Aren’t heroes just supposed to be the strongest people around? I tilted my head in confusion.
“Your Gear, Ruchika!” said Leonie.
“Huh? Whoa?!”
The pickpocket took out a knife and charged at me. I barely managed to dodge her swing, then hurried to get my distance from her.
“That was close…”
“Ruchika, where’s your Gear?”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t have one?!”
“No?”
“I can’t believe you came to take the entrance exam without a Gear… What, to her? You want me to what?”
In the middle of our conversation, Leonie suddenly started talking to herself.
“Leonie?”
“I’ll explain later. Put this around your neck.”
She passed me some kind of metallic device shaped like a cog. I did as I was told and put it around my neck.
—Attachment confirmed. Please state your name.
A robotic voice sounded in the back of my mind.
“I’m R-Ruchika.”
—Nice to meet you, Ruchika. I’ll be assisting you from now on.
As I reflexively said my name, a mental image formed along with the voice.
“Hmm, okay. Whoa…”
Apparently, this thing was some kind of magical device. A combat assistant, to be specific. It was displaying all sorts of information in my mind’s eye, from upcoming potential threats to recommendations for how I should proceed. The next moment, the outline of the pickpocket in my vision blurred, replaced by an image of her advancing toward me with a slashing attack.
“Here she comes!”
“Yeah, I see it. Huh, this thing is pretty neat.”
—Diagonal slash from overhead. One second away.
The pickpocket came swinging at me again, her attack a strong match for what the Gear had displayed in my head. It wasn’t perfect, but this thing seemed to be able to predict the future to some extent.
“Wow, you’re amazing. By the way, what’s your name?”
—…You are only the second person to ever ask my name in return. Please call me Prototype.
“Too long. I’ll call you Proto. Nice to meet you. By the way, who was the first?”
—Next attack: horizontal slash. Point five seconds away.
“Whoa, okay!”
Admiring the wonders of human technology, I nimbly dodged the pickpocket’s knife.
“I can see how this thing would be convenient, but I feel like it’s kinda disorienting, too. It might not be for me.”
“You trying to make a fool out of me, brat?!”
The pickpocket seemed to take my remark as an insult and brandished her knife even more viciously. The attack wasn’t much of a threat in the first place, but with the added assistance of the Gear, I was able to dodge it with ease.
“If you wanna play that way— Ah, hold up. You aren’t the type to give off much mana or a battle aura when you’re fighting, are you? That’ll definitely leave me hungry. Hmm, what to do…?”
“Ruchika, leave this to me.”
The same moment I heard her voice, Leonie took a step toward the pickpocket and closed the gap between them in an instant, getting inside the range of the girl’s knife and grabbing her by the arm.
“Haaah!”
“Bwah?!”
Leonie had thrown the pickpocket to the ground, knocking her out. While the girl was still unconscious, she skillfully tied her up with some rope. When I wondered aloud about where she’d gotten the rope from, Leonie explained she’d used something called “convenience magic.”
“Phew…”
“Nice work, Leonie. You too, Proto.”
“And you, Ruchika.”
—Well fought.
“That was some fancy footwork, Leonie.”
“Thank you. Shall we move somewhere else?”
“What about her?”
“I believe the guards who Nor alerted will be here soon to take her away.”
“Oh, okay— Huh?”
I suddenly noticed something.
“This emblem… Isn’t this the Hero Institute’s?”
“Hmm?”
I pointed to the gear-shaped device the pickpocket had around her neck. An insignia of a dragon was engraved on its surface.
“Yes…this is a genuine product of the Hero Institute. So that means this girl is associated with the Institute…?”
“…I used to be a student there. But I was expelled.”
“?!”
“Oh, you’re up?” I remarked.
The pickpocket seemed to have grasped the situation she was now in, but she wasn’t showing any signs of trying to escape. She had resigned herself to her fate.
“‘Used to be’…? So that means you also wanted to become a hero?”
“Yeah. Though, now I wish I could forget it ever happened.”
A dark smile formed on the pickpocket’s face as she went on:
“That place is a school in name only. They just want to recruit people with talent while they’re still young and innocent and brainwash them with Gear. Then once they’ve got them wrapped around their little finger, they give them some grandiose title and send them back out into society to work as another cog in their machine. That’s the Hero Institute’s whole—”
“Don’t spout such nonsense!”
Leonie interrupted the pickpocket with a shout.
“The Hero Institute trains the next generation of the most important profession in the world. Those heroes will become the hope of humankind and serve as models and beacons for the people.”
I was really starting to get the feeling that Leonie had very strong opinions about heroes. But the pickpocket was as cold as ever with her response.
“You mean those mass-produced, obedient puppets? Ha, some hope that is.”
“‘Puppets’? Heroes are society’s best and brightest, and they’ll be in steady supply thanks to the Institute’s education system. Though, I doubt someone like you, who can’t even conform to the norms of society, could ever really appreciate that.”
I could tell the two of them were never going to see eye to eye on this topic. But it made me wonder—wasn’t the Hero Institute just a school for training the strong? Now that I thought about it, maybe I didn’t really have a solid idea of what kind of place the Hero Institute was after all. Leonie and the pickpocket seemed to have totally different viewpoints on the matter, so I guess it was a controversial topic.
“The Hero Institute ain’t shit—you’ll see that much the moment you walk through the doors.”
“Thanks for the warning. But maybe you should just mind your own business.”
After that, the guard who Nor had called showed up and took the pickpocket away. But the whole situation had left a bad taste in my mouth.
“That girl sure had a lot to say about the Hero Institute, huh?”
“There’s no need to waste an ounce of your attention on anything she said, Ruchika.”
“Yeah, I won’t. Anyway, nice work back there, Leonie.”
“You too.”
That was the story of our hectic yet memorable first meeting.
At that time, I had no idea this girl—Leonie Baez—was going to change my life in a big way.