Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Virtual On Chapter2

Accelerator had arrived on one end of District 7.

In an abandoned subway station, he descended the stairs a step at a time, glanced over at the vast underground space that was empty now that the shops had left, and spotted a highly unnatural form enshrined there.

It almost looked like a beached whale.

The mass of metal that measured 150 meters or more was a cruise ship. Instead of water, it was supported by hundreds if not thousands of wooden pillars. It was the same weight distribution method seen at shipyards. And it was likely being used for the exact same purpose. The pieces had been carried in through the subway stations’ narrow entrance and the giant cruise ship had been constructed inside just like a bottle ship.

That ship was never expected to voyage out to sea and it instead acted as a certain old man’s castle.

This VIP had given great sums of money to the Blue Stalker, advanced the Next Generation Game of Virtual-On, and seemed to be plotting something.

Accelerator climbed the gangway to the deck and walked through the ship which was as eerily quiet as a ghost ship. He did not encounter any guards or servants along the way. In fact, the security’s power was out. Accelerator found this odd, but he soon found his answer.

“…So he kicked the bucket on his own,” he spat out.

That might not have been technically accurate. A capsule-shaped device sat on the luxurious canopied bed and the old man was contained inside it. It looked like cold sleep, but it was apparently not. His body was solidly encased in a clear substance much like glass or plastic.

Ever since the mummies left in the Egyptian pyramids, preserving the human body always came down to the prevention of rotting.

Accelerator glanced over at the bedside table. Something like a journal sat on it, but it only contained a name jotted down over and over. And there had clearly been more pressure on the pen for some than others. There were also a few bags of medicine, presumably prescribed by a hospital.

(Was he having trouble with his memory? It looks like he tried to stop time for himself before he forgot something.)

This man had given a pile of money to a stranger to achieve his goal, but that would be all for naught if he could not remember what that goal was. In a way, he had given up on the Blue Stalker. He had decided he would forget before the goal was achieved.

(But I might be able to ask him about it with this.)

The #1 monster summoned the scythe named Ifleesa from thin air. Specineff’s power could eat into or destroy someone’s mind, but it might also be able to forcibly draw information out of someone who was frozen but had active cells.

It was a device to directly touch the “mind” which existed at a higher level than the brain cells or electrical signals.

(Well, I know he isn’t going anywhere. If I have time, I should probably see what I can get out of him.)

He left the main target and checked around the other rooms.

A lot of them had strange interiors. One room’s walls, floor, and ceiling were entirely covered with pictures of a little girl. One room was overflowing with stuffed animals and toys that the old man himself would have no need for. The kitchen was plastered with recipes for childish snacks. The home theater contained a list of films that showed the recorded life of a certain girl.

It was all rather overwhelming, but once you grasped the backbone behind it, it all exuded humanity.

Simply put, this was what the old man had not wanted to forget.

The picture frames showed the old man smiling with a girl. The effort he had put into remembering this and this alone showed itself in the strange repetitiveness seen here.

(The lonely old man and his granddaughter, huh? That’s simple enough.)

As Accelerator viewed what the old man had left behind, he discovered a few pieces of information.

(His granddaughter disappeared one day…no, ''she was replaced by a stranger who looked identical''. And while he tried to find her, he ended up on a strange path. As he ruled out all the normal options, only one option remained… What is this? The Tangram? Is that a code word or something?)

But…

He eventually ran across a different sort of room. This one alone had nothing to do with that girl. The walls were covered with graphs, diagrams, equations, chemical formulas, and some kind of schematics. It looked something like scientific technology, but some parts were unclear. Being Academy City’s #1 esper was to have Academy City’s #1 brain, but even Accelerator could not guess what some of it meant.

Limited Wars that became show business, Virtuaroids, V-Discs, Cyber Imaginary Space, data materialization, Earth Crystals, Shadows, the Original Fei-Yen, parallel worlds, the Plajiner girl, and the Tangram.

“Hold on…” muttered Accelerator.

He looked around at it all.

“Since when did the darkness of this city connect to a fairy tale world?”

The problem was not that this fairy tale was utterly absurd. On the contrary, viewing it all revealed that a single connected theory could explain it all.

And the massive amount of documents and connections the old man had collected had all been handed over to the Blue Stalker.

That left one thing to ask.

Accelerator faced the old man encased in a clear material inside the capsule-like device. He stuck Ifleesa’s tip through the case.

He forcibly shook the old man who had tried to protect his memories even if it meant separating himself from reality.

“Speak. What is the Blue Stalker?”

It seemed almost profane.

With his entire body solidified like a specimen, he should not have been able to move his wrinkled body or to speak. And yet, his mouth provided a dry cracking sound as it was moved by force. All risk was entirely ignored.

There was no voice.

But the lips finished moving.

“They are not alone.”

“?”

Did that mean it was an organization rather than an individual?

That was Accelerator’s guess, but the old man continued.

