[Kigurumi, Twinning, Brainwashing]

“Look, Blanc, I’m sorry I had to ask for your help. I know you wanted to go on that date with Noir, I really do, but somebody had to help me sort all of this out.”

Standing in the middle of a box-filled storage room were two girls that looked almost identical, given their similar heights and colorful uniforms, though the way they carried themselves differed wildly making it easy to tell them apart. The two were Natura, heroines of Équilibre that had a duty to save and protect the people that lived in the city. As long as they kept the Light edging out against the Darkness, they’d be able to do anything they ever wanted. Something like that, anyway, they weren’t usually that interested in the details.

“It’s fine, Mana!” The white-haired Natura Blanc, alias Kohana Shirai, giggled a little in response to the way that her green-haired friend fretted. “Noir’s probably out cold after last night, so this is fine. Besides, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you lately outside of missions, so I thought this would be the perfect time to.” Her smile was radiant and her personality was sweet. Just looking at her for a short moment would be enough for anybody’s heart to melt in response.

Her green-clad friend, Natura Vert, alias Mana Kido, sighed a little frustratedly. “Is she overclocking her powers again without going into her finisher? What is that girl thinking? Trying to raise her limits so she won’t need to use it? That’s just going to make her end up tuckered out when we need her the most.” She muttered under her breath as she carefully lifted a box the size of her torso off a stack, using some of her powers over wind to keep it from falling to the ground preemptively.

“Isn’t that admirable though? She wants to protect us and the people around her, so she’s trying to get stronger so we won’t have to get hurt.” Kohana replied as she rubbed her hands together, causing any sore spots to heal immediately before she grabbed a box herself, struggling to bring it down as she wasn’t nearly as strong as the rest of her friends. The fact she tried at all was what mattered.

Mana shook her head as she cheated with her powers once more, using the wind to push one box carefully off its stack before catching the corner and gently letting it fall to the floor. “If she keeps that up, she’ll neglect teamwork. Should she be the one to get corrupted, she’ll be a bigger pain in our ass than we ever could be in hers. She needs to remember that she’s part of a team, not just a solo heroine.” The brain of the operation was speaking, as she shot a look towards the white-haired girl. “Furthermore, you won’t get any room to grow if she keeps coddling you, Blanc. Haven’t you felt like you’re not living up to the full extent of your powers?”

“I don’t think about my powers that way, Mana.” The white-haired heroine explained with a bit of pride and care in her voice. “It’s because of her that I try to improve. If she keeps on protecting me, I have to live up to her will. We grow because of one another, not despite one another.” She continued, noticing that she had a cut from the sharp edge of the box she just held. A cut that healed almost instantly once she rubbed a single finger along it. “Just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t do this. I had to focus and concentrate on the shape of the cut to close it up, mentally stitch it up. Now? It just wipes away, like all my worries whenever Kiko’s around.”

The green-haired girl narrowed her eyes as she sighed. “Look. You’re…” She paused, not knowing what to say. She was the smart person, the one that didn’t rely on her emotions whenever she wanted to get through a fight… but she was also the one who lost control of hers the fastest. If Natura Noir really brought her friend that much comfort, how was she going to say that it was just a placebo, something to keep her from breaking? “...Never mind.”

“No, you can’t just say that, Mana!” Kohana stomped towards her friend, grabbing her hand with hers. “You can’t just bottle everything up, that’s how you end up falling! It’s why I rely on you all, it’s why I rely on Kiko, it’s why we’re a team, isn’t it?” She suddenly launched into a passionate speech, causing sweat to roll down her friend’s face. “Isn’t it!?”

Mana tried to get away, swallowing audibly. “You’re getting a little heated, Blanc…” She muttered, a blush on her face. She wasn’t wrong at all, but the green-haired girl wasn’t the kind of girl that just came clean once confronted. Her emotions were her own, and she liked keeping them hidden. Despite knowing the other four for a year at this point, she still wasn’t comfortable with letting them know everything…

“I’m only concerned for you, Mana! You keep shutting yourself away in that room all day, just talking to us through the communicator, ordering us around and yelling at us! I know you care, you just don’t want us to see it! I’ve heard you wipe away your teams whenever we’re safe and sound after an S class fight, just… Just let us see you smile and worry about us, instead of only hearing it. Okay, Mana?” The white-haired girl let her emotions flow freely, since she wore her mind on her sleeve. So much so that she got a little winded once she finished talking, needing to take deep breaths to regain her sense of balance.

