Taika slowly opened her eyes on the morning of the sixteenth of July. Shouri had been insistent that she receive his embrace last night, despite having gone through such a traumatic event with Rebecca only hours prior.

Both Rebecca and Pacifica agreed with Shouri’s desire. Taika herself didn’t mind. In her humble opinion, she fit best in his grasp. Not that she minded their other arrangements or sleeping configurations. Her pride as Shouri’s first and ace emboldened these thoughts.

She closed her eyes, waiting for the alarm to go off and for their morning to start in earnest.

…

Wait a moment.

She opened her eyes and realized something: the room was too bright. The sun was up!

The lunar fox flew up in a panic. “Oddio! Sho, Paci, Rebby! Svegliati! Che è tardi!” Taika desperately tried to wake her companions.

“Mmmgh...” groans of protest from the other three only frustrated the fox.

“Wake up!” she barked.

“We’re not late Taika.” Rebecca weakly swatted at the annoyance disturbing her sleep.

“It’s like eight in the morning! We’re super late!” Taika cried out whipping her head to and fro, wondering how this could have happened.

“I took the day off, it’s fine,” Shouri added, sitting up with Taika and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“What? Why?” Panic was replaced by confusion.

Shouri replied by wrapping his arms tightly around her. “Happy Birthday Taika,” he whispered.

“…che…?”

She was completely frozen in place, stuck in her Maestro’s embrace. Her brain completely shut down as tears flowed down her cheeks.

Happy Birthday? What’s that?

Not something that applied to her. Birthdays were celebrated for other people. Not her.

“We took the day off today to surprise you,” Pacifica revealed.

“We are in a lunar-based city, after all. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff you want to see,” Rebecca added.

“I hope you’re ready to get spoiled today.” Shouri grinned, wiping the tears from her face.

“F-for me?” she asked, absolutely befuddled.

Confusion was met by sympathetic smiles. “Of course, silly.” Shouri chuckled.

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

Taika sat at one of the dining room tables in their suite. Shouri sat next to her with Rebecca and Pacifica flanking their sides.

The suite’s butler, Alfred, wheeled in a large covered tray. He uncovered it to reveal their breakfast.

“I hope you enjoy this humble breakfast – Happy Birthday Miss Taika.” He bowed before beginning to serve out the food. The two cat maids, Irene and Sophia, also joined Alfred, clapping in celebration of Taika’s birthday breakfast.

The fox’s eyes sparkled as a buffet of food was spread on the table before them. Several different meats, eggs, cheeses, fruit, and for Taika’s consumption, a nice warm stack of fluffy pancakes topped with perfectly macerated fruit.

Her tail twitched as her eyes darted back and forth trying to decide what to eat first.

In the end, her sweet tooth won out and the pancakes were voraciously devoured, the smiles of her friends as warm as the breakfast she enjoyed.

While Alfred cleared the table, the group decided on what the itinerary would be for the day.

“So what do you want to do Taika?” Shouri asked the obvious first question.

The birthday girl frowned. That was a good question. She had picked up cooking and now medicine, but she had just gotten several hundred notes worth of medical supplies. She didn’t need anything else at the moment.

“It’s okay Sho, we can just stay here and-”

“Wow, way to go bossman.” Rebecca nudged Shouri.

“You called it perfectly,” Pacifica giggled.

Taika frowned, tilting her head in confusion. “Che?”

Shouri couldn’t help but laugh a little himself. “Sorry Taika, when we were planning today, I kind of figured you wouldn’t want to do anything.”

Her face was flush with fluster as she lowered her head. “Mi dispiace,” she mumbled.

She perked up when a hand was placed on her shoulder. “Taika.” Shouri’s smile was just so dazzling, and the poor girl swooned.

“It’s your day, you can be as greedy as you want,” he told her.

“But I don’t know what I want…” she admitted sheepishly.

“That’s okay. As Rebecca said earlier, we’re in a town with lots of lunars around, I’m sure there’s stuff here we won’t see anywhere else.”

Slowly the girl nodded. “Okay.” She finally gave in to the implicit ask of her.

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

After freshening up, the group left the hotel and hit the streets. Since arriving in Naiza, they hadn’t had an opportunity to take in the sights.

There was one particular sight that couldn’t be avoided.

“I… want to go there.” Taika pointed directly at the tower that pierced the very heavens – the Lutera Space Elevator.

The trio of non-lunars looked at each other.

