Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item7

Novel Illustrations

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  Full Cover
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  Contents Page
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  Pages 003-005
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  Pages 006-008
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  Page 21
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  Page 68
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  Page 121
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  Page 144
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  Page 177
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  Page 204
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  Page 238

Opening

The past can act as a weapon.

Particularly in this darkness.

Prologue: The Academy City Bomber

October 25.

In the dead of night.

The job was a simple one.

An elimination.

Needless to say, the target was some piece of shit who couldn’t even follow the dark side’s rules. This wasn’t some poor innocent person, so they could relax and just have fun.

Which meant Battle Freak Mugino Shizuri had some other reason for being so irritated.

“This job is a race? Are you kidding me, Voice on the Phone!?”

“Whether it works or not, preparing for a kill comes with a risk of getting caught, so you had super better not be saying we don’t get paid if this doesn’t work out.”

Kinuhata Saiai was trying to sound like the responsible type, but she wasn’t actually the type to assess the risk herself like that. She generally went along on a job because the older girls were doing it. Despite appearances, she was the puppy type deep down.

Track suit girl Takitsubo Rikou hugged Kinuhata’s small body from behind for a bit of warmth.

“Is Frenda not coming? It’s past meetup time.”

“Let’s hope she didn’t run on ahead and get herself killed. She might’ve heard this job was a race and mistakenly assumed she would get the full reward herself if she killed the target alone.”

The irritated way Mugino said it didn’t make it sound like a joke.

On the dark side, it wasn’t unusual for people to just wind up dead for no real reason. In this world, you weren’t killed because of some critical mistake – you died because you failed to take sufficient precautions.

Mugino sighed and walked into the shadows.

Takitsubo and Kinuhata simply followed after their leader.

“No point in waiting for someone who’s this late. Let’s do it ourselves and then eat some nice food with that idiot’s late fee. Remind me: who’s our target?”

“Fuwaku Genyou. His specialty is pushing people toward death by loading them down with debt, making their significant other break up with them, eliminating any trust anyone had in them, etc. But he seems to have taken it too far and angered someone near the top. He’s apparently been killing a lot of ordinary people that weren’t part of his job.”

“Right, he’s the expert at pushing someone toward suicide without ever approaching them directly. In super other words, he’s an assassin who leaves no sign of foul play.”

“Everyone has their own limit, so he must spend more time gathering information than on actually guiding the target toward suicide. I don’t know how he gathers the personal information the target leaves scattered around where they live their lives, but he must create a detailed profile before pulling the trigger.”

If a psychiatrist was drawing up the plans for perfect crimes, then the world really was going to hell.

Although the dark side did view that kind of sanctuary as a blind spot to be exploited.

Mugino cut across the shadows.

“What do we need to watch out for?”

“Fuwaku Genyou will launch whatever kind of attack will work best on his target’s firmware, but he tends to use fire to cause enough financial pressure to push the target toward suicide. There have to be other ways to cause debt, but he has a strong tendency to make the target accidentally start a fire in their home or shop even when it isn’t necessary.”

“Why is Bomber-senpai super not here for this of all jobs? …And can you and those big boobs get off me already!?”

Kinuhata struggled and slipped out of Takitsubo’s arms.

Just like with summer homework, disposing of old clothing you don’t wear anymore, and cleaning the sink’s gross drain, it was tempting to procrastinate with an annoying job, but putting off a dark side job would only make it more annoying. It was best to nip those problems in the bud.

An intellectual psychiatrist must not have excited her battle freak blood because Item’s leader already looked bored.

“Takitsubo.”

“My research is complete.”

Villains’ strongholds – like the one they were on the way to attack – generally had certain traits in common.

1. The villain would be living there, so it had to be decently comfortable.

2. It had to be too well hidden for enemies to easily discover.

3. It had to be replaceable so it could be abandoned at a moment’s notice.

4. Any armor or traps were meant to buy enough time to make a safe escape.

However, there were individual differences in these conditions. There were cases like Item where they would intentionally choose clean luxury property because no one would expect a villain to be living there, but there were also villains who preferred to live in cardboard houses that were easily disposable.

They arrived in District 2, which specialized in cars, explosives, and military weapons.

Mugino looked out across the dark night.

“The remains of a vegetable ethanol supply plant? It’s a large place with plenty of buildings, but why would you choose an abandoned building overrun with weeds? Do they not find it dreary?”

“Mugino, everyone has their own ideal home. That hacker you killed before had stolen 1.5 trillion yen in crypto-assets from the military-industrial complex, yet he was living in the bathroom of a half-collapsed abandon apartment building. Based on the weird idea that he felt most at ease when everything he needed for life was within arm’s reach.”

This one seemed to be the type who found peace of mind in having plenty of cover to hide behind and countless exits to choose from. Did he play airsoft or online FPS matches for fun?

The place was huge and entirely abandoned.

A few boxy concrete buildings and several cylindrical tanks created a labyrinthine structure. There were chain-link fences set up on the grounds, but those had collapsed in places.

Takitsubo, as expressionless as ever, tugged on Mugino’s coat.

“Mugino, be careful when you use your power.”

“Huh? I know this place is for making fuel, but isn’t it abandoned?”

“It should be, but look.”

Takitsubo expressionlessly pointed at a metal pipe thicker around than her arm. Specifically, at the round meter sticking out from it.

The needle was all the way over at max.

It had not rusted in place that way. The tip of the needle was quivering even now.

“Did that idiot fill it with ethanol?”

“I don’t know why they would, but carelessly firing through the tanks or pipes here could trigger a big explosion. In addition to filling tanker trucks, it looks like the pipes connect directly to the large factory. If those are all full, there will be a lot of it.”

Could this be Fuwaku Genyou’s way of ensuring his safety?

It did make less precise attacks more difficult, but if an idiot with less tact launched an attack, the one who had set up the trap would be the first one caught in the explosion that turned the whole place into a burning crater.

“In that sense, this battlefield might be best suited for Kinuhata. Her nitrogen wall isn’t inflammable.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ve super made your point.”

If she did nothing, Mugino would take the lead, so Kinuhata consciously stepped out ahead. When there was a risk of traps or ambush, it was best for her and her Offense Armor shield to stand out front.

But their tracker discovered something first.

As soon as Kinuhata stepped out into an open space – probably a parking lot for large tanker trucks and other work trucks – Takitsubo pointed past her shoulder with no change of expression.

“Mugino. There’s a body over there.”

“?”

Dead bodies had no presence to them, so Mugino was slow to react in the shadows.

“Did someone get the target ahead of us!?”

“No, that’s a young girl’s body. It isn’t Fuwaku Genyou. It looks like she used knives. There are a variety of blades scattered around her.”

Mugino had briefly wondered if it was Frenda, but apparently not.

Frenda Seivelun used bombs and martial arts, but she was no knife freak.

“Scattered, huh? A combat expert would only need their familiar weapon and a spare just in case. Even small knives weigh you down if you carry enough of them. Carrying a ton of them sounds amateurish to me.”

“There is a small button on the grip, so they may be the type to launch out using springs.”

“Did she think that looked cool after seeing it in a cheap movie? That works as insurance when you’re cornered, not as a main weapon that gets regular use. A gimmick knife like that has small moving parts that make them fragile, so even daily maintenance will gradually wear them out.”

“Super who do you think you are badmouthing the holy action movie?”

But if that wasn’t their target or Frenda, then who was it?

Some complete stranger had died here.

“In that case…could it be a super colleague?”

Tension ran through them.

Kinuhata immediately shoved Takitsubo behind a concrete wall, but that delayed Kinuhata’s own movement. Her small body was blasted several meters straight back. By a point impact. If Offense Armor wasn’t enough to suppress it, it had to be quite high caliber. The term “anti-tank” and the number “12.7mm” flashed through Mugino’s mind.

There was no gunshot. But the hit produced a sharp sound of impact like someone slamming their palm down against a tatami mat.

Takitsubo called out with her navel showing after her clothing pulled up while falling back behind cover. The coat wrapped around her waist had gotten tangled up, making her even more of a mess.

“Kinuhata.”

“…I’m super alive…”

“Reacting out in the open will get you shot again, so play dead there.”

“Then super don’t talk to me, you airhead!”

That said, their opponent seemed mildly surprised at failing to finish them off in a single shot.

A piece of asphalt flew near Mugino’s feet.

Leaving a bullet hole.

The aim clearly wasn’t as accurate as before.

Mugino reflexively moved to hide behind the closest cover before realizing it was a thick fuel pipe and clicking her tongue. She changed course for a rusty old truck, but there was no guarantee that wouldn’t explode either.

Orange sparks sharply scattered.

From the rear of the truck.

Right near the fuel tank. They still hadn’t heard anything like a gunshot, but…

(They must be at least 500m away. They might not even be on the plant’s grounds.)

“Oh, hell! Why does that jack-of-all-trades Frenda have to missing precisely when we could really use her help!?”

Mugino made call after call from behind cover until the idiot in question finally answered.

“Sorryyy, my hair just won’t set today. In the end, curly hair like mine tends to explode when it’s humid. Argh, I fix it and fix it, but it still springs back out.”

“Go to hell.”

“I’m not kidding. It’s a big deal for the Academy City Bomber. Ow! How did this electric fuse get in my messy hair? I can’t make sure everything’s safe, so I really can’t go on a mission right now.”

Was Frenda taking advantage of the fact that she couldn’t be physically grabbed over the phone? But Mugino was adding a mental tally mark in the death column for this.

Anyway, Fuwaku Genyou was known for psychologically pushing people toward suicide without ever making a physical appearance, so it seemed unlikely he would be directly wielding a toy like a sniper rifle. His job had failed from the moment it could be perceived as a crime.

Damn that Voice on the Phone. This was why making it a race was a problem.

Their target wasn’t the only threat. Now they were stuck in a fight against some other dark side assassin!

In addition to the knives of various sizes strewn across the asphalt, Mugino noted an AED and a gas-operated injector resembling a handgun. If the abbreviation on the label was accurate, it contained adrenaline for the heart.

Mugino frowned.

(Is that the Looper who was killed? The one who feels serial killers get off easy with a single execution so they kill the killer and resuscitate them enough times to match their kill count plus one?)

That meant they were an engineer. This was the problem with these races. There were many different kinds of dark side specialist. When the ones who didn’t directly specialize in killing appeared on the front line with bullets and high-level esper powers whizzing by, their fate was all but sealed.

“The shot was from a good distance away.”

Takitsubo tilted her head and held a finger to her lips while observing the corpse from behind cover. She was analyzing it based on the direction the body had fallen, the amount of blood splattered on the hard ground, and so on. There had to be a lot more she wanted to investigate as a tracker, but she couldn’t approach the body and crouch down out in the open.

“I would estimate between 600 and 800 meters. The shooter must be using a fairly heavy bullet to aim accurately at that range. The bullet did not remain in the body, so it’s probably embedded in the ground to the northeast.”

“S-so is it a sniper?”

Kinuhata frowned while lying on the ground.

That was a type of criminal not found in Item.

…However, this was all just an estimation.

Using the bullet hole – that is, the marks the bullet left in the ground or human flesh – to determine the distance and direction of the shooter was a standard sniper countermeasure, but if the sniper wasn’t using lead or gunpowder, the general-use data wouldn’t apply. And that kind of personal research project was far from uncommon with the dark side.

Mugino quietly moved from behind the rusted truck to the wall of the parking lot’s small guardroom, regrouping with Takitsubo who had moved there from her own cover.

They pressed their shoulders together, feeling each other’s warmth.

Mugino saw this as a bad sign. Her instincts told of danger. Anything that calmed her nerves regardless of the situation she found herself in could easily cost her her life in the middle of an illicit dark side job.

“Why would the bullet be embedded in the ground?”

“There are too many pipes here to get a horizontal line of fire. At this distance, they would need to shoot down from above.”

That analysis had to be accurate, but Takitsubo sounded skeptical.

“But the body had more than one wound. The flesh was torn away in areas nowhere near her vitals. I can’t imagine the sniper would hit her in the leg when aiming for her head or heart.”

“Look at the skin. See how the edges of the gruesome wounds are red and swollen? That’s a vital reaction. In other words, she was alive when she received those wounds. Shooting a dead body won’t cause any swelling.”

“So the sniper tormented her, blasting away as much of her body as possible without killing her…and then finally delivered the killing shot? With anti-tank bullets? Then are they the type to turn killing into a game?”

“A wasteful freak like that should have a lot of openings.”

“On the other hand, people who don’t operate on logic can be weirdly persistent, which can be a pain to deal with.”

A night breeze blew in, blowing through Mugino’s hair.

That may have been why she heard it.

The charming sound was reminiscent of the rustling of a woman’s dress.

And a moment later…

“It’s no use.”

They heard a voice.

It had definitely come from a mere five meters ahead. Mugino sprang into action, turning toward the female voice.

There was no one there.

And this was the wide-open remains of a parking lot. There was nowhere someone could even hide there!

And yet…

“Bh!?”

Just as Kinuhata was attempting a recovery, she was blasted backwards again. There was no gunshot. Yet the Level 4 was toppled backwards even though her Offense Armor could stop a handgun or submachine gun shot from head on. It made the same tatami-slapping sound of impact as before. She had been hit by a large caliber weapon.

(It must really be a 12.7mm anti-tank rifle, or something even bigger. Should we assume a vehicle-mounted 20mm autocannon?)

“Kinuhata.”

“No, Takitsubo!!”

Mugino snatched the wrist of the track suit girl who reflexively tried to run over and then pressed against the closest cover. Kinuhata weakly waved a hand from where she was lying out in the open. So she was at least still alive.

“Did you think that would hide you? You don’t even know where I am.”

Again, that voice by her ear.

Wait, by her ear? It was even closer than the previous 5m.

Before even turning around, Mugino aimed with her right palm and released Meltdowner. The night air was scorched and the concrete ground melted orange, but that was all. She didn’t sense any lives taken.

“Kh.”

And Takitsubo Rikou gulped.

It’s no use.

She recognized that phrase. She also recognized the MO of a professional sniper wasting shots to slowly kill their target. There was only one person to whom both of those applied.

Yumiya Rakko.

She recognized those traits because that girl had been a target candidate who the Voice on the Phone had once asked them to assassinate, but Takitsubo had single-handedly refused the job because they had too little data on her. She didn’t know what the girl had done to anger the higher ups, but she was likely protected by a system different from Item if her data was kept so secret. So for better or for worse, she had real skill.

(It would probably be best not to use her name.)

Takitsubo quietly looked to the side of Mugino’s face as she glared into the distance.

(Knowing her name could easily cause a battle freak like Mugino to get obsessed with her. And Mugino isn’t the best against tricky types like this.)

Kinuhata, who should have been the safest one thanks to the thick wall of nitrogen surrounding her body, was still down and asked a flabbergasted question.

“Sh-she’s that close and we still can’t see her? Cough, super how the hell!? Is she hiding behind a big shield covered with meta-material?”

The fact that the technology itself existed made these things more complicated.

The world really was going to hell if the tech used to make sparkly children’s stickers was being used to develop military weaponry.

“Tch.”

Firing deadly Meltdowner blasts into empty air failed to get the sniper to act rashly. An expert sniper would know just how important targeting, aiming, and accuracy were. An attack that missed couldn’t do any damage, so blindly scattered blasts weren’t anything to fear.

…An expert at hiding her presence was approaching them using strange invisibility tech. Step by silent step.

Wielding an unidentified large-caliber sniper rifle.

They were at greater risk than if they had been plopped down in the center of a massive minefield.

“Wh- bweh, what do we do about this? I can’t shield Takitsubo-san with Offense Armor if I don’t know where the enemy is…”

“…”

“Retreat is always an option. This is an abandoned plant, remember? We can get out of here and then bring the entire place down from a distance. Mugino’s Meltdowner can do that! So…”

“She isn’t here,” declared Takitsubo.

Kinuhata, covered in a cold sweat, didn’t understand.

“Huh? But, she’s super-”

There was a rustling sound.

With no change in expression, the track suit girl had pulled something out from the weeds.

It was smaller than a waitress’s tray.

“Is that a six-wheel drone?”

Mugino quietly narrowed her eyes and Takitsubo nodded.

“Carrying a special parametric speaker. I would guess we are surrounded by three or four of them.”

This wasn’t all that unusual in Academy City.

Takitsubo explained while holding the drone to her chest.

“Nonlinear acoustics. Multiple sound waves beyond the audible range collide at a single point to greatly change the wavelength in that one point, making it audible. It’s a technology used to create a voice whispering in your ear without anyone nearby. The acoustic equipment in the high-tech haunted houses of District 6’s amusement parks use it. The sniper didn’t approach us without being seen. She intentionally created sounds to make it sound that way: footsteps, breaths, rustling clothing, her voice… Meanwhile, she’s targeting us from safety much further back. If we try to flee from the pressure of the ‘invisible sniper’ right in front of us, we would be letting the real sniper guide us into a more vulnerable position. It would drive us out from behind cover where we’re safe.”

Who was this sniper? Mugino frowned. If she didn’t have a spotter or even a hound and was resorting to tricks using her own voice, she may have been quite the loner of a girl.

“Where exactly is she?”

“The opposite of the direction Kinuhata flew. At a distance of 750 meters. She can hide the gunshot and the launch direction, but the bullet’s kinetic energy tells the truth. And thanks to Kinuhata using her power to hold the bullet back, I can confirm the crushed bullet is made from tungsten alloy. Knowing the relative density is enough to calculate out the rest.”

Mugino aimed her palm to the south-southwest.

A bight beam shot out and her long skirt flapped around her legs.

It didn’t matter that the plant was full of vegetable ethanol. The ultra-hot bundle of electron beams was blasted diagonally upwards, grazing the thick pipe overhead. It was targeted at the point where the large, dark shadows of a cylindrical tank and a boxy concrete building intersected.

As soon as it was launched, there was a change in the air.

“I was hoping she would attack after we located her.”

“She must be the kind of sniper who immediately retreats. Her presence is gone.”

Takitsubo was in top form if she could accurately sense a presence at a distance of 750m.

Item would ordinarily hunt down and kill a colleague who bared her fangs against them, but this sniper was not the target of this job. Plus, the interference was blatantly the Voice on the Phone’s fault. It would be foolish indeed to let a valuable target escape while they chased after someone worth nothing dead.

“Kinuhata, can you get up? Fuwaku Genyou is our priority now. If you can move, then get searching.”

“Bweh. He’s the type that likes to have a lot of exits, right? After all that super noise, won’t he have already made his getaway?”

If that had happened, then they just had to search for clues where the target had gone and pursue him.

Mugino grabbed Kinuhata’s hand and helped her to her feet before walking across the parking lot full of trucks. Making her way toward the largest concrete building.

“Either way, I’m betting all these buildings are connected underground.”

“Hm? Super why would they bother?”

“Kinuhata, they wouldn’t want to be trapped in case of fire. Both as an escape route and as an explosion-resistant shelter, the company would want to develop underground. And they’re free to dig into their own land.”

Had Fuwaku Genyou wanted a labyrinth like that as a hideout?

The way ahead was pitch dark, covered in dreary concrete, and provided plenty of places to hide.

“What’s the super right answer in a case like this? Turn on our lights to look out for traps and ambushes? Or continue in the dark to avoid giving away our position?”

A dull “vrum!” sounded.

Mugino held multiple orbs of light in front of her.

