Chapter 4

CHAPTER 2 A Dull Gray Alley
Skill_Out. 1 On the same day, October 3, early morning. Inside the rectangular, underground concrete bunker, Accelerator naturally couldn’t tell if it was day or night. But that wasn’t a problem. He stood under a fluorescent lamp casting uniform light below, leaning on his crutch. It was a firing range. The room was about fifty meters deep, but people could only freely walk around in the front ten meters or so. Everything past that was cordoned off by long horizontal tables barring entry. Past the tables were a handful of human-shaped targets, which were designed to move in every direction along a metallic grid of rails. The long tables were divided by thin partitions that separated about thirteen lanes in the firing area. Each lane was about the width of a telephone booth. Accelerator was around the midpoint, in lane number eight. His slender hand gripped a small gun. A stench reminiscent of fireworks drifted through his surroundings. “Beginning drill number forty-two.” After the prerecorded female voice announced the start of the exercise, five targets started moving at once. Hit them in order, starting from the front. Just shoot them one at a time. Leveling his gun with just one hand, he shot them all with precision. A series of gunshots rang out in the wide-open underground space. The sounds, already loud, bounced back to his eardrums with even more pressure. Accelerator was right-handed normally, but the crutch forced him to shoot with his left. “Beginning drill number forty-three.” Each exercise lasted around seventy seconds. Don’t focus too much on aiming. Always remember to look at the big picture, even movements in your peripheral vision. Accelerator just kept firing as he thought. For him, reloading the gun was the bigger hurdle. With his right hand on the crutch, he could only use his left for it. He popped out the magazine, then spun the gun around his index finger, which he kept on the trigger, bringing the magazine well faceup. Then, after using his mouth to pull another magazine from his left sleeve, he slid it home before finally spinning the gun one-eighty again, this time using his mouth to pull the slide. That took him about two seconds. Still too slow, he thought. “Beginning drill number forty-four.” It was clear he’d tested out many other guns as well. I guess my selection standards should focus on reload speed, how much it weighs when I shoot with one hand, and the recoil. On the lane table in front of him was a pile of weapons: various handguns for military, personal, and competition use—there were even shotguns, submachine guns, and rifles. Empty casings blanketed the area at his feet like a pile of fallen leaves. These, too, came in several shapes and sizes depending on the type of gun; some were metal of a bronze-like color, while others were blue and made of plastic. “Beginning drill number forty-five.” The targets sped along the rails before they were all struck, one after another. Don’t rely on a single powerful shot to get the job done. Being able to easily fire several bullets is way more versatile. Though the different exercises varied the targets’ speed and used one of the many switch-off points to rapidly alter their trajectories, Accelerator still landed his shots with accuracy and precision. Even an officially trained Anti-Skill officer would have trouble with this kind of combat drill. It hadn’t been long since Accelerator first started using guns, but even with his crutched, unstable posture, he was already handling them like one would a well-worn ballpoint pen. However… “…Useless,” Accelerator spat, irritated, before the machine could output his records. He hit a calculator-like object on the lane table and cut off the training program. Then he shoved the gun in his hand back onto the table. Without turning around, he said, “What do you want, you frickin’ poser?” At that, a single sharp footstep rang out as if on purpose. The sound came from behind him. Probably meant to be in lieu of knocking. “And here I thought I’d been hiding my presence pretty well. It seems I still lack training.” The soft voice belonged to a male. Accelerator turned around and saw a young man with a thin frame and brown hair standing there. His name, if Accelerator recalled, was Mitsuki Unabara. But right after he’d introduced himself, he’d claimed both his appearance and name were fake. “If it’s all right, I’d like to learn from this. Given that we’re in a firing range, you must not have relied on sound. How did you detect me?” “Blah, blah. Shut it already. I’m not here to make you stronger,” Accelerator snapped, but in reality, he hadn’t noticed Mitsuki Unabara approaching. At least, not