Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item

Novel Illustrations

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Opening

This is the story of a summer from over a year ago.

In other words, it is a retro, modern, high-tech, and smart incident from the past.

It is the crime-soaked story of how the dark side team named Item gained its fourth member.

Prologue: Feminine, Dangerous, Bright

The wall was thick.

It was supposed to be composite armor created from an alternating sandwich of polycarbonate and aramid fiber.

That meant it was far stronger than a bank vault.

But it was burned through in an instant.

A light blew away the unofficial research facility’s exterior wall along with the security guards who had noticed something was wrong.

A few people easily entered the secret area through the 2m hole that was still glowing red.

Then three beams flashed out in an almost offhand way.

That was all it took to blast through the labyrinthine research facility’s walls, trigger explosions, and tear the place to pieces. The security that should have activated in an emergency – not just the thick barricades, but the sprinklers and the alarm as well – had their wiring severed and failed to function.

After five seconds of this, everyone still alive had to have noticed something.

These blasts were not at all offhand. The beams of light were accurately melting and sealing every last exit, trapping the scattering researchers and security guards in their own personal jail.

Some girls walked through it all as casually as if this were the hallway at school.

The curvy girl in a summery sleeveless cardigan and a yoked skirt was Mugino Shizuri.

The girl with shoulder-length black hair in a pink track jacket and shorts was Takitsubo Rikou.

“Damn, I really need to stop eating so much bread. My legs are bloated.”

“Mugino, your problem is that you don’t exercise, not what you eat.”

It was a hot night, but the air conditioning must have been a little too cold because expressionless Takitsubo rubbed her bare thighs together as she replied.

“Hey, I’m out in front killing most of them myself.”

“You can kill anyone instantly with your power, so I don’t think that counts as exercise.”

Mugino Shizuri gently massaged her stocking-covered thigh with a hand.

Even during their carefree conversation, beams were flashing out from Mugino’s other palm. She vaporized an entire group of security guards who were unable to escape with the reinforced emergency exit door blocked.

Something landed at her feet.

It was a human arm still clutching a grenade.

“Mugino.”

“I see it.”

But not even that suicide blast could scratch Mugino Shizuri. Another beam blew it away. An explosion’s destruction was caused by the pressure created by accelerated heat and gas, so it was harmless if you had enough destructive power to repel the blast before it reached you.

She was one of only seven Level 5s within the 2.3 million population of Academy City.

Her power was known as Meltdowner.

It was a high-speed particle-wave cannon that could tear through any matter by ignoring quantum theory and forcibly firing electrons without transforming them into particles or a wave first. Ordinary explosives had been around for over a millennium, so the technological level was just too different. It was similar to how a group armed with chains and metal bats wouldn’t stand a chance against a brutally destructive giant robot.

Thick needles that looked more like spikes, electrodes, bottles of smelly chemicals, dentist chairs with sturdy restraint straps, and other grotesque items that seemed more like torture equipment than experimental tools were hit by even more destruction and scattered through the air in tiny pieces.

“Mugino, Mugino.”

Short, fluffy-haired Frenda Seivelun pulled a handmade explosive from below her short skirt and approached with an innocent smile. She was in full puppy mode.

She wore a thin poncho over a sailor-style short-sleeved white dress with black knee socks on her legs and a beret on her blonde head.

“In the end, we have to dispose of all the paper documents and computer equipment, right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What about the people?”

“Dispose of them.”

That was their job.

There were two types of explosions here. The Level 5 Meltdowner beams were a lot more noticeable, but pay careful attention and you would notice handmade explosives being tossed here and there as well. Although anyone stupid enough to take the time to get a good look at the grenades and rockets would soon be splattered up to the ceiling as blood and gore.

A rhythmic roar came from overhead.

“Up above,” said Takitsubo Rikou, standing straight and staring blankly.

“A helicopter, huh?”

Mugino Shizuri snorted and aimed her palm straight up. One beam was all it took to blast through to the roof and eliminate the heliport and the would-be escapees (probably whoever was in charge here).

But that wasn’t what the track suit girl had meant.

“Up above.”

“Yikes, that orange stuff is dripping down!!”

If Mugino hadn’t quickly hopped aside, the glowing goop created from heating the building materials to several thousand degrees Celsius would have landed right on her head. Being too strong could be a problem as well. This Level 5 wasn’t working with a team because she wasn’t powerful enough on her own.

Short Frenda stared at Takitsubo’s pink track suit.

“This is a big job, right? Takitsubo, you should buy something a little more seasonal once we get our pay. Y’know, like a sheer summer dress or a yukata that keeps falling off in places. Ooh, I know! In the end, aren’t China dresses summery?”

“I like this track suit best.”

“Wrong answer! Once we’ve been paid, you’re gonna be my dress-up doll!!”

“Um.”

When it came to combat, the pink track jacket and shorts girl always stayed a step behind.

She didn’t fight herself. She provided targeting assistance by detecting presences behind cover or walls. If she didn’t detect people’s lines of movement, the guns’ lines of fire, and even the dangerous pipes or high-voltage wires running through walls and ceilings, Mugino was liable to overdo things and self-destruct. They had to be extra careful in labs and industrial complexes.

The track suit girl shook a small container resembling a case of mechanical pencil lead.

“I do have some Body Crystal if we need it.”

“The espers aren’t the main target here, so don’t bother. It looks like we’re hunting down adults today,” casually replied Mugino, sending a scorching beam to the left and right to blow away the upper half of two security guards who were protecting an important-looking researcher. The wounds were instantly carbonized over, so there wasn’t even any gushing blood.

“Eek, eek!!”

The important researcher with a doctorate in some field of science (his primary subject of study was unethical human experimentation on children) fell on his rear, held out his hands, and shook his head. Over and over.

“W-wait. I won’t resist! I surr- I surrender!! You can do whatever you want to this place!!”

“Huh?”

Mugino Shizuri grunted in confusion.

The tilt of her head suggested she was truly baffled.

“Y-y-y-you’re a high-Level esper. Which means you’re a child – an unaffiliated hero. Ha ha. Let me guess, you’re here because you don’t like the dark side’s inhumane research or because you feel sorry for our child subjects. I’ll stop. I’ll never do this again. A-and if you’re this upset about the waste of life here, then you won’t want to kill defenseless people even if we are what you would call villains, right!? Heh hee, heh hee hee hee!!”

“Oh, that old argument.”

Something sizzled.

It was the sound of Meltdowner scorching the air and blowing away another security guard when he tried to escape. It didn’t matter to Mugino that he had dropped his weapon and had his back turned.

The researcher was at a loss for words and Mugino slowly crouched in front of him and leaned toward him.

“Hmm.” She tilted her head. “Hate to break it to you, but that wasn’t what we were hired to do.”

“Hired?”

“One of those heroes you mentioned is about to show up here, so we’re supposed to incinerate any problematic evidence before it can come to light.”

“…!? ~ ~ ~!!”

“And that evidence includes the information contained in people’s brains.”

Another sizzling sound.

Beyond her outstretched hand, the researcher’s entire head was missing.

The corpse didn’t even fall backwards.

“Sorry. A shitty villain like you might’ve had a chance to turn over a new leaf if I could erase specific memories like that psychological Level 5, but this is how I carry out jobs.”

The apology was only a word. There was no hint of guilt in her voice or on her face.

“Mugino,” said the pink track jacket and shorts girl, pointing further inside. “There’s something there. It doesn’t seem like an immediate threat, though.”

“Is it them?”

“Probably. The researchers went to the trouble of hiding both the room and its entrance.”

Mugino and Frenda exchanged a glance. Mugino and the others had been sent here because someone had detected signs of trouble at this research facility. The nature of the job meant they couldn’t keep relevant material on them, but they had memorized all the important people and things.

Mugino brushed the hair off her shoulder.

“Then give us 5 minutes to kill them all.”

They kept to the proposed schedule. Since no walls functioned as cover with Mugino, the security guards and researchers’ fates were sealed. After blowing up or vaporizing everything in the facility that moved, Mugino Shizuri and Frenda Seivelun walked through a space of death that smelled more scorched than bloody. They made their way back to the small room the track suit girl had informed them of.

“In the end, the latest game consoles are great! You can do fitness and health management on them.”

“Eh? Wouldn’t a contract with a 5-star gym be better? Then you can do Pilates and hot yoga.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Muuugiiinooo, if you’re trying to go on a diet-”

“…”

“Ahem, if you want to stay in shape like the beautiful person you already are!! Then you can’t just set aside some time each day dedicated to it. If it isn’t incorporated into a stress-free activity with visible results, you won’t keep at it for long, will you? So in the end, what you need is a well-made exercise game contained on a single small game console!!”

This had originally been a secret area not found on any of the building diagrams, but their rampage through the facility had left the hidden door bent and lifted up from the wall. Takitsubo was faithfully waiting in front of the banged-up door, so Mugino had her stand back while she kicked the door down with bottom of her foot.

“Oh?”

Sealed pods of tempered glass were lined up along both walls. They were used for cold sleep

Each pod was about the size of a phonebooth.

“In the end, we couldn’t detect any heartbeats or breathing because they were kept in cold sleep.”

Frenda twirled a mobile device in her hand. Modern camera lenses provided a variety of functions, which was convenient for people who were up to no good. As long as they made sure to switch off the automatic transmission of location and other data the phone companies used to sell off your privacy, piece by piece.

Mugino wiped the white frost from the exterior of one pod to look inside.

It contained a naked girl.

She had a brown bob cut, pale skin, and only modest curves. Even with a generous estimate of her age, she had at most just entered middle school. Even her hair was frozen solid. She was like a fruit gelatin with all the gaps filled in with clear resin.

Mugino took another look around the room and estimated the total number of pods at more than 40.

“Just like the data we were given. They’re all human lockers.”

“Which makes them the last thing to deal with to safely erase the project. Kind of depressing when they’re all so defenseless, but what do you say? In the end, should we count them and make sure they’re all here before we blow them up?”

“No, let’s take some as a souvenir. Actually, one should be enough.”

Mugino’s irresponsible mood made it sound like she was impulse buying at a pet shop.

Frenda looked confused.

“What? I thought our job was to eliminate everyone and everything here.”

“Why should we do exactly what we’re told?”

“Fine, but I know better than to think you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart. In the end, what’s your angle here?”

“First of all, our job is to erase some data the higher ups don’t want getting out. It was never spelled out in the job description, but they don’t want any concrete data that points to what they were doing here. They shouldn’t care about one of the kids who couldn’t explain what was done to them here. Think back to the job description. It specified killing the researchers and the security team, but it never mentioned the subjects. So we’re not actually required to kill them.”

“Makes sense,” said Frenda.

Neither of them was discussing this with the gravity of a life-or-death situation.

The decision to let these people live or die was entirely up to their whims.

“Takitsubo plays a valuable targeting role, but she can’t fight. My Meltdowner is too deadly to use in defense. I brought you in to fill that gap because I’d heard you were pretty good for a Level 0, but your specialty is bombs, not martial arts. You’re not exactly a defense specialist. And now we have the perfect candidates right here☆”

“Mugino, are you saying you want a defense-oriented esper?” asked Takitsubo.

“The Dark May Project artificially created high-Level espers by transplanting the #1’s thought patterns into their minds. Don’t you think something that unusual would make a good shield for you?”

Mugino made it sound like a question or suggestion, but Frenda and Takitsubo only shrugged. When Mugino decided to do something, there was no talking her out of it.

Frenda moved to the computer in a corner of the room.

“Let’s see, the project’s biggest successes were a pair of Level 4s. This says they’re called Offense Armor Kinuhata Saiai and Bomber Lance Kuroyoru Umidori. In the end, which one should we wake up?”

“The armor one.”

That was all it took for their paths to part.

One girl’s path would lead her to join those three while the other’s would lead her down a long, long journey that began here.

A deep mechanical thunk came from the thick protective glass. A change came over the clear solid within, which seemed like time and space solidified. It became a thick liquid. It was closer to being a gel than water. But it was soon sucked away by the many drains inside. Finally, the protective glass opened upwards.

“Hello, your name is Kinuhata Saiai, right? Do you understand the situation here?”

“…?”

The girl sat on the floor and stared blankly up at them.

Her brown bob cut was wet and flattened. The sticky gel dripped down from the undeveloped lines of her collarbones to her flat chest and down past her navel, but she didn’t seem to mind.

Takitsubo expressionlessly tilted her head.

“She isn’t screaming?”

“She probably isn’t even aware she’s naked. She was only just unfrozen, so the blood hasn’t gotten to her head yet.”

The way she looked up at them seemed more like a reflexive reaction to external stimuli than a willful action. Like the slow movements of a touch-me-not.

Takitsubo Rikou placed a brand-new towel over the naked girl’s head. It was likely an amenity kept on hand for situations like this.

“Mugino.”

The pink track jacket and shorts girl was looking elsewhere. She was clearly focused on something beyond the wall. Mugino Shizuri was a self-admitted battle freak, but at times like this, she prioritized Takitsubo’s vague “premonitions” or “bad feelings” above all else. The dark side girls knew from experience that they would regret it if they didn’t.

“I sense a disturbance to the south-southwest. I don’t think we can stay much longer.”

“Oh, the ordinary Anti-Skill got to work faster than expected. Then let’s make sure we’re gone in 180 seconds.”

“Eh? Wait! What about the rest of the subjects in cold sleep? In the end, there’s still a bunch of them!!”

Frenda panicked and Mugino had a simple answer.

“My second reason for keeping them alive is they make the perfect fall guys. Frenda, the process runs automatically once you input the command, right? Set the thawing process to run at low speed. Right after they wake up in 180 seconds, Academy City’s defenders of peace will arrive. And then…”

Mugino stopped talking and looked to the side.

The naked girl named Kinuhata Saiai still had that blank look in her eyes, so Takitsubo was assisting her. Her circulation still hadn’t fully recovered. She showed no embarrassment or resistance while Takitsubo toweled the bio electrolyte gel from her hair and body. She was even nakedly raising her arms to assist.

Mugino Shizuri pointed at a different pod.

“Anti-Skill will conclude this Kuroyoru Umidori girl snapped and destroyed the lab while still dazed from the thawing process. With everything they’ve done to her, she’s bound to have a reason to want to. So we let this avenger have this high score and we get off scot-free.”

Takitsubo was a good girl (by this group’s standards), so her face clouded over some and Frenda noticed.

“But will that really work? In the end, destruction caused by your Meltdowner won’t look anything like destruction by her nitrogen lances. No one who knows what to look for will be fooled.”

“That’s the entire point.”

There was a sizzling sound as something solid was fully evaporated. They were about to escape, but Mugino needlessly fired an ultra-hot Meltdowner beam at a random spot on the floor.

“If we perfectly covered up our involvement, we couldn’t prove we completed our job. So we leave a sign that the dark side will understand but ordinary people won’t. Otherwise, our client might refuse to pay us or some other dark side operative might take credit and steal it from us. And going on an enraged rampage to get our money back just sounds like a pain to me.”

Frenda’s shoulders slumped at that.

They were on completely different levels when it came to being criminals.

Mugino gave two satisfied nods as the machinery began to operate and made her way to the small room’s exit. She made sure to fire a second and third Meltdowner beam at a random part of the wall and ceiling as she did so.

“C’mon, get on your feet and escape. And make sure Anti-Skill doesn’t see you. If they do, we’ll have to slaughter them too, so be careful.”

“You do know most criminals want to avoid Anti-Skill for the opposite reason, don’t you?”

Yomikawa Aiho of Anti-Skill broke through the unofficial research facility’s front gate with a large team.

This happened only 90 seconds after a shadowy group of girls slipped out through a large hole in the wall.

It was a sultry night.

Academy City was located in western Tokyo, so it was enveloped in an inland heat even at night. And this was an ecological city that primarily used wind power, so the heat island effect was impressive.

District 17 was an unmanned factory district and its uniquely gorgeous nightscape had gained some minor attention on factory tour sites and such. Currently, a 12-person microbus with all its rear windows tinted was driving through that district. Maybe it was simpler to call it a TV studio bus.

But open the rear door and you would find fluffy carpet, a real leather sofa arranged in three sides of a square, a glass table, a vacuum tube analog audio system, a minifridge, and more.

From the outside, it was a rundown old bus that couldn’t be worth more than 300 thousand yen, but on the inside, it was a luxury limousine worth more than 50 million yen. The sofa and carpet were of the finest quality and the Chanel wastebasket in the corner was worth as much as a gigantic gaming PC. This was what the dark side girls used for transportation.

“Go,” briefly whispered Mugino.

“You got it.”

The driver’s hair was dyed bright, he wore a thick gold necklace, and he was chewing gum. Many types of people wound up on the dark side, but if you wanted a driver, the back-alley delinquents were your best bet. They had the skills, but they weren’t marked. And more importantly, they were easily replaced if they were lost during a job.

They were fleeing the scene, but the driver obeyed the speed limit as they drove through that factory district full of triple-blade wind turbines. They even passed right by the Anti-Skill vehicles flashing their lights at the front gate. The filthy studio bus slowly but surely left the scene.

Villains tended to feel a rush of endorphins as soon as they had crossed the district border and left the danger zone. At this point, there was no tracking them with only the standard drum-style security robots patrols.

“Yay!! That went perfect!! In the end, it went off without a hitch!!”

“Yay.”

Frenda and Takitsubo celebrated while getting to work on a small bottle of cider taken from the minifridge. The 5-star blue cheese and ham they snacked on was weeping at the drink pairing. And for some reason, there was a can of cheap mackerel mixed into the lineup.

A thick cloth audibly rustled. That was a towel. Kinuhata Saiai had finally recovered from her cold sleep and her ordinary embarrassment and confusion were kicking in.

Bagworm Girl Kinuhata Saiai was curled up in a corner and gave the other girls an inquisitive look.

“Super who are you people?”

“We’re not heroes, I can tell you that.”

That was all Mugino Shizuri opted to say while chuckling.

But it was enough for Kinuhata to understand she had not yet escaped the dark side. She had been raised as a lab animal in the depths of a research facility, so she had no legal identity, address, or student ID. If she was dumped out of this bus, she would only find an endless life of poverty and homelessness. And without any clothes at that.

No matter how unfair it seemed, her only way to avoid that was to rely on these dark side girls.

She had to be all too aware that she was about to be presented with a flood of information and definite death awaited her if she missed a single piece of it.

But despite the situation, Mugino Shizuri casually spread her arms and asked a question.

“So how do you like your first taste of freedom?”

The clock in the bus had just reached midnight of July 1.

Kinuhata Saiai smiled a little.

For some reason, that question seemed to change the unseen rules.

These people weren’t good or righteous, but she now knew she had found herself in a situation she couldn’t have hoped for even after a hundred years of being given nothing but air, food, electricity, and drugs in a sterile room.

The small girl slowly narrowed her eyes.

“It’s super not bad at all.”

These girls were Item – the strongest elite four-person team found in the very depths of Academy City’s darkness.

Between the Lines 1

(Note: The following is only saved in and managed by this undisclosed independent archive kept separate from the Bank. For many criminals, their information is disclosed here to admit to their secret links with the city’s leaders and to provide a sign of their trust. Generally speaking, the dark side dislikes being told what to do, but they are aware of the many hidden attempts to take control of the city’s darkness and are willing to perform the daily work to preserve the darkness.

This data will be kept secret even if it means taking a life. In other words, handle it with care. It does not matter if you are directly responsible or not. It could be a simple error or a cyber-attack by someone else. If the information leaks out, know that you have killed whoever illegitimately accessed it.)

Mugino Shizuri.

Level 5 Meltdowner.

One of the seven current Level 5s. By firing electrons in a state that is neither a particle nor a wave, her power creates a strong resistance that applies massive heat and friction to the target and forcibly burns through it. As a weapon, this power is classified as a high-speed particle-wave cannon. By its nature, this power is expected to have a wide-variety of research applications, including new weapons development, proof of zero-dimensional matter, and non-laser nuclear fusion reactors. Her power has the highly unique property of manipulating the state of an electron no matter who is observing it, which could have applications in a new type of quantum computer, quantum cryptography, highly flexible AI development, and next-generation high-volume high-speed communications. (Note: Some results of this research have begun to be incorporated into the Aneri Project, among others. See separate entry for details.)

There is a risk of mutual interference with the Railgun, another electric Level 5. Be cognizant of this when designing their research facilities.

Takitsubo Rikou.

Level 4 AIM Stalker.

Her power accurately records and saves the AIM Diffusion Field weakly emitted subconsciously by an esper so she can track it. Once she has recorded it, there are no distance limitations on tracking it, so she can accurately track it even if they flee the solar system. However, this recording and searching of AIM Diffusion Fields requires the oral consumption of a special powder known as Body Crystal, which has high production costs and powerful side effects. (Note: Further details on Body Crystal cannot be viewed without an authorization key from 1 Board of Directors member.)

Even when not using Body Crystal, she makes comments which suggest she is receiving something (e.g., “I detect a signal from the south-southwest”), but what this means is entirely unknown. It isn’t known if this premonition or sixth sense comes from her power or if she is subconsciously detecting something based on her experience.

Also, there are still many unsolved mysteries regarding her AIM Stalker power. Data on it is protected unusually strictly for a Level 4 and there are signs that her Bank data is incomplete. This could be related to that project the entire Board of Directors is (Note: The rest of this entry cannot be viewed without an authorization key from 6 Board of Directors members.)

Frenda Seivelun.

Level 0.

She has no esper power, but she excels at using a variety of explosives (albeit without any licensing or authorization) and she knows how to fight hand-to-hand. But since her combat style appears unique, it is likely something she learned on-the-job in order to survive in the dark side as a Level 0.

Her knowledge of explosives, and of chemical synthesis as a whole, is on par with a university professor. The lack of obvious burns and scarring on her body suggests this knowledge was not obtained through self-taught trial-and-error, but it is unknown who taught her. She has too many friends and acquaintances to make a determination.

Because she has an unusually wide range of friends and wants for nothing in her life, it is unclear why she has chosen to place herself in the dark side. For a time, it was suspected she was an undercover agent for Judgment or an online news site who was given the necessary chemistry knowledge with a Testament, but that theory has since been disproven. Which leaves her as even more of an enigma. If the cumulative points against her ever exceed 10, form an investigation team to look into it.

(Note: New Record. File partially copied over from Dark May Project entry.)

Kinuhata Saiai.

Level 4 Offense Armor.

Her power controls the nitrogen in the air to surround her body with a layer of ultra-compressed gas as a solid defense or to artificially boost her strength. The defense in particular will automatically react even to surprise attacks from her blind spots. It is also sturdy enough to leave her entirely unscathed from a shotgun blast at point-blank range. She is a close-quarters specialist, but her specs are so high the outcome of the battle is mostly determined by whether or not she can limit the battle to close range.

She was also a subject of the Dark May Project, meaning a portion of #1 Accelerator’s thought patterns were transplanted into her mind. (Note: See separate entry for project details.) The way her Offense Armor automatically activates to protect her comes from the successful adoption of an inferior version of the reflection equations the #1 loves to use. Related to this, there are reports of her manner of speech changing when she is excited.

Chapter 1: The Fifth Girl

Part 1

July 1, 10 AM.

Fifteen Bells, the largest complex in District 15.

As the largest shopping district in Academy City, District 15 was the envy of all 2.3 million residents.

The ultra-luxury apartments found in that primest of prime locations were sold more as investments than as actual residences. The very top floor and the roof garden of one such apartment building acted as Item’s base. Since the apartments were investments, the owners did not want to reduce the value by getting stains on the walls and floors or otherwise making the place feel “lived in”. That meant very few people actually lived there, so it was the perfect place to find a quiet life without actually escaping to nature and thus sacrificing the modern conveniences of the city.

“Academy City develops special powers based on quantum theory, so the city is home to scientific espers. Using the fact that observation alters the movement and nature of particles, methods such as hypnotism, drugs, and electric shocks have been used to help students develop a Personal Reality which allows them to produce ordinarily impossible phenomena.”

With nothing to do after completing their job, Mugino Shizuri was crossing a living room larger than a tennis court to reach her bedroom. The 100+ inch TV switched on by itself. Automatically searching out a recommended program upon detecting someone’s face didn’t seem like the best idea. It didn’t seem very ecological. And its recommendation algorithm had failed for her because she had no interest in the morning news program it had chosen.

But just this once, maybe it had done a good job after all.

This had delayed her just long enough to notice something flashing in a corner of the room.

“Huh?” she grumbled with a bottle of carbonated water in one hand.

She was only wearing a thin negligee since she had just taken a bath, but she had no real issues with standing by the window. She threw herself into one of the recliners lined up by the glass and grabbed the phone receiver. She leaned back and the chair collapsed back into something like a bed.

This was an ecological city of skyscrapers and three-blade wind turbines.

The large screen on the side of a blimp provided a UV forecast for the pedestrians walking below the summer sky.

The city sprawling out beyond the window was a shitty place. It could only shine so bright thanks to the dark side’s support, but no one there so much as glanced toward that dark side.

The call was from exactly who Mugino expected.

“Mujinayama, why do you always insist on calling the home phone? I don’t check this thing’s answering machine. You could reach me directly on my cellphone, so I’d never miss your calls.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, milady. I am but a lowly servant, so I would never be so rude as to directly contact you without prior arrangement. I really should not be calling your home either, but I can just barely preserve my honor by relaying it through your apartment landlord.”

Mujinayama was the butler who served at her family home outside of Academy City and he was like this about everything. She could never quite tell if the old man was treating her with care or trying to avoid interacting with her as much as possible.

“You may be living away from home in Academy City, but you must always be aware that you are a member of the glorious Mugino family and maintain the appropriate resolve.”

“You try to act humble, but did you call me up first thing in the morning to lecture me?”

“Milady.”

It was currently 10 AM. That was much too late for a student or a worker to be relaxing at home, but the gray-haired butler did not take issue with her not following the same schedule as ordinary people.

“Many things found their way to this country during the Westernization at the beginning of the Meiji period.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Science, art, meats, medicines, steamships, and – most importantly – wheat. The Mugino family is now one of the wealthiest in the world because they saw how the country was changing, actively accepted the Westernization, and spread its wings wider than anyone else. That family name is a sign of wisdom and glory that only a chosen few are privileged with, milady.”

“(Westernization, my ass. Udon and manju are made with wheat too. That pure white rice you see in samurai movies is a lie. In those days, I doubt much of anyone really ate just rice.)”

“Milady.”

Mujinayama still insisted on calling her that.

Mugino sighed in exasperation while lying back in the window-side recliner with the cordless receiver in hand. And she took a sip of carbonated water from the plastic bottle.

It was true a wide variety of new things had entered the country after it opened up from its isolationist period: new clothing, new cuisine, Western medicine, Shakespeare’s plays, etc. The Mugino family had indeed greedily absorbed those things and rapidly expanded just like Mujinayama so proudly stated (even more proudly than the girl who actually belonged to that family).

“Don’t forget Western-style organized crime.”

“Now, now.” The butler spoke like he was chiding a small child. “Violence is merely another form of negotiation, no different from conversation and money. But a Mugino must use violence as a tool, not be controlled by it. The honorable Mugino family is in fact one of the 5 wealthiest in the world and runs the grain production company which fills the bellies of 1.4 billion people worldwide.”

That put the Mugino family in a different position from the Japanese-style yakuza. They never did anything too noticeable and none of their criminal bases or criminal members every came to light. They did not wear obvious sunglasses and gold necklaces. On the surface, they were a global grain production company and, even there, the Mugino name was never found in the company name or the personnel list. But after the vast fortune earned there was laundered through specific banks and casinos, it was used to raise an army of a hundred thousand around the world. More than handguns of dubious origin, they even possessed tanks and attack helicopters. And the investment fund run by the group would buy up any company that gave them an opening – whether it was an old, established one or a new startup – to spread the corporation across the world like an amoeba.

It became an inextricable gear of society, all while hiding its presence.

Even the graffiti on the walls and the way they shook hands were used as signs to identify insiders and outsiders and any outsiders nosing around too much were eliminated. That was the Western way of using violence as a tool.

“If they’ve got so much wheat, they should just make illegal booze like a proper gang.”

“Unfortunately, there is no reason to make it illegally in the modern day.”

In other words, Mugino Shizuri had a dark lineage. Unlike most in the dark side, she hadn’t wound up there after making some kind of mistake. She was a monster born and raised in the darkness.

But in Academy City, she was simply a student.

That may have been what worried Mujinayama so much. He himself came from a more modern lineage that had thrown out their rusted bandit swords when the Westernization led to a prohibition on swords and were reborn as mountain-based snipers. He wished to personally assist when it came to combat rather than leaving that in the hands of Item’s other members, who were only with her by happenstance.

“Is there anything new with you, milady?”

“Hm, not really.”

She had diligently stayed up late last night killing. Same old, same old.

“I’m one of only seven Level 5s. I’m not going to find myself in serious trouble all that easily. There are those in the dark side who protect themselves by giving an invented story of their past, but I haven’t reached that point yet.”

(As long as the #6 – that Level 5 known as the Dark Side’s Bane – doesn’t show up anyway.)

Mugino lazily yawned and rolled over in the recliner. The old butler’s adorably jealous voice came over the phone.

“What are your schoolmates doing?”

“They’re downstairs flirting.”

Part 2

“Ah hah hah!! In the end, I’ve always been the bullied one when it comes to chest size, but we’ve finally found someone who makes even my clothing look baggy!!”

“…”

Frenda Seivelun held her sides and laughed with tears in her eyes while Kinuhata the newcomer pouted. Kinuhata had borrowed some clothes since she couldn’t stay in only a towel forever and this was the treatment she got. It was all the worse because she had thought the two of them weren’t all that different in size.

Fifteen Bells was roughly divided between the luxury apartments on the upper floors, the offices on the midlevel floors, and the fashionable brand-name shopping mall on the lower floors. Kinuhata Saiai had been forced into a too-big summer dress with one of the shoulder straps slipping down and now she found herself in an aisle of a luxury brand shop where even one of its empty boxes would net you some cash at a pawnshop.

It was 10 in the morning and the mall’s front glass doors didn’t open until 11, but this was a secret time when only the residents of the apartments above could shop. The truly wealthy did not fight through crowds or enter online drawings to buy the products they wanted.

“Can we super really shop at a place like this? Aren’t you a criminal group that gets paid dirty money for illicit work?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. In the end, we just completed a big job, right? Our pay is deposited immediately upon completion, so there’s nothing to worry about. Now, it’s time for a shopping spree with the black card of your dreams!! It’s time to throw money around to transform an innocent young girl into my very own dress-up doll!!!”

It didn’t sound like Frenda was willing to listen to a reasonable argument. She hadn’t even bothered denying they were a criminal group.

Next to Kinuhata Saiai, the pink track suit girl named Takitsubo Rikou was staring into the distance.

The air conditioning must have been a bit chilly in her shorts that left the full length of her thighs bare because she occasionally rubbed her legs together.

“Is this super weirdo always like this?” Kinuhata whispered to Takitsubo.

“Frenda normally uses her sister as a dress-up doll, but that sister is down with a summer cold. Frenda said she was going to explode if she didn’t find some other outlet to relieve the pressure.”

How were you supposed to respond to that?

Frenda herself didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Anyway, I bought a few things to celebrate, but do you have any requests? In the end, I’ll choose for you if you don’t.”

“If possible, I’d super like something easier to move in. I don’t mind if it’s short, but a bunch of loose frills and stuff that catches on the air would be super annoying.”

“So in the end you prefer boyish clothes?”

“I super don’t care about that distinction.”

The three argued as they walked through mall. At a spot similar to a public square, several clerks had a thick tarp laid out on the floor. They were apparently doing watermelon splitting as a seasonal event. There were paper bags smaller than a light novel gathered in one corner, which appeared to be the prizes for anyone who got it in one hit. As small as they were, they were still brand-name products that hosts and hostesses would swarm like puppies.

The girls arbitrarily chose a shop with a sporty look and entered. Kinuhata chose a garment that looked easy to move in and easy to maintain, but her cheeks stiffened when she saw all the zeroes on the price tag. Hold on. Has Japan become a country where you need a stack of cash to buy a single pen?

Meanwhile, Frenda and Takitsubo didn’t mind at all.

“Huh. In the end, France really is the country to go with for bicycle stuff. C’mon, Takitsubo! It’s time you said goodbye to that track suit! How about we cover your curves with a formfitting road bike suit!?”

“Oh, no. Not one of those colorful skintight suits the female pilots wear in robot anime.”

“Wouldn’t it be more like the female member on a Sentai show? On Sunday mornings, my sister prefers tokusatsu shows like Kabuto Driver over anime. She’s 7, so it’s not easy keeping up on that stuff so I can discuss it with her. Anyway, take this formfitting suit!!”

“Hey, hey, hey!!” quickly cut in Kinuhata. “Maybe look at all the zeroes on the tag before playing around with this stuff! One super careless tear and you’re in serious trouble!!”

“Don’t underestimate the criminally wealthy just after getting paid for a job, newbie. In the end, did you find something you want to wear? Is that what you’re holding?”

“Eh? Um, super, uh, this is way too expensive.”

“Then let’s get to the fitting room! In the end, it’s time for the thrillingly embarrassing experience of changing behind a single cloth so flimsy it feels like the air conditioning is going to blow it out of the way!”

“I said it’s too expensive! I’m super terrified to wear this!!”

Her complaints went ignored, so Frenda and Takitsubo grabbed her arms and dragged her into the fitting room. Just like a captured alien. She was confident in her strength, but she didn’t dare struggle and tear the clothing.

“In the end, if you don’t shut the curtain yourself, everyone will be able to see you, just like someone who didn’t set their social media profile to friends only.”

“I super get it already!!”

She yanked the curtain shut.

Track suit Takitsubo Rikou’s gaze lazily wandered through empty air before landing on Frenda.

“You’re having fun.”

“Wah hah hah!! In the end, this is tradition. The newest member of Item is doomed to be the dress-up doll of the second-newest!”

This meant Takitsubo had done this to Frenda and Mugino to Takitsubo. Frenda was still traumatized after experiencing minor gestaltzerfall when that girl had lined up 72 colors of plain track suits and quietly pressured her to choose one.

And eventually…

“I’ve super put it on.”

The curtain opened and Kinuhata Saiai emerged.

Her outfit consisted of a hoodie dress, a shoulder-baring top, and leggings. It suited her a lot better than the fancy dress that had been forced onto her.

“Ohh.”

“You’re a new type for Item.”

Kinuhata looked uncomfortable at the attention from the other two.

Frenda crossed her arms and nodded twice for some reason.

“We can use this as a starting point and try out some other genres. Let’s head to the other shops so you can try on a wide variety of styles.”

“Wait, um, you’re super buying this!? But the zeroes!!”

“Frenda, you need to buy Kinuhata’s underwear too.”

“Hold off on that because I’m saving the best for last. Yay, yay! In the end, which will you find more embarrassing: adult lingerie that makes it look like you lost a bet or kiddy ones with a big kitten face printed on the butt?”

“Eh? You mean Kinuhata isn’t wearing any underwear under there? That’s a problem.”

“~ ~ ~!?”

Kinuhata blushed red and trembled. Really, it was the athletic shop’s fault for not selling underwear. But without an official identity, address, or student ID (or clothing), she would have nowhere to go if she left now. And she would probably be naked again. So in that sense, Frenda and the unlimited black card she was waving around were still the most reliable “umbrella” here.

“Excuse me, she’ll be wearing this home, so we’d like to check out.”

In Academy City, crime was not the result of poverty. Kinuhata took a detached stance as she noted that you couldn’t escape the dark side even if you had such a large pile of cash you could die in a money avalanche.

“Umm.”

The popular clerk with a gyaru look had to be terrified of upsetting such a good customer because her fear was almost palpable as she spoke to Frenda.

“I don’t know how to say this, but our reader can’t seem to approve your card. I checked and it isn’t an error with the card’s chip or the reader, so it must be the account it’s linked to.”

The clerk seemed legitimately distressed, so it didn’t appear to be a joke.

Time froze.

Frenda Seivelun hesitantly looked back.

The blonde girl was trembling as she witnessed a situation far worse than she had expected.

“Whoa, where did you super get those scissors from?”

“Kinuhata, you need to remove the tags if you’re going to wear this. There, all cut off. Now these clothes are yours.”

“Did you super cut off the washing instructions too? Ugh, and memorizing those is a super pain.”

“Ah ha ha. Now you can’t return these.”

Frenda couldn’t bring herself to intrude on that heartwarming scene.

She didn’t have the courage to count the zeroes on the price tags fluttering to the ground.

Part 3

“Wehh,” moaned a tearful voice.

Hanano Choubi was a girl who looked to be around 15. Her long black hair was split into three with only the very ends tied. She was still a young girl. Her general vibe was more doglike than catlike. And she was trembling like a wet chihuahua.

She wore a short-sleeved sailor uniform, but she wouldn’t be questioned by Anti-Skill for walking through District 15, Academy City’s largest shopping district, at midday.

Everyone judged Hanano Choubi to be a girl with abysmal timing. Nothing she did or said was ever wrong, but the timing of those things was always off to a miraculous extent. So due to no real fault of her own, she earned everyone’s disapproval and found herself all alone.

Kyah! This man is a molester☆

For how many people would that accusation lead to a counteraccusation of being a scammer making false accusations, getting called a slut, and having your entire life derailed?

“Ugh, what kind of public reputation is ‘enemy of train-commuting salarymen everywhere’?”

Her tendency to monologue to herself despite her lack of friends may have come from her time in the drama club.

At any rate, her life had continued after hitting rock bottom.

Today was the start of her new and exciting life on the dark side. The person instructing her over the phone had told her to go to the top floor of the Fifteen Bells complex in District 15, meet her new teammates there, and work as a four-person team.

But when she boarded the elevator and pressed the top floor button, nothing happened. She noticed an inconspicuous palmprint reader next to the rows of buttons.

“Hmm.”

Hanano Choubi sprayed her palm with a special powder to easily get past the lockout and made her way to the top floor.

That was her specialty since she had no real esper power.

The elevator doors slid open and she found just one door in the space ahead. She hesitantly pressed the intercom doorbell, but there was no response. She had been told to be punctual, so she looked straight up, put a color contact in her right eye, and had the eye-scanner door opened only a second later.

“E-excuse me…”

Despite the techniques she used, Hanano Choubi only opened the door a crack and stuck her head in like the nervous small animal type she was. Her voice was quiet but carried well, another sign of her drama club background.

There was no response, but she still entered.

(Wow, that’s a lot of clothing brushes. How many clothes do you have to own to end up with so many different kinds of brushes? I’m kind of jealous.)

She touched the small intercom screen on the interior wall to check the status of the security system. It looked like there were people here. Based on the guard function that worked with the cutting-edge AI air conditioner, there were four people gathered in the large living room.

That had to be her destination.

“Umm, my name is Hanano Choubi and the voice on the phone told me to join a team called Item…”

She must not have been aware of her own biggest problem.

(Wait, four people?)

The things she said and did were always correct, but her timing was bad.

So the instant she touched the living room doorknob from the hallway…

“We did the goddamn job you asked us to, so why the hell haven’t we been paid!? Braglhlbhlakdfghsfjhnbhfahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

She fell right to the floor.

Hanano Choubi’s hips gave out, leaving her in a cute w-sitting position. Even she could tell she had tears in her eyes. She had to gather all her strength in her crotch to keep her bladder from giving way.

There was a demon lord living in modern Japan.

Or rather, a girl with a demon lord aura was shouting incomprehensibly into a small phone with her hair standing angrily on end.

The pink track jacket and shorts girl standing blankly in a corner of the living room noticed Hanano Choubi and turned her way.

“Mugino, there’s someone here.”

“Blaghblkhaydfgblakhndflwehrnakldsfhababhahafh!? …Huh?”

The death metal shout was cut off by a note of confusion.

The girl even tilted her head quite cutely.

“I-I’m Hanano…Hanano Choubi.”

That was all Hanano Choubi could get out while trembling in her attempt to avoid wetting herself.

“Who’s she? A friend of yours, Kinuhata?”

“Super nope.”

Meanwhile, a voice spoke from the phone at the demon lord’s ear.

“Like I’ve been trying to tell you, I transferred your payment like always. If you can’t access it, it must mean your account has been frozen for some reason. Go bitch at the stupid bank operator, not me.”

Oh, I know that voice, thought Hanano Choubi, her face brightening a bit.

That was the usual voice on the phone.

The traditional demon lord, meaning she was more frightening than sexy, frowned.

“Why would it be frozen?”

“Do I look like the tutorial goddess who’ll answer every question you pray at me? The money’s gone from my wallet, so the rest is on you. I’m not transferring any more money for that job. But if your account was frozen without any kind of notification to you, it probably means you screwed up on the data front and triggered a criminal account alert with the bank.”

