"Alice. Is that your mother's nightgown?"
"Mhm. Mama's getting up there, but she's still got a girlish streak. She steals my dresses all the time, so it's only fair I steal hers, right?"
"And her perfume?"
"Don't you like it? Now then, Makoto, just leave little Alice to Auntie..."
"...No. Please don't start talking like your mother."
"How rude! Call me Auntie! Auntie's tired, go fetch my foot bath!"
Watching Alice descend fully into character, Makoto grabbed her and tossed her onto the bed.
"Ow! So rough, Makoto! How dare you treat your mother-in-law this way! I'm not letting you see Alice anymore!"
"Leonora. On your knees. I'm in a mood."
Alice's eyebrow arched. She reached for the zipper with a theatrical flourish, pulling it down with a deliberate zzzzip, and arranged her face into an expression of wide-eyed alarm.
"My! Soe, it's been ages since you were this intense! Did you stop taking your pills?"
Makoto stared at her.
She's really committed to this bit, isn't she?
...
...
The Nakiri mansion had excellent soundproofing. What it didn't have was soundproofing rated for Alice's 120-decibel soprano, or for the rhythmic percussion of a headboard battering a wall.
Leonora Nakiri was keeping vigil at her husband's grave. For the next few days, the only people left in the house were Senzaemon Nakiri, Erina, and Erina's secretary Hisako Arato.
On the first night Makoto stayed over, Senzaemon retreated to his office at the academy.
That left only Erina and Hisako in the building, aside from the two animals upstairs.
Alice's vocal performance, accompanied by an unrelenting wall-banging backbeat, made sleep impossible. Both girls lay in their beds, wide awake and furious.
"Erina-sama, maybe I should find somewhere else to sleep?"
Hisako was an inexperienced girl herself. This kind of stimulation was more than she could handle.
"No!" Erina's teeth ground together. "If I leave, it looks like I'm running. This is my house. My house!"
She knew Alice better than anyone. That insufferable cousin was screaming loud on purpose, making sure every note traveled down the hallway.
All the more reason not to retreat. She'd be damned before she showed weakness.
Hisako looked helplessly at her fuming mistress while the sounds from upstairs showed no sign of stopping.
Two minutes later, Hisako stood up, her face scarlet. "Erina, I... I need to use the bathroom."
Once she was alone, Erina's hand drifted downward before she could stop herself.
Several days later. The Moon Banquet Festival at Totsuki Culinary Academy.
For one day each year, the academy threw open its gates, welcoming the public to a campus-wide celebration. Every student could apply for funding and set up a food stall anywhere on school grounds, though the prime locations had already been claimed by the Elite Ten and the most popular clubs. It was a chance for every aspiring chef to showcase their craft to the outside world. Students with real talent often received job offers from famous restaurants and hotels before they'd even graduated.
Those who failed to turn a profit faced a different outcome.
Expulsion. Expulsion. Expulsion.
Totsuki's favorite hobby.
This year's festival, however, was unmistakably different from any that had come before.
The usual flood of visitors poured in. Star students like Eishi Tsukasa, Rindo Kobayashi, and Erina were all hard at work, their stalls laden with masterfully prepared dishes. But out of the hundreds of thousands of people who'd entered the grounds, not a single person dared pick up their chopsticks.
Because the banner hanging above the school gates read:
CONGRATULATIONS TO LORD NISHIKADO ON HIS ASCENT AS KING OF THE WORLD
Every visitor who read it stopped dead.
What does that even mean?
It didn't take long to find out. Students like Soma Yukihira and Ryo Kurokiba explained it freely: nobody was allowed to eat until Makoto returned from conquering America.
The freeloaders who'd come hoping for a meal, Kogoro Mouri and Miyuki Shirogane's father among them, went slack-jawed.
Conquering... America?
Is this a joke?
While everyone stood around in stunned confusion, a shriek pierced the air.
"Waaah! What is that thing?!"
Dio Shirogane's expression shifted. He recognized the voice. His precious daughter.
"Kei!"
He and Miyuki rushed toward the sound. They found Kei and her best friend Moeha Fujiwara gaping up at a nearby tree, along with everyone else in the vicinity. Clinging to the trunk was a figure with impossibly long arms and a hunched, stooping back.
"Is that... an orangutan?" Miyuki blurted.
The figure turned.
