Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item2 Chapter3

==Chapter 3: Project Angelica==

===Part 1===

It was August 6.

The weather lady had a shocking report that morning.

“The large and powerful Typhoon 11 has finally made landfall in Tokyo!! Current windspeeds have surpassed 40m/s and we’re measuring around 250mm of rain every hour. Ugh, as you can see, Academy City is already experiencing plenty of rain with winds so powerful I need to hold onto something to stay on my fee- eek!? D-did you see that? Something just flew by. Yikes, a wind turbine’s blades just broke off and went spinning through the air before stabbing into the 3rd story of that building! The typhoon is moving a lot slower than predicted yesterday, so if you don’t have any urgent need, you should stay indoors all day today!!”

“Here, you need to water the morning glories we took in out of the storm. And in the end, you need to use this blacklight. The flower will wilt if you don’t give it UV light to replace the sunlight it needs.”

A lazy mood had set in at the shared living space in the elementary school dorm hallway.

Invincible Big Sis Frenda was helping with the potted morning glories brought in from the storm, but the adorable 7-year-old princess in a beret, a baggy T-shirt dress with a belt around the waist, and red leggings wasn’t listening. Even though those flowers were for her summer homework.

The summer homework was apparently to color a white T-shirt with a dye made from the morning glories. During the 2nd term, her class would then go on a field trip to a lab with too much time on its hands and view the fabric under an electron microscope to see how the dye had changed it.

The ordinary program had been interrupted by an emergency news program on the small screen of her children’s phone (which had been ultra upgraded with surveillance functions courtesy of her dark side big sister). She listened to that while standing up on her tippy-toes to excitedly look out of the tightly shut window.

“Ohh! In the first place, this is so cool… It’s a typhoon! Look, look, Onee-chan, I’ve never seen the wind turbines spin so fast!! Hoorayyyy! The world is coming to an eeeend!!”

“R-right. We need to stay in our rooms all day today. Wow…”

Her friend, a glasses girl named Azumi, was looking out the window next to her.

Frenda wondered why little kids got so excited about typhoons. It was still summer break, so it wasn’t like they would get off school.

The rain was coming down so hard it looked white outside, but since the dorm was located on a hill, there was no concern of flooding. Maybe the city was careful about where it put the dorms for small children.

“In the end, did you feed your rhino beetles today?”

“In the first place, Michelangelo and Geraldine are both doing great! All I have to do is swap out their package of sap every day, so it’s kind of boring.”

The younger sister was relatively fine with bugs. From what Frenda had heard, she had trouble with reptiles instead. She said she hated their slimy skin. Instead of being afraid, she was apparently afraid their skin would burst if she touched it. Even though crocodile skin and snake skin were both so tough.

“Thank you for coming today,” the dorm manager said to Frenda. “I told them to bring the morning glories in yesterday, but a lot of the children put it off and never did it. Honestly, even the security and cleaning robots are being kept inside so they aren’t blown over by a gust of wind, but those kids don’t listen. This should really all be my job, so thank you so much for helping out. I know those clay pots are heavy, so moving so many couldn’t have been easy.”

“In the end, it was nothing.”

Dark side people always felt a little guilty when someone from the light side thanked them.

The dorm manager was a weird woman who wore a miniskirt Santa outfit even though it was August. She was the kind of person who had no problem wearing a Halloween witch costume or a New Year’s furisode any time of year. She said she hated how clothing ended up smelling like mothballs if you only wore it once a year.

“Oh, do you want to take a shower? I can wash and dry your wet clothes while you do.”

“Ah ha ha. In the end, there’s no need.”

Frenda’s phone rang.

She checked the email, and…

“Oh, looks like things are happening now. In the end, I’ve got to go.”

“Oh? But it’s storming outside. Feel free to wait here until it dies down.”

If Frenda took the super-sweet elementary school dorm manager up on that offer, she would find herself ensnared in the inescapable trap that was a dorm manager’s lap pillow. ''Resist. I refuse to become someone who let’s other people feed her instead of picking up her own chopsticks.

“I’ll be fine. In the end, if I chug an energy drink and take off running, I’ll be back in no time. I can’t take up space in this elementary school dorm. And my friends will worry about me if I don’t show up.”

“Oh? Do you live in a District 14 dorm like most of the foreign transfer students? But isn’t that nearly on the other side of the city?”

Frenda smiled ambiguously and didn’t respond.

An umbrella would be meaningless in this storm, so the blonde-haired, blue-eyed big sister pulled her raincoat up over her head and looked back at her little sister.

She pulled the pull tab for her skinny energy drink and spoke with a mischievous smile.

“Root for the typhoon too much and it’ll stay here in Academy City. In the end, then they might cancel the festival.”

“Eh!? I-in the first place, they can’t do that!!”

“Then you’d better start being thankful for the sunny days. Do that and I’ll go to the festival with you. See you later☆”

Frenda smiled and threw herself out into the storm.

The email had been from Item. The next phase was already beginning.

===Part 2===

A luxurious cottage stood on a mountain.

A full slice of an enormous aromatic tree sat in the living room as a table. Five tablet computers were arranged in a C-shape on the table.

“Is that the UAV Frenda was talking about?” asked Mugino.

“It is,” flatly said Takitsubo, a video game joystick in her right hand.

The five screens provided a 180-degree view from the front of the UAV, along with status information. A different window could be opened to access the view from behind or below.

Long ago, a computer the size of a storage container had been used to control UAVs, but with modern parallel processing, ordinary household machines were enough. Apparently. All this information came from a girl who was currently out and Takitsubo wasn’t too confident on her own.

The UAV she was operating had been custom built by Frenda.

It was about 2m long and had a sharp silhouette resembling a gardening spade or a double-edged sword. It did have small wings spread on either side, but it mostly stayed airborne with the brute force of its ramjet engine’s thrust. It reminded Takitsubo of a bottle rocket with the bare minimum of wings.

“Isn’t this more like a remote-controlled surface-to-surface missile than a UAV?” asked Mugino.

“She said an ordinary UAV would be flipped over by the crosswinds if you tried to fly it in this typhoon,” explained Takitsubo.

Of course, this toy was built by a bomb expert like Frenda, so it probably could perform a precise bombing of a surface target or crash into an enemy fighter and explode.

“Won’t they send out a Six Wings when they detect this thing flying around?”

“The typhoon has bicycles, signs, and other large pieces of metal flying through the air, so Frenda said the airport radars and programmed alerts will be set to overlook a lot.”

That must have been true since the UAV was flying between the skyscrapers without getting shot down.

The UAV was flying through District 14.

That was a strange district where the high-tech skyscrapers were mixed together with short Italian-style buildings with orange roofs and white walls. If they moved the camera, they would have seen a Chinese block, a Korean block, an Indian block, and other small blocks with entirely different designs. The district had more foreign transfer students than any other. It was a lot like a single park with each flower bed containing a different type of flower.

And all of the roads were flooded.

“Hey, Mugino, didn’t the emergency alert say the areas with poor drainage had more than a meter of flooding?”

“Sounds like Venice. It floods every year there, like it’s a seasonal event.”

They could also see broken and toppled wind turbines here and there. Academy City’s power generation was distributed between all the many wind turbines instead of done at a giant centralized power station, so there was supposedly no concern of a power outage…but this made them wonder.

“Anyway, Mugino, does it look like we’ll make it on time?”

“I haven’t seen any non-typhoon alerts, so we should be good.” Mugino Shizuri sighed softly. “Ainame Caroline got my skin…which means she has my DNA map, but that isn’t enough to use for esper development. I’m one of the seven Level 5s, remember? To keep my information secret, all the medical equipment used to develop my power was special-made at my lab. No other equipment will do, so if she wants to cause trouble with my DNA map, she’ll have to attack that lab.”

If it was all used within a secure lab and never left the premises, they could ignore all the safety standards when designing the equipment. That meant Ainame Caroline would have a hard time acquiring the same thing elsewhere.

“I see. That would explain why she spent so much time gathering research data using her online marriage scams. She must have wanted plans for that equipment, or at least enough secret data to create replacement machines for what’s too difficult to get out of the lab.”

“But that tells us she would have a hard time getting into the lab. She’s having trouble. So if we attack the lab first, we can hide inside and set up an ambush. If she could get everything she needs with those marriage scams, she would have finished by now. Which means she can’t get it all. She’ll eventually get impatient and take more forceful measures. And if we know Honey Queen will attack there, I want us in control there first.”

But like she had said, that secret lab was secure enough that even Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary wanted to avoid attacking without a plan. On the surface and in secret, it was no ordinary lab.

“Hula Hoop,” said Mugino Shizuri. “That’s the world’s most powerful particle accelerator buried deep below Academy City’s outer wall. Hah. What better place to develop an electron beam Level 5?”

“Hm? But isn’t Hula Hoop’s control center located below District 23?”

“Officially. But most every facility that large has a higher-level lab hidden within it. The official side gets all the responsibility on paper, but the hidden side gets priority on using it in secret.”

One building looked out of place in the district of international transfer students.

Its vast grounds were surrounded by a tall wall and the building itself had a futuristic design similar to an airport terminal. Its purely functional beauty was a blot on the scenery. And the giant facility sat right smack in the middle of a residential area with no explanation of its purpose.

Takitsubo’s mouth formed a small triangle while she held the joystick.

“That’s the most lab-y building I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s perfect camouflage. ''Nothing could be more uninterestingly common in Academy City''.”

But the UAV controlled by Takitsubo failed to reach the space above the lab.

Something happened as soon as it moved out from between two glass-covered skyscrapers.

With a sizzling sound, the 5-tablet 180-degree view suddenly went dark.

