Harem Hero

Three of a Kind

When you open your eyes sometime later, you are not greeted with the pearly white gates of whatever afterlife awaits beyond mortality. Rather, instead, you see something much more interesting. Nana is hovering over you with tears in her eyes. Before you can get your bearings, she leaps on top of you and starts trying into your chest. Lala, Momo and Mitsuru are all looking down on you from above.

"Uh, what happened?"

Mitsuru pinches the bridge of her nose, "Honestly, I can't believe you. It's lucky that I successfully finished creating an antidote to their agent before it reached your brain stem and killed you for good. Your cute little heroic sacrifice nearly ended with you being buried six feet under."

Momo and Lala look very sheepish about the entire thing; the carefully pieced-together plan they shared with you was in tatters now. It never even got the chance to get off the ground, since you passed out before they could implement it.

"Hey – I wasn't going to let Nana choke to death on whatever that stuff was."

Mitsuru is withering, "I do believe that their constitution is significantly hardier than that of a human being. A brief exposure to the agent would be significantly less damaging to them than us."

"Still, Nana got pulled here against her will. I'm not going to let her get hurt for my own sake."

"I-Idiot!" Nana bawls into your chest, "Do you have any idea how sad everyone would have been if you died?"

Now this is a change to her usual tsundere act...

Lala and Momo give you a pair of wolfish grins as their sister continues to cry angrily, lavishing you with as many insults as she can possibly come up with. Most boil down to you being an idiot, moron, fool or pervert – and even combinations of all four. It looks like your display of ignorant heroism finally caused the dam to break. At least until Nana becomes aware of how much of a scene she's making. You've never seen her move so fast as she dries her eyes with her sleeve and leaps back to her feet, arms crossed and nose turned up into the air.

You're back in the garage, and still in one piece at that.

You sit up on the couch and groan as the dryness of your throat becomes achingly apparent. A single glass of water is handed over, but it does little to assuage the chemical burns that have been left in the back of your windpipe. You feel like utter shit. It's slightly worrying that this is becoming a regular occurrence.

"That was really cool of you, hubby!" Lala cheers with her tail wiggling happily, "The way that you sacrificed yourself for Nana was like something out of a manga!"

"This happened in volume thirty-six," Momo states plainly, "Geeze. You made our plan look like total crap!"

"Your plan?" Nana repeats, "What plan?"

You groan, "Lala and Momo wanted to show you how amazing and lovable I am so they came up with some theatrics to make you fall 'head over heels' for me. That's why they split off from us earlier. I got myself knocked out before they could swoop in and make it happen."

Nana frowns and turns on her sisters angrily, "Stop messing around, you two!"

Momo defends herself, "Sorry. We just wanted to show you his good side, that's all. We didn't expect things to take such a dangerous turn."

"And didn't it work anyway? You've been crying for two hours straight now," Lala jabs with her usual blend of cheeriness and childish ignorance. You don't think it's physically possible for Nana's face to get any redder than it already is.

Mitsuru turns back to her computer and gets busy, "Well, the Toxidroid is gone – and if they try to use that chemical weapon again we can distribute the cure to the emergency services. I don't think they'll try that plan again while we're still fighting back."