“You think we’d make such an amateur mistake?”

“Then someone set you up. Maybe a hacker and maybe a snitch, but someone from the dark side.”

The demon lord glared over at Hanano Choubi with the phone still in hand.

“Also, someone I don’t recognize has shown up in our apartment.”

“That would be Hanano Choubi. You were saying you wanted more variety since Item only has three members, remember? You should thank me. She’s a real prize. She specializes in disguise and infiltration, so she opens up a lot of new options for you☆”

An awkward air set in.

The voice on the phone had said they only had three members, but there were four other people here. With that one called Kinuhata and tearful, trembling Hanano Choubi, they made for a five-person Sentai team.

Every face there (expect for the trembling one) had “could her timing possibly be worse?” written on it.

“It’s up to you if you use her or not, but make your decision within 30 days. Oh, and you can’t return her if she dies or loses a limb or something. She might be Level 0, but like I said, she’s a real prize. If Item doesn’t want her, I have other places I can send her. So treat her with care even if this is only a trial period.”

“Hey, do you think we’re in any position to hire someone new? We can’t access our money with our account frozen! If we don’t do something soon, we’ll have to leave this apartment hideout!!”

“As cashless as our lives are these days, I’m sure you have some physical money lying around. If not, go crawling on the floors and check under your beds. All you need is a single yen to open a new bank account. Use whatever name you want as long as it can’t be traced back to us. By the way, Hanano Choubi’s disguises would be perfect for that. And don’t forget the most basic fact of life: if you want money, you need to work for it.”

“Do you have a job for us?”

“A big one. And if your frozen account was a targeted attack on Item, then I bet it was about this. They somehow learned what job I was bringing to you and made a preemptive strike. They’re so scared of you they were hoping to keep you away before the fighting even started. No one’s going to work if they can’t get paid for it, right?”

“…”

“I don’t care if you’re after the money or the revenge, but I have a feeling you’re very interested in hearing about this job.”

Part 4

If they were going to start on a new job, every member of Item needed all the details. That meant Mugino Shizuri’s phone was not enough.

Thus, the five girls took the elevator to the lower floors.

“How did you manage to buy Kinuhata’s clothes without your credit card?” asked blank-eyed Takitsubo.

“In the end, I dug through my pockets and found a few prepaid cards. Y’know, the kind where you input the alphanumeric string on them to buy stuff online or buy songs for your music player. If I wasn’t able to cash those out, I’d’ve been in trouble.”

“Hm? What would have happened to you then?”

“There are specialists for dealing with dark side people who don’t pay their debts, so I’d be on the run as they swarmed me like an endless stream of army ants. Now, I’m not about to let those losers take me alive and wring me out so tightly I turn into a super-rare cute girl diamond, but it’d be a pain regardless.”

“Eep. There are people like that on the dark side?”

Hanano Choubi shrank down even though this wasn’t about her.

Their destination was the classic style theater among the few different movie theaters in Fifteen Bells. It was strange for it to be deserted even at midday on a weekday, but no one voiced any confusion. Once they shut off the lights, deadly documents appeared on the large screen. Item’s job was in fact to erase and eliminate dangerous elements from Academy City.

“Huh? Why do you look so disturbed, Kinuhata-san?”

“It’s super nothing…”

They had to be surrounded by an unknown number of speakers because the voice on the phone sounded very three-dimensional as it explained. They still couldn’t see her face, though.

“Are you familiar with the Colosseum?”

“In the end, it’s an underground fight club with no rules – you can use any weapon or esper power you want,” readily supplied Frenda Seivelun.

Her immediate response suggested she was one of the ones who enjoyed watching the fights with a bowl of popcorn.

“The venue moves each time, so it’s hard to track down. The audience watches a dark web livestream on their computer or phone so they can enjoy seeing a real fight to death in high enough quality to make out each speck of splattered blood. It supports the latest high-definition resolution and even VR goggles. But they use some kind of obstruction program that prevents you from recording or screenshotting it. The contestants come from a variety of backgrounds, but I believe they’re all drawn in by the promise of the substantial prize money.”

“You know a lot about this, Frenda,” said Takitsubo. “You’re like a knowledge professor.”

“Heh heh. In the end, keep the praise coming☆”

The pink track suit girl’s off-kilter comment earned a bashful response from Frenda. Meanwhile, Hanano Choubi’s ordinary sensibilities had all the blood draining from her face.

“They claim the fights are to determine the strongest esper when it comes to pure violence rather than the Level system which is entirely based on what most benefits the adult researchers,” said the voice on the phone.

Even in the dark theater, one of Mugino’s eyebrows clearly twitched.

She was a battle freak who loved things like that.

“We wouldn’t care if it was just a bunch of idiots gathering together and killing each other. The problem is the prize money your girl mentioned. The prize is 15 billion yen. Where do you think that comes from? Surely you don’t think livestream ads are quite that lucrative.”

The voice on the phone probably wasn’t expecting a response. She continued without even waiting three seconds.

“Life insurance.”

“…”

The only sound was Hanano’s groan.

“They take out insurance policies worth billions on all of the participants, kill all but one in what they claim is just a sporting event, and then give the payouts to the winner☆”

“Huh? That explains the prize money, but what about the Colosseum’s management? Taking out the insurance policies costs something and managing communications infrastructure you can’t afford to be discovered is a major risk, so aren’t those pieces of shit the ones who would super want the most money?”

“Who’s that? Never mind, I don’t care. The management makes their own money. There’s the ads I mentioned earlier, plus there’s a paid service that lets people gift weapons to their favorite contestant mid-fight.”

“In the end, that’s why a lot of the male contestants dress like hosts and the female ones wear risqué costumes in order to survive. But if they rely on that strategy too heavily, the results are pretty tragic once their fans get tired of them.”

“Right, right,” said the voice on the phone. “Then the management uses their earnings to fund insider trading and illegal loans over social media to make even more money. They of course threaten the losers who get scared and drop out of the fights and set up a breakwater of branch managers and specialized staff in order to construct a safe zone where no consequences will make it back to them even if the entire operation comes to light. Really, it comes down to how convenient cryptocurrency is. All this money is shifting hands, but no one can track any of it. So long story short, the managers aren’t interested in a mere 15 billion. Like that Frenda girl said, the life insurance payouts are only meant as bait for contestants.”

“So what do you want Item to do about it?” Mugino Shizuri did not sound happy. “Nothing as stupid as wanting us to kill them all, I hope.”

“Of course not. This job comes from the insurance company they’re taking advantage of. The insurance business is just like horse racing: they go under if the amount they take in from customers isn’t more than the amount paid out to the customers. They’re close to going out of business after paying out so many high-value policies back-to-back.”

“And we’re supposed to shut off the tap?”

“The managing director who hired us says there will be no questions asked regarding our methods. Basically, do whatever you want as a long as it doesn’t cause their company any trouble. So this is a DOA job. Got that?”

In this case, DOA meant “dead on arrival”, not “dead or alive”.

“Hm,” groaned Mugino Shizuri as she considered it.

(The managers aren’t interested in a mere 15 billion. I don’t know if they have it in cash, gold, or crypto, but their vault must contain even more than that.)

“That sounds good to me.”

“To be clear, the Colosseum management recruits powerful esper contestants, so they’ll be armed with enough firepower to deal with complaints from an entire group of those contestants. Which means they’re likely powerful espers from the dark side. Screw this up and you could end up dead.”

“This is sounding better all the time.”

They were done talking.

After the call ended, the entire theater lit up.

It was a clean space without a single stain. It seemed to perfectly represent the shittiness of Academy City.

“So in the end, what are we going to do?”

“First of all, you and you.”

Mugino ignored Frenda’s question and pointed at Kinuhata Saiai and Hanano Choubi.

“We have five people all of a sudden, so we need to figure out what to do with these newcomers.”

Part 5

Item was more than just the girls. Just like the bus and its driver from the night before, there was an entire support organization below them. There was a limit to how many people could receive that level of support. As Mugino saw it, a single organization could only support three or four people at full specs. Any more and the costs would be too high and the support would become imbalanced.

Bullets were more destructive to biological matter when made from a soft metal with a high relative density, but everyone would choose a lead bullet over a gold one. Why was that? Because even the military and police preferred the much cheaper substance if the effect was similar.

So…

“One of you will be a full member, the other will do odd jobs.”

“H-hwut!?”

One girl stumbled over her word with the worst possible timing, earning her glares from the other four. That was of course Hanano Choubi.

And that statement sealed her fate.

“This timid chihuahua can do the odd jobs.”

“Wait, please waiiiiit!!”

Hanano Choubi tearfully begged, but Mugino’s exasperated look was unchanged.

Takitsubo approached from the side and whispered in her ear.

“(Hee hee. I didn’t know you were so nice, Mugino.)”

“Huh?”

“(A Level 0 who can’t fight on her own is a lot more likely to die on the front line. And she doesn’t seem to use tools like Frenda does.)”

Mugino shooed Takitsubo away without even looking her way. Takitsubo herself seemed amused despite the careless treatment.

“Eek! I’ll do anything! Anything! So please don’t throw me out!!”

Hanano Choubi seemed truly desperate, so Frenda shrugged.

“We have another job already, don’t we? In the end, why not use that to see how useful they are?”

“(Honestly, I’m not too interested in Item, so as long as I super have food to eat and a roof over my head, I’m perfectly fine doing odd jobs to support you.)”

“Kinuhata, don’t run away from a challenge,” said Takitsubo.

Unwanted support from an unexpected direction kept Kinuhata Saiai from running away.

The five of them boarded the elevator and rode it down past the ground floor.

Hanano Choubi was muttering to herself in the corner and friend-maker Frenda immediately got to talking to her.

“(Ehhh? Wait, how many dangerous landmines does this Mugino-san person have? You should have warned me! How is a newcomer supposed to know!?)”

“Not my problem. In the end, I had to carefully search out each of those landmines myself. I’m not handing over the product of my sweat and blood that easily.”

“(Please tell me you meant sweat and tears. And there’s something super fundamentally wrong with this team if you have to super search out personal landmines like that.)”

“Mugino.”

“Do those worms think I can’t hear them in this tiny elevator?”

The older girl hung her head while burning with rage.

They finally arrived at a concrete underground parking garage.

Since they were on their way to a vehicle, Mugino Shizuri had to already have a destination in mind. Hanano Choubi tilted her head curiously.

“Um, where are we going to start investigating this Colosseum thing? We don’t know who runs it or what they look like and I thought the fights are held at different locations each time.”

“Right.” Mugino nodded like a small child. “Our client is a life insurance company’s managing director, remember? We’re going to abduct them.”

Time froze.

But only for Hanano Choubi, it seemed. Frenda and Takitsubo didn’t seem at all surprised.

“Yeah. In the end, I figured we’d be doing that.”

“It did seem like they were holding back a lot of information.”

Mugino smiled.

One vehicle’s headlights flashed a few times in the gray parking garage. It was the seemingly rundown studio bus from before. The Level 5 girl waved casually toward it.

“Exactly. A lot of those who hire the dark side are in some kind of trouble they’re hesitant to come clean about, but I’m not about to sit around solving that puzzle using an intermediary in a game of telephone. We know who has the answers, so we’ll cheat and go to them directly. Dark side investigations start with the known factors and work from there.”

“Um, um, um, um!!” Hanano Choubi finally interrupted. The girl with abysmal timing already had tears in her eyes at this point. “I don’t really understand a lot of this, but I thought that important person from the insurance company was the one who hired us. Why are you starting by attacking our ally!?”

“Because it’s faster and easier.”

“But they’re the one paying us! Make the client mad and you won’t get paid even if you finish the job!”

“Who cares about the dark side’s stingy payment? Our target has at least 15 billion and probably a lot more. We can focus on taking all that for ourselves.”

“!!!??? I-isn’t this an important person!? What if that grownup with some kind of scary influence holds a grudge and puts our lives at risk!?”

“You think that’s enough to threaten a Level 5?”

You have to remember.

Just the day before, Item had destroyed the stronghold of quite a few powerful grownups.

“Besides, if this was an important client, the voice on the phone wouldn’t have given away so much of their information. If all we need to do is find the Colosseum and destroy it, we wouldn’t need to know about the insurance company or its general manager.”

“B-but do you even know which insurance company it is?”

Terrified Hanano Choubi kept asking Mugino more questions (which was actually quite reckless).

Fortunately, Queen Mugino was in a good mood, so Hanano Choubi didn’t have to blossom into a bright red flower.

“They’re about to go under, right? Before hiring us, they must have gathered a lot of data to determine the cause of their problem and that would have included some conspicuous searches into the dark side. There’s only going to be one insurance company that’s done that, so we target the general manager of that one.”

The safest option was to say nothing at all.

A member of the dark side could learn this much from a single statement.

Mugino chuckled.

“I know she’d deny it, but the voice on the phone wasn’t even trying to protect this client. Anyway, resolving this incident comes first.”

“…? But isn’t the insurance company the one with the problem?”

“In the end, someone else must want this job done. And since the voice on the phone never mentioned them, that’s the real client she wants to protect.”

Then Takitsubo Rikou spoke up.

She didn’t speak loudly. It was a quiet interruption, but it gathered everyone’s attention.

“Mugino. Even if they’re up to no good, this manager isn’t part of the dark side. We need to be careful of you-know-who.”

“Those are just stories.”

“Academy City’s #6 is known as the Dark Side’s Bane. I don’t think we should underestimate them.”

An icy silence settled in.

The only sound was the silly noise of Hanano Choubi’s nervous fidgeting.

There were stories of a malicious stalker being found dangling upside-down from a streetlight. There were stories of a gunrunning group being wiped out in a single night. There were stories of a small child being rescued unharmed from a kidnapping group.

This person had as many legends as there were stars in the sky, but no one knew their name or what they looked like. They assisted the weak found weeping in a back alley, they provided a means of fighting the villains, and they had saved an unknown number of lives from the inescapable pit of the dark side. That might make them sound like a righteous saint, but for those being targeted, they were like a living disaster.

The #6.

It was said you could judge whether someone was a good or bad person by how they reacted to hearing that name in a dark alley: hope or fear.

Item was of course not a fan.

Mugino Shizuri ranked higher, but in a direct fight with another Level 5, she would not escape unscathed. Although she was an extreme battle freak, so she might not avoid such an obvious risk if she encountered it.

That kind of risk management was a job for Frenda who worked with bombs, which were destructive and always required proper preparation and funding.

“So in the end, we need to set things up, nab them in an instant, and make a quick getaway?”

“I suppose.”

Mugino wasn’t too happy about it, but she did give her agreement. She required a delicate touch. If they had suggested giving up on this job, she would have exploded right away.

In a contrast to Hanano Choubi, Kinuhata Saiai remained calm.

She looked up at tall Mugino and asked a question.

“Super what should I do?”

“You were in the Dark May Project. That means you have a portion of the #1’s thought patterns in your head, right? How much can you do? I’m not interested in theoreticals. What can you actually do?”

Kinuhata Saiai didn’t even need to think about it.

She plainly responded.

“Super well, I can at least kill someone.”

Part 6

Several highways were linked together by the loops of a multilayer junction.

The area directly below it was shielded from satellite surveillance thanks to the many overpasses blocking the sky. It was the perfect spot for attacking a vehicle even if it was being escorted by several military trucks to the front and back.

First, a few beams of light flashed from behind.

The slightest of grazes melted the armor of the rearmost truck, causing it to crash quite spectacularly, so the rest of the convoy sped up. The instant they triggered an infrared laser crossing the road at a height of one meter, an unmanned rocket fired from the side of the road.

“Good, the off-route mine got them!!”

Frenda clenched her fist in victory a short distance away.

With the frontmost truck engulfed in flames, nothing could stop them.

The black luxury car ended up in a multivehicle crash with its bumper caught below the rear of the taller truck in front of it, so its tires squealed in a futile attempt to move froward or back.

As long as the trucks had proper bulletproofing and anti-shock construction, the soldiers inside would be injured but alive. The flames only affected the exterior, but they were still out of the fight now that their doors were bent and burnt too badly to open. The bulletproof trucks were made sturdy, so the soldiers the VIP had paid so much to hire were trapped inside. In Academy City, there was a saying(?): if you need to get rid of a bulletproof car, knock it into the water.

“Don’t let your guard down yet, newcomer.”

“Super yeah, yeah.”

Mugino and Kinuhata left the studio bus that drove up behind the mess. Mugino used Meltdowner to burn the driver’s side door just enough to trap the driver inside. The target car was also bulletproof, so the same conditions applied. Kinuhata jabbed her skinny arm into the rear bulletproof door and tore it away with brute strength.

Dry popping sounds rang out.

Kinuhata Saiai took a spray of gunfire from a T-shaped PDW smaller than a puppy, but she didn’t even flinch. A layer of concentrated air forcibly stopped the small caliber bullets.

“E-e-eeeeek!?”

Kinuhata dragged out a man holding a now-empty gun. Takitsubo carried over a giant caddy bag. If you folded in someone’s limbs and stuffed them inside, it functioned like a straightjacket.

Takitsubo expressionlessly puffed out her cheeks.

“Mugino told you not to let your guard down.”

“I didn’t. Which is why I’m not hurt. So where are we super taking this guy?”

“While it is soundproofed, I don’t want to take him to our usual hideout. I’ll have our support organization find a decent spot for us. Maybe an abandoned factory or hospital.”

He must have decided there was no telling what these girls were going to do to him.

The elderly man, who was looking 50% grosser than normal with all the sweating he was doing, gave a desperate shout.

“K-Kouzaku-kun!!”

“What a pain.”

It sounded a lot like a bedsheet flapping in the wind.

Someone placed a foot atop the destroyed black luxury car’s roof so gently it was like gravity didn’t affect her. The gloomy black-haired girl wore a short-sleeved blouse with the chest left unbuttoned and a miniskirt. That was probably some school’s uniform, so she looked like a high school student, or maybe a middle school student. Well, if not for the silver horns on the sides of her head, the bat wings on her back, and the pointy tail at the back of her hips.

Mugino frowned.

“Metal. …And is it a liquid? Who hired you to hand out tissues in that getup?”

“Ah ha ha. Do you really think this is just a costume? It was originally the product of high-level cushioning research, but it turned out it was too heavy for practical use. But it’s a perfect match for my power☆”

Was the weird emphasis on some words meant to hide her natural speech? Despite her short skirt, the black-haired devil girl called Kouzaku bent forward, allowing her silver tail to rise up like a scorpion.

“Now, greasy old men aren’t my type, but this bad grownup promised to tell me everything he knows about the Windowless Building. I’d at least like some plans of the place before I make my attack, so I’m sorry to say I’m doing some work for him.”

“Hah. What can one loner girl do? In combat, defense is a much harder role than offense. You have to defeat all of us while keeping that guy alive, but you couldn’t pull that off even if your power can grow you 6 cold arms. All you’ll do is give me some speedy target practice, loner metal!!”

“Oh, really?”

Something splatted against the studio bus’s windshield.

It was a lot like a raindrop.

Except it was silver.

Plus, no ordinary raindrops could reach the bus below the overpass.

“Hm? Everyone, look out above,” whispered Takitsubo Rikou when she noticed something.

A silver downpour began.

The “raindrops” were in fact metal arrows a bit longer than a pencil. But these were falling from an altitude of more than 10 thousand meters, so they had enough force to tear through the overpass and pierce through a bulletproof car’s armor.

The spiraling junction’s overpass collapsed into blocks.

Colorful cars crashed down along with it.

With a highway running above, the ordinary vehicles were not spared the devastation when the road suddenly collapsed below them. This destruction violated all the rules and standards of the dark side, which preferred to keep their presence hidden.

The deadly ceiling of silver arrows continued its descent.

“Tch. SAMs!!” shouted Frenda, swinging her arm horizontally.

Immediately, her short skirt flapped in the wind. More than five spear-like objects emerged and rocketed up into the sky. Explosive cylinders far thicker and longer than bottle rockets loudly exploded overhead.

Explosive blasts and steel pieces scattered in every direction, the two barrages collided in midair, and the distribution of the deadly rain was thrown off.

Small holes – safe zones – were forcibly created.

“Eek!?” tearfully shouted Hanano Choubi, clinging to Frenda’s hips and falling onto her butt.

But not even multiple microwave/IR short-range surface-to-air missiles could shoot down tens of thousands of “raindrops”. Frenda felt a chill down her spine.

“Takitsubo!!”

The silver rain collided sharply with the asphalt. An earsplitting metallic screech drowned out Frenda’s shout. Every last metal arrow vibrating at the moment of impact created a noise far louder than a giant chandelier falling to the floor. The hard pavement accepted the arrows like clay, letting them stab deep.

But the pink track suit girl was not shredded along with it.

That was thanks to Kinuhata Saiai.

She lay on top of Takitsubo and blocked the metal downpour with an invisible nitrogen barrier. Deflected arrows lay all around her.

“Takitsubo-san, are you alright? This is super my job here, right?”

“Don’t give up, Hanano. You can still come out on top.”

But she had only managed to protect this one small area. There was nothing she could have done about the collapsed overpass or the cars that had fallen with it. One car was badly crushed and its windshield shattered. Something stuck out from the bottom of its broken door: a family fireworks set sold at just about any department store.

The plastic packaging was stained dark red.

Frenda Seivelun spat out an unusually low voice for her.

“In the end, you won’t get away with killing ordinary people for no reason. If you want to play, find a worthy opponent first.”

“I super agree. And it’s our turn now.”

There was a flash of light brighter than a nearby lightning strike.

After all this, Mugino had left her defense entirely in Frenda’s hands. She hadn’t even glance toward the falling “rain” as she held her hand straight out. All so she could vaporize her target with Meltdowner.

“Whew. Giving up on defense for an all-out offensive? How exciting☆”

With the sound of flapping wings, the gloomy girl worked her metal bat wings and hopped down from the black bulletproof car’s roof. She placed her feet on the pavement she had just obliterated.

The wind finally carried over a rusty scent.

While Item’s bus had been bulletproof, it had still been torn to pieces. The metal arrows had pierced through the roof and even the chassis to reach the asphalt below. The windshield had turned white from all the cracks. No, there was red there too. The delinquent driver was probably dead.

The same had to be true of the enemy.

That devil girl had protected her client, the general manager, but no one needed to see what had happened to the bodyguards trapped in their vehicles. There had to be a mixture of blood and gasoline pooling up on the road below those vehicles.

Mugino clicked her tongue.

That girl was completely indiscriminate. Academy City’s shitty side was leaking out into the sunny side.

“Don’t just kill everyone. Safely cleaning up those corpses isn’t cheap, you know? You did it, so I hope you’ll be footing the bill for the cleanup. And if the #6 learns of this, you deal with that supposed Dark Side’s Bane on your own.”

“You’re so nice to get angry for the people who died, Mugino.”

Takitsubo was as expressionless as ever as Kinuhata helped her up. Maybe your sensibilities had to be that abnormal if you were going to get along with a violent Level 5.

And Kouzaku didn’t bother waiting around.

The tens of thousands of metal arrows piercing the pavement began to lose their shape. They gathered together and silver dolls rose up. There had to be at least 50 life-size dolls who looked a lot like Kouzaku herself.

“Ah, the dolls really are the easiest to control.”

The devil laughed as she raised her hands, gathered air in her wings, and wiggled her tail alluringly.

“As you can see, I’ve got plenty of teammates too.”

She used metal in liquid form. That should have been enough of a clue right there. It was absurd to think that skinny black-haired girl could carry around hundreds of kilograms or even several tons of a metal with a greater relative density than water. And if she could freely alter its shape, there was a simple solution there.

Not so much a mist as a cloud.

By filling it with plenty of air and parking up at high altitude, she could have it condense and pour down like rain when she needed it. If the surprise aerial bombing didn’t do the trick, she would then have an army of soldiers down on the ground.

“So what was it you were saying about having greater numbers?”

“…”

“Like you said, I need to defeat all of you while keeping this guy alive. This should be enough for that, don’t you think? Looks to me like you’re the ones on the defensive now.”

Along with her casual comment, the countless silver dolls rushed toward Item from all sides.

Part 7

Since she was outnumbered more than 10-to-1, Mugino Shizuri must have decided a lengthy battle would be a bad idea.

She suddenly produced a sharp flash of light and an explosive boom.

But that must have been a diversion. Someone made a move in the brief moment Kouzaku Mitori’s eyes and ears were overloaded. The silver dolls controlled by her Liquid Shadow could not think for themselves. She was essentially remote-controlling them with her power, so they would stand still if her thoughts ground to a halt.

Someone slipped between the many silver dolls and arrived right in front of the small girl.

“!!”

Kinuhata Saiai aimed for the center of Kouzaku Mitori’s chest with her fingers strengthened in some way. This attack was destructive enough to singlehandedly tear off a bulletproof luxury car’s door.

For a brief moment, the lovely girl’s eyes were muddied by red killer intent.

This meant her power was being boosted by thought processes taken from Academy City’s #1.

“How bout I super tear away half your body weight with just the one hand!?”

The impact made a high-pitched sound.

That meant it wasn’t a clean hit. Kouzaku Mitori had raised a pair of thick knives to catch Kinuhata Saiai’s palm.

Kouzaku Mitori laughed with her blades locked with the other girl’s fingers.

The immense pressure was bending the knives, but they were meant to be disposable anyway.

“Did you think my Liquid Shadow power was the only card in my deck?”

“You sack of shit!!”

“Also, that 5-star super rare boost probably won’t do much good against me.”

Meanwhile, Kouzaku’s eyes were pitch black.

Her voice dropped another level while staring out with her deep, stagnant eyes.

“It’s based on those ranks the shady higher ups of this city decided on for themselves. Seeing people innocently believe in and use that hierarchy to decide how many rights people get makes me want to vomit.”

Her silver tail tore through the air. But instead of Kinuhata herself, it was aimed at the ground below her. No matter how thick Kinuhata’s nitrogen armor was, she would still fall if the road below her crumbled.

The tables quickly turned.

Kinuhata noted the vibration of the thick knives Kouzaku was placing her full body weight behind to hold back Kinuhata’s hand.

“A frequency edge? Does making a T-shaped razor super vibrate like some kinda toy really accomplish much?”

“Hee hee. Oh, this toy might be a little too exciting for you.”

That was when three or four spheres smaller than baseballs were thrown in from the side.

They were grenades sans pin.

“In the end, I’m trusting your power is thick enough, newbie!!”

Kouzaku didn’t even glance over as she used her silver tail to throw an equal number of knives. As soon as the knives stabbed into the grenades, causing them to hover for a moment, the timed fuses activated. The explosives detonated one after another from quite close by.

“Tch!! Didn’t get a critical…hit…!?”

Frenda’s words trailed off.

Something tore apart the dust cloud and flew her way. They were the very same throwing knives that had stopped the grenades – and so should have lost all speed and momentum. They didn’t even fly along straight lines. They followed blatantly unnatural curved paths before stabbing into Frenda’s arm and side.

Kouzaku whispered bewitchingly while using the knives in her hands to pin Kinuhata on her back.

These thick blades were not an esper power.

“They’re called drone knives.”

“Kah! In the end, how many tricks do you have up your sleeve!?”

Frenda cursed but focused on evasive action over stopping and removing the knives, proving she really was an experienced dark side member. The next pair of knives that flew in only managed to hit her shadow.

But that was fine.

The knives came to a stop only 3mm away from the ground and changed direction. With a sound like a firework going off, triple flames erupted from the base of the knives in a Y-shape, creating something like a guard for the blade. The blades spun around and blasted the rocket-like flames from their pommel to pursue their target anew. They had already been introduced as “drone knives”.

And if the drone knives could fly on their own…

“Gut her☆”

“Tch!!”

Something exploded.

Kouzaku Mitori was secretly impressed. With no time to stop and remove the blades, Frenda had applied a small quantity of explosive to the knives and detonated it to forcibly propel them out of her. If she hadn’t done that, the drone knives would have spun around while still stabbing into her body, but it still wasn’t something most people could decide to do on such short notice.

One after another, rockets blasted through the air. The girl was skillfully and admirably focused on killing. But Kouzaku detonated an explosive of her own she had earlier kicked underneath a black bulletproof car. That rolled the heavy vehicle over as a giant shield to block all of the rockets.

(And if worse came to worst, I could use these movable wings as a shield☆)

Kouzaku’s power was only specialized to create and control those dolls under special conditions. But by using her own body as the base of her calculations, she could create the metal wings and tail as an extension of altering the details of the dolls.

(Of course, if I screw up my control, I could end up tearing away large pieces of my body with my own metal.)

The blonde girl was reliant on projectiles and it didn’t look like she could get back up and rejoin the fight right away.

Kouzaku was up against multiple opponents. There were still more people she wanted to stop while she had the chance. She could take her time and kill them all after she had them all down.

“Now, then.”

“!?”

Kinuhata Saiai was still just barely pushing back against the knives while fallen onto her back, but she was suddenly knocked to the side. A silver doll had kicked her in the side like she was a soccer ball.

“They have a relative density of about 20. The human body’s would be 1, just like water, so even these very sexy dolls weigh around a ton.”

“Bfh. Doesn’t that make the original weigh 50kg or so? That’s super heav-”

“I said ‘around’, you scrawny chicken carcass!”

That was about as heavyweight as you could get. It was like getting hit by a giant offroad vehicle. Kinuhata’s Offense Armor could stop a shotgun blast, but this had to be testing even its limits.

“Now for the next one.”

Several metallic crashes and clangs rang out.

Kouzaku had sent drone knives after a target other than Frenda, but they never hit Takitsubo Rikou. Kinuhata Saiai had blocked them with her body by forcing her way in their path on her unsteady legs.

…That kind of phony friendship pissed Kouzaku off.

These people were soaked in the dark side. They had killed and taken so much, but they had the nerve to declare themselves the single exception and take good care of their own family and friends?

Yes. That was how it worked, wasn’t it?

The grownup researchers who had taken away Kouzaku’s precious ■■■■■ would have gone home to their own partners and children at the end of the day. They knew what it meant to care for someone more than your own life, but they had no problem taking those kinds of people from others.

To them, clones and espers were no more than guinea pigs.

Kouzaku Mitori could not let them get away with it any longer.

She had become yet another drop in the sludge of the dark side she so loathed because it was the only way she could rebel. She was willing to kill if it would help her take down the ruler of this city.

“Hm. I had a feeling the drone knives wouldn’t work against that air armor.”

“Super technically, it’s nitrogen.”

“I really don’t care. And since you bothered to protect her, I take it that useless one in the track suit is your leader? That tells me my best bet is to focus my attacks on her.”

She probably couldn’t defeat Kinuhata, but she could immobilize her by siccing the liquid metal dolls on her, releasing their shape, and trapping her inside a block of the metal.

Once that was done, Kouzaku could capture the track suit girl and either kill her right away or use her as a shield.

Kouzaku stepped over a bloody corpse and swung her silver tail.

“The legs? No, I want her to stand on her own, so that won’t work. Okay, Miss Leader, I believe this is checkmate. I’ll start by taking your arms.”

“You will, will you? I’m so sad you’ve completely forgotten about me.”

There was a sizzling sound, immediately followed by a beam of light. A few more followed. That was enough to tear through the entire group of Liquid Shadow dolls. It didn’t matter that there were 50 of them.

Mugino Shizuri and her Meltdowner were one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s.

But that was irrelevant. Shoot them or blow them up, those dolls could regenerate. Or each of the scattered droplets could transform into a sharp needle that rushed toward Mugino.

Yet they didn’t regenerate.

Kouzaku tried to control the blasted silver droplets, but for some reason, her power couldn’t reach them.

It all splattered across the ground.

“Wha-!?”

“You don’t use just water or metal. You went out of your way to control something as unusual as liquid metal, which tells me your power can only control a very limited range of things. You said this was the product of high-level cushioning research, but it never caught on because a relative density of 20 was too heavy, right? I’m betting you can only control a specific metal molecule created in a factory somewhere.”

Mugino Shizuri gathered light in her palm and held it straight out.

She was ready to fire at any moment.

“Then all I have to do is provide a generous injection of electrons to change its molecular structure. Ion manipulation isn’t all that difficult. Mixing in various impurities on the microscopic level will make your special metal a lot lighter. It’s like dropping your melty candy in the sandbox. With all that gross sand coating it, you can’t eat the treat your mommy gave you.”

“That’s not possible…”

“This is Academy City. Don’t stop thinking so soon. My power is known as the atom breaker, for crying out loud.”

She made it sound so obvious.

She wasn’t even trying to brag. She was just pissed that she was being asked to give a detailed explanation of why 1 plus 1 is 2.

“S-so what?”

Kouzaku Mitori spread her arms wide.

Her metal wings did the same.

Her silver tail rose and she shouted with a bloody corpse lying at her feet.

“I still have plenty more weapons waiting for me at 10 thousand meters. I have a grand total of 1000 tons! If I send it all down and make dolls from it, we’ll have a real war on our hands!!”

A scratchy groan came from Frenda who was collapsed bloody on the ground. That had to be more than 100 large dump trucks’ worth. A girl weighed around 50kg with a relative density of 1 and that metal had a relative density of 20. That meant the total amount could create 1000 dolls.

“Quadruple digits? What the hell? In the end, how many secret weapons do you have!?”

“Not even an army of thousands is enough if I really want to bring down that goddamn Windowless Building.”

A deep, muddy darkness could be seen in Kouzaku Mitori’s eyes.

“But they have other uses. High-Level espers always have to play alone, so I’ll show you what a real war is like. I can defeat anyone if I crush them with superior numbers!!”

“Oh, really?” Mugino Shizuri grinned. “There’s more to Item than me. We’re a team and we work together.”

That was when something stabbed Kouzaku Mitori in the flank.

The corpse at her feet had stood up.

No, Hanano Choubi had been lying face down covered in blood, but she had grabbed one of the fallen drone knives and tackled Kouzaku.

From close range and with no mercy.

She supposedly specialized in disguise and infiltration. The voice on the phone had called her “a real prize”, so her skill had to be real. When she decided to attack, Kouzaku didn’t have time to react with arm, leg, wing, or tail.

“Gah?”

“I’m not the only one sad I’d been completely forgotten,” said Mugino Shizuri with a savage smile.

She did not overlook the moment her opponent was immobilized.

“And we fight as a team!!”

She sent out another Meltdowner blast from dead ahead.

Time seemed to resume flowing all at once.

Something exploded.

The scattered silver droplets became silver arrows and tore through the dust cloud as they flew horizontally toward Mugino.

“Tch!!”

Mugino evaded to the side and fired more Meltdowner blasts, but to no avail.

The inability to focus on offense hurt her a fair bit.

“Wah, yikes, eek!! I’m here too! Please don’t shoot meeeee!?”

Hanano covered her head with her hands and curled up like a small animal, but that was all Mugino could see. The gloomy black-haired devil girl was nowhere to be found beyond the shredded dust cloud.

She had probably sacrificed her wings or tail to create that scattershot so she could escape.

“God, so she detonated her own stuff? She’s really thought her power through.”

Kouzaku had shown a familiarity with using her power to attack and to withdraw. When fighting alone, you had to deal with all your mistakes yourself, so securing an escape route was more important than gambling on a method of defeating the enemy.

The dolls spread across the area lost their shape and splashed down into silver puddles. Kouzaku must have severed her power’s control. That meant the battle was over.

Mugino roughly mussed up her hair with a hand.

“With that done…Hanano!!”

“Y-yesh!? Wha-what do you want!? D-did I do something that upset you and all your terrifying power!?”

“Upset me? That was a well-played attack. You got her good.”

The nervous girl stared blankly for a moment.

But her face finally seemed to melt.

“Heh…heh heh☆”

“Mugino.”

Takitsubo Rikou approached Mugino.

She shook a small case.

“Should I use Body Crystal?”

“Hmm.”

Mugino crossed her arms and looked up.

That girl had claimed to have had 1000 tons waiting at 10 thousand meters. Those were absurd numbers, but a military bomber was more than 200 tons when empty, which meant it wasn’t that much different from a formation of bombers flying on a mission. Assuming that wasn’t just a bluff, that girl could have covered every centimeter of the area with a downpour of metal arrows, but some time had passed and there was no sign of it. She must have truly run away.

She had wanted some information from a “bad grownup” so she could attack the Windowless Building.

Assuming that was true, it didn’t necessarily have to be the insurance company’s general manager. If things weren’t looking good, she could stage a hasty retreat and make use of another immoral VIP who had the information she needed.

After some thought, Mugino made her decision.

“No need. We wouldn’t make any money pursuing her.”

“(In the end, there would’ve been no stopping Mugino if she got mad. I’m so glad that bloodthirsty and immature old hag managed to keep her cool this time.)”

“Frenda, if you have something to say, you’ll need to speak up. But anyway, we need to deal with that general manager.”

“E-eek!?”

All alone now, the old man had fallen on his rear.

When one person had the fortune of escaping, someone else would be stuck with an equal amount of misfortune.

Unfortunately, that was how the dark side worked.

Part 8

Item’s usual luxury limo disguised as a used studio bus had been destroyed, but they had other options.

After calling a tow truck and street cleaner (both belonging to their support organization) and having the destroyed cars and bloodstains dealt with, Item boarded a boxy minivan with a delinquent feel to it. In Mugino’s opinion the rear spoiler on the boxy vehicle gave it the perfect cheap look she wanted in a disguise. Aerodynamically, it actually increased drag, so it was more a hindrance than anything. No one on the planet would pay any attention to someone stupid enough to do that. Although if that was the driver’s legitimate tastes, she would lecture them and immediately scrap the van.

“Hanano! What are you doing!? Hurry up!!”

“Oh, yes! Coming!!”

The new girl scrambled into the back seat. Mugino looked back curiously to see what the girl had been doing, but she had apparently picked a small flower from somewhere and laid it out as an offering. She may have been holding a moment of silent for the ordinary people killed by the downpour of metal arrows. In this shitty city of science, it didn’t matter what offerings you placed on the roadside. Especially when any trace of Item’s presence here would be erased by their support organization.

After loading the van with the stuffed caddy bag that squirmed like a caterpillar, they drove to a familiar abandoned factory in disorderly District 10. Mugino took a toolbox from their underlings, laid out a tarp on the dusty floor, unzipped the caddy bag, and dragged out their target.

The old man, who had gained a +80% boost to his greasiness, immediately shouted up at her. But he must have been too terrified to move because he made no attempt to escape despite not being handcuffed or tied up.

“Wh-who are you people!? What did I do to deserve this!?”

Kinuhata kicked aside the unneeded caddy bag and approached.

“Is he the super client? We only knew the name of the insurance company and the job title of general manager.”

“He doesn’t have to be the client. As long as he has the same privileges at the same company.”

Mugino Shizuri didn’t seem particularly interested as she applied some hand cream to the back of her hand. She must have scraped the surface of a nail on the latch of the toolbox, so she pulled out a small bottle of nail polish with far more interest than she showed for the fate of the human in front of her.

“But if he is a normal person with no role in any of this, why did he have that gun? And an ordinary person wouldn’t hire a dark side esper as a bodyguard.”

Client, insurance company, general manager. The scraps of information he overheard were enough for the man to figure out what was going on.

His attitude immediately changed.

“Oh, are you those Item thugs the voice on the phone mentioned? I-in that case, I am your client! Have you dealt with the Colosseum yet!? Don’t think you can get away with this. I will tell the voice on the phone what you’ve done! This is going to cost you!!”

“Sigh. I really don’t like having to torture people.”

That comment shut the frantic old man up.

While applying another coat of nail polish, Mugino kicked the toolbox with the toe of her shoe just hard enough to produce a solid metallic clunk.

The violent sound echoed on and on in the silent abandoned factory.

“I always take things too far and they die on me. I don’t have any corpses to show you, but you can still see their scorched outlines on the walls. Like there. Or over there.”

“…!?”

“Unfortunately, those accidents have really driven down the value of the place. But you don’t have to worry about us.”

Mugino blew on her nail.

When she moved the shining finger to point at various spots on the walls, the greasy old man began to tremble.

“So tell us everything you know about the Colosseum. I’m sure you have tons of secrets you didn’t tell the voice on the phone. Come clean and I won’t have to worry about the blood and gore splattering past the tarp. Not that I’d be cleaning it up. That’s a job for our support organization.”

“Mugino,” Takitsubo quietly interrupted.

“Hm? Yeah, I know. If I do it, he’d die before we got anything out of him.”

“So in the end, I have to do it?”

Frenda tilted her head while burning open a mackerel can as a treat for herself.

“Want me to do the usual? The one where I shove a nonlethal amount of explosives up his nose and blow open his face just enough that he survives no matter how much he wishes he were dead?”

