"Okay, now that we finally took care of that huge disaster, we are going to go through the jungle, as a group. There will not be any more funny business! We have already wasted too much time and we need to cover a lot of ground before nightfall. Do you understand me?!" Makoto said aggressively, mainly to Alice and Ira. 

Everyone else were somewhat irritated as well. It had taken an hour to calm Alice down and put out the fires she had started. So they were all tired, dirty, and not in the best mood.

"Hey! Why are you yelling at me?! I'm not the one who started setting things on fire !" Ira exclaimed while glaring at Alice.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Because you're a psychotic little son of a bit-"

"OKAY! Let's not start fighting again," Mana said hastily, cutting Alice off. "I'll take the front, Rikka and Aguri keep an eye on Ira behind me, and Makoto try to keep Alice under control from the back. Sound good?"

There were a lot of sighs and grumbling, but they all agreed with Mana's plan. They walked through the jungle in almost complete awkward silence for a while. No one seemed to be in a good mood to talk. Eventually Alice did start talking with Makoto in hushed whispers, but aside from that the only noises that the group made were the occasional squeaks, gasps, or grumbles when they heard sudden noises or something startled them.

Mana was trying her best to lead the way through the unknown territory, but ended up accidentally taking routes that required a lot of effort to get through. The heat and humidity did not help the situation. Aguri and Rikka were just trying their best not to argue with each other. Aguri kept on giving Ira glares of suspicion as she looked around for any other dangers in the area. This made Rikka irrationally angry due to her sleep deprived state, and kept on trying to give Aguri a sign to tell her to cut it out. Surprisingly Alice was not causing too much of a problem, but the embarrassed and flustered look on Makoto's face showed that the things that she was saying were not very appropriate. The only bright side to the situation was that no one had started fighting.

Too bad that the peace could not last.

"I can't take it anymore!" Ira exclaimed, glaring at Aguri. "Could you go five minutes without glaring at me as if I set the world ablaze?! If you have something to say to me then say it to my face!"

"Well excuse me for being suspicious of the boy who has tried to kill us multiple times! You are a member of the selfish trio and a servant of the Selfish King! I wouldn't trust you even if you were the last person on earth!" Aguri yelled.

At this point the group had stopped moving. They were staring at Aguri and Ira argued, unsure of what to do.

"Ha! Finally something we can both agree on! I mean you wanted to kill me when I was injured and had amnesia! At least I attacked you when you could actually fight!"

"Says the psychopath who attacked the innocent civilians in the Trump kingdom! You can pretend to be nice all you want, but we all know that you're evil."

"Oh really! If I'm so evil then why did I give your friend the antidote when she was dying?! And what were you doing at that time? Oh yeah! You were yelling at her for 'slacking off!'"

"Why you little-"

"Guys stop fighting!" Rikka yelled as she put herself in between the two. "Wether you guys like each other or not we need to trust each other!"

Aguri snapped because she was too angry to think clearly. "Says the girl who refused to tell us that she met up with our enemy!"

"Oh for Pete's sake, Aguri, not this again!"

"Don't talk down to me as if I'm a little kid!"

"You are a little kid Aguri!"

"Well at least I haven't been taking us down the most difficult trails in this entire forest, only to lead us in circles!" Aguri said pointing at Mana.

"Wait, what? We've been going in a straight line!" Mana exclaimed.

"Actually we've passed the same boulder about five times now," Alice said, looking very disinterested.

"Hey! At least Mana is trying to help. You're just causing problems!" Rikka exclaimed.

"Real mature Aguri. Instead of taking responsibility for your actions, you try to make other people look worse. Honestly how are you even a Precure?" Ira said.

Aguri screamed in rage and tried to launch herself at Ira. Mana quickly grabbed her and tried to hold her back.

"Aguri calm down!"

"Let me kill him!"

Makoto and Alice just stood off to the side and watched as everyone squabbled. Makoto was watching with wide eyes, trying to think of a way to stop the fighting. Alice watched with a bored expression. It was obvious that she still hadn't gone back to normal yet.

"Ugh! This is so annoying!" Alice said. She looked at Makoto with a mischievous grin on her face. "Come on lets bail."

Makoto looked at Alice with a shocked expression. "What?! We can't just leave them Alice. They are our friends and Ira!"

"Don't be such a worry wort. We'll come back after a little bit. It's not like they're going anywhere anyway," Alice said pointing at the chaos that their friends were causing.

