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Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha:Volume 13 Illustrations

2022-05-03T17:46:28Z

162.238.158.199:

These are the novel illustrations that were included in volume 13

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| Forward to [[Shinmai Maou no Keiyakusha Volume 13 Prologue|Prologue]]
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</noinclude>

Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 13

2022-03-26T20:46:29Z

162.238.158.199:

==Chapter 13: Thinkers by the Current==
[[Image:Horizon8A_327.jpg|thumb]]
''What is this?

''What could it mean?

''Ooh, I know!

'''Point Allocation (You Be Quiet)

Mitotsudaira unfolded the letter they had received from Christina and found a string of characters within.

They were numbers. Double and triple digit numbers. And they were formatted like the letters in an ordinary text.

Mitotsudaira started to read them aloud, but she doubted anyone would be able to understand it.

So instead, she opened a sign frame and used a photography spell to read in the parchment’s text.

“Um, do any of you know what this means?”

Christina viewed the image of the parchment that had been sent to Tadaoki too.

She recognized the text displayed there.

“12 – 46 – 57 – 68.”

“You have this memorized?”

“I stared at it an awful lot, so I remember it pretty well.”

“That’s incredible.”

He seemed genuinely impressed, which made her a little happy. She was proud of her memory.

So she looked him in the eye and recited the proof of that pride.

“58 – 78 – 66 – 110 – 32 – 43.”

Then a blank line.

“96 – 26 – 94 – 115 – 79 – 90 – 26 – 42 – 106 – 43 – 82 – 115 – 91.”

And another blank line.

“90 – 92 – 42 – 23 – 79 – 81 – 104 – 83 – 42 – 105 – 11 – 87 – 84 – 85 – 86.”

“You really do have it memorized…”

''Oops. I got carried away and now he’s a little creeped out by it.

“U-umm.”

She hesitated, but he seemed to mistake what that meant.

“Oh,” he said and moved his sign frame so she could see.

He must have thought that was as much as she had memorized and could not continue like this.

But in fact, she had the rest memorized too.

However, her husband’s misunderstanding and concern made her happy.

“Thank you.”

She made sure to state her appreciation before reading off the numbers again.

“31 – 24 – 84 – 73 – 100 – 64 – 43 – 18 – 75 – 90 – 26 – 42 – 83 – 84 – 85 – 86 – 55.”

She took a breath in preparation for the last line. That row of numbers was located further away from the rest.

“81 – 43 – 75 – 67 – 19 – 20 – 36 – 77 – 101 – 23 – 90 – 25.”

That was all.

She relaxed her shoulders and looked up.

Everyone around her had fallen silent.

But this silence did not contain the cautious and ominous sese the previous one had. They were all staring at their sign frames.

“Um.”

She had decoded this, so she was going to ask if they wanted any advice. However…

“Oh, go ahead and eat some udon, Swedish Chancellor. We’re busy making some initial thoughts on this matter. The silver chains will serve you, so don’t mind us.”

She looked up to see a chain holding a pair of chopsticks and looking down at her.

''Will it understand this?'' she wondered while nodding at it. The chain wrapped a twisted hand towel around itself and began to serve the udon.

'''Vice President:''' “Okay, we have the letter now, so what are your initial impressions?”

'''Art-Ga:''' “Nerd, figure it out for us.”

'''Novice:''' “Wh-what kind of command is that!?”

'''Horizey:''' “Neshinbara-samaaa!!”

'''Novice:''' “So ''now'' you’re willing to come to me for help!? Only now!? …But I do know what this must be. Each number is either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ and by figuring out which is which and reading only the ‘yes’ ones, they form words!”

'''Four Eyes:''' “Didn’t the Hexagone Française President say it was using numbers in place of written characters? That would mean you are wrong.”

'''Horizey:''' “Mitotsudaira-samaaa!”

'''Silver Wolf:''' “My kiiing!”

'''Me:''' “Horizooon!”

'''Horizey:''' “I get the feeling this is a lost cause.”

'''Almost Everyone:''' “D-don’t give up already!”

Gin was watching the disastrous goings on from Kantou.

…''It looks even worse when you’re looking on from the outside.

She was on the beach at night. Fishing fires were burning out at sea and the fishing boats were casting their nets at the fish that approached them. Meanwhile, several stoves were being prepared here on the beach.

On Ookubo’s suggestion, everyone was going to eat out on the beach assuming the weather remained clear.

That would simplify the food distribution and storage and make it easier for everyone’s opinions to be heard.

“Master Muneshige, we did this sort of thing at Alcalá de Henares or at the public market back at Tres España, didn’t we?”

“The Tachibana home was situated a little higher than the rest of the city, so I would eat at the market’s open-air food stands on my way to and from there. The rumors I sometimes heard about you were fascinating.”

This was the first she had heard of that. She could not believe he was talking about it now, but it also told her he was enjoying things here.

“On the day of our final duel, they all saw me off with words of support, but I ended up staying at your place for a while afterwards since I cut off your arms and everything, so there was a rumor going around the city that you had finally killed me.”

“Does that mean they assumed you would lose? But regardless, I am glad to have heard about this.”

And…

“Don’t worry. You are plenty strong now, Master Muneshige. And you were back then as well.”

“And I’m going to get even stronger. I just know it now that I’ve seen this place and everyone in it,” he said quietly. “Winning a battle brings a sense of relief, but it also makes me feel like I’ve helped set history in motion.”

“Having history set you in motion is not a bad thing either.”

“That’s true too,” he said while they shared a smile as two who had lost in the past.

Then his face moved in towards her.

“–––––”

She felt indecent doing it here, but she allowed herself three seconds to celebrate their victory.

And after taking a breath…

“Master Muneshige, have you seen how everyone back on the Musashi is acting?”

“I have and I believe that letter contains complete sentences.”

That reminded her of Muneshige’s second inherited name. In addition to Tachibana Muneshige, he was also the head of the García family who had begun and run Spain’s postal service.

He had a decent amount of knowledge concerning letters and the text written therein. So…

“Master Muneshige! You can add this to your site!”

“I did not expect for my talents to come in handy here.”

He began to input his words to a sign frame.

'''Tachibana Husband:''' “Good evening! Tachibana Muneshige here!”

'''Flat Vassal:''' “This is weird. Why did the greeting tell me who it is more than him actually giving his name?”

'''Me:''' “Hey, that could’ve been Itoken too! Show her, Itoken!”

'''Obscene:''' “Hello and good evening! No one suspicious here! Only Itou Kenji the Incubus!”

'''Bell:''' “Oh, Itoken-kun said…um, ‘hello’ first.”

'''Me:''' “Hey, Muneo! You should say ‘hey’ or ‘hello’ first or it’s too sudden and surprises Bell-san.”

''I see,'' thought Muneshige.

'''Tachibana Husband:''' “Hey, understood! Hey, I will be more careful from now on! Hey, just leave it to me!”

'''Horizey:''' “You lose again, Toori-sama.”

'''Me:''' “D-dammit! It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my faaaaaault!”

'''Asama:''' “It’s okay, Suzu-san. That wasn’t your fault, okay? …Um, that would get annoying fast, so I’ll tell Gin-san to fix it.”

Fix it she did. And after taking a breath…

…''Now, let’s see if we can get back on track.

“Master Muneshige, why do you say that letter contains complete sentences?”

“Judge,” he said into his sign frame.

'''Tachibana Husband:''' “First of all, the lines of numbers have empty lines between them. If this were a list of items, it would look more list-like, but it would also not leave any empty lines to more efficiently use the space. And if they were all the same sort of thing, they would all be lined up together with only commas or spaces to separate them.”

'''10ZO:''' “You wouldn’t need empty lines between complete sentences either, though.”

'''Four Eyes:''' “If I may interject, I think each sentence is an entirely separate thought.”

'''Novice:''' “Since when are you shy about interjecting!?”

Gin was a little irritated by the Secretary’s response and the English author must have been as well.

'''Four Eyes:''' “You expect me to interrupt another nation’s officer? How stupid are you?”

'''Art-Ga:''' “Fine, I’ll teach him a lesson.”

'''Novice:''' “Wait! Stop drawing that storyboard!”

'''Four Eyes:''' “Someone is awfully demanding.”

'''Novice:''' “Please stop drawing that storyboard?”

'''Art-Ga:''' “You expect me to do what you say when you won’t even look me in the eye?”

“That was a splendid diversion leading into an equally splendid finishing blow, Gin.”

“Judge. Musashi’s people are very skilled in such things, making them easy to converse with. But anyway,” said Gin. “Can you say anything else about the parchment’s contents?”

“Yes. As you can see by looking at the numerical strings, each sentence is longer than the last.”

In other words…

“They may be writing about something on a higher level with each sentence. There is also that final sentence after several blank lines, but that may be something like a PS.”

Mitotsudaira saw everyone thinking about that.

…''If the Vice Chancellor’s Aide is correct, this must have some important meaning.

It was not just a quick memo or a list. So…

“Then how do we decode these numbers?”

“The most basic method would be to give each of the kana a number and then apply some other formula to that,” said the Secretary with a hand on his chin. “First, you would convert the kana into numbers and then you would add in some extra noise by applying some other code or formula that only your people knew.”

“Such us?”

“Since this is from Carlos I, you could add 1 for ‘the first’. I doubt it’s actually that simple and it’s probably something else entirely, but we’ll just have to do some searching to reach the right answer.”

“''Can'' we reach the right answer?”

“We know someone here can read it.”

He gestured toward the Swedish Chancellor.

She, however, grabbed some udon without providing a real response. That suggested her having read it was to remain unsaid here.

But they received a fragment of a hint from somewhere else.

It came from Asama. She frowned and tilted her head, but…

“I can see what looks like something familiar in this.”

The Secretary turned her way.

“Really!? P-please tell me what you see, Asama-kun! I guess your work with prayers helps here, doesn’t it!?”

“Um, Neshinbara-kun? Is it just me or have you been especially shameless lately?”

“Only because the rest of you work to destroy any pride I might have! Anyway, please tell me! I have to think up a major project for the upcoming summer event, so I don’t have much time!”

'''Art-Ga:''' “Your official duties come second to the summer event?”

'''Four Eyes:''' “You should set your priorities better.”

'''Novice:''' “I-I don’t want to hear that from either of you!”

“Calm down,” said Asama while opening a sign frame and holding it up to show off the end of the string of numbers.

Then she turned toward the king.

“Um.”

Before she could call his name, Horizon grabbed his head and yanked it around toward Asama.

That would be Horizon’s way of helping, but it must have been a little too sudden.

“Gweh.”

A weird noise escaped the king, but that was just Horizon’s idea of (physical) affection.

It took him about five seconds to recover.

Once he was back up, he noticed Asama looking at him with a bitter smile.

'''Asama:''' “Toori-kun, I would like to test something.”

…''Test?

The king responded by first looking to Mitotsudaira and the others.

He was checking with them before answering.

'''Me:''' “Okay, Nate, Bell-san, and…Tenzou too. You three help out Asama.”

Mitotsudaira gasped when she heard her king’s instructions and selection of people.

She knew what they were to do and there was no need to look to Suzu and the 1st Special Duty Officer to ensure they did as well.

'''Unturning:''' “What is this about?”

'''Silver Wolf:''' “Judge. There is only one thing the three of us would be needed to ‘test’.”

'''Me:''' “Yup. So get to it, Asama.”

They did not need to be told twice, so the three of them listened to Asama while holding their breaths.

Asama stood up and showed her sign frame to everyone. It was zoomed in on some of the numbers.

“Umm, will you please look at this?”

Christina listened to the Asama Shrine Representative.

It was adorable how Tadaoki was so focused on the nagashi udon like he was at a waterpark, but she also focused on the voice she could hear.

“Here and here. The final numbers are the same. Just take a look. The last two of the longer lines have ’84! 85! 86!’ at the end. And those three numbers are in order! That must be pretty rare! And that’s not all!”

Christina realized something while listening in.

…''That’s how they talk on the Shinto Net Asama late-night shopping show!

There were recent rumors that the Asama Shrine’s primary representative would be retiring from that show. If he had been training his daughter to take on that role, those rumors might just be true.

Christina hated that she was not set up to record this. However…

“Take a look here!” said the Asama Shrine Representative. “84! 85! 86! The three are all in a row, right!? And near the end of the line! That suggests to me that they might be one of the polite sentence enders that are common in Far Eastern!”

Suzu immediately typed out a response.

'''Bell:''' “No.”

A moment later, another response supported her decision.

'''Silver Wolf:''' “Judge! That is incorrect.”

'''Gold Mar:''' “Eh? What is? Asama-chi’s guess?”

Yes, but that was not what they were focused on.

Toori had chosen Suzu, Mitotsudaira, and Tenzou for a reason.

'''10ZO:''' “We were focusing on what kind of response the Swedish Chancellor gave to Asama-dono’s suggestion.”

But…

'''10ZO:''' “She continued eating her food just the same afterwards.”

“Yes,” agreed Suzu.

That response and everything else they were saying were confined to the divine chat. Christina was here with them and she might notice any outward movements they made.

They had a single task here.

Monitor Christina’s responses to see if Asama’s reasoning was correct and how important it was.

Only Suzu, Mitotsudaira, and Tenzou were so sensitive to sound and motion.

If Asama had been right…

'''Bell:''' “That would have…changed if it…was right.”

Her desire to confirm it would have shown itself somehow.

They did not know how well Christina could hide her inner thoughts, but she had shown no reaction whatsoever.

That would have meant nothing if she had not heard the suggestion, but…

'''Horizey:''' “Asama-sama was using her loud sales talk voice, which is guaranteed to have reached her and grabbed her attention.”

'''Asama:''' “Oh, no. What if she thinks I always talk like that?”

'''Gold Mar:''' “Asama-chi, you lose if you let it bother you.”

But not letting it bother her at all seemed like surrendering.

At any rate, Christina had ignored it.

'''Bell:''' “She ignored…Asama-san’s…performance.”

'''Asama:''' “Um, Suzu-san? Do you have to call it a performance?”

'''Unturning:''' “But isn’t it possible that the Swedish Chancellor specifically did not react ''because'' the Asama Shrine Representative’s performance was accurate?”

Kimi placed a hand on Asama’s shoulder and Asama brushed it off, but Suzu chose to ignore that.

Because…

'''Art-Ga:''' “There’s no chance of that and Suzu knows why.”

That was a lot of trust there, but she did know.

'''Bell:''' “Because Tadaoki-kun…is with her.”

Suzu explained the odd sense she had noticed in how Christina ignored them.

'''Bell:''' “She isn’t…alone.”

'''Scarred:''' “Hm? What does that mean, Master Tenzou?”

Tenzou nodded at Mary’s comment made while they viewed the udon side menu on a sign frame.

'''10ZO:''' “Simply put…oh, they have tempura, which is basically Far Eastern fritters. If you want something chewy, go with maitake or a root vegetable. For a different flavor, go with shiso. If you’re feeling like something wilder, you can go with a more chopped-up vegetable. And if you want it to go with something else, you could get the whiting tempura.”

'''Scarred:''' “I-I’ll do my best.”

''Do your best at what?'' he wondered, but then a sign frame appeared over Mary’s somewhat lowered head.

'''Wise Sister:''' “Heh heh. Hoping she ‘feels like something wilder’ tonight, are you?”

'''Gold Mar:''' “Was all of that supposed to be innuendo somehow?”

'''Horizey:''' “He has to make his move eventually.”

''That is none of your business,'' he thought, but Mary had already made her order.

He also answered her question about what was happening.

'''10ZO:''' “She is not alone, Mary-dono.”

In other words…

'''10ZO:''' “It does not matter if Christina-dono reacts in some way because she has Tadaoki-dono with her. In fact, she can use him to camouflage any secret information by making it unclear if her reaction was to him or not. But she chose to provide no reaction at all, suggesting she is not used to this sort of thing.”

He got the full answer out there. But…

'''Asama:''' “No, um, that’s not quite right, Tenzou-kun.”

'''Silver Wolf:''' “Judge. The 1st Special Duty Officer’s view isn’t quite correct.”

'''10ZO:''' “Eh? But…”

“Um,” said Mary as she opened her sign frame again.

'''Scarred:''' “Would Lady Christina really be able to use Master Nagaoka as camouflage like that?”

''I screwed this one up,'' sighed Tenzou.

'''10ZO:''' “So without using Nagaoka-dono as an option, Christina-dono’s only options were to react or not react on her own?”

'''Silver Wolf:''' “Judge. But she already views the Nagaoka boy as on her side, so if Tomo had been right, she would have ''shown some hesitation'' because she was not sure if she could get him involved or not. After all, they only just concluded that they would not have just one or the other decide for both of them.”

However, she had not shown any hesitation and she had not checked with Tadaoki about anything.

'''10ZO:''' “Then Asama-dono’s suggestion really must have been wrong.”

The similar endings to the two sentences were not polite Far Eastern sentence enders. Which meant…

'''Tachibana Husband:''' “The letter is not written in a polite or formal way. It simply states what must be said.”

'''Gold Mar:''' “The memo we received before said ‘Can you take care of this, William?’, right? So could those three numbers be a question phrase?”

'''Asama:''' “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

Asama was quick to respond.

'''Asama:''' “The end of the 3rd and 4th sentences look similar with the ‘84 – 85 – 86’, but the 4th sentence has a 55 after that. A question phrase would come at the very end of the sentence, so it would be weird to have one more character after that.”

'''Art-Ga:''' “Maybe the 4th one has a question mark at the end.”

'''Novice:''' “I know what this is…! He added an ellipsis or exclamation point to his sentence to make it sound more important…!”

'''Almost Everyone:''' “Only you do that!”

“About that,” said someone from Kantou.

It was Naomasa.

She had not spoken up in a while and the rest of her statement came after a short pause.

'''Smoking Girl:''' “If it simply states what must be said, it’s probably a list of instructions. And with growing intensity.”

Everyone exchanged a glance.

'''Flat Vassal:''' “With growing intensity?”

What did that mean?

'''Horizey:''' “Um, Naomasa-sama, if you could tell just me the answer and not tell everyone else you told me, then I could act like I had figured it out on my own.”

Everyone shuddered in fear at the audacity it took to ask that out loud.

'''Smoking Girl:''' “That request was enough, Horizon.”

And…

'''Smoking Girl:''' “This is a special trait of Far Eastern. You can increase the intensity of a command by adding just one more character to the end.”

'''Novice:''' “That would suggest this is a very businesslike and high-pressure letter.”

Neshinbara leaned back in his chair and scooted his butt forward. It was a lot like someone who had eaten too much, but he gave it a more somber look.

'''Novice:''' “Carlos I may have initially intended to simply ‘ask’ a question, but while he was writing it, it turned into some kind of command. That would mean his real question is here.”

He drew an arrow made of red lines on his sign frame.

'''Novice:''' “The PS at the very bottom would be his actual question and the 4th line just before it is probably some other command pointing to a pressing situation.”

'''Vice President:''' “Make some wild guesses here, Neshinbara. I’ll allow it.”

“Judge,” said Neshinbara while picking up his chopsticks and using that as camouflage to rapidly type at his sign frame.

'''Novice:''' “We know Carlos I was pursuing the Princess Disappearances. And we began to notice something irritating while pursuing those disappearances ourselves.”

Namely…

'''Novice:''' “Recall what we have seen in the mysterious facilities at Novgorod and the Sanada ruins and in the underground ruins at Houjou. It seems the Princess is connected to something from the Age of Dawn.”

Neshinbara spoke while breaking apart his chopsticks.

'''Novice:''' “We know there was a ‘nonexistent academy’ and we have recently come to realize it must have been around quite recently. Most likely, during Carlos I’s generation – about 30 years ago. Most of the people there have probably fallen victim to the Princess Disappearances. But what were they doing there? And at Novgorod, we heard that they were trying to befriend the Princess. Now, this next part is a guess.”

He took a breath, stuck his chopsticks in the water running down the bamboo, and scooped up some udon as he said more.

'''Novice:''' “Lord Motonobu created the Logismoi Oplo as a means of stopping the Apocalypse. We know from Mikawa that the Genesis Project was his work as well. And at the ‘nonexistent academy’, he tried and failed to befriend the Princess. So here is my conclusion: Carlos I and the others were working on a solution to the Apocalypse at their ‘nonexistent academy’. Or to put it another way, the ‘nonexistent academy’ was a Testament Cross-Borders Unit meant to stop the Apocalypse.”

And…

'''Novice:''' “There, they came up with two different ways of saving the world from the Apocalypse: the Genesis Project and the Logismoi Oplo.”

'''Four Eyes:''' “And? What question did Carlos I ask in that letter?”

'''Novice:''' “Eh?”

'''Vice President:''' “Hey, I asked you to make wild guesses about Carlos I’s letter, not about other random crap.”

'''Novice:''' “Eh? Hold on. I was getting to that! Give me another chance!”

Everyone saw Neshinbara splash at the water with his chopsticks to camouflage his conversation.

'''Almost Everyone:''' “Stop playing around!”

'''Novice:''' “I couldn’t think of any other motion to disguise my typing!”

But he did answer the question.

'''Novice:''' “We don’t know when this letter was written, but I imagine it must have been before P.A. Oda proposed the Genesis Project. Then it’s simple.”

'''Horizey:''' “It may have just been ‘Let’s do the Genesis Project and the Logismoi Oplo!’ ”

Horizon’s casual comment caused Neshinbara to freeze in place for a few seconds before Horizon spoke up again as if something had just occurred to her.

'''Horizey:''' “Oops. I should have let Neshinbara-sama say that himself. How careless of me to not read the room there. My apologies. …Now, go ahead.”

'''Novice:''' “You intentionally screwed up my timing, didn’t you!? Didn’t you!?”

But he did continue while soaking some udon in his bowl.

'''Novice:''' “I think this must have been some form of verification or command regarding that. This should be evidence to what Lord Motonobu and the others were up to and much, much more as well. So while I do have the summer event coming up, I will work hard to decode this.”

''I guess there’s a first time for everything,'' thought Masazumi concerning Neshinbara.

Their Secretary was usually extremely self-centered and honestly a lot like their Treasurer in that sense, but here he actually wanted to do his job.

…''Does that mean he’s found a personal interest in it?

Masazumi herself had gotten so engrossed in a book that she forgot to eat or sleep on more than just a few occasions. So…

'''Vice President:''' “Go for it, Neshinbara. You have until our Honnouji intervention. That is probably when we will make contact with Akechi Mitsuhide, so it would mean a lot if we knew by then what the Prince of Orange was trying to tell us at Novgorod.”

“Judge,” said Neshinbara and the others responded too.

'''Unturning:''' “Yes, and the Secretary’s girlfriend is skilled at decoding things.”

'''Gold Mar:''' “Judge. We should be fine with Shakespeare working on it.”

'''10ZO:''' “Indeed. Shakespeare-dono should be more than enough. Right, Mary-dono?”

'''Tonbokiri:''' “I see. So the glasses boy will act as our intermediary. Then there is nothing to worry about!”

'''Novice:''' “Waiiiiit! Do you really want to see my power that badly!? You’ll regret it.”

'''Laborer:''' “Shut up now if you don’t want to make this worse.”

Masazumi took a breath as the others devolved into their usual cannibalism.

But what came next was what really mattered.

“Okay, that solves our problem for the time being. So…”

The Swedish Chancellor turned toward her.

“You remembered?”

“Judge. You think I didn’t notice? When you got here, you said that ‘we would love to join you’, but that ‘we’ meant more than just you and Tadaoki, didn’t it?”

In other words…

“Who else is with you? And what is it they want?”

As soon as she asked…

“That is a simple matter!”

A deep voice boomed from overhead.

Masazumi gasped and looked up to the top of the bamboo waterway at the top of the stepped terrace.

The angle put the night sky in the background.

But she could not see anyone standing there. She could simply hear the sound of a chain rattling and a male voice.

“Ah! Hey, s-stop that! Eek, no! My legs do not spread that far!”

“Mitotsudaira, the silver chain.”

The wolf wordlessly tugged on the silver chain. And…

“Oh, qu-quitting already!? Tighter! Bind me tighter!”

“Hey…Mitotsudaira?”

The wolf gave another wordless tug. There was no response at first, but about three breaths later, something came into view at the top of the stepped terrace.

A student was dangling down from the chain.

It was a chubby middle-aged man.

His head was shaved and he wore a kasaya-style Far Eastern uniform even though it was summer.

But one person reacted to the man illuminated in the light spells: Neshinbara.

He had been retyping the contents of the parchment, but now he looked up.

“I-is that who I think it is!?”

“Oh, do you know him, Neshinbara?”

“You don’t!? That’s Ankokuji Ekei, leader of the major Kansai doujin group Ankoku-G Risho-To!”

“Wrooooong! Dead wrooooong!”

Once the silver chains let him down, he pulled a hand mirror from his pocket.

He used his fingers to skillfully reapply the makeup around the corners of his eyes and elsewhere.

“I am currently a monk diplomat for the Mouri clan and will soon transfer to M.H.H.R. Hashiba’s command! You must not use that old, boring name for someone of such foresight and skill!”

He crossed his arms then spread them again and twirled around on the spot, his kasaya flipping up as he did so.

“People call me Ankoku-G…”

He suddenly planted his feet firmly down, struck a pose, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“A! K! …Do not forget it.”

Everyone who saw it wordlessly elbowed their neighbor in the side.

<noinclude>
{{HorizonNavbar
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 12|Chapter 12]]
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 14|Chapter 14]]
}}
</noinclude>

Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 7

2021-01-24T01:09:57Z

162.238.158.199:

==Chapter 7: Vertically Separated Comprehenders==
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''It is time

''It is distance

''It is status

'''Point Allocation (Mutual)

Terumasa saw his old friend’s face in the evening sky.

But right now, she was smiling bitterly.

“ ‘Oh, Nabeshima’? That’s all you have to say? …Anyway, how are things going?”

“They’re not. This thing is busted.”

“Isn’t that why we called you in to fix it up with your spell? Or is it too bad for that?”

“But why do ''I'' have to do it?”

''Oops, she just got after me for complaining. But it’s so easy to complain when I don’t want to work.

Still, she must have understood how he felt.

“Yeah, sorry about this. Kiyomasa left me in charge of this since you were coming. If you need someone to really motivate you, I could call the upperclassmen over. Should I?”

“I don’t want to bother them.”

He knew his position here. He was not a fighter and he had only been able to watch the Keichou Campaign, yet here he was with everyone who had fought and lost that largescale battle. So…

…''I feel so out of place.

Meanwhile, some people lined up on either side of Nabeshima. Five in all.

They were old men of varying heights and they all had their arms crossed.

“Kid!”

“Looks like you could use some motivation!”

“Lucky for you, we’re here. Because…”

“We are the Four Heavenly Kings of Ryuuzouji!”

''Oh, these are the people Nabeshima was talking about,'' he thought, but he also tilted his head.

“Um.”

“What? You got a problem with the Four Heavenly Kings of Ryuuzouji!?”

“There are five of you.”

“Indeed, the five of us are the Four Heavenly Kings!”

“Why not call yourselves the Five Heavenly Kings?”

The men exchanged a glance and then were at each other’s throats.

“This is all your fault!”

“H-how dare you make that young man doubt us!”

“Wait, everyone, try to stay positive here! This means we’re famous enough that some kid knows who we are! We must take pride in what our lady has accomplished! Nevertheless, this is still all your fault!”

Since a fistfight broke out over his suggestion, Terumasa concluded the Five Heavenly Kings was not a valid option. Nabeshima glared over at them and waved her hand to tell him not to worry about it, so this must have been the exhausting norm for them.

But at the same time, Terumasa noticed a bandage around her hand.

…''She was injured?

Terumasa relaxed his shoulders.

…''This is tricky.

While he sat around doing nothing at all, things changed and his friends got hurt.

Of course, he doubted he could have changed any of that if he had been there. But still…

“I was called here, wasn’t I?”

He told himself to focus on the reality around him. He had to be aware of the current situation.

Above him, Nabeshima was smiling while watching the Four Heavenly Kings fight.

She had a nice smile. He much preferred seeing that than when she had been worrying over her future without confiding in anyone.

He knew that smile well, but this time it was thanks to her current life at Ryuuzouji. In that case…

…''None of them need me around to do their best and achieve their goals.

He had recently decided to stop worrying so much. He was surrounded by talented people and the people working for him were surprisingly considerate given that he was younger than them.

The ordinary people and his parents were the same. No one saw an inexperienced name inheritor like him as any more than an instructor or someone to advance their interests.

Besides, receiving flattery from someone else – even a superior – did not actually improve your skill. If you wanted compliments, you had to prove your skill first.

“Okay.”

That meant he had to stop worrying about his presence here. No one else cared. And if anyone did, it was because they were overly sensitive about their own presence here.

…''I love to get after myself, don’t I?

''But it really gets to me when someone else does it.

That was why he had trouble with combat since the results and responsibility arrived immediately. With construction, he could take his time and, if there was any kind of problem, he could say “B-but look how nice this part is! This pro more than makes up for that con, right!?” In fact, he had used that trick twice during the practical part of his name inheritor exam.

So he had to do this. If he did make a mistake…

…''My pros will make up for the cons. Probably.

“Nabeshima.”

“Yeah?”

“How long do I have?”

“They told me ASAP.”

''I see,'' he thought. There was a lot he had never before attempted with his spell, so there were a lot of unknowns. He appreciated that the higher ups had taken that into consideration.

But he knew one thing thanks to his construction education.

If he did this the normal way, it was a 2-week job. Repairing it to a barely working level would take 10 days and a complete repair would take 2 weeks.

He wanted to reach that first level, but doing it by August 10 would be difficult. Since he was involved, he knew he had to shorten that somehow.

Nabeshima placed a hand above her eyes to look down at him.

He could see the bandages on that hand. They bound it all the way to the wrist. She waved her hand to say she was fine, but the healing charm would be reducing the pain. Also…

…''It was enough for ''her'' to agree to a bandage.

She did not like to let this kind of thing show. The general mood here had probably helped make it easier for her to accept, but…

“Hey,” he asked. “Where’s Asano?”

“Asleep.”

“I see,” he said.

…''Nothing out of the ordinary there.

He opened a ''lernen figur'' and…

“Hey.”

“Coming-ing-ing-ing.”

A humanoid white Mouse emerged from his neck hard point part.

“Huh? A new pet?” asked Nabeshima overhead.

“No, this is the Shirasagi Castle’s controller. She’s homeless right now and she’s pretty useful when it come to repairs, so I’m keeping her with me.”

“Hm, so you were picking up chicks while we were out fighting? I’m impressed.”

“How rude-ude-ude-ude-ude.”

“Look, now you’ve made her mad. Please try to keep her in a good mood. Because…” Terumasa crouched down and handed the ''lernen figur'' to the Mouse. Then he pointed to the giant thruster in front of him. “Osakabe-hime, can you read this?”

“With ease-ease-ease-ease.”

The Mouse, Osakabe-hime, instantly regained her original form. She became a tall girl. Her white hair spread out in the air before fading away and creating several ''lernen figurs''.

[[Image:Horizon8A_211.jpg|thumb]]

Immediately, an alarm sounded in the sky above the stern.

This specific alarm was for an intruder alert, but…

“Hm? They caught me-me-me-me-me?”

“What did you do!?”

“Extracted the plans-ans-ans-ans-ans.”

Now that she mentioned it, he noticed the ''lernen figurs'' were displaying the plans for the Azuchi’s thruster and the surrounding structure. He had intended to give her a general outline of the current structure, but…

“Nabeshima-sama. Nabeshima-sama,” said a shipwide announcement. “Please contact Azuchi Repairs HQ right away. Shaja.”

“What the hell did you do, Ikeda!?”

“It was kind of me, but it wasn’t ''me'' me!”

“Wasn’t me-me-me-me-me.”

“It ''was'' you!”

Terumasa copied the diagram Osakabe-hime had produced and put it in a folder labeled “For Submission”.

…''Can I manage to repair the general components in 7 days?

If he managed that, would the praise manage to overpower his own self-consciousness?

“Anyway, my general rating of our first term would be ‘don’t ask me how, but everything worked out well enough in the end’.”

“Way to toot your own horn there, Seijun!”

“I’m talking about all of you too!”

Masazumi’s voice rose into the evening sky.

They stood on the stairs in front of Musashi Ariadust Academy.

It was only evening, but during the summer that meant it was already nearly 6PM. She saw the two Technohexen flying up into the sky for their evening shift and she adjusted her grip on the paper bag full of her things.

They had somehow managed to finish cleaning up the Student Council rec room.

…''I had a surprising number of spare clothes there.

But she still had less than the others, but was that because the others were sloppy or because she just did not own many clothes? It was also worrying that Futayo was only carrying Tonbo Spare with her. ''We aren’t going to get back from summer break to find her desk full of mold, are we?

“Vice President, you’ve been muttering to yourself a lot today.”

“Yeah, a lot of the usual stuff happened today. Don’t let it get to you, Balfette.”

She looked up into the sky to see the two Technohexen were no longer looking their way. They were flying next to each other on their way to Murayama’s shipping port to accept a delivery from Sanuki.

As for the group down here…

“I guess we have our party to go to.”

“Who wants to eat for free at the Udon Kingdom!” shouted Horizon while raising both hands.

Everyone else raised their hand too, so…

“Let’s leave our things at home and then gather on Okutama’s bow deck at 7. We can celebrate the entire first term and that we got to skip the Kantou Liberation. Since the Kantou group hasn’t joined us yet.”

“Then let’s make it a celebration for Nördlingen!”

'''Gold Mar:''' “In that case, tell us where you’re going. We’ll stop by during our dinner break.”

'''Art-Ga:''' “We’d also appreciate it if you told us where you’re headed after that.”

“Oh, I’ve been looking into places, so I’ll make a reservation for us.”

Balfette was quick. ''She must have done a lot of research,'' thought Masazumi.

…''But I’m no good at this stuff.

Then another thought hit her.

“We’re carrying all our stuff from the first term out of the academy and we’re planning a party, so why doesn’t it feel like summer break to me yet?”

“I-it doesn’t for any of us, which is why we’re trying to remedy that with the party, Vice President!” said Balfette.

“Masazumi-dono, you are the one who told us we weren’t getting a summer break,” added Crossunite.

She did not have a rebuttal for that one. But…

“Anyway, we have a plan, so everyone in charge of a task needs to send regular reports to either the Student Council rec room or to me directly. I’ll be in that room every day except Saturdays and event days.”

“You aren’t going to take any time off, Masazumi?”

“Listen up, everyone!” cut in the idiot. “Seijun-kun is lonely and has no friends, so let’s figure out how to make sure she gets invited along with everyone else!”

“Shut the hell up!”

“In fact, you can just invite her yourself, everyone. I know any of you can get everyone to show up if you try.”

''So can you,'' thought Masazumi, but she knew it was best not to say anything here.

“Vice President, do you want to be in the rec room at all times because you think something is going to happen?”

The Date Vice Chancellor asked that more for confirmation than as a pure question and Masazumi nodded.

But first, she pointed down the stairs. Balfette had made their reservation, so it would be unnatural to stop walking here. In fact, the people at the bottom of the stairs and in the park below were already reacting.

“Eek! Th-they’re looking this way!”

“Are they plotting to overthrow another enemy nation!?”

“Wow! This is just like when they decided to fight back against the Testament Union!”

The scary part was how none of it was exactly wrong. ''Well, except for the part about looking their way. They were imagining that.'' But…

“We’ve made our plans for summer break, but I bet the other nations are holding their own emergency meetings. Assuming their leaders aren’t just dictating whatever they want.”

Horizon raised her hand.

“Masazumi-sama, what do you mean by dictating?”

“You don’t know something as simple as that, Horizon!? C’mon, tell her what it means, Sis!!”

“Dick-tasting!? Masazumi, you have such a dirty mind! You really think the leaders of the other nations are using summer break to master their skills with chicken skewers!? With salt!? Or with sauce!? No, if you want to do it hardcore, you need to add chili powder! That makes it so super spicy it’ll knock out both participants!”

“Can you all please just shut up!?” shouted Masazumi.

“I am disgusted with this boy for passing it off to Kimi-sama instead of making his own bad joke,” added Horizon.

“Yay!” celebrated the idiot and his sister with a high five. Horizon, Asama, and Mitotsudaira did the same for no real reason. It looked like they were sharing the happiness, but…

“C’mon, Masazumi, you too!”

“No, I’d rather not.”

She felt it was best if she did not grow too friendly with that group. However…

“Anyway, Masazumi, what is the most dangerous plan the other nations could take against Musashi?” asked Mitotsudaira.

“Judge, it can be easy for us to overlook it because the problem is actually ''too'' big, but it’s this.” She pointed straight down. “The Musashi’s current location is a problem. As I’ve said several times today. We were told to return to Kantou by August 10, but we don’t want to do that. So…”

So…

“Someone from Hashiba is bound to show up here. In order to force us to go to Kantou.”

<noinclude>
{{HorizonNavbar
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 6|Chapter 6]]
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
}}
</noinclude>

Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 10

2021-01-24T01:02:44Z

162.238.158.199: /* Chapter 10: Worrier in a Closed Room */

==Chapter 10: Worrier in a Closed Room==
[[Image:Horizon8A_263.jpg|thumb]]
''What does it mean to think?

''To reach an answer?

''Or to doubt your answer?

'''Point Allocation (Giving It Your All)

Fukushima awoke with a gasp.

She saw the white of the ceiling and had to briefly think about where she was.

…''This is my room!

Her next question was the current time. Before she could even remember why it mattered, she grew curious and checked the clock on the wall instead of on a ''lernen figur''.

It was 7 PM.

She doublechecked the location of the hour and minute hands before finally remembering why she was checking.

“I have to leave for M.H.R.R. early tomorrow morning.”

But she had to do something else first.

Her preparations for the trip were more or less complete, so she only had one other task to complete before leaving.

“I thought it was to get some sleep.”

But she had just been asleep.

“Mh?”

Something was not right.

She was supposed to go to sleep later. That was why she had completed her preparations already. She would sleep until just before departure.

But something had happened earlier. Yes…

…''I ordered a game for Hachisuka-dono in lieu of a parting gift.

No, not that. Why had she gone to Hachisuka’s room in the first place?

“––––––”

It all came back to her.

She felt her face going pale and then she stood up.

…''That’s right.

She had decided she needed to tell Kiyomasa how she felt.

And after rolling around in her bed thinking about that, she had suddenly felt weary.

“I must have fallen asleep.”

That was a close one. She had not set the alarm on the PC installed in the wall next to her bed. If she had overslept, it would have looked terribly irresponsible of her.

…''That was far too close.

Since she was going to go to sleep again, she booted up the PC and set the alarm for just before departure.

“Testament. That is done then.”

But what was she supposed to do now?

…''I decided I would tell Kiyo-dono how I feel.

But how was she supposed to tell her that?

She also felt like she had behaved somewhat cold during the Siege of Bitchu Takamatsu Castle.

She felt certain she would be unable to look Kiyomasa in the eye right now.

“Kh…”

Then what could she do?

What if she went to meet her, failed to say anything, and came off as cold again?

And before that, there was the question of how Kiyomasa felt about her.

…''Kiyo-dono is very popular.

Fukushima was aware she also had a lot of supporters among the girls. ''But the boys seem to see me more as an athletic upperclassman than anything.

She thought it was a good thing because it gave them bonds of mutual trust to handle things on the front line.

Kiyomasa, on the other hand, was popular among the girls and the boys. The boys seemed to put her up on a pedestal or exaggerate things when it came to her because they would even refer to her as a goddess.

“…”

''I am overcomplicating this,'' thought Fukushima as she shook her head and sighed.

All she had accomplished was fill her breaths with heat.

But the main point was that everyone liked Kiyomasa more than her. They viewed her with a fondness and worship that was different than simple trust.

''That is one tricky part of being a female name inheritor,'' thought Fukushima.

Since a name inheritor’s sex often differed from that of the original from the Age of the Gods, gay marriage was allowed as a form of interpretation. The M.H.R.R. Protestants had even developed a technique of creating a child between two people of the same sex and doing that outside the body was accepted as an interpretation for a virgin birth.

Fukushima opened a ''lernen figur'' and looked up information on that.

“So in the most extreme form, you only need a single hair to have a child with someone.”

…''Then it can work for us!

She clenched her fist in excitement, but then gasped and shattered the ''lernen figur'' with that fist.

“Why am I looking up how to have her child!? Why am I already defiling her!?”

''No, I was only looking up some knowledge, so it’s fine. No, it isn’t. Or is it?

Either way, she had confused herself.

Her mood kept shifting wildly and she could not relax.

What was she supposed to do?

She would never reach an answer if she only ever pondered theoretical scenarios in her head here.

''I must take action. I am #1 of the Ten Spears. I am our forward.

“Indeed!”

She had made up her mind.

She only had one option here, even if it was an extreme one.

''I do it and see how it plays out. If she shoots me down, then she shoots me down.

“Okay!”

Two minutes later, Fukushima stepped out into the hallway wearing her track suit.

She was not emptyhanded. She held a pillow below her right arm. The pillow had a single word written on it.

…''Testament!

She had hurriedly handwritten it on there, but it was well done. ''A splendid job.

Writing a word on a pillow and showing that to your partner was an ancient tradition.

A note in the Testament talked about pillows being used in place of letters:

<At the time, pillows were made of wood and the wife would write either “yea” or “nay” on one so she need not say anything for her husband to know whether she was willing to accept his love or not. And if their opinions on the matter differed, well, the woman already had what amounted to a wooden club with her, so she could take direct action to remedy that. That is why sturdy loquat wood was preferred and, starting in the middle period, they developed a hammer style that had a hole in the center to attach a handle. This refined tradition was later incorporated into poetry, which is why love poems began to use pillow words.>

Fukushima was satisfied after reading that on a divine network reference site.

Her plan was perfect.

The end of the Testament note had said <Every era has its own traditions, but some of those mention “transforming robots” and “a color-coded team of five” along with everything else, so it is thought some of this may have been invented.> But she chose to ignore that.

''Anyway, I will do it with this.

Kiyomasa’s room was not far away. If she handed Kiyomasa the pillow at the entrance, the girl was sure to know what she meant. And if she did not…

“If she does not…”

Fukushima gulped while standing in front of the room in question.

“It is time!”

Taking action cleared her mind. He thoughts were entirely focused on handing Kiyomasa the pillow.

She held her hand in front of the ''lernen figur'' on the wall and the Western-style door slid open in front of her. She initially thought that was careless of Kiyomasa, but she had only gotten in thanks to her Ten Spears authorization.

Not just anyone could get in. That special access felt like a good sign as she looked inside.

The room was deserted.

“There was no on else there, but when I woke up, someone – or some''thing'' – had left me an offering.”

“An offering?” asked Kiyomasa in the steam rising from the bathwater.

She was speaking with Hachisuka. After leaving the rest of the work with the night shift and heading back to her room, she had found Hachisuka standing pale-faced out in the hallway.

It had looked like she was crying, so she had called out to her and the girl had rushed over and clung to her.

This side of her was not well known because she rarely let it show, but it was appropriate for her age. Kiyomasa noted that it was a rare experience even for her.

“It happened again.”

“Again? What happened again?”

“A mysterious phenomenon.”

According to Hachisuka, she had heard a strange banging sound and fainted. And when she came to…

“Some rice balls and some water had been placed in offering next to me. Some incense had been lit too.”

“That does sound an awful lot like a ritual to say farewell to the dead.”

Hachisuka said nothing and did not look over at Kiyomasa, but she nodded several times.

“I heard a banging sound like that before too.”

“You did?”

“The other night,” was all Hachisuka said. She must not have wanted to remember it.

“Did you get the room purified of mysterious phenomena?”

“I did. With Mlasi, Catholic, and Shinto. But…”

“But?”

“The ending of the Shinto purification was…let’s say ‘too exciting’, so I called it off.”

“Yes, Shinto is a nature worshiping religion, so it is strongly indigenous.” Kiyomasa used what knowledge she had to converse with Hachisuka. “I have heard Shinto mythology requires you to dance in the nude when worshiping the morning sun.”

“Just for the morning sun!?”

“Testament. And, um, when the morning sun rises, they call it ‘a man opening the woman’s cave’. Now, I am fairly certain that is a euphemism, but Shinto is the type of religion to highlight that sort of thing in the center of their mythology.”

“So they give Sweden a run for their money, huh?”

“Testament. Sweden’s inappropriateness comes from their secular side, but with Shinto, it comes from the state religion. In that sense, I think Shinto may be more inappropriate. Maybe it has spread so far that no one thinks to question it anymore.”

“Now I see why the provisional rule is necessary.”

“Very necessary.”

“Because they’re ‘too exciting’.”

“Much too exciting. Yes.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” asked Hachisuka with her face pale again.

Kiyomasa raised her eyebrows and nodded. Then she took a breath, shook the bathwater, and stood up.

“How about this, Hachisuka-san? You can have a Shinto purification done while you are somewhere else. That way you will not have to see it no matter how exciting it might be.”

She moved to the washing area. She had already washed her hair, so she considered leaving the bath.

In truth, she wanted to be alone after this.

“Oh, Kiyomasa.”

“Yes?”

“You should check Fukushima’s room.”

“Huh?”

That caught her off guard, so she felt her stomach leap up inside her.

…''U-um?

“Wh-why should I do that?”

“Testament. The banging sound I heard came from the wall.”

So…

“It might have happened in her room too.”

Kiyomasa could not tell her to go check on Fukushima herself.

…''Because.

She had already been planning to visit Fukushima’s room after this. And she wanted to do it alone.

“U-umm, what will you do, Hachisuka-san?”

“Hmm. Probably order a Shinto purification and then kill time somewhere. Maybe in the dining hall.”

“Will you be okay on your own?”

Kiyomasa was glad she had managed to ask that. She could not allow herself to prioritize her own feelings for Fukushima and put off helping with Hachisuka’s troubles.

But Hachisuka must have had her own thoughts on the matter because she nodded.

“I just needed to get this off my chest.”

So she would do the rest on her own.

Kiyomasa smiled at the fact that the girl trusted her enough to confide in her like this.

“Thank you.”

She took her time leaving the bath so Hachisuka would have plenty of time to change her mind.

After entering the dressing room and shutting the door to the bath, Kiyomasa breathed a sigh.

“…!”

She silently dashed over to the shelves of clothing baskets.

She had to get dressed and visit Fukushima in a hurry. Because…

…''She has a tendency to fall asleep quickly!

What if she was already asleep? If she was, her room would probably be locked and Kiyomasa would be unable to get in. But if she could get in…

“I need to be prepared!”

Fukushima would be leaving for M.H.R.R. early tomorrow morning. It was for training, so she was taking Kani with her and joining Shibata’s team, but that training would last until the end of summer break.

Kiyomasa would similarly be taking some underclassmen to Sanada, so they would not see each other for about a month.

That was a problem.

Why was it a problem? First of all, the thought put her in a bad mood.

If only she had not seen Fukushima making a man out of Katagiri in the bath the other night. There had been some concerning developments before that, but she had thought those two were simply a normal amount of friendly.

But seeing that had triggered some kind of feeling inside her.

She could not explain it well, but that had provoked something inside her that she had been subconsciously suppressing.

There was a side of her that feared Fukushima would be taken from her or leave her if she was not careful.

If she grew flustered every time anything happened, she could not fight on the front line with Fukushima. If she panicked on the inside every time anything happened, she could not look Fukushima in the eye and speak with her. If she lost control of her emotions every time something happened, Fukushima would think she was weird.

…''Oh, no! Every single one is about Fukushima-sama!

She was shocked all over again by that realization, but she also could not help but notice how much trouble she was being.

She was confident that she could assist Fukushima better than anyone else and she had proven it, so she had a tendency to prevent anyone else from getting close to Fukushima. She could only view Kani in such a positive light because her position as an underclassman put some distance between those two.

And after that incident in the bath, she had also realized she wanted Fukushima to look at her and only her.

She was such a terrible person.

She knew it was wrong.

''Especially that dream I had after the bath incident. What even was that? I know it was indecent, impure, and harmful, even if I can’t remember the details. Perhaps I should find a way to recall it in hi-res to further investigate just how wrong it- no, no. I mustn’t do that.

Anyway, that had broken something inside her.

And she was not confident she could hide it. If she tried to do that, she would be plagued by legit sex dreams and she would be a risk on the battlefield if she grew flustered every time she remembered those dreams.

She only saw one answer here.

“I must tell her how I feel, give up on her if I must, and build a new relationship with her based on the result.”

Would she cry if Fukushima rejected her?

But they would be separated for a month after tonight. That much of a cooling-off period would allow her to recover no matter how badly this went.

Hopefully Fukushima would accept her feelings.

But if she would not, that was acceptable too.

''In that case,'' she thought while dressing in a hurry. She put on her track suit. On her upper body, she only wore the shirt, keeping the jacket draped over her shoulders. Her hair was still damp, but that could wait.

She was going to head straight there, so she needed a weapon to help express her feelings.

“This!”

Her jacket had been hiding something inside her clothing basket.

It was a pillow.

“This traditional ‘Testament’ pillow is sure to get through to her.”

…''I did my research!

''This should work perfectly,'' she thought while leaving the dressing room. She opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and found Kasuya and Kani there.

“Oh? Kiyomasa?” asked Kasuya with eyebrows raised.

“Massive Katou-senpai! Where are you headed!?”

“Excuse me, but I have something somewhat important to take care of with a friend, so I need to be going. Oh, and I imagine ‘Massive Katou’ was Takenaka-sama’s idea, but you can simply call me Kiyomasa.”

She quickly responded to Kani and Kasuya, but then she turned around again where those two were giving her a puzzled look.

“Hachisuka-san is inside there, so make sure you say hello.”

“Oh, we’re about to do some bath karaoke, so we’ll ask her to join us.”

“Setting up a rotation with the three of you would probably be lots of fun!”

That would also give Hachisuka something to kill the time. But…

“I must be going!”

Kiyomasa knew she was breathing heavily through her nose, but she could not help it.

''I wonder what Fukushima-sama is doing right now,'' she thought.

''What do I do now?'' wondered Fukushima with her head in her hands.

She had worked up the courage to pay a visit with the pillow, but Kiyomasa was not there.

Stepping inside the room had been a mistake because now she heard several voices out in the hallway.

They were coming from Hachisuka’s room.

A heavily-equipped group had come running in and lined up out in the hallway.

“We are the Azuchi’s Purification Emergency Necessary Intervention Squad! Or PENIS for short!”

“Captain! It really doesn’t seem fair that keep using that abbreviation!”

“You fool! Why do you think I only ever do it when no one else is around!?”

…''Someone is around.

''Well, if they have not noticed me, then that is fine. Actually, no, it isn’t.'' And regardless…

…''I can’t be here when Kiyo-dono gets back!

She had broken into the girl’s room.

What would Kiyomasa think of her then?

But it sounded like Hachisuka’s room was being purified. So…

“Did she have a mysterious phenomenon in her room?”

How did that end up happening?

''Come to think of it, she does seem to be passed out every time I see her in there. That is not normal and you could even call it mysterious. I was so distracted by Kiyo-dono that I failed to notice Hachisuka-dono was suffering from a curse.

At any rate, the purification of the room appeared to have begun.

Once the hallway grew quiet, she wondered what she should do now.

“Hm.”

She held the pillow in her hands.

The best option would be to return to her own room and wait for Kiyomasa to return.

But what if someone was out in the hallway when she left this room? What if she ran into Kiyomasa herself?

And if she did make it back to her own room…

…''Will I be able to return here once Kiyo-dono is back?

She still had 5 hours before she had to leave. Kiyomasa would likely return at some point during that time, but she doubted she could maintain her own resolve that long. She was worried she would find an excuse to avoid returning to this room.

''In that case,'' she decided while breathing in.

“I can wait here instead.”

She was prepared to do that. She sat on Kiyomasa’s bed and placed the pillow at the head of the bed. It was important she made sure the “Testament” part was visible.

And…

“Waiting is a valid tactic. There is no point in losing my nerve after coming this far.”

She relaxed her shoulders and waited for Kiyomasa while wondering what that other girl was doing right now.

…''I wonder what Fukushima-sama is doing right now.

Kiyomasa stood blankly inside a dark room.

Fukushima’s room had been sitting open with no one inside.

That seemed careless, but it had also looked like the girl intended to return soon. After all, the luggage for her trip was sitting out.

While Kiyomasa tried to figure out what to do next, the neighboring room grew noisy. The Shinto purification team that Hachisuka had called in was starting their work. She could hear them via the hallway.

“Okay, you and you strike a pose there! Don’t be embarrassed! Take this seriously!”

“Captain, you’re the one that isn’t trembling enough!”

“Tingle, tingle, tingle, tingle!”

What she heard made her wonder if this was some underground evil cult instead of Shinto, but at least they were pouring their hearts and souls into their work.

Regardless, this made it hard for her to leave.

“I can’t believe this.”

She was not sure if that comment was directed at herself, at the current situation, or at Fukushima, but she sat down on Fukushima’s bed all the same.

Fukushima would be back soon.

There were still 5 hours until she left, but she had left her door wide open.

…''That honestly is just like her.

Kiyomasa smiled, placed her pillow on the bucket she had carried from the bath, and held that in her arms while she sighed.

“I’m so nervous.”

Carrying that pillow with her was enough to be confident in her own feelings. But…

“Will Fukushima-sama accept my feelings?”

“Sensei! The Udon Kingdom just about refused us entry thanks to you!”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I ended up destroying several of their punching udon machines.”

They heard their teacher laugh over the divine transmission and they also heard Sanyou yelling “Senpai! Senpai! They’re catching up!”, but they decided to ignore that part.

They were at a riverside restaurant on the Udon Kingdom’s central road. They were seated at the table Adele had reserved on the stepped terrace continuing down toward the river.

“Master Tenzou, what is a punching…whatever that was?” asked Mary.

“Judge. It is a game where the amount of udon you get to eat is based on the cumulative amount of force after three hits to a punching machine! It is very popular with the military commanders in this region.”

'''Art-Ga:''' “This ninja is trying to show off by regurgitating what he read on the tourism site.”

'''Gold Mar:''' “Ohhh, you’re showing incredible restraint, Ga-chan. You would normally give him that look to his face.”

'''10ZO:''' “A-a little more restraint than that would be nice!!”

Anyway, it sounded like their homeroom teacher was enjoying the first night of her summer break too.

“Okay,” said Masazumi while facing the others. “Did you all receive your tentative report cards?”

Those came as sign frames and she held up her own while it was only displaying the cover. The others nodded in response.

They opened theirs and showed them off to the people they were comfortable doing so with.

“Ho ho. Exactly the excellent grades we all expected of me,” said Horizon. “Toori-sama, is that that supposed to be your ranking? And here I thought the people at the top were supposed to have good grades.”

“D-dammit! What is wrong with you!? A double digits ranking is pretty good!”

“My king, you did above average in the subjects you came to us for help in, so I don’t think you need to worry.”

“Then Toori is on the borderline between idiot and average,” said Urquiaga.

Everyone froze.

Balfette and Crossunite immediately moved their eyes or head to keep an eye on their surroundings, Horizon and Asama remained calm, Noriki raised his hand to go ahead and announce his ranking, and the Date Vice Chancellor watched it all play out with narrowed eyes. The various reactions were pretty amusing. But…

“Heh heh,” laughed the idiot sister. “I challenge you, foolish brother! Let’s see who has the better ‘teacher’s comment’! Mine is, ‘I guess this’ll have to do. It’s a little late to expect you to start studying in your senior year.’ How about that!?”

“Incredible, sis! All I got was ‘make sure to build up your stamina during summer break or you’ll regret it later’!”

Asama spat out the water she was drinking and Horizon raised her right hand.

“I am the candid type,” she said. “And I think the standard thing here would be to have a big emotional scene before the final battle – in this case, before the Honnouji Incident. So I was thinking I could give everyone what they wanted there.”

“Hey,” said Toori. “So you’re willing to do that, but you aren’t willing to let me touch your boobs?”

“This is very different from having my boobs touched. In what world are they the same, Toori-sama?”

After a pause, the girls (even those at other tables at the restaurant) applauded Horizon’s comment.

After she raised her hands toward them all and bowed, Balfette hesitantly raised a hand.

“Bringing up something like that out of the blue is a lot like you, Vicereine Horizon, but is that really something you want to do?”

“It seems like a good idea,” readily replied Horizon. Because, “I am the kind of person who will join in just because I am excited with how you have made breakfast. In fact, I feel like I must join in to prove myself. And on top of that…”

She tapped on the idiot’s head a few times.

“I am also trying to become a new me. This allows me to do both at once. So, well…”

She gave Asama and Mitotsudaira a nod and then looked to everyone else.

“I am aware that it would be best if we could deepen our relationship through shared experiences. They might be intangible, they might crumble if you try to touch them, and they might be lost if you are not careful, but if there are indeed things that you can gain through death, contradictory thought that may seem…”

Then…

“I will try to seek out the forms of happiness that extend beyond just myself. I have recently come to think such things may be where true happiness is found.”

Masazumi listened to Horizon.

“Toori-sama has shown me such things, brought me to them, and given them to me as a part of my world, so I am truly thank- gweh!”

“Horizon! Don’t bite your tongue quite yet! Try to get at least this much out first, okay!?”

“Calm down,” said Horizon while holding out a hand to stop Mitotsudaira.

Then she tapped on the idiot’s head again.

“How about you, Toori-sama?”

“Me? Hmm.” He looked up into the sky. “I would love to do some sexy things with you, but you haven’t got all your emotions yet, right?”

Masazumi tilted her head at that.

“Just a second, idiot.”

“H-hey, only idiots call people idiots! Heh heh, so you’re an idiot! Bet you hate being called that!”

“Shut up, idiot. Now, are you listening?”

“Don’t tell me to shut up and then ask me a question!”

He really needed to shut up. But there was something she had to check on.

“The other night, we learned that Horizon’s Logismoi Oplo are essentially sermon weapons. Isn’t that right, Asama? In other words, their activation suppresses the corresponding emotion by filling her with a hatred or dislike of them.”

“Yes, that is my current theory,” said Asama.

“Then,” said Masazumi. “When Horizon gets Porneia, won’t it make her dislike sexual things?”

<noinclude>
{{HorizonNavbar
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 9|Chapter 9]]
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 11|Chapter 11]]
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</noinclude>

Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 1

2021-01-14T04:10:32Z

162.238.158.199: /* Chapter 1: Discussers in the Shade */

==Chapter 1: Discussers in the Shade==
[[Image:Horizon8A_039.jpg|thumb]]
''Hot

''Hot hot hoooot

''Hoooot hoooot

'''Point Allocation (Intelligibly Next Time, Please)

“Now, let’s discuss why I think the Honnouji Incident will occur no sooner than the end of August.”

Masazumi took a breath with the wind on her back by Student Council rec room window.

She knew everyone was watching her.

…''Now, then.

She continued speaking.

“I honestly do not actually know when it will happen. This is all speculation.”

But she was fairly certain she was right about when it would happen.

“Late August or early September.”

“So you expect it to happen after summer break?”

“Judge,” she confirmed. “That event signifies the retirement of a major nation’s leader. P.A. Oda has a lot of enemies, but they also have a lot of allies and related nations. They could probably safely complete the retirement and transfer of power during summer break, but if they do it after summer break, they can work with their allies to make sure they’re all on the same page.”

“That kind of finesse is especially necessary with a large nation,” added Crossunite.

Mary nodded in impressed agreement.

Come to think of it, England was a powerful nation but not a large one, so Mary probably would find that viewpoint a fascinating one.

So Masazumi continued.

“With the transfer of power and such to deal with, if they do it at the start of September, it would probably be focused on that first week of the month. That span of a week is important, so they would want to focus on it.”

So…

“We need to keep an eye on P.A. Oda’s actions from now on. There are a few different factors influencing when the Honnouji Incident happens, so I doubt even they know for sure at this point.”

“Eh? Really?” The idiot looked up. “What’s with them? Why do they keep getting after us if they don’t even have their own house in order?”

“Cut them some slack. They’re a large nation.” Masazumi raised three fingers toward the others with her right hand. “Three factors will affect when the Honnouji Incident happens.”

She started with the first.

“First, they might fall behind schedule beforehand. This happens a lot with the history recreation. Largescale events require a lot of preparation. Unexpected delays can pile up and that isn’t something you can predict beforehand. If you could predict them, you would work to remedy them before they became a problem.”

Everyone nodded in understanding, so she moved on.

“Second, foreign interference. To be blunt, this one’s mostly about what we do. The actions of any nations opposed to P.A. Oda can always change their plans.”

And the third.

“Third, there’s a religious issue.”

“Religious?”

Asama saw everyone tilt their head at that one.

They were clearly confused how religion could affect a nation’s plans, so she raised her hand.

She understood this one due to her Shinto expertise. Basically…

“Is it about lucky days and things like that?”

“Judge. Exactly.” Masazumi nodded. “Largescale events will of course involve largescale spells. And the religion behind those spells will designate days on which they work better. Shinto calls them lucky days and other religions tend to call them holidays or seasonal festivals. For a domestic affair unaffected by foreign influence, they should try to use one of those days to limit the depletion of their ether tanks and to maximize the effects.”

“With P.A. Oda, would that be Shinto or Mlasi?” asked Naruze.

“That’s hard to say,” replied Asama.

“Really? Not even you know?”

“Well, it really depends on what kind of spells we’re talking about.”

Because…

“Shinto’s lucky days are placed in one of six different categories based on what kind of luck they bring. Mlasi is similar, so it’s hard to say which category they would want to use. They might even want to use a combination between the two religions. But…”

Asama opened a sign frame.

It showed a map of the Far East with the locations of the major Shinto shrines displayed. The entire map was covered by a wave formed from pillars.

The wave was especially high around Mikawa and Edo Bay.

“This is real-time information on the ley lines sent by shrines from all around the Far East. Some of you probably saw this on the way here, but IZUMO is the one gathering all this data. However, P.A. Oda has refused to participate and will not hand over their data.”

Just as she started to say “but” again, he spoke up.

“But can you still figure something out from this?”

“Eh? Oh, yes, I can. …When P.A. Oda consumes a large amount of ether, the side effects can be measured in the neighboring regions. So if we keep a careful eye on this…”

“Won’t it be too late if we notice it on the day of the event?” asked Adele.

Asama shook her head.

“Such a major event is bound to have a rehearsal run. This will require a major opening of their ether tanks, so they will need to make sure that process is functioning properly. And that should produce detectable side effects.”

“I see,” said Adele.

“So our job is to ensure we do not miss those side effects?” asked Horizon with a double thumbs up. “Impressive work, Asama-sama. Just when everyone thought you were only good for shooting, blasting, and sinking ships, you prove just how multitalented you are!”

“Wait, why would anyone think that’s all I can do? Or something I do at all?”

Why did everyone refuse to look her in the eye after that?

“Anyway, we need to be on the lookout for that rehearsal day. Once we know what kind of lucky day they’re interested in, we can assume the next one or the one after that will be the real deal.”

“I see,” said Adele again before taking a breath. “And then we have to figure out how to intervene, don’t we?”

“Yes,” said Masazumi. “That’s the real problem here.”

Masazumi crossed her arms and groaned.

''We keep running into this problem lately,'' she thought.

“We’ll need some preparations in place if we hope to intervene. I’d like a week, no, 2 weeks if possible. This is all revolving around the span of a week, so with two of those to work with, we should be able to get everything ready.”

So…

“If I can, I’d like to be here at around August 20.”

“But that will not be possible if we return to Kantou, will it?” asked Horizon.

“Judge.” Masazumi uncrossed her arms and shrugged. “Personally, I want to find an excuse to stay here.”

“It’s a little late now, but couldn’t we have gone to Sweden instead of here?” asked Naito.

“Hmm, if we had done that, the M.H.R.R. Catholic states would have been extremely wary of our presence. So…”

At that point, Masazumi looked out the window.

She could see several white lines rising from below the Musashi.

“Is that smoke from people cooking?” asked Tenzou. “There sure is a lot of it.”

“Master Tenzou, the Musashi is 6km up right now, isn’t it? It’s incredible the smoke from cooking udon rises this far.”

“That would be because this is the Udon Kingdom.” Balfette pushed up her glasses and opened a sign frame. “I was curious, so I looked into it. Apparently, the Udon Kingdom does everything based on udon, so the water pipes in the landport all have udon sauce in them.”

It was unclear how much of that was true, but how much udon would they have to cook to send the smoke this high?

“This much is gonna form clouds, isn’t it?”

“Judge! Sa-…that is, the Udon Kingdom is famous for its udon clouds!”

Balfette opened an “Udon Kingdom Sightseeing Map”, so she was probably planning to head down for a visit after today’s exam.

''She sure is resilient,'' thought Masazumi, but…

…''Oh.

She belatedly remembered something.

“We…”

Everyone stopped moving to listen.

They turned toward her and she worked to keep a relaxed expression as she continued.

“We were fighting a war up until this morning, weren’t we?”

“How could you forget!?” they all shouted back at her.

“I know we were distracted with the makeup exam coming up,” said Naito while fanning Naruze by the Student Council rec room’s wall. “But only Seijun could ask ‘we were fighting a war, weren’t we?’ as casually as asking what we ate for breakfast.”

“Yeah, but it’s easy to forget now that we’re back to our normal lives,” said Masazumi.

“If you ask me, this is hardly our normal lives,” said Ohiroshiki who had stopped by to replenish the ice in the rec room’s small ice room. “We still seem at war to me.”

He pointed out the window where a class was taking a practical exam in the schoolyard.

Naito stretched up to see a half-fishman gym teacher speaking to the 2nd year boys.

“Listen up, you lot! For today’s makeup practical exam, you have to demonstrate your military swimming skills below the blazing sun!”

“Military swimming!?” One student in swimming trunks raised his hand. “Sensei! Is that pool over the port side of the schoolyard just for show!?”

“Use of the pool has been granted to the girls of two different classes. To put it simply, you were not deemed worthy! However!” The gym teacher wobbled on his feet and then collapsed onto the school yard. “This heat…is too much…for me too.”

“Sensei!”

“Don’t die, Sensei! We won’t get credit for our exam!”

“Let’s evacuate to the school building! We’ll just have to swim through the hallways!”

''Are they about to invent a new sport?'' wondered Naito. But…

…''That’s about how it was for us in the 2nd year too.

That suggested the Far East’s “culture” was being successfully passed down. And…

“Oh?”

Naito noticed a familiar face running on the schoolyard. They wore a black track suit and a hat.

“Seijun, should Chrippe really be running out in the open there?”

“Could you maybe come up with a better nickname first?”

But Masazumi did hold a hand over her eyes (despite being in the shade) to take a look.

There she saw…

“Swedish Chancellor Christina is here as a guest. Keep that in mind, everyone.”

Naito rolled the name “Christina” around in her mind.

She was the Swedish Chancellor they had rescued at Nördlingen.

…''Ga-chan’s definitely drawing a doujinshi based on her for the next event.

She was entering her second lap around the schoolyard after passing in front of Oriotri who was carrying a bamboo water bottle.

“What is she doing, Vice President?” asked Adele.

“She did a lot of work in M.H.R.R. to prepare for Nördlingen and whatnot, but then she ultimately chose not to blow herself up, right? She was so focused on all those things she neglected to complete some of her exams, so she’s completing them on the Musashi now.”

“Some of her exams?”

“Basically, she has to do some makeup exams just like we do. Our teacher is taking charge there, so after some discussion with Sweden, they got most of her makeup exams switched to athletic ones. I think she also has a foreign language exam left, but she won’t have any trouble with that.”

Asama nodded in an impressed sort of way while looking to the schoolyard with a tray in hand.

“In other words, these laps are like a ceremony she has to complete for choosing a life with the Nagaoka boy?”

“That’s a pretty bold way of putting it, Asama-chi.”

“Oh, come on,” said Asama, but she did not actually deny it.

…''She really has changed.

She seemed to have somewhat accepted that denying these things would accomplish nothing. Naito and Naruze had a fair bit of that between themselves, but now that strict shrine maiden was becoming that way too.

Naito knew she and Naruze still had a way to go in the regard. Naruze in particular had made a lot of progress since England, so it felt like she had surpassed Naito there.

“…”

Naito began to wonder if her partner felt inferior to her in any way.

If they both felt that way about each other, then was that another way they were “equal”?

If so…

…''It should be interesting to see how our relationship grows from here.

She constantly felt a desire to make sure she was a worthy partner.

“Asama-chi.”

“Yes?”

“How’s your new song coming?”

“For the summer festival, you mean?”

“Oh, judge,” said Naito noncommittally. “I was just hoping you were making one.”

“Wh-why?”

It was impressive Asama had time to do anything else at all with how busy she was with her shrine duties and the Chancellor. But doing things she was not obligated to do was probably a sign that she was still growing as a person.

That was probably best indicated by whatever she considered to be her new “normal”.

Changes in a relationship came from changes in both parties.

''The Chancellor, Mito-tsan, Kimi-chan, and Horizon must be changing as well.

''Yoshy and Ookubo from the 2nd year changed a lot too.

''Hooray for war then? Well, maybe not, but circumstances do change people.

In that case…

…''Oh.

Naito wanted to do something too.

Whatever the situation, they were headed into summer break. With those major battles behind them, she was looking to the future and searching for possibilities.

She wanted to do something new.

High school education was not required, but once you joined, there was no point in not doing it. So if she was going to make the most of her time outside of school…

“Seijun, about summer break.”

She directly asked what was weighing on her mind.

They were all looking forward to summer break, but…

“Are we even going to get one?”

Adele was seated close to the Vice President, so she got a good view of the girl’s reaction.

…''Oh, I know what that means.

''We aren’t getting one,'' thought Adele based on the Vice President’s reaction.

The Vice President had made a snap decision.

And her snap decisions were always about their policy regarding the Musashi and the Far East’s actions.

This snap decision meant they had to keep the Musashi and the Far East moving, so they could not spend time on a summer break.

As a vassal, Adele was prepared to accept that. Vassals kept the mission running smoothly and provided general support.

She was sometimes tasked with unnecessary odd jobs or joke jobs, but that was now how it was supposed to work. ''Although I feel like the jokes have become the majority lately. Of course, I bring it on myself a lot, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

But at the moment, she saw the Vice President start to say something.

