Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter3

Chapter 3: A Very Foreign Criminal Organization

Part 1

Mugino Sakuya was clearly up to something.

Mugino Shizuri and Butler Mujinayama were glaring quietly at each other.

However, Frenda Seivelun needed to be keenly aware of the fact that the enemy of your enemy was not necessarily your friend.

Item was a professional criminal team.

Meaning…

(In the end, Item was ordered to execute me, so there’s no guarantee at all they’ll give up on that job just because they feel like it!!)

Sakuya’s betrayal of the Mugino Family and the order given by Academy City were two separate matters.

In fact, one exchanged look with Mugino Shizuri was enough to eliminate any hopeful thoughts Frenda might have had.

Clear up the misunderstanding and regroup with Item?

Presenting Mugino with the conspiracy documents from the vault was no guarantee she wouldn’t just blast Frenda with Meltdowner.

Discussing things with Item would require safely setting things up in advance.

“Kh.”

The stage was nowhere near set for that, so there was no point in hesitating.

There was only one option here.

She couldn’t wait.

While Mugino Shizuri and Butler Mujinayama were clashing at close range, Frenda made a beeline for the exit.

A beam of light flew in.

She couldn’t tell if that had been aimed at Mujinayama in his tuxedo and monocle, or if it had been intentionally aimed at her.

“Eek!!”

Once outside the mansion, she was back in the spacious yard. It was large enough for an official game of soccer, so thoughtlessly cutting across it could easily get her shot to pieces without any cover to hide behind.

Frenda stuck to the building’s wall and circled around back where she found a parking lot.

That meant there had to be a rear gate.

The otherwise full parking lot had one spot left open.

Someone had left here in a car.

“…”

Frenda of course had no time. She scanned through the luxury cars filling the parking lot, chose one without bulletproof glass, and smashed the door window with her elbow. She wasn’t interested in driving it. She snatched the small radio inside and scanned through the frequencies.

Within an organization that disliked making phone calls and sending emails that went through central exchanges and servers, there were those who preferred toys like this. They would of course use high-level encryption, but that was no defense against one of their own radios.

“Ksh. Ksh! New orders from Sakuya-sama. Crossword needs to get out of here! Top priority!! This is all for nothing if we lose our negotiator!!”

“Sorry, but you’ll have to take care of things here. I’ll head to the forest safe house!”

(Hm.)

Frenda didn’t have time to sit and think.

She tackled open a side entrance next to the big gate leading out of the rear parking lot and scrambled on out.

She heard gunfire.

Had the firefight between the Mugino Family and the other criminal organization spread back here?

Frenda worked her body without even giving herself a chance to catch her breath.

She kept on moving.

She clenched her teeth and just kept running.

Gasping for breath, she clung to a nearby power pole and slid down to sit on the pavement. She chose to view her unpleasant sweat and heavy breathing as signs that she was still alive.

She took a deep breath.

“Phew.”

She had escaped by the skin of her teeth.

Somehow she had gotten out of the Mugino Family mansion, but she couldn’t stop here.

“Damn!! …In the end, Mugino Sakuya was right. Knowing the truth isn’t enough to improve my situation.”

She forced her weary body to get back up.

She had a new goal now.

She wasn’t interested in being a hero, but she still had to stop the Sakuya faction from killing the parents.

Frenda thought of her 7-year-old sister back in Academy City.

And that girl’s ordinary friends.

(It’s not my style, but in the end, I want to avoid some shitty future where something happens to Azumi-chan’s family and that 7-year-old ends up on the path of revenge.)

A kid like that shouldn’t be part of the dark side.

For that, Frenda was willing to push her worn-out body just a bit farther.

(So where can I attack to bring down Sakuya’s plot all at once? That is, what is her Achilles heel?)

In a direct attack, the Mugino Family could not defeat Academy City.

But by focusing their attacks on the parents scattered throughout the outside world, they could bring down Academy City’s defenses.

Sakuya was an embodiment of guile.

By setting the conditions just right, it would be possible to trap even Academy City.

(But I can’t thoughtlessly try to attack Sakuya herself when she has such sturdy defenses. Trying to protect the parents scattered across the country isn’t realistic either. Then what can I do?)

There was another option.

Killing the parents across the country on its own would simply be indiscriminate murder.

Violence on its own was only violence.

An initial threat and a later announcement were necessary. By making demands, they could profit greatly, either directly with money or not. If they wanted to extract cutting-edge tech from Academy City, they could do that. And if the criminals wanted to safely negotiate with the VIPs, they would need someone with specialized skill other than violence.

As a bomber, Frenda was very familiar with this idea.

(Still, they want to threaten Academy City of all places? That’s a much greater challenge than disarming a cruelly-designed bomb. A reckless job like that will require a specialist.)

In other words…

“A negotiator. They’re going to need someone who specializes in that kind of threat.”

So if that negotiator could be eliminated, Sakuya’s parent killing plan would fall apart. And if Frenda took the negotiator hostage, she might just learn some interesting things about Sakuya.

This wasn’t about being a hero. Frenda wasn’t that shameless. Still, she couldn’t just ignore the imminent threat to the parents.

Proving her own innocence could wait.

She had already decided she would be watching her sister in the Daihaseisai, right? How could she do that if she failed to defend the gentle environment surrounding that 7-year-old girl?

Plus, she did have a hint.

She only had to think back.

“Ksh. Ksh! New orders from Sakuya-sama. Crossword needs to get out of here! Top priority!! This is all for nothing if we lose our negotiator!!”

“Sorry, but you’ll have to take care of things here. I’ll head to the forest safe house!”

Frenda Seivelun looked down to the small radio she held.

They likely changed frequency and encryption method periodically, but it would still work for now.

She could use this to pursue them.

(Crossword. So you’re my next target.)

Now that she had a plan, she had to act on it.

Immediately.

She forced strength back into her weary body and slowly stood back up from the pavement.

Orange was creeping into the darkness.

Dawn had arrived.

Part 2

Several beams of light flashed out.

Mugino Shizuri had not stopped with just the one.

The mansion’s front hall was large and devoid of cover. And even if there were any thick walls in the way, Meltdowner would have pierced right through them. And yet.

“!!”

The old man in the tuxedo and monocle ducked low as he ran. Instead of taking the shortest route, he weaved sharply side to side. So instead of pure speed, it was his irregular zigs and zags that caused Mugino’s predictions to repeatedly fail her.

A dull impact rang out.

Mujinayama had already arrived right up in front of Mugino Shizuri.

Her vision twisted around.

First, he threw a punch, forcing his target to use their arms to defend. Once their body had stiffened, he could easily grab their sleeve and collar to swing them around. Once begun, the throw was completely inescapable.

He was known as the Mountain Sniper.

This self-defense technique was meant for throwing a wild boar charging from the nearby bushes by grabbing its fur. It was not meant for use against humans.

If Kinuhata hadn’t made a flying kick from the side, Mugino would have crashed into the nearby pillar without any chance to soften the impact.

“He can super dodge while doing that!?”

“Don’t fall for the monocle, Kinuhata! Mujinayama is a pro sniper. Like hell his eyesight is bad!!”

With a sharp sound, the scarlet carpet fluffed up. At the last second, the butler had accurately escaped just outside of Kinuhata’s attack range.

And this was no time to relax.

He disappeared.

The next audible footstep came from right next to Kinuhata. Of all people, he was targeting Kinuhata Saiai, whose Level 4 Offense Armor made her Item’s greatest close quarters fighter.

After using the motion of going for a body blow to put her on guard, he used his shoulder to to tackle her hard high up on her upper body. That much she managed to follow.

The rest was a blur.

All Kinuhata knew was that her feet left the floor after she took a defensive stance. The vector made no sense. Something more must have been done to her in the air because, instead of flying backwards, she was slammed straight down onto her back.

“Khah, ah!? Y- cough – you!!”

“Excuse me. …It is against my style to attack a child, but I am a Manager who serves the Bloodline. My personal way of life does not apply here.”

She had defended her entire body with her power, but she still had the breath knocked out of her.

Without those defenses, her thick spine would have broken and pierced her heart.

Offense Armor was an ultra thin and ultra strong shield created by compressing the nitrogen in the air. That he managed to break through it was a surprise, but it was also a surprise to find Mujinayama had done it with his bare fist and not broken his hand.

It was the same idea as passing your hand over a candle flame in an instant. He had moved so quickly not enough energy had managed to reach his fist.

But even if they understood how that worked, how many people could actually pull it off?

(Cough. He’s a super monster to outdo an esper without powers of his own.)

Collapsed and unable to move much, Kinuhata tried to grab Mujinayama’s ankle with a hand more brutal than construction machinery, but the butler had already disappeared.

Keeping his distance put him at risk of projectile attacks – such as Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner – but he didn’t seem concerned.

Mugino aimed her palm his way while propped up by Takitsubo.

Right, left, right, right.

Several beams flashed out, but none of them ended the fight. Mugino clearly had the greater deadly force, but it was the butler who had control of the scene.

Mujinayama’s actions weren’t normal.

They were as strange as someone moving the same way they always did while on a tightrope.

There was a grinding noise.

That was Kinuhata Saiai digging her nails into the floor and trying to rejudge the distance between them.

And because she excelled at martial arts, her eyes widened even as she struggled to breathe.

That butler was a sniper, but he could do all this outside of that area of expertise?

“You’re kidding, right? Cough, he’s right in front of Mugino, gasp, and she’s firing Meltdowner blasts super everywhere!!”

“You cannot see lead bullets in flight either, but they are equally deadly if they hit. Piling more destructive power on top does not change what I must do in response.”

His voice remained calm.

In this case, the most fearsome person was not Academy City #4 Mugino Shizuri.

It was Butler Mujinayama who could stand before that monster and fight on the same or a higher level instead of being killed instantly.

He had no esper power.

Nor did he have any unique next-gen weapons from Academy City.

There were no tricks here.

All he had was a single body kept moving by nerves and muscles and fueled by the oxygen he breathed and the circulation of blood.

“That old hag Sakuya must be going senile,” spat Mugino. “Does she really think getting one old man on her side is enough to solve the entire Mugino Family succession issue?”

“Did you think it was only me?”

“…”

“The Bloodline increases their position in the line of succession by collecting the trump cards of the Management. Whoever collects the greatest number of the most powerful cards will be the next family head. And after pouring in significant effort behind the scenes, Sakuya-sama is in the lead. This is not an illegitimate rebellion. Sakuya-sama is reaping the benefits of the power she gathered legitimately.”

Was that a bluff? No, that wouldn’t accomplish anything here.

More of the Family’s Management and troops had joined this rebellion than Mugino Shizuri thought.

Enough that she could be seen as the traitor at this rate.

“Mugino. We should withdraw for now.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Takitsubo!!!”

“Sakuya is gone.”

The #4 fell silent.

At times like this, the track suit girl did a great job of keeping an eye on the entire battlefield.

(So he was focused on buying time for her to escape instead of trying to win the fight.)

A single Meltdowner blast could burn right through Mujinayama no matter how much he tried to defend Sakuya. He could not protect her as a shield. So to ensure her safety, he had drawn Mugino’s attention long enough for Sakuya to escape.

Even his superhuman movements had been no more than a means of protecting the Bloodline.

How very like a butler.

Including how his behavior remained unchanged even in the presence of Academy City’s #4.