That provided a light source and the Meltdowner shield could burn through any projectiles launched from the shadows.

She smoothly walked into the darkness.

Takitsubo hid behind Mugino’s back and pulled a pair of sunglasses from her pocket. They clashed terribly with the gentle blank-faced girl’s look.

“Super what are you doing? It’s pitch black down here.”

“Kinuhata. This is the enemy’s home turf.”

Kinuhata’s exasperated question received a serious response from the busty track suit girl.

“The lights being off doesn’t prove the power is out. If he turns all the lights on after our eyes adjust to the dark, it will blind us, so it’s safer to have one of us ready in case that happens.”

“…”

This was a serious threat to their lives.

Of course, the power might actually be out and preparing for every single hypothetical you could think up would simply leave you unable to do anything at all. There was no absolute right answer. Ultimately, you just had to trust your own instincts.

They peeked inside a few rooms in the labyrinthine underground space.

Each one was probably necessary in the manufacturing of ethanol fuel, but Mugino and Kinuhata couldn’t say what the rooms did. Only Takitsubo nodded in apparent understanding.

As they continued to find no sign of the enemy or any new information, the lack of stimuli caused their attention to flag. To refocus their minds, Mugino kicked lightly at Kinuhata’s calf as they walked and Kinuhata retaliated with a light punch to Mugino’s flank. Each time those fighters began flirting, Takitsubo drew their attention by poking them in the back. She discovered touching their bra hook was the most effective method.

Looking further down the passageway, they saw a door that looked different from the rest.

Located next to it was a stairway leading up. That room was positioned so anyone inside could immediately head outside.

It was likely the guardroom.

Takitsubo did not call Mugino’s name.

She signaled her with finger signs instead.

(Why do I sense someone inside? He should already have fled after all that noise.)

Unexpected prizes were rarely a pleasant thing on the dark side.

You could never survive in this world without suspecting anything that felt out of place.

If another colleague with the same target was lurking there, Mugino only needed to fire Meltdowner through the door, but she didn’t know that was who this was. In the worst case, it could be an ordinary person who lost their job and was searching for a new home, or even an innocent schoolgirl who had come here as a test of courage. Especially during an event like this.

So Mugino and Kinuhata exchanged a glance, nodded, and kicked down the door despite the risks.

There were no rows of LCD monitors or even any desks and chairs. The abandoned guardroom only had the steel racks for monitors sitting empty.

Someone was leaning against the dusty racks.

“Fuwaku Genyou,” whispered Takitsubo as if seeking confirmation. “This is the expert assassin who uses suicide as a weapon.”

If this was the right person, then they could kill him.

To him, this was a strange intruder calling his name. Anyone who had spent any time at all on the dark side would know this was a life or death situation.

Yet he was slow to react.

“Ah, ahh…”

“?”

“Agh, bh.”

Mugino frowned in confusion.

A series of wet rupturing sounds burst out.

By the time he had collapsed to the floor, he wasn’t even human shaped anymore.

It felt a lot like a giant human-shaped water balloon had popped, sending the liquid within – the red liquid – cascading down.

This was probably a form of explosion.

Although from the outside it looked like all his blood vessels had boiled, all his skin had bubbled up, and he had exploded from within.

And Mugino wasn’t the type to flinch from gruesome corpses.

(Was it a liquefied explosive? More than 60% of the human body is water, so did someone have it permeate his cell fluid so they could detonate his entire body?)

It wouldn’t be impossible if you sprayed him with a highly flammable chemical.

It was an unusually cruel method of killing even for an explosive death. The death would be instantaneous either way, so it didn’t add any extra fear or pain for the victim. Why bother going to the trouble?

It was such poor taste.

Mugino held her phone to her ear.

“Frenda? …Was this your doing?”

“In the end, was what my doing?”

Apparently not.

It probably wasn’t the earlier sniper returning either. This was too different a type of death.

“Hello, hello.”

The voice was exceptionally cheerful. It didn’t seem mechanically altered either. An artificial voice had likely been created from samples, allowing an electronic device to read the desired text.

There was no human presence here anymore.

The three Item members were the only people in the cramped guardroom.

“I do apologize, Item, but this was a race. So I went ahead and took out the target.”

It wasn’t on the steel racks. Something was attached to the wall.

A tablet.

A rectangular light began to flash in the darkness to draw their attention.

Although it didn’t display a face or anything quite that obvious.

“…Who are you?”

“The Academy City Bomber.”

That response did not come from Frenda Seivelun.

Apparently she wasn’t the only one who called herself that.

What a dangerous world this was.

“Hee hee. It’s called oshikatsu. Oshikatsu. Frenda Seivelun, in the end I’m your biggest fan☆ Ha ha. How was my impression?”

“Wait, but…”

“(Mugino, we gain nothing by pointing that out.)”

Takitsubo silently placed a hand over Mugino’s mouth.

Why in the world wasn’t Frenda here today of all days?

If the mysterious bomber found out after preparing all this, they might just cry.

“To be honest, I’m really not interested in the reward. Frenda Seivelun, I just wanted some way of grabbing your attention. So, well, consider this my way of introducing myself.”

“Mugino, Kinuhata.”

“This is no more than an introduction. You’re my idol. There is so much I want to discuss with you, so let’s get in touch! Fwah ha ha! So, in the end, you’re gonna have a hard time getting rid of me☆”

“Run. As fast as you can.”

Item charged out of the guardroom without hearing the bomber’s preview through to the end.

A moment later…

The entire building exploded.

The grounds of the vegetable ethanol supply plant were blown away at 7000m/s.

Between the Lines 1

“Quarterback, huh? They’re that North American biker gang, right?”

This carefree question was asked by an elderly man in a pricey Italian suit.

The bouquet he held naturally hid a shotgun.

He was the Mugino Family head.

…Stories of gangs and mafias causing trouble had become common of late. The Mugino Family was officially a grain production company that filled the stomachs of 1.4 billion people worldwide, but they were secretly a multinational gang with hundreds of thousands of soldiers in countries around the globe. The entire world was their turf, so they were busy getting involved in conflicts all over and putting out those fires.

So this may have been one such case.

As usual, Butler Mujinayama stood perfectly straight by his side.

“To be more precise, they hail from Texas.”

“Why the quiet smugness? Texas is huge, so even that’s not all that precise. It’s the second most populous state in America. C’mon, apologize to Texas.”

The old butler wasn’t listening.

“Our advance information has proven accurate. The police and media show no sign of acting. I managed to get a reporter from a small paper to speak using a bribe and it turns out the embassy is applying pressure. So much that even a lawless freelancer is feeling it.”

“Ha ha ha. That explains why Detective Sobasaka-chan was making such a fuss.”

The quality of reporters varied wildly and the freelancer in question here was the lowest of perverts who flaunted a media business card while spending all his time secretly recording the moans coming from love hotels and apartments owned by the rich. In all likelihood, grabbing him by the collar and giving him a good shaking would have been enough to get the information for free, but the tuxedo-wearing butler had standards.

“They’re a biker gang. And one that rides around with shotguns and submachine guns. That unconventional president doesn’t need an illegal group like that. If he needs any unspeakable killing done, he has plenty of official channels for it, like calling in those berets or the delta whatevers who are straight out of an FPS game.”

“According to Ooumigarasu’s intelligence, this has nothing to do with the administration. It seems more likely that an embassy worker is being threatened over something personal.”

This wasn’t isolated to the one embassy. In every country that biker gang visited, they would target whatever embassy had the most influence there and find a worker with a guilty conscience. And before arriving in the country, they would personally threaten that worker the same way a normal person would book a hotel room online. This allowed Quarterback to travel the world, spreading mayhem as they pleased without ever being arrested.

“And that’s why no one shows up when they cause such a scene here? Isn’t Tokyo supposed to be the capital of Japan?”

There was a clattering sound.

A steel beam still caught in what used to be a ceiling had fallen.

The place looked like a squashed cake box.

Or like a bombed building seen on a news site.

Nothing remained to help one imagine it used to be a small family-run motorcycle shop.

The only things left were a pile of scorched rubble and a boy who happened to escape unharmed because he was at his elementary school when the crime was committed. He was still a small child. If he exercised daily, watched his salt intake, and otherwise took care of his health, he could live for around a hundred more years, yet the light of hope had vanished from his eyes. His motionless head was tilted at an angle. His body was unharmed, but only his body. So that was no guarantee of happiness.

The elderly man slowly narrowed his eyes.

(They barge in as they like, steal what they like, and destroy what they like.)

Based on the bullet holes left in the partially-collapsed walls and the floor, the ruffians had used 12-gauge shotguns and .45 caliber submachine guns. In fact, they hadn’t even collected their empty cartridges or shot shells. Did the signs of explosions mean they had used grenades too? The building’s collapse was due to them having fun by spraying around the acetylene gas used for welding in motorcycle repair and customization.

They probably hadn’t worried about fingerprints or hairs either. Someone’s discarded gum had been melted to the burnt and battered floor. For a normal criminal, that would be devastating material evidence.

“They’re so sure of their safety.”

They could do all this with no fear. The police didn’t show up and close off the crime scene and the media didn’t rush in and report on the crime. The villains protected by a greater authority could send bullets raining down on whoever they liked.

They had no set goal. They would do what they liked as much as they liked until they felt like moving on to another country or region. They had repeated the pattern for at least five countries now. While saying they were going to circle the globe trashing every single developed nation.

So there was no way of knowing who they would target next.

It didn’t matter if someone was at work or eating a meal at the time. It happened whether they were at home or at school.

Out of the blue, some happy person would end up like this.

“What are you going to do?”

The Mugino Family head kneeled in front of the lone boy.

He lowered himself to the boy’s eye level.

“Rushing to the hospital and praying for a successful surgery is one option. You could also begin a new life living with a relative or friend.”

“…”

The boy didn’t nod his head at either option presented to him.

Nothing he did would lead to those people’s arrest.

He could shout and scream, but the police wouldn’t show up and no one would help him.

He had the eyes of someone who had everything incinerated by unreasonable brutality.

The elderly man sighed softly.

He knew that look far, far, farrr too well. Anyone up to their necks in this world would.

Unpleasantly so.

He made another suggestion with a resigned air.

“Then do you want to hunt down those villains with us?”

For the first time, the boy reacted.

“That is one option, but it’s entirely meaningless. I don’t recommend it. Slaughtering them all will not improve your parents’ situation undergoing surgery in the hospital. It won’t fix your broken shop or bring back the stolen motorcycles. It accomplishes nothing. Revenge is meaningless. …The most it lets you do is spit on a pile of their bodies.”

“I don’t care…about the bikes.”

The boy sniffled his nose.

But he still managed to wipe away his tears and face forward.

He stared straight into the Mugino Family head’s face with rage and hatred in his eyes.

“I have to get back at them. So I’ll do it! That way this will never happen again and mom and dad can head home from the hospital without worrying. I won’t just ask you to do it. I’ll join you!!”

A dull, quiet sound followed.

It came from the Mugino Family head’s fist striking the small boy in the solar plexus.

There was no scream.

The elderly man had a shocking amount of experience in swiftly knocking people unconscious.

…Because he kept ending up in situations where this sort of thing was necessary.

His diorama hobby may have been a way of showing off that he could do things other than this sort of thing. He enjoyed his peaceful time engrossing himself in that hobby, but deep down it was probably acted as a downer for him.

But he had only built up his skill in this sort of thing because it was necessary.

Because even if it was evil, criminal, and wrong…it could lead to this sort of hope.

“You won’t just ask us to do it? You’ll join us?”

The elderly man caught the young body and lay him down on the floor.

That was enough.

Hearing those words was plenty for him.

This boy should not stain his small hands with blood. The Mugino Family wouldn’t allow it. This boy shouldn’t sacrifice his 100 years’ of life in the name of death and crime just because of this obvious misfortune and tragedy. His life was precious. He shouldn’t throw it away because he felt he had no choice. That was unacceptable. The Mugino Family preserved its hidden side so it could deal with this sort of thing.

They kept an eye on every level of human society, picked up on the voices being silenced in some corner of the world, and completed the jobs that the good and the just couldn’t do because they were bound by their own rules.

Butler Mujinayama sighed softly.

“Isn’t it fairly cruel to draw out his resolve and then reject it?”

“Don’t be stupid. If we went along with his selfish desire, this boy would become a friend of organized crime. He wouldn’t be able to open a bank account, sign a phone contract, find a job, rent a room, or get a passport. He might think that’s what he wants now, but life is long. We need to give him a path toward a brighter future.”

So this kind of job was handled by the specialists who were already unclean.

Besides, it wouldn’t be fair if only one side were pros.

This battle had to be fought by people who knew how it was done.

Isn’t that right, Quarterback?

I’m not forgetting that name.

“Can we track them?”

“They have done nothing to cover their tracks.”

“Then gather three or four teams. After they caused this much of a mess, it wouldn’t be any fun if we went all out from the start and they died immediately. Balance things out so those idiots can survive long enough to suffer. Use the usual pattern for punishment: give them a glimpse of hope before sending them plummeting to the deepest depths. I want to hear a chorus of that hysterical joke: ‘I’m sorry. My entire life was one big mistake.’ ”

“Do you need a director? Torture specialist Kusarihebi is in Argentina right now.”

“No need. I’ll plan it out myself. They seem to like attention, so I’ll break every breakable part of them and turn them into the kind of mutilated corpse that will go down in criminal history. I’ll teach those troublesome tourists all about the Japanese culture of ikezukuri. Using this bouquet.”

“And the embassy worker? I suppose that goes without saying.”

“It wouldn’t be any fun if we went all out from the start and they died immediately☆ …And by the end, there will be no exceptions. No matter where in human society they might try to hide, the great Spaceship Earth is a limited piece of land floating in the vacuum of space. Drag out every last person who played a role in this ridiculous affair.”

The Mugino Family did not call themselves the good guys.

The man who led the international criminal organization did not think of himself as a decent human being.

To be blunt, he saw himself as a hopeless villain.

But there were things even a villain like him despised.

“Everyone living a normal life is a better person than us. You hurt some of them. I hope you’re ready, Quarterback. You demonstrated all the forms of cruelty your feeble minds could think of. Did you think the protection of a greater authority would keep you safe? Did you think you could do as you liked with no risk whatsoever? To be honest, small-time fools like you are the kind of criminal I hate most.”

“Good grief. The thing you hate most changes by the week. Or by the day sometimes.”

“Don’t make it sound like a cheap but delicious set meal. Rankings are constantly in flux. Besides, do you think these people are worth more than bell peppers?”

“Apologize to all the bell pepper farmers out there. Right this instant. This kind of talk is unacceptable for the head of the world’s largest grain production company which fills the bellies of 1.4 billion people worldwide.”

The Mugino head exited the trashed shop with his shotgun bouquet resting on his shoulder.

With many butlers and maids following in his wake,

A true battle meant risking your life.

That was how professional jobs worked.

He had taken on this dirty job for a young child, so failure was not an option.

“This is a war between organizations now. The King of Mugino is coming for you, Quarterback.”

Chapter 1: Tetra-Ethylnipolita

Part 1

That had not been fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their opponent this time was an unidentified bomber.

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

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

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

That left Item with no reason not to kill them.

Mugino scratched her head in annoyance.

“Frenda.”

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

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

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

Track suit girl Takitsubo tilted her head.

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

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

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

“A pregnancy test for explosives.”

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

The clear fluid was already turning a cloudy yellow.

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

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

Although this one was primarily used for analysis.

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

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

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

“Super alchemy?”

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

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

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

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

It was also a fairly toxic chemical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were getting sidetracked.

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How are you going to investigate this?”

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

Takitsubo just came out and said it.

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

Kinuhata looked shocked.

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

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

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

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

Mugino and Kinuhata exchanged a glance.

And nodded.

As long as the woman was another rotten villain.

Part 2

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

Part 3

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

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

A bright voice came from the TV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were in District 2.

The district of cars, explosives, and military technology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Phew, that was a good swim.”

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

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

“…Why the swimsuit?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You can figure it out that super easily?”

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

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

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

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

“Super why?”

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

That did make sense.

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

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

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

“Found them.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mugino frowned.

“Why did they suddenly start targeting Frenda?”

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

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

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

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

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

“In the end, there are ways☆”

Part 4

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

It was night and past curfew for students.

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

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

Which also meant there were that many more bomber suspects.

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

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

“First prize is a free trip into space.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I want to be warm.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The little newbie blinked in confusion.

And Frenda Seivelun stuck out her tongue a little.

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

Part 5

The place was spacious yet secret.

It was an explosives synthesis lab.

Something beeped electronically.

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

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

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

And in this case…

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

A windstorm warning.

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

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

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

“Not good…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their eyes shot toward the metal door leading out.

“Not good at all!!”

Part 6

Of course, Item couldn’t cause a disaster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frenda looked proud of herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hmm.”

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

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

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

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

“Then what do we do?”

Takitsubo must not have believed this method would work.

The Academy City Bomber smiled and provide a correction.

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

“Super why?”

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

Mugino sighed without speaking a word.

Slowly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That sounded plausible enough, but…

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

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

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

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

Frenda had an answer for everything.

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

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

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

That would reveal the Morning Call bomber.

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

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

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

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

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

Takitsubo organized the necessary information with her fingertips.

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

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

“I think I found them.”

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

“Then this probably is them.”

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

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

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

The tablet itself was disposable.

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

Part 7

The park was unusually busy that night.

Probably due to the astronomy event.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The shadows were completely silent.

A deserted battlefield appeared before Item.

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

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

“…”

The weeds had grown to hip height.

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

The short girl sighed softly.

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

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

The tree branches overhead formed a tunnel.

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

It was an explosive dangling from a wire.

It detonated.

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

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

The explosion itself hadn’t made a noise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It exploded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lovely girl with sparkling blonde hair looked utterly exasperated.

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

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

“Bgh.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Frenda, look out.”

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

The explosion came a moment later.

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

However…

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

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

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

Frenda moved out ahead of their shield Kinuhata.

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

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

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

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

It was now a race against time.

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

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

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

A large semicircular structure was half buried in the weeds.

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

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

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

Mugino immediately aimed he right hand toward the sound.

“There you are!! You bom-”

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

Takitsubo somehow knew that within the hip-high weeds.

There really was something wrong with their tracker.

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

And a moment later…

All light vanished, plunging everything into darkness.

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

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

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

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

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

Mugino prepared to fire anyway.

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

Takitsubo stopped her.

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

“We can deal with that!!”

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

Mugino clicked her tongue.

But no powerful beam swept away the darkness.

She had listened.

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

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

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

The weeds rustled from a different direction.

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

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

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

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

She seemed interested in the detonator.

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

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

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

It really was just the one card.

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

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

Takitsubo tilted her head.

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

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

Either way, this could become their next hint.

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

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

“In the end, the A-17 board, huh?”

Between the Lines 2

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

It was midday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They are.”

“Then let’s get this party started.”

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

It resembled a whistling sound.

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

White smoke swelled out across the parking lot.

“?”

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

Mujinayama whispered with a pair of binoculars in hand.

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

An explosion blew it all to smithereens.

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

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

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

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

“Time to barge in and mop them up.”

They met no real resistance.

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

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

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

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

“That settles that.”

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

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

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

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

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

That was on display here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mugino Family had a different sort of power.

They didn’t seek a monopoly on something unique.

They wanted the opposite of that.

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

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

“Their leader is named Rafaeli Oslend, right?”

