Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item7 Chapter1

==Chapter 1: Tetra-Ethylnipolita==

===Part 1===

That had not been fun.

But if an explosion which mildly altered the terrain was enough to kill you, you weren’t cut out for work on the dark side.



“Ah ha ha! In the end, hundreds of remote bombs set up in a triangular pattern for self-destruction is what they use to destroy the underground portion of military bases when they evacuate them. And you all survived it? All thanks to the daily education you’ve gotten thanks to me, Frenda the Genius!”

The blonde girl had run so late she gave up and never showed, but for some reason she was gloating with hands on hips. The lawless dark side had no manners or etiquette either.

Kinuhata must have been curious about something because she kept rubbing her hands together in the small room.

“Umm, isn’t this super bad? That tablet on the wall means they must have video of us at the site of a dark side killing, doesn’t it? If they spread that around with a burner account, won’t we have a lot of trouble on our hands?”

“Huh? Kinuhata, are you shy on camera?”

“We weren’t the ones who blew up that freak. In fact, we didn’t kill any of the bodies we saw there. Trying to harass us like that would only tighten the noose around the real culprit’s neck.”

This wasn’t like the sniper who had tried to interfere.

Instead of beating a hasty retreat as soon as it wasn’t worth it anymore, this bomber was obsessed with Item for irrational reasons. Hunting the bomber down was the only way of ensuring their safety.

Mugino tapped her foot against the metal floor as she thought.

(Damn, not only did we have our target stolen from right under our noses, but we also have to supply a killing that isn’t going to pay anything. Luck just isn’t on our side.)

Their opponent this time was an unidentified bomber.

Another nuisance had stepped up onto the stage. Abduction and bombing weren’t like a brutal criminal who could be dealt with using a head-on show of highly-destructive esper power.

That job had been a race, so whoever got to the target first got paid.

…However, the Voice on the Phone said that bomber hadn’t been part of the race. That meant a stray criminal had stolen their target as a way of declaring war.

That left Item with no reason not to kill them.

Mugino scratched her head in annoyance.

“Frenda.”

‘Fine, I’ll do it,” replied Frenda in an offhand way.

Her voice was a bit muffled because she was wearing a special mask over her mouth. A hard plastic one.

Maybe the others didn’t share her knowledge of the danger, but she was the only one wearing a mask.

Track suit girl Takitsubo tilted her head.

“There are different kinds of bombers, right? What kind is the one targeting us? I know a detailed investigation of the fragments left at the site of an explosion can be compared to past bombings.”

“In the end, that’s what I’m doing right now,” replied Frenda, shaking a test tube with a plastic stopper on it.

“What is that?” asked Takitsubo, looking confused.

“A pregnancy test for explosives.”

The track suit girl didn’t have time to form a small triangle with her mouth over the idiot’s joke.

The clear fluid was already turning a cloudy yellow.

…This space was too small for the four members of Item to gather comfortably. The standard-size of cargo container defined by international shipping treaty was larger than a studio apartment, but it felt a lot more cramped with steel racks screwed into the floor and walls. And those racks were crammed full of expensive-looking analysis equipment and monitors.

This was one of Academy City Bomber Frenda’s mobile labs.

Although this one was primarily used for ''analysis''.

There were pro modifications made here and there. Because, needless to say, a container attached to a truck was not a room. Using the equipment the normal way would result in bad data from the entire container rocking side to side. But if the truck’s suspension was tightened up, the impacts from the road while driving would directly affect the delicate bottles and other chemistry lab equipment, shattering all that glass. And since she was self-taught, not all of her modifications were guaranteed to be correct. It wasn’t unusual for new bombers to get blown up somewhere in Academy City because one of their unspeakable modifications didn’t do its job.

The blonde girl checked the color of the yellow test tube using something like a ruler divided into millimeter-thick colored lines.

“Here we go. I had my suspicions after hearing the muddy sound and, in the end, it looks like I was right: tetra-ethylnipolita. Also known as ''the alchemy of explosives.''.”

“Super alchemy?”

The drop in Kinuhata’s tone wasn’t just in response to the dubious occult terminology.

She was remembering the messed-up researcher they had fought who had tried to create pure gold out of nothing. The memory was enough to ruin her mood.

Discussing bombs seemed to fill Frenda with energy. She removed her mask and flashed a bright smile (which was terribly inappropriate for the circumstances).

“Right. Explosives are a type of chemical, so they have ''an expiration date'' just like cold medicine. This is a type of recycled weapon that takes damp, expired explosives and mixes them with a powerful acid to create a new explosive. With some exceptionally burnable trash and 300 tons of acid, you can create 1500 tons of substitute explosive, so you could think of it as a bargain☆”

It was also a fairly toxic chemical.

Once in the body, it would kill someone even if it didn’t explode.

Although maybe that wasn’t too surprising when even air and tap water were dangerous if directly injected.

“So it’s an inferior watered-down version? I get mixing up a batch and selling it to cover operating expenses, but I can’t imagine a narcissist bomber would choose to use it. Don’t those self-centered egotists insist on using their own fancy original blend? Like they’re artists or something?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry for being a self-centered egotist of a narcissist bomber.” Frenda laughed it off as nothing. “The thing is, everyone has their own opinion on bombs. Not all of us are the kind of artists seen in movies. There are ‘franchisers’ who focus on high quantity and low price for business purposes. In the end, there are even bombers who choose to use the cheapest stuff available because it amuses them to blow up proud VIPs with musty old waste products. There are those who melt down fish trays and make explosives out of them in their dream of making cheap bombs. Others are so obsessed with health food they only make bombs out of the artificial fertilizers they hate. Remember, it’s all the result of exposing freaks to criminal psychology. In the end, everyone’s going to find their own answer.”

“Did you just super admit you’re a freak?”

“Hmm. Do you think an explosive made from the nitrogen compounds extracted from a cute blonde bomber’s bodily fluids would be popular? It would at least earn me a place in Academy City’s criminal history, don’t you think?”

“Could you not become the kind of freak you super don’t even see in movies?”

They were getting sidetracked.

They had to check through the past bombings in Academy City and track down this bomber who chose to use tetra-ethylnipolita.

“In the end, can I pass this off to you, Takitsubo? Mgh.”

“Yes.”

The weird noise at the end was the result of the container lab full of steel racks and lab equipment being cramped.

When Frenda turned around, she ended up with her face buried in Takitsubo’s chest, but Takitsubo kept talking like nothing was amiss.

“I only needed to know the primary component was tetra-ethylnipolita.”

“Mgh, mgh. I’ll add that tetra-ethylnipolita is a watered-down weapon invented out of necessity when supplies were low during a certain war. There is honestly no reason to use it when supplies are plentiful. I doubt any military has continued to use it after that war.”

“That should make it even easier to narrow this down,” said Takitsubo, already beginning to poke at a large tablet.

Mugino must have been bored without anything to do, so she asked about something unnecessary.

“How are you going to investigate this?”

“If we don’t know the answer, I just have to ''make friends'' with someone who does. And if I want to be able to search through all past bombings, Anti-Skill would be best.”

Takitsubo just came out and said it.

It was hard to tell with her track suit and blank stare, but she was no more a decent person than the rest. She was as much a dark side villain as Mugino or Frenda.

Kinuhata looked shocked.

