“Hey, I don’t want to touch you like this, either!!!” “You… You…???!!!” “God, did you need to make it feel so real? How does that even work?” “I…I…I’m not wearing pads!!!” Mikoto blushed bright red all the way to her ears, her face a ridiculous blend of emotions. She froze in place, trembling a little. Kamijou ignored the reaction and stepped away. “If you have the time to fool around like this, then I guess we’re still in the clear. Anyway, meet back up with me at the spot we decided on, Thor. Can’t do much without you there.” Thor had arrived at the parking garage slightly ahead of Kamijou. When he spotted him approaching, he raised a hand. “Hey. You’re late. Worried about people tailing you?” “…No, just having to go along with your stupid joke. Wait. How did you get here before me?” “Eh?” Thor looked at him strangely, but Kamijou didn’t notice. 5 Kamijou gripped a pair of binoculars. He was in a parking garage from which he could observe the giant building with no windows in the center of District 7. Here was where he’d met up with Thor, but after greeting him, the thunder god had gone off somewhere again, citing other preparations he needed to make. While the Windowless Building was said to be the personal castle of the Academy City General Board chairperson, it still towered over the surrounding cityscape. Hotels, shopping malls, and other businesses crowded the vicinity. Kamijou was on the fifth floor of a parking garage, leaning onto a guardrail meant to prevent vehicles from falling. Right behind him, a small refrigerator truck passed and headed down the slope. Thor’s words came to mind. “The rumors are true—the Windowless Building doesn’t have any ways in or out, and trust me, I looked. They’ve got the whole thing locked up tight. Not even fluid or air can get in, let alone a person. X-rays and microwaves can’t do it, either. It’s like a galactic space battleship stuck into the ground nose first.” What would they do, then? The answer was simple. “So if we want to rescue Fräulein Kreutune, our only option is blowing a hole in the wall. That’s our basic assumption here.” The small refrigerator truck passed behind Kamijou again. Then another, then another—all moving down the slope. “Pretty much everything we’re about to do is for that express purpose. All this work and effort is simply going into destroying the impenetrable fortress’s armor. Keep that in mind.” Kamijou peered through his binoculars. With his free hand, he took out his cell phone. The subject of his observation was that first refrigerator truck to reach the ground. He punched in the number he’d been given and connected with Thor. “Hey, the first truck’s in position.” “Of course it is. I’m the one driving it—with a camera and a controller. I didn’t ask you for obvious progress reports. What’s the situation in the area?” “…Nobody’s around the building. Just as you predicted.” “That’s fine, then… To be safe, continue to stay on lookout until we spring into action. The camera in the driver’s seat can only swing its neck so far. I need someone watching from above.” “What’s in that thing anyway?” “You’ll see very soon. Anyway, keep vigilant. Ten more minutes and all the trucks will be in position.” Kamijou looked through the binoculars. Thor was right; he watched as one truck after another, all the same make and model, parked around the Windowless Building. He didn’t spot any other people, like Thor was concerned about. Random pedestrians wouldn’t be paying any attention to this, but even Anti-Skill, who were perimeter security experts, didn’t seem to notice. “…Now that I look at it again, the building seems oddly defenseless.” “Goes to show how confident they are in the armor. There’s no entrances or exits to begin with. You could try to assign a security detail, but how would they know what places to protect?” Thor’s answer was light and casual. “But more importantly, if they assigned people to guard the thing, the guards could turn traitor, or people could disguise themselves as guards to get in nice and close.” “Not that it has anything to do with us, but don’t they need a contingency plan for people who want to topple the building by destroying the foundation it stands on?” “The schematics aren’t public, but the base of the Windowless Building is fifteen meters underground, and it’s real big. Basically, everything up to thirty kilometers or so out is all part of its foundation. And with all the thick pillars they’ve got burrowed deeper underground, that thing’s never going down. At least, you’d need more than a nuclear land mine to do it.” All five or six of the small refrigerator trucks eventually parked around the Windowless Building. “Everything’s in position. How’s it look?” “No changes. I don’t see anyone.” “Gotcha. Then, without further ado, let’s get this started.” “Get what started?” There was no verbal response to his question. Instead, Thor answered with his actions. Booooooooom!!!!!! All of a sudden, every single refrigerator truck positioned around the Windowless Building erupted into a