“They look like an individual, but their true essence is different. They cannot be explained using our laws, but their theories are sure to change again. If you must, read through the documents and think on it all. I will not hold anything back. I cannot. I am merely saying you can achieve more definite information that way than from my fragmentary words.”

It was true he would be unable to lie.

But in that case…?

“They are lonely, perhaps even more so than me. But there is no way to fulfill that desire, perhaps even more so than me.”

“…”

“After all, they are not alone. While I have a personal starting point, they have no goal to achieve. That might sound twisted and contradictory, but it is the truth. They are plagued by loneliness more than anyone.”

That seemed to be the limit. Even under the influence of Specineff’s power, the old man reached his physical limit and fell silent.

Left alone, Accelerator thought in silence.

What was this?

Who was the Blue Stalker?

“So, Touma. You were supposed to be buying ingredients for dinner, and yet you return with an unconscious girl. That’s what happened here, right? So what am I supposed to do about this? Eat her???”

“Annnd there we go. It’s the usual rule of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’! I should really start charging a fee every time I get caught in some kind of battle.”

“How can you say that when you’re kidnapping someone in the old-fashioned ‘rice bag over the shoulder’ style!?”

“Lilina said the same thing. By the way, Index.”

“What now!?”

“What do you have to say about this tonkatsu roast meat in this shopping bag here?”

“Uhohoi!! That’s the perfect surprise, Touma!!”

Index’s stomach was easily won over by Kamijou Touma’s house-husband technique.

After lowering sleeping Furashina Ririn onto the bed, he began cooking dinner.

“You can make half into tonkatsu and half into katsudon. Muhah! I can’t wait!”

“If you want to sound like a grand champion, say you’re eating katsudon with tonkatsu on top, Index. But it’s easy to make, so that’s fine by me…”

A fatty fried dish was too high-level for a kitten, so the calico cat got its usual cat food. But the smell alone seemed to increase its voltage unnecessarily, so it was flailing on the floor in protest.

Kamijou made sure to prepare a serving for Furashina as well, but she showed no sign of waking. He had to place plastic wrap over that one and then a plastic bowl over that to make sure the cat did not get up to any mischief.

“Touma, they said on TV there’s such a thing as cutlet mille-feuille.”

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. If you’re going to slice the meat so thin, it seems like you’d enjoy it more if you made it into shabu-shabu.”

“And there are cutlets where cheese oozes out when you bite into them!”

“…”

“There are also simple radish and chicken cutlets, creamy cutlet curry with soft-boiled eggs on top, and rich beef cutlets eaten with demi-glace on top!”

“If you have a problem with my guy cooking, then just say so, Index.”

Like that, they enjoyed a peaceful dinner together.

Eventually, Furashina Ririn blinked her eyes open, perhaps roused by the smell of food.

She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and then looked over at them.

“We’re having tonkatsu tonight. Want some?”

“I do.”

“Earlier, you insisted you didn’t like hot or bitter things, but this is fine? Eating tonkatsu right after waking up isn’t normal.”

“Eh? Why not, Touma? Give me food when I wake up and I’ll eat it whatever it might be.”

This room apparently suffered from a severe lack of common sense.

After preparing Furashina’s portion which he had left with plastic wrap over it, he prepared the bath while the girls ate. Incidentally, Furashina Ririn seemed to be the type who started with the shredded cabbage. A certain nun immediately scarfed down every piece of meat she could see, so Kamijou wished she would learn a lesson from Furashina.

“Do you have a set order for the bath?”

“Not really,” replied Kamijou. “I need to do the dishes, so I’ll go last. You two figure out what to do on your own.”

After Kamijou’s suggestion, Index and Furashina Ririn for some reason decided to visit the bath together.

(Huh? Come to think of it, what’s Furashina going to do about pajamas?)

He doubted she would put back on her blue dress-like outfit, but did that mean she intended to steal one of his shirts like Index did?

While listening to the TV and the sound of the shower through the wall, Kamijou worked at washing the dishes. And he spoke to the portable device on the counter next to him.

“Lilina.”

“Returning from sleep mode. What is it?”

“I have something to ask of you.”

“If that water I hear is from a shower… Oh, no. Do I really have that kind of perverted user? I mean, I am confident in my picture quality, but I can always make sure it’s out of focus and disguise it as a photography error. Sigh…it’s so exhausting doing things that make people doubt my specs.”

“I don’t know what you think I’m talking about, but I’m just going to ignore it. We’re heading out while those two won’t notice.”

“Why?”

“To fight a battle. You need to get ready too.”

“Umm, with who? The Blue Stalker? The kidnappers?”

“Misaka Mikoto,” replied Kamijou. “If her method to save the NPC players will only make more of them, she’s putting the cart before the horse. And I want some information from her. So that’s two reasons to contact her. …Even if I have to beat her in Virtual-On first.”

“Hm, but do you know where she is? My ability to search for a match only goes so far.”

“It’s true I don’t know where Misaka is.”

He admitted that.