“Are you going to threaten an ordinary person with no connection to the dark side? And a righteous Anti-Skill officer of all people?”

“Would you feel less guilty if it was a corrupt Anti-Skill officer?”

Takitsubo turned the tablet around for Kinuhata to see, like she was sitting at the phone counter and explaining the updated service plan that came with Kinuhata’s new phone.

“Hatsuyama Yui. She is a gym teacher at Hoshizora Middle School and she patrols the city’s largest shopping area in District 15. She is a corrupt officer who inflated her numbers by going after students for breaking curfew before the curfew actually begins. If I get my hands on some evidence and have a chat with her, I’m sure we can ''become good friends''.  I have all the data here on this tablet, but what do you think?”

Mugino and Kinuhata exchanged a glance.

And nodded.

As long as the woman was another rotten villain.

===Part 2===

Who the hell are- ''crash crash slam crash drag drag drag'' -hey, wai- ''wham wham'' -where did you get that vi- ''bam crash'' -I really- ''crack'' -do anything, so please no more! Wahhh, just let me curl up in my apartmeeeeeeeent…

===Part 3===

And so they had a route to search through all past bombings.

An active Anti-Skill officer had lent them her ID and password, so they could access all the Bank’s important data which was often used for criminal investigations. They couldn’t say how long this route would remain open, but it only had to last the day.

A bright voice came from the TV.

In ''first class'', they apparently didn’t attach a screen smaller than a bento box on the back of the next seat up. An impressive HMD compatible with ultra-high resolution VR was hanging there instead. Mugino preferred not to use those because the complex arrangement of bands used to support the weight of the goggles messed up her hair. Not to mention that the flat rubber bands kind of hurt when they tugged at her fluffy hair! And hadn’t cinephile Kinuhata said her view quickly fogged up when she got too excited watching an action movie as if it were on the big screen?

A sergeant caught standing in place during an FPS match was probably fighting with a lens wipe for that same reason. Not that that would stop anyone from headshotting them.

A young female voice was speaking like sound leaking from someone’s headphones.



“Academy City is holding an astronomy event to celebrate the autumn moon viewing season. Now is the perfect time to acquire accurate knowledge and say goodbye to the silly superstitions running rampant in our world. Will o’ the wisps, ghost photographs, and mysterious voices in abandoned buildings all have very real scientific explanations.”



Could nothing be done about the scourge of weird ads being inserted in an online streaming service when you were already paying for a monthly subscription? It would be one thing if the ads were for new winter-color cosmetics, but this sounded like Academy City government PR and was no use whatsoever.

(God. Ads that completely miss the mark do mean my data’s being protected, but safety has its drawbacks.)

They were in District 2.

The district of cars, explosives, and military technology.

Item’s current base was a model room. Which meant it was inside a skyscraper. On the wall were special windows with rounded corners. The type of window with a lowerable plastic shutter like those seen on passenger planes.

Cruise ships, passenger planes, airships, and even submarine cruisers.

The guest cabins and seats used in all those vehicles were on display here, but their positions were scattered around. You could open a ship’s cabin door and step out into the corridor to relax in a first-class airplane seat.

Kinuhata took her seat after filling a paper cup with soda from the drink bar.

“No normal customers will be visiting during the legal inspection, right?”

“''That’s the story'' ensuring no first-timers ever show up at this dark side rental villa,” explained Mugino, sounding bored.

“Phew, that was a good swim.”

The airtight door opened and Frenda walked in barefoot and wet-haired. And for some reason she was wearing a bikini.

“No need to choose between beef and fish for me! After a workout like that, I can eat them both! In the end, I’ve already worked off those calories!!”

“…Why the swimsuit?”

“Mugino, did you not see that pool? There’s a heated pool on the model cruise ship deck! Yeah, I always want to swim when I’m in a big bath, but I can satisfy that desire here.”

Frenda was celebrating on her own, but the other three had no interest in changing into a swimsuit at the end of October. Nor did they feel a desire to swim in a big bath.

Takitsubo lay in a luxuriously reclined first-class seat while swiping her finger across a tablet. But she wasn’t activating the seat’s massage.

“Anti-Skill’s official infrastructure sure is convenient. While they are labeled as unsolved, you can find bits and pieces of dark side incidents recorded in here. Although it seems to take someone from the dark side to link the pieces together. The official algorithms can’t do it even if you remove their restrictions.”

“Super where in the world are you going to find an industry with no villains?” asked Kinuhata, looking disgusted.

At the very least, they weren’t going to see one as long as they remained in Item.

Takitsubo must not have been expecting any goodness from the world in the first place because she didn’t seem bothered.

“Tetra-ethylnipolita isn’t used much these days, so I should be able to quickly find all the similar incidents from the past.”

“You can figure it out that super easily?”

Kinuhata sat in a seat that had to cost more than a king-size bed.

She didn’t use the massage. As the shortest one, she knew from experience the function meant to relieve the day’s stress for sexy young women by rubbing their shoulder blades would instead pummel the back of her head. Nothing brought tears quite like being betrayed by a convenient and pleasant service. It was a similar problem to having the movie you thought you had recorded on your DVR erased due to limited space. But the TV version often had a completely different dub script and sometimes even used different voice actors, so they were a valuable product you couldn’t find on the streaming services!

“With the exception of phantom thief weirdos who send advance notice of their crimes to the mansion they’re about to steal from, no criminal is super going out of their way to leave their calling card at the scene of the crime. Isn’t it possible they intentionally used the rare tetra-ethylnipolita in order to frame some other bomber for their crime?”

“It is possible of course, but I think that is highly unlikely in this case, Kinuhata.”

“Super why?”

“If they wanted to frame someone, they would have thoroughly mimicked Frenda’s bombs to provoke her that way. This criminal wants Frenda to notice them, remember? It seems to me the bomber would find it humiliating if their precious Frenda thought some other bomber was responsible for this incident.”

That did make sense.

It sounded a lot like the actions of someone who wanted to use their homemade bombs to create a world for just the two of them.

However, that was no more than “sounded like”.

Psychology wasn’t material evidence, so this left Kinuhata feeling unsatisfied. She didn’t know much about profiling, so it sounded more like fortunetelling than anything. …Although fortunetelling did have techniques to guide people into revealing their problems and convince them they had been solved.

“Found them.”

Takitsubo showed Mugino the tablet and everyone gathered around the screen. Cramming in that close made them feel overheated even here at the end of autumn.

Of course, they weren’t just going to get a real name or appearance.

If that much was known about the bomber, Anti-Skill would have arrested them already. With a currently active bomber, the best you could hope for was a nickname linking together different bombings.

“They’re known as Morning Call. …Frenda, you already look disgusted. It speculates here that they call themselves that because they use precise booby trap bombs to wake up the world.”

“But is that really true?” confidently asked Frenda, who knew a lot about the bombing industry(?). She also reached back with a finger and fixed the rear of her wet bikini bottom. “In the end, bombers who name themselves will soon make a mistake and get either arrested or assassinated. This is probably just a collection of online rumors. Do you want to know how many nicknames I’ve been given by the investigators who have no clue who I am? Ha ha ha. They give me a new nickname and create a new file each time, showing how well I vary my apparent profile to throw them off☆”

“Their primary target is…oh, Anti-Skill. They leave time bombs no amateur can defuse where they will be found and forces the bomb squad to complete a puzzle game.”

