ch 339: Welcome to Earth!

When the countdown displayed by Gantz finally reached 00:00, it was still only four in the morning in Tokyo.

Every member of the Gantz' Tokyo team, as well as Teresa, Violet, Rhea, Haruka, Unohana, Nureha and Angela, the seven mecha pilots that the Gods had sent them as reward for surviving the Hunting Missions, had gathered into the Gantz apartment. The Sphere was still there, seemingly inactive aside from displaying the cooldown.

They stared from the windows at the dark sky and checked on international news for over two hours before they noticed the first anomaly.

The sky had started to shift from night to day, but instead of turning blue, it was turning red.

Minutes later, media outlets started to pick up on this and reported that the red sky phenomena was roughly centered around the Tokyo area and had an irregular radius of about four hundred kilometers.

"Mama Sakura, should we move out to the city's periphery, or remain concentrated?" asked Haruka, her green and black artificial tail twitching.

Sakura displayed a gentle smile as she ruffled Haruka's gray hair.

"We knew from what Noah told us that their mothership will land in Tokyo, and what we can expect isn't mass destruction from a superweapon, but rather raiding parties that will both take prisoners and kill civilians for their own consumption. We will relocate near the mothership's landing area's periphery in pairs to surround it and engage the raiding parties shortly after they leave the mothership. A containment and suppression tactic."

"We can't shoot at the mothership itself." nodded Rin. "We must make them leave, and there's always the chance of a catastrophic explosion if we hit something sensitive."

The mecha pilots nodded.

"Do we infiltrate the mothership?" asked Ayase.

Sakura and Rin exchanged a glance, then shook their heads.

"We'd rather avoid it." said Rin. "We don't want to damage it for obvious reasons, and there's always the chance we'd get stuck inside when it leaves."

"Alright, let's move according to the plan. Good luck, everyone." smiled Sakura, and they all nodded to each other.

…

A while later, Unohana and Nureha, both dressed in their original outfits, entered a warehouse on Tokyo's northern periphery.

"Hey, what are…" The two warehouse employees gasped as the girls removed their berets, letting their fox-like ears loose.

The two girls looked very similar, but also opposite. Unohana looked like a white-haired wolf girl in a white outfit with blue accents, while Nureha had black hair and a black outfit with red accents.

"There's enough space." nodded Nureha as she stepped away.

"You… what…?" started one of the men, only to stop with Unohana gestured to them.

"You guys need to run towards the north. An alien invasion is about to start. That's what the red sky is about."

The two workers' eyes widened, and they without a doubt considered her crazy. Their words died on their lips, however, when Nureha gestured, and a giant mecha suddenly appeared near her, crouching near the warehouse's shelves.

Paimon, as was her mecha's name, was a twenty-meter tall white mecha with emerald accents and two shorts wings sprouting from its back. It was only armed with a two-handed sword, but the machine could manipulate air pressure to obtain some very interesting effects like 360° attacks, or performing near-supersonic bursts of speed.

"A Gundam." gasped the second worker, his eyes as wide as they would go.

"Not, not a Gundam. But close enough." snorted Unohana.

Paimon's cockpit opened, and Nureha climbed inside with the expertise of someone knowing her machine like the back of her hand.

The workers were still shocked speechless when Paimon, still crouching, waved its right arm around, causing many shelves to collapse and forcibly making more space. Space that quickly became occupied by Unohana's own mecha, Jormungand.

Unlike Paimon that was configured for close combat, Jormungand was all about killing its opponents from a distance. Its white and light blue chassis held many cancelled miniature missile launchers around its shoulders, torso, and thighs, and both arms held very potent, fast firing particle beam cannons.

"I won't repeat it again. Leave, take your family, and run away from Tokyo, by foot if necessary. It's about to become a war zone." warned Unohana before climbing inside Jormungand's cockpit.

"Team three, in position." announced Nureha on the command channel.

Unohana smiled, relaxing. The faint, old leather smell of the seat, the soft glow of the various indicators… She realized that she had missed it.