Mugino leaned forward a bit.

“Something just happened.”

“Isn’t this your lab, Mugino? Don’t you have information on its defenses?”

“Defending the lab isn’t my job.”

“Also, this isn’t a problem.”

The five tablets instantly switched to the view of a different UAV. They had more than one in flight. It may have been similar to a soccer video game where a single person controlled the entire team.

“UAV-CAM-02 – manual mode. This one was flying along with the first one, so it should have seen everything.”

With the wide view still in place, Takitsubo opened a smaller window and quickly rewound the footage to the moment UAV-CAM-01 was destroyed. But that didn’t tell her much. After a light like a camera’s flash or welding, the UAV suddenly exploded.

“That was a laser weapon,” concluded Mugino. “And not a single, straight-line optical weapon. I thought there was an unusual number of skyscrapers in the area when they’re guarding their secrets with a tall wall. They must have sprayed a special coating on the glass without permission. Now those skyscraper windows act as mirrors, bending the invisible beam any number of times.”

“That would mean they can hit us even if we approach between the buildings or below the pedestrian bridges.”

“In the worst case, even if we’re inside the manholes.”

That was when a dark shadow appeared on the footage from the upper left corner, static ran through the footage, and UAV-CAM-02 ceased responding.

“UAV-CAM-03…no response. I’ll send UAV-CAM-04 out ahead as bait and switch UAV-CAM-05 to manual mode.”

Takitsubo sacrificed another UAV to give herself some freedom of movement.

The mystery UFO was flying through the air along with their UAVs. It resembled a weather satellite. Solar panels and jets were attached all around the sides of a cylinder with a combination of three long metal rods sticking out of the rear. It looked to be around 5m long in all. It had no wings or propeller, but it managed reach a complete standstill at an altitude of 100m by precisely switching between its jets. It also flew around in small, irregular bursts. Overall, it moved like a small, cowardly fish.

“Is it a ramming weapon?”

“UAV-CAM-05 lost. Switching UAV-CAM-06 to manual mode.”

“It didn’t ram that one.”

“The noise in the footage is getting worse. And the UAVs stop responding to the joystick before they’re shot down.”

“There must be another EM weapon that sends out a beam of powerful microwaves… The EM waves would explain the strange burst of orange sparks just before they’re shot down.”

Their UAVs were more like rockets than airplanes and they had sent them in from multiple directions, but they were still losing them fast. It went without saying what would happen if they tried to approach by foot on the flooded ground. It was starting to make sense why even that arrogant Ainame Caroline had wanted to avoid a direct attack on this place.

===Part 3===

“Repurposed SDI.”

Frenda Seivelun spoke that term into her phone in the middle of an exceptionally large warehouse in District 11.

The relay mirror experiment used multiple mirrors to bend a strategic laser weapon.

Brilliant Pebbles used a heavy metal satellite for a ramming attack.

They had already seen an EM weapon, but at this rate, there could also be a linear gun that launched a metal shell with electromagnets or an IR weapon designed to destroy mechanical cameras and sensors

Or to sum it all up…

“You’ve at least heard of SDI, right? That was an American defense program during the Cold War, meant to use lasers and ramming satellites to intercept ballistic missiles in space. As their ally, Japan – and thus, Academy City as well – helped develop the technology. In the end, it was never actually implemented because the costs were too high. But they wanted something to show for the money they had spent, so there are a number of ‘legends’ about trying to use that space tech back here on Earth. That became known as Repurposed SDI.”

“That’s a satellite? But this isn’t outer space, so how the hell is it flying all over the place!?” demanded Mugino over the phone.

“That doesn’t really matter. In the end, the jetpack I created works similarly. It’s not hard to find experiments that keep a hunk of metal afloat by precisely switching between different jets. It’s just never mass-produced because the fuel costs are too high. My toy made up for that by supporting the buoyancy with an incombustible lighter-than-air gas.”

The strategic military technology designed to shoot down ultra-high-speed ballistic missiles in space with 100% accuracy had been secretly improved by multiple generations over the course of several decades. If any human or vehicle were to approach, it could be torn to shreds by the multiple layers of that defense network.

This violated anti-weapon and aviation laws, but what did that matter?

After all, this was the secret lab that specialized in one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s. Something like Repurposed SDI should be expected there.

“That building has the A/C units covered, unlike with ordinary skyscrapers where they’re exposed on the roof like they want someone to shove some poison gas in there. If the designer was that security conscious, a few secret weapons is hardly surprising. In the end, if this system is built to the same standards as the one protecting that Antarctic base run by a cooperative institute, then the interception rate should be around 99.99%, I think.”

“What are we supposed to do about that? Not one of those flying drones made it above the lab.”

“Dammit, Takitsubo. Don’t just waste those toys even if they are unmanned. In the end, do you have any idea how much each one costs!? Not to mention that each one of them is a handmade Frenda-chan masterpiece!!”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“In the end, yes.”

With a dull metallic clunk, Kinuhata Saiai pulled something in from the shadows.

It was a 7m piece of metal weighing more than 25 tons. Kinuhata didn’t even bother with the excavator-style treads – she forcibly dragged it using the physical boost provided by Offense Armor.

“Oh, god. This thing’s super heavy! This had better be what you wanted, Frenda-san!!”

“It’s perfect☆ In the end, load it into the support organization’s truck.”

Frenda nodded in satisfaction as she looked at a military vehicle with a humongous container on its back.

“So, Frenda-san, do you spend super all your time in here making bombs?”

“This is just where I store things. I do the mixing and construction in a proper container lab. Different types of bombs are created using different devices and follow different rules, so in the end, it’s easier for the lab to be a cheap space where I can ''swap out'' everything inside rather than have a giant space with everything I could ever need inside. I need to adapt quickly like that if I’m going to keep up with the latest trends.”

“Why can a bomber like you move around so super freely?”

“How do you propose they ban it? In the end, you can make jet fuel by purifying the algae you can find floating in the water just about everywhere. And if you abuse that, you can make a pretty nasty explosion.”

Frenda seemed unusually high energy, but that wasn’t just from the new flavor of energy drink. Frenda, the Academy City Bomber, was the kind of weirdo who got excited when she smelled explosives.

“Also, sorry about this. In the end, I had the item, but I can’t drive☆”

“Super what’s the point of collecting things you can’t use?”

“Hm. I normally use an AGV to move things in and out of storage, but I can’t do that thanks to the typhoon and the lightning. There’s too much electrical interference for the EM vehicle guidance markers on the floor to work right.”

Kinuhata had dragged out what was known as a multiple rocket launcher.

If the launch container was raised and its 12 giant rockets were fired, that strategic weapon could scatter 700 bomblets per rocket. That meant a single button was enough to obliterate an enemy ground force with more than 8000 bombs spread out over a wide area.

“No matter how accurately the Repurposed SDI can attack intruders before they arrive, it can only shoot down so many at once. So if we saturate the sky with dangerous targets, their precious interception weapon won’t be able to spare us any attention. Because if they miss even one of those bombs, their own lives are at risk.”

“You mean if we run along the ground during that time, we’ll be super safe?”

“Well, in the end, this tech is simple enough that it was supplied to external cooperative institutes. Its accuracy is 99.99%, remember? That means we can overload it as long as we launch at least 10,000 targets at once.”

That rocket launcher was the HsMLR-05, aka Meteor Shower.

And everything inside, from the solid fuel to the warheads, were Frenda originals.

Frenda Seivelun grinned as she viewed the device designed to launch a meteor shower of explosives and metal balls.

“In the end, you never want to underestimate the Academy City Bomber.”

===Part 4===

Their saturation attack began.

A pair of personal watercraft with sleek, futuristic designs bounced over the choppy waves in the muddy water and cut across Academy City District 14. Mugino and Takitsubo had met with Frenda and Kinuhata and now they rode alongside each other.

The journey wasn’t easy thanks to the typhoon.

“Wow! In the end, I can barely keep in control!”

“Don’t just focus on the current, Frenda! Focus on the wind too! If that powerful crosswind hits you, you’ll capsize!”

The wind had torn the blades off of a wind turbine and they flew spinning toward Item. Just as Frenda instinctually ducked down, the water nearby burst upwards in a splash of muddy water more than 10m tall. If that had splashed up directly below them, they would have capsized for sure. The rainwater infrastructure must have been overtaxed and a manhole cover had shot off from the pressure, but with the streets flooded, it was impossible to tell where the danger was.

The pair in the back seats weren’t having much more fun.

“Takitsubo-san! With all this rain, you need to hold on tight or you’ll super slip off!!”

“No using Offense Armor, Kinuhata. You would break Frenda’s hips and tear her in half.”

Meanwhile, a single thin trail of smoke shot out ahead of them overhead.

That was a jamming missile that would emit jamming signals to neutralize the enemy radar. It wasn’t clear how effective that would be and it would be shot down eventually. Once they recovered from their confusion, the lab would realize they only had to launch an anti-radar missile that would automatically fly right toward the source of the jamming. Still, it would be worth it if it confused the lab’s interception control system and made them doubt their own equipment’s specs.

Then a gray group passed by above the two personal watercraft.

That was the multiple rocket launcher meteor shower launched on a timer and aimed at a fixed target. The 12 large rockets came apart midflight, releasing the explosives packed inside like fish eggs. There were more than 8000 of the explosives shaped like bowling pins. Their unbalanced center of gravity would give them a stable flight while they rained accurately down in a tightly-packed pattern across the area.

“Good, good, good! We’ll be fine as long as they aren’t shot down before they release the bomblets. In the end, I was a little worried about the typhoon, but their course corrections are working just fine. I don’t think the crosswinds are going to blow them into any student dorms or anything!!”