Item had never heard anything about this bomber called Morning Call.

This was Frenda’s turf, but it was news to her as well.

…That meant it was likely Anti-Skill had declared a gag order for the media. They likely claimed it was to avoid social disorder and to prevent any copycats, but they really just didn’t want to reveal that their own people had failed in a battle of wits. If the only victims had been from the professional bomb squad, they could make that work. Although that relied on Academy City being shut off from the outside world.

Mugino frowned.

“Why did they suddenly start targeting Frenda?”

“That I can’t tell you. They haven’t done much for about half a year and the file theorizes they stopped finding the bomb squad challenges exciting.”

“Another cringe theory that probably came from online. In the end, I bet someone got lazy and had genAI write the report for them. Is there even a logical through line from beginning to end?” asked an exasperated Frenda.

And even if that theory was correct, it meant the bomber had decided to do deadly battle with another dangerous bomb expert instead of the bomb squad who had the necessary knowledge but had no experience in killing.

Really, this wasn’t a motive-guessing quiz, so it didn’t really matter. They only needed to know a bomber known as Morning Call physically existed and was now obsessed with Frenda.

“So what we super know is the bomber is after Frenda-san, they use tetra-ethylnipolita, and they’re called Morning Call? How does that let us launch a preemptive attack on them?”

“In the end, there are ways☆”

===Part 4===

After summing up what they needed to do, the four members of Item headed out into the streets.

It was night and past curfew for students.

Yet District 2’s downtown area was busier than usual.

This was the district of cars, explosives, and military technology, but even a special district like that had plenty of schools. A group of girls who were likely chemistry or industry students were laughing together. They were eating crepes like normal. This was Academy City, so there were classes in any subject. Frenda wasn’t the only girl with a broad knowledge of explosives.

Which also meant there were that many more ''bomber suspects''.

“The city is holding an astronomy event, right? Come to think of it, the streaming site’s home screen was full of movies that super feature aliens.”

Takitsubo was staring at the large device that spun around and released a ball for a shopping center lottery.

“First prize is a free trip into space.”

“Does that interest you? It’s not like you’d be landing on the moon or Mars or anything. That’s one of those things where you fly out into space for 120 seconds and then fall back to earth, right? That’s not a ‘trip’. It’s like you boarded the airplane, but there’s trouble midflight and it has to turn back to the airport you left from. If you have several duralumin cases of cash to pay for that, you’d be better off making a garden here on earth.”

“In the end, it’s like video game achievements. People just want to be able to say they ‘went to space’.”

Mugino had to wonder if that was really something worth bragging about. Was it really worth exposing your body’s cells to more powerful radiation than you would ever experience down here on earth?

And it was time to get down to business. They needed to identify and attack the bomber called Morning Call.

They discussed their plan while Frenda and Takitsubo fought over warm Kinuhata because their own cold weather clothing wasn’t enough.

“In the end, the current astronomy event has everyone aiming their phones and telescopes into the night sky. That prevents me from launching a bunch of water bottle rocket drones… Takitsubo, can we get your help?”

“Fine, but that means I get Kinuhata. And if we take this too far, Anti-Skill will notice we’re using their infrastructure. This ID will get frozen and the corrupt Anti-Skill officer will lose her job. Are you okay with losing access?”

“We can end this tonight, so that’s fine. But in the end, Kinuhata is mine.”

“I want to be warm.”

“You have a knit hat and ear warmers – what more do you need? Meanwhile, I’m still chilled from swimming in a bikini.”

“Oh, god, can you two super get off of me!?”

Unable to bear the pressure from either side, Kinuhata yelled and evacuated toward Mugino, but she did have a question on her small face.

But before she could say anything, the Academy City Bomber answered it.

“In the end, I’ll be borrowing the security cameras and all the cameras on the security robots and cleaning robots patrolling the streets. That covers all 23 districts, so there’s nowhere to hide.”

“We super don’t even know if Morning Call is a guy or a girl, so how are you going to search the security camera footage? District 2 seems flooded with explosives experts.”

“I don’t need to know what they look like. They’ll give themselves away for me.”

The little newbie blinked in confusion.

And Frenda Seivelun stuck out her tongue a little.



“In the end, I’m setting a trap for them☆”

===Part 5===

The place was spacious yet secret.

It was an explosives synthesis lab.

Something beeped electronically.

The person within glanced over at a computer’s LCD monitor and then froze.

They had set it up themselves so, no matter how many windows were open, one would pop up to the top if anything happened on it.

Some data could not be ignored by a bomber working in this city. That was why specialists often set up their homemade sensors and wrote their own analysis programs instead of relying on commercial apps.

And in this case…

(The anemometer…is vibrating with no connection to the wind direction?)

A windstorm warning.

After all, they stored, combined, and handled a lot of dangerous chemicals here. They couldn’t let an unexpected shock shake the building and trigger an explosion.

The flat screen also showed the air pressure change shooting up to dangerous levels.

Even if it used wind power, Academy City had far too many skyscrapers. The spontaneous and powerful winds caused by those buildings could even destroy houses.

“Not good…”

Tetra-ethylnipolita was a cheap substitute explosive created by combining an expired explosive with a lot of powerful acid.

The acid itself was so toxic it would produce a deadly smoke upon contacting the air. Even before creating an explosive with them, their use as an oxidizer in liquid fuel rockets was enough to know how dangerous acids could be on their own.

Of course, Morning Call did have the shelves reinforced against earthquakes, but that could only do so much. Building winds depended on the direction of the original wind, but experiments showed that, under the right conditions, they could reach twice the original wind strength. And if multiple building winds happened to coincide, the force of the impact could double or quadruple, knocking down not just the shelves but the entire building.

What would happen if the many bottles here crashed to the floor and shattered?

Morning Call could make some guesses, but the result would definitely be far more gruesome than simply being buried alive.

(The weather forecast is flawless, so why don’t they include a section on building winds!?)

They were intimately familiar with the biases and tendencies of their program. The building wind damage prediction had a delay of 80 seconds.

Their eyes shot toward the metal door leading out.

“Not good at all!!”

===Part 6===

Of course, Item couldn’t cause a disaster.

But if their opponent had specialized equipment, they could ''trick that opponent into thinking there was one.

“It’s started,” emotionlessly stated Takitsubo with her eyes on her tablet. “It shouldn’t be enough for human’s to sense, but some people are behaving differently.”

“In the end, are the sensitive people just that sensitive?”

Academy City phones had an earthquake alert app installed by default, but without a large-scale earthquake alert, people would generally ignore most quakes they couldn’t sense themselves. Although looking at the dots representing people’s locations showed that some people would respond.

And when an alert could be falsely triggered by a wide-spread malfunction in the wind speed or atmospheric pressure sensors, it was possible to trigger a false alert on purpose.

…For example, you could detonate a ton of explosives underground.

Frenda looked proud of herself.

“We’re dealing with another bomber, right? In the end, that just means I need to hold a hand to my chest, looking into my heart, and ask what I would do. Because the answer is found within this wonderful, beautiful, and perfectly-sized chest!! …''What is the last thing the Academy City Bomber would want to happen''?”

“Does this long, boring cutscene have a super skip function?”