"It's dangerous here Alice. There is something off about this place."

Despite her protest Alice started to walk away. Lance trailed behind her reluctantly. He wasn't fond of the idea either, but he wasn't going to leave Alice without her powers.

"Oh come on! It's been nothing but quiet all day. We'll be fine!"

Makoto looked back in forth between their friends and Alice. "Alice! Come back here! Alice!" Makoto reluctantly went after her.

Meanwhile the fighting between the rest of the group had gotten worse. Aguri had stopped trying to kill Ira, but only because her anger was now targeted at Rikka. The two lookes like they were seconds away from ripping each other's throats out. Mana was doing her best to hold Ira back, after Aguri had said a very offensive insult to him. She was doing her best to stay the peace keeper, but all the arguing was started to get on her nerves as well.

"I'm just saying that if you hadn't poured water over Alice's head we would probably be halfway through this jungle right now!" Rikka said.

"Well if someone hadn't decided to wonder off last night then Alice wouldn't have gotten possessed and have the crazy personality shifts she's been having." Aguri countered.

"Hey! Don't drag Alice into this the last thing we need is to get another person involved in this mess! Right Alice?" Mana looked over to where Makoto and Alice should have been. Her eyes widened when she saw that there was no one there. "Oh no."

Ira took advantage of the fact that Mana was distracted and managed to release himself from her grasp. "She's a Saint right now compared to you!" He shouted at Aguri.

"Guys"

"Well if she's a saint compared to me, then she must be a goddess of light compared to your whinny butt."

"Guys!"

"Says the girl whose been complaining about Ira being here all day," Rikka countered.

"GUYS!"

"WHAT?!" Rikka, Ira, and Aguri yelled in irritation and rage.

"MAKOTO AND ALICE ARE GONE!" Mana exclaimed. Irritation leaked in her voice.

"Where the heck could they have gone?!" Aguri exclaimed.

A loud scream echoed throughout the area. It seemed to be coming from the North.

"There's your answer," Ira muttered.

"Come on we have to go help them!" Mana said. The irritation left her voice immediately and was replaced with concern and fear.

Everyone except Ira nodded. The girls quickly transformed. Mana quickly ran in the direction of the scream with Aguri following close behind her. Rikka was about to follow, but she noticed that Ira was about to head in the opposite direction.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked.

Ira turned his head towards her but he didn't look her in the eye. "Back to the beach. I'd rather not stay where I'm not welcome."

Before Rikka had a chance to respond Ira teleported away. She wanted to go after him, but she knew that her friends needed her. She looked at the place where Ira was sadly for a moment before turning around to follow her friends.
***
"We'll be fine huh?!" a transformed Makoto yelled as she barely avoided the sharp blades of the creature attacking her.

"Shut up!" Alice, who had also transformed, yelled as she used her shield to block an attack.

The creature in front of them was huge. It's head shape was similar to a raptor. It's beak-like mouth was full of sharp teeth. It's body was long, and widened at the bottom where it had six bug-like legs and a long tail. It had two arms that were blade like claws. There was armor all over it's body.

"Alice! Distract it for a second!" Cure Sword yelled.

"Easier said than done!" Despite her response Cure Rosetta launched a few smaller shields at the side of the monster to grab it's attention.

Cure Sword quickly leaped into some trees and went up the branches. Once she was behind and above the monster she leaped into the air. "Sword Hurricane!"

The attack hit the monster head on and it let out a scream. Cure Sword smirked at the direct hit.

But that smirk quickly turned to one of surprise as the smoke cleared and the monster was completely unharmed. It let out a roar as it turned its head towards her and fired a beam.

Cure Sword, being in the air and falling, had no way to dodge the attack. There was a yell from Cure Rosetta, who was trying to find a way to get the monster to stop, but it was no use.

"Ace Shot!"

Right before the beam that Cure Sword was sure was going to kill her was countered by another attack that hit the beam from the side.

The explosion caused Cure Sword to be launched into the ground with a lot of force. "Ow..."

The creature lifted up its bladed claw to finish Cure Sword off.

"Diamond shower!"

The arm of the creature freezes before it could impale Cure Sword. Cure Heart quickly picks her up and quickly dashed out of range of the monster's attack.

