FIC: Can I Destroy The Earth? 2.XX: Love Is a Limited Edition Collector's Item!

[bookofgramarye]

Title: Can I Destroy The Earth? 2.XX: Love Is a Limited Edition Collector's Item!
Fandom: Binan Koukou Chikyuu Boueibu LOVE! | Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!
Rating: G
Summary: When the Battle Lovers complain about the impracticality and visibility of their combat uniforms, Wombat tries to placate them by offering them another piece of highly advanced scientific technology: a transformation pen that will allow them to disguise themselves as anyone they wish. Meanwhile, Caerula Adamas have identified their next potential monster, only to discover that it may have been unwise to target someone who has an earnest desire for dark power -- and a will of his own when it comes to wielding it.

[NOTE: On the advice of UCHYUU TV's legal counsel, this episode from season 2 of Can I Destroy the Earth? was withdrawn before airing and never shown on live intergalactic broadcast.]

Notes: This story originally began as a concept for a scene in which Wombat gives the Battle Lovers a thinly veiled rip-off of Sailor Moon's Disguise Pen, only for them to be thoroughly weirded out and disgusted by it...and the plot then proceeded to balloon out of my control into a full-length episode fic. I regret everything and nothing about this silly story, which takes place in early to mid-S1 canon (before the beach episode).

In the opening of the first chapter of the Student Council manga, Kinshirou orders the Figure Fan Club to be disbanded, ostensibly for lack of members. Neither of the Figure Fan Club characters are named or given any real personality, but the ones in this story are based off of the manga illustrations -- as is Ota's slight stammer and his habit of using otaku-ish netspeak like 'lol' and 'srsly' in actual conversation. (Also on AO3.)



Can I Destroy The Earth? 2.XX: Love Is a Limited Edition Collector's Item!

At Binan High School, officially sanctioned school clubs were permitted the use of a classroom or separate club room for their meetings and activities. There were only so many available rooms, however, and one of the tasks of the Binan High School Student Council was to review the club room assignments on an ongoing basis. If a club that had been assigned to a room were to lose its official status for whatever reason, such as insufficient membership or lack of a faculty advisor, the members of the now-defunct club would be required to vacate their room within forty-eight hours so that another club could make use of the space. Such was the edict of the student council, and more than a few unlucky clubs had fallen foul of it since the start of the new school year.

Normally, these types of transitions went smoothly, with nothing more than some grumbling from the old club as they cleared out their things and tidied the room as requested. But in the case of Binan's recently shuttered Figure Fan Club, one of its two remaining members was a good deal more vocal in his opposition to their current situation.

'This is an outrage!' he exclaimed, as he jabbed at the club room floor with a worn-out school broom. 'How dare those villains declare that our club lacks sufficient members, and force our closure forthwith!'

His companion cast a nervous look at the slightly open door, unsure of how far his friend's voice would carry down the hall. 'Like, srsly, Nakamura, chill out,' he mumbled. 'What'd you, uh, do with the box for Sweet Little Demon Enma-chan?' He held up the figure in question, a plastic model of an disproportionately busty young girl with long black hair, curling devil horns, a pointed tail, and a black-and-red outfit that was meant to resemble a formal kimono but which mostly skirted the line between skimpy and in violation of most public decency ordinances. She was one of Nakamura's favourites, and one of the last ones to be put back in her box to be taken back to their overcrowded bedrooms.

Nakamura -- for such was his name -- gripped the broom more tightly with both hands. 'Enma-chan can wait, Ota. Don't you feel the least bit vexed at how shabbily we are being treated by the so-called student council? It is hardly our fault that our membership has declined since the previous year.'

Ota, his fellow former club member, shrugged. 'Uh...not rly? I mean, I guess it's lamesauce, getting kicked out of here, but, like, we didn't do much with it anyway?' He held up the figure, turning it this way and that so that Enma-chan's generously demonic dimensions were displayed from all angles. 'Sucks to have to pack all this stuff up, though.'

'Whether or not we didn't do much with it is irrelevant,' Nakamura said, fuming. 'Our figure collection is a living testament to our dedication to our holy duties! Just think of all the hours we put into these displays, these shrines, to keep our fair maidens all dust-free and with their original packaging preserved intact! We owe it to them, as their true and loyal champions, to keep them safe. And now to think that we are being thrust out of our sanctuary, forced to decamp to less hospitable climes, all at the whim of those sneering philistines, those petty tyrants, those -- '

'I'm glad you're working so hard to clean up here.' A calm, pleasant voice cut into Nakamura's rant, slicing through his words like a knife in the dark. 'Do you need any assistance?'

Both boys jumped at the sound of the unexpected voice, and Ota only just managed to avoid letting Enma-chan slip out of his suddenly nerveless fingers as he spun around to face the club room door -- and the person who had spoken to them. 'N-no, Vice President Arima!' he stammered, as sweat prickled across his brow and on the back of his neck. 'We're f-f-fine!'

Arima Ibushi, student council vice president, was leaning against the door frame, regarding Ota and Nakamura with a good humour that bordered on amusement. His white uniform looked more pristine than it had any right to look for being worn at school all day. He glanced from one boy to the other, with a moment of contemplation for the figure cradled in Ota's hands, before he straightened up and gave them both a flash of a smile that was all the more unsettling for how genuine it seemed.

'Then please bring the room key to the student council office when you're finished,' he said. 'We'll be waiting.'

With that, he was gone.

The Figure Fan Club looked at each other, aghast, and immediately threw themselves into their cleaning and packing efforts without another word and at twice their previous speed. They were both in their second year at Binan, and they knew all too well that only someone with reckless disregard for his own self-preservation would think of keeping the student council officers waiting for a moment longer than necessary. President Kusatsu might have a glare that could freeze a glass of water solid at twenty paces, but Vice President Arima's smile was so cheerful that you seldom saw the danger beneath it until it was too late.

* * * *
In the narratively convenient meantime, a more fortunate club's members were busily engaged in their own after-school activities. Touchscreens were being tapped, pages were being turned, naps were being enjoyed, and pink furry alien creatures were being cuddled more or less against their will -- which is to say that for the Earth Defense Club and the slowly-decaying-but-nevertheless-reanimated remains of their club advisor, the afternoon was progressing at its usual lazy pace.

En, sprawled out across his half of the club room table, was the first to break the quiet. 'Hey, Atsushi, you never had a stamp collection as a kid, did you?' he asked, blinking sleepily up at his fellow third-year.

'A stamp collection?' Atsushi peered at En over the top of his book. 'No, En-chan, I didn't. Why do you ask?'

'I can't figure out what would make someone want to collect stamps. I mean, they're used, aren't they?' En made a vague gesture with the hand that wasn't propping up his chin. 'You need to mail something, so you get an envelope, and you put a stamp on it, and send it. So who was the first person who looked at some envelope and thought, hey, this is a nice letter from that guy I know, but what I really want to keep is that weird little bit of paper in the upper right-hand corner?'

Yumoto looked up from where his face had been buried in Wombat's fur. 'Some stamps have pretty pictures on them, don't they?' he said, pondering. 'Or pictures of cute animals, like Wom-san! I'd collect stamps with Wom-san on them!' The thought seemed to excite him, and Wombat let out a pained squawk as Yumoto redoubled his love-filled attentions.

'But people lick stamps, or at least they used to,' En pointed out. 'So even if it's got a nice picture on it, you're essentially collecting a weird little bit of paper with a nice picture and someone else's gluey spit all over the back.'

Without looking up from his phone, Ryuu made a face. 'That's not even an indirect kiss,' he said. 'Totally not worth it.'

Without looking up from his tablet, Io also made a face. 'As far as insurance purposes are concerned, assessing the value of stamp collections is mostly a matter of consulting one of the many collectors' guides out there. But only the truly rare stamps are worth regarding as an investment opportunity.'

'Even if they're not worth much,' Atsushi said, turning a page in his book, 'I suppose it might be fun to see if you could get lots of different stamps from all over the world. Most collections are about having a variety of things, aren't they? You don't just have five or ten or twenty or a hundred of the exact same thing. So maybe it's more about finding just the right things at the right times.'

En didn't look convinced. 'They'd still be a pain to deal with,' he said. 'Sorting and storing them and all that.'

'It's a lot easier to collect phone numbers and email addresses,' Ryuu chimed in, as he finished tapping out a message and sent it on its way. 'Doesn't take much work to keep them all organised, if you're careful about it.'

'I considered acquiring a rare coin collection when I was younger, but these days I would confine myself to a finite amount of bullion secured in a safe-deposit box.' Io's eyes flickered back and forth as he studied his tablet, watching the forex charts refresh and update in real time. 'A diverse collection of assets is the the best safeguard against market fluctuations and black-swan events.'

'Are there stamps with black swans on them?' Yumoto, unsurprisingly, was still focused on cute animals -- but then he sat up straight in his chair, letting the exhausted Wombat slump forward over his knees. 'Oh, that reminds me!' he said, an eager note in his voice. 'Our usual fruit milk supplier mixed up our order last week, so to apologise they sent us a free case of their new limited edition blackberry milk!' He looked around at his friends. 'We should all go over to my place and try it and see if it's any good, so Goura-an-chan can decide whether to get some more before they stop supplying it.'

