Having been asleep for half an hour, Naota lifted his head from his desk, finally noticing the presence of Haruko and Canti in front of him. What?
Naota was in a classroom after school on a Saturday. He'd been searching for an opportunity to escape so he could skip rehearsal, but he must have fallen asleep at some point. Why are Haruko and Canti here? he wondered.
Holding ukuleles and other stage props, Naota's classmates stood in a semicircle, watching him from a short distance. Among the crowd was Ninamori, who'd stayed over at the Nandaba residence the night before. She wore a foul expression and was glaring at Naota and Haruko.
"Sh-she just smooched him, didn't she?"
"It's a robot!"
"Is someone in it?"
"Who's that lady who smooched him?"
Hearing the voices of his peers, Naota finally grasped the situation. He realized it hadn't been a dream when someone had kissed him, prompting him to touch his cheek instinctively a moment ago. What's going on?
It seemed that Haruko and Canti had come together, Haruko kissing Naota while he was sleeping, with all his classmates watching.
What's going on?
"What are you doing? Here's your lunch," Haruko said as she took the lunchbox Canti had been carrying and offered it to Naota. "Saturday rehearsal, huh? I'm such a good housemaid, aren't I?"
"Ugh, whatever. I'm not doing any dumb rehearsal."
"Well, you still need to eat lunch."
"I don't need it. I'm out of here."
"No, you can't ditch today."
In an overt display of strictness, Ninamori cut in between Naota and Haruko. "Everyone decided this was how we were going to do it!"
Ninamori's voice was loud, but her classmates didn't find it odd that she had reacted so emotionally. No one said anything, although everyone now knew about her father's scandal and had noticed Ninamori was paying more attention to Naota recently.
"I won't let you go," Ninamori insisted, grabbing Naota's arm. That she would do such a thing to prevent him from skipping rehearsal was a reasonable thing for a responsible class president to do.
As for the other students, the question at the moment wasn't whether Naota would skip class, but the identity of the girl who'd kissed him so shamelessly and the story behind the robot she'd brought with her.
"More important, what's with the robot?"
"Isn't that the Vespa girl?"
"No way…"
Haruko and Canti, who'd suddenly appeared in the classroom, made quite an impressive combo. However, Ninamori was blasé about the maid and the TV walkman, having stayed at the Nandabas' house the night before. As Haruko and Canti were familiar characters to her, she was far more stressed over Naota.
"You have to do what we decided!" Ninamori ordered Naota.
"You must be joking! I have things to do!"
"Everyone is coming."
"No one will come to see this play!"
"They will!"
"They won't!"
"I want them to see it!"
"Because you're a show-off!"
"My father and mother are coming to see it together!"
It's so embarrassing, but it makes me happy when Dad and Mom come together to see me, too. Now I see—Ninamori is looking forward to her parents enjoying the play together, Naota thought.
Unfortunately, Naota had already gotten caught up in the emotion of the moment and shouted, "School plays are for kids!"
"You're a kid! You can't even eat spicy foods!"
"Playing a cat is embarrassing!"
Enraged, Ninamori pulled off Naota's hat. "How can you say that when you have a head like this?"
As a result of Ninamori's ruthlessness, everyone got to take a close look at Naota's head, and of course, everyone saw that he had cat ears.
They saw them! Naota thought in horror. Although he'd taken great care to hide them, everyone had found out that he had cat ears growing out of his head. He hoped that if he covered the unsightly things with his hands, no one would believe from merely a glimpse that he actually had cat ears. They all would simply shake their heads, wondering why someone as cool as Naota would want to wear such an ugly hat on his head. They'll think they didn't see properly, Naota assured himself. There was always a way out… always a way out.
In mid-panic, Naota let his mouth get away from him. "You're one to talk. You're the one who rigged the votes so you could play the lead role!"
Ninamori's face froze and turned white.
Within seconds, the classmates' eyes moved from Haruko to Canti to Naota's cat ears, before stopping and staring at Ninamori— or so she felt.
"Argh!" the class president screamed, clutching her head and doubling over.
At the same time, Haruko's chain link that was attached to the bracelet on her left hand started to move, reacting strongly like a magnet, and then pointing toward Ninamori. Haruko's green eyes became unusually serious and had a cruel glint to them.
Ninamori's body started to convulse, and suddenly, all the onlookers noticed a strange change: Her pores started to ooze out sweat before their eyes.
Several girls ran to Ninamori and screamed into her face.
"Eri? Are you okay?"
"Get her to the nurse!"
"Owww!" Ninamori screamed in pain.
Much to her classmates' horror, Ninamori began to transform. Somehow, cat ears suddenly started to grow from Ninamori's head.
"A magic trick?" asked one of the girls who'd rushed over.
The person who was most surprised, however, was Naota. The cat ears that were now growing out of Ninamori's head matched his exactly. But when Naota put his hands to his head, his cat ears were gone.
Meanwhile, at the MM factory, which Ninamori's father had lured to the city back when he was committing fraud, the battle watch commenced once again. It was a Saturday, so there wasn't a single person working in the building. The warning siren blared to no one. In one of the rooms, the host computer started to receive battle reports.
«MMR Class [L].PS, whose appearance was halted at the cranium, has found another exit that has opened at close distance. At short notice, testing the change in approach. 13:13.
In addition, presence of MMR Class [K].001 Atomsk is confirmed at the expected area of emergence. 13:13.
Executing the capture or destruction of [K] 13:13.
Good luck to PS in executing battle strategy. 13:13.»
Ninamori screamed as the insuppressible transformation took over her body.
Not knowing what was going on, her classmates stood there dumbfounded. Only Naota understood what was happening to Ninamori's body.
The spectacle was analogous to seeing a monster jump out of someone's head.
Naota guessed that, at the moment, Ninamori was probably hearing a loud ringing in her ears and was having to deal with the horrible feeling of her own head pulsing. He'd experienced it twice in recent past, after all. The first time, the robot Canti, who was standing beside him, had jumped out; and the second time, the one-armed robot Canti ultimately damaged had jumped out.
Wait, Naota thought. Does this mean a strange robot is going to leap out of Ninamori's head—in the middle of the day, in the classroom?
Ninamori's cat ears were extending up to the ceiling in the form of long metal arms. The bits everyone assumed were ears were actually more like foam pads attached to the tips of the arms. There weren't only two arms, either. Another one resembling the first two had appeared at the back of Ninamori's head, making a total of three.
Each arm bent at the joints, and the suction pads at the ends latched onto the classroom floor. It was very reminiscent of a camera tripod—a gigantic tripod, actually. Ninamori's head attached at the center, where the three legs joined, and her body suspended in midair. Extending from her gym shorts, her long legs didn't touch the floor and were violently kicking the air with all their might.