After several bright flashes of light, orange explosions overlapped overhead. The lab had started making full use of their Repurposed SDI, including the relay mirror laser weapon. But the 8000 bomblets couldn’t all be shot down right away.

The system had an accuracy rate of 99.99%, so more than 10 thousand targets would overload its capacity and targets would start to get through. However, Item’s ambush plan wouldn’t work if they really bombed the lab into dust. The 8000 was about right to keep the enemy busy for the time being.

Takitsubo looked expressionlessly up into the sky while holding onto Mugino’s back.

“Wow.”

“Mugino, we need to get in there before the fireworks show is over!! In the end, we’ll be sliced apart by that glass laser if we don’t!!”

The roaring of the wind was changing from moment to moment like it was alive, but fighting it wasn’t going to speed up their progress. Slicing through the winds with Mugino’s Meltdowner would only have a minimal effect. They had to use building walls, large signs, truck trailers, and anything else that would shield them from the wind as they kept their personal watercraft moving.

“Whoa,” cried Takitsubo without thinking.

A Brilliant Pebble shaped like a weather satellite or transistor had fallen nearby, but it had to be one that failed to shoot down part of the rocket rain. Still, it was packed full of rocket fuel and an oxidant. The two personal watercraft skillfully gave the makeshift mine a wide berth and used the hood and windshield of cars parked on the curb as ramps to jump high into the air. An instantaneous tailwind caught their backs at just the right moment.

“Also, Mugino, lend me your anti-recording device,” said Takitsubo. “The one that also disguises your location and number.”

“?”

“I’m picking up signals to the south-southwest and the northeast. Look, there are students stranded on the roofs. I’m going to report them to the fire department with my phone, so I need that accessory to boost my defenses.”

“So what if they’re stranded? It’s not like Frenda’s missiles are going to hit them.”

“But if they’re still there, they must have left their phones downstairs, so the floodwaters will have damaged them. They might go entirely unnoticed up there if we don’t tell the fire department.”

“Maybe, but why should we bother? It’s not like they’re drowning. If they’re on the roof, they aren’t going to die right away. All you’ll do is leave an unnecessary record that could come back to bite us.”

With a metallic click, Takitsubo Rikou pressed a handgun into Mugino Shizuri’s back.

She was as expressionless as always.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I picked it up in the Plinius yesterday. I think it was Kinuhata’s or Frenda’s.”

Takitsubo was seated right against Mugino’s back, so none of this was visible from the other watercraft bouncing along the muddy water.

Takitsubo whispered right into Mugino’s ear.

“No one can defeat your Meltdowner, but you have no defense against an ordinary bullet from point-blank range. Because there’s no room for you to create a Meltdowner shield. …I am your supporter, so I know your weaknesses. Better than anyone.”

“…”

Some dangerous electrification crackled from Mugino’s back as it leaped between drops of water, but Takitsubo still didn’t show any emotion on her face.

“Your Meltdowner can defeat most any enemy in one shot. I won’t deny that.”

With the watercraft shaking so much, the track suit girl pressed the handgun into that dangerous back all the harder.

“But I will not miss. And if ''all'' you want to do is destroy a human body, you don’t need very much destructive force. You get what I mean, don’t you? The key to victory is a contextual thing.”

“Why are you so intent on saving those people? …You even used Body Crystal to search them out. What do you gain from this that’s worth shortening your lifespan?”

“Nothing really. Like I said, I am only your supporter. My job is to do the things you can’t. So this isn’t a betrayal. ''Deep down, you want to do this too, don’t you? You don’t want to abandon those people in need, even if it is meaningless and doesn’t benefit us in the slightest''. Because those people have nothing to do with our fight against Honey Queen.”

Mugino didn’t bother turning around as she clicked her tongue and raised her middle finger.

But she didn’t self-destructively move her arm behind her back and launch a Meltdowner blast backwards, which Takitsubo took as permission. Takitsubo held tightly to her teammate’s back again while she attached the borrowed device to her phone’s bottom port and called someone.

They were approaching the tall wall.

They weren’t even close to the main gate, but…

“In the end, I’ll go in first. Kinuhata, I need you on standby!!”

“Super yeah, yeah.”

Kinuhata removed her arms from around Frenda and instead placed her hands on Frenda’s shoulders. Then she moved out in front of Frenda like a game of leapfrog.

Kinuhata placed her butt on the vehicle’s front hood, activated Offense Armor, and kicked the thick wall with both feet the instant they collided with it.

They broke through.

The two watercraft passed through the large hole, entering the lab’s grounds.

The fireworks show began to lose steam. They had filled the sky with so many explosives, but it looked like the defense system really was going to shoot them all down.

If they didn’t make it in time, it was all over.

Once all the decoy rockets were used up, the defense system could focus on Item instead. Then the lasers, linear guns, and ramming satellites of the Repurposed SDI defense network would wear them down and kill them.

Item approached the futuristic building that resembled an airport terminal. They didn’t expect the sturdy front door to open if they rang the bell, but…

“Mugino, I recommend aiming a bit left of the front door,” said Takitsubo.

“You got it!!”

With a deafening sizzling sound, a 2m hole was melted in a thick bulletproof glass window. Mugino Shizuri had created a new entrance for them.

Once inside, the watercraft skidded along the polished floor before coming to a stop.

The intellectual scientists in lab coats were shocked at first, but they paled and put their hands in the air as soon as they saw Mugino Shizuri.

“Yikes! I-isn’t that Lady Mugino!?”

“Are you kidding me? If we’d known it was her, we wouldn’t have even bothered resisting… There’s no way we can beat a monster like her!!”

Mugino chuckled and brushed her wet hair back with a hand, but the rest of Item had small triangles for mouths.

So this was Mugino’s lab.

She appeared to have the staff well trained.

“I only want one thing: give me full authority over the lab’s security right this instant. If we could get in, so could someone else. Does the name Ainame Caroline ring any bells? You there, the one looking awkwardly away, you didn’t let a 10-year-old trick you into an online romance, did you? But she’s through stealing bits and pieces through those marriage scams. At this rate, Honey Queen is going to try to take over this lab in person! So hurry!!”

===Part 5===

The typhoon had directly hit the city.

On this of all days, the Voice on the Phone with flaxen hair and a tight skirt suit had ordered Muber to one of her hideouts – ''a rundown apartment in District 7.'' Muber was an app that let you order food from any restaurant and have it delivered by bicycle.

“Oh, yes. Eating Menya Ikeda’s extra rich tonkotsu ramen on a rainy day like this is my idea of paradise. It only it were always like this for me☆ And the mentaiko rice side is to die for too.”

“…”

The soaking-wet bicycle delivery boy gave her a deeply resentful look, but the entire point of the delivery service was to get people food on days where going out was difficult. And the Voice on the Phone, being who she was, probably thought forcing the poor delivery boy out into the storm was half the fun.

After getting the college-aged delivery boy to leave quickly by giving him a 5-star rating, she carried the noodle bowl and rice bowl to the small room’s tea table. It was mealtime, which meant setting all her work aside. She also made sure to grab an ice-cold can of beer. She lit the menthol-flavored cigarette in her mouth and switched on the TV to hear the familiar intense-but-somehow-also-relaxed voices of the shopping channel. She had no interest in buying a new microwave, but she always ended up watching anyway.

She settled in to watch when an emergency alert appeared at the top of the screen: ''A cluster bomb terror attack in District 14? Possible connection to a lab in the district.

The Voice on the Phone’s face silently paled. The intoxication of the long 500mL can vanished instantly. That was the secret lab for Meltdowner, one of the Level 5s. It was meant to blend into its surroundings, so the media shouldn’t be discussing it in any capacity.

Not to mention…

(Wait. Don’t tell me… Uh, oh. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m in charge of Item, so does that mean I’m responsible for keeping Mugino’s data secure!? Why is it always like this for me!?)

Her phone rang.

It was from the great Director Nakimoto (who was a known gourmet and had inspired some unconfirmed rumors regarding cannibalism).

He was brief.

“What are you going to do?”

Hanano Choubi was just one of her disguises. It was only a preset face meant to get people to drop their guard, so she didn’t normally use that identity’s timid way of speaking.

Nevertheless, the tearful and trembling girl(?)’s instinct was to use that puppy dog voice here.

Her body knew she was dead if she couldn’t curry his favor.

“I-I will do everything in my p-power to solve this problem.”

===Part 6===

Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary of Honey Queen would be arriving soon. And yet…

“Where are they?”

While this was a lab, not all of it was dangerous experiment rooms with warning signs and icons on the doors. Item was currently speaking in the staff recreation room.

Takitsubo Rikou expressionlessly asked that question while drying her hair and track suit with a towel.

Mugino Shizuri didn’t even bother hiding her irritation as she repeated the question herself.

“Where are Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary? Where are Honey Queen?”

“Maybe they’re big fans of Miyamoto Musashi. Besides, they never super said when they would be showing up. And even if they know we’re here, they’re still going to attack in case we destroy the data they need.”

“Hey, hey, Mugino,” said soaking-wet Frenda, ignoring how her striped bra showed through her top. “What do they research here? You only called them ‘Meltdowner projects’, but that doesn’t tell us anything. This big building couldn’t have been cheap, but it’s not like Honey Queen needs everything in it. If we knew what Former Head Researcher Ainame Caroline’s top priority target is, defending would be a lot easier.”

Frenda’s idea of “defense” here was to set up a ton of bombs and traps in the areas they knew their enemy would be going.

“And what’s your real reason?”