“Mugino.”

“I know.”

Pounding footsteps were approaching.

A lot of them.

Mugino was concerned about the safety of her grandfather, but she didn’t know where in the maze-like mansion he was. For that matter, she didn’t even know if he was in the mansion at all.

It was time.

Kinuhata Saiai looked to Mujinayama.

He was brimming with energy. She could just about see a mirage-like aura coming from his shoulders.

“(But super what do we do now? With the way his monocle is shining, I don’t think that superhuman old man is going to let us escape.)”

“Then there’s only thing to do.”

Mugino didn’t bother keeping her voice down.

She made a show of holding her palm out, but not straight ahead at Mujinayama. She was aiming higher than that.

In other words…

“Is grandfather in his usual bedroom? I bet he’s fast asleep at this time of night.”

“The head is a very busy man. He may not even be in the country.”

“But that railroad model diorama he loves so much is in his bedroom, isn’t it? It’s so big I doubt he can bring it with him when he travels overseas.”

“Wait just a moment, Shizuri-sama. The head learned the basics of dioramas in France and then spent 40 years gradually adding to that masterpiece. You must not even joke about something like this. I do trust that not even you would perform such a profoundly reckless act, but destroying that is a line that cannot be uncrossed. And as manager of the mansion, it would be me he scolded over-”

A thick beam surged out.

She did not wait even a moment.

She even stuck her tongue out a little as she mercilessly unleashed a Meltdowner blast that broke through the wall and tore through a corner room on the 3rd floor, which was in fact the family head’s bedroom. A hole with a diameter of more than a meter had been annihilated.

While Mujinayama looked back in that direction and petrified, Item made their move.

If they directed killer intent his way, the old butler would instantly regain his senses.

So they rushed to the mansion’s front entrance.

They ran to the exit.

“Okay, that’s one card turned over. It turns out even that monster Mujinayama still has something he fears.”

“Hey, you didn’t just super direct some even scarier old man at us, did you!?”

Part 3

The first wave had ended.

Mugino Shizuri and Frenda Seivelun had both escaped, but that wasn’t what mattered.

Sakuya remained confident within a long, skinny blast and bullet resistant car that could probably carry 20.

The driver couldn’t hear her with the thick glass between them, but…

“Experts from the strange land of Academy City attacked, but they were forced to flee without killing their target. That alone qualifies as a success. The Mugino Family power I have gathered already rivals Academy City’s dark side.”

Of course, Sakuya was not heading to a hideout linked to the Mugino Family.

A new phase had begun.

From here on, she had to be cautious of the Mugino Family Bloodline. So she was on the way to a resort hotel she had acquired using hidden assets unconnected to the Mugino Family.

The physical distance was irrelevant.

Was there a link in the data or not? That was what mattered in the world of more shadowy pursuits. As long as no one knew you were there, you could be safe hiding in the adjacent room.

“Hm, hm♪”

In a corner of the Kingdom Suite taking up the entire top floor, an extra room had been built without the knowledge of the hotel’s owners. That said, it was only something that could be assembled on site, such as a simple sauna or a soundproof room.

“What’s the latest word on the Management?”

Sakuya’s question was answered by Mujinayama who had rejoined her after taking a different route. He looked as unconcerned as ever.

Nothing could be more reassuring for someone plotting misdeeds.

“The ones pretending to work for Eika-sama, Ginsuke-sama, and the rest of the Bloodline will be joining us soon.”

“Good. Now none of the Bloodline can interfere.”

The Management were an important part of the Family.

Ougigumo was in charge of the spinning business.

Bakyaku excelled at horse racing and other forms of gambling.

However, the Management did not draw a line between the legal and the illegal. So Ougigumo still ran a forced labor system where people were bought and imprisoned, just with those unthinkable things referred to by more modern terms like “online loans” and “away-from-home employment with free housing provided”. Bakyaku would work alongside the official gambles to dope the racehorses or to lay high-interest traps for shady investors and rich kids who had never worked a day in their life.

More than simple deadly force was asked of the Management.

They each had to monetize their business and expand their influence beyond the Mugino Family. For simple money, the Family could rely on their legal grain production corporation. The Management involved themselves in illicit businesses so they could listen in on what people were saying in every industry and at every class.

“Sakuya-sama.”

Mujinayama, the old butler in a tuxedo and monocle, bowed with greater precision than an automatic door.

This was an exciting crossroads in her life, but Mujinayama, who stood there with her, remained as precise as ever.

How reassuring was that?

That alone told her she had the upper hand on Shizuri.

“You have finally made a big step forward.”

“It took much too long.”

“There is no going back now. Sakuya-sama, victory is the only path left.”

This was a coup.

Mugino Sakuya’s methods might seem rash and risky, but she didn’t actually have much time left.

Because her greatest rival, Mugino Shizuri, was Academy City’s #4 Level 5.

That girl’s body itself was filled with the secrets of esper development technology. Investigating her body would reveal it all. By abusing that and mass-producing espers, the Mugino Family would transform into the world’s greatest violent group, both in name and in fact. That girl didn’t have to do anything at all. She didn’t need a vast fortune or army. She only had to return home to the Mugino Family and she would bring the Family a greater reward than the rest of the Bloodline combined.

If nothing was done, she would take the head spot.

Sakuya’s generation would be skipped over and Shizuri, of the next generation down, would take it all.

How could she just sit around and let that happen?

“What will you do now?”

“Good question.”

Sakuya smiled at Mujinayama as he bowed obediently.

“I must swiftly search out a path forward.”

She didn’t care that a man was present.

The beautiful woman reached around to her back and gracefully unzipped the back of her dress.

She removed the gorgeous dress.

Along with her underwear.

Then she stepped through the door and entered a small 2x2m room.

And then something crashed into her bare body.

“Snails” “That’s why Sayu says” “Finally reached a million!!” “Umeboshi are” “Here goes!!” “Aeuiueahoh” “Who killed him?” “Tomorrow’s weather in Kantou will be” “For a limited time only, you get 50% off!” “Next is Ikebukuro. Repeat: Ikebukuro.” “This one product is all you need for your basic makeup.” “Join me in prayer.” “Not just the redback spider! You also need to watch out for” “Now you need to stir it all together. Think of it like getting some air into” “To prepare for their harsh journey, the migratory birds will” “Be especially careful when fishing for bass” “The founder’s secret is” “You will never have to drink tap water again” “We’ve arrived on the scene, but the suspect is nowhere to be found! We will begin a search of the surrounding” “Continue north” “You were the traitor!?” “Hat” “Here you want to move the Gold to 63” “A brand new age of ramen” “Ahhhh!” “1, 2, 3, 4” “In zero-g outer space”

It was a flood.

A deluge of sound.

The room contained countless speakers. Like an octopus’s suckers or a peacock’s feathers, the cramped space was filled with circular patterns of various sizes. They were all simultaneously playing different voices.

It physically vibrated her fine skin. She received all that information at once through not just her eardrums but her entire body. The vibrations in her bones stimulated her brain.

Of course, not every voice meant something. She employed the cocktail party effect. When people were surrounded by a lot of noise, psychology said they would subconsciously select the topic that most interested them and try to focus on that voice alone. Using that, the information she most needed at the moment would rise to the surface even when she would have a hard time consciously picking it out.

She couldn’t assume she was blessed.

Thinking she had the perfect position was the same as giving up on thinking.

She had to always focus on her hunger.

Mugino Sakuya grinned as she picked up on one term.

“ ‘Fishing’ is it?”

Part 4

She was out of breath.

Surprisingly, it was Kinuhata Saiai who first gave up and stopped moving.

“Pant, pant. Why? I super don’t get how I could lose to Takitsubo-san.”

“Kinuhata, you’ve been running at an anaerobic sprinting pace. You only want to run all out until the enemy has lost sight of you. Then you switch to an aerobic marathon pace or you’ll wear yourself out.”

The difference in their dark side experience showed itself in these places.

And since Takitsubo couldn’t directly fight, failing to hide or escape would get her immediately killed. She would never get careless in those areas. Plus, the track suit girl was the kind of person who could float face down in the pool for a disturbingly long time.

“A-anyway, I made it. Cough, I super somehow managed to escape!!”

“Kinuhata. We need to check each other for injuries.”

“Eh? Huh?”

“You can’t check your own back, can you? When extreme exercise leaves the brain short on oxygen, your ordinary sense of pain can numb over, so it’s safer if we do a visual check of each other.”

“Ah, ah, wait! Help me, Mugino! Am I super trapped in this pattern where I get attacked right when I think I’m finally safe!?”

It was still 4 or 5 in the morning and no one was around, but a public road was no place to be stripping a girl. Nevertheless, Takitsubo performed the task calmly and expressionlessly.

“Mugino, Frenda disappeared.”

“Hey, don’t strip me! And wait, do we still have to go after her!? The Mugino Family is clearly the super real danger!!”

“Either way, I think we should run into Frenda if we pursue the Mugino Family.”

It didn’t matter if they did or did not have a reason to fight her.

If Frenda got scared and chucked a bomb their way, they would die. The real question was how Frenda viewed Item after they had been hunting her.

Was their enemy Frenda? Or the Mugino Family?

Mugino scratched irritably at her head.

“Tch. …If we can’t trust the Family, then we can’t use that hotel anymore. For that matter, Mujinayama arranged it for us, so Sakuya definitely knows all about it.”

They might as well have made an enemy of the entire city of Yokohama.

A decent number of the butlers and maids of the Management appeared to have joined Sakuya’s rebellion and it seemed unlikely the name of Mugino Shizuri would be enough to get the soldiers to open the way.

“…”

“Listen, Shizuri-sama.”

An old memory returned to Mugino.

She had obtained her esper power in Academy City, but that old butler was at an even deeper part of her.

She remembered the time she had followed that butler into the winter mountains while carrying an old wood stock rifle (while very much inside Japan). Her target had been a large animal, but thinking back, he had been acting more as an instructor than a spotter.

“Just as the recoil of firing a gun causes you to tense momentarily, all attacks give the enemy an opportunity. Whether close or long range, this is a common fact in all fields other than sniping.”

Mugino breathed out while concentrating Meltdowner in her palm.

(So Mujinayama is the enemy’s pawn. This is going to be a pain in the ass.)

The light in her palm vanished.

Her power was an ultra-powerful projectile. It was possible that old butler’s education had affected her psyche in a way that caused her control over electrons to manifest in that form.

Her attacks gave the enemy an opportunity.

In fact, Mujinayama’s martial arts had surpassed Academy City technology. Easily.

There was more that worried her.

“With Frenda staying on the run this long, they’ll probably be sending in another team before long.”

“Super meaning?”

“If we don’t do something soon, something’s going to happen inside Academy City.”

They all fell silent.

They had known Frenda’s Achilles heel from the beginning.

Item hadn’t played that card.

But not out of kindness.

If they relied on that and the unexpected happened, it could greatly distort the nature of Frenda Seivelun’s villainy.

And there was nothing more frightening than a skilled villain who had succumbed to self-destructive thinking.

Part 5

Inside that wall lay Academy City.

Some men performed their final checks in the back of a windowless work van parked on the curb during the night.

It was clear they had done this before.

“Our target is Fremea Seivelun. Age: 7. Location: a District 13 student dorm.”

