manages one last action, one perfect strike, and Cure Peach makes one more block seem perfect, at least to Setsuna, and Setsuna screams one more truth, the greatest truth.
"I envy you!"
The world turns bright again as she collides with Love, and her outstretched arm's strike against Cure Peach's guard turns into more of a lean against Love's hand. The opposed pressure of barrier fields disappears, and to the everlasting credit of the Linkruns' designer, Setsuna's now entirely material hand isn't smashed by the force of the collision.
Suddenly strengthless, Setsuna staggers.
Nothing hurts, because she can't feel anything at all. She probably wouldn't still be standing if her skeleton hadn't been subtly tinkered with. Even twitching her lips into a bitter, tiny twist that might generously be called a smile feels like an impossibility, made possible only by some outside aura somehow taking the place of her own magic for this, if for nothing else.
And then Love answers.
"Oh… I'm glad." Love smiles back, far more warmly than Eas could ever do, let alone now.
There were many things Eas could have imagined Love saying, predicted Love doing, after hearing that confession. And this wasn't one of them. The shock- the inexplicable sense of betrayal- actually manages to pierce the numbness of her dying body for a moment.
Eas lets out a sigh that feels as though she'll never be able to draw it back in again. "It's strange. We fought so hard, and… I finally feel at peace."
The world starts to move around Setsuna for some reason, some reason she doesn't understand for a moment- until she realizes that Miki and Buki are there, putting their arms around her sides to keep her from falling to the ground. She can't really feel their touch, even though she knows that they are there.
Miki leans around to where Setsuna can see her soft smile. "That's because you're finally starting to understand how Love feels. She's been trying so hard to reach you, to save you from Labyrinth. Even when it was hard, even when it hurt, she never stopped."
. Even though it hurt? Setsuna- Eas- whoever she is in these last moments, what could she say to that? Can she say anything at all? She can barely stand- she can't even stand, since it's her friends keeping her on her feet.
Her friends?
Eas thinks of pushing the others away, but she'd never have the strength. Not even with them untransformed; her muscles have shut down almost entirely, with all the mana-laced feedback loops that give her strength gone dead.
Setsuna thinks of not burdening her friends, and somehow, the faintest ghost of the power of motion returns to her, at least enough in her knees and in her core that she isn't entirely leaning on them, at least for this moment.
Love drops her transformation, and somehow this form, so much less powerful, seems more true. The nameless presence, something that has no name and yet deserves so many, the thing that shines through her strength and the power that serves her for a barrier as Cure Peach seems even more directly, obviously here this way. She smiles kindly at Setsuna, brighter than the sun still hidden by the thick rain clouds overhead.
"I… I think I'm at peace, too. I think I understand some of what you were feeling. Maybe it was our magic getting tangled up, there…"
But as the last words pass her lips, Love's tone drops. Confusion, then worry, forms upon her face. She's starting to realize just how completely Setsuna has broken down, though she doesn't know what's wrong.
But Eas knows.
It's funny, in the same way that brought that strange, dark, ironic laughter to her back in the mansion. But this time, the laughter doesn't pass her lips. Her breath isn't cooperating, and her mind is shocked and numb. Something deep in her brain, before the level of Mobius' attention and alterations, is telling her that something's very, very wrong. That there can't be more than another minute or two, at most.
The strangest, most trifling thing catches Setsuna's eye as she looks down at the grass.
It's the same shape as the bracelet Love gave her. The one she crushed underfoot in a vain attempt to escape Love's slowly tightening grip on her heart.
The others follow her eyes, and spot it too. Miki keeps holding Setsuna up, but Buki cranes over to look, and Love shifts to lean closer to Setsuna, so close, almost touching shoulders.
She smiles. "Oh! Look! We really are starting to understand each other. Mom says that only people who really are trying to find their happiness can find four-leaf clovers…"
She reaches down to pluck the four-leaf clover and turns to Setsuna.
And she opens her mouth again, and Setsuna can see words, but all she hears is the wailing static of her cochlear implants' pre-processing shutting down. A few seconds later, light and color blur into a chaos of static as her ocular implants follow suit. She tries to reach out, to find Love one last time, but everything goes black, and quiet, and cold.
She slumps back in Buki's arms, dead.
Warmth. Light.
Eas floats through the darkness. Or is it Setsuna? They are one person, but not the same, two sides of the same coin. But they are different. Her thoughts are so muddled.
But the bright red warmth floating in front of her, approaching her, is very simple.
"Finally, after so long, we can meet properly."