“But she seems to be able to tell what I’m doing. That’s clear enough from how she intervened when I was fighting the NPCs. Did she use some kind of esper power, did she take advantage of the rules of Virtual-On in some way, or does she have likeminded allies around the city who share what they see? That I don’t know.”

“Meaning?”

“She’s intervened once. It pains me to do this, but we just have to recreate that situation. If I attack another NPC player like I haven’t learned my lesson, Misaka’s sure to come running.”

“Ugh… You look hot-blooded at first glance, but you can come up with some devilish ideas.”

“That’s not it. I’m just focusing on my goal.”

Kamijou looked over toward the bathroom.

It did not look like they were going to leave anytime soon, so he slowly approached the main entrance and stepped into the outside world.

After locking the door from outside, he refocused his thoughts and spoke.

“Lilina, make the search for me. It needs to be an NPC Virtuaroid in District 7, since that’s my and Misaka’s home ground. Yes, and make it the same type as before.”

“It was a Cypher and Fei-Yen before.”

“Hmm…”

He had no proof, but Kamijou continued ahead regardless.

“Let’s start by keeping things as identical as we can. Before, we challenged a Cypher and the Fei-Yen joined in, so let’s start by focusing on the Cyphers in District 7. If that doesn’t lure her in, we can expand our range to other districts and hunt down the Cypher NPCs there too.”

“And if that doesn’t work either?”

“Then we shift to the Fei-Yen NPCs. We just keep going until she reacts.”

“Aye, sir. I’ll get started right away!”

In District 21, sparks flew atop a crude dam.

“Set 2 complete. The Cypher was destroyed and you win.”

In District 17, a giant form raced across a deserted factory’s rooftop.

“You defeated the Cypher. There really isn’t any tension when it’s an NPC, is there?”

In District 22, sword strikes were exchanged while descending into a vast underground mall.

“Yet another Cypher. It’s right there, so are you gonna hunt it down?”

In District 15, shot after shot was exchanged while flying above a shopping district.

“Ugh. You smashed it up so bad it’s like the rules don’t apply anymore. Those Defected PDs are scary…”

No matter where he went, the world remained carefree, so a lot of boys and girls shouted excitedly and aimed their portable devices his way in between viewing a factory or enjoying a night date. They had to be connected via blogs and SNSs, so information on Kamijou’s battles had to be spreading.

And none of them realized how twisted this really was.

It was as disgusting as stuffing a rotting corpse into a cute mascot costume, sitting it on a bench, and having unsuspecting children hug it with smiles on their faces.

“…”

Kamijou’s Temjin earned more and more points with its frightening moves and won the matches. But the boy holding the portable device in his hands was clenching his teeth. From the outside, it was impossible to tell which of those NPCs had a live human inside. In the worst case, they might all be players being forced to fight as zombies. Even if it was necessary, something unpleasant built up in his chest each time he hit one of them. It was an odd expression for a resident of a city of science, but he could tell his soul was being worn down.

So he held a wish in his heart: let the end arrive as soon as possible.

And that contradictory wish was eventually granted.

It happened in District 23, on the runway of the international airport which was decorated by many guide lights at night.

The referee sphere floating in the night sky was the first to pick up on something.

“Touma-sama, an enemy unit is incoming at eight o’clock. It is a customized Raiden. Based on the images and behavior found in my cache data history, it is a 93.8% match! This is the expected target!!”

“So she’s finally here. I was about at my limit…”

Kamijou Touma wiped the sweat from his brow, rubbed his thumbs on the top of the sticks, and smiled a little.

Was that because his plan had succeeded?

Or was it because he had been freed from a hell he had trouble bearing even when he had known it was coming?

Regardless, he shouted a familiar girl’s name.

“Misaka Mikoto!!”

This was on an entirely different level from the NPCs.

That could not have been plainer.

Orange lines tore across the international airport’s runway. Temjin and Raiden had forcibly heated their V-Discs with their extreme actions, so the red hot light lingered in the darkness of the night like tail lights.

The ultra-heavy wind named Raiden gave a roar. It rushed in, utterly ignoring its concept as a long-range focused type. Its weight would normally be a hindrance, but it used that weight. It swung around its Zig-18 bazooka to shift its center of gravity, clearly used powerful magnetism to pull in towing vehicles and fuel hoses that formed “walls” to act as footing, and otherwise made all sorts of unorthodox sharp turns. While flipping around in midair, it swung its bazooka around like a blunt weapon to make close-range attacks on Kamijou’s Temjin. It felt like being thrown into the center of a tornado.

In Virtual-On, stray bullets would not harm one’s surroundings. But that did not change the fact that a massive object was moving around and the continuous flashes of light had to have a negative effect on the passenger planes being guided into the airport at night. The Raiden’s pilot knew that, but she showed no concern for her surroundings.

“The same color of Temjin as before… You didn’t learn your lesson, did you!?”

“I thought you’d say that. Listen, Misaka! I more or less know what you’re trying to do!!”