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

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

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

The head found one more person.

“Ah, bh. Bhbhbh.”

In the parking lot peeling up from the ground.

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

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

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

The Mugino Family head showed exasperation on his face.

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

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

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

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

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

“Ugh-”

The shotgun roared straight down and silence returned.

The head fired with a single hand.

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

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

The head rested the bouquet on his shoulder.

“They should all be slaughtered now.”

“I believe so.”

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

Mujinayama sighed softly.

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

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

The old butler did not bat an eye at this.

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

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

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

Mujinayama made a suggestion.

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

“Thanks for the assist☆”

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

That said, this was the Mugino Family head traveling.

The bare minimum still amounted to a considerable convoy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Head.”

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

“What is it, Mujinayama?”

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

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

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

A great roar.

An impact piercing in from the side.

He didn’t have time to think beyond that.

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

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

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

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

The rumble of large motorcycle engines came from all around.

They were surrounded.

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

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

“A trap. It was a trap.”

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

Rafaeli Oslend.

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

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

His laughter was drowned out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conflicts between criminal organizations were games of massacring chess.

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

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

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

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

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

And it wasn’t over yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It made a metallic creaking sound.

An arm emerged from the opened door.

“Ah.”

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

The broken door slammed shut.

It was dull.

Such a dull sound.

The wet squashing sound repeated over and over.

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

And after it stopped…nothing.

The car ate him, someone whispered.

“Wha-?”

Rafaeli Oslend froze in place.

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

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

Ikezukuri.

“Go to hell!” shouted Rafaeli.

Or he meant to.

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

Conflicts between criminal organizations were games of massacring chess.

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

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

“From the very start…”

The Mugino Family head sneered.

He displayed an undeniable confidence.

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

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

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

“You’re…”

Rafaeli Oslend.

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

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

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

That was how the Mugino Family worked.

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

This was the same.

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

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

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

Therefore…

The Italian suit burst from within.

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

Countless gunshots rang out.

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

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

Something audibly broke.

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

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

It exploded.

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

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

Now was not the time to be standing paralyzed.

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

Then the process repeated.

The Mugino Family head was too much.

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

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

Someone was actually doing it.

With no hint of maturity.

“Sigh…”

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

That man never changed.

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

The supremely cool maid was exasperated.

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

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

She modestly called out to him instead.

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

“Head.”

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

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

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

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

Everything else was a mess.

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

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

The maid sighed softly.

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

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

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

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

At any rate, this ended the Quarterback incident.

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

“Kagyu, what are you doing?”

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

“Hm, let’s take a look.”

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

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

Something was visible inside.

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

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

“What the hell is this?”

Chapter 2: Inside and Outside

Part 1

It was October 28.

The astronomy event continued to color Academy City.

In addition to enormous telescopes, camping tents and lanterns had been dragged out to the front of stores. Almost like unsold inventory was being slapped with a random brand label to try and get it sold. And even if they were also outdoor products, why were the fishing rods on sale too? Were you supposed to fish for the moon reflected in the lake surface?

The banners lining the streets included an advertisement for a Zodiac Temple escape room being held, but did an ancient Greek stone structure really count as astronomy?

The fuzzy boundary lines between these things may have been a feature of Academy City where the mystical and the occult had no home.

An airship floated gently through the blue sky, displaying the news on its large screen.

“Next up is today’s astronomy forecast. The Cepheus Meteor Shower has been the talk of the town, but we already have confirmation that the world space station will pass by in low orbit at the same location, obstructing any photographs or videos. However, removing that obstacle from your images with AI eliminates any academic value your photo or video might have had, so do be careful.”

A moment later, something happened with no warning whatsoever.

An explosion.

At the top floor of a multipurpose skyscraper in District 15, Academy City’s greatest shopping district.

The passersby came to a stop and looked up without much care. Some students even held their phones up.

This was someone else’s misfortune. The people who had always viewed the world through their small screens would soon have shards of glass and burning scrap metal pour down on them, leaving them writhing on the red-stained ground. Unlike the majority of people who panicked and fled indoors.

There was no longer a dividing line between the observers and the participants.

The bomber named Morning Call had truly bared their fangs now.

Mugino Shizuri herself had predicted it was Morning Call’s turn now.

They were undoubtedly targeting Item now.

And this wasn’t the first attack.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> Ahh! Morning Call just blew away another of our secret bases! In the end, that’s the fifth one! Including the Cave Behind the Waterfall and the Five Star Villa!!”

“Kinu> And as soon as our luggage arrived ahead of us too. I think the Criminal Real Estate is going to get super mad and stop working with us soon. Even though we’re not the ones doing this.”

Thanks to this, Item had scattered.

Leading to a lot of activity on a social media service that didn’t leave any records, making it perfect for criminals.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> …In the end, we’re short on funds now. Should we do some part-time work?”

“Takitsubo Rikou> We have received a few job offers. As tailers and tunnelers and that sort of thing.”

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> Oh, a rich girl like Mugino will have a lot of experience with fine art. If she has an eye for it, maybe she could work as a stolen item appraiser?”

“Kinu> Do you super think we have time to waste on that? We have a bomber trying to kill us.”

“M> wtf why ru all typing evrything out”

“Takitsubo Rikou> The latest voice input has gotten really good, Mugino. I was wondering why you were so slow to respond, but are you typing it in by hand?”

“M> Oh, like this? Why not just call each other at this point? There’s no point in moving to another new hideout. If we end up standing out too much, it could give away Item’s existence.”

Any furniture and such they sent to a new place would only get blown up, so Item wasn’t meeting in person much lately.

Instead of setting up secret bases, they were each hiding out on their own.

The sketchy social media service now acted as the hideout linking them.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> So Morning Call isn’t even trying to hide it anymore. In the end, I miss when they were using those silent bombs.”

“M> They’ve blown up five hideouts now. Surely you’ve been able to gather some evidence by now. Do we really still need to keep running away?”

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> In the end, I do know their methods now.”

A short blonde girl was standing in a part of the District 15 shopping area being redeveloped. Specifically, by an empty window on the 25th floor of a building awaiting demolition after all its offices and shops had been removed.

It was 2500m from the skyscraper with black smoke rising from it, placing it at the very edge of the district.

A large device was bolted to the concrete floor with metal spikes driven in using compressed gas. The bizarre precision machine was a bulky combination of a large stainless steel tube and a box.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> They call themselves a bomber, but they actually use a number of different methods. This time, they attacked using a stationary rocket launcher.”

“Takitsubo Rikou> Was it launched remotely?”

“M> Then just track the source of the launch signal.”

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> In a giant shopping district packed full of surface antennae for phones? This isn’t a park full of weeds. They just have to send the detonation command signal from several antennae at once and I can’t tell which one they’re at.”

“Kinu> And that’s super what Morning Call is after, right?”

Exactly.

The short blonde girl had identified the launch site and rushed their as soon as Item’s hideout had been blown away by a rocket, but this was the result. The bomber wasn’t there.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> In the end, they aren’t setting up the launcher and immediately firing it. Morning Call is remotely sending the detonation signal from some safe position. So we can’t kill them by running toward the sound of the launch.”

Morning Call kept using the same trick.

If these attacks continued, it would soon become accepted fact throughout the darkness that Item was on the decline and could be safely attacked without any risk of reprisal. If things got that bad, the bomber wouldn’t even need to deliver the finishing blow. Item would be worn down by the endless supply of weaklings showing up to attack them. It was the same idea abused by “broken window manufacturers”. When idiots gathered in sufficient number, they could no longer sense the risk appropriately.

In the previous battle, Morning Call had realized it would be the height of folly to take on Item directly. So even if the bomber couldn’t deliver a single fatal blow, they could repeat this one effective attack over and over again. The bomber was wearing down Item until they made a mistake. And this would continue endlessly until that happened.

“M> I have zero intention of playing along with this silly marathon. What are we going to do about it?”

“Kinu> We aren’t going to find Morning Call by chasing after the sound of the launch, so we need to fundamentally change tack here.”

“Takitsubo Rikou> Well, we do have other options.”

Part 2

The room was dark.

A girl of around 15 sat inside.

Her eyes were covered as if to hide her identity in a newspaper or magazine photo, but they were being hidden by a smartphone. It was on its side and held on with rubber bands, so it appeared to function as simple VR goggles. It must have had an LCD screen on both sides because digital numbers were displayed along her eye line.

She wore a translucent raincoat. With a bikini showing through it.

Even though it was late October.

When manufacturing bombs, static electricity was the enemy.

Whether using acids or nitrogen compounds to produce explosives or soldering parts to an extremely precise semiconductor board, a single spark of static could ruin everything.

Of course, that problem could be eliminated with antistatic gloves and a raincoat, but the desire to remove as much clothing as possible while working was likely something of a jinx with no scientific foundation. They might find it silly themselves, but people would associate their past successes with meaningless habits and actions.

The girl spoke in the darkness.

“Now…I should have recovered 80% of what I lost.”

Bombs came in a variety of types and not all the processes in manufacturing them were delicate work.

At times, the bottoms of thick fire extinguisher were cut away, three of them were placed together end to end, and then welded together with a bright light.

After attaching the attitude control fins operated by servos and the cameras and sensors used for terminal guidance, the silhouette really began to take shape.

It looked just like a rocket or missile drawn on a small child’s drawing paper.

There was no real technical difference between the two.

It was a difference of use – for peaceful purposes or for killing.

“I still need more, though. I don’t have the numbers I want yet.”

After causing so many bombings that harmed plenty of ordinary people, Academy City’s higher ups weren’t going to just ignore it.

Some form of “purge” would begin soon.

The question was where that deadly weapon would be aimed.

Item was tasked with solving a variety of problems on the dark side, yet they had let Morning Call escape. And that had led to these ongoing bombings.

That meant Item was a part of this.

If Item hadn’t screwed up that night – if they hadn’t thoughtlessly provoked a dangerous bomber and then let her escape – none of this would have happened.

…By shifting the target of the hatred in that way, the bomber could easily avoid being the target of the purge.

Bombers were also experts at using bombs to manipulate individual and social psychology.

She grinned and shifted her focus to an Anti-Skill radio.

“Don’t let this be enough to trap you, my honey.”

Part 3

The School Garden, District 7.

Afterschool arrived just the same even for the most prestigious of schools.

It was evening.

The girls leaving the school building all seemed to be enjoying themselves. Their horoscopes and planetariums were common topics of conversation, likely because of the astronomy event.

A gentle atmosphere surrounded it all.

One girl carrying a flat school bag and an instrument case was part of the same crowd, yet seemed somehow different.

Unlike the other girls who were gathered in small groups like water droplets on a window, she alone remained isolated.

She was Yumiya Rakko, a dark side sniper.

(Sighhhhhh… October is almost over. The year is coming to a close. When am I going to finally make some friends? I’m nothing but rotting garbage…)

Friendships formed naturally. A group of friends would gather around you without any conscious effort on your part.

The people who saw it that way already possessed a form of talent.

It was hard to tell because there weren’t any exams or report cards like there were for the subjects taught in school, but social skills were in fact a skill. You were never taught how to work at them or practice them, but they still influenced the quality of your school life more than anything else.

Her life was gray.

Even in this sweet-smelling school for high-class girls.

(No, no, this is an opportunity. Winter is about to start, which means winter sports! Our school has a skating rink, so if I do some figure skating and stand out beautifully twirling on the ice, I can make friends and become the center of our class, our year, and our schoo-)

“Yumiya Rakko.”

“!!”

It came out of nowhere.

She turned around in surprise to find someone already within five meters of her.

An expressionless track suit girl was leaning against the sort of brick wall found everywhere within the School Garden, staring over at Rakko. There was no anger, hatred, or any other emotion in her eyes.

(An outsider? But the School Garden is more strictly guarded than your average research lab.)

“How did you get this far inside? Did you have a mapper map it out for you? Including everything from the flow of people to the locations of the security cameras?”

“How do you think I did it?”

She remained emotionless.

Rakko decided this girl was trouble.

They were conversing, yet she couldn’t get any useful information out of her.

“Not even the dark side can get in easily. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

“…”

“The only reason I didn’t do this when Hanano was caught was because I decided the hostage would be at risk if I got too close and caused a stir. But things are different now. You have no shield, which gives me more options.”

Someone who could suppress their emotions during a deadly battle was truly dangerous.

It was highly unusual for Rakko to find she didn’t want to be friends with someone.

(Who in the world is Hanano? We are enemies. She gains nothing by letting me know the name of one of her people, so why mention that in front of me? Wait, am I caught in the middle of someone’s pursuit of revenge?)

She was already in the palm of someone’s hand.

That unpleasant sensation reached her from the track suit girl. Intensely.

“You are a dark side sniper and, because you’ve been playing around a little too much, you were fifth on this week’s list of assassination targets. Oh, I did refuse the job, so no hard feelings. I’m not here to demand anything in return for that either. I simply want the cooperation of someone from a category we lack.”

The noise of the crowd rapidly faded from around Rakko.

This was the School Garden, a special area jointly funded and constructed by five prestigious girls schools. Making an appearance here was not a good idea for a dark side member.

At least, not in a way that anyone would notice.

“I don’t know who you are, but as another dark side pro you must know that our public lives are meant to act as cover but that doesn’t make them meaningless. It takes a fair amount of money and effort to maintain a safe and comfortable environment. Barging in and ruining all that…sounds like you’re asking to be killed.”

“If I couldn’t see you, I would probably be helpless.”

Tracker Takitsubo Rikou did not have any direct deadly power like Mugino. Nor did she have an unbreakable shield like Kinuhata. Ordinarily, she shouldn’t have been standing in front of a dark side sniper.

But she kept talking regardless.

“But I can see you and that changes things. As a pro you must know that a sniper’s luck has run out once her location is known. Do you really want to do this here and now?”

“I can remove myself from your sight quickly enough. Hell, I could even gouge out those silly eyes of yours to make sure you never see anything ever again.”

Takitsubo’s shoulders remained relaxed.

A quick motion of her fingers revealed she now held a glass container about the size of a tube of lipstick.

It only contained a small quantity of a clear, jelly-like substance.

The track suit girl whispered.

“Night rabbit fever.”

“…”

Rakko’s gaze sharpened further.

…That girl really was dark side through and through.

The track suit girl emotionlessly waved the glass container.

“I’ll take that to mean you’re aware that is a world-famous biological weapon that’s manufacture, storage, and use has been banned by international treaty. But this is Academy City, so it isn’t hard to get your hands on anything that can be scientifically created.”

“You’re bluffing…” quietly said Rakko.

And she focused on her uniform’s sleeve.

Her weapon used compressed gas, so it could kill that girl without making a noise.

“Compressed gas.”

“Kh.”

She saw right through it.

No…

“It can be chlorine or hydrogen peroxide, but by filling the glass container with gas to increase the pressure, even a single tiny crack will make it burst and scatter this particulate slime over a wide area. In an open outdoor space, a radius of 100m will be at risk in just a few seconds.”

Her empty hand – or the hand that had been empty – now held something.

It looked like a small perfume bottle, but its nozzle was even thinner than dried pasta. If the rubber stopper had a small safety valve, then compressed gas stored at high pressure and low temperature could be injected.

Rakko knew where all of Takitsubo’s vital points were – between the eyes, the thick arteries running from the heart to her limbs, etc. – but as easy as it would be to kill her, she couldn’t stop that glass container from shattering after it fell.

If Takitsubo was only now going to inject the compressed gas, would it be better to shatter it now?

No.

(I don’t know what’s already inside the glass container. She might have already injected the gas!)

“Like I said, you’re bluffing. The dark side might be lawless, but indiscriminately killing innocent people will still get you purged.”

“I see. Are those the rules you operate under? Sounds simple enough.”

“Kh. You would be making an enemy of everyone in Academy City, dark side or not. Living as a villain takes some brains, so you wouldn’t be so reckless now!”

“Night rabbit fever’s genetic structure prevents it from spreading from person to person. Unlike the plague or the variant bird flu, the scope of the infection is easy enough to control.”

“Spreading a deadly microbe in a public location is over the line regardless! Because this city doesn’t actually care about people’s lives. You live in the darkness, so you must know it isn’t the deaths that will get you assassinated – it’s the harm you would do to Academy City’s clean brand name. So that’s only a clear gelatin or agar inside that container!!”

“But your outside view as a sniper doesn’t give you any way of proving that convenient and optimistic speculation.”

The corners of Rakko’s eyes twitched.

Bull’s eye.

She was a sniper, not an analyst or biologist.

And if that really was night rabbit fever, allowing the glass container to fall to the ground and shatter would cause devastating harm within the School Garden. Within ten days of infection, the victims would come down with headaches, high fevers, and ulcers across the body. Rakko had even heard of ulcers forming on the eyeballs. And this would all be happening to the peaceful princesses who were always laughing happily with a hand held elegantly over the mouth.

The risk was too great to make a gamble.

Of course, everyone would make a different choice when faced with a crisis and there was no single correct answer. They might not respond logically. Some people would make the gamble while fully aware of the risks. But that was not the type of person Rakko was.

And the other girl knew that.

(This is her first try, but she isn’t showing any hesitation at all. She’s dealing with vague ideas of psychology, yet she isn’t at all afraid of me acting on a whim. Which means it isn’t vague for her. Has she already built up a solid picture of my psychology?)

That girl really had thoroughly researched Rakko’s traits and weaknesses.

Physically speaking, Rakko could kill her three times over in a single second…but she couldn’t actually do it.

She had been checkmated before the fight even began.

Takitsubo’s eyes must have possessed a talent on par with Rakko’s as a skilled sniper.

Rakko sighed softly.

“What do you want from me? If you want me to kill some pain-in-the-ass, then you could have gone through the Voice on the Phone.”

“Oh, you have a Voice on the Phone too? Probably a different one from us, though.”

“?”

(Mine has done such a poor job of guarding my information I’ve decided to move to another team, though.)

“What I want is what’s in your head. You don’t need to do any physical work.”

What reason did Rakko have to believe that?

And then…

“Oh, hello, Yumiya-sama. How do you do? Are you on your way to the dorm?”

It came as a complete surprise.

From right next to her.

(Hawahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?)

“We were thinking of going to get some sweets together. Would you like to join us?”

A girl in the same uniform as Rakko’s had noticed her and greeted her for once.

And with the sharp senses of an information expert, the dark side tracker instantly shifted her focus in that direction.

(Ugh…but this is my chance!!)

Rakko consciously held her breath and smoothly moved all her joints. She placed the fluttering of her hair, the muscles below her skin, and the creaking of her bones under her control.

If Takitsubo looked away even for a second…

If Rakko could reach a blind spot…

Rakko could blend into the background so thoroughly not even a wild animal could detect her and never be spotted again.

Even if she was within three meters of her target.

A true sniper would have no trouble tricking a puny creature that had abandoned her instincts in the smart life of the big city.

If she could grab the wrist of the girl holding the glass container, she could fire a million bullets into her with her other hand.

(You barged into the School Garden – my territory – and even threatened the lives of my future friends, buddies, BFFs. You will pay for that crime by having bullets tear away all your excess flesh!!)

Rakko silently smiled and slid to the side.

And then she abandoned her principles.

Her voice escaped her lips.

Unintentionally.

“Ah.”

Their eyes met.

Takitsubo really had turned her head to the side. Her right eye was directed at the girl who had spoken to Rakko.