massive explosion. “Ngh?!” The shock wave toppled Kamijou, despite his significant distance from the blasts. It knocked his binoculars and cell phone out of his hands and sent them sliding across the parking garage floor. He glanced up at the billowing black pillar of smoke, then dragged himself backward along his rear end to grab his phone again. “What the hell did you just do?!” “Couldn’t you tell? Blasting a hole. I didn’t want to do anything that would leave a bad aftertaste in my mouth, you know? So I avoided the civvies.” “You moron…” Kamijou grabbed his binoculars. Rising to his feet slowly, he checked what it was like on the ground. “What was the point?! Didn’t you tell me the building can withstand a nuclear attack?! The only people this affected are the folks in the stores down the street. You probably shattered their windows with an explosion like that!” “Ah, crap. I should have taken that into account. Hope nobody got hurt.” Thor would have been able to get enough information on his surroundings using the cameras for remote-controlling the trucks. He probably didn’t know what was happening now that the cameras had been lost in the explosion. So Kamijou let himself be angry as he announced the results. “It’s just like you expected. I don’t know what you put on those refrigerator trucks, but the building’s armor can withstand nuclear bombs. You’re not scratching that thing. Your plan failed!!!” “The Calculating Fortress. That’s the name of the armor plating. It’s made of a compound material that calculates and disperses impacts. Actually, I’m over the moon everything turned out how I expected. This means the first phase of the plan was a success.” “What?” “Never mind. Just get back here. No need to worry—our plan to rescue Fräulein Kreutune is going fine. Oh, right. I sent your phone a map. Use that route to get back. Otherwise, you’ll be tailed. If people start to follow you, don’t meet up with me. Got it?” 6 Chanted a magic spell. Seria Kumokawa was revived! “Huh? Hey, what’s up? Did the festival mood make you decide to be a real person instead of a shut-in for a while?” Those words, spoken on the sidewalk that night, came from a girl wearing a ridiculously colored maid costume of yellow and black, like some kind of honeybee crossing: Maria Kumokawa. She carried a cardboard box with fresh foodstuffs in it, preparing for the Ichihanaran Festival like all the other students. Incidentally, she was Seria’s little sister. The older of the two, wearing a rougher out-of-fashion uniform, didn’t seem to be very emotionally affected in either direction by her comment as she gloomily twirled a finger around a lock of black hair. “…Well, I’m not fully back in top condition yet. All the noise convinced me it was my time anyway.” “You mean those beauty pageants schools are holding for the Ichihanaran Festival? Or maybe the ones in charge of shocking swimsuits? Curse you, G! How dare you grow again!!!” “No beauty pageants for me. Yaaawn… I’m supposed to stay behind the scenes anyway. Onstage, I’d stand out too much. I’m not good at that stuff. Besides, someone’s gonna just manipulate the votes with their ability. Like Number Five. She’s so annoying. What’s the point?” “…You’d stand out too much, but you’re not good at it? Can’t imagine what kind of power you’ve been storing up this whole time.” Seria rubbed her eyes sleepily as if to say she just couldn’t keep up with her little sister’s energy right now. “Well, you know… It all goes to my chest, I guess.” “And there you go acting all superior! Even though you’re half asleep! Curse you, G. It’s like when a person changes after winning the lottery, isn’t it? You’ve got way more than you need, and you let it go to your head. I guess that’s just the way of the world…” “But if we ever got to a point where flat-chested people proudly condescended to big-chested people, I’d have to assume the world itself has an important screw loose.” “Got some trivia for you. Back in ancient Greece, before they had bras, flat chests were a sign of status. They said big boobs were ugly because they get all saggy.” “Don’t think that has much to do with modern times. Also, were flat chests a virtue? As far as I can tell from the Venus de Milo, they must have had an established size minimum even before the Common Era… Anyway, I think the right size is when you can start chuckling and complaining about how hard it is to find a swimsuit.” “I’ve said that before. For the exact opposite reason, though.” “Really. I see.” Seria’s melancholy mostly derived from her unwillingness to check her e-mail on her personal cell phone. It was probably flooded with heaps of annoying Academy City news… Actually, the light that notified her of an incoming message was blinking constantly. Something troublesome was clearly happening somewhere in the city again. …Not my problem. I never said I was officially back at work. Her “work” was supposed to involve her acting as a think tank for one of the old men reigning supreme on the General Board, devising and presenting solutions