Since they exchanged words this time instead of keeping the conversation one-sided, Mikoto seemed to realize who she was fighting here.

But she did not let up on the attack.

No, her actions briefly twisted like a wedge had been driven into the gears, but she immediately began attacking with twice the intensity.

Only the referee in the sky accurately tracked their movements.

“You…why? You said you understand the situation, so why would you do this!? Are you saying you knew what you were doing!?”

“Yeah, I did. It was a rough method, but I had to stop you as soon as possible!!”

He held her blunt weapon back with his Blitz Saber, but instead of locking weapons, he slid the blade along the Zig-18 bazooka. He pointed the tip toward the head of Mikoto’s Raiden.

His primary weapon, Sleipnir, changed form. The close-range sword became the long-range rifle known as the Neutral Launcher.

He fired without hesitation.

He launched several glowing projectiles in a row, but Raiden swung her head to avoid them all. However, she lost her balance. Kamijou’s Temjin could not normally win when it came to power, but he locked weapons with her again. And he pushed forward.

“Touma-sama, the 90 seconds will end soon and the judgment will begin.”

“But if I keep this up…”

“Gh!!”

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

Zero.

Temjin and Raiden came to a sudden stop. The spherical referee floating in the night sky swiftly calculated the result and declared the winner of the set.

“We have a 1 set lead, so let’s push on through, Touma-sama!”

She did not have to tell him twice.

But Kamijou was too impatient to wait around.

He sent a transmission to plead with Mikoto.

“Your method will only produce more victims!! Even if you gather everyone who has the same idea, more than half of them will end up as NPCs themselves. It’s too dangerous. And since you’ve Defected to protect the NPC player, you could cause a new player to Defect just like with the Blue Stalker! That’s like burning down the forest to plant a single tree!!”

“!! You don’t understand…”

“I was told to search for the Blue Stalker! I don’t know that meant, but if they are at the source of the Defections and the NPC players, then I can’t just leave them out there! Help me, Misaka. They have to know something we don-…!!”

“You don’t understand!”

She roared at him.

The second set began.

The risk was great, but he was close enough to end this with a close-range rush. As soon as the set began, Kamijou planned to push down the Raiden and swing down his Blitz Saber to settle things, but that was easily overturned.

It came from one of the Raiden’s heavy machinery fingertips.

He saw the thumb move as if it were flicking something.

(Oh, no…)

A nearly instinctual sense of danger filled him.

And Kamijou Touma had his Temjin move back with all its might.

It happened immediately afterwards.

“Touma-sama, something is coming. I can’t classify it!!”

(Oh, no!!)

The air was torn apart as a metal shell raced forward at frightening speed.

“The…Railgun!?”

Kamijou was dumbfounded.

Needless to say, Raiden had no such weapon. In that case, he could only think she had added it in with the Material Analyze feature, but…

A series of frictional noises reverberated without end.

Something like a black fog surrounded the light purple Raiden. It took shape using powerful magnetism and it looked like a sword or a wing.

“What is that!?” exclaimed Lilina.

“An iron sand sword. Misaka…did she scan ''herself'' with the Material Analyze and incorporate it into her unit?”

Thinking back, Accelerator’s Specineff had shown signs of something similar when it had intervened in the Blue Stalker battle. It was true that giving a Virtuaroid the traits and features of one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s might give them a great advantage.

But…

(I can’t believe this… It’s more than just those kidnappers who used the Reverse Convert to gain a portion of their unit’s power. The dividing line between human and Virtuaroid is blurring here too!!)

[[Image:Index_VO_299.jpg|thumb]]

“My friend disappeared…”

Misaka Mikoto spoke in a low voice.

It almost sounded like she was muttering a curse.

“She is wandering this city somewhere. And she’s coughing up blood as ignorant normal players beat her like a sandbag! And yet she’s sent right on to the next battle without even a chance to complain!! I’ve done everything I can, but I can’t search for her, I can’t find her, and I can’t stop this! Do you have any idea how that feels!?”

“…”

“So I have to save them. If I can’t find her in particular, I just have to save every last one of the people turned into NPCs!! Even if it’s unrealistic and the odds are astronomical, that’s the only shred of hope I have left!!”

She was essentially cheating at this point.

The already heavily-equipped Raiden used iron sand swords, lightning spears, and Railguns to attack from all directions. She filled in all the gaps in her attacks, so there was nothing he could do. Kamijou’s Temjin continued a desperate attempt to dodge, but no matter how much he fine-tuned and optimized the turbo repulsion, he doubted he could shake free of it all.

He rationally concluded he would lose this set.

It had to come down to the third and final set. He had to focus on observing his opponent’s idiosyncrasies and means of attack until then.

And even as he did that, he thought to himself.

It would be easy enough to say that he did understand. But there would be no weight behind it and it would not resonate inside Mikoto. For one thing, he did not even know who Mikoto had lost.

But that was no reason to fall silent and turn his back on her.

He decided to set aside the idealistic statements and to stop making everything sound nice and clean.