“In the end, I want to know all your secrets☆”

At a glance from Mugino, the female researcher checking on the espresso machine by the wall made a quick 180 and left the room. It was written plain on Mugino’s face she didn’t want anyone getting close.

She probably saw this as her territory. 

“You can look into it if you want,” she said casually, squeezing a dried towel between her hands to wipe the moisture from her hair.

“So even you super don’t know what they do here?”

“You were produced by the Dark May Project, but do you know ''what that project was ultimately designed to accomplish''? It’s the same here. What my power does is entirely separate from what they’re trying to accomplish by researching it.”

With that, it was time to get moving.

“Huh? I didn’t expect to see the security robots super patrolling a secret lab like this.”

“These probably belong to the lab, not Anti-Skill, so they won’t automatically alert the authorities if something happens. And we count as Mugino’s visitors, so I don’t think we need to worry,” expressionlessly explained Takitsubo before looking to the side. “Mugino, is it just me or does that robot have a rocket launcher? And a shotgun too.”

“You field this one, Frenda.”

“In the end, I bet they’re adapted from a killer satellite. America officially claimed they never made any killer satellites – satellites designed to destroy other satellites – but they work the same as the SDI anti-missile satellites.”

They checked the computers in a few of the rooms, but they weren’t just going to find secret data on Meltdowner just sitting out, either in document or data form. They would need to give the researchers a major talking to if they had.

But that wasn’t what they were looking for.

“Here.” Takitsubo pointed at the screen Mugino was operating. “I saw this error before too. We’ve tried three computers with different access levels and from different sections, but none of them have been able to log into this one server. That means it has the strictest security. This says it’s a parallel machine for use during heavy network traffic, but that can’t be true.”

“In the end, doesn’t it look like no one here is able to get into that server? It’s like a special box that none of the staff’s passwords or access privileges can get open.”

“So is it a personal server that only Ainame Caroline can access?”

If so, then the lab’s overall project would have been effectively stalled since that head researcher had been driven out half a year ago. It also meant Ainame Caroline couldn’t get the data she wanted through her online marriage scams. Not when none of her victims could get at the data she needed.

It was sounding all the more certain that Honey Queen would directly attack the lab. Even if Ainame Caroline’s Thoughtography had foretold Item’s ambush, Honey Queen would have no choice but to go for it.

“That would make this secret server the lab’s super final boss.”

If it had been set up from the beginning to prevent access, no amount of messing with it would let Item view the data. Not when they didn’t have a hacker on the team.

But if they could bypass that basic set up, they could break through that thick wall.

“Hm, hm♪”

Frenda hummed as she removed a wall panel and connected a few cables to her phone. Her work with precise time bombs and UAV bombers had given her solid electronic and hardware skills. She must have needed to learn a variety of skills to survive on the dark side as a Level 0.

“I’ve located the signal relay control point based on where the error response cuts off my access. But in the end, a physical bypass should circumvent it. Operating a manual switch should do the trick.”

“Care to dumb that down for the rest of us?”

“There’s a special gatekeeper that checks the username and blocks the way if it’s the wrong person. But if we rewire the cables to go around that device, the signals can get through without needing the gatekeeper’s approval. Which means we can view all the secret data we want.”

Then it was time to do just that.

…Or so Mugino thought, but Frenda wasn’t moving from the spot.

“What’s the holdup?”

“Um, where the work needs to happen is a problem.” Frenda scratched her cheek with her index finger. “In the end, someone needs to dive into the pool of supercomputer coolant and work underwater.”

“Can you super not swim, Frenda-san?”

“This isn’t ordinary water. It has a higher relative density. See, it’s a liquid of coolant particles. Dive in there clothed and the heavy particles will catch in the fibers like they’re a filter and you won’t be able to float back up again.”

They all exchanged a glance.

Except for Takitsubo who tilted her head with her usual empty look and made a suggestion.

“Then can’t you just strip down naked before diving into the coolant pool?”

They all fell silent again.

They had ridden personal watercraft over muddy water in the pouring rain of the typhoon. They were already so soaked their skin and underwear were showing through their clothes, but Item still had the exact same thought at the exact same time.

“I’m still not stripping down in here.” “I’m still not stripping down in here.” “I’m still not stripping down in here.”

“?”

The track suit girl was the odd one out, but they still knew what they needed to do.

Only one of them needed to do the work, so they only had to choose a single sacrifice and strip off all her clothes.

So…

“How about we wrestle over it?”

“Wait, wait, wait, no, no, no!! Muuugiiinooo! In the end, you can’t just knock me down out of nowhere and perform a giant swiiiiiiiiiing!!!”

While Frenda was spun around by her ankles, her miniskirt looked a lot like an umbrella in a typhoon, but that wasn’t enough to settle it. How wild was that demon lord if she could outshine Kinuhata Saiai and her Offense Armor when it came to martial arts?

Takitsubo Rikou tilted her head again.

“Mugino. I think no one would complain if you chose a fairer way of deciding.”

“What, like our intelligence? Or our femininity? That wouldn’t be fair for Kinuhata when she’s so short and scrawny. Here, Kinuhata, you can use my handkerchief.”

“Are you super picking a fight with me? If you wanna wrestle, then let’s fucking wrestle, you little…”

The casual barb made Kinuhata lower her head and mutter something (in her murderous #1 mode), but that wasn’t what Takitsubo had meant. Not that she said anything to comfort Kinuhata.

Takitsubo pulled out a deck of cards she had picked up in the recreation room.

“How about we play cards? Everyone knows how to play old maid and I think that game is more about luck than strategy.”

===Part 7===

Item sat in a circle so each turn would go Mugino, Takitsubo, Frenda, Kinuhata.

“Okay. In the end, I’m putting the joker in now.”

Frenda quickly dealt the cards to the four of them. It started out with 13 for each plus the one extra, but it was unusual to hold onto all of those. Any numerical pairs a player was dealt would be discarded right away.

“Tch. I didn’t get many pairs.”

“Ooh, in the end, I can discard these: the 3 of clovers and the 3 of hearts.”

“Ugh…I mean, um, it super isn’t anything. In fact, my hand is looking great.”

“I can discard this jack of diamonds and jack of clubs too.”

“Mugino, aren’t you curious about this card I have sticking up above the rest?”

“Wait, wait☆ Don’t start playing yet. In the end, sorry, but I have more to discard. Like this 8 of spades and 8 of diamonds.”

The other three all stared at Frenda.

This was looking mighty suspicious. As much as the game was based on randomness and luck, why was she the only one with so many pairs to discard before the game even began? The fact that her initial hand of 13 cards was down to just 2 caused their suspicions to explode. If Frenda had one of her cards taken and then got the pair to her remaining card, she would win.

In fact…

“Wasn’t Frenda the one who dealt the cards in the first place? I thought it was weird she volunteered to be helpful for once in her life.”

“And it was super Frenda-san who gave me all that advice about cheating in that illegal casino! Oh, I get it. You only pretended to shuffle the deck, didn’t you? And then you dealt all the matching cards to yourself to give yourself a super advantage!”

“She cheated?”

“What are you even talking about? In the end, accusations of cheating don’t mean a thing unless you grab the player’s wrist while she’s doing it. Ah ha ha.”

Everyone’s gazes collided.

That instant marked the death of the fair and fun spirit of cards beloved by the Earl of Sandwich.

Frenda soon grew visibly tearful.

“Hey, what’s the deal? In the end, I’ve never played such a long game of old maid, that giant discard pile clearly has more than 53 cards in it, and I just got the ace of spades even though I know for a fact I discarded it earlier! Just to be sure, this ''is'' old maid we’re playing, right? And who introduced cards from new decks by the same company!?”

“Huh. Sounds like one of those super mysteries we’ll never find an answer to.”

“Mugino. Did you just reach behind your back to vaporize a card you wanted to get rid of? Using a small Meltdowner orb, I’m guessing.”

“You must be imagining things.”

The total number of cards was blatantly growing and shrinking and one of them somehow discarded a pair of jokers in the most hellish game of old maid ever seen, but it did eventually end.

The final two players were Frenda and Takitsubo.

They had finally reached the real challenge of old maid. The game wouldn’t be so exciting if it didn’t come down to two players with either 1 or 2 cards, forcing them to a 50/50 chance of getting the joker or not.

Frenda had one card and she had to select one of Takitsubo’s two cards.

Since Frenda was leaning back in a defensive pose, she probably didn’t have the joker. Takitsubo was leaning eagerly but expressionlessly forward, hoping Frenda would choose the landmine.

It all came down to a choice between left and right, but…

“Grr. In the end, Takitsubo has the perfect poker face. Peering into her eyes doesn’t tell you anything.”

“And I can read you like a book, Frenda.”

“Is she somehow reading my AIM Diffusion Fiel- no! In the end, that’s another bluff meant to rattle me!!”

“Frenda, I will not lie to you. It’s on the right. The card on the right is the joker.”

“In the end, I accept that you aren’t lying, but are you talking about my right or your right!?”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

“The fact that wasn’t even a calculated tactic is what makes you so hard to read!!”

Sweat-soaked Frenda’s fingers wandered uncertainly before finally choosing the card on her left.

She felt like she had tried using all her logic to disarm a time bomb, but it ultimately came down to trusting in her luck and cutting either the red cord or the blue cord.

And…

“I lost.”

“Hell yes!! In the end, I’m out with the 8 of hearts and the 8 of cluuuuuuuuuuubs!!”

Frenda slammed down her final two cards and struck a victory pose.

This meant Takitsubo Rikou would have to remove her track suit and dive into the coolant pool.

However…

“(Do you super think she could do it?)”

