Natsuko’s knees thrust into the air, butt low to the ground, hands and feet flat against the rock below her. Lake water rippled against the rock she was posted on, guided there by winds from Hammertal Canyon. Her head was frozen in place, watching the frog resting in the same pose as her. When it jerked its head, she jerked hers. When it croaked she puffed her cheeks out and ribbited. She held position for what could’ve been a couple minutes or an hour. When the frog finally leapt into the water and created a splash, Natsuko leapt in after it, creating a much larger splash.

The water was frigid. By the time Natsuko was done swimming around in it she was shivering violently, but the shock of the cold thrust her into a state of aliveness so that even the discomfort was comfortable. It was gloriously cold. Sublimely cold. And she could feel it. Still dripping wet, she summoned Taiyouken and held her flaming white sword to a nearby tree to set it on fire. Once it was nice and toasty, she stretched out like a cat below the tree and savored the pins-and-needles of her nerves waking back up. Curling black embers rained down on her. As the tree burned, she slowly turned herself over and over, ensuring equal coverage like a rotisserie chicken.

Once she was warm and dry again, Natsuko went back to imitating a frog, hopping around the edge of the lake. She was thoroughly engrossed in being a frog until her hopping and ribbiting was interrupted by snorting laughter. She did a couple short hops to turn herself around and saw Daisy standing further up the bank.

“What the heck are you doin’ Natsu?” Daisy called out.

“I’m a frog,” Natsuko replied.

“I can see that. Why are you a frog?”

Natsuko shrugged. “I dunno. I felt like a frog. Wanna be a frog with me?”

“Sounds fun, but no can-do. I’m on a mission today.”

“What’s the mission?”

Daisy put her hands on her hips triumphantly. “I’m gettin’ everyone together for a girls’ day. You know, facials, mani-pedis, sparkling wine… I know that’s not really your vibe, Natsu, but—”

“Nah, I’m in,” Natsuko said, shedding her frog identity for a human one as she stood up.

Daisy blinked. She expected Natsuko and Yuna to be the hardest to sell the idea to. Natusko agreeing immediately was not on her bingo card.

“Really?” Daisy asked.

“Yeah! Sounds like fun. Plus, Shui will be working herself into a tangle right about now. She’ll need something to knock her brain loose."

“Oh! Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Daisy said, blushing at the fact that her own rationale was far less instrumental. She just wanted to be pampered.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell her that’s what we’re doing though,” Natsuko said. “If Shui thinks this is all about getting her brain juices flowing, she’ll go along with it and that’ll ruin the whole thing. It’s only gonna work if she thinks it’s a waste of time. Got it?”

Daisy saluted. “Roger dodger!”

“So who’s next on your list?” Natsuko asked.

“Well, let’s see…”

Daisy pulled out her list and drew a line through ‘Natsuko.’ Next up was…

“Gomiko and Margaret,” Daisy said, tapping the list. “After that it’s Yuna. I’m saving Shuixing for last.”

Natsuko stroked her chin. “I see. I see. It’s almost afternoon already so I guess we better get started, huh?”

Daisy smiled. This was already going better than expected.

----------------------------------------

“I-I’m sorry, now isn’t a good time,” Gomiko said. “I’m not feeling great.”

“But that’s precisely what a girls’ day is all about fixing!” Daisy said. “We’re all feeling a little down in the dumps about the world ending and all that, so we need some us time!”

Even in the dim light of the covered wagon Team Harald were holed up in, Daisy could see the whites of their eyes pop out of the darkness at the mention of the world ending.

“Wait, what do you mean the world’s ending?” Faisal asked.

Daisy froze. “Uh, it's… ending. In like, a week. That’s why everyone’s here, we’re fighting the Yishang to stop the end of the world.”

Eyes wide in shock, Gomiko rubbed her temples, trying to make sense of the news. Daisy and Natsuko stared at each other awkwardly. Both assumed Sofiane had informed them what was happening.

“Th-This is a joke, right?” Margaret asked.

Daisy swallowed. “N-No… that’s why you’re all here. Um… do y’all wanna wait for Sofiane to explain later, or…?”

“No, we’d like to know now! What the hell is going on!?” Harald said.

Daisy sprinted through all of the relevant information about the Yishang and Po-Lin with some interjections from Natsuko about what she half-remembered about Numberspace and what Shuixing was doing. The two of them tried their best to answer Team Harald’s questions but soon butted up against their own lack of knowledge. Between Daisy going on her three-day journey and Natsuko running around Vermögenburgh acting like various animals, neither of them knew how the defense efforts were proceeding.

Harald growled. “Why the hell didn’t Sofiane tell us!?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m sure he had his reasons,” Faisal said, frustration buried beneath his calmness.

Of the four, Harald seemed to be the most angry, but Faisal, Margaret, and even Gomiko were all rattled by the information. Daisy felt guilty for dropping a bomb on them, but how was she supposed to know they didn’t know the world was ending in a week?

“So… we’ll put y’all down as a ‘no’ then,” Daisy said.

She and Natsuko hopped out of the wagon and were on their way to Yuna and Kane’s tent when Margaret ran up to them.

“Wait, hold up!” Margaret stopped and caught her breath. “Put us both down as a maybe.”

Figuring she had the power to manifest things into the world, Daisy put them down as a ‘yes.’

----------------------------------------

“No,” Yuna said.

“Aw, c’mon Yun-Chan, pretty please? For me?” Daisy said, batting her eyelashes.

“No.”