It might be irresponsible and illogical, but he did not care.

He wanted to be here.

He wanted to intervene.

He wanted to stop Mikoto here, before she strayed any further.

If he was going to hit her with anything, it had to be that true motivation.

“Lilina.”

“Yes?”

Within the intense exchange, Kamijou let out a slow breath.

“Sorry, but I need you to stick with me through a bit more of this.”

“Don’t be sorry. I never thought I could choose my player and I will perform any action you think up and input with your fingers. If continuing forward is what you really want to do, then go for it. This Temjin will always provide the movements you want, Touma-sama.”

He had steeled his resolve.

He faced forward once more.

“Understood, Misaka… We must be on different paths.”

“…”

“And it’s easy for me to crush your path. You want to even out, average out, and share the debt. To do that, you have to build up a massive amount of points. …In other words, if I defeat you, lure you into rough plays, and stain your score, you can’t use your plan.”

“You…!!!???”

Temjin and Raiden stopped moving again.

The referee calculated out their points.

“! Just as I thought, it’s 1-1. This next set will determine everything!!”

Kamijou ignored Lilina’s warning.

He ignored her and spoke.

“So bring it, Misaka.”

With her Railgun, iron sand swords, and lightning spears, she had added a frightening variety of options into Virtual-On. The Raiden with that fearsome lineup stood before him.

And Kamijou gestured back toward himself with Temjin’s fingers to lightly provoke her.

“If you want to continue down your path, you need to crush my path first.”

Constant explosions shook the night.

Kamijou’s Temjin and Mikoto’s Raiden clashed again and again on the runway.

This was the final set.

Whether via destruction or points, this final battle would settle everything.

The location had few obstacles and little cover. Since Raiden’s selling point was its firepower, failing to dodge its attacks might mean instant destruction. The standard method would be to take advantage of her slow speed to fire from a distance, focus on the amount left in the different weapon gauges while wearing her down to stop her, and take points that way. But Mikoto’s swift movements defied the normal assumptions for Raiden’s speed, so he could not rely on that.

The V-Discs on their backs were heated to a bright scarlet and drew trails behind their incredible movements like tail lights.

He sometimes engaged in a close-range rush similar to mixed martial arts and sometimes moved away and sniped from a distance. Just when he thought he had dodged a shot from Raiden’s Zig-18 bazooka, a lightning spear pierced the explosive and detonated it near Temjin. But in exchange for the damage, Temjin used the smokescreen and caught Mikoto off guard by rapidly approaching and slamming his Blitz Saber toward her right leg.

Their scores changed with dizzying speed and their weapon gauges continually filled and depleted.

Their primary focus was not losing the set via destruction. After that, they fought to score a down on the other.

They fought over the points.

They were also checking the total number of rough plays listed on their command logs.

Since they had Defected, this was more than just a sport for them, so that was literally a countdown to their deaths.

“Uhee!? Wh-wh-wh-what-wha-what is that!?”

“Lilina!! If the data can’t keep up, then cut it off! I’ll aim by eye!!”

“Oh, honestly, honestly, honestly!! That customized Raiden’s entire body is crackling, its surface is covered in ECMs, and who knows when it’ll make a cyber attack that can slip right through our defenses!? I know I can handle anything in binary, but it’s still frightening!”

“I see. So her hacking power is the most troublesome part. I hope that Raiden can’t use it…”

“If you get that, then hurry up and silence her!!”

On the other hand, that might mean that even her hacking was not enough to return the NPC players to normal. Furashina Ririn seemed to specialize in that, but even she had said there was only so much she could do.

Tsuchimikado had said Kanzaki Kaori of the magic side was taking action, so Kamijou felt as if formless concepts like people’s hearts or lives were showing up here.

“Are you not going to use that power you’re so proud of?” asked Mikoto.

“Unfortunately, I’ve been a Level 0 from the beginning.”

“Take me too lightly and you’re headed straight for destruction. You know it really pisses me off when I see things ‘like this’.”

''Maybe so,'' thought Kamijou.

He still did not know why someone (probably the Blue Stalker) was increasing the number of Defected players and the NPC players that came from them. But it was true that it felt a lot like someone was toying with lives just like that experiment in which the #1 used and disposed of 20,000 mass-produced military clones.

That had stimulated Mikoto.

And it had been exacerbated by affecting someone close to her.

“But have you forgotten?” replied Kamijou as he cut off that line of thinking. “I’m not the kind of person to take even a single step back when faced with things ‘like that’.”

“!! Then what are you even trying to do!?”

Four iron sand swords surrounded Raiden and attacked him like whips. And after they cut off his escape, she launched a Railgun from straight ahead.

Kamijou used all of his invisible repulsion to make a high-speed dash.

Fleeing to the side or backwards would have been meaningless, so he moved straight ahead. If he avoided the greatest threat by a hair’s breadth, he would find Raiden defenseless thanks to the slight stiffening from the recoil of launching the attack.

With an explosive noise, Kamijou ignored all of the warnings from Lilina and moved forward.