But at the same time…

The track suit girl’s left eye rolled independently in its socket to pierce right into the center of Rakko’s face as she tried to vanish into the background. Like she was being pursued by a swiveling smart machinegun.

She couldn’t escape that lock.

(What…kind of world does this monster live in!?)

Item’s tracker didn’t do anything special.

She simply repeated herself.

“Do you want to try this where I can see you?”

“…You’ve made your point.”

Rakko then turned toward the girl who had spoken to her.

She smiled bright and bowed.

And provided a lie constructed in her head at Mach speed.

“I do apologize, Sazanami-sama. This girl was my upperclassman at my previous school and I have promised to show her around.”

“My, my. I had no idea. Some other time then. We must hang out next time, Yumiya-sama!”

Despite the disappointment in the girl’s voice, she left quickly enough. She found some other friends and joined up with them. And walked toward a sweet street lined with luxury cafes and bakeries.

Rakko breathed a deathly heavy sigh as she watched her go.

Her tiny back seemed to say not being able to join that schoolmate weighed far heavier on her than the fate of the world or her own life.

(Hawahh…)

Rakko held back the tears and turned toward Takitsubo.

Her words were dripping with hatred.

“Let’s get down to business. What do you want my help to do? You said this isn’t about blowing some pain-in-the-ass’s brains out.”

“Like I said, I want your opinion as a pro.”

“About what exactly?”

“An optimal sniping position.”

Takitsubo laid out the conditions.

“A distance of 3000-4000. Using homemade explosives, but you can think of them as roughly equivalent to a 120mm mortar. The launcher is fixed to the ground with stakes and the launch itself is controlled remotely. Thus, identifying the launch site based on the sound will not lead us to the bomber.”

“I’m going to assume tracing the source of the signal won’t work here. What else?”

“To eliminate this bomber, we need to predict where they will set up the launcher in advance. So I want your eyes and brains as a pro sniper. If we know where they will place the launcher in order to fire a rocket on our hideout, we can launch an attack of our own. Right?”

“Oh? What makes you think that?” interrupted Rakko.

Takitsubo expressionlessly tilted her head.

Eliminating Morning Call required predicting rather than reacting. That logic had to be correct. Or did Rakko think there was a way to find the bomber by reacting?

“You aren’t stupider than I could have imagined, are you?”

“Right back at you.” Rakko grinned. “Preparing a fixed rocket launcher and firing an explosive from long distance? It’s the same as mahjong tiles. You act like you’re looking for tiles that won’t help the enemy and discarding them to avoid playing into their hand, but you’re actually revealing everything one tile at a time. It’s a series of bluffs.”

“Oh, you play mahjong? You can find three other people to play with you?”

“~ ~ ~. I may be setting a new record for friendlessness each day, but I can still play all the mahjong I want alone against the computer!”

“That would explain why your idea didn’t seem much like mahjong. Did you start playing because it was one of the preinstalled games no one wants when you buy a new computer?”

“Well, I wanted it. I know it’s not the same as real mahjong played against other people, but it still gets me through the lonely nights when I want to die! When you don’t have friends, you take what you can get!!”

Why did that girl feel the need to pursue this so far?

If she understood Rakko’s psychology that well, she had to know how badly this hurt her!

Did that level of understanding not change the fact that an enemy was an enemy?

She needed to be more considerate.

“P-people find comfort in information they gather themselves. You can easily imagine the system behind it, you assume you know what will happen next, and you believe you have a complete understanding of the enemy’s mind. So it can be hard to notice that understanding was designed by the enemy and you’re following the path laid out for you. Everyone puts on an act during a serious match. (E-even if you are only playing against the program…) If you’re being misled by a mistaken reading of your opponent’s discards, you will get ron’d when you least expect it. …In fact, I hope that happens to you! Your ‘unlike you, I actually have friends’ aura pisses me off so much, you stupid friend-haver!! Sniff, wahhhhhhhh!!”

“But what would mean…”

Part 4

“Kinu> Can they really get away with doing all this in broad daylight…? These are technically dark side incidents, aren’t they? And it’s super being talked about on the news.”

“M> The news is calling it an accidental explosion after someone mishandled the acetylene gas being used for welding during construction. Who will think twice about seeing that on TV?”

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> There aren’t any articles on the Underground News or the Death Aggregator about it, so we should still be good. In the end, dark side news showing up in places that shallow is the same as a death sentence. At the very least, it doesn’t look like the higher ups are getting after us for causing trouble.”

The short blonde girl was still in the part of District 15 being redeveloped.

By this time Anti-Skill would have worked out the launch site and be on their way, but the Academy City Bomber still hadn’t fully investigated the launcher. In case she needed to pay them a visit later, she wanted to now which station’s evidence locker this stuff would be stored in.

“What a pain…”

“Kinu> What can you super learn from investigating the abandoned device? I thought we had moved past how the attack was made and onto where the remote commands are being sent from.”

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> Aren’t you at all curious? If they’re causing this much of a scene, they must be confident when it comes to money and influence. Morning Call might have a benefactor. Inspecting the parts can tell you a lot about a bomber, so we need to thoroughly-”

“Takitsubo Rikou> You’re in danger. Get out of there now.”

“?”

The strange interruption made the blonde girl tilt her head with her eyes still on her phone’s small screen.

People found comfort in information they gathered themselves.

But comfort designed by the enemy did not actually guarantee safety.

Academy City Bomber Morning Call only attacked using remotely-activated fixed rocket launchers.

…But was that really true?

“!?”

There was a sound like a burner.

A 2m model airplane made of lightweight metal and plastic suddenly shot by the window. Did that qualify as a loyal wingman?

Bombs made by linking three fire extinguishers end to end were attached to its underside. Several of them were lined up side by side.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> Oh, no. Was the UAV the real attack!?”

“Kinu> You mean Morning Call kept using fixed rocket launchers so we would adapt to that and leave us open to attack by a super drone?”

The short blonde girl immediately spun around and dashed toward the emergency stairs. At the exact same time, the UAV directed its nose toward her and launched several rockets in through the window.

Space itself seemed to expand as a disconcerting explosive noise filled the world.

The blonde girl literally rolled down the stairs. Causing a series of dull impacts. She continued down to the next floor with no landing at the midpoint. No gray dust poured down after her, but that was probably because the higher floor’s pillars were broken, bringing the ceiling down and fully crushing the entrance to the stairs.

(Oh, god. What happened to Anti-Skill!?)

The ceiling had only fallen near the stairs, so the blast wouldn’t have engulfed the entire floor. If it had, the skyscraper itself would have collapsed. But that was no guarantee all the Anti-Skill officers were unharmed. This criminal wasn’t one to be concerned about that.

And she didn’t have time for cursing.

She was still lying on the floor.

Her eyes met something else’s.

A dog’s.

The Siberian Husky was wearing clothing.

No, it only looked that way.

But there definitely were several colorful cords emerging from the bulletproof vest’s pocket. Those were connecting an explosive with a circuit board and a battery, they were tangled together with some trap wires, and it all formed a single loop.

This was a much older system then the detonator she had seen before.

And the old records had given a name for this weapon.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> A dog mine!?”

Part 5

The Academy City shopping district shook vertically.

“…Got her.”

A girl of around 15 fixed the zoom of the simple goggles made from a smartphone on its side, lifted it to her brow, and double-checked on the tablet screen resting in her lap.

She had killed her target.

“Ha ha ha. That’s all it took? I didn’t even get a chance to use my catapult bomb or my cluster bomb.”

She didn’t have any strong feelings on the matter.

This was going to happen sooner or later. It just so happened to be today.

That was all.

As with any type of criminal, there was no textbook for being a bomber. Which meant Morning Call’s bible had been Frenda Seivelun. It had taken a massive amount of effort just to learn that name. That Senpai had been like an elusive phantom. Morning Call had wanted to be like that. She had sifted through the records of past bombings, spotted the connections, used the slight remnants left at the bombing sites to estimate what kind of bomb had been used and how, and physically built the things she had constructed in her mind. She had mixed the explosive, manufactured the detonator fuse, and put together the circuit board. Mental fantasies weren’t enough to build an actual bomb, but each time she ran into a wall, she had invented her own replacements for the missing parts, filled in all the gaps, and constructed her image of Frenda Seivelun.

Whenever she was uncertain, she only had to look inside herself.

Her teacher had always answered the questions brought on by her own inadequacies.

At this point, she no longer needed to capture and bow her head to the Frenda Seivelun wandering outside. That would only hinder her now.

(Now that I’ve killed Frenda Seivelun, the remaining three hold no interest for me. Maybe I should place a bomb on a dam or industrial complex and send an anonymous threat to the higher ups. Telling them a crucial piece of infrastructure is about to go boom because Item screwed up. That should be enough to get the rest of Item purged☆)

A direct threat to the higher ups after all these high-profile bombings would be sure to make an enemy of Academy City as a whole. She would shoot to the top of the assassination list.

But Morning Call was an expert bomber.

She could easily fake her death in an explosion.

This wasn’t even the first time she had rewritten her identity to get a fresh start.

“Academy City Bomber Frenda Seivelun is no more. Now, who should I make my new Senpai?”

Morning Call started to stand up, but she heard a dull sound.

Someone was there.

Someone was peering into this room with a hand on the skyscraper’s window frame.

It was Frenda Seivelun.

“Huh?” she said.

For a brief moment, Morning Call truly lost track of reality.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. But the clock continued ticking all the same.

Frenda pulled something out from the top of her thigh high.

She tossed something over with her other hand.

More like passing a bag than sharply throwing a weapon.

Morning Call ended up following it with her eyes, but she realized a moment later what it was.

A clay-like bomb with an electric fuse attached.

She should have dived behind cover before checking what it was.

“~ ~ ~!!!!?”

Part 6

It exploded.

Part 7

“Pwah.”

A short blonde girl stood up at the site of the explosion.

She didn’t even seem fazed by the simple bomb exploding at close range.

“Takitsubo Rikou> Did Morning Call fall for our trap?”

“Kinu> You could say that.”

She reached toward the top of her head and pulled the blonde hair away.

Revealing a different girl.

“Ugh. I super thought I was going to die, even with Offense Armor.”

Part 8

The truth of the matter was Item had held a strategy meeting before launching their attack on Morning Call.

“M> We know for sure they’re after Frenda. So if we can keep them from doing that, their predictions will fall apart. For certain.”

They had also held this conversation before:

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

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

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

Which meant it wasn’t difficult to dress someone else up in the same clothes as Frenda.

Morning Call liked to set up a rocket launcher and then launch the explosive remotely. That meant they could ignore the possibility of being watched from close up.

By altering the details of her appearance with a fluffy blonde wig and such, someone else could pass off as Frenda from a distance.

And they had three reasons for choosing to swap out Kinuhata and Frenda.

1. Their heights were similar, making the disguise easier to pull off.

2. Offense Armor’s thick shield allowed her to survive a bomb blast, making her the safest option for a decoy.

3. Allowing the real Frenda to act freely was the perfect countermeasure against Morning Call.

While Morning Call was busy pursuing “the blonde girl”, the real Frenda was free to sneak up on them. After using her intuition as a bomber to track down Morning Call’s location, she had tossed in a clay-like bomb from close range. As payback for everything Morning Call had done.

Part 9

Jumping from skyscraper rooftop to rooftop, Kinuhata Saiai – blonde wig back on – spoke exasperatedly into her phone. The machine converted her voice into text.

“Kinu> She’s still on the move. I thought you super killed her in a surprise attack, Frenda-san?”

“M> Dammit, Frenda, what is this sloppy work!? If she escapes again, it’ll be Morning Call’s turn again!!”

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> In the end, Mugino, you’d go nuts if I did kill her right away! I left a treat for your battle freak side, so close in on her already.”

She was soaring through the evening sky.

Kinuhata had something like a powered suit surrounding her thanks to Offense Armor, but not even full use of her boosted leg strength was enough to close in on Morning Call. She couldn’t catch up. That girl had to be boosting herself in some way too. Each time she swung her arms and legs, the light of an explosion flashed like the muzzle flashes of a machinegun.

(She isn’t going to super start flying is she? Using rocket technology or something.)

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> Okay, I was willing to accept the rockets and drone bombing. But in the end, that dog mine was over the line. How can you blow up an innocent pup like that? Does she have no standards as a bomber!?”

A small shape flew sharply in from another direction.

Another blonde girl arrived, jumping from skyscraper rooftop to rooftop.

Frenda Seivelun.

The true Academy City Bomber.

“Perfect Cutie Frenda-tan> Hey, wait! When you’re me, you need to pay more attention to your skirt, Kinuhata! You’re flashing your underwear to the entire shopping district from way up in the air!”

“Kinu> Why would you choose to wear this frilly stuff, Frenda-san? I want to super tear this awful skirt to pieces.”

Kinuhata couldn’t wait for Frenda to catch up.

She was going to arrive sooner.

Taking in a quick breath, she clenched her right fist.

Just as Morning Call tried to change direction after noticing Frenda running in from another direction, Kinuhata took a powerful step forward.

Morning Call sensed the wind pressure and turned toward Kinuhata.

She had noticed the coming attack, but what could she do? Even if she guarded with her arms, Kinuhata’s fist would break those arms and smash her skull.

She still used no esper power. Instead of keeping it in reserve, she was probably just a Level 0.

“You damn gloomy smartypants bomber. All you’re good at is sneaking around harassing people. But you’re super mine now that you’re in punching range!!”

In the corner Kinuhata’s vision, Frenda’s mouth formed a small triangle, but Kinuhata didn’t have time to worry about any collateral damage here.

A fist boosted by Offense Armor thrust straight out. A direct hit from that killer fist could easily break through a pillar of reinforced concrete as big around as Kinuhata’s torso.

Morning Call moved to the side.

She slid aside with impossible speed, dodging Kinuhata’s boosted punch.

The sound of rubber shoe soles burning from friction arrived a moment later.

And a scent reminiscent of fireworks.

That meant it was a combination of explosives and martial arts.

(This bomber freak really is Frenda-san’s super biggest fan, isn’t she!?)

Kinuhata didn’t have time to be gasping.

By the time Kinuhata noticed Morning Call holding her palm out toward her, she had already tossed several explosives smaller than ping pong balls.

She didn’t seem afraid of being caught in the blast.

They detonated right away.

Protected by Offense Armor, Kinuhata was blasted diagonally upwards.

Takitsubo watched her flight.

Kinuhata’s small body had already flown past the edge of the skyscraper. It was only a matter of time before she was grasped by the unseen hand of gravity. She wouldn’t die when she hit the ground thanks to Offense Armor, but she would have a hard time returning to the fight anytime soon. The vertical distance was too great.

The figure that broke through the explosive smoke while ducked low was Mugino.

She already had deadly light gathered in the palms of her hands.

“They’re just bombs. Throw as many of them my way you want, my Meltdowner while blast right through them and kill you!!”

“Do you really believe that?”

Something exploded on a different building and something flew this way like a long throw in baseball. It was the thick water tank attached to that building’s rooftop. Its great mass crashed into this roof.

Mugino’s world shook.

And a mere meter in front of her…

“Uh!?”

It exploded, scattering orange-heated metal all around.

She might be the #4 Level 5 and she might be Meltdowner, but if she burned through that object, there would be radiant heat and molten metal dumped on her head.

A direct hit from that wouldn’t be enough to kill Mugino, but the only way to escape self-destructing would be to destroy the roof below her feet and jump down to the floor below.

“…”

Morning Call took a quick look around and noticed the track suit girl had vanished.

That was the tracker who couldn’t directly fight.

She must have decided standing in harm’s way here wouldn’t improve the situation for her side. Or maybe this was a plan to apply psychological pressure to Morning Call by hinting at an enemy in an unknown location. Like with a sniper or mines.

It wasn’t a bad plan, but it was far from decisive.

That left just one more.

“A pleasure to meet you, Senpai.”

“In the end, I don’t even know your name.”

“And I don’t actually know if Frenda Seivelun is your real name.”

The simple goggles made from a smartphone’s LCD screen covering the girl’s face muffled her laughter.

She displayed a zero and a dash on the digital display to wink.

“Plus, names and faces don’t really matter. It all comes down to how much you can boost your own skills by reaching a deeper understanding of that person. In that sense, I don’t even need you to live in the same era as you. Plenty of researchers out there right now motivate their studies with their admiration of Newton or Einstein.”

“In the end, is that why?”

“Yes.”

The raincoat and bikini bomber nodded like a small child.

And made an announcement.

“I have absorbed plenty from Frenda Seivelun. I’ve decided I don’t need any more. Because too much of a margin of error has grown between the Senpai in my mind and the Frenda Seivelun walking out in the real world. This boring, imperfect version of you will only reduce the value of your name. Learning from you would only hinder my progress. If you will only introduce noise, I should eliminate you.”

“In the end, I’m not some perfect idol you invented in your fantasies,” spat the fluffy blonde girl, pulling several objects from her short skirt.

It came down to just two.

The Academy City Bombers.

Frenda Seivelun and Morning Call.

Part 10

What did it mean to use explosives?

What phenomenon was triggered by detonating a bomb?

Bombs didn’t just scatter their blast in all directions.

Properly controlled, their destructive force could be concentrated on a single point to pierce thick armor or fanned out to slaughter more soldiers in a single blast.

So detonating an explosive at close range wouldn’t necessarily kill the bomber as well.

No Academy City Bomber would let something like that happen.

Thus…

“!!”

“!?”

Frenda Seivelun and Morning Call formed afterimages when viewed by ordinary human eyes. They were simply moving that fast.

Side to side.

Both of them repeatedly and irregularly slid over short intervals, securing enough mobility to have easily dodged every bullet of a submachine gun if one were being fired from directly ahead. They used the movements of their limbs in sync with the small blasts concentrated in one direction to move at speeds beyond the limits of their muscles.

It would have been easy to use this full force to throw punches or kicks, but their own bodies would have been destroyed by the speed.

(Seeing she went out of her way to make those goggles out of a dual-side phone, I thought she was just some tasteless freak who enjoys being called Morning Call. But…)

“Tch! In the end, you aren’t just some cheap bomber who only knows how to blow things up!!”

“I learned it all from you, Senpai. I learned how guns that leave a single open hole as a path out for the explosive force and engines that trap gasoline and convert it into rotation are both products of explosions!”

Frenda swung her right arm horizontally to send an orange blast sweeping out like a sword. Morning Call jumped three meters straight up and dropped her heel, sending a blast down toward Frenda’s head like a guillotine. Frenda fell back as if repelled by that attack, her feet digging into the rooftop to bring her to a stop.

“Shaped charge, self-forging.”

When Morning Call swung her right hand to the side, a rough-hewn steel sword was already extending from it.

“Acceleration, attitude control!”

She used the force of an explosive to cut sharply in and strike.

Orange sparks flew.

Frenda held a small shield in her hands. Like a bulldozer blade, the steel shield could stab sharply into and tear pieces from a target.

Explosions could produce more than destruction. At times, they could induce movement or creation.

What did it mean to use explosives?

This was the answer.

It was the same as humanity obtaining fire.

A bomber was someone who controlled the entirety of human civilization and wielded it as a weapon.

Kinuhata had thought she could defeat that civilization with a bit of strength and had paid for her mistake by taking a dive off the skyscraper’s roof.

Mugino had been cautious of that civilization’s knowledge and been pinned down by overwhelming force.

A mere esper lacked the power to surpass all the knowledge and technology accumulated by humanity over millennia.