“Why are we nabbing her?”

“We weren’t told. But given the size of the reward and the chosen intermediary, it probably isn’t just some pervert.”

They were Army Ant.

Their usual job was debt collection on the dark side, but making money off of villains on the brink of losing everything meant they also dabbled in abduction. If it was necessary to get someone to pay their debt in full, this group would crush that person with hundreds of thousands of atmospheres of pressure to convert them into diamond pieces.

Thus, they did not bother demanding an exorbitant ransom from Anti-Skill. They were already making a profit just from the share they received when getting the debt repaid.

Stability was best.

Although on occasion, those talents would inspire an intermediary to hire them for a job like this.

They saw it like a bonus side job.

“What’s the roleplay?”

“The target’s a first grader. And it’s September shortly after the end of summer break. The standard route would be to say this was her first year in the esper development and finding out she’s a Level 0 was too great a shock for her.”

“So she despaired about the future and ran away?”

“Then let’s prepare for that.”

New school years and new school terms were always a time for trouble.

The abduction of a 7-year-old child would stand out, but they only had to scatter around some false signs and explanations that would get the story buried in all the other records. Like placing a translucent red sheet over the problem set to hide the red text.

Besides. A unique city where 80% of the population were students was an extremely strange closed environment where accidents and incidents involving children were too common to stand out.

Which created room for a business profiting off of such things.

“This was one of the good intermediaries. Only the big shots in the administration use them. Like the Board. What do you think the girl’s family did?”

While the District 13 dorms were well defended, those defenses could be neutralized by rewiring the security system. By loading a gas-powered injection gun with a fast-acting liquid anesthetic, they could snatch the girl without her even uttering a scream.

“Don’t forget the neutralizer in case the anesthetic is too effective. 7-year-olds are small, so a mistake in calculating the dosage could kill her.”

“It doesn’t matter if she does die as long as whoever’s being threatened with her doesn’t know it.”

As they chatted, the men donned large masks shaped like ant heads to hide their identities.

The work van’s rear door opened and they began to exit.

Immediately, a giant bluish-black blob swept the first one away.

They didn’t understand.

It was warm and soft…and yet was the polar opposite of gentle.

The lead man vanished outside the van and the rest froze inside the van.

Completely baffled, they noted a very familiar smell.

The stench of a filthy urban river.

In other words…

(Sludge?)

It would sometimes fill rivers or the sea, preventing even large ships from traveling, but it was in fact an accumulation of dead organic material that could not decompose. In other words, it was the corpses of microbes.

“My, my.”

Someone stood there.

A woman in a gas mask.

Hanatsuyu Kuchikusa the Converter.

The biology researcher (wearing a knit dress that actually had large holes all over it) waved test tubes of colorful liquids.

Unable to leave the work van, the men fired their gas-powered injection guns from the open rear door in a panic, but the bluish-black mass wriggled all on its own to protect the roughly-dressed young woman from the tranquilizer rounds.

Attempting to defeat her in the field of toxins and medicines was a fatal mistake.

By mixing still-living microbes and precisely controlling their release of putrid gases, she could move that 50ton troublemaker of urban rivers as easily as her own limbs.

Of course, this technique was one of the mutations born of the dark side.

The ultimate mama(?) systematically scattered liquid droplets from her test tubes.

“I must be getting old to be so upset over the possibility of harm coming to a child. Hee hee. Having a family really does change how you think☆”

It wasn’t just the humans. The wet sound of destruction crushed the bulletproof van as well.

Part 6

Frenda sighed with her phone to her ear.

It was always worth asking. A report had come in via a combination of code words on a disaster notification message board to prevent a third party from tracking what was said.

(I thought I could use Hanatsuyu Kuchikusa and I was right to put together that macro just in case.)

Basically, Frenda had set things up so, if she didn’t contact her sister’s phone in a certain amount of time, an email asking for a defense job would automatically be sent through a series of intermediaries before reaching Hanatsuyu Kuchikusa. Payment upon completion of the job had been set up to work automatically as well.

Insurance like this was worth setting up while you were still safe. It was too late to scrape something together once you were already in a crisis.

For now, her sister was safe.

But that wouldn’t last forever. It would be best to not let this issue drag on.

“Now, then.”

She consciously shifted her focus.

Even with all her countermeasures in place, her phone was for emergencies only. She wanted to avoid using it as much as possible. Since the Mugino Family was from outside Academy City, she doubted they could intercept the signal, but Item was from Academy City.

So Frenda made her way to an internet cafe near Yokohama Station.

Any information from lodging and rest facilities would reach the Mugino Family before long, but she could still use them if she knew she would be found out. Basically, she had to keep it quick.

To avoid looking suspicious, she ordered the complimentary curry rice and melon soda.

(The luxury of getting as much of the food as you want is a selling point, so it’s weird they don’t have canned mackerel as an option.)

Then again, she was on the run, so she was lucky to be able to eat at all. Frenda entered the booth closest to the emergency exit, got on the computer, and began a speedy search for information.

“Crossword, Crossword… Oh? In the end, is this it?”

The ordinary search engines only provided links to a lot of puzzles with prize rewards, but a check through an underground search engine revealed some more dangerous articles.

This was the unseen negotiator for an organization.

“Kidnapping, threats, embezzlement, poisoning, a bomb threat at an international airport… Wow, he was the reason the president canceled his trip to Japan at the last second 5 years ago? Not bad.”

Frenda stopped eating the mild curry rice.

Even though she saw herself as the kind of scum who could eat while watching a livestream of people killing each other in the Colosseum.

On the other hand, they had anonymously exposed illegal bidding prices for construction projects. But based on the rest, that hadn’t been done out of a desire to see justice done – it was probably used to get the police to crush a rival criminal organization.

They were a genius in a single field.

By swapping out words and using language as a weapon, they could freely manipulate the emotions of enemy and ally alike to control individuals and organizations, or even tear them apart. They were like an expert in the unseen curse where the resistance each individual thought was best ended up working against the organization as a whole.

People like this were rare, but they did exist.

The Brain who gave advice to the Board of Directors and the Voice on the Phone who acted as a go-between for the legal and illegal worlds were probably that type.

Much like Frenda’s bombs, this was a power on a different axis from Academy City’s esper development. Those without a special power could only survive by keeping a hidden weapon that they had thoroughly honed. This person believed themselves superior and carried a variety of complexes.

Frenda must not stand on the same playing field as them.

No matter what.

“Argh. This is the kind of person I’d normally blow up before they could speak a word, but I’m supposed to capture them alive? Who knows when they’ll kill me in my sleep afterwards.”

(A number of these incidents don’t seem to have any link to the Mugino Family…no, that’s probably not it. In the end, that Family is just so big I can’t see every part of it. How far do their roots spread across the globe?)

As the name Crossword suggested, the negotiator would apparently cut printed character out of newspapers and magazines and paste them into letters to make threats. That would normally provide a lot of information from the paper, the blade used, the glue, and the location it was mailed from, but they calculated all that out and used it to their advantage. Such as being in Yokohama but throwing off the investigation by using newspapers delivered from Kansai or Hokkaido. By taking a hair from an enemy and mixing it into the glue, they could guide the police to a false arrest to punish that person for them.

(A paper magazine lover who dislikes email, huh? In the end, all the cutting out and pasting seems like it would just make the process harder, so maybe they’re the kind of person who enjoys doing things with their hands?)

A quiet craftsman who specialized in intellectual crimes.

As an energetic bomber, Frenda could sniff out the subtle differences between them.

Not even the sites that gathered underground articles on the cases had a photo of Crossword or their real name. In the end, all of their threat cases had gone unsolved. It didn’t sound like there was going to be any word on past convictions.

But Frenda did find one interesting piece of information.

“Crossword only ever uses synthetic glues. Not once in the past cases, did he or she use a traditional natural glue made by crushing rice.”

“I see. So do they have a severe food allergy?”

(Rice is everywhere in this country. Even when you buy wheat bread, it’s often made in the a factory that also uses rice. But when hiding out in a single location, it’s hard not to get sloppy with food. …They were headed to a forest safe house, right? Even if they fled there in a hurry, they would have to gather up a fair amount of allergy medication.)

“Specifically, antihistamines for regular use and epinephrine for emergency use. In the end, I should be able to find out Crossword’s identity by tracking down anyone who bought an unnatural amount of those medications today.”

Starch glue had many uses outside of stationery. For example, sturdily binding the pages of a thick book and keeping wallpaper on the wall. It was a landmine found all throughout life. Even the laundry starch used to keep blouses and shirts unwrinkled was essentially the same thing.

And while modern stamps used a synthetic adhesive, they used to use a starch glue. That meant there was a chance they used rice. Even when you tried to be careful, there was always the fear of some getting mixed in by mistake. It was unlikely they actually licked the stamps used for the threatening letters, but they would have to consider the possibility.

Frenda checked the clock in the corner of the desktop screen.

She was out of time.

“Oops. It’d be a shame to let this curry go to waste.”

The blonde girl used the largish spoon to scarf down the rest of the curry while organizing the information in her mind.

Antihistamines could be bought just about anywhere, so they wouldn’t be very useful.

So she decided to run one last search: sketchy online shopping sites offering epinephrine.

Crossword would have seen the same sites.

Part 7

Hotels and inns would be watched by the police and criminal organizations, but there some surprising places remained unmonitored.

Like a small multi-tenant building.

This one in particular was a makeshift office used by phone operators hired out by companies.

The people who thought they were calling up a big corporate headquarters to complain would have been shocked to see this.

The skinny building was as thin as a watermelon slice someone had failed to cut evenly and it was filled with locked rooms, but just one of the small rooms contained a sofa and a bed. If you didn’t make any noise, no one else would notice. If you wanted a bath, you could visit the spa across the street. It was perfect as long as you weren’t too concerned about complying with the laws governing the hotel business.

“…”

And Kinuhata Saiai was viewing it with her mouth forming a small triangle.

Noticing her gaze, the track suit girl spoke.

“It’s alright, Kinuhata. I’ll do it for you later.”

Takitsubo Rikou sat on the edge of the bed.

Mugino Shizuri was lying down with her head resting on the track suit girl’s lap.

Takitsubo was cleaning her ears.

And it didn’t seem like the first time she had done this.

“Wow.”

“This really helps calm her down,” said Takitsubo, keeping her hands working. “Mugino, what will we do now?”

“With the Sakuya faction as large as it is, Sakuya can’t protect each and every one of them, right? And as members of the Mugino Family, they aren’t innocent civilians, so we don’t have to hold back. As soon as they show an opening, we can start tearing through their troops and get whatever information we can out of- kyah!”

“Mugino,” briefly said Takitsubo.

Mugino was resting on her lap and getting her ear cleaned out, so Takitsubo had a small bamboo stick in her right ear.

Deep inside, but precisely controlled.

“Hey…you intentionally didn’t bring this up until you had me like this, didn’t you?”

“Because you would have snapped and started firing Meltdowner if I hadn’t.”

…The girl really did understand Mugino’s personality. At any other time, she might very well have blown away one of her teammates.

“Blindly tearing through the enemy will only hurt you in the long run, right? The Mugino Family is your family.”

“They’re after my future and my life. I can’t survive if I go soft like that.”

“I will come up with a method.”

Part 8

The Mugino Family head really was not in the mansion.

He had left on a job before midnight.