She watched the two workers run away. They would without a doubt warn the cops, but Unohana and Nureha didn't care.

What would cops do when they discovered two giant mechas hiding inside a warehouse? They would call the JSDF, which would at least get them to mobilize before the aliens came. It might do some good.

…

"Team six, mothership spotted, range approximately 3200 kilometers." declared Teresa.

Unlike the other teams, she operated solo. Her mecha, the Deer Stalker, specialized in both camouflage, thanks to its nanite-enhanced long cape, and sniping with a twenty-five meters long electric beam rifle that wouldn't be out of place as part of a battleship's main battery.

She had chosen to hide out in the middle of a grove, on the south-east part of Tokyo's periphery.

The others acknowledged the information, and Teresa entered a few commands on her console, then waited. On a secondary screen was displayed a map of Tokyo, and a large circle indicating the estimated landing point. The circle was slowly growing smaller, recalculated every five seconds as the mothership steadily grew closer.

It was now visible to the naked eye, and new outlets were starting to report on it. The entire world's national armies were mobilized.

A woman walking her dog entered the grove and stumbled on her, froze in shock, gasped when the mecha turned its head to look down at her, and hurried away.

Hers would be the fifth report of strange mechas appearing around Tokyo that the cops would receive this morning.

"Team six, landing estimated to be in the Shinjuku district in about four minutes." reported Teresa.

"Team One, get moving. Use terrain as cover as much as possible." declared Sakura, and Teresa followed the command, leaving the grove.

She paid no attention to the stupefied civilians as her Deer Stalker used its back thrusters to fly two meters above ground. She chose a route that would let her hide from the descending mothership as much as possible, and kept her speed low.

…

Sakura, dressed in her black and gold armor, sighed at the three police cars that stopped around the feet of Haruka's Infinity.

She jumped from the mecha's shoulder, and walked toward the cops had had just left their cars, not really knowing what to do with a giant mecha.

"You guys turn off your lights now! You'll get us spotted!" shouted Sakura.

"You! Who are you? What is that thing?" asked one of them.

"We are part of a secret international force." claimed Sakura. It wasn't even a lie. Noah's faction was international indeed, and so secret that all of this planet's heads of state ignored their existence.

Sakura pointed toward the mothership, now barely ten kilometers away.

"We received information that those extraterrestrials are giants and came to raid the population, and we humans are nothing but livestock to them. Your guns will barely tickle them. So turn those damn lights off before they notice us, and start evacuating the civilians already! Within a few minutes, this will be a war zone!"

The police officers were at least smart enough to turn their lights off before asking more questions, and Sakura ignored them, glancing at the mothership. The massive black craft, roughly in the shape of a thick, squat barrel with four massive legs, had a purely utilitarian design, with many antennas, pipes and other protrusions covering its surface. Each of the legs were almost two hundred meters thick, and its main body was about two kilometers in radius and 800 meters in height.

And then, bright beams of light were shot from some of the spines on the mothership's surface.

Sakura saw a few explosions in the distance.

"Mama, they're shooting down the JSDF's fighters jets!" exclaimed Haruka through Infinity's speakers.

"All teams, return fire, aim for anything that looks like a turret!" declared Sakura.

Haruka immediately moved, getting out of the building's cover, aimed its massive particle cannon in the mothership's direction, and a thick beam of blue energy burst toward one of the spines that had just fired.

Three more beams and one energy arrow came from other parts of the Shinjuku district, impacting the mothership and destroying spines.

Haruka fired three more times before the first white beam targeted her, but Infinity's electro-magnetic shield absorbed the hit without issue.

More spines from the mothership opened up on the four enemies, but between their slow rate of fire and the number of already destroyed spines, they were quickly suppressed.

Then, massive hangar bays opened near the bottom of the mothership, and thousands of giants wearing black battle armor whose design wasn't that dissimilar to those Gantz used burst out, accompanied by hundreds of combat vehicles and transports. The vehicles looked like centaurs made of metal poles and beams, with what Sakura assumed to be weapons at the ends of their two arms.