The green-haired heroine paused before nodding ever slightly. She was right. Even now, the images of her friends hurt while she sat there doing nothing… It hurt. But it was the only thing she felt comfortable doing. Whenever she went into the field, she always ended up overthinking and doing nothing good in the long run. And while it hurt… Rouge and Bleu’s faces whenever her intel and her guidance helped them out, their satisfied smiles and relieved expressions, they brought her hope. That hope, plus the fear of fucking up whenever she went outside, was why she stayed inside. If she could only keep her intel up while she went outside…

“...I’ll think about it, Kohana.” Mana said very firmly as she brought the last box down onto the ground, looking into her eye and forcing a smile onto her face. “Just give me time. Okay?” She asked, with as much determination as she could muster.

Kohana nodded and smiled back. “Of course. Just know that we’re there to support you just as much as you support us.” She chimed, before pouring her healing powers throughout both of them so that their exhaustion was washed away. A convenient use for such a simple power. “Well then, anything else you need me for? Taking everything out of the boxes? Putting them into our rooms? Trying out a couple of items? Anything?”

“What I want you to do now, Kohana.” The green-haired heroine said as she sat atop one of the boxes, clearing her throat. “Is go have fun with Noir. You’ve done enough for me today, you really don’t have to help me anymore.” She explained, a little blush on her cheeks slowly flushing its way into the open. “Besides… I don’t think I can take more uplifting speeches from you. I can only handle that much positivity. I don’t want to lash out at you for placing your hopes in me.” She continued, with the blush filling her face completely. Being that honest was hard for her.

The white-haired girl nodded as she came closer, only to kiss her friend straight on the lips. A giggle left her own as she stepped back. “Consider that thanks for being honest for once, Mana. Take care!” The small girl chimed as she ran off before the smarter girl had a chance to chew her out for that brazen an affectionate expression.

Mana just stared into open space for a moment before biting into her lip. “That girl… She really doesn’t understand the concept of taking things slow, does she?” She let out a bit of a curse under her breath as she got off the crate. “Talking about all of my problems like she knows me inside out. You’d think the girl knew how to read minds.” She continued to mutter, sighing as she looked towards the crate that she sat on. She still had so much to do, and now she turned away the only help she had. Ah well, that was part of her difficult personality, it was something she had to live with.

She couldn’t just sit around though. She needed to unpack everything, properly catagorize it, figure out what stuff they could give away to charities to advertise them so that they could get more support and funding to allow for better development of their tools and kits and what they had to throw away or keep in their base for nostalgic purposes. There was so much to do, and so little time to properly think about it.

The young lass opened up the box after thinking about all the tasks she had to do, and immediately her heart sank once she realized what was stuck inside the box. That entire box had one thing in it, and it was something she honestly never could’ve imagined.

A head. An empty, oversized head that looked like it belonged to a doll the size of the entire room. Not to mention that it wasn’t just a head for a doll, but it had the distinct look of somebody familiar, somebody that she had just complained about, and somebody that frankly should be awake by now so she really shouldn’t find out about this.

It was Natura Noir, alias Kiko Sakurai’s head, that it was modeled after. That muscled heroine’s head was laying in the box. Waiting to be picked up and put onto a doll’s exposed neck. Or, that’s at least what she thought it was going to be used for. Maybe there were a lot of individual joints in the other boxes, or maybe she had to buy them separately. She didn’t know, this wasn’t her area of expertise. She liked dolls and everything, but not when they were like this.

“What in the world am I going to do with this?” Mana muttered to herself as she picked up the overly huge head, using a bit of her windy powers to support that effort. It wasn’t easy, far from it, as the material that the head was made from was extremely dense, causing the heft of the prop to be much heavier than anything else she had touched today. That, or she was still mentally exhausted from the talk with her white-haired friend, and this was just a symptom by extension.

She eventually managed to lift it over her head, her arms and her legs buckling and wobbling from side to side as she tried to keep herself steady. One of these days, she’d have to ask Aoi out so that she could help train her muscles. Her or Akane, either or so that she wouldn’t be lacking in any kind of strength. And besides, if they all went out together, maybe she could express her frustrations, the one that Kohana had pointed out to her…

Unfortunately for the green-haired heroine, her moment of daydreaming ended up causing her concentration to break, which in turn made her lose her grip. She let out a loud yelp of pain as the head-shaped prop loudly *CLONKED* against the top of her head, after it went straight into the hole on the bottom of the prop. So not only was she saddled with a ringing in her ears from the impact, but she was now stuck inside the thing with her head still throbbing from the pain coalescing on the point of contact…

“Damnit, Mana! Damnit why can’t you focus when it matters!” Mana shouted, practically screaming from inside the hollow head as she tried to force it off. Unfortunately, this time she just didn’t have the strength. Thanks to her friend leaving her, at her own request, she didn’t have somebody to heal her arms. Which meant that she had to deal with the thing being stuck on top of her head for a little while.