Cure Sword finally got a good view of what was going on. Cure Ace and Cure Diamond we're doing their best to hold off the monster. Diamond was freezing areas of it while Ace kept on attacking it with her Ace Shot. It looked like she was trying to find a week point. Meanwhile Cure Rosetta kept on throwing her shield. Sometimes it was at the monster and other times they were at her comrades to either block an attack of use as platforms.

Once they were out of range and next to Cure Rosetta, Cure Heart put Cure Sword down.

"You okay Sword?" Cure heart asked as she put her friend and teammate down.

"At little banged up, but I'm fiNE!" Cure Sword ended her sentence with a high pitch scream as she tried to put weight on her left foot. Her leg gave out from the sudden pain, but luckily Cure Heart caught her before she hit the ground. "Never mind!"

Cure Heart put Sword's arm over her shoulder so that she could easily be leaned on for support. Cure Sword did her best to keep her weight off of her foot.

Cure Diamond and Cure Ace we're by their sides quickly. It seemed like they had fallen back. Cure Rosetta was still trying to attack the monster, though.

"It's no use no matter how many times I hit it the armor won't even crack," Ace said breathing heavily.

"And it breaks out of my ice within a few seconds. I don't know how much longer we can keep this up," Diamond said as she wiped some sweat off of her brow.

Right after she said that Alice crashed right next to the group. "That's going to leave a mark," she groaned.

The creature looked in the girl's direction and got ready to fire a beam. But right before it could a blast of dark energy hit it in the head, throwing off the monster's aim and causing the beam to barely miss the girls.

"Hey ugly over here!" Ira yelled to grab the monster's attention.

It worked the monster started to wave its arms around in fury and shoot a bunch of beams at him.

Ira looked over at the Precures. "Well, don't just stand there. Do something!" he yelled in between dodges.

After recovering from the intial shock, the Precures leaped into battle. 

Cure Rosetta quickly launched herself off of one of her shields, before quickly generating another one as she got in front of Ira before a beam could hit him.

Cure Heart and Cure Sword stayed on the ground and aimed their attacks at the monster's legs, while constantly trying to avoid the tail.

Cure Ace then used her Ace Shot to blow away the bladed claws.

"Heart, Sword transfer your power to Diamond now!"

"Right!"

Their bodies glowed as their power left their bodies and it was transferred to Cure Diamond. Before the monster could recover from Ace's attack she quickly froze its blade arms. With the stronger ice attack the creature let out a roar as it struggled.

"Sword now!"

Cure Sword nodded. "Sword Hurricane!" she yelled as she fired her attack at the frozen arms of the monster.

Due to them almost being frozen to the bone, the attack had no trouble slicing through and cutting the monster's arms off.

It let out a screech if pain and rage as it started to crazily shoot it's beam all over the area. The attack caused most of the Precures to hit the ground or try to dodge out of range. The only ones who didn't move were Ira and Cure Rosetta since she quickly summoned a shield to block the attack. Luckily the shield did not break, but using it so much was clearly taking its toll on her.

"Ira how fast can you teleport?" Cure Rosetta asked breathing heavily.

"Within a few seconds," Ira said as he fired another beam at the creature.

"Are you able to take other people with you?"

Ira rose an eyebrow "Yes, but it takes more energy and I can't go as far."

"That's fine. Do you think you could teleport me in it's mouth right before it fires a beam?"

"Are you kidding me?! Do you have a death wish?!" Ira screamed.

"Look it seems like it's only weak spot is the inside of the body. It's the only place this thing doesn't have armor. But the only time it's open wide enough for me to not get crushed by it's teeth is when it fires it's beams. If you can teleport me in there I can use my Rosetta Reflection to absorb the attack and launch it back into the monster," she explained as she struggled to keep the shield up.

"But we'll get hit by the explosion!"

"Then just teleport away once you get me there! You should have enough time!"

"This is an insane idea!"

"Well I don't see you coming up with any ideas!"

"How about we just run!"

"No we have to kill it!"

"Why are you so determined to kill this thing?!" Ira exclaimed.

"Because I'm the one who f*cked up and now I have to fix the sh*tty problem I caused! Are ya happy Mr. Bad Boy?!"

There was silence for a moment. "Fine! But don't be mad at me when you almost die!"

Ira quickly grabbed Cure Rosetta and once he saw that the monster was about to fire a beam at them As he teleported away Cure Rosetta made sure to fortify her shield.

"What are they doing?!" Cure Sword yelled.