“No.”

Even Frenda’s seemingly superhuman suggestion was rejected.

Mugino continued as casually as if they were discussing stopping for some sweets afterschool.

“You and you.”

Her brightly polish finger pointed at Kinuhata Saiai and Hanano Choubi.

“Whichever one we end up choosing, you need to get to know your job. Choose whichever tool you like from the toolbox and give this old man a nonlethal beating. Just tenderizer him a bit, because we need him alive to tell us what we want.”

“Wait, wait, wait, please waiiiiiiit!!”

It was Hanano Choubi, not the man, who shouted in protest. She shook her pale face side to side.

“S-stabbing a villain in self-defense is one thing, but this is something else entirely. T-t-torture? You want us to use these hammers and saws on an unresisting old man who looks old enough to be a school principal!? I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!! I could never do that!!”

“Hmm.”

Despite the blunt refusal, Mugino didn’t seem particularly offended and held her palm out.

Meltdowner pierced right through the thick concrete wall.

“But if you don’t I’ll kill him for sure.”

“…”

“So if you want to give him any chance at all of surviving, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

In a small world cut off from the outside world, people’s values were easily replaced.

Especially in a place on the border of death.

Mugino blew on her nail again before continuing.

“How many times do I have to tell you to keep him alive? Maybe using violence to take a life is too difficult for you, but what about using violence to save a life? Even Anti-Skill and Judgment do that when they come running to protect the peace of Academy City.”

Kinuhata Saiai and Hanano Choubi exchanged a glance.

Silence.

Eventually, some metallic clattering sounds echoed through the abandoned factory.

The only one who didn’t keep their silence was the insurance company man.

Timid Hanano seemed especially shocked by her own change of heart. She was supposed to be the representative of benevolence here. For her, it may have felt like having your elevator suddenly and silently stop. The deadly height had always been there, so the greater fear came from the usually unnoticed safety features that had suddenly stopped working.

The old man, whose confidence had clung to him like fat, was now trying to cajole the girls.

“W-wait, what you two doing!? What is that? A-a file? A screwdriver!? What could you possibly plan to do with that? Hey, are you listening!?”

Mugino Shizuri and Frenda Seivelun were accustomed to using violence themselves.

Not even Takitsubo Rikou made any move to stop them.

This was the dark side.

Logic was twisted and reconnected like a Möbius strip to reach obviously distorted conclusions.

“But if we don’t do this, you’ll super die.”

“This is allll for your own good.”

Even a virtuous person could become a killer under the right circumstances and without the luxury of choice.

It happened so easily as long as the obvious violence had a virtuous reason attached.

This was how people lost all restraint.

Between the Lines 2

Accessing digital recorder.

Performing sound quality diagnosis and automatic text conversion on New Recording File 0001.

…Pant, pant.

Y-you know how it works, right? The Colosseum uses high-value life insurance policies for its prize money. The payouts for everyone but the winner are combined for the prize. But that shouldn’t be possible.

Stop, I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything, I swear! Gblahh, please not the below the eyelid!!

Unnatural contracts and payouts should trigger an automatic alert in the central server! So someone would notice. It’s impossible to withdraw 15 billion yen in such a short time!!

Th-then how does the Colosseum actually work, you ask?

Well, that’s why I hired you.

I was threatened! By the people behind it!! So I connected to the central server from inside the company and altered the settings for the auto alerts!!!

Pant, pant. Urp. Do you understand now?

I’m not lying. Ksh.

This case involves my own wrongdoing, so I couldn’t contact Anti-Skill like normal. I had no other choice. I needed to end this in the darkness, without any of it coming to light.

That’s why I couldn’t tell you everything when I hired you. I didn’t want you coming back later to blackmail me using what I’d done. I wanted to protect my family. They don’t know about any of this.

Who runs the Colosseum?

Well – ksh.

They called – ksh – emselv – ksshh – I – ksh – te – kssshh…

(Warning!) The microphone is too close. The recording target’s breaths, rustling clothing, and other sounds are too loud. However, modifying the recording file could affect its validity as evidence. Create new copy and use a noise reduction program? (y/n)

Chapter 2: >>Colosseum.

Part 1

July 7, 9 AM

“Hooray for laziness…”

“Mugino.”

Mugino Shizuri was still lying in her large bed well after students and workers alike had gotten going. And for some reason, Takitsubo was in bed with her.

The negligee girl sleepily rubbed her eye.

“Why are you in here?”

“There weren’t enough beds.”

Takitsubo’s blank expression was as unchanged as her outfit. She wore her track suit at home, when going out, and even when sleeping.

“With two extra members all of a sudden, the room allotments are a mess. And right when we can’t access our money. You said we wouldn’t be able to buy new furniture for a while, remember?”

“…”

Maybe she had said that.

That didn’t seem like reason enough to climb into bed with her, but this could be solved by making beds for the two newcomers from a sofa or yoga mat or something.

“And didn’t you say you were going for an early morning jog before it got too hot? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this is the third time I’ve woken you. The sun is already pretty high in the sky.”

Sure enough, she heard a clattering noise from the various small items Takitsubo had in her pink track jacket’s pocket. Rolling over like that had to hurt, making it hard to sleep.

“Ugh, but I’m still tired. Besides, it’s already too late to jog today. It’s not the end of the world, so I can start jogging tomorrow.”

“Last night, you said to make you get up even if I had to spank you. Here, I recorded you saying it on this voice recorder. So what will it be? Do I have to spank you?”

“Curse my past self for being so thorough.”

The negligee girl made a highly unscientific complaint and crawled out of bed. She opened the bedroom door and entered the large living room just in time to see something green swaying in front of her.

They were in an apartment, but Frenda Seivelun was crossing the living room carrying a giant bamboo over her shoulder. But not because she had a new pet panda.

“Tanabata, it’s Tanabata☆”

The apartment’s decorative plants, tropical fish tank, and such were managed by a rental company and were replaced quite frequently, but Frenda had still stuck the bottom of some bamboo into a giant pot of moth orchids.

And some red, blue, and green decorations were attached among the bamboo leaves.

This wasn’t a school or shopping district, so it seemed unlikely individuals had attached all of those tanzaku. Frenda was apparently confusing the Tanabata bamboo with a Christmas tree.

There were far fewer tanzaku than other decorations and one of them said the following:

Don’t let anyone on Item get hurt.

Oh, and I want money, status, fame, time off, popularity, and friends!! As much as I can get!!!

-Frenda Seivelun

Mugino held a hand to her drowsy head and sighed.

“What are you doing? This is supposed to be a city of science.”

“Mugino, what do you do with that afterwards? I doubt you can put it out with the normal trash.”

Why would she know the rules of some silly superstition?

After taking a shower, Mugino changed into a tank top and long bike shorts to exercise in. Her sneakers were an expensive shock-absorbing model. Then she grabbed her music player…no, today she went for her folding handheld 3D game console. Frenda had said it worked too. The movement of jogging seemed like it would dislodge wireless earphones, so she decided the wired type was safer. She wasn’t picky about sound quality, but she had gotten the kind with pure gold wires anyway.

Takitsubo was the indoorsy type despite wearing a track suit year round, so she had no intention of joining Mugino. She was staring at the canine pet robots bumping into each other and having a turf war. Frenda was…what was she doing? She was at the table with a notebook open and looked delighted. It may have been the finance book (for managing their evil team). And yet she was the one wasting money on decorations like that bamboo.

Mugino ended up riding the elevator down to ground level on her own.

The lower floors contained a shopping mall full of luxury brand shops. As soon as she walked out of the automatic door and lost the blessing of the air conditioning, an invisible wave of heat radiating from the pavement hit her right in the face.

“This summer heat really makes me hate my own legs. Yet another thing I can blame on eating bread. Really, the wheat culture is to blame. The Japanese digestive system wasn’t made for Western food.”

The Fifteen Bells complex was something like a small amusement park, so jogging the perimeter made for a decent distance. Mugino decided to expand the area she covered in something like a spiral after one lap.

She put her earphones in.

One she got started, jogging was easy enough.

Mugino was an expert at being lazy, but she had more than enough stamina.

And as she jogged, it became very clear that today was July 7, Tanabata. Event advertisement flags were set up like streetlights on either side of the major street and the weather forecast provided by the large screen on the belly of a blimp also had a predicted arrival time for some meteor shower or another.

Four or five high school girls were sticking quite close together on the sidewalk. But rather than some girl-on-girl flirting, one of them appeared to have a cooling power. Mugino was jealous. That girl had to be like a seaside restaurant – popular in the summer but forgotten in the winter.

As Mugino passed them, the earphones attached to the folding game console did not play a fitness rhythm or the voice of an automatic advice mode.

It played some data recorded as videos.

“The Colosseum? We’ve been pursuing it too, but no luck so far. Several times now, one of our people goes missing and turns up a few days later as a pummeled corpse. These are people who can’t return to their dorm and have nowhere left to turn. How do you get such a valuable insurance policy on someone like that? My name is Komaba Ritoku. Contact me if you learn anything. I’ll buy any data you have with cash. I want to settle the score myself if possible.”

“Sorry, young lady. I appreciate the Musashino Milk, but I really don’t know anything about the Colosseum. For better or for worse, I’m keeping my hands off that one. I’ve told my entire team to do the same, so I couldn’t tell you what’s going on there now. What’s that? You thought Big Spider was led by a guy called Kurozuma? …It’s probably best if you go on believing that.”

“I can’t concentrate on this while running. …Mostly because it’s too damn hot.”

The fundamental problem was Mugino oversleeping.

She knew nothing was going to come of this, but she still replayed the footage several times, focusing on the people’s breathing and word choices to try and see if they were lying.

(Their quality is about as low as it gets, but they do have numbers. And because they’re weak, they know how to take advantage of their location. That means they’ll be monitoring every last nook and cranny of the back alleys. So if those Skill Out teams haven’t seen anything, where could the Colosseum be holding their deadly matches? And if it’s true they use a different location each time, do they follow some kind of pattern?)

They had hit a decent obstacle even for Mugino.

For one thing, this kind of investigation and pursuit wasn’t supposed to be Item’s job. They preferred jobs where they were given their target’s location on a map.

Mugino turned a corner while glancing over at a luxury department store bag abandoned in the gap between two shrubs growing on the side of the road.

Then someone caught up to her from behind. No, the person came up alongside her.

“Super good morning.”

It was Kinuhata Saiai.

The external voice triggered the earphones’ accident prevention feature, automatically lowering the volume.

Kinuhata was not out of breath as she ran. Mugino wanted to stay in the shade of the roadside trees or pass through the cool mist shower to fight the summer heat, but Kinuhata stole that position.

Kinuhata had already jogged several laps more than Mugino and she looked like she could keep going just fine. Mugino and Frenda were decent fighters, but in a pure fistfight, this small girl had to be even better. But that didn’t really matter. The dark side was especially irritating because you needed more than that.

Mugino removed one of her earphones without slowing her pace.

“What, are you taking an early morning jog too?”

“Early?” Kinuhata checked how high the sun was in the sky and released an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been watching movies at the theater at the bottom of our building. Seven in a row. I started yesterday, so I’m super stiff and thought I should loosen up before getting some sleep.”

“Movies, huh? Don’t we have a home theater system in our room?”

“It’s super nice, I’ll admit, but it’s just not the same as a real movie theater. Also, I thought that theater was the fashionable kind that panders to couples, but whoever selects its lineup knows what they’re doing. Especially late at night when it plays lots of super minor B and C movies that you can’t even find on streaming sites. After you freed me, I took a look around, but you super don’t see many theaters showing South American zombie horror flicks. Yeah, a big jungle chainsaw and tequila Molotov cocktails are super perfect for a tropical city where civilization has collapsed after a widescale blackout!!”

“Why do you like movies so much?”

“There wasn’t much in the way of entertainment when I was confined in that lab. I think they were super scared we’d kill someone if we had any toys. All they did was gather the subjects in a white room and super project the movie on a screen meant for presentations, but it stuck with me. …Of course, super who knows what kind of subliminal messages and ultra-low frequency sounds they were including in those.”

That explained it.

Those people imprisoned children, tested risky drugs on them, and gave them brainwashing movies as their only form of entertainment. The fact that she wasn’t disturbed by this proved to Mugino that she really was part of the dark side. Her only real thought was “sounds about right”. In dark side terms, she gave it 50 points. So exactly average.

Even the dangerous people who caused enough trouble to get expelled from school wanted nothing to do with the dark side. You couldn’t let every little thing surprise you.

“Wait? So when we went down to receive data on this job…?”

“Yes. As you’ve super guessed already, that was my first time in a real movie theater, something I’d always wanted to see. It was super weird doing it to see the data we would need to kill some super idiot, though.”

“Sorry about that.”

Kinuhata sounded blue, but Mugino’s response had no real emotion behind it.

Was that experience like fulfilling your lifelong dream of visiting Italy and being served awful pasta on the plane trip there?

“And did you find a new part-time job too?”

Kinuhata fell silent.

Mugino fanned her face with a hand while focusing on the rhythm of her jogging.

“It’s not an accusation. You’re allowed to have a side job. I believe Frenda heads out on forensics jobs sometimes.”

“Forensics? Oh, she’s a super expert with bombs, isn’t she?”

“It’s less about the explosives and more about the chemistry knowledge. Of course, she isn’t helping investigations trying to hunt down the bad guy. It’s more like she helps people know who to take revenge on for killing their buddy.”

Their conversation continued as they jogged.

“But if you are going to make drop-offs, you can’t leave the bag in such an obvious location. You’ll get complaints if the goods don’t reach their destination because someone else found it and took it away. By which I mean the client will send someone after you to reclaim their payment.”

“I think this client super wanted it to be found. They want to update the outdated criminal infrastructure. So they super want an accident with some convincing item.”

“I see.”

The dark side had its own etiquette.

They were all criminals who broke national laws and city regulations, but they could be picky about such things.

“Super more importantly, what about Hanano Choubi-san?”

“Her investigation should be done soon.”

Part 2

District 7.

A large outdoor space was lined with what looked like long shipping containers, but they were actually model rooms for a variety of different styles of studio apartment. But these were meant for landlords and building managers, not for residents. The rooms were created with hive construction. The rooms themselves were made whole in a single factory using a special industrial 3D printer. A jungle-gym-like framework of beams was created first and then the boxy rooms could be inserted like drawers to create an entire apartment building. If the suicide or murder of a resident threatened to lower the value, the entire room could be removed and swapped out for a new one, so hive construction was gathering a lot of attention in Academy City for the possibility of removing some of the risk from real estate.

However.

There was one sample room where it wasn’t clear which construction company had the key to its lock.

“I’m baaack.”

After inserting two keys and opening the front door, Hanano Choubi found a few chairs, a wall-sized mirror, lighting equipment, an industrial dryer, and more. It looked something like a beauty parlor, but some might have recognized it as closer to a TV studio’s dressing room, where a stylist worked. In other words, you could sleep there if you wanted, but it didn’t look lived in.

Also, a mountain of plastic clothing cases was stacked up by the wall.

Wigs, hair extensions, color contacts, false eyelashes, double eyelid gel, mouthpieces, foundation, etc. There was even a selection of implants, artificial bones, silicone artificial breast bags, and other things that should need surgery to make use of.

In the back was a tanning machine like the ones seen at a tanning salon and hyperbaric oxygen capsules used to manipulate blood oxygen to alter the swelling of the skin, but she didn’t need either of those this time.

“Nyan, nyan, nya-nyan, nyahhn.”

Maybe she wanted to be the feline type because Hanano nyan-ed a popular song as she entered the fake sample room and reached for the top of her head. She removed her long hair as simply as she might a hat.

By removing her eyebrows and eyelashes, she revealed her base face. The smooth face reflected in the mirror reminded her of a doll before it was processed.

“Now, then.”

The mirror covered an entire wall, but not all of it was usable. A lot of its surface was covered by notes and photos. Those provided data on her target.

“Age: 52. Sex: Male. Hair: black and a bit greasy. See photo for distribution of gray. Skin: Asian with lots of blue base grease. Eyes: black with a hint of brown. Oh, and the skin is only lightly tanned and with minor dust mite allergy symptoms. Should I adjust the skin to be a bit rougher?”

Hanano’s specialty was disguise and infiltration.

The quality of her disguise was dependent on the amount of data she had on her target. This time, she had spent an entire week gathering that data herself, so she was confident she could give herself the same fingerprints, teeth shape, eyes, blood type, and scent as him. Once she was in disguise, not even the target’s parents or a police dog would notice anything was amiss.

And like in this case, sex and age were no obstacle.

After applying some makeup, she looked into the mirror to see an old man who would look at home in a fancy suit. The process wasn’t complete, so her face had swollen out to the appropriate size, but everything below remained that of a girl.

“Oops.”

Hanano Choubi’s fingers touched a rectangular box on the table, but she quickly pulled her hand back. She may have subconsciously wanted some refreshing menthol since it was summer, but these were flavored cigarettes. This target was a nonsmoker, so the smell of nicotine or tar would stand out. If she had carelessly smoked one, she would have had to start over from the beginning. That had been much too close.

(I can buy some scentless tablets later on.)

“Language: standard Japanese with a hint of an Aichi accent. Dry eyes and symptoms of neck and shoulder stiffness. Places his weight on his right leg when standing and dislikes having people stand on his left side. Holds his chopsticks wrong and mouth breaths when he loses his cool. Also…here we go. His handwriting is, um, angular but sloppy. Wow, I don’t know about his schooling, but his parents must not have raised him right. He doesn’t just confuse ‘to’ and ‘too’, but ‘two’ as well.”

Her voice grew lower and deeper as she spoke.

Her weight and body type had already been transformed.

Throw out your morals and rely on technology and anyone could transform, no supernatural powers necessary.

From head to toe, she had become the broad-shouldered insurance company general manager and spoke with the deep voice to match.

“Sigh. If only I had a friend who would do Magical Powered Kanamin cosplay with me.”

Part 3

It was a simple matter.

“I asked around the sketchy people who know the back alleys, but none of them had any information on the Colosseum. That leaves the insurance company general manager as our only source of hints. We have his story, but it isn’t enough. Hanano, can you disguise yourself as him, infiltrate the company headquarters, and check the central server to see who the pricey payouts were made for and who received them? Hacking in from outside is apparently too difficult.”

They didn’t just threaten the general manger – who had already been treated to torture at the hands of two girls – and have him go because he was covered in bandages. A mummy (old) would stand out too much. And as an outsider, they couldn’t predict when he would get too scared and stop. Send someone like that to the enemy base and they tended to think they had escaped and the plan fell apart. Unfortunately, the cleanup afterwards generally meant brute force via long-range attack.

“This van is so much smaller. And my body is so stiff.”

Mugino complained from the back seat of the boxy minivan.

A three-blade wind turbine was spinning nearby, but they didn’t feel remotely cool. That rotation was from the quality of the bearings, not the strength of the wind.

She missed the larger vehicle. They could still use Item’s resources, but they couldn’t replace anything that was lost. They needed a new source of funding and fast.

“They’re doing fireworks!”

Frenda leaned out the window and stared into the distance.

Was a school out for its anniversary? Or maybe they had the day off because the air conditioner was broken and the school couldn’t keep the kids inside in this summer heat. Regardless, a bunch of small children were out in the blazing heat launching parachute-equipped fireworks in some kind of competition. If advance notice was given that children would be launching fireworks, a drum-shaped security robot with a special firefighting attachment would watch over the event, but Item was too far away to see it.

The other girls in the van were speaking too.

“Frenda-san, it’s super weird that you can detect the scent of explosives from this far away. Or that it excites you so much, for that matter.”

“Heh heh☆”

“Frenda, I don’t think that was a compliment. Kinuhata is disturbed by it,” said Takitsubo.

They were in District 3.

Even for Academy City, the district had a lot of office buildings for famous corporations.

Since the children were playing here, their local park may have been taken over by bullies.

The insurance company headquarters – a giant skyscraper – was also visible from here. Item was keeping enough distance that the company’s security team wouldn’t get suspicious.

“So, Mugino, are you sure the newbie can do this? We’re talking about a company full of old men. In the end, couldn’t I get in a lot easier making full use of my cuteness?”

“That’s worked in the past, but if we have a disguise expert, we might as well use her.”

“In the end, is this when I’m supposed to groan in frustration and complain that my job is being taken from me?”

“Mugino is worried about you, Frenda. She doesn’t like you doing those risky honeytrap missions.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I don’t let them lay a single finger on me when I’m controlling them! In the end, the trick to luring them in is to make sure they just barely can’t see what they want.”

Frenda pouted her lips. What it was she knew was probably something only she could know. And she seemed to be ignoring the Level 0 newcomer and glaring more at the track suit girl who had taken up the position of the wife who knew everything about Mugino.

“Uhh.”

The elderly general manager was starting to get nervous and even whined like a small animal with the deep old man voice. Everyone watching had their brains rattled and had to question their understanding of the world.

She(?) put a small earphone in her right ear.

“Wh-whether this works or not, a lot of people are going to see me. That’s fine as far as I’m concerned, but won’t the real general manager be arrested for misconduct?”

“So what if he is?”

He was an immoral grownup who had refused to call Anti-Skill when he knew people were dying and even defrauded his own company to protect himself. He was a perfect example of Academy City’s shittiness. They hadn’t killed him since he had told them what they wanted to know, but they were under no obligation to protect him either.

“Speaking of him, didn’t he mention having a family?” asked Mugino. “We should probably tell him to get a divorce right away if he cares about his wife and kids. If they only get divorced after he’s arrested, his family might share the legal liability for the damages he owes.”

“If that’s the kindest option you can think of, it says a lot about the dark side,” complained Hanano.

Mugino gave an irritated look to the overly cheerful summer sunshine.

“It’s 11 AM. The perfect time for an executive to show up at the office.”

A real executive would arrive in a chauffeured black luxury car, but Item had destroyed that car last week. Unproductive VIPs needed to use their car as a status symbol to feel pride in something, so it wouldn’t be out of place for him to take the train or walk when a replacement hadn’t arrived yet.

The summery scent of mosquito-repelling incense wafted over.

The incense itself and the ceramic pig it came from were both made by Frenda, so it was extremely effective.

“Hanano, you’ll be masquerading as the general manager to get inside the building. You’ll just walk right on past the receptionist out front. What then?”

“I use his executive key card on the reader in front of the elevator that leads to the upper floors and take that straight to the central server room which is normally off limits. That means I need to be the only one to board the elevator on the first floor.”

“Good. Leave the security cameras to us.”

Mugino took out a computer smaller than a makeup bag and shoved it into Hanano Choubi’s hands.

“Physically connect this to the central server and the program inside will extract all the necessary data automatically. You don’t need to do anything more than that, but don’t let the receptionist notice you’re hiding this.”

“Of course not. Who do you think I am?”

Hanano Choubi had the old man’s voice and attitude down perfectly. Mugino saw her off and then returned to the van.

The van was full of small monitors. They displayed grainy footage from a variety of angles. Needless to say, that footage came from the insurance company’s security cameras.

“In the end, how did we hack into this?”

“We couldn’t reach the central server located inside the building, but the security camera footage is gathered together and sent out to the security company along a single thick line. The insurance company doesn’t have a security room of its own, you see. So we messed with that. Now we can monitor all this footage without anyone noticing and without leaving a trace. Of course, that was all done by the support organization in their work jumpsuits, so I don’t know the details.”

“Oh, is that Hanano-san super there?”

Kinuhata pointed at one of the monitors.

Sure enough, it showed one of the automatic doors opening and a broad-shouldered old man entering the reception lobby. Like any top-rate corporate building, the first floor was all about showing off, so it was given a tropical look. It was full of green and even had a waterway. The arrogant general manager hadn’t been dropped off by his car like usual, so the receptionist and security team looked a little confused as they greeted him.

Takitsubo tilted her head while staring blankly.

“Have they figured it out?”

“I super don’t know.”

“In the end, he took some time off without permission, but he’s also a general manager who lives in the lap of luxury. They don’t want to ask too many questions and learn he was on a trip with a mistress or something, so will any of the ordinary employees be willing to directly ask him where he was? Damn, the security cameras can’t pick up their voices.”

Disguised Hanano raised a hand in greeting before walking through one of the security gates that resembled the ticket gates at a train station.

A tearful voice reached them through the small microphone hidden on her suit rather than through the security cameras.

That girl was smiling with the utmost confidence, but she was sobbing on the inside.

“(Stop speculating so much! I’m sure it seems fun when you’re just watching, but my life is on the line here. P-please don’t abandon me if this goes wrong. You won’t, will you!?)”

It didn’t matter if she aroused some suspicion as long as it wasn’t enough for someone to stop her. Although she was blatantly fidgeting while waiting in an elevator hall that looked like something from a luxury hotel.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.”

“In the end, speaking aloud is only putting you at more risk. Are you doing it on purpose as some kind of challenge run?”

“Says someone who’s only watching!!”

But there wasn’t any real trouble.

The metal doors parted and the general manager entered the empty elevator with a pace quickened just enough that no one would find it unusual. After the door closed, “he” held a card up to the control panel.

A push of the button and the elevator began to rise. It had switched into a mode that wouldn’t stop on intermediate floors.

“Um, Mugino-san. Super what floor is the central server room on?”

“28.”

“Hanano won’t have anywhere to escape if the security team surrounds her,” noted Takitsubo.

“I really am going curse all four of you,” protested Hanano. “Who is that munching on popcorn right next to the mic!?”

The correct answer was cinephile Kinuhata Saiai who always wanted popcorn when she was staring at a screen, but there was no need to say so. Frenda had opened a mackerel can and was going at it with a fork.

The elevator stopped at one of the higher floors.

The doors parted to reveal the exact opposite of the gentle atmosphere of sunlight and greenery found in the lobby. First of all, there were no windows to speak of. The large floor was divided up by chain link fences and thick tempered glass walls and the entire place was taken up by computers larger than vending machines. It wasn’t clear what the divisions between areas and machines signified, but the place looked like a labyrinth. Hanano trembled, walked pigeon-toed, and held her shoulders (all with the old man look), so the temperature may have been well below standard room temperature.

“This is…the central server room.”

She could already see the server machines. They were everywhere here on the 28th floor. But she couldn’t actually touch them with the labyrinth of chain link fences and glass walls in the way. She would need to unlock the door in the fence to get through.

Of course, Hanano would have already prepared to do just that.

However…

“I-it won’t open?”

She had sounded nervous before, but now her tone of voice rose even further.

With no one else around, she didn’t bother hiding the hesitation in her wandering hands.

“I don’t believe it. How is this happening? The fence door in the central server room won’t open!!”

“What does that mean? Didn’t you spend an entire week checking over everything from the general manager’s fingerprints to his irises? Including every little idiosyncrasy he has?”

“That week was the problem. It looks like they change the door’s passcode each week, so his information from July 1 isn’t good anymore!”

“And…what does that mean?”

“Uhh,” groaned Hanano. Mugino had repeated the same words, but her sizzling displeasure had been hard to miss.

They couldn’t have Hanano remaining silent during a mission, so Mugino compromised by speaking first.

“Do you have any tricks you can use?”

“Sure, if there was an emergency. For example, in an earthquake powerful enough to possibly bring the building down, all the locks are set to automatically release to ensure no one is trapped.”

“You don’t say?”

Frenda had known Mugino long enough to put down her mackerel can, grab blankly-staring Takitsubo, and scoot away from Mugino. Kinuhata was still new to this, so she only tilted her head with her big tub of popcorn.

Hanano Choubi was also new, so she failed to see the danger of her comment.

“Don’t run away, Frenda. Use those goggles of yours.”

“Ugh. No stopping you, huh? Fine, fine. In the end, I’ll support you.”

That was all Mugino had to hear before she smiled thinly and took action.

She reached a hand out the car window.

And she fired Meltdowner at the very center of the distant skyscraper.

Part 4

“Gyahhhh!?”

Hanano Choubi forgot all about acting and screamed for real. Not that anyone would have found it unusual given the circumstances.

A sharp tremor shook the giant building vertically, the tempered glass shattered, all the fire alarms went off, and a recorded female voice urged everyone to evacuate.

The blast hadn’t hit this floor, but her life was still at risk. The building was made of tens of thousands of tons of reinforced concrete, but it might as well have been a shaky suspension bridge. Mugino could have brought the entire skyscraper down with ease if she wanted to.

“What!? What did you just do!?”

“You said the locks would release in an emergency, right? So I figured it would be faster to make our own. Don’t worry. I had Frenda monitoring the electromagnetism produced by human bodies, so I only took out a big conference room no one was using. One less budget item for them to worry about, really.”

(This building isn’t part of the dark side. Cause a scene like this and the Dark Side’s Bane will notice. Once that #6 is after us, we’ll vanish without a trace in some back alley or another!!)

The diligent small animal of a girl slumped her shoulders when she belatedly realized she had become the kind of person who put her guard up when she saw a hero.

Meanwhile, Mugino Shizuri’s voice couldn’t have been more carefree.

Which probably meant she was the kind of person who could slaughter people while perfectly relaxed.

“Get a move on, Hanano. Or is the door still not open? How many more times do I have to blast that building? Should I target a load-bearing column next? Or maybe the base isolators? Give the word and they’re gone☆”

“No need, no need! The door’s open! That worked fine, so thank you for the very useful support!!”

(That kaiju girl!!)

Hanano shouted tearfully and opened the unlocked fence door. She pulled the miniature computer from her pocket, connected a cable to it, and connected the other end to one of the server machines. The computer would do the rest.

It made quiet sounds like scratching fingernails.

The bar on the screen gradually filled up from left to right. Alphanumeric text – likely filenames – flashed by, but there was no point in trying to read them.

A wired connection was best when dealing with so much data. Copying the files was nerve-racking enough without knowing the wireless connection could break at any moment.

“Yikes, yikes, hurry up, yikes… W-will this really tell us who received the insurance payouts when the Colosseum participants died?”

“It will, but they might have used a fake name or fake ID. Or maybe they used a throwaway go-between like the one who withdraws the money in a bank transfer scam. Anything that would leave a trail will have been faked.”

“Th-then what are we supposed to do? Is this all a waste of time?”

“This is well worth our time,” Mugino Shizuri readily assured her.

Hanano tilted her head (in old man mode), but…

“The big bosses at the top will be well-protected, but not so with the participants who end up as corpses anyway. But we’re not interested in the corpses or the criminals. We’re looking for the people with a high-value policy and are still alive. We should probably narrow it down to teenage students, a policy of at least a hundred million, and an expedited contract less than a month old. Once we have their identity, we can do this the old-fashioned way: tail them and let them lead us right to the Colosseum.”

The bar on the screen filled up and the number below reached 100%.

Hanano Choubi yanked out the cable, stuck the miniature computer in her pocket, and returned to the elevator.

“Oh, no! The elevator’s stopped because of the disaster!”

“Ah ha ha. Then it’s time for 28 stories’ worth of stairs. Should make for some good exercise.”

(Really and truly curse that terrain-obliterating god of destruction!!)

But she had no other option here, so she gave up, opened the metal door, stuck her head out into the emergency stairs, and heard hurried footsteps climbing from below. This was an above-the-board company, so were those security officer batons she heard thunking at their hips? If they realized who she was and ganged up on her, she felt certain they would beat her to death.

“Check each floor to ensure no one was left behind. Make sure every last employee, guest, and contracted janitor is safe! Teams A and B, follow me and inspect the stairs!! …Hm? Hey! Is someone up th-”

“Wahh!!”

While shouting, she flipped the luxury suit inside out like a stage magician’s handkerchief, wiped both hands on her face makeup to rearrange it, and transformed herself into a muscular young man on the security team. In mere seconds.

She could only prepare one emergency costume change, so the standard option was either a security guard or a firefighter depending on where she was infiltrating.

“Reporting for duty!”

“R-right. I don’t recognize you. Which team are you on? Anyway, you came from up above, right? Continue on down and join another team. Any other team! Right now, we need every single person assisting the evacuation!!”

“Roger that!!”

Muscular and handsome Hanano Choubi shouted something that seemed right and then ran down the stairs.

A predetermined plan alone was not enough to fool people. Going with the flow and adlibbing could be surprisingly useful. Of course, you would run into trouble if you relied entirely on adlibbing.

And no living thing would run around quite as actively as a cornered chicken.

“Ugh, those 28 floors are going to have me sweating… That’s like descending a small mountain. Let’s hope my makeup doesn’t come off.”

“Hanano, we’re still monitoring you via the cameras after your face change, so don’t worry. And if you want a shortcut down, keep your eye on the wall to your right.”

She didn’t even have time to look that way.

The concrete wall broke through from the outside and a slender hand appeared. Kinuhata Saiai had quickly and powerfully climbed 28 floors up the building’s wall and now she grabbed Security Guard Hanano Choubi by the collar.

“Wait, but, hey, what are you doing!?”

“It was super you who told us not to abandon you if things went wrong.”

Then the two of them dove down from that high floor.

“Gyehhhhhhhhh!?”

“Don’t worry. My Offense Armor will act as a cushion, so we won’t die when we super hit the ground.”

Part 5

“Finally. It’s already midday. How did it take you that long to escape one little building?”

“Huff, puff. Sh-she really is in full dominatrix mode, isn’t she?”

Mugino held out a hand in a “give it here” gesture. Hanano wiped the makeup from her face to return to her puppyish self before handing the miniature computer to Mugino. She was irritated and wanted to look cool by tossing it over, but after going through all that, she was terrified of dropping and breaking it.

Mugino looked satisfied as she accepted the computer.

“After grabbing some lunch, we can check inside this and start tracking one of the participants.”

“Shouldn’t we be running away? I can see the building from here and- wow, there’s a giant hole in the center.”

After yanking Hanano inside the van, Item left.

“Um, wait. Are you really asking me to change inside this cramped van? I have to strip down while the rest of you watch!?”

“Don’t worry, Hanano. I’m rooting for you.”

“You, busty track suit girl! What part of me were you looking at when you made that pitying comment!?”

Hanano tearfully complained, but she must not have wanted to remain in the security uniform that smelled like male sweat (because she had designed it to do so). The rustling of cloth filled the van for a while.

Anyway, next on the agenda was lunch.

Frenda knew how to access a wealth of information on her phone and she learned of a good restaurant frequented by District 3’s elite office workers. After driving to the center of the district, they left the van behind and walked the rest of the way.

Frenda spotted something on the way.

“Neat. In the end, of course a salaryman district would have miniskirt ladies handing out cans of beer.”

“That sign calls them ‘bargirls’. What does that mean?”

Takitsubo tilted her blankly staring head.

The bargirls were apparently advertising a new seasonal craft beer. But none of the officer workers in suits could drink beer in the middle of the day, so it seemed like they would have a hard time selling every can. Mugino though they would have better luck in District 5 with all its college students ready to party on Tanabata.

Mugino had also wondered what hidden gem of a restaurant Frenda had discovered, but it was a fairly large Chinese restaurant that shared a giant building with an electronics store.

“It’s normal. It’s so normal I’m about ready to punch Frenda.”

“No one here has time to wait in a long line, so anyplace that gets super lots of five star ratings will be one with a super lot of seating and decent enough food. This place is as super big as a parking garage.”

The five girls found a seat at a table in the back.

Was it a dark side habit to prefer the seat closest to the emergency exit? Or if that wasn’t available, one by a window.

“I’m going to get the vegetable gyoza meal with no garlic. It’s a good basic dish to super test the quality of the cooking. What about you, Takitsubo-san?”

“This.”

“Oh! In the end, they’re already serving the chilled noodles! I’ll get that too but with sesame sauce!!”

“It sure is summer. And I hate it.”

Mugino never passed up a chance to complain about wheat and she apparently went for the rice dishes as a result. She ordered the seafood fried rice with ankake sauce. Based on the photo in the menu, it had something extremely greasy poured on top. It had to be a giant mass of calories. The day she had slim legs was still a long way off. Although anyone foolish enough to say that aloud would have an instant 50% reduction in weight when their upper half was vaporized.

The restaurant was meant to get office workers in and out during their limited lunch break, so the young part-timer in a mini China dress had their order out in no time. Takitsubo stared blankly at the food.

“They’re gyozas, but they’re green. Kinuhata, you should eat more meat.”

“I don’t need your criticism. What are you – a super old man?”

“But you won’t grow otherwise.”

“Are you picking a goddamn fight with me while you waste your own super boobs by covering them up with that lame-ass track suit!?”

The growing girl who channeled the #1 when she got mad had to be calmed by friendly Frenda.

“Whew…”

Hanano’s body was demanding something unhealthy after the exhaustion of the previous job, so she nervously pulled in her bowl of stir-fried meat and vegetables that looked heavily seasoned. On the dark side, you could get your hands on a variety of pills or even a mysterious stamp that made sounds quite colorful when you placed it below your tongue, but this was the limit of unhealthy that petty bourgeoisie was willing to go for.

“Today’s Tanabata, isn’t it? Oh, this ordinary free ice water is soaking into my soul.”

“Which one is Tanabata again? The one with the pandas and lots of firecrackers?”

“Takitsubo-san, I think you’re super confusing it with Chinese New Year.”

Kinuhata looked kind of smug, but you wouldn’t see pandas on the streets of China even when celebrating the lunar new year. What Asian movie had she seen?

“Hanano, you should put this shichimi togarashi on your stir fry. You’re in the mood for something strong, aren’t you?” suggested Takitsubo.

“That sounds good, but it would make fixing my face harder, so I’ll pass. Spicy foods making your lips swell isn’t just a thing from gag manga. They have that lip cream full of capsaicin to give you fuller lips, remember?”

“Hanano.”

“Stop recommending it to me because you think that sounds funny!”

All of their food was good. But only good. The secret to the flavor was probably tubs of dashi from a factory in District 4. If this place was getting five star ratings, perhaps office workers thought it was a virtue to have no sense of adventure.

That was the opposite of Item’s way of life.

Mugino pulled out the miniature computer.

“Frenda.”

“Just one, okay!? Please, Takitsubo! In the end, a bite of my almond jelly for one of your sesame dumplings isn’t a bad trade at all, so pleeeeease! Oh, what did you want, Mugino?”

“You’ve been watching the Colosseum online, right? When does today’s match begin?”

“Hmm? The morning event should be over already. In the end, the next soonest would be the one that starts at 8 this evening. I remember the time because I tended to watch the killing while eating dinner in my room.”

“That’s super primetime. Are the managers intentionally aiming for mealtime when people are relaxing with their families?”

“Ugh.” Hanano paled and shrank down in her seat, but that was nothing as far as dark side tastes went . Mugino didn’t seem interested in that part at all.

“Damn, and it’s only 1 in the afternoon. Then there’s no point in pursuing one of the living contestants now. We can take our time and begin our pursuit at around 5.”

Part 6

“Beep, beep, beep,” rang a mechanical alarm.

Kitty Frenda wore baggy costume pajamas as she reached a slender arm out from bed, couldn’t reach, and had to forcibly extend her back to finally grab her phone from the bedside table.

“Ugh,” groaned another girl in the same bed as her. That was Hanano Choubi in a yoga-style tank top and hot pants. Item was short on beds with two new members added without warning.

“I feel like taking a nap was a mistake. Ah, my head feels so heavy…”

“It’s 3 PM. We don’t need to get moving quite yet, but in the end, we need to get ready soon or Mugino will chuck us outside before we have a chance to wake up.”

Frenda said that, but she wasn’t getting out of bed yet either. Maybe they had more time than she let on, or maybe she had done this enough times she was confident she could get dressed and ready quickly enough.

Frenda smiled a little while lying on her side.

“Oh, right. I forgot to congratulate you for your performance earlier today, Hanano.”

“Thanks.”

“To be honest, I thought we were in trouble for a bit there. What was that cruel VIP bodyguard called again? Kouzaku? Regardless, when Mugino didn’t even bother defending herself while attacking that girl head on, I bet she was thinking our newbies would die if she didn’t end the fight quick. Oh, but don’t tell Mugino I said so. She’d probably tear you in two to pretend that wasn’t why she did it. In the end, she had to throw out the option of a slower fight for you. And that would have been bad for Item as a whole. We would’ve had to look after you the entire time.”

Frenda gave a mischievous smile and slowly narrowed her eyes.

“But instead, you proved your usefulness in direct combat and in indirect infiltration. Without your help, we couldn’t have gotten that data from the insurance company. I doubt Mugino would have given up, but she would’ve relied on brute force to get the job done.”

“Ha…ah ha ha…”

Hanano could only laugh weakly at that. Did blasting a hole in the center of the skyscraper not count as relying on brute force?

Frenda winked while still lying in bed.

“So we owe you one. Is there anything you want us to do for you? Or anything you want from us?”

