“Do we have to?” Sunohara Saki looked around like a frightened mouse. For a kid from the Minatonezumi district, Noah had expected her to be more used to crawling where she wasn’t supposed to. Despite this, she whined all the way while Yulka threw them over the barrier and onto the private beach.

“You want EikōBio’s protection, right?” Noah felt the need to remind Saki that there were still people after her life as if the stinging sensation wasn’t enough.

“This is trespassing.” She objected, rubbing her bruised eye. “What if they have a drone watching over this beach? Or a CorpSec squad on standby?”

“Never stopped me before.” Realizing that this did not exactly put him in the best light, Noah quickly added “And the sky looks clear. No drones.” It was getting dark, but they would’ve at least seen a silhouette against the pinkish-orange sky if Genovista had one deployed. 

“Oh, what’s the point!” Saki threw her hands in the air. “KyotoSynth. Genovista. EikōBio. They’ve all probably forgotten about you by now.” Corpos didn’t have short-term memory. No, they were more like carnivores—only expending as much energy on chasing their prey as they had deemed worthy. A lion did not strain itself running after a mouse.

“Don’t care. I am going to get my ‘mimis back.” Tracking through the fine, white sand and towards the shore, Noah took a deep breath of the salty air. “And I only need you here to call Chō.” He added, turning back to Saki once she was by his side. “After that, you’re free to go.”

The both of them just stared at the choppy gray water, standing far enough from it so it did not splash their shoes. Noah fidgeted with the capsule in his pocket, tracing its thin yet hefty shape. 

“Let’s find my megaphone.” Saki's eyes scanned the stretch of beach—a determined face masking her apprehension. 

Noah raised an eyebrow, surprised by the change. "Your megaphone?" He echoed—a hint of amusement in his tone. “Think it's still here?"

“We need to reach out to Chō somehow, right? She may have big ears, but they’re not that big.” Saki explained, putting her hands on her hips. “This is where we first met, so it ought to be here somewhere.” Turning towards him, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

“I haven’t.” How could he? The same sun-bleached EikōBio banner was buried in sand, with only a few letters still legible. He could almost see the outline of Sunohara’s yacht flashing in his mind. Immediately, this string of consciousness resulted in him reminiscing about the time he ate sushi off of her naked body. 

Clicking her tongue, the woman kicked him on the side of his leg. “You were thinking about it, weren’t you!”

“About what?” Noah tried to play dumb, pretending that he was looking over an old bright plastic water cooler. The rectangular stretch of land—gated off on 3 out of the 4 sides—was a scrapbook of filth: aluminum beer cans, plastic containers, and assorted pieces of foil were interspersed within the silicate. 

Noah followed Saki as she began scouring the beach. After a few minutes of searching, she let out an excited squeal, digging up a weathered megaphone. 

"Got it!" The woman exclaimed triumphantly, holding it up for Noah to see. She flashed him a proud smile which turned mischievous. "Now, it's time for some target practice." Noah lowered his eyelids, watching Saki’s finger going down to a half-buried can—the once-white paint with a large yellow star revealing scratches of dull metallic gray. “Gather them up, boy. We’re going to shoot a little—make sure you know how to handle a pistol.” Finding an old, dried log, Sunohara began lining up the cans in a neat line, giving Noah a side-eye when he didn’t immediately start doing the same. 

“Isn’t Yulka going to be worried about us?” He imagined the wolf girl sitting in front of the entrance like an obedient dog waiting for her master.

“It’s fine—it’s fine.” Saki waved him off. “Yulka was a bodyguard, right? And 95% of being a bodyguard is just standing around.”

“Guess so.” Noah conceded, finally joining in the effort of can collecting. Despite the gravity of their situation, there was something oddly calming about the mundane task of setting up targets. It reminded him of being a boy and playing with a cheap BB gun his father had gotten him from a beach-side bazaar. Stub guns were similar in that they also shot round, marble-shaped projectiles. Except instead of being made from soft plastic, these were molded from lead. 

Noah lifted the weapon, feeling its weight. From what Mike had shown him from his concerningly large collection, the new generation of magnetic pistols seemed denser than the old gunpowder ones. He aimed at the line of cans, focusing his gaze on that yellow star. With a steady hand, he squeezed the trigger, feeling the motor whirring to life. Lacking any recoil, a small glinting projectile shot out, barely grazing the edge and only making the target stumble like a drunkard before finally finding its footing again.

“Hold the trigger longer." She commented from the sidelines, looking over the man’s shoulder to see exactly what he was doing wrong. “It will pack more punch if you overcharge it.”