in the sense of using normal, physical sensory organs. But… Gah. I’m shaking again… The hand that had been holding the gun now hurt for a reason other than exhaustion. He didn’t know why, but it had been like this since his first meeting with Unabara a few days ago. Whenever Accelerator was near this man, his fingertips would start to tremble on their own. Plus, he felt a slight pressure weighing down on him, like someone had left a basketball on top of his chest. At times like these, he only ever thought of one thing. Amata Kihara. That pelting rain, that dull pain, the taste and stench of blood like iron. Last Order. A small life, abused by unjust violence, ready to disappear at any moment. And… …Those black wings that came out of my back. It was no more than a vague image, an abstract idea. And he’d first become conscious of them after he’d started working with Group here… No, more accurately, ever since he’d taken down the scientist named Amata Kihara. But it wouldn’t do him any good to ask the man in front of him about it. Accelerator wouldn’t gain anything by showing weakness. “I said, what do you want?” “Have you decided on a weapon yet?” Unabara’s smile didn’t waver. “We don’t have much time for you to do a careful investigation. There’s always work to be done, and we need you to get familiar with our processes quickly.” “None of ’em really speak to me,” Accelerator grumbled, looking at the numerous firearms on the table. “Might not ever find one I like, even if you collected them from all over the world.” “Why not narrow down your equipment list, assuming you’ll be using your ability?” “Don’t talk like you know a damn thing.” He rapped the choker-shaped electrode around his neck. “I can’t rely on this.” “Why is that? It’s been upgraded since then, hasn’t it? According to the report from Group’s engineering department, they’ve extended the ability duration from fifteen minutes to thirty.” “Group, huh?” Accelerator repeated derisively. Ever since he’d been dragged here by those powered suits who had shown up after he’d smashed Amata Kihara on September 30, Accelerator had been integrated into a framework by the name of Group. But even now that he was an official member, he still didn’t know much about it. What he did know suggested that Group was a team of four people, including him, who would be acting in concert. However, he had no clue how many other teams like theirs existed, or even if they were the only one. Even those powered suit pilots might have belonged to a different Group than Accelerator. His transfer into Nagatenjouki Academy… That was the cover story he’d given Aiho Yomikawa and Kikyou Yoshikawa. Accelerator agreed that it was a good arrangement. Academy City’s top school was a place where it wasn’t strange to have special classes that were top secret. A laboratory for just one person, unbeknownst even to the current students there. They’d probably taken advantage of that to register him as a student on paper only. They—the ones managing Group. I still can’t quite see the full picture, but it must mean they have both the means and the motivation to go that far. Everything about this is shady. He knew that the Group he was in had many subordinate teams, or subsidiaries. Odd jobs, errands, all performed for the sake of just four people: the development and maintenance of equipment, the transfer of personnel, the removal of evidence… There seemed to be a vast number of people in place to do all these things. Mitsuki Unabara, one of those on the receiving end of such blessings, stared at him blankly. “Are you not happy with how we tuned your electrode?” “Ha. Doesn’t matter if it’s thirty minutes or three days—it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. If something out of the ordinary happens, that’s it. If this thing craps out on me, and I can’t fight, I’m dead.” This was something he had become acutely aware of after his confrontation with a powerful enemy—Amata Kihara—while his battery was dead. The dimension of him being safe by relying on something had long since ended. From here on, he’d need to fight no matter what situation he found himself chased into. “Ha-ha. Then all the work Group’s engineering team put into analyzing that electrode was for nothing.” “Fuck if I care,” said Accelerator flatly. “Are you done?” “No. Here’s the main reason I came.” Unabara spread his hands. “We, Group, have received a work order from the General Board.” “…” “Academy City is in the process of shoring up its defenses against the Roman Orthodox Church, but for all the weight they put on anti-Church measures, the city’s inner defenses are growing weaker by the day. In all the confusion, a certain faction is