While all six of Michael’s Companions were ‘female’, that didn’t mean that they ‘menstruated’ like humans. Sarah and Alice laid unfertilized eggs monthly, Jasmine created copious amounts of pink ‘slime’ monsters seemingly at random, and Talia would have muscle spasms or intense headaches occasionally.

Ever since Elina evolved into an Angel, she no longer experienced human-like menstruation. As for Inari, it was debatable if she was even actually ‘female’, since she was a shapeshifter. Even if she was confined to a singular form, it was more likely for her to simply go into heat yearly.

However, while the little boy appeared as ‘Michael’ and was being controlled mostly by him, ‘it’ was still Minari Sarina Jalicia. He grumbled “Ugh, for fuck’s sake~! I feel like Ally really failed to mention the downfall of fusing our bodies together like this!”

“How was I supposed to know what was going to happen? Ow, shit, well, hopefully you won’t have to deal with ‘my’ burden. I mean, my eggs are usually way bigger than your torso could possibly handle…” A deep and raspy, feminine voice echoed from deep within his mind.

The lights flickered and suddenly exploded, as Michael roared “Grah~?! Kitty-nipple-sauce! Agh~! Ally~, you should just go back into the Soul Realm! I don’t want you to have ta feel this shit!”

Vines burst out of his arms, back and chest, piercing through the metal walls, while that singular golden eye seemed to ‘absorb’ the light and transform it into mana. He grumbled “Damn it! Why is this happening right now?!”

Actually, Minari didn’t ‘need’ to menstruate and ‘it’ definitely evolved past the point of producing waste. The reason why their body was suffering so much was because of the nanites that were waging war against their immune system. Not only that, but the lack of mana in the environment was a major detriment to their physical health.

Fortunately, Michael didn’t take too long to realize the problem. He gritted his teeth tightly and pulled out a copper coin. The moment that it appeared, the third eye and those vines swiftly locked onto it. Grimacing, he opened his mouth and placed the piece of metallic mana onto his tongue.

He could instantly feel the refreshing and exhilarating sensation of having a million mana-points coursing through his brain. After that initial burst of energy, he then experienced a serene and calming sensation.

All of the vines contracted back inside of his flesh and disintegrated into Nature mana. His forehead closed up and the third eye transformed into ‘Light’ aura that was sucked into his Soul Realm.

As for the slimes and spiders, they had already been flushed down the toilet, so there was nothing he could do about them anymore. Michael murmured “It’s weird that none of the alarms went off… Oh, maybe my little power surge and brownout caused some sort of malfunction? Either that, or Arcana might be helping me out for some strange reason…”

Alice snickered, “Dude, you should’ve just asked me for a freaking mana potion, or a pill… or an injection. I know how much you hate smoke, so I won’t even mention the mana-weed… Although~, Talia did cook some ‘mana-brownies’ the other day, heh-heh-heh~.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way Ally, but I don’t wanna get addicted to your ‘potions’… Well, whatever, if you really wanna use this body to get high or drunk, I wouldn’t care that much. My only rules are… no cheating. Like, our seven-person fuckfest is already complicated enough; no more additions to the harem. I mean, I’m always horny and between the seven of us, we can pretty much cover every possible fetish I can think of… Anyway, it’d be weird and probably bad for ‘me’ to hog our corporeal form, hehehe~. So~, we should alternate every now and then, but for the moment, I think I should keep piloting the meat-suit for a little while longer. At least until we manage to get ‘settled’ into our new home a bit.” Michael was speaking within his mind and even projecting into their conjoined Soul Realm, so that everyone could hear. Then he stood up, about to use toilet paper to wipe the slime away, but quickly discovered that there was none.

However, the reason was that those nanites in the air, would quickly destroy fecal matter by transforming it into useable energy and storing it inside of their nano-crystal mana-batteries. They didn’t just do that for the bathroom, but everywhere throughout New Tokyo.

Human waste was always broken down, although manure was still useful as fertilizer. It all depended on the circumstances; of course, there were ‘bugs’ in the programming and ‘accidents’ did occur, but people were too afraid to complain.

Those tiny robots were coursing through their veins, settled into their vital organs, all around them, within their brains and it was impossible to ‘fight’ something like that. Even most Psychers would find it nearly impossible, and magical beasts would be incredibly vulnerable as well.

Ironically, in order to remain ‘human’ in a world that was filled with mana, the citizens of New Tokyo were slowly ‘evolving’ in a different direction. Regardless, once someone entered those walls, it was already too late for regrets.