'Blackberry, huh?' En said thoughtfully. He rolled himself up from his sprawl, extending his arms over his head in a long, deliberate stretch. 'Mmmm...I'm up for it.'

'Yeah, works for me,' Ryuu said. Io was already closing out applications on his tablet, and Atsushi had adjusted his bookmark to secure his place in the text as the general consensus of the club seemed to be heading in the direction of the door.

After taking a moment to collect their belongings and retrieve Tawarayama-sensei from his scarecrow-like position on a stool near the window, the Earth Defense Club made their way out of the room, secure in the knowledge that their club, for the time being, was under no threat of being dissolved.

* * * *
Compared with the dust and disarray of the Figure Fan Club's old room, and the half-forgotten and half-neglected storage space used by the Earth Defense Club, the student council office was immaculate, as always. Not so much as a stray fallen leaf from the potted plant in the corner was permitted to spoil the pristine effect. Even the door handles had been polished until they shone, and it was these polished door handles that confronted Ota and Nakamura as they arrived, as requested, to turn in their room key at last.

Neither of them was particularly eager to knock on the door, but after a few moments of nudging and pushing each other to go first, Nakamura worked up the courage to rap once, then twice, on the smooth painted wood. The commanding 'Enter' that followed made both of them flinch, but then Nakamura opened the door and all but shoved Ota past him and into the room.

President Kusatsu was seated at his desk, a steaming cup of tea close to his hand. He looked up from a stack of papers as the door opened, his eyes narrowing as if he had anticipated the interruption but was none too pleased with it all the same. Vice President Arima was setting down a china teapot on a nearby trivet -- his smile widened when he saw the newcomers slip into the room -- and Gero Akoya, the other ranking council member and Ota and Nakamura's fellow second-year, was standing to the other side of the president's chair, toying with a strand of his long pink hair and eyeing his classmates with unconcealed disdain.

Ota was the one to step forward first, digging into his trouser pockets as he did so. It took him a long, fumbling moment before he was able to produce the intended object, a room key on a plain metal key ring, from its depths. 'Here...here's the key, P-President Kusatsu,' he said, doing his best to sound casual about it.

The student council president beckoned to them, granting permission to approach his desk. 'Is the room clean?' he asked, short and severe. 'We will be examining it shortly, so I advise you to be truthful.'

'It's clean!' Ota said, a little too loudly. He and Nakamura, by contrast, had not had much time to tidy themselves up. Nakamura had streaks of dust in his hair and on the sleeves of his blazer; Ota's tie was askew, and his glasses were grubby from having being adjusted repeatedly with sweaty fingers. 'We, like, swept it and used cleaning stuff and, uh, things.'

President Kusatsu said nothing, but held out his hand for the key.

Even without the humiliation of having to give up their room key and make the end of their club official, something in President Kusatsu's flat, businesslike expression rubbed Nakamura the absolute wrong way. He and Ota had spent the past two afternoons emptying their club room of everything they valued, and yet the student council -- the president in particular -- seemed to regard the dissolution of their cherished club as nothing more than another box to check on the day's to-do list. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. If only I could break these accursed seals that bind my soul's true form, and tap into the power of the Dark Vortex swirling within me --

Such thoughts, however comforting, were of no avail in the face of the student council's authority. But as Ota dropped the key into the president's hand, Nakamura could not stop his seething resentment from simmering over. Clearing his throat loudly, he drew himself up to bow formally from the waist, with deliberately excessive politeness. 'We have removed all traces of our poor and humble selves from the premises, O esteemed Student Council President,' he declared, letting the exaggerated formality of his words drip acid into the air, 'in accordance with your most enlightened instructions.'

Ota nearly choked on an indrawn breath. 'N-Nakamura!' he gurgled, shooting an anxious look at his friend.

There was no way that President Kusatsu could interpret Nakamura's words and actions as anything other than the sideways insult they had been meant to convey. Yet he set the key down on the desk and picked up his cup of tea as if not a hint of impropriety had taken place.

'Very well,' he said. Nakamura might not have spoken at all, for all that he seemed to react to it. 'We of the council appreciate your prompt adherence to our decision. That will be all.' He raised the cup to his lips and took a sip of his tea.

Whatever reaction Nakamura had hoped to provoke, it certainly hadn't been that. Gero-san's eyebrows had gone up a fraction of an inch, and Vice President Arima had tilted his head a little to one side, but neither of them seemed inclined to say anything at all, let alone to bring the roof down on him for speaking so rudely to the president. As it was, there was nothing for him or Ota to do but to give a pair of shallow, hasty bows and make their exit as quickly as possible, glad for the chance to get out of the stifling atmosphere of the student council room.

By the time the door had closed behind them, Kusatsu Kinshirou had taken another sip of tea and had returned his cup to its saucer. A faint smile -- not a nice smile by any stretch of the imagination -- quirked his lips as he glanced down at the breast pocket of his uniform jacket. 'Do you agree with my assessment, Zundar-sama?' he said coolly.

Green light glimmered on the edge of Kinshirou's pocket, and the fabric stirred as a small green hedgehog clambered out of its hiding place and leapt from the pocket to the tabletop, landing next to Kinshirou's teacup. Its nose twitched rapidly, sensing the air.

'There is more than enough repressed ill-feeling and delusional self-importance in him to be of use, I would say.' Zundar looked up at Kinshirou, and nodded once. 'An acceptable choice of target, yes.'

Akoya flicked his hair back from his shoulders. 'Such a ugly, oafish commoner,' he said scornfully, eyeing the spot where his classmates had stood as if he wanted to burn the few feet of carpet that their feet had touched. 'It hardly seems worth wasting our time on him, in spite of his potential.'

'Hm.' Kinshirou turned his head to look at his second-in-command. 'Did he really use the expression "petty tyrants" to describe us, Arima?'

'I'm afraid he did.' Ibushi looked mildly sorrowful, but hardly concerned. He picked up the teapot and automatically refilled Kinshirou's cup. 'Those exact words, in fact.'

Kinshirou's thin, unpleasant smile twisted into something far darker and much less forgiving as he turned his attention back to the papers in front of him -- the topmost of which was a Binan High School student record file, with an attached photograph of the awkward second-year who had addressed him with such insolence.

'Nakamura Jirou,' he murmured to the photograph, as he reached for his tea once more. 'How little you know of tyranny...and how much you will soon find out.'

* * * *
The Kurotama's free blackberry milk, tested by five discerning palates after a long bath, received mixed reviews. En and Ryuu both proclaimed their approval, but Io found it a bit too sweet and Atsushi felt that the milk's blackberry taste verged on artificial, compared with the more natural taste of the banana, melon, and strawberry milks that Goura usually ordered. Yumoto couldn't seem to make up his mind one way or the other, and so when Goura weighed in on the decision it made sense for the Kurotama to stick to its existing fruit milk selection. Yet even though the actual order had been settled, the blackberry milk, and its relative merits and demerits, was still an ongoing topic of after-school conversation for the Earth Defense Club several days later.

'...which is why you tend to see blackberry mixed in with other berries, like raspberries and blueberries, where fruit drinks are concerned,' En concluded sagely, as he and Ryuu waited outside the toilets near the second-year classrooms for Atsushi and Io to finish washing their hands. Yumoto was waiting with them, but he was off in a world of his own, preoccupied with trying to balance a ten-yen coin on the tip of his nose while standing on one foot.

'I just wish they wouldn't try to add cherries in there as well,' Ryuu grumbled. 'Cherries do just fine on their own, but when you go all berry-crazy in drinks like that it's like they're not even there. I mean, you remember those fancy gummy fruit candies I brought to club a while back? Even the ones that looked like cherries didn't taste like them at all.'

'You'd think they'd have better ideas about how to make that kind of thing work.' En scuffed the back of one school shoe against the wall. 'Even if it's just candy, what's the point in trying to pretend that it's something it's not?'

As Ryuu considered his reply, Yumoto was wobbling on his balancing leg, twitching his nose in an effort to keep the coin from slipping. In a last-ditch attempt to maintain control, he flung his arms out wide -- and his left arm smacked into the stomach of someone who had just come out of Io and Ryuu's classroom without warning. The coin fell off Yumoto's nose and went skittering across the floor, hitting the wall a few feet away.

Startled, Yumoto whirled around. The person he had accidentally hit was a tall, weedy-looking boy with unfashionable thick-framed glasses. The boy didn't seem hurt by the impact in any way, but nonetheless he had a hand pressed to the upper part of his stomach and was glaring down at Yumoto.

'Oh, I'm really very -- ' Yumoto began, with the start of an apologetic smile, but the boy merely snarled and shouldered past him, fixing his glare on En and Ryuu instead.

'Do you all not have a club room to go to, where you can have these foolish conversations without subjecting others to their rambling incoherency?' he said sourly. His scowl turned into a sneer as he looked from Ryuu to En and back again. 'Some of us would dearly love a place to enjoy our pastimes in peace -- but alas, we are not all of the fortunate few. It is hardly fair for any of you to be so inconsiderate as to block the hallways for the rest of us, without so much as a glance to see who you might inconvenience.'