Eas' indoctrination told her to know better than to waste time imagining things happening after death, and so she hardly ever did. But if she'd imagined a voice that could exist beyond death, she would have imagined something cold, shrill, domineering. Not this voice, this soft, warm, richly feminine thing that sounds… she almost imagines her sounding this way herself, if only she could, if she could be so kind. She'd like to be, she realizes.
"Who…?"
Setsuna is not speaking with her lips, not as such. It is for other reasons than those of the material voice that she struggles to get a question out. But the red glow, or its source, understands.
"I am the ally of the Pretty Cures, Setsuna. The Key-Guardian of Joy, Akarun."
Setsuna peers, confused, at the approaching glow.
Slowly, it resolves into the shape of a key, much too large for any practical lock but still quite small. The key has a face, after a fashion, resembling a cartoonishly crude liquid crystal display. And that face is looking at her, and speaking.
"I've been waiting to speak to you for quite some time, you know. But so long as Mobius' will infused your body as well as your mind, I had to stay away. He'd have killed you on the spot in order to try and destroy me. But now that he's cut his connection and withdrawn his power, he can't turn your enhancements into a weapon any more. You are free to be the person you were always meant to be, without the changes he's made to your world. To become the fourth Pretty Cure."
The question should surprise her, but somehow it doesn't. As though part of Setsuna, if not part of Eas, always knew. Except… "But… I can't be the fourth Pretty Cure. I'm dead." Somehow, she finds the words easier to shape. Each one comes more naturally than the last.
But the key lets out a gentle, soft laugh. "Dead? No. Dying, granted, but you made the right choice, coming to find your friends. This way, I could catch you short of the threshold. It's all a-flutter right now for some reason, but even so, I wouldn't dare cross it. But none of that matters now, Setsuna. I know your trouble. Mobius has changed your body so that it can't sustain itself without outside power. But that? That is a problem I can solve for you. I don't think it's exactly how the Heavenly Empress expected it to be used, but the transformation brings enough magic to easily power your implants, and much more besides."
Suddenly, even Eas, not just Setsuna, finds it easy to express herself here. The dark laughter that could not come forth in the living, breathing, waking world is here now, because it's so very painfully funny.
Finally, Eas' laughter passes, leaving behind a bitter smile.
"And so I go on the same way, but in service to a new master?"
"If you want it that way, I suppose. But I'm not making a demand, Setsuna. This isn't an exchange of service for service. If you become the fourth Pretty Cure, you can live out a long life even if you never fight a battle. All you'd have to do would be to transform for an hour or so every few days, and you'd be able to sustain yourself indefinitely. You'll never need to hear about 'energy return on energy invested' again. The very idea!" Akarun sounds downright indignant.
Setsuna frowns. "How do you know all of this? You're… just a key."
"I'm just a key… and Mobius is just a large assembly of arsenical etchings. You're not the first sorceress I've bound myself to who's a little bit different, and I learn fast when I need to keep my friends safe. And alive. So go ahead. Sleep briefly. And awaken."
Eas's eyes flutter closed for the last time, and Setsuna becomes aware of herself again.
"Cure… Passion."
The words slip past her lips, a name - a word. Her word. Something that she's never said before, and yet it feels so right.
And she dreams herself standing in the open void, not the starry night or the sky or the sea but something more abstract. She fancies that her arms and legs drift, that her body dissolves into bright scarlet potentiality. She is swirling, wheeling, as though everything that's been part of her life, from the test tube in which she was made is suddenly- suddenly-
Free.
There is so little of Setsuna that is not overwhelmed by the sense of a foaming wave of remaking overtaking her that she barely has time to wonder whether this is what it's like for every Pretty Cure, or if something's different for her-
There is not a conversation between voices or minds, because no person can be said to be "at work" here.
The Heavenly Empress and her loving, faithful companion, the Mistress of the Gate, died many millennia ago. To those who know where to look, their echoes can still be found in the waking and dreaming worlds, granted. And even the echoes of such beings may yet converse with the living, of course, if properly called upon. But those echoes are not here, only something fainter and more abstract. Only imprints of a feat of creation and craft that converges on divine artifice.
But the imprints those ancient luminaries left on the processes by which the Pickruns perform their mission do still exist. And the metaphorical fingers with which they go to work do still intertwine, even now.
And if such faint imprints could talk, this is what they would say.
"Ugh, something very cruel rebuilt this one. And I think these parts of her are supposed to run on grief distillate!"
"You know what to do about that. You won that war, and its peace, after all."
"We."
"Mm."
"And… yes, I suppose. The modifications are straightforward enough, I should know. I'd thought every afterimage and remnant of that horror slain, up and down all of history. You said-"
"I did. Times change- I should know. What should never have been invented, may yet be reinvented, at least until hope prevails."