to difficult problems…but if she was being honest, she hated it. At least getting a free upgrade to a deluxe meal she hadn’t asked for hadn’t made her any happier. Instead, with all her determination, she averted her eyes from the problem of reality. “Fine then, Maria. I’ll talk about Kagun Kihara. You know, the one you love so much you get nosebleeds?” “I…I do not! I can exercise restraint!!!” “…If he declared he loved flat chests and said that anything B or above didn’t count as breasts, dun-dun-dunnn, how would you feel?” “……” Seria recalled how Maria’s former teacher had once been an active student keeper—someone who helped kids before they flunked out of school. “…I—I guess I wouldn’t like that. In fact, my pride would be so badly wounded that I would devolve into misanthropy.” “Well, there you go. So get to work, young lady.” “…I’m not sure how, to be honest. The only ways I know of enhancing breast growth are superstitions.” “Don’t worry. You just haven’t blossomed yet. You have hidden potential within you—just like characters in shounen manga. Potential for something like…this.” “Hey!!! Curse you, G! Don’t look all smug while you show off your assets!!!” Nobody could be an older sister without the ability to brush off her little sister’s fury. Seria put a hand to her mouth and gave a big yawn. Tears formed in her eyes, which she rubbed. As she did, she remembered something and asked her sister about it. “…Anyway, here’s a more important question: Is it true you fell head over heels for Touma Kamijou in Eastern Europe? Because if you did, things are about to get messier than a soap opera.” “Th-this is defamation!!! Where the hell did that rumor come from?!” 7 Their meetup point was next to a shopping mall near the Windowless Building. Not inside it but on the corner outside where the vending machines were. The night scenery was filled with blinking red lights from all the fire trucks that had rolled in. Their thick fire-extinguishing hoses were plugged into the pump valves on the wall, doubtless to make use of the mall’s full array of firefighting equipment. Thor leaned against a vending machine sipping a can of coffee, blending in with the other onlookers. When he saw Kamijou, he smiled thinly. “This country doesn’t have any good coffee, does it?” “…Why buy it if you’re just gonna complain?” Kamijou sighed in exasperation. “Anyway, explain yourself. You sure made a big show out there, and you didn’t even scratch the place. But you called it a success. What’s the big—?” Before he could finish, Thor put his finger to his own lips. He spoke softly. “I’ll tell you while we walk. There’s a good reason I couldn’t explain the whole plan to you.” “……” Kamijou and Thor began moving away from the crowd of onlookers. “…To begin with, Academy City’s leaders have a surveillance network, right? They can see every tiny little thing that happens in every corner of the city. I can’t exactly give you the whole plan under their watchful eyes, can I?” “You mean the man-made satellites and security robots and stuff?” “I don’t know how many projects this place has running in parallel, but those can’t cover all the blind spots alone. They must have a different network made of much less friendly tech. Something they don’t tell anyone about.” In reality, the surveillance network was an array of information-gathering nanodevices scattered all over Academy City called the Underline. But only a select few, such as Accelerator and Motoharu Tsuchimikado, were aware of it. “Here’s the thing, though,” continued Thor. “No matter what kind of tech they’re using, we can’t be the only ones who hate the complete lack of privacy at all times. Here’s an example.” Thor left off there, then opened a metal door under an overpass. It was probably meant to store cleaning equipment and the like, but for some reason, there was another door in the rear, beyond which stretched too many passages to count. Kamijou looked into the dimly lit hallways, illuminated by stuttering fluorescent lights, and frowned. “…What the heck?” “The Freshmen. Or, strictly speaking, the main underworld group they’re attached to; this is like a secret base of theirs. Clandestine operations need a base to work out of. This is one of them. A blank space, a blind spot outside of Academy City’s surveillance net. I’m surprised they’d build one right above the underground portion of the Windowless Building, though.” Of course, the place lacked any of the equipment the Freshmen had used for prep. To anyone surveilling them, Kamijou’s and Thor’s signals would seem to suddenly disappear, so investigators would doubtlessly be dispatched here quickly. The boys only had twenty minutes or so to make use of this place. “…Why do sorcerers like you know so much about Academy City? Even I didn’t know that, and I live here.” “Because the Freshmen were a potential enemy of Gremlin. We do our research on our foes. And we had the perfect window into their activities, too.” “?” “Bersi. A former researcher active in Academy City who goes by the alias Kagun