'Yumoto was going to apologise before you interrupted him,' En said, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at the flow of overblown words. 'Maybe you should let him finish, if it means that much to you.'

'And who died and put you in charge, anyway?' Ryuu added, hands on hips.

Io and Atsushi had emerged from the toilets just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation. They slipped silently into place beside En and Ryuu, not entirely sure whether they should intervene but not wanting to hang back, either.

The taller boy bristled, drawing himself up to his full height as he glowered at all of them. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides. 'By the power of the Dark Vortex that slumbers within me, you'll soon regret -- '

Suddenly, another boy with thick-framed glasses hurried out of the second-years' classroom. He was shorter and more heavy-set, and his expression was timid, almost embarrassed, as he shuffled up beside the taller boy and tugged at the edge of his blazer. 'Hey, c'mon, d00d,' he said softly, his eyes darting between his friend and the group of boys facing him. 'Let's, like, go stop by the game center on the way home, k? I've got last month's Figurama Hobbylink with me -- we can see if the new UFO catcher prizes are in, lol.'

The scowling boy seemed to hesitate, but whether it was his friend's pleading or a growing awareness that a five-against-two confrontation would not go well for him, he spun around with a disgruntled huff and brushed past Yumoto again as he started to walk away. The shorter boy was hot on his heels, breaking into a trot in his haste to keep up.

As the two boys rounded the corner, vanishing from sight, En folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall. 'Dark Vortex?' he said, rolling the strange English words through his mouth as if they had an odd taste. 'What was that all about?'

'That, it appears, was Nakamura Jirou,' Io said quietly. He bent down to retrieve Yumoto's dropped coin from the floor and returned it to him. 'He is in our class this year. He sits a few rows in front of you, doesn't he, Ryuu?'

'Nakamura?' Ryuu looked puzzled for a moment, but then snapped his fingers as if he had made some sort of connection. 'Oh, yeah, I guess he does. I forgot that that's his real name; I always think of him as Chuu-ni.'

'Chuu-ni?' Atsushi echoed, baffled.

'Yeah,' Ryuu said with a nod. 'Most of the guys in our class call him that because he's...well, he's kind of a head case. A total chuunibyou.'

'Chuu-ni-byou? What's that?' Yumoto asked, tipping his head to one side.

Ryuu scrunched up his nose, trying to figure out how to explain the term. 'Remember how in middle school, there were those kids who talked funny and made up all those stories about how awesome they were? Really weird stories, like they were reincarnated demon warriors or came from secret yakuza families?' He waggled his fingers in front of him in mock-ghoulish enthusiasm. 'This one guy I knew used to run around wearing these black tabi boots -- y'know, the kind you see old guys on construction sites wearing? -- because he said he was the youngest ninja master of a thousand-year-old clan, and he had to wear the boots all the time so he could sneak up on his clan's sworn enemies.' He rolled his eyes. 'That's chuunibyou.'

'Huh,' En said. 'I think we knew someone like that.' He glanced at Atsushi. 'You know, that kid in our middle school who wanted everybody to call him "Koinosuke the Blade"?' He laid extra stress on the Blade, once again emphasising the strangeness of the English words next to the archaic Japanese name. 'Even though his real name was Kenji or something?'

Atsushi looked thoughtful. 'I hadn't thought about him in ages. Didn't he move to another town at the end of that year?'

'Who knows,' said En, shrugging. 'Whatever happened to him, he was definitely a pain to be around back then. So this Nakamura is like that?'

'He's got it pretty bad,' Ryuu said. 'I mean, that whole Dark Vortex stuff isn't the craziest thing I've heard out of him. And it looks like it's even worse now that he and that other guy, Ota-what's-his-name, got kicked out of their club room.'

'What club was he in?' Yumoto asked.

'The Figure Fan Club,' Io said.

Ryuu shuddered. 'Those guys give me the creeps. Don't even get me started on that whole waifu thing they go on about.'

'As much as I cannot fault their devotion to the economic stimulus of a chosen industry,' Io said, shaking his head, 'the amount that they were spending on those figures could not have been remotely sustainable.'

'It's sad that they don't have a club room anymore, though,' Yumoto said. He was turning the coin over in his fingers, his mouth pursed in thought. 'I hope they have fun at the game center.'

'We should probably go to our own club room anyway,' Atsushi said, glad for a chance to change the subject. 'Wasn't there something that Wom -- er, that Tawarayama-sensei wanted to tell us about, Yumoto?'

'Hm?' Yumoto blinked, coming back to himself. 'Oh, yes!' he said, his eyes lighting up. 'C'mon, let's go find Tawarayama-sensei and head upstairs. There's supposed to be a big surprise for us once we get there!'

As the Defense Club headed off in the direction of the stairs to their club room, not a single one of them noticed that they were not the only ones left in the hall. By the time they had reached the stairs, three long shadows had fallen across the hallway floor. Seemingly out of nowhere, the student council had appeared...and judging by their serious expressions, they had witnessed at least some of the confrontation between the Earth Defense Club and the former Figure Fan Club.

'It seems as if our target has built up quite a lot of resentment already,' Ibushi said.

'Squabbling in the halls like a pack of ruffians,' Akoya declared. 'How typical of all of them, bringing down the whole tone of the school.'

Ibushi nodded absently, seemingly agreeing more with Akoya's tone of voice than with his words. 'Did you want to go after him now, Kinshirou?' When there was no reply, he looked over at their leader. 'Kinshirou?'

The student council president had a tight, intense look on his face, his gaze fixed on the bottom of the stairs where the Defense Club had turned the corner. 'Not yet,' he said in a low voice, after a moment's further silence. 'We will wait for another day or two. It will be better if we let the wound fester a little longer before we lance it.'

* * * *
As it happened, there was no need for Yumoto and the others to search for anyone. Wombat and Tawarayama-sensei were already in the Earth Defense Club's room, waiting for everyone to arrive. Once the five of them had settled into their usual chairs, with Tawarayama-sensei deposited in a suitable corner, En was the first to turn to Wombat for answers.

'All right,' he said, 'what's this big surprise that Yumoto says you have for us today?' Needless to say, he didn't seem enthusiastic about it, whatever it was. The expressions on the faces of the other Defense Club members ranged from genuinely curious inquiry (Yumoto) to polite-but-doubtful interest (Atsushi) to semi-bored resignation (Ryuu) to outright wariness (Io).

Wombat, who had chosen to climb up onto the table so he could see all of them equally (and remain out of Yumoto's immediate reach), cleared his throat. 'It has come to my notice,' he saif, 'that certain, er, individuals, who I will not name, have expressed a certain amount of, ah, dissatisfaction with certain, uh, aspects of the Battle Lovers combat uniform.' He cleared his throat again, more noisily. 'Far be it from me to entertain any assumptions as to -- '

En cut in. 'You don't need to hem and haw like that,' he said. 'Say it straight: We don't like the outfits.'

Ryuu rocked back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. 'I mean, they're not the absolute worst things in the world, but they could definitely be less weird to wear all the time.'

'For instance, do we really need all the ruffles?' Atsushi said. 'They don't seem at all practical for combat. And the bows are a little awkward to deal with, too.'

'If we are airing our grievances in this fashion,' Io said, his expression firm, 'then I would prefer that our outfits be as coordinated below the waist as they are above the waist.'

Ryuu suddenly grinned, and leaned forward, cupping one hand around his mouth. 'Io doesn't like the shorts,' he stage-whispered to Wombat.

'That is not what I -- ' Io began indignantly.

Wombat waved his short furry arms around. 'Everyone, please!' he begged, and they all fell silent. Nervously, he looked over at Yumoto, who was watching them all with wide, thoughtful eyes. 'Yumoto-kun, you haven't said anything -- what do you think?'

Yumoto flashed his usual bright smile. 'I think they're pretty great!' he said -- but then his expression turned thoughtful again. 'Except....'

'Except?' Wombat said.

Yumoto thought for a moment longer. 'I know that the pixel-thingys make it so that people can't figure out our identities, but what if there was a monster and we needed to sneak in somewhere to fight it?' He made a quick walking motion with his fingers, mimicking the act of tiptoeing past danger. 'Our Battle Lover outfits are really cute and fun, but they're really noticeable, too...and that's not always a good thing, is it?'

The upperclassmen looked at each other with surprise. It was the first time that Yumoto had had any real complaint about their Battle Lover outfits, and yet he had made an honest point -- one that was about more than just aesthetics.

'We do look like a cosplay group when we're all together,' Atsushi said.

'Or like those people you see handing out packets of tissues to promote some new karaoke place,' Ryuu added. 'The kind you walk past really quickly and pretend that you're texting someone so you don't have to make eye contact with any of them.'

'At least they are being paid to do so,' Io said. 'Which we, I must point out, are not.'

