"Keitaro! Wake up!" Naru cried as she shook Keitaro's dead body. "Come on! You can't die! You can't do this to me!"
Leon struggled to slowly get up. "It's no use. Your husband is dead"
"You're lying…" Naru whispered as tears ran down her cheeks…
"Your actions have consequences. Without his regenerating curse, your husband is just as much of a mortal as any average human. If only you had known he could die, you'd have taken better care of him" Leon said…
Naru let out a scream of deep anguish that echoed through the starry sky…
"I did just as you asked of me in your final moments, Kanako Urashima… I saved your brother from his immortality curse. Now he can finally rest in peace" Leon thought to himself…
Naru cried inconsolably over Keitaro's corpse…
Meanwhile, as Andr's bunker burned down, three mysterious women carried the Mew Mews outside, saving them from the fire. A Shinto priestess with long black hair was carrying Minto, a woman with long blonde hair and a big red bow on her head carried Bu-Ling, and a tall woman with brown hair tied into a ponytail rescued Zakuro. Dr. Mizuno then walked into the scene…
"Took you long enough, Ami" the priestess said…
"You're the ones who are late, Rei!" Dr. Mizuno replied…
"I'm amazed they could repel that monster invasion even without our help" the tall woman with the ponytail commented…
"They grow up so fast!" the blonde woman with the big red bow said happily. "In a few years they will be even stronger than us!"
"Where's Usagi-san? Hasn't she arrived yet?" Dr. Mizuno asked…
"The klutz we have for a leader probably got lost" Rei said, annoyed…
Ryou arrived, breathing heavily from having to run all the way back to the burning bunker, but was able to breathe with relief when he saw that his magical girls had been rescued on time. "Where's Retasu?"
"She was not in the bunker" the blonde with the big bow replied, worrying Ryou…
Back at the battlefield, Naru couldn't stop crying her heart out, hugging Keitaro's dead body. Leon only watched…
"I love you, Keitaro…" Naru sobbed. "I love you so much! …But I never told you… I was too afraid of being seen loving a loser like you… I fooled myself into thinking I hated you because I was too much of a coward to face the truth!"
"What is this? The mighty Naru Narusegawa crying like a baby?" Mitsune's voice was heard. The fox-faced woman then walked out from behind a nearby piece of wall, and stood behind Naru…
"It's over… Keitaro was all I had… Now there's nothing left…" Naru said, devoid of will to continue living on her own…
"Heh… In the end, you did depend on a man… How pitiful" Mitsune said. "Now, don't get me wrong, I never hated you or anything, despite the fact you were always prettier and more popular with the boys than me. My resentment is against those boys, not against you… But that's not the reason why I had Seta-sensei drift away from the both of us… even though I loved him just as much as you did…"
Naru didn't seem to be listening. She seemed to have died on the inside…
"Naru… You were the chosen one… You were going to be the symbol of strength and hope for all women in the world. It was my duty to make sure your fairytale with Keitaro had its Happily Ever After… that's the favor I owe to obaa-san… But look at you now, turned into a mess of tears… I can't see you like this. No woman can… The dream must live on…" Mitsune said as she slowly took out a kitchen knife…
"Stop!" Leon shouted…
Mitsune stabbed Naru in the back, piercing right through Naru's heart. The feminist leader died hugging the man she had mistreated all her life, and only in death they looked like a proper couple…
"You filthy vixen! You killed your own friend! Is nothing sacred to you?" Leon yelled, pointing his arm cannon at Mitsune…
"Not so fast!" Mitsune said as she pulled a beaten and tied-up Retasu from behind the ruins, using her as a human shield…
"You fucking piece of shit…" Leon growled…
"Just a little backup plan in case of the slim chance that you managed to defeat Keitaro and Naru. If you want to see your girlfriend alive, come to the Hinata Inn" Mitsune said…
"It was all your doing, wasn't it? All of the shit that happened that eventually led to the murders…" Leon said…
"Manipulating Seta-sensei into disappearing from Naru's life without any goodbye? Yes. Directing Naru towards Hinata Inn? Yes, I was the one who told her about it in the first place. Putting Keitaro in her path? Come on! They looked so cute together! Especially when she was pummeling him!" Mitsune confessed…
"Who gave you the right to play with these people's lives?" Leon screamed furiously…
"If you want to find that out, come to the inn. We'll be waiting for you" Mitsune said before she retreated with superhuman speed and agility…
Before going after Mitsune, Leon stopped by Mutsumi's headless body, her head reduced to a splatter of blood under the rock that Naru dropped on her earlier. Without a brain to send and receive signals from the rest of the body, Mutsumi was dead for good…