“––––––”

Everyone sent emotionless looks the Vice President’s way, as a sort of counterattack.

At some point, the Date Vice Chancellor and the 2nd Special Duty Officer had displayed a summer swimsuit article on their sign fame and Mary was doing the same with a “Far Eastern Summer Dishes He’ll Love” article. Hassan was writing an article on summer curry and Horizon was staring at the Vice President using her arms and her face.

They clearly all hoped to get a summer break.

Even the Vice President would have a hard time telling them they were not getting one now.

“No,” she began, but then she forcibly changed direction: “Yes.”

A pause followed.

No one said anything, but they could hear voices from outside…no, from the first floor of the building.

“Okay! Let’s dive right on in!”

“Splaaaaash! Splish, splish, splish!”

“Hold it, you lot! You may be in the hallway, but make sure you go up for air! Not that I know what that’s like since I have gills.”

Those other students were bringing sports to a strange new territory. But…

“––––––”

Everyone exchanged a glance and opened sign frames.

'''Me:''' “I’m stuck in a figure four leglock right now, but what do you think about Seijun’s joke just now?”

'''Asama:''' “It ended with ‘yes’, so I think that probably counts as a yes.”

'''Sticky King:''' “She changed course at the very last second, so I feel like the break will be a short one if we really are getting one at all.”

Adele agreed with Nenji’s assessment.

Across the room, Mary looked up at the 1st Special Duty Officer.

“Yes-no?” She blushed and tilted her head. “What is that supposed to mean, Master Tenzou?”

“I-it’s always a yes for you! And my answer will never vary, Mary-dono!”

The Vice President gasped when she heard that, so Adele looked to Horizon. And Horizon…

“Neshin- Mitotsudaira-sama!”

“J-judge! Masazumi, don’t even think about coming up with a pun using ‘vary’ and ‘Mary’. It would barely qualify as a joke!”

“Dammit, you keep cutting me off on my jokes lately!”

“Hold it!” interjected Neshinbara. “Ariadust-kun took a moment to insult me there, didn’t she!? Mitotsudaira-kun, you heard that, didn’t you!?”

Starting with him before moving on had become so standard no one paid any real attention to it. ''And you should count yourself lucky our cannibalism is hitting you in such a harmless way, Secretary.

But that aside…

“Masazumi?” asked Suzu. “How much…of a break are…we getting?”

Asama saw Masazumi rest her elbow on the windowsill and stare outside.

'''Unturning:''' “Is she trying to avoid answering?”

But Masazumi answered while still staring into the distance.

“Summer break is going to be a tricky thing.”

In other words…

“You could say we’re getting one, but you could also say we aren’t.”

Asama tilted her head at that.

“So which is it – yes or no?”

“That’s the thing.” Masazumi turned back around and shrugged. “We have to continue our work with the other nations even during summer break, but everything other than that will essentially be like a normal break.”

''That would mean…'' thought Asama.

“The people with more work to do will have a shorter break, won’t they?”

There was one person who would obviously have a lot of work.

…''How will he handle that?

Everyone turned toward Tenzou and he looked back at them in a cautious way.

“What do you say to that, Tenzou-kun?”

“Hm.” He crossed his arms and tilted his head and upper body. “For the most part, that’s just how it has to be.”

He was apparently prepared for it. But he would probably need a little bit of encouragement.

…''He’s changed too.

In the past, it had felt like he would either act immediately or refuse altogether. With Toori’s requests in particular, he would often go with the latter option after looking into it.

It was easy to guess why he had learned to hold off on making decisions now.

…''Mary.

He was no longer alone. He had someone waiting for him at home, so he could not rush into making decisions without discussing it with her first.

'''Me:''' “C’mon, Tenzou. You’ve been way too protective and defensive lately.”

'''Silver Wolf:''' “I think ''you'' could stand to learn how to be ''more'' defensive, my king.”

'''Laborer:''' “Ha ha ha. There’s no way he could ever pull that off, so specializing exclusively in offense is probably the right move for him.”

'''Hori-ko:''' “My attacks are indeed unavoidable.”

If only Horizon’s comment were not so true.

At any rate, Asama sent a comment to Mary.

'''Asama:''' “Um, Mary? What would you do if Tenzou-kun was stuck working during summer break?”

'''Scarred:''' “Eh?”

That must have come as a surprise because Mary hung her head toward her sign frame with flowers spilling from her.

The flowers meant her thoughts had to be in a positive place and that either inspired Naito to give her some encouragement or simply to tease her.

'''Gold Mar:''' “Would you go with him if you could? Like you did at Hexagone Française?”

'''Scarred:''' “No, um.”

'''Hori-ko:''' “Now, Mary-sama, it is time to choose.”

With that much encouragement, Mary hung her head while blushing and gave an answer.

“I-I would make Master Tenzou a lunch to eat on the job every day.”

Tenzou realized everyone was focused on him. But…

…''I must avoid anything that would waste Mary-dono’s efforts here.

“Mary-dono.” He spoke to her flushed and somewhat downturned face. “It is possible that I will no longer be able to eat lunch with you every day.”

[[Image:Horizon8A_061.jpg|thumb]]

But…

“So how about I thank you for the meal when you give me my lunchbox in the morning and thank you again when I return at the end of the day?”

Her hair shook as she turned to look at him. Flowers scattered and there was a smile on her lips.

“I would love that!”

Asama gasped.

…''Tenzou-kun has finally learned how to put his pride on the line in a good way.

''But anyway,'' thought Asama as she looked to Mary and Tenzou. The English Princess continued to scatter flowers as she tried to get back to studying. Tenzou watched that and then stood up.

“Here.”

He sat back down to her right.

Her shoulders tensed in obvious surprise, so he raised his right index finger.

“This is a ninja spell called Side Sitting.”

“A-a ninja spell!?”

“Yes. Now that I have cast the spell on you, you cannot help but let me sit by your side.”

“R-really?”

Masazumi responded to their conversation by leaning out the window and taking deep breaths. ''You just have to get used to it, Masazumi.

But Tenzou was not done speaking.

“Those affected by this spell are also doomed to see the caster when they look to the side.”

'''Mar-Ga:''' “I’m going to die.”

'''Asama:''' “Now, now, Naruze. Let’s not overreact.”

'''Mar-Ga:''' “I’ve known Tenzou since elementary school, but this really is going to kill me. Too much of a good thing really is poison.”

'''Gold Mar:''' “But why is it Ma-yan’s advances get a positive response, but Tenzou’s get a ‘has he gone insane’ response? This is definitely the latter.”

'''Uqui:''' “Ignore him. This can be the most delusional part of someone’s life.”

'''10ZO:''' “I’d prefer you call it the happiest part of my life!”

Incredibly, Asama could easily imagine him continuing on like this forever.

Regardless, this meant they had solved the Tenzou problem. So…

“Masazumi, this means you have some concrete plans for what we can do over summer break, doesn’t it? What are they?”

“Well, the first step will be procuring some more workers.”

That was a somewhat frightening thing to hear, but then Masazumi crossed her arms and turned toward Asama.

“You see, intervening in the Honnouji Incident isn’t our primary objective.” She opened a sign frame displaying a map of M.H.R.R. and she tapped at the northern part of it. “You haven’t forgotten, have you? We’re trying to make our way to Westphalia.”

Masazumi made sure everyone was focused on her before she continued.

“Are you listening?” she began, earning her some nods.

They all understood, so she went ahead and said it.

This had always been their starting point.

“At Mikawa, we tasked ourselves with collecting the Logismoi Oplo in order to stop the Apocalypse.”

Horizon nodded.

“The idiot insisted on world domination, but in the earlier debate between you and the Pope-Chancellor, we decided our main task would be debating the legitimacy of our objective at the Peace of Westphalia. …Oh, and I learned all this from Tres España’s Helper-sama.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s either a name inheritor or a name inheritor candidate, so I should probably look up her actual name sometime.” ''Or better yet,'' thought Masazumi as she added that task to her “Jobs for Ookubo” list. “While we search for a means of stopping the Apocalypse, our priority is gathering the Logismoi Oplo and securing our own rights and safety. It was my discussion with the Pope-Chancellor that determined we would use the Peace of Westphalia to make the final decision on all that. And at England and Magdeburg, we made a certain promise with Europe and the former Mlasi leader.”

“Europe’s nations and other related nations will support Musashi at Westphalia if we oppose Oda and Hashiba, since they are a threat to Europe, correct?”

Mitotsudaira framed it as a question since she had not been there when the decision was made.

Masazumi was relieved that someone like that could find the answer so quickly.

“Judge,” she confirmed. “Nothing is set in stone, but ''that is what we decided.'' So our objective will be achieved at the Peace of Westphalia, but we have to drive back Hashiba and Oda to get there.”

“And we finally managed to liberate Kantou, right?”

“Yes, but the big finale is yet to come. We still need to intervene in the Honnouji Incident.”

Masazumi swung her right arm and Tsukinowa did the same with his right foreleg to open a sign frame.

Then she spoke to them all.

“If we do not do something here, we will have a hard time emerging victorious at Westphalia.”

<noinclude>
{{HorizonNavbar
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Prologue|Prologue]]
| [[Horizon:Volume 8A Chapter 2|Chapter 2]]
}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter4

2020-12-27T15:38:32Z

162.238.158.199: /* Part 4 */

==Chapter 4: The Demon Lord’s Young — the_LIGHT.==

===Part 1===

“Where have you been, Risako!?”

“Mister, Risako-chan is back!!”

The gym clothes girl laughed when she saw the other children gathered around.

“Eh heh heh. A doggy and an older girl saved me.”

They must have been preparing for another move because all the trucks had their engines running. But they had waited until they had found the girl with red hair done up like candy. She was relieved. Having a home to return to was a wonderful thing.

“''A doggy,'' huh?” said the artificial ghost called Frillsand #G.

“…”

Her comment made the young researcher fall silent for a bit.

His name was Drencher Kihara Repatri.

That family name was so well known in the dark side that it had become a more powerful classification than beneficial or harmful. The man who bore that name sighed softly to help refocus his mind.

“There is a chance we’ve been located, but we’re faster at the moment. If we move before they catch up, we can reach ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'' without issue.”

“Do you really think this world will allow any of this to go ‘without issue’?”

“It’s our job to make sure it happens.”

The adults exchanged their views with their voices too low for the excited children to hear.

But a certain boy kept his voice low for a different reason.

“Risako.”

“Oh, Sodate-chan.”

The tall boy in the same kind of gym clothes looked troubled for some reason. In fact, he looked close to tears. Risako tilted her head, thinking he was afraid she would get after him about the ball and chemical soap, but this was different.

“So you came back,” he said.

“Eh?”

“I was hoping maybe you were gone for good.”

He had wanted that? Did he hate her that much? Risako’s face clouded over, but this was again different. He shook his head and explained.

He was the only one of the children who had ''started to question these motion sensors they wore for some kind of experiment.''

“Because then at least you might have been safe.”

===Part 2===

He was afraid of screwing it up, so he started by drawing marks on her back with a marker.

“Hamazura, that tickles.”

“Stay still.”

The old book had a brush-drawn diagram with no perspective or attempt to make it look three-dimensional. The indicated locations of the organs were clearly not right. Maybe it was like the difference between an aerial photograph of the clouds and the isobars on the weather forecast map. He wondered if this was what all traditional Japanese medicine was like as he drew Xs on his girlfriend’s body. She had even removed her bra and was holding her chest in her hands while showing him her smooth back. He thought his heart was going to burst every time she squirmed from the ticklishness. Even he knew that reaction was inappropriate given the circumstances. Once he finished that, it was finally time to start. He faced the girl while she lay face down on the container lab’s work table like she was sunbathing.

The moxa used for the moxibustion was like fluffy cotton, but he actually had to set it on fire.

It felt wrong doing that on her soft skin and he could even permanently scar her if he screwed it up.

“…”

His fear came to the forefront now that it was time to do it, but this was the only way to help her with the fever.

He fought the desire to shut his eyes and placed a small pile of “fuel” on her soft skin. He worked at the lighter with a trembling hand, but he kept failing. Once he finally had a small flame, he slowly moved it in close.

“Nh.”

“A-are you okay, Takitsubo?”

“I’m fine.”

He continued the process a few more times. He had his doubts, but when she wiped the sweat from her brow, no more sweat beaded up. It did seem to be working.

He could not thank the hakama girl enough.

He could not waste this chance she had given them, so they had to approach ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo''.

That card-sized hard drive had been labelled with the word “Lifeline”.

Aneri must have decided the data would be too small to see on his phone because she displayed it a flat screen monitor in the lab instead. It was a series of numbers.

It looked like a calculation sheet made with spreadsheet software, but even that was enough to make the delinquent boy’s head hurt. Maybe it was important data, but he had no idea what he was supposed to focus on.

“This looks like materials data,” said Takitsubo after peering at it from the side.

“Materials?”

“Whether they’re beneficial or harmful, the dark side does a lot of research.” She pointed at one of the numbers. “They’re also building a lot of military weapons. But doesn’t it seem odd? Academy City is a mass consumer and it only has so much land since it’s surrounded by walls. You can’t just dig into the ground here and find oil or ores. So where do they get all those materials from?”

“Where? Isn’t that what the cooperative institutions around the world are for? They can work out a deal with them.”

“But how can they do that without leaving any record of it?”

She pointed at another number.

If a citizens group monitoring the flow of money and materials could reveal a secret, then it had never been part of the dark side to begin with.

“Look at this. The dark side is using far more materials than the total amount brought in from outside the city. Cutting off the fat and redistributing it to themselves would not be enough for this. The amount the dark side uses is several times larger. This would show up in the records no matter what you did. Important people like the Board of Directors and its Chairman can only cover up so much. This is too much. It’s well past what you could hide by cooking the books.”

“But then…”

He trailed off when Aneri opened a new window. A single point on a map of Academy City was colored in red. There was a secret there.

“They have an entrance and exit that doesn’t leave any records,” said the track suit girl while viewing the screen.

There were several files that appeared to be saved from message boards and social media pages. Reading through them showed a certain point in common.

If you boarded a train between 4 hours and 30 minutes, you would be taken to another world.

Takitsubo pointed at that bizarre statement.

“There is a way of reaching it and we should see hints of it in the rumors told around the city. Like the ‘!’ signs, a deadly train, kidnappers at the amusement park, babies in the coin lockers, or an underground construction zone where you can dump anything you don’t want found. But none of that gets at the real truth.”

“You mean…?”

“Academy City doesn’t promote recycling so much just because it wants to make the most of its limited resources. ''Sending things back to be recycled over and over again masks how much materials are actually being used.'' They can’t have an investigation revealing that we dump out several times more trash than materials we take in, right? That would violate conservation of mass. So they needed to make it hard to compare those two values. It’s a form of laundering.”

Why was that sleight of hand necessary? How did they reach the impossible result of more waste than raw materials? What was this secret that no one wanted getting out?

''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.

This was the identity of that term they had heard so many times today.

“It…isn’t closed off? There’s a secret route through the walls surrounding Academy City!?”

That could not be. For better or for worse, Academy City was cut off from the outside world. Those thick walls prevented their tech from spreading to the world at large because that could lead to disorder and chaos.

Hamazura used to be part of Skill Out. That was a group of the boys and girls who had dropped out of Academy City but had nowhere to go since they could not get out of the city.

They had been trapped. They had dropped out of school, but those walls had kept them here. If you wanted to take a trip outside the city for just a few days, you needed to submit a ton of paperwork and receive a nanodevice injection. Because if you tried leave without using the official gates, you could be killed to prevent a data leak. There had been burglars and muggers in the back alleys, but none of those expert thieves had dared go anywhere near the walls.

If there was a way to freely move in and out, they may not have felt so much pressure. They could have made a place for themselves.

Their former leader, Komaba Ritoku, might not have had to fight and die.

“…”

But the dark side had torn down that number one assumption like it was nothing.

That counterfeiter had stored that information on a card-sized hard drive labeled “Lifeline”. Had he thought he could use that information to get some dark side bigshots to save him?

He must have never imagined he would instead have his brains blown out by a paparazzo. Hamazura was at the center of all this, but he still did not know if that had been planned or a spontaneous decision.

“It’s deep below Academy City.” Takitsubo Rikou calmly read aloud something on such a large scale that talk of an alternate dimension would have sounded more realistic. “The world’s largest particle accelerator is built directly below the city walls, so people are told that digging in that area could break the accelerator’s seal and expose them to radiation and other risks. That was meant to convince everyone that no one would be dumb enough to try it.”

The diagram they found looked like a puzzle ring. It seemed to carefully avoid the circular accelerator facility, but this was a tunnel built by the dark side. There was no chance it met all the proper safety standards.

That was the dark side’s lifeline.

They had built it to continue pumping fuel into their illicit research and its construction showed they did not care at all if they brought chaos to the world. It really was the greatest taboo. It was a dark umbilical cord that could wipe out the Kiharas and everyone else if it was cut off.

“I doubt Anti-Skill knows about this,” said Takitsubo. “So they won’t be able to block it off. We can safely escape the city if we use it.”

“…”

The red light displayed by Aneri was in District 10, the city’s biggest slum. The taboo no one wanted was hidden below the district everyone had abandoned.

It was unclear if it had always had this name. They may have changed the name periodically to help hide the truth. All the scattered information was fragmentary witness accounts and some of it would likely be intentional misinformation.

But that taboo’s gaping mouth had sat deep underground all this time.

Like a nightmarish symbol of freedom.

The dot on the map displayed on the small screen had the following name displayed next to it: Vanishing Tunnel.

That was the name of their final destination. Anyone who arrived there was given a ticket to another world.

===Part 3===

They were deep, deep underground in District 10.

Few people would think too much about the layout of the subway tunnels below the city. They might know a track took an unnatural curve at one point, but no one would question the online news article about them running across some kind of ruins during construction.

An underground passageway was surrounded by cold concrete and supported by the pillars positioned at even intervals.

The few fluorescent lights on the walls were not enough to fully sweep away the darkness.

That underground blind spot had become the biggest hot spot in the world. A great many people had gathered there. They had not all arrived along the same route. They had each gathered the hints scattered around the city and started to question the city’s biggest assumption. Academy City was surrounded by thick walls, but it was not in fact sealed off.

The brawny men in work jumpsuits were a courier group called Secret Express. The men and women in dress clothes were Concierge, a group that provided hideouts to meet a criminal’s demands. The girls in plain clothing and hiding their faces with sunglasses and hunting caps may have been an extremely popular idol group. The parade of scum included Controller, who used personal information and fictitious bills to threaten the girls he targeted until he had them in digital chains, and Flare, who left behind harmless powder identical to the real deal in order to confuse criminal investigations.

A ruler of the back alleys was there.

A major corporation’s lawyer was there.

A university headmaster was there.

A major entertainment producer was there.

And a few Kiharas from different fields were there.

All sorts of people flooded that underground passageway. People did not end up on the dark side because they were low class, poor, stupid, or criminal. It took all types. The dark side had reached every class of person equally. From worlds no one knew existed to industries everyone envied.

Some had fallen before making it this far and others had attempted a different route instead. In a way, finding this tunnel and setting foot inside made them the chosen ones.

And.

Every last one of them were obstructed and crushed by a certain figure.

The woman had long blonde twintails and she wore a skintight light blue dress and a long loose skirt.

Frillsand #G was like an impassable wall.

All who challenged her crashed into that wall with the intensity of their challenge. After seeing a few of them turned to hunks of flesh and splattered blood, the others must have started wondering if she literally was a solid wall because all of those dark side members had come to a stop. They were pushed back even though she had not taken a single step.

Of course, the ghost was not going to spare them just because they gave up now.

“Next stop: skewering. Repeat: skewering.”

With a wet sound, a muscular man in black was destroyed from groin to head. But he may have been one of the lucky ones. He was gone before he even knew what had happened to him.

“Please look out for the burning and severing.”

Screams of pain echoed through the tunnel. Before long, the dark side members were fighting amongst themselves too. They appeared to have begun an ugly struggle over the concrete column they could use as a shield. However…

“We will arrive at gouging soon.”

Just as the ghost silently circled behind the column, a wet sound exploded out. The victors and losers of the struggle were all turned to mincemeat together while Frillsand #G looked on in disinterest.

“Ah…gahh,” someone groaned.

It was one of the idol girls. Her bottom half was gone and the bottom of her torso was sticking to the floor like a slug.

“But…why? We found the taboo…so aren’t we part of the dark side too? Can’t we all use…the path out together?”

“I have children to take care of. A lot of them.” Frillsand #G did not even look in her direction. “Inviting all of you in with us would only put them at risk.”

“Just…” It was already too late for her, but the top half of a girl still clawed at the concrete floor. “Just in case? You took people’s lives for no more than that!?”

“Next stop: running over. I repeat: running over.”

With a wet splat, the complaints were silenced.

The ghost seemed to be rejecting the idea that grudges lacked the power to kill.

“The rear guard is an important job,” she said in a singsong voice. “But I cannot let that crybaby see this. Knowing of it and seeing it are two very different things.”

The artificial ghost glanced over at something else.

But she soon lost interest, turned around, and vanished into the darkness.

A mere ten meters away, Hamazura Shiage was hiding behind a column and holding his hand over the track suit girl’s mouth.

If she noticed them, they were dead. He felt like his heart, his breathing, his body odor, and the slight static electricity on his clothing could all give them away. He could not even wipe the unpleasant sweat from his cheek as he desperately waited for time to pass.

That ghost really was an enemy.

She had some kind of plan of her own and had saved them on a whim before, but that did not mean he could trust her. If she had saved them on a whim, then she could also choose to throw them out on a whim. And they only had the one life.

This was worse than a sea of blood.

Flesh and blood had lost any hint of their original form, fingers extended into empty space, facial skin was frozen in a look of agony while plastered to the wall. At this point, they were only “things”, not people. There was no dignity remaining.

Each of them was a dark side member who had arrived at ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'' along a different route than him.

Their endless possibilities had been reduced to zero.

Or so it felt to him.

Was this tunnel really the right path? The further they went, the more likely they were to encounter that ghost woman, so he began to wonder if it would be safer to turn back now and return to the surface.

“Pwah.”

His girlfriend escaped his hand. He was holding her from behind, so she leaned her head back to look him in the eye.

“Hamazura, I don’t sense her presence anymore. We can keep going now.”

“…”

“We can’t give up after coming so far. Blindly returning to the surface won’t save us. We’ll never find peace if we don’t go through here.”

“R-right.”

He would have long since broken if he were alone.

But when she pulled on his hand, he managed to work up some small semblance of courage.

Even with the evenly-spaced fluorescent lights, the tunnel was dark. And they had no idea who was in charge of that sparse lighting. What if the ghost could shut off the power? His phone felt all the more important to him now.

“This is a long tunnel.”

“Yeah.”

They were not speaking much anymore.

This was ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'', but did this tunnel really lead toward hope? No matter how far they went, the darkness never went away. As they trudged deeper and deeper, he felt like they had passed a point of no return. Also, who had built this enormous underground facility? Someone must have drawn up the plans, dug the hole, set the foundation, and brought in the rebar and concrete. This was a far bigger project than a bank robber’s hand-dug tunnel into the vault. Such a vast and well-made underground space could not have been built without the involvement of a major construction company.

Who had done it?

It might be a company whose ads he saw on TV every day.

Would all of this come to light one day? But those meaningless thoughts were cut off by Takitsubo.

She had noticed first because she was not holding the light.

“Hamazura, there’s a door.”

“…”

It was a thick metal door.

Just the one door sat at the end of the long, long tunnel. There may have been another route, but he did not recall seeing any other paths branching off along the way.

He slowly approached.

It did not appear to be locked. He doubted there were any grenades or other “gifts” left for them.

But that was not what scared him. He had seen all of those corpses along the way. The sight had left him so terrified he barely had it in him to keep his heart beating. He had started to view their fallen predecessors as no more than a piece of the scenery. Because otherwise that shadowy murder scene would have overwhelmed him too much to continue on.

The taboos were piling up.

He and Takitsubo had started this simply wanting to survive, but they too had been corrupted along the way.

Hamazura Shiage reached his fingers toward the doorknob.

He touched it. He squeezed it.

He turned it.

===Part 4===

A flood of light revealed a world no one was ever meant to see.

“…”

The other world turned out to be a cavernous pit.

This abyss slept deep below the earth, yet it was filled with much more artificial light than the tunnel. That was thanks to the construction lights set up here and there.

It was easily more than 250 meters across and maybe more than twice as deep. The perfectly circular space made of reinforced concrete at the very bottom may have reminded different people of different things.

Some might see it as a common utility duct, a circular colosseum, a switchyard’s turntable, or an underground temple dedicated to a god one must never offer any prayers.

But there was one crucial piece that helped solidify the proper image.

“A train?” muttered Hamazura while peering down over the railing.

It was a turntable.

Concrete columns were installed at even intervals around the edges, but there were none in the central circle. The flat concrete floor had a smaller circle built into it. That would rotate to change the train’s direction. The tracks outside the circle extended in 12 different directions. That made it all look like something else: a giant metal flower.

Yes, there were tracks, signal lights, transformers, maintenance equipment, a control room, and a fifteen-car train in here. It was a freight train.

“That’s the dark side’s lifeline?”

For him and Takitsubo, it was the plank of Carneades that would save their lives.

He doubted that turntable was all of it. There would be a container yard and maintenance zone hidden further out from the center.

They walked along the narrow catwalk built along the circular wall and descended the stairs. There were no corpses in here. Whoever had gotten here first must have used the ghost woman to eliminate any nuisances before they reached this point.

And since the train was still here, that person would still be here.

They shared this space with the slaughterer.

“Hamazura.”

“Don’t worry. I’m with you no matter what.”

“Not that. There’s someone down there. And they’re not alone.”

That was a shock. Takitsubo Rikou could accurately locate people by sensing their AIM Diffusion Field. She could not use that power as well as she used to, but she could still sense it to an extent.

The tension grew.

A single person with a bizarre power was certainly scary, but having a large group approach you brought a different sort of fear. He mentally switched his priorities to at least allowing Takitsubo to escape if things looked bad.

The only exit was up here.

Leaving that would mean being surrounded by dead ends in every direction.

“…”

After descending the last flight of stairs, they arrived at the deepest depths.

It felt so much different from when they had been looking down from above. But that was not too surprising since 250 meters was larger than a domed stadium. This was the same as a sports field looking so much bigger from the stands than on TV.

Yes, Hamazura Shiage now stood on the stage. He was no longer an outsider looking in.

“Oh, dear. You actually showed up. What a shame.”

He lasted one second.

His knees suddenly dropped to the ground. He could not keep his shoulders at the same height and his lost strength would not return.

“Wha—!?”

It was the ghost woman.

Was she a beneficial or a harmful?

She had left that tunnel far too bloody to claim she was trying to escape Academy City because she disliked conflict. If anything, she felt more like a vengeful spirit that refused to let anyone leave the city.

She looked like a Western doll with her long blonde twintails and light blue dress. She did not actually punch or kick him. Simply seeing her out of the corner of his eye had done critical damage to him.

A rusty-smelling liquid dripped from his eyes and nose.

He was trying to scream and flip over onto his back, but he was actually curled up and unable to move.

Encountering her meant death.

That was far too sinister a thing to be connected with a simple equals sign like that.

“It is no use.”

The ghost woman walked without audible footsteps. She moved herself from the corner of his vision to the center.

“No one is talking about anything as silly as defending against something with a shield or dodging a projectile with super speed. ''From the moment you see my face,'' the attack is complete. If I so much as casually stand in the corner of your vision, I can do continual damage without you even noticing my presence.”

He realized the strange things had always happened when the ghost woman spoke to him. And why had she turned the lights on in that tunnel? Because it was more convenient for her.

If you saw a ghost while driving, you would crash.

If your face, hands, or feet were missing in a ghost photo, you would find unnatural wounds or marks on your body.

Did this mean she even artificially reproduced those aspects of a ghost? He did not want to believe it because it would mean there was nothing he could do.

“Hamazu—!?”

“You noticed? You must have sharper senses.”

The track suit girl quickly pulled him close, but the ghost woman did not seem to care.

Besides, if seeing her really did mean death, then Takitsubo would have been killed too, but she was fine.

“But I am not talking about anything as poorly-defined as a sixth sense for ghosts. Do you have a power related to AIM Diffusion Fields?”

“There’s no AIM Diffusion Field around you? No, some strong but invisible power is scattering that weaker field.”

“It is known as High Voltage Cutting,” said the ghost woman. “The principle may be similar to the shock diamonds seen in a rocket engine’s flame or the cavitation of air bubbles created around a propeller. The constant emission of a powerful energy will create irregular waveforms and images while it interferes with itself.”

“Gh!? What energy???”

“You can find energy everywhere.” Her tone was light, so understanding how it worked must not have helped avoid its effects. “The carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide you thoughtlessly spread around forms acid rain when it bonds with the moisture in the air. You can acquire electricity simply by sticking two electrodes into a fruit, you know? Copper and zinc are such necessities that you can find them anywhere. Using that, you can produce hydrogen gas in addition to electricity. I only need to absorb power from a ''civilization battery'' the size of a city or even greater. That is enough for me to construct a single outlier point within that stable energy.”

“…”

“What are the common types of haunted locations? Old homes full of drafts, cliffs and caves eroded by the waves, and mountain roads late at night. They are always full of ''noise'', such as static electricity, pressure differences, the creaking of rusty doors, or the rustling of the trees in the wind. Have you ever heard a ghostly voice in the crackle of excess electricity or the roar of hydrogen gas being ignited? I can exist as I am wherever human civilization exists. If you wish to kill me, you must destroy your very way of life. On a global scale.”

This was too much.

He could not understand her explanation. And even if he thought he did, it still did not tell him how to destroy her.

Takitsubo gasped and spoke while holding onto him.

“I get that the constant use of a massive amount of unseen energy would eventually create something unnatural. But if seeing you is deadly, how do you choose specific targets to—?”

She trailed off.

She had seen something out of the corner of her eye, but not the artificial ghost this time. A unified set of colors could be seen peeking at them from a gap in the door to one of the freight train’s containers.

''They were small children wearing gym clothes and some kind of device. There were more than just ten or twenty of them.

''All of them were a part of the ghost experiment.

The children must have seen the ghost woman as they nervously spied out. And they seemed to be expectantly waiting to see if she would repel these unknown intruders. They did not know. They had not been told what they were being used for. Simply viewing a ghost photo was harmful and the longer you viewed it, the more damage it did. She embodied that power so perfectly that she had eliminated so many dark side elites.

Yet she had managed to accurately select one out of the many candidates.

That was like shooting the apple off someone’s head. Without explaining any of it to the children who had those sensors attached to them.

“…”

The delinquent boy clenched his teeth.

He could barely move, she held his life in her hand, and he had no idea how to fight back. He had to avoid angering her if at all possible. He understood that, but he still shouted up at her.

“You scum!!”

“Call me what you wish. In fact, I see it as a compliment.”

The ghost woman who resembled a fairy tale princess held her palm out toward him. He only had to see her impossible presence for her to attack, so that gesture was meaningless.

But then her eyes turned unnaturally away from him.

To the side.

A spare container sitting near the train was sliced in two. Something had dropped down from far above like a bolt of lightning.

A red figure wielded a thick machete made of heavy metal.

The android wore a racing swimsuit colored the orange and black of an insect. The bangs of her long crimson hair were cut straight across and she had a slender build.

Cartoony flowers were displayed in her mechanical eyes.

“Smug face.”

“Hello, hello,” said a twig of an old man in a blue jumpsuit and lab coat. “I hate to interrupt when you seem so busy, but I must insist.”

The ghost woman shrugged.

“Were you hoping to use the train? I thought you were one of the harmfuls who would remain in the city and resist to the bitter end.”

“I have no interest in those categories forced onto the dark side from the outside. All I care about is continuing my research. Academy City was a wonderful environment for that, but if that has changed, I need to leave and search out a more comfortable place.”

“You can see me, can’t you?”

“You should be able to tell by observing my eye movements.”

“And you know what that means?” She gave a suggestive glance over at the machine that had arrived with him. “In case you were unaware, I am capable of causing malfunctions in mechanical lenses and sensors just as well as in the human body. Ghost photographs are a result of ghosts interfering in optical machinery, are they not? That might be your masterpiece, but isn’t it presumptuous to assume she can wield her full power against me?”

She remained untouchable. She could kill someone just by placing herself in the corner of their vision and machines could not do anything to her either. Did she have no blind spots?

“Yes, I imagine so.”

But the old man did not seem to mind.

That mysterious old man ''known as a Kihara'' was not bothered that she held his life in her hand.

“You are the strongest when it comes to an individual. Looking at deadliness alone, you might outdo the #3 and the #2.”

“…”

Evidently, even ghosts could find something to be ominous.

This world may have been infected with a disease that caused all bad premonitions to come true.

“But in this specific location, I believe you too will find you cannot wield your full power.”

“What are you—gah!!!!????”

He had given her plenty of warning, but she suddenly arched her back and then froze unnaturally in midair. An ominous straining sound continued on and on as her body grew distorted. She bent and stretched, almost like a face pressed against a wall of glass.

Something was happening.

Hamazura had thought the ghost woman was an intangible being, like a mist or apparition. But she was not. She clearly had a spine to strain, muscles to cry out in pain, and organs to writhe unnaturally.

Then a bizarre creaking and cracking noise came from her. Her volume shrank more and more like she was being crushed in from all sides. The old man was holding something up in his special engineering glove. It looked like an empty candy box, but it was not. It had a small pinhole at the very top. The ghost woman was sucked into that small hole like a liquid or a gas. Hamazura did not want to imagine what things were like inside there. He could only say one thing in a daze.

“A pinhole…camera?”

“High Voltage Cutting? I see, a strange theory, but she is still a form of unstable energy. And all energy will move from high to low—unstable to stable. This is enough to break down her form and burn in her image.”

The old man let go of the candy box.

He had the look of a mischievous child who had just realized he could create his own spark show by sticking a metal clip in the microwave.

“This is the appropriate choice for a ghost photo, don’t you think? A digital camera just wouldn’t fit the aesthetic.”

After dropping it to the cold concrete, he crushed it below his heel. He did not even glance down at the flattened box.

“''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.''” He tapped on his lower back. “Surely you didn’t think a construction company building a secret tunnel out of the city was enough to earn a name like that. With something like her around, you really should have thought of a different possibility.”

“Wh-what?”

Hamazura felt like the unnatural “curse” had weakened, but he still could not bring himself to get up from the ground. The old man only now seemed to have realized that there was another person here reaching for the plank of Carneades.

Hamazura knew any attention on him would only lead to disaster.

Kihara Hasuu smiled.

“Let me make one thing clear. There is a member of the Board who built a vast fortune by doing unofficial construction work for the dark side, but he knows nothing of this. This massive underground structure just appeared out of the blue one day.”

“…?”

Out of the blue?

Hamazura had operated construction machinery before, so he knew how absurd that was. Did that old man have any idea how long it would take to dig out a hole of this size?

But the old man appeared to be serious.

Deadly serious.

“''The Vanishing Tunnel does not actually exist.''”

Hamazura had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

It made no sense. If that were true, then where were they now???

The old man gave the answer.

“Kazakiri Hyouka was not just a single individual. She is more like one piece of the Imaginary Number District, an entire city created from the aggregation of AIM Diffusion Fields. …It all began with a project meant to cut out a portion of that territory and extract it as a new resource. Unlike the microscopic alchemy performed in the particle accelerator, this would have been on the macro scale and cost very little. But not even the group of researchers who guided all that power through the city could have predicted it would take this form. ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'' is such a dramatic name. In truth, it was a major failure that needed to be covered up. Everyone involved was at their wits’ end.” He tapped his lower back again. “A nonexistent pathway unofficially connected Academy City to the world outside, increasing the risk of the outer world’s collapse through cultural exchange and technological contamination. The entire world very well could have been destroyed from this single point. While the researchers had hoped to extract materials from the Imaginary Number District, whatever came from there might have transformed the outside world into something truly grotesque. …Yes, that the world still exists as it does now was no more than ''dumb luck''. It was nothing we did on our end. Kazakiri Hyouka and the other inhuman monsters simply showed no interest in that. If something had occurred to them and they had tried it, the world would have ended.”

“You mean…” Takitsubo replied since she had a better understanding of things related to AIM. “You were researching the exact opposite of that ghost? A ghost made from powerful energy and an aggregation of weak powers are opposites, so when they came together, it caused the ghost to malfunction… You were trying to extract inorganic materials from that unseen city, weren’t you?”

“Hard to say if that research was a step forward or a step back. Like I said, they failed. They could not control it, so even the remains of their project you see here cannot be erased. I believe the natural half life was about 12,000 years. In the worst case, the Imaginary Number District could have been converted into real numbers, crushing Academy City in the process. I think the project could have found success if they could have cut off a piece at a workable size and found a way to control it. In that sense, that ghost really is the strongest as an individual and an enviable success.”

Now even Hamazura had a vague idea why the ghost woman had suddenly malfunctioned.

They could not be in the same place.

Two ghosts could not coexist. Just like installing two different pieces of security software on the same computer would cause a conflict.

“It was still a risky gamble, though. The odds were low, but if the tunnel ''had lost'', this temporary space itself would have vanished and we would all have become fossils after being buried deep below the surface.”

Hamazura heard a swooshing sound and looked over to see the android swinging her thick machete next to the old man. Those two had won their bet, so now no one could stop them.

Kihara Hasuu looked away from Hamazura and turned to someone else.

“Now, I have eliminated your bodyguard. Isn’t it time we talked this out like adults?”

===Part 5===

“When’s the train going to leave?”

“Oh, mister just left.”

The children dressed up in gym clothes were whispering to each other while peeking out through the cracked-open door of a freight train container.

But among them…

“Ow, that hurts.”

The girl named Risako spoke up in protest.

But Sodate ignored that and continued tugging on her skinny wrist. The bigger boy was kind of scary when he was not saying anything.

“Listen, Risako.” He spoke quickly while walking through the shadows to stay hidden. He seemed to be speaking to himself more than the girl. “You can still escape. It’s not too late. And once you get to the surface, go tell the grownups about this. I know you can do it.”

“Why? The train is about to leave.”

“You still don’t get it!?” He shouted with his hands on her shoulders. “They make us wear these clothes and devices, they keep us separated from the rest of the city, and they don’t let us go to a normal school. We’re Child Errors, so no one will even notice if we just disappear one day. They’re only raising us because they can use us for something. They’re fattening us up to eat us!”

“But…”

“We don’t even have phones to call for help. ''It isn’t normal to be this isolated.'' That’s why I kept leaving behind some sign of our presence: building blocks, picture books, balls, and so on. I left them outside before the trucks moved on and I made sure to write our names, the trucks’ license numbers, and other information on them! But none of it ever reached the grownups. Our efforts never reached anyone!!”

She had thought he kept stealing things because he was selfish. She had thought he would forget those things in his secret bases because he was sloppy. But that was not it.

“They’re relatively peaceful beneficials? Don’t make me laugh. What’s going to change after we board that train and leave Academy City? There won’t be anyone monitoring them anymore!! Once that happens, I just know he’ll stop holding back. He’ll ''take it even further''! So you at least need to escape before that happens!!”

“Sodate-chan…”

“I’ll give you an opening.” He looked the girl in the eye and spoke clearly. “I won’t let him turn you into a guinea pig no matter what!!”

===Part 6===

A somewhat slender man stepped out. He wore a short-sleeved safari jacket and a rash guard, making him look something like an old-fashioned adventurer, but the webcam attached to the side of his head gave him a more modern outdoorsy look. He appeared to be a different sort of researcher from the old mechanic in a lab coat and jumpsuit.

He was an expert at visiting so-called haunted locations around the world and revealing the scientific cause of the strange phenomena there. But he had apparently also artificially recreated such things to use them for his own purposes.

He grinned and raised his hands in a jocular way. Kihara Hasuu asked him a question with the deadly weapon girl still by his side.

“What is your name?”

“Drencher Kihara Repatri.”

“I see. So that’s you.”

The young man’s eyebrows moved slightly in response to the old man’s impressed tone.

“I didn’t expect someone like you to have heard of me.”

“You are rather…well known.”

The way he said that told Hamazura he did not mean that in a positive way.

This was a confrontation between two harmfuls.

The two researchers ignored the boy and girl entirely as they began a verbal rally. Hamazura knew he could not just sit and watch as a referee or spectator, but he had no way of intervening.

“As you can see, we come from different levels of the dark side. If there is no place for us in Academy City anymore, then leaving the city is a valid choice. But is that plank of Carneades really only big enough for the one group? I think it can support both of us just fine.”

That suggestion seemed surprising…but maybe it wasn’t. It was the ghost woman who had been slaughtering all of the other dark side members trying to reach this point. The android may have attacked Anti-Skill, but she had never actively tried to eliminate her fellow dark siders. She had attacked Hamazura near the counterfeiter’s tents, but if she had been trying to slaughter everyone she came across, the ordinary people in the amusement park would not have escaped alive.

The young man shrugged.

“If that means less fighting, it’s okay with me. Not that I really have a choice, do I?”

“Assuming you have no other trump cards.”

“Then I surrender.”

He did not hesitate to respond. Hamazura was actually surprised to see he was willing to back down to save his own life. Hamazura had gotten the impression that the extreme members of the dark side were willing to sacrifice their own life to achieve their goal.

That surprise scared Hamazura. He could tell he had let the dark side influence him too much. He was afraid the damage would be permanent if he went much further. Once he became a harmful, there was no going back.

“She was my prized project, you know? Frillsand #G, I mean. Now, I knew ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'' would pose a challenge, but I never imagined it was a giant mass of AIM Diffusion Fields.”

“Everything has its compatibility. In fact, I could never have won if we were not down here. Keep this girl from working and I’m helpless.”

The crimson-haired girl did nothing to fight the wrinkled hand rubbing her head.

The two men were reaching an agreement. That was not good. Hamazura and Takitsubo had nothing they could offer in a negotiation. At this rate, they would probably each get a bullet in the head as a parting gift. The only other option he could imagine was being made into a guinea pig for some bizarre experiment.

“Oh, right,” casually began the old man.

If he said “what should we do about those two lumps of flesh”, they were screwed. And Hamazura could not predict what that Kihara would do. He felt a terrible squeezing at his heart.

Finally, Kihara Hasuu continued.

“While we can share the train, I will be in charge there. So if you want a ride, it’s only natural you pay a small fare, don’t you think?”

“Do you want my research notes on Frillsand #G?”

“I’m no barbarian. A scientist’s research notes are a part of his very soul. Those are the fruits of your labors, so take them to your grave.”

“Then what do you want?”

“A few of them.”

The old man’s voice was as casual as ever as he pointed his engineering glove in a different direction entirely. He pointed at the gym clothes children who were peeking out from behind cover, without a clue what was being discussed.

“''Just select a few at random.'' I intend to restart my research once things have calmed down, but the rules are different outside the city. I can’t start abducting people off the street until I have a proper base set up, so I could use an initial supply for that settling-in period.”

Hamazura froze as he listened in.

This was the dark side. This was how the elites of that stagnant world thought.

“That Frillsand #G is important to your research, but not so with those lab rats, right? How many experimental observers’ lives were lost until you managed to ''properly reproduce'' that artificial ghost? If your research has entered a stable period, I would assume you are not running through those Child Errors as quickly as you once were.”

“Heh,” laughed Drencher Kihara Repatri.

He weakly lowered his raised hands. He must have decided that was no longer necessary. He too had seen the darkness, so he spoke with the same look in his eyes as the old man.

“It’s true those are all Child Errors. And however they would be treated in the ordinary world, we all know exactly what that term means in the dark side. Yes, I gathered them together and invited them into my lab. I made sure to have a plentiful stock of convenient lives that could be spent as I liked if other forms of research were not enough.”

“Then I can have a few?”

“''Go to hell, you son of a bitch.''”

===Part 7===

Several dry gunshots rang out.

===Part 8===

Hamazura Shiage did not understand what had just happened.

“Hamazura!!”

His body still refused to do what it was told, so track suit girl Takitsubo had to push him to the ground.

The young man had pulled out a handgun. It was no more than a small revolver, but he still fired it repeatedly from just a few meters away.

However…

“Ugh…”

“That won’t work,” said the old man.

The android’s crimson hair fluttered while she held her thick machete at the ready with her bare feet planted a step in front of Hasuu. Not only had she deflected all of the bullets, she had used their ricochets as a counterattack.

''No more than a small revolver.

''Something had gone horribly wrong when you started thinking of things in those terms in this country.

The young man had several holes in his upper body and dark red stains spread across his clothes. Doubling over did nothing to help, so he finally collapsed to the ground.

The old man in a jumpsuit and lab coat spoke up in exasperation while the strongest doll protected him.

“They’re just kids. And it’s not like I’m asking for all of them. Just two or three will do.”

“I wanted to…protect them from the dark side scum who think like that,” spat the young man while struggling to breathe down on all fours. He had given up trying to hold his wounds. “But nothing I did above board did anything to help. I couldn’t even get information on where those children were. The only way to fight the dark side…was to become the dark side. I almost laughed when I saw how many people came running to me then, claiming my research was so valuable. When I said I needed children’s lives to do it, they slapped me on the shoulder and agreed to it all. While happily sipping on a glass of the year’s finest red with their other hand. This city is rotten to the core.”

“Aren’t you Drencher Kihara Repatri?”

“Claiming to be a Kihara was the quickest way to get what I wanted. Ha ha. Those VIPs really were terrified of me.”

“Dammit,” spat out Hamazura Shiage.

The young man saw his own condition as of secondary importance.

It was true the ghost woman had used the children. They had been placed in a position where she could crush their lives at any moment. But had Hamazura ever seen her actually kill a child? What if they had been living in a world where they had to take the charade that far to be believed?

The old man had asked how many experimental observers’ lives were lost until he managed to properly reproduce the artificial ghost, but the young man had never answered.

That was in fact the answer. He had not sacrificed anyone. Not one. He had wanted to gather up those children known as Child Errors and drag them up out of the darkness. There ''were'' adults willing to dive into the dark side for no other reason than that.

There really were.

And yet…

“You’re lying.”

Hamazura suddenly rejected that entire premise. Because if he accepted this, he would have to admit to his own ugliness. Even if saying this would mean revealing he was ugly enough to put up a struggle like this.

“I’ve seen you before. You were at that counterfeiter’s place! You were preparing a passport for yourself so you could abandon those kids and leave the city!!”

“This all would have gone so much more smoothly if that had worked.” The young man smiled weakly. “If I had shown off how I escaped with the passport, Anti-Skill and the dark side’s focus would have turned toward District 23’s airport. Then the children would have had a safer escape underground here. I was never supposed to be down here with them.”

“~ ~ ~!!!!!!”

It felt like they lived in two completely different worlds.

And that young man was definitely the one in the right.

Hamazura felt so pathetic and contemptible for only ever acting to protect him and his girlfriend.

“I know I shouldn’t be asking this.”

The young man looked his way. As if to say it did not matter if he really was a Kihara or not.

His eyes knew how to view the light, but for some reason he now looked to someone as corrupted as Hamazura.

“Maybe it’s for the best if the dark side is destroyed, but please take care of those kids. You’re the only person I can leave them with now. When you saw your girlfriend suffering, you panicked and dumped medical supplies across the ground in your haste. I could see the conscience in your eyes. You had no choice but to fall this far, but you should still have some resistance to the dark side left inside you.”

“Wait, I’m not like that for everyone. Don’t shove this onto me! She’s my girlfriend, so of course I’d work to save her!!”

“Ha ha. Thinking that’s an ‘of course’ is what makes you such an oddity in the dark side. Don’t worry, I know you can do it. Because after falling into this shitty world, you still managed to find someone you care for and you decided to find peace instead of another thrill.”

Hamazura and Takitsubo had first heard of ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'' from this man.

Hamazura had been cautious because there was no righteousness in the dark side and the man must have had his own reasons.

Was this why?

Had it been some insurance, just in case? Instead of worrying about his own survival, he had wanted some insurance for after he died.

Yet he had also slaughtered the dark sider people rushing toward this exit.

All because he could not let any harm come to the children as those people fought each other. He had rushed down a dark path to prevent a mere possibility.

But on Hamazura and Takitsubo’s way here, hadn’t the ghost woman glanced their way after slaughtering everyone else and then left, as if sparing them?

“Why did you do all this?”

That was the only question Hamazura could find.

That was not something to say to a dying man. He knew that. But after letting the dark side corrupt him while he worked so hard to ensure his and his girlfriend’s survival, this answer was too pure and upright to accept.

“How could you throw away your own life over this!? When you get down to it, those kids are just strangers! How could a goddamn harmful go this far just because you ‘wanted to save them’!? How!? Tell me!?”

The young man smiled.

There was already blood dripping from the corners of his lips.

“Do you need a reason to protect someone? Of course you don’t.”

That was the end of it.

Time stopped for him with the smile still on his lips.

He had no reason. He did not know why. And he had rushed in to save those children without ever finding a reason.

Hamazura Shiage had to admit defeat.

“A…”

The loser boy clenched his teeth. He moved his battered body, swiped the bloody handgun and some ammo from the young man, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

Losers had their own etiquette to follow.

That scummy old man was still here. Hamazura was not going to let him trample on the young man’s victory.

“Aaaneriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!”

A dull kachunk echoed through the circular space.

The support AI had taken control of the train and shifted it out of standby, so it slowly began to move.

The turntable had tracks in twelve directions, but he knew where to send it.

He just had to remember what the card-sized hard drive labeled Lifeline had said.

If you boarded a train between 4 hours and 30 minutes, you would be taken to another world.

In other words…

(Hours and minutes. If I apply that to an analog clock…)

“Send it down the five o’clock track!!”

The train took off with so many children in gym clothes on board.

That had been his top priority.

“Is justice contagious these days?” asked the old man with the look of someone viewing a crazy person.

He had already proven that the gun would not work, so he gave Hamazura a look of partial pity now that he had inherited that defeated weapon.

“You risked your life for this, but to no avail. Look, not all of them were onboard. They must have run in fear from the very person who would have saved them.”

“Hamazura, two of them were left behind. We can’t just leave them here.”

A boy and a girl in gym clothes were holding hands a short distance away.

What had they thought when they learned the truth behind that young man’s satisfied smile?

Especially when their own actions had worked against him.

“Well, those two will suffice. I will be taking them as a souvenir. Any more than this would have been a waste of food anyway.”

“Shut up,” spat out Hamazura.

He really should not have been doing this. He had come here to escape to safety. It had been clear from the very beginning that he could not be a great hero or brave warrior. This selfish choice here might put himself and his girlfriend in danger.

But.

Even so.

A dying man had left this with him. He had been reminded what it meant to do the right thing. There were lives here he could save. He could redo things. And most of all, his girlfriend was watching.

He was done being pathetic. He gathered strength in his sweaty body and stood up under his own power again. He had to.

“Maybe you’re a Kihara and an android.”

His goal was to run away?

No, sometimes a man had to stand up and speak his mind.

“But I’ll take you on, you goddamned dark siders!!!!!!”

He knew it was possible.

He had just seen a man stay true to this way of life.

He could reclaim his humanity. He must have learned something from what he saw here.

===Part 9===

Of course, Hamazura could never actually hit the crimson-haired android by firing the 9mm handgun at random. He knew she would deflect the bullets with her thick machete and fill him with holes.

So he did something else instead.

“Aneri!!”

A giant shape suddenly moved right next to the racing swimsuit girl.

A wheel loader used to stack up the railroad-sized containers was being remotely controlled.

“Move.”

What was that machete even made of? She did not even look in that direction as she swung her weapon and sliced apart the snowplow-looking piece of machinery. Even though she was not using any rapid vibrations or heat.

But Hamazura used that moment to pull on his girlfriend’s hand and move from there.

This was a vast circular space, but it was not an empty colosseum.

It had concrete columns just like an underground common utility duct and it had various equipment needed for operating and maintaining the trains, all located where it would not get in the way of the turntable and the twelve directions of track. Transformers were surrounded by a fence, a prefab hut had been made into a control room, giant jacks and a carwash were prepared for maintenance purposes, and more.

Aneri had directly operated the freight train, so he felt safe assuming she could operate all of the equipment here.

He pulled his girlfriend close while hiding behind a concrete column and whispering to his phone.

“Aneri, can you directly hijack that hunk of junk?”

No response.

He took that as a no. This did not sound like it was an issue of building up to that or setting something up in advance. That android was immune to cyber attacks on some level he did not understand.

(That means the only option is to destroy her the old-fashioned way!!)

“Hamazura, we can’t hide here forever. If she stops focusing on us, she’ll go after those children. Villains always go for the easiest target.”

“I know that.”

Takitsubo kept trying to wipe the sweat from her brow, but something was not right. The moxibustion should have relieved her symptoms to an extent, but that treatment might not be working as much anymore.

He was worried, but he could not stop now. He hated that fact.

“But using ourselves as bait will put us at risk. Are you prepared for that, Takitsubo?”

“Ask any more stupid questions and I’ll slap you.”

“Okay, it’s time to win your heart all over again!!”

They both ran out from behind the concrete column.

Their eyes met the ones with pupils mechanically expanding and contracting, but they stayed strong this time.

===Part 10===

Ladybird had a lock on two targets.

She walked barefoot across the floor and accurately obeyed her instructions, but she also had a question.

Why were the children necessary?

Kihara Hasuu—her Sensei—was researching androids. He had already successfully created one, so he no longer needed to capture biological humans to dissect and observe them. This disagreement appeared to be over ownership of the Child Errors (she failed to realize it was her education by that true Kihara that led her to use the word “ownership” in this context), but why was the old man so insistent on this?

That unfortunate research was a thing of the past.

She was an android built from purely mechanical parts, but she could use an esper power. That meant no more human specimens were needed for esper development experiments. They only had to mess with machines from now on. The Child Errors no longer needed to be captured and used up.

She thought that was a wonderful thing. She could not believe the people who still clung to the old system that required humans to use other humans. Did they wish to protect the status given to them by the current Level system? If they truly believed their fight was just, then they were beyond reasoning with. Machines were not the only ones that could have their memory data rewritten. Humans could have their feelings and thoughts falsified as well.

So she would bring an end to it all.

She was fighting here to end the misfortune and tragedies caused by the esper development program.

“Ohhhh!!”

The boy raised a meaningless battle cry, ran in, and repeatedly fired his handgun. She only had to block those shots with her machete.

But he had apparently learned how she fought.

She tried to hit him with the ricochets, but they refused to hit. When she deflected a bullet back, it would follow the same straight trajectory. Placing a single piece of plywood in the middle would change things. A bullet’s force was determined by its muzzle velocity. The force of the ricochet would generally be lower. That was obvious enough since bullets were not constantly accelerating like a rocket or missile. So he could set it up so he could shoot her through an obstacle, but she could not break through it on the way back.

Her use of ricochets was similar to Accelerator’s reflection, but all her machete did was knock the bullet back. She could not ''include the actual vector in that''.

That said…

(I doubt someone with such a stupid face could do this. He must be receiving assistance with the calculations.)

She considered jumping. Lifting both feet from the ground was usually a bad idea in combat, but not so with her. With her android specs, she could kick off of one column to the next and attack from the air.

She heard the loud roar of an engine while dealing with the bullets.

It appeared to come from a forklift.

“Aneri, surround the kids! I don’t know where that old man got off to, but don’t let him get close!! If he tries it, run him over!!”

“Don’t get distracted.”

He could have gotten a hit in on her by sending the forklift in from the side while firing on her from the front. Not that a blow like that would be enough to destroy her frame.

She swung the thick machete in her right hand while gathering her strength in the space between her eyebrows.

That was how she aimed.

A blast of wind blew away the obstacles between her and Hamazura Shiage. It was more like they were obliterated by an explosion than swept away by wind.

“An esper power!?” shouted the boy.

“It looked to be Level 3 or higher,” said the girl.

She no longer had to worry about the gunfire now that the line of fire was clear. He must have known the risk of ricochets was back because he stopped attacking and hid behind a nearby column, but that was no defense. She could charge in and slice through the column and his torso behind it with a single horizontal sweep of her blade.

She had enough time to reach her other hand to her thigh, pull out the bottle, and take a drink of the discharge machine oil.

A dull boom burst out.

She was only an android modeled after the structure of the human body, but the materials used for her skeleton, muscles, and everything else were bizarre dark side tech. If she wanted to, her horsepower could rival a V12 engine at max RPM.

But even as she chose the correct action, her mechanical head was filled with questions.

She had used a wind power.

But hadn’t she used fire during her previous clash with these people? And what about the time before that?

Androids had the same structure as humans, so a single android should only have a single power. Or could she do what humans could not because she was a machine?

(Sensei?)

===Part 11===

A column of reinforced concrete was sliced through as easily as tofu or thin paper.

Not horizontally or diagonally—vertically and all the way through. After kicking from column to column to gain height, she had apparently dropped down like lightning. She had a human form, but she could perform superhuman movements.

Hamazura Shiage had tried to jump to the side just beforehand, but he ended up tumbling into a roll.

It was not his torso sliced through along with the column. It was a gas drum kept on hand for the facility’s auxiliary power generator.

He grimaced at the pain in his hips as he continued rolling and pulled the trigger repeatedly.

Not even Ladybird could deflect bullets that hit the concrete ground and sent sparks flying.

The vaporizing gasoline ignited into explosive flames that swallowed up the entire racing swimsuit silhouette.

However…

“No, Hamazura! It didn’t work!!”

“Tch!!”

He clicked his tongue while the track suit girl ran over from elsewhere and pulled him to his feet. A black figure was displayed on the other side of that fiery screen. She showed no sign of collapsing or writhing in pain.

Had she used that previous wind power to affect how the flames spread?

He hoped so. If she was simply this tough, he could not imagine how to defeat her.

“How ''do'' you defeat an android anyway? Strangle her or stab her in the heart, she’s still a machine. That won’t stop her!!”

Could he break her motherboard? Or pull out her battery? But he had no idea how many she had or where in her slender body they were located.

The roaring flames were sliced apart. A horizontal sweep of the heavy metal machete conquered the orange barrier. The barefoot android stepped through entirely unscathed. There was no sign of discoloration on her crimson hair, white skin, or orange and black racing swimsuit.

“Something isn’t right,” said Takitsubo Rikou with eyes seemingly more robotic than the machine’s. What was she looking at right now? “An android that uses esper powers is conceivably possible. Mechanical processing may be able to ‘observe’ the waves or particles like a human brain does. And if you developed that far enough, you might be able to purposefully select between different supernatural phenomena. But this wavelength is simpler than that.”

“You mean how she switches between powers?” spat out Hamazura. “That container base in the garbage pile was their lab, right? Then I get why that old man wants those kids so bad. Even if I don’t know exactly ''how'' he would use them.”

Now, why were they able to spend so long discussing this?

The delinquent boy made sure to keep his gun aimed, but the android in question was only tilting her head.

A dark liquid was dripping from her eyes and nose.

He had seen that before. Immediately after she had been hit by the hakama girl and fought back with her fire power.

“Oh, dear.”

Kihara Hasuu’s voice reached them from somewhere, but it was echoing too much to tell where it came from. Hamazura would have shot the man if he saw him.

“Is it that time already? This is why I wanted to stock up sooner rather than later.”

“Hey.” Hamazura shouted at the unseen man. “Isn’t that cheating? You can’t really call her an android if that’s what you’re doing.”

The boy watched as the girl in the orange and black racing swimsuit held her head and doubled over.

A low straining sound came from her.

Then her back opened along the line from her nape to her tailbone.

The clasp holding together the X-shaped band at the center of the swimsuit’s back popped open and the supports were released in four directions.

Then her soft skin opened wide while supported at her nape.

Her opened back almost looked like a steam locomotive’s boiler or a furnace from hell. The fact that it was smooth human skin instead of a thick metal door gave it the sinister appearance of an insect’s shell opening up.

The top half of her swimsuit fell out of place, but her chest was not visible.

Her long red hair dropped down to cover it up.

She had planted her hands and feet on the ground like a beast.

Something translucent crawled out of her. It looked like a long, narrow blade or like a wriggling snake. It would grab something, drag it inside her, and cut it away. It was an automatic extraction organ.

Hamazura knew what it was for.

“I saw the junk those trash collectors were taking back after searching through those piles of abandoned items. A fridge was full of some brownish filth.”

He felt nauseated just remembering it.

He grimaced as he viewed that monster.

“''It was stuffed full of corpses with the contents of their heads removed.'' When those trash collectors were searching out fridges and washing machines, they weren’t selling them to used appliance stores. They were opening up bloodstained boxes packed full of still-usable organs. And they all came from your lab, didn’t they!?”

“Well, the ordinary corpses were apparently disposed of in District 10’s slums, but there are a lot of people willing to buy up ones fresh enough to make use of their parts.”

Ladybird was not an android with esper powers. She was as harmful as they came. She was a machine that would devour people’s brains when necessary. In Hamazura’s opinion, that meant she did not fit the definition of an android.

“This is a completely different approach from the Rensa model of esper cyborg. Instead of a cyborg made by ''giving a brain a body'', Ladybird-kun ''is a body given a brain.''” Hasuu sounded like he was introducing his favorite grandchild. “Cellulose nanofiber is a carbon material gathering attention for its use in making wires and bulletproof materials, but the point is we can create delicate wires even thinner than the cranial nerves. But unlike a biological brain, leaving them in their active state causes them to automatically replicate and they will try to forcibly fold themselves up for space if they run out of room in the skull. The cerebrum’s frontal lobe is especially troublesome. So ''a foreign object'' must be introduced to constantly provide just the right amount of damage to ensure the brain remains the size I want it. Her power changes each time a new ''foreign object'' is introduced, but that is due to the change in the rejection and damage pattern. You can think of that as a simple idiosyncrasy.”

“Sen…sei?”

A grinding sound came from Ladybird while she seemed to be searching for something. However the old researcher described it, a human brain was apparently a necessary part for her to run. Her movements were noticeably stiff and awkward as she pursued that poison on her own.

“Sensei…but you said this research would help. You said the spread of androids would mean no more human specimens were needed for the esper development.”

“The ladybird—another name for the ladybug—might look humorous, but it is in fact a ravenous carnivore. You have heard that they are good to have around because they eat aphids, haven’t you?”

“Gh…kh.”

“And there are a lot of insects that mimic ladybugs. That includes a type of darkling beetle and cockroach, both kinds of bugs people might not normally want around. But that is not actually a type of protective coloration. Ha ha. Instead of trying to blend into their natural surroundings or avoid their predators, that coloration might actually be used to make humans like them.”

How deep did the dark side go?

How disgusting could the dark said get?

“So don’t you see?”

Its attacks were indiscriminate, like a cannibal insect.

The developer spoke to what looked like a lovely girl. And he seemed to be enjoying it immensely.

“''That is the perfect name for you.''”

===Part 12===

text> @I thought there was a problem with the world.

text> @I thought it was wrong for @humans to use @humans for their research in this city.

text> But @I could climb onto the examination table instead.

text> @I can be repaired or remade as many times as necessary.

text> Since my body was made identically to a @human’s, @I would be able to use an esper power as well. Pieces of my body could be freely added or removed, so @I could be examined inside and out more easily than a @human and @I could be modified as they saw fit.

text> No more sacrifices would be necessary for the esper development research.

text> That is why @I fought.

text> @I thought @Sensei’s research was a wonderful thing.

''“You know, Ladybird-kun, the term android signifies an artificial human built with an engineering approach. Based on that definition, it seems appropriate to me for a completed android to behave like a human.”

text> @Sensei’s words were like a shining light of hope.

text> @I wondered if @I really was good enough.

text> But @I was happy as long as @I could be of some use. @I think that kind of feeling is not something a simple machine could feel.

text> Does that mean @I am somehow @human?

text> The @humans that @I have seen are like that. They do not hesitate to make inefficient choices without even considering cost performance.

text> That is why @I find @humans to be so incredible.

text> @I have not spoken much with any other than @Sensei, but @I know that is because @androids cannot be made public yet. But @I love the @humans that @I see from a distance.

text> @I will build a path to a brighter future for them—a path to a happier world—so @I cannot allow someone to destroy all that just because they do not understand. So I will not let anyone interfere. Anyone who claims it is right to harm @people cannot be allowed to trample on the future @I can bring them.

text> So…

text>And yet…

===Part 13===

“Ah, ahh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

The lovely girl in a racing swimsuit screamed.

All light vanished from her already mechanical eyes. She had fully transformed into a grotesque predator that roared on all fours.

She wanted to reject the idea, but she could not.

The only way to preserve herself was to devour that raw body tissue and bring it to the most important part of her body. Because intentionally introducing that foreign object would trigger a rejection reaction that would continue to damage her head in just the right way. That truth was more horrifying than needing to soak in a bathtub full of rotting corpses every day. Yet she could not stop. She was not allowed to stop. That had been built into her at the design phase, whether she liked it or not. She would always return to it like a drowning person struggling to reach the surface for air.

Tears spilled from her eyes.

Her mechanical face was painted with anger, hatred, and shame.

Why was she designed to do that?

An ordinary person like Hamazura could not figure it out. What logical reason was there? It almost felt like the cruelty of someone who enjoyed to watch others suffer.

At the same time, everything she needed to survive was contained inside her. Or maybe it was more accurate to say she had been built as an autonomous iron maiden. The victim was thrown into her back, the door to that steam locomotive boiler would slam shut, and the rest was completed automatically. She was made to do that and she must have actually done it several times before.

At that point, it was not an issue of good and evil on her part.

Hamazura could not judge her, but he did have to stop her.

No matter what.

“Grahhhhhhhh!!” she roared.

“Hamazura!!”

Takitsubo shouted in a panic because the red figure had vanished.

But the quadrupedal android had not leaped toward Hamazura or Takitsubo. Nor did she leap toward Kihara Hasuu who had made her this way. She went for someone else. She gained height by kicking off the columns and she moved every closer to the smallest and easiest prey: the kids in gym clothes.

Her instincts took precedence over strategy or emotion.

“Aneri!!”

A hacked track inspection car drove in from the side to tear apart an exposed high-voltage power line for the train. The power line whipped like a serpent and tangled around the android.

A great crash followed.

Knocking her to the ground was not going to flatten Ladybird, but it mattered a lot that she had fallen on her right side with the machete still in that hand.

She could not use that to defend with her arm caught between herself and the ground.

Hamazura gripped the small revolver in both hands and fired several times.

Dry gunshots expanded through the enclosed space.

This time, the shots actually hit the android whose back was turned to him. The “mouth” on her back quickly closed before she had even withdrawn the extraction organ that resembled the thin wing of an insect or a giant scalpel, but that was all that happened. It did not seem to do any real damage to her.

She used one arm to tear away the exposed power line wrapped around her like a serpent, freeing herself. At this rate, the forklifts protecting the children would not last long.

There was no time to spare.

“Boy!! Do you want to protect that girl!?” shouted Hamazura from a distance.

He did not wait for a response. The boy’s efforts had backfired badly, but if he did not care about that girl, he would not have gotten her off the train so she could escape.

Hamazura Shiage decided to trust this fellow human being.

“Then be brave and step forward! Falling back only gives her more of a chance to eat you two!!”

When the boy protecting his friend squeezed his eyes shut and stepped forward, Ladybird briefly came to a stop. She needed the soft brains inside those children. That was the poison she needed to damage herself.

But moving up to her was the right choice.

It was just like a cowboy’s lasso. You could swing it overhead to gather strength all you liked, but it would still be hard to throw it around the head of someone who was close enough to hug you. The android’s extraction organ looked like the thin wing of an insect or a transparent sword, but it was very long. That meant it was hard to use against someone right up in front of her.

But this method would only buy a few seconds at most.

Once she moved to the proper distance and tried again, the boy really would be eaten.

Hamazura made his next move before she could do that.

He had picked up a bottle of industrial cleaner presumably used to wash the train and he chucked it over a metal fence to hit a device larger than a refrigerator.

The giant railroad transformer scattered a frightening amount of sparks. And while it was invisible, it also sent out powerful electromagnetic waves.

Those waves’ effect on the human body was unknown, but their effect on a machine would be much more severe.

He heard a scream. That thing shaped like a calm and composed girl was now writhing on the ground in apparent pain.

Hamazura ran over, fired two or three shots at her, and continued on past her. Then he picked up the gym clothes boy still standing in danger and slid along the ground like a baseball player.

He hid behind the concrete column where the gym clothes girl was.

“Well done, boy. It’ll be okay now.”

Maybe someone from Anti-Skill or Judgment should have been saying that.

Maybe someone from the filthy dark side had no right to say it.

But he had taken over for a man who had wanted to say that so very badly.

And while he said that, Hamazura made sure to check his phone where the kids could not see. The screen was dead and Aneri was not responding. He doubted her program had been taken out, but without a device to receive her instructions, he had lost the support AI’s help.

It really would be one-on-one from here on.

But he did not need to let that show on his face.

“Maybe she’s with the dark side and maybe she isn’t, I dunno, but I don’t want to trample on her dignity any longer.” He looked the boy in the eye. “I’m going to end this here. Listen, don’t get yourselves killed. You need to survive if I’m going to save her.”

“What are you going to do?”

The gym clothes boy’s voice was vanishingly quiet, but he still got it out.

Even if he had to suppress the trembling in his body.

“I don’t want to run away anymore. What I did wasn’t brave. If I had faced mister honestly, he wouldn’t have had to get hurt. So…!!”

“Then help me out.”

Hamazura had planned to tell the boy to take the girl’s hand and run as far away as possible on his signal.

But he changed his mind.

Drencher Kihara Repatri, that young man who had wanted to save the children who would be used up by the dark side, was dead and nothing could change that. But this boy’s eyes carried the light the man had instilled in those children. After losing to Drencher, Hamazura could not allow that light to be extinguished.

No matter what.

So he changed his mind.

“I need a few tools to finish this. I’ll buy some time with this gun, so you gather them for me. Can you do that?”