Instead of appearing crestfallen by the criticism, however, Wombat seemed unfazed. 'For that reason, I have come prepared to address your concerns!' From out of thin air -- considering his lack of clothing, none of them really wanted to think about where else he might have been hiding it -- he produced a glittery pink object and plunked it down on the tabletop in front of them. 'Behold, the Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen!'

'Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen?' the Defense Club echoed in a single startled voice.

'The Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen!' Wombat repeated, thoroughly pleased. 'A highly advanced scientific item of great power that can only be used by the heirs to the Throne of Love!'

The Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen, of which Wombat was so proud, appeared to be a rather squat, bulbous capped pen made of a shiny pink material, somewhere between a metallic plastic and a plasticky metal. The cap had a thick gold clip that could be used to secure it in a pocket, and the top of the pen was adorned with a large glittering pink heart-shaped crystal similar to the ones on their Lovracelets. At first glance, it looked like a reasonably ordinary pen -- though its size, shape, and undeniable pink-ness definitely did not make it seem like the sort of pen that an average high school boy would think of using to take notes in class.

En was the first to break the stunned silence that had fallen over the room. 'I am not touching that thing,' he said flatly.

'What exactly is it supposed to do?' Atsushi said, adjusting his glasses as he peered at the pen.

'You hold it up in the air, and you say, "Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen! Transform me into -- " and then you tell it what you want to look like.' Wombat looked even furrier than usual as he puffed out his chest with pride. 'Ideally, you would use it to disguise yourself as someone else, if your Battle Lover costume would make you too noticeable to be effective. Perhaps you might need to make yourself look like a doctor, or a flight attendant, or a fortune teller, or -- '

Yumoto's eyes had been growing wider and wider throughout Wombat's explanation, until finally his excitement could not be contained any longer. 'I want to try!' he said, and swept the pen off the table as he leapt to his feet.

The rest of the Defense Club recoiled, dreading whatever new and terrifying idea had entered their youngest member's mind. 'Geez, Yumoto, hang on a second -- ' En started to say, but Yumoto was too quick for him.

'Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen!' Yumoto said, holding the pen aloft. 'Transform me into...Goura-an-chan!'

The crystal heart on top of the pen glowed, and a swirl of pink sparkling light radiated out from the pen and washed over Yumoto's body. Within moments, the light had grown so bright that the other four boys had to raise a hand or turn their faces to shield their eyes from the glare. When the light faded, however, their jaws all but dropped to see that Wombat's highly advanced scientific technology had actually worked.

Standing in Yumoto's place was someone who definitely looked like his older brother Goura. It was the same kind face they all knew from their trips to the bath, the same genial smile, the same shock of hair, the same tall and muscular frame. He was even wearing the same Kurotama T-shirt with a towel tucked around his neck. If it wasn't for the bright pink pen in his hand and the Lovracelet still visible on his wrist, they would have sworn that it really was Goura...which made the whole situation all the more disconcerting.

'Hey, it really worked!' Even if he looked like Goura on the outside, Yumoto still had his own voice. He held up his much larger and more calloused hands and peered down at his new clothing, twisting his body so he could see as much of himself as possible. 'This is so neat! I look just like An-chan!'

The sound of Yumoto's high-pitched glee coming out of Goura's mouth was so unnatural that all four of his friends had to avert their gazes out of sheer discomfort with what they were seeing and hearing.

'I'm going to have nightmares about this,' En moaned to no one in particular.

Atsushi had taken off his glasses and was rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. 'Someone please let me know when he changes back,' he said quietly.

'It didn't...hurt, did it?' Ryuu said, worrying his lower lip. Io merely stared at the transformed Yumoto, too alarmed to say anything.

Goura-Yumoto looked down at the transformation pen in his hand. 'No, I feel just fine!' He turned to Wombat, whose facial expression seemed to be fluctuating between delighted at the success of Yumoto's transformation and disturbed by the actual results. 'So we can use this when we want to sneak in somewhere? What happens when we need to become the Battle Lovers?'

'You...you can use your Lovracelet t-to transform, as you normally would,' Wombat said, stammering only slightly.

'Oh, okay!' Goura-Yumoto set the pen down on the table and raised his wrist to kiss the red heart-shaped gem on his bracelet. 'Love Making!'

The others visibly relaxed as Yumoto went through the more familiar transformation into Battle Lover Scarlet. By the time he had landed in his usual ending pose, they were able to look at each other once again.

'That certainly was a...thing that just happened,' En said, voicing what all four of them were feeling.

'We will not be, er, required to use this new pen, I hope?' said Io. 'If so, then I duly withdraw my earlier objections to our costuming choices.'

'Aw, but it's kinda fun, Io-senpai!' Scarlet said, as he picked up the pen again. 'We might not need to use it all the time, but it's nice to know that we have it.'

'If you say so.' Io did not sound at all convinced. And if the faces of the other three Defense Club members were anything to go by, not one of them had any plans to put the Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen to use at any time in the near, middle, or distant future.

* * * *
Kinshirou had told his comrades that they would wait for a few days before making themselves known to their intended victim. Yet as fortune would have it, the opportunity for action presented itself barely twenty-four hours later.

The two members of the former Figure Fan Club had indeed spent the previous day at the game center, armed with plenty of precious coins for the UFO catcher and capsule toy machines in order to collect as many of the newest releases as they could. When they had had a club room, it would have been the sort of after-school activity that they truly enjoyed, because with each new acquisition they would have commented on the character, or the manufacturing quality, or discussed whether it deserved a place in one of their 'shrines', or...or done something more than simply feeding another coin into the slot. By the time they had to go their separate ways to head home for dinner, they had convenience store bags full of plastic toys and a vague sense that they'd wasted the entire afternoon.

At lunch the following day, Nakamura and Ota were hunkered down in their usual corner table, eating the cheapest bowls of ramen the cafeteria had to offer. Ota's well-thumbed Figurama Hobbylink was on the table in front of them, open to a spread on giant robot model kits. Neither of them were that interested in giant robots, but unlike some of the other figures in that month's issue, giant robots wouldn't attract any unwelcome attention if a teacher or someone from the student council were to pass by their table.

'What should we do today?' Nakamura said. 'The game center again?'

Ota had his head down over his bowl, and gave his noodles a long slurp. 'Maybe.'

When he didn't say anything more than that, Nakamura looked down at his own bowl. 'Or there's the manga cafe.'

'Yeah, maybe.' Ota poked at his ramen, trying to scrape a piece of bamboo shoot off the upper side of the bowl.

Nakamura frowned, and let the noodles slide off his chopsticks, back into the cooling broth. 'Something wrong?'

Ota looked up, blinking. 'No, nothing's -- ' he started to say, but then paused, his mouth suddenly tightening as he looked at something over Nakamura's shoulder. He put his chopsticks down and pushed his chair back. 'Hang on, brb.'

It was Nakamura's turn to blink, staring as his friend got up from their table and hurried off, heading in the direction of the doors leading out of the cafeteria. He spun around in his chair, and saw Ota making a beeline for a group of students who were just about to leave the room. His eyes narrowed when he saw that it was the so-called Earth Defense Club, then went wide again as he watched Ota all but catch Naruko Io by the sleeve of his jacket. Naruko looked surprised, but waved his friends off, and stayed behind to listen to whatever Ota was saying to him. At that distance, Nakamura couldn't tell what was going on, but Ota looked anxious and Naruko was nodding with a serious expression as he listened to Ota talk, and seemed to offer a few words of his own.

The whole exchange took less than a minute, and then Naruko was gone and Ota was scurrying back to their table. He slid into his seat and picked up his chopsticks, and bent his head over his bowl as if the last few minutes hadn't happened.

'What...' Nakamura began, then stopped when he felt his voice starting to waver. He cleared his throat noisily and tried again. 'What were you talking to Naruko about?'

'N-nothing, lol.' Once more, Ota didn't look up, but crammed an unnecessarily large tangle of noodles into his mouth, emptying his bowl of everything but broth. 'Jusht...just ashking 'm 'bout shome money shtuff.'

It was a little hard to understand Ota around the noodles, but Nakamura couldn't have misheard that last part. 'Money stuff?'

Ota hesitated, then gulped as he swallowed the mass of chewed noodles. 'If he, like, thought that it was ever a good idea to....' He seemed to be having a hard time looking Nakamura in the face; he looked at his depleted bowl, then at the table next to theirs, then over at the screened-off dining area where the student council ate their stupid fancy lunches, and finally settled on staring at his own hand, white-knuckled from his grip on his chopsticks. 'To sell a collection of stuff.'

Nakamura's own chopsticks slipped from his hand, clattering greasily onto the tabletop. 'To sell?!'

Ota finally lifted his eyes, guilt written across his face as clearly as if it had been tattooed into his skin. 'I gotta clear some space in my room. My mom's, like, srsly mad.'

'But...but our fair maidens!' As soon as the words left Nakamura's mouth, he realised how peculiar they sounded when they weren't spoken in the nice quiet privacy of their old club room. All the same, he couldn't seem to stop himself from continuing. 'How can you think of tossing them aside like...like so much trash?!'