planning an attack on Academy City’s facilities. Our mission is to wipe them out.” “Heh. Ha-ha-ha.” Accelerator couldn’t help but laugh when he heard that. “They ruin people like this, slap collars on them, and now the big ‘job’ we’ve all been waiting for is just to take out the trash? Ha, I guess life’s full of surprises!” Narrowing his red eyes in amusement, he curled his lips into a derisive grin. “They were talking about us filling in for that Kihara shithead, but I never thought we’d get such a stupid job! Ha-ha—guess to them, I’m just as much garbage as Kihara was!” “Don’t take it out on me. It’s your own fault you sank so low.” In response, Accelerator reached out with a slender arm and grabbed Unabara by the collar—purposely aiming right for the middle of his chest. Using his fingertips—with which he could reverse the direction of any vector if he wanted to, including his victim’s blood flow—he grabbed Unabara’s flesh. “Listen to me, kid. Let me tell you just one thing,” Accelerator vowed, expression unchanged as he pulled the shirt he’d grabbed in front of him. “Human lives are flimsy. So flimsy I could break them with a flick of my finger. So be a little more considerate. Or else I might go too far and break something I shouldn’t.” “I’ll be careful.” Unabara’s tone, in contrast to Accelerator’s words, was smooth, and his mouth was still curled in a relaxed smile. “Ugh.” Accelerator released Unabara’s clothing with a grunt. “May I continue?” “You were going to anyway.” “Our target is Skill-Out. You may be more familiar with them than I.” Accelerator frowned. Skill-Out was, broadly speaking, an armed group of Level Zeroes. Status in Academy City was determined by two factors: academic abilities and esper abilities. If someone was labeled a Level Zero, they essentially led their school life with tests marked with zeroes hanging from their necks, and some among them apparently couldn’t handle such treatment. Skill-Out theoretically had around ten thousand members in Academy City. That being said, most of them were people renting dormitories but not going to school, or those who did go to school and left their Skill-Out activities for nighttime. The ones living on the streets without attending classes or living properly in a dorm, the ones who had gained themselves a reputation as a violent group, only made up about 1 percent of the total. They had no clear-cut objective. If any young men loitering on the streets at night were Level Zero, that was already enough for people to treat them as members of Skill-Out. Thus, their presence could vary from three or four Skill-Out members gathered in a convenience store parking lot one night—or there could be a mob a hundred strong swaggering on the streets. “Whoa, whoa, wait a second. This job just got even more insignificant. Are the higher-ups gambling on when they think I’ll lose it and go crazy?” “No, not at all. In fact, there’s been talk about reorganization recently even with Skill-Out. Apparently, a team of Anti-Skill officers who went to suppress them were outplayed and had to beat a hasty retreat, so it’s not really strange this would fall in Group’s lap, given that we’re an unofficial organization.” “Hmph,” sniffed Accelerator contemptuously. Was it wisdom or combat strength? Those back-alley delinquents had clearly found a windfall of one or the other. “Skill-Out currently seems to be making some toys.” “Toys?” “Made by hollowing out oak logs and stuffing them with explosives. Five centimeters across, seventy long. They seem to be planning on using them as rockets; we’ve confirmed that they’re generally aerodynamic and have three vinyl-chloride wings.” “Hold on. Burning arrows?” Accelerator snorted in spite of himself. “Those are experimental weapons from the Edo period, for crying out loud. What, are they all obsessed with archaeology or something? They can fly maybe two thousand meters, but it’s not like they’re powerful even if they get that far. Maybe they would be if they stuck high-grade plastic explosives in the tip or something, but they probably make all their own explosives themselves, too. If they want to cause trouble with those, they have another think coming—toys like that wouldn’t even scratch the outer walls of research facilities.” “Unfortunately, with some preparations beforehand, they seem to be very effective,” said Unabara quietly. His voice carried well in the firing range, surrounded by thick walls. “They’ve been laying traps all over for the last few days. Moving the bikes stationed next to disaster evacuation routes, stuffing garbage into the ventilation near entrances to VIP facilities… What they’re doing is small in scale—hardly a public safety concern, but…” “…Since when were we supposed to be cleaning up after a bunch of kiddie pranks?” “But each generates an issue with a low chance of evolving into a more severe error, and twenty thousand of them have already been ‘reported.’ And even though we could leave them alone during times of peace, during an orange or red warning, they’ll be detected as errors. In other words…” “If these fire arrows ignite, they generate problems.” “If they use rocket weaponry, they’ll cause at least a code orange. And as the warning level increases, the twenty thousand ‘bombs’ Skill-Out has spent the last few days scattering across the city will all cause error reports at once. That’s what they’re after. If they can take down the servers maintaining the communication network with all those error reports, they’ll be able to do whatever they please, and Anti-Skill will probably never come. “This ‘hole’ probably wouldn’t be fixed in a day or two,” finished Unabara. “That’s all well and good, but… Why are you so certain about what they’re going for? If this is all your personal speculation, I will physically destroy you.” “No, not at all. We caught several of them and made them talk. We don’t think there’s much doubt.” Accelerator fell silent for a moment, but really, he had no right to criticize their tactics. If he wanted to compare records, he was clearly the one who had commited far greater atrocities. “They can’t even run amok without doing all this prep work… Considering they thought through all this stuff, they must be a bunch of chickens at heart,” Accelerator grumbled. “What are they after? Attacking military research facilities, stealing powered suits?” “No. Those sorts of facilities have their own independent security teams inside. Their goal is probably simpler than that… A rebellion against espers.” “Ha. So what? They’ll cut off communication lines, surround the espers, and kill them? Sounds like the kind of thing those numbers-obsessed Level Zeroes would do.” Hundreds of people ganging up on a single esper and killing them. Repeat that, and even Skill-Out, a gang of Level Zeroes, would be able to cause significant tragedy. “…Should Skill-Out’s plan succeed, at least two or three school districts’ worth of communications will be down. We should assume the casualties will be major in that kind of scenario. “But,” Unabara noted, tilting his head, “as you can see, Skill-Out is considering something grandiose, but will it really go that well? With weapons like guns and bodyguard gear, even if they surrounded someone with a dozen or so people… I find it hard to believe they’d be able to defeat Level Fives like you, for example.” “As long as parts of the plan look attractive, idiots will go for it even with all the holes. Incomplete combustion—that’s probably how this plan of Skill-Out’s is gonna end. Half-assed plans that bring about half-assed results and half-assed casualties.” The ones Skill-Out currently hated the most, and had the most obvious sense of inferiority toward, were Level Fives like Accelerator. But it was doubtful this plan alone would enable them to take any Level Fives down. In which case, Skill-Out would probably switch to easier, quicker targets and content themselves with that. In the end, they’d be killing powerless Level Ones and Level Twos. And the Level Twos… The mass-produced military espers and the higher being who controlled them. Who did they plan to target with their nonsensical violence that had no goal or greater meaning? “…” “This is bullshit,” Accelerator muttered to himself. Returning his attention to Unabara, he said, “Then Skill-Out isn’t the danger here.” He spat on the floor. “The real danger is some religious group exploiting the damage they cause to strike, right? Those rotten General Board assholes aren’t the kind to care about people in the alleyways to begin with.” “Very discerning.” “Anyway, what are you dragging your feet for? If you know what they’re after, you can just disable the automatic alarms. As long as we don’t get a code orange or above, the communication network won’t go down.” “If it wasn’t wartime, we could have done just that. But that’s like telling someone to turn off the antivirus software on their computer without knowing when it might be attacked.” “Nothing but enemies inside and out, eh? Really seems like Academy City is on a lot of people’s shit list.” “And it’s our job to do something about those people,” continued Unabara, flashing a smile. “It’s too late to rethink Academy City’s security systems. Anti-Skill and Judgment appear to be trying to remove the ‘obstacles’ on evacuation routes and VIP facility entrances—the sources of the errors—but there’s no guarantee Skill-Out will sit