Hamazura recalled the hard sensation in his pocket and clicked his tongue. He tried pulling it out, but its shine was still dull. It was not quite fully charged. The golden shine had yet to make a full circle around the edge of the coin. But that was fine. He threw the coin as far as he could, even though he had no idea if it would draw Ladybird’s attention or not.

He did not regret losing it.

He did not need the Coin of Nicholas.

Everyone already had the ability to switch over the tracks to a different route.

He would take a different route here and he did not need the creepy occult to do it.

He needed something else.

===Part 14===

She had found them.

Ladybird planted her hands and feet on the cold concrete ground while she located her target again.

She did not know how this would help her. If she captured them, her horrific feast would begin. But she could not stop herself.

She could not change this about herself. She could not escape her fate, just like a drowning person would subconsciously swim toward the surface.

…Even though she had wanted to protect the humans.

She would eat them.

This suffering would never end unless she consumed a human brain.

…Even though she was supposed to free those children from the darkness by lying on the dissection table herself.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Her vision blurred.

But even her tears were scattered by the blowing wind of her great speed.

Even during unstable bipedal movement, she could rival a V12 engine at max RPMs, so her top speed had increased even further now that she had abandoned her dignity as a girl and gained the efficiency of a machine.

It did not matter if they were an adult or a child.

Puny human legs could never escape her.

She pursued her target as accurately as a precision-guided weapon. She charged toward those distinctive gym clothes.

Handgun bullets attacked her from the side. Even after all this, she had not let go of the thick machete. And without any obstacles in the way, firing on her was suicide. She could accurately kill the shooter with the ricochet by adjusting the angle of her weapon.

Or so she thought.

Instead, the reaction speed of her right hand had slowed by 0.5 seconds.

“?”

That was a devastating delay.

The storm of lead hit her and she tumbled along the ground. A 9mm round was not enough to destroy her bones or muscles—the problem was her speed. The impact from the side easily knocked her off balance and she broke through two or three concrete columns along the way.

But what was this?

What had happened? She had been moving on all fours, but that had not affected her right arm’s movable range. When she checked, she found no report of her movement performance having dropped.

The problem must have come before that.

She finally realized there had been an error in her targeting.

A whitish smoke was filling the entire circular space.

It was a smokescreen.

(It can’t be.)

More gunfire. She immediately readied her machete, but that did not work when she could only respond after the fact. She could not protect herself and the bullets slipped past the weapon to slam into her body.

“Gahhh!!”

===Part 15===

Hamazura Shiage had seen what happened in that container lab buried in trash. The long silver-haired hakama girl had made a desperate attack to save him and Takitsubo. She had grabbed the android’s face with her palm and shoved burning incense in the android’s mouth.

But how did that make sense? If Ladybird had the reaction speed to deflect every bullet fired at her, how had she overlooked a human hand?

“The dark side is coldhearted to everyone. You don’t get lucky for no good reason.”

The weak were always observant. After going through that sorrowful goodbye and seeing the girl suffering from so much pain, he had decided to at least use what she had taught him.

This was the world’s oldest chemical weapon.

That sounded fancy, but it was easily made with ordinary items.

You could use the hexachloroethane found in commercial bug sprays or make a powder out of the zinc used in all sorts of things in everyday life. Hamazura recalled that Hanzou had been an expert at stuff like this.

“A smokescreen!! It might not stop IR and ultrasound, but your high-speed defenses aren’t a threat if your sensors malfunction for even a moment!!”

===Part 16===

So?

What did that matter?

The intense hunger inside Ladybird continued to grow. It was more like a desire for oxygen than for food or water.

She was going to kill.

Just the one brain would suffice.

Her thoughts focused more and more on that one goal.

…What had she wanted to save again?

She managed to detect something in the powerful smokescreen.

She spotted a small figure in gym clothes.

…What had once been a girl wept as she raised her voice.

“010011101010110001011001101111001011!!”

She could not even get out actual words anymore.

Something inside her had fried.

After rushing toward her target faster than a racecar, she opened up once more. The small size suggested this was the girl. Ladybird’s back opened wide and the thin translucent thing burst out. Several of those predatory organs stuck out like thin insect wings or like long tongues. They wrapped around her target to bind them and then she shoved the heavy mass inside herself.

This was the dark side.

The good were not rewarded and the evil were not punished.

And.

And.

And.

“…?”

When did she notice something was wrong?

The gym clothes had been on a figure small enough to easily lift up in her arms. That much was true. But what was with that weight? Would a child of around ten really weigh more than 200 kilograms?

“It can’t be!?”

In that moment, Ladybird’s heart was filled by a feeling of…

===Part 17===

Ladybird was not the only one with their target in sight.

Hamazura Shiage accurately aimed his handgun.

“You didn’t like it when I fired on you from behind earlier, did you? Almost like you didn’t want a bullet getting inside that ‘mouth’ on your back.”

The weak were always observant.

The only way to make up for the difference in strength was to search out a weakness.

“And when you were engulfed in flames by that gasoline, you extinguished it with a swing of your machete. That was pretty scary at first glance, but if it really couldn’t harm you, you wouldn’t need to put out the flames, would you?”

He had not used the smokescreen to reduce the effectiveness of her sensors just to hit her with a few useless 9mm bullets.

But making that attack had convinced her that was all it was for.

This was the smokescreen’s true purpose.

The curtain of smoke had let her see the gym clothes without realizing they were on a metal drum and he had baited her into trying to eat that.

Plus, he had already proven that the handgun bullets were enough to ignite the contents of those metal drums.

He fired repeatedly toward her back.

Toward the centerline down her back that resembled the zipper on a costume. The oversized target prevented her from fully closing her back, so he only had to fire on that gap as if shoving the bullets on in there.

The metal drum she had taken into herself now expanded within her.

It exploded.

When the intense boom echoed out from her, he knew he had won. The blast and shockwave were enough to blow away the smokescreen.

He wished he had not seen what remained afterwards.

He was the one who had caused those remains to be strewn across the ground here.

“Hamazura!!”

“I’m fine.”

He bit his lip with the small revolver still in hand.

“Her head moved weirdly in the smokescreen there,” he said. “And then that scream. ''Something other than her mechanical thought process kicked in.'' Without that, I don’t think the metal drum would have tricked her.”

Her attack had been running off of a program, so maybe the parameters could be overwritten and the attributes could be switched on and off.

“She must have remembered something.”

He hung his head and looked down instead of at his girlfriend.

Something was lying on the ground there.

“So in that final moment, she did what she could to save those kids.”

The girl’s head had rolled over toward him and it looked to him like she was smiling.

Because now she would never have to kill again.

===Part 18===

This was a surprise.

He had not even considered what he would do if this happened.

Kihara Hasuu stood in a daze after being left all alone. Finally, he looked around the vast circular space.

Takitsubo looked to be in pain. The moxibustion’s effects would not last forever.

“Pant, gasp.”

“Takitsubo.”

A sinister metallic click sounded. It came from a small revolver.

“Get the kids away from here. It’s time for a grownup chat with that man.”

“…Okay.” Takitsubo nodded. “Are you sure, Hamazura?”

“Yeah. We have to do this before we run away.”

Once no one else was around to see this, the delinquent boy approached the old man with the handgun in his grasp.

“Got anything else?” His voice sounded cold and hard, like a machine. “You’re one of those rumored Kiharas, aren’t you? Did you modify your own body with that android tech?”

“…”

“If not, it’s about time we woke up from this nightmare.”

The revolver’s muzzle rose. His cold voice contained a hint of blatant scorn. Like he refused to accept that this man was unharmed after making Ladybird suffer so.

“You will pay for what you did to ''that girl''. I can’t think of any reason why I should forgive you. I doubt I ever could. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stand on the side of justice. But if I don’t do this here, the justice I couldn’t have will die. I might be dumb, but I can tell that much.”

Yes.

The look in the boy’s eyes said he could not let this man live. ''Kihara Hasuu considered that the correct answer.'' He had not felt anger or sorrow upon Ladybird’s defeat. He had seen a problem to solve and improvements to make. If he were freed from here, he would immediately begin development on the next generation. That would mean many more victims. He knew himself well enough to say that.

And now that there was new research to be done, he had something to live for.

That was his fate as a Kihara.

He did not want to die yet.

He could not let himself die.

No matter what.

“You have set a record here. This will make you the new Kihara Killer.”

“This is over.”

“That is a serious crime. You will undoubtedly become the center of the new dark side. And Academy City will always demand more live sacrifices, whether you want it or not!!”

“Don’t try to stall for time. You’re dead and nothing’s changing that.”

This conversation was meaningless.

Would the boy normally have said so much on reflex? Set a record, Kihara Killer, center of the dark side—Kihara Hasuu’s wording was meant to give his opponent a big head. Was there any way—any way at all—to turn the tables on the boy? The old man was racking his brains the entire time he was buying time. It could be anything. As one who bore the name Kihara, he was willing to break all forms of ethics and standards if need be.

Then he saw it. He noticed something out of place—a gold shine on the cold concrete ground.

It was a Coin of Nicholas.

The clockwise shine had filled the outer edge now. It was fully charged.

“!!”

He immediately leaped at it and grabbed it in his special engineering glove.

He raised his voice.

He wanted to get started on his next research even if it meant relying on something very unscientific.

“Make his gun malfunction, Coin of Nicholas!!”

Who was to blame for this? The actual phenomenon occurred a moment later.

The result was perfectly fair.

A bullet flew from Hamazura Shiage’s handgun.

Yes, there were more ways for a gun to malfunction than for the bullet to jam or explode inside, blowing up the gun and the wielder’s hand along with it.

It could also fire the bullet without the trigger being pulled.

“Huh?”

The old man looked down.

He could not believe that he had been hit in the gut, rupturing his stomach of all things. More than the bleeding, his own vomit contaminated his body where a single germ could ultimately be fatal. He collapsed, suffered for more than five full minutes, and finally passed away. Stomach acid was primarily composed of hydrochloric acid. What did it feel like to be placed on the surgical table, have your gut cut open, and have a bunch of that dumped inside? All without anesthetic, of course.

The old man had lost his life to his own prayer.

A believer in science had relied on something beyond the bounds of science.

This was the fate of someone who stopped trying to do his own work. But in a way, this may have been exactly what he deserved.

If he had relied on his own strength from the beginning, he never would have earned such resentment over Ladybird.

[[Image:GT_Index_v03_459.jpg|thumb]]

If he had cut out pieces of his own flesh for his experiments, he never would have gotten into an argument over what to do with the children in gym clothes.

If he had chosen that path, everyone who had arrived here maybe could have worked together to survive.

Hamazura did not think the android was at fault.

Kihara Hasuu might agree, but it would mean something very different coming from him. The old man’s crime and punishment had to be defined by his own nature. Speaking as an expert required earnestly facing what parts of science you wished to preserve.

Was this too a present from heaven?

That coin was a trap that provided obvious miracles but also took away all other options you might try.

Hamazura Shiage spoke quietly while viewing the scum still gripping that gold coin after he had stopped moving.

Was his face blank?

Or was he suppressing an inappropriate smile?

“Merry Christmas. Did you enjoy your miracle, mad scientist?”

===Map===

[[Image:GT_Index_v03_460-461.jpg|thumb]]

Below District 10:

Hamazura Shiage – Beneficial

Takitsubo Rikou – Beneficial

Kihara Hasuu – Harmful

Ladybird – Harmful

Drencher Kihara Repatri – Beneficial

Frillsand #G – Beneficial

===Between the Lines 4===

“It’s over.” Anna Sprengel spoke bluntly behind the cold bars. “That marks the end of the December 25 festivities. I doubt anything more will happen now, so I suppose my entertainment has come to a close. Well, at least I managed to gather up some decent ‘fluctuations’. If everything had gone as planned, I might have been so disgusted I switched it off.”

She received no response from the next cell.

Most likely, no one knew what he was thinking.

The human damage had been far too great to say his silence was the most eloquent answer of all.

“What were you picturing? How did you see Operation Handcuffs ending? I bet your dream wasn’t half bad.”

So only Anna’s voice filled this space.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of. Most any adult can think of some embarrassing disaster from their teenage years. The more you express your dreams, the sooner those dreams will be crushed. That’s why the most effective method is to hide what you want and work to reveal what everyone else wants so you can work against them. Hee hee. ''If you want to accomplish something great, you first need to hide your primary objective.'' You were a little too pure. You need to muddy the waters a little.”

A solid clink echoed through the cold air.

The girl who looked only ten had flicked a gold coin into the air and then caught it in her hand.

“The Coin of Nicholas.”

The Board Chairman had lost control.

He had lost the ability to keep tabs on things.

The number of malicious accidents had been far too great. He had tried to give instructions from his cell, but he had been in no position to stop the snowball once it began rolling down the hill.

Because if he did that, the #1 would have once more become the #1 darkness.

He had sealed away his monstrous side.

He had sworn he would.

So. And yet.

“Adding in this one little foreign element shredded the flowchart you had in your head. You had it set up so the dark side would be dismantled and the people would peacefully surrender no matter how things played out, but that happy ending was torn to pieces and everyone chose for themselves to dive into a free world of high-risk death. …Who got them was random, but in the end ''only one person'' managed to break free of its bonds on their own. He slipped below my radar. I even contacted him during the day, yet I overlooked him. That is highly unusual.”

She sounded amused.

She almost seemed to place more importance on this than the #1 in the neighboring cell.

“I learned just the one thing from this spare time between experiments,” she continued.

Her voice seemed to have gone flat, like she had arrived at exactly the result she had predicted.

“''The freedom of magic wins out over the order of science.'' No matter how carefully you build everything up, I will still tear it down, overwrite it, and crush it.”

After a beat, she added one more thing like a mischievous child revealing a secret.

“Of course, these categories really don’t mean much of anything in the first place.”

She slid the edge of the golden coin along the crossbar of the barred door.

The scraping of metal on metal almost drowned out the click of a mechanism working.

The door had unlocked.

With no regard for how the lock actually worked.

“This is yet another miracle.”

The cell of science could not hold magic.

It was a very blunt metaphor.

She slowly walked out into the corridor and began to pass by the neighboring cell.

“As the name suggests, the Coin of Nicholas is a spiritual item limited to Christmas. Although it absorbs power directly from the ley lines instead of from the magician’s body, so it is technically more like a grimoire than a spiritual item. This chaos is a dream you will wake from come morning. It will not last long, so don’t worry.”

“How dare you!!”

Finally.

Something translucent challenged her from behind the bars. She looked like a lovely girl with marine creature elements and bat wings attached and she wore a dress of English newspapers covered in articles that some might consider profane. Metal bars meant nothing to her. She broke through them with a shower of orange sparks and she grabbed at the little girl covering herself with a thin red cloth.

She was Qliphah Puzzle 545, an artificial demon prepared as a trump card by the Anglican Archbishop who had once tried to overthrow the world.

However…

“I’m trying to talk. Don’t interrupt when you don’t even understand what I mean.”

All of a sudden, something stood next to the little girl.

The translucent being was an angel with a falcon head and a powerful body. As soon as a vertical crack ran through him, the angel mercilessly stripped off his entire body.

He was now a sun.

A dreadful light burst out and filled the space as it attacked the demon girl.

“Kyahhh!!”

Accelerator did not even stir.

The #1 had his reflection.

''Yet a red liquid dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“Think before you speak. Just think about it and you should realize that now is not the time for you to interrupt.”

Anna was not even looking in his direction.

She simply waved goodbye.

“My experiment is complete. Things will go differently next time.”

She never did look through the bars. She was already looking to some other place as she walked away.

But she did give a final parting comment.

“Send ''him'' my regards.”

Accelerator leaned back against the hard wall, let his hips sink to the cold floor, and lowered his head.

He did not speak a word.

One thing had been proven here. His small dream would never come true.

Not as long as she was here.

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume3_Chapter3|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume3_Epilogue}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter2

2020-12-25T20:24:13Z

162.238.158.199: /* Part 1 */

==Chapter 2: Dark Side — Ghost, Android, and…==

===Part 1===

Tires scraped against the asphalt as they slipped to the side.

Academy City’s District 1 was a government district and that loud noise seemed out of place in such an orderly and coldly inhuman area. Especially when it was mixed in with screams and sounds of destruction.

“Hey, wasn’t that one of our prisoner transport vehicles!?”

“It didn’t just slip on a snowy road! Something’s happening inside it! Move, get down!!”

The 20-ton mass of metal swerved along a large S, broke through a makeshift barrier, knocked away the special vehicle on the other side, and crashed into the front gate of the general Anti-Skill station. After coming to a stop in front of the building, an eerie silence hung over the prisoner transport vehicle, but that did not last long.

Everyone assumed the sound of sparks was from the side door being cut away.

But in fact, the bulletproof and blast-resistant armor was cut through a centimeter out from the door.

The door collapsed outwards and a strange girl emerged from within. She looked to be 13 or 14. She had long hair colored an inhumanly bright red and she was not at all dressed for winter. The colors covering her undeveloped body were orange and black. She was only wearing something like a racing swimsuit with the toxic coloration of an insect. Surprisingly, she was barefoot.

Her bangs were cut cleanly across, she had a smartphone on each shoulder and she had several skinny tubes in the belts around her thighs. Some were rolled-up silicone keyboards and others were clear bottles full of some kind of thick liquid that definitely did not look like a drink.

Her pupils mechanically expanded and contracted without any other change to her expression and she held a sixty-centimeter blade that was much too large and thick to call a knife. It looked lot like a machete used to clear one’s way through the jungle, but it may not have belonged to any existing category.

She had used that to cut through the armor.

The vehicle’s wall was designed with bullets and bombs in mind, but it had been like gelatin to her.

The atmosphere froze. Everyone stood still like they had failed to read in these new rules, triggering an error. They had never imagined anyone would make it this far toward Anti-Skill’s center.

“The dark side!?” someone shouted.

“Good grief.”

A skinny old man wearing a lab coat over a dark blue jumpsuit followed the girl out of the vehicle.

He could have been a researcher or a mechanic. The glint in his eyes felt like it would fit either profession.

Sparks flew as his handcuffs were cut through. Not the chain, the two loops.

“Ladybird-kun, there must have been a gentler way to handle that.”

“You were captured before I could hijack a vehicle, Sensei, so I used the Anti-Skill prisoner transport vehicle to bypass the need to fight at three checkpoints. That has saved us 250 seconds.”

“Unlike you, I am human. Crush any one of my organs and I die.”

“I complied with all safety standards. If you wish for even greater safety, you would need to replace your body with carbon muscles and a heavy metal skeletal frame. I recommend depleted uranium.”

“Now I’m worried what your idea of safety standards are. Really, it’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

When the girl known as Ladybird spoke, there was a mismatch between the movement of her lips and her actual voice. Almost like she was a ventriloquist’s dummy.

The paralysis finally wore off for the surrounding Anti-Skill officers and a few of them drew their handguns.

“What are you doing here, dark side!? You damn harmfuls!!”

“Oh?” The old man looked legitimately puzzled. “Have you not heard what is happening outside? The confusion among your ranks must be worse than I thought. Maybe there was no need to pay you a visit and cripple your network after all. If so, I do apologize.”

A dry “bang!!” rang out and an Anti-Skill officer was pushed back by the recoil.

Everyone assumed the old man would collapse, but he did not.

A few of the officers pulled their triggers half in a panic, but for some reason, it was Anti-Skill who had someone collapse from a bullet wound to the head, chest, or other vital point each time.

Ladybird had expressionlessly raised the machete in her right hand.

That was all. When a bullet came whizzing in, she would accurately detect it, raise the thick blade in its path, and use the deflected bullet to attack Anti-Skill.

Yes, she redirected it toward ''someone other than the person who had fired it.

Anti-Skill had been a united front at first, but now their eyes turned toward their companions.

None of it seemed to bother the old man as he toyed with his own gloves.

“Ladybird-kun.”

“Yes, Sensei?”

“Kill them all. We have no other option.”

Screams continued for a while after that.

The old man known only as “Sensei” walked deeper into the building with the pace of someone strolling along their usual walking path. A storm of red, black, and orange raged around him. Anti-Skill was firing handguns and submachineguns to try to stop him, but not a single bullet hit him. Hitting him was not possible in a world where Ladybird could take control of a flying bullet with brute force and send it back the way it had come. That was like trying to fight a stealth fighter using a hot air balloon.

Their cutting-edge bulletproof and blast-resistant equipment was meaningless.

They could not break that thick machete with bullets or even with artillery-sized heavy weaponry.

“It is made of Saintium. That element’s metallic bond strength is fifty-six times greater than depleted uranium, so it can easily stop a warship’s armor-piercing artillery. Of course, only Ladybird-kun could hope to pick it up. As for your equipment, I am grateful that prisoner transport vehicle had plenty of horsepower.” The old man sounded like he was just having a casual chat. “Now, you won’t find it mentioned in any chemistry textbooks because it’s an artificial element that doesn’t exist in nature. A speck of it large enough to see probably costs more than any of the cars driving around out there. It was not easy running the accelerator at full power long enough to get this much. I would have been in trouble if it hadn’t shown the results I wanted.”

Anti-Skill must have shifted things up to the next level because a grenade was thrown from around the corner.

Ladybird accurately detected the flying explosive and swung her machete horizontally toward it. She hit the grenade back like a baseball and the blast and fragments shredded the Anti-Skill officer.

But then she heard a solid sound at her feet.

The officer had thrown two grenades just to be safe.

“…”

She tilted her head, making her red hair flutter, but she did not hesitate to act.

She got down on top of the grenade to suppress the blast with her own body.

A muffled boom range out, but that was all.

She slowly stood back up and stood by the old man’s side like nothing had happened. There was no red of blood. Her racing swimsuit and soft skin were both entirely unscathed. Blast resistant equipment was not enough to explain that.

“A-a machine?” The officer who had been badly injured by the first grenade moved his lips while down on the floor. “Is that one of those cyborgs we’ve heard about?”

“That term is about two generations out of date. You need to update your thinking if you hope to talk about a ''Kihara'' like me.”

Ladybird’s pupils mechanically expanded and contracted as she walked barefoot from the entranceway to a hallway. She made sure to end the life of an Anti-Skill officer reaching for a gun with a trembling hand.

She pulled one of the bottles from the belt on her thigh, drank some of the contents, and then dumped the rest over her head as if drinking it was not enough. The thick clear liquid dripped down her hair and skin and gave her outfit the unique sheen of a racing swimsuit. That was a room temperature superconductive fluid that allowed her to safely release all her excess energy, but it was also a discharge machine oil that reduced the frictional wear on her joints. That sounded simple enough, but combine that with an outer space nuclear reactor and building a manned space probe was within reach.

However, the old man was more troubled by what he saw in front of him.

“Ladybird-kun, you could really stand to be more tactful.”

“Explain to me why you equipped me with parts that trouble you when they show through my clothing.”

The old man brought a hand to his forehead when the girl did not bat an eye while fixing the butt of her racing swimsuit with a finger bent like a hook. They had no business with the elevators or emergency stairs. If they only wanted to slaughter the people here, they would have simply brought down the building from outside. Ladybird’s specs allowed her to keep up with rifle bullets using that Left Arm sword that was 56 times tougher than depleted uranium, so it was curious why she had even bothered to enter the building.

They had business deeper inside. That was when his outdated phone rang. He pressed the small button with a finger inside thick engineering gloves. That model protected against injuries and the cold while also allowing for precise movement. That sounded simple, but even professional snipers had a hard time finding one they liked.

“You’ve done it now, Kihara-kun,” said a voice on the phone.

“I would really like to throw those words right back at you. Your silly betrayal here has already brought down three Kiharas.”

“This is all the newly-appointed Board Chairman’s doing. The twelve of ''us'' did not agree to it.”

“Such arrogance. Did you really expect me to accept that? My life is on the line here. And there is no need to hide the fall of Neoka Norito. It changes nothing here, but hiding it does make it harder to trust you, ''Board of Directors''.”

The racing swimsuit girl kicked down a metal door deep inside the building and escorted the old man toward the stairs leading down. They led to a dimly lit room of bare concrete. In addition to the boiler and plumbing, there was a metal box larger than a refrigerator. That was the fiber optic communication control box.

“''Do you want to be deemed harmful?''”

“They were already calling us that here,” said the man. “And I’m not so sure the categories invented by those in the light really mean all that much.”

“Do you think you can escape just because you are a Kihara?”

“If you have no plan, you should really shut up now. Your threats are sounding less concerning all the time. Now, do you have any more stupid questions?”

“Do you think it’s paradise outside the city? This city is the only place you can survive. No matter what form that survival might take.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Really, I find it strange that all of ''us'' were ever contained to a single city at all. Former Board Chairman Aleister has left the city. Without the Archetype Controller to reinforce our presence here, won’t the Kiharas naturally spread out across the world?”

The old man pulled a floppy disk larger than a tablet from his business bag. He inserted it into a special reader and then used a large device to hook it up to a fiber optic cable.

Ladybird expressionlessly tilted her head.

“Sensei, isn’t there a more efficient way of doing that?”

“When the world grows too convenient, people forget the value of a single byte. People can do anything with just one meg. If you forget that feeling, your creativity dies.”

“If you say so. I do not understand it myself.”

“Yes, yes. It may be hard to grasp for someone who is made from a flowchart of 1s and 0s. But restrictions bring inspiration to the human brain. Unlimited storage space is the same as a drug addiction.”

And in fact, a grinding sound filled the room as a horrific change occurred. The Anti-Skill general station’s network was infected through the communication control box and the ill effects spread to all 23 districts from there.

Hacking in from the outside would be difficult, but it was so much easier from the inside.

The old man smiled as he poured a fine powder into the large device.

“Parasite Hardware.”

Another nightmare took form.

“These nanodevices directly attach themselves to the signals traveling through the fiber optic cables to move around. Even light has a force capable of pushing objects, so it can actually carry devices of such a miniscule size. And the antivirus software searching for other software cannot detect this hardware, so the nanodevices pass right on through.”

“If you want a general term for software that removes malicious programs, sets up firewalls, detects suspicious activity, manages data traffic, and otherwise defends against cyber attacks, the term you are looking for is security software.”

“Good grief. We didn’t bother making all those little distinctions back when I helped build the foundation of the internet. And I’m still young, so that couldn’t have been all that long ago.”

“Unknown error detected.”

“Ladybird-kun, I am trying to do everything I can to compromise with you here, so do you have to tilt your head like that whenever I say something? You aren’t getting a correction out of me because there’s nothing at all inaccurate about calling myself young. Hey, wait, wait, wait. Not so close, Ladybird-kun.”

At any rate, the administrative network was in tatters now.

Anti-Skill communications, data sharing, and access to the cameras and sensors around the city had been brought down.

(Not that a little prank like this is enough to get past the wall.)

It was unlikely a single attack would actually be enough to bring down all of the online services, but to determine otherwise would require inspecting all of the hardware with an electron microscope, not just doing an automatic search with a program. A single drop of poison would require those in charge of water safety to ''clean'' everything down to the bottom of the dam. This was the polar opposite of a single megabyte floppy. The total amount was so great that inspecting it all was extremely difficult.

The old man had bought himself the time he needed to think up his next move.

After he left the basement, the conversation on the phone continued.

“Our reinforcements must not have arrived on time,” said the phone.

“Just give up.”

“You will die here, so enjoy this present from us, ''harmful''.”

The call ended. The overly skinny old man stuck out his tongue and slipped the phone back into his lab coat’s pocket.

“Sensei,” said the girl in the orange and black racing swimsuit.

The walls and ceiling were sliced through at the same time.

Several silhouettes covered in black armor broke into the building. Their equipment was different from the previous Anti-Skill officers. If an ordinary human fired those giant guns, the recoil might break their spine, but these silhouettes were wielding them with ease.

They said nothing, but the text on their right arms indicated they were different from the others: Anti-Skill Aggressor.

These special personnel had been trained to reproduce the movements of the enemy – that is, the brutal criminals of the dark side – during training. These elite of the elite had been created by training specially chosen Anti-Skill officers to the limit and providing them with equipment that could not be used openly. They had been intentionally made to stand on the borderline between justice and the dark side.

They were the Board of Directors’ trump card.

The old man known as a Kihara gulped when he saw them.

“Unbelievable.”

The look on his face was of legitimate surprise.

“''I was looking forward to whatever secret weapon you had in store for me and you send out equipment I designed myself? Worse, this version sold to ordinary Anti-Skill is at least two generations out of date''.”

A stir ran through the Anti-Skill Aggressors.

The hostility and killer intent meant to overpower the old man felt like no more than a ripple to him.

In fact, the multiple Aggressors were forced back by a creaking and cracking sound. Almost like they were being crushed by a thick wall.

The space itself seemed to cry out as those collections of heavy armor and advanced tech staggered back.

“Wh-what?” The Anti-Skill Aggressors broke their silence as their control of the scene crumbled away. “Can that hunk of junk use Telekinesis!?”

“Ladybird-kun.”

The old man ignored it all.

The Kihara spoke to the girl who was toying with her swimsuit’s shoulder strap because the slipping material was bothering her.

“You have two minutes. Teach them the value of a single byte.”

The snow had stopped a bit ago.

A sticky sound seemed to defile the icy air. Sherbet-like snow remained on a main road in District 17 where many unmanned factories ran.

An Anti-Skill officer wearing a bulletproof and blast-resistant full-face helmet actually clawed at his thick helmet with both hands, but he was too panicked to perform the simple task of removing it.

He doubled over, collapsed to the snow-wet road, and began to convulse.

Almost like he was drowning inside his own helmet.

“Everyone, check your helmet seals!!”

“I’m not getting any gas or bacteria warnings, though.”

“We can’t see it, but that harmful must be using some kind of tech. If we just protect ourselv— gah!?”

After feeling a bubbling sensation from his dominant hand to the shoulder, another Anti-Skill officer collapsed to the road.

“It’s no use.”

A woman stood there. She had a light blue silhouette with long blonde twintails. She wore a tight dress that showed off her figure, but a thin cloth was worn loosely around that like a fairy tale princess’s skirt, looking something like a hanging flower. Overall, she looked like a Western doll, but her curvy figure was at odds with that.

She was known as Frillsand #G, but no one here was familiar with that ''development code''.

“If you would stay away from here, I would have no reason to attack you.”

She was all alone, but this standoff had been going for more than an hour. She stood in the center of a six-lane road with no cover to protect her from bullets.

“What I am doing is not the question. What you need to dodge to survive is not the question.”

She actually sounded sad.

Frillsand #G spoke quietly while exposed to the gunfire.

“From the moment you see me, I hold your lives in my hands.”

“My aim…” A surviving Anti-Skill officer clenched his teeth in his helmet. “My aim is off! I can’t seem to aim at her!!”

Their target was not moving. Frillsand #G remained entirely motionless. Yet they could not hit her. When they tried to aim their guns, their arms would shake. Even when they forcibly steadied their weapon on the hood of the special vehicle they were using as cover, they could not stop the shaking.

With a dull rumble, thick cracks ran through the asphalt road.

An unmanned weapon had separated from a transport helicopter passing by overhead and landed on the ground. The quadrupedal machine was larger than the average van. It was known as the Dangerous Bull.

Gas and bacteria meant nothing to that bull-shaped unmanned weapon.

Or so everyone thought.

But…

“Gyahhh!?”

It was Anti-Skill that screamed while a loud boom shook the area. The sides of the bull opened up, allowing rockets and missiles to stick out like an attack helicopter’s weapons, but none of them were launched. Inexplicably, the unmanned weapon ran right past the motionless woman and trampled Anti-Skill as they tried to scatter.

The color red burst out, the car being used as a shield slid to the side, and endless groans left the officers who were not killed instantly.

“Stop! Stop!!”

“Can it…not see us? What happened to its facial recognition!?”

Frillsand #G’s thin blue skirt fluttered as she spoke quietly.

“It’s no use.”

A dry bang rang out. It was probably pure coincidence, but when an Anti-Skill officer crawled along the snow-wet road, grabbed a submachinegun in trembling hands, and fired it, the bullet flew straight toward the doll-like woman’s forehead.

He scored a clean hit.

He smiled within his helmet, but then the despair hit.

Frillsand #G’s forehead was unharmed. Not a single drop of blood. But not because her body was absurdly sturdy or because a barrier in front of her had deflected the bullet.

Yes, the bullet had entered her forehead.

''And passed right through her.

The officer saw sparks flying from the factory wall behind the woman with the silhouette of a fairy tale princess. He had not wanted to see that and it acted like a toxin physically eating away at his nerves.

Then he noticed something.

His tablet showed the footage coming from the Dangerous Bull that had trampled his allies, but something was wrong. The autofocus was not working and it was full of the glowing artifacts known as orbs.

The woman was standing right in front of it, yet the facial recognition cursor was flashing at a different point altogether.

One of his fallen colleagues’ face and hands were weirdly erased from the footage. Almost like some form of lock-on symbol.

He did not have the guts to see what he looked like through the lens.

“It…can’t be.”

It was not possible.

He wanted to reject this possibility since it should never have even occurred to him in a city of science.

“No, that’s just not possible. This must be a hologram using a mirage.”

“No, I am not that.”

“Then you’re using ultrasonic waves outside the audible range to exhaust our brains until they malfunction!!”

“No, I am not.”

“Symbols on the wall are messing with our view of three-dimensional space!!”

“No.”

The helmeted Anti-Skill officer shook his head in protest.

Every scientific approach he could think of had been denied.

So he had to accept it.

“''A gho—''”

“It is best to let sleeping dogs lie,” whispered the doll-like woman whose long double skirt hid her legs from view. “Leaving here is always an option. If you give up on entering this place, I need not bring further harm to you.”

She was an unknown. But this was Academy City where science worship thrived, so instead of sealing it away and leaving, the residents here reflexively chose to challenge the unknown.

“You…”

The woman appeared to breathe a quiet sigh when the man raised his gun.

“You damn harmfulllllllll!!”

“Hello, this is Frillsand.”

The man’s hands stopped unnaturally while holding the gun. And the bizarre song of the lifeless determined his fate.

“Next stop: mincemeat. Repeat: mincemeat.”

An unpleasant sound followed.

The woman had not moved a finger, but the human silhouette inside the bulletproof equipment crumbled away.

Slowly.

“I was only supposed to buy enough time to transport the children away, but Anti-Skill is not going to last at this rate.”

The Anti-Skill officer could not even scream as he drowned in his own blood. Frillsand #G watched that as she spoke to herself and her long twintails fluttered with movement entirely disconnected from the wind.

“Are you safe, my Drencher Kihara Repatri?”

A ghost could not hold physical objects, so she could not even wear a communicator on her ear.

Thus, these words were entirely meaningless.

But she had mentioned a certain family of researchers. Anyone with any contact at all with dark side research would be familiar with that name.

“Gasp, pant.”

District 8 was a dreary place with very little lighting even on Christmas. A schoolgirl with long and unruly silver hair and wearing a hakama was being chased down a narrow alley lined with used bookstores. The path was narrow enough already, but there were also piles of snow getting in the way. She pressed her back against the filthy wall and slid down onto her butt where she protected her head with both hands without worrying about how wet with snow the ground was.

She looked like she would wet herself if left like this for long.

“I-I haven’t done anything, so please help me! Don’t kill me!! Gasp, pant. Why does everything bad always have to happen to me!?”

Two fully-equipped Anti-Skill officers had her surrounded, but even they seemed taken aback by this.

“Hey, is she one of them?”

“She’s in Outrank. Vivana Oniguma, a dark side researcher.”

“Not what I meant. Is she a gentle beneficial or a brutal harmful?”

A simple flashlight caused the hakama girl to jump like she was on the receiving end of a laser attack. Afterwards, that girl, whose silver bangs were hardened into two decorative horns, actually looked confused, like someone who thought they were having boiling water poured on them from a tea kettle only to find it was room temperature.

One of the officers sighed in his helmet.

“What did you do?”

“N-nothing! It’s all a big misunderstanding!”

Vivana sniffled and answered honestly. A closer look showed the pattern of her hakama was made up of mascot characters, but if that was special-ordered, it had to be expensive. It may have been something like a red lacquered guitar or phone case.

“I don’t know about this beneficial or harmful stuff, but the dark side can refer to all sorts of people. My field of research just so happens to – eh heh heh – get some disapproving looks from most everyone in the educational field, so the next thing I knew, I had fallen down to this level. But I’m really not doing anything wrong, I swear.”

Anti-Skill was merciless to criminals who resisted to the bitter end, but there was nothing they could do with someone who fell onto her butt and confessed everything. The two of them exchanged a glance in the silly atmosphere they found themselves in.

Two large pieces of luggage sat near the girl: one black and one pink. But instead of suitcase or sports bags, they were large cloth wrappers stuffed full of things.

One of the men casually picked up the pink one.

“We can discuss this further at our car. This is your stuff, isn’t it?”

“Ah.”

“It’s pretty heavy. …Wait, it’s full of old Japanese books. Um, is this shung-?”

“G-gyahhh!!”

She frantically snatched the thick book away from him before he could open it.

The other man snapped back at her.

“Hey!!”

“Stop it, you idiot! This is fine! Don’t pull out your gun!!”

The two Anti-Skill officers started arguing. Vivana remained entirely motionless with the old Japanese book in her arms. She had even placed her butt back on the damp ground.

She was too panicked to get back up, but things were taking an unusual turn.

“I’ve had enough! Dark side is dark side. She’s a harmful, so we’ve got to do this!!”

“Are you insane? She’s clearly beneficial. She hasn’t even tried to resist!!”

“You never know where a harmful has a deadly weapon hidden.”

“She’s beneficial, so she isn’t hiding anything!”

“Get out of my way!!”

“Why should I!?”

Several dry gunshots rang out.

“Um.”

For a while, the silver-haired hakama girl squeezed her eyes shut and covered her head as if grabbing her two horns. But…

“Huh?”

When she hesitantly opened her eyes, it was already over.

The two officers must have accidentally pulled the trigger while fighting over the handgun because they were both collapsed on the ground with dark red holes in them. Strangely, Vivana found there was an unmistakable difference between a living person and a dead person. They seemed separated from their surroundings, like the color had faded from the background in that one spot.

When she noticed the red stain spreading toward her luggage, she quickly picked them up. That caused both cloth wrappers to come undone. They nearly spilled their contents of rare shunga books, rope, candles, a bamboo sword with a broken tip, tatami needles, incense, and a collapsible water wheel and wooden horse, but she shoved them all back inside.

(Uhhh.)

When her hakama slipped down from her shoulder, cheap red tape could be seen within. That was an even more familiar bondage material than ropes or leather. The taping techniques developed for sports medicine could also be used in more inappropriate ways.

(Why does everyone find this field of research so strange? Almost every country stops you from researching torture and the history of execution methods. They probably just don’t want me stumbling onto past cases of false charges. All I ever wanted was to do some ordinary, wholesome research, but the next thing I know, I’ve been shoved all the way into the dark side for it.)

Vivana Oniguma tearfully pouted her lips like a child while holding one of her favorite books in both hands.

“It’s not lewd.”

“How far did you wander off?”

“Ehh? You were the one that got lost, Onii-chan!”

Children’s voices could be heard on the Christmas streets. The little sister had emerged from the labyrinthine back alleys with her arms around a large dog that probably weighed more than she did.

“The doggy showed me how to get back to the street!!”

The golden retriever was wearing a thin backpack and he calmly looked up into the chilly sky.

The snow had stopped earlier.

He wanted a smoke, but he would wait until the children were gone.

(So after benefiting from our work for years, the Board has finally decided to cut us loose to save face. Not even this upheaval can dislodge those at the top. It is a reasonable choice on their part, though.)

He was helplessly petted by small hands while he thought in human language.

(Still, I know the one way the dark side has any chance of victory here.)

“The snow will still be here in the morning, so you can wait until then for your snowmen and snowball fights. Head home for today, children.”

“It talked!?”

“It talked!?”

The young siblings stared wide-eyed at the talking dog.

His name was Kihara Noukan.

He was unusual even for a Kihara and his very existence was near legendary. He was a researcher who loved both logic and romance. He was not a hero. If someone actively stepped into the darkness to gorge on the profits within, he would make a guinea pig out of them no matter who they were, but he would not go out of his way to intrude on a peaceful family.

Was he a gentle beneficial? Nonsense.

He was a Kihara. He understood that illogically drawing that kind of dividing line was the way villains thought.

“Make sure you’re home before even the moon is swallowed up by the darkness.”

===Part 2===

A click sounded in one corner of the darkening city.

It came from an old coin locker next to a capsule hotel. In such a rundown area, the lockers had no shortage of plausible rumors about babies or spirit tablets being found there.

“Okay.”

Hamazura pulled out a small paper bag of medicine.

He had gotten himself intentionally arrested to enter the Anti-Skill station, but he could not have them confiscate all of his possessions. He had especially wanted to keep Takitsubo’s medicine safe.

(But this is amazing. I just left it with Aneri’s drone and here it was inside a locker. With the locker locked and everything.)

“Enjoy karaoke with all your friends on Christmas!! Studio Enjoy Singing has a collection of more than 700,000 Christmas songs. And a full menu of food to enjoy too. Skip the chicken this 25th and feast on a real turkey! The full bird is cooked nice and long in the oven, so if you want food that tastes good and looks good on social media, head on down to Studio Enjoy Singing!!”

The LCD billboard on the capsule hotel’s roof would not shut up, but he could not glare up at it in protest. Even that carefree ad was equipped with a facial recognition camera to determine the favorability of the ad’s reception.

The city appeared peaceful even as the sun set.

Witness accounts of the “accidents” had to be out there, but most people only saw that as no more than a hint of excitement coloring their everyday lives. Yes, other people’s misfortune was only something to film with your phone and get likes on social media and views on video sites.

A strange buzzing came from his pocket.

He frowned and pulled out the phone to find the screen had lit up.

It was powered on despite him powering it off earlier.

“Aneri?”

Support AI Aneri had urged him to turn off his phone so Anti-Skill and Judgment could not track it, so he had done the same with the borrowed second one. But if Aneri had turned it on, had she come up with a way of preventing that?

She had probably used hacking, an anti-tracing program, or something else he did not understand.

“That’s good.”

Nothing major had happened, but it still felt significant. Seeing the light on that 6-inch screen felt just like seeing the lights in a mountain cabin window when lost on a snowy mountain at night.

Of course, he had no way of knowing the truth.

Aneri had decided the risk of being tracked was minimal because powerful dark side members had been attacking Anti-Skill stations and the network needed to search for him had been brought down by a brutal program or nanodevices.

“We’ll be fine now that Aneri’s here. Aneri, there’s so much I want you to look into! I’m counting on you, Aneri!!”

“You worry me, Hamazura.”

Takitsubo Rikou’s mouth formed a small triangle as she glared over at him.

Anyway, he had gotten a phone from that man who had worked as a voice on the phone, but he had not been able to get past the lock screen. He also did not know how to access any data or apps that were not openly displayed with square icons.

Aneri solved it all in three seconds.

The voice on the phone had possessed a counterfeit passport even more fancy than a normal one, so he must have found the address of a skilled counterfeiter who had created that passport for a fee.

It turned out that counterfeiter was known as Perfect Film.

Passports could have even more anti-counterfeiting methods woven in than paper money. It was generally best not to trust someone if they claimed they could counterfeit one, but if that voice on the phone had used this person, their quality was all but guaranteed.

You might think a passport was unnecessary for a domestic airline. That was true, but what was needed and what hurdles were set up could change on a case by case basis. It was actually easier to predict the hurdles with an international airline that always required a passport.

“Do we have enough money?” groaned Hamazura.

The voice on the phone’s small sling bag had included money crudely balled up and wrapped in rubber bands. Any activities that had to remain clandestine would require a fair amount of money. He did not know the going price for counterfeit passports, but this was a lot like flea market. Only suckers went ahead and paid the named price.

He looked down at the golden glitter in his hand. The shine had filled the entire outer edge of his Coin of Nicholas and the shadowy part was gone. The donut-shaped bar graph still had its full charge. That coin was apparently pure gold, but he felt using it for money was a bad idea.

(Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be able to explain to anyone what it is.)

It scared him.

It was creepy, but he was also reluctant to let it go at the moment.

He had more than just money troubles. You would normally contact a counterfeiter like this online first, but the situation was too pressing. Contacting them in advance might even cause them to flee, so rude as it was, it was best to head straight there and try to negotiate in person.

Once he had the email address, searching out the physical address was simple enough.

And Academy City was a large place, even if it was surrounded by walls. When they were being targeted by the city’s own system, slowly walking from one end to the other would be a bad idea. Plus, they did not know how long the Perfect Film counterfeiter would remain at their hideout.

They needed to act as soon as possible.

“The train will be arriving soon. Please keep your distance from the platform doors as you wait to board.”

“We’re taking the train, Hamazura?”

“Yeah.”

Takitsubo Rikou looked around at their surroundings, but Hamazura kept his eyes dead ahead as he quietly answered her.

“We could also steal a car, but anyone can see inside one of those ‘sealed rooms of glass’. That means crowded public transportation like a train or bus is best. If we act naturally, all the other people will hide us from view.”

“Acting normal now feels like the hardest thing, though.”

Once the train arrived, it spat people out and swallowed up the people waiting to board. Since it was the 25th, it felt busier than normal. Thankfully, there did not appear to be any delays due to the earlier snow. He felt a small hand grab at his jacket, so Takitsubo may have been afraid of them being separated by the crowd.

“Don’t push, please don’t push! We’re running on a special Christmas schedule, so there will be trains running after the usual last train. You don’t need to force your way onto this one, so please just wait for the next one!!”

Other passengers pushed on their backs as they boarded the train while a puppy-like station worker shouted from the platform. The station worker did not show any obvious interest in them. Even if the train system was half-public, the station workers were company employees, so they had no obligation to risk their lives to assist in the crackdown on crime. That may have been why their gears had not broken as badly as Anti-Skill’s.

“Gh.”

“Bear with it, Takitsubo.”

He had no idea if it helped, but he pulled his girlfriend close in the crowd.

“This is incredible,” she said while helplessly squished against him. “Is everyone here going to the same place?”

The thick automatic doors closed and the train began to move. With this crowd, Anti-Skill could not walk from one end to the other searching for people.

The train shook as it started to move, but that was when they heard an announcement from the opposite platform.

Train and station announcements were known for being dull and flat, but this was more than that. It sounded like the synthesized voice from music software where a text was given to the computer and the intonation was provided by altering the wave line.

“The next train is a commuter express headed to Katasu Station. Repeat: to Katasu Station. Please move behind the yellow line as you wait to board.”

“?”

Hadn’t this station been fully equipped with platform doors for a while now? Hamazura frowned at that strange announcement.

Just then, he heard a loud impact and then the glass of the nearby door was dyed red.

It happened just after the arrival of the train on the next track over. Screams erupted from the opposite platform along with the screech of steel on steel as the train rapidly applied its brakes, but this train continued to accelerate away from the station platform.

“Wait, did it hit someone?”

“I saw a severed head flying through the air. That’s what hit the glass like a ball.”

Hamazura and Takitsubo were surrounded by whispering voices while everyone was packed in too tightly for them to move.

The meaning of that crowd had suddenly changed.

“I saw who it was. It was Hikami, that loan shark on social media.”

“Eh, Ryougo-kun? The blond who’s always getting flamed for his videos? Like the one where he set a fan of cash on fire or the one where he sold some weird gold coin to a pawnshop?”

“Serves him right, but how’d he even fall onto the track? Aren’t there platform doors in the way???”

“Hamazura,” groaned a quiet voice. Someone else from the dark side appeared to have died, but it barely seemed to bother any of the other people here.

“What, some loan shark ended up like the Teke Teke?”

“There are worse ways to die. I fell asleep on the train after school one day and dreamed I was on a train full of gorillas.”

“You know how they never seem to finish those huge station expansions? I heard they’re having trouble with the rumored Platform 13. They dug too far and hit a spring, so they can’t stop the water and it’s been a swamp down there for years now. You can dump bodies or guns there and no one will ever find them, so there’s supposedly tons of people who sneak in there during the night.”

It did not matter what had actually happened. They had seen it happen for themselves, but it had quickly blended in with baseless rumors they had heard. It was no different than some thirty-second video they would watch to pass the time. Hamazura felt like they lived in an entirely different world despite standing right next to each other here. He felt a gaping hole in his heart growing even wider as he realized they would respond in the same way if he and Takitsubo died.

(I won’t let that happen.)

He clenched his teeth while holding his girlfriend even tighter in his arms.

(We haven’t lived lives we can share with just anyone, but we were doing everything we could to survive. I won’t let us be just one more passing curiosity for these people messing with their phones while munching on a snack in safety.)

The advertisement monitor at the top of the door was displaying a few headlines likely taken from some online news site.

They could have been showing a list of tomorrow’s victims, but instead the top story was about Mont Blancs passing shortcakes in sales. Almost like they were trying to give the impression that nothing of incident had happened on the 25th.

“We will soon arrive at the station.”

A flat male voice gave an announcement.

This one was not a strange synthetic voice talking about Yami Station or Katasu Station or whatever.

“The train may shake without warning, so please be careful. Next up is the end of the line: District 6 Amusement Park Main Gate Station. The station is likely crowded, so if you purchased your tickets in advance, we recommend getting them ready now.”

===Part 3===

They could not remain here.

Shirai Kuroko parted the putrid air to reach the underground parking garage.

“Can you drive?” she asked.

“Eh? I only have an assisted driving license. You know, the one where you sit in the driver’s seat and the self-driving car handles everything for you.”

Combover and glasses Anti-Skill Officer Rakuoka Houfu’s answer irritated the twintails middle school girl. Her image of adults was crumbling even further.

“That’s a same-day issue license like one for a moped, isn’t it? But I thought it didn’t qualify as ID. So do you normally use your insurance card?”

“Hm, do I even have insurance?”

“How do you function!?” the first-year middle schooler shouted at the middle-aged man.

For a civil servant, insurance payments would be automatically taken from their paycheck, so he would have insurance whether he knew it or not. Where his insurance card had gone was still a mystery, though. If he also lacked a passport and identity number card, then he may not have had any real ID. Had that never come up as a problem?

Yomikawa Aiho, another survivor, gestured the two of them over.

“You two can ride with us since we have room for four!!”

“Thanks,” said Shirai Kuroko while brushing her hair from her shoulder. “And do not forget about my internal investigation. I don’t want that being put off until later due to the emergency!!”

She could teleport faster than the average car, but after that surprise attack, the enemy might still be hiding nearby and they might have left a web camera or drone as a present. She wanted to keep her cards close to her chest for now.

She climbed into the back seat of a large and thick four-wheel-drive vehicle that was practically an armored truck. It actually looked inconvenient outside of the jungle or desert.

Rakuoka took the seat next to her like it was to be expected.

“Where are we headed?” she asked.

“Going south and crossing the district border would be faster than heading to North District 7 from here. And District 2 specializes in firearms and vehicles, so the station there should have plenty of equipment.”

That answer came from the brown-haired Anti-Skill officer in the passenger seat…Namino was it? The snow was more of a danger after it stopped falling, but the adults did not seem concerned about solid ice on the road.

(Where are you, Onee-sama?)

It was sunset.

The enormous four-wheel-drive vehicle left the parking garage. Shirai’s thoughts turned to her phone, but Mikoto was the kind of person to cut off contact when things got dangerous. She was the strongest electric esper, so it was best to try and outmaneuver her.

And something else was bothering Shirai anyway.

“What has become of the Outrank database of the dark side?”

“The datalink is undergoing an unknown form of cyber attack. From what I heard, we’re lucky to have noticed there’s an attack underway at all.”

This was a much bigger deal than she had thought. She had heard District 7 was not the only place under attack, but without Outrank, they had no way of arresting the people on that list.

“So we can’t rely on any of the stationary servers inside the building. As an emergency measure, we have put together a temporary network using an operation command vehicle and an aircraft. It’s a terribly thin line, but—”

He was cut off by an explosion.

Shirai looked out the window to see an aircraft had fallen into the city somewhere. A shout identifying it as a tiltrotor reached her ears through the thick bulletproof glass.

“Only one left,” groaned Yomikawa Aiho in the driver’s seat.

“They have to constantly send out powerful signals to wirelessly support the datalink, so as valuable as they are, we can’t hide them deep underground,” explained Namino. “We need them on the scene to maintain the network, but the very equipment they use gives away their position.”

“So with that tiltrotor down, only the operation command vehicle on the ground is left?” Rakuoka Houfu gulped. “If it comes to it, w-we will have to protect that mobile server ourselves.”

Shirai could not stop picturing the disaster at the general station. Were more people going to die in ways that left nothing resembling a human body behind?

She pulled a laptop from the pocket in the back of the seat in front of her and tossed it onto the middle-aged man’s lap.

“We can’t let those twins escape. Rakuoka-sensei, you write up my description and work on summing up everything that we saw. However you define the dark side, they had to be using either technology or esper powers. We can learn everything there is to know about them if we gather enough information. I don’t want to arrive at the next station asking for help with nothing to offer in return, so let’s make sure we have a gift ready.”

“Fine, but I don’t know how to use computers.”

Anti-Skill was supposedly made from volunteers among the teachers, so how did this guy make his handouts for class? Surely he did not still write them out on manuscript paper with a fountain pen.

“Handwrite it if you have to, but write up a report! Before this raw data I risked my life to obtain fades from my mind!!”

“Urp, I would love to, but…I get carsick and the scent of air fresheners only makes it worse. Ughh.”

“How did you ever get a teaching license!?”

Shirai finally grew wide-eyed and shouted at him, but then she handed the pale-faced man a motion sickness bag with an exasperated look.

“Geez, are you okay?”

“I really am sorry about that. Ugh, I’m losing the fight.”

“Vomiting on the job counts as a work-related illness, doesn’t it? Anyway, I will put together a digital report, so-”

“I will resist!!!!!!”

He showed some actual willpower for one.

And he smiled in a self-deprecating way as Shirai watched him.

“Pant, pant, sigh. I didn’t have a real reason for choosing to be a teacher.”

“Is that so?”

“I just couldn’t leave the familiar framework of school after I graduated. Having a teaching license saved me when my search for other employment failed, but that’s kept me bound to schools ever since. I know it’s weird, but I never have managed to truly ‘graduate’.”

“…”

“And I’m still single at my age.”

She was not sure how to respond to that confession.

But he had started this conversation himself, so she could not silence him now.

“Nothing went anywhere when I tried marriage interviews and dating apps. I just keep searching for a true love that may not even exist. Ha ha. It’s like I’m still a kid in school deep down. Maybe things would have gone differently if I’d been hired by a company.”

He had never worked for a company and he doubted he had ever put any real effort into getting married.

He had less than fifty thousand yen in savings and he had never moved out of his childhood home.

The internet was connected to every part of the world, but he was connected to fewer than 10 people on social media.

“Ha ha.” He laughed after explaining all that. “But I still wish I could be someone my mother and sister are proud of. Which is why I’m here in Anti-Skill instead of just a teacher. That’s a pretty impure reason to be out here fighting, isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

Shirai Kuroko sighed softly.

The combover and glasses man looked surprised by her response, so she explained.

She waved her phone to show she was willing to friend him on social media. It was not like it would hurt anything.

“Whatever your reasons are, you still chose to make your way into the outside world and try to help people, right? That’s enough to qualify as a public service if you ask me. Besides, it’s not like Uiharu and I had some grand reason for joining Judgment.”

Yomikawa and the other Anti-Skill officer in the passenger seat were smiling back at them through the rearview mirror.

They were not great heroes or powerful warriors.

They could not hope to solve everything on their own, so they preserved the peace by gathering together as an organization capable of handling powers much greater than their own.

But.

Even so.

Shirai was not going to let them be crushed by the dark side where everyone was convinced they were something special.

“I really can’t thank you enough. It’s been months since my tiny account has gotten a new friend. …Hm? No, wait a second!”

Just as the middle-aged man remembered something, Shirai tapped the link full of numbers he had sent her. “Will you be my friend?” That message popped up on the multifunctional phone’s small screen and it was followed by the screenname.

''Defiant School Swimsuit Ascension Teacher @ Sending All Shitty Games and Dramas to the Graveyard''

Shirai Kuroko placed the motion sickness bag over his head and beat him with her fist.

“You filth!!!!!! Give them back!! Give back the emotions I was just feeling!!”

“Bgh, gh, gwah! Stop, I’ll die!”

“Coin of Nicholas, please give me another partner!!”

“Wait! What is this!? Some mysterious ritual!? If that really activated some supernatural power, I’d be erased! I’d be transported to a world filled with elves, dancers, and elf dancers! No, I’m not ready! Is it finally my turn!? If so, I want to be reincarnated as a Demon Lord who successfully destroyed the Hero, so he masters the more boring skills to live a peaceful life in a rural village where he finds a poor unfortunate girl he can help out! Give me my new life as an overpowered self-inserrrrrrrt!!”

Nothing happened.

Shirai breathed a disappointed sigh, but she had not really expected anything from a sketchy ''good luck charm''. Nothing could do the impossible. Being first in line for one of those trendy new donuts was pointless if the shop was closed.

“Sob, sob. I should have known the gate to another world wouldn’t open for me.”

The middle-aged man muttered darkly to himself with the plastic bag still over his (drooping) head.

After revealing his tastes and having them thoroughly rejected, he began to yell (inside the bag).

“It’s not fairrrrrrrrrr! Even unpopular guys like me have a right to enjoy a strong drink late at night while writing harsh reviews of those shitty Western games and streaming dramas that the Hollywood elites pour so much money into!!”

“This is for writing reviews!? Then why the horrifying screenname!?”

“You need something to grab people’s attention! And why can’t I cut loose when I’m online anyway!?”

===Part 4===

Academy City’s District 6 was a special area where the entire district had been made into a giant amusement park. That was used for research and experiments into the service industry and the field of amusement and it had all the necessary facilities: the amusement park itself, pools, hotels, and theaters. There was no end to the suspicious rumors about the place: there was a secret casino hidden below it, seeing an unfamiliar mascot meant a kidnapper was lurking, and more.

Today was December 25, Christmas Day.

Night had already fallen by 6:30 PM. Given the crowds, Hamazura assumed the line might stretch all the way outside the district (so he was considering finding some way to sneak inside), but once they arrived, he found there was not much of a line at the ticket counter across from the ticket gate.

The hardcore fans would buy their tickets online or have a full year pass, so very few customers actually approached the counter on the 25th. Unlike a restaurant or café, there were no services at the counter that required the customer’s physical presence, so things moved quickly.

“Welcome. We have a couple’s discount, so you get 20% off the standard rate. Make some lovely memories, you two.”

The receptionist smiled from behind the thick plastic barrier and Hamazura blushed a little. It felt different when someone else said it.

“By the way.” Takitsubo held his jacket so ''he'' would not get lost while they passed through the silver revolving door. “This is the land of miracles where dreams come true, isn’t it? Why would a counterfeiter be hiding here?”

“That might be exactly why one ''would'' be here. You expect delinquents in the back alleys, so the investigators would never think to look for someone hiding here.”

The world changed once they were through the gate.

The sun had set, but the amusement park was aflood with all sorts of lights: lightbulbs, LEDs, glow-in-the-dark paint, fireworks, etc. The lit-up merry-go-round and coffee cups were like something directly out of a child’s dreams. The large Ferris wheel and roller coaster track seemed to be directly overhead. The entire district must have qualified as private property because children were cutting across the large spaces with electric scooters and carts that were not allowed on public roads. There were far too many attractions to see them all on foot.

Clearing the snow from this place could not be easy.

But that snow was piled up where it would be out of the way and children were playing in it. They were building snowmen and igloos. The people running the place knew how to turn a spontaneous weather accident into another attraction.

“It’s Christmas,” said Takitsubo with her breaths visible. She was holding onto his jacket and pouting her lips. “So I really wish we could have come here just for fun.”

Some weird gentleman frog mascot and an alien-looking rabbit mascot had gotten into a fight, but when a clown tried to stop them, they both ganged up on him and sent him tumbling across the ground. An overeager child then tackled the frog after the spirit of justice awoke inside him. The frog doubled over and groaned.

“(Ugh!? S-stupid kids. Show them a moment’s weakness and they attack.)”

“(Just bear with it, sister. We can survive tonight if we stay in these ''world’s smallest hideouts'', remember?)”

“?”

Takitsubo gave the mascots a puzzled look before asking a question.

“Hamazura, where is this person?”

“This way.”

A brass band arrangement of standard Christmas songs was playing while several parade floats moved slowly down the main street. A bear with horns was waving from one of those. Hamazura slipped past the crowd holding balloons coated with glow-in-the-dark paint and stepped into the shadows with his girlfriend at his side. They were on their way to an area different from the resort hotels.

These were known as the secret residences.

Obsessive fans would often ask to stay long term in one of the park’s luxury hotels, but this was an even more extreme version of that. The fans who did not want to let the magic die could rent a villa or residence in the park along with their full year pass. And after seeing the prices on the drink vending machines, you could guess just how inflated the price of a house here was.

Hamazura and Takitsubo walked to the address they had found using the contact information recorded in that borrowed phone. As large as the park was, very few buildings were clearly designated as residences.

So they walked to the ultra-luxury residential area illuminated with indirect lighting. The residences came in various styles from around the world, but they were probably each based on the setting of a fairy tale movie. They were interested in a gawdy Western mansion made of red brick.

Or more accurately, the few tents set up alongside the metal fence surrounding its yard.

“This is a surprise. I thought craftsmen like this were really picky about temperature and humidity.”

"It might be so they can pack up and make a run for it at a moment’s notice.”

“Living out here can’t be easy even if they’re using tents and sleeping bags meant for snowy mountains. What if the snow didn’t let up all night?”

“Humans can endure anything…as long as they can imagine something even more frightening.”

One tent was a living space, one was a lab, and then there were a few others. They all belonged to the counterfeiter known as Perfect Film. He could be contacted through the metal box next to the large residence’s grounds that had been tampered with to get access to the fiber optic network. If the signal was traced, they could escape while suspicions were still on the scapegoat. And the pursuers would have a hard time making their move when the decoy was a giant amusement park or one of their VIP guests.

However, this defense was the same as for neuroptera and uropyia meticulodina.

They remained undamaged because no one could find them, but damage was unavoidable if even a single person did find them. There were no solid defenses when using a synthetic tent as a hideout. If Perfect Film refused to cooperate and holed up inside, they could always break down the tent from the outside.

That was lucky.

Hamazura forced himself to see it that way. Not everyone on the dark side was an embodiment of murder like those twins in the Anti-Skill station. If their negotiations did not work out and they ran into trouble, they would at least not cause any trouble for the other guests.

“Let’s go, Takitsubo.” He looked ahead to their destination. “We both need a passport.”

She did not respond.

Puzzled, he looked over to find the track suit girl had collapsed onto the snow-wet ground.

He did not even have time to shout her name.

With a dull thud, the world flipped around more than once.

“…!?”

He had no idea what had happened.

Something inexplicable was happening, but his breath was knocked from him and he could not even get his voice out.

Once the bizarre weightlessness left him, he slammed down onto the hard ground. A hand covered his mouth before he could unclog his throat. Someone had climbed on top of him. He understood now what had happened and his fear had caught up with reality, but this person’s weight had him fully pinned down. She was a young woman and he was bigger than her, but he could not even budge. He had a bad feeling about this. His experience in the back alleys told him she knew what she was doing.

She was a sexy woman in her early twenties. She wore her black hair in a bob cut that fit around her head like a helmet and she wore a gawdy cowboy hat over that, but below that she wore a red China dress with the stomach replaced by a lace material that let her navel show through. She had Japanese, Western, and Chinese elements all in one outfit. A duralumin case containing who-knows-what hung from a belt she wore diagonally across her body.

The boots woman casually spoke to the boy whose hips she was straddling with no sign of shame about the large slits in her skirt.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa there. Don’t give me that. I can’t have someone intruding on my hunting ground while I stake the place out. I turned down all my wonderful Christmas plans for this, so let the birdwatching club have this one, okay?”

Hunting ground. Stake the place out.

Those short terms sent a very bad feeling down Hamazura’s spine.

“Wh-what!? Are you Anti-Skill? Or the dark side!?”

“Huh? Don’t give me that. All Anti-Skill ever does is put up wanted posters and then find every little nitpicky excuse they can to not pay up. To be blunt, that’s not a stable business. And the dark side is even worse. Once they have the information they want, they come back to silence you!”

She grinned and accurately adjusted the position of her hips to render his resistance useless. And she continued speaking while squirming in a way that would like highly questionable to anyone who happened across them in the darkness.

“What you need are some old-fashioned connections. Weekly Mind’s Eye, Emanating Light, and that sort of thing. Selling your best shot to a magazine like that is the most surefire method. Even if that just gets it used in some gruesome show for housewives.”

“…?”

Something about this seemed off to him.

That woman with a jellyfish decoration on her hat was not like Anti-Skill who had turned into murder machines after some crucial gear went missing, but she was also not like those dark side twins who had destroyed an entire station together.

He gulped and asked a hesitant question. If he was wrong about this, he would not survive. Nor could he save his girlfriend. That thought was enough to tear his heart apart.

“What are you doing here?”

“Snapping photos.”

She winked below the brim of her cowboy hat.

That sounded like a normal enough thing to do at an amusement park, but…

“After all, I’m not after just any old part of the dark side—I’m going deep. Hey, don’t give me that. This is more than some silly infidelity story that no one will care about in two weeks’ time. A single snapshot here could have me set for life. But I wouldn’t arrive in time if I intercepted Anti-Skill’s radio transmissions and came running. I can’t be playing catchup. For a real scoop, you have to make a gamble and lie in wait.”

“A scoop?”

[[Image:GT_Index_v03_168.jpg|thumb]]

“That counterfeiter will make such delicious bait. Don’t give me that. A shot with just him in my finder wouldn’t earn me squat. But you’re here because you’re in a bind right now, right? I just know some major dark side figures are gonna be drawn to this plank of Carneades.”

“…”

“What? Don’t tell me you don’t know what the plank of Carneades is. You know, that thing where there’s a single plank floating in the ocean and killing the other guy for it doesn’t count as murder. So I’m leaving him be. That way I can get a scoop that makes history.”

“Y-you mean…”

This was it.

Hamazura played a verbal game of tug of war as carefully as if he were removing the fuse from a landmine.

“You’re a paparazzi that targets the dark side?”

“Don’t give me that. I don’t like that word.”

The red china dress beauty sighed and lifted her hips.

But even as she freed the boy, she moved her face in close to speak.

“The name’s Benizome Jellyfish. You’re still small time, so if you promise not to get in the way of my miracle shot, I’ll let you go☆”

===Part 5===

Hanatsuyu Kaai and Hanatsuyu Youen – the Decomposer and the Carrier – were brutally violent twin sisters.

One of the pair had stripped off her white coat and medical corset and looked down into a large tub in the nude. This one was Kaai the Decomposer. Her black hair nearly reached her ankles while worn up, so now it was fully dragging on the floor behind her.

The place smelled sort of like a rhinoceros beetle. And it should have because the jacuzzi was filled with sawdust instead of water. She had of course not asked the hotel for permission.

“Now, then.”

She popped the rubber cap from a test tube and sprinkled in its contents.

That produced a bubbling sound and steam really did rise into the air. The small girl turned toward the bath’s large mirror while she waited for the reaction to stabilize.

She used her small right hand to lift one of her breasts up from below.

Her breasts were abnormally large for her height, but she did not believe in the urban legend of people who sent everything they ate to their chest. The fat that entered the body would build up equally everywhere. When your entire body grew fatter, your breasts would grow. When you got skinnier, your breasts would shrink too. In that case, it was obvious how to make only your chest grow.

You let the fat cover your entire body and then you cut away only what you did not want.

That was possible using the bizarre science of this city.

The bubbling died down.

“All ready☆”

However, she was not cultivating some type of biological weapon. She stuck her own slender foot into the sawdust and then sank her entire body into the tub. While it was finer than the sand at the beach, it was still not water, so she had to dump it over herself.

The power of fermentation was causing the sawdust to steam.

It was an enzyme bath.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

She frowned after noticing a solid sensation in the bath.

“Oh, there’s a weird coin leftover.”

She flipped the coin away without leaving the tub and it landed in a plastic waste receptable located a short distance away.

An infamous Hungarian countess had supposedly kept her skin beautiful by bathing in blood, but the Decomposer’s way was more efficient. She used every last part of her victims.

“ ‘I’ll help you escape with me?’ I hate those big muscular men who think they’re so righteous. Besides, I don’t plan to escape, so you’re nothing more than a thorn in my side.”

There was no preventing the smaller pieces of sawdust from sticking to her fingertips, but she did not mind. While pretending to be a rhinoceros beetle larva, she grabbed a large tablet from the edge of the tub, turned it on, and went through a bit of setup. The tablet’s own camera was too wide-angle for her liking, so she made sure to link it to a cheap web camera to give things a really underground feel.

Hanatsuyu Kaai spoke with a smile while using the sawdust filling the tub to hide her body up to the shoulders.

“Okay, let’s get this stream started, shall we?☆ Is everyone ready to finally enjoy a lonely Christmas that smells faintly of squid?”

She knew that adjusting the narrow-angle lens to keep her eyes just out of frame gathered more attention.

She was of course part of the dark side. And a legit harmful at that. Making an appearance online was a major risk for her.

But at the same time, the people who ended up on the dark side were not the type to actually follow the rules of whatever world they lived in.

“Attention, everyone. Tell me what part of my body you want me to wash first. Yes, yes. Christmas only comes once a year, so why not enjoy it, right? Hee hee hee. And if your request happens to be in line with what I have in mind, I might just make a show out of it.”

But the show did not last long. The screen froze before she could even get started.

The stream was down. She poked at the tablet’s screen with a puzzled frown and then the door burst open with the intensity of a nearby lightning strike.

An identical but blushing girl stormed into the luxury hotel suite they were using as a hideout.

“What are you doing, Kaai!?”

“Ehh? You can’t tell, Youen? I’m using this camera to give the lonely people out there a bit of excitement in their lives.”