“U-um, there is actually…”

Hanano scooted toward Frenda and whispered in her ear.

Frenda looked confused.

“Really? That’s pretty dangerous.”

“Hmm. Think of it as a last resort I can use. I am in the dark side now. And I thought you would be the best person to ask.”

“If that’s what you want.”

The blonde girl didn’t take much convincing.

Then three knocks came at the door. And the bedroom door opened before they could respond.

“Excuse me. Is Hanano-san in here?”

“Huh? Kinuhata-san? What do you want- gasp!? C-could it be!? Has this one success won me two friends at once!?”

“Super what are you talking about?” Kinuhata Saiai gave an exasperated sigh with a hand on her hip. “I heard this team has a tradition of the second-newest member super subjecting the newest member to a dress-up hell.”

“Gyahhhhhhh!?”

And so Hanano was dragged against her will to the brand-name shopping mall on the lower floors.

Kinuhata understood they didn’t have any money to work with, so she stuck to browsing and using the dressing rooms.

“Isn’t this just underwear!? I’m not an expert on Japanese clothing, but isn’t this that thing you wear when meditating under a waterfall or going to a hot spring!? Do I have to try this on here!? No, wait, it’s falling off, there’s nothing covering me, I’ll die!! Like any blushing teenage maiden would!!”

“Don’t worry. It’s just a super mini yukata for Tanabata. Super just get changed already. Super quickly.”

Meanwhile Kinuhata and Hanano’s phones both received a message.

It was a group message from Mugino, saying it was time for Item to get to work.

“We’re super going to District 7?”

“She says that’s where our target’s dorm is.”

They joined Mugino, Takitsubo, and Frenda who had taken the elevator down to the ground floor. They traveled by train.

It was 5PM and everything was colored orange by the setting sun. There were a lot of people, partially because it was rush hour, but there were also a lot more people ignoring curfew to stay out for Tanabata.

“Takitsubo-san, super what are you eating?”

“Bamboo leaf ice cream.”

“That is a very bright green,” said Mugino. “Sounds like a dessert for pandas.”

“Mugino, stop stealing licks. And the rest of you stop copying her.”

The five members of Item walked through the evening city.

They had arrived in District 7, but they didn’t know their destination yet.

They had located their target, though.

“Okay, let’s tail that contestant so she’ll lead us right to the Colosseum’s secret location.”

They had investigated the insurance company headquarters to determine the identity of a still-living contestant. With that information, they only had to tail that contestant the old-fashioned way. The contestant would of course have to arrive at the Colosseum at the appropriate time.

Item was currently in front of District 7’s train station, which was filled with a mixture of students and workers.

They could locate the enemy base starting from here.

“These are contestants for a deadly underground fight club, so I was expecting some kind of super muscular macho. But that’s just a super normal girl with her braid swaying side to side as she walks.”

“You’re the same way Kinuhata,” said Takitsubo. “You don’t look like a brawler.”

Their target was about 15m away.

It was the evening rush hour, but those dark side girls knew how to take advantage of the crowds.

The five of them chatted while following their target at a leisurely pace.

“A-are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Hanano. “What if they strike back in a way we never would have expected. I-I mean, anything goes on the dark side, right? And there are stories of people seeing a giant dragon at night recently.”

“Ah ha ha. In the end, nothing like that’s going to happen.”

“A-and should we really be following her so closely? I feel like she would see us if she happened to look back.”

“It doesn’t matter if she does see us. Why would she peg us as ‘suspicious’ in this crowd? In the end, sending out a UAV or something would be a lot more conspicuous. The traditional methods are more convenient for tailing people. …Mugino?”

No response.

A convenience store had a simple table set up outside to sell bentos to the people here for the Tanabata event. Food that had been sitting outside in this heat seemed questionable, though.

And Mugino Shizuri was entranced by something there.

Her shoulders were even trembling.

“W-wait, that generous serving of salmon only has 400 Calories!? You have to be kidding me! This is a revolution!! I knew rice was the way to goooooooo!!”

“Mugino…”

“400 Calories for a meal doesn’t seem all that unusual to me. Super how much do you usually eat?”

The best part of a bento was the ability to walk around while eating it. Just like using your phone while walking, it wasn’t recommended you do so, but the Item girls weren’t known for their manners.

“Here. In the end, I’ll take our photo.”

“(Wait, why are you taking selfies while we tail someone, Frenda-san?)”

“Because we’re tailing someone. It would look weird for a group of four or five girls to not do anything with their phones.”

The braid girl entered a narrow alley, turned a corner with a traffic mirror, entered a small building, and emerged through a different exit. She was checking to make sure she wasn’t followed, but it wasn’t hard to trick her when they knew that was coming. Especially when you had a team that could split apart or regroup as needed.

“Mugino.”

Takitsubo noticed something and tapped on Mugino’s shoulder to get her attention.

The track suit girl was looking at some graffiti on a building wall.

“I saw that same anchor and chain graffiti spraypainted on another wall earlier. I think it’s meant to guide people to the Colosseum while camouflaged within all the other paint and stickers.”

Once they knew the trick, the rest was easy.

Item kept their distance and continued pursuit while a blimp flew by overhead. The screen on the side provided information on a fireworks show. That had to be one hell of a nuisance for the people hoping to actually see the stars on Tanabata.

“Did the braid girl go in here?”

“Wow, it’s a parasol market. Are they super popping up around here now?” groaned Kinuhata.

True to the name, the entirety of the small park situated between two buildings was filled with an orderly arrangement of beach parasols, plastic tarps, beach chairs, sports coolers, and more. Was all of that the kind of equipment used to create a break area at a construction site? Each parasol seemed to signify a spot, but there were some areas with a few parasols linked together.

However, this was not a construction site. A peek under the parasols showed documents, heated tobacco products, and other things lined up below. Were some of the products laid out on a bodyboard to prevent the heat of the ground from damaging them? The shops weren’t just run by adults. Several of them were run by students in aprons.

Every single spot here was a shop.

There were shops for used books, electronics, and video games. The ones selling alcohol or running a pawnshop did not have any kind of license. The law meant nothing here. All of the products for sale were of dubious origin. This was an underground flea market where everyone was ready to pack up shop and scram the instant any trouble showed itself. It was a modern Kowloon Walled City that could appear anywhere like a mirage and sold just about anything.

There was a bar with dozens of varieties of vacuum-packed space food to go with the drinks and a sweets shop selling candies so old it was a mystery how you would go about finding them in the modern day, so the place had an unusual number of smiles for something dark side related.

Kinuhata looked at some cubes of meat sizzling on a hotplate that had toothpicks sticking into them like the samples at the supermarket.

“Huh? Super how do they have pricey wagyu steak here?”

“Check the price tag. That’s imitation meat made from soy and lard, Kinuhata.”

That would have been plenty cheap and delicious as long as it was made clear what it was to begin with. That sort of product only had such a bad reputation because people tried to hide that it wasn’t real meat.

They were also selling takoyaki with no octopus and a tuna bowl made with a mystery deep sea fish, but the people swaying unsteadily with a beer mug in hand at this hour probably weren’t too concerned about the flavor.

This wasn’t a beach, so how did they have those beach parasols in place? It turned out they had used a special tool to open thumb-sized holes in the ground. Lots of them. Maybe it was to set up a grid for the shops, or maybe whoever had done it was showing off what they could do.

Hanano nervously checked one of the shops.

“Wow…the dark side really is incredible to have a dungeon like this. Eh? But this used book shop…I don’t believe it! Is that Umisuna Seiru’s makeup guide? Ha ha. But that was banned from all the stores – physical and digital – after she was arrested!”

“Hanano.”

The newcomer was extremely satisfied after paying in cash for a full-color book that looked like a pocket-sized illustrated encyclopedia, so Takitsubo had to grab her hand and hurry her along. Otherwise, the girl was liable to start searching through all of the new cosmetics that weren’t supposed to go on sale until the fall.

Mugino scoffed at the entire scene around them.

“This is only the very surface level of the dark side. Home to all sorts of thugs.”

For the braid girl, this had to be a way of ensuring she wasn’t being followed. If Anti-Skill or Judgment took a step inside this market, everyone here would notice immediately even if they were in plainclothes and the market would scatter.

But that trick didn’t work when she was being tailed by other dark side members.

It looked like the braid girl was heading straight to her destination after passing through the parasol street. It was July 7, so the city was as much of a heat island as ever. Maybe she wanted to avoid staying outside where the heat shimmered up from the asphalt, but she clearly wasn’t focused enough. She was more focused on the shaved ice with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream she had bought at a food truck than she was on any surrounding threats.

Mugino commented while watching the girl through the reflection in the clear plastic cover of the drink vending machine she was facing.

“She fixed her hair and clothes before heading in there. She must want to look her best for whoever’s inside. I’m betting that’s the Colosseum.”

“I super didn’t expect this. Isn’t that a library?”

A circular building was located next to a mansion-like building, so it may have been a complex containing a few different academic facilities.

“Ugh, we ended up walking around in circles for nearly an hour.”

“Odd. Doesn’t that leave them less than two hours for the setup and pre-battle inspections?”

“No one knows where the Colosseum is, right? In the end, this is a sketchy underground fight club that wants to make sure they can escape if the authorities show up. If it took them half a day to get everything set up like at a legal sports tournament, they would’ve been found out ages ago.”

Also, the braid girl hadn’t looked like the kind of person who would appear in an underground fight club. Without any advance information, most anyone would assume she was just a bookworm.

“In the end, it’s a lot like the temptation of a fire alarm. Don’t you just want to shatter that silence just once?”

“Is the #6 super napping through all this?”

Now they had the location, but they couldn’t just follow the girl inside the main entrance. The door she had used had a “closed” sign on it.

Mugino narrowed her eyes.

That quiet library was in fact a deadly arena. It was like a physical representation of Academy City’s shittiness.

“We can’t go in through the front and I’m sure they have the rear entrance guarded. H-how are we supposed to get in?”

“If we need an entrance, my Meltdowner can give us one in any wall we want.”

“Someone come up with a good idea before this sadistic demon lord gets tired of thinking and fires one of her beeeeeeeams!!” screamed the chihuahua girl like a boiling tea kettle.

Team battles were all about making up for your teammates’ faults, so nimble Kinuhata climbed the library wall and kicked down the extendible emergency ladder kept up by the window. Then the Item girls climbed the ladder one after another and entered the library through a second floor window. Getting in was easy as long as they didn’t use a door.

Kinuhata took a look around.

“There’s a lot of dust super piled up in the corners.”

“What are you, a mother-in-law?”

“In the end, they can’t let the drum-shaped cleaning robots work in sensitive areas that store old books. They don’t want the sprayed detergent getting on anything.”

Was that why the place had been chosen as a secret arena? The limited number of cameras probably helped too. Although they were probably just threatening the library director or whoever else ran the place.

And the track suit girl noticed something else.

“Mugino.”

The air was abuzz with energy.

It didn’t suit the classic mansion interior at all.

A library might have people organizing the books and performing other work afterhours, but there were still too many people here. It felt more like being in the attic of a club.

Something was happening below.

Mugino and Frenda had too much firepower and could easily harm their own teammates if they got in the way, so they took the front and back positions to protect the group on their way into the long second floor corridor. The corridor overlooked the hall below.

An explosion of noise pushed up from there.

Cheering voices and booming music swirled up at them.

The audience had to be at least in the hundreds. Item felt silly for spending so much time tailing and infiltrating.

“Hey, hey! Sorry for interrupting you all during dinnertime! This modern Colosseum adds an exciting splash of red to your boring lives and you wouldn’t believe how much money is about to be changing hands here! We’re still taking online bets, so make sure you get in on that action! Nothing makes a match more exciting than having money riding on who lives and who diiiiiiiiiiies!!!!”

Some kind of plate was spinning.

The Colosseum was a form of entertainment, so music must have been crucial. But who was that busty gasmask girl skillfully operating the equipment at the DJ turntable?

“Frenda, explain,” said Mugino, sick of it all already.

“In the end, it’s normally something you watch online, but they do have an online drawing for a live viewing. Only the biggest whales spend enough to get put in for that drawing, though.”

Frenda didn’t seem particularly interested. She didn’t sound at all envious.

She had said she watched the Colosseum while eating dinner. She liked to watch it online while doing something else, so she may not have wanted to dedicate the many hours needed for the pregame and the actual match itself.

“But there’s so many. How were they all guided here?”

“I doubt they all super wandered around for an hour. That would be super conspicuous and having a line form at the library entrance would defeat the purpose. Maybe they were all loaded into the back of a truck and then super guided in from an underground parking lot?”

Of course, if they had a foolproof transportation method, the braid girl wouldn’t have had to walk around so much in the summer heat. If their truck was caught by an Anti-Skill inspection during some pre-summer-break crimefighting campaign, that was that. They had needed another method to bring in the (likely doomed to die) contestants since they mattered more than the audience.

All the desks had been removed from the reading space on the floor below and a chain link fence standing more than 3m tall had been placed around it. It wasn’t clear where they had gotten their hands on it, but those were temporary barricades set up on the streets to stop rioters. The 10m-diameter space within had to be the ring.

There were also colorful stage lights and speakers larger than sofas. They had brought in club equipment. The audience’s excitement was infectious, so the shouts and cheers spread like wildfire. And the match hadn’t even started yet.

Filming equipment was visible further out than the shouting crowd. Surprisingly, they were all enormous models that could be moved around on wheels, just like you would see in a TV studio. With the latest high definition specs, each one had to cost around 20 million yen. And there were tons of them here. That was all necessary for the online service, but it showed just how flush with cash the managers were.

In addition to that, over 100 small lenses were pasted all around the interior of the barricade. Those were likely for the VR composite stream. The quality of the equipment was pro-soccer level. With something that specialized, you needed more than just money. It took industry connections.

Mugino looked down from the railing in disgust.

“Is the Colosseum always like this?”

“Today is actually relatively subdued. They usually have these huge killer fireworks. Are they skipping that because of all the paper books? Or because the building isn’t properly soundproofed? In the end, look at that, Mugino. That’s one of the caged surprises! There’s a 3m white tiger in there to be thrown in there with the espers as a surprise contestant☆”

“Eeeek!” screamed Hanano, curling up in a corner of the 2nd floor. She didn’t have to fight the tiger herself, so Mugino thought the girl had too active an imagination.

Less imaginative Kinuhata and Takitsubo were more carefree.

“Huh, this super does look like a gory tournament where people die every round.”

“I feel sorry for the poor animals they make fight. I hope everyone running this place is struck down for their cruelty.”

Of course, Item’s job was not to fight in the Colosseum as contestants.

They had to slaughter the Colosseum management and take their blood-stained fortune. That would mean 15 billion, if not more.

Mugino grinned.

“Now, then. Where do these classy shitheads stash their money?”

Part 7

The Colosseum was a very important event for them.

They didn’t all gather together for every single event, but they still made sure to make an appearance on site as the management.

However, those four girls were not in the ring or in the stands. They were in a separate monitor room, built from a back room of the library full of book repair equipment. They used that room to keep tabs on the situation in the arena and online.

Of course, they weren’t upstanding members of society, so they had brought camping chairs and a camping table in for themselves. The table was piled high with chips, popcorn, fried chicken, fries, and more. For drinks, there were sodas and iced coffee. They preferred to bring their own rather than order it from a catering company. That made it feel more like doing yaminabe at a girls-only sleepover, which was a lot more fun.

“Uhh…”

A small 12-year-old girl with pale skin and shoulder-length black hair groaned while staring at all the monitors. Waniguchi Nokoba was a mixed martial artist and she wore a ring costume that looked like a racing swimsuit made even more revealing. She raised her small hands and stretched her back without getting up from her chair.

However, her hands just about crushed the rubber balls she held.

“I wanna fight too!! We worked so hard to get that white tiger for today and I wanna fight it!!”

“You’re our executioner who swiftly eliminates anyone who violates any rules regarding the match or the gambling, so you need to stay put as long as things run smoothly. It’s better this way, so try and enjoy the peace and quiet.”

Ibotanokikouji Kaede, a curvy girl wearing a Tokiwadai Middle School summer uniform and with a few braids in her fluffy blonde hair, breathed an exasperated sigh, but the martial arts girl ignored her.

Despite her young appearance, Waniguchi bared her teeth and spat back.

“Damn, I thought I’d be seeing lots of action in this position, but these dark side morons are all too scared to disobey. You’re criminals – why the hell are you following the rules? I’m starting to wish I’d entered as a contestant instead.”

“But then you would just win every match,” commented a tanned track girl named Hanayama Kamitsu.

“We wouldn’t make much money from the gambling side then, would we?” sighed Ibotanokikouji. “Waniguchi-chan, why are you so irritable today?”

“Her thigh,” whispered a silver-haired girl named Inoue Laspezia.

That got a response out of Waniguchi herself rather than Ibotanokikouji.

“Ah!? I’ve got another mosquito bite… No wonder I’ve been so mad today. This is why I hate the ground. Too many bugs. Hey, where’d the bug spray go!?”

“It’s too late for that if you’re already bitten. Come here. I will rub the anti-itch cream on for you,” said Ibotanokikouji.

“Yay!” rejoiced Waniguchi as she walked over, but she was interrupted by something else.

The silver-haired girl had been working in silence, but now she sat right in Ibotanokikouji’s lap.

“…Inoue Laspezia.”

“Yes?”

The silver-haired girl was still engrossed in the intricate work she was performing with her gloved hands, so she replied with just the one Kyoto-accented word. She didn’t even look up.

As the only one here immune to the lily’s allure, the track girl kept her distance.

Furious at having her special seat taken, Tiny Tyrant Waniguchi clung to Ibotanokikouji’s side, but then she noticed something else. Ibotanokikouji had a small DVD player open in addition to all of the management monitors. It was probably an item sold cheap at a discount store.

“Hey, Chief, what’s that? A horror movie?”

“One of the worst I’ve ever seen, but one of the stuntmen died in an accident during filming. If you watch carefully in slow motion, you can see him being crushed by the machinery in the background. Hee hee. I bet all those sophisticated teachers would faint if they saw this.”

In cases like this, the movie would either be banned from the online stores or the offending footage would be removed in a mystery update, so if you wanted to add it to your collection, you needed one of the limited first-edition physical copies. Because that would never be altered.

“Boo. If you want to see a corpse, just send me into the ring. I’d give you plenty of bloodshed.”

“Probably so, but I don’t need a close up of the corpse.”

Ibotanokikouji smiled thinly while operating her phone. She lovingly chewed on Inoue’s ear while she worked.

She pulled up her own personal map app which was linked to her photo album. But in her case, the map displayed a tour of famous suicide spots around Academy City.

“I want to decorate myself with other people’s deaths. I want to sleep wrapped in a blanket of their misfortune. Hee hee. So it doesn’t need to be anything exciting. Brand-name clothing isn’t for showing off. It looks best when you wear it casually. You can make diamonds by pressurizing human corpses, but there is no need to go around loudly advertising that fact. True class is found in doing things so discreetly the amateurs never notice what you have. The money we make with the Colosseum is the same.”

“Boo.”

Hanayama Kamitsu, the tanned girl with wavy shoulder-length black hair and a track athlete’s tank top and shorts, made no attempt to join the other three. She thought these things were nice to look at, but she had no desire to be a part of it herself. In her opinion, lesbian relationships were beautiful enough when things were going well, but they got nasty quick when things went bad. And on the dark side, the result would be a lot worse than for a band when a relationship between two members fell apart.

She normally wore something a little less revealing, so her hands wandered restlessly across the visible tan lines on the upper and lower halves of her body. She finally reached for a plastic item rather than one the chilled drinks in the cooler.

Waniguchi’s face lit up while still clinging to Ibotanokikouji’s side.

“Oh, is that an e-cigarette? I’ve always wanted to try one of those!”

“It’s a portable oxygen tank. It’s flavorless.”

As a track girl, Hanayama wanted as much oxygen inside her as she could get. Or rather, she got antsy when she couldn’t get it. She held the plastic device in the corner of her mouth, the blue LED at the end flashed, and she breathed in the compressed oxygen coming from the refillable cartridge.

“Anyway, did you see the news? That general manager was arrested. Something about attacking his own company. You really shouldn’t mug for the camera in a minute-long video just because you’re lonely and want some likes. They were playing it on all the talk shows.”

“So what? That’s not a problem for us as long as we can regularly withdraw the contestants’ insurance money. Even if they take emergency measures, that’s an adult corporation, right? They take forever to do anything, so we can still get today’s payouts. Besides, there are still plenty more insurance companies in Academy City. Not to mention executives we can blackmail.”

“Hm,” was all the response track girl Hanayama gave.

They were technically colleagues (of a sort), but they had never actually met directly to give him instructions. Even if the general manager sang like a canary, he didn’t know the girls’ real names. He had been disposable, so they didn’t care what happened to him.

To change the subject, Hanayama spoke to a different girl: the slender silver-haired girl seated in Ibotanokikouji’s lap with her eyes lowered to the delicate work she was doing. Overall, she was a squirrel-like person. But it upset her if you said she looked like a racoon, so it was worth being careful.

“Hey, Inoue. What nasty method will you be using this time?”

“…It’s nothing special.”

Inoue Laspezia wore an apron and a beret over a summer school uniform. She kept her eyes on her working hands and responded with a Kyoto accent.

Her hobby was figurines, her special skill was handicrafts, and she belonged to the art club. She didn’t even look Hanayama’s way as she made some precise movements of a thin-tipped paintbrush wet with the special iron material – that is, human blood – she had mixed to just the right color on her paper palette.

She never seemed interested in anything, but she refused to give up her spot on Ibotanokikouji’s lap.

“There was a murder in the area, so I’m just counterfeiting the murder weapon. It’s a razor with the appropriate fingerprints and blood on it. One of the big ones a barber would have. I had all the necessary materials in stock, so it doesn’t cost me anything.”

“Yikes. Remind me to never piss off a modeler.”

Tanned Hanayama grinned.

It didn’t matter if the evidence was real or not. The general manager likely had no recollection of what they had threatened him over. But what if the public and the justice system believed it? Even if the charges were false – no, especially when the charges were false – no one wanted to lose everything over it.

And once they started down that route, it would take over their life.

The rules of the world didn’t let you choose when you wanted to stop.

An adult important enough to have no qualms at all about oppressing the children would know exactly what happened the instant they took just one step off the edge of the cliff.

Ibotanokikouji had come up with the plan and ordered her to do it, but even she seemed exasperated.

She tightly hugged the silver-haired girl sitting in her lap.

“Oh, Inoue-chan. You’re such a perfectionist once you set your mind to something. Wouldn’t you have a much easier time sticking out your very cute butt on the train to make some false molestation accusations?”

“How would that work? Our targets always have a driver who takes them wherever they need to go.”

Inoue must have finished her work because she sealed the evidence razor in a plastic bag. She completed the work calmly and expressionlessly. That gave them one more trump card they could use to frame someone.

Everyone had their strengths and weaknesses. A honeytrap was probably beyond that whispering, downcast girl. …Except with the minority who were into the plain, obedient type.

“How’s this for a conclusion?” Waniguchi rubbed her cheek against Ibotanokikouji from the side. “The arrested general manager on the TV isn’t a problem for us. And we’re prepared to find us a new wallet. So we won’t throw out everything we’ve built up and we won’t go into hiding. We’ll continue running the Colosseum like normal.”

“Agreed,” said all four girls together.

But anyone capable of reading the room would have noticed they didn’t say it at the exact same time. The other three girls waited to see how Ibotanokikouji Kaede reacted before joining in.

And that secret center of attention whispered with the silver-haired girl still seated in her lap.

With a soft smile on her lips.

“Don’t worry. We are Item and we will be taking allll the profits of death for ourselves☆”

Part 8

Up above the ceiling, Mugino Shizuri and Takitsubo Rikou exchanged a glance.

“Mugino.”

“Did that bitch just say Item?”

Their recording of the general manager had said much the same thing, but this time it came straight from the villains themselves.

Item was of course the name of Mugino’s team. If these people were body doubles in case of emergency or a group using the name to get work in the dark side, they should have been disguised as and acting like Mugino and the others, but they weren’t.

Whatever their reasons, those girls had used the Item name in a private room where they assumed no one else was listening in. That meant this wasn’t an act. It was real.

Meanwhile, Frenda was worried about something else: the clothing of the central girl.

“Isn’t that a Tokiwadai uniform? How does a rich girl from that school end up in the dark side?”

“Having money super doesn’t prevent you from making mistakes. Aren’t all of you in super similar situations?”

If that girl actually was a Tokiwadai student, then she was a real piece of work.

The girls lounging on the floor below continued their conversation.

“Anyway, Waniguchi-chan, here’s some extra for this month.”

“Oh, thanks a bunch!”

The central girl tossed over something she held between two fingers.

The object spinning through the air was a plastic-looking card. It flew back around like a boomerang and Waniguchi nimbly caught it.

“It’s only the 7th. How did you manage to spend a month’s worth of pay that fast? You are being paid a proper wage, so you need to stop wasting so much money.”

“Ibotanokikouji Kaede. You’d be perfect if you wouldn’t get on my case about money.”

The small martial arts girl pouted her lips and rubbed her cheek against the Tokiwadai girl while giving the card she held a quick kiss.

That was apparently how their Item(?) received payments.

“A money card?” Mugino muttered under her breath up above the ceiling.

“Those are the prepaid cards you can super use with music players and online stores, right? You buy them at a convenience store and super input the number into your computer or phone.”

Mugino responded to Kinuhata’s explanation with a finger on her chin.

“They don’t ordinarily go above 10 thousand yen on a card, but there are premium ones with bigger amounts. Like 5 or 10 million on a card. Although I think those are really only meant to buy brand-name bags online or to make donations to net idols on video sites.”

But it was clever.

Prepaid cards were a lot lighter than cash or gold. They also couldn’t be frozen without warning like a bank account. Unlike a diamond, it didn’t matter if they were handled a bit roughly and got scratched up. And since cash could be converted into cards, they were also useful for money laundering. They could then be converted back into cash either via the internet or at a pawnshop.

“Mugino.”

Takitsubo pointed elsewhere.

The central girl – Ibotanokikouji Kaede? – had a suitcase near her. It looked cheap, but a closer inspection showed the lock had been replaced with a much nicer one. Not only was the new lock much tougher, but it appeared to include a sensor that would transmit its location over the internet if the lock was forced open.

(So converting their money into cards wasn’t just to launder it. They also don’t trust the banks to hold it.)

There were no standard methods in the dark side. It wasn’t perfect, but you could get a general picture of who someone was by the methods they used for these things.

Mugino considered this for a bit.

“If that case is packed full of 10 million yen cards with some room left for cushioning, then I’m guessing it holds around 80 billion.”

“Hapyah!?”

When she heard that amount, Hanano Choubi the Chicken yelped without thinking.

The Tokiwadai girl didn’t even bother looking up.

She simply held her palm upwards while still seated in her camping chair with Inoue in her lap.

“There.”

The entire ceiling collapsed.

Mugino didn’t even have enough time to click her tongue.

The building materials sank down like an antlion pit and the girls were dragged to the lower floor with nothing to grab ahold of.

Mugino gave up on righting herself as she fell and focused on landing without her legs giving out below her. Even with the intruders before her, Ibotanokikouji did not get up.

She did, however, pick Inoue up from her lap and set her down next to her.

“How do you do, ill-bred thieves☆”

“You think a lot yourself for a witch who converts human lives into money.”

“My, my, my. Aren’t you brimming with confidence, Level 5. Have you never bothered to question why it is you find victory wherever you go?”

Ibotanokikouji’s confidence was not broken by being called a witch.

If anything, she seemed to appreciate the insult.

“Your superiors have selected jobs they know a pathetic beginner like you can complete in order to give you a taste for success. You see the same process with drugs and gambling – all of life’s vices tend to work that way. But the free ride ends here. It is now time to take you for everything you are worth. You have reached the point where it all goes downhill.”

“You’re going to reduced to charcoal soon. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Poor thing. You should really try to use your head for once. You are convinced that you can do anything as long as you have Meltdowner, but I am saying that very idea is a falsehood this city’s adults have placed in your head.”

She giggled.

Still seated in her camping chair, she peeled Waniguchi away from her side.

“Do you really believe you can survive anything as long as you have your pride as one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s? Do you really think this city’s darkness is that shallow?”

It was Frenda who stared at her confident smile in disbelief.

That girl knew who they were to an extent. And yet she still looked confident while opposing the Mugino Shizuri.

Mugino did not hesitate, of course.

They only wanted the suitcase, not to hurt the villains or get some kind of information out of them.

She held out her palm and launched a brutal beam straight at the enemy.

But.

Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner bent at a sharp angle and blasted through a wall.

“Wha-?” said Frenda, her face entirely pale.

She may have received more of a shock than Mugino.

Mugino herself narrowed her eyes.

“You…”

“No, I did not use electricity.”

Ibotanokikouji Kaede hadn’t even gotten out of her chair.

She giggled in an elegant but wicked way.

“I am Academy City’s #6.”

She stated it plainly.

She called herself a Level 5. She called herself the esper known as the Dark Side’s Bane.

“It is time you learned that the outdated superiority of the seven Level 5s is a thing of the past. There are compatibility issues to worry about too. And on that note, recall that I am known as the Dark Side’s Bane.”

“Th-that can’t be true.”

Frenda believed in the brand name of Item’s – of Mugino Shizuri’s – strength.

She believed in the rarity of Academy City’s seven Level 5s.

So she could only reach one conclusion.

“In the end, Level 5s aren’t just going to appear everywhere we go!! You claim you’re the mysterious Dark Side’s Bane? A-anyone could come out and say they’re the #6! It’s just a number!”

“Oh, dear. You really are ignorant of the dark side’s depths, aren’t you? There really are Level 5s just about everywhere you go here. Really, you could say the dark side is their true home. The top two go without saying, as does the mystery beam shooter in front of us here. As for the electric one and the psychological one…it’s hard to say. I am reluctant to say they belong to the dark side, but given the projects they’re involved in, I would say they each have one foot in the dark side. My, my. That means your last hope of being right is that guts idiot. Are you sure you want to build up your standards and values atop someone as absurd as him?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Frenda Seivelun was left speechless.

Ibotanokikouji had a point.

What if the Level 5 known as the Dark Side’s Bane was also neck deep in the illicit and illegal?

Wouldn’t that be exactly the kind of shitty outcome you would expect in Academy City?

Besides, Academy City’s Level system was entirely based on how useful an esper was for important fields of research. So with the Level 5s at the top, it was only natural the corrupt adults of the dark side would be all over them no matter the Level 5’s own morals or personality. So they might even be tricked into getting involved.

Ibotanokikouji’s laughter seemed to rule this place.

Her eyes were directly on Level 5 Mugino Shizuri.

“You want to argue the point, but you can’t deny the possibility, can you? How much do the stories you have heard about the #6 really matter? How sure can you be that the gender and age you have pictured in your head is correct? Do you think any of the information you think you know will help you here and now? This is not a rumor, a vague report, or a strange legend. I am here right before you and I am calling myself the #6.”

“Don’t get a big head just cause you’re standing on the same field as me, worm.”

Mugino snapped back in a rage, but she also maintained some rationality deep in her mind.

In other words…

(I couldn’t see it, but she did break through the ceiling. What kind of power does she have?)

Then a voice called down from the broken ceiling.

Apparently not all five of them had fallen.

“Mugino!”

“Stay up there, Takitsubo! Hanano, you’re still up in the ceiling too, right!? Get Takitsubo out of here!! Do whatever it takes to protect her! Got that!?”

Mugino heard some panicked stammering, but it was growing more distant. Hanano was scared but doing as she was told. She was the kind of chicken who got moving when she felt cornered, not the kind that froze up.

Takitsubo’s AIM stalker was a convenient power, but she didn’t need to be on the front line for it to work. She could read the enemy’s location from safety and send the information over via phone.

That left Mugino, Frenda, and Kinuhata here.

Conveniently, only their vanguard had fallen from the ceiling. Had they been lucky or had the enemy been unlucky? Either way, that sort of omen held a surprising amount of power in the world of villains.

“This is like a bad joke.” Kinuhata sounded annoyed. “She’s the #6 Level 5 and a super Tokiwadai student?”

“My, my. You seem surprised to find an elite in the shadows.”

Ibotanokikouji’s expression said she found it puzzling why Kinuhata would question it.

She brought a finger to her chin and cutely tilted her head.

“Girls like me are given a sheltered upbringing cut off from the outside world. Make no noise when you walk, when you eat, or when you laugh. Were they trying to raise a ninja? When your very existence is forced into an unnatural state, it distorts something inside you. And so something must be done to put the hands of the clock back in their proper place. Which means learning the truth of the world, no matter how ugly it might be. And it must be done on a regular basis. Otherwise that luxury hand-wound watch will again fall out of sync with the rest of the world.”

“You’ll go this far to super learn how the real world works?”

“Try to appreciate just how restrictive a life one must live to need all this to avoid being torn apart by the distortion within. This is the problem with you cheap digital watches. You cannot understand the pain of a truly upper class upbringing.”

She sighed in apparent disappointment.

She was not killing to protect herself during a war, nor was she stealing because she was poor and starving.

But she was killing people all the same.

Human cruelty was most noticeable during peacetime when there were no excuses to fall back on.

“Hee hee.”

The Tokiwadai girl softly laughed and directed her graceful hand toward the ceiling.

“By the way, I did not expect you to have a fifth. But did you really think we would sit around long enough for them to escape?”

“Did you think we would sit around?”

Frenda Seivelun and Kinuhata Saiai took a step forward.

Frenda pulled several egg-shaped explosives from her short skirt and stuck them with fuses smaller than cigarettes.

“In the end, did you think we would give you time to attack Takitsubo and Hanano? You could’ve avoided this if you had just handed over the money, but I’ll admit it’s pretty funny you would prefer getting blown up!!”

Mugino noticed something in the middle of Frenda’s shouting. She surreptitiously pulled her phone from her pocket and found an email there: “Focus on the suitcase. You’re our strongest, so you go after it.”

Mugino had wondered where all Frenda’s confidence had come from when she had been so scared of the #6 announcement earlier, but she was only shouting to keep the enemy from hearing the vibration of Mugino’s silenced phone.

The next thing Mugino noticed was that the suitcase in question had vanished. It had been taken by…presumably the art club girl who had vanished along with it.

Mugino and the others no longer cared about the job the voice on the phone had brought them.

They didn’t even need to win the prize money in the bloody Colosseum.

It was all there in the suitcase.

Stealing the 80 billion in money cards was their top priority.

“Sh!!”

Mugino fired her first Meltdowner blast straight past Frenda and Kinuhata’s shoulders. The enemy had already bent one of her beams. Since she still didn’t know what that power was, she didn’t think this one attack would defeat that enemy. The beam was only meant to blind this mysterious other Item(?) while the original Item could exchange their thoughts under the cover of the blast and dust cloud.

“Leave the case to me!!”

“Super will do. This comes down to a compatibility issue with your power, right? We’ll defeat her here if we can, but we’ll at least slow her down while trying to work out what her power is and any other idiosyncrasies she has.”

Mugino tackled through a door and nearly rolled out into the hallway.

She spotted a summer uniform skirt fluttering up ahead. She saw a girl dragging the suitcase a long way down the hallway. She was nearly just a dot from Mugino’s perspective.

(I’d love to just blast her from here, but that would require a concentrated line of destruction skinnier than dried pasta. I wouldn’t want to vaporize the suitcase full of all that money.)

“I’ll just have to get closer!!”

Once she had a plan, she was quick to act on it.

She dashed down the library hallway.

The gloomy girl running up ahead looked back just once before pulling something like a remote from her skirt pocket and pressing the button with her thumb. Mugino heard shouting voices coming from beyond the wall to her side. A pair of double doors were broken down nearby and a bloody wild animal stepped into the hallway.

It was 3m long and weighed more than 250kg.

The white tiger’s cage must have opened.

“Shut up and stay out of this!!!”

Mugino slammed her palm into it. She didn’t even use her power. A vibration of the air rattled a nearby window and the impact propagated from the white tiger’s nose down to the tip of its tail. The blow to the face silenced the 3m beast in a single blow.

A Judgment-looking girl who had somehow ended up a Colosseum contestant was slumped on the floor.

“Y-you saved me? Thank-”

“Outta the way, you ♂♀〒#!!”

After paralyzing the girl with a shout, Mugino continued running down the hallway.

The silver-haired art club girl had escaped into the door at the very end of the long hallway.

That door led into a domed space. It covered the area of about four convenience stores. A round device in the center was covered in optical devices and surrounded by seats arranged in concentric circles.

Mugino glanced around the dark, windowless space.

(A planetarium?)

Was this inside the circular building she had seen alongside the library? But that didn’t really matter.

She could see the art club girl’s back from here. She must not have been able to move very fast while lugging that suitcase around. And Mugino was only interested in that luggage, so she was willing to shoot the girl in the back without warning as long as she wouldn’t hit the suitcase too.

(If I aim for her spine and concentrate the beam down to a line the width of dried pasta, I can kill her instantly with a single shot!)

But that isn’t what actually happened.

The gloomy silver-haired art club girl escaped outside through the emergency exit.

Because…

“Ah ha ha!! If you want to play tag, play with me, not Inoue!!!”

An explosive “roar!!!” came from the wall to Mugino’s side. It arrived so suddenly that Mugino didn’t have time to launch her Meltdowner. She clicked her tongue and rolled backwards.

A giant hunk of metal grazed her while producing a blast of wind.

The seats surrounding the planetarium device were arranged in neat concentric circles. They were a lot like movie theater seats, so they had to be bolted firmly to the floor.

They were all blown away like bowling pins.

A rough estimate said that attack had been deadlier than a freight train. It could have broken through the planetarium’s wall with ease.

The ear-splitting roar continued on and on.

It came from a tanned track girl with her wavy black hair cut to shoulder length.

She had just one leg on something like a skateboard with T-shaped handlebars attached. Was that called a kick scooter?

But the rear of the board, behind where her foot rested, was unusually large. That part alone was about 3m long, the tire was extra thick, and the enlarged cylinder looked a lot an unenclosed jet engine. Of course, it had to have a variety of different propulsion devices in addition to that most obvious one.

The dark side did not always rely on esper powers.

It also made use of next-generation weapons.

“Nice to meet you, colleague. I’m Hanayama Kamitsu of Item. But you can call me the courier.”

“…”

“I’m the courier who delivers death. That might mean directly delivering violence or a bomb, but even when I deliver gold bars or a first aid kit to save someone’s life, it always leads to ruin in the end. That’s just who I am. So be careful when a villain offers you kindness. Ah ha ha. Even a child knows it’s a bad idea to trust a demon’s temptations.”

Only then did she notice Mugino wasn’t responding.

It looked like Hanayama hadn’t even imagined someone might be interested in something more than her “courier” title.

“Hm? Are you still caught up on the Item thing? Did you think only you could use the name? Were you imagining a little © afterwards whenever you said it? Don’t be silly. Academy City’s darkness is never going to kindly protect a villain’s rights!”

The tanned girl laughed as she bent her hips and leaned her upper body against the T-shaped handlebars.

It was the unpleasant laugh of someone who knew the truth.

“Whichever team is more useful to the dark side as a whole gets to call themselves Item. That’s how the system works. Killers who do nothing but spend money aren’t going to cut it. You only destroy – you don’t produce anything. Meanwhile, we do our assigned jobs while also making our own profits, so I’d say we score just a biiiit higher than you.”

Her modified kick scooter gave a deep roar.

“So let’s play, imposter. Our Item will knock all the other candidates out of the running. This impractical proof-of-concept prototype can produce speeds of 1100km/h without leaving the ground. I’ll flatten you with my beloved Dragon Motor!!”

Hanayama didn’t wait for Mugino to respond.

She opened the throttle and melted into streamlines.

Part 9

Frenda Seivelun and Kinuhata Saiai. Ibotanokikouji Kaede and Waniguchi Nokoba.

Two against two.

“Oh?”

The first to speak was the small girl in a ring costume.

“You let your ace leave while your two substitute fighters deal with the Chief and me? You must be confident.”

“Waniguchi-san, should we do the usual?”

“Yes, please.”

They weren’t even given time to prepare.

Something blew across the room and all four walls were blown down. Even the wall behind Kinuhata and Frenda.

That meant the spaces divided by the walls were now connected.

This was now part of the Colosseum arena which was boiling with excitement after a shocking accident.

The crowd fell silent from panic, but it wasn’t long before a booming cheer erupted. All their voices joined to form a single powerful mass of noise. The leader girl tensed her brow in slight concentration.

Waniguchi casually grabbed a microphone that flew over to her on its own.