Ota bit down on his lower lip. 'Like I said, my mom...when I brought home our stuff from the club room, she said I couldn't keep all of it in my room. And there's...there's some that I don't rly like all that much anymore, so -- '

'So Naruko told you to sell them?' Nakamura's lip curled in a snarl. 'The ignorant cur! I knew I should have unleashed the Dark Vortex and blasted them all when I had the chance to -- '

'Knock it off, k?'

Ota's interruption was so sudden that Nakamura jerked in his seat, physically struck by his best friend's words. 'Wh...what?' he said weakly.

'That...that Dark Vortex stuff.' Ota's mouth twisted. Even though there was a pleading light in his eyes, the rest of his face seemed set and determined, harder and more unyielding than Nakamura could ever remember seeing it. 'It's cool and all, but...it's not real. You know it's not. So don't...so just don't, k?'

Nakamura stared at him, feeling the skin of his cheeks begin to burn scalding-hot even as his neck and ears felt as freezing-cold as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over his head. At some point, he must have shoved his lunch away from him, must have pushed back his chair, must have stood up, must have turned and walked out of the room -- except that he didn't have a sense of his own body moving until he found that he was running through the corridors, feet slamming on the floor as his heart slammed against his ribs in protest at the unusual physical exercise. He thought that he heard shouts, possibly even his name, but in his hot blind rush to be somewhere, anywhere that wasn't where he'd been, he didn't stop running until he took a turn too sharply and his legs slipped out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor.

As he lay on his side, winded and wheezing, he wondered if he'd hit his head in the fall. Everything around him seemed oddly dim, as if the hallway had fallen into shadow. But then as his head started to clear, he realised that he was the one who had fallen into a shadow -- one that was being cast over him by a group of three figures in strange dark uniforms, nothing like anything he'd ever seen outside of a cosplay competition.

'Well, this is a fine opportunity,' one of the figures (the tallest one? it was hard to tell from the floor) said. Its voice was weirdly distorted: Nakamura could understand it, but it sounded strangely mechanical, as if it were being run through some kind of machine. An artificial voice modulator, his brain suggested wildly, out of nowhere, and a sudden rush of fear (excitement) made his heart and stomach lurch in opposite directions.

'We may as well make use of it,' said a second voice, with the same inhuman distortion. 'Since it had the misfortune to land right at our feet.' Even though the artificial speech was devoid of emotion, to Nakamura it seemed to have a bored air, that of an alien unimpressed by the primitive creatures of Earth.

Twisting to look up, and straining against the haze in his vision, Nakamura tried to squint at the shadowy figures looming over him. 'Who...who are you?' he gasped.

The figure in the middle -- shorter than the other two, but wearing some sort of dark cape that swirled about him like a sinister aura -- took a half-step forward, planting the toe of his black boot right in front of Nakamura's eyes.

'We are Caerula Adamas, the rulers of this blue world,' it said, with a voice that lacked all trace of humanity. 'And you have been chosen to serve our higher purpose, beyond the delusions of your weak and pathetic existence.'

Nakamura's intended protest never got beyond an indrawn gulp of breath, because any argument that he might have made fell apart in his mouth as Ota's words suddenly echoed in his head.

(It's cool and all, but...it's not real. You know it's not.)

Because he was, wasn't he? Weak and pathetic. Even his best friend knew it. There was no Dark Vortex. There was no secret power sealed away inside him. There was no hidden special magical ability lying dormant within him, waiting for its moment to burst forth and transform him into something more than what he was. Something beyond his weak and pathetic existence. What was the point in pretending otherwise?

'That's right,' the figure in the cape murmured, as the realisation sank cold and heavy into Nakamura's chest. 'Accept your fate, and be bound to our will. And perhaps, as our vessel, you will have the power your craven heart so dearly desires.'

Before Nakamura's eyes, everything seemed to blur together, as the dark figures that surrounded him erupted into a blinding blaze of green light. There was a ringing in his ears, and a single strange word -- 'DONUM!' -- said by three strange voices, and then a sharp pain lanced through him, the only point of feeling in the numbness that swelled outward from the point of contact. And yet as something new and terrible prickled beneath his skin, remaking him from the inside out, his last clear thought was oddly calm:

Even if it's not the Dark Vortex, I'll take it.

* * * *
The lunch period was nearly over when the Battle Lovers' Lovracelets flashed their warning signal. As usual, four out of the five members of the Earth Defense Club looked more annoyed than alarmed to have their precious free time cut short.

'This had better be worth it,' Ryuu grumbled as he shoved his phone back into his bag.

Io wasn't quite ready to let go of his tablet. 'If the yen drops against the franc....' he muttered, hastily tapping out the last of his planned trades. 'Limit order, at sixteen thousand -- '

'Do you think we'll have time to finish this before class starts?' Atsushi said, as he and En followed the ever-eager Yumoto out of the club room. 'I wanted to review my notes before the quiz in history today.'

'We have a quiz in history?' En blinked, then shrugged. 'Let's hope this takes all afternoon, then.'

It didn't take long to locate the source of the distress. The monster they were expected to fight had plopped itself right down in front of the school's main entrance, blocking the way back inside for those students who had been eating their lunches outdoors in the fine sunny weather. In the general chaos, it was easy to slip around to one of the school's side entrances and poke their heads out from behind a corner of the building, a reasonable distance from the monster.

As monsters went, there wasn't anything especially weird about it. It looked like an oversized candy or toy dispensing machine -- the cheap kind found outside old arcades, a rounded metal stalk topped with a large glassy ball. Its dome-shaped head allowed the monster to swivel its face around and around in a circle, though the immediate effect was more comical than frightening. But at its sides, the monster had two wicked-looking metal arms with three-pronged claws at the ends, like the kind used to snag little stuffed toys in UFO catchers. And just as the Earth Defense Club got a good clear look at it, one of the monster's arms shot out and grabbed a panicking student by the collar of his blazer and shirt. The monster hoisted its squirming, yelling prey aloft, and then a beam of light shot out of the top of its domed head and enveloped the unfortunate student. There was a massive pop!, an implosion of sound...and in the blink of an eye, the victim was now trapped inside a person-sized clear plastic bubble, as if he'd suddenly become the world's biggest capsule toy.

'Gaccha gaccha gaccha!' the monster chortled, with a laugh like the sound of grinding gears, as its victim pounded on the inside of the bubble to no avail. 'You'll be a perfect addition to my collection!'

Indeed, several such plastic bubbles were scattered around the grounds, and each one appeared to have someone inside it. The Gaccha Monster -- as it seemed best to call it -- hadn't wasted any time.

'How horrible!' Yumoto said, fists clenching at his sides.

En was eyeing the Gaccha Monster's flailing arms. 'Looks like we'll have to keep back from it,' he said.

'Why should we keep back?' Ryuu was also eyeing the arms, but with a different idea in mind. 'It's only got two of those claws. If we all rush it at the same time, it won't know which of us to grab, and Yumoto can magically whip its butt while it's all confused!' He looked back at the rest of the club, a determined light in his eyes. 'Come on, let's get this over with so we can get back to the club room!'

'I don't think that's -- ' Atsushi started to say, but Ryuu was already raising his wrist to his lips to kiss his bracelet. Any possible objection was drowned out by Ryuu's shout of 'LOVE MAKING!', which was swiftly followed by an echo from Yumoto, and at that point all thought of alternate Battle Lover strategies vanished in a whirl of collective nudity and highly advanced scientific technology.

True to form, Vesta was quick to lead the assault. 'Come on, Sulfur, you and I can outflank it from this end!' he said, leaping out from behind the building and swinging out in a wide arc to the right. Sulfur made a slight face, biting the edge of his lip, but nonetheless followed Vesta's example.

Unfortunately, Sulfur's moment of hesitation was enough for the Gaccha Monster to turn and spot the solitary pink streak of Vesta's magic. Quick as a flash, it flung out an arm, and before Vesta could tumble out of the way it snagged him by one of the tails of his Battle Lover jacket and shot its beam of light directly at him.

'Vesta, look out!' Sulfur shouted, just as the monster's ray found its mark, but when the large clear bubble appeared, the Battle Lovers all saw that something was different about Vesta's clothing. He was still dressed in pink and white, but his entire outfit had been transformed. Instead of his Battle Lover shorts and jacket and big floppy bow, he was wearing an incredibly frilly pink-and-white dress that puffed out around him like a cloud, with a ruffled petticoat and knee-high white stockings. His hair was no longer held back by his usual headband, but instead was tied in two teeny-tiny pigtails secured with bright pink bows.

It took Vesta approximately two-thirds of a second to notice that his clothes were suddenly very different than they had been a moment before. 'What the hell?!' he exclaimed, looking down at his new outfit. Even though his voice was muffled by the barrier of the bubble, the abject horror in his tone was perfectly audible. 'Get this off of me!'

The Gaccha Monster clacked its claws with greedy glee. 'Gaccha gaccha! Oh, you make such an adorable Magical Meguca! Doomed magical girls are always popular!'

'Vesta!' Sulfur was the first to reach Vesta's bubble, though there was little he could do but put a hand on the outside, as if to comfort its trapped occupant. But a moment later, he had his Love Stick out and pointed at the monster. 'Let Vesta go this instant!'