“You promised you wouldn’t do this kind of thing anymore, remember?” Youen gave that reminder while Kaai did up her hair that was spread out in the bath. “You looked me in the eye and swore you would stop taking off all your clothes and going for a stroll around the park at night, taking off all your clothes, riding the elevator, and seeing if someone would get on at another floor, taking off all your clothes, closing yourself in the train bathroom, and leaving the door unlocked to see if anyone would carelessly open it, taking off all your clothes, taking off all your clothes, just always taking off all your clothes!! You promised!”

“But how else am I supposed to defile myself?”

“There’s something wrong with wanting to be filthy!!”

“Not filthy, Youen. Doesn’t it sound so much fancier when you use the word defile?”

Youen was trying to talk some sense into her sister, but for whatever reason, Kaai the Decomposer placed her hands on her cheeks with a spellbound look in her eyes.

She was breathing heavily despite not having a cold and she kept talking while giving off the scent of a rhinoceros beetle.

“I’ve tried all of things you described – and more – but no one ever finds me. No one notices and no one does awful things to me. It all turns out fine. This world is a surprisingly safe place. And don’t you think that’s a problem? I’m supposed to gather up the city’s impurities and cleanse them within me! That’s my job as the hated but necessary Decomposer, but how can I do that if nothing ever happens!?”

Yes.

A Decomposer was like the flies, roaches, and rats that ate all the leftover scraps in a city. People might hate them, but without them, the food chain would fail to create a full loop and everything would simply be absorbed from top to bottom. To create the proper loop, the dead lion or shark had to be broken down and returned to the soil or water. This girl was a ''researcher'' of that process.

But that did not really matter.

The biggest problem for the Carrier – the girl who used the small animals that carried all forms of pathogens – was that the two of them were identical twins.

So when Kaai the Decomposer did these things in public, Youen the Carrier was affected too.

''I saw that girl in the boutique the other day. Yes, she went into the dressing room and was doing something behind the flimsy curtain for an entire hour. I wonder what she was doing in there for so long. Ah ha ha.

The memory was enough for her entire head to boil over. Why did she have to take the blame for things her sister had done!?

But the twin who was already drowning in brain chemicals was in her own little world.

“So I had the best idea for this stream. I thought long and hard on this one. Wouldn’t an accident during a livestream fit the bill perfectly? Heh heh, eh heh heh. As a little gift to my viewers, I can have the camera ‘accidently’ set up at an angle that reveals my face in a reflection. Framing it as an accident is what will really get people’s attention, if you ask me. Then the video will spread like wildfire until everyone in the world has seen it and I can’t walk outside without people pointing and laughing and I’ll have so many stalkers exchanging my personal information on sketchy websites. And once they all know everything about me, it won’t be long before I’m abducted into a van with all the windows covered up. Eh heh, eh heh heh.”

“Please just stop this!!”

Youen ended up strangling her sister on reflex, but Kaai was still lost in her own fantasies while her sister shook her head back and forth. If anything, she liked it.

“Yes, defile me more.” Larva-mode Kaai smiled while soaking in the enzyme bath. “Cover me in rotting stench, sticky goo, disgusting filth, and even more unspeakable things. Yes, yes. This world doesn’t need order. All order does is absorb everything until it tapers off and hardens. The world needs some ''planned fluctuations'' that will cause the peak to break off and tumble into the depths. And in that sense…Academy City is so stifling right now.”

“Then we’re really going to do this?”

“Yes, let’s cause much, much more trouble for them. Let’s make sure those bright and shining tropical fish don’t die due to lack of enzymes.”

The grinning Decomposer remained true to herself from beginning to end.

All she wanted was to have fun in this city, so she had never even considered running away like all the others were doing.

"''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo''? Why would I care about that?”

===Part 6===

The old man named Kihara Hasuu was skinny as a matchstick and wore a lab coat over a blue jumpsuit. His arms were like dried branches, but the muscular young man with hair dyed blonde was powerless against him.

“Eek, eek!”

The young man should have been the hunter here.

He was indeed a brutal criminal known as Vacuum Piece.

He had visited the amusement park on Christmas night because of all the people there carrying valuables. Nothing was as fun as targeting a stupid couple that thought they were safe once they paid for a ticket and passed through the gate, having his group surround them, and dragging them to a gap in the security camera coverage.

This was supposed to be a profitable night for him, but…

“Please forgive me. I beg you. I’ll do anything.”

He was alone and he knew exactly why. The rest of his team had been ''dismembered'' in one of the gaps in security camera coverage that he supposedly knew better than anyone. Strangely, none of them had even managed to scream while that thick machete went wild in front of them. It was like they had been hit by a paralyzing curse. The work was done in no time and then the mincemeat had been shoved into an automatic processor for kitchen garbage.

“Is this the place?”

The old man looked around, showing no interest in the young man’s desperate pleas.

The young man nodded over and over with tears and snot staining his face.

“Yes, yes, it is. That whatever-you-called-him counterfeiter is in that tent up ahead.”

The young man must have realized that there were no set rules in place here.

It was all up to the old man’s whims, so he was only vaguely hoping he would be freed if he did as he was told.

“I can’t believe those were false footprints meant to take down a rival team. You should show some respect for his skill. I don’t want to hear another bad word about such a skilled craftsman.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Forget it. It was your ignorance that saved you anyway.”

The kindness in the old man’s voice only made him more frightening.

The tone of his argument would change from one moment to another and his emotions were like an irregular wave. The young man could not hope to guess when he would explode, so he had to be extremely careful if he hoped to survive.

But by then, he had already been decapitated by a strike from behind.

He had been working so hard to survive, but he failed to even notice the moment he was killed.

“Ladybird-kun.”

“Yes, Sensei?”

A girl in an orange and black racing swimsuit held a machete too heavy for an ordinary person to lift. She caught up to the old man from behind and stepped up alongside him. She did not seem bothered by stepping on the cold snow with bare feet.

[[Image:GT_Index_v03_179.jpg|thumb]]

The old man caught the severed head in his hands and stared at it.

“Hm, his mouth is frozen on an ‘uh’ sound. I wonder what he was trying to say.”

“That line of thinking is a waste of time,” mechanically replied the girl while tugging the chest of her racing swimsuit forward and dumping a thick discharge machine oil into the gap opened around her neck. The oil that was not absorbed into her skin was pulled down by gravity to drip down her inner thighs.

Kihara Hasuu gave her a troubled look.

“Now, Ladybird-kun, do you have anything to say?”

“Outputting response: Old man, quit sneaking glances over at me and just admit you want to see this. Why are you even so interested in leering at the details of a body you created yourself, you dirty old man?”

“Someone help! This girl is mercilessly gouging into people’s hearts with her words! And she thinks she can get away with it because machines don’t age!!”

“My machine parts deteriorate with time and from wear and tear. Even my electronic data must be defragged periodically.”

They spoke like one of them was not holding a severed head in his hands.

“Well, whatever. Crush the corpse and stuff it in one of those garbage cans so it can be turned into fertilizer.”

“I doubt the soil bacteria can break down the bones and hair. The thick bones are the greatest risk.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect. Once you’re done, keep an eye out for anyone else.” The old man exhaled a white breath and stared off into the distance. “There are ''a few other groups'' here. Kill them on sight.”

===Part 7===

''What am I doing?'' wondered Hamazura Shiage while hiding in the bushes, but Benizome had him beat in terms of skill. He knew this was not the time, but she had made it very clear what would happen if he messed with her plan. This was the dark side—a world where strength was king.

“Once I’m done here, you’re free to do whatever you want.”

The woman in a red China dress with a see-through stomach opened her duralumin case and pulled out a single-lens reflex camera, a bazooka-like lens, and a tripod. The way she crouched down pushed the already risqué slit of her dress to the limit.

Then she pulled a gold coin from her thigh and kissed it.

She had a Coin of Nicholas too.

“So stay put until then. I’ll capture a dark side superstar with this bad boy. I’m not letting someone use Anti-Skill or Judgment to eliminate the darkness. Don’t give me that. Good and evil aren’t what decides what information should be sent out into the world—it’s all about the price tag and newsworthiness.”

“Wait, you’ve realized Anti-Skill is going wild? Then why don’t you-”

“It was an accident.” Benizome cut him off. “It was only an accident. Every last detail was set up so it would only ever look like an accident no matter how deep you dug. Like I said, it’s about the price tag and newsworthiness. No one’s going to buy a photo that won’t bring them a profit, so there’s no point chasing after one.”

“D-did it never occur to you to run away?”

“To where? Don’t give me that. If you want to survive, you have to make the attempt. I know time is limited, so before they catch up, I need to get such an undeniably scandalous photo that I can threaten the unseen people at the top with it.”

“…”

“You can do business by directly negotiating a deal with the people connected to your photo. It’s generally frowned upon, but I can decide whether or not I’ll sell the photo to a publisher. But it’s a crime and the risk of death goes up considerably when you threaten someone with a shady past, so I wouldn’t recommend trying it if you can avoid it☆”

He could not believe this. He had seen a lot of different people in the dark side—twisted researchers, powerful espers that saw no value in the lives of others, and high-ranking soldiers—but she was clearly different from all of them.

She would not be an esper since she was an adult, but she also showed no sign of any bizarre weaponry. Using a camera as her weapon sounded unusually civilized for the dark side. He had not met someone this reasonable in a while.

Was she part of the beneficial dark side that those twins had mentioned? Or maybe she did not qualify as the dark side at all.

He did not have to fight her.

And even if he did, they could do it in a nonviolent fashion.

It really had been a long time since he had seen someone so wonderfully reasonable.

“Use them,” whispered track suit girl Takitsubo. “You said someone was using Anti-Skill. So do you know ''what is making them go berserk''?”

“Huh?”

Benizome almost sounded offended.

But she was not saying no. In fact, she sounded confused why they would ask something so obvious.

“Don’t give me that. Are you testing me? Do I even have to say that it’s—”

She started to answer but then held down the top of her cowboy hat with a hand. She held her breath and further lowered her already lowered head.

Hamazura’s eyes widened.

“(Is someone coming?)”

“(Don’t give me that. Quit asking stupid questions. You’re in the way!)”

They were out back behind one of the Secret Residences. Normal guests would have no business in this area and the rich people who had spent great sums of money to live there would have no reason to walk into the shadows behind the homes.

No one would come here unless they knew about the tents there.

Now that he was seeing it from this angle, Hamazura could not believe how conspicuous people were when taking that route. He was lucky the person waiting here was a paparazzo because a sniper could have shot him and Takitsubo both. That possibility should have occurred to him before. He could no longer laugh it off as ridiculous.

This time, it was an old man walking down that path. He was as skinny as a matchstick. He almost looked like he was using his jumpsuit and lab coat to disguise some wires as a human silhouette.

“Who is that?” asked Hamazura.

“A Kihara.”

He had not expected that answer.

Even Benizome Jellyfish was trembling a little.

“He’s a part of that researcher family. This is bad. I was hoping for a dark side bigshot, but don’t give me that. Kihara Hasuu is too big!!”

“Hamazura.”

Takitsubo grabbed at his jacket and called his name, but she was not looking his way.

He could also hear a metallic creaking sound.

“Hamazura.”

“…”

When she called his name even more forcefully, he looked the direction she was.

The tall metal fence in that direction had what looked like sharp barbed arrows or spears at the top, but they were probably more for decoration than security. Those spikes were too sharp for a lightweight stray cat or wild bird to stand on, much less a human.

Yet two bare feet were standing atop one.

A girl was crouched up on the fence looking down at Hamazura and the others with a tilt of the head.

This was not right.

If she were a normal human, she would have been 13 or 14. She was a short girl with long hair and bangs cut straight across, but even those ordinary things looked wrong to him.

Her blinking and visible breaths were too regular.

A quiet sound could be heard in the silence like the humming of a refrigerator late at night.

Even on this winter night, she wore something like a racing swimsuit colored a toxic orange and black like some kind of insect. The technology within and purpose for her clothing was clearly different from that of Hamazura or Takitsubo’s clothing. The bands on her shoulders held phones and the belts around her thighs held a rolled-up silicone keyboard and bottles of some kind of liquid. The long hair spread out behind her was inhumanly crimson. The pupils in her widened eyes were expanding and contracting even more mechanically than a security camera’s lens.

The atmosphere had changed.

He might not know the details of the tech, but his heart froze. His instincts told him the answer without even needing to see the brutal machete attached horizontally atop her small butt.

She was from the dark side. And she was probably a harmful. The paparazzo was not the only one laying a trap. That Kihara man had used himself as bait to reveal any threats. And this mystery girl had been launched as an attack.

She made no attempt to hide what she was.

Raised middle finger symbols appeared in the mechanical eyes looking down at them.

A strange noise echoed out, but the emotionless girl had not said anything. She had kicked off her unstable footing and that had caused the metal fence to loudly creak.

And where was she jumping?

Benizome Jellyfish was slow to react because she had been peering through her camera.

“Wah!”

Her soft body and specialized photography device were noisily knocked to the ground.

Hamazura did not even have time to reach out a hand toward her.

“Wahh!! Ahh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He only managed to grab Takitsubo’s skinny wrist and back away after falling onto his butt. Every centimeter between them and that girl felt valuable. Benizome’s skill was real, so if she had been taken down so easily, he did not stand a chance. It was over if he was caught.

However.

The attacking android actually looked puzzled. The machete she had drawn from the back of her hips had slipped from her hand. It hit the ground with the same crash and tremor a boulder would have caused.

“Ferromagnetic quick-drying paint, 256-times concentrated.” The paparazzo held a spray can, but it did not seem to contain pepper spray. “Analog film is dying out, but the manufacturers have made a vast fortune with chemicals and cosmetics. Haven’t you heard of film companies making health supplements? And there are chemicals out there that cause corrosion in high-power machines!!”

“So this chemical will not harm my carbon skin but will melt away my synthetic clothing and underwear? Sensei would love this.”

Hamazura definitely heard a lovely voice, but the actual voice did not match the lip movements. He could not imagine why they would do that intentionally.

“But I will do what I can. Sensei said someone would try to interfere and he was correct. Which is why I was waiting here.”

“!!!???”

Hamazura immediately shoved Takitsubo Rikou away.

He heard a dull swoosh of air, similar to the swinging of a metal bat.

That came from Benizome.

The mystery girl planted her bare feet firmly on the snow, grabbed the woman in one hand, and swung her around. Benizome had to weigh forty to fifty kilograms. You might think of women as soft and light, but an axe customized for battle would only weigh two kilograms and a ball-and-chain only three. Forty kilograms might be light for a woman, but it was a devastating weight for a striking weapon.

“Gahh!?”

Hamazura could not avoid the attack to his torso and was sent flying along with the China dress paparazzo. It knocked the breath out of him and he did not have time to even move his limbs before he started rolling across the cold ground. This was his limit. A single hit and he had already hit his limit. Dark shadows were encroaching on the edges of his vision and he felt a great temptation to let go of his consciousness.

But…

“Bh.”

He and Benizome had unintentionally managed to put some distance between them and that dark side girl.

That meant the closest person—and thus the likeliest target—was Takitsubo Rikou who had been left behind.

“Kh, aghhhh!!!!!!”

Benizome Jellyfish was lying limply on top of him, so he pushed her aside and forcibly got up from the ground.

Just before the mechanical girl leapt at the closer target, she turned her head around toward him.

The slow movement of her head looked less like a conscious act and more like a targeting program keeping him in its sights.

He had drawn her attention.

But what did he do now? How could he survive this unidentified enemy?

“Hey, don’t give me that. Do you even think before you act?”

He heard a voice. It came from Benizome Jellyfish who he had just pushed away. Still lying unnaturally on her side, she reached into the slit of her China dress and drew something from her thigh.

It was not quite a handgun.

It was a stun gun that used compressed gas to launch the electrodes.

“No biological reflexes, abnormal strength, and night vision? ''I bet she’s stuffed full of machines''. So this might work better than a plain old bullet.”

Hamazura Shiage felt like he had narrowly avoided death here.

But it had slipped his mind that he was still being swallowed whole by the world known as the dark side.

When the woman pulled the trigger, the electrodes stabbed into Takitsubo Rikou.

“Eh?”

The track suit girl looked down in surprise. She did not seem to understand what was happening even when she saw the electrodes and cables attached to the center of her chest.

But once the dry crackling sound started, she arched her back.

“Takitsubo!?”

“Ha ha ha!!”

It was a mystery how she still had so much strength left, but Benizome hopped up from the ground, let go of the stun gun without switching it off, and slid herself away. She also pulled a thick metal pen from her large cleavage. It had a two millimeter hole at the top of the grip, so it was probably a hidden camera. Its photos could not compare to the specialized single-lens reflex camera, but it would have the same quality as a phone camera.

Yes, she had been after one thing this entire time.

It was almost refreshing how dedicated she was to her goal.

“''A mechanical brain will always go for the weakest target first, right''!? Now I can escape and get my shot from a safe location. A shot of a Kihara-built secret weapon is sure to change history!! Don’t worry, she might turn you to mincemeat, but your deaths will allow me to set the world in motion!!”

(They’re all garbage! Is she a harmful too!?)

He glared at her while wishing he could kill her with his thoughts, but no one had ever said Benizome was on his side. She had merely let them live before, so it had always been on her terms. If she decided to cut them loose, there was nothing they could do to stop her.

However, he did have one thing he could use. Using it would leave him defenseless for a full hour afterwards, so it was best left unused until he absolutely needed it. There may have been a better way to use it, like to save his girlfriend suffering from that high-voltage current.

But he acted on reflex.

He did not have it in him to think rationally at the moment. His mind was boiling with rage. He could not let her get away with this. He could not let Benizome Jellyfish escape after using Takitsubo Rikou as bait for her own survival.

He stuck his hand in his pocket and grabbed the hard and cold coin within. He did not know how much power it had over humans who acted with a will of their own, so he chose to target something inanimate.

One option immediately came to mind, so he raised his voice.

“''Make Benizome’s shoes slip, Coin of Nicholas''!!”

“''Keep my shoes from slipping, Coin of Nicholas''!!”

He grimaced as soon as the words had left his mouth.

It had failed.

In fact…

“Ah ha ha!! Don’t give me that. Your eyeline was so obvious. Don’t underestimate a pro photographer!”

She was laughing.

The cause of his girlfriend’s pain calmly jumped into the bushes. All while a shotgun, a large handgun, and other weapons of various sizes spilled from the silver case she held.

He wanted to curse himself for thinking even for a second that she was a reasonable person.

She gave one last parting comment from the shadows.

“I knew something like this might happen once these things were being spread around! Don’t give me that. I can survive without its help, so I knew there was only one way to use it: To ''negate'' anyone else using one!!”

“Dammit!!”

He had not done any detailed research into how the coin worked. He had never tested to see what happened when two people used the coins on the same thing, but he felt so worthless now.

He had accomplished nothing and had to wait an hour for it to charge again.

He could not get back at her now.

The only people left were powerless Hamazura, Takitsubo who was still exposed to the high-voltage current, and the girl who moved through the cold like a piece of construction equipment. If she could swing a forty or fifty kilogram person around with one arm, she might be able to break through a concrete wall with her fist.

(What do I do?)

Leaving Takitsubo and running was out of the question.

He could never leave her to be the victim in a snuff film.

But that only told him his objective.

He still needed the realistically achievable means with which to achieve that.

(What do I do!?)

Just then, the heavy machinery girl’s eyes passed right by him as her head turned slowly like a swiveling fan.

He did not understand. It was not quite like she turned from right to left, ignoring him along the way. Once she turned to the left, her gaze moved back to the right. Since she was repeatedly turning her head side to side…had she lost sight of him?

He had no idea what was happening as he tried to catch his breath in front of her.

Given how much stronger she was, he doubted she would need to use any bluffs or feints, but he was through with rejoicing when he did not understand why something had happened. He had learned his lesson about that with Benizome Jellyfish.

“Pick it up.”

When he heard a female voice, he reached toward the ground almost on reflex.

He grabbed the pump action shotgun from the weapons Benizome had spilled on the ground.

“Fire.”

The blast knocked him onto his butt. That thing was clearly packed with too much powder. Benizome must have customized it herself, but he was pretty sure that increased the risk of it blowing up in your face.
The racing swimsuit girl had also fallen onto her butt.

He did not have time to feel guilty about shooting a girl at point-blank range.

There was a small scratch on her forehead and a miniscule trail of red liquid, but the wound of only a few millimeters revealed a bundle of something silver on the other side. That was clearly not a human wound.

“Y-you’re kidding me. That was an overpowered shot and I think it was a slug based on the way it hit!”

“''Now is your chance.''”

“?”

He finally spun around toward the voice that had been whispering in his ear.

A woman stood behind him and he could not even guess how long she had been there. She wore a formfitting light blue dress with a loose translucent long skirt worn over it and she wore her long blonde hair in twintails. But she looked around twenty and had the figure to match, so that dress-up doll attire looked weird on her.

She seemed inhuman in a different way from the girl whose pupils mechanically expanded and contracted.

It was like she was not really there.

He was afraid his hand would pass right through her if he reached out to touch her.

Yes.

The word had no place in this city of science, but it still floated up in his mind.

(A…ghost?)

Her tight and loose skirts hid her feet…giving the impression that she might not have any.

She was looking to the monster that had lost sight of her target. Of course, saving him did not mean this woman was a beneficial. She had not hesitated to order him to fire that gun and he never knew when that decisiveness would be directed his way.

“Pick up the stun gun if you wish to save your girlfriend. My nature affects ''mechanical senses'' such as cameras and sensors. Just like ghost photos and videos have not died out in an age of free image editing software. Just like phones lose their signal or have their location data or facial recognition malfunction during stories of paranormal encounters.”

Hamazura sprang into action.

Now was not the time to analyze what this ghost woman was saying. He snatched up the stun gun lying on the snow-wet ground and switched it off.

Takitsubo fell to her knees like he had switched off her power as well.

But the trouble was not over for her. That had been an illegal high-voltage current that did not adhere to any safety standards. Her cheeks were flushed and beads of sweat dripped from her forehead. Hamazura recognized these symptoms. She had suffered just like this from the Body Crystal drug extracted from the bodily fluids of berserk espers.

(Oh, no.)

He recalled the contents of the paper bag he was keeping safe: bC-96/R. What had Pet Breeder Aoumi Karei told him when she gave him that?

''“The temperature and humidity should be fine if you keep it in the fridge, but watch out for electricity leakage. Electrolysis can easily break down the medicine’s components.”

It had been destroyed.

The medicine currently circulating through Takitsubo Rikou’s body had been destroyed by this attack.

“Are you kidding me!?” he shouted.

But someone pressed their finger against his lips. It was Takitsubo herself. She was suffering from a high fever, but she still gathered what little strength was left to warn him.

Yes, that was right.

What had happened to that attacker?

“…”

His mind went blank. He had to have had his eyes off of the enemy for a full twenty seconds. She could have slaughtered him many times over in that time.

So why hadn’t she? The attacker slowly got up on her bare feet. For whatever reason, that heavy machinery girl wearing something like an orange and black racing swimsuit could not find the targets right in front of her.

She slowly turned her head side to side a few times to observe her surroundings, but then she pulled a bottle from her thigh and drank from it. Once she pulled the top of the bottle from her lips with a wet popping sound, she dumped the sticky clear liquid over her head.

He could hear electricity escaping from her head down to her feet. Something was happening.

“What is she?”

“She is not a cyborg that replaces human parts with machines.”

That whispering voice reminded him someone else was here too: the mystery ghost woman.

He would have fallen back on his butt if he had not been holding Takitsubo close.

“With that Kihara involved, she must be something even more grotesque.”

“…”

“I imagine artificial parts were built up one by one until they formed a full human. And with enough quality to be indistinguishable from a human on the outside,” explained the ghost women with the silhouette of a princess. “''Android'' would be the most suitable term. The word robot is more closely associated with the metal drums flooding the streets of this city.”

With a metallic scraping, the android girl pulled her thick machete out of the ground. She placed it in the sheathe directly attached to her swimsuit so it essentially lay horizontally atop her small butt. The undeveloped girl kicked off the snow with her bare feet to jump backwards and vanish into the darkness. Instead of running away, she seemed to be searching for the targets she had lost sight of. Not even she seemed to be aware what had happened.

Time passed, but Hamazura still did not feel any relief.

This was more than he had imagined.

He had known the dark side had cyborg parts that looked identical to biological ones, but this was a much greater taboo. If the ghost woman was right, that Kihara man had created ''something like'' thoughts and emotions from a machine.

And.

For that matter…

“Take your girlfriend and leave this place,” said the ephemeral ghost woman who he would have believed was a hallucination or hologram. “She has only lost sight of you. This seems to have placed a burden on her circuits, but not enough to damage them. I do not know when she will return. I cannot control where she searches and she would still smash your body to pieces if she happened to run into you without seeing you there.”

Her blonde twintails fluttered in a way disconnected from the blowing of the wind.

And she continued speaking to Hamazura who had been forced to confront just how deep the dark side went.

“There is more than one way to escape the city. Several dark side members have set their sights on this one, so this is now an extremely dangerous area. If you are not confident you can survive the deadly battle over this plank of Carneades, you should search for a different loophole. Before you lose everything and regret your choice.”

===Part 8===

The large four-wheel-drive vehicle arrived at the District 2 General Anti-Skill Station.

While the vehicle was navigating the parking lot, Shirai clicked the send button for the report she had compiled. However…

“Transmission error?”

“Huh, so even kids these days get it wrong sometimes.”

The combover and glasses man was not trying to tease her— he sounded more like he had spotted a four-leaf clover. There appeared to be some trouble with the network, but they were already at the station. She could hand the laptop itself to an administrative worker there.

“You’ve turned a major corner in your life once you start proudly talking about ‘kids these days’,” she said while stepping out of the unnecessarily large vehicle. “Your students won’t like you if you draw that line between yourself and them.”

“Eh? But I’m still a virgin.”

“Why would you reveal that information here!? And to a middle school girl no less!?”

What connection did that have to what she had said? She did not like how that had been a follow up to discussing his students. The Personal Information Protection Law needlessly weighed down on her shoulders. Did she really have to carry that information with her until the day she died?

This was District 2.

That district specialized in the research of gunpowder and vehicles, so its Anti-Skill station was very well equipped. It was now acting as their new headquarters.

They could not give up just because they had lost one base.

Shirai’s feet felt heavy as she walked. The scope and gruesomeness of the damage caused by the dark side was part of that, but she also could not wholly endorse what Anti-Skill was doing. She felt like a heretic, but things changed once they arrived at the Anti-Skill base.

There were very few people there.

The few adults who remained seemed listless. They were leaning against the wall or sitting down on the floor. The lack of conversation allowed a heavy gloom to hang over the place.

“What is this?”

“Half of us are no longer responding,” replied one of the officers waiting in the station. He at least seemed to still have a will to fight. “I really don’t want to believe all of them were taken out by the dark side, but I can’t deny how powerful those dark side freaks are. And they must have hit us with some kind of cyber attack. That means we can’t get an accurate count, allowing our imaginations to run wild.”

“You mean…they got away?”

“I hate to admit it, but yes. A lot of us are starting to think it was a mistake to dig up the dark side.”

None of them wanted their entire force to go down fighting.

A lot of Anti-Skill would have believed this job would only entail chasing down the criminals and taking them into custody.

But the reality they found was quite different.

Not even the murderous dark side would slaughter 2.3 million people to protect their throne, but Anti-Skill would not want to lose their own lives during a war of attrition. Not everyone thought saving the world was worth it if they or their family were killed in the process.

The problem was the ratio. A small minority would not have caused much of a problem, but once a majority of Anti-Skill had lost their nerve, the entire organization could fall apart. Especially if some of them started betraying their colleagues in the hopes that the dark side would spare them in exchange. And in truth, this base was badly understaffed.

It was an issue of morale.

Once morale dropped far enough, they could collapse despite outnumbering their opponents. And that did sound like a method criminals would prefer to use.

“This is worse than I imagined.”

Shirai breathed a heavy sigh. The “attack” had already begun. She felt a weight on her own shoulders, but she could not back out now.

Not after seeing those young twins smiling in that rotting world.

After meeting up with some other Anti-Skill officers, they guided her to the heliport on the roof.

“Phase 1 was less successful than hoped, but we did do some damage to the dark side’s hideouts and labs.” Fully-equipped Namino spoke over the artificial gale produced by the main rotor. “In Phase 2, we will strike at the dark side remnants trying to escape. Possible escape routes include the walls surrounding the city, its gates, the airport, the heliports, and the bases for loading shipments into the long-distance trucks. The brutal harmfuls are our top priority, but I also want to actively hunt down the gentler beneficials if we have the chance. At any rate, the remnants should be concentrated in the more popular spots, so we should be able to round them up if we attack there.”

“Attack, hm?”

“You got a problem with that?”

He seemed awfully sure of himself for someone who had been accused of excessive force earlier.

It made her want to ask for her own internal investigation right away.

The combover and glasses man tugged at her uniform from behind.

“(Sh-Shirai-san, you should go along with this for now. You can’t do anything if they refuse to let you join them.)”

“…”

“(And anyone would have a hard time taking the suspects’ side after the slaughter at the other station. You have to prove on-site that it is possible to arrest them normally without killing them.)”

“Understood. But stay away!! I have an anti-man barrier in place! Back up until I can’t detect your old man stink!!”

Meanwhile, the helicopter’s engine had warmed up.

She reviewed what information was available while boarding it.

Namino spoke on behalf of Anti-Skill as a whole.

“We will generally remain on standby up in the sky and rush in when a request comes in, but it would be best to make some predictions where we’ll be needed. District 23 in particular is a crowded airspace with more than five airplanes flying through every ten minutes. We would have a hard time making last-minute adjustments there even in an emergency.”

“Um.” Shirai raised her hand as was proper. “The point of Phase 2 is to cut off the dark side’s escape routes, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Then what is this?”

She pointed to the northeast of Academy City, but not toward a district bordering the wall and not toward the airport or any heliports.

Even she frowned as she asked about it.

“District 6 is an amusement park, but this says gunshots were heard there. What is that about?”

===Part 9===

Hamazura Shiage remained dazed for a while afterwards.

He had been hopelessly outmatched, so he had no idea how he had survived.

But.

Since he had…

“…”

“Hamazura.”

That question was already mixed in with some unnaturally heavy and heated breathing.

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes unfocused as she looked up at him.

He was anxious as could be. It was worse than having a powerful poison injected into his neck.

“Wh-what about the medicine? We still have a week’s worth from what Pet Breeder gave me, so you can take that!”

“I’m only supposed to take one dose a day and I think that means it’s a powerful drug. Speeding up the dosage on our own would be too dangerous.”

Then there was nothing they could do.

If amateurs like them could not make any decisions here, their only option was going to a doctor. But that was not an option while they were on the run. As a delinquent, he knew the protocol. After a crime, the wanted information was sent to hospitals and hotels first and foremost.

“Let’s find a black market doctor.”

“Hamazura.”

“We have money. There was a whole bunch balled up in the sling bag! And only someone in Academy City can deal with a Body Crystal issue. We can’t get you healed if we leave the city!!”

“Hamazura.”

She called his name stronger this time. She was woozy with a fever and her strength was draining from her along with the sweat, but she spoke clearly.

“Running away is fine, but why are we running away? It isn’t to turn our backs on hope, remember?”

“…”

“It’s true technology outside the city is two or three decades behind, but we have me and the medicine used to treat me. With both of those, a doctor outside the city might be able to fill in the blanks. There’s still a chance.”

How much strength had she gathered even as the core of her body looked ready to break?

“But there is no chance if we stay here and get arrested. Then our chances drop to zero. So which would you prefer? Remember why we’re running away.”

The sick generally became weaker and more selfish. Especially when the details of and treatment for their disease were unknown. But she worked to encourage him like she always did.

He had to reward that courage.

He suppressed the urge to rush forward and instead turned back the way they had come.

That was the only correct answer here.

“Wait, Hamazura. Where are you going?”

“That ghost woman saved us.”

First, he stated the facts so he could use that as a foundation for speculation.

“But ''why''? What happened with Benizome is enough to know we aren’t going to find anyone who saves us out of a spirit of volunteerism or simple benevolence. If she saved us, then it benefited her to do so. She spared us from a position of superiority.”

For that matter, how long had that ghost woman been there? She had appeared in the nick of time to save him, but it was possible ''she had waited until after Takitsubo was hit by the stun gun before intervening.'' Maybe she could have helped sooner, but she wanted to play the savior to take control of the situation.

“Then…”

“The ghost woman manufactured a draw between us and the android. That Kihara guy the android was protecting will notice something is wrong soon enough. If someone escaped the trap he laid for them, then it’s their turn to hunt him down. Once he senses danger, he’ll run. And we left on the advice of the ghost woman. So ''who has uninterrupted access to the valuable counterfeiter now?''”

“Oh.”

“Now you get it. She got both sides of that fight to leave at the same time, so Perfect Film is wide open. She can ask him for a job without having to worry about anyone intervening.”

He doubted that inhuman ghost woman would fear Anti-Skill’s ordinary bullets, but she may have had something she wanted to protect. Like the researcher who had developed her or her real body she had left as an astral projection.

At any rate, Hamazura layered speculation on top of the facts to fill in the blanks like he was solving a crossword puzzle.

“The ghost woman doesn’t want anyone interfering.”

He continued walking.

His pace had picked up.

“She might win a direct confrontation, but I bet there’s someone there she didn’t want caught in the middle of our fight. That’s why she pushed everyone else away. There must be something even losers like us can pull off here.”

They were not far from the tents now. He chose the tent that had some light escaping it and pushed his way in without knocking.

Inside, a stubborn-looking old man—presumably the counterfeiter—was facing a young man Hamazura had never seen before.

Was he a friend of the ghost woman?

He was dressed in something not quite like a plain-colored jumpsuit. His version had shorts and short sleeves. Was it called a safari jacket? It reminded Hamazura of a TV adventurer whose show kept getting brought back. Although this young man wore a black long-sleeved rash guard below to deal with the winter temperatures. The headband around his forehead had an outdoor webcam attached to the side of his head.

This tent appeared to the be the lab rather than the residence. Before anyone could say a word, Hamazura stuck his hand in a toolbox and pulled out a nail gun.

The young man was unfazed.

“Really? Frillsand-kun needs to do a better job.”

“Shut up.”

“Quick question: do you think ''a ghost created with science'' can be exorcized with two-yen-a-pop nails?”

That was not the question here.

Hamazura Shiage did not hesitate to aim the nail gun at Perfect Film.

“Hey!”

The stubborn old man’s eyes widened, but Hamazura was in no position to accept complaints. This was the dark side, so everyone was racking their brains to survive and choosing whatever option they could trust with their life.

He was through relying on uncertain promises or convenience.

“You need this greasy old man as much as I do, so you can’t have me killing him, can you? So let’s calm down and talk this out. We both want out of Academy City, but I’ll break our plank of Carneades if I have to!!”

“Okay, okay. I get it.”

The young man casually raised his hands.

Hamazura had the upper hand, but the young man was as calm as ever. Hamazura had come up with this plan, but he was shaken by this. He started to wonder if he was really doing the right thing.

“You want the same thing I do, don’t you?” asked the young man.

“A passport even better made than a real one.”

“Indeed. But neither of us has much time. And from the look of things, you need two. FYI, I coughed up a cool five mil for my plank.”

“…”

Five million yen. How thick would that be? He had the balled-up cash inside the voice on the phone’s sling bag, but not even that would be enough for this.

The young man grinned while verbally going on the attack.

“But you’re still a student, so how much can you pay for the plank you need to stay afloat? Per person, I mean. Oh, and this is precise work that can’t be done if the craftsman’s fingers are trembling from a threat to his life, so you can’t exactly ask for his help until you lower that weap—”

He never finished his sentence because something else happened first.

Hamazura heard something whizzing through the tent and then the counterfeiter’s rock-hard head burst.

The entire interior of the tent was dyed red and Hamazura fell back onto his ass. He had not done this. A nail gun was only meant to drive the nail into a piece of wood, so even if he had accidentally pulled the trigger, it would not have been powerful enough to crack open the old man’s skull, sending pieces flying everywhere.

Which meant…

“Man, Frillsand-kun ''really'' needs to do a better job,” lamented the young man.

He sounded like someone whose brand-new lightbulb had just died.

Yes, the ghost woman had overlooked something.

She may have thought this young man was free to negotiate once the Hamazura/Takitsubo team and the Kihara/Android team were diverted away from Perfect Film, but there had been someone else there.

Hamazura Shiage found a certain name spilling from his mouth.

“…fish.”

That woman could use electron beams, terahertz waves, and other special photography equipment to accurately aim through the tent, she had carried powerful weapons, and she was willing to lie in wait for her target just like a sniper.

She was part of the dark side and a goddamn harmful at that.

“Benizome Jellyfish!!!!!!”

She did not care about the fate of the entire world or the life of a single person.

That freelance camerawoman had no morals whatsoever, so she was willing to spread chaos if it would help her get the shot she wanted.

===Map===

[[Image:GT_Index_v03_214-215.jpg|thumb]]
[[Image:GT_Index_v03_216-217.jpg|thumb]]

District 2 General Anti-Skill Station:

Shirai Kuroko – Judgment

Rakuoka Houfu – Anti-Skill

Somewhere in District 8:

Vivana Oniguma – Beneficial

Somewhere in District 7:

Kihara Noukan – Beneficial

District 15 Luxury Hotel:

Hanatsuyu Kaai – Harmful

Hanatsuyu Youen – Harmful

District 6 Amusement Park:

Hamazura Shiage – Beneficial

Takitsubo Rikou – Beneficial

Drencher Kihara Repatri – Beneficial

Frillsand #G – Beneficial

Benizome Jellyfish – Harmful

Somewhere in District 18:

Kihara Hasuu – Harmful

Ladybird – Harmful

===Between the Lines 2===

“Aren’t these things so convenient?”

A girl who looked only ten leaned against the cold bars.

Her long, long hair gave off a rosy scent as she whispered into the neighboring cell.

“Smartphones, I mean. Now, computers will have plenty of software preloaded onto them when you buy them at the electronics store. Too much, really. But isn’t that the real difference between a smartphone and a computer? You have to read through all the manuals if you want to know how to use a computer, but you can just intuitively pick up how to use a smartphone just by touching it. That seems simple enough, but it’s actually incredibly hard to pull off. Masking the work that went into it is the trick to getting your new service to spread.”

Anna Sprengel received no response, but she did not seem offended.

She welcomed having an audience who would listen. What she could not stand were the fools who interrupted her with stupid questions while acting like they knew what they were talking about.

Self-proclaimed experts were a cancer on the world. They would end up destroying themselves, but the problem was how they spread their so-called expertise to others beforehand.

“Oh? But don’t you have firsthand experience with this? You inherited Academy City, after all. After the old Board Chairman squeezed out every last drop of its power, he handed it over to you as a bunch of codes. And what kind of hardware did that use? Hee hee hee. Wasn’t it a smartphone?”

She slowly breathed in and out before continuing.

“But human psychology is a strange thing.”

Most likely. that was something not even she had an answer for.

The human mind.

If she had a perfect grasp of its illogical and incomprehensible actions, she would not be here doing this in the first place.

“When you find something convenient and comfortable, do you ever get an urge to take a look behind the curtain? I know you do. For example, maybe you were curious about how exactly R&C Occultics managed to spread so quickly?”

Maybe she could control the masses as a single large group.

Maybe she could hold the reins by placing them in the category of “monster” and understanding them that way.

But now, Anna smiled thinly.

“But is that really what you should be looking into? How much do you understand about the workings of that phone you carry? Why is the internet a fixed fee while calls are charged by the minute? How does it connect while out on the ocean, up in the mountains, or anywhere else? Cross talk used to be an issue with phones, but why doesn’t it happen anymore? There probably isn’t a single person out there who can explain every single thing that goes on inside that card-sized case. The internet has no shortage of self-styled experts, but if they really could do what they claim, they would be filthy rich. The real experts tend not to let anyone know about the valuable knowledge they have.”

Why did people suddenly find the word Kirarazaka in their phone’s dictionary?

Why would a phone’s AI assistant respond to questions about aliens with the word Zoltaxian?

Was it a simple input error, was it a joke by the developers, or was it something secretly added in for some definite purpose? There were so many unexplained blind spots in the devices people carried with them every day.

“You inherited this city in the form of a smartphone, but how much of its functions do you actually understand? A normal user should be commended if they use even thirty-percent of what their phone can do.”

What was she hinting at with these questions?

This was a dark lullaby meant to drag the listener into a nightmare world.

Anna Sprengel quietly said one last thing.

“Let your guard down and you might just have your feet swept out from under you. That thing might be filled with undiscovered vulnerabilities you aren’t even aware of.”

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume3_Chapter1|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume3_Chapter3}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter3

2020-07-14T04:28:34Z

162.238.158.199:

{{Incomplete|parts=5|tparts=10}}
==Chapter 3: In the Void of Zero — Contact_6.==

===Part 1===

“Emergency arrival at Entrance 3!!”

“Another one? Our treatment rooms are full!”

The emergency entrance primarily used by ambulances was so tense it was easy to forget today was Christmas. These were not operating rooms. They were treatment rooms used for simple tests and first aid.

Everyone there had to wonder if the rusty stench was escaping the rooms.

They knew everyone who moved in and out of the room and the hallway were disinfected in a variety of ways, but the scent still seemed to linger in their minds. That was how bad the situation was.

An (intentionally) anxiety-inducing siren could be heard approaching. EMTs and doctors rushed this way and that. The people moving in and out were shuffled around like a deck of cards thrown all over the floor. The nurses and a private guard had to throw out a self-styled reporter who was trying to use the confusion to sneak some photos with a pen camera.

If a patient’s breathing or blood pressure fell too far in the treatment rooms, they were finally moved to an operating room. The long row of treatment rooms was meant to provide more minor care to avoid overburdening the limited number of operating rooms, but there was barely any difference between them anymore. If no operating room was available, a doctor would come to the treatment room and provide as much treatment as possible without violating regulations.

The term “field hospital” was on all their minds even though none of them had ever seen a real one.

“Really, what is going on today?” said the frog-faced doctor with a large mask covering half his face.

He could seem detached from the things going on around him, but no one knew how he really felt on the inside. His ability to maintain a stable condition at all times seemed to prove his talent.

They had no obvious external wounds.

At the very least, they had not been stabbed with a knife or hit by a car.

Yet they had undeniable internal damage.

Their blood vessels and nerves had ruptured.

The cause was unknown, but the number of victims continued to grow and it was nothing short of a miracle that none of them had died yet. The frog-faced doctor had initially suspected a toxin, bacteria, or radiation, but since he was here among them without any special protective equipment, they had obviously found no evidence of that sort of risk.

(But only specialists with the proper knowledge will be able to accept that conclusion. People will have seen all these patients taken to the hospital after they collapsed on the streets. I hope this doesn’t start any harmful rumors.)

A new nurse nervously held out a silver tray.

“Um, these are the patient’s possessions.”

Everyone here was merely medical staff and not Anti-Skill or Judgment, but when an injury suggested a crime or they found evidence of illegal drug usage, they were required to swiftly record and report it. That required them to know what their patients had on them. Especially when that patient was unconscious and they needed to identify them.

“Hm.”

He noticed something curious along with the ordinary wallet and phone.

It was a coaster-like disk made of smooth plastic. It was divided into different colors with a few different symbols carved into it, so it probably had some kind of meaning.

“Was this made with a 3D printer?”

“''We keep finding stuff like this,''” said the nurse with an almost fearful tremor in her voice. “They all have these weird items like a small skull or cards with strange symbols on them! What is happening!?”

“…”

Mythology, the occult, the spiritual world.

If this had to do with those things, the frog-faced doctor wondered if something external to the students was causing their powers to go berserk, but that did not seem quite right to him. In that case, they should have been harmed differently depending on their powers: burns from a fire power, telekinetic wounds from a telekinesis power, and so on. It was hard to imagine that would lead to such uniform symptoms.

(When the cause is unknown, it is important to look back from the onset of symptoms and reassess each and every thing they did. Did they start something new recently, or did they finally do something they had been avoiding before? If they stop whatever that is and the symptoms go away, then you can be fairly certain that was the cause.)

But that method would only convince a special sort of person who could view other people as something to be observed.

A cheerful female voice was speaking from the flat-screen TV in the guard office located next to the ambulance entrance.

“Are you worried people are keeping secrets from you? Do you feel left out?”

Everyone was afraid.

And fear led people to try things they normally would not.

They might call those very things ridiculous in public, but once no one was looking, things changed.

“Well, worry no more! Normal methods might be powerless to help you, but real magic can fix it all in a jiffy. If there is anything you want to know, investigate, or divulge, then log onto R&C Occultics. Our large collection of fortunetelling methods will free you from those needless worries!!”

And none of them had any idea that eliminating their worries in that way would only make them the next victim.

The negative cycle would never end until the cause of the damage was known, but R&C Occultics were the ones in control of the knowledge and data needed to learn that.

Without that knowledge, it would never end.

Just like how IT companies and car manufacturers would show off their graphs explaining how self-driving cars dramatically reduced traditional traffic accidents, but they would fail to mention the increase in accidents caused by cyber attacks.

Or like how online stores would advertise how much more convenient they made everyone’s lives, but they would fail to mention how inconvenient it was once the local stores all went out of business and your city or town grew fully dependent on the online store.

Or like how global food companies would highlight how they did not use additives or agrochemicals, but they preferred not to explain how they ended up with fruits and vegetables that stayed fresh despite being almost disturbingly pure and free of additives.

Information sources would hold back any information detrimental to them.

All publicly available information was biased in some way.

That was one of the most basic facts of giant corporations.

===Part 2===

“Ugh,” groaned Kamijou Touma.

It took him a second to remember where he was.

(Oh, right. I was thirsty, so I stepped out into the hall to get some water.)

He could not tell if he was in pain or not. He had lost all ability to judge his own pain.

He only had a general feeling of his entire body being swollen. He did not know what exactly that meant, but he knew there was something wrong with him.

He looked down at himself again. He was doubled over and leaning against the cold wall of the deserted hallway. He slowly tried to move away from the wall, but he could not manage it. He could not move, like the wall was sucking him in.

“You must be about at your limit.”

“Othi…nus?”

“''I told you this before, but you might not remember due to the constant pain.''”

A small form poked her head out of his pocket. It was the fifteen-centimetre god named Othinus. The girl with long, wavy blonde hair and an eyepatch climbed up to his shoulder.

“If this acute St. Germain really has been modified by the Rosicrucians as the legends say, then the technology here will have a very hard time fully healing you. After all, it is growing faster than Imagine Breaker can negate it. Human, if this continues, the microbes will infest ''your right hand'' as well. If you hope to escape death, you will need to speak with Anna Sprengel since she did this to you.”

“…”

Was that true?

Maybe it was.

But he had to ask about something else before continuing based on that assumption.

“You knew?”

“Knew what?”

“That I need Anna Sprengel to fix this. Did you tell anyone other than me that?”

Othinus let out a short sigh, but she did not hesitate to answer.

“Based on the commotion I’ve seen outside, Anna appears to be approaching this hospital. Now, I never told them myself, but Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki learned of Anna’s necessity on their own. I saw no reason to stop them, though.”

A dull sound followed.

Kamijou Touma’s hand squeezed around Othinus, but she did not bat an eye.

“Will you be satisfied once you have crushed me?”

“Othinus.”

“Only one thing matters here. Anna Sprengel is powerful and you have zero chance of victory if you thoughtlessly confront her head on.” The coldhearted voice of the god of magic, war, and deception continued. “So it is necessary to send someone else against her first so she will reveal her trump cards before you face her. Would you want ordinary Anti-Skill or Judgment playing that role? They would be slaughtered gruesomely. To be honest, I don’t really expect those two to win. I don’t, but those two Level 5s are the only candidates I could think of who had any possibility of staying in the fight long enough before losing and still making it back alive. ''Of course, it’s all over if they screw it up,'' but they at least have a chance. Anyone else would have been killed for sure no matter how hard they tried. Again, for sure.”

“Othinus!!!!!!” he roared in anger.

Her logical series of words came to a halt there.

And after a bit…

“There was never any way to avoid damage altogether. This was the only option that left any possibility at all of everyone surviving.”

“This is my problem.”

“If you had simply gone to face her on your own, you would have been killed first and foremost. And then it would all have fallen apart. Even for those girls who are fighting now.”

“Please, Othinus.”

The god glared up at Kamijou like a sulking child even as her entire torso was squeezed within his hand. It was the boy who had the wavering eyes of a lost child.

“I want you to save me, ''but not like this.'' I know I’ve fallen several steps behind. You said Imagine Breaker ''alone'' isn’t enough to keep up here, right? Well, it’s always been like that. I’ve always had to use every trick in the book to get by. So please. If someone has to die, then please build the plan around that person being me. Then I’d be on board one-hundred percent.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I don’t want to hate you.”

This time, the god fell silent.

She hung her head a little, hiding her face behind the brim of her witch’s hat.

And she spoke in a vanishingly quiet voice.

“(It was necessary, but even after all this, you still ‘don’t want to’, huh? It’s that soft side of yours that forces someone else to make the hard decisions, you know?)”

Before Kamijou could ask what she had said, she sank her teeth into his thumb and his grip on her relaxed.

“Ow!?”

“Hmph, insolent human. You can’t just touch a god’s body like that. Without asking permission first, I mean.”

She used that opening to slip from his hand and sat on his wrist with her thin legs crossed.

“I get your policy now, but that is no reason to abandon the information we have now. I will tell you what I have learned about Anna Sprengel. Let’s start with what you can do. However this plays out, it can’t end until you defeat her.”

He had already decided he was going to the battlefield himself.

This was his fight, so he was always the one who should have been in harm’s way.

But…

“Wait. If Misaka and…''who was the other one''? Anyway, if those two are on the front line, then how have you been watching them fight? Did you exchange addresses so you can watch a live video sent from their phones or something???”

“A certain idiot I could mention is so poor I do not have a phone of my own. And it wouldn’t be very mobile for me anyway.”

He felt bad about that, but it did not answer his question. Othinus was a legitimate god, but she could not use magic on her own in her current state.

For some reason, she could not look him in the eye.

Just like a child afraid of being scolded. Or like a child being asked who had broken the window when they were hiding the fact that they had broken the bonsai too.

She whispered rapidly while dripping with sweat.

“(R&C Occultics already has everyone using all sorts of meaningless magic, so a professional god can easily alter their half-assed spells to secretly place a Huginn and Muninn effect on top. But I really probably shouldn’t tell him that. I definitely can’t let him know I spread around those surveillance spiritual items made from the raven’s feathers. I mean, the side effect for using magic is hitting them whether I alter their spell or not, so this isn’t doing any more damage, but I just know he’d still be mad.)”

This time, he moved his hand higher.

Kamijou Touma, the God Catcher, squeezed Othinus' head between his thumb and forefinger.

It was punishment time.

The fifteen-centimetre understander flailed wildly for a while from the pressure to her temples.

===Part 3===

“Gh, agh.”

A hoarse sound reached Misaka Mikoto’s ears.

Even she was surprised a sound like that could come from her 14-year-old throat.

(I’m not dead?)

She could not seem to access her memories of what happened. It was a rare but irritating experience. It was like her body was sending out a powerful warning signal telling her that opening the lid of her memories would destroy her own ego.

What had happened?

(What did Anna do? And what happened afterwards?)

Her vision was unstable. Not knowing what had happened was causing a mild panic within her. There was something flashing in front of her eyes and she felt a dull pain throbbing in her temples, but nothing was actually flashing – her mind just could not process the scene before her. It was like having a piece of trick art shoved in front of her face without being told how to look at it.

She slowly tried to get up and finally realized something soft was surrounding her head.

It was Shokuhou Misaki.

The other girl was apparently seated on the ground and holding her to her chest.

Almost like she was comforting a small child.

“Are you alive there?”

“…”

Mikoto forced herself to shake her head to focus herself on reality.

“I can’t believe you came to before me.”

“And I never imagined I would have to look after you like this. But it’s not like I had a choice. I can’t save him without sending you after Anna, so I’m willing to do anything, even try out my nursing ability.”

They were in District 15.

Anna Sprengel was not here. She must have already gone on ahead.

A scorched smell reached Mikoto’s nose.

She also saw a metallic shine.

A crushed and bent mass of steel lay on the ground nearby, but it was not a 4-wheel vehicle or an airplane with a distinctive silhouette formed from the main wings and tail. She saw what looked like squid or octopus tentacles and a special paint oozing out onto the street. The technology was sticky and liquid, reminding her somewhat of a rotting corpse.

She gulped.

(What is that? Some kind of machine?)

“That is the Five Over OS, Model Case: Mental Out.”

The two girls were hiding behind what looked like a ruptured plastic ball with a diameter of several meters.

Mikoto was limp and sweating despite the cold and Shokuhou gently raised one hand for some reason.

Her fingertips moved as if she were controlling a marionette.

The gloves she wore must have been made to read her finger movements.

“Have you seen the mantis-like #3 version, Misaka-san? Well, this isn’t just the #5 version. ''It’s another version derived from it.'' To be clear, I picked this up from the dark side and it’s said to have enough academic value to rival me. I never imagined I would have to sacrifice it to save my life like this.”

They had to catch up to Anna who had gone on ahead.

Mikoto calmed her breathing and tried to pull her head away from that warmth that felt as inviting as a down blanket during the wintertime. But her actual body refused to leave that comfort. Her body more than her mind had been infected with a fear that she really would die if she kept doing this.

She exhaled and asked a question.

“What do we do?”

“What else can we do? We save him. Which means stealing some kind of method from the villain. And I’m willing to immaturely play as many trump cards as it takes to do that. So how about a second one!?”

With a dull thud, a metallic flash flew in from the side.

This one was a bizarre parasitic wasp the size of a car. Its two front legs wrapped around Shokuhou Misaki while she hid behind the scraps. Mikoto just watched it happen, but once she realized she was about to be left behind, she quickly clung to its reinforced glass abdomen. The strange machine slid across the ground while it rapidly vibrated its four thin wings to take flight while otherwise motionless.

This was not the further derivation.

It was the original Five Over, Model Case: Mental Out.

(Honestly, I thought this thing was destroyed back then, but then I look into it again and find there was a full set of spare parts out there. You can’t let your guard down for a second with this city!!)

The military weapon modeled after an ichneumon wasp flew up into the sky while making a rapid V-shape like a red pen marking a test.

The relative speed caused the snow to feel a lot more like a blizzard blowing right at them.

“Do you know where Anna went!?” frantically shouted Mikoto. “She’s following her phone’s navigation, so if we don’t stop her now, she’ll head straight to the hospital. And it takes less than half an hour to get there from here!!”

“You can handle that sort of mechanical search of the city, Misaka-san. Start hacking security cameras and phones to find her!!”

Then had Shokuhou taken flight just to feel like she was ''doing'' something? She could look cold and calculating, but this side of her reminded Mikoto of ''someone else''. Mikoto pulled out her phone, but then she clicked her tongue. Finding Anna was not as easy as Shokuhou had made it sound, but…

“Some of the cameras have unnaturally repeating frames as if to hide someone?”

“Where?”

“Keep going east. She isn’t even trying to lose anyone tailing her, so she’s taking the direct route to the hospital!!”

Their flight sped up.

If they had not already known how far to go, they might have passed her right by.

Mikoto pulled out an arcade coin.

They were already in District 7.

If Anna really was headed where the girls thought she was, they did not have a moment to lose.

“Keep our attitude and speed steady! Let’s see how she likes an aerial bombing!!”

Then the giant wasp suddenly began to stall. The blowing blizzard created by relative speed changed direction. They dropped straight down like a marionette after its strings were cut. Mikoto’s eyes widened as she clung to the thing.

“What, did it malfunction!?”

“No, this was something else!”

The mechanical bug wings continued to vibrate so quickly they produced afterimages. There was no damage to the machine and its output remained optimal. Nevertheless, the cutting-edge military weapon lost its balance and dropped toward the ground.

Mikoto could see Anna Sprengel’s thin smile down below.

She was also holding her small palm straight up toward them.

That was all, but…

“Did she grab at the air and the atmospheric pressure itself!?”

Airplanes and helicopters could not fly just anywhere. They had a maximum altitude. Devices that flew by interacting with the air would lose their power to fly if the air was too thin.

A dull roar reached Mikoto’s ears shortly thereafter.

A localized whirlwind attacked the Academy City sky and the Christmas lights and trees were torn away and flung upwards as if on a space elevator. The Five Over was caught by it and could only fall now that it had lost its flyable environment.

“Gahh!!”

They crash landed and the accumulating white snow burst into the air around them.

They had used two Five Over superweapons without doing any real damage to Anna at all. They were less than 200m from Anna, although they were separated by a few temporary warehouses (probably delivery drone bases) that looked like circus tents.

“Well, we’ll just have to make do,” muttered Mikoto while getting up from the ground.

In a dragged-out robot anime battle, the main characters would withdraw and try again the instant they ran across the slightest problem, but in reality, only the side with greater quality and quantity could escape enemy pursuit to leave the battlefield. If the weaker side carelessly turned their back, they would simply get shot down like this.

Would Anna Sprengel come to them?

Or would she ignore her surviving enemies and continue walking toward the hospital?

Misaka Mikoto exhaled and spoke.

“Shokuhou, hey, you with the excess fat.”

“What is it, you cut of bland lean meat?”

“I’m going to attack Anna again, so you use that opening to get away from here and return to the hospital.”

“Don’t you have that backwards? Placing me in front of the goal won’t accomplish anything. We already know Mental Out doesn’t work on Anna.”

“Yes, which is why you need to get that idiot out of there. If we called him up and told him, I just know he’d come here instead. We’re already in District 7 and this is only 20 minutes away from that hospital on foot, after all.” The rapid clip at which Mikoto spoke suggested even she was not fully convinced about her idea. “You might be hopeless in a direct physical fight, but you specialize in the more confusing worlds of influence and conspiracies, right? I don’t care how you do it, just spirit him away to somewhere Anna can’t reach him. I’ll do whatever it takes to get the vaccine or antidote from her. I swear it. So you get that idiot to evacuate. Take him outside Academy City if you have to.”

“Are you sure about this, Misaka-san?”

“Of course I’m not,” she spat back. Then she clarified. “But I know he would hate to see what happens if we don’t. If the peaceful hospital is attacked and all the doctors and patients are hurt while he watches on, he’ll blame himself for it. So you need to get him out of there before that happens.”

This was not a fight to win.

It was to avoid a bad aftertaste after they lost. Their best case scenario had already fallen that far.

They had to accept that Anna Sprengel was enough of a monster to change the modern era.

“Misaka-saaan.” Shokuhou Misaki sighed. “I won’t forget you for at least a week.”

“Oh? That’s longer than I expected. The world might be destroyed by then.”

They bumped fists and then got to work.

Misaka Mikoto moved toward a building wall while crouched low and Shokuhou Misaki instructed the ichneumon wasp combat machine to pick her up.

However, something had slipped both their minds.

Or maybe they had never had a chance to accurately assess their location after making an emergency landing due to the irregular stall. They deserved praise enough for making sure they did not crush any of the boys and girls who were visiting supermarkets and discount stores on Christmas to buy soba or a mochi maker for the New Year.

In other words, what would happen if they had happened to land on the direct line between Anna’s current position and the hospital?

A dazzling flash of light blasted right through the temporary warehouses in between.

They had been careless.

That 2-3m metal orb that could produce the world’s oldest whatever was enough of a threat, but Mikoto and Shokuhou had been attacked in another way afterwards. They had not given any thought to what that light had been. And in a clash between supernatural powers, leaving any gaps in your understanding was tantamount to suicide.

They were not given enough time to analyze what had happened. Just like the audience drawn in by the stage magician’s act, they could not make out the truth of what they were seeing despite seeing it directly.

Even seeing clearly grew difficult.

Shokuhou Misaki would have died if the ichneumon wasp Five Over had not left her control and automatically protected its user. It was bent, crushed, and pushed backwards while it counteracted the force. The thick shield very nearly flattened the human it was meant to protect. A torn-off shard of metal grazed the Queen’s cheek as she scooted back on her butt. A cut ran across her cheek like someone had slashed her with a blade.

The ichneumon wasp silhouette fell apart.

It could no longer fly and probably could not even walk.

But Shokuhou did not have time to worry about that. Things were even worse. If they were crushed here, their plan to “make the most of their loss” would fall apart too. She could see that solid pillar snapping before her eyes.

Since they were so near the hospital, an ambulance with siren blaring had to swerve out of the way of the “obstacle” collapsed on the side of the road.

In other words…

“Misaka…-saaan?” called Shokuhou from behind the crushed metal.

There was no response.

The other girl looked like a cat that was hit by a car. She was lying on her side and she did not even turn her head toward Shokuhou. The only movement was her short chestnut hair weakly fluttering in the chilly December wind. The white snow was falling on her and starting to accumulate so evenly and cruelly.

And Shokuhou also heard some quiet footsteps.

''She'' was coming.

“Misaka-saaan!!”

Still no response.

The girl who had sworn she would retrieve the vaccine or antidote now lay collapsed on the side of the road.

The disconcerting sirens clutched at Shokuhou’s heart.

===Part 4===

“Hm, hm, hm hm.”

Someone was quietly humming in the hospital hallway.

''Even though an ominous tremor had just reached the hospital itself.

A short girl had one arm in a cast and a square medical eyepatch over her right eye while she dragged along a metal stand carrying a clear IV bottle. That bob cut girl in pajamas must have been an inpatient because she was walking around in hospital slippers. But she bumped into a boy when she walked around the corner.

And with her forehead still pressed against Kamijou Touma’s chest, the girl known as Maidono Hoshimi spoke quietly to him.

“(Looks like you could use some help. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but if you simply open the emergency exit, an alarm will go off at the nurse station. If you want to escape safely, you would do best to get some help from a professional.)”

“…”

They had injured each other during their intense Christmas Eve battle, but Maidono was clearly exaggerating her own injuries. He should probably be judged guilty for punching a girl at all, but he certainly did not remember breaking her arm or gouging out one of her eyes.

This was her form of flashy camouflage where she chose the most conspicuous costume for the circumstances to keep anyone from remembering what she herself actually looked like. That dark side pro had eliminated all notable details other than “hospital patient”.

For that matter, Maidono Hoshimi was a fake name and her real name was still unknown, but a criminal suspect like her should have been locked in a hospital room with bars on the windows. It was enough of an emergency that she was even walking around free like this.

“(I owe you one,)” whispered the bob cut girl. “(And I thought it would be best to repay you before my trial begins. I’m sure to be charged with tons of additional offenses anyway, so what’s one or two more crimes now, right? You have something you need to do, don’t you? I’ll help you escape.)”

Kamijou appreciated the offer.

The hospital was overrun with confusion due to the near constant influx of emergency patients. But even so, the doctors or nurses were sure to stop a patient in as bad shape as him if he tried to leave through the main entrance. They would physically restrain him and drag him back to his room. That was why he had decided to use the emergency exit, but Maidono said that route held risk too.

However.

Kamijou Touma gently placed his hands on the pajama girl’s small shoulders.

And he slowly pushed her away from him.

“You don’t have to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You were going to quit the dark side, weren’t you?” He crouched to her eye level. “This is like going on a diet. If you decide to stop doing something, you have to ''get in the habit'' of not doing it. If you switch back and forth all the time because ‘I have to this time’ or ‘this is an exception’, no one will believe you actually want to quit. That’s like a serial killer who keeps insisting they’ll stop tomorrow or next week while continuing to kill people.”

“…”

“Listen, this is your life.”

His mysterious bleeding was still happening.

He felt like he could cough up some blood at any moment if he let his guard down.

But he still refused to grab that outstretched hand.

“Use your power for yourself. You were sick of dirtying your hands for someone else, right? You can’t use chopsticks, but you decided to believe you can still live a normal life and start making progress again, right? Then you can’t do this. You can’t run to the dark side again, Maidono. Living an honest life isn’t easy. Life often isn’t fair and it’s full of disappointments, so if you know some secret tricks, it’s definitely easier to just use them. But you decided ''you weren’t doing that anymore'', right? That was your decision. So live that life. It’s your life, so you need to put yourself first and do your best with the rules you’ve chosen for yourself.”

Her face twisted up.

Just like a child who had gotten separated from her mother at a large amusement park.

“For the first time.” Some time passed and she seemed to be holding her breath throughout. “For the first time, I found someone I actually wanted to serve. I thought I could go nuts just one more time before being thrown behind bars.”

“Like I said, life often isn’t fair and it’s full of disappointments. But that doesn’t mean anything is permissible. This is a good chance to learn how to show self-restraint.”

He smiled and wiped her tears away with his thumb.

He felt certain she would be fine now.

If Anna Sprengel was after him, he could not allow the hospital to be caught in the crossfire.

Just like Maidono had her life to live, Kamijou had his own way of living his life.

He squeezed the whistle he was wearing around his neck ''even though he could not remember where it came from.

“I’m on my way,” he said while pushing open the emergency exit with his shoulder.

===Part 5===

An explosion sounded in the distance.

The fire alarm linked with the emergency exit began to ring and Kamijou Touma ran down the stairs while barely staying on his feet. He was still technically indoors, but the heating was less effective here. The ominous chill felt like the invisible presence of death sneaking in toward his heart.

If he was spotted from here on, he would be restrained.

They might be acting out of good will, but his presence at the hospital would draw Anna Sprengel to it. If that happened, all the emergency patients driven to the verge of death by R&C Occultics would really and truly be killed by Anna.

He had to avoid that at all costs.

But even his sense of pain was failing him, the deafening alarm messed with his senses, and the stairs never seemed to change no matter how many flights he descended. Before long, he was enveloped by a sensation like he was walking on fluffy clouds. The light seemed to blur and the sound grew distorted. He lost track of what floor he was on.

And amid it all, he heard a voice.

“Looks like you’re having some trouble.”

No one had been there a moment before.

He at least felt confident of that.

The soprano voice carried well. As a high-pitched child’s voice, it was hard to judge whether this was a boy or a girl. Or maybe it had been intentionally modified to that end. Kamijou of course did not recognize it. He looked up again, but he could not actually see someone leaning against the wall of the landing. He only saw a vague outline there.

The next thing he knew, all the deafening noise was gone.

The fire alarm and the ominous rumbling from outside had vanished.

Had those things stopped, or had his senses gone out? He had no idea. Here, he was surrounded by a silence so great it actually hurt his ears.

At the very least, this person did not seem intent on capturing him.

When he slipped past them and descended the next flight of stairs, he found the same figure waiting there.

This may not have been real.

He looked over at the floor number sign. He had it square in his field of vision, but the meaning of the number never actually reached his mind.

“Not wanting to involve Maidono Hoshimi makes sense, but that does not change the fact that there is no hope left for you if you continue on like this.”

Kamijou Touma placed his right hand on the side of his head.

The figure seemed to be laughing.

“Oh, I am not St. Germain.”

He descended another flight of stairs.

The figure was again waiting for him. He began to wonder if the stairway would continue forever and he could never escape the spiraling prison without the permission of this boy(?).

Kamijou finally came to a stop and asked a question.

“Who are you?”

“Sorry, I guess my appearance wouldn’t be much of an explanation, would it? You may have at least heard my name, but I shouldn’t just assume. I should probably introduce myself from the beginning.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_BW6.jpg|thumb]]

The light blurred even when he looked straight at the figure.

Even their outlines were unclear, like it was a scene filmed through an out-of-focus video camera.

But accepting this other person’s presence seemed to allow a more colorful alternate world to spread out around him. The walls and floor had been given calming colors for the benefit of the patients, but now they flashed with bright colors and the orderly stairs bent and undulated like smiling lips. There were no gaps below his feet. There could not be. This distorted view was only an illusion. But he still felt like he would forever vanish from the real world if he were to misstep and fall into those pitch-black gaps.

The dream refused to end.

Was it his thoughts rather than his senses that were going haywire?

“''I am Aihana Etsu, the Level 5 known as Academy City’s #6.''”

“…”

He felt a squeezing at his heart.

Was this really them, or was it someone else?

“Why are you here?”

“To do the usual. The usual for me, anyway.”

That answer seemed to prove their legitimacy.

The #1 Accelerator, the #3 Misaka Mikoto, and all the others known as Level 5s ''created a unique world all their own''. It may have been in his imagination, but it felt that way to Kamijou. Clashing with them carried the same pressure as being taken inside an action movie or suspense movie.

“Now, what power would you like? I can give it to you. But I’m not too proud of that since I can’t say I actually ‘create’ the power.”

If he did not stay strong, he would be taken in by it.

He would stop to question his presence in the world of a war movie or suspense movie where people’s lives were used up as readily as tissues.

Aihana Etsu seemed to be smiling bitterly.

Kamijou could not actually see their face, but he could just tell from their aura.

“I cannot actually do all that much. The nature of my power means I cannot bring about justice on my own. So I am always thinking about who I can side with to ensure the good guys win. I lend out the name of Aihana Etsu as a part of that.”

“What…are you talking about?”

“''You are not a good person,''” they bluntly stated. “Which is why I avoided contacting before now, but it seems supporting you is the best choice available here. R&C Occultics, this mutation that has occurred within science, is rapidly tearing through the world centered around Academy City. It seems supporting you with my power is the only way of fighting it.”

This was Academy City’s #6.

Kamijou was being offered the power of one of the Level 5s officially recognized by the city.

“Now, picture the you that you wish to be. Picture your ideal self.”

A distortion ran through that blotted-out person’s voice.

In a way, this may have been the power most wanted in this era. The modern age prioritized time-saving and cost-effectiveness over all else, so no one had to go on a test of courage or go exploring through an old abandoned building for themselves. With a video site’s streaming service, everyone could safely experience the adventure someone else had posted. As long as the one
person charged toward certain death with a camera in hand, millions more could safely share in the same thrill and catharsis. That was what the modern age demanded.

No effort was needed on your part.

You could ignore all the risks.

You just needed a service that immediately provided the end result.

“You can be that version of yourself. Now, ''I will lend you Aihana Etsu.''”

“…”

“For example.” The person with the unseeable face pointed at the center of Kamijou Touma’s chest with their index finger. “Would you like to know what meaning that whistle holds? Are you at all interested in restoring your lost memories? You can do it, as long as you arrange the necessary conditions in this city.”