The well-polished black bulletproof car was parked on the curb in the verdant city outskirts.

“Oh, the sun’s coming out already. I really am becoming nocturnal now. That’s so bad for your health… The line is so fuzzy when doing things online, but now that that amateurish group of false billing scammers causing so much trouble in the area has been dismantled in a game of .50 caliber target practice, I really thought I could rest easy and get some sleep, but now this.”

The elderly family head left the car.

The man in a fancy Italian suit breathed in the biting chill of the early morning air, released a white breath, and gazed into the morning sun. Without really focusing on it.

A maid called Kagyu bowed respectfully next to him. She had only just been promoted from the troops to the Management. That meant she was still a new Manager. That wasn’t a position that normally let one speak directly to the head.

The reason for this was obvious.

“We still cannot reach Sakuya-sama. Roll call is underway, but we still do not know how much of the Management has rebelled. Plus, those who did obediently respond could always be spies.”

“I see.”

“Shizuri-sama was seen around, but we do not know where she has gone. According to the troops present, she did not seem intent on joining Sakuya-sama. She escaped after catching Manager Mujinayama off guard. …That we had no information on her before this suggests Sakuya-sama’s faction was monitoring her actions and keeping any reports from reaching the Family as a whole.”

“…I see.”

The number of butlers and maids who responded to his lowered gaze was noticeably small. All the trump cards known as the old-timers or veterans were missing. Even Mujinayama, who had acted as the chief holding Management together, had left the head’s side and gone into hiding.

That would explain why Shizuri’s presence in Yokohama had not reached the head’s ears.

Their betrayal had not been revealed by mistake. At this point, there was nothing he could do with this knowledge. Sakuya was making her intentions clear.

The amount of Management on your side was directly linked to your strength in the Bloodline.

This alone revealed the scope of Mugino Sakuya’s rebellion. Maybe that was a natural cause of concern for the one whose throne was being targeted.

Except this wasn’t about that.

“I can only think of one reason Mujinayama would freeze long enough for Shizuri to escape. She fried my diorama, didn’t she?”

He had spent 40 years on that. A man would have things he prized more than his life. Quite a few things.

The Italian suit man’s shoulders slumped and he leaned his weight against the handle of the shovel sticking into the ground.

And in that ground, men with the fearsome look of professional criminals were buried upright with just their heads sticking out.

Who the row of heads belonged to was obvious.

These were the troops of the rival organization who Frenda Seivelun had baited into a shootout with the Mugino Family. They apparently operated in budget padding.

The head spoke quietly.

“Who do you think you are giving me more work to do at 4 or 5 in the morning? Well, it hasn’t been fun for you either, I suppose, but the fact remains that you fired bullets toward our mansion. You have to pay for that.”

“We’ll pay you money. We know how the professional world works. Violence is our business and we know what it’s worth. We’ll even throw in some extra so the Mugino Family will profit from this. How does that-”

“Satou-san was out taking a walk.”

The criminal organization men had no idea who that was and fell silent.

But they had misread the situation.

“The Suzuki couple were out jogging in the morning like they always do. Yamada-kun, a scholarship student, was out delivering newspapers. Yabe-san the baker was taking a break after finishing his morning preparations. He had left his bakery to visit the nearby convenience store, a small joy he treats himself to every morning. Because he lately learned that Kimura-san the convenience store manager has a shared interest with him.”

He knew them all.

But not to find new sources of money for his criminal organization.

This was what mattered to him.

“You weren’t worried about stray bullets? Not even a little? Professional criminals like you should know just how much lead hurts.”

“W-we didn’t hear anything about anyone being hit.”

“Whether or not anyone was actually hit isn’t the point.”

A chill entered the air.

The Mugino Family didn’t put all that much weight on illegal sources of income.

They made all the money they could need with their above-board grain production business that filled 1.4 billion people’s stomachs. And without having to worry about money, they could stick more strongly to their principles without ever compromising.

If they didn’t need money, why did they support crimes like gun running and people smuggling?

So they could hear the voices of people from every business and class.

Like St. Mary Magdalene who protected sex workers and others of low status, or like Enma who viewed all of an individual’s sins and judged them accordingly.

“This comes before that,” said the great umbrella that drew no line between good and evil. “The very act of firing guns plants fear in this area. You wield your guns for your own purposes and commit crimes without a second thought, causing the local people to withdraw. You have put the entire Yokohama area on edge. Satou-san, Suzuki-san, and all the others did nothing wrong. Yet they are afraid, reluctant to head outside early in the morning, and have unfairly lost some of the options they should have had in life. Doesn’t that seem like an unforgivable misdeed?”

“What are you babbling about? None of that changes that we’re both criminal organizations!”

“Which is fine. I am simply trying to help the incredible people who can do what I can’t.”

He answered right away.

He didn’t yell and he didn’t scorn.

The Mugino Family’s king had long since moved past anger.

“Since you don’t seem to understand, let’s discuss definitions. All the people who live normal lives in the ordinary world are incredible people deserving of our respect. We couldn’t manage that, so we need to understand that on a deeper level than anyone. That’s why I won’t let you harm those people who have outdone me so thoroughly. I won’t.”

Sensing something, the young maid stepped back, so he couldn’t swipe her handgun.

So instead he raised the shovel in both hands and smashed each head in turn.

Right on down the row.

This boosted the despair and terror.

The next man in line glared resentfully, but not at the family head.

At the maid.

The criminals were crushed without the right to a quick and painless death.

It was all over.

The maid began to hold out a handkerchief but hesitated. He was entirely soaked with blood. A single handkerchief wouldn’t make a dent in that.

The Mugino Family head ignored the blood as he stabbed the heavy shovel into the ground again.

“You said someone fired the ALCMs without my permission?”

“Yes. We detected a variable-sweep wing aircraft take off from the remote island. That Russian four-seater is not designed for stealth, so that is worrying. We assume it was launched by Sakuya-sama’s faction.”

“And Shizuri was using her Academy City power all over the place.”

“Yes. Meltdowner, I believe it is called. I believe she is ranked as the #4 Level 5 in all of Academy City.”

So much for regional stability.

Who was it that was most responsible for Yokohama being on edge?

That went without saying.

“Sakuya made the first move and then Shizuri responded. So from the other likely candidates, Horika and Ginsuke must be waiting to see what happens. Of course, those cunning brats probably won’t aim for the top spot themselves. They’re more likely to side with the most likely winner and then turn them into a puppet ruler.”

Just because a Bloodline member wasn’t acting now did not mean they were a pacifist.

They were viewing the map and lining up their pieces in their own way.

The family head smiled bitterly while dyed red with the blood of around a dozen people.

“I dread to think what will become of the Mugino Family.”

Part 9

Mugino was freed from the ear cleaning.

Takitsubo Rikou got the conversation started in the makeshift office they were using as a hideout.

“Between Frenda and Sakuya, Sakuya should be easier to find. And the two of them will clash without our help. So we can find them both by pursuing just one.”

“But super how are we supposed to track her down? Even if she has an advantage, she’s still in the middle of a coup. Seems to me that puts her in a delicate position.”

Takitsubo had an answer for Kinuhata’s question.

The track suit girl had said she would come up with a method.

“Sakuya isn’t a trusting person. Not because she’s clever, but because people who profit by betraying others assume everyone else is doing the same thing. That keeps them from opening up to anyone. It’s like a curse binding them.”

“And?” irritably asked Mugino.

“Sakuya will be monitoring her allies even more than her enemies.”

The track suit girl flicked something with her finger.

An eraser-sized machine slid atop the glass table.

“A bug,” said Kinuhata, exasperated.

“It was on the inside of the maid’s collar. I of course made sure it isn’t functioning anymore,” said Takitsubo. “Inside Academy City, it would be less conspicuous to bug their phones. That way the targets would recharge it on their own. But they must use independent devices out here.”

A bug was a device that picked up surrounding noises with a microphone and then transmitted that data. As long as you knew the frequency, you could track down the source of the signal with a cheap walkie-talkie or radio.

Kinuhata looked uncertain.

“Do the Sakuya faction butlers and maids super not know about this?”

“Of course they know. One or two would be one thing, but hiding it from all of her troops just isn’t possible. If those bugs are listening around the clock, how many hours would the batteries last? And what if they wash their clothes with the bug still attached? It’s like the body cams used to catch crooked Anti-Skill officers. They know they’re being spied on.”

Item would use whatever they could.

The bug signal wasn’t all that powerful, but they could pick up the weak signal if they increased the size of the antenna.

“What’s the biggest antenna in the Yokohama area? That big antenna tower on top of a phone company? Or are we going to attack and take over that landmark skyscraper?”

“We don’t need to go that far. There’s a small electronics district near Yokohama Station, right? The frequency isn’t much different from an AM broadcast, so we can wrap some copper wire and make our own flat 5m-diameter antenna.”

Part 10

This early in the morning, no one was around. So Frenda attacked the physical “warehouse” for a sketchy online store that sold quite a few strange medical products.

It was a major drugstore.

Of course, the entire group wasn’t part of the illicit business. A hired pharmacist was making some extra money on the side. But that wasn’t her target here.

“Uonaka Ichijo. Hm, all easy kanji.”

Frenda smiled bitterly at the print-out she held.

Images from security cameras outside Academy City were grainy, but she did have an image of his face. It had only been a few hours since he disappeared, so she didn’t have to worry about him changing his face with plastic surgery. Just like when falling and scraping your knee, it could take days for even a small wound to heal. Unlike in TV dramas, surgery to the entire face required a lengthy schedule before the bandages could be removed.

She knew about the forest safe house thanks to intercepting a radio exchange.

Not all of Kanagawa was big cities and tourist destinations. It was mostly associated with the coast, but more than a third of its area was taken up by mountains and woods.

The resort areas where redevelopment had failed were in a tragic state. When buying a house, people ordinarily took out a mortgage at the bank and spent their entire life paying it off. But in these places, a lot of properties went for less than a million yen. And even with such low prices, the places were ghost towns. There weren’t any stores nearby and cell coverage was spotty at best that deep in the mountains. Living there was about as inconvenient as could be, but it was easy for shady people to acquire a temporary hideout there.

So it was time to get moving.

“Whew. In the end, I’m glad it turns out you can hitchhike in Japan.”

“You can’t! It’s way too dangerous! What is a teenage girl like you thinking flagging down cars? What would you have done if I hadn’t picked you up!?”

She was on her way to her destination with some help from a worrier of a trucker.

…The long-distance trucker reminded her of the truck driver killed by the explosion in Shinjuku, Tokyo, but that was meaningless. She tried to force the thought from her mind.

And couldn’t manage it.

(Damn.)

She glared at her silly face reflected in the passenger side door window. She lived in Academy City’s dark side. She had seen plenty of lives she hadn’t been able to save.

The driver’s eyes widened when they arrived at her destination.

The air was damp. The cricket and katydid cries were nearly deafening.

Even in early September, the mountain trees had not yet begun turning red.

“You really want to get off at this ghost town overgrown with weeds? What are you even doing here?”

“Ah ha ha. My grampa moved here for a new life after retiring. The houses here are super cheap and did you know there’s a hot spring near here? It’s a great place, but his laundry piles up if I don’t visit him every so often.”

“Huh, so your grandfather loves Japan, does he?”