The transports, however, were too small to carry any of the giants escorting them. They were essentially blocky, flying bricks with mesh instead of metal panels on their sides and rear, and were about the size of human buses. Their design made their purpose clear. They weren't made to transport soldiers or equipment. They were flying cages, ready to be filled.

The ground trembled as the mothership landed at last, and Sakura took from her spatial ring one of the G-Rifles.

…

Violet shook her head slightly to get a strand of her black hair away from her eyes as she executed a complex aerial maneuver, evading a few blasts of green energy while drifting. Her Hraesvelgr, currently in jet mode, seemed to circle around a cluster of flying giants while keping its nose pointed at them, its two laser miniguns firing 60 times per second and turning four of them into beehives.

Before the four-eyed, ogre-like aliens could turn and compensate for her movement, Violet launched four missiles and smashed a pedal to the floor.

Her cybernetic body, 85% prosthetics, allowed her to tolerate short accelerations of almost 30g, and the Hraesvelgr was almost capable of reaching it. It zipped through the enemy fire at reckless speed, energy blades appearing along the front edges of its wings and extending five meters past their tips.  As Voilet made a half-roll, the blue energy blades cut through two more giants.

The surviving enemies quickly got to the ground, correctly assuming that the surrounding buildings would provide them with cover and limit her movements.

They were right, but Voilet wasn't alone, and Rhea's Ullr burst from behind a building a hundred meters from them, its great bow already tensed, energy arrow ready for release.

Rhea let the arrow loose and it crossed the distance in an instant, causing a great explosion that killed two of the giants and threw the others off their feet.

Rhea was about to finish them with a second arrow when she spotted another group of giants grabbing terrified civilians and stuffing them none too gently into a transport. Judging that she wouldn't be able to kill them from afar without endangering the civilians, she decided to charge them. She would be able to fire half-charged arrows from point blank range. As she did, she quickly glanced at her map, saw that Ayase and Tsugumi weren't very far, and requested their assistance.

Rhea would use her Ullr as a decoy while the girls would engage the enemy from the flank and dispatch them.

A few of the surviving giants from the first group tried to shoot her, and they didn't notice the black shape of a fighter jet transform into a mecha and land just behind them, activating glowing blue energy blades.

…

Sakura used Shunpo to appear in the middle of a tight group of giants. She immediately lashed out with her shadow ribbons, cutting them to pieces, and looked around, taking stock of the situation. The square was littered with corpses of civilians. Some had even been piled up on top of one another, forming piles reaching almost two meters high. From the traces of blood on the streets, the invaders had used this spot to gather human corpses and captives alike before they would be transported to the mothership.

Speaking of captives, she walked to the two transports and broke their rear hatches open, freeing two dozen civilians.

"Go hide inside buildings. Hurry up, you must not stay on the streets."

"Y-Yes, thank you!" hurriedly nodded a young man.

Her sixth sense kicked in, and she suddenly jumped back, evading a blast of green energy that left a small crater where she had just been.

Sakura looked up and saw three giants descending toward them, and she knew at a glance that those were different. Their expression and body language screamed confidence and combat experience. Two of them wore their equivalent of sunglasses, but it was the one at the center who held her attention. The giant had long blonde hair and black eyes, and seemed to consider her with a mix of curiosity and expectation.

Sakura didn't waste time as she couldn't maintain Augment forever and pointed her empty left hand toward the leftmost giant before firing three Gandr in quick succession. The giant had started to evade, but his jetpack wasn't powerful enough to get him out of the way at such short distance, and the Gandr shots impacted against his chest, blasting his suit and flesh apart. He fell with a strangled cry.

His other two companions weren't inactive and shot at her with both their weapons and what Sakura had learned was a natural ability every giant shared. In addition to evading the green energy shots, she had to deploy light shields to intercept sudden lightning bolts coming from their fingers.

