"Hello, Kazehana," I said as I opened my bedroom door. "Did you want something?"

"To talk to you, mainly," Kazehana said, lounging on my bed. Despite being in a state of undress- wearing her nightclothes rather than her out-and-about clothes- I wasn't terribly aroused by the sight of her in my bed. It was interesting, what you could get used to. I mean, sure, I still thought Kazehana was hot, but now I was capable of looking at her without popping a situationally-inappropriate boner; if this was the prelude to sex, it would be obvious by now. "It's... important."

"Yeah, I saw your schedule already," I said dryly. "You changed your mind about coming with me when I left. Unless you forgot when I was leaving, and scheduled appointments past that date by mistake."

Kazehana blinked wordlessly as I climbed into bed alongside her.

"You... saw my schedule," Kazehana repeated.

"I'm the CEO, Kazehana," I said. "Also, when you started working as a therapist all those months ago, you made sure I saw your schedule so that I'd know whether or not you were busy on any given day, and it'd be easier to schedule things for us."

"I see," Kazehana said quietly. "Well... then, I suppose you already know the news. I just... I don't know. Maybe wandering through the multiverse isn't what I really want, anymore. Maybe I'd like to settle down, and help people with their problems."

I nodded wordlessly.

"...Rose?" Kazehana asked. "Is there..." Kazehana sighed. "You have to talk to me, Rose. Say something."

"The fuck am I supposed to say?!" I burst out. "I don't want you to stay here, Kazehana! I don't want to leave behind literally everyone a second time and go to the next world all on my own again! I do still want to spend my life with you, but fuck me, what the hell am I supposed to do when you don't want that anymore, huh? Am I supposed to throw a fucking tantrum like this?"

"...Ah," Kazehana said quietly.

"How did you think I'd feel about this news?" I asked, quietly, trying to force myself to calm down. "What were you anticipating the reaction would be?"

"A... bit of sadness, some 'I'll miss you's, and well-wishes for the future," Kazehana said.

"Yeah, well," I said, shrugging. "Unfortunately, I can't find those in myself right now. I'm just... I'm exhausted, Kazehana. These past eight months I've spent as the CEO, my solace was that at least I had you in my corner; that when it was over, the two of us could spend a month in the Warehouse decompressing and recovering. That there'd be some stability in the upcoming chaos of my life." I collapsed into the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "Nope. I fought so hard for this to be possible, didn't I? I fucking stabbed a man so that one day, my Sekirei could wise up and dump my ass." I shrugged. "My own goddamn fault I thought at least one of them liked me enough to not."

"Rose, I still love you," Kazehana began.

"But you're fine with never seeing me again in two months."

She didn't have a response to that.

After a few minutes, she got out of bed, and left the room.

And I was alone.

----------------------------------------

"Thanks for meeting me," I said, pouring some tea for my guests.

"Hey, any time," Homura said, her arm around Akitsu's shoulders. "Well... any time before you leave."

"This may be about that," Akitsu said.

I will admit, I wasn't really expecting her and Homura to become a couple, but when I thought about it for a good minute, it did make sense. Akitsu wanted children, after all, and while Matsu was a shapeshifter who could easily grow the required equipment, Homura simply already had it. She was, also, a bit less occupied than Matsu was; these days, Matsu was fully absorbed in her role as Queen Of The Sekirei, which she apparently occupied with Miya's blessing- god knows Miya didn't want to do it.

"It is, yes," I said. "It's..." I sighed. "...I am becoming... less and less okay by the day, with the prospect of leaving you all behind and entering the next world alone. And I was hoping... I mean, I know we've agreed that I'm not a fully-compatible life partner with either of you, because we want different things out of life, but, but! You two have each other for that, now! The two of you could come with me, you know? Start a family, raise your kids, and let them grow up knowing who their weird-ass Aunt Rose is, first-hand."

"Would we be able to raise a family?" Akitsu asked. She was, I couldn't help but notice, already pregnant- five months, with her belly noticeably swollen. As were, funnily enough, her breasts. I mean, sure, pregnancy did tend to make a woman's boobs bigger, but if anyone didn't need the help, Akitsu was them. "The metaphysics of Jumpchain..."

"There's options," I said with a shrug. "We can go to a really mundane Jump and make it last, like, fifty years. Plenty of time to have a ton of kids and raise 'em all to adulthood. Or, hell, we wouldn't even have to do that, you could just get a nice house in a nice neighborhood in the Warehouse, take advantage of the time dilation we have in there."

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I'm... not sure," Homura said, uneasily. "I read Kazehana's anthropological travelogue on the Warehouse. That accelerated aging thing feels... unhealthy."

"I- look, only some of the cultures in the Warehouse do that," I protested. "I can set you guys up on a planet where nobody does that! Promise! A world full of people who raise their kids at normal speed! Where it still takes the full eighteen years to turn a baby into a young adult!"