Morning Call had a grin on her lips.

She wore simple VR goggles made by tilting a smartphone on its side and attaching it to her head with rubber bands.

She used her eye movements to operate the detonation control app displayed over the real scenery and she prepared her next attack.

“An uncivilized ape that can’t open her eyes and learn about the world around her would be dead three times over by now.”

Ultimately, only a bomber could take on a bomber.

That was true, but did Frenda really think she had reached that level?

Morning Call couldn’t believe it.

It looked like they were evenly matched, but Frenda had her hands full simply keeping up. Morning Call wasn’t yet at her limit, so she continued to secretly toss explosives around whenever she threw a punch or kick, setting them up for later.

“You’re keeping up well enough, but I’ve already learned everything there is to know about Frenda Seivelun. You are the old and dusty remains of my former Senpai. Struggle as you might, the real you can never surpass the towering wall that I am.”

“…”

A line of red blood dripped from Frenda’s temple to her cheek.

Even if none of the blasts and fragments directly hit them, the rapid pressure changes could still injure and kill. Every unexpected thing and delayed calculation opened the gap between the two bombers until one would live while the other died.

Frenda was already in the palm of her hand.

“Technology is cumulative. None of it is inherently better, worse, more advanced, or behind the times. You only have Frenda Seivelun, while I have Frenda Seivelun and my own technology, so you have no way of defeating me. It goes without saying who wins between precisely 100% and at least 101%, right?”

Dull metallic sounds came from Frenda and Morning Call simultaneously.

There was no need to stick with their makeshift sword and shield.

Bombers used “fire”. They wielded all of human civilization as a weapon, so insisting on a single weapon would only limit their options.

The uncreative were the first to be eliminated in the world of bombers.

They both gave a roar and ran along the shortest route to each other.

“Ohhh!”

Just as Frenda’s skirt fluttered, a great mass was launched overhead by an explosive. It was a cluster bomb that split into 24 bomblets that were blasted out to evenly fill the space around it.

“Ohhhhhhh!”

Morning Call pulled the pin from a grenade and tossed it overhead, using its blats to eliminate some of the bomblets and securing a safe zone for herself.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Frenda twirled a metal tube in her hand, using it to direct an explosive force and launch a lead bullet at great speed.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Morning Call detonated an explosive at her feet, tearing up the rooftop itself, turning it into a thick shield.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Frenda used an explosive to boost her leg strength and jump straight over that shield standing taller than a prison wall. In midair, she targeted Morning Call with a bomb.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Morning Call remotely detonated an explosive buried in rubble that had crumbled atop it, sending a scattershot blast toward the blonde girl.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”

Several explosions coincided and exploded in quick succession.

(Got her!!)

A sneer formed on the lips below the simple goggles hiding Morning Call’s eyes.

They were using the same sort of power, but Frenda couldn’t keep up with the calculations. That gave Morning Call an advantage and the margin of error had just passed a threshold. A catapult bomb’s explosive force propelled a large quantity of gravel to speeds greater than a handgun, shredding Frenda’s body.

Or it should have.

“!?”

But a moment later, Morning Call detonated an explosive to slide rapidly to the right.

A sharp cut ran across her cheek.

(What the-?)

“Is it really so surprising? In the end, assuming victory without checking the body for a pulse or breathing is a common pitfall for second-rate bombers who like to blow people away with big explosions.”

She was alive.

Frenda Seivelun was looking down at Morning Call from atop the concrete shield jutting up vertically. The look in her eyes was icy. She was still alive.

It made no sense.

That had been a finishing blow. The battle wasn’t supposed to keep going. Yet a part of the battle Morning Call hadn’t needed to calculate out had arrived.

Each new second expanded the margin of error compared to the complete victory she had imagined.

Confused, the simple goggles girl sent out a series of explosively-boosted punches. At the same time, she released the small explosives she held, placing them in the midair positions she wanted.

Frenda had no way of dodging this speed and timing.

A punch to her vitals would knock her out.

Even if she blocked, she would have no way of avoiding the explosives positioned in the air. While Frenda tensed to endure the blow of the punch, Morning Call could pull back her fist and detonate the midair bombs to tear Frenda to mincemeat.

That was her plan.

She had calculated out the correct answer, so it was strange things weren’t playing out according to those values.

“…”

Morning Call tossed out an additional explosive. To fix the mistake.

The concrete shield audibly crumbled, but Frenda’s body wasn’t there. She easily landed on the skyscraper rooftop.

She wouldn’t die.

Why not? It didn’t add up.

When had Frenda become immortal?

This had nothing to do with being a bomber.

The girl who should have been dead grinned and whispered a term.

A term that didn’t seem relevant to the current situation.

“Tetra-ethylnipolita.”

“?”

“In the end, if you really had created a perfect model of me and made it a part of yourself, then why did you start using that explosive?”

This wasn’t simple curiosity.

Frenda’s voice contained obvious scorn.

When you could simply write “10”, it was a waste of time to express it as “1x10” instead. Frenda sounded like she was watching a fool go to the trouble of writing it out as “1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1”.

“In the end, the world’s bombers never use that because it’s inefficient. Sure, you can create plenty of substitute explosive by combining expired smokeless powder with a certain powerful acid, but no one is going to waste that much smokeless powder in this day and age. The logistics linking supply and demand have evolved beyond that point. That ‘alchemy of explosives’ is based on the assumption a lot of it is going to waste. It isn’t so convenient it ignores the conservation of mass.”

An explosive detonated with a “bang!!”

Frenda didn’t dodge to either side. The spear-like shockwave sent out by Morning Call shot right past her Senpai’s ear.

That had been aimed so it would hit when Frenda tried to dodge out of the way.

Morning Call’s plans weren’t working.

“In the end, I would never use that cheap substitute in one of my bombs.”

Morning Call tossed several more bombs overhead.

They didn’t simply fall back down.

Small parachutes opened. They would hang in the air, throwing off the timing for intercepting them, before the bombs sharply attacked directly below them. But Frenda pulled missiles from her miniskirt and accurately shot each and every one down.

“In the end, you are Morning Call. You are a completely different bomber from me. You aren’t Frenda Seivelun.”

She didn’t hesitate.

She smiled thinly while accurately manipulating SAMs the size of coffee cans.

“You thought you had perfectly modeled me and absorbed everything I know? Don’t make me laugh. In the end, you don’t even understand a tenth of what there is to know about the Academy City Bomber.”

“Damn you…”

“In the end, you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Something passed its limit.

The back of the girl’s raincoat burst.

Bombs continued to explode, forming giant glowing wings extending from her back. A lot like rocket boosters.

“You aren’t prepared to fly, though, are you? Control the explosions precisely enough and you can turn yourself into a hot-air balloon, an airplane, a helicopter, or a rocket.”

“Sorry, but that kind of bomber is five generations out of date. I’m sure you’re doing your best to be clever, but I already made my own personal aircraft. At the start of August, I think it was.”

“Kh. This ends here! You used-up old hag…”

“You see bright and shining Frenda-chan as an old hag? How low is your strike zone?”

“I don’t need precise calculations! If I slice diagonally through this entire building, I can slam you into the ground and kill you for sure!!”

That was certainly true.

But Frenda was still smiling.

“Here’s the thing.”

The “thud” was a perfectly ordinary noise.

It was the sound of a heavy chunk of concrete being swung down. No technology necessary.

The concrete struck Morning Call in the back of the head.

Courtesy of Takitsubo.

“Gah?”

“Bombs aren’t everything in the real world. In the end, we are Item.”

They had spent so long fighting back and forth with so many different types of bombs, but there were other ways.

The means were not the ends.

If one side killed the other, they won. Those were the rules.

“A blunt object. I was defeated…by such primitive means?”

This too was an option.

But the raincoat girl hadn’t prepared it.

Morning Call had been too focused on bombs too fully become Frenda Seivelun.

“Gah, ah, ah, ahh, ahhhhhhhhh!!!!”

“Frenda,” called Takitsubo.

She had already stepped aside.

The girl holding a hand to her half-crushed head gave a roar. Were her simple goggles glitching, or was it her brain that was broken? She ignored all else and swung her glowing wings of constant explosions to cut through the entire skyscraper and kill Frenda and Takitsubo.

But a second beforehand.

The Academy City Bomber twirled a tube in her hand and directed its end toward Morning Call.

Like it was a magic wand.

But this tube was filled with gunpowder and a lead bullet.

She had received assistance from a teammate, but she hadn’t said a word about losing at her own specialty.

Part 11

They had killed her.

Revenge was meaningless. That standard line was found everywhere in children’s books and fairy tales, but those on the dark side knew revenge was far from the worst thing. The truly empty victories were the ones that ended in killing a genius criminal freak who was motivated by their own madness rather than personal interest or a grudge.

Kinuhata sighed.

“Super what do we do now? Now that the bomber isn’t a threat, I’d love to take some time to sit back and relax.”

“No, not yet. Just to be safe, let’s check what Morning Call has on her. To gather information. I doubt there’s anything, but she is a bomber. In the end, if she set up a bunch of time bombs somewhere, the city could start blowing up before long. And unlike the kitchen timer bombs seen in movies, real ones can count down for days. In an old war, there were bombs intentionally set to wait for 20 days before detonating. So once the people were confident the threat had passed, the recovering city would be bombed all over again, wearing at the people’s nerves.”

“Time bombs made with cup noodles super aren’t just a thing in the movies.”

Snipers and bombers were similar in that they killed while remaining hidden, but this was the annoying part of bombers. Frenda and Takitsubo argued over their methods as they investigated the gruesome corpse’s swimsuit.

Mugino picked up the simple VR goggles.

She removed the smartphone from the plastic case attached to the rubber bands.

Whether it used a fingerprint or facial recognition, that physical sort of security meant nothing here. They had the owner’s dead body right here, so aiming the stolen phone at her face and pressing her finger against it were enough to unlock it.

The plethora of unfamiliar icons were likely the bomber’s personal programs, not apps bought from the store. This was what happened when those Academy City intellectuals thoughtlessly suggested everyone learned to code. Maybe they were for detonation control and maybe they were for drone control, but carelessly messing with them without knowing how they worked could possibly blow something up in some district or another. The phone could even blow up in Mugino’s hands. Although that would be preferable to having an elementary school or hospital somewhere blow up.

Takitsubo peered at the screen from the side.

“It would be safest to start by checking the basic apps that are installed by default. Of those, I would check…her personal contact list and the calendar listing her plans.”

“If those are her own program given the super top-level icon of something else, couldn’t the phone blow up as soon as you touch them? Maybe it brings up a prompt for a long password and detonates the phone if you can’t enter it in ten seconds.”

“Oh, like a front door with home security installed?” offhandedly suggested Frenda.

Most people’s home security didn’t explode, but she didn’t seem to care.

“In the end, you can avoid that by checking the apps that are already running. Even if it isn’t displayed right now, the camera, the map, and other apps you use regularly will be running in the background. If she was using the app herself, we know it can’t be a trap. And since she left it open, it won’t ask for the password again☆”

“Mugino. Start by checking the bomber’s addresses and schedule.”

“I get the feeling a freak like her wouldn’t have any friends…”

But Mugino’s guess was wrong.

After selecting one of the app screens from the listed tabs and looking at the phone, the #4 frowned in confusion.

One app contained a list of addresses.

“Quarterback?”

A call arrived with perfect timing.

From that Quarterback number.

They were the one who had called the phone, but they started with a terrifyingly deep voice.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Oh, are those phone scams common outside the city now? If you’re trying to work out my identity from how I respond, it’s not going to work, so give up, grandfather. So what, were you fighting this Quarterback person outside the city?”

The “eh?” in response sounded terribly silly.

The elderly male voice was a familiar one.

Mugino had heard nothing about the Mugino Family head operating under the name Quarterback, so it was more likely he had stolen that Quarterback person’s phone.

“Wait, Shizuri? Why do you have this phone?”

Explaining would be a huge pain in the ass.

“Is this super why she didn’t use social media to communicate?”

“I think so, Kinuhata. Academy City social media isn’t compatible with the low-tech phones outside the city.”

This greatly changed the nature of the incident.

Quarterback was a biker gang from North America, which meant they were from outside Academy City. That was an entirely different category from the personally-motivated bombings with no focus on profit. It felt like building a jigsaw puzzle the size of a tatami mat and suddenly finding a pile of pieces from a different puzzle entirely.

Takitsubo expressionlessly gathered the disparate information together.

“So Morning Call, a bomber causing serial bombings in Academy City, was linked with Quarterback, a biker gang causing trouble outside the city.”

“Why would she bother?” asked Mugino.

Takitsubo shrugged.

Apparently there were things even Item’s tracker didn’t know.

“Wait…she super wasn’t spreading damage through Academy City for some job from outside the city, was she?”

“Morning Call herself was motivated by her obsession with Frenda, so I doubt the bombings had anything to do with Quarterback. Frenda and the biker gang wouldn’t know each other.”

Frenda had once been thrown outside of Academy City due to a mess related to the Mugino Family.

However, she had no recollection of opposing a criminal organization by the name of Quarterback while outside. They were a North American biker gang, so they wouldn’t have much connection to Japan anyway.

Mugino snorted and then sighed.

“It’s also unlikely Quarterback was causing trouble as a job from Morning Call. What would a bomber gain from an attack on a Tokyo motorcycle shop?”

“Then in the end…we should assume they were connected in some other way?”

Frenda sounded unconvinced even as she said it.

What other way was there?

The only thing they could think of was…

“Umm,” said the Mugino Family head. “One of them is inside Academy City and the other isn’t, right? How could the two sides collude on anything? Cash and electronic bank transfers between the inside and outside of the city are monitored, so they wouldn’t be able to exchange illicit money, would they?”

He had a point.

But that was assuming Academy City’s system was working as advertised.

“To be super blunt, there are loopholes.”

Kinuhata’s love of movies gave her a respect for the culture outside the city, which came in handy here.

“Academy City’s technology is twenty or thirty years ahead of the outside world, but there are some super exceptions. Like fashion. And when it comes to vintage clothing, the products on the market outside the city can be worth even more. That gives them property value.”

“You mean Quarterback couldn’t send their money directly without arousing suspicions, so they convert it into used leather jackets and boots and whatnot, load all that into a shipping container, and send it right in through the Academy City’s front gate? To pay Morning Call?”

That method wouldn’t arouse any suspicion from the agents of justice guarding the city’s wall and gate.

A container full of used clothing might seem conspicuous, but innocent people would do the same. Because travel in and out of the city was so difficult, Academy City’s used clothing stores would import as many products at once as possible when they had a valuable chance to do so.

Takitsubo tilted her head.

“So Morning Call received her reward. Probably enough money to take things so unusually far in this incident. But then what kind of product did that bomber send to Quarterback? They’re a biker gang. I wouldn’t think of them as using especially complicated bombs.”

“Oh, so that’s it… It was probably these.”

After a moment of sudden realization, Frenda waved something between her index and middle finger.

“An A-17 board?”

Mugino frowned.

Wasn’t that the toy they found in the unexploded bomb?

“Isn’t that a bomb’s detonator? Why would Quarterback want a bunch of that niche product? Why would they pay so much money for them?”

“The biker gang probably didn’t use the bombs themselves. They don’t seem like the type to set up a time bomb on a public building and send a ransom to the mayor. Then in the end, I expect they were reselling them to make even more profit.”

“Hm??? But how? We’re not talking about ordinary guns or drugs, so there wouldn’t be that many buyers. Wouldn’t they just end up with a bunch of unsold inventory if they bought up a bunch of them?”

“That depends on how they go about selling them.” Frenda shrugged. “A time limit, cutting the red wire or the blue cord detonates the bomb, tilting or shaking the bomb does the same, maybe even opening the cover and exposing it to light is enough. …Complex bomb traps aren’t the only place these things are useful. The A-17 board can be used for more.”

“Oh. You mean using them in the dial of their own safe?” asked Takitsubo.

Frenda nodded.

In fact, Frenda herself protected the metal door of her container bomb-making lab that way.

“Criminals who can’t leave their money in legal banks for fear of having their account frozen or their assets seized have a tendency to develop a strong interest in delicately designed safes that can’t be forced.”

That criminal chose to use bombs based on her own personal aesthetics and had challenged a fellow bomber like Frenda.

It was after a period of inactivity that her focus had shifted from Anti-Skill to Frenda. Had that been when she made the jump from a hobby to a job?

Since they worked jobs for the Voice on the Phone, Item was also particular when it came to money. To the point that people could end up dead if they were deceived about a job or a rival stole a job from them. But those money issues were not something they would replace a core part of themselves to pursue.

This person had done that.

“Talk about pathetic,” spat Mugino. “So she was just after money?”

“I see.” The head must have been considering the matter for himself. “This isn’t just about Japan. Now that you mention it, there have been conflicts all over the world… It must have all been connected. A major commotion related to criminal organizations will naturally lead to governments cracking down on them, so even when using fake names or going through an unmarked agent, you won’t want to keep your money in a bank participating in an anti-crime campaign.”

And the greater the demand for personal safes, the greater the value of the A-17 board.

In every age, anxiety and impatience were the greatest sales pitch. No advertisement could stimulate the customer’s desire to buy as well.

That board was the ultimate form of physical security and it wasn’t available outside Academy City.

As long as it would protect their operating funds, people would be willing to pay massively inflated prices to get their hands on one.

“Well, we can’t cross the wall and leave Academy City, so can the Mugino Family clean up the mess happening out there? You won’t have to deal with high-level espers or next-gen weapons outside the city, so an ordinary fighting force should be enough.”

“What, you’re not joining us out here, Shizuri? There is one sticky problem left, so I was really hoping to skip right on past it with some Academy City power.”

“I can’t. Do you still not get how unusual it was for Frenda to get thrown out into Shinjuku before? I’m Academy City’s #4 Level 5. If I cross the wall without permission, I’ll be charged with leaking classified information like my DNA map and Academy City will hunt me down. So those of you out there need to deal with the problems out there.”

And after all that, Mugino said one last thing.

“I’m counting on you, grampa.”

Time froze.

It really did seem to freeze.

It was highly unusual for Mugino Shizuri of all people to speak as the younger one in a conversation.

And eventually…

The voice that came from the phone sounded like he had a manju caught in his throat.

“Don’t do that…”

“Why not? As far back as I remember, that’s generally how we’ve spoken when alone together.”

“Have your memories gotten confused during your long time in Academy City? The one who smiles so gently when you call him that is Mujinayama, not me! Listen, Shizuri. There are words that cause incredible pain when spoken to you by the younger generations.”

“Ehh? But, grampa.”

“It hits me right where it hurts, so stop! …My family just so happened to give me grandchildren quickly. I look away for a second and, next thing I know, your father has knocked up my daughter Eika and married her, so it doesn’t mean I’m all that old myself. It hurts. Anyone who can swing a bouquet as they lead the charge into the enemy HQ isn’t some old grampa sitting in a sunbeam on the porch!”

“God, what a pain. Who cares what I call you?”

Also, don’t mention to your teenage granddaughter how her father “knocked up” her mother.

Hearing about her parents’ sex lives only made her feel blue.

“It hurts, does it? Then I’ll call you something else, Onii-chan.”

“…Sorry, Shizuri, but it hurts worse when you get that considerate. I don’t even hear that word when I visit one of the fancy clubs or bars full of rabbit ears we run. You need to study more. Flip through some of those extremely knowledgeable magazines that teach men how to cook or build a study and you’ll see plenty of ways to address a man who’s been around a while and is starting to gray! You know, like ‘mister’, ‘señor’, ‘ bad boss’, or ‘choi waru’!!”

