Chương 45: The NEW Stardancer Adventures! Issue 88!

This was going to be Dione-chan's first sleepover, so Kaede wanted to do it right! Normally, this would have required doing things like buying the clone's favorite snacks (anything seasoned with salt), cooking her favorite foods (literally anything that wasn't gray gruel, and even then she'd eat oatmeal if she could pour food coloring and salt on it), having fun games to play (she liked card games played with colorful cards), and nature documentaries for them to watch together.

They'd planned it so that they wouldn't need to go to school the next day so they could sleep in, and then they'd have another sleepover the next night for double the fun! However, the two of them were magical girls, and so Kaede knew that their sleepover wouldn't be normal.

It was inevitable that while they were having fun, they'd be interrupted by a sudden monster attack that would try to steal their shirikodama, or there'd be a sudden kaiju attack, or aliens would invade, or they'd be sleeping and something would attack them in their dreams… If TV has taught Kaede anything, it's that the minute that Magical girls slowed down at intentionally tried to relax and have fun, bad things would happen. Not necessarily to them, but certainly around them.

To prevent anything from ruin Dione's first sleepover, Kaede had taken measures! As much as she wanted to invite her other schoolfriends—especially Suzuko and Maria—she'd made the decision to beg them to take over patrolling the city for the night, along with the Courts of the Black Heavens and Twilight Cosmos. Having they'd understood—this was Dione's first sleepover, and they didn't want anything to ruin it—but Maria had made her promise they'd plan a bigger sleepover next time, which everyone had been okay with.

She'd also done her best to try and curb ordinary crime for the night, writing a polite letter to every Yakuza group in the city she knew of in the city to ask them for a peaceful night. She'd even sweetened it by leaving a nice basket of fruits and candies with the letters, which she left in the office of each Yakuza's oyabun so they'd wouldn't miss it, or in their bedroom if they didn't have an office should could find easily. The gift basket would let them know she was asking nicely!

It was what that friendly yakuza man with the eyepatch who always forgot to put on a shirt had suggested when she'd asked for advice. And to make sure they wouldn't be interrupted in the middle of the night, Kaede had even scheduled for them to go on a quick patrol around the city for two hours to make it more like a normal night so that the universe wouldn't think they were taking a vacation and start a locked room murder mystery near them or something.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Everything was ready! Dione-chan was going to have a really fun sleepover!

"Dione-chan," Kaede said tiredly from the giant metal top hat she was sitting on, "where exactly did you get this board game?"

"Oh, I got it from this nice old lady," Dione said, sitting on top of a giant thimble. Above them, the sky was a chaotic, ominous, eldritch, unspeakable, blasphemous orange, filled with unblinking, baleful eyes that looked down on them with all the consideration a gambling addict gave their money.

"I'd been looking for a fun game we could play, and a found this little store on the shopping street that I'd never seen before, full of board games for us to play. I didn't know what any of them were, but the nice old lady was a big help. She said it was a great game for two people to who wanted to deepen their friendship!" This was all said with the naïve obliviousness of the utterly ignorant.

"Ah," Kaede said, going a little dead inside as she stared up at the sky. Despite not changing, the eyes looked like they were mocking her.

"Do you remember what other games were there?"

"Well, there was this game where you pretend to be doctors, one with the snakes and the elevators, a game where there are letters and numbers on the board and a little board with a hole in it, a farm-themed western Shogi game—""Farm-themed?"

"Yes, it had scythes and goats on it!"

"Ah. Sorry for interrupting, please continue."

"Well, there were these cards with pictures of monsters on them but that seemed complicated, a game called 'Cursed Pizza Place Night Security Guard', and… oh, something called 'Isekai Boken', but that sounded boring, since it seemed to be about trucks." Kaede nodded in resignation.

"Ah."

"Oh, and there was also a box with a game called 'Our Fun Sleepover At Home', but it turned to be empty, so the nice lady suggested this one instead." Dione looked around curiously.

"So, how do we play this? Is it a sportsball game?" On cue, something fell from the sickening, chaotic, ominous, eldritch, unspeakable, blasphemous orange sky, which sent out a shockwave that made the top hat Kaede was sitting on jump and caused her to fall on her back onto the cold metal. Before she could recover, a second black, cubic thing decorated with mocking eyes fell down next to the first, and Kaede was just barely able to keep from hitting her head.

Sighing, Kaede got to her feet as she stood up on the hat's crown, looking down at the two-letter word for five written in romanji.

"I think we're about to find out." When she got out of here, she was going to find whatever western yokai thought this would be funny, and taking a bucket of rusty nails to throw at them. This was going to absolutely ruin Dione's sleepover! And their friendship! Even Kaede knew this was an evil, evil game that made people hate each other! The only thing worse was that game about acting like a Sengoku Period warlord in Europe!