Kihara,” stated Thor as they walked down the long passage. Bersi. Kagun Kihara. A central figure in the Baggage City disturbance. Kamijou had only gone to the city on his guidance—to wrap things up there. Thor grinned. “We blew up all those refrigerator trucks in order to get his help.” “Wait, what? I thought he was dead—” “For many years, Bersi has been trying to take revenge on another scientist named Byouri Kihara,” Thor interrupted. “The fight in Baggage City wasn’t the only thing he anticipated. He saw a confrontation happening in Academy City, too. So before he left here, he set up a few…tricks. Back doors you might call them?” “……” “Here we are. Go on in.” Thor sounded as if he were inviting Kamijou into his own home as he opened the metal door halfway down the straight passage. Inside was a small room with no furniture, just a household outlet and an internet jack on the wall. Thor took his cell phone out of his pocket and hooked it up to the wall jack using a cable. “The armor plating covering the Windowless Building can withstand a direct nuclear strike. But that doesn’t mean the Calculating Fortress is hard, exactly. If you make a skyscraper using materials that are too rigid, then when it gets hit by some earthquake, the tremors will break the whole thing apart.” “Then how does it work?” “The armor plating can move. It calculates the impact pattern of EM waves and ultraviolet waves coming toward it and vibrates itself in an optimal way. Basically, it meets the incoming waves with their opposite, canceling them out. That’s why simply throwing stuff at it doesn’t make a difference. Of course, there are other ways it counteracts impacts, like with chemicals and temperature differentials, but yeah.” Once Thor’s phone was hooked up to the network, he started fiddling with it. Kamijou peered over his shoulder, but he couldn’t make out any of the tiny rows of numbers scrolling quickly up the screen. Clearly, the screen itself was not made for regular users. “The Calculating Fortress isn’t actually that hard, on the other hand. If its ‘brain’ stopped working, you could probably just blow a hole in it.” “But doesn’t the building get all its electricity from the inside?” “Yep. So we can’t force a blackout,” admitted Thor readily. “Instead, I took a different approach. Blowing up all those refrigerator trucks was part of it. Essentially, my aim was to get some data on how the Calculating Fortress canceled out impacts and see if I could figure out any of its tendencies. All those trucks might have looked the same, but each one had a different explosion strength and direction.” “…And if you found a tendency, what then?” “I could calculate an impact pattern the armor plating couldn’t handle. Then if we launch an attack of that exact pattern, we can blow a hole in a building that can stand up to nuclear strikes.” “Feels like you’d need more than just some guy’s laptop to calculate something like that.” “Right. So I’m using an even bigger computer.” Thor waggled his cell phone with all the numbers zooming down the screen. “Remember the back doors Bersi—er, Kagun Kihara—left here? He’s got an ID that gives him a free pass to a few supercomputers people use for research. I’m doing the predictive simulations on one. Although they’re the same as this secret base, once we use one, we’ll be locked out immediately.” Within about fifteen minutes, the results of his computations appeared on the screen. The equation for breaking through the impenetrable Calculating Fortress, the armor plating that made the Windowless Building impervious to even nuclear weapons. And now that Kamijou and Thor had it, they could move to the next phase of their plan. 8 Kamijou and Thor snuck through the site of an old research facility that had been the base of the Freshmen underground organization as they made their way across Academy City. They carried bags stuffed with electronic equipment. Thor had stolen it all. “The General Board chairperson is likely overly dependent on his personal surveillance network and the precision of the Calculating Fortress. Since no one can betray him, he would trust those things more than a random group of people. But no system is perfect. If we can get up close to the Windowless Building without being detected, we can deal a fatal blow to his security system.” “……” “Hmm? No worries. I know what we’re really after—rescuing Fräulein Kreutune. Getting her out of there won’t be the end. In fact, I think the harder part will be pulling the wool over everyone else’s eyes—Gremlin’s main force and Ollerus’s group alike. If we take any detours, they’ll converge on us from every direction, and we’ll be done for. To be honest, and I hate to say it, we can’t afford to be greedy.” Kamijou and Thor stopped in front of a ladder built into the wall. Kamijou looked up and saw a round exit. “A manhole?” “If we go outside, we’ll be right next to the Windowless Building—but once we’re out, the chairperson’s network will pick us up again. They’re probably investigating Kagun Kihara’s back doors