'Let him go? I don't think so!' The monster flexed its claws again. 'But you'll make a nice addition to my collection, too!'

'Sulfur, be careful!' Vesta yelled, and tried to rock his bubble enough to push Sulfur out of the way, but the claw was already zipping through the air. Sulfur didn't have enough time to line up a blast from his Love Stick before the monster had grabbed him as well -- and one flash of light and ear-splitting pop later, Sulfur was inside a bubble of his own, wearing another outlandish costume. This one, however, wasn't a lacy and beribboned dress like Vesta's, but rather was a skin-tight yellow-and-white outfit like the ones worn by professional bicycle racers, with matching fingerless gloves and a striped helmet in his hand in place of his Love Stick.

'Hee hee, a limited-edition Bad Bicycle Boys racing outfit!' The Gaccha Monster seemed more pleased than before. 'Not what I had in mind, but you'll do nicely!'

'Sulfur!' 'Vesta!' Cerulean and Epinard had drawn their Love Sticks as well, but with two of their fellow Battle Lovers already captured, it didn't seem like tackling the Gaccha Monster head-on would produce satisfactory results. As they paused, weighing their meagre options, Scarlet's voice rang out from behind them:

'Cerulean! Epinard! Over here!'

For the moment, the Gaccha Monster was distracted by its newest acquisitions, and so Cerulean and Epinard both turned and leapt back around the corner of the building, landing right where they had been standing when they first spotted the monster. Scarlet was there waiting for them, and Wombat was a few feet away, cradled in the stiffened arms of Tawarayama-sensei.

'Scarlet, what are you doing?' Epinard said. 'We have to get back there and rescue Sulfur and Vesta!'

'We will!' Scarlet replied. 'But we'll have to use this.' He held up something shiny and pink that glinted ominously in the early afternoon sun.

Cerulean squinted at it. 'Isn't that the pen-thing you showed us?'

'That's right!' Wombat said. 'Your newest weapon against those who would see all love wiped off the face of this planet, whose nefarious schemes threaten the very --

Before Wombat could finish deliver his latest inspirational message, Scarlet had raised the pen over his head. 'Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen!' he called out. 'Turn me into...a game center employee!'

Epinard and Cerulean stared blankly as Scarlet let the transformation pen do its work. By the time it was finished, the skeptical looks on their faces had deepened considerably, because the results were -- well, they were definitely unusual.

'Where exactly are you going with this?' Epinard asked, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

'You need to use it, too!' the transformed Scarlet said, holding out the pen. 'Just take it and repeat after me!'

Cerulean and Epinard looked at each other. Even if Scarlet's plan involved Wombat's dangerous new toy, he obviously had an idea of what to do to help their friends -- which was something that neither of them had. What did they have to lose?

* * * *
Up on the roof of the school, Caerula Adamas watched from a distance as the Gaccha Monster's beams trapped more and more students in plastic bubbles alongside those containing Sulfur and Vesta.

'This is a better outcome than I had anticipated,' Aurite said. His eyes glittered with malicious satisfaction as he surveyed the carnage below. 'With two of those detestable Battle Lovers in our power, the others will have no choice but to surrender!'

'He's a very lively monster, isn't he?' Argent rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'I'm pretty sure this is what one might call a "rampage."'

Pearlite sniffed, sounding less than impressed, but it did not prevent him from taking a step or two forward to get a better view of the battle on the ground. 'I can't say that what it's doing is very beautiful,' he said. 'What exactly will we do with all of these peasants once it has caught them?'

Neither Aurite nor Argent had an immediate answer for that question -- but then something happened that drove all thoughts of world conquest straight out of their minds. Perhaps it was their movement in the periphery of the monster's vision that caught its attention, or perhaps it owed something to the way that the afternoon sunlight was reflecting off of Pearlite's radiant pink hair, but all of a sudden the Gaccha Monster had turned around and fixed its bulbous eyes directly on the three Chevaliers standing near the edge of the rooftop.

'A-ha, what's this?' it crowed. The claws of its UFO catcher hands clacked eagerly. 'Gaccha gaccha, you'll be just perfect for my display!'

And then, in the blink of an eye, it aimed its arm and fired its metal hand directly at Caerula Adamas.

'What in the -- ' Aurite began, alarmed, but with the claw rocketing right at them there was no time for him to finish the sentence. Before the three of them could leap to safety, or even think to push one another out of the way, the claw had caught hold of Pearlite -- who unfortunately was standing closest to the ledge -- and yanked him off the roof so quickly that he seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

'Pearlite!' Aurite and Argent sprang forward, racing down the rooftop. They were about to leap down to the ground to rescue their fallen comrade when they heard another loud pop, followed by a heavy thump and a muffled shriek. They skidded to a stop, and looked over the edge of the roof. Below them, trapped inside one of the monster's large glossy bubbles and scrabbling madly to get out, was Pearlite.

From their vantage point, they could tell that Pearlite had been subjected to one of the monster's forced costume changes as well. Instead of his sleek black uniform with its tall boots and tailored military tunic, he was now wearing what appeared to be a ruffled, flared jacket made from a pink fabric a few shades darker than his own hair. White-tasselled epaulettes on both shoulders gave the coat a jaunty air -- but the overall effect was somewhat marred by the fact that Pearlite's legs were now bare from mid-calf to mid-thigh, with only a pair of painfully tight pink shorts and equally tight pink socks covering his lower half.

The Gaccha Monster seemed delighted by its newest acquisition. 'Ah, the manga-style battle outfit from Apocalypse Rose Princess!' it exclaimed as it retracted its claw hand. 'Merchandise from older series is so rare. I'll be sure to keep you out of direct sunlight.'

Judging by his desperate attempts to yank the jacket down far enough to cover the hem of his shorts, Pearlite absolutely was not a fan of his new costume. 'Aurite! Argent!' he howled, looking up, as he pounded on the bubble with one fist and wrestled with his jacket with the other. 'Get me out of here!'

Flustered, Aurite flung out a hand, trying to summon enough authority to force his creation to bend to his will. 'Gaccha Monster!' he shouted, in a voice that was shakier than he cared to admit. 'I command you to -- '

'Hold it right there!'

As if by the power of some theatrical rule, everyone and everything froze in place. Even the Gaccha Monster halted in its rampage, though its eyes were darting around in search of the voice that had interrupted it.

There was a flash of sparkling red light, and then a tall young man appeared in front of the monster, standing with his hands on his hips in a firm, authoritative stance. He looked to be in his late teens or early twenties, with blond hair combed neatly back from his face, and he was wearing a long pink-striped apron over a crisp collared shirt and plain trousers. Printed on the front of the apron was a bright red heart topped with a gold crown, surrounded on top and bottom by the words BINAN CROWN GAME CENTER in bold English letters.

The young man raised his arm and pointed a finger at the Gaccha Monster. 'As a game center employee,' he declared, in a voice that sounded strangely high-pitched to be coming from someone his apparent age, 'I can't allow you to use capsule toys for such an evil purpose! These toys are meant to bring inexpensive, mass-produced joy to people's hearts, not to trap them and make them sad! You have to let everyone go!'

The Gaccha Monster growled at this challenge to its power. 'You can't make me!' it bellowed, jabbing at the air with its catcher hand. 'They're all mine, rare and limited-edition items, and I'll put them on display somewhere where no one will be able to take them from me! My collection will be UNPARALLELED!' With that, it aimed its arm at its new adversary and fired, cackling wildly as it prepared to add another figure to its collection.

To the monster's astonishment, however, the suspiciously young-sounding game center employee easily leapt out of reach of the claw. His striped apron flapped like a banner in the breeze as he landed nimbly a few feet away.

'I didn't want to have to do this,' he said, a little sadly, and then turned his head to shout over his shoulder. 'You can come out now, Special Duty Unit Battle Lawyers!'

Before the Gaccha Monster could draw back its claw for another strike, two more flashes of light -- one glimmering green, the other glittering blue -- seared through the sky, and two more figures appeared on either side of the game center employee. Unlike their comrade, however, they were both wearing dark grey business suits and carrying solid-looking briefcases. Only their neckties, one green and one blue, provided a splash of colour against the dull grey and white of their clothing choices. They looked much more grown-up than the other man, probably in their early thirties, and they were both wearing glasses that glinted in the sunlight as they stared down the Gaccha Monster.

The one in the blue necktie, who had light brown hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, brought his right arm up across his chest in a defiant pose. 'First in billable hours, Battle Lawyer Blue!'

The one in the green necktie, whose darker hair was slicked to the side in a severe part, mirrored his companion's stance with his left arm raised. 'Ready to cross-examine, Battle Lawyer Green!'

'In the name of the Six Codes,' the two of them declared in unison as they stepped forward, in front of the game center employee, 'Earth's justice will be served!'

Inside their clear plastic bubbles, Sulfur and Vesta and Pearlite paused in their struggles, trying to make any sort of sense of what they were seeing and hearing.

'Did they say -- ' Io began hesitantly.