“Doesn’t that break the capacitors?” Noah immediately returned to what might have constituted a firing stance. 

“Sometimes.” She shrugged. “But if you want it to be lethal, you need to risk it. Otherwise, you might as well be shooting an air rifle.” Once again clicking her tongue, he saw Saki resting her head on her palm. “Don’t they teach you self-defense at EikōBio?”

“Believe it or not, I had someone for this kind of stuff.” Noah leaned in again, trying to look down the iron sight. “Koko-” For a moment, his mind went completely blank. He must have pulled the trigger at one point since the can fell to the ground—a newly-created hole now allowing golden light to shine through the broken star. “-handled security.” He forced himself to stutter the rest, feeling the excited Saki wrapping her arms around his shoulder. 

“Nice!” She patted him on the back a little too hard. “Keep going. Remember: there is no recoil. So don’t brace—it’s only going to make you fumble.” Looking down, she noticed Noah leaning like a wet tissue instead of joining her impromptu celebrations. 

He straightened up, clicked the safety on, and placed the gun down. “You mentioned that Mirei and Koko were at the tower, correct?”

“The horse and the fox.” She confirmed, sliding down steel ball bearings—the type you would get at a pachinko parlor—into the magazine. They had fast-loaders, but doing it manually was therapeutic. “Yeah, they’re at the tower. No idea what for.”

“Not your case?”

“In hindsight, they shafted me from all the important stuff after the horse managed to infiltrate the underground market with that pudgy cat.” The word “infiltrate” implied some amount of tact from Mirei and Tanji’s which the pair lacked, but Noah did not want to rub more salt in that wound. “Hope the new guy manages our contacts better than I did.” Although there was an attempt to laugh it off, the actual sound she made was more miserable than endearing.

“So you don’t know why they are there.” Noah tapped his chin. “But if you were to guess?”

Mirroring him, Saki now tapped the gun against her chin. For a woman who knew so much about firearms, her trigger discipline was awful—even he knew as much. Either that or she was too comfortable around those things. “I supposed they’re going to recycle the horse.” She said it so nonchalantly that it took a moment for Noah to register. It would have probably washed over him if she did not care to elaborate. “Scrape her numbers, change some features, put her back into the market.” In nature, most ecosystems are known to be cruel. Namiport—although covered in glass and silicon—was hardly more civilized. 

“And Koko?” It’s not like Noah didn’t care about what Mirei might have been going through, but it was the Kitsune that lingered in his mind—an aftertaste of her ginger hair burning his cortex and leaving him feeling bitter. More than anything, he just wanted closure (but by now, he was willing to settle on excuses and half-truths).

Saki shrugged, her expression unreadable. "Who knows with that fox.” She rose to her feet and began dusting the sand off after handing the pistol back. “Shall we call Chō?”

“Yeah.” Noah gave an automated reply, also now standing up and gripping the gun’s frame. “Let’s do that.”

They walked back towards the shore, leaving some of the cans standing on that dried log like aluminum pillars forgotten by some alien civilization. Along the way, they exchanged their numbers—Noah writing her a message containing the location of the alleged “EikōBio contact.” In reality, it was nothing more than just the address of his old apartment. Mike should be able to stall her for a while. Who knows, the two of them might actually get along.

There was always a certain acidic feeling that came with lying, but Noah managed to swiftly swallow it.  When the cabal first contacted him, the fact that his apartment was so unremarkable—just another brick-shaped building somewhere far enough from the center—made him a promising candidate for holding onto Tanji. So Saki going over to his old place would be a lot safer than just wandering the street or retreating to Renji's bar and bringing both him and Kuu under fire.

Noah turned his head, watching Saki carefully reading over his message—her eyes squinted as if analyzing each symbol of the address. Did she know he was lying? No, surely not. And yet, he could not deny that her inquisitive gaze was alarming, with Rin producing some beta blockers to keep his heart from straining itself for no reason.

“Why do you write everything in katakana?”

“Huh?” Noah stammered. Preparing her words to fly at him like bullets, he didn’t know what to do with…this. 

“It’s just a little hard to read—that’s all.” 

He chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. "Ah, sorry about that. It's just a habit. Makes things look cooler, you know?" Good. She doesn’t suspect a thing.

“Cooler?“ Saki was unconvinced, lowering her eyebrows. At least she was unconvinced about something so trivial rather than the fact that he was lying through his teeth. “Looks like you're shouting."

“I can just write in English.” Actually, that would’ve been a lot more convenient. 

The sound of water splashing against his feet and the damp feeling of his socks getting wet brought Noah back to the present. The air seemed somehow more tactile as he stared at the setting sun. 