The #6 was smiling.

That much Kamijou could tell.

“I generally do not give this sort of hint because my suggestions will only narrow people’s imaginations. But, well, I do promise you this power is more convenient than that Rensa’s was. And you must feel lacking in more areas than that. You must have realized by now that your right hand alone is not enough to keep up here. You must know that rushing in as you are will only get you killed.”

Anyone could be instantly transformed into a protagonist, no annoying training or leveling up required.

Kamijou Touma held his breath and shook his head.

“I don’t want it.”

“Why not?”

“This is none of your business.”

“This is my decision. What makes you think you have the right to refuse it?”

Kamijou just about smiled bitterly at that one.

This really was one of the chosen Level 5s. They were always so arrogant ''when they were doing the right thing.'' Just like the #3 had destroyed so many labs to protect her clones and just like the #1 had decided on his own to get rid of the dark side.

“Hey,” said Kamijou.

“Yes?”

“You aren’t Maidono Hoshimi who was driven to the edge by someone else. You seem to be enjoying your life well enough, so maybe it’s wrong of me to worry about you getting caught up in my business,” spat out Kamijou with a look he had not shown to that uncertain girl. “''But you’re starting to piss me off.'' I don’t like how you reject all my own possibilities by just saying from the start I can’t solve this on my own. It’s like you’re looking down on us all as no more than dolls you can play with. …You’re the perfect example of what a Level 5 shouldn’t be. And the fact that you honestly think you’re acting in our best interest makes it all the worse.”

“…”

“This is our issue. We’re not fighting for your amusement.”

This was the opposite.

It was the same thing he had said to Maidono Hoshimi, but viewed from the opposite direction.

He was providing an example of the anger you were supposed to feel when you learned your life was being used for someone else’s purposes. It was because Kamijou Touma felt this way that he had refused Maidono’s help. It was because he felt this way that he had decided to cut all ties with her despite knowing her help would be more and more convenient each time he used it.

“Stop setting up a camera, stepping in to help, and posting a nice edited version of the story to some video site to make you look like a success, you peeping tom. You’ll lend me Aihana Etsu? Don’t make me laugh. If you want to change the world, then put in the work yourself. What your power is doesn’t matter. Whether you’re a Level 0 or a Level-less teacher, everyone still does what they can to fight the cruelties they see in their life. Changing the world requires someone who isn’t afraid to get hurt, but that ain’t you.”

He was unsteady on his feet.

He would have fallen if someone pushed at him with their finger. In fact, he could barely stay standing without anything to prop him up. And even if he was in top form, clashing head-on with one of Academy City’s Level 5s would seem like suicide.

But he still said it.

Kamijou Touma made his point while holding out his right fist.

“And if you still don’t get it, then you’re just an obstacle to overcome. I will keep moving, Aihana Etsu, even if it means breaking through you.”

“You will die.”

“I know that,” mouthed Kamijou Touma.

For some reason, the #6’s voice had changed slightly here.

Almost like they were recalling a history of repeated failure.

“If you keep going like this, you will surely die. Whether you rush to the battlefield or you curl up here, you will not last long. No matter what you choose, the villain will have the last laugh. Your destruction has been predetermined here.”

“So what?”

He was afraid of dying. So terribly afraid.

He kept smiling so the others would not notice and he had avoided confiding in any of them, but those words he had revealed to the doctor were not a lie. It was him who had said he was scared.

But.

This was a separate issue.

“I made a choice here I never should have made,” said the #6. “To be blunt, ''I should never have anything to do with a hypocrite like you who refuses to take a side,'' but I am here anyway because I have reason to believe I must act here even it means violating my principles. Yet you are insisting on remaining your usual self. You insist on walking your extremely contradictory path where you talk endlessly about the goodness of human nature yet cannot abandon the violence of your fist. You are like someone who refuses to evacuate as the lava of a volcanic eruption approaches their city at the foot of the mountain and instead stares at the clock, waiting to walk to school according to their usual schedule. And that is why you will die. You are simply repeating the same pattern over and over.”

“If you want to take control of my life, then clench your fist, Aihana Etsu. Your words won’t reach anyone if you refuse to take even a single step out of your safe zone.”

He heard a quiet tongue click.

The #6 must have realized neither side was budging here.

The genderless soprano voice suddenly dropped to something terrifyingly deep.

And he(?) clenched his(?) fist.

“How stubborn can you be? If you want misfortunate that badly, then go ahead and die.”

After a dull thud, one of the two crumpled down and the other one slowly descended the stairs. The endlessly spiraling stairs were gone now. They arrived on the ground floor surprisingly quickly as they counted the flights they walked down.

The victor let out a breath and spoke all alone.

“See, Aihana Etsu? Was that so hard?”

The #6 had known no one would remain to stop Kamijou Touma if they lost here.

Yet they had still clenched their fist in order to “convince” him.

It had been a sort of ritual.

Fighting a battle they knew they would lose had been a ritual to allow Kamijou to continue onward. That elite ensconced in their safe zone had actually taken a single step outside of their usual way. It was Aihana who had said their #6 Level 5 power was not suited for direct combat.

Kamijou Touma could only smile as he stepped outside after rejecting someone else’s methods and trampling on their concern for him.

He felt the biting chill and the white curtain of snow blocked his view. The professional doctors with specialized knowledge had shaken their heads and said they could not support him in this outside field, but this was the freedom he had chosen for himself.

This was his life.

So now he had only one option left: to win.

===Part 6===

===Part 7===

===Part 8===

===Part 9===

===Between the Lines 3===

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</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter2

2020-07-14T04:01:17Z

162.238.158.199: /* Part 11 */

==Chapter 2: Black Pill, White Snow — and_RED_Rose.==

===Part 1===

The girl looked to be around ten.

It could be hard to tell thanks to the shopping district’s arcade roof, but it was snowing outside. However, being outside in the middle of winter was not enough to stop her from working at the two scoops of ice cream sitting atop the cone she held.

“Munch, munch.”

“Why do I always end up taking in kids like this?”

The delinquent boy named Hamazura Shiage had a distant look in his eyes even though he only had himself to blame. This naked little girl had only a red cloth gathered around her flat chest to protect herself, so she was almost guaranteed to bring trouble.

This was all happening in District 13, where Academy City’s elementary schools were gathered. This was the shopping district that had always(?) existed on the far eastern end of the district. A lot of children would gather there even though it was not on the way home for most of them, so it had become known as Afterschool Snack Road. If it were not winter break, gym teachers filled with a sense of duty would be patrolling the area.

(It doesn’t look like there’s any immediate trouble. Honestly, maybe it’s a testament to how peaceful this place is that a naked girl in only a thin cloth can walk around without anything happening.)

He did not want to even entertain the thought that this was the latest fashion. At least he didn’t see anyone else dressed like this among the local kids troubling the miniskirt Santas in front of the bakeries by peppering them with questions, hoping to learn the secrets of the flying sleigh that could slip past the military radars of advanced nations.

He looked up into the sky and saw a food delivery drone carrying a box using the claws attached to its crab-like legs. He briefly wondered if it was carrying a cake or a turkey before returning to the real topic at hand.

“I guess I can ask Fremea later on. Speaking of which, what’s taking her?”

That delinquent was the type to take in a kitten on a rainy day, so he had a small friend in this district. In fact, the entire reason he was here was to bring Fremea Seivelun a bottle of a bubbly golden drink that had “nonalcoholic” plainly written on the label (and was more pricey than nonalcoholic beer) yet the clerk had still refused to sell to an elementary schooler like her. He wanted to get that party item to the sulky girl so he could be freed of the errand. But not because he was interested in the Christmas spirit. No, he just wanted to go after his girlfriend from a variety of angles while she sat motionless in the kotatsu. There was always the standard of embracing her from behind, but he could also go with submarine mode by sticking his head underneath the opposite side of the kotatsu!!

The girl in a white knit dress standing next to Hamazura sighed while looking even more exasperated than him. He was not clever enough to figure out what a girl was thinking just from the look on her face, but he could guess she had found her super-sweet donut (that was fully customized for District 13’s many elementary school students) too much to handle.

Her name was Kinuhata Saiai.

She was a Level 4 who had been even more involved in Academy City’s darkness than him.

He glanced down at the bare legs sticking out from the bottom of her short dress.

“Is there some bare-skin health craze I wasn’t aware of?”

“What exactly are you looking at while coming up with these super fantasies? Look any longer and you’ll have to pay me. And before you start asking about some ridiculous idea like nude sunbathing in the frigid December air, why don’t you give some super thought to how these questions will influence your life, Hamazura? As much as she says she doesn’t mind, I have a feeling that expressionless track suit girl would be super jealous, but what do you think?”

“Yikes.”

“If that’s all you can say, then you have some super sense left. If these lover’s spats are how you want to enjoy this couple’s holiday, be my guest, but don’t drag me into it. This isn’t about Levels—Takitsubo-san is simply impossible to predict when she’s mad.”

Kinuhata sounded casual enough, but she was actually keeping her eyes on the windows and stainless-steel pillars around them. But not because she was worried about her hair or clothing. That was a professional’s way of monitoring her blind spots without having to turn her head or move her eyes too much.

It was worth being cautious at the moment.

''Because the entire dark side had apparently been shaken to its core.

(Now, will that year-end cleaning actually work? As long as there’s an illegitimate way to get ahead, the darkness will always crop up again. People love attaching price tags to everything and the negative cycle will begin anew when people need escape funding and hideouts to super shelter them during the chaotic aftermath. The rich can shout about justice through a loudspeaker all they want, but the black market won’t go away as long as people need it to survive.)

“Mm.”

The little girl used her small tongue to lick up the milk that had dripped onto the thumb holding the chocolate chip cookie cone. Some kind of AR walking game must have been having a Christmas event because the other children were gathered around seemingly empty areas with their phones at the ready, making it look like some kind of weird ritual. But this little girl must have had no interest in joining those children (and a few childish college students who were doing it too) because she stared at them with emotionless eyes.

“This really is a nice city,” she said from a short distance away. “Everyone has food to eat and a warm room to go home to, so they can all enjoy the holy night as no more than pretty scenery. Everyone has a livable environment here. Even though the winter city used to be a symbol of fear more sinister than a corpse, where the painful and ruthless chill would creep in through the snow to reach every nook and cranny both indoors and out. Just look at the hunger in St. Nicholas’s story or the icy cold in the Little Match Girl.”

“If you say so.”

A lot of kids that age liked to talk. Had she recently read a collection of harsh fairy tales or a book on how to make money by destroying people’s dreams?

She continued without worrying about the eyes on her.

“So I am sorry to say this city will soon return to having a true deadly winter. When a terrible day comes to an end, you might want to go to sleep with hope for tomorrow in your heart, but there was a time when you might not have woken up the following morning. People die so easily. But that is how humans are made, so it’s not your fault.”

“…?”

Something seemed off.

The little girl began muttering to herself while operating her phone.

“Hm, hm, hm hm. Good, good. It looks like all the people around the world I had rewrite the paperwork to keep scrutiny off my paper company are dead now.”

It was like leaning in to get a sniff of a beautiful flower only to discover a strange new kind of mantis in your face.

He could not read the emotion in the little girl’s eyes.

Something thick was lurking below the depths there.

A crescent moon smile split across her face as she looked up from the screen.

“''Is Takitsubo Rikou doing well?''”

“W-wait. What are you talking about?”

“''I do apologize for that. That was entirely my fault. Not that I expect you to understand even if I pulled out the name of that con artist Madame Horos. Since I have no way of objectively proving what happened, it is my duty to accept your anger and hatred.''”

A name burst into Hamazura Shiage’s mind.

Yes, he had ''only'' known her name.

That person had lured his girlfriend in with sweet words, taken control of her body, and used her as a disposable tool. He had known far too little about that hated enemy.

“Anna…”

And now the ordinary delinquent boy had found his enemy.

He had found that mysterious figure who lurked in the deepest depths of the magic side and may have been even more hidden than the Magic Gods.

Could this really be her?

“Anna Sprengel!!!???”

The bizarre figure who had taken the form of a little girl was no longer even looking his way.

She held the thin cloth in one hand and the ice cream cone in the other.

With her hands full, she turned around to look in a completely different direction.

“And I must apologize again. If I’m going to have some fun, they take priority.”

A heavy metal clanking sounded as two girls landed on the snow-covered arcade roof nearby.

The Ace and Queen of Tokiwadai had descended from the sky.

===Part 2===

They did not hold back.

The black metal on Misaka Mikoto’s back spread out like demonic wings. A Gatling gun, a chainsaw, a smoothbore gun, a melt-cutting blade, a multiple missile launcher, a large drill, a plasma cannon, and plenty more heavy weaponry were attached around a base of twin rocket engines.

That was the A.A.A., or Anti-Art Attachment.

It was such a black box that not even the #3 herself knew what the device was ''originally meant to do''.

But that was not enough to explain this.

While Mikoto could fly through the sky with that special equipment, the #5, Shokuhou Misaki, should not have been able to accomplish that kind of physical feat. And yet she was keeping up with fully-equipped Mikoto’s movements and rapidly jumped from a building rooftop to the arcade roof of the old(-looking, thanks to the professional “dirty” paintjob used for things like warship models) shopping district.

How could she do that?

There was a clear answer:

“I know that’s cutting-edge equipment, but couldn’t you have found something warmer for this time of year?”

“Ahhh, shiver, shiver. Send any complaints to my spare, ''Mitsuari Ayu''!”

Another girl had possessed a psychological power similar to Shokuhou Misaki’s. She had used several types of mechanical support to make up for her inadequacies as an esper and to defeat the #5 Level 5.

Those included the Five Over OS and the Five Over itself.

Both were Model Case: Mental Out.

To control ''that bizarre equipment which had attempted to purely mechanically reproduce the power of Academy City’s #5'', Mitsuari Ayu had worn a special suit.

However…

“Shiver, shiver, shiver.”

“A swimsuit—ha ha—a high leg cut—ah ha ha!—in December—ah ha ha ha ha!”

“Oh, shut up!! Why did you have to choose such a pain-in-the-butt design for this season and location, Mitsuari-saaan!?”

“And skintight too—pff ah ha ha! Hey, the crotch is looking pretty bulgy there.”

“It is not!! I can’t believe that girl! Did the loneliness drive her toward exhibitionism or something!?”

Shokuhou held her own body against the cold, but she still shouted in desperation with her body temperature higher than anyone else’s here. Fur coats and wool scarfs apparently had nothing on embarrassment when it came to keeping you warm.

The equipment’s design was about as crazy as bikini armor, but its defensive capabilities were very real.

And the enemy they had to defeat ASAP was right in front of them.

(It doesn’t look like she’s hiding a glass container or any other pills.)

After all, she only had a thin cloth barely covering her naked body. It seemed unlikely she had anything hidden below that, but did that mean she had no means of defense against the special microbes that not even Academy City could heal?

Or did she have antibodies in her body itself?

Whether it came to searching her possessions or running scans at the hospital, their best bet was to knock her out and capture her.

“Now, then,” said the barely-dressed little girl named Anna Sprengel. “''I gave you plenty of time, so I assume it has not spread to every part of his body yet. But if you’re still making me wait, perhaps I should speed things along.''”

Misaka Mikoto had seen Anna yesterday and the night before that. She had not noticed it at the time, but she had some clear differences from the other elementary schoolers who were busy using their phones to pursue the limited-edition Santa-costume Android Demon Lord (a hyper ultra miracle heroine who had destroyed three other worlds before arriving on earth and was actually just lonely). There was something about the aura surrounding the girl, the shadows lurking in her eyes, and the smile on her lips. There was something out of place there that felt far older than Mikoto or Shokuhou. Mikoto could not shake the feeling that she was looking at a cheaply faked ghost photo or something.

The girl had been holding her ice cream cone like a microphone, but she casually tossed what remained of it over her shoulder. As it flew up into the air and dropped behind her, her sweet lips formed a single word.

“Incubate.”

More of a shockwave than an explosion filled the space around her.

The tables and chairs in front of the stores were blown away, the Christmas tree and snowman decorations were knocked over, and the passersby were mercilessly thrown to the ground. The shop windows and even the transparent arcade roof all shattered.

“Misaka-saaan!!”

“I know!!”

If Mikoto used magnetism to take control of the metal objects and Shokuhou took control of the ''unconscious children and part-time workers,'' they could keep the snowy glass shards from shredding the skin of the defenseless people walking below.

Misaka Mikoto remained hovering in place and Shokuhou Misaki jumped to the ground when her footing collapsed.

The shopping district had lost its transparent protection, so the wind and snow could now reach it.

That was more than enough for the unconscious people to freeze to death.

“We need to move elsewhere!!”

“Do you really think she’ll give us the chance? I’ll use Mental Out ''to move those people out of the way'', so you buy me the time!!”

(What even was that, anyway?)

Mikoto was bewildered.

What had caused that shockwave?

And what was that giant orb that had appeared behind the little girl?

The metal sphere was more than two meters tall, making it taller than Anna herself. It gave off a dull silver light and it hovered in the empty air.

Had its appearance split the air?

That meant it worked very differently from Shirai Kuroko’s Teleportation. That girl’s movement did not have such a violent side effect.

It had caused this much damage simply by appearing.

Mikoto had no idea what it was, but she knew it was bad news.

(How was she storing that? If she’s storing the vaccine, antidote, or other defense in the same way, then can anyone but her even get it out!?)

She bit her lip and pulled out an arcade coin.

She placed the coin on her thumb while maintaining her midair position, but then she stopped moving.

The little girl was pointing at the center of her own chest with a thumb.

“Give me your best shot.”

“…”

“That ‘power’ was already deflected by ''a miniscule fraction'' of what R&C Occultics can provide anyone around the world, so do you really think it can harm me?”

“Argh!!”

Mikoto took action.

A boom shook the air and a beam of light scorched the air, but the straight line of destruction was not her Railgun that sent metal flying at three times the speed of sound.

It was a lightning spear.

She was afraid of facing that denial again. Even so, this lighting spear was powered up by the A.A.A. It could easily pierce the rubber suits used by workers on transmission towers and it might just immediately stop the heart of any ordinary person it hit.

However…

“Coward.”

She heard a single word full of both scorn and pity.

Not one step.

Anna Sprengel had not moved a single step while she was surrounded by dust crackling with electricity. The metal orb remained in place as well.

(What just…happened?)

Mikoto floated down from the broken arcade roof to the floor. She looked pathetic, but Anna actually seemed impressed.

“Oh, you didn’t fall for it?”

“…”

“Just like before, this would have been ''very much over'' if you hadn’t seen it. Did you use geomagnetism? Or the undetectably-faint plate vibrations? That’s kind of neat. So even the science side can detect those ''landmines'' made with ley line distortions.”

Anna laughed and pointed her thumb back over her shoulder.

While bragging about the metal orb there.

“Pneuma-less Shell. Hear me, Philosopher’s Egg and Clear Coffin. Hear me, spell that never strays far and is found hidden even in paintings and music. I seek not the red stone, so show me a distorted result here. So that junk might remain junk, entertain me with the unforeseen that not even I can predict.”

Was that a giant ship’s wheel at the very center?

The little girl grabbed it with her tiny hand and casually gave it a spin. It produced a continuous grinding noise like many heavy gears were turning along with it. Several cracks appeared in the orb and it opened in an even more complex way than a bank vault.

(Dammit, is this the real attack!?)

Something unbelievable had to be stored within.

The seal was opening.

There was no need to wait. Misaka Mikoto knew she had to settle this before the contents could show themselves, so she immediately readied the cutting-edge equipment she wore.

But she was an instant too slow.

Almost like the timing had been calculated out in advance to work that way.

With an especially loud clunk, ''it'' emerged.

It was a perfectly ordinary tree branch.

Mikoto’s mind went blank.

She honestly did not know what this meant.

The branch branched out several times to spread out like a large hand. It was no thicker than a little finger. It did have a scattering of solid green leaves, but Mikoto could not quite place what kind of tree it was from.

Mikoto help her breath, but for some reason, Anna Sprengel puffed out her cheeks from within. She slowly let out the breath she had been holding in and it took the form of a sigh.

“''Damn, that’s a dud.''”

“Really!!!???”

She did not wait a moment longer.

Had Anna infected that idiot over something so unimportant she was willing to leave it up to chance?

And on Christmas Eve of all nights?

Every weapon forming the demonic wings aimed at Anna Sprengel. They were all powerful enough to possibly sink a warship, but Mikoto was past worrying about how sturdy her opponent was.

However.

Anna’s next comment was one of complete disinterest.

“''Winning with this would be so easy it’d be a bore.''”

Misaka Mikoto perceived it as the wind crashing into the side of her face.

But in fact, the demonic wings of the A.A.A. had their right half torn away like they were made of wet paper.

The white curtain of the blowing snow was swept away only after a short delay.

They were still a good distance apart.

The little girl with only a thin blanket lazily covering her bare skin had merely given the tree branch a casual swing with her arm.

“What!?”

But it was too soon to be surprised quite yet.

The twin rocket engines ruptured and the special fuel leaking from within ignited. The silhouette of Academy City’s #3 was swallowed up by a flash of light as bright as the sun.

“Mi-”

The explosion was too large for ordinary gasoline to have caused it.

“Misaka-saaan!?”

Even Shokuhou’s scream was drowned out by the noise.

No one could have heard her, but Anna whispered in a singsong voice.

Or maybe she had never really been focused on that “enemy” in the first place.

“The world’s oldest whips are said to have been made from a thin tree branch, not leather or rope.”

She twirled the branch back to rest it on her bare shoulder.

This was the same as Misaka Mikoto flicking an arcade coin at triple the speed of sound.

In the hands of a true superhuman who could take a different view of things, even a single tree branch could produce such tremendous results.

“The first projectiles were stones, the first smokescreens were dried grass, the first biological weapons were corpses, and the first blades were…actually, I’m not sure if they were stone or bone. History and tradition can be found ''in any part of the world''. And their essence can be freely extracted from all things. If you go to the effort of-”

“Wait, essence? What are you talking abou-”

“What do you think I was just explaining, you rogd! Qhuvnd—ahhhh—hiengk!?”

A sudden change came over Anna.

She took action while Shokuhou watched on, frozen and unable to move.

That thin branch looked so cheap, yet it had eliminated the #3 with a huge explosion that may or may not have killed her. If the needle reached the end of the gauge, you would be killed for no reason. Without any dignity. Shokuhou Misaki had mastered all things related to the human mind, so she did not need to check a mirror to know the look on her face. She had the look of someone who had drawn the wrong card.

Meanwhile, Anna’s actions were even more obvious. Those were not attacks intended to kill. She kicked over the mascot in front of a nearby bakery and swung down the branch. She did not stop even after tearing off the thing’s head.

This was frightening in a different way from seeing a simple weapon or army.

It was like seeing the kind and hard-working straight-A student engaging in domestic violence.

“You people always do this! Always, always, always, always!! I’m teaching you all the right things from the very beginning, but you decide it’s too much work! You take these shortcuts and try to enjoy the feeling of mastering something without putting in any real time or effort!! And when that inevitably leads to failure, it’s somehow my fault? You don’t understand—truc—what you’re even doing, but you still feel qualified to criticize me? Are you kidding me!? Are you goddamn kidding—kfu—me here? Do! Not! Doubt! Me!! ~ ~ ~tnjswhglf~ ~ ~! Argh, there’s a purpose behind each step, so learn it all in order!! Don’t try to understand it yourself! Don’t assume you can—ntd—find the answer on your own!! If you just do what I tell you, all your questions will be answered and it will all make sense to you, you bvdhktuh!!!!!!”

It had been torn to pieces.

What had once been a torso was now just a few plastic blocks.

But then the monster must have noticed the dumbfounded honey-blonde girl’s eyes on her.

“Phew.”

She looked up from the mascot’s severed head, brought her hands together with the mystery branch still held in one of them, and smiled bright.

And she spoke with an adult confidence that seemed out of place from such a small girl.

“Sorry about that. But I will explain everything for you right now.”

“…”

Shokuhou was being taken in.

Even though she knew this was a bad sign.

The #5 girl was nearly invincible.

She had the strongest psychological power. She might have trouble in an unexplored jungle or the middle of the desert, but she was untouchable in a large city full of people. But there were a few people she would not want to run afoul of even then.

For example, the #1 who linked anything and everything to violence. Or the #2 who had stopped being an individual and split himself up so far that it was unclear if the overall will of “Kakine Teitoku” would keep a promise even if you negotiated with each individual branch and received their agreement. Those monsters could tear through a large group all on their own.

This girl was similar.

Manipulating minds was not enough to rest easy against her.

“Now, where was I? You were listening, so you know, don’t you?”

“S-something about prestige…”

“Oh, that’s right! The people who seek out the Son of God’s bloodstains or bundles of ancient parchment are smalltime losers who only want their actions to carry prestige. So you were listening. Good girl☆”

The girl (who at least looked young) laughed and denied everything before her eyes.

Yes. Listening to her, following her rules, and currying her favor were not a guarantee of survival.

For one thing, they were already engaged in combat.

“And the title of Level 5 here in Academy City is no different.”

===Part 3===

Shokuhou Misaki shuddered.

And she leaped behind cover as if a paralyzing curse had been lifted from her. She doubted the hip-height concrete barrier dividing the road from the café space could actually defend against Anna’s attack, but she wanted to avoid simply standing out in the open.

After all, Academy City’s #3 had been knocked out of the fight with the very first move.

More than anything Anna had done, Mikoto had been caught in the explosion of her own equipment and vanished into the bright flash of light, and Shokuhou could not spare the attention to try to figure out what had happened to her. If the other girl could no longer fight, that was that. And a psychological esper like Shokuhou could not hope to stick her hand into burning rocket fuel and drag someone out anyway.

Even from here, the heat felt like thin needles sticking into her body.

But she did not seem to be getting any warmth from that. The December chill remained, the snow stung as it hit her body, and that excessive heat was only doing more harm to the honey-blonde girl’s skin.

At the very least, the fire had not spread to the shops of this old(-looking) shopping district.

(I’m surprised I feel so betrayed by this. As much I’m loath to admit it, I must have been relying on Misaka-san more than I thought.)

But she still could not run away.

That boy would not last much longer if Anna was not defeated here. It was Shokuhou’s side that was in trouble if both sides lost sight of each other and wandered off into the city.

She forcibly stretched out her hand while crouched down with bent knees to grab at the chain of her bag full of remotes. She somehow managed to pull it over to her.

She heard a sound like thick rubber or leather stretching tight. It came from the suit between her two legs as her stretching to reach the bag put some kind of pressure on it.

She came to a stop as her thoughts were drawn to that part of her body. She had not thought too much about it before, but now she could not get her mind off of it. Was this an odd thing to think about given the circumstances? Yes, but she may have been trying to distract herself from the predicament she was in.

Mikoto’s nightmarish words replayed in her mind.

(It isn’t actually bulgy, is it?)

She looked down while crouching, but she could not tell from that angle. She knew this was not the time. She really did. But there were some things a girl just had to check on. She bit her lower lip and pulled out a forbidden item: a mirror.

(Hmm?)

The Queen was squirming behind cover while holding the small mirror up toward a fairly private location, but…

“Hey.”

“Hwaahhh!!!??”

“?”

The #5 Queen literally jumped when a casual voice spoke to her from beyond the concrete barrier.

Anna Sprengel’s usual all-knowing look had slipped as she stood there with her head tilted quizzically.

But the mirror was not what really mattered here. The other items in her bag were: the many remotes.

Shokuhou’s life was already at risk thanks to the enemy’s attacks and her own ally exploding, but she still pulled a TV remote out of the bag hanging from her shoulder. That item was the key to Academy City’s #5 power, Mental Out.

Her power had such broad applications that she had trouble using it properly without dividing it out and categorizing it.

Just as she aimed the remote and pressed the button with her thumb, Anna Sprengel’s head shook unnaturally, like it had been hit by an invisible bat from the side.

But…

“That will not work on me.”

“Eep!?”

(She recovered!? No, it didn’t take!!)

This was worse than with the #1 and #2 who she could control but she still had to keep her guard up around.

She had not expected her power to simply not work on someone. And not because they had forcibly deflected it with a solid defense like Misaka Mikoto did.

“You were mistaken to assume the supernatural ability to control people would allow you to comprehend my mental structure and take control. If you hope to grasp the mind of Anna Sprengel, you should have first trained yourself to the point that you can at least take control of an entire angel.”

Mental Out did not work.

Shokuhou’s power was strong, but ''it did not work at all against cats or dogs.''

And if her psychological power did not work on her enemy, her only remaining option was to use it on other people to gain more pawns. But doing that would only be sending innocent people to be slaughtered by Anna. That would leave a terrible taste in her mouth.

In fact, no one could stand up to this girl.

Even ''he'' had apparently been taken out with a single kiss attack.

That was why Shokuhou had not brought along any students with useful powers despite being the Queen of Tokiwadai’s largest clique. This was no longer about logic. The legend was crumbling. Not even Shokuhou Misaki was willing to carry the burden of someone else’s life when it came to fighting Anna.

In that sense, the only person she was comfortable with making use of here was that other girl.

(Speaking of which, what is that meathead doing? With our physical fighter down, even getting the ordinary people to safety is going to be tricky!)

She effectively had to do this without Mental Out. She was wearing the special equipment related to the Five Over, but the general athletic ability it provided her was still not enough to outdo Mikoto.

(And it’s worrying that Mitsuari-san never released the limiters on this suit during that ''other fight''. Dark side toys aren’t going to follow the safety standards, so I hope there isn’t a problem with this thing.)

With the #3 taken out in a single attack, Shokuhou did not see how she could escape defeat no matter how much she jumped and leaped around.

So she had to find some other way.

But what other way was there!?

“Now, what will it be this time?”

Shokuhou heard the sound of heavy metal grinding together.

Even with the snow falling on her through the broken arcade roof, Anna Sprengel had tossed aside the ordinary tree branch and started turning the wheel attached to the 2m orb.

A perfectly logical victory was not going to inspire any emotion inside her.

So she chose to laugh now that she had once more thrown some randomness into the battle.

That superhuman had reached the point that ''she enjoyed having Lady Luck abandon her.

“If you don’t give up, you might just win eventually. But not because of anything you do—because my luck runs out. But if you don’t keep buying tickets, you can never win the lottery.”

“…!!!???”

With a dull thud, a complex arrangement of cracks ran through the orb and it opened up to reveal…

“Rope.”

Was that the tool she planned to use to take on one of the strongest forces in Academy City?

It was a perfectly ordinary piece of junk that looked so worn out it could snap at any moment, but Miss Sprengel hummed with the smile of a small child returning to their secret base and showing off the prize they had found on the ground.

There was no legend here.

It was really and truly a dud.

Yet she remained unchanged. The difference between her and her opponent was too overwhelmingly great. So much so that Anna herself seemed bored to death.

“So a question: what is this the world’s oldest form of?”

===Part 4===

Anna Sprengel laughed.

She had considered going easy on her opponent if she got the right answer, but that girl apparently had no intention of trying. She turned 180 degrees around, her honey-blonde hair spreading out behind her, and she began running full speed away.

(Of course, going easy on her would just mean a longer, more painful death instead of an instant, painless one.)

It did not look like the girl was actually trying to escape.

Was this a temporary withdrawal so she could hide herself and make a surprise attack later?

(I am impressed she’s willing to risk her life for an antidote that might not even exist as far as she knows.)

“You’re used to working from behind the scenes, aren’t you? Do you normally boss other people around to wear down your enemy from a position of safety? Or are you actually afraid of letting these children come to harm? Hee hee. This is a school culture, isn’t it? You’re all children, but you upperclassmen get stuck with so much extra work.”

The girl who looked no older than ten had not moved a step from that spot. Her smile remained, yet she did not try to hide the boredom on her face as she waved her small hand to the side.

And she gave the answer to her quiz question.

“This is the world’s oldest form of bondage, courtesy of ancient Egypt.”

Several things could be heard slicing through the air.

The distance between them did not matter.

The old rope looked worn out and ready to snap if it tried to support someone’s body weight, but the Rose leader was able to endlessly draw out its essence. With that, she could bind even an asteroid falling from the heavens to hold it in place in the middle of the air.

(Running away will only mean stepping on and being blown away by a distorted ley line “landmine”.)

But…

“Wagh!!!???”

Shokuhou Misaki let out a strange cry and then pitched forward onto the ground.

Anna Sprengel had not done anything to her.

The snow had started to pile up due to the shattered roof, so the ground may have grown wet and slippery.

The rope thrown by Anna actually missed its target entirely, shooting by directly over the Queen of Tokiwadai’s head, and wrapping tightly around one of the pillars that held up the arcade roof. A light tug with her small hand was all it took for tremendous pressure to break the pillar away.

Anna had used the world’s oldest whip and a ley line landmine, yet her opponent had dodged them both simultaneously. And not with the esper powers or technology of Academy City. This was purely the girl’s lack of athletic ability.

''The'' Miss Sprengel stared in disbelief.

It was true Shokuhou Misaki was wearing a suit that supported her athletic abilities.

It was not a powered suit designed for combat, but it was still a bizarre piece of Academy City tech she had picked up in the dark side. Shokuhou would be able to take a handgun bullet to the torso without flinching and she could lift the average car from the ground with just her two arms.

But that did not mean she had overcome her own lack of ability there.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

If she had followed the proper movements found in textbooks, she would have been killed instantly. And Anna would have looked bored throughout. Or if the suit had optimized her movements based on combat data from martial arts masters, Anna would have snorted with laughter. She would have called that high-tech solution just another way of seeking the prestige of her predecessors.

But that was not what had happened.

Shokuhou Misaki had survived in her own way.

Anna’s predictions had failed. She had not received the expected result. A loophole or vulnerability in the world had been discovered here and it had overturned Anna’s accurate predictions in a single move.

It may have been a very minor thing, but it was also so wonderfully, unbelievably sweet.

“Ha ha☆”

The sweetness burned at her mind.

She knew this was a bad habit of hers, but she went along with it anyway.

It was like a never-before-seen powerful enemy had appeared in the middle of some tedious level grinding.

She let go of that rope that should have been a sure thing for her and she once more spun the wheel on the Pneuma-less Shell. With another grinding noise, the giant orb opened along a complex arrangement of cracks and her small hand roughly snatched at what emerged from within.

Her target’s face was bright red with embarrassment as she scrambled to her feet and continued to run away. Her long blonde hair swayed side to side while she tried to leave the arcade.

“Eh heh hah, ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!! What luck! You have such absurd luck!! Well, you did emerge victorious from the endlessly-cruel screening process of gene rarity to stand here before me now, so I suppose you had already proven your luck! Even so—hee hee—I never thought you would make me laugh like this. Ha ha ha ah ha ha ah ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

The metal orb groaned some more as it opened. It was no longer holding out on Anna.

“Pff. Ah ha ha! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten an ultra-rare one like this! This is from the 20th century!!”

“Kh.”

A tree branch and a flimsy rope had been devastating enough. Shokuhou grimaced at the thought of what was to come, but she was entirely taken aback by what emerged.

It was a silver-colored mass. It was no more than a fifty-eight centimetre sphere, but it sounded much heavier than a bowling ball when it dropped to the ground. The asphalt broke below it. But the official documents said it weighed eighty-four kilograms, so that was to be expected. It also had four metal rods that extended behind it like a comet’s tail.

In other words…

This was…

“Sputnik☆ Are satellites more your thing, Miss Science Side?”

“Wait a second.”

“The essence I can draw from this is the world’s oldest orbital launch. Although poor lonely Laika was on the second one. Now, I hope you enjoy this super-ultra-rare cause of death!!”

The instant Anna raised her hand from a good distance away, Shokuhou’s hair rose up in defiance of gravity. She was outside the shopping district, meaning no more arcade roof overhead. Only the mercilessly snowy sky waited up above her.

“Oh, no. This has to be some kind of joke ability. If she seriously going to blow me away like this!?”

She went pale and tried the best she could to run away, but…

“Eek!?”

Her right ankle twisted in an odd direction, she staggered to the side, and she fell. Anna’s predictions and calculations must not have taken that into account because the bus stop sign right next to her was torn from the ground and thrown into the snowy sky instead. Only the blue sky awaited it.

“Hee hee. You really are entertaining.”

“Oww.”

“More, more, more, more!!”

Anna rejoiced at her own bad luck.

She pulled out the next one. It was a perfectly ordinary fist-sized stone. No, it had a small indentation that the little girl stuck her finger into. What she scooped up was not paint. The thick, reddish-black substance was…

“Ha ha, ah ha ha. The world’s oldest writing tool was charcoal. Before papyrus or parchment, humanity preserved their own records by mixing charcoal with blood or fat and rubbing it on cave walls.”

She even licked her lips as she whispered the answer.

She toyed with the substance on her fingertips and moved her hand as if she were carving something into the world as a whole.

“In other words, all grimoires started from here.”

She wrote on a round table lying on its side nearby.

She wrote on a stainless-steel pillar that had avoided breaking.

She wrote on the snowman decoration positioned in front of an ice cream shop.

And all of them transformed into original grimoires that drew energy from the ley lines to autonomously defend themselves.

They all creaked as they began to move. The table’s four legs moved like an animal’s, the stainless-steel pillar bent over and crawled around like an earthworm or inchworm, and the snowman decoration’s smile gained a definite will of its own. And all three of them “glared” toward fleeing and falling Shokuhou Misaki.

“Go on. Sic her☆”

They obeyed Anna’s lazy command by rushing toward the girl, each in their own way.

The air shook.

The newly accumulating snow was blown away as they began to run.

Anna once more noted the middle school girl’s “luck” when she did not immediately look back at her pursuers. These were true grimoires, even if they were impromptu ones. If the casually written words there had entered the girl’s field of view, they would have assaulted her brain and sent blood pouring from every hole on her face.

“Ahh!!”

Anna had never imagined that someone facing such a threat to their life would run right smack into the support pillar of a wind turbine.

The table had overtaken its target and then made a U-turn to cut off her escape like a hound, but the unexpected collision threw off its aim and it crashed into a concrete wall instead.

“Pff!?”

When Shokuhou Misaki pushed her hands against the ground and climbed to her feet, the stainless-steel inchworm was clearly right there at the center of her vision, but she was so dizzy from the pain in her nose and her tension was so high that the text must never have actually reached her mind. She managed to overlook what was right in front of her and it saved her life.

Anna Sprengel could only hold her stomach with both hands and laugh.

“Ah ha ha ha!!!!!! Yes, you I like. Kamijou Touma is interesting as a raw material to work with, but he’s grown so used to his misfortune and he’s learned how to operate within it, so he’s just too unchanging. You, on the other hand, are a delight. You really are trying to do everything flawlessly, but you’re so hopelessly bad at it that it actually ends up saving you. Yes, yes. This truly is beyond any of my expectations!!!”

And how did the Queen of Tokiwadai respond while on the run?

“This city only needs one Queen: me!!”

(Now I get why Mitsuari-san never shut off the suit’s limiters no matter how cornered she felt ''back then''. This thing amplifies your unathletic side too, so one careless acceleration could have you trip or crash into a wall at twice the speed and she wanted to avoid self-destructing like that!)

Shokuhou Misaki tearfully held her reddened nose with a hand while shouting back at her foe.

Anna had called Kamijou Touma a “raw material”.

She would make her regret that. She would make her cough up whatever vaccine or antidote she was hiding. She would do whatever it took ''like the cruel queen she was.''

Anna Sprengel walked leisurely through the shopping district and poked her head out from the arcade before looking a bit to the side.

That was when it happened.

An arcade coin shot down from the top of the building at three times the speed of sound.

===Part 5===

It was past the point that thinking of her as a ten-year-old mattered.

“Eek!”

Shokuhou’s throat trembled at the sudden explosion.

A powerful explosion and shockwave erupted around Anna Sprengel, sending smashed plastic and concrete into the air as a fine dust. Invisible but thick walls rushed out in every direction, forcibly tearing the inchworm and snowman from the ground as they tried to attack the honey-blonde girl. It was the same principle as a ship’s sail or an umbrella during a typhoon. Shokuhou had fallen to the ground while the monsters had their large bodies raised, so the blast affected them differently.

“Oh, my.” Anna laughed from a short distance away while holding the thin red cloth to her chest. “You finally found the courage, did you? Good girl. You seemed to be arguing before, but does she actually mean a lot to you?”

But they had bigger issues to deal with.

Shokuhou looked up while still trembling.

Academy City’s #3 had her feet perfectly balanced atop the raised edge of a short building’s rooftop. But the A.A.A. was gone. Instead of sticking with that half-destroyed junk, she must have abandoned it to focus on escaping the rocket fuel explosion.

Shokuhou Misaki raised her voice while grimacing at the unpleasant wetness of the snow that her own body heat had melted below her butt.

“What is this sticky dust ability!? Microplastics? Concrete powder? Ew, ew, ew, ew! Are you trying to kill me by having me breathe in all this gross stuff!?”

“Shut up and go back to eating your organic vegetables covered in caterpillars and worms!! I just saved your snowy ass, so you should be rubbing your forehead into the ground to thank me! And get on up here. I can’t aim my Railgun at those ''drones'' with you down there!!”

“…”

Shokuhou leaped straight up before she could even look back on reflex. She jumped a full seven meters with no footholds on the way up. Unfortunately, she had been too panicked to even think about how she would land. In fact, she jumped clear over the building rooftop, lost her balance in midair, and began to rotate vertically.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

“(The world would probably be better off if I just let her fall ass-first into one of the TV antennas or Christmas trees around here.)”

“Enough calm calculation ability! Just save me already! Humanely, I mean!!”

Mikoto fired a few extra Railguns down.

Instead of Anna Sprengel herself, these were launched at the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman that had been attacking Shokuhou.

Explosions and shockwaves erupted out and they knocked the honey-blonde girl further off course, sending her through two flips along an unnatural trajectory. And for some reason, she landed neatly in Mikoto’s arms.

She was being princess carried in a highly unusual fashion.

“Kyun☆”

“Don’t say that out loud, you liar Queen!!”

“Well, this isn’t my first time being princess carried, so this is fine by me.”

Mikoto did not like where this conversation was headed, so she relaxed her arms to let Shokuhou fall straight down. She let Shokuhou’s defenseless back fall right onto her raised knee, bending her spine at an unpleasant angle.

“Agwahh!?”

“Stop thinking you have the upper hand here and tell me one thing. I need to know to stay focused right now, okay? The first time you just mentioned: was it with that idiot? I can’t imagine who else it would be.”

“I-I’ll leave that one to your imagination.”

A gloomy darkness entered Mikoto’s eyes, but she was also focused on the reality before them. Now was not the time to be having fun with Miss Exhibitionist in her high leg swimsuit (with one portion of her body a bit damp after sitting in the snow).

Their enemy was not dead yet.

And that did not just refer to the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman.

Anna Sprengel parted the dust while laughing. Yet the asphalt at her feet was torn up, so the Railgun blast had definitely hit there.

(You damn monster!!)

Mikoto clenched her teeth, but she had honestly doubted a surprise attack would be enough to settle this.

That was why she had been able to fire the shot without worrying about accidentally killing the girl and forever losing the only means of saving that boy.

Her Railgun was supposed to be her trump card, but ever since the 24th, it had been reduced to a mere door knocker that always lost to the enemy’s defenses. However, she was most humiliated by the fact that she was actually growing accustomed to that fact. Of course, that was due to the fact that she had high enough base stats to swiftly accept unpleasant information so she could work towards another solution instead of being a one-trick pony.

“What do we do!? My Mental Out isn’t showing any sign of working!!”

“Has she abandoned her humanity in body and mind? Anyway, we need to get away from her for the time being! Even if we are going to take the fight to her, we need to at least lure her into a soccer field, nature park, or other open area. Otherwise we’ll just do more damage to everything around her!!”

They knew it would only sadden Kamijou Touma if they caused a ton of collateral damage while trying to save him.

And that side of him was part of what made them want to save him in the first place.

Shokuhou Misaki was wearing an enhancement suit, but she would still trip and fall (with several times the force of normal), so she could not exactly jump from rooftop to rooftop in the middle of battle. If she slipped on the snow during her running start, she could end up falling and going splat at the bottom. Thus, Mikoto continued princess carrying her while leaping from frozen building to frozen building.

The Queen of Tokiwadai brushed her hair from her shoulder.

“Yes, this is how it’s supposed to work. The super genius beauty handles all the cool and calculated brainwork while the brawny dumb-dumb handles all the fighting and the transportation while also looking after me☆”

“I’ll drop you from this twelve-story building, pork buns.”

“Whaaaat!? How can you look at this perfect, lustrous body and think of that horrifying convenience store product full of additives!?”

The dumb Queen roared back with various (meat-filled) parts of her jiggling, but Mikoto ignored it. Although she did decide to be a little kinder to Shirai Kuroko who she always used as a convenient means of getting around. She had discovered that asking for help and being asked for it were completely different experiences.

She also noticed she had calmed down enough to think about other things like that.

Not receiving any additional attacks from Anna Sprengel would of course be best, but Anna also had no real reason to stop. It was hard to imagine ''her'' losing sight of someone just because they fled across the rooftops. This was an improvement, but it had been handed to them by the enemy. Mikoto was honestly unsure if she could simply accept it, so she grew cautious.

“…”

After coming to a stop on a rooftop (while princess carrying the hot and juicy pork buns), she looked back into the distance.

She saw nothing there.

Nor did she hear anything.

She waited for a bit before realizing what had happened.

“She… isn’t following us?”

Why not?

She thought to herself in the falling snow, failed to find an answer, and felt her mind boiling over.

She thought back to the sign she had seen Anna Sprengel looking at: ''Straight Ahead – District 15.''

In other words…

“''Did she lose all interest in us!?''”

===Part 6===

“You know what I’ve realized, Kami-yan?”

“What?”

Kamijou Touma sounded out of it as he responded.

“It’s not about the female doctors and nurses.” Aogami Pierce sat cross-legged on the neighboring bed with nothing better to do. “I’m all about the sickly girls in pajamas right now. I saw the cutest girl with a bob cut and an eyepatch out in the hall earlier.”

“What’s with you, Aogami Pierce? Did you take a mental trip to some other world when Fukiyose broke your secret tablet over her knee during her visit?”

“In fact, this is the home of girls in casts and eyepatches!! I need to be more careful cause I overlooked this until now! And I’m supposed to be the all-time master!!”

What did that matter?

Kamijou regretted asking, but he decided to say one thing more.

“What am I supposed to do about this information?”

“Let’s go visit a girl’s room.”

“Why did I even ask!? We can’t do that! You’re the kind of guy that loses all control on the school trip and ends up hated by the entire class! Think for two seconds why they go to the trouble of keeping separate rooms for boys and girls in the hospital!!”

“Shut up!! I’m not spending my Christmas playing cards with another guy!! I want at least one bittersweet memory!!”

Aogami Pierce’s hands were not functioning, so he had learned how to manipulate the cards with his toes. People always found a way to grow when the need arose. Even if it was meaningless growth.

He was making more sense than when he had been stubbornly refusing to admit Christmas was anything special, but he had taken it in the worst possible direction. Kamijou really wanted to avoid being caught in the middle of this.

“Don’t worry, Kami-yan. I’m pretty sure I can get away safely while they’re attacking you.”

“Do I need to break a few of your bones to extend your stay here? If you know we’ll be attacked and have to ‘get away’, none of your dreams are going to come true there!! Just accept the reality you’re stuck with, Aogami! At most, you might open the door and accidentally see them changing, but no love starts that way!!”

“Wrong!! We still have our old friends the suspension bridge effect and Stockholm syndrome!!”

“Aren’t those both about people mistaking their fear for something else!?”

Kamijou was aware that manuals on how to get someone to fall in love through hypnotism or psychology stubbornly refused to go away in certain niche markets, but he was pretty sure the end result of that would only feel empty. It was all one way and they would never be seeing you for who you really were.

“Oh, I’ve given up on any normal sort of love,” said the garbage in the neighboring bed while sounding almost proud of himself.

“…”

“As long as I can do her, I don’t really care how I get to that point. The age of maturity was lowered! And there’s a curse placed on all us boys, requiring us to lose our virginity before then!!”

“Pretty sure you’re just screwing yourself up so bad you’ll never even be able to hold a girl’s hand.”

“Wait…you’ve been acting awfully calm for someone sharing this hellish Christmas with me. What is this barrier between us? You can tell me!”

Kamijou Touma stared off into the distance.

He lamented his current situation.

And he stuffed a rolled-up tissue in his nose while thinking back on something.

“Kissing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Aogami Pierce stopped breathing.

“What… did you say? And what’s that nosebleed supposed to mean!?”

“I mean, people’s mouths are full of germs. You never know what kind of microbes are in there.”

“How dare you!!!”

===Part 7===

Anna Sprengel sighed quietly.

She looked up into the chilly white sky as those two disappeared, but then she looked away. It was just like a child watching an airplane through the car window until the car entered a tunnel.

She began walking in the direction she was most interested in.

She checked the blue sign and kept walking with a bored look on her face.

(Shokuhou Misaki is fun because she introduces so many irregularities without even meaning to, but now Misaka Mikoto is in control again. People who fight properly and lose seriously are such a bore. There’s nothing of value there. And I was really hoping to enjoy that a while longer too.)

Below the snowy sky, she wiped the reddish-black paint off of her small fingertips which looked softer than custard, causing the devices she had sent out to collapse on the spot. The powerful text written out on the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman all melted away and the same happened to the inanimate objects themselves. They were only makeshift grimoires and they had failed to establish the proper circulation of ley line power absorbed from the ground, so they appeared to rupture from within. It was similar to a stroke or aneurysm where your own blood flow kills you.

She did not even care enough to look back at what remained.

She snapped her fingers as she walked and the two-meter metal orb compressed down behind her. In the blink of an eye, it became a bottle no larger than an eyedrop container. The miniscule round flask was lined with a thin lead foil. And unlike the flasks found at ordinary schools, this one had multiple necks, making it look something like a bagpipe.

This was not her only trump card.

The Pneuma-less Shell was a base metal still made by intentionally distorting the original egg. It was in fact a spiritual item meant to disturb her own rhythm and reduce her status.

Once you eliminated death, you would forget the fear of death and others could bring about your death without you even realizing it. In other words, it led to careless mistakes. Just like the immortal Greek gods were unable to control themselves and ended up giving into their pride and jealousy, leading to many very human mistakes.

People could not restrain or govern themselves without wanting for something.

Think of the people of a certain country who so hated the clean water coming from their faucets at home that they would go out and buy bottled mineral water. Did those people properly appreciate the rarity of that single drop of water?

“I suppose that’s enough ''sightseeing''. There’s nothing more to see in this city, so maybe I should get to work. Nothing else of interest here... If St. Germain still hasn’t destroyed that boy, I need to help it along.”

(The acute St. Germain should have spread through his body by now, but I can hasten the process by driving him to anger.)

“I wonder what I’ll see.”

She laughed.

All she did was laugh.

“The pain, anxiety, fear, and resignation will wear your soul away, leaving only the last and final piece, but what will that final piece be, Kamijou Touma? I cannot wait to see what your true essence is.”

Anna then pulled out a perfectly ordinary smartphone to replace her spiritual item. It displayed the kind of map app used everywhere in the world.

The signs around here said this was the border between Districts 13 and 15.

Her destination was further east.

Academy City would normally be blotted out on navigation services from outside the city, but this was a complete version with everything down to the back alleys filled in by a satellite belonging to R&C Occultics. She could find her way around Academy City with this.

“Hm, hm, hm hm☆”

She inputted her destination and a few different routes were automatically calculated.

She tapped the shortest of the routes to begin.

Her destination was a certain hospital in District 7.

The phone spoke in a polite, female artificial voice.

“One hour to your destination.”

===Part 8===

The situation had changed.

They hesitantly turned back the way they had come and then followed the blue signs to the east. They of course made sure to continue jumping from snowy rooftop to snowy rooftop to avoid accidentally running into Anna on the streets.

Yet it was them that were in trouble if they lost sight of Anna.

She was the only one with the vaccine or antidote they needed. They had to prevent her from reaching the hospital.

But they also knew Anna would show up at the hospital eventually, so couldn’t they lie in wait there instead of trying to chase her around?

No, they could not.

Two Level 5s had attacked without slowing her in the slightest, so the hospital would be destroyed the instant she arrived there. It did not matter whether or not the sick boy who kept coughing up blood could win in the end. Everything there – the people and the things – would be destroyed in the process.

And that might be enough to break him.

Because he would carry the weight of things he had no responsibility to carry.

“Whoops.”

They had to be careful while jumping. If they knocked some snow off the edge of a roof, they might just be noticed.

They had arrived in District 15.

This district looked very different. It was Academy City’s largest shopping district, so it was flooded with young people dressed up as Santa or a reindeer. There were also some weird costumes like a box or a turkey with short arms and legs attached. There was apparently an attempt to break the record for the world’s largest cake, so the excitement was not going to end until the cake had been sliced up and everyone had a chance to snap a photo of their piece.

There were no umbrellas to be seen.

The view of the phone cameras was apparently more important than anyone’s health, so those view-blocking pieces of waterproof fabric would get you judged guilty.

Which made her easy to spot.

“There she is!”

A pedestrian deck was constructed up above a pedestrian scramble, making for a very busy area, but a girl who looked to be only 10 was walking above the road there mixed in with the crowd. From time to time, some young people carrying bottles of beer or sparkling wine (those were actual adults and not just high schoolers, right?) would pour some of their drink on her while laughing. The thin red cloth barely covering her was actually being accepted by the people here, so District 15’s happy and cheerful Christmas was a strange time indeed. A young wife in only an apron would apparently be accepted as no more than a costume on this day.

Shokuhou was disgusted since she preferred a classier atmosphere.

“This is worse than I’d heard.”

“All these lights are nearly blinding me, so it’s easy to lose track of her. Help me double check her location.”

The partying was already out of control, but a girl must have decided this was her chance and began an unauthorized concert out on the street. Around ten bodybuilders were lifting up a German luxury car (probably one of theirs) like a palanquin and smiled for the camera while filming an ad for a sports gym. This white Christmas was growing deadly cold, yet both the girl with a bare midriff and a megaphone and the oiled-up group in only trunks did not seem to care. District 15 really was a strange place. Enough so that the TV cameramen who had showed up hoping to get some good footage had to cover the lens with a hand to avoid filming the overly risqué costumes and the people misbehaving for the camera. It was easy to see why no one was paying much attention to Anna.

Had she chosen to use the elevated path because the ground level was packed in as close as a crowded train during rush hour? Although it did look like there would have been other options.

“She really is staring due east!” shouted Mikoto while focusing on something other than the people.

A blue sign was installed on the pedestrian deck. It was half frozen over by sherbet-like snow, but it was still readable: ''Straight Ahead – District 7.

(She’s moving from west to east? And District 15 leads right into District 7.)

Shokuhou must have been thinking the same thing because she arched one of her shapely eyebrows.

“There are plenty of landmarks there, but the last place we want her is there too: the District 7 hospital where he was taken.”

Anna was walking along in such a defenseless way she might as well have been daring them to attack her.

And if they managed to entertain her, she would be willing to come to stop and watch the show. But the instant she lost interest, she would resume walking toward that hospital. And once she arrived, she would destroy the entire building with the dying boy inside. Her steady pace gave off the same precision fear as a time bomb or a cruise missile.

Shokuhou kicked her legs like a small child while being princess carried.

“So what do we do?”

“Stop trying to act cute, pork buns.”

“The next time you call me that, I’m breaking through your mental barrier with Mental Out.”

“Oh, really? Well, I chose not to call you ‘sweet buns’ because I thought it sounded wrong, but if that’s what you prefer. Also, she’s using a device to navigate, isn’t she? Then we need to move in close and attack.”

“Did you learn nothing from last time!? We can’t hope to win with our direct fighting ability!!”

That was not something two Level 5s should have been saying.

But if they did not accept their disadvantage, they could not keep up with reality. They would be left behind by the times.

Mikoto let out a white sigh.

“Which is why that’s a diversion. Our real plan is to hack her phone and mess with her navigation to send her in an endless circle. I don’t really know how much of a monster this Anna Sprengel person is, but that’s a normal electronic device she’s holding. We can redirect her somewhere more convenient for us and then figure out how to keep her from defending herself. We’ll invite her into a whiteout. It’s time she learned how scary it is to get stranded out in the snow in a high-tech city of 2.3 million!!”

“I see,” said Shokuhou Misaki.

The diversion part would have to be done by Misaka Mikoto since physical fighting was her specialty. Everyone involved already knew Shokuhou Misaki’s Mental Out did not work on Anna, so the Queen honestly had nothing to do here. She just wanted Mikoto to get it on with it and become a noble sacrifice that would extend that pointy-haired boy’s life.

Except she had forgotten something.

Her dislike of the other girl was a mutual one.

“Okay, do your best to act as disposable bait. If she actually takes a bite of those sweet and sexy buns, I promise to never forget your sacrifice.”

“Bwah, wait!? Th-this is an 8-story building!! You can’t just toss me off of here, Misaka-saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!!”

After a count of three, Mikoto tossed the weight she was princess carrying. Shokuhou felt an odd floating sensation, but she could not actually do anything but scream while dropping down. And with that much noise, everyone in the area ended up looking up toward the source. That included Anna Sprengel in the middle of the crowd.

And a crescent moon smile had torn across her face.

It was the cruel smile of a small child thinking about squishing the bug held between her fingers.

“Ha ha☆”

“I am so sick of being used as a toy for weirdos with no common sense!!”

While Shokuhou flailed her arms and legs, the transmission of force must have come together just right because she spun around in midair and her feet landed cleanly on the railing of the pedestrian deck.

(A-and Misaka-san didn’t even help my landing ability!? Was that musclebound moron really trying to kill me!?)

“Of course I helped. I just did it wirelessly.”

That response came from the same pedestrian deck as Anna.

They were less than ten meters apart. Misaka Mikoto was crouched down in an animalistic stance as she took aim at the little girl’s navel. And she rushed in with enough force to dislocate Anna’s spine with a single tackle.

At the same time, a disconcerting sound came from all over Shokuhou’s body. No, the skintight suit covering her was being ''electrically'' controlled.

She leaped from the railing, flipped as gracefully as a ballerina or figure skater, and used the centrifugal force to sweep her heel around in a roundhouse kick. It was aimed for Anna’s face. Specifically, her eyes.

She did not need to score a clean hit.

As long as it blinded Anna or forced her to evade, it would create the opening Mikoto needed.

“Wait! Misaka, why!?”

Shokuhou Misaki finally bristled and yelled about being used as a sacrificial pawn, but the seemingly ten-year-old girl reached a small hand out toward the approaching heel and casually grabbed the Queen’s ankle. With a swing of her arm, Shokuhou transformed into a projectile to intercept Mikoto.

Mikoto did not really care. She focused on her magnetic control.

Instead of catching Shokuhou who flew in while rotating like a defective boomerang, Mikoto stepped on the girl (specifically on those loathsome twin pork buns on her chest) to take a leap forward.

This did not produce a “boing” sound effect, nor did it enhance her jump in any noticeable way.

(Really?)

The honey-blonde girl was mad now (and too much of an amateur to realize she needed to focus on her landing right now), so she pulled a TV remote from her bag and aimed it at Mikoto.

That girl who liked watching TV despite being the Queen of social media raised her voice.

“There are TV crews here, so you can kiss your social life goodbye after I make you strip down and dance in the nude, Misaka-saaan!!”

“Don’t interfere! Now is not the time!!”

With a dull zap, Mikoto’s head shook to the side. The #5’s Mental Out did not work on the #3 as long as Mikoto rejected it. All it did was give her a minor headache.

Without that, Mikoto would have crashed into Anna Sprengel, slammed her to the ground, and pinned her down. As a teenage girl, she hated having to win by using her weight, but there was no way such a little girl could overpower her like that.

But.

Something scorched the empty air.

If Mikoto had stayed on her previous course, her upper body would have been reduced to ashes before she even reached Anna.

Anna did not appear to be holding any kind of special weapon.

She had simply blown a kiss in an oddly mature way for her body size.

(What? This isn’t like that junk she was using before!)

The soles of Mikoto’s shoes scraped at the pedestrian deck. She had landed a bit to the side of the girl instead of on top of her.

She had not intended for that and she doubted Shokuhou had either.

Still unarmed, Anna laughed.

She crossed her fingers in an odd way for simply clenching and unclenching her fist.

“Hilarious. You should really keep the unathletic one in charge.”

“I! Am! Not! Unathletic!!!!!!”

That must have been something Shokuhou Misaki refused to let stand because she tearfully hopped back up while rolling and writhing on the ground (because she had been too focused on revenge to prepare for her landing).

Anna waved a small hand and took a single step back.

That brought her right alongside a redheaded high school girl in a knit cap who happened to be on the same pedestrian deck.

“Oh, no! She’s taking a hostage!!”

“Hey.”

But what happened next came as a complete surprise.

Instead of holding a blade up to the girl, Anna whispered in her ear.

The girl had been trying to earn more views on social media by filming as much of the partying as she could, but she had not had the courage to dress up in a costume herself.

“''Did you hear that? A mere middle schooler is worried for you. Doesn’t it make you want to die of embarrassment when you’re in high school''?”

“What?”

“''How long were you planning to be a mere cameraman while walking around in the snow without an umbrella? Don’t you feel lonely standing there adjusting the camera’s focus? It’s your phone, so shouldn’t you be there in the center of the screen? And you have a new power to show off, don’t you? If you could only use the magic properly, you could tear down the illusionary hierarchy built by science. And isn’t today the perfect day to throw out your inhibitions and make yourself the star?''”

Miss Sprengel’s whispers made the girl gasp.

Those words were like a sweet and slow-acting poison.

“''Sigh. Maybe my hopes for you were misplaced.''” She delivered the finishing blow. “''You’re just going to sit here all alone on Christmas and let that power go to waste, aren’t you? People like you, who have the power to change their future but refuse to do so, are doomed to live and die in obscurity.''”

Those words must have carried a great bewitching power because the knit hat girl immediately changed her mind.

“The power of a four-legged animal can be extracted from a single finger. Picture a line extending from the center of your heart to the tip of your middle finger and let the fire essence roar!!”

A bright flash of light was followed by a sound more like melting metal than burning.

And that was accurate because the pedestrian deck was melted and sliced through.

“What in the—!?”

“Ah ha ha.”

The knit cap high school girl’s response was strange.

She could have easily become a murderer just then, but it was joy that covered her face. She sounded like an elementary schooler whose esper power had first shown real results.

“I did it, I did it!!” She kept her palm held out toward Mikoto and Misaki. “I actually did it!! I forced the famous #3 to gasp and fall back. Hey, were you filming that? A selfie isn’t enough for this! This needs to go viral! My power was real after all!!”

Mikoto was overwhelmed by how unusual this was, but then she heard some laughter growing more distant. Anna Sprengel was slipping through the crowd while whispering a few statements each to the boys and girls she set her sights on. With some she used a grudge, with some talk of making easy money, with some an inferiority complex, and with some a desire for unity. She chose the perfect words to work their way deep inside each individual’s heart.

That was all it took to unleash something.

The middle and high school students enjoying their Christmas pulled out some objects from their pockets and bags. Some were plastic wands, some were metal medallions, and some were cards made with an automatic business card printer.

They all shouted something, but Mikoto could no longer perceive it as words.

Their voices shook the entire deck like the cheering at a stadium and their voices produced beams of light, explosions, ice spears, and even humanoid forms that rushed toward Mikoto like a flash flood.

Mikoto’s intuition told her this was very bad.

She could tell these were not the esper powers she was used to dealing with.

She reflexively tried to leap up with her magnetism to avoid it, but she felt some resistance at her right leg.

Someone was clinging to her while squishing those two chest buns against her leg.

The girl really did have tears in her eyes at the prospect of being left behind.

“What kind of servant are you, you violent maid!? You need to look after your Queen when she has this kind of once-a-millennium beauty, Misaka-saaan!!”

“Bwah!?”

She lost balance and both of them fell from the railing and off the pedestrian deck altogether.

But that may have been the best move they could have made since a few beams of light scorched the sky above. Mikoto could not have been more reluctant to admit it, but she might have been shredded by that barrage if she had followed her original escape plan.

Instead of falling to the ground, she used magnetism to attach themselves to the underside of the pedestrian deck. The unexpected movement managed to shake off all the gazes from above and below the deck.

“Any idea what that was!?” she asked.

“It wasn’t ordinary esper abilities, that’s for sure. If it was, then two Level 5s like us wouldn’t need to hide up here like bugs.”

“I agree, but that isn’t what I was talking about. If you had a ‘special power’ dropped into your lap out of the blue, would you really just start using it to kill? To be honest, Anna’s words weren’t that attractive. In fact, you’d be extra skeptical of any offer made by a little girl wearing only a thin cloth. Con artists normally try to look as legitimate as possible while giving an extremely calculated sales talk! So why did it work for her!?”

Mikoto was asking the Level 5 with the strongest psychological power if there had been any “interference” at play there.

“All she did was talk to them.” The Queen bluntly rejected that idea. But, “That can work if you already have your target’s personal information. Specifically, if you have already researched all of their internal problems, such as inferiority complexes, traumas, and mental tension in need of catharsis.”

“But how could she…?”

Mikoto trailed off as she found the answer.

R&C Occultics.

That enormous IT company had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and took fortunetelling requests from all around the globe. Which required the names, genders, ages, birthdates, blood types, and other crucial personal information about the requester and the person they had a crush on. (Did it also work with more platonic feelings, a boss you disliked, or someone you wanted revenge against?) Even the reason someone wanted the fortunetelling was a treasure trove of information on their doubts and worries. The possibilities someone rejected for themselves and the words they wanted to hear someone else say were a very good indicator of their psychological scars.

Giant IT companies loved to show off how personal information was a new form of monetizable asset, yet they also did everything they could to extract it from people without paying them for it, so analyzing their users’ browsing history to display the most effective advertisements was a walk in the park for them. If you dug deeper into those techniques, you would be able to influence the nonphysical mental world through psychological analysis, scoring people’s humanity, creating a cyber cult, and more.

In other words, you could develop a master key that would have no effect on the other 7 billion people out there but was carefully designed to stir something inside that one person and push them toward a certain action. Of course, it required such a massive prior investment that it was generally not worth the effort.

But this extraordinary idiot had actually done it.

This fool had ignored all of the warning bells from wiser people and done it anyway for one simple reason: because she could.

“By the way.” Anna Sprengel’s cruel laughter arrived from somewhere in the crowd. She sounded like a child who had never been taught the value of life. “Psychology deals in individuals and groups. Just like a single person running for the entrance during a good sale or at a concert will inspire everyone else to do the same, the actions of a few have a way of spreading through a larger group. To be clear, controlling a group is much easier than controlling an individual.”

Mikoto heard a gurgling sound.

She raised her guard against whatever was coming, but that “flash flood” from before did not arrive again.

Puzzled, she hacked a nearby street camera and displayed its footage on her phone’s small screen.

“What the hell?”

Was it Mikoto or the knit cap high school girl who asked that?

The girl who had wielded that strange ''new'' technique known as magic was holding her hands to her mouth. A dark red liquid was spilling from between her fingers. There was far too much sticky liquid dripping down to the pedestrian deck for this to be a simple scrape or cut.

“Eh, eh? Wai- bh. Cough, cough, cough!! What’s happening to me!?”

She extended her bloody hands hoping to find some assistance, but no one reached out to help her. In fact, the other boys and girls who had used what was (apparently) called magic were all coughing up blood and collapsing much like her. No, it went beyond coughing up blood. The blood vessels in their body were bursting, the dark blue marks of internal bleeding appeared on their skin, and some of them must have had the blood vessels in their eyes burst too because the whites of their eyes were stained red.

There was no answer to be found here.

Of course there wasn’t when no one understood the mechanism known as magic.

Their minds clung to speculation to escape the fear of not knowing and that groundless information inspired new hatred.

In other words…

“The #3 did this.”

There was deep resentment in their voices.

They refused to admit to their own fear, so the resentment settled in deep and inspired simple aggressiveness and hostility, all so they could avoid looking at their impending doom.

They were driven by an invisible fear.

Civilization had regressed to the age when germs were called a witch’s curse. If they caught a cold from being out in the winter chill, they would blame Mikoto. If their throat grew hoarse after shouting too much, that too would be Mikoto’s fault.

“She used EM waves somehow!!”

“That’s right. Why else would our blood vessels start bursting!?”

“It’s her or us! Electrolysis can easily break down our vitamins!!”

Mikoto had trouble breathing.

Even Shokuhou asked a trembling question while below the pedestrian deck that had clear icicles hanging down from it.

She had doubt in her eyes.

“I seriously doubt you did, but you didn’t actually do anything, did you?”

“No, I have no idea what this is. In fact, I can’t even cause that with my powers!!”

Mikoto shouted back, but that did not make it any less awkward. Yes, Mikoto and Shokuhou knew more about the situation than any of the other students, ''but not even they knew what was happening.'' And without knowing that, she could not be 100% certain she had not accidentally caused this somehow.

If Kamijou Touma had happened to be here, he could have explained it right away. He would have said this was the obvious ''side effect'' when a scientific esper used magical spells. He would tell those students to stop if they wanted to avoid destroying all their blood vessels and nerves.

But the majority of people living in Academy City did not have that knowledge.

And without the knowledge to avoid the damage happening to them, they could only turn to meaningless superstition.

Kill the witch and all the world’s problems will be solved. Break the Muramasa because that sword is disturbing the peace of the world. In the West and the East, there had always been cases of absurd mass hysteria where people attacked a minority to achieve peace of mind.

People were more frightening when inspired by fear than by anger.

Because they could no longer decide for themselves to lower their raised fist.

“Hey, what do we do? She already saw who we are. Oh, god. This is terrifying.”

“Shut up. We can’t back down now that the fight’s started. If we don’t take her out, she’ll just hunt us down in revenge!!”

“Get her!! Before she can attack again!! This invisible attack can get you through your dorm’s walls, so we need to kill her nowwwwwwwwwwwwww!!”