“Yeehaw!! I know you’re upset about having your fight taken from you, but we have a much more exciting event for you. Get hyped because it’s time for a purge. Hey, hey, yo, yo! A round of applause for the executioner! This livestream is about to get a hell of a lot bloodierrrrrrrrrr!!!

“Outta the way, newbie!!” shouted Frenda.

Some objects fell from her skirt and ruptured. She wanted a vibration. Libraries contained a lot of paper, so they were made to be especially sensitive when detecting earthquakes and electrical fires.

Ibotanokikouji Kaede stuck out her tongue a bit.

“Tch, trying to trip the breaker? How boring. You did manage to stop the livestream, though. And unfortunately, we took up the audience’s phones to keep them from recording the valuable match and uploading it to a video site.”

“In the end, those are professional cameras on wheels, so they’re going to use a wired connection. And in a real TV studio, they’ll have some junior staff member in charge of cable management!”

Having a video of your killings revealed worldwide was about the worst case scenario for people who worked underground jobs, but they had just barely avoided that here. However, this had only triggered an emergency system meant to respond to an earthquake, so the room’s power would be back on in about 10 minutes if no further problems were detected.

“But we’ll still kill you.”

Waniguchi pounded her fists together in front of her flat chest.

The 12-year-old girl gave a belligerent smile as she announced her opponents’ deaths.

“It’ll be an on-site exclusive event now, but that just means we have to make it even more exciting!!”

Waniguchi didn’t hesitate to step forward.

This was probably her role on the team. While the vanguard kept the enemy busy with direct combat, the rear guard would keep their distance and do something else. That rear guard claimed to be the #6. Anything she did was bound to be deadly.

(I super don’t know what that will be, but we can’t give her time to use it!!)

Kinuhata took a powerful step forward of her own.

The two girls both broke into a run. They took the shortest route to close in on each other.

Waniguchi spread her arms.

“No tricks? I like your style. You’re no better than some hunk of rotting meat in the garbage, but you’re at least meat worthy of some respect!!”

Just then, mere moments before they clashed, Kinuhata flew unnaturally to the right. It was fortunate she had Offense Armor. An ordinary human could have been mangled by the blast that hit her.

That wasn’t Waniguchi’s doing and it wasn’t Ibotanokikouji’s power either.

Her ally Frenda had used a bomb to knock her to the side.

A moment later, Waniguchi’s small hand tore through the air. It was less a straight punch and more of a spiraling motion to pull in everything around her hand. The attack missed its target and instead hit a bookcase, tearing it to pieces. She had to be using some kind of esper power. From the looks of that, she could tear a car in two with just the one arm.

“Are you stupid!? In the end, you need to fix your habit of relying on your tough shield to charge in and learn what you can about the enemy’s abilities! You’ll get yourself killed right away doing that on the dark side!!”

Frenda started to say more, but a large form loomed over her.

“Super watch out!!”

Kinuhata had fallen to the floor, but she threw over the heavy metal stand to some stage lighting, hitting Frenda hard enough to knock her away from something.

“I’m pretty sure I can survive longer than someone who stands super still to give a lengthy explanation in the middle of a deadly battle!!”

“You, bgh. I save your life and this is how you repay me? In the end, are you in one hell of a rebellious phase?”

This was no time to be complaining.

A tremor ran through the floor.

Frenda was being targeted by a grizzly bear that stood more than 3 meters tall when up on its hind legs.

“The Colosseum is usually about espers, but this was our insurance in case the white tiger was too powerful and mauled all of today’s contestants. We hoped to distract the audience from the lack of a winner by pitting the two beasts against each other and having people bet on the outcome.”

Ibotanokikouji held a hand to her mouth and laughed with no cage or anything else between her and the enormous bear.

She wasn’t even using the circus tricks of keeping it back with a whip or with fire or making herself look big.

“In the end, does this mean her power is controlling animals!?”

“No, that super doesn’t make sense. How would that explain when she destroyed the ceiling or the walls!? And it was easy to overlook, but she made the microphone fly over super on its own.”

That was true.

However, Ibotanokikouji was in fact demonstrating multiple strange phenomena. She held her palm out toward the grizzly without even glancing its way and it came to a stop. That unpredictable ferocious beast could attack anyone if it was in a bad mood, but she controlled it like she had a remote control.

The agitated beast was freed from whatever bound it and it swung its forelegs toward Frenda since she was closest.

Waniguchi ignored that as she walked forward.

A soft crunching sound followed.

That beast could stand to a height of 3 meters and its muscles would stop a .45 caliber handgun shot, but the 12-year-old girl had grabbed it with her slender arms and crushed it.

Even the bloodthirsty audience was briefly shocked into silence.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………In the end, did that really just happen?”

She hadn’t used a physical blow. That had looked more like a joint lock.

Waniguchi smiled sweetly while drenched in bear blood. That smile contained the perfect combination of innocence and intimidation, making it extremely popular for some.

“Ugh, really? Chief, I know playing with animals is fun and all, but try not to interrupt my fight.”

“Hee hee. Sorry about that. Please do forgive me. I messed up my control a little.”

Frenda was stunned.

An explosive danced meaninglessly in her hand after she froze in her throwing stance.

Would this even affect that girl?

Explosives were a symbol of humanity’s technology and violence, but it felt so inadequate against that smile.

“Leverage Struggle.”

Waniguchi smiled belligerently as she pulled a thick pair of pliers from her pocket.

She grabbed the wall with them and tore it right off with only one arm.

Just like a piece of heavy machinery demolishing a building.

“I’m not trying to hide my power. I’ve shown it off in the execution videos when someone violates the rules, after all. Scissors, crowbars, seesaws, and joint locks – if it uses leverage, I can use it as a weapon. Yeah, I can grab a concrete pillar as big around as your torso and bend it with my bare hands. Hell, I could do the same with one twice as thick.”

“Is this super idiot serious?”

With a splash, Kinuhata grabbed a bucket of machine oil and dumped it over her head. That was an odd thing to find in a library, but it was probably meant for the wheels of the heavy camera equipment. Or maybe it was a flammable weapon meant for use in the Colosseum.

“If super all you can do is amplify the power of joint locks that use leverage, then you can’t do a thing against a straight punch or kick. Simply put, you’re nothing to worry about as long as you don’t grab me. Why would you go out of your way to tell us that? There are super tons of ways of killing you.”

After hearing all that, Waniguchi’s face scrunched up.

She was trying very hard to hold back the tears. All of a sudden, she looked like a normal 12-year-old girl.

“Now, now, Waniguchi-chan. Don’t cry. This is why I told you not to reveal your power like that.”

“Sob. Chief.”

“And even if she is too slippery to grab with your bare hands, you can still hit and tear at her with those pliers. You can also try something trickier by using a seesaw to launch projectiles or yourself. It isn’t very smart to limit your options by focusing solely on barehanded joint locks.”

“You don’t need to attack me tooooooooo!!”

“There, there.”

The sadistic girl (who had made the 12-year-old cry for real) pulled Waniguchi into a comforting hug.

Concentration gathered in Kinuhata’s brow.

“You sure are confident. Do you think you can super win while protecting that idiot and fighting us essentially one-against-two? Let’s super hope you aren’t a meathead too.”

“Hee hee. Yes, you have a point.”

Ibotanokikouji laughed like it had happened to slip out.

It was the amused laugh of a mother who had finally secured a house for her family with a 35-year loan and then learned her daughter was myopically planning to run away from home and live independently.

“But I will still emerge victorious. Can I fight while protecting the weak? Can I win one-against-two? Of course I can. When you are powerful, you can fight back against this unfair world. But I can’t blame you for being too weak to know that.”

“?”

The #6 held a finger to her lips and whispered sweetly.

“You are in luck. You are about to receive a special demonstration of what the Dark Side’s Bane can really do.”

She only needed a single instant to end the fight.

Part 10

The extraordinary engine roared. The din became a physical mass that erupted through the planetarium.

That was Hanayama Kamitsu’s modified kick scooter – the Dragon Motor.

But Mugino Shizuri’s Meltdowner was an extraordinary projectile weapon. It didn’t matter how quickly the enemy accelerated toward her. She had nothing to fear as long as she reduced them to charcoal before they reached her.

Or so she thought.

“Ha ha ha!!”

Hanayama slipped past.

In fact, that giant kick scooter was moving along the planetarium’s domed ceiling. It defied gravity like a rollercoaster.

“Tch. Quit using brute force to defy fluid dynamics!!”

“I’m moving at 1100km/h, remember? That’s why I need my own supply of oxygen. Ah ha ha!! Wah ha ha!! It’s actually a lot harder to keep it on the ground!!”

Even the tanned track girl’s cackling was distorted by her speed. The kick scooter made several passes above Mugino’s head during that one statement.

Bare skin could not survive at that speed, so she likely had some kind of gel generously applied over her entire body.

“Stupid spider girl!!”

“Bingo.”

Hanayama answered the insult with a laugh.

Several metallic clangs followed.

The kick scooter had just about melted into streamlines, but on the enormous rear portion, several mechanical arms spread out to the sides like a spider. Each arm had a sharp heavy metal blade attached to the end.

“Atomic number 92!! These burning swords of depleted uranium can cut through a tank!! Hee hee, you won’t even notice you’ve been cut. Ah ha ha, let’s play a game of human daruma otoshi☆”

The kick scooter moved from the curved dome to the floor and then charged straight toward Mugino. Following it by eye was superhuman enough, so not even Mugino had time to take careful aim. She calculated the length of the skinny arms and swords and then considered whether to dodge left or right.

“Tch!!”

She fired Meltdowner at her feet to leap upwards.

“Oh, you figured it out? There goes my promise to kill you before you noticed.”

Orange sparks scattered a moment later. The wreckage of the seats was sliced through like tofu or jelly even outside the range of the arms and swords.

There were wires.

“That’s why you were right to call me a spider girl.”

Mugino was still hanging in midair, but Hanayama had already made five circuits of the domed ceiling or floor.

Hanayama couldn’t directly contact Mugino in the brief moment she remained airborne, but…

“I won’t let you land. I’ll build a spiderweb of deadly wires. Making wires this thin out of depleted uranium isn’t easy, you know? Now curse your own body weight while I slice you up like tokoroten!!”

Mugino’s fall toward death was almost complete.

She twisted around in midair and launched a Meltdowner beam.

But it didn’t hit the kick scooter.

Her opponent was just too fast.

(Damn, a single straight line just isn’t enough. I need another option to deal with a target that keeps moving out of the way.)

“Ah ha ha!!”

Mugino was trapped within a vortex of laughter.

If she did her best to resist – such as by using the airborne wreckage of the seats or the metal railings as a foothold – she could probably earn herself a few more Meltdowner-powered jumps, but that was all. Once gravity dragged all of those footholds back to the floor, Mugino would fall too and be sliced apart by the wires.

The Dragon Motor continued to circle around her.

The wires were being strung up all over the planetarium and Mugino would be sliced and diced if she fell into them.

“Random shots aren’t going to reach me and they can’t break my wires either!! You can’t keep shooting those beams forever! Bye-bye, Level 5. The Item name is ours now!!!”

Immediately afterwards, part of the planetarium’s domed ceiling was noisily torn away. A mass larger than a refrigerator lost its support and fell, so Hanayama had to quickly turn the T-shaped handlebars. From the kick scooter’s perspective, it had been like the road collapsing up ahead. She escaped unharmed, but she was still thrown off her planned course.

“What just…?”

The track girl found the answer before finishing her question.

She saw holes. Big holes. Random shots had done the trick. Mugino’s Meltdowner had opened several holes of 2m or more in the domed ceiling. The dome itself could no longer support itself and thick cracks ran through it. Once those cracks covered the surface area of the dome, ordinary gravity took control and the walls tore away and fell.

“It doesn’t matter how fast you are if I don’t aim for you directly.”

Mugino used the final airborne foothold and a beam to make another leap. She grinned and aimed her palm in midair.

The girl known as a monster still had confidence to spare.

“You don’t have many options left once you’ve lost your road, courier. And didn’t you say it was hard to keep that thing on the ground?”

“You…bitch!!”

Hanayama swerved this way and that to avoid the “canyons” in the collapsing dome. But as her routes grew more limited, she ultimately had only one path she could take, which made it easy to predict her future location and fire Meltdowner there. Because if Hanayama had slowed down, she would have fallen from the ceiling.

She wasn’t even given a chance to scream.

The beam launched from Mugino’s palm erased the tanned girl and her modified kick scooter from existence.

There was no corpse, or even a single drop of blood, remaining.

Part 11

Mugino heard something sharply slicing through the air.

“Whoops.”

With the domed ceiling destroyed, the taut wires had lost their support. It was like a blade-sharp bowstring suddenly snapping. She would have felt pretty silly losing a limb or her head to this.

But this also meant she didn’t have to worry about being sliced apart when landing on the broken floor.

She had defeated Hanayama Kamitsu, courier of the enemy Item.

But that wasn’t why Mugino was here.

The silver-haired art club girl with the suitcase was nowhere to be found. She had escaped. This was a job for a more intelligence-oriented member, not a combat specialist like Mugino.

She pulled out her phone while focusing on things outside the crumbling planetarium.

She knew exactly who to call.

(I need the support organization to set up a perimeter around the library. Hopefully they can at least catch a glimpse of her. Then Takitsubo just has to register her AIM Diffusion Field to track her even if she tries to flee the solar system.)

“Hanano! Have you gotten Takitsubo to safety? I want her to use AIM Stalker, so tell her to take some Body-”

“'Oh, hello. I have your mysterious 5th member in my custody.”

“Kh.”

Mugino scowled.

She recognized that voice, but it wasn’t who she had called. A call to Hanano Choubi’s phone had been answered by Ibotanokikouji Kaede’s voice, which could only mean one thing.

(She has the worst timing!)

“Please do not blame her for this. Hanano-chan did exactly as you asked. She suppressed her fear and fought tooth and nail to let Takitsubo-chan escape. You should really praise her for her admirable – if ineffective – efforts. But if she no longer has a place on your team now that she has failed you, I am more than willing to invite her to join mine. Hee hee. Sinfully cute, isn’t she?”

“Damn you.”

With a dull metal clang, someone tackled down the half-broken planetarium door. A battered-looking Kinuhata emerged. She was supporting Frenda with her shoulder, but was Frenda even conscious?

“Super sorry.”

Mugino didn’t have time to respond before those two collapsed limply forward.

Ibotanokikouji had to know the safest option was to say nothing at all, but that didn’t stop her.

“Just so you know, they scored surprisingly well escaping from that situation at all. Although my own indecisiveness is really to blame there. If I had been focused on them, they wouldn’t have lasted a second.”

Quiet laughter snuck in over the electronic device.

Ordinarily, this alone would have cost her her life.

“I told you I am the Dark Side’s Bane, didn’t I? You don’t seem to have the brainpower to understand what that means, so I hope this taught you the same lesson on a more instinctual level. This is my territory for hunting the likes of you. You cannot defeat me as long as you remain in this darkness. No matter what.”

“Shut the hell up, worm. That’s just a legend. Propaganda. Are you saying you would’ve self-destructed if we were heroes or schoolgirls from the sunny world?”

“You already know the answer to that.”

Those words seemed to take hold of the atmosphere.

Strange rules seemed to seep out from the cracks.

“None of you are anything more than prey, so when you gather together, you only end up devouring each other,” said Ibotanokikouji. “I am your bane – your predator – so your puny claws and fangs cannot reach me. There are no three-way deadlocks in the food chain. It is a pure top-to-bottom hierarchy.”

“…”

“We used a different insider at the insurance company for each match anyway, so that man was disposable to begin with. We can replace him at any time. Our only failure here is…well, that you are still alive must mean Hanayama-chan is dead. But we can overcome that too by negotiating with Hanano-chan and making her our new teammate. She’s a cute one, so I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to add her to my collection. Our four-girl structure will not be broken. Hee hee. Violence, starvation, sleep deprivation, itching, disgust, panic – there are any number of ways to remove someone’s will from their body. I can’t wait to see her cute attempts at resistance.”

Ibotanokikouji Kaede kept going. She was not done speaking yet.

“A life for a life. That makes us even, doesn’t it?”

Part 12

The city was full of life that Tanabata night.

Colorful light decorated the night sky as fireworks were launched from somewhere.

The meteor shower would apparently be visible soon.

But Item returned straight to their hideout without speaking a word.

Their group of five was incomplete.

They knew that, but there was nothing they could do right away.

“Mugino…”

Takitsubo started to say something, but she stopped.

There was no need to say it out loud.

Mugino had decided it would be safest to give that girl a role so she could escape first with Takitsubo. This was the result. Did everything always have to backfire in the dark side?

The weakest link would always be targeted and bitten off first.

And no matter what their intentions, their wounds and exhaustion were just as real. If they had stayed in the library, they would have been captured too. They had also lost sight of their initial objective, so Mugino and the other three had been forced to return home.

A symbol of a certain girl’s presence could be found in the Fifteen Bells apartment. The bamboo that Frenda had forcibly stuck inside a moth orchid pot had a certain tanzaku blowing in the air conditioning.

I want to be a part of Item! A useful part!!

Please let me find some way to make myself worthwhile to them as thanks for taking me in.

-Hanano Choubi

There was nothing else.

Only silence.

Even the violent Level 5 simply stared at the tanzaku for a while, not speaking a word.

Kinuhata and Frenda didn’t dare speak to the silent tyrant. They sensed a much greater rejection in this than in an enraged outburst.

“Mugino.”

But the track suit girl did quietly call out to her.

And with real force behind her voice.

Takitsubo had been with Mugino the longest, so she had to understand that girl’s violence better than anyone. But that was exactly why only she could safely pass between the countless landmines laid out there.

This was something that Mugino would never, ever say.

But it would reward the foolishly honest and kind newcomer who had arrived to bolster the team’s numbers and had faithfully protected Takitsubo from this dark world.

“This isn’t over yet. We can still rescue Hanano from that fake Item.”

Chapter 3: A Certain Display of Courage, A Secret Reward

Part 1

Dun, dun, dun, duuun!! Welcome to the Giant Croc Hell Dungeon, a life-size escape game!!!

Can you solve all the puzzles in the sunken underground mall of terror and escape back to the surface!?

“In – the – first – place!”

The mood was ruined in record time.

Frenda Seivelun was submerged up to her hips while wearing a fairly revealing swimsuit and another blonde girl was floating in a plastic inner tube small enough to be blown up by mouth. The 7-year-old who adored that inner tube was Frenda’s sister. But since almost all Academy City students lived in school dorms, it wasn’t unusual for family members to live apart.

It was July 14 at 2 PM.

The younger sister happily slapped her hands against the water below the cold fluorescent lighting. As her sister, Frenda was glad she had gotten over her summer cold.

The 7-year-old’s classes had ended after 4th period today, so she had gone here for the afternoon. But it was a mystery why her older sister, whose address and occupation were both unknown, could join her to play at this time of day.

“Academy City is such a strange place. How can they turn an entire underground labyrinth into a pool?”

“In the end, it’s a serious thing. Some kind of disaster response training.”

It was a summer urban flooding response program. They were running a largescale stress test in case a flash flood happened to fill an underground mall, but for most of the students, it might as well have been a temporary pool. And from elementary school to college, students could always get excited about playing in the water. Especially during the summer.

The event also provided a variety of business opportunities. The tablet in Frenda’s hand was one example. By viewing the area around them through its camera, it would augment the scene and even provide quiz-style codes and hints to search out and find.

Bikini Frenda waded through the hip-height water.

“Oh, this code is about cutting the right wire. Hey. In the end, what do you get when you mix yellow and blue?”

“Green!”

(Wait? In the end, is this using the primary colors of light or of color?)

It was a super simple question that even the 7-year-old could answer, but Frenda still suspected it was a trick question. Was that a sign of being a little too into the escape game?

One of AR’s best features was how different services could coexist at the same location. A service would use a location but not occupy it. The swimsuit couple that passed by while viewing a single screen appeared to be enjoying a mountain stream trivia quiz game. The four elementary-aged boys who each had a game system had formed an adventure party to explore the depths of an underwater cave.

Frenda rubbed her little sister’s head and operated the tablet with her other hand.

“Let’s see, we can’t get the thick rubber harpoon until we find a way to get past the electric lock on its box, so next we should solve the transformer puzzle and restore the power. No, in the end, that won’t work. It looks like we’d electrocute ourselves and get a game over if we electrified the flooded section while we’re in it. So do we have to put this entire area on hold? Is there some way to drain the water? Or is there a plastic diving suit that would protect us from the electric shock?”

“Frenda Onee-chan,” said the inner tube girl floating next to her.

At her age, she wanted to splash water on people and swim around when she was at a pool, so she wasn’t all that interested in solving some grand puzzle and cautiously advancing through a dungeon.

“In the first place, where did you buy that swimsuit?”

“What, has your mental carbonation run out already, princess? In the end, you were the one who said you wanted to do the limited-time croc escape.”

Frenda was mostly doing this for a practical test of her new summer eyeliner that claimed it didn’t run even when wet. But that had to remain a secret because the 7-year-old would have begged to wear the makeup too if Frenda mentioned it.

Anyway, about her swimsuit.

“Really, I just bought a random swimsuit at a District 15 shop. It’s called Shocking Beach and it’s the latest product from Mystery Beach. In the end, bikinis have replaced one pieces as the in thing this year. Specifically, the kind where you wear a normal bikini over a decorative thong.”

“Mhh.”

Frenda’s lazy answer didn’t receive quite the response she expected.

The younger sister was only 7, so she was wearing a cat one piece. It had been on sale for only a few thousand yen at an ordinary department store, but fashion wasn’t about the price tag. Frenda was confident in saying there was no better selection for that girl.

But the puffed-out cheeks suggested the princess was displeased.

The world’s cutest little sister frowned and explained.

“In the first place, I don’t like that your swimsuit has a brand and a name. It reminds me of those sneakers the boys show off because they’re supposed to make you run faster.”

“Eh? In the end, this is nothing like that. This isn’t a high-speed racing swimsuit, so it’s not going to change how fast I swim. In fact, with all the gaps in this, I couldn’t swim very well in it at all. The water’s current and viscosity would probably pull it right off of me. Being a grownup is such a pain. I envy you.”

“Hmph!! Now you’re looking down me. I want to wear a swimsuit like yours! In the first place, I want to grow up as soon as possible!!”

“Oh, shut up. In the end, you need to understand that I can’t wear a cat swimsuit like that anymore. It’s so childish I’d die.”

“Childish!? Die!! And I thought it was a little bit grownup because it isn’t a school swimsuit… In the first place, why do you get to be the grownup one!?”

“Because that’s how it works. In the end, you have the upper hand because you can wear that cat swimsuit and I can’t.”

“Hm?”

“And since you can wear either one, you should focus on the one only you’re allowed to wear. Kyah! Sister, you’re so dazzlingly beautiful and cute I can’t look right at you!”

“Ehh? You’ll make me blush if you keep singing my praises like that.”

The inner tube girl held her hands to her cheeks and wiggled. The way she smiled and did that reminded Frenda of a toy that did a wiggling dance in response to sound. Takitsubo had a habit of visiting a general store in rundown District 19 and her tastes were predictably unusual.

Complimenting while taking something away was one of Frenda’s standard big sister tactics for controlling little kids. If you complimented them and compromised, they would get a big head and, if you scolded them and confiscated something, they were guaranteed to rebel, so it could be tricky to get right. Those other tactics wouldn’t make her the perfect big sister who could get the girl to eat the green peas she so disliked.

“Hm. In the first place, I’m feeling kind of chilly.”

“In the end, what do you want to do? Head on up to the surface? It should be plenty hot there at 2 in the afternoon in the middle of the summer.”

They were playing an escape game where they moved around on their own, but you could also save your location to pause the game and leave. That way a larger demographic could enjoy the game with ease. The summer urban flooding response program lasted more than the one day.

“But you’re right. In the end, I could go for a drink and some sugar. If we get some hot sweets, would you prefer pancakes or some chocolate fondue?”

“Hmph! I don’t like it when you use grownup words like fondue.”

Frenda was pretty sure that was just French.

Then again, that cute but silly little sister would probably make a fuss about French things as a whole being too grownup.

“In the first place, I don’t like people who say sweets when they mean dessert.”

“Oh, that complaint I didn’t see coming.”

“Onee-chan…am I childish for wanting a hanetsuki taiyaki?”

“In the end, that makes you a classy grownup.”

That this was enough to cheer her up showed just how much of a child she was.

The thick waterproof shutters had been shut before flooding the underground mall, so all the shops there were closed. The vending machines had their power shut off to prevent any short circuiting, so they had to head all the way up to the surface to buy a drink. That may have been the one major flaw.

“Sigh. I can’t wait for summer break, but in the first place, I don’t want to do the homework or go exercise in the park. The one you do with the radio.”

“Fair warning: I won’t be helping you there, my sister. Don’t come crying to me when August 31 rolls around.”

“Mgyahhhhh!?”

After Frenda stuck a pin the map and finished saving their progress, she attached the tablet to the hook on the side of her bikini bottom and grabbed the decorative cord on the outer edge of her sister’s small inner tube. Dragging her back toward the stairs to the surface was enough for the little sister to shriek with delight.

(Hanano Choubi.)

Frenda thought to herself while towing her swimsuit sister in her inner tube.

The chill of the water dropped another level.

(In the end, I don’t even know if she’s still alive, but who knows what she’ll tell the enemy after they beat her up. Given the very real risk of a surprise attack, abandoning our hideout and escaping is worth considering.)

Worth considering

Did that mean there were other options to consider it against?

After the sisters left the water and climbed the stairs while holding hands, the little sister looked up and spoke to Frenda.

“Onee-chan, is something troubling you?”

“Hm? In the end, what makes you think that?”

“We got a rare chance to play in the water, but you don’t seem to be having much fun.”

Frenda thought about that for a bit.

That her wounds had healed was obvious enough in that swimsuit, but Hanano wasn’t so lucky. She was still suffering. Or in the worst case, she was already gone.

Also…

“In the end, here’s a question for you. Going to the pool is fun. I won’t deny that. But what if that means abandoning a friend to her problems?”

“Then you need to solve those problems so you can all go to the pool together!! Because you can’t enjoy the pool to its fullest otherwise!!”

“I see,” said Frenda before falling silent again.

She thought while holding the hand of her sister, who refused to remove the inner tube around her hips even after leaving the water.

“I went as far as buying the latest swimsuit, but I’m still too preoccupied to have fun. In the end, that must mean I already consider that newbie a friend.”

Frenda Seivelun could make friends with anyone, but she knew it was difficult for any one person people to stand out above the rest. In that sense, her emotions were thin and dry.

That meant something else about this was bothering her.

She considered that while approaching the bright exit with her sister.

(For one, her puppyish behavior doesn’t really fit in the dark side. In the end, does she feel more like a little sister than a colleague?)

Part 2

Fifteen Bells, District 15. Lower levels.

“Super good morning.”

“You seem sleepy. It’s already 3 in the afternoon. That’s snack time, Kinuhata.”

Takitsubo Rikou replied while adjusting the shoulder of her pink track jacket which must have slipped out of place as she moved.

“Oh, it’s only 3? I super shouldn’t have left that theater yet. Yawwwn. Ugh, the movies where they were intentionally trying to make a silly C movie are the worst. Real C movies are great because they were trying to make something good but things went wrong.”

If Kinuhata Saiai wasn’t even aware where the sun was in the sky, it was probably best not to ask her how long she had been in that windowless movie theater. Takitsubo had heard the girl liked movies, but this made it sound like she had been in the theater more than her bedroom at the apartment.

But Takitsubo’s thoughts were interrupted by…

“That apartment feels so gloomy right now. I’m staying close enough to super come running once I’m summoned by phone, but it’s honestly super easier to be out of the apartment. I’m not even sure what has Mugino-san so angry.”

“You were staying away on purpose.”

“I’m super ashamed to admit it. They super have showers at the spas and internet cafes and I can get my sleep when a movie turns out to be bad.”

Expressionless Takitsubo blinked twice.

No matter what happened, she always kept to her usual routine from when she woke up in the morning to when she went to bed at night, so the idea of making herself scarce for the time being hadn’t even occurred to her.

“With Hanano gone, aren’t you guaranteed your spot on Item?”

“I super don’t want to win that way. And I wouldn’t mind if I ended up in the support organization. It’s not like being a super elite of the delinquent world gets you anything special. So as long as I’m super guaranteed an ID and the basic necessities, I’m happy.” Kinuhata breathed a disinterested sigh. “But not if the person who holds the team together is super on edge all the time. If this place isn’t safe, I’d prefer to super leave and find the bare minimum elsewhere.”

Kinuhata didn’t need her home to be in Item. That was why she had started an illicit part-time job before all this had happened.

“She can’t help it,” replied Takitsubo, leaning against a fancy pillar in the mall of luxury shops. “Hanano is gone.”

That put a puzzled look on Kinuhata’s face.

She frowned and chose her words carefully.

“I thought Mugino-san super doesn’t value human life? Why would the loss of a single teammate super affect her like this?”

Financially, they had suffered a loss.

The suitcase filled with 80 billion yen worth of money cards had gotten away from them and they hadn’t received payment for the job from the voice on the phone either. And on top of it all, they had lost one of their team.

“I mean, I get that maybe it hurt her pride to be beaten by a group super calling themselves Item.”

“It’s not about that. Mugino is a kind person who cares deeply about her teammates.”

This time, Kinuhata’s thoughts ground to a complete halt.

Her mind refused to function, so her mouth flapped wordlessly. It took several seconds before she finally got some words out.

“Um, super what? Are we talking about the same tyrant queen here? Was there a movie version that was different???”

“I mean the real Mugino,” insisted Takitsubo. “Kinuhata, why do you think I joined the dark side?”

“Well…hm? That is strange now that I think about it. You can super keep to a normal schedule without anyone getting after you about it, can’t you? That’s super rare on the dark side. You don’t strike me as the kind of person who had to make a run for it after super killing a teacher that pissed her off.”

“I was arrested on false charges.”

She opened up so readily.

Everyone in the dark side had a reason for being there.

“My AIM Stalker is an unusual power, so some lab apparently wanted to gain custody over me. It was probably a project related to this dangerous Body Crystal drug and they wanted to keep it all a secret. I think the plan was to frame me for a crime to get me thrown in prison and then make me disappear once interest in me faded.”

“…”

A legal abduction to facilitate an experiment.

That was a strange phenomenon that could happen when the right person viewed a list of names and pointed at the one they wanted.

Kinuhata herself had been imprisoned and experimented on against her will in the Dark May Project.

Academy City really was shit.

“But Mugino saved me. The case against me was dismissed, but the reason why was never revealed. So I don’t actually know what firepower-obsessed Mugino did.”

Takitsubo smiled thinly as she explained this.

It was the smile of a girl revealing a small admiration.

“She said she wanted an esper who could support her since Meltdowner is too powerful and I don’t think she was lying about that. But if that was really all she wanted, she only needed to put me in a tiny cage in the corner of the room and give me food and water. Or if looking after a human was too burdensome and risky, there are specialized ‘pet sitters’ you can pay to do it for you. This is a city where people really will do things like that if they feel it’s necessary. But Mugino let me choose what clothes I wanted to wear, fed me whatever food I wanted to eat, gave me a room to sleep in, and – most importantly – gave me freedom and safety. I don’t care what anyone says – even Mugino herself – I think that came from a kindness in her that sets aside things like logic or efficiency.”

“So you think she’s super on edge because Hanano-san disappeared? That super doesn’t sound like the Mugino-san I’ve seen.”

“Aren’t you much the same? You don’t feel awkward in the apartment because of Mugino. When you’re there, you feel Hanano’s absence more starkly. Isn’t that what you wanted to avoid? Otherwise, you would never badmouth movies. Or fall asleep during them. I bet that was because you couldn’t focus on what you were watching.”

“…”

Strangely, Takitsubo’s words hit her right where it hurt.

What signals had she picked up coming from Kinuhata? She may have known more about Kinuhata than Kinuhata herself.

It was true. If Kinuhata had dealt with the two enemies in the library, then they couldn’t have gone after Hanano.

“Hanano is a part of Item now,” said Takitsubo. “And so are you for being so bothered by her absence. People who can care about others think everyone feels that way, but the dark side is where the people without those ordinary feelings end up. So the way you and Mugino are feeling shouldn’t be taken lightly.”

“Is that super so?” said Kinuhata as she changed direction.

She approached the elevator hall.

“Hanano-san was captured to super help you escape the Colosseum, right?”

“Yes.” Takitsubo nodded. “That gives me a reason to save her.”

“If I had been the one who didn’t fall from the library ceiling, I would super be in Hanano-san’s position now. I would have played my bodyguard role like normal and got super captured in the same way.”

Kinuhata clicked her tongue.

At times, the dark side had a way of highlighting the irony of fate.

“Damn, that super gives me a reason to fight too.”

“We all have one. No, we don’t even need one. When you get down to it, the question is whether or not you want to risk your own life to save her. I do. I can’t leave Hanano there.”

They boarded the elevator.

A palm scan and the press of a button brought them straight to their top floor hideout.

Kinuhata felt the ascent of the elevator as she watched the LCD floor number display and asked the other girl a question.

“I’ll super give you what you want here, Takitsubo-san. L-let’s just say I’m willing to let you talk me into it just this once. But super what if Mugino-san is against a rescue attempt?”

“Item generally acts on Mugino’s decisions, so I don’t think there is a way of dissenting outside of explaining how I feel.”

Takitsubo stopped there for a moment.

Until…

“But I don’t think that will be an issue.”

The elevator doors opened.

They opened the apartment entrance beyond and walked in.

“I see.”

Kinuhata put a hand on her hip and spoke with exasperation in her voice.

And a hint of amusement.

“She’s super serious about this, huh?”

The living room wall was entirely covered.

Documents and notes concerning the Enemy Item were pasted all across it.

The library that had been used as a Colosseum stage.

The people capable of secretly renting out the public facility, any suspicious payments they received, or any blackmail material.

Possible people who could have acquired and supplied that material.

Their personal information.

Especially anything that could be used to threaten them.

Which targets had a checkered past?

Etc., etc., etc.

The living room was large enough for an indoor game of tennis, but the entire wall was covered like a walking path covered by autumn leaves. It included the special camera equipment, the DJ who was clearly no amateur, the dark web setup, and the audience gathered at the library. Including the important and unimportant, there had to be at least a few thousand notes there in all.

But that must not have felt like enough because the lonely work was still underway.

All as a means of tracking down the enemy.

“…”

Mugino Shizuri did not even look their way. She showed no interest in the freedom and liberation of the midsummer shopping district outside and she continued her work while staring at the wall with the irritation written plain on her face. Mugino was known for being self-centered – for caring more about her nail polish than the foolish enemy’s cries for mercy – but now she had deep bags under her eyes. That was a sign of just how serious she was taking this. How long had it been since she slept? Kinuhata couldn’t say since she had been avoiding the apartment, but Mugino may have been doing this ever since their failure on July 7. That would mean a full week with no real sleep or rest.

Colored yarn extended in all directions from the known information – the library – creating something like a spider web. People, groups, money, buildings, information, equipment, fighting forces – any online information the slightest bit related had been printed out, cut out, and pasted up on the wall. The colored yarn visualized the relationships of interest, friends, enemies, superiors, subordinates, and group affiliations. It was all meant to build a giant web capable of snaring the unseen targets. The suitcase and the 80 billion were technically up there, but they were mostly buried by other notes.

That must not have been her priority any longer.

A few photographs of familiar faces were pasted at the edge of the spiderweb.

Mugino may have found the photos online, but they were the four members of the Enemy Item. The photos were fairly grainy, so she had probably found photos of other people where those four happened to appear in a corner or something.

They were pasted up there like it was nothing, but it was a miracle the spiderweb had managed to capture them at all. Tracking down those elusive girls had to have taken an unhealthy amount of effort and persistence. Mugino was known for vaporizing anything that pissed her off, but she had managed to restrain the part of her that always responded with thoughtless rage.

And.

There was also a photograph of missing Hanano Choubi’s face.

It came from the group selfie Frenda had taken as camouflage while tailing the Colosseum contestant.

Since that was pasted on the wall too, Mugino couldn’t be taking it lightly. In fact, she may have been the real center of the spiderweb, not the library.

Mugino would not let that girl become an unreachable memory.

She was the one who had ordered the girl to take Takitsubo and escape.

It would be one thing if Hanano had screwed up or run off without doing her job, but this was the result of carrying out Mugino’s order.

Mugino had to have her thoughts about Hanano for remaining faithful to the end despite being on the dark side.

She had kept her promise.

So it was only natural to risk your own life to repay the favor.

Takitsubo elbowed Kinuhata in the side and winked.

“See? I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You super win this one.”

Then they heard the front door open without the doorbell ringing.

Someone entered the apartment.

“Sorry. In the end, I know I’m way late. It took forever to buy up all the mackerel cans at the store.”

“You’re last, Frenda? Then you’re buying everyone dinner.”

It had been so long since Mugino spoke.

She may have forgotten how to do so over the past few days, so it came out as a low growl as she glared at the wall. Frenda complained through a cheerful smile.

“Eh? You aren’t even going to ask why I’m late? I had my own preparations to complete.”

That was true.

Frenda Seivelun was carrying so many bags you would think she had run away from home. First, she had a large suitcase in each hand. Then she wore a long mountain climber’s backpack on her back. But that must not have been enough because she had a sling bag worn diagonally across her front. It was July, shortly before summer break, so it was a miracle she hadn’t been taken in for questioning by Anti-Skill or Judgment while wandering around Academy City’s largest shopping district with all that luggage.

And she would have been in serious trouble if she had been taken in for questioning.

She lay down one of the suitcases and inserted a small key. It opened up like a pop-up book, revealing explosives in a variety of shapes and colors. Kinuhata didn’t know what they were all called and she doubted she would understand if Frenda explained what they all were. Since she had gone out of her way to bring them in from outside the hideout, they probably weren’t something that could be safely stored here.

She had gone around collecting them all for this.

Frenda winked.

“In the end, we need to pull out all the stops, right? If I’m going to save a friend, I’m going to give it my all.”

They wanted money, but what for?

As long as they didn’t lose sight of that, those girls would not lose their way.

What was a mere 80 billion worth?

If they couldn’t smile together with everyone they had accepted as a teammate, it wasn’t worth a damn thing.

Part 3

Tokiwadai Middle School was a conspicuous location even for the School Garden, a special area in District 7.

A curvy girl with a decorative braid in her fluffy blonde hair held her hands together in a polite greeting.

“How do you do?”

“Hello, Ibotanokikouji-senpai. Aren’t you running late? I thought your last class today was swimming.”

They exchanged greetings like it was nothing, but the short-haired girl in front of her was in fact one of the seven Level 5s. People like that walking the halls on a daily basis was one reason Tokiwadai was a den of monsters.

Ibotanokikouji Kaede, leader of a brutal dark side team, suppressed a soft sigh.

(Really, the weird thing is for elites like the Level 5s to be lurking in filthy back alleys during the day. As far as Academy City’s hierarchy is concerned, anyway.)

“I will be fine. Changing quickly is one of my talents, so don’t worry.”

“Everything moves at such a carefree pace in Tokiwadai, so I’m not sure I trust your idea of ‘quickly’. You should still probably hurry.”

Ibotanokikouji agreed with that assessment.

Tokiwadai Middle School was like a breathable aquarium.

The teachers and students all moved so maddeningly slowly as they walked down the hall or ate their lunch.

And she had to move just as slowly or everyone would see her as an aberration from the norm.

Like they did the Level 5 girl in front of her who chose to live true to herself.

“I assure you I will be fine. By the way, Misaka-sama, have you ever met the #6 Level 5?”

“I haven’t.” The girl shrugged. “It’s not like the Level 5s have some special community where we all get along. My arguments with the little one are famous, aren’t they? Or not, I don’t really know.”

The other Level 5, Mental Out, could reproduce just about any psychological power, so for better or for worse, this girl was the only one in Tokiwadai who could call her “the little one”. Which did make it seem like those two had some kind of special bond.

She casually shrugged again.

“There are only seven of us, but that doesn’t mean much. We haven’t all become friends and exchanged email addresses or anything. I don’t even know all their names and powers.”

“What if I told you I was the #6?”

“Oh, really?”

After that exchange, they parted with a smile.

Ibotanokikouji turned a corner in the hallway, and…

“Phew.”

Even the bright midsummer sun felt somehow cool inside Tokiwadai. It was a carefree world free of crime where the little birds someone had fed were relaxing on the windowsill.

Ibotanokikouji knew it was careless to attend a swimming class when an enemy dark side team wanted her dead.