“(I think this confirms she can sense something even without Body Crystal.)”

“(Then why did she lose? And she super doesn’t seem bothered by it.)”

“(She might have known what Frenda was thinking and guided her toward victory to help calm us all down.)”

===Part 8===

The coolant pool was in the back of the lab.

It was more than 2m deep and covered even more space than a convenience store.

It looked like clear water, but the rippling surface seemed somehow thicker than normal water. According to Frenda, sinking in while dressed would allow the clothing fibers to gather the coolant particles like a filter and prevent you from ever rising back to the surface.

“This is a radio and these are the tools you’ll need. In the end, keep everything on camera and follow my instructions,” said Frenda.

“Okay. How long will the work take?” asked Takitsubo.

“Around 10 minutes, I think.”

“Hold on. How will she have enough air?” asked Mugino.

Kinuhata tossed over something like a portable cooker’s gas canister. Frenda attached it to a metal pipe arranged in a fairly complex shape. She was creating a makeshift oxygen tank by customizing the kind of oxygen canister used in indoor gyms.

It was shaped more confusingly than a simple burner used to roast the surface of meat or fish.

“This won’t last an hour, so be careful. In the end, we can’t predict what kind of trouble could keep you down there longer.”

“Hm. Okay.”

“Don’t just breathe in the oxygen. The trick is to breathe out the carbon dioxide while closing the valve to keep the water out.”

“Time to take this off.”

Takitsubo didn’t hesitate to strip off her track suit.

Kinuhata and Frenda got an unexpected eyeful of bare skin from head on, so they awkwardly looked away.

(Th-they don’t look anywhere near that super big in her track suit. Those boobs are wasted on her.)”

“(Don’t let it bother you. I-in the end? Everyone loves our Frenda-chan because of the perfect balance I show in all my measurements. If my boobs were any bigger, it would mess with that balance, you see. So shut up, I’m not crying.)”

“?”

After stripping off her underwear too, Takitsubo Rikou sat down on the poolside(?), stuck the makeshift oxygen tank’s pipe in her mouth, and slowly entered the coolant, feet first. The liquid appeared highly transparent, but once she was fully submerged, she couldn’t be seen from the poolside.

Frenda spoke to her over the radio.

“Keep your right hand on the wall and slowly follow that. You’ll find the maintenance panel at a corner 15m from here, so use that as your landmark.”

“Okay.”

Takitsubo’s voice sounded muffled, but that was due to the pipe in her mouth, not the quality of the radio.

While Takitsubo walked through the coolant pool, the other three followed along outside the pool.

“Once you have the control panel open, aim the camera at the inside. I want to check the arrangement of wiring and switches.”

“This?”

Frenda viewed the footage they received and got to work with her right hand. The other two wondered what she was doing and found she was drawing out a wiring diagram on memo paper with a ballpoint pen.

Mugino viewed that from the side and pointed at one part.

“#2 and #7 are traps, so don’t touch those. Also, this isn’t communicating the signal using anything as obvious as a wired connection.”

“Mugino?”

“Do you see how #5 and #6 are unnaturally close together? Instead of using the electricity, they’re communicating with each other using the faint magnetism that leaks out around the wires. That kind of contactless communication means you’ll never reach the signal’s destination if you only follow the paths drawn out on the wiring diagram.”

Frenda knew a lot about circuitry as a bomber, but Mugino figured it out faster.

Even that (extremely villainous) girl was still a Level 5, which meant she was a genius girl whose brain was built differently from the average person.

“Mugino, what does that mean I should do?”

“Pull on wire #9 and nestle it right up alongside #6. Once you’ve done that, you can snip #5 with the wire cutters.”

Mugino’s phone beeped softly.

The phone was connected to the lab’s wireless LAN, but she found it now had access to a screen she couldn’t reach before. A single folder contained a large quantity of files.

The folder was named “Project Angelica”.

===Part 9===

“Oof.”

Takitsubo crawled out of the thick coolant.

“You really are as super naked as can be, aren’t you? Here’s a towel.”

“Whoa. What are you doing, Kinuhata?”

“I’m not letting you act like my big sister forever. I need to super return the favor every once in a while.”

“Ooh, my hair.”

(Naked) Takitsubo Rikou looked somehow pleased as she let Kinuhata do as she wished, but she eventually frowned.

“Ugh, there’s nothing worse than putting back on wet clothes. It’s so cold and clingy.”

“Super yeah, yeah.”

While Takitsubo dried off and put her clothes back on, Mugino and Frenda were operating their phones.

Project Angelica.

“Angelica? In the end, that reminds me of the word ''angelic''. Or maybe it’s someone’s name? I know there are people called Angela.”

“Someone’s name? No, it’s only a perennial herb from the Apiaceae family used to decorate cakes.”

Frenda tried to read too deeply into it, so Mugino, who was willing to put on an apron and work in the kitchen (when absolutely necessary), had to exasperatedly correct her.

“And to be honest, I doubt the name means much of anything. It’s common practice to give a project a name that will send anyone investigating it down a dead end. In this case, the similarity to angel and angelic is supposed to make you think there’s something like that hidden behind it.”

“''You mean the truly dangerous projects are given easily mistaken names that would sound important to just about anyone''?”

“That’s right. Then when you find some idiot trying to secretly search for information on it, you go in for the kill. The occult is the perfect option in Academy City because it stands out so much.”

So what was this lab hoping to do with Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner?



“The perfect electron microscope.

“The project being run under the tentative name Angelica can be summed up as an attempt to create the perfect electron microscope and electric scalpel at the same time.

“This will be used for physical and industrial gene manipulation.

“In other words, it can be used to design and develop an esper.”



Developing an esper.

That idea alone was hardly a rare one in Academy City.

But why would they bother adding the “design” in there too?

“Do you super think Ainame Caroline wrote this? That little tanned gyaru? Does her personality change when she’s writing?”

“Mugino,” interrupted Takitsubo. “This file gives a summary of the project’s objective and basic theory.”

“…”



“Existing gene manipulation techniques are either biological or chemical and use restriction enzymes.

“This requires strict calculations, including for the type of DNA molecule to act as a carrier for the sequence processed by the restriction enzyme, but the actual macro results are inevitably fickle. Current techniques cannot de-age someone or create a genius with 100% accuracy, nor can they create a human with wings or gills. This can be seen most plainly in the fact that the creation of the Level 5s, the poster children for Academy City’s esper development, is actually reliant on their initial genetic sequence. That is, they must have some inborn ‘talent’ in the first place for the later development to work.

“When such rare talent is required, not all researchers will be able to develop their specimens as desired. The basic concept is closer to investment or gambling than it is science. Anyone in this field will know countless colleagues who were ruined after they received massive amounts of advance funding but could never achieve the results they promised. We are supposed to be scientists. We must eliminate all financial risk from our work, but that is a problem we will never be rid of as long as we continue using existing methods.

“Angelica will fundamentally fix that reliance on coincidence.

“This problem will never be solved as long as we continue treating living beings as living beings. A true solution requires using a purely industrial approach that treats genes as components to be physically manipulated.”



“In the end, what’s this talk about physical and industrial?”

“So like robots?”

“I super find that hard to believe. You mean we’re going to see tin dolls with minds of their own wielding esper powers?”

There were heretical researchers lurking on the dark side who were attempting to create practical cyborgs or androids, but that didn’t seem to have any direct link to Mugino’s Meltdowner.

“Machines… Wasn’t there some research into using Mugino’s power in the field quantum computing and data transmission since it can fix electrons in a certain state?” asked Takitsubo.

“But it doesn’t sound like that’s what this means by industrial. Look at this file. It gives more details.”



“To reiterate, Angelica refers to the perfect electron microscope and electric scalpel as a set.

“If this ‘device’ is used on human genes, it can accurately cut away exactly the number desired.

“So instead of using chemicals and DNA molecules and then waiting for the reaction to show itself, you could see for yourself and use your own hand to directly slice through the genes. Think of it like editing a movie on old-fashioned film.

“Realizing this technique will require the cooperation of a powerful esper with the ability to control electrons.

“There are reports of the Railgun using EM waves to produce a macro reflected wave radar, but there are no examples of her using electrons themselves to cut anything. She has a tendency to avoid that and instead uses magnetism to vibrate iron sand. It is unknown if this is because she was only recently recognized as a Level 5, or if it is a permanent problem. Since we want both an electron microscope and an electric scalpel, it seems best to start with Meltdowner as a base since she does directly burn through things with electrons.

“With the Level 5’s help, she could manipulate people’s genes to evolve them however we wanted.

“She could evolve every last human to Level 5, or she could devolve any Level 5 into a powerless Level 0.

“Angelica would let a single person perform everything that Academy City is attempting to do.”



They were speechless.

Even ''the'' Mugino Shizuri.

Angelica wasn’t just about manipulating electrons or people’s minds. Instead of Level 5s born of happenstance reigning at the top of the hierarchy, they would be creating someone who could alter the total number of Level 5s with a flick of a finger.

If someone like that was created, the 6-tier system running from Level 0 to Level 5 would entirely collapse. The status of Academy City’s seven Level 5s wouldn’t be worth a thing.

Someone would be able to evolve anyone they liked into Level 5s and steal the powers of anyone they didn’t like.

She would truly become Academy City’s queen.

If she were to raise only 100 of her followers to Level 5 and leave the rest of the 2.3 million people at Level 0, she could easily rule over all of Academy City. And she would be able to swiftly snuff out any rebellious traitors among her ranks by taking away their power. No matter how large scale the rebellion, it would end in an instant.