Up on the rooftop, the uncaptured members of Caerula Adamas were equally flummoxed by the arrival of the new combatants.

' -- Battle Lawyers?' Aurite said, disbelieving.

For the first time, the Gaccha Monster seemed uneasy. 'Wh-what are you t-t-talking about?' it stammered. 'Why are you bringing lawyers into this?'

Battle Lawyer Blue held up a finger with no-nonsense intent. 'Those life-sized capsule toys are infringing upon the official licensed property of the original creators!' he said.

Battle Lawyer Green nodded, adjusting his glasses authoritatively. 'Such copyright violations,' he added, 'must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!'

Liquid beads of something that might have been sweat broke out on top of the Gaccha Monster's domed head. 'But...but it's fair use!' it insisted, looking around in growing panic at the scattered mass of bubbles with their costumed captives inside. 'Fair use! You can't say that I -- '

Before the monster could finish its protest, Battle Lawyer Green had thrown open his briefcase, and a whirl of papers flew out into the air. 'Unauthorized Reproduction Warning Blast!' he called out, pointing an arm directly at the monster.

The papers, responding to his command, turned into bright green darts that crackled with some sort of magical electricity. They zoomed towards the Gaccha Monster, and before it could do more than let out a cry and fling up its robot arms to protect itself, the darts had embedded themselves in the ground all around it, trapping it in a cage of green light.

As the monster reeled from his fellow magical attorney's attack, Battle Lawyer Blue reached into his own briefcase and released another whirl of papers into the air. 'Cease-and-Desist Letter Storm!'

This time, the papers turned into glowing watery-blue bolts that shot in all directions. Each bolt struck one of the bubbles, and as the burst of blue energy made contact with the plastic, the bubble popped and vanished -- and the person inside it landed on the ground, in the clothes he had been wearing originally.

'NOOO!' the monster yowled in mingled pain and rage within the cage of light. 'My priceless, one-of-a-kind collection! You'll PAY for that, you mundane trash!'

Freed from their bubbles, Vesta and Sulfur sprang to their feet, Love Sticks out and ready for battle. Pearlite, who had gone through more of an ordeal in his capture, felt his knees wobble as he tried to stand up, but then a strong arm was around his waist, supporting him as he regained his footing. Turning his head, he saw Argent looking down at him, with a faint smile on his face but deep concern in his eyes. A second later, Aurite was standing in front of both of them, his back ramrod straight with protective determination. Whether he was planning to defend them from the monster, or the restored Battle Lovers, or both, was anyone's guess.

Now that the two captured Battle Lovers were free, the game center employee's face lit up with happiness. 'Vesta! Sulfur!' he shouted in his too-young voice, and then his entire body seemed to shimmer -- and suddenly, Battle Lover Scarlet was racing towards his friends, waving his Love Stick around like a child playing with a fallen tree branch. No sooner had Scarlet reappeared than the two Battle Lawyers also seemed to blur and change, leaving Cerulean and Epinard in their place. The two of them hurried over to join Scarlet alongside Sulfur and Vesta.

Watching the Battle Lovers' triumphant reunion, Aurite's jaw tightened as he saw yet another of his plans for conquest go down to defeat. But then he glanced over his shoulder, to where a still-shaken Pearlite was leaning heavily on Argent, and he seemed to make up his mind. He took a step forward, his cape whipping out dramatically as he extended an arm to point at their enemies.

'Battle Lovers!' he boomed, in a voice that carried across the school yard. 'In these circumstances, we will allow you to win the day! Next time, however, you will not be so fortunate!' Then, in a twinkling of light, the three Chevaliers disappeared from the battlefield.

Cerulean rolled his eyes at Caerula Adamas's hasty retreat. 'Fortunate, he says,' he grumbled. 'Like we lucked out somehow.'

'It's probably for the best, anyway,' Epinard said, with a pragmatic shrug. 'Scarlet can take care of the rest from here.'

Sure enough, Scarlet had finally turned his mind back to the battle at hand. The cage of green light had disappeared when the Battle Lawyers had turned back into the Battle Lovers, but the Gaccha Monster didn't seem inclined to start fighting them again. Instead, it was slumped over, looking dejected and defeated, as faint wisps of steam rose from the cracked dome of its head.

'My precious collection...all gone....' it moaned, burying its face in its claws.

'Your collection isn't who you are, Gaccha Monster!' Scarlet said. He took a few steps forward. 'You don't need to collect things to feel good about yourself!'

The monster shook its head. 'But all my efforts...all that time I spent....'

'A sunk-cost fallacy.' Sulfur sighed. 'It happens to the best of us.'

'I mean, honestly,' Vesta said, 'you were just sort of grabbing us all from all over the place. That's not a collection -- it's a pile of stuff.'

Scarlet nodded. 'And even if you spent a lot of time on your collection, you shouldn't collect something just to have it, if you don't have a good reason to keep it. A good collection should be a reflection of the things that you love -- and it should show your love for everyone to see.' His eyes lit up as an idea occurred to him. 'It's like that lady who likes to clean all the things says -- you can magically change your life if you only keep the things that spark joy for you!'

(In the background, Epinard nudged Cerulean with his elbow. 'Does that count as a copyright violation?' he murmured. 'Should we be concerned?'

'I am not touching that pen again,' Cerulean muttered, scowling. 'That Tidy-Your-Condo woman can get her own lawyers. Besides, pulling my hair back like that made my scalp itch.')

Scarlet paid no attention to the musings of his fellow Battle Lovers. 'Even if you have good memories attached to certain things,' he continued, 'you don't need to keep the thing itself to keep the good memory that goes with it. Maybe you just need to remember why you liked collecting things in the first place, so you can figure out what you really love enough to want to keep.'

'What I...really love?' the monster echoed, peeking out from behind its claws. 'But what if I don't...I mean, what if I can't....?' It trailed off, sounding confused and a little afraid.

'You don't have to figure it out all at once. All you need is one good memory to start -- and I think we can help with that!' With a cheery smile, Scarlet hefted his Love Stick. 'Sparkle, Lumiere of Love!'

Taking their cue from Scarlet, the Battle Lovers fell into formation.

'Flash, Purifying Aqua!'

'Pierce, Gallant Hurricane!'

'Roar, Raging Gaia!'

'Thrill, Blazing Ignit!'

As the combined power of their Love Attack sent a massive winged heart barrelling straight towards the Gaccha Monster, it waved its clawed arms desperately, as if to fend off the threat. But when the blast of love magic hit it, its arms went limp, and Scarlet wasted no time in swinging his super-charged Love Stick up to the heavens for the finishing blow. 'Love Shower!'

The rain of pink love magic that thundered down on the monster made it all but disappear from sight -- and yet beneath that curtain of healing light, a transformation was taking place.

('Hey, aren't you Ota? From Class 2A? I didn't know you liked Ultra Mask Crimson!'

'I...y-yeah, I like him. I just got this for my b-birthday -- hey, wh-where did you get that pencil case?'

'Oh, I found it in this little store near the Binan Central Library. They've got a whole bunch of super-cool Crimson stuff -- I'm saving my allowance to get the new figure with the Crimson Rocket Bike!'

'Hey, that's r-r-really cool! Where'd you s-say the st-store was?

'It's pretty close to my house, actually. I can show you after school, if you want!'

'S-sure, that'd be great!')
When the Battle Lovers' magic dissipated in a massive puff of sparkling smoke, it revealed Nakamura Jirou, slumped over in a haze of sweet nostalgia and happy memories. His entire face was illuminated with a soft but radiant smile, one that was worlds away from the tense, pinched look that most of his classmates would have thought was his default expression.

Battle Lover Scarlet seemed pleased with the results. 'Love is over!' he declared, as the other Battle Lovers gave a collective sigh of relief.

'Who'd've thought that Chuu-ni had it in him?' Vesta mused to Sulfur, who nodded quietly in reply.

'He seems a lot more relaxed now,' Epinard said.

Somewhat less impressed by the whole thing, Cerulean tapped his Lovracelet like a warning. 'Let's get out of here before he comes around and starts asking us where he can buy our merchandise.'

It was simple enough to escape around the side of the school building and detransform, as the students who had been affected by the Gaccha Monster's rampage started to pick themselves up off the ground and figure out what had just happened to them and to the school grounds. But to their surprise, the Earth Defense Club saw that Wombat had propped Tawarayama-sensei against the nearest wall and was poking sadly at a smouldering pile of glitter in the nearby dirt.

'Wom-san?' Yumoto said. 'What's going on?'

Wombat looked up at him. 'It's the Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen.' It was his turn to sigh as he looked back down at the wreckage. 'Or rather, it was the Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen.'

'What the heck happened to it?' Ryuu said, eyes widening.

Wombat shook his head. 'The Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen was only meant to provide a temporary disguise for one of you.' He gave Yumoto, En, and Atsushi a baleful look. 'Since the three of you were all using its power at the same time, and used it to disguise your magical attacks as well, it overheated.'

Atsushi's brow furrowed in confusion. 'Exactly how does a pen overheat?'