around and wait until they’re done. That’s why we need to physically stop them ourselves.” “How clever,” he drawled. “In underhanded ways we can’t ask Anti-Skill for, I assume?” “Our target’s name is Ritoku Komaba—the current leader of Skill-Out and the brains of the operation,” Unabara explained, presenting a photograph on his phone screen. “He seems to be fairly influential in the darker streets of School District Seven. Do you know him?” “Nope. No reason to.” “Our mission is to swiftly deal with this Ritoku Komaba and prevent Skill-Out’s plan from coming to fruition.” “You think those shitheads will give up and stop just because of that? Their preparations are already finished, aren’t they? If they set off a code orange or above, they win. All of Academy City is at a code yellow right now. They’re close enough to see their goal. Even if their leader dies, one of his lackeys can take over.” “No, they can’t,” said Unabara smoothly, cutting him off. “It seems that their plan hinges on hitting specific locations. As I said before, they’ve been laying little traps everywhere, like at VIP facility entrances and along evacuation routes…but it seems they’re following a specific methodology. They use one explosion to cause a code orange in a certain location, then induce an error in certain areas’ automatic security. After that, the machines will come on by themselves, decide there’s a public security problem in facilities in the appropriate area, then start checking nearby areas in order to move people that way… Then, Skill-Out uses that fraction of a second to immediately expand the error area. That’s their ultimate goal. “Incidentally,” Unabara added, “only Ritoku Komaba seems to know where that initial target is. At least, none of the Skill-Out members we arrested had that information. It seems the whole thing needs someone to take the reins for the plan to succeed—and to prevent it from going out of control.” “Ugh. He’s just trying to keep his own position secure,” Accelerator sneered before waving a hand lightly. “I’m free to destroy this Komaba guy, but my rampage won’t cause a code red, will it? Unlike you, I can get a little flashy.” “If a code orange or above does get declared outside of the initial bombing point Komaba has in mind, their plan still won’t be achieved. Academy City’s security districts are subdivided, so it will probably end with the warning only affecting a very small area. They need careful coordination for the lockdown to jump across a wide area.” “…Great. You know all that, but not where this initial bombing point is. We could have had security get there in advance if we knew.” “Well, the only way to know would be to ask Ritoku Komaba himself,” Mitsuki Unabara said, smiling. “But don’t you think it would simply be quicker to crush him instead?” 2 He headed to the site on wheels. Accelerator was riding in the passenger’s seat of a garbage truck. However, the truck’s body had been painted black, and all the windows were heavily tinted. “We deal with corpses a lot, too, so a garbage truck is handy in various ways,” said the middle-aged man gripping the steering wheel next to him. “The internals of the packer in the back are made to be used once, then discarded. Every time we do a collection, we abandon it all, including the corpses, and exchange everything for new stuff.” What, like a vacuum refill pack? Accelerator thought, utterly amazed. “A garbage truck scavenging for the dead bodies of shitheads? What a bad joke.” The truck seemed to be running on electricity rather than gasoline; the engine made almost no noise. It was perfect for covert operations, in a way. While looking at the scenery going past the window, Accelerator said, “Anyway, what’s up with the black paint and the tinted windows? We’re not playing chauffeur for some rich asshole.” “Well, in our line of work, it’d be problematic if anyone sees our faces.” Accelerator was pretty sure that neither the truck nor the driver’s clothing were anything makeshift. Academy City had provided the genuine article for this job. He didn’t know where in the budget leadership was squeezing the money from, but they must have received funds equal to that of an entire school district’s worth of Anti-Skill officers, then poured it all into research and development for equipment. The middle-aged man answered him between responses to some kind of conversation he was having over the onboard radio. “You’re one of Group’s members, right? I hear this is your first time.” “So what?” “Nothing,” said the driver, still looking forward. “Lackeys like me don’t have the ability to do much more than drive you all around like this, but sometimes I get to thinking. Maybe if I wasn’t