“More like he loves Japanese military history. Apparently a lot of famous Japanese warriors lived around here. I only half listen when he goes on about it, so I don’t remember any of the names other than Takeda Shingen.”

“Oh, Sengoku period warriors? That’s a little different from the Minamoto clan or Shizuka Gozen, I guess. But maybe it has to do with Odawara Castle or Tsukui Castle?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

Frenda smiled and kept on telling lies.

If he got the impression she was out in the mountains to kill herself, he might try to stop her. …And a kindhearted man like that would only shorten his lifespan considerably by getting involved in this mess.

She wasn’t responsible for the Shinjuku bombing.

But she was sick of feeling the way it made her feel.

She waved as the truck drove off and, after making sure it was good and gone, she got to work.

(In the end, I’m going to end this here.)

She entered the ghost town overrun by weeds.

This was also a route leading to Academy City, but the scenery was completely different from the route to the east gate going through Shinjuku. Here near the south gate, everything was mountains and greenery.

It felt chillier than in Yokohama, but instead of the altitude, it probably had to do with the lack of the heat island created by the concrete and asphalt.

(Honestly. In the end, it’s hard to believe Academy City is right on the other side of the wall from this.)

The natural scenery seemed like a good fit for a semiconductor plant…or would a hot springs region actually be a bad fit because of all the extra minerals in the water?

The rusty road sign said this was the road to Hot Spring Shrine. Before science had explained how hot springs worked, they may have been linked to mountain worship.

(That traditional atmosphere is nice. Seems like it would actually be better for your health.)

Mountain worship. That meant this was a place for ascetic discipline. Searching on foot was probably going to be a pain.

The mountain road mostly took a winding route up the slope, but tiers had been dug into the slope to create a level surface for a small hot spring inn, a hotel, and more…or what had once been those things. The tiers were uniform, but the heights of the buildings differed, so some buildings stretched up higher than the next tier.

“No sign of life here. In the end, the place can’t be entirely abandoned.”

After spotting a deteriorating gate for a Spring Water Shopping District, Frenda left the winding mountain road.

She expected she was overthinking things, but a single long path was a scary thing for a professional bomber. It would be the perfect place for tripwires, sensors, and other traps. She slipped past what looked like an abandoned souvenir shop and walked through a weed-filled garden before finding some steep stairs climbing the concrete retaining wall holding the tiered slope in place.

She hadn’t found any traps yet, but that was no reason to relax.

In a minefield, one step being safe was no guarantee the next one would be.

She didn’t see any graffiti on the walls or anyone sleeping on the roadside. Probably because people still lived here, however few they might be.

More than just conifer trees, the foliage in the area included some chestnut and tea plants. Had someone grown them in their garden, or had animals carried the seeds here?

Animals.

“…”

Just as Frenda moved out onto the mountain road again, she crouched down and glanced at the guardrail which had fallen into disrepair.

She saw fur.

The tuft looked like wild dog fur except thicker. Had it been scraped off as the animal passed by?

“Ugh. In the end, they have the non-cute kind of bear around here?”

On the other hand, a wild animal like that would have triggered any kind of detailed and sensitive explosive trap. Frenda wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved or see this as a threat.

She wasn’t sure if they were bulbuls or starlings, but some wild bird cries passed overhead.

She placed her hands on the rusty guardrail and took a look at the scenery below. She spotted a straight line cut out of the fluffy forest. A mountain railroad must have run through here at some point. And it looked like there was another road too.

She slowly but surely climbed the mountain.

She felt impatient.

But she knew this would end with conflict. She couldn’t afford to have her legs worn out by the time she arrived.

The actual elevation to her destination couldn’t have been even 500m. It was higher up the slope, but nowhere near the summit.

“Phew.”

For some reason, she found a barrier similar to at a railroad crossing in the middle of the road. The metal pole had rusted and broken and the sign had fallen to the ground.

Scenic Heights.

“In the end, this must be the place.”

This wasn’t like before.

Had her senses been sharpened by walking so long without meeting anyone?

She couldn’t say what exactly was different, but she sensed an unnatural “regularity” to this scenery. It was an indescribable sense of wrongness, like finding the overgrown weeds had been combed into place.

This was proof that someone had been in and out of here.

It would have been prime real estate back when the hot spring resort was functioning, but now the weeds had grown to Frenda’s hip height. Instead of inns or hotels, two or three story villas were lined up irregularly. Had those all been ultra luxury second homes that could draw spring water directly from the hot spring? The barrier from before may have meant this had been a fenced-off gated committee. And now look at it. It reminded Frenda of the Japanese idea that the prosperous will eventually decline.

The safe house being used by Crossword Uonaka Ichijo, the Mugino Family negotiator, was a villa toward the back.

The wooden villa was as big as a school building.

Just to be safe, Frenda slowly approached from downwind.

(Anyway, I need to capture Mugino Sakuya’s negotiator. Then my counterattack can begin!)

While organizing her plan in her mind, Frenda Seivelun approached the giant villa in a ghost town that had been forgotten by time.

And a moment later…

Something exploded.

Frenda wasn’t even close to the blast, but her small body was still knocked to the ground. If she hadn’t known how to land safely, she might have broken a limb.

More than half the mansion-like villa had been destroyed.

The building’s cross-section was plain to see.

(What in the…!?) Frenda Seivelun was a professional bomber. She had confirmed in advance that there were no explosives in the area. And yet this had happened.

The sound of something beating at and slicing through the air passed by overhead. It turned in midair and directed its nose toward her.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

That was a remote-controlled, Academy City attack helicopter.

“A Two Wings… Damn. In the end, Academy City has crossed a line now!!”

Part 11

Sobasaka Michio’s eyes widened after entering Kanagawa without permission.

“What the hell is that!?”

A formation of Two Wings soared rapidly by above his car.

A single attack helicopter would be bad enough, but this was a whole group.

Even now, their Gatling guns were firing bands of light from the sky and the wings on either side had spread out like arms to launch tank shells that tore into the ground and exploded.

…Was this really Japan?

The Kanagawa police department would protest to Academy City, but the city would never listen.

Or would the headquarters request to have fighters scrambled from an airbase?

That might get fighters in the air, but this ghost town was still classified as an urban area. Firing live ammo on this unidentified force simply wasn’t happening. Their department was an odd one that proudly exclaimed that their lack of combat experience was proof of how peaceful their country was.

The helicopters made no attempt to hide what they were doing. This wasn’t some reckless attack. Academy City had probably already set up the laws and treaties in their favor.

Academy City was the headquarters of every academic field, so they would of course have plenty of top class lawyers as well. Trying to compete with Academy City in a brainy field was a mistake.

“I-it’s not too late to turn back!” shouted Sobasaka’s new partner. “This isn’t a job for the police!!”

“If you don’t like it, hop out and walk back, newbie.”

“If I’m left out in these mountains, I’ll be torn apart by stray bullets!!”

“Then prepare yourself. We need to be on the scene. A crime is being committed before our eyes. I don’t know what those helicopters are firing at, but if the police give up, then the law ceases to function in this country!!”

Part 12

Frenda Seivelun immediately hid behind a nearby tree trunk bigger around than she was.

Even that cover would be shredded if an attack helicopter took aim at it.

Along with Frenda hiding behind it.

(What do I do? Withdraw? Think. That would be the smart thing to do, but in the end, what happens to me if I leave without capturing Crossword!? If I keep doing the “smart” thing to avoid any risk, my chances will only continue to shrink!!)

Frenda was panicking, but then she noticed some motion in the distant rubble.

Through the cross-section of the half-destroyed mansion, she could see inside the second floor

A man was there.

He was still alive.

At this point, she didn’t care how injured he was.

(Uonaka Ichijo. If he’s alive, then I have to capture him!!)

On the professional battlefield, getting greedy was a good way to get yourself killed. That was an inviolable rule, but Frenda had somehow managed to avoid being killed instantly.

She heard another rotor.

The Mugino Family must have had their own secret attack helicopter. The aerial weapon must have been dismantled, the pieces packed into separate shipping containers, and then reassembled inside Japan.

(A large Russian helicopter?)

This changed the Two Wings’ priority.

From ground attack to air combat.

(Uh, oh. In the end, that thing can’t beat the Two Wings!!)

Frenda kept an eye on the sky as she ran toward the blasted rubble.

That was a global best seller in the category of attack helicopter, but it was still inferior to a cutting-edge Academy City model. Besides, the large Russian helicopter had cargo space for eight soldiers in addition to its direct weaponry. When compared to a helicopter designed only for direct combat, its belly had a van’s worth of extra volume.

The Two Wings moved faster, located enemies faster, and attacked faster. It didn’t leave any openings.

The monster even had a secondary jet engines. It could make sharp emergency slides to the side and even perform a flashy loop-the-loop despite being a helicopter. The basic specs of the two models of helicopter were just too different.

As Frenda watched, the air-to-air missile launched from the Mugino Family helicopter was easily evaded. More than just moving fast, it had to be emitting IR, EM, or something else invisible that disturbed the missile.

An explosive boom sounded.

A horizontal storm of fire sliced through the air in counterattack, tearing apart the large helicopter.

The five-piece main rotor spun fruitlessly as the burning hulk dropped. Like a meteor. And of all places, it was falling straight toward Frenda as she ran along the ground.

“Dammit!!”

Her heart froze. There was nothing she could do.

Then there was another explosion.

The Two Wings had fired its 120mm cannon to shred the falling helicopter. That was blatant overkill, but the program must have continued attacking because the metallic reading designated as its target was considered “still flying” as long as it continued gliding for a certain amount of time.

Just before small pieces of scorching metal poured down like rain, Frenda scrambled through the villa’s entrance and into its main hall.

Then again, that wasn’t much in the way of cover. The initial attack had only left the front wall intact and the blown-up rear led directly out into the grass.

Razor-sharp rain filled the space on the other side of the wall.

Climbing those crumbling stairs scared Frenda, but she couldn’t be picky right now.

Once on the second floor, she saw someone curled up in fear.

Was that him?

Mugino Family Sakuya Faction Negotiator, “Crossword” Uonaka Ichijo.

He was the foundation of the parent-killing plan.

The ceiling had collapsed, making the hallway something like a convertible and something was staring down at her from the wide-open sky. The Two Wings attack helicopter had locked onto its target again.

“!?”

(If I don’t capture him alive, I won’t be able to control Sakuya!!)

She had to make Sakuya reluctant to lose him. If the hostage died, the enemy boss wouldn’t hesitate.

She would give the go-ahead and a reckless slaughter would begin.

There was no time to complain.

Frenda just ran.

She rushed toward the man frozen in shock and then soared out through the building’s cross-section.

The 120mm cannon opened fire.

Explosive flames filled the second floor of the school-sized villa.

Frenda and the man just barely managed to fall down to the enormous dining room on the first floor, breaking the surviving long table on their way to the floor.

“Kh… Don’t die on me!!”

She grabbed his arm.

The wet sensation was of course blood.

Still, Frenda Seivelun had just barely secured the negotiator.

She dragged him over to the surviving wall and barely avoided the line of fire from a 20mm autocannon.

Staying here wouldn’t work.

She needed a sturdier shield. The bullets were bad enough, but an explosive blast could fill the space and circle around behind walls. Frenda turned her head to look at the mountain slope past the crumbling outer wall. This early in the morning, the orange sunrise was visible too.