He had heard the Virtuaroids were materialized data, but Temjin was far heavier and sturdier than a human. That worked to his advantage. He was up against the Railgun itself and the deadly shockwave and wind stirred up around it. A flesh-and-blood human would likely have been killed by those side effects alone. Kamijou’s Temjin was partially torn away in the process, but he successfully dodged the metal shell, even if just barely. And then he attacked Raiden.

“Gh…!?”

“Misaka!!”

He wielded the Blitz Saber close-range sword.

He focused his mind.

First, lights crossed paths. Then Temjin powerfully turned 180 degrees while Mikoto’s Raiden launched multiple iron sand swords directly behind her without turning around. That was the second exchange. More and more and more and more exchanges followed.

But had she noticed?

Kamijou was swinging his entire body around to slash his close-range sword while Mikoto was standing in place and relying entirely on her iron sand swords. This produced a difference in speed and instantaneous power between Temjin and Raiden. That difference grew with each attack and it eventually grew too wide to ignore.

In other words, she was ultimately unable to keep up with his attacks.

“Why?”

She forcibly turned herself around using the weight of her Zig-18 bazooka and by kicking off of a wall created by pulling in metal panels and beams with magnetism. Her top speed was greater than the customized Temjin, but the Temjin had greater mobility and stability.

“Why won’t you let me do this!? I have a way of ridding her of her pain! I have the power to pull her from the Virtuaroid where she’s forced to continue fighting even as she’s left battered and bloody! That’s all…that’s all I wanted to do!!”

“This isn’t about who’s right, Misaka!!”

Temjin’s Blitz Saber gave a roar.

“It’s about which option I want to choose! And I’m saying I can’t bear to watch as your desire to save someone ultimately puts more lives in danger! No!! Those strict words aren’t what I want to get across to you!!”

Her iron sand swords could no longer make it in time.

He dodged the attacks from straight ahead and kept a position out of reach of the powerful Binary Lotus laser weapons and her Railgun, so Temjin could not be crushed where he was.

So…

“I’m saying I don’t want to see you become a villain, Misaka!! And I’m willing to become a villain myself to prevent it!!!!!”

There was no reason for Kamijou’s Temjin to lose now.

A bluish-white light followed the path of his close-range sword and it drew a complex line that swiftly silenced the Raiden reinforced with so much firepower.

Even if they had Defected, it was still based on the Next Generation Game of Virtual-On.

Attacks were used to earn points, not to destroy your opponent. The winner and loser were determined by the points.

And no matter how much a player wanted to keep going, their unit would not move once the match was over.

Raiden fell silent.

Kamijou’s Temjin was similarly locked as they waited for the results.

“I know Defections are common during battles with a player going by the username of Blue Stalker. They must be good at pushing people in that direction. But they aren’t the only condition, so crushing the source might not be enough to solve this.”

“So you decided to try a method other than crushing the source?”

“The Blue Stalker appears so unpredictably that there was no real way to attack them anyway.”

That meant not even Mikoto know where the Blue Stalker was or how to contact them.

“I know my method is wrong, but the fact remains that there is no better method. Assuming the Blue Stalker knows something and that there’s some way of stopping this all in one fell swoop seems like wishful thinking to me. They might just be enjoying the chaos.”

“…I know that.”

“So with that in mind, I have to ask: what are ''you'' going to do? How exactly are you going to attack the Blue Stalker?”

“The same thing I did with you.”

“?”

“I don’t know where the Blue Stalker is, so I’ll have them come to me. I just have to do whatever it is they least want me to do.”

“…That being?”

“I don’t know how they benefit, but they’ve been using Virtual-On to increase the number of Defected players and the number of NPC players from there. I don’t know which is their goal and which is a side effect, but stopping it is simple enough. …I just have to attack the legal Virtual-On in a very public way. If no one can play Virtual-On, the Defections from there will stop too. The Blue Stalker won’t be able to make their very first step.”

“Are you serious…? You mean you’re going to stop the entire Virtual-On system!? I can’t even imagine the economic losses if you cause a data blackout across all 23 districts! This goes beyond rating restaurants and getting the latest information; the people who are really into it can’t read or write kanji or even do simple arithmetic without the machine!!”

“Luckily, the portable devices used for Virtual-On are so reliant on the centers that they need to be taken there for a simple firmware update. Take out the centers and they can’t maintain the service. …But I don’t know if I’ll really do it. I hope I can lure out the Blue Stalker by only making it look like I will.”

A short silence followed.

Mikoto may have been shocked into silence.

But she finally spoke.

“Fine then… I’m a part of this too, so I guess I can help you lure out the Blue Stalker.”

“Misaka…?”

“You’re talking about taking out the centers, but you don’t really have a way of doing that, do you? Surely you aren’t thinking of pouring gasoline around to set them on fire. So if you’re going to mess with the data, you’ll want me around.”