here, a few less people would fall this far.” “…” “Of course, I’m sure they could get as many replacement drivers as they needed. Still, I think about it. If I really floored it and got away, maybe I could save a person or two.” “Ha. You’ve got grit. The kind of grit that shouldn’t be wasted in a place like this.” “Tsuchimikado, Unabara—everyone in that passenger seat says the same thing. I wonder why.” It’s because you’re a good guy. One who’s too optimistic, quietly thought Accelerator. The recorded female voice on the GPS announced that they’d arrived at their destination. The electric-powered collection vehicle silently drew to a stop. Accelerator opened the passenger-side door, then put his distinctly cutting-edge crutch onto the ground before stepping onto the somewhat dirty road. He heard a voice from behind. “I’ll come to pick you up in twenty minutes, as instructed. Be careful.” “Win or lose, I’ll be going back in that thing, huh?” Accelerator answered without turning around, a thin smile on his lips. “Whether I’m dead or alive.” Ignoring the collection vehicle as it drove away behind him, he took careful stock of his surroundings. It was just a normal street. The kind you’d find anywhere. But the air felt different. He could sense eyes here and there over by the entrance to an alley, stabbing at him with sharp hostility. This would be like a swamp—once he went in, it wouldn’t be easy to get back out. When he moved to the alley’s entrance, he found several iron stakes pounded into the ground underfoot. The half-rusted stakes came in various lengths, from ten centimeters to thirty, and were stuck in the ground about a meter into the alley from the entrance, packed together. It was like a meadow of iron. This must be to prevent the security robots from getting in. Accelerator snorted. The oil drum–shaped robots in Academy City were designed to overcome height changes, to an extent. And when it came to things like elevators, the robots could still use infrared signals to search inside. But with a deliberate barricade like this set up, they wouldn’t be able to make any headway. After repeating their obstacle avoidance sequence a few times, they would file the data away, saving the location for later investigation and skipping it for now, then go off somewhere else. “…” He looked up and saw vinyl sheets hung between the buildings, blocking out the sky. Most of them were blue, though red and yellow ones occasionally joined them. He knew they were an ersatz way to cover the sky. Sunlight took on strange colors when it passed through, and those colors produced a mottled pattern on the ground like stained glass. These sheets were to evade satellite surveillance. Anti-Skill officers and other officers would forcibly remove such obstructions once every week or month. But Skill-Out guys would always put up new obstructions as soon the old ones were removed, purposely making it into a tedious game of whack-a-mole. That was how they did things. They casually made things, casually discarded them, and casually remade them as needed. If their barricades were broken, they’d throw up new ones. If their main base was destroyed, they’d find a new place to stay right nearby. If their organization was crushed, other outcasts would eventually gather and give birth to a new one. Skill-Out would never die. Like how the cockroach seemed like it would never go extinct, they learned, little by little, and strengthened their resistance. A form of evolution centered on the negative. A form nobody desired. “…This sure feels familiar,” Accelerator muttered, breaking into a grin. The dark alley stretching before him was a lawless area unreachable by either security robot or satellite. Nothing anyone did within this world would be seen. And of course, nobody would come to the rescue. “All right, then.” As he thought Let’s get started, his phone went off. Looking annoyed, he took it in hand. All it displayed was CONTACT 3. “Tsuchimikado?” he said. “Thought your first battle would be starting soon. I wanted to warn you about something before you began.” Here comes the warning, Accelerator thought with an eye roll. “And what’s that, Mr. Mentor?” “Don’t trust us,” Tsuchimikado said simply. “Like you or me, all of Group’s members are people who would cause issues just by becoming revealed to the world. There’s no winning in an organization made up of people like that.” “…You trying to suggest I’m hoping for a reward?” “No. Only that you’ll need to do more than follow the General Board’s rules to outwit them. They’re set up to reap the benefits no matter how you choose to do things. Keep that in mind when you think about what you should do. We both have something we