“The Mugino Family’s grampa isn’t just ‘choi’ waru.”

Why was the God Caesar of a global criminal organization getting so hung up over something so trivial?

Mugino remembered him as someone who wouldn’t lose his cool even if he had his hands tied behind his back and a handgun against his forehead in a harbor at night.

Meanwhile, the rest of Item was tilting their heads a short distance away.

“Hm? Super what is Mugino whispering about? I can’t believe she of all people would turn her back and hide the phone from us.”

“Kinuhata. She might feel bad for us.”

“Super what for?”

“In the end, because she can so easily contact her parents, her grandparents, and just her older family members in general. That’s not something the rest of us can do.”

This was from Frenda whose little sister was in Academy City.

That too was family.

It was similar, but not at all the same thing. No matter how badly Frenda’s life was threatened in this city’s darkness, she could never let herself foolishly try and rely on her 7-year-old sister.

She had family, but not in a way that placed a roof over her head.

The same was true of Takitsubo and Kinuhata. No one other than Mugino had come to rescue the former when she was wrongly accused and the latter had been frozen in a small room in the back of a lab. The three of them each had unique circumstances…but none of them had a roof to shield them from the winds and storms of the world.

Only Mugino had a roof, and an exceptionally strong one at that.

Even if spears fell like rain, she could rely on the older generation and take shelter below that roof.

She had insurance if anything happened.

That made a real difference.

“Huh. I wouldn’t have thought she could feel bad about something like that. I thought she was more the tactless type who would play whatever cards she had.”

“She really doesn’t need to worry about it,” said Takitsubo with her usual blank expression.

Yes, the same as always.

(But her family ties to the Mugino Family mean she can never escape the world’s darkness of her own free will the way we could. Not even if a great change comes to the world and remaining in the darkness becomes suicide. …She alone won’t be able to escape the island sinking below the waves as the sea level rises.)

They might be at an advantage or disadvantage in individual situations, but Takitsubo saw this as a compatibility issue and not an absolute ranking or hierarchy. Sometimes having a family was useful and sometimes it was easier to be alone. This just meant each member of Item held different cards. Mugino had no reason to feel bad just because her deck contained different cards from her teammates’ decks. Because they each had cards Mugino didn’t.

Whether she realize that or not, Mugino was still focused on her phone.

Because she knew she wasn’t allowed to refuse.

“Anyway, the A-17 board is the link connecting the Morning Call bomber inside Academy City and the Quarterback biker gang causing trouble outside the city. I mentioned one problem left to deal with, remember? Grampa, you deal with the problems on your end.”

Part 12

“Hmm? I see.”

The Mugino Family head nodded a few times with the foldable phone still held to his ear.

This was a matter to be dealt with outside Academy City.

The Family knew all about some circumstances those adorable girls did not.

After hanging up, the elderly man searched for a different number.

The Quarterback biker gang had been destroyed, but that didn’t bring everything to an end.

There was another enemy.

He couldn’t let the “grampa” title break him by reminding him of the passage of time.

He regathered his focus.

He operated the phone with his thumb. He chose one address and called it.

“Hello, hello. Are you sweating bullets? It’s me. Yeah, me. The man you failed to kill.”

Apparently the person on the other end didn’t want to reply.

But apparently they also weren’t able to hang up.

That clearly demonstrated the balance of power.

“I know about the A-17 boards. You’re the bastard who set things up so those delicate circuit boards could be bought cheaply and sold at a huge markup, aren’t you? Simply put, you sold information on other criminal organizations to the police in the relevant countries to get their bank accounts frozen. Then those criminals had no choice but to keep their money themselves. The demand for safes kept in your own home rose across the globe and the price of those boards skyrocketed. Yes, and the Academy City brand helps since their tech is 20 or 30 years ahead of the stuff out here. Anyone would want the finest security around when it comes to protecting their own dirty money.”

“…”

“That’s why criminal organizations all over have been causing trouble. They’re busy ‘working’ to make up for what they lost when their accounts were frozen. But are you sure that was a good idea? If word gets out, Quarterback will become a target of every criminal organization in the world. Now, do you think you can convince them all you had nothing to do with it? When your number is right here in their phone’s address book?”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Now that man would be targeted not just by the Mugino Family but by every criminal organization around the world. No matter how well he hid his self-important face behind the mask of justice, there would be an opening at some point in the 365 days of the year. And the professional criminals steeped in the darkness would not overlook that moment.

“Don’t worry.”

The Mugino Family head was going to busy now too.

After coming this far, he couldn’t let someone else get ahead of him and steal the final kill.

He had made a promise with that boy from the motorcycle shop.

That boy had a hundred years of life in the sunlight ahead of him, so there was no need for him to bloody his hands. This was a job for the Mugino Family which specialized in misdeeds.

So he made an announcement.

Holding solid evidence wasn’t enough.

“This won’t take long. I’ll be there to kill you soon enough.”

Between the Lines 3

It was all over.

Or it would be once one more job was complete.

Late at night, an elderly man in a brand new pricey suit put on a mask and dragged a man out of a fancy and heavily-guarded mansion and off its grounds entirely.

He stuffed the man in the back seat of a luxury car with Maid Kagyu in the driver’s seat.

The Mugino Family head immediately tore off the uncomfortable mask.

“This would have been so much easier with Shizuri…or any Academy City power.”

“And yet it took you less than 20 minutes. Head, you have again proven just what a monster you are. This is the foreign residence of a superpower’s official. How did you manage to sneak in with only a shovel?”

“I just knew I’d be in trouble if I took any longer than that. And there was no need to fire a gun. C’mon, get us out of here.”

They arrived on the outskirts of the city.

Specifically, at a large warehouse full of dust.

The Mugino Family head sat down the man with his arms tied behind his back and took up a position directly in front of him.

“Crank Serviceace.”

“…”

“Did you not study Japan’s culture and systems at all when you were assigned here? A 1-yen coin has a diameter of 1 centimeter and weighs 1 gram. They are quite well made. The insistence on those precise values shows the Japanese people’s meticulous approach to technology, don’t you think?”

The young man wasn’t listening.

The anger was gradually returning to his confused mind.

“D-do you know what you’ve done? I am an official embassy staff member. Harm me and you make an enemy of a superpower!!”

“Ocean or mountain – choose one.”

“…”

“I said choose one. Hurry.”

The head repeated the demand.

Crank Serviceace had thought he could flaunt the power of a superpower to solve any problem, but he was finally starting to catch on. He couldn’t have been taken away like this unless it was past the point of that mattering.

The Mugino Family head spoke to the young man whose mouth opened but no words came out.

This was the bastard who had abused his power to protect his own hide and continually provided Quarterback with carte blanche to commit crimes.

“Also, you were an official embassy staff member.”

The Mugino Family head strongly emphasized that one word to make a point.

Yes, the young man no longer had any connection to the country of his birth.

…Now, the Mugino Family head knew a lot about crimes. Perhaps more than anyone else in the world.

Threats came in a number of forms.

He knew them well.

If Crank had succumbed to threats against his precious family or threats to commit indiscriminate mass murder of innocent citizens of his country, the Mugino Family head might have given it more thought. He wouldn’t have forgotten the motorcycle shop burned to the ground or the boy standing blankly in front of it. Nothing would excuse what the man had done, but he might have considered lessening the dark punishment to come.

But that wasn’t who this man was.

“It turns out the US government has no need for a staff member who is so addicted to his guns he brings one with him to a country in violation of the local laws and then uses it to kill a stray dog because ‘it was annoying me’ rather than any kind of pressing reason. The paperwork has already been submitted, so you are officially fired. Congrats.”

This only sounded like a bad joke from a man with a shotgun hidden in a bouquet and so many butlers and maids surrounding him. But you couldn’t run a criminal organization if a bit of contradiction was going to bother you.

(It’s our inability to solve these contradictions that make us a criminal organization.)

He could only smile bitterly.

And this was also the scandal that Quarterback had discovered.

It may not have been much of a problem in a gun culture, but things worked differently in this country. Especially when it was done outside the embassy.

“That said, embassy staff come in contact with a lot of government secrets. Send you to an ordinary prison and who knows what brutal criminals you’d be leaking secrets to. …I guarantee if I returned you now, you’d be lucky if you were sent to Guantanamo. You’d end up in an unnamed detention facility. You’d be stuffed inside a cell smaller than a coffin standing upright and forced to live the rest of your life standing up.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Silence.

The fact that Crank didn’t immediately brush that off as a silly conspiracy theory was proof of just how much he knew of that superpower’s secrets. For better and for worse. He knew secret detention facilities like that really did exist. And that that fastidious superpower would never allow any official statements that would leak the kind of secret that would hurt their reputation as the world police.

If things were allowed to continue the way they normally would, he would end up in exactly the situation he was imagining.

Which was a situation the ordinary person couldn’t even imagine.

The Mugino Family head smiled over at him.

“So like I said: ocean or mountain – choose one. This is your last chance to skip town. The Mugino Family will make sure everyone thinks you’re dead, so how about it? Will you be taking our offer?”

“Wh-what do you get out of it?”

“I run an underground organization. Whether we’re smuggling or laundering, the more chaos in the world, the more room there is for us to make money. So giving you some getaway cash will let us profit a lot more than taking whatever pocket change you happen to have on you.”

“You would have me make an enemy of the States? Do you have any idea how many satellites are flying overhead? There’s nowhere I can run without getting caught! …Delta isn’t the world’s strongest force. The truly dangerous ones don’t leave any records behind. You can only suggest this insanity because you don’t know about that nameless squad!!”

“A paradise of everlasting spring does exist. You just have to visit another dangerous superpower where those FPS monsters can’t get at you even if they know you’re there. You were an official embassy staff member, remember? You know plenty of secrets that can act as a gift, so any country that hates them will welcome you.”

“Y-you mean I can buy my safety?”

“Yes,” nodded the elderly man. “Of course, that assumes you have the will and the resolve to seriously run from your crimes. You only live once, so you want try laughing out loud in a bathtub full of money, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m saved. Quarterback is gone and no one’s left to threaten my freedom. I’m saved!!”

“Yes, yes,” nodded the elderly man.

The former embassy staff probably didn’t notice with all the endorphins pumping into his brain, but the Mugino Family head seemed to be checking on something.

Then Crank spoke up again.

“By the way, I-I have a question.”

“What’s that?”

“What is this bathtub I’m sitting in?”

The Mugino Family head kicked away the bastard with his hands tied behind his back. Only after falling backwards and finding himself looking up at the warehouse ceiling from the bottom of the tub did Crank notice it.

It looked like a kusudama.

A piece of cloth far larger than a sandbag was hanging from an overhead crane. Its bottom opened and an aluminum waterfall filled the bathtub.

“It’s your coffin.”

The silver waterfall rang loud without end.

And the elderly man spat out his words.

“I said I’d give you some getaway cash, didn’t I? So smile because I’ve submerged you up to the head in money just like you wanted. …Still, 1-yen coins really are strange things. It’s money, but ten tons of them doesn’t even add up to 10 million yen.”

There was no response.

Only a pair of ankles stuck out from the silver gleam.

The bathtub was too small to contain the mountain of 1-yen coins, so some of them spilled out onto the floor.

There had never been any chance of an exception.

Especially when this idiot demonstrated the will and the resolve to run from his crimes. He still thought of himself as one of the chosen elite. And he had made the mistake of doing this in front of the Mugino Family head who stained his hands with so many misdeeds because he hated that sort of illicit loophole that didn’t even amount to a crime.

Every last person involved in this nonsense would be executed. That had been the rule from the start. The Mugino Family had set that rule even if it meant robbing a small boy of his right to revenge.

The job was complete.

He had kept his promise.

“Revenge is meaningless,” whispered the elderly man.

The most it let you do was spit on the pile of bodies you had created.

The head had said so to the innocent little boy himself.

But it had a further meaning for the Mugino Family.

“So your death changes nothing. Die a death that accomplishes nothing for the world, worm.”

Standing straight next to him, Butler Mujinayama made a suggestion.

“Shall I call my contact with that country and let them know we killed a former embassy worker who intended to leak national secrets because we knew their position would make doing so difficult? That will ensure your safety for a while and that superpower will owe you one. The White House will not comment, but the Pentagon certainly will.”

“No need. Don’t drag extra meaning into a job. It dilutes the purity of the crime. We didn’t do this for our own benefit.”

No longer interested, the Mugino Family head turned away from the bathtub full of money and headed toward the warehouse exit.

Mujinayama started work on the cleanup.

That superpower would be concerned if a former embassy worker, who could leak national secrets, went missing. There could be trouble if they suspected he had defected and began threatening other countries and regions. However, disposing of the bathtub in a public place without any way of tracing it back to the Mugino Family was no easy task.

Maid Kagyu whispered to him while walking by his side.

“Excellent work, head.”

“The fact that I enjoy coming up with these bad jokes proves I’m just another villain. The problem is this kind of cruelty is exactly what our imperfect world wants.”

“I see. You are having trouble calming down from the excitement, so you intend to spend this evening winning the hearts of the Mugino Family’s young maids using your dry wit and refined words. I have heard from the older maids it is a common occurrence in large, outdated mansions. I must welcome my unresisting self to a secret maid paradise your wife must never discover☆”

“Did you not hear what I said? Don’t drag extra meaning into a job. Going all in on that sort of erotic fantasy dilutes the purity of the crime. Stop getting so moe-moe all of a sudden!”

“Love, moe, and eroticism all have very different definitions. You must determine the nature of the maid from the aura produced by everything from the ends of her hair to the hem of her skirt. You still have much to learn about maids, head. If a puppy-style maid’s ‘Wahhh, I’m sorry. I’m such a silly, stupid ditz.’ reads as ‘erotic’ to you, I grant you 0 points. Head, you earn 0 points. Have you not been paying any attention at all over the course of your long life? Swift education and training is necessary to input everything you must know about Japanese maids. This is crucial for the improvement of my working environment.”

“…Wait. Are you planning to put a refined man like me in a maid uniform to train me from scratch, Kagyu?”

“If the head at the very top of the Mugino Family is viewing his maids with no idea how to distinguish between love, moe, and eroticism and lacks even the most fundamental knowledge on the subject and yet he suddenly wishes to attempt so great a challenge, a mere young maid such as myself could not possibly scold the head who reins so brilliantly above us. I simply could not.”

“I don’t remember clicking the ‘agree’ button, so why am I suddenly sent on this tour of hell!?”

The Management-level maid held her hands together in front of her in obedience and then sighed.

Was this really the same person she had seen 10 minutes ago?

After experiencing so many incomprehensible things in her service of the Mugino Family, she found herself able to accept even the most unreasonable thing. And this was not limited to Kagyu. All the Managers and troops serving the family likely felt the same.

“What a pain. I suppose this is what you get with the head who inherited the Mugino Family blood most strongly.”

“Eh?”

“Eh?”

For some reason, the two looked each other in the eye.

But it was Kagyu who experience the greater surprise.

“Excuse me, but I am uncertain what you mean. Why would you question that statement, head?”

“Well, I mean…”

He still looked confused.

Could it be? Kagyu was a relatively young member of the Management, so was she unaware how he and his wife had met? The elderly man explained.

“I married into the family. I don’t have a single drop of Mugino Family blood in me.”

A certain fact had been mentioned back when Frenda had been thrown out of Academy City.

…Mugino Shizuri did not look anything like the Mugino Family head.

Which meant it was his beautiful witch of a wife, whose age was hard to determine, who most strongly inherited the family blood.

There was another, even more frightening secret boss who hadn’t made a single appearance during the deadly battle for the head position because Sakuya was far too boring of an opponent…and was the only person in the entire world capable of getting this man to eat bell peppers.

Chapter 3: The Night Sky Does not Discriminate Against Criminal Girls

Part 1

Mugino Shizuri glared at an LCD TV.

While lying on a yoga mat.

“Ton-toko-ton ton-toko-ton-ton♪ Raise your hands, stretch your back, push your chest out, and hold that position. Keep holding it as you slowly breathe out for 20 seconds.”

District 15.

The giant broadcast tower had two observation decks, but it wasn’t well known that the upper observation deck was a luxury hotel.

A few of Item’s hideouts had been blown up by rockets one after another, so they had ended up living there for the time being.

However, Morning Call, the bomber targeting Frenda, had been killed and the biker gang operating outside of Academy City had been eliminated. Peace had returned to the world and the dark side criminal girls had no job and way too much time on their hands.

Kinuhata cut across the large living room and gave the online show a skeptical look.

“Isn’t yoga a form of meditation using motions with a mythological basis? Is there super any point to removing the foundational philosophy and just mimicking the poses?”

“Shut up. I don’t care what it is if it works.”

“But…this bust-increasing yoga is supposed to make your boobs bigger, so if it does work, won’t it mean more fat on your body, increasing your weight?”

Mugino just about physically fired Meltdowner, so Takitsubo had to hold her back. She remained expressionless as that monster swung her around. Kinuhata departed with a flip of her thick jacket. She hadn’t said where she was going, but a movie theater would be a good guess.

“Mugino.”

“What the hell is this yoga crap? It’s a pain in the ass and putting up with it only means your weight goes up!? I’ve had it! Why must everything be so complicated!? I hope humanity dies off!!”

(I think Kinuhata was only pretending not to be interested. She glanced over at the screen, so she must have been checking the title.)

“Lash out if you want, but not even using Meltdowner as a retrorocket will save you if this tower falls over. Do you want to be a stain on the ground?”

“…”

Kinuhata had already left.

Without a specific individual to lock onto, Mugino’s anger cooled quickly. And the daughter of the wicked Mugino Family wasn’t the type to fight human civilization to stop the environmental damage visible around her.

Mugino seemed to finally come back to her senses.

“Takitsubo, what are you investigating?”

“Remember that Morning Call bomber? She’s dead, but she may have left behind some gifts. Like bomb storehouses or a bomb manufacturing lab. Even without a criminal plot behind it, we don’t want an accidental explosion killing a bunch of innocent people, do we?”

“You can just let Frenda handle that.”

“Mugino, are you serious? The battle is over and today is our day off. I can’t ask her to come back when she’s meeting with her family.”

Part 2

“In the first place, have you heard of Microscopium, Onee-chan?”

“??? Why are you bringing up a southern constellation?”

“The night sky is so generous to let there be constellations for things like a clock or a ruler. I want to be a constellation too.”

…Was this trivia she had learned from the astronomy event? That was all you saw these days, even in the LCD ads on the trains and the tablets used to order at restaurants. But, anyway, apparently not all of the southern constellations were based on BCE-era mythology. Plenty of them had been named by the astronomers of an earlier age.

They were at the busy station area in District 7.

The city remained abuzz with the astronomy event.

Apparently businesses would leap at any business opportunity because it was in full swing even now at midday.

Frenda didn’t often see this, but school sometimes let out before lunch for a seven-year-old.

Some companies must have decided to double up with the moon viewing season because the convenience store sweets section had a lot of wagashi dango, the stand-up soba shop and the burger shop both had a moon viewing special using eggs, and some strange bunny girls were handing out fliers on the street corner. However, they may not all have been fully satisfied with their job because some of those high school girls lured in by the pay had stiff smiles on their faces.