The first time she had been hit by that, she had only been paralyzed for a few seconds before she could move again. A normal civilian would have died for sure. Still, if Rin hadn't been following her at the time, she would have been in trouble.

After warning their companions about the giants' ability, Sakura and Rin had separated to save more civilians.

Sakura used Shunpo again, landing on the shoulder of another giant, and slashed with the G-sword she held in her right hand, cutting his head off.

Only the blonde giant remained.

He drew a sword as well as he landed on the floor and took shots at her while making sudden moves to the sides, with no apparent pattern. Sakura understood that he was trying to make it harder for her to just teleport near him.

That giant was smart, and clearly a few cuts above the others, but Sakura still was overwhelmingly faster, and after seeing all the corpses around them, she wasn't in the mood for playing fair.

She extended her shadow toward the giant as they exchanged sword blows. He noticed and started to dodge, but it was already too late. One of her ribbons had wrapped itself around his left ankle, causing him to fall as he jumped. He quickly slashed at the ribbon to no effect, and caught a Gandr shot in the face.

As his body instantly went limp, Sakura glanced around, not seeing any more giants in her immediate surroundings. No more were coming from the mothership, but there still had to be hundreds, possibly thousands already in the city, killing or capturing civilians or fighting either Sakura's companions, the JDSF troops, or the Gantz teams being teleported from all over the world.

She was about to jump to a rooftop and search for the next group of giants when a voice interrupted her.

"Thank you. How did you do all that?"

Sakura glanced at the girl who had just spoken, one of those she had freed from the alien transports. Had it been a man or middle-aged woman who had spoken, Sakura would have ignored them.

But the girl was cute. She was 160cm tall, had hazel eyes and hair that ended at neck level, their ends slightly wavy giving the girl a slightly disheveled look, but it suited her well.

And Sakura was impressed by her guts. It took some courage to step forward and speak to someone she had just witnessed kill a bunch of aliens with what could only be supernatural abilities.

"…It was magic. Do you want to learn it?" smiled Sakura.

"Magic? I normally wouldn't believe in magic, but after today, and seeing it with my own eyes… I'd like to learn it if possible. How long would it take?"

"It really depends on the person's potential, but learning it isn't dangerous, and success is guaranteed. What is your name?"

"I am Madoka Higuchi." replied the girl.

"I am Sakura Tohsaka. This is a sensitive topic and there's no time for explanations. That will have to wait until after the fight is over. Please follow me into that back alley. I'll first get you to a safe place." nodded Sakura, feeling lucky that she was the one carrying the team's Sanctuary.

The girl, keenly motivated by her recent captivity, the sight of the corpses all around them, and her feeling of helplessness and terror, only hesitated a moment before following her.

…

"The slave will refer to its Owner, Noah, as Master. It will refer to any of its trainers as Mistress." came Ladli's own lust-laden voice through the earplugs filling her ears.

Ladli Ren repeated the sentence, mumbling through the ball gag filling her mouth. After weeks of relentless training, after hearing the commands tens of thousands of times, it became a conditioned reflex, positively reinforced the plugs filling her pussy and ass vibrating with a stronger intensity whenever she repeated the commands.

Back then, she had not understood why Mistress Medb would make her read aloud those messages from the sheet she handed her.

But now, she knew all too well.

Ladli didn't really think of herself as a proud Deva anymore. One who had tried to conquer the world.

It was hard to feel superior when she had been turned into a gimp.

She didn't need to look in the mirror in the corner of the dungeon room to know what she looked like.

From the top of her head to the top of her toes, her body was encased in skintight, shiny black latex. A black latex corset with no fasteners or laces squeezed her waist. It was simply a tube made of thick rubber that she had been made to step into, and it had shrunk around her waist until it reduced her measurement by almost ten centimeters.

Knee high ballet boots made of gleaming black leather encased her feet. They didn't feature any laces or other means of removing them, just like the corset. The boots had just shrunk around her feet and had not relaxed their grip on ever since them.

