"I'll be going now, Mimi. Be sure to contact me right away if that guy does something that makes you cry, okay? I'll make sure he gets what's coming to him."
"Ahaha… I'll be fine. Hiro-sama treats me very well."
"Hmph… I really wanted to take you with me though."
I waved at Granny Serestia who was glaring at me, hoping that she'd hurry up and leave already.
She seemed to have been satisfied after talking with Mimi and the rest of the crew members and told us she'd be leaving, so we all went down to the hotel lobby to see her and her crew off. Oh c'mon Granny. I've come all the way here to see you off, so could you hurry up and get outta here already? Well, it looks like my feelings were properly conveyed to her since Granny Serestia finally headed toward the hotel entrance–
"Oh, right."
–But before she took a step outside of the door, she suddenly turned back toward me while acting like she just remembered something.
"There are actually some other rats snooping around you aside from us. So make sure to keep your guard up."
"Eh...? Ugh. Gimme me a break already."
Finding out that there's more trouble coming our way the moment I thought everything was resolved already wasn't funny at all man.
"Was the public order of this colony always this bad?"
"It should be relatively decent, but..."
Even Dr. Shouko displayed a bitter smile after hearing Granny Serestia's info. It's not something that will get solved by just smiling wryly though. In any case, we need to find out who exactly was sniffing around, what their purpose was, and deal with them accordingly.
And this had to happen just when we had to stay in this colony for an extended period because we can't stay inside the Lotus. We only had to pay attention and be careful whenever we needed to go outside if we were staying on the ship, and we could always activate the energy shields if push comes to shove. And even if enemies did manage to invade the ship, we still had combat bots to deal with them.
"Well, I guess we just need to go with our current countermeasures... In any case, Igasek will protect us until the renovation of the Black Lotus is complete, and this hotel should have pretty good security measures as well, since it's pretty high-end."
"You're so easygoing... Don't do something stupid like going off on your own to check things out and messing up, y'hear?"
"I'm no bloodthirsty berserker, so I ain't gonna go that far. I'm not that free."
"You just wanna get spoiled by the women around you, right?"
"It's much more worthwhile than rushing into danger. That's just common sense. I prefer not getting caught up in any troublesome stuff. It would be best to brush off and snuff out falling sparks before they cause a fire."
Even though I seem to have a tendency to easily attract trouble, I still wouldn't go out of my way to purposely poke my head into that stuff. I've only ever been caught up in trouble and didn't go looking for it of my own volition after all. I didn't really go looking for trouble myself... right? Uh, let's just stop thinking about this too deeply. Yeah.
"How pathetic... Are you really okay with this guy, Mimi? Won't he bring in a lot more women at this rate?"
"It's okay. I'll make sure to get along with all of them!"
"That's what she said. It's fine if you don't overdo it, but don't ever make her cry, y'hear? That's if you don't wanna get your balls ripped off and vaporized with a laser gun."
"You really say some crazy scary stuff, Granny... I'll pay close attention to make sure that doesn't happen."
"Hmph... Let's get going, you two."
"Gotcha Boss. See you again, Bro."
"Bye bye."
Nicholas lightly bowed his head toward us while Lattice waved at us in farewell before leaving together with Serestia. Will we actually meet again in the future? I had a funny feeling we actually will. That old lady, apart from being on the same category of a pain in the behind as that damn emperor, apparently liked to freely travel around lots of places. I'm sure she'll bring some sort of trouble our way sooner or later.
"Man, I'm sure glad everythin' ended peacefully."
"It actually didn't end peacefully at all..."
As soon as Serestia left, I retorted to the remark of Tina who'd gotten dressed in casual clothes and nabbed herself some booze. Or rather, all of the girls were now wearing casual clothes.
"Are we just gonna stay and relax inside our room today?"
"It's true that there might still be people sniffing around, but it's not like it's necessary for us to go out there and deal with them."
Elma handed me a bottle of soft drink while saying so. That's certainly true. If one can really avoid trouble by staying indoors, then one should just do so. Fortunately, we're quite used to staying indoors a lot, so we weren't really bothered by this sort of situation. Well, the same can be said for all the people who live in outer space in this dimension though – in space colonies and the like.
"That's right. Let's just watch some holo-movies while drinkin' booze."
"I also think it's important for us to have relaxing breaks like this, Big Brother. We'll get worn out easily if we're always on edge."
"I have a feeling you girls are only acting like this so you can drink booze to your heart's content though?"
"That's just your imagination."
Elma half-forced me to sit on the sofa, and she herself sat down beside me. Wiska sat on the opposite side, and Tina sat on top of my lap. What the heck? I was now surrounded by the drunkard trio.
"It'll be my turn later, Sis."
"And I was hopin' you wouldn't remember Whee."
"Mou."
Wiska and Tina started messing with each other like usual. By appearance alone, they looked like children playing around, but they were actually both adult women of drinking age casually chugging alcohol. It's fine if you frolic about like that, girls. But make sure not to spill your drinks.
"Let's go and play, Kuu-chan!"
"Yes, Mimi-san."
Recently, Mimi has taken to calling Kugi the nickname 'Kuu-chan'. It seemed like the two of them have been gradually getting closer to each other. Since the two of them took out tablet terminals, I suppose they were gonna play some sort of battle game.
"Oh, this sure looks interestin'."
"What is?"
"It's a movie about monitorin' a man-eatin' mascot robot workin' part-time at a fast food restaurant prowlin' about late at night."
"Is the genre supposed to be horror...?"
"That kind of mascot should usually have been scrapped already though."
"Yer just no fun sometimes, neesan."
"A normal company wouldn't make a mascot robot like that, so it must have been built by a third-rate underground engineer. Maybe it was even built by pirates?"
Wiska pondered over the mystery while looking at the synopsis and the preview images shown on the holo-display. If Wiska's logic was applied, the movie would be about a twenty-four-hour illegal robot extermination marathon or something like that.
Anyway, we did pay them quite a bit of cash, so it's only right for Igasek to work hard while we're taking it easy like this. However, I once again had no idea what or who the ones snooping around were... The only thing that came to mind right now were the people involved in 'creating' Dr. Shouko, but that's a story from a long time ago already. I wonder what we're gonna find out later.