“What? Why are you helping me? Are you giving me a chance to confess my sins?”

“Oh, shut up. If you don’t want to die, you need to get to the mountain tunnel!! In the end, we can escape the Two Wings’ bombing there!!”

With the large helicopter shot down, all of the soaring Two Wings could once more focus on the ground. Their top priority would be “Crossword” Uonaka Ichijo, but Frenda could easily get blown up right along with him since she was lending him her shoulder.

The man groaned and coughed up blood.

“Leave me here…”

“Enough complaining.”

“I’m going to die either way. Whatever you’re hoping to get from me, it won’t work. So leave me here.”

“I’m not doing this to save your villainous ass! Shut up and run!!”

He was clearly taller and heavier than Frenda and he was worn out and near death. Even running 20m lending him her shoulder would be risky.

Nevertheless, they managed to dive into the tunnel together.

A powerful explosion erupted nearby. Apparently the 120mm cannon had crashed into the thick mountain face.

Frenda’s hearing was drowned out by an intense ringing for a bit.

But that meant she was still alive.

She grimaced and placed her hand on the tunnel wall to stand back up. She grabbed a first-aid kit attached to the wall, opened it, and pulled out the disinfectant and bandages.

He pissed her off, but she couldn’t let Crossword die from his blood loss.

Maybe it was too little too late, but she had to do her best to stanch his bleeding. This was a struggle only available to her because she was still alive. Although she did make sure to apply the disinfectant and tie the bandages as painfully as she could manage.

“Ugh! B-be more gentle…”

“You think you’re in position to make demands? Think before you speak next time. In the end, I’m not your big sister!!”

But Frenda Seivelun could not reflect on the ordinary joy of survival.

She had a bad feeling.

“…”

An icy sensation crawled along her spine. Something in the air changed. Or so it seemed to her.

“What? Why are you-”

“Sh.”

She held out a hand to shush Uonaka Ichijo.

Quietly, Frenda poked her head out from the tunnel to take a look.

And she frantically pulled it back inside. With her breath caught in her throat.

That was not who she wanted to see.

Mugino Shizuri and Item.

Mugino Sakuya and the Mugino Family.

A cold sweat poured down Frenda’s brow.

They were both monsters. She had just risked her life to capture someone who might just be able to stop the killing of parents across the country. If she was caught up in another battle here, the negotiator – the key to it all – could be killed.

The bloody man leaned back against the wall and sat down on the ground before asking a question while breathing heavily.

He hadn’t wanted to sit. He just couldn’t stay upright any longer.

“Wh-what are you going to do?”

“We need to get deeper inside the tunnel. Listen. I need you to help stop the killing of the parents. Don’t you dare die before that’s done. In the end, I’ll resuscitate you and then kill you in a much more painful way myself!!”

Part 13

Of course.

Mugino Shizuri and Mugino Sakuya had not enjoyed a friendly journey deep into the mountains together.

Their battle had begun on the way.

“As expected, you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. You’re as stupid as Eika. Everyone, land this fish before she breaks the line.”

The woman wore a gorgeous storybook dress.

Mugino Sakuya sneered thinly.

This wasn’t the time to be picky. Shizuri raised her voice.

“Kinuhata!! You focus on the ones with blades who move in such a pain-in-the-ass way!! I can fry all the second-rates who keep their distance and rely on projectile weapons!!”

“Super on it.”

With a dull “thud!!”, Kinuhata’s head jerked upwards.

The motion was a lot like receiving an uppercut, but her entire body was guarded by a thick nitrogen barrier.

A swooshing sound came later.

“You’re a tough one, little lady. A 12-gauge from that range isn’t enough to knock you down? I guess our assumptions out here don’t apply to you Academy City kids.”

“I’m super flattered.”

“But a slug’ll break through. Sure, you’ve got a special power, but your specialty is martial arts, isn’t it? I’ve fought someone like you before. I just have to remember that time I had to fight a tiger and brown bear covered in bulletproof armor.”

The man wielded a nunchaku shotgun made by linking two shotguns with a short chain. Wasn’t he called Ougigumo?

The shotguns so loved by the American military caused the most damage when pressed directly against the opponent’s gut and fired. And the nunchaku was less about the destructive force of the physical impacts and more about creating strange, ever-changing trajectories that defied the enemy’s ability to accurately predict them and slipped past their defenses through sheer unexpectedness. It might seem silly at first, but the combination of a close-quarters shotgun and ancient martial arts may have been surprisingly effective.

“Let me enjoy this a bit, okay? Your great Academy City power isn’t flimsier than a bulletproof car’s door, is it!?”

The shotgun was the ultimate close-quarters weapon and he could cover all 360 degrees.

All Ougigumo had to do was get close to his enemy and he was unstoppable.

Except…

“By the way, this super isn’t a completely deserted ghost town, is it?”

“?”

“That means the power, gas, and water lines should still be active. And this deep in the mountains, they won’t use city gas carried in through pipes. They’ll use giant propane tanks brought in by truck, don’t you think?”

“Gwoh!?”

When Kinuhata used Offense Armor to lightly kick up like she would a soccer ball, the American shotgun moved on reflex. The idiot accidentally triggered a powerful explosion.

A large motorcycle engine roared through the mountains.

Holding his heavy machinegun like an old knight would a lance, Bakyaku spoke up in exasperation.

“Don’t get yourself killed before I can even try to work with you, Ougigumo. I’m docking you points for that.”

“12.7mm… I’m super taking him out first!!”

“Kinuhata, what should I do?” asked Takitsubo.

“Get in some building or another and stand by! If I have something for you to do, I’ll super call your phone!!”

Kinuhata shouted that, kicked off the nearly vertical retaining wall nearby and climbed up to the next tier.

Unless it was a specialized off-road motorcycle, motorcycles were generally not a good choice for rough mountain terrain. Driving through the weed-filled gardens and across the overgrown grass would get foliage tangled in the wheels and chains. He couldn’t drive up the concrete retaining walls to prevent landslides, so he had to use the winding mountain road to move between tiers.

Thus, anyone who could move directly between tiers could run circles around him.

Kinuhata had the advantage.

Keep this up and he was bound to make a fatal mistake.

(That heavy machinegun is more of a threat than a 2000x damage boost, but I can super attack him whenever I want since his movements are so restricted. I can focus on staying behind cover while moving along the roofs to reach a good attack posi-)

It came from the side.

Without warning, the large motorcycle’s front wheel charged sharply toward Kinuhata.

That was way too soon for him to have gone up the winding mountain road!

“Wha-?”

She didn’t have time for surprise.

With a dull thud, Kinuhata’s small body was thrown to the asphalt. The big motorcycle had slammed into her. She rolled back, hopped up, and finally took intentional evasive action. Bakyaku’s heavy machinegun roared and easily plowed the pavement in pursuit of Kinuhata.

She let Offense Armor protect her as she broke through the window of a nearby inn and fled deep inside the abandoned building.

She spied out from a 2nd floor window and thought.

(Tch!! I see. So that’s super it.)

The mountain road zigzagged back and forth, but the concrete retaining walls had steep stairs and the tall hotel rose higher than the next tier up. There were plenty of alternate routes a large motorcycle could use as a shortcut.

Kinuhata heard the roar of the engine.

It was close.

Bakyaku was probably already inside the same old inn. Still on the large motorcycle.

With Offense Armor, a close-range shotgun blast would only make Kinuhata bend back some, but a heavy machinegun was another story. She might be able to use her full strength to stop a single shot, but she might not manage that if several hit her in quick succession. And of course, once her power slipped. Her flesh and bone body would be obliterated.

(Should I break the windows to spread glass shards around? No, I don’t know enough about him. If those tires were injected with plastic instead of air, like the ones bulletproof cars use, then I can’t super puncture them!!)

A thumping sound came from the stairs.

Kinuhata turned that way with a very bad feeling and the bright beams of headlights shined out at her.

Bakyaku.

A Mugino Family Manager.

The young butler spoke, still straddling the large motorcycle.

“I have nothing against you, but you sided with Shizuri-sama, which makes you Sakuya-sama’s enemy. I do thank you, though. By serving Shizuri-sama, you have contributed to the Mugino Family. I have no intention of taking that from you.”

“You have some guts saying that while super taking the side trying to kill Mugino, you rebel.”

“I need no excuse. This is my way of expressing my love for the Family.”

The motorcycle engine howled. The two-wheeled hunk of metal shot forward. With the heavy machinegun aimed at little Kinuhata.

Not even Offense Armor could stop that destructive power.

“Prepare yourself.”

“And…done,” said a sluggish voice.

It was Takitsubo Rikou.

She had horizontally extended a wire made from winding together several thin steel wires. At about face height.

Bakyaku’s body swung around with his head as the center point. The motorcycle continued on ahead as the body stayed in place before falling to the floor. The biker-killing wire trap had caught him right in the neck. Of course, she hadn’t been holding the wire by hand. It was wrapped around something like a large reel.

“Wh-where did you super find that?”

“There are a bunch of them over there. The inn’s banquet hall has a small stage, so I think the wires are used to raise and lower the curtain.”

Several lights flashed outside the window.

Those would be Mugino’s Meltdowner.

She didn’t even need to actually destroy the butlers and maids. By melting the mountain road’s asphalt or the concrete retaining wall, the rank and file troops pursued by the orange rivers would be forced to flee. Instead of a situation where risking their lives could end up with both sides dead, challenging her was like sticking your head into a blast furnace. Apparently not even the Mugino Family troops were that reckless.

Kinuhata stared out of the inn’s window.

“Sigh. We super can’t rejoin Mugino with all that going on.”

“If we reach the goal first and wait, she’ll catch up with us.”

And so Kinuhata and Takitsubo decided to climb the mountain ahead of Mugino.

On the track suit girl’s instructions, Kinuhata silently eliminated the snipers and marksmen hidden in the bushes along the way.

“But what is Sakuya’s faction doing way out in the mountains like this?”

“Who knows. Maybe they have a hideout here?”

Item had made it this far following the signals from the bugs Sakuya used to keep her people loyal. When all they needed were the coordinates, they didn’t need to decrypt or decipher the signal. So they had made it this far without knowing what the plan was.

“And super Frenda-san is supposed to be here too, but what would she be doing here?”

“Again, maybe this is their hideout.”

They climbed the winding mountain road all the way to the top.

The track suit girl really was good at these tests of endurance. She remained expressionless even though she wasn’t physically boosted in any way like Kinuhata was.

They arrived at what looked like a group of luxury villas…or what was left of them. If Frenda wasn’t here, either Mugino or Sakuya would probably find her while climbing the slope. What that meant regarding Frenda’s safety was less certain.

“(Where is super Frenda-san?)”

“(Sakuya is here, so Frenda should be here somewhere.)”

She wouldn’t be anywhere obvious. That bomber girl’s life was on the line. Although it seemed safer to these two if Frenda made her appearance now while none of the Mugino Family Bloodline – neither Shizuri nor Sakuya – were here.

“If there’s any chance of this working out, we need to super find Frenda-san before it starts raining blood. Takitsubo-san, where do you think we should start looking?”

“Wait, Kinuhata.”

They heard something slicing through the air.

That was an Academy City Two Wings attack helicopter.

An entire group of them.

“Damn!!”

