You two... have quite the seamless chemistry.
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That night, Mingnan set up an astronomical telescope on the balcony and gazed into the night sky, hoping to find a flying saucer.
Just then, an eerie, ghostly blue light flickered across the heavens.
Mingnan froze for a moment, then his face lit up with wild delight. “A UFO! It’s here! At last, my planet has come to take me home!”
He raced downstairs and ran toward the flying saucer descending through the dark clouds.
“I’m here! I’m here!” Mingnan shouted, waving his arms as he dashed through the streets in the early hours before dawn.
The flying saucer seemed to be “moved” by his enthusiasm. It noticed him and fired a beam of light in his direction.
“Bang!”
At that instant, a man leapt out from the bushes beside the road.
He was powerfully built and wore a black vest. Blue streaks ran through his hair, and an elongated handcuff was fastened around his right wrist. With a single leap spanning more than a dozen meters, he slammed into Mingnan and knocked him aside.
Whoosh.
Under Mingnan’s stunned gaze, the man who had knocked him away fell into the beam. His body rapidly shrank before he was sucked into the flying saucer.
“Vrrrrr…”
The flying saucer disappeared into the distance.
Mingnan spun around and stamped his feet in fury. “You got the wrong person! I’m the one who belongs with you!”
He was livid. That sudden stranger had stolen his chance to return to outer space.
Early the next morning, his mother dragged the glum Mingnan to school.
The captain of the Victory Team had personally visited their home the day before to persuade him to attend classes. If he skipped school again, forcing the captain to make another trip, it would be terribly embarrassing.
When Qi Ming arrived at school and saw that the seat left empty the previous day was now occupied, he gave a slight nod. It seemed he would not need to make a home visit after all.
“Well, well, Mingnan. What brings you to school? Tired of clutching that telescope and staring at the stars?”
As soon as class ended, several students gathered around Mingnan’s desk and began mocking him.
Qi Ming walked over.
“What’s wrong with stargazing? The district chief in my hometown, Chief Sun, enjoys watching the stars after work too.”
“As long as it does not interfere with his duties or cause trouble for anyone else, there is nothing wrong with his hobby.”
Mingnan was deeply moved that his new teacher had spoken up for him.
“Teacher, did you know that I’m actually an alien? A flying saucer came to pick me up last night!”
Qi Ming asked, “Are you sure you really saw a flying saucer?”
Neither the triangular Delta Space Station operated by TPC nor the radar equipped with the Yushima rectifier had detected anything.
But Mingnan had a “history.” In the original story, he really had encountered the UFO of an extraterrestrial invader.
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“Hey, Mingnan. You don’t have to tell everyone about things you dreamed up. You’ll only cause trouble for the teacher,” said a female student named Miri.
“I really saw it! I almost went back with the spaceship!” Mingnan protested, then recounted everything that had happened the night before.
The more Qi Ming listened, the more solemn his expression became.
A beam that could shrink people?
As far as he knew, both Dada from Ultraman and the Crow Men from Ultraman Tiga possessed shrinking ray guns, and both had come to Earth to capture human beings.
And that handcuffed man who had suddenly rushed out and knocked Mingnan away from the shrinking beam…
Why did he sound so much like Zara, the man among the pair of men and women brought to Earth by the Muzhin Alien to be hunted as prey in Episode Fourteen of Ultraman Tiga, “The Exiled Target”?
“Akemi, may I borrow your drawing board?” Qi Ming asked.
“Of course!”
Qi Ming quickly sketched the spinning-top-shaped spaceship used by the Crow Men.
“Was the flying saucer you saw yesterday like this?”
Mingnan nodded frantically. “That’s it!”
Qi Ming then drew Zara, the man whom the Muzhin Alien had treated as prey for sport.
“Was the man who knocked you aside built something like this?”
Mingnan stared in amazement. “Teacher, you’re incredible! You can even draw him from my description!”
After sorting through the clues, Qi Ming roughly understood what had happened.
Even in this fused world, Mingnan—who had once encountered an invading flying saucer in the original Ultraman Leo story—still seemed destined to cross paths with extraterrestrial craft.
This time, he had encountered the Crow Men’s spaceship.
The boy should have paid the price for his “astonishing wisdom”: after being struck by the Crow Men’s shrinking ray, he would have been sealed inside a container and kept as a reserve slave.
But the kindhearted Zara had saved him by taking his place in captivity. That might not have been such a bad thing.
After all, being captured by the Crow Men merely meant lying inside a container as a slave, leaving some hope of rescue or escape.
If he fell into the hands of the Muzhin Alien, he would be dead within minutes.
Qi Ming immediately returned to the offshore base and reported everything in the command room.
Dan Moroboshi was skeptical. “You mean two different kinds of aliens have already invaded Earth? But the radar detected nothing.”
Yamanaka, who had only just been discharged from the hospital, said bluntly, “You actually believe the ramblings of a child who imagines himself to be an alien? The Victory Team has no time to listen to a kid’s dreams.”
It was another day of Yamanaka performing consistently.
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At that moment, Emi, sitting before the computer, wore a strange expression.
“The intelligence department just submitted a new report. Aliens really are hunting human beings.”
She explained that numerous people had gone missing over the past several nights.
One witness claimed to have seen a flash of blue light, after which a man who trained in boxing simply vanished.
Nagi Saijyo nodded. “It seems Officer Qi Ming’s information was correct. An alien race really has appeared and begun abducting Earth’s people on a large scale.”
Qi Ming thought to himself that the timing did not match.
According to Mingnan’s account, the Crow Men’s spaceship had only arrived the previous night, yet the string of disappearances Emi mentioned had already been continuing for several days.
Furthermore, the Crow Men’s shrinking ray did not emit blue light when fired.
After considering the matter for a moment, Qi Ming walked behind Emi and looked at the computer screen in front of her.
“Pull up the list of those who have disappeared over the past few days.”
Emi nodded. Qi Ming scanned the names one after another: the male lead in martial-arts films, a muscular man out for a nighttime run, a thug who had been violently collecting protection money…
And every one of them had vanished after nightfall.
Nighttime. Blue light. The missing people were all unusually strong men.
Once these keywords came together, Qi Ming immediately thought of Abbas from Episode Seventeen of Ultraman Tiga, “The Battle of Red and Blue”—the alien who had come to Earth to capture powerful humans and turn them into soldiers.
Another triple assault!
The first generation of the Kyrieloids had only just perished, and now these three alien races had come to Earth to wreak havoc.
The timing was almost too perfect.
Qi Ming could not help wondering: the universe was so vast, so why were all these aliens rushing to Earth at once?
And in this world, unlike in the original story, they were not arriving one after another in an orderly line. They were charging in all at once, completely disregarding the rules.
Was there something on the Japanese territory of this world that attracted them?
It was like the Sphia Mother in Ultraman Decker, drawn directly down onto a planet.
There had to be a reason for everything. Surely there was a scientific explanation. Perhaps it was “that thing” that had created this bizarre fused world.
If he got the chance, he would have to find an alien and ask.
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