In fact, it wouldn’t end with just the city. The rest of the human population in the wide world found outside the city’s walls would only be a matter of time. No one among the 6 or 7 billion people out there would have any way of resisting the queen and her 100.

If this came to fruition.

However…



“Note:

“Mugino Shizuri = poor match for Angelica’s precise gene slicing.

“Power output too great.

“New esper needed. One with similar power but more precise control.”



The final text file had a different tone.

The choppier text could not hide the irritation of the writer. This was a personal note, not a research paper based on logic.

“…”

Was this why Ainame Caroline referred to Mugino as a failure?

It wasn’t a matter of ability.

She had grown ''far faster'' than the head researcher had wanted. She had become poorly suited for the precision Ainame Caroline needed.

Was it after that she had started destroying other espers with her experiments and been driven from the lab? Had her extreme level of tuning been too much for those espers, or had she just been too impatient?

“I see.”

When she finally spoke, that was all Mugino said.

“But Angelica is a means, not an end. It’s a convenient tool that can customize an existing person or create your ideal person out of a fertilized egg. Ainame Caroline. What is that brat trying to do by toying with the building blocks of human DNA?”

===Part 10===

“Are you ready to go, Tachiuo-chan?”

“Y-yes. No, wait. I need to put on a new mask.”

“Hwa ha ha. Then we’ll get going once you do. If you want to study life, there’s no better place to start than DNA. Yes, I won’t leave any coincidences or gaps in the ACGT. And it’ll all be possible with Angelica. Growth, division, aging, and death – after I view every action the cells and chromosomes can make, I can search for any growth or survival that doesn’t fit into the simple cycle of addition and subtraction. If I do find that invisible current, its unnatural guidance should take me right to the cool thing we call life☆ Then I check and see if humans, cats, and little insects all have equal souls. Depending on the result, I might even prove that humanity is less valuable than some bugs.”

“And this is all for your sister?”

“Right. I’ll scientifically prove that she had a soul and it made it safely to heaven. Then no one can laugh at me for saying so, not even here in Academy City.”

===Part 11===

After they ate dinner and took turns bathing, it was around 11 PM.

“They’re here,” Takitsubo said out of nowhere.

“Kh.”

“Something feels off to the south-southwest. This fluctuation has to be them.”

If Takitsubo Rikou was that certain, Mugino didn’t need to ask for her reasons or reasoning.

They really were here.

The entire giant building that resembled an airport terminal shook vertically. Sharp cracks ran through all the windows on one side.

But not because something had crashed into the front of the building.

It was more accurate to say, ''the roof had been torn away.'' Right after something pierced through a point in the lab ceiling with tremendous force, the typhoon winds tore the entire roof away. It came away as easily as the scored strip at the top of a plastic bag.

But they couldn’t afford to forget about the girl who had broken through a roof sturdier than tank armor at the very start of all this.

(It’s that mask girl.)

“Tachiuo Mary!!” shouted Mugino with a Meltdowner blast directed straight up, but it didn’t hit.

Tachiuo Mary didn’t hesitate to jump down the three-story drop of the central atrium. She used her body’s fearsome muscles and sturdy bones to forcefully absorb the shock of the landing and then adjusted her grip on the thing resting on her shoulder.

The weapon had a long shaft like a spear, but the long blade at the tip was even broader than an azure dragon sword.

It resembled a Chinese glaive called a Chang Bing Dao, but it was essentially different.

''She had taken a flat piece of metal and crushed it more than halfway to create a spear-like shaft.

“Is that a helicopter rotor? Where did you super get that!?”

“F-from the ‘hospital’ stopped on a nearby building roof.”

Tachiuo Mary politely answered the question before ''disappearing''.

She held the piece of metal weighing more than 100kg and used pure speed to approach Kinuhata Saiai. Before Kinuhata could raise her arms to guard herself, the makeshift Chang Bing Dao sliced through the air and struck Kinuhata in the torso, sweeping her aside. The follow through of the swing slammed Kinuhata back-first into a nearby wall.

This created a loud crash of destruction.

It made sense that girl could defeat all of the doped-up soldiers armed with full-auto shotguns loaded with tiny needles poisoned with habu venom coagulant or hornet venom acetylcholine.

But Kinuhata forcibly held the rotor in place with her hands, restricting the girl’s movement.

With Offense Armor, she didn’t have to worry about this slicing her in two.

“Super now!!”

Tachiuo Mary abandoned her weapon.

She let go of the Chang Bing Dao, grabbed two nearby wireless LAN antennae and used them to deflect Mugino’s kick and Frenda’s wrist coming in from the sides. With a swishing sound, she again readied the two antennae that branched out something like short tridents.

“In the end, are those supposed to be Bijiacha!? That’s the Chinese version of a parrying dagger!!”

Frenda’s shouted explanation was cut short.

A wire thicker than an index finger was wrapped around Tachiuo Mary’s ankle with a weight attached to the end. A sharp piece of metal more than 30cm long was attached to the other end. It was likely a ceiling crane used to unload industrial computers, materials, and other cargo from a truck parked in a garage.

A sharp kick sent the metal into the side of Frenda’s face, sending Frenda spinning to the floor. No, she had launched herself with a small explosive right before it hit, just barely eliminating its force. If not for that, half her face would have been torn right off.

Ferocious rain blew in through the torn-away ceiling. Mugino was so irritated by the wet clothing clinging to her skin she wanted to just strip it all off, but she only clicked her tongue instead.

“Tch!! A Sheng Biao too!? What doesn’t this Chinese weapon lover have!?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t actually know what any of these are called. I don’t recognize any of those names you’re using.”

Tachiuo Mary politely responded with the muffled voice behind her mask.

Was she saying she didn’t know the names or how they worked, but her body automatically selected any nearby object she could use as a weapon? Just like someone who folded a paper airplane or origami crane out of a random flier didn’t think too much about it? If so, how many reflexes and habits had Ainame Caroline ''written'' into her specimen’s brain and nerves?

“I do not mind.”

Tachiuo Mary must have realized the same thing, but she didn’t seem bothered by it.

The gloomy high schooler looked Mugino Shizuri directly in the eye.

“Lady Carol destroyed my ordinary world, which was so peaceful and boring but also so stifling it could kill you. But she never demanded I obey her. She treated everyone in Honey Queen as equals, both me…and ''him''. I like this little world. I’m happy as long as I can remain steeped in this wicked world. Unlike you, I won’t starve from any kind of deficiency!!”

“Hah. You’re wasted as a villain!!”

Meltdowner shot from Mugino Shizuri’s palm.

However, it failed to connect with Tachiuo Mary who stood straight in front of her. It flew right past her cheek.

Mugino’s aim had not been off.

Tachiuo Mary had sharply thrown her makeshift Bijiacha with the power of explosives and one of them stabbed into Mugino’s thigh.

“Gah!!”

“Like I told you, if Lady Carol asks me to, I will win even if it means fighting you.”

(She has guts. What kind of idiot would challenge me of all people to a head-on shootout!?)

Mugino clenched her teeth at the pain that felt like being stabbed by building rebar, but the corners of her lips also rose.

She formed a violent smile. She revealed her identity as a battle freak who didn’t care what she gained or lost from the fight.

She had determined this girl was worth fighting.

The air roared as it blew down from above.

The Sheng Biao, a large piece of metal attached to a thick wire, flew towards Mugino’s head like an axe kick.

She had no choice but to jump back and bear with the pain.

The attached wire gave this weapon a different trajectory from an ordinary projectile, but that also limited its range.

“Tch!!”

Mugino raised her right hand and took aim with Meltdowner, while Tachiuo Mary used a swing of her slender ankle to cut away the Sheng Biao, abandoning it on the wet floor.

Unarmed Tachiuo Mary walked slowly forward. Her long braid swayed side to side, sending water droplets scattering as she approached Mugino with no hesitation whatsoever.

This was no ordinary person.

For one, no one with a stable mind would block Mugino Shizuri’s way in an open space with no cover. This was obviously suicide, but she boasted the specs needed to survive it. She was even more of a threat unarmed than with those brutal weapons because she was now free to move however she liked.

Mugino was having fun.

She enjoyed feeling the chill of death crawl up her spine.

It had been far too long since someone had forced her to push past her limits!!

(Tachiuo Mary. When your enemy’s options are unlimited, thinking too hard is a good way to lose!!)

“Ha ha!!”

Mugino arrived at that answer and held her palm straight out.

She heard a lot of high-pitched metallic clinking sounds and noticed Tachiuo Mary had kicked up some junk and scrap metal from the wet floor and grabbed it in her hands.

The large paper airplane surrounding an explosive lithium ion battery was a Shen Huo Fei Ya.

Was the old-fashioned grenade made by forcibly opening a hole in a spray can and stuffing tissues inside supposed to be a Zhen Tian Lei?

“Ohhhh!!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Neither one ran or hid.

They launched their attacks from head on. A beam surged out and triggered an explosion in midair. The exploding paper airplane erupted with flames like a firework to weave through a gap in the explosion, sharply curving in toward Mugino.

Fighting this girl was ''fun''.

She was a being of pure death and violence who dragged out enough of Mugino’s endorphins to put her in extreme battle freak mode. At this point, Kinuhata and Frenda were reluctant to try and assist. An explosion sent talon-like metal shards slicing through the air, grazing Mugino’s cheek and stabbing into her upper arm, but Mugino only corrected Meltdowner’s aim. Instead of aiming for the vitals, she aimed where she expected Tachiuo Mary to be after a jump to the right.

However…

“Hm!?”

She missed.

Her Meltdowner beam unnaturally veered off course and very nearly grazed Kinuhata Saiai who had been preparing a surprise attack on Tachiuo Mary from the side.