Tokiwadai was a safe zone in every possible way. It was physically isolated, no information could leak out, and it was involved in Academy City politics.

But it took away everything except for safety, so staying there too long was stifling.

She felt staying here was like locking yourself up in prison for safety.

“Everything moves at such a carefree pace” was a good way of putting it.

Since she was attending Tokiwadai, Ibotanokikouji obviously was not short on money. She was soaking neck deep in the dark side anyway because she feared she would become cut off from the world at large like Urashima Tarou if she did not leave on occasion. Or to put it another way, she always wanted to be at the leading edge of the world. No matter how rotten the truth was, it helped her adjust the hands of her old watch that fell out of sync so easily.

(The dark side has a bad habit of drawing a solid line between themselves and the rest of the city.)

She raised both arms to stretch her back.

The girls in the hallway were moving carefully but somehow hurriedly just before the break ended, but all of a sudden they parted to the sides of the hallway.

Her power was best suited for killing, but with a bit of creativity, it could also do things like this.

She walked right down the center of the hallway.

(The two worlds are geographically connected and function like two sides of the same coin. This sunlit field is within reach. I haven’t been reborn in another world or anything.)

Mugino’s team would have seen the Tokiwadai uniform in the library and they had to be working feverishly to track her down and rescue the hostage, but they must have assumed their enemy would not be attending school at the predetermined time each day.

She had sacrificed her freedom and bound herself here, so she needed it to cut off all pursuit, both physically and psychologically.

She glanced through a classroom door to check the clock on the wall, but she did not make her way to the locker room. She preferred a deserted location, so she set her sights on the landing of the stairs leading up to the roof. That some cleaning supplies had been left out but no one had reported it meant people barely ever came this way.

Ibotanokikouji nodded.

A sharp sound of splitting air scattered from her feet. Since barely anyone went up to the roof, a “closed for cleaning” sign had been left lying on the landing instead of being put away properly, but it hopped up like she had kicked it. She easily caught it in one hand when it arrived at eye level.

She set it up on the stairs below, transforming the landing up to the roof into her own private territory.

(Of course, if I have to, I can always have them subconsciously avoid the stairs.)

“Now, then.”

She didn’t have much time, so she removed her uniform while operating her phone.

This was why she couldn’t use the locker room in the busy time before swimming class.

She attached an eraser-sized signal spoofing device to the phone’s bottom connector and manually input a number not recorded in the address book. She had to be clever since Tokiwadai had that electrical esper, that psychological esper, and so many more.

“Yes, I can talk now. But I need time to store my uniform, underwear, and valuables in the locker room, lock the locker, and reach the pool on time, so you have 5 minutes for your report.”

“Do they really allow private phones at that fancy school?”

“It won’t be a problem as long as none of you call me in the middle of class.”

She had called the art club girl named Inoue Laspezia.

Her plain, whispered voice was even harder to make out coming from the device.

“And a lot of the girls here don’t have one. Have you heard of love letters? They still write them on paper here. With a spritz of perfume on the stationery, of course.”

“At a girl’s school?”

“The rules in the student handbook never say a word about banning relationships with other students. Although it’s possible the teachers just didn’t think that one through.”

“Whatever. I don’t have anything to do but wait, so I was trying to figure out what to cook today.”

“Do forgive me. The school provides our lunches, so I won’t be able to eat your bento.”

“Don’t worry about it. I found some good eel, so I’m planning to make some jellied eel broth.”

“Eh? But today isn’t even your day to cook.”

“I’m doing it.”

“Jellied eel broth… Just a second. You aren’t planning to serve just that one dish for dinner, are you? Whenever you try to make a Kyoto dish, you always boil it down well past being a stew. Remember when you suddenly said you wanted to make Kyoto-style ramen the other day and ended up toiling over that huge pot for 8 hours? You always insist Waniguchi-chan doesn’t go to the convenience store to tide herself over, so she was so hungry she started rolling on the floor and begging you to let us eat even if it wasn’t perfect.”

“I will always wait as long as it takes. I will wait and wait even if it boils down beyond recognition.”

Ibotanokikouji stared into the distance, thinking she had better get home early today.

But anyway. She unzipped her skirt, leaving her in only her underwear and mentally listed out the things she wanted to check with her dark side teammate.

(We can wear whatever underwear we want, but here I am with matching white for the top and bottom. I’m so like the other girls here it makes me want to die.)

“How are things with the rest of you?” she asked.

“No real issues yet, but Waniguchi is on the verge of losing control, just as you feared. She says she wants to get back at them for what they did to our teammate, but that’s only an excuse. She really just can’t bear having to restrain herself from destroying someone who is at her mercy. …Then again, there are a number of legitimate reasons, like revenge and getting that girl to tell us where all the enemy’s hideouts are.”

Ibotanokikouji went on to remove her underwear on a stairway landing with no walls separating it from the rest of the school.

She held her phone between shoulder and cheek, grabbed the racing-style Tokiwadai swimsuit, and spread it out between her hands.

“You haven’t started without me, have you?”

“Not really. I don’t need you getting after me again, Kaede.”

“That’s a good girl. I will reward you later. I know this is an unusual situation, but we don’t gain anything by letting that get to us. Bear with it. We can all ‘welcome’ our cute newcomer together.”

“…”

Did that silence come from jealousy? But it was cute how Inoue still obeyed.

Ibotanokikouji continued the conversation with her phone held between shoulder and cheek and one leg lifted to put on the swimsuit. The angle of her head messed with her vision, so she had trouble staying balanced.

Hanano Choubi, was it?

“I still think we should have killed her then and there,” said Inoue.

“What’s this? Jealous? I chose to take her in because she’s cute.”

“That’s a bad habit of yours. And ultimately, you either don’t get along or they can’t keep the dark side’s secrets, so we have to kill them and clean up afterwards.”

Inoue sounded legitimately exasperated.

“You really need to understand that we are the only ones who can get along with someone as tricky as you. Because with both people and things, you prefer the ones with the presence of death about them, don’t you?”

“Hee hee. If you’re going to react this cutely, I’m going to do it even more.”

There were two teams and the winner could officially call themselves Item.

That much was true, but there was no real reason to take the risk of searching out the enemy team’s personal information or hideouts. If all they wanted to do was lay the pressure on Mugino Shizuri’s team, they only needed to throw some of their Colosseum money at the adult world. It wouldn’t be immediate, but the damage would slowly but surely accumulate. The frozen bank account was one example. By the time the bubbles were visible on the surface, the bottom of the pot was already boiling away.

So they needed to preserve this situation.

It was crucial they kept themselves in a position where they could make unilateral attacks. If they got greedy and made a mistake, they might lose everything.

“I miss you,” said Inoue.

“Yes, yes. Just wait a while longer. I plan to head straight home today.”

“Thank you. I will have a sea bream hotpot ready for you. First, I slice it thinner than sashimi, then quickly heat it with some turnip…”

“Kyoto seasoning scares me.”

Generally, when a curvier girl attempted to put on a one piece swimsuit, pulling up the shoulder straps alone wasn’t enough to get the chest up. Ibotanokikouji pushed her large chest inside the swimsuit to fix that and finally took the phone from between her shoulder and cheek.

“The system will be back to normal either today or tomorrow. We will wait until then before working together to win over Hanano-chan. If she joins us, we have a new teammate.”

“And if she doesn’t, we kill her and dispose of her body?”

“Oh, you. You aren’t hoping for that outcome, are you?”

No response.

Ibotanokikouji seriously hoped she wouldn’t try the “she was resisting so I had no choice but to kill her” trick.

“I will do whatever you want of me, Kaede. Even if I am bored out of my mind.”

“If you’re bored, why not finally handwash your 2D body pillow covers and hang them up to dry?”

“Bff!?”

Inoue must not have been able to ignore that one because she gave a highly unusual response over the phone.

“And how can you be bored out there where your options are endless?”

Ibotanokikouji tugged on the shoulder strap with her thumb and let it snap back into place.

And she winked.

“You have it so much better than me, suffocating in this luxurious fish tank.”

Part 4

Mugino started with their primary assumption.

The living room wall behind her was covered by the “spiderweb” that only she could make sense of.

The enemy wasn’t here, but the battle had already begun.

“Hanano Choubi is almost certainly still alive.”

“What are you basing that on? I would super like to believe it, but I feel like optimism and wishful thinking are clouding your judgment.”

“Let me rephrase that: most likely, they want to kill her, but can’t.”

“?”

“It’s a simple issue of job allocation.”

Mugino made it sound obvious, but then she noticed the confusion on the other three’s faces.

She changed tack.

“Frenda, you arrived at the apartment with a big pile of explosives earlier, didn’t you?”

“What about it? I don’t want to hear a single word about it only being chemical fertilizer. I pulled out all the stops and even dug out the potassium perchlorate and pentaerythrite this time. Napalm, white phosphorous, thermobaric – I’ve got it all. In the end, I’m a one-girl chemical fireworks show of blood and death!!”

“Why did you bring it yourself instead of asking the support organization?”

Time froze for Frenda Seivelun.

She knew the answer now.

Mugino sighed.

“I’m sure you had other reasons, like not trusting them with those delicate explosives and not wanting to tell them about your hiding spots. But aside from that, you couldn’t even contact them, could you?”

Takitsubo glanced at the colorful spiderweb on the wall behind Mugino.

Mugino nodded before continuing.

“I would much prefer to leave all this research to them. Numbers are the fastest way of gathering intelligence. But that wasn’t an option, so I’m doing it myself.”

It wasn’t that they had run out of money or been abandoned. Mugino’s terrifying reputation was too powerful for that. Anyone who took the rules too lightly was guaranteed to die. Everyone who dealt with her understood that down to the marrow.

So…

“You super said it was about job allocation, didn’t you? In other words, something big is super going on, so none of the teams can gather the personnel needed to support them?”

“Kouzaku Mitori.”

Mugino pointed back over her shoulder to a photo on the wall.

It was the black-haired girl with the Liquid Shadow power who had guarded the insurance company general manager.

“She said she was preparing to attack the Windowless Building and it turns out she wasn’t bluffing. And I honestly respect that,” noted Mugino.

But that was a side issue.

“So all the villains have had their support organizations gathered up for investigation and defense related to that. No one on the dark side can easily dispose of a body right now.”

“Yeah. In the end, covering up the smell is really tricky once it starts to decompose.” Frenda shrugged in annoyance. “Those thugs on the support organizations wouldn’t have much to do otherwise. In Academy City, there’s legal precedent for the particles that cause the scent of human death being used as evidence of a crime, so no one wants to let the decomposition begin in their own hideout.”

The city did have decomposition experts who could cause even those particles to break down and excellent cleaners who could thoroughly remove the particles from the floor and wallpaper, but there weren’t many of them, which made them conspicuous.

That was bad for anyone who wanted to stay hidden.

And since the dark side’s standard(?) corpse disposal infrastructure had ceased to function, the few experts out there would be getting a rush of requests to deal with the already existing corpses. It was best to assume they were too overwhelmed to get in touch with.

“Which means I’m not very worried about Hanano Choubi being killed right now.”

If the problem was that serious, it might seem like they would want to call in a Level 5 like Mugino or a Level 4 like Kinuhata instead of the support organizations, but no one bothered to ask why that hadn’t happened.

Needless to say, if word got out that the situation was that bad, the standard(?) dark side member would use the emergency to demand excessive payment or even plot a coup of their own.

In other words, the people at the top were too concerned to open up the possibility of their pet dog biting them too.

“Mugino. Do you think she really can destroy the Windowless Building?”

“If anyone could destroy that thing, I’d have already done it,” replied Mugino like it was nothing.

She respected the attempt, but she never said it was realistic. Academy City was a shitty place that loved to shatter those kinds of hopes. All while pretending they were the good guys.

Since Kouzaku Mitori’s photo was on the wall and Mugino had an accurate idea of how likely her attack on the Windowless Building was, Mugino must have known their higher ups would be attacked but hadn’t bothered saying anything to them. She had also known Kouzaku’s plan was sure to end in failure, but she hadn’t bothered to warn her.

That was because the sooner this attack on the Board of Directors was solved, the sooner the dark side could return to normal, the sooner the corpse disposal infrastructure could recover, and the sooner Hanano’s life would be at risk.

Item was fighting the bad guys and risking their lives to save a friend.

But even with all that, they still weren’t heroes.

Nor did they want to be known as heroes.

This was evil cannibalizing itself.

“By my prediction, the anti-Kouzaku focus will end tonight at the latest. Then, with the incident over, the dark side will return to normal. So we need to attack that fake Enemy Item’s hideout and kill them all before then.”

It was just like Mugino to not mention saving Hanano there.

They had the enemy’s tail in their grasp, but they did not strike quite yet. If they screwed this up, the enemy would notice, go further into hiding with their hostage, and never return to the surface. So Mugino wanted to focus on gathering as much information as possible for as long as possible to increase the odds of success for their one and only chance.

Takitsubo smiled a little.

“What do we know about those four?”

“Only three really matter because I killed one back on the 7th.”

Mugino next pointed at the four photos she had tracked down and were pasted on the outer edge of the spiderweb.

When two groups clashed, it was important to know how many people and how much funding the enemy had. And in Academy City’s case, it also helped to know as much as you could about the esper powers and next-generation weapons they had available.

Mugino had of course spent a lot of time on this part.

“Ibotanokikouji Kaede.

“Age: 14. Sex: Female. The center of Enemy Item. A legit member of the upper class who attends Tokiwadai Middle School, but the veracity of her claim to being the #6 remains unknown. All that information is locked down too much to get at, but the rumors I’ve heard say Tokiwadai only has two Level 5s. Her power seemed to use wind or shockwaves, but it’s too soon to say for sure. She might have been holding back on her power while we were watching.

“She is a latent sadist who decided to experience the city’s night to distract herself from her oppressive upper class life. The obsession with earning a fortune without her parents’ help is probably a stereotypical rebellious phase. The way she shows no restraint with such a strong power suggests she is not a murder virgin.

“Like I said, details on her self-proclaimed #6 position are unknown.

“Still, the Dark Side’s Bane title may mean her job is to punish other villains.

“This goes without saying, but she’s the most dangerous one.

“Redirect her toward me if it all possible, but if you can’t, then don’t hesitate to run away. For now, we’ll assume she is the #6. You have my authorization to run away during this mission. You should assume contacting her on your own will cost you your life.”

“Hanayama Kamitsu.

“Age: 18. Sex: Female. She was a Level 0, but she called herself the courier and plowed through any pursuers using her Dragon Motor, a kick scooter modified to use a linear engine or jet engine. On the surface, she was a faithful courier, but she was definitely a peeping tom who loved to watch from a distance as the recipient was ruined by whatever she delivered to them. The quick-dried mummy accident in that one District 7 apartment was apparently her doing.

“I’m using the past tense because I killed her on the 7th. She won’t play a role here except for any friends or acquaintances who might hold a grudge, so you can forget the information about her personally.

“The Dragon Motor is mostly a mystery. Has it been mass-produced? If so, can anyone other than her operate it? Who knows. But we can’t deny the possibility, so we need to assume her ghost will return to haunt us in that way.”

“Inoue Laspezia.

“Age: 15. Sex: Female. Known as the modeler. On the art club and makes money counterfeiting various kinds of evidence. Like a hacker, she seems like a support specialist who uses tricks more than direct combat. In addition to creating counterfeit evidence, she also accepts jobs to destroy existing evidence. That’s a good way to earn people’s trust aside from killing.

“I can barely find a bad word about the girl either in the official Anti-Skill records or on the dark side. Almost no one has any complaints with her counterfeit evidence and the vast majority say they saved her. She might be the type who ended up here because she was a little too good at lying.”

“Waniguchi Nokoba.

“Age: 12. Sex: Female. That apparently isn’t her real name, but I couldn’t track down what her name really is. She’s small, but she’s an expert at MMA and has already killed a few people in unofficial matches at her age. Which earned her cheers from the audience, of course. In the Colosseum, she was apparently the executioner who punished anyone who broke the rules. Simply put, she’s just a combat-obsessed freak. It looked like she sought out the dark side herself because she found all the rules and regulations of the official matches too restrictive.

“She goes by a number of titles: the Executioner, the Steel Crusher, the Human Scrapper, the Death Game Queen – you get the picture.

“Since she doesn’t use any next-generation weapons, her ability to break her opponent’s spine and crush them into a giant meatball must come from her esper power.

“Leverage Struggle.

“It apparently lets her increase the force of leverage. It’s probably Level 3 or 4. She focuses on grappling since she’s a meathead, but she could make more creative use of it with some advice from the other members.”

Mugino let out a long breath after getting through all that.

Frenda shrugged.

Mugino had learned a lot, but they still only had the general outlines. Too much remained unknown: was Ibotanokikouji the #6 or not? Would Hanayama’s technology reappear after she had been retired to the graveyard? They didn’t even know Waniguchi’s real name.

And in cases like this, they couldn’t just suspect every little bit of information they had to be on the safe side. A detective who focused on all the details and prepared for the worst even without any definitive evidence would be crushed under the pressure of all the suspicion on the dark side where everything was a muddled mixture of truth and lies.

“In the end, should we find a vulnerable Judgment member and come up with something to threaten them with? Hiring a hacker and making an attack from outside would be even better. Why go to all this trouble when we could just get the data directly from the Bank?”

“In the past, Meltdowner was enough no matter who attacked us.”

Hadn’t Ibotanokikouji said their superiors had given Mugino’s team jobs they could win to give them a taste of victory? And once they had sunk beyond the point of no return, the higher ups could make use of them however they liked.

She had a point, thought Mugino with a slight smile.

And…

“If this goes well, the biggest problem is Ibotanokikouji Kaede at the top. The next biggest would be Waniguchi Nokoba with her deadly martial arts. But we can’t ignore Inoue Laspezia and her ability to frame anyone for just about anything. She could end up being a dark horse. …After all, we don’t even know what her Level is. Is she a Level 0, or has she just not used her power since her job is to counterfeit evidence? They might be saving her as a last resort.”

“If they didn’t have a hostage, you could blow up their hideout from outside, Mugino.”

Takitsubo normally stared blankly into the distance, but now she gave a shocking idea. She may have been pissed too – it just didn’t show on the surface. Partially from the talk of framing people and counterfeiting evidence, but mostly about Hanano who had been captured in order to protect Takitsubo.

Kinuhata cracked her neck.

“Then let’s super think about how we’ll rescue the hostage. That’s our top priority and running away super isn’t going to help. Mugino-san, do you super know where Enemy Item’s base is?”

‘Technically speaking, they have five bases. But four are definitely abandoned, so we can ignore them. The cleaning maids have been in and out, but there was no response. Those bitches must have taken Hanano here – District 11’s abandoned railway tunnel.”

“What? In the end, are you saying those villains are a bunch of slugs who chose to live in filthy concrete ruins covered in graffiti!? When they have a suitcase filled with 80 billion yen!?”

“They did buy a retired luxury train, secretly stick it in the tunnel, and convert it into a hideout. I’m sure it was meant for technical research, but it wasn’t much use given the limited land in Academy City. Anyway, they’re living comfortably there. Any of the city’s train nerds would kill to be in their position. The Nightjar’s restaurant had three Bichelin stars, which means they have the nicest industrial kitchen you could ask for. It should also have a cocktail lounge and a pool car. The track was removed from the abandoned section, but the tunnel itself has power since laying out new power lines would have been too expensive.”

Mugino shrugged.

“But I imagine the real draw for them was the thick tunnel walls and the high-voltage train lines. They have a smart shelter where they don’t have to worry about being discovered from their phone signals, satellite images, or anything in between. Also, a nap room in a luxury beauty salon or a really nice private room in a university hospital aren’t great choices for hiding with a noisy hostage. They could apply violence to keep her silent, but the fear that produces is a double-edged sword. She might just get desperate. And remember that the corpse disposal infrastructure is down, so they can’t kill her even if they want to. As long as they have to hold onto her, they’ll stay to the tunnel.”

It meant a lot to know the location.

But a tunnel was a troublesome location. It had limited entrances and exits, so the enemy was bound to lay out tons of dangerous traps. And while they could blast a hole in the wall of an ordinary building with Meltdowner and make a surprise attack through there, it wasn’t so easy with a thick tunnel.

“You super can’t shoot through that?”

“I can, but the blast would be powerful enough to bring the entire tunnel down.”

Just like with a large arching dam, a tunnel not made with the shield method was not as sturdy as all the thick concrete made it look. Given the total amount of dirt bearing down on the ceiling, the columns were unbelievably skinny and unreliable, so it took some almost artistically creative load balancing to make it work. If that was thrown off, it could all collapse like a house of cards. And that wasn’t an option when you wanted to rescue a hostage, not kill everyone.

“If all the super traps are in the way, I could charge right on in with my Offense Armor. That would clear out all the stationary traps and give you a path.”

“That sounds great, but in the end, could the walls survive all those explosives going off?” Frenda breathed an exasperated sigh. “In the end, I want a map of the tunnel. If that line has been abandoned, the security level for that data should have dropped, right? Do you have that, Mugino?”

“Of course.”

Mugino unfurled two pieces of paper larger than picnic blankets. One was a map of the abandoned railway tunnel. The other was a diagram of the Nightjar train.

“But these are the official plans. This won’t include any of the modifications the Enemy Item made, so be careful.”

“In the end, it’s better than nothing.”

“Hee hee.”

Takitsubo held a hand over her mouth as she laughed.

Mugino gave her a funny look.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t expect you to tell us to ‘be careful’.”

If most people said something like that, they might end up reduced to charcoal.

But not so with Takitsubo.

She could rely on her own instincts to safely cross the minefield that was Mugino Shizuri.

“Tch.”

That was Mugino’s only real response.

She even looked away awkwardly.

Meanwhile, Frenda was busy analyzing. She crawled along the floor like a dog, sticking her butt up despite her short skirt, and even licking her lips.

“In the end, any modifications they made will be built on top of the original structure. No matter how much they change it, the foundation doesn’t lie.”

“You can super tell?”

“All those notes Mugino has on the wall give us enough to know the personalities and habits of each Enemy Item member. And they can’t pull traps out of thin air. Unlike guns and knives, the finished product isn’t packaged up and sold by the arms industry. Mugino, you’ve been tracking down their past actions, right? In the end, how much of your pride did you sacrifice for that?”

“I only went as far as collecting their receipts from the communal trash dump near their hideout.”

“You sure do you love your friends, huh? So in the end, I’ll look into what kinds of traps they could build with that list of materials.”

Part 5

A quiet scraping sound filled the room.

Silver-haired art club girl Inoue Laspezia sat on the sofa engrossed in her work. She used the kind of work magnifying glass that attached to the forehead and wore an apron over her summer uniform. Some might have thought she looked like a cute squirrel, but no one would be smiling when they learned she was working on creating a bloody ashtray as counterfeit evidence.

(I need as many cards in my deck as possible so I can help Kaede.)

She had always been good at lying.

Her adorable appearance, trouble making jokes, and plain whispery voice had helped make people trust her. Everyone had looked down on her and assumed “that boring girl” couldn’t lie and would be easy to manipulate. None of this had been intentional on her part; it had all been a miraculous combination of factors.

What would have happened to the boy who cried wolf if he fooled everyone to the very end? Inoue Laspezia was the answer.

Her parents.

Her teachers.

All of the adults.

It had been like a magic spell from a picture book that let her bend them all to her will. When the young girl had learned to use it, no one had ever scolded her for it, so her malice had only grown. It had been all the worse for how pure and innocent she was. When she shouted “a wolf is coming”, it was enough to send a silly adult to their doom.

She hadn’t wanted money.

She hadn’t resented anyone.

Inoue Laspezia had simply enjoyed the looks on their faces when a single silly false accusation against an adult so much stronger and older than her would cause everything they had built up over their lifetime to come crashing down.

It was such a common desire that it was found in a fable from more than 2000 years ago.

But it was also a villainous act that no one should have been allowed to actually commit.

(Phew.)

Maybe that was why she loved figurines. She also liked the works they were based on. In other words, she was an otaku. The residents of the 2D world never changed no matter how much she lied. They never got mad and they were never deceived. She could never be so open with anyone else. If it weren’t so easy to buy life-size body pillow covers of her favorite characters from the internet, she figured she would probably have kept a corpse in cold storage instead. …The only problem was how bulky those covers were even when rolled up like a scroll. Especially when she inevitably found a new favorite character each new season.

As anyone who had folded a 1000-yen note to play with the famous person’s face can likely imagine, one’s love can be shaken if their body pillow cover gets a crease in it. But if you carelessly iron it, things can get even worse. They fade, twist, and wrinkle so easily. They required a lot more delicate care than a resilient pet.

The pillows had a life of their own.

(Hmm. I know Kaede doesn’t like how much space they take up, so maybe I should finally switch over to VR. Then you just need the one blank body pillow you can touch and hug and the VR adds in whatever image you want. The data won’t deteriorate or take up extra space. On the other hand, you need the equipment, the hookups, enough space to move around in, and the initial setup sounds like a pain.)

“Hey.”

Waniguchi was back.

Inoue chose that as a good time to remove the magnifying glass from her forehead.

The 12-year-old executioner felt a need to resupply at the convenience store once every three hours. Inoue felt that was only the result of Ibotanokikouji spoiling the girl. What she wanted changed based on her mood, so she couldn’t just buy it all at once.

Waniguchi was supposedly an MMA fighter who wasn’t satisfied with the official matches and joined the deadly underground fights…so it was strange how dependent she was on the chips and sodas sold at the convenience store. Meatheads usually only ate protein, chicken tenders, egg whites, and raw vegetables.

“Don’t keep the refrigerator open too long. My jellied broth is setting in there.”

“Oh, you mean the stuff that’s way too bland?”

“Keep saying that and Kyoto will eventually fight back.”

"Does Kyoto transform or something?”

Waniguchi pulled a giant cup of blue condensed milk flavor shaved ice from the bag. You apparently heated it for ten seconds in the microwave to melt it just enough. Then she pointed at Inoue’s forehead.

“You’ve got paint on your face.”

Despite the warning, Inoue did not reach up to touch her face. She couldn’t let her guard down just because she was wearing thin gloves. If she got some red AB-type iron paint on her fingers, it could get all over her. She stopped working and made a mental note to use her small bottle of turpentine later on.

Waniguchi cackled.

“You’re a mess. This is the problem with you indoorsy art club types. How is it you have such a great eye for aesthetics and are so obsessive over making your artwork perfect, but you don’t give a single thought to your clothing or even your posture. Keep stooping over and whispering all the time and the Chief will lose interest in you.”

“Is that so, Aiyose Hiyoko-chan?”

“S-stop! I’ve thrown out that name! I have a much cooler ring name now!! Even the Chief said she loves it!!”

Waniguchi Nokoba quickly held her arms up in an X-shaped defensive stance.

That name apparently qualified as a counterattack.

The mood of the room changed drastically when Ibotanokikouji wasn’t around. These two were all over her, but wanted nothing to do with each other.

The nature of relationships differed depending on who they were with.

“Anyway, where’s the can opener?” asked Waniguchi. “Hello? The can opener? The thing you use to open cans?”

“How stupid do you think I am? I know what a can opener is.”

Inoue set down the small metal file in her right hand, grabbed another tool from the table, and tossed it over.

It was an enormous knife in a synthetic leather sheath. The end of the guard had a claw-like protrusion that could be used as a can opener. Of course, it could also be used to split open an enemy’s forehead in close combat.

Waniguchi caught it one-handed, but then she noticed something.

“Wait. Isn’t this the Chief’s knife?”

“…”

“You swiped one of her things and took it to your room again, didn’t you!? You always do this. Whenever she gives you the opening, you sneak off with her underwear or handkerchief or something.”

2D was the best, but it had no scent or warmth.

And if the pillow smelled like Ibotanokikouji, then whatever Inoue did with the 2D character didn’t count as cheating.

“Say what you like, but I always clean up the evidence, leave it as good as new, and return it before Kaede notices, so you have no proof of anything.”

“What the hell!? And all I ever do is sneak into her bed when she’s away!!”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Are you going to fess up, or do I have to call Anti-Skill on you?”

The arguing continued.

Maybe she wanted to get in the way of Inoue’s work, but Waniguchi stuck around while she drew the large single-edge knife from the synthetic leather sheath and pressed the guard against the edge of the can. She easily got the lid open. She wasn’t just accustomed to doing this. She worked as fast as a sewing machine.

“Didn’t you go to the convenience store?” Inoue sounded a bit exasperated. “And do they even still sell cans you need an opener for?”

“The discount mackerel cans tend to need an opener. And the entire stock has a tendency to just vanish, so they’re weirdly in demand. Also, these old-fashioned canned fruits are the best toppings for shaved ice. The Chief told me about these mandarin oranges soaking in this toxically thick syrup!”

Young Waniguchi brutally licked her lips.

After opening the can, she flipped it upside down and shook it to add her own extra topping to the convenience store shaved ice. Then she added some highly carbonated cider. It was a brute force strategy where she used her youth to protect her against all the sugar. And what had happened to melting it a bit in the microwave?

Waniguchi began mixing the giant shaved ice using the thick plastic straw and spoon the store had provided.

“So how is that girl doing?”

“She’s stopped making any noise, but I think she’s still alive. I removed anything she could use to kill herself.”

“Are you sure? Did you remove her teeth? She could bite her tongue or tear out a thick artery with those.”

“Didn’t we have this discussion already? Just like sticking her head in the sink to drown herself, the odds of her trying it are too low to worry about.”

But she still did go check on Ibotanokikouji’s new friend.

Inoue set her incomplete artwork down on the newspaper laid out on the table, removed her gloves, and rubbed moisturizer on her fingers. The way she scowled at the sound of crunching shaved ice, she may have been concerned some water droplets would end up on her art.

But Inoue’s silent glare only motivated Waniguchi to pour even more cider on and gulp down the half-liquefied shaved ice. She must have forgotten all about the canned mandarin oranges because she started choking, earning her an even harsher glare from the art club girl.

The two of them walked down the long hallway.

The mood changed the instant they opened the door.

Inoue frowned a bit at the hot, humid air that wafted out. It was like arriving in a stranger’s room. And that wasn’t entirely inaccurate. A certain girl had been trapped in there for a week now, so her scent would naturally have started to take over.

A weak groan came from the room.

In a girl’s voice.

“Uh…”

That was Hanano Choubi.

The room was structured like a prefabricated bath, but it had no window, the shower hose had been removed along with any other equipment that could be used for suicide, and the faucet had been wrapped tight with wire to keep it from turning. The tile floor was damp from the humidity and the long-unused electrical outlet was covered in dust. Her hand was handcuffed to the pipe on the wall.

Waniguchi put a hand on her hip.

“Why are we going easy on her? If we really want to lay on the pressure, we should shut off water to the toilet too.”

“Do you want to clean up after that? When we’re having so much trouble with corpse disposal already?”

Violence was not the only card capable of tearing down someone’s psyche and making them obey you like a robot. Pain was just one of the cards that made people’s circumstances impossible to bear. If you dumped them in an environment their sensibilities refused to accept and removed all avenues of escape, their internal logic would easily collapse.

For example…

A week had passed since July 7. For that entire time, she hadn’t been able to take a bath, change her clothes, or even change her underwear. For a teenage girl, that alone would feel impossible to bear.

They didn’t need to torture her or even lay a finger on her.

In these circumstances, keeping her clothes on actually increased the discomfort.

Those two had caused more than their fair share of suffering on the dark side, so they understood this well.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that perfume you sprayed yourself with back there,” said Inoue.

Hanano groaned and her shoulders shook.

“But it was really obvious because it didn’t fit your plain look at all. That stuff was too grownup and expensive for you. Just so you know, I broke it all down with a special biological solvent I have, so not even a trained dog could have followed your trail.”

“And that goes for those toys the Hound Dogs use too,” added Waniguchi with a “kee hee hee” of laughter.

Her expression said she loved shattering people’s hopes.

“That was the only trick she tried,” whispered Inoue. “Kaede said she might make for a teammate with some interesting skills, but what do you think?”

“Who can say. I bet she wasn’t looking past the girl’s appearance. She can’t get enough of the terrified mouse type. But it’s not my decision. And I never said I would always obey every one of the Chief’s orders.”

There was no panic or irritation in Inoue and Waniguchi’s voices.

They didn’t think Hanano would really be their teammate.

If they could win her over before the support organization was back, then she would be. If that didn’t work, they would kill her. They were assuming they would end up killing her and they could just stop working if a miracle did occur.

They had no real pressing reason to keep Hanano alive.

Nor would they gain anything by cruelling torturing her.

They didn’t even need to attack Mugino to eliminate that threat – going into hiding would work just as well. Then they could add onto the frozen bank account to gradually tighten their grip around Mugino’s throat. If the others on the dark side realized they had a chance to attack, those others would do the dirty work for them. They didn’t even need to get Hanano to reveal any of Mugino’s personal information or the location of her hideouts.

In fact, they were hoping to kill her and throw her out as soon as possible, so any excess injuries to the future corpse could turn into unwanted evidence.

But all of that was based on a logical analysis of the situation.

None of that meant much when to someone with a short temper who wouldn’t want to leave an enemy prisoner alone after one of their own was killed. Plus, what if they spared Hanano now and she betrayed Kaede?

“If she won’t listen, why not just strangle her?”

Chained Hanano’s shoulders jumped.

The 12-year-old girl may have been enjoying the effect her words were having on the older girl. She smiled belligerently and kept going.

“Constrict her carotid artery and she’ll be out in less than 10 seconds, but get the windpipe and she’ll suffer a lot longer. You can make her experience the fear of drowning. Do it just right and her stomach will go nuts too.”

“No. You’d enjoy it too much and end up crushing her neckbone.”

“I mean, yeah, but you’re pissed too, aren’t you?”

“Kaede does not want revenge.”

“Again with the Chief.”

“You say that, but you will obey her here, won’t you?”

Hanano’s gaze bounced back and forth like a tennis umpire. Probably because her life was on the line here. She looked truly pitiful.

Then again, this conversation was primarily being used to lay the pressure on her.

This Item had its own support organization, but those convenient workers had been called away for an emergency task. That meant they could not be relied on to dispose of a body, so killing was best avoided.

Kaede had gone out of her way to supply this secret hideout. Think of it like an article of clothing their sweetheart bought them. These girls wanted to avoid stinking up the place with a corpse.

“When do you think those underlings will be back?” asked Waniguchi.

“Who knows.”

“God, a hostage that doesn’t make us a single yen is such a waste of space. How long are we going to keep feeding her? I guess this demonstrates how necessary the support organization is.”

“Are they all that necessary, though?” Inoue rejected that conclusion while whispering down toward the floor. “You say we can’t kill her because you don’t want the stench and rotten corpse juices all over our hideout, right? I can’t stop the actual progression of decomposition, but none of the particles that cause the smell can escape if I strip her corpse naked and coat her in a thick layer of varnish or paint. It’s like packing food in rubber or plastic. We can leave the solidified paint doll in a corner of the room and wait until either the support organization returns or we have the money to pay an expert in cleaning up decomposing corpses.”

A few concerned noises escaped Hanano’s mouth. She had thought the humiliation would at least end when she died, but apparently not.

But she could not bring herself to speak in full words.

Whatever she said, she feared expressing any kind of clear will would send her in an even more devastating direction.

“Can you do that, art club?” asked Waniguchi.

“With Kaede’s permission.”

“If this girl poses any threat at all to the Chief, we should do it right away.”

“It might sadden Kaede, so we should wait for now.”

That was the line between them.

Inoue and Waniguchi glanced toward the door at the same moment.

Ibotanokikouji was not there. She was meditating like she always did. Which in her case meant holding a selfie photoshoot in front of the large mirror while using herself as a dress up doll. It sounded silly, but she had slipped out of Tokiwadai’s strict student dorm for this. She was very serious about it. If she was ever interrupted, she would get after them quite severely, so they had to be careful.

Finally, Waniguchi cracked her neck.

“Chief doesn’t seem too interested in what we’re up to.”

“I do not want to do anything without her express permission. I do not want her mad at me.”

“Yeah, your crocodile tears never work on her for some reason. Even though they’re so shocking even I’ll stop my fist when I see them.”

“Hee hee. That’s what makes her so interesting. She is the only person in the 3D world I can’t fool.”

Of course, violence was Waniguchi’s job. She would clench her fist and destroy someone’s joints in the same way some people would grab the vacuum after spotting some dust or a stain on the floor.

That said…

(The quality of an artist’s work depends on their motivation and mood. It’s so much easier with us athletic types because we’ll do what you say as long as you punch us and give us an order.)

“Hm,” groaned Waniguchi.

She stared at Hanano.

Smiling to try and smooth over an awkward silence was said to be a reflex for the Japanese. Hanano was no exception. It had nothing to do with whether or not she was happy and, in this case, it may have been more of a defense mechanism to avoid angering her captors.

The Colosseum executioner nodded.

Inoue didn’t even have time to stop her.

The little executioner needlessly slammed her fist into the center of the hostage’s face.

Hanano’s choking and sobbing sounded somehow wet. Her breathing may have been clogged by her own blood.

“Are you trying to anger me?” asked Inoue.

“My bad. That ‘you don’t dare touch me’ look of hers pissed me off☆ Does she think she’s some VIP just cause the Chief likes her?”

“Did it have to be her nose? The blood splattered on the wall and the floor. This is going to be a pain to clean up.”

“That’s your main issue? I get the feeling you’re even more pissed off than I am. Cause she’s stealing time you could’ve spent with the Chief.”

Waniguchi casually apologized while leaving the room being used as a cell.

Inoue put her hands on her hips.

“You just returned from the convenience store, right? Did you do a check around the entrance?”

“Just because there are only so many ways in doesn’t mean they’re going to go for the front door. Not even I want to be anywhere near all those traps.”

“Kaede put together those traps, but I worked hard to hide them. Hee hee. Which means it was a joint effort, doesn’t it? In an old war, they apparently painted explosives to look just like coal or rubble and placed them around enemy territory to incite a panic.”

“Damn perfectionist.”

“I guarantee you that no one will notice the high-low mix Kaede and I made.”

“So will they go for the rear entrance? Or they might look for another path we didn’t even consider. Or dig their own hole, I suppose.”

Part 6

“So we’ll be going straight for the front door.”

Frenda grinned in the darkness while holding a multitool knife shaped like a pair of pliers.

The darkness was not due to nightfall.

The abandoned railway tunnel was in District 11. Instead of passing through a mountain, this tunnel sloped down below the surface of the city. The hemispherical entrance was covered by a chain-link fence to keep people from wandering in, but that was easily bypassed.

Mugino Shizuri, Takitsubo Rikou, Kinuhata Saiai.

Frenda Seivelun stayed a step ahead of the other three to lead the way.

Takitsubo tilted her expressionless head.

“You can tell where the traps are?”

“In the end, I’m impressed by your courage if you followed me this far without trusting I could.” Frenda used her tool to cut a colored cord. “Broadly speaking, there are two types of trap: the high-tech electronic ones and the low-tech primitive ones.”

“Primitive like a pitfall?”

“Right. Those go back into BCE times, but the technique was really refined in Vietnam. You only need a shovel to make them and they don’t use any explosives or metal to be detected, so they’re still even more frightening than landmines.”

Takitsubo may have meant her example as a joke, but Frenda took it entirely seriously as she worked.

“Both types have their pros and their cons. High-tech traps using invisible lasers and ultrasound seem convenient at first glance, but they’re easily exposed using special cameras and sensors. For that matter, using electricity at all means they’ll produce a faint magnetic field. You know how sending out sonar all the time would be suicide for a submarine? It’s the same idea. …On the other hand, low-tech mines made from wood and glass are primitive, but they’ll slip right past a metal detector, which means you can’t let your guard down. Of course, they have the flaw of being vulnerable to moisture and impacts, so they easily malfunction.”

“Hm. So super which type is better?”

“There’s no definitive answer. So the optimal trap usage is to have a mixture of both types.”

Frenda moved aside a plastic bottle that had been given a metal cap. A smaller sealed bottle was submerged in the liquid within, so it was likely a detergent bomb made from two substances that were dangerous when mixed. But if Frenda hadn’t moved it, it would have looked like any other trash forgotten and buried in here.

“It’s called using a ‘high-low mix’, although I believe that term was originally used in reference to aircraft. But in the end, if you know from the beginning they’ll be using that strategy, you have nothing to fear.”

“You say that, but if you miss just one of them, we go boom,” said Mugino. “Not that it’s guaranteed to be an explosion.”

