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Playtime?

With a hop, skip, and giggle, a little girl appeared. Toying with the hem of her poofy dress, she looked around for friends, because playtime is always better with friends and-

Ah! Ah ha! Girly-girls in pretty-skirts! They had good clothes-taste.

… and a grumpy-girly-boy? He has bows! She likes bows.

They’d make great friends!

Smiling happily, Ginger raised a chubby hand and waved at them, crying out,“ Gin-Gin!” Then she turned to look at the music-player-wakers and gave them her best puppy eyes, clearly begging permission to go play.

“ Ging?”

Her eyes. There was something wrong with the girl's eyes, and Europa recoiled as she realized what it was. "Her eyes are made of frosting," she hissed to Polaris. The child, she reasoned, was some kind of Youma - after creatures made of trash and coffee and playground equipment, things kind of ceased to surprise you - but the handlers with the flutes was new to her.

What had seemed like an ordinary evening of patrol had certainly gotten very weird, very fast. And judging from Wolframite's reaction, he knew no more about the strange visitors than either of the senshi did. (Nor, apparently, did the visitors know anything about them, if they thought the two girls were on the same team as the lieutenant!)

The little girl, as creepy as her eyes were, didn't exactly look threatening, though - Usually youma were a bit more malicious. That was how you could tell the difference between them and your neighbor's irish wolfhound at one in the morning.

"Do you think it's dangerous?" she asked Polaris quietly.

This was a dumb question. Of course it was dangerous. It was a youma.

"We are the Makaiju aliens," Iya returned in a huff, though obviously proud of her words, "We're not like you silly humans and senshi. We're special. Which is why we're going to take over this silly little planet of yours, so that we can have a new home."

Eyes drifted towards the dark skinned girl, her lips pursed at the order for her to 'go home'. Stupid senshi, did they not realize that this was her new home? And bossy, so bossy! If she had acted this way towards any of her peers, they'd have smacked her across the face. Which they had done before. And it had hurt. So how could these senshi get away with such nonsense???

"Ginger, do you hear that?" The small voice quipped, her voice indignant, "They think you're a magic trick" (Whatever a magic trick was, to Iya, it was clearly an insult) "You should go play with them - show them what a good little girl you really are. And while you're at it, why don't you bring some energy back with you, when you're done?"

Magic trick? That didn’t sound nice. Ginger was no magic trick! Ginger just wanted to play, but dark-skirt-girl was being mean.

Ginger crossed her arms and pouted, sad that her potential playmates didn’t seem to like her. Her sad disposition lasted for only a second though, replaced by eagerness at Iya’s suggestion.

Good idea! Ginger would play, be nice; surely dark-shirt-girl would be nice then too.

Turning towards her three new playmates, little Ginger began to skip over to them, smiling happily. Before she had covered even half the distance to them she stopped, a look of confusion washing over her features.

What would they play? Did skirt-girls and bow-boys dance?

… They had to! Everyone dances.

She resumed her skipping, eventually calling out something that could’ve been “icing rope,” “ice ‘n nope,” or “isotope”; the way she spoke made it a little difficult to tell. A smooth, fat white cord appeared in Ginger’s hands, about the length of a double jump rope. Not missing a beat, she wrapped the excess length around one of her arms and jumped it once, twice, and then with a happy grin she lashed it at the skirted girls.

Dance!

Her hip had just barely ceased to be sore after the battle at Apollo's, and leaping to avoid the rope didn't help. Europa landed heavily, tumbling against Polaris and clinging to her not to fall over. "Ouch," she said through gritted teeth. A few more jumps like that and she was finished. This wasn't to say she anticipated what the rope did - she didn't know - but it was always a good idea to minimize physical contact with monsters. (She wasn't so sure it was a youma anymore - it was, after all, being controlled by a pair of self-proclaimed aliens.)

And then, of course, there was Wolframite going after the controllers instead of the creature itself - of course it made sense to cut off the head rather than keep fighting the body, it just wasn't how things were typically done.

She let go of Polaris, feeling confident enough to stand on her own aching leg, and took a few cautious steps backwards. She was still holding off on using her attack - while it would buy them valuable time, she wanted to see what they could do to this thing before forcing it to stand still for sucker punches.

(Oh, how Europa longed for offensive maneuvers!)

"Think you can do that floaty thing with the loose metal again?" she asked Polaris while keeping her eyes trained on the cookie girl.

Maybe once they finished this, they could run Wolframite up a flagpole again and show him what for.

Iya huffed as she watched Irre take off - well that wasn't any fun, if her partner wasn't even going to stay around!

Frowning, her attention slowly returned back to the battle on the ground. As the metal swingset beneath her began to shake, she shrieked and jumped off, hovering mid-air as she glared down at the light-haired girl. What in the world kind of attack was this?

As the metal began to swirl, Iya felt her own flute begin to tug forward. The small alien gripped it tightly and scowled - now this meant war.

"Gingey! Gingey get the one who's doing all that... that stuff! They're trying to steal my flute!"

The alien he was trying to go after had moved, and his weapon hit nothing but air. Frowning, he stood on the swing set and watched as the girl floated beyond his range of attack. Clutching the jump rope, he crouched down to leap up, but quickly gripped the metal frame when the swings started to pull and shake in the direction of the Ginger girl. Flying bits of trash that had collected from the pile that rushed at him now rushed up to hit the girl. The trash can was the worst, and he watched as it hit it's mark. The monster continued to lash around blindly with her frosting whip, and he leaped off the swings to solid ground to avoid both the metal debris and the frosting weapon.

Standing a bit away from the cookie girl, he watched as the whip aimed at them. Not bad, and he watched before imitating her hold of the jump rope and watching her attack. This was giving him some good ideas of how to handle his own weapon. Part of him wanted to cheer the cookie on, but that would be supporting the enemy and so he didn't.