(I didn’t screw that up. ''She did something to me''!?)

“We are both giving this our all, so I will hold nothing back. These projectiles are not my only weapons.”

This was supposed to be a clash between espers, after all.

Meanwhile, Tachiuo Mary slammed her fist into a nearby wall and yanked out a thick steel beam. Since the end was split and spread out like a palm tree, it looked a lot like a Chinese Zhuazi Bang. A hit from the steel beam itself would kill instantly and even a graze from the many “talons” at the end would tear the flesh away like a bear slashing a human.

It scored a direct hit.

Kinuhata’s range of motion had been severely restricted thanks to her teammate’s Meltdowner beam, so she was caught in the flank. This time, she was knocked to the floor. If not for Offense Armor, her upper and lower halves would have been torn apart.

“Check.”

As a deterrent, Mugino launched two blasts without trying to hit, but the beams exploded in her palm.

Her attack had failed.

She was blasted to the wall, but Tachiuo Mary didn’t even bother looking while she spoke to Takitsubo.

“Now she can’t move. You’re only meant to locate the enemy, right? Y-you can’t do anything without your attackers.”

“What did you do?”

“''I used Angelica. That allows me to do more than raise an esper’s level. I can lower it too. That is my esper power. The chemical secreted inside me is dangerous in much the same way as Body Crystal. Touch that chemical and it will destroy your genetic sequence. The rainwater dripping from my skin is probably a threat too. I-I’m not talking about anything as simple as losing control of your power. This will destroy your DNA and transform all of your cells into a lesion''.”

“Kh.”

“J-just kidding?”

Tachiuo Mary thew away her makeshift Zhuazi Bang with a heavy clank and stuck out her tongue a little.

She was so bad at making jokes that the very air seemed tense.

She had said Ainame Caroline had saved her, but this weight showed just how bad her previous life had been.

And the tall, soaked high schooler readily denied everything she had just said.

“I can’t actually do any of that yet. My Anything Link is still only Level 4. Besides, we’re here right now to complete Angelica. All I can do now is send an electron beam through the skull and into the brain to throw off the balance of brain chemicals. It’s not quite the same thing as electrolysis. Still, it is enough to make an esper lose control of their power.”

She grabbed something next to her without even looking in Takitsubo’s direction. It was a hat rack that looked a lot like a Christmas tree made of wires. But by attaching the long, skinny support of a floor lamp by wrapping duct tape around them, it turned into a Chinese spear known as a Xian Qiang. If she stabbed that into immobilized Mugino’s back, the multiple branches of the thick wires would stir up her insides, making a mess of her bones and organs.

“It’s time I lost my murder virginity.”

Tachiuo Mary knew what this meant.

She put on a resolute face and took another step forward.

“She taught me there was more to the world than the supposedly peaceful classroom where the popular are in control and not even the air molecules can move freely. I’m happy as long as I can stay in this wicked world. I’m willing to kill to stay here.”

“Do you think you’re more noble and special because you’re reluctant about the killing you do? If so, you should already know you’re making a mistake.”

“Shut up. I won’t let anyone call me a murder virgin again. I will live in the same world as Lady Carol forevermore. And this is what that will take.”

“”That’s too bad. That shame and guilt are a luxury those of us with no choice but to live on the dark side can’t afford. If you’re going to throw that away without even understanding its value, then you’re only a smalltime villain.”

Track Suit Girl Takitsubo spoke quietly in the rain.

She held a small case in her hand. The white powder sprinkled on the back of her hand was Body Crystal.

“I won’t let you kill Mugino.”

“S-so what? You can talk big all you want, but no matter how much of your lifespan you sacrifice, a targetter like you can’t harm me without an attacker. Who is going to obey your accurate instructions? There’s no one left. You’re out of ammo and only have the scope left, so what can you do?”

“''I’m not worried.''” Takitsubo was confident. “I know Mugino will get back up. I trust the Level 5 Meltdowner.”

A scraping sound followed.

Mugino Shizuri’s right hand was dragging along the floor while she remained collapsed with her bangs covering her face.

But…was she even conscious?

“You know I provide targeting support for Mugino because you researched us before this attack, right?”

The Level 5’s palm was aimed precisely at Tachiuo Mary.

Tachiuo Mary should have written it off as impossible.

She was watching something that shouldn’t be happening.

“Sh-she can’t do it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I already broke down Mugino Shizuri’s brain chemicals using the electron beam I sent through her skull, so if she fires Meltdowner now, it will only blow up in her face!”

“If you really believe that, then you can just stand there and wait for your win.”

Make no mistake.

Takitsubo Rikou was not a kind person. Nor was she harmless.

She was just as messed up as the other members of Item.

That plain track suit girl was also a villain whose only home was on the dark side.

Meaning…

“Kh.”

Tachiuo Mary spun around.

She focused on Takitsubo for the first time.

She was forced to.

Takitsuo’s pupils were unnaturally dilated. She had already used the Body Crystal, meaning she had intentionally pushed AIM Stalker beyond the limits of what she could control.

But more than that…

“I don’t believe it…”

Tachiuo Mary was aware of the deadly light gathering in a corner of her vision, but she did not remove her gaze from Takitsubo.

The obvious Level 5 wasn’t the real threat here.

She focused on the person who inspired far greater terror in her.

“Does this mean…observing and tracking AIM Diffusion Fields ''isn’t the true form of your pow''-”

The light that should have exploded instead shot out as a beam and pierced Tachiuo Mary.

===Part 12===

Tachiuo Mary had been defeated.

Takitsubo Rikou stared silently at the result for a while, a slight cloud over her face.

“Mugino?”

No response.

Mugino’s hand fell limply to the wet floor. She didn’t react at all to Takitsubo’s call. Mugino Shizuri was unconscious. Was she fully spent after that final attack, ''or had she passed out before that''?

(What was that just now?)

Takitsubo decided she needed to hide what had had happened, even from the rest of Item. At the same time…

“Cough!! Hack, cough!?”

She didn’t even have time to cover her mouth. She reflexively doubled over and coughed up a lot of blood.

This was the result of all the Body Crystal she had taken.

There had to be a cost. The sound of her lifespan shrinking seemed to ring through her very bones.

Nevertheless, she had overcome it.

She had used her power for the people important to her.

Tachiuo Mary must have been reaching for the same summit. That timid high schooler had fought so hard, yet it still wasn’t clear what was in it for her. What good was realizing Project Angelica for her? That couldn’t be her goal. That monster probably only wanted to spend time with Ainame Caroline.

Just like Takitsubo did not hesitate to consume her own lifespan for no direct benefit of her own.

Tachiuo Mary was the same.

“Gh…”

“Wake up, Mugino. She’s still breathing.”

“Ow… That injury is fatal. She just can’t bleed out and die right away because the gut wound was cauterized. The battle is still over.”

Frenda and Kinuhata were…still out.

Mugino and Takitsubo made sure they were still breathing and had a pulse, but they didn’t react to a light slap on the cheek. They also didn’t even stir with the pouring rain falling on them. They would need more specialized smelling salts to wake them.

“Takitsubo. A lab like this is bound to have ammonium carbonate lying around somewhere. We can split up and-”

“Mugino.”

Takitsubo interrupted to give a warning with her wet hair plastered to her cheeks.

Mugino noticed a moment later.

The rain had been pouring in ever since the roof was torn away, but it had stopped.

That was probably nothing more than the ordinary natural phenomenon of entering the eye of the storm, but it felt more like even that massive natural disaster was holding its breath in fear of a certain girl.

Yes, someone was approaching from down the hallway. It was the 10-year-old genius girl with the toxic outfit that looked wrong on her terribly small body.

It was Ainame Caroline.

“Wait. Tachiuo-chan? Damn, did you really lose? Now that’s what I call boring. I guess even you had a hard time taking on all four of them at once.”

“Ugh,” groaned Tachiuo Mary, still unable to get up from the floor.

But she still managed a somehow weak smile behind her mask.

“Did you find it, Lady Carol?”

“I did.”

“Good. Then maybe this was somewhat worth it…”

Tachiuo Mary smiled despite her missing organs.

She was the kind of person who could smile even now.

The little brown gyaru gave a quick nod. She reached into her exceptionally short skirt’s pocket and pulled out something too old-fashioned for a cutting-edge lab.

She held a cassette tape.

“While you were keeping them busy, I accessed by personal server in the back. At times like this, you should take a lesson from what major corporations do when backing up the personal information they get on tens of millions of people with their point cards: if you want to securely backup your most important data, you’ve gotta go with a cute digital magnetic tape☆ The discount hard disks sold in electronics stores are all just disguised nonvolatile memory, so I realllly wouldn’t trust them if I were you.”

Could Ainame Caroline control her personal server from any computer in the lab?

She twirled the digital cassette full of her research secrets like she was performing a card trick and then she inserted it between the wrapped wire at the center of her bikini’s flat chest.

“Ha ha ha. It cracks me up. Now I have the full plans for the lab’s unique medical equipment. It’s honestly sad that all that effort was over this one tiny digital cassette. But if I combine this with Mugino Shizuri’s DNA map, I can continue my research and complete Angelica without needing this stupid lab. It’s only a matter of time now.”

“And how are you going to find that time? The only time you have is her remaining lifespan. That’s a valuable thing. A part-timer won’t be handing out free samples of it on the street corner,” spat Mugino, ignoring that she was so wet her underwear showed through her clothing. “Even with that big hole in her gut, she still has to weigh twice what you do. Did you think you could escape my Meltdowner while struggling to drag her along with your scrawny arms?”

Ainame Caroline titled her head a little.