“Misaka-san,” said Shokuhou, but Mikoto was on the move before she even finished. With the Queen still in her arms, she used magnetism to swing around from the bottom of the pedestrian deck like she was on a trapeze. She flew in a large C to arrive high overhead just before the point below the deck was filled with beams of light and great heat. That part of the deck actually melted and the remainder tilted like it had lost its balance.

The #5’s eyes were wide as she clung to the #3’s hips.

“We can’t get the vaccine or antidote if we lose sight of that monster. And she’ll destroy the hospital when she gets there. Where did Anna Sprengel go!?”

“I don’t know!! But these people collapsing take precedence right now. Did Anna do something to them!?”

Every time the terrified students used magic, they would harm themselves more, but they mistook that for another mysterious attack from Misaka Mikoto, grew even more terrified, and clung to magic again to rid themselves of that fear. Unfortunately, no one here could prove to them they were trapped in a hopeless vicious cycle.

Kamijou Touma was not here.

Even so, Misaka Mikoto focused on what they had to do while she flew upside-down in the air.

“Shokuhouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!”

That verbal slap to the cheek got the Queen to gasp and grab her remote.

Yes.

Anna Sprengel and Misaka Mikoto were exceptions, but Mental Out would work just fine against this ordinary group of ordinary people.

A single button froze the world around them.

All those boys and girls had been shortening their own lives with magic like someone obsessively checking to make sure they had locked the door before heading out, but now they all came to a stop.

The negative spiral had been broken.

At the same time, the only person still moving stood out like a sore thumb. A small form was using the stairs to descend from the tilted deck.

It had to be…

“Anna Sprengel!!!!!!”

===Part 9===

“Oh, dear. They’ve noticed me. That psychological one is still full of surprises and a lot of fun. Maybe we’re just a good match.”

Anna smiled as she descended from the snow-covered pedestrian deck to the crowd on the surface.

A part-timer on a red Santa-themed bike was trapped in the crowd with a phone and an insulated bag, presumably after someone ordered something to this area without thinking. These human shields apparently made it difficult for those girls to attack, so Miss Sprengel slipped past the poor part-timer and kept walking. She was starting to think using a bike might be fun because she had seen a Christmas-themed rental bike stand that formed a metal tree by attaching a ton of bikes to a revolving door made from cross-shaped metal poles.

(I’m sure they can guess where I’m headed, so will they panic if I arrive ahead of schedule?)

The naked little girl pulled her red cloth in closer and smiled coldly. The danger of being her favorite was obvious enough from that boy who was approaching death due to an unexpected kiss from her.

The thorns of this rose would harm all life around her.

She cut across District 15 which continued to party like they were in Sodom (which shouldn’t have been much of a surprise for a city built by Aleister) and she approached the neighboring district.

That was District 7.

But just before she arrived, a black shooting star fell toward her head.

Misaka Mikoto had dropped straight down with an iron sand sword made by gathering up all the iron sand she could find and shaping it into a rapidly-vibrating sword.

Anna simply held up her small hand.

But her fingers were crossed in an unusual way for simply spreading your hand out.

That was enough to stop an attack capable of slicing right through an armored train.

“And this is unbearably boring, Misaka Mikoto. You were somewhat interesting back when you were blurring the line between science and magic with the A.A.A., but no longer. Now you’re just plain old strong. You can increase your parameters all you like, but your movements themselves are so one-note. I’m not interested in an event boss that requires the strongest equipment, so get lost already.”

“!?”

Mikoto did not expect a clean hit.

The instant she tried to push her way through, it was not Anna Sprengel who was destroyed. It was one of the metal trees found here and there in District 15. It was a rental bike stand made by attaching all the bikes to metal poles to form a tree.

A large cloud of snow scattered into the air around her landing point.

Disconcerting cracks ran through the entire metal and concrete stairway Anna stood on. The metal poles were sliced to pieces and the seemingly ten-year-old girl was slammed into the ground along with the wreckage of the many bikes.

They were rental products, so they did not use anything fancy like carbon or aluminum frames.

That meant Mikoto could control them via magnetism.

(I don’t have to defeat her. If I can crush her under all these scraps and keep her from moving, she won’t be able to cause any more trouble. Once she’s caught, I can apply even more pressure from all directions with my magnetism to really trap her!!)

“This will get you nowhere.” Those words mercilessly left the rubble to pierce through the girl’s heart. “I said I wasn’t interested in raw strength. Because I already know who wins in a contest like that.”

It was like a volcano had erupted.

Concrete shards and sharp rebar scattered every which way. Misaka Mikoto (and Shokuhou Misaki who was clinging to her hips) were blown away in a tailspin. They were launched at a high angle, so instead of falling back to the ground, Mikoto planted her feet on the wall of a nearby building to stand on it.

“What… just happened!?”

“Wait, what is that?”

Mikoto and Shokuhou’s questions were subtly different.

When Mikoto blinked her eyes and took another look, she noticed a translucent figure standing next to Anna Sprengel. It held a small fist straight up in a silly kind of way.

What was it?

She honestly did not know.

It looked like a humanoid silhouette about as tall as an adult man, but it had large, swan-like wings growing from its back, and its entire head had been transformed into a twisted falcon, eagle, or some other bird of prey. It gave off a pale platinum glow and there was no mistaking it for an ordinary person. But despite the sinister silhouette, a glowing halo hovered above its man-eating head.

Anyone would know what that symbolized.

Even children’s picture books used that to signify an angel.

Mikoto felt a terrible sense of wrongness, disgust, and rejection crawling up her spine, like she had seen a maggot-ridden rotting corpse being named the winner of a beauty pageant and no one was questioning it.

That thing was wrong.

This was not about the division between science and magic. Even Mikoto, a science worshiper who knew nothing of the occult, could tell this was blasphemous.

That was the only word she could think of for this being that shattered people’s ordinary values just by existing.

“''Aiwass,''” bluntly whispered the little girl lazily covering her nudity with a thin cloth.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

Was that its name? Mikoto was not even sure her ears had heard it correctly. If she analyzed the high frequencies and low frequencies with an auditory device, she might find it was pronounced entirely differently.

At any rate, this was on another level altogether.

It may even have been the source that shared its “power” with the monster known as Anna Sprengel.

But Misaka Mikoto forced herself to take a positive view of the situation.

“We drew this out of her. That means we managed to break through that confident smile of hers.”

“U-u-um, Misaka-san? I realllly doubt my Mental Out is going to work on that falcon angel, so if you’re done with me, could I head back to that boy’s hospital bed and—”

“That means the real battle has finally begun!! We’re on the right track here. If we keep going like this, we can force Anna to use up everything at her disposal!!”

“Please just let me leave!!!!!!”

The little girl looked up at them from the ground.

She was no longer smiling.

Anna Sprengel spoke with that bizarre monster by her side.

She did not even glance toward that reliable partner.

“Do not come out when I have not called for you, dullard. You’re ruining my fun.”

Misaka Mikoto boiled over.

She thought her vision had gone entirely red.

Anna had possessed a means of winning at any time, but she had chosen not to use it. She had dragged out the fight while dancing elegantly along the line between life and death, like she was trying to draw out every last drop of blood.

Did she really not have anything more to her?

Did she not have an earnest desire she could not wait a second longer to fulfill or an anxiety that things would never be the same again if she screwed things up here? Did she not experience impatience or hatred so intense she lost sight of herself? Was she really filled with so much confidence she could take as many detours as she liked and choose as many methods and options as she wanted to try out?

Even though Mikoto had to worry about all the unrelated people who were injured, the definite threat to the hospital, and the microbes eating away at that boy’s life from within?

“Give it a rest, you—”

Mikoto gathered strength in her brow and clenched her teeth so hard she thought they might break.

She prepared to let out a roar.

But just before she could, Miss Sprengel sighed and said more.

“Because, dullard, I can slaughter them instantly even without your help.”

===Part 10===

An ominous tremor ran through the entirety of Academy City.

===Part 11===

The air was scorched and no one was moving.

This was the sinister atmosphere of a battle’s aftermath, where even the corpses were abandoned.

And amid it all…

“Hm, hm, hm hm.”

A little girl hid her soft skin with a red cloth and hummed an out-of-tune Christmas song.

She did not bother looking back.

No one remained to get in her way, so her small legs calmly crossed the district border and entered District 7.

That was their home ground.

That hospital was located there.

(Now, then. I wonder if those innocent little heroes were aware what it means to worry about someone else’s life. It means you believe your own life is not at risk and that it isn’t your time to go.)

Anna Sprengel followed her phone’s navigation while she spoke aloud.

“''Believing you’re special and that you won’t die is a common form of megalomania in teenagers, but I seriously doubt the real world will be so kind.''”

Everyone died eventually.

But in most cases, they did not know their time was coming.

===Between the Lines 2===

Something pushed up from his stomach.

He thought it was vomit, but it was blood instead. After splattering something the color of tomato juice into the antibacterial sink, Kamijou Touma staggered backwards.

With so many patients living in shared spaces, lines would form at the bathrooms if they were the only places with mirrors for grooming yourself and sinks for washing your face. That was why hospitals often had separate washing stations.

They were generally used to keep yourself clean and presentable even while hospitalized.

They were not meant for going pale-faced with despair.

“Acute St. Germain, huh?” sighed Othinus from his shoulder.

The look on her tiny face in the mirror said she could not call herself a god of war if the color splattered in the sink was enough to faze her.

Pride could often be taken as a negative thing, but it was also comforting to be surrounded by people with the proper knowledge of what to do in a crisis.

“Do you know what’s happening to me?”

This was an unexplained phenomenon as far as Academy City’s scientific analysis was concerned. Kamijou Touma fully trusted the frog-faced doctor’s skill. That man had saved him countless times. But that was why it weighed on him so heavily that this was too much for that doctor.

Those Tokiwadai girls might have widened their eyes at his tone of voice here. It was unusual for him to reveal his weakness like this.

The fifteen-centimetre one-eyed god, who was also his understander, let out a soft sigh and crossed her legs while seated on his shoulder.

“The Magician St. Germain is a colony of parasitic microbes. Oh, and it won’t infect anyone else unless certain specific steps are taken, so you don’t have to worry about that. I imagine St. Germain himself wanted to avoid diluting and altering himself by spreading indiscriminately.”

“…”

“That means St. Germain himself has no life force to be used as source for magic power. This might be easier to understand from an Eastern perspective than a Western one. Without a body containing the organs, blood vessels, and nerves, the ‘energy’ can’t circulate, and it can’t refine that energy into magic power. That’s why St. Germain always uses a host body to refine life force into magic power before using magic. For an Academy City esper, the side effects of that act as an internal attack that destroys the body.”

Kamijou wiped off his sticky lips with the back of his hand, but his lips still felt gross. He looked down and found the back of his hand was bloody too. The skin had split open and the dark red liquid was oozing out.

Even after seeing the wound, he felt no obvious pain there.

He probably had too many wounds to distinguish any single one anymore. His entire body felt hot and swollen and he could have sworn it had grown to twice its usual size. He was a human-shaped blob of pain.

“The method was different, but this is pretty much the same as what Anna Sprengel is doing in the guise of a giant IT company,” said Othinus. “The students of this city are being attacked by knowledge over the internet, while you are being directly attacked from within by a microbe, but in both cases, ''it comes down to the taboo of an esper using magic.''”

He heard a group of footsteps hurrying by outside the sliding door. The nurses were probably rushing to a hospital room after receiving a nurse call.

Finding the people collapsed in their dorms or on the streets and then transporting them to the hospital was difficult enough, but the problem did not end there. The number of R&C Occultics victims would only continue to grow. Once it reached a certain point, it was even possible the hospitals would cease to function.

And even after all this, they still had no idea what Anna was even trying to accomplish.

Why did the Rosicrucians want to cause this devastating damage to Academy City?

(What am I supposed to do?)

He questioned himself.

At the very least, he knew nothing would improve if he simply waited around here. If he did not do something while he could still move, he would rapidly run out options.

But where was he supposed to go and what was he supposed to do there?

He turned on the faucet to wash away the red blood that felt like it had been drained directly out of his lifespan.

“You will know that soon enough,” said Othinus from his shoulder.

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter2

2020-07-13T03:49:15Z

162.238.158.199:

==Chapter 2: Black Pill, White Snow — and_RED_Rose.==

===Part 1===

The girl looked to be around 10.

It could be hard to tell thanks to the shopping district’s arcade roof, but it was snowing outside. However, being outside in the middle of winter was not enough to stop her from working at the two scoops of ice cream sitting atop the cone she held.

“Munch, munch.”

“Why do I always end up taking in kids like this?”

The delinquent boy named Hamazura Shiage had a distant look in his eyes even though he only had himself to blame. This naked little girl had only a red cloth gathered around her flat chest to protect herself, so she was almost guaranteed to bring trouble.

This was all happening in District 13, where Academy City’s elementary schools were gathered. This was the shopping district that had always(?) existed on the far eastern end of the district. A lot of children would gather there even though it was not on the way home for most of them, so it had become known as Afterschool Snack Road. If it were not winter break, gym teachers filled with a sense of duty would be patrolling the area.

(It doesn’t look like there’s any immediate trouble. Honestly, maybe it’s a testament to how peaceful this place is that a naked girl in only a thin cloth can walk around without anything happening.)

He did not want to even entertain the thought that this was the latest fashion. At least he didn’t see anyone else dressed like this among the local kids troubling the miniskirt Santas in front of the bakeries by peppering them with questions, hoping to learn the secrets of the flying sleigh that could slip past the military radars of advanced nations.

He looked up into the sky and saw a food delivery drone carrying a box using the claws attached to its crab-like legs. He briefly wondered if it was carrying a cake or a turkey before returning to the real topic at hand.

“I guess I can ask Fremea later on. Speaking of which, what’s taking her?”

That delinquent was the type to take in a kitten on a rainy day, so he had a small friend in this district. In fact, the entire reason he was here was to bring Fremea Seivelun a bottle of a bubbly golden drink that had “nonalcoholic” plainly written on the label (and was more pricey than nonalcoholic beer) yet the clerk had still refused to sell to an elementary schooler like her. He wanted to get that party item to the sulky girl so he could be freed of the errand. But not because he was interested in the Christmas spirit. No, he just wanted to go after his girlfriend from a variety of angles while she sat motionless in the kotatsu. There was always the standard of embracing her from behind, but he could also go with submarine mode by sticking his head underneath the opposite side of the kotatsu!!

The girl in a white knit dress standing next to Hamazura sighed while looking even more exasperated than him. He was not clever enough to figure out what a girl was thinking just from the look on her face, but he could guess she had found her super-sweet donut (that was fully customized for District 13’s many elementary school students) too much to handle.

Her name was Kinuhata Saiai.

She was a Level 4 who had been even more involved in Academy City’s darkness than him.

He glanced down at the bare legs sticking out from the bottom of her short dress.

“Is there some bare-skin health craze I wasn’t aware of?”

“What exactly are you looking at while coming up with these super fantasies? Look any longer and you’ll have to pay me. And before you start asking about some ridiculous idea like nude sunbathing in the frigid December air, why don’t you give some super thought to how these questions will influence your life, Hamazura? As much as she says she doesn’t mind, I have a feeling that expressionless track suit girl would be super jealous, but what do you think?”

“Yikes.”

“If that’s all you can say, then you have some super sense left. If these lover’s spats are how you want to enjoy this couple’s holiday, be my guest, but don’t drag me into it. This isn’t about Level – Takitsubo-san is simply impossible to predict when she’s mad.”

Kinuhata sounded casual enough, but she was actually keeping her eyes on the windows and stainless-steel pillars around them. But not because she was worried about her hair or clothing. That was a professional’s way of monitoring her blind spots without having to turn her head or move her eyes too much.

It was worth being cautious at the moment.

''Because the entire dark side had apparently been shaken to its core.

(Now, will that year-end cleaning actually work? As long as there’s an illegitimate way to get ahead, the darkness will always crop up again. People love attaching price tags to everything and the negative cycle will begin anew when people need escape funding and hideouts to super shelter them during the chaotic aftermath. The rich can shout about justice through a loudspeaker all they want, but the black market won’t go away as long as people need it to survive.)

“Mm.”

The little girl used her small tongue to lick up the milk that had dripped onto the thumb holding the chocolate chip cookie cone. Some kind of AR walking game must have been having a Christmas event because the other children were gathered around seemingly empty areas with their phones at the ready, making it look like some kind of weird ritual. But this little girl must have had no interest in joining those children (and a few childish college students who were doing it too) because she stared at them with emotionless eyes.

“This really is a nice city,” she said from a short distance away. “Everyone has food to eat and a warm room to go home to, so they can all enjoy the holy night as no more than pretty scenery. Everyone has a livable environment here. Even though the winter city used to be a symbol of fear more sinister than a corpse, where the painful and ruthless chill would creep in through the snow to reach every nook and cranny both indoors and out. Just look at the hunger in St. Nicholas’s story or the icy cold in the Little Match Girl.”

“If you say so.”

A lot of kids that age liked to talk. Had she recently read a collection of harsh fairy tales or a book on how to make money by destroying people’s dreams?

She continued without worrying about the eyes on her.

“So I am sorry to say this city will soon return to having a true deadly winter. When a terrible day comes to an end, you might want to go to sleep with hope for tomorrow in your heart, but there was a time when you might not have woken up the following morning. People die so easily. But that is how humans are made, so it’s not your fault.”

“…?”

Something seemed off.

The little girl began muttering to herself while operating her phone.

“Hm, hm, hm hm. Good, good. It looks like all the people around the world I had rewrite the paperwork to keep scrutiny off my paper company are dead now.”

It was like leaning in to get a sniff of a beautiful flower only to discover a strange new kind of mantis in your face.

He could not read the emotion in the little girl’s eyes.

Something thick was lurking below the depths there.

A crescent moon smile split across her face as she looked up from the screen.

“''Is Takitsubo Rikou doing well?''”

“W-wait. What are you talking about?”

“''I do apologize for that. That was entirely my fault. Not that I expect you to understand even if I pulled out the name of that con artist Madame Horos. Since I have no way of objectively proving what happened, it is my duty to accept your anger and hatred.''”

A name burst into Hamazura Shiage’s mind.

Yes, he had ''only'' known her name.

That person had lured his girlfriend in with sweet words, taken control of her body, and used her as a disposable tool. He had known far too little about that hated enemy.

“Anna…”

And now the ordinary delinquent boy had found his enemy.

He had found that mysterious figure who lurked in the deepest depths of the magic side and may have been even more hidden than the Magic Gods.

Could this really be her?

“Anna Sprengel!!!???”

The bizarre figure who had taken the form of a little girl was no longer even looking his way.

She held the thin cloth in one hand and the ice cream cone in the other.

With her hands full, she turned around to look in a completely different direction.

“And I must apologize again. If I’m going to have some fun, they take priority.”

A heavy metal clanking sounded as two girls landed on the snow-covered arcade roof nearby.

The Ace and Queen of Tokiwadai had descended from the sky.

===Part 2===

They did not hold back.

The black metal on Misaka Mikoto’s back spread out like demonic wings. A Gatling gun, a chainsaw, a smoothbore gun, a melt-cutting blade, a multiple missile launcher, a large drill, a plasma cannon, and plenty more heavy weaponry were attached around a base of twin rocket engines.

That was the A.A.A., or Anti-Art Attachment.

It was such a black box that not even the #3 herself knew what the device was ''originally meant to do''.

But that was not enough to explain this.

While Mikoto could fly through the sky with that special equipment, the #5, Shokuhou Misaki, should not have been able to accomplish that kind of physical feat. And yet she was keeping up with fully-equipped Mikoto’s movements and rapidly jumped from a building rooftop to the arcade roof of the old(-looking, thanks to the professional “dirty” paintjob used for things like warship models) shopping district.

How could she do that?

There was a clear answer:

“I know that’s cutting-edge equipment, but couldn’t you have found something warmer for this time of year?”

“Ahhh, shiver, shiver. Send any complaints to my spare, ''Mitsuari Ayu''!”

Another girl had possessed a psychological power similar to Shokuhou Misaki’s. She had used several types of mechanical support to make up for her inadequacies as an esper and to defeat the #5 Level 5.

Those included the Five Over OS and the Five Over itself.

Both were Model Case: Mental Out.

To control ''that bizarre equipment which had attempted to purely mechanically reproduce the power of Academy City’s #5'', Mitsuari Ayu had worn a special suit.

However…

“Shiver, shiver, shiver.”

“A swimsuit – ha ha – a high leg cut – ah ha ha! – in December – ah ha ha ha ha!”

“Oh, shut up!! Why did you have to choose such a pain-in-the-butt design for this season and location, Mitsuari-saaan!?”

“And skintight too – pff ah ha ha! Hey, the crotch is looking pretty bulgy there.”

“It is not!! I can’t believe that girl! Did the loneliness drive her toward exhibitionism or something!?”

Shokuhou held her own body against the cold, but she still shouted in desperation with her body temperature higher than anyone else’s here. Fur coats and wool scarfs apparently had nothing on embarrassment when it came to keeping you warm.

The equipment’s design was about as crazy as bikini armor, but its defensive capabilities were very real.

And the enemy they had to defeat ASAP was right in front of them.

(It doesn’t look like she’s hiding a glass container or any other pills.)

After all, she only had a thin cloth barely covering her naked body. It seemed unlikely she had anything hidden below that, but did that mean she had no means of defense against the special microbes that not even Academy City could heal?

Or did she have antibodies in her body itself?

Whether it came to searching her possessions or running scans at the hospital, their best bet was to knock her out and capture her.

“Now, then,” said the barely-dressed little girl named Anna Sprengel. “''I gave you plenty of time, so I assume it has not spread to every part of his body yet. But if you’re still making me wait, perhaps I should speed things along.''”

Misaka Mikoto had seen Anna yesterday and the night before that. She had not noticed it at the time, but she had some clear differences from the other elementary schoolers who were busy using their phones to pursue the limited-edition Santa-costume Android Demon Lord (a hyper ultra miracle heroine who had destroyed three other worlds before arriving on earth and was actually just lonely). There was something about the aura surrounding the girl, the shadows lurking in her eyes, and the smile on her lips. There was something out of place there that felt far older than Mikoto or Shokuhou. Mikoto could not shake the feeling that she was looking at a cheaply faked ghost photo or something.

The girl had been holding her ice cream cone like a microphone, but she casually tossed what remained of it over her shoulder. As it flew up into the air and dropped behind her, her sweet lips formed a single word.

“Incubate.”

More of a shockwave than an explosion filled the space around her.

The tables and chairs in front of the stores were blown away, the Christmas tree and snowman decorations were knocked over, and the passersby were mercilessly thrown to the ground. The shop windows and even the transparent arcade roof all shattered.

“Misaka-saaan!!”

“I know!!”

If Mikoto used magnetism to take control of the metal objects and Shokuhou took control of the ''unconscious children and part-time workers,'' they could keep the snowy glass shards from shredding the skin of the defenseless people walking below.

Misaka Mikoto remained hovering in place and Shokuhou Misaki jumped to the ground when her footing collapsed.

The shopping district had lost its transparent protection, so the wind and snow could now reach it.

That was more than enough for the unconscious people to freeze to death.

“We need to move elsewhere!!”

“Do you really think she’ll give us the chance? I’ll use Mental Out ''to move those people out of the way'', so you buy me the time!!”

(What even was that, anyway?)

Mikoto was bewildered.

What had caused that shockwave?

And what was that giant orb that had appeared behind the little girl?

The metal sphere was more than 2m tall, making it taller than Anna herself. It gave off a dull silver light and it hovered in the empty air.

Had its appearance split the air?

That meant it worked very differently from Shirai Kuroko’s Teleportation. That girl’s movement did not have such a violent side effect.

It had caused this much damage simply by appearing.

Mikoto had no idea what it was, but she knew it was bad news.

(How was she storing that? If she’s storing the vaccine, antidote, or other defense in the same way, then can anyone but her even get it out!?)

She bit her lip and pulled out an arcade coin.

She placed the coin on her thumb while maintaining her midair position, but then she stopped moving.

The little girl was pointing at the center of her own chest with a thumb.

“Give me your best shot.”

“…”

“That ‘power’ was already deflected by ''a miniscule fraction'' of what R&C Occultics can provide anyone around the world, so do you really think it can harm me?”

“Argh!!”

Mikoto took action.

A boom shook the air and a beam of light scorched the air, but the straight line of destruction was not her Railgun that sent metal flying at three times the speed of sound.

It was a lightning spear.

She was afraid of facing that denial again. Even so, this lighting spear was powered up by the A.A.A. It could easily pierce the rubber suits used by workers on transmission towers and it might just immediately stop the heart of any ordinary person it hit.

However…

“Coward.”

She heard a single word full of both scorn and pity.

Not one step.

Anna Sprengel had not moved a single step while she was surrounded by dust crackling with electricity. The metal orb remained in place as well.

(What just…happened?)

Mikoto floated down from the broken arcade roof to the floor. She looked pathetic, but Anna actually seemed impressed.

“Oh, you didn’t fall for it?”

“…”

“Just like before, this would have been ''very much over'' if you hadn’t seen it. Did you use geomagnetism? Or the undetectably-faint plate vibrations? That’s kind of neat. So even the science side can detect those ''landmines'' made with ley line distortions.”

Anna laughed and pointed her thumb back over her shoulder.

While bragging about the metal orb there.

“Pneuma-less Shell. Hear me, Philosopher’s Egg and Clear Coffin. Hear me, spell that never strays far and is found hidden even in paintings and music. I seek not the red stone, so show me a distorted result here. So that junk might remain junk, entertain me with the unforeseen that not even I can predict.”

Was that a giant ship’s wheel at the very center?

The little girl grabbed it with her tiny hand and casually gave it a spin. It produced a continuous grinding noise like many heavy gears were turning along with it. Several cracks appeared in the orb and it opened in an even more complex way than a bank vault.

(Dammit, is this the real attack!?)

Something unbelievable had to be stored within.

The seal was opening.

There was no need to wait. Misaka Mikoto knew she had to settle this before the contents could show themselves, so she immediately readied the cutting-edge equipment she wore.

But she was an instant too slow.

Almost like the timing had been calculated out in advance to work that way.

With an especially loud clunk, ''it'' emerged.

It was a perfectly ordinary tree branch.

Mikoto’s mind went blank.

She honestly did not know what this meant.

The branch branched out several times to spread out like a large hand. It was no thicker than a little finger. It did have a scattering of solid green leaves, but Mikoto could not quite place what kind of tree it was from.

Mikoto help her breath, but for some reason, Anna Sprengel puffed out her cheeks from within. She slowly let out the breath she had been holding in and it took the form of a sigh.

“''Damn, that’s a dud.''”

“Really!!!???”

She did not wait a moment longer.

Had Anna infected that idiot over something so unimportant she was willing to leave it up to chance?

And on Christmas Eve of all nights?

Every weapon forming the demonic wings aimed at Anna Sprengel. They were all powerful enough to possibly sink a warship, but Mikoto was past worrying about how sturdy her opponent was.

However.

Anna’s next comment was one of complete disinterest.

“''Winning with this would be so easy it’d be a bore.''”

Misaka Mikoto perceived it as the wind crashing into the side of her face.

But in fact, the demonic wings of the A.A.A. had their right half torn away like they were made of wet paper.

The white curtain of the blowing snow was swept away only after a short delay.

They were still a good distance apart.

The little girl with only a thin blanket lazily covering her bare skin had merely given the tree branch a casual swing with her arm.

“What!?”

But it was too soon to be surprised quite yet.

The twin rocket engines ruptured and the special fuel leaking from within ignited. The silhouette of Academy City’s #3 was swallowed up by a flash of light as bright as the sun.

“Mi-”

The explosion was too large for ordinary gasoline to have caused it.

“Misaka-saaan!?”

Even Shokuhou’s scream was drowned out by the noise.

No one could have heard her, but Anna whispered in a singsong voice.

Or maybe she had never really been focused on that “enemy” in the first place.

“The world’s oldest whips are said to have been made from a thin tree branch, not leather or rope.”

She twirled the branch back to rest it on her bare shoulder.

This was the same as Misaka Mikoto flicking an arcade coin at triple the speed of sound.

In the hands of a true superhuman who could take a different view of things, even a single tree branch could produce such tremendous results.

“The first projectiles were stones, the first smokescreens were dried grass, the first biological weapons were corpses, and the first blades were…actually, I’m not sure if they were stone or bone. History and tradition can be found ''in any part of the world''. And their essence can be freely extracted from all things. If you go to the effort of-”

“Wait, essence? What are you talking abou-”

“What do you think I was just explaining, you rogd! Qhuvnd – ahhhh – hiengk!?”

A sudden change came over Anna.

She took action while Shokuhou watched on, frozen and unable to move.

That thin branch looked so cheap, yet it had eliminated the #3 with a huge explosion that may or may not have killed her. If the needle reached the end of the gauge, you would be killed for no reason. Without any dignity. Shokuhou Misaki had mastered all things related to the human mind, so she did not need to check a mirror to know the look on her face. She had the look of someone who had drawn the wrong card.

Meanwhile, Anna’s actions were even more obvious. Those were not attacks intended to kill. She kicked over the mascot in front of a nearby bakery and swung down the branch. She did not stop even after tearing off the thing’s head.

This was frightening in a different way from seeing a simple weapon or army.

It was like seeing the kind and hard-working straight-A student engaging in domestic violence.

“You people always do this! Always, always, always, always!! I’m teaching you all the right things from the very beginning, but you decide it’s too much work! You take these shortcuts and try to enjoy the feeling of mastering something without putting in any real time or effort!! And when that inevitably leads to failure, it’s somehow my fault? You don’t understand – truc – what you’re even doing, but you still feel qualified to criticize me? Are you kidding me!? Are you goddamn kidding – kfu – me here? Do! Not! Doubt! Me!! ~ ~ ~tnjswhglf~ ~ ~! Argh, there’s a purpose behind each step, so learn it all in order!! Don’t try to understand it yourself! Don’t assume you can – ntd – find the answer on your own!! If you just do what I tell you, all your questions will be answered and it will all make sense to you, you bvdhktuh!!!!!!”

It had been torn to pieces.

What had once been a torso was now just a few plastic blocks.

But then the monster must have noticed the dumbfounded honey-blonde girl’s eyes on her.

“Phew.”

She looked up from the mascot’s severed head, brought her hands together with the mystery branch still held in one of them, and smiled bright.

And she spoke with an adult confidence that seemed out of place from such a small girl.

“Sorry about that. But I will explain everything for you right now.”

“…”

Shokuhou was being taken in.

Even though she knew this was a bad sign.

The #5 girl was nearly invincible.

She had the strongest psychological power. She might have trouble in an unexplored jungle or the middle of the desert, but she was untouchable in a large city full of people. But there were a few people she would not want to run afoul of even then.

For example, the #1 who linked anything and everything to violence. Or the #2 who had stopped being an individual and split himself up so far that it was unclear if the overall will of “Kakine Teitoku” would keep a promise even if you negotiated with each individual branch and received their agreement. Those monsters could tear through a large group all on their own.

This girl was similar.

Manipulating minds was not enough to rest easy against her.

“Now, where was I? You were listening, so you know, don’t you?”

“S-something about prestige…”

“Oh, that’s right! The people who seek out the Son of God’s bloodstains or bundles of ancient parchment are smalltime losers who only want their actions to carry prestige. So you were listening. Good girl☆”

The girl (who at least looked young) laughed and denied everything before her eyes.

Yes. Listening to her, following her rules, and currying her favor were not a guarantee of survival.

For one thing, they were already engaged in combat.

“And the title of Level 5 here in Academy City is no different.”

===Part 3===

Shokuhou Misaki shuddered.

And she leaped behind cover as if a paralyzing curse had been lifted from her. She doubted the hip-height concrete barrier dividing the road from the café space could actually defend against Anna’s attack, but she wanted to avoid simply standing out in the open.

After all, Academy City’s #3 had been knocked out of the fight with the very first move.

More than anything Anna had done, Mikoto had been caught in the explosion of her own equipment and vanished into the bright flash of light, and Shokuhou could not spare the attention to try to figure out what had happened to her. If the other girl could no longer fight, that was that. And a psychological esper like Shokuhou could not hope to stick her hand into burning rocket fuel and drag someone out anyway.

Even from here, the heat felt like thin needles sticking into her body.

But she did not seem to be getting any warmth from that. The December chill remained, the snow stung as it hit her body, and that excessive heat was only doing more harm to the honey-blonde girl’s skin.

At the very least, the fire had not spread to the shops of this old(-looking) shopping district.

(I’m surprised I feel so betrayed by this. As much I’m loath to admit it, I must have been relying on Misaka-san more than I thought.)

But she still could not run away.

That boy would not last much longer if Anna was not defeated here. It was Shokuhou’s side that was in trouble if both sides lost sight of each other and wandered off into the city.

She forcibly stretched out her hand while crouched down with bent knees to grab at the chain of her bag full of remotes. She somehow managed to pull it over to her.

She heard a sound like thick rubber or leather stretching tight. It came from the suit between her two legs as her stretching to reach the bag put some kind of pressure on it.

She came to a stop as her thoughts were drawn to that part of her body. She had not thought too much about it before, but now she could not get her mind off of it. Was this an odd thing to think about given the circumstances? Yes, but she may have been trying to distract herself from the predicament she was in.

Mikoto’s nightmarish words replayed in her mind.

(It isn’t actually bulgy, is it?)

She looked down while crouching, but she could not tell from that angle. She knew this was not the time. She really did. But there were some things a girl just had to check on. She bit her lower lip and pulled out a forbidden item: a mirror.

(Hmm?)

The Queen was squirming behind cover while holding the small mirror up toward a fairly private location, but…

“Hey.”

“Hwaahhh!!!??”

“?”

The #5 Queen literally jumped when a casual voice spoke to her from beyond the concrete barrier.

Anna Sprengel’s usual all-knowing look had slipped as she stood there with her head tilted quizzically.

But the mirror was not what really mattered here. The other items in her bag were: the many remotes.

Shokuhou’s life was already at risk thanks to the enemy’s attacks and her own ally exploding, but she still pulled a TV remote out of the bag hanging from her shoulder. That item was the key to Academy City’s #5 power, Mental Out.

Her power had such broad applications that she had trouble using it properly without dividing it out and categorizing it.

Just as she aimed the remote and pressed the button with her thumb, Anna Sprengel’s head shook unnaturally, like it had been hit by an invisible bat from the side.

But…

“That will not work on me.”

“Eep!?”

(She recovered!? No, it didn’t take!!)

This was worse than with the #1 and #2 who she could control but she still had to keep her guard up around.

She had not expected her power to simply not work on someone. And not because they had forcibly deflected it with a solid defense like Misaka Mikoto did.

“You were mistaken to assume the supernatural ability to control people would allow you to comprehend my mental structure and take control. If you hope to grasp the mind of Anna Sprengel, you should have first trained yourself to the point that you can at least take control of an entire angel.”

Mental Out did not work.

Shokuhou’s power was strong, but ''it did not work at all against cats or dogs.

And if her psychological power did not work on her enemy, her only remaining option was to use it on other people to gain more pawns. But doing that would only be sending innocent people to be slaughtered by Anna. That would leave a terrible taste in her mouth.

In fact, no one could stand up to this girl.

Even ''he'' had apparently been taken out with a single kiss attack.

That was why Shokuhou had not brought along any students with useful powers despite being the Queen of Tokiwadai’s largest clique. This was no longer about logic. The legend was crumbling. Not even Shokuhou Misaki was willing to carry the burden of someone else’s life when it came to fighting Anna.

In that sense, the only person she was comfortable with making use of here was that other girl.

(Speaking of which, what is that meathead doing? With our physical fighter down, even getting the ordinary people to safety is going to be tricky!)

She effectively had to do this without Mental Out. She was wearing the special equipment related to the Five Over, but the general athletic ability it provided her was still not enough to outdo Mikoto.

(And it’s worrying that Mitsuari-san never released the limiters on this suit during that ''other fight''. Dark side toys aren’t going to follow the safety standards, so I hope there isn’t a problem with this thing.)

With the #3 taken out in a single attack, Shokuhou did not see how she could escape defeat no matter how much she jumped and leaped around.

So she had to find some other way.

But what other way was there!?

“Now, what will it be this time?”

Shokuhou heard the sound of heavy metal grinding together.

Even with the snow falling on her through the broken arcade roof, Anna Sprengel had tossed aside the ordinary tree branch and started turning the wheel attached to the 2m orb.

A perfectly logical victory was not going to inspire any emotion inside her.

So she chose to laugh now that she had once more thrown some randomness into the battle.

That superhuman had reached the point that ''she enjoyed having Lady Luck abandon her.

“If you don’t give up, you might just win eventually. But not because of anything you do – because my luck runs out. But if you don’t keep buying tickets, you can never win the lottery.”

“…!!!???”

With a dull thud, a complex arrangement of cracks ran through the orb and it opened up to reveal…

“Rope.”

Was that the tool she planned to use to take on one of the strongest forces in Academy City?

It was a perfectly ordinary piece of junk that looked so worn out it could snap at any moment, but Miss Sprengel hummed with the smile of a small child returning to their secret base and showing off the prize they had found on the ground.

There was no legend here.

It was really and truly a dud.

Yet she remained unchanged. The difference between her and her opponent was too overwhelmingly great. So much so that Anna herself seemed bored to death.

“So a question: what is this the world’s oldest form of?”

===Part 4===

Anna Sprengel laughed.

She had considered going easy on her opponent if she got the right answer, but that girl apparently had no intention of trying. She turned 180 degrees around, her honey-blonde hair spreading out behind her, and she began running full speed away.

(Of course, going easy on her would just mean a longer, more painful death instead of an instant, painless one.)

It did not look like the girl was actually trying to escape.

Was this a temporary withdrawal so she could hide herself and make a surprise attack later?

(I am impressed she’s willing to risk her life for an antidote that might not even exist as far as she knows.)

“You’re used to working from behind the scenes, aren’t you? Do you normally boss other people around to wear down your enemy from a position of safety? Or are you actually afraid of letting these children come to harm? Hee hee. This is a school culture, isn’t it? You’re all children, but you upperclassmen get stuck with so much extra work.”

The girl who looked no older than 10 had not moved a step from that spot. Her smile remained, yet she did not try to hide the boredom on her face as she waved her small hand to the side.

And she gave the answer to her quiz question.

“This is the world’s oldest form of bondage, courtesy of ancient Egypt.”

Several things could be heard slicing through the air.

The distance between them did not matter.

The old rope looked worn out and ready to snap if it tried to support someone’s body weight, but the Rose leader was able to endlessly draw out its essence. With that, she could bind even an asteroid falling from the heavens to hold it in place in the middle of the air.

(Running away will only mean stepping on and being blown away by a distorted ley line “landmine”.)

But…

“Wagh!!!???”

Shokuhou Misaki let out a strange cry and then pitched forward onto the ground.

Anna Sprengel had not done anything to her.

The snow had started to pile up due to the shattered roof, so the ground may have grown wet and slippery.

The rope thrown by Anna actually missed its target entirely, shooting by directly over the Queen of Tokiwadai’s head, and wrapping tightly around one of the pillars that held up the arcade roof. A light tug with her small hand was all it took for tremendous pressure to break the pillar away.

Anna had used the world’s oldest whip and a ley line landmine, yet her opponent had dodged them both simultaneously. And not with the esper powers or technology of Academy City. This was purely the girl’s lack of athletic ability.

''The'' Miss Sprengel stared in disbelief.

It was true Shokuhou Misaki was wearing a suit that supported her athletic abilities.

It was not a powered suit designed for combat, but it was still a bizarre piece of Academy City tech she had picked up in the dark side. Shokuhou would be able to take a handgun bullet to the torso without flinching and she could lift the average car from the ground with just her two arms.

But that did not mean she had overcome her own lack of ability there.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

If she had followed the proper movements found in textbooks, she would have been killed instantly. And Anna would have looked bored throughout. Or if the suit had optimized her movements based on combat data from martial arts masters, Anna would have snorted with laughter. She would have called that high-tech solution just another way of seeking the prestige of her predecessors.

But that was not what had happened.

Shokuhou Misaki had survived in her own way.

Anna’s predictions had failed. She had not received the expected result. A loophole or vulnerability in the world had been discovered here and it had overturned Anna’s accurate predictions in a single move.

It may have been a very minor thing, but it was also so wonderfully, unbelievably sweet.

“Ha ha☆”

The sweetness burned at her mind.

She knew this was a bad habit of hers, but she went along with it anyway.

It was like a never-before-seen powerful enemy had appeared in the middle of some tedious level grinding.

She let go of that rope that should have been a sure thing for her and she once more spun the wheel on the Pneuma-less Shell. With another grinding noise, the giant orb opened along a complex arrangement of cracks and her small hand roughly snatched at what emerged from within.

Her target’s face was bright red with embarrassment as she scrambled to her feet and continued to run away. Her long blonde hair swayed side to side while she tried to leave the arcade.

“Eh heh hah, ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!! What luck! You have such absurd luck!! Well, you did emerge victorious from the endlessly-cruel screening process of gene rarity to stand here before me now, so I suppose you had already proven your luck! Even so – hee hee – I never thought you would make me laugh like this. Ha ha ha ah ha ha ah ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

The metal orb groaned some more as it opened. It was no longer holding out on Anna.

“Pff. Ah ha ha! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten an ultra-rare one like this! This is from the 20th century!!”

“Kh.”

A tree branch and a flimsy rope had been devastating enough. Shokuhou grimaced at the thought of what was to come, but she was entirely taken aback by what emerged.

It was a silver-colored mass. It was no more than a 58cm sphere, but it sounded much heavier than a bowling ball when it dropped to the ground. The asphalt broke below it. But the official documents said it weighed 84kg, so that was to be expected. It also had four metal rods that extended behind it like a comet’s tail.

In other words…

This was…

“Sputnik☆ Are satellites more your thing, Miss Science Side?”

“Wait a second.”

“The essence I can draw from this is the world’s oldest orbital launch. Although poor lonely Laika was on the second one. Now, I hope you enjoy this super-ultra-rare cause of death!!”

The instant Anna raised her hand from a good distance away, Shokuhou’s hair rose up in defiance of gravity. She was outside the shopping district, meaning no more arcade roof overhead. Only the mercilessly snowy sky waited up above her.

“Oh, no. This has to be some kind of joke ability. If she seriously going to blow me away like this!?”

She went pale and tried the best she could to run away, but…

“Eek!?”

Her right ankle twisted in an odd direction, she staggered to the side, and she fell. Anna’s predictions and calculations must not have taken that into account because the bus stop sign right next to her was torn from the ground and thrown into the snowy sky instead. Only the blue sky awaited it.

“Hee hee. You really are entertaining.”

“Oww.”

“More, more, more, more!!”

Anna rejoiced at her own bad luck.

She pulled out the next one. It was a perfectly ordinary fist-sized stone. No, it had a small indentation that the little girl stuck her finger into. What she scooped up was not paint. The thick, reddish-black substance was…

“Ha ha, ah ha ha. The world’s oldest writing tool was charcoal. Before papyrus or parchment, humanity preserved their own records by mixing charcoal with blood or fat and rubbing it on cave walls.”

She even licked her lips as she whispered the answer.

She toyed with the substance on her fingertips and moved her hand as if she were carving something into the world as a whole.

“In other words, all grimoires started from here.”

She wrote on a round table lying on its side nearby.

She wrote on a stainless-steel pillar that had avoided breaking.

She wrote on the snowman decoration positioned in front of an ice cream shop.

And all of them transformed into original grimoires that drew energy from the ley lines to autonomously defend themselves.

They all creaked as they began to move. The table’s four legs moved like an animal’s, the stainless-steel pillar bent over and crawled around like an earthworm or inchworm, and the snowman decoration’s smile gained a definite will of its own. And all three of them “glared” toward fleeing and falling Shokuhou Misaki.

“Go on. Sic her☆”

They obeyed Anna’s lazy command by rushing toward the girl, each in their own way.

The air shook.

The newly accumulating snow was blown away as they began to run.

Anna once more noted the middle school girl’s “luck” when she did not immediately look back at her pursuers. These were true grimoires, even if they were impromptu ones. If the casually written words there had entered the girl’s field of view, they would have assaulted her brain and sent blood pouring from every hole on her face.

“Ahh!!”

Anna had never imagined that someone facing such a threat to their life would run right smack into the support pillar of a wind turbine.

The table had overtaken its target and then made a U-turn to cut off her escape like a hound, but the unexpected collision threw off its aim and it crashed into a concrete wall instead.

“Pff!?”

When Shokuhou Misaki pushed her hands against the ground and climbed to her feet, the stainless-steel inchworm was clearly right there at the center of her vision, but she was so dizzy from the pain in her nose and her tension was so high that the text must never have actually reached her mind. She managed to overlook what was right in front of her and it saved her life.

Anna Sprengel could only hold her stomach with both hands and laugh.

“Ah ha ha ha!!!!!! Yes, you I like. Kamijou Touma is interesting as a raw material to work with, but he’s grown so used to his misfortune and he’s learned how to operate within it, so he’s just too unchanging. You, on the other hand, are a delight. You really are trying to do everything flawlessly, but you’re so hopelessly bad at it that it actually ends up saving you. Yes, yes. This truly is beyond any of my expectations!!!”

And how did the Queen of Tokiwadai respond while on the run?

“This city only needs one Queen: me!!”

(Now I get why Mitsuari-san never shut off the suit’s limiters no matter how cornered she felt ''back then''. This thing amplifies your unathletic side too, so one careless acceleration could have you trip or crash into a wall at twice the speed and she wanted to avoid self-destructing like that!)

Shokuhou Misaki tearfully held her reddened nose with a hand while shouting back at her foe.

Anna had called Kamijou Touma a “raw material”.

She would make her regret that. She would make her cough up whatever vaccine or antidote she was hiding. She would do whatever it took ''like the cruel queen she was.

Anna Sprengel walked leisurely through the shopping district and poked her head out from the arcade before looking a bit to the side.

That was when it happened.

An arcade coin shot down from the top of the building at three times the speed of sound.

===Part 5===

It was past the point that thinking of her as a 10-year-old mattered.

“Eek!”

Shokuhou’s throat trembled at the sudden explosion.

A powerful explosion and shockwave erupted around Anna Sprengel, sending smashed plastic and concrete into the air as a fine dust. Invisible but thick walls rushed out in every direction, forcibly tearing the inchworm and snowman from the ground as they tried to attack the honey-blonde girl. It was the same principle as a ship’s sail or an umbrella during a typhoon. Shokuhou had fallen to the ground while the monsters had their large bodies raised, so the blast affected them differently.

“Oh, my.” Anna laughed from a short distance away while holding the thin red cloth to her chest. “You finally found the courage, did you? Good girl. You seemed to be arguing before, but does she actually mean a lot to you?”

But they had bigger issues to deal with.

Shokuhou looked up while still trembling.

Academy City’s #3 had her feet perfectly balanced atop the raised edge of a short building’s rooftop. But the A.A.A. was gone. Instead of sticking with that half-destroyed junk, she must have abandoned it to focus on escaping the rocket fuel explosion.

Shokuhou Misaki raised her voice while grimacing at the unpleasant wetness of the snow that her own body heat had melted below her butt.

“What is this sticky dust ability!? Microplastics? Concrete powder? Ew, ew, ew, ew! Are you trying to kill me by having me breathe in all this gross stuff!?”

“Shut up and go back to eating your organic vegetables covered in caterpillars and worms!! I just saved your snowy ass, so you should be rubbing your forehead into the ground to thank me! And get on up here. I can’t aim my Railgun at those ''drones'' with you down there!!”

“…”

Shokuhou leaped straight up before she could even look back on reflex. She jumped a full 7 meters with no footholds on the way up. Unfortunately, she had been too panicked to even think about how she would land. In fact, she jumped clear over the building rooftop, lost her balance in midair, and began to rotate vertically.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

“(The world would probably be better off if I just let her fall ass-first into one of the TV antennas or Christmas trees around here.)”

“Enough calm calculation ability! Just save me already! Humanely, I mean!!”

Mikoto fired a few extra Railguns down.

Instead of Anna Sprengel herself, these were launched at the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman that had been attacking Shokuhou.

Explosions and shockwaves erupted out and they knocked the honey-blonde girl further off course, sending her through two flips along an unnatural trajectory. And for some reason, she landed neatly in Mikoto’s arms.

She was being princess carried in a highly unusual fashion.

“Kyun☆”

“Don’t say that out loud, you liar Queen!!”

“Well, this isn’t my first time being princess carried, so this is fine by me.”

Mikoto did not like where this conversation was headed, so she relaxed her arms to let Shokuhou fall straight down. She let Shokuhou’s defenseless back fall right onto her raised knee, bending her spine at an unpleasant angle.

“Agwahh!?”

“Stop thinking you have the upper hand here and tell me one thing. I need to know to stay focused right now, okay? The first time you just mentioned. Was it with that idiot? I can’t imagine who else it would be.”

“I-I’ll leave that one to your imagination.”

A gloomy darkness entered Mikoto’s eyes, but she was also focused on the reality before them. Now was not the time to be having fun with Miss Exhibitionist in her high leg swimsuit (with one portion of her body a bit damp after sitting in the snow).

Their enemy was not dead yet.

And that did not just refer to the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman.

Anna Sprengel parted the dust while laughing. Yet the asphalt at her feet was torn up, so the Railgun blast had definitely hit there.

(You damn monster!!)

Mikoto clenched her teeth, but she had honestly doubted a surprise attack would be enough to settle this.

That was why she had been able to fire the shot without worrying about accidentally killing the girl and forever losing the only means of saving that boy.

Her Railgun was supposed to be her trump card, but ever since the 24th, it had been reduced to a mere door knocker that always lost to the enemy’s defenses. However, she was most humiliated by the fact that she was actually growing accustomed to that fact. Of course, that was due to the fact that she had high enough base stats to swiftly accept unpleasant information so she could work towards another solution instead of being a one-trick pony.

“What do we do!? My Mental Out isn’t showing any sign of working!!”

“Has she abandoned her humanity in body and mind? Anyway, we need to get away from her for the time being! Even if we are going to take the fight to her, we need to at least lure her into a soccer field, nature park, or other open area. Otherwise we’ll just do more damage to everything around her!!”

They knew it would only sadden Kamijou Touma if they caused a ton of collateral damage while trying to save him.

And that side of him was part of what made them want to save him in the first place.

Shokuhou Misaki was wearing an enhancement suit, but she would still trip and fall (with several times the force of normal), so she could not exactly jump from rooftop to rooftop in the middle of battle. If she slipped on the snow during her running start, she could end up falling and going splat at the bottom. Thus, Mikoto continued princess carrying her while leaping from frozen building to frozen building.

The Queen of Tokiwadai brushed her hair from her shoulder.

“Yes, this is how it’s supposed to work. The super genius beauty handles all the cool and calculated brainwork while the brawny dumb-dumb handles all the fighting and the transportation while also looking after me☆”

“I’ll drop you from this 12-story building, pork buns.”

“Whaaaat!? How can you look at this perfect, lustrous body and think of that horrifying convenience store product full of additives!?”

The dumb Queen roared back with various (meat-filled) parts of her jiggling, but Mikoto ignored it. Although she did decide to be a little kinder to Shirai Kuroko who she always used as a convenient means of getting around. She had discovered that asking for help and being asked for it were completely different experiences.

She also noticed she had calmed down enough to think about other things like that.

Not receiving any additional attacks from Anna Sprengel would of course be best, but Anna also had no real reason to stop. It was hard to imagine ''her'' losing sight of someone just because they fled across the rooftops. This was an improvement, but it had been handed to them by the enemy. Mikoto was honestly unsure if she could simply accept it, so she grew cautious.

“…”

After coming to a stop on a rooftop (while princess carrying the hot and juicy pork buns), she looked back into the distance.

She saw nothing there.

Nor did she hear anything.

She waited for a bit before realizing what had happened.

“She…isn’t following us?”

Why not?

She thought to herself in the falling snow, failed to find an answer, and felt her mind boiling over.

She thought back to the sign she had seen Anna Sprengel looking at: ''Straight Ahead – District 15.

In other words…

“''Did she lose all interest in us!?''”

===Part 6===

“You know what I’ve realized, Kami-yan?”

“What?”

Kamijou Touma sounded out of it as he responded.

“It’s not about the female doctors and nurses.” Aogami Pierce sat cross-legged on the neighboring bed with nothing better to do. “I’m all about the sickly girls in pajamas right now. I saw the cutest girl with a bob cut and an eyepatch out in the hall earlier.”

“What’s with you, Aogami Pierce? Did you take a mental trip to some other world when Fukiyose broke your secret tablet over her knee during her visit?”

“In fact, this is the home of girls in casts and eyepatches!! I need to be more careful cause I overlooked this until now! And I’m supposed to be the all-time master!!”

What did that matter?

Kamijou regretted asking, but he decided to say one thing more.

“What am I supposed to do about this information?”

“Let’s go visit a girl’s room.”

“Why did I even ask!? We can’t do that! You’re the kind of guy that loses all control on the school trip and ends up hated by the entire class! Think for two seconds why they go to the trouble of keeping separate rooms for boys and girls in the hospital!!”

“Shut up!! I’m not spending my Christmas playing cards with another guy!! I want at least one bittersweet memory!!”

Aogami Pierce’s hands were not functioning, so he had learned how to manipulate the cards with his toes. People always found a way to grow when the need arose. Even if it was meaningless growth.

He was making more sense than when he had been stubbornly refusing to admit Christmas was anything special, but he had taken it in the worst possible direction. Kamijou really wanted to avoid being caught in the middle of this.

“Don’t worry, Kami-yan. I’m pretty sure I can get away safely while they’re attacking you.”

“Do I need to break a few of your bones to extend your stay here? If you know we’ll be attacked and have to ‘get away’, none of your dreams are going to come true there!! Just accept the reality you’re stuck with, Aogami! At most, you might open the door and accidentally see them changing, but no love starts that way!!”

“Wrong!! We still have our old friends the suspension bridge effect and Stockholm syndrome!!”

“Aren’t those both about people mistaking their fear for something else!?”

Kamijou was aware that manuals on how to get someone to fall in love through hypnotism or psychology stubbornly refused to go away in certain niche markets, but he was pretty sure the end result of that would only feel empty. It was all one way and they would never be seeing you for who you really were.

“Oh, I’ve given up on any normal sort of love,” said the garbage in the neighboring bed while sounding almost proud of himself.

“…”

“As long as I can do her, I don’t really care how I get to that point. The age of maturity was lowered! And there’s a curse placed on all us boys, requiring us to lose our virginity before then!!”

“Pretty sure you’re just screwing yourself up so bad you’ll never even be able to hold a girl’s hand.”

“Wait…you’ve been acting awfully calm for someone sharing this hellish Christmas with me. What is this barrier between us? You can tell me!”

Kamijou Touma stared off into the distance.

He lamented his current situation.

And he stuffed a rolled-up tissue in his nose while thinking back on something.

“Kissing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Aogami Pierce stopped breathing.

“What…did you say? And what’s that nosebleed supposed to mean!?”

“I mean, people’s mouths are full of germs. You never know what kind of microbes are in there.”

“How dare you!!!”

===Part 7===

Anna Sprengel sighed quietly.

She looked up into the chilly white sky as those two disappeared, but then she looked away. It was just like a child watching an airplane through the car window until the car entered a tunnel.

She began walking in the direction she was most interested in.

She checked the blue sign and kept walking with a bored look on her face.

(Shokuhou Misaki is fun because she introduces so many irregularities without even meaning to, but now Misaka Mikoto is in control again. People who fight properly and lose seriously are such a bore. There’s nothing of value there. And I was really hoping to enjoy that a while longer too.)

Below the snowy sky, she wiped the reddish-black paint off of her small fingertips which looked softer than custard, causing the devices she had sent out to collapse on the spot. The powerful text written out on the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman all melted away and the same happened to the inanimate objects themselves. They were only makeshift grimoires and they had failed to establish the proper circulation of ley line power absorbed from the ground, so they appeared to rupture from within. It was similar to a stroke or aneurysm where your own blood flow kills you.

She did not even care enough to look back at what remained.

She snapped her fingers as she walked and the 2m metal orb compressed down behind her. In the blink of an eye, it became a bottle no larger than an eyedrop container. The miniscule round flask was lined with a thin lead foil. And unlike the flasks found at ordinary schools, this one had multiple necks, making it look something like a bagpipe.

This was not her only trump card.

The Pneuma-less Shell was a base metal still made by intentionally distorting the original egg. It was in fact a spiritual item meant to disturb her own rhythm and reduce her status.

Once you eliminated death, you would forget the fear of death and others could bring about your death without you even realizing it. In other words, it led to careless mistakes. Just like the immortal Greek gods were unable to control themselves and ended up giving into their pride and jealousy, leading to many very human mistakes.

People could not restrain or govern themselves without wanting for something.

Think of the people of a certain country who so hated the clean water coming from their faucets at home that they would go out and buy bottled mineral water. Did those people properly appreciate the rarity of that single drop of water?

“I suppose that’s enough ''sightseeing''. There’s nothing more to see in this city, so maybe I should get to work. Nothing else of interest here. …If St. Germain still hasn’t destroyed that boy, I need to help it along.”

(The acute St. Germain should have spread through his body by now, but I can hasten the process by driving him to anger.)

“I wonder what I’ll see.”

She laughed.

All she did was laugh.

“The pain, anxiety, fear, and resignation will wear your soul away, leaving only the last and final piece, but what will that final piece be, Kamijou Touma? I cannot wait to see what your true essence is.”

Anna then pulled out a perfectly ordinary smartphone to replace her spiritual item. It displayed the kind of map app used everywhere in the world.

The signs around here said this was the border between Districts 13 and 15.

Her destination was further east.

Academy City would normally be blotted out on navigation services from outside the city, but this was a complete version with everything down to the back alleys filled in by a satellite belonging to R&C Occultics. She could find her way around Academy City with this.

“Hm, hm, hm hm☆”

She inputted her destination and a few different routes were automatically calculated.

She tapped the shortest of the routes to begin.

Her destination was a certain hospital in District 7.

The phone spoke in a polite, female artificial voice.

“One hour to your destination.”

===Part 8===

The situation had changed.

They hesitantly turned back the way they had come and then followed the blue signs to the east. They of course made sure to continue jumping from snowy rooftop to snowy rooftop to avoid accidentally running into Anna on the streets.

Yet it was them that were in trouble if they lost sight of Anna.

She was the only one with the vaccine or antidote they needed. They had to prevent her from reaching the hospital.

But they also knew Anna would show up at the hospital eventually, so couldn’t they lie in wait there instead of trying to chase her around?

No, they could not.

Two Level 5s had attacked without slowing her in the slightest, so the hospital would be destroyed the instant she arrived there. It did not matter whether or not the sick boy who kept coughing up blood could win in the end. Everything there – the people and the things – would be destroyed in the process.

And that might be enough to break him.

Because he would carry the weight of things he had no responsibility to carry.

“Whoops.”

They had to be careful while jumping. If they knocked some snow off the edge of a roof, they might just be noticed.

They had arrived in District 15.

This district looked very different. It was Academy City’s largest shopping district, so it was flooded with young people dressed up as Santa or a reindeer. There were also some weird costumes like a box or a turkey with short arms and legs attached. There was apparently an attempt to break the record for the world’s largest cake, so the excitement was not going to end until the cake had been sliced up and everyone had a chance to snap a photo of their piece.

There were no umbrellas to be seen.

The view of the phone cameras was apparently more important than anyone’s health, so those view-blocking pieces of waterproof fabric would get you judged guilty.

Which made her easy to spot.

“There she is!”

A pedestrian deck was constructed up above a pedestrian scramble, making for a very busy area, but a girl who looked to be only 10 was walking above the road there mixed in with the crowd. From time to time, some young people carrying bottles of beer or sparkling wine (those were actual adults and not just high schoolers, right?) would pour some of their drink on her while laughing. The thin red cloth barely covering her was actually being accepted by the people here, so District 15’s happy and cheerful Christmas was a strange time indeed. A young wife in only an apron would apparently be accepted as no more than a costume on this day.

Shokuhou was disgusted since she preferred a classier atmosphere.

“This is worse than I’d heard.”

“All these lights are nearly blinding me, so it’s easy to lose track of her. Help me double check her location.”

The partying was already out of control, but a girl must have decided this was her chance and began an unauthorized concert out on the street. Around 10 bodybuilders were lifting up a German luxury car (probably one of theirs) like a palanquin and smiled for the camera while filming an ad for a sports gym. This white Christmas was growing deadly cold, yet both the girl with a bare midriff and a megaphone and the oiled-up group in only trunks did not seem to care. District 15 really was a strange place. Enough so that the TV cameramen who had showed up hoping to get some good footage had to cover the lens with a hand to avoid filming the overly risqué costumes and the people misbehaving for the camera. It was easy to see why no one was paying much attention to Anna.

Had she chosen to use the elevated path because the ground level was packed in as close as a crowded train during rush hour? Although it did look like there would have been other options.

“She really is staring due east!” shouted Mikoto while focusing on something other than the people.

A blue sign was installed on the pedestrian deck. It was half frozen over by sherbet-like snow, but it was still readable: ''Straight Ahead – District 7.

(She’s moving from west to east? And District 15 leads right into District 7.)

Shokuhou must have been thinking the same thing because she arched one of her shapely eyebrows.

“There are plenty of landmarks there, but the last place we want her is there too: the District 7 hospital where he was taken.”

Anna was walking along in such a defenseless way she might as well have been daring them to attack her.

And if they managed to entertain her, she would be willing to come to stop and watch the show. But the instant she lost interest, she would resume walking toward that hospital. And once she arrived, she would destroy the entire building with the dying boy inside. Her steady pace gave off the same precision fear as a time bomb or a cruise missile.

Shokuhou kicked her legs like a small child while being princess carried.

“So what do we do?”

“Stop trying to act cute, pork buns.”

“The next time you call me that, I’m breaking through your mental barrier with Mental Out.”

“Oh, really? Well, I chose not to call you ‘sweet buns’ because I thought it sounded wrong, but if that’s what you prefer. Also, she’s using a device to navigate, isn’t she? Then we need to move in close and attack.”

“Did you learn nothing from last time!? We can’t hope to win with our direct fighting ability!!”

That was not something two Level 5s should have been saying.

But if they did not accept their disadvantage, they could not keep up with reality. They would be left behind by the times.

Mikoto let out a white sigh.

“Which is why that’s a diversion. Our real plan is to hack her phone and mess with her navigation to send her in an endless circle. I don’t really know how much of a monster this Anna Sprengel person is, but that’s a normal electronic device she’s holding. We can redirect her somewhere more convenient for us and then figure out how to keep her from defending herself. We’ll invite her into a whiteout. It’s time she learned how scary it is to get stranded out in the snow in a high-tech city of 2.3 million!!”

“I see,” said Shokuhou Misaki.

The diversion part would have to be done by Misaka Mikoto since physical fighting was her specialty. Everyone involved already knew Shokuhou Misaki’s Mental Out did not work on Anna, so the Queen honestly had nothing to do here. She just wanted Mikoto to get it on with it and become a noble sacrifice that would extend that pointy-haired boy’s life.

Except she had forgotten something.

Her dislike of the other girl was a mutual one.

“Okay, do your best to act as disposable bait. If she actually takes a bite of those sweet and sexy buns, I promise to never forget your sacrifice.”

“Bwah, wait!? Th-this is an 8-story building!! You can’t just toss me off of here, Misaka-saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!!”

After a count of three, Mikoto tossed the weight she was princess carrying. Shokuhou felt an odd floating sensation, but she could not actually do anything but scream while dropping down. And with that much noise, everyone in the area ended up looking up toward the source. That included Anna Sprengel in the middle of the crowd.

And a crescent moon smile had torn across her face.

It was the cruel smile of a small child thinking about squishing the bug held between her fingers.

“Ha ha☆”

“I am so sick of being used as a toy for weirdos with no common sense!!”

While Shokuhou flailed her arms and legs, the transmission of force must have come together just right because she spun around in midair and her feet landed cleanly on the railing of the pedestrian deck.

(A-and Misaka-san didn’t even help my landing ability!? Was that musclebound moron really trying to kill me!?)

“Of course I helped. I just did it wirelessly.”

That response came from the same pedestrian deck as Anna.

They were less than 10 meters apart. Misaka Mikoto was crouched down to keep a more animalistic eye level as she took aim at the little girl’s navel. And she rushed in with enough force to dislocate Anna’s spine with a single tackle.

At the same time, a disconcerting sound came from all over Shokuhou’s body. No, the skintight suit covering her was being ''electrically'' controlled.

She leaped from the railing, flipped as gracefully as a ballerina or figure skater, and used the centrifugal force to sweep her heel around in a roundhouse kick. It was aimed for Anna’s face. Specifically, her eyes.

She did not need to score a clean hit.

As long as it blinded Anna or forced her to evade, it would create the opening Mikoto needed.

“Wait! Misaka, why!?”

Shokuhou Misaki finally bristled and yelled about being used as a sacrificial pawn, but the seemingly 10-year-old girl reached a small hand out toward the approaching heel and casually grabbed the Queen’s ankle. With a swing of her arm, Shokuhou transformed into a projectile to intercept Mikoto.

Mikoto did not really care. She focused on her magnetic control.

Instead of catching Shokuhou who flew in while rotating like a defective boomerang, Mikoto stepped on the girl (specifically on those loathsome twin pork buns on her chest) to take a leap forward.

This did not produce a “boing” sound effect, nor did it enhance her jump in any noticeable way.

(Really?)

The honey-blonde girl was mad now (and too much of an amateur to realize she needed to focus on her landing right now), so she pulled a TV remote from her bag and aimed it at Mikoto.

That girl who liked watching TV despite being the Queen of social media raised her voice.

“There are TV crews here, so you can kiss your social life goodbye after I make you strip down and dance in the nude, Misaka-saaan!!”

“Don’t interfere! Now is not the time!!”

With a dull zap, Mikoto’s head shook to the side. The #5’s Mental Out did not work on the #3 as long as Mikoto rejected it. All it did was give her a minor headache.

Without that, Mikoto would have crashed into Anna Sprengel, slammed her to the ground, and pinned her down. As a teenage girl, she hated having to win by using her weight, but there was no way such a little girl could overpower her like that.

But.

Something scorched the empty air.

If Mikoto had stayed on her previous course, her upper body would have been reduced to ashes before she even reached Anna.

Anna did not appear to be holding any kind of special weapon.

She had simply blown a kiss in an oddly mature way for her body size.

(What? This isn’t like that junk she was using before!)

The soles of Mikoto’s shoes scraped at the pedestrian deck. She had landed a bit to the side of the girl instead of on top of her.

She had not intended for that and she doubted Shokuhou had either.

Still unarmed, Anna laughed.

She crossed her fingers in an odd way for simply clenching and unclenching her fist.

“Hilarious. You should really keep the unathletic one in charge.”

“I! Am! Not! Unathletic!!!!!!”

That must have been something Shokuhou Misaki refused to let stand because she tearfully hopped back up while rolling and writhing on the ground (because she had been too focused on revenge to prepare for her landing).

Anna waved a small hand and took a single step back.

That brought her right alongside a redheaded high school girl in a knit cap who happened to be on the same pedestrian deck.

“Oh, no! She’s taking a hostage!!”

“Hey.”

But what happened next came as a complete surprise.

Instead of holding a blade up to the girl, Anna whispered in her ear.

The girl had been trying to earn more views on social media by filming as much of the partying as she could, but she had not had the courage to dress up in a costume herself.

“''Did you hear that? A mere middle schooler is worried for you. Doesn’t it make you want to die of embarrassment when you’re in high school''?”

“What?”

“''How long were you planning to be a mere cameraman while walking around in the snow without an umbrella? Don’t you feel lonely standing there adjusting the camera’s focus? It’s your phone, so shouldn’t you be there in the center of the screen? And you have a new power to show off, don’t you? If you could only use the magic properly, you could tear down the illusionary hierarchy built by science. And isn’t today the perfect day to throw out your inhibitions and make yourself the star?''”

Miss Sprengel’s whispers made the girl gasp.

Those words were like a sweet and slow-acting poison.

“''Sigh. Maybe my hopes for you were misplaced.''” She delivered the finishing blow. “''You’re just going to sit here all alone on Christmas and let that power go to waste, aren’t you? People like you, who have the power to change their future but refuse to do so, are doomed to live and die in obscurity.''”

Those words must have carried a great bewitching power because the knit hat girl immediately changed her mind.

“The power of a four-legged animal can be extracted from a single finger. Picture a line extending from the center of your heart to the tip of your middle finger and let the fire essence roar!!”

A bright flash of light was followed by a sound more like melting metal than burning.

And that was accurate because the pedestrian deck was melted and sliced through.

“What in the-!?”

“Ah ha ha.”

The knit hat high school girl’s response was strange.

She could have easily become a murderer just then, but it was joy that covered her face. She sounded like an elementary schooler whose esper power had first shown real results.

“I did it, I did it!!” She kept her palm held out toward Mikoto and Misaki. “I actually did it!! I forced the famous #3 to gasp and fall back. Hey, were you filming that? A selfie isn’t enough for this! This needs to go viral! My power was real after all!!”

Mikoto was overwhelmed by how unusual this was, but then she heard some laughter growing more distant. Anna Sprengel was slipping through the crowd while whispering a few statements each to the boys and girls she set her sights on. With some she used a grudge, with some talk of making easy money, with some an inferiority complex, and with some a desire for unity. She chose the perfect words to work their way deep inside each individual’s heart.

That was all it took to unleash something.

The middle and high school students enjoying their Christmas pulled out some objects from their pockets and bags. Some were plastic wands, some were metal medallions, and some were cards made with an automatic business card printer.

They all shouted something, but Mikoto could no longer perceive it as words.

Their voices shook the entire deck like the cheering at a stadium and their voices produced beams of light, explosions, ice spears, and even humanoid forms that rushed toward Mikoto like a flash flood.

Mikoto’s intuition told her this was very bad.

She could tell these were not the esper powers she was used to dealing with.

She reflexively tried to leap up with her magnetism to avoid it, but she felt some resistance at her right leg.