need to protect, after all.” “…” Accelerator fell silent for a moment. What he thought back to then was a certain girl. One who was probably still in the hospital at that very moment. But his expression, his behavior, his words—he suppressed all of it before that reached the surface. “That all you wanted?” “Yeah, I guess so. Finish up quickly and come back. Musujime should be getting started on her job now, too. You may not need to hear this, but you won’t want to get yourself caught up in that.” “Her job?” Accelerator frowned. Ka-bam!! A high-pitched explosion rang out from deeper down the ever-so-narrow alley. It sounded distant, but a burst of warm air hit Accelerator’s face. Maybe the air had been compressed—the atmosphere around him had been laced with dust and dirt. For an instant, Ritoku Komaba’s plan crossed his mind…but Tsuchimikado was strangely calm on the other end of the call. After thinking for a moment, Accelerator offhandedly offered his own prediction. “Is Musujime using explosives or something? Also, I didn’t hear anything about a competition.” “She’s not after their people. She’s after their money,” answered Tsuchimikado idly. “Skill-Out needs funds to stay active. They seem to have split it up using various ploys, but we’re having her take care of whatever’s here. Better to burn it all than let them run away with it.” The explosions continued. Skill-Out, however, was used to fights involving those sorts of weapons. They wouldn’t be daunted. You needed a powerful ability to stand on this battlefield alone. If he recalled, Awaki Musujime’s ability was Move Point: a way to move objects to other places, unbound by three-dimensional limitations. Was she using it now? “And here I thought she was just Group’s mascot. She’s still useful? Thought she couldn’t move how she wants when she’s mentally unstable.” “Same as you,” said Tsuchimikado flatly, listening to the explosions through the phone. “She’s boosted.” “Really? That’s great. Anyway, should I just take advantage of the chaos to flatten their whole group at once now that they’re lacking leadership?” “I doubt any leader will run away so easily while their funds are being destroyed, but the name of our primary target is Ritoku Komaba—the bastard leading all of them. Make absolutely sure he doesn’t get away.” “I’m more worried I’ll flatten him too hard. Digging his flesh out of rubble would probably be awful,” Accelerator offered blithely, hanging up. After putting his phone in his pocket, with one hand still on his crutch, he placed his other hand softly on his neck. The gesture was one you might make if you were checking your joints, but in his case, his hand landed on his choker-shaped electrode’s switch. “Well, then, let’s get started, shall we?” He sensed several people appearing. About twenty guns and crossbows had just been trained on him—from deeper in the alley, from the windows of buildings, from the smallest shadows. Faced with all that, Accelerator smiled very, very thinly. “Time to take out the trash. I’ll finish this in ten minutes.” And then, he returned to that place he would have gladly crawled through mud to escape from. 3 Awaki Musujime was walking down a dark alley. Because of the multicolored vinyl sheets stretching from building to building overhead, other colors mixed into the sunlight, casting blues, reds, and yellows onto the road below. The air seemed stagnant, suffused with the smell of garbage and dust. The walls were covered in sloppy graffiti, and she spotted the remnants of a rusting ATM—who knows where they found it—with its lid pried open. Other things were strewn about, too, like a chipped saw and broken lumber. It seemed the incidents around this area never ceased. As Musujime walked through it all, she had a camisole-like cloth wrapped around her bare chest and her school blazer hanging from her shoulders. She paired that with a skirt that was incredibly short, too. Overall, her clothing was quite suggestive. But no one was able to touch her. Not a single person. “…Piece of cake.” A large man set upon her with a metal pipe, and a skinny woman aimed at her from the window of a building with an arrow. Musujime would deal with both the same. Using her Move Point ability, she teleported nearby rusted cars and metal dumpsters in front of her to serve as shields. Once she’d blocked their initial attacks, she went on the offensive, plunging the corkscrews she carried directly into her targets’ limbs. After that predictable series of events, it was over. Musujime twirled the ability-bolstering military-grade flashlight in her right hand; she could also use it as a police baton. The item was mainly to assist her in aiming her ability, though. Her