"Reinvented? You're sure this isn't the origin- of course you are. If it was, we couldn't do anything about it anyway. Well, it's all out of our hands, apart from doing the work in front of us. And… yes, the same changes that salvaged the grand scale can salvage the petite. When she closes the circle with the others, she should be fine. And I have to admit that there's definitely some potential here, if we use the implants as only a starting point…"
"Can we lock in some of this rebuild work?"
"Well, we're going to have to go off-template, and the effects would be downright cruel to have her flipping them on and off."
"That's what I was thinking."
"I'll see what I can do."
And Setsuna's body begins to reform, to change. She can feel a burst of power within herself, power beyond what her- 'Mobius Heart' isn't the proper word, she knows somehow- could ever do before. She feels ripples dancing down every wire that's been woven through her muscles and organs and brain, tiny meticulous things doing… something... to them, and she shivers and if she has a face in this place her face is relief and delight. She can feel things without names flooding to her, things that were taken from her, were frozen or stolen and are part of her again-
The rain is over. And she has no memory of rising to her feet, but she's standing. Not just standing, but standing in a distinctly… poised fashion. And in front of her eyes, she sees her friends staring at her in shock. They don't just look rained on; they've been crying. And she's…
Setsuna looks down at herself. She feels more alert, more vigorous, than she can remember ever feeling in her life. Lighter, in the way that she started to feel lightness earlier this afternoon, except without the hollow bitterness. And she's clothed… strangely. In an outfit she's never seen before, a bizarre outfit unlike any Labyrinth uniform or any Earth fashion, except…
Except that, when she thinks about it, she recognizes some of these stylings and affectations.The lace-fringed armbands, the bows, and- her mind freezes- the four-color clover pinned to her chest.
It's… it's different from the way Love and Miki and Buki look in their Pretty Cure forms, but it's like those forms.
Akarun was telling the truth.
Love is the first to do more than stare, though a soft hiccup interrupts her first word as the teary smile forms on her face. "Set- Setsuna! You're okay!"
Miki and Buki are smiling too, but this is- this is so much.
Too much.
The colors aren't more visible than they were before. The sounds aren't more audible, the smells aren't interacting more strongly with her nostrils. But the colors are brighter, the sounds louder, the smells sharper. She is aware, not merely of moisture in the air, but of the taste of the humidity. These new clothes must, simply must, be different because she's noticing them, feeling them on her skin in a way she never did before.
Even her sense of her dermal barrier implants feels different, and of her body, in ways she can't begin to catalogue with all of this overwhelming her.
Is this… Is this part of being a Pretty Cure? Or did surviving past her death at Lord Mobius's hands somehow do this to her?
It's so much. So much more. And… and Love.
Love is there. Everything is too much and Love is suddenly more-
Heat rushes to Setsuna's face like some kind of localized overexertion, no, like the sting of reproof, no, even less like that, no, like nothing Eas ever felt in her life, because the girl at the center of the cosmos claps her hands in delight.
"I'm so happy! This is wonderful! Setsuna, you're okay, and you're the fourth Pretty Cure after all! We can be teammates! Come on, let's go and celebrate!"
Setsuna steps back on sheer reflex, as if to escape the sudden terrifying sensory sensual onslaught she's never experienced before. She looks around wildly, around, down, down at her hands.
And freezes.
Her hands. She's caused so much pain. So much suffering. She looks back up at Love and Miki and Buki, her friends. She can see how excited and happy they all are, but…
No. No. This is… this can't be happening, this can't be this way, this is…
More than she can handle. More than she deserves.
She shakes her head frantically, taking another step back, and another. The confusion on Love's face make Setsuna's chest ache in a way Eas has felt before but still doesn't understand.
Setsuna has to explain somehow. "I… I can't… Not me. I've done things- hurt people. I'm not worthy!"
There are cracks in the clouds that show glimmers of sunlight, but somehow this little clearing, torn up by her battle with Love, seems smaller, more confining, more oppressive with every passing moment. There's too much here. Far too much. She needs to be somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere… simple. Somewhere with nothing that can reach her so, so intrusively, so much..
"Setsuna… It's-" Love starts to say. But then she pauses and her eyes fill with the same determination that pulled Setsuna to her in the first place.
A determination that terrifies Setsuna right now.
Setsuna doesn't understand what's happening, but her fears carry weight, now, as they never did under the rule of Mobius. That fear, that confusion, that shock, pour into the link between Cure Passion and Akarun, and the link answers.
Setsuna's body starts to glow a with a rosy red light. In a flicker of crimson and a sudden inrushing pop of wind, the girl disappears.
Death, rebirth, despair and Love, faith and doubt. The line between who she was and who she will be. So many emotions just rendered beautifully. Just makes me well up with tears.