"I'm sorry, Mutsumi… If I had been a proper hero, you wouldn't have ended like this…" Leon apologized with tears in his cybernetic eyes. He stayed there mourning Mutsumi's death, doing a minute of silence for her before wiping his tears and moving on, rushing towards Hinata Inn at maximum speed…
A while later, Retasu slowly opened her eyes, finding herself under a familiar ceiling. "I've been here before…" she thought…
"Rise and shine, Miss Midorikawa… Rise and shine…" Mitsune's voice said…
Retasu got startled and fully woke up to find herself tied on a bed. In the room with her were Mitsune and, much to Retasu's shock, Haruka Seta, professor Seta's wife, who she, Leon and Dr. Mizuno had visited a while ago and hadn't seen her since the whole Kanako incident…
"Welcome back to Hinata House!" Mitsune greeted with a sly smile…
"Haruka-san! What are you doing here? …What am I doing here?" Retasu asked, scared…
Haruka smoked her cigarette calmly. "I heard the news… now both of my cousins have kicked the bucket…" she said, and then suddenly clenched her fist furiously, crushing the pack of cigarettes she had in her hand. "That cyborg bastard you have for a boyfriend is going to pay…"
"Show some respect to our guest, Haruka-chan!" said a voice that Retasu immediately recognized…
Entering the room was none other than the same short old lady that Retasu had met and befriended way back when she first arrived at Kanagawa…
"Obaa-san! You're back!" a surprised Haruka said to her grandmother…
"Obaa-san?" Retasu echoed, surprised…
"It's been a while, sweet young lady… Oh! Where are my manners? I forgot to introduce myself that time when we met!" the old lady said. "…I am Hinata Urashima. This is my inn I built decades ago with my own hands"
Retasu was speechless. She had so many questions but couldn't bring out even a single one…
"You must have a lot of questions, so lend me some of your time to answer them" Hinata said. "As you know, this inn is legendary. It is said it has the power to enter anybody into Tokyo University, thereby allowing you to enter it in the same year as your beloved, and thus making your love last forever. It is also said that confessing to your loved one in the nearby ruins of the old inn will cause the love between the two to last forever… Recently, it has been attributed the power to help you get revenge on cheating boyfriends and mistreating husbands, to allow you to get rid of what's preventing you from reaching your true love…"
Retasu listened silently and respectfully to the old lady as she continued her speech…
"As you can see, this inn is a symbol of hope for every female in Kanagawa prefecture. As long as this inn stands, fairytales can come true and every princess can find her Prince Charming and live happily ever after… My grandson Keitaro, may his soul rest in peace… When he was 4 years old, I saw him make a promise to this little girl. He told her they would enter Tokyo University together when they grew up, and that they would marry… That was the cutest thing I had ever seen in my life! …The realization of that marriage and that happy ending by means of this inn would have been the pinnacle of it all!"
"Then how did it go so wrong? How did that pure and innocent dream get so corrupted?" Retasu asked sadly…
"It didn't! What became corrupted is our modern society!" Hinata replied sternly. "This is no longer the world I grew up in. World War II changed everything, and we were forced to incorporate America's culture into our civilization. After that, the 60's came, and it became a world-wide trend to break every rule in the book just for fun! Romantic relationships were also affected. There is no longer any respect! Men are just going around having sex with anyone like they've regressed to their animal instincts!"
"Well… That's true, but still…" Retasu tried to object…
"Humanity today no longer believes in fairytales. Nowadays, people don't appreciate the Happily Ever After ending… Men are too busy with their own sexual needs to take their women's feelings into account!" Hinata ranted. "I saw so many girls… their hearts broken, shattered into a million pieces! Their tears, streaming endlessly into an infinite river where they were drowning in sorrow and despair! In order to stop this madness, a reversal of the traditional gender roles is needed! In order for those sweet girls to have their Happily Ever After, they needed not a princess, but a strong female warrior who would dominate her Prince Charming! …The little girl to whom my grandson made that promise in that fateful day… That girl's name was Naru Narusegawa. In order to have the image that my inn needed to become a beacon of hope for all women and girls once more, I needed Naru-chan to become a fierce tigress and take the reins in her relationship with my grandson!"