Her Mistresses, of course, added black leather cuffs around her ankles, currently linked together by a short chain, as it wouldn't do for their plaything to get ideas about them growing complacent with her bondage.

Her arms were similarly confined behind her back inside a tight armbinder made of thicker latex.

The gag and armbinder were often removed only to be replaced by other forms of restraints, but Mistress Medb had made clear that the bodysuit, the hood, the ballet boots and the corset might never be removed, and she should learn to live with them.

The polished steel posture collar around her neck, secured behind her neck by a padlock, and the equally shiny steel chastity belt were the only things she wore that weren't black. A deliberate choice, drawing attention to the fact that she was owned and controlled in the most intimate of ways.

"The slave's pleasure belong to its Master, it is not allowed to cum without permission."

The latex hood stretched over her head was special. It had no eye holes, only one at the rear to let her long gray hair trough, two nostril holes connected to short breathing tubes, and a hole for her mouth. And yet, the Mistresses were able to make it turn transparent when they wanted it.

Being able to see and be seen as anything more than a faceless doll was a privilege she had to work hard to obtain and keep.

Whenever she didn't perform perfectly, Ladli became unable to see anything but darkness, only able to hear the endless messages of submission delivered by the earplugs, only able to smell rubber, and only able to taste the rubber of the various gags that filled her mouth whenever she wasn't fed or used.

And she had grown to love it all.

"The slave loves to please its Master and its Mistresses."

Ladli mumbled again, repeating the message, and being rewarded again.

It was hard to think of anything through the deep, constant fog of arousal. The messages now seemed hallucinated as much as real. Often, right after they ended, she couldn't even tell if they really came from the earplugs or if she was just replaying them from her memories.

She knew that it didn't even really matter anymore.

The messages of submission had been engraved so deep in her psyche by now, that even if the Mistresses were to change their mind and release her, Ladli would be unable to resume a normal life.

"The slave is forbidden ordinary clothes and may only be dressed in latex."

She would immediately seek someone to serve, someone to encase her in tight latex, someone to bind her and control her.

Ladli heard a grunt to her left, and she shuffled to turn, careful to move slowly to avoid making too much noise and waking Mistress Medb. Through the bars of her cage, she could see the two other gimps.

Beatrice was still sleeping, the blonde woman encased just like her in gleaming latex, red in her case. She had been there before her, and Ladli had never seen her display anything but eager obedience to the Mistresses' whims.

The one who had grunted was Yuuma Tokoyogi, Mistress Aya's daughter and the most recent addition to the basement's residents. The young woman, with short brown hair and purple, almost pinkish eyes, had resisted her induction into Noah's harem, and Mistress Aya had decided to make her a purple-colored gimp for a week to give her a new perspective.

Ladli didn't doubt that Yuuma would soon understand that 'volunteering' to become Master's submissive lover was better than being another rubberized, anonymous gimp at the very bottom of the ladder in Master's harem.

Her current position was likely temporary as Mistress Medb hadn't made her record messages of her own. Yuuma would likely become another Mistress to Ladli.

"The slave will always put its Master's needs and wants before its own."

Ladli mumbled again, her train of thought derailed for an instant by the vibrators picking up the pace, and she corrected her thoughts. Being at the bottom of the ladder was actually the best place for a slave like Ladli. She was increasingly satisfied with being a mere possession and shouldn't presume to be a person.

In her pleasure-addled state, all she could think was that she was meant to serve Master and the Mistresses, and she would be satisfied with it.

…

Jinah's phone vibrated and she chuckled, already knowing who was calling and why. She had received the system notification a few minutes earlier. Ladli, the last of the three villains they had been asked to tame, had broken enough to satisfy the quest's condition.

"Hello, Natsuki-sensei! How are you doing?"

"Come down to my apartment immediately!" snapped Natsuki.

"I'm on my way." nodded Jinah. All the girls living in the same building really made things easier.