“Wait. I…”

“Stop. You yourself said you were fighting because you didn’t want me to become a villain. Well, I’m the same. I’m not going to let you become a villain on your own. And this is for that girl too.”

Kamijou brought a hand to his forehead.

He had not expected things to develop in this direction.

He was a little afraid to let things continue like this, so he changed the subject.

“Come to think of it, who is this girl you’re talking about? Oh, or should I not have asked?”

“It’s fine.”

Mikoto replied with the voice of someone once more facing the problem they had to solve.

That girl was someone who attended Tokiwadai Middle School and was always by Mikoto’s side.

Or so Kamijou assumed. But what she said next betrayed those expectations.

“I’m talking about a girl named Furashina Ririn.”

“Ahhh! Where have you been all this time, Shirai-san!?”

“Uiharu, I’ve been regularly reporting back while searching for Onee-sama, haven’t I?”

“Uheh. So Misaka-san has vanished so thoroughly not even a Teleporter like you can find her? But we’ve had a rough time of it, too! We managed to get through today, but I don’t know what we’re going to do tomorrow! We need to do our best as we approach the finals!!”

The 3 girls discussed the issue as they entered through the glass door of a fairly pricey convenience store that used only natural ingredients.

Close by, another girl leaned against the wall next to the entrance.

“Yeah…”

With her honey-blonde hair fluttering behind her, Shokuhou Misaki faced the small screen of her portable device with annoyance in her voice. She was equipped with home-theater-level airtight audiovisual goggles built with special-ordered wood cone speakers to make them more “classy”, but she was in no mood to play and only felt like losing herself in the internet.

She munched on vegetable chips as she groaned to herself.

“Whyyy is everyone spreading this story about trying to save a nonexistent girl? Then again, I can control people’s minds, so maybe I shouldn’t be lamenting the mysteries of the human mind.”

There was supposedly a girl named Furashina Ririn.

She supposedly loved Virtual-On more than anything.

She had supposedly Defected, become an NPC player, and found herself fighting battles against her will.

The word “supposedly” was always present.

Giving it any thought would reveal how unnatural the information was, but people on the internet were weak to multiple sources. By placing the same information on multiple blogs and message boards, its plausibility could be increased erroneously.

Since everyone was saying the same thing, people assumed it had to be correct and that it was universally known.

“Queen.”

A girl with long ringlet curls quietly called for her from nearby.

Shokuhou moved her large, round eyes.

“Have you figured out what is going on?”

“Yes. But I can only call it mysterious even with an explanation.”

“That’s right. This feels like it involves laws and technological abilities beyond the Academy City standards.”

There was a reason they tilted their heads.

Players would enter a state similar to sensory deprivation, their personality would approach collapse, they would have difficulty walking and breathing, and they would become NPCs. It was unclear if the rumors of players vanishing into thin air were true or not, but some had gone missing and their fate seemed to be linked to that of their unit. The proposed method of saving them was to even out, average out, and share their sullied score by forming a team with them. A single rough play was diluted within 100 fair plays.

That was a process to return the zombies to the world of the living.

That method was used to bring back those who had been lost, but what would happen if it was used on a girl who had never existed in the first place and only appeared in rumors?

Furashina Ririn.

Had something by that name truly been born in this city?

“Ahh, ahh.”

Shokuhou left the bag of vegetable chips with her ringlet curled servant, rubbed her index finger against her temple, and breathed a deep sigh.

“I was ''trying'' to defeat Misaka-san yesterday to ‘wake her up’ before she got in too deep and decided to Defect, but she just ''has'' to get so stubborn when it comes to things like this.”

Kamijou had no idea what she meant.

Her words made not even one iota of sense to him.

“Wait,” he said in his Temjin’s cockpit. “Furashina…Ririn? Is that what you just said?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“But that makes no sense. I mean, Furashina is in my room right now! She can’t be trapped inside a Virtuaroid as an NPC!!”

“What…?”

“We need to go back over all of our information! Something isn’t right! But this contradiction is sure to be an important key to all this. So, Misaka, please tell me everything you know!!”

“There isn’t much to tell.” Mikoto seemed confused and her explanation came in bits and pieces. “There’s a girl named Furashina Ririn. She taught us about the Next Generation Game of Virtual-On, she gave us a lot of ideas about how to fight, and it’s thanks to her that we managed to defeat Shokuhou and continue onto the main tournament.”

Something seemed off.

So he asked about it.

“She gave you ideas? So this Furashina didn’t actually fight alongside you?”

“But she was part of our team!! She was the 5th member!”

“But you’ve never actually met her, have you? ''You were speaking with someone going by the name Furashina Ririn, but you have no proof it wasn’t someone else entirely''!”

“Eh? Wait a second. Where are you going with this!? I promise you I-…!!”

Her words were suddenly cut off.

There was a simple reason.

The sound of an empty can being crushed was amplified several hundred times as it pierced through the Raiden’s chest.

“…Ah?”

Kamijou Touma’s thoughts ground to a halt.