Its face nearly made Kei and Moeha burst into tears. The skull was broad and flat, the brow ridge grotesquely pronounced, the eye sockets cavernous. Two bulging eyes protruded unnaturally from the sockets. The nose and mouth jutted forward in the unmistakable prognathism of a primate, and the ears tapered to points. It was, in every structural detail, the face of an ape.
Except for one thing. The skin was smooth. Hairless as a human's. The dissonance was nauseating, an uncanny valley made flesh.
Even veterans of multiple Reincarnation Games, Hachiman Hikigaya and Yukino among them, felt their skin crawl.
"What on earth is that?"
Erina, who'd been waiting at the gate with her grandfather to welcome Makoto, staggered backward. She'd witnessed the terror of the Gun Devil firsthand, and this thing still made every hair on her body stand on end.
"My name is Charlie." The creature dropped from the tree, landing in a crouch. Its spine curved like an ape's, its elongated arms dangling almost to the ground. Dull eyes swept across the food stalls. "That's the only thing I remember. Everything else is gone."
"Where did you get those clothes?" Senzaemon's face darkened.
Everyone noticed it at the same moment. The monkey-creature was wearing a Totsuki Academy uniform.
A security guard came sprinting up, gasping. "Director! We found a student's body in the rear vegetable garden!"
Every pair of eyes swiveled back to the uniform on the creature's body. The connection was immediate. Expressions hardened across the crowd.
Hachiman pulled Saika Totsuka behind him. Ai Hayasaka stepped in front of Kaguya Shinomiya.
The thing reminded them all of the crab-monster from before, though if they were being honest, the crab had been far easier on the eyes.
"Why so angry?" Charlie's face showed nothing. "Because I killed that human?" Without waiting for an answer, those flat eyes drifted back to the stalls and their tantalizing displays. "Chicken. Beef. Pork. Fish."
A pause.
"I have a question. Why is it that only humans can't be killed and eaten?"
Silence.
"You've killed so many animals to eat. Why should anyone be upset that I killed one human?"
The crowd froze. A collective system crash.
A few seconds later, a figure strode out and planted herself beside the creature. "He's right! What humans do is wrong!"
All eyes turned to her. She was aggressively plain, the sort of face that vanished in a crowd, but her expression radiated righteous indignation.
"Who is this person?" Moeha Fujiwara was lost. Setting the monkey-thing aside for a moment, was this woman out of her mind? Literate or not, anyone who spoke the language should know better than to agree with that.
"Who is this person?" Another voice, this one right beside Moeha.
The youngest Fujiwara sister turned and her face transformed. "Makoto-senpai!"
Beside Makoto, Nayuta, Megumi Kato, Yu Ishigami, and the others studied the bizarre pair in the center of the crowd with narrowed eyes.
"Another mutant, like the crab-creature?" Ran Mouri guessed.
"Then let's take it out. Right, Ran?" Sonoko Suzuki suggested.
Ran's brow creased. In truth, she'd rather not. The monkey-thing was revolting. As a close-combat specialist, the idea of touching it made her skin crawl.
"Don't you dare!" The woman threw her arms wide, shielding Charlie. Her voice rang with conviction. "He's absolutely right! Humanity shouldn't be so selfish! We need to liberate..."
Bang.
She never finished. Yu Ishigami's arms had already shifted into gun barrels, and a burst of fire punched a hole clean through her stomach.
"Don't dirty Senpai's ears," Ishigami said, his face blank.
Everyone, especially the Shuchiin Academy middle schoolers, stared at the gun that had replaced his left hand.
That's... the power Ishigami awakened?
Students like Kyoko Otomo, the ones who'd once mocked and bullied him, went white as chalk. They'd heard rumors that Ishigami had gotten close to Makoto Nishikado, but none of them had believed he could actually manifest abilities.
Every kid who'd ever given him grief in middle school felt their knees begin to shake.
Ishigami wouldn't... come looking for payback. Would he?
"Eat up," Makoto said.
The words had barely left his mouth when the Libido at his feet swelled to the size of a lion and lunged, clamping its jaws over the woman's upper half in one bite. From out of nowhere, a fanged orangutan, a dolphin, a rabbit, and other warped creatures materialized, and within seconds the body had been stripped to nothing.