“Kinuhata, have you broadened your horizons from watching movies and started playing games on your phone?”

By systematically triggering a series of tremors ordinary people couldn’t sense, they could trigger a false positive in a program meant to predict spontaneous urban winds.

The greater the specialist, the more they would freeze in front of their monitor.

An expert bomber would be convinced they were about to be destroyed by their own explosives or toxic gas. So instead of following standard procedure and waiting inside the sturdy building, they would try to escape outside no matter what.

“Hmm.”

Takitsubo tilted her head and, unsure what to do with the large tablet in her hands, she held it to her large chest like a waitress holding her silver tray while waiting for the customer to order.

Item’s tracker wasn’t thrilled. Even though this was her specialty and everything was going smoothly.

“Frenda. Am I just supposed to search for every single person who rushed outside during the tremor?”

“That’s got to be tens of thousands, right? Now, if every single innocent person who happened to open the door and step outside sounds like acceptable collateral damage to you, go right ahead, but I’m voting against it.”

“Then what do we do?”

Takitsubo must not have believed this method would work.

The Academy City Bomber smiled and provide a correction.

“In the end, you want to pay attention to what happens immediately after the quake ends.”

“Super why?”

“A lot of people will have unwittingly opened their door. And some people will have been more sensitive to it than most. There are times when an otherwise ordinary person picks up on a slight shaking, sound, or pressure change. If we suspect them all, we’ll be here all day. …But what about after it ends? Won’t everyone breathe a sigh of relief and relax?”

Mugino sighed without speaking a word.

Slowly.

…That would be the usual reaction after a disaster. Once you knew you were safe, you wouldn’t need to scramble around any more.

“But in the end, a bomber with plenty of secrets is a different matter. They fled their hideout in a panic, thinking the building winds were going to destroy it, but they won’t want Anti-Skill to later retrieve their personal information from their illegal lab. They will have set a time bomb to erase all evidence after they got away. With maybe a minute or two on the timer.”

However, the time bomb being discussed here wasn’t necessarily the kind to trigger a big, flashy explosion like in a movie.

Fingerprints, hairs, saliva, paper documents, electronic data – safely erasing everything that could lead back to them would be the top priority, so the bomb could actually be a high-pressure bottle with a spray nozzle that fills the entire room with a mist of powerful acid. Like a more incredible version of a bug bomb that exterminates all the insects in a room at a the push of a button.

Conveniently, manufacturing tetra-ethylnipolita also required a large quantity of acid in addition to the old, damp explosive.

“I see. It’s true a bomber’s chemistry lab would have equipment worth over a hundred million yen each.”

“And equipment that can’t be bought no matter how much cash you have, so you have to buy all the components from different stores to avoid arousing suspicion and then build it yourself.”

What kind of equipment would that be? Kinuhata frowned, but Takitsubo was her usual expressionless self. It was hard to tell if she already knew the answer or if she had activated skip mode and it was all passing in one ear and out the other.

“In the end, they should regret their actions once they realize it was a false alarm. And in the end, ''they’ll head back in to stop the time bomb’s unnecessary countdown.'' Most people will relax once they realize the possibility of danger is past, but if someone instantly panics and rushes back the way they came, that’s who we want. Especially if they seem ''more'' concerned on the way back.”

That sounded plausible enough, but…

“Um. What about someone who ran outside while they were cooking and then super realized they had left the stove on?”

“In the end, that could happen. But then wouldn’t they hesitantly head back inside? In the worst case, they could be met by a pillar of fire taller than them when they opened the door. Normal people are excessively afraid of having temporary peace and safety taken from them. Even if they know checking the stove as soon as possible allows them to keep the damage to a minimum if there is something wrong. What’s happening in their kitchen and whether they’ll lose their home or restaurant is like a huge game of baccarat for them. They’ll feel considerable pressure while slowly flipping over that card.”

“Oh, so is it like how no one wants to go first in Russian roulette even though the first shot has the greatest odds of survival?”

“More or less. Normal people love peace and safety, so they can’t act swiftly based on nothing but odds. But a dark side pro can throw out their feelings and run the numbers.”

Frenda had an answer for everything.

Was that thanks to her experience in dealing with fire and explosions?

Of course, this was a fake trap, so there was no actual building wind damage. Thus, there wouldn’t be any tempura fires after someone’s oil spilled in their kitchen.

“We want someone who seems a lot more concerned as they head back into the building than when they ran out in fear of the wind damage that isn’t coming. Takitsubo, run a search based on that. In the end, this can’t fail.”

That would reveal the Morning Call bomber.

Of course, this tracking method wouldn’t work on just any criminal.

It only worked with a technological criminal with tons of pricey equipment who didn’t want to lose their tools.

Traps were based on psychology, so there was no one-size-fits-all answer.

Traps used to inspire a mistake were often influenced by past successes. Frenda must have succeeded with this before. And she might use a similar type of trap in the future too.

(It’s all about using information only an expert would notice. I bet you could use this to smoke out a sniper too. …Not that I ever want to be stuck in a situation where I have to do that.)

Takitsubo organized the necessary information with her fingertips.

She had the massive collection of data taken from security cameras and cleaning robots across the city.

Most of it was filtered through mechanically, but ''that alone'' could miss something important.

“I think I found them.”

“In the end, it’s worth double checking. There is always a chance it’s some unfortunate innocent person. In the first phase, when they rushed out of the building, they should be clutching whatever they treasure most. Are they holding a loupe for precision work? A pro will definitely take the tool they’re familiar with. They could buy a new one, but the slight scratches and cloudiness on the surface of the lens would make it completely different. A pristine new one wouldn’t bring back the familiar idiosyncrasies they were used to.”

“Then this probably is them.”

Just as the others looked at the screen, the app suddenly shut down. The home screen and its rows of square icons reappeared.

Anti-Skill must have noticed the illicit access. Now they couldn’t use that trump card again.

Takitsubo didn’t seem bothered as she erased the electronic SIM and shut down the device.

The tablet itself was disposable.

“They’re here in District 2. Come with me.”

===Part 7===

The park was unusually busy that night.

Probably due to the astronomy event.

The lack of light made it hard to tell exactly how many people were around, but it was about as busy as a shopping district on the weekend.

“They’re just ignoring the curfew? What a pain…” complained Mugino.

The track suit girl expressionlessly pointed somewhere. Instead of the walking path circling the park, she indicated the woods just off that path. The shadows were deeper there.

“It’s no longer used and half buried in the greenery, but there is an outdoor stage for festivals there. The dressing room space in the rear is Morning Call’s base.”

The darkness made Mugino worried about her black stockings. Small sparks of static could shine surprisingly bright.

As soon as they took a step into the woods, the presence of the crowd vanished.

The shadows were completely silent.

A deserted battlefield appeared before Item.

The bomber had to be terrified right about now. Were they relieved at stopping their own meaningless countdown, or were they beginning to suspect a trap?

Either way, they had returned to their hideout to stop the timer on their own time bomb. After learning their life wasn’t at risk, they had ''gotten greedy''. With a lathe, a 3D printer, and an airtight glovebox, being a bomber wasn’t cheap. And the equipment was super heavy too. If a bomber wasn’t ready to abandon it all, they would be stuck going back and forth carrying expensive equipment weighing more than a ton each.