The seven-year-old, who wasn’t aware of those painful financial issues, seemed brimming with energy – far more than necessary – while holding a flier for a pet cafe that was doing a rabbit event for the moon viewing season.

In fact…

“In the first place, did you know, Onee-chan? If you wish upon a shooting star, your wish will come true! I want to be a constellation.”

“Wanting to be a star is a bad omen, so stop saying it.”

“I want to make an Onee-chan constellation too!”

“That’s also a bad omen, so stop!!”

The small snort of triumph told Frenda her seven-year-old sister really did intend to accomplish it. In just a few months, a blonde miniskirt Santa Claus (special skills: lock picking and home security breaking) would be placing the toy she most wanted by her pillow and her New Year’s money would come along a week later, but children could be so greedy.

That said, how many seconds did it take between a shooting star appearing and disappearing? The dark side assassin who knew a lot about bombs and martial arts considered that question. You had to repeat your wish thrice in that time, which sounded difficult even with a pro boxer’s excellent kinetic vision.

“In the end, what do you want for dinner tonight?”

“Hm, moon viewing curry!”

“Ehh? It’s not just soba and burgers? They’re doing that for curry too?”

“In the first place, a partially fried egg is the only way to go!!”

While they were chatting like that…

It was Frenda’s dark side nose that picked up on it before her conscious mind.

But why now?

Sensing a quiet tingling, it took her a moment to realize what had caused it.

A face she couldn’t make out was mixed in among the passersby.

It was late October.

And yet this person was wearing a short-sleeve summer uniform.

So they briefly looked like a ghost to Frenda.

Or…

Maybe that was wishful thinking on Frenda’s part.

But that was no ghost.

They looked right at Frenda and grinned.

With the face of someone who should not have been alive.

Hanano Choubi.

A girl who was supposed to be dead.

“What is it, Onee-chan?”

The seven-year-old looked curiously up at her frozen sister.

She hadn’t noticed.

Because the crowd making up this peaceful scene only contained one dark side scum who knew that Hanano Choubi had already died.

Without that crucial piece of information, she only looked like a timid puppy of a girl.

But Academy City Bomber Frenda Seivelun couldn’t overlook this.

Because she knew.

This was the traitor who had once perfectly deceived Item and escaped beyond their reach.

That was certainly part of it.

But more than that…

“?”

Her seven-year-old sister was by her side.

She had trusted this to be a perfectly safe sanctuary, but this dark side idiot had to barge on in.

That was one thing she could not allow.

She had to update her definitions.

This demon had put her sister’s life at risk.

Frenda put on a smile and crouched down to her sister’s eye level.

“Hey, my sister.”

“In the first place, what is it, Onee-chan?”

“See what my phone says? The moon viewing burgers and tsukune are selling so well there’s a shortage of chicken eggs. In the end, we might not be able to have moon viewing curry tonight if we don’t get some eggs soon.”

“My goodness!!”

“If we run to the supermarket now, we might not make it. But I also seem to recall there still being some raw eggs left in the big fridge at your dorm.”

“In the first place, you can count on me, Onee-chan! I will protect our moon viewing curry future!!”

The seven-year-old sister waved both her little hands and boarded the next bus that arrived.

The bus’s engine roared as it drove off.

…A joke app that let you rapidly create fake articles could come in handy. Her sister vigorously waved through the window and didn’t seem to notice the water bottle drones flying over the bus to keep an eye on her. Sunset hadn’t arrived yet, so those UFOs wouldn’t get in the way of the astronomy event.

And…

“…”

That left only Frenda Seivelun and Hanano Choubi.

The time for kindness was over.

Hanano giggled.

She gave the same impression as when Frenda had last seen here. Which was what felt so off. The assumptions had greatly changed since then. This traitor had duped Item and run off, yet she was still playing the pure and timid creature.

“Looks like this isn’t going to be a tearful reunion. W-was it a bad time? I did like you a lot, Frenda-san, so I was waiting for a time when the rest of Item wasn’t around. And I chose to use this face and body.”

“…What do you want?”

“Heh…heh heh. I want to help you.”

“Then in the end, you shouldn’t have done anything that my sister is likely to remember. Even for a moment.”

Hanano pulled something from her pocket.

It was a pack of menthol flavored cigarettes. She shook it, pulled one out, and placed it in her mouth. With practiced ease.

Finally something clashed with the timid creature Frenda remembered.

Hanano was a master of disguise and infiltration.

Was she really a student? She may have been a lot older than Frenda had thought.

Hanano lit the end of the cigarette with a faded oil lighter, blew out some smoke…and began to speak.

“You will die, Frenda Seivelun.”

Part 3

The sounds of the crowd rapidly faded from Frenda’s ears.

Those few words seemed to pierce into her.

This wasn’t an empty threat like those habitually given by your average delinquent.

But nor was it a deadly threat spoken by a dark side pro.

This was something else.

It carried much more certainty.

Hanano saw Frenda gasp, but she didn’t react with triumph.

She showed pity.

As if she were watching an old woman lashing out at her surroundings without knowing how little time she had left.

“Yes. The date of your death has already been written. If you only continue down the path laid out for you, you will die before this date next year. I guarantee it.”

“…”

“But will you still only continue down that path? Really? I mean, why should a murderous villain bother following the rules!? There is no goal down that path. You must break free of it if you are to survive. You can do that with my help. But remember, this is because I like you. It’s nothing more than that. There is no rule requiring me to save you and it isn’t part of my win condition. So I will give you a single chance. This is your only opportunity to take my hand. Let it pass you by and you lose any chance of breaking free and the timeline will continue on its course until that final moment☆”

But they hadn’t arrived at that final moment yet.

They were still here in the past.

“Think of your seven-year-old sister. I don’t care about her myself, but you do very much, Frenda-san.”

Hanano giggled and moved.

She reached a hand out toward Frenda.

“Don’t you want to see her eighth birthday? What about her ninth and her tenth? Don’t you want a future where the two of you can smile side by side in peace?”

“…”

“That is possible with my help. However, it will mean breaking the rules like the villains we are. Maybe people will talk about you behind your back, but you will survive. The method itself is simple, but it isn’t something someone from the past can think up and act on. Frenda Seivelun, I will not force you to accept. The choice is yours. Will you take my hand, or not?”

Hanano gave no evidence to back up her words.

And yet.

Frenda found herself being drawn in.

No, there was something different about the atmosphere surrounding Hanano. She wasn’t playing poker here. She wasn’t standing on the line between deception and discovery – trust and mistrust.

Every card she held was the truth and she could defeat her opponent no matter when she revealed her hand.

She could crush her opponent.

She showed that sort of confidence.

But…

“In the end, taking your hand carries a different meaning too.”

“Yeah.”

Hanano sighed.

With a “that’s what I thought” look on her face.

And she had already told Frenda this was her only chance to break free and change the timeline.

Frenda looked up again.

“In the end, I’d rather die than betray Item to survive!!”

A sharp popping sound rang out then.

Frenda’s eyes raced over to see heated kernels of corn popping at a popcorn stand. One after another. Some small children were curiously gathered around. They may not have known how popcorn was actually made.

And by the time the blonde girl looked ahead again, no one was there.

Hanano Choubi, master of disguise and infiltration, had blended into the crowd and left.

Or had she?

She had definitely disappeared, but Frenda found it hard to believe even after seeing it for herself.

“…”

You will die, Frenda Seivelun.

To repeat, that cursed prophecy had nothing to back it up. This was far from unusual on the dark side. It should have been no more meaningful than a muscular guy shouting angrily that he was going to kill her.

Yet it eerily rang in her ears.

Maybe because Hanano’s voice hadn’t contained any of the hostility and ill will normally heard in a threat.

Only pity.

Frenda stood there all alone for a while.

Yes, like she had been left behind.

She hadn’t made the wrong choice…she thought.

She was confident that had been the right decision.

But.

The timing had been poor.

She wasn’t sure if that had been the right time to give the right answer.

Between the Lines 4

Now, it’s time to get started☆

Chapter 4: Breakdown

Part 1

District 11, evening. They were at a distribution base for Academy City’s land routes. More specifically, at a cargo terminal where countless cargo containers were stacked up like ancient pyramids.

They were facing each other.

“Voice on the Phone” Hanano Choubi and “Dark Side’s Bane” #6.

But this confrontation should have been terribly unbalanced.

Hanano alone was no threat to the #6.

As a Voice on the Phone, she held a special position, but Hanano herself wasn’t proficient in martial arts or firearms. She used a disguise to make herself look younger, but she was in fact an adult, so she wasn’t even an Academy City esper.

However, the current situation had boosted Hanano’s position.

This was the past.

Ultimately, there was no way to perfectly kill Hanano Choubi here in this past timeline.

Because…

“I am in fact a master of disguise and infiltration.”

“…”

“Yes, it’s just as you feared. You were right on the money☆ Rejoice. It doesn’t matter even if there was an official announcement of Hanano Choubi’s death at some point in the past. What does that really prove? I am a master of disguise and infiltration, so there’s always a chance I took on another identity and survived. Kami*** Touma? Misaka **koto? It doesn’t really matter who. As long as they’re one of the confirmed survivors known to be alive in the present timeline. From my position in the past, there is always a chance I can kill someone else and take their place.”

“So even if you are killed in the past, you would make it so you survived by hijacking someone else’s life? …That atrocity is a betrayal of humanity as a whole. Do you really think I will let you get away with it?”

“A normal person probably couldn’t manage it. But I’m such a master of disguise and infiltration that that’s all I really have going for me. Anyone else would surely get caught eventually, but you could actually see Hanano Choubi play the role of Kamijou Tou** or Mi**** Mikoto without ever breaking character. There is an opening there.”

Hanano punctuated this by sticking a new cigarette in her mouth.

She lit it and theatrically blew out the smoke. In addition to the nicotine and tar, the smell of the burning flavor clung to the smoke.

It was only a moment, but she did occupy both her hands and look down while facing the enemy.

Apparently she really was trying to make a mockery of Academy City’s #6.

“And you’re really not one to get after me about that, #6.”

“I have a name: Aihana Etsu.”

“My point is I’m intentionally trying to avoid using that name. It’s always like this.”

Hanano pointed at her opponent’s face with the cigarette held between her fingers and quietly clicked her tongue.

“You exist as no more than that name, so any official announcement of ‘Aihana Etsu’s death’ has to be taken with a grain of salt. I can’t fully deny the possibility you were actually lending your name out to someone else and the real you is still alive, so I have no way of fully and surely killing you here in the past. Killing you in the present or the future is easy enough, but it can’t be done in the past.”

“Which implies something.”

“That it does. I’m saying I intend to take on the #6. Which means I need to set up a situation that places me on equal or better footing to Academy City’s #6 Level 5.”

She admitted it so readily.

This adult.

This con artist who hadn’t even undergone the esper development Curriculum.

“Neither of us can die in the past…because of the “it’s possible” loophole. Just like Schrodinger’s Cat, we exist in a strange mixture of life and death for as long as we are trapped in this box of a world that places great restrictions on the past. You get what I mean, don’t you? Whoever breaks down these absolute conditions first will have the right to do whatever they want with the other’s life. For once, your usual brute force methods won’t work. This is a puzzle, not a battle.”

“…”

The #6 said nothing.

Aihana Etsu, who always seemed to be looking down on people in an aloof way, was brought to silence.

It was a rare feat, but the logic behind it was accurate. Assuming, of course, you could accept all the talk about the past and the future.

However, one thing stood out here.

Hanano Choubi knew that some people were “confirmed survivors”. As long as the timeline known as the present existed, there were people who could not die in the past. That line of thinking was accurate. …However, the Hanano here shouldn’t have had a way of knowing that. She lived in the past, so this should have been the present for her, so she shouldn’t have any way of defining the current timeline as the past.

Ordinarily, anyway.

This was the part that felt to be the greatest risk to Academy City #6 Level 5, Aihana Etsu.

Just once, Hanano Choubi had broken the rules in a major way.

“How can you see the future, Hanano Choubi?”

“Why should I answer a monster who traveled back to the past to meddle with the people there, #6?”

Part 2

“District 11?”

In the District 15 broadcast tower’s observation deck hotel, Mugino Shizuri asked a displeased question.

That was the distribution base for the city’s land routes.

In other words, there was little there aside from cargo containers stacked up like pyramids. Mugino was the wealthy sort of criminal, so she didn’t get all excited thinking about harbors and warehouse districts at night.

“That’s right, Mugino. It looks like Morning Call’s lab is disguised as one of the containers there. That district is popular among elementary school students as a giant hide-and-seek field. Do you want to see one of them find something they shouldn’t and trigger a big explosion?”

Takitsubo’s plainly stated explanation made Mugino grimace.

The look on her face said it wasn’t fair to attack her like that.

“…How did you locate it?”

“Morning Call seems to have hid ammo dumps and labs here and there across the city, but all facilities will fall into disrepair if they aren’t used for long. An infrastructure maintenance manager appears to go around to each of them. She must have gone to a few different contractors and talked it out.”

“Hm, Frenda prefers to do everything herself so that is a very different tactic.”

Of course, that was because having someone else do it created an opening for betrayal. In a bomb making lab, a small bit of sabotage could cause a gas leak which triggers a major explosion. Even without specialized knowledge, someone could kill their employer by randomly swapping out the labels on two chemical test tubes both containing a clear liquid.

“How did you track down the manager Morning Call was using?”

“In every industry, you find a limited number of reliable people. It didn’t take long to find them by starting at the top of the list and working my way down.”

There were underground businesses that gathered all the data around without having a specific target in mind.

Like the Keysmith who photographed people’s analog key from a distance and then made 3D printer data based on them. Or the Biocollector who gathered up fingerprints from railings and elevator buttons around the city, hoping to create a master key that could open any fingerprint scan lock. Basically, some people would secure a vast amount of data without choosing a target and then search through the massive database when some of that data was necessary.

Had the manager been storing up their clients’ data in the same way?

…That they didn’t realize their gathered data could bring a crisis just as easily as profit proved these were second-rate criminals.

“Also, the odds are good the reward Morning Call received from Quarterback was left inside a container there.”

“Oh, you mean the vintage leather jackets, boots, and that kinda thing?? As a way of getting money through the city’s gate without it looking like it?”

Kinuhata started to say something but stopped.

Something must have bothered her.

She looked over at Frenda Seivelun.

“…”

“That’s weird. Frenda-san usually super leaps at a chance to talk about money.”

“Eh? O-oh, in the end, it’s nothing…”

And so they set out for District 11.

Once this task was complete, the entire job would be done with.

Part 3

Outside Academy City.

Police sirens blared. The police were finally beginning to respond, so the pressure from that embassy must have evaporated. It was October 29 and the day had worn on until the sun set. Not that pursuing the case at this point would find even a single member of Quarterback still alive.

An elderly man in an Italian suit walked calmly along without paying any heed to the police cars and motorcycles roaring past him. His suit was of course a luxury product without a speck of blood on it.

The Mugino Family head raised his arms and stretched.

(The people who make a quick getaway after a crime will get caught by the checkpoints and patrols as intended…but this is probably the last day I can relax here in Tokyo.)

“Hmm, that should end the Quarterback case. I’m a little sad to see it go. Like the end of a festival.”

The maids and butlers of Management and the troops had already withdrawn. With the police functioning normally, he couldn’t afford to stand out too much.

Only Mujinayama accompanied him.

“Couldn’t you have at least left Manager Kagyu with you? The ire of one of the mansion’s young maids does not make for a comfortable work environment.”

“If I bring up model trains with her, she only tilts her head in confusion.”

“Hm? That sounds cute to me.”

“That isn’t the reaction I want. Why is it you always look at those young maids the same way you would your own grandchild? I bet you’d smile happily if one of them served you a fried egg they had burned black.”

“The real question is why you, who has an actual granddaughter, don’t feel that way looking at the young maids.”

“The point is I won’t force Kagyu to discuss it with me if she doesn’t understand it. I’ve come all the way to Tokyo, so I need to check out all the model shops I can before returning to Yokohama!”

“I must warn you I will report any and all Family expenditures to your wife.”

Things weren’t as bad as the day before, but a thick bulletproof car wouldn’t be much use with security on such high alert. If he wanted to avoid unnecessary trouble at a checkpoint, it was best to travel by foot.

(If I let that benevolent checkpoint bring me to a stop, there are those who would blow me away along with the police using a 5000-yen anti-tank rocket. I can’t bring that kind of trouble to this bright world.)

“Would Tokyo’s model train shops be in Akihabara?”

“You fool, anywhere in such an obvious location will have been picked clean of the good stuff. We would either find nothing worthwhile or inflated prices. But there are these strange areas where you can find otaku shops in locations hobbyists are too afraid to go. Like right here in Shinjuku☆ The fourth floor of this mess of a multi-tenant building has a really nice shop.”

The head gestured for Mujinayama to accompany him, looking as excited as a small child.

The sharp blast of an explosive rang out.

It was a gunshot.

And from point-blank range.

“Kah…?”

A shot to the back.

It came as a complete surprise. Which was why his first breath afterwards contained a questioning note.

At the same time, a portion of his brain half-reflexively analyzed the damage to his body.

That was just how much combat experience he had.

(.45 caliber. And that was no normal bullet. This scraping sensation left inside me means the bullet was made by heating the hell out of some boron carbide powder, the next hardest material after diamond. And it was made flat to ensure the full force of the impact hit me. Which means this was a Crocodile Killer.)

That was just about the worst bullet that could be fired from a handgun.

Instead of an unnecessarily large revolver that was more for show, this was designed to ensure the target suffered and died.

Oddly, international treaty banning its use by soldiers had led to its use spreading among civilian police forces instead.

But where had it come from?

Not even the King of Mugino had eyes on the back of his head, but that elderly man had a man he trusted more than his own eyes watching his back.

There was only one possible culprit for shooting him from point-blank range like this.

The Mugino Family head managed a scratchy voice.

“Mujina…yama?”

“Wrong. It’s always like this with people.”

The words were followed by a heavy, sticky sound.

It sounded less like makeup being removed from a face and more like a solvent being used to strip away a thick layer of dried paint.

The old butler’s face disappeared, revealing a young female one.

Even her height had been faked.

“I have nothing against Mugino Shizuri, but roping that #4 into this is the only way to show my target I mean business.”

This meant nothing to him.

She likely didn’t expect him to understand what she was talking about.

She had the tone of someone talking to themselves.

And even if he had been caught by surprise and shot in the back, he was still the extraordinary Mugino Family head.

He was stronger alone than when he had his many subordinates and an assortment of powerful weapons.

That was how it was supposed to work, yet…

“!!”

His quickly-thrown punch was easily blocked. Followed by a dull sound. A single blow was all it took to send him slumping to the ground.

“Khah!!”

“It’s no use. In this timeline here in the past, I exist in an unstable state as the cat in the box, so no one can truly kill me. And you aren’t even one of the confirmed survivors.”

None of it worked against Hanano Choubi.

It wasn’t a matter of strength. It was like trying to attack an illusion seen in the fog. The Mugino Family head didn’t let it show on his face, but he didn’t think he could win this one.

Collapsed on the ground, the elderly man coughed up blood and glared at the young woman.

There was one question that mattered more than his own life.

“What happened…to Mujinayama?”

“What do you think happened to him?”

That was all Hanano asked, her eyes open wide and unblinking.

The head head’s arm shot up like a separate creature.

Even more strongly than before.