power offered too much in the way of freedom, so her aim would fluctuate unless she set her own standards. As she waved the tool in her hand, she spoke with evident boredom. “Numbers don’t always give you an advantage, and you can’t ensure victory just by preparing weapons beforehand. I suppose it’s very much like back-alley delinquent groups not to understand that.” In contrast to her cool demeanor, her surroundings had transformed into a howling storm. She’d raised a miniature tornado all around her in order to block the attacks coming from all directions. It was composed of thick pieces of metal, like manhole covers and iron plates. Move Point didn’t make any noise, but countless bullets were very loudly clanging off the impromptu shields. Musujime used her mouth to pull the pin out of a grenade, then tossed it into the now-coverless manhole. A muffled explosion reverberated in the underground sewer. According to their intel, a trove of reserve cash was hidden down there, enough to purchase expensive handbags. “That makes nine… They’re not putting up much of a fight.” Ever since Kuroko Shirai from Judgment had turned the tables on her during the incident on September 14, the negative changes in her mental state had put her in a condition where she was unable to use her ability. And the reason it had come back to her like this today was… …I’d thought the whole thing was fishy when I first heard about it, but I guess this means the engineering department is actually pretty skilled. Musujime currently had external electrodes that looked like compresses attached to her shoulders and back. Miniaturized low-frequency vibration machines: Broadly speaking, they were medical-grade massagers that fed electric currents into her body. They measured the agitation of her brain waves, then created pulse patterns that would be most effective. She couldn’t exactly call it perfect, but she did admit that it had lowered her stress levels somewhat. Of course, walking around the city with compresses attached to your body isn’t exactly the kind of life girls should be leading. That incident on September 14 really had been a major factor in why she’d needed to borrow the power of technology to get her powers back. Musujime herself had been the mastermind behind that incident, but she wasn’t the only one in the criminal group. She’d asked for dozens of like-minded espers to help her steal the Remnant, a part of the Tree Diagram. Most of them had been taken down by that Railgun and arrested by Anti-Skill. She was the only one able to be out in public. Academy City didn’t currently have a clear punishment for treason. But she didn’t think anyone would bother to preserve the human rights of lowly traitors who threatened peace in the city. That meant all they needed to do was have the punishment conducted outside the law, unbeknownst to others. In detestable ways that took advantage of the fact that the long arm of the law couldn’t reach them. She had to do something about that. The ones who had once walked the same path as her were in danger. “…” Musujime tossed a hand grenade into the opening of a large external air-conditioning unit, shredding all the paper bills hidden inside and tearing apart the unit itself. …Hard cash, gold bars, IT bank access card under fake organization names… I have to say, they were going to quite a lot of trouble to spread it all out. I wonder what they did to get all this money in the first place. Ritoku Komaba, the leader of this entire area, had apparently outlawed sex trafficking. If he’d purposely cut off one of the quickest ways of amassing cash, that must have meant he had other ways, but… None of my business anyway. My goal is to destroy it all, and that’s all I have to do. I just have to take out fourteen more places and go back home, she thought, carefree, swinging the flashlight in her hand around lazily. “…I’d appreciate it if you let up a bit, esper.” Suddenly, a man’s voice broke into Musujime’s thoughts. In the narrow, straight alley, a man as big as a gorilla stood about ten meters in front of her. He must have emerged from the back of one of the surrounding buildings. He clothed his block frame with a cheap jacket, but it seemed like one flex of his muscles would rip it to shreds. The man looked like destruction incarnate, but his voice was cheerless. Sounding like he was spitting out copy paper, he continued: “I’d been keeping our funds separate…to prevent it all from being stolen in one fell swoop. Like a…timid person who carries multiple wallets out of fear of extortion. And as such, I feel as though it’s a touch childish for someone to realize all that and then to go on and strip them of everything anyway…”