As soon as Kinuhata pushed blankly-staring Takitsubo behind a nearby boulder, a series of powerful explosions erupted.

The Academy City unmanned weapons were bombing something. Something nearby.

The noise was so bad it seemed like that alone would kill them, but it did appear that they weren’t the target.

“Are they after Frenda?”

“How should I super know!?”

And the catastrophe did not end there.

A beam of light lanced out.

And a second and third.

Something was approaching. Clear human killer intent spread across the nearly deserted abandoned buildings.

“That’s Mugino.”

“Takitsubo-san, you hide somewhere. Always keep an escape route in mind and be super ready to move at any time. You have 60 seconds.”

“Wait, Kinuhata.”

“She keeps firing those stupid powerful beams, but things still haven’t settled down. That means Mugino is being pushed back! I’ll gather as much attention as I can, but that means I can’t focus on protecting you while I fight!!”

Part 14

She threw punches and kicks.

But just before the moment of maximum impact, he would strike her wrist or push on her shin to sap the force of the blow. She combined ordinary martial arts with surprise Meltdowner blasts from her palms, but the old butler in a tuxedo and monocle only swung his head to the side to easily dodge them.

Mujinayama.

He swung something around like a club.

It was a precision sniper rifle.

That was not meant to be used as a striking weapon. But sniper rifles were made sturdy enough to endure their own recoil. Thus, it provided Mujinayama with competitive-level precision as well as a weapon for dirty brawling. He was very careful to ensure the blows did not send too powerful of vibrations to the barrel or workings of the gun. Just like a mountain sniper who was forced to treat his tools roughly.

“You’ve honed your skills this far and a silly coup’s the best you could come up with? What do you live your life for, Mujinayama?”

“Whether or not this is ‘silly’ is not for the lowly butlers like me to decide. That judgment is made by Sakuya-sama who will soon stand at the top of the Mugino Family.”

“You don’t get to complain how tough life is as a Manager who can’t choose the Bloodline they serve. You left me and sided with Sakuya. You betrayed the Family of your own free will.”

“I know nothing I say can-”

Mugino Shizuri sent a Meltdowner blast his way mid-sentence.

At the same time, something dropped straight down like a lightning bolt.

It was Kinuhata Saiai.

She landed with a dull “crash!!!”, the asphalt denting below her.

On the other hand, that was all that happened.

That surprise attack using her Academy City esper power should have been unavoidable for someone outside the city. But not even that could reach Mujinayama. He had already jumped backwards. The soles of his shoes skidded along in a harshly weaving S-shape as he did so.

He had gotten away.

“Shizuri-sama’s daily complaints about Academy City’s espers have told me all I need to know. I know you each have a single trump card and I know how you think to ensure you can make the most of that card. Thus, a surprise like this is well within my expectations.”

“Kh.”

Aside from that, there weren’t many people who could take on both a Level 5 and a Level 4 while remaining in control and protecting Sakuya.

“You should not have come here, Shizuri-sama. I gave you more than enough time. If you still have not found a way to kill me, then so be it.”

He remained composed while staring down Academy City’s #4.

Mujinayama was not unarmed.

He held a spear-long sniper rifle. Things had change since they were in the Mugino Family mansion. The old butler’s playful air was gone.

“Mujinayama is a family of mountain snipers. …I never imagined you would try to fight him in place like this. You did not think this through. You have given us far too great an advantage.”

Behind him, Mugino Sakuya whispered in obvious enjoyment.

The old butler was currently serving and protecting Sakuya, not Shizuri.

“Mujinayama, hurry up and kill her. You must protect the Bloodline you serve, no matter what. Hee hee. With a setup like this, even you will be forced to take this seriously, won’t you? You cannot protect me without killing Shizuri.”

The girl wasn’t even looking at the true villain of Sakuya.

The #4 was glaring only at the old butler.

“Mujinayama,” she growled.

“There are reasons I cannot abandon Sakuya-sama. They are, however, silly personal reasons not even worth conveying to you, Shizuri-sama.”

“This isn’t your rebellion. It’s Sakuya’s selfish desire!!”

“Be that as it may, I cannot leave Sakuya-sama alone. I simply cannot. Think of this too as the fate of a Manager serving the Bloodline and give up on me, Shizuri-sama.”

The atmosphere strained under the tension.

Mujinayama’s muscles crawled quietly below his luxurious tuxedo. The bundles of muscle fibers moved tightly as they entered a mode intended to kill.

This was the ideal form of the world’s most powerful predator which surpassed even the lion and the great white shark.

In other words, the human.

“Prepare yourself. You may be a legitimate member of the Bloodline, but you failed to gather the Management and are thus our enemy. I pray that this conflict will lay the foundation of further prosperity for the Mugino Family.”

His monocle did not even waver.

He scored a perfect 100 as a Manager serving the Mugino Family.

How ironic it was that his loyalty to the Family would turn around to threaten Shizuri as an individual.

Part 15

Mugino Shizuri and Kinuhata Saiai. Even in Academy City, where esper development was the norm, they held positions near the top of the ranks at Level 5 and Level 4.

Mujinayama didn’t care.

He slipped forward.

And then suddenly vanished.

Maybe he had intentionally let Mugino’s eyes get used to his movement before breaking free with his top speed.

She couldn’t be certain.

The color white scattered in her vision.

It had happened to her, but she couldn’t tell what it was that had happened to her.

Had he hit her?

Her brain was badly shaken, but even this was Mujinayama showing mercy.

Just this once.

If he could slip past her guard and slam the stock of his sniper rifle against her nose, he could just as easily have crushed her eyes or torn out her throat.

(This isn’t just about me. He broke free of Kinuhata’s eyes at the same time!?)

“Tch!?”

“Even the same, for example, right motion could lead to an attack with the fist, elbow, or shoulder, each of which will have a very different reach or power. You must always be cognizant of at least two, and if possible three, options so the enemy cannot predict your actions. I thought this was a lesson I had drilled into you from a young age.”

At this point, Mugino couldn’t afford to hold back.

Holding the struck bridge of her nose, she stepped back and held her other palm out front.

A beam exploded out.

Academy City’s #4 Level 5, Meltdowner.

When the old butler in a tuxedo and monocle sighed, it contained a note of pity.

Butler Mujinayama did not try to stop the attack. He simply sidestepped the deadly attack and walked toward her.

Right, right, left, right, left, left.

“Y-you’re kidding? So it wasn’t a fluke before. He’s really dodging Mugino’s super Meltdowner from head on like that!!”

“Holding your hand out to aim? That is so simple I almost thought it was a feint, Lady Shizuri. It does not matter how powerful an attack is if it is so predictable.”

Of course, Mujinayama did not have the power of precognition or mind reading. He was probably predicting Mugino’s aim from the distance between them and using the signs she gave him, but that wasn’t the biggest issue.

Drilled into.

From a young age.

This old butler had looked after Mugino Shizuri as far back as she could remember. That length of time was his greatest weapon. He knew this monster’s idiosyncrasies possibly even better than she did herself. This could not be overcome overnight. She could try to change those idiosyncrasies, but she could not consciously cover these things right away.

Mujinayama was getting closer.

A direct hit here would be deadly.

Everyone here knew that. He was an ordinary human who had not gone through the esper development, but he had still easily beaten down Kinuhata Saiai while she was boosted by her Level 4 Offense Armor. He really could slay a grizzly or lion barehanded. All of Item believed so without real evidence. This attacks were not something a human could endure.

And he was right there.

Mujinayama spoke while strolling below a row of cherry trees.

“Is this all you have, Lady Shizuri?”

But she couldn’t hit him.

The beams always sizzled right past the butler.

Mugino Shizuri’s deadly attack was ineffective against Mujinayama!!

“If so, you are no threat at all. Not even with that superpower you acquired in Academy City.”

“What, is a Mugino Family Manager hesitating to kill once it comes down to it? You’re gonna make me cry.”

“I have not been playing around.”

Metal audibly scraped against metal.

“Mujinayama is not a family of geniuses. Thus, we always make certain. The first shot is used to reveal all the small errors introduced by reality.”

It was the sound of him pulling back the sniper rifle’s bolt handle and loading the first round.

The Mountain Sniper whispered.

“Shizuri-sama, this little game of ours has allowed me to accurately measure your range of motion. My adjustments are now complete, so the next time it will be a real bullet.”

Part 16

Someone was watching all of this play out.

It was Frenda Seivelun waiting near the tunnel entrance.

“Are you kidding? In the end, Mugino of all people is being pushed back? She has Takitsubo and Kinuhata with her and she’s struggling against a single old man? In the end, it looks like Item can’t get by without their true star – Frenda-chan.”

Things were not going well.

But for some reason, Frenda still wasn’t moving.

She was hiding in a tunnel. If she cut through the mountain and left through the other end, she could escape.

Her reason was obvious.

“She’s the #4. There’s no way she’ll let this beat her, right? But that old man’s movements are definitely superhuman. Watch out, Mugino! Ahh, she’s gonna lose. Ahh.”

It was her eyes.

She had the same look in her eyes as the big sister chasing after her racing 7-year-old sister with a video camera.

The skill difference with Mujinayama was just that great.

Whatever the case, she couldn’t just let this happen.

Item’s advantage was their Academy City esper powers. Those unconventional powers were being pushed back by the overwhelming numbers of the Mugino Family. After all, there were only three of them. If Meltdowner and Offense Armor weren’t up to the task, then they would be crushed by sheer numbers.

Do not forget.

A single bullet was enough to kill someone. The esper development did nothing to change the biological body.

The time had come to think carefully.

(What can I use right now? I’m in a tunnel, so I can get potassium nitrate from a smoke bomb, there’s ethanol disinfectant in the first-aid kit, and I can probably separate the sodium from the de-icer. Or would the disaster tools include a small generator? If there’s any gasoline or diesel left in the tank, it would be faster to mess with that!)

Bloody and captured Uonaka Ichijo groaned.

“Hey, what’re you doing? Aren’t you gonna run?”

“In the end, the Sakuya faction will surround me and kill me if Mugino is defeated here. Even escaping through the tunnel will only keep me alive for a day or two before I run out of places to hide. So I can’t let them kill Mugino!!”

Part 17

Mujinayama was a sniper.

First, he accurately shot through the extra fuel tank of a Two Wings unmanned attack helicopter flying by overhead, causing the jet fuel within to explode. A shockwave dropped down on the entire area like a suspended ceiling. Mugino grimaced and was delayed by half a step while Mujinayama pulled the bolt handle to eject the empty cartridge. Then he loaded the next round.

“Gah!!”

With a bang, Kinuhata flew backwards.

She had moved in to guard Mugino.

She had recognized that the #4 would be hit if she didn’t.

Even with Offense Armor, it was a serious blow. A 7.62mm sniper round had nearly twice the bullet weight of an ordinary assault rifle round. And by intentionally shifting the center of gravity back, the big game round would bend 90 degrees on impact, releasing all of its kinetic energy 5cm within the target. Kinuhata rolled along the ground, doubled over and coughing.

Mugino clicked her tongue and launched Meltdowner, but the old butler in a tuxedo and monocle only took a step to the side. He calmly pulled the bolt handle and loaded the next round.

The next one would end it.

Mugino Shizuri accepted that fact.

But a sudden explosion threw the series of events into chaos.