“In the end, I can sniff them out,” replied Frenda, using duct tape to seal the lid of a bug cage stuffed full of ants that likely were not native to Japan. “I wonder if this was a rush job for them. I can smell the paint and turpentine they used for the camouflage. Now, I’m not about to place my full trust in a hint left by the enemy, but I doubt this is some kind of strategy. In the end, they were overconfident and made a careless mistake. I bet they didn’t notice the smell because they’ve been surrounded by it for so long – that’s a mistake pros make all the time.”

Minefields were simple but highly effective.

Unlike a two-way fight, they let you defeat the enemy without taking any damage yourself.

But all the effort put into setting up the traps would lead to an assumption that the enemy would never make it past them all and make a direct attack.

If you had the skills necessary to get past the traps, then a frontal assault would function as a surprise attack.

“Takitsubo. In the end, I could use some water,” said Frenda because both her hands were full.

“Yes, yes. You mean this bottle with a straw in it?”

“Grab me a mackerel can too.”

“Are you sure you need that?”

While Frenda ate her fish, she began working less and less until she finally had no more work to do. They had crossed the dense field of traps. Frenda herself actually grew more cautious in case this was a trick to get her to lower her guard, but she never did find anything more.

“We’re almost to the Nightjar,” said Mugino, staring up ahead. “They were probably afraid of getting caught in their own traps, so they only set them up near the distant tunnel entrance.”

While the tunnel was abandoned, it still had power and the fluorescent lights for workers remained lit. Of course, this was the enemy’s home base, so it was possible those lights could be shut off at any moment. They kept their phones at the ready in case they needed them for light, but a large and extremely pointy silhouette was visible even without any extra light.

That was the Nightjar luxury train.

It was also the smart shelter the Enemy Item used when they were being pursued and needed a place to hide.

They heard a sound of straining metal.

Kinuhata immediately rushed out in front of Frenda and was blasted backwards by an explosive sound. Frenda quickly got down on the ground, her eyes wide.

“Eh? Eh?”

“Cough, there’s super something there! Be careful!!”

Something with eight-legs lurked in the shadows.

Several of them, in fact.

The drum-like bodies were likely based on the security robots that patrolled Academy City. The eight legs were abnormally long for those bodies and a .50-caliber machinegun had been forcibly attached to the side. Kinuhata had been knocked back despite her nitrogen shield.

Mugino clicked her tongue and launched her Meltdowner.

She also moved to protect Takitsubo.

“Tch. I thought the thick tunnel blocked any signals from getting in!”

“Signals can still travel inside the tunnel, so these could be remotely controlled from the train.”

That said, they were right next to the high-voltage railway power line, which would interfere with any control signals. It was best to assume these were specialized for autonomous combat.

However…

“They have cameras, so the enemy will know we’re here. This is a race against time now! Frenda, don’t let the enclosed tunnel scare you – it’s time for your bombs! And Takitsubo!!”

“I know,” whispered Takitsubo, pulling something from her track suit pocket.

It looked like a mechanical pencil lead case, but it contained an unsettling white powder.

“I will use it today. If I had just used Body Crystal and recorded Hanano’s AIM Diffusion Field the first time, none of this would have happened. I put her life at risk because I didn’t want to shorten my own lifespan. So I won’t let the Enemy Item escape this tunnel no matter what they try.”

She was essentially saying she would chemically shorten her life.

It was a matter of chemistry, so one plus one would always equal two. There was no room for a miraculous result of three or four. She was implicitly saying she was fine with that. She was saying Hanano Choubi held that much value for her.

Kinuhata got up, clenched her teeth, used her arms to guard, and forcibly held back the machinegun fire while she marched forward and silenced one 8-legged drum with her fist.

“Is Takitsubo-san’s power that super great?”

“In the end, it’s not so much great as it is cheating! I wouldn’t want her as my enemy for a different reason than Mugino!!”

“Don’t call me a cheater. I’m always faithful.”

Takitsubo gave a somewhat off-kilter comment among the explosive gunfire while she licked up the powder she had sprinkled on the back of her hand.

Their enemy had no real reason to keep Hanano alive.

This was a race against time, so they would have a hard time searching through each of the more than 10 train cars while remaining alert for surprise attacks and counterattacks. Ordinarily, it would be downright impossible. But that was where Takitsubo’s AIM Stalker came in handy. One look at the area and she could accurately locate any esper – from Level 0 to Level 5 – by the faint power they emitted. And once she had “recorded” an esper’s power, she could track them even if they fled the solar system.

The fact that the enemy was reliant on traps and unmanned weapons meant their support organization had been recalled. The only people in that long train would be the Enemy Item’s three survivors and their hostage, Hanano.

So Takitsubo only had to identify which cars she sensed people inside.

“It’s not too late.”

Takitsubo forced out the words while covered in a disconcerting amount of perspiration.

If they looked inside an occupied car and found Hanano, they could protect her. If they didn’t find her, everyone inside was an enemy. If all three enemies were together, then blowing up that car would eliminate the threat and rescue the hostage all at once.

“If I can locate the people here, Mugino or Frenda can blow down the train’s wall, and we can rescue Hanano!!”

Takitsubo’s power would set it all in motion, so she didn’t hesitate to use the Body Crystal despite the risk to her.

However…

“…?”

“Takitsubo?”

The faintest furrowing of the brow on Takitsubo’s otherwise expressionless face caught Frenda’s attention while she used an explosive resembling correction tape to burn right through one of the 8-legged drums.

The track suit girl had frozen in place.

“She’s not here,” she said.

“What? Who’s not?”

“I’m not sensing anyone. This train is deserted!!”

Part 7

“Did you hit the switch?”

“I did.”

Still handcuffed to the pipe, Hanano Choubi blankly watched Waniguchi Nokoba and Inoue Laspezia converse in the bathroom where the bathtub and sink’s faucets were locked down with wires.

The confusion must have been plain on her face. Or maybe Waniguchi was simply feeling the relief of finishing a job. Either way, she answered the question Hanano hadn’t asked out loud.

“Your friends have failed.”

“…”

“This isn’t any of our five hideouts. Those dumbasses attacked the wrong place, so we got to watch them through an ultrasound-transmitted camera while remotely activating a trap to fill the entire tunnel with poison gas.”

“When we know they’re looking for us, why wouldn’t we go even deeper into hiding?”

“Who knows if this will actually kill them, but there’s no way they’ll arrive in time to rescue you.”

Hanano’s pupils shrank.

Amused by that reaction, Inoue and Waniguchi continued their conversation.

“Besides, did they really expect a bunch of girls to live somewhere like that? We certainly couldn’t bring Kaede there. Abandoned tunnels are a treasure trove of bugs and rats.”

“Ugh, my thigh is itchy all over again just thinking about it!! I’m only ever living at the top of a skyscraper where there aren’t any mosquitos or flies. And with all the cargo stored in District 11, you can’t find convenience stores anywhere. That’s a dealbreaker for me since I need to resupply once every three hours or I go crazy.”

Inoue noticed something and pulled her phone from her skirt pocket.

She checked an email and looked up.

“This says the support organization has finished their other job. They should be back soon.”

“So what was that other job anyway?”

“The battery’s low,” murmured Inoue while staring at her phone. There was a dusty old power outlet at the bottom of the wall, but she hadn’t brought a power cable in here with her. “Apparently they don’t care if we know now that it’s over. It turns out some moron tried to attack the Board Chairman’s Windowless Building.”

“Damn, I wish that’d worked. Without that shithead at the top, the Chief and I could create our own private love paradise.”

“Sounds like a hell I would do anything in my power to stop.”

The return of the support organizations meant the return of the corpse disposal infrastructure. Which truly eliminated all reason to keep Hanano alive.

“So. With that restriction gone, how should we kill her?”

“You have the worst taste.” Inoue sighed. “What if Kaede hears you beforehand?”

“Nice joke. If she really cared, she’d have stopped meditating and joined us. Besides, she’ll be happy as long as she can surround herself in death. And once she’s bored with that, we can use this girl to frame our enemy. You knew from the get-go we needed to kill her, didn’t you? It’s like the rest of you keep ordering more food but refuse to eat the bell peppers, so I get to eat them all myself. Think of me as the saint of volunteer work who completes all the tasks no one else wants to do.”

The small girl chuckled.

She bent over and leaned toward Hanano.

“I still can’t figure out what such a weak person is doing on the dark side. It takes a pretty dumb person to not follow the most beautiful of rules: survival of the fittest. But not even that rule applies to the dark side. This is a much simpler and purer world.”

“(Survival of the strongest, you mean? That sounds arrogant, but you’re really just trying to make yourself look powerful because you’re afraid of being bullied if people see you as weak, aren’t you? Oh, Hiyoko-chan. Don’t think I didn’t notice that your workout regimen with those rubber balls has nothing at all to do with your power.)”

“I heard every word of that, you Kyoto girl who somehow can’t pass a history test. And use my ring name.”

The way the 12-year-old blushed and cleared her throat was quite cute, but she was also an expert in crushing and destroying people. She wasn’t about to go easy on anyone.

(Kaede isn’t coming to save her. And after she went to the trouble of taking her in.)

Inoue noted that, but she made no attempt to stop Waniguchi.

That was because this happened all the time.

“I have no interest in violence, so can I wait outside until you’re done?” asked Inoue.

“Ehh!? I’m a performer, you know!? I need an audience to really get into it!! Even when I’m punching the sandbag at the gym, there are at least people around! If you’re going to leave, at least call the Chief in here.”

“You must be joking. I can’t let Kaede see this.”

Just before she left, Inoue’s eyebrows twitched. There was something about Hanano. No, it was the lack of any kind of reaction that Inoue found unusual. She should have struggled in any way she could. Sure, she was handcuffed to the pipe, but she would be killed if she did nothing at all. Would she really give up and accept that fate?

Inoue sensed something from the girl’s apparent lack of concern.

The first to take a step forward was plain and whispering Inoue, not short-tempered Waniguchi. The silver-haired art club girl grabbed the chest of Hanano’s clothing and jerked her hand forward. Hanano’s short-sleeved sailor uniform audibly tore, revealing her chest.

Her modest chest was covered by a plain bra.

Something hung at her chest: a cylinder about the size of a AAA battery.

That was a fuse.

The device was used to ensure a destructive explosive would detonate at the desired time. However, the fuse alone was no more powerful than a firecracker.

But it seemed unlikely she would have that hidden away for no reason. If it was her secret prize, it had to be worth entrusting her life in.

“Eh?”

Inoue was speechless. But she did not doubt the reality before her eyes. Her small nose detected a scent other than sweat staining Hanano’s bra.

“Liquid explosive!!??”

Meanwhile…

“You gave me an entire week to work with.”

Hanano managed a weak but unmistakable smile.

When she had asked Frenda to tell her where Mugino’s mines were located, Frenda had told her to find them herself. She had found that heartless at the time, but now she knew better.

You didn’t reveal your teammates’ secrets, even as a joke. If you couldn’t manage that, you could never earn the trust of your team.

Which led to only one possible conclusion: this was the best option available to her.

The triumphant girl spoke with no attempt made to cover the chest exposed by her torn sailor uniform.

“If you want to be villains, you really should have stripped off all my clothing.”

Part 8

Kaboooooom!!!

Enemy Item’s hideout exploded so violently it was visible from the outside.

Part 9

Frenda Seivelun had emerged from the abandoned railway tunnel.

Poison gas was a bad match for Item. Mugino could simply use her firepower to burn the gas – that is, forcibly oxidize it to rewrite the chemical formula – and neutralize it. Frenda could use her explosives in the enclosed tunnel to push all the contaminated air outside. Finally, Kinuhata could protect herself with the thick gas barrier created by her Offense Armor.

But they didn’t feel like they had outsmarted their enemy.

“Get the van moving!! Hurry!”

Mugino shouted and the van’s tires screeched.

She was shouting this command to a driver from the support organization. His presence meant the situation had advanced to the next phase.

The delinquent driver first merged onto a large highway.

“Wh-where exactly do you want to go!?”

“You can see that smoke in the distance, can’t you? Get there as fast as possible!!”

Frenda was desperate because she already knew what this had to be. As an explosives expert, the deep noise was enough for her to identify the type of explosive used.

The young driver’s eyes widened.

“The light’s red.”

“So what!? Don’t let your foot off the gas!! Run the light!!!”

They plowed right through the large intersection at full speed, just barely avoiding a yellow sportscar. A flurry of horns honked at them, but they ignored it.

But this couldn’t last forever.

They crossed a few district borders, but they hit some congestion upon entering District 15.

A few sirens blended together in the distance.

“I can’t get you any further!! It looks like Anti-Skill is directing traffic up ahead…”

“Tch!!”

The girls didn’t bother listening any further and hopped out of the van.

Even now, a blimp floated leisurely by overhead. Its screen read, “A fire in a building along a major road in this area is causing traffic delays. If you are nearby, please watch out for falling objects. For a detailed map of the affected area, please check the traffic management center or the railroad company’s website.”

In the distance, they saw orange light and black smoke rising into the night sky. Firetrucks and ambulances were gathered at the base of the building.

All four of them had to be thinking the same thing: why did it have to be here of all places?

Outside the “keep out” tape, the press and personal phones were filming the scene.

That made it difficult for anyone on the dark side to approach. But quite a few things were flying through the area, even outside the taped-off area.

There was sharp shards of glass, scorched wreckage of what had once been furniture, and a book that looked like it had been chewed up by a fierce dog.

The book contained Umisuna Seiru’s makeup techniques.

Who was it that had so happily embraced that prize up after discovering it at the parasol market?

Silence fell over all four of them.

Their rescue of Hanano Choubi had failed. But this explosion had revealed Enemy Item’s location. More than that, it had probably killed some of them.

But that meant nothing.

Why hadn’t Hanano considered that part?

Frenda recalled an earlier conversation with the girl.

“Oh, right. I forgot to congratulate you for your performance earlier today, Hanano.”

“Thanks.”

Yes.

It had been meant as a reward.

“Without your help, we couldn’t have gotten that data from the insurance company. I doubt Mugino would have given up, but she would’ve relied on brute force to get the job done.”

“Ha…ah ha ha…”

She had disguised herself as the insurance company’s general manager and skillfully retrieved the data.

So Frenda had wanted to give her a reward to welcome her into Item. She had thought the nervous newcomer might relax some if she felt like she had done something for the group as a whole.

“So we owe you one. Is there anything you want us to do for you? Or anything you want from us?”

“U-um, there is actually…”

The response Hanano had given had been a dangerous one: a liquid explosive.

But Frenda had decided that was something you might need to get along in the dark side.

Had that been a mistake?

At the time, Hanano had looked so relieved.

And yet…

“Really? That’s pretty dangerous.”

“Hmm. Think of it as a last resort I can use. I am in the dark side now. And I thought you would be the best person to ask.”

Frenda stared silently at the embers and smoke for a while.

She stared at that overwhelming reality.

She had failed to do anything.

She had plenty more friends, but what did that matter? She had a lengthy list of addresses in her phone, giving her connections to various industries from the light and the dark, but could any of that fill the emptiness she felt now?

The death of just a single person brought so much sorrow.

Needless to say, nothing else could replace her. It wasn’t a simple matter of arithmetic.

Hanano Choubi wasn’t meant to die.

That might sound odd for Item, who killed other members of the dark side all the time, but Frenda refused to accept that argument.

Keep fighting, she thought.

It doesn’t matter how pathetic or unsightly it is.

The villains of Item aren’t meant to have a noble death, you idiot.

Finally, the blonde girl said something no one else there would understand.

“In the end, how was this your last resort? There had to be other options to try, like injuring yourself badly enough the enemy would panic and feel the need to take you to a normal hospital.”

That timid girl must have been pushed to her absolute limits.

She hadn’t wanted to die without accomplishing anything, so she had at least wanted to take them down with her.

Frenda thought that was a foolish decision.

But she couldn’t let Hanano’s courage go to waste. That friend had paid with her life for this hint. That smoke and fire couldn’t be hidden by any dark side tricks.

That was their new starting point. If they used that, they could resume the hunt no matter where the enemy tried to run.

(Damn that girl.)

Frenda’s mind was boiling.

She repeated much the same words, but directed at someone else.

(Damn those girls!!)

She didn’t care about the money.

There was no hostage anymore.

The girls’ objective had changed yet again.

In other words…

Frenda Seivelun bit her lip for a moment. And then…

“You’re dead, counterfeit Iteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem!!!”

Villains were selfish.

They didn’t reflect on their actions, they spoke of payback and debts when they usually rejected the obligations of the righteous world, and they thoroughly criticized and punished other people for their actions. When something went wrong, they found someone else to blame before considering their own mistakes.

But none of that mattered at the moment.

Who cares about Academy City’s #6? What did the Dark Side’s Bane matter?

They would throw out their own goodness if letting their morals restrict their actions would allow their target to escape. If they couldn’t reach the enemy as things were, they would throw it all out. The wolf would break free of all its bonds, race through the night, and tear out the fat pig’s throat with its fangs.

They would choose to become wild animals.

The enraged girl’s howl rang through the night.

The foolish sacrifice had lost their final shield. They no longer had any bargaining chip capable of stopping Item.

The hunt had begun.

Between the Lines 3

It happened all of sudden while she was changing clothes.

“Pant, pant.”

It interrupted the selfie photoshoot she called medication.

Ibotanokikouji Kaede, the curvy girl with a braid in her fluffy blonde hair, held a hand to her head and leaned against the wall like she had bumped into it from the side. That was enough for the wall to collapse like wet cardboard, so she had to quickly catch herself.

The power was out.

A ceiling board had fallen and several wires dangle down with intermittent sparks spilling out. That gave her some light to go on in the darkness.

“Inoue-chan, Waniguchi-chan?”

She had hit her head, so it ached now. The voice that spilled from her mouth was so horribly hoarse she barely recognized it.

What had happened?

An explosion?

She wobbled on her feet as she searched her pocket, but she couldn’t find her phone. She was disinclined to get down and crawl through the dark searching for it. First, she needed to find out what happened.

It didn’t appear to have been a gas explosion from the bathroom or kitchen.

She called her teammates’ names while searching for them.

Her first guess was the room holding the hostage.

She smelled something like fireworks before she even got close. That plus a smoky smell. It looked like the door had been blasted outwards from within. But instead of the bent door lying on the floor, its splinters were stabbing into the opposite wall.

“Please answer me. Inoue-…”

She trailed off.

She could barely see the floor in the dark, so she ended up kicking something. It was about the size of a soccer ball, but heavier.

It was a human head.

Inoue Laspezia’s.

It was burnt beyond recognition and Ibotanokikouji held a hand over her mouth upon seeing it. When she looked away, she saw something hanging on the wall. It reminded her of a coat on a hangar, but that was no coat. It was skewered by a rainstorm of sharp metal scraps and partially embedded in the wall. It took her a second to recognize the motionless object as…a burnt human body.

“Wanagu-”

The name was cut off by the need to swallow the vomit threatening to climb her throat.

The hostage had done something to trigger an explosion.

Emotions could come later. She had to think about what needed to be done now. This explosion would have been visible from the outside. Anti-Skill, the press, and even online news reporters who were little more than gawkers would be rushing here before long. And Mugino’s team would follow this very obvious signal.

Ibotanokikouji’s Item had now lost three members.

She was the only one left.

In that sense, this last-ditch suicide attack had been very successful.

Now wasn’t the time to argue about individual power.

She could never have run the Colosseum and its 80 billion in profits if she let her emotions take control at times like this. Her opponent here wasn’t just a Level 5, but that Level 5’s entire team. That meant they could cover for each other’s vulnerabilities and blind spots. She had to assume she gained nothing from a direct confrontation.

Ibotanokikouji reigned supreme only as a criminal.

As seen in how she ran the Colosseum and how she abducted Hanano, her general policy was to hide herself in the crowds so she could remain invisible.

So in this case…

“I need to run away.”

She made the decision instantly.

This had nothing to do with how strong or weak her power was. Waiting here for an entire group of enemies was out of the question.

She needed to slip away for now.

She could consider how to kill them later.

“I need to escape to safety and gather my strength. And gather people as well.”

Once she made a decision, she was quick to take action.

She grabbed a bent oil lighter originally meant to light aroma candles. At the very least, she needed to gather up and burn or otherwise dispose of the documents, the evidence, the phone she had lost and given up on finding, and anything else incriminating. She left the corpses and burnt wreckage alone while grabbing her Tokiwadai summer uniform and the suitcase containing 80 billion yen. Then she left the destroyed hideout.

It was a room in a District 15 luxury apartment.

Specifically, it was the room on the floor directly below Mugino’s hideout.

(We already had a room soundproofed to use as a cell, so keeping a hostage here was no problem. And we could spy on their conversations using a device that reads the minute vibrations in the pillar running between the two floors.)

“Since the blast broke though the ceiling, did this destroy their hideout too?”

She went straight to the elevator, saw it was already rising from the ground floor, and changed direction. She stepped out onto the emergency stairs, descended just one floor, and pressed the elevator button from there.

The rising elevator would not react to the down button, so she could slip past Anti-Skill, the firefighters, or whoever else was coming up from below.

She boarded the elevator that did arrive and rode it down to the ground floor.

That brought her to the bottom of Fifteen Bells, but the outside was awash with flashing red lights. She had no intention of being seen by the cameras of the press and onlookers gathered just outside the “keep out” tape. She instead left through the back staff entrance.

“You’re dead, counterfeit Iteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem!!!”

She heard a shout from the crowd, but she kept her face impassive.

She poured all of her strength into her facial muscles.

They hadn’t noticed her yet, so the Tokiwadai girl slipped away from the explosion site with her suitcase in tow.

She didn’t risk using her power.

She could have manipulated the crowd on a subconscious level if she wanted, but she preferred to avoid giving herself away with any unnecessary actions.

Ordinary behavior was the ultimate camouflage.

This wasn’t over yet.

The rules hadn’t changed: the name Item went to whoever won in the very end.

Chapter 4: Roar of the Level 5

Part 1

July 21, 8 PM.

“Phew.”

A girl in a summer uniform and a large mask arrived in District 3. She was fortunate her usual makeup tools had survived the explosion. The mask covered most of her face’s identifiable features, but it could stand out too much if she didn’t eliminate the mismatch with her skin.

This was Ibotanokikouji Kaede.

A drum-shaped security robot passed nearby, but she was fine for now. Based on its movement pattern and the direction it pointed its lenses, it was likely on traffic duty. Panicking and running away would only draw its attention. While she was a criminal, there was not a major alert out for her arrest.

This was the northernmost district in Academy City. In addition to luxurious office buildings owned by many major corporations, it contained the North Gate leading to Saitama. That meant it also contained the traffic services and infrastructure related to the gate.

The blimp floating by overhead provided some advice on its screen: “The North Gate is experiencing light congestion. Plan for a 20-30 minute delay. If your vehicle is caught in the congestion, please turn off your engine to cut down on exhaust while idling.”

During the hot night, the roadside mist shower was unpleasant. It stuck to her skin and clothing like sweat.

A small light danced in the corner of her view while a three-blade wind turbine turned.

A couple in yukatas was crouched down, apparently enjoying some sparklers. Their phone backlights were brighter than the fireworks. Die, the upper-class girl cursed silently. It didn’t look like they had requested a security robot with a firefighting attachment to supervise, so she hoped they started a fire and had the worst night of their lives.

Her fluffy blonde hair with a decorative braid swayed as she walked, the suitcase rolled behind her, a bulging sports bag hung over her shoulder, and she entered a building that resembled a giant parking garage.

Ibotanokikouji had arrived at a long-distance bus terminal.

To efficiently process as many large buses as possible, the facility had been expanded to have loading stations on the upper and lower level. The lower level also had a taxi loading zone and a parking lot, but the bus loading stations were the main attraction.

The interior was a bit nicer than a concrete parking garage. Instead of metal signs and sun-faded plastic benches, the waiting area was protected by a glass box and contained large sofas like you would find in an airport lounge. A push of a button on the seat and a waiter from the affiliated café would come to take your order.

“C-11 – the Highway Cradle bound for Aomori should be…this one?” Ibotanokikouji checked the alphanumeric designation provided by the e-ticket displayed on her new phone and made her way to the loading station for the bus she wanted. The bus itself had yet to arrive, so she would have to wait. She opened the clear door, found an empty spot on the sofas covering three of the four walls, and sat down.

“Phew.”

(I would have preferred to go to District 23 and escape overseas by air, but they should be monitoring all of the international flights.)

“Ugh, if only I could fly tonight. Just give me freedom. But that can wait until I escape Kantou and take a domestic flight to another international airport.”

The transportation facility was crowded even at night. There were other middle schoolers like her and even younger elementary schoolers wandering around with large suitcases. Public transportation usually shut down after the city curfew, but today was special.

It was the 21st.

There was a reason Ibotanokikouji had taken the risk of staying hidden until today.

Today was the first day of summer break.

The city had a population of 2.3 million, 80% of whom were students. They wouldn’t all be leaving the city to return home for the break, but a lot more would be leaving today than any other day. Tokiwadai was extremely strict about spending the night away from the dorm (although Ibotanokikouji snuck out of the dorm fairly frequently), but that changed if you were returning home for the break. She had gotten her form filled out a little differently from everyone else, but as long as it let her hide among all these people, she didn’t need to fear pursuit.

She heard a deep rumbling.

A late-night bus large enough to give 30 people ample legroom was climbing a spiraling slope similar to a parking garage.

“…”

Ibotanokikouji was alone after losing her three teammates, but Mugino still had all four members of her team. That meant her opponent was more than just a Level 5. Mugino had multiple support personnel, so fighting her alone would be a bad idea. The strength of Ibotanokikouji’s power didn’t even come into it. If a power compatibility issue occurred in that situation, she would be doomed.

She was at a terrible disadvantage, but the battle wasn’t over yet.

Whoever emerged victorious in the end held the right to the Item name. That condition remained in effect.

It didn’t matter that she was the only one left.

If she gathered new teammates to fill all four slots again, she could redo her version of Item.

She crossed her legs in the waiting area sofa and rubbed her palm gently across the suitcase sitting next to her.

She had created this place for herself – no adult had given it to her. She couldn’t let some stranger have it.

Yes, for herself.

To put that another way, her teammates had only ever been a collection she kept to decorate her hideout according to her tastes. She might watch them, touch them, and adore them, but she would not lament their loss forever.

She loved her Item teammates from the bottom of her heart. That was completely true.

But the sorrow would not last forever.

They could be replaced.

Replaced with an even greater collection which would create an even more comfortable place for herself.

If you lost your treasured possessions in a fire or other disaster, you would not just give up. When you loved something, you would naturally seek out new ones as long as you lived.

Hers was the love of someone looking down at her loved ones from above.

(I have plenty of money. I can rebuild my forces as many times as it takes. So what I need most now is freedom. I need to go into hiding and cut off all pursuit before slowly and gradually acquiring new fighters and finally becoming the hunter once more. Then I can turn the tables on them. I will make them pay for taking my collection from me.)

“This is not over.”

To do this, she needed to escape Mugino’s team’s pursuit, use the adults’ power to gradually weaken them, and end their turn as the hunters without having to lay a single finger on them herself.

For now, that meant escaping outside of Academy City.

“As long as I am undefeated, the threat of Item remains to plague you. I will grow and regenerate and wear you down.”

Part 2

“Mugino.”

“Okay, let’s make a real show of it.”

Part 3

Something exploded, sounding a lot like a giant firework going off.

Then the building shook vertically, sending an icy chill into her gut.

The bus terminal lost all power, but it wasn’t as dark as a movie theater. Similar to a parking garage, it wasn’t fully enclosed, but more than that, the lights directing people to the emergency exits immediately switched on.

The indoor speakers that had been playing light jazz now played an emergency announcement.

But this didn’t sound like a prerecorded synthesized voice.

“Hello, hello, hello☆ This is not a test. In the end, that was a real anti-tank rocket, so I’d evacuate pretty quick if I were you. We’ll try our best not to hit any of you, but we can’t guarantee your safety if you don’t do your best to leave. I repeat, this is not a test.”

At first, the customers stared blankly in the dark.

But the mood changed once another explosion erupted quite close by.

The many customers scattered and fled in every direction.

It was like the glass waiting areas were hornet’s nests someone had poked with a stick.

The panic soon spread to the customers inside the building.

“Now, the rest of this message is for the piece of shit hiding in your midst!! We have the building surrounded by UAV bombers and remote grenade launchers. In the end, we have them programmed to detect your face and gait in the crowd no matter how well you try to hide them. That rectangular cage is our Colosseum ring. Everyone else can get out, but not you!! Take one step outside and you’ll be blown to pieces for breaking the rules!!!”

“…”

Those cursed words probably meant nothing at all to the ordinary people. The terms like “UAV bombers” and “remote grenade launchers” entered their ears, but their brains failed to convert the sounds into anything meaningful. If they had understood the situation, they would have been too afraid to leave.

The only one who understood was the true villain who was all too familiar with unreasonable death, so she was coated with sweat.

(Are they crazy? Launch a large UAV bomber in Academy City, and the airport radar will pick it up. Not to mention these explosions! Do they want to get killed by the unmanned Six Wings that will inevitably be called in!?)

No.

They probably didn’t care about that. It wouldn’t harm them if their unmanned weapons were shot down and the Six Wings attack helicopter might target Ibotanokikouji as well.

Panic clutched her heart, but her rational side insisted that, even if she were identified within the crowd, launching an explosive to kill her there would result in an indiscriminate slaughter. If they were really prepared to do that, they wouldn’t have bothered with a warning and simply blown up the entire building with their automatic 40mm grenade launchers or 300kg air-to-surface missiles.

However. While that did check out logically, could she really, truly predict what a dark side team would do while burning with rage? Would she really be safe heading outside with only that reasoning to go on?

It functioned much like landmines. The possibility of the threat was enough to restrict her actions.

(In that case, it would be better to escape in some way that prevents them from identifying me. That means hiding in a large roofed vehicle. Like in the large luggage space below a bus!!)

Ibotanokikouji’s eyes widened when she saw a uniformed driver rushing out of his large bus.

She left the glass box with her heavy suitcase.

“W-wait. You have the long-distance bus right here. We’re only 400m away from the North Gate. If you leave now…!!”

“You want me to leave with all this going on? They’ll be canceling all the trips anyway!!”

A bus would be perfect for escaping, but could it really avoid all the fleeing customers spread out over the area? The driver joined them. Ibotanokikouji considered using her power to control him, but it wasn’t suited for giving detailed instructions like the operation of machinery.

(If anyone is stupid enough to get in the bus’s way, you should just run them over.)

But only the dark side could carry out a plan like that without hesitation.

She looked to the bus, abandoned and driverless.

(I don’t gain anything by fighting here, but I can escape the city if I get this bus moving. C-could I drive it myself?)

She flinched back from a loud boom of destruction.

This one wasn’t a rocket. Nor did it sound like a collision between buses.

The slightly muffled sound reminded her of compressed gas, or maybe a powerful blow made with nitrogen.

Something was rolling in the shadowy distance. It appeared to be another late-night bus. An impact to its side had bent it and positioned it to block the spiraling slope leading down.

It weighed too much to ram out of the way, so now no one could get any of the large buses out.

“Tch!!”

She made sure to split the smoke and dust with her power so she could still see.

Given this, should she have given up on leaving the city and mixed in with the crowd? Even if she couldn’t escape the UAV bombers and remote grenade launchers, she could have tried going a step further and taking a hostage. They couldn’t aim at her alone with explosives!

But all the potential hostages were gone. Ibotanokikouji Kaede was alone in the bus terminal.

“It’s no use,” said a strange voice.

It was soft, but it still pierced sharply into her chest.

Someone passed by the broken bus and stood directly in front of Ibotanokikouji.

The girl wore a pink track jacket and shorts.

“We aren’t holding anything back. I have already used my Body Crystal and recorded your AIM Diffusion Field. It doesn’t matter what you do now. I can track you even if you escape into outer space or the deep sea.”

As an outsider, Ibotanokikouji couldn’t know if that voice from the darkness was telling the truth.

But there had to be something to it.

That wasn’t any ordinary gaze directed her way. She couldn’t shake an uncomfortable feeling like someone had their finger jabbed right between her eyes. It told her she couldn’t fool this observer no matter what.

“You cannot escape. Not as long as I live. So if you want to escape, you need to kill me and cut off my supernatural pursuit. Do you understand the rules now?” Ibotanokikouji had figured that much out on her own.

She kicked away the suitcase and tossed aside the sports bag she carried over her shoulder. Even the mask was in the way now. She didn’t want anything obstructing her breathing even slightly, so she removed the cloth and let it fall to her feet.

That tracking power did sound like a problem, but at the same time, each esper could only have one power. That meant this girl could not shoot fire or electricity from her hand or otherwise fight directly.

A powerless location-tracking esper should have been hiding in the bushes holding a sniper rifle, but here she was standing in front of Ibotanokikouji. How stupid could she be? If she was going to set things up this perfectly, there was no good reason for Ibotanokikouji to not just kill her here.

But Ibotanokikouji did not step forward.

In fact, she stepped back.

A dreadful beam of light swept through the air from the side. The bus terminal was structured a lot like a parking garage and this blew away a few of the thick concrete columns supporting the ceiling. If she hadn’t noticed and moved toward the tracker girl, the first blast would have vaporized her upper body.

Yes, this was a battle between the two Items.

So of course this girl was here.

“Level 5. Mugino…Shizuri!?”

“What’s wrong, self-proclaimed #6!? Surely this isn’t enough to strip you of that title!?”

Mugino licked her lips as she approached.

The 80 billion yen in the suitcase no longer mattered.

She was much more interested in taking her time to shred that girl’s reputation.

So her first priority was…

“Kinuhata!!”

“Super on it. We’ve trapped her here, so I’ll super take Takitsubo-san and disappear.”

Kinuhata stuck to her initial role as Takitsubo’s shield by pulling on Takitsubo’s hand and gently guiding her into the darkness.

That was the right decision.

Ibotanokikouji’s win condition was not defeating Mugino – it was killing Takitsubo to stop being tracked. Fail to take those priorities into account, and Mugino’s side would lose another member.

They weren’t going to let that happen again.

Their target didn’t even bother suppressing her tongue click at this point.

“Tch!! Outta the way!”

“You’d better kill me quick, fancy girl. Otherwise Takitsubo will get away.”

Mugino slid to the side to position herself in between.

They walked in parallel for a bit.

The roles of hunter and hunted had been flipped by this one strategy. Mugino grinned and basked in a wolfish joy over stealing the advantages of being on the run.

The Tokiwadai girl could no longer escape.

Even if she intended to escape the city, she had to stop here and fight.

“You and your cheap tricks!”

“We’re not as bad as you. You decide who the good guys are in any given situation based on what benefits you the most.”

Sadism took a type of talent. Violence was just violence. To derive sweet pleasure from it required a different outlook. In a world full of targets, what you focused on differed from situation to situation. Like a cup of water in the desert or a single breath of air when buried alive. A sadist had a talent for determining what exactly that was for someone and destroying it with pinpoint accuracy.

Mugino had reached that point.

She sneered while embracing her own body and expanding a sweet barrier thickly around herself.

“So how should we handle this fight to the death. If we’re going to do it, I might as well hear your preference.”

“Oh? Have you forgotten I still get a say here? Don’t just decide what we’re about to do.”

“Have you forgotten who I am? The two team leaders are about to engage in single combat. Talking with the enemy to try and understand them would just be a bore.”

“Talking? Yes.” Ibotanokikouji laughed too. “That would be silly.”

Mugino Shizuri and Ibotanokikouji Kaede both launched something from their palm.

They didn’t bother waiting to confirm the rules. Both of them had lost at least one of their teammates. Talking couldn’t change the amount of spilled blood.

Part 4

Even so.

Mugino thought to herself while the anger sizzled at her heart.

Her Meltdowner beams had scorched the air and blown up a few empty buses. That much was fine.

Some of them had bent in a way she hadn’t expected, but she had seen the phenomenon before.

Ibotanokikouji immediately jumped to the side to dodge in the opposite direction, but it made sense she could get lucky there if she was guessing that a surprise attack was coming.

But what had Ibotanokikouji done?

A small red line ran across Mugino’s cheek. It was like a cut from a blade.

A moment later, the concrete wall behind Mugino was torn apart and blown away. Almost like an invisible wrecking ball had hit it.

She had seen this before when Ibotanokikouji had first demonstrated her power.

Or more accurately, she hadn’t seen it. But it was definitely there.

It was deadly.

(She claims to be the #6, but what kind of power is she actually using!?)

“Ha ha!!”

Instead of widening her eyes in shock, Mugino laughed.

By controlling her tension, she transformed it into elation and pleasure.

Like an athlete entering the zone.

Thrill rides and horror movies spent huge sums of money to safely mass produce thrills.

Since the villains were cut off from the benefits of justice and goodness, the primary rule for survival in the shadows was to convert anything and everything into sustenance.

So Mugino swallowed the lump of unease and advanced while firing Meltdowner beams as fast as she could. She ignored the passive rule of drawing out a circle that surrounded the target.

Without knowing the details of that girl’s power, she couldn’t calculate the risk of charging straight in or taking a more roundabout path.

So only one thing mattered now.

(I need to get her to use her power for defense even if I have to force it. Then I can reveal her secrets while staying safe myself!!)

Firing a machinegun could stop the enemy troops. If you didn’t want a single shot coming back your way, it was safest to pin them behind cover by firing ten thousand bullets of your own. Just like a turtle afraid to stick out its head and move because someone was poking at its shell.

And Meltdowner could do more than pin someone in place.

It could pierce through concrete pillars, abandoned buses, or any other cover. Mugino could keep most any enemy on the run without needing any evasive action of her own. She would fry them before they had a chance to counterattack.

Ultimately, she didn’t really need to reveal Ibotanokikouji’s power. Hanano had paid with her life to blow up Waniguchi and Inoue while the latter’s power remained a mystery and that was perfectly fine.

However…

“Have you already forgotten? Do try to remember what I said before.”

Ibotanokikouji spoke from beyond the barrage. She still had time to talk with all this going on.

“Are you stupid? Your high score came from working through a list of easier small scale jobs chosen specifically to give you a taste for blood and victory. Just because you can power your way through some jobs on easy mode doesn’t mean every battle you come across will be as easy.”

It happened directly ahead of her. The thick beam launched from Mugino’s palm exploded shockingly close and scattered light everywhere.

“!?”

“Oh? The first time, our powers intersected and your beam bent, but this must be what happens when they perfectly overlap.”

Silence fell, like time had stopped for a moment.

About 10m away, Ibotanokikouji was holding out her own palm.

She didn’t even try to show off her high score of remaining unscathed in these circumstances.

Both girls came to a stop and glared at each other.

And like they had timed it…

“What the hell did you do, #6?”

“Guess, Level 5.”

The frozen time seemed to explode back into motion.

Mugino knew it would be neutralized, but she still launched another Meltdowner directly at her enemy. She dashed in the instant Ibotanokikouji held out her palm and the thick beam exploded. She kept low to duck below the scattering light to arrive right in front of her target.

She aimed her open palm up at Ibotanokikouji’s face.

Her right hand was spread as wide as it would go.

(Let’s see if you can block it when I grab your face and fire at point-blank range, Dark Side’s Bane!!)

A deep roar followed.

But that wasn’t Meltdowner. Mugino was the one who was knocked away, spinning through the air.

Ibotanokikouji winked, stuck out her tongue a bit, and whispered softly.

“I won’t even let you touch me.”

Mugino ended up embedded in the dented side of a bus, but she still smiled belligerently.

A trickle of red dripped down from her right temple, but she ignored that.

“That tells me even you’d be in trouble if I did manage to grab your face.”

“My, my. You have no imagination at all, do you? It could be a bluff to make you think that.”

“If it was, you wouldn’t be so desperate to suggest it might be. If you had me fooled like you want, you would have no reason to raise any doubts.”

Ibotanokikouji fell silent.

That was the correct response.

But it revealed a concern over saying too much, so Mugino still docked her some points.

“And unlike your first attack, I wasn’t hit by enough force to destroy a thick concrete wall. Why not? I can’t think of any reason why you would hold back just now.”

Something exploded.

Ibotanokikouji held her palm out in a different direction and Mugino quickly rolled to the side. A long-distance bus large enough to give 30 people ample legroom rolled onto its side after being torn through like an aluminum can in a ferocious dog’s jaws.

The diesel fuel ignited and the sprinklers on the ceiling produced their artificial rain.

But Mugino was still the one laughing.

“Ha ha ha!! Now I see. I’ve figured you out, you flimsy #6! Unlike my Meltdowner, your power doesn’t always have the same strength. It wavers with your resolve. And it’s something you need a fair amount of distance from to feel safe!!”

“What’s it like having such an empty head? What good is bragging about the enemy’s specs to the enemy?”

She moved to the left and right.