But the result had already been determined. A few more dull impacts rang out.

Hanano clapped her hands together as if dusting them off.

“Now, then. I have what I need, so I just need to contact her… Yes, this should do: Quarterback’s phone! If Item has been taking good care of it, they should still have Morning Call’s phone with them. And with that, it’s about time I made my move.”

“…?”

“Really, I do feel bad. All I need to do is tear down a timeline, so I thought pitting Frenda Seivelun and Yumiya Rakko against each other in the past would be enough…but it turns out weak interference like that gets worked out by some kind of unseen force. She couldn’t go on a mission because of a bad hair day? What even is that? Since that wasn’t enough to change the predetermined current, I needed to do something a little more irreversible.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about my reasons for killing you, Mugino Family head.”

Part 4

It was a chilly night in Academy City District 11.

“This here is the last of Morning Call’s bomb making labs,” said Takitsubo, viewing a large cargo container.

It looked like an ordinary box at first, but there were signs of metalworking around the vents. According to Academy City Bomber Frenda, that was the result of additional ventilation equipment being installed on the interior of a container lab.

Kinuhata looked to the side.

“What do we do about the used clothes container over there? I super get it’s valuable, but we’ll have to research a way of selling off a ton of clothing at a decent price in a short period of time.”

Their discussion was interrupted by an electronic beeping.

It came from Morning Call’s phone that hey had decided to hold onto until the incident was fully dealt with.

The screen said the call was from Quarterback.

Mugino assumed the head was calling her through this unusual route again, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

A young female voice spoke from the phone.

“Hello, hello, Mugino-san. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Everything froze.

Kinuhata and Takitsubo’s eyes widened a lot at the familiar face on the screen.

Frenda didn’t speak a word.

“Forgive me the terrible frame rate and resolution. Outside the city, video calls and streaming sites are only just starting to become common. Huh? That’s not much of a reaction. I even chose to use this face and this uniform to make sure you would know who it was. C’mon, c’mon. Give me that ‘just saw a ghost’ look.”

The uniformed girl was familiar.

The short-sleeve summer uniform didn’t match the season.

That was definitely the one worn by that nervous small animal of a girl. Which was why none of it made any sense.

Mugino slowly asked a question, her voice pitched low.

“How the hell did you escape death?”

This was wrong.

She was making an undeniable mistake.

A traitor boldly announcing her survival to the Mugino Shizuri was about as suicidal as it got. If she had faked her death, she could have remained hidden for the rest of her life.

Yet Hanano Choubi laughed.

It seemed unlikely she was simply relying on the fact that this conversation was happening through a screen.

Mugino Shizuri did not forgive traitors.

Everyone knew that absolute rule. Not that she would accept ignorance as an excuse.

Hanano knew all that and yet flouted that rule with a smile.

“I see you’re still quite the dominatrix, Mugino-san. Don’t move on before I’m ready. I still have a guest I want to show you. Whoa, oof.”

A large dark shape filled the small phone screen.

She must have had a hard time propping up whatever was falling over in front of her. The blurry screen wobbled and then pulled back.

Finally, it came into view.

“May I introduce you to today’s special guest! Tah dah!! It’s the Mugino Family head☆”

They saw an elderly man in an Italian suit.

He didn’t look very good.

His slumped-over body looked unnaturally weak, his face was dripping with sweat, and there were dark red stains here and there on his fancy suit.

Out of nowhere, Hanano now held a handgun in her empty hand. The small plastic gun looked like a toy, but it definitely had the power to kill. Specifically, it was a .45 caliber.

“What are your demands? Out with it already, you suicidal freak.”

“Hm? I think you’re confused. Why do you think I have any demands for you? Try hearing me out first.”

Hanano looked puzzled.

The purity, harmlessness, and cuteness of her expression were terribly out of place.

But then it came.

“I will now be publicly livestreaming the head’s execution, so just shut up and watch. Hanyah? That’s all I wanted to say, so where did I get it wrong?”

Mugino’s body swelled out unnaturally from within.

Or it seemed to for Kinuhata watching on next to her.

Takitsubo had previously said having a family could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the circumstances. This was one of the bad times. Someone without a family to begin with had no one to be taken hostage. Mugino was experiencing a pain Takitsubo never had to feel.

But this was even worse than that.

It could hardly be worse.

“Is this because you’re so self-conscious as the #4 you always assume people want something from you? Assuming you know what other people are thinking is a bad habit, you know? I’d even call it harassment☆”

But.

Mugino could do nothing.

She was inside Academy City and those two were outside.

The physical distance was too great for her to rush to her grandfather’s aid. Plus, she was Academy City’s #4 Level 5. If she crossed the city wall without going through the intricate official procedure, she could easily be viewed as an industrial spy leaking a Level 5’s DNA map, making an enemy of Academy City as a whole.

This was District 11, but it didn’t matter that the city wall was right there.

“Huh? You actually know your own limits? Without even trying it first?”

Hanano laughed mockingly on the screen.

Yes, mockingly.

“I was ready for you to come charging my way even though you know it wouldn’t work. But you’re more coldhearted than I gave you credit for, you traitor☆”

Hanano had already stated her goal.

She didn’t beat around the bush.

So she got right to it. On the small phone screen.

In that moment, the object held to the Mugino Family head’s head was a perfectly ordinary one.

A handgun.

The elderly man in an Italian suit directed his eyes calmly toward the camera and opened his mouth.

“I-”

Bang!!

The life-stealing blast sounded terribly light.

The screen was dyed red.

Something heavy thudded to the ground. The camera lens was wiped off by something, but there was no life on the newly cleaned screen.

“Ah…”

It had happened so fast.

It didn’t matter how important or powerful someone was.

Anyone who wasn’t a confirmed survivor could easily die from one moment to the next.

What had her grandfather tried to say in his final moment?

Not only had she been powerless to save his life, she hadn’t even been able to receive his final message as his granddaughter.

“Ahhhh.”

Takitsubo had accompanied Mugino for years, but not even she know how Mugino defined human life.

What about family ties? What about a grandfather and granddaughter? What about respect and admiration for the head of an organization?

Ultimately, only the #4 could know the answers to those questions. Or maybe not even Mugino herself knew the answers.

At any rate, she had crossed some kind of threshold.

Something unidentified was crying out as it was born.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!”

“With this I’ve given you a reason, Mugino Shizuri.”

The phone had cracked from being thrown to the ground, but it still produced a voice as if to supply the finishing blow.

She sounded really, truly amused.

This was the true enemy even Item had failed to kill.

“So come and kill me for my treachery.”

Part 5

The shot from point-blank had splattered her hair and face with red and black.

Hanano Choubi pulled a clean handkerchief from her skirt pocket and wiped her face off. The handkerchief was quickly stained red.

“So am I ‘dead meat’ now? …Peh heh heh! The #4 terrifies everyone, but if you already know how she’s going to react, you can make use of it. Oh, Mugino-san, you are just so predictable. Peh heh!!”

She scoffed.

The situation was rapidly changing. She could sense it.

“What now, #6?”

She spread her arms, looked up to heaven, and spoke to someone who wasn’t here and now.

Yes.

This was a death sentence to the world.

It was beyond even a declaration of war.

“Ha ha ha. Mugino and I are both confirmed survivors. That means neither of us is allowed to die here in the past!! But there is no stopping Mugino now. I mean, I murdered her grandfather before her eyes. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Thanks to the inviolable rules of her organization and her familial love as an individual, Mugino Shizuri can never forgive a traitor!! Hee hee, gya hya hya hya hya hya!!!!”

This had set up a fight to the death between Hanano Choubi and Mugino Shizuri.

No matter where Hanano tried to run now, even if someone else got between them…and no matter what might happen to the world as a whole, Mugino would come to kill the traitor.

This primary rule had been established from the start.

Traitors were the one thing Mugino could never forgive no matter what.

Not even Academy City’s #6 could stop it now.

In fact, the #6’s involvement wouldn’t change things much. Because Mugino, Hanano, and the #6 were all confirmed survivors.

Meaning…

“Will Hanano Choubi win by killing Mugino Shizuri, or will Mugino Shizuri win by killing Hanano Choubi? As things are, those are the only ways for this to end. If you don’t like it, you’ll have to get in between us, #6.”

Hanano grinned as she roared.

She had decided she would make that self-important #6 regret this to death.

Truly to death.

And she had pulled it off.

“If anyone in this three-way showdown dies, it will mean losing a confirmed survivor. Heh heh. And that means losing the present you so badly want to protect, #6!! Ah ha ha, gyaha gyaha! Too mad to talk, huh!? Cackle cackle cackle cackle!!”

The collapse of a distant future was no skin off Hanano Choubi’s nose since she lived in the past.

She simply had to go on living life as she saw fit in the changed timeline.

But it was a different story entirely for the #6 who had shown up from the distant future to meddle.

Between the Lines 5

How could this happen?

It’s all falling apart.

Thanks to someone who isn’t the strongest and isn’t untouchable.

Thanks to a rotten adult who isn’t even an Academy City esper.

The past is the past, so it can never be shaken.

That’s supposed to be how it works.

That was why I had to intervene to keep Hanano Choubi from killing that embassy worker for no real reason.

I should have noticed at that point.

The killed man wasn’t a confirmed survivor, but I should have wondered why Hanano could ignore the correct timeline and commit an unnecessary murder. Why could she selfishly take a life in the delicate timeline known as the past?

I should have noticed!

I should have noticed that Hanano Choubi was an exceptionally dangerous person.

I underestimated her.

We are simply too poorly matched.

The past and disguises.

She can transform herself into anyone.

Once she’s aware of that fact, then she really is free to do what she wants.

But how did she gain that awareness?

It shouldn’t be possible for someone living in the past to become aware they are living in the past.

This is one thing I certainly didn’t anticipate.

It would seem I, Aihana Etsu, must take this seriously for once.

Epilogue: Go Beyond the Möbius

Mugino Shizuri was only meant to set the stage.

Hanano viewed only one person as her enemy: Academy City’s #6.

The Dark Side’s Bane.

As long as she could severely wound and kill them, nothing else mattered.

She didn’t care what was broken.

She didn’t care how many lives were lost as the timeline collapsed.

She didn’t care at all.

“At long last we stand on equal footing. Live or die. Win or lose. No one can predict anything in this chaos.”

The chilly night breeze washed pleasantly over her.

And she smiled with her voice lowered to a whisper.

Now, Hanano Choubi’s true identity was a Voice on the Phone – an adult human. She had never undergone the esper development Curriculum, meaning she wasn’t even a Level 0.

She had no ability to look into the future no matter how hard she focused her mind.

The trick was a simple one once revealed.

No matter how much of a tightrope walk that technological trick was, it produced a magical effect as long as the #6 didn’t realize the truth.

(I don’t need any kind of special power and I don’t need to go through the Curriculum. With enough processing power, you can predict the future to an extremely high level of accuracy. So I simply had to use my VIP privileges as a Voice on the Phone to secretly use that supercomputer.)

“Tree Diagram. It still exists here in the past, you see.”

That was Academy City’s – no, the world’s most powerful supercomputer.

The monstrous thing precisely predicted each and every molecule to create 100% accurate weather forecasts for the entire planet down to the second.

That was enough to predict the future.

Based on what the tasks she had seen running when using her power as a Voice on the Phone to take a peek, it was currently enjoying a fairly awful part of the past related to the #1, Level 6, and 20 thousand clone girls. She honestly didn’t care about any of that. That quite literally was not Hanano Choubi’s world.

She would enjoy things in her own way.

She stuck a fresh menthol-flavor cigarette in her mouth and lit it in the darkness.

(After this…yes, if I can watch out for contact with a few exceptions, this should all play out the way I want.)

If all she needed to do was kill a confirmed survivor, then she didn’t need to put her own life at risk. For example, she could have chosen a more harmless target like Fremea Seivelun and taken her life.

However…

“Trying to kill one of those weaker types has a risk of dragging a bunch of extra people into this. …Was it called Agitate Halation? It’s always like this, I swear. A bunch of unpredictable heroes showing up is about the last thing I need.”

The world of villains had to be home to only villains.

It had to be separate.

That was the initial assumption. It was self-evident. If nothing irregular got in the way, the dark side would continue to deteriorate on its own. Then the #6 would be dragged into it when they tried to intervene. Setting up a three-way battle.

(I can change the future. Did you underestimate me because I’m in the past? Let me send those words right back at you, you goddamn #6.)

Like this, there were tricks allowing one to see the future from the past.

But…

Interfering with the past from the future very clearly surpassed the bounds of science.

(I couldn’t find the answer even in the Bank.)

It was so inexplicable that only an esper power could have done it. She knew who her enemy was, but she couldn’t move on without accepting that enemy was a true monster.

What was their power? It couldn’t be something as simple as controlling time.

Look more closely.

If you don’t let the fear win and you keep observing to the end, a weakness is sure to show itself.

Just then…

A call came to the phone Quarterback had been using. The screen said “Morning Call”, but this couldn’t actually be her. Hanano was the only one who needed to know how to bring the dead back to life.

Which member of Item would it be?

This was something of a gamble, but her guess was wrong.

“Oh, how strange. I thought for sure this would be Frenda-san running to me in tears. In fact, I thought I had specifically set things up so she would do that.”

Hanano laughed.

She had found her comrade in arms.

“I didn’t expect you to call me and I can see the future by cheating. What trick did you use here…Takitsubo-san the Traitor?”

Afterword

If you picked them up one at a time, welcome back. If you bought them all at once, welcome.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This time the book was largely split into two halves. I wanted to use the Academy City Bomber duel as a way of drawing out Frenda Seivelun’s skill to the very limit. And I also used that first half to introduce a few things about the Mugino Family I didn’t get to put in Volume 4.

I gave that girl a guest appearance with a connection to Frenda. This was Rakko-chan’s first time in the novels, so I was kind of nervous! I couldn’t have her actually meet Frenda at this point, but I gave that its own significance.

When you saw the first half’s enemy boss was a naked girl in a raincoat, I expect some of you had an “oh?” reaction. She shouldn’t have any connection to Academy City at this point, but perhaps there is some link to Salome. I hope it got you thinking anyway.

In a previous afterword I asked which member of Item you feared the most and if your ranking had changed, but I wonder how many people chose that fifth member.

For the second half, the person who has been saying and doing some ominous things in the past volumes is finally back on center stage. It’s been a long time since the end of Volume 1!! Using a disguise specialist in a prequel seems like cheating because, when you really think about it, there is a chance they could have taken the place of any of the characters in the present, but did any of you predict all of this? I think it was her ability to fool all of Item in the first volume that makes the strategy feel so plausible.

Thinking about who is a “confirmed survivor” in a prequel is a double-edged sword that can act as a weapon and a weakness, but I wrote this manuscript while working hard to go on the attack with it! I hope that creates a sense of tension not usually seen in prequels, but that is for all of you to judge.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nilitsu-san and to my editors Miki-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. With the social media deception and the timeline collapse, there must have been aspects that were difficult to illustrate. Thank you again.

And I give my thanks to the readers. I did a Shokuhou prequel in NT11, so maybe you were ready for it back when this series began. …Ready for this to be more than just a prequel. And so now the person who appeared all the way back in the first volume is ready to gather up all the foreshadowing and tear everything down. Time to hijack the past!! Thank you so much for reading this far!

And I will end this here.

My heart is just drawn to cargo containers for some reason. Why?

-Kamachi Kazuma

Ending

The man heard himself groan.

He was puzzled to find he was still among the living.

“Still alive there?”

A fully mocking voice reached him from above.

From very close above.

Perhaps his wound had been treated in some way while he was unconscious.

No, the first shot aside, had the one shown to Shizuri and the rest over the phone even been a real bullet?

Hanano Choubi looked down at the man collapsed on the ground, stuck a fresh cigarette in her mouth, and ignited her oil lighter, its small flame pushing away the cold shadows.

“And now you are dead. It’s important that I sow confusion. Particularly when it comes to throwing off the #6’s reading of the situation.”

“?”

“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t understand the value of that since you aren’t from Academy City. To be clear, that’s something I wish I could say about myself. What you do about it is up to you.”

She had successfully set up a fight to the death between Hanano Choubi and Mugino Shizuri. She had dragged the #6 into it.

All three of them were confirmed survivors.

If any of them died, the distant future timeline would fully collapse. She could finally do real damage to the #6 who was meddling from a position of safety.

…Everything was going as planned. But on the dark side, where the unexpected was common and the rules were constantly broken, it was best to be on your guard when you couldn’t find a single thing at all that wasn’t going to plan.

She had to account for the backup backup plans and even unexpected misfortune.

She had to predict it all.

Leave even a single pinhole open and the #6 would use it to launch a counterattack.

She wanted a solid defense.

She was the one drawing up the plans and launching the attack, but she still wanted a trump card that even she couldn’t predict. Without that, she couldn’t fully ride the wave of the dark side.

So she wanted another joker.

(The Mugino Family head is actually still alive. The #6 will be too focused on finding some way of stopping my clash with Mugino to notice this.)

“What happened to Mujinayama?”

“You already asked that. Is it always like this with you? How many things do you value above your own life?” Hanano looked exasperated. “If someone isn’t a confirmed survivor, it doesn’t affect the timeline whether they live or die. So I have no interest in them.”

“…”

“And I have no reason to go out of my way to kill someone who doesn’t need to die. I don’t have time to spare on meaningless detours.”

The elderly man remained silent for a while.

Eventually, he opened his mouth again.

“The Mugino Family will not take it sitting down if I am considered dead. That would mean ignoring the person who killed their head. So you will be pursued by an international criminal organization numbering in the hundreds of thousands.”

“There is no chance at all I will be killed by outsiders like that, so don’t worry about me.”

“Even if Mugino Shizuri counts among them?”

A short silence fell.

But it wasn’t fear or surprise that had left her speechless.

Hanano was clearly enjoying herself.

“That’s exactly what I want. This wouldn’t be a gamble otherwise.”

If she only wanted to break the timeline and destroy the future, she only needed to kill herself as a confirmed survivor.

Her awareness of the future gave her that absolute power against the world as a whole.

So why didn’t she?

(If my survival route and death route can both destroy the future, of course I prefer the one where I win while living and laughing.)

She wanted to survive and she wanted to laugh in her victory, so the hell she had planned out included the incomplete irregular choice of letting the head act freely.

She knew that was weakness on her part.

It was excess unrelated to her initial objective of defeating the #6.

But Hanano wouldn’t deny that part of herself. For one thing, she hadn’t started this fight with a noble and wise objective in mind.

As a master of disguise and infiltration, she wasn’t interested in ordinary beauty standards.

When presented with her own weakness and ugliness, she could bring herself to love the flaws others had discovered in her.

(If any one of us three dies, the timeline collapses. …And if that isn’t enough, I now have the Mugino Family head as a trump card. This three-way battle isn’t just three-way. The #6 can’t ignore this. They will do something. But this irregular move should help me tear down whatever that is.)

She lit another new cigarette.

After enjoying the cheap flavored smoke, she gave her answer.

“I am a villain.”

“…”

“That is why I’m willing to bet my life on something as trivial and insignificant as this. Humans will do anything to avoid humiliation. …So I’m more than willing to make a gamble if it lets me get back at that goddamn #6. It’s always like this, I swear.”

Now, make your way to Academy City’s wall.

That absolute wall divides the world in two: inside and outside.

Her direct clash with Mugino Shizuri awaits here there.

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