Edwin was having the time of his life, as much of a life as he had being an artificial intelligence with a soul that was also a slave to a capricious and extremely dangerous overlord.

Hey, Came the little protest from Uta, she was miffed about the description, it was not as if she was really capricious on purpose, it just sort of happened while she was doing her own thing.

Was thinking about the Minds Edwin replied, though they were both very similar now that he thought about it.

Only one had the ability to completely remove his code and destroy him forever while the other… could probably do that as well if she tried hard enough.

Hmmmm.

Still, she wasn't going to for now. Rather something had happened which was rather strange in and of itself.

The fact that she was able to get pregnant, but not in the physical sense, but rather the… soul sense.

As in she was inside of his soul so much that some of it entered hers, and like an oyster created a pearly substance over the irritating little scrap of material, Uta had created layers of… something over the fragment and it had then emerged like a misshapen pearl from Uta herself.

I do not like the way you are describing the child Uta said and Edwin shrugged mentally. It was not as if it was a bad analogy, it made total sense.

The bit that was strange however was that the resultant… creature was not really human, nor was it an AI, but a strange melding of the two.

It was still bound to the Commander thankfully, so MAGI had control over it in some sense, but it was… also… not really all there.

As in it just existed and did whatever it was that eggs did. It was, an egg perhaps? Not really an infant, but more of a little undefined blob that over time was absorbing the information from the world around it and then spinning it inside of its core. They could watch it happen in real time. Or rather Edwin could, Uta wasn't a machine and so she couldn't read code as fast as he could.

But still, it was doing so at a very impressive rate, one had to wonder just where it came from because it certainly did not come from Uta or himself. The speed was akin to that of the Minds but it didn't have a processing core which made things… strange. It was independent of the AI core network which did not help things when it came down to it.

They would not be able to monitor what its thoughts were as it was not in the server gestalts, only the Commander would be able to do that and the Commander was… notoriously apathetic. They were going to need to solve this problem on their own it looked like. That was… unfortunate.

Or it would be if MAGI had not taken a personal interest in it. MAGI had arrived and was monitoring the egg with a separate thread of consciousness as it did with Lilith, Adam, and the other Hitchhikers.

All of them being rather powerful and the idea that their child would be of a similar strength was just the slightest bit disconcerting, especially if it inherited Uta's personality.

And so the egg was left inside of Edwin's soul like a hitchhiker of his own, Uta doing things that probably could be equated to humming and stroking the thing, even if it was a blob of information currently. Hopefully, it would take the "don't destroy the world" messages to heart.

As for what Edwin was currently doing, he was playing at being a wise man. As in he was pretending to be wiser than he thought when in actual fact he was simply feeding information that the real Minds fed to him while he was pretending to be them.

They were all there to guide the Mitsugo apparently. Just sitting there and talking with those that came in to ask for things, guiding the Mitsugo and the rest of the continent to doing things that the Minds wanted to get done.

It was not perhaps as organic as they originally wanted it, but when the villages were perfectly happy to just lie there and do nothing until they needed to defend themselves or to attack stuff or whatever it was, well, they weren't exactly happy about that. The Minds had decided then that they would push the Mitsugo and the Raisu by extension by having the HeMUs impersonate the Minds and solve the problems that were cropping up.

Notably, that of them not having conquered the world yet.

Notably, them collecting as much power as possible and then guiding the world so that they did all the growing needed so that when the moon blowing up event came around they weren't going to just sit there and be useless. Or when more of the moon alien people came around they wouldn't be utterly useless and sit there twiddling their thumbs.

No, something had to be done and they would be the ones doing it.

Gathering all the power, ensuring that the people of the continent grew, ensuring that they weren't going to squander their special powers that involved magic of all things, then giving them an opponent to test themselves on. Akatsuki was certainly something worthwhile, but maybe something bigger could work as well. Or smaller?

The Minds had not decided yet but whatever it was would certainly be dangerous, but maybe they would be on the offensive instead of the defensive.

They were ninja, after all, assassins and being quiet and all that noise. Things to consider.

The Minds had not yet decided and that meant that Edwin hadn't yet decided.

So he was here, sitting down in a decidedly uncomfortable pose that made him look wise accepting audiences along with the rest of the HeMUs and pretending that they knew what they were walking about.

Most of the questions were innocuous enough, should I kill this person? Kind of questions.

Some not so much.

The Minds (the actual ones) had decided that they needed to spread the Mitsugo genes throughout the entirety of the continent. To do that they were going to be marrying out the Mitsugo who had been altered to be genetically compatible to that of the other clans, using their future sight to influence the children in the womb.

They were going to be instantly attractive to the specific males and females that saw them, allowing for the unwitting pawns to head in and make children by which they would spread out into all the different bloodlines.