But her cry was not heard by Cure Rosetta or Ira. They teleported into the mouth right as the monster shot a beam. It hit the shield at close range, but it did not break. They knew the beam was powerful, but being so close and being hit head on made Ira and Rosetta realize just how powerful it was.

Rosetta clenched her teeth as she struggled to keep the barrier up. This would have been a challenge if she was full of energy, but being so exhausted from blocking so many attacks made keeping her shield up so much harder.

Ira was about to teleport to safety when he saw Rosetta's struggle. But he couldn't.

"I'm going to regret this," he muttered.

Rosetta was almost screaming in agony. Black dots were starting to fill her vision as it started to fade. Come on just a little longer!

Suddenly Ira grabbed her shoulders and she felt power flowing into her.

"Ira. What are. You still. Doing here!" Rosetta yelled, having to break up her sentence as she struggled to speak.

"I'm saving you! What does it look like I'm doing?!"

Ira noticed that Cure Rosetta started to glow. It was different than when Cure Diamond had gotten Sword's and Heart's powers transferred to her. No, it looked a lot more like the way Swift Claw had glowed. He could have sworn that her eyes had turned red with yellow irises for a moment.

After what seemed like forever, the monster finally stopped firing its beam.

"Rosetta Reflection!"

In an instant she fired back an attack that felt twice as powerful as the one she had just blocked. Ira quickly teleported the two of them away as an explosion started.

The rest of the Precures saw the monster let out a screech of pain before falling on the ground dead. They didn't seem to notice that they had transformed back.

"Are they okay?" Rikka asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

A second later Ira and Alice, who detransformed, appeared right in front of the group on the ground. They looked a little burned, clearly they did not completely avoid the explosion, and exhausted, but they didn't seem to have any life threatening injuries.

The pixies quickly lifted up Lance, who was on top of Alice's head, and began to chatter with him excitedly and worriedly.

Despite her injury Makoto walked a few steps closer to them and went on her knees. She lifted Alice up by the shoulders and began to shake her. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?! Stop trying to die on me every day!"

Alice didn't really react, she just kinda limply let herself be shaken. When Makoto stoped she collapsed onto Makoto and put her head on her shoulder.

"Sorry for worrying you, and I'm sorry about my behavior. I don't know what came over me," she whispered. Her voice was soft and gentle, just like how it usually was.

Makoto wrapped her arms around her in response. "Don't worry about it just rest,"

Rikka and Mana quickly joined the two and were chatting excitedly, clearly celebrating their victory.

Ira stood up and was about to leave, but someone stopped him.

"Hey Ira."

Ira looked over and saw Aguri walk up to him. He sighed, "Look I'm not really in the mood to be yelled at right now, okay. I'm leaving."

"That's not what I was going to say."

Ira quirked an eyebrow in confusion.

"I wanted to say that I'm..... I'm...." Aguri kept on pausing, clearly having trouble saying the words.

"Just spit it out already!"

"I'm sorry okay!"

There was a shocked silence for a few moments.

"What?" He said dumbly thinking that he must have misheard what she was saying.

"You heard what I said!" Aguri exclaimed. "I still don't exactly trust nor do I like you. You've done so many terrible things that I still don't forgive you for that."

"Is this supposed to be nice? If so then you're doing a horrible job."

"Just shut up and listen. But despite all that I can't deny that you really did save us today, so for that you have my thanks. I may not trust you, but I am willing to give you a chance to earn it."

Ira opened his mouth to respond but before he could a loud voice rang through the clearing.

"Hey Aguri! Ira! We're going to move to a different clearing nearby. I would suggest staying the night here, but I don't think that's a good idea with the body there!" Mana yelled waving trying to get their attention.

"How do you know that there's a clearing nearby?" Aguri yelled.

"Apparently a spirit came by and saw that we killed that monster. It's apparently been causing a lot of trouble lately and the spirit said it would lead us to a safe place to stay for tonight to show their gratitude."

Ira tried to see if there was some sort of creature with the girl's but there's nothing there. Apparently Aguri was just as confused as he was.

"I don't see anyone with you!" Aguri yelled.

"For some odd reason only Alice can see or hear them. Makoto can tell that something is there, and can occasionally hear a few words, but that's about it!"

"Okay we're coming!"

Aguri was about to start walking towards the group.

"Hey, kid."

Aguri turned her head back to look at Ira. "Yeah?" There was a tiny bit of annoyance in her voice, probably from being called kid.