Someone was clinging to her while squishing those two chest buns against her leg.

The girl really did have tears in her eyes at the prospect of being left behind.

“What kind of servant are you, you violent maid!? You need to look after your Queen when she has this kind of once-a-millennium beauty, Misaka-saaan!!”

“Bwah!?”

She lost balance and both of them fell from the railing and off the pedestrian deck altogether.

But that may have been the best move they could have made since a few beams of light scorched the sky above. Mikoto could not have been more reluctant to admit it, but she might have been shredded by that barrage if she had followed her original escape plan.

Instead of falling to the ground, she used magnetism to attach themselves to the underside of the pedestrian deck. The unexpected movement managed to shake off all the gazes from above and below the deck.

“Any idea what that was!?” she asked.

“It wasn’t ordinary esper abilities, that’s for sure. If it was, then two Level 5s like us wouldn’t need to hide up here like bugs.”

“I agree, but that isn’t what I was talking about. If you had a ‘special power’ dropped into your lap out of the blue, would you really just start using it to kill? To be honest, Anna’s words weren’t that attractive. In fact, you’d be extra skeptical of any offer made by a little girl wearing only a thin cloth. Con artists normally try to look as legitimate as possible while giving an extremely calculated sales talk! So why did it work for her!?”

Mikoto was asking the Level 5 with the strongest psychological power if there had been any “interference” at play there.

“All she did was talk to them.” The Queen bluntly rejected that idea. But, “That can work if you already have your target’s personal information. Specifically, if you have already researched all of their internal problems, such as inferiority complexes, traumas, and mental tension in need of catharsis.”

“But how could she…?”

Mikoto trailed off as she found the answer.

R&C Occultics.

That enormous IT company had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and took fortunetelling requests from all around the globe. Which required the names, genders, ages, birthdates, blood types, and other crucial personal information about the requester and the person they had a crush on. (Did it also work with more platonic feelings, a boss you disliked, or someone you wanted revenge against?) Even the reason someone wanted the fortunetelling was a treasure trove of information on their doubts and worries. The possibilities someone rejected for themselves and the words they wanted to hear someone else say were a very good indicator of their psychological scars.

Giant IT companies loved to show off how personal information was a new form of monetizable asset, yet they also did everything they could to extract it from people without paying them for it, so analyzing their users’ browsing history to display the most effective advertisements was a walk in the park for them. If you dug deeper into those techniques, you would be able to influence the nonphysical mental world through psychological analysis, scoring people’s humanity, creating a cyber cult, and more.

In other words, you could develop a master key that would have no effect on the other 7 billion people out there but was carefully designed to stir something inside that one person and push them toward a certain action. Of course, it required such a massive prior investment that it was generally not worth the effort.

But this extraordinary idiot had actually done it.

This fool had ignored all of the warning bells from wiser people and done it anyway for one simple reason: because she could.

“By the way.” Anna Sprengel’s cruel laughter arrived from somewhere in the crowd. She sounded like a child who had never been taught the value of life. “Psychology deals in individuals and groups. Just like a single person running for the entrance during a good sale or at a concert will inspire everyone else to do the same, the actions of a few have a way of spreading through a larger group. To be clear, controlling a group is much easier than controlling an individual.”

Mikoto heard a gurgling sound.

She raised her guard against whatever was coming, but that “flash flood” from before did not arrive again.

Puzzled, she hacked a nearby street camera and displayed its footage on her phone’s small screen.

“What the hell?”

Was it Mikoto or the knit cap high school girl who asked that?

The girl who had wielded that strange ''new'' technique known as magic was holding her hands to her mouth. A dark red liquid was spilling from between her fingers. There was far too much sticky liquid dripping down to the pedestrian deck for this to be a simple scrape or cut.

“Eh, eh? Wai- bh. Cough, cough, cough!! What’s happening to me!?”

She extended her bloody hands hoping to find some assistance, but no one reached out to help her. In fact, the other boys and girls who had used what was (apparently) called magic were all coughing up blood and collapsing much like her. No, it went beyond coughing up blood. The blood vessels in their body were bursting, the dark blue marks of internal bleeding appeared on their skin, and some of them must have had the blood vessels in their eyes burst too because the whites of their eyes were stained red.

There was no answer to be found here.

Of course there wasn’t when no one understood the mechanism known as magic.

Their minds clung to speculation to escape the fear of not knowing and that groundless information inspired new hatred.

In other words…

“The #3 did this.”

There was deep resentment in their voices.

They refused to admit to their own fear, so the resentment settled in deep and inspired simple aggressiveness and hostility, all so they could avoid looking at their impending doom.

They were driven by an invisible fear.

Civilization had regressed to the age when germs were called a witch’s curse. If they caught a cold from being out in the winter chill, they would blame Mikoto. If their throat grew hoarse after shouting too much, that too would be Mikoto’s fault.

“She used EM waves somehow!!”

“That’s right. Why else would our blood vessels start bursting!?”

“It’s her or us! Electrolysis can easily break down our vitamins!!”

Mikoto had trouble breathing.

Even Shokuhou asked a trembling question while below the pedestrian deck that had clear icicles hanging down from it.

She had doubt in her eyes.

“I seriously doubt you did, but you didn’t actually do anything, did you?”

“No, I have no idea what this is. In fact, I can’t even cause that with my powers!!”

Mikoto shouted back, but that did not make it any less awkward. Yes, Mikoto and Shokuhou knew more about the situation than any of the other students, ''but not even they knew what was happening.'' And without knowing that, she could not be 100% certain she had not accidentally caused this somehow.

If Kamijou Touma had happened to be here, he could have explained it right away. He would have said this was the obvious ''side effect'' when a scientific esper used magical spells. He would tell those students to stop if they wanted to avoid destroying all their blood vessels and nerves.

But the majority of people living in Academy City did not have that knowledge.

And without the knowledge to avoid the damage happening to them, they could only turn to meaningless superstition.

Kill the witch and all the world’s problems will be solved. Break the Muramasa because that sword is disturbing the peace of the world. In the West and the East, there had always been cases of absurd mass hysteria where people attacked a minority to achieve peace of mind.

People were more frightening when inspired by fear than by anger.

Because they could no longer decide for themselves to lower their raised fist.

“Hey, what do we do? She already saw who we are. Oh, god. This is terrifying.”

“Shut up. We can’t back down now that the fight’s started. If we don’t take her out, she’ll just hunt us down in revenge!!”

“Get her!! Before she can attack again!! This invisible attack can get you through your dorm’s walls, so we need to kill her nowwwwwwwwwwwwww!!”

“Misaka-san,” said Shokuhou, but Mikoto was on the move before she even finished. With the Queen still in her arms, she used magnetism to swing around from the bottom of the pedestrian deck like she was on a trapeze. She flew in a large C to arrive high overhead just before the point below the deck was filled with beams of light and great heat. That part of the deck actually melted and the entire deck tilted like it had lost its balance.

The #5’s eyes were wide as she clung to the #3’s hips.

“We can’t get the vaccine or antidote if we lose sight of that monster. And she’ll destroy the hospital when she gets there. Where did Anna Sprengel go!?”

“I don’t know!! But these people collapsing take precedence right now. Did Anna do something to them!?”

Every time the terrified students used magic, they would harm themselves more, but they mistook that for another mysterious attack from Misaka Mikoto, grew even more terrified, and clung to magic again to rid themselves of that fear. Unfortunately, no one here could prove to them they were trapped in a hopeless vicious cycle.

Kamijou Touma was not here.

Even so, Misaka Mikoto focused on what they had to do while she flew upside-down in the air.

“Shokuhouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!”

That verbal slap to the cheek got the Queen to gasp and grab her remote.

Yes.

Anna Sprengel and Misaka Mikoto were exceptions, but Mental Out would work just fine against this ordinary group of ordinary people.

A single button froze the world around them.

All those boys and girls had been shortening their own lives with magic like someone obsessively checking to make sure they had locked the door before heading out, but now they all came to a stop.

The negative spiral had been broken.

At the same time, the only person still moving stood out like a sore thumb. A small form was using the stairs to descend from the tilted deck.

It had to be…

“Anna Sprengel!!!!!!”

===Part 9===

“Oh, dear. They’ve noticed me. That psychological one is still full of surprises and a lot of fun. Maybe we’re just a good match.”

Anna smiled as she descended from the snow-covered pedestrian deck to the crowd on the surface.

A part-timer on a red Santa-themed bike was trapped in the crowd with a phone and an insulated bag, presumably after someone ordered something to this area without thinking. These human shields apparently made it difficult for those girls to attack, so Miss Sprengel slipped past the poor part-timer and kept walking. She was starting to think using a bike might be fun because she had seen a Christmas-themed rental bike stand that formed a metal tree by attaching a ton of bikes to a revolving door made from cross-shaped metal poles.

(I’m sure they can guess where I’m headed, so will they panic if I arrive ahead of schedule?)

The naked little girl pulled her red cloth in closer and smiled coldly. The danger of being her favorite was obvious enough from that boy who was approaching death due to an unexpected kiss from her.

The thorns of this rose would harm all life around her.

She cut across District 15 which continued to party like they were in Sodom (which shouldn’t have been much of a surprise for a city built by Aleister) and she approached the neighboring district.

That was District 7.

But just before she arrived, a black shooting star fell toward her head.

Misaka Mikoto had dropped straight down with an iron sand sword made by gathering up all the iron sand she could find and shaping it into a rapidly-vibrating sword.

Anna simply held up her small hand.

But her fingers were crossed in an unusual way for simply spreading your hand out.

That was enough to stop an attack capable of slicing right through an armored train.

“And this is unbearably boring, Misaka Mikoto. You were somewhat interesting back when you were blurring the line between science and magic with the A.A.A., but no longer. Now you’re just plain old strong. You can increase your parameters all you like, but your movements themselves are so one-note. I’m not interested in an event boss that requires the strongest equipment, so get lost already.”

“!?”

Mikoto did not expect a clean hit.

The instant she tried to push her way through, it was not Anna Sprengel who was destroyed. It was one of the metal trees found here and there in District 15. It was a rental bike stand made by attaching all the bikes to metal poles to form a tree.

A large cloud of snow scattered into the air around her landing point.

Disconcerting cracks ran through the entire metal and concrete stairway Anna stood on. The metal poles were sliced to pieces and the seemingly 10-year-old girl was slammed into the ground along with the wreckage of the many bikes.

They were rental products, so they did not use anything fancy like carbon or aluminum frames.

That meant Mikoto could control them via magnetism.

(I don’t have to defeat her. If I can crush her under all these scraps and keep her from moving, she won’t be able to cause any more trouble. Once she’s caught, I can apply even more pressure from all directions with my magnetism to really trap her!!)

“This will get you nowhere.” Those words mercilessly left the rubble to pierce through the girl’s heart. “I said I wasn’t interested in raw strength. Because I already know who wins in a contest like that.”

It was like a volcano had erupted.

Concrete shards and sharp rebar scattered every which way. Misaka Mikoto (and Shokuhou Misaki who was clinging to her hips) were blown away in a tailspin. They were launched at a high angle, so instead of falling back to the ground, Mikoto planted her feet on the wall of a nearby building to stand on it.

“What…just happened!?”

“Wait, what is that?”

Mikoto and Shokuhou’s questions were subtly different.

When Mikoto blinked her eyes and took another look, she noticed a translucent figure standing next to Anna Sprengel. It held a small fist straight up in a silly kind of way.

What was it?

She honestly did not know.

It looked like a humanoid silhouette about as tall as an adult man, but it had large, swan-like wings growing from its back, and its entire head had been transformed into a twisted falcon, eagle, or some other bird of prey. It gave off a pale platinum glow and there was no mistaking it for an ordinary person. But despite the sinister silhouette, a glowing halo hovered above its man-eating head.

Anyone would know what that symbolized.

Even children’s picture books used that to signify an angel.

Mikoto felt a terrible sense of wrongness, disgust, and rejection crawling up her spine, like she had seen a maggot-ridden rotting corpse being named the winner of a beauty pageant and no one was questioning it.

That thing was wrong.

This was not about the division between science and magic. Even Mikoto, a science worshiper who knew nothing of the occult, could tell this was blasphemous.

That was the only word she could think of for this being that shattered people’s ordinary values just by existing.

“''Aiwass,''” bluntly whispered the little girl lazily covering her nudity with a thin cloth.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

Was that its name? Mikoto was not even sure her ears had heard it correctly. If she analyzed the high frequencies and low frequencies with an auditory device, she might find it was pronounced entirely differently.

At any rate, this was on another level altogether.

It may even have been the source that shared its “power” with the monster known as Anna Sprengel.

But Misaka Mikoto forced herself to take a positive view of the situation.

“We drew this out of her. That means we managed to break through that confident smile of hers.”

“U-u-um, Misaka-san? I realllly doubt my Mental Out is going to work on that falcon angel, so if you’re done with me, could I head back to that boy’s hospital bed and-”

“That means the real battle has finally begun!! We’re on the right track here. If we keep going like this, we can force Anna to use up everything at her disposal!!”

“Please just let me leave!!!!!!”

The little girl looked up at them from the ground.

She was no longer smiling.

Anna Sprengel spoke with that bizarre monster by her side.

She did not even glance toward that reliable partner.

“Do not come out when I have not called for you, dullard. You’re ruining my fun.”

Misaka Mikoto boiled over.

She thought her vision had gone entirely red.

Anna had possessed a means of winning at any time, but she had chosen not to use it. She had dragged out the fight while dancing elegantly along the line between life and death, like she was trying to draw out every last drop of blood.

Did she really not have anything more to her?

Did she not have an earnest desire she could not wait a second longer to fulfill or an anxiety that things would never be the same again if she screwed things up here? Did she not experience impatience or hatred so intense she lost sight of herself? Was she really filled with so much confidence she could take as many detours as she liked and choose as many methods and options as she wanted to try out?

Even though Mikoto had to worry about all the unrelated people who were injured, the definite threat to the hospital, and the microbes eating away at that boy’s life from within?

“Give it a rest, you-”

Mikoto gathered strength in her brow and clenched her teeth so hard she thought they might break.

She prepared to let out a roar.

But just before she could, Miss Sprengel sighed and said more.

“Because, dullard, I can slaughter them instantly even without your help.”

===Part 10===

An ominous tremor ran through the entirety of Academy City.

===Part 11===

The air was scorched and no one was moving.

This was the sinister atmosphere of a battle’s aftermath, where even the corpses were abandoned.

And amid it all…

“Hm, hm, hm hm.”

A little girl hid her soft skin with a red cloth and hummed an out-of-tune Christmas song.

She did not bother looking back.

No one remained to get in her way, so her small legs calmly crossed the district border and entered District 7.

That was their home ground.

That hospital was located there.

(Now, then. I wonder if those innocent little heroes were aware what it means to worry about someone else’s life. It means you believe your own life is not at risk and that isn’t your time to go.)

Anna Sprengel followed her phone’s navigation while she spoke aloud.

“''Believing you’re special and that you won’t die is a common form of megalomania in teenagers, but I seriously doubt the real world will be so kind.''”

Everyone died eventually.

But in most cases, they did not know their time was coming.

===Between the Lines 2===

Something pushed up from his stomach.

He thought it was vomit, but it was blood instead. After splattering something the color of tomato juice into the antibacterial sink, Kamijou Touma staggered backwards.

With so many patients living in shared spaces, lines would form at the bathrooms if they were the only places with mirrors for grooming yourself and sinks for washing your face. That was why hospitals often had separate washing stations.

They were generally used to keep yourself clean and presentable even while hospitalized.

They were not meant for going pale-faced with despair.

“Acute St. Germain, huh?” sighed Othinus from his shoulder.

The look on her tiny face in the mirror said she could not call herself a god of war if the color splattered in the sink was enough to faze her.

Pride could often be taken as a negative thing, but it was also comforting to be surrounded by people with the proper knowledge of what to do in a crisis.

“Do you know what’s happening to me?”

This was an unexplained phenomenon as far as Academy City’s scientific analysis was concerned. Kamijou Touma fully trusted the frog-faced doctor’s skill. That man had saved him countless times. But that was why it weighed on him so heavily that this was too much for that doctor.

Those Tokiwadai girls might have widened their eyes at his tone of voice here. It was unusual for him to reveal his weakness like this.

The 15cm one-eyed god, who was also his understander, let out a soft sigh and crossed her legs while seated on his shoulder.

“The Magician St. Germain is a colony of parasitic microbes. Oh, and it won’t infect anyone else unless certain specific steps are taken, so you don’t have to worry about that. I imagine St. Germain himself wanted to avoid diluting and altering himself by spreading indiscriminately.”

“…”

“That means St. Germain himself has no life force to be used as source for magic power. This might be easier to understand from an Eastern perspective than a Western one. Without a body containing the organs, blood vessels, and nerves, the ‘energy’ can’t circulate, and it can’t refine that energy into magic power. That’s why St. Germain always uses a host body to refine life force into magic power before using magic. For an Academy City esper, the side effects of that act as an internal attack that destroys the body.”

Kamijou wiped off his sticky lips with the back of his hand, but his lips still felt gross. He looked down and found the back of his hand was bloody too. The skin had split open and the dark red liquid was oozing out.

Even after seeing the wound, he felt no obvious pain there.

He probably had too many wounds to distinguish any single one anymore. His entire body felt hot and swollen and he could have sworn it had grown to twice its usual size. He was a human-shaped blob of pain.

“The method was different, but this is pretty much the same as what Anna Sprengel is doing in the guise of a giant IT company,” said Othinus. “The students of this city are being attacked by knowledge over the internet, while you are being directly attacked from within by a microbe, but in both cases, ''it comes down to the taboo of an esper using magic.''”

He heard a group of footsteps hurrying by outside the sliding door. The nurses were probably rushing to a hospital room after receiving a nurse call.

Finding the people collapsed in their dorms or on the streets and then transporting them to the hospital was difficult enough, but the problem did not end there. The number of R&C Occultics victims would only continue to grow. Once it reached a certain point, it was even possible the hospitals would cease to function.

And even after all this, they still had no idea what Anna was even trying to accomplish.

Why did the Rosicrucians want to cause this devastating damage to Academy City?

(What am I supposed to do?)

He questioned himself.

At the very least, he knew nothing would improve if he simply waited around here. If he did not do something while he could still move, he would rapidly run out options.

But where was he supposed to go and what was he supposed to do there?

He turned on the faucet to wash away the red blood that felt like it had been drained directly out of his lifespan.

“You will know that soon enough,” said Othinus from his shoulder.

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter2

2020-07-13T03:05:28Z

162.238.158.199:

==Chapter 2: Black Pill, White Snow — and_RED_Rose.==

===Part 1===

The girl looked to be around 10.

It could be hard to tell thanks to the shopping district’s arcade roof, but it was snowing outside. However, being outside in the middle of winter was not enough to stop her from working at the two scoops of ice cream sitting atop the cone she held.

“Munch, munch.”

“Why do I always end up taking in kids like this?”

The delinquent boy named Hamazura Shiage had a distant look in his eyes even though he only had himself to blame. This naked little girl had only a red cloth gathered around her flat chest to protect herself, so she was almost guaranteed to bring trouble.

This was all happening in District 13, where Academy City’s elementary schools were gathered. This was the shopping district that had always(?) existed on the far eastern end of the district. A lot of children would gather there even though it was not on the way home for most of them, so it had become known as Afterschool Snack Road. If it were not winter break, gym teachers filled with a sense of duty would be patrolling the area.

(It doesn’t look like there’s any immediate trouble. Honestly, maybe it’s a testament to how peaceful this place is that a naked girl in only a thin cloth can walk around without anything happening.)

He did not want to even entertain the thought that this was the latest fashion. At least he didn’t see anyone else dressed like this among the local kids troubling the miniskirt Santas in front of the bakeries by peppering them with questions, hoping to learn the secrets of the flying sleigh that could slip past the military radars of advanced nations.

He looked up into the sky and saw a food delivery drone carrying a box using the claws attached to its crab-like legs. He briefly wondered if it was carrying a cake or a turkey before returning to the real topic at hand.

“I guess I can ask Fremea later on. Speaking of which, what’s taking her?”

That delinquent was the type to take in a kitten on a rainy day, so he had a small friend in this district. In fact, the entire reason he was here was to bring Fremea Seivelun a bottle of a bubbly golden drink that had “nonalcoholic” plainly written on the label (and was more pricey than nonalcoholic beer) yet the clerk had still refused to sell to an elementary schooler like her. He wanted to get that party item to the sulky girl so he could be freed of the errand. But not because he was interested in the Christmas spirit. No, he just wanted to go after his girlfriend from a variety of angles while she sat motionless in the kotatsu. There was always the standard of embracing her from behind, but he could also go with submarine mode by sticking his head underneath the opposite side of the kotatsu!!

The girl in a white knit dress standing next to Hamazura sighed while looking even more exasperated than him. He was not clever enough to figure out what a girl was thinking just from the look on her face, but he could guess she had found her super-sweet donut (that was fully customized for District 13’s many elementary school students) too much to handle.

Her name was Kinuhata Saiai.

She was a Level 4 who had been even more involved in Academy City’s darkness than him.

He glanced down at the bare legs sticking out from the bottom of her short dress.

“Is there some bare-skin health craze I wasn’t aware of?”

“What exactly are you looking at while coming up with these super fantasies? Look any longer and you’ll have to pay me. And before you start asking about some ridiculous idea like nude sunbathing in the frigid December air, why don’t you give some super thought to how these questions will influence your life, Hamazura? As much as she says she doesn’t mind, I have a feeling that expressionless track suit girl would be super jealous, but what do you think?”

“Yikes.”

“If that’s all you can say, then you have some super sense left. If these lover’s spats are how you want to enjoy this couple’s holiday, be my guest, but don’t drag me into it. This isn’t about Level – Takitsubo-san is simply impossible to predict when she’s mad.”

Kinuhata sounded casual enough, but she was actually keeping her eyes on the windows and stainless-steel pillars around them. But not because she was worried about her hair or clothing. That was a professional’s way of monitoring her blind spots without having to turn her head or move her eyes too much.

It was worth being cautious at the moment.

''Because the entire dark side had apparently been shaken to its core.

(Now, will that year-end cleaning actually work? As long as there’s an illegitimate way to get ahead, the darkness will always crop up again. People love attaching price tags to everything and the negative cycle will begin anew when people need escape funding and hideouts to super shelter them during the chaotic aftermath. The rich can shout about justice through a loudspeaker all they want, but the black market won’t go away as long as people need it to survive.)

“Mm.”

The little girl used her small tongue to lick up the milk that had dripped onto the thumb holding the chocolate chip cookie cone. Some kind of AR walking game must have been having a Christmas event because the other children were gathered around seemingly empty areas with their phones at the ready, making it look like some kind of weird ritual. But this little girl must have had no interest in joining those children (and a few childish college students who were doing it too) because she stared at them with emotionless eyes.

“This really is a nice city,” she said from a short distance away. “Everyone has food to eat and a warm room to go home to, so they can all enjoy the holy night as no more than pretty scenery. Everyone has a livable environment here. Even though the winter city used to be a symbol of fear more sinister than a corpse, where the painful and ruthless chill would creep in through the snow to reach every nook and cranny both indoors and out. Just look at the hunger in St. Nicholas’s story or the icy cold in the Little Match Girl.”

“If you say so.”

A lot of kids that age liked to talk. Had she recently read a collection of harsh fairy tales or a book on how to make money by destroying people’s dreams?

She continued without worrying about the eyes on her.

“So I am sorry to say this city will soon return to having a true deadly winter. When a terrible day comes to an end, you might want to go to sleep with hope for tomorrow in your heart, but there was a time when you might not have woken up the following morning. People die so easily. But that is how humans are made, so it’s not your fault.”

“…?”

Something seemed off.

The little girl began muttering to herself while operating her phone.

“Hm, hm, hm hm. Good, good. It looks like all the people around the world I had rewrite the paperwork to keep scrutiny off my paper company are dead now.”

It was like leaning in to get a sniff of a beautiful flower only to discover a strange new kind of mantis in your face.

He could not read the emotion in the little girl’s eyes.

Something thick was lurking below the depths there.

A crescent moon smile split across her face as she looked up from the screen.

“''Is Takitsubo Rikou doing well?''”

“W-wait. What are you talking about?”

“''I do apologize for that. That was entirely my fault. Not that I expect you to understand even if I pulled out the name of that con artist Madame Horos. Since I have no way of objectively proving what happened, it is my duty to accept your anger and hatred.''”

A name burst into Hamazura Shiage’s mind.

Yes, he had ''only'' known her name.

That person had lured his girlfriend in with sweet words, taken control of her body, and used her as a disposable tool. He had known far too little about that hated enemy.

“Anna…”

And now the ordinary delinquent boy had found his enemy.

He had found that mysterious figure who lurked in the deepest depths of the magic side and may have been even more hidden than the Magic Gods.

Could this really be her?

“Anna Sprengel!!!???”

The bizarre figure who had taken the form of a little girl was no longer even looking his way.

She held the thin cloth in one hand and the ice cream cone in the other.

With her hands full, she turned around to look in a completely different direction.

“And I must apologize again. If I’m going to have some fun, they take priority.”

A heavy metal clanking sounded as two girls landed on the snow-covered arcade roof nearby.

The Ace and Queen of Tokiwadai had descended from the sky.

===Part 2===

They did not hold back.

The black metal on Misaka Mikoto’s back spread out like demonic wings. A Gatling gun, a chainsaw, a smoothbore gun, a melt-cutting blade, a multiple missile launcher, a large drill, a plasma cannon, and plenty more heavy weaponry were attached around a base of twin rocket engines.

That was the A.A.A., or Anti-Art Attachment.

It was such a black box that not even the #3 herself knew what the device was ''originally meant to do''.

But that was not enough to explain this.

While Mikoto could fly through the sky with that special equipment, the #5, Shokuhou Misaki, should not have been able to accomplish that kind of physical feat. And yet she was keeping up with fully-equipped Mikoto’s movements and rapidly jumped from a building rooftop to the arcade roof of the old(-looking, thanks to the professional “dirty” paintjob used for things like warship models) shopping district.

How could she do that?

There was a clear answer:

“I know that’s cutting-edge equipment, but couldn’t you have found something warmer for this time of year?”

“Ahhh, shiver, shiver. Send any complaints to my spare, ''Mitsuari Ayu''!”

Another girl had possessed a psychological power similar to Shokuhou Misaki’s. She had used several types of mechanical support to make up for her inadequacies as an esper and to defeat the #5 Level 5.

Those included the Five Over OS and the Five Over itself.

Both were Model Case: Mental Out.

To control ''that bizarre equipment which had attempted to purely mechanically reproduce the power of Academy City’s #5'', Mitsuari Ayu had worn a special suit.

However…

“Shiver, shiver, shiver.”

“A swimsuit – ha ha – a high leg cut – ah ha ha! – in December – ah ha ha ha ha!”

“Oh, shut up!! Why did you have to choose such a pain-in-the-butt design for this season and location, Mitsuari-saaan!?”

“And skintight too – pff ah ha ha! Hey, the crotch is looking pretty bulgy there.”

“It is not!! I can’t believe that girl! Did the loneliness drive her toward exhibitionism or something!?”

Shokuhou held her own body against the cold, but she still shouted in desperation with her body temperature higher than anyone else’s here. Fur coats and wool scarfs apparently had nothing on embarrassment when it came to keeping you warm.

The equipment’s design was about as crazy as bikini armor, but its defensive capabilities were very real.

And the enemy they had to defeat ASAP was right in front of them.

(It doesn’t look like she’s hiding a glass container or any other pills.)

After all, she only had a thin cloth barely covering her naked body. It seemed unlikely she had anything hidden below that, but did that mean she had no means of defense against the special microbes that not even Academy City could heal?

Or did she have antibodies in her body itself?

Whether it came to searching her possessions or running scans at the hospital, their best bet was to knock her out and capture her.

“Now, then,” said the barely-dressed little girl named Anna Sprengel. “''I gave you plenty of time, so I assume it has not spread to every part of his body yet. But if you’re still making me wait, perhaps I should speed things along.''”

Misaka Mikoto had seen Anna yesterday and the night before that. She had not noticed it at the time, but she had some clear differences from the other elementary schoolers who were busy using their phones to pursue the limited-edition Santa-costume Android Demon Lord (a hyper ultra miracle heroine who had destroyed three other worlds before arriving on earth and was actually just lonely). There was something about the aura surrounding the girl, the shadows lurking in her eyes, and the smile on her lips. There was something out of place there that felt far older than Mikoto or Shokuhou. Mikoto could not shake the feeling that she was looking at a cheaply faked ghost photo or something.

The girl had been holding her ice cream cone like a microphone, but she casually tossed what remained of it over her shoulder. As it flew up into the air and dropped behind her, her sweet lips formed a single word.

“Incubate.”

More of a shockwave than an explosion filled the space around her.

The tables and chairs in front of the stores were blown away, the Christmas tree and snowman decorations were knocked over, and the passersby were mercilessly thrown to the ground. The shop windows and even the transparent arcade roof all shattered.

“Misaka-saaan!!”

“I know!!”

If Mikoto used magnetism to take control of the metal objects and Shokuhou took control of the ''unconscious children and part-time workers,'' they could keep the snowy glass shards from shredding the skin of the defenseless people walking below.

Misaka Mikoto remained hovering in place and Shokuhou Misaki jumped to the ground when her footing collapsed.

The shopping district had lost its transparent protection, so the wind and snow could now reach it.

That was more than enough for the unconscious people to freeze to death.

“We need to move elsewhere!!”

“Do you really think she’ll give us the chance? I’ll use Mental Out ''to move those people out of the way'', so you buy me the time!!”

(What even was that, anyway?)

Mikoto was bewildered.

What had caused that shockwave?

And what was that giant orb that had appeared behind the little girl?

The metal sphere was more than 2m tall, making it taller than Anna herself. It gave off a dull silver light and it hovered in the empty air.

Had its appearance split the air?

That meant it worked very differently from Shirai Kuroko’s Teleportation. That girl’s movement did not have such a violent side effect.

It had caused this much damage simply by appearing.

Mikoto had no idea what it was, but she knew it was bad news.

(How was she storing that? If she’s storing the vaccine, antidote, or other defense in the same way, then can anyone but her even get it out!?)

She bit her lip and pulled out an arcade coin.

She placed the coin on her thumb while maintaining her midair position, but then she stopped moving.

The little girl was pointing at the center of her own chest with a thumb.

“Give me your best shot.”

“…”

“That ‘power’ was already deflected by ''a miniscule fraction'' of what R&C Occultics can provide anyone around the world, so do you really think it can harm me?”

“Argh!!”

Mikoto took action.

A boom shook the air and a beam of light scorched the air, but the straight line of destruction was not her Railgun that sent metal flying at three times the speed of sound.

It was a lightning spear.

She was afraid of facing that denial again. Even so, this lighting spear was powered up by the A.A.A. It could easily pierce the rubber suits used by workers on transmission towers and it might just immediately stop the heart of any ordinary person it hit.

However…

“Coward.”

She heard a single word full of both scorn and pity.

Not one step.

Anna Sprengel had not moved a single step while she was surrounded by dust crackling with electricity. The metal orb remained in place as well.

(What just…happened?)

Mikoto floated down from the broken arcade roof to the floor. She looked pathetic, but Anna actually seemed impressed.

“Oh, you didn’t fall for it?”

“…”

“Just like before, this would have been ''very much over'' if you hadn’t seen it. Did you use geomagnetism? Or the undetectably-faint plate vibrations? That’s kind of neat. So even the science side can detect those ''landmines'' made with ley line distortions.”

Anna laughed and pointed her thumb back over her shoulder.

While bragging about the metal orb there.

“Pneuma-less Shell. Hear me, Philosopher’s Egg and Clear Coffin. Hear me, spell that never strays far and is found hidden even in paintings and music. I seek not the red stone, so show me a distorted result here. So that junk might remain junk, entertain me with the unforeseen that not even I can predict.”

Was that a giant ship’s wheel at the very center?

The little girl grabbed it with her tiny hand and casually gave it a spin. It produced a continuous grinding noise like many heavy gears were turning along with it. Several cracks appeared in the orb and it opened in an even more complex way than a bank vault.

(Dammit, is this the real attack!?)

Something unbelievable had to be stored within.

The seal was opening.

There was no need to wait. Misaka Mikoto knew she had to settle this before the contents could show themselves, so she immediately readied the cutting-edge equipment she wore.

But she was an instant too slow.

Almost like the timing had been calculated out in advance to work that way.

With an especially loud clunk, ''it'' emerged.

It was a perfectly ordinary tree branch.

Mikoto’s mind went blank.

She honestly did not know what this meant.

The branch branched out several times to spread out like a large hand. It was no thicker than a little finger. It did have a scattering of solid green leaves, but Mikoto could not quite place what kind of tree it was from.

Mikoto help her breath, but for some reason, Anna Sprengel puffed out her cheeks from within. She slowly let out the breath she had been holding in and it took the form of a sigh.

“''Damn, that’s a dud.''”

“Really!!!???”

She did not wait a moment longer.

Had Anna infected that idiot over something so unimportant she was willing to leave it up to chance?

And on Christmas Eve of all nights?

Every weapon forming the demonic wings aimed at Anna Sprengel. They were all powerful enough to possibly sink a warship, but Mikoto was past worrying about how sturdy her opponent was.

However.

Anna’s next comment was one of complete disinterest.

“''Winning with this would be so easy it’d be a bore.''”

Misaka Mikoto perceived it as the wind crashing into the side of her face.

But in fact, the demonic wings of the A.A.A. had their right half torn away like they were made of wet paper.

The white curtain of the blowing snow was swept away only after a short delay.

They were still a good distance apart.

The little girl with only a thin blanket lazily covering her bare skin had merely given the tree branch a casual swing with her arm.

“What!?”

But it was too soon to be surprised quite yet.

The twin rocket engines ruptured and the special fuel leaking from within ignited. The silhouette of Academy City’s #3 was swallowed up by a flash of light as bright as the sun.

“Mi-”

The explosion was too large for ordinary gasoline to have caused it.

“Misaka-saaan!?”

Even Shokuhou’s scream was drowned out by the noise.

No one could have heard her, but Anna whispered in a singsong voice.

Or maybe she had never really been focused on that “enemy” in the first place.

“The world’s oldest whips are said to have been made from a thin tree branch, not leather or rope.”

She twirled the branch back to rest it on her bare shoulder.

This was the same as Misaka Mikoto flicking an arcade coin at triple the speed of sound.

In the hands of a true superhuman who could take a different view of things, even a single tree branch could produce such tremendous results.

“The first projectiles were stones, the first smokescreens were dried grass, the first biological weapons were corpses, and the first blades were…actually, I’m not sure if they were stone or bone. History and tradition can be found ''in any part of the world''. And their essence can be freely extracted from all things. If you go to the effort of-”

“Wait, essence? What are you talking abou-”

“What do you think I was just explaining, you rogd! Qhuvnd – ahhhh – hiengk!?”

A sudden change came over Anna.

She took action while Shokuhou watched on, frozen and unable to move.

That thin branch looked so cheap, yet it had eliminated the #3 with a huge explosion that may or may not have killed her. If the needle reached the end of the gauge, you would be killed for no reason. Without any dignity. Shokuhou Misaki had mastered all things related to the human mind, so she did not need to check a mirror to know the look on her face. She had the look of someone who had drawn the wrong card.

Meanwhile, Anna’s actions were even more obvious. Those were not attacks intended to kill. She kicked over the mascot in front of a nearby bakery and swung down the branch. She did not stop even after tearing off the thing’s head.

This was frightening in a different way from seeing a simple weapon or army.

It was like seeing the kind and hard-working straight-A student engaging in domestic violence.

“You people always do this! Always, always, always, always!! I’m teaching you all the right things from the very beginning, but you decide it’s too much work! You take these shortcuts and try to enjoy the feeling of mastering something without putting in any real time or effort!! And when that inevitably leads to failure, it’s somehow my fault? You don’t understand – truc – what you’re even doing, but you still feel qualified to criticize me? Are you kidding me!? Are you goddamn kidding – kfu – me here? Do! Not! Doubt! Me!! ~ ~ ~tnjswhglf~ ~ ~! Argh, there’s a purpose behind each step, so learn it all in order!! Don’t try to understand it yourself! Don’t assume you can – ntd – find the answer on your own!! If you just do what I tell you, all your questions will be answered and it will all make sense to you, you bvdhktuh!!!!!!”

It had been torn to pieces.

What had once been a torso was now just a few plastic blocks.

But then the monster must have noticed the dumbfounded honey-blonde girl’s eyes on her.

“Phew.”

She looked up from the mascot’s severed head, brought her hands together with the mystery branch still held in one of them, and smiled bright.

And she spoke with an adult confidence that seemed out of place from such a small girl.

“Sorry about that. But I will explain everything for you right now.”

“…”

Shokuhou was being taken in.

Even though she knew this was a bad sign.

The #5 girl was nearly invincible.

She had the strongest psychological power. She might have trouble in an unexplored jungle or the middle of the desert, but she was untouchable in a large city full of people. But there were a few people she would not want to run afoul of even then.

For example, the #1 who linked anything and everything to violence. Or the #2 who had stopped being an individual and split himself up so far that it was unclear if the overall will of “Kakine Teitoku” would keep a promise even if you negotiated with each individual branch and received their agreement. Those monsters could tear through a large group all on their own.

This girl was similar.

Manipulating minds was not enough to rest easy against her.

“Now, where was I? You were listening, so you know, don’t you?”

“S-something about prestige…”

“Oh, that’s right! The people who seek out the Son of God’s bloodstains or bundles of ancient parchment are smalltime losers who only want their actions to carry prestige. So you were listening. Good girl☆”

The girl (who at least looked young) laughed and denied everything before her eyes.

Yes. Listening to her, following her rules, and currying her favor were not a guarantee of survival.

For one thing, they were already engaged in combat.

“And the title of Level 5 here in Academy City is no different.”

===Part 3===

Shokuhou Misaki shuddered.

And she leaped behind cover as if a paralyzing curse had been lifted from her. She doubted the hip-height concrete barrier dividing the road from the café space could actually defend against Anna’s attack, but she wanted to avoid simply standing out in the open.

After all, Academy City’s #3 had been knocked out of the fight with the very first move.

More than anything Anna had done, Mikoto had been caught in the explosion of her own equipment and vanished into the bright flash of light, and Shokuhou could not spare the attention to try to figure out what had happened to her. If the other girl could no longer fight, that was that. And a psychological esper like Shokuhou could not hope to stick her hand into burning rocket fuel and drag someone out anyway.

Even from here, the heat felt like thin needles sticking into her body.

But she did not seem to be getting any warmth from that. The December chill remained, the snow stung as it hit her body, and that excessive heat was only doing more harm to the honey-blonde girl’s skin.

At the very least, the fire had not spread to the shops of this old(-looking) shopping district.

(I’m surprised I feel so betrayed by this. As much I’m loath to admit it, I must have been relying on Misaka-san more than I thought.)

But she still could not run away.

That boy would not last much longer if Anna was not defeated here. It was Shokuhou’s side that was in trouble if both sides lost sight of each other and wandered off into the city.

She forcibly stretched out her hand while crouched down with bent knees to grab at the chain of her bag full of remotes. She somehow managed to pull it over to her.

She heard a sound like thick rubber or leather stretching tight. It came from the suit between her two legs as her stretching to reach the bag put some kind of pressure on it.

She came to a stop as her thoughts were drawn to that part of her body. She had not thought too much about it before, but now she could not get her mind off of it. Was this an odd thing to think about given the circumstances? Yes, but she may have been trying to distract herself from the predicament she was in.

Mikoto’s nightmarish words replayed in her mind.

(It isn’t actually bulgy, is it?)

She looked down while crouching, but she could not tell from that angle. She knew this was not the time. She really did. But there were some things a girl just had to check on. She bit her lower lip and pulled out a forbidden item: a mirror.

(Hmm?)

The Queen was squirming behind cover while holding the small mirror up toward a fairly private location, but…

“Hey.”

“Hwaahhh!!!??”

“?”

The #5 Queen literally jumped when a casual voice spoke to her from beyond the concrete barrier.

Anna Sprengel’s usual all-knowing look had slipped as she stood there with her head tilted quizzically.

But the mirror was not what really mattered here. The other items in her bag were: the many remotes.

Shokuhou’s life was already at risk thanks to the enemy’s attacks and her own ally exploding, but she still pulled a TV remote out of the bag hanging from her shoulder. That item was the key to Academy City’s #5 power, Mental Out.

Her power had such broad applications that she had trouble using it properly without dividing it out and categorizing it.

Just as she aimed the remote and pressed the button with her thumb, Anna Sprengel’s head shook unnaturally, like it had been hit by an invisible bat from the side.

But…

“That will not work on me.”

“Eep!?”

(She recovered!? No, it didn’t take!!)

This was worse than with the #1 and #2 who she could control but she still had to keep her guard up around.

She had not expected her power to simply not work on someone. And not because they had forcibly deflected it with a solid defense like Misaka Mikoto did.

“You were mistaken to assume the supernatural ability to control people would allow you to comprehend my mental structure and take control. If you hope to grasp the mind of Anna Sprengel, you should have first trained yourself to the point that you can at least take control of an entire angel.”

Mental Out did not work.

Shokuhou’s power was strong, but ''it did not work at all against cats or dogs.

And if her psychological power did not work on her enemy, her only remaining option was to use it on other people to gain more pawns. But doing that would only be sending innocent people to be slaughtered by Anna. That would leave a terrible taste in her mouth.

In fact, no one could stand up to this girl.

Even ''he'' had apparently been taken out with a single kiss attack.

That was why Shokuhou had not brought along any students with useful powers despite being the Queen of Tokiwadai’s largest clique. This was no longer about logic. The legend was crumbling. Not even Shokuhou Misaki was willing to carry the burden of someone else’s life when it came to fighting Anna.

In that sense, the only person she was comfortable with making use of here was that other girl.

(Speaking of which, what is that meathead doing? With our physical fighter down, even getting the ordinary people to safety is going to be tricky!)

She effectively had to do this without Mental Out. She was wearing the special equipment related to the Five Over, but the general athletic ability it provided her was still not enough to outdo Mikoto.

(And it’s worrying that Mitsuari-san never released the limiters on this suit during that ''other fight''. Dark side toys aren’t going to follow the safety standards, so I hope there isn’t a problem with this thing.)

With the #3 taken out in a single attack, Shokuhou did not see how she could escape defeat no matter how much she jumped and leaped around.

So she had to find some other way.

But what other way was there!?

“Now, what will it be this time?”

Shokuhou heard the sound of heavy metal grinding together.

Even with the snow falling on her through the broken arcade roof, Anna Sprengel had tossed aside the ordinary tree branch and started turning the wheel attached to the 2m orb.

A perfectly logical victory was not going to inspire any emotion inside her.

So she chose to laugh now that she had once more thrown some randomness into the battle.

That superhuman had reached the point that ''she enjoyed having Lady Luck abandon her.

“If you don’t give up, you might just win eventually. But not because of anything you do – because my luck runs out. But if you don’t keep buying tickets, you can never win the lottery.”

“…!!!???”

With a dull thud, a complex arrangement of cracks ran through the orb and it opened up to reveal…

“Rope.”

Was that the tool she planned to use to take on one of the strongest forces in Academy City?

It was a perfectly ordinary piece of junk that looked so worn out it could snap at any moment, but Miss Sprengel hummed with the smile of a small child returning to their secret base and showing off the prize they had found on the ground.

There was no legend here.

It was really and truly a dud.

Yet she remained unchanged. The difference between her and her opponent was too overwhelmingly great. So much so that Anna herself seemed bored to death.

“So a question: what is this the world’s oldest form of?”

===Part 4===

Anna Sprengel laughed.

She had considered going easy on her opponent if she got the right answer, but that girl apparently had no intention of trying. She turned 180 degrees around, her honey-blonde hair spreading out behind her, and she began running full speed away.

(Of course, going easy on her would just mean a longer, more painful death instead of an instant, painless one.)

It did not look like the girl was actually trying to escape.

Was this a temporary withdrawal so she could hide herself and make a surprise attack later?

(I am impressed she’s willing to risk her life for an antidote that might not even exist as far as she knows.)

“You’re used to working from behind the scenes, aren’t you? Do you normally boss other people around to wear down your enemy from a position of safety? Or are you actually afraid of letting these children come to harm? Hee hee. This is a school culture, isn’t it? You’re all children, but you upperclassmen get stuck with so much extra work.”

The girl who looked no older than 10 had not moved a step from that spot. Her smile remained, yet she did not try to hide the boredom on her face as she waved her small hand to the side.

And she gave the answer to her quiz question.

“This is the world’s oldest form of bondage, courtesy of ancient Egypt.”

Several things could be heard slicing through the air.

The distance between them did not matter.

The old rope looked worn out and ready to snap if it tried to support someone’s body weight, but the Rose leader was able to endlessly draw out its essence. With that, she could bind even an asteroid falling from the heavens to hold it in place in the middle of the air.

(Running away will only mean stepping on and being blown away by a distorted ley line “landmine”.)

But…

“Wagh!!!???”

Shokuhou Misaki let out a strange cry and then pitched forward onto the ground.

Anna Sprengel had not done anything to her.

The snow had started to pile up due to the shattered roof, so the ground may have grown wet and slippery.

The rope thrown by Anna actually missed its target entirely, shooting by directly over the Queen of Tokiwadai’s head, and wrapping tightly around one of the pillars that held up the arcade roof. A light tug with her small hand was all it took for tremendous pressure to break the pillar away.

Anna had used the world’s oldest whip and a ley line landmine, yet her opponent had dodged them both simultaneously. And not with the esper powers or technology of Academy City. This was purely the girl’s lack of athletic ability.

''The'' Miss Sprengel stared in disbelief.

It was true Shokuhou Misaki was wearing a suit that supported her athletic abilities.

It was not a powered suit designed for combat, but it was still a bizarre piece of Academy City tech she had picked up in the dark side. Shokuhou would be able to take a handgun bullet to the torso without flinching and she could lift the average car from the ground with just her two arms.

But that did not mean she had overcome her own lack of ability there.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

If she had followed the proper movements found in textbooks, she would have been killed instantly. And Anna would have looked bored throughout. Or if the suit had optimized her movements based on combat data from martial arts masters, Anna would have snorted with laughter. She would have called that high-tech solution just another way of seeking the prestige of her predecessors.

But that was not what had happened.

Shokuhou Misaki had survived in her own way.

Anna’s predictions had failed. She had not received the expected result. A loophole or vulnerability in the world had been discovered here and it had overturned Anna’s accurate predictions in a single move.

It may have been a very minor thing, but it was also so wonderfully, unbelievably sweet.

“Ha ha☆”

The sweetness burned at her mind.

She knew this was a bad habit of hers, but she went along with it anyway.

It was like a never-before-seen powerful enemy had appeared in the middle of some tedious level grinding.

She let go of that rope that should have been a sure thing for her and she once more spun the wheel on the Pneuma-less Shell. With another grinding noise, the giant orb opened along a complex arrangement of cracks and her small hand roughly snatched at what emerged from within.

Her target’s face was bright red with embarrassment as she scrambled to her feet and continued to run away. Her long blonde hair swayed side to side while she tried to leave the arcade.

“Eh heh hah, ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!! What luck! You have such absurd luck!! Well, you did emerge victorious from the endlessly-cruel screening process of gene rarity to stand here before me now, so I suppose you had already proven your luck! Even so – hee hee – I never thought you would make me laugh like this. Ha ha ha ah ha ha ah ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

The metal orb groaned some more as it opened. It was no longer holding out on Anna.

“Pff. Ah ha ha! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten an ultra-rare one like this! This is from the 20th century!!”

“Kh.”

A tree branch and a flimsy rope had been devastating enough. Shokuhou grimaced at the thought of what was to come, but she was entirely taken aback by what emerged.

It was a silver-colored mass. It was no more than a 58cm sphere, but it sounded much heavier than a bowling ball when it dropped to the ground. The asphalt broke below it. But the official documents said it weighed 84kg, so that was to be expected. It also had four metal rods that extended behind it like a comet’s tail.

In other words…

This was…

“Sputnik☆ Are satellites more your thing, Miss Science Side?”

“Wait a second.”

“The essence I can draw from this is the world’s oldest orbital launch. Although poor lonely Laika was on the second one. Now, I hope you enjoy this super-ultra-rare cause of death!!”

The instant Anna raised her hand from a good distance away, Shokuhou’s hair rose up in defiance of gravity. She was outside the shopping district, meaning no more arcade roof overhead. Only the mercilessly snowy sky waited up above her.

“Oh, no. This has to be some kind of joke ability. If she seriously going to blow me away like this!?”

She went pale and tried the best she could to run away, but…

“Eek!?”

Her right ankle twisted in an odd direction, she staggered to the side, and she fell. Anna’s predictions and calculations must not have taken that into account because the bus stop sign right next to her was torn from the ground and thrown into the snowy sky instead. Only the blue sky awaited it.

“Hee hee. You really are entertaining.”

“Oww.”

“More, more, more, more!!”

Anna rejoiced at her own bad luck.

She pulled out the next one. It was a perfectly ordinary fist-sized stone. No, it had a small indentation that the little girl stuck her finger into. What she scooped up was not paint. The thick, reddish-black substance was…

“Ha ha, ah ha ha. The world’s oldest writing tool was charcoal. Before papyrus or parchment, humanity preserved their own records by mixing charcoal with blood or fat and rubbing it on cave walls.”

She even licked her lips as she whispered the answer.

She toyed with the substance on her fingertips and moved her hand as if she were carving something into the world as a whole.

“In other words, all grimoires started from here.”

She wrote on a round table lying on its side nearby.

She wrote on a stainless-steel pillar that had avoided breaking.

She wrote on the snowman decoration positioned in front of an ice cream shop.

And all of them transformed into original grimoires that drew energy from the ley lines to autonomously defend themselves.

They all creaked as they began to move. The table’s four legs moved like an animal’s, the stainless-steel pillar bent over and crawled around like an earthworm or inchworm, and the snowman decoration’s smile gained a definite will of its own. And all three of them “glared” toward fleeing and falling Shokuhou Misaki.

“Go on. Sic her☆”

They obeyed Anna’s lazy command by rushing toward the girl, each in their own way.

The air shook.

The newly accumulating snow was blown away as they began to run.

Anna once more noted the middle school girl’s “luck” when she did not immediately look back at her pursuers. These were true grimoires, even if they were impromptu ones. If the casually written words there had entered the girl’s field of view, they would have assaulted her brain and sent blood pouring from every hole on her face.

“Ahh!!”

Anna had never imagined that someone facing such a threat to their life would run right smack into the support pillar of a wind turbine.

The table had overtaken its target and then made a U-turn to cut off her escape like a hound, but the unexpected collision threw off its aim and it crashed into a concrete wall instead.

“Pff!?”

When Shokuhou Misaki pushed her hands against the ground and climbed to her feet, the stainless-steel inchworm was clearly right there at the center of her vision, but she was so dizzy from the pain in her nose and her tension was so high that the text must never have actually reached her mind. She managed to overlook what was right in front of her and it saved her life.

Anna Sprengel could only hold her stomach with both hands and laugh.

“Ah ha ha ha!!!!!! Yes, you I like. Kamijou Touma is interesting as a raw material to work with, but he’s grown so used to his misfortune and he’s learned how to operate within it, so he’s just too unchanging. You, on the other hand, are a delight. You really are trying to do everything flawlessly, but you’re so hopelessly bad at it that it actually ends up saving you. Yes, yes. This truly is beyond any of my expectations!!!”

And how did the Queen of Tokiwadai respond while on the run?

“This city only needs one Queen: me!!”

(Now I get why Mitsuari-san never shut off the suit’s limiters no matter how cornered she felt ''back then''. This thing amplifies your unathletic side too, so one careless acceleration could have you trip or crash into a wall at twice the speed and she wanted to avoid self-destructing like that!)

Shokuhou Misaki tearfully held her reddened nose with a hand while shouting back at her foe.

Anna had called Kamijou Touma a “raw material”.

She would make her regret that. She would make her cough up whatever vaccine or antidote she was hiding. She would do whatever it took ''like the cruel queen she was.

Anna Sprengel walked leisurely through the shopping district and poked her head out from the arcade before looking a bit to the side.

That was when it happened.

An arcade coin shot down from the top of the building at three times the speed of sound.

===Part 5===

It was past the point that thinking of her as a 10-year-old mattered.

“Eek!”

Shokuhou’s throat trembled at the sudden explosion.

A powerful explosion and shockwave erupted around Anna Sprengel, sending smashed plastic and concrete into the air as a fine dust. Invisible but thick walls rushed out in every direction, forcibly tearing the inchworm and snowman from the ground as they tried to attack the honey-blonde girl. It was the same principle as a ship’s sail or an umbrella during a typhoon. Shokuhou had fallen to the ground while the monsters had their large bodies raised, so the blast affected them differently.

“Oh, my.” Anna laughed from a short distance away while holding the thin red cloth to her chest. “You finally found the courage, did you? Good girl. You seemed to be arguing before, but does she actually mean a lot to you?”

But they had bigger issues to deal with.

Shokuhou looked up while still trembling.

Academy City’s #3 had her feet perfectly balanced atop the raised edge of a short building’s rooftop. But the A.A.A. was gone. Instead of sticking with that half-destroyed junk, she must have abandoned it to focus on escaping the rocket fuel explosion.

Shokuhou Misaki raised her voice while grimacing at the unpleasant wetness of the snow that her own body heat had melted below her butt.

“What is this sticky dust ability!? Microplastics? Concrete powder? Ew, ew, ew, ew! Are you trying to kill me by having me breathe in all this gross stuff!?”

“Shut up and go back to eating your organic vegetables covered in caterpillars and worms!! I just saved your snowy ass, so you should be rubbing your forehead into the ground to thank me! And get on up here. I can’t aim my Railgun at those ''drones'' with you down there!!”

“…”

Shokuhou leaped straight up before she could even look back on reflex. She jumped a full 7 meters with no footholds on the way up. Unfortunately, she had been too panicked to even think about how she would land. In fact, she jumped clear over the building rooftop, lost her balance in midair, and began to rotate vertically.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

“(The world would probably be better off if I just let her fall ass-first into one of the TV antennas or Christmas trees around here.)”

“Enough calm calculation ability! Just save me already! Humanely, I mean!!”

Mikoto fired a few extra Railguns down.

Instead of Anna Sprengel herself, these were launched at the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman that had been attacking Shokuhou.

Explosions and shockwaves erupted out and they knocked the honey-blonde girl further off course, sending her through two flips along an unnatural trajectory. And for some reason, she landed neatly in Mikoto’s arms.

She was being princess carried in a highly unusual fashion.

“Kyun☆”

“Don’t say that out loud, you liar Queen!!”

“Well, this isn’t my first time being princess carried, so this is fine by me.”

Mikoto did not like where this conversation was headed, so she relaxed her arms to let Shokuhou fall straight down. She let Shokuhou’s defenseless back fall right onto her raised knee, bending her spine at an unpleasant angle.

“Agwahh!?”

“Stop thinking you have the upper hand here and tell me one thing. I need to know to stay focused right now, okay? The first time you just mentioned. Was it with that idiot? I can’t imagine who else it would be.”

“I-I’ll leave that one to your imagination.”

A gloomy darkness entered Mikoto’s eyes, but she was also focused on the reality before them. Now was not the time to be having fun with Miss Exhibitionist in her high leg swimsuit (with one portion of her body a bit damp after sitting in the snow).

Their enemy was not dead yet.

And that did not just refer to the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman.

Anna Sprengel parted the dust while laughing. Yet the asphalt at her feet was torn up, so the Railgun blast had definitely hit there.

(You damn monster!!)

Mikoto clenched her teeth, but she had honestly doubted a surprise attack would be enough to settle this.

That was why she had been able to fire the shot without worrying about accidentally killing the girl and forever losing the only means of saving that boy.

Her Railgun was supposed to be her trump card, but ever since the 24th, it had been reduced to a mere door knocker that always lost to the enemy’s defenses. However, she was most humiliated by the fact that she was actually growing accustomed to that fact. Of course, that was due to the fact that she had high enough base stats to swiftly accept unpleasant information so she could work towards another solution instead of being a one-trick pony.

“What do we do!? My Mental Out isn’t showing any sign of working!!”

“Has she abandoned her humanity in body and mind? Anyway, we need to get away from her for the time being! Even if we are going to take the fight to her, we need to at least lure her into a soccer field, nature park, or other open area. Otherwise we’ll just do more damage to everything around her!!”

They knew it would only sadden Kamijou Touma if they caused a ton of collateral damage while trying to save him.

And that side of him was part of what made them want to save him in the first place.

Shokuhou Misaki was wearing an enhancement suit, but she would still trip and fall (with several times the force of normal), so she could not exactly jump from rooftop to rooftop in the middle of battle. If she slipped on the snow during her running start, she could end up falling and going splat at the bottom. Thus, Mikoto continued princess carrying her while leaping from frozen building to frozen building.

The Queen of Tokiwadai brushed her hair from her shoulder.

“Yes, this is how it’s supposed to work. The super genius beauty handles all the cool and calculated brainwork while the brawny dumb-dumb handles all the fighting and the transportation while also looking after me☆”

“I’ll drop you from this 12-story building, pork buns.”

“Whaaaat!? How can you look at this perfect, lustrous body and think of that horrifying convenience store product full of additives!?”

The dumb Queen roared back with various (meat-filled) parts of her jiggling, but Mikoto ignored it. Although she did decide to be a little kinder to Shirai Kuroko who she always used as a convenient means of getting around. She had discovered that asking for help and being asked for it were completely different experiences.

She also noticed she had calmed down enough to think about other things like that.

Not receiving any additional attacks from Anna Sprengel would of course be best, but Anna also had no real reason to stop. It was hard to imagine ''her'' losing sight of someone just because they fled across the rooftops. This was an improvement, but it had been handed to them by the enemy. Mikoto was honestly unsure if she could simply accept it, so she grew cautious.

“…”

After coming to a stop on a rooftop (while princess carrying the hot and juicy pork buns), she looked back into the distance.

She saw nothing there.

Nor did she hear anything.

She waited for a bit before realizing what had happened.

“She…isn’t following us?”

Why not?

She thought to herself in the falling snow, failed to find an answer, and felt her mind boiling over.

She thought back to the sign she had seen Anna Sprengel looking at: ''Straight Ahead – District 15.

In other words…

“''Did she lose all interest in us!?''”

===Part 6===

“You know what I’ve realized, Kami-yan?”

“What?”

Kamijou Touma sounded out of it as he responded.

“It’s not about the female doctors and nurses.” Aogami Pierce sat cross-legged on the neighboring bed with nothing better to do. “I’m all about the sickly girls in pajamas right now. I saw the cutest girl with a bob cut and an eyepatch out in the hall earlier.”

“What’s with you, Aogami Pierce? Did you take a mental trip to some other world when Fukiyose broke your secret tablet over her knee during her visit?”

“In fact, this is the home of girls in casts and eyepatches!! I need to be more careful cause I overlooked this until now! And I’m supposed to be the all-time master!!”

What did that matter?

Kamijou regretted asking, but he decided to say one thing more.

“What am I supposed to do about this information?”

“Let’s go visit a girl’s room.”

“Why did I even ask!? We can’t do that! You’re the kind of guy that loses all control on the school trip and ends up hated by the entire class! Think for two seconds why they go to the trouble of keeping separate rooms for boys and girls in the hospital!!”

“Shut up!! I’m not spending my Christmas playing cards with another guy!! I want at least one bittersweet memory!!”

Aogami Pierce’s hands were not functioning, so he had learned how to manipulate the cards with his toes. People always found a way to grow when the need arose. Even if it was meaningless growth.

He was making more sense than when he had been stubbornly refusing to admit Christmas was anything special, but he had taken it in the worst possible direction. Kamijou really wanted to avoid being caught in the middle of this.

“Don’t worry, Kami-yan. I’m pretty sure I can get away safely while they’re attacking you.”

“Do I need to break a few of your bones to extend your stay here? If you know we’ll be attacked and have to ‘get away’, none of your dreams are going to come true there!! Just accept the reality you’re stuck with, Aogami! At most, you might open the door and accidentally see them changing, but no love starts that way!!”

“Wrong!! We still have our old friends the suspension bridge effect and Stockholm syndrome!!”

“Aren’t those both about people mistaking their fear for something else!?”

Kamijou was aware that manuals on how to get someone to fall in love through hypnotism or psychology stubbornly refused to go away in certain niche markets, but he was pretty sure the end result of that would only feel empty. It was all one way and they would never be seeing you for who you really were.

“Oh, I’ve given up on any normal sort of love,” said the garbage in the neighboring bed while sounding almost proud of himself.

“…”

“As long as I can do her, I don’t really care how I get to that point. The age of maturity was lowered! And there’s a curse placed on all us boys, requiring us to lose our virginity before then!!”

“Pretty sure you’re just screwing yourself up so bad you’ll never even be able to hold a girl’s hand.”

“Wait…you’ve been acting awfully calm for someone sharing this hellish Christmas with me. What is this barrier between us? You can tell me!”

Kamijou Touma stared off into the distance.

He lamented his current situation.

And he stuffed a rolled-up tissue in his nose while thinking back on something.

“Kissing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Aogami Pierce stopped breathing.

“What…did you say? And what’s that nosebleed supposed to mean!?”

“I mean, people’s mouths are full of germs. You never know what kind of microbes are in there.”

“How dare you!!!”

===Part 7===

Anna Sprengel sighed quietly.

She looked up into the chilly white sky as those two disappeared, but then she looked away. It was just like a child watching an airplane through the car window until the car entered a tunnel.

She began walking in the direction she was most interested in.

She checked the blue sign and kept walking with a bored look on her face.

(Shokuhou Misaki is fun because she introduces so many irregularities without even meaning to, but now Misaka Mikoto is in control again. People who fight properly and lose seriously are such a bore. There’s nothing of value there. And I was really hoping to enjoy that a while longer too.)

Below the snowy sky, she wiped the reddish-black paint off of her small fingertips which looked softer than custard, causing the devices she had sent out to collapse on the spot. The powerful text written out on the table, stainless-steel pillar, and snowman all melted away and the same happened to the inanimate objects themselves. They were only makeshift grimoires and they had failed to establish the proper circulation of ley line power absorbed from the ground, so they appeared to rupture from within. It was similar to a stroke or aneurysm where your own blood flow kills you.

She did not even care enough to look back at what remained.

She snapped her fingers as she walked and the 2m metal orb compressed down behind her. In the blink of an eye, it became a bottle no larger than an eyedrop container. The miniscule round flask was lined with a thin lead foil. And unlike the flasks found at ordinary schools, this one had multiple necks, making it look something like a bagpipe.

This was not her only trump card.

The Pneuma-less Shell was a base metal still made by intentionally distorting the original egg. It was in fact a spiritual item meant to disturb her own rhythm and reduce her status.

Once you eliminated death, you would forget the fear of death and others could bring about your death without you even realizing it. In other words, it led to careless mistakes. Just like the immortal Greek gods were unable to control themselves and ended up giving into their pride and jealousy, leading to many very human mistakes.

People could not restrain or govern themselves without wanting for something.

Think of the people of a certain country who so hated the clean water coming from their faucets at home that they would go out and buy bottled mineral water. Did those people properly appreciate the rarity of that single drop of water?

“I suppose that’s enough ''sightseeing''. There’s nothing more to see in this city, so maybe I should get to work. Nothing else of interest here. …If St. Germain still hasn’t destroyed that boy, I need to help it along.”

(The acute St. Germain should have spread through his body by now, but I can hasten the process by driving him to anger.)

“I wonder what I’ll see.”

She laughed.

All she did was laugh.

“The pain, anxiety, fear, and resignation will wear your soul away, leaving only the last and final piece, but what will that final piece be, Kamijou Touma? I cannot wait to see what your true essence is.”

Anna then pulled out a perfectly ordinary smartphone to replace her spiritual item. It displayed the kind of map app used everywhere in the world.

The signs around here said this was the border between Districts 13 and 15.

Her destination was further east.

Academy City would normally be blotted out on navigation services from outside the city, but this was a complete version with everything down to the back alleys filled in by a satellite belonging to R&C Occultics. She could find her way around Academy City with this.

“Hm, hm, hm hm☆”

She inputted her destination and a few different routes were automatically calculated.

She tapped the shortest of the routes to begin.

Her destination was a certain hospital in District 7.

The phone spoke in a polite, female artificial voice.

“One hour to your destination.”

===Part 8===

The situation had changed.

They hesitantly turned back the way they had come and then followed the blue signs to the east. They of course made sure to continue jumping from snowy rooftop to snowy rooftop to avoid accidentally running into Anna on the streets.

Yet it was them that were in trouble if they lost sight of Anna.

She was the only one with the vaccine or antidote they needed. They had to prevent her from reaching the hospital.

But they also knew Anna would show up at the hospital eventually, so couldn’t they lie in wait there instead of trying to chase her around?

No, they could not.

Two Level 5s had attacked without slowing her in the slightest, so the hospital would be destroyed the instant she arrived there. It did not matter whether or not the sick boy who kept coughing up blood could win in the end. Everything there – the people and the things – would be destroyed in the process.

And that might be enough to break him.

Because he would carry the weight of things he had no responsibility to carry.

“Whoops.”

They had to be careful while jumping. If they knocked some snow off the edge of a roof, they might just be noticed.

They had arrived in District 15.

This district looked very different. It was Academy City’s largest shopping district, so it was flooded with young people dressed up as Santa or a reindeer. There were also some weird costumes like a box or a turkey with short arms and legs attached. There was apparently an attempt to break the record for the world’s largest cake, so the excitement was not going to end until the cake had been sliced up and everyone had a chance to snap a photo of their piece.

There were no umbrellas to be seen.

The view of the phone cameras was apparently more important than anyone’s health, so those view-blocking pieces of waterproof fabric would get you judged guilty.

Which made her easy to spot.

“There she is!”

A pedestrian deck was constructed up above a pedestrian scramble, making for a very busy area, but a girl who looked to be only 10 was walking above the road there mixed in with the crowd. From time to time, some young people carrying bottles of beer or sparkling wine (those were actual adults and not just high schoolers, right?) would pour some of their drink on her while laughing. The thin red cloth barely covering her was actually being accepted by the people here, so District 15’s happy and cheerful Christmas was a strange time indeed. A young wife in only an apron would apparently be accepted as no more than a costume on this day.

Shokuhou was disgusted since she preferred a classier atmosphere.

“This is worse than I’d heard.”

“All these lights are nearly blinding me, so it’s easy to lose track of her. Help me double check her location.”

The partying was already out of control, but a girl must have decided this was her chance and began an unauthorized concert out on the street. Around 10 bodybuilders were lifting up a German luxury car (probably one of theirs) like a palanquin and smiled for the camera while filming an ad for a sports gym. This white Christmas was growing deadly cold, yet both the girl with a bare midriff and a megaphone and the oiled-up group in only trunks did not seem to care. District 15 really was a strange place. Enough so that the TV cameramen who had showed up hoping to get some good footage had to cover the lens with a hand to avoid filming the overly risqué costumes and the people misbehaving for the camera. It was easy to see why no one was paying much attention to Anna.

Had she chosen to use the elevated path because the ground level was packed in as close as a crowded train during rush hour? Although it did look like there would have been other options.

“She really is staring due east!” shouted Mikoto while focusing on something other than the people.

A blue sign was installed on the pedestrian deck. It was half frozen over by sherbet-like snow, but it was still readable: ''Straight Ahead – District 7.

(She’s moving from west to east? And District 15 leads right into District 7.)

Shokuhou must have been thinking the same thing because she arched one of her shapely eyebrows.

“There are plenty of landmarks there, but the last place we want her is there too: the District 7 hospital where he was taken.”

Anna was walking along in such a defenseless way she might as well have been daring them to attack her.

And if they managed to entertain her, she would be willing to come to stop and watch the show. But the instant she lost interest, she would resume walking toward that hospital. And once she arrived, she would destroy the entire building with the dying boy inside. Her steady pace gave off the same precision fear as a time bomb or a cruise missile.

Shokuhou kicked her legs like a small child while being princess carried.

“So what do we do?”

“Stop trying to act cute, pork buns.”

“The next time you call me that, I’m breaking through your mental barrier with Mental Out.”

“Oh, really? Well, I chose not to call you ‘sweet buns’ because I thought it sounded wrong, but if that’s what you prefer. Also, she’s using a device to navigate, isn’t she? Then we need to move in close and attack.”

“Did you learn nothing from last time!? We can’t hope to win with our direct fighting ability!!”

That was not something two Level 5s should have been saying.

But if they did not accept their disadvantage, they could not keep up with reality. They would be left behind by the times.

Mikoto let out a white sigh.

“Which is why that’s a diversion. Our real plan is to hack her phone and mess with her navigation to send her in an endless circle. I don’t really know how much of a monster this Anna Sprengel person is, but that’s a normal electronic device she’s holding. We can redirect her somewhere more convenient for us and then figure out how to keep her from defending herself. We’ll invite her into a whiteout. It’s time she learned how scary it is to get stranded out in the snow in a high-tech city of 2.3 million!!”

“I see,” said Shokuhou Misaki.

The diversion part would have to be done by Misaka Mikoto since physical fighting was her specialty. Everyone involved already knew Shokuhou Misaki’s Mental Out did not work on Anna, so the Queen honestly had nothing to do here. She just wanted Mikoto to get it on with it and become a noble sacrifice that would extend that pointy-haired boy’s life.

Except she had forgotten something.

Her dislike of the other girl was a mutual one.

“Okay, do your best to act as disposable bait. If she actually takes a bite of those sweet and sexy buns, I promise to never forget your sacrifice.”

“Bwah, wait!? Th-this is an 8-story building!! You can’t just toss me off of here, Misaka-saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!!”

After a count of three, Mikoto tossed the weight she was princess carrying. Shokuhou felt an odd floating sensation, but she could not actually do anything but scream while dropping down. And with that much noise, everyone in the area ended up looking up toward the source. That included Anna Sprengel in the middle of the crowd.