"I don't know," Akitsu said. All I really heard, however, was the final word: 'no.'

----------------------------------------

"Wow, you are not having a good time," Matsu noted as I entered her domain.

She'd built a sanctum sanctorum, deep beneath the harbor in Tokyo. It was accessible only by portal or by a little hatch deep underwater, deeper than any scuba diver could safely go. In this deep underground chamber, a great pool of red slime sat in the center, surrounding a small, faintly-glowing pearl the size of an eyeball. Matsu's slime core and reliquary; the thing that sustained her, and would recreate her in the event of her body's death.

Of course, this sanctum wasn't just where Matsu kept her reliquary and extra body mass. There were great big computer banks lining the walls, and some truly excellent power management systems in the basement- the fruits of nearly a century of Warehouse tech industry progression. An ordinary top-of-the-line smartphone from there had terabytes of RAM, a petabyte of storage, and a processor that could eat every benchmarking software you threw at it for breakfast, with a battery life that'd keep it doing that for days on end. When you scaled all that up to the size of Matsu's new home...

...Well.

Pretty much the only thing standing in the way of global green energy was energy storage- the generation was a solved problem. If Matsu ever felt like sharing her toys, she had enough battery backup to power the entirety of Japan for two years before she had to think about hooking up some solar panels or geothermal generators.

"Hello, Matsu, nice to see you too," I said. "No, I'm not having a good time. It is sinking further and further in that I am leaving behind everyone I know, yet a fucking gain, and this time it's even worse because I actually like you guys."

"Ahhh, I see, I see," Matsu said, nodding. She sank back into her slime pool, reemerging instantly from the edge and stepping out, the red slime solidifying and shifting into pale, freckly flesh and hair the same shade of red- it hadn't been that color before, but out of all the changes my love life had undergone, 'Matsu's hair color' was not exactly high on the list of significance.

Her outfit had changed, too. She still wore a white dress with a long skirt- slit up the sides to let her legs breathe, of course- but now, instead of semi-detached sleeves, she had a regal-ish cape draped across her shoulders, along with a long pair of opera gloves that came up to her biceps. The Sekirei crest was emblazoned on both front-side panels of the cape, and I knew it was even bigger on the back, and in a move she hadn't stolen from Karasuba, she'd also had it engraved into a signet ring she wore on her right ring finger.

"So... what would you like me to do about it?" Matsu asked, stepping towards me, her high heels clacking against the stone tiled floor. "I could make some simulacra of everyone, with just enough tweaks to want to go with you. I could also make some introductions to some unwinged Sekirei- maybe now's a good time to meet new people?"

"I'll pass," I said. "What I want... really, what I'm offering, is... I think, a bit bigger than all that. See, Matsu, you're the Queen of the Sekirei now, right?"

"Mhm..." Matsu said, nodding. "If you just want to fuck me on my throne, I will absolutely do that for you. Hell, I can give you three of me to fuck if that's what you want."

"Not quite- I mean, I do want that, but that's not what I'm here for," I said. "What I'm here for is... to make an offer to you. One ruler to another."

"Oooh?"

"I have dominion over an entire galaxy," I said. "Two hundred forty seven billion stars, each with at least one terrestrial planet orbiting it. A tenth of those are like our own Sun, and plenty of those have Earth-like planets in orbit. So, Matsu. This is what I offer you: As many stars and planets you want, in whatever condition you want- untouched, pre-furnished, or even already-inhabited- for you and the Sekirei to call home. And the only condition I have for this is that these planets are in my Warehouse, and I would, therefore, be able to bring you with me, without going against your wishes."

Matsu hummed thoughtfully.

"C'mon, Matsu," I said, letting myself grin. "Whaddaya say? Wanna be an interstellar Queen? Maybe crown yourself an Empress?"

"I can't," Matsu said, shaking her head.

"Ah," I said, hollowly.

"Uprooting the Sekirei would be impractical," Matsu said. "Their very nature is that they form strong ties to people. With a hundred Sekirei would come something like a hundred Ashikabi, and those Ashikabi aren't like you- they're people with their own deep roots in this world, their own families and friends they'd want to see." Matsu shook her head. "If we wanted to move the Sekirei into the Warehouse, we'd have to move the whole world with them."

"Fuck," I muttered.

"I'm sorry," Matsu said, wrapping her arms around me. "I know it hurts. I love you, I promise- I'm not happy about being left behind, either. But..."

"But," I said, hugging her back. "...This is the end of the line for us, isn't it?"

"Try to find a way to come back and visit, okay?" Matsu pleaded. "I don't want this to be the end for us."

"I'll... I'll see what I can do," I said, closing my eyes. "...I love you, Matsu."

"I love you too."