En put a hand on Atsushi's shoulder. 'Atsushi,' he said wearily, 'I don't think you want to be asking that question, because no matter what the highly advanced scientific explanation is, I guarantee you that it will be extremely stupid.'

Ryuu nudged the crystalline fragments of the pen with the point of his toe. 'So you guys broke the sparkle-pen thingy?' he said, pouting a little. 'Huh, too bad. I was kinda hoping I might get a chance to use it at some point.'

'Ryuu, you literally just were transformed against your will into some sort of magical girl in a frilly petticoat,' said Io, staring incredulously at his best friend. 'Why on earth are you so anxious to go through that again?'

'I'm not!' Ryuu waved his hands. 'I was just saying -- oh, never mind.' He had caught En's eye, and the look that said did you not hear what I just said about it being highly advanced and extremely stupid? gave him a strong hint that it wasn't worth arguing about any longer. 'Anyway, do you think they're going to cancel classes for the rest of the day or what? I want to go to the Kurotama and take a bath.'

'I don't really think we should skip class -- ' Atsushi started to say, only to twitch when En cleared his throat very loudly and obviously ' -- but I suppose it is better to head out while they're cleaning things up around here. None of us are on major cleaning duty today, right?'

'Not me,' Ryuu said.

Io shook his head likewise. 'Nor I.'

En shoved his hands into his pockets. 'Then let's get going before someone from the Student Council shows up and sticks a broom in our hands.' He looked around at the rest of the Earth Defense Club. 'If anyone asks, we can say we had to go talk to some little kids at Binan Elementary about recycling or saving the whales or whatever. How does that sound?'

It wasn't the most convincing of excuses, but that hadn't ever stopped them before.

* * * *
Even though the Gaccha Monster and the Battle Lovers had left flattened grass, scorch marks, gouges, and divots all over on the front lawn of Binan High School, most everything seemed to be back to normal the next morning. Only a few patches of freshly laid turf and the markings of lawn rollers showed where the groundskeeping staff had put in overtime to repair the cosmetic damage.

Naturally, the surprising speed with which the repairs had been made cropped up in the Earth Defense Club's conversation during their after-school soak at the Kurotama that same day.

'I guess it's all part of the insurance or something, but it can't be cheap to fix up the grounds every time some monster pitches a fit around the school and starts smashing everything in sight,' En mused.

'Binan High School has a very well funded endowment,' Io said. 'Based on my regular assessment of the public accounting records, its fiscal soundness is without question. The Student Council, to say the least, are careful guardians of the school's cash flow.'

'At least someone's got money,' Ryuu grunted. 'I'm super-broke right now. Pretty soon I'm going to have to be like Chuu-ni and that friend of his and start selling some of my stuff just to have enough cash in hand for a nice date.'

'They're selling things?' Atsushi said, sitting up a little straighter in the water.

Ryuu nodded. 'Yeah, that's all they were talking about today between classes. Sounded like they were really going to have a clean-out.'

'Hm.' Io's expression turned thoughtful. 'Perhaps Ota-kun was able to convince Nakamura-kun after all.' When the others looked at him questioningly, he gave a slight shrug. 'Yesterday at lunch, Ota-kun stopped and asked me about the relative merits of selling part or all of a set of highly collectible items. I told him that he would need to have them assessed properly to determine a fair market value, but that I naturally would recommend selling them if he no longer wished to own them.' His mouth twisted wryly. 'Not what he wanted to hear, presumably, but he did ask me for my opinion.'

Yumoto paused in mid-scrub, leaning forward on his broom so that the bristles mashed against the tile floor. 'But it's good that they're thinking about it, isn't it? Trying to figure out what they really love?'

En huffed a breath through his nose. 'Since it took all of our powers and that glitter-pen-thing of Wombat's to help them figure it out, then they'd better make a fortune on their stuff, is all I'm saying.'

'You did make a good Battle Lawyer, En-chan,' Atsushi said, as a teasing light crept into his eyes. 'Are you sure you wouldn't consider studying to become a lawyer for real?'

'Pass.' En crossed his hands in front of him decisively. 'Going to law school would be like listening to a nonstop series of lectures from our esteemed Student Council President. Who in their right mind would sign up for that?'

Across town, in the Student Council office, Arima Ibushi turned his head into his shoulder and sneezed delicately.

'Pardon me,' he said automatically, and set down the tea canister he had been holding. 'Yes, we're nearly out of gyokuro -- there's more dust than leaves in here by this point. I'll be sure to order some more tonight.' He took out a handkerchief to dab at his nose, and glanced over at Kinshirou, seated at his desk. 'Unless you would prefer a change? In this hot weather, a white Darjeeling might be better.'

To all outward appearances, Kinshirou was deep in contemplation of the files in front of him, though both he and his vice president knew that he had not turned a single page for several minutes. Nakamura Jirou's photograph stared up at him, blank and glossy, until Kinshirou released a long slow breath and let the folder fall shut.

'Whatever you think best,' he said quietly, without looking up. 'It may be better to wait until after the summer holidays, to ensure that the tea does not remain in a hot room for weeks on end.'

'Ah, yes, you're right. I'll wait to order it, then.' The careful dance between president and vice president was one in which few words meant much. 'I suppose I should see if Akoya has a preference, for that matter?'

That did prompt Kinshirou to raise his head. 'He will be in tomorrow,' he said. His expression was suddenly stern, as if to keep any hint of sentiment or vulnerability under tight control. 'Or so he informed me this morning, when he called to tell me that he would be absent today.'

Few people could rival Arima Ibushi for the mildness of his tone. 'I've no doubt that he needed a day to recover from his involuntary transformation,' he said, as he put his handkerchief away, 'but I'm fairly sure he spent most of today choosing what outfits he'll be bringing to the resort hotel.'

Mild as it was, it was the wrong tactic. 'Don't be flippant, Arima.' Kinshirou stood up, and turned to face the long windows behind the desk. His voice was cold and regal, firm in its rebuke. 'I have no intention of allowing a minor setback to interfere with our plans for total conquest of this planet. We will accept our failures and learn from them, as our duty demands.'

It was Aurite speaking to Argent at that moment, and the latter bowed his head in humble acknowledgement. 'My apologies, Kinshirou,' he said. 'I haven't forgotten our duty. Please be assured that when the time comes, both Akoya and I will be yours to command.'

It was a simple pledge, heartfelt in its own way, and it stirred faint echoes in a part of Kinshirou's mind --

(They're all mine...no one will be able to take them from me!)
-- that found it much easier to accept his loyal lieutenant's words for what they were, without allowing them to touch the more painful thoughts that lay just beneath the surface.

'Mine to command, you say,' he murmured to his shadowy reflection in the glass. 'Very well. When the time comes, I will expect nothing less.'

 

EPILOGUE

A short time later, in the Binan High School Press Society's production room, a heated exchange of artistic views was underway.

'All right, all right, I admit that it wasn't our most stellar work, but we still put a lot of time into editing this week's episode. And now you say it's not going to air at all?'

'Someone in Legal's got a bug up his cloaca about copyright. And Corporate's not going to cough up the licensing fees for every single kiddie show that Zundar's dimwit monster ripped off.'

'So what are we supposed to do about it?'

'Eh, throw together a clip show for this week. Highlight the rise of the Battle Lovers, set up individual spotlights, maybe use some B-roll if you need to pad it out. Cut in some footage from Season 1 if you have to -- I can get you some takes that never made it to air last time. The sponsors won't care, and the fan forums will go nuts over the new material. Set everything up for next week.'

'Fine, fine. Just clear the rough cut with Legal before we're in post-production next time, okay? We've cut the filming schedule to the bone as it is, and Tazawa and I have a science test next Thursday.'

'You'll make up for the production slowdown during the beach episode. It'll be a total piece of cake to shoot, I promise...after all, it never hurts to give the audience what they really want to see.'


Notes

A number of anime series were ripped off to make this story possible, but here are the main in-jokes/parodies/homages:

- Sweet Little Demon Enma-chan -- an aged-up, hypersexualised combination of Enma Ai (Jigoku Shoujo) and Lala Satalin Deviluke (To Love-Ru)
- Super Sparkle Stealth Love Pen -- Disguise Pen (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon)
- Magical Meguca (Ryuu's capsule outfit) -- Kaname Madoka (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)
- Bad Bicycle Boys (Io's capsule outfit) -- Naruko Shoukichi (Yowamushi Pedal)
- Apocalypse Rose Princess (Akoya's capsule outfit) -- Tenjou Utena (Shoujo Kakumei Utena)
- Special Duty Unit Battle Lawyers (En and Atsushi's disguises) -- Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman (Tokumu Sentai Shinesman) with a little bit of Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban)

And a small shout-out to Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (人生がときめく片づけの魔法), in Battle Lover Scarlet's speech about only keeping the things in your life that spark joy.

The initial kanji in Nakamura Jirou (中村二郎) are the characters for chuuni (中二), the common abbreviation for chuunibyou (中二病). Ota's full name (not stated in the story, but as written in my mind) is Ota Kunihiro (小田邦宏) -- which is a bit of a play on words as well, since it can be said as otaku ni hiro or "otaku 2 hero."


Return to the Master List