Gantz: The beginning

The alien is one of us?

"Why are we back here?"

They were back in the Gantz room.

Yoko shook her head, fear evident in her tone. "I don't know, it's never happened before."

Nishi looked at the ball and realized the timer was counting down. "It's started, this room must be our target's location." Yoko gasped, and Nishi turned to face her with concern. "Which means the only logical explanation, is that the alien is here, and it's one of them." Nishi gestured to the group stood on the opposite side, looking around in confusion.

Yoko couldn't quite believe it. How was it possible for one of them to be the alien? "This is insane, are you saying that the alien somehow disguised itself as a human?"

Nishi tightened his hold on the large gun. It would be hard to fight an alien of that size in a narrow space like this. "It certainly makes sense, we know the alien can't cloak for long, so it's not as if it's hiding by invisibility, and just to be sure-" Nishi clicked the stealth mode of the device in his pocket and disappeared, causing everyone else to gasp in shock. When Nishi reappeared, and the static died off, he turned to Yoko. "I didn't see it, so it's definitely one of them."

Yoko looked at them. "But who? The disguise is near perfect, how are we supposed to find it?"

Nishi avoided looking directly at the group; he had his suspicions but wanted to keep it to himself for now.

"Just what the hell are you two whispering about, and how did you do that trick kid? I'm starting to think this guy was right, you know what's going on, don't you?" Blue sweater said with a deep frown, daring to step closer.

"Nishi, we can't just – shoot everyone in the room, right? I mean, we're – we're not going to do that are we?" Yoko looked at him with concern because she knew it was something he would seriously consider.

Nishi sighed and whispered, "It would be the easiest way to find it." Yoko's eyes widened, but then he said, "But it wouldn't help us; once we shoot one of them, the alien will attack, and I want to be ready."

The dog lowered his head upon hearing them and ran off into the hallway as if he believed Nishi would kill him.

"Sounds like you have a plan, does that mean you want my help after all?"

Nishi snorted at her smug comment, "The rules have changed. Unless you want to defend the alien? Perhaps you can become an alien rights lawyer; your next paper could be, 'aliens have a right to be here as much as we do.'"

Yoko huffed at him, and he laughed. "Fine, what do you wanna do?"

"Just follow my lead." Nishi walked into the middle to address the other players. "Listen up! Before you got here, you all died and were brought back by this ball. It recruits us to kill specific aliens within a certain amount of time. Unfortunately, on our last mission, we ran out of time before we could complete it. The alien you saw just now is the alien we failed to kill. Normally, we are transferred to a particular location to take out the target, but this time, the target has come to us. I have reason to believe that the alien is here, disguising itself as one of us." Nishi didn't expect them to believe him, so it wasn't surprising when they started complaining and claimed he tried to trick them. "Just to be clear, while you're all calling me a liar, I don't have a problem with killing anyone in this room, so if you want to test that, then go right ahead." Nishi knew he had to be careful not to provoke the alien just yet, it knew they were onto it, but he was hoping to buy some time.

Takada frowned. "So how do we find out who's the alien, it's not going to just come out and admit it if you ask."

Yoko wondered the same thing, but she was willing to back Nishi a hundred percent, and her hold on the gun was proof that if any of them tried anything, she wouldn't hesitate to kill them either.