“…”

The weeds had grown to hip height.

Kinuhata regretted her choice to wear bike shorts. She envied Takitsubo her track suit. The two wearing skirts were so focused on the upcoming battle they didn’t seem to mind at all.

The short girl sighed softly.

“Then it would be best to move in and attack Morning Call before they realize how much danger they’re in. Let’s get go-”

“You should duck. In the end, you’ll die if you don’t.”

The tree branches overhead formed a tunnel.

Something swayed in the night breeze. Something about fist sized.

It was an explosive dangling from a wire.



It detonated.



The expert was correct here. It was best to do as she said.

But despite the explosion, no screaming or shouting came from the many people on the walking path outside the woods.

The explosion itself hadn’t made a noise.

The sound like gravel being slammed into the ground came from the hundreds of small metal balls known as controlled fragments being propelled into the ground by the blast, not from the explosion itself.

The gold decorations on the shoulders of Frenda’s military band style outfit shook as she laughed.

She was enjoying herself as someone tried to take her life with a bomb.

Maybe that had lit a fire in her as the Academy City Bomber.

(In the end, that they detonated it by remote means they’ve noticed someone approaching their base.)

“A silent bomb, huh? In the end, pretty clever for a second-rate bomber.”

“Is it even super technologically possible to make a bomb that blows up without making a noise?”

“Anything’s possible. A handgun silencer works by absorbing the sound of the gunpowder’s detonation, right? If you surround the bomb in that kind of soundproofing material and adjust the blast so it won’t break the sound barrier, you can prevent the shockwave itself from making the usual explosive noise. And since this bomb kills using the hundreds of scattered fragments instead the blast itself, it’s still plenty deadly. Oh, watch out there.”

Frenda slipped that in so smoothly Kinuhata was slow to comprehend and react.

It exploded.

A jet like a sharp spear more than 30m long stabbed at Kinuhata’s solar plexus. That scorching spear could melt through steel or even composite armor like it was ice cream.

Even with Offense Armor, her short body was knocked onto its back.

“Wha- bah!? Kh, what the hell was that? Cough cough!!”

“In the end, you should really ask these questions before letting it hit you.”

It was a concave directional mine. Similar to how a solar cooker focused the sunlight on a single point, the bomb focused the blast on a single point. The sharp spear-like blast was normally used to penetrate the side of a tank.

And ''because the destructive force was gathered on just the one point.'' Frenda was entirely untouched while walking right next to Kinuhata.

The lovely girl with sparkling blonde hair looked utterly exasperated.

(First the tetra-ethylnipolita and now this. This bomber loves their cheap bombs. To think someone would try to kill Academy City Bomber Frenda-chan with a plastic umbrella.)

“Hey, Kinuhata, did anyone say the enemy only used silent bombs?”

“Bgh.”

“See, that nitrogen barrier of yours is far from perfect. In the end, you’re bleeding. Okay, fine.”

“Why are you tearing a piece from your skirt? We chose that for you!”

“I bought a few more of the same, so it’s fine. This one’s a spare.”

And so the girl’s precious cloth was used to tie up her cute underclassman’s wound.

“In the end, bombers try to avoid analysis by having a large number of cards in their deck. So we can expect plenty more to come, with the order shuff-”

“Frenda, look out.”

The warning from highly-perceptive Takitsubo was enough for the bomber to pull back her foot.

The explosion came a moment later.

Some anti-personnel mines as small as a health drink would send a jet thinner than a laundry pole straight up to pierce through from heel to knee. The idea was to use as little explosive as possible while still being effective, so it did no harm whatsoever if the target was just 30cm out of position. In this case, the mine was less a weapon that exploded out in every direction and more a weapon that fired straight up.

However…

“The mine missed my foot? In the end, are they using both sensors and a remote?”

“We’re being attacked. Does that information matter for anything other than exciting the freaks?”

“Oh, just that we could track down Morning Call’s location using the source of the remote signal.”

Frenda moved out ahead of their shield Kinuhata.

Without her guidance, they would have a hard time continuing through the dark woods.

The essence of a bomber was for an individual to cause more destruction than should be possible for an individual. They would take hundreds of enemy lives in a single action, ambush and blow away powerful military vehicles like tanks or armored trucks that people normally couldn’t even approach, and even bring down mountainous fortresses.

Their position as a joker that could turn a battle around from hiding made them a lot like a sniper, but while a sniper attacked individuals, bombers could attack groups of people, vehicles, and even buildings. Which didn’t mean they couldn’t also cause the precise destruction needed to kill just one person within a group.

At any rate, Morning Call had noticed Item and retaliated several times. It seemed unlikely these detonations were accidental.

It was now a race against time.

“We don’t have time to defuse every bomb we come across, so we’ll have to break through by force. Mugino, you’re up!”

“Tch. It’s a pain, but we can’t have Kinuhata step on each and every one of them!”

Mugino obeyed Frenda and Takitsubo’s instructions as she fired Meltdowner into the ground from a distance, detonating the mines there. After ensuring their safety with violence, Item ran deeper into the shadows.

A large semicircular structure was half buried in the weeds.

Those were audience seating. Something like an elevated stage was located at the center of the semicircle.

The dressing rooms in back were the bomber’s base.

The overgrown weeds rustled from something other than the night breeze.

Mugino immediately aimed he right hand toward the sound.

“There you are!! You bom-”

“That’s an escaped ferret. Morning Call is 200 meters north-northwest.”

Takitsubo somehow knew that within the hip-high weeds.

There really was something wrong with their tracker.

Mugino aimed her palm out ahead this time, accurately targeting Morning Call’s fleeing back.

And a moment later…



All light vanished, plunging everything into darkness.



They were in the woods off the walking path, but they had still been relying on the distant light to see.

That slight hint and Meltdowner’s aiming were eliminated all at once.

But this wasn’t a power outage as a form of sabotage.

“Oh, right. The astronomy event. There’s a super blackout for the entire city during the main event.”

This may have been why there hadn’t been any food stands or trucks in the park despite the size of the seasonal event.

Mugino prepared to fire anyway.

Even if the first shot didn’t hit, Meltdowner itself acted as a light source tearing sharply through the shadows. If the bright beam revealed the bomber’s silhouette, she could easily target them afterwards.

Takitsubo stopped her.

“No, Mugino. There are a lot of TV cameras and phones around. Using Meltdowner here would leave too many records behind.”

“We can deal with that!!”

“This astronomy event is being led by a few different universities, so the observation data will be saved and stored in a research-level database. With the time and place Meltdowner was fired recorded along with it. Then we would have bigger issues than operating on the dark side.”

Mugino clicked her tongue.

But no powerful beam swept away the darkness.

She had listened.

However, this also meant the Morning Call bomber would get away. When she could have killed them if she tried.

“Letting them go means it’s their turn next. If they kill just one extra innocent person, you’d better go apologize to that person’s family yourself,” said Mugino, sounding bitter.

Apparently it wasn’t the presence of the TV cameras or the data stored for university-level research that had convinced her. It had been the moment of the killing being recorded on so many innocent people’s mobile devices.

The weeds rustled from a different direction.

“In the end, what has you so irritable? When the target gets away, we need to think up our next move instead of blaming each other.”

The Academy City Bomber was toying with something in her hands as she made this exasperated comment.