She twirled her bunny ears phone in a hand and looked down.

“Tachiuo-chan.”

“Yes?”

“''Thanks for everything.''”

Even at a distance, Mugino clearly heard the awful sound of a brain frying.

The mask’s straps came off Tachiuo Mary’s ears.

But she wasn’t moving anymore.

A line of red blood silently dripped from the corner of her exposed mouth.

Ainame Caroline had a form of Thoughtography. According to the “hospital” Item had brought their delinquent driver to, she used a special iron ink to burn a random pattern into the surface of the brain, obstructing the cranial nerves and thus preventing consciousness.

With her gut burst open and multiple organs gone, there had been no saving Tachiuo Mary regardless.

But Ainame Caroline had shown so little hesitation.

“Ah ha ha☆ And now a girl as little and cute as me can nimbly escape. Problem solved.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Lame. Remind me who fatally wounded her? That blood dripping from her mouth isn’t my fault, by the way. Stop acting all righteous when you’re the one who killed her. That’s just boring.”

Ainame Caroline twirled her blast-resistant bunny ears phone with an icy expression on her face.

She didn’t stop with just the one.

More sizzling sounds followed. This time from unconscious Frenda Seivelun and Kinuhata Saiai. Finishing off a downed enemy before they could get up again may have been standard practice on the dark side, but that wasn’t the point.

That eliminated the possibility of withdrawing.

Not even finding ammonium carbonate smelling salts in the lab would help now. Those two would never wake up again unless that piece of shit’s power was removed or she was erased from the face of the Earth.

“Mugino.”

Takitsubo tried to say something, but Mugino didn’t even look her way and held out a hand to stop her.

She directed a slight smile toward the source of all this trouble.

“What choice do I have? Tachiuo-chan broke before I could turn her into a complete Angelica. She lost ''the functions I can trust in'', so I see no reason to keep her around anymore.”

“…”

Mugino considered this while looking at collapsed and unmoving Tachiuo Mary.

Maybe this was wrong since she was the one who had given that girl the fatal wound.

But something about that girl reminded her of Butler Mujinayama who would take her side at any time.

There was nothing in it for Tachiuo Mary.

She probably didn’t really care all that much if Project Angelica was completed or not.

And yet she had fought to the end. Despite the lack of any real personal benefit. It wasn’t clear what connection those two had or what debt Tachiuo Mary might owe Ainame Caroline, but ultimately, there was only one reason Tachiuo Mary had consistently accepted more risk with no personal benefit.

''She had wanted to be with her.

That little researcher had hit a roadblock in Project Angelica, destroyed some promising espers in her impatience to get back on track, been kicked out of the lab, and found herself on the dark side with nowhere to go. That was who Tachiuo Mary had met. But instead of sympathizing with the troubled little girl, Tachiuo Mary had respected her for having what she did not. That was why she had grabbed the offered little hand. She had seen Ainame Caroline as worth looking up to and she had believed helping her would put a smile on that little face. The shy and timid high schooler had mustered so much courage for someone other than herself.

She had decided for herself how to use her life.

She had chosen to throw out her own possibilities, turn her back on the law, and become a villain who had still chosen to act as a diversion for her partner.

That dumbass had made the choice without any hesitation or regret.

“Tachiuo-chan was admittedly a valuable ''specimen'', but I can create a new Angelica with your DNA map and the equipment plans on this cassette tape. And then, like I said, it’s only a matter of time. This only delays the inevitable. Once I investigate the irregularities in DNA, I will eventually find a scientific definition of life and the soul. Hee ha ha. It cracks me up so much it took me this long to get back what I created in the first place☆”

If you didn’t understand the value of people’s lives and minds, it was best to avoid messing with them. But this girl had trampled on them. Whether enemy or ally, she had destroyed the lives and minds of the people who had found their own reasons for risking their lives and fighting on the dark side.

The most dangerous con artists didn’t need a conscious switch to begin lying.

She did not hesitate or regret eliminating one of her own.

Was that insufficient?

Was that still not enough of a reason to begin a fight between dark side groups?

That dirty piece of shit didn’t deserve to exist even in the hellhole that was the dark side.

Even if this wasn’t the ending Tachiuo Mary would have wanted.

“Are humans worthless to you, you shitty researcher?”

“''Humans are just collections of functions. Take my dead sister for example. She was someone who woke up early every day to make a charaben for me. That was one of her functions and it’s why I respected her.''”

That girl earnestly wanted to learn what a human life was.

She still didn’t have an answer there and she smiled here.

''It didn’t matter what kind of tearjerking backstory she had, nothing would change that this monster was a bad person through and through.'' With truly bad people, you didn’t need to consider the possibility of some special event giving them a change of heart.

Not even Mugino would deceive the teammates who watched her back.

She was merciless when it came to traitors, but that was a sign off how much she loathed liars and fakers.

But Ainame Caroline had not prepared to maliciously deceive her enemy, nor did she feel any guilt about betraying her allies. She simply had no morals and had a hair trigger when it came to lying.

She didn’t deserve the title of villain.

She was just a disgrace.

What would happen if someone like her completed Angelica and gained the ability to freely increase or decrease the number of Level 5s?

It was unlikely to signal the arrival of a wicked new world.

And not because the winner gets to write the history. It would only lead to a disgrace toying with and consuming lives for fun.

It would only mean more of that kind of bloody scene.

“You’re actually making me look decent,” said Mugino. “If that’s not a sign to stop, I don’t know what is.”

Ainame Caroline was a researcher.

Without her ''brilliantly broken brain'', Mugino’s Meltdowner never would have been completed. No matter how much they loathed each other, that was undeniable. Mugino needed to thank that girl for letting her reign over the dark side and support her life and livelihood as a rare Level 5.

But this was a separate issue.

No causal link between the Level 5 and the researcher could make up for what had happened here. As a villain of the dark side, this was not something she could ever let go.

Mugino would never forgive someone who made a mockery of the people she had accepted as worthy.

Tachiuo Mary had been ''a respectable'' villain. That made her worthy.

Frenda Seivelun and Kinuhata Saiai had the skills needed to watch her back. That made them worthy.

So what would she do now?

Was that even a question at this point?

“Takitsubo.”

“Yes?”

“Take care of Frenda and Kinuhata. If ammonium carbonate won’t wake them, then at least keep them safe. Predicting lines of movement and fire are your specialty, right? Don’t stay in once place. Drag the two of them around if you have to.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll wipe that piece of shit off the face of the Earth. I won’t be satisfied if a single speck of dust is left.”

Mugino didn’t even need to think about it.

She cracked her neck before continuing.

“Because eliminating dangerous elements in Academy City is our job as Item.”

===Between the Lines 4===

My sister got up early every morning and made me a charaben.

My sister got up early every morning and made me a charaben.

My sister got up early every morning and made me a charaben.



In the end, that was Ainame Caroline’s ''entire'' definition of her sister.

She was only a collection of functions.

Ainame Caroline did not understand the formless concepts of the mind or a life, so people’s external outputs were everything to her. If someone had the functions of “cheerfully saying hello”, “giving directions to an old man looking lost on the side of the road”, and “taking lost money to an Anti-Skill station”, she judged them an honest and good person.

That person’s inner life was of no concern to her, even if they made sure to say hello so their teacher wouldn’t yell at them, even if that lost man was a well-known local wealthy person, and even if they simply weren’t interested in such a miniscule amount of money.

At the same time, Ainame Caorline, the girl who had (on paper) graduated college and earned a doctorate at the age of five and helped develop a Level 5, saw even herself as no more than a collection of functions. Of course she did. ''Who had ever bothered looking into their own inner life''? She had turned out this way because of the list of functions fitted into her slots.



When someone makes fun of you, they might as well be making fun of me.



Or in other words, ''it angered her as a researcher when someone refused to recognize the functions she had created and built into her teammate.

She had to be a good person because she never deleted the photos of her sister’s charaben, right?

She had to be a good person because she still wore her sister’s suspenders, right?

She had to be a good person because she continued to fight a lonely battle for her sister, right?

With functions like those, surely anyone would reach the same conclusion.

Humans were collections of functions.

Since you could never directly view another person’s mind or life, you only had the things they did to judge them by – no matter what they might be thinking on the inside. If someone had functions 1, 2, and 3, you could conclude what it was they would ultimately output into the world. That was all you needed to define an individual person.

In the extreme, you could say humans were hairless apes who had gained the function of thought.

The value of one’s life came from their functions.

You could learn the nature of someone’s mind from their functions.

So creating the greatest function and giving it to someone else was the most good act imaginable. If she filled all of someone’s slots with nothing but “good functions”, they were sure to be happy.

And as the person doing that, she had to have the functions of a good person.

How could that be wrong?

If it was, she wanted to know how. That was something else she was sure to learn once she completed Angelica.

She would view the entirety of someone’s genes and eliminate all coincidences and gaps. Could DNA be controlled through simple addition and subtraction? Angelica would let her fully grasp the activity of the cells and chromosomes and then she could immediately detect even the slightest unnatural current there. That would let her find whatever “life” was. If successful, she could easily figure out if all souls – be they human, cat, or insect – were of equal value. Of course, instead of proving them equal, she might instead fully overturn the accepted hierarchy.

Now, it was time to open her phone, view the photos of those charaben her sister had worked so hard to create, and lose herself in those wonderful memories. Because now it was only a matter of time before she had her answer.

She could reminisce about her beloved sister.

She could fall into a gentle dream about that person whose functions struck such a miraculous balance.



My sister got up early every morning and made me a charaben.

My sister got up early every morning and made me a charaben.

My sister got up early every morning and made me a charaben.

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