“In the end, pull yourself together, Mugino!!”

The voice was familiar.

Frenda Seivelun, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl, must have tossed in a home-made bomb.

Despite the fact she was being hunted.

Almost as if she just couldn’t resist.

Mujinayama had avoided a direct hit, but he still flinched and froze for a moment. Yes, the seemingly untouchable old butler had actually reacted to this fully unexpected attack. His complete lack of openings before had been the result of his complete understanding of Mugino Shizuri.

Because he was the one who had taught her how to fight and survive within the Mugino Family.

(Oh! In that case!!)

Mugino Shizuri didn’t let the fear win and actually moved forward.

She aimed for an ear.

After all, she had knocked out a white tiger with a single palm strike back in the Colosseum. This had happened in a city of science, so there was of course a reason why it worked.

She had rattled the inner ear to throw off its equilibrium.

(If I want to get in an attack, I need to bring down his guard first!!)

She couldn’t quite reach. Her fingers were 10cm away from the sniper rifle’s muzzle.

But there was an impact.

Not from her elbow or fist.

But with the longer reach of the cardigan she had been roughly wearing.

“Always be cognizant of at least two, and if possible three, options, right!?”

“Nh!?”

Something audibly and violently struck the air.

With the correct snapping motion, any cloth could become a whip.

In the instant he flinched, Mugino once more stepped toward Mujinayama. She moved in low and pushed up on the long barrel of his sniper rifle with her right hand as she did so.

She didn’t bother trying to snatch it away in a game of tug-of-war.

She melted and blew away the center of the rifle with Meltdowner.

Mujinayama had expected her to pull on it, so he was caught off guard and frantically staggered.

Increasing your options wasn’t the only way to gain an advantage.

You could reduce your options yourself to lead your opponent toward self-destruction.

And a basic fact and goal of all forms of art was that information was harder to remove than to add. Adding it could be enough to reach proficiency, but only one who had learned to remove it and was recognized for this could be called a true master.

“Lady Shizuri. I never taught you to do that.”

“No. It’s my own self-taught style!!”

And that prevented even Mujinayama from keeping up with her thoughts.

Their gazes clashed.

But Mugino managed to act a single moment before Mujinayama could regain his balance and strike back.

A roar exploded out.

It was the sound of Mugino Shizuri’s fist accurately finding the old butler’s cheekbone.

She didn’t rely on the easy and deadly Meltdowner.

She had learned more than just her esper power.

This was the experience and violence that Academy City’s #4 had sharply honed in the darkness after leaving the protection of the Mugino Family and entering Academy City where Butler Mujinayama was not watching.

She used only her bare hands.

And that was what surpassed Butler Mujinayama in the very, very end.

“Well done. You really have grown, Shizuri-sama.”

He collapsed.

Slowly.

His words carried utter satisfaction.

Like they always did.

He viewed her with the eyes of a man watching his grandchild.

If only he would say everything had been a lie – a silly act.

That would have made it so much easier.

It was Mugino Shizuri whose face crumpled up.

“Are you kidding me?”

She grabbed the tuxedo’s collar.

And forced him back onto his feet.

She could kill him at any time with Meltdowner.

Yet she was the one trembling and trapped.

The words spilled out.

“You taught me how to hold a pencil, how to use chopsticks, and how to ride a bike.”

She seemed to be speaking through a bit lip.

But her voice soon grew to an unstable shout.

She was shaken.

Traitors deserved death.

But she couldn’t do it.

Not with Mujinayama. This old man had always been at the very foundation of her personality.

He had been a solid, unshakable presence in her life. Like a large tree. He had been an old man in a monocle since she had first been introduced to him.

“Even once I was in Academy City, you stayed on the phone with me until I learned the times table. That’s how it always was for everything! Are you goddamn kidding me!? Why do you have to be my enemy!?”

“…”

Why?

Mujinayama kept his silence in the face of that obvious question.

He had said repeatedly he had his reasons for not betraying Sakuya.

Was it truly a matter of loyalty like he said? Or did he owe her a personal debt such as saving him or his family?

But.

What did that matter?

He should have come to her before the interest grew too large for him to refuse.

He was a Manager who served the Mugino Family.

And Mugino Shizuri was part of the Bloodline.

Neither the troops nor the Management were simple sacrificial pawns. Protecting them was the Bloodline’s duty – their noblesse oblige.

Because the Management risked their lives doing the dirty work, the Bloodline had to risk their own futures to protect them. That was an inviolable rule. It was that give and take that allowed them to rule the world as a single whole. That was the rule anyone who wished to lead the Mugino Family had to learn first and foremost.

Yet Mujinayama hadn’t come to her.

He had feared involving her.

He hadn’t let her do her job.

As a result, he was forced to attack Shizuri on Sakuya’s command and now he had placed the noose around his own neck.

Still, he did not utter a single word of complaint.

He didn’t need to see anything other than how she was biting her lip.

“Honestly…” whispered the old butler in a monocle, slowly shutting his eyes.

He had the look of a grandfather observing his grandchild’s growth even in the middle of a horrific conflict between two blood-related members of the Bloodline.

“That kind of soft thinking…will not let you inherit the Mugino Family which fills 1.4 billion stomachs around the world…”

The gentle air was shattered.

By an explosive sound.

The sound of an explosive detonating.

But this did not come from Frenda. The blonde girl’s eyes were widened with surprise too.

This was more accurately described as the report of a handgun.

Butler Mujinayama swayed to the side and then crumbled unnaturally to the ground.

Standing behind him was Sakuya.

She was holding a two-round handgun small enough to hide in the palm. It would only be accurate up to a range of around 5m, so it was not meant for an actual firefight. It was likely an assassin’s handgun meant to be hidden up the sleeve.

“Whose side are you on?”

Despite the smoking handgun, her voice wavered, like that of a lost child.

They were aunt and niece, weren’t they?

Whatever anti-aging methods she was using, Mugino Sakuya looked at most nearly 30, but her actual age was unknown. Although that she was putting in an effort suggested an effort was necessary.

But it may have been the same for her.

Mujinayama had served the Mugino Family for a very long time. So just as he had taught Mugino Shizuri to ride a bike and helped her learn the times table, he may have also been by Sakuya’s side when she was a child.

But Mujinayama had let go of her hand in the very, very end.

His smile had been directed at Shizuri, not Sakuya.

So.

“Go...to…helllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!”

A fearsome beam of light raged out.

Part 18

It happened suddenly.

Frenda Seivelun was the one who tackled Mugino Sakuya out of the way.

After missing its mark, the Meltdowner beam sliced through the abandoned villa area.

Takitsubo and Kinuhata joined her.

Not Mugino Shizuri, but the runaway blonde girl.

“Nice one, Frenda.”

“But what’s your position here anyway!? Because I’m super ready to give you an Offense Armor punch if you make it necessary!!”

While they had been given special permission to pursue Frenda, Item could be broken up if they killed anyone unconnected to Frenda outside of Academy City. Even if no one would move directly to make that happen, there were plenty of forces on the dark side who were probably watching on, hoping that would happen.

“Is this any time to argue!? In the end, do you really think Mugino’s gonna give us time to chat? We’ll be fried in an instant if we’re not paying attention!!”

Frenda’s goal was to return to Academy City and reclaim her usual life. She wanted to live it up on the dark side while also hiding that side of herself as she followed her 7-year-old sister’s efforts in the Daihaseisai with a camera in hand. It was a selfish goal, but to make it happen, she had to prove she had not intentionally escaped outside the wall and she couldn’t have Item eliminated.

That meant she definitely couldn’t let Mugino Shizuri commit mass murder outside Academy City and she couldn’t let Sakuya, the mastermind behind the entire incident, die. Having that villain confess to it all was her best bet.

They must have been programmed not to feel fear. The Two Wings carelessly attempted to attack Mugino Shizuri in her current state, only for each of them to be shot down in turn.

It went without saying what would happen to the human body if one of those beams hit it.

They couldn’t kill outside of Academy City.

They couldn’t leave Mugino Shizuri in this state.

Takitsubo Rikou, Kinuhata Saiai, and Frenda Seivelun were a team again.

They had a single goal.

They would not let their teammate die. They would save her here.

And to do that…

“We have to defeat Academy City #4, Mugino Shizuri!!”

Between the Lines 2

Either hang her head or bear with it.

Those were her only options as a child.

In the Mugino Family, it was a foregone conclusion that the Bloodline would compete.

You couldn’t let your fragility and weakness show.

Because the rest of the family would actively use that as a target to strike.

So Mugino Sakuya always left the house and went somewhere deserted to tremble all alone.

She couldn’t make friends at school and even the teachers only nervously watched her from a distance, never approaching. She wasn’t treated like anyone else. Because she had been born to the Mugino Family. The true nature of that family never leaked out, but everyone in the honest world could just tell she didn’t fit in.

The family head was always assessing her, the adults were already disappointed in her at her age, and she was forced to compete with the brothers, sisters, and other relatives of her generation even though she knew she couldn’t win. In that shadowy world, it seemed like everyone indulged in the dark joy of tearing down people weaker than themselves.

There was no ordinary love there.

There was no rest for Mugino Sakuya. She knew she would only be worn down little by little no matter where she went, but she had no chance to recuperate. The heart in her small chest would only continue to be torn apart until there was nothing left. She knew that, but there was nothing the helpless girl could do about it.

No one was coming to save her. And she didn’t expect anyone to. When the police or her teachers saw her scraped and bruised body, they would only click their tongues and look the other way.

But then.

During it all.

“Oh, dear. Is this where you got off to, Sakuya-sama?”

There was one kind voice.

Whenever Sakuya went missing, he was always the first one to find her. Not her parents, not her siblings, and not any friends or teachers. It was the butler in a black tuxedo and monocle who always found her first.

Mujinayama had been Mujinayama since long before Sakuya was born.

He seemed permanently unchanging, like the sacred tree at a Shinto shrine.

When Sakuya was weeping and feeling crushed by the weight of her own weakness, he would rub her head and speak to her.

Patiently.

As many times as it took.

“Listen. Strength comes in many forms. Eika-sama has her form of strength, but you too have your own form of strength. You simply have yet to realize it. If you are only given the opportunity, you will become stronger than anyone.”

“…Even stronger than the head?”

“Yes.”

“Even stronger than you?”

“Of course.”

“Nuh-uh. No one can beat you.”

Mujinayama smiled gently.

Thinking back, that had less to do with the small girl’s words and more with the fact that the girl who could only hang hear head or bear with it had finally shown him an awkward smile.

Mugino Sakuya asked a question as they returned to the mansion, hand in hand.

Hesitantly.

“Hey, Mujinayama?”

“Yes?”

“Nothing can stop the fighting between the Bloodline. And the struggle over the Management is only going to heat up. …Will you stay with me to the end?”

“That has always been my intention.”

And so.

And yet.

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Dengeki Island: A Girl’s Battle (Still Growing) Kamijou Touma Visits Another World Toaru Majutsu no Index X Apocalypse Witch Crossover SS Toaru Majutsu no Index X Apocalypse Witch X Heavy Object Crossover SS I Still Want to Do a Summer Fair A Certain Collaboration Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 Kamachi Crossover Illustrations - Preface - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - A.E. 02 - Afterword Durarara Crossover Preface - Academy City Chapter - Ikebukuro Chapter	Next