Jinah reached Natsuki's apartment and knocked on the door. Before it opened, she was joined by Mash and Gudako, who apparently had been summoned as well.

"Is everything alright? You sounded stressed. Oh, and you're using your real body now?" asked Jinah when the door opened.

Natsuki, fuming, didn't answer and grabbed Jinah by the wrist before pulling her inside her apartment. Mash and Gudako followed.

Jinah entered the living room and saw Astarte, still dressed in her maid outfit, stoically standing there while a girl that looked a lot like a younger Natsuki, dressed in a simple black dress, poked her cheek.

"Hi, Astarte." smiled Jinah.

"Greetings, Jinah Goshujin-sama, Mash Goshujin-sama, Gudako Goshujin-sama." nodded Astarte with a small bow.

Natsuki was in the process of teaching her maid etiquette. The Japanese version of it, anyway.

"Hi!" waved the mini-Natsuki.

"Do not play innocent, Jinah! I know you have something to do with this!" coldly replied Natsuki.

"Now what makes you say that?" asked Jinah with a small smile.

"Because you're the living incarnation of chaos? After everything that happened since you girls came to this world, how can I not suspect you? And you're not even trying to deny it!"

"I am not. So, who is this cutie?" grinned Jinah.

"I'm Natsu-Kyun!" cheekily replied the miniature Natsuki with a high-pitched voice and a salute. Where Natsuki's real body looked in her twenty or so, and the mental projection she usually used looed a bit younger, maybe sixteen, Natsu-Kyun had the body of a twelve years old.

"Nice to meet you, Natsu-Kyun! I'm Jinah. Let's be friends!"

"Okay! You have good eyes to have immediately noticed my cuteness. In a few years, I'll be just as sexy and beautiful as my original!"

"Original?" asked Mash, and Natsuki sighed.

"...This girl isn't supposed to be able to exist as anything more than a split personality. I created her a long time ago, by partitioning part of my subconscious. She's a magic construct of sorts."

"She made me because she felt lonely, all alone in the dimensional prison!" claimed Natsu-Kyun with a proud smile. "A magic ritual, and voilà! Natsu-Kyun enters the stage!"

Natsuki rubbed her temples and refused to meet their gazes.

"How did you do it? Can it be reversed?" asked Natsuki with a tone of tested patience.

"No! I don't wanna go to sleep again!" protested Natsu-Kyun.

"As far as I know, it can't be reversed." shrugged Jinah.

"But what about the dimensional prison? Having Natsu-Kyun in the open is one thing. Although I am already regretting not fixing her personality. But who will keep the prisoners from escaping if I can't return?"

"The Gods gave the dimensional prison its own consciousness. It doesn't need a Warden anymore. You're free, Natsuki-chan." smiled Jinah.

"Don't call me with a -chan!" snapped Natsuki by sheer reflex, as her eyes widened.

Freedom? Being able to leave Itogami island? It was something she had sacrificed so long ago that the concept seemed unreal to her.

"Free to go with us when we leave this world, I mean." added Jinah with a smile.

"…Do you plan to train me like you did the others?" asked Natsuki with narrowed eyes.

"Nope." replied Jinah as she shook her head. "It wouldn't work anyway, with you being able to teleport away at any time. I guess I could if you gave me time to put a sealing rune on you, but I'm not going to risk our relationship. Instead, I will count on your self-interest."

"Self-interest?" asked Natsuki and Natsuki-Kyun in sync.

Jinah nodded and sat on Natsuki's sofa to appear less threatening.

"First, you do not necessarily have to share Noah's abilities to go with us, should you wish to. We're friends and we get along well, and there are precedents. For example, there's this whole family from another world that came to Chaldea because some well-connected politicians wanted them dead."

Jinah didn't feel the need to point out that there was actually only one male in the Aoi family and that most of the women had agreed to become Agents. For a second, she wondered if they had already been trained. Probably not. Olga-Marie and some of the other girls at Chaldea might want to let Noah do it himself, and the Pandoras of the Aoi family were plenty strong already.