Of course, Michael was an anomaly. Not only did the nanites fail to overpower his immune system, they were eventually ‘consumed’ and some of them were even repurposed. It was as if they were recognizing him as one of ‘them’ or perhaps more like a swarm of wasps submitting themselves to their ‘Queen’. They were mindless drones on their own, but as long as he wanted them to do something, they would be incredibly useful.

***

Hiro was finished with the urine test, shower and he was already inside of the ‘locker room’ by the time the lights started flickering. He heard some screaming and felt a wave of fear rushing over him, but then everything seemed to go back to normal.

While putting on his dark-blue skinny-jeans, he muttered “Why haven’t there been any alarms? Maybe Minari really is… some kind of kami-sama?” He put on a white tank-top and then wore a flannel jacket over that. Then he sat down on a metal bench near his locker and started putting on his obnoxiously bright yellow socks. His shoes were literally green sneakers that glowed in the dark.

The room was rather large, because it had been designed to cater to at least one-hundred ‘security officers’. Unfortunately, since they had a ‘voluntary’ military force, there were no more than two or three guards stationed at every checkpoint across the huge pykrete wall.

In a city of millions, there were only around ten-thousand soldiers and officers in total. However, there were nearly seventy-thousand ‘mercenaries’ and ‘adventurers’ who would offer their services in the event of an emergency. For the most part though, the automated sentry turrets and remote controlled drones are able to deal with most threats before they even make it near the walls.

If something was able to sneak inside, the nanites would typically be even more lethal than bullets or bombs. They could potentially ‘deconstruct’ nearly anything rather swiftly. Powerful beings would be able to resist, but they would be severely weakened and suppressed.

Overall, New Tokyo was relatively safe from the chaotic environment that plagued the rest of the world. At least, that’s the ‘official’ story; the truth was that plenty of other places existed on the planet, where people were able to live fairly peacefully.

The Vampire Alliance did have some dangerous inner demons like Joseph Cain, but he was a necessary evil. His personal power was the only reason that he wasn’t condemned and either banished or executed by the other members of the coalition.

Beatrix, or The Ace of Spades, was currently leading her own organization: The Guardians. They were a military force that had ties in every continent and with two ‘Seeds’ in their possession, they were certainly one of the most powerful existences on the planet. Fortunately, they weren’t very overbearing and unless provoked; they tended to avoid direct confrontation with other groups.

Zombies United was exactly what it sounded like: An entire country filled with nothing but undead. They mostly stayed within Canada and the Great Lakes region, though they did have territories in Russia, Alaska, Scandinavia and Greenland. They were relatively aggressive and while their overall population of three-hundred million seemed excessive, they were spread out over a very large amount of land. Most importantly, the majority of the ‘people’ in that particular nation were literal and metaphorical zombies, without the ability to think for themselves. Thus, the ‘actual’ population was less than nine-hundred thousand. Each ‘sentient’ being possessed a horde, which they used for anything from construction, to full-blown war.

Forewarning was an adventuring ‘guild’, which focused entirely on conquering dungeons and ignored everything else. They called themselves “RL PVE-ers”, though they did engage in conflicts with other adventurers… quite often. Their leader was a brutal dictator known as ‘Bunny’. Although she didn’t possess a ‘Seed’, she still had an extraordinarily large amount of Legacy equipment. There was a time when Butter and ‘Dalthis’, along with several other terrifyingly powerful figures were in the guild. Unfortunately, once Bunny became a ‘manaholic’, things became a little tense.

Demon Lords was an organization that appeared in the wake of the ‘Armageddon Tsunami’ in Japan, before Michael had turned into an ice-sculpture. It was started by their leader ‘Tentacle-sama’, who used his gigantic octopus-body to save an entire anime convention from drowning to death. Regardless of their oppressive name and the fact that most of their members were actual monsters, they were fairly peaceful. Most of them lived on the back of a colossal turtle, which swam around the world constantly.

As for Angelic Rebellion, they weren’t very hostile either. Their ‘rebellion’ was more-so against the magical-beasts and general chaos that afflicted the planet. They tended to go around, attempting to prevent small villages and towns from being destroyed by bandits, undead, demons, monsters and even nature itself.

Regardless of how bad it seemed at first glance, even during the Apocalypse, the world was still there. People were managing to survive and sometimes even thrive. It’s not as if cataclysmic events had never happened before then. Humanity had nearly been extinguished on many occasions… but there are some things that cannot be fought nor stopped.