“Sure,” Shouri spoke more uneasily than he had intended.

“Why though?” Rebecca asked what her Maestro was thinking.

Taika’s gaze remained fixated on the massive structure. “I just feel like I have to see it.” Her tail slowly swished behind her, despite how locked onto the tower she was.

Another quiet exchange of opinions from the rest of the party before they nodded to one another. “Sure Taika, we can at least visit. We won’t be able to go to Luna itself though,” Shouri spoke up after a moment.

“Is it hard to get to Luna?” Pacifica wondered.

“While things can move between Luna and Riterra just fine, people are another story.” Shouri ushered the group to start moving again.

As they walked, he continued his explanation.

“You need this thing called a passport, and it has to be approved by both the Riterran and Lunar governments. Which naturally makes it a massive pain in the ass for normal people to get,” he told his Resonators.

“But why?” Rebecca raised a brow. “Like there’s so many lunars here, surely it can’t be that bad,” she pointed out.

“Remember what we talked about yesterday?” Shouri began. The fire fox nodded. “That’s another reason Naiza is built to be cut off from the rest of the Kalanichi mainland: many of the lunars here are living here illegally. As long as they stay in this city, the governments of both Riterra and Luna look the other way.”

“At least, as far as I understand,” he added with a shrug. “Since it is kind of illegal there isn’t very good reading about it.”

The trio of Resonators remained quiet, just walking along. Looking around the air was thick with lunar rhythm, the same kind Taika radiated. What was normally a very rare thing to sense out in public in Riterran cities, was so prevalent here that they almost became numb to it from over-exposure.

“Oh, what’s that?” Taika pointed out a small shop brightly illuminated with music audible from across the street.

“Hey, an arcade,” Shouri noted. “I wonder if they have Lunar games here.” Though his curiosity was piqued, it wasn’t his decision to make: “Do you want to go look?”

Taika looked to her fellow Resonators, who just stared back at her expectingly. “Uhhh sure,” she decided.

With the first destination in mind, the group crossed the street and made their way into the establishment. Given it was a Monday morning, there weren’t many other people inside besides the employees – a Maestro and three Resonators. The interior was rather dark, intermittently lit, with the main source of lights being the arcade cabinets themselves.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Many different types of games were available for use. “Oh!” Rebecca rushed over to a machine with a couple of plastic light guns as the controllers. Her tail swished with curiosity as she unholstered one of them, looking over the plastic controller connected via a long, thick wire.

“Yeah?” Shouri tittered, amused.

“Since we talked to that army chick, I’ve been kinda wondering what shooting one of those guns is like,” Rebecca admitted.

“I doubt that will give you the full experience,” Pacifica pointed out.

“I’m more interested in the aiming part of it,” Rebecca clarified. “Like it’s not part of your body, so it can’t be as accurate as slinging a spell.”

Shouri himself was itching with wonder. “Alright, we can play a round.” He fished a tuner from his side and scanned it in, taking a few notes and giving enough credits for two players. He unholstered the other light-gun and the game began.

It was quite a simple game - one in the “rail shooter” genre; the players were guided through a virtual environment and digital Scherzando would pop out for them to shoot. Shouri was not a good shot at all, taking too long to line up his gun with the digital monsters.

Rebecca’s learning curve was much shallower, after calibrating the gun with her battle sense, she was able to cover for her Maestro’s deficiencies and they managed to clear the level with their last life remaining.

“That’s bullshit!” Rebecca complained as she learned first-hand the tactics used to pry the sharps from her hands – a quick-moving “boss” stage easily ended their run, prompting them to scan the tuner again to take more money.

“Yeah, no.” Shouri shook his head, refusing Rebecca’s pleading gaze to right the injustice. “Not falling for the grift.” He chuckled, holstering the gun-shaped controller.

“Hrmph. I coulda won,” the fire Resonator grumbled, allowing the gun to drop loose and hang off the machine. (Pacifica properly holstered it when Rebecca’s back was turned)

Wandering around the arcade there was no shortage of games available for their consumption. However, one game would catch Pacifica’s eye.

“Oh my god!” the otter exclaimed rushing away from the group.

Concerned, Shouri, Taika, and Rebecca gave chase. They found the water element before a set of matching arcade cabinets. There were five of them in total, all matching in design and appearance. Each one had a seat in front of them and was in various states of their “attract modes”, displaying different elements of gameplay while they sat idle.