It was one of those silent bombs. Since Frenda was holding it, she must have picked up a sample that failed to explode and removed its fuse.

The blonde girl observed it with a loupe like a jeweler would use.

She seemed interested in the detonator.

It wasn’t a mess of colored wires like those in movies.

To Kinuhata, it looked smarter and thus harder to deal with.

She guessed this was what you would find if you removed the special screws to open a smartphone and look inside. The card-sized surface was crammed full of centipede-like microchips and narrow gold wiring. There wasn’t even a wire connecting the battery to the circuit. The flat lithium battery was directly attached. No, more than one were. Most likely, melting one of the battery’s connections to remove it would cause the device to detonate using the other batteries or the power stored in a capacitor. It was unclear how it would attach to the bomb’s fuse or whatever, but one edge of the board was covered in gold pins. Like a retro game cartridge.

It really was just the one card.

…This didn’t feel like something someone could make at home. Like how modern electric cars were giant computers which, unlike the old cars made of metal and pipes, you couldn’t fix on your own if it broke down in the mountains.

Kinuhata didn’t know much about electronics, but she could tell this high-tech component was out of place here. In fact, was that narrow glass cylinder lying on its side at one end of the card-sized board a vacuum tube? Those were the prize products of electronics stores and she had seen them in the high-quality amps used in home theaters. Why bother including one here?

Takitsubo tilted her head.

“I have heard the center of vast military networks will use old-fashioned boards without semiconductors as a defense against nuclear EMPs.”

“In the end, are they really? I don’t think that would help much. I’m betting they heard those rumors in a science magazine or trivia news site and included the vacuum tube here mostly just for fun. I mean, it clearly serves no real purpose in the simple detonation control process. It isn’t a central part of the design. It looks like it was added in later on.”

Either way, this could become their next hint.

Hopefully it would give them the information they needed to take back the initiative and kill Morning Call before that bomber could begin some strange game.

As Academy City Bomber Frenda Seivelun took a close look at the credit-card-sized board, fascination grew on her face.



“In the end, the A-17 board, huh?”

===Between the Lines 2===

“A gas station out front and a car repair garage in the back? It’s the perfect base for those car and motorcycle lovers.”



It was midday.

The Mugino Family head removed a pair of binoculars from his eyes and sighed in exasperation.

The Quarterback biker gang traveled the world spreading mayhem, so they of course had no fixed base in Japan. At best, they would storm a shop or factory, throw out the original owner, and take over.

The walls were covered with bright graffiti and the cars had been modified with no concern for what was safe or legal. These cars were stolen, so maybe they didn’t have to worry about the consequences of the modifications.

The elderly man who preferred Italian suits normally avoided going in guns blazing and terrifying the neighbors.

“But even with all this going on, looks of “not my problem” were found all across the residential area. The residents likely hadn’t reached out a helping hand to the gas station owner when the station was illegally taken over.

“Fine then. Mujinayama, are the trucks in position?”

“They are.”

“Then let’s get this party started.”



A 155mm field gun positioned 9km away opened fire.



It resembled a whistling sound.

The giant shell tore through the air in a large arc similar to a long throw in baseball, flying fully over the residential area before stabbing down into the edge of the gas station’s grounds.

White smoke swelled out across the parking lot.

“?”

At the far side of the gas station grounds, the large men in leather jackets and sunglasses stood still, not knowing what this white phosphorus meant.

Mujinayama whispered with a pair of binoculars in hand.

“No correction necessary. Keep in mind the wind from the west-southwest and open fire.”

An explosion blew it all to smithereens.

And not just from one direction. Several field guns positioned all around Quarterback’s base launched shells from distances ranging from 5-10km.

The gasoline or diesel stored underground must have caught fire because the building itself was blasted upwards.

The aforementioned “trucks” were no metaphor. They were special vehicles towing large containers with an openable side. The containers each hid a military field gun, so the entire container would open like an outdoor concert stage, all the shells would be launched, and the container would close back up so the truck could vanish along the ordinary roads. The entire process took less than three minutes. The license plates reflected strong infrared, keeping them from being mechanically read on the road, and lights of various colors were shined on the containers to change the apparent color of the truck at any time.

The Mugino Family head got moving with the bouquet-disguised shotgun in hand.

“Time to barge in and mop them up.”

They met no real resistance.

The initial bombardment had killed 80% and the remaining 20% had been too badly injured to stand.

The head fired slugs directly into the screaming Quarterback troops, blowing away their upper bodies.

Which may have been a blessing for those burning and struggling victims.

A final man emerged from behind a twisted steel beam, but Butler Mujinayama silenced him with his bolt-action sniper rifle before reporting.

“That settles that.”

“This is only the beginning. But more than that, you need to contact that construction guy we bought off before. After blowing up the place for our own reasons, it’s only logical that we return the gas station and repair garage to the original owner in good-as-new condition. Make sure it’s all fixed up.”



A bar on the outskirts with lots of large motorcycles parked outside was flattened.



A dangerous underground parking garage where villains with an aversion to satellites gathered to ''sell their wares'' was engulfed in flame and shockwaves.



A highway service area that was in plain sight yet not a single ordinary vehicle ever stopped there was blown away.



The everyday, peace, and happiness could collapse in an instant.

That was on display here.

With so many troops and Managers in tow, the Mugino Family head entered the artillery-destroyed service area on foot. They didn’t need to climb over the guard rails surrounding the place. Those had been badly bent and blown away who knows where.

There was sporadic resistance, but the initial attack had already given one side the upper hand.

The biker gang was armed with shotguns, submachine guns, and grenades.

That may have been enough of a threat for police officers who were forced to write a report explaining their actions whenever they fired a tiny handgun even once.

But it wasn’t nearly enough to handle the Mugino Family which had supersonic bombers and ALCMs.

“Give up, Quarterback. If you really want to battle us, you’ll need a fighting force on the level of the Seventh Fleet. When we call something a war, it isn’t just a figure of speech. The Mugino Family has its roots planted across the world, so we can gather old and new weapons and personnel from around the world and truly procure everything needed to wage a war.”

They did not research and develop their own bleeding-edge next-gen weapons the way Academy City did.

The Mugino Family had a different sort of power.

They didn’t seek a monopoly on something unique.

They wanted the opposite of that.

Whether it was a stealth bomber or a nuclear submarine, as long as it was a form of violence already traveling the globe as an officially adopted weapon of a major power somewhere, they could get their hands on it whether it was on the strategic or the tactical level. It might take throwing cash around and it might take some under-the-table deals, but they could do it. So you could say the Mugino Family’s power was the price the world’s people had to pay for allowing violence to grow unchecked across the planet. If no one was producing these things for a profit, no one would need to become their targets. In that sense, it was a cursed mirror that reflected your own ugliness. The evil and criminal Mugino Family acted as a warning guiding people toward good and justice.

(Sakuya and the others were extremely cautious of Shizuri’s brand as Academy City’s #4, but they were actually fairly off the mark as far as what the Family wants. Monopolizing a technology before it proliferates doesn’t act as a karmic warning.)

“Their leader is named Rafaeli Oslend, right?”

“According to the data on the phone recovered from the rubble, anyway.”

“But this service area is their largest base. Where has he gotten off to?”