Ibotanokikouji ran sharp zigzags through the sprinkler rain to approach Mugino.

It could be hard to tell because Mugino was often reckless in her usage, but her power had such high firepower that it wasn’t well suited for close range. She could end up catching herself in the blast. And for whatever reason, Ibotanokikouji could deflect Meltdowner’s thick beams or convert them into a burst of sparkles. And each of those sparkles was still powerful enough to melt steel. Even Mugino would be in trouble if she took one of those to the head.

Thus, close range was a problem for both Mugino and Ibotanokikouji.

Realizing that, Mugino held out her hand and clicked her tongue.

“Tch. Please spare me some revelation that we’re birds of a feather!!”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Unlike you, I am brimming with nobility and class.”

Their arms and legs intersected.

Ibotanokikouji knocked Mugino’s wrist aside just before she could fire Meltdowner and then swept her leg toward the leg supporting Mugino as her own power spun her around.

(Damn, do they teach an elegant self-defense class at her rich girl school!?)

Mugino had already been off balance, so she completely fell backwards while Ibotanokikouji remained standing and aimed her palm down at her.

The concrete ground was torn through and dented in.

If Mugino hadn’t rolled aside so quickly, the same would have happened to her face.

And Ibotanokikouji had no real reason to stop with the one attack. Just like Mugino had fired repeatedly to pin her down earlier.

The floor was torn into over and over, so Mugino kept rolling until she fired Meltdowner into the floor, using the recoil to jump. She landed on a bus roof, so Ibotanokikouji used her invisible power to blow away the bus below her.

Ibotanokikouji must have found something odd because she frowned while still holding her arm out. Mugino grinned while easily jumping down from the rolling bus’s roof to the concrete floor.

“I can’t see that power, but I can still tell when you use it.”

“…”

“The outstretched hand is obvious, but you also wrinkle your brow a bit when you use your power. You screwed up not killing Kinuhata back at the library. Oh, don’t bother trying. That kind of habit isn’t something you can fix that quick. And once I know the direction and timing in advance, I have nothing to fear.”

Ibotanokikouji ignored that and continued using her power, but Mugino dove sharply below another bus. The bus bent, flew into the air, and rolled, but Mugino was no longer there.

“Your power is invisible.” Mugino landed in a different position, the soles of her boots crunching the glass scattered across the floor. “But since it shatters glass instead of passing through, it isn’t made of light like a laser. It can’t be electromagnetic either since it doesn’t produce any sparks when it hits the side or door of a bus. I’ve heard fluorescent lights light up on their own when exposed to microwaves, but I don’t see that either. So what invisible attacks does that leave? Ultrasonic waves? Controlling the wind or air?”

“Shouldn’t you consider the possibility of simple telekinesis?”

“Not a chance. If your power was that convenient and had this kind of range, you wouldn’t need to rely on projectile attacks. You’d just grab me directly and lift me up into the air like the crane game.”

Also, the enemy wasn’t going to provide the correct answer like that.

Anything she said would either work to her advantage or just be a silly mistake.

Just like Mugino was explaining all this to try and find confirmation in her opponent’s expressions.

“I’ve been hit by your power twice already. The first time it grazed my cheek and cut me, but the second time I took a direct hit and was knocked through the air. That second one has to be the real one. When it seemed to cut my cheek, it was more like I just barely dodged the attack and it tugged on my skin hard enough to tear it. Which suggests…”

Something swept through the air.

But Mugino kicked off a concrete pillar, performed a midair flip, and dodged the invisible attack moving by at hip height.

She didn’t advertise her ability to perform acrobatics, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do it.

“Pressure. But instead of fanning it out around yourself, you narrow it down to a point like a spear.”

Ibotanokikouji immediately leaped to the right and took aim with her palm.

She didn’t hesitate.

“Killer Press!!”

The concrete pillar was easily destroyed, but Mugino was no longer there.

The Level 5 took one step to the side like a bullfighter.

“Yeah, that’s a pretty self-explanatory name. But you shouldn’t have given it away even if I already knew the answer. Did you panic? It didn’t help you at all.”

“You…”

“Currents of water, air, mud, lava, or any other particle have viscosity and they will naturally flow along the path of least resistance. I believe that’s the foundation of fluid dynamics. So by launching a point of invisible but powerful pressure, you can bend the path my Meltdowner takes as it travels through the air as a current. Just like river water traveling around a bridge support in the middle.”

Ibotanokikouji herself had said it wasn’t electricity when they first met.

To be blunt, that hint had been unnecessary.

When attacking that lab, Mugino herself had pushed back a grenade blast with her power.

With her specialty in pressure, Ibotanokikouji would be able to do even more than that. It was possible she could even turn a human into a diamond.

“And it makes sense now why your projectiles are weaker at close range. You can hit anything you want with a point of powerful pressure, but it isn’t convenient enough to break the law of action and reaction. If you did shatter my body, the blood, gore, and bone fragments would be launched in every direction with the force of a bullet. Your own survival comes first for you, so you don’t want to be killed by that gruesome scattershot. So of course you hold back when you get close.”

They glared at each other.

They were past the point of hiding anything.

“Kinuhata and Frenda told me they saw you make a microphone float in the air and that you controlled a grizzly to sow chaos during the battle in the Colosseum.”

But…

“Your power isn’t just the control of gravity or of animals. You used pressure to knock the microphone into the air like a billiards ball. You used pressure to hit the switch to the grizzly’s cage. Animal paths form in the mountains and forests because animals naturally choose the path of least resistance when walking, leading them the same way every time. So you used a minute amount of pressure to redirect the grizzly away from one direction and toward another.”

“Well done. Killer Press allows me to design my own animal paths by creating invisible bushes and thickets. And the sensation is so subtle the influenced target isn’t even aware they are being controlled.”

That was when Mugino’s voice dropped in tone.

“So what about back at the Colosseum, when Hanano fled with Takitsubo?”

“That’s right. You gave the command, but I influenced the direction they chose.”

If not for that, the timid chihuahua of a girl would still be there by Mugino’s side.

Mugino hadn’t seen it herself, but the way the Tokiwadai girls had parted to clear the way for Ibotanokikouji had been an application of that technique.

She sent out a minute amount of pressure to distance people.

When water, air, bugs, lava, powder, or humans moved as a group, they followed the fluid movement of particles. That meant they had viscosity and would naturally flow along the path of least resistance. That fact was the basis of fluid dynamics.

(But if that’s her power, then our trump card will work against her!!)

Mugino roared.

But not to intimidate Ibotanokikouji and not to break the limiter in her mind.

Her opponent was the only member of her team left, but Item was fighting together.

“Frenda!! It’s time to trap her!! Restore the power!!!”

She was answered by the fluorescent lights.

The darkness was instantly swept away. But that was not necessarily a good thing.

Mugino and Ibotanokikouji had done a lot of damage to the walls and ceiling. Thick severed cables were hanging down here and there. And thanks to the bus fire, the sprinklers had covered the floor in water.

What happened when the power was restored in that state?

A deep staticky noise erupted out.

Mugino had already launched Meltdowner downwards and used the recoil to leap onto a bus roof. The bus’s rubber tires would prevent the electricity from traveling up from the floor.

“Tch!!”

Ibotanokikouji could not use her power like a rocket in that way. Instead, she dented in another bus’s metal side with her hands to climb up to the roof like it had a ladder.

“Oh, and I thought you would cling to the wall like you had suction cups. Can you only increase pressure, not decrease it? C’mon, is that all a student of the famous Tokiwadai can do? Ha ha! And you expect me to believe you’re the #6? What can those filthy adults research using that!? This is just sad!”

“Kh, your words mean nothing to me!!!”

Stun guns were sold with a voltage of over a million, but this was very different. The much greater current and constant exposure to the entire body made this much more dangerous. The couple hundred volts used for large appliances could easily kill a human with the help of some highly conductive water.

But aside from that, Ibotanokikouji whispered across the valley of deadly electricity between their buses.

“You do know the suitcase containing the 80 billion is still down there, don’t you? The money cards are made of plastic and, while the suitcase is stab and bomb resistant, it is still made of plastic. That deadly electricity will be enough to melt the cards, rendering them useless.

“That’s only 80 billion. Did you really think I was still fighting for that, you piece of shit?

A Meltdowner beam immediately flew out.

Ibotanokikouji used her own power to destroy a ceiling panel and twist a thick pipe she swung on like a pendulum to reach another bus. And she launched her Killer Press to target Mugino from a distance.

Both missed attacks caused great destruction. Concrete pillars broke, cracks ran through the ceiling, and the buses providing the only safe footing rolled and exploded. The glass waiting areas were destroyed in the process.

Ibotanokikouji pointed her open palm elsewhere.

With a loud noise, a fallen square ceiling panel shot straight up from the ground. She had shoved the pressure spear between the floor and the panel to launch it up like kicking up a soccer ball.

And as soon as it arrived at her eye level atop the bus…

“Killer Press!!”

She knocked the thin panel outwards with all her might.

The many sharp fragments pierced by the invisible pressure spear fanned out to slice through the air. Just like the break shot in pool. They roughly filled the direction Mugino was.

They were stopped by a sizzling sound.

Mugino had eliminated the glass shards flying her way. Her beam had bent and flown elsewhere, but it had managed to secure her safety first.

“Didn’t I say once I know the direction and timing in advance, I have nothing to fear?”

“…”

“But that was neat. I never thought of scattering the attack to hit someone who won’t stay still.”

Mugino sneered as she continued firing her ultra-powerful projectiles, but she couldn’t get a hit in on Ibotanokikouji. She blew away buses and broke pillars, but Ibotanokikouji remained alive.

In fact…

“!!”

When a beam was on course to hit, it would bend unnaturally.

Ibotanokikouji raised her own voice while holding her hand out.

“And I told you all matter follows the path of least resistance!! All I have to do is launch my Killer Press straight ahead and your Meltdowner will bend at least a little. You can’t hit me!!”

“Odd. Did I say anything about trying to hit you?”

“No, you can’t mean…?”

“I flipped that card over to scare you. Worked, didn’t it?”

This whole time, Mugino had not been aiming for Ibotanokikouji who kept jumping from bus to bus to escape. She had been aiming just a bit lower, vaporizing the remaining buses to remove her opponent’s movement options.

Ibotanokikouji’s face finally clouded over.

“Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Did you think I didn’t, you fancy slut?”

Another explosion laid the pressure on Ibotanokikouji.

With only one bus remaining, the two of them naturally had to rely on the same one. The two wicked girls faced each other like they were preparing for a duel.

Both espers used high firepower projectiles.

The next exchange of attacks would end this.

Ibotanokikouji held her palm straight out, but then something unexpected happened.

Mugino aimed her palm as well.

But instead of aiming at her enemy, she aimed at the roof of the final bus they were standing on.

There was no more safe ground.

Destroy this bus, and there was no escape. They would be forced onto the wet and electrified floor of death.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Really?”

The word seemed to slip out of Ibotanokikouji’s mouth.

Whatever she was feeling, her lips formed an oddly tense smile.

And Mugino was not shaken.

“My objective here isn’t survival. If it were, I could’ve given up on avenging Hanano and let you run off.”

So she didn’t hesitate.

“All of us in Item were only after one thing this whole time: your shitty head!!”

A beam flashed out, the metal noisily vaporized, and all the fuel in the bus ignited.

Ibotanokikouji instinctually jumped from the roof…and then her thoughts ground to a halt.

That had been the right choice if she was to live as long as possible.

But where was she supposed to land? The floor was covered in electrified water, so her heart would stop the instant her feet touched down!!

Meanwhile…

“No…way?”

Mugino had thrown herself into the air as well, but she was holding her palm out toward Ibotanokikouji.

She didn’t even consider what would happen a second from now.

In this single snapshot in time, she would do what she could to personally kill a girl who was going to die regardless. Her piercing gaze conveyed only an intention to give Ibotanokikouji more than just an electric death.

Yes.

If Ibotanokikouji hadn’t been so focused on survival, she too might have launched a final attack. But in her fear, she had looked away from the battle. Her thoughts had abandoned the battle as they raced in search of some way to survive.

It was too late now to grip the trigger again.

The light of a high-speed particle-wave cannon was already gathering in Mugino’s palm.

In that final moment, her violent lips formed a few words.

Those words didn’t even reference Ibotanokikouji Kaede, the leader of Enemy Item.

Even her own life was a secondary concern.

“Are you watching, Hanano?” whispered Mugino.

The beam erupted forth.

The brutal beam that had so often mercilessly sliced through Academy City’s darkness struck Ibotanokikouji at the hip and vaporized her lower half.

Mugino was no longer focused on the 80 billion or her own life.

Once she decided someone had to die, she threw out all of those normal calculations.

That Level 5 wasn’t concerned with how her attack’s immense energy nearly blew away her own body.

Epilogue: A Path Leading to Another Time, Another Place

July 28, 2 PM. Below the blazing sun in the blue sky.

“So in the end, it’s all over.”

“It really is, Frenda.”

Frenda Seivelun and Takitsubo Rikou were watching a distant funeral hall with a chimney as large as a bathhouse’s. Hanano Choubi’s funeral was being held there. With their binoculars, they could see a middle-aged man and woman in funeral garb clinging to the solid coffin and weeping.

Hanano Choubi had died on the 14th.

It had taken this long because of the circumstances of her death.

She had died in an explosion.

She had chosen that fate herself when she decided rescue would not arrive in time.

It wasn’t clear if her remains were even inside that coffin. Generally, the remains were given some makeup before the funeral. They would even be sewed up or have wounds hidden if necessary, but not even an embalming expert could fix that.

Umisuna Seiru’s makeup techniques.

Frenda placed the half-read book and an unopened mackerel can on the railing of the park viewing platform and silently clasped her hands toward the funeral hall’s chimney in the distance. Her hair was blonde, but she did this in the Japanese style.

After watching that, Takitsubo fidgeted with her jacket’s pockets and spoke.

“Her remains were retrieved. That means Hanano protected herself.”

“Takitsubo?”

“If someone on the dark side had killed her and tried to cover it up, there wouldn’t have been any remains to find. They would have erased the existence of the murder case altogether, so it would have ended with a declaration that she had voluntarily gone missing. Even though there’s nowhere to run in a city surrounded by thick walls.”

Frenda had chosen to live in a world that worked that way.

It was summer break and the bright sun was shining down, but she had turned her back on that to soak up to her shoulders in muddy darkness.

She could not go to the funeral hall and light incense for Hanano.

Frenda viewed the distant funeral hall through her binoculars again.

She focused on the weeping parents more than the empty coffin.

She couldn’t help but think about her own 7-year-old sister.

“They say nothing remains once you’re dead, but in the end, that’s a lie, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“In the end, we could die at any time in this job. I thought I was prepared for that…but I don’t want to put my family through this.”

“Then you just have to survive.”

“No matter what that means?”

That place wasn’t found on any map.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of thick concrete. The labyrinth of underground passageways looked like a shelter built by someone who believed the world was ending or a death game where victims would be trapped inside to fight to the death. Mugino Shizuri and Kinuhata Saiai walked through it, side by side.

“I still can’t believe that Enemy Item had their base directly below our apartment. I guess they were always a step ahead of us because they were spying on our conversations.”

“Super what will we do about a new hideout?”

“Yeah, that one was destroyed in the explosion. I want to avoid District 15 for the time being. I did like the feel of District 3 where we finally hunted down Ibotanokikouji Kaede. Are there any luxury apartments or private salons there?”

They were chatting as they walked, but that suddenly stopped.

Or maybe this was something Kinuhata had wanted to ask for a while.

“I really didn’t expect what super happened after that. Well, I can understand with Takitsubo-san, but…”

“You mean Frenda?”

Mugino looked confused.

And she didn’t stop walking.

“She makes tons of friends in both worlds because she can easily sympathize with the situations people find themselves in. She’s a bomb freak who enjoys killing, but it also isn’t hard to get her crying. That’s good from a human perspective, but working on the dark side like that will break you.”

“That super isn’t what I meant,” cut in Kinuhata.

They continued through the dreary underground passageway that had a way of wearing down the human heart.

“Mugino, I meant how you took such care and super held back on making our attack. I expected you to grab us by the collar and demand we head out right away.”

“That’s what I would normally do, but I wasn’t in the mood. And I liked that.”

“?”

“Calling me Mugino. Much better than adding an honorific.”

That was all it took for them to speed up their pace.

Out of nowhere, Kinuhata asked another question.

“So do you super think it was true?”

“Think what was?”

“That she was the Dark Side’s Bane. She super claimed to be the #6, remember?”

Mugino shrugged.

“She was probably bluffing.”

“That’s super what I thought.” Kinuhata didn’t seem very surprised. “Whether they know it or not, any of the Level 5s is going to be part of some super major project. It’s just the ones who act like good people super haven’t been told about it. So if we had killed one, all the awful grownups benefiting from her would have done something to get back at us, but there’s been super no sign of that.”

“Also, if she was a Level 5, then her DNA map would be extremely valuable, so attempting to leave the city with falsified documents could have gotten her assassinated. Not even I want to try crossing that outer wall. The people at the top would try to prevent the leak of the DNA map by killing the escapee even if it meant firing a powerful contactless weapon through their apartment wall.”

For that matter, a hot-blooded hero dedicated to defeating villains wouldn’t try to run away the instant she was cornered. That would only allow the weak to be devoured.

Then something occurred to Mugino.

(That would mean the real Dark Side’s Bane is on another level entirely, wouldn’t it?)

“I had to kill her before getting a clear answer out of her, so wouldn’t that mean she was actually pretty powerful?”

“Takitsubo-san was really mad about that stunt you pulled. It’s just super hard to tell since her face is always blank. I know it was necessary, but you did electrocute yourself.”

“I am technically an electrical esper, you know? I have more of a resistance than your average person.”

“Your heart super stopped for two full minutes.”

“Item fights as a team. I knew someone would collect me after I died and my heart stopped.”

“She super said she would kill you if you got in the habit of it.”

That was pretty extreme for Takitsubo, who normally acted as their brakes. So Kinuhata wasn’t joking about her being really mad.

Then Mugino’s phone rang.

She pulled it from her pocket but didn’t stop walking.

“Hello, hello.”

“First off, good work. I am glad you managed to clean up the Colosseum incident. Just to be sure, you can accept payments now, I hope? The support organization reported that the money cards they had collected were melted by a deadly electrical current.”

“Huh? I thought you’d be more upset. Wasn’t that insurance company general manager our client? We did kind of abduct him and beat him up.”

“If you took this job seriously, you should already know that isn’t an issue. Academy City needs to keep its six-stage hierarchy of Level 0 to Level 5. Two or more conflicting systems of evaluating power would only lead to chaos. The city leaders didn’t want that happening.”

“I get the feeling you actually hoped that general manager would get dragged into all the trouble.”

“Based on what?”

Mugino kept walking through the gloomy underground passageway, taking a deep breath of the damp air.

And she gave her answer.

“Kouzaku Mitori. It sounds like you managed to stop her attack on the Windowless Building, but if her plan had worked out, that general manager would have been the one who gave her the information she needed. And someone would need to punish the traitor to tie up all the loose ends.”

“I am much too nice to give you any answers here☆ You would be in a lot of trouble if you knew anything for sure.”

“In other words, the higher ups are up to their usual tricks: hammering down any nail that sticks up too far.”

Mugino’s mood changed.

It silently but definitely grew colder.

“How much did you know about there being two Items? The two teams were set up to fight and whichever one survived got to officially keep the name. But when you get down to it, victory there doesn’t really give us anything of value, does it?”

“…”

“The higher ups wanted to hammer down a nail. Or some real idiot thought they would earn some points by taking the initiative. That means that girl with the stupidly long name stepped on someone’s toes. The battle over the title of Item was set up to eliminate that group for violating some kind of taboo.”

“Are you asking for confirmation? Again, you would be in a lot of trouble if you knew for sure.”

The voice on the phone’s tone dropped a bit.

An ordinary person would conclude this was a landmine. Anyone familiar with Academy City’s darkness, and with the voice on the phone who held special privileges there, would immediately back off. Even if they just barely managed to avoid the landmine, they would be stuck trembling in bed with the covers pulled up over their head for three days and three nights afterwards.

But these shadowy girls were different.

Kinuhata checked the map, nodded twice, and pulled a can of spray paint from her pocket. She roughly drew out a 2m circle covering the dank concrete wall.

That just left firing Meltdowner.

The underground shelter was designed to resist a nuclear attack, but the wall instantly raised the white flag. The girls now had a hole large enough to easily step through.

“Wha-?”

A woman in her mid-20s sat on the other side.

She wore a gawdy tight skirt suit and wore her long black hair pulled back.

She looked a lot like the highly sophisticated secretary of a major corporate president. Surprisingly, her desk contained an old-fashioned black telephone and a reel-to-reel tape recorder the size of a bookcase. Those were old enough to be rare. Although they had to be heavily modified in unseen ways to convert the analog signal to digital, encrypt it, and replace it with quantum bits.

(Her love of analog suggests she’s with the District 19 faction.)

“Wh-wh-wha-buh-wuh!?”

The voice on the phone was too shocked to speak, so Mugino casually spoke instead.

“When the wall’s more than a meter thick, I end up with a magma tunnel. Kinuhata, cool the edge of the hole for me.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll use my liquid nitrogen tank for that, but as you can see, this is an enclosed space. Don’t get yourself killed by super breathing in the nitrogen vapor.”

“Your eyes are bugging to an amusing degree, but I get the feeling you want to know how we got here. Or is it the ‘why’ you’re interested in? God, this is the problem with you utter morons who believe you’re safe just because you’re sitting in the important seat given to you by some higher up you’ve never even seen. Everything’s two sides of the same coin, so we all live in the same world.”

Mugino grinned and stepped inside.

But that smile didn’t mean she was truly enjoying this.

“I don’t even care about that shitty excuse for another Item. We still haven’t settled things concerning Hanano Choubi. If you were only trying to direct us toward killing them, then that chihuahua’s death was just an unfortunate accident. It never would’ve happened if you hadn’t recruited her and sent her to us.”

“And from the moment you approved of that Item vs. Item duel, you were dragging us into some show business nonsense. That alone deserves the super death penalty if you ask me.”

A faceless, nameless mysterious voice only had an advantage while they remained hidden.

Once they were identified and tracked down in person, all they could do was tremble in fear.

Strip away the shiny Academy City gilding and only shit remained.

The voice on the phone fell from her chair and clutched the black phone’s receiver to her large chest, but she could not call anyone for help. This was the secret hideout she had created for herself. The soldiers didn’t know she was here. If she did shout for help, her subordinates wouldn’t even find the entrance.

“So anyway, this is our revenge. …Prepare yourself, string puller. I will never forgive a traitor. Did you get that? I will never, ever forgive a traitor. Yes, I know a real idiot like you needs to hear something several times before it sinks in, so let’s try it again. I will never forgive a traitor. Did it get through your thick skull yet?”

“We super couldn’t let Takitsubo-san see this part. Or Frenda-san who’s been acting uncharacteristically nervous.”

This was just as unreasonable as letting someone sink to the bottom of the ocean in the bulletproof car they had designed to be indestructible.

The dark side was all about using people’s circumstances against them.

“R-really?”

“Ibotanokikouji Kaede asked the same thing.”

“I am the voice on the phone. I am the manager of the darkness – the one and only chosen one who passes down all the orders. If you kill your commander, it will be seen as a rebellion. You will make an enemy of Academy City’s 2.3 million people!!”

“Like I told her, I’m not fighting to survive.”

She was Meltdowner, one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s.

Mugino Shizuri held her palm out, gathered a beam there, and smiled belligerently.

No one was ever going to mistake her for a righteous hero.

Nor did she want to be one.

But she was still a kind person who cared deeply about her teammates.

“You’re – dead – meat.”

Afterword

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

When I wrote the A Certain Scientific Railgun novel, I believe I mentioned in the afterword that I hoped to do that again if I had the chance, but it looks like I got my wish in a somewhat different form. So now we’re still on the science side but with a dark side focus. This is a story about the 4 girls of Item + 1, starring Level 5 Mugino Shizuri!

Any readers who have read my novels or that thing on my official site should be aware that I’ve gotten weirdly hooked on writing four-girl groups. I find Item is just as easy to make use of as Lessar and the rest of New Light on the magic side. This time, I turned back time to about a year prior to Volume 1 of the original novels and focused on the story of Item’s formation. As a side note, that is about when Past Kamijou and Past Shokuhou were having their adventure in NT11, so they’re somewhat linked through the seasonal event.

I hope you will notice the many ways I had fun with the past setting, like showing Fremea before she learned to say “nyah”, showing where Mugino learned to use her scattershot attack, and the mentions of Aneri and the Dragon Motor.

Mugino Shizuri, our protagonist this time, is a difficult girl to work with, but I believe she is a kind person who cares deeply for her teammates as long as no one betrays her and as long as she is not in a crisis situation. She really is the wicked demon lord, isn’t she? She is also like a tiger or bear in that her excessive self-defense instincts can have disastrous results for ordinary people. If you reread OT15 knowing what she originally wanted to protect and where it all went wrong, you might find something new about how she goes on a rampage and bares her fangs against her own team.

And Item was also the enemy this time.

A girl who seeks out impurity because she can’t stand how her pure upbringing has left her out of sync with the world.

A devil-like girl who wants to watch people ruin themselves through the contracts they make.

A girl who cried wolf who is a perfect liar.

A girl who makes sure she is always the one attacking because she is afraid of being attacked.

All four of them were about as terrible as someone can be, but while Mugino’s Item were all facing and charging in the same direction, the Enemy Item all belonged to different genres of crime, so whichever one you found most frightening might say something about your personality.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nilitsu-san, to my editors Miki-san, Anan-san, Nakajima-san, Hamamura-san, and Matsuura-san, and to Fuyukawa-san and the Daioh editorial department. I am deeply moved that I received permission to write an entire novel about not just the science side but the dark side. Grasping the unique atmosphere of high-tech Academy City’s delinquent girls couldn’t have been easy. Thank you for going along with that and all the other gimmicks I included.

And I give my thanks to the readers. What did you think about this story focused on the dark side, which normally remains hidden but definitely exists somewhere in Academy City? Not one of the people in this book could be one of the good guys, but they still risked their lives and fought with all their might. I could not ask for anything more than for you to have found one of them who you sympathized with. Thank you.

It is time to close the pages for now while praying (once again even harder than usual) that the pages of the next book will be opened.

And I lay my pen down for now.

Wow, when you list it out, there really aren’t many Level 5s not involved in the dark side…

-Kamachi Kazuma

Ending

“Mugino.”

“Yeah, I just heard about it from the support organization too.”

“On July 14, only two charred corpses were found at the super site of the explosion. It took so long to report back to us because the remains were burned and blown into so many pieces they had super trouble determining how many people they belonged to.”

“In the end, they finally finished salvaging the records from the AI air conditioner that tracks people’s locations. Inoue Laspezia and Waniguchi Nokoba entered the room they were using as a cell at 8:21 PM on the 14th. And the explosion was seen from the outside at 8:30.”

“So there was a super lag of about 10 minutes until the explosion?”

“That’s more than enough time for someone to slip out before the explosion.”

“But in the end, Hanano was being confined there. And both Inoue and Waniguchi were in the room with her. She couldn’t have won in an esper battle, so how could she have taken them out?”

“I can think of plenty of methods. Remember, there’s no rule saying she had to detonate the bomb as soon as she pulled it out. If she used the wires around the faucets to remove her handcuffs and then combined the wires with the outlet to give herself an electric attack, she could have placed a time bomb in front of the incapacitated pair and then snuck out.”

“…”

“So, Mugino, is that also why her coffin was empty?”

“Hold on. In the end, who were the couple crying at her coffin?”

“According to the support organization, they super can’t contact them. It’s super unknown if they were even ordinary people.”

“Hanano Choubi. Who were you really?”

The date was July 31.

The location was District 3, where a world-famous construction company had its headquarters. Most recently, the company was gathering attention for cooperating in the construction of the Endymion space elevator. A girl entered through the staff entrance and took a special elevator up past the 50th floor to reach the very top floor.

That girl was Hanano Choubi.

Her short-sleeve sailor uniform was unusual for the building, but no one stopped her.

Not even one.

Well more than 10 secretaries were working on the top floor, but there was a secret passageway to the back of the floor which couldn’t be seen from their front office. In fact, the army of beautiful secretaries didn’t even know who it was who paid them.

The entire construction company was an elaborate front.

It wasn’t uncommon for an impressive-looking HQ building to only perform work like performance appraisals and general affairs without doing any actual work. For example, a construction company would hire an external design office for its design work, store their cement, steel beams, and other equipment in a giant warehouse, and let all the hard work take place at the construction site. In other words, there was surprisingly little to do at the giant HQ building. On the inside, it had become a place that existed solely to make the company look impressive. And when there was such a massive gap on the inside, it was perfect for hiding things.

For example, the entire president’s office could be remade into an office for a dark side executive.

Of course, doing that required threatening the real president into never being around.

“Nyan, nyan, nya-nyan, nyahhn♪”

Hanano Choubi had finally arrived to the safety of a closed room.

She nyan-ed a popular song as she walked across the large space like she owned the place.

“Phew, I’m exhausted.”

She reached a hand to the top of her head and grabbed her hair. No, she grabbed a wig, threw it off like a hat, and removed her eyebrows and eyelashes as well. She exposed a smooth face like an incomplete doll as casually as removing her clothing. Then she removed a different premade set from a small bag and applied this new face.

That transformed her.

Although in this case, it may have been more accurate to say she returned to her original appearance.

She was short, but she lost the color of an adolescent girl. She now looked older – in her mid-20s. The woman with shoulder-length flaxen hair looked horribly out of place in the sailor uniform. She cheerfully reached into a minifridge like you would find in a hospital or hotel, pulled out a tall 500mL can of beer, and pulled over the small paper box and ashtray sitting on the desk. The box was a pack of menthol-flavored cigarettes.

Yes. Technically speaking, Hanano Choubi wasn’t even a Level 0.

Everyone in Academy City knew adults could not use esper powers.

She opened the pull tab, took a sip, and glared at the side of the can.

(Oh, damn. This isn’t the kind without any sugar or purine. I didn’t even notice when I bought it. And I’m getting old enough I need to start paying attention to that.)

But she had already opened it, so it was too late.

With the chilled beer, she wished she hadn’t cooled off so much in the air conditioning.

Then she shook the pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and lit the oil lighter with her thumb.

The refreshing summery menthol flavor once more took over in her mouth. She could acquire the most luxurious products if she wanted, but she preferred this cheap chemical deception. If this flavor couldn’t make her smile, she could never have gotten along with the dark side of Academy City, which had taken science well past a lethal dose.

And the cigarette held in the corner of her mouth tasted all the better when it had been a month since she had last indulged.

To ensure her character remained intact, she had made sure to keep up the act even when no one was around to deceive.

(I even spent three months in a random school’s theatre club to get in character and prepare the necessary paperwork, but unlike that rehearsal, I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes when performing for real.)

She had also prepared a small incident.

With everything from the school life to the molester angry at getting called out, it hadn’t been easy setting up a profile that raised no eyebrows after ending up in the dark side. But when the setup was done right, everything else would go smoothly.

“Bwehh… This canned beer and smoke are exactly what I needed. Every year, my tastes are more like an old man’s. I could see myself playing golf at this rate.”

She puffed the cigarette with obvious familiarity, leaned back in the leather chair, and looked up toward the ceiling.

All she did was stare blankly like that. Waste was the greatest recreation and it tasted all the sweeter when it was time you were wasting. On the dark side, death was a constant companion and everyone was always trying to work out each other’s powers in esper battles, so they could never imagine someone throwing pieces of their lifespan into the fire for their own enjoyment.

(I used that tracking perfume because I thought it would look unnatural if I didn’t make any attempt to resist, so I was sweating a little when she pointed out it was too grownup and expensive. But everything else gets a passing grade, I would say.)

She grabbed the beer can and chugged the rest.

While she felt the intoxication catching up to her, she grabbed her phone in order to face reality a little.

“I see, I see. Wow, I got a lot of messages while I was away. I keep scrolling, but the list of new emails never ends. Sob.”

She had the makings of a nightmare there.

She could only pray the intoxication didn’t make her violent.

Several colors of cellphone were lined up atop the heavy ebony desk. They were more than just 10 and they were connected to the many cables attached to a power strip. Each of them had an anti-trace device and a voice changer program included.

She rapidly scanned through the information provided on the small screens and focused in on one of them.

That one reported a death.

“One of my decoys has disappeared. Heh heh. How thoughtful of you, Mugino-san.”

A link of the command chain had been destroyed, but the damage didn’t reach this high.

That was how the dark side worked. If you failed to question the answer you worked so hard to acquire, you would never move past that point.

“But not thoughtful enough. Letting the blood rush to your head when a friend is killed is only a virtue in the sunny world. Eh heh heh.”

You earned quite a few grudges in this line of work. If the on-site workers could discover your identity with just a bit of digging, you could never truly serve as a voice on the phone. A go-between was an expert at controlling access to information and preserving its safety.

The real one was elsewhere.

Yes, they should have been suspicious from the moment Hanano Choubi made it through the elevator and front door to hesitantly step inside the Fifteen Bells apartment.

Not many people had access to top secret data like Item’s handprints and eye scans. Her ability to spoof them meant she came from somewhere very, very deep in the dark side.

Her greatest weapon was these phones. She grabbed one of them, unplugged its cable, and called someone. She naturally sank lower into the chair. …Although that was a minor violation of etiquette compared to the cigarette in her mouth and the alcohol in her system.

“Yes, yes, Hello, hello. I have settled the entire incident we were talking about. I was right to infiltrate the team personally. The odds were admittedly low, but there was always the possibility the two Items would talk it out and join forces. So I thought it would be best to kill one of their own to motivate them with anger.”

That was why she had asked Frenda Seivelun for the liquid explosive.

And it was why the most powerless girl had shouted from the ceiling of the Colosseum to get the fighting started before either Item could do anything else.

And it was why she had triggered that final explosion.

The 5th girl – the odd one out – had set it all up.

“Yes, of course Mugino Shizuri’s Item won. They were the one with a real Level 5, after all.”

There was only one person she could be speaking with now.

Was it an honor to directly speak with that person, or did it feel like being the poor department head who had to babysit their superior? Each of the few real voices on the phone had their own interpretation.

“I won’t ask why this had to happen. I never do. But I’m sure it wasn’t just anything as common as stepping on someone’s toes or violating a taboo. Yes, yes, I know. No looking into it. Academy City is supposed to be a city of science, but the people at the very top sure do have a mythical quality to them. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Will I end up dead if I poke my nose into that any further? Ah ha ha.”

Her flowing report continued without delay.

She was not interrupted by any questions. She guessed this report wasn’t really necessary and the person she was speaking with already knew it all. By using a mysterious surveillance technology beyond just the cameras and security robots. Whatever it was, it was much nastier and covered every nook and the cranny of the city.

So this was less a report and more a test.

If she hid anything important, she would lose their trust and immediately lose her job, if not her head.

Maintaining the dark side’s excellent infrastructure had some very high maintenance costs. And in this case, the cost was in lives rather than money.

The menthol cigarette wiggled in the corner of her mouth while she laughed and finished her report.

Her eyes were on the Windowless Building located several districts away.

“Yes, I await my next instructions.”

After finishing the report as planned, she hung up and tossed the phone onto the desk.

With all of that done, she had finally completed one cycle.

She leaned back into her executive chair, raised her arms as high as they would go, and stretched.

As long as she remained reliant on this chair, she would never reach the actual top.

“Ugh. I appreciate being trusted, but it’s not great when success is simply expected. I work my ass off and don’t get anywhere closer to a promotion.”

She didn’t know what a promotion from her position would mean. It was possible she was already on the edge of the cliff and one more step forward would send her tumbling down.

(Would the next step up put me the Board of Directors? Now there’s a funny joke. I’m sure they have unimaginable power, but I’d never want to be one of them.)

But she was glad Mugino’s Item had won.

If she was being honest, Ibotanokikouji Kaede’s Item had been good at what they did, but they had thrown money around a little too indiscriminately. Villains of that sort made connections with the corrupt adults of the dark side behind the voice on the phone’s back, so there was always a risk of them working their way into the adult chain of command and striking back.

That was what she had meant by stepping on people’s toes and violating a taboo.

That wasn’t a pleasant thought for the voice on the phone who controlled all of the dark side by sending out instructions from a position of safety. Once the connection went both ways, her life could be threatened too. She was the only one who should be sending out terrifying surprises. She couldn’t have them coming back up at her.

(But. I doubt that was the only reason they had to be killed. Hm, did I feel the need to get some alcohol in my system before making that report because I still have some lingering attachment to those four? What is wrong with me? Do I want to start drunkenly analyzing my actions until I’m so depressed I get an urge to jump off the building?)

But she was through with that sentimentality.

Now was the time for rational analysis.

For example, the Dark Matter appeared to be plotting something in secret.

For example, the Mental Out had one foot in the dark side yet showed no sign of being corrupted by it.

Those monster children were getting involved in the adults’ plans, but no matter how useful they could be, that wasn’t her style. She preferred her pawns to be cut off from the network and isolated. Just like Item.

The isolated strongest was the best form of the dark side. It was incredibly cost effective.

It was a laughably good deal for her.

(In that sense, the Item member who frightens me most is Frenda Seivelun because she’s so sociable and unpredictably makes friends in just about every industry. I have a much better feel for her now that I’ve met her in person. I need to add a ‘caution’ tag to her file and I may have to do something about her eventually.)

But what to do now?

Hanano Choubi crossed her legs in the executive chair like she belonged there.

She shoved the shortened cigarette in the ashtray, making sure to put it out.

She wouldn’t allow a single ember to remain.

No, this was only someone who had used that name for a while. And now she whispered alone with a thin sneer on her lips.

“Honestly, it’s always like this with you.”

Prev	[v d e]Toaru Majutsu no Index: Genesis Testament GT Volume 1 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword GT Volume 2 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending GT Volume 3 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending GT Volume 4 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending GT Volume 5 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending GT Volume 6 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword GT Volume 7 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending GT Volume 8 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending GT Volume 9 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending GT Volume 10 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending [v d e]Side Stories Volume SP Illustrations - Stiyl Magnus - Mark Space - Kamijou Touma - Uiharu Kazari - Afterword Railgun SS1 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 Kanzaki SS Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 Railgun SS2 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 Road to Endymion Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 Necessarius SS Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 Virtual-On Illustrations - Preface - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword Railgun SS3 Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 Biohacker SS Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 Agnese SS Illustrations - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 Railgun LN Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword Item LN Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending Item LN 2 Illustrations - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - Afterword - Ending Toaru Kagaku no Railgun: Cold Game Toaru Jihanki no Fanfare Toaru Majutsu No Index: Love Letter SS Toaru Kagaku no Railgun SS: A Superfluous Story, or A Certain Incident’s End Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament SS Toaru Majutsu no Index: Shokuhou Misaki Figurine SS Toaru Majutsu no Index: A Certain Midsummer Return to the Starting Point Toaru Majutsu no Index: Using Final Bosses to Determine a Sociological Threat Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament Bonus Short Story Toaru Majutsu no Index: Thus Spoke the Kumokawa Sisters Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-On: Vooster's Cup, The Day Before Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-On: Misaka Mikoto's Dangerous Tea Party Toaru Majutsu no Index: Birthday Through the Glass Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 20 Bonus Short Story Toaru Majutsu no Index: Misaka Mikoto’s Teamwork A Certain Magical Index: Genesis Testament SS [v d e]Official Parody Stories A Certain Prophecy Index A Certain Academy Index A Certain Gift Exchange A Certain March 201st Novel I Don't Want This First Story of A Certain Magical Index!! or I Don't Want This Final Story An All-In "World" Tour of Academy City, the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion, and Ground's Nir Kamijou-san, Two Idiots, Jinnai Shinobu, Gray Pig, and Freedom Award 903, Listen Up! …Fall Asleep and You Die, But Not From the Cold☆ We Tried Having a Group Blind Date, but It was an All Stars Affair and a World Crisis Will the Spiky-Haired Idiot See a Piping Hot Dream of His Wife? Dengeki Island: A Girl’s Battle (Still Growing) Kamijou Touma Visits Another World Toaru Majutsu no Index X Apocalypse Witch Crossover SS Toaru Majutsu no Index X Apocalypse Witch X Heavy Object Crossover SS I Still Want to Do a Summer Fair A Certain Collaboration Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 Kamachi Crossover Illustrations - Preface - Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Epilogue - A.E. 02 - Afterword Durarara Crossover Preface - Academy City Chapter - Ikebukuro Chapter	Next