Fight! Fight! Fight! ...Now Kiss

"Noa! Knock it off! She's the enemy, remember?!" Towa tugged Noa's elbow, but to no avail. Noa didn't even seem to notice Towa. She was too busy drooling over Elsie. Noa and Towa were just going to eat lunch outside, but apparently, they weren't the only ones with that idea.

"But she's soooo cuuuute!" Noa squealed, making grabby hands as she reached for the shorter girl. Elsie only smirked at her and Towa.

"Pathetic. And to think, you performed so well at D4Fes! Alas, it was merely a stroke of bad luck on our part that we... lost. It shan't happen twice."

"No, it won't," Towa agreed grimly. "We'll beat you fair and square this time, and then you'll see, Photon really is the best!"

"Oh, please, prepare for a one-way ticket to pound town with that attitude!" Weronika punched her palm, and, despite herself, Towa chuckled nervously and shied away behind Noa. That, at last, was enough to draw Noa's attention away from Elsie for a fraction of a second.

"Towa!" she sighed in exasperation, feeling the weight of Towa's grip on her elbow shift as she crept quietly behind Noa.

"Hey!" Towa was now twice as embarrassed. "Why didn't you notice anything I tried to say to you earlier?!"

"It is because Elsie is so cute, is it not? No one can resist her charms!" An amber eye closed as Elsie raised a hand in a half-shrug, palm facing up. Beside her, Weronika couldn't help but snort. Unlike Elsie, she hadn't done her research and did not know about Noa's cutie obsession.

"Cute? I've seen roadkill that's more attractive. She literally looks like an angry skunk!" Weronika looked Elsie up and down. As per usual, she wore only black and white, including her hair and the accessories in it. Yoba had a dress code, but it wasn't very enforced.

"WERONIKA!" Elsie shrieked.

At the same time, Noa shrieked as well, but only because Elsie's sudden indignation and little pink blush was SOOO CUUUUTE!

"Noa..." Towa deadpanned again.

"Weronika, you are absolutely atrocious! A fiend! A beast!" Elsie began swatting Weronika with her pearl-studded black purse.

"Oww, hey, what gives?!" Weronika managed to demand through her teasing laughter. God, she's such a weak hitter! It's a good thing we aren't challenging Photon to a physical competition! Although... Weronika's taunting smile became arrogant.

"—so you shouldn't be criticizing me!" Noa muttered. While Elsie and Weronika bickered, bantered, and battled, Noa and Towa took the time to privately address one another. Of course, Towa was quick to get on Noa's case about always being so weak-willed around Elsie, but Noa wasted no time in turning it back around on Towa and calling her out for crumbling under Weronika so quickly.

"Just look at her, though!" Towa's eyes were wide. "She's huge!" Weronika was already tall and muscular, but next to Towa, it was even worse.

"So? The least you could do is not provoke her if you really think you can't keep up a poker face for five minutes!" Noa sighed, exasperated. Wasn't Towa supposed to be an idol stan? Wasn't she supposed to be good at acting and keeping smiles on her face even when she didn't mean it?

"Well, it beats what you're doing!" Towa scoffed. Being afraid of Weronika was reasonable. Simping for, and sucking up to, Elsie was not.

As if trying to prove Towa's point, Elsie was still taking shots at Weronika. "Must I always be the lady to your tramp? Must I always be the one to bring out the leash?" She shook her head and sighed, fancying herself a martyr for enduring Weronika's impulses for so long.

"You're the lady?! I'm the tramp?!" As if trying to prove Elsie's point, Weronika's cry of indignation immediately silenced Towa and Noa. But in Weronika's mind, the anger was justified. Maybe from the outside, she was the tramp to Elsie's lady, but all anyone had to do was spend time with them for even just five minutes, and it became readily and quickly apparent that the roles were actually reversed.

How many people had Elsie terrorized with her bodyguards? The coward. She didn't even fight her own battles! She outnumbered strangers with her black suits and let them do the dirty work. And dirty work often translated to the guards coming back stained in blood. Weronika lost count of how many times she needed to talk Elsie down before she sicced her guards on anyone that even looked at her in a way she deemed improper.

She calls ME the beast, the tramp! Weronika scowled. She's such a Karen... What a world they lived in, where Weronika was the voice of reason.

All four of them were fighters, but each was insistent that her standards were the best, so rather than actually engage in their promised rematch, they spent more time arguing with their fellow unit-mates than their opponents.

In the distance, Neo, Saki, and Ibuki watched in disdain, confusion and concern, and exasperation respectively. Sophia's eyes, meanwhile, were glued to Neo, as if attempting to identify Neo's reaction in order to determine what her own ought to be.

On the glass walkway above, Michiru happened to notice the interaction. "Hey, Lumina, look!" she snickered, holding her phone over the railing.

The two of them shared a good laugh at the expense of their rivals and friends before joking to each other, "Fight! Fight! Fight! ...Now kiss."

And in the days to come, as Towa and Noa repeatedly tried to engage in battle with Elsie and Weronika (only for the two couples to always wind up fighting each other more than the rival unit), it was no longer just Hayate, Lumina, and Michiru that suspected and made jokes about the relationship status between Towa and Noa, and Weronika and Elsie.

"Should we ask again?" Hayate once whispered with a smirk, watching from a distance as Towa and Noa kept chasing one another around in circles while Elsie and Weronika engaged in yet another shouting match. Hayate was referring to the last time she suggested that Elsie and Weronika were dating, and what a delightful and terrifying encounter that had been.

"Nah," said Lumina and Michiru. "Let's wait it out and see how long it takes for them to realize. Care to place any bets?"

Suffice to say, Ibuki wasn't happy when she heard that her little assistant was engaged in gambling, but when Neo found out, solely for the purpose of irritating Ibuki, she added her own handful of yen to the pot. Seeing that, Sophia was quick to jump on board as well.

"I have a feeling it shall be quite a while longer," Neo remarked coolly as Michiru dictated the bet Lumina was to record for her. A moment later, shaky-handed Sophia added the same amount. As if to accentuate Neo's point, the group heard Elsie's high-pitched shriek in the distance.

About two minutes later, Towa and Noa went brushing past glaring daggers and pointing fingers at one another. Elsie and Weronika were close behind, still in each other's faces with insults, roasts, and accusations to rival Towa and Noa's. They were so wrapped up in each other that they completely missed their smirking bandmates watching them storm their way across Yoba's campus, scaring everyone else in their path.

Fight! Fight! Fight! ...Now kiss...

AN: Pre-AM, it always amused me that Towa and Noa were the couple most likely to roast each other to death while everyone else was so sweet and romantic (shameless self-promo: My Valentine's Day fic). Then Elsie/Weronika happened and I was like: "Evil"Towa/Noa!

I thought it would be hilarious if they kept trying to have a unit vs. unit fight only to wind up having it be a Towa vs. Noa and Weronika vs. Elsie every single time, much to the secret amusement of literally everyone else.

Also Wero and Elsie's summer lines made me think "OMG Wero is a wolf in heat and it's mating season!" LOLOLOLOL