"Second, you know everything about the abilities Noah shares with us. And more are added from time to time, since he keeps growing stronger. Don't tell me you aren't tempted. Maybe not to the point that you would wish to enter his harem for those alone, but I will add that even setting those aside, Noah is considered a fantastic lover by just about everyone who shared intimacy with him. You would really be missing out if you pass on the opportunity. And if the BDSM aspect turns you off, you can just tell him so and keep things vanilla between you."

Jinah wasn't actually sure that Noah would be satisfied with that, but she didn't see it as a problem. Once Natsuki got hooked to sex with him, she would surely accept to humor him with some light power play, and things would gradually escalate.

"And lastly, you aren't very popular here, miss Witch of the Void." frowned Jinah. "You have plenty of enemies, and now, it's your real body that is on the line."

Natsuki's face twitched. During a previous conversation, she had mentioned being shot in the head by a sniper once. Since it had been her mental projection, a furious Natsuki had simply reappeared near the shooter with a new projection and dealt with him.

"Wouldn't it be nice if Astarte didn't have to make a painful choice and part with someone close to her?" asked Mash with puppy eyes.

Astarte nodded, trying to make her own imitation of puppy eyes at Natsuki.

Natsuki stared at both Jinah and Mash, then sighed.

"That's a low blow, both of you… But you aren't necessarily wrong… I'll think about it. How much time do I have to decide?"

"We haven't found the Demonic Pillar yet, but it probably won't take much longer." nodded Jinah. "Once we do, we'll go kill it, gather everyone, and leave."

"I don't know about the original, but I'll be coming!" exclaimed Natsu-Kyun with eager eyes. "I want to eat plenty of delicious food every day and go on adventures! It will be fun!"

"Yes, you'll be very welcome, Natsu-Kyun." smiled Jinah.

"I'm not doing sex stuff with Noah until I'm grow up, though." added Natsu-Kyun with a thoughtful expression, causing Jinah to blink at her bluntness.

"What are you even suggesting! Of course not!" angrily retorted Natsuki. Then she turned to Jinah, Mash and Gudako, saw their knowing smiles, and her cheeks reddened.

"Don't even think about what you seem to be thinking! I may have created her, but she isn't me, and her thoughts and desires are their own, not mine! I don't want to do… things with Noah!"

"Eheh, my original isn't being honest." chuckled Natsu-Kyun. "She isn't me, but she modeled me after her ideal self, being more outgoing and confident! But we have the same tastes!"

"Not even have a romantic date with him? Maybe watch the sunset together, hand in hand? Eat crepes with him in a parc?" suggested Jinah.

"None of…" started Natsuki, and then she remembered that Jinah and the others could detect lies. With a groan of frustration, she quickly opened a spatial portal to another part of Itogami Island and left.

Jinah chuckled at the closing portal. Convincing Natsuki to follow them would likely prove easier than she thought.

As Gudako and Mash started to chat with Natsu-Kyun and Astarte, Jinah thought about Queen Zana, currently back in the Warlord's Empire. Due to time constraints, they had been forced to release her before they could complete her training, and Zana was still reluctant.

But she wouldn't report it to Ki. And when they left this world, she would follow them out of her own free will. At least, that is what Ki would think.

Zana knew what would happen if she resisted. A fight between Ki and Jinah. A fight that Ki couldn't hope to win.

For his sake, Zana had reluctantly agreed to use the remaining time to make some good memories with Ki, say goodbye properly, and follow them quietly.

Jinah actually felt some regrets about it. It had seemed a good idea at the time, and even now, she couldn't argue that the things Zana would gain, immortality and all that, ultimately outweighed the moral considerations of breaking up the happy couple.

But she should have found a better way to go about it, rather than seizing the first opportunity that came around.

Still, once Zana's training was complete, she would likely agree that it was for the best and maybe forgive Jinah, Mash and Gudako.