right now. If they figure out what I was using that supercomputer to calculate, the chairperson will make our job harder in whatever way he can.” “How much time do you think we have?” “Ten, maybe twenty minutes. But that’s more than enough for us to blow a hole in the famous Calculating Fortress.” Kamijou yet again felt the weight of the bags filled with electronic devices. Once they climbed the ladder and popped open the manhole, there was no going back. He understood that. And he went forward anyway. “Let’s go,” Kamijou said. “Just want I wanted to hear.” What linked Fräulein Kreutune to Touma Kamijou? It didn’t matter. Because, in the first place… …he didn’t walk this path because he wanted people’s gratitude. He wanted to save her, so he would. That was all there was to it. 9 Tonight’s entrée was mizutaki, a one-pot stew dish. “…Stews are a great way to make simple chicken seem like a luxury.” Kikyou Yoshikawa twirled a small cylinder for the portable stove on her finger. Her area of expertise was cloning technology—pharmaceutics, genetic engineering, and the like. She’d even had a hand in the military Radio Noise project in the past. She lived in an apartment meant for school faculty, but she wasn’t renting this unit under her name anyway. She’d ended up drifting into the apartment of an Anti-Skill officer she knew. It was extremely unfortunate, but Kikyou Yoshikawa didn’t have a job. Aside from her, several other freeloaders occupied the apartment, too. For example, a girl who looked ten named Last Order, who was busy swinging around a nunchuck-shaped wireless controller as she bounced up and down on the couch. “Mmmmrrrrrr!!! I’ll never give you Snow White, declares Misaka declares Misaka!!! There’s no actual proof she’ll be happy if I give her to the prince, basically, says Misaka says—Hey!!!!!!” “Come on, you. Dinner’s ready.” “Misaka’s just getting to the good part, complains Misaka complains Misaka! Communication is very important in online games, and I can’t just log out before settling everything, says Misaka says Misaka giving a basic explanation!!!” “…All the accounts in your friends list say Misaka, though. Doesn’t that mean you’re just playing with yourself?” Yoshikawa, former scientist, cocked her head, remembering the mass-produced military espers and the girl’s position as their command tower. …Also, while the fairy-tale aesthetic, cute stars, and heart-shaped effects could fool you, upon closer inspection, it looked like the seven dwarves, armed with farming implements like axes and hoes, were all piling on a prince on a white horse and beating the crap out of him. Was the video game themed around a peasant revolt? “Hey,” said Yoshikawa to the white-haired, red-eyed Level Five esper reclining on another couch at a right angle to the one Last Order was jumping all over. Accelerator. His nearby crutch with a modern design and the choker electrode at his neck implied he wasn’t at full strength, and he wasn’t. Despite that, he was still the most powerful person in Academy City. At the same time, though… “I’m racking my brain over how to handle her,” said Yoshikawa. “You’re her guardian, Accelerator. Do something.” “…How should I know any better? If we all start eating without her, she’ll come to the table. We just have to make her feel left out. No picking her up or giving her orders.” “Well, you seem to know a lot about her.” “You want me to punch your lights out?” Yoshikawa ignored Accelerator’s glare. She fit the cylinder into the portable stove, then tightened it with a clasp, preventing it from moving. She turned the dial that controlled the heat a few times to test it, just to make sure it could produce a ring of blue flame. There was one other freeloader here—a girl named Misaka Worst (evil eyes, big breasts)—but she was a delinquent and loved going out at night, so she didn’t always come home for dinner. Number One scowled. “Where’s the owner of this stupid place anyway?” “Who knows. Aiho is probably being run ragged. Security’s tight this week. They lifted the restriction on students going home for a while because of the Ichihanaran Festival.” “…And what are you up to?” “Training to be a wife!!! Well, that’s what I’d like to say, but these days, it’s all about sharing chores and having a dual income stream.” “Can’t hurt to learn those skills anyway.” “You’re one to talk,” retorted Yoshikawa, exasperated. “Anyway, I know I can’t stay in place forever like this. It doesn’t matter when you’re a kid, but when you’re a full-fledged adult, any blanks in your résumé can have terrible effects on your prospects.” “Did you find something?” “Sort of. I’m laying the groundwork for now.” Yoshikawa picked up a large A4-sized envelope off the floor and waved it at him. “I was invited to be a special lecturer at a science university. Only on a temporary basis, though. If I can make a little money with this, that’ll help me prepare to reenter college myself.” “Why go back?” “I want to be a teacher but not one who specializes in genetics. Although can’t be in charge