“Grace the Great Operation – Arcade”

Pacifica was in front of one of the machines, her tail wagging as she trembled with excitement. “Hey, are you alright?” Shouri questioned, placing a hand on the otter’s shoulder.

“It’s GGOA!” she shouted, pointing at the machines.

“Who did what now?” Rebecca raised a brow.

In the blink of an eye, Pacifica had grabbed her tuner off of Shouri’s waist and shoved the screen in Rebecca’s face. “GGO! It’s only the most popular gacha game on the market! You play as a young Maestro who is recruited into a secret organization to travel through time to save the world with the help of a huge array of Ethereals!”

Rebecca shoved the indecipherable mess away from her face. “Alright?”

“The arcade game can connect to your mobile game account and you can get cards you can have your Ethereal’s information stored on!” Pacifica exclaimed.

“That sounds expensive,” Shouri mumbled.

“It’s not!” Pacifica’s eyes were shimmering with hope.

There was something about this whole thing Shouri knew he would regret. That being said, he was an absolute pushover when it came to things his precious Resonators wanted and fell for the grift. “Fi-” Before he could even get the other syllable out, Pacifica jumped for joy.

“YIPPIE!” she squealed before turning to one of the machines and inserting her tuner into the purpose-built slot on the machine.

“Oh, we’re gonna be broke in an hour,” Shouri mumbled, watching the charges rack up on Taika’s tuner.

“She’s having fun.” Taika giggled.

As long as Taika was happy though, that’s all that mattered to Shouri today. “Let’s leave her to it. What do you want to play?” he addressed the birthday girl directly.

“Che?” Taika looked around as if he was talking to someone else. “M-me?”

“Yeah silly. Surely there’s something you’re interested in doing?”

“N-non.” The vixen averted her gaze.

As her line of sight shifted, however, her eyes fell upon another machine. It was a well-illuminated device with a small “stage” in front of a larger screen. There was currently one of the few other patrons occupying the machine. A Maestro girl, probably in her late teens, who almost seemed like she was dancing?

The lunar wandered over and watched the other girl move. Arrows were moving up on the screen, as Taika listened closer, she could hear the beat of the song within the steps the girl was making on the machine.

The song came to a stop and the girl wiped some sweat from her brow. She noticed the fox girl staring. “You wanna try?” she asked.

“Uh… Non lo so. I’m not sure what this is,” Taika admitted sheepishly.

“It’s a rhythm game. The arrows come up on the screen and you press the buttons with your feet.” The teen motioned to the “stage”, which on further inspection did have arrows that matched the ones that had been previously shown on the display.

“Can I Sho?” Taika asked her own Maestro.

He stared back incredulously. “Why are you asking me?” He chuckled.

With a hesitant gulp, Taika got on the stage. The girl who had been previously playing even went ahead and paid for this session and picked out a nice easy song.

It was dull in comparison to what Taika had seen only minutes ago. The notes crawled up the screen so slowly. Tapping the right button in time was almost effortless. Rebecca noted how bored her fellow fox seemed. The song ended with a perfect score.

“You sure you haven’t done this before?” the other Maestro asked.

“It seems simple. Is there something a bit faster?” the Resonator asked.

“Sure. Try this one.”

The second song of the set was a bit faster. Taika had to exert some effort. But again, there was this air of frustration. Not because of the difficulty, but the lack thereof.

Another perfect score.

“What was the one you were doing before?” Taika inquired.

“Oho?” The girl’s eyes lit up as she went to a second set of songs colored red. “You sure?” she challenged with a chuckle.

“Yeah, those other two were boring,” Taika stated adamantly.

“Okaaaay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

With the song selected, the music began to play. Taika was caught off guard by how fast and sudden the notes came at her. She missed the first chunk and stumbled over herself trying to catch up with the song. But it was odd, the rush she got was almost like when she was fighting – and within a couple of seconds, she had regained her bearings and began to hit all the notes again. “Not even using the bar, what the heck?” the teen gasped, noting the fox girl’s movements.

Shouri and Rebecca could only watch in silent awe as the lunar element focused entirely on the screen, keeping perfect pace with the notes as they assaulted her. Finally, with the song’s conclusion, she turned on the ball of her foot to face her friends, breathing slightly harder. “Come è stato?” She smiled.

They couldn’t help but smile back. “You were cool,” Rebecca replied, with a nod of approval from Shouri.