“Pretty please? For me?” Natsuko said, batting her eyelashes.

“Especially not for you.”

“Hey! What did I do!?”

Yuna crossed her arms. “Sold your soul to the Yishang for power, shithead.”

Daisy’s old teammates were sitting cross-legged under a tent made small by packing Yuna’s six-foot frame into it. Somehow, Yuna had already found snacks to munch on, and the floor of the tent was strewn with boxes and plates and cans everywhere except the Kane-sized clean space with a Kane in the middle of it.

“Aw, c’mon Yun-Chan, you’ll have fun I bet!” Kane said.

She stared daggers at him. “Call me Yun-Chan again you little shit and I’ll shove my fist so far up your ass you’ll be barfing fingernails.

“Surely you’re not gonna stay cooped up inside the whole time?” Daisy asked.

“No, I’m going to go be useful and help plan our attack,” Yuna said.

“Defense,” Natsuko corrected.

“Attack,” Yuna corrected. “We’re attacking and dethroning the Yishang, ain’t we?”

“We’re defending Shuixing so she can figure out a way for us to escape through Numberspace. I explained that to you,” Daisy said.

“Tch.” Yuna looked away. “We oughta go on the offense.”

Daisy huffed. “C’mon, Yun-Chan! You’ll feel so much better. Please? Please? Please? Please?”

“You’re not goinna get me to come to your stupid fucking pampering day by badgering me, so knock it off!”

“Please? Please? Please?” said Natsuko.

“Please? Please? Please?” said Daisy.

“Please? Plea—” Kane started to say.

“Kane shut the fuck up. I’m not—”

“Please?” added Daisy.

“No!”

“I’m gonna keep saying ‘please’ until you say you’ll come to girls’ day with us. Don’t forget I wore you down until you agreed to come with me to Vermögenburgh. And my secret reason for doing so wasn’t to save the world, it was to have a girls’ day, so you know I’m serious about this,” Daisy said.

“It’s not going to work,” Yuna said.

----------------------------------------

After half an hour and several thousand please's, Yuna was on board and Daisy and Natsuko were off to convince Shuixing. The research team under her direction had ballooned into a multi-laboratory affair, making her somewhat challenging to find. The lab that contained Natsuko’s former closet-home, where she expected to find Shuixing, was being used for assembling compounds for Numberspace entry.

“Any a' y’all seen Shuixing?” Natsuko asked one of the graduate assistants who was straining a bright blue liquid into a vial.

“Dr. He? She’s probably in the observation room,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“Where’s that?”

The student pointed downwards. “In the sewer. There’s a door to the stairs somewhere around here.”

After some brief exploration, Daisy and Natsuko found the door he was referring to and descended. Though they weren’t quite sure what to expect, it certainly wasn’t what they found.

The slimy cobblestone sewer, with a river of sludge running through the middle, had been converted into something between a lounge and a newspaper room. Electric floodlights and lanterns from Deco Imperia lit up the sewers bright as day save the dark canals half-covered in wooden planks functioning as bridges. The side of the sewer closer to the door was filled with desks where members of the science team were comparing notes and compiling a relational map along the damp walls of the sewer. Across the canals on the far side was a collection of tables and overstuffed chairs, hazy with the smoke of burning al-Nuwban incense sticks trying their hardest to drive away the sewer smell. Amongst the smoke Natsuko saw Shuixing and some other researchers passed out on chairs.

Daisy scratched her head. “Do we wait for her to wake up?”

Natsuko shrugged. “I guess.”

Despite weary glances from the other science team members, Natsuko and Daisy stood around Shuixing’s limp body and waited for her to return to consciousness. After about five minutes, she awoke with a gasp.

“H-Hah! Gods… what was— who? Oh, Natsu, not now,” Shuixing said, grabbing her glasses from the table next to her and rubbing smoke particles from them.

“You don’t even know what we’re gonna say yet,” Natusko said.

“Whatever it is, I’m too busy. Our research has stalled and the last thing I need is distraction.”

Shuixing reached for a notebook on the table next to her and began furiously scribbling in it. When Daisy or Natsuko tried to speak, she shushed them. They waited around for her to finish jotting down notes, underestimating how much she had to write down and ten minutes later she was still scribbling.

“Shui we want to—”

“Shhh!”

“We want to have a girls’ day!” Natsuko said.

Shuixing stopped writing and looked up at Natsu as though she had just said they wanted to let the Yishang win. As far as Shuixing was concerned, that was exactly what they had.

“Eight days left and you want to have a— what, some fun little distraction? Natsuko, are you serious? It’s bad enough you’re distracting me right now! I know you and Daisy don’t have much to do but wait for us to get attacked, but I can’t waste a second on frivolity. I have work to do!”

Shuixing stood up from the chair and brushed past them headed for the work stations to synthesize her data with the other researchers.

“Well that sure didn’t go very well. Ya wanna wear her down like we did Yuna?” Daisy asked.

Natsuko shook her head. “Nope! That went perfectly. Our poor, put-upon scientist has run out of steam and her thoughts are circling aimlessly with nowhere to land, like a bird lost at sea.”

“So what do we do then?”

Natsuko grinned nefariously. “What if it wasn’t up to her?”

Daisy looked confused for a second before her eyebrows shot up. “We’re not going to kidnap Shui for girls’ day, are we?”

Natsuko reached into her pockets, rummaged around in them for a second, and from them drew a pair of finger guns which she shot Daisy with. “Bang, bang, bullseye!”