of a classroom with my credentials, it seems like the bar for being a student keeper is lower… Wait, I think they employ people out of the private sector, too, not just people with regular teaching certificates… Huh?” Yoshikawa froze. She’d been preparing the stew before, but now she looked here and there before moving to the awfully advanced-looking kitchen and rummaging around in a cabinet. “…No green onion shoots to use as seasoning. Well, we can still eat the stew just fi—” “Okay!!!!!!” There was an explosion. The seven dwarves had sandbagged the prince on his white horse and plundered his crown and mantle, giving Last Order the time to suddenly shout like that. “Misaka will go buy some right now!!! declares Misaka declares Misaka and stuff!!!” “…You’re up, Mr. Guardian.” “Don’t just dump her on me…” Last Order didn’t find errands fun—no, that kind of character trait would have been too easy to understand. She clearly wanted to go out on the town at night, especially now that the Ichihanaran Festival prep was probably making the city feel like a whole other world. “You’ve got the tightest grip on her reins, don’t you? Honestly, when you get to be my age, there are times where you just can’t keep up with a kid immediately putting her ideas into action,” said Yoshizawa. “Shut it. I’m not in charge of her. And you’re making me out to be in the same category as her,” said Accelerator. “Now, give Misaka your wallet! says Misaka says Misaka, holding out her hands!!!” “Hmm. Then maybe she’s got a hold on your reins. Well, either way, you’re still joined at the hip.” “…Every once in a while, I get the feeling you’re really into the idea of being utterly destroyed. Your careless ramblings have a price, you know. Ever considered that?” “Misaka! Is right here!!!” shouted Last Order. “Oh, but what about the Ichihanaran Festival? Do you want to go around with her and see the sights after all?” “‘After all’? What are you even talking about?” “……” Suddenly, Accelerator and Yoshikawa realized that Last Order’s shouting, louder than any siren, had ceased. They turned around. Nobody was on the couch. The front door was half-open, caught on a shoehorn that had fallen to the floor. And one particularly small pair of shoes nearby was missing. Yoshikawa put a hand on her hip and used her other to massage her temple. She shut one eye and exhaled. Then she spoke. “Please, Mr. Guardian?” “Oh, screw this!!!” 10 The manhole cover was open. First, Kamijou pushed the bags stuffed with electronic devices up onto the ground and then he leaned himself out onto the nighttime road. Thor shouted at him from below. “Quick! We’ve only got ten or twenty minutes!!!” They were right next to the Windowless Building. Before Thor could clamber out of the manhole, Kamijou ran across the sidewalk and hugged the wall of the structure. With a large red pen, he then drew a large circle on the Calculating Fortress armor plating. Since nuclear weapons would have no effect on it, he’d imagined the wall to be as hard as a diamond. But when he actually touched it with the pen, it felt more like a thick sheet of rubber. Was that because it was avoiding the impact in addition to repelling it? Or… Did it only seem a little bouncy because of the waves running through the Calculating Fortress, and in reality, the material actually was as hard as diamond? …Thor said there are other countermeasures, like chemicals and high temperatures. It can’t all be covered in nanomachines, could it? Kamijou shouted over his shoulder. “I marked it!!!” “The excavator!!! I already put the impact pattern calculated by Kagun Kihara’s back door into it!!!” Thor finished assembling the electronic tools packed into their bags. It looked almost like a machine gun, but instead of a barrel, it had a giant stake attached to it. The tool wasn’t for a single piercing strike to open a hole—it was for breaking down walls with a barrage of hundreds, if not thousands, of hits at a time. Kamijou grabbed the excavator, then caught a lithium-ion battery from Thor and shoved it into the machine from below like a magazine. Thor prepared his excavator the same way. “Push the stake along the line you just drew. Then you simply pull the trigger. That’ll activate the excavator. Don’t stop when you see cracks—keep pushing. Once you’re all the way through, pull it back out and do it again in a different place on the line, away from the first. Got it?!” Kamijou and Thor placed the tips of their excavators at roughly the three o’clock and nine o’clock positions, then pulled the firm triggers. Brrrr-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak!! As the stock assailed Kamijou’s shoulder with a dull pain over and over again, the thick stake’s tip pounded into the armor plating of the supposedly impenetrable Windowless Building. It would not be exaggeration to say this was a historical moment. Not even Accelerator, Academy City’s most powerful Level Five, had been able to destroy this structure. “It’s in!!!” “But it’s not going fast enough!!! It’s taking too long