"I may have said some things that were inaccurate earlier. You're definitely a Precure," Ira said, mumbling out his words like he was embarrassed.

It wasn't a sorry, but Ira didn't do sorry. That was as close to an apology that he was going to give. Surprisingly Aguri seemed to understand that.

"Thanks, now come on. I want to sleep."

***
The group arrived at the clearing  a half hour later and they were a bit of an exhausted mess. Makoto hand her arm over Mana's shoulder and was leaning on her for support as she limped. Rikka was carrying Alice, who was barely even able to stay conscious. So that meant that Aguri and Ira had to carry most of the supplies.

It was honestly a beautiful area. There were different kinds of fruits hanging from the trees. A small river had a waterfall with water so blue that it almost looked dyed. There was even an area full of soft grass that didn't seem to have any rocks or twigs to make the group uncomfortable while sleeping.

Alice was thanking someone that he couldn't see so he guessed it had to be a spirit.

They took about another hour to set up camp and it was already dark. Almost everyone feel onto their sleeping bags right away. Ira didn't have one, but Mana insisted that he borrowed hers because she was going to stay up to keep watch for a while. After a lot of awkward kindness he relented.

The group seemed to be less suspicious of him, but that didn't stop Ira from being as far from the group as possible. Sure they weren't going to stab him while he slept, but it was still super awkward. So he just laid on the sleeping bag looking at the stars.

"Hey, mind if I join you?"

Ira looked to the side to see Rikka and he quickly sat up. "If you must."

Rikka laid down her sleeping bag and sat down next to him. She quickly grabbed his arm and pulled it towards her.

"Hey! What are you doing?!" Ira exclaimed trying to pull his arm away.

But Rikka's grip was strong. "Looking over your wounds. I know that the stunt you and Alice pulled did not leave you unscathed."

Ira let out a huff, but let Rikka do her thing. She checked his arms, legs, head, and even chest, which had them both be a blushing mess. Rikka found a few minor burns, but luckily they weren't going to cause any major problems. She put some ointment on them before bandaging them up.

"Thanks a lot for coming when you did. To be honest, our injuries would have been a lot worse if you hadn't helped," Rikka said as she dressed one of his burns.

"It wouldn't be satisfying to have you all die if I hadn't done it myself anyway."

Rikka let out a small chuckle. "You're cute when you're trying to put on a tough guy act."

Ira turned pink slightly and looked away. "It's not like I did much. You guys still got the crap beaten out of you."

Rikka let out a small hum. "True. Makoto sprained her ankle, Aguri's arm got cut open, Mana  had so many splinters from getting thrown into a tree, and Alice has some minor burns and is so drained that she probably won't be able to walk for at least a day."

"And what about you?"

Rikka pauses for a moment as her cheeks got tinted with pink. "Some frostbite on my hands and arms. Turns out I can only use my ice attacks so many times before my body can't handle it. Luckily it's minor so I should be fine." She wrapped one more bandage on Ira's arm before she finally finished. "There done! Make sure to not touch your wounds and keep them clean. I'll change the bandages tomorrow."

Ira nodded. "Thanks."

They sat together for a while in silence. Surprisingly it wasn't uncomfortable. Ira didn't know how it happened, but Rikka had ended up falling asleep with her head in his lap after sometime. He was too tired to move her, so he just left her there. A small traitorous part of him knew that it was because I didn't want her to move. At some point his eyes began to feel heavy and he eventually fell asleep.
***
I can get this done today I said. It shouldn't take too long to write I said. Now it's been 5-6 hours and this is my longest chapter by far. But anyways, I still walk this earth! So sorry it took so long. Work, school, lack of motivation, and some mental health issues kinda kept me away from this project. Don't worry I'm completely fine and nothing horrible happened to me! I just have really bad anxiety and I didn't want to stress about this. I'm going to be honest updates will be slow. I know you all love this story and I love the support, but it's not very encouraging when it feels like an update is demanded. I have been working on other things I'm passionate about. I'm finally writing my own original works. Now, I am still going to finish this, but this isn't my top priority. But honestly thank you all so so much for supporting my story, it's what helps me continue this story. I have been thinking about changing the title because I realized that Rikka x Ira is not the main focus. Still an important focus, but not the main one. Idk, tell me your opinions in the comments if you want. I love you all! I hope to not take nearly as long on another chapter!