"Oh! She's getting to the part where I come in!" Mitsune said happily…
Back at the ruins, Ryou was explaining something to Minto, Bu-Ling and a now-awake Zakuro…
"What do you mean there was another Mew Mew before Ichigo?" Minto asked with disbelief…
"To be honest, I didn't know it until Keiichiro recently told me about it. We have you all numbered to easily keep track of you. For example, Retasu is Mew #03, Minto is Mew #02 and Ichigo is Mew #01… but… at some point during my childhood, my father and Keiichiro were already working on the Mew project to repel the alien invasion, and a girl had volunteered to take part in the project after they discovered she was a compatible host for the DNA of the Japanese Red Fox. That girl is Mew #00… Also known as Mitsune Konno…"
Meanwhile, at Hinata Inn, Mitsune pulled something out of her pocket…
"A Mew Pendant?" Retasu squealed in shock…
"That's right. I'm technically your senpai" Mitsune replied. "Though it took about a year for my powers to stabilize… Back then, the experiment went wrong and I turned into a full fox"
Mitsune then flashed back to the harsh days she spent as an actual fox. She was tired, wounded and hungry. That day, old Hinata was praying in front of the small shrine to the fox deity, the same one where Leon and Kanako would have fought to the death years later. While Hinata was praying, she saw poor little fox Mitsune come out of the bushes in that dire state and collapse right beside her…
"This must be a sign!" Hinata had said…
The old lady then took the little fox into her arms and back to her empty inn, where she nursed it back to health…
"Imagine my surprise when I saw that little fox turn into a human girl!" Hinata narrated as she flashed back to the time she walked into the room where she had left the fox and saw a younger and naked Mitsune in its place. "I thought I had encountered a benevolent youkai!"
"I owe my life to Hina-obaasan here" Mitsune said solemnly. "I would still do anything for her to this day"
"And so, I continued to raise this girl as if she were yet another of my grandchildren… And also asked her for an important favor: to make sure that my grandson Keitaro and the girl of her promise got married as I had planned. That's why I passed my inn to Keitaro-chan, while Mitsune-chan convinced Naru-chan to start living here… But a sacrifice was needed to turn Naru-chan into the tigress of a wife that I needed her to be… she needed to know what it's like to have your heart shattered by a man!"
"I took care of driving Seta-sensei away from her and disappear from her life without any goodbye. It was for her own good" Mitsune said…
"Do you realize how many lives were lost because of your plans?" Retasu cried. "Do you realize how many lives you've played with?"
"Sometimes when trying to change the world, sacrifices will have to be made. Sadly, I just about gave too much of my own with the deaths of my granddaughter and grandson" Hinata lamented…
"A war has no winners! This war has only hurt everybody, including you!" Retasu cried…
"Enough talk. Mitsune-chan, please be so kind to show our guest her room" Hinata said…
"With pleasure" Mitsune said, and took Retasu to the underground tunnels…
"Haruka-chan… That robot Dr. Seto built is going to arrive soon. Have everything prepared to welcome it" Hinata said…
"You can count on me, obaa-san" Haruka said, grabbing her whip…
"Our fairytale can still have a happy ending… Yes, there's still one princess left here that we can turn into a dominant queen…" Hinata said to herself…
While Haruka went to guard the inn's entrance, Mitsune threw the tied-up and gagged Retasu into a room in the underground tunnels. "Oh! I almost forgot!" Mitsune said before taking Retasu's Mew Pendant from her. "Gotta get rid of this" she said before she threw it into a hole in the wall, fairly big but not enough for Retasu's head or body to fit in it, and with her arms tied she wouldn't be able to use them to get to the pendant. "Just lay there quietly while we take care of your cyborg boyfriend" Mitsune added before she closed the door and locked it…
Meanwhile, Hinata went to see Shinobu in her room. Sarah was there treating Shinobu's wounds from the beating she received from Andr, and bringing her ice to hold onto her swollen face…
"What happened?" Hinata asked, horrified…
"Shinobu-chan failed to beat that Andr boy, and got beaten by him instead" Sarah replied…
"Don't worry, dearie. I know how we can fix that" Hinata said to Shinobu…
Leon had finally reached the hill where Hinata House was located and started running up the long stone stairs at full speed…
Mitsune smirked as she walked through the underground tunnels for one more stop. "Let the final battle begin" she said dramatically…
Leon finally reached the top of the hill and found Haruka waiting for him outside of the inn's entrance…