to bore a hole!!!” Plus, the noise was even louder than Kamijou expected. Thor had just exploded several refrigerator trucks a little while ago, too. He was sure the people from the fire department were still doing their work. “It’s too loud!!! They’re gonna notice us!!! If some random fireman gets in our way, we’ll burn through the ten or twenty minutes in a heartbeat!!!” “The firefighters can’t hear anything but the sirens. They won’t notice us right away!!! The bigger problem’s the armor plating—it’s more of a Goody Two-shoes than I thought. Damn it! I thought I calculated the ideal values! How is it still this tough…?!” Skreerrr-grrrr!!! The grinding sound was like gears splitting apart. Thor cursed, then stopped his excavator and pulled it out of the wall. The thick stake was bent halfway. “Gotta switch spikes! You keep going. We can’t afford to lose any more time!!!” “You mean you have spare parts?!” “Enough to make a whole other excavator, just in case one of ours got busted up. But that means I’ve only got the one extra spike. Don’t break yours!!!” Things were not going according to plan, and accidents they hadn’t foreseen were starting to pile up. It all amplified Kamijou’s anxiety. Was this it? Could they do nothing else? The Calculating Fortress armor plating protected the personal castle of the General Board chairperson, the leader of Academy City. And they were taking it on, just the two of them? They’d fundamentally misunderstood something, hadn’t they? Nevertheless, stopping and turning tail wouldn’t magically make the situation any better. The self-evident truth was that the way you got out of predicaments was by thinking only of pushing forward. While it sounded a lot like the gambler’s fallacy, trying to be clever and coming up with a solution wouldn’t help. Kicking his anxiety to the curb, Kamijou scanned the giant clocklike circle he’d drawn, then pushed in the excavator again between three and four o’clock. He began to move the tip toward the five o’clock position when something happened. “…Wait, what?” At first, he thought his excavator had malfunctioned. The immense brr-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak noise continued, but another sound, a strange one, had begun to make its way in. “Thor! Something’s wrong. Mine might be going haywire, too!!! Haven’t you fixed yours yet?!” He got no response from Thor. Still facing the Calculating Fortress, Kamijou shouted again. “Thor!!!” At this point, even he was confused. He turned around. Thor should have been swapping out his spike on the sidewalk, but instead, he was holding his broken excavator in his arms and squatting. He looked up, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide-open. It was as though he was trying to stare up at the night sky—at something. No. He wasn’t just trying. Thor was on guard against something approaching them from the dark skies, even letting their entire objective—penetrating the Calculating Fortress—be consigned to oblivion. “…Not good.” “What isn’t good?! My excavator’s making a weird noise! I don’t know shit about how these things work. Get your spike replaced and give it to me!!! Then you can check the motor on mine—” “No!!! It’s not your excavator malfunctioning!!! That’s the sound of something striking air. We’ve got Academy City unmanned weaponry coming at us!!!” Kamijou’s finger fell off the excavator’s trigger. The impacts to his shoulder ceased, and the incredible noise the machine was producing vanished as well. The other explosive sounds continued. They were every bit as loud as the excavator but clearly separate from it—and Kamijou could sense them getting closer. Red and green lights danced in the night sky, but Thor seemed to have picked out something besides those pinpricks. “…A cheaper version of the Hexawing model? If they’re sticking with the name scheme, that would make them Quadrawings, I guess. Seems like getting rid of the excess gave ’em a boost in mobility…” “Get to the point, Thor!” “Autonomous attack helicopters. They whittle you down with sonic weaponry, then rain machine-gun bullets and missiles on you. Some of the most brutal shit this city’s ever fielded, I bet!!!” Judging by the number of lights in the sky, there had to be more than one. But if even one approached, it would spell doom for Kamijou. He was powerless in the face of nonsupernatural violence. “They’re autonomous, right?! That means they’re unmanned. Thor! Can’t you take them out with your sorcery?!” “I could maybe do something, but we don’t have time to mess with them!!! We don’t want Gremlin or Ollerus detecting us. We have to break through the Calculating Fortress. It’s all we’ve got. If we keep taking losses, the situation will get exponentially worse. We can’t afford to deal with the helicopters!!!” They couldn’t let themselves be killed without a fight, yet they didn’t have time to deal with the oncoming threats. Their escape route was finally gone. If they couldn’t find a way through, then they wouldn’t be able to rescue Fräulein Kreutune. There