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Alise was supposed to be babysitting the twins, and technically, she was. They'd spent the day at the arcade, had seen a movie, and were headed for the bus stop to take the bus home. On the way out of the theater, though, Alise had seen a piece of graffiti that she had sworn she'd seen on a different building the night before. As the sun set beyond the horizon and the dark of the night fell, the teen could have sworn that she saw the wall art move, even, and immediately became suspicious. A trick of the light, or something else? Like... something insidious?

Even though she should have been taking the twins home, Alise instead managed to convince them to follow her to a more secluded spot, where they could transform and check it out. Aomori was more easy to convince than Hokkaido, who rather preferred going to home and getting to bed at a reasonable hour, but ultimately, and especially because there was no way she was getting home on her own, the more hesitant twin agreed. Thus, the trio set off to investigate the case of the strangely moving art.

"I'm not the only one who saw that, right?" Lepus asked, squinting as the graffiti once more seemed to move locations.

Hokkaido wasn't the most particularly enthused about being dragged into investigating the many strange happenings around Destiny City, much less when it came to the tag team of both her twin and their babysitter. Aomori got them into enough trouble as it is, but combined with Lepus? Hokkaido was convinced that disaster was around every corner whenever the two troublemakers were together.

The day had started off normal, with a trip to the arcade and then to see a movie. Mama and Papa were enjoying a nice day to themselves, since it was Papa's birthday. Alise, who had somehow convinced them that she was a trustworthy babysitter, had taken on the task of watching the twins for the day, which Nemu had regarded with Much Concern at first, though she slowly lowered her guard when nothing bad or otherwise out of the ordinary happened. That was her first mistake, dropping her guard like that, trusting Alise not to get them involved in powered shenanigans...

Pictures on the walls that moved didn't seem like a super bad thing, per say, but Hokkaido wondered why they couldn't just ignore it. Then again, magical pranks were right up their alley...

"M-Maybe it's just a Halloween decoration...?" the chibi senshi of baku timidly offered, not particularly interested in wanting to investigate.

At first, nothing happened, because why would it? Surely, the rumors of graffiti just moving from one wall to another was just that, a rumor. Paint couldn't move, unless it was of the magical kind, but who in their right mind would just paint a wall out in the open like that?

(Or, well, this was Hokkaido's line of thought, at the very least.)

Just as it might have seen like they were all collectively just going to be standing around looking like fools while Aomori poked at someone's act of vandalism like an even bigger fool, however... the paint moved. As if to get away from Aomori's incessant poking and prodding, it seemed to slither away from the child, going around the corner of the wall to the other side.

"L-Look!" Hokkaido couldn't help but exclaim, "It's moving!"

... Or was it? Perhaps they were all being pranked by someone even more of a prankster than Aomori.

Hokkaido couldn't be sure at this point if she was being left out of some sort of elaborate practical joke that Aomori and Lepus were in on; how could her twin not notice the paint moving? It seemed almost comical, really, how it moved when Aomori had her back turned... like those hidden camera shows Hokkaido caught her sister watching sometimes. If it was a prank she was being left out of the loop on, though, Lepus was being an awfully good actor, because she seemed awfully intrigued by the shifting graffiti, as if this was new to her, too.

"... I'm really sure!" the child insisted, "It moved when you turned around!"

How did her sister go from saying the art was moving, to denying that it was moving, and how would she get Aomori to pay attention? Hokkaido wasn't really sure if this was the kind of thing you could capture on video, or if the senshi phones even had that kind of function.

"Ask Lepus...!" she added, sounding slightly exasperated, a rarity for her. If there was anyone Aomori would listen to, it would be her mentor, and perhaps putting Lepus on the spot would prove once and for all as to whether they were all pulling her leg or something.

... Why couldn't they have just gone straight home after the movie again?

Lepus blinked in confusion as she was met with opposition from not one, but both of the twins; Hokkaido yes, she was used to her having objections to everything the older senshi proposed, but Aomori, who usually hung onto Lepus’ every word? Even though she had been one once herself, Lepus had forgotten how fleeting the attention spans of small children were, and their crankiness was starting to make her cranky, which was a bad sign.

When they had first spotted the mysterious shifting paint, Lepus had envisioned the three of them investigating this mystery, perhaps even tracking down a supposed culprit. Now, though, she was staring down two children who had already lost interest in checking out this strange phenomena, and scratching her head at trying to keep their attention.

“C’mon, just a little bit longer?” Lepus pleaded, even though she was supposed to be the mature one here, and looked directly at Aomori, avoiding Hokkaido’s (judgemental) gaze. “Look. How about this- I’ll cut you a deal. You like ghost games, right? What if… I bought you, I dunno, Phasmophobia on Steam?”

If she couldn’t appeal to their sense of adventure, then she would simply have to appeal to the sense of the forbidden. If there was one thing Lepus remembered from her childhood (and her experience with playing in public lobbies), it was that age restrictions were merely a suggestion if you tried hard enough. She also knew that the twins had a Steam account, and while their parents might have objected to Aomori playing certain video games on the basis of them being ‘too mature’ for her age, parental controls were nothing when a Mauvian got involved!

Or one determined teenager who had experience with that sort of thing. Either or.

For a brief fleeting moment, it almost seemed as if Aomori would take the bait bribe offer, but just as quickly, the chibi senshi surprisingly declined. Dang, these kids were hard to please- Lepus couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

“Alright, alright, I’ll take you guys back home, then,” Lepus said, though she was unable to hide the disappointment in her voice. Maybe they didn’t want to watch moving wall art, but she did! Aomori, while not outright accepting Lepus’ offer of buying an age-restricted game for the younger girl, expressed a desire to speak with her later, so Lepus gave her a knowing wink of acknowledgment.

Perhaps, if there was anything to be learned from this, it was that she should probably make more of an effort to bring only Aomori with her… Also, to figure out what sort of deal she could cut with Hokkaido to gain her cooperation.