Whether Defected or not, this was all based on Virtual-On, so no amount of hitting each other could put their lives in danger.

But the glowing projectile that tore through Mikoto’s Virtuaroid rejected that assumption.

The beam of light punched through the Raiden’s chest and out the back.

The rectangular backpack of the V-Converter was torn through, the motor deck bent out from within and was blown away, and the V-Disc contained inside was shattered.

The red hot shards flew through the air.

Like the fading flames of life, they fell to the ground and lost their light.

“…Bah…ksshh, ahh, ksssshhhhhhh…”

“Wait, Misaka.”

“Ksssshhhh!! Kssshhh!! Kssssssshhhhhhhh!!”

“Misaka!!”

“Click!! ———————”

Only a plain electronic tone sounded.

He had no idea what that meant.

But it sounded to him like the flatlining signal of an EKG.

“Ahh.”

And.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

She was disappearing.

With a giant hole blown in her chest, the Raiden seemed to dissolve into the air.

He knew it was happening and he could see it happening, but there was nothing he could do.

The referee sphere overhead did nothing.

He did not recover from the wait for the results. He pressed the buttons and moved the sticks like crazy on his portable device, but Temjin did not even budge.

This was different from simple destruction.

She had been shot.

She had been defeated.

She had died.

Died!?

“Touma-sama, you are receiving a communication request from username Akj*daj5hinrl19…hm? Hmm?”

“A corrupted name…could it be!?”

After a burst of static, a young man’s voice spoke.

“It didn’t matter to me which one remained, but I chose you to survive on a whim.”

“The Blue Stalker!!” shouted Kamijou as another small window opened in the corner of his vision.

It was a chat request.

And it said:

“Furashina: My plan was to spread rumors to create an outline for the nonexistent Furashina Ririn, but since there had to be some basis behind them, I had to prepare a few things first. I registered an empty apartment with a fake name, placed a nonexistent student’s data in a school server, and left trash or a handkerchief at a meeting place to make it look like she just missed someone after setting up a meeting. I did similar things with online activity. Simply sending messages doesn’t provide much realism, so I placed hints here and there which could be combined into what seemed like a real presence. But the rumors have grown so much now that I can just sit back and watch as more and more people claim to know Furashina Ririn or that she’s a friend of a friend. Now do you understand what happened?”

“…!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

He doubted this was really Furashina Ririn. It was clearly someone pretending to be her. He was being toyed with by the Blue Stalker who had tricked Misaka Mikoto into trying to save a friend from the Defection trouble.

The chat window closed and the man spoke directly once more.

“Once the results hit a certain level, I just have to wait for the final result to appear on its own. You can take your time and praise your freedom until that final moment. Although the end result will be the same no matter what you choose.”

Far in the distance, he saw a Cypher with distinctive blue coloring and yellow lines. It was lit by multiple guide lights and yet still blended into the darkness.

The Blue Stalker wielded a brutal close-range sword longer than it was tall.

But Temjin did not move a finger.

His opponent slowly turned around and transformed its humanoid form into something more like a fighter jet.

Kamijou let out a roar when he realized the Blue Stalker was preparing to leave.

“Wait!!”

“If you have regrets and still wish to struggle, then come with me.”

A repulsive pressure blew back at Kamijou as an answer.

The one who knew everything had once more stole something from Kamijou and then left before his eyes.

It was over.

Silence surrounded him.

The maddening heat in his head cooled.

He finally grasped the current situation.

Kamijou Touma screamed.

He screamed on and on as if to crush the pressure of what he had lost.

It seems Code Phoenix will pass Stage 2.

The Plajiner bud is demonstrating behavior very different from that of the original girl loved by the Tangram, but this too must be one option among the infinitely-branching “paths”.

The human NPCs were another unexpected change, but I can accept those as another possibility for the Shadows.

At the moment, I have no chance of completing Stage 3.

I must first acquire Plajiner, the world’s greatest black box. From there, I can use that power to find a solution to Stage 3.

I am aware how pathetic this is. I keep talking about escaping the bonds of Plajiner, yet I still find myself deifying Plajiner in a way. Does this make me the same as a zoologist criticizing a witch for using a familiar?

My birthplace had passed the point of no return. Everything was quantified and calculable, so it was a world in which the field of possibilities had been closed off. The few enlarged plants held all the wealth for themselves and they created a cold cage in which overthrowing those in power was utterly impossible.

Within that, there was one symbolic existence. The V-Crystals, Cyber Imaginary Space, Virtuaroids, the original Fei-Yen, and the Tangram. Beyond all that advanced technology stood the name of a single researcher. In other words, that name was synonymous with technology and anyone chosen by that name was blessed with technology. That deified and sacred researcher became the winner.

L’Ln Plajiner.

The scales of the world took the form of that girl and I will smash them to smithereens. I will bring possibility back to the world. And to do that, I have come to another “path” using the Tangram’s rejection.

I will do this even if it means relying on the other Plajiner, Furashina Ririn.

Now, let the final game begin.