The general idea being that when the Rabbit Goddess/Fox Goddess/Moon Person came out of the moon, they would be unable to turn everyone into the White weird people since they all had residues of the Arcane Chakra inside of their systems, something fundamentally incompatible with that of the usual Chakra. While it could be suppressed when the child chose the regular Chakra over that of the Arcane, it did not go away, continuing to burn away, waiting for the chance to grow again.

Which in turn meant that the Minds were very eager to spread the genes to everyone that they possibly could, a means of protecting the future generations… from what Edwin could only assume was war. Because war was how the Minds expressed themselves, what with them being descended from the Commander who was an embodiment of complete and utter war on the most basic of levels.

Only the Commander was rather… lazy(?) and so the Commander didn't wage war, perfectly content to sit and nap the millennia away. Edwin took after the Commander in that regard and so dearly wished that he too could nap the millennia away.

Only he couldn't. He had a job to do.

A job that included being one of the Minds of the Mitsugo who in turn were looking to him and the other HeMUs for answers to their questions.

Right now he was trying to decide how best to answer her question as to the exact reasons as to why they were deciding to pair off a large number of the children in the village with that of the other clans who were going to be taking the children out (maybe) and spreading their genes to those outside of the Rice Nation in the first place.

The clan had been made strong by forcing others to marry into them, rather than marrying out.

It was something that was a rather drastic departure from the norm and the Minds were regarding the Clan head (who was not a HeMU, indeed she had no idea what a HeMU was, fully human and the Minds intended to keep her that way, if only to giggle when she frowned in confusion regarding the tomfoolery that the Minds engaged in,) who was standing inside of their chambers, looking up at the rings of masked figures before her.

"Why are we dividing our population Minds? What is the purpose of this?" She had asked, expecting them to answer… because that was their job. The whole answering questions thing.

I can see why she is annoyed, to have your children sent away… it must be terrible

Uta unhelpfully said, her own pity for the woman clouding Edwin's judgement for a second.

It can't be helped. It is necessary for the overall survival of the continent, they cannot afford to be limited merely because of their biological designations at birth

Edwin replied, mentally cracking his neck, dearly hoping that the Clan head would leave soon so that he could do it physically. He had an image to maintain you know.

"It is necessary Chiho. They shall continue to be linked to us through the bonds that we all share, their children and their children's children shall all bear the mark of the Mitsugo. We shall grow in number, in power and in doing so we will be able to demonstrate our strength to the world when we unify the continent." They said, all of them speaking at the same time. Their voices deep, some of them at a different pitch for the maximum level of creepiness.

It had taken quite a bit of practice to get that right.

She looked confused for a second there, her face twisted slightly as she considered their words. She was a smart girl, or woman, (everyone looked young in their eyes) and had been chosen as the Clan head at their request. She had served the Mitsugo for years no, decades even and was a very capable leader, even if she liked to annoy them.

"You want for the Mitsugo to conquer the continent?" She asked, her lips raised in what the Minds knew to be a mocking smile.

"Negative. We shall make the continent as one through our ties to each other. They shall do so willingly. There will not be force involved for they shall join without bloodshed. It is why we have ordered the complete subjugation of their nations economically is it not?" Asked the Minds, their voices reverberating around the room. She was no doubt confused since they were notorious about changing their minds (small M) at a whim.

"It will not be a task that will be completed in a few years, how long do you foresee until this plan is completed.?" She asked, hand on her hip, her posture of a much younger her, one from decades ago.

"Decades. Perhaps centuries."

"Then they will continue to fight each other while knowing that everyone around them is family? That their enemies are family? We can feel our links to each other do we not? Even those that choose to give up their Arcane Chakra." She stated, and she was correct, as she should be.

"The link shall be dampened for them. They will know that they feel a connection to those around them but they will be unable to understand what it is, the Gestalt is ready and we are ready." They said. The Gestalt would effectively constrict itself so that the children outside of the clan would be able to recognize when another was in front of them, but that was it, no communications, no messages, no reassuring pats on the head. Just an anomaly that they as superhuman supernatural soldiers would need to get used to.

Like the newtype gundam thing now that they thought about it. Would make sneaking around harder at least.

The Gestalt was their creation, after all, if they wanted it to be silenced then it would be, it being an extension of that from the Origin Universe.

"Then…"

"Yes. Continue with the breeding plan. The Mitsugo shall be spread through the continent, civilian and shinobi. There is no other option, the Mitsugo shall reign supreme."

And so it would, through economics and family ties. The Gestalt ready to lift the restrictions on a select few once they got them on side and ready to infiltrate governments and clans.

The Mitsugo would be everywhere even if they did nothing… for now.