wasn’t even a less bad ending this time. They’d race straight to the worst possible conclusion. “Thor, if we can’t deal with those things, then we need to pull out for now.” “We’ll be losing our only chance to save Fräulein Kreutune! We can’t use the Freshmen’s underground base again, and once Academy City deploys a security patch and updates the defensive program to be able to deal with the impact pattern we’re exploiting, we’ll be up a creek!!! We’ll never get another chance at this!!!” “Yeah, well, you made a plan, and it failed! If the two of us die here, then nobody will save her!!!” “Once Gremlin and Ollerus make a move to capture her, we’ll be left without any opportunities to intervene. And she’s not gonna like what either of those groups does to her!!!” “Damn it!!!” Kamijou swore, pulling the excavator’s trigger again. But they wouldn’t make it. That was crystal clear. The situation was changing by the second, and they lacked the means to respond to it. They were basically rationing out the last dregs of their savings. Once things got too bad, the changes would force them out of the picture. And then. Something happened. A strange noise—and this time, it did come from Kamijou’s excavator. It sounded like tough metal ripping apart. At first, he thought his spike was damaged, like Thor’s had been. But he was wrong. Krsshh-eeeeekkkk!!!!!! A giant fissure appeared in the wall of the Windowless Building. The crack spread farther out than the circle Kamijou had drawn on the wall with red pen. It was bigger, too. And the destruction only continued to amplify from there. A square. Each side was over ten meters long. The fissure was shaped such that it showed clear human intervention. The impenetrable Calculating Fortress began to fracture. Cut off from the wall around it, the giant panel tipped, then fell toward Kamijou. “What…the…?!” He let go of the excavator. Frantically, he rolled to the side to get out of the way. The thick wall debris bent the rough machine as it fell—it was still stuck inside—then crushed it, thoroughly destroying it. As the pieces collided with the ground, a dust cloud erupted from it. The Calculating Fortress was said to be indestructible, so maybe the dust had come from the sidewalk asphalt. …Our excavators didn’t make that hole. Something else must have—something better. But what? And wasn’t the pattern Thor used Kagun Kihara’s back door to calculate the only possible exploit? Can’t the wall cancel out nuclear attacks?! From the outside, it appeared nothing but the excavators could have made any impact. And defenses like these wouldn’t just crack from deterioration or metal fatigue. In which case, wouldn’t that mean this man-made destruction hadn’t come from the outside? But if it hadn’t, then where had it come from? “……” Thor stared intently at the dust cloud, trying to see past it. Through the hole in the Calculating Fortress, he glimpsed the interior of the Windowless Building. The space was occupied. But by who? Whoever it was, Thor and Kamijou could hear their footsteps. Not hard ones, like leather shoes or boots would give off, but clapping ones, like someone hitting a glass table with the palm of their hand. Was this person barefoot? Their skin touched the air outside the dust cloud. And out she stepped. She was fairly tall for a woman, standing at almost two meters in height. Her silver hair almost reached her ankles, and because her head was down, her face was difficult to make out. She wore something akin to a dress made of thin synthetic fibers but one not designed primarily to be fashionable. Her underwear was clearly visible through it, although her eyes betrayed no sign of her caring. The texture of her pale skin appeared as smooth as a girl in her teens, but it was hard to actually tell. On some fundamental level, she looked inhuman. It wasn’t a clear-cut thing, like it would be if she had horns or wings. In fact, Kamijou wouldn’t be able to give a clear answer as to what exactly was wrong with her. But something was off—something hard to explain with words. If a teenage girl was in a sauna, nobody would think anything of her glossy skin. But if that same girl had been discovered in an ancient pyramid, that would have made zero sense. It was like that. The woman was herself without fault, but she emanated an aura that was clearly mismatched somehow. Who…are you…? Kamijou thought. And then he wondered why he hadn’t actually said those words. Later on, he would recognize the feeling as being like staring down a carnivorous beast that had just escaped its cage. He felt he shouldn’t excite her or stimulate her at all—not before he knew what was going on. If she came out of the Windowless Building, would that…make her Academy City’s leader? But I thought there was a chairman, not a chairwoman… But Kamijou’s guess was incorrect. Thor, who had entirely forgotten about both the ten- to twenty-minute time limit and the autonomous attack helicopters closing in, mumbled to himself, sounding dazed. “…Fräu…lein…Kreutune…?”
Chapter 101
35 min read