And a crescent moon smile had torn across her face.

It was the cruel smile of a small child thinking about squishing the bug held between her fingers.

“Ha ha☆”

“I am so sick of being used as a toy for weirdos with no common sense!!”

While Shokuhou flailed her arms and legs, the transmission of force must have come together just right because she spun around in midair and her feet landed cleanly on the railing of the pedestrian deck.

(A-and Misaka-san didn’t even help my landing ability!? Was that musclebound moron really trying to kill me!?)

“Of course I helped. I just did it wirelessly.”

That response came from the same pedestrian deck as Anna.

They were less than 10 meters apart. Misaka Mikoto was crouched down to keep a more animalistic eye level as she took aim at the little girl’s navel. And she rushed in with enough force to dislocate Anna’s spine with a single tackle.

At the same time, a disconcerting sound came from all over Shokuhou’s body. No, the skintight suit covering her was being ''electrically'' controlled.

She leaped from the railing, flipped as gracefully as a ballerina or figure skater, and used the centrifugal force to sweep her heel around in a roundhouse kick. It was aimed for Anna’s face. Specifically, her eyes.

She did not need to score a clean hit.

As long as it blinded Anna or forced her to evade, it would create the opening Mikoto needed.

“Wait! Misaka, why!?”

Shokuhou Misaki finally bristled and yelled about being used as a sacrificial pawn, but the seemingly 10-year-old girl reached a small hand out toward the approaching heel and casually grabbed the Queen’s ankle. With a swing of her arm, Shokuhou transformed into a projectile to intercept Mikoto.

Mikoto did not really care. She focused on her magnetic control.

Instead of catching Shokuhou who flew in while rotating like a defective boomerang, Mikoto stepped on the girl (specifically on those loathsome twin pork buns on her chest) to take a leap forward.

This did not produce a “boing” sound effect, nor did it enhance her jump in any noticeable way.

(Really?)

The honey-blonde girl was mad now (and too much of an amateur to realize she needed to focus on her landing right now), so she pulled a TV remote from her bag and aimed it at Mikoto.

That girl who liked watching TV despite being the Queen of social media raised her voice.

“There are TV crews here, so you can kiss your social life goodbye after I make you strip down and dance in the nude, Misaka-saaan!!”

“Don’t interfere! Now is not the time!!”

With a dull zap, Mikoto’s head shook to the side. The #5’s Mental Out did not work on the #3 as long as Mikoto rejected it. All it did was give her a minor headache.

Without that, Mikoto would have crashed into Anna Sprengel, slammed her to the ground, and pinned her down. As a teenage girl, she hated having to win by using her weight, but there was no way such a little girl could overpower her like that.

But.

Something scorched the empty air.

If Mikoto had stayed on her previous course, her upper body would have been reduced to ashes before she even reached Anna.

Anna did not appear to be holding any kind of special weapon.

She had simply blown a kiss in an oddly mature way for her body size.

(What? This isn’t like that junk she was using before!)

The soles of Mikoto’s shoes scraped at the pedestrian deck. She had landed a bit to the side of the girl instead of on top of her.

She had not intended for that and she doubted Shokuhou had either.

Still unarmed, Anna laughed.

She crossed her fingers in an odd way for simply clenching and unclenching her fist.

“Hilarious. You should really keep the unathletic one in charge.”

“I! Am! Not! Unathletic!!!!!!”

That must have been something Shokuhou Misaki refused to let stand because she tearfully hopped back up while rolling and writhing on the ground (because she had been too focused on revenge to prepare for her landing).

Anna waved a small hand and took a single step back.

That brought her right alongside a redheaded high school girl in a knit cap who happened to be on the same pedestrian deck.

“Oh, no! She’s taking a hostage!!”

“Hey.”

But what happened next came as a complete surprise.

Instead of holding a blade up to the girl, Anna whispered in her ear.

The girl had been trying to earn more views on social media by filming as much of the partying as she could, but she had not had the courage to dress up in a costume herself.

“''Did you hear that? A mere middle schooler is worried for you. Doesn’t it make you want to die of embarrassment when you’re in high school''?”

“What?”

“''How long were you planning to be a mere cameraman while walking around in the snow without an umbrella? Don’t you feel lonely standing there adjusting the camera’s focus? It’s your phone, so shouldn’t you be there in the center of the screen? And you have a new power to show off, don’t you? If you could only use the magic properly, you could tear down the illusionary hierarchy built by science. And isn’t today the perfect day to throw out your inhibitions and make yourself the star?''”

Miss Sprengel’s whispers made the girl gasp.

Those words were like a sweet and slow-acting poison.

“''Sigh. Maybe my hopes for you were misplaced.''” She delivered the finishing blow. “''You’re just going to sit here all alone on Christmas and let that power go to waste, aren’t you? People like you, who have the power to change their future but refuse to do so, are doomed to live and die in obscurity.''”

Those words must have carried a great bewitching power because the knit hat girl immediately changed her mind.

“The power of a four-legged animal can be extracted from a single finger. Picture a line extending from the center of your heart to the tip of your middle finger and let the fire essence roar!!”

A bright flash of light was followed by a sound more like melting metal than burning.

And that was accurate because the pedestrian deck was melted and sliced through.

“What in the-!?”

“Ah ha ha.”

The knit hat high school girl’s response was strange.

She could have easily become a murderer just then, but it was joy that covered her face. She sounded like an elementary schooler whose esper power had first shown real results.

“I did it, I did it!!” She kept her palm held out toward Mikoto and Misaki. “I actually did it!! I forced the famous #3 to gasp and fall back. Hey, were you filming that? A selfie isn’t enough for this! This needs to go viral! My power was real after all!!”

Mikoto was overwhelmed by how unusual this was, but then she heard some laughter growing more distant. Anna Sprengel was slipping through the crowd while whispering a few statements each to the boys and girls she set her sights on. With some she used a grudge, with some talk of making easy money, with some an inferiority complex, and with some a desire for unity. She chose the perfect words to work their way deep inside each individual’s heart.

That was all it took to unleash something.

The middle and high school students enjoying their Christmas pulled out some objects from their pockets and bags. Some were plastic wands, some were metal medallions, and some were cards made with an automatic business card printer.

They all shouted something, but Mikoto could no longer perceive it as words.

Their voices shook the entire deck like the cheering at a stadium and their voices produced beams of light, explosions, ice spears, and even humanoid forms that rushed toward Mikoto like a flash flood.

Mikoto’s intuition told her this was very bad.

She could tell these were not the esper powers she was used to dealing with.

She reflexively tried to leap up with her magnetism to avoid it, but she felt some resistance at her right leg.

Someone was clinging to her while squishing those two chest buns against her leg.

The girl really did have tears in her eyes at the prospect of being left behind.

“What kind of servant are you, you violent maid!? You need to look after your Queen when she has this kind of once-a-millennium beauty, Misaka-saaan!!”

“Bwah!?”

She lost balance and both of them fell from the railing and off the pedestrian deck altogether.

But that may have been the best move they could have made since a few beams of light scorched the sky above. Mikoto could not have been more reluctant to admit it, but she might have been shredded by that barrage if she had followed her original escape plan.

Instead of falling to the ground, she used magnetism to attach themselves to the underside of the pedestrian deck. The unexpected movement managed to shake off all the gazes from above and below the deck.

“Any idea what that was!?” she asked.

“It wasn’t ordinary esper abilities, that’s for sure. If it was, then two Level 5s like us wouldn’t need to hide up here like bugs.”

“I agree, but that isn’t what I was talking about. If you had a ‘special power’ dropped into your lap out of the blue, would you really just start using it to kill? To be honest, Anna’s words weren’t that attractive. In fact, you’d be extra skeptical of any offer made by a little girl wearing only a thin cloth. Con artists normally try to look as legitimate as possible while giving an extremely calculated sales talk! So why did it work for her!?”

Mikoto was asking the Level 5 with the strongest psychological power if there had been any “interference” at play there.

“All she did was talk to them.” The Queen bluntly rejected that idea. But, “That can work if you already have your target’s personal information. Specifically, if you have already researched all of their internal problems, such as inferiority complexes, traumas, and mental tension in need of catharsis.”

“But how could she…?”

Mikoto trailed off as she found the answer.

R&C Occultics.

That enormous IT company had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and took fortunetelling requests from all around the globe. Which required the names, genders, ages, birthdates, blood types, and other crucial personal information about the requester and the person they had a crush on. (Did it also work with more platonic feelings, a boss you disliked, or someone you wanted revenge against?) Even the reason someone wanted the fortunetelling was a treasure trove of information on their doubts and worries. The possibilities someone rejected for themselves and the words they wanted to hear someone else say were a very good indicator of their psychological scars.

Giant IT companies loved to show off how personal information was a new form of monetizable asset, yet they also did everything they could to extract it from people without paying them for it, so analyzing their users’ browsing history to display the most effective advertisements was a walk in the park for them. If you dug deeper into those techniques, you would be able to influence the nonphysical mental world through psychological analysis, scoring people’s humanity, creating a cyber cult, and more.

In other words, you could develop a master key that would have no effect on the other 7 billion people out there but was carefully designed to stir something inside that one person and push them toward a certain action. Of course, it required such a massive prior investment that it was generally not worth the effort.

But this extraordinary idiot had actually done it.

This fool had ignored all of the warning bells from wiser people and done it anyway for one simple reason: because she could.

“By the way.” Anna Sprengel’s cruel laughter arrived from somewhere in the crowd. She sounded like a child who had never been taught the value of life. “Psychology deals in individuals and groups. Just like a single person running for the entrance during a good sale or at a concert will inspire everyone else to do the same, the actions of a few have a way of spreading through a larger group. To be clear, controlling a group is much easier than controlling an individual.”

Mikoto heard a gurgling sound.

She raised her guard against whatever was coming, but that “flash flood” from before did not arrive again.

Puzzled, she hacked a nearby street camera and displayed its footage on her phone’s small screen.

“What the hell?”

Was it Mikoto or the knit cap high school girl who asked that?

The girl who had wielded that strange ''new'' technique known as magic was holding her hands to her mouth. A dark red liquid was spilling from between her fingers. There was far too much sticky liquid dripping down to the pedestrian deck for this to be a simple scrape or cut.

“Eh, eh? Wai- bh. Cough, cough, cough!! What’s happening to me!?”

She extended her bloody hands hoping to find some assistance, but no one reached out to help her. In fact, the other boys and girls who had used what was (apparently) called magic were all coughing up blood and collapsing much like her. No, it went beyond coughing up blood. The blood vessels in their body were bursting, the dark blue marks of internal bleeding appeared on their skin, and some of them must have had the blood vessels in their eyes burst too because the whites of their eyes were stained red.

There was no answer to be found here.

Of course there wasn’t when no one understand the mechanism known as magic.

Their minds clung to speculation to escape the fear of not knowing and that groundless information inspired new hatred.

In other words…

“The #3 did this.”

There was deep resentment in their voices.

They refused to admit to their own fear, so the resentment settled in deep and inspired simple aggressiveness and hostility, all so they could avoid looking at their impending doom.

They were driven by an invisible fear.

Civilization had regressed to the age when germs were called a witch’s curse. If they caught a cold from being out in the winter chill, they would blame Mikoto. If their throat grew hoarse after shouting too much, that too would be Mikoto’s fault.

“She used EM waves somehow!!”

“That’s right. Why else would our blood vessels start bursting!?”

“It’s her or us! Electrolysis can easily break down our vitamins!!”

Mikoto had trouble breathing.

Even Shokuhou asked a trembling question while below the pedestrian deck that had clear icicles hanging down from it.

She had doubt in her eyes.

“I seriously doubt you did, but you didn’t actually do anything, did you?”

“No, I have no idea what this is. In fact, I can’t even cause that with my powers!!”

Mikoto shouted back, but that did not make it any less awkward. Yes, Mikoto and Shokuhou knew more about the situation than any of the other students, ''but not even they knew what was happening.'' And without knowing that, she could not be 100% certain she had not accidentally caused this somehow.

If Kamijou Touma had happened to be here, he could have explained it right away. He would have said this was the obvious ''side effect'' when a scientific esper used magical spells. He would tell those students to stop if they wanted to avoid destroying all their blood vessels and nerves.

But the majority of people living in Academy City did not have that knowledge.

And without the knowledge to avoid the damage happening to them, they could only turn to meaningless superstition.

Kill the witch and all the world’s problems will be solved. Break the Muramasa because that sword is disturbing the peace of the world. In the West and the East, there had always been cases of absurd mass hysteria where people attacked a minority to achieve peace of mind.

People were more frightening when inspired by fear than by anger.

Because they could no longer decide for themselves to lower their raised fist.

“Hey, what do we do? She already saw who we are. Oh, god. This is terrifying.”

“Shut up. We can’t back down now that the fight’s started. If we don’t take her out, she’ll just hunt us down in revenge!!”

“Get her!! Before she can attack again!! This invisible attack can get you through your dorm’s walls, so we need to kill her nowwwwwwwwwwwwww!!”

“Misaka-san,” said Shokuhou, but Mikoto was on the move before she even finished. With the Queen still in her arms, she used magnetism to swing around from the bottom of the pedestrian deck like she was on a trapeze. She flew in a large C to arrive high overhead just before the point below the deck was filled with beams of light and great heat. That part of the deck actually melted and the entire deck tilted like it had lost its balance.

The #5’s eyes were wide as she clung to the #3’s hips.

“We can’t get the vaccine or antidote if we lose sight of that monster. And she’ll destroy the hospital when she gets there. Where did Anna Sprengel go!?”

“I don’t know!! But these people collapsing take precedence right now. Did Anna do something to them!?”

Every time the terrified students used magic, they would harm themselves more, but they mistook that for another mysterious attack from Misaka Mikoto, grew even more terrified, and clung to magic again to rid themselves of that fear. Unfortunately, no one here could prove to them they were trapped in a hopeless vicious cycle.

Kamijou Touma was not here.

Even so, Misaka Mikoto focused on what they had to do while she flew upside-down in the air.

“Shokuhouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!”

That verbal slap to the cheek got the Queen to gasp and grab her remote.

Yes.

Anna Sprengel and Misaka Mikoto were exceptions, but Mental Out would work just fine against this ordinary group of ordinary people.

A single button froze the world around them.

All those boys and girls had been shortening their own lives with magic like someone obsessively checking to make sure they had locked the door before heading out, but now they all came to a stop.

The negative spiral had been broken.

At the same time, the only person still moving stood out like a sore thumb. A small form was using the stairs to descend from the tilted deck.

It had to be…

“Anna Sprengel!!!!!!”

===Part 9===

“Oh, dear. They’ve noticed me. That psychological one is still full of surprises and a lot of fun. Maybe we’re just a good match.”

Anna smiled as she descended from the snow-covered pedestrian deck to the crowd on the surface.

A part-timer on a red Santa-themed bike was trapped in the crowd with a phone and an insulated bag, presumably after someone ordered something to this area without thinking. These human shields apparently made it difficult for those girls to attack, so Miss Sprengel slipped past the poor part-timer and kept walking. She was starting to think using a bike might be fun because she had seen a Christmas-themed rental bike stand that formed a metal tree by attaching a ton of bikes to a revolving door made from cross-shaped metal poles.

(I’m sure they can guess where I’m headed, so will they panic if I arrive ahead of schedule?)

The naked little girl pulled her red cloth in closer and smiled coldly. The danger of being her favorite was obvious enough from that boy who was approaching death due to an unexpected kiss from her.

The thorns of this rose would harm all life around her.

She cut across District 15 which continued to party like they were in Sodom (which shouldn’t have been much of a surprise for a city built by Aleister) and she approached the neighboring district.

That was District 7.

But just before she arrived, a black shooting star fell toward her head.

Misaka Mikoto had dropped straight down with an iron sand sword made by gathering up all the iron sand she could find and shaping it into a rapidly-vibrating sword.

Anna simply held up her small hand.

But her fingers were crossed in an unusual way for simply spreading your hand out.

That was enough to stop an attack capable of slicing right through an armored train.

“And this is unbearably boring, Misaka Mikoto. You were somewhat interesting back when you were blurring the line between science and magic with the A.A.A., but no longer. Now you’re just plain old strong. You can increase your parameters all you like, but your movements themselves are so one-note. I’m not interested in an event boss that requires the strongest equipment, so get lost already.”

“!?”

Mikoto did not expect a clean hit.

The instant she tried to push her way through, it was not Anna Sprengel who was destroyed. It was one of the metal trees found here and there in District 15. It was a rental bike stand made by attaching all the bikes to metal poles to form a tree.

A large cloud of snow scattered into the air around her landing point.

Disconcerting cracks ran through the entire metal and concrete stairway Anna stood on. The metal poles were sliced to pieces and the seemingly 10-year-old girl was slammed into the ground along with the wreckage of the many bikes.

They were rental products, so they did not use anything fancy like carbon or aluminum frames.

That meant Mikoto could control them via magnetism.

(I don’t have to defeat her. If I can crush her under all these scraps and keep her from moving, she won’t be able to cause any more trouble. Once she’s caught, I can apply even more pressure from all directions with my magnetism to really trap her!!)

“This will get you nowhere.” Those words mercilessly left the rubble to pierce through the girl’s heart. “I said I wasn’t interested in raw strength. Because I already know who wins in a contest like that.”

It was like a volcano had erupted.

Concrete shards and sharp rebar scattered every which way. Misaka Mikoto (and Shokuhou Misaki who was clinging to her hips) were blown away in a tailspin. They were launched at a high angle, so instead of falling back to the ground, Mikoto planted her feet on the wall of a nearby building to stand on it.

“What…just happened!?”

“Wait, what is that?”

Mikoto and Shokuhou’s questions were subtly different.

When Mikoto blinked her eyes and took another look, she noticed a translucent figure standing next to Anna Sprengel. It held a small fist straight up in a silly kind of way.

What was it?

She honestly did not know.

It looked like a humanoid silhouette about as tall as an adult man, but it had large, swan-like wings growing from its back, and its entire head had been transformed into a twisted falcon, eagle, or some other bird of prey. It gave off a pale platinum glow and there was no mistaking it for an ordinary person. But despite the sinister silhouette, a glowing halo hovered above its man-eating head.

Anyone would know what that symbolized.

Even children’s picture books used that to signify an angel.

Mikoto felt a terrible sense of wrongness, disgust, and rejection crawling up her spine, like she had seen a maggot-ridden rotting corpse being named the winner of a beauty pageant and no one was questioning it.

That thing was wrong.

This was not about the division between science and magic. Even Mikoto, a science worshiper who knew nothing of the occult, could tell this was blasphemous.

That was the only word she could think of for this being that shattered people’s ordinary values just by existing.

“''Aiwass,''” bluntly whispered the little girl lazily covering her nudity with a thin cloth.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_BW5.jpg|thumb]]

Was that its name? Mikoto was not even sure her ears had heard it correctly. If she analyzed the high frequencies and low frequencies with an auditory device, she might find it was pronounced entirely differently.

At any rate, this was on another level altogether.

It may even have been the source that shared its “power” with the monster known as Anna Sprengel.

But Misaka Mikoto forced herself to take a positive view of the situation.

“We drew this out of her. That means we managed to break through that confident smile of hers.”

“U-u-um, Misaka-san? I realllly doubt my Mental Out is going to work on that falcon angel, so if you’re done with me, could I head back to that boy’s hospital bed and-”

“That means the real battle has finally begun!! We’re on the right track here. If we keep going like this, we can force Anna to use up everything at her disposal!!”

“Please just let me leave!!!!!!”

The little girl looked up at them from the ground.

She was no longer smiling.

Anna Sprengel spoke with that bizarre monster by her side.

She did not even glance toward that reliable partner.

“Do not come out when I have not called for you, dullard. You’re ruining my fun.”

Misaka Mikoto boiled over.

She thought her vision had gone entirely red.

Anna had possessed a means of winning at any time, but she had chosen not to use it. She had dragged out the fight while dancing elegantly along the line between life and death, like she was trying to draw out every last drop of blood.

Did she really not have anything more to her?

Did she not have an earnest desire she could not wait a second longer to fulfill or an anxiety that things would never be the same again if she screwed things up here? Did she not experience impatience or hatred so intense she lost sight of herself? Was she really filled with so much confidence she could take as many detours as she liked and choose as many methods and options as she wanted to try out?

Even though Mikoto had to worry about all the unrelated people who were injured, the definite threat to the hospital, and the microbes eating away at that boy’s life from within?

“Give it a rest, you-”

Mikoto gathered strength in her brow and clenched her teeth so hard she thought they might break.

She prepared to let out a roar.

But just before she could, Miss Sprengel sighed and said more.

“Because, dullard, I can slaughter them instantly even without your help.”

===Part 10===

An ominous tremor ran through the entirety of Academy City.

===Part 11===

The air was scorched and no one was moving.

This was the sinister atmosphere of a battle’s aftermath, where event the corpses were abandoned.

And amid it all…

“Hm, hm, hm hm.”

A little girl hid her soft skin with a red cloth and hummed an out-of-tune Christmas song.

She did not bother looking back.

No one remained to get in her way, so her small legs calmly crossed the district border and entered District 7.

That was their home ground.

That hospital was located there.

(Now, then. I wonder if those innocent little heroes were aware what it means to worry about someone else’s life. It means you believe your own life is not at risk and that isn’t your time to go.)

Anna Sprengel followed her phone’s navigation while she spoke aloud.

“''Believing you’re special and that you won’t die is a common form of megalomania in teenagers, but I seriously doubt the real world will be so kind.''”

Everyone died eventually.

But in most cases, they did not know their time was coming.

===Between the Lines 2===

Something pushed up from his stomach.

He thought it was vomit, but it was blood instead. After splattering something the color of tomato juice into the antibacterial sink, Kamijou Touma staggered backwards.

With so many patients living in shared spaces, lines would form at the bathrooms if they were the only places with mirrors for grooming yourself and sinks for washing your face. That was why hospitals often had separate washing stations.

They were generally used to keep yourself clean and presentable even while hospitalized.

They were not meant for going pale-faced with despair.

“Acute St. Germain, huh?” sighed Othinus from his shoulder.

The look on her tiny face in the mirror said she could not call herself a god of war if the color splattered in the sink was enough to faze her.

Pride could often be taken as a negative thing, but it was also comforting to be surrounded by people with the proper knowledge of what to do in a crisis.

“Do you know what’s happening to me?”

This was an unexplained phenomenon as far as Academy City’s scientific analysis was concerned. Kamijou Touma fully trusted the frog-faced doctor’s skill. That man had saved him countless times. But that was why it weighed on him so heavily that this was too much for that doctor.

Those Tokiwadai girls might have widened their eyes at his tone of voice here. It was unusual for him to reveal his weakness like this.

The 15cm one-eyed god, who was also his understander, let out a soft sigh and crossed her legs while seated on his shoulder.

“The Magician St. Germain is a colony of parasitic microbes. Oh, and it won’t infect anyone else unless certain specific steps are taken, so you don’t have to worry about that. I imagine St. Germain himself wanted to avoid diluting and altering himself by spreading indiscriminately.”

“…”

“That means St. Germain himself has no life force to be used as source for magic power. This might be easier to understand from an Eastern perspective than a Western one. Without a body containing the organs, blood vessels, and nerves, the ‘energy’ can’t circulate, and it can’t refine that energy into magic power. That’s why St. Germain always uses a host body to refine life force into magic power before using magic. For an Academy City esper, the side effects of that act as an internal attack that destroys the body.”

Kamijou wiped off his sticky lips with the back of his hand, but his lips still felt gross. He looked down and found the back of his hand was bloody too. The skin had split open and the dark red liquid was oozing out.

Even after seeing the wound, he felt no obvious pain there.

He probably had too many wounds to distinguish any single one anymore. His entire body felt hot and swollen and he could have sworn it had grown to twice its usual size. He was a human-shaped blob of pain.

“The method was different, but this is pretty much the same as what Anna Sprengel is doing in the guise of a giant IT company,” said Othinus. “The students of this city are being attacked by knowledge over the internet, while you are being directly attacked from within by a microbe, but in both cases, ''it comes down to the taboo of an esper using magic.''”

He heard a group of footsteps hurrying by outside the sliding door. The nurses were probably rushing to a hospital room after receiving a nurse call.

Finding the people collapsed in their dorms or on the streets and then transporting them to the hospital was difficult enough, but the problem did not end there. The number of R&C Occultics victims would only continue to grow. Once it reached a certain point, it was even possible the hospitals would cease to function.

And even after all this, they still had no idea what Anna was even trying to accomplish.

Why did the Rosicrucians want to cause this devastating damage to Academy City?

(What am I supposed to do?)

He questioned himself.

At the very least, he knew nothing would improve if he simply waited around here. If he did not do something while he could still move, he would rapidly run out options.

But where was he supposed to go and what was he supposed to do there?

He turned on the faucet to wash away the red blood that felt like it had been drained directly out of his lifespan.

“You will know that soon enough,” said Othinus from his shoulder.

<noinclude>
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Horizon:Volume 7C Chapter 79

2020-02-18T12:17:36Z

162.238.158.199: /* Chapter 79: Reviewing Girls at the Confrontation Ground */

==Chapter 79: Reviewing Girls at the Confrontation Ground==
[[Image:Horizon7C_0739.jpg|thumb]]
''Are you at peace now?

'''Point Allocation (August 28, 1197)

The M.H.R.R. imperial assault unit saw it coming.

“That’s Musashi’s silver wolf!”

Someone in the Far Eastern uniform of Musashi was running toward them. Plus, she held a total of four mandible swords in her Silver Chains and her hands.

She was making a one-girl charge with that equipment to stop them.

“Damn,” they said since they were pursuing an enemy of their own. “This is a bad time to be surrounded!”

They had been angled to the west so they could withdraw at any time, but they had already arrived northwest of Nördlingen and Mitsunari’s unit was approaching from the east. If they could survive this, they could surround the enemy from the east and west in front of the Nagaoka estate north of Nördlingen.

“Keep going!” shouted the unit commander.

Once the decision had been made, it did not take them long to act. Their diagonally-angled formation straightened out to a direct north-south orientation.

“If anything happens, we withdraw to the southwest! Got that!?”

“Testament,” they replied while a few of them took the lead. They used their thrusters to charge toward the enemy formation up ahead.

Gunfire and defense spears clashed and defense barriers shattered.

The din of battle sounded while enemy and ally exchanged words.

“Break, damn you!”

“Shut up!” shouted back the enemy while pointing behind them all. “Look! The Musashi 5th Special Duty Officer is catching up! You’re screwed!”

“Look, look, look! She’s here, she’s totally here!”

“Hey, everyone! Check out these terrified mobile shells!”

The imperial unit clenched and raised their fists in anger while doing as much as they could.

“God, i-it pisses me off so much that they’re not even fighting for themselves!!”

But the truth of the matter caught up to them soon enough.

Musashi’s silver wolf was closing in on them.

“Fight back!”

They fired their guns, but the silver wolf suddenly vanished.

Only grass scattered in the air at the center of their vision. And…

“To the left!”

That warning came from one of those using a targeting spell.

When they heard him, the others looked to the left.

A silhouette stood on the grassy field there, but it was not the wolf.

“A mandible sword!?”

A mandible sword with a Silver Chain wrapped around the hilt stood there while dully vibrating.

And the chain extended up into the morning sky.

“Above!”

She had jumped to the side, stabbed the mandible sword into the ground with a chain, and used that to jump off of.

It was devastating that she had taken two actions so quickly and that she had moved above them without warning. No one could respond in time.

They simply looked upwards to see the silver wolf swinging both her arms while flipped upside down.

She rapidly threw two swords, and at the same time…

“Tear into them, Silver Chains!”

The one blade was pulled from the ground and the final sword joined it as the chains swung them horizontally.

That made four attacks from four directions, above, below, left, and right. They opened defense barriers, but no one knew who should respond to which attacks.

“…!”

The swords scored direct hits and the sounds of tearing flesh and breaking bone shook the air.

Just as the M.H.R.R. imperial assault unit expected to be hit by the silver wolf’s attack, they saw something else.

Someone rushed in between them and the attack.

It was a slender but tall figure.

“Sakon-sama!?”

That ultra-tall girl spread her arms and legs so the blades stabbed into and pierced through her joints, muscle, and bone.

The vermilion swords caused her bones to shatter and her blood to spray.

“…!”

But she did not collapse.

Her large body swayed and her arms swung weakly to keep her balance.

“Hh.”

A tense gasp escaped her lips, but she held firm.

She remained standing.

Then the color vermilion appeared in their vision.

One of the mandible swords had burst out of her back.

The silver wolf had thrown another blade for good measure and it had pierced through Sakon’s torso.

“Gah…ah!”

With her lung penetrated and her breathing stopped, the air escaped her throat.

But she did not fall.

Even after taking so much punishment, she did not give any ground. She could not stop the air escaping her after the attack to the gut, but…

“I can’t…let that happen.”

She moved with the five blades still piercing her body.

It was slow and she staggered a lot, but she moved forward.

“Sakon-sama!”

She did not look back or acknowledge their shouts in any way, but…

“I’m fine.”

She took another step forward.

“I am…fine.”

She stepped toward the silver wolf.

Mitotsudaira prepared for a fight.

She stopped moving, but she remained focused on her surroundings.

There was one thing she had to focus on most of all at the moment: the identity of the opponent in front of her. After all…

…''She has already taken two artillery hits!

Either one of those pseudo-anti-ship cannon blasts should have killed her instantly. Mitotsudaira had not seen the first, but the second had been a direct hit.

But while her inner suit was damaged, her actual body had been entirely unscathed when rushing in just now.

What did that mean?

Mitotsudaira had felt something odd in the tactile feedback when her four attacks had been blocked.

That was why she had thrown that fifth one, and that had confirmed her suspicions.

Specifically…

…''This Shima Sakon…actually did ''evade my attack.

But not by twisting around to avoid the blade altogether.

She had bent her body so the blade ''did not hit the breastplate of the mobile shell she wore.

…''Why would you do that?

What kind of person would choose to take damage to themselves over damage to their mobile shell?

Wouldn’t that just make the mobile shell a nuisance?

But that was what she had chosen.

That was why the five blades had pierced through her and left her body broken. The bones of her arms had been pulverized, so they bent down and swayed past the point where the blades were stabbed into them.

Yet she continued approaching on unsteady legs. It was slow and she drifted a bit to the left on her third step, but she was still trying to approach Mitotsudaira.

Mitotsudaira also saw Sakon’s hands moving. Her upper arms had been shattered and the arms were simply dangling down and swaying, but her white hands still tried to grab the hilts of the swords stabbed into her thighs.

She managed it. She could only make short snaps of her wrist, but by repeating the process a few times, she gradually worked at dislodging the blades.

There was no blood on the vermilion blades. Nor had any dripped down. But pulling the blades out was exposing some of the flesh within the gashes containing those blades.

“Hh!”

She nearly screamed, but swallowed it.

“Ah!”

And she did not stop trying to remove them.

Mitotsudaira realized something about that action.

She recognized it.

She knew what this opponent was.

“Are you-?”

She started to ask, but Sakon suddenly looked up.

The demonic-looking head of her mobile shell faced south.

“No!!”

Then that tall figure was blown away before Mitotsudaira’s eyes.

It was a cannon blast from the south.

The shell was meant for the imperial assault unit, but Sakon had jumped backwards into its path.

This was her third time receiving a direct hit.

The leap did not seem quite long enough, but Mitotsudaira saw something there.

She saw the shape of Sakon’s mouth below her helmet.

…''She’s smiling?

It had looked a lot like a smile of relief.

A moment later, the tall mobile shell was blasted into the air.

The force of the impact swung the blades around, causing them to slice through her body.

And Mitotsudaira saw a bloody mist envelop that chopped-up body.

In the blink of an eye, the bloody mist gathered around the damaged portions, and…

“She’s regenerating!”

Mitotsudaira arrived at a conclusion when she saw that body rapidly repairing itself.

She did know what this opponent was. Or rather, she knew what ability this was.

“You can regenerate just like Rudolf II, can’t you!?”

After flying a dozen or so meters, Sakon rolled across the grass and into the forest.

Onitakemaru understood everything now.

The first time, he had not understood a thing.

The second time, the little girl had already been running by the time he adjusted and rebooted.

And this third time, he had seen it all for the first time.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Little girl!”

She did not respond, but…

“Kh.”

He could feel her entire body trembling from pain.

But there was nothing he could do for her. He probably did have a pain relief spell set up, but …

…''These are foreign spells!

The list was in German. A translation spell must have been in effect since it was displayed in broken Far Eastern, but they were displayed with the explanation preceding the name, which made searching difficult. What was he supposed to do? Well, he knew he had to find a random spell that looked like it was what he wanted and activate that. And yet…

…''Damn!

One of the spells had to be the best one and what if he activated a detrimental spell? He could not get past those concerns. And…

“Ow.”

A change came over her while she shed tears and gagged as she breathed.

Her injuries were not just severe, they were clearly fatal, but that damage began to repair itself.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “You can regenerate!?”

That had been a unique ability of certain species during his time, but right now, her body was heating up enough to produce steam and a bloody mist blew around her while her broken and split body was repaired.

This was clearly more specialized than the species-specific ability he knew.

…''Was she intentionally modified!?

Then he recalled what he had told her before.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “You said you’re from Austria, didn’t you?”

He had studied up on the nation he belonged to after waking up in this era. And instead of standard information, he had been given information only available to important figures like name inheritors.

Their leader was the M.H.R.R. Emperor and he was from the House of Habsburg.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “The Emperor is from Austria.”

And that man had a certain ability said to be from his House.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I have heard he can regenerate in order to survive assassination attempts.”

That Emperor was here in the formation east of Nördlingen.

But Onitakemaru had heard something else about the Emperor.

He lacked a certain ability that this girl clearly had since she was so tense with pain.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “The M.H.R.R. Emperor has no sense of pain.”

Then what was she? He asked a question in order to figure that out.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Were you a prototype used to help create the emperor?”

Sakon wept from the pain.

…''Ow, ow.

She did not like pain. In fact, she actively tried to avoid it. However…

“I can’t let that happen.”

She could not let anyone else feel this pain.

She in particular could not let that happen.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “What do you mean!?”

''Oh, you were okay, Onitakemaru-san? This really hurts, but I’m glad. The beating of my heart feels like it’s shaking my arms enough to tear the nerves apart, but…

“Th-thank goodness.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Goodness!? You have been protecting me this whole time, haven’t you!?”

He yelled in her ear.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “You only pretended to have escaped unharmed while taking the hits for me, didn’t you!?”

He was right. ''But,'' she thought. ''That’s for the best.

Because…

“I’ve been like this since I was born. I lived in that facility for so long doing stuff like this.”

Sakon had been born in Austria.

She had been from an unimportant branch of an important family.

But she had apparently been born with “superior” traits. Or at least the people at the facility had said she was shockingly “superior”.

Except she had just one crucial “flaw”.

That flaw was pain.

But the family had needed to study her “superiority”.

So she had been brought to a castle deep in the mountains and made to feel pain more times than she could ever hope to count.

Her branch of the family had been too unimportant, so she had been separated from her parents to live there.

Fortunately, she had not known what a normal childhood was like. She had assumed that was how everyone lived and the other children who were occasionally brought there had felt no pain.

They had all offered up their flesh and blood like it was the done thing and they had been praised for it.

She had been the failure. The spells meant to reduce her pain had not worked. Her regeneration would immediately bring back her sense of pain and it would also sharpen that sense.

But no matter how much she cried and screamed, they had told her it was necessary.

Some of the doctors who came to see her had been brought to tears by her crying, and that had only made her feel all the more like she was doing something wrong.

Her regeneration must have been too powerful. She had grown abnormally tall and she had been different in other ways too. She had only been 7 when everyone had to look up at her in surprise.

She had felt like a failure and that had made her stubbornly want to continue with the research even though it hurt.

She had suddenly been kicked out of that life when she was 9.

They had told her the research had shown some results.

She had gone back to her parents, but they seemed to have grown so much shorter since she had last seen them.

She had always dreamed of the research finally ending.

She had dreamed of having her parents hug her like she saw the other children’s parents do since they had been allowed to accompany their children there. And she had wanted her parents to tell her she had done a good job.

That was all she would have needed to be satisfied.

She had once asked one of the other children what was so great about being hugged.

“When someone hugs you…well, you can feel their body heat. Oh, and you can feel their pulse,” the girl had said. “That’s really important. It reassures you that you’re someone’s child even though we can do all this. They say it’s that experience that will let us do the same for our own children in the future. Hee hee. We’ll have to make sure our heart hasn’t been shot through then, though.”

But her parents had been too short to hold her head to their chest. Worse, they had apologized.

''No. That’s not…that’s not what I want to hear.

''I worked so hard. It hurt, but I kept at it that whole time.

''I wasn’t doing that because I wanted an apology.

At the time, she had only found one possible explanation.

…''I really am a failure.

She could also tell her parents were worried for her. Even if they did not see eye to eye (literally or figuratively), she could tell they cared for her. So…

“You don’t have to worry about it.”

She had wept while speaking those words. She had wept because she knew she could not stay with them. They had said she could, but knowing she would bring them more worries than anything else had filled her with a mixture of thankfulness and pain.

She had decided to return there only if she failed.

Their obvious worry for her told her they were not demanding she succeed. So she left home while confident they would still accept her even if she failed.

She had failed almost immediately after entering elementary school 5 years late. She had of course been bullied for being different, but her failure had come from using her strength.

Her regeneration had also increased her physical strength.

The other child’s body had easily broken, but it had all been covered up due to her family and the success of the research. Fortunately, after the injured child had made a full recovery, they had decided it was better to be her ally than her enemy. Having a retainer felt weird, but she had been the oldest one there. She had learned how to tread carefully so no one could try to borrow her supposed authority. Their teacher had praised her for acting as a balancer in the classroom and she had cried on her own later on because ''that'' was what she had wanted to hear.

And she had learned.

She must not touch things.

She must not want things.

She must protect things.

She was always with the others, but she could never take the initiative or touch anyone. Even when she saved them or helped them out, she could not expect any kind of thanks and, if they were going to get hurt, she had to take that role in their place.

She was used to pain. She knew how to endure it, so it made sense to her to accept it instead of letting anyone else have it.

She was a failure and she was always in the way, so it had seemed like a fair tradeoff to place all the danger on her own shoulders.

And now she had achieved that.

She had protected Onitakemaru and the assault unit. She had merely been careless the first time, but she had done it on purpose the second and third times.

She could not let any one of them be hurt.

“Thank goodness.”

It hurt. Her body was repairing itself with the swords still inside her, so the healing wounds were
constantly slicing themselves back open on the blades.

“Hh.”

The blade stabbing into her stomach and piercing her lung felt gross because of the chill she felt in her diaphragm.

She felt pain, displeasure, and disgust, but…

“This is fine.”

''You fool,'' thought Onitakemaru. ''This is not at all fine.'' So…

'''Onitakemaru:''' “How is this fine? This is nothing of the sort.”

“Because,” she said while clearly trying to keep the pain out of her voice. “You weren’t hurt, right?”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “What-”

He just about finished with “does that matter”, but her trembling voice cut him off.

“I noticed something…when I first put you on.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “And what was that?”

She gasped as the blade in her right leg tilted and sliced its way out her leg.

“Ah,” she continued while clenching her teeth, but she finally managed to calm her heavy breathing once the blade had fully left her.

Only then could she answer his question.

“I could hear your pulse.”

He mentally tilted his head at that. He was a ghost, so he had no pulse.

…''But…

He was currently a data entity known as a ghost. He was made of ether. Ether had a current from the ley lines and it moved in something like waves. That could be heard from the mobile shell when the divine protections started up, but those waves were normally synced with the wearer and thus almost entirely eliminated.

She had only heard those waves because they were not properly synced.

But surely she could have heard a pulse from literally anyone else.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Do you not have parents?”

''Maybe I should not be prying so much.'' But…

“I do have a dad and a mom…but they’re both shorter than me.”

That was when it hit him: ''This little girl is a moron.

She must have never obtained many different things that everyone else took for granted. They must have slipped from her grasp due to some kind of misunderstanding. But…

“Kh.”

While she gasped and tried desperately to hold back the tears, he held her within him and recalled a moment from his own past.

His mind traveled 500 years back in time to his first child – to his daughter.

“Yoritomo and Shima Sakon have stopped moving.”

Narumi heard Tomoe Gozen’s comment while slowly standing up from the grassy field southwest of Nördlingen.

The woman was looking to the distant forest northwest of the city.

Nördlingen’s circular wall obstructed their view of that point.

The Mito Lord had rushed off toward the enemy in that direction, but…

“Another shell? Should we assume they were defeated?”

“Testament. That seems likely, but something is bothering me about this.”

“What is it?” asked Narumi, so Tomoe Gozen turned toward her and answered.

“It might come as a surprise, but Yoritomo has a soft spot for children.”

“For children?”

Narumi tilted her head while thinking back to the glimpse of the enemy she had gotten earlier.

“At that height, I doubt Shima Sakon is young enough to count as a child.”

“Then,” said Tomoe Gozen. “Have you ever heard that Yoritomo had a daughter?”

“I have, but I don’t know the details.”

She knew the family tree, but she did not know much more because…

“Didn’t she die young, before even marrying?”

“You make it sound like she was not worth remembering. And from a historical viewpoint, that is probably true.”

But…

“She did marry. But at the age of 6.”

That was awfully early. But at the time, the samurai government had yet to be established and the nobles tended to be in charge. To work your way into the imperial court and rule over a region of the Far East, it was best to get the political marriages done as quickly as possible.

But what did that matter now?

…''Wait, could it be?

Narumi’s intuition told her this bad feeling was accurate.

Her knowledge of the family tree told her that marriage had not had any lasting effects.

“Did the marriage fail?”

“Testament. The other family betrayed Yoritomo.”

And…

“It was with Minamoto no Yoshinaka’s heir, Yoshitaka, when he was still only 11.”

“Do you understand now?” asked Tomoe Gozen with a sigh heavy with weariness. “This incident was mostly dealt with when we ran away.”

She had asked about it later and learned that Ishi had made various arrangements. Her illness had probably worsened because of the physical and emotional effort involved in that, but…

…''That’s right.

“After Yoshinaka was killed, Yoritomo decided to kill Yoshitaka. But the young couple had already enjoyed a year together by that time.”

“There were people that stupid back then too?”

“Testament,” confirmed Tomoe Gozen.

The Date Vice Chancellor would understand this. Because…

“The Date clan’s tragedy…was not unique.”

“That wasn’t something we took pride in.”

“Fair enough,” said Tomoe Gozen. “As young as she was, Yoritomo’s daughter tried her best to protect her husband. She let him escape their home in secret and pretended to be playing with him to hide his absence. …We women seem to have a talent for lying.”

“It would be nice if this story of yours was a lie too.”

''Sorry,'' she thought. ''I honestly have trouble coming to terms with this one myself.

…''This was recreated without Yoshinaka and me knowing.

''Why did they not allow any interpretations in the history recreation back then?'' she asked herself as she continued.

“The child’s best efforts at deception were apparently discovered on the first day. Her husband Yoshitaka was soon discovered and beheaded. This was of course meant to be a secret, but Yoritomo’s daughter learned about it and it made her ill.”

“––––”

Narumi fell silent, so Tomoe Gozen slapped her on the shoulder.

The battle was not over yet. Hearing a sound other than Tomoe Gozen’s voice would remind the girl of the reality around her, so Tomoe Gozen began walking through the booming of shellfire while talking.

“Yoritomo later tried to have her sent to the imperial court to strengthen his connections there, but she still could not forget what happened, her illness worsened, and she died in Kyou. …She was 20 when she died.”

“What was her name?”

“Testament. Her actual name is not known. But I do know her nickname, which indicated her position as the eldest daughter,” she explained. “Apparently, she was called Ohime.”

Yoritomo was reminded of the past.

…''Honestly.

Why?

Why was he reminded of a past even he so wished he could forget and pretend never happened?

She had been given so much happiness for her first 6 years of life and she had enjoyed a fulfilling year after that, but when she was 7, he had taken all of that from her.

That had been part of the history recreation. That had been a valid reason and he had explained it to her countless times.

But it had not been enough.

His daughter had hidden it for his sake, but her condition had worsened as time went on.

She had tended not to get up from the floor and, in the end, she had refused to even meet with him.

He had last seen her after she had breathed her last, so her final words to him had come secondhand.

“I was a failure of a child, wasn’t I?”

''No.

''That isn’t what I wanted to hear or what I wanted to tell you.

''Even after everything that had happened, you stayed strong and clung onto life.

''You kept going for 13 years – nearly twice the time you lived in happiness.

“You fought so hard.”

''That was what I wanted tell you, but you were already gone.

''So I gave up on myself. I ended Yoritomo’s history recreation, inherited the next generation’s name, and let Yoshitsune kill me.

''I honestly felt relieved when I saw Yoshitsune there in front of me.

''I knew it was finally over.

''Yes, that’s right.

''I started the Kamakura Shogunate as a society where people were always rewarded for the work they did for their superior. Whenever someone did something for me, I would tell them what a good job they did and reward them for it. I made sure of it whenever possible.

''When I died and met her in the afterlife, I wanted to show her that her father was a changed man. That I could own up to what I had done and I would no longer try to run away.

''I wanted to tell my daughter she was not a failure. And…

…''It’s pathetic but true.

''I am the Shogun who created an entire era, but…

…''All I wanted was to ask forgiveness of a little girl.

''That must be one of my regrets.

''That is why I wanted to make up for it as soon as I awoke within this mobile shell. I wanted to destroy my mobile shell self to make up for having destroyed someone’s life.

''And if I could protect someone at the same time, maybe I could earn some small fraction of forgiveness.

''But that isn’t what happened. Who is this girl I am practically holding in my arms?

''She has such a big body, but she calls herself a failure, she tries to protect me, and she cries. She keeps complaining of the pain, but she smiles upon learning I am unharmed.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “––––––”

''I am sorry,'' thought Onitakemaru.

…''I am sorry, Ohime.

''It looks like it will be some time yet until I can join you and apologize. So for now…

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Hey.”

He kept Ohime’s name in his mind.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “How old are you?”

“Eh? Oh, w-well.” She answered him. “I am 20.”

“I see,” he replied.

''Even that is the same.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Hey.”

Onitakemaru spoke slowly.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Stand up. The battle is still ongoing. We need to get moving.”

“R-right, let’s do that.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Does it hurt?”

“Eh? W-well, no, um, it doesn’t. I’m fine.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I see. Understood.”

Then…

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I will begin assisting your movements. Before, it was just the basic mobile shell reactions, but now I will support your actions in my own way.”

“Eh? Wh-what does that mean?”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I will handle the attacks. You only need to move along with me.”

And…

'''Onitakemaru:''' “You handle defense. You can get blown away in what amounts to self-destruction if you like. I’ve figured out that’s just how you are. Even if I don’t like it.”

“Sorry.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I said I don’t mind!”

“N-no, you didn’t! That’s the first I’ve heard of it!”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “It was implied! God.”

Ohime had been smarter than this. Just how foolish was this girl? So he spoke.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Is that big body all you’ve got going for you? You really are a hopeless little girl.”

So…

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Kohime. That is what I will call you from now on.”<ref>Ohime means “big princess” and Kohime means “little princess”.</ref>

Sakon gasped.

“–––––––”

Intense pain filled her body and refused to go away, but she did understand one thing.

…''Wow.

''He really is paying attention to me.

''Thank you so much, Mitsunari-sama,'' she thought.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “What?”

“Oh, um, I’m just happy is all. Happy that you’re bigger than me.”

And…

“Thank you.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I should be thanking you.”

He sounded exasperated.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “You protected me from those shells. …Good job.”

“Oh, um, uh.”

She had no idea what to say. She had never imagined he would thank her and it was all so sudden.

So…

“Ha ha.”

Tears suddenly spilled from her eyes.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“It’s just…it’s just…”

She got up and looked into the sky with her blurry vision. It was blue.

She viewed that color while shaking her right shoulder to dislodge the blade there.

She felt a continuous stabbing pain followed by something splitting her bone, but that familiar pain seemed to link her to everything she had been through in the past.

And now she stood at the forefront of it all.

“I’ve never been so happy.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “How stupid are you? You’re about to charge right into more pain while the enemy tries to give you pain.”

“That’s fine. That’s just fine.”

She could use her right arm, so with a grunt of effort, she pulled out the left sword and reached for the one in her gut.

“I’m perfectly fine.”

Pulling that one out made her spine tremble, but…

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Kohime.”

“Yes?”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I will support your physical divine protections as much as I can. That will increase your regeneration even more and up your physical abilities, but your sense of pain will-…”

“Oh, pain relief doesn’t work on me. Same with anesthetics. So I don’t have any of that prepared.”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “So that’s why I couldn’t find it on the list!”

That meant he had tried to help her out at some point.

…''Yeah.

It hurt, but she was happy.

She had been happy before, but this was different.

Instead of a relieved happiness that she was permitted to be here, she felt happy ''to'' be here.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I more or less understand now, so I’ll shove it all in there.”

“M-must you be so rough about everything!?”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “We have no time. Hurry up and pull that sword from your left leg and grab it in both hands. I specialize in the bow, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t use a sword. I will show you the technique of a true Shogun.”

And…

'''Onitakemaru:''' “I will fully activate all of the divine protections I was given so I could function. They are a type of anti-ship equipment, but think of using them as a way of helping me out here. …Our enemy is Musashi’s 5th Special Duty Officer. Based on the records I have seen, even this might not be enough to defeat her. The data on her history recreation says she will go on to call herself the Vice Shogun. People overthrow their masters so often in this era, so she is bound to be a formidable foe for me, the Kamakura Shogun.”

“I-I’ll do my best?”

'''Onitakemaru:''' “You have my permission. And if you accomplish anything here, I will reward you with my praise.”

“So,” he said while effectively holding her in his arms.

'''Onitakemaru:''' “Let’s do this together, Kohime.”

“Okay,” she agreed while taking the first step forward.

'''Kohime:''' “Here we go!”

<noinclude>
{{HorizonNavbar
| [[Horizon:Volume 7C Chapter 78|Chapter 78]]
| [[Horizon:Volume 7C Chapter 80|Chapter 80]]
}}
</noinclude>

Horizon:Volume 7C Chapter 78

2020-02-18T11:17:03Z

162.238.158.199: /* Chapter 78: Answerer at the Calculation Site */

==Chapter 78: Answerer at the Calculation Site==
[[Image:Horizon7C_0715.jpg|thumb]]
''Instead of following

''Someone else’s path

''Give me what

''I want now

'''Point Allocation (Victory)

Tomoe Gozen saw the grass scattering in the wind.

Two giant forms had begun a rapid interaction: Yoshinaka and Date Narumi’s mobile shells.

Their footwork crushed the grass and packed down the dirt, producing tremors.

They tried to circle behind each other, attacked with and dodged swords, and made backhanded strikes.

From an outside perspective, one would block the view of the other and they moved too quickly to follow.

Even now, Narumi was leaping forward while turning her right side forward. She appeared to be pulling in her sword, but…

…''I can’t catch any of the details.

She was probably trying to tear into Yoshinaka’s joints.

Tomoe Gozen had been a part of that speed earlier, but it was so hard to follow while on the outside. That was just how precise Yoshinaka’s movements were and how he did not resort to brute force to keep the exchange going.

Tomoe Gozen felt like Narumi had the disadvantage here.

Because…

…''Their mobile shells are different.

Yoshinaka was wearing a mobile shell, but his own frame was large too. The shell provided power assistance and armor. It was a lot like wearing a suit of armor.

But Narumi was the size of an ordinary human. The mobile shell fully covered her feet and head, so there was a size difference between her and the shell.

That meant there were no direct reactions and feedback between shell and body.

When she planted her foot on the ground, the foot of the shell would cushion the impact and transfer it up the shell’s leg.

That was a harsh handicap in a battle where speed and reactions were everything.

She had to be using as many spells and divine protections as possible to assist her evasions and movements and Tomoe Gozen thought she was doing pretty well for herself.

…''But looking at this really says something to me.

Her era had been so wild and rough.

After all, Yoshinaka’s mobile shell assisted the movements of his skeleton, but it did not boost his muscular strength. Even the reactive divine protections and spells were only replacements for his original reflexes.

That meant he was fighting the Date Vice Chancellor in her cutting-edge mobile shell while little different from how he had been without any assistance back in the day.

That explained why M.H.R.R. and Hashiba had wanted him so badly.

“Only they would be able to manage this kind of battle power.”

Meanwhile, more grass scattered in the wind.

In the battle beyond it, the amount of flying sparks grew.

Both combatants were attacking more often, sending solid sounds of impact into the air.

They both sped up and moved in closer.

Their battle became an exchange of close-range attacks.

''Four elements are intensifying this battle,'' thought Narumi.

The first was speed.

The second was strength.

The third was technique.

And the fourth was competition.

She considered those four elements in relation to Yoshinaka.

Which ones were her advantage and which of his advantages could she take away from him?

“Honestly.”

To test herself, she stepped forward with her right side out in front and made a jab with the mandible swords in her two hands.

She made seven near-simultaneous strikes with both sides.

But before those attacks could reach the gaps in his armor, the enemy deflected them with his blade ''and with his armor.

…''He’s rough but accurate.

He did a splendid job of using his armor to defend.

Normally, armor was meant to block unexpected hits. It was insurance in case the enemy caught you by surprise while you were attacking or evading.

But this opponent was different.

He moved his arm, shoulder, and chest armor alongside her blade ''and had her hit it.

So he ''deflected'' her attacks with his armor.

That proactive defense was meant to create an opening in the enemy’s defenses that he could then attack.

That was obvious enough to her.

He would only fight one or two battles of this type on this battlefield, so instead of carefully preserving his armor, he made use of it with the intent of wearing it out.

And after he did, he would wield his own power, so she made her own move.

“We make a good match.”

Her deflected arms left her open to attack, so she purged her forearms and resummoned them along with the mandible swords. A moment later, she made a jab with her newly-summoned arms.

“…!”

A roar erupted directly ahead of her, so she sent her left foot back to dodge with the least possible movement.

…''Now this is unpleasant.

She had come to understand something after fighting him for a bit, having her swords deflected, and attacking anew.

'''Uqui:''' “Hey, Narumi. Things are sounding pretty stagnant over there.”

'''Unturning:''' “I am trying not to upstage you too much.”

And…

'''Unturning:''' “You’ve noticed too, haven’t you?”

'''Uqui:''' “The movements sound identical.”

“Yes,” replied Narumi while sighing within Unturning Centipede.

'''Unturning:''' “Minamoto no Yoshinaka’s mobile shell was built with Date clan technology.”

“Testament! Yes! It’s your beloved Katakura-kun! It’s time for a one-two-three divine transmission made from our love! And to be clear, the relative weights of our loves makes it 80% mine and 20% yours! …Huh!? Oh, it’s only you, Narumi-kun! Don’t send me a divine transmission when I’m about to start a passionate speech about self-love! I’m gonna hang up, okay!? I mean it! Right this instant! I swear I am! I’m totally hanging up! Just you wait! Are you sure you want that!? I’m serious! Almost there, just a biiiit longer and- hey, don’t hang up on me!”

'''Uqui:''' “So how’d it go?”

'''Unturning:''' “There was an HR-related malfunction in the divine transmission connection, so I couldn’t get through.”

“But,” she continued while using a snapping motion to send in a strike from the right.

'''Unturning:''' “When Kojirou took his second inherited name and when Komahime was married, Date exchanged some things with Hashiba. When it comes to weapons, Date wanted aerial ship technology and Hashiba wanted god of war and mobile shell technology.”

'''Novice:''' “That sure was generous of you.”

'''Unturning:''' “Using Date technology requires a fairly high level of steel refinement technique. Obtaining Orei Metallo at the former site of Novgorod does not guarantee they can make usable components out of it, right?”

So…

'''Unturning:''' “We concluded we would have developed new technology of our own and closed the gap by the time they caught up on that front.”

'''Vice President:''' “But then M.H.R.R. conquered K.P.A. Italia.”

“I knew you would catch on,” said Narumi while catching some blade sparks on her armor.

'''Unturning:''' “IZUMO’s steel brand BIZEN is located south of M.H.R.R., so they began to provide technological support to M.H.R.R. after that. They had apparently been fairly cooperative even before that, but once M.H.R.R. could overpower everyone else in the area, they almost completely capitulated. That probably wouldn’t have happened if Hexagone Française had fought back sooner.”

But BIZEN’s capitulation must have only barely come in time.

Katakura would have been gathering the information, but it would have been managed by…

'''Unturning:''' “Niwa, since she was working as the negotiator with Date.”

Niwa had fought at Novgorod, but she must have acquired what she needed for her nation even before that.

Ironic that it was showing up here while Niwa was so close by.

'''Unturning:''' “The other mobile shell likely uses Date technology as well.”

'''Flat Vassal:''' “Um, but how can you tell?”

'''Unturning:''' “Due to the snowy environment, Date motors tend to use a lot of sealed and closely-connected parts and they use the exhaust to warm the parts. They also have a unique sound since they use Orei Metallo.”

'''Mar-Ga:''' “But M.H.R.R. is known for their mobile shells too. Why would they need another nation’s tech?”

'''Unturning:''' “I said they’re built for a snowy environment, didn’t I? That means they enclose the wearer in a sealed container. Compared to the open-design shells that only surround the wearer, ours provide higher-quality sensory devices and divine protection control. But…”

She had seen something here.

'''Unturning:''' “He is a ghost.”

The enemy’s mobile shell used an open style, but some parts of the armor was just as dense as the sealed variety in order to contain the bluish-white ether light.

'''Unturning:''' “They normally provide sensory and movement assistance and the reaction feedback divine protections are provided using conduits or fold-up charm slips. That technology has been modified to instead provide the divine protections needed to seal a ghost in the shell.”

The open design could not do that.

But a fully sealed deign must have been too difficult at that size, so the ether was held in place at various points across the shell. That was probably Maeda Toshiie’s technique.

And either way…

'''Unturning:''' “Now that I know this, I must correct Date’s mistake.”

Narumi stepped forward.

She forcibly leaped toward Yoshinaka.

…''Don’t rush like that!

That was Tomoe Gozen’s opinion of Narumi’s leap.

She could tell Narumi had sped up.

She was using the flight thrusters on her back. The instant Yoshinaka sent his large sword in from the right was when she had previously sent her blade back at it, but this time she had moved forward.

However, Yoshinaka was not going to overlook that change in her movement.

Tomoe Gozen knew that much after dueling with him earlier.

Narumi caught his sword on her left blade and jabbed her right blade toward his gut.

Since she had moved forward, her left mandible sword scraped at his elbow armor instead of his sword.

Tomoe Gozen saw Narumi’s next movement build up on that as a foundation.

First, her left mandible sword slipped past the inner edge of the sword in Yoshinaka’s right hand.

Her sword held him in check and prevented him from swinging his sword inward.

Meanwhile, he used the armor on his right elbow and side to seize her left sword as if biting down on it.

And he twisted.

Nevertheless, she struck at his side with her right blade.

His response began with footwork. He moved his right leg back and swung his left foot forward and right to make a step.

That twisted his hips to his right.

The twist reached her left arm and the blade he was holding at his side.

She let go of the sword and purged her left arm in midair.

And he made an evasion.

He used the footwork-based twist of his hips to move his upper body.

He bent his body to the side and away from Narumi’s blade.

Tomoe Gozen recognized this method of evasion.

…''Oh.

Tomoe Gozen watched the action play out.

This was his unique method of evasion.

…''That isn’t the mobile shell doing that.

She had not understood it while dueling and sparring with him, but that motion was reliant on the legs he moved forward and back.

He created more clearance in his skeletal structure to prepare for the rest of the movement.

He decided how he wanted to move and then built it into his actions.

It was probably designed for when someone moved in close. He must have prepared it as an ace up his sleeve to ensure victory. And…

“Victory against me.”

He had used that against her during training 500 years ago. That had been the starting line for them all. He was now a ghost that had forgotten everything, and yet…

…''He remembers that!

But the battle continued.

A Vice Chancellor would be able to react to that instantaneous movement.

Narumi had already responded.

She had moved in close and accelerated so she could respond no matter how he tried to evade.

She had closed the gap between them so the enemy could not escape.

She took a longer step to make up for the bending of his body.

Her blade was going to hit him.

But his left hand shot forward.

By bending his body, his left hand had lowered in front of her blade.

Gauntleted bony fingers grasped the mandible sword.

He seized it by force.

And he faced forward.

He unleashed a roar.

Meanwhile, her right sword was held in place. Tomoe Gozen saw him make a slight movement where he was holding it.

It was a vibration. He gathered his strength and shook the hand holding the blade.

That passed through the sword and lightly shook Narumi’s mobile shell.

That was enough.

Whether evading or whatever else, she would need an initial movement to do it, but he had sent a small vibration into her just when she was going to do that.

He unbalanced her.

At this level of combat, any interference with your movements was a real threat. If she tried to move now, it was all over, so this kept her from moving.

“Wait!”

Before Tomoe Gozen could shout “that’s too dangerous”, Narumi made a movement her mobile shell could make even while unbalanced.

Tomoe Gozen saw a light.

Even with her movement prevented, there was something that interference could not stop.

She used the thrusters on her back.

Light burst out for an instant and the mobile shell blasted forward.

She made a short jump.

But her right hand was slow to move thanks to the unbalancing, so her body only lifted up on the left.

That was good enough.

The left arm she had purged earlier was there.

She reattached that left arm in midair and clenched its fist.

“…!”

The metal attack slammed into Yoshinaka’s mouth and the roar was released a moment later.

The light shattered upon hitting the mobile shell’s fist.

It could not take flight.

Meanwhile, Narumi once more purged her left arm at the shoulder. And…

“Have a taste of your own medicine.”

The chain reaction of explosions erupted right in front of Yoshinaka’s face.

Tomoe Gozen saw the attack Narumi had made.

But she soon noticed what happened next.

Neither of them stopped moving.

With her right sword free once more, Narumi summoned her left arm and adjusted her distance from the enemy as she landed.

Meanwhile, Yoshinaka made his move within the smoky explosion of the ether light.

“–––––!”

His voice shook the morning ground as mere noise.

And Narumi made her next move.

He rotated his cry down from the sky to the earth and spread his arms.

The armor on his face had broken.

Bone was visible below. It was a skull. It had been hardened to protect it and it was whiter than expected.

He was dead.

Tomoe Gozen felt like this was simultaneously what she had most wanted to see and what she had least wanted to see.

But his body was still moving.

He slammed the sword in his right hand toward Narumi as she approached.

He was fast. This was clearly faster than before.

The movement was accompanied by a popping of metal. The power system and artificial muscles within his mobile shell had burst as they tried to supply the movement he wanted.

These were no longer the movements of a man. He unleashed the strength of a wounded animal.

He was a mindless soul. Without the memories and words needed to restrain his strength, he had exploded with a power that surpassed the limits of his structure.

There was no hesitation in the movement. He had simply predicted Narumi’s action and swung his sword in response.

Meanwhile, Tomoe Gozen saw Narumi’s choice.

Narumi made two decisions.

First, she chose not to wield two swords.

She placed both hands on her right sword to abandon one sword’s weight and gain more speed.

She could no longer use the extra defense and quick rate of attacks the two swords had given her. This new stance showed she was prepared to let it all came down to a single attack from both sides.

And she made another decision as well.

“The left!?”

For the first time in this battle, she stepped forward with her left leg first.

Narumi decided it all came down to this.

She had made sure to always start with her right foot during this battle.

When falling back, she had always used her left foot to keep her right one out front.

She had never made a single attack from the left.

She had a single reason for doing so.

This let her use her full strength when the enemy made their final attack.

For her final attack, she would launch an attack the enemy could not respond to.

She stepped forward and made another decision.

“Paths of Countless Hundreds!”

She repeatedly ejected new legs for rapid mobility. She used that momentum to slip past her enemy’s sword.

…''Hit him!

She sent out a high-speed attack from essentially point-blank range.

Then she saw the enemy’s decision via Untuning Centipede’s sight.

She had seen that footwork before. It was the twisting rotation that had avoided her earlier attack.

“…!”

He pulled it off at the price of breaking his own artificial muscles and power system.

This was not a human or animal movement. It was only possible because he was a skeleton inside there.

His upper body twisted approximately 180 degrees around at the waist.

She could not hit him.

He had smashed his own body enough to move it out of the way of her sword.

The horizontal slash slipped right through the gap.

The sword pressure did hit him, but…

…''He dodged it!

The enemy swung his own sword in that very instant, but it was directed sideways rather than toward her.

It hit the ground.

He used the large sword like a staff to prop his broken self up.

And he turned his face toward her.

Even his head had turned 180 degrees around.

Meanwhile, she was controlling Paths of Countless Hundreds. She turned her back thrusters around to face him directly. Instead of stopping herself while at such great speed, she threw herself forward in the air to collide with him.

If he tried to run out of the way, he would only put distance between them, which would work against him as he used himself as a cannon. Plus…

…''He’s already starting to recover his functions.

When a mobile shell or god of war lost a portion of its functions, it would combine its other functions to recover the lost ones. Some, like the Seiryu, could even repair their own functions.

As far as she could see, his body was regaining strength by the second.

The surviving pieces of his power system and artificial muscles were linked together to use them in place of the broken and torn pieces to recover that functionality. He would eventually recover, even if not to his best condition.

If she was going to defeat him, it had to be now. So…

“Stop!”

She blasted her thrusters into the ground. She upped the directionality to make it something like a spike and sent Unturning Centipede right into the shockwave.

She stopped, but she was a little too far away. It would take Unturning Centipede another step and a half.

But she knew what the enemy was trying to do: roar.

She also knew what she had to do. After stopping…

“Unturning Centipede!” she shouted while judging her distance from the enemy. “Summer break begins now!”

Tomoe Gozen heard a roar.

Having turned himself into a cannon emplacement, Yoshinaka released light. But Narumi’s mobile shell was not close enough to stop it.

She had very nearly made it, but she would need to take another step and a half for her sword to reach and to effectively hit him with his own explosions.

The roar raced out.

“…!”

The light pursued it along a direct path toward the throat of Narumi’s mobile shell.

It hit.

That was an accurate description.

The beam of light escaping Yoshinaka’s mouth scored a direct hit on Narumi’s mobile shell.

But Tomoe Gozen saw a blossoming flower.

That was the mobile shell. Narumi had separated from it and opened the entire front of it.

“Kh.”

Narumi let the opening armor push her forward and collapsed out.

At the same moment, the roar beam hit the spot where her face had just been.

And after collapsing forward, she made a leap.

“Unturning Centipede!”

The mobile shell tossed over the sword in its right hand.

As soon as she caught the mandible sword from midair, the mobile shell exploded.

The blast reverberated out, the wind roared, and all the noise echoed off of the morning city wall.

But Tomoe Gozen’s eyes were on the Date Vice Chancellor’s sword.

“Ohhh!”

It crashed into Yoshinaka’s throat so soon after his roar.

Narumi finally took a breath.

Behind her, Unturning Centipede collapsed over with its arms raised after being destroyed and triggering a secondary explosion. It almost seemed to be applauding her actions.

“Have a nice vacation, Unturning Centipede.”

In front of her, Minamoto no Yoshinaka was watching her.

She was standing behind him, so he looked up and to the left as if to remove the blade stabbed into his throat.

“…”

The enormous figure fell to his knees while the mandible sword slipped from his neck.

Then he fully collapsed to the ground. And…

“Yoshinaka!”

She heard Tomoe Gozen’s voice. And footsteps.

Was she running this way? She could hear the rustling of the grass. But…

…''Huh?

Narumi saw something.

A bluish-white light was rising from the ground below the grass. What was that?

…''Could it be!?

She turned toward Tomoe Gozen and sprang toward the woman.

She was willing to tackle the woman if need be. And sure enough, her shoulder slammed into her.

“You can’t!”

“I can’t!?”

Just as Tomoe Gozen questioned it, something appeared.

It was an arm. Giant fingers and a giant palm made from gathered bones appeared. Then the wrist and forearm suddenly grew from the morning ground.

…''This is Maeda Toshiie’s Kaga Millionen Geist!

Narumi saw a hand of bluish-white ether light grab Yoshinaka’s entire body from below.

The powerful arm gripped his giant form and mobile shell as if to crush them.

“Yoshinaka!”

Tomoe Gozen’s cry echoed vainly through the air as everything vanished before her eyes.

It only took a moment.

The ether light scattered into nothingness and the giant arm was gone, as was Yoshinaka.

“Gwah.”

Tomoe Gozen groaned as if in pain while still trying to lift up the man who was no longer there.

But she inhaled, paused, and looked up.

After waiting three breaths, she moved away with eyes closed.

Had she come to terms with something inside herself? She tapped thrice on Narumi’s shoulder and spoke a single word.

“Sorry.”

“I do not deserve an apology or thanks for this.”

Narumi took a breath of her own.

…''That was not a pleasant result.

The enemy had gotten away and Unturning Centipede had been destroyed. She wanted to collapse to her knees over that, but…

“I suppose a pain-in-the-rear beginning was bound to result in a pain-in-the-rear ending,” said Tomoe Gozen before looking north.

Artillery fire continued in the sky while gunfire and other attacks were used to pursue the anti-imperial unit withdrawing to the north.

The battle was not over yet.

Mitotsudaira moved in closer to the enemy.

The anti-imperials and imperials were both a mobile shell unit. Naturally, they had high mobility and were fast. But…

…''My king made a request!

The odors of spell gunpowder and scorched metal reached her lungs as she ran. The scent of dewy grass joined it.

She sniffed at those olfactory elements and realized it smelled different from Kantou.

If anything, it was a more nostalgic smell. Hexagone Française was not all that close by, but it was not all that far either. The climate and vegetation were similar here.

Also, she was surrounded by the trees of a forest.

“This is far from an away game for me.”

She sped up. She bent her legs to bring her feet up to hip height and then launched them forward.

“Here I go!”

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| [[Horizon:Volume 7C Chapter 79|Chapter 79]]
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