Kei Shirogane, Moeha Fujiwara, and the other younger girls went pale, but having already witnessed Makoto's rampage through central Tokyo, they'd built up just enough tolerance to stay conscious.
The four fiend-beasts ringed Charlie, licking human blood from the corners of their mouths, eyes alight with hunger.
"You asked why only humans can't be eaten, didn't you?" Makoto's lips twisted into a thin smile. "Here's your answer: there's nothing that can't be eaten. As long as you've got the strength, you're welcome to eat me. Law of the jungle, right?"
He had zero interest in debating sociology or anthropology with this thing. It wouldn't understand anyway.
"I've learned that logic is dull and tedious. Let's use violence instead."
He flicked his wrist, signaling the fiend-beasts to stand down, and crooked a finger at the monkey-creature. "Come."
Feeling the pressure of four devils at his back, Charlie clenched his fists, bared a mouthful of fangs, and launched himself at Makoto with a guttural howl.
He lasted one second. The ape-fiend behind him shot out an enormous hand, snatched him from mid-air, and bit down on his right leg, tearing it free with the casual efficiency of someone pulling apart a chicken drumstick.
Makoto reached over and covered Moeha Fujiwara's eyes, watching the scene with a pleasant smile.
Blood sprayed.
Charlie screamed, thrashing in agony and rage. "AAAAAAGH!"
Makoto's smile didn't waver. He tapped his temple. "Hmm? Was that underhanded of me? Then let me teach you something, monkey. Intelligence. That's human evolution."
"All right. Finish him."
On his command, the Libido-devil, dolphin-devil, and rabbit-devil reached out in unison. They tore Charlie apart, limb from limb, and devoured every piece while his screams still echoed.
"M-My apologies, Lord Nishikado." Senzaemon hurried forward, bowing low. "Our security failed to keep that thing out. I'm sorry you had to witness such an eyesore."
Makoto waved it off with a faint smile. He hadn't expected a character that repulsive from his past life to show up here of all places. Being able to put it down was an unexpected bonus.
If it had been someone like Makoto Ito, Suguru Kamoshida, or trash of that caliber, he wouldn't have minded keeping them alive a while longer and taking his time. But for something like Charlie, he didn't want the creature drawing breath for a single extra second.
Every moment I spend looking at that face takes a year off my life.
He glanced around at the fragrant stalls lining the grounds. "Is everything ready?"
"Yes!" Soma Yukihira, Terunori Kuga, and the others nodded eagerly.
Makoto checked the clock tower on the main building. "Right. It's 8:57. I'll wrap up America before nine and be back for breakfast."
Even the people who'd witnessed him annihilate two destroyers with a perfect Susanoo gaped at this.
He's planning to defeat the most powerful nation on Earth... in three minutes? What's next, conquering the moon?
Moeha Fujiwara's eyes were practically dripping with infatuation. Everything about Makoto had already checked every box on her list of ideal traits. The way he'd shielded her eyes from the bloodshed a moment ago had pushed her admiration higher still. And now, watching him treat the entire United States like a speed bump... she was gone.
Makoto paid the stares no mind. He placed a hand on Yu Ishigami's shoulder.
Both of them vanished.
The crowd exchanged bewildered looks.
A moment later, Sonoko Suzuki, Hina Ebina, and the other players who hadn't gained powers pulled out their phones. Classmates crowded around for a look. On-screen was a livestream.
Kouta Hirano, the resident military otaku, read the title and nearly choked. "That's... Fort Bragg! One of the largest military bases in the United States! Over 260,000 personnel, airborne divisions, operational combat core!"
Before he'd finished, Makoto reappeared. This time he cupped Reze's face in his hand. She gazed up at him with open devotion.
They vanished together.
Sonoko's screen split in two: Ishigami on the left, Reze on the right.
Hirano checked his own phone. "Fort Hood! The U.S. Army's largest armored base! Primary training and deployment center for armored and mechanized infantry!"
Makoto flickered back again. Then again. Then again.
Utaha Kasumigaoka. Megumi Kato. The Akizuki sisters. Beam. One after another, each teleported away.
Hirano rattled off the names of American military installations like a sports commentator, his voice climbing with every reveal.
Last of all, Makoto took Nayuta's hand and landed on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. He settled himself on top of the newly rebuilt Statue of Liberty's crown, pulled out his phone, and opened the livestream.
"Two and a half minutes left. Good luck, everyone."