The green-haired heroine slumped over onto the floor, using the air around her to stabilize her descent as she avoided another concussion in the process. “Great. Of all the times to get into an accident, it had to be now. I look like I’ve activated a goddamn Bighead cheat code now, not to mention a head swap code or something. Who even designed this thing!? It doesn’t have eyeholes or anything!” The frustrated heroine shouted from within, wanting to rip at her hair to try and calm herself down. Her awful temper was so self destructive…

As she laid on her “face” and contemplated what to do, what she could possibly do to get out of this predicament, she felt a certain pressure growing around her neck. “Hm?” She muttered as she tried to push up on the head, just to see if she had some strength left in her arms. However, this time it didn’t budge because it was seemingly stuck around her neck. “What the…”

Then it clicked. There’s only one person who would dare make such mockeries of her and the others. One demon, one that had previously fucked them over and caused them grief. One that was seemingly obsessed with them specifically, taking their visages and twisting them into mockeries. One that was even unaffiliated with that damned Tenebris to make matters even worse. Only he would dare make something like this…

“Damn that Kurow! He’d make giant ass doll heads just to make us look like fools!? What even is the point of any of this!?” Now Mana was really pissed. She tried to turn up the intensity on her winds, blowing at her fake head as hard as she could. If she could just force the connection between her neck and her head to give way, then she would be home free. But no matter how hard the winds blew, no matter how hard she tugged, it didn’t come off. It was sealed so hard that the cloth between her neck and the head itself felt like an authentic part of her body, rather than a sealant that kept her looking like an oversized idiot.

But if that was the only thing it did, then she could live with it. She’d be pissed beyond all belief, but she could handle it. No, instead it was going to get much worse much more quickly. She could feel her body spasming ever slightly, making a shiver run up her spine. Whenever that happened, she knew that bad things were going to follow right behind it. At least she couldn’t possibly get turned into some sort of stupid secretary like last time, that was just the worst…

That tingling, that spasming, it all turned into a quick rush of power. Instead of feeling weak and worried at herself, she felt strength welling up within. Strength that she could use to crush that head of hers… But then again, it was her head, she probably shouldn’t do that. Wait. Her head? Hold on, no, it was a weird doll head. It wasn’t her head, She was…

Who was she again?

Mana struggled as her mind started getting wrapped up in thoguhts that were flushing into her head, all while her body continued to change. The strength was less of a gift and more a foreboding sign of what was about to happen. The parts of her body where the strength had coursed through soon started bulging with muscle, which kinda made her look like a green-colored version of her stronger friend. And for a good reason.

The color of her uniform changed moments later, from that deep green that reflected the winds at her command, into a deep black that was almost synonymous with the darkness that she fought against. And not only that, but she couldn’t feel the wind at her fingertips like she usually could, making her feel weak in one way… Something that started growing within her mind. She was weak..? She…

“I don’t… I DON’T LIKE BEING WEAK!” The girl screamed from within her oversized head as she smashed her fists into the ground, causing them to get coated in darkness. Her mind was still having a tough time associating properly with all the thoughts happening in her head, but her body understood one thing. It was strong now. It had always been strong. It was fueled by the darkness, just like the things that it fought. Which meant that it had to be one specific person…

That person was Natura Noir. She was Kiko Sakurai, not a weakling! She had gotten this strong to protect her friends! That’s why she wore such a big head on her shoulders too! Because that’s how much pride she had in her strength, the power to protect the people she held near and dear to her heart. That’s why she stood tall, that’s why she went first and asked questions later! That’s who she was!

Kiko laughed as she got onto her feet, the frustration in her body washing away as she realized who she was. Not realizing that the oversized head was actually a cursed kigurumi that had turned her from the stupid nerdy Mana into the much more pleasant and easily manipulable Kiko, as the demon that had made the doll-like head had planned. Now, there was just one tiny little issue with her current state. One thing that she had overlooked and neglected to think about, something that she had kinda promised a few days ago.

“...Ah shit, my date with Kohana!” The muscled heroine shouted as she ran out the door, not even caring that she caused the walls around her to break thanks to the width of the head on her shoulders. Somebody was going to point it out to her eventually, and she’d end up showing her friends where she found her head, and then they’d take on the other roles in the team until they had all swapped roles. Then the demon could swoop in and control them like he always did…

But for now? She was going to have a date with her best young friend. And wonder why there were two of her, even if neither of them would be able to figure it out...