“Ready?” Saki placed one hand on his shoulder while bracing the megaphone in the other like a weapon. With what they were about to unleash, it might as well have been.

“Ready.”

Saki nodded, smacking her lips and raising the megaphone to her mouth. With a glance at Noah, she took a step forward. "CHŌ!" She bellowed, her metallic voice dancing across the water. Gritting his teeth, Noah cursed himself for not covering his ears earlier. 

Watching the whale girl rise was like observing a resurfacing submarine. Her eyes—those with black sclera and two white irises—were once again covered by her soaked raven-colored hair, with Chō shaking off bathtubs worth of water. She didn’t rise very far, only poking a part of her head above the waves like a periscope.

“This is Noah! He’s a friend! You can trust Noah!” Sunohara explained, now shoving the megaphone into his hands. Noah looked at the device, going through half-rehearsed speeches in his mind. Chō looked to be a very polite young lady—examining the pair of insect-sized people on the beach with her hands tucked in like a kid waiting for her turn to speak. But even if she might have been patient, this surely caught the attention of the onlookers. Even those who couldn’t begin comprehending what was going on must’ve seen the Aqua Femme titaness; she wasn’t hard to miss. 

If he wanted to act, he needed to act now.

“I need your help.” Noah spoke into the megaphone, with the device screeching before amplifying his mumbles. He stumbled back as the woman pulled herself onto the beach, resting her huge breasts in the sand while squinting down at him. The whale girl—their pudgy siren—looked a lot like some ancient depiction of an aquatic fertility goddess: so soft and jiggly that he just wanted to give her a big hug (although his arms couldn’t even wrap around her fingers).

Noah took a deep breath, steadying himself under the intense gaze. "I really—really need your help." He repeated, explaining everything in excruciating detail with just a little exaggeration here and there. Chō winced—her eyes widening and narrowing as the story unfolded. Making this poor girl look like she was about to cry reminded him of Tamiko, but that only strengthened his resolve. 

Chō pushed her chest out, creating breast-shaped craters within the sand while shifting a good portion of the entire beach a few feet back. She didn’t do that out of any sense of malice, but rather determination. “Chō will help!” The girl asserted, raising her voice ever so slightly. It was deep, yet soft—powerful, yet gentle. “Chō will help friend!”

“You could get hurt.” Noah admitted. It was easy lying to Sunohara, but something resembling a paternal instinct now sparked up within him. He tried to skirt around using the word “died,” but something told him that the whale girl understood the situation. Besides, if all went well, he would need to worry about everyone in Namiport except Chō.

“Chō will get the kitty back.” The giantess clenched her fists—each likely having enough strength to crush industrial equipment. Good. That’s what Noah man was banking on. “Master told Chō: ‘Do good deeds. When you die, you will go to heaven. Until then, keep doing good deeds.’” Nodding her head extremely quickly, she basked the shore in a self-made downpour. “Chō will help!” She repeated, demonstrating her resolve. 

“Thank you.” Reaching into his pocket, Noah took out one of the transformation capsules. A grin appeared across his lips. “Catch!” He called out, hurling it underhand. Chō scuttled to seize the miniature orb, but he knew that her fingers wouldn’t be able to grasp what to her appeared like a plastic grain of sand. Instead, it landed in the water with a PLOP as the programmed transformation began. For once, he could see someone else going through it.

Yulka sat with her back against the cold metal fence. It creaked and rattled with each tiny movement. Her wolf-like ears twitched at the faintest rustles—their senses heightened. But each time, it was just a false alarm: a gust of wind or a pair of stray cats darting across the path. 

Maybe she could’ve caught one of them as a replacement for Tanji. 

By now, she was so bored that her mind began coming up with hypotheticals like a computer putting on a screensaver. Letting out a growl of frustration, her tail flicked restlessly behind her, sweeping the ground like a broom

“Siekiera, motyka—baba goła. Sunohara—to pierdoła.”

She sang through half-clenched teeth just to keep herself sane, looking up at the gray sky and pressing her legs together. 

“Siekiera, motyka—małpi wuj! Sunohara—to jest-!”

Before she could finish, there came the sound of sloshing liquid from behind, making Yulka jump to her feet. Angry waterfalls approached her followed closely by pulsating earthquakes. It seemed like Mother Nature herself was finally returning to the city. 

Yup. Without a doubt, this was Mother Nature. Yulka could even see her pussy while looking up—two pillars of pale flesh that were her thick legs looming on either side of her while a large, round belly hung from her waist. It cast an enormous shadow that blacked out the setting sun.

So this was their “direct approach?"