Following the fundamentals and firing their guns was enough to hunt down the less than 20% who had survived. They had all been mostly crushed in the initial artillery strike. That was no reason to let your guard down since a dying man could still pull a trigger or remove the pin from a grenade, but it wasn’t even a battle at this point.

The head found one more person.

“Ah, bh. Bhbhbh.”

In the parking lot peeling up from the ground.

The large man’s prized motorcycle was scorched and reduced to bent scrap metal and his leather jacket had partially fused with his body. Anyone could have identified his injuries as fatal, but he was still shouting angrily with unfocused eyes. He apparently intended to aim his gun this way and pull the trigger, but his right arm had already been torn away and blasted who knows where.

“Why… Why aren’t the police showing up after all this!? Goddammit!!”

The bouquet shotgun split open the shouting man’s forehead.

The Mugino Family head showed exasperation on his face.

“Because of the instructions you gave, obviously. ''You had that superpower’s embassy ensure no one would touch any incident involving Quarterback.''”

Of course, the Mugino Family had plenty of ways of holding back the police on their own, but Quarterback had dug their own graves in this case.

This was their just deserts. And the head would make sure to bury each and every one of them.

There wouldn’t be any survivors hiding behind cover. The only way anyone remained alive was if they had covered their face in blood and hidden among their friends’ bodies.

Unable to bear it any longer, someone groaned down by the head’s feet.

“Ugh-”

The shotgun roared straight down and silence returned.

The head fired with a single hand.

He didn’t even look down as he continued on.

After another ten minutes of target practice with the survivors, they had all been eliminated.

The head rested the bouquet on his shoulder.

“They should all be slaughtered now.”

“I believe so.”

“Oh, no lecture? Even though going all out like this must have terrified all the ordinary people out there?”

Mujinayama sighed softly.

“You saw the breakdown of a small boy. Not using one of the kiloton nuclear warheads which can be launched from a 155mm was a relatively rational reaction considering.”

“I did consider using that mobile ballistic missile waiting on some island somewhere. That 50megaton hydrogen bomb has to be one of the worst things humanity has invented. That unused second-hand weapon is mid-range, so it could attack anywhere in Japan, couldn’t it? They could have escaped by boarding a sketchy cargo ship and fleeing to international waters, but they all decided to remain in the country, making this hunt that much easier.”

The old butler did not bat an eye at this.

If this much was enough to shock him, he could hardly serve the Bloodline.

The Mugino Family was a criminal organization with hundreds of thousands of troops around the globe and they provided life-giving food to 1.4 billion innocent people in just about every country and region. They were on another level entirely from simple multinational or ultranational groups. You had to think on that scale to properly discuss the Mugino Family.

In just about every possible way, Quarterback had chosen the wrong opponent from the start.

Mujinayama made a suggestion.

“We will count the bodies. Cleaning up after a mission is our duty, so you need not accompany us to the end.”

“Thanks for the assist☆”

And so the elderly man took a bare minimum number of subordinates with him as he boarded a black bulletproof car.

That said, this was the Mugino Family head traveling.

The bare minimum still amounted to a considerable convoy.

In the back seat, the elderly man looked out through the thick window. He must have noticed a distinctive sign in the city flowing by because he made a childish comment without even looking to the maid politely seated next to him.

“A job well done really works up an appetite. Oh, man, could I go for some gyudon.”

“It is too late for lunch but too early for dinner.”

“You need to be more clever than that, Miss Maid. It’s mid-afternoon, so there are plenty of useful terms we can use. Like snacks or afternoon tea!”

“I thought I was fairly well trained as a Manager, but it would seem I require more training. Eating gyudon for afternoon tea never would have occurred to me.”

He felt like she wasn’t treating him with as much care recently.

He pouted his lips and then a simple tone sounded in the car.

“Head.”

He took the receiver from the maid named Kagyu. This was a car phone, not a cellphone.

“What is it, Mujinayama?”

“I have a report on the cleanup. The service area was Quarterback’s largest base in Japan, yet there is no sign of their leader Rafaeli Oslend’s body.”

“We did do a real number on them. Any headless bodies?”

“The number of torsos is insufficient, so this is not just a case of miscount-”

A great roar.

An impact piercing in from the side.

He didn’t have time to think beyond that.

A large truck had shot out from a different street and crashed into the side of the VIP car at the center of the convoy of bulletproof cars.

Like a game of daruma otoshi, that one bulletproof car slid sideways out from the convoy.

It then broke through the guardrail and onto the gentle slope reinforced with concrete. The head’s view collapsed. His sense of up and down vanished, likely because the thick bulletproof car, which had to weigh more than two tons, was rolling over and over again.

The screeching of brakes came from far above, but it was too late.

The rumble of large motorcycle engines came from all around.

They were surrounded.

By a greater number than they had killed at the service area.

Bringing them down at this exact point had been the plan all along.

“A trap. It was a trap.”

One of them was the face found in the data the Mugino Family had collected.

Rafaeli Oslend.

The large man got off his large motorcycle and drew a shotgun with an excessively large drum magazine attached. If that was full-auto, it could tear through a bulletproof car’s door, or even the side armor of a light armored truck made to be dropped by parachute.

“While you were reveling in your big win, you didn’t realize at all you had fallen for my trap, did you? Ha ha ha. It’s time you figured out I had you dancing in the palm of my hand, you old bastard! ''I set up some teams to lose to you on purpose''. All to set up this moment!!!”

His laughter was drowned out.

Several explosive booms erupted in quick succession. Caused by a horizontal storm of bullets. Countless cracks ran through the thick door window, the black paint was torn away, revealing the gray metal below, a few metal components split, and the bulletproof door itself bent and weakly swung open.

One of the subordinates wielding a 45mm submachine gun whispered.

“Japanese cars really are sturdy. One of our huge four-wheel-drive ones would’ve been sliced in half by now. And, boss, shouldn’t we stop now?”

“What the hell is wrong with you!? We haven’t even fired a thousand rounds yet!!”

“There’s no point in any more. A few of us have already been killed by ricochets. Attempting a door breaching from head on is dangerous.”

“Oh, is it?” Rafaeli removed his finger from the trigger.

Conflicts between criminal organizations were games of massacring chess.

It didn’t matter how many pawns were sacrificed as long as you could take the king by the end.

Feeling satisfied after taking the valuable rooks and bishops had been that Japanese man’s final mistake.

“Oliver has a family. So do the others who died here. We need to pay out of the team account to support those families.”

“Yeah, a ‘family’ with god knows how many people around the world. How are we supposed even count them all?”

“A hell of a thing to say when it was your meaningless ricochet that killed him.”

And it wasn’t over yet.

Rafaeli breathed a heavy sigh, took a cigarette from the pack one of his subordinates handed him, and stuck it in his mouth.

He lit it on the red-hot muzzle of his gun.

“Don’t die yet, old bastard. I’ve gotta teach you how Quarterback does things.”

Rafaeli wiped the sweat from his brow and gestured over with his chin.

His many subordinates held their guns at the ready as they approached the twisted rear door.

“Our rules say any idiots who kill one of us get dragged for a mile while still alive. Not a puny little kilometer – a proper mile for each one of us they killed. After the mess you made, I’ll give you a choice. Do you want to be dragged all the way to Kagoshima or Sapporo?”

After the concentrated gunfire, the door easily moved at a light push. One of Rafaeli’s subordinates placed his hand on the thick, twisted door and slowly opened it.

It made a metallic creaking sound.

An arm emerged from the opened door.

“Ah.”

In an instant, the arm grabbed the soldier by the collar and dragged him into the car.

The broken door slammed shut.

It was dull.

Such a dull sound.

The wet squashing sound repeated over and over.

It must have been loud to be heard coming from inside the thick bulletproof car.

And after it stopped…nothing.

''The car ate him,'' someone whispered.

“Wha-?”

Rafaeli Oslend froze in place.

The twisted door opened again and something was tossed out. Like it was nothing. The object colored toxic reds and blacks looked like an enormous piece of chewed gum.

It was a human who was just barely still breathing. Or really, breathing was the only thing he could do anymore. He had intentionally been reduced to that state. Simply killing him would have been easier, but meticulous effort had gone into altering him into a mass of human flesh like this. In the most optimal way.

Ikezukuri.

“Go to hell!” shouted Rafaeli.

Or he meant to.

But instead a heavy impact pierced through his entire body, launching him more than three meters straight back. He didn’t understand that the object that knocked him down had in fact been the bent and twisted bulletproof door.

Conflicts between criminal organizations were games of massacring chess.

Having their king taken so suddenly created a brief silence from all those troops and guns.

The person who had kicked away his own bulletproof door emerged into the world.

“''From the very start…''”

The Mugino Family head sneered.

He displayed an undeniable confidence.

That wasn’t the face one would expect of a VIP isolated after a surprise attack from a large group.

The red color covering his body was only the blood of his enemies.

“''I was worried this wouldn’t be any fun if I overwhelmed you and your pain and fear continued for too long. Did it not occur to you, Quarterback, that I was setting things up to extend that pain and fear as much as possible?”

“You’re…”

Rafaeli Oslend.

He forced his blood-clogged throat to get out a trembling voice.

“You’re stronger unarmed? That’s insane…”

“Now, now. Who did you think trained Mujinayama to where he is now? I couldn’t serve as the Family head unless I was better than all the rest.”

That was how the Mugino Family worked.

Mugino Shizuri wasn’t feared because she was Academy City’s #4 Level 5. It was her fundamental personality and deep-seated nature that gave her such a presence.

This was the same.

The Managers and troops were not meant to make the head stronger. Katanas and guns were no more than a last resort to keeping yourself safe.

There were no options or services available there. It was an intentional restraint the Mugino Family head had placed on himself to keep him at the level of ''ordinary violence.''

In the criminal world where funding, weapons, and population mattered most, he was one who single-handedly went around tearing down those things that had been so coldly listed out. His fists were far more powerful. He couldn’t call himself a true Mugino if that wasn’t true.

Therefore…



The Italian suit burst from within.

Now that he had removed his restraints, he could mess them up.



Countless gunshots rang out.

The Mugino Family head grabbed a nearby enemy soldier in a single hand and used him as a shield. He was holding the hapless man upside down by the leg.

He swung around the enormous man – who had to weigh more than 100kg – bludgeoning a new enemy with him.

Something audibly broke.

Red blood splattered on the ground. Front teeth flew through the air.

Unable to bear the fear, someone threw a grenade sans pin.

It exploded.

But only their own man’s body was splattered around.

Because the head had thrown the crushed corpse to the ground to cover the explosive. Using a single hand.

Now was not the time to be standing paralyzed.

The elderly man was already rushing sideways toward his next target and knocking them down.

Then the process repeated.

The Mugino Family head was too much.

He had brought violence so far he wasn’t even walking on two legs.

If the world of a delinquent manga – where large motorcycles are lifted from the ground for street fights, nail bats and metal pipes clash together while leaving afterimages behind, and a single punch sends pompadoured boys flipping several meters through the air – were suddenly attacked by a war rather than a street fight…it would probably turn out like this.

Someone was actually doing it.

With no hint of maturity.

“Sigh…”

Maid Kagyu, who had used the commotion to slip out of the car, sighed with her 9mm full-auto handgun at the ready. Like a proper criminal, she was of course using the nearly scrapped bulletproof car as a shield.

''That man never changed.

(Yes, he is the kind of person who could crush an enemy organization’s convoy or mansion with a single shovel resting on his shoulder. But when he rids himself of that shovel and goes at it truly barehanded is when he is at his strongest. Our head has left the world of a delinquent manga to reach a global stage.)

The supremely cool maid was exasperated.

No matter how exceptional an individual the Mugino Family head was, bone was bone and muscle was muscle. So what he was actually doing was shutting off the mental limiters, eliminating all the excess, and optimizing his body’s actions as much as possible. The difference was impossible to tell at a glance and he probably wasn’t doing it based on logical calculations. Intuitive geniuses were so terrifying because they weren’t even aware of what they were doing.

With his superhuman and unpredictable actions, she couldn’t even provide covering fire.

She modestly called out to him instead.

She wasn’t concerned about the enemy’s bullets. People could be killed by a tiger or elephant rolling over in its sleep.

“Head.”

“Oh, perfect timing, Kagyu! ''Shoot me in the back a bit with that 9mm''!! I’m overpowering them so much this is going to be over in no time, but they still haven’t felt enough fear! Ha ha ha! After all the trouble these fools caused, I need to give them some hope for the moment! Ha ha ha ha heh hahhhh!!!”

“The dead cannot feel hope. Head, pummeling that flesh any longer will only hurt your hands.”

“Hm?” The Mugino Family head stopped his slaughtering hands.

He held a red and black mass in one hand. It had no more volume than a metal bat. Apparently the only part left was the leg he had been holding onto as he swung the man around. It had torn off at the base of the thigh.

Everything else was a mess.

Large motorcycles were bent at right angles, modified cars were flipped over, and the boxy rear of a large truck was more than halfway torn up. So many soldiers had been caught in that ''massive blender''. Counting the Quarterback bodies would be a challenge.

At this point, it felt like something from the occult – like a brown bear’s ghost had appeared and run amok. Strictly speaking, it was possible to achieve this superhuman destruction using leverage, gears, elasticity, pulleys, and other things used in the agricultural machines Mugino specialized in, but even so…

The maid sighed softly.

“Did you have to destroy them like a piece of construction equipment? Did you not consider who would have to count the bodies? Create all the bodies you like, but at least leave their heads intact.”

“Does it matter which part you use as long as each of them only has one? You could count the number of dicks if you wanted.”

“After you kicked them to a pulp and tore them apart? Those will not all have survived either.”

“A Japanese maid should really be more bashful than this,” said the elderly man, staring into the distance.

At any rate, this ended the Quarterback incident.

The rumbling of many engines approached from the distance. The elegance of the noise told him this was Mujinayama and the others arriving from the service area.

“Kagyu, what are you doing?”

“With you here, I must check for any unwanted gifts left for you. I doubt there are any, but there could be a bomb attached to a clock in one of the trunks.”

“Hm, let’s take a look.”

“Please do not approach while I am checking. Get off of me.”

The car’s trunk was locked, but its contents were still visible. It had been partially torn away while still shut.

Something was visible inside.

And not just one. A ton of them. With this many of them, they may have been a product meant to be sold.

The Mugino Family head picked one of them up between his fingertips.

“What the hell is this?”


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